Foreign Policy Update – USA Gov Policy

NICARAGUA

After Secretary of State Antony Blinken met with representatives from the Government of Nicaragua officials arrested Cristiana Chamorro, a journalist who’s considered a potential candidate for president of the country. Blinken said he is “very disturbed by the steps that Nicaragua has taken – backward, not forward in terms of putting in place what is necessary for free and fair elections.” He added that Nicaragua has moved in exactly the wrong direction. This week the opposition in Nicaragua has been denied the ability to compete in elections. According to Blinken, it is a sign of a total lack of confidence in the system.

IMMIGRATION

Vice President Harris is tasked with dealing with the root causes of irregular migration. According to Blinken, the US is doing this in partnership with Mexico. He suggested there are answers to the issue of illegal immigration. The Vice President, he said, made a phone call to resolve the situation. She “recently had a call to action with our private sector to look at what it would take to make more investment in Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador so that there is more opportunity,” according to Blinken. He offered no other details about what actions VP Harris is taking in his interview with CNN on Thursday.

RUSSIA

Secretary Blinken this week said he has not spoken with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov since he met with him a few weeks ago. HE pointed out that “…we are seeing, unfortunately, a new front in cyber threats, and that is criminal organizations using what’s called ransomware to hold hostage companies, to hold hostage critical infrastructure for financial gain.” These attacks, he said, are usually perpetrated by criminal enterprises, organizations, but they often have some physical connection, because their leaders live someplace, they’re working from someplace, and Blinken thinks it’s the obligation of any country to do whatever it can to find these enterprises and to bring them to justice, including in the case of the Russian attack on the Colonial Pipeline.

“We need two things. We need to make sure that our defenses, whether it’s governments or whether it’s the private sector, are much stronger and much more effective when it comes to cyber attacks in general and so-called ransomware in particular. But we also need countries around the world to make commitments and then make good on those commitments not to harbor criminal enterprises that engage in these attacks, and on the contrary, to seek them out and to stop them and to bring them to justice,” Blinken added.

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CHINA

This June 4 marks the 32^nd anniversary of the Chinese massacre in Tiananmen Square. The State Department Principal Deputy Spokesperson, Jalina Porter, announced only that the “United States condemns actions by Hong Kong authorities that prompted organizers to close the June 4th Museum that commemorates the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.” When questioned at the press briefing on Wednesday if the US was sending any particular messages, she quipped “No, we’re not sending any direct messages at this time, other than saying that Hong Kong and Beijing authorities continue to silence dissenting voices by also attempting to erase the horrific massacre from history.”

PALESTINE

A statement released by the State Department this week said that the United States is “in the process of providing more than $360 million in assistance to the Palestinian people. This includes $38 million in new assistance to support humanitarian efforts in the West Bank and Gaza.  This new assistance includes nearly $33 million for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) in support of its West Bank and Gaza operations, and an additional $5.5 million to humanitarian partners.” 

The Department called the funds “critical” and said the money will provide needed support for humanitarian organizations to provide emergency shelter, food, relief items, and health care, as well as mental health and psychosocial support for those who experienced trauma.

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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