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Foreign Affairs Panama Folds as Australia Ducks for Cover Canberra’s footsie with China is unlikely to go unnoticed by the Trump administration. Credit: Ryan Fletcher/Shutterstock The Trump administration is getting down to business weeding out the seeds of the Chinese Communist Party’s influence in strategic footholds internationally. In recent days, the future of the Panama Canal has seemingly been secured—calling time on the creep of CCP influence.  In securing and facilitating maritime trade between the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, the strategic value of the Panama Canal is obvious. The bilateral relationship between Panama and the U.S. began in 1903, and, while of course there have been various disruptions, it has been altogether oriented toward securing the free flow of maritime trade (a vital national interest for Washington) via the canal. It is a relationship that turns on permanent neutrality of Panama.  The U.S. and Panama have enjoyed deep economic engagement, with American exports accounting for 25 percent of all goods and services imported by Panama, including a staggering 60 percent of Panama’s imported food. The U.S. remains the central customer of the Panama Canal; over 70 percent of all transits head to or from American ports.  The U.S. is also the leading source of foreign direct investment in Panama. According to the CRS, China leads (slightly) the U.S. as Panama’s key trading partner, with Beijing accounting for 17.2 percent of total merchandise trade, compared to Washington’s 16.1 percent.  The CCP Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has worked to degrade the U.S-Panama relationship, eroding the stability of American strategic interests in the Panama Canal along with it. In 2017, Panama became the first country in Latin America to sign on the dotted line for the BRI. This agreement allowed the CCP to bed down and expand influence for its long-term strategic benefit. Strings are most definitely attached.  Trump called time on this, and in a matter of days Panama’s government agreed it could not have its cake and eat it too. Since 1997, a Chinese firm has operated two of the five ports in the Panama Canal. These happen to be the ports at both ends of the canal. Already, Panama’s supreme court has received a lawsuit to cancel the Hong Kong–based firm’s contract.  Coupled with cancelling Panama’s BRI partnership, and potentially allowing free transit for American military vessels, these efforts might be enough to rebalance U.S. power in the immediate region. Of course, this invites potential international arbitration brought by China and poses questions around the neutrality of the Panama Canal. We will wait and see. Events unfolding rapidly in Panama have direct relevance for Australia, not least the U.S.-Australia alliance. The U.S. is among Australia’s largest sources of foreign direct investment, and Washington and Canberra celebrate a military-strategic “ride or die” bromance. The U.S. increasingly looks to the Australian continent as a forward base for Indo-Pacific operations. Yet it is China that keeps Australia afloat.  China is Australia’s largest trade partner, accounting for more than a quarter of Australian international trade. In 2023, this trade increased by almost 10 percent. Australia’s labour government has effectively worked to “stabilize” ties with Beijing. Bilateral relations for the decade prior had been dire, from all out-trade war to Australia’s domestic security fabric fraying over the intent of one state (Victoria) to sign up to the BRI. Thwarted by Canberra, the BRI deal is dead in the water. Yet the CCP’s tentacles remain.  Australian lobsters and wine are flowing again to Beijing, and there are various instances of Canberra kowtowing to China. As illustrated by a cyber-attack attributed to a group in China, Australian policy increasingly appears to be to publish a short statement and move right along. Canberra continues to evade American ire over its China relationship. Under Trump 2.0, this could change. In keeping with strategic U.S. port challenges, one must consider the Port of Darwin debacle. The Port of Darwin, in Australia’s Northern Territory, is Canberra’s nearest port to Asia. In the Australian Government’s own words, it is a critical piece of infrastructure.  In 2015, the Landbridge Group—a Chinese company—was awarded a 99-year lease to operate the Port of Darwin. The Landbridge Group provides an upbeat CCP-esque mantra encapsulated in its vision statement for the Port of Darwin: “Partnering in growth, connecting people and supporting potential”.  Fears that said growth, connections and potential would have Chinese characteristics led to a 2021 Australian defence department security assessment into the lease of Port of Darwin to Landbridge Group. The findings (apparently) concluded there were insufficient national security grounds to overturn the lease.  Enduring Australian intelligence and defense concerns led to the new Australian government’s announcement in 2022 that it would review the circumstances surrounding the Port of Darwin lease. In a public statement by stealth published late one Friday evening in 2023, the government announced that there is a “robust” system in place to manage risks, extant monitoring mechanisms of said risks are “sufficient” and ongoing. It concluded that “it was not necessary to vary or cancel the lease”. Pre-dating the 2015 lease is the 2011 agreement struck by Australia and the U.S. known as Marine Rotational Force–Darwin (MRF-D). For six months every year, U.S. marines arrive in Darwin on rotation to train alongside the Australian Defence Force and other allies and partners. MRF-D serves to strengthen interoperability between Australia and U.S. forces, “advance our shared goals, demonstrate the… endurance of [the] alliance, and contribute to regional security.”  MRF-D remains a “key touchpoint of the Australia-U.S. security Alliance.” It is therefore no wonder the nine-mile drive from MRF-D’s location at RAAF Base Darwin to Landbridge Group’s Port of Darwin operations office is so problematic. Kept under wraps by Australian officials are the plans to keep Australia’s two mates apart in Darwin. With China elbowing in on the Port of Darwin, it has long been rumored the U.S. would secure a private port in the area (Glyde Point), about 25 miles away from Darwin’s current port.  The Port of Darwin is a strategic asset in the Indo-Pacific great game. Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese criticized the lease agreement while in opposition, but, in power, his fears appear to have evaporated. Australian leadership’s language around China is increasingly muted. For instance, an Australian citizen once “arbitrarily detained” in China and facing the death penalty is now simply in “detention.”  Handing the CCP Australia’s single strategic northern port for a century and refusing to walk back the decision due to fear of Beijing’s economic wrath is business as usual for Canberra. Even in the absence of a BRI memorandum of understanding, Australia’s Port of Darwin problem has obvious BRI characteristics.  Landbridge Group celebrates online its “plans to grow” Darwin Port by “developing the infrastructure to meet future customer needs…[providing] opportunity to increase trade with Asia through the company’s extensive business networks in the region”.  Another fan of 99-year leases in the Indo-Pacific region appears to be the British government, which is intent on handing the Chagos Islands (in the Indian Ocean) over to Mauritius. The idea that any comfort can be gleaned from the provision of a 99-year lease to the U.S. for the strategic foothold that is Diego Garcia is beside the point. China has fervently worked to shore up its standing with Mauritius. The South Pacific also finds itself on the receiving end of CCP effort and affection. The Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea are balancing Chinese capital and attention with long-held political commitments to the West.  Washington can’t be everywhere, funding everything, thwarting CCP creep in every corner of the globe. Nor should it be. Inked in agreements like the ANZUS Treaty, Australia has a responsibility and a commitment to take the lead in the South Pacific to share the security burden and take a load off Washington.  Australia’s neighborhood is crowded by a deluge of ticking time bombs—the culmination of years of CCP inroads and erosion of strategic infrastructure and governance throughout the region. Canberra may point to Trump’s Panama Canal triumph and celebrate Washington’s intent to make its partners and allies pay their fair share, but this does not exempt Australia from making its own tough decisions.  Lest Canberra be forced to “pick” between the largest economic partner (China) and its security provider (the U.S.), Australia should start thinking outside the box. Decisions to hand strategic infrastructure that provides regional uplift, and not least hosts U.S. marines, to the CCP is likely to draw attention from the Trump administration.  Australia’s value proposition is its strategic geography. Affording a “beachhead” for U.S. forces and allies to secure and stabilize the Indo-Pacific. It would appear that the Australian government has no incentive, let alone interest, in diverging from its policy of self-sanctioning when it comes to China.  When (not if) Trump’s team interrogates Australia’s value proposition, beyond political taglines of “mateship,” Canberra must be ready to respond. Offering Washington a 99-year lease of Australia’s Coco-Keeling Islands or of Christmas Island, both located in the Indian Ocean, would be an apt place to start.  Australia’s expenditure on defense is currently 2 percent of GDP and forecasted to reach a height of 2.4 percent by 2028, less than half of Trump’s 5 percent benchmark for NATO partners.  Some tough conversations are about to occur, and something tells me Australia’s “she’ll be right” attitude will no longer suffice.  The post Panama Folds as Australia Ducks for Cover appeared first on The American Conservative.

Politics Vance’s Hierarchy of Goods Why should the cobbler’s children go unshod yet again? Credit: KAMIL KRZACZYNSKI/AFP via Getty Images There is an old saying that great men are seldom good men. The reason for this is that people we call “great” often have real or imagined duties well outside their families and friends, making it difficult to meet their daily obligations. My grandmother once expressed disappointment after reading the memoir of an evangelist she admired when she learned he wasn’t the family man she expected. Imagine a person who is generous in his support of charities and great causes but neglects his family, to the point that his children live in poverty and squalor. That’s the thought experiment at the heart of a seemingly arcane theological dispute between Vice President J.D. Vance, Pope Francis, and the American Catholic bishops. “Ordo amoris,” or the order of love, has become the surprise catchphrase of the second Trump administration. Many who voted for Donald Trump and Vance see the federal government as being like the neglectful parent who may have serious social concerns but is not meeting its primary fiduciary duty to the American people. While an extreme example, it wouldn’t be moral under Catholic social teaching properly understood or basic common sense to let your children starve to serve some greater good or simply because you accidentally allowed other worthy concerns to consume all your attention.  “What is built on the basis of force, and not on the truth about the equal dignity of every human being, begins badly and will end badly,” Pope Francis wrote in an open letter rebuking the administration. “I exhort all the faithful of the Catholic Church, and all men and women of good will, not to give in to narratives that discriminate against and cause unnecessary suffering to our migrant and refugee brothers and sisters.” Since the publication of Hillbilly Elegy, Vance has made the plight of the working class in the Rust Belt and Appalachia central to his political mission. That is a morally defensible priority even though there are poorer people elsewhere in the world with whom he has less direct, personal connection. The economic and cultural problems of the communities Vance is interested in also have serious implications for national prosperity and social solidarity. Vance’s Christian detractors view issues like immigration almost solely through the prism of poor migrants being kept out of wealthy countries. But the costs and benefits of cheap and plentiful immigrant labor, legal or otherwise, are not shared equally across American society. Many of the benefits of continuous mass immigration flow to affluent Americans who are not exposed to the costs much at all. PR stunts like flying illegal immigrants from strained border communities to Martha’s Vineyard were meant to both illustrate and counteract that.  The working-class citizens and lawful permanent residents, many of the latter immigrants themselves, bear the costs while receiving fewer of the benefits. Yes, there are some macroeconomic upsides that are shared more broadly. But in general, the people in direct employment and wage competition with the new arrivals are not reaping the rewards of cheaper domestic services. In most other contexts, a public policy where the benefits go disproportionately to corporations and the upwardly mobile while the costs are disproportionately concentrated among the downwardly mobile would be scrutinized as possibly unfair and unjust. Immigration is a major exception to this rule. The broken border under former President Joe Biden created moral hazards for migrants themselves, as well as a political upheaval that even those tut-tutting Vance for raising impolitic questions must recognize. If it weren’t for the chaos along the southern border, it is possible that Trump and Vance wouldn’t be wielding power right now in the first place. That’s not to say that there aren’t legitimate moral concerns about the human dignity of even illegal immigrants. There has been dehumanizing rhetoric and there likely will be excesses of the Trump deportation program. Ordo amoris doesn’t invalidate the parable of the Good Samaritan or more radical concepts of Christian love (though the latter are made possible by God, not government). But there is some need for the reordering of loves and loyalties. Or more accurately, a restoration of their proper order. Whether that makes America great again remains to be seen. There’s a case to be made it was already great. Let’s hold out hope for good, too. The post Vance’s Hierarchy of Goods appeared first on The American Conservative.

Foreign Affairs Iran Diplomacy Can’t Wait President Trump wants a nuclear deal. He had better act fast. President Donald Trump says he wants a deal, not a war, with Tehran. “I would much prefer a Verified Nuclear Peace Agreement, which will let Iran peacefully grow and prosper,” he wrote last week on Truth Social. He had better act fast. Negotiating an accord that constrains Iran’s nuclear energy program will take time. The one that President Barack Obama got took 20 months to negotiate, and forces opposing diplomacy may grow stronger in the months and years ahead. Meanwhile, Trump’s own position likely will diminish. Second-term presidents quickly learn that their political capital no longer accumulates—it dwindles. Today Trump dominates the GOP, but on Iran, neocons are breaking ranks. “In my humble opinion, there is no such thing as a verifiable nuclear peace agreement with the Iranian regime, who are religious Nazis,” Senator Lindsey Graham wrote on X. Graham’s post came mere hours after Trump endorsed such an agreement.  If the president intends to pursue diplomacy with Iran, he should act while his approval ratings among Republicans are sky-high, and he should publicly tie the initiative to his opposition to forever wars. Graham is a steadfast uber-hawk, but many GOP politicians would fall in line behind Trump, if only to avoid provoking the ire of America-Firsters.   As anti-Iranian politicians in America seek to thwart diplomacy, Iran’s anti-American hardliners are challenging their own president’s support for talks. With President Masoud Pezeshkian at the helm, Tehran’s moderates have a powerful voice in government, but their position is precarious. Jamal Abdi—the president of the National Iranian American Council and a keen observer of Iran’s domestic politics—wrote to me that the “window for diplomacy on the Iranian side is narrow.”  Abdi said that President Joe Biden’s diplomatic failures show that opportunities for constructive engagement can be fleeting. Biden had campaigned on restoring the Obama-era accord, from which Trump withdrew in 2018, but a lack of urgency and refusal to offer meaningful concessions doomed the election promise. In August 2021, less than seven months after Biden’s own inauguration, the hardliner Ebrahim Raisi became president, succeeding Hassan Rouhani, a relative moderate. Negotiations stalled. After Raisi was killed in a helicopter crash last year, Iranians elected Pezeshkian, who is more moderate than even Rouhani. Today, Iranian hardliners see a sucker in the new president, and they see duplicity, not an olive branch, in Trump’s diplomatic gestures. Despite opposition, Pezeshkian has signaled to Washington that he wants to negotiate. In December, his vice president for strategic affairs wrote that, if Trump is serious about wanting to make a deal, “Iran is willing to have a dialogue that would benefit both Tehran and Washington.”  Trump should take the offer. Successful diplomacy would vindicate Iran’s moderates and sideline its anti-American hardliners. Of course, this opportunity comes with corresponding risk. Murtaza Hussain of Drop Site News told me that “if things go south it will still be a political win for [Supreme Leader Ali] Khamenei and the hardliners who will say, ‘I told you so.’” Hussain is undoubtedly right about the lower-level hardliners, but Khamenei, who is playing a complex and evolving role in Iranian discourse, might not see diplomatic failure as a win. Abdi told me last Thursday that Khamenei is “providing rhetorical support” to the moderates and “publicly preparing the country for talks.” But Abdi cautioned: “How long he will hold that political space open is the question.” As it happens, not very long. On Friday, Khamenei said that negotiating with the U.S. is “unwise, unintelligent, and not honorable.”  Nevertheless, Khamenei seems not to have prohibited his underlings from negotiating with the U.S. Most likely, Khameni is distancing himself from talks so that his reputation won’t be damaged if they fail. He may also be playing good cop, bad cop with his reformist president to enhance Tehran’s bargaining position. On X, Ali Vaez of the International Crisis Group noted that Khamenei made similar comments in 2011 despite authorizing Iranian diplomats to meet in secret with U.S. officials.  The biggest obstacle to diplomacy with Tehran may come not from the hardliners in America and Iran, but from those in Israel. Last week, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, in a joint White House news conference with Trump, played more to the U.S. president than to reporters in the room. “The Iran terror axis has never been weaker,” Bibi boasted. “But as we discussed, Mr. President, to secure our future and bring peace to our region, we have to finish the job.” Trump, in the presence of Netanyahu, deviated from the prime minister’s talking points. Asked by an Israeli journalist if Iran’s present weakness means now is “the right time to hit their nuclear facilities,” Trump pushed back. “They’re not weak,” he said. “They’re very strong right now.” Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute tweeted a clip of the exchange and observed that Trump had demolished “the premise for the argument to attack.” Parsi found another recent comment by Trump even more striking. Ahead of the meeting with Netanyahu, as Trump signed an executive order reimposing “maximum pressure” on Tehran, he said not only that he hoped to get a deal, but that “there are many people at the top ranks of Iran who do not want to have a nuclear weapon.” Writing in Responsible Statecraft, Parsi said that Trump’s comment is “problematic for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who claims that Iran’s leaders are irrational and suicidal.”  Why did Trump, during Netanyahu’s visit, make diplomatic overtures to Israel’s adversary? The president may have wanted to establish a tacit quid pro quo: He’ll do what Netanyahu wants on Gaza in exchange for leeway on diplomacy with Iran. During the joint press conference, Trump proposed that the U.S. would “take over” Gaza and have its inhabitants resettled abroad. In the months ahead, the Israeli premier will need to think twice about obstructing Trump’s Iran diplomacy plans, lest his ally in the White House reconsider this proposal. But once the Gaza crisis is in the rear-view mirror, Trump’s leverage will wane. The Israel lobby sometimes opposes U.S. diplomacy with Iran more aggressively than does Israel itself. But, at the moment, Trump and his allies seem to hold some leverage over pro-Israel groups. After Elon Musk appeared to give a Nazi salute at a post-inauguration rally in January, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) dismissed the gesture as “awkward” and unintentional, urging “all sides” to “give one another a bit of grace, perhaps even the benefit of the doubt.” For the ADL, the statement was unusually restrained.  Pro-Israel groups will choose their battles with Trump wisely, but they won’t roll over. Though the ADL downplayed Musk’s controversial gesture, days later it condemned Nazi-related jokes he had made on X. These groups will undoubtedly push back on diplomacy with Tehran, as the ADL has done in the past, but Trump’s best shot at a deal is to begin the process now, while they are wary of getting on his bad side. Machiavelli once wrote, in reference to great political leaders, “Without opportunity, their skill would have been wasted, and without skill, the opportunity would have been in vain.” Trump is a skilled politician, and some combination of cunning and good fortune has given him a golden opportunity to get something he wants: a landmark nuclear deal with Iran. Wasting it would be a shame. The post Iran Diplomacy Can’t Wait appeared first on The American Conservative.

The following article, PRISON Is The PERFECT PLACE For LIBERALS: Equal Treatment, Free Food, Free Healthcare, No Cars, No Fuel, And Nobody Has Guns Except The Guards, was first published on Conservative Firing Line. (Natural News) Liberals are described as extremists with radical socialist views, pushing for equal distribution of resources and forced medical treatments. They are criticized for advocating for transgender rights, such as allowing men to use women’s bathrooms and transgender individuals to compete in women’s sports. Liberals are portrayed as climate change fanatics, promoting electric vehicles … Continue reading PRISON Is The PERFECT PLACE For LIBERALS: Equal Treatment, Free Food, Free Healthcare, No Cars, No Fuel, And Nobody Has Guns Except The Guards ...

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Having worked his way up from an audio engineer in his youth, by 1960, Meek was starting a revolution. The post “Help me”: Joe Meek and his strange encounter with a possessed cat first appeared on Far Out Magazine.