“Why is North Korea suddenly testing all these missiles?
Experts are split. One potential reason is that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un wants to slowly ratchet up pressure on Biden and get his attention.
“North Korea usually begins its new military threats-cum-psychological warfare cycle through graduated escalation,” Sung-Yoon Lee, an expert on Pyongyang’s politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, told me.”
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“the North Korean leader wants the tests to bother Biden so much that the US engages in some kind of diplomacy with North Korea to stop the launches. Once at the negotiating table, Pyongyang would seek an end to US sanctions on the country before agreeing to dismantle (at least some parts of) its nuclear program, while Washington would push for the opposite — North Korea first verifiably dismantling at least some parts of its nuclear program before the US lifts any sanctions.
That broad standoff has plagued US-North Korean relations for decades, but it’s particularly irksome to Kim right now. The sanctions hurt his country’s economy, which the dictator has promised to improve, and are especially biting during the Covid-19 pandemic. His new round of testing, then, is a message to the White House: End the sanctions, or America’s relations with North Korea are about to get a lot more tense.”
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“The other potential explanation experts gave me for the recent tests has less to do with the US and more to do with simply improving North Korea’s military capabilities.
“These launches are not a cry for attention, nor are they a cry for help with North Korea’s broken economy. Such launches are a sign of North Korea’s clear determination to continue advancing its ballistic-missile programs as part of making good on the ambitious plans for North Korea’s weapons programs,” said Markus Garlauskas, the US national intelligence officer for North Korea from 2014 to 2020.
Getting stronger militarily, after all, was a promise Kim made to top North Korean officials and his people during a January meeting. “If these [launches] go unchecked by the international community, this is likely to lead to launches of bigger and more capable systems, including those capable of carrying multiple nuclear warheads,” added Garlauskas, who is now at the Atlantic Council think tank in DC.
Whatever the reason, though, it’s important to note that Kim could have chosen to be even more aggressive than he has been.”
“Because of the scale of China’s economy and its military, the speed of its technological advancement and its radically different worldview from that of the United States, China’s rise now profoundly impacts every major U.S. national interest. This is a structural challenge that, to some extent, has been gradually emerging over the last two decades. The rise to power of Xi has greatly accentuated this challenge and accelerated its timetable.
At home, Xi has returned China to classical Marxism-Leninism and fostered a quasi-Maoist personality cult, pursuing the systematic elimination of his political opponents. China’s market reforms have stalled and its private sector is now under increasingly direct forms of party control. Xi has also used ethnonationalism to unite his country against any challenges to his authority, internal or external. His treatment of recalcitrant ethnic minorities within China borders on genocide. Xi’s China increasingly resembles a new form of authoritarian police state. And in a fundamental departure from his risk-averse post-Mao predecessors, Xi has demonstrated that he intends to project China’s authoritarian system, coercive foreign policy and military presence well beyond his country’s own borders to the world at large.
China under Xi, unlike under previous leaders Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, is no longer a status quo power. It has become what the international-relations world calls a revisionist power, a state bent on changing the world around it. For the United States, its allies and the US-led liberal international order, this represents a fundamental shift. Xi is no longer just a problem for U.S. primacy. He now presents a serious challenge to the whole of the democratic world.”
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“while the Trump administration did well to sound the alarm on China, its efforts at implementation have been chaotic and at times contradictory. At root, the issue is that “strategic competition” is a declaration of doctrinal attitude, not a comprehensive strategy that has been put into practice.
The uncomfortable truth is that China has long had an integrated internal strategy for handling the United States, and so far its strategy has largely worked. By contrast, the United States, which once articulated and then operationalized a clear, unified strategy to deal with the challenge of the Soviet Union, in the form of George Kennan’s strategy of containment, so far has none in relation to China. This has been a dereliction of national responsibility.
Washington’s difficulty in developing an effective China strategy lies in the absence of a clearly understood strategic objective. At present, objectives articulated by various officials range from inducing Chinese economic reform through a limited trade war to full-blown regime change that focuses on overthrowing the Communist Party. So what should this objective be—and what understanding of China is it based on?”
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“a strategy that focuses more narrowly on Xi, rather than the CCP as a whole, presents a more achievable objective—and also points to policies that serve to weaken rather than embolden his autocratic leadership in the process.”
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“The political reality is that the CCP is significantly divided on Xi’s leadership and his vast ambitions. Senior party members have been greatly troubled by Xi’s policy direction and angered by his endless demands for absolute loyalty. They fear for their own lives and the future livelihoods of their families. There are countless examples that point to this deep and abiding skepticism towards Xi. Of particular importance in this mix are the reports unearthed by international media of the wealth amassed by Xi’s family and members of his political inner circle, despite the vigor with which Xi has conducted the anti-corruption campaign. It is simply unsophisticated strategy to treat the entire Communist Party as a single monolithic target when such internal fault lines should be clear to the analyst’s eye—and in the intelligent policy maker’s pen.
Any strategy that focuses on the party rather than on Xi himself also ignores the fact that China, under all five of its post-Mao leaders prior to Xi, was able to work with the United States. Under them, China aimed to join the existing international order, not to remake it in China’s own image. That suggests the mission for America’s China strategy should be to see China return to its pre-2013 path—i.e., the pre-Xi strategic status quo. There were, of course, many challenges to U.S. interests during Hu Jintao’s second term, but they were manageable and did not represent a fundamental violation of the liberal international order.”
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” It might be helpful to keep in mind one overriding political objective: To cause China’s elite leadership to conclude that it is in the country’s best interests to operate as a status-quo power again. This means that the party needs to see a clearer route to success by staying within the existing US-led liberal international order than by building a rival order; and it should clearly be in the party’s best interests, if it wishes to remain in power at home, not to attempt to expand China’s borders or export its political model beyond China’s shores. In other words, China can become a different type of global great power than that envisaged by Xi.”
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“A successful U.S. strategy must be based on its existing strengths, which means the four fundamental pillars of American power: the power of the nation’s military; the status of the U.S. dollar as the global reserve currency and mainstay of the international financial system; global technological leadership, given that technology has become the major determinant of future national power; and the values of individual freedom, fairness and the rule of law for which the nation continues to stand, despite its recent political divisions and difficulties.
This last point is important. Any effective U.S. China strategy will be anchored in both national values and national interests. This is what has long distinguished the nation from China in the eyes of the world. The defense of universal liberal values and the liberal international order, as well as the maintenance of U.S. global power, must be the twin pillars of America’s global call to arms.
U.S. strategy must also be fully coordinated with major allies. This has nothing to do with making allies feel good; it’s because the United States now needs them to win.”
“The last option — and this is the option that I would support — would be using US leverage with the Taliban to greater effect to get a real, genuine peace process in place, which would mean keeping US forces in the country until that peace process is further along and shows more signs of progress.
This would mean more costs and resources for something that admittedly may not work, but it would allow the peace process to continue, preserve US credibility, and reduce risks to Americans from terrorism.
I think that the question really is this: Is the US willing to spend $5 billion annually, which means a small US force presence of about 2,500? Is that worth it, as an insurance policy to prevent another 9/11-style attack?”
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“Our combat role ended back in 2014. Since then we’ve really been focusing on the counterterrorism mission, which does involve backstopping the Afghans by assisting and advising. But it’s not as if we’re going at it hand in hand with the Taliban.
But remember also that if the Taliban came back to power, you’ll see terrorists from all over the world — not just al Qaeda — you’ll see a convergence of extremists and terrorists back in Afghanistan. It’s likely to be a worse terrorist safe haven than it was before 9/11.”
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“We are obviously much more equipped to prevent that 9/11-style attack from happening on US soil, no doubt. The argument that I’m making is that if we withdraw to zero, the Taliban comes back, and terrorist groups and extremists pour back into Afghanistan.
That gives the Taliban a dangerous narrative to propagate, which is they were able to kick out the US and its NATO partners. “We succeeded,” they could say. That is the real danger, that we lose to terrorists and extremists and we provide an opportunity for them to regather strength.
And yes, you’re right, we do have the ability to stop terrorism much more than we did 20 years ago at our border. But it’s still a high cost for us to pay when we could continue to support partners that we’ve been supporting for 20 years. There’s no indication the Taliban feels pressure to break with al-Qaeda. Even the UN has said the Taliban has not changed its relationship with al-Qaeda.”
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“we’re down to 2,500 troops. We had 100,000 troops in Afghanistan at one point. We really have right-sized our engagement there. We’re not looking for quick, easy solutions. We’re trying to manage threats and being able to manage the threat at roughly $5 billion a year, that seems like a good investment from a national security perspective.”
“The issue is the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which is slated to bring up to 55 billion cubic meters a year of natural gas from Russia to Germany and is within a few months of completion. A bipartisan coalition in Congress aims to thwart what it views as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s drive to acquire political leverage over Europe by hooking it on Russian gas. Now, lawmakers are pressuring the Biden administration to implement the sanctions they already passed.”
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“Biden himself has said that the pipeline is “a bad deal for Europe” but is reportedly reluctant to move forward with sanctions that would affect a critical ally. In the face of Congressional demands for maximal action that will kill the pipeline — an outcome that may not even be possible — senior aides are searching for a measure that would get Congress off the boil without causing a breach with Berlin.
If no middle position can be found, and the administration capitulates to Congress, one senior Berlin official worries, the result may be “a major portion of the CDU/CSU [the allied Christian Democrats and Bavarian Christian Social Union] turning against the U.S.” Germany’s center-right coalition has held the chancellery for all but 20 of the postwar German republic’s 72 years in existence. Such a breach with what has arguably been the most consistently pro-American party in Europe, the official adds, “hasn’t happened in the history of this republic.” The insult to Chancellor Angela Merkel, whom Trump singled out for particularly offensive treatment and who is now coming to the end of her 16-year tenure, would be unforgettable.”
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“Russia may richly deserve the punitive treatment, but whatever damage a new round of sanctions implementation will inflict on Russia will be relatively minor compared to the harm to the U.S.-German bilateral relationship at a genuinely critical moment. Washington is looking to Europe — with Germany in the lead — to craft complementary policies to manage an emboldened China. On issues like setting standards and regulating the cyber world, only a U.S.-European effort could block Chinese ambitions. Washington also hopes Germany and its EU partners will help stop Chinese efforts to control a range of international agencies and provide a united front on Chinese human rights abuses. Breathing new life into NATO, revitalizing the Iran nuclear deal and, ironically, managing Vladimir Putin are other areas where German support will be essential.”
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“Congress is so determined to whack Russia that it is threatening to undermine the very transatlantic alliances that are essential for countering Russia over the long-term. But that is the result of Capitol Hill’s trouble with setting priorities and an ingrained bad habit — specifically, the habit of slapping on sanctions whenever it doesn’t like something. American legislators appear to have forgotten that so-called “secondary” or “extraterritorial” sanctions, which affect not only countries that have done things that are wrong (Russia invading and annexing Crimea) but also countries that have done things within their rights (doing business with Russia), are considered by the rest of the world to be a violation of international law.”
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“the case that sanctions advocates make is questionable at best. The notion that Putin will ensnare Europe in an energy stranglehold is far-fetched. Europe has been diversifying its energy sources for decades and now receives less than 40 percent of its natural gas from Russia, down from 80 percent in 1990. There is also little evidence that Germany’s substantial Russian gas imports over decades have affected Germany policies toward Russia. Nothing stopped Chancellor Angela Merkel from taking the lead in criticizing Moscow for the poisoning of Navalny, who was flown to Berlin, where he recuperated. (Trump questioned whether the Russian government was behind the poisoning.) Nor can Germany be accused of weakness when it comes to the sanctions related to Russia’s annexation of Crimea or occupation of eastern Ukraine.
In recent years, German natural gas consumption has fluctuated in a small band, and while it may grow as nuclear energy and coal are phased out, that will be offset to a significant degree by the rapid growth in renewable energy. Germany is a global leader in the field with renewables comprising 18 percent of total energy consumption and powering more than 45 percent of electricity generation. Moreover, a completed Nord Stream 2 would likely not mean substantially greater exports of Russian gas to Europe. It would just mean that less gas comes to Europe in pipelines that transit Ukraine, Belarus and Poland. (Concern about diminished gas transit fees have led Ukraine and Poland to be among the vociferous lobbyists for killing Nord Stream 2.)
Against this backdrop and with ample historical experience, the Germans plausibly argue that they will not be in the thrall of the Kremlin. The key dependence, they argue, will run in the other direction, with an economically ramshackle Russia urgently needing euro payments for its gas, a point endorsed by experts such as Eugene Rumer, the former top U.S. intelligence community Russia watcher.
There are ways to achieve a solution with Germany that will avoid a train wreck. Many German politicians — including Greens who hate to see more fossil fuels flowing into the country and policymakers who hate having any business with Russia — think the pipeline was a dumb idea from the start, but relations with the Trump administration were too toxic to sort things out, and the project is now too close to completion to abandon. There is ample room for negotiation.
Former German Ambassador to the U.S. Wolfgang Ischinger has suggested that Germany make the flow of gas conditional on improvements in Russian behavior. Responding to the argument that Russia will divert gas that now transits Ukraine to Nord Stream 2 and starve that country of much-needed transit fees, Steven Pifer, who served as U.S. envoy to Ukraine, argues for insisting on a Russian guarantee that it will continue pumping at least 40 billion cubic meters of gas through Ukraine, as it is now doing, beyond 2024, when the current deal runs out. No doubt there are other possible approaches as well.
What there is no substitute for in global politics is a strengthened transatlantic alliance — historically the most important for American statecraft — and that is something that won’t happen if the strongest country in Europe, Germany, feels dissed.”
“Russian President Vladimir Putin likely directed an effort by Moscow to try to swing the 2020 U.S. presidential election to Donald Trump, according to an American intelligence report released on Tuesday that linked the Kremlin and allies of the former president.”
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“The report also punctured a counter-narrative pushed by Trump’s allies that China was interfering on Biden’s behalf, concluding that Beijing “did not deploy interference efforts.”
“China sought stability in its relationship with the United States and did not view either election outcome as being advantageous enough for China to risk blowback if caught,” the report said.
U.S. officials said they also saw efforts by Cuba, Venezuela and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah to influence the election, although “in general, we assess that they were smaller in scale than those conducted by Russia and Iran.”
The Russian, Chinese and Cuban Embassies in Washington did not immediately return messages seeking comment. The Iranian mission to the United Nations and the Venezuelan Ministry of Information also did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Moscow, Beijing and Tehran routinely deny allegations of cyberespionage and election interference.
The report assessed that Russian leaders “preferred that former President Trump win re-election despite perceiving some of his administration’s policies as anti-Russia,” with its authors adding, “We have high confidence in this assessment.””
“Administration officials have urged patience as they review the dysfunctional system under which migrants are currently processed at the border, and as they seek to dismantle former President Donald Trump’s complex web of policies that put asylum and other humanitarian protections out of reach for most people. For now, that means that the vast majority of migrants are still being turned away.
Though the White House has declined so far to call it a “crisis,” the situation is increasingly dire: As of Wednesday, more than 3,700 children were reportedly being detained in Customs and Border Protection (CBP) temporary holding facilities designed for adults for longer than legally permitted — a record high. These are the same facilities that generated widespread outrage under the Trump administration, where children slept with nothing but mylar blankets to keep them warm at night on concrete floors.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Saturday that a CBP facility is “no place for a child,” but that border agents are “working around the clock in difficult circumstances to take care of children temporarily in our care.”
CBP officials are struggling to quickly transfer them to state-licensed shelters for migrant children, which have had to drastically slash their capacity amid the pandemic, and where beds are now full. That has forced the administration to reopen temporary tent facilities in Carrizo Springs, Texas, which are costly and not subject to the same level of oversight as permanent shelters.
On Saturday, the administration also announced that the Federal Emergency Management Agency would help “receive, shelter and transfer” unaccompanied children over the next 90 days. The agency is now working to expand the capacity of shelters designed to administer care to children.
If this sounds familiar, it’s because the same crisis has been playing out cyclically since at least 2014, when the US saw a dramatic shift in the kinds of migrants who were arriving at the southern border, from primarily single-adult Mexicans to families and children from Central America’s “Northern Triangle”: Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador.
In the years since, the federal government has failed to adapt to ensure that children and families are treated humanely. That burden is now on Biden.”
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“While most migrants are still being turned away at the border, the Biden administration began accepting unaccompanied children in February in a reversal of Trump-era policy. Most of them have been stranded in Mexico for a year under that policy, despite their right to seek protection under federal law, and are now seeking to reunify with family in the US.
Since 2014, the number of unaccompanied children arriving at the southern border has remained above 40,000 annually, peaking at more than 72,000 in 2019 under Trump.”
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“The administration also announced Wednesday that, in an effort to reduce the pressure on resources at the border, it is restarting the Central American Minors program, which allows children in danger to apply to come to the US from their home countries instead of having to come to the US-Mexico border to do so. Trump had ended the program after taking office, leaving around 3,000 children stranded who had already been approved for travel.”
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“Biden has kept in place a Trump-era policy that has allowed the US to expel nearly all migrants arriving on the southern border with no due process on the grounds of curbing the spread of Covid-19.”
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“Biden has created narrow exceptions to the policy for unaccompanied children and asylum seekers who were sent back to Mexico to await their day in court in the US under the Trump administration’s Migrant Protection Protocols. Last month, Mexico also stopped accepting some families with children under the age of 12 due to a change in its laws concerning the detention of children, so they have been released into the US instead.
But the vast majority of migrants still can’t enter the US under the policy.”
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“the Biden administration’s message to migrants is, “The border is not open,” and “Do not come in an irregular fashion.” But there is hope among migrant communities in Mexico that the new administration will eventually offer them protection given that Biden has sought to pursue more immigrant-friendly policies than his predecessor.”
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“Smugglers have also been spreading misinformation about the Biden administration’s plans to process asylum seekers in an effort to profit from it.”
“The starting point of any conversation about U.S. policy toward Cuba needs to be a piece of unfinished business from the previous administration: the still-unfolding mystery of how 26 American diplomats were injured in Havana in 2016 and 2017.
The exact origins of the injuries remain uncertain, but the known and emerging evidence suggests the Cuban regime is guilty, if not by commission then at least by omission, of injuring U.S. personnel. This episode represents a likely direct attack on one country’s citizens by another, and there has yet to be a full accounting of who is responsible and how it all happened, or a resolution. If the Biden administration is tempted to engage anew with Havana, it must first hold the Cuban government to account for what these American diplomats endured.”
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“Cuba consistently denied involvement. Instead, the regime has peddled the theory that the cause was mass psychogenic illness—aka. mass hysteria—among America’s diplomatic personnel. Conveniently, this theory absolves Cuba of blame, shifting it instead to the victims. Yet the theory doesn’t hold up to scrutiny now, and never did.”
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“Accountability for the injuries of these 26 Americans must begin where the attacks started, in Havana.”
“since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the reason that brought forth US global supremacy has ceased to exist. There was an original argument for the United States shouldering the immense burdens of global military dominance: Without it, totalitarian powers would conquer much of the Earth. That would be terrible for the world, the thinking went, and it could be bad for the United States.
The problem, though, is the pursuit of military dominance since then has created a lot of enemies of the US that didn’t need to be enemies of the US. We’ve engaged in bad behavior ourselves and stimulated it in others.
I worry that — in a world where the foremost threats to the American people are pandemic disease and climate change — America will continue to define its biggest threats in military terms, even if they aren’t.”
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“Since 1991, I think almost everybody has lost out, aside from the major defense firms and some ruling elites. America’s strategy has been incredibly destructive for people throughout the greater Middle East, and of course, the Iraq War resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of civilians.
And I don’t think the American people have won out, either. I think that we have gotten less safe and more fearful as a society as a result of constantly being told by leaders of both parties that the whole world is out to kill us and that that’s why we’ve got to go to war to kill them first.
Look, the argument that US military power contributed to world order was very real. The Bretton Woods system played an important role in stabilizing global capitalism. But since the 1970s, and especially the 1990s, I think it’s hard to argue that US military dominance somehow underpins everything else.
It’s very difficult to see how applying sanctions on dozens of countries and waging continual warfare in the greater Middle East somehow serves the general interest of capitalism. Maybe it serves the interests of particular firms, but not the system of capitalism.”
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“What I’m opposed to, first and foremost, is military dominance as an end in itself. That’s what I think it has become in our own time, and I don’t think it began that way. That doesn’t prohibit the US from being a robust power: It’s going to be a great power and it’s going to have a strong military. We should absolutely be able to defend ourselves. I’m not even closing the door on things like humanitarian intervention, either.
What we have to ask, though, is if the US has used all this power wisely and judiciously. It’s clear that we haven’t, and it’s making all of us in America and around the world less safe. Just think of this: Roughly 80 percent of all US military interventions have occurred after 1991. Can we really say the millions at home and abroad have had their lives improved by that? I don’t think so.”
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“I’d lead a systematic policy of disentangling the US from regions where its interests are either not vital, as in the Middle East, or not really imperiled, like Europe. I absolutely believe in the capacity of Europeans to manage their own affairs. The United States does not need to be the protector of Europe.”
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“we have to be cautious in observing how China continues to rise and how it behaves. It has not had a record of territorial conquest with anything like the record of past US adversaries, like the Axis powers or the Soviet Union. That’s a good thing, though you wouldn’t know it from all the cries about China’s desire to dominate the world emanating from Washington, DC.
A President Wertheim — and please let your readers know I’m rolling my eyes as I say that — would recognize the US has an opportunity to cautiously retrench its position militarily in certain regions as it ramps up cooperation on the issues that really matter. I’d encourage allies and partners in the region to step up to counterbalance China. We still have time to allow that process to happen, and that’d be a good thing since it takes two great powers to make a great-power war.”
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“What I am fearful of right now is that it’s almost impossible for many people in the foreign policy community to envision circumstances in which the United States could ever pull back from a region. I worry about the United States putting itself on the front lines of any potential conflict, which could mean a great-power war. We should avoid being in that situation in the first place if we possibly can.”
“Several past presidential administrations have relied on two authorizations for the use of military force — known as AUMFs — to carry out military operations from Iraq to Afghanistan to Somalia to Syria. The 2001 version greenlit the fight against al-Qaeda in Afghanistan after 9/11, and the 2002 iteration gave Bush Congress’s blessing to invade Iraq — a measure then-Senator Biden voted for.
Since then, Republican and Democratic administrations have broadly interpreted those authorizations as giving the US permission to, among other things, hunt down terrorists around the world, including assassinating Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani in Iraq. However, presidents still said they still held the ultimate authority to wield the military as needed in their role as commander in chief.
Concerned about the ever-widening use of force based on these authorizations, lawmakers from both parties have for years wanted to repeal the current AUMFs and replace them with updated and more limited versions, but rarely received enough congressional or White House support.”
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“Now Biden, according to his team, agrees the AUMFs behind decades of war should go.
“We are committed to working with Congress to ensure that the authorizations for the use of military force currently on the books are replaced with a narrow and specific framework that will ensure we can protect Americans from terrorist threats while ending the forever wars,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a Friday statement to Politico later posted to Twitter.”
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“Experts and activists cite two main concerns about what comes next after the White House’s announcement.
First, it’s unclear that a new authorization will actually limit what Biden might want the military to do in the region.
If a new AUMF “is truly narrowly crafted and contains a sunset clause, then it could be a really important step in the right direction,” said Oona Hathaway, a professor of international law at Yale Law School. “But if it simply formalizes the forever war by creating a set of rules for using force in the Middle East in perpetuity, it’s not clear that’s an improvement.”
The new measure, then, must be written in a way that truly limits the president’s ability to interpret the law expansively.”
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“Second, as mentioned above, Biden didn’t cite previous AUMFs for his Syria strike. He leaned on his Article II powers in the Constitution, which names the president as the commander in chief, thereby giving him ultimate authority over all military matters.
“I directed this military action consistent with my responsibility to protect United States citizens both at home and abroad and in furtherance of United States national security and foreign policy interests, pursuant to my constitutional authority to conduct United States foreign relations and as Commander in Chief and Chief Executive,” he wrote to congressional leaders in a letter last week.
This means a more specific, limited AUMF might not necessarily lead Biden to always seek Congress’s approval for a military attack. He might still feel legally justified in launching an operation if he feels such a move is needed.
The White House’s announcement, therefore, hasn’t ended a roiling debate about war powers. If anything, Biden’s stance has kicked it into overdrive.”