Friday News Roundup — June 11, 2021
A Nascent Tech Strategy, Reforming Foggy Bottom, Biden Heads to Europe, Air Force High-Tech Command & Control, Putin Cracks Down Further on Navalny
Happy Friday from Washington, DC. The big news inside the Beltway this week was the passage of the U.S. Innovation and Competition Act — formerly known as the Endless Frontier Act — by the Senate. This bill, the most robust piece of industrial policy legislation in years, aims to reinvest in advanced research and manufacturing in order to better position the United States to economically and technologically compete with China. Perhaps even more surprising than the contents of the bill is the fact that it passed in a bipartisan fashion after a robust amendments process, something approximating “regular order” for a Senate too often gripped by partisanship. It faces a somewhat uncertain future in the House of Representatives, however, where there is opposition from the wings of both parties.
In The Hill on Monday, CSPC’s David M. Abshire Chair Mike Rogers argued that the United States and its allies need to understand the holistic challenge posed by Chinese economic coercion and respond appropriately. We also welcomed our new class of summer interns here at the Center, Annmarie Youtt, Liam Miller, and Maria Ruiz Del Monte. We are extremely excited for all their contributions in the coming months.
This week in the Roundup, Dan analyzes how technological and industrial policy are taking shape among like-minded partners, CSPC Senior Fellow Robert W. Gerber argues that the State Department needs to better leverage its Foreign Service Officers in order to better serve the public, Michael anticipates some friction below the surface when President Biden meets with European leaders, Ethan looks ahead to the next steps for the Air Force’s new approach to command and control, and Joshua explores the Russian government’s attempt to use the legal system to attack Alexei Navalny’s political party. As always, we end with some news you might have missed.
A Tech Strategy Takes Shape
Dan Mahaffee
Over the past several years, it has been clear that the United States and its allies needed to address the Geotech challenge with greater seriousness. While Beijing was focusing on the nexus of advanced technologies, national security, and economic prosperity, we were distracted elsewhere. Laissez-faire approaches helped to drive amazing innovations — and they will continue to do so — but we generally failed to recognize how Beijing and its state-affiliated firms were positioning themselves to set future technology standards, supplant U.S. and allied innovation leadership, and use this leadership to influence and shape the world to the interests of the Communist Party of China.
Now, two successive presidential administrations and Congresses have pushed, in a bipartisan fashion, to address this Geotech challenge, as well as the broader competition with Beijing. With a looming long-haul U.S.-China competition, the first steps taken now have the potential to shape years, if not decades, of U.S. policy and our approach to this competition. Thus, it is worth looking at the elements we see so far in U.S. tech strategy — 1) a focus on security, 2) (re)engagement on industrial policy, and 3) multilateral cooperation — and where they could be headed.
Perhaps the most fundamental aspect of any tech strategy is to ensure the safe and secure operation of critical networks and to protect the information and data of American consumers. Both the Trump and Biden administrations have sought to do this, through actions aimed at Chinese telecom equipment companies like Huawei and ZTE, as well as social media apps like WeChat and TikTok. Expanded CFIUS review — including the rejection of a Chinese firm acquiring a U.S. dating app over blackmail concerns — reflects the broader understanding needed when technology and security concerns intersect. At the same time, both the Biden and Trump administrations sought to ensure that U.S. innovations would not end up in the hands of the Chinese government and military, with measures ranging from limiting U.S. investment in Chinese state-owned/affiliated military contractors to examining Beijing’s influence and infiltration of American college campuses.
Where the Trump administration rightly called out Chinese companies for their security risks and access to U.S. users’ data, there was also the challenge of the administration’s more transactional approach, the linkage of tech issues as potential leverage in the trade dispute, and approaches — especially in the case of TikTok — that would likely not hold up in court. While the Biden administration has seemingly given WeChat and TikTok a temporary reprieve, it is worth noting their longer-term effort to examine the issue of foreign-owned or affiliated social media apps or other apps/platforms that harness and harvest U.S. users’ data.
Moving ahead, these security processes should focus on creating clear rules, standards, due process, and transparent evaluation and resolution of investment review or foreign apps’ access to U.S. users’ data. Befitting the fast-paced world of technology and to encourage, not stifle, innovation and competition, these processes need to be straightforward and expedient — clear rules for all to follow and no prospect of years of appeals and Byzantine legal maneuvering. Finally, when it comes to setting rules for data management and privacy, U.S. policymakers need to move ahead with what is a U.S. data standard, differentiating from the regulatory capture of Brussels and the state control of Beijing.
From support for R&D to a greater emphasis on the security and resilience of supply chains, a greater comfort with what would have once been dismissed as “industrial policy” is also a key plank of this nascent tech strategy. Certainly, as we have long advocated, the answer is not to “out-China, China” with top-down, command economy research planning and programs, but rather to reinvest in the tools we have allowed to atrophy while encouraging investments in future R&D and innovations. Securing supply chains means a greater recognition of our dependence on China as well as other geopolitically vulnerable choke points.
Building on this week’s Senate-passage of the U.S. Innovation & Competition Act is one step, as is the ongoing Biden administration review of supply chain security. The upcoming report from the bipartisan commission on Artificial Intelligence also calls for the creation of U.S. AI strategies and industrial policy, highlighting the importance of this field for economic and security purposes. At the same time, a greater emphasis on support for the commercialization and actualization of technologies — not just basic research — as well as public-private dialogue on supply chain security solutions (e.g. greater domestic manufacturing, nearshoring, and innovative/deregulatory approaches) should be the next steps, rather than focusing solely on government largesse and potential supply chain mandates.
Finally, there is the important marshaling of allies. President Biden’s trip to Europe comes at a key time for bridging divisions between Washington and Brussels on technology issues, and The EU-U.S. Trade and Technology Council, while not a panacea, is a major step forward. This also builds on the efforts to establish greater technology cooperation among the Quad members. These and other efforts at the G-7 to bring together major democracies on technology issues are an important signal to authoritarians. It is worth also building on the private sector commitments made under the Trump administration for the Clean Networks initiative, as much of the equipment and infrastructure we’re concerned about is run by the private sector.
Therefore, greater dialogue among governments and the major companies in these countries is key, as well as combined approaches for countering authoritarian influence in international standards-setting bodies. Finally, as the whole globe is increasingly networked, it will be important for U.S. and allied leaders, government and private sector, to focus less on business with China in favor of competing with China across Eurasia and in the global south.
Precedents for the future of technology competition are being set on these three key fronts: security, industrial policy, and multilateral cooperation. These are as significant as the first steps taken in the early days of the Cold War, though the ultimate challenge is far more complex. Still, with bipartisan resolve, the United States is now addressing this vital competition.
Building a Bigger (and Better) State Department
Robert W. Gerber
One of the most important challenges facing the Biden administration is rebuilding the capacity of the State Department and the morale of its Foreign Service Officers (FSOs).. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken presented the Biden Administration’s FY 2022 Department of State and Agency for International Development budget request, the new administration’s first attempt to tackle this challenge, on June 7. The $58.5 billion budget represents a 10% increase over FY 2021. It includes funding for 500 additional civil servants and FSOs — the largest increase in a decade and a key part of Blinken’s stated goal to “Recruit, train, and retain a first-rate, diverse global workforce.”
Complementing this staffing increase, a new Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer will lead the charge to implement the Secretary’s “Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Plan.” The latter effort recognizes — appropriately — that it is in our national interest to have a foreign service corps that truly represents America’s diversity. It also seeks to address widespread claims that the Department has historically fallen short in terms of promoting women and minorities to senior positions, which has led to retention and recruitment woes.
These are important enhancements to a Department in need of invigoration. Am erica’s premier foreign affairs agency lost 8% of its officers since 2016 and dropped significantly on the “best places to work in the federal government” list in recent years. But without institutional reform at the State Department, the return on investment of the new personnel the Department seeks to hire will be marginal at best. The reason is that the State Department is burdened by bureaucracy and compartmentalization — so bigger is not necessarily better.
There have been several efforts in the past to reform the State Department including the Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review (2015) and the audit in 2017 that cost $13 million and was described by the Department’s Inspector General as a “missed opportunity.” A number of recent reports have focused on the urgent need to streamline the State Department’s bureaucracy and reform its personnel system. The Atlantic Council examined the proliferation of Bureaus (37 at the moment) and special offices at State, and concluded: “Many stem from clearly felt needs, others are congressionally imposed… A few were created as efforts made to find jobs for politically endorsed job seekers.” The Council on Foreign Relations recommended culling the number of Undersecretary positions. A 2020 Harvard Kennedy School study calls for a “flattened organizational structure with fewer bureaus and enforceable limits on the number of Deputy Assistant Secretaries.”
In many cases, there are two people in separate bureaus doing essentially equivalent jobs. This institutional architecture creates turf battles and a frustratingly slow decision-making process in Foggy Bottom. Furthermore, the State Department has a tendency to send multiple people representing different bureaus to NSC-chaired interagency meetings and international conferences, causing confusion on the receiving end. Seeking quicker results, many Executive Branch agencies bypass the State Department, forging their own relationships with foreign governments and deploying an increasing number of staff overseas to advance their agencies’ interests.
The American Academy of Diplomacy recommends “giving flexibility and more autonomy to diplomats in the field.” This makes sense in terms of adding agility to react to events and seize opportunities. Currently though, officers in the field tend to be burdened with cumbersome program oversight and mandatory reporting assignments generated by multiple bureaus in Foggy Bottom. Congressional reporting adds to this workload. Regional bureaus have even replaced competent people at Embassies abroad with the Bureau favorite candidate. FSOs and locally employed staff also spend a large portion of time supporting Executive Branch visitors from Washington. FSOs dedicate weeks to completing employee evaluation reports and lobbying for their next assignment in an opaque and cumbersome ritual. This is time that could be spent meeting with companies, government officials, and civil society — engagements that lay the groundwork for the advancement of U.S. economic and security interests or serving American citizens abroad.
As a former FSO, the amount of time I spent serving Washington-based clients made it a challenge to schedule one meeting per day outside the embassy. This reflects in large part the inward-focused orientation that guides the daily work of the institution. This contributes to a phenomenon described in the Atlantic Council State Department Report. “For a wide range of reasons some of which are beyond the control of the department, many in the U.S, business community and private citizens either have little or no relationship with the diplomats who serve them.” Imagine the inverse: an externally-oriented Department of State, with embassies and consulates that function as hubs of expertise, information, and services for businesses, tourists, and academics. Our embassies have a trove of market intelligence and connections that could benefit these “customers.” Public diplomacy could also be decentralized and all officers in the field encouraged to participate in public speaking, not just the Ambassador or Public Affairs chief (Perhaps public diplomacy should be a core competency taught to all officers and a criteria for promotion?). These changes would better achieve mission goals while at the same time create more opportunities for leadership.
There is no shortage of global challenges: transnational crime, conflict, malign activity by adversaries, economic development and humanitarian assistance needs, pandemics, and the climate crisis. We need to revitalize alliances, defend human rights, promote democracy, and defend the rules-based order. Having more “loafers on the ground” in the words of former Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage is helpful in this regard. But more staffing will not make a significant impact unless we also improve what our well-trained, talented, dedicated officers are actually doing with their time, orienting their efforts towards achieving maximum impact in the service of U.S. national interests. Today’s workers want to make an impact, have meaningful work, with a chance for advancement. By streamlining the institution and creating better leadership opportunities for its career officers, the State Department will be more able to recruit and retain the first-rate diverse global workforce the Secretary envisions.
“America Is Back” in a Skeptical Europe
Michael Stecher
President Biden is off on his first international trip. The itinerary includes a bilateral meeting with U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as a meeting of the Group of Seven industrialized nations and a NATO Summit in Brussels. Writing in the Washington Post last week, President Biden laid out his agenda for this trip. While in Europe he will work with European leaders to present a way forward on digital infrastructure and trade that established market democracies as leaders in the geotech challenge and promote European security, and begin a dialogue on security and arms control issues with President Putin.
In his remarks at R.A.F. Mildenhall on Wednesday, President Biden summed up his overarching goal by saying, “we’re going to make it clear that the United States is back”. This sentiment, however, comes at an awkward time for transatlantic relations. With increasing volume and frequency in recent years, the U.K., Germany, and France have started to pursue an “ambition of strategic autonomy.” Each of these countries defines strategic autonomy differently, but they all agree that this is essential to preparing for a world where the United States is less active and engaged in European affairs, or even for preparing to push the United States out of leadership roles where interests do not align.
The concept of strategic authority comes from two not-entirely-unrelated sources. Readers may recall that then-Senator Barack Obama travelled to Europe in July 2008 to promise Europeans that the United States was back and ready to pursue multilateral approaches to promote European and global security. That trip was billed as a preview of a country that was ready to turn the page from the assertive unilateralism of the George W. Bush era. Seen from Europe, however, the United States returned to assertive unilateralism as soon as Obama left office and was replaced with a version of assertive unilateralism that was even less friendly — some might say hostile — to European interests and the European project. “Strategic autonomy” is a diplomatic euphemism for an understanding that the United States is not necessarily a reliable partner.
The other tributary to the river of strategic autonomy is Brexit. In Washington, the United Kingdom was primus inter pares among allies because their diplomats and leaders could speak Anglo-Saxon liberal to Americans and Continental European in Brussels. Their influence made sure that U.S. interests were understood by EU leaders and their policymaking reflected that understanding. With the U.K. having departed from the EU, that voice is lost. The United Kingdom is now searching for a new role in the world, and Germany and France are looking to push the European Union to pursue policies that are more aligned with their own interests.
Leaving the United Kingdom’s ongoing process of self-reflection about post-Brexit foreign policy to one side, the main axis of intra-EU debate on the nature of strategic autonomy breaks down between a French vision that prioritizes capabilities for independent action, particularly in defense, and a German vision that prioritizes capacity to act outside of U.S. influence on economic issues. In short, France wants Europe to play more of a role in international politics, building on how that country has involved itself in the ongoing territorial dispute between Greece and Turkey. Germany wants to be able to build a pipeline to import gas from Russia without years of sturm und drang from the United States about potential sanctions. This is an oversimplification of course and there are substantial areas of overlap between the two visions — both “sides” would like to be able to make the Iran nuclear deal work, for example.
This presents new risks and opportunities for the Biden administration. On the one hand, the United States has been trying to get Europe to invest more in its own defense for … the entirety of the postwar period. There has been a long-running train of thought in U.S. defense thinking that removing the U.S. security blanket would force the Europeans to take a more active role and, since on most issues European and American interests are aligned, this would be a good thing. The problem is that European defense capabilities are still very inefficiently designed. There is no integrated European military and the member states have differing views of the defense priorities. European defense spending is still too low for the EU to play a leading role in defending its member states or projecting power, but that lack of spending is not the only problem. If the Biden administration can build on the momentum to make the EU a more serious player in continental security and a more capable partner generally, that will allow the United States to focus its resources more efficiently as well.
On the other hand, a European Union that works to undermine U.S. policymaking would be a Bad Thing. The Trump administration may have encouraged this by abusing its leverage, imposing tariffs on European-made steel and aluminum for specious reasons and unilaterally breaching the Iran nuclear deal, but it will not be enough for President Biden to say that he is not-Trump and therefore everything will be better now. Mending these relationships will take time and hard work. A successful series of summits and meetings will help, sure, but it will also require Senate-confirmed ambassadors who can build relationships in European capitals. If the European Union is serious about playing a more constructive role in global politics, managing that transformation will be one of the most important foreign policy responsibilities that President Biden has. The Europeans are making it very clear that they are not interested in just waiting out repeated bouts of opposition and hostility from Washington.
“Implementation time — JADC2”
Ethan Brown
It’s been a long time in the making, but the command and control component of All-Domain Operations, more commonly known as Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2), has received Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s blessing this week, allowing the experimental plans to proceed towards actual enterprise implementation.
I spoke on JADC2 to open my 2021 roundup column (among its many other entries here over the past 16 months), and decried its reference as an approach, vice a user-input developed system to create a functional architecture that supports data sharing across shooters, sensors, and echelons of higher command. At the time, Lt. Gen Dennis Crall (USMC, DoD J6 Director) had informed the media that JADC2 was not a system, but rather a sub-component under the Joint Warfighting Concept. This rhetoric was particularly concerning as it gave an excuse for congressional and defense leaders to bow out of a critical evolution in defense technology which risked reliving the strategic weapons mudslinging in the post-WWII era for the DoD. Fortunately, Secy. Austin’s blessing to move forward with JADC2 as the linchpin for future U.S. warfighting command and control sets the enterprise on a path towards truly achieving Joint C2.
The challenge now is in the literal implementation. Among other concerns, the recent budget pronouncements have clearly indicated a contraction of funding (a mere 1.6% increase over FY2021 — $703.7bn to $715bn — with cuts to personnel, the war in Afghanistan, and a bump to strategic weapons for deterring CCP aggression). The JADC2 announcement this week (which actually stems from May 13th, when SECDEF actually signed his approval) secures the necessary funding for the near term, and all that remains is for the services who were fighting for their contracting chunks of funding to come to terms with the new reality. However, as individual services have acquisitions authority over new programs, this has been the ongoing hurdle for defense leaders since the early conceptualization of a fully-connected network. What these ‘marching orders’ from Secy. Austin enable, most critically, is forcing the services to begin unifying their efforts for Joint C2. Whereas the previous years have seen the Air Force clearly leading the pack in JADC2 network development (the Advance Battlefield Management System), the Navy and Army and very limited spook/intel service were chiming in with subsequent vectors tailored to their very specific vision of Joint networking. While each service has its own interpretation of what a fusion data-sharing system requires, the enterprise has in truth lacked an overarching framework that concisely expressed scope, the strategic objectives aligned between programs, and now — exclusion items to keep the future of JADC2 on vector.
Lt. Gen. Crall has eloquently maneuvered through this competition between the services. His next steps are to “take the strategy and vet it and see what is in compliance and what is not”, meaning it sits within his purview to tell the service JADC2 program leaders how the capabilities must align, and the idea of one service dictating all terms and the siblings bending to heel can be avoided; again, reflect on the influence of the nuclear-weapon equipped Air Force in the late 40’s, and how that stirred funding blood feuds that gutted the DoD ahead of the Korean War. We are fully engaged in a new era of strategic competition (even video games are making hay on new kinds of conflict), and getting the entire defense enterprise aligned and zeroed in on collaboration is going to be the key in deterring, or responding to, aggression against peer adversaries.
Where the broader ADO efforts must catch up with the spearheading by DoD to date, is on the commercial side — the literal boxes and bolts that will host the network and enable the mesh across domains and battlefields throughout the globe. Lt. Gen. Crall noted that industry products have not met the expectations in terms of identity management (the network access requirements so that the blue blip on your integrated helmet-display is in fact, a friendly and not an adversary). Machine learning has yielded technological leaps and bounds, but even recent proving ground exercises have resulted in target misidentification from sensors transmitting AI-assisted data that could be fused into JADC2; to have that sort of mishap occur in the field is bad enough, and that doesn’t remotely compare to the fog of war against a well-trained adversary who would exploit such vulnerabilities. However the functional version of the next-generation network manifests, it can’t replace human decision making but will certainly strive to better ‘arm’ combatants with more data, faster, in order to make good decisions at critical injunctions.
Simply, JADC2 and ADO is going to touch everything in the next conflict (and will be tested in sub-liminal confrontations short of open conflict). Just this week, microcosms of what a fully integrated DoD could look like were lost in the headlines of the FY2022 budget news. These individual events include an Unmanned Aircraft successfully conducting an aerial refuel of a Navy F-18, “over the horizon” capabilities being the foundation of our future counter terror strategy, and markets affecting new possibilities for military logistical support from space (queue the obligatory HALO reference). What do all of these new system-threads share? The absolute need for secure, timely, and fully integrated command and control that pushes data from one component to another.
It isn’t too far outside the realm of possibility to think of the science fiction-like manifestation of JADC2 in the next conflict, that’s why I included a link above to the Battlefield: 2042 video game trailer that dropped on Wednesday. It may come across as smarmy, but the dominated battle spaces of Afghanistan and other counter terror locales have already begun their fade into the history books. Competition between states will be data-driven, and the swing that the U.S. aims to take at the problem will be total integration across the force.
JADC2 isn’t going to be the cure-all though, and this is what bears close monitoring in the coming months, with the end of June being a key window as Gen. John Hyten (Vice-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs) has promised the Joint Requirements Oversight Council will release its requirements for All-Domain Ops across the forces. While making data shareable from the F-35 to the Submarine, to the Company-level soldier on the ‘front lines’, to the intel analysts and decision-makers half a world away is a necessary step forward in battlefield control, the system has to be secured against inevitable adversary interference. It needs to go beyond being another pseudo-linked network that fails because of proprietary equipment pandering. And most important, the capabilities need to be determined by the end-users — the shooters, pilots, analysts, and maneuver experts whose lives will depend on this system and its conceptual TTP’s (Tactics, Techniques and Procedures).
To his credit, Lt. Gen. Crall has addressed these vulnerabilities directly — saying that the way ahead must avoid proprietary solutions, and that development has to start at the tactical edge and work backwards to the higher echelons, hardened for austere environments where it is a no-fail engagement. Industry has to play ball and collaborate, just like the new strategy for JADC2 is forcing the service-rivalries aside in the name of cooperation. I’ve been following the developments on JADC2 for over a year now, and to see policy marry strategy and get the green-light from on-high means the real work has just begun.
Russia Designates Navalny’s Organizations as “Extremist”
Joshua C. Huminski
On Wednesday, a Russian court designated the political and activist networks of Alexei Navalny, Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) and the affiliated Citizens’ Rights Protection Organization as “extremist”. Navalny, who was arrested on his return to Russia in January this year following five months’ of treatment for Novichok poisoning (believed to be by Russian intelligence) remains in a prison outside Moscow. He was sentenced to two and a half years for violating terms of his parole for a 2014 embezzlement charge, dismissed as a politically motivated charge.
The Russian government has been steadily working to ensure that associating with the group is sufficiently prohibitive to dissuade anyone from being involved with, supporting, or promoting the movement. The prevents people associated with the groups from running for office, crowdsourcing funds, and potentially risks prison sentences for anyone associated with the group, donating to the groups, or shared materials from the groups. In April of this year, the group shut down its offices in anticipation of further crackdowns.
Navalny and his opposition movement has been a thorn in the side of President Putin, the Kremlin, and his United Russia party with his repeated exposes of alleged corruption, including a Black Sea palace believed to be owned by Putin with some $1.3 billion. Navalny’s political advocacy promoted the idea of “smart voting” or encouraging voters to vote for any candidate, regardless of party, if they had the potential of unseating a United Russia — Putin’s party — candidate.
This is the latest example of increasing hostility from the Kremlin to not just Navalny, but opposition movements writ large within Russia. While many on the outside see Russia as a brutal autocracy, there existed a fairly robust and active opposition movement that was nominally tolerated by the Kremlin. It was largely a fringe opposition and one that certainly could not pose a threat to the government, but it was tolerated nonetheless.
Does Navalny and his movement really represent that significant of a threat to the Kremlin? According to the Kremlin, the answer would be yes. Domestic support for Navalny is lower than the international response to his jailing and persecution would suggest — an April poll from the credible Levada Center found that 1 in 2 Russians supported his jailing, with just 29% say it was unjust. Notably, half of 18–24-year olds believed he was imprisoned unjustly, but the number dropped dramatically among those 55 and older — just 19%. Later, in May, the Levada Center found that only 16% of those surveyed looked at protests in support of Navalny as positive.
This is not surprising as state-run media is profoundly negative on Navalny and there is little, if any, internal opposition or independent media, and outside media sources, such as the Riga-based Meduza was declared as a “foreign agent” in April of this year, mandating increased reporting requirements and heavy financial audits.
While some in the West are seeing the move as a signal to President Joseph Biden in advance of next week’s summit with Putin and worthy of cancelling the event entirely, it says more about Putin’s domestic concerns than any international signal. By banning Navalny’s group entirely and raising the cost of doing business to such a degree, the Kremlin is strangling the operational freedom and flexibility of the movement. Taking Navalny off the chessboard was a first step, but in and of itself left the broader opposition effort he represented free to act, albeit within constraints. By limiting everything the movement can do and raising the prospect of financial penalties and imprisonment for even supporting the group, the Kremlin with strangle it domestically in advance of the September election. An aide to Navalny, Leonid Volkov, said as much: “Alas, we must be honest: it’s impossible to work under these conditions.”
The effort is akin to taking Al Capone off the stage and then using the RICO legislation to strangle the Chicago Outfit at every level of operation. Had Capone merely been removed, but no follow-on action taken, the Chicago Outfit could easily have continued to exist, operate, and indeed thrive — leaders are replaceable, structures are not.
Moreover, by cloaking the decision in legal dressing and Duma actions, Putin is providing a veneer of legitimacy to the actions. Were it to be a unanimous ban from the Kremlin or state action, the legitimacy would have been absolutely in question. While to the West it is clearly politically-motivated, domestically it can be sold as a legitimate court decision, albeit one made behind closed doors due to “classified” information being introduced. That it was held behind closed doors also suggests that the evidence introduced in support of the decision almost certainly would not stand up to close, external scrutiny.
There is also the prospect, however limited, that in tightening the strangle hold on the group to such a degree, Putin could ease the grip on the movement closer to the election to appear either magnanimous or so sure of his victory that even a modicum of opposition could be tolerated.
Of course, Putin could have chosen to do so after the summit with Biden. That he did so in advance was likely to indicate that Russian domestic affairs are not up for discussion, but also that his actions were, as shown above, about domestic institutions and their legitimacy and credibility — something unquestionable in the eyes of Putin, especially by Biden. Undoubtedly the status of Navalny, his movement, and opposition within Russia will be raised by Biden in the discussion, but it will almost certainly get nowhere with Putin.
News You May Have Missed
Guy Who Slapped Macron Gets 4 Months in Jail
French justice moves fast. On Tuesday, while French President Emmanuel Macron was greeting constituents in the village of Tain l’Hermitage south of Lyon, he approached 28-year old Damien Tarel. Shouting “Montjoie! Saint-Denis!” — a monarchist cheer that refers to the battle flags of the Capetian kings — he slapped Macron in the face before being wrestled to the ground. Tarel, a self-professed member of the extreme-right and supporter of the gilet jaunes movement, was tried in a local court under emergency procedures on Thursday and sentenced to 4 months in prison and a 14 month suspended sentence. Macron tried to downplay the incident in a news conference, but said that it is important not to normalize public violence.
A Roman Pizza Vending Machine?
The Policy Team might not always agree on the best format for pizza, but we all agree that pizza is one of the world’s most perfect foods. We encountered the report in the New York Times of a completely automated pizza-making machine being installed in downtown Rome (as in Italy) with some skepticism. Italy exists in the American imagination as a bastion of slow food, made in traditional fashion, but the owner of this new contraption is hoping to attract students and other night owls who are looking for a snack when traditional pizza places are closed. The reporter does not offer a clear opinion in the piece as to whether the 3-minute robot pizza is any good, but we are willing to head over and report back.
The views of authors are their own, and not that of CSPC