US Diplomacy v. the Military-Industrial Complex

 The last time the United States achieved lasting peace with its former enemies was in 1945. Since then America has been dragged into an endless succession of regional wars, with its diplomats being forced to play second fiddle to the hawks in various US administrations.

Nowadays it's not diplomats who come up with solutions to solve tensions between states, but the direct or indirect representatives of the American, Russian or French military-industrial complexes, that is - military attachés or secret service chiefs posted  in embassies. The situation arose after 1945 and gradually worsened as the military-industrial complexes in question gained increasing levels of influence over politicians.

Of course, unlike diplomats, the people of the military-industrial complex (MIC) do not aim to settle conflicts between states, but to stall solving them in order to keep the level of arms sales as high as possible.

A recent example from Australia illustrates how toxic a MIC can be for the conduct of normal diplomatic relations between states. Thus, a country like France - hitherto known to have the oldest and most prestigious diplomatic service in Europe - recalled its ambassadors from 2 of its oldest Western allies, namely the US and Australia, simply because the French MIC lost an order to supply submarines to the Australian Navy in favour of the Americans.

The Russian MIC is also a strong competitor to the American MIC when it comes to sales of military hardware.Thus, the Russians have succeeded in selling sensitive military hardware even to NATO members like Turkey. Cash-strapped nations like India are also traditional customers. The huge success of the Russian MIC, however, lies elsewhere. Twenty-odd years ago one of their own - Vladimir Putin - took over the presidency and made sure that no traditional politician will ever gain power in Russia again. The domination of the Russian MIC over state institutions is so complete due to the fact that no alternative power centres have been allowed to exist.

" Russian defense companies do not need to spend money on lobbyists (as their U.S. counterparts do) because key individuals working for them simultaneously hold senior political posts and already take part in high-level decision-making. Thus, Russia’s defense-industry lobbying, such as it is, focuses on access to the federal budget—funds distributed by the government with the active participation of the presidential administration and Putin himself for arms procurement, R&D and industrial modernization programs. " ( Pavel Luzin )

Many analysts and Western politicians have mistakenly compared Putin to the likes of Stalin or Hitler. For a start, unlike them, Putin is not a politician and has never aspired to be one. Secondly, unlike Stalin, he has an excellent working relationship with the top generals of the Russian army, or with the heads of Russia's main secret services like the GRU and the FSB. Thirdly, Vladimir Putin has demonstrated that when his country is backed into a corner, he and his army commanders act as one in pushing back against what they see as trespassers to the Russian security sphere. And finally, Putin and the other top leaders of the Russian MIC take a dim view not only of traditional politicians, but also of the role diplomats can play in solving international crises. In other words, unlike his Western counterparts, Putin is not a politician but the leading PR representative of the Russian MIC.

In the United States, the typical political representatives of the MIC are the  neo-conservatives, the most belligerent of Americans. They are often found in important positions, either in the White House or in the state or defense departments , where they exert a strong influence on US foreign and defense policy. (Two best-known such people are Paul Wolfovitz or Victoria Nuland.)

Even worse, four of the top 5 corporations in the military-industrial complex in the US are run by women , who unfortunately have a dubious reputation for being more aggressive in negotiations than men ...

Whenever the issue of diplomatic negotiations between states  comes up -  such as the planned Biden Administration negotiations with Russia this month - representatives of the mass media associated with the complex fill up the public space with articles describing the diplomatic efforts as being a sign of weakness on the part of the US, insisting instead on the need to send more weaponry to the US' allies.

In other words,  when it comes to extinguishing armed conflicts,  the tactic of ​​the American military-industrial complex is to pour more gas on the fire, in order to be able to provide as many weapons as possible to the conflict zones of the world.

A Farewell to French Submarines from Australia

Make no mistake, I was born in Romania, a formerly Francophone country, I hold a master's degree from a French university and I am a great admirer of French gastronomy.

The submarine crisis, however, is overblown. France's neo-Napoleonic dream of becoming top dog in the Indo-Pacific region is naive. The French cannot conceivably guarantee Australia's security in case of troubles with China: only the United States could. What's more, France's diplomatic relations with Australia have been tepid until a few years ago, when Francois Hollande and a misguided Australian prime minister decided to sign a contract for 12 French-built submarines in order to upgrade the Australian fleet. Unlike the UK or the US, France has been a continental - not a maritime - military power. As Charles de Gaulle astutely pointed out to Macmillan, on the other hand:

"the sense of being an island remains very strong with you. England looks to the sea, towards wider horizons. She remains very linked to the United States by language, by habits and by certain agreements. The natural course of your policy leads you to seek the agreement of the Americans because you are ‘mondiaux’ … .”

Looking back in history, one should not forget that Napoleon even planned to invade Sydney in 1814 and to evict the newly-established British colonists from New South Wales. To date, Australians have contributed far more to the security of France during the  2 world wars than the French will ever contribute to Australia's security, now or in the future. 

The Australian government has a duty to its citizens to choose from all possible strategic partnerships the one that best ensures the security of the country in today's tense Indo-Pacific strategic environment. Accordingly, Australian leaders should not feel compelled to apologise for changing their minds and putting their country's interests first.

The Canary in the Coal Mine

 Last December, Germany finalised a Comprehensive  Agreement on investment  with China on behalf of the EU, angering many EU members in the process. While somewhat understandable from a German point of view, the speed with which the agreement was concluded and the opportunity to do so in the current context leave much to be desired.

Before signing it, officials should have taken clues from last year's attack by the Chinese government on Australian exports. As dependent as Germany is on the Chinese market for a significant share of its exports, Australia has seen its barley, beef, wine, lobster, timber and even coal exports brutally affected by an official ban. China has revived its old imperial kow-tow policy, according to which countries around it could see their access to its market denied if the political leadership in Beijing feels slighted by them in any way.

Australia has displeased Beijing last year when it called for an international inquiry on the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic. The call was seconded at the time by the EU and is fully justified in scientific terms, even if the Chinese leadership preferred to give it a political spin. Soon thereafter the Chinese government started targeting Australian exports one after another on an almost monthly basis, trying to make an example of Australia should any other country try to follow in its footsteps. Problem is, Australia had signed a bilateral free trade agreement with China back in 2015, which should theoretically have protected the two countries' companies from such unwarranted political disputes. It follows that concluding treaties with China is not worth the paper treaties are written on and will clearly not protect anyone .

The EU-China investment protection treaty ( CAI) should not be ratified until the Chinese government abandons such harmful commercial tactics with Western countries like Australia, with which they have a free trade agreement in force. In this case, Australia is no more and no less than the canary in the coalmine for the EU, blinded - as it were -  by the false hope of enjoying normal economic relations with China.

Once it concludes major trade agreements, China succeeds in modernising and in boosting its own economy's growth. However, it does so at the expense of its trading partners, as its record attests when examining its economic relations with first the USSR and then the US.

This is why Australia's recent commercial predicament should be taken seriously in Brussels and should act as a powerful brake against the type of wishful thinking that disregards Chinese polity's true nature and its hidden geopolitical agenda.

EU Diplomacy's Munich 2.0 Moment

 

May 9, 2020

European diplomatic traditions, which are some of the most illustrious in the world, have not prevented the External Action Service from writing one of the most inept letters I have ever read. After months of China’s diplomatic bullying, aimed at changing the pandemic narrative in its favour, is this ill-conceived message addressed to the Chinese leadership all that the best diplomatic experts within the EU have been able to come up with ? To add insult to injury, the EU officials have even accepted the letter to be censored by Beijing before its publication, deleting any reference to the fact that the pandemic started in China.

Diplomatic intimidation was not invented by the Chinese. The Nazis used it before them. Just before the start of the second world war, this type of bullying made Neville Chamberlain bow to Hitler’s demands in order to achieve – in his view – “peace with honour”.

Pushing back against Chinese bullying, however, is the only reasonable course of action of any country and self-respecting diplomatic establishment. From my personal experience working for Chinese bosses, I also happen to know that taking a firm stand against their bullying is the only way to deal with the representatives of a nation that has recently achieved economic success, but is still haunted by a huge inferiority complex. Trying to appease Chinese bullying or to ignore it will not make it go away, but will only lead to more serious bullying in the future.

To give but one example, Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison has called for an international inquiry into the origins and handling of the coronavirus pandemic. His initiative has prompted a furious attack by the Chinese ambassador to Canberra, who by now is used to treating Australia like a de-facto Chinese colony. He used the media to threaten that Chinese consumers could stop importing Australian beef and wine. This type of threat echoes the Davos speech of a Chinese official this year, who claimed that the United States will not do anything to counter China’s recent belligerence because his country is the biggest market for American hamburgers outside the USA.

“If you give China an inch, they will take a mile. And if you succumb to bullying and intimidation, you can expect only one more thing: more bullying and intimidation. It’s going to be a question not simply of what is Australia saying about what’s happening in China: it’s about China trying to dictate what’s happening in Australia.” (Dr Samantha Power, former US Ambassador to the UN Security Council, in Financial Review, November 2019)

The Chinese amhassador’s assertion that his country’s consumers might decide not to buy Australian beef in the future is also directed against the Chinese middle class. These are the biggest consumers of beef in the country, and if the communist party decides for some reason to stop importing it, they will have to revert to a more traditional, pork-based diet. In other words, the communist party seems as displeased with Australia as they are with the restless Chinese middle class, who have nevertheless made the fatal error of putting their future prosperity into the hands of the communist officials.

The EU , on the other hand, is China’s biggest export market and this fact alone gives it a lot of clout, a temporary disruption in supply chains notwithstanding.

This is why appeasing China’s offensive diplomatic behaviour makes so little sense.

Instead, EU diplomats should intensify calls for an independent inquiry into the handling of the pandemic and declare at least a few Chinese diplomats in Europe persona non grata after their unwarranted offensive behaviour in Paris or Stockholm. Anything else will be construed by the communst regime in Beijing as proof of Western democracies’ inherent weakness. Indeed, like the Nazis before them, their entire propaganda machinery rests on proving to the population how strong China’s communist government is and how weak Western democratic governments are by comparison.

Naturally, no European country wishes to confront China, which is fair enough. However, by appeasing its diplomats’ bullying and ignoring its shameless propaganda, the EU is making a huge error, one which is already being put to good use by the continent’s “ideological competitor”.