Freedom Line Blog

A parallel alliance between the world’s governing thugs continues to follow a James Bond movie scenario: buffoonish villains pursuing absurdly dramatic evil.  Other than a shared penchant for casual clothing and over-the-top rhetoric, however, there’s nothing funny about the increasingly close alliance between Venezuela, Iran and Russia.

This week, Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez is traveling to Russia and Iran to secure cooperation agreements on nuclear enrichment, oil production and other stick-in-the-eye measures to America and its allies.

At some point, Americans will wake up to a clutch of hostile nations that have nuclear weapons in volatile regions.  Hopefully, the Obama Administration is doing much more strategic planning than waiting for a Felix Leiter-type CIA operative to save the day.

You can tell a lot about a man from his pastimes.  According to the Associated Press (with associated photos), the former Russian president shot a gray whale with a crossbow from a rubber speed boat in choppy arctic waters.

This isn’t Putin’s first brush with staged danger.

He has been photographed fishing bare-chested in Russia’s Altai region, and was shown on television diving into an icy river and swimming the butterfly stroke.

In April he attached a satellite-tracking collar on a tranquilized polar bear. He also has shot a Siberian tiger with a tranquilizer gun and released leopards into a wildlife sanctuary.

While there’s no need for President Obama to wrestle an alligator or box with a grizzly bear, it would be nice if our dear leader could compensate by showing a bit more backbone in the foreign policy arena; especially towards Iran and the country that built its new nuclear facility.  (I.e. Russia)

A hat tip to James Delingpole of The Daily Telegraph (UK) is in order for his continuing coverage of the metastasizing Climategate controversy. The Russians are now weighing in with charges that global warming alarmists used only 25% of data reported by Russian scientists; intentionally leaving out information showing no signs of warming. Much of this doctored research was in turn folded into the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) report, the definitive statement supporting the calls for international regulation of energy consumption. (For a counter-argument using all the available climate data, see this report published by the Heartland Institute.) With the Copenhagen climate conference degenerating into anarchy and finger-pointing soon there may be another appellation added to “discredited” and “fraudulent”: convicted.

As Lord Christopher Monkton explains in this interview, he and another climate skeptic are requesting prosecution of the researchers responsible for destroying information sought through Britain’s version of the Freedom of Information Act. Others are calling for investigations into whether there is a case for criminal fraud against scientists using government grants to produce misleading reports. Many of the people who’ve profited from this scurrilous research are present or arriving in Copenhagen. When looking back on the group photos a few years from now, one wonders how many of them will be behind bars, owing millions in damages, or drummed out of office. Most likely, not enough.

In his book “America Alone”, Mark Steyn discusses the “strong horse, weak horse” theory of foreign affairs. When terrorists like Osama bin Laden see a strong horse and a weak horse, they will necessarily like the strong horse. Traditionally, weakness was shown by the absence of power. Among many modern nations, it is evidenced by the refusal to use power. In either case, weakness is a provocation to those seeking to do harm.

And, as Ivan Krastev describes in today’s Washington Post, President Obama’s weakness on foreign affairs – silence on the killings of Iranian dissidents, making nice with dictators, bowing to the Japanese emperor – is signaling an over matched man in critical times. The Russians are familiar with a leader whose celebrity masks his country’s drop in prestige.

Obama himself is largely viewed in Russia as the American Mikhail Gorbachev, but Russians are less impressed than other Europeans have been with Obama’s brilliance and rock-star popularity. They remember the Gorbi-mania that conquered the globe at the moment the Soviet Union was about to crumble. Russians are tempted to view Obama’s global reformism and his progressive agenda as an expression of American weakness and not as an expression of America’s regained strength and legitimacy.

What does all this mean for the “reset” policy? First, it means that Russians will not be in a hurry to respond to the positive signals coming from Washington, and any perception of Washington weakness will diminish Moscow’s willingness to cooperate even in areas of common interest and common concern. It is not Obama’s deference but his strength that can persuade the Kremlin to cooperate with Washington. Simply put, to persuade Russians to join him, Obama must first demonstrate that he does not need them. He needs a clear victory, whether against the Taliban in Afghanistan, Iran’s nuclear ambition or Beijing’s habit of devaluing its currency. Obama must show strength for the “reset” policy to succeed.

Chances are Obama’s decision tonight to send less than the requested amount of troops to Afghanistan will do nothing to achieve either a clear victory in Afghanistan or more esteem for the Russians (or anyone else for that matter).

While the future of space travel may be in the private sector (see the X Prize Foundation’s website), governments are still the main players in this day and age. That’s why it’s encouraging to see this ABC News report that the U.S. is considering delaying the retirement of the Space Shuttle.

Not that the shuttle is anything exciting. Space travel started losing its appeal when the focus became the International Space Station (a sort of floating UN with freeze-dried food) instead of missions of discovery. But with space becoming an issue tied in just as closely with national security as with science & technology, leaving the US dependent on an increasingly surly Russia for our trips to outer space was never a good idea.

Today’s revelation that the Obama Administration is pulling missile defense out of Poland and the Czech Republic reflects a complete ignorance of (or apathy towards) the point that I made in yesterday’s post — that the Western commitment to collective security in Eastern Europe has made the continent (and the world) a safer and freer place.

It also reflects a total strategic miscalculation. The oldest con in international diplomacy is to get an adversary to give up something tangible today for an abstract promise tomorrow (see “Land for Peace”). The notion that Russia will be of more assistance in sanctioning the Iranians (and the broader idea that sanctions will have any serious effect) ignores a question that the self-proclaimed realists in the Obama Administration have somehow overlooked. Why is it in Russia’s interest to play ball when they’re currently getting major concessions from the U.S. at no cost?

Though it’s been overshadowed by the healthcare debate, the last month or so of the Obama Administration has been its absolute worst for foreign policy. We’ve agreed to one-on-one talks with North Korea (with the laughable goal of getting back to the six party talks — you know, the ones we had before we agreed to one-on-one talks?), decided to pursue prosecutions of CIA interrogators, announced that Iran likely already has the ability to build nuclear weapons, seen the White House put political pressure on General McChrystal to keep from requesting more troops in Afghanistan, and imposed a foolish tire tariff that’s threatening a trade war with China.

The President can get away with Jimmy Carteresque policies for a lot longer than Jimmy Carter ever could because Obama has considerably more political gifts. But in the end, politics (particularly the presidency) is always about performance. This will not end well for Obama or the country.