RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://pjmedia.com/spengler/the-chinese-tortoise-and-the-american-hare/

Historian Andrew Roberts reports that Winston Churchill said just after Pearl Harbor that “in the event of war, the Japanese would ‘fold up like the Italians,’ because they were ‘the wops of the Far East.’” The West chronically underestimates Asians, as the Russians found out at Port Arthur, the Americans at Pearl Harbor and the Yalu River, the British at Singapore, and so forth.

A case in point is the present tariff war. The U.S. assumed that tariffs on Chinese imports would force China to make fundamental concessions to American trade demands. On January 6, President Donald Trump said, “China’s not doing very well now. It puts us in a very strong position. We are doing very well.” Since then China’s CSI 300 stock index has gained 37% during 2019 to date, double the gain in U.S. stock markets. China’s economic growth has accelerated while America’s has slowed. The tariff war may have hurt the U.S. economy more than China’s. With an internal market of 1.4 billion people, China can replace lost foreign business by increasing internal demand. Ten years ago exports made up 36% of China’s gross domestic product versus only 18% today. World trade is shrinking, but the impact on China is manageable.

I support President Trump. I applaud him for calling attention to China’s challenge to America’s strategic position. But I have warned from the outset that the tools he has employed won’t get the results he wants.

https://www.npr.org/2019/04/26/7175477

President Trump effectively “unsigned” an international arms sales agreement Friday, moving to withdraw the U.S. from the United Nations’ Arms Trade Treaty. The agreement sets global standards for regulating transfers of conventional arms, from rifles to tanks and airplanes.The treaty, known as the ATT, has been in effect since late 2014. The U.S. signed on to the agreement in 2013 but has not ratified the treaty.The U.S. withdrawal had been expected. Trump made it official at the National Rifle Association’s annual convention in Indianapolis, pulling out a pen onstage and signing a paper that he said would take back the Obama administration’s signature on behalf of the U.S.

https://issuesinsights.com/2019/04/26/china-iran-nuclear-weapons-u-s-sanctions/

President Trump, true to his tough-guy form, this week announced the withdrawal of sanctions waivers on countries that don’t cease purchasing oil from the terrorist state of Iran by the beginning of May. China will almost certainly defy the U.S. and refuse to cut off Iranian crude imports, at least not cut them off completely.

Importing just under 30 million tons last year, China is Iran’s biggest petroleum customer, and Beijing has formally protested the Trump Administration move and argued that its commercial relationship with Tehran is justified.

Obviously, China isn’t interested in letting anything take it off track from its objective of permanent global economic dominance. Less obvious, however, is Iran’s sinister role in the rise of China at the expense of superpower America.

Speaking to the Wilson Center last fall, Henry Kissinger, sounding very much like his old, detente-designing, Nixon Administration self, expounded on his strategic views of the U.S. and China, over 45 years after engineering the opening to the long-isolated Communist regime.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-goal-for-irans-oil-exports-zero-11555972882

President Trump wants to exert “maximum pressure” on Iran, which is why he is giving the sanctions screws another firm twist. Any country that imports Iranian oil will soon face U.S. penalties—with no exceptions. Last year seven nations and Taiwan were granted waivers through May 2, giving them time to adjust supply lines. These waivers won’t be extended, the State Department said Monday, helping to push the benchmark oil price to $74 a barrel, a nearly six-month high.

Italy, Greece and Taiwan have already ended their Iranian oil imports. That leaves five countries at risk of U.S. sanctions: China, India, Turkey, Japan and South Korea. Two are close allies, and no doubt their leaders will protest this stiff medicine. But the Trump Administration has given them enough warning, not to mention a six-month waiver. That’s plenty of time to make other arrangements.

By all accounts, Iran’s economy is in trouble. “To date, we estimate that our sanctions have denied the regime well north of $10 billion,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Monday. “The regime would have used that money to support terror groups like Hamas and Hezbollah and continue its missile development” and “it would have perpetuated the humanitarian crisis in Yemen.”

Mr. Pompeo reiterated the White House goal “to deprive the outlaw regime of the funds it has used to destabilize the Middle East for four decades, and incentivize Iran to behave like a normal country.” To that end, the U.S. intends to drive Iranian oil exports to zero.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-takes-aim-at-caracas-and-havana-11555972251

As Washington and Moscow face off over Venezuela, the Caribbean has become a focal point for global politics for the first time since the Cold War.

The U.S. and its allies have recognized Juan Guaidó as the interim president of Venezuela and demanded that Nicolás Maduro step aside, doubling down on sanctions against the dictator and his allies in Havana. Mr. Guaidó has called on Venezuelans to turn out on May 1 for what he hopes will be the largest demonstration in the country’s history. Yet Mr. Maduro is standing his ground, backed financially by China and Russia, and receiving military and security assistance from Cuba and Russia.

For the Trump administration, all roads in the Western Hemisphere lead to Caracas. Left to accelerate, the breakdown of governance and civilized life in Venezuela can only create more refugees, enrich arms smugglers and drug cartels, allow forces like Hezbollah to insinuate themselves more deeply in the region. On the other hand, a return to some kind of stability under a pro-business government would initiate an economic recovery that would help the people of Venezuela and their neighbors alike, and deprive the terror cartels of much of their arms and funding. Crucially, if Venezuelan oil production recovers, it would help stabilize world energy markets and significantly increase American leverage with both Russia and Iran.

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2019/04/america_needs_new_export_controls.html

During the Cold War, the Soviet Union seriously outspent the United States on military equipment. The U.S. and its NATO allies worried that the Russians would have such overwhelming military power that, at any moment, Soviet and Warsaw Pact forces could flood Western Europe, starting with the Fulda Gap, where NATO would be pushed back and defeated.

The problem today is less Russia — with decent technology but not enough funds to produce great numbers — than China — with money to produce, but not yet a great technological base. So China uses ours.

American companies face no meaningful export restrictions and they are eager to take advantage of low-cost manufacturing in China and potential access to China’s huge domestic market. This has had an impact on Chinese electronics as well as aircraft manufacturing, submarine capabilities, and more. What China has not been able to get from legal American imports, it has worked to acquire by electronic and human spying.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/273421/trump-designates-islamic-revolutionary-guard-corps-joseph-klein

President Trump has decided to designate the Iranian regime’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) to counter Iran’s global campaign of terrorism. “This unprecedented step, led by the Department of State, recognizes the reality that Iran is not only a State Sponsor of Terrorism, but that the IRGC actively participates in, finances, and promotes terrorism as a tool of statecraft,” President Donald Trump said in a statement Monday morning. “This designation will be the first time that the United States has ever named a part of another government as a FTO.” The designation takes effect on April 15th.

The Iranian regime lives and breathes Islamic extremism, which it seeks to export through its global jihad terrorist network. The IRGC sits at the center of that terrorist network. It provides funding, equipment, training, and logistical support to terrorist proxy groups, including most notably Hezbollah in Lebanon and Syria. The IRGC has American blood on its hands, going as far back as bombings in Beirut at the Marine barracks in 1983 and at the U.S. Embassy annex in 1984. The IRGC also caused casualties to U.S soldiers in Iraq by providing roadside bombs to its proxies. As Special Representative for Iran and Senior Adviser to the Secretary of State Brian Hook explained on Monday, “The IRGC has been threatening American troops almost since its inception. And whenever we impose sanctions on Iran, it’s usually followed by a range of threats. What endangers American troops in the Middle East is an IRGC that operates with impunity and never has its ambitions checked in the Middle East. We’re taking an entirely new approach to this of significant sort of sustained maximum economic pressure to deny the IRGC and the Iranian regime of the revenue that it needs to conduct its foreign policy.”

https://www.wsj.com/articles/u-s-to-designate-iranian-guard-corps-a-foreign-terrorist-organization-11554499401

The Trump administration is preparing to designate Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a foreign terrorist organization, U.S. officials said, a step that would vastly escalate the American pressure campaign against Tehran but which has divided U.S. officials.

The decision, which could be announced as early as Monday following months of deliberation, would mark the first time that an element of a foreign state has been officially designated a terrorist entity.

National security adviser John Bolton and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have been strong proponents of the move, which is intended to help the U.S. crack down on businesses in Europe and elsewhere controlled by the IRGC, the officials said.

But Pentagon officials, including Marine Gen. Joe Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have cautioned against the move, several U.S. officials said, fearing it could lead to a backlash against U.S. forces in the region without inflicting the intended damage to the Iranian economy.

Central Intelligence Agency officials have also had reservations about consequences of the decision, the officials said.