U.S. citizens should “be very careful” when traveling around the world due to the risk of arbitrary arrests by hostile governments, a Republican senator warned days after Russia detained a U.S. citizen.
“I think people do need to be very careful and weigh carefully when they travel to these countries that are not exactly our friends,” Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson, a senior member of the Foreign Relations Committee, told the Washington Examiner.
The second-term senator offered that warning days after Russian officials arrested a Michigan native on charges of espionage. The former Marine’s detention punctuated a string of high-profile incidents of American and Canadian citizens held overseas, including a series of cases that provoked a State Department travel warning for China.
“The world remains a pretty dangerous place,” Johnson said. “I would concentrate, if I was traveling around the world, I would concentrate on places that are very friendly and I wouldn’t take too many risks.”
Johnson’s warning extended beyond the obvious countries with a history of enmity with the United States. North Korea and Iran have posed dangers to American travelers for decades. China and Russia loom as “near-peer” adversaries for the United States. But authoritarian repression poses a risk for American citizens even among some traditional allies.
“I wouldn’t necessarily travel to Turkey, or Egypt, or Saudi Arabia right now,” Johnson, who chairs the Foreign Relations subcommittee for Europe, told the Washington Examiner. “If I was just a private citizen, there are a host of places I would not go, and unfortunately Russia and China are two on that list right now.”
It’s not clear if fractious foreign powers have decided categorically that detention of American citizens is an effective tactic for jabbing the United States, or if the motivations are too distinct to fit any pattern. Turkish officials held North Carolina Pastor Andrew Brunson for two years and have accused him of complicity in a failed coup attempt that the authoritarian President Recep Tayyip Erdogan blames on the United States.
“You have a great deal of tension between the United States and Turkey,” Anthony Cordesman, an expert in strategic challenges at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C., told the Washington Examiner. “There’s an obvious reason why things have become a problem there and are likely to remain one.”
There’s a similar dynamic in play with respect to China, which seized two Canadian citizens after America’s northern neighbor arrested a senior Huawei official at the Justice Department’s request; the top tech giant executive stands accused of violating U.S. sanctions on Iran.
“At least between Russia and the United States it tends to be cleared up fairly quickly,” Cordesman said of such controversies. “China is always far more uncertain. It can react quickly when it has a high profile [situation]. This instance certainly did. You’re talking about someone who is a major figure in the Chinese power structure, even though she isn’t a political official.”
China’s surveillance state helps it find myriad targets for such arrests, according to a State Department travel warning released Thursday.
“U.S. citizens may be detained without access to U.S. consular services or information about their alleged crime,” the bulletin emphasized. “Security personnel may detain and/or deport U.S. citizens for sending private electronic messages critical of the Chinese government.”
The opportunities to use such tactics in disputes with the West seem likely to continue, at least with respect to China, as President Trump’s administration is taking a harder line with the Communist regime in light of American assessments that Beijing is waging “a cold war” against the United States.
“We have certainly changed U.S. strategy towards China,” Cordesman said. “You’re confronting China much more openly than you have in the past and the spillover necessarily gets more attention and a higher profile. It is not clear that something similar is happening with Russia, as of yet, but there [would have] to be a first case.”
The current spate of Chinese detentions may be directly linked to the arrest of Huawei Chief Financial Officer Meng Wanzhou, but it can fit into a broader strategic competition that affects other U.S. allies. A top Australian national security expert recently argued that China wants to “normalize nothing less than hostage taking as an instrument of diplomacy.”
“Amid danger and disruption among the big powers, this is a vital time for self-respecting middle players to form their own united front,” Rory Medcalf, head of the National Security College at the Australian National University, wrote Wednesday in a Financial Review column.
The growing strategic competition leaves Americans with a risk management dilemma. The State Department’s travel warning might lead some travelers to use WhatsApp, Signal, and other secure messaging services that seem safer from prying eyes. That could backfire, Cordesman warned, if spy agencies around the world choose to regard that behavior as suspicious.
“As people routinely use encryption to protect themselves, they also routinely create concern on the part of foreign intelligence services,” he told the Washington Examiner. “By the very nature of counterintelligence, I won’t say that you operate on the basis of being paranoid, but you do tend to come pretty close.”
The risks can be magnified depending on a person’s background, Johnson suggested. Paul Whelan, the American most recently arrested in Russia, is a former Marine Corps staff sergeant who was discharged as a private for bad conduct. Now he oversees security for an auto parts supplier in Michigan.
“There could be trumped-up charges made just because of somebody’s background,” Johnson told the Washington Examiner. “I would be very careful based on whatever a person’s background might be in terms of going to some of these countries because they’re not our friends right now.”
The Wisconsin Republican believes that “standard tourists” should be safe enough in a country like Russia or China, if they don’t have a evocative background such as military experience or security work.
But what would he say if his own children wanted to visit Moscow, Beijing, or Istanbul? “Go to Hawaii.”
