On People Leadership Ukraine’s Zelensky Has Earned Mantle as De Facto Leader of Eastern Slavs
Eastern Slavs, generally include Ukrainians, Russians, and Byelorussians yet it is Russia’s ruler today that uniquely implies Russia owns the highest tier of a presumed Eastern Slavic caste system with the right to dominate the others. Present day leader of Belarus, Alexandr Lukashenka is submissive to Putin and has acquiesced to Putin’s domination. Having based…
Essay: Xi Jinping Gambles on Putin’s Wars. China’s Jiang Zemin & Hu Jintao Did Not Need To
President Vladimir Putin’s nearly three year slog inside sovereign Ukraine fuels mission creep for Russian forces and Chinese sponsor Xi Jinping’s substantial, yet globally interdependent, and therefore limited, instruments of power. Compared with his predecessors, Xi has become a spendthrift of Chinese good will with his international support for aggressors Russia and Iran against Ukraine…
U.S.-China Relations: Corrosive Effects of China’s National Intelligence Law
Thaw Sought: National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan has wrapped-up his August visit to China to try to find grounds for resolving gridlocked issues in U.S.-Chinese relations. One of those that may not have come up is China’s economically and geopolitically destabilizing 2017 National Intelligence Law (NIL17). Problem: NIL17 requires Chinese expats and citizens to aid…
A 2020 Telegraph of China’s Effort to Spy on Innovation Hubs
The People’s Republic of China in 2020 created a pretext for spying, influencing, and shaping global innovation hubs by initiating an annual Global Innovation Hubs Index (GIHI) ratings report through Tsinghua University’s Center for Industrial Development and Environmental Governance (CIDEG), joining its effort to the Nature Research brand by purchasing an article on Nature.com. To…
Truth Out the Window: Putin’s Cynicism with “Special Military Operation” Mocks Russian Intellect and Losses
Note Putin’s dictatorial cynicism in the apparatchik-wording at the Russian Foreign Ministry, reported by Politico covering Russia’s latest free press restrictions retaliating for EU bans on Russia’s state-controlled RT and Sputnik: The “counter-restrictions” are imposed on “a number of media outlets of EU member states and EU-wide media operators that systematically disseminate false information about…
What Caspian States Can Do If Russia Tries to Misuse Treaty to Co-Opt Them for Putin’s Wars
The Set-up In the Spring of 2018, during negotiations leading to the execution of the Convention on the Legal Status of the Caspian Sea on August 12, 2018 by Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Iran, and Azerbaijan, the Russian Ministry of Defense took two actions to coerce the other parties: (1) the April 2018 relocation of the…
Russia’s and China’s Irregular Warfare Against Israel, Israelis, and Palestinians
Introduction Jonathan Winer’s must-read report for the Middle East Institute last November chronicled and discussed circumstantial evidence of timing, communications, training, modes of operation, financial, and weapons support by Russia for Hamas and for Iran, Hamas’s chief sponsor before and after the terror organization’s October 7, 2023 terror war on Israel. This, provoking a predictable…
Policymaker Pitch: Strategy of Attrition Will Backfire on the United States – Biden Administration Must Be Bold for Ukraine Now
The United States’ piecemeal weapons micromanagement of Ukrainian defense (no ATACMS against Russian military and military logistics inside Russia) suggests to allies that the goal is to weaken Russia via attrition, not expedite victory for Ukraine. Russia’s leadership does not care about attrition so long as they ultimately rule the…
Dictatorships Vie for Control of U.N.’s WIPO
The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is a likely vector for intelligence gathering by participants from China and Russia. Last week I noted a young, former Rostec executive (per his LinkedIn profile) working in Geneva, Switzerland apparently assigned to WIPO and more probably than not under pressure of the Putin…
House Obstruction Drives Risk of Long War, Lost Advantages
The Senate has passed a $95 billion dollar aid package for Ukraine and Israel but the Majority Leader in the U.S. House of Representatives, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) signaled that Republicans there will not pass it without the border security measures they want. However, a bi-partisan border security measure…