China's One Belt, One Road: Pakistan's Cautionary Tale

Back in 2015, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) section of China's One Belt, One Road (OBOR) Initiative was expected to bring economic development and jobs to Pakistan and also provide substantial benefits to China. The new deep water port at Gwadar, Pakistan, on the Arabian Sea would enable China to transport oil from the Middle East up through Pakistan to western China rather than across the Indian Ocean and through the congested Malacca Straight between Indonesia and Malaysia to the South China Sea. By encircling India, the CPEC offered a way to balance or neutralize democratic India's influence in the region, but the CPEC also involved China in India's Kashmir border dispute with Pakistan high in the Himalaya Mountains. Shots fired on the border in Septemebr, 2020, violated an Indo-Chinese agreement. Pakistan found the terms of the CPEC less than transparent and a debt burden Beijing was unwilling to renegotiate. The Chinese support Pakistan expected for its border dispute with India failed to materialize. In fact, in September, 2017, China and India signed an anti-terrorist declaration that criticized Pakistan for shielding terrorist groups. The US even floats the notion that China might be an ally willing to help persuade Pakistan to pressure its Taliban friends to help stabilize neighboring Afghanistan. The bottom line is: Pakistan's deteriorating economy, made worse by the coronavirus, finds 18 million employees out of work. China, which expects repayment for the CPEC, has no need for Pakistan's textile exports. CPEC construction jobs failed to satisfy Pakistan's need for the education, technical training and scientific research necessary for modern employment, such as monitoring and correcting Pakistan's poor air quality. Finally, the CPEC involves atheistic China with a Muslim country, when China is trying to eliminate the Uighur Muslim culture in Kashgar, home of the Id Kah Mosque, and to control up to one million Uighurs in so-called re-education camps. At the same time, Pakistan's Hindu minority, already discriminated against in better economic times, is converting to Islam just to receive assistance from the government and charities.

Putin's Private Siberian Project Excludes Alexei Navalny

Two-dimensional maps often show Russia on the far right side and the United States all the way over on the left. This separation provides the false impression the countries are far apart. But as John McCain's vice presidential running mate, Sarah Palin, famously observed, she could see Russia from her kitchen window. Presumably, Russia's President Vladimir Putin can see the United Staes from a Siberian window. And lately, US military planes have intercepted Russian planes snooping from the skies over Alaska. Climate change turned Siberia, once identified with Russian prison camps in an inhospitable frozen wasteland, into what President Putin calls the East Sibrian Sea's Northern Sea Route "a matter of national pride." With increased seasonal passage through Arctic waters comes faster market access for oil and gas from Russia's Yamal Penninsula and a new military option. Beginning on September, 11, 2018, Russia, China and Mongolia participated in Vostok-2018, a massive military exercise in Siberia. By the middle of 2020, Vladimir Putin, who considered the collapse of the USSR the 20th century's geopolitical disaster, felt confident. Russia tamed the Chechnya separatists in 2000 and annexed Crimea in 2014. Possible domination of Georgia and Belarus was still in play. The US was about to walk away from an Open Skies Treaty, resisted by the Kremlin ever since one was designed to prevent surprise attacks after World War II. Refusing to authorize treaty-permtted flights over Russia's military exercises and staging areas for nuclear weapons aimed at Europe provoked the US to designate a final November, 2020 participation date. Russia already interfered with US elections in 2016 and was prepared to do so again in 2020. On July 1, 2020, voters approved a referendum allowing a Russian president to serve two consecutive 6-year terms after the next election, when the current term of President Putin, age 67, ends in 2024. At this propitious moment, Putin's political nemesis, Alexei Navalny, arrived in Siberia. Mr. Navalny's anti-corruption message had gained traction in Russia's urban areas, where his slick YouTube delivery system skirted state-owned media and inspired massive protests when Putin decided to return to the presidency in 2012. By 2020, Navalny was far outside Russia's major cities schooling opposition city council candidates who won two seats and ousted the majority held by Putin's United Russian party in the student town of Tomsk in Siberia's elections on Sunday, September 13, 2020. By winning one seat in Novosibirsk and uniting with three other independent candidates, the United Russian party also seemed likely to lose its majority there. Timing favored Mr. Navalny's opposition party, since the coronavirus exposed the effect of falling oil prices on a falling standard of living, while Putin's wealthy oligarchy buddies remained untouched. On the plane back to Moscow from Siberia, Mr. Navalny became seriously ill. The plane made an emergency landing in Omsk, Siberia, where Alexei spent two days in a coma before the Kremlin allowed a plane to fly him to Germany on August 22, 2020. There, and also later in laboratories in France and Sweden, doctors determined he was exposed to the nerve gas chemical weapon, Novichok, the same poison that nearly killed the former Russian spy, Sergei Skripal, in England. On Tuesday, September 8, 2020, a masked man threw a foul-smelling liquid into the offices of Navalny's Anti-Corruption Foundation in Novosibirsk, Siberia. By Wednesday, September 9, German officials announced the attack on Navalny forced them to reconsider Gazprom's Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline between Germany and Russia, which already is a source of controversy in Germany and Poland. Although Mr. Navalny came out of his coma on Monday, September 7, 2020, and could walk a short distance by September 14, German physicians remain uncertain about the extent of his long-term recovery. German doctors released Mr. Navalny from the hospital on September, 22, 2020. He will remain in Germany for rehabilitation but has expressed his intention to return to Russia, where court orders have frozen his bank accounts and, on August 27, 2020, seized his apartment to prevent it from being "sold, donated, or mortgaged." Knowing Mr. Navalny will be greeted with a rousing rally when he returns to Moscow, Putin certainly is planning to counter his reception. It is interesting to note how enthusiastic Vladimir Putin was about Siberia, when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited him in 2010. He took her to a map in his dacha's private office to show her the areas where he was involved in saving Siberian tigers and polar bears from extinction. An earlier post, "North Pole Flag," also details Russia's continuing interest in the Arctic.

Q is QAnon's Practical Joker

Q, a practical joker on the TV show, "Impractical Jokers", is fun. QAnon is mumbo jumbo. According to QAnon, Q is so named, because he or she is a miitary or intelligence official with high level classified Q clearance to see nuclear material/weapon information, and QAnon's followers have been described as Christians striving to learn and apply biblical truths. They are certain they have foreknowledge of the inevitable Great Awakening when good destroys evil. Yet, the NEW TESTAMENT, in Mark 13:31-33, says "Heaven and earth will pass away...But of that day or hour, no one knows, neither the angels in heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father." When faced with inconvenient truths, QAnon's supporters bob and weave to deflect objective truth and reason with ever-changing explanations. QAnon followers see President Trump and themselves, a band of US patriots, fighting to bring down the "deep state" of powerful elite leaders in a cabal of corrupt media, government and education, financial and religious institutions. For QAnon's devoted band, signs from on high provide clues to the future. Maybe the name of the horse that wins Saturday's Kentucky Derby will be significant. They already see the death toll from the coronavirus as giving the media elites a way to hurt President Trump (known as Q+) and his chance of re-election. To believers, President Trump is not part of the Establishment. Conspiracies appeal to QAnon: - A New World Order is trying to dismantale societies throughout the world. - Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton ran a ritualistic children's sex ring in the basement of a pizza place in Washington. - Hillary Clinton and Barack Obamatha have a 16-year plan to destroy the US with draught, disease and nuclear war. QAnon tells followers to "Enjoy the show," the forthcoming global Armegeddon. Some scared followers alleviate their paranoia about the certain good versus evil clash by joining the secret community that expects to be on the winning side of good. Since others are willing to participate in the battle to destroy evil schemes and individuals, such as Hillary Clinton, the FBI classifies ANon as a domestic terrorist threat.

Alexei Navalny's Sudden Siberian Illness

Despite the campaign Alexei Navalny's supporters waged against a constitutonal amendment allowing Russian President Vladimir Putin to remain in office until at least 2036, past the current two consecutive term limit, the change passed in July, 2020. To preclude a challenge from a government-in-exile or any other "foreign" opponent, another constitutional amendment prohibits future Russian presidents from having established citizenship or permanent residency in another country. These constitutional changes are just the latest maneuvers Putin has made to eliminate domestic and foreign challenges. Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000 determined to restore Russia to pre-Communist collapse status. He switched from President to Prime Minister in 2008, but, when President Dmitry Medvedec's term was about to end in 2012, he decided to return to the presidency. His decision was greeted by an outbreak of protests about corruption, movtiated by Navalny, and a speech in Europe criticizing Russia's less than fair parliamentary election by then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Putin determined to get his revenge on both the protests and Secretary Clinton. Yet, he saw red flags. Navalny unexpectedly won 30% of the vote in Moscow's 2013 mayoral contest with a Putin crony, and opposition to Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovch's decision not to partner with the European Union and the following bloody protest led to his departure in February, 2014. Unmarked Russian troops moved into and gained control of Ukraine's Crimea by March, 2014. Back in Russia, Boris Nemtsov was collecting evidence that the so-called volunteeers fighting in Crimea were there at Putin's direction. On February 27, 2015, an assassin's bullet ended Nemtsov's life near Red Square. Unlike Nemtsov, Navalny was not as concerned about Putin's role in Crimea and the US and other countries' sanctions that followed. He seemed to take the annexation as a given. Putin turned his attention to providing support for Secretary Clinton's 2016 presidential rival. According to The Atlantic magazine's review (September, 2020) of Catherine Belton's book, PUTIN'S PEOPLE, Russian operatives had been tracking Donald Trump for 30 years on the chance that he some day would be useful. After a one-on-one 2018 meeting with President Putin in Helsinki, President Trump absolved Russia of interfering in his 2016 election. In 2017, Putin managed to eliminate Navalny as a political opponent by barring convicted criminals from running for office and by having both Alexei and his younger brother, Oleg, arrested on questionable charges. A judge suspended Alexei's five year sentence, but, in an unsuccessful attempt to put pressure on Alexei to end opposition protests, Oleg was sent to a penal colony for three and a half years. The brothers were reunited on June 29, 2020, shortly before Alexei fell ill in Siberia. Although Alexei was barred from running for office himself, his platform of anti-corruption and support for an increased standard of living, once considered only appealing to Russia's urban middle class, began to attract a wider audience of low-paid unskilled, agricultural and transportation workers, healthcare professionals and teachers in the public sector, some trade unions and those dissatisfied with the age increase for state pensions. By September, 2018, Putin's candidates for four regional elections were defeated. Viktor Zolotov, commander of Putin's 300,000 protective force, challenged Navalny to a duel, never fought. On August 20, 2020, after a month earlier Russia's Constitution was ready to declare Putin president for life, it was no surprise Navalny suddenly became seriously ill while returning from a meeting with opposition candidates for local elections in Siberia. Originally, it was thought Navalny was poisoned by drinking tea laced with a toxic substance. After he was transferred to Germany for treatment, doctors discovered a nerve agent probably was sprinkled in his underwear or socks. One final note, in 2017, President Putin arrived with flowers and champagne to show his respect on the 90th birthday of Crimean-born, human rights agitator, Lyudmila Alexeyeva. She pressed the case for Alexei Navalny and denounced Boris Nemtsov's "awful political killing."

Spies Fail Lie Detector Tests?

How do the CIA, FBI and US Army explain the long periods Alexander Yuk Ching Ma, Jerry Chun Shing Lee and Peter Rafael Dzibinski Debbins spied for China and Russia without being detected? Mr. Ma was employed by the CIA for 22 years and the FBI for six. For nine years, Mr. Lee first worked for the CIA and then the FBI, and Mr Debbins spent his nine years in chemical and Special Forces units within the US Army. Each man provided highly classified national defense material to US enemies. Mr. Ma also compromised US human assets in China, and Mr. Debbins recommended fellow Green Berets who might cooperate with Russian intelligence. Periodic lie detector tests, identifying suspicious coincidences, "walking back the cat" investigations to discover those who had access to information about a failed operation, security clearance questionnaires and other procedures for uncovering spies exist. But Robert Hanssen, an FBI counterintelligence analyst, never had a polygraph test during the 15 years he spied for Moscow. Another spy revealed he had been able to convince a new lie detector operator results that indicated he was lying were inconclusive. What methods should prevent US spies from escaping detection before they are able to undermine US national security?

China and Russia Play A Long Game; So Must We

Why should kids stay off the TikTok app, when all they want to do is dance, watch kids lip-sync and try out their comedy routines? Along with collecting the location, unique device identies and message content data of TikTok users that will last forever, just as Pavlov conditioned a dog to associate food with a bell, China can associate the images kids throughout the world see on TikTok with a warm and fuzzy feeling about all things Chinese. Big Bird helps kids learn on SESAME STREET. What can a Chinese cartoon character with a cuddly pet panda or "Mulan" do to grab a kid's attention and to begin conditioning him or her to ignore warnings about Chinese motives? This morning a PBS kids cartoon show already taught children to associate the "Golden Rule" exclusively with China's Confucius. China also is taking advantage of the opportunity to reach adults by running propaganda ads in TIME magazine and other respected, but revenue-starved, publications. Why not subsidize travel/study trips to China for high school and college students, offer senior centers a documentary about the advanced civilization Marco Polo found, not playing in a commercial's swimming pool, but in 13th century China or include a souvenier pin from the 2022 Winter Olympics near Beijing in cereal boxes? China's payoff would be worth these and other investments that dull US precautions, such as when a US graduate student obliviously agrees to help a Chinese professor obtain classified documents for a research project that compromises US national security. Similarly, a US business executive, conditioned over the years, may see nothing wrong with a sale that transfers US intellectual property to China. Chinese-Americans are especially vulnerable. Both fiction, QUANTUM SPY by David Ignatius, and the FBI case against Alexander Yuk Ching Ma, who worked 34 years for the US government, illustrate Chinese agents use a pitch asking them to start supporting their "motherland", not the "foreign" land of their birth. Russian agents use more traditional methods to recruit spies, but they too play a long game. They target those who have access to classified information who run into financial problems, are susceptible to compromising affairs or can be blackmailed because they are hiding a secret. A review of Catherine Belton's book, PUTIN'S PEOPLE, in THE ATLANTIC magazine (September, 2020), lists the Russian operatives who tracked Donald Trump for 30 years on the chance that he could be politically or commercially useful. Looking back at how Westeren democracies contained the USSR after World War II suggests a way forward. NATO brought together a coalition ready to deter Communist expansion. The US cannot go on blithely providing the food, commodities and safe financial haven China and Russia need, while these countries are free to concentrate on their legal and illegal efforts to make military, surveillance and other technological progress, as well as on using social media and other means to destabilize societies throughout the world. Neither on-again, off-again sanctions by the sole US government, nor agreements with and assurances from China and Russia, offer the promise of long-term peace the way a democratic alliance would. When Britain concluded a review of an April 24, 2019 decision to build its 5G (fifth generation) network with a limited amount of equipment from the Chinese telecom giant, Huawei, the decision was overturned on July 14, 2020. Following the UK's decision, Britain suggested forming a 10-country alliance of democracies to develop alternatives to Huawei and other Chinese suppliers. Such a NATO-like coalition of G7 members (Britain, Canada, the US, France, Germany, Italy, Japan) and Australia, South Korea and India represents the brainpower, financing and determination needed to offset the continuing threat China and Russia pose.

Has China Overplayed Its Hand?

Xi Jinping, Chairman of China's Communist Party, envisions a "China Dream", not to cool or feed the planet, but to regain China's place, center stage in world history. Kublai Khan's civilization, superior to Europe's in the 13th century, waited for Marco Polo to discover Chinese people paid for their goods with paper money and healed their wounds with a kind of vasoline. Unwilling to wait for China to be discovered in the 21st century, Chairman Xi chooses to dream of world domination by following Deng Xiaoping's 1978 advice, "It is a glorious thing to be rich." To be a rich country in the 21st century requires the technological superiority the world associates with Silicon Valley. When Chairman Xi learned, in April, 2018, a US ban on microchip exports could cause the bankruptcy of a Chinese firm, ZTE, he saw how the patent a US company held on a specific semiconductor chip established the international standard for an item essential in every device connected to a cell phone network. From that point on, his "Made in China 2025" program aimed for self reliance and acquiring standard essential patents (SEPs). Using a SEP without being licensed subjects a user to the charge of infringement. According to a German patent data source, Huawei now holds 2000 5G SEPs. Normally, a firm has to license its monopoly rights to anyone on FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) terms. The US wants to withhold licensing its SEPs to competitors because of national security concerns. To be fair, Huawei would have to be allowed to do the same. The chip situation is very complicated, because Washington has not been able to resist lobbying from US firms that want to continue selling chips to Huawei, a short term gain, since China is determined to end reliance on US supplies. Nonetheless, as of September 26, 2020, the US Commerce Department requires US suppliers to obtain hard-to-come-by licenses to export what China's Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation (SMIC), considered a supplier to the Chinese military, needs to upgrade and maintain its manufacturing and hardware equipment. Not easy to replicate or fund are the processes of: 1) designing the delicate silicon microchips created for different purposes, such as operating driverless cars, and 2) constructing the automated, super-cooled and shock resistant facilities where chips are manuractured. Ironically, Taiwan, which Beijing claims under its "one country, two systems" policy framework, currently is among the countries with facilities capable of fabricating microchips. Yet, Beijing is at odds with the democratic government Taiwan re-elected in January, 2020. Chairman Xi's detrmination to maintain stability through surveillance-guaranteed control and conformity undermines a relationship that provides Taiwan's top tier brainpower and technology. What steps is China taking to reduce external dependency, even from Taiwan, on foreign sources of semiconductor chips? - Enhanced domestic training of top quality skilled workers - Using experienced Chinese hackers to scoop up foreign researh and development progress in a wide variety of high tech industrial, medical, engineering, solar, gaming and military fields - China Talent Plan, a spy-like program for recruiting foreign individuals with access to intellectual technology property who are willing to work with Chinese partners - Huawei, a Chinese company with total annual earnings of over $100 billion annually from 170 countries, sells smartphones and cellular and internat gear that give Beijing potential access to big data from around the world. Some US professors targeted by the China Talent Plan have seemed oblivious to the way China uses them, but the FBI has been concerned for more than a decade. Yanqing Ye, for example, would see herself on an FBI wanted poster after she entered Boston University's Department of Physics, Chemistry and Biomedical Engineering without declaring, on her visa application, her status as a Lieutenant in China's military, her membership in the Chinese Communist Party and her association with China's National University of Defense Technology (NUDT). The FBI found a Princeton professor working on unmanned drones and autonomous submarines with a scientist from NUDT. Although Huawei has global sales, its biggest customer is China, where a 2017 law requires any citizen or organization, including Huawei, to comply with all government requests. Therefore, the US attempts to prevent countries from making Huawei purchases, especially the countries in the "Five Eyes" spying pact that shares intelligence among Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the UK and US. When Britain concluded a review of an April 24, 2019 decision to build its 5G (fifth generation) network with a limited amount of Huawei equipment, the decision was overturned on July 14, 2020. In October, 2020, Sweden also decided not to use Huawei products in its 5G network. Following the UK's decision, Britain suggested forming a 10-country alliance of democracies to develop 5G technology and to eliminate dependence on Huawei and other Chinese technology companies. With 6G technology already on drawing boards, an alliance of G7 countries (Britain, Canada, the US, France, Germany, Italy, Japan) and Australia, South Korea and India represents an important source of brainpower and financing to develop future networks. Such a NATO-like coalition also could more than match China's future investments in computing power to handle big data, the semiconductor industry, drones, robotics, autonomous weapons and other advanced technology. By attempting to gain world domination, China has stirred up widening opposition to its transgressions, such as internment of one million Uighur Muslims in so-called re-education camps, disregard of Hong Kong's 50-year guarantee of rights under China's takeover agreement with Britian and an expanding claim to the South China Sea. What some are calling a tech Cold War is more. Chinese Communism and the democratic ideals of human rights, the rule of law and representative government are waging a battle for history's center stage.