RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2022/01/kamala_harris_off_to_honduras_what_could_go_wrong.html

Kamala Harris is going abroad again.

This time, she’s upping her game a little from her last one, the Paris shopping trip, and now heading to Honduras, where plenty is at stake.

Arriving on Jan. 27 or so, she will meet the new Honduran president, who’s a historic “first,” a woman president, which will provide plenty of grist for the Kamala identity politics mill, which interests her more than the border surge. She’ll talk about “firsts” and then at some point get to “root causes,” of illegal immigration as if that information were not already available in some place like Yuma, Arizona, where the latest surge is surging. Instead of going to that un-romantic place with no red carpets and saluting military men, or some other U.S. border point of entry, she’ll do her happy hunting for those “root causes” from a cossetted former first lady of a leftist stripe who’s since been elected president. She’s likely to get into some kind of trouble, given who she’s getting involved with.

Who is Xiomara Castro, the about-to-be sworn-in new president of Honduras? None other than the wife and second cousin of “Cowboy Hat,” former Honduran President Mel Zelaya, with that ‘Mel’ short for “Little Melon” — remember him? He was the former wannabe Hugo Chavez of who got booted from the presidency in 2009 on orders from the Honduran Supreme Court. Zelaya broke the law regarding an illegal ‘poll’ he was conducting with the Venezuelan military’s ‘help’ and when ordered by the Court to stop, didn’t. The Court recognized what he was doing as a disguised bid to scrap the country’s constitution through a phony coerced poll in order to replace it with a Hugo Chavez-style alternative. Zelaya wanted to join the club and have the same things Hugo had. After he ignored the Court, the Court ordered him out and he got rousted from his sleep by the Honduran military acting on orders from the high court and legislature, which forced him onto an airplane to Costa Rica “in his pajamas.” (A State department official told me that actually, he was buck naked, so somebody put some kind of clothes on him.) The global left yelled ‘coup,’ but the word on the streets in Honduras was that it was not a coup, based on the number of law-abiding Hondurans who came out to support and celebrate the ouster.  Zelaya tried to rouse a revolt from his asylum in the Brazilian embassy, but no one took him up on it. After that, he claimed the Israelis were doing radar experiments on him or something. He eventually fled to the Dominican Republic where he ran out on his hotel tab before returning to Honduras, leaving the D.R. to pay the bill. Chavez adored the mustachioed, cowboy-booted dictator wannabe, calling him “Commandante Vaquero.”

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18159/iran-china-threat

“China’s leading diplomat underlined his country’s readiness to expand cooperation with Iran in financing, energy, banking and cultural sectors despite” the US sanctions. – Tehran Times, January 15, 2022.

The agreement grants China significant rights over the Iran’s resources and help to Iran in increasing its oil and gas production. Leaked information showed that one of its terms is that China will be investing nearly $400 billion in Iran’s oil, gas and petrochemicals industries. In return, China will get priority to bid on any new project in Iran that is linked to these sectors. China will also be able to pay in any currency it chooses.

The partnership is not only going to assist the Iranian regime to skirt US sanctions, it also enables Iran to gain access to funds, empower its militia and terror groups in the region and continue advancing its nuclear weapons program.

The agreement between China and Iran, defying and challenging the US, also has a military dimension. Iran’s armed forces are currently holding a joint naval exercise with China and Russia. Iran, posing a threat to the region and the United States, will also, in all probability, step up its acquisition of advanced weaponry and nuclear technology from China.

As the largest importer of Iranian oil, China will also have authority over Iran’s islands, gain access to the oil at a highly discounted rate and increase its influence and presence in almost every sector of Iranian industry, including telecommunications, energy, ports, railways, and banking.

The real horror, as China and Iran’s military and strategic partnership intensifies, is that the Biden administration’s reluctance to take a firm stand against the mullahs and Beijing — as with Afghanistan and now Ukraine — can only have incalculably severe repercussions for the national security interests of the US and its allies, who may feel the need to start “hedging their bets” and seeking out presumably more reliable protectors, who may not have our best interests at heart.

The ruling mullahs of Iran are strengthening their ties with the Chinese Communist Party as well as conveniently violating US sanctions without facing any repercussions from the Biden administration.

https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/insight/

An important pipeline project in the Mediterranean has been caught in a web of conflicting security and energy policy across Europe and beyond. To prevent an energy crisis for our allies and take away Russian leverage, the Biden administration should restore full American support to the project.

The EastMed Pipeline was designed to bring natural gas from the offshore fields of Israel and Cyprus across Greece to Italy and Bulgaria. In 2013, the European Commission designated the pipeline a “Project of Common Interest” and invested tens of millions of dollars in technical, economic and environmental studies. It was estimated that the pipeline could send as much as 20 billion cubic meters of gas to Europe annually. In 2019, the energy ministers of Cyprus, Egypt, France, Greece, Israel, Italy, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority created the East Mediterranean Gas Forum. Notice that Turkey, a NATO member, was not included.

At the end of 2020, Congress passed legislation that included support for constructing pipelines and liquified natural gas terminals, and created a United States-Eastern Mediterranean Energy Center run by the U.S. Department of Energy. Then-secretary of energy Dan Brouillette announced his department’s support for the project.

America’s friends and allies banded together to increase and diversify energy supplies in Europe. So, why—in 2022—would the Biden administration privately and unofficially tell a Greek official that the U.S. no longer supports the project?

EastMed, as it turns out, is in the crossfire of economic, foreign and energy policy across a number of very different countries, continents and operating philosophies.

https://asiatimes.com/author/spengler/

It must be a hitherto unreported side-effect of the Omicron strain, perhaps a malignant protein activated by the rays of the full moon. America’s political class, Democrat and Republican alike, appear to have gone babbling, barking mad, starting with President Joe Biden, but afflicting his political opponents as well.

Biden’s January 19 press conference drew pity from the global press, with verbal gaffes unlike anything that has escaped the mouth of an American president before. He predicted a Russian military move into Ukraine: “My guess is he will move in. He has to do something.” Russia will be “held accountable if it invades,” Biden said, but added, “It depends on what it does. It’s one thing if it’s a minor incursion and we end up having to fight about what to do and not do, et cetera.”

A baffled reporter asked if he was giving Russia permission for a “minor incursion,” and Biden dug himself in deeper: “If it’s something significantly short of a significant invasion or not even significant — major military forces coming in…for example, it’s one thing to determine that if they continue to use cyber efforts, we can respond the same way, with cyber…There are differences in NATO as to what countries are willing to do, depending on what happens. The degree to which they are able to go.”

The White House press office spent the next several hours “clarifying” the “minor incursion” remark. The world simply concluded that Biden was senile.

Wrote Germany’s center-right daily Die Welt: “Biden stumbled several times. He showed lack of concentration. He closed his eyes several times and stared at the ceiling to regain his concentration. After more than an hour of questions, he looked at his watch and asked the reporters, ‘How much longer did you want to do this?’”

“It’s obvious why the White House staff wants to put the president in front of a microphone as little as possible,” Die Welt concluded.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18145/the-uae-is-america-friend-not-rival

The Houthi attack against the UAE, which has long-standing defence ties with the US… makes a mockery of US President Joe Biden’s decision, taken in the first weeks of his presidency, to remove the Houthis from Washington’s list of designated terrorist groups….

The Gulf region has become a major battleground between the US and China, not least because American influence is seen as being in decline by Gulf leaders because of Mr Biden’s weak and ineffectual leadership, especially in the wake of his administration’s disastrous handling of the Afghan withdrawal in the summer.

https://edition.cnn.com/2021/08/16/politics/afghanistan-joe-biden-donald-trump-kabul-politics/index.html

This has led many Middle Eastern states that have previously adopted pro-Western policies to re-evaluate their long-standing relationship with Washington as they feel, quite rightly, that they can no longer rely on the US to defend their interests, especially when it comes to protecting them against the threat posed by Iran and its allies.

From China’s perspective, Abu Dhabi is seen as the “pearl” in its plan to establish what Chinese President Xi Jinping calls the Maritime Silk Road, a project that aims to secure Chinese dominance over key trading routes from Asia to the Middle East and beyond.

The fact that the Biden administration…should be pressuring the UAE over its ties with China is a classic example of how the White House has got its priorities all wrong.

As this week’s attack by Iranian-backed terrorists on the UAE graphically illustrates, Iran poses the greatest threat to Gulf security, and it is Washington’s failure to support its Gulf allies against the Iranian menace that has led them to develop ties with China in the first place.

If Mr Biden is truly concerned about nations like the UAE developing relations with Beijing, then the best way to reverse this trend would be to offer the Gulf states better protection against Iran. That would be a sure-fire way to get American relations with the Gulf back on track, and keep the opportunistic Chinese communists at bay.

The dramatic drone and missile strikes on the United Arab Emirates (UAE) by Iranian-backed Houthi rebels highlight the utter folly of the Biden administration’s willingness to question the loyalty of one of its key Gulf allies.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18125/us-diplomacy-iran

As part of its “diplomacy”, the White House first told the Iranian leaders not only that it is willing to lift nuclear-related sanctions, but also that it is considering lifting non-nuclear related sanctions.
Not only has the Biden administration’s diplomatic route lifted some of the sanctions on the Iranian regime and its Houthi proxy, the administration has also looked the other way regarding the Islamic Republic’s malign actions in the region.
As #BloodyFriday [the Iranian regime’s lethal response to citizens protesting water shortages] trended on Twitter, not a word of condemnation could be heard from the White House. The organization Iranian-Americans for Liberty pleaded with the Biden administration to stand with the protesters….
Sadly, throughout history, “diplomacy” without the credible threat of a military follow-up (emphasis on the credible) can easily be regarded as just a “toothless” bore.
The Biden administration’s policy of “diplomacy” towards the Iran’s ruling mullahs seems in reality to be nothing more distressing to the ruling mullahs than a soggy pile of concessions and capitulations that, far from stopping their predations, will only empower and embolden them.

The Biden administration is perpetuating the idea that the White House is relying on “diplomacy” in dealing with the Iranian regime. However, the Biden administration’s “diplomacy” with Iran seems nothing but capitulations to the ruling mullahs.

As part of its “diplomacy”, the White House first told the Iranian leaders not only that it is willing to lift nuclear-related sanctions, but also that it is considering lifting non-nuclear related sanctions. This was followed by the first concession toward Iran’s proxy militia group, the Houthis. Even as the evidence — including a report by the United Nations — showed that the Iranian regime was delivering sophisticated weapons to the Houthis in Yemen, the Biden administration suspended some of the anti-terrorism sanctions on the Houthis that the Trump administration had imposed. Soon after, the Biden administration revoked the designation of Yemen’s Houthis as a terrorist group.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18140/china-year-of-the-tiger-ii

The same inaction by Western leaders to hold China accountable for the global pandemic that infuriates Western citizens only emboldens the Communist Party leadership, which sees inaction as a license to do more.

China will be constantly assessing the political strength of its adversaries. European political leaders have never demonstrated the stomach to confront military threats. During my tenure as U.S. Ambassador to the Netherlands, I observed Europeans always believed dialogue was more important than confrontation. Bad agreements were better than no agreements and being party to agreements that did not work was better than withdrawing.

They also likely assess the EU will do almost anything to protect its significant economic ties with China. The EU likely would propose as the appropriate response to any CCP action against Taiwan talks and talks and talks.

The CCP will closely monitor the responses of the EU and U.S. to Russia’s aggressive posture against Ukraine. Does Russia gain major concessions from the West? Does it grab another piece of Ukraine with little or only a modest reaction from the West? If so, this would signal to China that the West is unreliable ally and ripe for the picking.

The year of the Tiger, 2022, is shaping up to be a year of escalating tension between the world’s two major superpowers. It will be go big or go home.

Not only will the U.S. go big against China, but it is likely the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) will see 2022 as an opportunity to go big against the U.S. The target will be Taiwan.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18138/destroying-taiwan

Chinese ruler Xi Jinping is not going to be deterred by the prospect of losing TSMC [semiconductor company] or, for that matter, all of Taiwan’s semiconductor industry. He will take the island even if he has to make it a radioactive slab uninhabitable for a thousand years.

“China wanted Taiwan long before TSMC was churning out chips, and would want it even if TSMC had never existed…. It wants Taiwan because, like Nazi Germany, it is an expansionist power….” — Michael Turton, columnist, Taipei Times, January 10, 2022.

China’s regime is extraordinarily casualty-adverse…. McKinney and Harris, therefore, totally miss the mark when they argue that an arms race with China would be counterproductive. Xi knows that an invasion of the island would be unpopular among most Chinese citizens if their sons or daughter were killed or maimed in the effort…, he is not about to do anything that could lead to the end of Communist Party rule.

Richard Fisher, a China military analyst with the International Assessment and Strategy Center, tells Gatestone that it is possible for the United States to win such a contest with China. Fisher is correct. The Chinese military is arms-racing not just with the United States but with much of the region, especially Japan and Australia.

[A]t a time when China’s Communist Party is attacking democracies, Washington cannot allow Beijing to absorb any one of them, even if it is not home to the world’s leading chipmakers.

“Destroying Taiwan’s democracy is essential to giving China’s Communist Party license to destroy all other democracies.” — Richard Fisher to Gatestone, January 2022.

If America came to the rescue of Taiwan, it would not be defending just the island; America would be defending itself.

America can save Taiwan from Chinese invasion by promising to destroy it, or at least its chipmaking capability, argues an article in Parameters, the U.S. Army War College’s quarterly. In “Broken Nest: Deterring China from Invading Taiwan,” Air University’s Jared McKinney and Colorado State University’s Peter Harris say that Taipei and Washington should make the island “unwantable.”

https://amgreatness.com/2022/01/16/how-to-counter-bidens-national-security-incompetence-in-2022/

The inept national security policies of Joe Biden during his first year in office caused a profound deterioration in American and global security that is certain to worsen in 2022 unless he takes aggressive steps to change course. 

From his disastrous withdrawal of U.S troops from Afghanistan, lack of coherent policies to deal with Russia and China, a stubborn determination to appease Iran to revive the deeply flawed 2015 nuclear deal, and an obsession with climate change as a national security issue, Biden in just one year severely undermined America’s global reputation as a strong and principled nation. 

Making this worse is a global perception that Joe Biden is not mentally competent to be the U.S. commander in chief. 

America’s enemies have been watching this unprecedented deterioration of American global leadership and are preparing to cash in. This could include in 2022 China attacking Taiwan, Russia invading Ukraine, and increased provocations by Iran and North Korea, including possible nuclear tests by both nations. There is also the threat to the United States directly by criminal and national security threats resulting from Biden’s failure to secure our southern border. 

Biden’s advisers and members of Congress must recognize that threats to American security could significantly worsen in 2022 and demand changes to the Biden Administration’s national security policies and staffing. These changes should include:

First, fire Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan. These officials have been weak advisers to an incompetent president and should be replaced with more experienced Democratic experts with gravitas and principle.