RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/japans-biden-jitters-11609197375?mod=opinion_lead_po

In a 2020 campaign with little foreign policy substance, the idea Joe Biden mentioned most was restoring alliances. Which alliances? With Mr. Biden’s inauguration less than four weeks away, some allies in the Asia-Pacific are apprehensive.

Last week Japan’s number-two civilian defense official told Reuters: “We are concerned China will expand its aggressive stance into areas other than Hong Kong. I think one of the next targets, or what everyone is worried about, is Taiwan.”

Yasuhide Nakayama added: “So far, I haven’t yet seen a clear policy or an announcement on Taiwan from Joe Biden. I would like to hear it quickly, then we can also prepare our response on Taiwan in accordance.” He also asked, according to Reuters, “How will Joe Biden in the White House react in any case if China crosses this red line?”

Hardliners in Beijing see democratic Taiwan as a separatist province and are determined to bring it under their control. They also want Taiwan’s advanced microchip technology. Meanwhile, opinion in Taiwan has moved against unification, especially as China reneges on its treaty obligations by arresting democracy supporters in Hong Kong. A Chinese military operation across the 110-mile Taiwan Strait during Mr. Biden’s term can’t be ruled out.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16900/germany-russia-nord-stream-pipeline

“We continue to call on Russia to cease using its energy resources for coercive purposes. Russia uses its energy export pipelines to create national and regional dependencies on Russian energy supplies, leveraging these dependencies to expand its political, economic, and military influence, weaken European security, and undermine U.S. national security and foreign policy interests. These pipelines also reduce European energy diversification, and hence weaken European energy security. — U.S. Department of State, “Protecting Europe’s Energy Security Act,” October 20, 2020.

On December 24, the Kremlin admitted that U.S. sanctions may succeed in preventing completion of the pipeline. The U.S. government is now readying a fresh round of congressionally mandated sanctions that could deal a fatal blow to the project, according to the Reuters news agency.

A report by the Swedish Defense Research Agency found that Russia has threatened to cut energy supplies to Central and Eastern European more than 50 times. Even after some of those states joined the European Union, Russian threats continued.

The United States is ratcheting up the threat of sanctions against European companies in an effort to deal a death blow to the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline between Russia and Germany. The pipeline would double shipments of Russian natural gas to Germany by transporting the gas under the Baltic Sea. U.S. President Donald Trump, like his predecessor Barack Obama, has criticized the project because it would make Germany “captive” to Russia for its energy supplies.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/16866/biden-trump-middle-east

It is worth remembering that, when President Trump took office, the region was still reeling from the dire consequences of former US President Barack Obama’s inept and naive handling of the region.

By early January 2017, when Mr Trump took office, Iran was squandering the tens of billions of dollars it received for signing the nuclear deal, which Mr Obama had helped broker in 2015, on expanding its malign influence across the landscape of the Middle East.

Mr Trump’s Middle East legacy… completely redefined the landscape of the region from the chaos and conflict that prevailed when Mr Obama left office. Nowadays, the momentum in the region is moving towards peace, not conflict….

[T]he challenge for the incoming Biden administration now will be to see how it can pursue a different foreign policy agenda without jeopardising the very significant achievements that have been accomplished during Mr Trump’s tenure.

Certainly, if the incoming Biden administration makes any serious attempt to undermine Mr Trump’s legacy in the Middle East, it will do so at its peril.

The incoming Biden administration has indicated that one of its top priorities will be to adopt a new approach in Washington’s dealings with the Middle East. In particular it wants to revive the flawed nuclear deal with Iran as well as re-establish a dialogue with the Palestinian leadership, which imposed a three-year boycott on the Trump administration.

Yet, while the new Biden team, the majority of whom are relics from the Obama administration, are keen to assert a new policy agenda for the region, they also need to take care that, in so doing, they do not squander the impressive legacy US President Donald Trump has built up in the region.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/beijing-tests-joe-biden-11608334532?mod=opinion_lead_pos1

No one should mistake what the jailing of Jimmy Lai and other Hong Kong champions of democracy signals: China is testing Joe Biden.

Mr. Lai is the founder of one of Hong Kong’s most popular newspapers, Apple Daily. Now he’s in jail facing several charges, including one from a new national security law that China bullied through. We know China was enraged when Mr. Lai met with American politicians on trips to Washington in 2019, including Vice President Mike Pence and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and the basis of the national security charge is that he’s encouraged foreign governments to impose sanctions on Hong Kong and Beijing.

Mr. Lai has been denied bail and publicly exhibited in shackles. Ta Kung Pao, the Chinese Communist Party mouthpiece in Hong Kong, says he should be extradited to the mainland for trial. Friends worry that would be a death sentence for the 72-year-old publisher.

President Xi Jinping is hoping to intimidate Hong Kongers into silence and testing whether Mr. Biden and his aides will look the other way at these and other abuses. So far Mr. Xi must be pleased at the lack of response.

One of the Trump Administration’s achievements was to recognize that China has become America’s primary adversary. It steals U.S. technology, monitors and intimidates critics on American university campuses, engages in massive spying, claims new territory in the South China Sea, and threatens U.S. allies in Taiwan and Australia. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has pushed back, from condemning China’s incarceration of the Uighurs to sanctioning officials responsible for the crackdown in Hong Kong.

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2020/12/09/america_surrenders_to_china_144805.html

The United States is mired in a succession crisis. There is much loose talk about another civil war erupting between supporters of President-elect Joe Biden and President Donald Trump. As this occurs, America’s enemies act boldly against U.S. interests. Each precious moment wasted on deciding which septuagenarian won the White House in November is another moment that the Chinese Communist Party continues its long march to global dominance. 

China’s dominance will not come at first in the form of military conquest. Beijing is very much a 21st century power, and its program for displacing the United States will look far different from what the Soviet Union tried during the Cold War. Chinese dominance will be brought on by superior trade, industrial, and technological development practices. 

Beijing recently signed a revolutionary free trade alliance with several Asian powers—including Australia—meant to increase China’s influence over the Indo-Pacific and diminish Washington’s hard-won influence there. China announced it had achieved quantum supremacy—a lodestar for whichever country or company seeks to pioneer quantum computing. Many technologists, like Scott Amyx, have previously argued that quantum computing could be as disruptive to the world economy as the cotton gin or automobile were. Whoever dominates this new industry will write humanity’s future. 

And then there’s the new space race between the United States and China. Private launch companies, including SpaceX, have revolutionized America’s overall space sector. But the lack of political vision or leadership means that real gains for America in space will be slowly realized, if ever. President Trump was the only American leader in decades who seemed to understand the promises and challenges of space. Yet, the rest of the government never fully embraced Trump’s robust space program. Now, it may be too late. 

https://www.wsj.com/articles/trial-lawyers-vs-arab-israeli-peace-11607294549?mod=opinion_lead_pos4

When the White House announced in October that Sudan planned to normalize relations with Israel, it showed that the peace movement could extend beyond the Persian Gulf. The northeast African country is changing for the better, but a pair of self-interested Senators could derail this progress.

Sudan had been a geopolitical nightmare for most of dictator Omar al-Bashir’s 30 years in power. He fell last year, and Abdalla Hamdok, an economist and reformer, became Prime Minister. A quarter-century after the country hosted Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda, the transitional government is opening up civil society and promising democratic elections in 2022.

Washington and Khartoum have negotiated a broad deal to improve ties. On top of the agreement with Jerusalem, Sudan has put $335 million in an escrow account to pay victims of al Qaeda’s 1998 U.S. embassy bombings. In exchange the U.S. would lift its state sponsor of terrorism designation and restore Sudan’s sovereign immunity. The deal would open the country to foreign investment, which its shrinking economy desperately needs. But Congress needs to approve.

Mr. Hamdok leads a fragile government and has survived an assassination attempt. Many Islamists are unhappy with his turn to the West, and some problematic officials from the Bashir era remain influential. It could be tough for the reformer to keep pushing change—or even remain in office—if the agreement falls through and his legitimacy becomes questionable. Israeli-Sudanese normalization would be off the table, and Sudan’s currently poor ties with Iran would likely warm up.

If there was any doubt that a return to ill-fated “Iran Deal” would spark almost immediate conflict in the Middle East, it was extinguished last week.

Accounts vary as to how Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the godfather of the Iranian bomb, was assassinated. One Iranian account claimed that he was killed by a remote controlled pick-up truck armed with a gatling gun. Others suggest it was conducted by as many as sixty highly trained operatives.

One thing, though, is for certain. This was a state-conducted assassination that only a handful of countries could have executed.

It is no surprise that responsibility for the attack was swiftly ascribed to Israel’s Mossad. It had what criminologists call the categorical trinity: motive, means, and opportunity.

In a sense, it would be hardly surprising for Israel — if confronted with an opportunity — to launch such an attack.

Fakhrizadeh was central to Iran’s nuclear strategy — a plan to build a bomb with one target in mind: Israel. Prime Minister Netanyahu called him out by name in a press conference two years ago. Removing Fakhrizadeh constitutes a major disruption for the Ayatollahs nuclear strategy and the existential danger it poses for the world’s only Jewish state, and one painfully aware that threats of genocide can become reality.

Israel recognises what the Iranian bomb is — a singular threat to its continued survival. It would not take more than a few such bombs to entirely eradicate its people. Iran’s pathological, feverish, dogmatic hatred of Israel means no eventuality can be excluded.

For Israel then, eliminating Fakhrizadeh was not then a matter of mere geostrategy but survival.