RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/06/17/us-miliitary-strategy-geopolitics-restraint-russia-china-ukraine-war/

By H. R. McMaster, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution and a former U.S. national security advisor, and Gabriel Scheinmann, the executive director of the Alexander Hamilton Society.

The Biden administration failed to deter Russia from its second invasion of Ukraine. Like his predecessors in the White House, U.S. President Joe Biden went to great lengths to placate and reassure Russian President Vladimir Putin in return for stable relations. Biden defied Congress when he refused to sanction the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, unilaterally extended U.S. adherence to the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty without reciprocation by Russia, and honored Putin with a bilateral summit during his first overseas trip. As Putin amassed his troops on Ukraine’s borders, Biden pulled U.S. naval forces out of the Black Sea, refused to send additional weapons to Ukraine, enumerated everything the United States would not do to help Ukraine defend itself, and evacuated U.S. Embassy staff and military advisors. More broadly, the administration proposed a real cut to the defense budget; sought to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. defense strategy; restricted U.S. production capacity for oil, gas, and refined products that might have displaced Russian supplies; and signaled its willingness to overlook Russian and Chinese aggression in exchange for hollow pledges of cooperation on global issues such as climate change. After surrendering Afghanistan to a terrorist organization and conducting a humiliating retreat from Kabul, the administration’s attempts to deter the Russian invasion with threats of punishment were simply not credible.

Deterrence, however, does not disintegrate overnight. Contrary to the narrative of U.S. belligerence and imperialism that has been impressed on countless university students, the United States has, since the end of World War II, largely pursued a policy of restraint despite its considerable military power.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18619/iran-nuclear-program-plan-b

There also exists the dangerous likelihood, if and when Iran’s regime has nuclear weapons, that they will fall into the hands of Iran’s proxies and militia groups, or that the regime will share its nuclear technology with its proxies and allies, including the Syrian regime and the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Iran’s regime has already been setting up weapons factories abroad, and manufacturing advanced ballistic missiles and weapons in foreign countries, such as in Syria. These weapons include precision-guided missiles with advanced technology to strike specific targets.

“The mission of the constitution,” the preamble [of Iran’s constitution] stipulates, “is to create conditions conducive to the development of man in accordance with the noble and universal values of [Shiite] Islam.” The constitution goes on to say that it “provides the necessary basis for ensuring the continuation of the revolution at home and abroad.”

Eliminating Israel was not only one of the main religious prophecies of the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, it is also a leading policy of his successor, the current Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, that Israel will be erased from the face of the earth.

If the Biden administration allows Iran to obtain nuclear weapons, President Joe Biden and his associates, like Neville Chamberlain’s illusory “Peace for our time,” will have as their legacy that it was their acts alone that destabilized global security and set the world at risk.

It is therefore imperative that the Biden administration let the ruling mullahs know — credibly — that Iran’s regime must eliminate the possibility of its having nuclear arms, period. No nuclear deal, no sunset clauses. Sunset clauses merely pave the way for Iran to resume enriching uranium at any level it chooses. The regime’s ballistic missile program, which is linked to its nuclear program, must also be eliminated.

It must be made unmistakably clear to the Iranian regime that the United States and its allies will not allow the current regime, a state sponsor of terrorism, to arm itself with nuclear weapons and emerge as yet another global nuclear threat.

The Biden administration’s nuclear negotiations to revive the nuclear deal (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action) with Iran’s ruling mullahs are going nowhere, all while the administration does not seem to have a Plan B.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18616/biden-china-policy-support

Previously, U.S. policy was that Americans were forbidden to invest in companies included in a “blacklist” of Chinese companies directly involved in China’s military, and in producing applications used by the Communist regime to oppress its own people and threaten its neighbors. The new “answers” amount to a wholesale abandonment of a policy Americans of all political stripes supported.

[I]t can also be seen as part of a long easing of economic sanctions imposed by the Trump administration, without obtaining any benefit for American prestige or negotiating leverage with China in return.

The 48 companies included on the initial Trump administration blacklist all work directly with the People’s Liberation Army, Chinese intelligence, or otherwise provide artificial-intelligence products and services used by Beijing to deny the human rights of its Uighur minority.

While Hikvision and Sinochem’s listed subsidiaries are not traded on major U.S. exchanges, they have been included in index funds carried by such giants as Vanguard and BlackRock.

There is no penalty for investors who continue to hold these stocks after the grace period, which ended in June 2022. All the order says is they may not buy any more shares, nor can they (after the grace period) sell what they have, without OFAC approval.

[M]oves like this should be offered only in negotiation with the Chinese over things important to American national security, and the peace and freedom of our allies. Giving up on it because it was “confusing” to international financial institutions is a sad excuse.

And it comes at a time when the Biden administration has also announced a tariff waiver on solar panels coming from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam. This action, explained as a “bridge” while domestic solar panel manufacturing ramps up, re-opens a previously closed door to China’s dumping solar panels into the U.S. market.

At the same time, China is these days more belligerent, more aggressive, and more of a problem than ever. What exactly is the Biden administration getting for its quiet retreat from the tougher trade policies of the Trump administration?

Not a more conciliatory stance on Taiwan. China will “definitely not hesitate to start a war” over a Taiwan split, Chinese Defense Minister General Wei Fenghe warned the U.S recently.

Not help for American business.

Recently the Biden administration issued new answers for Americans invested in Chinese companies with direct ties to Beijing’s military. Previously, U.S. policy was that Americans were forbidden to invest in companies included in a “blacklist” of Chinese companies directly involved in China’s military, and in producing applications used by the Communist regime to oppress its own people and threaten its neighbors. The new “answers” amount to a wholesale abandonment of a policy Americans of all political stripes supported.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18609/solar-panels-biden-china

Beijing set out to destroy the American solar panel industry with subsidies that allowed Chinese companies to sell below the cost of manufacture — and, with the help of a series of neglectful American presidents, it largely succeeded.

Americans workers cannot compete with slaves. Chinese solar panels are often made with what is politely termed “forced labor,” Uighurs and other captive Turkic minorities transported around China to factories resembling concentration camps.

Now, thanks to Biden, products built by forced or slave labor will find their way into the United States tariff-free. Chinese producers have been shipping China-made products into Southeast Asian countries — most notably Vietnam — and exporting them to the U.S. with labels falsely showing manufacture in those other countries.

Biden “has opened the door wide for Chinese-funded special interests to defeat the fair application of U.S. trade law.” — Mamun Rashid, Auxin Solar’s CEO, NBC News, June 6, 2022.

“We have not invested in building up American capacity the way we should, and we have not addressed China’s repeated cheating,” [Senator Sherrod] Brown [D-Ohio] stated. “On all these decisions, American solar manufacturers and their workers must be at the table.” Biden, unfortunately, has taken away the seats of these domestic stakeholders.

The second implication is even more important. Biden with his tariff waiver, dog-whistled to American manufacturers to keep factories in China.

Biden always says he wants to support American manufacturers, but he keeps making decisions favoring Chinese workers. He did that June 6 when, with a single stroke of his pen, he devastated a U.S. industry, undermined the American legal system, and promoted slave labor in China.

On June 6, President Joe Biden, declaring a national emergency, granted a 24-month tariff exemption for solar cells and modules from Cambodia, Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam.

The biggest beneficiary of Biden’s move is none of those countries. It is China. The biggest victim is America.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18608/world-peace-political-survival

Failed White House policies — on Afghanistan, open borders, and now the issues of energy independence and pork-barrel budgets — have caused surging rates of inflation.

With mid-term elections months away and dismal poll numbers, the White House and many Democrats have resorted to unpopular distraction campaigns, including an assault on the Second Amendment.

Meanwhile, 18 Democrat Members of Congress have addressed a serious, realistic strategy for world peace and political survival. Their concerns regarding Iran’s nuclear buildup include:

“If Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terror, has proven anything,” Rep. Josh Gottheimer (NJ-5) stated in a joint press release, “it’s that they can’t be trusted… Iran’s paramilitary arm, has… killed hundreds of Americans, and attacked our bases and allies in the region. Strengthened with billions of dollars in sanctions relief, Iran would be an enormous danger to Americans at home and abroad, and to our allies. Additionally, it’s been reported that… Russia will be de facto judge of compliance, and in a position to return enriched uranium to Iran – without any oversight. Are we seriously going to let war criminal, Vladimir Putin, be the guarantor of the deal? We must address the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran. ”

“Iran must never be allowed to become a nuclear threat to the world,” added Rep. Elaine Luria (VA-2) “Not today. Not ten years from now. Not ever.”

https://bit.ly/3MyNenk

According to the Washington, DC-based White House Historical Association, the 1978/79 US policy on Iran, that embraced Ayatollah Khomeini, betrayed the pro-US Shah of Iran, and failed the pro-US Sunni Arab regimes, was based on a superficial view of Middle East political, religious, cultural and historical reality:

“…. In January 1979, the Shah fled into exile, and the theocratic regime of Khomeini took power. There was little informed understanding in the U.S. government about the political implications of this fundamentalist regime. Gary Sick, who was on the National Security staff, recalled a meeting in which Vice President Walter Mondale asked the CIA director Stansfield Turner, ‘What the hell is an Ayatollah anyway.’ Turner said he wasn’t sure he knew….”

However, the New York-based Foreign Affairs Magazine claims that – following President Carter’s initial assessment that Ayatollah Khomeini would be preoccupied with tractors rather than with tanks – the US President amended his position on Iran, concluding that regime-change was the most realistic policy toward Iran, because the Ayatollahs were relentlessly anti-American, ill-faith negotiators, neither partners for peaceful coexistence, nor amenable to democracy or to abandoning their anti-US fanatic vision:

“….Recently declassified documents reveal that in December 1979, Carter issued a presidential finding—a notification to Congress required under laws passed in the aftermath of the Watergate scandal—ordering the CIA to ‘conduct propaganda and political and economic action operations to encourage the establishment of a responsible and democratic regime in Iran; make contacts with Iranian opposition leaders and interested governments in order to encourage interactions that could lead to a broad, pro-Western front capable of forming an alternative government….’ The CIA attempted to organize external Iranian opposition groups into a cohesive force, tried to aid dissidents in Iran, and enlisted regional powers such as Saudi Arabia to help undermine the nascent theocracy….”

Has the 1979-2022 track record of Iran’s Ayatollahs justified President Carter’s transformation of policy from diplomacy to regime-change?