Last month, the Senate Armed Services Committee voted to advance the FY2025 NDAA to the Senate floor, which includes a significant provision that would establish a regional contingency stockpile of U.S. weapons in Taiwan.
This stockpile could mirror the shortcomings observed in the War Reserve Stockpile Allies-Israel (WRSA-I) program, and could have equally disastrous consequences for accountability. The Israel-based reserve’s lack of oversight, transparency, and accountability mechanisms serves as a cautionary tale for why such a model should not be replicated in Taiwan.
Insufficient checks, balances, and transparency
The Israel-based reserve does not have the necessary checks and balances to ensure end use monitoring of stockpiled weapons by Israeli forces. This absence of oversight mechanisms has allowed for withdrawals of military equipment without public documentation or congressional scrutiny. In Taiwan, a similar lack of oversight could result in the unregulated transfer and use of U.S. weapons, which carries with it potential to stoke regional tensions with additional military activity and use of force.
The Israel-based reserve's operations are also shrouded in secrecy, with no public inventory or clear policy guidance on allowable transfers of materials. This opacity has enabled unknown amounts of weapons transfers, in the shadow of ongoing conflict and civilian harm, without any public or legislative scrutiny. Establishing a similar stockpile in Taiwan at a time of heightened geopolitical strain in the Taiwan Strait, could diminish transparency further and erode trust in U.S. foreign policy decisions.
Legal, ethical, and escalatory concerns
One of the most concerning aspects of the Israel-based reserve program is its potential to embolden aggressive Israeli military actions by providing easy access to advanced weaponry. In the volatile context of Taiwan, where tensions with China are perpetually high, the presence of a U.S. weapons stockpile could encourage more confrontational postures. This in turn could trigger an arms race, destabilizing the region and posing significant risks to global security.
The legal frameworks governing the Israel-based reserve, such as the Foreign Assistance Act and the Arms Export Control Act, have also proven inadequate in ensuring comprehensive reporting and accountability. Recent legislative efforts, such as the emergency supplemental H.R.815 and the 2023 Securing American Arms Act, have further eroded these constraints, reducing oversight and allowing for more discretionary transfers of defense articles. Replicating this flawed legal and operational structure in Taiwan could similarly lead to U.S. arms being used in violation of international law and human rights standards, or otherwise being diverted to unintended end users.
Enhanced oversight and transparency
To avoid replicating the dangers of WRSA-I, any consideration of a U.S. weapons stockpile in Taiwan must be accompanied by stringent oversight and transparency measures. Congress should mandate comprehensive reporting on all arms transfers and establish robust mechanisms to ensure these weapons are used in accordance with international law and ethical standards. Without such measures, the risks of unchecked militarization and regional instability far outweigh any perceived strategic benefits.
The shortcomings of the Israel-based reserve program provide a clear warning against establishing a similar weapons stockpile in Taiwan. The lack of oversight, transparency, and accountability, coupled with the potential for human rights abuses and regional destabilization, make such a stockpile a highly risky and potentially disastrous proposition. The U.S. must learn from the WRSA-I experience and enact responsible arms transfer policies that promote stability, not undermine it.
Lillian Mauldin is a Founding Board Member of Women for Weapons Trade Transparency and a Research Fellow at the Center for International Policy. Lillian brings expertise and knowledge across a wide range of thematic issues and governance levels, including federal, state, and local. Lillian hopes to help enact policies that will prioritize holistic human wellbeing and that will demilitarize the institutional fabrics of the United States.
Soldiers drive their military vehicles past Taiwan flags during an army exercise in Hsinchu, central Taiwan January 27, 2010. The U.S. and China are currently at odds over an arms sales to Taiwan, according to local media. REUTERS/Nicky Loh (TAIWAN - Tags: MILITARY POLITICS)
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro talks to supporters from a balcony at Miraflores Palace after the presidential election, in Caracas, Venezuela July 30, 2024. REUTERS/Maxwell Briceno
Venezuelan strongman Nicolás Maduro went to presidential elections on Sunday with the hope of gaining the legitimacy he lacked from the widely questioned 2018 presidential elections.
Instead, his regime is receiving perhaps its deepest challenge yet, as the victory announced by the electoral authority has been questioned nationally and internationally.
Turnout seems to have been massive on Sunday with an estimated participation of 63% or 80%. It’s hard to actually know, given that over 20% of the population has emigrated in recent years, rendering any calculation difficult based on an outdated electoral registry. The turnout, as well as a number of exit polls that were circulating on social media, raised expectations of a significant win for opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez, supported by the opposition’s leader, María Corina Machado.
However, when the National Electoral Council (CNE) provided results close to midnight Sunday, it showed Maduro with a 51% majority and an “irreversible tendency” based on 80% of the votes having allegedly been counted. This immediately spurred protests given the reports across the country of grave irregularities at the end of the process.
In Venezuela’s system, when the voting ends, the voting machine is finalized and spits out a paper tally of the votes received by that machine. Each party witness is supposed to receive a copy. However, in most cases this did not happen, and the opposition ended up with only 30-40% of the paper tallies.
Furthermore, the CNE did not, and still has not, published the voting data on its webpage, as it is required to do by law.
Shortly afterwards from their campaign headquarters, Machado and Gonzalez charged that the CNE’s results were fraudulent and that the tallies they did have showed that Gonzalez had won handily. They called for people to go to the electoral centers to defend the vote. However, they did not call for street mobilizations, in order to avoid violence which could play into the government’s hands.
What they did do was work with the witnesses of other opposition candidates, to collect as many paper tallies as they could. Based on that work, they announced Monday evening that with 73.3% of the tallies, Edmundo Gonzalez had an irreversible lead of 3.5 million votes.
As early as Sunday night, regional leaders had expressed doubts about the CNE’s results. Chilean President Gabriel Boric set the tone saying on X:
The Maduro Regime should understand that the results it has published are hard to believe. The International community and above all the Venezuelan people, including the millions of Venezuelans in exile, demand complete transparency of the vote tallies and the process, and that the international observers not committed to the government testify to the veracity of the votes
Chile will not recognize any result that is not verifiable.
The situation only became more critical on Monday and Tuesday as more international leaders, many with an institutional or ideological commitment to moderation joined the chorus, including the United Nations Secretary General and the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs which has been facilitating negotiations since 2019.
On Tuesday the Carter Center, which brought the most significant international effort at elections monitoring, announced that it was removing all personnel from Venezuela. When it returned to Atlanta, it released a scathing report saying that, from beginning to end, the elections did not meet international standards.
The critical positions of Colombia, Brazil are particularly important given that they are border countries and are on the ideological left and exerted an important impact during the electoral campaign with timely statements criticizing aspects of the process. Although they have not yet issued a much anticipated joint statement, there are hopes they still could, and perhaps engage in direct diplomatic engagement with Maduro. Colombian President Gustavo Petro Wednesday called for the release of detailed vote tallies.
On the other side, Russia, China, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Honduras and Cuba congratulated Maduro on his reelection shortly after the CNE announced its results.
The Maduro government itself has responded so far by leaning into the situation, transmitting outrage and pushing forward. Maduro jubilantly and aggressively declared himself Venezuela’s next president. Already on Monday morning, the CNE, still having failed to publish voting data and with its website out of service, held a ceremony proclaiming Maduro’s purported victory.
This proclamation predictably detonated protests across the country as frustrated citizens took to the streets. These protests were quite different from previous anti-Maduro protests that were predominantly mobilized by the middle classes and students. Yesterday it was residents of poor and working class districts of the capital Caracas, such as Caricuao and Petare, who took to the streets. At least 16 people have been killed in clashes across the country since the vote Sunday, reported the rights group Foro Penal and a survey of hospitals, according to the Washington Post. At least 750 people have reportedly been arrested.
The social base of these protests creates difficult optics for Chavismo — the leftist, revolutionary movement begun by the late Hugo Chávez — and for the government’s attempts to portray them as the work of the same violent protesters of 2014 and 2017.
However, it’s not yet clear that the opposition leadership has a strategy to capitalize on citizen outrage. Instead, they have rightfully focused on their demand that the CNE release the voting data as required by law. They also want to avoid easy accusations that they seek to generate violence. Machado called for the convening of citizen assemblies in the middle-class areas of Caracas. But it is not clear this will overcome a long-term class division in opposition mobilization.
The Maduro government responded to international rejection of its election by breaking relations with seven Latin American nations, including Argentina, Panamá, Costa Rica, Peru, Chile, Uruguay, and the Dominican Republic, and ordering diplomatic personnel to leave immediately. The most immediate threat of this move is that Machado’s campaign leadership has been operating from the Argentinian Embassy since orders for their arrests were issued in March.
In the past, the Maduro government has successfully neutralized opposition leaders by either arresting them or forcing them into exile through campaigns of harassment. It has tolerated Machado’s campaign and González’s candidacy as part of its search for normalization with the rest of the world and the easing of U.S. and E.U. sanctions. Now that that project seems to be on the rocks, however, the government could well go after them.
For now, the U.S. has reacted with caution. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said “there will be consequences,” but officials have suggested that economic sanctions that were suspended last year in order to encourage the government to conduct a free and fair electoral process will not be immediately restored and that the policy will be reviewed in terms of “overall U.S. national foreign policy interests.”
What seems clear is that with such high exit costs, Nicolás Maduro and his officials have decided it is better to weather the storm than to hand over power, a decision that could generate more instability and suffering.
There have been efforts by the opposition and international stakeholders to negotiate the terms of an orderly transition that would avoid a witch-hunt. It has been the Maduro government that has rejected these efforts in large part because the glue that keeps their coalition together is the idea that the revolution started by Hugo Chávez in 1999 is irreversible.
Considering the possibility that this might not be the case could lead to defections.
However, having sunk to a new low in international and national credibility as a result of Sunday’s election and the way the government has (mis)handled it, perhaps the coalition could be open to renewed efforts at negotiation.
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Georgia, Tbilisi: May 21 2024 year The rally on Rustaveli aveniu near Parlament, the slogan of the rally is not against the Russian law (Photo: Maikowl / shutterstock)
The standard Western account of contemporary Georgian politics portrays the government of the “Georgian Dream” party as under the sway of Russia and opposed by “democratic” parties. The truth is much more complex.
Rather than a desire to follow Moscow, Georgian policy in fact reflects what CIA Director William Burns has called the “hedging middle,” subservient neither to Russia nor the West, and determined by the official view of what constitutes Georgian national interests.
This in turn reflects globalizing developments that have long since escaped from the control of the West. On the road to the Georgian border, I passed a huge new bridge being built by China. Despite great unhappiness in Washington, the Georgian government has also signed a contract with Beijing to build a new port on the Black Sea.
It is urgently necessary that Western policymakers should grasp Georgian reality, because it can be confidently predicted that at the end of October, Georgia will be plunged into a severe political crisis in which the U.S. and the EU will be deeply involved.
Parliamentary elections are due in Georgia on October 26, and the universal opinion among Georgians with whom I have spoken is that if the government wins, the opposition, backed by pro-Western NGOs, will allege that the results were falsified, and will launch a mass protest movement in an effort to topple the Georgian Dream government.
Judging by recent statements, most Western establishments will automatically take the side of the opposition. This narrative is already well underway, with lines like “Government vs. the People in Georgia” and “a crisis that has pitted the government against its people.” This suggests that Georgia is a dictatorship in which “the people” have no say except through street protests.
In fact, Georgian Dream has won three generally free national elections.
This is not of course to exclude the possibility of rigging in October. Western officials and commentators should remember that the opposition also alleged that the 2020 parliamentary elections were rigged, although Western observers certified that the elections were free (if flawed) and that Georgian Dream won by a very large majority. Today, according to opinion polls, Georgian Dream has far more support than any single opposition party. If the entire opposition can combine, they might be able to win a majority, but bitter divisions among its various parties are making this very difficult.
Western governments and commentators should also recognize that the NGOS on which they rely for much of their information about Georgia are in most cases deeply entwined with the Georgian opposition, as well as being overwhelmingly funded by the West.
Already in 2023, the Georgian government alleged that the U.S. was laying the groundwork for regime change in Georgia by funding training of Georgians by Serbian activists whose previous organization had played an important part in toppling the government of President Slobodan Milosevic. Their present group, Belgrade-based Canvas, “advocates for the use of nonviolent resistance in the promotion of human rights and democracy.”
During the Cold War, U.S. administrations frequently helped overthrow democratically elected governments that differed with Washington. Americans should ask themselves if this is really a tradition they wish to continue.
The new law requiring NGOs with foreign funding to register as “agents of foreign influence” (which led to large opposition-led protests in May) was introduced partly in response to this perceived threat, and is intended to weaken this source of opposition internal and external strength.
In response to the law, the EU has frozen Georgia’s accession process and cut off much of its aid, while the U.S. imposed sanctions on Georgian government officials. The EU’s ambassador in Tbilisi has publicly stated that if Georgian Dream is re-elected, this will end Georgian hopes of joining the EU.
While the Georgian government remains committed in principle to seek membership in both NATO and the EU, the NATO member on Georgia’s western border is not Poland or France, but rather Turkey, and Turkey has pursued a policy of determined neutrality towards the war in Ukraine, including a refusal to join in Western sanctions against Russia.
The Georgian government believes that, while in the foreseeable future Russia will not help Georgia reunify with the separatist ethnic territories that broke away with Moscow’s help in the 1990s, the Kremlin has no desire to launch a new war against Georgia. “Why should they? They’ve got everything they wanted,” I was told.
Like Turkey, the Georgian Dream’s policy of avoiding increased tension with Russia is based partly on economics. As a Georgian friend remarked sardonically, “Very few Georgians have any affection for Russia or Russians; but a great many Georgians want to make money off them.”
Georgia has profited handsomely from its government’s refusal to join in Western sanctions against Russia. Although Georgia has no formal diplomatic relations with Russia, trucks going to Russia from the Persian Gulf and elsewhere are backed up for miles at the border. Russia remains a vital market for Georgian agricultural produce,. Georgia receives numerous tourists from Russia. Due above all to the war in Ukraine, Georgian GDP grew by 11. percent in 2022 and 7.5 percent in 2023.
Georgian government propaganda against the opposition is largely concentrated on the allegation that it will drag Georgia into a new war with Russia, as part of a U.S.-directed “global party of war.” This warning resonates deeply with many Georgians but seems greatly exaggerated.
Feeling among opposition supporters with whom I have spoken is overwhelmingly against war. At most, a new Georgian government might encourage more Georgian volunteers to fight in Ukraine. A far more plausible warning is that the price of Western support for opposition victory would be full Georgian adoption of Western economic sanctions against Russia, a move that would inflict serious damage on the Georgian economy.
If Georgian policy towards Russia is therefore solidly grounded in pragmatism, it is also true that a certain distrust of the West has grown over the years. Although both the Georgian government and most ordinary Georgians remain committed in principle to seeking NATO membership, nobody with whom I spoke during my last visit expressed confidence that NATO would in fact fight for Georgia in the event of war.
This skepticism dates back to the Georgian-Russian War of 2008. The Bush administration had offered future NATO membership to Georgia, and U.S. officials and politicians had spoken of Georgia as a U.S. ally. Yet in the event, the US did nothing to help Georgia.
Attitudes to the EU are much more positive, both because of the hoped-for economic and migration benefits of membership and because the idea of belonging to “Europe” is deeply embedded in Georgian culture (though according to strict geographical classification, Georgia is in fact in Asia). Nonetheless, doubts about the EU have also been growing in the Georgian establishment.
This is partly due to skepticism as to whether Georgia will ever in fact be admitted to EU membership. As I was frequently reminded in Tbilisi, Georgia’s neighbor Turkey has been waiting for admission for many decades. Of course, this is largely due to reasons specific to Turkey; but in the case of Georgia, doubt is increased by a feeling that Georgia will never be admitted to the EU before Ukraine, and that Ukrainian admission to full membership is probably impossible.
These doubts about Western commitment have been increased by domestic political developments in both Europe and America indicating increased public opposition to further NATO and EU enlargement.
In their attitudes to the EU, supporters of the Georgian government can also be said to behave like supporters of right-wing parties within the EU, in terms of resentment at perceived dictation by Brussels, including in policies towards gender that are seen as alien to core Georgian traditions.
In the Georgian mountain resort town of Gudauri, near the Russian border, stands a signpost. It reads, among other destinations: Ankara, 1,200 km; Moscow 1,591 km; Beijing, 5,834 km; and Washington D.C. 9,209 km. Since I first visited Georgia in 1990, Georgians have told me of their regret that their country is situated in the southern Caucasus, and not southern Europe. This may indeed be regrettable. It is also a fact.
American Sue Mi Terry was indicted July 15th on charges of violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act, including failure to register as a foreign agent.
The indictment alleges that she worked as an unregistered foreign agent for the government of South Korea in exchange for luxury goods and other gifts. It also accuses her of receiving and deploying talking points from South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) and providing that agency with inside information from an off-the-record discussion with Secretary of State Antony Blinken, amongst other allegations.
While the accused is presumed innocent, this case offers important lessons for whoever takes the Oath of Office as President of the United States next January.
Terry is typical of foreign policy influencers in and around Washington. Regarding North Korea, she advocated denuclearization as the preeminent goal, promoted sanctions, and cautioned against engagement with Kim Jong-un and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).
But these policies have not kept the DPRK from achieving real nuclear capability, nor have they improved the human condition there. Widely regarded and cited in the indictment as a North Korea “expert,” Terry was a CIA analyst until 2008, then served on the National Security Council and National Intelligence. Since leaving government, she has been affiliated with the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), the Council on Foreign Relations and at the Wilson Center, where she was Director of Korean industrial giant Hyundai Motor’s Korea Foundation Center for Korean History and Public Policy.
Terry and husband, Washington Post columnist Max Boot, both have ties to the Council on Foreign Relations. Boot is reported to have collaborated with her on a story spouting ROK NIS talking points. One of Sue Mi Terry’s friends is Jung Pak, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State who oversaw North Korea matters but suddenly resigned in early July. Pak’s departure is rumored to be connected to Terry’s legal troubles.
The case offers three significant lessons for the next President:
Lesson 1: US policy on North Korea has failed. Time for a new vector.
The absence of full-scale war on the Korean Peninsula is not “success”. Establishing an enduring peace, reducing the risk of nuclear or conventional conflict, and alleviating the suffering of the non-elites of the North Korean population are the proper measures. We have not made any progress on those fronts. Denuclearization should be the ultimate objective, but not at the exclusion of progress on other matters.
As a recommendation, the U.S. should make ending the Korean War a formal U.S. policy priority. The armistice that was signed in July 1953 was intended to be a temporary matter, replaced with a permanent peace treaty. The Geneva Convention of 1954 was the last focused attempt to reach such an agreement but failed miserably. The adversaries — formally the DPRK and the United Nations Command, but in practice North Korea, South Korea and the United States — remain in a state of war. Resolution is a necessary step to enable progress on denuclearization, human rights, and privation.
Lesson 2: Think tanks and affiliated experts are vulnerable to financial pressure from foreign entities
A footnote to the Terry indictment noted: “a "think tank," or policy institute, is a research institute that provides expertise and insight concerning topics such as global affairs to policymakers” and “often present themselves as independent sources of expertise.”
These organizations are big businesses. CFR’s 2023 annual report boasted of an endowment of $565 million and most if not all think tanks rely heavily on grants and gifts to operate. The gifts are often attributed to “anonymous” donors. For example, the Brookings Institution received from $2 million (minimum) to $6.3 million (maximum) from such donors from 2022 to 2023.
Furthermore, according to the indictment, Terry allegedly used a gift account for one of the three think tanks she has been associated with to mask the source of a $37,000 NIS payment. Strategically and on the tactical level, the presence of murky money can corrupt expertise and influence.
Many of these influencers migrate from think tanks to government and back again. In January 2021, Brookings announced that 19 of their experts had been selected to serve in high-level positions in the new Biden Administration. The list included Sue Mi Terry and Jung Pak. Then-Brookings President John R. Allen expressed his pride in the appointments, but Allen suddenly resigned the following year while under investigation for undue foreign influence himself.
The Justice Department did not charge Allen after the investigation — but the allegations were serious enough to merit a sudden departure.
The U.S. government should also require full disclosure of the source of gifts and donations to non-profit organizations which seek to influence U.S. foreign policy, as would be required if Congress passed legislation like the Fighting Foreign Influence Act. The government should also limit the number of individuals hired for senior positions, whose most recent employment was at a think tank with significant foreign government funding.
Using the Terry case as an example, the government should also strengthen vetting procedures for incoming foreign policy officials regarding potential foreign influence or affiliation.
Lesson 3: Foreign intelligence services, even friendlies, can present a threat to US interests
The indictment says Terry was compensated by the “ROK Government.” While technically accurate, that is a dangerous oversimplification. ROK NIS has been a free radical since its birth as the Korean Central Intelligence Agency in 1961. NIS and its predecessors have been alleged or proven to be involved in kidnapping, murder (in 1979 of ROK President Park Chung Hee), illegal surveillance, cyber crimes, bribery, and election interference.
Given its history, it should not be assumed that NIS — in this case or any other — is doing the bidding of its government rather than pursuing its own agenda.
ROK NIS may be a uniquely tawdry agency — but even our closest partners’ objectives do not always match ours. This case shows that our government officials — current and former — have become too comfortable with the presence of “friendly” spies in our midst, and improved safeguards are a must if the U.S. is to maintain sovereign independence in the formulation and implementation of foreign policy.
There needs to be an in-depth investigation of ROK NIS activity regarding U.S. officials and policy influencers, ideally with South Korean government cooperation. Also, a comprehensive threat assessment of the intelligence agencies of allied nations, with a briefing of the findings to the President and members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
Furthermore, an unclassified version of this document should be made publicly available.
The Sue Mi Terry case is so much more than the luxury purses and high-end sushi cited in the charges. It is a compelling call for the next President of the United States to increase safeguards against undue foreign influence on U.S. policy, especially when that influence contributes to enduring failure.
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