RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.frontpagemag.com/point/2021/03/biden-sends-15-million-covid-aid-palestinians-who-daniel-greenfield/

Last spring, Senate Democrats were obsessed with saving Hamas from the coronavirus.

Eight Senate Democrats, including Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren, dispatched a four-page letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, demanding to know what America was doing about the coronavirus.

Not in America. In Gaza.

According to the Senate letter, “as of March 24, the first two cases of COVID-19 were confirmed in the Gaza Strip.”

That’s two cases. Two. The United States has over 200,000 as of now.

The letter quotes an article claiming that in Gaza, “health ministry officials” whined “that just one person infected with the deadly virus would end in ‘complete disaster’”

Fast forward to this year and some 500 Gazan residents in Hamas territory have died of the virus. That’s not exactly a major crisis.

So the Biden administration is directing $15 million in aid.

The United States said Thursday it is giving $15 million to vulnerable Palestinian communities in the West Bank and Gaza Strip to help fight the COVID-19 pandemic, a sharp reversal from the Trump administration which cut off almost all aid to the Palestinians.

Thomas-Greenfield said the $15 million in aid is “consistent with our interests and our values, and it aligns with our efforts to stamp our the pandemic and food insecurity worldwide.”

Food insecurity? Because we’re also funding food aid programs. Food isn’t a bomb, but as a practical matter foreign aid is fungible and non-profits on the ground in areas controlled by terrorists tend to either use local contractors associated with the terrorist leadership or make payoffs to them.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17205/credible-nuclear-deterrence

The current consensus position is pretty straightforward. Modernize the three aging elements of the land, sea, and air Triad — strategic bombers and related cruise missiles, land-based missiles, and submarines and related sea-launched ballistic missiles — and build a new nuclear command-and-control system to protect the US from cyber threats, while also refurbishing the nuclear warhead laboratories and facilities.

Some critics, however, want to take down nuclear systems across the board, including: (1) low-yield nuclear weapons on US submarines; (2) the Navy cruise missile, just starting research; (3) the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) and (4) the bomber cruise missile or long-range strike option (LRSO). Critics even want to stop the US from being able to build from 20-80 nuclear warheads annually.

There are also those who want the US to adopt a “no first use” policy. The US deterrent, however, extended over NATO and America’s Western Pacific allies, has historically included the threat of responding to a major conventional attack from Russia, North Korea or China, for example, with the first use of nuclear weapons. Many US allies might legitimately be worried if that option were “undone” by explicit US policy.

Given then the survivability of the current US nuclear forces, the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR, p.67) determined that, should the US get rid of its ICBM force, the likelihood of a Russian attack on the US nuclear forces would only be increased. But with the entire Triad of US forces modernized, any chance of an attack on the American ICBM force would be “vanishingly small” — a conclusion reached recently by a number of analysts at the Federation of American Scientists.

As the current commander of US Strategic Command Admiral Charles Richard explained, if the US chooses not to modernize, it is choosing to go out of the nuclear business. The old legacy forces simply cannot be sustained much beyond this decade, when the replacements need to be delivered.

Various elements in the US Congress are saying that they want US nuclear policy to go in a decidedly new and different direction. This conflict between views on nuclear deterrence may place in jeopardy the hard-fought bi-partisan consensus created over the past ten years, in which the country agreed to fully modernize the aging US deterrent while also implementing arms control with its adversaries.

The current consensus position is pretty straightforward. Modernize the three aging elements of the land, sea, and air Triad — strategic bombers and related cruise missiles, land-based missiles, and submarines and related sea-launched ballistic missiles — and build a new nuclear command-and-control system to protect the US from cyber threats, while also refurbishing the nuclear warhead laboratories and facilities.

Some critics, however, want to take down nuclear systems across the board, including: (1) low-yield nuclear weapons on US submarines; (2) the Navy cruise missile, just starting research; (3) the Ground Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) and (4) the bomber cruise missile or long-range strike option (LRSO). Critics even want to stop the US from being able to build from 20-80 nuclear warheads annually.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/north-koreas-military-carries-out-unusual-activities-near-border-11616508652?mod=world_major_1_pos1

North Korea launched several short-range missiles over the weekend, U.S. and South Korean officials said, in a show of defiance against President Biden and his administration that was widely expected after joint U.S.-South Korea military exercises.

The weekend launches caused no damage and are being viewed more as a symbolic show of strength than one intended to inflict damage or hit any specific targets, according to two U.S. officials.

U.S. officials declined to provide details about the short-range missile launches or even how many were launched. The launches aren’t covered by the United Nations Security Council resolutions that govern such activity, and they were on the “low end” of routine activity from the North Koreans, two senior administration officials said.

President Biden said he didn’t consider the launch a provocation.

“According to the Defense Department, it’s business as usual,” he said at the White House. “There is no new wrinkle in what they did.”

A senior U.S. official said Pyongyang “has a clear menu of provocations when it wants to send a message,” and “what took place last weekend is falling on the low end of that spectrum.”

On Wednesday, Seoul’s military said North Korea had fired two projectiles that appeared to be cruise missiles. The Sunday-morning launches occurred about 30 miles west of Pyongyang, the military said.

South Korean defense officials said the previous day that they were monitoring unusual activity by North Korea’s military in a sector close to the South Korean border. It wasn’t the same area where the suspected missile launches took place.

North Korea frequently fired off short-range missiles even as negotiations between leader Kim Jong Un and then-President Donald Trump’s administration inched on. At the time, Mr. Trump and his administration maintained that the short-range missiles didn’t violate the terms laid out in his discussions with Pyongyang, which failed to yield an accord. CBS News earlier reported the missile launches.

The Biden administration is nearing the end of a review of its policy with North Korea, the senior administration officials said. Next week, national-security adviser Jake Sullivan is expected to meet in person in Washington with counterparts from South Korea and Japan to discuss the U.S. posture with regard to North Korea, the officials said. It follows visits by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who traveled to Tokyo and Seoul last week.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/americas-backagainst-a-wall-11616452400?mod=opinion_lead_pos9

Anyone who thought international politics would calm down once Donald Trump left center stage has had a rude awakening. After the Alaska confrontation between top U.S. and Chinese officials and the slanging match between Presidents Biden and Vladimir Putin, the world is as fraught as ever. American relations with Russia are at their lowest ebb since the Kennedy administration and U.S.-China relations at their frostiest since Henry Kissinger went to China in 1971, while Beijing and Moscow are more closely aligned than at any time since the death of Stalin.

It is not just the big boys who are testing the Biden team. Officials at Washington’s Fort McNair tightened security after reports of Iranian threats against the facility. North Korea is said to be moving toward new tests of long-range missiles. The Taliban announced that it plans to impose “Islamic rule” on Afghanistan when American forces leave. Meanwhile, U.S. Special Forces have arrived in Mozambique to train local troops in the face of a major offensive by ISIS-aligned militia groups. Authorities in Belarus have largely crushed the democracy movement in that country, and the Burmese military, despite facing unprecedented opposition at home and criticism abroad, shows no sign of relaxing its grip on power.

Relations with allies are also bumpy. The Biden administration threatened sanctions against European companies participating in the Nord Stream 2 project. And on a recent trip to Delhi, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin warned India against purchasing S-400 missile systems from Russia.

Bad relations with China and Russia and the troubled state of the world can’t be blamed on the Biden team, but the ideas driving this administration’s foreign policy are heading for severe and serious tests. Central to the Biden approach is the belief that the path to global stability involves reinvigoration of American leadership in the service of the “rules-based international order,” sometimes called Rubio. Supporting international institutions, promoting human rights and pushing back against revisionist powers may cause short-term disruptions until adversaries recognize the strength of the U.S. position, but ultimately a principled and forward-looking American stand will prevail.