The European Union is currently threatening additional sanctions on Russia after the attempted poisoning and imprisoning of opposition leader Alexey Navalny upon his return to Russia following his treatment in Germany, as well as for other incidents of anti-democratic behavior by the Russian government. Navalny was apparently poisoned with the nerve agent Novichok, and he is just the latest in a long line of Russian politicians and journalists who have suffered poisoning or have been assassinated during Vladimir Putin’s dictatorship.
Recent anti-Kremlin protests led to 10,000 arrests, largely as a result of Russia’s so-called parliament passing a dozen laws this past December which expanded Putin’s power and limited freedom of speech and access to information; this latter only involves government agencies, after the FSB agents suspected of poisoning Navalny were named. On the other hand, antigovernment protests must disclose the sources of their funding, which obviously is meant to intimidate donors with the threat of imprisonment.
The laws would also label
single-line pickets as illegal “mass rallies,” and prohibit demonstrations in
front of law enforcement and security buildings. Reporters who cover such
events must show their press badges, which given the number of journalists
murdered in Russia is meant to intimidate them from covering such events. At
least 20 journalists have been killed since 2000 in which there was a too obvious
link to their work, but dozens more have been murdered who worked for independent,
human rights or opposition media for whom a direct link to their work allegedly
could not be “proven.”
This is the kind of anti-democratic
and media “enemies of the people” brutality that is the kind of thing that
Donald Trump no doubt wished he could emulate. In its final report card on the Trump
administration, the journal Foreign
Policy observed that while in 2016 he promised that “we are going to have a great
relationship with Putin and Russia,”
Trump’s steadfast deference toward Russian
President Vladimir Putin remains something of a mystery…Trump never made a
serious effort to improve relations or drive a wedge between Moscow and
Beijing, even though doing so would have made good geopolitical sense. Apart
from sanctioning a few more Russian officials, however, Trump didn’t do very
much to challenge Russia either. Instead, Trump got himself impeached for
trying to bolster his reelection prospects by withholding U.S. aid to Ukraine
until Kyiv dug up some dirt on the Biden family.
The
result? Russia is still interfering in Ukraine today, still supporting the
Bashar al-Assad regime in Syria and warlord Khalifa Haftar in Libya, and still
conducting murderous attacks on perceived threats at home and abroad. Moscow is also the likely perpetrator of the massive cyber-breach that compromised U.S. government computer networks,
including the Defense Department, State Department, Los Alamos National
Laboratory, and the National Security Agency. Can you imagine what Trump might
have said had this happened on Obama’s watch?
Trump of course questioned the
veracity of intelligence data that pointed the finger at Russia—just as he
denied the intelligence and the Mueller report that proved that the Russian
government and its foreign intelligence agencies had interfered in the
election; when Putin told Trump that Russia did not interfere in the 2016
election, that is all Trump wanted to hear, never once considering that Putin
would naturally lie about such a thing.
China will be another headache that Trump has left the Biden administration. People will no doubt be under the impression that Trump was “tough” with China, although the only thing he really did was impose tariffs on Chinese imports and restrict its smartphone technology, while doing literally nothing to counter Chinese global threats. We should recall that up until 2020, while Trump was insulting our allies, he actually referred to Chinese dictator Xi Jinping as “my good friend,” typical Trump “schmoozing” that he mistakenly thought could replace actual diplomacy.
Even as the Covid-19 pandemic was underway, Trump was
praising China’s response to it: “He is strong,
sharp and powerfully focused on leading the counterattack on the Coronavirus. Great
discipline is taking place in China, as Xi strongly leads what will be a very
successful operation”; it is worth noting, of course, that Trump himself wasn't "disciplined" enough to engage in a similar "counterattack" on the virus in this country. This was all before the pandemic became a political annoyance for
Trump, after which it became the “China virus.” We might also add that China’s
coronavirus numbers are for domestic propaganda consumption, and to be taken by
the world community with a large grain of salt.
As
with everything else, if Trump couldn’t quickly “persuade” anyone to do his bidding,
he lost all interest. The U.S. continues to have a massive trade deficit with
China, and Foreign Policy grades Trump's China antics as follows:
He
tried to get Chinese President Xi Jinping to put more pressure on North Korea;
Xi refused. He tried to get China to make major structural reforms and end its
predatory trade and investment practices, and he eventually launched a costly
trade war in an attempt to force Beijing to comply. That didn’t work
either, because China retaliated and adapted; U.S. businesses,
consumers, and farmers bore most of the costs of Trump’s tariffs; and Trump
chose to pressure China unilaterally instead of lining up other countries
alongside the United States. The administration’s escalating campaign against
Huawei, ZTE, TikTok, and other Chinese technology firms has hurt these firms in
the short term, but it has also spurred Chinese efforts to reduce its
dependence on U.S. technology and may eventually cost U.S. firms a lot of future
earnings. Not surprisingly, relations with China have spiraled steadily
downward over the past four years.
And that is not all. Trump’s military braggadocio about being
tough has not impressed China either, and he did nothing to counter its
military ambitions. The Department of Defense released a report on the subject last year, in which it states
DoD’s
first annual report to Congress in 2000 assessed the PRC’s armed forces at that
time to be a sizable but mostly archaic military that was poorly suited to the
CCP’s long-term ambitions. The report recognized the CCP’s objective was for
the PRC to become a “strong, modernized, unified, and wealthy nation.” Despite
these great power aspirations, the PLA lacked the capabilities, organization, and
readiness for modern warfare. Yet the CCP understood these deficiencies and set
long-term goals to strengthen and transform its armed forces in a manner
commensurate with its aspirations to strengthen and transform China.
Two
decades later, the PLA’s objective is to become a “world-class” military by the
end of 2049—a goal first announced by General Secretary Xi Jinping in 2017.
Although the CCP has not defined what a “world-class” military means, within
the context of the PRC’s national strategy it is likely that Beijing will seek
to develop a military by mid-century that is equal to—or in some cases superior
to—the U.S. military, or that of any other great power that the PRC views as a
threat. As this year’s report details, the PRC has marshalled the resources,
technology, and political will over the past two decades to strengthen and
modernize the PLA in nearly every respect. Indeed, as this report shows, China
is already ahead of the United States in certain areas such as:
Shipbuilding:
The PRC has the largest navy in the world, with an overall battle force of approximately
350 ships and submarines including over 130 major surface combatants. In comparison,
the U.S. Navy’s battle force is approximately 293 ships as of early 2020.
Land-based conventional ballistic and cruise
missiles: The PRC has
more than 1,250 ground[1] launched ballistic missiles (GLBMs) and ground-launched
cruise missiles (GLCMs) with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers. The
United States currently fields one type of conventional GLBM with a range of 70
to 300 kilometers and no GLCMs.
Integrated air defense systems: The PRC has one of the world’s largest forces of advanced long range
surface-to-air systems—including Russian-built S-400s, S-300s, and domestically
produced systems—that constitute part of its robust and redundant integrated
air defense system architecture.
More
striking than the PLA’s staggering amounts of new military hardware are the
recent sweeping efforts taken by CCP leaders that include completely
restructuring the PLA into a force better suited for joint operations,
improving the PLA’s overall combat readiness, encouraging the PLA to embrace new
operational concepts, and expanding the PRC’s overseas military footprint.
Despite
the PLA’s progress over the past 20 years, major gaps and shortcomings remain.
The PRC’s leaders are aware of these problems, and their strategy envisions the
PLA undergoing almost 30 more years of modernization and reform. Of course, the
CCP does not intend for the PLA to be merely a showpiece of China’s modernity
or to keep it focused solely on regional threats. As this report shows, the CCP
desires the PLA to become a practical instrument of its statecraft with an
active role in advancing the PRC’s foreign policy, particularly with respect to
the PRC’s increasingly global interests and its aims to revise aspects of the
international order.
While that is a problem that predated the Trump administration, it
was made demonstrably worse by the de
facto inaction of the Trump administration, despite all its “tough talk.”
Foreign
Policy
also called Trump’s handling of North Korea “amateurish” and “inept,” staging
what was little more than “reality show” summits that while they “produced the sort of media attention
that Trump craved, they succeeded only in enhancing Kim’s stature and
underscoring Trump’s gullibility. The president lost interest in the issue as
soon as his PR stunt failed, and North Korea’s nuclear arsenal and missile
capabilities have continues to improve ever since.” Trump’s “fire and fury” threats actually did work to
bring Kim Jong-un to the table, but he was foolishly persuaded by the exchange
of “beautiful” letters, and since they had a “beautiful friendship,” Trump
failed to keep the pressure on Kim when the latter needed more convincing to
accept a more reality-based agreement.
And then of course the Biden administration inherits the absolute
disaster that was Trump’s Iran policy. Trump surrounded himself with anti-Iran
militants like John Bolton and pro-Israel lobbyists like Mike Pompeo, and
promulgated a “maximum pressure” policy that Slate called an “unmitigated disaster”:
Iran
had been in full compliance with the nuclear deal from July 2015, when
President Barack Obama and five other national leaders signed it, until May
2018, when Trump withdrew from it for no good reason. Iran remained in
compliance for another year-and-a-half, even as Trump reimposed economic
sanctions, and as he forced the other signatories to reimpose sanctions as well.
Neither goal was accomplished. Instead, since Trump withdrew
from the deal, Iran has increased its stockpile of enriched uranium by eight
times, and has found ways to export a
sizable amount of its petroleum as well. Meanwhile, Iran’s hard-line factions
have strengthened their grip on Tehran’s politics, with two consequences.
First, in the highly unlikely event that the regime buckles, the
hard-liners—backed by the elite Revolutionary Guard, which never liked the
accord—would likely take power. Second, more immediately, because of this shift
in the domestic balance of power, President Hassan Rouhani, who touted the deal
and is facing reelection next summer, is unlikely to come back into
compliance—even if President-elect Joe Biden seems eager for a return, as he
is—without major concessions that Senate Republicans might block Biden from
making.
Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, Trump entered into
an “agreement” last year with the Taliban for a phased withdrawal of his “warfighters,”
and since then the country has descend back into chaos. The current Kabul
government has accused the Taliban of reneging on power-sharing agreements and
fomenting violence all over the country. The AP reports that “A Taliban official said the talks stalled after
the Taliban demanded the government side accept a new ‘inclusive Islamic system’
that includes all ‘tribes and groups’ in Afghanistan — language that indicates
the Taliban seek guarantees that Islamic rule would be in place in post-war
Afghanistan,” and opposed to the current government’s demands that the Taliban
instead accept at least the fig-leaf of democratically-elected government,
which seems unlikely. If the Taliban regains control of the country, will it
become a breeding ground for terrorists again? Stay tuned.
Of course we need our “friends”—meaning our Western allies—to get on board with trying to even the balance sheet, which Trump had
insured would be impossible as long as he remained president. Australia's The Strategist dryly noted that his "self-aggrandizing boasts mask a record of scant accomplishment." Trump’s so-called
“America First” foreign policy “accomplished” only two things: alienating our allies,
and strengthening our enemies. The first part of the equation should be a
problem that is easy to “fix” for the Biden administration, but the second part
is another matter altogether; just don’t expect Fox News to provide any "clarity," let alone “reality,”
on that subject.
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