Wednesday 30 November 2016
Photo, left:
JOHN BATCHELOR SHOW
Co-host: Gordon Chang, Forbes.com & Daily Beast.
Hour One
Wednesday 30 November 2016 / Hour 1, Block A: Carolyn Bartholomew, Vice-Chair of the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, in re: the recommendations in the Commission's 2016 Annual Report about takeovers of American companies by Chinese state businesses, including this related development: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-lattice-m-a-canyonbridge-idUSKBN13N1D5
Wednesday 30 November 2016 / Hour 1, Block B: Dean Cheng, senior research fellow of the Asia Studies Center at the Heritage Foundation, in re: Federated States of Micronesia enjoys, so to speak, Chinese investment that in reality threatens US strategic interest. Need to travel through Micronesian waters for supply, communications, and national allegiances. Current American neglect is losing contact while the Chinese State takes over carefully, investment has been placed there for a decade to interfere with US access over this vast oceanic territory. Target A has been political denial – less to Washington than to Taipei. As Beijing fears the Taiwanese DPP, “the gloves are coming off.” The Compact of Free Association is coming up for renewal, and China is trying to make it difficult for the US. Any discussion of expanding Pacific bases means going to one of the island countries in this part of the world. http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2016/10/countering-chinese-inroads-into-micronesia.
Countering Chinese Inroads into Micronesia* By Dean Cheng (see below)
Wednesday 30 November 2016 / Hour 1, Block C: Michael Auslin, AEI, & author, The End of the Asian Century, in re: US renunciation of TPP? The strategic and economic ramifications. December 7 Pearl Harbor strike, 75 years later, Abe moves to establish a [replacement] alliance in the Vientiane Agreement.. After Britain Japan is he largest single foreign investor in the US. Need Trump to press ahead with a bilateral agreement wit Japan; also with Britain. A lot of new ways of thinking.
Thucydides Trap: a rising power and a mature power will tangle. Athens and Sparta; Russia and Britain; and now China and the US. The Chinese miracle has suddenly (at last) turned into the Chinese run-in as the Washington commentariat wakes up. What are the signs of a weakened China? What pressures will that exert on Xi? https://www.aei.org/publication/free-trade-under-fire/
Wednesday 30 November 2016 / Hour 1, Block D: Michael Auslin, AEI, & author, The End of the Asian Century, in re: China’s deep smarting at “the humiliations of the Ch’ing Dynasty.” Kissinger (Ferguson): Find a way to negotiate with China. Don’t force a confrontation.” Problem is here, for exactly 45 years the US has moved mightily to integrate China into the world system at all levels; yet Xi
On China presents a view of China that has very little to do with China as it is today. He demands that the US play the long game, which is impossible when a nation moves to create and maintain a Chinese order across East Asia and openly promotes war with the US. Xi didn't even bother to call Trump because they hold that he’ll go visit Beijing and pay obeisance. . . Cardinal Richelieu: “In matters of state, he who has the power often has the right; and he who is weak often cannot keep from being wrong in the eyes of the world.” Not Realpolitik, but Machtpolitik. . . . In open forums, China turns to smaller powers, such as Singapore, and reminds them that they’re small. “China is big, Singapore is strong, and you'd better remember that.” Wow. This ain’t working.
James Fallow's revisionist thinking in the new Atlantic: Thucydides Trap https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2016/12/chinas-great-leap-backward/505817/
Hour Two
Wednesday 30 November 2016 / Hour 2, Block A: Bruce Bechtol, professor at Angelo State University and author, North Korea and Regional Security in the Kim Jong-un Era, in re: the U.N. sanctions imposed today: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-nuclear-un-idUSKBN13P1TF South Korean Pres park offers to resign; this is our ally facing North Korea. Recommended sanctions against DPRK, es n China and minerals [and oil?[ - these sanctions are likely to be more of he same, On paper, the last year’s sanctions are the toughest ever. But no enforcement, And 80% of DPRK trade is with China, which ignores sanctions.
UN sanctions; China makes a big show of enforcing them, then a few months later the China completely ignores them. Today’s trade China-DPRK is enormous. The present and the last Bush administration have failed Enforcement: In 2005 Treasure designated Banco Delta Asia as money-laundries for North Korea; all we have to do is refuse to allow any business between that bank, or any of the other well-known laundries. Current US policy has failed uninterruptedly for thirteen years.
About Pres Pak in Seoul: Asians do not see things as we do; perception is more important than reality – a lot of the street demos have been promoted by the left; Pres Pak has asked the parliament to take actin, which will create a constitutional crisis, This very much amuses North Korea. US is trying to deploy THAAD, now in the midst of much insecurity.
Wednesday 30 November 2016 / Hour 2, Block B: Nitin Gokhale, former anchor at New Delhi Television and now an independent security analyst on Bharat Shakti, an Indian defence website, in re: Gwadar is a port in Pakistan; the new Silk Route goes through Xinjiang and Pakistan to the ocean. Gujarat: Potential of China militarizing this port is of much concern. China is also bldg. a naval base in Djibouti. India will build up other port to counter Gwadar. Chinese and Indian admirals are staring eyeball to eyeball in Colombo, where china tried to dock a nuclear-powered sub and raised alarm bells. Indians know that China is not to be trusted. http://www.ndtv.com/world-news/chinese-navy-ships-to-be-deployed-at-pakistans-gwadar-port-1630354
KARACHI: China would deploy its naval ships along with Pakistan navy to safeguard the strategic Gwadar port and trade routes under the $46 billion China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a Pakistani official in Karachi has said. China and Pakistan are currently building the nearly 3,000-km-long economic corridor linking Pakistan's Gwadar port on the Arabian Sea with Xinjiang to improve connectivity between the two countries. The move would open up a new and cheaper cargo route for transporting oil to China as well as export of Chinese goods to the Middle East and Africa. A Pakistan navy official said the role of maritime forces has increased since the country has made the Gwadar port operational and speeded up economic activities under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). . . .
Gwadar Port is a warm-water, deep-sea port situated on the Arabian Sea at Gwadar in Balochistan province of Pakistan. The port features prominently in the China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) plan, and is considered to be a crucial link between the ambitious One Belt, One Road and Maritime Silk Road projects.
Wednesday 30 November 2016 / Hour 2, Block C: Gordon Chang, in re: Kissinger wants dialogue; recommends a balance of power, similar to Teddy Roosevelt. This means that spheres of influence are dominated by one power at a time: Asia—controlled by China; Europe— by Russia; West—by USA. These three dominate the planet. This is his case for a world order. Kissinger doesn’t understand Asia: in ’72 he went with Nixon to speak with Mao, assumed that Taiwan would just go away. Forty years later Taiwan is strong; Kissinger doesn't grasp how small powers can be vibrant. His assumptions about how the word works aren’t true now and weren’t in 1972. Again: Japan is a sovereign state and can defend itself; this offends Kissinger, but we [Americans] stand for principles. In Kissinger’s world there are no principles; he doesn’t understand this.
China is militarizing its bogus islands and wherever else it can – Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia et al et al – this is a contest. China is trying t dismember its neighbors; with Kissinger’s way, you wind up with the same dynamic as obtained before WWII. Kissinger doesn’t think of this.
At AEI this evening, Chinese guests: “Your president Trump is strong. Our president Xi is strong, too.” – yike, pre-Enlightenment power politics.
China grew because the Americans put Chinese interests above their own. This will not happen again.
Kissinger’s recommendations to Trump can be summarized as follows:
• Do not go all-out into a confrontation with China, whether on trade or the South China Sea. Rather, seek “comprehensive discussion” and aim to pursue that policy of dialogue and “co-evolution” recommended in World Order. Kissinger sees the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, quite regularly. When he says that Xi regards “confrontation as too dangerous” and thinks that “adversarial countries must become partners and cooperate on a win-win basis,” he speaks with authority. The questions the Chinese want to ask the new president, according to Kissinger, are these: “If we were you, we might try to suppress your rise. Do you seek to suppress us? If you do not, what will the world look like when we are both strong, as we expect to be?” Trump needs to have answers to these questions. The alternative, as Kissinger has said repeatedly, is for the United States and China to talk past each other until they stumble into 1914 in the Pacific, not to mention in cyberspace. http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/11/21/donald-trumps-new-world-order/ **
Wednesday 30 November 2016 / Hour 2, Block D: Tunku Varadarajan, Hoover, in re: The Brady Bunch & the Conquest of the Third World. TunkuVaradarajan, @HooverInstViewers in the Third World marveled at the egalitarian treatment given to Alice, the housekeeper, a mere “servant.” Those of us with TV sets and maids were disconcerted, wondering why our own help was treated so differently.
There’s more. Eight people coming together under one roof, with room for all, underscored America’s physical and economic grandeur, its enviable prosperity. As a friend from Bangladesh remarked to me about the Bradys’ eldest daughter: “I knew Marcia Brady was sexy before I knew what sex was. It made me wish we had a station wagon, in Dhaka. It made me want to live in America.” America was, once upon a time, the United States of Brady. http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-brady-bunch-ambassadors-1480280018
Hour Three
Wednesday 30 November 2016 / Hour 3, Block A: Josh Rogin, Washington Post, columnist, and CNN political analyst, in re: Follow the Money for Giuliani in Mexico City 2002. @JoshRogin, Washington Post. In 2002, shortly after he stepped down as New York’s mayor, Giuliani scored a $4.3 million contract to consult for the government and police force of Mexico City, then led by up-and-coming politician Andrés Manuel López Obrador. The contract was the first big international consulting haul for Giuliani Partners, which at the time included former New York City police commissioner Bernard Kerik.
Giuliani worked personally on the contract, visiting Mexico and meeting regularly with López Obrador and Mexico City Police Chief Marcelo Ebrard, who later succeeded López Obrador as the head of Mexico City’s government. The idea was to replicate Giuliani’s success in reducing New York City’s crime rates in Mexico City. He recommended policies such as “zero tolerance” for petty crimes and applying “broken windows” policing, which focuses on disorder and vandalism to establish a sense of law and order that, in theory, would reduce the number of more serious crimes.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/josh-rogin/wp/2016/11/29/giuliani-ma...
Wednesday 30 November 2016 / Hour 3, Block B: Larry Johnson, NoQuarter, in re: The Unanswered Questions of David Petraeus’s Washington Misrule. @LarryJohnson, No Quarter. Then Petraeus personally delivered the black books to a residence where Broadwell was staying in Washington, D.C. A few days later, he returned to retrieve them.
On Oct. 26, 2012, Petraeus was interviewed by FBI agents in CIA headquarters while he was still director. Petraeus told them he had never provided any classified information to Broadwell or facilitated her provision of the information.
“These statements were false. Defendant David Howell Petraeus then and there knew that he previously shared the black books with his biographer.”
On Nov. 9, 2012, Petraeus resigned from the CIA following the revelation of his affair with Broadwell. This came after Tampa socialite Jill Kelley told the FBI that Broadwell was harassing her via email. The FBI traced Broadwell’s emails and discovered she was communicating with Petraeus. The FBI told Petraeus’s boss, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, of the suspected affair.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/03/03/petraeus-mistress-got-secret-black-books-full-of-code-words-spy-names-and-briefings-with-obama.html?via=newsletter&source=DDAfternoon
Wednesday 30 November 2016 / Hour 3, Block C: Abraham Loeb, Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science, Harvard University Chair, Harvard Astronomy Department Director, Institute for Theory and Computation (ITC) Founding Director, Black Hole Initiative (BHI) Chair, Breakthrough Starshot Advisory Committee Vice Chair, Board on Physics and Astronomy, National Academies; in re: A vibrant scientific culture encourages many interpretations of evidence, argues Avi Loeb. Self-Satisfied Cosmology Deceived the Mayans and May Be Deceiving US.
BLINDED BY BEAUTY How each culture views the Universe is guided by its beliefs in, for example, mathematical beauty or the structure of reality. If these ideas are deeply rooted, people tend to interpret all data as supportive of them — adding parameters or performing mathematical gymnastics to force the fit. Recall how the belief that the Sun moves around Earth led to the mathematically beautiful (and incorrect) theory of epicycles advocated by the ancient Greek philosopher Ptolemy. Similarly, modern cosmology is augmented by unsubstantiated, mathematically sophisticated ideas — of the multiverse, anthropic reasoning and string theory. The multiverse idea postulates the existence of numerous other regions of space-time, to which we have no access and in which the cosmological parameters have different values.
The anthropic argument is then often applied. It holds that our own region has the parameters it does (including those of dark energy and dark matter) because other, more likely values would not have allowed life to develop near a star like the Sun in a galaxy such as the Milky Way. An overlooked problem with this argument is that, according to one analysis, life is 1,000 times more likely to exist 10 trillion years from now around stars that weigh one-tenth the mass of the Sun. This means that terrestrial life might be premature and not the most likely form of life, even in our own Universe. (1 of 2)
http://www.nature.com/polopoly_fs/1.20906!/menu/main/topColumns/topLeftColumn/pdf/539023a.pdf
Wednesday 30 November 2016 / Hour 3, Block D: Abraham Loeb, Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science, Harvard University Chair, Harvard Astronomy Department Director, Institute for Theory and Computation (ITC) Founding Director, Black Hole Initiative (BHI) Chair, Breakthrough Starshot Advisory Committee Vice Chair, Board on Physics and Astronomy, National Academies, in re: Milkomeda – merging of Milky Way and Andromeda in a few billion years. . . . Are we alone, or is there life elsewhere; if yes, is it intelligent, as we are [sic]. Finding this out is one of the main goals in modern astronomy; study atmospheres around stars One-quarter I MW have star s like our own; habitable zone; interesting to visit such a star. Proxima Centauri has a roughly-Earth-mass planet in its habitable zone. We’ll send a probe there (Starshot) – use a very powerful laser to push a small [craft} with a sail and most of the speed of light.
The Back Hole Initiative – combines astronomers, mathematicians, physicists and philosophers. Most enjoyable. . . . If you throw an encyclopedia into a black hole, it disappears. Hawkings showed that it evaporates; theory says naught can be actually lost – so where did it go? (2 of 2)
Hour Four
Wednesday 30 November 2016 / Hour 4, Block A: David Victor, Foreign Policy, Energy Security and Climate Initiative co-chair at Brookings, and professor of international relations at the School of Global Policy and Strategy and director of the Laboratory on International Law and Regulation (ILAR), at UC San Diego; and author, Global Warming Gridlock: Creating More Effective Strategies for Protecting the Planet; in re: “Making climate science more relevant. Better indicators for risk management are needed after Paris"
For nearly three decades, the central goal in international climate policy had been to set the political agenda—to engage all countries on the need for action. So long as that was the goal, it was sufficient for policy-makers to focus on simple indicators of climate change, such as global average surface temperature With the 2015 Paris Agreement, governments launched a process that can move beyond setting agendas to coordinating national policies to manage the climate. Next month in Marrakesh, diplomats will convene to flesh out the Agreement. They need to focus on the infrastructure of data and analysis that will be needed as the Agreement becomes operational. The scientific community can help by identifying better lagging indicators to describe what has changed as policy efforts progress, and leading indicators to focus policy on the right risks as the planet warms. http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/354/6311/421.full.pdf (1 of 2)
Wednesday 30 November 2016 / Hour 4, Block B: David Victor, Foreign Policy, Energy Security and Climate Initiative co-chair at Brookings, and professor of international relations at the School of Global Policy and Strategy and director of the Laboratory on International Law and Regulation (ILAR), at UC San Diego; and author, Global Warming Gridlock: Creating More Effective Strategies for Protecting the Planet; in re: “Making climate science more relevant. Better indicators for risk management are needed after Paris" Climate change will affect water supplies and multiple aspects of human life; it’s the realm of social scientists to bld models to see how the risks unfurl and integrate. Much of what we need to know we don't know, and won't until it unfolds before our eyes. Wildfires I impacts on snow melt, other such events: what to do with our infrastructure and water supply to prepare for the coming changes? (2 of 2)
Wednesday 30 November 2016 / Hour 4, Block C: James A. Hendler, Tetherless World Professor of Computer, Web and Cognitive Sciences Director, Rensselaer Institute for Data Exploration and Applications, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), in re: “Science of the World Wide Web" By the late Nineties, we knew something was emerging, as both of us had worked with Timer Berners-Lee and two of his close colleagues. “Socio-technical” is our buzz phrase. The Web is a bunch of machines talking to each other; also humans talking to each other, The Web is what stands between the network of machines and the network of people. The Web Observatory: a project, constantly emerging – what signals do we get to know what's going on in the Web – what data to store to see trends over time, also its size and how people use it. Compare , e.g., US and China--using both we see [a larger picture]. . . . Information bubbles.
Science 11 Nov 2016: Vol. 354, Issue 6313, pp. 703-704; DOI: 10.1126/science.aai9150 with Wendy Hall. Ten years ago, Wikipedia was still in its infancy (and totally dismissed by the establishment), Facebook was still restricted to university users, Twitter was in beta testing, and improving search capabilities was the topic that dominated Web conference research agendas. There were virtually no smartphones, online surveillance of activity and data storage were largely unknown beyond security services, and no one knew that being a data scientist was one day going to be “the sexiest job in the world”. http://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/354/6313/703.full.pdf (1 of 2)
Wednesday 30 November 2016 / Hour 4, Block D: James A. Hendler, Tetherless World Professor of Computer, Web and Cognitive Sciences Director, Rensselaer Institute for Data Exploration and Applications, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), in re: “Science of the World Wide Web" with Wendy Hall. Need a research agenda that targets [the progression of] the www. Trustworthiness! Different kinds of governance are now interacting in new ways. In newspapers, we had libel laws, on the Web, those laws don't currently apply as they were written In Europe, trying to come up with rules for privacy. How can we figure out the effects that a decision one country makes may affect the whole Web – and its trustworthiness. Who shd be making some of these decisions? And Facebook policies – Brexit and US election. How did the meme BlackLivesMatter go from being a [phrase on the Web] to having real-life effects? Who was pushing it? Web Sciences at universities: many different scientists from different disciplines. (2 of 2)
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* http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2016/10/countering-chinese-inroads-into-micronesia.
Countering Chinese Inroads into Micronesia By Dean Cheng
As China’s economy has grown and China has assumed the role of foremost global trading power, Beijing has extended its influence to the South Pacific. The latest development has been reports of a new mega-resort on the island of Yap in the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM).[1] The United States, which has generally played the dominant role in this area that straddles key sea lanes of communications to the western Pacific, needs to keep a close eye on Chinese efforts to make inroads there. Otherwise, Washington could find itself strategically outflanked.
Current State of Affairs in Micronesia and the Pacific
While Yap and Truk (also part of the FSM) were major Japanese naval bases in World War II, the South Pacific has generally not been a point of great power contention since 1945. At the end of World War II, the U.S. assumed responsibility for the “Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands.” In the 1980s, the Compact of Free Association (COFA) allowed the various Trust Territories to become independent states: the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, Palau, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.
Under the COFA, the U.S. maintains certain preferential policies towards the island nations, while also assuming responsibility for their defense. Citizens of the islands may join the U.S. military without first establishing permanent residency or citizenship. The U.S., in turn, can maintain strategic access through the waters that are encompassed by the various island nations. Some one-third of global trade and almost 50 percent of energy commerce passes through waters controlled by these island states.[2]
While the U.S. has been responsible for the island states’ security, Washington has generally exerted limited economic effort in support of their development. (Much of U.S. aid in this case is administered via the Department of Interior, rather than the State Department.[3]) The largest source of aid to the states has been Australia ($7 billion between 2006 and 2013).
Meanwhile, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has established relations with the Cook Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, Fiji, Niue, Papua New Guinea (PNG), Samoa, Tonga, and Vanuatu, becoming a major donor and providing some $1 billion in aid.
According to the Lowy Institute in Australia, China has grown as a source of aid to various South Pacific nations.[4] Although China’s aid efforts remain behind Australia’s, they have eclipsed Japan’s.
Chinese Investments and the Extension of Chinese Power
The extension of Chinese power has occurred even as Beijing no longer competes with Taipei for diplomatic recognition from the various South Pacific states. For many years, Beijing and Taipei sought to buy diplomatic recognition by offering large aid and investment packages to the various nations. Under Republic of China (ROC) President Ma Ying-jeou, an informal truce was reached whereby both the PRC and ROC refrained from trying to alter the state of recognition. Six states in the region currently recognize Taiwan (ROC), while eight recognize Beijing (PRC).
Ironically, the shift away from “checkbook diplomacy” between Beijing and Taipei has probably left the region more open to Chinese investment, as the PRC pursues commercial opportunities in the region. Indeed, Chinese trade with Pacific island countries rose by 60 percent between 2014 and 2015, reaching $8.1 billion.[5]
As is the case with its investments in the Indian Ocean region, China’s economic investments in the South Pacific could eventually pose a security threat. After Australia, China is the largest source of aid to Samoa and Tonga. However, like the “string of pearls” of Chinese commercial investments and developments in the Indian Ocean, little evidence exists that Chinese business investments in the South Pacific are masks for a greater military presence.
In both instances, however, Chinese investments do serve the purpose of expanding China’s commercial, economic, and political footprint. This is arguably even more true in the South Pacific, where Chinese aid has transitioned from grants to concessional loans that will have to be paid back. Many of these island nations may find it difficult to meet the terms of these loans, given their limited economic resources. This, in turn, could open the door to other forms of Chinese presence, including military.
In some cases, China has clearly emphasized political and diplomatic considerations. When Fiji’s military staged a coup in 2006, many donor states, including Australia, reduced their commitments. The PRC, however, maintained its relations with the military government, and substantially expanded its aid donations. Chinese bilateral aid rose to $333 million by 2013, substantially outpacing Australian and Japanese aid.
Challenges Facing the U.S.
For the U.S., the presence of the PRC in the South Pacific does not pose immediate military threats; rather, it promises longer term influence for Beijing, which is likely to erode regional support for the U.S. This longer term erosion does have potential military implications. Not only do key sea lanes of communications (SLOCs) transit the waters encompassed by these island nations, but they also offer potential sites for various bases, as was the case in World War II.
Anchorages and airfields in these islands would offer alternative sites for Guam—which is already densely covered with various American military bases and facilities—making it a lucrative target for Chinese missiles and other stand-off weapons. Dispersal to additional sites would complicate Chinese targeting, by both proliferating the number of sites that might have to be attacked and broadening the number of sovereign states that it would be attacking.
By contrast, if Beijing established a political foothold in these islands, it could persuade these states not to extend access to the U.S., as well as arrange for Chinese access. These need not be military bases; the ability to build space surveillance facilities and communications nodes, for example, would make these islands potential reconnaissance and surveillance sites for eavesdropping on Guam and the U.S. missile test facilities at Kwajalein in the Republic of the Marshall Islands.
Recommendations for the U.S.
China’s efforts in the South Pacific are still at the nascent phase, so a relatively low-key American effort would serve to limit Chinese inroads. However, if the U.S. neglects the region, then Chinese investments are likely to generate disproportionate benefits. Therefore, the U.S. should implement the following policies:
• Develop a regional strategy for the South Pacific. The first step is to recognize both the region’s importance and its needs. In this regard, the U.S. should coordinate its efforts with Australia and New Zealand, which are physically closer and have far more expertise in the region. In addition, the three nations share a common perspective and a common democratic tradition, and have the Australia, New Zealand, United States Security Treaty as a foundation for their efforts.
• Preserve the Compact of Free Association. Part of the U.S. strategy for the South Pacific should be to preserve the COFA, which provides the legal basis for relations between the U.S. and several of the states in the region. Should the effort by the Federated States of Micronesia (FSM) succeed, then there would be the diplomatic equivalent of “open season” on the various states, which would ultimately be detrimental to U.S. interests. The FSM effort would end the COFA by the close of 2018, rather than 2023, severely curtailing the time available for renegotiation. Washington should seek to reverse the FSM’s decision, while initiating talks now for revising the COFA. The U.S. should also consider moving the administration of COFA-related funds to the State Department, rather than the Department of Interior, so that it can be better integrated into a regional strategy.
• Highlight and emphasize private investment and trade in the South Pacific. The aid distributed to many South Pacific states has not resulted in a substantial growth in regional economies. Such growth is unlikely to occur so long as the various states depend on aid. Given their location on the equator, the states have a number of potential avenues for economic growth, including tourism and fishing, as well as space tracking and potentially even space launch. (The commercial space launch provider Sea Launch operated its maritime launch ship from equatorial waters in the Pacific.) The U.S. may want to also consider including the various states in free trade agreements.
• Monitor Chinese efforts in the region. Chinese efforts in the South Pacific, while mainly economic, undoubtedly have a political component and possibly a strategic one as well. Beijing is primarily oriented towards developing trade; however, as with much of East and South Asia, multiple political, diplomatic, and military considerations are in play. For these reasons, the U.S. needs to monitor China’s efforts in the South Pacific, as well as keep watch on its efforts in the Indian Ocean or Latin America.
—Dean Cheng is a Senior Research Fellow for Chinese Political and Security Affairs in the Asian Studies Center, of the Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy, at The Heritage Foundation
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** Trump Meets TR for a Strong New American Century. Niall Ferguson, @HooverInst
Kissinger’s recommendations to Trump can be summarized as follows:
• Do not go all-out into a confrontation with China, whether on trade or the South China Sea. Rather, seek “comprehensive discussion” and aim to pursue that policy of dialogue and “co-evolution” recommended in World Order. Kissinger sees the Chinese President, Xi Jinping, quite regularly. When he says that Xi regards “confrontation as too dangerous” and thinks that “adversarial countries must become partners and cooperate on a win-win basis,” he speaks with authority. The questions the Chinese want to ask the new President, according to Kissinger, are these: “If we were you, we might try to suppress your rise. Do you seek to suppress us? If you do not, what will the world look like when we are both strong, as we expect to be?” Trump needs to have answers to these questions. The alternative, as Kissinger has said repeatedly, is for the United States and China to talk past each other until they stumble into 1914 in the Pacific, not to mention in cyberspace.
Given a weakened, traumatized, post-imperial Russia, the recognition Putin craves is that of “a great power, as an equal, and not as a supplicant in an American-designed system.” Kissinger’s message to Trump is well calibrated to appeal to his instincts: “It is not possible to bring Russia into the international system by conversion. It requires deal-making, but also understanding.” The central deal, Kissinger argues, would turn Ukraine into “a bridge between NATO and Russia rather than an outpost of either side,” like Finland or Austria in the Cold War, “free to conduct its own economic and political relationships, including with both Europe and Russia, but not party to any military or security alliance.” Such a non-aligned Ukraine would also need to be decentralized, increasing the autonomy of the contested eastern regions, where there has been intermittent conflict since separatist movements received Russian support in the wake of the Crimean annexation. The alternative to such a deal is that we may inadvertently over-use our financial and military superiority, turning a post-Putin Russia into a vast version of Yugoslavia, “wracked by conflict stretching from St. Petersburg to Vladivostok.” http://www.the-american-interest.com/2016/11/21/donald-trumps-new-world-...