RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/08/14/bolton-

he British love their chips, but they’d best be careful not to let them get fishy. The most provocative thing U.S. national security adviser John Bolton said during his visit to No. 10 Downing Street this week was that the British don’t want their “telecommunications system in the 5G world to be compromised by the ‘Manchurian chip phenomenon’ any more than we do” — referring to the dangers posed by the Chinese 5G telecom pioneer Huawei.

I&I outlined the Huawai threat in some detail in May. Its hardware and future software upgrades could be used by Beijing for espionage, or even to attack the military and civilian computer resources of the countries using it.

Even liberal Democrats recognize the threat. “Allowing Huawei’s inclusion in our 5G infrastructure could seriously jeopardize our national security and put critical supply chains at risk,” Senate Intelligence Committee top Democrat Mark Warner of Virginia wrote in March. “Software reviews of existing Huawei products are not sufficient to preclude the possibility of a vendor pushing a malicious update that enables surveillance in the future. Any supposedly safe Chinese product is one firmware update away from being an insecure Chinese product.”

Bolton said British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s new government was “looking really from square one on the Huawei issue” — which some British officials claimed was an inaccurate account of Bolton’s meetings — and Bolton offered to arrange briefings on the U.S. findings on Huawei.

https://spectator.org/democrats-fiddle-while-iran-burns/

Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) forces seized the British oil tanker Stena Impero on July 19, an outrage that follows Iran’s June 13 attacks on two oil tankers and the June 20 downing of an American drone. Yet rather than focusing on an increasingly volatile Iran, congressional Democrats are more interested in political gamesmanship than national security when dealing with the defense budget.

Cornered by international sanctions, Iran is lashing out with escalating viciousness, as ongoing economic turmoil has truly made both people and government desperate. This has culminated in the regime’s mostrecent proclamation of capturing 17 “U.S. spies.” Likely untrue, this claim illustrates how Iran’s hunger for conflict threatens American national security.

Accordingly, President Donald Trump correctly announced July 22 that the United States is bracing for the “absolute worst” with Iran. He already came to the brink of an airstrike against Iran following Iran’s destruction of the American drone in international airspace. Concern over Iranian casualties caused him to abort the mission at the very last minute.

While Trump’s administration is wisely taking seriously the magnitude of Iran’s dangers, on July 12 House Democrats passed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the Department of Defense’s (DoD) annual budget, by strict party-line vote, with not one Republican among 220 congressional supporters. Unsurprisingly, the legislation is a transparently partisan piece of political theater.

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/mike-pompeo-us-withdrawal-inf-treaty/

And hits the Russians for their persistent noncompliance.

Bangkok — It’s official: The U.S. is out of the INF Treaty.

Here at the annual conference of ASEAN, the organization of Southeast Asian countries, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told National Review that the U.S. has triggered its formal withdrawal from the treaty. 

President Trump announced the imminent U.S. exit last October, starting the clock ticking toward the official date six months later, or today.

Signed in 1987, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty was a key agreement in the late 1980s Reagan–Gorbachev diplomacy that proved the endgame of the Cold War.

After the Soviets deployed intermediate-range SS-20 missiles that could hit NATO countries from bases in the Soviet Union, the U.S. countered with its own intermediate-range missiles in Europe. President Ronald Reagan proposed the “zero option” to eliminate such U.S. and Soviet systems, and the INF Treaty did just that. 

The Russians have been flagrantly violating the treaty for years, and it doesn’t apply to China, which has massively built up its missile program, including intermediate-range systems. 

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14629/us-china-deal-huawei

This is the worst possible time in what is called the “cold tech war” to give relief to Huawei. Huawei is vulnerable to American measures for only a short period, so this is the time for the Trump administration to exert leverage.

[W]hen it comes to harm, we haven’t seen anything yet. Beijing will undoubtedly use Huawei to control the networks operating the devices of tomorrow, remotely manipulating everything hooked up to the Internet of Things — in other words, just about everything.

So far, the U.S. has had little success in persuading other countries not to buy low-cost (subsidized) Huawei equipment for their 5G networks (the fifth generation of wireless communication). The Philippines, a treaty partner of the United States, has decided to buy 5G Huawei gear, and Italy, another ally, is almost certainly going to make the same decision soon.

The Trump administration, by crippling Huawei, can make up for the failure to convince other countries to shun its equipment… Huawei cannot market its phones without Google’s Android operating system…. Outside China, Huawei’s phones would be commercially unmarketable because they would not be able to connect to the Google Play Store.

So, if the Trump administration is going to move against Huawei as a national security threat, it has to do so now. Beijing is now stalling, hoping to buy time for Huawei.

American and Chinese trade negotiators, meeting Tuesday and Wednesday in Shanghai, are cooking up an interim deal that is deeply injurious to U.S. national security.

There is growing pessimism that Washington and Beijing can reach a comprehensive agreement, given the fundamental differences over, among other things, industrial policy, intellectual property protection, and restrictions on foreign investment.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/14559/us-special-forces-abroad

What skeptics need to understand is that the Green Berets in Africa — as all U.S. troops are doing in other places and other contexts — are performing a crucial service to U.S. interests. They are helping America maintain a small footprint in states at peril of losing the battle against jihad and its totalitarian ideology, or other threats, while often assisting local militaries transform from corrupt, domestic bullies to national protectors of the people.

American Green Berets are currently gripped in helping dozens of African countries in a low-key but desperate struggle to prevent a vast swath of the world’s poorly governed spaces from falling to Islamist terrorists. The U.S. Special Operations Africa Command’s 3rd Special Forces Group (3rd SFG) has been operating in 33 such countries, training and equipping their local armies to enable them to combat threats to state sovereignty posed by al Qaeda and ISIS. The same goal was the impetus behind the establishment of the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM) in 2007.

Since then, the number of American soldiers deployed in Africa has grown to approximately 6,000, a quarter of which belong to Special Forces units. About two-thirds are stationed at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti. Their mission is to support the Organization of African Union’s mission to suppress the al Qaeda affiliate, al-Shabaab, in its effort to challenge state sovereignty in Somalia, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, and to combat piracy operations in international shipping lanes along the East African coast.

Since 2015, the 3rd SFG has borne the brunt of the burden, returning to an earlier “Area of Responsibility,” following a lengthy deployment in Afghanistan. These Green Beret troops serve as a force multiplier to African counter-terrorist units, by providing needed intelligence and supplying logistical resources.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/xi-changed-my-mind-about-trump-11564008053

At first I had no idea why President Trump talked so much about sovereignty. I’ve changed my mind. To be more precise, Xi Jinping changed it. Mr. Trump is the only thing that stands between us and a world dominated by China.

“We do not expect diverse countries to share the same cultures, traditions, or even systems of government,” Mr. Trump told the United Nations General Assembly in September 2017. “But we do expect all nations to uphold these two core sovereign duties: to respect the interests of their own people and the rights of every other sovereign nation.”

Mr. Trump mentioned sovereignty 21 times in that speech. Why? Everyone knew America was a sovereign state, one of nearly 200 in the world. The idea of sovereignty has been firmly established for more than three centuries. Mr. Trump’s defense of it seemed unnecessary.

Yet for more than a decade, President Xi has been dropping audacious hints that China is the world’s only sovereign state. As a result, I have come to believe that Mr. Trump’s defense of sovereignty is essential to maintaining international peace and stability.

The world is full of “experts” who will tell you China and the U.S. are locked in a contest for dominance. Technically, that’s true. The idea that the two nations are struggling for control, however, falsely implies that America is jealously guarding its position atop the international system. That’s Beijing’s narrative. Chinese leaders disparage the U.S. by implying it is in terminal decline and accusing it of attempting to prevent China’s legitimate rise.

In reality, America is preserving more than its role in the international system. It is trying to preserve the system itself—which Mr. Xi is working to overthrow by promoting imperial-era Chinese concepts.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-hesitant-embrace-of-human-rights-11563835208

The big news from Washington is that Woodrow Wilson is back. From Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to Vice President Mike Pence and even, if somewhat hesitantly, President Trump, senior American officials are putting human-rights concerns front and center in American foreign policy.

In recent weeks, the Trump administration has condemned Chinese repression of Muslims in Xinjiang, hosted a conference of 106 countries to discuss religious freedom around the world, and announced the formation of the International Religious Freedom Alliance. Mr. Pompeo called China’s mass repression of the largely Muslim Uighur people “the stain of the century.” On Wednesday Mr. Trump met at the White House with 27 people from around the world who have faced persecution for their religious beliefs.

At first glance, the embrace of human rights by the Trump White House seems odd. Mr. Trump has made no secret of his disdain for the idea that promoting human rights overseas should be a major theme of American foreign policy. Outreach to leaders such as Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un and Mohammed bin Salman is predicated on the president’s willingness to overlook their dismal records on human rights. And that an administration whose domestic supporters attack an opponent by chanting “Send her back!” should head a global drive for human rights strikes even many Republicans as improbable.

But the political logic behind the administration’s Wilsonian pivot is strong. Team Trump needs to unify its populist and conservative supporters in the U.S. even as it builds a coalition against Chinese overreach in Asia and beyond. Incorporating a vision of human rights focused on religious liberty helps on both fronts.