By Jim Geraghty
Monday, September 23, 2024
In the latest issue of the magazine, our Noah Rothman offers a grim assessment of the
foreign-policy views of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump:
Kamala Harris cannot say that she
wants America’s most stalwart ally in the Middle East to win its war against
Iran-backed terrorists. Donald Trump will not say that he wants a
Western-facing country, which is being dismembered by one of America’s oldest
enemies, to win its righteous war of self-defense. Both campaigns pay lip
service to the need to confront China without leveling with the American people
about what it will take to achieve our objectives. These may be serious times,
but they have not generated commensurate seriousness in our politics. Pray that
it doesn’t take an epochal disaster for America to come to its senses.
This past weekend, Trump announced the “launch
of official Trump coins,” “the ONLY OFFICIAL coin designed by me — and
proudly minted here in the U.S.A.” No doubt that’s time and energy well-spent,
43 days before Election Day.
Trump also called for capping the interest rate on credit cards at 10 percent —
remember a few weeks ago, when Republicans criticized the Harris campaign for supporting government-mandated price controls? — and warned, “The Jewish people would have a lot to do with a
loss if I’m at 40 percent,” at a “Fighting Antisemitism in America” event. He
also dismissed the idea of a second debate, insisting, “It’s too late.” (In
1980, Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter debated a week before Election Day.)
Trump also met with Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the Emir of Qatar, at Mar-a-Lago. (There are those who
characterize Qatar as only posing as a U.S. ally while secretly supporting
Islamist extremism, “an arsonist pretending to be a firefighter.”)
On the other side of the aisle, Vice President Kamala
Harris announced she would not attend the annual Al Smith charity dinner in New York on October
17 — an event that almost no political figure ever skips. Harris campaign
adviser Keisha Lance Bottoms, the former mayor of Atlanta, insisted that one of
Harris’s most appealing comments of the campaign so far — “If somebody breaks
into my house, they’re getting shot” — was merely “a joke.” (Actually, if you break into the Naval
Observatory, there is an excellent chance you will be shot by the U.S. Secret
Service.)
As the Washington Post’s Dan Balz gently puts it, “Harris also has now done a limited number
of press interviews. They have drawn mixed reviews. In part that’s because
those events are seen through partisan lenses, but also because she has
sometimes avoided answering direct questions.” Politico gives Democrats the bad news: “Kamala Harris didn’t get
much of a post-debate bounce. . . . Harris and Trump are still on a collision
course for a very close finish in November.”
Outside of the zany, outlandish circus of the campaign
trail, the world is growing more dangerous. Hezbollah’s launching hundreds of rockets into northern Israel,
although thankfully almost all of them have been intercepted. A couple of days
ago, Biden administration officials conceded that no, a hostage
release deal is not imminent, and as many of us have contended from the start, Hamas is proving to not be a serious, good-faith
negotiator:
Another problem is that, according
to Biden administration officials, Hamas makes demands and then refuses to say
“yes” after the U.S. and Israel accept them. The intransigence has severely
frustrated negotiators, who increasingly feel the militant group isn’t serious
about completing an agreement. Critics have also accused Israeli Prime Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu of sabotaging the process, partly in an effort to appease
the hard-right flank of his governing coalition.
The lead story on the website of the Wall Street Journal
this morning:
American Airlines Capt. Dan Carey
knew his cockpit equipment was lying to him when an alert began blaring “pull
up!” as his Boeing 777 passed over Pakistan in March — at an altitude of 32,000
feet, far above any terrain.
The warning stemmed from a kind of
electronic warfare that hundreds of civilian pilots encounter each day: GPS spoofing. The alert turned out to be false but
illustrated how fake signals that militaries use to ward off drones and
missiles are also permeating growing numbers of commercial aircraft, including
U.S. airlines’ international flights.
“It was concerning, but it wasn’t
startling, because we were at cruise altitude,” Carey said. Had an engine
failure or other in-flight emergency struck at the same time, though, the
situation “could be extremely dangerous.”
Pilots, aviation-industry officials
and regulators said spoofed Global Positioning System signals are spreading
beyond active conflict zones near Ukraine and the Middle East, confusing
cockpit navigation and safety systems and taxing pilots’ attention in commercial jets carrying
passengers and cargo.
The attacks started affecting a
large number of commercial flights about a year ago, pilots and aviation
experts said. The number of flights affected daily has surged from a few dozen
in February to more than 1,100 in August, according to analyses from SkAI Data
Services and the Zurich University of Applied Sciences.
Way back in April, Andrew Stuttaford and I reported on the increasing rate of
Russian jamming of GPS signals over international airspace above the Baltic
Sea, and how this increased the odds of an aviation disaster. I pointed out that the Biden administration was unlikely to
do anything about it, for fear of being deemed “provocative” or “escalatory” in
the fight against Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
All around the world, you see further signs that
America’s enemies are on the move, marshaling their forces, and taking steps to
tie us down or even steal from us.
Did you know that the North Koreans and Chinese got a Tennessee man to set up a “laptop farm” to get North Koreans
and Chinese workers paid for remote work that companies thought was being
done by American and British citizens? It was a “a scheme to deceive U.S.
companies into hiring foreign remote IT workers who were paid hundreds of
thousands of dollars in income funneled to the [North Koreans] for its weapons
program,” according to Assistant Attorney General Matthew G. Olsen of the
Justice Department’s National Security Division. Who knows how many remote
workers your company is using to help put money in the pocket of Kim Jong-un?
Walter Russell Mead turned some heads in his column in the
Journal last week, with the provocative headline, “U.S. Shrugs as World War
III Approaches.” But Mead was just laying out the grim, eye-opening assessments
of the Commission on the National Defense Strategy. The short
version is that it’s as bad as you fear, but here are some key excerpts:
The threats the United States faces
are the most serious and most challenging the nation has encountered since 1945
and include the potential for near-term major war. The United States last
fought a global conflict during World War II, which ended nearly 80 years ago.
The nation was last prepared for such a fight during the Cold War, which ended
35 years ago. It is not prepared today. . . .
The Commission finds that, in many
ways, China is outpacing the United States and has largely
negated the U.S. military advantage in the Western Pacific through two decades
of focused military investment. Without significant change by the United
States, the balance of power will continue to shift in China’s favor. . . .
Russia will devote 29 percent of
its federal budget this year on national defense as it continues to
reconstitute its military and economy after its failed initial invasion of
Ukraine in 2022. Russia possesses considerable strategic, space, and cyber capabilities
and under Vladimir Putin seeks a return to its global leadership role of the
Cold War. . . .
The Commission finds that [the
Department of Defense’s] business practices, byzantine research and development
(R&D) and procurement systems, reliance on decades-old military hardware,
and culture of risk avoidance reflect an era of uncontested military dominance.
Such methods are not suited to today’s strategic environment. . . .
The Commission finds that the U.S.
defense industrial base (DIB) is unable to meet the equipment, technology, and
munitions needs of the United States and its allies and partners. . . .
The U.S. public are largely unaware
of the dangers the United States faces or the costs (financial and otherwise)
required to adequately prepare. They do not appreciate the strength of China
and its partnerships or the ramifications to daily life if a conflict were to
erupt. They are not anticipating disruptions to their power, water, or access
to all the goods on which they rely. They have not internalized the costs of
the United States losing its position as a world superpower. A bipartisan “call
to arms” is urgently needed so that the United States can make the major
changes and significant investments now rather than wait for the next Pearl
Harbor or 9/11. The support and resolve of the American public are
indispensable.
Being a leader requires doing a lot more than saying
things that are popular. It requires leveling with the public about the hard
realities of the world, and what steps need to be taken to mitigate the threats
we face. Leadership is a responsibility to bear, not a prize to be won.
This year has brought a fundamentally unserious
presidential campaign to the American people, in a deadly serious world. Good
luck to the winner, and to us. We’re all going to need it.
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