(This article was written by Shea Bradley-Farrell and appeared in Human Events. SHEA BRADLEY-FARRELL: Biden’s failed policies have turned America’s border into a warzone)

“I don’t know how to (explain) the emotional toll … until you smell a dead body, until you come across some of the most horrific scenes (of rape, murder, brutalization) that you’ll ever see, until you see true pain and traumatic breakdown in people that don’t deserve the situations they’re in, until you’ve had to protect your family and experienced the fear and panic of something actually happening to your own kids … people just won’t understand.”

Alison Anderson’s words could describe a war zone in a land far away– maybe a scene from the brutal Hamas attack against Israel on October 7, 2023. But Alison’s words describe events in our own backyard, a war-like zone at the U.S. southern border that most Americans will never experience.

“We’ve had just about every experience you can imagine,” Alison tells me in an interview. Alison, the wife of a U.S. Border Patrol agent of 16 years, has lived with her family on the Texas-Mexico border for almost a decade, first on a ranch near Big Bend National Park and then in Del Rio.

During the past few years, Alison has been chased by an illegal alien on the ranch and defended her small children multiple times from illegal aliens trying to break into her house. “It turned out two of those guys had violent criminal histories,” she says. “And one had prior felony charges of home invasion, residential theft, armed robbery.”

Alison has witnessed women and children abandoned by the cartels, beaten, and raped. She has seen dead bodies on her property–illegal aliens who succumbed to heat and terrain or who were murdered by coyotes or traveling companions. “There are properties in Quemado (Texas)… that see hundreds a day coming through their farms, destroying their crops, disrupting their lives, and threatening their families,” she says.

Out of the ten million illegal aliens encountered by Border Patrol since President Joe Biden took office, Texas has been burdened with almost half at 4.9 million . Kinney County Attorney Brent Smith estimates Border Patrol only catches about 20% of illegal crossers –the rest are “gottaways.” Statistics recently reveal that 1.6 million known gottaways were recorded under Biden’s administration so far, more than in both the Trump and Obama administrations combined.

Illegal aliens cross the Rio Grande River near the ranch where Alison’s family lived, then traverse rugged terrain, canyons, and ravines, following trails to Highway 90 to “load out” in cars to be taken into the interior of the U.S. But on the way, they look for houses that are “opportunities” to get help or to commit crimes.

“We were tucked down inside a canyon…” Alison explains, “When the wind would blow, you could smell the groups, it’s a horrific smell. And this was my first warning sign … I could tell whether they were close or far away based on how strong the smell was.”

Once, Alison was outside doing target practice and smelled a group close by. “I figured the sound of gun fire would push them away from the house,” she says, “but I saw a dark spot up on a rock wall, on a hill about 30 yards out, covered by brush. I squinted to see what it was … it was a man, who gave me (a) slow wave! My heart sank – I’ve got two little ones sleeping inside. It’s dusk. Before I can fully process what’s happening, he takes off running, coming down the hill (toward me) and disappears into the brush…and I’m thinking ‘Oh my God! Oh my God! My brain was trying to process the danger – how to get to my kids – And I ran.”

As Alison ran toward the house, the man ran toward her. “We’re about 15 feet apart and we make dead-eye contact, and he grins at me like ‘I got you.’… That was a pivotal moment. I realized I was prey.”

Alison sprinted toward the house to call the Border Patrol station as fast as she could, “hitting the buttons a thousand times!” and then, “I turn around and the man is coming up my front gate. I drop everything, pull my firearm, swing that door open and head out on that porch and yell “You STOP!” The Border Patrol supervisor was on the phone and heard the entire thing. The guy finally backed up …. but as I hung up the phone, he comes back (toward the house.) So I went back out and fired a round over the top of his head.”

Border Patrol tracked the man’s footprints and found he had walked all over the Anderson’s property while Alison and her girls were home alone. Alison says, “They tracked him for a couple hours, but he wasn’t caught. I was terrified he would come back and cause harm to me and the girls. That’s when I said, ‘I can’t do this anymore.’”

Alison and her family lived on the ranch until Biden’s open border policies forced their move to Del Rio. “I had so many encounters…,” Alison says, “the dangers were escalating … the amount of traffic we had in groups coming to the house, looking in my daughters’ windows at night, trying to break in, camping on our property … groups that had been in the brush two days or longer…our house looked like an opportunity. I had a target on my back.”

But in the border town of Del Rio, Alison still deals with border chaos, like confronting smugglers on her property and a murder committed behind her house (smuggling related) in September 2023. “We have an overwhelming number of women, of families, experiencing (crises like) this. I’m glad we have a social network to (talk) about our experiences and how it affects our kids. We lean on each other, because people don’t understand.” Alison continues, “We feel like prey and look like victims in our own homes, where we are supposed to be safest, feel safest.”

Border residents say their stories are dismissed and ignored by politicians and media for political gain, and by an American public that is uninformed and complacent. “Americans don’t know…they have no idea. There’s a huge lack of interest because it doesn’t impact their daily lives.” Alison confides.

About border residents’ frustration, she says, “It’s the inaction – I’ve been to the capital in Austin, I’ve preached to (federal) legislators on border security forums, I’ve met the governor personally. I’ve talked to people who can make change happen. And it’s so maddening…why is it okay for our top official to ignore the law and there be no consequences? Border security, national security, should be at the top of the list.”

There is a war-like zone on our southern border that will only get worse if Biden is reelected. But no American citizen should ever have to live this way.

“We have border burnout—border PTSD.” Alison finishes. “We’re tired of sharing and reliving our stories over and over with elected officials, legislators, and politicians. We take pictures with them, we open our hearts to them, then they leave and there is absolutely no action ever.” She pauses to compose herself. “But we keep hoping –you never know who you’ll run into that can actually make a difference.”

Shea Bradley-Farrell is a Senior Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.

Indonesia, the fourth most populous nation in the world, the third largest democracy, held its general election on 14 February 2024, marking the fifth round of presidential and legislative elections in the nation’s democratic era. The country is known as a diverse archipelago with some 300 ethnic groups and a population size that stood at 278.696 million in 2023.

The democracy isn’t without challenges and complications.

The declared winner, Prabowo Subianto, received 58.58% of the votes cast. Prabowo, a former army general, was a two-time contender in previous presidential elections. He lost both times to Joko Widodo, popularly known as “Jokowi,” before joining the victor’s cabinet as the defence minister. In the earlier elections, he portrayed himself as a nationalist and strong figure, although some questioned his mental fitness due to a temper. His image subsequently shifted to a more benign grandfatherly figure, and went so far as to show off dance moves during the most recent campaign which became popular on social media. These images contrasted sharply with those from his 2014 and 2019 campaigns and seemed to allay some of the concerns about human rights violations he had been accused of in the past — allegations that he has long denied.

Initially, Jokowi was thought to support Ganjar Pranowo, the candidate from his ruling Democratic Party – Struggle (PDIP), a former Central Java governor, who has a similar image to himself: a believer in pluralism, engaging, and modest. These are characteristics that would ideally win the hearts of the Indonesian public. According to a survey conducted by Saiful Mujani Research and Consulting (SMRC) released in May 2023, however, 81.7% Indonesians were satisfied with Jokowi’s performance as President and from this number, 40% the satisfied respondents would have supported Ganjar with 30% backing Prabowo.

Jokowi eventually threw his support behind his former rival, Prabowo, while the president’s eldest son, Gibran, the mayor of Solo in Central Java, was picked to be the running mate. The Prabowo–Gibran administration is expected to continue Jokowi’s signature mission not yet accomplished: construction of the new capital city, Nusantara, in East Kalimantan. Indeed, Subianto has made no secret that the continuation of Jokowi’s policy is what he intends to do as head of state. The constitutional court chief justice, who coincidentally was Jokowi’s brother-in-law, was removed by the ethics panel for allowing the last-minute change in candidacy’s age limit — but the court’s verdict was deemed binding regardless.

The two other contenders decided to challenge the result to the Constitutional Court, citing widespread irregularities. The contenders also challenged the 36-year old Gibran’s inclusion on Prabowo’s ticket, claiming that he should have not been allowed. Additionally, the government in the lead-up to the election disbursed a hefty social aid in amount of Rp 496.8 trillion which is almost equal to the social aid being disbursed during the COVID-19 pandemic, Rp 498 trillion, and 12.4% higher than the allocation the previous year at Rp. 493.1 trillion.

The constitutional court on the 22nd of April sealed the victory for Prabowo, rejecting the petitioners’ appeal entirely and ruling there was no evidence of fraud or state intervention that materially shifted the election result. Moreover, the court also found no evidence that Jokowi and his administration bent the laws to support Prabowo.

The dynamics during the campaign season, however, point to a direction of democracy backsliding. It is understood that the rising popularity of Prabowo rooted from Jokowi’s support, as the latter, the first president from outside the Jakarta elite, remains widely popular in the country yet could not run for the third term. Some have argued that Jokowi’s eldest son as a vice president effectively serves as Jokowi’s power by proxy, but the question is that how committed Prabowo, 72 years old, as the role of vice president is often called a “spare” and its influence normally determined by the president.

With what happened during the campaign and election, another question would be how the corruption that remains rampant in the country will affect potential foreign investment? To date, the newly elected administration has yet to offer plans to tackle the issue.

According to Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index (CPI), Indonesia’s position remains unchanged at 34 and the country’s global ranking dropped by five positions to 115th place in 2023, and this issue may pose additional challenges for foreign investors to pursue large-scale opportunities.

Prabowo is also expected to lead a different possible approach in dealing with current regional security challenges.

With the increased tensions in the hydrocarbon-rich South China Sea, the result of the recent presidential election is not only important for the country’s trajectory, but also of interest to both the United States and China. The latter has engaged in aggressive behavior in the region, particularly against the Philippines.

Additionally, Prabowo will be expected to continue the focus on sustaining economic growth, which suggests friendly relations with both the United States and China will be of paramount importance. If so, it is expected that Indonesia will pick no sides or formally align with either major power.

Prabowo will likely continue the popular policy of Jokowi, as he vowed to do during the campaign. His predecessor known to avoid making criticism of either Washington or Beijing, managed to balance defence cooperation with the former and foreign investment with the latter. In his administration, Jokowi managed to score a copious amount of Chinese investment, including a $11.5 billion commitment from one of the world’s largest glass makers, Xinyi, for the construction of a manufacturing plant in the country, and the already popular $7.3 billion high-speed railway, which connects Jakarta and the capital of West Java, Bandung, cutting commute times from four hours to forty minutes.

Not surprisingly, Prabowo paid a visit to China soon after the election, a sign that the bilateral relationship will remain robust.

In recent months, the United States has been increasing its diplomatic activities and engaged in joint military exercises with its allies in Southeast Asia, including Indonesia. However, different challenges for the bilateral ties loom for the new government. While Jakarta indicates a desire to engage in more cooperation on joint military exercises, the fallout from the October 7th attack by Hamas on Israel may potentially affect the relationship with Washington. Indonesia has expressed strong support for a Palestinian state, and thanked Spain, Norway and Ireland for extending formal recognition to Palestine. The government also made appeals to European countries for a permanent ceasefire during a ministerial meeting in Brussels. The ongoing war in Gaza, as well as the Biden Administration’s continued, if qualified support for Israel may cast a pall over relations between the two if the fighting continues indefinitely.

Alternatively, an incident from March of this year between China and the Philippines at the Second Thomas Shoal, a submerged reef within the Spratly Islands highlights that concerns remain about China’s aggressive behavior. China claims sovereignty in the area despite a United Nations Convention on the Law and Sea (UNCLOS) tribunal in 2016 finding that China’s claims lacked legal merit. The tribunal also ruled that the Spratly Islands are not islands in a legal sense, rather rocks or low tide elevations. The tensions may be seen as a microcosm of Beijing’s more assertive moves in the South China Sea. Therefore, while currently Sino-Indonesia relations are on good terms, there is no guarantee that disputed South China Sea claims won’t be an issue in the future. One such challenge could bet Beijing’s claims overlapping with Indonesia’s in the gas-rich Natuna Sea area.

It is important to emphasize that the tension in the South China Sea is unlikely to abate anytime soon and the new elected government needs to be cautious while maintaining a delicate balance between the United States and China. Despite ongoing commitments from Washington and Jakarta to cooperate on military matters, unlike with the Philippines, it remains doubtful that Indonesia will join the United States in countering China’s assertiveness in the South China Sea by hosting an American military base in the country. Under successive governments, Indonesia has maintained a free and active foreign policy, non-aligned with any major powers and supports Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ (ASEAN) centrality amid the great power rivalry — and is most likely to remain this way.

To be sure, Prabowo’s historical stance showed quite a different picture. In 2019, he was very critical on Chinese investment in Indonesia and said at the time he would review these transactions if elected, as he strongly opposed any foreign influence in Indonesia. In contrast, after joining Jokowi’s administration as the defence minister, his response to the presence of Chinese fishing vessels in Indonesia’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) in the North Natuna Sea, a clear sovereignty issue, was rather lacking in firmness.

Prabowo will be sworn into office in October so how his administration will look has yet to be finalized. Whomever he chooses to be in the cabinet will play a very important role for the country’s direction: Indonesia’s role in ASEAN that will indirectly affect its policy towards China amid existing South China Sea tensions, as well as bilateral relations with both the United States and China. Whether Jokowi’s foreign policy practices will carry over and be reinforced will depend on how committed Prabowo is in continuing the policy, as he promised he will.

(This article was written by Hermann Tertsch and appeared in El Debate. Palabra y dignidad)

In Spain we have spent twenty years directly confronted with the lie as a form of government, with the principle of contradiction abolished and semantics kidnapped, prostituted and gang-raped.

The matter of the despicable, illegal and perverse Amnesty Law, by which a majority of parliament intends that politicians pardon one another’s crimes in order to create a regime of impunity for the gang of wrongdoers that governs and hands out favors, is a criminal operation that comes from far off, in time and in space.

The massacre that ended 192 lives and cut short thousands, the same one that brought us José Luís Rodríguez Zapatero, was the initial moment of the process that now seeks to close and armor-plate itself with the definitive and violent exclusion from the system of half of Spanish society. No one right now can assure that it will succeed. There is too much moral misery and overflowing corruption in a power that behaves like a band of outlaws. But let no one dare to rule it out.

I always remember Ferdinand Peroutka when there is talk of the semantic perversion that accompanies criminal socialist regimes. And of the detachment from every commitment of honor that comes with the rejection of the lie and the value of one’s own word. A journalist exiled from communist Czechoslovakia, he used the radio from Munich to encourage his compatriots in the daily step of resistance, which was the defense of the meaning of words and respect for them. Because that is what marked, what marks, the difference between those who resist and those assimilated into the system — the thin line over the abyss that separates having dignity and honor as one’s reference from, on the contrary, the sordid drive for abuse, the power of impunity and the greed of resentment.

In this Spain, once again the vanguard of the worst, no one is surprised anymore if someone promises one thing and does the opposite without the slightest self-reproach. What is more, often without reproach from others. It does cause astonishment, yes, to see rulers assert something before the cameras in the morning and in the afternoon deny it and swear the opposite. But it has no social effect whatsoever. The networks are full of recordings of solemn declarations by Pedro Sánchez, his government and other cronies in which they assert that what they perpetrated this Thursday in the Congress of Deputies is immoral, illegal, criminal and unviable.

This is probably the greatest collective self-incrimination of rulers since the show trials of the Moscow of the terror years under Stalin. With the difference that here in Spain all the accused acknowledged, appraised and characterized their crime — of high treason and coup d’état — before committing it. Right up to consummating it on Thursday. And they did so cheerfully and without any coercion or pressure. Nor, of course, the tortures suffered by the many Bukharins who stammered out their crimes, real or invented, through toothless mouths and faces turned into a mass of bloody flesh.

The crimes we are witnessing now — this nauseating betrayal and the conspiracy for a coup d’état and the overthrow of the legal powers, especially the judiciary — are cheered and applauded by public and private media turned into pamphlets of the worst agitation ordered by the powerful. This is only possible after decades of degradation in political debate and the penetration of moral misery and the cowardice of convenience into every segment of society.

The reconquest of the dignity of an apathetic and indolent society is the titanic but necessary task for those of us who do not want to leave our children and grandchildren in a nightmare of a life. That is why we must restore legality, abolish impunity and fight the lie until we bring to the dock the wrongdoers who have perpetrated this crime.

Hermann Tertsch is a Distinguished Fellow (Honorary) at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.

(This article was written by Peter Huessy and appeared in Warrior Maven. U.S. & China: Cold War or Cold Peace?)

Foreign Policy is a journal of international affairs that likes to take issue with what it sees as conventional wisdom. This month they publish an essay taking issue with the growing concern in the United States—deemed not justified—over the direction of the Chinese government under the leadership of Xi Jinping. Michael Hirsch a columnist for the Journal worries Washington is unnecessarily headed toward a cold war with China rather than an alternative cold peace.

Hirsch admits of Chinese aggression against the United States but dismisses it as any sign China wants to dominate the competition between the two nations, let alone seek hegemonic primacy. As evidence he advises Xi apparently “pleaded” with US industrial leaders to make investments in China (now declining for the first time in decades), on top of a near $700 billion in annual trade, and that these are indicators China is totally accepting of the current international economic system (which many believe China has been trying to undermine and destroy.)

What Hirsch dismisses is the long ago adopted unrestricted warfare strategy of the CCP against the United States. Apparently, the reports of its adoption were fables.

Hirch tells us the surveillance and sky balloons hovering over top US strategic nuclear facilities were “errant”—not designed to surveil the USA and just coincidentally crossing the entire United States and “spying” on our most sensitive military bases.

The author also writes that the United States strategic modernization program is in “response” to the Chinese nuclear buildup—implying the build is also errant because the Chinese nuclear build-up is obviously being exaggerated.

Actually, the strategic modernization was fully agreed to in 2010 at the time of the New START agreement not in response to China but to replace an aging and rusting strategic nuclear deterrent, and one strictly limited by arms control limits. The companion Nuclear Posture Review of 2010 in fact hardly thought of China as a nuclear threat, emphasizing the cooperative nature of the relationship with both nations, especially in dealing with nuclear threats from terrorist organizations.

At that time, experts such as Rick Fisher, Mike Pillsbury and Brad Thayer were warning about the emerging Chinese threat and were largely ignored by the drive-by media.

It is puzzling that Hirsch embraces David Sanger’s new book on China as Sanger correctly explains the US mistakenly believed that bringing China into international organizations (largely created by the West) would modify China’s actions internationally as well as soften its internal security mix, although Hirsch thinks not only will China embrace this international system but needs it to survive.

And with respect to emerging top technologies, Sanger in an interview with Ivo Daadler explains that some experts believe with respect to mastering new emerging technologies, such as AI, you cannot be in China’s camp and the US camp together. “You have to choose” he declares. That doesn’t fit into Hirsch’s narrative either.

Now Hirsch also says many Chinese economic plans under the Belts and Roads Initiative are failing. And that the Chinese economy is in trouble. Both are true–witness the loss of $6 trillion in market cap value of its stock market.

But does that lessen the threat?

The USSR often failed to accomplish its goals such as taking over the ROK (1950) and El Salvador (1963-91). But the cost to the US and its allies were huge—2 million dead Koreans and 35,000 dead American soldiers. And millions of injured and displaced. Followed shortly thereafter by the Soviet against South Vietnam and all of Indo-China.

The Soviet economy largely failed to improve the living conditions of its people over long decades of economic stagnation during the Cold War. But the USSR was no less of a military threat. And it took the US nearly half a century to get US policy right and collapse the Soviet Union empire.

Yet the conventional wisdom of the time was the economy of the USSR was at least 45% of the United States and as such not subject to being undermined. Ambassador Kenneth Galbreath famously ridiculed President Reagan’s planned economic takedown of the USSR by proclaiming the Soviets made highly efficient use of their manpower and would not be affected by Reagan’s plans.

Yet despite its economic weaknesses, the Soviets were successful in using terrorism and wars of national liberation to flip some 20 nations from pro-USA to pro communist bloc from 1969-80. They caused serial mayhem worldwide especially as the world’s number one state sponsor of terrorism, recruiting Cuba, Syria, Iraq, Libya and North Korea, (and now Iran) all having continued as elements of the past few decades of international trouble for the United States and its allies.

At the very end of the essay the author tells us to remember the lessons of détente but not to do so 20 years too late. Unexplained is whether Hirsch is proposing that the US should adopt detente with China but to do so 20 years prior to when we similarly adopted detente with the USSR?

That “détente” proposal alone shows how uninformed the author is. In many respects we have “détente-plus” with China—the US embraces investment in China including as Bill Gertz explained recently, using US government pension funds through Black Rock to buy stocks in Chinese military companies.

Proposals to be aggressive in taking down China are not met with enthusiasm in Wall Street or in the current US government—although Congressional assessments on China have been well done and accurate now for decades.

Detente didn’t end the Cold War. It actually prolonged it and served the interests of the USSR. Reagan rejected detente (to the horror of the media and the “smart” folks in academia) and as an alternative adopted what became an economic war against the USSR underneath an umbrella of peace through strength.

Is that possible with China given the extensive economic ties between China and the Western industrialized world? That is what the USA has to determine. IWP’s John Lenczkowski has a well thought out plan how to meet the challenge of the Chinese war against the USA. Hirsch seems unaware of it. And Strategic Command head Anthony Cotton has underscored that while the Cold War strategy of Reagan cannot necessarily be adopted wholesale with respect to China, China remains a very significant strategic threat to the United States.

As Hirsch does, declaring our future with China as a choice between Cold War or Cold Peace helps nothing. The issue is what is China trying to accomplish. Does China want to pursue “unrestricted” war with the US? We didn’t persuade the Soviets to stop fighting. We destroyed their economic ability to do so. That Cold War lasted a half century. And détente—if that is a Cold Peace—didn’t work. And only by 1981 did we get the strategy right. The US does not have decades to get things right with China.

The issue is what China does and intends to do. And what is in its most secret declarations.

For sure, the lack of transparency in China policy is not helpful. But we know the PRC is building 360 new silo-based ICBMs (which Hirsch recognizes), and now are developing a new mobile ICBM. And over and over again, Xi tells his politburo and his colleagues that China will be the world’s economic and military hegemon no later than 2049, 100 years after the PRC’s founding. Its Navy is now the world’s largest. According to HASC Chairman Rogers, the Chinese air force will soon be the world’s largest, while the USAF is now the smallest and oldest in history.

The US financed China’s huge economic growth since 1970 and under the assumption the Chinese government would moderate its authoritarian and dictatorial policies.

The US got that spectacularly wrong.

The PRC had their own World Bank coterie of experts that planned the de-industrialization of the USA.

The National Security Agency (NSA) head told the NDUF in 2009 that China was stealing $600 billion in intellectual property annually just from USA industry.

The PRC bribes US academic big shots with $50,000 a month cash to steal research paid for by the USA government and industry. [Must be the CCP version of peaceful coexistence!]

And murders prisoners to “harvest” and sell their organs worldwide for profit.

Hirsch may think these actions of China are just as a competitor with the United States—much as Burger King is a rival to McDonalds. And he may believe the can manage the “competition” with China without war or military hostilities.

But this depends upon whether China sees military hostilities as necessary to achieve their goals. After all, the Chinese leadership under Mao killed 65 million of their own people to seek and then keep power. And Xi Jinping has full embraced the Mao legacy. How many Chinese people is he willing to risk to achieve his objective of the world’s hegemon? After all, Mao when informed a nuclear war with China would kill hundreds of millions of Chinese, he shrugged and said that was no problem as Chinese women would “make that up” in a couple of generations.

David Sanger of the New York Times whose new book on China, Russia and the United States (a book Hirsch strangely embraces) correctly notes that when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 the US did not even apply sanctions until a year after the invasion. And provided only blankets in lieu of military assistance. And he further explains that despite the invasion, Chancellor Merkel of Germany embraced the Russian gas supplies through the Nordstrom pipeline. In an April 24th interview, Sanger wonders whether Putin would not have reasonably concluded Ukraine was available for the taking. Just as Xi Jinping might conclude the same with respect to Taiwan.

Peter Huessy is a Senior Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.

(This article was written by Hermann Tertsch and appeared in El Debate. El mal fario)

The director of this newspaper, Bieito Rubido, has said that Pedro Sánchez is going to end very badly. And the PSOE, today more Sánchez’s gang than his party, has become angry and wants to pursue the director of El Debate judicially for wishing the president ill and, according to them, threatening him with nothing less than a bad end to his life. Put another way, in more colloquial terms, they want to throw the book at Bieto Rubido for putting a bad-luck curse on their beloved leader.

No one can be surprised any longer at the follies of a Spanish socialism that has sunk into leftist radicalism, into generalized and obscene corruption, and above all into an absolutely deranged and hysterical struggle against the truth and against the most obvious realities. There are many politicians who, with greater or lesser success, have tried to deceive Spaniards throughout their history. But no one has ever set out to treat them as absolute imbeciles the way Sánchez’s gang does, obscenely.

In these times of general upheaval in which Sánchez and his ministers are already launched, by way of abuse, insult, crime and arrogance, into a head-on collision with legality, the opposition, and all the sectors of Spanish society that refuse to bless crime and folly, it must be made very clear that Rubido is quite right. And that if he can be accused of anything, it is of being excessively cautious in formulating a prognosis that is, for the rest, fairly evident and foreseeable. Sánchez is going to end badly. Very badly. He will end as a dictator or as a defendant answering for his outrages. And the first option does not exclude the second. Because Sánchez has to end very badly, for the good, the freedom and the future of Spanish society and the Spanish nation.

As Rubido said, in these five days the husband of Begoña Gómez had the golden opportunity to announce his withdrawal and seek a less traumatic way of stepping away from politics. And one that, over time, would make it easier to manage later on, if not his impunity, then at least a certain leniency for him and his circle when Spain once again has a legal and legitimate government, a defender of legality and the Constitution.

But it is clear that Pedro Sánchez’s character and the disorders that define it are his worst enemy when it comes to seeking non-tragic ways of facing his immense and terrible responsibilities for the incalculable damage he has caused to the Spanish people and to the State and its institutions.

Even the most ardent fans of the head of government know today that his pause for supposed sentimental turmoil was nothing but one more piece of baseness. And that he did it with the intention of perpetrating a self-coup that would leave his hands free to strangle the justice system and the media that threaten the impunity and the brazenness with which he himself, his wife, his brother, his family, his ministers and the entire gang that is the Socialist Party have moved and continue to move.

What Sánchez has achieved is that not only Spain, not only Europe, but literally the whole world now knows some of the most sordid aspects of the Spanish head of government’s circle, which resembles a company with management practices proper to establishments for the exercise of prostitution. And that even in the newspapers in principle most friendly to his ideology, it is a constant that the Spanish government comes across as a putrid quagmire composed of very minor beings of the lowest human and moral quality.

Europe shows every day more symptoms of weariness with the arbitrariness and whims of a progressivism that plunges into poverty, falling competitiveness, deindustrialization, educational collapse and ideological ravings that cause pain, insecurity and failure. Sánchez and his party, now irrational and fanaticized, with a government of separatists, communists, terrorists, parasites and traitors, placed themselves at the vanguard of that ideology which generates violence and distress but which is already in full shipwreck because of its failure across the whole continent.

No one is going to help Sánchez, and soon he will not even arouse the pity of his hired guns and his «Charos» suckled by his media and his outlets paid for by everyone. That being so, his only way of surviving will be that of the dictator, of the bunkered dictator immersed in the total conflict of war on the opposition, society and freedom, and with ever more guilt on his back, now with no possibility of return to society. Bieito Rubido was right. He could have resigned and bet on trying to let time make people forget, or at least fade, his responsibilities in the profound existential crisis of Spain that he has so aggravated. He lost the opportunity and he will end badly, very, very badly. And it is not a threat at all. It is an obviousness.

Hermann Tertsch is a Distinguished Fellow (Honorary) at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.

(This article was written by Maria Maalouf and appeared in Arab News. US wooing Iraqi PM in bid to reduce Iran's influence)

Next week’s visit to the US by Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al-Sudani will take place in a very complex regional context. Israel’s ongoing military operations in the Gaza Strip have been exploited by pro-Iranian militias to carry out armed attacks against American military bases in Iraq and Syria. Meanwhile, the US wants to strengthen the capabilities of its partners in the region to confront terrorist organizations. This comes at a time when Washington is seeking to transform its military role in the Middle East, within the framework of focusing on the most potent threats to America’s security and its interests in the international arena.

Several issues will be on the agenda on Monday, when the Iraqi PM holds his first meeting at the White House since he assumed power in October 2022. He will meet US President Joe Biden and many American officials.

US Ambassador to Iraq Alina Romanowski said in an interview with Reuters last month that Daesh still poses a threat to the security and stability of the Iraqi state and that the mission of the military coalition led by the US to rout the group is not yet over. Therefore, Washington is focusing on building Iraq’s security capabilities to ensure the permanent defeat of Daesh and allow it to confront future terrorist threats. Since 2012, the US Congress has allocated more than $2 billion of Foreign Military Financing to build Iraqi security capabilities.

However, in January, Al-Sudani stated that the justification for the presence of the US-led coalition in Iraq had come to an end and that there was a need for dialogue with Washington to set a timetable for ending the mission of combating Daesh in Iraq. With the increase in American military strikes against armed militias in the country in response to the attacks on its bases since Oct. 7, pressure has increased on Al-Sudani to remove US troops from Iraq. This is despite the fact that their mission is today limited to providing support and training to Iraqi forces to enhance their capabilities to prevent the return of Daesh and protecting the Iraqi state against the threats of other terrorist organizations.

The US administration opposes any unplanned withdrawal from Iraq, as it fears a complete withdrawal may lead to the return of Daesh, in addition to making Iraq even more of an arena for Iranian influence, thus wasting the efforts that America has made in Iraq over the past two decades.

With the increase in armed operations by pro-Iranian Iraqi militias against American military bases in Iraq and Syria, Washington has, in recent months, urged Baghdad to make more efforts to prevent such attacks. The US administration has called for Iraq to increase security around all military bases that host American forces, prevent the militias from obtaining advanced weaponry, prosecute those who have carried out attacks against American bases and installations in Iraq, and respect the pledge it made to guarantee the security of American diplomatic and military facilities in the country.

The Biden administration also seeks to prevent Iran from using the Iraqi financial system to circumvent US sanctions. Therefore, it restricts Iraq’s access to its funds in America in an attempt to eliminate money laundering, which many trends indicate benefits both Iran and Syria. The US Federal Reserve imposes strict restrictions on international dollar transfers to Iraqi commercial banks.

Washington has also called on Baghdad to reform its financial system to prevent Iran from benefiting from it. Among the most prominent required reforms are improving the oversight of monetary transfers, preventing the financing of Iranian-backed militias and enhancing transparency in the economic system. The Iraqi government has pledged to implement these reforms but little progress has been made so far. The US is pressuring the Baghdad government to act as soon as possible.

The multiple visits exchanged between American and Iraqi officials reveal that Iraq is still a priority in US foreign policy and that it is the cornerstone of regional stability. The Biden administration is focusing on consolidating relations with Baghdad and moving their bilateral relations into a permanent strategic security partnership, as Iraq remains one of the most essential battlefields against terrorism.

America’s search for a stable strategic partnership with Iraq comes within the framework of its policy to limit Iranian influence, which Washington sees as one of the key threats to its strategic interests in the region.

Maria Maalouf is a Senior Media Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.

(This article was written by Hermann Tertsch and appeared in El Debate. Sánchez puede ser mucho peor)

The ferocious campaign against the VOX party, which had its most intense moments between the municipal and the general elections, has not subsided in intensity; it has changed in its forms. When everyone should by now have accepted its failure.

The objective was to finish off this party, and what it has achieved is to demonstrate that a very firm electoral floor has already consolidated and does not give way even under the most adverse conditions possible.

Neither with 90% of the media announcing its disappearance and inventing division, internal discord and desertions, nor with the various private campaigns of assorted enemies, has the desired effect been produced.

Few parties outside the government would have withstood so firmly a campaign so barbaric and intense — one that there has not been in Spain even against parties that defend terrorism.

That does not mean it did no damage. Some of the damage was a boomerang. Because the dent of the asphyxiating harassment of VOX was enough to do great harm to Núñez Feijóo, so much as to deny him the government.

And it was precisely the campaign of the People’s Party and its media that demanded VOX give the PP the majority the latter claimed to have and never had. The self-inflicted defeat, aimed at VOX’s backside, will go down in the annals of blunders in electoral-strategy design.

Never has a party that had won the elections in alliance devoted itself so intensely to harming its only possible ally, to the point of depriving itself of victory.

Not everyone in the other parties has understood this, and of course there are many in several of them, on left and right, who dream of a Spain without VOX, whether by harassment and demolition or by outlawing it.

It is quite possible that there are fools in the PP to whom the outlawing of VOX would seem convenient.

Let them be careful, because if Sánchez goes off to the Valley of the Fallen to do a photo shoot among skulls and bones, he does so, of course, to use the dead in the most miserable way for his propaganda.

But also to visualize that, faced with the catastrophe his government confronts — with a mountain of unheard-of corruption scandals and with Sánchez’s own wife, Begoña Gómez, at the center of the whole plot — he is preparing for a total confrontation with such a civil-war character that it will already be a civil war, though for the moment a cold one.

The propaganda machinery set in motion for the visit to the Valley of the Fallen, which provided from a single official source the images of Sánchez and company advancing through the basilica and the tunnels like conquerors and owners, makes the warlike language clear.

Meanwhile, the friendly media, the most militant ones and the others of more surreptitious propaganda, were again setting their sights on VOX and the «concord laws», which in two regions where this party governs with the PP have replaced the «democratic memory laws» of the Popular Front-style, revanchist sectarianism.

In reality, those concord laws merely recover a spirit of the Transition that treats equally the sides of a war they consider a common tragedy of all Spaniards.

This spirit was abolished, prohibited by Zapatero as soon as he came to government after the 11-M bombings. And today it is a persecuted spirit, because for today’s Popular Front-ists, for the government and all the media of the left’s hegemonic lies, there is only one impeccable side and one demonic side.

The media all ring out that this conflict is because VOX denies relatives the right to recover the bodies of the war’s victims. Which is a miserable lie, whoever the announcer saying it may be. VOX is not against a dignified burial for those who remain in a mass grave. It defends that right for all. For the victims of the Popular Front and for the Nationalist ones, whose remains are often reburied or abandoned in the grave when the Democratic Memory crews identify them as «Francoists».

VOX is against the Democratic Memory Law that serves to finance an immense network of rackets of civil-war revanchism. But above all because it is a totalitarian law that wants to divide and set Spaniards against each other even more, and to impose lies as official and obligatory truths, and to prohibit, persecute and punish truths because they are not to power’s liking.

Sánchez can use that law for a head-on clash that makes it impossible to debate and investigate all the countless crimes of the various criminal schemes developed under his government.

The radical application of Sánchez’s Democratic Memory Law could turn it into something very similar to that Law Against Fascism that the criminal Nicolás Maduro and the no less criminal Delcy Rodríguez pulled out of their sleeve — both with very close contacts with the Spanish government through Rodríguez Zapatero.

That law, just passed by the narco-communist dictatorship, gives entirely free rein to seize, fine and detain — and, in the case of Venezuela, to torture and murder — in absolute arbitrariness, anyone suspected of fascism, of sympathies with conservative forces, or of criticism of Bolivarian socialism.

It is rightly said that the immense majority of Spaniards no longer respond to the left’s lures with hackneyed campaigns against fascism or Francoism. That is true.

But an absolutely incompetent opposition has allowed and helped to consolidate the PSOE’s maneuver of regime change to impose laws with brutal mechanisms of coercion.

They are laws so that a dictator or a regime with an unscrupulous autocrat can have all the power, of absolutely arbitrary use, to persecute the entire opposition it declares an enemy.

They are laws against freedom, against the truth and for dictatorship. And with a tsunami of corruption cases and now manifest diversions, embezzlement of national and European funds that reach his government and his own home, Sánchez is capable of anything.

If he has no serious and convincing warnings to dissuade him, he is capable of trying to threaten all of society in order to keep power, which is now the only thing that grants impunity to himself, to his wife and to that entire council of ministers already under a hundred thousand suspicions. Sánchez may be close to being much worse than until now.

Hermann Tertsch is a Distinguished Fellow (Honorary) at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.

(This article was written by Peter Huessy and appeared in Warrior Maven. “Nuclear War” Book & Jacobson’s Nuclear Confusion)

The new book “Nuclear War” by Annie Jacobson has received multiple rave reviews. It portrays a scenario in which billions of people die within three days of a North Korean strike on the US with two nuclear warheads. The problem? The US deterrent policy that Jacobsen believes is based on nuclear war fighting, and which relies on an automatic launch on warning strategy if Washington discovers a missile has been launched at the United States.

The nuclear Armageddon story starts with North Korea launching a one megaton bomb that hits the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, described as a “bolt-out-of-the blue strike” for which the US is unprepared. Another nuclear weapon takes out a nuclear power plant in California. The United States immediately responds with a launch of 82 ICBMs at the DPRK but inside a short six-minute window within which the US President supposedly must decide whether and how to retaliate.

Jacobson also argues the US has to use our ICBMs because submarine-based missiles cannot be launched to fit within the six-minute window. And since as she claims, Russia’s early warning satellite and radar system are, unfortunately, not very good, and since the US ICBM range is inadequate to hit North Korea without going over Russia, Moscow incorrectly believes that the US retaliatory missile launch is on its way toward Russia, not North Korea.

Believing that the US launch is a first strike against Russia and Putin having adopted a new policy of “launch on warning of an attack,” Jacobson concludes that “Putin will not wait” for confirmation that nuclear warheads have landed on Russia soil. Russia will then launch a massive nuclear strike on the United States. And this would in turn push the United States into attacking Russia with its on-alert remaining nuclear force [which at the start of the war numbered some 1800 strategic nuclear warheads according to Jacobsen.]

The resulting tens of millions of immediate deaths would then be followed by the breakdown of food and energy supplies and the subsequent death of additional hundreds of millions of Americans and Russians. Even worse, the 300 billion pounds of soot produced by the massive fires brings with it “nuclear winter”, as the sun’s warming rays are blocked out from reaching the earth’s surface. The death of billions of people worldwide results.

In a number of interviews with Vanity Fair and Mother Jones, for example, and in reviews by the New York Times and the Cyber Brief, Jacobson argues that the US has a plan to conduct nuclear war fighting which is automatic and set down as a series of previously adopted requirements that leave US officials little leeway to change the US response.

Jacobson also say that one person, the President of the United States, can make the decision to destroy the world, and can do so even without very much information. And she warns, the military “war mongers” have a very “aggressive culture” that has a predilection to “jam” the President toward a “quickly launching a massive retaliatory strike.”

She argues that any Presidential candidate must therefore be assessed on whether that person is stable and not erratic, including as one reviewer noted, an “unsteady commander should not be in charge.” And this is really important, as the country is “at the brink” of possible nuclear war, the book argues. Not coincidentally, the title of a new series of essays being published by the New York Time is “At the Brink,” which in turn was initiated as a means of fully exploring the nuclear disarmament issues raised by the “Oppenheimer” movie.

Unfortunately, the scenario adopted by Jacobson is a “cooked the books” argument. Her book is filled with seriously misunderstood US policy prescriptions, and a gross failure to understand the basics of nuclear deterrence. She asserts nuclear weapons do not make us strong, and need to be significantly reduced in importance, and instead of modernization the US should seek arms control and disarmament.

Not only that, the scenario adopted doesn’t make any strategic sense as well. Why would North Korea just attack the US with two nuclear warheads, knowing full well the US could turn the DPRK into a parking lot?

While admitting that nuclear deterrence has worked perfectly for roughly 75 years, the book warns deterrence might definitely fail and if it fails, any use of nuclear weapons, no matter how small, will result in all out nuclear war. Jacobson also argues that all US previous military war-gaming, going through multiple scenarios of how nuclear weapons might be used, universally ends in general nuclear war. And thus, she concludes, the US policy of “mutual assured destruction” often referenced as “MAD” is itself “mad” and not reliable as a deterrent strategy!

She is wrong on all counts. The US however does not have a “MAD” nuclear strategy and does not have an automatic series of retaliatory strikes to carry out. The US also does not have a launch on warning strategy or policy, although she correctly notes that Russia does. Thus, the US President does not have to respond within six minutes which seems to be based on the assumption that the US does indeed have a “launch on warning” deterrent strategy.

Furthermore, the US would first try and shoot down the incoming North Korean warhead with its GBI or ground-based interceptors, or if available, a better system that is now being discussed and was unanimously recommended by the Strategic Posture Commission.

Jacobson does have the US shoot four interceptors at the incoming warhead, but the result is rigged: they all miss. She references Dr. Ted Postol of MIT that the US missile defense system is only successful 50% of time even in “scripted tests” but in the real world “cannot be effective” says Jacobson and would have almost a zero chance of intercepting a ballistic missile warhead.

However, in fact the GBI system and all national and theater missile defense systems deployed by the United States actually have been successful in nearly 84% of all tests. And while the GBI deployments in Alaska and California number only 44, that small deployment has been due in large part to disarmament advocates that have opposed all US national missile defenses going back to the 1972 ABM treaty.

Dr. Postol however has also been totally wrong about the high success of the Israeli Iron Dome missile defense that Jacobson explains many Americans with whom she has spoken believe the US can duplicate. The Iron Dome missile defense has indeed shot down an estimated 90% of Hamas and Hezbollah missile launches aimed at Israeli settlements.

This Iron Dome success rate was ridiculed by Dr. Postol as unproven. He explained that the Israelis did not suffer casualties but not due to the effectiveness of missile defense but because Israelis learned to run faster to the shelters. Noted Israeli missile defense expert Dr. Uzi Rubin commented that Postol’s “fortune cookie” analysis was ridiculous and was based on an animus toward missile defense rather than a reliance upon scientific fact.

Apart from trying to intercept the incoming NK warhead, for some reason Jacobson rushes the President to fire back and only with land-based ICBMs. However, there is no reason for the President to respond within a 6 minutes window. Even if NK launched a nuclear missile from a submarine and from just off the coast of North Carolina, for example, the warhead could arrive at the Pentagon much more quickly than from an ICBM, but again, what response by the US would require a near immediate Presidential launch decision, especially when no further North Korean missile launches have been detected?

Furthermore, a much more likely US retaliatory response could be to either launch a SLBM from the Pacific from a US Ohio class submarine. Or if available, a Navy submarine or ship based nuclear armed theater cruise missile, (SLCM-N), a technology development that was a top recommendation of the 2023 Strategic Posture Review Commission.

In these scenarios, there would be no over-flight of Russia territory, the US could still destroy key North Korean targets promptly, including the NK leadership, and would be a relatively limited response. A reasonable result? The North Korean launches do not continue. Armageddon does not ensue.

Contrary to what Jacobson assumes, US deterrent strategy is not about “war fighting” but is to ensure the US is able to credibly respond to any adversary launch of nuclear weapons against the United States and its allies, a capability to deter being required across the spectrum of conflict. Such capability is not a “plan for nuclear war” or a “catalyst for Armageddon” as claimed.

It is true that Putin has appeared to have adopted a launch-on warning strategy. But even worse is that his strategy of “escalate to de-escalate” has also been adopted by the Russian leader. Here Jacobsen gets totally confused. It is not as she claims the strategy of the United States to use nuclear weapons in a conventional conflict. In fact, the US military has repeatedly underscored that the enemy introduction of nuclear weapons into a conventional conflict results in “nothing holds”—meaning our conventional war strategies of victory would fail.

And while indeed it was General John Hyten who brought this Russian strategy to our attention, Jacobson mangles the facts. The US nuclear umbrella and extended deterrence over our NATO and Western Pacific allies are not an aggressive and unwarranted “escalate” strategy.

General Hyten warned years ago “escalate to de-escalate” is a Russian not an American strategy. For example, Moscow attacks conventionally, as they did Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova. And then if faced with a counterattack which might succeed, Moscow threatens the limited use of battlefield nuclear weapons which former President Yeltsin ordered Russia to develop in 1999. The objective? To get the US to stand down and not come to the defense of an ally attacked by Russia.

Thus, the Russian “escalate to de-escalate” policy is actually an “escalate to win” strategy, as Dr. Brad Roberts has explained. The policy is to secure the fruits of aggression and fundamentally eliminate the US conventional and extended nuclear umbrella.

When during the Cold War, the US would bring its nuclear capability to central Europe if faced with a conventional strike through the Fulda Gap by the Warsaw Pact nations, it was to prevent aggression and war in the first place, not to help aggression succeed.

In conclusion, the scenario offered by Annie Jacobson will scare the uninformed. And if believed might undermine the American public’s support for our nuclear deterrent.

In particular the story is a rigged critic on American ICBMs and Missile Defenses, the two bet noirs the disarmament community has been trying to kill for nearly the past half century.

Jacobson repeats all the criticisms about these systems and weaves them into a threadbare doomsday tapestry. We are told ICBMs can be launched in minutes; ICBMs don’t have adequate range and thus have to fly-over Russia; ICBMs are first strike weapons; ICBMs will end the world; ICBMs cannot be recalled.

Indeed, ICBMs can be promptly launched but that is a positive attribute because it tells an enemy that their key assets cannot remain in a sanctuary free from being destroyed. Given these assets are what they value most, holding such valuable assets at risk is the central plank of US deterrent policy through at least 14 Presidential administrations.

In the 75 years of the nuclear age, no ballistic missile has been launched at the USA. And no launch committee meeting has ever been convened at Strategic Command to evaluate such a launch.

And no President has ever had to decide to launch an ICBM or SLBM.

To eliminate deterrence, or weaken it, without replacing the system with something equally effective, would be a dereliction of duty.

And could indeed put the lives of billions of folks on this planet at risk.

Peter Huessy is a Senior Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.

(This article was written by Maria Maalouf and appeared in Arab News. EU's world-first AI law to reverberate in America)

The European Parliament last week passed the Artificial Intelligence Act, which is viewed as the world’s first comprehensive law to define the legal aspects of AI. It provides for EU-wide regulations in reference to quality of data, transparency, human oversight and accountability. The law will apply to the providers and developers of all AI systems that are marketed or used within the EU, regardless of whether they are based inside or outside the bloc. Therefore, it will have implications for the use of AI in the US.

The act will impose fines on any company or group violating its rules. The exact amount will be a percentage of the global annual revenue that AI generates. The European AI law is being defended as not stifling innovation. Quite the opposite, in fact, as small and medium-sized enterprises will be adopting AI techniques. This will enhance innovation.

The European law on AI squares well with the main scope of AI, which is to achieve a competitive advantage in e-commerce. This will be gained in the processes of manufacturing, managing human resources, fostering customer relations and promoting advertisements and marketing. In other words, enterprises’ performance will be raised and this can increase profits, lower costs, save time, better collect data and reduce production and distribution errors, among other advantages.

The political history of the new act began in April 2021. It was the culmination of negotiations between the Council of the European Union and the European Parliament. Agreement on the text was reached in December 2023. Last week’s vote in the European Parliament turned that political consensus into law.

Most of its bylaws will enter into force two years after its introduction. However, any provision that has to do with the application of prohibited AI systems will be enforced within six months of its signing into law. In addition, any of its stipulations in reference to generative AI will be enforced after one year.

The act will abolish several AI applications that are considered to be a threat to the rights of citizens. These are related to biometric categorization systems that originate from sensitive characteristics. This will also deal with the practice of untargeted scraping of facial images by the internet or in CCTV. Such a practice aims to create a facial recognition database. These AI applications will be forbidden, in addition to the techniques that AI employs to control emotion recognition. These methods are considered manipulative of human behavior and exploit humans’ vulnerabilities.

The law is a direct response to the proposals submitted by average European citizens to the Conference on the Future of Europe in 2021-22. Many of their concerns centered on how to boost the European economic advantage in a few strategic economic sectors. They wanted to improve their ability to access information and data regardless of any particular trait or ethnic, political or religious affiliation.

The European AI Office will now be founded. It will function according to the European Commission’s rules. It will not conflict with the AI authorities and government bodies controlling the AI operations of individual member states. It will rather offer guidance on how European countries can best utilize AI and its capabilities. It promises not to discriminate against any European government or organization using this technology. However, political observers will not rule out a potential conflict involving this office and European entities since the implementation of AI involves complex processes and procedures and they can lead to many conflicts of interest among the people employing them.

Two different reactions have emerged regarding the new European AI Act. Human rights groups have condemned it. The Access Now organization issued a statement saying: “The new AI Act is littered with concessions to industry lobbying, exemptions for the most dangerous uses of AI by law enforcement and migration authorities, and prohibitions so full of loopholes that they don’t actually ban some of the most dangerous uses of AI.”

On the other hand, the UN General Assembly is studying many draft texts as it seeks to announce a statement that can be a general declaration of humankind’s use of AI.

Finally, the European AI Act will have a great impact on any company doing business in the EU. Every American company must review its AI systems before they are used in Europe. This reviewing process could be costly and time-consuming. And American businesses cannot rely on US law because there is no federal legislation that allows or bans certain AI policies. The US government and private sector companies have no other option but to abide by the European law.

The only American alternative to this law would be to rely on state laws and regulations governing privacy in the US. But this would be a very short-sighted approach as far as AI laws in America are concerned. Therefore, the Europeans are far ahead of any other nation or group of nations in providing guarantees on how to use AI the right way.

Maria Maalouf is a Senior Media Fellow at the Gold Institute for International Strategy, a Washington D.C.-based foreign policy and defense think tank.