RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trumps-china-trade-truce-1543790868

Donald Trump had one of the most productive foreign trips of his Presidency this weekend as he announced a tariff truce and new trade negotiations with China. Then he threatened to blow up his Presidency by terminating Nafta before Congress passes a replacement. More on the latter nearby, but at least his cease-fire with China is good news for the economy and American workers.

Mr. Trump and President Xi Jinping stepped back from the brink of total trade war while giving themselves room to strike a deal over new trading and investment rules. Mr. Trump agreed to hold off on raising tariffs to 25% from 10% on $200 billion of Chinese goods in January. This would be a huge tax on American consumers, as well as businesses that have Chinese suppliers.

The White House says China will start buying U.S. farm goods immediately, which will be a relief in farm states where incomes are down. China will also buy an unspecified “but very substantial” amount of farm, energy, industrial and other products to reduce the bilateral trade deficit. More customers are better, though the overall U.S. trade deficit won’t fall much. The U.S. will run a trade deficit with the world as long as it also runs a capital surplus.

Far more important, the two countries will begin talks this month on China’s predatory behavior including forced technology transfer, intellectual property and cyber theft, and regulatory abuses against foreign companies. The parties have 90 days to agree or Mr. Trump will apply the 25% tariff—and presumably more on top of that.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-and-chinas-most-valuable-export-1543525958

Investors are still guessing whether and how the United States and China will settle their differences when President Trump sits down to dinner with Chinese dictator Xi Jinping this weekend. But even if Mr. Xi won’t agree to stop stealing U.S. technology, Mr. Trump can get Chinese help in enhancing American intellectual property.

A Reuters report today suggests that for now the White House is focused on playing defense:

The Trump administration is considering new background checks and other restrictions on Chinese students in the United States over growing espionage concerns, U.S. officials and congressional sources said.

In June, the U.S. State Department shortened the length of visas for Chinese graduate students studying aviation, robotics and advanced manufacturing to one year from five. U.S. officials said the goal was to curb the risk of spying and theft of intellectual property in areas vital to national security…

Every Chinese student who China sends here has to go through a party and government approval process,” one senior U.S. official told Reuters. “You may not be here for espionage purposes as traditionally defined, but no Chinese student who’s coming here is untethered from the state.”

Having practiced its surveillance techniques on associates of the Republican party in the U.S., perhaps America’s intelligence community can now gather important information about espionage directed by the Communist party in China.

But the U.S. can play offense, too, by untethering Chinese tech talent from the state. For Chinese students who don’t appear to pose any threat, the U.S. should seek to recruit more of them to study in the U.S. and ultimately to create new intellectual property here. Whether native or foreign-born, innovators are treated less well in China than they used to be.

The Chinese regime’s official publication People’s Daily says that billionaire Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma is a member of the Communist party. Li Yuan reports in the New York Times that for businesspeople in China calling themselves communists is “often a matter of expediency. Party membership provides a layer of protection in a country where private ownership protections are often haphazardly enforced or ignored entirely.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/272071/trump-didnt-create-europes-resentment-bruce-thornton

Speaking in Paris at the centenary of the Armistice, French president Emmanuel Macron made some silly comments about nationalism. Recycling tired clichés about nationalism’s guilt for both World Wars, he called nationalism the “betrayal of patriotism” and warned about the “old demons coming back to wreak chaos and death.”

Apart from the ideological prejudices and historical ignorance on display from a globalist watching the “rules-based international order” tottering even as he speaks, Macron was also aiming his barbs at President Trump, who identifies himself as a proud nationalist. Macron punctuated his point by later calling for the creation of an “EU army” because “We have to protect ourselves with respect to China, Russia and even the United States of America.”

For NeverTrump globalists from both parties, a scolding from a European, even one accompanied by preposterous threats, is the QED of their indictment of Trump’s numerous offenses. But contrary to such naïve admiration, long before Donald Trump, the European ruling elite, especially the French, have looked on the U.S. with resentment, contempt, and envy.

The history of just the last 27 years illustrates how little Trump has to do with European attitudes towards America. By the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Europe and its dreams of ever-closer integration into a larger transnational federation was a few years away. Suddenly there was geopolitical space for a new “superpower” freed from the old Cold War strictures. Though belonging to NATO and a committed ally of the U.S., increasingly by the early 90s the European elite often appeared to comprise a “non-aligned” movement committed to peace and global development. It also was open to transcending the old, Manichean communist-capitalist dichotomy that had long fretted European communists and socialists, not to mention more recent leftist parties like the Greens. Even before the collapse of the Soviets, “third way” alternatives were touted such as “Eurocommunism,” or frauds like “communism with a human face” were proposed and implemented. Of course, the Warsaw Pact peoples living under communism knew every human face had a boot eternally stamping it.

https://amgreatness.com/2018/11/27/what-is

It seems that Saudi Arabia’s rulers murdered an opponent. The U.S. media and political class is shocked, shocked, to find that murder is going on in such precincts. Who did they imagine the Muslim world’s leaders are?

Moreover, our chattering class demands that President Trump do whatever it takes to make sure that they do nothing like that again. Do what? Does anyone really think that swapping sheik A for sheik B would improve their kind’s moral standards? Do they have any idea of what keeps A on top of B, what it would take to switch them, or what the repercussions would be in foreign policy? Are they naifs, idiots, or are they just playing with foreign policy to make life a little harder for Trump?

What follows is politically incorrect information on what Saudi Arabia is, what role it plays in American politics, and what it means for our foreign policy. Then, I will suggest how American foreign policy from the Founding to around 1910 would deal with today’s Middle East.

Saudi Arabia’s rulers are a subspecies of the desert rats endemic in the region. The ones on the cheese now are of the clan of seven sons out of old king Saud’s favorite wife, Suda, and hence are known as Sudaris. The previous ruler, Abdullah was the only son of another wife. When Abdullah’s birth-order turn came, in 2005, he took the throne thanks only to having mobilized the national guard of bedouins for war against the national army (and everything else) controlled by the Sudaris. Today, when you read about Mohammed bin Salman’s “anti-corruption reforms,” you should know that they target primarily Abdullah’s son and other relatives. In other words, what is going on, including murder, is a purely dynastic power play. But that is Saudi Arabia’s nice side.

The fundamental reality is that this is a slave society, (the Arabic word for black man is the word for slave) which considers work something that inferiors do for superiors, prizes idleness, and practices cruelty as a means of asserting superiority. Everyone knows that women, treated as property, end up disproportionately in the harems of the wealthy. But few stop to think that this custom dooms the majority of Saudi men to lives without legitimate sex, never mind families.

As for who gets what, that comes strictly either from birth or from connections with the powerful. Nor are the young clamoring for the kind of useful work that would lift them up. They compete, all right, but for favor. Saudi students in U.S colleges—and even in military training programs—just don’t do their work. A degree is a passport to a job which somebody else performs.

https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/trumps-saudi-gamble

“America First! The world is a very dangerous place!” President Donald J. Trump’s opening of his statement on “Standing with Saudi Arabia” (November 20) was eccentric; the ensuing 600-odd words—indubitably his own—appeared to give Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (“MbS”) an unqualified and outrageous carte blanche, seven weeks after Jamal Khashoggi’s murder. There may be more than meets the eye, however.

A disclaimer first. With my decades long, sometimes passionate, amply documented record of loathing all things Saudi, I do not rejoice at what looks like the President telling a nasty man in charge of a nasty country that he is free to go on acting like a murderous thug that he is. What I sense, however, is that Trump-the-Transactionalist senses an opportunity to grab and hold MbS by his short and curlies, while telling an incredulous world that the Prince is still a good boy intent on reforms like women driving, Saudi Vision 2030, and all that.

The opening of Trump’s statement was replete with visceral Iranophobia:

“The country of Iran . . . is responsible for a bloody proxy war against Saudi Arabia in Yemen, trying to destabilize Iraq’s fragile attempt at democracy, supporting the terror group Hezbollah in Lebanon, propping up dictator Bashar Assad in Syria (who has killed millions of his own citizens), and much more . . . The Iranians have killed many Americans and other innocent people throughout the Middle East. Iran states openly, and with great force, ‘Death to America!’ and ‘Death to Israel!’ Iran is considered the world’s leading sponsor of terror.”

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/statement-president-donald-j-trump-standing-saudi-arabia/

The world is a very dangerous place!

The country of Iran, as an example, is responsible for a bloody proxy war against Saudi Arabia in Yemen, trying to destabilize Iraq’s fragile attempt at democracy, supporting the terror group Hezbollah in Lebanon, propping up dictator Bashar Assad in Syria (who has killed millions of his own citizens), and much more. Likewise, the Iranians have killed many Americans and other innocent people throughout the Middle East. Iran states openly, and with great force, “Death to America!” and “Death to Israel!” Iran is considered “the world’s leading sponsor of terror.”

On the other hand, Saudi Arabia would gladly withdraw from Yemen if the Iranians would agree to leave. They would immediately provide desperately needed humanitarian assistance. Additionally, Saudi Arabia has agreed to spend billions of dollars in leading the fight against Radical Islamic Terrorism.

After my heavily negotiated trip to Saudi Arabia last year, the Kingdom agreed to spend and invest $450 billion in the United States. This is a record amount of money. It will create hundreds of thousands of jobs, tremendous economic development, and much additional wealth for the United States. Of the $450 billion, $110 billion will be spent on the purchase of military equipment from Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and many other great U.S. defense contractors. If we foolishly cancel these contracts, Russia and China would be the enormous beneficiaries – and very happy to acquire all of this newfound business. It would be a wonderful gift to them directly from the United States!

The crime against Jamal Khashoggi was a terrible one, and one that our country does not condone. Indeed, we have taken strong action against those already known to have participated in the murder. After great independent research, we now know many details of this horrible crime. We have already sanctioned 17 Saudis known to have been involved in the murder of Mr. Khashoggi, and the disposal of his body.

Representatives of Saudi Arabia say that Jamal Khashoggi was an “enemy of the state” and a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, but my decision is in no way based on that – this is an unacceptable and horrible crime. King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman vigorously deny any knowledge of the planning or execution of the murder of Mr. Khashoggi. Our intelligence agencies continue to assess all information, but it could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event – maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!

https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-three-stages-of-trumps-foreign-policy-1542672995

President Trump’s foreign policy has passed through two stages—one restrained and one more turbulent. The third and most decisive is now beginning to take shape.

Through most of his first year in office, Mr. Trump moved cautiously on the international stage and tended to defer to mainstream advisers. Starting last spring with the departures of H.R. McMaster and Gary Cohn, Mr. Trump has been taking more radical steps, ramping up tariff wars around the world while jettisoning the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Iran nuclear deal, the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty and the Universal Postal Union.

For Mr. Trump’s critics, this second stage has been catastrophic. American power, they argue, depends on the institutions Mr. Trump is weakening and the allies he is alienating; the president is sawing off the branch on which he sits. His defenders say he is placing American power on a sounder footing, clearing away the deadwood of the past, forcing others to pay their fair share and ensuring the U.S. benefits more from international trade.

The case against Mr. Trump’s international disruption isn’t as strong as most in the foreign-policy establishment believe. There are certainly dangers in the president’s impulsive approach—some of them grave—but Mr. Trump has one big point in his favor. The liberal-internationalist vision, which holds that the world is a kind of greater European Union, moving inexorably toward its own kind of “ever closer union” via a strengthening network of international institutions, seems to be running out of steam.

As countries like Turkey, India, China, Brazil and Nigeria develop, they are striving more to strengthen their sovereignty than to pool it. By shifting America’s stance away from the losing defense of legacy liberal internationalism that characterized the John Kerry years, the Trump disruption might, might point the way toward a more sustainable U.S. diplomatic approach.

But for Mr. Trump to be remembered as something other than a diplomatic wrecking ball, his administration will have to rapidly shift gears. Destruction ceases to be creative when it doesn’t lead to the construction of something better. After the cautious first stage and the dramatic second stage, a third stage of strategy and leadership must follow.

In the Middle East, the murder of Jamal Khashoggi and the humanitarian catastrophe in Yemen seem to be forcing the administration to review its strategic options. Simply outsourcing U.S. regional policy to Riyadh and Jerusalem won’t do. Washington needs a vision and a policy that both reassures our local allies and disciplines some of their wilder instincts. Walking away from the Iran deal was easy; implementing a new regional strategy will be hard. Like his predecessors, Mr. Trump will be judged not by his intentions but by his results.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13296/nuclear-inf-treaty-withdrawal

Russia has violated not only the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), but, according to former senior White House nuclear arms official Frank Miller, every major arms-control agreement it has signed with the United States.

The same kind of deception has been characteristic of China.

The truth is that there is no INF arms-control regime to be saved. It is senseless to pine for a treaty that only one power — the United States — observes. Self-abnegation here only enables others to shoot first and make threats that the US cannot answer.

The US renunciation of the 1987 United States-Soviet Union Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) has generated much skepticism in the arms-control community — particularly in much of Europe, and from Japan.

These countries hoped not only to keep Russia and the United States in the 1987 treaty (despite Russia’s major violations of the INF treaty), but persuade China to become a party to the treaty and thus be forced to eliminate the hundreds of INF-range missiles China has deployed in Asia and ranged against US and its allied interests.

Critics have presented the following five main arguments against the US move:

It enables Russia to build as many INF missiles as it likes, while simultaneously allowing Moscow to blame Washington for reneging on the treaty.

It imperils the entire structure of arms control, including the possible 2021 extension of the United States-Russia 2010 New START Treaty.

It would require extensive consultation with Europe or risk undermining allied cohesion and offering Moscow new targets in its campaign of political warfare against the NATO alliance.

It is unnecessary — despite Russian violations — because the US has adequate conventional air-launched and sea-launched cruise missiles to keep Russia at risk and defend Europe, and presumably America’s Pacific allies, against China.

It concedes a strategic advantage to Russia, since no INF-equivalent missile is in production by the United States to match Russian INF missile deployments.

These arguments, however, do not hold up to scrutiny.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/authors/dan_caldwell/

After the attacks of September 11, 2001, millions of Americans were deployed overseas to combat zones in nearly a dozen countries. They joined the honored ranks of millions of other American veterans alive today who fought bravely in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam, not to mention those who served during the Cold War or participated in 1990s conflicts such as the Persian Gulf War.

The veterans of our most recent wars distinguished themselves in challenging situations time and again. When we consider martial valor and individual sacrifice, we shouldn’t only think about our troops on the beaches of Normandy or Iwo Jima. We should also remember those who fought in dusty places like Fallujah, Baghdad, and Kandahar, displaying heroism to rival that of previous generations. Thus, we rightly honor their service today.

However, the tactical successes and individual bravery of American fighting men and women over the past 17 years cannot mask the broader failures of U.S. foreign policy since 9/11. Nor should they be used as justification to continue endless wars disconnected from U.S. security in places like Afghanistan.

The best way to honor the sacrifices of our post-9/11 veterans and their families is to make sure we pursue a foreign policy that only calls on our troops to fight when absolutely necessary for our safety, prosperity, and way of life. We shouldn’t ask people to risk everything for their country when what they are fighting for has little to do with U.S. interests or can only be connected to them indirectly via distorted or idealistic theories of the world. We dishonor veterans when we continue to pursue failed policies that can’t be clearly linked to why so many of them joined in the first place: to defend America and our freedom here at home.

It isn’t surprising when we hear so often about the need to “stay the course” in places such as Iraq and Afghanistan in order to honor our fallen and the veterans who served in those conflicts. We understand the psychology of not wanting our heroes’ sacrifices to have been in vain. However, when we can’t connect continued fighting to a plausible strategy for victory, it doesn’t honor anyone. Would those who have given the ultimate sacrifice want us to continue pursuing the same failed strategies that lead to the same disappointing results while also ensuring that more service members will serve and die in those places?