And South Korean pursuit of nuclear weapons could trigger far greater economic retaliation from China than what occurred after Seoul’s 2016 decision to deploy the THAAD ballistic missile defense system. A South Korean nuclear weapons program would increase the potential for a reciprocal Japanese nuclear program, exacerbating nationalist tensions between the two countries. South Korea’s advocacy for nuclear options seems born from concerns about the continued viability of the U.S. Extended Deterrence Guarantee. The U.S. has a treaty pledge to defend South Korea, an alliance forged in the crucible of the Korean War. Today, 28,500 of our uniformed sons and daughters serve there, in harm’s way - a living testimony of American commitment. As another sign of reassurance, Washington recently agreed to resume combined military exercises and rotational deployment of strategic assets, both curtailed since 2018. It’s understandable that any nation will be concerned when it relies on an ally for much of its national security. Any perceived wavering in America’s commitment to defend South Korea would intensify advocacy for nuclear options. Presidents Biden and Yoon recently reactivated the Extended Deterrence Strategy and Consultation Group, an excellent venue for exploring additional reassurance measures. But basing U.S. nuclear weapons on South Korean soil or developing an independent South Korean nuclear force should not be on the table. Each has a tremendous downside. They are not the right options.

Also unaddressed is the question of whether South Korean nuclear weapons would be integrated into the U.S.-South Korean Combined Forces Command and Operations Plan 5015 (the allied strategic plan for a major conflict with North Korea). If so, South Korean nuclear weapons would still be subject to the National Command Authorities of both countries. Seoul keeping its nuclear force separate from the integrated command structure would raise U.S. concerns about their military concept of employment. What would trigger South Korean use of nuclear weapons and against which North Korean targets? South Korea developing nuclear weapons could lead to calls in Washington for the withdrawal of U.S. forces either due to anxiety of being drawn into South Korean escalatory actions or isolationist perceptions that Seoul could now go it alone. And then there’s the question of money. An indigenous nuclear program would divert an enormous amount of South Korea’s defense budget away from critical requirements to duplicate an existing capability that the U.S. currently provides. Those defense funds would be better spent augmenting conventional force requirements, as stipulated in South Korea’s Defense Reform Plan 2.0 and the bilateral plan for the transition of wartime operational command. There are other problems, too. South Korean nuclear weapons would violate the Non-Proliferation Treaty or require Seoul to withdraw from it. Either could expose Seoul to international sanctions as well as curtailment of supply of fissile material from the Nuclear Suppliers Group.

Polls show that South Koreans increasingly favor both bringing U.S. tactical nuclear weapons back to the Korean Peninsula and developing an indigenous nuclear capability. But the shift in public opinion seems grounded more on national prestige than strategic considerations. The newly inaugurated Yoon Suk Yeol administration, like its predecessors, has declared it will not pursue an indigenous nuclear weapons program. But senior officials privately express concern about the U.S. commitment to defend South Korea. Still, there has been little discussion of the details of either option. The redeployment of U.S. nuclear weapons to South Korean soil lacks military merit. The ground-based weapons removed in the 1990s no longer exist in the U.S. military inventory. Today’s tactical nukes are mounted on mobile air- and sea-based platforms, making them difficult for North Korea to find and target. To place them in a static underground bunker would degrade deterrence and heighten the risk of a North Korean preemptive attack on such high-value targets. Some have suggested that, if tensions on the peninsula should rise, the missiles could always be moved back to their mobile launch platforms. But doing so during a crisis might be deemed “too escalatory” and, therefore, prevented, thus increasing risk to the population. A South Korean nuclear weapons program would cause tension with Washington, reminiscent of U.S. threats to break the alliance after the discovery of Seoul’s covert nuclear program in the 1970s. Similarly, the disclosure in the 1990s of an independent South Korean target list of North Korean targets caused bilateral strains with the United States.

The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic in the United States has brought into sharp focus the critical downside of trade with China during the past three decades, and the outsourcing of manufacturing to China. About 97 percent of antibiotics sold in the United States are currently supplied by Chinese pharmaceutical companies. U.S. policymakers are concerned that China might weaponize medical exports to the United States. American taxpayers, universities, corporations and investors funded the development of the technologies that drive today’s global economy. In the U.S.―China trade relation, China subverted this U.S. advantage by requiring U.S. firms to transfer their technologies to China for market access. From the age of the Roman empire, economically weak nations were never militarily strong. When U.S. firms set up plants in China, they provide jobs there and directly strengthen the Chinese economy. Also, the expropriation of technology of U.S. firms that set up plants in China benefits their Chinese counterparts today, and the Chinese economy in the future. As their economy has strengthened, China has become more aggressive toward the U.S. armed forces. Until the turn of the century, we were manufacturing most hospital supplies and drugs in the United States. However, with China’s entry into the WTO, a cartel of Chinese companies colluded on price. They sold these antibiotics and hospital supplies much below-cost and drove all U.S. makers out of business, after which they increased the price several-fold.

Tehran has long been designated by the United States - Republican and Democratic administrations alike - as the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism. One example: According to the French government, the Iranian intelligence ministry was behind a 2018 plot to bomb a large gathering of Iranian opposition supporters in Paris. “This extremely serious act envisaged on our territory could not go without a response,” read a rare joint statement from France’s interior, foreign and economy ministers. In truth, their response - e.g. freezing the assets of two suspected Iranian intelligence operatives - barely amounted to a slap on the wrist. Equating the murder of dissidents with the imposition of economic sanctions on murderers is risible. This raises an interesting policy question. For decades, it was widely believed that treating tyrants as respected “stakeholders” in the “international community,” trading with them, providing them aid, welcoming their participation into international organizations, and getting them to sign multilateral treaties would put them on a path to liberalization. That belief, we now know, was misplaced. Perhaps the free nations of the world might consider an alternative: building their own international communities based on comprehensive free trade agreements, while leaving the rogue regimes to manage on their own. Bellicose regimes we cannot deter; we will need to defeat. Finally, we should always support, as much as we can, those fighting for freedom and human rights in foreign lands. “The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.” Frederick Douglass said that, too.

Frederick Douglass called freedom of speech “the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down. They know its power.” Back in the day, tyrants could gag those they ruled, but in free nations people were free, their rights protected. Once Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn arrived in America, once Natan Sharansky was in Israel, the Kremlin could silence them no more. Today, tyrants are increasing their reach, attempting, not without successes, to restrict speech everywhere. Iran’s overseas “campaign of terror has included 360 targeted assassinations”. “Iran leverages its well-earned reputation for extrajudicial killings to try to silence civil society through death threats against activists, dissidents, and journalists.” One definition of war: the use of violence to impose one’s will on others. It is within that context that such murders should be viewed. Iran’s rulers won a pivotal battle back in 1989 when Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for the killing of Salman Rushdie, British author of “The Satanic Verses.” One can only imagine how differently history might have unfolded had the response of free nations been robust; had they, for example, recalled their ambassadors from Tehran and sent the regime’s envoys packing. Instead, only the U.K. broke diplomatic relations, and only for about a year. The tyrants of the world learned a lesson. The rulers of North Korea and China have found nefarious ways to limit speech critical of them, intimidating and manipulating what we might otherwise consider powerful and independent individuals in Hollywood, professional sports, and the news media.

Mr. Putin wanted to ensure that Russian military and intelligence services got the message: They would risk their lives if they betrayed him. Mr. Putin whipped up his electorate with allegations of “Russophobia” and anti-Western diatribes. And nowhere has Mr. Putin, who began his career in the KGB and later served as director of Russia’s ruthless Security Police (FSB), relied more on a Potemkin village of lies and propaganda than in his efforts to justify the Ukraine “special military operation” ― the most destructive war in Europe since World War II. Now, reeling from a blistering Ukrainian military counteroffensive and with few options to compensate for Russia’s corrupt military culture, severe shortages of equipment and ineffectual strategy, Mr. Putin is framing his wartime narrative with the most menacing threats of nuclear strikes. Mr. Putin wants the world to accept his twisted, fact-free narrative about enemy Ukrainian “Nazis” at the gates, when in fact it is Russia’s unprovoked war that has caused a humanitarian catastrophe. Mr. Putin knew the specter of a modern Cuban missile crisis would strike a chord with President Biden, who was just short of 20 when the U.S. and Soviet Union came ever so close to nuclear war. Mr. Putin’s coldblooded grip on the Kremlin might be at risk, but the “motherland” is not under threat and Russia has no legitimate justification for using nuclear weapons. Since Mr. Putin’s KGB past makes him a natural-born hypocrite and purveyor of lies, the Biden administration must now counter the Kremlin’s approach with a public relations strategy.

"It has been a long struggle,” Mr. Shii agreed and added, “The first time they bared their fangs as the vanguard of the anti-communist movement was in the 1978 gubernatorial election to choose the successor to Torazo Ninagawa.” As chairman of the Japanese Communist Party, Mr. Shii’s comments and assertions are openly political and brazenly hostile. It is clear that the attack on the Unification Church is an attack on the LDP and especially on the Abe faction, which has been aggressively anti-communist and pro-American. Mr. Shii said openly: “The starting point [with LDP] was the Shogyo Rengo, an anti-communist organization that was united with the Unification Church. Since then, there has been a half-century of historical collusion between the two organizations.” He emphasized that “the essence of the problem is that the two parties are inextricably linked.” The anti-American component of this attack is made remarkably clear in Mr. Shii’s comments. As written in the article, “Mr. Shii pointed out that strengthening the deterrence of the Japan-U.S. alliance, the Quad (the security framework of the four countries of Japan, the U.S., Australia, and India), and other frameworks to encircle or eliminate China would lead to a vicious cycle of military to military.” Mr. Shii asserted, “We should have a concept of creating a framework that includes China and resolve all issues peacefully.” No one should be confused. The current attack on the Unification Church is an effort to undermine and weaken the Japanese-United States alliance and create an opening for a Chinese Communist-Japanese rapprochement.

After former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s tragic assassination on July 8, the far left has exploited this horrific crime by attempting to destroy Abe’s supporters in the Japanese Diet and eliminate the anti-Communist organization he supported. It is particularly ironic that Prime Minister Abe’s death has become an excuse to attack his allies and his wing of the governing party, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). After all, Abe was the most pro-American and openly anti-Chinese Communist Party prime minister in Japanese history. The Japanese Communist Party’s assaults on the Abe wing of the LDP and the work of the Unification Church are remarkably blatant attacks on everything Abe worked for throughout his life as a political and governmental leader. Amazingly, this deliberate effort to eliminate anti-communists and undermine the Japanese-American alliance was openly explained in the official newspaper of the Japanese Communist Party, Shimbun Akahata. The paper interviewed Kazuo Shii, the chairman of the Japanese Communist Party, who described the history of effective anti-communism and pro-Americanism in Japan. The interview makes clear how much the current attack on the Unification Church is part of a long-term communist strategy to weaken the pro-freedom and anti-communist forces in Japan. “From the Communist Party’s point of view, this is the final war against the Unification Church,” the interviewer said.

For the most part, they rejected the recommendations of the Keynesians and social democrat economists, because as I was often told, their ideas were too close to the command and control policies of the socialists. Thomas Jefferson is reported as saying that revolutions every 25 years or so were necessary to maintain liberty. He understood that bureaucracies - even well-intentioned - become stifling and oppressive, and occasionally need to be tossed out and start anew. That is what happened with the former communist and socialist states - the money ran out, and the bureaucrats quit or were fired. The currencies became useless because they were without backing and lacked a tax enforcement police - which meant that the national debts could not be paid and had to be written off. To this day, many of the former socialist countries have some of the world’s lowest debt-to-GDP ratios and are much more fiscally sound than most of the major countries. During a worldwide financial crisis, they will be the last ones to go bankrupt or resort to hyperinflation (many of them - “been there, done that” - and never again). Most the countries instilled more sensible new tax systems with low-rate or even flat taxes. Bulgaria has a simple 10% flat tax on both corporate and personal income. The bureaucratic plaque is slowly growing again in many countries, from both domestic pressures for “programs” and from foreign governments and international organizations that are trying to impose freedom-destroying regulations - all in the name of protecting the environment and combatting financial fraud. Restoring economic freedoms may require new revolutions.