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《哈蕊斯外交顧問》有感
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美國大選目前是五五波，哈蕊斯副總統很有機會扶正；不妨先了解、了解她可能的重量級幕僚(本欄第二篇文章)。
郭登博士看來經驗豐富而且務實；是否老謀深算還得看他有沒有出頭的命。不過，「務實主義」很自然、很容易轉為「國內優先論」，或昔日所說的「孤立主義」。
今年11月美國大選，不論誰出線，台灣政府和烏克蘭政府都將感到秋風襲人。此之謂小國悲哀(本欄第三篇文章)。
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白宮安全顧問新任人選之一 -- 承聰談事
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謝謝承聰談事君的報導和分析。請與開欄文和本欄第二篇貼文參照。
沙利文剛宣佈訪華，最熱門繼任者出爐，稱要聯合他國贏對華競爭
承聰談事，2024-08-25，湖南省
近日，外交部的一則消息引起了廣泛關注：美國總統國家安全事務助理沙利文即將于8月27日踏上訪華之旅。這不僅是中美高層間的又一次重要互動，更被外界視為當前複雜國際局勢下兩國關係未來走向的一個風向標。而與此同時，沙利文可能的繼任者也逐漸浮出水面，其對華態度更是成為了人們熱議的焦點。
在特朗普與哈裡斯的總統競選激戰正酣之際，沙利文的這次訪華無疑為這場大選增添了不少變數。作為拜登總統的得力助手，沙利文一直以來都在中美關係的處理上發揮著舉足輕重的作用。而如今，隨著大選日益臨近，他的每一次出訪都似乎被賦予了更多的政治意涵。
據《紐約時報》最新民調顯示，哈裡斯在幾個關鍵的搖擺州以微弱優勢領先特朗普，這使得她有可能成為下一任美國總統。而一旦哈裡斯入主白宮，她很可能會提拔自己的國安顧問菲力浦·戈登接任沙利文的位置。這一人事變動，無疑將對中美關係產生深遠影響。
菲力浦·戈登，這位在克林頓時期便已開始涉足國家安全事務的資深外交官，歷經多屆政府，深諳國際政治遊戲規則。他在對華政策上的主張，雖未完全脫離布林肯的“競爭與合作”框架，但卻更加強調了在國家安全層面對中國的防範與應對。
在最近的一次公開演講中，戈登毫不掩飾地表達了他對中國崛起的擔憂，稱中國是“唯一一個既有能力又有意圖挑戰美國的國家”。他呼籲美國應加強與盟友的合作，共同應對來自中國的挑戰。這番言論，無疑為外界解讀其未來對華政策提供了重要線索。
然而，無論沙利文還是戈登，他們的對華態度都只是中美關係複雜棋局中的一部分。在這場涉及政治、經濟、科技等多個領域的博弈中，雙方都在不斷調整自己的策略，試圖找到最有利於自己的平衡點。而在這個過程中，合作與競爭並存，挑戰與機遇同在。
沙利文的訪華之旅，無疑為中美雙方提供了一個難得的溝通機會。在當前國際形勢下，兩國能否通過對話與合作，共同應對全球性挑戰，促進世界和平與發展，無疑是世界各國都極為關注的問題。而沙利文與中方領導人的會晤，也將為解答這一問題提供重要線索。
與此同時，人們對於沙利文可能繼任者的關注也並未減弱。戈登的對華態度雖然強硬，但作為一個經驗豐富的外交官，他是否能夠在上任後推動中美關係走出當前的困境，實現雙方的互利共贏？這無疑是所有人都期待解答的問題。
中美關係，作為當今世界最為重要的雙邊關係之一，其走向不僅關乎兩國人民的福祉，更影響著世界的和平與繁榮。在這個關鍵時刻，我們期待雙方能夠以開放、包容、合作的態度，共同推動中美關係健康穩定發展，為世界注入更多的正能量。而這一切，都將從沙利文的這次訪華開始。
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哈蕊斯應該以烏克蘭勝利為外交目標 – Anders Aslund
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阿斯倫教授是瑞典人，這是他採取超級鷹派立場的背景。下文雖然是他一廂情願的喃喃自語，但由此可以看出俄羅斯周邊鄰居的國國自危。
Kamala Harris Must Correct US Ukraine Policy
Anders Åslund, 08/13/24
As US vice president, Kamala Harris has followed the Biden administration line on Ukraine; but as president, she could turn the war around and make it a winning issue. Doing so will require a comprehensive strategy backed by sufficient resources, all of which are already available in the form of frozen Russian assets.
STOCKHOLM – By providing Ukraine with early military, political, and financial support, US President Joe Biden’s administration saved it from being overrun by Russia. Yet since November 2022, the conflict has been locked in a stalemate, which is not to Ukraine’s advantage. If elected, Kamala Harris should make it an explicit goal to turn today’s horrendous war of attrition into a Ukrainian victory. Ukraine’s surprising offensive in Russia’s Kursk region may be the beginning of a more promising development.
Ukraine’s own goals are clear: to restore full territorial integrity; to allow all displaced Ukrainian citizens – including the thousands of children kidnapped by Russia – to return; and to receive full compensation for the damage Russia has caused. By contrast, the United States currently has no strategy to speak of. The Biden administration merely claims that it will support Ukraine “for as long as it takes,” whereas Harris’s Republican challenger, Donald Trump, promises to end the war in a day, implying complete capitulation to the Kremlin.
For Harris, the current impasse is an opportunity. Two-thirds of Americans are rooting for Ukraine’s victory, and she has already dealt extensively with Ukraine, having met President Volodymyr Zelensky six times and led the US delegation to the Ukraine Peace Summit in Switzerland in June. As US vice president, she has followed Biden’s lead; but as president, she could turn the war around and make Ukraine one of her big winning issues.
Doing so will require a comprehensive strategy backed by sufficient resources. The Biden administration’s policy (presumably the work of National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan) is to defend Ukraine without provoking Russian President Vladimir Putin. Owing to irrational fears about nuclear attacks or World War III, the White House has created imaginary Russian red lines, thus offering Russia a sanctuary from Ukrainian attacks with Western arms. But given that Putin would not survive a nuclear war, he is exceedingly unlikely to go down that path.
表單的底部
Another fundamental shortcoming of the Biden policy is the lack of any clear goal. The goal should be to provide Ukraine with enough support to defeat Russia. Harris should appoint a national security adviser who is whole-heartedly committed to that objective. The Ukrainians are bravely fighting on their own. They are not calling for foreign troops; but they do need potent arms, the right to use them to target Russian bases, and sufficient funding from the West.
Ukraine received about $100 billion in 2023 (half of it military assistance, and the rest budget support and humanitarian aid), and it is on track to receive around the same amount in 2024. While substantial, that is not enough to tip the balance. For an outright victory, Ukraine would probably need $150 billion per year, with a doubling of military support to $100 billion. That would equip it to win the war, which would then reduce future costs (not to mention Ukrainian suffering).
It is no secret where such funding can be found. The West has frozen $280 billion in Russian reserves, two-thirds of which are held in the private Euroclear system in Belgium. Moreover, the US Congress has sensibly passed legislation authorizing the Department of the Treasury to seize frozen Russian assets, while demanding that the European Union do the same. But the EU has refused, owing mainly to opposition from France and Germany.
This European resistance makes no sense. With Russia violating international law on a daily basis, the Kremlin cannot credibly demand the protection of international law. Like the US, the EU needs to adopt legislation allowing for Russian funds to be seized and used to support Ukraine. Though only around $5 billion has been located in the US, that money can be seized and delivered to Ukraine immediately to set an example for the Europeans. True, in June, the US persuaded other G7 members to lend Ukraine $50 billion by drawing on the future yields from frozen Russian funds. That was a good start. But Ukraine needs the money as soon as possible to defeat Russia.
After Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022, the US, the United Kingdom, and Canada were Ukraine’s primary sources of military aid and training. During the war’s early months, they were understandably reluctant to furnish the Ukrainians with the most sophisticated arms, for fear that Russia would seize them. But these fears were alleviated by the summer of 2022. For two years now, the US could have been providing Ukraine with the weapons it needed to push the Russians back.
Very little will happen unless America leads. The US remains globally dominant in arms production and exports, whereas the Europeans have too few arms to change the balance in the war.
Finally, we come to the most absurd flaw in America’s Ukraine policy: the prohibition against using US-supplied weapons to hit Russian bases from which Ukraine is being attacked. This policy is not even in keeping with the right to self-defense enshrined in the UN Charter. It should be revoked immediately.
The war in Ukraine could be a boon for Harris, but she must correct Biden’s mistakes and provide the additional resources Ukraine needs to defeat Russia. By seizing Russian sovereign assets and persuading US allies to do the same, she can help Ukraine win without placing any additional budgetary burden on Americans.
Anders Åslund, writing for PS since 1995, is the author of Russia’s Crony Capitalism: The Path from Market Economy to Kleptocracy (Yale University Press, 2019).
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哈蕊斯外交顧問-Jay Solomon
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Meet Philip Gordon: Kamala’s Foreign Policy Guru
His views on Iran—and connections—are raising eyebrows in Washington.
Jay Solomon, 08/12/24
What does Kamala Harris believe about the Middle East? Does she side with the old-school Democrats in her party, who are traditionally pro-Israel? Does she believe that the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), was transformational—and should be salvaged? What does she think about a U.S. defense pact with Saudi Arabia? Syria’s president Bashar al-Assad? And Sudan’s widening civil war?
With the specter of a broad Mideast war hanging over this presidential election—and potential U.S. involvement growing as the Pentagon dispatches carriers, destroyers, and missile-defense capable cruisers to the region—the answers to all of these questions are far more urgent than they typically would be for American voters. The problem is that Vice President Harris has largely been a back-bencher on foreign policy, unlike some of her predecessors, including her boss Joe Biden.
Which is why a man named Philip Gordon—who has served as Harris’s foreign policy adviser since she ran for the White House in 2020 and has worked in every Democratic administration since Bill Clinton’s—has become the focus of tremendous scrutiny in Washington over the past few weeks.
Republicans believe that through Gordon they have the outlines of a Harris foreign policy agenda. And they’re already crafting their political attacks around it. “Democrats want to put him in charge of the White House’s entire foreign policy,” Republican senator Ted Cruz told The Free Press. “It would be unspeakably catastrophic.”
Gordon’s critics from the right say he’s not just wrong on issues—he’s skeptical of U.S. military power and the efficacy of financial sanctions—but that he’s also developed troubling contacts with institutions and individuals close to Iran. Republicans are already demanding Vice President Harris answer why Gordon wrote a string of 2020 opinion pieces with a Pentagon official, Ariane Tabatabai, who was tied last year to an Iranian government-backed influence operation, called the Iran Experts Initiative, tasked with selling the 2015 nuclear deal. (More in a moment.)
“Before joining your office, Mr. Gordon co-authored at least three opinion pieces with Ms. Tabatabai blatantly promoting the Iranian regime’s perspective and interests.” Republican senator Tom Cotton and Representative Elise Stefanik wrote Harris on July 31. “Each prediction was. . . wrong, as it was biased in favor of Tehran.”
Gordon and Harris’s office declined repeated requests for comment from The Free Press. Ariane Tabatabai has also declined to publicly comment on her role in the Iran Experts Initiative.
The Limits of American Power
Most Americans will never have heard Gordon’s name. But he is part of a core group of Democratic foreign policy experts who have helped guide U.S. global strategy for the past three decades.
The Johns Hopkins University PhD initially focused on Europe during the Clinton and Obama administrations when the U.S. partnered with NATO to use military force and espionage to combat ethnic cleansing in the Balkans and North Africa—ultimately unseating Libyan dictator Muammar Gadaffi. The actions at the time were seen as in line with the Democrats’ core philosophy of liberal interventionism.
But that philosophy began to shift for Gordon during Obama’s second term, when the Middle East became his bailiwick and he coordinated regional policy at the National Security Council.
His recent writings reveal the experience left him—and others in the White House—with a much greater skepticism of the U.S.’s ability to influence events on the ground, given the fallout from the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, and Washington’s failures to promote democratic change in Egypt and Syria. “Phil left the Obama administration with a much clearer understanding of the limits of American power and the need for a much more humble foreign policy than most of those in Biden’s inner circle,” Trita Parsi, vice president of the neo-isolationist Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, recently told The Nation.
Over the past half-decade, Gordon has espoused a deep wariness of using American military and economic power to attempt to coercively affect global change—a view that could be challenged by a rising China and the major wars gripping Europe and the Middle East. In his 2020 book Losing the Long Game, the 61-year-old diplomat recounts what he argues has been a disastrous run of U.S. efforts to use military force to engineer leadership change in countries ranging from Afghanistan to Libya. In the case of Syria, where former president Obama threatened and then backed away from attacking President Assad’s military, Gordon argues that the U.S. would have been better off never calling for the Arab despot’s removal in the first place.
“It is therefore hard to avoid the conclusion that if the United States was not prepared to accept the real costs and consequences of regime change—which are always greater than its proponents acknowledge—it would have been better not to pursue the goal,” he wrote.
But it is Gordon’s view of Iran that has most alarmed Republicans and critics of a constrained American foreign policy.
No recent foreign policy issue has divided Democrats and Republicans more than the Iran nuclear deal—Obama’s signature achievement. Architects of the deal, including Gordon, argue that it is a template for a new American foreign policy. They say the agreement—had Trump not scuttled it—would have neutralized Tehran’s nuclear capacity without requiring American or Israeli military action. And they argue the easing of economic sanctions could have allowed Iranian businesses and civil society to better integrate internationally and potentially moderate Tehran’s clerics. “A nuclear agreement could begin a multigenerational process that could lead to a new relationship between our countries. Iran could begin to reduce tensions with its neighbors and return to its rightful place in the community of nations,” Gordon said in a 2014 speech, outlining President Obama’s hopes for the deal.
But critics have argued the loosening of sanctions on Iran has provided Tehran with billions of dollars to fund its terror proxies across the Mideast—proxies that unleashed the massacres of October 7 and that today threaten commercial traffic across the Persian Gulf and other strategic global waterways. Gordon was among the most vocal Democratic critics of former President Trump’s 2018 decision to pull the U.S. out of that landmark nuclear agreement.
Harris has largely been mum on the Mideast threats since taking to the campaign trail last month. There’s also no foreign policy section yet displayed on her website. But the progressive wing of her party is already pressing their candidate to immediately engage Tehran’s newly elected president, Masoud Pezeshkian, to help end the Gaza war. The Iranian leader has announced his desire to resume nuclear diplomacy with the West, a track Gordon could lead in a Harris administration.
But Americans have gotten some insights into Harris and Gordon’s position in recent weeks. After a late July rocket attack on Israel by Lebanese terror group Hezbollah that killed 12 schoolchildren, Harris drew fire for initially remaining quiet.
Then, last Thursday in Michigan, the candidate met with pro-Palestinian activists who said that that Harris had told them at a political rally she was “open” to discussing their calls for a U.S. arms embargo on Israel. Philip Gordon batted cleanup: “@VP has been clear: she will always ensure Israel is able to defend itself against Iran and Iran-backed terrorist groups,” Gordon said on X. “She does not support an arms embargo on Israel. She will continue to work to protect civilians in Gaza and to uphold international humanitarian law.”
Iran Experts Initiative
But it’s not just Gordon’s positions on Iran that are being heavily scrutinized. It’s his ties to Ariane Tabatabai and other Biden administration officials who are, or have been, probed by Congress and the U.S. government in recent months for their suspected links to Tehran’s Islamist leadership.
Alarm about Iran’s influence in Washington first gained traction last year after the State Department quietly revoked the security clearance of the Biden administration’s point man on Iran policy, special envoy Robert Malley. The diplomat had worked closely with Gordon during the Obama years to craft the 2015 nuclear deal with Tehran. And Malley had been seeking to revive Iran diplomacy when he was placed on unpaid leave in June 2023.
The White House and State Department have repeatedly refused to explain Malley’s absence or status. But Republicans investigating his case told me they uncovered evidence that the FBI is now probing whether Malley illegally downloaded classified documents onto his personal devices and may have shared them with individuals outside the U.S. government. Administration officials have privately told me they were stunned last summer when documents and information tied to Malley began appearing in Iranian state media, giving the impression that Iran had essentially penetrated the U.S. government’s communications systems. Malley has refused to comment publicly on his case beyond an initial statement saying he’d be vindicated and back in government.
Concern about Iran’s activities deepened further last fall when I published in the news site Semafor the first in a series of articles about Iranian influence operations in the West. The initial piece focused on The Iran Experts Initiative, or IEI, and detailed how Tabatabai and a group of other influential U.S.- and Europe-based Iran experts closely coordinated with Iran’s Foreign Ministry, starting in 2014, to produce opinion pieces and studies that advanced Tehran’s position on the nuclear deal and other national security issues, while never disclosing it. The story was based on a large cache of Iranian government emails that were obtained by the Persian-language television channel Iran International and shared with Semafor, where I previously worked.
Some members of the IEI publicly denied they were essentially acting under the control of Iranian diplomats, and described the program as informal. But in the emails I reviewed, Iranian officials describe closely monitoring the publications and media appearances of IEI members. And Tabatabai, in her own correspondence, can be seen seeking Tehran’s guidance on her travel plans and appearances before Congress. Other IEI members offer to ghostwrite opinion pieces for Iranian diplomats and pledge to help the Foreign Ministry advance its positions in the international nuclear talks.
Malley initially brought Tabatabai into the State Department in 2021 to join his nuclear negotiating team with Iran. Shortly before his suspension, she departed to the Pentagon to become chief of staff for Christopher Maier, assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict. It’s one of the most sensitive offices in the Department of Defense, requiring high-level security clearances.
Republican lawmakers have repeatedly questioned Tabatabai’s continued presence in the Pentagon. And Cotton and Stefanik are seeking to know if Gordon knew of her participation in the IEI when he jointly drafted with her three opinion pieces during the 2020 election cycle that sharply criticized the Trump administration’s position on Iran.
In January 2020, the two argued in The New York Times that the U.S.’s assassination of Iran’s most powerful military officer, Major General Qasem Soleimani, needlessly antagonized Tehran. The Pentagon had argued that Soleimani was behind a string of attacks on U.S. military forces in the Middle East going back more than a decade. “The costs of the United States’ targeted killing. . . are mounting beyond the already significant risks of Iranian retaliation and subsequent military confrontation,” Gordon and Tabatabai wrote on January 6, 2020, just three days after Soleimani’s death.
Three months later, in March 2020, Gordon and Tabatabai pressed in The Washington Post for the U.S. to ease some economic sanctions on Tehran in order to help Iran manage the Covid-19 pandemic that they argued risked spreading the virus across the Middle Eastern country’s borders. “In the face of an impending humanitarian catastrophe in Iran and desperate appeals for an urgent international response, the Trump administration has, unsurprisingly, responded by calling for more pressure and ever more sanctions, the latest of which were imposed on March 18,” the March 2020 article reads.
Gordon’s critics note that Iran’s pandemic troubles didn’t spread cross-border. And they also point out that Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei actually declined U.S. offers of Covid-19 assistance, citing a conspiracy theory that Washington actually created the disease to harm its enemies.
Cotton and Stefanik, in their letter to Harris, ask if Gordon and Tabatabai purposefully spread Iranian disinformation to relieve U.S. pressure on Tehran’s theocratic rulers. “Did you request further investigation into Mr. Gordon when Ms. Tabatabai’s connections to the Iranian Foreign Ministry were revealed in September 2023? Did Mr. Gordon admit and report his ties to this individual?” they wrote.
Harris, to this date, hasn’t replied.
Jay Solomon is an investigative reporter for The Free Press, and author of the book, The Iran Wars. He most recently worked at Semafor, where he was global security editor; before that, he was chief foreign affairs correspondent for The Wall Street Journal. Follow him on X at @jaysolomon.
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