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Germany has rejected the US push to ban Chinese telecommunications equipment vendor Huawei technologies from its 5G rollout, with the Asia Times reporting on Monday that the company would be allowed to build part of the network.
Economist David P. Goldman reported that the German business daily Handelsblatt last week had cited a new draft law that Chancellor Angela Merkel would submit to the Bundestag next month as its source for this information.
The report also said that both Japan and South Korea had also refused to exclude Huawei from their networks in October.
Washington has campaigned for more than two years to try and push countries it considers allies to avoid using 5G equipment from Huawei in their networks. Thus far, only Australia and Vietnam have said openly that they would follow the US’ lead.
Sweden recently
the third country to say so publicly, but a court later
sections of a decision that had excluded the company from participating in Swedish spectrum bids. The spectrum auction itself was put on hold.
New Zealand and Poland have indicated that they are likely to toe the US line, but have yet to make public pronouncements about what policy they would follow.
The UK first said in January that it would allow Huawei to bid for up to a third of equipment in non-core parts of the country’s 5G networks but later changed its mind and said all Huawei gear would have to be removed by 2027.
A couple of days back, a report said that this timetable had also been changed and companies would be asked to strip out the Chinese vendor’s gear by September 2021.
Goldman said the German decision had been expected after Democrat candidate Joe Biden won the US presidential election.
A report on 20 November said a group of academics and ex-officials who are close to the Biden camp had suggested that Huawei be given a role in the global build of 5G networks.
The Japanese decision was reported by the Yomiuri Shimbun in October, with the paper saying Tokyo would take its own steps to respond in the event that there were security issues.
And the South Korean news agency Yonhap reported, also in October, that an official had told US Undersecretary of State Keith Krach during a meeting in Seoul that it was up to private companies to decide on what gear they used.
“We made it clear that whether a private telecom company uses the equipment of a specific enterprise is up to that company to decide,” the official said.
“But regarding the general security risks posed by the 5G technology in the telecommunication market, we agreed to work closely with the US side and co-operate in terms of technological issues.”
Goldman wrote: “German officials earlier this month [November] described the Huawei decision as a cliffhanger, as German industrial lobbyists wrangled with German security officials who were reluctant to incur the wrath of the American intelligence community. [US President Donald] Trump’s loss at the polls appears to have tipped the balance in favour of the industry lobby, which wants to work with China.”
Huawei Australia has been contacted for comment.
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Michael_Novakhov shared this story from |
Germany has rejected the US push to ban Chinese telecommunications equipment vendor Huawei technologies from its 5G rollout, with the Asia Times reporting on Monday that the company would be allowed to build part of the network.
Economist David P. Goldman reported that the German business daily Handelsblatt last week had cited a new draft law that Chancellor Angela Merkel would submit to the Bundestag next month as its source for this information.
The report also said that both Japan and South Korea had also refused to exclude Huawei from their networks in October.
Washington has campaigned for more than two years to try and push countries it considers allies to avoid using 5G equipment from Huawei in their networks. Thus far, only Australia and Vietnam have said openly that they would follow the US’ lead.
Sweden recently
the third country to say so publicly, but a court later
sections of a decision that had excluded the company from participating in Swedish spectrum bids. The spectrum auction itself was put on hold.
New Zealand and Poland have indicated that they are likely to toe the US line, but have yet to make public pronouncements about what policy they would follow.
The UK first said in January that it would allow Huawei to bid for up to a third of equipment in non-core parts of the country’s 5G networks but later changed its mind and said all Huawei gear would have to be removed by 2027.
A couple of days back, a report said that this timetable had also been changed and companies would be asked to strip out the Chinese vendor’s gear by September 2021.
Goldman said the German decision had been expected after Democrat candidate Joe Biden won the US presidential election.
A report on 20 November said a group of academics and ex-officials who are close to the Biden camp had suggested that Huawei be given a role in the global build of 5G networks.
The Japanese decision was reported by the Yomiuri Shimbun in October, with the paper saying Tokyo would take its own steps to respond in the event that there were security issues.
And the South Korean news agency Yonhap reported, also in October, that an official had told US Undersecretary of State Keith Krach during a meeting in Seoul that it was up to private companies to decide on what gear they used.
“We made it clear that whether a private telecom company uses the equipment of a specific enterprise is up to that company to decide,” the official said.
“But regarding the general security risks posed by the 5G technology in the telecommunication market, we agreed to work closely with the US side and co-operate in terms of technological issues.”
Goldman wrote: “German officials earlier this month [November] described the Huawei decision as a cliffhanger, as German industrial lobbyists wrangled with German security officials who were reluctant to incur the wrath of the American intelligence community. [US President Donald] Trump’s loss at the polls appears to have tipped the balance in favour of the industry lobby, which wants to work with China.”
Huawei Australia has been contacted for comment.
Michael Novakhov – SharedNewsLinks℠
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Michael_Novakhov shared this story . |
As we shoulder our way through the avalanche of “what will Biden mean for Russia” speculation, it is striking that these come as often from Russian as Western sources. And of course, the future of this relationship is important but the tone of Russian commentary says as much about the problematic way the country it views itself as what may happen in the U.S.
Of course, American discussions of Russia are often hyperbolic and blinkered — for too long, to talk about Russia inside the Washington Beltway was as much as anything else to be talking about Donald Trump, and whether you believed he was a Moscow-installed puppet or the victim of ‘Russiagate’ slander. But Russian discussion of America has its own blinkers.
In the government newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta, for example, Sergei Karaganov, one of Moscow’s heavyweight foreign policy experts, has just delivered an ode to Russia’s need, in his words, to stop being on the defensive and “offer ourselves to Eurasia and everyone as the leader of what is normal, national, sovereign, peaceful.”
After all, Russia, in his view, not only stands for all this, but has historically been the country which, “through military-political containment, blocks the road to those who unleash the wars’ that so blight the world.”
It is a full-throated call for this “nation of victors” to assert itself in the world, but what is interesting is against whom it is pushing back. It is “against hegemonism in politics”, it is against the “transnationalists,” the “liberals”, although their form of liberalism is instead an attempt to “impose a semi-totalitarian, unified ideology.”
Although there is an obvious nod to the debauched decadence of “Gayropa,” this is clearly about resisting the hegemonic pressure of the United States, and its European proxies and minions. And this is a struggle which Russia must not just join, but lead.
At a time when other Russian experts are advocating caution, it is striking to encounter such determination – desperation — to be an equal to the United States, to regain its position as the other pole of the world.
Russia has not just past glories, but present strengths and future prospects.
However, the thought of being able to attain such comparability with a country with an economy twelve times as large (and even in terms of GDP per capita, more than five times the size), Even allowing for Russia’s ‘hidden’ spending and greater relative purchasing power, the U.S. still has a defense budget outstripping it by leagues, and despite its recent travails, more soft power at that.
But the real point is not whether Russia could seek to equate itself to the U.S. so much as should it. Recall the fury when Barack Obama — clumsily — called Russia a “regional power.” There is nothing wrong with being a significant nation, with some global interests and more regional ones, yet no claims to more than that.
The Soviet Union spent itself into the grave trying to keep up with the Americans in the arms race (the United States pretty much bankrupted itself too, but could afford to). Why would post-Soviet Russia want to engage in a new ideological race?
Empire, hegemony, global leadership, call it what you will, this is a ridiculously expensive and intrinsically uneconomic pursuit. It is not one Russia can afford, and there is little evidence Russia – as opposed to the Kremlin and certain members of the commentariat – is interested, either.
There is a reason why Moscow relied on hirelings and adventurers in the Donbass, mercenaries and airpower in Syria.
Russians applauded the annexation of Crimea, a piece of land they felt had always rightfully been theirs, but that does not scale up. The evidence from polls and vox pops alike is that they have no enthusiasm for a grand global mission which means boys coming home in zinc boxes and money that could be building roads in Rostov and clinics in Kamchatka spent instead on foreign bases and ideological outreach.
Surveyed, 71% of Russians think their country is mainly or definitely a “great power.” And they are right, but their terms of reference may not be the Kremlin’s. After all, 47% express positive feelings towards the U.S. and only 41% negative. This is not the stuff of global crusades.
Just get over it
Attempts to match America — especially at a time when China is rising fast as another geopolitical power and national model — is a terrible act of self-harm.
It distracts attention and resources from urgently-needed domestic reform and reconstruction. It plays to the conspiracy-minded silovik mindset that seeks to divide the country between loyalists and traitors and in the process poisons the scope for genuine debate.
And it is doomed to fail. Arguably, America’s global status is itself on the wane.
Whether the Biden presidency can do more than repair some of the worst damage to its international standing from four years of Trumpish dilettantism remains to be seen, but this is not just a one-term malaise. Washington’s capacity to shape the world, always over-hyped, is increasingly open to question.
This obsession with the United States, with the need to challenge a mythical ideological offensive, is little more than a mirror-image of the Washington perspective that sees itself locked in a normative struggle with Moscow, the white-Stetson champion of freedom and democracy against the black-hat authoritarians.
But the big difference is – especially as Trump sulks his way towards the exit — Moscow matters much less to Washington than vice versa. A rising China, restoring transatlantic ties, rebuilding the State Department — frankly, all these are likely to have a greater priority for the Biden administration.
To Moscow, though, like a jilted lover obsessively stalking an old flame, everything is still about America. Even when embracing China, for all the talk of strategic partnership, it is peeking round to see if Washington has noticed.
On one level, this is understandable: even for the Soviet Union, the “Main Enemy” was also the yardstick by which it measured itself.
A Russia that is happy being what it is, would be no bad thing. This not only makes it easier to adopt the more pragmatic and moderate foreign policy so many have advocated, it also avoids wasting scarce resources on prestige projects and risky adventures.
It’s also healthier for the national psyche. It’s time to move on.
The views expressed in opinion pieces do not necessarily reflect the position of The Moscow Times.
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Michael_Novakhov shared this story . |
Nobody expects President-elect Joe Biden’s centrist foreign policy views to shift radically once he’s in office. Not after almost five decades in Washington, most of which have been spent with international affairs as his bailiwick. But for progressives grumbling about some of Biden’s Cabinet picks, I offer good news: This administration can still deliver on some of your biggest foreign policy goals.
Much of the focus since the election has been on whom Biden will install to run the federal bureaucracy. That’s fair, given the challenge of rebooting the nation’s operating system after four years of President Donald Trump and his haphazard staffing. The problem is that some of Biden’s picks come with baggage of their own.
Antony Blinken, the president-elect’s choice to become secretary of state, and Michèle Flournoy, reportedly the lead contender to run the Pentagon, are under increasing scrutiny for their post-government work. That includes founding WestExec, their consulting firm, whose client list is secret and which has diligently kept its staff from being called “lobbyists.” Flournoy’s close ties with defense contractors are also getting major pushback.
A look at some of the main foreign policy priorities for the progressive movement shows some major opportunities on the horizon.
Meanwhile, one of Biden’s top choices for CIA chief, former Deputy Director Michael Morell, has been accused of defending the Bush-era torture program. He could face opposition from Senate Democrats if nominated. Avril Haines — who has been tapped to become director of national intelligence — has also been criticized for her role in redacting the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on CIA torture and supporting current CIA Director Gina Haspel’s nomination. (Haines worked at WestExec, too, by the by.)
All of that having been said, it’s a mistake to focus solely on the people at the top. For all the centrists being put in place, a look at some of the main foreign policy priorities for the progressive movement shows some major opportunities on the horizon:
Considering domestic and international economics in foreign policy. Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren both argued during their presidential runs that the U.S. needs to develop a foreign policy that keeps the economic well-being of all Americans in mind. Heather Hurlburt, a policy researcher with New America, wrote in 2018 that “ensuring the basic health and sustainability of the U.S. economy, addressing inequality, and attacking absolute poverty both at home and abroad” should be central to a progressive foreign policy.
Jake Sullivan’s pending appointment as national security adviser should be seen as a promising development. Sullivan, who praised Sanders’ focus on crony capitalism and corruption abroad in 2018, recently worked with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace on a series of reports examining how to make foreign policy work for America’s middle class.
Putting climate change front and center. Former Secretary of State John Kerry is on track to be appointed to a Cabinet-level role focused on international climate efforts, a decision that lends weight to Biden’s ambitious climate plans. As fellow MSNBC columnist Emily Atkin noted, though, progressives need to be ready to be critical of Kerry and Biden, leaning on them to follow through with action instead of just rhetoric.
Accepting the limits of U.S. military power. Biden’s not exactly what anyone would call a peacenik, but after going on 20 years of constant war, he literally can’t afford to deploy forces overseas like his predecessors. Trump, for all his misguided logic, wanted to roll back some of the U.S.’s overseas military commitments that have left the armed services stretched thin. Biden should at least consider the same, with an acknowledgment that a military presence doesn’t always guarantee success.
Defending democracy without going on the offense. Both neoconservatives and progressives believe the U.S. should advocate for democracy abroad. The difference is that the former believes the military needs to foster new democracies, while the latter is typically more interested in shoring up those that already exist. And as we head into 2021, democracies need help to keep from becoming nationalist oligarchies. We’ve already seen this backslide happen in Hungary and Turkey. Halting — and, ideally, helping reverse — these transformations should be a priority for the Biden administration.
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Rethinking U.S. alliances. Biden campaigned on restoring some of America’s most crucial alliances after years of Trumpian mishandling. He now has an opportunity to determine what “crucial” means — especially when it comes to ignoring human rights abuses from allies like Saudi Arabia. While the Trump administration turned a mostly blind eye to Riyadh’s killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Biden’s team can afford to be a bit pickier about who gets called a friend.
Ending U.S. support for the war in Yemen. On a similar note, in the short term, progressives can count on Biden and his Cabinet to call off American support for the six-year war in Yemen. Both houses of Congress passed a resolution in 2019 that would constrain U.S. involvement in the Saudi-led campaign, which has at times targeted civilian facilities and prevented humanitarian aid shipments; Trump vetoed the legislation. A new version is sure to pass in the next session of Congress, and Biden will sign it.
If progressives want not just to have a seat at the table but also to sit at its head, now is the time to lay their own groundwork.
There will undoubtedly be foreign policy fights between the left wing of the Democratic Party and the liberal internationalists who have dominated the Democratic establishment since the end of the Cold War. No matter who winds up as defense secretary, slashing military spending will be a major lift. Through a combination of Trump’s demands and congressional inertia, this year’s National Defense Authorization Act is likely to appropriate over $740 billion for the current fiscal year to the Defense Department and other national security projects. Getting Flournoy to trim that number could be difficult.
The same goes for U.S. policy toward Israel, still one of the deepest divides among Democrats. Relatedly, Biden and his team are facing what could be an early test in the Middle East. Iran’s top nuclear scientist was killed over the weekend in an assassination that showed the hallmarks of an Israeli operation. How Biden threads the needle of discouraging Iran’s nuclear program, avoiding war and supporting Israel without encouraging international lawbreaking is likely to be a preview of the rest of his term.
Biden is prioritizing staffers who have years of experience in foreign affairs. If progressives want not just to have a seat at the table but also to sit at its head, now is the time to lay their own groundwork. The Biden administration needs new foreign policy hands to revitalize the ranks, from top to bottom. Now is the time to seed lower-level staffers who eventually guide the U.S. in the next decade and beyond, building on the work that will be done over the next four years.
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Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for MSNBC Daily, where he helps frame the news of the day for readers. He was previously at BuzzFeed News and holds a degree in international relations from Michigan State University.
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Michael_Novakhov shared this story from  The Hawkeye.
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Imagine being a part of the United States, but having little to no rights. You don’t get to vote for U.S. president. All you get is to elect a governor, the Senate and Assembly.
This is exactly the anguish Puerto Ricans experiences every year around election time.
According to TIME, Puerto Rico has been a territory of the U.S. since 1898 after the U.S. defeated Spain in the Spanish-American war.
However, unlike Hawaii, which receives complete voting rights, Puerto Rico is controlled by the U.S. government and its citizens are given birthright citizenship as Americans so they can travel between their island and the U.S. mainland, but aren’t allowed to vote for president.
Puerto Ricans deserve to receive voting rights and choose who their president will be. And this is a right they so desperately want.
In June 2017, around 97% of votes were in favor of becoming a state instead of a territory. But only 23% of the population voted on it, according to Ballotpedia.
According to the New York Times, Puerto Ricans voted again on the same question in this November’s election.
The majority of Puerto Ricans said yes, they wanted to be the 51st state to join the union.
It’s time to stop asking Puerto Ricans what they want—We know what they want. Allow Puerto Rico to be a state.
The Declaration of Independence says that “all men are created equal.” If this is true, then Puerto Ricans have as much right as Americans on the mainland to vote. They are just as much a part of this country as we are.
Plus, if the U.S. government allowed Puerto Rico the right to vote, we would become uniquely diverse. Puerto Rico would be a progression for the U.S. to develop itself into a nation that is equal and just. We all know that for hundreds of years different groups have had to fight their way to receive the rights they deserve.
If the U.S. would give Puerto Rico its right to vote without protests or harm to citizens, it would be a proud moment in American history.
Unfortunately, that’s not normally how it goes. Think of how long it took women and African Americans to gain the right to vote. These two groups had to fight hard to get to that point.
If the U.S. decides to find “roadblocks” preventing Puerto Ricans from voting, then they will have to fight for these rights. They will have to protest in the streets and make their voices to be heard.
And we will have to help them. These are our brothers and sisters who should receive the right to vote. We must fight alongside them. We have to make others realize how important this situation is.
We all have to stand up. This is a season of development and growth for the U.S. and the government must feel us shake the foundation of the nation.
