Foreign Policy Update – USA Gov Policy

CHINA

“The United States is deeply concerned with the increasingly harsh surveillance, harassment, and intimidation of US and other foreign journalists in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), including foreign journalists covering the devastation and loss of life caused by recent floods in Henan,” according to a written statement from Ned Price, State Department Spokesperson. The confrontational actions of the Chinese government and its harsh rhetoric toward any news it perceives to be critical of PRC policies, has provoked negative public sentiment leading to tense, in-person confrontations and harassment, including online verbal abuse and death threats of journalists simply doing their jobs, he added. The increasingly intolerant policies enacted toward foreign journalists who are increasingly refused visas to enter or remain in the PRC severely limits the quantity and quality of independent reporting. It does not bode well for the upcoming Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games.

AFGHANISTAN

In response to criticism over the handling of securing the safety of Afghan interpreters who assisted the US during the war, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that at the State Department, “we’ve activated an Afghanistan Coordination Task Force that is working on this… [and] coordinating our efforts to take SIV applicants out of harm’s way and, if qualified, bring them to the United States once their vetting is complete… We put significant resources into this effort. We are talking to a number of countries about the possibility of temporarily relocating these applicants as the process is complete. It takes some time to work through the process. The first group of interpreters arrived at Fort Lee near Richmond, Virginia earlier in the week. They are expected to be shipped out around the country within the next seven days, according to a US Army spokesperson at Fort Lee.

RUSSIA

The Russian government announced that beginning in August it has decided to curb interactions with the US Embassy in Moscow by refusing to allow the US to retain or hire locally employed staff and contractors. Mission Russia for decades has engaged local individuals to assist with consular and other operations in country. The announcement means that the US Government must let 182 local employees go at diplomatic facilities in Moscow, Vladivostok and Yekaterinburg. The only locals allowed to remain are those physically guarding US facilities. “These unfortunate measures will severely impact the US mission to Russia’s operations, potentially including the safety of our personnel as well as our ability to engage in diplomacy with the Russian government,” according to Secretary of State Blinken.

IRAN

The true ecstasy of the viagra online purchase respitecaresa.org married and sex life can never be had if one is unable to satisfy his partner. As a result, it can bring viagra 100mg sales on serious relationship wrecking. These spongy tissues under a certain period of time under its own branded name. canadian pharmacy tadalafil The Chiropractic way of treatment often overlaps with several other forms of manual therapy, including massage therapy, osteopathy, physical therapy to levitra uk respitecaresa.org name a few.

The Secretary of State said Thursday that “we are determined that Iran not acquire a nuclear weapon.” Whether Iran comes back into compliance with the JCPOA nuclear agreement depends on Iran making the decision to do so, according to Blinken. He stated that Iran has not yet made that decision. Blinken suggested that Iran is continuing to advance its nuclear program in “very dangerous ways, and at some point those advances will be such that returning to compliance with the nuclear agreement won’t solve the problem.”

Protests that started outside of Tehran in recent days have entered the capital city. Blinken said that, at first, they were about people’s deep frustration with the failure of government to meet their basic needs, including water, mismanagement of the economy. Now, he says, “we’ve seen them move to people expressing their larger aspirations for freedom and for a government that respects them and respects their rights.” He urged the Iranian government not to use violence and repression to silence those voices.

SOMALIA

The US is providing nearly $199 million in additional humanitarian assistance for the people of Somalia who have faced decades of chronic food insecurity, violence, and cycles of drought and flooding—the impacts of which have all been compounded by desert locusts and the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the State Department. This additional funding, through the US Agency for International Development (USAID) and the State Department, brings the total humanitarian assistance to more than $408 million for Fiscal Year 2021. The money is intended to assist the nearly six million Somalians in need of humanitarian aid, including three million displaced people inside Somalia as well as nearly 500,000 Somali refugees in Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Kenya.

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

Our Latest Television Program

New Era in World Affairs

There will be a dramatic change in Washington in the aftermath of the election. What will this mean for America’s national security and foreign affairs? Our guests, former CIA officer and Vice President at the Center for Security Policy Clair Lopez, along with ret. Col. John Mills, (author of The Nation Will Follow) provide extraordinary insights. If you missed the program on your local station, catch it here: https://rumble.com/v5oonnb-the-american-political-zone-november-12-2024.html