Month: August 2023

China flies high weather balloons over the United States, sends its stealth submarines off our coast to surveil our military preparedness, buys large swaths of US land often near strategic military installations and now is illegally growing more than an estimated $4.37 billion in marijuana in Maine.  A federal memo, obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF) is reporting that there are 270 suspected Chinese illegal operations in the state. Penobscot County Sheriff Troy Morton told the DCNF that “There are hundreds of these operations occurring throughout the state. It’s upsetting to those who live near these operations, and even those who are following Maine laws and procedures.”

The July 2023 federal memorandum was distributed throughout the US Border Patrol. It is challenging for law enforcement to halt these operations. Many of the Chinese growers either have asylum claims in the country or have resident status, making it challenging to remove them from the United States, according to an anonymous federal law enforcement source who was not authorized to speak publicly about the threat. He told DNCF that he thinks “…the Chinese are taking advantage of rural areas, like Maine, to produce marijuana to sell across state lines and funnel the profits back to China.

According to the National Drug Threat Assessment (NDTA), circa 2020, “… the funds are likely used for other criminal activity… or sent to China.” The Chinese drug smuggling route runs the length of the I-95 corridor from Miami, Florida, to New Brunswick, Maine. The corridor is linked to many states and also handles bulk cash, illegal narcotics, and illegal aliens. 

Nationwide law enforcement believes that the Chinese Maine operations are connected to approximately 749 properties nationwide and with individuals with direct connections to both Maine and Washington, according to the Grays Task Force.   The federal memorandum included a “heat map” indicating the locations of the Chinese sites and indicates that the production is spread across large areas of Maine.

Derek Maltz, former head of the DEA’s Special Operations Division told DCNF that “There’s no deterrence… Criminals are maters a taking advantage of the vulnerabilities.” The Chinese operations are also suspected of collaborating with the Mexican drug cartels.  Maltz says that “They take case from the cartels in American, and they buy these properties, and they do these investments with cash from the Mexican cartels in our own country. This is part of their laundering scheme.”

When the illegal Chinese operations work with the cartels, they are providing an important service by picking up the cash and doing the money transfers. They often use banking apps and use the cash to buy American real estate or to commit additional crimes. The federal memorandum stated that the illegal grow operations are extremely profitable as they trade in an untaxed product. 

One of the Chinese-owned properties alone can with 100 marijuana plants, in three cycles a year, generate $16.2 million in sales, according to the NDTA. Sheriff Morton admits that Maine has few resources to combat the Chinese drug trade. He points out that “Regardless of where the individuals are from, the true problem involves conflicting state and federal laws. We also have little to no oversight, allowing for [Chinese] criminal activity to occur at a high degree.” While the recent revelations about the Chinese Maine operations are significant, the main drug China produces for the US market is fentanyl.

US Representative David Trone of Maryland says that US authorities report that China remains the primary source of the precursor chemicals, which are then processed and manufactured into synthetic opioids by Mexican drug cartels to bring into the United States.  According to Trone, “99 percent of the fentanyl is coming from precursor drugs from China, and then it’s manufactured by two cartels, the Jalisco and Sinaloa Cartels, and they’re the ones that are bringing it across the border.” Most of fentanyl is mass-produced in Mexico using chemicals from China. It is then pressed into pills or mixed with other counterfeit pills made to look like Xanax, Adderall, or oxycodone and sold to American unaware buyers. 

Anders Corr, publisher of the Journal of Political Risk, says “China has played a key role in flooding America with fentanyl, and the regime is now weaponizing the drug issue against the United States.” The DEA does not currently have sufficient resources to address the expanded threat from China. Almost 64% of US deaths from drugs are the result of fentanyl drug abuse. The 2021 US death toll from fentanyl drug overdoses doubled the number in 2019. This is yet another critical arena where China is conducting war with the United States.

Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept.

In Asia there is a serious potential for conflict in the South China Sea over Taiwan. The US State Department on Wednesday expressed its “deepening concern” about the threat of worsening violence in Mali as the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission there (MINUSMA) begins its withdrawal. In Europe, Russia’s incursions in Ukraine and elsewhere are of no less concern. Western military analysts worry that the fragility of peace in Western Europe may not be sustainable if Putin’s mercenaries, fighting under the banner of the Wagner Group, create provocations in other parts of Europe. Over the last four weeks, 5,000 soldiers from Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Wagner Group have reorganized inside Belarus. There are indications that they are preparing to interfere militarily in other countries in the region. How high must the level of provocation rise to legitimate a kinetic response from Western Europe? This is one of the questions floating around leaders in Washington this week. 

Earlier this month, two Belarusian helicopters violated Polish airspace. “It seems that Belarus is becoming a permanent vector of Russian interference against North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members on the alliance’s eastern flank,” according to Jakub Bornio of the Jamestown Foundation. It is not the first time Belarus has gained attention over its activities. In 2009, the joint Belarusian-Russian Zapad exercises simulated a nuclear strike on Warsaw. This was presumably to discourage Polish authorities from housing a US missile defense shield in the country. In November 2021, Eurasian Daily Monitor reported an artificial migration crisis growing in the Polis-Belarusian border area. Piotr Muller, a Polish government spokesman at the time, called the situation “intensifying” with 3,000–4,000 migrants gathered in the direct vicinity of Poland’s eastern frontier. Since then, the weaponization of migration has been a constant element of hybrid pressure, according to Bornio. 

Although Prigozhin’s soldiers are said to be without heavy weaponry this could easily be remedied by equipment from Belarus and Russian military equipment already located in the country. Wagner forces that are deployed in southern Belarus just north of Ukrainian border require Kyiv to maintain forces in the northern part of the country to repel potential cross-border expeditions. This border area contains the extensive marshlands of the Pripyat dike. Heavy weapons would not be useful due to the topography of this area. Wagner’s men, armed with light artillery are outfitted for what is required on an offensive battlefield. 

In part, the Wagner Group is a useful tool for Putin in the event of a hybrid campaign against NATO’s eastern flank. It may also be equally useful as a Kremlin psychological operation aimed at European societies and decision makers “by creating a feeling of insecurity, which in turn intends to minimize support for anti-Russian policies, lower confidence in those in power and introduce new levels of polarization, says Bornio. On August 14, Polskie Radio reported that the Polish Internal Security Agency detained two Russian reportedly engaged in Wagner-style psychological operations on behalf of Russia’s special services. The public split between Putin and Prigozhin provides the Russian leader with the plausible deniability that enables Moscow to deny responsibility for Wagner Group activities. In what Bornio says has emerged as the counter-narrative, US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield, delivered an umbrella statement saying that “any attacks by the Wagner Group will be seen as an attack by the Russian government.” It was followed recently with a similar statement by Lithuanian President Gitana Nausėda. 

Last month Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka suggested, in a scripted manner, that members of the Wagner Group were asking for permission to “go on an excursion to Warsaw and Rzeszow” in Poland, according to the Kremlin. By the end of July over 100 Wagner mercenaries had been deployed near the Suwalki Corridor, an area immediately southwest of the Lithuanian – polish border, between Belarus and Russia’s Kalinigrad Oblast. The corridor is a chokepoint of strategic military importance since the formation of NATO.

Military analysts are particularly concerned that Putin will use the Wagner Group to conduct hybrid incursions just below the threshold requiring a response from NATO and Western powers using sabotage, live fire in the border area, and forced border crossings by masses of immigrants, some of whom may be trained for combat. It will require a good communications strategy and a firm response from Kyiv if Wagner forces move into Ukraine or Poland. The area is heating up as last week Belarus conducted new drills near the Suwalki Corridor, increasing pressure on NATO’s eastern flank. On August 12 Poland sent several thousand troops to its border area with Belarus. It is a complex and nuanced battlefield. As the spectrum of cross-border activity increases, it may require a different level of response from NATO countries to deter Moscow

Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept.

Illustration: Pixabay

The Biden Administration is dangerously reluctant to protect American national security.  It ignores the reality of Chinese, Russian, North Korean, Iranian and criminal cartel adversaries who so clearly seek to harm the U.S.A.

The President has utterly refused to address the open southern border. Indeed, it appears to favor allowing vast and unprecedented numbers of people to enter the country illegally, despite the plague of fentanyl deaths, human trafficking, and cartel violence that results.

It has submitted budgets that force the U.S. Navy to shrink at a time when it should be growing, particularly now that China has the world’s largest navy and the Russians are sending out dangerous new submarines to directly threaten American shores.

The balloon incident opened many eyes.  It appears that no action would have been taken against the intrusive Chinese aircraft, until a local media outlet raised an alarm by publishing pictures of it.  

Even some of the non-Progressive members of the President’s own party recognize Biden’s bizarre pacifist philosophy. In July, the then-Democrat dominated House of Representatives felt forced to add $37 billion to the White House’s proposed defense budget. Mike Rogers, then the ranking Republican of the House Armed Services Committee, warned that Biden’s 2023 budget would accelerate the retirement of 24 ships, shrinking the U.S. Navy to 291 ships. He noted that “The Biden administration’s 30-year ship-building plan also reduces the Navy’s ability to protect its aircraft-carrier strike groups and eliminate enemy minefields, reduces the Marine Corps’ ability to conduct forcible-entry missions, and reduces by almost 10 percent our Navy’s capacity to launch missiles. Public estimates indicate that China will eventually develop a global force of submarines capable of launching ballistic missiles, posing an obvious risk to the U.S. And China’s surface-combatant forces already greatly exceed ours. It is unsettling, to say the least, that the Biden administration is shrinking our naval force under these circumstances.”

Russia, thanks to an Obama-era deal, now fields the world’s largest nuclear arsenal. China now has more ICBMs than the U.S. and has doubled its arsenal of atomic warheads in just the last two years.  Despite that, the Biden White House reversed the 2018 decision to develop a submarine-launched nuclear cruise missile and seeks to retire the B83, a thermonuclear gravity bomb. 

Biden’s irresponsibility became evident early in his Administration in the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan.  While there was general agreement that most American forces would be withdrawn, it was considered that the powerful and nearly impregnable U.S. Air Force Base in Bagram would be maintained.  This would provide the backbone for the Afghanistan civilian government to survive and keep the Taliban from gaining power.  The President chose, however, to close it down, and with very little warning to our international allies fighting alongside us or Afghanistan citizens aiding us, completely, recklessly, and rapidly withdrew American forces.

Biden’s incompetence was also observed in his bizarre statement before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He predicted that Moscow would invade, but stated that he wouldn’t respond to a “minor incursion.”  Rather than clearly stating that the U.S. would provide the weaponry Kyiv needed to survive, the White House slow-walked assistance. In December of 2021, Congress reported frustration at the Administration’s sluggish pace.

As the potential of military threats across the globe has exponentially increased, Biden’s Department of Defense concentrates not on developing a ready deterrent, but on instituting woke policies that have demoralized America’s fighting forces and impaired recruitment. The U.S. Army will miss its recruitment goals.

The United States has never faced a threat on the current scale, with opponents possessing larger geography, population, and industrial capabilities.  Nor did those adversaries possess weapons capable of devastating the American homeland.

The President needs to reverse course immediately.

Photo: Naval ships assigned to flotillas with the navy under the PLA Eastern Theater Command steam in formation to conduct alongside and astern replenishment-at-sea during a comprehensive replenishment training exercise on February 10, 2023. (eng.chinamil.com.cn/Photo by Zhang Weile)

In our first article on Special Counsel Jack Smith’s June 2023 Indictment of former President Donald Trump, we discussed the illegal search of Mar A Lago, and the necessity for the suppression of all evidence seized as illegally obtained “fruit of the poisonous tree.”  In our second, we examined the interaction between the Espionage Act, and the Presidential Records Act, as well as the potential defense that the former President had legal possession of the allegedly classified documents recovered during that illegal search and seizure.  

Today we examine an extremely troubling aspect of this Indictment – the apparent violation of Donald Trump’s right to counsel under the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution.

As is well known, the accused in every criminal matter has a right to counsel, and one important aspect of the relationship between an attorney and their client in known as the Attorney-Client Privilege.  As described by Stephen M. Forte, Esq., the Managing Partner of Smith, Gambrell & Russell, LLP, “(t)he attorney-client privilege is the oldest privilege recognized by Anglo-American jurisprudence…(a)t its most basic, the privilege ensures ‘that one who seeks advice or aid from a lawyer should be completely free of any fear that his secrets will be uncovered.’ Thus, the underlying principle of the privilege is to provide for ‘sound legal advice [and] advocacy.’ With the security of the privilege, the client may speak frankly and openly to legal counsel, disclosing all relevant information to the attorney and creating a ‘zone of privacy.’ In other words, shielded by the privilege, the client may be more willing to communicate to counsel things that might otherwise be suppressed. In theory, such candor and honesty will assist the attorney in providing more accurate, well-reasoned professional advice, and the client can be secure in the knowledge that his statements to his lawyer will not be taken as an adverse admission or used against his interest.” (Citations omitted.) 

Yet, if we review the June 2023 Indictment of former President Trump, we find these allegations:

“On May 23, 2022, Trump met with Trump Attorney 1 and Trump Attorney 2 at the Mar A Lago Club to discuss the response to the May 11 Subpoena (issued by the Justice Department).  Trump Attorney 1 and Trump Attorney 2 told Trump that they needed to search for documents that would be responsive to the subpoena…Trump, in sum and substance, made the following statements…as memorialized by Trump Attorney 1…’Well, what if we, what happens if we just don’t respond at all or don’t play ball with them?’…’Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?’…Well look isn’t it better if there are no documents?'”

We also find these allegations as well;

“Trump Attorney 1 located 38 documents with classification markings inside the boxes, which Trump Attorney 1 removed and placed in a Redwell folder…(a)fter Trump Attorney 1 finished sealing the Redwell folder…Trump and Trump Attorney 1 then discussed what to do with the Redwell folder…Trump made a plucking motion, as memorialized by Trump Attorney 1…’well okay why don’t you take them with you to your hotel room and if there’s anything really bad in there, you know, pluck it out’…” 

If respect is paid to the attorney-client privilege, then Trump is entitled to ask his lawyers any question he wants, and not have those questions used against him.  Further, nowhere in the Indictment is “Trump Attorney 1’s” response reported.  More likely than not, “Trump Attorney 1” would have explained to the former President why documents would need to be produced in response to the Justice Department’s subpoena.  As Journalist Michael Tracey states, “‘What happens if we just don’t respond’ is exactly the type of question you’d expect a client to ask his lawyer in the context of privileged, confidential communications. But here the DOJ decided to ‘seize’ those communications and present them as evidence of criminal wrongdoing.” 

But there is a more fundamental question that requires an answer – Where did Special Counsel jack Smith get this information from in the first place?  Obviously from “Trump Attorney 1,” that is, Evan Corcoran, who was forced by the DC Circuit Court of Appeals “to testify and hand over records to special counsel Jack Smith’s team investigating Trump’s handling of classified records after leaving the White House.”

The higher court had been asked to overturn the order of D.C. District Judge Beryl Howell, who had “ruled that prosecutors in special counsel Jack Smith’s office had made a ‘prima facie showing that the former president had committed criminal violations,'” according to sources who described her…order, and that attorney-client privileges invoked by two of his lawyers, Corcoran and Jennifer Little, could therefore be pierced.” 

But didn’t we just review the nature of the Attorney-Client Privilege?  What happened to the “zone of privacy” that allows a client to “be secure in the knowledge that his statements to his lawyer will not be taken as an adverse admission or used against his interest?”

As described by the Blog, Above the Law, “Judge Beryl Howell, in her last act as chief judge of the District Court in DC, found that the crime-fraud exception to attorney-client privilege applied to certain aspects of Corcoran’s relationship with Trump, and she ordered him to testify to the grand jury investigating the wrongful retention of government documents at Mar-a-Lago. She also ordered him to hand over certain communications, including transcripts of recordings, immediately.” 

And just what is the “crime-fraud exception?”

“The attorney-client privilege does not cover statements made by a client to their lawyer if the statements are meant to further or conceal a crime. For this exception to apply, the client must have been in the process of committing a crime or planning to commit a crime…(s)ome of the crimes that often arise in this context include crimes that are meant to obstruct an investigation or ongoing prosecution…(a)n important distinction separates communications regarding a past crime from communications regarding an ongoing or future crime. The crime-fraud exception usually applies only to communications regarding ongoing or future crimes.” 

This leads to the next question – what “ongoing or future crime” was being committed “to obstruct an investigation or ongoing prosecution?”

According to the June 2023 Indictment, the “obstruction” involved a certification made by Trump’s Attorney’s that a search of Trump’s Records was conducted, and all that was found were the 38 pages turned over to the Justice Department, when in fact, Trump allegedly hid more documents in other Storage Boxes that were not searched by his lawyers.

The Indictment goes through a convoluted series of events that make it appear that Trump withheld some Storage Boxes from his attorneys, with the implication that this was done in an effort to lead Trump’s counsel to make a false certification that all records responsive to the subpoena had been turned over to the Justice Department.

The indictment concludes by stating that the search of Mar A Lago revealed an additional 102 documents with varying degrees of classification.  However, the Indictment does NOT state that these documents were recovered from any boxes which were allegedly kept from Trump’s attorneys, nor is there a single word of explanation as to why the former President would want to turn over some classified documents to the Justice Department, but not others.

“It’s rare that a court breaks attorney-client privilege, even rarer that the reason is that the lawyer was wittingly or unwittingly contributing to a crime or fraud,” according to The Bulwark.  “(W)hen Judge Beryl Howell told attorney Evan Corcoran that he had to provide evidence about Trump’s obstruction of justice in refusing to return classified national security documents stored at Mar-a-Lago…public reports suggest that Trump deliberately misled his lawyer. He is said to have lied to Corcoran about the completeness of his search for classified documents at Mar-a-Lago—a lie that Corcoran then dutifully passed along to the government as the truth.” 

Yet, “(t)he invocation of the crime-fraud exception is remarkable because of the nature of its origins and the deep reluctance with which it is approached by the legal profession. The complexity of the doctrine of crime-fraud…has obscured how genuinely exceptional these events are…we might think that an attorney would be an especially good source of information about a client. But even so, we see a higher value in protecting attorney-client communications against examination.” 

In other words, the attorney-client privilege is sacrosanct, and the crime-fraud exception is a very rare exception to be employed.  If so, one would think it would only be invoked when a client is planning  an extraordinarily serious crime; trying to hide his plan to commit a murder for instance, or steal an extremely large amount of money by defrauding a bank.

One would not expect such a rare exception to be applied over whether or not an attorney properly certified that some documents were turned over to the Justice Department or not, even if those documents are allegedly classified.  This is particularly true when it is unclear whether the former President was hiding documents, and for what purpose – or whether Trump had legal possession of those documents.

As the situation is described by Mark Levin, “Attorney-client privilege is crucial. The crime-fraud exception is a rare exception. It’s not supposed to be regularized or routine, or we cease to have the ability to have effective representation of counsel…Mass murderers, terrorists, what have you – attorney-client privilege is rarely pierced when it applies to them, and yet it’s been pierced in a serial nature when it applies to Donald Trump…(t)his is just more evidence of the unraveling of our liberties…(o)ur civil liberties are being violated…(i)f they can do this to Donald Trump or if they can drag lawyers in front of grand juries…take their testimony…Well, what’s left?”  

Unfortunately, this is not the first time Special Counsel Jack Smith has shown a lack of respect for the attorney-client privilege.  In 2013, former Arizona Congressman Rick Renzi, a Republican, was convicted of extortion and bribery.  “Renzi, who was granted a presidential pardon by Trump, detailed illegal wiretaps, prosecutorial misconduct, and a blatant disregard for the sanctity of attorney-client privilege,” by a lawyer working for the man who prosecuted him – Jack Smith.

“Renzi recounted that Smith’s team had illegally wiretapped his attorney 41 times. The team not only lied about their activities, but they also tried to utilize the acquired evidence against him. A 2019 legal filing on Renzi’s behalf described ‘widespread misconduct’ and deliberate recording of ‘privileged phone calls.’ Though the actions were carried out by a member of Smith’s prosecutorial team, Smith was responsible for overseeing his team and holding them accountable.” 

As described in PJ Media, “(j)ust as in Renzi’s case, the DOJ is allegedly trying to use conversations protected by attorney-client privilege against Donald Trump. Renzi explained that Trump’s…attorney-client privilege was infringed on. Smith (claims) that the ‘former president was trying to commit a crime by asking’ a certain question, even though it was ‘normal and proper’ attorney-client privileged communication, Renzi stated…Renzi is not the only one to protest against the violation of attorney-client privilege in Trump’s case. ‘Timothy Parlatore, who until recently worked as a criminal defense attorney for former President Donald Trump,’ said Jack Smith’s team crossed a ‘red line’ while Parlatore was testifying before a grand jury…(t)he lawyer’s complaint? That questions he was asked infringed on attorney-client privilege.”

“Parlatore stated that, in his opinion, it was ‘clear that the government was not acting appropriately and made several improper attempts to pierce privilege and, in my opinion, made several significant misstatements to the [grand] jury, which I believe constitutes prosecutorial misconduct.’ Not prosecutorial misconduct from the unimpeachable Jack Smith and team! Oh, wait — that’s exactly what they were accused of in Renzi’s case…” 

These are extremely serious allegations of misconduct against Jack Smith and his prosecution team, but the evidence of prior violations of a criminal defendant’s right to counsel exist.  Could Smith be repeating this illegal pattern in his prosecution of former President Trump?

Judge John Wilson (ret.) served on the bench in NYC

On June 14, the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability held hearing entitled  “Death by a Thousand Regulations: The Biden Administration’s Campaign to Bury America in Red Tape.” The meeting shined a light on Biden’s regulatory blitz that, according to Chairman Comer, began on the President’s first day in office. Comer highlighted how sweeping executive orders and unchecked regulations issued by the Biden Administration have resulted in Americans paying higher prices, businesses struggling to make ends meet, and fewer economic opportunities in the marketplace.

In addition, he noted that the Biden Administration targeted positive and necessary regulatory reforms implemented by the previous Administration. Comer stressed that this dramatic expansion of Executive Branch power has come at the expense of the American people, and described how “From sweeping Executive Orders to massive, costly agency regulations, the Biden Administration has spared no expense when it comes to transforming America—much of which has been done without a clear delegation from Congress. In just his first few days in office, President Biden issued far-reaching Executive Orders that radically altered how federal agencies approached climate issues. The Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, and several other agencies launched a government-wide effort to push out regulations to fundamentally change American life. It is estimated that just three of the Biden Administration’s rules will cause $1.5 trillion to be spent over the next decade.”

In addition to the White House, there are over 400 federal departments, agencies, and sub-agencies that also abuse power by issuing regulations that ignore the Constitutional role of Congress.

A revealing new study by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity reports that “As of the end of 2022, the Biden administration imposed new regulatory costs on American households and businesses at a pace surpassing that of the Obama administration during a comparable period. The added costs from these Biden-era final rules, which include both their current and expected future costs, amount to almost $10,000 per household. If regulatory costs continue to rise at the same rate as they did during the Obama administration, the total costs of Biden’s rulemaking over an eight-year period would almost reach $60,000 per household.”

This contrasts sharply with the Trump Administration, which reduced regulatory costs almost as fast as President Obama and Biden were adding them. Without even counting Operation Warp Speed, the Trump administration’s agencies through four years reduced regulatory costs by almost $11,000 per household in present value.

What is the impact on the economy from excess regulation? According to the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) “The cost of government extends even beyond what Washington collects in taxes and the far greater amount it spends. Federal environmental, safety and health, and economic regulations and interventions affect the economy by hundreds of billions—even trillions—of dollars annually. Regulatory burdens can operate as a hidden tax. Unlike on-budget spending, regulatory costs are largely obscured from public view. They are the least disciplined aspects of government activity, which can make regulation overly appealing to lawmakers. Budgetary pressures can incentivize lawmakers to impose off-budget regulations on the private sector rather than add to unpopular deficit spending. …Just as firms generally pass the costs of some taxes along to consumers, some regulatory compliance costs and mandates borne by businesses will percolate throughout the economy, finding their way into consumer prices and workers’ wages.”

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) notes that the father of the U.S. Constitution, James Madison, “would be horrified to discover that the administrative state has added both rulemaking (legislative) and interpretative (judicial) powers to its enforcement (executive) power.”

Illustration: Pixabay

Fifteen years ago, on August 8th, 2008, Russia invaded the sovereign nation of Georgia. Moscow still occupies the country’s Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions, which run along Georgia’s northwest Black Sea coastline. Together the areas totaled about 20% of the sovereign nation’s territory. Russia’s so-called “borderization” policy has caused massive hardships there and halted Georgian moves toward integration with the West, but it doesn’t stop at the border. The Black Sea itself today is a point of contention among major powers. 

During the last 24 months no Western nation has participated in a Black Sea naval exercise. “No warship from a non-riparian country has entered the Black Sea since December 2021,” according to Vladimir Socor of the Jamestown Foundation.  He says that it is a rare situation in modern history where Western naval powers simply have been “shut out… until further notice.” 

At the same time Putin’s Black Sea Fleet sails the waters with impunity. From late 2021 to July 2022, Moscow imposed a total blockade of the Black Sea, effectively turning Ukraine into a landlocked state. The waters were then conditionally opened for 11 months until last month when Putin deployed two corvettes from the Russian fleet astride the Black Sea’s shipping lanes in both the Bulgarian and Turkish Exclusive Economic Zones, according to NATO and Radio Free Europe. Simultaneously, Russian sea- and land-based missile and drones attacked Ukrainian ports and halted civilian shipping in the Black Sea.

Although Western powers are expected to return at some point, the date remains an open-ended question. Socor says that the “causative factors behind their decision are: the dangerous environment created by Russian military actions in the Black Sea in the run-up and during the full-scale war against Ukraine; the United States’ and its allies’ policy of avoiding kinetic contact with Russian forces at almost any cost; and Turkey’s decision, when the war broke out, to bar access through the Bosporus Strait into the Black Sea for warships of non-riparian countries.”

The lack of Western navies contrasts sharply with the post-Soviet era, especially the period after Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine, when a number of great power navies patrolled the Black Sea. In the past US and allied navies held annual exercises, multiple patrols, and regular port visits within the confines of the Montreux Convention limiting tonnage and duration in the area. The United States Navy was the dominant force in the region with assistance from NATO allies and the NATO organization. 

The Center for Maritime Strategy points out that this unequal burden-sharing explains the fluctuations in the Western navies’ presence from year to year until 2021. The German researcher Carsten Schmiedl, notes that warships of Western allies were present in the Black Sea for 210 days in 2014, 58 days in 2016 and 182 days in 2021. NATO records indicate that the last significant exercise with the participation of non-riparian Western navies, Sea Breeze 2021, was held in July of that year. Socor says it was the “21^st annual iteration of that multinational exercise, co-hosted by Ukraine and the United States and involving naval, land and air components in Ukrainian and international waters.”

This year both NATO and the Western allied countries have decided not to re-enter the Black Sea. Instead of defying Russian warnings and pushing back against Putin’s mining of Ukrainian harbors, blockage of grain exports, and missile strikes on critical infrastructure, the US and other Western nations  decided not to conduct freedom of navigation operations that reinforce international maritime law. Nor have those states conducted a single humanitarian maritime operation to unblock Ukrainian agricultural exports by escorting cargo ships, or instituted a demining operation employing one of the Standing NATO Mine Countermeasures Groups.

“Russia has extended its discretionary domain in the Black Sea stage by stage, squeezing out the other riparian countries from international waters and their respective exclusive economic zones—and ultimately the Western navies from the sea during this war,” says Socor. With the 1994 seizure of Abkhazia in Georgia, Russia effectively controlled the northern portion of the Black Sea. In 2014, the annexation of Crimea enabled Moscow to control vast swaths of Ukraine’s territorial waters and parts of its exclusive economic zone and establish sole control over the Sea of Azov and Kerch Strait. 

This steady seizing of important territories served as a prerequisite to the latest current blockade of Ukraine and areas of the Bulgarian and Turkish exclusive economic zones. It will be up to the United States and its Western allies and NATO to unite in the future and push back against Russian aggression in the Black Sea. Without a force countering Russian moves in the Black Sea, countries that depend on it for transportation of grain and other products will continue to suffer at the whim of the Russian government.

Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept.

Photo: Russian submarine Alrosa (Russian Navy Website)

Russia’s opaque Wagner Group continues to serve as Putin’s brutal paramilitary force supporting his war in Ukraine. Not unlike earlier times in Russian history, internal power conflicts challenged the arrangement and today, it remains in flux. Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the group, remains involved in Russia military activities as are other private organizations supporting Putin. The Russian state’s private armies have implications for relevant actors in other unstable, less developed states, too. Analysts in Washington this week are assessing if the Putin-Wagner clash will sway how other private armies around the world serve the Russian state apparatchiks. Molly Dunigan and Anthony Atler of the RAND Corporation suggest that the West use a RAND-developed military will-to-fight model to highlight opportunities to counter adversary-employed private military actors.

Russia’s private armies are involved in hot spots around the globe, including in Syria, Ukraine, several African countries. They are connected to, but not an official part of, the Russian state military apparatus. These armies provide a plausible cover while allowing Russia to expand its footprint outside of its immediate geopolitical sphere of influence and simultaneously push back on Western influence. Groups, like Prigozhin’s, are directly involved often in major combat operations and conflicts short of outright war. RAND’s model suggests that the United States and its allies “may be able to counter these actors and diminish their will to fight through cognitive maneuver, a concept that emphasizes changing minds and behaviors as a path to victory.” At a time when the American public does not want to see the country’s troops involved in kinetic warfare in Europe, this may be a method to make bloodless progress toward quelling the small-state instability brought about by Russia.

RAND found that using multimethod qualitative analyses, they could identify potential vulnerabilities at the individual, team, organizational, state, and societal levels that could be targeted to diminish the motivation to fight among individual contractor personnel, the relationships between Russian private military companies, and the Russian government and armed forces, and public opinion on the use of contractors and their treatment. 

Key among RAND’s findings: 

First, the opaque nature of the Russian private military industry is making is challenging for Western intelligence agencies to identify the actors. They have bene operating globally for decades but little is understood about who they are and the personnel they employ in the field. Technically, private armies remain illegal in Russia and operate “under the radar.”

Second, RAND says that there are opportunities, at multiple levels, to challenge the private actor armies’ will to fight cognitively without risking US soldiers lives in an actual theater of operation.  Dunigan and Atler point out that at an individual level, private military personnel tend to be motivated by economic factors rather than a sense of patriotism or loyalty to the Russian state. Moving to a team level, they suggest that the West could exacerbate the negative views the state military and private forces hold about each other. At the organization level, there are opportunities to exploit negative feelings. There is a pervasive sense that leadership exerts influence though coercion. In addition, there are disparities in pay and treatment of Russian paramilitary forces could dissuade recruits. RAND examined the state level and found that in Russia, the industry’s illegal status indicates a lack of state support, which could discourage recruitment and inhibit retention of private military personnel. Societally, the Russian people have little knowledge of how their private army personnel are employed or inhumanely treated. 

Finally, the RAND report points out that Russian private military actors are reminiscent of auxiliary forces and that they serve to expand Russia’s military footprint while their illegal status allows Russia to maintain plausible deniability of involvement in military operations.

Donigan and Atler suggest four ways the United States and the West could address the challenge of Russia’s private military forces throughout the world to stabilize increasingly vulnerable regions of the world. First, exploit vulnerabilities in recruitment and retention of contractor personnel and in their loyalty and commitment to Russian private military companies and the Russian state. They add that broadcast warnings to potential recruits about the coercive nature of contracts, disparities in pay and living conditions between contractor ranks, as well as the mental and physical health risks of private military contractor employment and difficulty accessing treatment may dissuade some from joining. Third, they suggest the United States identify and exploit opportunities to sow disorder or exacerbate tensions between Russian private military actors and Russian military forces. Finally, they conclude, it is important to create societal backlash against Russia’s use of private military personnel by publicly disseminating information about their veteran status and poor treatment, as well as data on casualties. Taken together, the RAND study offers a comprehensive method for how the United States can stand up to Russian forces in remote areas where direct kinetic confrontation is not a viable option.

Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept.

Photo: Pixabay

Where in the world is China going to show up next? It appears the answer is right on the United States’ doorstep. Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) form Beijing’s new strategy for maco-regional development of economic and business interests and trade relations. China first showed up in the region  in the 16^th century. While its footprint in the area remains small today in comparison to the influence exerted by the United States, defense and security aspects present Washington with a fast-evolving geopolitical challenge in an area of vital interest to the US. Beijing is delivering sophisticated weapons and arms to the region. In the near future, some Western military analysts speculate it may require Chinese instructors to work in the LAC for paramilitary purposes, despite Beijing’s claim it bilateral relations are purely economic.

Conventional defense and security cooperation, led by China’s private security companies (PSCs), already are active in some LAC countries. Although their involvement to date is limited to work with local security providers, there is speculation in Washington that this could lead to government-to-government requests from China to permit the official deployment of its PSCs into the area in “a larger scope under the pretext of spiking criminality and the activities of the Chinese mafia in some LAC countries”, says Sergey Sukhankin of the Jamestown Institute. He suggests that the Biden Administration should expect China’s presence to grow, not only due to the critical natural resources in the region and strong agricultural opportunities, but also due to the lower risk posed by the LAC countries since they have strong institutions, an existing middle class, and higher standard of living than in riskier areas in sub-Saharan Africa. China’s policy currently is driven in large part by investment and business opportunities in the LAC, but it also closely focuses on less savory activities of concern, including illegal immigration, drug trafficking, corruption networks, money laundering and support for populist-authoritarian governments.

This not only increases diplomatic tensions in the region for Washington, but also represents a critical threat for US national security. Given the State Department’s lack of primacy for regional concerns since the Reagan Administration, Biden now finds Washington facing a blind spot, with some military experts saying it makes “it harder to spot threats as they emerge.” As LAC-China bilateral security cooperation expands, Washington is left playing defense against China’s ongoing contributions to the region’s economic development and business interests. China’s escalating reengagement in the LAC expanded under Deng Xiaoping’s economic reform period and the country’s opening to the West. Sukhankin says that Chinese President Jiang Zemin’s 13-day tour of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Uruguay and Venezuela serves as a pivotal point in modern regional bilateral relations. Since 2017, Beijing’s extension of the Maritime Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) serves as the logical extension of earlier efforts to become a key player in the LAC. China today is moving into the vacuum created by the US retreat from regional involvement three decades ago.

A recent Jamestown Foundation report points to four core interests China has in the LAC region. The first is to gain access to metals and rare earths, energy, and food to support the growth of its domestic economy and middle class. Sukhankin says China also needs to “expand export markets for its excess capacity in both heavy and retail manufactured goods.” Second, the report argues that its presence is required to confront Taiwan over official diplomatic ties and gain support from the region. Third, China needs to compete with the US to “reciprocate, at least symbolically, Washington’s longstanding security presence in China’s geographic orbit” and “rising to the top of the international food chain.” Finally, Beijing intends to spread undemocratic practices by rendering support to leftist political regimes that are thwarting democracy and economic progress to both challenge the US and achieve China’s regional geopolitical ambitions.

China attempts to deflect from accusations of security concerns, claiming their only interest in the LAC is economic. However, in 2014 Chinese President Xi Jinping traveled to Brazil where he openly called for China to play a role in dealing with transnational problems in the region, according to Ted Piccone of Brookings Institution. The following year, Beijing admitted that it “has the intention to compete with the US for a greater sphere of influence in the region,” says Megha Rajagopalan of Reuters.  

Geopolitically Washington needs to examine three main areas of concern. First, according to Sukhankin, is that Beijing’s broader policy concerns are hinged on its aspiration to assume a leading role in the developing world, becoming its voice and speaking on behalf of it. Second, is its US rivalry and expanding influence in America’s “backyard,” which comes as a response to the US “pivot to Asia” strategy. Finally, as early as a 2008 working paper, Beijing clearly sought non-recognition of Taiwan by the LAC countries as a principal driver of its south-south foreign policy and justification for expanding economic relations in the area. China is playing the long game while Washington appears to be taking a time out on the sidelines. That makes the situation in the region more dangerous as its gives China a free hand in the area.

Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept.

Illustration: Pixabay

The evidence of a radical ideological assault on America’s education is overwhelming.  This is not just a verbal attack.  It involves oppressive government action and actual physical assaults on parents.

The latest example comes from Glendale, California. The local educational establishment sought to impose an LBGTQ+ curriculum and related “Pride” festivals. According to a Daily Signals report One assistant principal even told staff to teach children that every person is, by default, “queer” and “socialist.” Parents initially reacted by pulling up to 60% of students out of class. A further concern, notes the publication, was Glendale’s transgender policies, such as allowing students of the opposite sex to use the same bathrooms and locker rooms, putting their children at risk.”

Outside of the local school board meeting, parents held a protest. They were confronted, according to the local police department, by Antifa of Southern California protestors, which labelled the concerned parents as a “hate group.”

Antifa’s violence has largely been ignored by Justice Department.  When President Trump sought to have the organization labelled a terrorist organization for their consistent violence, FBI Director Chris Wray stated that the group was an “ideology, not an organization.”  This has been done despite Antifa’s abundant use of violence in arson, riots, and attacks on parents, journalists and other innocents.

In contrast, parents protesting radical education policies have been targeted and labelled as “domestic terrorists.” In 2022, House Judiciary Republicans led by U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) released a statement  indicating they had sent a letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland regarding his Oct. 2021 memorandum directing the targeting of parents by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). “This is about intimidation. This is about chilling free speech,” Jordan noted.

Examples of the radical ideological impact on education are significant. A National Review study reported that “high-school students near you may get to spend up to seven weeks of class time asking “How does white rage fuel the racial wealth gap… it’s all too easy for activists to slip this radical content into their lesson plans without parents’ knowledge.”

In January, Michael Brown wrote “In the academy, liberals now outnumber conservatives by roughly 5 to 1. Among the general public, on the other hand, conservatives are considerably more prevalent than liberals and have been for some time.” That’s why Jon A. Shields penned an article for National Affairs in 2018 titled, “The Disappearing Conservative Professor.” Shockingly, he wrote, ‘According to a recent [2018] study on faculty party affiliation by the National Association of Scholars, the ratio of Democrats to Republicans at Williams College is 132:1; at Swarthmore it is 120:1; and at Bryn Mawr it is 72:0. At many of America’s best research universities, the ratios are only moderately better.'”

The New York Post reported that a speaker at the City University of New York Law Law School May 12 commencement ceremony was cheered on by students and faculty as she attacked Jews…proudly flung around antisemitic tropes, accused Israel of carrying out “lynch mobs,” pushed the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement and labeled the NYPD “fascist.”

A Manhattan Institute  study revealed that “Something peculiar is spreading throughout America’s schools. A public school system just outside the nation’s capital spent $20,000 to be lectured about making their schools less racist. At a tony New York City prep school, a teacher was publicly denounced by the administration for questioning the idea that students should identify themselves in terms of their racial identity. Educators in California are locked in pitched combat over a statewide model curriculum overflowing with terms like “hxrstories” and “cisheteropatriarchy.”

Tax dollars which should go to teaching reading, writing, math and other key subjects are being embezzled by leftist educational bureaucrats for the purpose of radicalizing students.

Illustration: Pixabay