Foreign Policy - Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association

1,036 migrants, with 63 unaccompanied children, become largest single group ever taken into custody at southern border

Anna Giaritelli — Thu, 30 May 2019 07:46:08 +0000

A caravan-sized group of more than 1,000 people was taken into federal custody in western Texas Wednesday after illegally crossing from Mexico into the United States, a senior Border Patrol official told the Washington Examiner.

Agents encountered 1,036 people, primarily from Central America, near El Paso, Texas, early Wednesday morning. The arrest marks the largest group of unauthorized immigrants that Border Patrol has ever taken into custody at once.

The group included 63 children traveling without a parent or guardian. Another 39 people were single adults, and the remaining 934 claimed to be traveling with a family member, according to a report. Guatemalan citizens made up just over half the detainees. The rest are primarily from other Central American countries, including Honduras and El Salvador.

It’s not clear if the group came from Northern Triangle countries as part of a caravan, though it’s not likely, given no news of a convoy traveling through Mexico. Border Patrol has said human smugglers often oversee the movement of migrants at the border and use the groups to distract federal law enforcement while they move narcotics or people hoping to avoid arrest over unmanned parts of the border. Smugglers charge migrants an average of $5,000 to $8,000 each to get to the United States.

[Also read: Top sheriff warns: Trump’s ‘done’ if illegal immigration isn’t slashed]

Border Patrol said in late March its agents on the southern border had since October apprehended 100 groups that contained 100 or more people. In its 2017 fiscal year, CBP documented two groups of 100 people or more. That jumped to 13 groups in 2018.

Until Wednesday, the biggest group of people to arrive at once consisted of more than 430 individuals. That apprehension took place Monday in the same region of the southern border. Memorial Day marked the busiest day in history for Border Patrol’s El Paso region as 2,200 people were taken into custody.

President Trump told reporters at the White House earlier Thursday to expect a major statement about the border in the next day or two. Wednesday’s apprehension has not been publicly shared by Customs and Border Protection or its parent, the Department of Homeland Security.

Donald J. Trump@realDonaldTrump

Yesterday, Border Patrol agents apprehended the largest group of illegal aliens ever: 1,036 people who illegally crossed the border in El Paso around 4am. Democrats need to stand by our incredible Border Patrol and finally fix the loopholes at our Border!

Source: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/1-036-migrants-with-63-unaccompanied-children-become-largest-single-group-ever-taken-into-custody-at-southern-border

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State Department downplays European army: ‘We support NATO’

Joel Gehrke — Tue, 13 Nov 2018 02:00:37 +0000

European nations should bolster their military capabilities within the NATO alliance, the State Department said Tuesday in response to French and German calls for a continental army.

“Whatever should be done should not take away from NATO’s efforts,” State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert told reporters Tuesday. “We would not want the weakening of NATO.”

President Trump has charged European leaders with free-riding on the United States by failing to spend a large enough proportion of their budgets on NATO. But French President Emmanuel Macron and outgoing German Chancellor Angela Merkel replied, most recently, by casting doubt on U.S. commitment to their security and calling for a new “European army” to give the continent more independence in foreign policy.

“What is really important, if we look at the developments of the past year, is that we have to work on a vision of one day creating a real, true European army,” Merkel said Tuesday, according to the Daily Mail. “Only a stronger Europe is going to defend Europe.”

Her comments echoed Macron’s sentiment last week. “I want to build a real security dialogue with Russia, which is a country I respect, a European country, but we must have a Europe that can defend itself on its own without relying only on the United States,” the French president said, according to the BBC.

Macron added that Europe must fortify its cybersecurity capabilities “to protect ourselves with respect to China, Russia and even the United States of America.”

Germany is the leading European economy, but has been a relatively weak military power since the end of the Second World War. France and the United Kingdom — which recently left the European Union — have flanked the United States as the major powers of the NATO alliance.

“We support the European efforts to increase defense spending at NATO and also their military capabilities as a means to achieve a more equitable burden-sharing in the transatlantic security relationship,” Nauert said. “We support NATO. We support NATO and think that NATO should only be strengthened.”

Source: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/defense-national-security/state-department-downplays-european-army-we-support-nato

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Russia replaces America as the power player in the Middle East

The Hill — Tue, 06 Mar 2018 11:38:55 +0000

The sorry position of the United States in the Middle East today ought to be sending President Trump a powerful message. The region bristles with American air and naval bases and major deployments in Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, among others, manned by 55,000 troops and civilians, and rising contingents in the war zones of Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq. Despite all this military strength, the “go to” power in the region today is Russia.

Since Russian President Putin saved Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime from collapse, he has established working relations with every major power in the Middle East, including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Iran and Turkey, though several of them fiercely oppose what he is doing in Syria. Moscow has worked successful deals with Saudi Arabia to prop up international oil prices. Its relations with Israel have never been closer, notwithstanding Russia’s having greatly strengthened Iran in Syria.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Putin have overcome the tension of fighting on opposite sides in Syria, and of Turkey’s NATO membership, to agree on Ankara’s purchase of Russian air defense missiles and a Russian nuclear reactor. Egyptian President Fattah Al Sisi, like Erdogan and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has made multiple pilgrimages to Moscow, and now Egypt and Russia have signed a draft agreement giving Moscow access to Egyptian airspace and possibly bases. Moscow has agreed to sell Egypt the same advanced missile system Turkey is buying and to build Egypt’s first nuclear reactor.

Except in Syria, all of this has been achieved through diplomacy. In the space of a few years, Putin has ended decades of Russian irrelevance in the Middle East and built a stronger position than the Soviet Union enjoyed 40 years ago. There is nothing mysterious about how he’s done it. Putin understands the power of diplomacy. You can bet there are no unfilled Russian ambassadorships in countries that matter to Moscow as there are today, almost unbelievably, vacant American posts in Egypt, Jordan, Libya, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey and of course, Iran, where we have no embassy.

Putin has been immeasurably helped by the conviction of American decline that prevails throughout the region. As much perception as it is reality, the belief took root in the early Obama years and has grown steadily since. What the president ought to notice is that no amount of military presence makes the slightest dent in it.

Yet, in order to make room for defense increases “like no one has ever seen,” Trump’s 2019 budget proposes that all nondefense discretionary spending, which is everything other than entitlements and interest on the national debt, should drop over 10 years to 1.3 percent of gross domestic product. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, that would be a third of the average level of the past half century and the lowest level since the Hoover administration.

The State Department and international assistance would be slashed. Adjusted for inflation, the cuts would also amount to a 42 percent plummet from today’s spending for education, science, health, housing, nutrition assistance, which is virtually all federal programs that provide opportunity, reduce inequality, strengthen human capital and stoke innovation. These are the sources of long-term growth and national cohesion, two of the three pillars of national greatness.

We have a military designed for a global power and it has funding shortfalls that need to be fixed. On the other hand, we’re not acting like a state with global responsibilities and interests. We also continue to allow ourselves the luxury of enormous waste in the Pentagon budget by building tanks we will never need, airplanes that cannot operate in modern combat airspace, and redundant nuclear systems beyond what’s needed for deterrence. With 21st century military needs, domestic requirements and those of international leadership, and with an exploding deficit, the waste is no longer affordable.

No great nation has ever been built on military strength. The Soviet Union tried and left its people standing in line for soap and matches. No democracy as unequal and divided as we are can allow the fissures to continue to widen without mortal risk. No country that has built its well-being on alliances, trade, and leadership of an international order based on the rule of law can afford to treat its commitments with contempt or to forget that diplomacy is the primary instrument for promoting national interests. Military power is only the fallback when diplomacy fails.

Trump has plenty of company in confusing military spending with military strength and military strength with national greatness. The difference is that he wants to make the mistake on a larger scale than anyone else has imagined since at least 1945. A far lesser state, not a greater one, is at the end of the path he wants to head down.

Jessica T. Mathews is a distinguished fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where she was president for 18 years.

Source: http://thehill.com/opinion/international/376929-russia-replaces-america-as-the-power-player-in-the-middle-east

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