Foreign Policy Update – USA Gov Policy

IRAN

After the Iranian navy threatened US ships in the region, President Trump informed Tehran that the US will not stand by idly while US sailors and ships are harassed by Iran. In a Thursday radio interview Secretary of State Michael Pompeo said that what Iran did was “unacceptable.” He added that “in contrast, when they took 10 of our sailors and made them kneel down, when the Iranians did that back in the previous administration, that secretary of state apologized. President Trump took a very different approach. They brought some of their boats up too close to ours. He made clear we were going to allow our sailors to defend themselves… to date, at least, the Islamic Republic of Iran hasn’t chosen to challenge President Trump.”

In a separate interview on Thursday, Pompeo said that Washington is having to fight against the UN’s attempts to lift a ban on Iran’s purchase of advanced military technology. He added that the good news is that the “UN Security Council resolution gives us the ability to make sure that that doesn’t happen, and we are working with our Chinese, our Russian, our British, our French, our partners on the Security Council to make sure – and even more broadly throughout the UN to make sure that they’re all on board in preventing this from happening coming October 18th of this year.”

CHINA

In a recent interview, Pompeo said it is especially dangerous during the current pandemic for China to manipulate the information space with fake news. He pointed out that while the United States knows the virus came from Wuhan, China, it is uncertain precisely how that happened. Pompeo said this is why there needs to be a thorough investigation.

He added that when China and the Chinese Communist Party use “disinformation to suggest somehow that this was a European thing or the Americans started it, that’s dangerous. Not only dangerous because it fails to inform, but dangerous because we need to know the answers to these questions so that we can save lives and get the economy started back up and, frankly, to make sure that something like this can never happen again.”

By Friday afternoon the Chinese still had not provided the United States with an actual sample of the virus. Pompeo said this is not the way partners work. Pompeo said he will be providing the President with a concrete sets of options so that the US can hold China accountable.

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HONG KONG

As the Covid-19 virus spread to pandemic proportions few noticed the absence of the long-term protests in Hong Kong. The streets cleared due to the virus, helped Beijing further tighten its grip on the region. Pompeo said Washington’s ask of Beijing is the same as it has been – “show us what you’re doing.” In recent days Beijing has intensified its crackdown on Hong Kong while the world is distracted with the impact of the Covid-19 virus.

WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION

This is not the first time that that the World Health Organization (WHO) has failed to protect the world. The institution also failed during the SARS epidemic, according to Pompeo. He said: “The same kind of thing happened, where the WHO was unable to do its primary function – stopping a pandemic from spreading across the world. And this time they were unable to; you can see it. They said don’t close your borders. President Trump made the decision to do that and keep American people safe.”

WHO was too slow in declaring that the Covid-19 virus was spreading quickly and extremely virulent, and it was something that could transmit from human to human. Those are the kind of things that the WHO “has failed” in, Pompeo said. He pointed out that it’s “…nothing against any individual that may work at the WHO. It’s about an institution that has fundamentally failed to do its primary task, keeping people all across the world – and in our case, the thing that matters most: keeping Americans safe.”

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

Quick Analysis

Putin’s Saber Rattling

Earlier this week, President Biden reversed his 2022 decision, authorizing the provision of antipersonnel land mines to the Ukrainian government. It follows an earlier Administration authorization to allow the use of an advanced American missile system capable of striking as deep as 100 miles inside Russian territory. The US election season may be ending, but both Russia and the West show no indication of stepping down the conflict. Russian propaganda continues to swell as the Kremlin increases its threats to use nuclear weapons against the West. Last week Andrey Sushentsov, program director of the pro-Kremlin think tank Valdai Discussion Club (VDC), published an article on growing nuclear tensions in the region. Official Russian language in the last few years has been threatening. Since the US election, rhetoric like that in the Sushentsov article, has approached the level of nuclear blackmail. The VDC article’s main theme centers on Russia’s intent to directly confront the West militarily if the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) becomes involved in Russia’s conflict with Ukraine. “On the one hand, these threats are intended to frighten the West, but on the other, Russian propagandists themselves are starting to believe in the inevitability of escalation,” according to Ksenia Kirillova of the Jamestown Foundation. On November 11, Sushentsov wrote that “The conflict will reach a completely new level, with unpredictable consequences for Europe and the entire world.” Kirillova points out that Putin’s distorted image of the world is divorced from reality and is causing the Kremlin to issue demands that are impossible to fulfill. Financial and other Russian resources needed to support Putin’s war are growing scarcer at the same time. This week the Kremlin announced a reduction of payments to its soldiers. Recently North Korea acknowledged it was sending soldiers to fight in Ukraine as Putin is running out of bodies to use as cannon fire. The war is not going well for Russia. One question floating around the Washington intelligence community is whether Putin will act out of desperation before President-elect Trump assumes office. In recent months the Russian propaganda machine is spewing out materials from fairly reputable analytical platforms inside the country. Kirillova says that “Kremlin ‘experts’ do not conceal that such threats are only intended to break the West psychologically, as they themselves are not prepared for full-scale nuclear war.” Despite Russia’s lack of preparation for an all-out war with the West, the expanding nuclear rhetoric carries with it an increase in the threat of a full-scale war in multiple theaters of operation. In June 2023 a founder of the Russian Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, Sergey Karaganov, called for “delivering a pre-emptive strike of retaliation” on Poland to force the West to surrender. In the previous month, Dmitry Suslov, a direct of research programs at the policy center proposed organizing “a demonstration nuclear explosion” aimed at intimidating the West. In September, President Putin announced a reappraisal of Russian nuclear doctrine after speaking earlier in the year at the plenary session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum and jokingly calling Suslov a “scary person.” Pavel Baev, writing in the European Daily Monitor, says “Putin intends his announcement to mark an escalation of nuclear brinkmanship and influence the proceedings of future Ukrainian peace efforts.” Putin is expanding the list of environmental conditions that are acceptable for using a nuclear weapon and incorporating it into Russian military doctrine. Baev adds that “The ups and downs of Russian brinkmanship are disconnected from the kinetic battles of the war, correlating instead with Ukrainian peace offensives, such as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s first peace summit in Bürgenstock, Switzerland.” Despite the increase in vitriolic language, in a You Tube video published a week before the US presidential election, Karaganov openly assured the West the primary goal of the escalation is to break the American spirit and that of the West, not outright nuclear war. By Election Day in the US, with political prognosticators predicting a win for former president Trump, Karaganov changed his tune and called for an increased role in nuclear deterrence. Kirillova points out that Western concessions to Russia are unlikely to reduce the risk of nuclear escalation. The distorted reality inside the Kremlin continues to push that President-elect Trump is an adherent of “world government,” that Ukraine will create a nuclear weapon, and Russia must prepare for a nuclear conflagration to achieve its ambitions for a new world order. President-elect Trump has indicated he will not agree to concessions that destabilize Europe, the Middle East or other regions. Going forward a strong US foreign policy may be the most stabilizing course the West can count on to restrain Putin and his intent to rebuild the Russian empire. Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept. Illustration: Pixabay

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