Department of Peace for Our Time
November 16th, 2013 - 11:27 pm
Neville again.
American healthcare aside (“If you like your plan…”), there are some promises that President Obama has kept. Notably, his promise last year to Russia’s Vladimir Putin —
accidentally overheard by the entire world, via an open microphone — that once he’d won the 2012 presidential election, he’d have more “flexibility.” He was true to his word. With this September’s Russia-brokered deal over Syria’s chemical weapons, the Obama administration showed flexibility enough to compete with Cirque du Soleil.
Now, just when it seemed that U.S. policy toward Russia could hardly become more flexible without requiring all Americans to dine daily on borscht (or does the Affordable Care Act already include a provision for that?), here comes a story in the
New York Times, headlined
“A Russian GPS Using U.S. Soil Stirs Spy Fears.” The gist is that the State Department is gung-ho to allow the Russian Space Agency,
Roscosmos (which coordinates with Russian military launches), to install on U.S. turf some half a dozen electronic monitor stations for a Russian Global Positioning System. The
Times reports that not everyone in the administration thinks this is a great idea. The Pentagon and the Central Intelligence Agency see this plan as a threat to U.S. security: “They fear that these structures could help Russia spy on the United States and improve the precision of Russian weaponry.”
But does that worry the State Department? Not according to the
Times, which goes on to provide the following account of the State Department’s rationale:
For the State Department, permitting Russia to build the stations would help mend the Obama administration’s relationship with the government of President Vladimir V. Putin, now at a nadir because of Moscow’s granting asylum to Mr. Snowden and its backing of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria.
Come again? I have read that paragraph over, at least half a dozen times, and it still doesn’t make sense. If the Obama administration’s ties to Putin’s regime are at a low, the reason is not that the U.S. has snubbed or damaged Russia, but that Russia’s Putin has mocked and undermined the U.S. First came Russia’s dalliance with American fugitive Edward Snowden. Then came the aborted showdown over Syria, in which Russia, one of Assad’s chief weapons suppliers, walked away with the jackpot, sending warships into the Mediterranean and wielding diplomacy to translate Assad’s use of chemical weapons into a ticket for the Russian-backed survival of his regime and alarming expansion at U.S. expense of Russian influence in the Middle East. Surely, if the U.S.-Russia relationship is to be improved, it is Russia that owes the U.S. some conciliatory moves. Not the other way round.
And yet, there it is — a report that the State Department hopes to woo Russia by answering the Kremlin’s insults and power-and-influence grabs with an invitation to come on in and set up GPS monitor stations for Roscosmos on U.S. soil; never mind the worries of the CIA and Defense Department. I’m not questioning the reporting in this article; in context there is every reason to believe that the reporters are accurately providing information about State Department policy. It’s the policy itself that makes no sense, at least not if the aim here is to protect U.S. interests and national security.
But there’s a lot going on right now that in terms of actually protecting the U.S. makes zero sense. The endless, amnesiac and oh so flexible “reset” with Russia is consistent with the State Department’s zeal, and for that matter, the president’s, to ensure that no new sanctions are imposed on Iran, lest any flexing of U.S. muscle might wreck the chances for a nuclear deal at the talks now scheduled to resume Nov. 20 in Geneva. Call it pre-existing appeasement.
Nor are these independent matters. In Tehran, in Beijing, in Pyongyang and beyond, policy and military elites are reading that article in the
New York Times, and drawing their own conclusions about just how thoroughly the U.S. administration will prostrate itself to appease despotic regimes that deride, oppose and threaten America and its allies. This is a policy far removed from the ways of the real world, in which, 26 years ago, to spectacular effect in the cause of peace, President Reagan went to West Berlin and commanded Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev: “Tear down this wall.” Instead, buying deals for our diplomats today at the cost of proliferating threats tomorrow, we are tripping step by step down the trail of
“Peace for our time.”
Is The State Department Nuts? Why Would It Allow Russians To Build Facilities In US?
WOULD YOU BELIEVE THE U.S. STATE DEPT IS REPORTEDLY PREPARED TO LET RUSSIA BUILD THESE ON AMERICAN SOIL?
Nov. 16, 2013 8:44pm
Dave Urbanski
The CIA and Pentagon have been trying to halt a State Department plan to let Russia’s space agency (Roscosmos) construct within the United States a handful of monitor stations, according to American officials, the
New York Times reported.
The fear is that the stations could aid Russian efforts to spy on the U.S. and bolster the accuracy of Russian weaponry, the officials told the Times, adding that the Russians said the monitor stations would dramatically improve their version of the Global Positioning System.
A look inside Roscosmos (Image source: YouTube raw video)
The CIA and other U.S. spy agencies, along with the Pentagon, believe the monitor stations would provide Russia with better accuracy with weapons and an opening to spy on the U.S., the Times noted.
In addition members of Congressional intelligence and armed services committees regard Moscow’s GPS — a.k.a. Glonass (i.e., Global Navigation Satellite System) — with suspicion and want answers from the Obama administration.
“I would like to understand why the United States would be interested in enabling a GPS competitor, like Russian Glonass, when the world’s reliance on GPS is a clear advantage to the United States on multiple levels,” said Representative Mike D. Rogers, Republican of Alabama, the chairman of a House Armed Services subcommittee.
The Times characterizes the State Department’s willingness to let Russia build about a half dozen stations as a way to help repair President Obama’s relationship with Vladimir V. Putin, which took a nosedive after Moscow granted asylum to Edward Snowden and supported Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
The Russian push in this direction is part of a larger global race by China and European Union nations, among others, the Times reported, to perfect their own GPS technology and challenge the dominance of the American GPS.
A former senior official in the State Department’s Office of Space and Advanced Technology told the Times that the Russians “don’t want to be reliant on the American system and believe that their systems, like GPS, will spawn other industries and applications. They feel as though they are losing a technological edge to us in an important market. Look at everything GPS has done on things like your phone and the movement of planes and ships.”
Administration officials have held off a final decision until the Russians give more information and U.S. agencies resolve differences, State Department and White House officials told the Times.
You can read the entire New York Times article
here.
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