The United Nations/ US Sovereignty/International Law

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.thaimbc.com/2023/09/30/wef-caught-orchestrating-u-s-border-crisis-from-military-bases-in-panama/?fbclid=IwAR1n6_59aO8TJTfeZ0HghQHqigj_WQecc6NCIfUyGSHIwRSyjiufv2cO7ik

[DougMacG]

"If you can't own property, you are property."

"No farmers, no food."

"Eat insects."

Hard to overstate how far the global Left wants to go.  Hard to understate how fast it is coming.

https://expose-news.com/2023/10/15/agenda-2030s-goal-is-no-farmers-no-food/

Folks, the issue isn't Joe Biden's age.  The Left is organized, entrenched, worldwide and motivated.

How come we aren't?

Even when we win elections, it is only a pause in the move toward total Leftism.

Do what you can right now to stop it.

[Body-by-Guinness]

The WHO is pretty much an entirely owned subsidiary of the Chinese Communist Party, so count me among the “who the hell cares?” club. Somewhat surprised to see the Israeli ambassador playing along, but the UN and its make work tail chases have certainly subverted many more concerned with self interest than more noble ends.

[Crafty_Dog]

Biden Gets European Help for His Big-Government Agenda
When Congress and the courts say no, his agencies recruit foreigners to apply pressure here at home.
By Phil Gramm and Jeb Hensarling
Oct. 17, 2023 6:15 pm ET



American exceptionalism, the product of economic freedom and source of our prosperity, is being threatened by the Biden administration, which seeks to circumvent Congress, the courts and the Constitution to Europeanize the American economy. The administration, which can’t get Congress to legislate its agenda or the courts to allow it through executive orders, is now using international agreements and coordination in tax, antitrust, environmental and financial policy to empower Europe to impose the administration’s agenda on the U.S.

Europe is more than willing to share its constraints with its more efficient competitor, but the Biden administration is the driving force behind this regulatory race to the bottom. This mounting regulatory burden is dragging down the unique productivity, wages and profits that Americans view as our birthright.

A perfect example is the Biden administration’s agreement to allow foreign governments to tax U.S. companies on their U.S. earnings if Congress refuses to adopt the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s global minimum tax. The administration not only supports the international tax increase but was its principal author. While 137 nations endorsed the OECD tax agreement, a Democratic Congress rejected it last year. Now, with a Republican House, the administration’s only chance to raise corporate taxes is to use the OECD agreement to pressure Congress to impose the tax or let foreign nations collect the equivalent tax on U.S. subsidiaries operating in their countries. The Trump administration blocked France’s proposed digital services tax on U.S. tech companies by threatening tariffs on its wine and cheese exports to the U.S. But the Biden administration has pledged not to retaliate when foreign nations tax American companies on their U.S. earnings.

Another example of this collusion is the Federal Trade Commission’s coordination with the U.K. antitrust watchdog, the Competition and Markets Authority. After the FTC wasn’t able to block Microsoft’s acquisition of Activision Blizzard in federal court, the agency appears to have conspired with the CMA to block the acquisition.

When asked about FTC involvement in its objection, the CMA admitted it had 26 meetings and exchanged 74 emails with the commission about the Microsoft case. Based on this evidence Activision CEO Bobby Kotick charged: “The CMA is being used as a tool by the FTC to be able to create these kinds of outcomes, and [this] isn’t the way that they’re supposed to be operating.” Quaint as it may sound, the FTC is “supposed to be operating” according to the rule of law and the Constitution. Undeterred, the FTC and the Justice Department continue to sue Google and Amazon not for exploiting their customers, the U.S. antitrust standard, but for failing to protect their competitors, the European standard.

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s proposed climate-change standard, under which all large public and private companies would be forced to disclose their carbon footprint and those of their suppliers and customers, would impose European-style environmental reporting rules on American companies. Lacking the clear legislative authority to issue such a rule, the SEC likely faces a Supreme Court challenge similar to West Virginia v. EPA (2022), which overturned President Obama’s Clean Power Plan.

But the SEC has a backup plan. The European Union-dominated International Organization of Securities Commissions, of which the SEC is a member, has recently endorsed the International Sustainability Standards Board’s “sustainability-related financial disclosures standards.” Will the administration coordinate with the EU to enforce its rules against U.S. companies operating in Europe and their American suppliers and customers?

While the SEC has used its regulatory power to impose the administration’s anticarbon initiative, it has also pushed to expand its jurisdiction to cover the $20 trillion private-funds industry. In August the SEC approved sweeping new rules to expand its regulatory authority over investments made by sophisticated investors that historically have been considered capable of protecting their own interests such as pension plans, university endowments and wealthy individuals.

Based on his concern over the size and profitability of hedge funds, private equity and venture-capital firms, SEC Chairman Gary Gensler has pushed his agency to adopt the largest expansion in its regulatory authority in 80 years on a 3-2 partisan commission vote. Republican Commissioner Hester Peirce objected: “The rule-making is ahistorical, unjustified, unlawful, impractical, confusing and harmful.”

Given the absence of clear legislative authority for such a massive power grab, this is another invitation to a court challenge. But large financial-service providers have European investors, acquire European assets and operate in Europe. Don’t be surprised if Mr. Gensler starts coordinating with European regulators.

The Biden administration’s Europeanization of the American economy is a political agenda meant to expand the size and power of government. Most American families don’t have a political agenda. They have jobs, bills and responsibilities; they want a better life for their children.

Over the past 30 years, real per capita gross domestic product in France and Germany, the EU’s two largest economies, have grown, respectively, from $28,670 to $38,913 (a 35.7% increase) and from $30,615 to $43,032 (40.5%). Real per capita GDP in the U.S. has grown 56.7%, from $40,108 to $62,866. Making America more like Europe gives the Biden administration the government it wants, but European economic results won’t give American families what they want.


Mr. Gramm, a former chairman of the Senate Banking Committee (1999-2001), is a nonresident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He holds stock in Amazon and Google and is an adviser to a private-equity fund. Mr. Hensarling, a former chairman of the House Financial Services Committee (2013-19), is an advisory council member to Americans for Prosperity. He holds stock in Amazon and Microsoft.

Copyright ©2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8
Appeared in the October 18, 2023, print edition as 'Biden Gets European Help for His Big-Government Agenda'.

[Crafty_Dog]

The Disgrace of the United Nations on Israel
The Secretary-General abandons Israel, a state the U.N. helped to create.
By
The Editorial Board
Follow
Updated Oct. 25, 2023 6:21 pm ET




In the ever-expanding hall of shame for propagators of global disorder, prepare a special pedestal for United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres. His disgraceful remarks Tuesday to the Security Council are an example of why the U.N. can’t be counted on to keep the peace anywhere.


Mr. Guterres’s comments amount to nothing less than an apologia for Hamas terrorists, despite a few thin caveats. “It is important to also recognize the attacks by Hamas did not happen in a vacuum,” he said of the Iran-backed terror group’s Oct. 7 invasion of southern Israel, which claimed more than 1,400 lives.

Lest anyone miss his point: “The Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation. They have seen their land steadily devoured by settlements and plagued by violence; their economy stifled; their people displaced and their homes demolished.”

Although he allowed that these “grievances” don’t justify the “appalling attacks by Hamas,” he warned that “those appalling attacks cannot justify the collective punishment of the Palestinian people.” We quote Mr. Guterres at length in case readers assume someone in his position couldn’t really have delivered a speech of this sort. He did.

Mr. Guterres seems to know little about the institution he leads. A U.N. resolution passed in 1947 recommended the partition plan for Palestine that led to the creation of Israel the following year, as our friends at the New York Sun note in a sharp editorial.

Meanwhile, for decades the U.N., under the auspices of the U.N. Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) refugee agency exclusively for Palestinians, has discouraged permanent resettlement by refugees and runs schools that teach children Israeli territory belongs to them.

Far worse is Mr. Guterres’s parroting of what amounts to a modern-day blood libel that Israel is indiscriminately killing Palestinian civilians. The Israel Defense Forces more than a week ago tried to warn Gazans to flee the likely path of an invasion; Hamas discouraged civilians from doing so and the U.N. criticized . . . Israel.

Civilians are dying because Hamas deliberately targeted Israelis and now uses Gazans as human shields, as Mr. Guterres had to acknowledge Tuesday. By calling for Israel to accept a cease-fire, Mr. Guterres is effectively rewarding the terrorists’ civilian-killing strategy while denying a U.N.-approved state the same ability to defend itself that every other country enjoys.

This false equivalence elevates Mr. Guterres’s comments to the destructive from merely foolish. His message to the world’s rogues is that if you go on a killing spree, the U.N. will help justify your depredations. Will Mr. Guterres concoct some excuse if Beijing invades Taiwan—or Philippine territory? This is how the U.N. makes itself a fellow traveler in the advancing march of global disorder.

[Body-by-Guinness]

  ·
🚨 Breaking: 🇨🇿 Czech Defense Minister Jana Černochová calls to leave the UN 🇺🇳 for supporting terrorism: “Three weeks ago Hamas murdered over 1400 Israelis, more victims for their population than Al Qaeda murdered in the US on 9/11. And only 14 countries, including ours, have spoken out clearly against this unprecedented terrorist attack. I am ashamed of the UN. Czech Republic has no place in an organization that cheers on terrorists and does not respect the fundamental right to self-defense. Let's get out!”
----
UN, an overfed rats nest

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.ukcolumn.org/article/un-moves-to-advance-pandemic-treaty-and-regulations-signaling-urgent-need-for-public

[G M]

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/who-cleaned-ebola-rape-fiasco-250-payoff-congolese-victims-documents

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/u-n-women-retracts-statement-condemning-hamas-attacks-on-israel/

[DougMacG]

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/u-n-women-retracts-statement-condemning-hamas-attacks-on-israel/

Not One Thin Dime to this rogue organization should be our policy.

Women who retract the condemnation of rape, murder, kidnap...

To call them worthless would be to miss the danger they pose.

[Crafty_Dog]

China’s race to dominate deep seabed minerals

U.S. participation in Law of the Sea Treaty needed

By John Norton Moore

The Washington Post recently published a front-page story as to how Xi Jinping’s China is seeking to dominate the mineral resources of the deep seabed. These resources of copper, nickel, cobalt, manganese and rare earth minerals are the most important remaining strategic minerals on Earth. Moreover, China seeks to control the important environmental rules that will govern the harvesting of the nodules containing these critical minerals.

But the Post piece left out the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea as to how this happened and the simple solution that will put the U.S. back in the game.

The U.S. led the world in the negotiations leading to the Law of the Sea Treaty and was by far the biggest winner. We quadrupled our sovereign territorial sea and extended our control over offshore resources, both fisheries and oil and gas, in an area larger than the entire U.S. landmass — for the largest such area in the world.

We also won our “no sign” issues, ensured access to strategic minerals of the deep seabed, and navigational freedom for our Navy and commercial shipping.

Thus, we ended the negotiations with four USA-designated deep seabed sites in the mineralrich Clarion-Clipperton Zone of the Pacific — each site approximately the size of Rhode Island, and each containing minerals estimated at $1 trillion in value.

We secured freedom of navigation in the new 200-nautical-mile “economic” zones as well as the right of transit passage for our ships and aircraft through straits used for international navigation.

Since no nation owned the deep seabed and our industry needed clear property rights to a specific site before spending the billions required to develop a site, the U.S. supported the creation of a small international agency called the International Seabed Authority to provide those property rights through licenses to be issued to treaty parties.

When early drafts of the seabed mining regime were unacceptable, President Ronald Reagan announced changes required for the U.S. to accept the treaty, changes that were subsequently agreed upon in a lengthy renegotiation.

As part of this renegotiation, the U.S. was given the only permanent seat on the Council of the International Seabed Authority, a seat with substantial authority over deep seabed harvesting rules, environmental rules, and other critical council decisions. This renegotiation was a victory for Reagan.

After this renegotiation, our NATO allies, as well as China and Russia, quickly became parties to the Law of the Sea Treaty. Today, 168 countries and the European Union are parties to the treaty. But responding to a drumbeat of false and misleading arguments against the treaty for over 25 years, the Senate has never given advice and consent.

The result has been the loss by the United States of “USA-2” and “USA-3” and a growing risk of loss of “USA-1” and “USA-4.” In the meantime, Russia has been licensed for three deep seabed sites and Xi Jinping’s China for five.

Just as Russia and China are seeking dominance over land-based deposits of these minerals in Africa and Latin America, they are taking advantage of the United States’ absence from the treaty to seek to do the same in the deep seabed. As our national security, business and environmental leaders told the Senate in 2012, the last time the treaty was before the Senate for advice and consent, it is imperative that the U.S. accede to the treaty. But the 10-plus years since this last Senate consideration of the treaty, coinciding with Mr. Xi’s rise to power in China, has made U.S. adherence of much greater importance today. Today, America’s absence from the treaty has empowered three critical security threats from Mr. Xi’s China. The first is the effort to obtain dominance over strategic minerals from the deep ocean floor and to exclude the United States from this most important remaining source of such minerals, as discussed in the Post story. The second, of equal concern for the United States, is China’s wholeof- government campaign to increase the restrictions on navigational freedoms embodied in the treaty that are critical for the U.S. Navy and American trade. Our allies need us in the effort to enforce these freedoms won in a difficult negotiation lasting a quarter century and now embodied in the treaty. The third is a Xi-Putin laser focus on the Arctic, America’s fourth seacoast, while nonadherence to the treaty is inhibiting the United States’ response to their Arctic activism.

There is a simple solution that can change the game overnight. That is for the Senate to provide prompt advice and consent to the treaty and for the United States to take its seat on the Council of the International Seabed Authority and license our remaining two USA-designated sites.

This provides both U.S. input on the important environmental rules for seabed mining and protects access to $2 trillion in critical strategic minerals. Our membership in the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea will also immediately strengthen our hand against these other efforts from Mr. Xi’s China to dominate ocean space. John Norton Moore formerly served as U.S. ambassador for the U.N. Law of the Sea Convention and chair of the NSC Task Force for UNCLOS. His book about the urgent need for the United States to adhere to the Law of the Sea Treaty, “The Struggle for Law in the Oceans: How an Isolationist Narrative Betrays America,” was just published by Oxford University Press

[Crafty_Dog]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/22/global-pandemic-agreement-at-risk-of-falling-apart-who-warns

[Body-by-Guinness]

Found this through a usually reliable source quoting the NYT, which I won't set an account with. I'll amend it if I find confirmation or refutation:

Details emerge on the 12
@UNRWA
 employees who participated in the Oct 7 massacre (from
@nytimes
):
🔴 9 employees have been fired; 2 are dead.
🔴 6 were confirmed to be inside Israel on Oct 7 based on their phones; others discussed their involvement on intercepted phone calls; 3 received texts telling them to report to meeting points on Oct 7, and one was told to bring RPGs stored at his home.
🔴 7 were teachers at UNRWA schools; 2 worked at schools in other capacities; the remaining three were a clerk, a social worker, and a storeroom manager.
🔴 A school counselor from Khan Yunis and his son abducted a woman from southern Israel.
🔴 A social worker from Nuseirat helped bring the body of a dead Israeli soldier to Gaza and helped distribute ammunition and coordinate vehicles on the day of the attack.

ETA: though I can't open it without registering, here is the NYT link:

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/28/world/middleeast/gaza-unrwa-hamas-israel.html?fbclid=IwAR166nStU1hGzS-rhFWEyXCv0V9xE5Md6CHGlnTzQJ48bFkj_52qy5GTc-I

[Body-by-Guinness]

Read a couple different sources claiming just prior to publicly cutting UNRWA of from funds due to its support of Oct. 7 atrocities the Biden admin quietly slipped them $10 million to tide them over. Rumor has it Trudeau of Canada did the same. Will update if further confirmed or disproven.

[DougMacG]

United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA)

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/einat-wilf-without-unrwa-there-would-be-no-hamas-it-must-be-dismantled
---------------------------

[Doug]  The first two letters is what must be dismantled.

Question, are they, the UN, doing more harm than good?

[Crafty_Dog]

https://amgreatness.com/2024/02/17/natos-new-mission-peace-through-censorship/

[DougMacG]

The mission against Hamas is "over the top"?

Cease fire needed?

https://www.politico.com/news/2024/02/19/un-resolution-cease-fire-gaza-00142140

Or is it that Democratic Muslim American votes are needed?

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/rep-rashida-tlaib-urges-michigan-democrats-vote-biden-primary-rcna139360

[Crafty_Dog]

The latter.

[Crafty_Dog]

Let's bring the discussion of India getting a seat on the Security Council here.

As we started discussing in the Indo-Pacific thread, Britain and France are on the Council due to stasis, not because they really deserve it any more. 

What would it take for India to get a seat and break the stasis, and who would be the countries pushing to replace Britain and France?

[Crafty_Dog]

Trump Should Lay Off NATO, Target the U.N.
Military alliances provide hard security benefits to the U.S. Turtle Bay is useless at best and often inimical to America.
By John Bolton
March 8, 2024 3:25 pm ET


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Wonder Land: Historical parallels are never perfect. But given Donald Trump's isolationist rhetoric and increasingly threatening actions from Iran, Russia and China, the former President could learn much from the Munich Agreement of 1938. Images: Reuters/CTK via ZUMA Press Composite: Mark Kelly
Donald Trump’s assault on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization began in his first term and has continued as he campaigns for a second. NATO certainly has its problems, as Henry Kissinger argued in “The Troubled Partnership: A Re-Appraisal of the Atlantic Alliance” (1965). But it serves U.S. national-security interests. Undermining U.S. strength by eroding alliances hardly amounts to an America-first agenda. Further, Mr. Trump’s focus on NATO shields from scrutiny the United Nations and other international institutions that are much more inimical to America.

Mr. Trump’s acolytes recognize that his NATO withdrawal threats have kicked up problems. Tellingly, however, their efforts to clean up after him are themselves unwise and unworkable. They unintentionally reflect the irrationality of Mr. Trump’s longstanding effort to debilitate NATO and his blunderbuss approach to world affairs generally.

One MAGA-world alternative to complete withdrawal is creating a “two-tier NATO,” in which any member not meeting the 2014 Cardiff summit commitment to spend 2% of gross domestic product on defense wouldn’t receive alliance protection. This notion is toxic to alliance solidarity and impractical. Iceland, a NATO member, has no military and therefore spends nothing on defense. I never discussed Iceland with Mr. Trump, but I expect he’d question why it was even allowed in NATO. The simple answer: Look at a map. Shall we concede Iceland to Russia or China so it can “persuade” Reykjavik to allow naval and air bases there?

Consider the vulnerability of Poland, the Baltics and others on Russia’s periphery. Because of geography, they are at risk no matter how high their defense spending—and all now exceed the Cardiff target. NATO deterrence provides their only real protection. If that deterrence recedes or fails, the Moscow-Beijing axis will seize these low-hanging fruit, notwithstanding that they satisfy Trump accounting rules.

Finally, a two-tiered NATO would be untenable in combat, logistics and communications. Imagine that Russia invades Poland. The U.S. springs to its aid, but Russia advances close to the German border. The U.S. field commander calls his Russian counterpart to say: “You can do whatever the hell you want in Germany. Please excuse us while we retreat to the next NATO country that spends 2% of its GDP on defense. We’ll see you there if you attack them after you finish Germany.” The Russians are already enjoying vodka toasts over a two-tiered NATO.

Another Trump World proposal is to impose tariffs on NATO member countries that don’t reach the 2% spending level. Presumably, this logic also applies to non-NATO allies like Japan, South Korea and Australia if Mr. Trump believes they aren’t carrying their fair share of the defense burden. This gambit is a non sequitur to everyone but Mr. Trump, for whom international problems are nails crying out for his tariff hammer. Penalizing the economies of U.S. allies to encourage them to increase defense spending sounds like “the beatings will continue until morale improves.”

More practically, on what authority could Mr. Trump draw to impose such tariffs? Even a Republican-controlled Congress, which is far from certain, is highly unlikely to give him new tariff authority. Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act, often cited in Mr. Trump’s first term, applies when foreign actions are “unreasonable or discriminatory, and burden or restrict U.S. commerce.” That hardly covers sovereign defense-spending decisions we happen not to like.

Section 232 of the 1962 Trade Act, authorizing tariffs to protect American national security, is closer to the mark. Mr. Trump used Section 232 to impose tariffs on Canadian and European steel and aluminum imports, thereby proving, unsurprisingly to everyone but Mr. Trump, that penalizing your allies doesn’t weaken your adversaries. Obviously, the opposite is true: we should be unifying allies against China economically as well as politically, not splitting the camp of those harmed by Chinese intellectual-property piracy and harmful trade policies.

Even if all NATO members reached the Cardiff targets, the spending issue wouldn’t disappear. Facing mounting global threats, Washington’s defense budgets need to increase to Reagan-era levels, perhaps 5% to 6% of GDP from the current 3.5%. Inevitably, therefore, NATO members (and other allies globally) will have to increase to perhaps a 4% minimum. Getting to 2% is the easy part. The Trump-mitigating proposals are untenable, evanescent, and inadequate to keep NATO strong.

Besides, there are better targets for MAGA ire. Mr. Trump could usefully wreak havoc on the U.N. As I said 30 years ago, you could lose the top 10 floors of the U.N. Secretariat building and it wouldn’t make a bit of difference. Things have only gotten worse.

In 2022, Washington spent about $18.1 billion across the U.N. system, far more than any other contributor. Contributions are made via several methods in a complex, nearly incomprehensible system, most commonly through “assessed” contributions, with the U.S. generally paying 22% of agency budgets so funded. Washington has had limited success in constraining U.N. budgets, and has often itself prompted significant increases.

Assessed contributions are functionally taxes. Contrary to what some Trump supporters have said, defense expenditures aren’t. We need to spend on our defense whether we have allies or not. Allies help reduce that burden. The U.N. only makes it heavier.

One powerful reform would be shifting from assessed contributions to wholly voluntary ones. America and other members would pay only for what they want and insist they get value for money. Even if only the U.S. switched unilaterally to voluntary contributions, it would create a tsunami that could fundamentally change the entire U.N. Or not, in which case at least we wouldn’t be paying for it.

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There is no chance any U.N. component will ever voluntarily adopt such a system, because the U.S. has been the U.N.’s cash cow since 1945. Instead, a President Trump could simply say we are moving to voluntary contributions whether anyone else does or not. Under Article 19 of the U.N. Charter, failure to pay assessments for two years running could cost a country its vote in the General Assembly, but that loss is insignificant. General Assembly votes are nonbinding, and the U.S. carries no more weight than Vanuatu or Eritrea.

America’s Security Council vote, and therefore its veto power, is totally secure, guaranteed by the charter’s Article 27, and the charter itself can’t be amended without consent from all permanent members, including the U.S., per Article 108.

For those U.N. specialized agencies and programs already funded voluntarily, Inauguration Day would present immediate opportunities to defund some entirely and reduce funding for others. In his first term, Mr. Trump defunded the U.N. Relief and Works Agency, a decision Joe Biden reversed. Given that some Unrwa employees joined Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks, defunding it should be a top priority.

As Washington implemented a switch to voluntary contributions, it would face important decisions on continuing membership in several U.N. entities, decisions which would involve not merely defunding, but withdrawing from them completely. The U.S. has been in and out of the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization for decades, withdrawing first under Ronald Reagan, inexplicably rejoining under George W. Bush. Mr. Trump took us out again, and Mr. Biden again returned. A Trump win should guarantee a third withdrawal, hopefully for good. Mr. Trump also served notice of withdrawing from the Universal Postal Union but later backed down. UPU warrants another look.

Beyond massive changes in U.N. funding and membership, Mr. Trump should insist that an American become U.N. secretary-general when António Guterres’s term expires in December 2026. Although I have no prospect of and no desire for a position in Mr. Trump’s second-term administration, I would be available as our candidate for secretary-general.

The ultimate question is whether America should withdraw from the U.N. altogether. Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick was once asked that question. She paused, then answered: “No, it’s not worth the trouble.”

Although technically part of the U.N., international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank should also be carefully re-examined. On the IMF, Mr. Trump should read the seminal 1998 op-ed in these pages by George Shultz, William Simon and Walter Wriston, “Who Needs the IMF?” No one has answered the question adequately.

Not since the Reagan administration has there been a comprehensive review of multilateral foreign assistance. Proponents long argued that multilateral development banks help Washington mobilize development resources, but private capital is now far more widely available than when they were founded. Multilateral foreign aid only marginally advances U.S. national-security interests, but these banks have powerful Washington lobbies. Mr. Trump should mark them down for defunding or withdrawal. That would free up greater resources for bilateral foreign assistance, which, if implemented effectively, can advance core American interests.

Finally, a wall of pretend international courts—including the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, the Law of the Sea Treaty’s tribunal and the World Trade Organization’s dispute-resolution process—are already on history’s ash heap, or on their way there. Clearing away what remains is still important work. In his first term, Mr. Trump stymied the WTO judicial mechanism, and even the Biden administration has kept it stymied so far. Mr. Trump’s focus shouldn’t be limited to international trade, but to all manifestations of emerging “global governance,” heartily encouraged under Mr. Biden and Barack Obama.

A related issue is arms control, particularly how to handle a potential renewal of the New Start Treaty. Although we persuaded Mr. Trump in 2019 to withdraw from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces and Open Skies treaties with Russia, New Start was never much of an issue. Mr. Trump’s desire to cozy up to Vladimir Putin may give Mr. Putin an opportunity to cajole Mr. Trump into negotiations to extend New Start. Mr. Trump should resist any such temptation. Moreover, any strategic weapons negotiations should include China as well as Russia, given China’s rising nuclear and ballistic-missile capabilities.

Mr. Trump rightly never expressed support for the “rules-based international order” the left loves to conjure. As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Hamas’s barbaric attack on Israel, and countless other examples demonstrate, there is no such thing. A president who truly grasps this can reawaken Americans to the necessity of operating from positions of strength in the world, not high-minded rhetoric and virtue-signaling.

NATO and other U.S. politico-military alliances aren’t acts of charity, and they are fundamentally different from the U.N., the international financial institutions and the global-governance project. We founded and support NATO because it serves hard U.S. national-security interests, not because of warm feelings for Europeans or abstract notions of “democracy.”

Nobody is going to defend us or maintain an international system favoring America if we don’t. That requires spending the necessary resources and extending our reach through alliances like NATO. If we reduce our defense capabilities or retreat from positions of strength, others will fill the vacuum, invariably to our disadvantage.

Mr. Bolton served as President Trump’s national security adviser, 2018-19, and ambassador to the United Nations, 2005-06. He is author of “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir.”

[Crafty_Dog]

(2) OFFICIALS PLAN TO BLOCK TRUMP FROM STOPPING UKRAINE AID: According to U.S. and European officials, the U.S. and NATO allies are considering a plan to transfer control of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group from the U.S. to NATO to ensure arms transfers continue ahead of a potential Trump presidency.

Former Pentagon and NATO official Jim Townsend said some NATO officials think it is better to institutionalize the arms transfer process, and this plan isolates Ukraine arms transfers from a Trump reelection or the U.S. getting distracted by a conflict with China (!!!).

Why It Matters: This is another instance of the Biden administration attempting to “future-proof” policies against a future Trump administration. The Biden administration’s goal is very likely to prevent a repeat of 2017 when Trump and House Republicans used the Congressional Review Act to repeal last-minute Obama administration rules on energy emissions. – R.C.