But at the same time, by wading into the Russia-Ukraine crisis, Harris took on another assignment that may provide little in the way of political victory for her or the Biden administration, at a time when she faces low approval ratings.

Harris’ Saturday remarks at the Munich Security Conference came less than 24 hours after President Joe Biden said Russian President Vladimir Putin has already made the decision to invade Ukraine.

During her speech, Harris said that if Russia “further invades Ukraine,” the U.S. and its allies “will impose significant, and unprecedented economic costs,” with “far-reaching financial sanctions and export controls.”

“Make no mistake: the imposition of these sweeping and coordinated measures will inflict great damage on those who must be held accountable,” the vice president said.

Just under 38 percent of Americans have a favorable view of Harris, while about 52 percent have an unfavorable view, according to an analysis of polls compiled by Real Clear Politics between December 5 and February 15. Meanwhile, this month, an average of polls show Biden with an approval rating of 41 percent, while 53 percent say they disapprove of his performance.

Harris’ low approval comes after she has taken on a portfolio of duties that has arguably been more challenging than the one Biden handled when he served as vice president. She has also faced rumors of overseeing a toxic workplace amid high-profile staff departures.

Harris was tasked with addressing the causes of migration from Central America and curbing the flow of immigrants entering the U.S. She has also led the Biden administration’s push for voting rights legislation, which was recently put on hold after two Democratic lawmakers objected to changing Senate filibuster rules.

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Matthew Dickinson, a political science professor at Middlebury College, said the matters the vice president has taken on, including the Russia-Ukraine crisis, are “intractable issues.”

“If [Harris] is hoping to establish…the sense of the person who can get things done, these aren’t issues in which you can do that,” he told Newsweek on Friday. “The odds that there’s going to be some resolution to this crisis in a way that satisfies everybody is very low.”

But with her trip to Germany and her address, he added, Harris “has an opportunity here, in the midst of a crisis to articulate a vision. And do it in a way that, even if it is the president’s vision, she amplifies that in a way that reminds people of some of her strengths.”

Conservatives criticized the Biden administration’s decision to send Harris to Germany to address the crisis.

“This was the border czar, Kamala Harris, and what did we get from her valiant activity on the southern border? We got the most encounters in January that we’ve had in 20 years,” said Kayleigh McEnany, who served as press secretary to former President Donald Trump, on Fox News Friday. “Now she’s in Europe trying to stop World War III, and forgive me if I’m less than hopeful that she has the skill and acuity to stop the war. I hope she does.”

Since taking office, Harris “has been the target of a constant barrage of negativity from the opposition,” according to Audrey Haynes, a political science professor at the University of Georgia.

In an email to Newsweek, Haynes wrote that Harris “stands out from earlier peers as being the first woman, the first person of color, and the first person of South Asian descent to serve as vice president, and she is doing so when polarization and culture wars make her a target no matter what she does or how she performs.”

She added that the Biden administration has given Harris “what many believe are impossible tasks,” noting her immigration role and the trip to Germany.

“She has been labelled a failure when her position has very limited political capital to start, and she has been put into tasks, that again, are serious and complex and cannot be solved with a speech or a visit,” Haynes wrote.

When reached for comment, Harris’ office referred Newsweek to the vice president’s Saturday remarks in Germany and a Biden administration press briefing about the trip.

In an interview with Newsweek, Christopher Fettweis, a political science professor at Tulane University, said he “wouldn’t put too many hopes on a big breakthrough” in the Russia-Ukraine crisis following the vice president’s trip.

“There’s been a lot of high-profile meetings—not with the vice president so far—but about this crisis, and really not much has come out of any of them. So I wouldn’t get hopes up too high that this one is going to be different,” he added.

But he said that the trip offers Harris an opportunity to build up her foreign policy credentials, and is more likely to help than harm her reputation.

“If she’s trying to burnish executive credentials for a down-the-road run…it could help. But it’s probably not going to hurt,” Fettweis said.

“If the Russians invade, no one’s gonna say, ‘Boy if [Harris] had done something different in her conversations with the Germans, it might have come out a totally different way,'” he added.

Source: https://www.newsweek.com/kamala-harris-makes-last-ditch-appeal-peace-putin-poised-ignore-1680903

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The UN Security Council was to hold an emergency meeting this Friday to discuss North Korea’s seven missile tests in the past four weeks. The meeting was requested by the United States, along with Britain and France, and agreed by Russia, which holds the presidency of UNSC for the month of February.

However, given the Russo-American saber-rattling on Ukraine at the Security Council on Monday and especially in view of Sino-Russian history with Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs, one more UNSC meet on North Korea’s juggernaut is very unlikely to produce anything substantive.

In fact, anticipating this likelihood of an ineffectual – or worse, divided – UNSC, Britain, France and Germany on Wednesday pre-empted the council by calling on North Korea “to accept the repeated offers of dialogue put forward by the United States,” thereby putting the onus exclusively on the US.

Indeed, of these seven missiles tests – which included six ballistic missiles, two of them hypersonic – it was the last one, the Hwasong-12 IRBM (intermediate-range ballistic missile) test last Sunday, that marked the longest-range missile test since 2017.

This is the one that startled US President Joe Biden’s administration, obliging it to approach the UNSC for early redressal. On normal apogee, the Hwasong-12 can reach 5,500 kilometers, which covers all of the US military deployments in North Korea’s periphery.

Last October as well, the US, UK and France convened a UNSC emergency meeting as North Korea, in defiance of the Biden administration’s calls, tested a submarine-launched ballistic missile that, at least potentially, enables Pyongyang to strike anywhere on Earth. Even at that time, the UNSC could not reach any consensus because of open opposition from China and Russia, leaving the US to fend for itself.

US taking the lead

The US track record in taking the lead of course throws up its own puzzles and pitfalls. In 2017, then-president Donald Trump began by name-calling Kim Jong Un as “Rocket Man,” threatening him with “fire and fury,” but soon melted into exploring their “personal relationship” that resulted in two unsuccessful summits.

Other than obtaining a 17-month respite from North Korean tests, those two summits served only to embolden Kim, who has since rejected all US efforts to revive talks, underlining their trust deficit.

While candidate Biden, like Trump, had also begun by calling the North Korean leader “short and fat” and “a thug” and by being highly critical of Trump’s “love” for Kim, he has yet to follow the Trumpian U-turn by offering to hold a direct meeting with Kim Jong Un. This neglect of the “Dear Respected Comrade” by President Biden has since triggered Kim’s ratcheting up of this testing spree.

Also, while Biden continues to pursue the same Trumpian aims of complete denuclearization of North Korea as a precondition to lifting sanctions, his approach in engaging Pyongyang has remained rather subtle and piecemeal, if not insipid and lackluster. The US continues to seek refuge in lofty ambitions but its strategies so far have allowed the North Korean nuclear and missile programs to flourish unabated.

The Biden administration’s preoccupation with sanctions and its rhetoric of protecting its credibility with its regional allies have become increasingly mind-numbing and appear both rigid and dated. Meanwhile, Kim Jong Un has continued building his deterrence capabilities.

Unstoppable Kim Jong Un

In a rare gesture in 2017, the UNSC unanimously slapped sanctions on North Korea’s oil imports and coal, iron, textile and fish exports. These, however, were followed by North Korea precipitously conducting its sixth nuclear test on September 3 that year, followed by Hwasong IRBM tests in November.

Two of those missiles were fired over the Japanese island of Hokkaido and three others demonstrated the ability to reach the US military base in Guam; plus it tested a Hwasong-15 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) with a range of up to 13,000 kilometers, which could potentially hit the US mainland.

There is little doubt that Kim Jong Un’s buildup of a nuclear deterrent remains aimed at the United States and that its allies Japan and South Korea remain only a subset of his strategy. But even there, rather abrasively, Kim has called Joe Biden a weak coward and a real thug, while his powerful sister Kim Yo Jong warned the Biden administration that if “it wants to sleep in peace for the coming four years, it had better refrain from causing a stink as its first step.”

More recently, Kim Jong Un seems to be taking advantage of Biden being preoccupied with the Covid-19 pandemic and and the Ukraine crisis. There are even deeper insinuations of Ukraine having helped North Korea’s nuclear and missile capabilities.

Meanwhile, South Korean President Moon Jae-in sees that his country’s security could become marginalized in US calculations in dealing with the North Korean regime.

After the Hwasong-12 test, he was quick to express his anxieties, warning on Monday how these precipitous missile tests were bound to push Kim Jong Un closer to scrapping its April 2018 moratorium on nuclear and ICBM tests. This was immediately echoed by US officials as they began calling on Pyongyang to revive direct talks without any preconditions.

It is bewildering, however, to see the US repeating the same old rhetoric after the ground realities have changed rather rapidly. If anything, US officials have been urging Pyongyang for direct talks ever since the failed Kim-Trump Hanoi summit of February 2019, but have reportedly been rebuffed by the Kim regime. Understandably, the gulf between the expectations of both sides has expanded with the passage of time.

Changed ground realities

Taking a cue from his interactions with Trump, Kim Jong Un’s frequent and longer-range missile tests seem part of his attempt to apply the same maximum pressure “tit-for-tat” strategy to reverse Washington’s hostile sanctions policy.

In this context, the US strategy of imposing severe sanctions – which remains equally ineffective in the Ukraine crisis – or worse, posturing a redeployment of US nuclear forces in South Korea will only egg Kim on to accelerate these tests and eventually breach his April 2018 moratorium.

Kim Jong Un building up his robust nuclear deterrence capability makes denuclearization of North Korea a distant dream. At the most ambitious level, Kim now wants the US to recognize North Korea as a normal nuclear-weapons state – in fact to reward it for being a responsible nuclear state.

He now wants the US to convert its outdated strategy of nuclear disarmament-for-lifting-sanctions into one of lifting sanctions in lieu of suspension of North Korean tests – this swap being his prerequisite for a Biden-Kim summit. Kim aims to sign a much-anticipated peace treaty with the US, extending mutual diplomatic recognition, exchange ambassadors and finally remove US forces from North Korea’s periphery.

All this seems way beyond what US is even contemplating. Surely the current format of US North Korea strategy has stopped working and needs an urgent overhaul. Kim Jong Un’s increasingly robust nuclear deterrence makes it incumbent on the Biden administration to rejig its North Korea strategy.

Can it begin to think of calibrating incremental lifting of sanctions to buy time with a moratorium on North Korea’s missile tests? The US may also need to recalibrate its military deployments in the region to initiate foot-in-the-door diplomacy to hold its regional allies in good stead by redefining its alignments and objectives.

Can the US offer to desist from military exercises, downsize its military presence in North Korea’s periphery by potentially inducting its regional allies like Japan, South Korea and other friends into a more dynamic AUKUS-plus security mechanism to broad-base its advantages?

The Biden administration has to begin contemplating such out-of-the-box strategies to incentivize instead of alienating North Korea, an authoritarian regime with robust nuclear capabilities.

SWARAN SINGH
Dr Swaran Singh is professor of diplomacy and disarmament at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi; adjunct senior fellow at The Charhar Institute, Beijing; senior fellow, Institute for National Security Studies Sri Lanka, Colombo; and visiting professor, Research Institute for Indian Ocean Economies, Kunming (China).

Source: https://asiatimes.com/2022/02/biden-administration-must-rejig-its-north-korea-strategy/

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Tensions have soared in recent weeks, as the United States and its NATO allies expressed concern that a buildup of about 100,000 Russian troops near Ukraine signaled that Moscow planned to invade its ex-Soviet neighbor. Russia denies having any such designs — and has laid out a series of demands it says will improve security in Europe.

But as expected, the U.S. and the Western alliance firmly rejected any concessions on Moscow’s main points Wednesday, refusing to permanently ban Ukraine from joining NATO and saying allied deployments of troops and military equipment in Eastern Europe are nonnegotiable.

The U.S. did outline areas in which some of Russia’s concerns might be addressed, possibly offering a path to de-escalation. But, as it has done repeatedly for the past several weeks, Washington also warned Moscow of devastating sanctions if it invades Ukraine. In addition to penalties targeting Russian people and key economic sectors, several senior U.S. officials said Thursday with certainty that Germany would not allow a newly constructed gas pipeline to begin operations in the event of an incursion.

All eyes are now on President Vladimir Putin, who will decide how Russia will respond amid fears that Europe could again be plunged into war.

In the meantime, U.S. President Joe Biden spoke to his Ukrainian counterpart Volodmyr Zelenskyy on Thursday to reiterate American and allied support, including recent deliveries of U.S. military aid.

“Had a long phone conversation with POTUS,” Zelenskyy tweeted. “Discussed recent diplomatic efforts on de-escalation and agreed on joint actions for the future. Thanked President Joe Biden for the ongoing military assistance. Possibilities for financial support to Ukraine were also discussed.”

The White House said in a statement that Biden told Zelenskyy he was “exploring additional macroeconomic support to help Ukraine’s economy” as it comes under pressure as a result of Russia’s military buildup.

Meanwhile, the United States announced that the U.N. Security Council will hold an open meeting Monday on what U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield called Russia’s “threatening behavior.” She said the deployment of more than 100,000 troops along Ukraine’s border and other destabilizing acts pose “a clear threat to international peace and security and the U.N. Charter.”

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters earlier that the response from the U.S. — and a similar one from NATO — left “little ground for optimism.” But he added that “there always are prospects for continuing a dialogue, it’s in the interests of both us and the Americans.”

White House press secretary Jen Psaki was circumspect when asked whether the Biden administration saw a sliver of hope in that the Russians said they would keep communications open even as they said that they lacked optimism..

“We don’t know if the Russians are playing games on diplomacy. We hope not,” Psaki said.

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the U.S. response contained some elements that could lead to “the start of a serious talk on secondary issues,” but emphasized that “the document contains no positive response on the main issue.” Those are Moscow’s demands that NATO not expand and that the alliance refrain from deploying weapons that might threaten Russia.

Lavrov said top officials will submit proposals to Putin. Peskov said the Russian reaction would come soon.

The evasive official comments reflect the fact that it is Putin who will single-handedly determine Russia’s next moves. He has warned of unspecified “military-technical measures” if the West refuses to heed the demands.

Peskov added that Putin and Biden will decide whether they need to have another conversation following two calls last month.

Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said Kyiv had seen the U.S. response before it was delivered to Russia and had no objections. He tweeted it was “important that the U.S. remains in close contact with Ukraine before and after all contacts with Russia.”

On a visit to Denmark, Kuleba emphasized his country’s need to strengthen its defenses.

“This crisis is a moment of truth, and this is why we speak about weapons,” he said. “This is why we speak about economic sanctions. This is why we speak about the consolidated position of all of us, so that President Putin sees that there are no weak links in our defensive chain.”

Germany’s Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said during a parliamentary debate on Ukraine that her government is closely coordinating its policy with allies, considering a range of options that could include the new Nord Stream 2 Russian gas pipeline to Germany.

While the diplomacy sputters on, so too do maneuvers that have escalated tensions. Russia has launched a series of military drills involving motorized infantry and artillery units in southwestern Russia, warplanes in Kaliningrad on the Baltic Sea, dozens of warships in the Black Sea and the Arctic, and Russian fighter jets and paratroopers in Belarus.

NATO said it was bolstering its deterrence in the Baltic Sea region, and the U.S. ordered 8,500 troops on higher alert for potential deployment to Europe.

As war fears mounted, thousands of Ukrainians expressed their resolve to stand up to the Russian pressure under the hashtag #UkrainiansWillResist on Twitter and Facebook.

“No one will force Ukrainians to accept the Kremlin ultimatum,” wrote Andrii Levus, who initiated the campaign.

Ukraine’s Interior Ministry has organized training on acting in emergency situations, with an emphasis on dealing with explosives.

Beyond concerns about a possible Russian offensive in Ukraine, there also has been speculation that Moscow’s response could include military deployments to the Western Hemisphere.

While a senior Russian diplomat recently refused to rule out such deployments to Cuba and Venezuela, a top Putin associate expressed skepticism Thursday at that prospect.

“Cuba and Venezuela are aiming to come out of isolation and restore normal relations with the U.S. to a certain extent, so there can’t be any talk about setting up a base there as happened during the Soviet times,” Dmitry Medvedev, a deputy head of Russia’s Security Council, told Russian media.

While he charged that the West is using Ukraine as a way to contain Russia, he somberly acknowledged that a Russia-NATO conflict “would be the most dramatic and simply catastrophic scenario, and I hope it will never happen.”

While concerns about a possible Russian attack linger, a separatist conflict simmers in Ukraine. Following the 2014 ouster of a Kremlin-friendly president in Kyiv, Moscow annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and backed an insurgency in the country’s eastern industrial heartland. Fighting between Ukrainian forces and Russia-backed rebels has killed over 14,000 people, and efforts to reach a settlement have stalled.

Since the conflict began, Russia has been accused of sending troops and weapons to the separatists, something it has denied. On Thursday, Peskov wouldn’t comment on a proposal from the Kremlin’s main political party, United Russia, which suggested that Moscow respond to the delivery of Western weapons to Ukraine by sending arms to the rebels. He added that Putin is aware of the proposal but had no immediate reaction.

Envoys from Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany met in Paris on Wednesday to discuss ways to resolve that conflict, reaching no visible progress but agreeing to hold another meeting in two weeks. Zelenskyy praised the talks as “constructive” and urged a quick meeting of the four countries’ leaders.

Source: https://www.npr.org/2022/01/27/1076267324/russia-sees-little-ground-for-optimism-in-the-u-s-s-response-on-ukraine-crisis

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