Friday News Roundup — August 21, 2020
Russian Opposition Leader Poisoned, South Korean Naval Expansion, Israel-Emirates Deal, Weakened Functions of Government
Good morning to you on this late summer Friday. This week has been marked by the digital DNC, as campaigning and conventioning in the time of COVID is markedly different from before. Next week, we’ll look to see how the GOP responds, and with the election heating up, things will only get more dramatic, and, “fittingly 2020.”
This week CSPC David M. Abshire chair Mike Rogers wrote about the importance of removing existing Huawei equipment from our infrastructure, and he also joined with Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger to explain why Edward Snowden remains a fugitive from justice.
Joshua reviewed Clive Hamilton and Mareike Ohlberg’s analysis of the influence of the Chinese Communist Party in their book Hidden Hand, while also breaking down the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévy’s new book The Virus in the Age of Madness. In the Diplomatic Courier, Ethan decried the suggestion that the military would be called on to resolve any political crisis following the election.
In this week’s roundup, Joshua provides an update as the leader of the opposition to Vladimir Putin has fallen ill under mysterious circumstances. Ethan covers the growth in the capabilities of the South Korean navy. Michael looks at the deal between Israel and the UAE, and Dan shares his perspective on how our functions of government have been weakened by culture war politics. As always, we wrap with news you may have missed. As a reminder, we will have a brief update next week, and be back with a full roundup on Friday, September 4th.
Russia’s Leading Opposition Figure Poisoned
Joshua C. Huminski
Alexei Navalny, Russia’s main opposition figure is currently in a coma and life support at a hospital in Omsk, following a suspected poisoning just prior to departing on a flight from Tomsk for Moscow. Kira Yarmysh, his spokesperson, said she suspects he was poisoned via his tea, saying “It [the tea] was the only thing he drank all morning. Doctors said that the toxin was absorbed more quickly through hot liquid.”
Unsurprisingly, Russian state media is downplaying the possibility that he was poisoned. An unidentified law enforcement official told Tass—a state-owned media outlet—that authorities weren’t considering it a deliberate poisoning, yet, but that he could have “taken something himself” before boarding the plane. For its part, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said “Like any citizen of our country we wish him a quick recovery,” adding that the government would consider a request for him to travel abroad for care.
Yaroslav Ashikhmin, Navalny’s personal doctor, told a Russian news outlet that they were trying to have him transferred to a hospital in either Hanover, Germany, or Strasbourg, France, where there are more experienced toxicologists. According to reports, he may be transferred to Berlin as soon as this evening.
This is not the first time Navalny has been targeted for his pro-democracy and anti-Putin activities. In July 2019 Navalny was poisoned by an “unknown chemical agent”, while in prison for encouraging pro-democracy protests. Two years earlier, he was blinded in one eye after being attacked by a pro-Kremlin activist.
In October 2019, the Ministry of Justice classified Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation a “foreign agent” opening the group up to intensive audits and inspections. This came a month after Russian authorities carried out a nationwide crackdown on Navalny’s network of offices and activists. The National Guard and the FSB raided over 200 sites in 41 cities and towns. Golos, an independent election monitor, was also raided during this campaign.
If indeed this were a poisoning attempt by the Russian government, it was likely intended to be fatal, having been delivered just prior to his departure on a long flight where, presumably, he would have been far from medical care. This is in stark contrast with previous attempts which, while debilitating, could be seen as warnings.
Navalny’s poisoning fits within a broader trend of the Putin regime’s treatment of dissidents, defectors, and opposition figures. Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist critical of the Putin regime was murdered in her apartment building in 2005. A year later, in 2006, Alexander Litvinenko, a former FSB officer and critic of Putin, was poisoned with Polonium-210 in London. Boris Nemetsov, another opposition figure, was murdered on Bolshoy Moskvoretsky Bridge nearly at the doorstep of the Kremlin in 2015. More recently, Sergei Skripal, also a former Russian intelligence officer and defector, along with his daughter, were poisoned in 2018 with Novichok, a unique Soviet-era chemical agent.
If Moscow could have eliminated Navalny at any point in time, why now? Some are speculating that removing a vocal opposition figure creates more freedom of movement for Putin—far easier to act without a pesky gadfly harassing the state. This is true, but murdering Navalny in such a high-profile manner that will be laid—regardless of whether it was ordered by Putin or not—at his feet may create more trouble than it is worth.
It is also important to remember that despite outward appearances, Putin’s regime is not a monolithic entity marching to the same beat. Soviet Russia never was and Putin’s Russia is most certainly not either. It should be seen as a series of competing interests and power bases all vying for the approval of the tsar, in this case Putin. Individuals seeking to court his favor will attempt to do things that they think will please the boss or protect the boss and the ruling siloviki.
Some analysts speculate that this could be a prelude to action in Belarus in support of the embattled Alexander Lukashenko. Seeing the attack against Navalny as a precursor to an intervention in Belarus misreads the situation on-the-ground.
Moscow wants, and indeed needs, Minsk in its orbit. Putin is unlikely to intervene overtly in Belarusian politics and almost certainly will not use force. Using force would likely provoke a response from the Belarusian security services (even if they were to lose) and Putin would undoubtedly lose any support he has from the people. While such an action may not decidedly push Belarus into Europe’s orbit, Putin is unlikely to want to take that chance.
Belarus is not Crimea, and while the situations may appear analogous to some commentators, they are decidedly not. As Mark Galeotti notes in his podcast, Putin does not want to annex Belarus. Doing so would bring a country seven and a half times the size of Crimea, with five times the size of the Crimean population, and a GDP per capita in Belarus that is half of Russia. Moscow could ill-afford to bring such an economic burden into its already beleaguered economy, to say nothing of the fact that the security services in Belarus would undoubtedly fight back.
Rather, the attack against Navalny is more likely an attempt to stave off internal pressure or actions encouraged by the Belarusian protests against Lukashenko. Indeed, some protestors in Khabarovsk, in Eastern Russia, have started chanting support for Belarus. Khabarovsk has been the site of large-scale protests for nearly six weeks against the Kremlin’s handling of local politics.
Removing Navalny from the chess board would certainly remove a well-organized opposition figure who would undoubtedly have seized upon the situation in Belarus to put pressure on Putin. This would be the case even if the situations were, which they are not, analogous. While it may be tempting for those in the West to read tea leaves of potential instability for Putin as a result of the protests in Belarus, Minsk is not Moscow and Putin is most definitely not Lukashenko.
What matters more, in any case, is what Putin sees when he looks at Belarus at a time when the protests in Khabarovsk are ongoing. Coming off the heels of a certainly manipulated referendum of his own, Putin sees a threat to an erstwhile ally who was overwhelmingly re-elected in a grossly interfered election. Popular protests are ongoing in Minsk, just as they are in Khabarovsk. By removing Navalny, Putin or those around him, hope to stave off the kind of popular support that may well lead to Lukashenko’s popular removal.
South Korea Joins the Maritime Arms Race
Ethan Brown
Last week South Korea (also referred to as the Republic of Korea, or “ROK”) took immense strides in diversifying the defense architecture in the Indo-Pacific theater, one which potentially alters the dynamic for countering Chinese communist aggression. The ROK announced plans to develop and produce the state produced aircraft-carrier, a 30,000 ton multi-purpose transport vessel prototypically dubbed the LPX-II. The targeted completion date is no later than 2025, based on the Ministry of Defense’s operating plan for revitalizing the ROK’s defense posture for 21st century national security.
The aircraft carrier is one of the most profound tools of power projection available to a modern state. Even the titanic inventory of the United States has limited numbers of these powerful ships. As we saw earlier this year during the COVID-19 zenith, when the USS Theodore Roosevelt was quarantined in Guam while the virus ran rampant through the vessel, the People’s Liberation Army Naval forces were quick to take advantage of the vacuum in the South China Sea (France’s Charles de Gaulle Aircraft carrier, augmenting the U.S. presence, was similarly out of commission), as well as a drive-by in the Strait of Taiwan.
After the hectic transfer of ships and deployments in the following summer months, the presence of pro-liberal democracy forces returned to patrol the waters of IndoPACOM en masse, but the creeping monolith of Chinese communist expansion remains pervasive. That South Korea has publicly announced its goal of swelling the ranks of maritime power projection is an important development for the region, to say the least.
The first consideration for South Korean nautical force development stems not from the titan to its west, but it's peninsular adversary to the north, the DPRK. Presently, South Korea’s only option of introducing air power to deter or counter its rival is directly over the demilitarized zone. Adding navigational legs over the Sea of Japan or the Yellow Sea would significantly reduce payloads and ‘playtime’ for any ROK Air Force sorties in the event of conflict with North Korea. If conflict breaks out on the peninsula, the course of action for DPRK forces will be to pummel the south with over 13,000 pieces of direct-fire artillery (as much as the Battle of Stalingrad in WWII, and currently the most weapons-dense zone on earth) and follow suit with paratrooper assaults on major ROK airports- rendering any aerial resistance unusable. With the entry into the aircraft carrier race, South Korea affords itself some measure of flexibility in maneuvering its airpower; including its fleet of F-35Bs.
The ROK already possess some variants of floating runways, as its naval inventory includes several Dokdo-class amphibious assault ships, which are essentially enormous flatbed trucks for offloading marines in an amphibious assault. These amphibious assault ships also have a large flat surface deck which supports helicopter and jump-jet takeoffs and landings. Similar in design and employment as the USS Wasp, the current ships in ROK inventory are only about 10,000 tons. The variance between an amphibious assault ship and a purpose built aircraft carrier (even one as ‘small’ as the LPX-II) is ten to twenty aircraft as well as thousands of naval personnel. So as the LPX-II will remain outsized by its PLA Navy Liaoning-class (60,000 tonnes) adversaries and of course, the monstrous U.S. Nimitz-class carriers (97,000 tonnes), it will surpass Japan’s Izumo destroyer-carrier at 20,000 tonnes and as the DPRK lacks an aircraft-carrying vessel, South Korea has gained a definitive maritime advantage over its northern rival.
For the broader Indo-PACOM considerations, how would a ROK carrier affect the overall strategic dynamic? First, the U.S. Navy's 7th Fleet potentially regains one of its Carrier Strike Groups (likely the Theodore Roosevelt or the Ronald Reagan). The U.S. 7th Fleet, ported out of Yokosuka, Japan, must contend with over 124 million square kilometers of blue water, while facing the world’s most prolific maritime threat matrix in PLA Naval aggression, mutual defense of Taiwan and Australian/New Zealand partners, as well as the persistent volatile North Korean threat. By freeing up one of these carrier groups, the United States is able to refocus and increase its presence in the South China Sea, or increase its coalition training with Japanese or Australian Royal Navy partners. When the ROK introduces the LPX-II as part of its modernized inventory (slated for sometime in the next 2-5 years, depending on how the ROK economy and its ship-building prowess performs in those years), the United States may divert some of its attention from the perpetual Korea crisis towards the Chinese Communist threat.
The presence of a U.S. aircraft carrier is much more diverse than a flotilla of menacing steel and offensive firepower. It enables the United States to reaffirm commitments to safeguarding international trade pathways on blue water. It provides an opportunity to share knowledge and fusion with security partners; while the notion of ‘fusion’ seems tongue-in-cheek while discussing security partnerships, the reality is much more challenging. Despite common-systems like the F-35B across the U.S., Japan, South Korea and Australia, differences in system integration, communication channels, and even simple “isms” like delegation of command authority and operational control can severely degrade coalition performance in the event of conflict.
So yes, South Korea getting themselves an aircraft carrier clears up quite a bit of operating space for the 7th Fleet and creates significant flexibility for the United States. Anything that enables the U.S. to reaffirm partnerships and foster improved security cooperation abroad against a common adversary would be a welcome change to the present dynamic.
Israel-Emirates Deal Moves the Ball Forward A Little
Michael Stecher
Last Thursday, President Trump announced an agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates. The White House’s statement on this accord called it “historic” and “a foundation for further advances towards regional peace.” In a sense, this is correct. This deal makes progress on long-standing U.S. policy goals in the Middle East, even as it produces winners and losers that track along the major political fault lines in the region. Upon closer examination, however, there is less to this deal than meets the eye, as evidenced by the speed with which the major players have returned to their regularly scheduled programming.
Beginning in the immediate aftermath of the Six Day War in 1967, the collective opinion of the leaders of the Arab States was that, to the extent that peace and normal diplomatic relations with Israel were possible, they could only be achieved as part of a “land for peace” agreement. The Palestinian cause was a key organizing principal in the region, even if the reality was never so straightforward. Israel had close relations with non-Arab states in the region—Iran before the 1979 revolution and Turkey before the rise of Erdoĝan—as well as sotto voce relations with Morocco, Oman, and Jordan. Egypt was a special case after a series of diplomatic moves realigned Cairo out of the pro-Soviet camp in exchange for a peace agreement with Israel, recovery of the Sinai Peninsula, and billions of dollars of U.S. military assistance, but even that never produced much more than a cold peace.
This put an important brake on U.S. policy in the region. One of the most consistent goals of U.S. foreign policy in the postwar period has been the creation of stable regional security architecture that would enable dense networks of cooperation in which the United States played a vital role, but was not the sole ringmaster of the cat circus. This succeeded in Europe with NATO, but has mostly been a pipe dream in other regions—this impulse animates “the Quad” among the U.S., India, Australia, and Japan in the Indo-Pacific, as well as ongoing, quixotic efforts to get Japan and South Korea to cooperate more closely.
In the Middle East, any attempt to make this kind of architecture work collapsed after the 1979 revolution in Iran. The creation of a U.S.-led Israeli-Palestinian peace process in the 1990s created some space to envision this kind of future and Jordan became the second Arab country to open official diplomatic relations with Israel, but the Second Intifada, the uprising in the Palestinian territories that began in 2000 and prompted a harsh Israeli crackdown, hardened the dividing lines.
Below the surface, however, emerging shifts in regional power dynamics made realpolitik agreements between Israel and certain Arab states possible. There are currently two major competitions for influence ongoing in the Middle East. The first and best known to Americans is between the largely Shi’a Muslim resistance bloc, anchored by Iran, and the largely Sunni conservative bloc anchored by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Cooperation Council, which includes the United Arab Emirates. These blocs are engaged in active proxy conflicts in Yemen and Syria and competing for influence in Iraq and Lebanon. At the same time, there is also a competition between the same conservative bloc and Turkey and Qatar, who are fighting in Libya and competing for influence in Iraq, Lebanon, and the Palestinian territories. The coup that replaced the Muslim Brotherhood-led government in Egypt with President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, for example, should be seen through this lens.
Ever since tensions bubbled over between Israel and Turkey after the Gaza freedom flotilla in 2010, Israel and the conservative bloc have found themselves on the same side of most regional issues. Both disliked Egypt’s turn towards the Muslim Brotherhood. Both opposed Iranian and Hezbollah expansion in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. Both considered the Iranian nuclear program to be the most important threat to global security. Quiet diplomatic backchannels opened and Israel even opened a diplomatic mission at the International Renewable Energy in Abu Dhabi. As I mentioned in my piece in June, Israeli domestic political pressure to annex parts of the West Bank threatened to end this collaboration. Instead, Israel gave up on annexation in exchange for diplomatic recognition from the United Arab Emirates.
Because this deepens two sets of U.S. partners' security relationships and the United States either guaranteed or blessed the deal, this can be seen as an important policy win; it is probably the most productive piece of international policymaking of the Trump administration. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu gets a tangible reward for giving up on annexation, which was an unpopular part of intra-right-wing posturing for an election that morphed into national policy and an incipient international own goal (looking at you on this one, David Cameron). It defuses a ticking time bomb in the Israeli relationship with the Democratic Party over annexation. Netanyahu also gets further proof of his long-standing belief that Israeli can make inroads with the Arab countries even without a breakthrough on negotiations with the Palestinians. Since he also believes that the Palestinian Authority negotiates in bad faith, pocketing any Israeli concessions and demanding more, those negotiations remains unlikely as long as he remains in power.
By making their covert relationship overt, the Emiratis—and through them the Saudis and the rest of the Gulf Cooperation Council—get a semi-official voice in the Israeli policymaking dialogue and can use it to advance their political interests, particularly as regards Palestine. Prior threats that Israeli policies could threaten relations with the Gulf States carried little weight in Israel because they were below the radar. Now that they are in the open, the tradeoff of losing them will become clearer to Israeli voters. Jordan also benefits; before this, they had usually stood alone as the Arab country with the closest relationship with Israel, a position they found uncomfortable when the Palestinian issue was on the international agenda. Now they have some company.
Egypt sees its position weakened slightly after this deal. When Egypt and Israel made peace and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat visited Jerusalem, it was a world historical event. In the intervening decades, despite being the largest country in the region by population, Egypt’s economy and international standing have stagnated, even as it has maintained an important role in regional politics as the key interlocutor with Israel on Palestinian issues. The center of gravity of the Arab world has moved to the Gulf, however, and this deal underscores the extent to which Egypt has fallen off the top tier in regional politics. This is also a setback for the Palestinian Authority; their political position is a stag hunt and they are progressively weakened by defections and rumors are already swirling that this one presages more.
While this does make progress on the participants’ regional security interests, it only moves them forward a little. This is not like the Israel-Egypt accord, which at a stroke demilitarized both countries’ biggest security concerns. It is not even like the Israel-Jordan accord that heralded what the peace process could produce. It does not remove the threat posed by Iran or Hezbollah or even make any real changes to the regional balance of power, since Israel and the Emirates were already working together covertly. That I can call this President Trump’s greatest foreign policy achievement is damning with faint praise.
The surest sign that this deal is weaker tea than it seemed at first glance is that all of the participants are also working it into the preexisting political narratives, which have not changed. One of the benefits that the Emiratis hoped to win from the deal was the ability to purchase F-35 fighters from the United States. The United States has long held a policy of ensuring that Israel has a qualitative military edge over other powers in the region. Netanyahu’s political rivals claim that this deal basically assures that the Emiratis receive the advanced fighters in the near future, making him a poor steward of one of the cornerstones of Israeli security policy. For their part, the Emiratis have repeatedly made clear that, for them, this is an agreement to begin a process that will culminate in formal recognition, which is certainly a lesser vision of the deal than you might have initially thought.
Mailing It In
Dan Mahaffee
Of course in 2020 there would not be the traditional lull during the summer months. The headlines tell the stories of the postal service disruption, deadlocked attempts at relief measures, the rise of QAnon candidates, and COVID clusters on campuses. For many, the summer has been one of concern about physical and financial health, and the sense that progress would be made towards a return to normalcy has given way to a sense of a long haul ahead.
At the same time, there are signs that we have begun to adapt. Technology has transformed how we stay connected, work, and learn. While Wall Street is hardly Main Street, the financial system has remained strong and functioning. American tech companies have surged ahead, with Apple crossing the incredible milestone of a $2 trillion market cap. That handful of tech companies is, in fact, keeping entire indices in the black for the year.
The success of these American tech giants is not without its controversy, as we have long covered in these “pages.” However, their success demonstrates the ability of the American system to innovate—and what a disappointment our government is when you compare it to the private sector’s ability to do so. If one truly wants to think about government operating “more like a business” then let’s look to business.
This column happens to be written on a new iPad keyboard, as working from home overtaxed its simpler brethren. When purchasing this keyboard, I was able to reserve an online appointment to pick up the keyboard; confirm that is what the correct one for the iPad; and I was advised to arrive at the store with the necessary time, with the QR code for my order and appointment, as well as any measures that would be needed for temperature checks or to provide me PPE to meet the store’s requirements.
Be it this new process for shopping at Apple—or the example of the Texas grocery chain HEB preparing for Covid long before the federal government—it was clear that business leaders moved with alacrity that politicians lack. It’s not just Covid, as the private sector has also moved ahead of government when it comes to addressing social issues, systemic racism, and addressing inequality.
Be it these broader issues, or to circle back to the specific issues financial and operational issues of the postal service, these are also challenges that we have known existed long before the pandemic. Covid has only been an accelerant to trends our politics have ignored. The question becomes, clearly, why should the Trump administration feel the need to address the postal service’s issues right now—right before the election that will rely largely on mailed ballots? Adding to the controversy is that the president then said the quiet part out loud, but to use an aviation analogy, addressing the postal service’s shortcoming at this point would be like Capt. “Sully” turning to his co-pilot in the precious seconds after the bird strike and asking him to implement a renovation of LaGuardia airport.
Establishing the postal service is one of the Congressional powers explicitly enumerated to Congress. No leader, on either side of the aisle, should be acting surprised that the postal service was in a state of such fragility. The proposals by the Trump administration to reform the postal service could be the impetus for major reform or the starting block for a broader package of reforms. However, now is not the time, nor should our leaders—as well as the media and even we ourselves—act surprised when crises reveal how the years of empty political battles over culture war touchstones have left many of our government institutions in precarious states. Rewarding posturing and partisanship allows populists to truly “mail it in,” because they simply go louder, crasser, and crazier. Knowing the nuts and bolts of good governance and having the experience of building consensus needs to be rewarded.
If we are to look at the government and hope that we apply principles of business to its function, we cannot simply say “it needs to turn a profit.” We need to consider what we would ask of the management team when we look at their performance. When we focus on the controversies of the postal service, the challenges reopening schools, and the continued economic uncertainty, it is easy to forget that these all stem from our disjointed pandemic response. How much of that comes from how quickly our perceptions of the virus and the commensurate response become a political and partisan exercise—rather than one grounded in science and economics.
Beyond the pandemic, our competition with great powers continues, as events around the world repeatedly demonstrate. That trends of economic and societal transformation were merely accelerated by COVID means that they will not also go away with a vaccine. These issues will not be addressed by continuing to fight the culture war battles that are designed to pit American against American and turn our politics into reality show entertainment. Politics of this nature rewards the sensational and hyperbolic, not the competent. It makes it more likely that we whipsaw from policy-to-policy, rather than ensuring continuity and stability. The political incentive structures become negative feedback loops as leaders use partisan rancor to build political strength. Why maintain or reform or renew our vital institutions when all you need to do is convince enough of the electorate that your opponent means the end of America as we know it?
As we watch this week’s and next week’s conventions, we will see the typical campaigning, where you build up your candidate and tear down the other, but the question for the ballot box, as we look beyond the pandemic, is who will we want to manage the national rebuild.
News You May Have Missed
DHS Secretary Unlawfully appointed to position, gov watchdog determines
Chad Wolf, the architect behind the deployment of federal law enforcement against protests across the nation, was determined to be unlawfully appointed to his post, according to the Government Accountability Office. To recall, this is the same Secretary whose federal officers were apprehending protestors in unmarked cars, tweeted about violent extremists and law enforcement engaged in battle (tweet and its embedded photo were unauthorized per government social media standards). While the assorted names and positions associated with this invalid selection of Wolf are wildly complicated, the simplified version is that the order of succession for replacing former DHS secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was outright ignored and Wolf altered the DHS policy once he was instituted as the acting Secretary, a title he still retains to date.
China Excited to Share COVID-19 Vaccine with Other Countries, Terms and Conditions May Apply
The People’s Republic of China is interested in vaccine diplomacy. According to the World Health Organization, between state-owned enterprises and private concerns, half of the global vaccine candidates in final testing are being developed in China. China, which allegedly has very few domestic cases of the coronavirus, is interested in leveraging its global position as a leader in vaccine production to advance its political interests in other areas. In particular, countries that are willing to recognize Chinese maritime claims in the South China Sea, for example, will move to the front of the line. Countries that are interested in closer ties with the United States, however, might just have to wait their turn.
Kanye West Disqualified from Wisconsin 2020 Ballot
In a 5-1 bipartisan decision, the Wisconsin Elections Commission ruled that rapper Kanye West did not file for the Wisconsin 2020 presidential ballot in time for the 5pm August 4th deadline. This comes as a blow to the rapper’s brief aspirations for the Oval Office, which some believe is fueled by supporters of President Trump, while Democratic activists are concerned about the potential to siphon votes in narrowly-decided swing states.
U.S. Citizens Unable to Leave Venezuela due to Maduro: State Dept.
A U.S. State Department spokeswoman issued a statement that the Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro was blocking Americans from leaving the stricken country as the U.S. State Department was working to arrange humanitarian repatriation. The Venezuelan government has said that the Americans could be repatriated on flights chartered with the state-owned airline—but such charters by the State Department would violate U.S. sanctions on Venezuela.
The views of authors are their own and not that of CSPC.