Warren Getler: Constantine Menges and the threat from the Russia-China axis

Constantine Menges (1939-2004)

While China last week floated a relative non-starter of a peace plan to end Russia's unprovoked war in Ukraine, Beijing at the same time is reported to be preparing the sale of artillery shells and other munitions to Moscow. We take a look at the current dynamic through the lens of the late Constantine Menges, a former senior national security adviser to President Ronald Reagan.

Sometime in the next couple of months, China’s leader, Xi Jinping, is expected to land in Moscow to meet with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. That meeting could push world events toward a negotiated settlement in the war in Ukraine; or, more likely, it could lead to a prolongation of that year-long conflagration through the supply of Chinese-made offensive weaponry to the struggling Russian military.

Whatever the outcome, the Xi-Putin meeting exemplifies a further solidification of the post-Soviet Russian-China alliance, something which my late neighbor and U.S. presidential adviser, Constantine Menges, predicted would take hold with a vengeance and would threaten U.S. national security interests on an unprecedented scale.

Those predictions date back some 20 years, and they seem to be very much worth addressing amid the current geopolitical landscape. We ignore Menges at our peril.

In Washington-area policy circles, Menges (who worked in senior roles at the White House and the CIA) was known for being both persistent and prescient. “Constant Menace” was his light-hearted handle among those who respected his analytic skills and his passion for putting views forward on how to best protect U.S. national security and economic interests in an emergent tri-lateral world.

Menges, who died of cancer in 2004, made it his dying wish to his wife, Nancy, that his deeply researched work, China: The Gathering Threat, be published posthumously. Today, it’s extremely hard to find the book (published by Nelson Current in 2005,) and its ranking on Amazon is, sadly, way back in the dusty-shelf space.

Yet Menges’s unquestionably powerful and illuminating tome stands as the potential successor to statesman George F. Kennan’s remarkable article published under the pseudonym “X” in Foreign Affairs in July 1947. Kennan’s article, urging containment of the Soviet Union, set a course for U.S. foreign policy – rigorous Cold War policy -- in the immediate wake of World War II and throughout the closing decades of the last century. Menges’s overlooked work, which goes to the “big picture” kind of thinking that is often absent from today’s debates, should set descriptive swim-lanes for U.S. foreign, economic and military policy in the years running up to 2050. Kennan’s seminal article, entitled “The Sources of Soviet Conduct,” clearly has its 21st Century match in Menges’s work, a richly footnoted book that focuses in excruciating detail on the sources of post-Soviet Russian conduct and associated Chinese conduct on the world stage.

In these times of heightened geopolitical uncertainty amid the ongoing tragedy in Ukraine, I’m reminded of the over-the-fence talks in Georgetown I had in the early 2000s with Dr. Menges: about the new Russian leader, Putin, and about the emergent economic powerhouse, China.

Menges, in his quiet professorial way, would assert that while Middle East turmoil and state-sponsored terrorism would provide major challenges to American and Western interests, the “long-game” had to be focused on what he described as the coming dualistic challenge from both the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation, working in concert with each other.

Menges’s prescriptive book, written in 2004, lays out these key points, foreshadowing the current state of play.

*America’s most strategic challenge:  the “China-Russia strategic axis is explicitly intended to counter the United States around the world and provide the basis for a still undefined ‘new political and economic order’ that China has declared to be a major global objective and which Putin endorsed at his first summit,” with the then Chinese leadership some 20 years ago.

*The “China-Russia strategic axis makes the world more dangerous. For the first time in forty years, the U.S. faces these nuclear-armed major powers coordinating their international actions or secretly providing each other with military guarantees in the event of conflict with the U.S. or other countries.”

*China’s ultimate goal is “regional dominance,” including the South China Sea zone of influence, leading to potential hemispheric dominance stretching to Europe through both economic muscle (direct investment) and military presence. Taiwan – the forever hot-button target -- sits in the cross-hairs of China’s growing shore-based phalanx of ballistic-missile systems, and the U.S. strategic response to an invasion by Beijing remains less than certain.

*Putin, “since assuming the presidency of Russia ….in 2000, is an intelligent, disciplined and systematic leader. He has said Russia should become a ‘strong state’ under a ‘dictatorship of law’ and that it must again play a major role in world affairs.”

*Russia “now stands precariously at the crossroads of a democratic or autocratic future. Which road Russia chooses will have historic and long-term consequences for the United States. The path favored by China and hardline elements in Russia could well plunge the U.S. back into a replay of the darkest days of the Cold War.”

We should read Menges, dive into his probing analysis of the inner-thinking of the hard-boiled Tier 1 autocrats in Beijing and Moscow over the past half-century. And, most important, we should listen to his call to action: “It’s time to get serious about strategy toward China and Russia and about geopolitics. The United States ‘must manage the peace,’ in confronting an expansionist Russia and “the rising, globally active, nuclear-armed and increasingly wealthy Communist regime in China.”

This upcoming summit in Moscow, a tete-a-tete of the world’s top two “autocrats for life,” is of critical significance for peace in Europe and beyond.

If the summit’s true agenda is to prolong the war in Ukraine through advanced-weapon supplies from Beijing to Russian troops, it would severely deepen the suffering of the Ukrainian people and heighten the risks of an even broader war beyond current battlelines.

Putin, playing his China card like never before, would gain immensely from Chinese arms deliveries through a renewed ability to prosecute an invasion that keeps him in power as long as he is seen as having the upper hand on the battleground (currently very much in question by all observers.) Xi, in turn, would gain by keeping the global media’s focus on the hot war on Europe’s edge while quietly and steadily increasing the People’s Liberation Army presence in and around Taiwan and the South China Sea disputed territories.

How the Biden administration, and future U.S. administrations, deal with the “long-game” China-Russia challenge is first among priorities for America and the West. We would do well to consider the prescient wisdom of Dr. Menges, one of the key architects of the Reagan Doctrine and a most-thoughtful “framework” practitioner of big-picture foreign, economic and military policy.

Warren Getler, based in Washington, D.C., writes on foreign and military affairs. He has worked as a journalist at Foreign Affairs Magazine, the International Herald Tribune, The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg News.

David Warsh: Competing with expansionist China while managing internal threats to our democracy

SOMERVILLE, Mass.

I have, at least since 1989, been a believer that competition between the West and China is likely to dominate global history for the foreseeable future.  By that I mean at least the next hundred years or so.

I am a reluctant convert to the view that the contest has arrived at a new and more dangerous phase. The increasing belligerence of Chinese foreign policy in the last few years has overcome my doubts.

It was a quarter century ago that I read World Economic Primacy: 1500-1990, by Charles P. Kindleberger. I held no economic historian in higher regard than CPK, but I raised an eyebrow at his penultimate chapter, “Japan in the Queue?”  His last chapter, “The National Life Cycle,” made more sense to me, but even then wasn’t convinced that he had got the units of account or the time-scales right.

The Damascene moment in my case came last week after I subscribed to Foreign Affairs, an influential six-times-a-year journal of opinion published by the Council on Foreign Relations. Out of the corner of my eye, I had been following a behind-the-scenes controversy, engendered by an article in the magazine about what successive Republican and Democratic administrations thought they were doing as they engaged with China, starting with the surprise “opening” engineered by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger in 1971. I subscribed to Foreign Affairs to see what I had been missing.

In 2018, in “The China Reckoning,’’ the piece that started the row, foreign- policy specialists Kurt Campbell and Ely Ratner had asserted that, for over fifty years, Washington had “put too much faith in its power to shape China’s trajectory.”  The stance had been previously identified mainly with then-President Donald Trump.  Both Campbell and Ely wound up in senior positions in the Biden administration, at the White House and the Pentagon.

In fact the proximate cause of my subscription was the most recent installment in this fracas. To read “The Inevitable Rivalry,’’ by John Mearsheimer, of the University of Chicago, an article in the November/December issue of the magazine, I had to pay the entry rate. His essay turned out to be a dud.

Had U.S. policymakers during the unipolar moment thought in terms of balance-of-power politics, they would have tried to slow Chinese growth and maximize the power gap between Beijing and Washington. But once China grew wealthy, a U.S.-Chinese cold war was inevitable. Engagement may have been the worst strategic blunder any country has made in recent history: there is no comparable example of a great power actively fostering the rise of a peer competitor. And it is now too late to do much about it.

Mearsheimer’s article completely failed to persuade me. Devotion to the religion he calls “realism” leads him to ignore two hundred years of Chinese history and the great foreign-policy lesson of the 20th Century: the disastrous realism of the 1919 Versailles Treaty that ended World War I and led to World War II, vs. the pragmatism of the Marshall Plan of 1947, which helped prevent World War III. There is no room for moral conduct is his version of realism. It is hardball all the way.

My new subscription led me to the archives, and soon to “Short of War,’’ by Kevin Rudd, which convinced me that China’s designs on Taiwan were likely to escalate, given President Xi Jinping’s intention to remain in power indefinitely. (Term limits were abolished on his behalf in 2018.)  By 2035 he will be 82, the age at which Mao Zedong died.  Mao had once mused that repossession of the breakaway island nation of Taiwan might take as long as a hundred years.

Beijing now intends to complete its military modernization program by 2027 (seven years ahead of the previous schedule), with the main goal of giving China a decisive edge in all conceivable scenarios for a conflict with the United States over Taiwan. A victory in such a conflict would allow President Xi to carry out a forced reunification with Taiwan before leaving power—an achievement that would put him on the same level within the CCP pantheon as Mao Zedong.

That led me in turn to “The World China Wants,’’ by Rana Mitter, a professor of Chinese politics and history at Oxford University. He notes that, at least since the global financial crisis of 2008, China’s leaders have increasingly presented their authoritarian style of governance as an end in and of itself, not a steppingstone to a liberal democratic system. That could change in time, she says.

To legitimize its approach, China often turns to history, invoking its premodern past, for example, or reinterpreting the events of World War II. China’s increasingly authoritarian direction under Xi offers only one possible future for the country. To understand where China could be headed, observers must pay attention to the major elements of Chinese power and the frameworks through which that power is both expressed and imagined.

The ultimate prize of my Foreign Affairs reading day was “The New Cold War,’’ a long and intricately reasoned article in the latest issue by Hal Brands, of Johns Hopkins University, and John Lewis Gaddis, of Yale University, about the lessons they had drawn from a hundred and fifty years of competition among great powers. I especially agreed with their conclusion:

As [George] Kennan pointed out in the most quoted article ever published in these pages, “Exhibitions of indecision, disunity and internal disintegration within this country” can “have an exhilarating effect” on external enemies. To defend its external interests, then, “the United States need only measure up to its own best traditions and prove itself worthy of preservation as a great nation.”

Easily said, not easily done, and therein lies the ultimate test for the United States in its contest with China: the patient management of internal threats to our democracy, as well as tolerance of the moral and geopolitical contradictions through which global diversity can most feasibly be defended. The study of history is the best compass we have in navigating this future—even if it turns out to be not what we’d expected and not in most respects what we’ve experienced before.

That sounded right to me. Worries exist in a hierarchy: leadership of the Federal Reserve Board; the U.S. presidential election in 2024; the stability of the international monetary system; arms races of various sorts; climate change. Subordinating all these to the China problem will take time.

David Warsh, a veteran columnist and an economic historian, is proprietor of Somerville-based economicprincipals.com, where this essay originated.

David Warsh: Prepare for multigenerational contest between China and the West

China’s national emblem

SOMERVILLE, Mass.

China is building missile silos in the Gobi Desert. The U.S. has agreed to provide nuclear-submarine technology to Australia, enraging the French, who are building a dozen diesel subs that they had expected to sell to the Aussies. Xi Jinping last week rejected Joe Biden’s suggestion that the two arrange a face-to-face meeting to discuss their differences.  Clearly, the U.S. “pivot” to the Pacific is well underway.  Taiwan is the new hotspot, not to mention the Philippines and Japan.

The competition between China and the West is a contest, not a cold war.  Financial Times columnist Philip Stephens was the first in the circle of those whom I read to make this point.  “The Soviet Union presented at once a systemic and an existential threat to the West,” he wrote. “China undoubtedly wants to establish itself as the world’s pre-eminent power, but it is not trying to convert democracies to communism….”  The U.S. is not trying to “contain” China so much as to constrain its actions.  He continued,

Beijing and Moscow want a return to a nineteenth century global order where great powers rule over their own distinct spheres of influence.  If the habits and the institutions created since 1945 mean anything, it has been the replacement of that arrangement with the international rule of law.

I’m not quite sure what Stephens means by “the international rule of law.”  The constantly changing Western traditions of freedom of action and thought? Is it true, as George Kennan told Congress in 1972, that the Chinese language contains no word for freedom? Is it possible that Chinese painters produced no nudes before the 20th Century?

The co-evolution of cultures between China and the West has been underway for 4,000 years, proceeding at a lethargic pace for most of that time. While the process has recently assumed a breakneck pace, it can be expected to continue for many, many generations before the first hints of consensus develop about a direction of change.

A hundred years?  Three hundred? Who knows? Already there is conflict. There may eventually be blood, at least in some corners of the Earth. But the world has changed so much since 1945 that “cold war” is no longer a useful apposition. The existential threat today is climate change.

China’s cultural heritage is not going to fade away, as did Marxist-Leninism. The script of that drama, written in Europe in the 19th Century, has lost much of its punch. Vladimir Putin has embraced the Russian Orthodox Church as a source of moral authority.  Xi Jinping has evoked the egalitarian idealism of Mao Zedong in cracking down on China’s high-tech groups and rock stars, and strictly limiting the time its children are allowed to play video games.

But what is the Western tradition of “rule of law” that presumes to become truly international, eventually? Expect an answer some other day. Meanwhile, I’m cooking pancakes for my Somerville grandchildren.

David Warsh, a veteran columnist and an economic historian, is proprietor of Somerville-based economicprincipals.com, where this essay first appeared.

An appeal to the Chinese dictatorship

The letters are below this press release

Benedict Rogers, co-founder and Chief Executive of Hong Kong Watch, will stage a 24-hour fast and hunger strike on Christmas Eve in solidarity with prisoners of conscience and persecuted people throughout China. He has published an Open Letter to Xi Jinping and an Open Letter to “all peoples suffering under the Chinese Communist Party’s repressive rule”, outlining 12 “demands” for the Chinese Communist Party regime and the international community.

Mr Rogers had originally intended to hold a 12-hour protest in a cage outside the Chinese Embassy in London on Christmas Eve, with a seasonal theme based on the “12 Days of Christmas”. He called for “12 Hours of Protest” outside Chinese embassies around the world. However, due to new COVID-19 restrictions in London, he postponed that plan and is instead publishing his Open Letters and undertaking a fast and hunger strike.

His 12 Demands outlined in his Open Letters focus on a range of human rights concerns in China, detailed as follows:

1. Free Hong Kong and all Hong Kong political prisoners, especially Jimmy Lai, Joshua Wong, Agnes Chow, Ivan Lam and the 12 Hong Kong youths imprisoned in Shenzhen

2. Stop Uyghur Genocide

3. Stop atrocities in Tibet

4. Stop persecution of Christians and Falun Gong in China

5. Stop Forced Organ Harvesting

6. Free Gui Minhai, the Chinese-born Swedish national abducted from Thailand and serving ten years in prison in China

7. Free Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, the two Canadian hostages detained in China

8. Free Li Ming Che, a Taiwanese human rights activist jailed in China

9. End Slave Labour in Global Supply Chains and say #NoGenocideTrade

10. End Torture in China

11. To the free world - stop #CCP bullying

12. To the free world – Buy Australian Wine and stand up to CCP bullying

“I cannot be with my mother this Christmas, due to the pandemic. But there are many people throughout China who are separated from their families and loved ones because of the Chinese Communist Party regime’s inhumane repression,” said Benedict Rogers.

“This Christmas there are people in prison in Hong Kong and throughout China who can’t be with their parents, spouses, wives, relatives and friends – and worse, are languishing in dire conditions and subjected to physical and mental torture and slavery. I cannot, in good conscience, enjoy Christmas celebrations without remembering my Hong Kong, Tibetan, Uyghur, Christian, Falun Gong and Chinese dissident brothers and sisters. The very least I can do is sacrifice a few hours of my Christmas Eve in a symbolic gesture of solidarity and to call on the world to speak up for them and to confront the Chinese regime’s atrocious human rights violations. I hope others will join me around the world, at least in spirit, in these demands.”

In his Open Letter to Xi Jinping, Mr Rogers says the purpose of the action is “to let the peoples of China – and especially those imprisoned by your regime – know that they are not forgotten and not alone. And as they sit in their prison cells or concentration camps in different places across China this Christmas Eve, I hope they may know in their spirits that there are people in the free world speaking their names, calling for their release, ensuring that the world does not ignore their cries: Free Jimmy Lai, Joshua Wong, Agnes Chow, Ivan Lam, Andy Li, Free the 12 Hong Kong Youths jailed in Shenzhen, Free Gui Minhai, Free Li Ming-che, Free Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, Free Pastor Wang Yi … and all the others whose names we do not know or cannot record here.”

He adds: “In addition to all the individual prisoners of conscience across China, there are the big picture tragedies that keep my soul and conscience awake at night too: the genocide of the Uyghurs, the atrocities in Tibet, the persecution of Christians, Falun Gong practitioners and other religions, the repression of civil society, lawyers, bloggers, journalists, whistleblowers and dissidents, the broken promises and dismantling of freedom in Hong Kong, the barbaric forced organ harvesting, torture and slave labour. These things must stop.”

In a call to the international community, Mr Rogers says: “I want to awaken the world. Your regime, Mr Xi, not only represses its people, it threatens the free world. But we must not allow this to continue. Your regime is a bully, Mr Xi, and if there’s one thing every kid in the world knows in the school playground, it is to stand up to bullies. So this Christmas I urge everyone everywhere around the world – after fasting or hunger striking with me – to buy as much Australian wine as you can, and ONLY Australian wine, and enjoy it.”

Benedict Rogers co-founded Hong Kong Watch in 2017, after being denied entry to Hong Kong on the orders of the regime in Beijing. He is also the co-founder and Deputy Chair of the Conservative Party Human Rights Commission, and a member of the advisory board of the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China (IPAC, the advisory board of the Stop Uyghur Genocide Campaign and the advisory board of the International Coalition to End Transplant Abuse in China (ETAC)”.

For further information or interviews please contact Benedict Rogers on ben@hongkongwatch.org

A copy of the two Open Letters can be found below:

A CHRISTMAS OPEN LETTER TO XI JINPING AND THE LEADERS OF THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY REGIME

24 December 2020

Xi Jinping

General Secretary of the Communist Party of China

Zhongnanhai

Beijing

People’s Republic of China

Cc: Carrie Lam, Chief Executive of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region

Cc: Liu Xiaoming, Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China to the United Kingdom

Dear General Secretary Xi Jinping and leaders of the Chinese Communist Party regime throughout the People’s Republic of China,

I am writing firstly to wish you a peaceful and blessed Christmas and New Year.

There are some who say “Christmas is cancelled”, but the truth is that Christmas – in its truest sense – can never be “cancelled”: not by pandemics, nor by brutal, inhumane, mendacious and corrupt dictatorships, for “Christmas” is not simply a material event, but an event in history which lives on in the hearts and minds of those who choose to believe it. The Christmas story – and the values and message it represents – is about birth, life, love and liberation, and while you can repress these values with actions that cause death, hate and repression, as your regime does to all your peoples each and every day, you can never imprison or kill the spirit of Christmas. So, I wish you a merry Christmas.

Secondly, I want to say that I love China and its peoples, and I wish all the peoples of China a blessed Christmas. They have suffered so much for so long under the repressive rule of the Chinese Communist Party regime, and yet have developed an economy that has grown with dynamic and impressive speed. It is not your regime, Mr Xi, that is responsible for China’s economic growth, but rather the entrepreneurialism and talent of the Chinese peoples. Imagine how much greater and more prosperous China could be if it were free.

I first went to China when I was 18 years old. I lived and taught English for six months in Qingdao. I made many friends there, and returned many times. I have travelled often in China, from Shanghai to Kunming, from Guilin to Shenyang, from Suzhou and Hangzhou to Yangshuo and Dali, from Guangzhou and Shenzhen to Beijing and Nanjing. I have been to the birthplace of Confucius in Qufu and climbed Taishan. I began my working career in Hong Kong, living in that great city for the first five years after the handover. It is because I love China and the peoples of China that I devote my energies to advocating for their basic rights and dignity. I want China to take its rightful place as a great nation on the world stage – but it can only do so when its regime stops repressing its own people, committing crimes against humanity and flagrant breaches of international treaties, and stops its aggression against its critics beyond its borders too.

It is in that spirit that I had intended to hold a 12-hour vigil and protest outside the Chinese Communist Party regime’s embassy in London on Christmas Eve. I had planned it with the theme of the “12 Days of Christmas” in mind – 12 hours of protest, with 12 demands. I had intended to sit outside your embassy in a cage, and I know others, including Uyghurs, Tibetans, Falun Gong practitioners and Hong Kongers had planned to join me at different times.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the new restrictions we are under, I have had to change plans. But I am not abandoning the essence of what I had planned. Instead of sitting in a cage outside your embassy, I will be at home. Instead of a 12-hour protest, I will stage a 24 hour fast and hunger strike. I call it both a fast and a hunger strike because both terms carry meaning. ‘Fasting’ is a spiritual act, accompanied by prayer. A ‘hunger strike’ is a political act, accompanied by protest. I want to do both. So I will do 12 hours of fasting and prayer and 12 hours of hunger strike and protest.

And with what purpose? To let the peoples of China – and especially those imprisoned by your regime – know that they are not forgotten and not alone. And as they sit in their prison cells or concentration camps in different places across China this Christmas Eve, I hope they may know in their spirits that there are people in the free world speaking their names, calling for their release, ensuring that the world does not ignore their cries: Free Jimmy Lai, Joshua Wong, Agnes Chow, Ivan Lam, Andy Li, Free the 12 Hong Kong Youths jailed in Shenzhen, Free Gui Minhai, Free Li Ming-che, Free Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, Free Pastor Wang Yi … and all the others whose names we do not know or cannot record here.

And in addition to all the individual prisoners of conscience across China, there are the big picture tragedies that keep my soul and conscience awake at night too: the genocide of the Uyghurs, the atrocities in Tibet, the persecution of Christians, Falun Gong practitioners and other religions, the repression of civil society, lawyers, bloggers, journalists, whistleblowers and dissidents, the broken promises and dismantling of freedom in Hong Kong, the barbaric forced organ harvesting, torture and slave labour. These things must stop.

Finally, I want to awaken the world. Your regime, Mr Xi, not only represses its people, it threatens the free world. But we must not allow this to continue. Your regime is a bully, Mr Xi, and if there’s one thing every kid in the world knows in the school playground, it is to stand up to bullies. So this Christmas I urge everyone everywhere around the world – after fasting or hunger striking with me – to buy as much Australian wine as you can, and ONLY Australian wine, and enjoy it.

So, Mr Xi, in keeping with the theme of the ’12 Days of Christmas’, I present my 12 demands.

1. Free Hong Kong and all Hong Kong political prisoners, especially Jimmy Lai, Joshua Wong, Agnes Chow, Ivan Lam and the 12 Hong Kong youths imprisoned in Shenzhen

2. Stop Uyghur Genocide

3. Stop atrocities in Tibet

4. Stop persecution of Christians and Falun Gong in China

5. Stop Forced Organ Harvesting

6. Free Gui Minhai, the Chinese-born Swedish national abducted from Thailand and serving ten years in prison in China

7. Free Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, the two Canadian hostages detained in China

8. Free Li Ming Che, a Taiwanese human rights activist jailed in China

9. End Slave Labour in Global Supply Chains and say #NoGenocideTrade

10. End Torture in China

11. To the free world - stop #CCP bullying

12. To the free world – Buy Australian Wine and stand up to CCP bullying

Mr Xi, I know this Christmas letter is not short. But it’s shorter than the 12 Days of Christmas. And it’s not as long as some of your speeches to the National People’s Congress. And it’s far more comprehensible than Xi Jinping Thought.

In 1949, Chairman Mao declared that the Chinese people had stood up. In 2020 it is up to those of us who have freedom to stand up for the Chinese people – and that’s what I am doing this Christmas Eve. I hope others around the world will stand up with me for the peoples of China and against your repressive and mendacious rule, and that the real spirit of Christmas – the spirit of love and liberation – will enflame our hearts and minds and spread quicker than the virus your irresponsible regime failed to contain, and with much more positive effect.

With my prayers and love for China,

Benedict Rogers

A CHRISTMAS OPEN LETTER TO ALL PEOPLES SUFFERING UNDER THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY’S REPRESSIVE RULE

24 December 2020

To everyone throughout China, Hong Kong, the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) better known as East Turkestan, Tibet, Inner Mongolia and beyond – to every prisoner, to every activist, to every religious believer, to every blogger, to every journalist, to every lawyer, to every ordinary person who yearns to be free:

I am writing firstly to wish you a peaceful and blessed Christmas and New Year.

There are some who say “Christmas is cancelled”, but the truth is that Christmas – in its truest sense – can never be “cancelled”: not by pandemics, nor by brutal, inhumane, mendacious and corrupt dictatorships, for “Christmas” is not simply a material event, but an event in history which lives on in the hearts and minds of those who choose to believe it. The Christmas story – and the values and message it represents – is about birth, life, love and liberation, and while regimes, restrictions and viruses can restrict our activities, movements and interactions, they can never imprison or kill the spirit of Christmas. So, I wish you a merry Christmas.

Secondly, I want to say that I love China, its culture and peoples, and I wish all the peoples of China and everyone living under the Chinese Communist Party regime’s rule a blessed Christmas. You have suffered so much for so long under the repressive rule of this regime, and yet you have developed an economy that has grown with dynamic and impressive speed. It is your entrepreneurialism and talent that has grown the economy of China, not Xi Jinping or the Chinese Communist Party regime’s. Imagine how much greater and more prosperous China could be if it were free.

I first went to China when I was 18 years old. I lived and taught English for six months in Qingdao. I made many friends there,  and returned many times. I have travelled often in China, from Shanghai to Kunming, from Guilin to Shenyang, from Suzhou and Hangzhou to Yangshuo and Dali, from Guangzhou and Shenzhen to Beijing and Nanjing. I have been to the birthplace of Confucius in Qufu and climbed Taishan. I began my working career in Hong Kong, living in that great city for the first five years after the handover. It is because I love China and the peoples of China that I devote my energies to advocating for their basic rights and dignity.

I want China to take its rightful place as a great nation on the world stage – but it can only do so when its regime stops repressing its own people, committing crimes against humanity and flagrant breaches of international treaties, and stops its aggression against its critics beyond its borders too. The regime that rules China is rapidly losing friends and reputation in the world, but the people of China will never lose friends or reputation. Let’s learn to distinguish between the two and stand on the side of the people.

It is in that spirit that I had intended to hold a 12-hour vigil and protest outside the Chinese Communist Party regime’s embassy in London on Christmas Eve. I had planned it with the theme of the “12 Days of Christmas” in mind – 12 hours of protest, with 12 demands. I had intended to sit outside the embassy in a cage, and I know others, including Uyghurs, Tibetans, Falun Gong practitioners and Hong Kongers had planned to join me at different times.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the new restrictions we are under, I have had to change plans. But I am not abandoning the essence of what I had planned. Instead of sitting in a cage outside the Chinese embassy, I will be at home. Instead of a 12-hour protest, I will stage a 24 hour fast and hunger strike. I call it both a fast and a hunger strike because both terms carry meaning. ‘Fasting’ is a spiritual act, accompanied by prayer. A ‘hunger strike’ is a political act, accompanied by protest. I want to do both. So I will do 12 hours of fasting and prayer and 12 hours of hunger strike and protest.

And with what purpose? To let you, the peoples of China, Hong Kong, Tibet and East Turkestan (peoples under Chinese Communist Party rule) – and especially those imprisoned by the Chinese Communist Party regime – know that they are not forgotten and not alone. And as they sit in their prison cells or concentration camps in different places across China this Christmas Eve, I hope they may know in their spirits that there are people in the free world speaking their names, calling for their release, ensuring that the world does not ignore their cries: Free Jimmy Lai, Joshua Wong, Agnes Chow, Ivan Lam, Andy Li, Free the 12 Hong Kong Youths jailed in Shenzhen, Free Gui Minhai, Free Li Ming-che, Free Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, Free Pastor Wang Yi … and all the others whose names we do not know or cannot record here.

And in addition to all the individual prisoners of conscience across China, there are the big picture tragedies that keep my soul and conscience awake at night too: the genocide of the Uyghurs, the atrocities in Tibet, the persecution of Christians, Falun Gong practitioners and other religions, the repression of civil society, lawyers, bloggers, journalists, whistleblowers and dissidents, the broken promises and dismantling of freedom in Hong Kong, the barbaric forced organ harvesting, torture and slave labour. These things must stop.

Finally, I want to awaken the world. The regime that Xi Jinping leads not only represses its people, it threatens the free world. But we must not allow this to continue. The Chinese Communist Party regime is a bully, and if there’s one thing every kid in the world knows in the school playground, it is to stand up to bullies. So this Christmas I urge everyone everywhere around the world – after fasting or hunger striking with me – to buy as much Australian wine as you can, and ONLY Australian wine, and enjoy it.

So, friends, in keeping the theme of the ’12 Days of Christmas’, I present my 12 demands.

1. Free Hong Kong and all Hong Kong political prisoners, especially Jimmy Lai, Joshua Wong, Agnes Chow, Ivan Lam and the 12 Hong Kong youths imprisoned in Shenzhen

2. Stop Uyghur Genocide

3. Stop atrocities in Tibet

4. Stop persecution of Christians and Falun Gong in China

5. Stop Forced Organ Harvesting

6. Free Gui Minhai, the Chinese-born Swedish national abducted from Thailand and serving ten years in prison in China

7. Free Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, the two Canadian hostages detained in China

8. Free Li Ming Che, a Taiwanese human rights activist jailed in China

9. End Slave Labour in Global Supply Chains and say #NoGenocideTrade

10. End Torture in China

11. To the free world - stop #CCP bullying

12. To the free world – Buy Australian Wine and stand up to CCP bullying

Friends, I know this Christmas letter is not short. But it’s not as long as some of Xi Jinping’s ridiculous speeches to the National People’s Congress or Carrie Lam’s absurd Policy Address. And it’s more comprehensible than Xi Jinping Thought or Carrie Lam’s statements.

In 1949, Chairman Mao declared that the Chinese people had stood up. In 2020 it is up to those of us who have freedom to stand up for the Chinese people – and that’s what I am doing this Christmas Eve. I hope others around the world will stand up with me for the peoples of China and against the Chinese Communist Party’s repressive and mendacious rule, and that the real spirit of Christmas – the spirit of love and liberation – will enflame our hearts and minds and spread quicker than the virus which the irresponsible regime failed to contain, and with much more positive effect.

With my prayers and love for you all,

Benedict Rogers

Jim Hightower: Unmasking a Trumpian face-mask profiteer

Via OtherWords.org

Everyone should wear a protective medical mask — but some ought to be in ski masks, like those favored by bank robbers and muggers.

Take Zach Fuentes, a former deputy chief of staff for Donald Trump.

He resigned from the White House in January, looking for some sort of lucrative entrepreneurial future. Then, the pandemic hit, and as Trump’s incompetent government quickly caused it to spread, Fuentes thought: Aha, opportunity!

By April, he had set up a corporate façade for hustling contracts to provide medical supplies to government agencies. Only 11 days after he opened for business — bingo! — the former Trump aide won a $3 million deal from the Department of Health to ship respirator masks to Navajo Nation hospitals that were being overrun by hundreds of COVID-19 cases.

Fuentes was awarded the contract with little competitive bidding, even though he had no knowledge about medical supplies or experience in federal contracting, and even though his price of $3.24 per mask was triple the pre-pandemic cost of one dollar each.

Oh, he also had no masks, so he bought a batch from China — a bit hypocritical, since Trump is frantically trying to blame Chinese officials for his own massive screw-ups in handling the pandemic in our country.

Worse, the bulk of Chinese masks Fuentes procured turned out to provide inadequate protection, were unsuitable for medical use, or were not the type he promised to deliver. So, the Navajo people didn’t get the help they urgently needed, Fuentes and the supplier each made off with a bundle, and we taxpayers got mugged.

This is what happens when the government is turned over to insider profiteers. At least these bungling bandits should have to wear scarlet masks, so we can point them out to our children and say, “Don’t let them control your future.”

OtherWords columnist Jim Hightower is a radio commentator, writer, and public speaker.

Brian Wakamo: NBA's China fiasco shows what's most important to business

From OtherWords.org

The NBA has gotten itself into a bit of a situation.

On Oct. 4, acclaimed Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey tweeted in support of the continuing protests in Hong Kong. His simple, two-sentence tweet (which has since been deleted) has prompted an unlikely controversy

The owner of the Rockets, Tilman Fertitta, quickly denounced his general manager’s tweet, saying it does not speak for the organization and emphasizing that the Rockets are, resoundingly, not a political organization.

Why did Fertitta condemn his own manager? The replies to his tweet offer a clue.

Nearly all come from Chinese nationals warning that if Morey isn’t fired, the Rockets will lose the entire Chinese market. Fertitta himself may agree, as evidenced by his liking Instagram comments calling for Morey’s ouster. Reports suggest the Rockets have internally discussed this option.

Firing one of the most successful general managers in the NBA over the past decade may seem absurd. But the Rockets are the most popular NBA team in China — and, as many businesses have found, that market share can put a lot of pressure on political speech well outside of the country.

By now the Rockets have lost business deal after business deal in China, drawn a condemnation from the Chinese consulate in Houston, and jeopardized their status in the country.

The NBA hasn’t exactly been supportive of Morey either. In a bland statement, Commissioner Adam Silver offered only very tepid backing.

Meanwhile ,Brooklyn Nets owner Joe Tsai — a co-founder of Chinese retail giant Alibaba — put out a long statement describing Hong Kong’s protests as a “separatist movement.”

In an especially disappointing statement, superstar LeBron James seemed to suggest Morey — who has been doing business in China for over a decade — was “misinformed” about the situation in Hong Kong.

American politicians from across the spectrum, on the other hand, have been much more supportive.

Republican Sen. Ted Cruz tweeted in support of Morey, while fellow Republicans Rick Scott and Josh Hawley demanded answers from the NBA. Democratic presidential candidates Beto O’Rourke, Julián Castro, and Elizabeth Warren all condemned the response from the league as well.

Yet this groundswell of support from American politicians will likely only inflame the critical response from China.

China has long been attempting to regulate foreign free speech via economic pressure.

Many movie studios, like Disney’s Marvel outfit, have altered scripts to prevent films from being boycotted in the Chinese market. Google has repeatedly censored its searches to appease the Chinese government, while Twitter has suspended accounts which are critical of China.

This pattern extends even further. China’s government often pays Chinese student associations on college campuses to boost Chinese state visits — and to criticize any sentiment seen as anti-China. In many cases, the Chinese government has harassed even non-Chinese academics who criticize the state.

Among major sports leagues, the NBA often brands itself as the most woke. LeBron James has consistently stood up for the Black Lives Matter movement, and once called President Trump a “bum.”

But the league has long been happy to take Chinese money and sponsorships, especially since Yao Ming was drafted by the same Houston Rockets years ago. And progressive politics hardly dominate there besides — Tilman Fertitta has even proclaimed his support for Trump’s policies.

Still, the obvious prioritization of commercial ties with a government that’s attacking demonstrators in Hong Kong and putting millions of ethnic Uyghurs in concentration camps is a damning statement about what the league — and the economic system it operates in — truly values.

Brian Wakamo is a researcher on the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies.

David Warsh: The future of the great U.S.-China trade decoupling

In the Port of Shanghai, the world’s biggest container port

James Kynge, Financial Times bureau chief in Bejing in 1998-2005, is among the China-watchers whom I have followed, especially since China Shakes the World: A Titan’s Rise and Troubled Future – and the Challenge for America appeared, in 2006.  Today he operates a pair of proprietary research services for the FT.

So I was disheartened to see to see Kynge employ an ominous new term in an FT op-ed column on Friday, Aug. 23, “Righteous Anger Will Not Win a Trade War’’.  President Trump thinks that the U.S. becomes stronger and China weaker as the trade war continues, Kynge wrote, but others see an opposite dynamic at work: “mounting losses for American corporations as the U.S. and Chinese economies decouple after nearly 40 years of engagement.”

Decoupling is so incipient as a term of art in international economics that Wikipedia offers no meaning more precise than “the ending, removal or reverse of coupling.” A decade ago, it implied nothing more ominous than buffering the business cycle (The Decoupling Debate). Former World Bank chief economist Paul Romer, no professional China-watcher but better connected than ever, since he shared a Nobel Prize in economics last year, returned from a trip there in June with something of a definition. The mood in China, at least in technology circles, was grim but determined, he told Bloomberg News.

“I think what they’ve decided is that the U.S .is not a reliable trading partner, and they can’t maintain their economy or their tech industry if it’s dependent on critical components from the United States.  So I think they are on a trajectory now, that they’re not going to move off of, of becoming wholly self-sufficient in technology. Even if there’s a paper deal that covers over this trade war stuff, I think we’ve seen a permanent change in China’s approach…. There’s no question that they’re on a trajectory to become completely independent of the United States because they just can’t count on us anymore.’’

How long might it take to pretty fully disengage at the level of technological standards?  More than five years, maybe ten, Romer guessed, citing Chinese estimates. For that length of time, Kynge reckons, U.S. high tech vendors would continue to suffer.  American companies and their affiliates sell nine times more in China than their counterparts operating in the United States, according to one estimate he cited. Cisco and Qualcomm report being squeezed out of China markets, he says.  HP, Dell, Microsoft, Amazon and Apples are considering pulling back.

The long-term competition for technological dominance worries Kynge more than the trade war.  In many industries, he writes, China is thought to be already ahead. Among those he lists are high-speed rail, high-voltage transmission lines, renewables, new energy vehicles, digital payment systems, and 5G telecom technologies. And while there is no agreement about which nation possesses the more effective start-up culture, in university-based disciplines such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and biomedicine, in which the U.S. has been thought to have been well ahead, China is making rapid gains.

This decoupling of two nations that for 40 years gave grand demonstration of the benefits and, latterly, the costs, of trade is a bleak prospect.  If there is a silver lining, it lies in the fact that rivalry often produces plenty of jobs along with the mortal risks that passionate competition entail. But if America is to do anything more than simply capitulate, it must find a leader and begin to move past the disastrous presidency of Donald Trump.

Friday’s shocking escalation, via Trump’s Tweets, brought that eventuality a little closer.  The president is on the ropes. There is no sign of trade war fever beyond his base that might restore the confidence required for him to win a second term.

.                                                xxx

New on the EP bookshelf:   The Narrow Corridor: States, Societies, and the Fate of Liberty, by Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson (Random House, 2019).

The Triumph of Injustice: How the Rich Dodge Taxes and How to Make Them Pay, by Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman (Norton, 2019).

David Warsh, an economic historian, book author and veteran columnist, is proprietor of Somerville-based economicprincipals.com, where this essay first appeared.

At PCFR: The Royals; Fleeing Central America; Brazil's new strongman; Threatening Taiwan

"A Good Riddance" cartoon from Punch, Vol. 152, 27 June 1917, commenting on King George V’s order to relinquish all German titles held by members of his family.

Mark your calendars for some exciting upcoming talks at the Providence Committee on Foreign Relations (thepcfr.org; pcfremail@gmail.com). Consult thepcfr.org for information on how to join the organization and other information about our organization.

Our speaker on Thursday, March 14, will be Miguel Head, now a fellow at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center. He spent the past decade as a senior adviser to the British Royal Family. He joined the Royal Household as Press Secretary to Prince William and Prince Harry before being appointed in 2012 as their youngest ever Chief of Staff.

Previously, Mr. Head was Chief Press Officer at the UK Ministry of Defense, and worked for the Liberal Democrat party in the European Parliament. While at the Shorenstein Center, Mr. Head is doing research into how social inequalities in Britain are fomenting the politics of division (which helped lead to the Brexit vote) and how non-political leadership, working collaboratively with traditional and digital media, can play a role in bringing disparate communities together. At the PCFR, he’ll talk about those things as well comment on the past and current role of the Royal Family, and, indeed, life with the Royals.

xxx

At the April 4 Providence Committee on Foreign Relations (thepcfr.org) dinner, James Nealon, the former U.S. ambassador to Honduras, will talk about Central America in general and Honduras in particular, with a focus on the conditions leading so many people there to try to flee to the United States – and what the U.S. can and should do about it.

A career Foreign Service officer, Nealon held posts in Canada, Uruguay, Hungary, Spain, and Chile before assuming his post as Ambassador to Honduras in August 2014; Nealon also served as the deputy of John F. Kelly, while Kelly was in charge of the United States Southern Command.

After leaving his ambassadorship in 2017, Nealon was appointed assistant secretary for international engagement at the Department of Homeland Security by Kelly in July. During his time as assistant secretary, Nealon supported a policy of deploying Homeland Security agents abroad. He resigned his post on Feb. 8, 2018, due to his disagreements with the immigration policy of Donald Trump, and, specifically, the withdrawal of temporary protected status for Hondurans.

xxx

Then, on April 10, the speaker will be Prof. James Green, who will talk about the political and economic forces that have led to the election of Brazil’s new right-wing president, Jair Bolsonaro – and hazard some guesses on what might happen next.

Professor Green is the Carlos Manuel de Céspedes Professor of Latin American History, director of Brown’s Brazil Initiative, Distinguished Visiting Professor (Professor Amit) at Hebrew University, in Jerusalem, and the Executive Director of the Brazilian Studies Association (BRASA), which is now housed at the Watson Institute at Brown.

Green served as the director of the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Brown University from 2005 to 2008. He was president of the Brazilian Studies Association (BRASA) from 2002 until 2004, and president of the New England Council on Latin American Studies (NECLAS) in 2008 and 2009.

Additional speakers for the season will be announced soon. They will include a June event on Taiwan’s tense relations with expansionist China.

Explaining Putin; Will China and U.S. go to war?

The friendly face of Vladimir Putin.

To members and friends of the Providence Committee on Foreign Relations (thepcfr.org; pcfremail@gmail.com).o.

With Russian intrusion into American politics and government such an issue, we thought it would a good idea to recruit a Russia expert to start off our season. Thus we have the distinguished Prof. David R. Stone of the U.S. Naval War College lined up for Wednesday, Sept. 13.

He'll explain Putin  and the new Russian nationalism and how it affects us.

Professor  Stone received his B.A. in history and mathematics from Wabash College and his Ph.D in history from Yale University. He has taught at Hamilton College and at Kansas State University, where he served as director of the Institute for Military History. He has also been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. His first book Hammer and Rifle: The Militarization of the Soviet Union, 1926-1933 (2000) won the Shulman Prize of the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies and the Best First Book Prize of the Historical Society. He has also published A Military History of Russia: From Ivan the Terrible to the War in Chechnya (2006), and The Russian Army in the Great War: The Eastern Front, 1914-1917 (2015). He also edited The Soviet Union at War, 1941-1945(2010). He is the author of several dozen articles and book chapters on Russian / Soviet military history and foreign policy.

 
On Wednesday, Oct. 11, Graham Allison, who has been running Harvard’s Belfer Institute, will talk about, among other things, Chinese expansionism in the South China Sea.   He'll talk about his new book Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap? 
 

China uses money to try to curb free speech about it at American colleges

Adapted from Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com.

Americans should worry about the increasing efforts of Chinese interests to try to curb free speech about that nation at U.S. and other Western colleges and universities, including some prestigious New England schools, such as Harvard. This push for self-censorship includes financial incentives by big donors linked to these regimes and threats to curtail access to the hugeChinese market.

There was at least a modest victory against the march of the dictators when Cambridge University Press reversed itself and decided to republish hundreds of articles on its Chinese site that the university had previously supinely blocked at Beijing’s request.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Cambridge had “blocked more than 300 articles dealing with sensitive topics ranging from pro-democracy Tiananmen Square protests to Tibet on its Chinese site.’’

In reinstating the articles after academics denounced the self-censorship, Cambridge University Press said: “Academic freedom is the overriding principle on which the University of Cambridge is based.’’ Good to hear, if belated!

Of course,  severe Chinese government censorship of the Internet in that nation will continue, as will efforts by Chinese interests to silence criticism of the regime wherever they can around the world. Those who believe in liberty and free inquiry shouldn’t be encouraging these authoritarian aggressions.

John Pomfret, former Beijing bureau chief of The Washington Post,  described the regime’s efforts in a Post essay headlined “China’s odious manipulation of history is infecting the West’’.  Among his remarks:

“China’s move to demand self-censorship {by Cambridge} is not an isolated case. It’s just one of many the Communist government has taken in recent years to mold history and historians to serve the needs of the Chinese Communist Party. Party boss Xi Jinping has led a campaign against what he calls ‘historical nihilism,’ the party’s shorthand for attempts to write honestly about the past and mistakes committed by China’s Communist leaders. As part of that campaign, historians and writers have been silenced and jailed, books have been banned and party censors have launched a nationwide campaign to expunge any positive mention of Western political ideas from Chinese college textbooks.’’

.

Llewellyn King: America's vulnerability to China's not-so-secret weapon -- rare earths

Rare earths are used in the manufacturing of wind turbines.

In October 1973, the world shuddered when the Arab members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries imposed an oil embargo on the United States and other nations that provided military aid to Israel in the Yom Kippur War. At the same time, they ramped up prices.

The United States realized it was dependent on imported oil — and much of that came from the Middle East, with Saudi Arabia the big swing producer. It shook the nation. How had a few foreign powers put a noose around the neck of the world’s largest economy?

Well, it could happen again and very soon. The commodity that could bring us to our knees isn’t oil, but rather a group of elements known as rare earths, falling between 21 and 71 on the periodic table. This time, just one country is holding the noose: China.

China controls the world’s production and distribution of rare earths. It produces more than 92 percent of them and holds the world in its hand when it comes to the future of almost anything in high technology.

Rare earths are great multipliers and the heaviest are the most valuable. They go into many of the things we take for granted, from the small engines in automobiles to the wind turbines that are revolutionizing the production of electricity. For example, rare earths increase a conventional magnet’s power by at least fivefold. They are the new oil.

Rare earths are also in cell phones and computers. Fighter jets and smart weapons, like cruise missiles, rely on them. In national defense, there is no substitute and no other supply source available.

Like so much else, the use of rare earths as an enhancer was a U.S. discovery: General Motors, in fact. In 1982, General Motors research scientist John Croat created the world’s strongest permanent magnet using rare earths. He formed a company, called Magnequench. In 1992, the company and Croat’s patents were sold to a Chinese company.

From that time on it became national policy for China to be not just the supplier of rare earths, but to control the whole supply chain. For example, it didn’t just want to supply the rare earths for wind turbines; it insisted that major suppliers, such as Siemens, move some of their manufacturing to China. Soon Chinese companies, fortified with international expertise, went into wind turbine manufacture themselves.

“Now China is the major manufacturer of wind turbines,” says Jim Kennedy, a St. Louis-based consultant who is devoted to raising the alarm over rare earths vulnerability. A new and important book, Sellout, by Victoria Bruce, details how the world handed control of its technological future to China and Kennedy’s struggle to alert the United States.

At present, the rare earths threat from China is serious but not critical. If President Trump — apparently encouraged by his trade adviser Peter Navarro, and his policy adviser Steve Bannon — is contemplating a trade war with China, rare earths are China’s most potent weapon.

A trade war moves the rare earths threat from existential to immediate.

In a strange regulatory twist the United States, and most of the world, won’t be able to open rare-earths mines without legislation and an international treaty modification. Rare earths are often found in conjunction with thorium, a mildly radioactive metal, which occurs in nature and doesn’t represent any kind of threat.

However, it’s a large regulatory problem. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency have defined thorium as a nuclear “source material” that requires special disposition. Until these classifications, thorium was disposed of along with other mine tailings. Now it has to be separated and collected. Essentially until a new regime for thorium is found, including thorium-powered reactors, the mining of rare earths will be uneconomic in the United States and other nuclear non-proliferation treaty countries.

Congress needs to look into this urgently, ideally before Trump’s trade war gets going, according to several sources familiar with the crisis. A thorium reactor was developed in the 1960s at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, in Tennessee. While it’s regarded by many nuclear scientists as a superior technology, only Canada and China are pursuing it at present.

Meanwhile, future disruptions from China won’t necessarily be in the markets. It could be in the obscure but vital commodities known as rare earths: China’s not quite secret weapon.

Llewellyn King (llewellynking1@gmail.com) is host and executive producer of White House Chronicle, on PBS, and a veteran publisher, columnist and international business executive. This first appeared in Inside Sources.

Hosting a Chinese propaganda agency

Hassenfield Common and the Unistucture & Globe Dome at Bryant University, in Smithfield, R.I. Bryant has a unit of China's controversial Confucius Institute on its remarkably attractive modernistic campus.

Adapted from Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary,'' in GoLocal24.com

As the United States withdraws from speaking out for human rights and democracy, the Chinese dictatorship moves in with piles of money. That money is already having sad effects.

Consider that Greece has vetoed a European Union statement denouncing Chinese human-rights abuses in the wake of Greece recently getting billions of dollars in infrastructure investments from Beijing. Croatia and Hungary (the latter run by a semi-fascist president), also the beneficiary of massive Chinese spending, have also blocked E.U. statements on Chinese actions, including China’s attempt to take over the entire South China Sea. Each E.U. nation has veto power over statements meant to be the official E.U. position.

Here at home we have the Confucius Institute problem. The Institute is affiliated with China’s Education Ministry and hasthe official aim to promote Chinese language and culture.  But it is really a propaganda and intelligence office, a handy base for industrial and other espionageand a sturdy platform for the increasingly aggressive and expansionist dictatorship to keep in line Chinese students studying abroad.  Their very presence tends to constrain intellectual freedom regarding things Chinese.

Some U.S. colleges and universities, such as Rhode Island’s Bryant University, have partnered with the Institutesatellites for the money and business connections they provide after they set up shop on American campuses. These Confucius Institute operations provide free (to the colleges) teachers and textbooks and cover operating costs.   Some administrators and faculty members like them because they help bring in full-tuition-paying Chinese students and provide freeand luxurious junkets to China to some administrators and faculty members.  Such operations are inappropriate on American college campuses.

Rachelle Peterson, director of research at the National Association of Scholars, a conservative group, has accurately complained: “Confucius Institutes export the fear of speaking freely around the world. They permit a foreign government to have intimate influence over college classrooms. It’s time to kick them off campus.’’ Ms. Peterson quoted former Chinese Communist Party propaganda chief Li Changchun as calling the on-campus Confucius Institute satellites “an important part of China’s overseas propaganda efforts.’’

Llewellyn King: Trump's foreign policy: Punish friends, reward enemies

The Great Rift Valley extends from Syria down through east Africa to Mozambique. It is a huge depression with volcanic action, lakes and steep-sided gorges. Think of the Grand Canyon and start multiplying.

When contemplating President Trump’s foreign policy, I think of the Great Rift Valley: the largest gash in the Earth’s surface.

The president, in the incoherence of his foreign policy, is creating great gashes between traditional allies that will leave scars down through history. He also appears to be set on empowering our putative enemies, Russia and China.

Many of us White House watchers think that  it is quite possible that some of those around the president had questionable relations with the Russians both during the campaign and after the election. Their motivation remains unclear. Also unclear is why Trump is so pro-Russian.

Russia’s motivation is known: It wants the United States to lift the sanctions imposed after Russia invaded Crimea and started a surrogate war in eastern Ukraine.

It is also clear that Russia has an interest in destabilizing Europe, whether it is by manipulating its energy supply or interfering in its elections, as it tried to do most recently in France. Russia has a policy and it is hostile to European and North American interests from the Arctic to the Balkan states.

Trump could end the whole Russian business very quickly by finding out — if he doesn’t already know — who in his immediate circle did what, why and when. He could tell us himself of his involvement.

China is another Trumpian riddle. He campaigned against China for job snatching, currency manipulation, the trade deficit and its incursions into the South China Sea.

In a classic East meets West scenario, Trump, the self-styled dealmaker, was going to sit opposite Chinese President Xi Jinping and negotiate. But when they met at the White House, all points of contention evaporated; even freedom-of-navigation operations by U.S. warships in international waters near contested reefs in the South China Sea were curtailed. Either there was no negotiation, or Trump folded.

There is a Potemkin village quality to Trump’s claims to have opened opportunities for U.S. firms in China. China has not abridged its local participation laws, so U.S. companies doing business there still have to have a Chinese partner, which must have equity control. It is a system the Chinese use to steal U.S. expertise and technology. As to Trump’s claim of Chinese currency manipulation, it has disappeared — maybe it was a dubious issue all along.

If all of this is in the hope that China might stop North Korea building nuclear weapons and delivery systems for them. Well, that has been a vain hope of other presidents. China has no interest in curbing Kim Jong-un for its own reasons and because of the leverage, paradoxically, it gives China with the United States.

But what history might judge as the more egregious Trumpian folly in Asia is his abandonment of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a carefully crafted deal to keep the economies of United States and 11 other Pacific nations growing without China, which would not have been a partner. Now the gap left by the United States is being filled by China, as are other gaps. Europe, deeply disturbed by U.S. softness to Russia, climate-change policies, protectionist rhetoric, and vitiation of past practices and agreements, is looking reluctantly to China for stability in a crumbling world order.

The goals of Trump’s foreign policy are obtuse, subject to stimuli known only to him — examples include his unexplained enthusiasm for Saudi Arabia, and his complete hostility to everything done by President  Obama, including the Cuba opening. The results, though, are not in doubt: gladness in Moscow and Beijing and sadness and confusion in London, Paris, Berlin and among our  other (former?) friends worldwide.

So far Trump’s exploits are not only capricious, but also very dangerous, slamming those countries that share U.S. values and encouraging those who oppose our interests. These rifts will not heal quickly. Once a nation is labeled untrustworthy, it is distrusted long after the creator of the distrust has left the field. The rifts remain, great gashes in global confidence.

Llewellyn King (llewellynking1@gmail.com) is executive producer and host of White House Chronicle, on PBS. 

The Chinese love Boston

The gate at the entrance of Boston's Chinatown.

From Robert Whitcomb's "Digital Diary'' in GoLocal24.com

The Chinese were the number one source of foreign tourists in Greater Boston last year, taking first place from the British. The Greater Boston Convention & Visitors Bureau estimated that 230,000 Chinese visited the area last year (compared to 224,000 Brits), drawn particularly by its history and its great educational institutions (and maybe by the opportunity to do a little industrial espionage in the region’s huge high-tech sector). The Chinese are especially eager to see MIT and Harvard, which many Chinese attend.

It’s too early to tell how much the Trump administration crackdown on immigrants might reduce the flow.  Meanwhile, The Boston Globe reported that a U.S.-China climate summit slated to be held in Boston this year has not been scheduled, raising suspicions that that’s because of the Trump administration’s opposition to doing anything about global warming.

China to an appeasement-minded U.S.: 'You die, I live'

These words by my  friend of 54 years, Arthur Waldron, as published in the Oct. 31 Wall Street Journal, have  rightfully gotten a lot of attention. They come from his remarks at an Oct. 2 conference in New York.

Today the People’s Republic has decided to abandon even talk of liberalization. She wants a Party dictatorship without end. She has no interest now in the United States.

We Americans do not yet entirely recognize that this change of course has been determined in China. . . . We believe other cultures will understand our gestures as we mean them: our hand proffered for a handshake, our attempt to walk a mile in their moccasins, our gestures of restraint, will signal desire for peace and understanding, even friendship. That is the message we are trying to send.

How does the Chinese government receive it? Not at all as intended, but as the opposite.

The official Chinese reaction will be, “We have successfully intimidated Washington to the point she won’t even mention us. The Americans are weak, irresolute, and when it comes to it, craven. We can deal with them and drive them out of Asia.”

“Compromise” is a scarce concept in Chinese theories of conflict. Rather the phrase they use is ni si wo huo—“you die, I live.” That is not “win-win.” …

Let me conclude with my deepest worry, which is the {U.S.} acceptance and normalization, as it were, of the …hideously oppressive PRC.

The Dalai Lama comes in past the garbage cansto the White House. We are the United Bloody States of America, as Churchill might have put it. …So since when does Beijing get to tell us how to treat our guests? We should tell them—write a protest, hand it to our deputy under assistant secretary and we will file it. And the Dalai Lama should go in from the front door and into the Oval Office.

David Warsh: Of Ross Perot, Donald Trump and 'the China shock'

Donald Trump’s hostile takeover of the Republican Party is nearly complete. I was as slow as the next guy to see in coming.  But now that the fox is almost in charge of the chicken coop. I have some ideas about why it happened, and why just now.

Let’s go back to the last time a billionaire decided to run for president. That was 1992, when software entrepreneur H. Ross Perot ran as an independent candidate. I was able to refresh my memory thanks mainly to a useful conference volume, Ross for Boss: The Perot Phenomenon and Beyond (SUNY Press, 2001), edited by Ted G. Jelen, of the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.  This comparison last September by John Dickerson of Slate was prescient.

Perot was born in Texarkana, Texas, in 1930, the son of a cotton broker. An Eagle Scout, an Annapolis graduate, a star salesman for five years for IBM Corp., he quit in 1962 to found a software firm, Electronic Data Systems.  In 1984 he sold the company to General Motors Corp., its principal client, for $2.4 billion. Four years later he and his son started a second firm, Perot Systems Corp. They sold it to Dell Inc., in 2009, for $3.9 billion

During the 1980s Perot became absorbed in POW/MIA issues in Vietnam. By the early ’90s, he had become involved in many of the larger controversies of the day.  During 1991, he appeared regularly on popular television talk shows, criticizing presidents Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush for having failed to balance the federal budget. He portrayed Washington as being in the grip of lobbyists, many of them working for foreign interests. He criticized trade agreements.  He denied having presidential ambitions.

In February 1992, Perot appeared on Larry King Live to encourage citizens to nominate him by petition in 50 states as presidential candidate of the Reform Party.  He proclaimed his lack of political experience as an asset. He promised to spend as much as $100 million of his own money – more than either party could expect to raise in those days  well before the Supreme Court struck down spending limitations – and argued that meant he couldn’t be bought. By June, he was running even with Bush and Bill Clinton in most polls.

That same month he got in an argument with two high-profile political consultants who urged him to immediately launch an expensive advertising campaign, and, when one of them resigned, Perot asserted that he, too, would withdraw, explaining that he felt that he had revitalized the Democratic Party by threatening to enter the contest. A barrage of negative publicity followed. Perot was ridiculed as eccentric and judged to be a quitter.

In late September Perot returned to the race, “for the good of the country,” in time for three televised debates among the candidates in October.  This time he emphasized opposition to the pending North American Free Trade Agreement, and warned of the “giant sucking sound” accompanying jobs lost overseas. He spent nearly $50 million in a month on “infomercial” advertising, much of it in states  that he had no hope winning.

Perot received 19 percent of the popular vote in the November election, but failed to win a single state and received not a single vote in the Electoral College. Clinton slipped past Bush with 43 percent of the popular vote. Martin Nolan, chief political correspondent for The Boston Globe for  30 years, remembers, “Perot did not defeat GHWB electorally, but more by draining attention. He made the incumbent president a ‘low-energy’ candidate.”

Four years later Perot was back, this time as the official nominee of his Reform Party.  This time he polled fewer than half as many votes.  He left politics and returned to the relative obscurity of the business world.

Perot’s role in galvanizing support for budget-balancing measures is still hotly debated. The Clinton administration, the Federal Reserve, Congress and the Federal Communications Commission all played a part (the FCC by facilitating the rapid build-out of communications technology and the Internet).

In any case, by the end of the ’90s, the federal budget was balanced. Perot’s criticism of trade-liberalization measures found little traction, though. The North American Free Trade Agreement became law in 1994, and the following year the World Trade Organization replaced the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. 

Perot’s  greatest influence was probably that described by his running-mate in 1992, Adm.  James Stockdale: “Ross showed you don’t have to talk to [ABC’s] Sam Donaldson to get on television…. American candidates can now bypass the filters and go directly to the American, people.” Subsequent independent presidential candidates have included Pat Buchanan and Ralph Nader.

Fast forward to 2016 and Donald Trump.  Much has changed since 1992.

Exhibit A is an important new essay by a trio of labor economists, arguing that trade theorists didn’t well understand what was happening in the world these last  35 years – particularly the last 10.  Read “The China Shock,’’ by David Autor (of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology), David Dorn (of the University of Zurich), and Gordon Hanson (of the University of California at San Diego) is headed for the authoritative Annual Review of Economics. They argue that theorists failed to anticipate how extensive dislocations would be, especially in the U.S.:

“Just as the economics profession was reaching consensus on the consequences of trade for wages and employment [that they would be modest], an epochal shift in patterns of world trade was gaining momentum. China, for centuries an economic laggard, was finally reemerging as a great power, and toppling established patterns of trade accordingly. The advance of China…has also toppled much of the received empirical wisdom about the impact of trade on labor markets.  The consensus that trade could be strongly redistributive in theory but was relatively benign in practice has not stood up well to these new developments.’’

Talk about an inconvenient truth!  Is Donald Trump right? Were we fools to liberalize so quickly?  I don’t think so. The short-term and medium-run costs are clearly greater than had been expected: Poorer cities are remarkably slow to adjust, with wages and labor-force participation rates remaining depressed, and unemployment rates high, for a decade and more.

But is the world a better, safer place than when it was divided into market economies, communist nations, and Third World growing ever-so-slowly, if at all? Steven Radelet, of Georgetown University, makes the case in The Great Surge, the Ascent of the Developing World (Simon and Schuster, 2015).  In Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization (Harvard/Belknap Press, 2016), Branko Milanovic, for many years lead economist at the World Bank, describes the stresses. 

In any event, it appears that most of the hectic global transition is over.  Today it is China that is contemplating layoffs. The greatest gains from trade almost certainly lie ahead – but for whom?

Meanwhile, Peggy Noonan, the former Reagan/George H.W. Bush speechwriter who for many years has been an influential columnist for The Wall Street Journal, describes the new contest as between the “protected” and the “unprotected.” She recently told Karen Tumulty, of The Washington Post, “We are witnessing history.  Something important is ending.”

What has already ended, I think, were the  50 wonderful years after 1945 in which the United States, having emerged less scathed from World War II, was more or less unchallenged as the world’s only economic superpower – a long splendid day in which the eight years of the Reagan administration constituted the late afternoon.

How might Trump do with issues like these in the general election? Again, Marty Nolan:  “In ’92, Perot prospered in cold, remote country: Maine, Minnesota, Alaska. He was zip in the late Confederacy.”  If you look at the maps of exposure to industrial competition in “The China Shock,’’  it’s the Midwest and the Southeast where the trade shocks have hit hardest.  Slim chance that Trump would, like Perot, go away with a goose-egg, if he is the nominee.

That said, I fully expect Hillary Clinton to win in November. She has the right language to succeed: The task now is to fill in what has been hollowed out.  If Trump is its candidate, the trick for the GOP to learn as much as possible from this election to shed the heavy burden of ideology that Trump has lampooned, to abandon the absolutism of recent years in favor of practical compromise – either that or fade into history.

So it seems possible, even likely, that Trump’s campaign will prove helpful to straightening things out between the parties. I think Paul Krugman got it exactly right when he wrote the other day: “We should actually welcome Trump’s ascent. Yes, he’s a con-man, but he’s also effectively acting as a whistle-blower on other people’s cons. That is, believe it or not, a step forward in these weird, troubled times.”

To which I can only add, yes, that’s so, as long as Trump is defeated soundly enough to discourage a third such billionaire in the future, one who might be smarter than the first two.

David Warsh, a longtime financial journalist and economic historian, is proprietor of economicprincipals.com.

Robert Whitcomb: FBI right about terrorist's iPhone

The U.S. government has the stronger argument in its battle with Apple over obtaining access to possible information about terrorism in the iPhone of Syed Rozwab Farook. That Islamic fanatic and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, murdered 14 people in San Bernardino, Calif., last Dec. 2 before police killed them.

The fact is, as Microsoft founder Bill Gates told the Financial Times, “This is a specific (emphasis is mine} case where the government is asking for access to information.’’

 “They are not asking for some general thing; they are asking for a particular case.”

“It is no different than [the question of] should anybody ever have been able to tell the phone company to get information, should anybody be able to get at bank records” to investigate a crime, Mr. Gates added. 

The government's case, backed by a federal judge, rests on  long-established law holding that "no item -- not a home, not a file cabinet and not a smartphone -- lies beyond the reach of a judicial search warrant"  in investigating crimes, Manhattan District Atty. Cyrus Vance has noted.

There exists no "right of privacy" to withhold evidence of a crime. The idea that the cellphone is a privileged device off-limits to law enforcement is absurd.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym is not telling Apple to create a “backdoor’’ that puts all users in new danger of being electronically violated. She has told Apple to help the FBI get into a single iPhone to obtain information that might save people from being murdered by ISIS-related terrorists.

We don’t want to break anyone’s encryption or set a master key loose on the land,” FBI Director James Comey has said.

Judge Pym has ordered Apple to create temporary software to let the FBI try many passwords on the phone without its data disappearing, which it normally would after 10 tries because of the company’s security walls.

Apple chief executive Tim Cook complains that such a “backdoor” could be used on other phones. But it stands to reason that Apple could control its software to unlock specific  devices, after the government obtained warrants detailing compelling circumstances.

Apple’s hypocrisy in this is impressive.

Consider its close cooperation with China, a police state. There, Apple has moved its local user data onto servers run by state-owned China Telecom, which mines such information with abandon. And Apple submits to security audits by Chinese officials. But then, Apple hopes to continue enjoying 40 percent profit margins by expanding further in China -- the company’s second-largest market.

Apple – at least for public consumption -- worries that if the U.S. government forces it to let authorities into Farook’s phone that China will demand the same right, which might scare away some potential iPhone buyers there. But there’s little indication that Apple will not continue giving the dictatorship whatever it wants.

James Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, noted in the Los Angeles Times:

"What's driving this is Apple's desire to persuade the global market, and particularly the China market, that the FBI can't just stroll in and ask for data.  {But} I can't imagine the Chinese would tolerate end-to-end encryption or a refusal to cooperate with their police, particularly in a terrorism case."

Law enforcement must have the tools to keep up with criminals, who increasingly use such tools as encryption, Bitcoin currency and disappearing messages. In this case, Apple, rather than worrying that the publicity connected with letting the U.S. government get into a criminal’s cellphone might hurt profits, should focus on saving lives. (Do tech execs, shielded by wealth and gated communities, not feelquite as threatened by terrorists as the poorer people (e.g., in San Bernardino) who are usually the victims?)

Meanwhile, let’s worry more about how private-sector organizations such as Apple, Microsoft,  Google and Yahoo, invade our privacy and follow us wherever we go. As Fortune magazine columnist Stanley Bing wrote: “It's just the beginning, guys. Every breath you take. Every move you make. Every bond you break, every step you take, Apple will be watching you.’’

Robert Whitcomb, a fellow of the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy, in Newport, R.I., is overseer of New England Diary and a former editor at the International Herald Tribune and The Wall Street Journal.

Gregory N. Hicks: U.S. must stay at the trade table

  The Boston Tea Party remains one of the seminal events in American history, and it continues to resonate among political elites, because most Americans believe that the “Tea Party” was a protest about taxation without representation.

It really wasn’t. It was actually about the setting of rules for international commerce without representation. John Hancock, a signer of the Declaration of Independence, merchant, ship owner and one of wealthiest men in the colonies, along with the Sons of Liberty, instigated the Boston Tea Party because the British government had given the British East India Company a monopoly to transport tea to the colonies and sell it there, effectively excluding American merchants from competing in a trade in which they had been profitably engaged. From the very beginnings of our republic, Americans have demanded the opportunity to compete internationally on a level playing field.

Two thousand years ago, Roman Senator Marcus Tullius Cicero said “the sinews of power are money, money, and more money.” This observation is as true for the 21^st Century as it was in the First Century BCE. National power comes from national prosperity.

Fifteen years into the 21^st Century, it is clear that the international economy has entered a transition period similar to the change that occurred a century ago, when the United States emerged as the world’s leading economic power. When that occurred, the United States did not use its economic power to influence global events, instead adopting a foreign policy of isolationism and international disarmament.

“The business of America is business,”  said President Coolidge, and America’s insistence on repayment of World War I debts contributed to economic instability in Europe. Isolationism led to the Smoot-Hawley Tariff, the Great Depression and World War II.

Fully cognizant of this history as well as the necessity of rebuilding the world’s economy after World War II, the U.S. government  leveraged America’s overwhelming post-war economic superiority to establish the dollar as the dominant currency of international finance and trade and to found the multilateral institutions that are the girders of today’s rules-based international economic system. The relatively level playing field for international commerce that was created has led to 70  years of economic growth and prosperity that has lifted millions from poverty.

Economies rose from the ashes of World War II by adopting key aspects of the American economic model, but in 1990, the United States was still the world’s largest economy. Our nearest competitor, Japan, had a GDP only 40 percent the size of America’s; China’s GDP was less than one-sixth the size of ours.

Today, the United States is no longer the world’s largest economy; that status belongs to the European Union. Most economists project that China will soon overtake the United States as the world’s largest national economy, although some argue that milestone has already been passed. Meanwhile, India’s economy is not too far behind.

Despite the emergence of multiple global economic competitors, the United States remains the acknowledged leader and fulcrum of the international economy. Five major trends in the global economy – the internet impact on international commerce, the emergence of global value chains, the oil exploration technology revolution, the rebound in U.S. manufacturing, and the resilience of the dollar after the 2008 financial crisis – illustrate the centrality of the United States to both the international economy and international relations.

We’re all familiar with the Internet’s impact on our daily lives, and at work, we experience the internet’s effects on productivity, but on a larger scale, it is also transforming international trade opportunities. For instance, E-bay and Amazon are fostering an Internet-based international retail revolution. The first company makes it possible for any individual to engage in an international commercial transaction. Any American who offers a good on E-bay could find that it has been purchased by someone from Ghana or Fiji; and the reverse transaction is equally possible. For its part, Amazon, based on its global warehouse network and relationships with modern logistical companies, has built a virtual mall in which customers can buy almost anything and have it delivered to their doorstep within a few days.

Internet communication has also made cross-border vertical integration of production, or global value chains, possible. Pioneered by Nike and improved by Apple, the process is perhaps epitomized today by Gilead, a San Francisco-based pharmaceutical company that is saving thousands of lives by developing and lowering consumer drug prices through innovative production arrangements with pharmaceutical producers in a number of developing countries.

Global value chains are inducing a reconsideration of the statistical analysis of international trade, which is changing perspectives on international economic policy. Analysts are grasping the importance of trade in intermediate goods, i.e., components or partially finished goods that are moving across borders through vertically integrated production processes. For the United States, one-third of exports and three-fifths of imports are intra-firm trade in intermediate goods.

A recent International Monetary Fund study looked at the major economic powers from the standpoint of domestic value-added (DVA) and foreign value-added (FVA) in their national output. The study found that China’s economy is the most dependent on foreign value-added content of any of the major economies, while the United States is the least dependent. The study also suggested that if China let its currency, the Yuan, appreciate, it would both move up the value chain and reduce the dependence of its economy on foreign inputs. Perhaps tellingly, China’s leaders have been allowing the Yuan to appreciate steadily over the past decade.

“Fracking,” that uniquely American technological innovation, is also changing the international policy landscape, and if the U.S. resumes exporting oil and natural gas, could have an even greater impact. The current policies of Arab oil-producing states clearly reflect their unease with growing American energy independence, while Europe, through employing fracking to develop its own energy resources or importing American oil and gas, has the potential to reduce its energy dependence on Russia by substantial amounts.

The manufacturing sector provides the tools of national power, and a newly released Congressional Research Service study suggests that all the talk of the demise of U.S. manufacturing is premature. While China became the world’s top manufacturing country in 2010, the United States remains second by a wide margin. In addition, U.S. manufacturing output grew between 2005 and 2013 by 5 percent, despite the Great Recession. Much of this growth was powered by inward foreign direct investment, 39 percent of which has been landing in the manufacturing sector.

Despite setbacks to the dollar’s reputation arising from the international financial crisis, the dollar continues to symbolize American economic strength and prowess. The dollar’s central role in international finance and trade provides unique avenues for the United States to use economic power in lieu of military intervention or other forms of pressure to resolve international problems. Yet that unique role is under competitive pressure as China, the European Union, Japan, Russia, India and Brazil all seek to put their currencies on an equal footing with the dollar.

International economic policy offers the U.S. government a range of tools to advance U.S. foreign policy and commercial interests in an increasingly competitive, multipolar environment. Among those tools, preferential trade and investment agreements positively affect more aspects of economies than any other. Not only do trade agreements lock-in existing trading and investment patterns, they create new links by eliminating trade barriers through reducing taxes and writing new trade and investment rules that go beyond those found in the 1994 World Trade Organization agreement.

In  national power, trade agreements not only generate economic growth, jobs, and tax revenue, but they also create economic interdependence among agreement parties. The voluntary acceptance of that interdependence is an unambiguous symbolic foreign-policy statement. In a multipolar world, such agreements are essential to economic competitiveness and peaceful coexistence.

Our competitors understand these characteristics very well, including the axiom, illustrated by the 1773 Tea Act that sparked the Boston Tea Party: “He who writes the rules, wins.” They are aggressively negotiating trade pacts around the world, changing the terms and rules of trade in their favor. Currently, the European Union, formed itself by a trade agreement, has 32 preferential trade agreements in place with 88 countries, and it is currently negotiating 12 agreements covering an additional 36 countries. India’s existing preferential trade network includes 26 countries via 14 agreements, and it is negotiating four new agreements covering 37 additional nations. Japan has implemented 14 agreements with 16 countries, and is negotiating three trade agreements covering 35 nations. China has 12 preferential trade pacts in force with 21 countries, and is negotiating three more agreements that would cover 14 additional states.

Completing both the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations would expand the U.S. preferential trade network consisting of 14 agreements covering 20 countries to an additional 33 nations. TPP and TTIP involve three of the world’s top four economies and cover a majority of the world’s existing trade.

Moreover, they seek to write new trade rules that facilitate the growth of 21^st Century international trading patterns such as e-commerce, global value chains, and foreign investment, among others. As importantly, they revitalize longstanding strategic relationships with our Asian and European allies, an important signal to both China and Russia that the United States intends to remain a competitive actor in Asia and Europe. Conversely, failure to complete these agreements would be an act of unilateral economic-policy disarmament with long term consequences for U.S. economic growth and national power.

In a 21^st Century world that is more multipolar, more complex, more integrated and more competitive than the United States has ever experienced in its history, U.S. competitors and strategic allies alike – Brazil, China, the European Union, Japan, India, and Russia – are seeking to amass economic power and to deploy it as a leading element of their foreign policies. In many cases, they seek  strategic advantages through these efforts, often at the expense of U.S. interests.

International economic-policy tools such as trade negotiations provide an effective, peaceful means to compete with these challenges.   If we do not participate in making the rules for international trade, others will write our companies out of the competition, many jobs will be lost and many more never created, and our national prosperity and national power will decline. If they were alive today, John Hancock and the Sons of Liberty would support the negotiation of TPP and TTIP. We should too.

Gregory N. Hicks is State Department Visiting Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, in Washington; an economist and a veteran U.S. diplomat. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the U.S. Department of State or the U.S. government.  This piece stems from Mr. Hicks's remarks at the June 9 meeting of the Providence Committee on Foreign Relations (thepcfr.org)

Robert Whitcomb: Another trap in the energy cycles

A few years ago I co-wrote a book, with Wendy Williams, about a controversy centered on Nantucket Sound. The quasi-social comedy, called Cape Wind: Money, Celebrity, Energy, Class, Politics and the Battle for Our Energy Future, told of how, since 2001, a company led by entrepreneur James Gordon has struggled to put up a wind farm in the sound in the face of opposition from the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound — a long name for fossil-fuel billionaire Bill Koch, a member of the famous right-wing Republican family.  An amusing movie, Cape Spin,  directed by John Kirby and produced by Libby Handros, came out of this saga, too. Mr. Koch's houses include a summer mansion in Osterville, Mass., from which he doesn’t want to see wind turbines on his southern horizon on clear days.

Mr. Koch may now have won the battle, as very rich people usually do. Two big utilities, National Grid and Northeast Utilities, are trying to bail out of a politicized plan, which they never liked, forcing them to buy Cape Wind electricity. They cite the fact that the company missed the Dec. 31, 2014, deadline in contracts signed in 2012 to obtain financing and start construction. Cape Wind said it doesn’t “regard these terminations as valid” since, it asserts, the contracts let the utilities’ contracts be extended because of the alliance’s “unprecedented and relentless litigation.” Bill Koch has virtually unlimited funds to pay lawyers to litigate unto the Second Coming, aided by imaginative rhetoric supplied by his  very smart and well paid pit-bull  anti-Cape Wind spokeswoman, Audra Parker,  even though the project has won all regulatory approvals.

It's no secret that it has gotten harder and harder to do big projects in the United States because of endless litigation and ever more layers of regulation. Thus our physical infrastructure --- electrical grid, transportation and so on -- continues to fall behind our friendly competitors, say in the European Union and Japan, and our not-so-friendly competitors, especially in China. Read my friend Philip K. Howard's latest book, The Rule of Nobody, on this.

With the death of Cape Wind, New Englanders would lose what could have helped diversify the region’s energy mix — and smooth out price and supply swings — with home-grown, renewable electricity. Cape Wind is far from a panacea for the region’s dependence on natural gas, oil and nuclear, but it would add a tad more security.

Some of Cape Wind’s foes will say that the natural gas from fracking will take care of everything. But New England lacks adequate natural-gas pipeline capacity, to no small extent because affluent people along the routes hold up their construction. And NIMBYs (not in my backyard) have also blocked efforts to bring in more Canadian hydro-electric power. So our electricity rates are soaring, even as many of those who complain about the rates also fight any attempt to put new energy infrastructure near them. As for nuclear, it seems too politically incorrect for it to be expanded again in New England.

Meanwhile, the drawbacks to fracking, including water pollution and earthquakes in fracked countryside, are becoming more obvious. And the gas reserves may well be exaggerated. I support fracking anyway, since it means less use of oil and coal and because much of the gas is nearby, in Pennsylvania. (New York, however, recently banned fracking.)

Get ready for brownouts and higher electricity bills. As for oil prices, they are low now, but I have seen many, many energy price cycles over the last 45 years of watching the sector. And they often come with little warning. But meanwhile, many Americans, with ever-worsening amnesia, flock to buy SUV's again.

Robert Whitcomb oversees New England Diary.

Giving the dictatorships a pass

Why do people defending Edward Snowden and denouncing the National Security Agency seem to have nary a word about the cyber-attacks  and physical threats by the murderous North Korean regime meant to disrupt the showing of a  Sony movie about depraved dictator Kim Jong-un? And why do they say nothing about the cyber-attacks and Internet spying by the milder but  very corrupt and bigger dictatorships Russia and China?

Maybe it's because these hypocrites fear North Korea, China and Russia but don't fear a democratic and infinitely more humane nation like the United States. The double standard remains staggering.

-- Robert Whitcomb