THE MERKEL SPYING STORY: “I WISH YOU COULD HAVE INVENTED A MORE CONVINCING STORY; I FELT DISTINCTLY LIKE AN IDIOT REPEATING IT.”

10/28/13

If we are to believe the White House, the NSA had been spying on 35 world leaders since 2002 but the spying stopped after the White House found out about it earlier this year.  So Angela Merkel is not alone in being the subject of great interest by American spies, which should surprise no one.  But the President knew absolutely nothing about the program for over five years but put an immediate end to it as soon as he got wind of it, which should surprise everyone…if it were true.

Why do I doubt the White House on this one, and you should as well?

First, Mr. Obama and his henchmen are politicians and, as such, are rarely, if ever to be believed because a politician lies at least as easily as s/he tells the truth.   It seems as if this tendency to lie reflexively springs from an inability to make a moral distinction between deceit and honesty when the only legitimate moral standard is the advancement of one’s political career and the obvious benefits such continuation and furtherance will bring to the benighted masses.  But who knows what goes on in the febrile minds of these narcissistic fops?

Second, the reason given for the President’s not knowing about the program is that it wasn’t, as the Wall Street Journal put it (Monday, 10/28/13, page A1),  “practical to brief him on all of (the eavesdropping operations).”

Hmm…

While it might not be practical to brief the President on all the NSA’s eavesdropping operations, wouldn’t it make sense to take the time to brief him on an operation so important as that conducted against Angela Merkel, given that Germany is one of our closest allies, one of the world’s preeminent economic powers, and the de facto ruler of Europe?  One would think the NSA would have time to brief the President on such a trifling matter, right?

Third, let’s assume for a moment that the NSA really didn’t brief President Obama on its eavesdropping on Germany and 34 other countries.   Wasn’t the President sufficiently curious to wonder where all the juicy intelligence the operation garnered was coming from?   Though the President is not half as smart as his cheering section would have you believe (Nobody is.), he’s a pretty smart guy.  One would think that access to the information one hopes such an operation would be able to gather would pique his curiosity.

Interestingly, unless I have missed something, no one at the NSA or the White House has commented on whether President Bush was briefed on the eavesdropping on, inter alia, Angela Merkel and her predecessor, Gerhard Schroeder.  (Note that the operation had been going on since 2002.)   Given Mr. Bush’s having been nearly entirely free from the burden of intellectual curiosity, or even rational thought, no one would be at all surprised if, had he not been briefed, Mr. Bush displayed no curiosity whatsoever regarding the source of the intelligence he was getting on Mr. Schroeder and Mr. Merkel.   But I digress.

Two further points…

First, it is entirely possible, one supposes, that the NSA felt no need to brief the President of the United States on one of its most important, or at least one of its most high level, spying operations.  If this were true, the good news would be that the White House is not lying…but only about not being briefed on, not about its complete ignorance of, the operation.  The bad news is that the implications of a spy agency that does not feel that it ultimately reports to the President are genuinely horrifying. 

Second, on a slightly less frightening note, maybe the whole story about the NSA’s not briefing the President on a successful plot to bug the personal phone of the leader of a loyal ally and the second most consequential nation in the Western hemisphere is a load of horse excrement, as is the tale of the President’s being completely unaware of the caper.  Maybe the reason that the NSA and the White House are trying to force us to dine on such equine detritus is that, as many have suggested, the real story is that everyone spies on everyone but no one can admit it.   Maybe this is just the way “diplomacy” is conducted…trust but verify, as the Gipper put it in a related context. 

“Everyone does it” is never justification for a course of action desired by one’s teenage children.  And “everyone does it” does not seem like sufficient justification for spying on a good and faithful friend; it still offends our, or at least yours truly’s, sensibilities.  But the rules of international diplomacy do not necessarily comport closely with the ethical rules by which individuals conduct their lives.   But, as hypocrisy is the tribute immorality pays to morality, the politicians’ not being able to speak freely about what really goes on in international relations is an admission that ethics, as commonly understood, are at best an afterthought in such matters.

CHINESE INFRASTRUCTURE PROJECTS: TYING CHINA MORE TIGHTLY TO NORTH KOREA…OR TO KOREA?

6/8/13

Yesterday’s (i.e., Friday 6/8/13’s, page A8) Wall Street Journal featured an article by Jeremy Page entitled “China Builds Up Its Links to North Korea.”  The article discussed Chinese construction of an extensive infrastructure network, including roads, railroads, an immense power cable, and a high speed railroad line, linking northeastern China with North Korea.  The article reports that the infrastructure program indicates a continuing desire of China to not only sustain North Korea but also to integrate North Korea even more deeply into the Chinese economy.   This massive undertaking contradicts China’s stated claims that it is cooperating with the  U.S. strategy of isolating and pressuring North Korea.   Such activity indicates, according to the article, that China not only believes that the Kim dynasty will remain in power in Korea but also that it is taking steps to insure North Korea’s vitality, or at least continued existence, as a buffer against what it considers U.S. encroachment in northeast Asia.

A thought occurred to yours truly as I read this piece, however…

Could the Chinese be taking these steps to integrate not the NORTH Korean economy with that of China but, rather, to integrate the KOREAN economy with that of China?  Perhaps the Chinese, being long range thinkers and having a firmer grasp on reality than most of the people who inhabit our government, are giving up Kim Jong Eun and the entire concept of Communist North Korea for dead and are anticipating a reunification of the peninsula with Seoul, rather than Pyongyang, in charge.   The Chinese are tying their economy into that of North Korea with hopes of being firmly wrapped up with the new Korean government.

Remember German unification.  After a very troubling decade, roughly coinciding with the calendar ‘90s, the Germans eventually integrated the former East Germany into the larger German economy, resulting in the second German economic miracle.   A reunification of the Korean peninsula would be at least equally troublesome at its start, but, eventually, one has to bet that the very resourceful, and very rich, South Koreans would integrate the former north into a vibrant Korea, creating a kind of Asian Deutschland, an economic juggernaut that, while not quite on par with Germany, would be a formidable force on the regional and world economic stages.   The Chinese would do well to be closely tied to the new Korea, just as countries like Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Hungary have done well being closely tied to Germany.

Further, the Chinese always think politically as well as economically.   It would certainly be in China’s interest to be firmly tied to a unified Korea in order to counterbalance the influence the United States would have on the new power on the peninsula.

Anybody who thinks about the Korean situation at all carefully cannot believe that the North is sustainable.  North Korea in its present form is finished; its fall is assured and the only question is time.  And the Chinese have shown a remarkable ability to think in terms of longer periods of time than does the West.

BISMARCK’S DREAM, MERKEL’S VICTORY

5/1/13

Emblazoned across the front page of today’s (i.e., Wednesday, 5/1/13’s) Wall Street Journal is the headline “Latest Leader Pays Court to Mother Europe” over four pictures of European leaders (new Italian Prime Minister Enrico Letta, Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaris, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, and French President Francois Hollande) exchanging pleasantries with, paying homage to, or being lectured by German Chancellor Angela Merkel.   The article behind the picture, which appears on page A10, explains that, over the last few years, and especially as European financial problems have taken hold, the first stop of any new leader of a Eurozone country is in Berlin to get the seal of approval from, er, sorry, visit Ms. Merkel.

My first thought as I saw the picture and read the nearly extraneous article was the same thought that has occupied at least some of my thinking since the European “crisis” started and spread…the Germans have accomplished what has been their goal since the unification of the German state under Bismarck in 1871:  economic and political domination of what was once called Mitteleuropa, or the heart of Europe, and beyond.

Germany tried twice in the first half of the last century to achieve this goal of European domination and failed both times.   In the latter part of the last century and into the early part of this one, the Germans have finally succeeded.   They have done so not by militarism or by pursuing ghastly political and racial theories to their horrific ends.  Instead, the Germans have come to dominate Europe by being, well, German…working hard, being smart, saving money, and being fiscally responsible.   The tremendous success Germany has achieved by applying what once were simple, common sense principles is nearly enough to make yours truly consider a Volkswagen, but I digress.

There are many lessons of here, including

·        Military conquest, at least in the modern era, ultimately always fails.

·        No one, and no country, ever gets rich or powerful by spending money she doesn’t have.  A person or a country gets rich by making more money, by producing more, than one spends.

·        Blowing money, perhaps especially on the military, is no recipe for achieving domination, power, or even success.

Here is the United States, however, we are heeding none of the above lessons.   This is no surprise; we have long been of the opinion that we have nothing to learn from anybody else, especially when the lesson involves delaying gratification.

ASIA HAS A CHOICE: GERMAN RESPONSBILITY OR AMERICAN SILLINESS?

4/22/13

This morning’s (i.e., Monday, 4/22/13’s, page C1) Wall Street Journal reports that consumer debt is exploding in Asia, primarily in China, Indonesia, and Malaysia.  Nonmortgage consumer debt in Asia outside Japan has risen 67% to $1.66 trillion in the last five years.  In Indonesia alone, such credit has tripled.   Consumers are lining up to pay interest rates ranging from 15% on secured car loans to 40% on unsecured loans.  No wonder lenders are rushing to Asia.

Why are the newly prosperous Asians borrowing so much?   Such expansion is typical, we are assured, at this stage in their economic development as people start to make decent livings and yearn to buy the things they manufacture for others.   And it is certainly understandable that, after years of having very little, and being inundated with media images of the prosperity of Japan, Europe, and the United States, Asians outside Japan would want to acquire lots of the same junk with which we are curiously so fascinated.   But when one listens to the explanation of one Wiwik Sugiarti, who lives in Indonesia, of why he borrows to buy such things as televisions and DVD players…

“I can buy two or three things at the same time and not have to worry about how to pay for it now,”

one who has seen such misunderstanding and misuse of credit and its consequences gets the urge to utter something like “Uh-oh.”

Again, one can understand Asia’s desire to buy stuff.   But it seems to yours truly that the people in that part of the world can make a choice regarding the development path they would like to follow and the attitude toward money and credit they would like to emulate.  They can be like we Americans, who, through some misplaced sense of entitlement, have decided we deserve everything we want regardless of our ability to pay for our heart’s desires.  Alternatively, they can be like the Germans, who only consider buying things they don’t absolutely need when they have the money to pay for those things and even then agonize over parting with their hard earned euros.   There are, of course, exceptions to these generalizations; I am sure there are some spendthrift Germans out there and there are plenty of Americans (Yours truly comes immediately to mind.) who are much more German in their spending and saving habits.  But there is little doubt that the overall American approach is quite different from the overall German approach.

So which will it be, Asian friends and brothers?   Spend like drunken sailors, eat through the seed corn, and expect, or hope, others will continue to lend you money…or act like mature adults in financial matters?   The choice is, presumably, yours.  

We in America had better hope the non-Japanese (The Japanese are apparently already lost, by the way; see, inter alia, my 4/9/13 post  THE NOT SO INCREDIBLE SHRINKING YEN.) in Asia pick the latter.   If they spend like us, who will pick up the tab for our childish spending?