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Letter from Manila: Negotiating at Gunpoint

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November 15, 2022

By Greg Rushford

Manila, Philippines — It’s past time to sound some national security alarm bells. The Philippines, America’s oldest treaty ally in the Pacific, has been facing economic and military pressures from China. Beijing’s bullying has been intensifying gradually for more than thirty years. The hard truth is that the Chinese are winning.

The PLA Navy — clearly contrary to international law, as determined by an international tribunal in The Hague in 2016 — has been preventing Philippine fishers from casting their nets in the South China Sea. Chinese predatory fishing in Philippine waters has been devastating to corals and other marine life, while also causing Philippine fish stocks to drop more than 60 percent. And now, adding insult to injury, China has been exporting Philippine fish it has stolen — back to the Philippines.

The same PLA Navy has been preventing the Philippines from developing much-needed oil and gas resources in Philippine waters — notably including Reed Bank, which is within the Philippines’ continental shelf and is believed to have the energy resources needed to keep the country’s electricity grids running. Xi Jinping, the general secretary of the Communist Party of China, has given his coast guard permission to shoot to kill any Philippine exploration vessels that interfere with China’s ambitions to develop Reed Bank’s resources. Former Philippine Supreme Court Justice Antonio Carpio observes that Xi’s bullying “clearly violates international law.”

Xi is essentially demanding that Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. negotiate away his country’s energy independence — at gunpoint. As Eduardo Mañalac told me, because of the political risk associated with the Chinese military intimidation around Philippine oil-exploration fields, no major western market-oriented oil company will touch the Philippines. Xi is basically asking Marcos to agree to negotiate only with Chinese state-owned drilling concerns which do not pretend to adhere to international standards of financial transparency.

Mañalac is a respected former president of the Philippine National Oil Company, and a former senior official in the Philippines’ energy department. His concerns over the corrosive effects of Chinese corruption are well-taken in leading international energy circles. And in Manila’s legal circles, the scent of scandal is in the air, fueled by pending civil litigation alleging high-level governmental cronyism, and also criminal complaints alleging graft.

If Xi Jinping succeeds in intimidating the new Philippine president, who has only been in office since June, China will develop and control a key part of the Philippine energy sector. The Philippines will have been shamed — and residents of cities like Manila will have Xi to thank, every time they turn their lights on.

It’s worth looking back briefly at how one of America’s most important security allies has landed in such a predicament. Last month, I spent two intense weeks of mostly off-the-record talks with the usual journalistic sources, ranging from ordinary citizens who chafe at Chinese bullying to the higher echelons from the worlds of national security, diplomacy, politics, law, and business. The gist of what I picked up points to one bottom line: a lack of necessary political will at the presidential levels in both Washington and Manila, dating to the early 1990s.

What Happens when the Yankees Really Do Go Home

In 1991, the United States Air Force and Navy evacuated the large U.S. bases at Clark Field and Subic Bay. Volcanic eruptions from nearby Mt. Pinatubo that covered both bases in ash were the immediate impetus for the pullout. But the real reason involved insular-looking Philippine domestic politics. That, plus American stubbornness during endless negotiations over the usual suspect: money.

Then-President Corazon Aquino and some of her aides who wore anti-American chips on their shoulders had made it plain that Uncle Sam just wasn’t welcome anymore. And the Yankees, fed up with years of negotiations over basing rights that went nowhere, were happy to go home.

While over the years, the Philippines has succeeded commendably in turning the former U.S. bases into one of the most thriving hubs of economic growth in Southeast Asia. But watchful military eyes in Beijing soon perceived that the Philippines was left defenseless.

In 1995, the Philippines discovered that the Chinese navy had seized Mischief Reef, a tiny speck in the South China Sea that is part of the Philippines’ continental shelf. Chinese officials insisted that that they were just erecting fishing shelters. Manila and its neighbors in ASEAN fussed for awhile, but basically shrugged.

The PLA Navy on the Move

Visiting Manila in 1998, I saw Philippine reconnaissance photos that showed that the Chinese had erected military features on Mischief Reef, gun turrets, and such. When those photos hit the Manila papers, there was a public outcry (at least involving ordinary Filipinos, if not so much business elites with their eyes on doing business with a rising China).

Meanwhile, officials in then-President Bill Clinton’s State Department were not much bothered. Don’t worry: China lacks the resources necessary to project real military power, I was told.

The Clinton White House was busy extending a helping hand to a mainland China that wanted to get back on its feet and join the market-oriented global economy, after decades of economic mismanagement by the Communist Party of China. Clinton saw a potential peaceable economic partner, not a strategic rival-in-waiting.

From 2001 to 2008, the drift continued. President George W. Bush, his hands full with Iraq and Afghanistan, never seemed to focus on the future dangers associated with Chinese mischief in the South China Sea.

As had his predecessor Clinton, Bush welcomed China into the World Trade Organization in 2001. Inside WTO headquarters in Geneva, China quickly assumed the mantle of a responsible participant in multilateral negotiations, including those aimed at persuading governments to slash subsidies to their fishing fleets that were engaged in illegal fishing. But on the high seas, the Chinese fishing fleets kept doing ever more environmental damage. By 2016, marine biologists were warning that the South China Sea’s fish stocks were heading toward collapse.

An American President Blinks

By the time President Barack Obama, who sat in the Oval Office from 2009-2016, completed his eight years in office, the PLA Navy had taken near-total control of the South China Sea.  

The PLA Navy, of course, had its eyes on much more than fish. The story is now as familiar as it is disconcerting: how the Chinese created artificial islands out of white sand and coral in Philippine Exclusive Economic Zone. What were once half-submerged specks in the sea are now modern Chinese naval and air bases. Mischief Reef, Fiery Cross, and Subi Reef have hardened runways for jet fighters, sophisticated radars, jamming equipment, lasers, anti-aircraft missile launchers, and more.

The United States Navy, which specializes in conventional surface warfare — but isn’t so adept at waging political warfare — watched America’s former military dominance of the South China Sea slip away. Beijing’s weapons of choice were a mixture of the usual sleight-of-hand: propaganda and disinformation proclaiming Chinese good intentions, sand dredgers, and coast guard ships that were accompanied by swarms of maritime militia “fishing” fleets. 

While all this was underway, Xi assured China’s neighbors that his military would not weaponize the South China Sea. That was, of course, a lie.  But the disinformation worked. As Seth Jones has written, China took the South China Sea “without firing a shot.”

Obama watched all this happen. He promised senior Philippine officials I’ve spoken with that America would not just stand idly by. But that’s what he did.

Washington Starts to Pay Attention

It wasn’t until 2020 that an American secretary of state, Michael Pompeo, working with David Stillwell, a respected Asian hand who headed State’s East Asian Affairs bureau, stated publicly that the United States recognized that the Chinese maritime aggression was in violation of international law. Last month in Manila, I was reminded several times how welcome that statement was. The State Department had signaled that America was starting to get serious about protecting its friends in the Pacific.

Indeed, in April 2020, the U.S. Navy helped Malaysia fend off Chinese Coast Guard and maritime militias, which were trying to bully the Malaysians out of exploring for oil and gas in Malaysia’s Exclusive Economic Zone.  This is still being talked about in Manila’s national security circles.

As Philippine investigative reporter and author Marites Vitug has noted approvingly, “three American warships and an Australian frigate conducted a joint exercise near the site” of Malaysia’s exploration activities. Vitug also pointed out that when faced with such resolve, the Chinese intruders backed off.

I still cannot report that America has yet put into operation what could be called a truly sophisticated political-military-diplomatic maritime strategy. But some steps in the right direction have continued on President Joe Biden’s watch.

Last month, to cite just one of several recent encouraging developments, U.S. Ambassador to the Philippines MaryKay Carlson announced that “the United States has now made available $100 million in foreign military financing in part for the Philippine military to use as it wishes.”

Searching for Presidential Political Will in Manila

But how does one help an ally who lacks the political will to defend its own sovereignty? Former Philippine President Benigno Aquino, Jr. clearly had the necessary determination to stand up to Chinese bullying. In 2013, Aquino filed a challenge in The Hague, asserting that Chinese aggression in the South China Sea violated Beijing’s obligations as a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. And on July 12, 2016, Aquino’s move became a resounding success, when an UNCLOS tribunal ruled that China had acted illegally. It was “an overwhelming victory for the Philippines,” as Greg Poling noted in his recent, very well-received book, On Dangerous Ground.

“The judges agreed that China had illegally destroyed the marine environment through clam harvesting, intentionally created the risk of collision [with] foreign ships, and prevented the Philippines from accessing the resources of its EEZ and continental shelf,” Poling wrote.  Moreover, “they berated China for building artificial islands while the arbitration was underway.”

But there was one problem with the tribunal’s finding: it was issued twelve days after Rodrigo Duterte had succeeded Aquino as president. And it turned out that Duterte, a man who enjoyed projecting an image of a tough guy in the political arena, wasn’t so tough after all when it came to standing up to bullies in Beijing. The Philippine “strongman” refused to enforce his country’s legal victory — leaving Philippine fishing communities hanging, and potential oil and gas exploration, especially in Reed Bank, subject to the PLA Navy’s intimidation.

Just one 2018 press release issued by the historically weak Philippine Coast Guard showed the atmosphere of subservience that Duterte nourished.

Duterte and Xi Jinping had signed a maritime cooperation agreement, the release noted. So the Philippine Coast Guard had gotten busy making friends with China’s Coast Guard.  Translation:  that meant that the two coast guards bonded when they got together in Guangzhou.  Readers who have ever experienced Chinese hospitality will have already imagined the partying and entertainment.

Afterwards, the Philippine Coast Guard issued a press release that celebrated its fraternal ties with the same Chinese Coast Guard that had taken control of Philippine fishing grounds. “The two sides noted the positive outcomes of the bilateral relations and expressed their willingness to further deepen cooperation by conducting port visits, joint exercises, personnel exchange and training, and utilization of hotline communication,” the Philippine press release enthused. 

The Philippine Coast Guard now has new leadership said not to be subservient to China. Whether that’s true or not, a Coast Guard spokesman told me last month that he was not authorized to talk about Chinese maritime aggression.

Political Risk

Meanwhile, on Duterte’s watch, Philippine government officials close to him allegedly pressured two American oil majors, Shell and Chevron, to sell their shares in the Philippines’ Malampaya gas field to a crony of Duterte’s who has a reputation of being pro-Chinese. This was “extremely suspicious,” notes Eduardo Mañalac, the former president of the Philippine National Oil Company.

Malampaya is important for two reasons. It supplies perhaps 40 percent of Manila’s electric grid. And it is running out of gas reserves, which makes future exploration on Reed Bank, and elsewhere very important.

Mañalac is not the only reputable Philippine critic of the Malampaya sale. Reuben Torres, a well-regarded former executive secretary to former Philippine President Fidel Ramos, is pressing litigation that alleges that the transaction was of dubious legality. 

And the Philippines’ Office of the Ombudsman is reported to be looking into separate charges that the Malampaya transaction was criminal. 

Whatever the truth, the whiff of political risk is hanging in the political air that Ferdinand Marcos, Jr., the new Philippines president known better as “Bong Bong Marcos,” has inherited. The message to international oil majors is that Philippine energy sector is tilted in favor of Xi and the PLA Navy. Such a lack of a level playing field explains why only the Chinese government has expressed interest in exploring for oil in Chinese-controlled Philippine waters.

So how will this story end? The answer depends upon how Bong Bong Marcos responds to the bullies from Beijing.  As Greg Poling has observed, while the Chinese have been winning, they haven’t yet “won.”  

I believe that despite the previous years of mistakes in Washington, involving both Democratic and Republican presidents, the new Philippine leader will have America’s backing — if he genuinely wants it.

Stay tuned.

America’s Bitter Political Divide, Through an International Lens

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February 16, 2021

Talk about a political whirlwind. How to explain America’s bitter divisions to the watching world? 

The basic facts are a mouthful. Joe Biden’s electoral victory on November 3, 2020, which has been determined many times over to have been free and fair. Donald Trump’s defiant refusal to accept defeat. The dozens of (embarrassingly) failed Trump lawsuits. The lies of a stolen election. Violence in the streets of Washington, D.C., stoked by pro-Trump militias like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers (each of which has connections to the convicted-but-pardoned Roger Stone). The January 6 riots on Capitol Hill, followed by impeachment and the predictable acquittal at the hands of 43 out of 50 Senate Republicans. Whew. 

Still, the ruckus failed to prevent Biden’s electoral certification and January 20 inaugural. “Welcome back, America,” said friends around the world, who have been watching in real time. 

From my home in rural Rappahannock County, VA. (Population: 7,420), I also watched the February 13 U.S. Senate’s vote to acquit Trump in real time — on French television.

But the international headlines can’t by themselves explain what’s been driving American politics. Always remember former House Speaker Tip O’Neil’s truism that “all politics is local.”  So let’s look at America’s divisions narrowly, through an international lens focused on how prominent politicians in one congressional district in rural Virginia have been dealing with the turmoil.  

Virginia’s 5th congressional district is as rural Americana as it gets. It stretches from the outskirts of the Washington, D.C., suburbs to the foothills of the lovely Blue Ridge Mountains in Rappahannock County, and down through the scenic Shenandoah Valley, to the North Carolina border. 

Such parts of the southern United States are often referred to as the Bible Belt, where socially conservative evangelical Christians have significant political sway. The lines of the 5th district have been drawn to ensure that it would be extremely difficult for any Democrat to win election here.

Bob Good to the rescue

Which brings us to the 5th district’s newly-elected congressman, Republican Rep. Bob Good. He’s a self-described “biblical conservative” and a former athletic official at the Lynchburg-based Liberty University, the private evangelical school founded by the late Jerry Falwell Sr. 

Last summer, Good replaced the district’s former Republican congressman, Denver Riggleman, who was knocked off the ballot in a convention of party insiders engineered by angered 5th district Republican bosses. Their ire was aroused after Riggleman had officiated at the wedding of two gay men. Championing gay rights is anathema in 5th district Republican circles. 

In last November’s general election, Good routed his Democratic challenger, a mild-mannered physician named Cameron Webb who expressed concerns about the Trump’s administration’s erratic responses to the coronavirus pandemic. On the campaign trail — refusing to wear a mask — Good basically ran against the “radical left” and “socialists” who support the sort of violence perpetrated by “Islamic Jihad” terrorists. Dr. Webb must still be scratching his head. 

A new congressman’s priorities

Rep. Good’s two top declared priorities in Congress will be to fight for “religious freedoms” and for citizens’ rights to have concealed-carry permits to carry guns across state borders. He’s also a hardliner on immigration who has recently visited (and praised) a section of Trump’s wall along the U.S.-Mexican border in Arizona. 

Good voted against certifying Biden’s electoral win. He has expressed admiration for a fellow Republican freshman from Georgia, the hard-right Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Greene has also drawn international headlines by espousing extreme conspiracy theories. She wants Joe Biden to be impeached, on grounds he has been “compromised” by America’s enemies and is a security risk. 

For Good, extreme rants have also come closer to home. His top district aide, Sandy Adams, had to apologize after she posted a Twitter attack on Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, likening the young progressive New Yorker to Adolf Hitler. 

[Adams also was among the crowds on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, with her husband, Melvin Adams, the 5th district Republican chairman and one of the party bosses who helped elect Bob Good to Congress. (To his credit, Melvin Adams told supporters in a private communication that he had tried to talk some ruffians out of perpetrating violence. He declined to respond to a query asking if he had shared what he had seen with the FBI.]

Sandy Adams posted a meme in 2015 that pictured then-President Barack Obama “along with Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin as an opponent of gun ownership,” Richmond-based political reporter Ben Paviour noted on National Public Radio news last month. 

A “Phony” Pandemic — and “Sissies” from Brazil

Good believes the coronavirus pandemic is “phony,” a “hoax” perpetrated by radical Democrats to shut down businesses, schools, and churches. Speaking last December before the Campbell County Militia near Lynchburg — again, maskless –Good asserted that social-distancing regulations issued by Virginia’s Democratic governor, Ralph Northam, were a threat to “our First Amendment rights to assemble,” not sensible precautions aimed at protecting Virginians’ health. 

Readers will be reminded of Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, who claims that Brazilians must not be “sissies” about the coronavirus. “All of us are going to die one day” anyway, he says. A Trump admirer, Bolsonaro has cultivated a passionate base including Christian conservatives and also paramilitary forces who don’t want their country’s gun laws loosened.

Two awkward facts: Brazil’s virus death count is approaching 240,000, second in the world only to the United States, which is now more than 485,000 — and rising. Trump and Bolsonaro have sought to deflect the blame for their poor performance to communist China. 

Enemies of the People

Let’s really narrow the lens, focusing on two upstanding citizens from the 5thdistrict’s Rappahannock County. Terry Dixon and Ron Frazier seem to illustrate the continuing resonance of Donald Trump’s persistent campaign to sow distrust of America’s free press as “enemies of the people.”

Dixon chairs the Rappahannock Republican committee. A deacon in a local Baptist church, he appeared at a Sunday service during last year’s election campaign with then-candidate Bob Good. (Virginia’s Democratic candidates tend to speak to the district’s black churches.) Dixon also played a leading role in Good’s ouster of then-incumbent Republican congressman Denver Riggleman last year. 

Frazier, a member of the county’s board of supervisors, is the longest-serving public official in the county. Frazier seems to personify the historical grievances of many Rappahannock natives, when he refers to the U.S. Civil War as the War of Northern Aggression. 

A little historical research indicates the term is often associated with 20th century segregationists who opposed civil-rights legislation. Frazier did not respond to repeated invitations to explain whether that notion fit him. Nor did he respond when asked for his feelings about the Confederate flags being waved by Jan. 6 rioters at the U.S. Capitol.  

[One thing that is guaranteed to inflame emotions in rural Virginia is to suggest to latter-day Johnny Rebs that the American civil war was an insurrection rooted in pro-slavery views. There is a statue on the county courthouse grounds dedicated to the memories of Rappahannock residents who gave their lives defending the confederacy. Their cause was “righteous,” according to the inscription. Armed men patrolled that statue last summer, should Black Lives Matter or Antifa decide to show up. They didn’t. While the lingering resentments in the American south are not as openly hateful as, say, the centuries of festering animosities in places like Armenia or Serbia, they have never gone away.]

Frazier was recently the object of some controversy in the local Rappahannock News, after it came out that on January 6 he had attended Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally at the Ellipse, and then the mass demonstration on the East Side of the Capitol. “We were on the ground,” Frazier stated in an account posted on social media. “Not sure about any property damage but a woman that tried to breach was shot.” 

Unsurprisingly, that raised eyebrows. Exactly what did Frazier see that day? Did he cross police lines? If so, he would have been breaking the law, said the local chairwoman of the Democratic Party who suggested the possibility of a censure. Others in the community questioned Frazier’s judgement — not for peaceably exercising his constitutional rights to protest, but for believing what Republican senate leader Mitch McConnell has famously called presidential “lies.”

In his reports in the Rappahannock News, editor John McCaslin has also highlighted comments supporting Frazier from the chairwoman of the county’s board of supervisors, and also Republican committee chairman Terry Dixon. 

It’s hard to see how any reporter could have been more even-handed. McCaslin is a veteran journalist whose 40-plus career has included stints as a White House correspondent for the Washington Times, and a columnist for the Los Angeles Times syndicate. He has a reputation as a straight shooter. Toward that end, McCaslin has recently run several missives from residents who have strongly supported Ron Frazier. 

But Republican chairman Terry Dixon hasn’t been impressed. Dixon circulated a private e-mail in local religious circles that vented his deep-seated beliefs. It’s revealing of the passions that are roiling American political waters.

“Dear Friend,” Dixon began. “I need your help to stop something terrible from happening next Monday at the February 1 Board of Supervisors meeting. Rappahannock County Democrats are trying to censure Supervisor Ron Frazier because he attended a Trump rally. With the help of the Rappahannock News they are lying and distorting the truth.” 

Continuing, Dixon asserted that Rappahannock County Democrats are “far-left” socialists who are “behind an effort of character assassination that echoes the propaganda efforts of Saul Alinsky, the Soviet Union and the Chinese Communist Party.” 

Dixon electronically whispered that “for years,” the Democrats “and the leftist Rappahannock News have aggressively tried to damage Ron Frazier’s reputation.” They have accused Frazier of breaking the law he claimed. “All of us are next on their smear list,” he added. “If we don’t stop them now they will get bolder and more dangerous.”

Thus fired up, a group of concerned local citizens turned up at the Feb 1 supervisors’ meeting — two meetings, actually, as there were both afternoon and evening sessions — arguing that the board should not censure Ron Frazier. 

Never let the facts get in the way of a good political argument, as they say. Here, nobody had accused Frazier of breaking the law. The board of supervisors had no intention of censuring him. Discussing Frazier’s attendance at the Stop the Steal events was not even on the agenda. Rappahannock Democrats had not questioned Frazier’s constitutional rights to peaceable assembly. 

I sent written questions to Frazier, asking if he thought he’d been fairly treated by his local newspaper. He did not respond. Nor did Dixon respond to repeated written requests for his comments.

There’s a lot more that could be said about moral leadership at the American grassroots level. Many attendees at the Rappahannock County supervisors’ February 1 meetings, including Ron Frazier, were captured on video not wearing masks to protect the public health. Nor were many of those good citizens willing to practice safe social-distancing. Why the Rappahannock County board of supervisors is willing to hold public meetings that could endanger the lives of their own constituents is a matter perhaps best left to moral historians. 

Meanwhile, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro — and other authoritarian-minded world leaders like Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte who sew distrust of the press — would understand. 

And so would Russia’s Vladimir Putin, who has long used misinformation tools aimed at dividing Americans by sewing distrust of a free press. Sometimes one wonders why Putin need bother, when so Americans — from Donald Trump down to America’s small communities — unwittingly do his work for him?  

Reversing our lens to look at the bigger picture, however, suggests a different set of emerging political realities. Republicans with insular attitudes are only competitive in four of Virginia’s eleven congressional districts. Trump won the small rural counties, but the majority of Virginia’s urban- and suburban voters have moved on. They support America’s multicultural, multiracial, rule-of-law based modern society.

Hillary Clinton easily beat Trump in Virginia’s 2016 presidential election, winning 49 percent of the state’s vote to Trump’s 44 percent. In 2020, Joe Biden thumped Trump even more: 54-44 percent.  

Asked for any ideas on how Republicans might become more competitive statewide, Virginia 5th congressional district chairman Melvin Dixon did not respond.

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.