Foreign Policy Update – USA Gov Policy

CROATIA

Secretary of State Michael Pompeo met with Croatian Prime Minister Plenkovic during his recent trip to Croatia. He announced the United States will remain engaged in the region to ensure a good outcome for Europe. Pompeo said he hopes Croatia decides to go with the F-16 planes and that it is a sovereign decision which will deliver value to the Croatian people. He added it is “part of a larger context of the relationship between the United States and Europe where we will show up aiming to make sure that we deliver good security outcomes…” Pompeo assured the Prime Minister that the United States will “use its economic and diplomatic tools to try and drive these processes forward in a way that is serious and thoughtful and engages not only the capacities that the EU and NATO bring, but also those that the United States can uniquely bring to these conversations.”

TURKEY

Syrian fighters in Libya have been moved through southern Turkey into Azerbaijan, according to reports seen by Secretary Pompeo. He believes Azerbaijan instigated this conflict and questions why Turkish President Erdogan would allow that to happen at this time when tensions were easing in the Eastern Mediterranean. Pompeo added that he hopes “it’s not the case… [It] created more instability, more turbulence, more conflict, more fighting, less peace.” Pompeo urged all nations to “just stay out” of the fighting other than to urge a ceasefire.

IRAN

President Trump is continuing the maximum pressure campaign against Iran as part of his broader efforts in the Middle East to create Middle Eastern stability. In a Thursday interview, Secretary Pompeo said that the wrong way to approach Iran was “to appease, to give them money, to give them wealth, to create opportunities for them to continue to build out their terror campaign around the world, so we’ve stopped that.”

President Rouhani, according to Pompeo, said that they have lost $150 billion as a result of the American efforts. Pompeo added that the $150 billion “would have cost people all around the world their lives” and that the US has been successful in this effort.

VATICAN

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A senior State Department official, while in Rome for meetings with the Vatican, said that they US was having “very productive engagement… and a very respectful exchange…” concerning more than a million Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and Kyrgyz locked up in internment camps. The official told Vatican officials that Protestant house churches are being burned down, Catholic sermons are being monitored and Catholic priests and laypeople are being abused in China. The official added that Tibetans who are undergoing a new wave of oppression along with Falun Gong adherents are suffering enormously under the Chinese communist regime.

PACIFIC ISLANDS

The United States reaffirmed its pledge to a free and open Indo-Pacific region. The State Department is doubling from $100 million last year to $200 million in 2020, the amount of new funding as part of the Pacific Pledge. This figure includes more than $78 million in new programming across the Indo-Pacific Pillars and $130 million in support for the region’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. According to the Office of the State Department Spokesperson, this assistance is in addition to the approximately $350 million that US agencies invest annually in projects, assistance, and operations to build a more prosperous future for people in the Pacific Island region.

CHINA

The tide has turned against China, according to Secretary Pompeo, as “The Chinese Government unleashed a virus on the world…. They deceived the world and they covered up.” While traveling in Europe Pompeo addressed press questions about China’s 5G network: “I’m confident that many more European countries now, frankly because of just sharing information with them, they’re going to make their own sovereign decision that says no, we don’t want our citizens’ data in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party. I think every European country now understands this, is increasingly aware of it.” Washington has reached out to Europe to provide data concerning the Chinese security threat in recent months. It appears countries are now holding off on implementing the Chinese version of 5G on the continent.

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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