Foreign Policy Update – USA Gov Policy

CHINA

A major development in US-China relations this week as the State Department orders the closing of the Chinese Consulate in Houston. It appears a lot more than diplomacy was going on in Texas. In an interview this week Secretary of State Pompeo said that everyone knows the rules for diplomats. “You’re only permitted to be there in a diplomatic status with the consent of the host nation… it’s not okay to use your diplomats to engage in industrial espionage, it’s not okay to steal intellectual property, it’s not okay to engage in those kind of behaviors.” The Chinese have many more diplomats in the US than there are American diplomats in China.

On Thursday, Pompeo gave a major speech at the Nixon Library in California defining the US-China relationship in terms of the new policy objectives of the Trump Administration. Pompeo said the closing of the Houston consulate is protect the American people. In 2015 President Trump began to talk about the China threat and the need to ensure that jobs which depend on American intellectual property aren’t lost to theft from Chinese diplomats. In retaliation the Chinese announced the closing of the American Consulate in Chengdu, China. The Secretary said that Washington had been ignoring China Communist Party activity inside the US for over 40 years and that it is time to secure the nation. According to Pompeo, “General Secretary Xi has clearly taken actions that are aggressive and broken promises that are central to how great power nations behave….” Pompeo added that the US wants good things for the Chinese.

GREENLAND

In Denmark to meet with the three foreign ministers – the foreign minister of Denmark, the foreign minister of Greenland, and the Faroe Islands, Pompeo pointed out that the US has an important relationship with the Kingdom of Denmark, and the “three of us together are working on making sure that we get national security right for everyone.” The US operates Thule Air Force Base in Greenland. Pompeo said the US wants “to make sure that the Arctic is peaceful and that activity in that region is handled in the appropriate way.”

The Secretary is concerned about aggressive Chinese activity in the Arctic. He added: “ I think we’ve all been a little bit naive to watch not only the Russians but the Chinese interests there competing to become more and more aggressive. We have a responsibility for our people to make sure that we respond in a way that is appropriate, to do everything we can to make sure that the environment there is taken care of, to make sure that this doesn’t become another place for battle.”

NATO

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Questioned this week about NATO while in Europe, Secretary Pompeo commented that the US wants to ensure that the European nations pay their share of the cost. He pointed out that the United States is an “enormous partner in the transatlantic alliance.” And that the US remains the largest contributor to NATO. The US continues to provide humanitarian assistance to countries all across the world, many of which are European, he added.

SYRIA

On July 20 the Assad regime held so-called Parliamentary Elections in Syria. According to a statement released this week by the US State Department, “Bashar Al Assad is seeking to present this dubious election as a success against alleged Western plotting, but in reality it is simply another in a long line of Assad’s stage-managed, unfree votes in which the Syrian people have no real choice.”

Syria has not held free and fair elections since Assad’s Ba’ath party came to power. “We have seen credible reports of polling staff handing out ballots already filled in with Ba’ath party candidates. Reports of citizens being pressured to vote were common, and voter privacy was not guaranteed. In addition, Syrians residing outside the country – comprising nearly one quarter of Syria’s pre-revolution population – were not permitted to vote. This disenfranchised population includes the more than 5 million refugees driven out of the country by the regime’s relentless war against its own citizens,” according to the State Department.

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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