Yearly Archives: 2019

Republicans for Russia

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By Greg Rushford

Ronald Reagan would be astounded. Dwight Eisenhower would be mortified. John McCain would be apoplectic. And the rest of us stand simply to be perplexed, and increasingly concerned — as attitudes towards the historically predatory Russian Bear are undergoing a significant shift in influential Republican Party circles in the United States. It seems the Bear now appears, well, cuddly, to people who used to cringe at such a notion.

Gallup polling has revealed that perhaps 40 percent of Republicans now believe that “Russia is a U.S. ally or is friendly” to the United States, the Washington Post has reported. As television personality Tucker Carlson — whose foreign policy views and advice are taken seriously by President Donald Trump — said on his widely-watched Fox News show late last month, “I think we should probably take the side of Russia, if we have to choose between Russia and Ukraine.” On several occasions, the president himself has expressed similar views. 

How could any American believe that Russia is even close to being friendly to the United States, or to any western democracy? Readers will have various opinions. Some will point to a certain ignorance factor: In 2014, after Russia had invaded its neighbor Ukraine, one survey found that 84 percent of the American public couldn’t find that country on a map. Others might suggest that many Americans, especially those who don’t read the nation’s quality newspapers regularly, simply don’t know which news sources to trust anymore — itself a goal of both Russian propaganda and the constant attacks on journalistic “enemies of the state” coming from the president of the United States and his supporters. 

Still others will point to deeper historical roots, notably the intellectual connection between the isolationist America Firsters of the 1930s who didn’t want to fight Hitler’s Nazis, and today’s America Firsters who are soft on Vladimir Putin’s Russia. 

Regardless, the essential facts concerning Russian conduct are crystal clear. Russia has been caught repeatedly running covert influence operations aimed at undermining liberal democracies. The Kremlin put its secret thumb on the scales of America’s 2016 presidential elections, with Donald Trump’s knowledge and approval — that’s an undeniable fact, however awkward for many of the confused Republican faithful. 

The list of Moscow’s “active measures” to undermine democracies is lengthy. Eastern European democracies, including the Czech Republic and Hungary, have been constantly targeted. So have Nato’s frontline Baltic nations — Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia — that share borders with Russia. The Kremlin’s spymasters have also targeted America’s western European allies including France, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and also Montenegro and other Balkan nations.  

The reach of the Kremlin’s influence operations stretches beyond Europe, to remote corners of the globe. Putin and his intelligence operatives have wooed small global geopolitical players like the Philippines and even tiny Fiji (population not quite 900,000). As I’ve previously reported, Putin’s propaganda specialists at TASS have been giving Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s official Philippine News Agency “media training.” Translation: the Kremlin’s propaganda experts have been positioned to help Duterte’s spinmeisters wage information warfare against the Philippine strongman’s perceived enemies in his country’s free press. Moscow has also tried to chip away at the longstanding U.S.-Philippine security alliance by enticing Duterte — who has a chip on his shoulder when it comes to Americans — into a few small-arms deals. 

For little Fiji, there have also been arms deals. Putin is also Africa’s number one arms supplier. Anywhere America isn’t paying attention, wherever there are senior politicians to be cultivated, where there might be a future pro-Russia vote in some United Nations body —Putin and his intelligence operatives are likely to show up. The point for American Republicans: To say that Russia is America’s friend, and the friend of free societies anywhere, is simply false. 

Moscow’s current influence operations have deep historical roots, dating to the Soviet Union during the 20th century and the expansionist Czars in earlier centuries. Clearly, Russia’s modern-era information warfare campaigns have not been “an anomaly,” as Keir Giles, a veteran Russia-watcher at London’s Chatham House, explained in a 2016 paper that deserves to be read again in Washington. Giles concluded that western governments should “recognize that the West’s values and strategic interests and those of Russia are fundamentally incompatible.” 

It would take a volume to sort all this out. Meanwhile, let’s take a closer look at some of current facts that should be uncontested. A series of brief snapshots helps illuminate how pro-Russian sentiments are sprouting in the same Republican Party that once cringed at the very notion.  

Snapshot

On December 3, seventy one Republican House of Representatives members voted against House Resolution 546, “disapproving” Russia’s inclusion in Group of Seven summits “until it respects the territorial integrity of its neighbors and adheres to the standards of democratic societies.” Putin has been persona non grata at the G-7 since he seized Crimea in 2014 — another foreign policy decision taken on predecessor Barack Obama’s watch that Donald Trump would love to get rid of. 

The 71 pro-Russian Republicans did not carry the day, as 116 other Republicans supported the measure to chastise the Russians. It ended up passing the House by 339 Democrats (including one independent lawmaker) to the recalcitrant 71. Still, it’s worth noting that those supporting Putin’s ambitions to rejoin the G-7 despite his aggression against Ukraine included Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee Jim Jordan, Chris Stewart, and Mike Conaway.

Snapshot

These same Intelligence Committee Republicans who are privy to some of their nation’s most sensitive secrets have been peddling Putin’s (and Trump’s) propaganda line that the Ukrainians were the ones responsible for interfering in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The Republicans have chosen to believe the Kremlin’s “fictional narrative,” rather than the unanimous view of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and the office of the Director for National Intelligence, as Trump’s former top Russia expert on the National Security Council, Fiona Hill, has put it.  

None of these lawmakers with their top security clearances have expressed moral outrage over another thoroughly documented fact: that then-candidate Donald Trump, his son Donald Jr., and others in the Trump presidential campaign including now-convicted campaign manager Paul Manafort and Republican trickster Roger Stone welcomed the Russian covert operation to help put Donald Trump in the White House. Instead, the Republican Intelligence Committee lawmakers have been spending their energies defending Trump from the consequences of his pressure campaign aimed at persuading Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to smear Democrat Joe Biden, one of Trump’s prospective rivals in the 2020 presidential contest. 

Snapshot

Remember the fleeting news reports when President Trump, standing by Putin’s side at a July 2018 press conference, denigrated the unanimous findings of the entire U.S. intelligence community that Putin covertly sought to help Trump defeat Hillary Clinton in 2016? Trump shrugged he didn’t “see any reason why” Russia would have done that. 

Typically, as in so many other instances where the headlines screamed outrage, the president of the United States blamed the usual suspects — “dishonest” journalists — for spreading fake news. So far, the Big Lie tactics have worked in whipping up the current frenzy among Trump’s Republican base. But it is difficult to imagine that someday, dispassionate historians will be so forgiving.  

Snapshot

Trump’s Fox News friend Tucker Carlson has blamed the media for an alleged pro-Clinton bias in reporting on the Mueller Report’s solid documentation of the extensive Russian information warfare aimed at boosting Trump’s political fortunes. “It never happened, there was no collusion,” Carlson declared. “Russia didn’t hack our democracy. The whole thing was a … ludicrous talking point invented by the Hillary Clinton campaign…to explain their unexpected defeat…” 

The hard facts, as the detailed report prepared by Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller III documented, say otherwise. Putin’s intelligence operatives “carried out a social media campaign that favored presidential candidate Donald J. Trump and disparaged presidential candidate Hillary Clinton,” Mueller reported. He further established that the Republican candidate and his associates knew the Russians were helping Trump. Beyond doubt, they “expected” that Donald Trump “would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts.” 

Still, Mueller failed to find prosecutable proof that Trump criminally conspired with the Russians. This was the entire opening the president and his allies like Tucker Carlson have needed to falsely claim that the special counsel had completely exonerated Trump.  

The smooth-talking Carlson may not have a sure grasp of the facts relating to Russian influence operations —  but the television personality knows what his untutored American audience craves to hear. 

Snapshot

Republicans who are inclined to regard Russia as an ally of Nato democracies might change their opinions if they would read the most recent annual reports published by secret intelligence agencies in Latvia and the Czech Republic. 

Latvia’s Constitution Protection Bureau (known as the SAB) issued its most recent annual report this past April. The state security service’s findings ran to 54 pages, which were “dominated by one word: Russia,” as a Latvian Public Broadcasting report put it. Just one line sums up the litany of Moscow-directed dirty tricks: “The aggressive activities of Russian intelligence and security services pose a serious threat to the collective security of NATO and EU, and the national security of Latvia.” The Russians operations, the SAB further observed, had been “accepted at the highest political level” in Russia, the reference of course being to Vladimir Putin. 

And last month the Security Information Service in Prague (called the BIS) released a 26-page report that likewise pulled no punches regarding Moscow’s covert operations aimed at undermining the Czech Republic. The BIS revealed further details of Russian subversion, including those associated with hostile “cyber and information operations.”

The BIS also reported how the Russians had been working secretly to “cultivate an influence basis close to politicians,” aiming to build “influence networks.” 

This is the point in the story where observers of the current political climate in Washington, D.C. — where intelligence officials whose findings have embarrassed the White House have come under sustained political attack — will have a familiar feeling. Turns out that in Prague, too, not every politician is an admirer of secret intelligence agency findings involving Russia that can be politically awkward.

Milos Zeman, the president of the Czech Republic, is infamous for his unashamed, undisguised, pro-Russian inclinations. This April, Zeman blasted the latest BIS report for engaging in what he claimed was a “fictitious hunt” for Moscow-directed spies. And for the fourth time, Zeman rejected his government’s proposal to promote the respected head of BIS, Michal Koudelka, to the rank of general, reported Radio Prague International. 

Let’s end this on a positive note. This past April, Koudelka attended a private ceremony at the Langley, Virginia, headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency. The Czech spymaster was given the George Tenet Award, one of the highest the CIA gives to exemplary international partners. 

In Washington, some people still get it. 

Hong Kong — and the Lost Mandate of Heaven

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By Greg Rushford

Wednesday, August 15, 2019

World headlines are full of the crisis in Hong Kong. That great international port city is in the grip of civil unrest that has brought an astonishing two million people (out of a population of seven million!) into the streets. They were sparked, above all other things, by their desire to live their lives without fear of the heavy hand of repression from mainland China, a corrupt surveillance state controlled by the Communist Party. The smell of tragedy is in the air, with still-fresh memories of Beijing’s bloody Tiananmen Square massacre thirty years ago. We don’t yet know how this immediate story will play out, other than we’re all watching an historical milestone in the makings.  

What is clear is how this crisis developed. That, and the identities of the three people who are most responsible for building the frustrations that have now spilled into the streets. First and foremost: Xi Jinping, the general secretary of the Communist Party and president of China since 2012. Xi has ruled like an emperor — but is clearly frightened by the notion that China should keep its promise to let Hong Kong people keep on enjoying the democratic freedoms that the Party denies to mainland Chinese subjects. 

Second is the acerbic C.Y. Leung, one of Beijing’s men in Hong Kong who served as the city’s chief executive from 2012 to 2017.  There isn’t room in this space to tell you about Leung’s full record, other than to note that he put the interests of his political masters in Beijing ahead of Hong Kong’s.

The third person most responsible for the present political instability is Carrie Lam, a politically tone-deaf bureaucrat who formerly ran the civil service for Leung, and then was tapped in 2017 by Beijing to become chief executive. Lam declined to comment for this article. She wouldn’t even say whether it bothered her that Beijing’s heavy hand has been steadily eroding the freedoms and dedication to the rule of law that have distinguished Hong Kong from all Chinese mainland cities. Of course not: from all appearances, she’s kowtowed to Bejing at every opportunity. 

I first visited Hong Kong when it was a British colony in 1969, and have flown to the city nearly every year since the Brits withdrew in 1997, when Hong Kong became a Special Administrative Region of China. There’s naturally a lot of history of the last fifty years to be told, as Hong Kong turned into a global financial center defined by — to repeat for emphasis, because this is the most important point — qualities no mainland Chinese city has ever enjoyed. These are: a remarkable civility in public discourse, a world-class civil service, and a bastion of economic freedoms. Above all, Hong Kong until recently has stood for a respect for free speech and the rule of law that the British left behind in 1997.

But to understand the root causes of the frustrations that are now playing out in Hong Kong’s streets, just looking back at a few key events of the last five years are sufficient to explain.

In August of 2014, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress in Beijing released a document that outlined how the Communist Party intended to carry out mainland China’s promise that Hong Kong people could one day elect their chief executive by universal suffrage. That had been the key deal that was enshrined in Hong Kong’s Basic Law, the city’s so-called mini-constitution that came with the 1997 British handover to China. Instead of universal suffrage, Hong Kong’s chief executives since the handover had been “elected” by a committee of 1,200 Hong Kongers, most of whom were marked by their loyalties to the mainland. 

From the Chinese mainland’s perspective, Hong Kong people — unlike their peers in other world-class cities like London, Paris, Tokyo and New York — were not mature enough to be trust to pick their own leaders. 

In its White Paper five years ago, the Standing Committee established its bottom line. Universal suffrage would (finally) be allowed in the 2017 election for the next chief executive, as long as there would be a guarantee that “the chief executive shall be a person who loves the country and loves Hong Kong.” The catch: The Beijing-controlled 1,200-person election committee would pick three candidates who met the approval of the Communist Party. Hong Kong people could then vote for one of them. In other words, Xi was confirming that he intended to break China’s responsibilities as contained in the Basic Law. This was a very big deal, to understate the matter. 

Immediately there was a public outcry that the mainland communists had, once again, demonstrated that they only liked “elections” where they could pick the winners. But Hong Kong’s political establishment just sort of sat back. 

Not the young people. In September, tens of thousands of outraged Hong Kong residents, lead by intrepid student leaders who emerged from seemingly nowhere, went into the streets. What had begun as peaceful Occupy Hong Kong with Love and Peace demonstrations soon morphed into what’s now mostly known as the Umbrella Movement. For several months, the young people obstructed access to government buildings, and blocked roads and disrupted traffic in key commercial districts. Such disruptive tactics, however, gradually cost them their initial widespread public support, as C. Y. Leung and Xi had calculated.

Leung’s political strategy was never based on reaching a legitimate political accommodation, but to use the Hong Kong police with their teargas and pepper spray to wear down the young people. It worked.

Xi and the mainland communists reacted the same way in late 2014 as they have in the past weeks: threats of mainland repression if the “rioters” and “terrorists” didn’t go away, coupled with a crude propaganda campaign aimed at discrediting the protestors. And like they have again done this month, mainland agents then unleashed targeted violence instigated by criminal triad members with their sticks. 

When I visited Hong Kong in 2015 and spoke with both pro-Beijing politicians and some pro-democracy Hong Kong leaders, there didn’t seem to be much interest in working out an amicable settlement. Emily Lau, a respected pro-democracy member of Hong Kong’s legislature, just shrugged and said the prospect of future violence was “Beijing’s problem” to worry about. If Xi persists, Ms. Lau told me, the city would someday become “ungovernable.” While I didn’t appreciate her insights at the time, today observers are using the same word. 

Hugo Restall, the editorial page editor at the Wall Street Journal Asia, had called for a political compromise in a column during the demonstrations back in September, 2014. He reasoned that the widely unpopular C.Y. Leung, who had clearly lost the public’s trust, should resign as chief executive. But mainly, Restall pointed to President Xi as the man who really could resolve the conflict: “Mr. Xi’s hardline stance on Hong Kong’s political system created this standoff.” 

Noting that Xi was fond of quoting Confucius, the ancient Chinese philosopher, Restall framed his challenge to the Communist Party leader in classic Confucian style. A central component of Confucian politics holds that whenever emperors break their faith with the Chinese people, they lose the necessary “mandate of heaven” to continue to govern legitimately. 

Xi’s breaking his faith with Hong Kong, Restall reasoned, had cost him that mandate. But now, “if the emperor is honest with his people, there’s a chance he can regain the mandate of heaven,” Restall concluded. (Full disclosure: Restall was then my editor at the Wall Street Journal Asia, which I have occasionally contributed to since 1995. He remains a trusted friend.)

But Emperor Xi and his minions scoffed at the notion they might wisely reflect upon honored Confucian traditions to best serve the Chinese people. Instead, they gradually tightened the screws on dissent in Hong Kong.

Democracy activists from the 2014 Umbrella Movement like teenager Joshua Wong have been in-and-out of jail ever since, on charges ranging from obstruction of justice to contempt. The energetic Wong is now all of 22 years old. His real “crime” has been his passion for democracy, that and his natural talent for leadership. Beijing’s hidden hand has been the driving force behind the repression.

Perhaps you’ve read in the South China Morning Post about the five Hong Kong booksellers who went missing in 2015, and “eventually turned up in the custody of mainland China authorities.” Or of the various pro-democracy politicians who were duly elected to Hong Kong’s legislative council, only to be disqualified because of their (peaceable) political views that Beijing feared. C.Y. Leung and Carrie Lam’s roles during this unfortunate series of events: mostly keeping their mouths shut while allowing the dirty work to be done behind the scenes.

Or you might recall news accounts from a year ago this month concerning Victor Mallet, the veteran Hong Kong-based correspondent for the Financial Times. Mallet lost his working visa last year for taking Hong Kong’s traditional respect for free speech a tad too seriously. Mallet, who was vice-chairman of the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, invited a Hong Kong dissident who was daring to call for independence from China — an extreme stance that the vast majority of Hong people have never supported — to explain his reasoning at an FCC lunch. Predictably, mainland authorities went ballistic. 

Talk about a fine opportunity for Hong Kong leaders to remind Beijing that Hong Kong’s reputation as one of the world’s leading financial centers is based on honoring the free flow of speech and information. Instead, Chief Executive Carrie Lam and her subordinates took the unprecedented step of kicking the Financial Times journalist out of Hong Kong. 

It was a simple case of repression-by-bureaucracy. Mallet’s working visa was not routinely renewed. (Dictatorships like Vietnam play such nasty games to keep journalists in line, not Hong Kong until these days.) Mallet also was subjected to various indignities, including a four-hour interrogation by Hong Kong authorities. He has not been allowed to return, even as a visitor. This was Chief Executive Carrie Lam’s work. She has grudgingly acknowledged the ultimate decision was hers, but has never fully been truthful about that sad episode.

There’s a lot more that could be said, but that’s the essence. This year, the tone-deaf Lam worked overtime to press legislation that would allow Hong Kong authorities to extradite anyone to mainland China, where they would be subjected to China’s corrupt judiciary. That was simply going too far — especially when Lam was accused of playing sneaky games to bypass established procedures to get the legislation through Hong Kong’s legislature. 

So Hong Kong people were once again left with no alternative but to go into the streets. Faced with such a fierce public outcry, Lam finally apologized, and backed off, sort of — but has refused to withdraw the offending legislation permanently. Like Leung before her, she has relied upon Hong Kong’s riot police, instead of looking for a peaceful political negotiated outcome to end the unrest. 

That’s the best I can now offer, by way of trying to explain how the crisis that threatens Hong Kong’s cherished way of life has been building up for years. As always, it’s impossible to predict with certainty what will unfold in the coming days, weeks, and perhaps months. All we know is that another important historical milestone is being shaped in one of the world’s most wonderful cities. Stay tuned. 

Trump’s War on the WTO

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Economic nationalism is a threat to world-wide—and American—prosperity.

by Greg Rushford

July 4, 2018, in The Wall Street Journal

President Harry S. Truman and Secretary of State George Marshall successfully pressed America’s war allies to create the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade more than 70 years ago. Leaders across the globe, mindful of how economic nationalism in the 1930s had contributed to the devastation of World War II, wanted to open the world up again. The agreement focused on slashing of tariffs and other barriers to trade—bringing unprecedented prosperity to hundreds of millions of people. The GATT, which evolved into the World Trade Organization in 1995, became the world’s most successful international economic experiment.

But now economic nationalism and tariff wars are back. President Trump regards the WTO with disdain and would like to withdraw. He has ordered aides to come up with ways to inflict punitive tariffs on U.S. trading partners anytime he wishes—in clear violation of the system the WTO administers. And it’s not only talk. Mr. Trump and U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer have taken a wrecking ball to the legal machinery sustaining the global trade regime.

The White House is slowly killing the WTO’s seven-member appellate body, which is the institution’s court of final appeal in trade litigation. The ploy is a simple war of attrition: The U.S. has whittled the court down to four members by withholding the consensus to replace jurists when their four-year terms expire. Another vacancy in September will leave three—barely a quorum but not enough to handle the caseload. By the end of next year, only Hong Zhao, a veteran Chinese trade official, will be left.

Mr. Lighthizer, who declined to comment for this article, has left WTO diplomats in the dark as to what he wants. But that’s not difficult to figure: higher tariffs. Mr. Lighthizer has been a longtime advocate for the protectionist domestic steel lobby, which has often lost at the WTO.

Mr. Lighthizer argued in 1995 that it had been “a mistake” when the appellate body’s decisions were made binding on member countries. American presidents since Ronald Reagan had championed that reform. It meant that losing parties would have to bring trade policies into compliance with their WTO legal obligations or pay compensation. To economic nationalists like Mr. Lighthizer, this infringed on sovereign rights.

In a 2001 speech, Mr. Lighthizer raised eyebrows in the normally genteel trade bar by saying that he believed some WTO jurists “may be crooked, although I have no evidence of that.” Perhaps due to such intemperance, his 2003 campaign to become a WTO jurist was rebuffed. Now he can exact revenge.

Mr. Lighthizer’s gripes about judicial overreach could find some support—if it weren’t for his bullying. The WTO’s negotiated trade agreements, subjected to rounds of compromise, include imprecise legal obligations. Stuck analyzing diplomatically fudged language, the appellate body has been forced to fill the gaps by applying enlightened international legal theories.

“There are issues that governments have chosen not to raise in negotiations in the hope that they could obtain their goals through litigation at the WTO, even though they knew what they sought had never been agreed to by the other members,” Washington trade lawyer Terrence Stewart wrote last year. It’s a legitimate concern, but judicial overreach still is in the eye of the beholder.

Despite Mr. Trump’s assertion that the WTO has been “a disaster” for the U.S., Washington has won 85% of the 117 WTO cases it has brought against foreign trading partners. Japan complained in 2003 that WTO jurists had stretched the law by determining that Japanese health officials used phony science to ban American apples.

The real U.S. gripe is that foreign governments have won most of the 145 cases that they have brought against American protectionist policies. Mr. Lighthizer’s steel clients have screamed the loudest whenever jurists in Geneva have found legal hanky-panky in the way U.S. antidumping officials hit foreign competitors with tariffs. This is fodder for Mr. Trump’s base.

The Democratic Party has its share of protectionists too. In 2011 President Obama’s trade office, cloaked in secrecy, blocked the appointment of Washington trade lawyer Jennifer Hillman to a second term on the appellate body. Ms. Hillman was subjected to a whisper campaign suggesting her vote was not considered “reliable.” Translation: She was too intellectually honest to tilt her legal determinations in the White House’s favor. This pleased the steel lobby.

In 2016 Mr. Obama’s trade advisers blocked Seung Wha Chang, a South Korean legal scholar, for a second term on the appellate body. Mr. Chang had ruled against the U.S. too often, especially in cases involving steel and aluminum. The Koreans complained bitterly.

Tim Reif, the Obama trade lawyer whose fingerprints were all over the moves against Ms. Hillman and Mr. Chang, is currently advising Mr. Lighthizer. On June 7 he was nominated by President Trump to fill a vacancy on the U.S. Court of International Trade. As a federal judge, Mr. Reif will enjoy lifetime tenure. He declined to comment.

The debate over the WTO isn’t going to be resolved by lawyerly tinkering. The real problem rests in the return of economic nationalism. Both political parties would be well-advised to consider the wisdom of Truman and Marshall. They understood that true national-security imperatives meant resisting protectionism.

Mr. Rushford edits the Rushford Report, an online journal that tracks trade politics.