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Blinken’s Unwise, Unwarranted Trip to Central Asia
In an effort to gain leverage against Russia and China, Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to Kazakhstan last week to meet with foreign ministers of the five Central Asian nations. The United States has no vital national security interests in any of the five Islamic states that have had long-standing ties to Moscow and…
The Biden National Security Team Must Get Smarter…Sooner
iden and his secretaries of state and defense have pursued a policy of dual containment of both Russia and China that has contributed to the strengthening of Sino-Russian bilateral relations and created a worsening Cold War situation with both Beijing and Moscow. Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger have been credited with manipulating the U.S.-Soviet-Chinese triangle in a way that gave the United States stronger relations with both China and the Soviet Union than China and the Soviet Union had with each other. Biden will probably be credited with contributing to the worsening of these bilateral relations and weakening the U.S. geopolitical situation in general.
A Costly and Prolonged Cold War Now Seems a Certainty
No one knows how the war in Ukraine will end, but there is one post-war certainty: there will be a prolonged and costly Cold War between the United States and Russia. In an interview with David Ignatius of the Washington Post, who has been doing the bidding of the Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency for several decades, Secretary of State Antony Blinken emphasized the importance of a “long-term goal of deterrence.” Ignatius took this to mean that the Biden administration will make sure that Russia “should not be able to rest, regroup and reattack.”
Commentary: This former CIA analyst has something to say about the classified documents crisis — and it’s likely not what you think
The former involved Trump’s intentionally keeping large amounts of classified material at Mar-a-Lago; the latter led to small amounts of intelligence at Biden’s former office and his home, as well as in Pence’s home. Since I held high-level security clearances for more than four decades while in the Army, Central Intelligence Agency, Department of State and Department of Defense, I have something to offer on the issue of secrets and secrecy.
Breaking the Addiction to Secrets and Secrecy
There is no question that the government must protect its sources and methods in the collection of intelligence. Regarding substance, however, I believe that, with the exception of details on weapons systems as well as on sensitive negotiations, there are few legitimate secrets and almost none that must remain classified for more than ten years at most. The secrecy that surrounded the Iran-Contra affair probably saved the Reagan presidency over the short term, but greater transparency would have prevented Iran-Contra from ever getting off the ground in the first place.
Harvard’s Kennedy School: Key Part Of The Military-Industrial Complex
Harvard’s Kennedy School’s denial of a fellowship to Kenneth Roth, the former head of Human Rights Watch, because of his criticism of Israeli policies in the West Bank and Gaza is only the latest example of the corporate role played by Harvard’s most prestigious think tank on public policy. Roth, who has spent the last three decades at HRW defending human rights around the world, was offered a senior fellowship at the School’s Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. It was quickly withdrawn.
