The View from Right Field

How Worried Should We Be About the China-Russia “Alliance”?

The big news of the opening weekend of the Winter Olympics, other than the Olympics itself, which wasn’t all that big, was the meeting between Presidents Xi Jinping of China and Vladimir Putin of Russia.  The presidents signed an oil-gas deal and issued a joint statement opposing the expansion of NATO (the first time China had ever done that), criticizing the AUKUS security pact signed last year between Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, and more.₁ 

But how big of a deal is this challenge really?  The answer to that question is probably dependent on how big of a power you think Russia is going to be in ten or twenty years.  Mitt Romney recently quoted John McCain as saying that Russia is a gas station parading as a country.  Unfortunately, a combination of the economic rebound from the pandemic and Joe Biden’s restrictions on fracking and drilling in the U.S., and other things, has pushed up the price of oil and gas, making Vladimir Putin’s gas station more valuable.

China Does Care (A Little) About World Opinion

In a November 2 post on social media, Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai accused former vice-premier Zhang Gaoli of sexually assaulting her on at least one occasion.  The post was promptly taken down, all mention of Ms. Shuai was taken off Chinese social media, and she went incommunicado.  Pro tennis players around the world started wondering where she was and how she was doing.  And unlike the NBA, which folded like a cheap tent when a Houston Rockets general manager supported Hong Kong in a tweet, they didn’t back down.

China normally doesn’t respond to these kinds of complaints.  Ask the Uighurs.  For that matter, ask the Dali Lama.  But with the Winter Olympics coming up in February and tennis stars continuing to ask where Ms. Shuai was (before China tried to ban tennis players, the Women’s Tennis Association said it would pull out of China), China gave in – at least partially.

Who’s Worse on Foreign Policy: Biden or Trump?

Donald Trump did a bad job on foreign policy.  I talked about that a lot, though, eventually, I got tired of saying it over and over, so I mostly stopped.¹  Even though I felt that way about former President Trump, I did not vote for Joe Biden because, in Illinois, I did not need to.  President Biden was going to win Illinois.  And I was very concerned about President Biden’s domestic policy – or, rather, the domestic policy of his supporters.  Still, when President Biden won, I was hopeful American foreign policy would be better than it had been under former President Trump.  Unfortunately, it hasn’t been.

On February 19, President Biden told the Munich Security Conference that “America is back.”  That was the hope: President Biden would restore, or at least start to restore, America’s credibility and reliability around the world.  But the way we left Afghanistan was a disaster.  Obviously, President Biden was handed a terrible mess in Afghanistan.  President Trump signed a surrender agreement with the Taliban on February 29, 2020, under which we were to leave on May 1, 2021.² 

After Afghanistan: What Next for American Foreign Policy?

After the collapse in Afghanistan, the questions for many are: Why did it happen so quickly¹ and why we weren’t prepared.  Which are good questions.  But I have a different question: What’s next for American foreign policy?  In that regard, I was surprised by the very negative reaction from Europe to our quick and unilateral pullout from Afghanistan.  One might have expected concern from Asia, but the comments from Europe were very interesting.  Here are excerpts from an article Wednesday’s Financial Times (behind the FT paywall):

“European allies had hoped Joe Biden’s election to the US presidency would bolster Nato’s relevance after Donald Trump’s acrimonious years.  Washington’s messy withdrawal from Afghanistan is prompting a rethink.

Does China Really Think They Can Get Women to Have More Babies by Changing Some Law?

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that China will be removing the last legal barriers to families having as many children as they want.¹  In 1979, China was worried about over-population, so it instituted a strict one-child policy.  Enforcement got quite nasty.

By the 2010s, China had a problem: not enough babies.  The population was aging.  The workforce was going to start shrinking.  In 2015, the one-child policy was changed to two children.²  The increase from one child to two children didn’t work, so earlier this year, the limit was increased to three children.  Now, all of the birth limits will be repealed.

“One Little, Two Little, Three Little Babies.” China Changes Its Policy Again.

Six years after abandoning its one-child policy for a two-child policy, China has now gone to a three-child policy.  The one-child policy, which began to be strictly enforced in 1980, was put in place to limit population growth in the world’s most populous country.  The problem was that it worked too well, and in 2015 China went to a two-child policy because its population was aging and its workforce was shrinking.

But the birth rate hasn’t rebounded.  Economic growth around the world has reduced the number of babies that women have, and China has been no exception.  As its middle class has grown, its birth rate has fallen.

We Defended Berlin. Will We Help Defend Taiwan?

Several years ago, we were on a tour of Morocco.  One of the couples in our group was of Chinese ancestry.  The wife said she had been born in Taiwan and had come to the United States when she was young.  I asked the husband when he had come to the United States.  I was embarrassed when he said that he had been born in the United States and that his ancestors had come to the United States in the 1800s, to help build the transcontinental railroad.  In other words, his ancestors may have come to the United States before mine.

One of the other people in the group asked them if they thought China, i.e., the People’s Republic of China, would invade Taiwan.  The wife said Beijing could take Taiwan anytime it wanted to.  The husband, however, who was a retired major general in the Army, merely mentioned the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 and did not say much else.

H.R. McMaster on Strategy Against the Soviet Union and Strategy Against China

Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster (Ret.) and Jonathan D.T. Ward wrote in Thursday’s Chicago Tribune that the United States’ strategy vis-à-vis China should include the kind of policies used by President Reagan in the Cold War against the Soviet Union.  Messrs. McMaster and Ward explain:

“Reagan’s approach – applying intensive economic and military pressure to a superpower adversary – became foundational to American strategic thinking. It hastened the end of Soviet power and promoted a peaceful conclusion to the multi-decade Cold War.”

While Trump Stews, Mike Pompeo Has Been Busy

It’s unclear what Donald Trump has been doing with his time now that he is off Twitter, Facebook, etc., but Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has been working hard.  Karen DeYoung has a list of what he has been doing.  It’s a lot – and it’s wrong.  Instead of working on a transition, Secretary Pompeo has been throwing up roadblocks for the Biden administration.

As Ms. DeYoung notes, what Secretary Pompeo can be reversed, but in most cases, it will take time.  Also, the process of reversing those decisions could hurt the very people and policies Secretary Pompeo is trying to protect. 

Do Uighur Lives Matter? – Part Two: Do We Care?

In an earlier post I talked about why I thought saying “Uighur Lives Matter” could be problematic.  But beyond that, I don’t think “Uighurs Lives Matter” would carry the day in the United States, even if saying it wasn’t problematic.  Let me mention a couple of reasons.  First, a number of Americans just don’t care about what is going on elsewhere in the world.  It is part of their America First approach.  They feel we need to make economic deals with China.  We have to take care of ourselves; we can’t worry about the Uighurs.  This is certainly what former National Security Adviser John Bolton says that President Trump told President Xi Jinping. 

Second, lots of individual Americans and American companies are intimidated by China.  They see over a billion Chinese and decide sales and profits are more important than principles and doing what is right.