Foreign Policy Update – USA Gov Policy

ISRAEL

Secretary of State Michael Pompeo recently returned from a visit to the Middle East in which he met with top Israeli political leaders, including the Mossad. In a Tuesday interview he stated that the US still had a lot of work to do in the Middle East to isolate the regime in Iran. Pompeo also said he hopes for new normalization agreements to be signed in the next month or two. But all is not peaceful in the region. On Friday Iranian State television announced that its top nuclear physicist General Mohsen Fakhrizadeh has been assassinated and it believed Israel was to blame.

TAIWAN

Last week Taiwanese represents flew to Washington and signed the Economic Prosperity Network agreement. It covered economic collaboration, from semiconductors to 5G to healthcare supply chains and represents and expansion of US-Taiwan relations.

Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment Keith Krach said he thinks we will “… see a continued partnership there with Taiwan… I can tell you that the single most unifying, bipartisan issue that I’ve seen on Capitol Hill is this whole issue with regard to the Chinese Communist Party and their economic aggression, as well as other types of aggression. We’ve seen it increase over the last couple of years. We really saw it increase during the time of the pandemic.” He also criticized China for its treatment of its Muslim Uighur minority in Xinjiang and other human rights abuses.

KUWAIT

On Tuesday Secretary of State Pompeo met with Kuwaiti Foreign Minister Sheikh Nasser Al-Mohammad Al-Sabah in Washington to discuss the US provision of food security aid to the country amid the pandemic. Pompeo noted that the US and Kuwait “fought together to defeat ISIS’s fraudulent caliphate” and that the US-Kuwaiti relationship is a “model of progress.”

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AFGHANISTAN

The US participated in the virtual 2020 Afghanistan Conference with participants from 66 countries and 32 international organizations. The State Department said that the event took place under extraordinary circumstances, at the “beginning of the final four-year cycle of the Transformation Decade, shortly after the start of the Afghanistan Peace Negotiations and during the COVID-19 pandemic.” Participants renewed their long-term commitment to support Afghanistan and an inclusive peace. The conference final document called for the participation of women, youth, ethnic, religious, and other minorities and affirmed that “any political settlement must protect the rights of all Afghans, including women, youth and minorities.”

CLEAN NETWORK IN LATIN AMERICA

Under Secretary of State for Economic Growth, Energy, and the Environment Keith Krach and Assistant Secretary for the Bureau of Energy Resources Frank Fannon met with reports to discuss their recent travel to Latin America and the Caribbean to promote 5G security, expand the Clean Network in the Western Hemisphere, and to discuss regional growth in the critical mineral development sector and energy security. The Clean Network, according to Krach, has grown to 53 clean countries with the entry of Brazil, Ecuador, and the Dominican Republic in the last week. He said this is a big change from six months ago when it looked like China was imposing successfully its 5G technology on these countries. The Clean Network today represents two-thirds of the world’s GDP. Krach pointed out that “Huawei’s vaunted 90 deals have dwindled to just 12 outside of China. It has proven China, Inc. is beatable and, in the process, exposed its biggest weakness, and that’s trust.”

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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