Im-Politic: The Washington Post Goes All Fake News on Trump, Biden, and the UN

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Anne Gearan, Ashley Parker, Biden, election 2020, General Assembly, Im-Politic, Joe Biden, Mainstream Media, Philip Rucker, Trump, Ukraine, UN, United Nations, Washington Post

On Sunday, I wrote about an Associated Press article dealing extensively with manufacturing that I said might not have been Fake News, but sure came close. Today, the Washington Post published an article about President Trump’s activities at the UN General Assembly meeting in New York City that unquestionably deserves that label.

The theme of the article was made clear by the headline: “Trump uses U.N. meeting to wage domestic political attack on Biden.” Sounds pretty disgraceful, right? I mean, after all, every September the world’s leaders gather for this event, and address weighty issues ranging from threats to peace to climate change (a big focus this year). And here comes this notoriously egomaniacal and selfish boor of an Oval Office occupant determined to ignore his responsibilities as steward of the national interest and global leader – and the tradition of domestic politics stopping at the water’s edge. Instead, all he cared about was using this solemn conclave to slime former Vice President Joe Biden, a likely opponent during the next presidential election campaign.

As often not the case these days, moreover, the article itself faithfully reflected the header. According to authors Anne Gearan, Philip Rucker, and Ashley Parker, the President “turned” the General Assembly, “where foreign leaders converged to confront climate change and other global pandemics, into the backdrop for an assault on a domestic political opponent.”

They continued: “Trump used his meetings with heads of state to flay Biden, celebrate his personal attorney’s altercations and tend to his media feuds.”

For good measure, they wrote that Mr. Trump “seemed to revel in the opportunity to kick up dust around Biden, who has led Trump in virtually every public poll for several months.”

In other words, could the President be more of a reckless lout?

Readers were also told that participants in the global gathering were “baffled by the sudden interjection of a complex Trump scandal that they found mystifying.” And the authors dutifully quoted (globalist) “experts” to validate their emphasis on the President’s allegedly alarming weirdness:

“‘It puts foreign leaders in a difficult if not impossible position,’ said Richard N. Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations. ‘How do you manage this complicated person who doesn’t play the game by the rules, and how do you somehow protect this important relationship? Everybody’s a bit wary.’

“Victoria Holt, managing director at the Henry L. Stimson Center, said the arcane details of the Ukraine story and its overlap with U.S. politics are largely beside the point for other leaders here. ‘I’m sure they are scratching their heads,” she said. “The United States is supposed to be leading on major issues” such as climate change.’”

Except a glancing reference in its paragraph completely destroyed the alarming premise of the article. As the authors briefly noted, the controversy over Mr. Trump’s own and the Biden family’s dealings with political leaders and oligarchs from Ukraine “hung over Trump’s first day at the annual U.N. meeting, beginning with a volley of shouted questions from journalists….”

Another unintentionally revealing observation: “Trump stayed away from the Ukraine topic in his only major prepared remarks of the day….”

That is, it wasn’t Mr. Trump who injected domestic politics into this year’s General Assembly and its work. It was journalists like the Post reporters. (Unless you attach lots of importance to the fact that the President tweeted about the subject beforehand – which the Post reporters clearly didn’t, since they devoted no other passages to it.) Talk about blaming the victim.

The Washington Post, of course, is the newspaper that throughout the Trump administration has been sanctimoniously warning that “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” As so often the case, though, it’s ignored how shamefully biased reporting by democracy’s supposedly impartial watchdogs represent an equally dangerous threat.

Im-Politic: Biden’s Fake History on Fighting Russia’s Political Interference in Europe

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Alliance for Securing Democracy, Biden, Bill Kristol, Eastern Europe, election 2016, election interference, Europe, German Marshall Fund, Im-Politic, John Podesta, NATO, North Atlantic treaty Organization, Obama, Putin, Russia, Trump, vital interests, Western Europe

Maybe Joe Biden’s main problem isn’t simply that he’s “gaffe-prone” – at least not nowadays, as he again seeks the Democratic nomination for President. Maybe the former Vice President’s main problem is that he’s suffering major memory loss – and I mean major memory loss. Either that, or his recollection of how the Obama administration in which he served responded to Russian political subversion in Europe reveals a truth-telling problem comparable to the one widely believed displayed by President Trump.

How else can the following recent Biden statement be explained, in a CNN interview in which he charged that Mr. Trump’s reelection would wind up destroying the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) – America’s most important post-World War II security alliance:

“Why did we set up NATO…? So no one nation could abuse the power in the region in Europe, would suck us in the way they did in World War I and World War II. It’s being crushed.

“Look at what’s happened with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin. While he — while Putin is trying to undo our elections, he is undoing elections in — in Europe. Look what’s happened in Hungary. Look what’s happened in Poland. Look what’s happened in — look what’s happening. You think that would have happened on my watch or Barack [Obama]’s watch? You can’t answer that, but I promise you it wouldn’t have, and it didn’t.”

Leave aside for now the massively inconvenient truth that the Obama-Biden watch was exactly when Putin most recently tried to “undo” (bizarro phrasing, I know) a U.S. election. Leave aside also the incoherence of the claim that “You can’t answer that, but I promise you it wouldn’t have, and it didn’t.”

Because even if Biden is only referring to Russian interference with politics in Europe, his statement ignores literally dozens of such instances and campaigns during his White House years. Abundant evidence comes from the Alliance for Securing Democracy – a research organization housed in the German Marshall Fund – a quintessentially globalist, Washington, D.C.-based think tank. For good measure, the Alliance’s “Advisory Council” contains not only the usual crew of bipartisan Washington foreign policy Blob hangers-on from previous globalist administrations, but virulent Trump-haters like long-time neoconservative stalwart Bill Kristol, as well as John Podesta, who chaired Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful presidential run in 2016. So clearly, this source has no interest in putting out anything that will make Mr. Trump look good relative to political rivals.

The Alliance maintains a handy-dandy interactive search engine called the “Authoritarian Interference Tracker,” which makes it easy to identify political subversion efforts by a wide range of countries in a wide range of countries. And here’s just a small sample of what comes up when the controls are set for the Obama years:

>2008 – present: “In 2008, the Institute of Democracy and Cooperation, a pro-Russia think tank headed by former Duma deputy Natlaya Norchnitskaya, opened in Paris. According to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, ‘the organization toes a blatantly pro-Kremlin line.’ The Institute’s Director of Studies…told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty that its financing comes from ‘the Foundation for Historical Outlook in Moscow, which in turn is financed by unspecified private Russian companies.’”

>2008-2017: “According to the [British newspaper] The Guardian, between 2008 and 2017, Rossotrudnichnestvo, a Russian government-organized non-governmental organization (GONGO) worked with state-sponsored media outlet TASS and Russian intelligence agencies as part of a nearly decade-long influence effort that sought to distance Macedonia from the EU [European Union] and N NATO and to prevent the success of the Macedonian name change referendum.”

>2009-2011: “According to the Czech Security Information Service’s (BIS) annual reports for 2009 and 2010, Russian intelligence services were actively involved in programs to build closer relations with the Russian expatriate community in the Czech Republic as a way to expand influence in the country. These programs specifically targeted academic and intellectual elites as well as students, according to BIS.”

>2010-2014: “According to Reuters, between 2010 and 2014, the Russian government offered Ukrainian oligarch Dmytro Firtash lucrative business deals in exchange for Firtash’s political support in Ukraine. Firtash and his companies received large loans and lucrative gas contracts from Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom at significantly discounted prices. Firtash’s companies would then sell gas to the Ukrainian government at a high price and pocket the difference. Firtash used his domestic political influence in Ukraine to support Russian government-backed presidential candidate Viktor Yanukovych’s successful 2010 campaign for the presidency. According to Reuters, the Russian government instructed Firtash to ensure Ukraine’s position in Russia’s sphere of influence.”

Here are some abbreviated descriptions of other such incidents:

>2010-2011: “Funds from Russian money-laundering scheme funneled to Latvian political party.”

>2010: “Russian government-connected oligarch Vladimir Yakunin finances pro-Russian Estonian political party.”

>2010-2014: “Emails expose Greek political party Syriza’s ties to Russian-connected actors.”

>2013: “Russian money-laundering ring cycles money through Polish, pro-Russia think tank.”

>2013: Bulgaria’s “Pro-Russian Ataka party reportedly receives funding from the Russian embassy.”

>2013: “Russian government-connected oligarch Vladimir Yakunin launches foundation in Geneva [Switzerland]. The foundation allegedly “is part of a network of organizations promoting an authoritarian and Eurasianist model of thought to counter the current liberal-democratic world order.”

>2014: A “new Russian Orthodox Church in Skopje [Macedonia] raised concerns among Macedonian officials that ‘Russia may be trying to use the Orthodox Church to its Russian interests in Macedonia,’ according to” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

>2014-present: “Emails reveal Russian government-connected oligarch funded network of pro-Russia fringe political groups in Eastern Europe.”

>2014: “French far-right party National Rally, formerly Front National…receives loan from bank ‘with links to the Kremlin.’”

>2015: “Russian government activist founds pro-Russia political party” in Poland.

>2016-17: “Czech intelligence service reports on Russian covert political influence campaign in annual report.”

My point here certainly isn’t to sound the alarm about all this Russian political activity, especially in Eastern Europe – which, as I’ve written repeatedly (see, e.g., here), has long been part of Russia’s sphere of influence, has never been defined as a vital U.S. interest, and where America’s options for responding effectively are limited at best. Nor is my point to vouch for the accuracy of every single one of the above claims, or others like it in the database. And I certainly don’t believe that the above information represents any evidence that Russian interference put Mr. Trump over the top in 2016.

Instead, the point is to show that, despite Biden’s boasts, the kind of Russian activities about which he’s alarmed plainly took place during the Obama years in spades (and have been reported by many Mainstream Media sources, as the database makes clear), they occurred in both Eastern and in (more important to the United States) Western Europe, and that Washington’s responses evidently did little to stop or even curb them.

Indeed, the record shows that, at least when it comes to Biden’s record of fighting the Russian subversion in Europe that he considers a mortal threat to America, by his own standards, he deserves the Trump-ian label of “Sleepy Joe.” As in asleep at the switch.

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: Why the Iran Deal (So Far) Worries Me

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allies, Biden, European Union, Iran, Iran deal, Iran talks, Kerry, Middle East, nuclear weapons, Obama, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, sanctions, Saudi Arabia, Shiites, State Department, Sunnis, Susan Rice

I still haven’t yet examined all the statements made by participants about the nuclear weapons deal announced yesterday by the United States, five other major world powers, the European Union, and Iran. So I can’t comment on all of the possible loopholes created by the agreement, which include differing interpretations of its provisions by the signatories (not to mention the inevitable discrepancies among wording in different languages, plus any that might be deliberately created by the various governments involved). In fact, as far as I can tell, no actual agreement text has been made public by the Obama administration. The only official U.S. document I’ve seen is this description posted on the White House website.

So like most of us, I’m somewhat hamstrung in evaluating the accord – which, to complicate matters further, is a work in progress, that everyone acknowledges leaves many critical details up in the air. Further, I’m no expert in the technology involved in producing nuclear weapons and peaceful nuclear energy.

All the same, what I know of the deal worries me as much today as it did the day before its unveiling. My main – non-technical – concerns:

>Iran is an awfully big country – the world’s 18^th largest. At more than 636,000 square miles, it’s just under 18 percent the size of the United States, and slightly less than 2.5 times bigger than Texas. A country that big will contain a great many hiding places, and will be challenging for the international community to monitor.

>All of the strategic conditions that, at least in principle, have been driving the Iranians to develop so many of the capabilities for building nuclear weapons remain firmly in place. Their theocracy represents a hated minority sect located in a region demographically dominated by its main theological rivals – which include not only large countries like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, but unspeakably violent terrorist groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda and its various offshoots.

At least as important, Iran has used force to challenge the United States, which has in recent years toppled adversary regimes in Iraq and Libya, and has worked hard to oust the Assad dictatorship in Syria. Even a small nuclear arsenal would practically ensure the Iranian regime’s indefinite survival against its most powerful foreign threat by far.

And don’t forget – Iran’s neighborhood is overwhelmingly likely to remain hostile and dangerous long after the end of the various fixed-term provisions envisioned by the framework.  Therefore, going nuclear could still just as strongly appeal even to a future Iranian regime much more moderate than today’s.

>America’s foreign policy team doesn’t even deserve to be called the JV. Secretary of State Kerry was known during his Senate career as a “showhorse,” not a “workhorse.” And even with a strong legislative record on Capitol Hill, there is no reason to consider him anywhere near a match for Iranian negotiators. Like Vice President Biden, he’s traveled extensively, and accumulated much face time with foreign leaders. Whether either of them has learned anything useful from these experiences is not entirely clear. As for national security advisor Susan Rice, she’s simply a climber devoid of any substantive accomplishment.  Her career has been nothing more than a monument to over-promotion and possibly racial tokenism. And then there’s the president himself, who of course, had amassed only a half a Senate term’s worth of national policy-making experience before winning the White House in 2008.

Has foreign policy experience been any guarantee of good results for the United States? Hardly. It was the “best and the brightest,” after all, who led the nation into Vietnam and other debacles. What’s worrisome about the current administration is that it’s a combination of down-the-line (liberal) establishment thinkers completely lacking in any meaningful private sector or other real-world experience, and the wisdom and judgment they usually nurture.

>As has widely been noted, the Obama administration is heavily invested in Iran deal’s success for many reasons. Both the president and Kerry clearly have the legacy thing on their minds – both in the positive sense of achieving an historic and enduring breakthrough, and in the negative sense of burnishing records that look decidedly bleak so far. How enthusiastic will the president and his aides be to conclude that Iran is cheating? In fact, between now and the next (June 30) deadline, how plausible is it that they’ll hold fast on the framework’s decisive conditions when firmness could blow up an enterprise on which they’ve worked so hard for so long?  

Add to these influences – to which all politicians, and other human beings, are subject – the strong tendency of the State Department, the diplomatic establishment, and their Mainstream Media enablers to value perpetuating diplomatic “processes” at least as much as achieving results. Just think of how the endless, on-and-off Israeli-Palestinian peace talks are continually described. Not that it’s out of bounds to believe that “talking is better than fighting.” But time is not necessarily America’s friend here – both because of Israeli threats to solve the problem militarily, and because of the related likelihood of continuing Iranian progress toward weapon-ization.

>America’s allies in keeping Iran nuclear weapons-free are hardly known for steadfastness. The European Union and most of its individual members have been ambivalent enough about responding to Russia’s expansionism over the last year – and that’s a threat in their own neighborhood. Economics looks like the most powerful explanation. The continent is stagnating economically, and even though Russia is no giant on the global economic stage, it’s been a major market, and fuel supplier, for many European countries – notably Germany. Growth-starved European economies are bound to be just as tempted by potential customers in Iran. As a result, it’s not just President Obama who could be reluctant to accuse Tehran of cheating. Many allies could be equally unwilling. Which means that, barring the most frightening and flagrant examples of Iranian cheating on a final nuclear agreement, the threat of promptly and completely reimposing sanctions to punish agreement violations looks ominously empty. 

>Finally, the administration’s explanation of why Iran has come this far literally sounds too good to be true, especially given the existential advantages Tehran would create for itself by going nuclear. As Mr. Obama has made clear, he doesn’t believe that sanctions possible in current circumstances by themselves can change Iran’s nuclear plans. He has repeatedly stated that using force in the Middle East has usually been a disastrous mistake for the United States in recent years. Yet he credits current sanctions with, first, seriously committing Iran into a diplomatic exercise aimed expressly at eliminating any nuclear option and, second, with producing Iran’s signature onto a framework fully capable (as the president sees it) of achieving this epochal objective.

I readily concede that the sanctions have hurt Iran economically. Yet as a friend reminded me a few weeks ago, it’s a country for which levels of economic privation unknown to Americans are still a warm memory. The population’s ability to endure further hardships shouldn’t be underestimated – especially considering the national power it could bring and the pride it could foster. Indeed, Russia may be teaching Washington a lesson in economic resilience right now.

But let’s close on an encouraging note. The Wall Street Journal today reported that, as the Iran talks have proceeded, the Obama Pentagon has been upgrading its biggest bunker buster bombs – weapons that can be used in principle to destroy even heavily protected Iran nuclear facilities. Perhaps despite much evidence to the contrary, when administration officials keep saying that they’re not operating in a perfect world, they really do know it.

Im-Politic: Budget Strengthens Case that Obama’s Border Security Strategy isn’t Serious

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Biden, border security, budget, CAFTA, Central America, Colombia, foreign aid, George W. Bush, Im-Politic, Immigration, Obama, Plan Colombia, Ronald Reagan

With immigration and Department of Homeland Security funding at the center of a looming budget showdown between President Obama and Congress’ Republican leaders, it’s surely useful to look over the new Obama budget and see what it actually proposes on this front. And it’s hard to avoid concluding that the president’s claimed determination to bolster border security shouldn’t be taken seriously.

Let’s leave aside Mr. Obama’s “executive amnesty” move last fall, which can only strengthen the already powerful policy magnet that’s been luring illegal immigrants to the United States for so long. Yes, the president did propose to increase border security funding by nearly 25 percent over current funding levels – to just under $374 million. But the week before the official budget request was unveiled, the administration dropped a powerful hint that it doesn’t expect any of these new resources to do much good. Why else would the White House have touted so prominently – in a New York Times op-ed by the Vice President – its decision to attack the proverbial root causes of last year’s Central American immigration surge by spending $1 billion to promote reform in the region?

The administration’s ostensible belief that the best way to deal with the international problems facing the United States is to manipulate hard-to-contol revents abroad is, as I’ve written, a time-honored tenet of American foreign policy. With the huge but long-ago exceptions of post-World War II aid to Western Europe and Japan, this strategy has also failed so completely in the closely related foreign aid and trade spheres that it deserves the label delusional. Moreover, as I’ve also written, this approach becomes absolutely unforgivable upon realizing the unique geopolitical advantages enjoyed by the United States that make much easier-to-control and more promising domestic solutions – like serious border security efforts, in this case – vastly superior.

After all, it’s not as if the United States hasn’t tried promoting reform in Central America before. During the Cold War, President Reagan launched a “Caribbean Basin Initiative” aimed at preventing the rise of “new Cubas” and a repeat of the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua. In 2005, Congress passed President George W. Bush’s Central America Free Trade Agreement, which was hyped in part as an immigration control measure. Vice President Biden’s own new article makes clear that substantial American aid to the region has been continuing. Yet he admits that the region’s countries are still held back by “inadequate education, institutional corruption, rampant crime and a lack of investment….”

Nor does Mr. Biden stop there in knee-capping his apparent belief that yet more money is the cure for most of what ails Central America. He adds that Central American countries and their economies still lack “clear rules and regulations; protections for investors; courts that can be trusted to adjudicate disputes fairly; serious efforts to root out corruption; protections for intellectual property; and transparency to ensure that international assistance is spent accountably and effectively.” Who can reasonably doubt, therefore, that what’s fundamentally crippling the region after all this time is not a lack of resources (especially considering how tiny these nations are) but a dysfunctional political culture. And why on earth does the Vice President suggest that this disease can be cured with more “training”?

Mr. Biden at least does provide some concrete answers – mainly, the U.S.-assisted transformation of the much larger nation of Colombia. There’s no doubt that progress has been made in that strife-torn country on many fronts. According to World Bank data, economic growth has been trending up and the poverty rate is declining. At the same time, though down from its peak at the turn of the century, illicit drug production in the country has now stabilized, and a final peace agreement to end Colombia’s 30-year insurgency remains elusive. (Indeed, casualties continue.) Moreover, although this progress has been made at the cost of $9 billion from American taxpayers, the Obama administration is still asking Congress for nearly $300 million more in annual aid in its new budget. More ominously, the end of a long global boom in raw materials is already imposing major economic pain throughout Latin America, which has relied on strong commodity exports for much of its recent growth. So expect those root socio-economic roots of mass emigration to start growing again all over the region.

A president serious about sensible immigration reform would recognize what a losing battle the nation has been fighting in order to curb illegal migrant inflows at their sources. Mr. Obama’s continued hype of these utopian proposals greatly strengthens the case that he’s anything but that president.