Author: Daria Novak

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

The collective yawn by Democratic leaders and their media supporters in response to both the revelations of the Durham Report, as well as the unnecessary crises resulting from the Biden Administration’s policies, indicates an extraordinary challenge facing the nation.

In his farewell address to the nation upon leaving office on September 17 of 1776, President Washington, America’s founding father, warned “However [political parties] may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”

 The Democratic Party scandals that have become increasingly evident, including the abusive practices by federal agencies to influence elections, manipulate public opinion, and intimidate opponents are unprecedented. Its policy choices have directly resulted in the loss of American energy independence, the elimination of effective control of the southern border, ruinous inflation, the virtual bankruptcy of the federal treasury, a loss of U.S. influence in strategic areas across the globe, and an increase in internal divisions within the population by race and gender. It has excused and assisted violence by extremist movements that further its agenda.

These goals are directly related to Democrat’s lust for power, on a level never before endured by Americans. Illegal immigration, which has devastated communities from Texas to New York, is seen as a vehicle to gradually increase party enrollment.  Perhaps not so gradually; tied in with Democrat’s opposition to voter ID, the impact of illegals on elections may occur far sooner than the attainment of citizenship. Openly, in testimony before Congress, the Biden Administration has stated that illegal immigration is under control, even in the face of both televised and statistical evidence to the contrary.

Unabashedly, the Democratic Party has lied to the American public on repeated occasions.  It has engaged in dramatic actions to attain and keep power.  The entire Russian Collusion scandal of the 2016 election has now been proven to be a fraud. Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) falsely assured the citizenry that he had absolute proof of Moscow’s influence, tearing the nation apart. The revelations from the Hunter Biden laptop were suppressed by Democrat sympathizers within the government and the media. The overt actions of Hillary Clinton in destroying federal evidence went unpunished.

Key Party leaders have praised extremist organizations that have burned cities, looted stores, assaulted innocents, invaded police stations and attacked federal courthouses, all in a bid to garner support of particular demographic groups.

The current White House has weakened the military by placing the implementation of its political and social agenda over the key task of defending the nation.

Looming over the nation is the specter of a scandal which the Democrat Party and its media supporters diligently seek to downplay.  It defies common sense to maintain that the vast riches received by the Biden family from foreign powers in return for no viable product or service was not influence peddling. That offense is made far worse by the fact that a major player in this scheme was America’s most dangerous adversary, the People’s Republic of China.  Hunter flew aboard Air Force 2 with then vice-president Biden to China, and returned with exceptional gains for the Biden family.  

The downplaying of these outrageous scandals by Democrats and their staunch defenders in the media is the clearest indication that far too many have, in fulfillment of President George Washington’s ultimate nightmare, placed loyalty to a political party over the welfare of the nation.

Illustration: Pixabay

When I was a Criminal Court Judge, I accepted many plea agreements – sometimes, more than 50 in a day.  Many were routine – most did not involve jail sentences.  Most Defendants were required to pay a fine,  perform community service, enter into a treatment program, or sometimes, just avoid rearrest for anywhere from six months to a year.

In all cases, my job was to ascertain whether the Defendant was pleading guilty voluntarily, of their own free will, and whether they understood the terms of their plea agreement, and the obligations they were assuming under those terms.  I would explain the rights the Defendant was giving up by pleading guilty, including the right to a trial, the right to confront the witnesses against them, and the right to testify or present witnesses in their own behalf, should they choose to do so. 

90 percent of the time, the Defendant exhibited the requisite understanding and freely expressed their agreement.  But then, there were the other 10 percent…

Sometimes, the Defendant could not admit their guilt to the crime, no matter how attractive the terms of their plea agreement.  Other times, the Defendant wanted to continue the plea negotiations, or insisted on a trial.  There was even the occasional Defendant who was incompetent to enter a plea – usually from drug or alcohol use before their appearance in court.

But of that 10 percent, there were at least one percent of cases where I refused to accept a plea.  In most of those cases, I was not convinced that the Defendant really accepted their guilt, or that they were capable of fulfilling the terms of their plea (for instance, how was an unemployed felon going to pay restitution of thousands of dollars to the victim?  Steal from another victim?)

It was extraordinarily rare for me to refuse to accept a plea agreement because I believed the prosecutor was being too lenient with a Defendant.  In fact, more often than not, I sent the parties back to the negotiating table because I believed the District Attorney was being too hard.

Thus, it was with extreme interest that I watched the plea agreement in the Hunter Biden federal tax fraud case fall apart like a cheap suit in a rainstorm.  What happened?

In December of 2020, after Joe Biden was elected President, his son Hunter revealed that he was under investigation by the Justice Department.  That investigation is purported to have begun in 2018, but the Biden’s claim they were not made aware of the investigation until after the election.  “It isn’t clear which entities or business dealings might be tied up in the probe, though the person with knowledge of the matter said at least some of focus was on (Hunter’s) past work in China,” according to the Associated Press in 2020.  “Hunter Biden has a history of international affairs and business dealings in a number of countries. Trump and his allies have accused him of profiting off his political connections, and have also raised unsubstantiated charges of corruption related to his work in Ukraine at the time his father was vice president and leading the Obama administration’s dealings with the Eastern European nation.” 

Though, as stated, the Justice Department investigation is reported to have begun in 2018, in 2019, Hunter Biden dropped off his laptop for repairs at a shop in Delaware.  When he never paid for the repairs, or picked it up from the shop, the owner turned the laptop over to the FBI, keeping a copy of the contents.  Those contents became news in October of 2019, when the New York Post exposed a series of emails that detailed Hunter’s “history of international affairs and business dealings in a number of countries,” and provided details that substantiated “charges of corruption related to his work in Ukraine at the time his father was vice president.” 

Since the Biden’s primary residence is Delaware, the US Attorney for that state, David Weiss, conducted the investigation into Hunter Biden.  Though Hunter is the son of the President of the United States, and many of his alleged illegal activities involve his father, Weiss claims to have never sought appointment as a Special Counsel.  If he had, Weiss could have extended his probe of Hunter’s business dealings into other jurisdictions, and could have potentially conducted an investigation of the President himself.

In June of this year, after almost five years of investigation, the US Attorney offered Hunter a plea deal – “plead guilty to two charges of misdemeanor tax evasion and enter a pretrial diversion agreement on a firearm possession charge.”    So far, we haven’t discussed the gun charge – but understanding the nature of this allegation is crucial to understanding why the plea deal fell apart.

As detailed by Politico, “(i)n 2018, the wife of Hunter Biden’s late brother Beau allegedly found Hunter’s .38-caliber Colt revolver in his truck, disposed of it in a trash receptacle behind a Delaware grocery store and later returned to retrieve it, only to find it missing, according to a police report…a man who regularly rummaged in the trash returned the weapon to authorities a few days later…evidence…emerged as the investigation into the gun incident progressed: (Hunter had) responded ‘no’ to a question on the background-check questionnaire that asks, ‘Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?’ Five years earlier, he had been discharged from the Navy Reserve after testing positive for cocaine.”

As the plea agreement was described by Politico,  Hunter “will plead guilty to the two misdemeanors covering his failure to pay his federal taxes from 2017 and 2018, but will not be required to plead guilty to the gun charge. Instead, the charge will remain pending while he proceeds through the diversion program. If he complies with the terms of that program, prosecutors will drop the charge.” 

The outcry against the plea agreement was immediate.  “Republicans have spotlighted the long-running criminal investigation into Hunter as evidence of a two-tiered justice system that treated Democrats differently — particularly in light of the federal indictment of former President Donald Trump,” according to Roll Call.  “House Oversight Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., in a  statement Tuesday called the charges ‘a slap on the wrist.’ As part of an investigation, Comer has claimed that members of the Biden family have engaged in influence peddling and received payments from companies based in foreign countries.” 

The common belief that Hunter was getting a “sweetheart deal,” and “special treatment” was bolstered by the revelations made by IRS Investigator Gary Shapley, who detailed that “IRS investigators recommended charging Hunter Biden with attempted tax evasion and other felonies,” instead of the two misdemeanors he agreed to plead guilty to.  The recommendation called for Hunter Biden to be charged with tax evasion and filing a false tax return – both felonies – for 2014, 2018 and 2019. The IRS also recommended that prosecutors charge him with failing to pay taxes on time, a misdemeanor, for 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019.”

The explosive part of Shapley’s statement was his allegation regarding political interference in the Justice Department investigation, which led to the reduced charges.  “I am alleging, with evidence, that DOJ provided preferential treatment, slow-walked the investigation, did nothing to avoid obvious conflicts of interest in this investigation,” Shapley stated. 

Shapley’s allegations were bolstered by another IRS whistleblower, Joseph Ziegler, who testified before Congress that “If you have a felony charge, if you have the evidence for the felony, and you also have the evidence for the misdemeanor, it’s departmental policy that you have to charge the felony. The reason for that is an equitable treatment of taxpayers.”  He also “told CNN host Michael Smerconish he came forward because the IRS did not ‘follow the normal process to do things’ in the case. Ziegler, who has previously said he identifies as a Democrat, said his testimony was not a ‘Democrat or Republican problem…(t)his is, ‘Is justice blind?’ We are bringing evidence forward that justice is not blind. That people are given preferential treatment, and that we need to change from that. That we need to learn from that so that this doesn’t happen again in the future.” 

Given this background, is it any wonder that many felt the Hunter Biden plea agreement was a prime example of favoritism being shown to the son of a US President?  But in another prime example, this time of blind justice,  U.S. District Judge Maryellen Noreika refused to accept Hunter’s plea agreement on July 26.

  According to Politico,  “(t)here were two agreements between the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Delaware and Hunter Biden. The first was an actual Plea Agreement, pursuant to which Biden was supposed to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges. The second was an unusual “Diversion Agreement” between prosecutors and Biden, pursuant to which Biden is supposed to enter a pretrial diversion program for drug users in order to resolve a potential felony charge — with no guilty plea required — that he had knowingly possessed a firearm while being an unlawful user of a controlled substance.”

“The judge’s principal concerns appeared to be twofold.  First, she questioned the scope of a provision under which the government agreed not to prosecute Biden ‘for any federal crimes’ encompassed by the statement of facts attached to the documents, which principally concerned Biden’s overseas consulting work…Noreika asked in particular whether Biden could still be charged under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.  It was there that things went very awry – with a prosecutor saying that it was still possible under the terms of the deal, and one of Biden’s lawyers strenuously objecting, apparently on the theory that the deal was designed to resolve any and all potential charges related to the consulting work that gave rise to the tax charges.”

“Second, the judge took issue with the fact that the immunity provision was not in the Plea Agreement.  Instead the provision was in the Diversion Agreement, which, as structured by prosecutors and Biden’s lawyers, did not appear to require her sign-off.” 

These are not minor issues.  As explained by former US Attorney for the Northern District of Alabama, Joyce Vance, “Hunter Biden’s team seemed to believe once he pled guilty, there would be no further prosecution coming out of the Delaware U.S. Attorney’s investigation…(t)he government’s view seemed to be that its investigation was ongoing, and it wouldn’t make that commitment. That’s unusual. There’s little incentive for a defendant to plead to ‘some’ charges knowing an investigation is ongoing and others could be coming.”

Further, “Vance argued the judge expressed concern about the agreement linking Hunter’s tax issues with the firearms charge, which would see the charges against him over the latter dismissed ‘as though they were never filed.’  She wrote: ‘It was the Judge who balked here, expressing concern that the role assigned to her went beyond her constitutional role. Under the Constitution, decisions about whom to indict and on what charges are reserved to the executive branch and put into the hands of the Justice Department.”

“Judges don’t make those decisions.,” Vance said. “The Judge was concerned that, because the agreement gave her the authority to oversee decisions about when a breach of the agreement occurred and charges could be brought to trial, that the parties were forcing her out of her constitutional lane…(u)ltimately, the judge determined that the way in which the parties structured their two, interlocking agreements — the plea agreement and the diversion agreement — required her to play a role in the latter’s enforcement without giving her a say over its approval.”  

Judge Noreika gave the Delaware federal prosecutors and Hunter’s legal team 30 days to try and come up with an agreement she could accept,  But a lot can happen in those 30 days, including the continuing Congressional investigation into the connection between Hunter’s “overseas business activities” and his father.

Stay tuned – this story is far from reaching its conclusion.

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

Photo: Public Domain Pictures.net

Systemic rivalry between China and Western Europe is emerging as an issue in Germany and other EU nations. A 61-page, robust policy report examining China’s strategy in Europe was released recently using strong language toward Beijing. Joe Cacese, of the Jamestown Foundation, says that it emphasized the need for Germany, Europe’s largest economy, to reduce its dependency on China. Berlin is China’s largest trading partner. “The strategy reflects a compromise between Germany’s three ruling coalition parties, and a departure from Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s typically conciliatory approach to conducting business with the PRC”’ according to Cacese. The current administration in Germany has not altered its China trade policy in any significant way since taking over from Merkel’s. Chancellor Scholz, after last fall’s 20^th Party Congress, traveled to Beijing to deliver a message. It was that Germany stands with China in the need to maintain strong economic ties. 

Scholz ignored numerous national security concerns his own cabinet expressed when he authorized a deal to sell parts of the Hamburg port terminal to the Chinese shipping firm COSCO. He then claimed his downplaying or “derisking” of the China trade issue was justified because Germany had already diversified its supply chains. The “International Cooperation” portion of the German government report used strong language to emphasize the need for the EU to push back against Chinese pressure, saying “China is leveraging the political, military, and economic weight it has gained to pursue its interests on all continents and in international organizations, and it is working to reshape the existing rules-based international order according to its preferences.” 

The report also called for maintaining the status quo in the Taiwan Strait and contended that an Indo-Pacific security crisis would also implicate the EU, stating that “security in the Taiwan Strait is of crucial importance for peace and stability in the region and far beyond.” To strengthen the German economy, the report also called for tackling Chinese disinformation as well as including a roadmap for diversification of trade partnerships. Cacase says is notable is that the country’s principal position on its China strategy “is almost explicitly at odds with Scholz’s previous remarks, as it emphatically warns the country that ‘de-risking is urgently needed.’” Germany began the first quarter of 2023 in an economic recession. Energy prices continue to rise with the loss of cheap energy from Russian sources. That raises the political risks for Germany’s political elite. Despite these factors the government report is playing an expanded role in the political discourse over China and pushing for a change in trade policy.

This report is a first step. Last week European leaders said, according to the German Marshall Fund, that the path to reducing dependencies on China will not be a straight one, but that de-risking has “become the prism through which Europe views its relationship with China.” Germany continues to send conciliatory messages to Beijing, including an announcement by German carmaker Volkswagon to invest $700 million in China’s electric vehicle group Xpeng in Guangzhou. It will give the German company a 5% market share and a seat on the board. French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire visited Beijing last week further blurring the hard line that some European leaders are calling for with China. France, the second largest economy in Europe, also is lobbying to invest in China’s electric auto industry. AP reports that on the trip Le Maire “defended Paris’s controls on foreign access to technology after authorities said two Chinese citizens are under investigation for what news reports say is possible smuggling of French-made processor chips with military uses to China and Russia.” The punch-counterpunch between economic stability and politics continues as China pushes its BRI programs into Europe.

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

The Biden Administration removed the press credentials of one of the best reporters in the White House press corps. We have him on our program this week! Listen to our discussion with Fred Lucas.

Seventy years ago last week, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) celebrated its self-proclaimed “victory” in the war in Korea. Joining the celebration was Russia’s Defense Minister, Sergei Shoigu. Over the last seven decades Moscow has maintained formal relations with the DPRK, although Russia has not made the country a priority. North Korea is a difficult thorn in the side of both Russia and China. Today, Pyongyang is viewed as a junior partner to Putin’s Russia, as Moscow is one to Beijing. 

Since the start of its war in Ukraine, Moscow has shown an increased interest in North Korea, according to Boris Bondarev, of the Jamestown Foundation. Kim Jong-un, president of the DPRK, is determined to act independently of other states, including China. In past years China has maintained cross-border trade and allowed Chinese companies to do business there. It gave Beijing leverage over the regime and kept Kim from upsetting the balance on the Korean peninsula. The North Korean president, however, is determined to use Russia to free his state from Chinese influence, despite his owing his country’s existence to Beijing.

Western analysts are growing concerned with Russia’s increased interest in the DPRK over the last 15 months. Bondarev suggests that the North is a challenge for all sides involved and that its nuclear program is now of particular concern. He says “The problem of a peaceful settlement on the Korean peninsula as caused, and continues to cause, a major headache… It is no secret that North Korea is a difficult and problematic partner for the Kremlin—most notably, within the framework of the failed six-party talks of 2003–2009, which Russian diplomacy tried to take an active part.”

Kim is determined to demonstrate that the North is an independent and sovereign nation-state, which makes it increasingly dangerous and more likely to take unpredictable actions if its suspects an existential threat. Russia’s war in Ukraine has provided the DPRK with an opportunity to play a closer role to Moscow by supplying Vladimir Putin’s troops with the shells Russia  needs to continue the battle in Ukraine. The DPRK is one of the few countries Putin can label as an ally fully in his corner. Russia is depending on Kim to address the Kremlin’s “shell hunger.” From Kim’s perspective, it has raised his status in the eyes of the DPRK’s partner. Shoigu’s trip was not only a protocol one. Analysts point to the underlying goal of obtaining its large stockpile of munitions and weapons that are compatible with Russia’s. While visiting the North, Shoigu negotiated a number of agreements concerning delivery of a regular supply of Soviet-style weapons to Russia’s Armed Forces. 

 The Russian-DPRK bilateral relationship benefits both sides as Russia needs ammunition and Pyongyang needs the sales to help it struggling economy, according to the Korea Times. Kim can also play Russia against China if Beijing attempts to constrain the North. Bondarev says that “From the opposite side, what can Pyongyang offer Moscow? …[it] can provide its partner with desperately needed ammunition for artillery, mortars, tanks, rocket launchers and Multiple Rocket Launch Systems. The war in Ukraine is a “classic” artillery war characterized by an enormous consumption of munitions.”

Analysts suggest that despite it critical supply needs Moscow may not be able to count on the DPRK for a steady stream of weapons due to its lack of advanced manufacturing. With few countries willing to sell military equipment and artillery to Russia, Moscow knows that it must depend on Kim despite that significant percentage of defects and low quality.  “On the surface, it would seem that Russia, which boasts of its status as a permanent member of the UNSC, should be more active in defending the inviolability of its decisions,” says Bondarev. However, Putin’s action show no indication he is concerned about global stability and international security, nor does he appear to care about his country’s international image. Russia is paying a high cost due to Putin’s desire to maintain his personal power.

Beijing is standing down, according to analysts in Washington, as the war effectively diverts US attention away from China’s strategic pursuits and may be giving Xi Jinping the time he needs to plan for his own war with Taiwan. 

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

Illustration: Pixabay

As the threats from China gain in intensity, U.S-Australian relations grow increasingly vital.

In June, an Australian Strategic Policy Institute study noted that “China’s military build-up is a big … problem, and it has long been large enough to, in and of itself, increase the potential for military conflict in the region, if only because it encourages other countries to modernize their military forces… it has taken several years of naked aggression and overt bullying from Beijing alongside that military build-up to show clearly how Australia’s interests and the global rules-based order could in the future be permanently undermined…To most observers of international politics in Asia, it’s now clear that China’s leaders won’t be satisfied until the United States is kicked out of the region, preferably unceremoniously, and Beijing has secured the unquestioning respect of all those left behind…From this analytical starting point, it is hard to view China as anything other than an enduring national security threat to Australia.”

In April, noted a Voice Of America report,  an unclassified version of a major defense study  recommended that Australia buy longer range missiles to counter China’s growing threat to ‘the global rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific… The review …warn(s) that Beijing’s rapid military build-up and its territorial ambitions in the South China Sea threaten Australia’s security. The review also details concerns that the Australian Defense Force is not equipped for modern warfare’s “missile age” and that Australia is no longer protected by its geographic isolation.

Measures have been taken to address the crisis.

In September 2021, leaders of Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States announced the creation of an enhanced trilateral security partnership called “AUKUS.” AUKUS is intended to strengthen the ability of each government to support security and defense interests, building on longstanding and ongoing bilateral ties. It will promote deeper information sharing and technology sharing; and foster deeper integration of security and defense-related science, technology, industrial bases and supply chains.

The two countries have taken significant steps to pave the way for closer defense and security ties. These have included the annual rotation of Marines to Darwin, which completed a twelfth year of exercises in 2023, and enhanced rotations of U.S. Air Force aircraft to Australia. Additionally, they signed the U.S.-Australia Force Posture Agreement at the annual Australia-United States Ministerial Consultations (AUSMIN) in August 2014. In October 2015, the U.S. and Australian defense agencies also signed a Joint Statement on Defense Cooperation to guide future cooperation. Finally, in 2021, the United States and Australia led their ninth Talisman Saber, a biennial joint military exercise designed to ensure and demonstrate the ability of the two defense forces to work together with the highest levels of interoperability.

In March, AUKUS partners announced an optimal pathway to produce a nuclear-powered submarine capability in Australia at the earliest point.

The cooperation extends to air power, as well. Australia has a major role in the production of the F-35 fighter, which is transforming the defense posture of the U.S., Japan, and Australia in the Indo-Pacific.

Key training activities have been conducted to increase the ability of the nations’ militaries to work closely together

In July, several hundred U.S. Marine Corps infantrymen of the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit landed on the beach at Midge Point in Queensland, Australia.

With them were trucks, spare parts, mechanics, fuel, communications gear and everything else needed to support the infantry in a fight as part of Exercise Talisman Sabre 2023 — the U.S.-Australia exercise that included a dozen other partner nations.

When Marines came ashore in Navy landing craft air cushions, or LCACs as they are better known, they took with them all the supplies and other materiel needed to push inland against entrenched enemy forces in the exercise scenario, he said. It’s getting back to the roots of what the Marine Corps does best, he said: sustaining themselves in austere, contested environments and moving quickly to secure objectives without waiting for the logistics tail to catch up to the fighters.

Photo: Several hundred U.S. Marine Corps infantrymen of the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit landed yesterday on the beach at Midge Point in Queensland, Australia. (DoD)