The burgeoning cold war with China just got frostier over the past 24 hours.
The Trump campaign has made clear that it intends to hammer China in the general election. On Tuesday night, as reported by Politico, the Trump campaign sent a memo to its surrogates claiming that internal polling showed that Trump gained a dramatic 9 points against Joe Biden over the last three weeks to pull to even at 48-48. According to the memo, “55 percent favor sanctioning China for its handling — or lack thereof — of the coronavirus.”
This morning, the Wall Street Journal reported that Chinese and Iranian hackers were “aggressively targeting American universities, pharmaceutical and other health-care firms in a way that could be hampering their efforts to find a vaccine to counter the coronavirus pandemic.” It cited unnamed officials and alleged that these “attacks” have been ongoing since January 3 — the same day that Chinese officials informed CDC director Robert Redfield that the coronavirus was spreading in Wuhan. Redfield then informed HHS Secretary Alex Azar, who informed the White House National Security Council, but was ignored.
Most ominously, the WSJ hints that “the aggression could be viewed by the Trump administration as a direct attack on U.S. public health and tantamount to an act of war...because the attacks may have hindered vaccine research in some cases.”
How will congressional Democrats and presumptive nominee Joe Biden respond? A new Reuters report quoted Jake Sullivan, a key foreign policy advisor to Biden, saying the Biden campaign was preparing to roll out policies that will “hammer Trump” on his handling of China — by sounding even more anti-China than Trump.
But Stephen Wertheim, Qi's deputy director of research and policy, warns that such an attempt to out-hawk the hawks risks plunging the United States into an unnecessary cold war with the world's number-two power — and will make Americans less safe. We stand, he argues, on the brink of an even more destructive and less justifiable mistake than America's post-9/11 crusade against terror. See his video below and read his op-ed in Monday's New York Times with Qi research fellow Rachel Esplin Odell:
Responsible Statecraft is a publication of analysis, opinion, and news that seeks to promote a positive vision of U.S. foreign policy based on humility, diplomatic engagement, and military restraint. RS also critiques the ideas — and the ideologies and interests behind them — that have mired the United States in counterproductive and endless wars and made the world less secure.
A top U.S. military general wants a "Marshall Plan" for Latin America but is likely more concerned about China's encroachment into America's backyard with "dual use" infrastructure than about what poor people in the Global South actually need.
But then again, Gen. Laura Richardson, SOUTHCOM commander, is a military officer,not a diplomat or humanitarian program lead at USAID.
Richardson told an audience at the Aspen Security Forum last week that the U.S. has been MIA in the region while Russia and especially China has been exploiting the post-COVID economic downturn with both military outreach (Russia recently in Cuba) and development projects (Beijing's Belt and Road). That is why Washington needs to offer its own "Marshall Plan" to Latin America, which it views as it its own sphere of influence.
She said 22 of the 31 countries in the region have signed on to the Belt and Road development program.
“How are we competing Team USA and Team Democracy with the tenders that are coming out from [other] countries? How are we getting our U.S. quality investment and talking about our U.S. companies investing in the region? We have a lot of companies in the region. I don’t think we’re branding Team USA as we should. It should be better. We’ve got to be bragging about what U.S. quality investment does,” she said.
The Marshall Plan, proposed by Secretary of State George C. Marshall in a speech at Harvard University in 1947, was launched by President Harry S. Truman in 1948 to help Europe rebuild after World War II. The plan provided $13.3 billion in aid to 16 countries through 1951, about $150 billion in today's dollars.
“I really believe that economic security and national security are going hand-in-hand here in this hemisphere,” she said.
Security of course, is the optimal word here. "If (Belt and Road is) for doing good in the hemisphere, then I’m all for it. But it makes me a little suspicious when it’s in the critical infrastructure … deep water ports, 5G, cybersecurity, energy, space … I worry about the dual use nature of that,” Richardson said.
“These are state-owned enterprises by a communist government and I’m worried about the flipping of that to a military application very quickly if something were to happen, maybe in the Indo-Pacom region,” she said.
Therein lies the crux of the situation. On one hand she is absolutely right. As in Africa, Global South countries are reacting to economic outreach from China and Russia because a) they need it and America (private nor public) isn't in the game and b) help from China and Russia doesn't appear to come with as many strings as U.S. assistance might demand. She may also be on point that there are a dearth of high-level visits and attention to the region, giving the very real impression that Latin America is an afterthought.
But we should also ask why the military is taking the lead on asking the real questions here. Where are the diplomats? Is this just another argument for putting more military eyes and assets in the region?
Richardson is right to raise the issue: it is past time that Washington stop whining about China's influence and apply some elbow grease to nurturing productive relations with its neighbors that aren't just about military or political ideological influence. In other words, a two-way street, that if paved well, will mean security and prosperity for everyone. But we should also ask why the military is taking the lead on asking the real questions here, and who, in the end will be providing the answers.
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Protesters, mainly Houthi supporters, hold weapons as they rally to show solidarity with Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, in Sanaa, Yemen July 19, 2024. REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah
Israeli forces attacked “vital civilian infrastructure” at the port of Hodeidah in Yemen on Saturday in response to a Houthi drone strike in Tel Aviv, according to Mwatana, a leading independent Yemeni human rights organization.
The Israeli military claimed that it hit “military targets,” but Mwatana reports that the strikes did extensive damage to oil facilities, fuel tanks, and the port’s wharf and cranes, all of which are critical to supplying the civilian population in north Yemen with much-needed fuel and food.
The group also said that the strikes knocked out the central power station providing power to the entire city. Houthi authorities say that the strikes killed at least three people and wounded 87. Yemen researcher Nick Brumfield commented on the Israelis’ choice of targets: “The Israeli attack on Hudaydah’s oil storage was not an example of the Houthis hiding weapons in civilian infrastructure and it getting bombed. As best as I can tell, this is Israel purposefully targeting vital civilian infrastructure in and of itself.”
The Israeli government used the same tactics in Yemen that it has employed to such devastating effect in Gaza.
The Israeli response represents a major escalation against the Houthis, who have been launching drones and missiles at Israeli targets without success since shortly after the war in Gaza began. The attacks have taken their toll: Israel’s Eilat port is now bankrupt as all shipping has been redirected elsewhere, to safer routes, and the U.S. Navy has spent over $1 billion in resources intercepting the Houthis’ far less expensive weapons in the Red Sea.
Like the ineffective U.S.-U.K. bombing campaign against the Houthis that began in January, these Israeli strikes play into the hands of the Houthis, the armed militia group and political movement that has been the de facto government of north Yemen for the last ten years. Direct conflict with both the U.S. and Israel is a significant boost for the Houthis’ domestic political standing, and their opposition to the war in Gaza has likewise raised their international profile.
Journalist Iona Craig observed on BlueSky that the strikes are a gift to the Houthis: “For a group whose existence, evolution and expansion depends on being at war they’re being gifted everything they need.”
In addition to being a disproportionate response to the drone attack, the strikes on Hodeidah seem certain to provoke the Houthis to launch more attacks on Israel. Hodeidah was a frequent target of Saudi coalition airstrikes before the 2022 truce took effect, but this did nothing to stop Houthi attacks on Saudi and UAE targets. After more than nine years of foreign governments bombing Yemeni cities, it should be clear that it doesn’t achieve anything except to inflict misery and death on Yemeni civilians.
According to Haaretz, the Israeli military knows that striking Yemen is unlikely to deter the Houthis from launching more drones and missiles. Escalation against the Houthis isn’t going to make Israel more secure, but it will further strain Israel’s resources as it brings the region closer to a wider war. As long as the U.S. continues backing Israel’s war in Gaza and wages its own military campaign in Yemen, the U.S. is at considerable risk of becoming further embroiled in that wider war.
The people that will suffer the most from Israel’s strikes are, as always, the civilian population of Yemen that has already endured a decade of war and deprivation. Craig added, “While helping the Houthis, the only damage such performative strikes do is to the Yemeni people by targeting the main entry point of food in a country that imports more than 70% of its food supplies and 90% of its wheat.”
Indeed, the U.S. has refrained from targeting the port in its bombing campaign because of concerns that doing so would worsen the country’s ongoing humanitarian crisis.
The Israeli strikes in Yemen will make it harder for the Biden administration to pretend that Houthi attacks on Red Sea commercial shipping have nothing to do with the war in Gaza. The administration wants to keep these conflicts in separate boxes to maintain the illusion that it has prevented the war in Gaza from destabilizing the region, but they are all obviously connected. It does no one any favors to ignore this reality.
If the U.S. wants to see an end to the Houthi attacks on shipping and those directed at Israel, it should stop trying to bomb its way to de-escalation and put real pressure on the Israeli government to end its campaign in Gaza. The war in Gaza is the main driver of all these other conflicts, and none of them will be successfully resolved until there is a lasting ceasefire and an end to the blockade that has been strangling the Palestinian people there.
At the very least, the U.S. should be pressing the Israeli government to avoid any further escalations against other countries in the region. Among other things, that requires delivering a clear message to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu when he comes to Washington this week that the U.S. will not bail him out if he goes to war in Lebanon. The region cannot afford any more conflicts, and the U.S. must stop stoking existing ones with more weapons and support.
On July 18, the European Parliament elected German conservative Ursula von der Leyen to a second five-year term as president of the European Commission.
The only candidate running, she managed to cobble together a heterogeneous ad hoc coalition consisting of her fellow center-right Christian Democrats, center-left socialists, liberals and Greens. Despite the important gains made by the right-wing national-conservative forces in the EP elections in June largely at the expense of the liberals and the Greens, the parliamentary majority chose continuity in von der Leyen.
In terms of foreign policy, this means doubling down on the “centrist” (read neoconservative-liberal) consensus on the war in Ukraine while isolating the war skeptics on the right and the far left. The first session of the newly elected Parliament has drawn clear lines and established what appears to be a clear-cut division for the next five years.
First, the majority rejected a request by the far-right Patriots for Europe, led by France’s National Rally and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban’s Fidesz party to place on the plenary agenda a debate on last weekend’s assassination attempt on former U.S. President Donald Trump, currently running to regain the office as the Republican nominee in the November election.
The Patriotsare the main national-conservative group in the chamber and the third largest faction overall, behind only von der Leyen’s center-right European People’s Party (EPP) and the socialists. When the request was, predictably, rejected by the centrist parties (119 votes in favor, 337 against), the Patriots accused them of violating democratic norms and laying the groundwork for politically motivated violence against opponents.
To highlight the Patriots’ isolation, the main center-right group, the EPP, counterattacked by introducing a resolution on Ukraine. They were joined by other centrists — socialists, liberals, Greens — and the pro-Ukraine right from the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group, the assembly’s fourth largest. The five political groups tabled a conventionally hardline joint text, demanding, among other things, the removal of any restrictions on the use of Western weapons systems delivered to Ukraine against military targets on Russian territory.
The lawmakers also “reiterated their belief that Ukraine is on an irreversible path to NATO” even though the European Parliament has no say over NATO and a number of the EU members (Austria, Ireland, Malta and Cyprus) are not members of NATO and have not shown, to date, any inclination to join it.
Reflecting the Brussels meltdown over Viktor Orban’s diplomacy that took him in recent weeks to Kyiv, Moscow, Beijing, Washington, and Trump’s Mar-a-Lago in what he called a “peace mission,” the resolution made a point of condemning him for “violating common EU positions” and failing to coordinate with other member states and EU institutions.
Lawmakers demanded “repercussions for Hungary.” While these repercussions are already being set in motion by attempts to boycott Hungary’s rotating EU presidency, no interest has been shown in engaging with the substance of Orban’s comments which he articulated in a letter to the president of the EU Council Charles Michel.
Given the degree to which Orban chose to highlight what, to be meaningful, should have been a highly sensitive and discreet diplomatic initiative, there may be reasonable doubts about its effectiveness. The problem, however, is that he is the only EU leader left who enjoys open channels of communications with the Kremlin, while the mainstream, “respectable” European leaders mostly trade in maximalist rhetoric about Ukrainian victory and Russian defeat without defining those terms, much less offering credible paths to their achievement.
The Patriots for Europe tabled an alternative motion on Ukraine that was substantially different from the majority’s resolution. While they condemned Russia’s aggression and expressed support for Ukraine’s independence and territorial integrity within its internationally recognized borders (i.e. including Donbass and Crimea), they also recalled that every member state “is sovereign regarding its decisions on providing financial, military and diplomatic support to third countries.”
They also stressed their conviction that there is no military solution to the conflict and that peace is the only viable and sustainable solution. Accordingly, they urged that the parties “open diplomatic channels, with the aim of concluding a lasting peace agreement.”
The two motions exposed the unbridgeable differences in the two sides’ approach to the war in Ukraine; thus, negotiations to find a compromise proved neither possible nor desired. Rather, political points were to be scored: the majority sought to portray the Patriots as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s stooges, while the Patriots accused the majority of escalating the conflict in pursuit of unachievable goals and weakening European economies in the process.
As anticipated, the majority text was adopted overwhelmingly: 495 votes to 137. Amendments tabled by the Left group, designed to open the way for a diplomatic solution to the hostilities, were all rejected. This is telling: while it may have been politically unpalatable for the centrists to vote for the Patriots’ proposals, no such unofficial restrictions exist regarding the far left; thus, the rejection of diplomacy seems to be a matter of choice, not just political convenience.
The “centrist” majority also rejected the Left’s (relatively moderate) amendment that deplored the apparent double standards applied by the EU to violations of international law by Russia in Ukraine and by Israel in Gaza.
While the leaders of the majority factions congratulated themselves on sending another “strong message” to Orban, not all of the lawmakers appear convinced. Michael von Schulenberg, a parliamentarian from Sahra Vagenknecht’s left leaning party in Germany and a veteran U.N. diplomat, deplored that the majority’s draft was based on “continuing and intensifying the war up to a military victory over Russia, which is now completely unrealistic.” The rejection of attempts at finding a peaceful solution, in his view, will continue inflicting “immeasurable suffering on the Ukrainian people.”
As a recent survey from the European Council on Foreign Relations showed, such views are fairly widespread among Europeans, including the voters of the mainstream political parties. However, as the initial session of the new European Parliament has demonstrated, they are destined to remain isolated in an assembly that is supposed to represent them.
Roughly the same coalition (except the majority of the ECR and some defections on the center-right, like the French Gaullists) that voted for the resolution on Ukraine also elected von der Leyen, a Russia hawk, for a second term. Add to this the designation of the former Estonian prime-minister Kaja Kallas, who once advocated for dismembering Russia, as the EU’s high representative for foreign policy, and the alignment of EU institutions in favor of continuity on Ukraine becomes complete.
These dynamics in the EU, however, can change if a possible Trump-Vance administration brings about a dreaded (or hoped for, depending on one’s perspective) American retrenchment from Europe. In that case, the Europeans will either have to fight Russia in Ukraine with substantially less U.S. support or seriously consider how a negotiated end to the war can be achieved.
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