RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17215/china-whitsun-reef

The failure of the Obama administration to defend the Philippines in early 2012, in a confrontation similar to today’s, emboldened China’s regime to adopt an even more aggressive posture in its peripheral waters.

China claims all the waters inside the dashes are sovereign as well, terming them “blue national soil.” There is no legal basis for an assertion of sovereignty of this sort.

Whitsun, which Manila calls Julian Felipe Reef, is 175 nautical miles from Palawan, an island of the Philippines. The feature is within the Philippine “exclusive economic zone”….

Since December, large Chinese trawlers have lashed themselves together and parked in formations near Whitsun. Vessels come and go, but the numbers have gone up over time. They have not been engaged in fishing.

Near Whitsun, retired U.S. Navy Capt. James Fanell tells Gatestone, China is building “two concentric rings of new artificial island bases.”

Washington [in 2012] brokered an agreement for [China and the Philippines] to withdraw their craft [from Scarborough Shoal], but only Manila complied. Beijing has been in firm control of Scarborough Shoal ever since. The Obama administration, despite the brazen Chinese seizure, decided not to enforce the agreement it had just arranged.

Worse, by doing nothing to hold China accountable for deception and aggression at Scarborough, Washington empowered the most belligerent elements in the Chinese political system by showing everybody else in Beijing that aggression worked.

Chinese vessels have continued pressure in the South China Sea, especially at Second Thomas Shoal, also thought to be part of the Philippines, as well as other Philippine-controlled features.

“Many on the Biden team failed to act in 2012. They now have a very rare opportunity to get another chance to do the right thing. Let’s hope they will.” — Capt. James Fanell, former director of Intelligence and Information Operations at the U.S. Pacific Fleet, to Gatestone Institute, March 2021.

James Holmes, who holds the J. C. Wylie Chair of Maritime Strategy at the U.S. Naval War College, told Gatestone that China’s current actions at Whitsun are “an offensive that looks like conquest by increments.” Fanell maintains that not opposing China’s actions at Whitsun will soon put both Taiwan and the Senkakus at risk.

About 220 Chinese fishing vessels, almost certainly part of China’s maritime militia, are now crowding around Whitsun Reef in the Spratly chain in the South China Sea in another attempt to break apart the Philippines.

Whitsun is where the United States and the region should confront an increasingly expansionist China. The failure of the Obama administration to defend the Philippines in early 2012, in a confrontation similar to today’s, emboldened China’s regime to adopt an even more aggressive posture in its peripheral waters.

Whitsun Reef is inside China’s infamous nine-dash line. The line on official maps defines an area informally known as the “cow’s tongue,” which includes about 85 percent of the South China Sea. Beijing maintains it has sovereignty over every feature there, including Whitsun, which Beijing has named Niue Jiao.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17213/us-china-russia-thucydides-trap

The Paris Climate Accord is more of an aspiration than a strategy while the Iranian nuclear problem has always been a way of avoiding the real issue: the danger that the Islamist regime poses for regional peace and stability.

[T]he Biden doctrine, if one might suggest such a label… could cause lasting damage because it concerns relations with China and Russia.

Is China [and Russia] a rival, a challenger, a competitor, an adversary or an enemy? Is the US heading for a cold, lukewarm or even a hot war…?

[W]ithout answering that question it won’t be possible to develop serious policies to deal with them.

The phrase “Russia wants to subvert our democracy” has become a Bidenian leitmotiv. And, yet, the same Russia is invited as a partner in stabilizing Libya, finding a future for Syria and helping keep the mullahs on leash.

You don’t deal with an adversary, even a troublemaker, the same way you do with an enemy.

[T]here are enemies who, like the bug in a Voltaire short story, are suicidal; they prefer to attack and die rather than live to make peace.

George Shultz always advised against taking on two powerful challengers at the same time, even though the US needed to plan for simultaneously fighting two major wars.

When Joe Biden started his presidency with the slogan “diplomacy is back!” some wondered what that meant in terms of a coherent foreign policy. Diplomacy, as every sixth-grader knows, is one of the many means needed to implement a policy. On its own, it is either an academic conceit or another name for charade. In the past week or so we have observed diplomacy, as practiced by the new administration, both as a conceit and a charade.

As a conceit, it appeared in the headline-catching slogan “America is back in the Paris Climate Accord” launched by Washington. Now, however, we know that the “return” is so full of “ifs and buts” that even the French, initially applauding loudly, are beginning to wonder whether they have been sold a bill of goods. Another example was furnished by the tedious scrimmage over the “nuclear deal” with the mullahs in Tehran.

President Biden had hinted at a quick return to the path traced by his former boss Barack Obama. Based on that assumption, British Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab imagined a scenario that would lead to defanging the mullahs with a lasting solution to the 42-year old “Iran problem.” Now, however, we know that Raab may have jumped the gun as the Biden team are still wondering what to do about a deal that Robert Malley, the diplomat in charge of the dossier, has described as defective.

In the broader scheme of things, these two examples may do little harm.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17202/erdogan-turkey-islamic-superpower

Erdogan was promoting his global campaign of victimization by “Islamophobia”, while in fact it is the critics of extremist Islam who are in danger and frequently killed.

In the Caucasus, Turkey has just supported the Azerbaijani war against Armenia in Nagorno-Karabakh in order to create a Turkish Islamic corridor between Azerbaijan, Turkey and other Muslim countries.

“It began in 1989 with the fatwa against Salman Rushdie: no Western country reacted except with words – as if they thought a verbal spell might work!…. The battle lost in Armenia is the first of a war waged in the West against the Judeo-Christian civilization”. — Michel Onfray, Reveue des deux mondes, February 1, 2021.

While the new sultan extends his influence to Syria, Libya and the Caucasus, he also extends it to the Mediterranean. For pacifist Europe, that sea only exists when it comes to bringing in migrants.

“What the Turkish regime is doing is using its diaspora as a Trojan horse.” — Michel Sifaoui, europe1.fr, February 7, 2021.

In Turkey under Erdogan, school textbooks have been rewritten to refer to Jews and Christians as gavur, “infidels.” Earlier Turkish textbooks referred to the members of the two religions as the “people of the Book”…. The curriculum adopts an anti-American stance, and shows sympathy for the motives of ISIS and al-Qaeda. — Report by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (IMPACT-se), March 2021.

“We are a large family of 300 million people from the Adriatic to the Great Wall of China”. — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Minval.az, October 18, 2018.

“It was a very special day, July 24 [2020],” said France’s leading expert on Islam, Gilles Kepel.

“It was pilgrimage time to Mecca and, due to the pandemic, no one was there! It was the anniversary of the Treaty of Lausanne, the origin of modern Turkey within its current borders. Erdogan was about to twist the arm of the secular Ataturk, who had turned the old Hagia Sophia basilica into a museum that he had donated ‘to humanity’. Erdogan… turned it back into a mosque”.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17148/lessons-middle-east

If appointing Antony Blinken as Secretary of State was enough to reassure Israelis and Saudis, the designation of Robert Malley as special envoy to Iran only rekindled their concerns. Malley was not only involved in the conception of the JCPOA, he was “kicked off of Obama’s first presidential campaign after reports emerged he had met with members of the Hamas terror group,” and has reportedly asked that Hamas be included in talks in the future. Senator Tom Cotton tweeted that the appointment was “deeply troubling… Malley has a long track record of sympathy for the Iranian regime & animus towards Israel. The ayatollahs wouldn’t believe their luck if he is selected.”

The Israeli government, whose secret service has managed to demonstrate Iran’s willingness to acquire nuclear weapons, also warned: “The deal gave Iran a highway paved with gold to build the critical infrastructure for an entire arsenal of nuclear bombs. That deal gave Iran the resources to significantly escalate its aggression and terror across the Middle East.”

Far from the memory of the too numerous wars that have marked the Middle East, the temptation is strong to think that diplomacy should replace force, and that a good negotiation, even if it means coming out a loser, is better than a conflict. This is more or less the philosophy that seems to inspire the “not so new” American administration, such as that for former US President Barack Obama.

Former President Donald J. Trump, for his part, had no doubt learned some lessons from British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and more from the miserable double-cross offered by Hitler to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and the French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier, which would lead, a year later, to the Second World War. Daladier and Chamberlain were so opposed to the use of force that they preferred to sacrifice Czechoslovakia to Nazi appetites rather than stand firm while there was still time. The rest, unfortunately, is well known.

Other have been inspired by the Roman general, Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus: “Si vis pacem, para bellum” — If you want peace, prepare for war.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17195/iran-houthis-celebrate-biden

By removing the Houthis from the terrorist list and cutting off US support to confront the militia group, the Biden Administration has emboldened and empowered the Houthis and given them a free pass.

That is most likely why the Houthi terror group has ratcheted up its missile attacks. More than 40 drones and missiles were reportedly launched by the Houthis at Saudi Arabia in the month of February alone.

In spite of the mounting evidence of crimes committed by the Houthis, the Biden Administration decided to hand an undeserved political victory to Iran’s regime. Let us hope that the Biden Administration reconsiders, and stops rewarding Iran for its malign behavior as well as jeopardizing the strengthening peace and stability that has finally been taking off throughout the Middle East.

The Biden Administration has completely reversed the former administration’s firm policy on the Houthis in the Yemeni civil war.

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo designated Yemen’s Iran-backed Houthi rebels, also known as Ansarallah, as a “foreign terrorist organization” in January 2021. The move was intended to hold the terror group accountable, as Pompeo clarified:

“These designations will provide additional tools to confront terrorist activity and terrorism by Ansarallah, a deadly Iran-backed militia group in the Gulf region. The designations are intended to hold Ansarallah accountable for its terrorist acts, including cross-border attacks threatening civilian populations, infrastructure, and commercial shipping.”

But after less than a week in office, the Biden administration began reviewing the designation and revoked the designation of Yemen’s Houthis as a terrorist group.

Why would the Biden Administration remove a militia group, which commits crimes against humanity, recruits, injures and kills children, from the terrorist designation? According to Human Rights Watch’s World Report 2020:

“Since September 2014, all parties to the conflict have used child soldiers under 18, including some under the age of 15, according to a 2019 UN Group of Eminent International and Regional Experts on Yemen report in 2019. According to the secretary general, out of 3,034 children recruited throughout the war in Yemen, 1,940—64 percent—were recruited by the Houthis.”

https://hotair.com/archives/john-s-2/2021/03/26/largest-ever-incursion-chinese-air-force-near-taiwan/

Reuters is reporting that the Chinese air force sent another incursion of military aircraft near the island of Taiwan today. This has become a somewhat routine occurrence lately but today was a bit different because of the size of the incursion.

Twenty Chinese military aircraft entered Taiwan’s air defence identification zone on Friday, in the largest incursion yet reported by the island’s defence ministry and marking a dramatic escalation of tension across the Taiwan Strait…

It marked the largest incursion to date by the Chinese air force since Taiwan’s defence ministry began disclosing almost daily Chinese military flights over the waters between the southern part of Taiwan and the Taiwan-controlled Pratas Islands in the South China Sea last year…

The presence of so many Chinese combat aircraft on Friday’s mission – Taiwan said it was made up of four nuclear-capable H-6K bombers and 10 J-16 fighter jets, among others – was unusual and came as the island’s air force suspended all training missions after two fighter jet crashes this week.

From the moment the Biden administration took office, China has been rattling its air force saber over Taiwan. Then there was that not-so-subtle warning from a military spokesman that “Independence Means War.” What’s significant about this latest action is that China is clearly escalating the situation. That’s worrisome because our own military leaders have been warning recently that China clearly has the annexation of Taiwan in its sites.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/beijing-targets-american-business-11616783268?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

In the weeks that surrounded President Biden’s inauguration, Chinese leaders waged an information campaign aimed at the U.S. Their flurry of speeches, letters and announcements was not, as the press first assumed, addressed mainly to the new administration. It was an effort to target the U.S. business community.

The Communist Party’s top diplomat, Yang Jiechi, spoke to a virtual audience of American business leaders and former government officials in early February. He painted a rosy picture of investment and trade opportunities in China before warning that Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong and Taiwan are “red lines” that Americans would do well to keep quiet about. Mr. Yang excoriated Trump administration policies toward China and was unsubtle in pressing his audience to lobby the Biden administration to reverse them.

General Secretary Xi Jinping, seated before a mural of the Great Wall of China, beamed himself to business elites in Davos, Switzerland, in late January. He urged them to resist efforts by European and American policy makers to “decouple” segments of their economies from China’s. Mr. Xi also wrote a personal letter to a prominent U.S. businessman exhorting him to “make active efforts to promote China-U.S. economic and trade cooperation.”

To make clear that these were requirements, not suggestions, Beijing announced sanctions on nearly 30 current or former U.S. government officials (me among them). These were in addition to the sanctions Beijing placed on American human-rights activists, pro-democracy foundations and some U.S. senators last year.

Beijing’s message is unmistakable: You must choose. If you want to do business in China, it must be at the expense of American values. You will meticulously ignore the genocide of ethnic and religious minorities inside China’s borders; you must disregard that Beijing has reneged on its major promises—including the international treaty guaranteeing a “high degree of autonomy” for Hong Kong; and you must stop engaging with security-minded officials in your own capital unless it’s to lobby them on Beijing’s behalf.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/europes-covid-bill-is-coming-due-11616795722?mod=opinion_lead_pos8

Europe’s leaders have told citizens that they’re all in the Covid-19 crisis together. But in the U.K., roughly 40% of the population has received at least one Covid-19 shot. Across the water, only about 13% of the European Union’s citizens have received a jab. In France, that number is closer to 10%.

In Britain, case rates and hospitalizations are falling, and the rate of excess deaths from Covid has reached zero. But in Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel has warned of an “exponential” rise in cases. Ms. Merkel floated an Easter lockdown, which she quickly walked back. Italy, where more than one million people over 80 haven’t been vaccinated, has entered another lockdown.

Paris and other major French cities are shut down. Critical-care hospital beds in the Paris region are full, according to Frederic Valletoux, head of France’s hospital network. Mr. Valletoux has reported “exploding” numbers and says that only lockdowns can prevent an “unprecedented violent shock” to France’s healthcare system.

Europe’s third wave will cost thousands of lives and billions of euros. Summer vacationers, essential to the economies of Southern Europe, may have to stay away for a second year. This will increase the gulf in competitiveness and debt between the eurozone’s rich north and poor south. Southern states could require another bailout, a scenario deeply unpopular with German voters, who go to the polls in national elections in September.

Europe’s elected leaders, French President Emmanuel Macron and Ms. Merkel in particular, are responsible for the tragedy of errors that has caused Europe’s vaccine fiasco. They and their parties are starting to pay the political price.

In mid-March regional elections, Merkel’s Christian Democrat Union had its worst-ever showing in two of its historical strongholds. In the southwestern state of Baden-Württemberg, which the CDU ruled for 58 years until 2011, Ms. Merkel’s party won only 23% of the vote. In Rhineland-Palatinate in the West, once the launchpad for the CDU’s Helmut Kohl, the party finished at 26%, far behind the center-left Social Democrats.