Russian Collusion Boomeranging? Mauldin on China.

Israel turns70. (See 1 below.)
+++++++++++++++++++
Has the ADL gone off the deep end? (See 2 below.)
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Collusion boomerang!  Hillary,  Democrats and The DNC get ready to duck.

They are going to learn a powerful lesson.  "Be careful what you start."

I still believe it will go all the way to the top and ensnare Obama once the grand juries, which are now being formed,  start.(See 3 below.)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Is N Korea doing what China tells them?  If so, can either be trusted?  (See 4 below.)
++++++++++++++++++++++
Mauldin on China. (See 5 below.)
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Dick
+++++++++++++++++++
1) Israel’s First 70 Years Have Surprised the World

Some challenges remain or have returned, like military threats in the region and tension with American Jews.

By Daniel Gordis, BLOOMBERG

In November 1947, one day prior to the expected United Nations vote on partitioning Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, the CIA urged President Harry Truman not to throw his weight behind the idea. America would have to defend the new Jewish state when it faltered, the CIA’s secret memorandum warned, adding that “the Jews will be able to hold out no longer than two years.”

Several months later, David Ben-Gurion was about to declare the establishment of the State of Israel. Seated among the dozen or so men who would determine the fate of the state-to-be, he famously turned to one of his top military commanders, Yigael Yadin, and asked him if he thought a new Jewish state would survive the military onslaught that the Arabs would inevitably launch. Yadin, who would later serve as chief of staff of the Israeli Defense Forces, replied that he thought the Jewish state would have a 50-50 chance.

Today, those bleak assessments feel like ancient history. As the modern Israeli state celebrates 70 years, the prevailing sentiment is one of extraordinary accomplishment. American Jewish leaders were incensed in 1948 when Ben-Gurion came to the U.S. and spoke about the fledgling state as the new center of the Jewish world; today, that status is nowhere in doubt.

In 1948, there were some 650,000 Jews in Israel, who represented about 5 percent of the world’s Jews. Today, Israel’s Jewish population has grown ten-fold and stands at about 6.8 million people. Some 43 percent of the world’s Jews live in Israel; this population overtook American Jews several years ago and is now the world’s largest Jewish community. Israel’s birthrate, even among secular Jews, is higher than that of any other OECD country, and significantly higher than that of American Jews (who now account for some 34 percent of Jews worldwide).

Beyond mere survival, the other challenge that the young Jewish state faced was feeding and housing the hundreds of thousands of Jews who were flocking to its borders. At times, financial collapse seemed imminent. Food was rationed and black markets developed. Israel had virtually no heavy machinery for building the infrastructure that it desperately needed. Until Germany paid Holocaust reparations, the young state’s financial condition was perilous.

Today, that worry also feels like a relic from another time. Israel is not only a significant military power (and in the region, a superpower) but also a formidable economic machine. A worldwide center for technology that has more companies listed on the Nasdaq than any country other than the U.S., Israel’s economy barely hiccupped in 2008. The shekel, its currency, is strong. Like other countries, Israel has a worrisome income gap between rich and poor, but fears of an economic collapse have vanished.

Israel has become an important cultural center, vastly disproportionately for a country whose population approximates that of New York City. When the five finalists for the Man Booker literary prize were announced last year, two were Israelis who write in Hebrew: David Grossman and Amos Oz. Grossman won. Ever since S.Y. Agnon received the Nobel Prize for literature in 1966, the Israeli literary scene has been punching far above its weight.

When the state was founded, Ben-Gurion sought to block television altogether; he thought it would have a deleterious impact on Israeli education and culture. He failed in that attempt, but for decades, Israel had but one television channel. Today, Americans and Europeans alike wait hungrily for new episodes of Israeli shows like “Fauda,” while others (like “Homeland” and “The A Word”) have been remade into American and British series.

On the occasion of Independence Day, Israelis are fully conscious — and deeply proud — of the fact that their country has exceeded the ambitions of the men and women who founded it seven decades ago.

Yet some of the initial worries and troubles of those early years persist. Militarily, the looming enemy is not the Palestinians (with whom peace remains utterly elusive), but Iran. The Israeli military is bracing for a possible Iranian missile or drone attack. International support for Israel remains a concern: In 1948, many American Jews were deeply conflicted about the creation of a Jewish state. Solidarity eventually grew — but today the relationship has become increasingly fraught.

And Israelis got a stark reminder this week that some of the social ills that have long plagued the country persist. Several days ago, Haaretz, Israel’s “paper of record,” asked its writers which Israeli song they most despise. When one replied that he hates the national anthem, a furious Twitter discussion ensued. At one point, a woman annoyed at having her focus on security dismissed by the Haaretz editors, tweeted, “It’s thanks to my ideology that you live like a king in this country and can write and distribute your absurd newspaper with no impediments.” Amos Schocken, Haaretz’s editor and the son of its previous editor, retorted (in a tweet he subsequently deleted): “You insolent woman. My family was leading Zionism when you were still climbing on trees. Haaretz has been in the Schocken family for 83 years; we did fine without your ideology and will continue to.”

Seventy years after its founding, Israel’s once-ruling Labor party has virtually no political influence. There are many reasons for that, but its reputation as an elitist, out-of-touch clan of European intellectuals is prime among them. Neither the Haaretz crowd nor the Israeli non-European majority is likely to alter its views of the other. Despite the many questions surrounding the Jewish state as it enters its eighth decade, what seems almost certain is that it will be not Ben-Gurion’s founding Labor party but the once marginal and now powerful political right that will rule this still young and fascinating nation for the foreseeable future.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

2) The ADL Smears Mike Pompeo

Partisan hackery.

By Sohrab Ahmari

When the Anti-Defamation League tapped Jonathan Greenblatt to serve as its CEO in 2015, there were concerns that the Obama White House alumnus would turn the venerable civil-rights group into an arm of the Democratic Party. Alas, those concerns have proved well-founded. Witness Greenblatt’s letter this week opposing Mike Pompeo, President Trump’s choice for America’s next secretary of state, for the flimsiest of reasons.

Running to more than 5,000 words, the letter accuses the CIA director of fanning bigotry with irresponsible statements about radical Islam. Greenblatt goes so far as to suggest that Pompeo’s attitudes are redolent of classic anti-Semitism. That’s a serious charge. It is also utterly baseless. If Pompeo is “Islamophobic,” then so is the ADL. As it turns out, the secretary of state-designate and the ADL have remarkably similar views on the nature of the Islamist threat.

Let’s compare Pompeo’s allegedly culpable statements with the ADL’s long record of public advocacy on radical Islam, the homegrown Islamist threat, and Islamist ideologues and networks operating in the U.S. homeland.

The Silence of American Muslim Organizations

The ADL fulminates against Pompeo for suggesting that some American Muslim organizations don’t go far enough in condemning terrorism and the ideologies that inspire it. Here’s Greenblatt’s letter:

In the aftermath of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing when responsible leaders were attempting to calm interfaith tensions, Mr. Pompeo did the opposite. . . . Despite the numerous and repeated condemnations of extremism that Muslims and Muslim leaders had voiced, then-Rep. Pompeo said that ‘silence in the face of extremism coming from the best funded Islamic advocacy organizations, and many mosques across America, is absolutely deafening.’

Yet the ADL has also criticized American Muslim organizations for failing to condemn terrorism unequivocally, and in terms that have been as harsh if not harsher than Pompeo’s. Consider the ADL’s profile of the Council on American Islamic Relations, or CAIR, one of the largest and most visible of such groups. “CAIR’s stated commitment to ‘justice and mutual understanding,’” the ADL argued,

. . . is undermined by its anti-Israel agenda. . . . While CAIR has denounced specific acts of terrorism in the U.S. and abroad, for many years it refused to unequivocally condemn Palestinian terror organizations and Hebzollah by name. . . . CAIR’s more recent criticism on Hezbollah began only when the terrorist organization stopped focusing solely on Israel and began engaging in military operations against Sunni Muslim fighters in Syria and Iraq.

In 2010—three years before Pompeo made his speech on the House floor calling on American Muslim organizations to more forcefully condemn terror—the ADL described major Muslim-American organizations’ anti-radicalization efforts as “a sham.” The ADL news release read:

As the number of American Muslim extremists allegedly involved in terror plots in the U.S. and abroad continues to grow, major Muslim-American organizations have publicly acknowledged the existence of a problem in their community and vowed to tackle it head on. But the initial efforts to root out radicalization—announced by a few of these groups in the wake of the arrests in Pakistan of five Muslim-American students from Virginia for allegedly attempting to join a terrorist group—has proven to be a sham and a cover for anti-Semitism and extremism, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

So much for Greenblatt’s claim that Pompeo’s concerns about Muslim organizations made the then-congressman an outlier in the American conversation about Islamism and terror. That is, unless Greenblatt is willing to concede that the ADL, too, was bigoted and out of the mainstream as recently as a few years ago.

Homegrown Radical Islamic Networks

The ADL’s letter also takes Pompeo to task for allegedly promoting a “conspiracy theory that a fifth column of Muslims exists in the United States with the express purpose of undermining the country.” To prove the charge, the ADL quotes from a 2014 interview with Pompeo in which he said:

There are organizations and networks here in the United States tied to radical Islam in deep and fundamental ways, and they’re not just in places like Libya, and Syria, and Iraq, but in places like Coldwater, Kansas and small towns all throughout America. This network is real. The efforts to expand the caliphate are not limited to the physical geography of the Middle East or in the other places where there are large Muslim majorities.

The ADL also quoted from a 2015 speech in which then-Congressman Pompeo said:

I don’t think that you can define the challenge by geography but rather we have a military, political, and diplomatic challenge and a faith-driven challenge to figure out how to contain what is not a small minority inside the Islamic faith that believes in much of what it is we are facing in the Middle East today and the threats that we face here in America as well.

To summarize Pompeo’s views, he believes, first, that there are radical-Islamic networks that operate in the American heartland, and, second, that the Islamist threat is not a geographic one but an ideological and globe-spanning challenge to Western security. Well, the ADL has long suggested the same things, sometimes in nearly identical language.

Here’s a statement from an ADL report marking a decade after 9/11:

The ideologies of extreme intolerance that motivated the 19 hijackers responsible for carrying out the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks continue to pose a serious threat to the U.S.

While no attacks of that magnitude have been successful on American soil in the ten years since 9/11, one of the most striking elements of today’s terror threat picture is the role that a growing number of American citizens and residents motivated by radical interpretations of Islam have played in criminal plots to attack Americans in the United States and abroad.

Although they do not constitute a fully coherent movement in the U.S., more and more American citizens and residents are being influenced by ideologies that justify and sanction violence commonly propagated by Islamic terrorist movements overseas.

In addition to disagreements with perceived American actions against Muslims around the world, these extremists believe that the West (and America specifically) is at war with Islam and it is the duty of Muslims to defend the global Muslim community through violent means. They come from diverse backgrounds and, as a whole, do not easily fit a specific profile. About one fourth are converts to Islam who embrace the most extreme interpretations of the religion.

Likewise, in a 2013 report on homegrown Islamism that was published in the wake of the Boston Marathon bombings, the ADL noted:

The Boston Marathon bombing in April 2013 served as a tragic reminder of the persistent threat posed to the United States by homegrown extremists motivated by the ideologies and objectives commonly propagated by Islamic terrorist movements overseas. The bombing also underscored the significant influence and impact of online terrorist propaganda on a new generation of homegrown Islamic extremists.

As Internet proficiency and the use of social media grow ever-more universal, so too do the efforts of terrorist groups to exploit new technology in order to make materials that justify and sanction violence more accessible and practical. Terrorist groups are not only using Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and various other platforms to spread their messages, but also to actively recruit adherents who live in the communities they seek to target. . . .

While the fundamental ideological content of terrorist propaganda has remained consistent for two decades—replete with militant condemnations of perceived American transgressions against Muslims worldwide, appeals for violence and anti-Semitism—terrorists groups are now able to reach, recruit and motivate homegrown extremists more quickly and effectively than ever before by adapting their messages to new technology. One clear indication of the success of these efforts is the number of homegrown extremists that have been found in possession of terrorist propaganda.

Although most homegrown Islamic extremists have lacked the capacity to carry out violent attacks—plots have been foiled by law enforcement at various stages—the Boston bombing showed how two brothers influenced by online terrorist propaganda can terrorize our communities and undermine our security.

The ADL, then, acknowledged the ideological nature of the Islamist threat and its homegrown dimension. What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. If Pompeo’s remarks are beyond the pale, so are the ADL’s positions. Senators weighing Pompeo’s fitness to serve as America’s top diplomat can be forgiven for dismissing this cheap attempt at sliming him. It is the ADL’s donors and supporters who should be asking tough questions—of Greenblatt.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

3) Collusion, Anyone?

ByMichael Barone

As the likelihood that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia seems headed toward zero, the likelihood of proof of a different form of collusion seems headed upward toward certainty.

The Russia collusion charge had some initial credibility because of businessman Donald Trump's dealings in Russia and candidate Trump's off-putting praise of Vladimir Putin.

It was fueled by breathless media coverage of such trivial events as Jeff Sessions' conversation with the Russian ambassador at a Washington reception -- and, of course, by the appointment of former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel. But Mueller's prosecutions of Trump campaign operatives were for misdeeds long before the campaign, and his indictment of 13 Russians specified that no American was a "knowing participant" in their work.

Now there's talk that Mueller is winding up his investigation. It seems unlikely that whatever he reports will fulfill the daydreams so many liberals have of making Trump go the way of Richard Nixon.

Meanwhile, the evidence builds of collusion by Obama administration law enforcement and intelligence personnel in trying to elect Hillary Clinton and defeat and delegitimize Trump in and after the 2016 election.

The investigation of Clinton's illegal email system was conducted with kid gloves. FBI Director James Comey accepted Attorney General Loretta Lynch's order to call it a "matter" rather than an "investigation." Clinton aides were allowed to keep her emails and destroy 30,000 of them, plus cellphones. They were not subject to grand jury subpoenas, and a potential co-defendant was allowed to claim attorney-client privilege.

On June 27, 2016, Lynch clandestinely met with Bill Clinton on his plane at the Phoenix airport -- a meeting that became known only thanks to an alert local TV reporter. Lynch supposedly left the decision on prosecution to Comey, who on July 5 announced publicly that Clinton had been "extremely careless" but lacked intent to violate the law, even though the statute punishes such violations whether they are intentional or not.

Contrast that with the collusion of Obama officials with the Clinton campaign-financed Christophe Steele/Fusion GPS dossier alleging Trump ties with Russians. Comey and the Justice Department used it, without divulging who paid for it, to get a FISA warrant to surveil former Trump campaign operative Carter Page's future and past communications -- the "wiretap" Trump was derided for mentioning.

Similarly, when Comey informed Trump in January 2017 of the contents of the then-unpublished Steele dossier, he didn't reveal that the Clinton campaign had paid for it. Asked on his iatrogenic book tour why not, he blandly said he didn't know. And maybe he doesn't actually realize he was employing J. Edgar Hoover-like tactics to keep his job. Maybe.

In any case, after he was fired, he immediately sent four of his internal memos, at least one of them classified, to a law professor friend to leak them to the press, with the intent of getting a special counsel appointed -- who turned out to be his longtime friend and ally Robert Mueller. Collusion, anyone?

Collusion can get complicated and sometimes fails to produce the intended results. Comey's deputy FBI director, Andrew McCabe, reportedly kept to himself for weeks the discovery that Clinton emails had been transmitted over the home computer of her aide Huma Abedin's then-husband, the disgraced ex-Rep. Anthony Weiner. After Comey learned of this, he made his Oct. 28 announcement that the Clinton email investigation was being reopened.

Comey and McCabe have produced contradictory accounts of events, and Comey's public praise of McCabe contrasts with his referral of McCabe to Justice's inspector general, who found him guilty of "lack of candor" -- a fireable offense for which he was indeed fired. Partners in collusion sometimes fall out.

Longtime Clinton friend Lanny Davis charges that Comey's statement was responsible for Clinton's defeat, and Comey, on his book tour, admitted that he may have made it only because he assumed Clinton would win.

Davis may be right, though no one can prove it. But one could also say that the Democratic Party lost the presidency because it nominated a candidate under investigation for committing a felony. And it seems as certain as these things can be that if Hillary Clinton had followed the law and regulations, there would be today no President Trump, no Attorney General Sessions, no EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, no Justice Neil Gorsuch.

The blame ultimately belongs to Barack Obama, who knew of Clinton's private email system and who could have ordered her to follow the law. But that's one bit of collusion that didn't occur.

COPYRIGHT 2018 CREATORS.COM

Michael Barone is senior political analyst for  the Washington Examiner, resident fellow at American Enterprise Institute and longtime co-author of The Almanac of American Politics.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

4)  North Korean leader suspends nuclear and missile tests, shuts down test site

By Anna Fifield

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has declared he will suspend nuclear and missile tests starting Saturday, and that he will shut down the site where the previous six nuclear tests were conducted.

“From April 21, North Korea will stop nuclear tests and launches of intercontinental ballistic missiles,” the Korean Central News Agency said in a report Saturday morning.

This came out of a meeting of the central committee of the ruling Worker’s Party of Korea held Friday to discuss policy issues related to “a new stage” in a “historic” period.

“The North will shut down a nuclear test site in the country’s northern side to prove the vow to suspend nuclear test,” KCNA reported.

This comes less than a week before Kim is due to meet with South Korean president Moon Jae-in in the first inter-Korean summit in 11 years. Moon has said that Kim is willing to discuss denuclearization and that he will not insist on American troops being withdrawn from South Korea as part of any deal.

Trump meeting with Kim Jong Un would be huge, but not the first effort at diplomacy

President Trump agreed March 8 to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un "by May." Here are three other big events in North Korean diplomacy. (Jason Aldag/The Washington Post)

 +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

5)

China Plays It Cool

By John Mauldin

China is the world economy’s elephant in the room. We can’t possibly ignore it, yet many try anyway. Admitting China’s influence forces us to admit the world is changing—and we all must change with it.

This year, China is in the headlines because President Trump wants better trade terms. That’s important, but it’s only one piece of a much larger Chinese story that has been unfolding slowly for decades. Periodically, I check in on the latest developments. Today, we’ll see where we are, with the help of my trusted sources.

First, I hope you saw the announcement we are ending Outside the Box after next week. This is one step in the ongoing reorganization of my research efforts. I greatly enjoyed sending you those mid-week stories and I know you liked them, too. Rest assured, we will soon offer something even better. I have more info in a short video you can watch here.

Central Control

One of the great pleasures of my life is reading Gavekal’s outstanding economic research. I can do this thanks only to a long friendship with the firm’s three founders: Charles Gave, Louis Gave, and Anatole Kaletsky. Otherwise, it’s available only to their clients, and the cost is beyond my normal research budget.

One thing I appreciate about the Gavekal analysts and writers is that they are all independent and free to disagree with each other. Even the founders Charles, Louis, and Anatole often differ significantly—both in public and private messages that I get to read. Frankly, that is often when I learn the most.

Last week, Arthur Kroeber of Gavekal Dragonomics sent around a fascinating presentation about US-China strategic rivalry. It broadly matches my own thinking, but also gave me some “a-ha” moments. This is how I learn, by the way. My mind is a big blender into which I toss info from multiple sources. It whirs and rearranges the ingredients into something new, such as the following thoughts on China. They’re a mix of me, Gavekal, and my many other China contacts (I must hat tip Leland Miller and the China Beige Book). I should point out that any wrong conclusions are my own and should not be blamed on my sources. I am perfectly capable of making my own mistakes, thank you very much…

The first point to recognize: Xi Jinping is firmly in charge. You probably heard about the constitutional amendment that makes him effectively president for life. It doesn’t mean Xi is invulnerable or can do whatever he wants. He has constraints, as all national leaders do. But he doesn’t have to worry about reelection, or rivals trying to shift the agenda, or getting congress to approve his policies and budgets. Xi sets the agenda. Everyone else follows it.

I pointed out about two years into Xi’s presidency that it was clear that he was the most important Chinese leader since Deng Xiaoping. That is no longer the case. He is the most important figure in modern Chinese history since Mao and possibly Sun Yat-sen. From my viewpoint, Mao was a disaster for the Chinese people. Millions died under his disastrous economic policies. Since Deng and subsequent Chinese leadership and continuing with Xi, there has been a remarkable turnaround.

Yes, much of China still lives in deep poverty, but the fact that it moved 250 million+ people from subsistence farming into urban middle-class lifestyles, in less than two generations, is an unprecedented economic miracle. The breathtaking picture at the top of this letter is of Shenzhen, whose population went from 30,000 in 1979 to now 10,000,000+. Sixteen Chinese cities have a population over ten million. These are staggering growth stories most Westerners have never heard. The US has only two metro areas of comparable size.

Say what you will, historians will look back 100 years from now and marvel. And Xi seems determined to make life better for those still in poverty.

Arthur pointed out another, less noticed constitutional change that may help. It extended party discipline down to local officials, for both what they do and what they might fail to do. This gives Beijing a more effective enforcement mechanism and should result in more consistent policies.

My first thought on this was that even more centralized control may not be such a wonderful thing for China. It hasn’t worked so well elsewhere. Arthur agrees China could face problems down the road, but for the next few years thinks the new measures will be a net positive. He expects 6.5% GDP growth this year, as does Beijing (which of course gets what it wants). Last year’s shadow banking crackdown has somewhat contained excess leverage, at least for now.

China’s rapidly growing debt, both private and state-sponsored, is going to be a problem at some point. Xi and the leadership are trying to head off the problem, but debt has its own reality. Increasingly easy access to credit makes it hard to control. Chinese “investors” load up on debt to invest in “sure things” only to find them not so sure.

For now, though, short-term stability gives Xi room to focus on long-term economic priorities, of which he has two: The “Made in China 2025” industrial policy and the “Belt and Road” infrastructure initiative. As we’ll see in a minute, both are much more than they seem.

Meanwhile, the US sees China as both partner and rival. Obviously the two economies are intertwined and depend on each other. President Trump observes, correctly, that China doesn’t always reciprocate the trading rights that the US and other governments extend. China is really quite protectionist—far more so than the other “BRIC” countries, as measured on the OECD foreign direct investment restrictiveness index. Trump is right to press for better trade parity. When China can ship cars to the US for 2.5% tariff, and US cars must pay a 25% to go into China, something is out of balance. There are literally scores of examples like that. And for this, we let them into the WTO and gave China most-favored nation status? (More on that below.)

But at its heart, the US-China rivalry is not really a trade war. This has been unfolding for a long time. Trump’s tariff threats are only the latest move and won’t be the last.

Two Cards at Play

Beijing has two big economic programs, neither of which it considers negotiable. They are strategic priorities the rest of the world will have to face.

Made in China 2025 is a broad industrial policy with multiple goals:

• Improve manufacturing productivity

• Build up technology-intensive sectors

• Gain 70% self-sufficiency in key materials and components

On the surface, there is really nothing wrong with this policy. Many nations have long done similar, including the United States. But let’s get beyond the surface.

The government, state-owned enterprises and private businesses are all giving Made in China 2025 truly massive funding. Research & development spending was US$232 billion in 2016 alone. Ominously, a new government commission, founded just last year, is overseeing the “integration” of this technology development with possible military use. And let’s make no mistake, this “funding,” whether equity, loans, or grants, ultimately comes from the state or at the urging of the state.

Note that last goal of 70% self-sufficiency in certain markets. Made in China 2025 is, by its nature, an anti-trade program. Favoring domestic producers necessarily disfavors importers. Other governments, including the US, do the same, of course, but rarely on this rather immense scale. So, it’s inevitably going to be a point of argument.

China’s Belt & Road Initiative looks like a giant infrastructure program, and it is, but that’s not all. It is Xi’s mercantilist version of the US-led postwar Marshall Program. Where we carved out leadership via institutions and trade agreements, while at the same time supplying much-needed money, China seeks to do the same by physically connecting itself with the Eurasian continent. I have said from the beginning that this may be one of Xi’s most profoundly disruptive and transformative policies of his career. There was some skepticism when it was first announced as the scope was so massive, but I think everyone is now a true believer. China is committing to putting its hard dollars into completing this project’s multi-decade vision.

(Click to enlarge)

As my friend George Friedman often says, China’s main strategic challenge is that the US controls the seas. Geography means China’s imports and exports must traverse coastal bottlenecks the US could easily close if it wished. That’s intolerable if your goal is to be a superpower, and that’s definitely what Xi wants.

One Belt, One Road is the answer. It will link the Eurasian land mass into a giant trading bloc with Europe at one end and China at the other. The project will open land routes the US cannot interdict, thereby letting China take what it feels is its rightful place of leadership. The scope is breathtaking, but Beijing is determined to make it happen. Again, I would not bet against Xi on this.

Notice all the smaller Asian countries that the One Road goes through. It will give you access to not only East Asia but Europe as well. China is building a “main pipeline” not unlike Eisenhower’s interstate highway system. And that means all those little countries will access that main road. Ultimately, China wants to pay for all the products it buys in Renminbi and have those small countries make it part of their central bank holdings. That is part of the process of becoming a reserve currency, which is something China covets. The same thing is true for the project’s ocean and seaport aspects.

Whatever your feelings about Chinese leadership, you have to admire a country that can undertake such a huge project that will take decades to fulfill. While Xi and his team may be starting it, it is unlikely anyone currently on top will still be on top in 30 years. That is Vision with a capital V.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++