RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidens-strange-help-for-havana-cuba-sanctions-russia-11652909478?mod=opinion_lead_pos2

Whatever the humanitarian impulse behind the Biden Administration’s Monday announcement that it will lift some sanctions on Cuba, the timing couldn’t be worse. The dictatorship is under stress, and it remains Russia’s closest ally in the Western Hemisphere. Why would Team Biden take the pressure off Havana now?

Cuba’s regime may be in the most precarious state of its 63 years in power. The economy has collapsed, and hero worship of Fidel Castro is as dead as he is. The July 11 uprising last year, when tens of thousands went to the streets and shouted for freedom, exposed the contempt Cubans have for their government.

Thousands of peaceful protesters were rounded up last summer by paramilitary and secret police, and some 750 are still in jail. This week Havana declared a new law criminalizing basic liberties. Insulting a government official is now punishable with up to five years in prison. A Cuban who engages with an international aid group not authorized by the state is headed for years behind bars.

The Biden Administration’s new policy removes the cap on dollar remittances that Americans may send to Cuba, reopens air travel to cities across the island, and restores travel by so-called educational groups. The practical effect will be to supply the regime, which controls all commerce, with hard currency to keep its repression going.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18544/china-plan-destroy-america

China has been unabashed about making its intentions known. Already in 1999, two colonels in China’s People’s Liberation Army, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiansui, wrote, “Unrestricted Warfare: China’s Master Plan to Destroy America.” In it, the authors “suggest the significance of alternatives to direct military confrontation, including international policy, economic warfare, attacks on digital infrastructure and networks, and terrorism. Even a relatively insignificant state can incapacitate a far more powerful enemy by applying pressure to their economic and political systems.” Ideally, “one might not even know that one is the target.”

There seem to be so many policy decisions now that would appear to help America’s adversaries such as Russia and especially China, rather than what is best for America, that, on February 2, 2022, the Republican Leader of the House of Representatives, Kevin McCarthy — despite a disagreement with former President Donald Trump and a subsequent “genuflection” by way of apology — after mentioning the current administration’s “self-created crises,” noted that “Almost every page,” of the Biden Administration’s 3000 page America Competes Act “has a provision that helps China but hurts America.” McCarthy cited, among other matters:

On page 1689, it provides a new, unlimited green card program for the Chinese Communist Party to exploit. It also allows research funds to freely flow to colleges and universities that host Confucius Institutes – which are essentially CCP propaganda centers that censor our campuses.

These policies would make our nation more vulnerable to Chinese espionage, which is already widespread.

In fact, the threat of Chinese spying in America is so widespread that the FBI has 2,000 active cases to counter it, and opens a new case every 12 hours. “

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2022/05/us-trade-deficit-communist-china-climbing-terence-p-jeffrey/

At the White House press briefing last Dec. 6, press secretary Jen Psaki made it clear that President Joe Biden wanted the People’s Republic of China to pay a price for its human rights abuses.

He would do so by declining to send any U.S. government officials to the Beijing Winter Olympics, which would be held in February.

“The Biden administration,” Psaki said, “will not send any diplomatic or official representation to the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympic Games given the PRC’s ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and other human rights abuses.”

“U.S. diplomatic or official representation would treat these games as business as usual in the face of the PRC’s egregious human rights abuses and atrocities in Xinjiang,” she said. “And we simply can’t do that.”

But business as usual with the PRC did continue in the business arena, if not the Olympic one.

In fact, in the days leading up to and through the Beijing Olympics, U.S. imports from China increased.

In January 2021, according to the Census Bureau, the United States imported $39,111,200,000 in goods from the PRC, while exporting only $12,860,900,000. The result was a bilateral monthly trade deficit of $26,250,200,000.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18540/biden-attempts-iran-deal

Mr Biden’s hopes of pressing ahead with the nuclear talks suffered a significant setback the other week when a bipartisan super-majority of US Senators voted to endorse a Republican-led measure insisting that any future agreement with Tehran must address Iran’s support for terrorism in the region, and that Washington should not lift sanctions against the IRGC. Tehran is unlikely to concede to either measure.

Iran’s refusal to clarify the true extent of its undeclared nuclear activities is entirely consistent with the uncooperative stance it has adopted in its dealing with the IAEA over many years.

In an indication of how desperate the Europeans are to revive the deal, Mr Borrell said the EU was giving serious consideration to the ludicrous proposition whereby the terrorist designation against the IRGC was lifted, but kept in place on other parts of the organisation, which has several arms across the security apparatus and a sprawling business empire.

The EU initiative is not dissimilar to other hare-brained options being considered by the Biden White House, with analysts recommending that one compromise option for the US is to lift the terrorist designation against the IRGC while keeping it on the Quds Force, the unit responsible for the IRGC’s foreign operations and which arms and backs militant groups throughout the Middle East.

The lengths to which some naive politicians on both sides of the Atlantic are prepared to go to revive the nuclear deal is nothing less than shameful, especially at a time when the world is struggling to deal with another tyrannical regime following Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine.

Hopefully, the more Iran refuses to cooperate with international bodies such as the IAEA, the more it will become clear that any hopes of securing a new deal with Tehran would not only upend the region but the president’s legacy as well.

The utter futility of the Biden administration’s obsession with reviving the Iran nuclear deal has been laid bare by the latest damning assessment by the head of the UN’s nuclear watchdog.

https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/the-doctrine-of-american-unexceptionalism?token=

Russian leader Vladimir Putin was supposed to have used his Victory Day speech yesterday to reveal his intentions regarding the Ukraine war. Russia watchers expected him to define his aims, signaling a prolonged conflict or, possibly, a path to peace. As it turned out, Putin did neither. His war against Ukraine drags on.

But although this week failed to clarify the future of the war in Europe, there is still a small chance that it will offer us some clarity on another front: Iran’s ongoing efforts to build a nuclear arsenal. Enrique Mora, the European Union’s Iran nuclear talks coordinator, is visiting Tehran today, May 10, seeking to break the deadlock in the negotiations between Iran and the United States. His mission might teach us whether Tehran has decided to cut a deal with President Biden. Chances are, however, that we will end the week as much in the dark about Tehran’s intentions as we are about Putin’s.

To help us understand why, I turn to Michael Doran, the author of today’s essay. Doran sees a connection between the way the Biden administration has approached both the Ukraine war and the conflict with Iran. Namely: in both cases the White House has profoundly weakened America’s diplomatic hand by shying away from traditional deterrence.

Doran has never gone along with the crowd. He first came on my radar in 2005, after what we would now call “woke” professors mobilized against his bid for tenure at Princeton. I liked him immediately.

He has a knack for writing topical articles that age well. His 2002 Foreign Affairs article on Osama bin Laden, “Somebody Else’s Civil War,” remains one of the best things written on al-Qaeda and radical Islam. When his 2015 piece, “Obama’s Secret Iran Strategy,” first came out, Doran’s view about Obama’s eagerness to please Iran was controversial. It’s now common wisdom. And last year, when Biden took office, he co-authored a piece in Tablet Magazine, “The Realignment,” which predicted that President Biden would zealously follow Obama’s Middle East playbook.

Today’s essay tries to make sense of this administration’s baffling foreign policy strategy, which seems to offer succor toward our enemies, like Iran and China, while isolating allies in the Gulf and Israel. As Doran explains, this is not borne out of incompetence, but out of a deeply held ideology about the trajectory of America and the West. — BW

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18472/china-nuclear-buildup

“The PRC likely intends to have at least 1,000 warheads by 2030, exceeding the pace and size the DoD projected in 2020.” — Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China 2021, US Dept. of Defense.

“In space, China is putting up satellites at twice the rate of the United States and “fielding operational systems at an incredible rate.” — General David Thompson, the Space Force’s first vice chief of space operations, quoted in The Washington Post, November 30, 2021.

“Look at what they [CCP) have today…. We’re witnessing one of the largest shifts in global geostrategic power that the world has witnessed.” — General Mark Milley, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, breakingdefense.com, November 4, 2021.

“[T]he Chinese are building up their military capabilities in space, cyberspace, and in the conventional force. It’s all happening at the same time.” — Timothy Heath, senior international and defense researcher at Rand Corporation, Business Insider, January 4, 2022.

“To fully assess the China threat, it is also necessary to consider the capability of the associated delivery system, command and control, readiness, posture, doctrine and training. By these measures, China is already capable of executing any plausible nuclear employment strategy within their region and will soon be able to do so at intercontinental ranges as well.” ­­— Admiral Charles Richard, Commander of U.S. Strategic Command, Senate Committee on Armed Services, April 20, 2021.

There is now as well the added probability of China and Russia engaging in military coordination…. a strategic partnership of “no limits” and with “no forbidden areas” in an agreement that they said was aimed at countering the influence of the United States.

This cooperation has already seen China undermining Western sanctions on Russia and supplying Russian President Vladimir Putin with the lifeline he needs to continue his war in Ukraine.

“The friendship between the two peoples is iron clad.” — Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, Associated Press, March 7, 2022.

“For the first time in our history, the nation is on a trajectory to face two nuclear-capable, strategic peer adversaries at the same time, who must be deterred differently.” ­­— Admiral Charles Richard, Senate Committee on Armed Services, April 20, 2021.

[T]his is NOT the time for the US to cancel the sea-launched nuclear cruise missile (SLCM-N), as President Joe Biden plans to do.

Meanwhile, Biden’s proposed defense budget risks speeding the US to defeat by insufficiently taking into account the current skyrocketing inflation, as acknowledged in early April by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Pentagon comptroller Mike McCord. “This budget assumes an inflation rate of 2.2%, which is obviously incorrect because it’s almost 8%,” said Milley. “Because the budget was produced quite a while ago, those calculations were made prior to the current inflation rate.”

“Nearly every dollar of increase in this budget will be eaten by inflation. Very little, if anything, will be left over to modernize and grow capability.” — Representative Mike Rogers, (R-Ala.) House Armed Services Committee, Defense News, April 5, 2022.

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2022/05/06/bipartisan-majority-in-congress-slaps-down-biden-on-iran-deal-n1595762

A bipartisan supermajority in Congress voted on Thursday night to require that any nuclear agreement with Iran must also address Iran’s support for terrorism in the region, and that the U.S. should not lift sanctions on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

The non-binding resolution also stated that the administration should address Iran’s illegal ballistic missile program and China’s continuing purchases of Iranian oil that evade U.S. sanctions.

It’s unclear whether the Senate would have the opportunity to advise and consent on any deal that is struck as it would a treaty. The original 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPA) was not presented to the Senate as a treaty and Congress was unable to give a meaningful vote on the agreement.

But Biden may be under considerable pressure from Senate Democrats to allow a vote on the deal. The Democrats know they are vulnerable on this issue and need the cover of a vote to weather what is certain to be fierce Republican attacks.

Politico:

Lawmakers from both parties said it was a warning shot to Biden’s negotiating team, who have all but acknowledged in private that an agreement that goes beyond curtailing Iran’s nuclear program is no longer possible, according to multiple people familiar with classified Hill briefings on the subject.

The vote was also a preview of the bipartisan rebuke that’s likely to come if the U.S. and Iran clinch an agreement that doesn’t address Iran’s non-nuclear activities and removes the IRGC’s terrorist designation — a “test vote,” in the words of one senator.

Iran wants the sanctions lifted while keeping their terrorist force, the IRGC, and their ever-improving ICBMs that threaten Israel, the Europeans, and soon, the USA.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/foil-the-financiers-of-irans-terrorism-revolutionary-guard-quds-sanctions-congress-deal-11651432838?mod=opinion_lead_pos8

Signals out of the White House suggest President Biden won’t give in to Iran’s demand that the U.S. remove Tehran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from the State Department list of terrorist organizations as a condition for a nuclear deal. But if Mr. Biden believes the IRGC is a terrorist organization, he must go further and withdraw his administration’s offer to lift terrorism sanctions on the group’s top financiers.

When news broke in March that Mr. Biden was considering Iran’s request to take the IRGC off the Foreign Terrorist Organization list, the White House faced outcries from Congress, allies in the Middle East, former U.S. officials and Gold Star Families whose loved ones were killed by the IRGC in Iraq. NBC’s Andrea Mitchell asked Secretary of State Antony Blinken if the IRGC is a terrorist organization. “They are,” Mr. Blinken replied.

The next day at the Senate Armed Services Committee, Gen. Mark Milley faced the same question. “In my personal opinion, I believe the IRGC Quds Force to be a terrorist organization, and I do not support them being delisted from the foreign terrorist organization list,” the Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman said. The Quds Force is one of several branches of the IRGC.

A State Department spokeswoman added last month that “the president shares the chairman’s view that IRGC Quds Forces are terrorists.” A senior administration official told the Washington Post’s David Ignatius that the president “doesn’t intend to concede on the terrorist designation, even though this may be a dealbreaker,” in Mr. Ignatius’s paraphrase.