RUTHFULLY YOURS

Washington and Pyongyang exchange threats as the latter continues to evoke the wrath of world powers with its latest nuclear test.

The nuclear confrontation between the US and North Korea entered a critical phase Sunday with North Korea’s conduct of an underground test of a thermonuclear bomb.

If the previous round of this confrontation earlier this summer revolved around Pyongyang’s threat to attack the US territory of Guam, Sunday’s test, together with North Korea’s recent tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the continental US, was a direct threat to US cities.

In other words, the current confrontation isn’t about US superpower status in Asia, and the credibility of US deterrence or the capabilities of US military forces in the Pacific. The confrontation is now about the US’s ability to protect the lives of its citizens.

The distinction tells us a number of important things. All of them are alarming.

First, because this is about the lives of Americans, rather than allied populations like Japan and South Korea, the US cannot be diffident in its response to North Korea’s provocation. While attenuated during the Obama administration, the US’s position has always been that US military forces alone are responsible for guaranteeing the collective security of the American people.

Pyongyang is now directly threatening that security with hydrogen bombs. So if the Trump administration punts North Korea’s direct threat to attack US population centers with nuclear weapons to the UN Security Council, it will communicate profound weakness to its allies and adversaries alike.

Obviously, this limits the options that the Trump administration has. But it also clarifies the challenge it faces.

The second implication of North Korea’s test of their plutonium-based bomb is that the US’s security guarantees, which form the basis of its global power and its alliance system are on the verge of becoming completely discredited.

In an interview Sunday with Fox News’s Trish Regan, former US ambassador to the UN John Bolton was asked about the possible repercussions of a US military assault against North Korea for the security of South Korea.

Regan asked, “What are we risking though if we say we’re going to go in with strategic military strength?… Are we going to end up with so many people’s lives gone in South Korea, in Seoul because we make that move?” Bolton responded with brutal honesty.

“Let me ask you this: how do you feel about dead Americans?” In other words, Bolton said that under prevailing conditions, the US faces the painful choice between imperiling its own citizens and imperiling the citizens of an allied nation. And things will only get worse. Bolton warned that if North Korea’s nuclear threat is left unaddressed, US options will only become more problematic and limited in the years to come.

Robert Curry serves on the Board of Directors of the Claremont Institute and is the author of Common Sense Nation: Unlocking the Forgotten Power of the American Idea from Encounter Books. He also serves on the Board of Distinguished Advisors for the Ronald Reagan Center for Freedom and Understanding. https://amgreatness.com/2017/09/04/whats-matter-germany/

Germany is making trouble again. This time it is not sending young men in uniform swarming across its borders to conquer Europe. Instead, it is using its position of economic dominance to cause young Muslim men from outside Europe to swarm across Europe’s borders. In World War II, Germany’s conquest of Europe and subsequent defeat left the continent in ruins. This time, however, Germany’s actions seem designed to bring about Europe’s destruction by inviting conquest rather than by initiating it.

First the Kaiser, then Hitler, now Angela Merkel. Over and over again and in different ways, Germany’s hubris has invented ways to take Europe down. How can we possibly be here again?

If you take a moment to ponder the title of Gertrude Himmelfarb’s book, The Roads to Modernity: The British, French, and American Enlightenments, you will notice that Germany is conspicuously absent from Himmelfarb’s subtitle and her book. This is an important clue about the shape of the West today. After all, the story of Germany comes close to defining the conflicts and agonies of the 20th century and gives clues about our present crises. It is a remarkable fact that twice in the 20th century Germany fought the three nations in Himmelfarb’s list in two enormously destructive wars. Those conflicts strongly suggest that Germany was the enemy, not just of those nation states, but also of the Enlightenment traditions those nations represent.

The Enlightenment was a period of political revolutions in Britain, America, and France. Those revolutions resulted from a radical change in thinking in those three countries.

Britain’s revolution came first, in 1688. It replaced the divine right of kings with rule by the king (or queen) in Parliament, a regime that is still recognizable in Britain today. The radically new American idea was forged in the American Enlightenment and recognizes the sovereignty of the people (the subject of my book, Common Sense Nation: Unlocking the Forgotten Power of the American Idea). America’s original constitutional design is also still recognizable, though America in recent years has been living under an increasingly post-constitutional regime. France keeps trying to make its version of the Enlightenment project work politically, reflecting its inherent problems. France’s current attempt, the Fifth Republic, was established only very recently, in 1958.

During the Enlightenment era there was a crucial parting of the ways between Germany, on the one hand, and Britain, America, and France on the other. Here is Stephen Hicks in his fine book on postmodernism:

Anglo-American culture and German culture split decisively from each other, one following a broadly Enlightenment program, the other a Counter-Enlightenment one.

How would the 20th century have played out if Germany had belonged in Himmelfarb’s subtitle such that war between a 20th century France and Germany would have been as unlikely as war between 20th century France and Britain? That, it seems, would have averted both world wars and saved lives by the tens of millions.

Instead of being part of the Enlightenment project, Germany was the heartland of Romanticism, the 19th-century movement that followed the Enlightenment era. Romanticism was the rejection of Enlightenment thinking, and it started in Germany.

North Korea conducted its sixth nuclear test on Sunday, detonating a bomb 10 times more powerful than its last test a year ago. The South Korean government says Pyongyang is also preparing its third test of an intercontinental ballistic missile. The tests underscore how much U.S. intelligence has underestimated the North’s nuclear progress, which will soon make American cities vulnerable to attack.

The standard refrain of foreign-policy experts is that the world has no good options other than war or acquiescence. The policy default, repeated by the Trump Administration, is pleading with China to coerce North Korea into giving up its nuclear program, despite evidence that Chinese leaders don’t want to help and Kim Jong Un may not take their orders.

A military strike has to be a last resort because it might lead to a larger war that could kill tens of thousands in South Korea and Japan, including U.S. troops. But the U.S. does have other options. Washington can put severe pressure on North Korea and the Kim Jong Un regime. To understand how, take the standard tool kit of statecraft, sometimes summed up by the acronym Dimefil: diplomatic, information, military, economic, finance, intelligence and law enforcement.

• Diplomatic. The U.S. can put far more pressure on countries to cut or restrict ties with North Korea. While the regime preaches an ideology of self-reliance, it needs international ties to raise hard currency and source the raw materials and technology it needs.

• Information. Defectors are already sending information into the North about the outside world. The U.S. and its allies can expand that effort and encourage elites to defect or stage an internal coup.

• Military. Building up missile defenses and conventional forces will diminish the North’s ability to use nuclear blackmail. Deploying tactical nuclear weapons to South Korea would make the threat to retaliate against a nuclear strike more credible.

• Economic. Donald Trump tweeted Sunday that the U.S. is considering sanctions against anyone who does business with North Korea. The regime uses networks of Chinese traders to evade sanctions and also to conduct more legitimate business. Applying sanctions to these networks could curtail the North’s trade.

• Financial. The U.S. can cut off North Korea’s access to financial intermediaries that conduct transactions in U.S. dollars. In June the U.S. applied secondary sanctions to the Bank of Dandong, a Chinese bank. Larger Chinese banks should suffer a similar fate if they continue to facilitate trade with North Korea.

• Intelligence. The Proliferation Security Initiative begun under the George W. Bush Administration tracked and intercepted the North’s weapons exports. The program could be enlarged to block other exports forbidden under United Nations sanctions.

• Legal. A U.N. Commission of Inquiry in 2014 reported evidence of human-rights abuses in the North’s huge network of prison camps. China and Russia have shielded the Kim regime from prosecution at the International Criminal Court for these crimes against humanity. Pressure for accountability will further isolate the North and encourage elites to defect.

The North is especially vulnerable to pressure this year because a severe drought from April to June reduced the early grain harvest by 30%. If the main harvest is also affected, Pyongyang may need to import more food while sanctions restrict its ability to earn foreign currency. Even in a normal year, the North needs to import about 500,000 tons of grain.

Lyle J. Goldstein is Professor of Strategy in the China Maritime Studies Institute (CMSI) at the United States Naval War College in Newport RI.
The world has held its breath over the last two months. For nuclear strategists and specialists in the field of international security, this boiling predicament on the Korean Peninsula has been less an occasion for fatalist joking than a grim spectacle of just how dangerous and destabilizing the process of nuclear proliferation can be in any situation, let alone one in which both “players” in an asymmetric rivalry are inclined toward bombast, ambiguity, and risk-taking. http://nationalinterest.org/feature/here-what-chinese-scholars-think-about-the-north-korea-22145?page=show

When Donald Trump first took office, he and his national security advisors quickly reached the conclusion that China is the key to resolution or even just managing the volatile situation on the Korean Peninsula. In this conclusion, the 45th president was not actually wrong. He simply underestimated the difficulties and complexities involved, including the imperative for Washington to make some very hard choices in order to ease the crisis.

China is best positioned among all the powers of Northeast Asia to wield both sticks, and more importantly carrots, to manage a peaceful resolution of the North Korea nuclear crisis. In this space, I have repeatedly argued for the prioritization of the North Korean nuclear issue within U.S. foreign and defense policy circles, as well as within U.S.-China relations. However, such a policy would require a close understanding of Beijing’s complex and often contradictory approach to Pyongyang. This approach has a significant geo-economic dimension, likely involves calculations with respect to Chinese interests in the Arctic, could require some “rebalancing” toward Pyongyang, as well as a certain understanding of how military scenarios could unfold from a Chinese perspective on the Peninsula—all themes I have explored in previous editions of this Dragon Eye series.

Still, it has not been possible to develop a relatively comprehensive typology of Chinese assessments regarding the Korean nuclear issue. But that is now almost realizable thanks to the diligent work of a Chinese postdoctoral researcher named Zhou Xiaojia [周晓加] at Fudan University of Shanghai. This academic published an ambitious survey of “The North Korean Nuclear Issue and the Perspectives of Chinese Scholars” [朝鲜核问题与中国学者的观点] in the May/June 2017 issue (No. 3) of the international relations journal Peace and Development [和平与发展]. This edition of Dragon Eye will summarize Zhou’s survey in the hopes of contributing to enhanced U.S.-China mutual understanding on this most vexing, yet important issue for global security. Zhou’s initial estimate is both crisp and profound: “Chinese scholars do not agree” [中国学术界看法不一].

Zhou’s first cut on the issue concerns the underlying reasons or responsibility for the current crisis. One group of scholars seems to blame the inherent difficulties of achieving cooperation, according to this survey. Thus, Fan Jishe [樊吉社] explains that given the twin goals of denuclearization and preserving stability, the problem lies in that Washington prioritizes the former, while Beijing prioritizes the latter. Another scholar Yang Xiyu [杨希雨] suggests that the major divide between China and the United States is that Beijing has always accepted North Korea’s right to peacefully develop nuclear energy, while Washington never did. The scholar Li Kaisheng [李开盛] sees no basis for cooperation because of different interests and a fundamental lack of strategic trust between Beijing and Washington. Li explains that one of the major restraints on the United States possible use of force against North Korea has been “China’s opposition and even [the possibility] of Chinese counter-attack” [中国的反对甚至反击]. He also straightforwardly explains that China will not accept the removal of the North Korean ruling regime, because that would mean U.S. military power directly on China’s border and the loss of China’s “strategic buffer” [战略缓冲地带]. Taking a rather less confrontational approach, the scholar Zhu Qin [朱芹] observes that the Six Party Talks failed because trust and punishment mechanisms were lacking. She also notes that those talks tended to consistently favor the stronger parties over the weaker parties, leading to increasing alienation by the latter. The scholar Cheng Xiaoyong [程晓勇] emphasizes the role of China and Russia insisting on preserving stability on the Korean Peninsula. That trend is further reinforced, he explains, by South Korea’s likewise strong aversion to the use of force.

It seems illogical for self-described “progressives” to turn a blind eye to the misery of fellow females forced to endure the kind of unimaginable treatment documented by best-selling authors Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Azar Nafisi.

The reason for that is rooted in a regard for “multiculturalism” in which anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism are considered more vital than the victimization of women.

There is, of course, never any mention of the “people who suffered under Eastern colonialism,” such as the Iranian victims of the current regime, or the victims of al-Qaeda and ISIS, or the nearly 11,000,000 Muslims killed since 1948. Of these, 90% by other Muslims; only 3% by Israel.

In spite of repeated and verified accounts of the physical and sexual abuse of women and girls throughout Muslim parts of the world, Western feminists at best remain silent, and at worst supportive of the male oppressors.

It seems illogical for self-described “progressives” to turn a blind eye to the misery of fellow females forced to endure the kind of unimaginable treatment documented by best-selling authors Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Azar Nafisi. The reason for that is rooted in a regard for “multiculturalism” in which anti-Americanism and anti-Zionism are considered more vital than the victimization of women.

In such a value system, the highest priority is the ultimate goal of destroying pluralistic and democratic Western values, which the far-left views as a euphemism for conservative, capitalist, colonialist, imperialist ideals that must be eradicated. They do not even bother to realize that throughout history, Muslim conquests — not even speaking of Asia — but of the Christian Byzantine Empire, the Middle East, North Africa, Eastern Europe, Greece, Spain and Northern Cyprus have been even more repressive, brutal and absolute. According to this “liberal,” essentially totalitarian, worldview, the United States and Israel are what the Iranian ayatollahs call the “Great Satan” and the “Little Satan,” while radical groups and regimes that oppose America and the Jewish state are supposedly allies.

It is thus that Judith Butler, professor of comparative literature at University of California, Berkeley and a “gender and third-wave feminist queer theorist,” justifies her support for Islamist terrorist organizations such as Hamas and Hezbollah, which she referred to at a 2006 anti-Israel teach-in as “social movements that are progressive… part of a global Left.”

This view is exactly upside-down and backwards. Hamas, the Sunni terrorist organization that rules the Gaza Strip, and Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Shiite terrorist group based in Lebanon and with a foothold in Syria, are not only mass murderers, but would subject Butler herself to Sharia (Islamic) law and deny her all human rights, let alone those associated with her womanhood and lesbianism. Butler is living in a fantasy world if she considers radical Islamists “progressive” in any shape or form.

As far back as 2001, Bronwyn Winter, a senior lecturer at the University of Sydney and the Director of the Faculty of Arts International and Comparative Literary Studies program, noted that the “‘multiculturalist’ discourse… legitimates even the most fundamentalist Islamic voices in the name of ‘cultural difference.'”

European leaders accepted the transformation of parts of their countries into enemy territories. They see that a demographic disaster is taking place. They know that in two or three decades, Europe will be ruled by Islam.

Ten years ago, describing what he called “the last days of Europe,” the historian Walter Laqueur said that European civilization was dying and that only old monuments and museums would survive. His diagnosis was too optimistic. Old monuments and museums might well be blown up. Look nowhere else than what the black-hooded supporters of “Antifa” — an “anti-fascist” movement whose actions are totally fascistic — are doing to statues in the United States.

The terrorist attack in Barcelona received the same reaction as all the large-scale terrorist attacks in Europe: tears, prayers, flowers, candles, teddy bears, and protestations that “Islam means peace “. When people gathered to demand tougher measures against the rising influence of Islamism across the continent, they were confronted by an “anti-fascist” rally. Muslims organized a demonstration to defend Islam; they claimed that Muslims living in Spain are the “main victims” of terrorism. The president of the Spanish Federation of Islamic Religious Societies, Mounir Benjelloun El Andaloussi, spoke of a “conspiracy against Islam” and said that terrorists were “instruments” of Islamophobic hatred. The mayor of Barcelona, ​​ Ada Colau, cried in front of the cameras and said that her city would remain an “open city” for all immigrants. The governor of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont, used almost the same language. Spain’s Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, a conservative, was the only one who dared to call jihadist terrorism by its name. Almost all European journalists said Rajoy’s words were too harsh.

After the attack in Barcelona, Spain, when people gathered at the site to demand tougher measures against the rising influence of Islamism across the continent, they were confronted by an “anti-fascist” rally. Pictured: “Anti-fascists” beat a man who they claimed is a “right-wing sympathizer” at Las Ramblas, Barcelona, on August 18, 2017. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images)

Mainstream European newspapers describing the horror once again sought explanations to what they kept calling “inexplicable”. The leading Spanish daily newspaper, El Pais, wrote in an editorial that “radicalization” is the bitter fruit of the “exclusion” of certain “communities,” and added that the answer was more “social justice”. In France, Le Monde suggested that terrorists want to “incite hatred”, and stressed that Europeans must avoid “prejudice”. In the UK, The Telegraph explained that “killers attack the West because the West is the West; not because of what it does” — but it spoke of “killers”, not “terrorists” or “Islamists”.

Anti-terrorism specialists, interviewed on television, said that the attacks, carried out across the continent at an ever-faster pace, will become deadlier. They noted that the original plan of the Barcelona jihadists had been to destroy the Sagrada Família Cathedral and kill thousands of people. The specialists parroted that Europeans will just have to learn to live with the threat of widespread carnage. They did not offer any solutions. Once again, many said that terrorists are not really Muslims — and that the attacks “had nothing to do with Islam”.

Many leaders of Western European countries treat Islamic terrorism as a fact of life that Europeans must get used to — as some kind of aberration unrelated to Islam. They often avoid speaking of “terrorism” at all. After the attack in Barcelona,​​ German Chancellor Angela Merkel issued a brief reproach about a “revolting” event. She expressed “solidarity” with the Spanish people, and then moved on. French President Emmanuel Macron tweeted a message of condolence and spoke of a “tragic attack.”

In the current crisis, governments, NGOs, charities and the media have all embraced migrants in the millions, and welcomed them with open arms. The Jews during the Second World War — most of whom were turned away, turned in, or betrayed by all European governments — were not so fortunate.

All of Europe’s efforts have been devoted to rescuing migrants: on borders, at sea and in cities that host asylum centers. Such distinctions, however, are apparently not enough: the immigration question must become a new ideology, like a religion. That seems why there is an orchestrated attempt by large segments of the establishment to turn Europe’s rescue operations into a “new Holocaust”. Questioning them must become a taboo. Even Pope Francis, who compared a center for migrants to “concentration camps”, adopted this nonsense.

Despite Muslims historically having been the most aggressive colonizers, Europe’s élites have come to idealize them due to a mix of demographic decline, misconception of Islam, self-hate for the Western culture and a fatal, romanticized attraction for the decolonized Third World people.

What is the best way to shut down the debate on immigration? By heightening the language to levels impossible to be debated. That is what has been happening in the new — and false — trend of comparing the waves of migrants arriving in Europe to Jews during the Holocaust.

Recently, Franco Berardi, the Italian author of a play in Germany, “Auschwitz on the Beach”, charged Europeans with setting up “concentration camps” on its territory. One line in the performance was, “Salt water has replaced Zyklon B” — a reference to the poison gas used by the Nazis in World War II to exterminate Jews. After protests from the Jewish community, the play was cancelled. Adam Szymczyk, the director of the Documenta exhibition, defined the show as a “warning against historical amnesia, a moral wake-up call, a call to collective action”. This response, while true for the mass-murder of Jews, is a grotesque distortion of what has been happening in Europe for the last three years. On the contrary, governments, non-governmental organizations, bureaucrats, charities and the media have all embraced migrants in the millions, and welcomed them with open arms. The Jews during the Second World War — most of whom were turned away, turned in or betrayed by all European governments — were not so fortunate.

Auschwitz on the Beach?
In the current crisis, governments, NGOs, charities and the media have all embraced migrants in the millions, and welcomed them with open arms. Pictured: The Greek Red Cross helps an Afghan migrant who just arrived from Turkey with an inflatable boat on Lesvos Island, Greece, on December 13, 2015. (Image source: Ggia/Wikimedia Commons)

The current misrepresentation was first formulated by Sweden’s deputy prime minister, Asa Romson. “We are turning the Mediterranean into the new Auschwitz”, she said. Since then, this sham comparison has entered into the European mainstream, and the death of six million Jews has been turned into an ideological platform — a parable of human suffering — to justify importing even more unknown migrants. Even Pope Francis, who compared a center for migrants to “concentration camps”, adopted this nonsense.

Jewish organizations in the US rightly condemned the comparison. David Harris, Executive Director of American Jewish Committee, said: “The Nazis and their allies erected and used concentration camps for slave labor and the extermination of millions of people during World War II, there is no comparison to the magnitude of that tragedy.”

All of Europe’s efforts, in fact, have been devoted to rescuing migrants: on borders, at sea and in cities hosting asylum centers. Such distinctions, however, are apparently not enough: the immigration question is apparently supposed to become the new ideology, like a religion. That is why there seems an orchestrated attempt by large segments of the establishment to turn the rescue operations into a “new Holocaust”. Questioning them must become a taboo.