Small by Comparison

As seen on “Just the News, No Noise” with John Solomon and Amanda Head Tuesday, September 22nd.

Xi Jinping lands at Joint Base Andrews on Wednesday for his first White House visit in more than a decade, and Victoria Coates says he arrives holding the weaker hand. “I definitely think President Trump is coming in from a position of strength,” the Heritage Foundation vice president and former deputy national security adviser told hosts John Solomon and Amanda Head Tuesday on “Just the News, No Noise”. By her account, Russian oil bound for Beijing is passing into American hands, and Iran’s ports are blockaded. Tuesday’s Greenland deal, in her telling, is the model Xi should study.

Treasury designated Rosneft and Lukoil last Oct. 22 for funding the Kremlin’s war machine, and in January Lukoil agreed to sell its international arm to the Carlyle Group, pending Treasury’s permission. “What would have been a very free flow of oil to China isn’t anymore. That’s going to be oil we control, our people control,” Coates said. She would still sell to Beijing at full price; the August Venezuela agreement, 65 billion barrels under 100-year concessions, is her proof, with Libya possibly next.

Taiwan is harder. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and his Japanese and South Korean counterparts had just opposed any unilateral change to the Taiwan Strait’s status quo. Coates expects Trump to say plainly that neither side wants a conflict, and that this is not a situation “where we will appease them and we will just hand over Taiwan.” Then he can walk Xi through Tuesday’s Greenland agreement as “the win-win-win that that is for Greenland, for the United States, for Denmark,” delivered “with a little twinkle in his eye. I know how to do this. You’re not doing so great.”

Ronald Reagan reached Geneva in November 1985, the first U.S.-Soviet summit in more than six years, after a first term of military buildup and missile defense; he came home with a joint statement that nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought, and Gorbachev’s acceptance of an invitation to Washington. The summit was the dividend of strength, not a substitute for it.

Trump told the assembly the choice was a deal that lets Iran rebuild or annihilation; that afternoon envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner met Iranian officials for about three hours. “This is actually a very major concession on the part of the Iranians,” Coates said. Can President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi deliver? “Are they able to make a decision? Are they able to implement a deal?” The subject is fixed: “This actually isn’t about the Strait of Hormuz. This is about the Iranian nuclear program and their ability to hold the civilized world hostage.”

Tehran had bet, she said, that Trump would trade sanctions relief for an open strait before November. The blockade of Iran’s ports ordered in April reversed the bet, and Trump now says the war ends immediately after the election. Her paraphrase: “Regardless of the results of the midterm, you get two more years of Donald J. Trump. How do you like that?”

The hall laughed at Trump in 2018 and watched his escalator and teleprompter fail last year; on Tuesday his vow that Iran will never have a nuclear weapon drew applause. “This year they’re applauding because there are enough people in that room with the intellectual honesty to realize this was a horrible problem for the entire planet,” Coates said. Cuba’s delegation walked out, days after the island’s grid collapsed for at least the sixth time this year.

Even the AI race Trump wants called superintelligence cuts her way: rapid advancement means loosening the regime’s grip on information. “Do we want to keep our draconian communist totalitarian hold on that country? That’s a tough choice.” A guest who needs an openness he cannot afford calls on a host who signed for two Arctic bases the day before. Chairman Xi, Coates said, “looks pretty small by comparison.”