No Better Enemy, No Worse Friend

Richard Fernandez:

Back in 1968, Henry Kissinger once observed that “it may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal”. Everything was subordinated to domestic politics according to which Washington’s first instinct was to coerce its allies and attract its foes.  In contrast to the Marine’s well known slogan, the motto of the some diplomats was “no worse friend, no better enemy”.

In the intervening half century Kissinger’s ironic adage appears to have become even truer. According to the Business Insider ^[1], “ISIS Is Making An Absurd Amount Of Money On Ransom Payments And Black-Market Oil Sales”.

ISIS earns about $US1 million each day in oil sales alone, said David Cohen, the Treasury Department’s under secretary for terrorism and financial intelligence. He also said the group has netted approximately $US20 million in ransom payments this year. Additionally, Cohen said ISIS has raised funds through local extortion and crime, like robbing banks.

By contrast, Kurdish oil tankers are sailing in circles in search of a port because Washington has blocked its oil sales anywhere in order to avoid offending Iraq. The New York Times ^[2] explains:

Roughly two dozen huge oil tankers are idly turning figure eights around the Mediterranean or on the high seas, loaded with oil pumped from wells in Iraqi Kurdistan but with nowhere to legally offload it.

The oil fleet is a costly gamble, to the tune of millions in fees each month, by Kurdish officials who are desperately trying to sell the oil abroad, even as the Iraqi government and the United States are blocking their attempts.

To Iraqi officials, the tankers are carrying contraband — oil that by law should be marketed only by the Iraqi Oil Ministry, with the profits split: 83 percent for the Baghdad government, 17 percent for the Kurdish autonomous government in the north.

Perhaps the secret to ISIS’ recent success can be summed up in one phrase.  They punish their enemies, the administration punishes its friends. China has just surprised Western analysts by deploying an SSN ^[3] — for the first time — into the Indian Ocean.  The torpedoes it carries will be aimed at Western ships.

One Sunday morning last December, China’s defense ministry summoned military attachés from several embassies to its monolithic Beijing headquarters. As the WSJ’s Jeremy Page reports:

To the foreigners’ surprise, the Chinese said that one of their nuclear-powered submarines would soon pass through the Strait of Malacca, a passage between Malaysia and Indonesia that carries much of world trade, say people briefed on the meeting.

Two days later, a Chinese attack sub—a so-called hunter-killer, designed to seek out and destroy enemy vessels—slipped through the strait above water and disappeared. It resurfaced near Sri Lanka and then in the Persian Gulf, say people familiar with its movements, before returning through the strait in February—the first known voyage of a Chinese sub to the Indian Ocean.

America won’t — can’t  – stop China.  Not only won’t they, they won’t let anyone else. The American ally Taiwan after waiting 13 years ^[4] for US persmission to buy replacement diesel-electric submarines, has reluctantly decided to build its own.

Taiwan is moving ahead with plans to build its own submarines, with an initial design to be completed by the year-end, after lengthy delays in getting eight vessels under a 2001 U.S. defense deal and as China’s navy expands rapidly.

While major obstacles remain, such as overcoming significant technical challenges and what would almost certainly be strenuous objections from Beijing, a political consensus has emerged in Taiwan in recent months that it can wait no longer, officials and lawmakers said.

There was a time when Egypt was characterized as America’s running dog in the Middle East. Now under attack from Islamists forces from every corner, the former running dog Egypt is looking for allies. The Jerusalem ^[5] Post writes, “Sisi was confident he could depend on America’s assistance to fight the threat of terror.”

However, instead of cooperating with Cairo, the White House, still smarting over the ouster of former president Muhammad Morsi and of the Muslim Brothers, declared an embargo on arms for Egypt.

The recent visit of the Egyptian president to Washington and his meeting with his American counterpart did not bring a thaw. Obama allegedly quizzed Sisi over human rights in Egypt. The Egyptian president retaliated by saying he would join the coalition against Islamic State but would not send troops, since they were badly needed to defend his country against terror.

Relations between the two countries are still fraught, though America is now grudgingly dispatching ten Apache helicopters that were meant to have been delivered a year ago.

Deprived of the support of his country’s former staunchest ally, Sisi had to look elsewhere.

He is in the process of setting up his own coalition with North African countries facing the threat coming from Libya, such as Sudan and Algeria.

Nothing will come Egypt’s way unless it politically benefits the ruling party.  After all, the Kurds in Kobani were to be left to their fate until the pollsters noticed that it was hurting the  administration’s image. The Wall Street Journal’s Enthous, Parkinson and Barnes ^[6] wrote: “in public, the Obama administration argued for weeks that Kobani wasn’t strategically vital to the air campaign against Islamic State extremists. Behind the scenes, however, top officials concluded the Syrian city had become too symbolically important to lose and they raced to save it.”

Read more