As John Kerry looks forward to reaching an accord with China over climate change, the communist country is making moves to build a spy base 100 miles off the U.S. coast.
Something is wrong with this picture.
Climate czar Kerry sees the world through Green-tinted glasses.
“We very much hope to be able to find the pathway to a breakthrough that could make a huge difference,” Kerry told CNBC’s Tania Bryer at the January World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
That was right before a Chinese spy balloon wafted over the U.S. As NBC News reported, that balloon was able to gather intelligence from several sensitive American military sites, despite the Biden administration’s efforts to block it from doing so, according to two current senior U.S. officials and one former senior administration official.
That didn’t deter Kerry from mulling a visit to China to for a climate chat. He said last month that China invited him to visit “in the near term” for talks on averting a global climate change crisis even as diplomatic relations between the world’s two biggest greenhouse gas emitters remain tense.
The United States and China must work together to address climate change, Kerry said in an interview with Reuters. There are issues that need to be clarified before a sit-down Kerry said.
Issues like spying on America?
Nope. China first must issue its plan to reduce methane emissions and advance in the transition away from coal.
Now Politico is reporting that China is in talks with Cuba to establish a foothold there to spy on the United States, two senior U.S. officials said.
The officials, granted anonymity to discuss an extremely sensitive intelligence matter, said China was in direct conversations with Cuba to set up a base on the island nation just 100 miles from the United States. It would allow Beijing to collect signals intelligence on southeastern portions of America, home to many military facilities and major industries. Evidence of the negotiations came to light in recent weeks, the officials said.
There are clearly problems with compartmentalizing climate change from politics. If Kerry makes inroads with China over carbon emissions, does that diminish the gravity of efforts to spy on the U.S.?
As Special Presidential Envoy for Climate (staff and budget unknown, good luck asking) Kerry answers to no one but President Biden. He flies above the nuts-and-bolts work of the State Department.
The world, however, isn’t black and white. Nor is it Green and carbon. The same China that might be considering, maybe, to reduce its coal imprint is the same one that’s eager to eavesdrop on America from the Cuban coast.
If anything, this latest move indicates that China will do what it wants. The only thing we can control is our response.
“It is a disaster for the Biden administration. It shows that what they’re trying, their policies are not working at all, the aggression of China continues,” Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) told Politico. “Here they’re flying over to China, maybe as we speak, to grovel to Beijing. Meanwhile, Beijing is basically giving us the middle finger.”
Kerry needs to look at the big picture.
