Foreign Policy Update – USA Gov Policy

CUBA

Communist Cuba continues to repress the Cuban people while simultaneously undermining democracy in the region, according to the State Department’s Acting Assistant Secretary for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Michael Kozak. He said the United States is increasing pressure on the Castro regime to “stop the repression of its citizens and its intervention in other countries, particularly Venezuela.”

The country’s leadership is unable to produce the resources it needs to feed its population. Kozak noted that “Its economy is parasitic, depending for years on massive subsidies from the Soviet Union, and later on depending on a revenue stream from its essentially colonial relationship with Venezuela.” The extreme poverty of Venezuela is now impacting Cuba as its communist economic advisors find themselves facing extreme shortages under the government-controlled economy.

US policy toward Cuba is designed to restrict their other key sources of revenue to force the regime to face up to the deficiencies of its own model and allow some major freedom to its own people. The US is exposing the truth about the Cuban medical missions program, a moneymaking scheme disguised as humanitarian assistance, according to Kozak. The State Department also is discouraging travel that involves staying in hotels run by the Cuban military to break the monopoly of the Cuban military as established on processing remittances.

VENEZUELA

Elliott Abrams, the US Special Representative for Venezuela, said that there were roughly 7,000 extrajudicial killing over the last year in the country. He quoted the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, Michele Bachelet, as saying that the UN “remains concerned about the lack of independence of the justice system in Venezuela,” and “is concerned about the continuing use of the military justice system to try civilians.”

The UN report stated that “Relatives of victims also reported various forms of intimidation, threats, and reprisals by members of the security forces to stop them from seeking justice. In the most serious cases, this led to forced and prolonged displacement of family members or even, in some cases, their killing” and “Documented cases included severe beatings with boards, suffocation with plastic bags and chemicals, submerging the head of a victim underwater, electric shocks to the eyelids, and sexual violence in the form of electric shocks to genitalia.”

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The US is attempting to counter the downward spiral in Venezuela by naming and sanctioning the individuals most responsible for it, according to Abrams. The US sanctioned two additional individuals this week along with previously announced sanctions against the head of the Venezuelan Supreme Court, Maikel Moreno, due to his involvement in significant corruption.

CHINA

No foreign policy human rights problem the US faces is greater than that posed by China, according to Secretary of State Michael Pompeo. In a recent interview he cited the enormous risk to believers of all faiths inside of China and offered the mass genocide suffered by the Uyghur people at the hands of the communist regime as an example of China’s egregious behavior. He added that Christians have been under pressure inside of China for a long time and that the situation is deteriorating. Pompeo pointed out that Beijing appears to be hacking Vatican websites to get a jump on negotiations with the Vatican about the appropriate role for the Catholic Church inside of China.

He believes this type of behavior is typical of the regime as it threatens total rule by the Chinese Communist Party. Pompeo said: “They can’t allow religious freedom because people of conscience understand that those freedoms that they value would be at risk.” The party “understands that the things the CCP leadership want to keep people from doing would be a risk if they permitted any dissent or exercise of individual conscience rights,” he said.

In his final comment to a reporter Thursday, Pompeo said: “Weakness breeds risk and strength is respected with respect to the Chinese Communist Party. So, you can see that in how China has responded to President Trump just being candid, just being honest. This isn’t about being angry. This is about rebalancing a relationship that has fallen out of balance over 40 years and demanding that the Chinese Communist Party participate on the global stage in the way that we demand every country does.”

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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