TBR News April 4, 2018

The Voice of the White House 

Washington, D.C. April 4, 2018:”Off in the distant rolling hills of Arkansas, we can hear ragged voices raised to the heavens in supplication. These are faint but these are growing in volume and location. Soon, we are hearing them from sub Rio Grande clusters in Los Angeles and Polish throats in Chicago. Faint at first but steadily growing in volume until in still-distant November, they become a deafening chorus at polling places across the nation. And what is this determined chant being proclaimed throughout the land and unto all the inhabitants thereof? It is very simple; DUMP TRUMP.”

Table of Contents

• China retaliates, slaps duties on U.S. soybeans, planes; markets skid
• Soybean, aircraft and cars: Which US states will suffer most?
• Moscow to West: Remember fate of Goliath when trying to cling to power
• UK may have staged Skripal poisoning to rally people against Russia, Moscow believes
• How John Bolton Wants to Destroy the Constitution to Attack North Korea
• A Special Relationship Born in Hell
• Trump’s self-delusion blinds him to legal peril
• Silence speaks volumes: how Trump’s Twitter feed reveals his blind spots
• Could the Cold War Return With a Vengeance?

 

 

China retaliates, slaps duties on U.S. soybeans, planes; markets skid

April 4, 2018

by Michael Martina, David Lawder

Reuters

BEIJING/WASHINGTON (Reuters) – China hit back quickly on Wednesday against the Trump administration’s plans to impose tariffs on $50 billion in Chinese goods, retaliating with a list of similar duties on key U.S. imports including soybeans, planes, cars, beef and chemicals.

The speed with which the trade struggle between Washington and Beijing is ratcheting up – China took less than 11 hours to respond with its own measures – led to a sharp selloff in global stock markets and commodities. [MKTS/GLOB]

U.S. President Donald Trump, who has long charged that his predecessors served the United States badly in trade matters, rejected the notion that the tit-for-tat moves amounted to a trade war between the world’s two economic superpowers.

“We are not in a trade war with China, that war was lost many years ago by the foolish, or incompetent, people who represented the U.S.,” Trump wrote in a post on Twitter early on Wednesday.

Because the actions will not be carried out immediately, there may be room for maneuver. Publication of Washington’s list starts a period of public comment and consultation expected to last around two months. The effective date of China’s moves depends on when the U.S. action takes effect.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in an interview with CNBC that it would not be surprising if the U.S. and China trade actions led to negotiations, although he would not speculate on when this might happen.

Investors were wondering, nonetheless, how far one of the worst trade disputes in many years could escalate.

“The assumption was China would not respond too aggressively and avoid escalating tensions. China’s response is a surprise for some people,” said Julian Evans-Pritchard, senior China economist at Capital Economics, noting that neither side had yet called for enforcement of the tariffs.

“It’s more of a game of brinkmanship, making it clear what the cost would be, in the hopes that both sides can come to agreement and none of these tariffs will come into force,” said Evans-Pritchard.

U.S.-made goods that appear to face added tariffs in China based, on an analysis of Beijing’s list, include Tesla Inc electric cars, Ford Motor Co’s Lincoln auto models, Gulfstream jets made by General Dynamics Corp and Brown-Forman Corp’s Jack Daniel’s whiskey.

Unlike Washington’s list, which was filled with many obscure industrial items, China’s list strikes at signature U.S. exports, including soybeans, frozen beef, cotton and other key agricultural commodities produced in states from Iowa to Texas that voted for Trump in the 2016 presidential election.

“China is also trying to weaken our will by targeting certain segments of our economy,” White House trade adviser Peter Navarro said in an interview with National Public Radio.

“But let’s remember: we buy five times more goods than they buy from us. They have a lot more to lose in any escalation in this matter.”

POLITICAL TARGETS

While Washington targeted products that benefit from Chinese industrial policy, including its “Made in China 2025” initiative to replace advanced technology imports with domestic products in strategic industries such as advanced IT and robotics, Beijing’s appears aimed at inflicting political damage.

Tobacco and whiskey, for example, are both on Beijing’s list and are produced in states including Kentucky, home of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Beijing’s list of 25 percent additional tariffs on U.S. goods covers 106 items with a trade value matching the $50 billion targeted on Washington’s list, China’s commerce and finance ministries said.

“This is a real game changer and moves the trade dispute away from symbolism to measures which would really hurt U.S agricultural exports,” said Commerzbank commodities analyst Carsten Fritsch.

China’s tariff list covers aircraft that would likely include older models such as Boeing Co’s workhorse 737 narrowbody jet, but not newer models like the 737 MAX or its larger planes.

A Beijing-based spokesman for Boeing, the largest single U.S. exporter to China, declined to comment.

Beijing’s announcement triggered heavy selling in global financial markets, with U.S. stock futures sliding 1.5 percent and U.S. soybean futures plunging nearly 5 percent and on track for their biggest fall since July 2016. The dollar briefly extended early losses, while China’s yuan skidded in offshore trade.

RAPID RESPONSE

Hours earlier, the U.S. government unveiled a detailed breakdown of some 1,300 Chinese industrial, transport and medical goods that could be subject to 25 percent duties, ranging from light-emitting diodes to machine parts.

The U.S. move, broadly flagged last month, is aimed at forcing Beijing to address what Washington says is deeply entrenched theft of U.S. intellectual property and forced technology transfer from U.S. companies to Chinese competitors, charges Chinese officials deny.

Foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said China had shown sincerity in wanting to resolve the dispute through negotiations.

“But the best opportunities for resolving the issues through dialogue and negotiations have been repeatedly missed by the U.S. side,” he told a regular briefing on Wednesday.

The tariff list from the office of U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer followed China’s imposition of tariffs on $3 billion worth of U.S. fruits, nuts, pork and wine to protest U.S. steel and aluminum tariffs imposed last month by Trump.

WILL CONSUMERS PAY?

Many consumer electronics products such as cellphones made by Apple Inc and laptops made by Dell were excluded from the U.S. list, as were footwear and clothing, drawing a sigh of relief from retailers who had feared higher costs for American consumers.

A U.S. industry source said the list was somewhat unexpected in that it largely exempts major consumer grade technology products, one of China’s major export categories to the U.S.

“The tech industry will feel like overall it dodged a bullet,” the source said, but added that traditional industrial goods manufacturers, along with pharmaceuticals and medical device firms, could suffer.

Many U.S. business groups support Trump’s efforts to stop the theft of U.S. intellectual property but have questioned whether tariffs are the right approach. They warn that disruptions to supply chains that rely on Chinese components will ultimately raise costs for consumers.

“Tariffs are one proposed response, but they are likely to create new challenges in the form of significant added costs for manufacturers and American consumers,” National Association of Manufacturers President Jay Timmons said in a statement.

ALGORITHM SHIELDS U.S. CONSUMERS

USTR developed the tariff targets using a computer algorithm designed to choose products that would inflict maximum pain on Chinese exporters but limit damage to U.S. consumers.

A USTR official said the list got an initial scrub by removing products identified as likely to cause disruptions to the U.S. economy and those that needed to be excluded for legal reasons.

“The remaining products were ranked according to the likely impact on U.S. consumers, based on available trade data involving alternative country sources for each product,” the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Reuters.

Many products in those segments appear on the list, including antibiotics and industrial robots and aircraft parts.

USTR did include some key consumer products from China, including flat-panel television sets and motor vehicles, both electric and gasoline-powered, with engines of 3 liters or less.

A Reuters analysis that compared listed products with 2017 Census Bureau import data showed $3.9 billion in flat-panel TV imports, and $1.4 billion in vehicle imports from China.

USTR has scheduled a May 15 public hearing on the tariffs, which were announced as the result of an investigation under Section 301 of the 1974 U.S. Trade Act.

China ran a $375 billion goods trade surplus with the United States in 2017, a figure that Trump has demanded be cut by $100 billion.

Reporting by David Lawder, Jason Lange, Ginger Gibson, Steve Holland, Makini Brice, Susan Heavey and David Chance in WASHINGTON; Michael Martina, Cheng Fang, Ryan Woo, Ben Blanchard, Tony Munroe, Cate Cadell, Philip Wen, Dominique Patton and Josephine Mason in BEIJING and Engen Tham in SHANGHAI; Additional reporting Brenda Goh in Shanghai, Stella Qiu in Beijing, Tom Miles in Geneva and Michael Hogan in Hamburg; Editing by Kim Coghill and Alex Richardson

 

Soybean, aircraft and cars: Which US states will suffer most?

In the latest round of Chinese tariffs against 106 American products, the focus is on the lucrative US exports of soybeans, planes and cars. But why has China targeted these products and which US states will suffer most?

April 4, 2018

by Michael Da Silva

DW

The soybean industry, vital for the production of foodstuffs and the animal feed industry, is set to take the biggest hit as a result of China’s latest proposed retalitory tariffs on the US.

Soybeans, the biggest American agricultural export to China last year, have been targeted for several reasons. Soybeans are already native to large parts of China given the country’s vast tropical and warm temperate regions, which already makes the growing of over 2,500 types of soybean possible.

The United States, Brazil and Argentina lead the exports of soybean, with China and Japan being the leading importers. The Americas contribute to 55 percent of the world production of soybean. The US exports 37 percent of the world‘s soybean and the impact of such a levy on the US is clear.

Crude oil prices affect soybean prices and the relationship between the two is growing given the importance of soybean in the biofuel sector. High crude oil prices are favorable for soybean prices because of the profitability of biofuel production — but the cost of US crude oil took a hit on the news that China was targeting American soybean.

Soybean tariff to hit Illinois hardest

Furthermore, soybean has been targeted to strike at the heart of the Republican party. With the exception of Democrat-run Minnesota, soybean is an industry that affects US states governed by Republicans. Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Indiana, Missouri, Ohio, North Dakota, South Dakota and Arkansas are the top soybean producers in the US — and all are governed by the Republicans.

However, some experts have cast doubts over whether China can replace its reliance on American soybean, with the US currently exporting 62 percent of its soybeans to China.

“There simply aren’t enough soybeans in the world outside of the US to meet China’s needs,” said Mark Williams, chief Asia economist at Capital Economics.

“As for reducing dependence on imports, there are a few options, but none is a magic bullet that could hurt US farmers without generating costs at home.”

Illinois alone has at least 43,000 soybean farmers, but the impact will be felt in a number of related industries that are key to the state’s prosperity, including biofuel, railroads and animal agriculture.

Chicago-based Boeing targeted

Illinois, the home state of former president Barack Obama and currently governed by Republican millionaire Bruce Rauner, will feel the pinch from China’s sanctions more than any other.

Not only is Illinois the biggest producer of soybean, but Chicago-based Boeing could suffer most from the 25-percent reciprocal tariff China has placed on US aircraft weighing between 15,000 and 45,000 kilograms.

This is bad news for Boeing, with more than a quarter of its global delivery in 2017 going to China. Shares fell up to 5 percent on the New York Stock Exchange on the news, while Boeing’s France-based rival Airbus would be perfectly placed to benefit.

China is on course to usurp the US as the world’s biggest travel market, with 921 million more passengers set to travel to, from and within China by air by the year 2036. To facilitate this growth, it is estimated that China will need more than 7,000 new planes at a value of around $1 trillion (€810,000 billion).

China Eastern Airlines is currently Boeing’s fifth-largest customer, behind Ryanair, Southwest Airlines, Turkish Airlines and American Airlines.

Car tariff threatens Michigan jobs

There has been a steady trend towards overseas car companies to manufacture their cars in China to avoid the hefty import charge of 21 to 30 percent that already exists. This makes China’s decision to include the automotive industry in its latest round of retaliatory tariffs a strategic move to accelerate that shift.

This trade model has seen General Motors’ business in China grow by 13 percent in in the past year, with one in 10 cars sold in China a GM. This equates to 3.9 million cars, a figure that eclipses the three million GM cars sold in the US during the same period.

Ford earned $1.5 billion in China in 2017 and the company estimates it has 4.2 percent of the Chinese market. This suggest that the latest round of Chinese tariffs will not impact too greatly on the industry, but rather could encourage more US car companies to entrench its manufacturing within China, which of course protects Chinese jobs in the sector.

While the tariffs are unlikely to seriously damage the profits of US car companies, it threatens American manufacturing jobs in the sector. And where are GM’s largest plants located? The state of Michigan, governed by Republican Rick Snyder.

 

Moscow to West: Remember fate of Goliath when trying to cling to power

April 4, 2018

RT

The West is becoming an Orwellian version of itself in its desperate attempts to cling to power, Russia’s foreign intelligence chief said. If this continues, the West may face a similar fate to that of Biblical figure Goliath.

Sergey Naryskin, the head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), delivered the strongly-worded message at an international security conference in Moscow on Wednesday. He accused the West and the United States in particular of failing to acknowledge that they can no longer dictate their will to the rest of the world.

Western nations “cannot and will not face the truth and acknowledge that their own influence, which used to be unchallenged, is now diminishing. They are still trying to build relations with other nations based on old principles rooted in colonialism, on coercion and dictate.”

The Russian official branded as “stunningly hypocritical” the West’s methods of projecting power today. “The US is trying to masquerade the brutal American dictate as ‘Euroatlantic’ or ‘international’ solidarity. To present the US-centered system of international relations, which is based on coercion and even blackmail, as an appearance of voluntary submission,” Naryshkin said, citing the recent expulsion of Russian diplomats as a glaring example of this approach.

He was referring to the poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter on British soil last month. After the UK accused the Russian government of orchestrating the crime, London and its allies expelled over 100 Russian diplomats. Naryshkin alleged that the poisoning was “cooked up” by British and American intelligence services. He said the unwillingness of some European nations to join those expulsions is a sign that Washington’s system of “vassalage” is crumbling.

In its arrogance “the US increasingly resembles the overconfident Biblical strongman Goliath, who was slain by the young David.”  The global community should pay attention to that story, the official stressed – otherwise the tension between the West and Russia may lead to “a new Caribbean [Cuban missile] crisis.”

The West is targeting Russia with wild accusations because it perceives it as a driver for change in the world, the Russian official said. Washington now has a “fixation” on fighting “a non-existent Russian threat,” and the forms of this fight have become “ridiculous,” according to the intelligence chief.

“Politics never was an honest business. But the amount and nature of lies spurred today in attempt to justify Western hegemony is unprecedented,” he said. According to Naryshkin, the West is using Orwellian ‘doublespeak,’ investing words with the opposite of their true meaning to justify its policies. “The situation is counterintuitive and really dangerous,” he warned.

“So many times big talk about human rights and democracy was accompanied by military interventions into sovereign nations. Those nations were plunged into bloody chaos that had no place for such a fundamental right as a right to live. Over the past two decades, hundreds of thousands of innocent people fell victim to NATO aggression in Europe, the Middle East and Northern Africa,” he said.

There is a greater need “to reset the international relations system to make it work.” That would require the countries to abandon double standards and “start speaking in a truly common language of humanity, before it is too late.”

Naryshkin was speaking at the opening ceremony of the 7th Moscow Conference on International Security. The high-profile event in the Russian capital is being attended by delegations from 95 nations.

 

 

UK may have staged Skripal poisoning to rally people against Russia, Moscow believes

April 1, 2018

RT

London’s reluctance to share information on the poisoning of former double agent Sergei Skripal has led Moscow to strongly suspect that it was the actual perpetrator of the crime, the Russian ambassador to Britain said.

The poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury triggered the worst diplomatic conflict between London and Moscow in years. The UK accused the Russian government of using a military grade nerve agent against the former spy and, according to Moscow, is stonewalling all attempts by Moscow to learn details of the ongoing investigation into the incident.

Moscow is increasingly convinced that Britain is the real culprit behind the attack, according to Russian Ambassador to the UK Alexander Yakovenko.

We have very serious suspicion that this provocation was done by British intelligence,” Yakovenko told Russia’s NTV channel. He clarified that Russia has no direct proof of this suspicion, but the behavior of the British government constitutes strong circumstantial evidence in support of this theory.

The diplomat added that London had gained both short-term and long-term benefits from the poisoning. The short-term gain is that Theresa May’s government managed to spin this story to whip up support both at home and in Europe, while sidelining its failures to negotiate more favorable terms for exiting the European Union, Yakovenko said. The long-term benefit is that it improved London’s standing in the ongoing confrontation between the West and Russia.

“The Britons are claiming a leading role in the so-called containment of Russia. To win support from the people and the parliament for this containment of Russia, a serious provocation was required. And the Britons may have done a really savage one to get this support,” he said.

The ambassador said that details of British investigations into the deaths of several high-profile people with Russian ties have been kept from the public. These include former Russian intelligence officer Aleksandr Litvinenko, Georgian tycoon Badri Patarkatsishvili, fugitive Russian businessman Boris Berezovsky and Russian whistleblower Aleksandr Perepilichny. He said he hoped there would be a public disclosure of relevant facts in relation to the Skripal case.

“I am sure Russia will not allow the Britons to escape the legal field. They will have to give answers,” he said.

After the poisoning in Salisbury, the UK convinced some of its allies to follow its lead by expelling Russian diplomats. The US was the most receptive to the call, kicking 60 Russians out of the country, which dwarfed the UK’s expulsion of 23 people. European countries that chose to show solidarity with London expelled between one and four diplomats each. Ukraine expelled 13.

Russia hit back with reciprocal expulsions of foreign diplomats. It also demanded that Britain downsize its diplomatic mission in Russia to that of Russia in Britain, affecting over 50 jobs.

 

How John Bolton Wants to Destroy the Constitution to Attack North Korea

April 3 2018

by Jon Schwarz

The Intercept

Several weeks before President Donald Trump announced that John Bolton would soon become his new national security adviser, Bolton wrote a peculiar op-ed for The Wall Street Journal titled “The Legal Case for Striking North Korea First.”

What made Bolton’s column odd was not his belligerence — he’s always been the embodiment of America’s violent id in human/mustache form — but rather his invocation of “international law.” According to Bolton, it is now legal for the U.S. to attack North Korea.

It is generally accepted that states may engage in preemptive war if they face a so-called imminent threat, under a classic formulation articulated by former U.S. Secretary of State Daniel Webster in 1837. Webster wrote that a pre-emptive attack is valid only if the “necessity of self-defense” is “instant, overwhelming, leaving no choice of means, and no moment of deliberation.” This is a high threshold, which makes sense given that Webster was not supporting a pre-emptive war by the U.S., but arguing that it was bogus for British soldiers to claim they had been engaging in legitimate self-defense when they entered U.S. territory from Canada.

But Bolton has spent his entire career expressing his deep contempt for the entire concept of international law. For Bolton, it’s a meaningless “theological exercise” utilized by “the academic Left” to prevent the U.S. from defending itself. (He does allow that international customs may have their place in establishing “navigation protocols” for “seafaring states.”)

Moreover, Bolton obviously doesn’t mean what he says in his op-ed. The “threat” part of the imminent threat to the U.S., he writes, would be North Korea possessing the capacity to strike America with nuclear weapons via intercontinental ballistic missiles. The “imminent” part is that they may have soon have this capacity. So it’s fine for us to obliterate North Korea right now.

In other words, Bolton is not arguing that North Korea is in fact about to attack us. Rather, he contends that it is legal for a country to attack another if the second country may soon possess the ability to attack the former with nuclear weapons. But this would obviously mean that it’s legitimate for Kim Jong Un to attack the nuclear-armed U.S., particularly after Trump threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea at the United Nations in September. Indeed, by Bolton’s standard, it would also be okay for any country on earth to immediately nuke the U.S.

So, if Bolton’s rhetoric is not aimed at the U.N., who is it aimed at?

The likely answer is: Congress — plus Bolton’s potential rivals within the executive branch.

To understand this, we must look back at American history in general, and the history of Bolton’s faction of the far right in particular.

Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution states that “Congress shall have Power …  To declare War.”

James Madison, the Constitution’s main architect, explained that the U.S. must maintain “a rigid adherence” to “the fundamental doctrine of the Constitution, that the power to declare war including the power of judging of the causes of war is fully and exclusively vested in the legislature.”

Why? Because, said Madison, the history of human beings shows conclusively that “the executive is the department of power most distinguished by its propensity to war: hence it is the practice of all states, in proportion as they are free, to disarm this propensity of its influence.”

Abraham Lincoln later endorsed this perspective, writing that if Americans “allow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion,” this means also allowing the president to do so “whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose” – which therefore permits the executive “to make war at pleasure.” For Lincoln, it was obvious why America’s Founding Fathers had designed the Constitution to prevent this: “Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars. … No one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us.”

The Constitution did, to some degree, bind presidents for 150 years. The War of 1812, the Mexican-American War, the Spanish-American War, World War I, and World War II were all formally declared by Congress.

But after World War II, the executive branch staged a breakout. President Harry Truman called the Korean War, which began in 1950, a “police action,” and sent hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops to Korea without any kind of formal approval from Congress. During this police action, the U.S. used more bombs than it had in the Pacific theater during all of World War II, and killed perhaps one-fifth of the population of North Korea.

Then came the Vietnam War, the main phase of which did in fact begin with approval from Congress. While legislators did not pass a declaration of war, precisely, the 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Resolution did authorize President Lyndon Johnson to “take all necessary measures to repel any armed attack against the forces of the United States and to prevent further aggression.”

That changed in 1971, when Congress repealed the resolution, but President Richard Nixon argued that he had the Constitutional power to continue to prosecute the war anyway.

This led to the passage of the War Powers Act in 1973, which established clear timetables on the presidential use of force. According to the act, the clock starts running when “military forces are engaged, or there exists an imminent threat that such forces will become engaged, in hostilities.” Starting then, the president must report to Congress the rationale for the use of the military within 48 hours. If Congress does not authorize the hostilities within the next 60 days, the president must terminate the military’s involvement within another 30 days.

This was clearly a step back from the intent of the Constitution, which does not authorize the executive branch to start wars on its own — even if they are only three months long. Nevertheless, it was one of the few significant assertions of congressional power in living memory and was passed despite Nixon’s veto.

Presidents Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton then merrily started small wars with little congressional opposition (although some members of the House of Representatives unsuccessfully sued Clinton for violating the restrictions of the War Powers Act in his bombing of Kosovo). Bush did seek and receive approval from Congress for a large-scale conflict, the 1991 Gulf War.

Then came the presidency of George W. Bush. His vice president, Dick Cheney, was a leader of the hardest faction of the American hard right, and brought with him people like Bolton, who became Bush’s undersecretary of state for arms control.

This wing of the GOP had long hated the idea that the Constitution means what it says about war, and saw 9/11 as a golden opportunity to set things right.

Bolton wrote in his 2007 memoir that the War Powers Act was an “overreaction.” As secretary of defense in 1990, Cheney had claimed that the elder Bush could go to war in Iraq without congressional action, and even believed the president could do so if Congress had expressly voted against giving him authority. Post-9/11, the Cheneyites adamantly argued that, if needed, the younger Bush could attack a country like Iraq solely on his own authority as president, without asking the legislative branch for permission.

Their legal case relied partly on a childish attempt at linguistic chicanery.

It’s long been universally accepted that presidents can in fact act without Congress in the face of a genuine imminent threat to the U.S.; it could hardly be otherwise in an age of nuclear weapons. When running for president in 2007, Barack Obama stated that the executive branch may “unilaterally authorize a military attack” to stop an “imminent threat to the nation.” Joe Biden, then also campaigning for the presidency, said the same thing: that the president may use force on his or her own authority in response to “the imminent threat of attack.”

The Bush administration therefore set about radically expanding the definition of the word “imminent.” Every few years presidential administrations issue something called a “National Security Strategy,” which is just what it sounds like. Bush’s 2002 National Security Strategy included a section titled “Prevent Our Enemies from Threatening Us, Our Allies, and Our Friends with Weapons of Mass Destruction.” It included this passage:

For centuries, international law recognized that nations need not suffer an attack before they can lawfully take action to defend themselves against forces that present an imminent danger of attack. Legal scholars and international jurists often conditioned the legitimacy of preemption on the existence of an imminent threat — most often a visible mobilization of armies, navies, and air forces preparing to attack.

We must adapt the concept of imminent threat to the capabilities and objectives of today’s adversaries. …

The United States has long maintained the option of preemptive actions to counter a sufficient threat to our national security. The greater the threat, the greater is the risk of inaction — and the more compelling the case for taking anticipatory action to defend ourselves, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy’s attack.

This was essentially an announcement that the president of the United States could start any war at any time. (Other countries’ leaders aren’t allowed to do this, however: The 2002 NSS piously emphasized that nations should not “use preemption as a pretext for aggression.”)

In the end, Bush did decide to seek congressional approval to invade Iraq, and received it in October 2002.

But as Bolton’s Wall Street Journal op-ed demonstrates, he still feels exactly the same today. In language strikingly reminiscent of the 2002 NSS, Bolton claims, “Necessity in the nuclear and ballistic-missile age is simply different than in the age of steam. What was once remote is now, as a practical matter, near; what was previously time-consuming to deliver can now arrive in minutes.”By classifying North Korea as an imminent threat — as of right now — Bolton was not concerned with the U.N. and namby-pamby international law. Rather, he was announcing that Trump has no need get any authorization from Congress to start a war. Indeed, even Congress’s few weak attempts to rein Trump in on North Korea generally give the president explicit power to use force in the face of an “imminent threat.”

Moreover, Bolton is a wily enough operator that he surely understands the usefulness of this stance as a negotiating position, should he encounter opposition within the Trump administration.

For decades, presidents have generally relied on the legal opinions of the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department, which is sometimes called the executive branch’s supreme court. What would happen if the OLC told Trump that he could not legally attack North Korea?

Thanks to Obama, we already know the answer. In 2011, the OLC informed him that U.S. involvement in the war on Libya had to be terminated. But Obama ignored the OLC, and the White House simply searched for other executive branch lawyers who’d give him a piece of paper telling him what he was doing was perfectly legal.

If Bolton wants war with North Korea and Trump encounters similar resistance from the OLC, Bolton will surely be prepared to find a lawyer somewhere to make precisely the argument Bolton did in his column.

Congress and all of us need to start keeping an extremely close eye on the language used by Bolton and the Trump administration. Their words are potentially the difference between life and death for millions. And as Lincoln said, a position like Bolton’s “destroys” the Constitutional framework of the Founding Fathers, “and places our President where kings have always stood.”

 

A Special Relationship Born in Hell

The United States should cut all ties with war criminal Israel

April 3, 2018

by Philip Giraldi

The Unz Review

If you want to understand what the “special relationship” between Israel and the United States really means consider the fact that Israeli Army snipers shot dead seventeen unarmed and largely peaceful Gazan demonstrators on Good Friday without a squeak coming out of the White House or State Department. Some of the protesters were shot in the back while running away, while another 1,000 Palestinians were wounded, an estimated 750 by gunfire, the remainder injured by rubber bullets and tear gas.

The offense committed by the Gazan protesters that has earned them a death sentence was coming too close to the Israeli containment fence that has turned the Gaza strip into the world’s largest outdoor prison. President Donald Trump’s chief Middle East negotiator David Greenblatt described the protest as “a hostile march on the Israel-Gaza border…inciting violence against Israel.” And Nikki Haley at the U.N. has also used the U.S. veto to block any independent inquiry into the violence, demonstrating once again that the White House team is little more than Israel’s echo chamber. America’s enabling of the brutal reality that is today’s Israel makes it fully complicit in the war crimes carried out against the helpless and hapless Palestinian people.

So where was the outrage in the American media about the massacre of civilians? Characteristically, Israel portrays itself as somehow a victim and the U.S. media, when it bothers to report about dead Palestinians at all, picks up on that line. The Jewish State is portrayed as always endangered and struggling to survive even though it is the nuclear armed regional superpower that is only threatened because of its own criminal behavior. And even when it commits what are indisputable war crimes like the use of lethal force against an unarmed civilian population, the Jewish Lobby and its media accomplices are quick to take up the victimhood refrain.

Last week, the Israeli government described the protests an “an organized terrorist operation” while Gazans are dehumanized by claims that they act under the direction of evil Hamas to dig tunnels and rain down bottle rockets on hapless Israeli civilians. The reality is, however, quite different. It is the Gazans who have been subjected to murderous periodic incursions by the Israeli army, a procedure that Israel refers to as “mowing the grass,” a brutal exercise intended to keep the Palestinians terrified and docile.

The story of what happened in Gaza on Friday had largely disappeared from the U.S. media by Sunday. On Saturday, The New York Times reported the most recent violence this way: “…some began hurling stones, tossing Molotov cocktails and rolling burning tires at the fence, the Israelis responded with tear gas and gunfire.” Get it? The Palestinians started it all, according to Israeli sources, by throwing things at the fence and forcing the poor victimized Israeli soldiers to respond with gunfire, presumably as self-defense. The Times also repeated Israel’s uncorroborated claims that there were gunmen active on the Gazan side, but given the disparity in numbers killed and injured – zero on the Israeli side of the fence – the Palestinian shooters must have been using blanks. Or they never existed at all.

The Israelis reportedly also responded to “suspicious figures” on the Gazan side with rounds from tanks, killing, among others, a farmer far from the demonstrations who was working his field. Israeli warplanes and helicopters also joined in the fun, attacking targets on the Palestinian side. Drones flew over the demonstrators, spraying tear gas down on them. One recalls that the major Israeli assault on Gaza in 2014 included vignettes of Israeli families picnicking on the high ground overlooking the assault, enjoying the spectacle while observing the light-and-sound show that accompanied the carnage. At that time, more than 2,000 Gazans were killed and nearly 11,000 were wounded, including 3,374 children, of whom over 1,000 were permanently disabled.. If the current slaughter in Gaza continues, it would be a shame to forego the entertainment value of a good massacre right on one’s doorstep.

The reliably neocon Washington Post also framed the conflict as if Israel were behaving in a restrained fashion, leading off in its coverage with “Israel’s military warned Saturday it will step up its response to violence on the Gaza border if it continues…” You see, it’s the unarmed Palestinians who are creating the “violence.” Israel is the victim acting in self-defense.

The newspaper coverage was supplemented by television accounts of what had taken place. ABC News described “violent clashes,” implying that two somewhat equal sides were engaged in the fighting, even though the lethal force was only employed by Israel against an unarmed civilian population.

The backstory to the killing is what should disturb every American citizen. When it comes to disregard for United States national sovereignty and interests, the Israelis and their amen chorus in Washington have dug a deep, dark hole and the U.S. Congress and White House have obligingly jumped right in. Since June 8, 1967, when the Israelis massacred the crew of the U.S.S. Liberty, Israel has realized it could do whatever it wants, whenever it wants, wherever it wants, any time it wants, to anybody…including American servicemen, and the U.S. would do nothing.

Let me speak plainly. The existence of many good Israelis to who oppose their own government’s policies notwithstanding, the current Israel is an evil place that Americans should be condemning, not praising. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu should not be receiving 29 standing ovations from Congress. He should be rotting in jail. Israel’s shoot-to-kill policy and dehumanization of the Palestinian people is nothing to be proud of. That the United States is giving this band of racist war criminals billions of dollars every year is a travesty. That the reputation of American has been besmirched worldwide because of its reflexive support of anything and everything that this rogue regime does is a national disgrace.

Gazans are demonstrating in part because they are starving. They have no clean drinking water because Israel has destroyed the purification plants as part of a deliberate policy to make life in the Strip so miserable that everyone will leave or die in place. And even leaving is problematical as Israel controls the border and will not let Palestinians enter or depart. It also controls the Mediterranean Sea access to Gaza. Fisherman go out a short distance from the shore to bring in a meager catch. If they go any farther they are shot dead by the Israeli Navy.

Hospitals, schools and power stations in Gaza are routinely bombed in Israel’s frequent reprisal actions against what Netanyahu chooses to describe as aggressive moves by Hamas. Such claims are bogus as Israel enjoys a monopoly of force and is never hesitant to use it.

Over in the other Palestinian enclave the West Bank, or what remains of it, the story is the same. Brutal heavily armed Israeli settlers rampage, poisoning Palestinian water, maiming and killing their livestock and even murdering local residents. Children throw stones or slap a soldier and wind up in Israeli prisons. The settlers are backed up by the army and paramilitary police who also shoot first. The Israeli military courts, who have jurisdiction over the occupied West Bank, rarely convict a Jew when an Arab is killed or beaten.

And here in America a bought-and-paid-for Congress continues to do its bit. Last week President Trump signed the so-called Taylor Force Act, part of the marathon spending bill, which will cut aid going to the Palestinian Authority while also increasing the money going to Israel. Back in January, Congress had also cut the funding going to support Palestinians who are still living in U.N. run refugee camps in spite of resolutions demanding that they should be allowed to return to their homes, now occupied by Israeli Jews. During the perfunctory debate on the measure, Congressmen were lied to by pro-Israel lobbyists who claimed that Arabs are terrorism supporters and use the money to attack Israelis.

I could go on and on, but the message should be clear to every American. There is no net gain for the United States in continuing the lopsided and essentially immoral relationship with the self-styled Jewish State. There is no enhancement of American national security, quite the contrary, and there remains only the sad realization that the blood of many innocent people is, to a considerable extent, on our hands. This horror must end.

 

Trump’s self-delusion blinds him to legal peril

April 4, 2018

by Jennifer Rubin

The Washington Post

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III informed President Trump’s attorneys last month that he is continuing to investigate the president but does not consider him a criminal target at this point, according to three people familiar with the discussions.

In private negotiations in early March about a possible presidential interview, Mueller described Trump as a subject of his investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. Prosecutors view someone as a subject when that person has engaged in conduct that is under investigation but there is not sufficient evidence to bring charges.

The special counsel also told Trump’s lawyers that he is preparing a report about the president’s actions while in office and potential obstruction of justice, according to two people with knowledge of the conversations.

Mueller reiterated the need to interview Trump — both to understand whether he had any corrupt intent to thwart the Russia investigation and to complete this portion of his probe, the people said.

In other words, he is under investigation. On the way out the door after an interview with Mueller, he could be informed that he has just become a target. In other words, the “subject but not a target” designation is at best for Trump meaningless and at worst a sign he’s in jeopardy at any moment of becoming a target. There is a further complication here. Under the Justice Department’s current Office of Legal Counsel memo, a sitting president cannot be indicted; in other words, he cannot be charged — hence is not a target — until he leaves office. Jed Shugerman of the Fordham University School of Law agrees that, most likely, “all it means is Mueller probably has no intention of indicting a sitting president (who thus is not a target).”

The most frightening news for Trump (if he was paying attention) is confirmation that Mueller will write out a report, even before his full investigation is complete, likely making the case that Trump has obstructed justice. That could then be made public by Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein and used by Congress — in all likelihood only if Democrats win one or both chambers — to commence impeachment proceedings.

“I think the bigger news is that Mueller has decided to write a report on obstruction,” says former Justice spokesman Matt Miller. “Whether he would do so has been one of the big outstanding questions, since that is not what DOJ prosecutors usually do.” He continues, “That tells me two things: First, he must think there is some evidence of criminality or he probably wouldn’t be writing one. He would more likely just close up shop. Second, if he has told Trump’s lawyers about it, he has likely already have gotten some sort of green light from Rosenstein to either release it or send it to Congress. Hopefully that is the case — the pressure on Rosenstein will be immense if and when this report is ever written.”

If Trump truly has felt “relief” — as opposed to blustering — he is either not getting adequate legal advice, rejecting that advice or incapable of absorbing legal advice. It is one more indication that an interview with Mueller may prove catastrophic for Trump. Ethics guru Norman Eisen tells Right Turn, “I think the now departed John Dowd was right: Trump should take no great comfort from this. Many was the time that I had a client move from being a subject to a target.” He continues, “If I were representing the president, I would not let him testify because of the risk of him doing that to himself, and the risk of a false statement. Moreover, the report is unlikely to be flattering to Trump; just look at what [then-FBI Director James] Comey’s expressions about Hillary Clinton did to her.”

Trump you will recall was convinced at one time he was not under investigation. He even added that to his letter firing Comey. But of course, the firing of Comey set off a chain of events which in fact put him under investigation. Former prosecutor Renato Mariotti explained in a series of tweets: “As a practical matter, federal prosecutors typically don’t decide until late in an investigation whether they will charge a person who is under investigation. Usually prosecutors don’t make that judgement until they’ve interviewed witnesses and reviewed the relevant documents. … The prosecutor can just continue to collect evidence and make the decision to indict at a later time. That’s why any good federal criminal defense attorney knows that what really matters most is whether your client is a subject.”

This in turn brings us back to the president’s greatest peril — impeachment proceedings, which may include subpoenas for financial records (e.g., tax returns) he has insisted remain secret. Republicans have shown themselves entirely unwilling to confront Trump on the smallest matters (e.g., foreign emoluments) and so are highly unlikely to take impeachment seriously. By contrast, Democrats, if they get a damning report from Mueller and win the House, will almost certainly open hearings at least to determine if impeachment is appropriate. There should be no doubt that the midterms may turn on a single question: Should Trump be held accountable if he obstructed justice?

 

Silence speaks volumes: how Trump’s Twitter feed reveals his blind spots

The president is rarely at a loss for words, but he prefers not to mention the likes of Stormy Daniels and Stephon Clark – offering a window into his insecurities and prejudices

April 4, 2018

by David Smith in Washington

The Guardian

Hillary Clinton, the New York Times and Mexico are in. Stormy Daniels, Vladimir Putin and Stephon Clark – not so much.

Donald Trump’s tweetstorms frequently set the day’s political weather as they castigate foes, rattle diplomatic alliances, polarise debate on cable news, employ legions of fact checkers and generate questions for the White House that are usually met with the flat answer: “The president’s tweets speak for themselves.”

But while all this consumes huge attention and energy, the president’s silences speak for themselves, too. His Twitter feed, a grimly fascinating window into his consciousness with an assist from Fox News, has conspicuous blind spots that may indicate his deepest insecurities or prejudices.

“Trump is so vocal about what he likes and dislikes – so present in the national conversation – that his omissions are often more revealing than his comments,” Jamelle Bouie, chief political correspondent, wrote at Slate. “On the rare occasions when this president is silent, it is consistently when confronted with violence against nonwhites.”

Bouie highlighted how the shooting of Clark, an unarmed black man killed in his grandmother’s back yard by police in Sacramento, California, had gone unremarked upon by Trump and been brushed off by the White House as a matter for “the local authorities”.

This contrasts with the president’s Twitter assaults on prominent African Americans such as Barack Obama (“perhaps the worst president in the history of the United States!”), the congressman John Lewis (“All talk, talk, talk – no action or results”), the congresswoman Frederica Wilson (“Wacky”), the football player Colin Kaepernick (“YOU’RE FIRED”) and the CNN journalist Don Lemon (“dumb as a rock”).

Future historians will find on Twitter alone plenty of evidence to support the view of Trump as one of America’s most racially divisive presidents, even before they turn to his verbal criticism of the congresswoman Maxine Waters as a “low IQ individual” and his mealy mouthed comments about white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Trump’s reluctance to tweet about Daniels, a pornographic film actor who alleges that she was paid to hush up an extramarital affair, is especially striking. For once his fighter’s instinct to punch back has been suspended, perhaps on the advice of lawyers, perhaps because the issue is uniquely sensitive in the Trump household.

There appeared to be similar legal constraints on the president’s tweeting about the special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into alleged collusion with Russia, but last month he invoked Mueller by name for the first time. This was taken as further evidence of Trump now cutting loose, following his instincts and paying less heed to a dwindling band of advisers.

As for Russia’s president, Putin has received scarce attention since Trump tweeted in December 2016: “I always knew he was very smart!” Despite the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury in the UK, and Washington’s expulsion of Russian diplomats, the president has spent more tweets assailing the actor Alec Baldwin than Putin.

Anyone who relied solely on Trump’s tweets for news would find precious little about the humanitarian crises in South Sudan, Syria or Yemen, but they would learn plenty about the value of opinion polls and TV ratings. When hundreds of thousands of people marched in Washington and other cities last month to demand tougher gun control measures, Trump, who was at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, did not tweet.

And what of those solemn moments when a graceful intervention is called for? When Stephen Hawking died last month, Barack Obama tweeted a photo of himself meeting the British astrophysicist with the words: “Have fun out there among the stars.” From Trump, nothing.

He was at it again on Twitter from 6.34am on Tuesday, blasting “Fake News Networks”, the CNN president, Jeff Zucker (whom he called “Little Jeff Zuker”), “Cheatin’ Obama”, and Amazon, which he claimed was costing the US Postal Service vast amounts of money. But will he spare a tweet for Wednesday’s 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King?

 

Could the Cold War Return With a Vengeance?

The Pentagon Plans for a Perpetual Three-Front “Long War” Against China and Russia

April 3, 2018

by Michael T. Klare

TomDispatch

Think of it as the most momentous military planning on Earth right now. Who’s even paying attention, given the eternal changing of the guard at the White House, as well as the latest in tweets, sexual revelations, and investigations of every sort? And yet it increasingly looks as if, thanks to current Pentagon planning, a twenty-first-century version of the Cold War (with dangerous new twists) has begun and hardly anyone has even noticed.

In 2006, when the Department of Defense spelled out its future security role, it saw only one overriding mission: its “Long War” against international terrorism. “With its allies and partners, the United States must be prepared to wage this war in many locations simultaneously and for some years to come,” the Pentagon’s Quadrennial Defense Review explained that year.  Twelve years later, the Pentagon has officially announced that that long war is drawing to a close — even though at least seven counterinsurgency conflicts still rage across the Greater Middle East and Africa — and a new long war has begun, a permanent campaign to contain China and Russia in Eurasia.

“Great power competition, not terrorism, has emerged as the central challenge to U.S. security and prosperity,” claimed Pentagon Comptroller David Norquist while releasing the Pentagon’s $686 billion budget request in January.  “It is increasingly apparent that China and Russia want to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian values and, in the process, replace the free and open order that has enabled global security and prosperity since World War II.”

Of course, just how committed President Trump is to the preservation of that “free and open order” remains questionable given his determination to scuttle international treaties and ignite a global trade war. Similarly, whether China and Russia truly seek to undermine the existing world order or simply make it less American-centric is a question that deserves close attention, just not today.  The reason is simple enough. The screaming headline you should have seen in any paper (but haven’t) is this: the U.S. military has made up its mind about the future. It has committed itself and the nation to a three-front geopolitical struggle to resist Chinese and Russian advances in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East.

Important as this strategic shift may be, you won’t hear about it from the president, a man lacking the attention span necessary for such long-range strategic thinking and one who views Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping as “frenemies” rather than die-hard adversaries. To fully appreciate the momentous changes occurring in U.S. military planning, it’s necessary to take a deep dive into the world of Pentagon scripture: budget documents and the annual “posture statements” of regional commanders already overseeing the implementation of that just-born three-front strategy.

The New Geopolitical Chessboard

This renewed emphasis on China and Russia in U.S. military planning reflects the way top military officials are now reassessing the global strategic equation, a process that began long before Donald Trump entered the White House. Although after 9/11, senior commanders fully embraced the “long war against terror” approach to the world, their enthusiasm for endless counterterror operations leading essentially nowhere in remote and sometimes strategically unimportant places began to wane in recent years as they watched China and Russia modernizing their military forces and using them to intimidate neighbors.

While the long war against terror did fuel a vast, ongoing expansion of the Pentagon’s Special Operations Forces (SOF) — now a secretive army of 70,000 nestled inside the larger military establishment — it provided surprisingly little purpose or real work for the military’s “heavy metal” units: the Army’s tank brigades, the Navy’s carrier battle groups, the Air Force’s bomber squadrons, and so forth. Yes, the Air Force in particular has played a major supporting role in recent operations in Iraq and Syria, but the regular military has largely been sidelined there and elsewhere by lightly equipped SOF forces and drones. Planning for a “real war” against a “peer competitor” (one with forces and weaponry resembling our own) was until recently given far lower priority than the country’s never-ending conflicts across the Greater Middle East and Africa.  This alarmed and even angered those in the regular military whose moment, it seems, has now finally arrived.

“Today, we are emerging from a period of strategic atrophy, aware that our competitive military advantage has been eroding,” the Pentagon’s new National Defense Strategy declares. “We are facing increased global disorder, characterized by decline in the long-standing rules-based international order” — a decline officially attributed for the first time not to al-Qaeda and ISIS, but to the aggressive behavior of China and Russia. Iran and North Korea are also identified as major threats, but of a distinctly secondary nature compared to the menace posed by the two great-power competitors.

Unsurprisingly enough, this shift will require not only greater spending on costly, high-tech military hardware but also a redrawing of the global strategic map to favor the regular military. During the long war on terror, geography and boundaries appeared less important, given that terrorist cells seemed capable of operating anyplace where order was breaking down. The U.S. military, convinced that it had to be equally agile, readied itself to deploy (often Special Operations forces) to remote battlefields across the planet, borders be damned.

On the new geopolitical map, however, America faces well-armed adversaries with every intention of protecting their borders, so U.S. forces are now being arrayed along an updated version of an older, more familiar three-front line of confrontation. In Asia, the U.S. and its key allies (South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, and Australia) are to face China across a line extending from the Korean peninsula to the waters of the East and South China Seas and the Indian Ocean. In Europe, the U.S. and its NATO allies will do the same for Russia on a front extending from Scandinavia and the Baltic Republics south to Romania and then east across the Black Sea to the Caucasus. Between these two theaters of contention lies the ever-turbulent Greater Middle East, with the United States and its two crucial allies there, Israel and Saudi Arabia, facing a Russian foothold in Syria and an increasingly assertive Iran, itself drawing closer to China and Russia.  From the Pentagon’s perspective, this is to be the defining strategic global map for the foreseeable future. Expect most upcoming major military investments and initiatives to focus on bolstering U.S. naval, air, and ground strength on its side of these lines, as well as on targeting Sino-Russian vulnerabilities across them.

There’s no better way to appreciate the dynamics of this altered strategic outlook than to dip into the annual “posture statements” of the heads of the Pentagon’s “unified combatant commands,” or combined Army/Navy/Air Force/Marine Corps headquarters, covering the territories surrounding China and Russia: Pacific Command (PACOM), with responsibility for all U.S. forces in Asia; European Command (EUCOM), covering U.S. forces from Scandinavia to the Caucasus; and Central Command (CENTCOM), which oversees the Middle East and Central Asia where so many of the country’s counterterror wars are still underway.

The senior commanders of these meta-organizations are the most powerful U.S. officials in their “areas of responsibility” (AORs), exercising far more clout than any American ambassador stationed in the region (and often local heads of state as well). That makes their statements and the shopping lists of weaponry that invariably go with them of real significance for anyone who wants to grasp the Pentagon’s vision of America’s global military future.

The Indo-Pacific Front

Commanding PACOM is Admiral Harry Harris Jr., a long-time naval aviator. In his annual posture statement, delivered to the Senate Armed Services Committee on March 15th, Harris painted a grim picture of America’s strategic position in the Asia-Pacific region. In addition to the dangers posed by a nuclear-armed North Korea, he argued, China was emerging as a formidable threat to America’s vital interests. “The People’s Liberation Army’s rapid evolution into a modern, high-tech fighting force continues to be both impressive and concerning,” he asserted. “PLA capabilities are progressing faster than any other nation in the world, benefitting from robust resourcing and prioritization.”

Most threatening, in his view, is Chinese progress in developing intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) and advanced warships. Such missiles, he explained, could strike U.S. bases in Japan or on the island of Guam, while the expanding Chinese navy could challenge the U.S. Navy in seas off China’s coast and someday perhaps America’s command of the western Pacific. “If this [shipbuilding] program continues,” he said, “China will surpass Russia as the world’s second largest navy by 2020, when measured in terms of submarines and frigate-class ships or larger.”

To counter such developments and contain Chinese influence requires, of course, spending yet more taxpayer dollars on advanced weapons systems, especially precision-guided missiles. Admiral Harris called for vastly increasing investment in such weaponry in order to overpower current and future Chinese capabilities and ensure U.S. military dominance of China’s air and sea space. “In order to deter potential adversaries in the Indo-Pacific,” he declared, “we must build a more lethal force by investing in critical capabilities and harnessing innovation.”

His budgetary wish list was impressive. Above all, he spoke with great enthusiasm about new generations of aircraft and missiles — what are called, in Pentagonese, “anti-access/area-denial” systems — capable of striking Chinese IRBM batteries and other weapons systems intended to keep American forces safely away from Chinese territory. He also hinted that he wouldn’t mind having new nuclear-armed missiles for this purpose — missiles, he suggested, that could be launched from ships and planes and so would skirt the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, to which the U.S. is a signatory and which bans land-based intermediate-range nuclear missiles. (To give you a feel for the arcane language of Pentagon nuclear cognoscenti, here’s how he put it: “We must continue to expand Intermediate Nuclear Force Treaty-compliant theater strike capabilities to effectively counter adversary anti-access/area-denial [A2/AD] capabilities and force preservation tactics.”)

Finally, to further strengthen the U.S. defense line in the region, Harris called for enhanced military ties with various allies and partners, including Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, and Australia. PACOM’s goal, he stated, is to “maintain a network of like-minded allies and partners to cultivate principled security networks, which reinforce the free and open international order.” Ideally, he added, this network will eventually encompass India, further extending the encirclement of China.

The European Theater

A similarly embattled future, even if populated by different actors in a different landscape, was offered by Army General Curtis Scaparrotti, commander of EUCOM, in testimony before the Senate Committee on Armed Services on March 8th. For him, Russia is the other China. As he put it in a bone-chilling description, “Russia seeks to change the international order, fracture NATO, and undermine U.S. leadership in order to protect its regime, reassert dominance over its neighbors, and achieve greater influence around the globe… Russia has demonstrated its willingness and capability to intervene in countries along its periphery and to project power — especially in the Middle East.”

This, needless to say, is not the outlook we’re hearing from President Trump, who has long appeared reluctant to criticize Vladimir Putin or paint Russia as a full-fledged adversary. For American military and intelligence officials, however, Russia unquestionably poses the preeminent threat to U.S. security interests in Europe.  It is now being spoken of in a fashion that should bring back memories of the Cold War era. “Our highest strategic priority,” Scaparrotti insisted, “is to deter Russia from engaging in further aggression and exercising malign influence over our allies and partners. [To this end,] we are… updating our operational plans to provide military response options to defend our European allies against Russian aggression.”

The cutting edge of EUCOM’s anti-Russian drive is the European Deterrence Initiative (EDI), a project President Obama initiated in 2014 following the Russian seizure of Crimea. Originally known as the European Reassurance Initiative, the EDI is intended to bolster U.S. and NATO forces deployed in the “front-line states” — Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland — facing Russia on NATO’s “Eastern Front.” According to the Pentagon wish list submitted in February, some $6.5 billion are to be allocated to the EDI in 2019. Most of those funds will be used to stockpile munitions in the front-line states, enhance Air Force basing infrastructure, conduct increased joint military exercises with allied forces, and rotate additional U.S.-based forces into the region. In addition, some $200 million will be devoted to a Pentagon “advise, train, and equip” mission in Ukraine.

Like his counterpart in the Pacific theater, General Scaparrotti also turns out to have an expensive wish list of future weaponry, including advanced planes, missiles, and other high-tech weapons that, he claims, will counter modernizing Russian forces. In addition, recognizing Russia’s proficiency in cyberwarfare, he’s calling for a substantial investment in cyber technology and, like Admiral Harris, he cryptically hinted at the need for increased investment in nuclear forces of a sort that might be “usable” on a future European battlefield.

Between East and West: Central Command

Overseeing a startling range of war-on-terror conflicts in the vast, increasingly unstable region stretching from PACOM’s western boundary to EUCOM’s eastern one is the U.S. Central Command. For most of its modern history, CENTCOM has been focused on counterterrorism and the wars in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan in particular. Now, however, even as the previous long war continues, the Command is already beginning to position itself for a new Cold War-revisited version of perpetual struggle, a plan — to resurrect a dated term — to contain both China and Russia in the Greater Middle East.

In recent testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, CENTCOM commander Army General Joseph Votel concentrated on the status of U.S. operations against ISIS in Syria and against the Taliban in Afghanistan, but he also affirmed that the containment of China and Russia has become an integral part of CENTCOM’s future strategic mission: “The recently published National Defense Strategy rightly identifies the resurgence of great power competition as our principal national security challenge and we see the effects of that competition throughout the region.”

Through its support of the Syrian regime of Bashar al-Assad and its efforts to gain influence with other key actors in the region, Russia, Votel claimed, is playing an increasingly conspicuous role in Centcom’s AOR. China is also seeking to enhance its geopolitical clout both economically and through a small but growing military presence. Of particular concern, Votel asserted, is the Chinese-managed port at Gwadar in Pakistan on the Indian Ocean and a new Chinese base in Djibouti on the Red Sea, across from Yemen and Saudi Arabia. Such facilities, he claimed, contribute to China’s “military posture and force projection” in CENTCOM’s AOR and are signals of a challenging future for the U.S. military.

Under such circumstances, Votel testified, it is incumbent upon CENTCOM to join PACOM and EUCOM in resisting Chinese and Russian assertiveness. “We have to be prepared to address these threats, not just in the areas in which they reside, but the areas in which they have influence.”  Without providing any details, he went on to say, “We have developed… very good plans and processes for how we will do that.”

What that means is unclear at best, but despite Donald Trump’s campaign talk about a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria once ISIS and the Taliban are defeated, it seems increasingly clear that the U.S. military is preparing to station its forces in those (and possibly other) countries across CENTCOM’s region of responsibility indefinitely, fighting terrorism, of course, but also ensuring that there will be a permanent U.S. military presence in areas that could see intensifying geopolitical competition among the major powers.

An Invitation to Disaster

In relatively swift fashion, American military leaders have followed up their claim that the U.S. is in a new long war by sketching the outlines of a containment line that would stretch from the Korean Peninsula around Asia across the Middle East into parts of the former Soviet Union in Eastern Europe and finally to the Scandinavian countries. Under their plan, American military forces — reinforced by the armies of trusted allies — should garrison every segment of this line, a grandiose scheme to block hypothetical advances of Chinese and Russian influence that, in its global reach, should stagger the imagination. Much of future history could be shaped by such an outsized effort.

Questions for the future include whether this is either a sound strategic policy or truly sustainable. Attempting to contain China and Russia in such a manner will undoubtedly provoke countermoves, some undoubtedly difficult to resist, including cyber attacks and various kinds of economic warfare. And if you imagined that a war on terror across huge swaths of the planet represented a significant global overreach for a single power, just wait. Maintaining large and heavily-equipped forces on three extended fronts will also prove exceedingly costly and will certainly conflict with domestic spending priorities and possibly provoke a divisive debate over the reinstatement of the draft.

However, the real question — unasked in Washington at the moment — is: Why pursue such a policy in the first place? Are there not other ways to manage the rise of China and Russia’s provocative behavior? What appears particularly worrisome about this three-front strategy is its immense capacity for confrontation, miscalculation, escalation, and finally actual war rather than simply grandiose war planning.

At multiple points along this globe-spanning line — the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea, Syria, the South China Sea, and the East China Sea, to name just a few — forces from the U.S. and China or Russia are already in significant contact, often jostling for position in a potentially hostile manner. At any moment, one of these encounters could provoke a firefight leading to unintended escalation and, in the end, possibly all-out combat. From there, almost anything could happen, even the use of nuclear weapons.  Clearly, officials in Washington should be thinking hard before committing Americans to a strategy that will make this increasingly likely and could turn what is still long-war planning into an actual long war with deadly consequences.