Summit Dust Settled; When's the Next Dust-up?

With the Obama-Xi Summit a comfortable week behind us, it seems timely to dig into some of the rhetoric, particularly in the areas of cyber and national security - matters of critical importance to the global and interdependent information and communications technology (ICT) industry.

Indeed, putting an exclamation point on that critical importance, it is worth noting, that a month in advance of the Summit, on August 11, nineteen major U.S. industry and ICT trade associations wrote to President Obama seeking his strong engagement with President Xi to address growing barriers to ICT trade, and, while not specifically called out, not just in China (link to letter).

The letter appealed (very slightly edited for length):

·         The U.S. and China should reaffirm their commitment to open markets, particularly in the ICT sector, recognizing the significant benefits that both countries enjoy from integration into global ICT industry value chains.

·         The U.S. and China should confirm…that in pursuing measures to protect national security, they should ensure that measures affecting the ICT sector are: (i) necessary to advance a legitimate security objective; (ii) narrowly-tailored to achieve that objective; (iii) the least restrictive of open trade and competition as possible. In particular, both sides should commit to refrain from embedding in their national security laws, regulations, and policies specific requirements related to economic security that are designed to advance policies that distort markets and restrict open competition.

·         The U.S. and China should agree, at the highest levels of government, to ensure that an ongoing high-level consultation mechanism exists and is dedicated to minimize any disruption to mutually-beneficial global ICT trade through the achievement of these goals.

Ah, cyber-motherhood and digital-apple pie.  Good stuff.

And, thankfully – and rather impressively – the two Presidents ponied up, at least rhetorically.

Key takeaways from the Summit in terms of ICT:  Both sides agreed...

·         They would not “conduct or knowingly support” cyber and non-cyber-related theft of intellectual property in order to favor individual companies or sectors. 

·         They would provide timely responses to requests for information and assistance in addressing cyber-related incidents, and, to facilitate this, they would launch a high-level semi-annual dialogue on fighting cybercrime involving key law enforcement and security agencies on both sides.

·         They would work together to identify and promote international norms for government behavior in cyberspace and pledged to establish a senior experts group to discuss these issues further.

·         They would limit the scope of national security reviews, and to refrain from restricting investment/business on the basis of economic or public interest concerns.

Bravo.  (Polite golf applause).

It will come as a surprise to virtually no-one that the joint announcement was met with a bit of skepticism. 

An illustrative example of such sentiment (and by no means am I criticizing any one person or publication in particular), would be the September 25, 2015 article in the Hill, titled “Time for Constructive Confrontation with China” (linked).

The article, which bemoans China’s State-mercantilist approach to world trade, particularly in the IP-intensive ICT industry, and critiques the U.S. for its milquetoast engagement on such concerns, among other things states, in sum:

“In a properly functioning global trading system, countries are supposed to focus on innovating to differentiate themselves in fields where they have comparative advantages, and then trade for things that other countries are better at producing…The United States cannot wait for China's ruling officials to wake up to the error of their ways, however. It must forcefully push back… The strategy should be to put less emphasis on legalistic engagement and more on achieving tangible results…”

Damned straight.  Spot on.  100% non-objectionable.

But let’s be sure to make it a two-way process. 

Indeed, and specifically borrowing from the September 2015 Obama-Xi commitment to refrain from restricting investment/business on the basis of economic or public interest concerns, as well as the U.S. industry associations' plea for both sides to “refrain from…policies that distort markets and restrict open competition,” let's consider a case in point:

On June 1, 2015, the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center’s National Coordinating Center for Communications (quite a mouthful), overseen by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS), distributed - across the U.S. ICT industry - an amateurish FBI document slandering China-based Huawei Technologies (my employer, as regular readers will recall).

The aptly-named FBI “SPIN” (“Strategic Partnership Intelligence Note”) document, dated February 2015, which regurgitates four pages of beyond-tired and oft-disproven misinformation, can be accessed here. 

This document, prepared by the FBI and broadly circulated by DHS, is very clearly a U.S. Government initiative to very much restrict (effectively "ice") investment/business on so-called “national security” grounds.  This fact-challenged document – its genesis, approval and dissemination – very obviously reflects a policy that very much “distorts markets and restricts open competition.”

Yes, China should be held to its commitments, and perhaps most efficiently in the context of “constructive confrontation.” 

But, so too must a light be shined on the market-distorting, trade-restricting and – very worrisome – precedent-setting policies of the U.S. Government.

Neither side should expect to have its cake and eat it too.  Any myopic attempt by either side to do so will only result in neither side delivering on their promises, preserving a status quo that is in no-one's best interest.

Challenging Cheney's "Exceptionalism" Op-ed

An August 28, 2015 Wall Street Journal commentary by former Vice President Cheney popped up in my Facebook feed today, titled “Restoring American Exceptionalism.” 

Citing select truths, while plucking patriotic heartstrings, the Vice President argues forcefully against the recent multilateral (U.S., UK, Germany, France, Russia, China) accord with Iran that will end decades of economic sanctions against that country in exchange for restrictions on its nuclear program. 

Cheney criticizes and labels President Obama as a latter-day Neville Chamberlain, utterly ignoring that the unstable environment in which the President is compelled to operate is the direct result of the duplicitous and failed policies in large part architected by himself.

But first, in fairness, let’s acknowledge the select truths from the Cheney op-ed:

·         “America has guaranteed freedom, security and peace for a larger share of humanity than any other nation in all of history.”

·         “In the 1940s American leadership was essential to victory in World War II, and the liberation of millions from the grip of fascism. In the Cold War American leadership guaranteed the survival of freedom, the liberation of Eastern Europe and the defeat of Soviet totalitarianism.”

·         “For the better part of a century, security and freedom for millions of people around the globe have depended on America’s military, economic, political and diplomatic might.”

·         “As citizens, we have another obligation. We have a duty to protect our ideals and our freedoms by safeguarding our history. We must ensure that our children know the truth about who we are, what we’ve done…”

The Vice President is disingenuous in his promotion of that final truth.  He ignores the truths of what his Administration did to our country: Waging meaningless wars, sacrificing thousands of young people to false causes, leaving hundreds of thousands more maimed, our economy weakened, our surplus drained, our national reputation and credibility badly tarnished.

For instance, in proclaiming that the President “has abandoned Iraq, leaving a vacuum that is being tragically and ominously filled by our enemies,” he declines to acknowledge that the devastation and lawlessness that defines Iraq today is the direct result of a groundless – senseless - war that he himself engineered. 

Cheney’s war fundamentally demolished whatever shaky stability existed in the region at the time, facilitating the rising threats of Iran and Isis, and, we should not forget, obscenely bolstering his own personal wealth.

The Cheney op-ed goes on to make repeated references to the American “supremacy” that defined the bi-polar world that existed before the fall of the Soviet Union, steadfastly ignoring the multi-polar world that emerged in its wake, driven, in part, by the years of American-won (relative) peace and prosperity during the succeeding decade defined by the U.S.-led global Internet boom.

Instead, clinging desperately to yesterday’s concept of American exceptionalism, Cheney rejects the fundamental geopolitical realities inherent in a multi-polar world, demanding that America somehow re-birth Cold War preeminence, cramming yesterday’s two-dimensional square peg exceptionalism into today’s far more complex multi-dimensional round hole.

In this context, he blasts Obama:

“…despite the explosive spread of terrorist ideology and organizations, the establishment of an Islamic State caliphate in the heart of the Middle East, the proliferation of nuclear weapons, and increasing threats from Iran, China, North Korea and Russia, President Obama has departed from this 75-year, largely bipartisan tradition of ensuring America’s pre-eminence and strength.”

Wrong.

President Obama, in the context of the severe damage done to America’s reputation and prestige over the eight years of Bush-Cheney rule, has been working to re-establish America as a credible partner – an exceptional nation in a multi-polar world in which exceptionalism is not confined to our fifty States.

Indeed, Cheney is actually spot on when he writes:

“ As America faces a world of rising security threats, we must resolve to take action and shouldn’t lose hope. Just as one president has left a path of destruction in his wake, one president can rescue us. The right person in the Oval Office can restore America’s strength and alliances, defeat our enemies, and keep us safe. It won’t be easy. There is a path forward, but there are difficult decisions to be made and very little time.”

This is what Obama has been charged with for the last seven years.  And, to some limited extent, he has achieved success.  America is indeed an exceptional nation, but, in a multi-polar world, we must accept and work with peers on the global stage.

Like the former Vice President, I hope that whichever candidate prevails in 2016 can pick up and carry this standard further forward.  Borrowing again from Mr. Cheney, this will be best and perhaps only accomplished if, unlike the Vice President, we “ensure that our children know the truth about who we are, what we’ve done…”