Month: June 2016
Dump Trump
I’m a Democrat, albeit one who votes often for local Republicans. I don’t like the one-party “state” I live in. I’d have preferred to register as an independent. But that means my voice would never be heard. Elections here are almost always decided in closed primaries. The District of Columbia isn’t even a state like the other 50, which means I don’t get to vote at all for Senators or a voting member of the House.
So I had absolutely no voice in whom the Republicans chose as their candidate. Nor did I much care, since I wasn’t going to vote for any one of the 16 (or was it 18?) candidates who joined the primary horse race. Even Governor Kasich, the most proven of them, had a record on abortion and gay marriage that we used to call neanderthal, until we discovered that they were pretty smart.
Trump is smart too. He understood that many Republican primary voters are racist misogynist xenophobes. His anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and anti-abortion rants and sound bites gained him their votes, while his competitors split the remainder. Trump voters like his bold, unsubtle grab, accentuated by his repetition of vacuous and unsupported claims that the people he just offended will “love” him.
The trouble is they don’t and won’t. His negatives among women, Hispanics and minorities generally (including Blacks and Jews as well as Muslims, gays and lesbians) are astronomical. Even the Republican leaders in Congress don’t like him and are refusing to defend him. Utah is thought now to be in play! That we, and the rest of the world, have to put up with another five months of this loser’s narcissistic bombast is unfair, cruel and unusual. Those who didn’t vote for him in the primaries and won’t vote for him in the election don’t deserve this.
This screed wouldn’t be complete without some reflection on foreign policy and national security. Trump is already having an effect there: his anti-Muslim rhetoric supports the Islamic State claim that the West is at war with Islam, his pro-Putin sympathies give comfort to our antagonist in Ukraine and Syria, his offer to meet with Kim Jong-un undermines efforts to isolate a fanatical nuclear proliferator who threatens American troops and important American allies.
Yesterday he sought to boost the value of a commodity he owns that has lost almost one-third of its value from its peak around five years ago, by suggesting he supports returning to the gold standard. That’s a dumb idea with zero chance of becoming reality. What other personal interests will he seek to promote during the campaign?
The only way out is for Republicans to dump Trump. That won’t be possible at or after the convention. He has too many pledged delegates lined up. It has to be prepared in advance and implemented by Trump himself. The Republican leadership in both houses and in the party should tell Trump now that the joke is over. He needs to step aside and allow the convention to choose a serious replacement. Any serious Republican will do: Romney is the obvious choice and would surely do better against Clinton than Trump.
Failing to dump Trump will risk bringing to office an unqualified pathological liar capable of doing serious damage both domestically and internationally.
Or, in the more likely event of his defeat, it will spell the end of the Republican party as we know it, and likely just the end of the Republican party. This will be its third presidential loss in a row, one I expect will be resounding. The Democrats survived that kind of near-death experience in the Reagan/Bush 41 period, but they retained control of the House and regained control of the Senate. This time the Senate and maybe even the House will turn Democratic. The Republicans will likely split if not implode.
That’s my fear. I prefer that the two-party system survive. There is only a month for the Republicans to save it. I hope they have the courage to do so. Dumping Trump will save their party from an ignominious defeat and preserve a serious electoral competition.
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Pay the piper
The Syria Campaign’s Taking Sides, a report out today on how the United Nations operates its humanitarian relief efforts in Syria in favor of the government, is dramatic. It illustrates that the UN gives the Syrian government a veto over how and when aid is distributed, resulting in supplies going overwhelmingly to government-controlled areas. It concludes:
The United Nations (UN) in Syria is in serious breach of the humanitarian principles of impartiality, independence and neutrality.
But the issue is not an academic one of principles. It has a real impact on the ground inside Syria, where aid is just not reaching many opposition-held areas.
For Americans, what this means is that some portion of the $4.5 billion in tax dollars we have spent on Syria-related relief during the past five years or so has gone exclusively to regime-controlled areas, thereby supporting the government of Bashar al Assad. For 2016, that means a substantial portion of the more than $250 million pledged to the UN. Russia and Iran, both of which are belligerents with troops on the ground supporting the Syrian government and therefore contributing to the humanitarian crisis, have pledged zero in 2016 (Russia’s total for the past five years is $36 million while Iran’s is zero).
Some US aid does go to opposition-controlled areas, through cross-border shipments by nongovernmental organizations operating from Jordan and Turkey. US government officials will likely want to point this out, but they may not do so to protect the semi-covert character of many of these shipments.
What the Syria Campaign advocates is that donors make their support conditional on the UN maintaining the most basic of humanitarian principles: that aid should go to people based on need and need alone. That may sound blindingly obvious, but it is exceedingly difficult in a conflict zone. The Syrian government uses the leverage it gets from the UN’s presence in Damascus to make sure it doesn’t happen.
So the issue comes down to this: is the UN prepared to continue operating in Damascus, or would it do better to threaten to leave and operate exclusively from other countries? The Syria Campaign thinks the government would yield, at least in part, to a UN threat to leave, because it needs the relief the UN supplies to continue to flow to parts of the country it still controls.
Certainly the odds of any relief supplies getting to opposition areas the government has besieged would decline even further if the UN were to leave Damascus. The political economy of shipments into besieged areas gives the regime good reason to maintain its stranglehold. But the UN could be far more aggressive in providing cross-border assistance to areas that are not besieged from neighboring countries if it were not under the government’s thumb in Damascus.
Ideally, the Syrian government would cave to a UN threat to leave the capital and allow more shipments to opposition-controlled areas. That however seems unlikely, especially during a period when government forces are on the offensive and making some progress.
One thing the US could do, if the UN stays in Damascus, is reduce its aid channeled through the UN and increase its cross-border efforts. It could also tell Moscow and Tehran they need to fill the resulting gap in UN funding. It is time that those who call the government’s tunes pay the piper.
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Is Islam exceptional?
At last Thursday’s Brookings event celebrating the launch of his new book on Islamic Exceptionalism, Shadi Hamid laid out the historical and religious reasons for Islam’s resistance to liberal secularization. He argued that the differing contexts of Christianity and Islam’s founding moments shaped the histories of interactions between the state and religion in European and Islamic civilizations.
Jesus and Mohammed, Hamid argues, had different historical roles. Jesus was a radical dissident in the Roman Empire. He avoided politics. The New Testament has little to say about governance, making it easy to divorce Christianity from political life. Mohammed was the author of a constitution and for part of his life a head of state. The Qur’an guided governance in the Middle East and North Africa for well over a thousand years, with the reign of the Prophet serving as an example to live and rule by. Liberal ideas like the inevitability of progress and secularism have no analogues in traditional Islam.
The end of the Ottoman Caliphate left the Middle East struggling to create a new, legitimate form of government. Mainstream Islamism is the latest successor to generations of Muslim thinkers attempting to parse the legacy of Islamic governance beyond its eighth century origin. The current Islamist project of reconciling pre-modern Islamic law with the modern nation-state has never been attempted before. Islamism is inherently modern in a way few conservative religious movements can claim to be.
Brooking’s Isaiah Berlin Senior Fellow in Culture and Policy, Leon Wieseltier, joined Hamid in discussing one of the most controversial arguments in Islamic Exceptionalism. Islam does not fit with Western concepts like secularism. This exceptionalism challenges the liberal tendency to explain away difference and argue that all peoples and civilizations are fundamentally the same—or are at least similar in fundamental ways. Hamid contended that the differences between the Islamic world and ‘our’ largely Christian world tangibly affect what forms of government and policies are feasible or practical.
Wieseltier and Hamid then dove into the questions of Islam’s compatibility with liberal democracy and the values essential to it, namely equality. Hamid argued that Islam is compatible with democracy, but it runs into some problems with liberal democracy. Islamic concepts such as Shura can be adapted into democratic structures, but equality doesn’t fit neatly into Islamic law or many Islamic societies. Wieseltier challenged this point; he claimed that certain concepts like equality are as universal as algebra, and therefore can be compatible with a ‘modernist’ vision of Islam.
In Hamid‘s view, the ‘metaphysical’ nature of this discussion reflected the political debate happening all over the Middle East. Rather than contesting budget reports, Islamists and their opponents are dealing with big questions about the role of religion in public life. The conversation about that will not be over soon.
Here is the video of the event:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ylbkgHBW0pw
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Hamilton, not the musical
A friend draws to my attention this, from Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist Number 1:
An enlightened zeal for the energy and efficiency of government will be stigmatized as the offspring of a temper fond of despotic power and hostile to the principles of liberty. An over-scrupulous jealousy of danger to the rights of the people, which is more commonly the fault of the head than of the heart, will be represented as mere pretense and artifice, the stale bait for popularity at the expense of the public good. It will be forgotten, on the one hand, that jealousy is the usual concomitant of love, and that the noble enthusiasm of liberty is apt to be infected with a spirit of narrow and illiberal distrust. On the other hand, it will be equally forgotten that the vigor of government is essential to the security of liberty; that, in the contemplation of a sound and well-informed judgment, their interest can never be separated; and that a dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidden appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. History will teach us that the former has been found a much more certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter, and that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants.
The relevance of this passage to current events is, I hope, all too clear. We are watching the emergence on the American political scene of a demagogue paying more than obsequious court to some of the people. I still hope the rest will prevent him from assuming the tyrannical powers.
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Contrasting reactions
The statements of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton about the Orlando murders contrast dramatically. Trump calls the perpetrator a “radical Islamic terrorist” and claims credit for predicting something like this attack would happen. Clinton does not. She defines the murders as an act of terror and hate but does not use the I word. She also questions whether a “weapon of war” should be available to criminals and terrorists.
I imagine the Islam and gun control issues will dominate the political debate over this mass murder. Republicans will say we can’t defeat the enemy if we are unwilling to define him clearly. Democrats will say “assault” weapons should not be sold legally. How should you and I react?
Personally I have no problem with naming Islamic extremism as the enemy. But I have some sympathy with politicians who don’t want to do that. They are listening to advice from the Islamic community, whose cooperation is vital to countering the extremists. Many Muslims don’t want to credit the terrorists with a connection to Islam, fearing that will taint the entire community. Trump is exhibit number 1 in that regard.
I also have no problem with banning “assault” weapons, which to a non-aficionado like me means rapid-fire weapons with large magazines. I have some sympathy with politicians who want to defend the right to bear arms, which in rural areas are useful. But you can hunt, kill an animal predator or defend your family with something a lot more modest than the AR15 the Orlando shooter used. A line has to be drawn somewhere. We don’t allow people to drive around town in a tank.
But neither of these issues will be resolved in the aftermath of this shooting. The tug of war will continue. As Trump correctly says, there will be more.
We need to learn to react in ways that minimize future risk.
The objective of terror is to sow fear. Trump helps the Islamic radicals to do that. Take this sentence from his statement:
Since 9/11, hundreds of migrants and their children have been implicated in terrorism in the United States.
Is this true? Is it judicious? Including Orlando, ten “homegrown extremist” attacks had killed 95 people since 9/11. No more than a couple of dozen people planned and executed these attacks. I suppose Trump might also be counting the dozens more implicated in plots that were foiled. Hundreds?
In the same time period, eighteen far right wing attacks killed 48 people, more until Orlando than radical Islamic terrorists. I haven’t noticed any agitation against this slaughter on the right, which of course thinks Muslims should control their own, against this slaughter. Trump has carefully avoided offending his white supremacist supporters and throws them the occasional bone of ambiguous prejudice to chew on.
Trump also emphasizes the terrorism risks arising from immigration, including the second generation. The killer was born in the US. His family appear to have been legal Afghan immigrants to the US. Are we going to hear a proposal not only to block Muslims from entering the US, not only to deport undocumented immigrants, but also one to expel those already here, including those who are natural born citizens?
Sure, Hillary Clinton’s reaction is far cooler and less passionate than Trump’s. But if I want the US to be safe, that is the far better reaction when terrorists are trying to scare the country into doing counterproductive things.
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Peace picks June 13 – June 17
- Authoritarian Resilience and Revision after the Arab Uprisings. Monday, June 13. 3:30 PM – 5:00 PM. The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Register to attend. Five years after the 2011 uprisings, authoritarianism remains a deeply embedded feature of the Arab state system. Countries in the region are caught between the competing impulses of fragmentation and two equally unsustainable authoritarian visions—that of the self-proclaimed Islamic State, or classic autocratic regimes. Robert Worth and Joseph Sassoon will discuss these dynamics, sharing from their recent books. Carnegie’s Frederic Wehrey will moderate. Following the discussion, copies of the book will be available for sale with signing by the authors. Joseph Sassoon is an associate professor at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and is the author of Anatomy of Authoritarianism in the Arab Republics. Robert Worth writes for the New York Times Magazine and is the author of A Rage for Order: The Middle East in Turmoil from Tahrir Square to ISIS. Frederic Wehrey is a senior associate in the Middle East Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
- Cascading Conflicts: U.S. Policy on Turkey, Syria, and the Kurds. Tuesday, June 14. 10:00 AM – 11:30 AM. Bipartisan Policy Center. Register to attend. In the fight against ISIS, U.S. policymakers have been increasingly confounded by the fact that two crucial allies, Turkey and the Kurds, are locked in a violent conflict on both sides of the Turkish-Syrian border. While Washington’s plans for defeating ISIS rely on airbases in Turkey and Kurdish troops in Syria, the Turkish government continues to insist that Washington’s Syrian Kurdish partners are no different from the Kurdish terrorists against which it is fighting at home. In the absence of a more effective U.S. plan for addressing the situation, Turkey’s domestic conflict now threatens to not only undermine the war against ISIS but also destabilize Turkey, damage U.S.-Turkish relations, and prolong the Syrian conflict. Join the Bipartisan Policy Center for an expert panel discussion that will address the evolving relationship among Turkey, Syria and the Kurds, with a focus on the implications for U.S.-Turkish relations and U.S. policy in Syria. As an already complicated situation risks causing a major crisis between Washington and its allies, understanding the dynamics has become more important than ever. Panelists: Eric Edelman, Co-Chair, BPC’s Turkey Initiative, Former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey. Aliza Marcus, Author, Blood and Belief. Ceng Sagnic, Junior Researcher, Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies. Amberin Zaman, Public Policy Fellow, Wilson Institute. Moderated by:Ishaan Tharoor, Reporter, The Washington Post.
- Youth, Peace and Security: New Global Perspectives. Tuesday, June 14. 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM. U.S. Institute of Peace. Register to attend. Today’s generation of youth, at 1.8 billion, is the largest the world has ever known. Many of these youth are living in countries plagued by violent conflict and extremism, such as Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Nigeria. The goal of SCR 2250 is to recognize youth as partners for peace rather than solely viewing young people as perpetrators of violence—a shift in mindset that responds to the call to action of 11,000 young peacebuilders in the Amman Youth Declaration. The resolution, sponsored by the Government of Jordan, is a direct follow-up to the Global Forum on Youth, Peace and Security held in August 2015, as well as the Security Council’s Open Debate on the Role of Youth in Countering Violent Extremism and Promoting Peace held in April 2015. Join USIP and the Interagency Working Group on Youth and Peacebuilding for a discussion on SCR 2250 with the U.N. Secretary-General’s Envoy for Youth H.E. Ahmad Alhendawi of Jordan, young leaders from countries affected by violent extremism and armed conflict, and other experts. Speakers Include: Manal Omar, Associate Vice President, Center for Middle East and Africa , U.S. Institute of Peace; H.E. Dina Kawar, Permanent Representative of Jordan to the United Nations; H.E. Ahmad Alhendawi, United Nations Secretary-General’s Envoy on Youth; Saji Prelis, Co-chair of the Inter-agency Working Group on Youth and Peacebuilding, Search for Common Ground; Soukaina Hamia, Youth Peacebuilder, Deputy Director of Sidi Moumen Cultural Center of Casablanca, Morocco; Saba Ismail, Youth Peacebuilder, Executive Director of Aware Girls, Representative of the United Network of Young Peacebuilders (UNOYP); Victoria Ibiwoye, Youth Peacebuilder, Founder of One African Child of Lagos, Nigeria; and Oscar Fernandez-Taranco, United Nations Assistant Secretary-General for Peacebuilding Support.
- The Economic Decline of Egypt after the 2011 Uprising. Wednesday, June 15. 1:00 PM. The Atlantic Council. Register to attend. Five years after the 2011 revolution, Egypt’s economy is floundering and remains far from recovery. Successive Egyptian governments since 2011 have struggled to develop a vision for a new economic model for Egypt, while simultaneously implementing populist policies to appease the immediate demand of the public. This lecture is also the launch of the Rafik Hariri Center’s Mohsin Khan and Elissa Miller’s new report, “The Economic Decline of Egypt after the 2011 Uprising,” and a discussion on the trajectory of Egypt’s economy since 2011 and what the current Egyptian government should do to arrest the economy’s downward slide. A discussion with: Prime Minister Hazem Beblawi, Former Prime Minister, Arab Republic of Egypt; Executive Director, International Monetary Fund; Caroline Freund, Senior Fellow, Peterson Institute for International Economics; Mohsin Khan, Nonresident Senior Fellow, Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, Atlantic Council; and Mirette F. Mabrouk, Deputy Director & Director of Research and Programs, Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, Atlantic Council. Introduction by: The Hon. Frederic C. Hof, Director, Rafik Hariri Center for the Middle East, Atlantic Council.
- Desert Storm after 25 years: Confronting the exposures of modern warfare. Wednesday, June 16. 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM. SEIU Building. Register to attend. By most metrics, the 1991 Gulf War, also known as Operation Desert Storm, was a huge and rapid success for the United States and its allies. The mission of defeating Iraq’s army, which invaded Kuwait the year prior, was done swiftly and decisively. However, the war’s impact on soldiers who fought in it was lasting. Over 650,000 American men and women served in the conflict, and many came home with symptoms including insomnia, respiratory disorders, memory issues and others attributed to a variety of exposures – “Gulf War Illness.” On June 16, the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence at Brookings and Georgetown University Medical Center will co-host a discussion on Desert Storm, its veterans, and how they are faring today. Representative Mike Coffman (R-Col.), the only member of Congress to serve in both Gulf wars, will deliver an opening address before joining Michael O’Hanlon, senior fellow at Brookings, for a moderated discussion. Joel Kupersmith, former head of the Office of Research and Development of the Department of Veterans Affairs, will convene a follow-on panel with Carolyn Clancy, deputy under secretary for health for organizational excellence at the Department of Veterans Affairs; Adrian Atizado, deputy national legislative director at Disabled American Veterans; and James Baraniuk, professor of medicine at Georgetown University Medical Center. Following discussion, the panelists will take audience questions.
- Can the US Work with Iran: Challenges and Opportunities. Thursday, June 16. 9:00 AM. The Atlantic Council. Register to attend. Nearly a year after the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany signed a landmark nuclear deal with Iran and nearly six months after the agreement was implemented, the nuclear aspects of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) appear to working smoothly. But other challenges potentially imperil the agreement. There are questions about whether the JCPOA can serve as a template for additional regional and international cooperation or whether domestic politics in the US and Iran and Iran’s continuing difficulties re-entering the global financial system will put those opportunities out of reach for the foreseeable future. To discuss these vital issues, the Atlantic Council’s Future of Iran Initiative and the Iran Project invite you to a half-day symposium.
9:00 a.m. – The progress and problems of sanctions relief
Featuring: Christopher Backemeyer, principal deputy coordinator for sanctions policy at the Department of State, Teresa Archer Pratas, deputy head of the sanctions divisions at the European External Action Service, andGeorge Kleinfeld, a sanctions expert at the law firm Clifford Chance, and moderated by Elizabeth Rosenberg, director of the Energy, Economics, and Security Program at the Center for a New American Security.
10:15 a.m. – The JCPOA’s effects on US-Iran relations
Featuring: Suzanne DiMaggio, director of the US-Iran Initiative at New America, Suzanne Maloney, deputy director of the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution and a senior fellow in the Brookings Center for Middle East Policy and Energy Security and Climate Initiative, and Negar Mortazavi, an Iranian-American journalist and analyst, and moderated by William Luers, director of the Iran Project.
11:30 a.m. – The impact of the JCPOA on Iran’s role in regional conflicts
Featuring: Ellen Laipson, a senior fellow and president emeritus of the Stimson Center and former deputy chair of the National Intelligence Council, J. Matthew McInnis, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a former senior analyst in the US Department of Defense and Intelligence Community, and Bruce Riedel, director of the Intelligence Project at the Brookings Institution and a former senior director for the Near East and South Asia on the National Security Council. Barbara Slavin, acting director of the Future of Iran Initiative, will moderate.
12:30 p.m.– Keynote by Ben Rhodes, deputy national security advisor for strategic communications, on the legacy of the JCPOA. Stephen Heintz , president of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, will introduce and moderate.
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