Foreign Policy Update – USA Gov Policy

CYPRUS

This week Clarke Cooper, Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs, was in Greece conducting talks concerning the current security environment in the East Mediterranean region. He said the US needs to see further assurances from Cyprus on its “ability to deny port access to Russian naval vessels.” According to Cooper, as Cyprus takes a greater role in the Eastern Mediterranean and expanded responsibilities supportive of European Union as well as NATO requirements, “we do need to be more interoperable with them, and that does require addressing the portage issue.” In September Russia held two naval exercises in the energy-rich Eastern Mediterranean, with Russian warships conducting firing exercises. The head of the Centre for Analysis of World Arms Trade in Moscow, Igor Korotchenko, said the exercises were designed as “a show of force by Russia against NATO.”

CHINA

“…the Chinese Communist Party is highly capable, ambitious, and hostile to our basic political principles: democracy, openness, and individual dignity,” according to David Stilwell, Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. At an address this week at the Hoover Institution Stillwell spoke about the Trump Administration’s 2017 National Security Strategy, which is centered on the observation that we are in “a geopolitical competition between free and repressive visions of world order.” Influence and interference operations are fundamental to how the Chinese Communist Party engages with the world. Stillwell said we can’t think of China as simply a trade partner or the home of a great civilization. The Chinese Communist Party’s strategy implicates private as well as governmental targets around the world, he added, and it why all institutions in American society need to “understand that strategy and adopt measures to manage risk, counter coercion, and protect free expression.”

HONG KONG

“The United States strongly condemns the arrest and detention of three student democracy activists and calls on Hong Kong authorities to release those that remain detained immediately,” according to Secretary of State Pompeo in a statement. The Beijing-controlled Hong Kong government continues to stifle dissent, repress public opinion, and use law enforcement for political purposes. There have been a number of arrests, detentions, and harassments of pro-democracy protesters.

Pompeo said the People’s Republic of China has “violated its international obligations under the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration,” while the Chinese Communist Party and its Hong Kong proxies crush the promised autonomy of Hong Kong, and “eviscerate Hong Kong’s respect for human rights,” including the rights to peaceful assembly and freedom of expression.

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IRAN

“Instead of using its natural resource wealth to improve living conditions for the Iranian people, the Iranian regime prefers to pawn its oil to fund the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF) and support its terror proxies as they sow chaos and destruction around the Middle East. We will not let that happen,” according to Secretary of State Michael Pompeo in a statement release on October 31, 2020. The US also condemned attacks by the Iranian-backed Houthis against Saudi Arabia. The attacks were launched indiscriminately towards Riyadh, and risked the lives of innocent civilians, including Americans. Pompeo said: “These acts demonstrate that the Houthis are not serious about seeking a political solution in order to bring peace to Yemen. The United States calls on Iran to stop smuggling weapons to the Houthis in violation of UN Security Council resolutions and to stop enabling the Houthis’ aggressive acts against Yemen and towards its neighbors, including Saudi Arabia.”

MALDIVES

Secretary Pompeo announced that the United States is opening its first permanent embassy in the Maldives. He said the United States wants to continue to build out what has been a “really important” security and diplomatic relationship. The Maldives are located just southwest of India and are in a strategic area where China is increasing its naval activity and influence operations.

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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