Foreign Policy Update – USA Gov Policy

CHINA

Yang Jiechi, a member of China’s Politburo, met with Secretary of State Michael Pompeo this week for six hours. In a read out for the press Pompeo said that the US is engaging China over its aggressiveness in a way that hasn’t occurred for the past 20 years. He said that the Trump Administration will not respond to Chinese coercion by retreating or having a nonreciprocal relationship. Assistant Secretary of State David Stilwell said that the Chinese were not forthcoming in the meeting despite US attempts to hold productive talks.

Pompeo said “It’s no longer enough to listen to what the Chinese Communist Party is saying. We can see their actions. I ticked through a few of them: Hong Kong, Tibet, Xinjiang, what they’re doing in India, what they’ve done in the economic zones along the Philippines and Malaysia and Indonesia and Vietnam, the coercion on Australia – when they had the audacity to demand that there would be an investigation of how this virus got from Wuhan to Milan, how this virus got from Wuhan to Tehran, how this virus got from Wuhan to Oklahoma City, and to Belgium and to Spain, and decimating the global economy.”

China did, he said, what authoritarian regimes do: “they disappeared doctors, they squirreled information away, and they denied the world the access it needed to respond to this virus in a way that could have reduced a lot of risk and a lot of costs.” Pompeo added that the US plans to closely watch the upcoming elections in Hong Kong. Pompeo said there is concern that the elections might be cancelled or postponed if Beijing thinks it won’t get its way. According to Stilwell, the Chinese have said one thing and done another which is the root of the lack of trust between the two countries. The trade deal, he pointed out, will be a good acid test of their commitment and trustworthiness.

GERMANY

In 2017, according to Pompeo, the Administration decided to evaluate the country’s entire structure of how the US engages the world, including how US troops are deployed globally.

He said troop deployment to places like Germany has two dimensions. “One, their location, and second, a dimension of should these be permanent bases or are we better off in a more modern world to have rotational deployments where we can get the right equipment at the right time.” Deployments now revolve around “big air forces, big cyber capabilities, big capabilities that are in different pockets,” he pointed out. The US in 2020 is concentrating on how it can collectively best respond not only in Europe, but also in the Middle East to meet today’s challenges.

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IRAN

The IAEA Board of Governors passed a resolution this week addressing Iran’s failure for the past year to answer the Agency’s questions about multiple locations in Iran related to its past nuclear program and now it is denying access to IAEA inspectors to potentially sensitive nuclear sites. The State Department’s Special Representative to Iran, Brian Hook, pointed out that Iran is taking destabilizing and irresponsible actions on the nuclear front. He added: “The news today out of Vienna at the IAEA is significant and it raises serious concerns about Iran’s nuclear program and its lack of transparency.” Hook praised the IAEA, and thanked Washington’s European partners, for holding Iran accountable and hopes the country has nothing to hide, although appears unlikely.

SYRIA

The Treasury Department and State Department are releasing 39 designations under the Caesar Act and Executive Order 13894 as the beginning of what will be a sustained campaign of economic and political pressure to deny the Assad regime revenue and support it uses to wage war and commit mass atrocities against the Syrian people, according to a statement released by Secretary of State Pompeo this week. It designates the architect of the Syrian people’s suffering as Bashar Al-Assad and his wife Asma al-Assad.

“For more than nine years, the Assad regime has waged a bloody war against the Syrian people and committed innumerable atrocities, some of which rise to the level of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including killings, torture, enforced disappearances, and the use of chemical weapons,” Pompeo noted. By most estimates, since the conflict began, more than half a million Syrians have died and eleven million people have been displaced.

DARIA NOVAK served in the United States State Department during the Reagan Administration, and currently is on the Board of the American Analysis of News and Media Inc., which publishes usagovpolicy.com and the New York Analysis of Policy and Government. Each Saturday, she presents key updates on U.S. foreign policy from the State Department.

Illustration: Pixabay

Quick Analysis

What Would War with Taiwan be Like

There is a coming conflict with Taiwan. What remains uncertain is the nature of that conflict. A newly released report this week by the Global Taiwan Institute’s (GTI) John Dotson argues that political warfare is a key component of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) attempt to undermine and achieve annexation of Taiwan. The CCP’s goal, he says, is to force the subjugation of the island’s citizens and democratic society and place it under “full CCP political Control.” Chinese directed propaganda and disinformation, elite cooption, political subversion, and coercive military and economic actions all are connected by a prominent link – they are actions intended for psychological effect. They are also methods of political warfare in an ongoing, persistent, and multi-faceted campaign against Taiwan. Information warfare used by Beijing against Taipei manipulates the news to change the attitudes of the population. Is it working? Dotson says that China is successfully exercising influence of “content and editorial coverage in traditional media outlets such as newspapers and television news channels, largely by leveraging influence through local proxy figures—in particular, wealthy businesspersons who have extensive financial equities in China.” He suggests that Beijing employs a “pink model” to push pro-CCP content into social media news feeds, not unlike what China does inside the United States. Using algorithmic targeting, Beijing is able to attack selected demographic targets who are more vulnerable to disinformation. Its goal is to further sow confusion and reduce cognitive resistance to pro-CCP’s narratives. Encouraging a population to believe false information by reducing a group’s opposition to it is a common practice among intelligence agencies and politicians alike. First, a population is provided with several scenarios that are easily accepted as true. In a simple example, one might read that at noon the sun is high in the sky, the clock says 12:00 pm, and many people are eating lunch. These points are easily accepted as true. The human brain at this point becomes more susceptible to accepting new information that may be false as it is programmed to let its guard done. The CCP follows by planting real information among false facts to make it easier to accept and digest. It doesn’t stop at disinformation, Beijing is also leveraging its toolkit in a related field, “legal warfare (法律戰), to promote its interpretation of international law and diplomatic practice. Yet another major category of concern in the CCP’s political warfare against Taiwan is known as “gray zone operations.” These are more closely related to military actions and include activities such as the aerial and maritime encroachment of Taiwan’s territory. The goal is to erode the concept of sovereignty and security. The United States is experiencing “gray zone” operations on our own southern border. In Taiwan, these include China’s overflight of Taiwan’s airspace by military aircraft. These events are increasing in both number and intensity as they grow close to the island itself. Simultaneously, China’s PLAN (People’s Liberation Army Navy), through its coast guard “law enforcement” operations are challenging Taipei’s outer islands. Dotson points out that the “paramount objective in such operations is the intended psychological effect on Taiwan’s population.” Another related area according to the GTI report is increasing economic coercion. China is attempting to deny Taiwan market access, ban its imports, and limit politically-oriented trade and investment opportunities. The intent is to “punish groups within Taiwan for developments to which Beijing objects, to isolate Taiwan internationally, and to pressure other countries and international companies to conform to Beijing’s preferred policies on Taiwan,” says Dotson. To date, Taiwan has suffered from attempts to ban Taiwan’s export of agricultural products. Beijing has also punished countries who willingly import from Taiwan and have close relations with Taipei. Perhaps one of the most misunderstood areas of China’s political warfare campaign against Taiwan revolves around its “united front work.” This embraces a range of measures that Dotson says include both financial and psychological cooption and include the use of front organizations and political subversion. In Taiwan, China is coopting business and political elites, funding and manipulating local organizations (temple societies) and offering support to fringe political parties that can be used to destabilize Taiwan and spread the CCP’s propaganda. Western militaries analyze the likelihood of kinetic warfare but spend less time on the impacts of political warfare. The free world cannot overlook what is happening in Taiwan and needs to recognize that Chinese political warfare extends across the globe. Beijing may not need to physically capture the island by force if it wins using a clandestine political warfare model of conflict. Then the question becomes, “Who is next?” Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept. Illustration: Pixabay