[Peace-discuss] Team Biden floats Emirati ally Michèle Flournoy as SecDef

Mon Mar 9 15:00:37 UTC 2020

In case there were previously any doubt, now we know for sure exactly what
kind of "normal" Team Biden has in mind for their "Return to Normal."

Think we'd need the War Powers Resolution in a Biden Administration? *You
betcha.* Which means we'd need Con Res WPR to be good law in the House. How
much do you suppose Pelosi and Hoyer would help us challenge Biden as POTUS
on war powers? Here's a wild guess: about as much as they helped us
challenge Obama on war powers. It's not like they're straining themselves
to help us now. Even now, it's pulling teeth to get these people to do
anything at all. Imagine how hard it would be if Biden were POTUS to get
House Dem leadership to do anything.

Congress should keep working those War Powers muscles with the goal of
making them stronger than they are now. We need them now, stronger, on the
Saudi war in Yemen. It is extremely likely that we would need them much
more in a Biden Administration than many Democrats now imagine.

Joe Biden's secret governing plan
Adios
Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen
https://www.axios.com/joe-biden-cabinet-vice-president-picks-b17882ac-3953-450f-8afb-38a3c8dcda57.html

Joe Biden confidants are privately discussing potential leaders and Cabinet
members for his White House, including the need to name a woman or African
American — perhaps both — as vice president, top sources tell "Axios on
HBO."

*Why it matters: *Biden advisers describe a Return to Normal plan — a
reversal of President Trump's unorthodox, improvisational style. Biden
wants known, trusted people around him — many from the Obama years.

[...]

*Michèle Flournoy,* an Obama undersecretary of defense, would be the
favorite to run Biden's Pentagon.

[...]
=====

*This is Michèle Flournoy**: *

HACKED EMAILS SHOW UAE BUILDING CLOSE RELATIONSHIP WITH D.C. THINK TANKS
THAT PUSH ITS AGENDA
Zaid Jilani, Alex Emmons
July 30 2017, 8:27 a.m.
https://theintercept.com/2017/07/30/uae-yousef-otaiba-cnas-american-progress-michele-flournoy-drone/

THE UNITED ARAB EMIRATES has one of the most repressive governments in the
world. The Gulf dictatorship brutally cracks down
<https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2017/country-chapters/united-arab-emirates>
on
internal dissent and enables abusive conditions
<https://www.state.gov/j/tip/rls/tiprpt/countries/2016/258886.htm> for its
massive migrant labor force. It also plays a key role in the bloody war in
Yemen, running a network of torture prisons
<https://apnews.com/4925f7f0fa654853bd6f2f57174179fe> in the “liberated”
parts of the country.

That makes it all the more shocking that the UAE is so rarely criticized by
leading U.S. think tanks, who not only ignore the Gulf
dictatorship’s repression, but give a privileged platform
<https://theintercept.com/2016/10/26/at-hillary-clintons-favorite-think-tank-a-doubling-down-on-anti-iran-pro-saudi-policy/>
to
its ambassador, Yousef al-Otaiba. Otaiba is a deeply influential voice in
U.S. foreign policy circles, and is known in Washington for using his
pocketbook <http://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/his-town/> to
recruit allies.

Last month, hackers began releasing screenshots of emails from a Hotmail
account that Otaiba used for official business.

[...]

The latest batch of hacked emails passed to The Intercept and other outlets
by “GlobalLeaks” provide insight into how Otaiba manages to find — or buy —
so many friends in D.C. think tanks. The documents offer a glimpse into how
a small, oil-rich monarchy can obtain such an outsized influence on U.S.
foreign policy, showing the ambassador obtaining favors from Obama
administration veterans — including Hillary Clinton’s presumptive Defense
Secretary — and making large payments in return.

A $250,000 Invoice

One of the documents obtained by The Intercept was an invoice from the
Center for New American Security, an influential national security think
tank founded in 2007 by alumni from the Clinton administration. The
invoice, dated July 12, 2016, billed the UAE embassy $250,000 for a paper
on the legal regime governing the export of military-grade drones. It was
signed by Michele Flournoy, a senior Pentagon official under President
Barack Obama; Hillary Clinton was widely expected to name Flournoy as her
secretary of defense. Flournoy co-founded CNAS and, in addition to outside
work as a management consultant, currently serves as the think tank’s CEO.

Think tanks are independent institutions, but they are often funded by
weapons companies, Wall Street banks, and even foreign governments. CNAS is
transparent about the fact they have received money from the UAE, and even
list the country’s embassy on website
<https://www.cnas.org/support-cnas/cnas-supporters> as a donor. These
institutions, including CNAS, often assert
<https://www.brookings.edu/about-us/brookings-policies-on-independence-and-integrity/>
that
their scholars are independent of their donors, and that their analysis
reflects their personal beliefs, not the interest of powerful donors.

The invoice, however, as well as emails obtained by The Intercept, portray
a different picture: a close relationship between CNAS and Otaiba, with
Otaiba paying for specific papers and discussing the views in the papers
with the authors. Otaiba later explained to those responsible for creating
the policy papers how the documents would be used to push the UAE’s drone
program.

In its description field, the invoice reports that the payment was made
for “Support for the Center’s Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR)
Study.” The MTCR <https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/mtcr> refers to a
35-nation agreement that governs the export of certain large military-grade
weapons. Countries can apply for membership in the MTCR and become eligible
to buy these weapons. The MTCR has been a headache
<https://www.defensenews.com/2017/03/21/uncertainty-at-state-department-holding-up-new-agreement-on-armed-drones/>
for
the drone industry because some of its products are classified as missiles,
which makes them more difficult to export. The agreement has also irritated
U.S. allies, who would love to get their hands on sophisticated, American
attack drones.

The UAE is one of the countries that ran into a roadblock in the MTCR. The
Obama administration blocked
<http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/17/politics/congress-sales-drones-jordan-uae-trump/index.html>
the
sales of some weapon systems to the Emirates because the MTCR prohibits
their sale beyond close allies. Some lawmakers have pushed the Trump
administration to allow for the sales.

Part of the campaign to allow the UAE to buy these drones has involved
think tank work. According to emails obtained by The Intercept, Otaiba
commissioned a private paper on the MTCR from CNAS. In a June 24,
2016, email to Otaiba, Flournoy wrote, “Yousef: Here is the CNAS proposal
for a project analyzing the potential benefits and costs of the UAE joining
the MTCR, as we discussed. Please let us know whether this is what you had
in mind.”

On July 11, Flournoy followed up with Otaiba, writing, “We believe the
study could be done for $250K. We are happy to send you a revised proposal
along those lines this week if that is acceptable.” In a November 2016
email to Otaiba, Ilan Goldenberg, the director of CNAS’s middle east
security program, was blunt about the UAE’s support for the think tank’s
MTCR work. “One administrative item,” he noted. “We’d initially agreed that
you would provide the second tranche of your financial support for the
project when we are at the midpoint, which I think is about now. So I will
have someone from our development team send you bank details/invoice over
the next few days.”

Goldenberg is an Obama administration veteran who led the Office of the
Under-Secretary of Defense for Policy’s work on Iran. He currently serves
as a senior fellow at CNAS.

In February of this year, Goldenberg sent the MTCR study to Otaiba by
email. Otaiba circulated it to some high-level officials in the UAE
government and military. In May, Otaiba sent an email to Flournoy and
Goldenberg praising the study — and for its utility in moving the Gulf
dictatorship’s agenda forward. “And thank you for the report,” he wrote. “I
think it will help push the debate in the right direction. Some of the UAV”
— unmanned aerial vehicles — “manufacturers are pushing for a similar
conclusion, so this report might reaffirm their arguments.”

In June, CNAS produced a public paper
<http://drones.cnas.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/CNASReport-DroneProliferation-Final.pdf>
echoing
the same conclusions, arguing that the United States’s “reluctance to
transfer U.S. drones harms U.S. interests in tangible ways.” Namely, the
public report asserted that some countries are now turning to China to get
the technology instead. The Emirates is listed as one of those countries
that has been denied some drone sales, and has instead turned to China. The
stated goal of the paper was to push the Trump administration on the policy.

[...]

In another series of emails dated between February and March 2013, Flournoy
uses a private gmail account to contact Otaiba and ask him to help promote
the sale of electronic surveillance technology from a U.S.-based firm to
the UAE.

The UAE government is a voracious consumer
<https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jun/15/bae-mass-surveillance-technology-repressive-regimes>
of
surveillance technology, and has repeatedly bought up electronic spying
tools from Western countries to spy on political dissidents
<https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/mg7pjy/ahmed-mansoor-million-dollar-dissident-government-spyware>.
In October, The Intercept reported
<https://theintercept.com/2016/10/24/darkmatter-united-arab-emirates-spies-for-hire/>
that
the UAE is recruiting a small army of Western hackers, who are helping to
turn the Emirates into the world’s most sophisticated surveillance state.

In a February 2013 email to Otaiba, Flournoy expresses dismay that du, a
major Emirati telecom company, chose not to purchase location-based
services technology from Polaris Wireless, a company that specializes
tracking electronic devices. On its website
<http://www.polariswireless.com/wireless-location-services-national-security/>,
Polaris advertises “wireless location intelligence” that can be used in
“locating and tracking known suspects,” “detecting and monitoring crowds,”
and allowing users to “stay ahead of those who pose a threat.” Polaris
Wireless has an office <http://www.tradearabia.com/news/DEF_218073.html> in
Dubai. In 2012 its CEO credited sales in the region
<http://www.tradearabia.com/news/DEF_218073.html> with a growth in revenue.

Flournoy told Otaiba that she is “most interested in seeing the UAE have
this capability as a key security partner.” She asked him to intervene with
the ministry of interior and help set up a meeting for a senior executive
with Polaris.

[...]

Nicholas McGeehan, Human Rights Watch’s researcher for the UAE, told The
Intercept by email that activists in the country are convinced the
government is using electronic surveillance to track them. “When we were
last able to get into the UAE — in January 2014 — the local activists we
met were leaving their mobile phones at home whenever they traveled, and
didn’t want the authorities to know where they were going,” McGeehan said.
“They were confident that the authorities were using their mobile phones to
track them.”

[...]
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/attachments/20200309/db5574c4/attachment-0001.htm>