RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://asiatimes.com/

The Biden Administration’s policy signaling on China has been confused and contradictory from the inception of the Administration, and the confusion around House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s rumored visit to Taiwan suggests that Biden’s foreign policy team blundered its way into a prospective crisis. At China Center’s deadline, Pelosi was en route to Asia, without confirmation or denial of a stop in Taiwan.

The seriousness of the present situation cannot be emphasized enough. Remnin University Professor Jin Canrong, one of the Chinese analysts most closely followed by Biden’s national security team, said Aug. 1 in an interview with the “Observer” (guancha.cn) website: “It can be said that in our offshore waters, whether in the Taiwan Strait or the South China Sea, our military has advantages. Our ballistic missiles can cover the entire South China Sea, the air force can basically cover the entire South China Sea, and the navy has certain advantages over several US fleets. In addition, we have obvious advantages given our geographic position in electronic countermeasures and reconnaissance systems. If the US really wants to create friction here, it won’t be cheap.”

In off-record discussions in Washington, several US former top foreign policy officials expressed doubt that Pelosi planned a trip to Taiwan without consulting the White House. How the visit was first mooted suggests an amateurish attempt at plausible deniability. Pelosi did not announce a visit to Taiwan, and no American media outlet has confirmed such plans. Instead, the first mention of a possible visit came from the London Financial Times July 18, citing six separate sources. That is not eavesdropping at a hotel lobby bar, but a deliberate leak. The newspaper also said that the Administration was divided over whether Pelosi should visit Taiwan.

https://www.newsweek.com/reviving-dead-corpse-opinion-1728909

Robert Malley, the man who led the American delegation sitting outside the “Iran talks” in Vienna while American interests were represented inside those talks by the Europeans, Russians, and Chinese, has now thrown in the towel. “You can’t revive a dead corpse,” he has said.

Question: Can you revive a live corpse?

It isn’t a fully sarcastic question. American bribes thrown at Tehran—both for the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal (JCPOA) and the hoped-for-2021 reprisal—were intended to invigorate what was seen by two Democratic administrations as a live, but perhaps comatose, body. It was actually dead then, although the bribes were numerous.

Before the JCPOA, the U.S. had issued warrants for, arrested, tried, and/or convicted a number of Iranians for violations of American export laws regarding high technology or equipment that could have military application. The 2015 deal unfortunately reversed most of that.

Three Iranians were pardoned before trial, and a fourth in the same case had his charges dropped. Three men were released from prison for providing or planning to provide technology: fiber-optic gyroscopes and electron tubes, satellite service, and high-tech industrial parts. Charges were dropped against another man in the case, as well as the company he worked for. Charges against an Iranian accused of shipping lift truck parts, one accused of shipping antennae, and one accused of sending aircraft parts to Iran were also dropped—as were charges against three fugitive defendants wanted in federal court for cases involving alleged export controls or sanctions violations regarding goods headed for Iran.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/07/our-other-foreign-policy-stale-orthodoxy-iran-bruce-thornton/

Next to the conflict between Israelis and Arabs, the war between the U.S. and Iran is the most significant illustration of our failed foreign policy idealism. The fact that we don’t consider it “war” –– despite the fact that the prime mover of the Iranian Islamic Revolution, the Ayatollah Khomeini, formally declared war on us –– is itself evidence of our myopic idealism. Calling the conflict what it is would force us to admit that 43 years of “diplomatic engagement” have failed at stopping wars.

Now, however, the wages of that delusional policy are more dangerous than ever. Iran has just announced that it has enriched enough uranium to quickly produce a nuclear weapon, the Gatestone Institution reports, and has over 3000 missiles, many capable of delivering nuclear bombs. Also worrisome is Russia’s recent visit to Iran to strengthen their geopolitical marriage of convenience. Both nations are facilitating each other’s evasion of Western sanctions, and Iran is slated to sell several hundred advanced drones to Russia and providing training in their use, while Russia may reciprocate by providing the mullahs with its advanced S-400 and S-500 air defense systems.

So, all that our decades of reliance on the “democratic, rules-based international order” has got us is a fanatic, illiberal, revanchist, oil-rich regime on the brink of possessing weapons of mass destruction.

https://bit.ly/3zER3Ez

Conventional wisdom vs. evidenced-reality

According to the late Prof. John Kenneth Galbraith, “the notion of conventional wisdom… is commonly understood as knowledge that is accepted within a certain community or among the general public…. [They] tend to hold on to opinions and ideas that fit with their established worldviews. Accordingly, conventional wisdom provides an obstacle for the acceptance of new knowledge or novel and original thinking….

“To its adherents, conventional wisdom provides comfortable padding against inconvenient truths and the complexities of reality…. This is a prime manifestation of vested interest. For a vested interest in understanding is more preciously guarded than any other treasure…. Acceptable ideas are disinclined to change….

“In the struggle between what is correct and what is agreeable, conventional wisdom had a tactical advantage…. There are many reasons why people like to hear articulated that which they approve…. It serves the ego: the individual has the satisfaction of knowing that other and more famous people share his conclusions….

“The enemy of conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events [evidence].… The fatal blow to conventional wisdom comes when conventional ideas fail signally to deal with some contingency to which obsolescence has made them palpably inapplicable.… The concept of conventional wisdom accentuated the difference between established truths – fundamentally out-of-touch with contemporary challenges – and new knowledge….”

Yale University’s Prof. Harlan Krumholz adds: “In science, what seems obvious may not be true, and what is accepted as conventional wisdom, may sometimes be based on flawed assumptions.” 

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18761/china-taiwan-us

One hopes that [Speaker Nancy] Pelosi’s Taiwan visit is also intended to reassure free Asia that America will militarily defend Pacific democracies, despite the failure of the US either to deter Russia from invading Ukraine or adequately to defend it after it was invaded.

Above all, the US, must not submit to the Chinese Communist Party’s threats. Pelosi should proceed to Taiwan with as large a bipartisan Congressional delegation as possible. If she bows to demands to stay away, China will be incentivized to attack Taiwan effectively the next day. Backing down at this point would only establish a pattern that all Beijing has to do to intimidate America is bark.

After America’s humiliating defeat in Afghanistan and the “far too little, too late ” response to Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, any cancellation of Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan would be seen the world over as yet another spineless US surrender.

The only question is if this administration finally has the political will to stop appearing weak, scared and permitting China to dictate US policy. The administration’s record so far: it has sold oil from America’s Strategic Petroleum Reserve, meant for hurricane damage and other emergencies, not only to China, but to the offshoot of a firm there in which President Biden’s son, Hunter, had “invested heavily”; it has cancelled the China Initiative, thereby allowing China to continue stealing intellectual property with impunity; it has ignored China’s purchase of massive amounts of American farmland and land near US military bases; it appears about to lift tariffs for China that will permit China to dictate US trade policy but only negligibly curb inflation; it is permitting China to collect genetic data from Americans citizens for potential biological warfare against the US.

China this weekend, according to reports, privately delivered a message to US national security officials reinforcing an earlier Chinese Foreign Ministry statement: if US Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi goes ahead with her planned August visit to Taiwan, it would be met with a “resolute and strong measures.”

China’s Foreign Ministry Spokesman Zhao Lijian stated on July 19 that the visit “would seriously undermine Chinese sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

https://amgreatness.com/2022/07/27/the-ukrainian-verdun/

Five months after Russia invaded Ukraine, the war is now reduced to one of attrition. The current dirty, grinding slog is fought mostly with artillery and rockets. Everything from Ukraine’s shopping centers to apartment buildings—and the civilians in them—are Russian targets. 

Most outsiders have already forgotten the heroic Ukrainian winter repulse of the botched Russian shock-and-awe effort to sweep into Kyiv, decapitate the government, and declare the eastern half of the country a Russian protectorate within mere days.

Months later, the long war devolves further into a contest of mass and weight—tons of explosives blowing up pathways for massed troops grabbing a few more charred miles of ruined landscape.

Vladimir Putin bets he can throw in more men and more shells than Ukraine and its Western suppliers can match. He is quite willing to “win” by laying waste to eastern Ukraine even if it means losing three Russian soldiers for every Ukrainian. 

When war becomes such gridlocked carnage, each side looks to new game-changing diplomacy, strategies, allies, or weapons to break the deadlock.

For Putin, such escalation means more flesh, steel, and explosives. His country is 28 times bigger than Ukraine, and over three times more populous, with an economy 15 times larger. 

As for Putin’s financial reserves, the Western oil boycott means increasingly little to him when 40 percent of the planet’s population in India and China are eager to secure near-limitless Russian energy. 

Another 750 million people in Europe once talked tough. But as a second winter nears, their gas and oil imports from Russia will further wither. Then their Churchillian rhetoric may chill. 

So, the Ukrainian war increasingly will depend on endless U.S. aid and escalation.

To stop the Russian steamroller, Ukraine demands sophisticated American missiles to sink Russia’s Black Sea Fleet. Kyiv requests shipments of U.S. jet fighters to knock down Putin’s missiles and planes.

It asks for more rockets and artillery to ensure tit-for-tat retaliation for every incoming Russian shell and bomb. Kyiv negotiates for more Western intelligence to take out more Russian generals and more lift capacity to stage airborne raids into Mother Russia itself.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18753/arabs-us-tamper-middle-east

Arabs point out that one of Biden’s biggest mistakes was that he took America’s Arab allies for granted while embarking on a policy of appeasement towards Iran’s mullahs.

“The behavior of the Obama and Biden administrations regarding Iran and Afghanistan served as a wake-up call for the countries of the region.” — Ali Hamadeh, Lebanese Journalist, Annahar, July 20, 2022.

“Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen and Libya were stable countries until the US president decided to tamper with their security for no reason other than his fascination with the discourse of the left and the extremist [Muslim] Brotherhood….” — Saudi political analyst Mohammed Al-Saed, Okaz, July 18, 2022.

“I remember a little over a year ago how Biden described his relations with Riyadh when he said that they were partners and not allies, then removed the [Iranian-backed] Houthis from their designation as terrorists and then returned to the Iranian nuclear agreement.” — Mohammed Al-Saed, Okaz, July 18, 2022.

The Arabs are telling Biden that they do not appreciate or respect weak leaders and remain concerned about his appeasement policy toward the mullahs and their proxies in the Middle East.

Many Arabs believe that US President Joe Biden’s recent visit to the Middle East was a failure, mainly because the Arab countries still do not have confidence in his administration’s policies. The Arabs point out that one of Biden’s biggest mistakes was that he took America’s Arab allies for granted while embarking on a policy of appeasement towards Iran’s mullahs.

https://lawliberty.org/two-kinds-of-detente/

Historian Niall Ferguson, the official biographer and occasional alter ego of Henry Kissinger, proposed to “dust off that dirty word détente and engage China” in a June 5 essay for Bloomberg News. Wrote Ferguson:

Back in the 1970s, that little French duo-syllable was almost synonymous with “Kissinger.” Despite turning 99 last month, the former secretary of state has not lost his ability to infuriate people on both the right and the left—witness the reaction to his suggestion at the World Economic Forum that “the dividing line [between Russia and Ukraine] should return to the status quo ante” because “pursuing the war beyond that point could turn it into a war not about the freedom of Ukraine … but into a war against Russia itself.”

Ferguson distinguished himself earlier this year as a skeptic of Western policy towards Ukraine, writing for example on March 9:

Western media seem over-eager to cover news of Russian reverses, and insufficiently attentive to the harsh fact that the invaders continue to advance on more than one front. Nor is there sufficient recognition that the Russian generals quickly realized their Plan A had failed, switching to a Plan B of massive bombardment of key cities, a playbook familiar from earlier Russian wars in Chechnya and Syria.