China, Russia and the nature of their alliance / understanding

 A year ago, the Putin regime made up its mind that it would embrace pariah status. What would be required to restore Russia's ability to be accepted in polite company on the world stage is pretty much inconceivable. 

China is every bit as much of a rogue nation as Russia, but Xi's savvy and energetic diplomacy moves have positioned it better strategically.

Russia goes more for in-your-face belligerence:

Russia could have its most powerful and quiet nuclear attack submarines on persistent patrols off either U.S. Coast in the next two years, the head of U.S. Northern Command told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday.

In response to questions from Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) on the threat of Chinese and Russian cruise missile submarines operating close to the U.S., NORTHCOM commander Gen. Glen VanHerck said that the deployments of the Russian Yasen-class nuclear cruise missile attack boats have been deploying more frequently.

“[The risk is] absolutely increasing. Within the last year, Russia has also placed their [Yasens] in the Pacific,” he said.
“Now not only the Atlantic, but we also have them in the Pacific and it’s just a matter of time – probably a year or two – before that’s a persistent threat, 24 hours a day. … That impact has reduced decision space for a national senior leader in a time of crisis.”

Also known by their NATO reporting name Severodvinsk class, the 13,800-ton Yasen-class attack boats are among the most capable submarines in the world. In particular, the three current boats in the class are capable of a special quiet operations mode that make them difficult to detect in the open ocean. In 2018, the lead boat in the class, Severodvinsk, evaded U.S. efforts to find it for weeks, according to press reports.

Navy officials have told USNI News that the service has become increasingly concerned with the efficacy of the Russian submarine force.

The growing ability of Russian submarines to operate undetected in the Atlantic pushed the Navy to reactivate U.S. 2nd Fleet and create a command for anti-submarine warfare across the Atlantic in 2018.

The Russian Navy has planned to build ten Yasen-class attack boats, with the fourth to commission later this year, according to Russian press reports.

Medvedev further ratchets up the rhetoric:

Dmitry Medvedev, the 57-year-old deputy secretary of Russia’s Security Council chaired by Putin, said in video remarks to reporters that Russia’s relations with the West have hit an all-time low.

Asked whether the threat of a nuclear conflict has eased, Medvedev responded: “No, it hasn’t decreased, it has grown. Every day when they provide Ukraine with foreign weapons brings the nuclear apocalypse closer.”

 

Russia can still count China among its friends. What is each side getting from it? China procures energy from Russia, and Russia pockets cash:

Russia will increasingly be a commodities warehouse for China as Moscow grows more economically dependent on Beijing, a source close to the Kremlin told the Financial Times.

That unequal partnership was on display this week as Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Russian President Vladimir Putin, marking their first summit since Russia invaded Ukraine last year.

After Putin launched his war, the West largely cut off Russia from the global financial system and shunned its energy exports, forcing it to reroute its oil and gas to China and India.

Indeed, Chinese purchases of Russian energy jumped 54% to $81.3 billion last year, accounting for 40% of the Kremlin's budget revenue. And in January, Russia exported 2.7 billion cubic meters of natural gas to China, becoming its top supplier, according to data cited by the FT.

"The logic of events dictates that we fully become a Chinese resource colony," the source told the FT. "Our servers will be from Huawei. We will be China's major suppliers of everything. They will get gas from Power of Siberia. By the end of 2023, the yuan will be our main trade currency."

Russia sees its economic ties with China as the key to winning the war in Ukraine, the source said, adding that Beijing is crucial to weathering Western sanctions while Russian natural resources help lock in China's support.

Because Xi has laid diplomatic groundwork, China can still court Europe while allying itself with Russia:

Part of Xi’s calculation, sadly, is that he can get away with his support for Russia without losing European trade. Europe humiliates itself by kowtowing to Beijing despite its insouciant support for Putin’s hostilities on the EU’s eastern doorstep. The actions of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron make this abundantly clear. Visiting China last November with German car manufacturer executives, Beijing's Global Times newspaper saluted Scholz. It observed that the chancellor's "pragmatic approach will surely bring [German businesses] more dividends of China's development, which will help them get a head start in competition with other foreign investors in China."

Russia is handy for China with regard to hegemonic designs in the Pacific, too:

As the People's Republic of China approaches its 100th anniversary in 2049, the existence of Taiwan will transition from being a bleeding stain on the CCP's credibility to that of an arterial hemorrhage. Xi has told his People's Liberation Army to be ready to seize the island nation by 2027. The Russian alliance helps significantly in this plan. 

Russia now regularly deploys its navy alongside China’s in exercises around Japan. These displays of raw military power allow China to put pressure on the U.S. and its allies while also presenting China's aggressive intentions toward Taiwan as having multilateral support. While the Russian navy struggles with maintenance and readiness, it has experienced crews in command of advanced weapons systems, especially its submarines, which are highly competent and capable of evading even the U.S. and British forces.

Russia having opted to ensnare itself with an invasion of Ukraine, China is able to play the architect of a new, multipolar world-stage arrangement, as exemplified by its role as broker of re-established ties between Saudi Arabia and Iran. 

That move really served notice that China doesn't accept a US leadership role in the Mideast:

China has been pushing to challenge the U.S. role as the world’s superpower for years, and their success in securing the agreement weakens the U.S. position in the region. 

The United States has had longstanding but recently tense relations with Saudi Arabia, especially since the 2018 assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who criticized the Saudi regime. U.S. intelligence assessed in 2021 that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman approved an operation to kill or capture Khashoggi. 

The U.S. has had fraught relations with Iran for decades since the 1979 Iranian Revolution, making it likely impossible for the U.S. to arrange such a deal between the two Middle Eastern powers. 

China has meanwhile bought substantial amounts of oil from Saudi Arabia and stayed close to Iran. 

Some international affairs experts have said the agreement signals China is getting more involved in diplomatic engagement of the Middle East. 

“It should be a warning to U.S. policymakers: Leave the Middle East and abandon ties with sometimes frustrating, even barbarous, but long-standing allies, and you’ll simply be leaving a vacuum for China to fill,” said Jonathan Panikoff, the director of the Scowcroft Middle East Security Initiative for the Atlantic Council, in a Friday analysis. 

And Xi even felt emboldened to send a reminder to Putin which country is the alpha dog in their alliance right after their summit:

China's leader, Xi Jinping, has called a meeting of former-Soviet Central Asian countries, in an audacious power play in Russia's backyard the week of his summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Xi invited the leaders of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan to the first China-Central Asia summit on Wednesday, the AFP news agency reported. It remains unclear whether Turkmenistan has been invited.

The states are all former members of the Soviet Union, and Moscow has long regarded them as being in its sphere of influence after the Russian Empire conquered them in the 19th century.

So these two expansionist rogue states understand each other, shall we say. Whether their alliance would withstand any real stress tests or hair-raising near-mishaps better than a Five Families agreement remains to be seen.

But they, and the rogue states within their collective orbit, such as Iran, North Korea, Venezuela and Nicaragua, harbor no love for the rest of the world's notion of a stable and productive world order. They're driven by an entirely different set of values. 

 

 

 

 

 

Is the US military for hire on a mercenary basis in the age of the Very Stable Genius?

This is the VSG, talking to FNC's Laura Ingraham:

“We have a very good relationship with Saudi Arabia—I said, listen, you’re a very rich country. You want more troops? I’m going to send them to you, but you’ve got to pay us. They’re paying us. They’ve already deposited $1B in the bank.”

"The bank." Is he talking about the US Treasury, or some privately owned bank he's done business with?

And how many other nations currently hosting US military personnel is he considering having such arrangements with?

I do know that he said he wanted South Korea to pay 400 percent more for us having bases there. Which has driven them into the arms of the Chinese.

It's this kind of stuff. Every time I see some article that is out to persuade the reader that Trump is worth supporting despite his egregiously erratic ways, this kind of thing comes along.

He is what he is. Lots of people in post-America seem to think that's great.

My assessment differs.

Barney & Clyde - episode 15

It's here.

Welcome back to the Libation Station! Pour yourself something bracing, pull up a bar-stool, and get in on the fortnightly exchange of libertarian and conservative perspectives on the weighty matters of the day. Specifically: 1. Making children into the spokespeople for climate alarmism 2. Our Fight or Not? - What is the proper US response to attacks on Saudi Oil production? 3. Old News: What's going on with Julian Assange? 4. Journalism's Death Rattle: the NYT attempt to revive the Kavanaugh smear. Send your feedback to barneyandclydeshow@gmail.com Comment here or at: https://www.facebook.com/barneyandcly... Please consider supporting us! https://www.patreon.com/barneyandclyde

The US will have to be involved in a response to the Iranian attack on Saudi Arabia

Noah Rothman has a very sobering piece at Commentary entitled "No, We Shouldn't Let Saudi Arabia 'Fight Its Own Wars.'" You can tell by the way he's written it that being responsible was foremost among the attitudes he wanted to bring to its crafting. This is very serious stuff he's discussing.

As the president considers how the United States should respond to a series of aggressive acts by Iran and its proxies in the Middle East, one fact should be clear: There are no good options.

Inaction is unacceptable. A passive posture would invite more aggression, and the pattern of escalating Iranian provocations suggests the Islamic Republic could miscalibrate its attacks in a way that would require a broad and conclusive response from the West. But even a measured military response to Iranian attacks entails risk. While neither the Western world nor Iran and its roguish allies want to see a full-scale military confrontation, the mechanisms for de-escalating such a conflict once the shooting starts are untested and unreliable. Iran would retaliate, potentially against American military and diplomatic targets, compelling the United States to respond in kind. That’s how cycles of violence spiral out of control. The choice before President Trump is an unenviable one, but this is the job he wanted.

If Saudi Arabia were to be served notice that it would be going it alone, it would merely delay a broader scope of engagement. The tit-for-tat taking out of the means by which the attack was launched would not halt Iran's pattern of aggression. And even if Saudi Arabia went after the Iranian presence in Yemen, Lebanon and/or Syria, it would exacerbate the Sunni-Shiite tension that fuels much of what has been going on.

As a commenter here at LITD noted recently, this latest attack did not happen in a vacuum. Rothman reminds of of the recent timeline:

Iran’s aggressive behavior follows a clear pattern of escalation. It has executed sophisticated covert operations targeting the global oil supply by disabling and hijacking ships in the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz. It has destroyed a $120 million American aerial surveillance drone operating above international waters. And now, it has executed an elaborate assault on a Saudi refinery. Iran is behaving rationally by testing the limits of provocation as a tool of statecraft. Its strategic objective is to stoke anxieties among America’s Middle Eastern and European allies and, ultimately, erode global will to maintain the present suffocating sanctions regime. Eventually, Iran is likely to miscalculate, executing a bloody attack that demands a disproportionate response from the United States. This is an outcome that American policymakers are right to avoid, but not at any cost.

Senator Lindsey Graham's view is that the shooting down of the drone is the point at which this escalation should have been resolutely addressed:

As President Donald Trump ponders retaliation on Iran, he and a close Republican ally had a spat over the supposed "weakness" of the last U.S. confrontation with Tehran.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said on Twitter that Trump's decision to call off a military strike on Iran for taking out a U.S. drone in June may have emboldened the Iranians to attack an oil facility in Saudi Arabia on Saturday.

"The measured response by President @realDonaldTrump regarding the shooting down of an American drone was clearly seen by the Iranian regime as a sign of weakness," Graham said in a series of tweets.

Secretary of State Pompeo is using the term "act of war" to describe the attack:

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday called the airstrikes on Saudi oil facilities “an act of war” and said it was an “Iranian attack” on the world’s energy supply.

“This is an attack of a scale we’ve just not seen before,” Pompeo told reporters in the Saudi city of Jeddah, where he is expected to meet with Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman.

“The Saudis were the nation that were attacked. It was on their soil. It was an act of war against them directly.”

The US’ top diplomat said that the flight patterns of the drones and cruise missiles used in the Saturday attack suggest they didn’t come from the south, where Iranian-backed Houthi insurgents are fighting Saudi coalition forces in Yemen.

The group has claimed responsibility for the attacks.

Pompeo said US intelligence has “high confidence” that the weapons used in the strikes on an oil field and refinery were not part of the Houthis’ arsenal and have not been previously deployed by the rebel group. 

Newly selected national security advisor Robert O'Brien immediately has a doozy of a plateful.

As Rothman points out, there are no good options. Letting the situation escalate further is the worst of them.

Saudi-led coalition: the arms used in the attack were almost certainly Iranian, but the attack did not originate from Yemen

Where the investigation stands at present:

The Saudi-led military coalition battling Yemen's Houthi movement said on Monday that the attack on Saudi Arabian oil plants was carried out with Iranian weapons and was not launched from Yemen according to preliminary findings.

Coalition spokesman Colonel Turki al-Malki said that an investigation into Saturday's strikes, which had been claimed by the Iran-aligned Houthi group, was still going on to determine the launch location.

"The preliminary results show that the weapons are Iranian and we are currently working to determine the location ... The terrorist attack did not originate from Yemen as the Houthi militia claimed," Malki told a press conference in Riyadh.

He said authorities would reveal the location from where drones were launched at a future press briefing.

What we do know is that the situation is having a history-making effect on the price of Brent crude:

Oil prices soared after a coordinated attack hit the heart of Saudi Arabia’s oil industry on Saturday, forcing the kingdom to cut its oil output in half.

Brent crude futures, the international benchmark, rose as much as 19.5% to $71.95 per barrel at the open, the biggest intraday jump on record. By early afternoon, the contract was at $69.06, up $8.84 or 14.71%.

I do believe I'll gas up the car when I head out in a few minutes.

Thursday roundup

Have you seen the ever-grimmer news coming out of Venezuela and wondered, how long can it be until this Maduro regime can't cling to power any longer? Well, a large part of the reason for its staying power is the extent to which Russia is propping it up:

As allies go, Venezuela is a relatively cheap one for Russia. But the potential returns on Moscow’s investment there could be priceless. 

In exchange for modest loans and bailouts over the past decade, Russia now owns significant parts of at least five oil fields in Venezuela, which holds the world’s largest reserves, along with 30 years’ worth of future output from two Caribbean natural-gas fields. 

Venezuela also has signed over 49.9 percent of Citgo, its wholly owned company in the United States — including three Gulf Coast refineries and a countrywide web of pipelines — as collateral to Russia’s state-owned Rosneft oil behemoth for a reported $1.5 billion in desperately needed cash. 

Russian advisers are inside the Venezuelan government, helping direct the course of President Nicolás Maduro’s attempts to bring his failing government back from bankruptcy. They helped orchestrate this year’s introduction of a new digital currency, the “Petro,” to keep oil payments flowing while avoiding U.S. sanctions on the country’s dollar transactions.

Venezuela’s still-formidable defense force, once an exclusively U.S. client, is now equipped with Russian guns, tanks and planes, financed with prepaid oil deliveries to Russian clients. Maduro scoffed last year at President Trump’s public threat to use the U.S. military to bring him down, saying Venezuela, with Russian help, had turned itself into a defensive “fortress.”

Look, the Very Stable Genius's surprise trip to Iraq was replete with his signature grandstanding and has given his shills a ready opportunity to fawn, but the Leftist media in post-America has really outdone itself in childish, petty spin on it.  CNN may have been the worst.

Bookworm on David Hogg getting accepted to Harvard:

 I wasn’t at all surprised to learn that Harvard has extended an offer to David Piglet . . . er, David Hogg, the kid who was nowhere near the Parkland School shooting but who leveraged his attendance at that school into a very prominent anti-gun platform. Indeed, in some ways I admire Hogg’s initiative in surfing Leftist obsessions to achieve his own fame, but I don’t admire Hogg or anything he believes in or stands for.

One cannot get around the fact that neither Hogg’s grades nor his test scores would normally have brought him to Harvard’s attention. Moreover, his tweets revealed a young man who is barely literate and extremely ignorant. It is purely his hostility to the Second Amendment (about which he knows nothing) that sees him being invited to an institution that once produced people notable for actual accomplishments, rather than politically correct views.

By contrast, conservative Parkland student Kyle Kashuv, who supports the Second Amendment, shows himself to be informed, witty, literate – and in every way the type of student who would have been a Harvard shoo-in thirty years ago, but this year doesn’t stand a chance. (Incidentally, being Jewish, he wouldn’t have been a Harvard shoo-in 80 or more years ago. Harvard’s had issues for a while.)

Khashoggi came to a grim end that points up Saudi Arabia's capacity for ruthlessness, but this new information will widen your perspective on the situation:

The Washington Post has caused itself a major scandal since it has come to light they and their martyred “reformer” Jamal Khashoggi were publishing anti-Saudi propaganda for Qatar. They tried to bury this in a pre-Christmas Saturday news dump, but that can’t stop the damage this will do to their reputation.

“Text messages between Khashoggi and an executive at Qatar Foundation International show that the executive, Maggie Mitchell Salem, at times shaped the columns he submitted to The Washington Post, proposing topics, drafting material and prodding him to take a harder line against the Saudi government,” the Post wrote December 21.

The ever-thoughtful David Solway's latest at PJ Media is entitled "Is Poetry Really Dead?"

If anything here is a must-read, it's Jonah Goldberg's latest at NRO:

Nearly all of the controversies that have bedeviled Trump’s administration are the direct result of his character, not his ideology. To be sure, ideology plays a role, amplifying both the intensity of anger from his left-wing critics and the intensity of his transactional defenders. Many of the liberal critics shrieking about the betrayal of the Kurds implicit in Trump’s decision to withdraw from Syria would be applauding if a President Clinton had made the same decision. And many of the conservatives celebrating the move would be condemning it.

But Trump’s refusal to listen to advisers, his inability to bite his tongue, his demonization and belittling of senators who vote for his agenda but refuse to keep quiet when he does or says things they disagree with, his rants against the First Amendment, his praise for dictators and insults for allies, his need to create new controversies to eclipse old ones, and his inexhaustible capacity to lie and fabricate history: All of this springs from his character.

Derek Hunter's open letter to Pope Francis. 

 

I can actually see some validity in both of these divergent viewpoints on the administration's response to the Kashoggi murder

Eli Lake at Bloomberg:

If Trump publicly acknowledges the obvious — that, as the CIA has concluded, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is responsible for Khashoggi’s murder — then he would also be signaling an openness to undermining an important ally at a time when the U.S. needs it as a consumer of weapons, a producer of oil and a bulwark against Iran. “We may never know.” “The world is a very dangerous place.”

Not so long ago, most of Congress would have basically agreed with this approach. Democrats and Republicans were pleased last year to court the Saudi crown prince on his tour of America. They praised his domestic reforms. There were rough edges, the thinking went, but he was on our side.

It’s a familiar pattern. When it comes to America’s abuser allies, the crutch of realpolitik has propped up the foreign policies of past presidents for decades. Barack Obama’s administration wouldn’t call the military’s ouster of an elected president in Egypt a “coup” and he never cut off military aid to Egypt, even after its military slaughtered dozens of protestors in Cairo in 2013. George W. Bush tolerated many deceptions, crackdowns and double-dealing from Pakistan, even though Osama bin Laden himself was living in a compound down the road from its military academy. Ronald Reagan supported apartheid South Africa because it was on America’s side against international communism.

Trump’s case is slightly different because he can’t even get the realpolitik right. It’s true that Saudi Arabia could in theory choose to purchase its arms from China or Russia, as the president warns. But given its decades-long reliance on the U.S., that transition would take years — years the Saudis do not have in their current conflict with Iran. That’s the real reason the Saudi alliance is in the U.S. national interest. The kingdom’s enemies are America’s enemies. 

With that in mind, a better approach for Trump would have been to say nothing for now and focus behind the scenes on spurring more Saudi reforms and concessions. Under this scenario, Congress could have been a good foil. Trump could have privately demanded the Saudis release journalists and human-rights activists from prison and take more seriously a peace process in Yemen. If the Saudis balked, Trump could say he doesn’t know how much longer he can hold off Congress.

Now Congress has no incentive to wait. If Trump won’t hold the crown prince accountable, it will. The most serious bill to watch in this regard is the Saudi Arabia Accountability and Yemen Act. That legislation would suspend arms sales to Saudi Arabia, mandate sanctions on all those responsible for the Khashoggi murder, prohibit midair refueling for Saudi planes in the Yemen war and require the State Department to report on war crimes committed in Yemen. Earlier this year, this kind of proposal would have gotten support only from the fringes of both parties. Now it’s mainstream. 

For more than 70 years Republicans and Democrats have supported the U.S.-Saudi relationship. Even Obama sold the Saudis advanced weapons after negotiating the Iran nuclear deal. It was Obama who first authorized the midair refueling of Saudi planes for the Yemen war the Trump administration this month suspended.

A savvier president would have appreciated this history and tried to turn the Khashoggi crisis into an opportunity to change Saudi behavior. Instead, Trump has essentially dared Congress to act. In so doing, he has lost his leverage to shape the punishment for a heinous crime. Because of his abdication, America’s relationship with Saudi Arabia is in a very dangerous place.

Christian Whiton at The National Interest:

There can be no doubting that Khashoggi’s murder was a heinous crime. The Trump administration has moved decisively to hold Saudi Arabia accountable. President Trump himself addressed the matter publicly on several occasions, entertaining the possibility that Saudi Arabia’s influential crown prince was personally involved. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo traveled to Saudi Arabia to confront the Saudis directly. And then the administration sanctioned seventeen Saudi nationals for their suspected involvement in the killing. 

Of course this is not enough for those who have gotten up on their high horses. They demand an end to arms sales to Saudi Arabia and a forced end to the war in Yemen, presumably on terms favorable to the Iranian proxies there whom Saudi and other Arab states are fighting, and who occasionally rain down ballistic missiles on Riyadh. It’s quite easy to be high-minded from the safety of Washington and New York. 

In the real world, the conduct of the Saudis is startling but far from unique. Among other U.S. allies, Turkish president Tayyip Erdogan, who scored diplomatic points against his regional rival over the Khashoggi killing, has dozens of journalists and political opponents rotting in his jails. Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte wholeheartedly endorses extrajudicial killing by police. And among U.S. adversaries, journalists and other opponents of governments like those in China and Iran have short life expectancies. 

The breakdown of relations that the critics of Saudi Arabia now seek, and which Trump firmly rejected with his statement of support for the alliance with Saudi Arabia, is not a novel concept. There’s even a clear example in the Middle East. In response to human-rights violations by the Shah of Iran, then-President Jimmy Carter went wobbly on his support for the Iranian monarch in 1979. The move helped usher in the Iranian Revolution and the Islamic Republic, which to this day throws political opponents in Evin Prison in Tehran and executes gays by hanging them from construction cranes. Oops. 

More to the point, Iran challenges U.S. interests around the Middle East. In effect, we are still dealing with the consequences of high-minded but dumb decisions that created today’s Iran. 

One country that stands against Iran’s ambitions is of course Saudi Arabia. Each year, it spends about $70 billion on defense, which, for example, is more than three times what Israel spends. Riyadh is also poised to buy $20 billion of American defense goods. 

Most importantly, by keeping a working relationship with Saudi Arabia, we can retain influence and urge the country down its own path of reform. While this process has recently manifested itself in headline-catching moves like finally letting women drive, the biggest opportunity is having Saudi Arabia halt its historical support for Wahhabism abroad. It’s no secret that Saudi-funded schools and mosques as far away as Indonesia have brought with them radical Islamist clerics. The Saudi government has promised Trump to change this activity, which is nearly as important to long-term U.S. security as thwarting Iran. 

For those who would say, "I thought LITD was all about absolutes, about pure right and wrong. Are you getting murky on us?" I'd respond that the key is remaining true to your immutable principles and then determining the most effective way to further them in the world as it's actually presented to you.

Thoughts on the way Trump handled the Khashoggi murder's impact on US-Saudi relations

Allahpundit at Hot Air notes both the distinctive stylistic flourishes and the VSG's set of priorities:

. . . it’s written in fluent Trump-ese. Exclamation points galore. It’s basically the longest Trump tweet in history. You would think that if he had resolved to officially shrug off Khashoggi’s murder, he’d at least farm the statement out to John Bolton or Mike Pompeo to pretty it up. Nope. It reads like dictation for the most part. Which is good, frankly: If we’re going to greenlight the murder of dissidents by our Wahhabist “friends,” better that we avoid diplomatic niceties and doublespeak. The Trumpian tone of the statement is his way of taking full possession of the decision. He’s owning it.

His logic is pure nationalism too, right down to the “America First!” kicker. (Exclamation point in the original.) As you read, bear in mind this post from last night. For all of Marco Rubio’s pro-nationalist twaddle lately, do you think he agrees that arms sales matter more than an American resident’s right not to be dismembered by a foreign power that he’s criticized? Maybe there’s a lesson here for Little Marco.

After my heavily negotiated trip to Saudi Arabia last year, the Kingdom agreed to spend and invest $450 billion in the United States. This is a record amount of money. It will create hundreds of thousands of jobs, tremendous economic development, and much additional wealth for the United States. Of the $450 billion, $110 billion will be spent on the purchase of military equipment from Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and many other great U.S. defense contractors. If we foolishly cancel these contracts, Russia and China would be the enormous beneficiaries – and very happy to acquire all of this newfound business. It would be a wonderful gift to them directly from the United States!…

Representatives of Saudi Arabia say that Jamal Khashoggi was an “enemy of the state” and a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, but my decision is in no way based on that – this is an unacceptable and horrible crime. King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman vigorously deny any knowledge of the planning or execution of the murder of Mr. Khashoggi. Our intelligence agencies continue to assess all information, but it could very well be that the Crown Prince had knowledge of this tragic event – maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!

That being said, we may never know all of the facts surrounding the murder of Mr. Jamal Khashoggi. In any case, our relationship is with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. They have been a great ally in our very important fight against Iran.

Ben Shapiro at the Daily Wire says maintaining strategic ties to Saudi Arabia could have been handled on other grounds:

 Obviously, justifying human rights violations on the basis of economic deals is a major moral disaster — and comes closer to the Obama agenda with regard to Iran than to actual principle. We don’t need Saudi cash. We do need Saudi Arabia to act as a counterweight to Iran. That’s the central point upon which Trump should have focused. And even then, we can help Saudi act as that counterweight without greenlighting or nodding away murder.

And

 [Trump] has essentially signaled that because the United States has strategic interests in alliance with Saudi Arabia, there will be no serious consequences for human rights violations. That’s unnecessary. The United States is the strong partner here, not the Saudis — they need us far more than we need them. We could certainly have slapped them on the wrist, at the very least — and it is not in the interest of the United States to stand idly while our allies commit open murders against dissidents.  

The VSG didn't help himself by casting doubt on the CIA assessment with al that "we'll-never-know-all-the-details" jive.

Then there's this bracingly blunt contribution for Hawaii Senator Tulsi Gabbard:

Hey @realdonaldtrump: being Saudi Arabia’s bitch is not “America First.”

But those who assume such forthright positions would do well to first see if they are vulnerable to charges of inconsistency:

Gabbard’s remark drew some criticism of her own dealings with Syrian president Bashar al-Assad. She met with him in an unannounced trip in January 2017 and was skeptical that he was behind the deadly chemical weapons attack in April 2017.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) responded to her tweet highlighting her friendliness towards Assad.

And how would you describe your fondness for Assad? Asking for the 500,000 Syrians he murdered... including the 50,000 children who gasped their last breath because of him.

In essence, the sum total of these takes is this: This has been one of those situations that calls for a hard swallow and an unfortunate pragmatic foreign-policy call, which necessitates that it be handled with finesse and as much humanity as can be brought to bear - and the Very Stable Genius is the wrong man for the job.

 

 

Saturday roundup

As you know, campus jackbootery is a frequent topic of LITD posts. We have seen some opining - on the Right - that such pointing-out of the state of post-America's educational rot is overblown, that it may even have descended into off-putting alarmism. We disagree. For an overview of why it needs to remain a front-burner issue, check out this piece at Quillette by California State sociology professor Bradley Campbell. 

What now for US policy regarding Saudi Arabia, now that the CIA has concluded that crown prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered Khashoggi's murder?

Hell, no:

A rare white lion is set to be auctioned off to be shot by trophy hunters - in spite of a huge worldwide campaign to save him.

The majestic animal, named Mufasa, was confiscated three years ago when he was a cub, along with another baby lion called Soraya.

Animal lovers want to move him to a sanctuary, but authorities in South Africa have instead announced he will be sold at auction.

Because Mufasa is infertile, the only value he would have is to be bought by a hunting company and then shot.

There are said to be less than 300 white lions like Mufasa in the world, with just 13 still living in the wild.

More than 200,000 people have signed a petition calling for the decision to be reversed.

Three more news stories of a similar nature that will enrage you and turn your stomach: here, here and here.

Steve Scalise's piece "What Went Through My Mind The Day I Was Shot" is moving indeed.

Georgian Sam Thomas at The Resurgent breathes a sigh of relief that Amazon chose to put HQ2 elsewhere.

Good New York Post editorial on how inept Theresa May's handling of Brexit has been.

Jibran Khan at NRO says that DC's approach to "getting guns off the street" is an affront to civil liberties.

Wednesday roundup

We may be polarized in 2018 post America, but somebody's buying something from somebody. Consumer confidence at highest level in 18 years.  Rise in wages and salaries of 3.1% in October.

The Pakistan Supreme Court overturned the death sentence of that Christian mother who'd been incarcerated for nine years. When the judge read the decision, she was free to go. Muslims have reacted by blocking roads in the nation's biggest cities.

Get your brain around the way he got both of these disparate assertions into one sentence:

"So, we have to stop demonizing people and realize the biggest terror threat in this country is white men, most of them radicalized to the right, and we have to start doing something about them," [CNN's Don] Lemon concluded. "There is no travel ban on them. There is no ban on — you know, they had the Muslim ban. There is no white guy ban."

Remember a few weeks ago when I noted that and enthusiasm for "implicit bias" training had infected our local school board? I'll bet it won't be long until "equity" training, now gaining a foothold in Missouri, works its way to our district. It depends on whether a sufficient number of concerned citizens have the guts to call BS on it as they did there:

Yesterday, I noted that five of seven candidates for the Montgomery County, Maryland school board say the biggest problem facing the school district is lower achievement by “students of color.” I disputed the notion that this gap is the school board’s responsibility or problem, but that view seems to be an article of faith in education circles nowadays. 

It’s also generating a new industry — cultural and racial equity training. Pacific Education Group is an industry leader. According to the Kansas City Star, the California firm “has been in high demand in recent years, training educators, city leaders and corporate executives from Lawrence [Kansas] to New York and Philadelphia to Los Angeles and around the world.”

The Group’s founder, Glenn Singleton, is the author of “Courageous Conversations About Race: A Field Guide for Achieving Equity in Schools.” The “courageousness” of Singleton’s politically correct conversations is open to question, but according to the Star, his is the No. 1 book recommended by the Missouri School Board Association for educators and administrators to read this year. 

Recently, however, parents in a Missouri school district — Lee’s Summit — rebelled against paying Singleton and his group to provide cultural and racial equity training. They expressed their displeasure at a school board meeting and on social media. 

According to the Star, critics “opposed Singleton’s firm because of its cost, and its discussion of white privilege and the cultural competence of white teachers educating black children.” Some wondered why the focus should be on inequities related to race. 

The response, I suppose, is that race is where the most obvious unequal outcomes are. The Star tells us that “based on a formula involving Missouri Assessment Program scores, Lee’s Summit’s black students performed nearly 84 points below white students in 2015, 2016 and 2017.” And, according to district data, the margin is widening not narrowing.

I don’t think critics are denying that racial outcomes are unequal, though. Instead, it appears that they reject, as I do, the idea that responsibility for poor outcomes lies with the school district, rather than the students and/or their parents. 

They are striking a blow in favor of common sense and individual responsibility, and against fancy talk, group think, and victimology. 

We should expect no less from the Show Me State.

Andrew McCarthy at NRO on how we ought to regard Saudi Arabia:

We do not have common values with the regime in Riyadh. We are an un­matched pair, drawn reluctantly together by some common interests and enemies — which tend to be interests and enemies for saliently different reasons. We cannot avoid interaction, and better that it be cooperative than belligerent. It should, however, be strictly transactional, and there is no good reason to pretend it is anything but.

Did you know Sandra Day O'Connor and William Rehnquist dated each other when they were both Stanford law students circa 1950?

Erdogan sees an opportunity to burnish Turkey's credentials as a major player

He gave a speech this morning in which he proclaimed nothing less than that Turkey was becoming the world's "joint conscience." A statement like that makes for a useful litmus test among the other world-stage players, particularly those in his region. How will Iran receive such a statement? How about the new populist governments and movements in Europe? NATO? Russia? The United States, which recently got back one of its citizens who had been languishing in Turkish prison on flimsy charges?
He's not wrong about the basics of the Khashoggi affair, of course. The removal of security cameras inside the Saudi embassy shortly before Khashoggi's arrival, the body double, reports of Khashoggi's body parts showing up. Pretty damning stuff, either separately or in sum.
And let us remember this further layer of complication: Khashoggi was an Islamic hardliner, supportive of the Muslim Brotherhood.
The fact is that both Turkey and Saudi Arabia are among the world's most egregious human-rights violators. And they're both ostensible US allies.
Saudi Arabia has been useful for two main reasons: its oil and the fact that it is so resolutely opposed to Iranian hegemonic designs that it is willing to look at cooperative measures with Israel.
This may be the bridge too far, though.
It gets sticky, though, doesn't it? Taking severe measures against Saudi Arabia should not push us into some kind of Erdogan-led camp that might or might not include Russia.
In a way, this situation points up just what is truly exceptional about America. The US is and always has been driven by an idea: ordered liberty. And because it's had a strong moral foundation, it's been able to stay relatively true to its core ideal. While most of the world continues to proceed along the age-old model of world affairs - power centers making moves based on consolidation and, if possible, expansion, of that power - we still, despite a weakening of our clarity of vision in recent decades, focus on freedom and its resultant human advancement.
We must keep a level head as this situation plays out, but what does that look like? Obviously, we have to call out Saudi Arabia and make it pay. But we need to scoot Erdogan out from behind the podium and exert the kind of leadership that marshals the West to steadfastness. Erdogan's notion of a "joint conscience" must not hold sway.
That's about all we can do. Respond morally to grim developments in a perpetually broken world. Be on record as having done the right thing even as bad actors make complicated messes.

Gutter-level political discourse: seems like everybody wants to play

Joachin Castro shows off his bona fides as a member of the I-accuse-and-to-hell-with-any-evidence school:

Without evidence, Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-TX), a member of the House intelligence committee, said Jared Kushner might have passed a “hit list” to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman resulting in the apparent brutal slaying of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.  

Castro, during a CNN appearance Friday morning, cited unspecified “reporting that Jared Kushner may have, with U.S. intelligence, delivered a hit list, an enemies list, to the crown prince, to MBS, in Saudi Arabia and that the prince may have acted on that, and one of the people he took action against is Mr. Khashoggi.”

When CNN’s Poppy Harlow interjected that she was unfamiliar with such reporting and the network had not reported that, Castro reiterated that “I’ve seen reporting to that effect… that needs to be investigated.” While Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, is close with the Saudi crown prince, no one has accused Kushner of any involvement, let alone orchestration, in the Khashoggi killing.

Then there's the Very Stable Genius's contribution to post-America's search for civility:

President Donald Trump praised Montana Republican Rep. Greg Gianforte for assaulting a reporter during his campaign last May, saying "any guy who can do a body slam ... he's my guy" and made a gesture mimicking a body slam.

At a Montana rally Thursday night, Trump admitted, "I shouldn't say this," but continued and said, "there's nothing to be embarrassed about."

The comment comes at the same time as the administration responds to the disappearance and apparent murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the Saudi consulate in Istanbul. Khashoggi was last seen entering the Saudi consulate on October 2 and Turkish media reports that an audio recording suggests Khashoggi was tortured and killed soon after entering the building before being dismembered.

Trump said Thursday "it certainly looks" like Khashoggi is dead. But, Trump said he is "waiting for the results" of investigations being conducted by Saudi Arabia and Turkey, after which he pledged to make "a very strong statement."

Gianforte pleaded guilty to misdemeanor assault in June 2017 after he was convicted of "body slamming" Ben Jacobs, a reporter for The Guardian. A judge sentenced him to a 180-day deferred sentence, 40 hours of community service, 20 hours of anger management and a $300 fine along with a $85 court fee.

Trump said he found out about Gianforte assaulting a reporter when he was traveling in Rome, and initially was concerned it would hurt the Republican in the election. 

"Then I said, well wait a minute, I know Montana pretty well, I think it might help him. And it did," Trump said. The President's comments were met with laughter and applause from the crowd in Montana.

Thanks for nothin', President Face-Palm-A-Day.