Foreign Policy Update – USA Gov Policy

HONG KONG

Some of the worst news to come out of Asia since the emergence of the Wuhan pandemic is that Hong Kong’s autonomy appears to be coming to an abrupt end. The PRC is forcing the former British colony under a new national security law after bypassing the Hong Kong city legislature. In the 1997 declaration on Hong Kong, Beijing promised 50 years of independent rule as a semi-autonomous region. The governments of the United States, Australia, the UK and Canada issued a joint statement early Friday outlining their deep concern about the direct imposition of very harsh legislation which would curtail Hong Kong people’s liberties and erode Hong Kong’s autonomy.

President Trump on Friday also announced that he has directed his administration to review the full range of agreement since the territory is no longer separate from Beijing. During a press conference at the White House President Trump said he is directing the “administration to begin the process of eliminating policy exemptions that give Hong Kong different and special treatment.” He also noted that he plans to revoke Hong Kong’s “preferential treatment as a separate customs and travel territory from the rest of China.”

WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION

The President announced that the US is pulling out of the World Health Organization (WHO) due to its mishandling of the Covid-19 virus pandemic. “We will be today terminating our relationship with the World Health Organization and directing those funds to worldwide and deserving urgent global public health needs,” Trump said in a statement from the White House. The President said that the WHO is under China’s control and failing to make the reforms within 30 days as requested by the US. Since WHO has refused to commit to making any reforms the US has stopped over $400 million in funding to the UN body.

In an interview this week Secretary of State Pompeo reminded people that the head of the World Health Organization in January said there was no human-to-human transmission of the virus and that there was little risk to the world. Pompeo added that at least since December the organization covered up the facts.

AUSTRALIA

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In a Sunday interview Secretary Pompeo was asked about Australia’s Victoria state, which is considering signing up as part of China’s BRI (Belt and Road Initiative) to earn billions from Beijing. Pompeo said that “every citizen of Australia should know that every one of those Belt and Road projects needs to be looked at incredibly closely…nearly each one of them has some cost to it. There’s often money loaned at concessional rates or conditions placed in the debt documents or government concessions that have to be made to the Chinese Communist Party in order to get those Belt and Road Initiative projects built. Those present real risk – real risk to the people in that region, real risk to your country – and frankly, they build up the capacity of the Chinese Communist Party to do harm in other ways as well.”

IRAN

This week Secretary Pompeo announced his decision to end the sanctions waiver covering all remaining JCPOA-originating nuclear projects in Iran, and also sanctioned two Iranian nuclear officials. The Iranian regime has “continued its nuclear brinkmanship by expanding proliferation-sensitive activities.” According to Brian Hook, Special Representative for Iran and Senior Advisor to Pompeo, this is a “complicated and multifaceted decision.”

On Wednesday, Pompeo terminated the nuclear waiver for the three remaining Iran nuclear-related projects. Hook pointed out that this includes the Arak reactor conversion, the provision of enriched uranium for the Tehran research reactor, and the export of Iran-spent and scrap research reactor fuel. The decision will take effect after a 60-day wind-down.

A senior State Department official said there were basically quite a larger number of projects that had begun under the JCPOA for which US waivers were in place, and those waivers have gradually been taken down one by one with this as the latest step in that progression.

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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