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Updates by Country, Weapon, or ThemeBy: Dustin Rimmey, Topeka High School, KansasResolved: The United States federal government should substantially reduce Direct Commercial Sales and/or Foreign Military Sales of arms from the United States.Summary: This file is a big update on all things debate. You have answers to popular politics disadvantages, China uniqueness updates for both affirmative and negative arguments, DIB Updates, some “economists are liars” cards in additions to new solvency evidence and takeouts for Taiwan, Saudi Arabia, and Ukraine among many other things!Table of Contents TOC \o "1-3" \h \z \u Updates by Country, Weapon, or Theme PAGEREF _Toc22157684 \h 2Agenda Politics PAGEREF _Toc22157685 \h 6Agenda DA Thumper PAGEREF _Toc22157686 \h 7Election DA Thumpers PAGEREF _Toc22157687 \h 10Turkey Blockage Thumps PAGEREF _Toc22157688 \h 14USMCA DA Thumpers PAGEREF _Toc22157689 \h 15China PAGEREF _Toc22157690 \h 17UQ-China Sales Increasing PAGEREF _Toc22157691 \h 18UQ—China Rise in Latin America Now PAGEREF _Toc22157692 \h 20U-US-China Trade deal PAGEREF _Toc22157693 \h 21U--Relations down PAGEREF _Toc22157694 \h 23I/L--Trade K/T Us-China PAGEREF _Toc22157695 \h 24China is Revisionist PAGEREF _Toc22157696 \h 25Impact U-China Leadership Increasing Now PAGEREF _Toc22157697 \h 30AT-Chinese Mil Mod PAGEREF _Toc22157698 \h 31Defense Industrial Base PAGEREF _Toc22157699 \h 32U-FY 2019 Reporting PAGEREF _Toc22157700 \h 33U-Sales Up Now PAGEREF _Toc22157701 \h 34Taiwan Link PAGEREF _Toc22157702 \h 36Economists PAGEREF _Toc22157703 \h 37Are lying liars who lie PAGEREF _Toc22157704 \h 38Iran PAGEREF _Toc22157705 \h 41U-Oil Tanker Strike PAGEREF _Toc22157706 \h 42AT- No War with Iran PAGEREF _Toc22157707 \h 44Russia--Aff PAGEREF _Toc22157708 \h 45NU-Africa Fill in Now PAGEREF _Toc22157709 \h 46NU-Middle East Rise Now PAGEREF _Toc22157710 \h 48NU-Revisionism PAGEREF _Toc22157711 \h 50NU-Latin America Rise Now PAGEREF _Toc22157712 \h 51Russia--Neg PAGEREF _Toc22157713 \h 52U-Russia focused on Saudi PAGEREF _Toc22157714 \h 53Saudi Arabia--Aff PAGEREF _Toc22157715 \h 54New Solvency--Saudi Arabia = Vietnam PAGEREF _Toc22157716 \h 55Use the NDAA to End Yemen Support PAGEREF _Toc22157717 \h 57AT-THAAD Deal PAGEREF _Toc22157718 \h 58Taiwan--Aff PAGEREF _Toc22157719 \h 59AT-Elections PAGEREF _Toc22157720 \h 60Taiwan--Neg PAGEREF _Toc22157721 \h 61Support Inevitable—Consulars PAGEREF _Toc22157722 \h 62Alliances DA Helper PAGEREF _Toc22157723 \h 63Ukraine--Aff PAGEREF _Toc22157724 \h 64Must Re-Assess Relationship PAGEREF _Toc22157725 \h 65Ukraine--Neg PAGEREF _Toc22157726 \h 67Arms Sales Minimize Conflict PAGEREF _Toc22157727 \h 68Arms Sales Minimize Casualty Rates PAGEREF _Toc22157728 \h 69Arms Sales Deter Russia PAGEREF _Toc22157729 \h 70Arms Sales Key to Tactics PAGEREF _Toc22157730 \h 72AT-Javelin Missiles—No Escalation PAGEREF _Toc22157731 \h 74Agenda PoliticsAgenda DA Thumper This card is choose your own adventure – talks about impeachment thumping Prescription Drugs, Funding and Guns plus gives generic analysis about a weak executive not driving forward change Tovin Lapan, 10-4-2019, "As Impeachment Inquiry Takes Off, Trade Deal, Other Bills Might Be Stalled," Fortune, partisanship persistently boiling over on Capitol Hill, when Congress returned from summer recess in September, members hoped to tackle gun restrictions, escalating prescription drug prices, and a new trade agreement with Canada and Mexico. Now, with the majority of political energy on both sides of the aisle focused on either executing or combatting an impeachment inquiry, that already ambitious agenda is wobbling on shaky legs and could soon be down for the count. Congress is currently on a two-week break from Washington, D.C., for district work, and when they return Oct. 15 will have just 30 days in session remaining. The president will carry significant sway as a catalyst for moving bills along.“A lot of focus in legislating comes from presidential leadership,” said Rebecca Eissler, San Francisco State University assistant professor of political science. “When the presidency is operating smoothly, the White House can focus attention, guide, and prioritize the legislative process. This administration has not been terribly focused on legislative efforts other than the tax cuts act and the attempt to repeal Obamacare.”In late April, for example, Democrats and Republicans announced they had agreed on investing $2 trillion in infrastructure projects with more meetings to come to hash out details. Three weeks later, President Donald Trump nixed talks, apparently miffed about ongoing House investigations related to the Mueller report. “I walked into the room and I told Sen. Schumer and Speaker Pelosi, ‘I want to do infrastructure’ … but we can’t do it under these circumstances,” he said during a Rose Garden press briefing in late May.Democrats have indicated they are out to prove they can legislate and investigate simultaneously, while Republicans are painting impeachment as an unnecessary distraction from progress on key policies. Mitch McConnell and Kevin McCarthy, the Senate majority leader and House minority leader, respectively, co-authored an op-ed published in the Wall Street Journal attacking House Democrats for using the trade pact with Mexico and Canada as a “political football” and being “more interested in picking fights with the White House than clinching bipartisan victories for America.”If the 116th Congress closes the year without a legislative feather in its cap, little is likely to be accomplished prior to 2021. Come January, electioneering will kick into high gear, limiting the chances for a compromise that could hand one side a win in the eyes of the electorate. “It’s not so much Congress is incapable of doing two things at once, but the environment for it is not there,” said Eric Schickler, co-director of the Institute of Governmental Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. “There are significant gaps between the two sides on the major issues, and there’s no track record in the last couple years of closing those types of deals … What’s different now is the intensity of partisanship is so much stronger.”Here’s what to watch out for in Congress during the final quarter of 2019.Federal FundingOutside of marquee items like prescription drug prices and the trade accord, Congress still has to agree on a federal spending bill for fiscal year 2020.In September, they kicked the hard decisions, such as money for Trump’s border wall, down the road to Nov. 21 with a stopgap measure.Even though there was agreement over the summer on suspending the debt limit until after the 2020 election and some other budget generalities, many points of contention remain. United States-Mexico-Canada AgreementIf any major legislation emerges from the partisan quagmire it will most likely be the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), most pundits agree. All sides support a deal, but Democrats are working on a series of changes they would like to see before a full vote, including greater environmental and labor protections. At an Oct. 2 press conference, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the impeachment inquiry and passing bills like the USMCA “have nothing to do with each other.” “The president has said he wants this U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement to go forward, and we are waiting on the language on enforceability. Does it mean he can't do that? That's really up to him,” she said.U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said work was being done on the Democrats concerns, and he was still confident the USMCA would come up for a vote and pass, adding that “if it did not pass it would be a catastrophe for our economy.”Prescription Drug PricesTrump has spoken a great deal about controlling the price of prescription drugs, and House Democrat aides are rumored to be at work on their own prescription drug plan that would allow the federal government to negotiate prices with pharmaceutical companies. The Senate is a different story, however, where a bipartisan bill introduced by Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) earlier this year gained little traction with other Senate Republicans. It is worth noting the McConnell/McCarthy op-ed homed in on the trade deal above all other potential legislation, never mentioning drug pricing—a bipartisan issue among voters but not one many GOP senators are eager to approach. Trump, for his part, suggested in Oct. 3 remarks during the roll out of an executive order on Medicare that lobbyists from pharmaceutical companies and other special interests were influencing the impeachment inquiry."I would be very surprised if the hoax didn't come a little bit from the people that we're taking on," he said referring to the impeachment probe. "I wouldn't be surprised if it was from some of these industries that we take on, like pharma."Gun RestrictionsEven with momentum for new regulations on firearms coming into the fall session after a series of summer mass shootings, agreement between the House, Senate, and White House was a long shot.The House has passed a bill expanding federal background checks that also encourages states to create “red flag” laws permitting police to temporarily seize weapons from those judged to pose a threat. McConnell has said he is reluctant to bring any gun bills to the Senate floor that do not have the explicit support of the president. Trump has vacillated on which specific policies he would back, most recently suggesting he favors some version of red-flag laws rather than enhanced background checks. It is still possible the White House will release its own proposal to prompt the Senate to take up the issue. Impeachment = Re-entrenchmentGridlock, especially if impeachment proceedings fizzle out, could benefit Republicans if they can paint Democrats as obstructionists who will resort to anything to grind government to a halt. Meanwhile, Democrats express a desire to move legislation forward on several issues but may be ultimately unwilling to hand any perceived victory to the White House. Freshmen Democrats, who ran midterm platforms of resisting Trump as well as bringing home concrete benefits for their constituencies, may push harder for some true legislative victories to campaign on in 2020, Eissler said. Still, most political observers point out, even prior to impeachment, the historically high levels of partisanship made any major legislative accomplishments doubtful. “During the Clinton reelection period in ‘96 you had a divided government and some pretty heated battles, but the House Republicans and Clinton agreed to a series of deals that helped House Republicans have something to run on and helped Clinton get reelected,” Schickler said. “It doesn’t seem likely that dynamic is going to show up here.”Election DA ThumpersRussia decides our elections – not votersWeiner 9/26 Rachel Weiner, 9-26-2019, "U.S. attorney warns of possible Russian interference in 2020 elections," U.S. attorney whose office investigated interference in the 2018 midterm elections said Thursday he is certain Russia will try to meddle in the upcoming presidential race in similar ways to the past. “They’re going to do the same thing,” G. Zachary Terwilliger said Thursday afternoon at an event at George Mason University’s National Security Institute. “They’re going to do it. In an open setting like this there’s not a lot I can get into, but I think it wouldn’t be irresponsible for me to say they’re definitely going to try.” Cabinet members and leaders on Capitol Hill have issued similar warnings. Testifying Thursday about the whistleblower allegation that President Trump pushed Ukraine to interfere in the 2020 election, acting director of national intelligence Joseph Maguire called election security his “most fundamental priority.” Terwilliger said he had heard from an administration official that “their big concern is deepfakes,” or doctored images and videos. But he said he was also worried about the “actual physical infrastructure” of election machines, while cautioning that the issue was outside his purview. With the “complete decline of ISIS and the caliphate,” Terwilliger said his office is “focused a lot more on state-sponsored cyberattacks.” His office charged a Russian accountant with involvement in funding disinformation campaigns in 2018. Though Terwilliger said it’s “unlikely” she will ever be extradited, he argued that “we had to tell people this was happening.” If his office were to have a similar case in the run-up to the next election, he said he would “push .?.?. to get that information to the public.” Terwilliger declined to say he believed Russia would again be intervening on Trump’s behalf, insisting it was too early to say “if they’ve calculated who would be a better president for their interests.” He also suggested that some of the anger directed at his office for prosecuting Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, as well as trying to compel Chelsea Manning to testify before a grand jury, was sparked by Russia.*Deep fakes, propaganda and astroturfing oh my Fazzini 10/2 Kate Fazzini, 10-02-2019, “Trolls will use fake videos and other new tricks to try to sway the 2020 election, warns Alphabet researcher,” CNBC, There’s a race to “inoculate” consumers against false and inflammatory content ahead of the 2020 elections, according to the head of R&D for an Alphabet subsidiary that monitors online disinformation. But two trends are going to be particularly hard to stop: “deepfake” videos, which are videos altered to show speakers saying inflammatory things, and propagandists using real videos out of context. Yasmin Green is the director of research and development at Jigsaw, an Alphabet subsidiary created to monitor abuse, harassment and disinformation online. She was speaking on a panel of experts in disinformation at the Aspen Institute Cyber Summit in New York on Wednesday. Election influence is likely to be pushed through different channels, on different websites and using different techniques than in 2016, Green said. Social media companies and researchers such as those at Jigsaw are working both to pinpoint these new or expanded techniques and find “interventions” for them that protect free speech but alert consumers about the authenticity of what they’re consuming. “I’m not as worried about faked accounts at this time,” Green said, referring to the popular fake social media accounts that were started sometimes years in advance of the 2016 election on Twitter and Facebook and were used to sow discord among voters. Social media companies are doing a better job of removing those accounts, and would-be trolls are now having to “start from scratch.” “I do commend Facebook, and I see them doing a lot,” she said. Instead, consumers should expect trolls to use a far wider variety of platforms in the upcoming elections, especially companies that don’t have a strong advertising business like the social media giants do. ‘Inoculating’ users Jigsaw and other researchers have been trying out different methods of warning consumers about altered, fake or false content before they view it, she said. Results of these interventions have been mixed. In one study, researchers showed a group of participants a “deepfake” video featuring a comedy routine by actor Walter Matthau that had been altered to feature the face of former President Richard Nixon. The researchers told all viewers that the video was fake. WATCH NOW VIDEO12:56 The rise of deepfakes and how Facebook, Twitter and Google work to stop them Even after being told, only around one-third of the participants correctly identified it as fake. Further, 17% of participants answered “yes” to the question, “Were you familiar with Richard Nixon’s background in comedy?” Nixon did not have a background in comedy. Green described another recent research project conducted by Jigsaw, in which a group of people was told how disinformation campaigns and propaganda work, then participants were shown a propaganda video. For a second group, researchers showed participants the propaganda video first and then later described how disinformation and propaganda work. The participants who learned about disinformation first were far less likely to believe the videos, she said, suggesting that it’s possible to inoculate users against fakes. Real videos, false pretenses Green also cited the story of Brooklyn civil rights activist and martial arts instructor Omowale Adewale as an example to consider in advance of the elections. In that incident, Adewale was approached by a group that said it was involved in charitable initiatives to support African-American civil rights issues and it wanted to provide free self-defense courses in the community. The organization paid Adewale for providing the free training and sent him “swag,” including logo t-shirts that he could wear in videos, Green said. “For him, it felt very much in line with his social justice and activism,” she said. But promised meetings about the goals for the organization didn’t materialize. Eventually, Adewale learned the group was a Russian front organization and it had been using the real videos out of context to create propaganda. Adewale’s case has Green particularly concerned about “Americans either knowingly or unknowingly [creating] real videos that are out of context and used to manipulate people at the other end.” Another panelist, reporter Nina Jankowicz, also said she worried about how the new, widespread knowledge of how foreign influence campaigns work will crop up domestically in the next election. Jankowicz pointed to an “astroturfing” technique — using fake online profiles — that was used by a Senate candidate in Massachusetts, which she reported on for Buzzfeed. This displayed a concerning trend, she said, of even American candidates and groups deploying tactics similar to those used by foreign influence campaigners in 2016. “The Russian playbook has been split wide open not only for other foreign actors but also domestic actors,” Jankowicz said.*Impeachment changes the election for better or worse Cillizza 9/29 Analysis By Chris Cillizza, Cnn Editor-At-Large, 9-29-2019, "How the impeachment battle changes everything for 2020," CNN, . The "I" word, presidential edition: Impeachment is now a go. The decision by House Democrats to launch a formal impeachment inquiry will fundamentally reshape the ways in which Washington works (and doesn't) over the coming months and put a free radical of massive proportions into the 2020 presidential race. What's fascinating about the politics here is how much is unknown and unpredictable. Yes, we know that that House Democrats will focus on the allegations that Trump abused his office for personal gain in his interactions with the Ukrainian president. And yes, we know that Trump will call the whole thing a hoax and a witch hunt and a thousand other things designed to lessen its impact. What we don't know is, how will the public react to all of this? Before the Ukraine story broke, clear majorities of the country opposed congressional attempts to impeach Trump. Early polling in the wake of the Ukraine story suggest that number is moving somewhat, with more people now saying they believe an impeachment inquiry is justified. But does that impeachment bump stay as the long work of further investigation by Congress into Trump's activity in Ukraine continues? Or does the six-headed Congressional investigation turn up information that makes this all look even worse for Trump? Do any Republicans of consequence -- long-serving members or influential behind the scenes players -- come out and say "Yes, I think this President has done wrong"? All of these questions are impossible to answer from where we sit today. But with impeachment activities -- and votes -- likely to extend well into the fall and maybe even bleed into the election year, what happens in these next few months will have a profound impact on the political landscape on which the 2020 election will be fought and decided.*It’s too soon to tell – changes in Eligible Voting Population analysis proves Wilson 9/11 Chris Wilson, 9-11-2019, "The America That Votes in 2020 Will Look Radically Different From 2016," Time, gaming out possible 2020 election outcomes, particularly in states where there was a razor-thin margin of victory last time around, one tends to start with how a growth or decline in the turnout of various demographic groups could shift the scale given their partisan leanings. But equally important is the fact that four years can make a tremendous difference in the proportions of those demographics in any given state, as people relocate and new potential voters age into eligibility for the first time. Indeed, a TIME analysis of the voting-eligible population (VEP) from the Census Bureau’s annual American Community Survey found that the demographics of many states crucial to both parties’ odds of victory in 2020 are evolving rapidly. This churn among eligible voters — many of whom, to be fair, are not yet registered — will be especially critical to the campaigns next year because, more than a year out, there remains a wide variety of paths to victory for both parties. As TIME’s Brian Bennett noted this week: To win, Trump probably needs to come up with a different set of states than those that garnered 304 electoral college votes and carried him to the White House: public polls show his disapproval ratings swamp his approval numbers by at least 9 percentage points in his 2016 blue-to-red trifecta of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. For our purposes, the voting-eligible population is defined as citizens, either native-born or naturalized, who will be at least 18 years old on Election Day and are not institutionalized. While the United States Election Project estimates this eligible population more precisely, accounting for modifiers such as different state laws on whether convicted felons can vote, our state-by-state figures match its numbers closely and allowed us to study this population in detail. The data was gathered from IPUMS USA, where one can freely download unit-level, weighted Census data for precise analysis of a trove of variables, like whether a person has recently moved or what language they speak at home. While the most recent data is from 2017, even the one-year developments since 2016 show a significant change in the electorate between citizens born before the fall of 1998, who were largely eligible to vote in 2016, versus those born before 2002 and largely eligible next year. (Sorry, those of you with Dec. 2002 birthdays.) Every state with a sizable Hispanic population, for example, will see a small but significant growth in the percentage of eligible voters in that demographic. In Texas, which will host the third Democratic debate this week, we estimate that about 5,800,000 Hispanics will be eligible to vote in 2020 compared to 5,200,000 in 2016. That’s a nearly 2 percentage point increase when accounting for overall population growth. (The 2016 figure closely matches the Census’ flat tables if one is willing to do a small amount of addition.) This may not seem like a tremendous figure, but given that the Texas Democratic Party just released an ambitious plan to turn the state blue next year, 600,000 new voters in a left-leaning demographic is far from negligible. Of course, this across-the-board growth largely comes from individuals who have recently aged into the voting population — an age group that is historically the least likely to vote. But there is a second factor, one that’s more difficult to cast forward to 2020 but introduces even more uncertainty: our calculations show that in 2017 alone, 2.4 percent of eligible voters moved to a different state, which is close to national figures for all residents. That’s a fairly consistent figure from year to year, but it is not equally distributed in terms of where people leave and where they end up. In North Carolina, for example — a state where Democrats would love to repeat Barack Obama’s 2008 victory — an average of about 234,000 new potential voters have moved into the state each year since 2010, while 188,000 have departed. The incoming population is significantly more educated — 32% have at least a Bachelor’s degree — compared to the state’s overall education levels (again, just when considering the 2020 voting-eligible population.) This is good news for Democrats, given that a variety of surveys and polls indicate that voters with a college education break in their favor by a 21-point spread, according to a 2018 Pew Research Center study. A high-stakes special election this week in North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District, which Trump carried by 12 percentage points, went to the Republican candidate by 2 points. We’ll be unpacking these migration and eligibility trends in more detail, particularly after the Census Bureau releases its 2018 figures later this month, which will be available for this level of microanalysis by the end of the year. Whether a state imports or exports more voters, and what we can surmise about those transients — plus, what we know about the newly-minted young voters — could very well be a deciding factor in the 2020 election. We all know a Democrat is theoretically capable of far outpacing Trump in the popular vote. Whether he or she can win the election itself will have a great deal to do with where America’s voters live a year from now.Turkey Blockage ThumpsCongress will block and sanction sales to Turkey, thumpsAlan Fram, 10-9-2019, "Bipartisan Senate Bill Would Halt Arms Sales to Turkey," NBC Southern California, bipartisan Senate bill would halt U.S. military assistance to NATO ally Turkey and clamp sanctions on the U.S. assets of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan because of his country's invasion Wednesday of northern Syria. The measure effectively rebukes President Donald Trump's abrupt decision to pull U.S. troops from the region. Soon after their withdrawal, Erdogan commenced air and ground assaults on Syrian Kurdish fighters who've been helping the U.S. battle Islamic State extremists there, which numerous lawmakers and others had warned would happen. The measure would also impose sanctions on foreign military sales to Turkey, an outline of the legislation said. It would take effect immediately, and its restrictions would be lifted only when the Trump administration certifies that Turkey has ceased its operations and withdrawn its forces from the region. Trump told reporters at the White House that he agreed with sanctions but seemed to condition that on Turkey's actions inside Syria.USMCA DA Thumpers USMCA won’t pass before Thanksgiving – lack of labor union approval Pramuk 10/9 Jacob Pramuk, 10-09-2019, “AFL-CIO chief Richard Trumka says Trump’s USMCA deal ‘would be defeated’ if House votes before Thanksgiving,” CNBC, top labor leader has cast doubts on the House quickly approving President Donald Trump’s replacement for the North American Free Trade Agreement. In an interview with The Washington Post published Wednesday, AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said it would be a “colossal mistake” for the Democratic-held chamber to vote on ratifying the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement soon. The head of the key labor group, which represents more than 12 million active and retired members across a range of industries, added that the agreement “would be defeated” if the House voted before Thanksgiving. Trumka’s comments underscore the sustained resistance to USMCA from labor groups even as the White House and key business organizations push for the deal’s swift approval. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and top Democratic negotiators have said they want to resolve concerns about the deal harming American workers or the environment before they ratify it. The labor leader’s remarks undermine a key claim from the president as he makes his case for the deal: that major labor unions back USMCA. Spokespeople for Pelosi and the White House did not immediately respond to requests to comment on Trumka’s remarks. Trump sees USMCA ratification as a top political and economic priority ahead of the 2020 election. During his 2016 campaign, the president promised to overhaul U.S. trade relationships to stop companies from moving manufacturing jobs out of the country. Last month, White House trade advisor Peter Navarro said he saw a “100%” chance the House approved USMCA by the end of the year. Companies reliant on trade with America’s northern and southern neighbors have also pushed for approval of the deal. Myron Brilliant, executive vice president of the influential U.S. Chamber of Commerce, told Bloomberg last month that “we’re hopeful [USMCA] will be passed later this fall, I think before Thanksgiving.” Canada was the largest export market for American goods last year, followed by Mexico. Last week, Pelosi told reporters that Democrats are “on a path to yes” on the trade deal. She added that her caucus has not yet had its concerns about enforcing the agreement assuaged. They worry USMCA will not go far enough to stop companies from moving to Mexico in order to hire workers for lower wages than in the U.S. “We want to be sure that as we go forward, we are strengthening America’s working families and our farmers who are very affected by this,” she said.Concerns over Mexico labor laws is also discouraging Dems from approving the deal Esposito 10/8 Anthony Esposito, 10-8-2019, "U.S. Democrats say Mexico must do more on labor after trip to speed up trade deal," U.S., CITY/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The leader of a U.S. congressional delegation to Mexico said on Tuesday that Mexico must take more concrete steps to implement its labor reform, after a trip aimed at speeding up ratification of the new North American free trade deal. FILE PHOTO: Mexico's President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador attends a news conference at the National Palace in Mexico City, Mexico August 30, 2019. REUTERS/Henry Romero Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador has vowed union freedoms, higher wages and other labor rights in his bid to assuage the concerns of U.S. congressional Democrats, who hold the key to ratifying the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA). But as he concluded his visit to Mexico, Richard E. Neal, who leads the Ways and Means Committee in the United States’ lower house of Congress, suggested Democrats were still not satisfied. “Our meeting with President Lopez Obrador shed further light on the Mexican government’s desire and intentions to carry out its labor justice reform, but the United States needs to see those assurances put into action,” Neal said in a statement. It was unclear precisely what steps Neal would like to see. During its time in Mexico, the U.S. delegation zeroed in on the labor reform passed by Lopez Obrador’s left-leaning government last year, examining the funding set aside to implement the law, according to the statement. The USMCA, which would replace the $1 trillion North American Free Trade Agreement, risks getting bogged down in the 2020 U.S. presidential election race if U.S. lawmakers do not ratify it soon. The deal was negotiated last year after U.S. President Donald Trump said the existing North American Free Trade Agreement was unfavorable to U.S workers and businesses. Lopez Obrador called for ratification as soon as possible in his morning news conference ahead of the meeting and pledged to enforce the labor reform. “The reform is so that ... workers can freely choose their representatives, and so there is union democracy and better wages,” he said. After the meeting Jesus Seade, Mexico’s deputy foreign minister for North America, said he expected House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to move ahead with the USMCA by early November. Seade has been leading negotiations with U.S. officials seeking to placate Democratic concerns about enforcement in the new deal. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and Representative Kevin Brady, the top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee, urged Democrats to move quickly. “With election year politics upon us, time isn’t on our side. But the window of opportunity hasn’t closed yet. Democrats must act now,” they said in a joint statement. Mexico’s Congress has already approved the deal. It also needs ratification from Canadian lawmakers. Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard told reporters the next three weeks would be a “decisive phase” for the pact, and that officials would send U.S. lawmakers a document next week detailing the issues discussed on Tuesday, including Mexico’s labor reform. An impeachment inquiry into Trump, which some fear could further delay passage of the USMCA, was not discussed with the delegation, Seade said. Seade has previously taken the view that the inquiry should in fact spur lawmakers to act on USMCA, and Pelosi has said it should not obstruct the deal. U.S. trade groups on Tuesday pressed lawmakers to approve the deal and not allow the inquiry to postpone it. Ann Wilson, chief lobbyist for the Motor & Equipment Manufacturers Association, said the industry had delayed key investments given continued uncertainty a year after the agreement was signed by the three countries’ leaders. “We don’t have time to waste. We need to get it done,” she said. Democrats are seeking better mechanisms in the trade agreement to ensure enforcement of labor and environmental provisions. One measure under consideration is providing aid to Mexico to beef up enforcement of labor rules. U.S. Congressman Bill Pascrell, another member of the delegation to Mexico, suggested all sides were getting closer to an agreement. “We’ve all got to get our act together, and we’re moving, we’re making progress,” he told Reuters after the meeting with Lopez Obrador.ChinaUQ-China Sales IncreasingChinese sales are increasing now (especially drones!), their low prices and lax regulations are a hit around the world.Artie Villasanta, 9-27-2019, "China Boosting Arms Sales To World," Business Times, will soon replace Russia as one of the world's top three arms exporting countries while increasing its weapons exports to the rest of the world outside Asia. China exports more weapons to more countries (53) than any arms exporter and is the world's leading exporter of armed aerial drones. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the Sweden-based institute dedicated to research into conflict, armaments, arms control and disarmament, reported that China has become one of the world's largest arms exporters. China ranks fifth in the list that includes the United States, Russia, France, and Germany in that order. These five countries accounted for some 75 percent of the total volume of arms exported since 2014. SIPRI has exported 16.2 billion units of ammunition (bullets, rockets, artillery shells, missiles) over the past 12 years, according to CNBC. Pakistan has been the top buyer of Chinese arms since 2007. It bought 6.57 billion units of ammunition over the past 11 years. Bangladesh came in second with purchases of 1.99 billion units while Myanmar bought 1.28 billion units. All these countries share a border with China and are members of China's Belt and Road Initiative. Sales to these three countries rose to new heights in 2018. Pakistan bought 448 million units; Myanmar 105 million units and Bangladesh, 75 million units, said SIPRI. The "loose restrictions" in the developing world makes China "well-positioned to become one of the world's largest arms exporters," according to Timothy Heath, senior international defense researcher at the RAND Corporation, a leading U.S. defense think-tank. Heath also argues Russia's once-formidable arms industry is in decline due to the failing Russian economy and the painful economic sanctions imposed by the West. "As Chinese weapons and equipment improve in quality and Russia's defense industry continues to atrophy, Chinese manufacturers will likely displace Russian defense industries in many key markets." Chinese arms exports have risen while Russian exports have fallen over the last five years. Another reason for the popularity of Chinese weapons is their very low price compared to American and European arms.China’s low prices and no strings attached policies will elevate them above RussiaArtie Villasanta, 9-27-2019, "China Boosting Arms Sales To World," Business Times, is positioned as the lower-cost alternative for advanced weapon systems, and the main competitor to Russian hardware, said Roy Kamphausen, president of Seattle-based non-profit research institution, The National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR). China also has a "no strings attached" arms sales policy similar to Russia's. This intense competition for dollars is adding friction to the otherwise smooth relationship between Moscow and Beijing.Chinese arms exports increasing nowGrace Shao, 9-26-2019, “China, the world’s second largest defense spender, becomes a major arms exporter,” CNBC, has not only become a major defense spender, but increasingly analysts say China is also turning into a top arms exporter. Over the past five years, China was one of the largest exporters along with the United States, Russia, France and Germany and China, according to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) published in March. Those nations accounted for three-quarters of the total volume of arms exported, the data showed. China has exported 16.2 billion units of ammunition — mostly to countries in Asia, the Middle East and Africa — over the past 12 years, according to SIPRI data. Beijing is set to commemorate the 70th anniversary of Communist China on Oct. 1. The country did not open up its economy until 40 years ago and since then quickly?became the world’s second largest.China’s One belt one road policy guarantees their ascent in the global arms marketGrace Shao, 9-26-2019, “China, the world’s second largest defense spender, becomes a major arms exporter,” CNBC, “potential market” and “loose restrictions” in the developing world may make China “well positioned to become one of the world’s largest arms exporters,” said Timothy Heath, senior international defense researcher at California-based policy think tank RAND Corporation. Since 2007, China’s top arms export countries by total units are Pakistan (6.57 billion units), Bangladesh (1.99 billion units) and Myanmar (1.28 billion units), according to SIPRI. All three countries are part of China’s global development strategy — the Belt and Road Initiative. In 2018 alone, China sold Bangladesh 75 million units, Myanmar 105 million units and 448 million units to Pakistan, according to SIPRI’s calculations. “China is likely to continue expanding its arms exports, especially to partner (Belt and Road) countries... Arms exports provides an efficient, lower cost way for China to both improve security in countries featuring major Chinese investments and to minimize spending and commitments by the PLA,” Heath explained. To put things into perspective, Chinese conventional weapons make up only 3% of the arms import market in North and South America, said Roy Kamphausen, president of Seattle-based non-profit research institution, The National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR). He said that market is dominated by the U.S. (19%), Russia (14%), and Germany (12%).UQ—China Rise in Latin America NowChina’s arms sales are increasing throughout Latin America, threats to the US are inevitableC. Todd Lopez, 10-10-2019, "SOUTHCOM Commander: Foreign Powers Pose Security Concerns," Dialogo Americas, has legitimate economic interests in the region, Adm. Faller said, but it also is involved heavily in the information space, including in the information technology, cyber and space realms. "Their arms sales have grown," he said. "They have deployed some assets — that's ticked up consistently in the last couple of years. They are also increasing their military engagement." He said the Chinese have created Spanish-language schools and training centers and in addition to military sales, have been giving hardware to various nations. There is significant evidence of investment in Chinese and Russian weapons systems in SOUTHCOM’s area of responsibility, Adm. Faller said. "Russian weapons systems sales [are] in the billions, and China's [are] increasing. China is also gifting a lot of military hardware to [...] partners. The extent to which it undermines partnerships with the U.S. [and] contributes to instability [...] is a concern for the security of the U.S." Dozens of Chinese infrastructure projects in South America are contributing to instability, Adm. Faller said, noting that China is working on 56 port deals in the region. Some of those deals are locked up with onerous leasing agreements, he said, and some of those agreements have left host nations with little access to and little control over what the Chinese have built. In one partner nation, he said, a Chinese-built road has a 99-year lease in which the Chinese have land rights on both sides. “Thousands of acres, and they have the ability to control the tolls on that road for 99 years," the admiral said. “That's the price you get for having the Chinese come in and build a road. We've been watching that closely, and it has our attention and has contributed to a sense of urgency I feel about the overall security.”U-US-China Trade dealThe US and China reached the first part of a trade deal – this solves escalation and is a timeframe deficit to their impacts Lynch and Siegel, 10-11-2019 (David, Rachel, Yale graduates – David has a MA in international relations, and Rachel has a BA in history, "Trump announces partial trade deal with China, lifting hopes that tensions could ease," Washington Post, ) President Trump said Friday that the U.S. and China have reached a limited trade deal, marking the first tangible achievement in the 18-month trade war between the world’s two largest economies. Speaking in the Oval Office during a meeting with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He, the president said negotiators had reached a “substantial phase one” agreement though details remained to be written down. As part of the partial agreement, the White House agreed not to proceed with plans to increase tariffs on $250 billion in Chinese goods next week to 30 percent from 25 percent. The partial accord, involving major Chinese purchases of U.S. farm products and U.S. tariff concessions, is intended to pave the way for a more complete bargain between Washington and Beijing. Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping could meet to finalize such an agreement in Chile at an Asian-Pacific leaders summit in mid-November. “Both presidents have to own this thing,” said Craig Allen, president of the U.S.-China Business Council. News of a potential deal, which capped two days of talks in Washington, had cheered Wall Street earlier on Friday. Even before the president spoke, the Dow Jones industrial average was up more than 480 points or 1.8 percent amid hints that a partial accord was imminent. But the lack of specificity in Trump’s announcement, and his comment that the partial deal could still take weeks to iron out, cooled some of that optimism. And the Dow closed up slightly more than 300 points on the day. “This deal temporarily puts off any further escalation of tensions but does not resolve any of the major underlying sources of frictions between the two countries or mitigate uncertainty about the future of the bilateral economic relationship,” said Eswar Prasad, former head of the International Monetary Fund’s China unit.US-China reached the first phase of a trade deal – that solves econGunjan Banerji, 10-11-2019, ("Stocks Climb on U.S.-China Trade Talk Progress," WSJ, ) U.S. stocks surged Friday as investors cheered progress on trade negotiations between the U.S. and China, helping the S&P 500 break a three-week losing streak. President Trump said just before the closing bell that the two countries reached a “very substantial Phase One deal” and agreed not to implement tariffs set to go into effect next week. China, meanwhile, said it would increase purchases of U.S. agricultural products. Friday’s talks elicited optimism among investors and helped pull the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average within 2% of their July records. Trade tensions have been a key driver of market volatility this year as investors have reacted to fresh tariffs between the two countries--and tweets from President Trump on the state of the talks. In a sign of how eager investors have been for a resolution on trade, anticipation of a deal was enough to lure some investors back into stocks and push them out of traditionally safer bets like gold, the Japanese yen and Treasurys. “This has been an irritant, I would say, for investors,” said John Carey, a portfolio manager at Amundi Pioneer Asset Management. A final deal “would ease at least one source of worry.” The Dow industrials closed up 319.92 points, or 1.2%, to 26816.59. The index rose as much as 517 points earlier in the session but pared some of those gains as traders learned that two pressure points remained unresolved: a final decision on a new round of tariffs set for December and policies around Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies Co. The S&P 500 surged 32.14 points, or 1.1%, to 2970.27. The rally was broad-based, with eight of the S&P 500’s 11 sectors climbing. Both the Dow and S&P 500 averted a fourth straight week of losses. The Nasdaq Composite added 106.26 points, or 1.3%, to 8057.04. Shares of industrials companies were among the biggest gainers. Caterpillar, which has been a bellwether stock for trade, recorded its biggest jump since January, adding $5.71, or 4.7%, to $128.40. Apple shares rose $6.12, or 2.7%, to $236.21, a fresh record. Overseas, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 2.3% and the Shanghai Composite gained 0.9%. “Actions speak louder than words,” said David Madden, an analyst at CMC Markets U.K. “At the end of the day, if the two sides were not interested in having some progress, they wouldn’t even be meeting today.” The prospect of a trade deal also helped calm fears of a recession that had simmered in recent months. U.S. consumer sentiment rose in early October, according to a University of Michigan survey released Friday. Investors have been closely watching for signs that lackluster manufacturing data around the world will spill over to the consumer, which has been a source of strength in the U.S. economy. The recent trade deal solves relationsLeonard, Mohsin, Wingrove, Donnan, 10-11-2019 (Jenny, Saleha, Shawn, Josh "U.S., China Reach Substantial ‘Phase One’ Trade Deal, Trump Says," Bloomberg, ) The U.S. and China agreed on the outlines of a partial trade accord Friday that President Donald Trump said he and his counterpart Xi Jinping could sign as soon as next month. As part of the deal, China would significantly step up purchases of U.S. agricultural commodities, agree to certain intellectual-property measures and concessions related to financial services and currency, Trump said Friday at the White House. In exchange, the U.S. will delay a tariff increase due next week as the deal is finalized, though new levies scheduled for December haven’t yet been called off. The agreement marks the largest breakthrough in the 18-month trade war that has hurt the economies of both nations. Importantly, Trump said the deal was the first phase of a broader agreement. The president indicated he could sign a deal with Xi at an upcoming November summit in Chile. While the limited agreement may resolve some short-term issues, several of the thorniest disputes remain outstanding. U.S. goals in the trade war center around accusations of intellectual-property theft, forced technology transfer and complaints about Chinese industrial subsidies.US-China trade deal delays tariffs and solves current tensions – this opens the door to future deals and advancement on the trade war BBC News, 10-11-2019, "US postpones next tariff hike after China trade talks," President Donald Trump said negotiators had reached a "phase one deal" that would include increased agricultural purchases and address financial services and technology theft. China's top negotiator Liu He also said he was "happy" with the progress. The US was due to raise tariffs on some Chinese goods to 30% next week. US share markets, which had risen on reports of a deal, closed higher, but shed some gains in the final minutes of trade as it became clear any agreement was relatively limited. "We've come to a deal, pretty much, subject to getting it written," Mr Trump said, adding that negotiators would begin discussing additional phases as soon as this set of agreements is put to paper. Mr Trump said he might sign the deal alongside Chinese President Xi Jinping at a United Nations summit in Chile in December. The US has claimed progress in the past on similar issues, such as increased agricultural purchases and foreign exchange and currency, without the dispute being resolved.U--Relations downTrade talks don’t address big issues like tech transfers – tariffs are also increasing Churchill, 10-11-2019 (Owen covers US-China relations, trade, and wider issues concerning China's global presence. A co-founder of the Shanghai-based news outlet Sixth Tone, he is an alumnus of London's School of Oriental and African Studies and Fudan University in Shanghai. "US and China make no progress in deputy-level trade talks: sources," South China Morning Post, ) Deputy-level trade talks between the US and China aimed at laying the groundwork for high-level negotiations later this week failed to yield any progress on critical issues, according to two sources with knowledge of the meetings. During the discussions on Monday and Tuesday in Washington, the Chinese refused to talk about forced technology transfers, one source said, which is a core US grievance regarding China’s economic policies. Speaking on condition of anonymity, the person said that talks had also skirted the issue of state subsidies, which the Trump administration says give Chinese companies an unfair advantage over international competitors. Deputy-level negotiators, led on the Chinese side by vice-minister for finance Liao Min, spent the time focusing on only two areas: agricultural purchases and intellectual property protection. “They have made no progress,” said another source familiar with the talks, adding that the Chinese side had not made headway in persuading US negotiators to consider a freeze on tariff increases, a main priority for Beijing. Tariffs on US$250 billion of Chinese goods are set to increase from 25 to 30 per cent on Tuesday, while fresh duties of 15 per cent on US$160 billion of largely consumer products will go into effect on December 15.I/L--Trade K/T Us-ChinaSolving the trade war is key to broader US-China relations – it’s the root cause of other issues Mauldin, 10-11-2019, (William, reporter at The Wall Street Journal, writing about international economic topics ranging from trade policy to climate change and sanctions "Trade Talks Resume at Pivotal Moment in U.S.-China Relations ," WSJ, )WASHINGTON—Senior U.S. and Chinese officials will square off for trade talks Thursday at a pivotal moment in the countries’ relationship, with higher tariffs looming if negotiators fail to break a five-month stalemate. The backdrop for the talks has become more complicated. What started as a U.S. assault on Chinese trading practices has become muddied by other issues, from China’s repression of its Muslim minorities to the possible impeachment of President Trump. “I don’t have high expectations for these talks,” said Sen. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican who has urged a tough approach to Beijing. “What we’re going through here is not just a trade dispute but a much-needed rebalancing in our relationship.” U.S. business leaders are worried about the long-term implications of an unending trade war. Large companies fear losing access to China, the world’s largest consumer market, while small businesses in particular are chafing under 25% U.S. tariffs on many Chinese imports. “These tariffs have been a major, major challenge for us,” said Deepa Gandhi, chief operating officer of the New York-based handbag company Dagne Dover. “It would be great if we could focus on growing and building our business instead of mitigating tariffs.” Wall Street is on edge, with markets moving on news that could affect trade talks, such as the U.S. blacklisting this week of Chinese companies and entities linked to the Muslim crackdown. There are troubling economic signs. An index of U.S. manufacturing showed the lowest reading in more than 10 years for September. Few believe the U.S. and China will agree to a comprehensive trade accord this week. “It’s unrealistic to think we’re going to solve all the issues in one go—we have too many issues,” said Craig Allen, president of the U.S.-China Business Council. Yet Mr. Allen is hopeful for a “cessation of hostilities,” including halting new U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods—which are paid by U.S. importers and consumers—and the start of serious negotiations toward an accord. Most Democrats back a tough approach to China, but many have criticized Mr. Trump’s tactics and reliance on tariffs. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D., Wash.) said it is “clear from the latest report on U.S. manufacturing that the tariff-first approach on trade is hurting the United States.”China is RevisionistChina is selective revisionistBonnie Glaser, 4-5-2019, "China as a Selective Revisionist Power in the International Order," Yusof Ishak Institute, (Bonnie S. Glaser is Senior Adviser for Asia and Director of the China Power Project at Center for Strategic & International Studies, Washington DC, where she works on issues related to Asia-Pacific security with a focus on Chinese foreign and security policy. Khairulanwar Zaini is Research Associate at the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute.), ISSUE: 2019 No. 21 ISSN 2335-6677 RESEARCHERS AT ISEAS – YUSOF ISHAK INSTITUTE ANALYSE CURRENT EVENTS Singapore | 5 April 2019 China as a Selective Revisionist Power in the International Order Report of a seminar presentation by Bonnie Glaser at the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute in January 2019, compiled by Khairulanwar Zaini* EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ? The Trump Administration has identified China as a revisionist power in its National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy. However, it is important to assess whether China fits the traditional descriptions of a ‘revisionist’ power. ? China and the West have different understandings of the international order, particularly as it relates to the status of the U.S global alliance system and the role of values and norms. ? China seeks to change the international order both through the creation of parallel institutions as well as the pursuit of change within existing institutions. ? China is best understood as a selective revisionist power: While it accepts the notion of an international order and a rules-based system, it does not accept all the existing rules in the current system, especially those that they it regards as underwriting US hegemony. ? In general, China has accepted and become integrated into the global economic order, it has implemented some changes in the global financial order, but remains skeptical about aspects of the global political order. China also prefers incremental change in the international order, not sudden global shifts that could harm political and economic stability. * Bonnie S. Glaser is Senior Adviser for Asia and Director of the China Power Project at Center for Strategic & International Studies, Washington DC, where she works on issues related to Asia-Pacific security with a focus on Chinese foreign and security policy. Khairulanwar Zaini is Research Associate at the ISEAS – Yusof Ishak Institute. 2 ISSUE: 2019 No. 21 ISSN 2335-6677 INTRODUCTION There are increasing concerns about the ramifications of China’s rise as a global power on the existing international order, with some fearing that China would undermine or even seek to upend the post-war order that has proven conducive to the growth of the United States and its allies. The Trump Administration’s National Security Strategy identified China as one of the revisionist powers “actively competing against the United States and our allies and partners” and seeking “to shape a world antithetical to U.S. values”.1 The NSS describes how the competition manifests “across political, economic, and military arenas”, while noting the use of “technology and information” by U.S. strategic rivals “to accelerate these contests in order to shift regional balances of power in their favor”.2 More specifically, the NSS elaborates that China seeks to displace the United States in the Indo-Pacific region, expand the reaches of its state-driven economic model, and reorder the region in its favor.3 The National Defense Strategy, issued around a month after the NSS, similarly specifies that China wants … to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model—gaining veto authority over other nations’ economic, diplomatic, and security decisions.4 The categorical and powerful accusations against China contained in these signature U.S. strategic policy documents deserve to be scrutinized and unpacked. To properly understand China’s role in and impact on the international order, it is important to assess whether China fits the traditional descriptions of a ‘revisionist’ power, as well as to broach beyond the rhetoric to evaluate the actions and policies that China has actually pursued. A full accounting of Chinese foreign policy would suggest that it is best understood as a selective revisionist power: China accepts the notion of an international order and a rules-based system—it does not seek anarchy or chaos—but while they support the idea of having rules, they do not accept all the existing rules in the current system. THE INTERNATIONAL ORDER The idea of an international order is not as straightforward as some may assume. The Chinese differ from their Western counterparts in their understandings of the international order. In the Western perspective, the international order consists of three layers. The first is an institutional layer populated by organizations that were established in the aftermath of the Second World War, which includes the United Nations (UN), the Bretton Wood Sisters (i.e. the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund), as well as more recent plurilateral institutions such as the Group of Twenty (G20). Significantly for the West, supplementing this institutional layer is a second layer comprising the U.S. system of global alliances. There is also a third layer—of values and norms. Although these values and norms may not be universally shared, they are considered inextricable from the international order in the eyes of the United States and many Western countries. 3 ISSUE: 2019 No. 21 ISSN 2335-6677 However, when the Chinese speak of the international order, they do not embrace the expansive definition of the West. Rather, China distinguishes between the UN-centric order based on sovereignty and the U.S.-dominated liberal order focused on human rights and U.S. alliance structures, and emphasizes its acceptance of only the institutional layer of the UN and its affiliate organizations. China rejects the Western contention that the American alliance system, as well as its values and norms, are part of the international order. The veteran Chinese diplomat, Madame Fu Ying, neatly encapsulated China’s position in her 2017 speech, stating that: The international order which China attaches itself to is the framework centered on the United Nations and its institutions … the World Trade Organization and the World Bank. [The creation of this order] represented historical progress for humanity, by incorporating international relations into a framework of rules and putting world finance, trade, and development under universally recognized rules of governance.5 It is also important to recognize that the international order is composed of economic, political, and security sub-orders. Change in the international order can thus be effected by a change in a specific sub-order, which could occur while the other sub-orders remains relatively stable and unchanged. Briefly put, China is most effectively integrated into the international economic sub-order, but it is within the international security and political suborders that Chinese concerns and reservations arise, which leads to Chinese efforts to push for change. There are various ways to effect change in the international order., one of which is through the use military force. This is however, not a tool that China relies on today. Instead, China seeks to change the international order through the creation of parallel institutions as well as through the pursuit of change within existing institutions. CHINA’S RHETORIC ABOUT THE INTERNATIONAL ORDER Two statements by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2014 and 2017 in particular have caught the attention of American policymakers, setting off alarm bells over the extent of Chinese ambitions in the international order. In one of the earliest indications of China’s growing assertiveness, President Xi Jinping proposed a new regional security architecture during the Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia (CICA) in 2014, suggesting that It’s for the people of Asia to run the affairs of Asia, solve the problems of Asia, and uphold the security of Asia.6 This statement provoked a great deal of consternation among Obama administration officials, who sought clarification from their Chinese counterparts, since the formulation of ‘Asia for Asia’ was clearly intended to exclude the United States as a central player in the 4 ISSUE: 2019 No. 21 ISSN 2335-6677 affairs of the continent. The Obama administration eventually came to the conclusion that Xi’s comments were meant as a trial balloon—a way of testing the region’s receptiveness to Chinese efforts to curate a new security order in Asia which was not anchored by an American security presence. Moreover, other participants of CICA, such as South Korea, expressed their deep reservations about the remarks, prompting it to be dropped from the subsequent joint conference statement. On its part, China has yet to repeat such remarks or raise such a proposal again, to date. More recently, President Xi’s speech promoting the ‘Chinese model’ during the 19th Party Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in October 2017 raised similar concerns in the Trump administration. In his speech, Xi described how China’s system of socialism offers “Chinese wisdom and a Chinese approach to the problems facing mankind”. Furthermore, Xi stated that the Chinese model provides … a new option for nations who want to speed up their development while preserving their independence.7 For many observers, this seemed to indicate an unprecedented and remarkable shift in the tone of U.S.-China strategic rivalry, which had hitherto been non-ideological. Prior to this, even Chinese officials were keen to emphasize how the competition between the United States and China was unlike the global ideological clash that characterized the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. However, the idea of a ‘Chinese model’ seems to suggest that China is advancing an ideological alternative to capitalism. Some have suggested that Xi’s speech was intended to reassure a domestic audience about the achievement and durability of Chinese economic development. Indeed, in a speech to foreign political parties in December 2017, a few weeks after his remarks at the Party Congress, Xi stated that China does not intend to export its model to the world.8 However, it still remains unclear and difficult to determine China’s intentions.9 - Xi’s evolving statements on China’s role in the international order Furthermore, there has been an evolution in Xi’s rhetoric about China’s role in the international order, especially as it pertains to reforming the global governance system. In the same December 2017 speech to foreign political parties, Xi stated that China will actively take part in reforming and constructing the global governance system, and ensuring the world political and economic order develops in a more just and reasonable direction. A few months later, in a speech to the CPC’s Central Conference on Work Relating to Foreign Affairs in June 2018, he pronounced that [China] should take an active part in leading (引领) the reform of the global governance system, and build a more complete network of global partnerships.10 5 ISSUE: 2019 No. 21 ISSN 2335-6677 The language about China’s role in reforming global governance has shifted, with Xi using the term 引领 to indicate how China should be taking an active role in leading efforts to reform the international system, instead of merely actively taking part in the reform process. ‘ - The gap between China’s internal and external messaging There is also some mismatch between China’s messages to its domestic and international audiences. Foreign Minister Wang Yi has sought to allay fears of Chinese revisionism with statements intended to reassure the world that “China will always be a participant in the international order, not a challenger; a facilitator, not a trouble-maker; and a contributor, not a “free-rider”. 11 Wang also promised that China … will continue to act as a responsible major country to contribute to world peace, promote global development, and uphold the international order.12 However, in its domestic messaging, China tends to emphasize its role in reworking the current international order and global governance system. For example, in a February 2018 article written for the CPC’s primary journal for political theory, State Councillor Yang Jiechi argued that The trends of global multi-polarity, economic globalization, informatization of society, and cultural diversity are surging forward and emerging markets and numerous developing countries are rising rapidly, thus driving a rebalancing of global power and gradually reshaping the theory and practice of modern international relations. Therefore, strengthening global governance and reforming the global governance system are an imperative and general trend.13 Yang further stated that “China will deepen its involvement in global governance and work to guide the reform of the international order”. However, sentiments from figures such as Yang should also be contextualized against the internal deliberations of the Chinese leadership and foreign policy circles about the extent of global responsibilities that China should shoulder. China is attempting to challenge the international order – the united states backing down greenlights china’s actionsMichael J. Mazarr, Timothy R. Heath, Astrid Stuth Cevallos, 2018, "China and the International Order," Rand Corporation, report evaluates the character and possible future of China’s engagement with the post–World War II international order. The resulting portrait is anything but straightforward: China’s engagement with the order remains a complex and often contradictory work in progress. In the Maoist era, China frequently maintained an antagonistic posture to the international system. However, since the advent of the reform and opening-up period in the late 1970s, the trajectory of China’s policy toward the postwar order has been more supportive. It has joined hundreds of leading institutions, gradually boosted its direct and indirect support for many multilateral activities and norms, and expressed a commitment to increasing its role in global governance. However, following precedents set by other great powers, China as an increasingly powerful nation has also demonstrated a willingness to challenge and revise aspects of the existing order. In some cases, it has created institutions, such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), that are more responsive to Chinese interests but may duplicate existing institutions—suggesting competition. On other issues, such as human rights, Beijing has conditioned its support on a redefinition of key terms to reflect China’s preferences. In still other cases, such as trade and nonproliferation, China has supported key norms—but its behavior falls far short of complete compliance and, in some cases (as in its industrial policy), seems actively calculated to circumvent the spirit of the norms. This report evaluates the character and possible future of China’s engagement with the postwar international order as part of a larger RAND study on the future of the postwar liberal international order, x China and the International Order the Project on Building a Sustainable International Order. To make this assessment, the analysis examined China’s participation in international institutions, adherence to international norms, compliance with established rule sets, and broad level of support for multilateral coordination and problem-solving under the aegis of the postwar order. RAND researchers consulted available evidence on China’s behavior in these areas; analyzed Chinese official documents and scholarly writings; reviewed recent activities and trends; gathered data on several especially important issue areas, such as evidence of Chinese compliance with nonproliferation and activities within the United Nations (UN); and brought together a number of subject-matter experts for a roundtable to evaluate key evidence. The biggest wild card is the question of where China’s policy is headed over the medium term, roughly the next decade. The directives contained in the 19th Party Congress suggest that China intends to adopt a bolder approach toward questions of international leadership, becoming more deeply involved in key institutions and issues, such as peacekeeping and climate change. At the same time, China may also step up efforts to challenge norms favoring liberal democratic values that it has long opposed. Because China is unlikely to surpass the United States by virtually any measure of national power any time soon, China is unlikely to displace the United States as the global normsetting power. However, China’s burgeoning power is already intensifying competition with the United States for leadership and influence within the international system, primarily at the regional level but also increasingly at the global level. Indeed, on select issue areas (such as climate change) and in some geographic areas (such as some countries affected by the overland Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st Century Maritime Silk Road [known as the Belt and Road Initiative]), Chinese influence could surpass that of the United States. Whether a growing competition for influence and leadership with the United States in shaping the terms of the international order escalates into dynamics that become destructive of that order remains to be determined. One major challenge in this study, therefore, is that the question of China’s future approach to the international order is bound up inextricably with broader strategic questions regarding the evolu- Summary xi tion of Chinese power, the vitality of the international system, and the firmness of the U.S. commitment to leading that international order. The evolution of these variables cannot be predicted with confidence. Any analysis of China’s approach to a shared international order—and possibly U.S. strategy and policy responses to that approach—must take seriously the fact that it is dealing with a moving target. Currently available data and interpretations do not allow an unqualified medium-term judgment. Taking this larger context into account—as well as the complexity of China’s behavior to date—this study offers three major findings about the relationship of China to the international order. First, China can be expected to demand more influence in the international system as a condition for its support. Broadly speaking, since China undertook a new policy of international engagement in the 1980s— and putting aside the areas (liberal values and human rights) in which the Chinese Communist Party has the greatest degree of conflict with the U.S.-led order—the level and quality of its participation in the order rival those of most other nations. It has come to see multilateral institutions and processes as important, if not essential, for the achievement of its interests. However, like the United States and other major powers, an increasingly powerful China has demanded exceptions to the rules and norms when it sees vital interests at stake. Moreover, as its role in the international community grows, China will likely demand changes to institutions and norms to reflect its power and value preferences as a condition for its support. Indeed, at the 19th Party Congress in 2017, President Xi Jinping called for China to become a “global leader” in terms of comprehensive national power and “international influence” by mid-century. However, these demands are not likely to contest the fundamental nature of the international system. Second, looking forward, a strengthened and increasingly multilateral international order can continue to provide a critical tool for the United States and other countries to shape and constrain rising Chinese power. The growing collective strength of the developing world opens opportunities for the United States to engage these countries as partners in building a more-resilient international order. This is true for two major reasons. First, reforms that accommodate the interests of rising xii China and the International Order powers through greater multilateralism can make the international system more responsive and robust. Second, a widely supported multilateral system provides the United States with greater leverage: Involvement by more countries can also help fashion norms against which individual countries are judged for their status, prestige, and influence. This can, in turn, incentivize China to participate and restrain its behavior or risk prompting a multilateral balancing process grounded in the norms of a mutually agreed order. Examples of reforms to build multilateralism and strengthen norms include measures to expand the role of China and other developing economies in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and to increase Chinese involvement in mediating international conflicts through the UN. Reforms to accommodate the interests of China and other rising powers alone are unlikely to determine Chinese behavior. Strong U.S. leadership, backed by military strength and in cooperation with its network of allies and partners, will remain essential to deterring China from considering the most egregious and dangerous acts of aggression against its neighbors. However, a resilient and responsive multilateral order can play a critical role in incentivizing China to operate primarily within, as opposed to outside, international institutions. Finally, modifications to the order on the margins in response to Chinese preferences will typically pose less of a threat to a stable international system than a future in which China is alienated from that system. Some observers have expressed concern about the implications of alternative standards or institutions promoted by China, such as the establishment of the AIIB, to enable development-related investments in Asia without the conditions (in terms of human rights, rule of law, or labor or environmental standards) that typically accompany efforts by the existing Asian Development Bank. Although Chinese-led initiatives do challenge U.S. leadership and influence, they generally do not pose a threat to the fundamental integrity of the international system. Because an international system that features a greater Chinese presence but remains stable and effective would favor U.S. interests more than a conflict-ridden international system in which China is alienated, the United States should seek ways to participate in Chinese-led initia- Summary xiii tives and appropriately expand opportunities for Chinese involvement in existing institutions. In considering China’s future role in the order, the United States can take reassurance from the high degree of legitimacy and trust in the international system expressed by most countries, although polls do indicate that China has made remarkable strides in narrowing the gap in favorability with the United States in the past few years.1 By many measures, including gross domestic product and defense spending, the United States will remain the world’s most powerful country for the foreseeable future and thus will remain the most essential leader in the international order. Overall, China has viewed U.S. leadership as having contributed to international peace and prosperity in some important ways, even if its differences with the United States have grown over time. China’s role in shaping Asia’s economic and security order is likely to be the most contentious part of its foreign policy in the future. China’s determination to become Asia’s paramount power will unavoidably entail an intensifying competition for influence with the United States. Balancing Chinese power and protecting U.S. interests will remain challenging tasks, especially given the fact that the realities of economic integration have rendered Cold War–style strategies of containment infeasible. However, the outcome is hardly foreordained. China’s ability to realize its ambition is constrained by the fact that many Asian countries remain distrustful of Chinese power. To the extent that Beijing attempts to assert regional dominance through efforts that fail to adequately account for the interests of other countries, it will produce—and is already producing—countervailing reactions from regional states. Therefore, there are limits to how much China can use major geopolitical economic initiatives, such as the infrastructure and trade effort, to link Europe, Africa, and China through the Belt and Road Initiative to bribe or coerce participating nations into doing its bidding. In addition to formidable challenges to sustaining economic 1 Margaret Vice, “In Global Popularity Contest, U.S. and China—Not Russia—Vie for First Place,” Pew Research Center, August 23, 2017. xiv China and the International Order growth, China thus faces many hurdles in its efforts to shape an economic and security order in Asia to its advantage. In sum, this study argues for a two-part U.S. approach to the future of China’s engagement with the international order. First, the United States should develop a comprehensive strategy to sustain and expand China’s role in the international order. This strategy should include efforts both to accommodate China in existing global institutions, such as the IMF, and for the United States and others to participate in Chinese-led initiatives, such as the AIIB and Belt and Road Initiative. This recommendation flows from a moregeneral assumption: The growth of Chinese power is not something the United States can or should oppose per se but instead should seek to steer in a direction that reinforces existing institutions and norms. In the process, the United States should use expanded cooperation to build strong, long-term relationships with Chinese officials at all levels and in all issue areas, even as it continues to affirm relations with its allies and partners. To be clear, this recommendation does not assume that such efforts will ease Chinese demands or reduce the degree of assertiveness with which it pushes territorial or other claims. This analysis presumes the opposite—that growing Chinese power and self-confidence will produce an era of rising Sino-American tension and rivalry. In such a context, the primary U.S. strategic challenge is neither to “prevent” China’s rise nor to appease its demands so fundamentally as to prevent such a rivalry. The challenge is to manage the emerging rivalry in ways that avoid major conflict, leave open the potential for cooperation on as many issues of mutual concern as possible, and safeguard vital U.S. interests. Encouraging China to uphold the rules, norms, and institutions of a shared order—while working simultaneously to sustain the coalition of mostly like-minded democracies at the core of that order to bolster U.S. influence—can be a central element of a strategy to achieve those goals. Second, the United States should continue to dissuade China from employing various forms of violent aggression to fulfill its regional ambitions. While many of China’s specific claims and actions are designed to skirt rather than directly violate formal international Summary xv law, the country’s efforts could increasingly threaten norms of territorial nonaggression and risk regional conflict to the extent that China becomes much more belligerent in the pursuit of them. Regional states are not naive about the possible forms of Chinese muscle-flexing and continue to look to the United States to play an essential role in deterrence. Therefore, the second component of U.S. strategy centers on ensuring military readiness to exercise credible deterrence against aggressive challenges to the international order. Also, in select cases involving core values regarding human rights and democracy, the United States should reaffirm its commitment to norms that reflect those values and resist Chinese efforts to change them—but in a measured way that builds on common values and concerns. Impact U-China Leadership Increasing NowChina is seeking to ratify the Arms Trade Treaty, which will raise their standing in the International CommunityReuters Editorial, 9-27-2019, "China aims to join U.S.-spurned arms treaty as soon as possible," U.S., . President Donald Trump has said he intends to revoke the U.S. signature to the treaty, which regulates the $70 billion global cross-border trade in conventional arms and seeks to keep weapons out of the hands of human rights abusers. So far, 104 countries have joined the pact, which the General Assembly approved in 2013. Then-U.S. President Barack Obama had signed it but it was opposed by the National Rifle Association and other conservative groups and never ratified by the U.S. Senate. Speaking at the United Nations on Friday, the Chinese government’s top diplomat State Councillor Wang Yi said China has initiated domestic legal procedures to join the Arms Trade Treaty. China’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement following Wang’s announcement that the country was striving to join the treaty “as soon as possible”. This is an important action for China to actively participate in the governance of the global arms trade governance and reflects China’s determination to support multilateralism, it said. China has always attached great importance to the issue of illegal arms sales and their misuse, and supports the purposes and objectives of the treaty, the ministry added. “As a responsible member of the international family, China is willing to continue to strengthen exchanges and cooperation with all parties and work together to build a standardized and reasonable arms trade order and make positive contributions to maintaining international and regional peace and stability.”AT-Chinese Mil ModIts inevitable, and happening nowGreg Levesque, 10-8-2019, "Military-Civil Fusion: Beijing’s “Guns AND Butter” Strategy to Become a Technological Superpower," Jamestown Foundation, great gamble is underway in China, as the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) attempts to introduce new concepts that challenge traditional notions of centralized economic and defense planning. A key pillar of this effort is “military-civil fusion” (军民融合, jun-min ronghe), or MCF—a national strategy that has quickly become a guiding force behind not only local government economic planning but also the strategies of Chinese corporations. MCF is influencing investment decisions, talent recruitment, and research and development (R&D) across multiple fields of dual-use technology sectors, to include artificial intelligence, advanced materials, and aviation. To date, most coverage of MCF has focused on the military aspects of the strategy in enabling the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to field more high-tech weaponry and systems for future combat. This is no doubt important; however, it misses the grander strategic thrust behind the initiative, which when revealed yields deeper insight into how Chinese leaders are positioning the country to compete militarily and economically in an emerging technological revolution. According to Jiang Luming (姜鲁鸣) of the PLA National Defense University, the MCF concept provides a long-term “law of development” for synchronizing China’s economic and national defense building efforts. It involves the “comprehensive planning of the two major systems of military and civilian resources, brings about a compatible economic and technical foundation for [resource] sharing, transforms limited social resources into bidirectional and interactive combat power and production power, and achieves multiple types of production from a single investment” (PLA Daily, June 2, 2016). This description captures MCF’s importance as a means of managing resource allocation to most effectively translate economic scale into military might. Said differently, it represents an innovative, though still unproven, effort to turn the classic macroeconomic “guns versus butter” model on its head. This is especially critical as the leaders of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) seek to navigate the economy through the “middle-income trap,” while also revamping the country’s defense science, technology, and industrial (DSTI) system to create systematized capabilities for potential future conflicts. [1] While this strategy makes perfectly clear that Beijing has no intention of matching Washington dollar for dollar on defense, it will likely make it more difficult to properly assess the full scope of China’s military programs and posture.Defense Industrial BaseU-FY 2019 ReportingUS Arms Sales remain steady since 2016Aaron Mehta, Deputy Editor and Senior Pentagon Correspondent for Defense News, covering policy, strategy and acquisition at the highest levels of the Department of Defense and its international partners., 10-4-2019, "Here’s how many foreign military sales the US State Department OK’d in FY19," Defense News, — The U.S. State Department cleared $67.9 billion in weapons in fiscal 2019, in an indication that America’s position in the global arms trade remains strong. The number, spread across 64 individual procurement requests from 28 different countries and a NATO consortium, represents the second year in a row that the overall value of foreign military sales requests have slightly declined. But the total still represents almost double the total cleared by the State Department in fiscal year 2016. These numbers represent potential arms sales that the State Department cleared internally, then passed on to Congress through the Defense Security Cooperation Agency. The notifications do not represent final sales; if Congress does not reject the potential sale, it then goes into negotiations, during which dollar figures and quantities of equipment can change. In some cases, as highlighted by the large FMS request notification for Turkey to buy Patriot batteries, those sales will never happen. However, while not solid dollars, notifications are a notable way of tracking interest in procuring American arms from foreign partners, and can be a leading indicator of final sales to come.U-Sales Up NowArms sales up in FY 2019 but competitors are still trying to fill gapsMarcus Weisgerber, 10-15-2019, "The US Exported Arms Worth $55B in the Past Year," Defense One, weapons worth more than $110 billion over the past two years, a top Pentagon official said Tuesday. That’s $55.4 billion in fiscal 2019, which ended on Sept. 30, and $55.6 billion in 2018, according to Lt. Gen. Charles Hooper, director of the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, the arm of the Pentagon that oversees foreign arms sales. “Our strategic competitors are using their own defense exports in an attempt to degrade long-standing and emerging U.S. alliances and partnerships,” Hooper said Tuesday at the Association of the U.S. Army annual convention in Washington. “Accordingly, the U.S. government is organizing to ensure that our defense exports will prevail in an increasingly competitive global market and remain a vital pillar of U.S. defense and foreign policy.” Recent fiscal years’ totals have included: 2017, $42 billion; 2016: $33.6 billion; 2015: $47 billion; and 2014: $34.2 billion. “We do not measure our success by statistics alone, but the data is certainly a sign of increased activity,” Hooper said. “And as such, this activity offers us some opportunities.” Hooper said that the three-year average of $51 billion is up 16.6 percent in a year. As of Sept. 30, the final day of fiscal 2019, the U.S. government is overseeing more than 14,700 foreign sales, the general said. President Trump and administration officials have touted arms sales as a top foreign policy tool; in Hooper’s words: “security cooperation has been elevated to a tool of first resort for U.S. foreign policy.” Arm sales are high now – but not yet finalized. Aaron Mehta, 10-4-2019, "Here’s how many foreign military sales the US State Department OK’d in FY19," Defense News, — The U.S. State Department cleared $67.9 billion in weapons in fiscal 2019, in an indication that America’s position in the global arms trade remains strong. The number, spread across 64 individual procurement requests from 28 different countries and a NATO consortium, represents the second year in a row that the overall value of foreign military sales requests have slightly declined. But the total still represents almost double the total cleared by the State Department in fiscal year 2016. These numbers represent potential arms sales that the State Department cleared internally, then passed on to Congress through the Defense Security Cooperation Agency. The notifications do not represent final sales; if Congress does not reject the potential sale, it then goes into negotiations, during which dollar figures and quantities of equipment can change. In some cases, as highlighted by the large FMS request notification for Turkey to buy Patriot batteries, those sales will never happen. However, while not solid dollars, notifications are a notable way of tracking interest in procuring American arms from foreign partners, and can be a leading indicator of final sales to come. Geographically, the Pacific region led the way with 21 requests, totaling $24.8 billion in potential sales – notable given the emphasis put forth by the Trump administration that the Pacific represents a priority theater for the future. Following that was the Middle East, with 18 requests totaling $15.2 billion. Europe had 18 requests for $19.8 billion; the only nation from Africa, Morocco, put in six requests totaling $7.26 billion; and Canada put in three requests, for $731 million. The biggest potential customer, at a time of a whole-of-government effort against China is underway, is Taiwan. Over four different requests, Taiwan requested $10.7 billion in sales, driven primarily by $8 billion for long-sought F-16 aircraft, as well as $2 billion for Abrams tanks. In second place was Japan, with $7.54 billion in requested sales, spread over six requests. That was driven by three different tranches of SM-3 missiles and an Aegis Ashore missile defense system. Morocco, which was cleared for six separate requests totaling $7.26 billion on U.S. arms, came in third. Their procurement was driven mainly by its purchase of new F-16 fighter jets and the associated equipment, as well as a request for Abrams tanks. As always with FMS notifications, a few large sales can drive the overall total. Sixteen of the 63 sales requests topped $1 billion, led by Taiwan’s F-16 request ($8 billion), Poland’s F-35 request ($6.5 billion), Morocco’s F-16s ($3.79 billion), the U.K’s procurement of Chinook helicopters ($3.5 billion), Turkey’s Patriot request ($3.5 billion) and Japan’s largest SM-3 request ($3.3 billion). Sign up for our Early Bird Brief Get the defense industry's most comprehensive news and information straight to your inbox Subscribe The F-16 was a significant driver of FMS requests this year, showing the Lockheed Martin legacy plane remains popular around the world. Eight requests, with a potential total of $15.8 billion in sales, involved the F-16, raging from the request for tranches of fighters from Taiwan, Morocco and Bulgaria to $125 million for Pakistan security support related to their F-16 fighters. While the numbers are strong, Roman Schweizer, an analyst with Cowen, notes that political realities could upend an unusual number of these potential deals in the coming year. “Notably, for FY19, there are a number of large sales that may be unlikely for political or other reasons: these include a $3.5B sale to Turkey of Raytheon’s Patriot missile system, a $2B sale to Taiwan of General Dynamics’ M1 Abrams tanks, and an $8B sale to Taiwan of Lockheed Martin F-16s,” he wrote in a note to investors. “We don’t think a Turkish Patriot purchase is possible as they continue to own/operate Russian-made S-400s. And while Taiwan needs U.S. weapons (fighters, tanks and more), there is a legitimate concern that those sales could be halted if there is a broader strategic agreement with China on trade and economic issues. “If that's the case, about 20% of this year's potential deals aren't viable, meaning this would be a step-down year but not quite as low as FY16's $37B in announcements.” From a corporate level, Schweizer estimates Lockheed Martin is the big winner for the year with $32 billion, followed by Raytheon at $15 billion, Boeing at $9 billion, General Dynamics at $3 billion, Northrop Grumman at $1.2 billion and Textron $600 million. A specific wrinkle for FY19’s accounting was the inclusion of $3.9 billion as part of a controversial emergency package pushed through by the Trump administration for Saudi Arabia and the UAE. For the better part of a year, those weapons were tied up in Congress over concerns of how they will be used as part of the Saudi-led actions against Iranian-backed fighters in Yemen, an operation that has contributed to a humanitarian crisis in that country. The issue escalated following the death of columnist Jamal Khashoggi, which has been tied to the Saudi royal family. In May, the State Department announced that an emergency exemption would be used to push those arm sales through; while the administration cited a broad threat from Iran in the region as the reason, the move received bipartisan rebuke from both the Senate and the House, with some members expressing concern this was a precedent-setting move to take away arms sale veto powers from Congress. That $3.9 billion was divided among seven FMS notifications, four for the UAE and three for Saudi Arabia.Taiwan LinkTaiwanese Sales Requests topped $10 billion in FY 19Aaron Mehta, Deputy Editor and Senior Pentagon Correspondent for Defense News, covering policy, strategy and acquisition at the highest levels of the Department of Defense and its international partners., 10-4-2019, "Here’s how many foreign military sales the US State Department OK’d in FY19," Defense News, biggest potential customer, at a time of a whole-of-government effort against China is underway, is Taiwan. Over four different requests, Taiwan requested $10.7 billion in sales, driven primarily by $8 billion for long-sought F-16 aircraft, as well as $2 billion for Abrams tanks. In second place was Japan, with $7.54 billion in requested sales, spread over six requests. That was driven by three different tranches of SM-3 missiles and an Aegis Ashore missile defense system. Morocco, which was cleared for six separate requests totaling $7.26 billion on U.S. arms, came in third. Their procurement was driven mainly by its purchase of new F-16 fighter jets and the associated equipment, as well as a request for Abrams tanks. As always with FMS notifications, a few large sales can drive the overall total. Sixteen of the 63 sales requests topped $1 billion, led by Taiwan’s F-16 request ($8 billion), Poland’s F-35 request ($6.5 billion), Morocco’s F-16s ($3.79 billion), the U.K’s procurement of Chinook helicopters ($3.5 billion), Turkey’s Patriot request ($3.5 billion) and Japan’s largest SM-3 request ($3.3 billion).EconomistsAre lying liars who lieEconomic Cost-Benefit Analysis falsely gets to decide who lives and diesRobin Kaiser-Schatzlein, a Brooklyn-based journalist who writes critically about economic life in America., 9-30-2019, "The Tyranny of Economists," New Republic, 1984, a two-year-old named Joy Griffith climbed onto her grandfather’s reclining sofa chair to watch cartoons. At one point, she fell between the collapsible footrest and the seat. The footrest trapped her head, and she began to suffocate. When she was finally found, she was blue and lifeless. Police officers extracted her body from the chair and resuscitated her. They were successful, but she had been deprived of oxygen for too long. The toddler had permanent brain damage. From then on out, she lay in a vegetative state in a hospital. In June of 1985, the Consumer Product Safety Commission issued a “national consumer alert” about the type of sofa chair that strangled Griffith. But the commission still needed to decide if they would require design changes. So Warren Prunella, the chief economist for the Commission, did some calculations. He figured that 40 million chairs were in use, each of which lasted ten years. Estimates said modifications likely would save about one life per year, and since the commission had decided in 1980 that the value of a life was one million dollars, the benefit of the requirement would be only ten million. This was far below the cost to the manufacturers. So in December, the commission decided that they didn’t need to require chair manufacturers to modify their products. If this seems odd today, it was then too—so odd, in fact, that the chair manufacturers voluntarily changed their designs. Prunella’s calculations were the result of a growing reliance on cost-benefit analysis, something that the Reagan administration had recently made mandatory for all new government regulations. It signaled the rise of economists to the top of the federal regulatory apparatus. “Economists effectively were deciding whether armchairs should be allowed to crush children,” Binyamin Appelbaum writes in his new book The Economists’ Hour. “The government’s growing reliance on cost-benefit meant that economists like Prunella were exercising significant influence over life and death decisions.” Economics had become a primary language of politics.Economic Cost-Benefit analysis focuses on a flawed notion of the value of human life, and its technocracy places the interests of corporations over people.Robin Kaiser-Schatzlein, a Brooklyn-based journalist who writes critically about economic life in America., 9-30-2019, "The Tyranny of Economists," New Republic, on corporations increased through the New Deal and into the 1970s. Richard Nixon’s administration introduced both the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Corporations were on the defensive, but soon found a powerful ally in economists, a vast majority of whom opposed regulation as inefficient. Corporations began to argue that if the cost of compliance to a new regulation (say seatbelts or lead remediation) exceeded the benefit, it shouldn’t be implemented. The government, starting at the end of Nixon’s administration and continuing to this day, agreed. Cost-benefit analysis hinged on an ever-changing calculation of the monetary value of a human life. If a life could be shown to be expensive, regulation could be justified. If not, it would be blocked or scrapped. The EPA, in 2004—to allow for more lax air pollution regulations—quietly sliced eight percent off their value of human life, and then another three percent in 2008 by deciding to not adjust for inflation. The fluctuating value of life was a seemingly rational but conveniently opaque method for making political decisions. It simultaneously trimmed away the gray areas of political discourse by reducing the debate to a small set of numbers and obscured the policy in hundreds of pages of statistics, figures, and formulas. This marriage of rational simplicity and technocratic complexity provided cover for regressive policies that favored corporations over taxpayers. Economists reduced a question that dogged political philosophers for centuries—about how much harm is acceptable in a society—to a math problem. As Cass Sunstein, a contemporary cost-benefit proponent in Barack Obama’s administration, said, “The United States experienced a revolution. No gun was fired. No lives were lost. Nobody marched. Most people didn’t notice. Nonetheless, it happened.”Economists are lying liars who lie. Nearly every economic theory has been a failure which incorrectly describes how the world works and only pads the pockets of the affluent while leaving the rest of the world left in the dust.Robin Kaiser-Schatzlein, a Brooklyn-based journalist who writes critically about economic life in America., 9-30-2019, "The Tyranny of Economists," New Republic, Economists’ Hour jogs down many, if not all, of the well-worn, crowded paths in the forest of recent economic history: the Volcker Shock, the abandonment of Bretton-Woods, financialization of mortgages, Pinochet’s neoliberal repression in Chile, deregulation of air travel, the list goes on. They are all deftly told. Appelbaum duly mentions the failures of these myriad economic policies, like the Federal Reserve’s callous indifference to the havoc caused when scores went unemployed because of sky-high interest rates in the 1980s. But in Appelbaum’s concluding chapter, his analysis sags. He offers few solutions, aside from a few sentences on the importance of labor unions in counterbalancing the power of corporations. But maybe this makes sense. Appelbaum is something of a creature of the system that economics built, a reporter who once covered the Federal Reserve for The New York Times, even arguing in the book that, beginning in the 1970s, capitalism “became a self-satisfied monopolist in the marketplace of ideas, with predictable consequences: in the absence of alternatives, it was difficult to muster the will to deal with its evident shortcomings.” This, in some ways, explains where the book fails to deliver. Appelbaum, like most of us, stands in the vast shadow of the economists’ monolithic, totalizing, yet inaccessible ideology. But buried in the book are germs of truly useful ideas. Appelbaum shows the strangely high degree of consensus in the field of economics, including a 1979 survey of economists that “found 98 percent opposed rent controls, 97 percent opposed tariffs, 95 percent favored floating exchange rates, and 90 percent opposed minimum wage laws.” And in a moment of impish humor he notes that “Although nature tends toward entropy, they shared a confidence that economies tend toward equilibrium.” Economists shared a creepy lack of doubt about how the world worked. But worse, they were wrong. If you look at the economic theories put forth during the economists’ hour—from Friedman’s monetarism to Arthur Laffer’s supply-side economics—Appelbaum, like many others, finds the theories often demonstrably did not do what they were supposed to do. Monetarism didn’t curb inflation, lax antitrust and low regulation didn’t spur innovation, and low taxes didn’t increase corporate investment. Big economic shocks of the 1970s, like the befuddling “stagflation,” provided reasons to abandon previous, more redistributive economic regimes, but a reader still burns to know: How could economists be so wrong, so often, and so clearly at the expense of the working people in the United States, yet still ultimately triumph so totally? It’s likely because what economists’ ideas did do, quite effectively, was divert wealth from the bottom to the top. This entrenched their power among the winners they helped create. So if you squint, what Appelbaum presents could be seen as a picture of a dramatic class-war, a conservative counter-revolution in reaction to the New Deal government, duplicitously legitimized by a regressive political theory: economics. Or as a more bracing economics writer, John Kenneth Galbraith, once put it: “What is called sound economics is very often what mirrors the needs of the respectably affluent.” In his conclusion, Appelbaum argues that the economists’ hour is over: Now we have a president who once wrote “trade is bad” in the margins of a speech on tariffs. However, economic doctrines simply aren’t coherent enough for one person to thoroughly reject. Free market cheerleaders like Friedman were advocates of both LBGTQ rights and immigration, and of deliriously repressive right-wing military regimes all over the world. And it is important that Donald Trump’s only major legislative victory was a regressive tax-cut straight out of the supply-side playbook, something Appelbaum spends an entire chapter chronicling. I’m not convinced the hour is over. Appelbaum’s book shows economists’ dramatic impact on government policy, and thus reveals economics to be not an abstract, disinterested science but a moral and political science all to itself. It’s politics for the technocrats and the well off.IranU-Oil Tanker StrikeOil Tanker attacked off of Coast of Saudi ArabiaHamdi Alkhshali and Ben Westcott, Cnn, 10-11-2019, "Iranian oil tanker hit by two missiles near Saudi port: state news," CNN, oil tanker belonging to the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) was hit and damaged by two missiles on Friday, Iranian state news IRNA reported. The missiles were "possibly" fired from Saudi soil, Saheb Sadeghi, head of the public relations of the National Iranian Tanker Company, told state-run Press TV. Reports that the missiles were fired from Saudi territory were later dismissed by NIOC, as reported by IRNA. Iran has not offered any publicly available evidence for the incident. The ship is still moving and traveling south, according to the tracking service Marine Traffic. No Iranian government officials have blamed the attack on any side at this stage. Commenting on the incident, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said according to the semi-official Fars News Agency: "Those behind this dangerous adventurism are responsible for the consequences of such act." The tanker was 60 miles (96 kilometers) from the Saudi port of Jeddah on the Red Sea when the incident occurred, damaging its body, IRNA reported. According to the news service, the resulting explosions caused oil to leak into the Red Sea. Iran's Press TV also tweeted Friday: "Report: Explosion in #Iranian tanker has set vessel on fire near #Saudi port city of #Jeddah." All the tanker's crew members are safe, IRNA reported. Investigators are looking into the sources of the missiles. News of the incident caused oil prices to rise on Friday. Prices for Brent Crude jumped 2% to just over $60, while WTI Crude climbed nearly 2% to $54. A series of attacks on oil tankers and production facilities in the region has increased tensions in recent months. In September, Saudi Arabia's Abqaiq oil processing facility -- the largest of its kind in the world -- was attacked in a series of drone strikes which halved the country's production. Houthi rebels claimed responsibility for the attack, but both Saudi and US investigators claimed "with very high probability" that it was launched from an Iranian base. Shortly after that attack, President Donald Trump said the US was "locked and loaded." He added that the US was waiting on Saudi Arabia to find out "under what terms we would proceed." Speaking to CNN, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif denied responsibility for the September attack and warned of "all-out war" if the US or Saudi Arabia conducted military strikes against his country. The drone strikes followed attacks on tankers in the Strait of Hormuz in July, including the capture of the UK-flagged oil tanker Stena Impero by Iran. The vessel was eventually released from the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas in late September.Oil Tanker Attacked off of Saudi CoastPatrick Wintour, 10-11-2019, "Iranian oil tanker damaged by explosions near Saudi port city," Guardian, missiles hit an Iranian state-owned oil tanker as it headed to Syria on the Red Sea, the Iranian government has claimed. Tehran did not attribute responsibility immediately but said two explosions 20 minutes apart on the Sabiti tanker, which caused oil to spill from two tanks, were not the result of an accident. The boat was about 60 miles from the Saudi Arabian port city of Jeddah when it was hit. The scale of the damage did not appear extensive in photos published by Tehran news agencies. The blasts prompted speculation that they were a reprisal by Gulf states for attacks attributed to Iran on Saudi oil assets in September. Meanwhile, the Pentagon announced it was sending at least 1,000 additional troops to Saudi Arabia. It said the deployment meant that in the past month 3,000 troops had been sent to the kingdom or had their deployment extended. US Patriot missile defences failed to deter a cruise missile and drone attack that severely damaged two Aramco facilities and shocked the Saudi government last month. US officials have since discussed with their Middle Eastern ally how to strengthen Saudi defences, and the Pentagon said Friday’s deployment would “assure and enhance the defence of Saudi Arabia”. This week Donald Trump announced he was pulling troops from the Syrian border with Turkey and said he wanted to end America’s endless wars in the Middle East. It appears some of the newly announced troops are being despatched to replace other American forces expected to depart the region in the coming weeks. The US and the EU attributed the September attack to Iran, rejecting claims by Houthi rebels in Yemen that they were responsible. A full UN report on the incident has not yet been completed An Iranian foreign ministry spokesman said: “Those behind the attack are responsible for the consequences of this dangerous adventure, including the dangerous environmental pollution caused. The details and factors behind this act will be investigated and will be announced after the results are reached.” Suggestions that the oil company that owned the tanker was blaming Saudi Arabia at this stage were denied. Friday’s incident, if confirmed as an attack, would be the first such incident targeting Iranian-owned shipping in the Gulf, though a state-owned tanker, Grace 1, was seized by British authorities off Gibraltar on the basis that it was breaching an EU oil embargo. Iranian news agencies stressed that the Sabiti was stable, no crew had been injured and the leak was being brought under control. Iranian ships routinely turn off their transponders to prevent tracking, but the Sabiti turned on its tracking devices late on Friday morning in the Red Sea, according to data from . The vessel last turned on its tracking devices in August, showing it near the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas. Dryad Global, a firm specialising in oil shipping intelligence, said the vessel’s proximity to the port of Jeddah made it plausible that Saudi Arabia could have been involved, or at the very least that the incident was intended to create the perception of Saudi involvement. But it added: “In terms of Saudi interests within the region, it remains unclear why Saudi would seek to target Iran in this manner. An attack of relatively low sophistication with limited and almost negligible strategic gain would be highly irregular and not serve any Saudi strategic narrative. Further still, it is highly unlikely that the Saudis would risk an ecological disaster in an area of strategic significance such as the Red Sea.” Tension in the strait of Hormuz has been heightened for months as the US and Iran spar over Washington’s decision in 2018 to withdraw from the Iranian nuclear deal and impose worldwide sanctions on Iran including its oil exports. An attempt by the French president, Emmanuel Macron, at the UN general assembly in New York to engineer a meeting between the Iranian president, Hassan Rouhani, and Trump failed as the two sides could not reach agreement on the sequencing of the compromises the two sides would have to take. Since then, the Pakistani prime minister, Imran Khan, has stepped forward as a possible mediator between Iran and Saudi Arabia. The perception was that neither Saudi Arabia nor the UAE, Iran’s two main Gulf rivals, were looking to escalate the crisis by undertaking a military response to the Aramco incident. It would be surprising if either Gulf state resorted to the kind of “plausible deniability” tactics allegedly deployed by Iran. Israel is also deeply hostile to Iran but has confined most of its attacks to Iranian military sites in Syria. The current round of attacks on oil shipping started on 12 May when four ships, including two Saudi oil tankers, were attacked in the Gulf just outside the strait of Hormuz, which is a major oil shipping route. US and British officials blamed Iran, a charge Tehran denies. A further two tankers were hit on 13 June, and a week later Iran said it had shot down a US surveillance drone, an attack that nearly led to a major reprisal by the Trump administration. Oil prices jumped 2% after reports of the tanker blasts on Friday, with crude futures rising by more than $1 (79p) a barrel.AT- No War with IranUS Activism in the Middle East will not generate a war with Iran, we need to be present in the region to counteract armed Iranian proxy states.Irina Tsukerman, human rights and national security lawyer and analyst, who has written extensively for a variety of domestic and international publications on strategy, geopolitics, and security in the MENA region, 9-25-2019, "The Prospects for Advancing US-Saudi Defense Alliance in the Shadow of the ARAMCO Attacks," No Publication, the recent attacks on Saudi ARAMCO oil fields, which according to US and Saudi intelligence assessments, involved both drones and cruise missiles, and most likely originated in Southern Iran, the future of the US-Saudi alliance has come into question as President Trump has been taking time to assess the nature of the threat and to decide on reasonable next steps that would deter Iran from further aggression in the region. While deliberating, the White House has faced an increasing pressure from the increasing number of isolationists among the President's base, libertarian elements on both the left on the right, and anti-war factions supported by Iranian lobbyists and left-leaning organizations not to take any military action or take any steps that would increase the likelihood of the US being drawn into war. The false dichotomy of "no response" to Iranian aggression in the Middle East, which has grown substantially since the administration has canceled oil waivers f or its top trade partners and designated the IRGC as a terrorist organization, or "a total nuclear holocaust" has plagued the administration, and before that had been used as an argument in favor of US entry into the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action ("JCPOA" or "the nuclear deal".) Indeed, the same actors who have pushed for the nuclear deal, including the unregistered Iranian lobby group NIAC, and its founder and former Executive Director Dr. Trita Parsi, have been vocal in making the dubious claim that even limited military strikes to undermine Iranian capabilities would bring US into a full military confrontation and costs untold amount of money and many American lives. None of this has been substantiated by specific numbers or details; the unlikelihood of this scenario is that quite simply, even Iran's best naval forces, the IRGC boats geared towards asymmetrical warfare, are substantially inferior to even a fraction of the US forces. The more realistic threat is not that Iran is a direct and serious threat to the US air force or navy but that many of its proxies in the region are armed with hundreds of thousands of missiles and are willing to sacrifice themselves to make the potential conflict as bloody as possible.Russia--AffNU-Africa Fill in NowRussia is filling in Africa nowKester Kenn Klomegah, 10-2-2019, "David Shinn: Russia’s Renewed Interest In Africa Due To Desire To Restore Previous Influence – Interview," Eurasia Review, Shinn: There has been minimal public comment by both the U.S. executive branch and U.S. Congress on Russia’s effort to intensify relations with Africa. Having said that, Africa has seldom arisen as a topic for discussion in the Trump administration. The U.S. national security policy under the Trump administration treats China and Russia as a global strategic competitor and this includes U.S. policy in Africa. The administration’s focus has been, however, on China and not much on Russia. The United States is concerned about Russian activities in Africa, especially in the Central African Republic (CAR) where the private Wagner Group, which reportedly has close ties to the Russian leadership, has assigned about 400 mercenaries in support of the government. General Thomas D. Waldhauser, U.S. Commander of AFRICOM, told the U.S. Congress in March that “Russia is also a growing challenge and has taken a more militaristic approach in Africa.” He added that “Russia has bolstered its influence with increased military cooperation including donations of arms, with which it has gained access to markets and mineral extraction rights. With minimal investment, Russia leverages private military contracts, such as the Wagner Group, and in return receives political and economic influence beneficial to them.” Last March, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State, John J. Sullivan, at an investment luncheon in Angola commented that “Russia often utilizes coercive, corrupt and covert means to attempt to influence sovereign states, including their security and economic partnerships.” These quotations give you an indication of the degree to which the United States is skeptical of Russia’s role in Africa.Russian arms sales increasing in Africa nowGreg Mills, Dr Mills heads the Johannesburg-based Brenthurst Foundation, 10-2-2019, "OP-ED: From liberation to authoritarianism? From Russia to Africa with Love," Daily Maverick, , Russia has an influential African alumnus. Many among Africa’s leadership cohort studied in the East Bloc during the Cold War, including President Joao Louren?o of Angola. Absent any colonial role, the Soviet contribution to the liberation struggles is still celebrated in some African capitals. According to the leaked documents, Russia is seeking to bolster its presence in at least 13 African countries by building relations with current and future regimes, military agreements, and the grooming a new generation of “leaders” and undercover “agents”. Deals with Mozambique and the Central African Republic are among 20 military relationships already established by Moscow, centring on arms sales, intelligence sharing, and police and army training. The wars in Chechnya, Syria and Ukraine have provided the Russians with a certain set of skills. Such state dealings are beefed up by the presence of Russian mercenaries and “consultants”, whose role is linked with a pernicious local political economy. General Waldhauser noted to the US Congress that in the Central African Republic: “Russia has bolstered its influence with increased military co-operation including donations of arms, with which it has gained access to markets and mineral extraction rights.” He went on to note that: “With minimal investment, Russia leverages private military contractors, such as the Wagner Group,” observing that the CAR’s president had had recently installed “a Russian civilian as his National Security Adviser”NU-Middle East Rise NowRussia is rising in the Middle East NowDouglas J. Feith and Shaul Chorev, Douglas J. Feith, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, served as US undersecretary of defense for policy. Adm. Shaul Chorev, head of the Research Center for Maritime Policy and Strategy at the University of Haifa, served as deputy chief of the Israeli Navy and as head of Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission., 9-26-2019, "Russia’s Eastern Mediterranean strategy explained," The Jerusalem Post | JPost, Russia is taking advantage of the power vacuum created by America’s desire to disengage from the Middle East. As president, Barack Obama launched the policy of “pivoting” away from the region, and President Donald Trump is carrying that policy forward. As a result, Russia is emerging as a dominant military and political force in the region. For its decisive military support to Assad, Russia has been rewarded with military facilities in Syria – the Tartus naval facilty and the Khmeimim Air Base – that are crucial for logistics and from which it can project power into the Middle East, the Balkans and farther west along the Mediterranean. In conflict, Russia is positioned to execute an area-denial strategy against the United States.Russia is selling arms all-over the middle east and western Mediterranean nowDouglas J. Feith and Shaul Chorev, Douglas J. Feith, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, served as US undersecretary of defense for policy. Adm. Shaul Chorev, head of the Research Center for Maritime Policy and Strategy at the University of Haifa, served as deputy chief of the Israeli Navy and as head of Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission., 9-26-2019, "Russia’s Eastern Mediterranean strategy explained," The Jerusalem Post | JPost, also has a major interest in arms sales. Because Russia’s business interests receive too little attention, they warrant emphasis, though Russia’s policies are not driven solely by such considerations. When Russia helped save the Assad regime, it ensured the success of Iran’s pro-Assad investment and effectively aligned itself with the Shi’ite axis of the Iranian regime, the Syrian regime and Hezbollah. This gives it leverage both with the axis and with the opponents of that axis: Turkey, Saudi Arabia and other Sunni-run states, as well as Israel. In Israel’s intensifying clash with Iran in Syria, Russia occupies a strategic position. Israel has used its aircraft in Syria to keep Iranian forces away from the Israeli border. Russia, however, is the dominant military power in Syria, so Israel needs its cooperation, or at least its acquiescence, in the campaign to keep Iran at bay. Accordingly, from the head-of-government level on down, Israel has cultivated close communication with Russia regarding Syria. Russia is not actively restraining Iran, but neither is it preventing Israeli strikes against Iranian forces in Syria. Russia appears to want to avoid any confrontation between its own forces and Israel. Israeli and Russian military commanders have arranged to de-conflict their operations. Russia is improving Syria’s air defenses. It has delivered S-300 air defense missile batteries and is training the Syrians to use them. Meanwhile, Russian soldiers are presumably manning these batteries. The S-300 could threaten Israeli aircraft and, if upgraded to the longer-range S-400, the danger would increase. Putin has said he wants all foreign troops to leave Syria. This seems to apply to Iranian and Turkish but not Russian troops.NU-RevisionismRussia is acting in Africa now to counterbalance and become revisionistKester Kenn Klomegah, 10-2-2019, "David Shinn: Russia’s Renewed Interest In Africa Due To Desire To Restore Previous Influence – Interview," Eurasia Review, Shinn: I think Russia’s renewed interest in Africa is due to a desire to restore its previous influence and to build allies as it experiences growing criticism by Western countries. As China’s relationship with Russia strengthens, I will be watching for China-Russia collaboration in African countries. Really, I don’t think any non-African country “owes” Africa, but it is in the interest of all developed countries to support the economic development of Africa. With other questions such as the practice of democracy, Russia does support whatever regime is in power. While this makes its policy predictable, it does not encourage good governance and democratic practices in those countries that are severely challenged in these areas. Many other countries follow this practice and even countries like the United States, which often do speak out forcefully on behalf of good governance, are not always consistent.NU-Latin America Rise NowRussia’s Sphere of Influence is increasing in Venezuela and Nicaragua with Arms SalesC. Todd Lopez, 10-10-2019, "SOUTHCOM Commander: Foreign Powers Pose Security Concerns," Dialogo Americas, , he said, is helping to prop up the Nicolás Maduro regime in Venezuela with weapons sales and security assistance. They're operating elsewhere, too, he added. "They have traditional arms sales relationships with countries in the region, and that continues, particularly in Venezuela [and] Nicaragua," Adm. Faller said. "Russia has deployed nuclear-capable bombers [and] Russia has deployed their most advanced warship that is capable of firing nuclear cruise missiles throughout the region, all within the last year. Russia has provided significant assistance to Venezuela." Hundreds of Russians — both forces and contractors — are in Venezuela "helping Maduro continue his reign of terror on the nation," Adm. Faller said. In Nicaragua, he told the defense writers, Russia runs a counternarcotics and counterterrorism training center that "has dubious dual purposes." Russian information operations are strong in South America as well, he said, with a large Spanish-language media presence. "It’s Russia's largest language operation outside of their native language, outside of Russia," he said. "It's pumping a lot of information out in those spaces, and then misinformation." Adm. Faller said at one point, he was in Washington meeting with lawmakers and Russian propaganda outlets reported he was on the Columbia-Venezuela border planning an invasion into Venezuela.Russia--NegU-Russia focused on SaudiPutin is in Saudi Arabia to meet with MBS now to focus on increasing arms exports, the plan would allow Russia to fill in NOWAlex Koch, 10-10-2019, "Vladimir Putin to hold talks with Saudi Arabia's powerful crown prince," Foreign Brief, President Vladimir Putin arrives in Saudi Arabia today for high-level talks that will feature a meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman. Discussions are expected to focus on investment agreements. Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund has invested some $2.5 billion in various Russian industries, including technology, infrastructure and oil, over the past few years. Putin is expected to return the favour on this trip, with more than 10 investment agreements expected to be signed, particularly in Saudi Arabia’s tourism and agricultural industries. Aside from trade and investment, the trip allows Putin to further consolidate Moscow’s warm ties with Riyadh. Over the past decade, Russia has built considerable influence in the Middle East, largely on the back of cordial relations with all the region’s major players, including Saudi Arabia, Iran, Israel, Turkey and Egypt—this despite many of these regional powers being at odds with each other. Expect Moscow to leverage its influence by increasing arms sales to the region. The Middle East is the world’s second largest and fastest growing arms market and already accounts for around half of Russia’s arms exports. Russia’s share of the global arms market has fallen by 8% this decade, so the Middle East could be key to reversing that trend, which would in turn boost Moscow’s power projection.Saudi Arabia--AffNew Solvency--Saudi Arabia = VietnamMuch like withdrawing from Vietnam was a day of reckoning for the US in 1973, we are at the same crossroads in Saudi Arabia in 2019. Our arms sales and support have not made the region demonstrably safer, in fact, we have destabilized the region. The time to end sales is now.Marina Ottaway, a Middle East scholar at the Woodrow Wilson Center and a long-time analyst of political transformations in Africa, the Balkans, and the Middle East, 9-26-2019, "The Vietnam moment in US Middle East policy," Middle East Eye, attacks on Saudi oil facilities, and the difficulty the United States is experiencing in formulating a meaningful response, bring into focus a question Washington has skirted for years but has not had the courage of address directly. Does the United States' deep involvement in the Middle East serve any purpose? Does it safeguards US interests and those of its allies? Does it make a difference? Washington is as deeply enmeshed in the region as ever, but increasingly unable to make a difference The Obama administration moved a timid step in the direction of questioning US involvement by withdrawing troops from Iraq and announcing a pivot to Asia, but the rise of the Islamic State group (IS) led to a renewed focus on the Middle East. As a result, Washington is as deeply enmeshed in the region as ever, but increasingly unable to make a difference. It is time for Washington to admit this is the case, give up the ambition to remake the region and its regimes to suit its purposes. This is what the United States did in Vietnam in 1973, when it finally recognised that it could not win the war, signed a peace accord with both North and South Vietnam and withdrew. Two years later the North Vietnamese army overran the south. Left to its own devices, Vietnam has since reformed, and today is a thriving country, with a growing economy, and surprisingly good relations with the United States. Admitting that the Vietnam policy was a failure was a drastic and humiliating step for Washington, but also a courageous one that ultimately benefited the United States, Vietnam and its neighbours. Abandoning the present failed policies in the Middle East will be equally difficult and humiliating, but it will be beneficial in the long run for the United States and the region as a whole. A new policy The attack on the Saudi oil facilities show the United States must embrace a new policy. It does not matter whether the attacks were launched directly by Iranian forces, by the Houthis in Yemen or by elements of al-Hashd al-Shaabi - the Popular Mobilisation Units - in Iraq, because Iran was ultimately responsible. What really matters is that all the US arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE have not prevented the attacks or even mitigated the consequences What really matters is that all the US arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE, and the training of forces in the Gulf and Iraq, have not prevented the attacks or even mitigated the consequences. No evidence has surfaced indicating that weapons from the extensive Saudi arsenal were fired at the incoming drones and missiles. Above all, it matters that the United States is not able to formulate a meaningful response that will make Iran pay a price for the attacks without leading to a new war, exposing US troops in the region to greater harm or opening Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries to new attacks. Posting a small number of US troops to Saudi Arabia and the UAE as President Trump is proposing will not make those countries safer -but the weak and hesitant US response is sending a signal of both a lack of commitment and powerlessness. Two choices The United States has two choices if it wants to remain a credible actor in the region. It can increase its commitment and take military action against Iran, knowing it will probably lead to a new, long and unwinnable war. This is the pre-1973 Vietnam option. Or it can adopt the post-1973 Vietnam option, admitting that it is not its duty to help fight the Saudis’ battles for them, or to chase IS remnants in Iraq (it is Iran that wields more influence in that country), or to continue fighting the Taliban in an endless war in Afghanistan leading nowhere This is not a call for a new isolationism. It is a call for a more realistic policy that reflects today’s reality, when the United States simply no longer has the overwhelming superiority of wealth and power that allowed it to dream of remaking the Middle East as it wanted. It is a call for the United States to learn to protect its interests in the region as it is, through diplomacy, agreements and alliances, rather than through endless conflicts. Such a policy shift will be better for the United States, but also for the countries that are encouraged by the illusion of a protective American umbrella to pursue their own unsustainable policies.Use the NDAA to End Yemen SupportThe US Congress should use the NDAA to end its support of the War in YemenWilliam D. Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy., 10-6-2019, "Opinion," Washington Post, Post is to be commended for running a?series of strong pieces [Opinions, Oct. 2] to mark the anniversary of Saudi Arabia’s assassination of Jamal Khashoggi. The question remains: Why is the United States still siding with this ruthless regime? In her commentary “Let the world hear Khashoggi’s last words in Arabic,” Karen Attiah was on point when she wrote, “The United States . . . tunes out the screams of people such as Jamal and pays more attention to the oppressive background rhythm of money changing hands in exchange for weapons.” This mercenary logic is at the heart of President Trump’s persistent efforts to block Congress from ending U.S. arms sales and military support for the brutal Saudi-led war in Yemen. His reason? Jobs for U.S. workers and revenue for U.S. weapons contractors. No amount of jobs should be an excuse for backing a murderous regime that has sparked the world’s worst humanitarian crisis and destabilized the Middle East and North Africa. And The Post’s own Fact Checker has demonstrated that the president’s claims of jobs flowing from Saudi arms deals are greatly exaggerated. Congress has a chance to end U.S. support for the Saudi war in Yemen by adopting provisions in the National Defense Authorization Act that would do just that.?The time to act is now.AT-THAAD DealTHAAD Fails, while the tests have been “successful” they’ve not tested for multiple missiles or decoys, which is how missile attacks happenAndrew Cockburn, the Washington editor of Harper’s Magazine and the author of five nonfiction books,, 9-27-2019, "Just How Swampy Are U.S-Saudi Arms Deals?," American Conservative, course, if the Riyadh based BCG office (“always buzzing with a motivating and inspiring vibe,” according to the corporate website) had the true interests of Saudi Arabia at heart, they would have thrown the THAAD sales force out on their ears. THAAD is a system distinguished not only by its enormous cost ($1 billion plus per six-launcher battery), but also by its total uselessness for the Saudis. Presumably, the Saudis have been sold on the THAAD as a defense against Iranian ballistic missiles like the old Soviet Scud and its various Iranian upgrades. As its name suggests, the THAAD aims to intercept incoming short range or medium range ballistic missiles arcing down into the top of the atmosphere 25 to 90 miles up and no further away than 125 miles. The THAAD’s radar must therefore “acquire”–spot– the actual missile warhead, distinguishing it from nearby broken up pieces of its spent booster rocket or from decoys deliberately launched with it. The radar must then track and predict the future trajectory of the warhead itself, not confusing it with any of the accompanying bits and pieces. Relying on the radar’s predictions, the THAAD missile interceptor, once launched, must quickly accelerate to MACH 8 speed and guide with absolute precision to hit the target warhead directly, like a bullet. Near misses won’t do. After a series of early, disastrous failures, the Pentagon is now touting a fifteen out of fifteen string of successful THAAD launchings. Needless to say, not one of these tests has been against a ballistic missile target accompanied by booster debris or decoys, much less against half a dozen of such missiles fired at once. This alone should be reason enough for the Saudis to toss the deal, but even if the system could perform as advertised, it would have been entirely irrelevant as a defense against the September 14 Houthi attacks on Abqaiq and Kurais. The drones and cruise missiles employed clearly came in at low altitude, while THAAD is designed to operate against high altitude targets. The Patriot and Hawk batteries already in place are of course no better suited to confront low altitude threats, which are inevitably masked by ground clutter. Even if the attackers had been obliging enough to send in ballistic missiles with a high-altitude trajectory, the THAAD would have offered little succor, since its infra-red seeker, as noted, cannot distinguish between actual warheads and decoys. Nor would the Russian S-400 system cheekily offered by Putin in the aftermath of the attack have fared better, and for many of the same reasons.Saudi Arabia—NegNo Solvency—New US Troop DeploymentsTroops and Air Defense Articles are being deployed to Saudi ArabiaGordon Lubold and Nancy A. Youssef, 10-11-2019, "Pentagon to Deploy Around 2,000 Additional Troops to Saudi Arabia," WSJ, —The U.S. military is deploying 2,000 additional troops, three new antimissile systems, two squadrons of jet fighters and other equipment to Saudi Arabia in an accelerating U.S. buildup meant to counter Iranian hostilities in the region, U.S. defense and military officials said Friday. The move represents the largest of three rounds of U.S. military deployments to Saudi Arabia since July, and comes as U.S. lawmakers hold a negative view of arms sales and support to Riyadh, exemplified by a bipartisan vote earlier this year opposing U.S. arms sales to the kingdom. The Pentagon said it would deploy two Patriot surface-to-air missile batteries as well as a Terminal High Altitude Air Defense system, or Thaad, which provides broader air defenses against the ballistic missile threat for much of the region, officials said. The additional 2,000 troops will join approximately 700 service members that had been deployed in previous rounds, including some to Prince Sultan Air Base, about 80 miles southeast of Riyadh.Air defense wings and other troops are en route to Saudi ArabiaGordon Lubold and Nancy A. Youssef, 10-11-2019, "Pentagon to Deploy Around 2,000 Additional Troops to Saudi Arabia," WSJ, Hook, the State Department special representative on matters involving Iran, said the two moves were unrelated. “The president has said he is getting us out of endless wars, which is very different,” Mr. Hook said at the State Department. “The troops that we’re sending into Saudi and the enhanced assets are defensive, they’re there to defend our interests and help Saudi defend itself.” Fahad Nazer, the spokesman for the Saudi Arabian embassy in Washington, welcomed the deployment. “Given the increasing brazenness of Iranian attacks and its continuing provocations, Saudi Arabia is working closely with its partners, including the United States, to bolster our defensive military capabilities,” Mr. Nazer said. In addition to the troops, missile batteries and jet fighters, the Pentagon said it was deploying an air expeditionary wing, which can conduct both offensive and defensive air missions. During a Pentagon press briefing Friday, Army Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, described the additional U.S. deployment as a defensive move intended to re-establish deterrence in the Gulf. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said the deployment was a message to the Iranians: “Do not strike another sovereign state. Do not threaten American interests and American forces, or we will respond.”Deployments to Saudi will be slow---US naval vessels in need of repairGordon Lubold and Nancy A. Youssef, 10-11-2019, "Pentagon to Deploy Around 2,000 Additional Troops to Saudi Arabia," WSJ, strikes on Saudi Aramco’s Khurais oil field and Abqaiq—the world’s largest oil-processing facility—led to?the most extensive outage the oil industry?has ever seen, knocking out 5.7 million barrels of daily crude-oil production, nearly 6% of global output.The capabilities being deployed to Saudi Arabia involve the kinds of forces the U.S. military traditionally has supplied through an aircraft carrier. The USS Abraham Lincoln has been deployed to the Middle East for more than six months and is expected next to move toward the Pacific. The carrier set to replace it, the USS Harry S. Truman, has been delayed by electrical problems. The Truman now isn’t expected to arrive in the Middle East for nearly another month, defense officials said. The strike group accompanying the Truman, however, already has moved toward the Gulf, the officials said. The decision to use ground-based aircraft suggests the U.S. is planning for gaps in aircraft carrier coverage, but also could signify that the U.S. may be planning to remain in the region for the long term, analysts said. “It’s a more elaborate operation because you are having to send it piecemeal, whereas a carrier is self contained,” said Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. “The carrier is also a more flexible way of projecting power because it’s a lot easier to move than an expeditionary air wing.”Taiwan--AffAT-ElectionsWho wins the Taiwan elections are irrelevant, both sides are angling to buy weapons from the US to counter ChinaLawrence Chung, 10-8-2019, "Taiwan’s KMT seeks to reassure US over its defence policies," South China Morning Post, ’s main opposition party Kuomintang has sent a high-profile delegation to the US-Taiwan Defence Industry Conference to try to reassure the Americans about the party’s security and defence policies if its presidential candidate Han Kuo-yu wins the upcoming election. The annual conference, held by the US-Taiwan Business Council on Monday in Ellicott City, Maryland, has long been seen as an important occasion for senior officials and business leaders from the two sides to share their views on defence and related matters. This year the mainland-friendly KMT made use of the occasion to promote the defence and foreign policies Han – who is challenging incumbent President Tsai Ing-wen of the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party – would adopt if the KMT returns to power after January’s presidential poll. “The primary focus of our national defence and force building should be aimed at preventing [China] from making a decision to use force,” its representative Alexander Huang Chieh-cheng, chairman of the Council on Strategic and Wargaming Studies, said during a keynote speech. Huang, a former vice-chairman of Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council which charts cross-strait policy, told American officials the KMT would refrain from being a “troublemaker in the region,” and would be “a responsible partner for security in the Indo-Pacific”. Huang noted that the US has already positioned mainland China as a “revisionist power” in various strategy documents recognising the rapid expansion of mainland Chinese influence in areas such as diplomacy, economics, military and the internet over the past two decades.Taiwan--NegSupport Inevitable—ConsularsNormalization of consular functions show US support for TaiwanMatthew M. Burke, 10-7-2019, "US and Taiwan strengthen ties by signing agreement to formalize consular functions," Stars and Stripes, United States and Taiwan recently formalized what already occurs in practice: routine consular functions such as prisoner visits and arrest and death notifications involving their citizens. John Norris, managing director of the American Institute in Taiwan, and Louis Huang, of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the U.S., signed a memorandum of understanding Sept. 13 that establishes standard consular functions, according to a statement on the institute website. The institute is a nonprofit, private corporation funded by the State Department and established in 1979 after the U.S. switched its diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to Beijing, according to the institute website. Congress maintains oversight over what is often referred to as the de facto U.S. embassy on the island. The Taipei representative office is the Taiwan equivalent in the United States. The U.S. acknowledges the Chinese view that it has sovereignty over Taiwan, which split from the mainland in 1949 and is self-governing. However, the U.S. regards the status of Taiwan as unsettled and supports the island with arms sales and other measures, such as by steaming warships through the Taiwan Strait that separates the island from China. Experts say the agreement is the latest step in a renewed focus on improving relations with Taiwan. “I think it extends well beyond the trade war and there are a number of areas where both the U.S. administration and both houses of Congress have taken new interest in improving relations with Taiwan,” said Carl Baker, executive director of the Pacific Forum think tank in Hawaii. “I do think that it is not so much supporting the sovereignty of Taiwan as it is a general shift in the U.S. to seeing Taiwan in geo-strategic terms in the context of China’s growing military strength in the Asia-Pacific.” The Solomon Islands drew the ire of the Trump administration last month after it cut ties with Taipei in favor of establishing diplomatic relations with Beijing. The Solomon Islands was the largest Pacific nation aligned with Taiwan, according to Reuters news agency. The memorandum is the latest move to strengthen ties between Taiwan and the U.S. under President Donald Trump.Alliances DA HelperStrong ties with Taiwan are key to servicing equipment and logistics throughout east and southeast asia.Huang Tzu-Ti, 10-8-2019, "Taiwan, US to deliver ‘considerable ach...," Taiwan News, (Taiwan News) — Taiwan and the United States are expected to deliver “considerable achievements” by cooperating on defense logistics, said the island’s top security official. Chang Guan-chung (張冠群), vice minister of National Defense for Armaments, said the two countries will seek to boost collaboration in logistical and technical support in addition to arms procurement, reported CNA. He made the remarks at the closing ceremony of the US-Taiwan Defense Industry Conference 2019 held in Maryland from Oct. 6 to 8. The details of the plan are still being worked out, Chang noted, adding that the U.S. is open to the proposal. The two are eyeing the establishment of a logistics supply chain in the future, according to the report. The U.S. recognizes Taiwan's prowess in research and development in its defense industry, reckoned York Chen (陳文政), deputy secretary-general of the National Security Council. However, while confirming that collaboration is set to begin in a few months, he declined to disclose further information because of its confidential nature, wrote CNA. Washington has approved two major arms sales to Taiwan this year, including 108 M1A2T Abrams tanks, some 250 Stinger surface-to-air missiles, and 66 F-16V fighter jets. According to Chang, the island hopes to improve on its maintenance of defense systems with American assistance while putting in place a maintenance logistics service for regional allies, reported the?Liberty Times.Turkey--AffSolvencyThe US Should end all arms sales to TurkeyWilliam D. Hartung, 10-15-2019, "To Curb Turkey’s Invasion of Syria, Cut off US Arms and Support," Inkstick, area where US action could make a difference is an immediate cessation of US arms sales to Turkey, and, even more crucially, an end to US support for Turkey’s existing arsenal. According to the most recent edition of the International Institute for Strategic Studies’ “Military Balance,” all of Turkey’s 300-plus combat aircraft are of US-origin, as are over two-thirds of its armored vehicles, the bulk of its medium-range transport aircraft, and most of its attack helicopters. Although Turkey has developed its own arms industry, it still depends on US spare parts and maintenance support to keep its military running, including such crucial items as engines and software. The Center for International Policy’s Security Assistance Monitor has published useful fact sheets on the flow of US arms to Turkey, as well as the US role in training and equipping opposition forces in Syria (here and here). A cutoff of arms and sustainment would strike directly at the principal instruments of the Turkish invasion. A bipartisan coalition in Congress has threatened to pass legislation imposing economic sanctions and cutting arms transfers to Turkey. It is critically important that these measures explicitly target the US role in sustaining Turkey’s military, not just arms transfers in the pipeline. The Turkish invasion of Syria is yet another cautionary tale regarding the risks involved in transferring US arms to potentially unreliable allies and regions of conflict. The most egregious current case is the role of US-supplied arms in the brutal Saudi/UAE-led war in Yemen, which has sparked the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe. These cases underscore the need for strengthening Congressional oversight of arms sales, perhaps including a requirement that major deals receive Congressional approval before moving forward.Turkey—NegInherencyHouse Republicans on the verge of Sanctioning TurkeyJoe Gould and Aaron Mehta, 10-16-2019, "Liz Cheney’s Turkey sanctions bill would ban US arms sales," Defense News, — More than 90 of?U.S. President Donald Trump’s fellow Republicans in the House were poised Wednesday to introduce sanctions against Turkey aimed at ending its assault against Kurdish fighters and civilians in Syria — an assault Turkey began after Trump announced he was withdrawing U.S. troops from Syria. The sanctions announced Wednesday by House Republican Conference Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., include a ban on U.S. military assistance to NATO ally Turkey and, separately, would apply to anyone who provides financial, material or technological support to or knowingly conducts a transaction with the Turkish armed forces, including defense articles, petroleum and natural gas. This bill also extends the sanctions placed through Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, or CAATSA, on Turkey in response to its purchase of the Russian S-400 Triumph anti-missile defense system. The House bill follows the efforts of Sens. Lindsay Graham, R-S.C., and Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., who are expected to introduce their version on Thursday. The House sanctions bill underscored the dissatisfaction with Trump’s decision as the administration scrambles to contain the fallout, including bipartisan criticism that the withdrawal betrays Kurdish allies and benefits Russia, Iran, the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad and the remnants of the Islamic State group.CircumventionState Department will Construct Waivers for Arms Sales to Turkey to ContinueTony Bertuca, 10-15-2019, "U.S. crafting waivers to continue arms sales to Turkey," InsideDefense, State Department plans to craft waivers to continue U.S. arms sales to Turkey, despite escalating diplomatic tensions and?economic sanctions?over Ankara's ongoing military operations against Kurdish forces in northern Syria, according to a senior defense official. The official said the Pentagon expects the waivers soon so that "official business" between the United States and Turkey -- a NATO ally -- can continue. Proponents of the arms sales have said Turkey would go to Russia for its weapons if the United States does not allow them to continue. U.S. relations with Turkey hit a speed bump earlier this year when the Turks were booted from the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program over their purchase of a Russian-made missile system. However, other nations, including the United Kingdom, have suspended all arms sales to Turkey over fears the weapons could be used in the Syrian conflict. Defense Secretary Mark Esper has said he intends to discuss the situation in Syria with other NATO allies next week at a meeting in Brussels. Meanwhile, members of both parties have argued President Trump's decision to withdraw U.S. troops from northern Syria gave Turkey license to attack Kurdish forces that helped the United States fight the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.Ukraine--AffMust Re-Assess RelationshipThe new arms deals to Ukraine have alienated our NATO allies because they have neither interest to defend Ukraine nor admit it as a NATOTed Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow in defense and foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, is the author of 13 books and more than 800 articles on international affairs, 9-26-2019, "It’s High Time To Reassess The United States’ Relationship With Ukraine," Federalist, lost in all the partisan maneuvering and bickering is a more important issue: the nature of Washington’s overall relationship with Ukraine and whether that relationship really serves America’s best interests. To examine that issue it is important to overcome an especially tenacious?foreign policy myth: that Trump has engaged in an appeasement policy toward Vladimir Putin’s Russia. The appeasement accusation was an integral part of the “Russia collusion” narrative that not even the politically biased staff of former special counsel Robert Mueller could substantiate.The reality is that the Trump administration’s Russia policy has been noticeably more uncompromising and confrontational than the approach Barack Obama adopted, and nowhere is that aspect more evident than with respect to Ukraine. It may not be a wise policy, but it is decidedly hardline.Despite explicit congressional authorizations, Obama refused to sell arms to Kiev, believing (with good reason) that such a step would exacerbate already serious Ukrainian-Russian tensions, and even more worrisome, exacerbate U.S.-Russian tensions. Conversely, the Trump administration approved?two major arms sales?to Ukraine during its first two years. The latter sale in the spring of 2018 even included Javelin anti-tank missiles.The new arms package that Trump temporarily delayed was the third such measure to provide significant arms aid to Kiev. Since Moscow backs a secessionist war in eastern Ukraine and has been on bad terms overall with Kiev since demonstrators ousted the elected, pro-Russian government in 2014, the U.S. policy of boosting Ukraine’s military capabilities is hardly a friendly act.The arms sales are not the only indications of a significant escalation of Washington’s support for Kiev under the Trump administration. Secretary of Defense James Mattis admitted that Washington had adopted a program?to train Ukrainian troops??at a military base in western Ukraine.One dramatic exception to the recent shrill partisanship surrounding Trump’s alleged use of the latest arms deal for nefarious purposes is the attitude regarding the appropriateness of the sale itself. There is a bipartisan consensus in Congress that selling weapons to Ukraine is a good move that benefits America’s security interests. But that assumption reflects poor judgment by both the executive and legislative branches.Americans should ask themselves why Ukraine is now an essential security interest of the United States warranting Washington meddling in a civil war and adopting measures certain to antagonize Russia. Clearly, Ukraine was never a U.S. security interest of any sort during the Cold War, given that it was an integral part of the Soviet Union. Merely because it became independent is not a sufficient reason that a country deep inside Eastern Europe, directly on Russia’s border, should now be an American security client. Yet that is what has occurred.For some members of the U.S. political and foreign policy establishments, even the current cozy bilateral security relationship with Kiev is not enough. President George W. Bush strongly lobbied the North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies to offer Ukraine (along with Georgia) membership in the alliance. At the 2008 NATO summit, Bush pressed for a Membership Action Plan, the first stage of the process leading to admission.Key European allies, led by France and Germany, balked?for two reasons. First, as German Chancellor Angela Merkel told Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Ukraine was a dysfunctional mess in domestic politics and policies. Second, both Paris and Berlin feared that admitting Ukraine or Georgia would lead to serious trouble with Russia.Those NATO members seem no more enthusiastic today about having a treaty obligation to defend Ukraine and Georgia than they did in 2008. Indeed, they seem anxious for an agreement between Moscow and Kiev ending the violent standoff over eastern Ukraine’s secession. Zelensky’s government has?expressed worry?that the West, especially Paris and Berlin, will pressure Kiev to make major concessions to Moscow to achieve that goal.At the same time, enthusiasts in the United States continue to press for NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia. Given the conflicting tends on the two sides of the Atlantic, the United States could find itself trying to protect its de facto Ukrainian client from Russian coercion when even its principal NATO allies have no stomach for such a mission. Indeed, comprehensive public opinion surveys in European countries?show little willingness to fulfill mutual defense obligations?to other current NATO members, much less to nonmembers on Russia’s frontier.Washington’s entire Ukraine policy fairly cries out for a comprehensive reassessment. Unfortunately, the shallow partisan posturing over Trump’s latest actions provides little hope that such a meaningful reassessment will occur anytime soon.Ukraine--NegArms Sales Minimize ConflictUS Aid to Ukraine is key to minimizing civilian casualties and combatting an aggressive Russia in the Donbas region.Nolan Peterson, a former special operations pilot and a combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, is The Daily Signal’s foreign correspondent based in Ukraine., 9-26-2019, "How Ukraine Uses US Military Aid," Daily Signal, 2014, U.S. military aid has improved the survivability of Ukraine’s armed forces, and allowed them to fight with more precise, limited means, without relying on Soviet-era area-warfare tactics (which Russia has showcased in its indiscriminate bombing campaign in Syria), thereby reducing the risk of collateral damage. Also, and no less importantly, American aid sends a deterrent message to Moscow and boosts the morale of Ukraine’s soldiers and civilians. “U.S. assistance has both a symbolic value and a practical one,” said Oleksiy Melnyk, co-director of foreign relations and international security programs at the Razumkov Centre, a Ukrainian think tank. “Most of the equipment and weapons go for the front-line troops and … they have helped to save lives.” Ukrainians have the will to fight, that’s clear. Moreover, Ukraine has rebuilt its once dilapidated military into the second-largest standing land army in Europe in terms of manpower. Today, after more than five years of war, Ukraine remains one of the world’s top weapons-exporting nations and is able to meet many of its own defense supply needs. Still, the former Soviet republic has some glaring shortfalls in its domestic military-industrial complex. Namely, when it comes to producing high-tech tactical battlefield technologies such as counter-battery radars and night-vision systems, as well as the ability to field certain big-ticket items, including warplanes and anti-aircraft defenses. “Ukraine is indeed a major arms manufacturing nation—but we nonetheless desperately need U.S. military help,” said Ponomarenko, who has reportedly extensively from the war’s front lines. “The reason behind this is that our military in the Donbas faces an enemy that enjoys considerable superiority in many aspects of modern warfare, starting from the use of drones to radio-electronic jamming systems.”Arms Sales Minimize Casualty RatesUS Military aid is key to Ukrainian defense reform and has cut casualty rates in more than half.Nolan Peterson, a former special operations pilot and a combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, is The Daily Signal’s foreign correspondent based in Ukraine., 9-26-2019, "How Ukraine Uses US Military Aid," Daily Signal, forthcoming U.S. military aid to Ukraine is slated to support Ukraine’s navy and navy infantry. The country’s land and special operations forces are set to benefit, as well, through the delivery of sniper rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, counter-artillery radars, electronic warfare detection and secure communications, night-vision systems, and military medical treatment. According to the Pentagon, U.S. military aid is tied to Ukraine achieving certain reform benchmarks. “This security cooperation is made possible by Ukraine’s continued progress on the adoption of key defense institutional reforms to align Ukraine’s national security architecture with Euro-Atlantic principles,” a June Defense Department press release stated. American deliveries of counter-battery radars, night-vision devices, and armored Humvees have been a “game-changer” for Ukrainian forces, Ponomarenko said. “Smart, more perfect weaponry gives us a real chance [against Russian forces],” Ponomarenko said. “And this is where U.S. military aid saves the day. It gives us weapons and equipment that are better than what our enemy has in Donbas in terms of mobile, high-tech warfare.” In particular, the 20 Lockheed Martin AN/TPQ-53 counter-battery radar systems the U.S. sent Ukraine in 2015 had a positive impact on the survivability of Ukrainian units using the system; their casualty rates dropped from 47% to about 18%, Ukrainian officials say. Counter-battery radars detect and track incoming artillery or mortar rounds from their points of origin. A military force using the system has more time to take shelter and requires less time to return fire. “Ukraine really lacks a number of capabilities where the U.S. aid proved to be very essential. Namely are counter-artillery radars, anti-sniper systems, secured radios, night-vision equipment, and medical equipment,” Melnyk, a former Soviet fighter pilot and Ukrainian air force commander told The Daily Signal.Arms Sales Deter RussiaAs the delivery of arms sold to Ukraine has increased, so has Russian Aggression in the region.Military Times Editorial, 9-26-2019, "Military aid for Ukraine is good for the US," Military Times, from the noise of the political storm over President Donald Trump’s phone calls with Ukraine is the loud barrage of Russian artillery fire blasting away in the Donbass. The Russian attacks are increasing in frequency and destruction. Ukrainian casualties are mounting. Ukraine has asked the U.S. to provide military supplies to support their fight against the Russians, but the White House has delayed it. For the Ukrainian military, and ultimately for the U.S. and other allies who are dealing with Russian aggression, the bottom line is this: Any delay in arms sales has a deleterious effect on Ukraine’s fight. That’s bad news for U.S. forces who may one day encounter the Russian military and will rely in part on lessons learned from Ukraine’s fight. Since the 2014 Russian seizure of Crimea and invasion of Ukraine’s east, the “full spectrum” of Russian military doctrine has been on display. That doctrine — often referred to as “hybrid warfare” — includes the use of conventional forces like mechanized infantry backed by armor and artillery, as well as special operations forces, assassinations and bombings, electronic warfare, cyber attacks and the weaponization of information. Ukraine needs U.S. arms to counter these threats.Arms sales to Ukraine both reduce casualties and deter Russia.Military Times Editorial, 9-26-2019, "Military aid for Ukraine is good for the US," Military Times, 2015, for instance, Ukraine received 20 AN/TPQ-53 radar systems that track incoming mortar and short-range artillery fire. The casualty rate for units equipped with those systems dropped from 47 percent to about 18 percent, Col. Andrii Ordynovych, Ukraine’s military attache in Washington tells Military Times. Similarly, after Ukraine’s military began using U.S.-provided Javelin anti-tank weapons, Russian tanks and armored personnel carriers that once operated with devastating impunity have backed off, Ordynovych said. “That was a strategic deterrence,” he said. That’s the goal of the $250 million U.S. aid package held up by Trump, which includes sniper rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, counter-artillery radars, electronic warfare detection and secure communications, night vision and military medical treatment. In July, George P. Kent, deputy assistant secretary in the European and Eurasian Bureau at the U.S. Department of State, told Military Times that the U.S. military is paying close attention to how Ukraine fights the Russians, and the equipment and tactics and techniques the Russians are employing. “I think there is a great opportunity, even as we are helping the Ukrainian military build its own resilience against Russian aggression, for us to learn from the modern way of Russia doing war in Ukraine,” he said in an interview. Things have changed since Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, said Kent, and what the Russians are learning in Ukraine has been applied to places like Syria. The delay in the arms shipment “is being assessed by Russian intelligence,” said Ukraine’s military attache. Given what’s at stake for U.S. national security interests, every day the Trump administration delays is a good day for Russia. And by extension, a bad day for us.Arms Sales Key to TacticsA Us-Russia war is inevitable, arms sales are key to understanding how the US may have to fight Russia in the future.Howard Altman, 10-1-2019, "In wartime Ukraine, Trump’s stalled US weapons sale is a minor concern," Military Times, roiling controversy about President Donald Trump’s interactions with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky over whether the former pressed the latter to investigate the son of Joe Biden has put a spotlight on Ukraine and its grinding conflict with Russia-backed militants — especially in Washington, where the deadly conflict in Ukraine has become a political ping pong ball and Trump faces the very real possibility of being impeached. But as my colleagues in journalism dig into the unfolding scandal about whether Trump withheld arms to a friendly nation fighting Russians in pursuit of political favors, I wanted to know how this is all playing out in Ukraine, where the loudest noise emanates not from the chattering class, but from Russian artillery. Bottom line up front? Folks in Ukraine are not overly bothered by the controversy, nor any delay in the arms sales. I wanted to know what this all means to Ukraine’s military, because by extension that has a real effect on ours. Ukraine has become a laboratory for how the U.S. might one day have to fight the Russians, and we have U.S. troops there training Ukraine forces. Plus, we already have seen the Russian lessons learned in Ukraine carried out by Russian-backed forces against U.S. troops in Syria in the form of electronic warfare that interfered with U.S. aircraft.Arms sales to Ukraine are all about countering future Russian aggression and preventing Russian and Chinese arms fill-in to regions around the globeHoward Altman, 10-1-2019, "In wartime Ukraine, Trump’s stalled US weapons sale is a minor concern," Military Times, about 250,000 active duty troops, Ukraine, Danylyuk pointed out, has the biggest army in Europe next to the Russians. And by facing off against the Russians, Ukraine soldiers have learned valuable lessons about their tactics, techniques and procedures, information they have shared with U.S. troops in Ukraine. “U.S. soldiers have gotten more from our soldiers than they share with them,” he said. But “the scale of your support to Ukraine is five times less than Egypt,” he said, “and they have a not-very-pro-U.S. government that is not in war with Russia. And not a nuclear power that in 1993 decided to abandon its nuclear arsenal to get American guarantees for our independence and territorial integrity. It’s not fair.” The bottom line, however, is not about fairness, said Danylyuk. It’s about countering Russian aggression, something U.S. troops may one day have to deal with directly. Arms packages like the one at the center of the latest festering Trump imbroglio aren’t game-changers, said Danylyuk. “Ukraine is not a sort of African country which needs to get rifles and ammunition,” he said. “We can build everything ourselves.” A better mutual bilateral U.S.-Ukraine agreement on arms development “would be more beneficial to the U.S. than Ukraine,” said Danylyuk. That’s because by helping beef up Ukraine’s defense industry, the U.S. can meet two objectives in one move. It can help choke off Russian arms sales, thus depriving Moscow of much-needed revenue it uses to fund its aggressive behavior. And it can help prevent the Chinese, who are already making inroads to Ukraine’s defense industry and elsewhere in the region, from filling that void. “We need reasonable, bilateral cooperation between the U.S. and Ukraine in the field of defense industry,” he said. “It is pretty clear Ukraine was a part of the Soviet defense industry and if there is cooperation from the U.S., we can replace Russia in a lot of countries, including India.”AT-Javelin Missiles—No EscalationWe have already delivered javelin missiles, and it did not cause Russian escalationNolan Peterson, a former special operations pilot and a combat veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan, is The Daily Signal’s foreign correspondent based in Ukraine., 9-26-2019, "How Ukraine Uses US Military Aid," Daily Signal, 2018, Ukraine took possession of the U.S. Javelins. The anti-tank weapons have not been deployed to the Donbas battlefield. In fact, Kyiv guaranteed the weapons would remain in storage outside the war zone, and would not be used in the conflict under its current conditions. Thus, the delivery of U.S. anti-tank weaponry has not affected the overall outcome of the war in the Donbas or given Ukraine the means to repel a full-blown Russian invasion. On the other hand, the Javelins’ delivery did not spur a Russian military escalation, either, as some had feared. “It’s politically important that the Russians are deterred by the possibility that Ukraine will get even more lethal weapons [from the U.S.] if Moscow decides to escalate,” Khara said. Beyond their battlefield utility, the U.S. Javelins are also a potent moral booster for Ukrainian troops, demonstrating American resolve to support Ukraine’s ongoing defensive military campaign. “Everybody knows that the Javelins are not going to be engaged in combat in Donbas and that this was rather a symbolic, political move from D.C., but I can tell you that it immensely boosted morale in the Ukrainian ranks,” said the Kyiv Post’s Ponomarenko. “It simply showed that we are not alone in this battle, that we still have a powerful friend standing behind us—and that our friend means business by supporting us with exclusively advanced weapons given only to the most trusted allies.”We’ve already sent them javelin missiles and we’ve just approved more. Lucas Tomlinson,, 10-1-2019, "US OKs Javelin antitank missile sale to Ukraine, officials say," Fox News, Trump administration has agreed to sell Ukraine 150 Javelin antitank missiles and two additional missile launchers, two U.S. officials confirmed to Fox News on Tuesday. Lethal arms sales to Ukraine have come under intense scrutiny, now that President Trump has been accused of taking part in an alleged quid pro quo scheme using military aid as leverage to get officials there to investigate Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden, his son Hunter and their business dealings in Ukraine. U.S. Army Soldiers fire a Javelin Antitank Missile system during a large-scale platoon live-fire exercise at Fort Campbell, Ky., July 29, 2016. (U.S. Army) U.S. Army Soldiers fire a Javelin Antitank Missile system during a large-scale platoon live-fire exercise at Fort Campbell, Ky., July 29, 2016. (U.S. Army) Trump has vigorously denied the claims and pushed back against the accusations, which have sparked an impeachment inquiry by House Democrats after a whistleblower complaint accused Trump of "using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election." Source: Secretary Pompeo was on President Trump's call with Ukraine's leaderVideo During the July 25 phone call, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky told President Trump, “We are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps. [Specifically] we are almost ready to buy more Javelins from the United States for defense [sic] purposes,” according to a rough transcript of the call released by the White House. President Trump replied, “I would like you to do us a favor though…,” leading some to speculate that the U.S. president was referring to some kind of “favor for a favor” in exchange for information on Biden, the onetime vice president. Trump has repeatedly defended his call with Zelensky as "perfect" and calls the latest Democratic probe "another witch hunt." House Democrats have subpoenaed Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and State Department officials, as well as Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani, as part of their impeachment probe. CLINTON CALLS FOR CAUTION ON IMPEACHMENT, TELLS DEMOCRATS NOT TO 'JUMP TO ANY CONCLUSIONS' Officially, the Pentagon was not ready to confirm the Javelin sale to Ukraine on Tuesday. The two officials who spoke to Fox News declined to be identified. A U.S. soldier fires a Javelin antitank missile in Afghanistan in this 2015 photo. A U.S. soldier fires a Javelin antitank missile in Afghanistan in this 2015 photo. (REUTERS/Lucas Jackson) “It would be premature to discuss security assistance until it has been formally notified to Congress. I would refer you to the State Department,” Pentagon spokeswoman Lt. Col. Carla Gleason said in a statement. The State Department announced it approved the $39.2 million sale of 150 Javelin missiles and other equipment on Thursday. Political-Military Affairs, US Dept of State ? @StateDeptPM .@StateDept authorizes a proposed Foreign Military Sale (FMS) to #Ukraine for 150 Javelin missiles worth $39.2 million @StateDeptPM #FMSUpdate- 314 11:53 AM - Oct 3, 2019 Twitter Ads info and privacy 432 people are talking about this ONLY 11 PERCENT OF NETWORK NEWS COVERAGE OF UKRAINE CONTROVERSY REFERENCED BIDENS, RIGHT-LEANING WATCHDOG CLAIMS Javelin antitank missiles were not part of the $250 million Pentagon aid package the White House held up in July, along with roughly $150 million from the State Department for a total of $400 million for Ukraine. Trump has cited corruption in Ukraine as one of the reasons his administration withheld the aid, which was released Sept. 11. To date, $225 million has been allocated, according to defense officials. The Trump administration first sold 210 Javelin antitank missiles to Ukraine last year for $47 million. Bloomberg first reported the $39 million missile sale on Tuesday. A U.S. soldier fires a Javelin anti-tank missile near Al Asad Air Base (AAAB), Iraq, Sept. 26, 2018. (U.S. Army National Guard photo by 1st Lt. Leland White) A U.S. soldier fires a Javelin anti-tank missile near Al Asad Air Base (AAAB), Iraq, Sept. 26, 2018. (U.S. Army National Guard photo by 1st Lt. Leland White) At the United Nations last week, Trump defended his record of providing assistance to Ukrainian forces who have been engaged in fierce ground combat with Russian and Russian-backed forces, including armored units, in eastern Ukraine for the past five years. “I gave you antitank busters that -- frankly, President Obama was sending you pillows and sheets, and I gave you antitank busters. And a lot of people didn’t want to do that. But I did it," Trump told reporters in New York. Russian troops also annexed Crimea from Ukraine in 2014.Non UQ – already sent them missilesDavid Brown, 10-2-2019, "U.S. OKs more Javelin missiles for Ukraine," POLITICO, SALES: The U.S. has given the go-ahead for Ukraine to purchase 150 Javelin anti-tank missiles for $39 million, days after Trump came under fire for appearing to make continued transfers of the weapon contingent on learning damaging information about the Bidens, our own Jacqueline Feldscher and Connor O’Brien write. “The new arms deal, which includes 150 of the portable tank-busting weapons made by a joint venture between Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, has been in the works since before [the July 25 phone call between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky]. The U.S. Embassy in Ukraine announced that Ukraine requested the weapons on July 7.” The sale is not related to the almost $400 million in military aid that was frozen this summer, which is now at the heart of House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry into Trump. Zelensky, in Tuesday remarks to reporters, said he didn’t know why the aid was originally frozen. “It wasn’t explained to me,” he said, per The Associated Press. He also dismissed the idea that Trump was trying to force him into digging up dirt on the Bidens. Pompeo accuses Dems: Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Tuesday rebuffed House Democrats’ demands for testimony and documents related to the Ukraine scandal, essentially accusing the lawmakers of being bullies, asking for too much and not giving enough time to answer, POLITICO’s Andrew Desiderio and Heather Caygle report. “Let me be clear: I will not tolerate such tactics, and I will use all means at my disposal to prevent and expose any attempts to intimidate the dedicated professionals whom I am proud to lead and serve alongside at the Department of State,” Pompeo wrote to House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Eliot Engel. Dems respond: “Any effort to intimidate witnesses or prevent them from talking with Congress — including State Department employees — is illegal and will constitute evidence of obstruction of the impeachment inquiry,” said Engel, Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff and Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings in a joint statement. Pompeo’s words didn’t go over well in Foggy Bottom, POLITICO’s Nahal Toosi writes. “Pompeo has done little to protect U.S. diplomats from a virtual war waged on them by President Donald Trump’s administration. His abrupt withdrawal earlier this year of the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine — whom Trump disparaged in a call at the heart of Democrats’ impeachment inquiry — also has raised questions about Pompeo’s willingness to stand up for staffers facing political attacks.” More depositions coming: “Marie Yovanovitch, the former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, will be deposed Oct. 11, postponing her scheduled session by nine days, a committee aide said Tuesday. Kurt Volker, the U.S. special representative for Ukraine negotiations who resigned last week, will be deposed on Thursday,” per The Wall Street Journal. And State Department Inspector General Steve Linick, who is independent from Pompeo, on Tuesday asked to meet with congressional staff today, CNN reports. The request was “highly unusual and cryptically worded,” one congressional source said. About that secret server: “The Trump White House upgraded the security of the National Security Council’s top-secret codeword system in the spring of 2018, according to two former Trump White House officials familiar with the matter, as part of an effort to ferret out and deter leaks,” write POLITICO’s Daniel Lippman and Natasha Bertrand. “The changes included a new log of who accessed specific documents in the NSC’s system ... and was designed in part to prevent leaks of records of the president’s phone calls with foreign leaders and to find out the suspected leaker if transcripts did get disclosed, one of the former officials said. Prior to the upgrade, officials could only see who had uploaded or downloaded material to the system but usually not who accessed which documents.”Already sent them finalized missiles salesAssociated Press, 10-3-2019, "US finalizes sale of 150 anti-tank missiles to Ukraine," Washington Times, (AP) - The State Department has approved a sale of military equipment to Ukraine that includes 150 anti-tank missiles to help fight Russia-backed separatists. A Defense Security Cooperation Agency notice says the $39.2 million sale includes 10 launch units for the Javelin missiles and related equipment. The agency announced the sale Thursday after notifying Congress, where the leadership gave initial approval earlier this week. President Donald Trump earlier this year delayed nearly $400 in aid to Ukraine as he sought to press the country’s president to investigate the son of former Vice President Joe Biden. This sale is not part of that aid package. The U.S. has been providing assistance to Ukraine since Russia-backed separatists invaded in 2014 following the ouster of a Kremlin-backed leader in an Eastern European country that was once part of the Soviet Union. SKIP AD Air Force Gen. Tod Wolters, the Supreme Allied Commander, told Pentagon reporters on Thursday that he believes that the U.S. should send more Javelins to Ukraine beyond those already in the pipeline. He said the Javelins, which are manufactured in a joint venture by Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, and the military training teams that deploy with them allow Ukraine to better protect itself.We just approved FMS sales to Ukraine – including 150 javelinsAmanda Macias, 10-03-2019, “State Department approves possible $39 million Javelin missile sale to Ukraine amid Trump impeachment probe,” CNBC, — The State Department on Thursday approved a possible foreign military sale to Ukraine for 150 antitank missiles and related support equipment worth approximately $39.2 million. Ukraine requested the Javelin missile system early this past summer, and the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, brought up the missiles in the July 25 phone call with President Donald Trump that led Democrats to kick off an impeachment inquiry last week. The Defense Department notified Congress of the possible sale Thursday. “This proposed sale will contribute to the foreign policy and national security of the United States by improving the security of Ukraine. The Javelin system will help Ukraine build its long-term defense capacity to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity in order to meet its national defense requirements,” the State Department said in a release. “It’s a defensive contribution, the Javelin,” U.S. Air Force Gen. Tod Wolters, the nation’s top general in Europe, told reporters at the Pentagon. “It affords a soldier the opportunity to put a resource in his or her hands that affords the opportunity to protect their sovereign turf. It’s a sophisticated capability, it’s a modern capability, it has great precision, it has great speed.” GP: UKRAINE-INDEPENDENCE-DEFENCE-CELEBRATION Ukrainian servisemen ride atop of an APC’s with Javelin anti-tank missiles during a military parade in Kiev on August 24, 2018 to celebrate the Independence Day, 27 years since Ukraine gained independence from the Soviet Union. - Around 4,500 servicemen, including dozens representatives of foreign allies like the United States and Great Britain, saluted Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko during a military parade. Some 250 pieces of military hardware, including advanced Ukrainian weapons the Bohdana 155-mm self-propelled howitzer and the Vilkha multiple-launch rocket system, were shown to the thousands of spectators who waved Ukrainian blue and yellow flags. (Photo by Genya SAVILOV / AFP) (Photo credit should read GENYA SAVILOV/AFP/Getty Images) Genya Savilov | AFP | Getty Images In addition to the Javelins, the sale would include 10 Javelin Command Launch Units, as well as training equipment and a suite of logistical support services. Zelensky brought up Javelin missiles in the now-infamous call with Trump that is at the center of House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry. In a five-page memorandum of the call released last week, Zelensky noted that Ukraine was “almost ready to buy more Javelins from the United States for defense purposes.” Trump responded: “I would like you to do us a favor though because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it. I would like you to find out what happened with this whole situation with Ukraine.” Trump appears to be referring in this instance to the origins of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe. In a separate portion of the 30-minute call, Trump asked Zelensky if he could “look into” unsubstantiated allegations of wrongdoing against former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter, who previously had a seat on the board of a Ukrainian natural-gas company. This sale is separate from the $250 million in military aid, authorized months earlier by Congress but held up without a clear explanation by Trump until nearly two months after his call with Zelensky. Democrats, along with a whistleblower who filed a complaint that brought the call to Congress’ attention, are accusing the president of soliciting a foreign government to interfere in the 2020 election to favor Trump. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said this week that he was on the call. The prime contractor for the Javelin Missile System is Raytheon of Waltham, Massachusetts. There are no known offset agreements proposed in conjunction with this potential sale.Ukriane is getting 150 javlinsDavid Axe, 10-4-2019, "Ukraine Is Getting 150 Deadly Javelin Anti-Tank Missiles," National Interest, U.S. State Department has approved the sale to Ukraine of 150 Javelin anti-tank missiles and 10 launchers. SPONSORED CONTENT Recommended by Why Fly Economy Ever Again?. Search Last Minute Business Flights Why Fly Economy Ever Again?. Search Last Minute Business Flights Yahoo! Search Blood Sugar: Here’s How You Wash Out Glucose from Blood Blood Sugar: Here’s How You Wash Out Glucose from Blood Banks Offer Cash Bonuses for Opening a Checking Account Yahoo Search The $40-million deal signals a political retreat for the administration of Pres. Donald Trump. In a July 2019 phone call with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky, Trump strongly insinuated that the United States would sell the Raytheon-made missiles to Ukraine only if the Ukrainian government agreed to investigate Hunter Biden, the son of former U.S. vice president Joe Biden. Hunter Biden has been a legal, paid consultant to a Ukrainian energy company. “This proposed sale will contribute to the foreign policy and national security of the United States by improving the security of Ukraine,” the State Department announced on Oct. 3, 2019. “The Javelin system will help Ukraine build its long-term defense capacity to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity in order to meet its national defense requirements. Ukraine will have no difficulty absorbing this system into its armed forces.” “The proposed sale of this equipment and support will not alter the basic military balance in the region,” the department added. 5 SECONDS Do You Know What Happened Today In History? Ukraine bought its first Javelins in March 2018. That deal included 210 missiles and 37 launchers and cost $47 million. The Trump administration in 2017 had approved Ukraine to receive Javelins. The 2017 decision reversed the policy of the administration of Pres. Barack Obama, which placed limits on the sale to Ukraine of what it considered “offensive lethal weaponry.” The infrared-guided, fire-and-forget Javelins with their 18-pound warheads can destroy armored vehicles and fortifications at a distance of up to three miles. The munitions promised to significantly improve the Ukrainian army’s ability to defend against the Russian-supplied tanks and fighting vehicles in the arsenal of pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine’s Donbass region. Report Advertisement “Javelins alone will not enable Kiev to force Russia out of Crimea and Donbass, but they substantively increase Ukraine’s ability to impose costs on Russian forces,” wrote Ian Brzezinski, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center on International Security. “The Javelins will also likely reanimate among Russian commanders uncomfortable memories of the role that U.S. shoulder-mounted Stinger air-defense missiles played in forcing the Soviet Union’s retreat from Afghanistan in the late 1980s,” Brzezinski added. “In these ways, the Javelins will help to deter further Russian seizures of Ukrainian territory.” Ukraine’s then-president Petro Poroshenko in mid-2018 celebrated the testing of the first batch of Ukrainian Javelins. “Finally this day has come!” Poroshenko tweeted. “Today, for the first time in Ukraine, the launch of Javelin missile complexes took place. This is a very effective defensive weaponry, which is used in the event of Russian offensive on the positions of Ukrainian troops.” A year later Ukraine needed more Javelins. On July 25, 2019, Trump and Zelensky spoke via phone on a variety of subjects. “We are ready to continue to cooperate for the next steps,” Zelensky said, according to an edited transcript of the call that the White House released under pressure from lawmakers. “Specifically we are almost ready to buy more Javelins from the United States for defense purposes,” Zelensky added. “I would like you to do us a favor though,” Trump replied, “because our country has been through a lot and Ukraine knows a lot about it.” Trump then leaned on Zelensky to investigate the younger Biden and offered Zelensky the assistance of U.S. Attorney General William Barr. It’s illegal under U.S. law to invite foreign interference in a U.S. election. Report Advertisement Before Trump called Zekensky, his administration had delayed $400 million in U.S. military assistance to Ukraine. Lawmakers from both major political parties had questioned the delay, ultimately leading to the revelation of Trump’s attempt to trade missiles for political favors. Meanwhile, a whistleblower from inside the U.S. intelligence community stepped forward with allegations of wrongdoing involving Trump’s calls with foreign leaders. Report Advertisement In clearing Ukraine to receive the second batch of Javelins, the State Department effectively prevents Trump from withholding the missiles in the hope that Ukraine will render partisan political favors.We have already sent Ukraine missiles and we’ve just approved moreDefense Post, 10-3-2019, "US approves $39 million sale of Javelin anti-tank missiles to Ukraine," U.S. has approved Ukraine’s purchase of Javelin missiles and launch units at an estimated cost of nearly $40 million, the Defense Security Cooperation Agency said on Thursday, October 3. Ukraine requested to buy 150 Javelin missiles and 10 Javelin Command Launch Units, training devices, support equipment, training and support services, and other related elements, DSCA said in a release. The total estimated cost is not to exceed $39.2 million, the release said. “The Javelin system will help Ukraine build its long-term defense capacity to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity in order to meet its national defense requirements,” DSCA said. Raytheon is the primary contractor. The State Department formally authorized the sale with the informal approval of Congress, Bloomberg first reported on Tuesday. The Javelin purchase is in addition to, but separate from a previous $250 million military aid package that President Donald Trump withheld in June before asking Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky for a “favor” in a July 25 phone call that has triggered an impeachment inquiry in the U.S. House of Representatives. The administration lifted the hold on that sale, originally approved in June, on September 11 following backlash from Congress, Politico reported. During the call, Zelensky reiterated his government’s desire to purchase more Javelin anti-tank shoulder-fired missile launchers. Trump responded by asking Zelensky to investigate Hunter Biden, the son of former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, who is likely to be Trump’s top challenger in the 2020 U.S. presidential election. The U.S. Defense Department’s General Counsel directed top Pentagon officials on Thursday to prepare to preserve and turn over all pertinent records relating to the Ukraine aid, Assistant Defense Secretary for Public Affairs Jonathan Hoffman told reporters. The Ukrainian government is at war against eastern separatists backed by the Russian government. Nearly 13,000 people have been killed since the start of the insurgency, which broke out in April 2014 following Russia’s annexation of Crimea. The U.S. has sent Ukraine $1.6 billion in military and security aid since 2014. In 2017 the Trump administration approved the U.S.’s first lethal arms sales to Ukraine since the conflict began. Ukraine and its Western allies accuse Russia of funneling troops and arms to the pro-Moscow rebels across the border. Moscow denies the allegations. FGM-148 Javelin fire-and forget anti-tank guided missile The FGM-148 Javelin is a U.S.-made man-portable fire-and-forget anti-tank guided missile which locks on and uses automatic infrared guidance, allowing the user to take cover immediately. The Javelin’s high-explosive anti-tank (HEAT) warhead can defeat modern tanks by attacking them from above, but the system can also use a direct-attack mode against buildings and helicopters. The tandem warhead carries two shaped charges: a precursor to detonate explosive reactive armor and a primary warhead to penetrate base armor. The U.S. previously approved the sale to Ukraine of 210 Javelin missiles and 37 launch units, including spares, in March 2018 at an estimated cost of $47 million. A joint venture between Raytheon and Lockheed Martin to produce the anti-tank weapon has since been awarded a number of contract modifications for foreign Javelin sales. The purpose of the sales has been “to help Ukraine defend itself against Russian aggression,” Joint Staff Spokesperson Air Force Colonel Patrick Ryder told reporters Thursday. Trump’s July phone call with Ukraine’s president, which was reported by a whistleblower, shows the U.S. president has considered sales of the sophisticated weapon system as leverage over the Ukrainian government. The July phone call was not the first time the prospect of the Trump administration’s Javelin sales hung over Ukrainian officials. Weeks after the U.S.’s first approved sale in 2018, Ukraine’s chief prosecutor halted four ongoing criminal investigations involving Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager, allegedly over concerns that the Trump administration may withhold the sales, the New York Times reported last year. A Ukrainian opposition source who spoke to The New York Times at the time said he did not believe there had been a quid-pro-quo between U.S. and Ukrainian officials over halting the investigations. Manafort, who came under intense scrutiny in the Mueller investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, was jailed in the U.S. earlier this year on charges of tax and financial fraud relating to his work advising Ukraine’s pro-Kremlin former President Viktor Yanukovych. ................
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