White House Chronicle

News Analysis With a Sense of Humor

Europe Knows Russia and Is Deeply Afraid

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Europe is naked and afraid.

That was the message at a recent meeting of the U.K. Section of the Association of European Journalists (AEJ), at which I was an invited speaker.

It preceded a stark warning just over a week later from NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte, also speaking in London, who said the danger from Vladimir Putin’s Russia won’t recede even if there is peace in Ukraine.

Rutte said defense spending must increase across Europe and recommended that it should reach 5 percent of GDP. Singling out Britain, he said if the Brits don’t do so, they should learn to speak Russian. He said Russia could overwhelm NATO by 2030.

The British journalists’ session reflected fear of Russia and astonishment at the United States. There was fear that Russia would invade the weaker states and that NATO had been neutered. Fear that the world’s most effective defense alliance, NATO, is no longer operational.

There was astonishment that America had abandoned its longstanding policies of support for Europe and preparedness to keep Russia in check. And there was disillusionment that President Trump would turn away from Ukraine in its war against Russian aggression.

The tone in Europe toward the United States isn’t one simply of anger or sorrow, but anger tinged with sorrow. Europeans see themselves as vulnerable in a way that  hasn’t been true since the end of World War II.

They also are shattered by the change in America under Trump; his hostility to Europe, his tariffs and his preparedness to side with Russia. “How can this happen to America?” the British AEJ members asked me.

In many conversations, I found disbelief that America could do this to Europe, and that Trump should lean so far toward Putin. In Europe, where Putin has been an existential threat and where he invaded Ukraine, there is general amazement that Trump seems to crave the approbation of the Russian president.

Speaking to the journalist’s meeting via video from Romania, Edward Lucas, a former senior editor of The Economist, and now a columnist for The Times of London and a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy, said, “Donald Trump has turned the transatlantic relationship on its head. He wants to be friends with Vladimir Putin. We are in a bad mess.”

He said he saw no realistic possibility of a ceasefire in Ukraine in the near future, and he said Trump had made it clear that he was prepared to walk away from trying to bring peace “if it proved too hard.”

Lucas suggested that if European nations continue to back Ukraine after a Russian-dictated peace offer endorsed by America, Trump will punish them. He might do this by withdrawing U.S. assets from Europe, pulling back large numbers of troops from the 80,000 stationed there, and refusing to replace the American supreme commander of Europe.

“Then we will see how defenseless Europe is,” he said.

In Washington, it seems there is little understanding of the true weakness of Europe. No understanding that money alone won’t buy security for Europe.

Europe doesn’t have stand-off capacity, heavy airlift capacity, ultra-sophisticated electronic intelligence or anything approaching a defense infrastructure.

Trump has equated defense simply with money. But in Europe (although 27 of its nations are part of the European Union), there is no cohesive structure in place that could replace the role played by the United States.

Within the EU there are disagreements and there is the spoiler in the case of Hungary. Its pro-Russia ruler, Victor Orban, would like to try to block any concerted European action against Russia. The new right-wing Polish president’s hopes for good relations with Orban are a worry for most EU members.

I have long believed that there are three mutually exclusive views of Europe in the United States.

The first, favored by Trump and his MAGA allies, is that Europe is ripping off America in defense and through non-tariff trade barriers and is awash in expensive socialist systems embracing health, transportation and state nannying.

The second, favored by vacationers, is that Europe is a sort of Disney World for adults, as portrayed on PBS by Rick Steves’ travelogues: Watch the quaint people making wine or drinking beer.

The third is that Europe has been encouraged by successive administrations to accept the U.S. defense umbrella, as that favored America and its concerns, first about Soviet expansion and more recently about expansion under Putin.

Now Europe is alone in defense terms, naked and very afraid — afraid of Trump’s pivot to Putin.

The Problem of Old Leaders — Churchill’s Sad Last Years in Office

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Old age is a thorny issue. I can attest to that. As someone told my wife about me, “He’s got age on him.” Indubitably.

The problem, as now in the venomously debated case of former president Joe Biden, is how to measure mental deterioration. When do you take away an individual’s right to serve? When do you restrict choice and freedom by the calendar and not by some other measure? Can you oblige the old to pass arbitrary competency tests for everything from driving to running a country?

Part of the answer in the Biden case, and many things, is a vigorous and fearless press. Contrary to the current allegations that Biden’s health decline was hidden by the press, nothing was hidden except by those close to him.

Anyone who watched Biden on television or heard him speak knew he was having problems. Months before the last election, I wrote a column about it. And so did others. Nothing was hidden from anyone except the full severity of the decline, which might have been buried by Biden’s family and his White House staff.

Supposing they had felt strongly that the 46th president should step aside, how would that have been managed if Biden had refused their entreaties? How do we know what his wife, Jill, said to him privately? Biden had reason to go on to protect his son, Hunter, who was the victim of considerable political animus.

Most of all, Biden probably wanted to finish what he saw as the business he had started: promoting people he felt had been unfairly left out. The symbols of that were Vice President Kamala Harris and Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Before Biden ran for president, I chatted with him at a reception by a brain cancer support group in Washington. I had interviewed some of the doctors involved on television, and I went away thinking how likable Biden was and what a pity he was too old to run for president.

But he did run, and the Biden presidency was a success, measured by the economy, peace and optimism about the future. By the end, it might have been running on inertia. Only those close to Biden know how much staff work was done what Biden directed.

Biden wasn’t the only man with trouble at the end of a successful political career. So did a much greater man, a true figure of destiny: Winston Churchill.

As the late historian and philosopher Roger Scruton courageously pointed out, the second Churchill administration was a disaster. The man who stepped into the prime minister’s role in 1951 wasn’t the great statesman who stepped into the same office in 1940, aged 65.

Ten momentous years had taken its toll. This was an old, forgetful man whose constant drinking added to his failing powers.

As he had during the war, he would call the news desk at The Daily Express every night and inquire, “What’s the news?” During his second term as prime minister, it is reported that he was often confused and didn’t seem to know what day it was. But he was Winston Churchill, the man who had saved Britain. And no one, no journalist on The Daily Express, was going to whisper that Churchill was failing.

Lord Beaverbrook, the proprietor of The Daily Express and close friend and ally of Churchill, did tell the paper’s editor, Bob Edwards, “I’m dying from the legs down and Churchill is dying from the neck up.”

Many problems in Britain weren’t addressed by the prime minister and his government and were to haunt Britain until Margaret Thatcher became prime minister in 1979. Foremost among these were a lack of any immigration restrictions for people from the former empire and trade union power allowed to grow unchecked.

The Churchill case is instructive. Had there been an age limit of 65 for prime ministers, as many companies have for their top executives, Churchill wouldn’t have been allowed to assume office when he was so needed in 1940.

Candor from loved ones may be the best defense against senility in leadership. After all, children do take the car keys from old and failing parents, or should.

If you love what you do, is it right for society to force retirement? Noel Coward, the prolific British playwright, actor and director, said, “Work is more fun than fun.” So, apparently, is high office.

Trump, Who Thinks He Bought the Nation, Now Eyes the World

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When Donald Trump began his first term as president in 2017, I wrote that he came to office not as a politician who had won an election, but rather as a businessman who had won a takeover battle and was ready to hire, fire, sell-off, and generally to reshape the property he had bought.

On Christmas Day, Trump – with a series of posts on social media — revealed himself as a businessman who believes not that he has won the nation in a takeover battle,  but rather that he has won the whole world and that he is ready to hire, fire and sell-off.

Also, like a canny takeover artist, he didn’t reveal his hand during the takeover struggle. During the election, there was no hint that Canada should become the U.S. 51st state, that Panama was overcharging U.S. shipping nor that ownership of Greenland was essential over and above the key role it already plays with a vital U.S. base, happily provided for by treaty with Denmark.

Like a businessman, Trump offered to buy Greenland during his first presidential term. His offer was soundly and summarily rejected. Now he is back and the answer hasn’t changed.

Canada, Trump believes, takes unfair advantage of the United States in trade, although the regime of the flourishing cross-border trading is the selfsame one: the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, signed in July 2020 by Trump himself as a vast improvement over its predecessor, the North American Free Trade Agreement, although in substance and spirit it is very similar.

When it comes to Panama, Trump has a double accusation. Beyond the belief that Panama is ripping us off, this kind of national business paranoia is part of the Trump manual of expectations in foreign policy: All foreign governments are scalawags bent on cheating America.

It is part of a kind of permanent, low-grade C-Suite paranoia that is present in many companies: Who is stealing an advantage, who is going to concede to the unions, who is angling for more shelf space, etc. You might call it corporate situational awareness paranoia.

Statesmanship is learned; good instincts help, but it isn’t intuitive for most leaders. It is learned through studying history, meeting, talking, traveling, and moving in foreign policy circles. It is learned best on the job, if the job is in the House or the Senate.

Trump has learned not in that world, but in the world of New York real estate with its own jungle law — deals are done, undone, litigated, and political influence is brought to bear. Ultimately, there is victory for one side.

Trump correctly — and it could be said belatedly because he took no action during his first administration — has cast a penetrating light on China in the Americas. China, as Trump has said, doesn’t operate the Panama Canal. Panama does. A subsidiary of Hong Kong-based CK Hutchison Holdings manages two ports at the canal’s entrances, with Chinese firms providing more than $1 billion for the construction of a new bridge over the canal.

Panama’s revenues are up as a result of congestion charging, but fewer ships are transiting the canal due to drought. The vast Lake Gatun, which feeds the canal and keeps the lock system viable, is only partially full. The less water available, the fewer transits are possible. These dipped from 38 large ships to just 22 but rains have improved the situation and transits have risen.

Seizing canals is a fraught business, witness the disaster of France and Britain trying to seize the Suez Canal in 1956. Major damage to the Panama Canal would cost the United States for decades. It is a masterpiece of big, intricate engineering. I took a cruise through it for the purpose of understanding it better.

The British word “gobsmacked” is easily understood: smacked in the mouth. That is what happened to the commentariat — those who comment on national affairs. Trump’s Christmas Day declarations on Truth Social, his social media network, went almost unmentioned. The reporting was there, the networks and newspapers  turned up the volume, but the commentators were silent,

That, in its way, is as notable as Trump’s implication that he has bought the world and plans to take possession. The enormity of the thing has been quieting. We, the opinion writers, have been struck dumb, you might say. That is news in itself.

How the Movement to MAGA Britain Failed in Its Time

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“Make America Great Again.” Those words have been gently haunting me not because of their political loading but because they have been reminding me of something, like the snatches of a tune or a poem that isn’t fully remembered but drifts into your consciousness from time to time.

Then it came to me: It wasn’t the words, but the meaning, or, more precisely, the reasoning behind the meaning.

I grew up among the last embers of the British Empire in Southern Rhodesia. I am often asked what it was like there.

All I can tell you is that it was like growing up in Britain, maybe in one of the nicer places in the Home Counties (those adjacent to London), but with some very African aspects and, of course, with the Africans themselves, whose land it was until Cecil John Rhodes and his British South Africa Company decided it should be British; part of a dream that Britain would rule from Cape Town to Cairo.

Evelyn Waugh, the British author, said in 1937 of Southern Rhodesia that the settlers had a “morbid lack of curiosity” about the indigenous people. Although it was less heinous than it sounds, there was a lot of truth to that. They were there, and now we were there, and it was how it was with two very different peoples on the same piece of land.

However, by the 1950s, change was in the air. Britain came out of World War II less interested in its empire than ever. In 1947, under the Labor government of Clement Attlee, which came to power after the wartime government of Winston Churchill, it relinquished control of the Indian subcontinent — now India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

It was set to gradually withdraw from the rest of the world. The empire was to be renamed the Commonwealth. It was to be a club of former possessions, often more semantically connected than united in other ways.

The end of the empire wasn’t universally accepted, and it wasn’t accepted in the African colonies that had attracted British settlers, always referred to not as “Whites” but as “Europeans.”

I can remember the mutterings and a widespread belief that the greatness that had put “Great” into the name Great Britain would return. The world map would remain with Britain’s incredible holdings in Asia and Africa, colored for all time in red. People said things like the “British lion will awake, just you see.”

It was a hope that there would be a return to what was regarded as the glory days of the empire when Britain led the world militarily, politically, culturally, scientifically, and with what was deeply believed to be British exceptionalism.

That feeling, while nearly universal among colonials, wasn’t shared by the citizens back home in Britain. They differed from those in the colonies in that they were sick of war and were delighted by the social services that the Labor government had introduced, like universal healthcare, and weren’t rescinded by the second Churchill administration, which took power in 1951.

The empire was on its last legs, and Churchill’s 1942 declaration, “I did not become the king’s first minister to preside over the dissolution of the British Empire,” was long forgotten. But not in the colonies, and certainly not where I was. Our fathers had served in the war and were super-patriotic.

While in Britain, they were experimenting with socialism and the trade unions were amassing power, and migration from the West Indies had begun changing attitudes. In the colonies, belief flourished in what might now be called a movement to make Britain great again.

In 1954, London got an organization, the League of Empire Loyalists, which was more warmly embraced in the dwindling empire than it was in Britain. It was founded by an extreme conservative, Arthur K. Chesterton, who had had fascist sympathies before the war.

In Britain, the league attracted some extreme right-wing Conservative members of parliament but little public support. Where I was, it was the organization that was going to Make Britain Great Again.

It fizzled after a Conservative prime minister, Harold MacMillan,  put an end to dreaming of the past. In a speech in South Africa, he said that “winds of change” were blowing through Africa, though most settlers still believed in the return of empire.

It took the war of independence in Rhodesia to bring home MacMillan’s message. We weren’t going to Make Britain Great Again.

Elizabeth, the Essential Queen, Dies

Queen Elizabeth II in coronation regalia

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“The Queen is dead. Long live the King.”

Some would add to that traditional and ringing appeal, “God save the monarchy.” It may not need saving, but the British monarchy won’t be the same. Queen Elizabeth II was a one off, as they say.

I clearly remember the death of King George VI, and the ascent of Elizabeth. I was living in a far corner of the British Empire, in Southern Rhodesia.

In the colonies, we were a study in patriotism, and we believed in Britain and the empire itself as nearly a divine intention. We almost believed in the divinity of the monarch.

More, we believed that the new queen, so beautiful and young and hopeful, would usher in a new era of Elizabethan greatness. A new Queen Bess set to restore the fortunes of Britain after the savagery of two world wars.

It wasn’t to be, of course. The winds of change were rustling, if not yet blowing, and Britain’s global manufacturing dominance wasn’t to return. Gradually, we were to learn that our vision of Britain as the great civilizing force, the happy world policeman, was fantasy.

But Elizabeth kept her promise. The promise she made on her 21stbirthday, “I declare before you all, that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of that great imperial family to which we all belong.”

She kept to the letter and the spirit of that promise. Through all these decades of convulsive change, Elizabeth has been as constant as the Rock of Gibraltar, one of the remnants of the time when the sun really didn’t set on the British Empire.

Elizabeth wasn’t a great mind, a visionary, or even a woman who understood a great deal of what she saw and was told. Arguably, she wasn’t even a very good mother. But she was, every day of her long, long reign, the embodiment of that word from the days of empire “duty.”

Elizabeth did her duty every day of her life and did it completely. How many thousands of native dances did she endure? How many school choirs did she hear? How many awful heads of state did she break bread with and chat about the weather? A famous cover of the satirical magazine “Private Eye” had a picture of her greeting Nicolae Ceausescu, the Romanian dictator, and a balloon quote from her said, “Do you have any interesting hobbies?” One from her husband, the late Prince Philip, said, “Yes, he is a mass murderer.”

Her real love was horses. She was a devoted equestrian who rode, against physicians’ advice, shortly before she died.

Queen Elizabeth II will be remembered for much, and it must include rising above her dysfunctional family.

In England, I covered the marriage of her sister Margaret who, hiding behind the dubious cover of one forbidden love affair, lived the life of a princess about town — no hint of duty or hard work there. At the time of her marriage to the photographer Anthony Armstrong-Jones, royal mania gripped the country. It was an emotional outpouring not to be equaled in intensity until the death of Princess Diana.

The Queen’s sense of humor shone through when she termed one awful personal year as an “annus horribilis.” Always her sense of being human was entwined with her regal demeanor.

Save for the funeral of the beloved Elizabeth, one can expect a huge loss of stature by the monarchy. Charles, the new king, is an odd duck. He has good intentions, but he doesn’t inspire. His son, the future King William, has yet to prove that he is more than an average young man with a strong-willed wife, the future Queen Catherine.

The monarchy will survive because Brits like it, not the way they came to love Elizabeth, but because it is a useful institution. And, in a time of wobbly political leadership, institutions are an important shock absorber to democracy’s vagaries.

With a monarch, people can believe there is order beyond the disorder of the political process. When I came to the United States in 1963, I was struck by how we, the people, had no place to hang our emotions on, besides on the president – and, at any time, about half the people dislike the president.

Elizabeth wasn’t born to be queen but came into the succession because of the abdication of her uncle Edward VIII. She began her duty driving an ambulance during World War II –and duty was a driving force in her long reign.

Never, forget the royals provide the greatest show on earth with all that pomp and ceremony, loved by the Brits and the tourists.

Watch the greatest funeral you have ever seen unfold on the television. This great queen will be buried as none other has — on television.

The Future of Britain is on the Ballot

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By Llewellyn King

Long before our election in November, a much greater upheaval may hit Britain. Probably in late June, the country will vote on whether to stay in the European Union. Leaving is called “Brexit” in the British press.

While polls have consistently shown that voters favor Britain remaining a member of the 28-nation bloc, there are signs that things are changing. British business, which has until now seen its future as being in the EU, is beginning to rethink its support for British membership. A recent poll shows industry believing it could prosper out of the EU.

This is a big problem for British Prime Minister David Cameron. He has promised dramatic changes in Britain’s membership, which will be announced at the European summit next month.

Britain wants less-oppressive regulations and a change in immigration policy. It wants an end to what has been a fundamental part of the European structure: the freedom of movement between countries. In short: no more immigration to Britain from Europe.

It is a complex negotiation which Cameron believes he can win; particularly when Europe is in shaky shape after the economic crisis in Greece and from the surge of migrants from the Middle East and North Africa.

Although Europe’s political elites may have to hold their refined noses, the chances are better today than ever that they would rather their unruly island neighbors stay in than further damage the European project by withdrawing.

Predictably some economists say that Britain will do just fine without Europe, while others see dire economic consequences.

When the referendum comes, it will be a free vote with about half of Cameron’s Conservative Party voting to withdraw. These are the rambunctious “Euroskeptics” that have bedeviled British elections for generations and have made the role of Conservative prime ministers particularly trying.

The opposition Labor Party is divided on a Brexit. But Labor has so imploded under the extreme leftist Jeremy Corbyn that it is likely to go along and lend its support — feeble though it is — to the forces wishing to stay in the EU.

The Scottish Nationalists will also support continued membership. They hope that if they break away from the United Kingdom, they will get succor from the EU.

But the forces for exiting the EU are powerful and articulate. They are emboldened by Europe’s problems and the fact that they will no longer be bound by the dictates of, as they say, “faceless bureaucrats in Brussels.”

The wild card in the referendum may be England’s wild man: Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson.

Now finishing his term as mayor of London, Boris Johnson is a lovable version of Donald Trump. He has gone from scrape to scrape and has come out ahead of the game. For instance, three years after having won a seat in Parliament in 2001, Johnson was sacked by the Tory leader at the time, Michael Howard, for allegedly lying over an affair with journalist Petronella Wyatt. Johnson called newspaper stories about the affair “an inverted pyramid of piffle.” He was also sacked from his editorship of The Spectator, where the piffle took place.

But being elected to higher office is such a compensation, so Johnson, a bicycle-riding, tradition-loving maverick got himself elected mayor of London. In this office he saved the iconic double-decker buses, presided over the 2012 Summer Olympics, and endeared himself to an even wider audience.

The British revere Johnson’s eccentricity and voted him back into Parliament in the last election. Now people talk openly of him being Cameron’s successor after the referendum.

Johnson has hedged his bets on British membership in the EU. Just this week he declared that he will not lead the “Out” forces, but he does not totally endorse the “In” forces.

Here is the possible scenario: Cameron has to produce a deal that satisfies some of the Euroskeptics and set a date for referendum. Then the vote. Then the hangover, one way or another. Then Johnson makes his move – unless some schemer, like the current Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, has not outmaneuvered the charming and brilliant Boris.

Cleverly Johnson has written a long political treatise comparing London to Athens, and leaving room for people to believe he has the qualities of Pericles, without actually claiming the great Greek’s mantle. Then, just to be safe, he has knocked off a highly laudatory biography of Churchill, which invites the idea that Johnson shares some of his hero’s traits.

This kind of effrontery makes British politics a perpetual night in the pub. Cheers! — For Inside Sources

The Falklands: From Obscurity to Prosperity

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By Llewellyn King

PORT STANLEY, Falkland Islands — These islands, where the weather in summer is as bleak as it is in winter and where the only constant is the wind, aren’t easy to love. It’s a climate so perverse that it can rain, turn sunny, rain again, turn cold and rain all over again in the same day. Also, they’re very remote — almost 1,000 miles from Argentina, which hardly makes them any kind of offshore island, as Argentina insists.

No one much wanted the Falklands down through history. The British were there in 1765, and so were the French, but on separate islands and unbeknown to each other. The British were pushed out when Spain got possessive, but came back in 1833 and stayed.

When the British Empire included swathes of Africa and much of Asia, islands here and there didn’t rate a lot of concern in London. It’s doubtful whether experienced officers in the colonial service even knew where they were.

Yet there were rugged British settlers who made a living for generations out of ship servicing, fishing, cattle and, big time, sheep farming from 1870 to the present. Now there are just over 2,000 Falklanders, making a robust living out of farming and tourism, mostly from cruise ships.

In 1953, Britain rejected Argentine President Juan Peron’s bid to buy the Islas Malvinas (Falkland Islands). But in the 1970s, Britain wanted to hand them over to Argentina. The downsizing of the empire was well along. Only Rhodesia was a problem, where stubborn colonials held out for the right to perpetuate their rule over or alongside the indigenous inhabitants. In 1980, under newly elected Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Britain handed over Rhodesia to Robert Mugabe and his band of former guerillas. The Thatcher government stripped the citizenship of 240,000 white settlers, telling them they were now citizens of Zimbabwe – which is ironic, considering the high value that was placed on the ancestry of the Falklanders.

So while this fire sale of colonies was in progress in the 1970s, the Falklands, with only 2,000 British citizens and 800,000 sheep, was of no account. The handover to Argentina looked like a done deal.

But, as so often in history, things fell apart largely because Argentina was consumed with internal problems, after the seizure of power by the military junta headed by Leopoldo Galtieri. Thatcher was more occupied with the sagging British economy than handing over islands far off the coast of Argentina. And while the Dirty War, in which Argentine security forces and allied thugs were responsible for the disappearance of tens of thousands of people, was raging, Argentina wasn’t to be rewarded with a gift of islands on which Britons farmed.

Then, to boost his own shaky position, Galtieri whipped up a cause and invaded the Falklands on April 2, 1982. The dictator must have thought that Britain would roll over and accept the forcible seizure of the Falklands, much as it had abandoned the British settlers in Zimbabwe two years earlier.

But for Thatcher, the Iron Lady, the Falklands seizure was simple aggression. War fever gripped Britain and much of its ally, the United States. Columnist George Will wrote about the ending of diplomatic efforts by the Reagan administration: time for the diplomats to “come north and cold steel to go south.”

So we watched a British fleet steaming south, while the Argentine forces dug in on the Falklands.

It took a month for the British forces to reach the Falklands and the counter invasion to begin. The fighting lasted 74 days with 649 Argentine military personnel, 255 British military personnel, and three female islanders killed.

The Falklands War did wonders for Thatcher, sweeping her Conservative Party back into power in 1983. For her, it was the seminal act of her premiership, the last roar of the Imperial Lion. In its way, it did for her what firing the air traffic controllers the previous year did for President Ronald Reagan. It showed just how tough they could be.

At the time of the war, the Falklands were a drain on the British Treasury. Now, thanks to that war, this is a tourist destination with behemoth cruise ships — sometimes three at once — anchored here.

But Argentina still lays claim to the islands — a claim now as constant as the wind. — For InsideSources

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Collision Course in the South China Sea

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By Llewellyn King

When I was learning to fly, one of the lessons was that if you see an object on the horizon that is seemingly stationary but getting larger, watch out. It is probably an aircraft closing with you.

Trouble with China in the South China Sea is on the horizon of U.S. strategic concerns and getting larger. A major confrontation may be at hand.

China claims sovereignty over the Spratly and Paracel islands in the South China Sea. Its claims have been disputed by Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines,Taiwan and Vietnam.

Ignoring these neighbors’ territorial claims, China has built artificial islands on otherwise submerged reefs in the Spratly archipelago. They have built runways, capable of landing military jets, on Fiery Cross and Subi reefs, and are building one on Mischief Reef.

Vietnam and the Philippines have also built up reefs, but on a smaller scale, and mostly to help their fishing fleets.

Offshore islands, real or summoned from the deep, are trouble. Argentina and Chile nearly went to war over the Beagle Channel Islands, off the inhospitable tip of South America, until Pope John Paul II brokered a peace deal in 1984.

Britain and Argentina most certainly did go to war in 1982 over the Falkland Islands, which Argentina claimed then and still claims.

Nations use territorial disputes not only to divert attention from domestic problems, but also to heal the real or imagined wounds of history.

China feels, reasonably, that it was kicked around in history. Britain occupied parts of it, most notably Hong Kong, and then acted as a drug lord in the 19th-century Opium Wars. In the 20th century, China was invaded by Japan.

Now, as the world’s second-largest economy and most populous nation, China is feeling assertive.

But all of Asia, and by extension the rest of the world, is invested in this dispute: one third of the world’s shipping passes through the South China Sea, and its rich fishing grounds are a vital food source for the region.

The Chinese bolster their claims with a 1947 map showing what is known as the “nine-dash line,” or the cow’s tongue because of its shape, in the South China Sea. This line extends around the sea and encloses 90 percent of the area; by historical standards this is a whopper of a claim for territory, and one which threatens U.S. allies in the region as well as our shipping.

The Chinese claims appear to be in total violation of international law,  particularly the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, which the United States has not ratified, and which China ratified in 1996.

The dispute with claims and counterclaims is laid out in a new, dispassionate report by the Boston Global Forum, a Harvard professor-heavy think tank.

The United States responded to the China’s claim of territorial integrity for its artificial islands after a long delay, testing the right to navigate by sending the USS Lassen, a guided missile destroyer, through the 12-nautical-mile zone off Subi Reef on Oct. 27. China has reacted angrily with aerial exercises.

The USS Lassen’s transit of the reef appears to have divided the White House. At one point, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter would not acknowledge in public that it had actually happened, or that U.S. aircraft might test the Chinese claim to territorial air rights.

These actions are known as freedom of navigation operations, or FONOPS. It is a term we will hear more of if the United States and China cannot divert from their brinkmanship in the South China Sea.

The United States does not favor any nation’s claim to islands, or even rocks, in that sea. It does, though, have a vital interest in checking Chinese expansion and the interests of its Asian allies who expect a robust U.S. response to China’s island grab — and claim to a whole ocean. — For InsideSources.com

Sex, Booze and Rock ‘n’ Roll in Making a British Jihadist

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It is a simple question, but there are only fragments of an answer. The question is: Why do so many Muslims, born in Britain, turn to jihadism?

The best numbers available show that more than 500 young, British-born Muslims have traveled to Syria to fight for the Islamic State. By comparison, an estimated 100 Americans have taken up arms for the Islamic State. As the population of the United States is 313 million, compared to 63 million for the whole of Britain, the disparity is huge.

The “the enemy within,” as the British media calls these young people, has deeply disturbed the British public, as it looks to its political leaders to take action. One writer, in The Daily Telegraph, says that the government has been soft when it should have been tough, and tough when it should have been soft.

The truth is that successive British administrations have been silent on the consequences of immigration since the second Churchill government in the 1950s. Everyone is to blame and no one is to blame.

Britain never saw a large influx of immigrants after the Norman Conquest in 1066. In fact, it had become quite proud of its tolerance for émigrés; Karl Marx was the exemplar. The Jews were tolerated after the 1650s, but excluded from many occupations and social circles.

Past and present Britain is made up of enclaves remarkably disinterested in each other. Hence, a small island nation can support 53 distinct, regional accents and dialects.

Idealists believed that post-World War II immigration would change Britain for the better, sweep away its imperial trappings. Actually if anything eroded the class structure, it was the great wave of pop music and fashion in the 1960s.

Surveys show that of the immigrants from the subcontinent, the Indians assimilated best and took to business — and the class system — with alacrity, many becoming millionaires. The Muslims, primarily from Pakistan, have fared the worst. They assimilated least and imported practices that are a savage affront to British values: forced and under-age marriages, honor killings, and halal butchers, opposed by many British animal rights groups.

These same values have made life rough for young men of Pakistani descent. For working-class British youth, sex, booze, music and soccer are their safety valves. Sexual frustration is endemic all over the Muslim world; it is at work among devout, young Muslim men in Britain, where sex is celebrated in the culture.

British business had a role in the mix of immigrants in the 1960s. Businesses wanted workers for the textile mills and factories in northern England, who would do the dirty, poorly paid work nobody else wanted. The proprietor of large tire retreading company boasted to me in 1961 how he had solved the labor problem by recruiting rural Pakistanis, who worked hard and cheaply and kept to themselves. His words have echoed with me down through the years.

This alone does not explain why, for example, a preponderance of the jihadists are from London, or why some of them seem to be university types from the London School of Economics, King’s College London, the School for Oriental and African Studies, and others. If you are young, male and Muslim, and even somewhat religious, it is easy to be persuaded that you live among the infidels with their alcohol and preoccupation with coitus.

But, again, it is not explanation enough; not an explanation of why a generation of British-born young men are attracted to the life and values of their distant ancestors, or why they have shown such savagery.

Britain has comforted itself by dealing with self-identified “community leaders” in the Muslim community. Unfortunately the real leaders have been fiery, foreign-born imams who proselytize hatred in the mosques that serve Britain’s 2 million Muslims. The Muslim communities have been hidden in plain sight from the British mainstream.  — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate


Barking Mad about Dog Justice

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You are embarking on reading something that is hopelessly one-sided, patently biased and completely partisan. It is plainly and simply a call for equality.

I want dogs in the United States to be accorded the same rights and privileges as they are in France.

I say that if you want to be born a pooch, do it in France. The French dog’s life is tres bonne.

You may think I am barking mad, but I have been studying pampered pooches for decades. In Britain, people have a screw loose about all animals. But in France, the dog is the overlord of all it surveys.

British dogs may get roast beef on Sunday, if they are lucky. Their French equals drag their owners to the patisserie whenever they feel the urge for an eclair or a napoleon.

British dogs get a bath infrequently in the family tub. But French dogs go to a salon. Sadly, in America, we outsource the grooming to a chain; not the same as a salon for Fifi the Pomeranian or Jacques the wolfhound.

But it is really at lunch and dinner when the French dog struts his or her superior situation: They go to fine restaurants with their owners, and sometimes — Mon Dieu! — eat their meals on the same china.

In England the lucky few four-footers can go to the pub and, with the publican’s permission, enter the hallowed premises. After some unpleasantness with the same publican’s large mongrel, which always blocks the entrance, he or she will find a spot under the table and hope for a bit of overcooked banger.

It is quite amazing how many dogs will show up in a restaurant in France and, after a few snarls, how fast they will settle down to the serious work of begging for food, or waiting in the certain knowledge that if they have the power over their owners to be taken out to lunch or dinner, delicious victuals will be provided with a loving, “Bon appetit, mon petit chien!” Last month in Paris, I saw a happy dog sitting on a banquette in a fine restaurant.

Dogs in France also are conspicuous on public transportation. You see them on the trains, both local and intercity, and the intercity airplanes. Some taxi drivers feel safer with a German shepherd or Rottweiler on the front seat. I have always thought a dog is superior to plastic dividers and other security devices in these uncivil times.

The French indulge their dogs and owners to such an extent that they have special sanitation workers who ride motorcycles equipped with vacuum cleaners, so that the good citizens do not, well, step in it.

But in America, dogs are defendu, not allowed to darken the door. They are classified as a health hazard. You can get away with dining with your best friend outdoors at some establishments. But mostly, the dear creatures must endure confinement at home while we gorge.

My fellow Americans, can this go on? Can we allow the pampered poodles of France to lord it over good ol' American coon hounds? Liberte, egalite, fraternite for the dogs of the U.S.A.! — For the Hearst-New York Times Syndicate