#these were such easy foreign policy wins | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mariacallous · 20 days

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All wars have simple strategic storylines. In the U.S. Civil War, there was the Union’s Anaconda Plan to strangle the Confederacy and later the March to the Sea to slice what was left in two. In World War II, U.S. strategy centered on “Europe first,” as well as the principle of unconditional surrender by Germany and Japan. During the Vietnam War, the United States’ guiding mantra was “search and destroy.” In Iraq, the phrase was “clear, hold, build.”

In some cases—such as World War II—strategic shorthand paved the way to victory. In others, such as Vietnam, it immortalized epic blunders. But in every case, these strategic bumper stickers served a purpose. They told audiences—both domestic and foreign—what the basic tenets of the game plan were for winning the war, especially as it dragged on. And it’s precisely this kind of easy-to-communicate plan that Ukraine has been missing for the past year. Two and half years into the war, Kyiv desperately needs its own tagline. It now has the chance to get one.

During the first year of the war, Ukraine was a straightforward protagonist. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was an unlikely hero, but once Russia attacked, he became a war leader straight out of central casting. His famous reply when the United States offered to evacuate him from Kyiv—“I need ammunition, not a ride”—could not have been better crafted for the moment if a Hollywood scriptwriter had written it.

But as important as the messaging, Ukraine also had a clear—if simple—theory for how it would win the war. First, it stopped the Russian offensive in Kyiv. Next it broke Russian forces around Kharkiv and retook Kherson. Finally, as Western-made arms poured into the country, a final counteroffensive in the spring of 2023 would at the very least push Russia back closer to its borders, if not finish the war entirely.

Unfortunately for Ukraine, the latter step never materialized, not least because months of Western hesitation to deliver critical weapons such as tanks and aircraft gave Russia the time it needed to complete extensive fortifications along the front. When the 2023 counteroffensive petered out, Kyiv lost more than troops and equipment. It also lost a compelling argument for how it intends to win.

The lack of a convincing narrative was more than a public relations challenge for Kyiv; it also jeopardized future Western military aid. Western observers increasingly saw Ukraine as locked in a protracted war of attrition against a bigger and more powerful Russia—which also happened to be the Kremlin’s new storyline for the war, after its first storyline (Kyiv’s quick collapse and the installation of a Russian satrap) had been exposed as delusional. This was a war that Ukraine likely could not win, the West now believed. That narrative, in turn, fed a growing skepticism in Washington and other Western capitals about whether military aid to Ukraine was still a good investment. At best, Ukraine could point to the idea that Western weapons and ammunition prevented the loss of even more land—hardly a glowing sales pitch for securing further aid.

Arguably, the accusation that the Russia-Ukraine war was stalemated was never entirely accurate. While much of the Western media attention focused on the stagnant front lines, Ukraine notched a series of less headline-grabbing but arguably equally important achievements, including pushing Russia’s once vaunted Black Sea fleet out of its Crimean ports and the western Black Sea—a significant feat for country without a navy. Moreover, the lack of Ukrainian military progress was at least partially due to monthslong holdups in U.S. and European aid deliveries, as well as strict red lines limiting the use of any Western weapon to attack airfields, bases, and other military assets on Russian territory.

Such holdups, some of which continue today, meant that Ukraine risked becoming mired in a sort of strategic quicksand. To get more military aid, it needed to prove that it had a chance of winning by demonstrating significant battlefield results—but it needed to do so without violating strict limitations on the use of U.S. and other Western weaponry. At the same time, significant battlefield victories, especially against a Russian military that was learning and rearming, required ever more substantial injections of Western military aid and ever more audacious tactics. Ukraine was caught in a vicious chicken-and-egg dilemma that was leading nowhere good.

More subtly, but no less important, there were domestic consequences for not having a strategic narrative, particularly in terms of public morale. When I was in Ukraine in August, I could see exhaustion in everyone’s faces, from officials in the government to think tank researchers to people on the street. Perhaps this is why more Ukrainians have become open to a negotiated end to the war, albeit not on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s terms. While practically every one of the dozens of Ukrainians whom I interviewed—at different levels of seniority, both inside and outside of government—recognized the need for victory and the existential stakes at hand, few were able to articulate just how Ukraine would come out victorious. And particularly for the younger and more junior interlocutors, that was a source of both frustration and resentment.

In this respect, the Kursk counteroffensive arrived not a moment too soon. For the first time, Ukrainian forces pushed into Russia, seizing more than 1,200 square kilometers (about 460 square miles) of territory—somewhat more than land than Russia seized in Ukraine in all of 2024—and capturing several hundred Russian prisoners in the process.

While the counteroffensive came as a surprise to many—including officials in the U.S. Defense Department—the push into Kursk makes perfect sense. Ukraine, after all, needed to do something big. It needed to show that while the Russian military may be vast, it is still uneven and, in places, brittle. Ukraine also proved that, despite Western and particularly U.S. hand-wringing about the threats of nuclear escalation that have characterized the Kremlin’s messaging on the war from the start, Putin is not as trigger-happy with his nuclear arsenal as the messaging implies, for a host of reasons. So these threats should not be a reason for the United States to place strict limits on Ukraine’s conventional military operations.

What Ukraine needed, in other words, was to do something splashy and show—once again—that it can win.

At the same time, Ukraine needed to give its own population some good news after years of destruction and bloodshed. As one Ukrainian interlocutor told me, Ukrainians have not felt as much optimism since the country’s lightning offensive to recapture the areas east of Kharkiv in late 2022. The Kursk offensive offers Ukrainians what they needed—a strategic reset.

But while the Kursk offensive is a first step, Ukraine will need to offer more if it wants to maintain the momentum that it now enjoys. Perhaps most importantly, it needs to find a new strategic storyline. Ukrainian leaders need to convince both their constituencies at home and backers abroad that they have a plan to win the war. Indeed, Zelensky has promised to present such a plan to U.S. President Joe Biden and his two potential successors this month.

Inferring from Ukraine’s actions, the country’s new, if still unstated, strategic tagline seems to have three relatively well-defined parts: survive, strike, and seize. The first—survive—focuses on withstanding Russia’s punishing assaults against Ukrainian energy infrastructure and halting Russia’s slowly advancing offensive in the Donbas. The second—strike—seems to revolve around hitting military and industrial targets deeper inside Russia, not only in order to wear down Russian military capabilities, but also to increase the economic and political costs of the war for the Putin regime.

The third and final part—seize—is where Kursk fits in. This action emphasizes capturing Russian territory along the border, presumably both as a buffer to protect Ukrainian territory from Russian aggression and as a potential bargaining chip further down the road.

Ultimately, all three elements are necessary but likely not sufficient in constructing a new theory of victory for Ukraine. While the survive, strike, and seize elements of Kyiv’s nascent strategy will undoubtedly ramp up the pressure on Moscow, they probably will not, by themselves, allow Ukraine to retake its lost territory. Indeed, Russia has continued to advance in eastern Ukraine, despite the Ukrainian offensive in Kursk. Nor will future strikes and seizures dramatically ramp up domestic pressure on Putin to the point where he will end the conflict. Most Ukrainian analysts whom I interviewed admitted that most Russians—particularly those who actually have influence in Putin’s autocracy—simply don’t care enough about Kursk to force Putin to abandon his war aims.

Thus, the question that remains is what the next and final element of Ukraine’s theory of victory might be, if it exists at all. Essentially, Ukraine has two basic choices—supplant or settle.

In the former, it can hope that the increasing pressure on the Putin regime will ultimately cause it to collapse under its own weight. As Wagner Group boss Yevgeny Prigozhin’s ill-fated coup attempt demonstrated last summer, all authoritarian regimes—including Russia’s—appear stable until the moment they are not. But while this theory is plausible, betting on Putin’s collapse is by no means assured, and even so, it is not necessarily guaranteed that whoever comes next would end the war.

Alternatively, Ukraine can push to settle the conflict. By increasing the pain to the Putin regime through the Kursk offensive and continued deep strikes against Russian infrastructure, Ukraine can pressure Putin to change his cost-benefit calculus—and back off from his maximalist demands. Kyiv could then trade captured Russian territory for Russian-captured Ukrainian territory.

In some ways, this approach seems to be the more straightforward one. Ukraine has already inflicted significant costs on Russia and can almost certainly ramp that up, especially if the West lifts restrictions on the use of its weaponry and other red lines. With Kursk, Ukraine has also already demonstrated that it can take Russian territory. The question is whether it can take enough territory—and just as importantly, hold it—to achieve sufficient leverage to reclaim all of Russia-occupied Ukraine.

At the end of the day, it’s up to Ukraine to choose whether the tagline for its war is survive-strike-seize-supplant or survive-strike-seize-settle. Or perhaps it is something else entirely. Ukrainians, after all, are the ones bearing the brunt of this war. And then, it will be incumbent on Ukraine’s supporters in the United States and around the world to give it the resources and policy room to make that storyline a reality.

And the good news is that the basic hook for the plotline—a modern-day David fights off Goliath in a battle between liberal democracies and a coalescing bloc of revanchist autocracies—remains as compelling as ever.

But with U.S. elections on the horizon and growing challenges around the world competing for scarce attention and resources, Ukraine’s leadership owes its partners and allies—as well as its own public—its theory of how it will win. If not for the West’s sake, then certainly for the sake of the Ukrainians themselves.

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centrally-unplanned · 10 months

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For the VOR thing: Do Bismarck and Hitler

Did Hitler, quite well I think! As for Bismark - he is overrated, though not crazily so. I think the best indicator for Bismark's VOR is what happened when other actors changed; Wilhelm II ascends and then he is unable to fight the new change, turns out society isn't behind him and Wilhelm has plenty of allies. It shows that he was a leader of a more fragile consensus then he knew.

He is of course a man of great ambition that cannot be replicated - he put in the work for the German Unification like no one else would have, moving immediately for it at every opportunity. But it was an easy target - the vast majority of Germans wanted it. Even the rulers of the other German states could see the writing on the wall, and were fine with the outcome - it was primarily France & Austria-Hungary pushing back that was stopping it. And Germany bested them because the Prussian Military Command had revolutionized mobilization, officer training, and operational planning, things he had little to do with. Its easy to look impressive in foreign policy when you have the biggest stick.

And when you look beyond the unification to his domestic policy, its pretty mixed. Kulturekampf is a failure, he constantly isolates the conservative faction, and fails to anticipate economic challenges. And the foreign policy success are...okay here is a quote from wiki:

A net result of the strength and military prestige of Germany combined with situations created or manipulated by her chancellor was that in the eighties Bismarck became the umpire in all serious diplomatic disputes, whether they concerned Europe, Africa, or Asia. Questions such as the boundaries of Balkan states, the treatment of Armenians in the Turkish empire and of Jews in Rumania, the financial affairs of Egypt, Russian expansion in the Middle East, the war between France and China, and the partition of Africa had to be referred to Berlin; Bismarck held the key to all these problems.[69]

Its a quote praising him, and I want you to ask: wtf does any of this have to do with Germany? How does Bismark having a say in how Egypt settled its debts with Britian over the Suez Canal benefit them? Of course Bismark was able to play diplomat on these issues, Germany was powerful and didn't have a huge vested interest, why not let them host a conference in Berlin. He had wins, don't get me wrong, just that post-1871 the stakes for Germany were often small, and honestly he liked to meddle.

This is all framed negatively because I know his reputation - most people view him as one of the most accomplished statements of all time. And he is, just not as high as people put him - he has easy targets and pliable politics. Without him, tons of individual things along the way would look different. But you likely would have had a unified Germany, economically strong, spiking fears in Russia & France. With enough years Bismark's legacy fades. B+

#vor debate

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tamgdenettebya · 2 years

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The war will continue, Zelensky and his instigators in the West are pursuing their own goals. All our sources in expert circles confirm our insider layout that many Western partners have their own interests in the Ukrainian crisis. And they believe win-win.

Let's try to break them down:

1. The main goal is the collapse of Russia

2. The secondary goal is the weakening of Russia

3. In the event of Russia's victory in the war, cutting Ukraine according to the Yugoslav scenario, where the Poles will grab western Ukraine painlessly for themselves, perhaps other neighbors will tear something off on the sly for themselves, part of the country will be a "stub of Ukraine", the rest will be taken by the Russian Federation.

4. The collapse or economic, industrial and financial weakening of the EU, that is, Germany and France, as the main threat to the dominance of the dollar.

5. Strengthening American / British military concerns.

6. Super profits of American and British gas, fuel and energy transnational corporations.

In any of the options, the Poles (British), as the main beneficiaries of the game to the last in the Ukrainian crisis, leave with the maximum profit. Moreover, now they are making a great profit on it, having "cut" the entire Ukrainian business environment, luring them to them, they have also become a logistics hub, harnessed all their structures to work in the Ukrainian crisis and accumulate as a "hub" all the money allocated for Ukraine. Also a political plus, the EU stopped kicking Poland for its policies, and the Polish government was able to shift the attention of the internal society to the external case.

Also, Poland has become an energy and fuel hub in Europe and now holds Germany for “one place” (the explosions of SP-1,2 and the Druzhba oil pipeline were not just profitable for Warsaw). The purpose of the Poles, the collapse of the EU and the creation of their union, led by Warsaw. It is also important for the arms lobby to continue the Ukrainian crisis, as billions of orders are pouring into them. Arms Race 2.0 has begun. Some kind of hybrid cold war. Western politicians benefit from the Ukrainian crisis, since all the hardships within their countries can be attributed to it. Politicians do not care about the lives of ordinary people, they pursue their personal selfish goals.

The biggest grief in this game is assigned to the Ukrainian people, who became a hostage to the game of big players. It is easy to blame Russia, but if you look at the causal relationship, then in fact - this scenario was a “trap” for the Kremlin, and with every step the scriptwriters lured the Russians into this game. Sooner or later this case would come true. According to our data, it was prepared for 2024, but Putin decided to get involved in the game before he partially confused the cards at the "gaming table", but took the image of a historical blow to himself, becoming a kind of "aggressor".

the war will bring more grief and devastation, and Ukraine will roll back even more in development for the coming decades. Even if the first option succeeds and the Russian Federation loses and collapses, then Ukraine will be patted on the shoulder and they will say the phrase: “the Moor has done his job, the Moor can leave.” Everything in the country will be owned by TNCs (transnational corporations), the whole country will be in loans and debts (on the needle). In short, economic slavery, power will be established by foreign corporations, as, for example, in Iraq and African countries, and we will become another resource base where people will live on $1 per day).

In any of the options, Ukraine loses. There are no good scenarios for this nation anymore.

I must say thanks to Zelensky, who now gets everything he dreamed of (world fame, photos in glossy magazines, etc.), but he also understands that he is a "pawn in the game" from which there is no way out for him.

#ukraine #war #kiev #zelensky #russia #poland #usa #europe #my opinion

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dialogue-queered · 1 year

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Comment: Useful reflections on the PRC.

10 Sept 2023

Latika Bourke

Extract1: One of Europe’s top business figures in China says there is no hope that anyone can influence President Xi Jinping to retreat from his aggressive foreign policy.

Joerg Wuttke, the president emeritus of the EU Chamber in China, is in Australia to address the Asia Society on Monday about the economic trajectory of the world’s second-largest economy.

Extract 2: He said he did not believe this would lead to conflict over democratically ruled Taiwan, which China claims as its own and Xi has threatened to take control of, with military force if necessary.

Wuttke said that although Xi had to service his domestic crowd with patriotic statements, he would assess the risks and costs of starting a war as too great. Xi was “not a man in a hurry when it comes to Taiwan”.

“I really don’t see any military conflict in Taiwan, everything I hear here is too rational,” Wuttke said in an interview over Zoom from Beijing, where he has been based since 1997.

“He’s a man who doesn’t gamble. Unlike Putin, he’s a man that wants security and controllable security – and a war in Taiwan is anything but.

“I guess that he will not make the mistake of going down the road that has unintended consequences as he has seen from the US in Iraq and Afghanistan: it is easy to start a war and it’s very difficult to end it and win it.”

Extract 3: China’s economic coercion and the supply chain gaps exposed by the pandemic have led to Western countries adopting policies of de-risking and diversification, setting up potential friction between businesses that have profited from their Chinese operations and governments that want to lessen their public’s dependence on authoritarian states.

Earlier this year, EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Europe would be seeking to “de-risk” from China. This language has gone on to be adopted by the White House, the G7, Wuttke’s native Germany, Japan and, most recently, Australia’s Treasurer Jim Chalmers.

Extract 4: “Now what keeps the party in office is utter, 110 per cent control.”

Wuttke said China’s tactics were deliberate and that the economic weakness invited the question of how stable the country could be in the “enhanced Xi Jinping echo chamber” that prevails in Beijing.

#china #de-risking #the age #taiwan #2023 #auspol

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ifmfincoachinfo · 2 years

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The Future of Mutual Funds - All that you need to know

India is rapidly seeing an escalating digital revolution. Whether it is internet penetration, data uptake or even the latest technology trends, India is applauded worldwide. All this started back in 2015 when the government of India initiated the Digital India Programme.

Later in 2016, demonetization was a big step in the digital era. All these events resulted in the growth of opportunities in the field of the mutual fund industry. Investors have also started to adopt mutual funds as their means of investment.

Mutual Fund Industry - How it got evolve?

Initially, many investors believed that investing in mutual funds was not suitable for them. However, a series of events changed the opinion of the people.

The announcement of demonetization by Narendra Modi, Donald Trump's win, an increase in oil prices and an asset base of 17 lakh were seen in 2016; all these events led to awareness in the mutual fund field in our country.

Also, the CAGR (Compounded Annual Growth Rate) was 18% which was a huge step in the evolvement of the mutual fund industry.

SIP- A facility offered by mutual funds to the investors

SIP is a big factor leading to rapid growth in the industry. Today, more than one crore of customers have active SIP, i.e. Systematic Investment Plans.

If mutual funds industry growth is to be considered, the Indian market is already booming. The most significant indication is the number of foreign-based management companies progressing into the Indian market.

If the latest data is to be considered, the MF industry's total AUM had risen 20 per cent to Rs 37.6 trillion in 2021-22. The industry added 31.6 million net new folios, taking the count to 129.5 million.

The systematic investment plan expanded to Rs 12,328 crore in FY22, with new SIP registrations at 26.6 million. Apparently, mutual funds in India are more likely to penetrate urban, semi-urban and rural areas. For this, some financial planners make the process easy by financial planning.

Opportunities in the mutual fund industry

Be it any industry, improvement is one rule that leads to positive change. In the mutual fund industry field, large-scale changes have been taking place, leading to evolution and innovation.

For example, new opportunities have evolved in asset management, which requires investments in different assets, including securities, stocks, bonds, and real estate, managed by a manager.

It also requires proper management firms, including front, middle and back office functions. The significant roles within the investment team include economists, research analysts, fund managers, dealers and traders.

Economists - Economists ensure the latest trends, future and its influence on international and domestic markets. The roles and responsibilities include preparing reports and market presentations on macroeconomic developments and sectoral shifts. As an Economist, you must prepare the team for the risks in the market. At the same time, macro and policy analysis, forecasting, modelling macro variables, and providing investment insights are the management team's responsibilities.

Analysts - This is another excellent opportunity in the field of the mutual fund industry. The analysts track your investment recommendations by observing the prices of assets from the day of purchase to how they perform over time. You can also opt for the profile of equity research analysts who carry out telephone calls with all the dealers and intermediates. These calls usually comprise suggestions for the customers while speaking with the organization's administration, retail deals, constraints and so on. Plus, visiting the organizations and carrying out meetings, gathering data, surveying monetary explanations, and evaluating the income and benefits of the organization.

Fund Managers - Another opportunity you can use in the mutual fund field is fund managers. As a fund manager, you must choose the best stocks, bonds, and financial market instruments and give the result to the investors by fulfilling the fund's objective. Later, fund managers search for the financials of publicly and privately traded companies. This is quite an interesting profile as it involves researching, collecting information, reading financial briefings and knowledge about global economic events.

If you are somebody who loves conducting research or has financial modelling skills, reporting skills, and mathematical proficiency, you can opt for fund managers as your career. Based on your research, a list of companies falls under the investment objective. Fund managers also prepare a portfolio and accompany sales and marketing professionals to various events for promotions. Other than this, all the decisions related to portfolio composition are made by fund managers.

Dealers/Traders- Dealers place the orders according to the instructions. Then there are sales and client relation teams that market the organization and promote their products and services. You also have the chance to be a part of the infrastructure team that keeps the entire organization moving. From IT to HR, the infrastructure team is vital for the motion of any company.

Takeaway

We all know that algorithms are one factor that is gaining popularity in earnings and economic news. This directly opens the door to short-term trading.

On top of that, several asset managers are using machine learning methods to process the data. This is the future of asset management. If talking about the critical roles at investment firms in future, there will be a need of

Investment decision maker

Investment Researcher

Private wealth manager

The technology firm will need

Data Scientist

Application Engineer

Investment Banker

Investment Officer

Investment researcher

Private Wealth Manager

The innovation team will need

Investment thinking and process innovator

Knowledge Engineer

Innovation Facilitator

A few factors may challenge growth, but change is guaranteed.

#ifm fincoach #ifmfincoach #mutual funds #mutualfunds #SIP #SIP sahi hai #mutual fund industry

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bllsbailey · 3 months

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The Federalist Makes a Strong Case for J.D. Vance As Trump's VP Pick

The Federalist has endorsed J.D. Vance (R-OH) as the ideal choice for former President Donald Trump's Vice President in the 2024 election.

They argue that Vance, a military veteran and U.S. Senator from Ohio, embodies the values of the working class and has a strong understanding of Trump's political vision. Vance's political acumen and alignment with Trump on key issues, such as foreign policy and border security, make him a strong candidate. They add that Vance being on the ticket would bolster Trump's support in crucial Rust Belt states, such as Michigan and Wisconsin.

The headline reads, "If Trump wants to win, he should run with J.D. Vance." Here is what part of the article written by Ned Ryun reads:

The Ohio Republican has proven himself time and time again as one of Trump’s strongest allies. He’s a ruthlessly effective messenger, especially on hostile networks, and would perform strongly against Kamala Harris in a debate. He’s stood up to the globalists who want America’s sons and daughters to fight other nations’ wars. He’s in lockstep with Trump on tariffs, trade, and economic policy. And he won’t surrender, as far too many Republicans have, on border security, illegal immigration, and protecting American workers. I’ve watched Vance closely since he was elected. He’s stayed true to what he believes, even when it meant fighting the establishment of his own party, and hasn’t allowed Washington to change him. To put it differently, he has a spine — a rare virtue in Washington. His political rise wasn’t easy either. When he announced his run for Senate, he faced long odds and a field of well-funded and well-known primary opponents. But Vance stood out, connected deeply with the voters, earned Trump’s endorsement, and won big. In the general election, Vance overcame the critics and an avalanche of cash from wealthy leftist donors to crush Democrat darling and former presidential candidate Tim Ryan, thanks in no small part to Vance’s discipline on the campaign trail and strong debate performances. Vance is battle-tested, brilliant, and has proven he has what it takes. He would excel as a messenger for Trump’s agenda in the most critical swing states. If, God forbid, something were to happen to Donald Trump, he is the only vice-presidential contender who would continue Trump’s legacy rather than returning the GOP to the dark days of old.

There are many pros to choosing Vance as VP, and although Trump has said he won't announce his vice presidential pick until the Republican National Convention, it seems like Vance, Gov. Doug Burgum (R-ND), and Dr. Ben Carson are atop the list of finalists. But then again, Trump could surprise everybody and choose someone who has not been mentioned at all as a VP option.

Although there are many pros, there are some cons for Vance, including leaving his Senate seat vacant and risking a Democrat winning that seat. There are also his negative comments about Trump in 2016, which the mainstream media could continue to hammer up until the November election. The reality is that many people opposed Trump as the GOP nominee back then, but things change. Several of those critics have come around, finding common ground on policies, and are on board for another four years of a Trump presidency.

Trump mentioned Vance's comments in April of 2022:

They appear to have cleared the air and are on good terms, especially since Vance is one of the front-runners to become VP.

Putting the cons aside, as Ned Ryun highlighted, Vance is battle-tested. He is "smart, effective, and a true believer in policy." At the end of the day, what matters is where they stand on policy and, more importantly, that they don't waver from their stance.

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newstfionline · 4 months

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Tuesday, May 14, 2024

Small, well-built Chinese EV called the Seagull poses a big threat to the US auto industry (AP) A tiny, low-priced electric car called the Seagull has American automakers and politicians trembling. The car, launched last year by Chinese automaker BYD, sells for around $12,000 in China, but drives well and is put together with craftsmanship that rivals U.S.-made electric vehicles that cost three times as much. A shorter-range version costs under $10,000. Tariffs on imported Chinese vehicles probably will keep the Seagull away from America’s shores for now, and it likely would sell for more than 12 grand if imported. But the rapid emergence of low-priced EVs from China could shake up the global auto industry in ways not seen since Japanese makers exploded on the scene during the oil crises of the 1970s. BYD, which stands for “Build Your Dreams,” could be a nightmare for the U.S. auto industry.

Mexico Prepares for a Potential Trump Win (NYT) They’re studying his interviews, bracing for mass deportations and preparing policy proposals to bring to the negotiating table. As Mexico heads toward its presidential election next month, government officials and campaign aides are also girding for a different vote: one in the United States that could return Donald Trump to the presidency. The last time Mr. Trump took office, his win surprised many of America’s allies, and his threat-filled diplomacy forced them to adapt on the go. Now, they have time to anticipate how Mr. Trump’s victory would transform relations that President Biden has tried to normalize—and they’re furiously preparing for an upheaval. For some, the memory of negotiating with Mr. Trump the last time he was in office, when he used extreme threats against Mexico, looms large. What it took to reach a deal with Mr. Trump’s team back then? “Time, patience, cold blood,” the former Mexican foreign minister Marcelo Ebrard said in an interview. “You can win, if you understand this. It’s not easy.”

Russian Forces Push Deeper Into Northern Ukraine (NYT) In the past three days, Russian troops, backed by fighter jets, artillery and lethal drones, have poured across Ukraine’s northeastern border and seized at least nine villages and settlements, and more square miles per day than at almost any other point in the war, save the very beginning. In some places, Ukrainian troops are retreating, and Ukrainian commanders are blaming each other for the defeats. Thousands of Ukrainian civilians are fleeing to Kharkiv, the nearest big city. As anxiety spreads, some hard questions loom: How far will this go? Is it just a momentary setback for the underdog Ukrainians? Or a turning point? Ukrainian soldiers, by all accounts, are exhausted. More than two years of trying to fight off a country with three times the population to draw from has left Ukraine so depleted and desperate for fresh troops that its lawmakers have voted to mobilize convicts, a controversial practice that Ukraine had ridiculed Russia for using in the first half of the war.

Russia is ramping up sabotage across Europe (Economist) The fire that broke out in the Diehl Metall factory in the Lichterfelde suburb of Berlin on May 3rd was not in itself suspicious. The facility, a metals plant, stored sulphuric acid and copper cyanide, two chemicals that can combine dangerously when ignited. Accidents happen. What raised eyebrows was the fact that Diehl’s parent company makes the iris-t air-defence system which Ukraine is using to parry Russian missiles. There is no evidence that this fire was an act of sabotage. If the idea is plausible it is because there is ample evidence that Russia’s covert war in Europe is intensifying. In April alone a clutch of alleged pro-Russian saboteurs were detained across the continent. Germany arrested two German-Russian dual nationals on suspicion of plotting attacks on American military facilities and other targets on behalf of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence agency. Poland arrested a man who was preparing to pass the GRU information on Rzeszow airport, the most important hub for military aid to Ukraine. Britain charged several men over an earlier arson attack in March on a Ukrainian-owned logistics firm in London whose Spanish depot was also targeted. The men are accused of aiding the Wagner Group, a mercenary group that has been active in Ukraine and is now under the GRU’s control. On May 8th Britain announced that in response to “malign activity” it was, among other steps, expelling Russia’s defence attaché, an “undeclared” GRU officer.

Georgia: Agents of foreign influence (Foreign Policy) The Georgian Parliament’s legal committee on Monday approved the third and final reading of a controversial foreign agents bill that has brought tens of thousands of Georgians to the streets in recent months to protest what they see as a Russian-style effort to chill free speech. Lawmakers took only 67 seconds to review and greenlight the legislation. Parliament is expected to pass the bill on Tuesday, and Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze has promised to back it. Opposition members, who have recently been denied access to Tbilisi’s main government building, did not attend Monday’s vote. Under the proposed legislation, civil society organizations and media outlets that receive more than 20 percent of their funding from abroad must register as “agents of foreign influence.” In April, the ruling Georgian Dream party introduced the bill, which is modeled after a Russian foreign agents law that President Vladimir Putin enacted in 2012 and has since used to crush dissent. Mass demonstrations have erupted in the capital in response to the proposed law, marking some of the largest rallies in Georgia since it declared independence from the Soviet Union in 1991.

India’s mammoth election is more than halfway done as millions begin voting in fourth round (AP) Millions of Indians across 96 constituencies began casting their ballots on Monday as the country’s gigantic, six-week-long election edges past its halfway mark. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is seeking a third straight term with an eye on winning a supermajority in Parliament. Monday’s polling in the fourth round of multi-phase national elections across nine states and one union territory will be pivotal for Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, as it includes some of its strongholds in states like Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. The staggered election will run until June 1 and nearly 970 million voters, more than 10% of the world’s population, will elect 543 members to the lower house of Parliament for five years. The votes are scheduled to be counted on June 4.

Malaysia’s appetite for oil and gas puts it on collision course with China (Washington Post) In the open sea off the coast of Malaysian Borneo, industrial rigs extract massive amounts of oil and gas that fuel the economy of Malaysia. Slightly beyond that, in waters Malaysia also considers its own, Chinese coast guard vessels and maritime militia boats maintain a near-constant presence, say Malaysian officials. For 10 years, their country has done little to contest them. But Malaysia is running out of oil and gas close to shore. Increasingly, it has to venture farther out to sea, raising the likelihood of direct confrontation with Chinese forces in the South China Sea. As tensions rise throughout the South China Sea, one of the world’s busiest and most contested bodies of water, energy demands are drawing Malaysia deeper into the fray and testing the country’s long-standing reluctance to antagonize China, according to interviews with more than two dozen government officials, diplomats, oil and gas executives and analysts in Malaysia.

More bodies found in Indonesia after flash floods killed dozens and submerged homes (AP) Rescuers recovered more bodies Monday after monsoon rains triggered flash floods on Indonesia’s Sumatra Island, bringing down torrents of cold lava and mud, leaving 41 people dead and another 17 missing. The heavy rains, along with a landslide of mud and cold lava from Mount Marapi, caused a river to breach its banks. The deluge tore through mountainside villages along four districts in West Sumatra province just before midnight Saturday. The floods swept away people and submerged nearly 200 houses and buildings.

Sleepy far-flung towns in the Philippines will host US forces returning to counter China threats (AP) The far-flung coastal town of Santa Ana in the northeastern tip of the Philippine mainland has long been known by tourists mostly for its beaches, waterfalls, fireflies and a few casinos. But that’s changing after the laid-back town of about 35,000 people, which still has no traffic light, became strategically important to America. The United States and the Philippines, which are longtime treaty allies, have identified Santa Ana in northern Cagayan province as one of nine mostly rural areas where rotating batches of American forces could encamp indefinitely and store their weapons and equipment on local military bases under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement. Thousands of U.S. forces withdrew from two huge Navy and Air Force bases in the Philippines in the early 1990s at the end of the Cold War, ending nearly a century of American military presence in the country. In recent years, Washington has been reinforcing an arc of military alliances in Asia to counter an increasingly assertive China, which it now regards as its greatest security challenge.

The flow of food and other aid into Gaza has almost entirely dried up over the past week, the U.N. says. (NYT) The flow of aid into Gaza has almost entirely dried up in the past week, according to the United Nations, at a time when humanitarian agencies say the enclave needs a drastic increase in the amount of food, medicine and other goods to tackle a looming famine. Since the start of the war, most aid for Gaza has entered through two border crossings in the southern end of the territory. Israel shut down one of those, Kerem Shalom, after a Hamas rocket attack nearby killed four Israeli soldiers on May 5. The next day, Israel’s military seized and closed the second, in Rafah, on the Egyptian border, as part of what it called a “limited operation” against Hamas, bringing the flow of aid to a near-total stop.

Christian presence quickly dwindling in Gaza after seven months of war (Baptist Press) At Easter, Gaza Baptist Church leader Shady Al-Najjar described those sheltered in the church’s remnants as “too tired to suffer,” living “very difficult” and “useless” days. Al-Najjar has since fled to Egypt, and the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have set up shop in what remains of the church compound damaged in the war, former church pastor Hanna Massad told Baptist Press May 8. Al-Najjar is among many Christians who are fleeing Gaza with a renewed vigilance, International Christian Concern (ICC) said as the Israel-Hamas War enters its eighth month, speculating whether any Christians would remain. ICC estimated 25 percent to half of the 900 to 1,000 Christians who lived in Gaza before the war have fled, and that an additional 25 percent are applying to leave.

Hospitals overflowing in besieged Sudanese city as final battle looms (Washington Post) Dozens of people were killed in fighting in the Sudanese town of El Fashir this weekend, a civil society group said Sunday, raising fears for more than 2.5 million civilians trapped there as paramilitary forces encircle the city—the last one in the region outside their control. “Today was one of toughest days we have ever witnessed … The attack was from three directions,” wrote a member of the city’s Emergency Response Room in a message to The Washington Post. “The fighting was inside the populated areas, all kinds of weapons were used.” At least 38 civilians were killed, 189 injured and “many houses” destroyed, he said. “The hospital is calling for blood donations, they say the numbers of wounded are over their capacity.” Abdo Musa Hassan, the medical director of El Fashir South Hospital, said on Sunday he was too busy to give a death toll. But he said the hospital was already overwhelmed and patients were being treated on the ground, in a tent or on balconies. Medical resupplies had been cut off two weeks ago after the RSF seized control of the Melit area, which links El Fashir to the rest of Sudan, he said.

#headlines #news

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beeseverywhen · 5 months

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The mistake here, and it is one which is particularly prevalent on the left, is to think that progress is entirely dependent on being able to spend lots of extra money. It is ahistorical to believe that you can’t be radical on a budget. William Gladstone led reforming Liberal governments in the 19th century. He was famous for being so parsimonious with the public finances that he was obsessed with “saving candle ends”. The Labour government of the 1960s implemented significant domestic change amid near-constant economic turmoil. Capital punishment was ended, homosexuality was decriminalised in England and Wales, theatre censorship was abolished, the laws on abortion and divorce were modernised. Being cash-strapped didn’t prevent the Labour government of the 1970s from legislating against sex discrimination and introducing statutory maternity leave.

Progress isn’t all about the state being able to open its wallet. The legacy of reforming governments is often not defined by how much money they spent, but by the enduring institutions they created and the social advances they embedded. Several of New Labour’s key reforms came at zero or trivial cost to the exchequer. A notable one was the establishment of the minimum wage. In advance of its creation, Tories attacked it as a recipe for mass unemployment. They now accept it as a fact of British life. The minimum wage has raised the incomes of millions of low-paid workers and been celebrated by some analysts as the most successful economic policy in a generation.

Another no-cost progressive cause implemented during Labour’s last period in government was the introduction of civil partnerships, the stepping stone to the legal recognition of same-sex marriage that followed. Of all the reforms of the New Labour years, banning smoking in enclosed public spaces was one of the greatest triumphs of no-cost progressivism. Fuggy pubs and fume-hazed restaurants are no more than a smelly memory. Deaths from heart disease and strokes have fallen dramatically since lighting up was banned in indoor venues. There’s a strong case that the ban has been the single biggest benefit to public health in my lifetime while saving the NHS the money that it would otherwise be spending on treating smoking-related diseases.

These examples suggest how a Starmer government can prove the naysayers wrong when they claim it will struggle to achieve anything. In its early period in office, there will be a need for quick wins to establish that Britain is under new and reforming management. Fortunately for Sir Keir and the rest of the shadow cabinet, they have plenty of opportunities to score. The House of Lords provides an easy way to demonstrate that Britain has a modernising government. The Blair government ejected the bulk of the hereditary peers from the claret-coloured benches of the Lords. The removal of the residual ones is long overdue. A Starmer government can get on with that swiftly, and putting it in the manifesto will quash any meaningful resistance from peers. There would be no cost to the taxpayer from telling the hereditaries that their time in the legislature is up. There would be a bit of a saving to the public purse because they’d no longer be claiming expenses.

It ought to be an early ambition for Sir Keir to strengthen relations with the European Union, and David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, suggests it will be. Closer ties with our neighbours will be popular within Labour’s ranks, and the reasoning will be understood by most voters, a large majority of whom now say they are full of Bregret. Given how abysmal the consequences of Boris Johnson’s Brexit deal have been, it should not be beyond the wit of a Labour government to agree more rational and less frictional trading arrangements with the EU. Mitigating some of the damage wreaked by Brexit should, over time, boost a Starmer government with a much-needed growth dividend.

It will very likely be a first-year priority for Labour to create Great British Energy, a new publicly owned clean power company. This will involve some set-up costs, but it will more than pay for itself if it is done right and catalyses the expansion of a profitable, job-creating, high-tech, future-facing industrial sector. The Blair government overrode Tory opposition to secure a popular goal in its early life by banning handguns. Soaring knife crime is a lethal stain on our society. It would be a quick win for a Starmer government, and one rectifying a Tory failure, to implement a comprehensive ban on the sale of zombie knives, machetes and other vicious bladed weapons.

There are many areas where valuable reforms require little or no additional public spending. These include modernising the school curriculum, using planning reform and the levers of the state to encourage house building, overhauling the regulation of water and other utilities, banning no-fault evictions and enhancing consumer protection. As a potential equivalent of the introduction of the minimum wage during the Blair years, Sir Keir’s circle points to Labour’s substantial package of measures to enhance the rights of workers and increase the responsibilities on employers to treat their staff properly. These include banning zero-hours contracts and ending the pernicious practice of “fire and rehire”. This may come with a cost to some exploitative companies, but will improve the conditions of many workers without involving a bill for the exchequer.

There’s no question that a Starmer government will be confronted with enormous challenges, but that doesn’t justify the excessive despondency of the miserabilist chorus. History shows that you don’t have to be a chequebook government to be a reforming government. Even when money is tight, Labour will have substantial opportunities to change lives in ways that matter a lot. They just have to be seized.

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dertaglichedan · 1 year

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Everyone Knows Why Joe Biden Used A Pseudonym: Corruption

Late last week, the House Oversight Committee asked the National Archives for unredacted communications involving three pseudonyms Joe Biden apparently used during his vice presidency: Robert Peters, Robin Ware, and JRB Ware.

That’s right, Biden used pseudonyms when he was vice president.

Among the documents committee Chairman James Comer is requesting from the National Archives is an email sent to a “Robert Peters” — that is, Biden — with the subject line “Friday Schedule Card,” which included an attachment that had details about a scheduled phone call between then-Vice President Biden and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in May 2016. The only person copied on the email was Hunter Biden.

Isn’t that interesting? Why would Biden use an alias to convey this information to his son? And why, if there was “an absolute wall” between Hunter’s foreign business schemes and his father’s duties as vice president (as Biden has repeatedly claimed), would he have told his son about a phone call with the Ukrainian president? Especially since at the time Hunter was sitting on the board of Burisma, the Ukrainian energy firm that had recently been under investigation.

You know why. The whole country knows why. It’s the same reason Biden had coffee and went to dinners with his son’s foreign business associates when he was vice president. It’s the same reason Hunter would call his father and put him on speakerphone during business meetings. It’s why the Bidens created a network of shell companies to receive tens of millions in payments from oligarchs in Russia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Romania, and China.

The reason is this: The Bidens are corrupt. And they’re corrupt in a straightforward, easy-to-understand way. As vice president, Joe Biden was a powerful man. He used that power to do things for wealthy foreign oligarchs who made him and his family rich. It’s not more complicated than that.

The Bidens didn’t even try very hard to hide it. In fact, that might be the most revealing aspect of all of this. Consider the timeline here. By the time Biden took that phone call with President Poroshenko in May 2016, he’d already strongarmed the Ukrainian government into firing the country’s top prosecutor, Viktor Shokin, who had been investigating Burisma. A few weeks later, Hunter was again copied on an email to Biden (again under the alias “Robert Peters”) this time about his father’s schedule for the following day, when he had a meeting with Ukrainian Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman. After that meeting, the White House announced a new aid package to Ukraine.

Recall that Biden was President Obama’s point man on Ukraine policy beginning in the spring of 2014, shortly after Russia invaded and annexed Crimea. Months later, in May of that year, Hunter took a position on the board of Burisma, which paid him a jaw-dropping $83,000 a month despite Hunter’s complete lack of expertise in the energy sector. (Hunter’s erstwhile business partner Devon Archer recently claimed Hunter’s real value-add was the “Biden brand,” which is to say access to Joe Biden).

What else was happening around this time? On May 26, the same day Hunter was copied on the email about the phone call with Poroshenko, Donald Trump passed the threshold of delegates required to guarantee his nomination to be the Republican Party’s presidential nominee. It had been pretty clear at least since mid-April that Trump would likely win the GOP primary, but by the end of May, it was all but guaranteed.

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mariacallous · 2 years

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The internet meme “Florida Man” captures the absurdity many have come to expect from the U.S. state. It’s easy to dismiss zany stories about Floridians catching alligators in trash cans and planting banana trees in potholes as having little bearing beyond the state’s borders. But foreign-policy practitioners cannot afford to ignore the upcoming battle between two important Florida Men: the candidates vying for the state’s governorship on Nov. 8.

The gubernatorial election, held on the same day as the U.S. midterms, will pit Florida’s sitting governor, Republican Ron DeSantis, against the state’s former governor, Republican-turned-independent-turned-Democrat Charlie Crist. DeSantis, who outpaces his opponent in both campaign contributions and name recognition, is widely expected to win; FiveThirtyEight’s average of recent polls shows DeSantis leading Crist by 8.1 points. Some observers say DeSantis’s competent response to Hurricane Ian, which barreled across Florida last month, has further boosted his chances of victory.

Florida is known for its hyper-local yet nationally consequential political landscape; razor-thin margins in the state have decided national races, including the 2000 U.S. presidential election between George W. Bush and Al Gore. But DeSantis’s likely triumph in Florida’s gubernatorial contest could have broad implications for U.S. foreign policy, too.

Though U.S. foreign policy is typically considered a function of the federal government, state governments also frequently work with foreign governments and businesses—a trend experts say has only accelerated with the COVID-19 pandemic. Florida is no exception: In 1996, then-Gov. Lawton Chiles unveiled a joint partnership to support Haiti’s democratic and economic development. In 2018, then-Gov. Rick Scott attended conservative Colombian President Iván Duque’s inauguration in Bogotá. And DeSantis issued an executive order last month to limit state and local government trade with companies linked to seven “countries of concern” that he alleges pose a cybersecurity threat, including China and Russia. DeSantis also waded into the foreign-policy conversation in June when he labeled Colombia’s new leftist president, Gustavo Petro, a “former narco-terrorist.”

More than one-fifth of Florida’s residents were born abroad, and the state boasts the largest diaspora populations of Colombians, Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans in the United States. Coupled with its geographic proximity to Latin America and the Caribbean, these demographics have given Florida significant influence on U.S. policy toward the region.

For decades, the state’s powerful diaspora interest groups have generally backed hard-line positions toward socialist regimes in Havana and Caracas. The Cuban American National Foundation, headquartered in Miami, steered the United States toward a staunchly anti-Fidel Castro policy beginning in the 1980s, and Florida’s senior U.S. senator, Marco Rubio, exemplifies the community’s continued influence. The son of Cuban immigrants, Rubio reportedly drove the Trump administration’s reversal of the Obama-era thaw in U.S.-Cuba relations.

Immigrants have flocked to Florida for decades, many fleeing oppressive regimes, political instability, and violence. Thousands of Haitians have set sail for Florida in recent months, often in overcrowded and ill-equipped boats. Across the United States, border officials encountered more than three times the number of Venezuelan migrants during the 2022 fiscal year than they did in the 2021 fiscal year, and more Cubans are arriving now than during the 1980 Mariel boatlift. But observers say Florida residents, including those of Latin American and Caribbean origin, increasingly oppose the influx of newcomers—a tension already affecting U.S. immigration policy. As of September, 47 percent of residents in the Miami-Dade region—home to Little Havana, Little Haiti, and “Doralzuela”—supported the Florida government sending migrants out of state.

Though the U.S. federal government retains primacy in regulating immigration, DeSantis has repeatedly proved himself willing to push the limits of his power and tangle with federal authorities. On Sept. 14, DeSantis used state funds to fly 48 unwitting Venezuelan migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts. His office argued the move granted them “an opportunity to seek greener pastures.” Though DeSantis now faces several lawsuits—including from the migrants themselves and from the Florida Center for Government Accountability—his administration plans to continue such flights.

U.S. President Joe Biden rebuked Republican officials like DeSantis for “playing politics with human beings,” but the Biden administration has also faced criticism as it balances the political, humanitarian, and legal dynamics of immigration policy. This challenge is clear in the administration’s recent announcement that it will offer humanitarian parole to some Venezuelan migrants yet increase expulsions of others who enter the United States illegally.

As governor, DeSantis has also signed legislation banning so-called sanctuary cities, which generally help shield undocumented migrants from deportation by restricting collaboration between local law enforcement and federal immigration authorities. The state’s newly redistricted election map, meanwhile, skews heavily in the Republican Party’s favor—increasing the likelihood that the midterm elections deepen the bench of like-minded Florida members of Congress willing to reinforce DeSantis’s interests in Washington and beyond. Rubio, in particular, has allied with the governor, even defending a DeSantis-backed Florida riot law from criticism by a United Nations committee aimed at combating discrimination. DeSantis himself is also a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives, and his time on Capitol Hill has helped him forge ties with non-Florida legislators such as Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, who supported the Martha’s Vineyard stunt.

Many migrants arriving in Florida are caught in a feedback loop of insecurity fueled by lax U.S. firearm regulations. Florida, which trails only Texas in its number of federally registered guns, is a wellspring for arms trafficking to Latin America and the Caribbean. As recently as 2016, U.S. firearms accounted for 99 percent of guns recovered and traced after crimes in Haiti. This month, Mexico filed a lawsuit in Arizona to curb trafficking of U.S. guns across the southern border.

Though Florida is not solely to blame for making the Americas the world’s most murderous region, its gun regulations are felt by U.S. neighbors and bear consequences for national immigration and security policies. Mass shootings at Orlando’s Pulse Nightclub in 2016 and Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018 thrust Florida to the forefront of the U.S. gun control debate. Endorsed by the National Rifle Association, DeSantis favors further loosening Florida’s firearm laws.

Meanwhile, the 2021 collapse of Champlain Towers South, a condominium building near Miami, drew international attention to the low-lying, peninsular state’s climate vulnerability. Experts have not definitively linked the collapse to environmental factors, yet Florida is clearly an early warning signal for emerging climate threats. A 2022 U.N. report singled out the state as an example of a place uniquely vulnerable to coastal flooding and other climate-related issues. Experts say ocean warming will only intensify storms—as Floridians learned last month with Hurricane Ian.

DeSantis has embraced some environmental reforms, championing an expansive resilience effort. This has included creating a state-level office for resilience and grant-making to help Florida communities reduce their vulnerability to sea level rise and flooding. DeSantis also helped lock in billions of dollars to restore the Everglades, a wildlife-rich wetland in the state. (Critics charge that these initiatives are smokescreens for DeSantis’s continued support of precarious development projects and the fossil fuel industry.)

How Florida’s next administration chooses to handle climate change could be a blueprint for other environmentally vulnerable communities around the world. DeSantis’s largely effective response to Hurricane Ian does not negate the storm’s massive devastation, which laid bare Florida’s continued lack of resilience to climate change. As such storms intensify, there is increasing urgency to develop effective defenses that low-lying communities worldwide can implement.

The election has another, potentially troubling dimension: DeSantis’s ties to the political upheaval that has compromised the United States’ global standing in recent years. The FBI probe into whether former U.S. President Donald Trump kept classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, his South Florida resort, has drawn international attention to DeSantis’s state. The club itself—an alleged magnet for foreign intelligence agents—has also become a national security liability.

Trump has suggested he may run again in 2024, but possible criminal charges cloud his political future. Some observers believe DeSantis is the Republican Party’s best bet in that race, though it’s unclear whether he will defy Trump—his longtime ally—and launch a presidential bid. Either way, DeSantis will need to appeal to the former president’s fan base, which dominates the Republican Party.

We don’t yet know whether DeSantis would court political support by complicating the federal investigation surrounding Trump and Mar-a-Lago. Overt obstruction is a remote possibility, but anything could happen in the current political arena, which has been shaped by the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. And even DeSantis’s continued criticism of the probe would hurt the United States’ global reputation as a standard-bearer for the rule of law. Whether DeSantis would intervene to defend Trump—as Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody, DeSantis’s close ally, has done—or delegitimize him is unclear.

Sabotaging Trump could eliminate DeSantis’s strongest Republican competition for 2024, but it could also alienate pro-Trump voters whose support DeSantis might need in a faceoff against the Democratic nominee. A DeSantis presidential run—if done in the Trumpian mold—could also induce a U-turn in U.S. foreign policy and solidify the extreme right’s transformation of this sphere. DeSantis’s success or failure in Florida’s 2022 gubernatorial election could be an early predictor of his national viability. This may be the race’s greatest foreign-policy implication.

Whether DeSantis keeps his office or Crist makes an unlikely comeback, Florida will stay relevant to quagmires like U.S.-Cuba relations and emerging threats like climate change. As a top destination for international travel, the often-ridiculed state is the country’s face to millions of international visitors each year. Ignoring Florida Men could have broad consequences for the United States’ global image.

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sdislau · 2 years

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Humans as a weapon

The border crisis in Poland continues. In summer 2021, first migrants were lured in by a ruthless dictator to be weaponized in his political games. But was he stupid? Did we ask ourselves what's his goal? How to score at his own game? Of course we didn't.

We toy with human lives, and we're bad at it. It's been the dictator's plan all along; demoralize further our state and society, then point the finger and say: "See, the pesky Poles are being fascist again, just like they were with us before the war." The oppression of the Belarus' Polish minority - from destruction of our sacred places to false imprisonment of local Poles - clearly shows the state works against us, and the oppression all Belarussians face proves its disregard for human life. Łukaszenko's aimed to bring us down to his level, and it worked.

We're pushing back the migrants. We're leaving them to die of cold and hunger in the wilderness of Europe's last primeval forest. It's the easy way, but it's not the right way, and it's not the moral way. We've lowered ourselves to Łukaszenko's level, trying to weaponize the migrants against him. In that, we've forgotten that you don't wrestle a pig, because you both get dirty and the pig likes it.

We fought for so long to be on the side of democracy, liberalism and equality. The dismantling of communism was our hard-won success and a symbol of a better tomorrow - free of arbitrary trials, police violence, and party-ownership of the state. Yet, we succumbed to humanity's worst instincts, provoked by a known brute. Łukaszenko has simply done what he's been doing well.

We make it easy. We've been electing a motley crew of authoritarians, liars, crooks and scumbags with ties to the Kremlin, world's biggest mob. Blinded with their handouts, we turned silent on their crimes.

In that time, with our mandate, the ruling party's dismantling the institutions that make our state secure. They're destroying our credibility among allies, ruining any little trust we had in our state, and pitting us against each another. In that, they've achieved a divided society alienated from any foreign friends it had. And who's winning in that?

Russia. The fascist thug with atomic weapons bets on Europe's disunity. Several countries led questionable policies on Russia, but we - and Orban's Hungary - are the Troyan Horse. We're actively wrecking EU from within. It's a vain attempt at sovereignty we can't have. We're too small.

#poland #europe #migrants

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xtruss · 2 years

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Biden & Neocon War on Russia Leading World to Annihilation, Global Peace Activist Dr. Helen Caldicott Warns

CC BY-SA 2.0/The Official CTBTO Photostream/Nuclear Test

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — President Joe Biden has surrounded himself with hardline neocons and together they are waging a war on Russia in Ukraine that is leading the world towards nuclear annihilation, anti-nuclear campaigner and peace activist, Dr. Helen Caldicott, told Sputnik.

Last week, the US announced another $2.6 billion in aid for Ukraine, which includes Bradley infantry fighting vehicles and Stryker armored personnel carriers, among other equipment. According to the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) think tank, the United States may gain as much as $21.7 billion in military sales for restocking equipment delivered to Ukraine by NATO allies.

Earlier on Monday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned the United States and its NATO allies were waging not merely a hybrid proxy war on Russia in Ukraine but, increasingly, a real one to annihilate Russia's culture and language.

"Supported by and supporting the world’s most powerful military industrial complex, he [Biden] has surrounded himself with died-in-the-wool neocons who are leading us on a trajectory to annihilation," Caldicott, founder of the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Physicians for Social Responsibility, said. "As president, he is leading the world towards imminent nuclear war."

Biden urgently needed to defuse the extremely dangerous situation he created and meet as soon as possible with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Caldicott said.

"If Biden had an inkling of global leadership he would cast aside his advisers and take the world stage, negotiate with Putin as if his and all life depended upon it and end this obscene military standoff," she said.

Russia Regularly Warns West That Direct Nuclear Powers Clash Unacceptable: Lavrov! The policy of the US and NATO towards an actual military confrontation with Russia is fraught with catastrophic consequences, and Moscow is forced to regularly send warning signals to Washington and Brussels about the unacceptability of a direct clash between nuclear powers, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said on Monday January 23, 2023

Biden's policies already brought the world closer to the brink of thermonuclear than at any time in more than the past 60 years, Caldicott cautioned.

The Ukrainian crisis was a catastrophe, where for the first time since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, the two global nuclear superpowers are confronting each other militarily, one threatening the use of nuclear weapons and the other almost certain to retaliate in kind, she said.

Biden could have prevented the entire current conflict war from breaking out if he had simply heeded two security requests from Moscow, neither of which threatened the independence or integrity of Ukraine in any way but both of which were essential to Russian security, Caldicott said.

"Before the Russian invasion, Putin had asked Biden two things: First, Do not allow Ukraine to join NATO. And second, Remove the offensive US missiles deployed in new NATO countries adjacent to Russia - easy enough but antithetical to the neocon agenda," she concluded.

— Sputnik International | January 23, 2023

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fzzh001 · 2 years

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5G wars: the US plot to make Britain ditch Huawei

GCHQ was confident it could work safely with the Chinese tech firm. An American official thought otherwise — and, in a Cabinet Office meeting, shouted about it for five hours

Donald Trump’s arrival in Washington in 2017 had quickly united the Five Eyes spy network against the misinformation emerging from the White House. The assurances given by US agencies to their counterparts in the UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand proved that the preservation of intelligence-sharing should be safeguarded from politics.

It was a laudable effort — until the CIA and National Security Agency (NSA) sided with White House officials on matters relating to Huawei, the Chinese tech firm with links to the Chinese Communist Party. Britain was determined to engage with Huawei based on a recommendation made by Ciaran Martin, whose team at GCHQ had made detailed intelligence and technology assessments.

A White House delegation arrived in London in May 2019 on a policy-disruption mission. Their brief was to oppose a British plan that would allow Huawei limited access to help build the country’s next-generation 5G cellular data network.

Within minutes of the delegation’s arrival at the Cabinet Office, Martin and other senior officials, including the deputy national security adviser, Madeleine Alessandri, were effectively shouted at by one of their guests for five hours.

That guest was Matthew Pottinger, a former US Marines intelligence officer parachuted into the White House in early 2017 to become the National Security Council’s director on Asia. He was known for his distrust of China’s authoritarian regime, a sentiment shaped during his previous life as a foreign correspondent for The Wall Street Journal in Beijing, where he had been subjected to surveillance and physically attacked by the authorities.

Pottinger’s influence on US policy towards China was immediate on taking up his role. He was described by Steve Bannon, the former White House chief strategist, as “one of the most significant people in the entire US government”. One year into his role, Pottinger had played a key role in the White House’s decision to impose tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods. Trump had already declared that “trade wars are good, and easy to win” when he had decided to punish China over, as he saw it, the American jobs being lost to its cheaper workforce. Beijing retaliated with its own tariffs on US products.

While Pottinger and Martin were both in their mid-forties and equally influential in their respective governments, that was pretty much where the similarities ended.

“We were keen to work with the US to counter [China’s strategic] ambitions,” Martin recalled. “The problem was, on our side, we didn’t think Huawei’s limited involvement in UK 5G was the most important thing in a much wider strategic challenge — whereas the US were only interested in that part of the problem, for reasons we couldn’t fathom.”

A British intelligence official who was at the meeting said: “Pottinger just shouted and was entirely uninterested in the UK’s analysis. The message was, ‘We don’t want you to do this, you have no idea how evil China is’. It was five hours of shouting with a prepared, angry and weirdly non-threatening script. We tried to offer a policy discussion but Pottinger didn’t care. We even said that we didn’t contest the analysis of the Chinese threat and explained our technicalities, but the US officials weren’t interested in that. Pottinger was continuously and repeatedly obnoxious.”

Martin had anticipated a debate with the visitors — if not the shouting. The Trump administration had expressed its disapproval of the British plan after details, which should not have been made public for almost another year, were leaked to The Daily Telegraph two weeks earlier by Theresa May’s then defence secretary, Gavin Williamson. He was sacked , despite repeatedly denying being the leaker. He was among a small but vocal group of Conservative MPs who vehemently opposed any involvement from Huawei in the creation of Britain’s 5G network.

Ten years’ distrust

Washington’s hostility to Huawei could be traced back to 2012, when an investigation by the US House intelligence committee concluded that it was a national security threat, because it was unwilling to “provide sufficient evidence” regarding its “relationships or regulatory interaction with Chinese authorities” in Beijing. The Obama administration banned Huawei and another Chinese firm, ZTE, from bidding for US government contracts. Five years later, the Trump administration warned that China’s 2017 National Intelligence Law, which states that organisations must “support, co-operate with and collaborate in national intelligence work”, could force Huawei to snoop for Beijing on countries in which it was operating.

US intelligence agencies and White House officials had repeatedly lobbied all members of the Five Eyes to ban Huawei on national security grounds. While New Zealand had followed Australia and banned the Chinese telecoms company in November 2018, Canada was still considering its options, and would not announce its intention to ban Huawei until May this year. The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo — a director of the CIA during the early days of the Trump administration — had declared in a thinly veiled warning to Britain in February 2019 that countries using Huawei equipment were a risk to the US. Staff from his office were also reminding their counterparts in Britain that they were risking their place in the Five Eyes should the UK decide to approve Huawei.

In May 2019 — the same month Pottinger flew to Britain for the meeting at the Cabinet Office — the US president signed an executive order to prohibit Chinese companies, including Huawei, from selling equipment in America because of the “undue risk of sabotage” and “catastrophic effects” on communications systems and infrastructure. The Department of Commerce placed Huawei and 68 of its affiliates on a trade blacklist for “activities contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States”.

Martin gave Pottinger assurances that Huawei’s work on the 5G network would not compromise the UK’s intelligence-sharing channels with the Five Eyes, government systems or nuclear facilities, because such sensitive areas were linked to computer networks inaccessible to Huawei. Such guarantees were not enough to appease their Americans during — or after — their meeting in London.

Lord Darroch, who served as Britain’s national security adviser before becoming the UK’s ambassador in the US in January 2016, said the US delegation “didn’t really have any compelling technical arguments that undermined the GCHQ case. I remember GCHQ seeming pretty unimpressed. The encounter exposed that the US case was really political, not technical. So GCHQ stuck to their guns, and, initially, so did the prime minister.”

Theresa May, who was prime minister until July 2019, said: “Any decision taken by a politician can by definition be described as a political decision, but this was not a decision based on politics. It was based on the fact that we believed that . . . we had the capability of ensuring that we could protect what needed to be protected.”

The unshakable position on Huawei held by the US officials was particularly insulting to their British colleagues, because GCHQ had spotted a technical threat in the Chinese company’s products two years before the company had been banned by the White House. In fact, GCHQ had created an oversight facility in Banbury, Oxfordshire, to identify any risks associated with Huawei’s products. The only reason for not excluding the Chinese company altogether was because its products were significantly cheaper than those of its competitors, Nokia and Ericsson.

The CIA tried to discredit the UK’s position on Huawei in the eyes of its European allies. Officers from the agency’s Belgium station met their counterparts in the French, German, Italian and Norwegian intelligence services, among others, to express their concerns about the UK’s “misjudgment”. British intelligence officials were outraged by what they described as a “black ops” mission facilitated by the CIA — some even calling it a betrayal of friendship. Yet again, the special relationship between London and Washington had been strained and risked being permanently disrupted.

On July 14, 2019, two months after his team clashed with Pottinger in London, Ciaran Martin travelled to Washington with Britain’s national security adviser, Mark Sedwill, to meet US officials at the White House. Among those present were Pottinger and John Bolton, Trump’s latest national security adviser. Notably missing was Sir Kim Darroch, the ambassador, who had been handling the crisis behind the scenes but had been forced to resign a few days earlier after leaked emails revealed he had described Trump as “incompetent”, “insecure” and “inept” in cables he had sent to London shortly after the president had been elected to office.

During the hour-long meeting, Bolton reassured Martin and Sedwill that he was sympathetic to the UK’s assurances and said he would ask members of his own security council to devise a plan that would help resolve their differences over Huawei. Pottinger seemed largely deferential to Bolton during the meeting, and the aggression he had shown in London had all but disappeared. Perhaps it was because he knew the US had a trick up its sleeve.

The new prime minister, Boris Johnson, had supported Martin’s recommendations on dealing with the Chinese telecommunications giant. In January 2020, he gave Huawei limited approval to build the 5G network, but with more limitations, excluding it from access to military and nuclear sites and national infrastructure. Huawei would be allowed to build only the parts of the network that connected equipment and devices to phone masts.

Britain’s defiance was met with the ultimate checkmate. Trump introduced further sanctions in May 2020 that banned Huawei from using US-made chips in its equipment. As a result, Martin could no longer guarantee the security of Huawei’s products, and two months later, in a remarkable public U-turn, Johnson finally banned Huawei from operating in Britain. His move would delay the country’s 5G rollout by up to three years and cost it at least £2 billion to remove all Huawei 5G equipment from its networks by 2027.

Pompeo welcomed Johnson’s decision, saying: “The UK joins a growing list of countries from around the world that are standing up for their national security by prohibiting the use of untrusted, high-risk vendors.” Pottinger must have also been cheering. Not only had his opposition to Huawei’s role in Britain come to fruition, but by the time it did, Trump had promoted him to deputy national security adviser.

“There was a lot of media speculation and parliamentary interest in whether we would ban Huawei or not,”’ said Darroch. “In my time, GCHQ had led on detailed analysis about the risk from Huawei kit on the communications network and had concluded that, provided it was not at the core of the network, it was OK. This analysis was a central part of the discussion at the national security council and key to the then-agreed outcome that Huawei equipment could be used in certain parts of the network. It was basically driven by the analysis of GCHQ . . . It would be legitimate to do it [drop Huawei] for political reasons, or because it was so important to the Americans, or as an expression of Five Eyes solidarity, or whatever. But it shouldn’t be dressed up as technical.”

Martin stepped down as head of GCHQ’s National Cyber Security Centre in September 2020 to become a professor at Oxford University’s Blavatnik School of Government. He maintains that his confidence in the plan for Huawei to help build the country’s 5G network had always been underpinned by technical assessments, and he had been under no illusions about the potential risks that Huawei posed.

“In reality, anyone can have a go at hacking anything,” he said. “We in the UK, thanks to the US sanctions, are now entirely dependent on Nokia and Ericsson. For sure, we trust their boards of directors. But are we seriously saying that just because they’re not Chinese, they can’t be hacked? By neighbouring Russia, for example? Or China?”

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collapsedsquid · 3 years

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Trump would tolerate no more nonsense about a “war of ideas.” Brutality would be defeated by greater brutality. The euphemism of the War on Terror had been an attempt to conceal such disreputable behavior, but Trump brought it unapologetically into the open. He lied that “thousands and thousands” of Muslims in Jersey City had cheered the fall of the Twin Towers. As vengeance, Trump would “bomb the shit out of ISIS” and stop fighting “a politically correct war,” by which he meant one that distinguished between guerrillas and civilians. “You have to take out their families,” he told Fox. Torture “absolutely” works, Trump asserted, showing faith in the CIA’s 15-year-old narrative. He pledged to bring back “a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding” and stock Guantanamo Bay full of “bad dudes.” ISIS’s assault on Paris meant there was “no choice” but to close mosques within the United States. Before 2015 had ended, Trump delivered his ultimate response to ISIS: calling for a ban on all Muslim immigration. “We can’t take a chance,” he said, denying that ISIS fighters were meaningfully distinct from the Muslim civilians they raped, terrorized, and turned into refugees. It was Cheney’s one-percent doctrine applied civilizationally. Stephen Miller was so excited by these promises that the following month he joined Trump’s campaign. His old boss, Jeff Sessions, the first senator to endorse Trump, helmed the candidate’s foreign policy and national security working group.

[...]

Fifteen years of brutality as background noise made it easy for many to misinterpret Trump’s position on the War on Terror. Journalists listened to his invective against it and called him antiwar, as if he had not been promising to “bomb the shit” out of millions of people. “Donald the Dove,” Maureen Dowd of The New York Times wrote, “in most cases . . . would rather do the art of the deal than shock and awe.” Such attitudes revealed what elites chose to believe about Trump and what they opted to consider merely an act for the rubes. What they overlooked by focusing on Trump’s criticisms of the ground wars was that he wanted to expand the War on Terror to frontiers it had yet to reach. Most important, they heard Trump describe the enemy as Radical Islamic Terror. For 15 years, nativists, stoked by Fox News, had considered such a definition a prerequisite for winning the war. Elites had never understood why the right was so spun up about the phrase. Trump knew that “Radical Islamic Terror” extracted the precious nativist metal from the husk of the Forever War.

[...]

Trump and his nativist followers, the coalition known as MAGA, did not quite offer a Dolchstosslegende. They didn’t claim the Security State had deliberately lost the War on Terror, but rather that it had flinched at confronting a civilizational assault. The offer Trump made to the Security State was an alibi. He would “unleash” the military, which meant, as John Rambo had said, that the military had not been allowed to win. It was easier for the MAGA crowd to accept that than to accept that their American exceptionalism had marched America into ruin.

It’s about the dream of collective punishment.

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