The Trump administration seems finally to be getting its foreign policy footing, with a number of important achievements in the past few days:
Honduras
The dangerous post-electoral chaos in Honduras has been ended with the US endorsing the re-election of Juan Orlando Hernández. “‘Now with the decision of the United States, I am out of the game,’ said Salvador Nasralla, the candidate of a leftist coalition who had claimed victory in the highly contested election. ‘Those who govern Honduras are criminals who depend on the United States,’ the leftist leader ungraciously added.” (Wall St Journal)
Ukraine
Marines launch Javelin anti-tank missile. These are being shipped to the Ukraine to use against the tanks Russia has supplied the separatists. (Kostyukov/AFP/Getty)
President Trump “has signed off on a decision to provide Ukraine with lethal defensive weaponry, including portable antitank armaments, U.S. officials said Friday, in a major shift in the years long conflict between Kiev and separatists backed by Russia.” (Wall St. Journal) President Obama had refused to send the Ukraine these weapons to defend its homeland, despite a 1994 US obligation to guarantee Ukraine’s borders expressed in the Budapest Memorandum.
Israel
The US refused to back down at the UN in its endorsement of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. More countries than previously either voted with the US in rejecting the anti-Israel, anti-US proposal put before the UN General Assembly or abstaining. The UK, France, Germany, and Japan all kowtowed to Muslim Middle East oil interests by endorsing the resolution. The US should follow through and actually open its embassy in Jerusalem next year, not later. The Palestinians are now saying they will no longer accept the US as an honest broker between themselves and Israel. Perhaps that will put an end to that perennial State Department exercise in futility, the attempt to broker an Israel-Palestine peace settlement.
Time to push back against China
Ground-based THAAD interceptor
A strong push-back by the US and its allies against China’s imperialism in Asia is long overdue. It’s intolerable that China has been able to successfully intimidate the timorous South Korean president, Moon Jae-in. The Chinese Communist government retaliated against South Korea’s THAAD missiles acquired from the US by halting Chinese tourist visits to South Korea and boycotting South Korean companies and goods in China. President Moon caved by halting completion of the THAAD installation and in so doing seriously damaged the security interests of the US and Japan, which need a complete installation to warn against Chinese or North Korean launches. But the US did nothing to help South Korea and punish China for its arrogance in denying a sovereign country the right to defend itself. Instead, President Trump denounced South Korea’s trade surplus with the US and threatened to scuttle the Korean-US trade treaty (KORUS).
In the future, it’s crucial that when China tries heavy-handed economic damage to a US ally, the US should proceed unilaterally if necessary but in coordination with allies if possible to retaliate with trade measures that (1) make up for the lost trade the country bullied by China is suffering and (2) retaliate with economic measures against China that cause it great economic pain. If this is done in South Korea’s case, we think that President Moon will acquire the necessary backbone to complete the THAAD installation. If he still doesn’t after being offered this help, then the US should no longer trouble itself about South Korean casualties if it decides to attack China’s proxy state, North Korea.
And time to commit to a Mars landing
Next task: landing Americans on the Red Planet
President Trump and the Republicans are reportedly not doing well with young voters. We suggest that imbalance would evaporate quickly if the President could inspire millenials — not to mention us older folk — with a JFK-like national commitment to establishing a US presence on Mars. Repairing bridges is fine where required, but a Mars landing is inspirational. This would be a future-oriented rather than shovel-ready infrastructure program.
The President should publicly commit the nation to the Mars landing by next Spring at the latest. A successful landing before the end of 2020 would be optimal. The public interest is there. Readers can advance the prospect of this happening by writing the President and their representatives in Congress and by supporting the Mars Society, whose end-of-year letter is here.
Click here to go to yesterday’s Founders Broadsheet (“Democrats pillory Tax Cuts bill but fear middle class benefit and economic boom”)
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