Tag Archives: foreign policy

Emails

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How do you get 650,000 State Department emails onto one laptop, even if accumulated over some years?  Especially when it’s a laptop that isn’t routinely used by a State Department employee or confidante of a State employee, but instead is owned by (or at best shared with) a State employee/confidante spouse and dependent?

Separately, might some of these be copies of the emails Democratic Party Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton deleted under the claim that they were personal, centered on wedding planning and yoga?

More “Missing” Emails

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And more destruction of evidence.

From an FBI Form 302:

CENTCOM records shows approximately 1,000 work-related emails between Clinton’s personal email and General David PETRAEUS, former Commander of CENTCOM and former Director of the CIA.  Most of those 1,000 emails were not believed to be included in the 30,000 emails that IPS was reviewing. Out of the 30,000 emails, IPS [Office of Information and Programs and Services, which is responsible for State’s responses to FOIA requests] only had a few emails from or related to PETRAEUS as well as a few related to Leon PANETTA, former Secretary of Defense.

It’s nice that CENTCOM, the other end of the correspondence, had records of the emails, but the emails themselves seem to be “missing.”

Hmm….

Being Aced Out?

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Vietnam has shown interest in opening Cam Ranh Bay to our Navy’s use, and that interest has grown as the People’s Republic of China has increased its aggressiveness in occupying the South China Sea and interfering with other nations’ activities in their waters in the Sea—in particular here Vietnam’s use of its Paracel Islands, in which the PRC is building air bases for the PLA Air Force.

The Obama administration has been less interested in taking advantage of the opening while it has been responding timidly to the PRC’s occupation.

Now this.

Three Chinese navy ships will make their first port call this weekend at the Vietnam’s strategic Cam Ranh Bay, coming as the countries are locked in a territorial dispute in the South China Sea.

Just to emphasize the matter, the PLA Navy’s visit comes on the heels of a visit to the port by two USN ships, and it comes while Vietnam and the PRC continue to dispute ownership of the Paracels.

As Predicted

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…by a number of folks, including politicians.

Senior Iranian officials, including the country’s president, have been floating the possibility of further payments from the United States for months. Since the White House agreed to pay Tehran $1.7 billion in cash earlier this year as part of a deal bound up in the release of American hostages, Iran has captured several more US citizens.

Here’s Senator Mark Kirk (R, IL) again:

After airlifting $1.7 billion in cash ransom payments to Iran, even the US State Department ‎now warns of increased dangers that the world’s biggest state sponsor of terrorism will continue to illegally seize Americans and Westerners who travel or do business with Iran. Companies, banks, and American citizens would be wise to stay away from Iran[.]

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corp, Iran’s primary military force, and the Praetorian Guard supporting Iran’s Supreme Leader Sayyed Ali Hosseini Khamenei says

“We should wait and see, the US will offer … many billions of dollars to release” American businessman Siamak Namazi and his father Baquer….

Yep.  Saeed Ghasseminejad, Associate Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies:

Paying $1.7 billion to Iran to release the US prisoners has encouraged Iran to arrest more Americans.  Iran senses weakness in the US leadership as it constantly tests the administration through a chain of provocative actions.

We shouldn’t have to look forward to more of this after early November.

Cowed by the PRC?

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Canberra confirmed last week that the Australian Navy won’t conduct freedom-of-navigation patrols in the international waters of the South China Sea, giving China’s bid to dominate the strategic area a boost.

And

An international tribunal ruled in July that China’s bid to claim most of the sea violates international law. But the verdict will be rendered moot unless law-abiding states are willing to push back. That would give Beijing effective control over the 60% of Australian trade that transits the sea.

However, Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Foreign Minister Julie Bishop appear to have gotten their marching orders from PRC President Xi Jinping and Wang Yi.  Embarrassingly (did Turnbull have the grace for embarrassment), Turnbull has decried opposition to this acquiescence as “highly political,” and a measure of “immaturity and unreadiness to take responsibility for these issues.”  Bishop is terrified that enforcing freedom of navigation imperatives—even international law—would “escalate tensions.”

You bet the matter is highly political, Turnbull.  Enforcing international law—or surrendering the rights involved to the biggest bully—is purely political.  In what venue would you place it otherwise?  Your inability to understand that, or your timidity in acting on an accurate understanding, marks your own political immaturity and unreadiness.

Escalating tensions?  The PRC is already doing that with its seizure and occupation of the South China Sea, and it’s actively pressing its advantage gained from your backing away from tension.

You guys used to be made of sterner stuff.  What happened to the Australian government that faced down a rampant Japan on your doorstep just 75 years ago?

Or are you thinking you have no support from the US, which already is in retreat before the PRC?  That, at least, would have a ring of shameful truth to it.