Friday News Roundup — June 14, 2019
Hong Kong Seethes; U.S. Troops in Poland; Back to Space Corps; Legal Hypocrisy in Campaigning; plus News You May Have Missed
Happy Friday from Washington, D.C. Stateside this week, the House Armed Services Committee passed the National Defense Authorization Act following markups on Wednesday. The NDAA passed with an amendment that creates the first ever U.S. Space Corps within the Department of the Air Force.
Overseas, tensions between the United States and Iran remain high as two oil tankers, one Norweigan and one Japanese-owned, were attacked in the Gulf of Oman Thursday morning. Thursday afternoon, Secretary of State Pompeo announced that the U.S. believes Iran was responsible for the attacks. This comes on the tail of an attack on four oil tankers last month off the coast of the U.A.E.
In this week’s roundup, Dan comments on the conflict between protestors and the police in Hong Kong, which have left at least 79 injured; Michael examines the administration’s decision to send an additional 1,000 U.S. troops to Poland; Joshua looks at the latest measures related to the scaled-back Space Corps; and Chris addresses hypocrisy and political norms on the campaign trail. We conclude with some of the news you might have missed, curated by our crack summer interns, calling attention to topics from the protests in Prague to cereal safety concerns.
Hongkongers Defend the Rule of Law
Dan Mahaffee
With the promise of “one country, two systems” at stake, the people of Hong Kong took to the streets en masse to protest the planned changes to the enclave’s extradition law. The smell of tear gas wafted over the streets of the “fragrant harbor” as police sought to remove protestors blocking the Hong Kong Legislative Council, or LegCo, to prevent the legal changes from being enacted. While foreign governments have limited options to address this situation, it is important to understand what this means to Hong Kong — and the future of Beijing’s attempts to control information at home and abroad.
The controversy stems from the proposal that a person arrested in Hong Kong could now be extradited to China, and subject to the legal systems of the Communist Party rather than those established under the Hong Kong Basic Law and common law precedents from its time as a British colony, as well as the territory’s own international agreements. The differences between the legal systems of Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland have long made Hong Kong an attractive destination for business and investment — due to the rule of law and legal transparency — and, as a result, Hong Kong has also enjoyed preferential status in terms of trade and visa policy from a range of western countries, including the United States.
While Hong Kong’s pro-Beijing leaders have stated that the measure is necessary due to a recent murder in Taiwan where the suspect, a Hong Kong-national, fled back to Hong Kong, many of those protesting see this as a fig leaf for further measures by Beijing to gradually strangle the territory’s legal and political autonomy — long before the ostensible end of “one country, two systems,” mandated by the handover treaty to last until 2047. That the pro-Beijing chief executive Carrie Lam and her allies on the LegCo speak of closing “a loophole” in Hong Kong law is laughable, considering that the wall between the Hong Kong and mainland legal systems, including extradition, was carefully crafted to ensure the independence of the Hong Kong legal system from China’s.
As Hong Kong has long served as an international entrepôt and a bastion of political freedom, it has also been a thorn in the side of Beijing’s Communist regime. For much of its recent history, the regime was able to tolerate Hong Kong’s more independent approach, as it served as a useful bridge for international capital and one of the world’s main financial centers. Starting in 2015, Beijing has become increasingly interested in the control of information and less concerned about economic growth, harshly cracking down on Hong Kong’s thriving underground publishers — including the “disappearing” of booksellers back into the mainland for questioning while being held incommunicado. Even the once globally-regarded South China Morning Posthas become a mouthpiece for Beijing since its purchase by the Alibaba group. As President Xi Jinping has sought to consolidate power, stamp out rivals within the party, and reshape the narrative of the history of Communist China, these sources of independent thought and scholarship were seen as a key challenge to the regime.
With this week’s protests, we see the technological evolution of the regime’s efforts, as the encrypted messaging app Telegram came under a DDoS attackfrom servers on the mainland to prevent protestors from communicating. Hongkongers have also taken to reverting back to paper subway tickets to prevent tracking by authorities — rather than using the Octopus Cards that are omnipresent in daily life.
It is likely that the changes to the extradition law will move forward, as Chief Executive Lam remains loyal to Beijing and the LegCo remains stacked with pro-Beijing members. Even though the Hong Kong Basic Law states that the territory should move towards universal suffrage for the election of executive and legislative leaders, such reforms have stalled, making it easier for pro-Beijing parties to prevail. The Chinese foreign ministry has continued to rail against “foreign actors” instigating the violence, even though the protests appear to largely be led by local politicians, religious leaders, and civil society groups.
Even though Ms. Lam and the LegCo claim that the law prevents extradition for political crimes or those with a sentence longer than seven years, such a change would further quash the free spirit of Hong Kong. Before visiting Hong Kong — or even transiting through its airports — any foreigners involved in business or civil society would need to reevaluate the risk they face, as China increasingly wields detention of foreigners in a range of international disputes.
U.S. and allied policymakers must now tread a careful line. President Trump said that he believed Hong Kong and China could “work things out,” but Congressional lawmakers have wanted to take a harder line, and review the legal arrangements that denote Hong Kong’s autonomy and eligibility for preferential treatment. However, there is a certain amount of leverage to be lost if we declare “one country, two systems” dead before Beijing does.
Instead, the best solution may be to put pressure on the pro-Beijing business leaders, tycoons, and politicians who enjoy the support of Beijing yet a warm welcome on the international stage. That is one lever that we may yet be able to utilize, though, as I noted in last week’s review of the anniversary of Tiananmen, Chinese Communists have long understood that the capitalist west is willing to put profit before principle.
1,000 American Service Members to Deploy to Poland
Michael Stecher
On Wednesday afternoon, Washington, DC was shaken out of its midday stupor by a series of loud roars. The culprit was a flyby from an F-35B Lightning II, the U.S. Marine Corps’s variant of the Joint Strike Fighter, in honor of Andrzej Duda, the President of Poland, who was visiting President Trump at the White House. President Duda came to Washington to seal a deal to permanently station 1,000 U.S. service members in Poland. The Polish government had initially approached the Trump administration with a more substantial request last year — an entire armored division, approximately 15,000 soldiers, to be stationed in a location that may or may not have been proposed as “Fort Trump” — but seem quite pleased with this compromise outcome. Deepening American presence in the country satisfies several of Poland’s top political objectives, but it is less clear what strategic value the United States derives from this deployment.
To hear Poles tell it — especially supporters of the ruling Law and Justice Party — Poland is one of one of the great tragedies of geopolitics. Trapped between Germany and Russia on flat, open plains, it was repeatedly partitioned between avaricious great powers and abandoned to Communist domination after the Second World War. Having so recently won its sovereignty back, Poles are skeptical of surrendering it to Eurocrats in Brussels, even as they fear Russia’s revanchist impulses. For Poland, America solves this conundrum by serving as a third pole: Western and anti-Russian but non-European. As a result, Poland has long been very solicitous of building a closer defense relationship with the United States.
Poland is an active participant in the NATO mission in Afghanistan and has troops in Iraq as part of Operation Inherent Resolve. The Polish government is looking to replace the Soviet-era MiG-29s and SU-22s in its air force and wants to buy F-35s to do so. Beyond the request for an armored division permanently stationed in the country, Poland already hosts a substantial U.S. presence: an armored brigade combat team on a rotational basis; an army aviation detachment; and a battalion that is part of NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence Mission. Even before this recent announcement, there were approximately 4,000 U.S. troops in Poland, more than the permanent or rotational presence in any other European country other than Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom. They are already slated to host a ballistic missile defense battery to help defend NATO from “the increasing proliferation of ballistic missiles and against threats emanating from outside the Euro-Atlantic area” (*coughcough*Russia*coughcough*).
When the Trump administration began contemplating the idea of permanently basing an armored division in Poland, many American defense experts (including, if I may humbly add, yours truly) responded with incredulity. The U.S. Army — whose birthday is today, so Happy Birthday to all of our friends in green — does not have three brigade combat teams that could be easily moved to a permanent station in Poland. Several alliance members would view such a large presence in Eastern Europe as unnecessarily provocative towards Russia. Nor is it clear that the United States should necessarily be enabling the Eurosceptic position of the Polish government at a time when it is flirting with undermining its own democratic institutions, especially in the name of “Euro-Atlantic security.”
For nearly two decades, the United States has played this game of footsie with Eastern European countries who see Washington as a counterbalance to both Brussels and Moscow — recall former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s dichotomy of the vibrant “New Europe” emerging in the former Communist bloc as opposed to the aging “Old Europe” that opposed the Iraq War. Considering the emphasis that the Trump administration has placed on NATO members paying 2 percent of their gross domestic product on defense, which Poland does, and ongoing disputes between the United States and Germany over the Iran nuclear deal and the Nord Stream II gas pipeline, it is not exactly a surprise that the White House has decided to fire this shot across Berlin’s bow. The argument that many of the European allies have hinted at that stationing more U.S. troops in Poland might violate the 1997 NATO-Russia Founding Act in which the alliance pledged to refrain from placing “substantial” combat forces in Eastern Europe in order to preserve good relations is also ludicrous in a world where Russia has invaded Ukraine and illegally tried to annex the Crimean Peninsula.
It is less clear what good, exactly, these troops will do. According to the Joint Declaration published by the White House, the forces that will deploy to Poland include a squadron of unarmed Air Force surveillance drones, a headquarters detachment, and logistics elements. These forces could deter a group of angry teenagers, but would probably not affect the decision to introduce “little green men” to Poland, let alone a Russian invasion. The plans to build the infrastructure to receive and support additional forces in a crisis are good and needed, but they are small-scale changes that hardly merit an event in the Rose Garden. It appears that the primary goal for this deployment is signalling, rather than security. Deployments-as-signaling can be valuable: think of “tripwire” forces in Germany during the Cold War or in the Baltic states today; they tell the Russians that any invasion would necessarily involve the direct confrontation of Americans and Russians and the righteous rage of an aroused “Omaha milkman.”
Usually, however, you want to use those signals to encourage your allies and deter your adversaries. In this case, however, it seems more likely that the goal is to support the domestic agenda of one ally and hector another ally, which does not seem like a worthwhile use of the U.S. Armed Forces.
Back to the Space Corps
Joshua Huminski
Early on Thursday morning the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) voted to establish the Space Corps within the U.S. Air Force during the Committee’s markup of the FY2020 National Defense Authorization Act. This is the latest development in the long, tortured birth of a new space-focused military entity, but is far from the final step.
Under the amendment, approved by a 33–24 vote, the new organization is tasked with “protect(ing) the interests of the United States in space; deter aggression m, from, and to space and conduct space operations.” A four-star commandant will head the Space Corps who will also serve as a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It will take assets and personnel from the U.S. Air Force, but not the Navy or Army, nor from National Reconnaissance Office or the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency. The Secretary of the Air Force is empowered to create new alternative acquisition vehicles for defense space, but not space assets for the Intelligence Community.
Under the Senate Armed Services Committee language, the Space Corps will have a one-year transition period, while HASC proposes a start date of 1 January 2020 with an ending not later than the end of 2023.
So, after all the debate, dialogue, and column inches written, it appears that national security space is right where it started, roughly two years ago.
Throughout the debate it appeared that the Space Force was a solution in search of a problem. And it appears that it remains so. The big risk now is that a great deal of command and bureaucratic energy is going to be spent establishing a new entity without truly addressing the underlying problems.
What about acquisitions reform? While the legislation empowers the Secretary of the Air Force to create new vehicles, it neither mandates their creation nor addresses the broader acquisitions challenges that affect the defense enterprise writ large. What about personnel and promotion tracks? Here the Secretary of the Air Force is tasked with creating a plan for staff development, something the Air Force could do unilaterally. Creating a space cadre will not, however, take place overnight and nor will creating a plan for their development. This is especially challenging if the Space Corps is not drawing from the Navy or Army space components.
The legislation also fails to address how the Space Corps will interact with the newly re-established Space Command, the Space Development Agency, or the remainder of the national security space enterprise. It does task the Secretary of the Air Force to develop a plan and present it to Congress, but this is a significant gap that undoubtedly will take a great deal of effort to fill. For his part, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL) one of the leading advocates for the Space Corps, believes that the Space Development Agency will be absorbed into the Space Corps within three years.
It remains to be seen whether the Space Corps with its “organize, train, and equip” mandate will truly get national security space to “go fast”. As of right now, it appears that it is just another layer of bureaucracy attempting to fix existing bureaucratic failures.
Lock Him Up?
Chris Condon
The 2020 election, like the 2016 election, is one that is likely to challenge the norms of American politics. Democrats have railed against President Trump for years, criticizing him for eroding these norms that have kept our republic relatively stable for 230 years. In this day and age, however, some Democratic candidates have seen fit to practice a staggering level of hypocrisy; they shout “norms” from the rooftops but discard those that do not suit their fancy on the campaign trail. One example that surfaced just this week was that of Senator Kamala Harris, who told NPR that the Justice Department under a hypothetical President Harris would “have no choice” but to prosecute President Trump for obstruction of justice once he leaves office.
In the history of the United States, a sitting or former president has never been charged with a crime. Only three presidents have ever faced the realistic prospect of impeachment and removal from office, a remarkable fact given the many turbulent eras we have weathered. Even Richard Nixon, whose approval rating hovered just above 20% following his resignation, avoided prosecution via presidential pardon. Prosecuting a former head of state, however attractive the idea may be to score political points, runs egregiously contrary to the current of history. Just as Donald Trump was criticized for stoking chants of “lock her up” referring to losing presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Harris must now be chastised for her calls for Trump’s imprisonment.
Of course, wrongfully locking people up is a sort of tradition for Kamala Harris, who had stints working in California’s justice system before being elected to the Senate. Her record as California Attorney General is perhaps most troubling and illiberal, where she stood as a monument to the “tough on crime” past of the Democratic Party. When multiple California inmates were proven innocent after being incarcerated and then petitioned for release, Harris’ office rejected their applications because they had filed them “too late.” When the Supreme Court opined that conditions in California’s prisons violated the Eighth Amendment due to rampant overcrowding, Attorney General Harris resisted efforts to release non-violent offenders. At one juncture, her office argued that releasing prisoners was unwise because it would reduce the availability of prison labor.
Harris has also had a shaky record on the death penalty. In a Democratic Party where capital punishment has come to be seen as a vestige of a more brutal age, Kamala Harris defended it in 2014. She also resisted reforms to impose more oversight on police departments for unnecessarily coercive practices, including a measure to standardize the use of body cameras for police in the State of California. Democrats are generally not quick to forgive candidates for their past deeds; Joe Biden still faces criticism for his conduct during the Anita Hill hearings, and Kirsten Gillibrand has felt some heat for her friendliness to the NRA while a member of the House of Representatives. Many of these same Democratic critics have brushed aside criticism of Harris’ record as the attorney general of the nation’s most populous state, pointing to her activism for criminal justice reform in the U.S. Senate. It is up to Democratic voters to decide: will they accept hypocrisy on prosecuting political adversaries and political gamesmanship on criminal justice?
This kind of hypocrisy does not stop with Kamala Harris. Although she has called for the destruction of the Supreme Court as we know it through Court packing, so have other candidates like Pete Buttigieg. In the same breath they use to attack President Trump’s appointment of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, they suggest that the next Democratic president should be allowed to appoint six new justices to the Court that are more friendly to a liberal agenda. “Rule of law! Political norms!” they cry as they suggest destroying an impartial Court for political gain. Bernie Sanders, who has rejected a court packing strategy, has still suggested term limits for Supreme Court justices, an idea that was rejected by Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 78. If reviving a practice rejected in the Federalist Papers doesn’t violate our norms, then what does? (It’s also simply a terrible idea.)
What has become clear is that the American political system has decided that attacking norms of government is a fashionable practice. Whether it is President Trump shaking his fist at the Federal Reserve Chairman or Kamala Harris/Pete Buttigieg/Bernie Sanders calling for the destruction of the Supreme Court or the Electoral College, we have come to a dangerous point in our political history. Our Constitution and shared political norms give us the most solid foundation to build upon, but we cannot follow their example if we first take a sledgehammer to it for political gain. Presidential candidates, rather than discussing how they alone can fix the nation’s problems and everyone else should be imprisoned, should be discussing how they will fulfill their duty to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States.
News You May Have Missed
Czechs Protest Over Prime Minister’s Corruption
Crystal Staebell
In the streets of Prague, protesters have joined the largest protests since the Velvet Revolution — which ended communist rule 30 years ago — demanding the resignation of their wealthy prime Minister, Andrej Babis. The police have suggested that he ought to face prosecution on corruption charges, while the European Union has decided to hold back funding, the majority of it being farm subsidies, until the issue has been handled. Babis is facing two charges: one, that he abused EU funds for his luxury resort and farm, and, two, concealed his ownership of this farm to access EU small business funds (as one of the richest people in the world, he’s far from a small business owner). These alleged conflicts of interest led to the European Commission audit that was leaked to the media. The prediction is that while this is indeed a massive demonstration, its impact on the Czech political reality remains unclear.
Guatemalan Migration Increases as Coffee Prices Decline
Carlota Cumella de Montserrat
Brazil, Colombia, Honduras, Vietnam and Saudi Arabia are outcompeting one of the all-time biggest coffee producers in the world: Guatemala. The global coffee sector is suffering a crisis due to the low coffee prices. These have decreased to a point where it does not cover the costs of production, despite salaries having been lowered to derisory amounts. When the main source of income for Guatemala has been coffee production for generations and it suffers a 60% drop, the only alternative seems to be migration. Regardless of the recent increase in security measures put in place in the Mexican border, citizens in Guatemala are determined to sell their lands and search for an alternative way of living away from the coffee industry further north.
Ginsburg Discusses Upcoming Court Decisions
Sarah Weintraub
Last Friday, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg spoke on the upcoming end of the court’s term at a conference in New Paltz, N.Y.. Ginsburg noted that the end of the term will bring more 5 to 4 decisions as the Court rules on some of the term’s most anticipated cases. The Court will decide whether the Trump administration may include a question on citizenship in the 2020 census, amid discussions that this move would lower response rates among undocumented people. Regarding the Establishment Clause, the court will look at whether the symbol of a cross as a public war memorial is unconstitutional. A set of three separate cases to be decided focus on alleged racial and partisan gerrymandering in Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina. All of the decisions announced in the last two weeks of the term will demonstrate the current leanings of the court, now back to full capacity with the addition of a ninth justice, Justice Kavanaugh, at the beginning of this term.
Renewable Technology: Powering our Future (and Fossil Fuels’ Demise)
Stephanie Lizzo
The coal industry is looking towards a dark future in the face of the rapid rise of the renewable energy sector. According to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the installed capacity of clean energy sources in the United States now exceeds that of coal. While this ability differs from the power actually produced, it is a signal that the future of the American energy sector will be forged by solar, wind, and water technology. The shift away from dependence on coal has been catalyzed by a growth in natural gas production, declining prices of renewable energy sources, and public environmental concerns. Power companies are increasingly trying to remain ahead of the curve as they invest in solar and wind projects or pledge to go carbon-free. As these clean sources becomes cheaper and more accessible, opposition will continue to mount against other fossil fuels, pushing the United States into a new era of energy.
Do Cheerios Lower Cholesterol or Cause Cancer?
Madison Howell
Just this week, the Environmental Working Group’s Children’s Health Initiative (EWG) attacked General Mills products claiming that they contained high amounts of glyphosate, a probable carcinogen according to the WHO and a known carcinogen according to California’s Office of Environmental Health Hazards Assessment. Glyphosate is a chemical widely used in weed killers, such as “Roundup”. Since the use of glyphosate is so widespread in agriculture, it is starting to show up in food items even when the product is not used by the companies, so it is thought to have infiltrated the food chain and may be bioaccumulating in animals and possibly humans. However, the EPA does not currently recognize glyphosate as a carcinogen, even though it has been linked to many cancers, and their legal limit of glyphosate is exponentially higher than what the EWG recommends. The EPA will hold a regulation revision review of glyphosate at the beginning of July, so be prepared to throw away your cereal boxes.
The Savior of the World May Be Found … on MBS’s Yacht
“Salvator Mundi” — the painting that is allegedly the work of all-time Renaissance man Leonardo Da Vinci, but also might have been painted by one of his disciples or a professor of paintings conservation at NYU — was purchased by an anonymous buyer at Christie’s in 2017 for $450 million. That buyer was later revealed to be a front for the leader of Abu Dhabi, Muhammad bin Zayed, who was acting on behalf of the Saudi Crown Prince Muhammand bin Salman (better known as “MBS”)—who is perhaps best known for his role in ordering the assassination of Washington Post writer Jamal Khashoggi. The piece was supposed to appear at the Louvre for an exhibition celebrating the 500th anniversary of Leonardo’s death, but it was a no show. It was supposed to hang in the gallery of the Louvre’s Abu Dhabi museum, but it is not there. No one seemed to know where to find the Savior of the World, until an art industry news site announced that it was, in fact, hanging on MBS’s megayacht. A report in The Daily Beast splashed some water on this claim (though hopefully not the painting, which is very fragile), but floating on a yacht in the Red Sea would be a fittingly Bond Villain-esque update to the extremely mysterious tale of the most expensive piece of art ever sold.
The views of contributors are their own, and not that of CSPC.