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: A Neglected Reason for Skepticism About Deterring North Korea

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allies, America First, Asia, China, Cold War, deterrence, Eastern Europe, Japan, North Korea, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, South Korea, Trump, Western Europe

With President Trump traveling around Asia and talking North Korea, among other subjects, with the region’s heads of state, it’s a good time to bring up an aspect of the nuclear crisis that hasn’t received enough attention – including from yours truly.

It’s what political science types might call the asymmetry in stakes perceived by the North and by the United States, and it’s a problem that’s greatly complicating American efforts to resist China’s recent expansionism in Asian coastal waters and Russia’s similar activities in its borderlands, as well as North Korea’s designs. It also differentiates these national security challenges from their prime Cold War era counterparts.

In plain English, “asymmetry in stakes etc” means that what the United States on the one hand, and North Korea, China, and Russia on the other, are arguing about means much more to those three American rivals than it does to the United States itself. As a result, especially with all of those rivals either able or on the verge of being able to hit a U.S. cities with nuclear-armed missiles, Washington’s commitment to defend the countries in their cross-hairs is much less believable than the prospect that they will call America’s bluff and risk a military conflict.

After all, the United States would be put in a position of exposing its territory and population to nuclear attack for relatively low priority interests – principally, South Korea, freedom of navigation in the South and East China Seas, and small Eastern European countries that until recently were well inside the Soviet orbit for decades with no apparent effect on U.S. security or prosperity.

North Korea, China, and Russia would also be running nuclear risks if military showdowns develop.  For them, however, the upsides are more highly prized. And since the downside for America involves catastrophes that would equal the September 11 attacks by about a zillion, it’s likely that the United States would not decide, as the saying goes, to sacrifice Washington or New York or (FILL IN CITY OF YOUR CHOICE) to save Seoul or Vilnius (capital of the Baltic state Lithuania) or Asian sea-lanes.

Of course, the United States vowed to use nuclear weapons to defend allies during the Cold War, too, and the threat clearly achieved the desired deterrent effect. But thinking in “asymmetry terms” explains why these circumstances differed fundamentally from today’s. The main allies being defended – Western Europe and Japan – were continually identified as high priorities by Washington, and the reasons were entirely understandable. Both were major potential and then actual concentrations of industrial, technological – and therefore military – power. Their possible shift into the Soviet (or, less likely, Chinese), camp would transfer major assets to U.S. adversaries and weaken the overall strength of the free world.

I’d long had my doubts about whether preventing even losses this great were worth risking a global nuclear cataclysm, but this proposition was at least reasonably debatable, in my opinion. Preventing the losses at risk now? Not even close.

And what’s also surely instructive about the Cold War experience is that the European allies, in particular, never fully believed the American pledge. That’s largely why the United Kingdom and especially France developed their own impressive nuclear arsenals. Fast forward to today, and America’s nuclear pledges, especially in Asia, are more deeply doubted. That’s why South Korea and Japan are discussing creating their own nuclear forces more actively and urgently than ever.

In a previous post, I’d identified other reasons for challenging what may be a growing belief that North Korea can be deterred by America’s nuclear weapons just like the Soviet Union and China were during the Cold War – and that therefore some kind of agreed upon freeze in Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program is the most realistic way to resolve the crisis peacefully and acceptably. The asymmetry argument is another important reason for skepticism.

It’s entirely possible that I’m wrong. And I’d be perfectly happy to support such an effort. But if a freeze becomes the aim, I want American forces – whose vulnerability to North Korean attack would put heavy pressure on any U.S. president to respond with nuclear weapons and possibly trigger North Korean nuclear retaliation – nowhere near the Korean peninsula. Because the chances that I’m right are much higher than zero. And I view the policy of incurring any risk of a nuclear warhead landing on American soil in order to save South Korea to be completely indefensible.

As argued above, Japan could reasonably be placed into a different, and higher priority, category. So although I’d prefer to see U.S. forces exit the Asia-Pacific region completely, a fallback position could be focusing American deterrence policies on protecting Japan (from whatever plans for global or regional hegemony or predominance or call it what you will China may be seeking), abandoning South Korea militarily (but as previously proposed, supporting its development of nuclear weapons and selling it whatever conventional arms it wants), and pulling back from the South China Sea (because, as also previously argued, any power controlling these waters will need to trade with America if it wants to grow acceptably fast).

It would be an Asian version of the partial pullback I’ve recommended for Europe. It’s also entirely consistent with what’s lately often been called an “America First” foreign policy. Maybe it’s something for President Trump to consider?

Our So-Called Foreign Policy: On U.S. Alliances, Trump’s the Voice of Responsibility

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2016 election, alliances, China, Cold War, Donald Trump, East Asia, escalation dominance, extended deterrence, foreign policy establishment, Germany, Japan, North Korea, nuclear weapons, Our So-Called Foreign Policy, Russia, smothering strategy, South Korea, Soviet Union, Western Europe

Foreign policy devotees like yours truly have rarely seen salad days like the last few weeks. On the heels of a long and remarkably candid interview of President Obama summarized in an Atlantic magazine piece have now come two comparably detailed and revealing sessions on the subject between Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump and reporters from first the Washington Post and then The New York Times.

I wrote last week on Trump’s Post remarks on America’s approach to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) embodied far more realism and indeed wisdom on the subject of U.S. alliances than the bipartisan American foreign policy establishment has demonstrated in decades. His latest statements to The Times confirm this superior judgment – and on elements of U.S. alliance doctrine that are as fundamental, longstanding, and arguably reckless as they have been thoroughly soft-pedaled in public. Specifically, Trump is challenging the decades-long policy that, a quarter century after fall of communism, is still exposing the United States to the risk of nuclear war to protect Japan, Western Europe, and South Korea.

One reason for threatening to unleash armageddon to maintain the freedom of major treaty allies was always made reasonably clear to the American voter during the Cold War: Western Europe and Japan were actual and potential concentrations of economic, industrial, and therefore military might. Therefore, they needed to be kept out of Soviet (and Communist Chinese) hands at literally all costs or else the global balance of power would tip fatally against the free world. And central features of American foreign policy quite naturally became deterring communist aggression both by deploying hundreds of thousands of American soldiers and heavy conventional weapons overseas, and by placing literally thousands of nuclear weapons on allied soil.

What was never made remotely clear to the U.S. public was a second, equally crucial reason for this alliance strategy – and the reason it has survived the complete transformation of the global strategic environment since the Soviet Union collapsed and China started integrating with the world capitalist economy instead of seeking its overthrow. Extending the American defense umbrella over the allies was also deemed essential to prevent these countries – and especially the former Axis powers Germany and Japan – from ever becoming global security threats themselves again.

The ultimate military guarantees provided by Washington were central to a strategy of what I’ve called “smothering” the allies. The United States literally would eliminate the need for them to carry out independent foreign policies ever again by meeting all the major needs that spur countries to conduct foreign policies in the first place. Washington would shield them from military attack and provide huge markets for the surplus production they needed to foster ever-rising levels of prosperity.

The economic dimension of this strategy have been problematic enough – but let’s save that discussion for another post. But the military dimension has become downright irrational in recent years. Put simply, yoking America’s very survival to that of foreign countries is easily defensible at a time when mortal threats to U.S. alliances are difficult to find – as in the early post-Cold War years, when Russia was weak, China seemed tamed, and North Korea’s development of nuclear forces that could strike the American homeland seemed a remote prospect even to worrywarts.

What Trump has been telling his media interlocutors is that those relatively halcyon days are gone. As events are making clear, the weaknesses of the military smothering strategy have become most apparent in East Asia. As I’ve written, the U.S. approach is logically defensible for America only if the United States maintains escalation dominance – nuclear superiority so overwhelming that even a questionably rational regime like North Korea’s would understand that it would come in a distant (and completely destroyed) second if these terrible weapons were ever used.

But as I’ve also written, this American escalation dominance is weakening, as the North has made progress in developing both nuclear weapons able to strike U.S. targets, and weapons mobile enough to survive limited American preemptive strikes aimed at taking them out. Here’s an update on Pyongyang’s nuclear programs. In other words, it’s one thing for an American president to promise to risk Los Angeles for Seoul (the South Korean capital), when there’s no real risk to Los Angeles. It’s quite another to make this vow when southern California is a real target. Recent Chinese nuclear weapons progress presents a similar dilemma, especially with China more aggressively asserting territorial claims in the South and East China Seas – including islands also claimed by Japan.

The point here is not that America’s current approach to alliances should be changed immediately. It’s entirely possible that such “extended nuclear deterrence” is the nation’s best overall bet for continued security and prosperity even in a post-Cold War world in which potential adversaries possess increasingly formidable nuclear capabilities. But contrary to the sneering, harrumphing – much less indignant – responses of foreign policy establishmentarians, the smothering strategy is anything but a slam dunk any more, either.

So it’s anything but crazy or irresponsible for Trump to be raising the prospect of Japan and South Korea acquiring their own nuclear deterrents. Indeed, as Trump told New York Times reporters David E. Sanger and Maggie Haberman, it’s essential for Washington to start thinking about these possibilities precisely because better Chinese and North Korean capabilities are – understandably – raising doubts among Japanese and South Korean leaders themselves about the credibility of U.S. nuclear guarantees. That is, they’re no longer solidly convinced that Washington would risk Los Angeles for Seoul or Tokyo. And if you think about these matters seriously, how could they be?

Indeed, Trump’s remarks about U.S. alliance policy have performed a major public service. For decades, a series of at-least-questionable decisions bearing on American national life and death have been common knowledge among U.S. leaders and foreign policy professionals, allied leaders, and adversary leaders. But they’ve been practically unknown to most Americans. Now what has clearly been a secret kept through countless acts of omission is starting to come out. The establishment is clearly being discomfited, but given its longtime record of often disastrous incompetence, why should anyone outside its coddle ranks care? For all other Americans, and especially those truly supportive of accountable, representative government, Trump’s challenge to the nation’s alliance strategy can only ultimately be an unalloyed good.