Israel's top terrorist unit goes public:I have always said it is dangerous when you believe you can drink your own bathwater:
Democrats Are Losing Because They Believe Their Own Press
Democrats are convinced they are the majority party, but in the American political system they are not. Read in browser »++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
An important shift may be developing regarding our relations with China.
China has taken advantage of being given the opportunity to join the world's nations in a manner of normal competition. It has abused the privilege we granted them and it is high time America pulled the plug. That said, the challenging repercussions can spread world wide. However, that is no reason to act cowardly either. We have tried that and should have learned feeding bullies will not curb their appetite.
Obama's foreign policies had two goals:
a) Curry favor with adversaries, and b) Weaken America.
Trump is seeking to right that sinking ship. Because he is trying to reverse a dangerous course that was sapping our economic and military strength, endangering our commercial status and domestic tranquility he is creating other risks. This is no reason to quit our new sense of urgency and actions but it gives Trump Haters another opportunity to bash him and spread doubt about his more aggressive and confrontational policies..
Making America Great Again is far better than continuing to Make America Weak but Democrats are good at selling their pusillanimous goals and policies because they make for less visible tensions.(See 1 and 1a below.)
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Dick
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1)
Mike Pence Announces Cold War II
By Walter Russell Mead
The administration is orchestrating a far-reaching campaign against China.
Did Cold War II break out last week while no one was watching? As the Kavanaugh confirmation battle raged, many Americans missed what looks like the biggest shift in U.S.-China relations since Henry Kissinger’s 1971 visit to Beijing.
The Trump administration’s China policy swam into view, and it’s a humdinger. Vice President Mike Pence gave a guide to the approach in a speech last week at the Hudson Institute (where I am a fellow). Denouncing what he called China’s “whole of government” approach to its rivalry with the U.S., Mr. Pence vowed the Trump administration will respond in kind. He denounced China’s suppression of the Tibetans and Uighurs, its “Made in China 2025” plan for tech dominance, and its “debt diplomacy” through the Belt and Road initiative. The speech sounded like something Ronald Reagan could have delivered against the Soviet Union: Mr. Xi, tear down this wall! Mr. Pence also detailed an integrated, cross-government strategy to counter what the administration considers Chinese military, economic, political and ideological aggression.
In the same week as the vice president’s speech, Navy plans for greatly intensified patrols in and around Chinese-claimed waters in the South China Sea were leaked to the press. Moreover, the recently-entered trilateral U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement was revealed to have a clause discouraging trade agreements between member countries and China. The administration indicated it would seek similar clauses in other trade agreements. Also last week, Congress approved the Build Act, a $60 billion development-financing program designed to counter China’s Belt and Road strategy in Africa and Asia. Finally, the White House issued a report highlighting the danger that foreign-based supply chains pose to U.S. military capabilities in the event they are cut off during a conflict.
Any one of these steps would have rated banner headlines in normal times; in the Age of Trump, all of them together barely registered. But this is a major shift in American foreign policy. As China responds, and as other countries formulate their approaches to the emerging U.S.-China rivalry, a new international reality will take shape. With many longtime U.S. allies opposed to the Trump administration on trade policy and other matters, and with Russia, North Korea and Iran all looking to frustrate U.S. goals, an indignant China looking for opportunities to make Washington pay may find help.
American businesses engaged directly or indirectly with China could face difficulties as the U.S. strategy is implemented. American presidents have broad authority over trade and investment related to national security. Donald Trump has already used this to threaten and impose tariffs and Mr. Pence warned that even higher tariffs are on the way. The White House report highlighting supply-chain vulnerabilities could provide the basis for new and more far-reaching restrictions.
Business and investors may still be underestimating both the Trump administration’s determination to challenge China and the amount of economic disruption that greater U.S.-China tension can bring. To the mix of longtime China hawks and trade hawks now driving U.S. policy, national security matters more than economic friction, and many of the protestations from the U.S. business community may fall on deaf ears. Both China and the U.S. are likely to move quickly, unpredictably and disruptively as they struggle for advantage; Wall Street should brace itself for further shocks.
In terms of domestic politics, the new and more confrontational policy is likely to be broadly popular. Mr. Trump’s populist base resents the “theft” of American jobs, and human-rights and religious-freedom advocates are increasingly troubled by China’s severe repression at home and support for authoritarian regimes abroad. The foreign-policy establishment may oppose Mr. Trump’s tactics, but it generally accepts the need for a stronger stance against China. Businesses will be split; while some are heavily exposed to a potential deterioration in U.S.-China relations, others are angry about stolen intellectual property, resent restrictions on their access to Chinese markets, or fear competition from subsidized Chinese firms.
Democrats who have relished attacking Mr. Trump for allegedly being soft on Vladimir Putin will have a hard time explaining why a hard line on Russia is a patriotic duty but a tough China policy is a mistake. Things could change if the economic and political costs of confrontation rise, but at least initially the new China policy has encountered little opposition.
Replacing the North American Free Trade Agreement, reshaping the Supreme Court, and launching a new Cold War in the same week is quite the trifecta. America may or may not be on the road to greatness under Mr. Trump, but it is certainly going somewhere, and at an accelerating pace.
1a) The Deeper Meaning of Pence’s China Broadside
Vice president’s blunt speech could be inflection point in Washington-Beijing relations
By Gerald F. Seib
Last Thursday, while the Capitol was consumed with the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination debate, a few blocks away an event with at least as much long-term significance was unfolding, to relatively little notice.
Vice President Mike Pence walked to a podium at the Hudson Institute and delivered a remarkable, 40-minute broadside against China. The speech is worth a deeper look, because there was nothing casual about it. Rather, it was the product of extensive behind-the-scenes work, and may come to be seen an inflection point in the complex trajectory of relations between Washington and Beijing.
In surprisingly blunt terms, Mr. Pence accused China of abusing its economic power, stealing American technology, bullying the very American companies that have helped in its economic rise, intimidating its neighbors, militarizing the South China Sea and persecuting religious believers at home.
“America had hoped that economic liberalization would bring China into a greater partnership with us and with the world,” Mr. Pence said. “Instead, China has chosen economic aggression, which has in turn emboldened its growing military.”
In his most headline-grabbing assertion, he also charged that China is attempting to interfere in the 2018 midterm elections and laying the groundwork to try to defeat President Trump’s quest for re-election.
That assertion is sufficiently self-serving—the president is so tough on China that its leaders now want him out—that it is easy to dismiss. Besides, Mr. Trump also brags about what a great relationship he has with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
What’s more important, though is that this charge of election high jinks was merely the tip of what Mr. Pence charged on this front.
He asserted that the Chinese have embarked on a governmentwide effort to “interfere in the domestic policies of this country.” In this concerted program, he charged, China seems to expand its influence by “rewarding or coercing American businesses, movie studios, universities, think tanks, scholars, journalists, and local, state, and federal officials.”
This isn’t a casual accusation. For months, a team of national-security officials has been compiling a study on the many ways China uses money, power and rewards to affect the way it is viewed in the U.S. The study was intended in part, say those familiar with it, to shame American institutions that the administration believes are being used by China.
In a key passage, Mr. Pence declared: “Beijing provides generous funding to universities, think tanks, and scholars, with the understanding that they will avoid ideas that the Communist Party finds dangerous or offensive. China experts in particular know that their visas will be delayed or denied if their research contradicts Beijing’s talking points.”
This portrayal of China’s tactics is important for a lot of reasons, but mostly because it puts the mushrooming trade disputes between Washington and Beijing in much broader and more ominous context. The Trump administration sees Chinese practices not merely as an attempt to gain an economic upper hand, but as a part of a kind of broad struggle over global dominance, in which the Chinese are pulling every lever at their disposal in a quest to prevail.
This portrayal, of course, glosses over some of China’s own, considerable internal problems. Its debt load is soaring, and its economic growth may be faltering. Chinese stocks and bonds have declined, as has the Chinese currency. Meanwhile, the cult of personality that has been built up about Mr. Xi is a sign of his power, but also may reflect deeper insecurity about his regime’s relations with its people.
It’s possible to exaggerate Chinese omnipresence, much as Americans, in retrospect, exaggerated the rise of Japan as an economic threat in the 1980s. Demonizing China also can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, pushing Beijing deeper into the kinds of hostile actions the U.S. is decrying.
Still, the tension reflected in Mr. Pence’s speech is very real and playing out on multiple fronts. Just last week, China canceled a long-planned U.S.-China security dialogue, and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis canceled a visit to Beijing. Those moves came as a Chinese warship harassed a U.S. Navy vessel as it sailed in international waters near disputed islands claimed by Beijing in the South China Sea.
The Trump administration and China still find plenty of ways to communicate amid the tensions. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was in Beijing on Monday, in fact, talking about both trade fights and the diplomatic dance under way to convince North Korea to abandon its nuclear-weapons program. Unlike during the Cold War, when the U.S. and the Soviet Union had few economic ties to bind them together, the U.S. and China still are in an economic embrace that gives both sides ample reason to coexist peacefully.
Still, Mr. Pence has signaled that the coexistence is, and may, remain a tense one.
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