Month: August 2021

HONG KONG

In response to Beijing imposing harsh controls over Hong Kong and repressing more freedoms previously guaranteed, the US responded Thursday by announcing Deferred Enforced Departure for Hong Kong residents currently in the United States. It will provide Hong Kongers who are concerned about returning to Hong Kong with temporary safe haven in the United States for a period of up to 18 months.

The State Department Spokesperson, Ned Price, said the “United States stands in solidarity with the people in Hong Kong in the face of cruel repression by the PRC.” The US joins other nations offering similar options to those who fear returning to Hong Kong, including the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia.

“It is clear when you look at what is happening that PRC authorities seek to use the tools that they have given themselves… the national security law and other legislation – to make arbitrary arrests, politically motivated prosecutions of opposition candidates and politicians, activists, and peaceful protestors with the goal it seems – or certainly the end result – of creating an atmosphere of fear, of self-censorship, of repression among the general populace,” said Price. 

IRAN

Iran’s new leader, President Raisi, announced that his country will not back down from continuing to develop its nuclear program. Despite Raisi’s statements to the contrary, Price said the US is willing to wait on doing anything to see what direction the Iranian government takes going forward. When questioned about how long Washington is willing to wait, Price would not provide a timeframe, saying “we’re not going to put a timeline on it, but for us, this is an urgent priority, knowing the issues that are at play, and we hope the other – we hope the Iranians treat it with the same degree of urgency. 

Price told reporters Thursday that Iran “… has distanced itself from its nuclear limitations since 2018, the breakout time, according to published reports, is back down to a handful of months. For us, that is not a proposition that can last indefinitely, and it is also not a proposition that can last indefinitely when, as these nuclear constraints aren’t applied, Iran’s advancements continue day by day.”

GUATEMALA

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The US views the suspension last week of Guatemala’s special prosecutor for corruption as a move in the wrong direction. “Attorney General Consuela Porras’ sudden appointment of Rafael Curruchiche to lead FECI does not add confidence in the body’s ability to independently investigate and prosecute corruption cases. Our position remains that it is essential for FECI – that it is essential FECI is able to function, and its prosecutors and analysts are empowered to continue to investigate cases to maintain the fight against corruption in Guatemala,” according to Price. 

ETHIOPIA

The State Department announced a “substantial increase” in the amount of aid it provides to Ethiopia. “We have been very clear that we are supporting, and we are standing with the people of Ethiopia… we are doing all that we can to support the people of Tigray who have suffered tremendously from this conflict. We’re doing that in a number of ways: through the provision of aid, our calls for expanded humanitarian access – but on a political and diplomatic level – to bring the parties together, the Ethiopian Government and the TPLF [Tigray People’s Liberation Front], to arrive at a negotiated ceasefire, just as we call an all of the armed actors in this conflict to halt the violence, to cease some of these atrocious attacks that, in some cases, reportedly have resulted in very grim civilian deaths. We are working urgently on this.” 

UKRAINE

Secretary Antony J. Blinken met with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba in Washington this week to discuss Russian escalations along the Ukrainian- Russian border and in the occupied territories of Ukraine over the last few months. Prior to their meeting Blinken said that the US is “…very much committed to Ukraine’s independence and sovereignty, its territorial integrity.  We’ll talk about challenges to each of those and the work that we’re doing together to stand for a strong Ukraine that can defend itself against external aggression but also pursue the vitally important process of reform to strengthen even more its democracy and its economy.”  

DARIA NOVAK served in the United States State Department during the Reagan Administration, and currently is on the Board of the American Analysis of News and Media Inc., which publishes usagovpolicy.com and the New York Analysis of Policy and Government.  Each Saturday, she presents key updates on U.S. foreign policy from the State Department.

Illustration: Pixabay

What isn’t China up to these days warrants a shorter response than one which simply lists China’s overseas political, military, and commercial exploits. With the recent conclusion of the CCP’s latest 五年计划 (Wǔnián Jìhuà), or Five-Year Plan, and the celebrations surrounding the 100^th anniversary of the founding of the CCP in July, Beijing reaffirmed its commitment to aggressive adventurism for the foreseeable future. Its policy threatens the stability of the international rules-based system and portends a period of exacerbated conflict on multiple fronts across the world.

The unanswered question on military planners’ minds this summer is not if, but what will Beijing do, where will it do it, and when it will occur. China’s military might now exceeds that of its verbose political rhetoric of the early 2000’s. President Xi Jinping effectively used this two-decade period to take advantage of a so-called “window of opportunity” of Western largess. The doors to advanced Western military and commercial technologies were unlocked and swung wide open after China received permanent Most Favored Nation (MFN) status from the Clinton Administration. China marched through them and openly copied, stole, or reverse engineered what it needed from the West. The communist giant was able to skip three-to-four generations of technical development time and cost.

China’s military, according to senior American defense experts, is on par with that of the United States in many areas and, in some, exceeds US capabilities. Senior leaders at the Pentagon now openly admit that if the US were to go to war with China today it might not win. Forty years ago, that concept was unimaginable. China could not feed its own population during the 1980’s. It was forced to import grain to avoid widespread starvation. Fifty percent of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) was grounded at any given time due to a lack of trained pilots and spare parts. Its navy lacked over-the-horizon radar relegating ships to coastal “brown” waters close to the mainland. Computer chip production facilities a few decades ago contained dust bunnies the size of baseballs and had high failure rate and the country still was manufacturing black and white TV’s. The picture has changed. In 2021, China’s presence is felt in space, on the high seas, and in the corporate board rooms of major corporations. It controls the global market in Rare Earth Elements (REE’s) needed to build everything from military guidance systems to cell phones and hospital equipment. 

China today is more politically and economically involved in the Arctic region than in the past, according to “Exploring Gaps in Arctic Governance: Identifying Sources of Conflict and Mitigating Measures,” a major RAND report released this week. The region is emerging as strategically important due to investment in the critical energy, transportation, fishing, and communications sectors. “The sheer scale of China’s Belt and Road Initiative and the country’s global ambitions more generally increasingly fuel Arctic states’ concerns over China’s longer-term ambitions in the region,” according to the RAND report.

Over the last couple of years, China has fortified man-made islands in the South China Sea and installed military weapons systems capable of sinking ships. It is continuing to build specialized runways that can handle military aircraft and dredge ports for its military ships. Chinese naval vessels not only patrol vast stretches of water reaching past the “first chain” of islands, but also those well into international blue water. China has intensified its harassment of foreign ships traveling in the South China Sea and invaded the territorial waters of countries across the region. Its PLAAF jets fly dangerous close to those of other nations flying in international air space.

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Commercially, China’s predatory lending practices in the developing world have led to foreclosures on major infrastructure projects and bankruptcies. Typically, these projects have some level of national security significance for Beijing. In Sri Lanka, for example, Chinese foreclosure of one port project will provide it the potential of basing rights for its submarines if/when China takes over the port. In 2014, China sent a submarine to Sri Lanka but didn’t obtain basing rights. If it takes over the port, it will use it to monitor the US naval base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean and patrol and monitor international shipping lanes there. 

China is weaponizing the Himalayas with massive dam projects that can control the flow of water for almost the entire Indian subcontinent. Release too much and the cities downstream are flooded. Release too little and the populations suffer from drought. China released Covid on the world – intentionally at first or not. It has not cooperated with scientists investigating the virus. Beijing is weaponizing space with lasers that can take out communications satellites and, perhaps, do other damage. Hong Kong is gone. Taiwan is threatened. China is courting dangerous partners, including Russia and Iran. The list is long and varied and covers the globe.

What the West, and Washington in particular, needs to ascertain is what injury China’s leadership is willing and capable of inflicting on the non-communist world, according its own moral code of behavior. We can no longer afford to assume falsely that China will behave by western standards of human decency and rationality or comport themselves according to the values expressed in the UN’s Universal  Declaration of Human Rights.

DARIA NOVAK served in the United States State Department during the Reagan Administration, and currently is on the Board of the American Analysis of News and Media Inc., which publishes usagovpolicy.com and the New York Analysis of Policy and Government.  Each Friday, she presents key updates on China.

Illustration: Pixabay

As great power rivalry among Russia, China, and the United States heats up it is important not to overlook Russian intra-regional competition along that country’s border areas in the Central Asian states. New trade routes, including rail, road, and air are being developed by Russia in was once part of its internal transport infrastructure. Today the smaller nation-states in the region are intensifying competition among themselves to gain benefits from Russia, China, Turkey, Iran and the other major powers now active in the area. According to Paul Goble, of the Jamestown Foundation, Russia controlled much of the region until 1991. It built the rail system to benefit Moscow’s needs. With the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan almost complete, the regional situation is exposing differences among the Central Asian crossroads states and raising the potential risk level for conflict in the area. 

Not all the Central Asian states are benefitting equally from renewed interest. The result is that each state is competing with the others for largess from Russia and the other major powers investing in regional infrastructure projects. There are new rail and shipping lines near the Caspian Sea in places such as Tashkent, Uzbekistan, and in the port of Makhachkala, the capital of Russia’s Republic of Dagestan. The names may not be familiar, but they are significant in that Iran and others are competing with Russia for influence in these littoral states. Four years ago, Goble wrote that “In Soviet times, Moscow and Tehran divided the Caspian into two unequal zones, a division that even then had important implications because of the oil and natural gas reserves discovered on the seafloor as well as due to the rising trade between the Soviet Union and Iran. With the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the number of littoral states increased from two to five: Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan thus become involved in talks about delimitation and trade on the Caspian alongside the Russian Federation and Iran.” It raises the specter of regional economic conflict morphing into a major military confrontation in the future.

For 23 years, ending in May 2020 due to the COVID pandemic, Russian transshipment of goods rose annually in all the Federation’s seaports except for the Caspian region, where the volume decreased by 12.2%.  A TASS interview with Vadim Yakovenko, head of the Russian Federal Property Management Agency, said that Makhachkala Commercial Sea Port is the only non-freezing and deep-water port of Russia in the Caspian Sea, which accepts ships up to 150 meters in length. To improve the level of Russia’s cargo transshipment there, Moscow is developing new routes in an attempt to increase its level of trade while also constraining expansion by other states. Russia and China, according to Goble, are working together to press for a region-wide approach to ensure they benefit most in the wake of recent Taliban victories in Afghanistan.

Infrastructure projects once posited as unifying are now intensifying competition among the Central Asian states and between the major powers. Russia is working hard to maintain its dominance in the region. It is building railways that connect to and support its maritime commerce. The now sovereign railways, second only in importance to maritime infrastructure, often suffered from lack of local funding for maintenance and improvements in the past. Russia is attempting to fix the funding issue. According to the World Bank, the level of transport connectivity in Central Asia makes it one of the least connected areas of the world. Russia intends to boost its regional influence by improving the transportation sector and is willing to do so at the expense of other states.

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According to the publication, Eurasian Integration, “Each of the Central Asian states has adopted transport development strategies that are linked with international projects of trans-Eurasian transport corridors, including those within the EAEU, SCO, the Chinese One Belt – One Road project and the North-South corridor… the problems of connectivity of communications, coverage of territories, the degree of coverage by the railway network, access to the largest international markets remain significant.” 

Last year the volume of freight rail traffic from China to Europe increased by 50%, which is seven times that from 2016. According to a December 2021 article by  Fyodor Koloskov in Eurasian Integration, P. Sevostyanov, a State Advisor of the Russian Federation, said “the transportation of goods by the new railway will reduce transport costs between Russia and Pakistan by 17-20%, and between the countries of Central Asia and Pakistan by 35%.” Those numbers are too good for Russia or China to step aside and allow the smaller countries in the region to develop their own transportation hubs more suited to their needs.

DARIA NOVAK served in the United States State Department during the Reagan Administration, and currently is on the Board of the American Analysis of News and Media Inc., which publishes usagovpolicy.com and the New York Analysis of Policy and Government.  Each Thursday, she presents key updates on China.

Illustration: Russian rail car (Pixabay)

Taking a wide look at what America has descended into, particularly since the last election, reveals a deeply disturbing picture.

Journalistic outlets, whether in print, online, or through television are designed to examine just one topic at a time.  That fails to provide an overall picture of how radically America has changed, a movement that began to gain steam following Barack Obama’s pledge to “Fundamentally Transform” the nation and accelerated since Biden’s inauguration.

Consider:

Democrat-run cities have experienced a massive surge in violent crime, a result of policies such as letting violent offenders out of jail early, not allowing bail for violent criminal defendants, defunding and hampering police forces, and ignoring the offenses of protestors who burn and loot.

Inflation has risen to 5.4%, the highest in 13 years.

Government giveaways are discouraging workers from returning to their jobs, threatening the existence of small businesses throughout the United States. The Labor Force Participation Rate has plummeted.

Our educational system has been taken over by those who disparage and seek to eliminate much of western culture.  One example: Virginia’s Loudoun County’s teacher training material supports “discouraging heterosexualism and parental authority over their own children.” Blatant falsehoods about U.S. History are being taught.

The U.S. military, faced with its greatest challenge since the British burned the White House in the war of 1812, has had its buying power reduced by the Biden Administration. However, military funds are being used for transgender surgery and drag shows on an Air Force base. The formally dominant U.S. Navy is now smaller and less modern than China’s. Russia’s nuclear deterrent is now larger.

The Arctic is now dominated by Russia, with vast military bases and 42 icebreaker vessels. (The U.S. has only one.)

A prominent lawyer has had his law license suspended for his statements while representing someone the current President doesn’t like.

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Individuals and organizations that don’t kowtow to Progressive Democrats are widely censored. It’s about to get worse. The Biden Department of Justice is encouraging private companies to spy on the private texts of their customers.  In addition, individuals are encouraged to spy on family members. Senate Leader Charles Schumer had previously introduced legislation specifically designed to limit the application of the First Amendment.

Prominent Democrats are reluctant to criticize the despicable acts of Communist tyrants in Cuba and Venezuela.

The White House refuses to acknowledge their destruction of the southern border and reverse their policies that caused the dilemma.

There has been no substantive response to the repeated cyberattacks on American infrastructure and commercial activity.

The abortion debate has changed substantially, from whether the procedure is legitimate in the early stages of pregnancy to a growing acceptance of infanticide, the killing of fully viable infants.

Law enforcement has become increasingly selective.  Prominent leftist figures have escaped prosecution or even, in some cases, investigation for wrongdoing.  The Durham report has all but vanished.  There are no signs of examining the influence peddling the Chinese have engaged in with the Biden family. In the nation’s largest city, New York, $850 million given to Mayor de Blasio’s wife for a program designed to assist the mentally ill has vanished. No investigation has been conducted.

Outright racism is being perpetrated in many quarters.  The Mayor of Chicago, Lori Lightfoot, refuses to be interviewed by white journalists.  A proposed federal agricultural program is specifically designed to provide funds based on skin color, in order to exclude white farmers.

Attacks on religion by government authorities have become commonplace, including attempts to exclude religious institutions from government contracts and demands by one mayor to “review” the sermons pastors plan to give. Anti-Semitism has become commonplace.  One state’s Attorney General has openly affiliated with Louis Farrakhan. Several members of Congress continuously spout anti-Jewish rhetoric.

These trends, individually and collectively, indicate a nation in deep distress, and drastically imperil the Constitutional paradigm that had made America the greatest nation on Earth.

Illustration: Pixabay

“Whose side are you on?” sounds like a schoolyard challenge. Increasingly, however, it’s a valid question Americans have been asking about the nation’s political, cultural and educational elites.

The unease is unlike the usual controversies arising from differences in opinion about specific issues. The leadership in Washington, Hollywood, and university campuses are overtly eager to repudiate much of the founding principles upon which the U.S. was originated, and to intentionally miscast the past history and current character of the country.

Much of the citizenry sees the nation in a realistic light. They know that, against all odds, its founders established a nation that provided more freedom, prosperity, and opportunity than anything that ever existed before. The citizenry also acknowledges that being human, the founders had flaws, which were endemic to the times in which they lived. Since the dawn of recorded history, the horrors of slavery, inequality in the treatment of women, and other wrongdoings were not just prevalent but universal. America moved to attack these vices, and for the most part succeeded, despite the propaganda of those who see political profit in race baiting and similar misdeeds.

Diminishing a successful constitutional form of government that has endured wars and depressions and continues to champion the rights of the individual is not easy, so Progressives have adopted a divide and conquer strategy. They pit blacks against white, women against men, young against the old. They Cast aspersions on the institutions of protection, such as the police and the military. They weaken the structure of the Supreme Court and subject it to political threats. They assault religion and ensure its absence from the public square.

Even propagating falsehoods about the past and emphasizing every prior flaw while hiding every accomplishment is not likely to succeed in an environment of economic satisfaction. The prior four years produced more jobs for minorities than any other period in recent memory, and more economic benefits for the middle class and poor. Crucially, energy independence was achieved. Therefore, the Progressive goal of conquest by division was truly threatened, and the 45^th President came under relentless attack, which eventually proved successful in preventing his re-election.

Since the onset of the current Administration, the historically successful capitalist economy has been under attack, with numerous vast proposals to institute a government-centered milieu based on deficit spending.  The reality that these proposals have clearly led to financial ruin and political repression in numerous, and just about all, examples whenever enacted anywhere throughout the globe is largely ignored by key influencers.

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The brilliance of an independent judiciary in preventing a loss of freedom and the maintenance of integrity in government does not fit in well with Progressive plans, so the concept of stacking the Supreme Court with partisan judges has become a leftist battle cry.

The demonstrable past success over the past of rights-based, limited government and capitalist economics is inconvenient, as are the facts about powerful, centralized authority’s threat to personal rights. Therefore, discussion must be censored. At one time, freedom of speech was cherished by almost all. Currently, it is suppressed online and on campus.  

Propaganda in education is not restricted to colleges. It is prevalent as early as the initial years of grammar school, where indoctrination into progressive ideology increases at the expense of basic subjects, even as American students fall behind their global peers.

For Progressives, the institution of a new political paradigm takes precedence over all else. The White House’s budget will include trillions for social welfare programs designed to buy votes, some thinly disguised as “human infrastructure,” but nothing additional for crucial items such as defense even as Russia and China prepare for military adventures on two continents.  Raising taxes takes precedence over creating jobs and increased prosperity.

Constitutionalism or arbitrary government? Whose side are they on?

Illustration: Pixabay

Two vital studies, one to update America’s National Defense Strategy and the other to review the nation’s nuclear defenses, will soon be completed.

The two analyses come at a time when the U.S. faces unprecedented threat levels from China and Russia.  These dangers are significantly different than anything faced since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and require entirely different approaches.

For about three decades, the Pentagon was significantly superior in technology and raw power than its opponents. That era has come to a dramatic end. It now faces China, which has a larger navy than the U.S., and a Russia with a superior nuclear arsenal.

The new National Defense Strategy is expected to be completed early next year. When delivered, it will provide a new set of goals and priorities for America’s defense, according to Colin H. Kahl, the undersecretary of defense for policy.  He Notes that the documents will spell out, among other things, priorities for modernizing the U.S. nuclear triad and ensure that the United States has the right capabilities matched with the national nuclear strategy. The review will also examine how the United States can take steps to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in its national security strategy while ensuring the strategic deterrent remains safe, secure and effective and that the extended deterrence commitments to its allies remain strong and credible. 

That may be a vain hope.  Vladimir Putin has emphasized increased use of small, “battlefield” nuclear weapons. China is expected to potentially quadruple its nuclear weapons within this decade.

Budgetary decisions will have to be made that recognize the dramatically heightened threats. While America’s adversaries have invested heavily in both conventional and nuclear weaponry, the Pentagon faces reduced funding, when accounting for inflation, at a time when it must replace aging strategic forces and conventional weaponry that has been depleted and overused in the Middle East and Afghanistan.

Especially important to the FY 2023 budget will be decisions Washingrton must make about modernizing and replacing the aging systems of the nuclear triad, which includes ground-launched, submarine-launched and air-launched nuclear weapons. Modernization also involves new submarines, such as the Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines; new intercontinental ballistic missiles as part of the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent program; and new bomber aircraft, such as the B-21 Raider.

“I do think we need to have a modernized triad as a hedge against an uncertain technological future, but one where we expect our adversaries to be quite competitive and building up their own capabilities,” Kahl said, adding that, in addition to triad modernization, related nuclear command and control systems must also be upgraded.

While Kahl said he can’t predict exactly how the NPR will look when it’s complete, he did say the U.S. remains committed to its nuclear deterrent and its extended deterrence commitments.

“I don’t know exactly where we’re going to land on numbers on all of this, but what I can guarantee you is that we are committed to having a safe, secure and reliable deterrent, and one that is credible — not just to our adversaries, but to our allies, over which we have extended our deterrence commitments,” he said.

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The U.S. nuclear deterrent is expected to protect the U.S. and its allies in a rapidly-changing nuclear environment, Kahl said.

“As we look at the strategic environment … I think we see a couple of things,” Kahl said. “First, obviously, I think it’s widely recognized that we’re in a period of accelerating great power competition. But it’s more than that. We’re also increasingly in a multipolar nuclear world.”

Russia, he said, continues to develop new kinds of nuclear weapons and also continues to expand its arsenal of non-strategic nuclear weapons — typically smaller, lower-yield “tactical”-style nuclear weapons designed to attack troops or facilities, rather than entire nations.

“We also see that … the role that nuclear weapons play in Russia’s doctrine is quite elevated in the sense that, I think, Russia sees much higher utility for nuclear weapons than any other state,” he said.

Nearby, China wants to grow its own nuclear arsenal both in numbers and technological capacity, he said.

“… they’re …developing new kinds of nuclear weapons…”

Kahl said anxiety among America’s traditional allies has been high.

Photo: An aging B-52 (DoD)