Foreign Policy Update – USA Gov Policy

VENEZUELA

Venezuelans are suffering. The economy is in ruins. And, now interim President Juan Guaido’s chief of staff has been taken into custody on questionable charges that he had guns in his home. In an interview Secretary of State Michael Pompeo commented on the unstable situation in Venezuela. He reiterated that the American people stand with the people of Venezuela, who are going through horrific times. Pompeo pointed out that the Trump Administration is behaving in the opposite way of Obama’s during the green effort in Iran. He added that: “Instead of shunning the people, we have supported them. Instead of denying the rights of the people of Iran, we’re supporting the rights of the people of Venezuela. We’re committed to this; we’re going to stay the course.”

Washington is approaching Venezuela on several fronts. Pompeo said “There’s the political element, there’s the economic element. We are desperately trying to get humanitarian assistance to the people of Venezuela. We are committed to helping Venezuela, the region, deny Maduro the opportunity to engage in this thuggish behavior that has been so harmful to ordinary Venezuelans. We’re determined to achieve this outcome, and we’re optimistic that we can get there.”

The political turmoil in Venezuela is expanding as the country is experiencing hyperinflation with the majority of its citizens suffering from malnutrition and many starving, including children. The former Maduro regime has dug in and refuses to give up power. Maduro, who is supported by the military has refused to allow humanitarian aid to cross the border into the country and had led to armed skirmishes with aid convoys.

LEBANON/IRAN

Secretary Pompeo announced that he is in talks with Lebanese government officials about how Beirut can extricate itself from the grips of local Hizballah groups, which are supported by the regime in Iran. He added that there are serious risks to Lebanon and Israel if they permit Hizballah’s missiles in southern Lebanon. There also are “… risks of having Hizballah intertwined in the government” and other “…risks that it presents to the Lebanese people.” The US Government is pushing back against Iran on a number of fronts. Washington recently added a number of names from Iran to its list of terrorist-designated groups and individuals. There also will be another round of sanctions coming up in May 2019.

According to the Secretary, the government has designated “senior leaders inside the IRGC. “You’ve seen us designate financial institutions, financial agents engaged in moving illicit money in support of the Houthis, in support of Hamas, in support of Hizballah. This administration has taken serious efforts across a broad range of threats, a broad range of efforts to Iran to extend its reach. We’ll continue to do that in evaluating whether or not to sanction a particular Iranian entity,” he noted. Estimates suggest that Hizballah may have over 100,000 rockets and may be building tunnels into the Northern Galilee, as well as setting up a military infrastructure on the Golan Heights.

In remarks to the traveling press, during the Secretary’s recent Middle East trip, Pompeo commented that “The simple goal is to get Iran to behave like a normal nation: stop blowing up things around the world; stop fomenting terrorism; stop their assassination campaign in Europe; stop underwriting the Houthis, Hamas, Hizballah. Simple things – the same things we ask every nation in the world to do we’re asking of the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

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CHINA

Secretary Pompeo recently stated that the trade war with China was started long before President Trump assumed office. He added that we’ve“…had decades of Chinese abuse where we couldn’t sell our wheat, couldn’t sell our cattle, we couldn’t sell our beans or our cotton into China without a massive tariff, and when we did, they would steal our intellectual property. Those were unacceptable outcomes. The trade war was started an awfully long time ago by China. President Trump’s trying to flip that. He’s trying to make it better. I’ve seen the discussions; I know we’re making progress. I’m hopeful there’ll be a deal with China before too long….”

NORTH KOREA

On Friday, March 22, President Trump unexpectedly announced via Twitter that he is cancelling the recently announced additional trade sanctions aimed at North Korea. His statement caught the Treasury Department off guard as the Treasury Department had only a day earlier announced the additions restrictions. This appears to be the President’s latest attempt to salvage the nuclear negotiations.

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

Ukraine’s Frozen Conflict

As we approach winter in the northern hemisphere, the war in Ukraine is beginning to resemble a “frozen conflict” from many perspectives. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky recently told the media he hopes the war will end faster once President-elect Trump takes over in January. Opinions in Moscow, however, differ from that of the Ukrainian leader. Russian President Vladimir Putin argues that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) needs to exclude Ukraine from joining in “exchange” for peace. If it does not, he says, then no end to the war is in sight. So far there is no Christmas solution. Several NATO countries, according to Vladimir Socor of the Jamestown Foundation, are tentatively considering “coalitions-of-the-willing” to provide security for Ukraine outside of the formal NATO framework. There is, however, no collective mechanism today under which such an arrangement is viable. According to the NATO Charter, while Ukraine is a NATO partner country, it may not join as a full member since it has not fulfilled the requirements for membership. That has not stopped NATO and allies from continuing “to provide Ukraine with unprecedented levels of support, helping to uphold its fundamental right to self-defence,” according to the organization. Socor says that keeping Ukraine out of NATO will not advance peace with Russia. Waiting for a peace settlement, he suggests, would only serve to encourage Moscow to continue the war indefinitely. Although the Biden Administration officially withdrew its support for Ukrainian membership in 2021, NATO maintains an “open door” policy toward membership-seeking countries. The current White House position led the way for European states to oppose Ukraine’s membership saying that a decision should be delayed until “conditions are met.” Biden pushed for changing “open door” to a “bridge” metaphor. It is not intended as an across-the-board NATO policy and has been implemented in the past on a case-by-case basis, says Socor. “The alliance’s open-door policy was not fully insulated from Russia’s non-statutory blocking power, and NATO-aspirant countries’ path toward membership was not always irreversible.” Russia has successfully blocked states like Georgia from joining, first in 2008 and again after the war in Ukraine began in 2014. Russia recognizes the value add of Ukraine to NATO is enormous and that Kyiv has a better case than some other nations. Putin’s invasion was, in part, intended to foreclose that option. By 2021, Moscow was pushing hard to maximize its war objectives, which included further annexations of Ukrainian territory. A main goal for Putin was, and is, to ensure there is no Ukraine left to join NATO. As President-elect Trump prepares to assume office in January, he is faced with the historical challenges presented by the war. Post-conflict security guarantees were the center of several proposals made during the 2023 military stalemate. The incoming Trump Administration has yet to outline how it intends to handle the Russia-Ukraine war. Analysts in Washington believe that the new Administration will expect its European allies to guarantee the majority of Ukraine’s security needs. As we approach 2025, several European nations have acknowledged that they do not view Ukraine as eligible for NATO membership as it would draw the organization into the middle of the conflict. Others want to wait until the war is over or pending a “peace” settlement before considering Ukrainian membership. Socor reports that some “influential voices” are suggesting that “Kyiv should join NATO after “freezing” the war along a stable armistice line, de facto accepting Ukraine’s partition, with NATO security guarantees applying de jure to the government-controlled territory only.” This would mean starting accession talks soon with the actual talks to commence only after a ceasefire is in place. Trump arrives in Washington at a time when Putin’s hybrid strategies of war in Ukraine have eviscerated commonly-held differences between war and peace. “Absent a political consensus in NATO over Ukrainian membership, certain European allies, including France’s President Emmanuel Macron, are holding informal consultations about post-conflict security guarantees to Kyiv by NATO members outside of NATO’s framework,” according to the Jamestown Foundation. The Biden Administration downplayed the discussions on possible forms of military assistance and defense industry cooperation by sending only an Assistant Secretary of State. For a European peace to hold the Trump Administration would need to formally extend the United States’ nuclear deterrence to Ukraine. Options under discussion in Europe include a “coalition of the resolute” to deploy forces to Ukraine as part of a possible armistice package, deterring further Russian attacks, says Secor. European officials are also debating, without any agreement, whether its military forces could perform non-combat logistical roles to free Ukrainian forces to fight. None of the possible courses of action has moved forward as all eyes are waiting on the incoming Trump Administration for clues about its intended level of support for a NATO framework and other non-NATO proposals. Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept.