Why America First Policy Requires US to Push Back Against Russia

My article published on Daily Mail 24:

https://en.dailymail24.com/2017/10/29/why-america-1st-policy/

The US may very well be perfectly fine with living and letting live. It may very well be entirely happy to let someone take play world policeman for a change and focus on providing for its own citizens and protecting its borders. It might be for the best if other countries sorted out their issues among themselves. But it's all a pipe dream.

Russia is not going to let the United States to live and let live. It's not about Putin's stay in power or pursuit of dominance in the Middle East, or the restoration of the Russian Empire.

It's about the simple fact that we are under our attack within our own borders, and Russia will not stop until it brings the US to ruin.

How would that scenario look? Alarmingly, the picture emerging is not too far from where we are now: a nation, lost in confusion, unable to tell propaganda and fake news from reality, its political leadership torn apart by endless scandals and investigations, with its citizens trusting foreign leaders more than they trust their own.

Russia has proven to be a danger, playing both parties against each other, sowing chaos, confusion, and aggressively attacking US interests internally and externally. Its Kaspersky software has been used as an espionage tool across various government agencies, endangering our information. Hacking into voting machines and attacks on various political entities was a crude attempt to compromise the integrity of our democratic election problems, and to cause months of finger-pointing and social divisioins.

Over the years preceding this election, Russia continued aggressive active measures, which ranged from bribery of nuclear trucking companies, to espionage through highly placed officials in an attempt to get to the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, to aggressive hacking and propaganda measures which intensified through election. Under the Obama administration, Russia sent its "diplomats" on fishing expeditions around our sensitive infrastructure, even in such unusual vacation destinations as Kansas.

Additionally, Russia has presented a direct threat to our interests and security abroad. Russian intelligence aggressively targeted US diplomats in Moscow and Eastern Europe, which included such unprofessional and belligerent actions, as physical attacks, including one that left a diplomat badly beaten outside the Embassy, and having to be evacuated, poisonings, severe destruction of property, and harassment that went far beyond the expected annoyances from the old Soviet KGB playbook expected in that part of the world.

Strategically, Russia continues to present a threat wherever it goes, directly interfering with US interests in the Middle East, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. In Syria, Russia constructed a base, while supporting Iranian militias, adversarial to US interests, attacking US-backed groups, and presenting a threat to the Straight of Hormuz, a strategically important trade rout for US and her allies. At numerous points throughout its presence in Syria, US and Russia neared a point of direct conflict, while Russia continued provocative actions, involving airplanes and submarines. In Afghanistan, Russia supplies Taliban with fuel and even weapons, despite the fact that NATO, including the US, is actively fighting against Taliban. Thanks to Russia's assistance, the Taliban has made significant territorial gains, even as the US surged its own forces inside the country.

Additionally, Russia continues to supply Iran with weapons, now also selling S-400s to Turkey, a country that also presents a significant challenge to US interests in Syria. And Russian government oil company is moving in on the oil fields taken over by the Iraqi forces, IRGC, and Iran-backed militias from the Kurds in Kirkuk, which endangers vested US business interests. Russia's attacks on Ukraine, including cybersecurity attacks, are widely viewed as potential dry runs for similar attacks on US infrastructure, including the electric grid.

And that's not including the aggressive lobbying against the Magnitsky Act, the cruel adoption ban that forbids dangerously ill Russian children from being taken in by American families, the non-stop brainwashing of the Russian citizenry against Americans, the troll farms, which makes old school Soviet propaganda seem like child's play, and the authoritarian actions against foreign NGOs, as well as government-linked hostile takeovers of US hedge funds and other financial institutions in Russia, well documented by Bill Browder and others.

All of that paints a rather dreary picture of the US-Russia relationship, with only one side systematically pursuing hostility and instilling hatred against not only the government of the other, but against all of it institutions, the fabric of society, and way of life. Russia is not acting like a potential partner, even on a strictly limited and professional level. It's looking to undermine every goal and pursuit of the United States, and to cause an internal collapse. The appeal of hardcore Communism is no longer quite as potent, though to be sure, the Soviet Union's fellow travelers took strong root in the academia, governments, the media, and think tank world.  But non-ideological confusion of values and internal social and political divisions are just as destructive, and have met with a deplorable level of success. Intersectionality, radical movements, and fake pseudoright=wing and pseudo-left wing organized groups and violent events all have the classic Soviety-style footprint on them, and a number of articles have come out to show how Russia had duped unwitting Black Lives Matter activists into organizing events that ended up benefiting Russia.

For that reason, placing America First, and American interests first, requires a strong, unequivocal, coordinated, and systematic response to Russia by President Trump, who needs to start enforcing Congressional sanctions he signed into law this summer immediately, members of both parties in Congress, who need to put aside political differences and focus on the common goal of defending US national security and political integrity, our media, who needs to focus on exposing Russian connections wherever they are, and not just to the benefit of one party over another, our institutions, including think tanks, who need to be more alert to the foreign money, lobbyists, and other pro-Russia influences, and finally, US citizens, who need to start learning to spot propaganda that benefits the foreign state, and stop giving in to the divisiveness being sown by bots, trolls, and Russian agents of influence at every opportunity.

We need to keep America great, not make Russia great again.

New Strategy in Afghanistan Already a Bust

With Taliban continuing to gain ground in Afghanistan, not without assistance from Russia, and taking over 3 districts in the past 2 days, our "new" strategy in Afghanistan seems to be flawed.

First of all, we cannot really achieve victory without cutting off the source of fuel and other resources (i.e. Russia) from the enemy. However, that does not appear to be the goal. Our "surge" of several thousand people is aimed at providing additional training and counsel to the local police. However, this tactic seems little to do with the stated goal, which is to back the Taliban into a corner and force them to the negotiating table. Without a significant realignment of strategy, human resources, and capabilities, actions by the Afghan forces are not likely to change, and all of that will take significant time, during which period, the Taliban will continue gaining ground, making the consequent push back that much harder.

So basically, Taliban right now has the momentum. We added more troops for counseling, but did not otherwise significantly shift the situation on the ground. And we have no specific stated measurement of success, but without any military education whatsoever, I can tell you want one such measurement logically should be: How much ground our allies have regained from the enemy. I sure hope that there is some secret plan that will emerge like deus ex machina at the last minute, and we will see an immediate reversal of fortunes for everyone involved. Right now, however, we are off to an inauspicious start.

Refighting the Cold War in Afghanistan

The current US Afghanistan strategy is to destroy ISIS and to force Taliban to the negotiating table.

Russia's strategy is to arm Taliban and to give it free stuff, like fuel, in order to strengthen it vis-a-vis ISIS (at least, that's what it says).

By arming the very terrorist organization, NATO forces are fighting, Russia is engaging in a proxy war with the US.

Wait a second, haven't we done this before? And haven't we learned anything?

Only now we have American boots on the ground. Why is the new strategy not addressing this macro issue of having to contend with Russia?

How I learned to stay calm and love the Taliban

The new administration's strategy in Afghanistan is basically to bomb the Taliban until their will is broken and they come to negotiating table. All of that will require several thousand more US troops and likely years of engagement.

Let me translate that for you: it means that after 16 years of trying to destroy the Taliban, the US now believes that it's not only OK but desirable to negotiate with Taliban, and that after all the lives lost, US would be ok with the Taliban being potentially part of the Afghani government.

That was the part of President Trump's big speech on Afghanistan that I found most disturbing, and as I now see, my fears bore out.  We spent years trying to liberate Afghanistan from an entity that was no better than Al Qaeda, but regional, and which turned Afghanistan into an oppressive quagmire after the Soviet Union left.  We were first against them before we were for them. Being ok with Taliban as part of Afghanistan is completely incompatible with our other stated goals for continuing to stay in Afghanistan: stability, democracy, and security. First off, Taliban is already backed by Russia and Iran.  We are then stating that depending on how negotiations go (and Taliban without a question will want some permanent role in the government - or they will continue to recruit and die trying, because that's what mujahedeen are trained to do), we are ok with Russia and Iran playing a central role in that country. Why don't we just skip the fighting part, engage in direct negotiations with these two states over the future of Aghanistan, and ask them to help us with Taliban in exchange for playing a direct and stabilizing role in the government? That's essentially what's actually happening.

China and India will not be ok with each other or with this turn of events. China is interested in mining opportunities, and Afghanistan's role in the regional network of roads that is part of its geopolitical ambitions. India sees China as a major threat. Having these two states engaged in Afghanistan simultaneously guarantees tensions. Mattis claims that he will put pressure on Pakistan to stop supporting terrorists, such as Taliban and Al Qaeda that are flowing in and out of Afghanistan and finding a safe haven in Pakistan. But at the hearing he himself stated that the Pakistani government is ready to play ball, but the ISI, Pakistan, secretive and scary spy agency, is playing its own game. And ISI cares little about sanctions, and appears out of control significantly more so than the government. To complicate matters, Pakistan is significantly more dependent on China than it is on the United States, which means we must get China on the same page. China may not necessarily want to support a failed states run by terrorist organizations because it threatens regional stability and its own economic ambitions,, but so far, it's been perfectly ok with having Pakistan on the dole as is.  And if China agrees to be helpful, that will likely be in exchange for having us out of Afghanistan as soon as possible.

As for democracy and liberalization, those two concepts are foreign to Afghanistan. It was for a time more liberal under Soviet occupation, but the Soviet occupation would have proved short-lived even without our backing of the mujahedeen, because for a variety of historical and geographic fctors, it's extremely difficult to occupy a country such as Afghanistan, highly tribal, surrounded by mountains, and strongly opposed to foreign occupants. No empire had lasted very long, and neither would have the Soviets. Without substantially changing the culture and mindset of the locals, democracy and liberal values are just not going to stick. Security and stability can only be guaranteed when various types of terrorists, drug lords, and state actors are done fighting it out over this piece of territory and passages to the outside world. THat is the bitter reality Mattis was not acknowledging. If the only goal here is to diminish the influence of Taliban as such, he should have said so. However, implying that Taliban alone is the root of all evil is naive and disingenuous. Multiple terrorist organizations are finding Afghanistan a safe haven, the drugs flowing out of the country are funding international terrorism, not just Taliban, and Iran is using Afghanistan as a drug supply route for its own reasons. Furthermore, Iran is recruiting Afghan children to fight in Syria, further radicalizing the population.    Plus some of the state actors involved believe in maintaining a perpetual state of war for reasons of facilitating arms trade, distracting from their own activity elsewhere, and utilizing it to weaken the United States and other countries they see as opposing their own geopolitical ambitions.

At this rate, it won't take 3000 people and several more years. It will take many tens of thousands of people and decades to achieve even what is stated to be the goal. Taliban is not going anywhere without a bloody fight, and will try to drag as many people with them in the process as possible. And having Taliban as part of the government is implicitly legitimizing them anyway. If US is basically saying that they want Taliban to be viewed as a negotiating partner, they are implicitly undermining whatever limited authority the Afghani government already has. It's big schtick with the population was that it's fighting the Taliban. If it cannot even be seen as strong enough to destroy the Taliban as an entity even with all the US help, then what legitimacy does it have, and how is it preferable to the Taliban that is NOT giving up on its ultimate goal of domination? And the US is also undermining its own moral case for being involved in Afghanistan in the first place, without, by the way, in any way guaranteeing that none of this will eventually come back to bite US in other places around the world.

The Trouble With Afghanistan

I hate to admit it, but Elizabeth Warren actually has a point on her critique of our strategy in Afghanistan:

* there is no timeline
* the drug trade is back up
* there is no support for the government

What she did not mention but I will: there is a group of rogue states operating in Afghanistan in contrast to our own goals. In addition to being in conflict with our own State Department over how to handle Taliban, we also have to contend with growing ISIS presence, with Al Qaeda, with the ISI freelancing, and with these other states (China, Russia, Iran, Pakistani government), all contending for human and natural resources, dominance in the area, and a way to stand up to the United States.

I did not hear a clear strategy or an answer from Secretary Mattis that would have allayed any of these concerns.

In Which the State Department Stands in Support of... Taliban

When the Trump administration took completely reasonable steps to try to closed down the Taliban office in Qatar, the State Department pushed back, claiming that such a step would undermine US efforts in Afghanistan.
Wait a minute - we spent 16 years in Afghanistan, fighting... who or what exactly?
Since when has Taliban (backed by Russia and Iran) been helpful to our efforts in Afghanistan?
Why shouldn't we be taking all possible action to pressure the enemy we are ACTUALLY FIGHTING?
What am I missing here, and who exactly works for our State Department?
I hope Tillerson goes on a massive firing spree after this "dissent memo". This is absolutely unacceptable.