RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-beijing-loves-biden-and-paris-11613937344?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

The U.S. officially rejoined the Paris climate accord on Friday to much media and European applause. Our guess is that China is the most pleased because it knows the accord will restrict American energy while Beijing gets a decade-long free ride.

Paris is a voluntary agreement, and nations submit their own commitments to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. The Obama Administration vowed to slash emissions 26% or more from 2005 levels by 2025, but the Trump Administration withdrew from the accord. President Biden has now pledged to reach “net-zero emissions no later than 2050.”

Like Mr. Obama, Mr. Biden is committing the U.S. without submitting the Paris agreement to the Senate as a treaty. They know it would never get a two-thirds vote for approval, and probably not even a simple majority. Yet the Administration will cite Paris to justify sweeping environmental regulations to raise the cost of fossil fuels and subsidize renewable energy and electric vehicles. It will bypass Congress for much of this.

The economic damage will be real. A 2017 analysis of the Obama Paris commitments, by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the American Council for Capital Formation, predicted a $250 billion reduction in GDP and some 2.7 million lost jobs by 2025.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/tyler-o-neil/2021/02/18/tom-cotton-lays-out-a-strategy-to-fight-the-new-cold-war-against-china-n1426674

On Thursday, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) released a roadmap to counter the Chinese Communist Party and prevail in a new “Cold War” against this “Evil Empire.”

“This Evil Empire preys on—and spies on—Americans. It imprisons innocent people in concentration camps. It uses slave labor to fuel its factories. And it denies basic freedoms to all its 1.4 billion people,” Cotton declared in a speech at the Ronald Reagan Institute in Chicago. “We need to beat this Evil Empire—and consign the Chinese Communists, like the Bolsheviks, to the ash heap of history.”

He released a report entitled “Beat China: Targeted Decoupling and the Economic Long War” that laid out three central goals to combat China: decoupling, mitigating the effects of decoupling, and reorganizing the federal government to better respond to the CCP.

Cotton praised Reagan’s historic success at defeating the Soviet Union without firing a shot, but he warned that the “Cold War” against China “will be more complicated than the first. China is wealthier and more populous than any enemy America has ever faced. It’s also more entangled with us economically.”

Cotton acknowledged that America’s “deep dependence on China didn’t grow overnight.” Rather, Americans actively pursued a “strategic partnership” with the Chinese Communist Party on the grounds that open markets and open borders would make China rich and then lead China on the path to freedom. China indeed became rich, “but instead of reforming, the Communist Party began to exploit new connections between our free society and its totalitarian society.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/pompeo-no-one-can-ever-again-deny-the-threat-irans-islamic-republic-presents-israel-gulf-nations_3702900.html

Former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Feb. 18 said he is confident that no one will ever again be able to deny the threat that the Islamic Republic in Iran presents Israel, the Gulf nations, and the United States, following the “historic” achievements for the region made under the Trump administration.

Pompeo made the remarks while accepting a “Champion of International Human Rights” award at the ninth Annual Champions of Jewish Values International Awards Gala, held by the the World Values Network on Thursday in honor of Black history month. It is the first award of its kind.

He was referring to former President Donald Trump’s Abraham Accords, a joint statement between Israel, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and the United States—and later, with Bahrain and other Arab countries. The agreement, which earned the former president Nobel Peace Prize nominations, serves to establish new cooperation and normalization between the Middle East nations.

The deals were first announced on Aug. 13 and Sept. 11, 2020.

“I am confident that people around the world now think about Iran differently than when our administration took office,” Pompeo said, addressing the event virtually.

“And while the next administration [Biden] may choose its own tactical plan, I don’t believe that’s the case that anyone will ever again deny the threat that the Islamic Republic presents to the United States, to Israel, to Arab nations in the Gulf.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/18/us/politics/biden-iran-nuclear.html?campaign

WASHINGTON — The United States made a major move on Thursday toward restoring the Iran nuclear deal that the Trump administration abandoned, offering to join European nations in what would be the first substantial diplomacy with Tehran in more than four years, Biden administration officials said.

In an effort to make good on one of President Biden’s most significant campaign promises, Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken spoke with European foreign ministers and agreed that the 2015 nuclear accord with Iran “was a key achievement of multilateral diplomacy,” and one worth pursuing again, according to a State Department statement.

Mr. Biden has said he would lift sanctions imposed by President Donald J. Trump if Iran returned to the sharp limits on nuclear production that it observed until 2019.

Iran has said the United States was the first to violate the terms of the 2015 nuclear accord, and that it would act only after the United States reversed course and allowed it to sell oil and conduct banking operations around the world. A senior Biden administration official said on Thursday evening that closing that gap would be a “painstaking” process.

The announcement will open what is likely to be a delicate set of diplomatic offerings.

The sparring over who moves first will be just the first of many hurdles. And with a presidential election only four months away in Iran, it was not clear if the country’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and the nation’s political and military leadership would fully support re-engagement with the United States.

https://thefederalist.com/2021/02/17/why-you-should-be-skeptical-of-the-new-tough-on-china-joe-biden/

The Biden administration is stocking up with the same Democrat establishment cast that supported the project of China’s rise to global dominance.

The Biden administration and its corporate media cheerleaders are at pains to tell you that career-long China kowtower Joe Biden is “tough on China.” But toughness can only be proven by action. Contra the official narrative, however, President Biden’s initial policies and those tasked with implementing and building upon them do not indicate strength. Rather, to America’s detriment, they signal a reversion to the status quo ante of weakness.

The media has trumpeted Biden administration rhetoric on three key China-related issues: the administration’s affirmation — with caveats — of the Trump administration’s designation of the Chinese Communist Party’s atrocities in Xinjiang as constituting “genocide”; its pledge of a “rock-solid commitment” to Taiwan; and its promise to maintain a “free and open” Indo-Pacific — again, with caveats.

The media also celebrated the Biden administration’s most authoritative statements on U.S.-China policy yet, from a readout of the president’s first call with Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping, and related statements by officials on the administration’s China strategy. Headlines about the call claimed Biden “confronted” Xi with “concerns” about contentious issues such as human rights, trade, and Taiwan. Chinese state media, of course, saw it quite differently — as an amiable and welcome reversal of Trump’s tough on China stance.

American corporate media also reported that Biden staffers embraced the idea America is in an “intense strategic competition with China,” and would be maintaining some of the Trump administration’s policies — a tacit admission of Trump’s relative toughness.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/joe-biden-gets-tested-in-iraq-11613497028?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

Joe Biden has said his Presidency won’t be a third Obama term, and he’ll have plenty of opportunities to prove it. The latest comes after a rocket attack against the U.S.-led coalition in Erbil, Iraq.

“Initial reports indicate that the attacks killed one civilian contractor and injured several members of the Coalition, including one American service member and several American contractors,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday. He added that he had told the leader of Kurdistan’s regional government that Washington would help “to investigate and hold accountable those responsible.” America’s adversaries will be watching, especially in Tehran.

An investigation is under way, but it’s hard to believe a Shiite militia allied with Iran isn’t behind the attack. The group Awliya Al Dam, or Guardians of Blood, has claimed responsibility. U.S. and Iraqi officials say smaller organizations like this have been linked to better known Iranian proxies such as Kataib Hezbollah. SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks extremist groups’ online activity, reports that Awliya Al Dam has vowed more violence after the latest incident.

Iranian proxies launched several rocket attacks on U.S. and allied forces in 2019 and 2020. Their goal is to drive out the roughly 2,500 U.S. troops that assist the Iraqi military, provide intelligence against a return of Islamic State, and limit malign Iranian influence in the country. Retaliatory strikes won’t put a complete stop to such aggression, but the right retaliation can degrade the militias’ abilities. Inaction could invite more brazen attacks.

Before Donald Trump ordered the retaliatory attack on Iranian terror chief Qasem Soleimani in January 2020, many warned such a response would lead to a full-scale war. Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei tweeted that Mr. Trump “can’t do anything.” Mr. Biden doesn’t need to escalate to Mr. Trump’s level, but it’s worth reminding Tehran that he isn’t Barack Obama —and the U.S. can do something.