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Category: WORLDS

  • Inside the Ring: China’s ‘Belt and Road’ propaganda for U.S.

    The Pentagon’s Pacific Command is pushing back against China’s attempt to relabel its global infrastructure development initiative to make it more palatable for strategic messaging in support of Beiji

    The Pentagon’s Pacific Command is pushing back against China’s attempt to relabel its global infrastructure development initiative to make it more palatable for strategic messaging in support of Beijing’s drive for global hegemony.

    The initiative is Chinese President Xi Jinping’s $1 trillion infrastructure investment plan, mostly in the underdeveloped world, that U.S. officials have said is part of Beijing’s drive to expand global influence and military power-projection capabilities.

    The initiative until recently was known in English as the “One Belt, One Road Initiative.”

    However, when Chinese leaders realized use of the word “one” two times in the name might signal to international audiences that China is using the effort to supplant the United States around the world, the translation of the term was changed — but only in English.

    To make the initiative sound less threatening, China changed the name to the shorter “Belt and Road Initiative.”

    The Chinese government then set into motion a Mighty Wurlitzer of propaganda and media outlets — including the Xinhua News Agency internally and the Voice of China international cable and radio outlets — to erase all references to One Belt, One Road.

    After the English rebranding was revealed during a three-star Pacific Command briefing, the command and all U.S. government agencies were urged to stop assisting Chinese propaganda and strategic messaging by avoiding all use of the Beijing-authorized term Belt and Road Initiative.

    The concern is that using the term will fuel international support for Beijing’s narrative that China’s economic system of socialism with Chinese characteristics and its political ideology of one-party communist rule are preferred options for a China-led new world order.

    China’s infrastructure program, along with the Beijing-funded Confucius Institutes on American and foreign college campuses, are being used by Beijing to exploit and gain leverage over free nations.

    China continues to show its disregard for international rules by ignoring U.N. resolutions on North Korea and the Permanent Court of Arbitration ruling denying Beijing’s sovereignty claims to own 90 percent of the South China Sea.

    Randy Schriver, assistant defense secretary for Asian and Pacific security affairs, said last month that China’s military is a key player in the Belt and Road Initiative.

    “The military is supportive of a comprehensive strategy that in many ways the leading edge is the predatory economics,” Mr. Schriver said in an interview. “And they’re supportive and complementary of one another. Where China is using economic tools, they’re often doing so in order to create access, potential bases and the like.”

    NORTH KOREA HYBRID WARFARE

    North Korea is engaged in low-intensity conflict that has been dubbed “gray zone” warfare that shifts between periods of virulent anti-U.S. hostility and charm offenses, according to military sources.

    The regime of Kim Jong-un has two overriding strategic goals that are the driving forces behind its hybrid warfare programs: keeping the regime in power and seeking international legitimacy for the regime.

    As part of this information warfare, North Korean operations swing like a pendulum between hostility and charm offensives.

    Two phases of the hybrid warfare were visible over the past several years, when North Korea targeted the United States and South Korea with cyberattacks and other covert efforts that the sources said ultimately led to the impeachment and imprisonment of conservative former South Korean President Park Geun-hye.

    Then after the election of President Trump in 2016 and South Korean President Moon Jae-in, North Korea launched a major charm offensive that is ongoing and seeks to exploit the Trump administration’s desire to negotiate the denuclearization of North Korea.

    “They have been able to go from the brink of war in 2017 with the U.S. and [South Korea] to four historic peace summits all within one year, with all the strategic players vying for their attention,” said one military source.

    The hostility phase, dubbed the “harm campaign,” stretched from 2014 to 2016 and involved antagonistic polices and rhetoric and confrontation, pushing the notion that the United States was preparing for a nuclear war against North Korea. A key characteristic of this phase was missile and nuclear testing.

    In South Korea, the North Koreans used information operations to portray the Park administration as corrupt and in league with a hostile United States and that the government in Seoul had pursued policies that harmed the South Korean people.

    Globally, North Korea stepped up cyberattacks against government and private institutions, notably spreading the WannaCry malware and stealing millions of dollars from banks. By March 2017, North Korea was linked to cyberattacks in 150 nations.

    “From the [North Korean] and Kim Jong-un’s perspective, the impeachment and imprisonment of President Park could be seen as the total success of the [information operations] campaign,” the source said.

    By late 2017, with the election of Mr. Trump and Mr. Moon, North Korea quickly shifted from hostility to engagement, promoting a new propaganda narrative using concepts of “peace, unification and economic cooperation.”

    The new charm campaign was kicked off by North Korea’s participation in the Winter Olympics in South Korea and reached a high point with the summit in Singapore between Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim.

    As a result of the new campaign, North Korea halted its virulent anti-America propaganda inside the country and began promoting closer economic ties with South Korea.

    Missile and nuclear tests also were halted, although cyberattacks, including those involving theft of funds from banks, are continuing.

    North Korea’s goals of regime survival and international acceptance remain unchanged by the shifting hybrid warfare approaches.

    MATTIS TALKS INF WITH NATO

    Defense Secretary Jim Mattis recently held discussions with NATO allies on what to do about Russia’s breaking of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces treaty that bans medium-range nuclear missiles.

    Russia violated the INF treaty by building and deploying large numbers of a new intermediate-range ground-launched cruise missile designated the SSC-8.

    Moscow so far is refusing to give up the illegal missile, and Congress has mandated that the Pentagon begin research into new U.S. intermediate-range missiles that, if deployed, would violate INF limits.

    Mr. Mattis said in Paris earlier this month that for four years the U.S. government discussed the INF violation with Russia with the goal of bringing Moscow back into compliance.

    “This is a treaty that is only signed between Russia and the United States, but it has very, very strong links to the security of Europe and the security of NATO,” he said.

    Mr. Mattis said he sought advice while in Europe on “what do we do with a treaty that two nations entered into, one is still living by — that’s us, the United States — and Russia is not?”

    “I cannot forecast where it will go,” Mr. Mattis said. “It’s a decision for the president. But I can tell you that both on Capitol Hill and in the State Department, there’s a lot of concern about the situation. And I’ll return with the advice of our allies and engage that discussion to determine the way ahead.”

    There is mounting pressure on regional military commanders to jettison the INF treaty.

    In Asia, recently retired Pacific Command commander Adm. Harry Harris, now the U.S. ambassador to South Korea, said he favors getting rid of the INF treaty because of China’s large force of intermediate-range missiles.

    “We have no ground-based capability that can threaten China because of, among other things, our rigid adherence, and rightfully so, to the treaty that we signed onto, the INF treaty,” he said.

    Adm. Harris said the U.S. military is at a disadvantage because of the threat of Chinese missile attacks against both bases and ships.

    The military’s European Command could use new intermediate-range missiles to counter the threat posed by Russia’s illegal SSC-8.

    An administration official said that Mr. Mattis does not favor pulling out of the INF treaty.

    However, Marine Corps Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, is said to favor ending the INF treaty and moving ahead with building a new intermediate-range missile force.

    • Contact Bill Gertz on Twitter at @BillGertz.

  • Jamal Khashoggi disappearance after Saudi Consulate visit creates diplomatic crisis

    International intrigue deepened Wednesday over the disappearance of a prominent U.S.-based Saudi journalist after a visit last week to the Saudi Consulate in Turkey, as suspicions that he had been kil

    International intrigue deepened Wednesday over the disappearance of a prominent U.S.-based Saudi journalist after a visit last week to the Saudi Consulate in Turkey, as suspicions that he had been killed or kidnapped by a team of Saudi operatives threatened to spiral into a major diplomatic crisis.

    President Trump and his top security aides, who have cultivated a close relationship with hard-charging Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, pressed Riyadh for answers Wednesday to what happened to Jamal Khashoggi, a frequent critic of the regime who has not been seen or heard from since visiting the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.

    “The Saudis have a lot of explaining to do because all indications are that they have been involved at minimum with his disappearance,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker, Tennessee Republican, told The Associated Press. “Everything points to them.”

    The Saudis deny any role in Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance. Prince Khalid bin Salman bin Abdulaziz, Riyadh’s ambassador to Washington, denounced what he called “malicious leaks and grim rumors” of Saudi culpability.

    One thing, however, is certain: If Mr. Khashoggi, who has written critically of the crown prince, was silenced — perhaps permanently — by a Saudi intelligence operation, the fallout will be severe for the Trump administration, which has spent more than a year cozying up to Riyadh as its go-to ally against the Middle East’s other major power, Iran.

    “We accuse the Iranians of exporting terrorism,” said longtime regional analyst Joshua Landis, who heads the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma. “Well, this looks an awful lot like the Saudis are exporting terrorism, and that puts a bone in the craw of the Trump administration’s whole narrative that it’s better to be friends with Saudi Arabia than Iran.”

    The incident is likely to cool even further the frosty relations between Saudi Arabia and Turkey, battered by Ankara’s decision to side with Qatar in a diplomatic feud with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf allies. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has described Mr. Khashoggi as a “personal friend” and has issued increasingly harsh public statements demanding that the Saudis clarify what happened to him.

    Video evidence

    A New York Times report said top Turkish security officials now believe the journalist was assassinated in the Saudi Consulate on orders from Riyadh.

    Citing an unidentified official, the paper said Turkish investigators had uncovered a complex operation in which Mr. Khashoggi, 59, was killed within two hours of his arrival at the consulate in Istanbul on Oct. 2 by a team of 15 Saudi agents, who then dismembered his body with a bone saw they brought for the purpose — an account the Saudis strenuously deny.

    Several Turkish news outlets broadcast a montage of surveillance videos on Tuesday and Wednesday purporting to expose how Mr. Khashoggi was the target of an elite Saudi “assassination squad.”

    The leaked videos do not offer definitive proof about Mr. Khashoggi’s fate but claim to show a team of 15 Saudis arriving and leaving Istanbul via private jets, and visiting the Saudi Consulate just as Mr. Khashoggi disappeared there. Turkish media identified some of the men as either members of Saudi intelligence or the kingdom’s military special forces.

    The Washington Post, where Mr. Khashoggi has written columns since last year, reported that intercepted communications showed Saudi officials wanted to lure Mr. Khashoggi back to Saudi Arabia. The paper said it was not clear whether the agents intended to kill Mr. Khashoggi or whether U.S. officials had warned him he was a target.

    President Trump has been under increasing pressure to respond to the incident. Vice President Mike Pence told a radio appearance that “violence against journalists should be condemned.”

    “It’s a very serious situation for us,” Mr. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “We do not like seeing what’s going on. Now, as you know, they’re saying, ‘We had nothing to do with it.’ But so far, everyone’s saying they had nothing to do with it.”

    The White House later said National Security Adviser John R. Bolton, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and White House senior adviser Jared Kushner had all spoken with Salman to ask “for more details and for the Saudi government to be transparent.” It was not disclosed what they were told by the prince.

    Mr. Trump made his first overseas trip as U.S. president to Saudi Arabia, whose friendship and willingness to take direct military action against Iran-backed militants in Yemen has factored heavily into the administration’s overall Middle East strategy.

    A critic of the prince

    Mr. Khashoggi was at the Istanbul consulate seeking to fill out forms ahead of his wedding to his Turkish fiancee, Hatice Cengiz. Surveillance images capture him entering the consulate but never emerging, while his fiancee is seen waiting listlessly for him outside.

    “Images in the media point to the possibility of an abduction or an assassination. I hope that it does not turn out to be murder, as alleged by these images,” Ms. Cengiz said in a statement to CNN on Wednesday. “Until official statements are made, it makes more sense to wait a bit longer and to see the final result as opposed to making a bold comment.”

    Mr. Trump has said he intends to meet with Ms. Cengiz, who appealed to the president for help, at the White House in the near future.

    Ms. Cengiz has written that Mr. Khashoggi sought to become a U.S. citizen after living in self-imposed exile since last year, fearing repercussions for his criticism of the Saudi leadership.

    She also wrote that Mr. Khashoggi felt concern that he “could be in danger” during the days leading up to Oct. 2, but that he needed to visit the consulate in Istanbul to obtain the necessary paperwork so the couple could be married.

    Mr. Khashoggi has written columns over the past year arguing that despite the crown prince’s image as a reformer and modernizer of Saudi Arabia’s deeply conservative society, oppression of intellectuals and religious leaders has spiraled in recent years.

    The prince has won favor with the Trump administration while leading a widely publicized drive to reform Saudi Arabia’s Sunni monarchy. But he has also presided over the arrests of large numbers of rights activists and businessmen in the kingdom.

    But sources close to the government in Riyadh say it is hard to believe that the young prince would risk an international incident and embarrass Mr. Trump and Mr. Erdogan by ordering the assassination of a journalist critic on foreign soil.

    “Saudi policy toward a critic like this is always to buy people off, try to bring them back into the fold,” one source told The Washington Times. “An act like this is totally out of character for the royal family. If it happened, it would be because it was a total [mess]-up by some people and there will be consequences.”

    But the prince has proved an audacious, risk-taking leader at home and abroad. He drew global attention as he consolidated power last year by engineering a nearly three-month-long house arrest of dozens of the kingdom’s most powerful people, including several older princes within the ruling royal family.

    He has also spearheaded a bloody intervention into the civil war in neighboring Yemen and has vowed to fight Iran and its regional proxies in the struggle for dominance in the region.

    A revenge hit?

    Mr. Landis said the prince has ushered in a sharp shift in the way Riyadh conducts itself on the world stage.

    “The Saudis may have used money, not force, for decades to get their way with bribes, but that all changed with Mohammad bin Salman,” Mr. Landis said. “Frankly, I don’t put it past him to have put out an order for [Mr. Khashoggi] to be whacked in the same way [Russian President Vladimir Putin] is whacking opponents overseas because it sends a message and intimidates critics.

    “Every Saudi who might be thinking about speaking up is going to be quiet,” he added, asserting that the risks are high for the Trump administration to continue with what has been over the past year a policy of increased weapons sales and diplomatic chumminess toward the crown prince.

    “The administration has been running around hanging America’s hat on Mohammad bin Salman,” Mr. Landis said. “That hat hook just fell off the wall.”

    The Trump White House’s efforts to cultivate Saudi Arabia are complicated by a far less friendly attitude among many lawmakers on Capitol Hill — of both parties. Sen. Rand Paul, Kentucky Republican, has called for a halt in arms sales to Riyadh until the Khashoggi mystery in cleared up, and some Capitol Hill Democrats were pouncing Wednesday on the White House’s slow response to the incident.

    “If the allegations are true, I hope this is a serious wake-up call to the Trump administration and D.C. more broadly that we need a complete re-evaluation of our relationship with Saudi Arabia,” said Rep. Ro Khanna, California Democrat. “This is what happens when you embolden authoritarian dictators around the world.”

  • Customs revises policy permitting Canadian marijuana workers into U.S. ahead of legalization

    Canadians involved in the nation’s legal marijuana industry will not be automatically barred from entering the United States after all, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has clarified.

    Canadians involved in the nation’s legal marijuana industry will not be automatically barred from entering the United States after all, U.S. Customs and Border Protection has clarified.

    “A Canadian citizen working in or facilitating the proliferation of the legal marijuana industry in Canada, coming to the U.S. for reasons unrelated to the marijuana industry will generally be admissible to the U.S.,” the border agency said in a statement Tuesday.

    Marijuana legalization is scheduled to take effect in Canada starting Oct. 17.

    The U.S. clarification came after a top official suggested Canadian marijuana industry workers may be barred from entering the U.S.

    Immigration law allows the U.S. to deny entry to anyone who “is or has been an illicit trafficker in any controlled substance,” including marijuana, meaning Canadians who legally work or invest in the plant may be deemed inadmissible, said Todd Owen, executive assistant commissioner for the CBP’s Office of Field Operations.

    “We don’t recognize that as a legal business,” he told Politico last month. “Facilitating the proliferation of the legal marijuana industry in U.S. states where it is deemed legal or Canada may affect an individual’s admissibility to the U.S.”

    Canadians who profit from legal weed will not be automatically rendered inadmissible, CBP clarified this week, but border officials may still deny entry to individuals who are attempting to visit the U.S. for reasons related to the marijuana industry, the agency said.

    Thirty-one states in the U.S. have passed laws legalizing marijuana for medical or recreational purposes despite a federal prohibition.

  • Donald Trump opposes ban on arm sales to Saudi Arabia over journalist’s disappearance

    President Trump said Thursday he does not favor stopping arms sales to Saudi Arabia in retaliation for the suspected murder of a Saudi journalist who has been critical of the government.

    President Trump said Thursday he does not favor stopping arms sales to Saudi Arabia in retaliation for the suspected murder of a Saudi journalist who has been critical of the government.

    “They’re spending $110 billion on military equipment,” Mr. Trump told reporters at the White House. “I don’t like stopping the investment. They’re going to take that money and spend it on Russia or China. What good does that do us?”

    The U.S. is investigating the disappearance of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post who disappeared after entering the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, for a meeting.

    Mr. Trump said of the Saudi journalist’s suspected murder, “We’re taking it very seriously. Something like that should not be allowed to happen.”

    But he said there are “certainly other ways of handling this situation” besides stopping arm sales, if Saudi Arabia’s government is implicated in Mr. Khashoggi’s disappearance.

    “That doesn’t help us, not when it comes to jobs. There are other things we can do. We’re looking for the answer,” he said. “What happened is a terrible thing, assuming that happened. Maybe we’ll be pleasantly surprised, but somehow I doubt it.”

  • IMF plans talks with Pakistan on debt help

    A team of experts from the International Monetary Fund will travel to Islamabad in the coming weeks to discuss a possible financial assistance package for Pakistan — despite warnings from U.S. lawmak

    A team of experts from the International Monetary Fund will travel to Islamabad in the coming weeks to discuss a possible financial assistance package for Pakistan — despite warnings from U.S. lawmakers and the Trump administration that the money would be used to pay off massive debts Pakistan has run up with China.

    IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said in a statement Thursday she had met with top officials of the new government of Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan, including Finance Minister Asad Umar, on the sidelines of the global finance body’s annual meeting now underway in Bali, Indonesia.

    The delegation “requested financial assistance from the IMF to help address Pakistan’s economic challenge,” Ms. Lagardesaid in a statement.

    “An IMF team will visit Islamabad in the coming weeks to initiate discussions for a possible IMF-supported economic program,” the IMF chief said, adding, “We look forward to our continuing partnership.”

    Pakistan has been a prime recipient of funds and infrastructure financing from China’s ambitious $1 trillion-plus “Belt and Road Initiative,” including the construction of highways, bridges and the strategically located port of Gwadar on the Arabian Sea.

    Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on an Asian tour this summer said the Trump administration would “be watching” closely any IMF negotiation with Pakistan.

    “There’s no rationale for IMF tax dollars — and associated with that American dollars that are part of the IMF funding — … to go to bail out Chinese bondholders or China itself,” Mr. Pompeo told the financial network CNBC in July.

    Pakistan officials later claimed they had received assurances from Washington that the Trump administration would not veto an IMF financial package.

  • Hackers behind Ukrainian blackout linked to crippling NotPetya attack

    Clues have been uncovered connecting the same hacking group to separate cyberattacks waged against the Ukrainian energy and financial sectors in 2015 and 2017, respectively, security researchers said

    Clues have been uncovered connecting the same hacking group to separate cyberattacks waged against the Ukrainian energy and financial sectors in 2015 and 2017, respectively, security researchers said Thursday.

    ESET, a Slovakian cybersecurity firm that made the connection, said that its researchers have found the first publicly presented evidence linking both widely reported attacks to the same sophisticated hacking group, all but confirming a previously rumored relationship.

    Researchers analyzing a recently discovered strain of malware found similarities that led them to conclude that the hacking group that successfully compromised Ukraine’s power grid was also likely responsible for the crippling “NotPetya” ransomware attack that initially infected computers in the country’s financial sector prior to claiming victims in the U.S. and abroad, ESETreported.

    Hackers used a malware toolkit called “Industroyer” to target the Ukrainian power grid starting in 2015, and researchers recently discovered an “improved” version while monitoring the activities of a group previously linked to the NotPetya attack, ESET said.

    Detected by ESET in April, the improved version of Industroyer being used by the NotPetya attackers suggests the hacking group is still active and developing its operations, according to the firm.

    “While the possibility of false flags — or a coincidental code sharing by another threat actor — should always be kept in mind when attempting attribution, in this case we consider it unlikely,” the company said.

    ESET refrained from attributing the hacking group, dubbed “TeleBots,” to any particular government, though the Trump administration previously blamed Russia for the NotPetya attack, having accused Moscow in February of acting “reckless and indiscriminate.”

    “It was part of the Kremlin’s ongoing effort to destabilize Ukraine and demonstrates ever more clearly Russia’s involvement in the ongoing conflict,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said previously.

    Moscow previously called the the attribution “unsubstantiated and groundless.”

  • Andrew Brunson, U.S. pastor jailed in Turkey, may be coming home after secret deal: Report

    American Pastor Andrew Brunson may return to the U.S. soon after a secret deal was made between the U.S. and Turkey, NBC News reported on Thursday.

    American Pastor Andrew Brunson may return to the U.S. soon after a secret deal was made between the U.S. and Turkey, NBC News reported on Thursday.

    Two unnamed senior administration officials and a third person briefed told NBC that the U.S. and Turkey reached a deal to secure Mr. Brunson’s return home. The charges against him should be dropped at his next court date on Friday.

    NBC’s sources explained that much of the deal is unknown, but it will require the U.S. to back down on economic pressures.

    The deal would be a step toward easing the growing tension between the two NATO allies, which has been mounting as the White House demanded that Mr. Brunson be released. He has been forced to remain in Turkey for the past two years.

    Turkey arrested Mr. Brunson on terrorism charges after accusing him of having a hand in the failed 2016 military coup. The U.S. and Mr. Brunson deny he had anything to do with it.

    President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan told journalists on Monday that his country’s court rulings apply to everyone, the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet reported.

    “I am not in a position to intervene [in Mr. Brunson’s case] with the judiciary since Turkey is a constitutional state,” he said.

    • David Sands contributed to this report.

  • Beijing’s bravado betrays growing case of nerves

    Chinese state media has just announced the imminent test flight of a new long-range stealth bomber called the Hong-20. A “military expert” told reporters that “usually, the development of equipment an

    ANALYSIS/OPINION:

    Chinese state media has just announced the imminent test flight of a new long-range stealth bomber called the Hong-20. A “military expert” told reporters that “usually, the development of equipment and weaponry of the People’s Liberation Army is highly confidential.”

    Revealing the bomber name before trials shows the Chinese aviation industry is gaining more confidence, the expert boasted.

    If there was ever an example of “projection,” this is it. The Chinese are not “confident;” they are scared.

    The communist regime, which by the way just confirmed it is holding over 1 million of its citizens in ‘re-education’ camps in the restive western region of Xinjiang, is acting like a deer in the headlights. In the face of real “Trumpian” confidence radiating from Washington, China’s leaders are acting like the schoolyard bully who for the first time just got punched in the face, and figured out they don’t like it one bit.

    President Trump has done the one thing Beijing thought would never happen — he is using the full weight of American power for the first time since World War II, economic, political, moral and yes, even military power. And it’s working.

    We should expect more bravado and parading of weapons from China, which is desperate to turn American public opinion against Mr. Trump’s hard line. There has been lots of love shared between the American elites and those in Beijing over the last few decades. That is over now. The globalist game is over. The hollowing out of America is over.

    I don’t believe the narrative in the mainstream U.S. media created about the People’s Republic. I have never believed the Wall Street apologists for the dictators.

    The experts claim that China’s economy is well on its way to surpassing the United States in terms of GDP. But, that was before Mr. Trump stopped letting Beijing treat trade as a one-way street. China’s economy is actually a house of cards, propped up by uncollectable debts and exploitative trade practices. The government has to build empty “ghost cities” just to keep people employed and not rioting. Did I mention the re-education camps? That all doesn’t sound like a stable, growing society to me.

    Meanwhile, in the U.S., we are in the midst of a real reset, one that will benefit the country in the long run. There will be some short-term pain — as we are seeing in the American stock market — as we forge new expectations and the old ways of doing business pass by the wayside.

    We’ve just learned that China is trying to influence next month’s midterm elections. They must be thinking, “For God’s sake we can’t let Trump consolidate power, or we are finished!”

    We should expect more malign behavior, more fear-mongering in the South China Sea, more spy technology embedded in our communications equipment, more military parades, and more general Chinese chest-thumping.

    The Chinese will continue to lash out, as cornered creatures tend to do, and now the leadership’s deceptions are being exposed for all the world to see. President Trump is threatening the very hold on power of the Chinese Communist Party. In their world, they cannot allow this to happen.

    Ronald Reagan won the Cold War and tore down the Iron Curtain.

    Donald Trump may be doing the same thing, only this time in the Pacific, frustrating the insidious Chinese plan to undermine America without firing a shot, and threatening the communists’ hold on power in Beijing.

    • L. Todd Wood is a former special operations helicopter pilot and Wall Street debt trader, and has contributed to Fox Business, The Moscow Times, National Review, The New York Post and many other publications. He can be reached at LToddWood.com.

  • Angela Merkel’s Germany immigration policies set for referendum in Bavaria elections

    When it comes to regional politics here, no state is more influential than Bavaria, the nation’s economic powerhouse and an unabashed conservative stronghold often described as Germany’s Texas. But th

    BERLIN — When it comes to regional politics here, no state is more influential than Bavaria, the nation’s economic powerhouse and an unabashed conservative stronghold often described as Germany’s Texas.

    But the elections Sunday in Bavaria are expected to represent a referendum on center-right Chancellor Angela Merkel’s policies over the past few years and on her conservative allies to the south, who have repeatedly caused trouble for her since her decision to allow more than 1 million refugees into the country three years ago.

    In fact, for the first time in decades, Bavaria’s conservative Christian Social Union finds itself under threat in its own backyard from the Germany’s resurgent far right — and from the left.

    “They tried to fight fire with fire at the beginning of the year with regard to the migration crisis,” said Olaf Boehnke, a senior adviser in Berlin with Rasmussen Global, a Brussels-based think tank, referring to Bavaria’s conservatives. “But they’re realizing that if you try to be more extreme than the extremists, it’s a lost cause.”

    For 12 of the past 13 elections in Bavaria, the Christian Social Union (CSU), the conservative sister party of Ms. Merkel’s Christian Democrats (CDU), has ruled with an absolute majority — a rarity in German politics, where compromise and coalition-building between parties is the norm. The party has held an absolute majority in the state legislature for all but five years over the past six decades.

    That has allowed the CSU in Bavaria, home to automotive giant BMW and the Oktoberfest, to create a conservative, semiautonomous cultural and political bubble in Germany’s south. The state, for example, recently enacted laws mandating that crosses be hung in all administrative buildings, much to the ire of Berlin.

    But the elections Sunday will likely rock the political impregnability of the CSU. The party is polling only at 33 percent, according to German broadcaster ZDF, down a whopping 15 percent from 2013, when Bavaria held its last state elections. In the stable world of German democracy, such a decline amounts to an electoral earthquake.

    Meanwhile, the environmentalist Greens are polling second at 18 percent and the far-right, anti-immigrant Alternative for Germany (AfD), once a fringe party that didn’t run a single candidate in 2013, is at 10 percent, according to the ZDF poll.

    Regional elections in Germany can have huge impacts on national politics, though election outcomes typically reflect a mix of local and national factors, Carsten Brzeski, chief economist for ING Germany, wrote in an analysis of the upcoming election.

    But this time, the reason for the decline of the CSU in Bavaria is clear.

    “The CSU tried to make the election a kind of referendum on Merkel’s stance on refugees,” Mr. Brzeski said. “The continuous nagging and trouble-seeking in Berlin, initiated by the CSU, has completely turned this around.”

    Ms. Merkel’s conservative bloc lost over 1 million votes to the AfD in last year’s federal elections, a development largely connected to popular unhappiness with her 2015 decision to open the nation’s borders to over 1 million, mostly Muslim refugees fleeing violence in the Middle East and elsewhere.

    Bavarian backlash

    It was a decision that particularly affected Bavaria, a Catholic stronghold that served as the main entry point for those who traveled through the Balkans to reach Germany, Mr. Boehnke said.

    That gave Bavaria and the CSU “a special role to play as to how to cope with this,” he said. “They not only reject free-floating migration, but also were the first victims who were subject to this new trend.”

    With refugee policy a hot-button issue in the state and the AfD gaining ground, the CSU — which forms a “grand coalition” government in Berlin with Ms. Merkel’s CDU and the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) — sought to move refugee and immigration policy to the right to protect their political base.

    In doing so, however, they almost toppled Ms. Merkel’s fragile coalition multiple times in recent months.

    In June, Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, who is also the CSU’s party chairman, threatened to order German police to turn away refugees at the Bavarian-Austrian border, with or without the federal government’s blessing. Such a move would have undermined Ms. Merkel’s authority and shattered her coalition. She was forced to hold an emergency summit on asylum policy with European partners in order to calm her unruly coalition partner.

    Intergovernmental tensions spiked again in September, when two refugees were accused of killing a German-Cuban man in the eastern city of Chemnitz, prompting riots and right-wing violence that lasted for a week.

    Some of the violence was caught on video but dismissed by the head of the nation’s domestic security unit, sparking public outrage and calls for his resignation. Being a close ally of Mr. Seehofer’s, however, he was instead given an interior ministry posting — once again demonstrating, Mr. Brzeski said, the CSU’s ability and willingness to “hijack” the government in Berlin in an effort to win back votes locally.

    But the abysmal poll numbers ahead of the Sunday elections indicate that voters are tired of the CSU’s political maneuvering in Berlin — a positive signal for an embattled Ms. Merkel as she struggles to keep her government together, Mr. Boehnke said.

    “They cannot play the blame-Merkel card too excessively,” he said. “They tried to make her a bogeyman, but there’s not much to this.”

    But the anticipated outcome of the elections is also indicative of a larger trend of political fragmentation in Germany, said Georg Neugebauer, a political scientist at Berlin Free University.

    With the leftist Greens and the ultraconservative AfD exploiting voter dissatisfaction with mainstream parties, a more segmented political environment is taking hold and ultimately will put Germany in the same precarious political situation as once-stable nations such as Sweden and Austria.

    That would mark a sharp change for Germany under Ms. Merkel, which had come to be seen as a rock of stability and the economic powerhouse of the European Union during her 13 years in power.

    “We’re currently seeing a breakdown of society, or at the very least in this case a breakdown of large political milieus into many smaller ones,” Mr. Neugebauer said.

    Such a consequential political trend has expanded the scope of how elections in Germany’s Texas can impact the nation and beyond.

    “Things are changing on a bigger scale, and Bavaria is a perfect example,” said Mr. Boehnke. “The political system is on the move.”

  • U.S. gives warning of Iran efforts to evade sanctions

    With unprecedented U.S. sanctions against Iran’s oil industry set to kick in next month, the Treasury Department is warning the rest of the world to beware of dodgy money fleeing the Islamic Republic.

    With unprecedented U.S. sanctions against Iran’s oil industry set to kick in next month, the Treasury Department is warning the rest of the world to beware of dodgy money fleeing the Islamic Republic.

    Washington and Tehran are in a battle of wills over oil exports, which the U.S. is trying to cut off in the wake of President Trump’s decision in May to pull out of the 2015 multilateral deal that eased global sanctions in exchange for curbs on Iran’s suspect nuclear programs.

    “Any country that allows its central bank to be involved in deception in support of [Iranian] terrorism requires the highest levels of scrutiny, particularly when the country itself is the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism,” Treasury Undersecretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Sigal Mandelker said Thursday.

    The Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued the advisory “to help financial institutions better detect and report potentially illicit transactions related to the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

    Iran and the other signatories to the deal, including Russia, China and several European allies, are trying to keep the nuclear deal alive and to make an end-run around the U.S. sanctions, but a number of major corporations have already ended this Iranian dealings for fear of losing access to the much larger American market. Even harsher penalties are set to start on Nov. 4, punishing countries who buy Iranian oil.

    On Sunday, Iran’s parliament approved a bill to tighten its laws against money laundering and terror financing, in a bid to strengthen its case that the U.S. moves are unjust. A U.N. watchdog agency has repeatedly said Iran has so far lived up to its commitments under the nuclear deal, although Washington argues Iran has pursued aggressive moves against U.S. and allied interests beyond the agreement.

    The move was strongly opposed by hardline conservatives in Tehran, who argue the provisions will hamstring the Iran’s ability to support its regional allies, including the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah.

    But the remaining partners from the Iran nuclear deal, have insisted that Tehran conform with the U.N.’s Terrorism Financing Conventions — the international Financial Action Task Force (FATF) standards — if there is any change to continue doing business under the nuclear deal.

    The partners all fear U.S. sanctions, which warn other countries to be aware of Iranian “deceptive practices” to move around assets, including front companies and fraudulent documents manipulated by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps and top executives at the Central Bank of Iran.

    Iran is OPEC’s second largest exporter and the world’s fourth largest oil producer, but the Trump administration says it wants to completely cut off its exports.

    Some Iranian oil buyers, such as South Korea and France, have halted their purchases completely while China and India, the biggest buyers of Iranian crude, are now buying far fewer barrels.

    Iran is reportedly exploring way to subvert the U.S. restrictions, including the use of “ghost tankers” who turn off the tracking systems before entering international waters.