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      Blinken criticizes Russia's 'violent crackdown' on protesters and weighs North Korea sanctions

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      The Biden administration will consider new sanctions against North Korea as well as other possible actions against Russia said Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, in a television interview on Monday, as the administration continued its foreign policy review.Blinken told NBC News tools aimed at denuclearizing the Korean peninsula include additional sanctions in coordination with US allies, as well as diplomatic incentives he did not specify.Blinken said he was “deeply disturbed by the violent crackdown” on Russian protesters and arrests of people across the country demanding the release of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny.“The Russian government makes a big mistake if it believes that this is about us,” he said. “It’s about them. It’s about the government. It’s about the frustration that the Russian people have with corruption, with autocracy, and I think they need to look inward, not outward.”In the interview, taped on Sunday, Blinken did not commit to specific sanctions against Moscow. He said he was reviewing a response to the actions against Navalny, as well as Russian election interference in 2020, the Solar Wind Hack and alleged bounties for US soldiers in Afghanistan.“The president could not have been clearer in his conversation with President [Vladimir] Putin,” Blinken said of Joe Biden’s call last week with the Russian leader. More

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      Pompeo's exit leaves new secretary of state with task of regaining department's trust

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      No statues were toppled at the state department after Mike Pompeo’s departure. It was a changing of the guard, rather than regime change. But in one case at least, his legacy was brought down quickly and visibly.
      On the day of the inauguration, workmen brought down a giant placard about “professional ethos” that the former secretary of state had erected at the main entrance to mark his first year in office.
      The Trump era was particularly tough for US diplomats, who were regularly maligned as part of the “Deep State” by Donald Trump – and the state department was hollowed out and often sidelined under Pompeo and his predecessor, Rex Tillerson.
      In April 2019, staff had been gathered in the foyer, and Happy by Pharrell Williams was played through the state department public address system, as the “ethos” placard was unveiled.
      Foreign service officers were told they were each a “champion of American diplomacy”. It was supposed to be a morale-boosting exercise but had the opposite effect. To experienced diplomats, it felt like condescension.
      “We are confident that our colleagues do not need a reminder of the values we share,” Ned Price, the incoming department spokesman, noted drily this week.
      The giant sign had also become a monument to hypocrisy as Pompeo was subjected to a string of inspector general investigations about his use of departmental resources for his private ends, sending government officials out for dry cleaning or to walk the dog, and flying his wife, Susan, out on state department trips. Pompeo had the inspector general fired.
      A state department spokesperson confirmed on Thursday that the “Madison Dinners” Pompeo and his wife had staged in the diplomatic reception rooms had been discontinued. His critics said that he was using the well-heeled guest list at the taxpayer-funded events to build up a donor base for a 2024 presidential run.
      In Pompeo’s day, the ground floor corridor leading to the press room was lined with pictures of him in action around the world. Since his departure, it has reverted to tradition, with photographs of several former secretaries going about their work.
      Another Pompeo legacy that has been quietly dropped is the Unalienable Rights Commission a panel of conservative historians and political philosophers, whose report every state department employee was instructed to read. It told them that America’s founding fathers believed that private property and religious freedom were “foremost” among human rights, and that US foreign policy should follow that example.
      At his confirmation hearing, Pompeo’s replacement, Antony Blinken, said he would repudiate the commission’s findings and reaffirm US adherence to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
      In his first speech at the headquarters in Foggy Bottom, Blinken promised staff he would begin “rebuilding morale and trust”. He did not mention his predecessor, but his speech sought to salve the bruises he left. Career diplomats had largely felt ignored, and betrayed when Pompeo declined to defend them in the face of groundless attacks from the White House.
      “I’ll seek out dissenting views and listen to the experts, because that’s how the best decisions are made,” he said. “And I will insist that you speak, and speak up, without fear or favor. And I will have your back.”
      The new management style has not been entirely welcomed. While the nominations for the top jobs in Washington and at the United Nations have gone to highly experienced and competent people, almost all have been political appointees – most of whom had left the department and become politically active – rather than career promotions.
      “The career people feel like you’re sending the message: if you want the top jobs, you’ve got to cozy up to a campaign and raise some big money. And that’s a terrible precedent,” Brett Bruen, director of global engagement in the Obama White House said. “It’s being seen by people who had high hopes for this administration as a slap in the face.”
      Price, the new spokesman, responded by saying Blinken’s “first task will be to invest in the department’s greatest asset: our people”.
      “Under Secretary Blinken’s leadership, career experts will always be at the center of our diplomacy, and he is committed to ensuring that they will help to lead it by serving in many of the department’s most senior positions,” Price said.
      Bruen said most of the top jobs in Washington and New York have already been filled, but the next test of the new secretary of state will be the appointment of ambassadors.
      “Biden said during the campaign he was going to empower and elevate career diplomats,” he said. “Pretty clearly, he hasn’t done in the senior positions so fine: with the ambassadors, appoint fewer than 10% political.” More

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      Biden presses Putin on election interference and Navalny arrest in first call

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      The US and Russia have agreed to extend an arms control treaty limiting their deployed nuclear warheads after Joe Biden’s first phone call as president with Vladimir Putin.At the same time, Biden took a firm position on Russian actions that Donald Trump largely ignored, raising concerns about the poisoning and arrest of the opposition leader, Alexei Navalny, warning Putin that the US supported Ukraine against Russian “aggression”, complaining about Russian interference in last year’s US presidential election, and the “Solar Winds” cyber-attack on US government agencies last year.Biden challenged Putin on US intelligence reports that Russia had offered bounties to the Taliban and other extremist groups in Afghanistan for the killing of US soldiers.The White House account of the call said: “President Biden made clear that the United States will act firmly in defense of its national interests in response to actions by Russia that harm us or our allies.”The White House spokeswoman, Jen Psaki, said that Biden had also expressed opposition to the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline, as being a “bad deal” for Europe, one example of continuity with the Trump and Obama administrations.The Biden team is seeking to take a tougher line on Russia’s violations of human rights and international law while seeking to make progress on arms control with Moscow, which crumbled under the Trump administration.The two leaders formally exchanged notes extending the 2010 New Start agreement by five years, assuring the survival of the last remaining arms control treaty between the US and Russia in the wake of the Trump era.The extension was agreed just 10 days before New Start was due to expire. It keeps in place a limit of 1,550 deployed strategic warheads on either side, imposes limits on delivery systems, and enforces verification and transparency measures, helping ensure the two biggest nuclear weapons powers do not take each other by surprise.According to the White House the two leaders also talked about re-establishing a regular “strategic stability dialogue” between senior officials, at which frictions in the relationship, and possible new arms control agreements, could be discussed.The Kremlin’s readout of the conversation said that “the presidents expressed their satisfaction with the exchange of notes of extension of the New Start, which happened today”.“In the coming days the parties will complete all the necessary procedures to ensure that this important international legal mechanism for the mutual limitation of nuclear missile arsenals functions in the future,” the Kremlin account said.The Kremlin’s account described the conversation as “frank and businesslike” – a turn of phrase often used to describe tense discussions.It added that the two leaders had also discussed the Open Skies treaty, another arms control agreement allowing transparency through mutual aerial surveillance, which Trump also withdrew from, and from which Moscow has said it was also preparing to leave.Biden and Putin discussed the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, which Trump left but Biden has said he is willing to rejoin, and the conflict in Ukraine between the government there and Russian-backed separatists. Putin, now dealing with his fifth US president, restated his proposal for a summit of the five permanent members of the UN security council.Dmitri Trenin, the director of the Carnegie Endowment’s Moscow Centre, tweeted that: “[The] Putin-Biden phone conversation today promises no reset, but suggests a degree of predictability to the badly strained relationship. Confrontation needs to be managed safely.”The change in course in US foreign policy is likely to accelerate after the Senate confirmed the appointment of Antony Blinken as secretary of state on Tuesday, one of his first actions was to co-sign a statement with other G7 foreign ministers condemning the poisoning and arrest of Navalny and the mass detention of protesters and journalists.The statement said the G7 ministers “call upon Russia to adhere to its national and international obligations and release those detained arbitrarily for exercising their right of peaceful assembly”.At the UN, the acting US ambassador announced another sharp break with Trump-era policy, the restoration of diplomatic ties with the Palestinian Authority and renewing aid to Palestinian refugees as part of its support for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. Trump, a close ally of the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had broken US ties with the Palestinians.The Biden team has said its first foreign policy goal would be to repair relations with allies and global institutions ruptured by Trump. The state department said on Tuesday it would “thoroughly review” sanctions the Trump administration imposed on the prosecutors office of the international criminal court (ICC), over investigations it launched into war crimes committed by all parties in Afghanistan, and by Israeli and Palestinian forces in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem.“The United States shares the goals of the ICC in promoting accountability for the worst crimes known to humanity. At the same time, the United States has always taken the position that the court’s jurisdiction should be reserved for countries that consent to it, or that are referred by the UN security council,” a state department spokesperson said.“Much as we disagree with the ICC’s actions relating to the Afghanistan and Israeli/Palestinian situations, the sanctions will be thoroughly reviewed as we determine our next steps.” More

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      European leaders hail 'new dawn' for ties with US under Biden

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      European leaders have voiced relief at Joe Biden’s inauguration, hailing a “new dawn” for Europe and the US, but warned that the world has changed after four years of Donald Trump’s presidency and transatlantic ties will be different in future.“This new dawn in America is the moment we’ve been awaiting for so long,” Ursula von der Leyen, the European commission president, told MEPs. “Once again, after four long years, Europe has a friend in the White House.”The head of the EU’s executive arm said Biden’s swearing-in was “a demonstration of the resilience of American democracy”, and the bloc stood “ready to reconnect with an old and trusted partner to breathe new life into our cherished alliance”.But Von der Leyen said relief should not lead to illusion, since while “Trump may soon be consigned to history, his followers remain”.Charles Michel, the president of the European council, also said the US had changed. Transatlantic relations had “greatly suffered” and the world had grown “more complex, less stable and less predictable”, said Michel, who chairs summits between the EU’s 27 heads of state and government.“We have our differences and they will not magically disappear. America seems to have changed, and how it’s perceived in Europe and the rest of the world has also changed,” he said. Europeans “must take our fate firmly into our own hands”.A study this week showed that while many Europeans welcomed Biden’s election victory, more people than not felt that after four years of Trump the US could not be trusted, and a majority believed Biden would not be able to mend a “broken” country or reverse its decline on the world stage.The EU has invited Biden to a summit and top-level Nato meeting when he is ready, with Michel called for “a new founding pact” to boost multilateral cooperation, combat Covid, tackle climate change and aid economic recovery.The German president, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, said he was “greatly relieved” at Biden’s inauguration, hailing “a good day for democracy”. He said democracy under the Trump administration had faced “tremendous challenges and endured … and proved strong”.Steinmeier said the transfer of power to Biden brought with it “the hope that the international community can work together more closely”, and he said Germany was looking forward “to knowing we once more have the US at our side as an indispensable partner”.However, he said that “despite the joy of this day”, the last four years had shown that “we must resolutely stand up to polarisation, protect and strengthen our democracies, and make policy on the basis of reason and facts.”Italy’s prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, said his country was “looking forward to the Biden presidency, with which we will start working immediately.” He said the two countries had a strong common agenda, including “effective multilateralism, climate change, green and digital transition and social inclusion.”The Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, said Biden’s victory represented “the victory of democracy over the ultra-right and its three methods – massive deception, national division, and abuse, sometimes violent, of democratic institutions.”Five years ago, Sánchez said, the world had believed Trump to be “a bad joke. But five years later we realised he jeopardised nothing less than the world’s most powerful democracy.”Britain’s prime minister, Boris Johnson, who has faced criticism for his close relationship with Trump, said he was looking forward to working closely with Biden, citing a host of policy areas in which he hoped to collaborate.“In our fight against Covid and across climate change, defence, security, and in promoting and defending democracy, our goals are the same and our nations will work hand in hand to achieve them,” Johnson said in a statement.The former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev called for Russia and the US to repair their strained ties. “The current condition of relations between Russia and the US is of great concern,” he said in an interview with the state-run news agency Tass. “But this also means that something has to be done about it in order to normalise relations. We cannot fence ourselves off from each other.”Among the US’s more outspoken foes, Iran, which has repeatedly called on Washington to lift sanctions imposed over its nuclear drive, did not miss the chance to celebrate Trump’s departure.“A tyrant’s era came to an end and today is the final day of his ominous reign,” said the president, Hassan Rouhani. “We expect the Biden administration to return to law and to commitments, and try in the next four years, if they can, to remove the stains of the past four years.”Biden’s administration has said it wants the US back in the landmark Iran nuclear accord from which Trump withdrew, providing Tehran returns to strict compliance.The Nato chief, Jens Stoltenberg, said the military alliance hoped to strengthen transatlantic ties under the new president, adding that the world faced “global challenges that none of us can tackle alone”. More

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      Joe Biden can't heal America without help from the rest of the world | Gordon Brown

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      On the campaign trail, Joe Biden quoted the following words of his favourite poet, Seamus Heaney: “Hope for a great sea change / on the far side of revenge.”As the US president-elect finally takes the oath of office in Washington DC, the rest of the world desperately needs him to effect a sea change. If his first task is to reunite a divided America, his second is to end American isolationism: to show Americans that they need the world, and show the world that we still need America.Given the intertwined triple threats of the pandemic, economic collapse and climate catastrophe, his presidency will be defined not by the previous benchmarks of 100 days, but rather by its first 10 or 20 days. The Trump impeachment trial notwithstanding, day one will see Biden delivering on his plans to roll out mass vaccination and to reboot the ailing US economy by forcing the biggest fiscal stimulus in history through Congress. Given that body’s new political makeup and Biden’s own inclinations, his multi-trillion-dollar plan will be greener than anything ever contemplated by US lawmakers.But Biden must then go global. His presidency will be forged or broken on the anvil of those existential crises, and the internationalist in him knows that not one of these three domestic objectives – a virus-free, an economically resilient and a pollution-free US – can be fully realised without multilateral cooperation. Yet this is something that economic nationalists in both the US’s main political parties have not just rejected but scorned.Once, in the unipolar world immediately after the cold war, the US acted multilaterally (think of the global coalition that ousted Iraq from Kuwait 30 years ago). Recently, in a multipolar world, it has been acting unilaterally. Breaking with the aggressive populist nationalism of the Trump years will not be easy.So we should not expect a rerun of the lofty “go anywhere, pay any price” internationalism of the past. This thinking was once so dominant that John F Kennedy’s inaugural address in 1961 made scarcely any mention of domestic concerns. Nor should we expect any attempt by Biden to repeat Bill Clinton’s global Third Way of the 1990s – an over-triumphalist attempt, at a time of undisputed American hegemony, to lock every country into an updated “Washington consensus”.Now, in a world where there are many competing centres of power, and two and a half centuries after its Declaration of Independence, the United States needs a more modest “declaration of interdependence”.In language that will, on first hearing, seem protectionist, Biden will repeat his campaign statements that American foreign policy must now be determined by its domestic priorities. But because eliminating the virus, rebuilding commerce and trade and dealing with the climate crisis all depend on working more closely with other countries, the new president will abandon the walls, the tariffs and the xenophobia of the Trump years for a policy more “alliances first” than “America first”. And the Biden I came to know from working with him during the global financial crisis will not only be the most Atlanticist of recent presidents, but will make the most of his reputation as the great conciliator.Biden should immediately telephone the Italian prime minister – the current chairman of the G20 group of nations – and propose he urgently convene a summit of world leaders to coordinate emergency global action on each of the health, economic and environmental crises.The president-elect knows that immunising the US will not be enough to protect its citizens as long as poor countries cannot afford vaccinations and the virus continues to mutate and potentially reinfect those previously immunised. The US and Europe should lead a consortium of G20 countries to cover the estimated $30bn (£22bn) shortfall in funds needed to vaccinate the entire world. This is a bargain compared with the trillions in economic activity that will be lost if the pandemic rages on or, once contained, returns.Even before Covid, the US, like all advanced economies, was facing a high-unemployment low-growth decade, and no major economy – or developing-world nation – will fully recover the reduced output and lost jobs of 2020 unless and until there is a synchronised global plan that lifts growth.In today’s low-inflation and low-interest-rate environment, there is a global surplus of savings waiting to be invested, and public investment that boosts productivity will pay for itself by creating a virtuous circle of consumer demand, growth and rising tax revenues.I know from my experience during the global financial crisis that if the US, Europe and Asia agree to coordinate their fiscal stimuli, the multiplier effect – the spillover from increased trade and consumption – will be twice as effective in delivering growth as if each bloc acts on its own.The dividend from heightened cooperation could be upwards of 20 million much-needed jobs – and that boost could be even bigger if President Biden overturned President Trump’s objections to emergency aid for Africa and the developing world. What could become a 21st-century Marshall plan could include debt relief; the creation of $1.2tn of new international money through what are called special drawing rights; and matching funds for health, education and poverty reduction from the IMF and World Bank.Biden, who will rejoin the Paris climate accords this week, should also announce that he will attend this December’s Cop26 climate conference in Glasgow. He has already said that the 2020s may be our last chance to avoid catastrophic global warming. His domestic energy initiatives will be welcome, but not enough. The transition to a net-zero carbon economy is the greatest international endeavour of our times, and the US and Europe must now lead, persuading all countries, rich and poor, to implement a global green new deal and agree carbon reduction targets for 2030.Trump’s abject failures and his legacy, a more insecure world, present Biden with another historic opportunity. The Joe Biden I know will signal his determination to stand up to Chinese illiberalism and Russian opportunism. He will act quickly to secure a revamped Iranian treaty that not only constrains Tehran’s nuclear ambitions but also tackles its sponsorship of terrorism.But underpinning these immediate imperatives is a profound generational challenge. Since the 1980s, when Biden went to Moscow to help Ronald Reagan secure his nuclear weapons reductions deal with President Gorbachev, he has been in the forefront of demands for nuclear disarmament. I believe Biden could be the first president of the nuclear age to declare and deliver a “no first use” policy on nuclear weapons. By also negotiating global bans on both nuclear testing and the enrichment of uranium, his presidency could usher in a decade of disarmament. These historic steps would pave the way for the renunciation by Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt and Turkey of any nuclear aspirations, the further isolation of North Korea, and the downgrading of the role of nuclear weapons on the road to their eventual elimination.Not since Franklin Roosevelt, nearly 90 years ago, has a US president come to office amid so many pressing crises and so loud a clamour for change. FDR’s words on his inaugural day, a powerful call to “action and action now”, apply with equal force to these perilous days. And President Biden knows it. His task is no less than, as Seamus Heaney put it, to “make hope and history rhyme”.• Gordon Brown was UK prime minister from 2007 to 2010. His latest book, Seven Ways to Change the World, will be published by Simon & Schuster this summer More

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      Majority of Europeans fear Biden unable to fix 'broken' US

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      A majority of Europeans believe America’s political system is broken, that China will be the world’s leading power within a decade, and that Joe Biden will be unable to halt his country’s decline on the world stage, according to a report.
      While many welcomed Biden’s victory in November’s US election, more Europeans than not feel that after four years of Donald Trump the US cannot be trusted, according to the study by the European Council on Foreign Relations.
      “Europeans like Biden, but they don’t think America will come back as a global leader,” said the thinktank’s director, Mark Leonard. “When George W Bush was president, they were divided about how America should use its power. With Biden entering the White House, they are divided about whether America has power at all.”
      The survey of 15,000 people in 11 European countries, conducted at the end of last year, found that the shift in European sentiment towards the US in the wake of the Trump presidency had led to a corresponding unwillingness to support Washington in potential international disputes.
      At least half of respondents in all 11 countries surveyed felt, for example, that their government should remain neutral in any conflict between the US and China, while no more than 40% in any country said they would back Washington against Russia.
      “It’s clear that the tumultuous Trump presidency has left an indelible imprint on Europe’s attitude towards the US,” said Ivan Krastev, chair of the Centre for Liberal Strategies, an NGO in Sofia, and an ECFR board member. “The majority of Europeans are now sceptical about the capacity of the US to shape the world. It makes many, rightly or wrongly, want to opt for a more independent role for the EU in the world.”
      In their report, Leonard and Krastev note that while more than 60% of those polled believed the US was “broken”, most evaluated the EU and their own countries’ systems much more positively – an opportunity, they argue, to harness the collective power of the bloc for the benefit and protection of its citizens.
      The survey found that 51% of those polled did not agree with the statement that under Biden the US was likely to resolve its internal divisions and seek to address international issues such as climate change, peace in the Middle East, relations with China or European security.
      Amid a widespread sense of growing Chinese superiority, 79% of those polled in Spain, 72% in Portugal, 72% in Italy and 63% in France said they thought China would overtake the US as the world’s leading superpower within the next decade.
      Just over 32% of all respondents – and a startling 53% of respondents in Germany – felt that after voting for Trump, Americans could not be trusted. Only in Hungary and Poland did significantly more people disagree with that view than agree.
      Just 10% of those polled saw the US as a “reliable” security partner that would always protect Europe, while at least 60% in every country polled said they doubted their country could depend on US support in the event of a crisis.
      The authors say the geopolitical consequences of this shift are significant: two-thirds of those surveyed said it was now important that Europe look after its own defence, including 72% in Portugal, 71% in Sweden, 70% in France and 69% in Poland.
      At least half of respondents in every country surveyed said they would prefer their government to be neutral in a conflict between the US and China. Across the 11 states surveyed, only 23% of respondents thought their country should take Washington’s side against Russia, with 59% preferring to remain neutral.
      Between 38% and 48% of respondents in seven countries thought the EU should adopt a tougher international stance on issues such as trade, taxation and regulation, while most countries considered Germany was now a more important country to “have a good relationship” with than the US.
      The poll also revealed that in nine of the 11 countries – Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Spain and Sweden – where the same question was asked in previous years, the average share of people saying the EU’s political system worked very or fairly well had risen from 46% to 48%.
      It found that people who believed their own national political system was working, which was more often the case in northern than in southern Europe, were more likely to say the EU was a success.
      The report identified four “tribes” that went a long way to grouping respondents’ positions, depending on whether they felt the EU, US or China were rising or declining. The biggest tribe, “In Europe we trust”, comprised 35% of respondents, while only 9% belonged to “In America we trust”. More

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      How Biden era could kickstart coordinated approach to Russia

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      Joe Biden’s accession to the US presidency has spawned a huge body of literature about his intentions towards China, but in his four years out of office Biden has in fact made Russia his primary focus in combatting authoritarianism. Now, just days from coming into office, the arrest of the Russian dissident Alexei Navalny has suddenly presented him with a test case, which may also lead to friction with two of his closest allies: Germany and the UK.Germany under Angela Merkel has always resisted a full confrontation with Russia, and has fought hard to keep the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany going, saying it is a commercial not a political issue.But Merkel has met Navalny, who was nursed back to health in the German capital after his poisoning and has been described as “the Berlin patient” by Vladimir Putin, and her government may now feel a personal obligation, beyond rhetoric, to help him. The Putin entourage is already heavily sanctioned by the EU as a result if their repression in Belarus as well as Navalny’s poisoning, so her options for showing disapproval through further individual sanctions is limited. And the Nord Stream 2 project will not be far from Merkel’s thoughts.In the case of the UK, British prime ministers have been rhetorically strong about Russia, but are open to the charge that the rhetoric does not extend to clamping down on the lawyers, accountants and army of estate agents that enable the Russian kleptocracy to invest their corruptly-obtained wealth in London. Chatham House, the sober minded thinktank, is, for instance, hosting an event on Tuesday promoted as follows: “The most startling findings of the ‘Russia’ report from parliament’s intelligence and security committee were not about the extent of Moscow’s malign influence in the UK, but about how unwilling the British government had been to take steps to detect and counter it.“The report identified gaping holes in both awareness of the problem, and legislation to deal with it. A formulaic response from the government promised that at least some of these holes have been plugged”. Six months on, how many holes in measures such as ”unexplained wealth orders”, have been filled?But perhaps by coincidence matters are coming to a head. Since 2019, the threat of US sanctions has left the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline about 94% complete. If finished, the 764-mile (1,230km) pipeline will terminate in Lubmin, a coastal village in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, and more than double Germany’s imports of Russian natural gas.On Friday, Germany’s federal maritime authority approved extending the project’s operational time frame because of “unforeseen delays outside German waters”.Since US sanctions would target private companies involved in the project, the state government of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania has gone to the lengths of establishing a public foundation that could take over the potentially sanctionable activity. Germany believes the US would not have the nerve to sanction a public body, even though this foundation is largely Russian funded.Nicholas Burns the former US assistant secretary of state suggested to the German business newspaper Handelsblatt this week that if Germany suspended construction of the pipeline the US could lift sanctions.Equally, the UK as host of the G7 summit in June looks as if it is going to revive the anti-corruption drive David Cameron started the last time Britain held the event.The west has been hampered in the past four years by the fatal ambiguity of US policy towards Russia. The State Department had been willing to confront Russia, but Donald Trump remained inexplicably averse to doing anything but indulge Putin.Biden has appointed an experienced team with a deep knowledge of Russia including: William Burns, director of the CIA; Victoria Nuland, deputy secretary of state for political affairs; Andrea Kendall-Taylor, senior director for Russia and Central Asia in the future NSC; Kathleen Hicks, first female deputy head of the Pentagon; and Shanthi Kalathil, coordinator for human rights and democracy. Collectively they will try to give Germany clearer signals on US policy to Russia, and both how to combat democratic backsliding in Europe and Russian meddling. The huge cyber-attack on Washington institutions, attributed to Russia’s foreign intelligence, lies heavily on the minds of Congress.Biden has promised that he will make the promotion of democracy his guiding foreign policy principle, including a summit to attack the weapons of the authoritarians. Many have questioned the wisdom of the US presenting itself as the standard bearer of liberal values given its state of crisis.But the attack on the Capitol in Washington has only made his allies more convinced of this agenda, and its relevance to America. So the frontline of the “battlefield” where the new US administration and Russia will confront each other is likely to be extended to the post-Soviet space and will include at least Ukraine, Belarus and Georgia. For all the talk of the rise of China and the implications of the “Asian century” on America, it is the threat posed by the old cold war enemy that for now at least may most exercise the transatlantic alliance. More

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      Unscrupulous and aggressive, Pompeo plans to be the next Trump – but smarter

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      While all eyes are on Donald Trump and his Capitol Hill mob, a would-be heir and successor is running riot all by himself, storming citadels, wagging the flag and breaking china. No, it’s not Donald Jr, or Ivanka, or Ted Cruz, and certainly not poor, conflicted Mike Pence.Mike Pompeo may not strike many people as presidential material. But Trump lowered the bar. Make no mistake. America’s snarly, bully-boy secretary of state is focusing not on Joe Biden’s inauguration this week but on how to beat him or any other Democrat in 2024.Pompeo, the man who would be king, is playing political hunger games – and, looking ahead, he aims to win.In a display of extraordinary chutzpah, Pompeo has spent the time since Trump lost the election setting booby traps and laying diplomatic minefields in global conflict zones. Partly he aims to secure his own and Trump’s “legacy”. Partly it’s to screw Biden. But mostly it’s about winning the White House.Pompeo has upended established policies, adopted ultra-hardline positions, and claimed imaginary successes to advance his personal standing with the Trump rump. In fact, he’s trying to out-Trump Trump. Like him, he’s unscrupulous and aggressive, but here’s the difference: he’s not stupid.That potentially makes the former Kansas Tea party congressman and CIA chief more dangerous to the Biden presidency, and the progressive cause, than a disgraced Trump may ever be. He showed his political savvy by steering clear of the impeachment fracas. Instead, Pompeo is busy setting future agendas.Speaking in Washington last Tuesday, for example, he declared – without new evidence but drawing from a dust-heap of recycled, unproven claims – that “al-Qaida has a new home base: it is the Islamic Republic of Iran”.The American right has been trying to make the Iran connection ever since Dick Cheney falsely fingered Saddam Hussein for 9/11. But Pompeo does not get hung up on facts. He prefers assertions, tweets and slogans. Thus, he claimed, “they [Iran and al-Qaida] are partners in terrorism, partners in hate… This axis poses a grave threat to the security of nations and to the American homeland”.There’s no doubting where Pompeo and his re-purposed axis of evil are headed with this sort of talk. “We ignore this Iran-al-Qaida nexus at our peril,” he said. “We must confront it. Indeed, we must defeat it.” Message to Biden: when dealing with Iran, make war, not peace – or be accused of coddling terrorists.Raw bellicosity plays well on the right, especially with Christian Zionists and evangelical born-againers, of whom Pompeo is ostentatiously proud to be one. Such voters now seek a less toxic Republican standard-bearer. His new designation of Yemen’s Tehran-supported Houthis as terrorists is yet more grist to this mill, regardless of the civilian suffering he admits it will cause.Pompeo also arbitrarily returned Cuba to the US list of terrorist sponsors last week. Cuba accused him, reasonably enough, of “political opportunism” to obstruct improved relations under Biden. Pompeo is notably less vocal about Havana’s ally, Venezuela, where he and John Bolton risked Bay of Pigs II with failed regime change plots.Pompeo loves baiting China, the new “evil empire”, no matter that “Wuhan virus” insults, sanctions, and sabre-rattling are plainly counter-productive. He gratuitously goaded Beijing again last week by strengthening contacts with Taiwan. Decades of delicate east Asian diplomatic balancing flew out the window.This last-gasp diplomatic blitzkrieg does not fatally tie Biden’s hands but coupled with past policy blunders, it makes sensible policymaking more difficult. In truth, the Pompeo-Trump legacy is best defined in negatives: not achieving North Korean disarmament, wrecking the Iran nuclear deal, quitting the Paris climate accord, alienating allies, undermining the UN. In this sense, Biden just needs to act positive.Pompeo’s last big push for a trademark achievement – persuading Saudi Arabia to join Gulf states in cutting highly-questionable “peace deals” with Israel – ran into the sand. The Trump administration leaves office with the Middle East in greater disarray than when it arrived, whether it’s Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Libya, or the western Sahara.Unabashed, Pompeo is zealously re-writing this record of failure as a fake narrative of success. “If Pompeo’s efforts [to promote his legacy] look comical… if they are a bloated mess of obsequious praise for Trump, empty sloganeering, and half-truths, well, they are also a fair reflection of the man himself,” wrote analyst Jeffrey Lewis.As he not so stealthily lays the groundwork for a 2024 run, Pompeo has controversially exploited his position to deliver partisan speeches, hold exclusive dinners for wealthy backers, woo Christian groups, tour key domestic battlefields such as Iowa, get chummy with authoritarian foreign leaders – and tailor US foreign policy to his hawkishly regressive views.His politicised machinations have not gone unnoticed. Pompeo’s professional conduct has been investigated by his own state department. He was accused of lying about the Ukraine phone call that got Trump impeached the first time. For a while, he abetted Trump’s election denialism with talk of a “second term”.“Selfishness at the expense of the national interest isn’t the mark of an honourable diplomat or a patriot,” a New York Times editorial scathingly remarked on Friday.Many abroad are wary. After Pompeo, anxious to get out of Dodge during last week’s Trump showdown, invited himself to Brussels, he was roundly snubbed. EU politicians who have smarted at past insults, served up one of their own. They did not have time for him. The trip was cancelled.Many in Europe hope finally to have seen the back of him. Fat chance. If he gets his way, Pompeo will be the next Trump. It’s an alarming prospect for America and the world. More