Friday News Roundup — June 19, 2020
Clash of the Global Titans; Old Spies Learn New Tricks; Gorsuch and Gay Rights; Quantum Computing On the Battlefield; Bolton On the Record; Plus News You May Have Missed
Happy Friday from Washington, DC. Today is June 19th, also (and hopefully soon better) known as Juneteenth or Emancipation Day. While it became federal policy to free slaves in rebel-held territory after the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect on January 1, 1863, there were still enslaved people in the United States until after the last rebel troops surrendered. On June 19, 1865, Major General Gordon Granger announced General Order #3 to the people of Galveston, Texas: “The people of Texas are informed that, in accordance with a proclamation from the Executive of the United States, all slaves are free. This involves an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves.”
155 years later, we are still not in full compliance with that order. Each year, Juneteenth is both an opportunity to celebrate our ancestors putting an end to a horrific injustice and an opportunity to reflect on the work we still need to do to make absolute equality of rights a lived reality for all Americans.
This week in the roundup, we welcome our new interns, Danielle Anjeh, Nick Schroeder, and Emily Stone. You will hear more from them over the next few weeks and we are very excited to have them on board. One of the many side effects of the COVID-19 outbreak is that internships are less valuable to students who cannot learn from colleagues face-to-face. We at CSPC are dedicated to doing our best for these three and hope we can count on you to read their work and give them feedback.
On Thursday, CSPC hosted New York Times Beirut Bureau Chief and author of MBS: The Rise to Power of Muhammad bin Salman, Ben Hubbard to discuss the Crown Prince’s leadership, the impact of the Khasshogi murder, and bilateral and regional dynamics for Washington and Riyadh. In the Diplomatic Courier, Joshua reviews “Russians Among Us: Sleeper Cells, Ghost Stories, and the Hunt for Putin’s Spies” by Gordon Correa.
In this week’s roundup, Dan turns his attention to the tensions high up in the Himalayas between India and China. Joshua looks at how Russia is using digital disinformation and old-school spycraft simultaneously. Chris analyzes the Supreme Court’s decision on LGBT+ rights and how conservative judicial philosophy and conservative political preferences are not always fully aligned. Ethan looks at how quantum computing will affect the electronic battlefield. Michael might not buy a copy of John Bolton’s new book, but he has some thoughts about it. As always, we end with some news you may have missed.
A Himalayan Melee
Dan Mahaffee
When thinking of confrontation between rising nuclear superpowers, it is hard to imagine that it would come down to bats with nails, razor wire-wrapped clubs, and bare fisticuffs, but the deadly confrontation between the Indian and Chinese militaries was just that. Due to the 1996 agreement between the two nations, no weapons are allowed within two kilometers of the disputed border, called the “Line of Actual Control.” Thus, when an Indian patrol encountered Chinese forces on a Himalayan mountain cliff on Monday, the brawl left 20 Indians dead with questions remaining about the number of PLA casualties.
While the border with India fails to garner as much attention as issues like the South China Sea, Xinjiang concentration camps, the status of Hong Kong, or actions intimidating Taiwan, recent weeks have seen an increase in tensions. A large part of this has been the Chinese reaction to Indian infrastructure improvements in the forbidding terrain of the Himalayas, as well as the measures India took in 2019 regarding direct control of Kashmir. Complicating factors include the India-Pakistan rivalry — with China serving as Pakistan’s main patron — and the economic and societal pressures in all three countries due to the COVID outbreak.
The increase in tensions is part of a pattern of an increasingly muscular Chinese response to regional tensions. At a time when the economic pillar of Chinese Communist Party legitimacy is under stress due to the Covid pandemic and internal management of disease response and lockdowns, it is only natural to expect Beijing to be more focused on the nationalistic grievances. Interestingly, though, the internal management of the crisis — at least in state-controlled Chinese media — has been to downplay the incident. The Chinese military has long been reticent to share details about military casualties, partly because of information management and partly because of the reality of having a military of only children.
India, on the other hand, has also taken a more nationalistic turn under Prime Minister Narendra Modi, but despite China’s growing economic and military might, that nationalism has largely been focused on a range of measures that appeal to Hindu nationalists at the expense of India’s Muslim population. His record on needed economic reforms is largely incomplete, and efforts at military modernization are hamstrung by existing budget obligations. While there have been promising starts to improved cooperation with the United States over successive administrations since the end of the Cold War — a traditional non-alignment strategy, nationalistic, autarkic attitudes towards defense procurement, and “muscle memory” that aligns India’s defense industry to Moscow, have all served as brakes on speedier cooperation with the United States and other regional allies. One area of promise, however, has been the continued deepening of ties amongst “the Quad” — the United States, India, Japan, and Australia — in terms of military cooperation and strategic dialogue.
For India, this confrontation will change the perceptions of its border security, its economic relationship with China, and the need for economic reform and military modernization. While I doubt that we will see Delhi turning entirely to Washington for strengthened alliances, there are opportunities for further cooperation — provided that the scope of Indian nationalism and self-reliance is also understood.
For China, at a time when tensions are increasing, a further “salami-slicing” strategy can be expected. As China enjoys military superiority, and it can continue to shape the line of control in the Himalayas to its advantage, improve infrastructure in Tibet and other adjoining regions, and seek to present India with a “fait accompli” on the border, lest India seek a war for which it is unprepared — despite the bluster you hear on Indian news channels. As part of this geopolitical competition, China’s land links through Eurasia, as well as its infrastructure investments from Myanmar to Sri Lanka to Pakistan reflect the importance of naval positioning in the Indian Ocean.
To borrow from Einstein’s famous quote, it’s not likely that World War III would start with “sticks and stones,” but the tensions in the Himalayas reflect the great power competition that will mark the 21st century. U.S.-India relations have long seemed to be two-steps forward, one-step back, one-step sideways, but ties between Washington and Delhi will be key to our regional posture and any form of geopolitical offshore balancing in Eurasia. If there is an opportunity for meaningful dialogue and deepening ties with India, now is the time, but India must also make its needed reforms and modernizations.
Russian Intelligence Operations — Throwback & Flashforward
Joshua C. Huminski
This week saw an interesting illustration of both the old school and new school of Russian intelligence operations. The release of a detailed report by Graphika on Russia’s social media efforts, dubbed Operation Secondary Infektion, illustrates how Russia updated the manual of active measures in response to the 2016 election. By contrast, with the sentencing of Paul Whelan to 16 years in prison following conviction on charges of espionage, the old school is vividly on display.
Updated Active Measures & Operation Secondary Infektion
While not new, and expertly analyzed by Thomas Rid of Johns Hopkins, Russian active measures campaigns remain an effective means of influencing adversaries, sowing discord and dissent, and exploiting existing divisions within a society. Graphika, a research firm, released a report that revealed how Russian operatives used social media accounts, online forgeries, fake blogs, and more to target adversaries of Moscow including Emanuel Macron, Hillary Clinton, the World Anti-Doping Agency, the government of Ukraine, and more.
Dubbed Operation Secondary Infektion after Operation Infektion in which Russia seized upon the claim that AIDS was created by the United States, Graphika detailed how Moscow leveraged social media to advance its goals of dividing and discrediting targeting institutions. Interestingly, the analysts note, because the campaign was so stealthy and below the radar, its efficacy was not as great as it could, perhaps, have been.
The six-year campaign produced over 2,500 pieces of content in seven languages on 300 platforms. The majority of these used single use “burner” accounts and focused on nine areas, as identified by Graphika: Ukraine, U.S. and NATO interference in other countries; European divisions; elections; migration and Islam; doping scandals; Turkey as a destabilizing force; defending Russia; and insulting critics of the Kremlin.
What is unique about this campaign is the lack of engagement on social media in terms of likes, shares, and retweets. Its viral effect was minimal, despite the effort expended in creating the content and obscuring the origin. The creators of this material maintained a high degree of operational security, making identifying the originators in Russia and revealing the full scope of the Operation difficult. By contrast, the Internet Research Agency’s efforts in the 2016 election were much higher profile and received higher engagement, although much of the engagement occurred after the campaign was revealed.
Interestingly, Graphika — which worked with the major social media companies — noted that in their research some responses to Secondary Infektion’s efforts were called out as “Russian Trolls” on the media platforms.
The absence of engagement despite the effort put into the effort is interesting. Why would an organization go through as much effort to create the content and mask its origin, and not generate much appreciable benefit for doing so? This is perhaps asking a question based on a 2016 mindset. The 2016 efforts succeeded because the West underestimated the system’s vulnerability to influence while, simultaneously, over estimating the impact the campaign had. Russia’s influence operations were successful because the West made them successful. Most of the social media engagement occurred after the fact and Russia became the dominant narrative across the political spectrum.
Secondary Infektion could itself be part of a larger campaign designed to muddy the waters further by creating the exact type of content analysts/commentators are looking for and that the social media platforms would expect to see. The content filters and algorithms created in response to 2016 would be looking for certain signals and traits. As Graphika noted, “Secondary Infektion’s posts were consistently low-quality, often running afoul of anti-spam rules on platforms and at times generating pushback from other users who came across their content.”
Ultimately, the content created by Secondary Infektion may be bait or a smoke screen for the actual active measures campaigns Moscow is launching; a test bed to see with what they can get away.
Equally, the campaign itself could be designed to seize upon existing fears of Russia’s influence operations, letting the West’s imagination run wild. Right now, the West is predisposed to see Russian boogeymen behind every subversive or divisive issue. What better way for Moscow to achieve its ends by pouring a little gas onto the fire by feeding the West what it expects to see without actually doing anything.
Spy Swaps & Paul Whelan
This week a Moscow court sentenced Paul Whelan to 16 years in prison after he was found guilty of espionage. Whelan, a former U.S. Marine, was arrested in December 2018 by FSB officers after allegedly receiving a USB drive with classified information as he was attending a wedding in Moscow. The U.S. Department of State condemned the sentence as did the U.S. embassy in Moscow.
Whelan was arrested shortly after Maria Butina, a former aide to a Russian central bank official, pleaded guilty in Washington to charges of operating as an unregistered Russian agent. Butina, the U.S. alleged, was attempting to get close to U.S. government and political officials during the 2016 election in an effort to influence policy on Russia.
Even before sentencing, speculation began as to how the situation would play out in the political theatre. Would Russia use Whelan as a bargaining chip to for diplomatic purposes or as part of a swap? Moscow denied the possibility, with Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov saying “Russia never uses people as pawns in diplomatic games” adding “It’s true that Russia engages in counter-intelligence with respect to those suspected of spying, this is done on an ongoing basis, but Russia never uses anyone as a pawn.”
Rumors began that Washington and Moscow were in discussions to swap Whelan for Viktor Bout and Konstantin Yaroshenko. Bout, convicted of weapons smuggling and other charges in 2011 is known as the “merchant of death” for his global arms trafficking network is serving a 25-year sentence. Yaroshenko is serving a 20-year sentence on charges of cocaine smuggling.
The prospect of swapping Bout for Whelan is akin to swapping a pawn for a rook. Bout, who some analysts suggest is a GRU officer, operated a global network of arms trafficking, violating international sanctions, and sending weapons to nearly every hotspot around the world. Whelan, by contrast, is in all likelihood a hapless bystander. His bad conduct discharge and itinerant background make it less likely he is an actual intelligence officer for the United States. If anything, he was an easy target for an entrapment operation with a view to using him, despite Russian denials, as a pawn in a swap.
Unfortunately, in the current political environment in Washington, with an administration that is fixated on optics (perhaps more than anything else) getting Whelan back would be seen as a victory (and indeed a distraction from the current turmoil), whatever the cost.
Neil Gorsuch…LGBT+ Hero?
Chris Condon
While the news over the past few weeks has consisted almost entirely of protests over George Floyd’s murder and the occasional COVID tidbit, one other story this week managed to break through. On Monday, the Supreme Court handed down a ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, which centered around workplace discrimination against gay and transgender individuals. Answering whether the Civil Rights Act of 1964 includes protections for the LGBT community, the court ruled that firing employees for their sexuality or gender is prohibited under federal law. Perhaps the most surprising aspect of the decision was its author: Trump-appointed Justice Neil Gorsuch. From the time of his appointment, Gorsuch has hardly been thought of as a liberal justice, but this case demonstrates that judicial ideological boundaries are not always as rigid as we tend to believe.
The case at hand, although named for a man (Gerald Bostock) who was allegedly fired by Clayton County, Georgia for being gay, actually merged multiple similar lawsuits for consideration before the Court. The group of petitioners also included Aimee Stephens, a transgender woman who was fired from her job at a funeral home after informing her employer of her gender transition. Both petitioners alleged that their terminations violated federal law under the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits workplace discrimination based on “race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.” The question put before the court essentially boiled down to whether sexual orientation and gender identity comfortably fit into the law’s definition of sex. If so, terminating these employees would be a violation of federal law.
The majority’s argument is clear: sexual orientation and gender identity are included under the Civil Rights Act’s protections. Although sexual orientation as an abstract concept does not necessarily fit into the definition of sex, the petitioners convinced the court that in practice they are one and the same. Gerald Bostock is a man who is attracted to other men, and he joined a recreational softball league of other gay men (which prompted the county to fire him). If Bostock were born a woman who was attracted to men and joined a softball league for straight women, the county would never have even considered termination. In essence, this means that a female worker in the exact same situation (being sexually attracted to men) would not have been fired, and thus the company quite literally discriminated on the basis of sex, just what is prohibited by the Civil Rights Act.
Although the majority incorporated six justices from across the ideological spectrum (Gorsuch, Roberts, Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan), the decision did not sail through without dissent. Justice Samuel Alito authored a dissenting opinion, not only criticizing the majority’s reasoning, but taking issue with its philosophical underpinnings. From the start, Justice Gorsuch has extolled the virtues of textualism, the legal philosophy which holds that federal law should be interpreted by the plain meaning of the words on the page and nothing more. His decision in Bostock v. Clayton County strikes a similar tone, arguing that the text necessitates a ruling for the petitioners. Justice Alito seizes on this to reprimand Gorsuch for an ostensible lack of authenticity in his philosophy. Essentially, he argues that Gorsuch is guilty of the very “judicial activism” that he often advocates against by fabricating portions of the law that do not exist.
While Justice Alito was joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, Justice Brett Kavanaugh took a similar but more tailored, less broadly philosophical approach in a separate dissent. The truth of the matter is that if Justice Gorsuch’s opinion is an example of “judicial activism,” each and every justice on the Court is guilty of the offense. By Alito’s definition, which he assures us only applies to justices making things up to support their own policy preferences, any decision that looks favorably upon causes he dislikes is judicial activism. Any decision that upholds his own personal views, however, is perfectly just and the epitome of good judicial behavior. Next time Justice Alito argues that the Fourth Amendment permits warrantless searches and seizures of private property, remember this moment (hint: it doesn’t).
Upon signing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, President Johnson delivered the following remarks: “We believe that all men are created equal. Yet many are denied equal treatment. We believe that all men have certain unalienable rights. Yet many Americans do not enjoy those rights.” He went on, “[t]he reasons are deeply imbedded in history and tradition and the nature of man. We can understand — without rancor or hatred — how this all happened. But it cannot continue. Our Constitution, the foundation of our Republic, forbids it. The principles of our freedom forbid it. Morality forbids it. And the law I will sign tonight forbids it.” This week, the Supreme Court rightfully ensured that one of the many blessings of liberty may not be denied based on an immutable circumstance of birth. Every American should rejoice.
Quantum Information Science in Warfighting
Ethan Brown
In an unsurprising piece of analysis, information sharing and its secureness are important during the 21st century, and permanent factors in the Great Powers Competition paradigm. In order to stabilize a rapidly rearranging world order against rising authoritarian and anti-liberalist powers, the United States and its allies must tighten relationships, expand partnership opportunities, and build stronger cohesion/interoperability. Data sharing, particularly through classified and intelligence platforms, is a critical component to that goal of fused, coordinated and informed great powers deterrence and operations up to and including conflict.
The defense industry has learned some difficult lessons in the preceding era of conflict regarding its information security, notably the data breaches inflicted by aggressors in the information domain. These breaches and losses of data include multiple attacks which targeted the Office of Personnel Management, which at the time stored all of the Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and validates/monitors DoD and government-issued security clearances.
More recently than that infamous 2015 data breach, repeated reports have shown state-sponsored cyber intrusions continually active against major telecommunications companies responsible for infrastructure, as well as defense industry contractors and vendors, as the target of such attacks.
The frequency and sophistication of cyber-attacks is increasing on a regular basis, which makes upgrading the networks, pathways and portals of the digital space a challenge even with the increasing number of new members of the cyber industry swelling ranks. In light of this, what is the defense agencies response to increased state-sponsored cyber aggression?
Quantum communication, computing timing and sensing via the Air Force Research Labs (AFRL) initiative, an effort to introduce quantum collider theorized technology into the defense industry world. Such quantum/edge/adaptive technology would expand the security protocols within the cyber domain to levels heretofore unfathomed in the defense/cyber world.
Of course, quantum computing is the nut that both adversaries like China and domestic industry titans like IBM are still working to crack open. This space would be remiss if it did not remind that some of the other great innovations in recent modern history were the result of military innovation, so this AFRL endeavor- in partnership with universities and private industry, may well break open the elusive superposition/entanglement problem.
This space will also make every effort to avoid as much techno-jargon as possible, as the author was about as far removed from the AFRL as an Air Force member could during my time of active duty. So, in short- here is the elevator pitch on what this new tech initiative means.
Standard computing transfers knowledge via bits, traditional ‘ones’ and ‘zeroes’ as we understand it in casual terms. Standard computation systems utilize pathways, portals, and gateways to dictate, limit, and share data. The U.S. military and intelligence community utilize these systems, just like any large corporation, to share and collate data. For the non-civilian users, there are a litany of unique and comprehensive additional security measures applied to these systems, but as is wont to do with a government enterprise, the systems are usually far behind the cutting edge of present commercial tech. Older systems on the same old computational paradigms equals an obvious vulnerability. The data is “on” or “off”, limited to a command-prompt lifecycle.
Quantum computing further breaks the information down to sub-bits, called “qubits”, and is able to manipulate its super-physical attributes as it moves through its computational medium. These are defined in terms “Superposition”, “entanglement”, and “interference”; most simply, these alternative physics mechanisms allow for data movement, computation, transfer and transition through the mesh of the computing system- everything is faster, simultaneous, and can be broken down into much smaller pieces of data so that interference and the old ideas of ‘bandwidth’ are not constraints. In commercial theorems, the concept of ‘edge computing’ as it relates to the inbound 5G network uses similar principles. In quantum computing, there aren’t command prompts, the information moves, lives, executes its functions and recovers from the action near simultaneously.
For military and intelligence applications, quantum computing potentially equals a digital system that understands to secure itself, meaning encryption between systems that the network itself applies through its own ability to action command prompts, and functions autonomously to perform those implied tasks, post-prompts. This is better known as machine learning- which thanks to quantum computational capability, enables the predictive analysis for the system to realize the need to secure itself.
A secured system such as this one offers exponentially increased access due to incredibly expanded ‘bandwidth’ (term is obsolete when referencing quantum computing but for the sake of idiom, it is applied here). The ability to secure itself is key, and it returns to the original premise of this analysis: that countering rising powers means the United States must increase its interoperability with partners and allies, vice continuing to tear apart those partnerships as this space discussed at length last week.
The benefits to a quantum computing enterprise go beyond what has been defined thus far; the capabilities would also include resource allocation optimization, which means reducing downtime on critical system maintenance (a pitfall of the F-35s integrated maintenance program to date, for example). Further, quantum computing enables hosting and implementing artificial intelligence in a rational, controlled capacity for national defense purposes, the speed of quantum computation which enables the human component to remain ahead, or at least in step with the A.I. counterpart.
And finally (inevitably), the ability to rapidly introduce a wholly integrated command and control system- daresay, an Advanced Battle Management System for Joint All-Domain Command and Control- that would be an undeniable perk of an AFRL-sourced quantum information science capability. As of now, this is simply the initial solicitation for experts outside the defense industry to begin incorporating experimental quantum capabilities into the DoD architecture. But with such bold policy ambitions as the ABMS, cloudONE, and other fully integrated, fully encrypted systems upon which the DoD will rely, quantum computers alone may possess the computational power necessary to bring these revolutionary systems to life.
Profiles in Cowardice: The John Bolton Memoir Saga
Michael Stecher
In the song “The Room Where It Happened” from the musical Hamilton, the title character tells Aaron Burr:
When you got skin in the game, you stay in the game
But you don’t get a win unless you play in the game
Oh you get love for it, you get hate for it
You get nothing if you
Wait for it
You should never assume that authors are fully involved in the selection of headlines or titles, so it might just be a coincidence that John Bolton is now facing the prospect of getting little love, lots of hate, and nothing of value for his new book, The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir. CSPC is not among the group of venerables who received advanced copies of the book, so we can only assess the stories as reported in the press, but the revelations in the book appear to be a mix of the shocking-but-not-surprising and the eyerollingly-self-serving. The government has sued to stop its publication, which is unlikely to succeed, but it may succeed in securing an order from the court to prevent Bolton from profiting from it.
John Bolton had a reputation when he joined the Trump administration. Large swaths of the foreign policy establishment in the United States has a teleological view of American power — to them, the United States is the agent of the redemption of the world from the perils of nationalism, despotism, and rivalry. Among this group, Ambassador Bolton comes from the Leninist wing. Not only can America’s size, wealth, and civic-mindedness heal the divisions of the world, its power and might can be used to advance the cause of peace and liberty. His enemies say that he has never seen a war he did not like, but a fairer estimate is that he believes that there are many problems in the world that can be solved by the righteous application of American resolve.
Inside the government, Bolton was known as a sicarius, a dagger-man. He is the kind of person who combines sharp intelligence and keen strategic sense. He could navigate the national security bureaucracy and wield influence within it, while simultaneously sidelining his rivals. When President Trump hired him to be National Security Advisor, their worldviews were clearly opposed on key issues, so his eventual resignation or dismissal (this is a disputed point) came as no surprise. Nor is the fact that he kept sufficiently copious notes that he could produce nearly 600 pages covering less than 18 months in the Trump administration.
The book itself contains some wild allegations. Or rather, they would be wild allegations if they did not align so closely with other reporting about President Trump’s behavior in the impeachment hearings and several other insider accounts. In an excerpt published in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, Bolton reports that President Trump told Chinese President Xi Jingping that, if China increased the amount of soybeans it purchased from U.S. farmers, it would improve his reelection chances. Bolton recounts Trump, “pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win.” We should read this in the context of reporting in Bloomberg News that Chinese leadership is “coming around” to the idea of a second term for President Trump because “‘Trump is destroying U.S. alliances.’” This is shocking! President Trump is trying to get a foreign leader to help with his election campaign. But it is hardly surprising. We saw him do the exact same thing with Ukrainian President Vlodomyr Zelensky.
Lots of the revelations in the book appear to be of this sort. President Trump thought that Finland was part of Russia! President Trump wants to do favors for autocrats! President Trump does not listen in his intelligence briefings! President Trump tried to use the criminal justice system for personal ends! President Trump had no problem with China putting Uighurs in concentration camps! President Trump thought it would be “cool” to invade Venezuela! President Trump hoped that Elton John would appreciate him giving Kim Jong-Un a copy of the song “Rocket Man”! The Chinese government appears to think that Jared Kushner is an idiot or a dupe! Stuff like that.
As to the merits of the government’s lawsuit and request for a restraining order to prevent the book’s publication, I can only point you towards the arguments of more astute legal scholars: Harvard’s Jack Goldsmith; Also Harvard’s Noah Feldman; University of Texas’s Steve Vladeck; and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher’s Theodore Boutrous Jr. My lightly educated guess is that the court will reject prior restraint of the publication, but might be convinced that Bolton revealed classified information or did not entirely follow the procedures for pre-publication review that the government imposes on all holders of security clearances. The Trump administration may also have used the pre-publication review process pretextually, in order to delay or even deny the publication of the book. If the court finds evidence of that, it may have longer term implications for the first amendment rights of government employees.
More to the point, Ambassador Bolton describes a conversation with the president in which he clarifies that he did want a “quid pro quo” with Ukraine, and confirms the general outline of the case presented by Democrats in the House of Representatives during President Trump’s impeachment trial. He does not say whether he thinks that the president should have been removed from office in the matter, but does say that it was “bad policy, questionable legally and unacceptable as presidential behavior.” In the excerpt in the Journal, he adds that, “Had Democratic impeachment advocates not been so obsessed with their Ukraine blitzkrieg in 2019, had they taken the time to inquire more systematically about Trump’s behavior across his entire foreign policy, the impeachment outcome might well have been different.”
But this is the crux of the issue. Ambassador Bolton was invited to testify in the House during the impeachment hearings and he declined, even when his former subordinates spoke out. When threatened with a subpoena, he threatened to sue to quash it. “If only they had all the information I know!” complains the man who refused to share his information. Executive privilege, which is the excuse he cited to avoid testifying in the House, binds current employees of the Executive Branch. It might even bind former employees in some cases, but strategic leaks started coming from The Room Where It Happened during the impeachment hearings, leading Chairman Adam Smith (D-CA) of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence to accuse him of having “saved it for the book.” Ambassador Bolton adds that he did not think that his testimony would have made a “significant difference” to Senate Republicans, but that post hoc rationalization says a lot about him.
Courage in this business is about doing what is right, even when it has a cost to you personally, even when it might not make any difference. As a matter of fact, that is the point that Hamilton is trying to make to Burr in the song:
God help and forgive me
I want to build something that’s gonna outlive me
What do you want, Burr?
What do you want, Burr?
If you stand for nothing, Burr, then what do you fall for?
Burr’s response is that he wants to be in the room where it happens, even if he can never really elaborate what good he would do when he got there. The filmed version of the musical Hamilton will be released on Disney+ on July 3. The Room Where It Happens: A White House Memoir, which Jennifer Szalai reports is “bloated with self-importance, even though most of what it recounts is Bolton not being able to accomplish very much. It toggles between two discordant registers: exceedingly tedious and slightly unhinged,” is due to be released on Tuesday, pending arguments before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
News You May Have Missed
Nominee Will Give Washington Greater Control over Development Bank
Emily Stone
The United States’ plans to nominate Mauricio Claver-Carone as president of the Inter-American Development Bank Group, Latin America’s primary development bank. Mr. Claver-Carone currently serves as the senior director for Western Hemisphere Affairs at the National Security Council, and has worked on sanctions on Venezuela and Cuba. Although the Inter-American Development Bank Group is based in Washington, D.C., Mr. Claver-Carone’s appointment as president of the group would break a longstanding tradition of appointing a Latin American to the position. The Trump administration hopes that having an American at the helm will stop the bank from building closer ties with China. With a strong background in geopolitics, many are viewing Mr. Claver-Carone’s nomination as a way for the United States to further expand their influence over “multilateral entities,” despite the primary goal of the IDB being to alleviate poverty and promote economic development in the region.
Literature Industry in China Faces Strict Controls
Danielle Anjeh
China will begin strengthening controls on its booming literature industry to promote online publications reflecting government-approved values. The authorities will impose stricter censorship on online literature to ensure it “correctly guides public opinion” and is “healthy and positive,” as reported by the state news agency Xinhua. Chinese officials have voiced their apprehension about how this policy affects literary freedom in the state. Moreover, this issue is impacting the US audience of Chinese literature directly due to the online literary publications that are supported by a large amount of US readership. To combat being censored, writers had previously used hyphens between characters or wrote in Latin characters. These forms are now being criminalized and writers have to find other workarounds to prevent censorship.
Hungary Moves to End Rule by Decree, but Orban’s Powers May Stay
Nick Schroeder
At the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak, Prime Minister Viktor Orban was given the power to rule Hungary by decree. Orban’s government said they would end this rule by June 20th, but have been criticized because people believe the government is just trying to normalize the extreme amount of power it currently has. In fact, the Karoly Eotvos Institute believes Orban just wanted to create “a legal basis for the use of newer extraordinary and unlimited government powers”. Critics have also pointed out that many of Orban’s degree measures have been less about Covid response and more about centralizing power and detaining dissidents. Despite Hungary’s relative success at handling coronavirus cases, questions for Washington and Brussels remain about Orban’s “illiberal state.”
Democrats in Nebraska Pull Support from Senate Nominee
Chris Janicek is running against Senator Ben Sasse in Nebraska this fall, but his already long odds got substantially longer after he sent text messages in which he speculated about the sexual needs of a female staffer. The messages were sent to the woman in question and several other staffers. He also sent a follow up message in which he clarified his grammar and meaning. Mr. Janicek later went to the staffer’s house to try and get her to accept his apology. The Nebraska Democratic Party has announced that they will no longer provide any support for Mr. Janicek’s campaign and are calling on him to withdraw from the race. The party lacks the legal means to have him removed from the ballot and he said that he will not end his campaign.
Trump Appointee Dismisses Heads of News Agencies
The U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) oversees Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Voice of America, Radio Free Asia, and other public broadcasting resources abroad. They have been a frequent target of President Trump’s ire for what is perceived to be a persistent anti-Trump editorial bias. Michael Pack, the new CEO appointed by President Trump, has dismissed the heads of four of USAGM’s outlets, which observers worry is a sign that the agency could become overtly politicized. CSPC’s past president David M. Abshire was the first chairman of a predecessor organization to USAGM.
The views of authors are their own and not that of CSPC.