With the deadline for a floor vote on Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh just a week away, here is where we stand:
- He demonstrated in Thursday’s testimony his partisan peevishness and lack of emotional equilibrium. His temperament is ill-suited to making judicial decisions.
- His testimony has included lies about his knowledge of purloined emails and about his own hard-drinking life as a teenager.
- His decisions as a judge are distasteful if not odious: he is an avowed opponent of subpeoning a sitting president, has tried to impose his own “pro-life” values on a teenage immigrant, and will do his best to shield companies from accountability for their actions while trying to reverse progress in ensuring civil rights.
- The White House is trying to limit the reopened FBI background investigation in ways that will make it impossible to interview relevant witnesses.
Any one of these items would in my view make Kavanaugh ineligible to become a Supreme Court justice and bring into question his current position on the DC Court of Appeals. Together they suggest there is something profoundly wrong with the person who nominated him. How did President Trump think he was going to get away with this?
He almost did, and he might still, because of the Republican majorities in both houses of Congress. Only an extraordinary #metoo uprising and two women confronting a retiring Republican Senator on the outs with the President combined at almost the last moment to block the railroading of this blatantly disqualified candidate through the Senate.
So what will happen next Friday? Hard to tell. The FBI will certainly find much more drinking and harassment of girls in Kavanaugh’s circle than he was prepared to let on. But whether it will come up with credible witnesses who tell interesting tales about his own misbehavior is in doubt. The White House effort to limit the inquiry will cast doubt on its outcome, if it finds no malfeasance by Kavanaugh.
Just as important: will women continue and amplify their effort to raise consciousness and create a popular backlash against the appointment of Kavanaugh? I’m sure some will try, but protest has to be loud, visible, and widespread to make politicians think twice. Here the press will play an important part. #metoo needs coverage to be effective. It will make an enormous difference to the outcome if polling shows a serious potential impact on the November 6 election.
The Republican leadership is still determined to confirm Kavanaugh, because he would tilt the court definitively in a radical right-wing (I can’t honestly call it conservative) direction. President Trump will back him 100% until he doesn’t. The delay so far has rendered it virtually impossible for another nominee to be confirmed before November 6. We are in for more high drama.
Here for those who may have missed it are highlights of last week’s testimony:
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Like this:
Like Loading...
1. Tunisia: Justice in Transition | Tuesday, October 2, 2018 | 9:30 am – 11:30 am | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | 1779 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20036 | Register Here
Please join the Carnegie Middle East Program for a screening of the documentary, Tunisia: Justice in Transition. The film tracks the trajectory of Tunisia’s Truth and Dignity Commission, established in 2013 to address the crimes of the Ben Ali and Bourguiba regimes. It includes interviews with victim’s families, human rights activists, and political actors to explain the Commission’s rocky path over the past five years.
Following the screening, Sarah Yerkes will moderate a discussion on the status of transitional justice in Tunisia today with one of the film’s creators, Ricard Gonzalez, and Salwa El Gantri.
Speakers:
Salwa El Gantri is the head of Tunisia Office for the International Center for Transitional Justice. She is an expert in gender and transitional justice, and has more than twelve years of experience in the democracy, human rights, and transitional justice fields.
Ricard Gonzalez is a journalist and political scientist. He has worked as a correspondent in Washington, DC, Cairo, and Tunis for El Mundo, El País, and Ara.
Sarah Yerkes is a fellow is a fellow in Carnegie’s Middle East Program, where her research focuses on Tunisia’s political, economic, and security developments as well as state-society relations in the Middle East and North Africa.
2. Is Russia Becoming Central Asia’s Near Abroad? | Tuesday, October 2, 2018 | 4:00 pm – 5:30 pm | Wilson Center | 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20004 | Register Here
Russia’s relationship to Central Asia has always been distinctive and ambiguous, in contrast to its attitude toward both Ukraine and the Caucasus. Only in the twentieth century did it develop a deep sense of mission there, and then only at the hands of a small number of ideologues.
Today, Central Asia is fast recovering its traditional regional spirit, which increasingly impacts its former imperial ruler. As this happens, Russia, while remaining a force to be reckoned with in Central Asia, is also becoming an object of Central Asian geopolitical and cultural influence. Hence the notion of Russia as Central Asia’s “near abroad.”
The talk will be a Distinguished Speaker Lecture with S. Frederick Starr, Founding Chairman of the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute & Silk Road Studies Program and a Professor at John Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies.
3. China’s Alliance with North Korea and the Soviet Union: A Conversation with China’s Leading Historians | Thursday, October 4, 2018 | 3:30 pm – 5:00 pm | Wilson Center | 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20004 | Register Here
The Wilson Center’s History and Public Policy Program will be hosting China’s three leading diplomatic historians for a discussion about the history and present day relevance of China’s Cold War-era relations with North Korea and the Soviet Union.A Misunderstood Friendship: Mao Zedong, Kim Il-sung, and Sino-North Korean Relations, 1949–1976, co-authored by Dr. Zhihua Shen and Dr. Yafeng Xia, is the first book-length history of the China-DPRK relationship to appear in English. Shen and Xia draw on previously untapped primary source materials to offer a unique account of the China-North Korean relationship, uncovering tensions and rivalries that shed new light on the ties between these two Communist East Asian nations. They unravel the twists and turns in high-level diplomacy between China and North Korea from the late 1940s to the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, and reveal that the tensions that currently plague the alliance between the two countries have been present from the very beginning of the relationship.
Mao and the Sino–Soviet Split, 1959-1973: A New History, co-authored by Dr. Danhui Li and Dr. Yafeng Xia, synthesizes over 20 years of research on the subject by the authors and offers a comprehensive look at the Sino-Soviet split from 1959, when visible cracks appeared in the Sino-Soviet alliance, to 1973, when China’s foreign policy changed from an “alliance with the Soviet Union to oppose the United States” to “aligning with the United States to oppose the Soviet Union.”
The authors will be joined by commentator Dr. Gregg A. Brazinksy and moderator Dr. Christian Ostermann
Speakers:
Zhihua Shen is the director of the Center for Cold War International History Studies at East China Normal University, Shanghai, and the author of a number of major Chinese-language works on Cold War history.
Danhui Li is Professor of History at Institute for Studies of China’s Neighboring Countries and Regions, East China Normal University, editor-in-chief of two academic journals: Lengzhan guojishi yanjiu (Cold War International History Studies), and Bianjiang yu zhoubian wenti yanjiu (Studies of Borderlands and Neighboring Regions). A leading authority on CCP’s external relations during the Cold War, she has published extensively on Sino-Soviet relations and Sino-Vietnamese relations during the Indochina War (in Chinese, Russian and English).
Yafeng Xia is Professor of History at Long Island University in New York and Senior Research Fellow, Institute for Studies of China’s Neighboring Countries and Regions at East China Normal University in Shanghai. A former Wilson Center fellow and public policy scholar, he is the author of numerous books on Chinese Cold War history.
Gregg A. Brazinsky is professor of history and international affairs at The George Washington University. He is the author of Winning the Third World: Sino-American Rivalry during the Cold War (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2017), and of Nation Building in South Korea: Korean, Americans, and the Making of a Democracy (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2007).
4. LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media (DC Launch) | Thursday, October 4, 2018 | 12:00 pm – 2:00 pm | New America Foundation | 740 15th St NW #900 Washington, D.C. 20005 | Register Here
In an age of livestreamed terrorist attacks and viral misinformation, a new pocket-sized battleground has emerged.
Through the weaponization of social media, the internet has transformed war and politics. Terrorists livestream their attacks, “Twitter wars” produce real world casualties, and viral misinformation alters not just the result of battles, but the very fate of nations.
In their new book LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media, authors Peter W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking study what social media has been doing to politics, news, and war around the world, drawing upon everything from historic cases to the latest in AI and machine intelligence. They track dozens of conflicts in every corner of the globe, studying the spread of YouTube battle clips, a plague of Nazi-sympathizing cartoon frogs, and even enlist in a digital army themselves.
Join New America for a conversation moderated by Anne-Marie Slaughter, President and CEO of the Foundation, with the authors as they tackle the questions that arose during their five years of research: What can be kept secret in a world of networks? Does social media expose the truth or bury it? And what role do ordinary people now play in international conflicts?
5. Yemen’s Path Forward | Thursday, October 4th, 2018 | 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm | Middle East Institute | 529 14th St NW Washington, DC 20045 | Register Here
Three years into Yemen’s civil war, the country continues to see severe humanitarian devastation, widespread food insecurity, and lack of economic access, against the backdrop of an increasingly complex geopolitical environment. An intensification of fighting in Hodeidah and elsewhere in the country has added to the human costs of the conflict and threatens to become catastrophic. Increasingly, Yemenis are war-weary and anxious to see progress on the UN-led negotiating process intended to end the fighting and restore the peaceful transition interrupted three years ago.
The Middle East Institute (MEI) is pleased to host a half-day conference to assess the priorities for ending the conflict and scenarios to move forward. This conference will convene two panels and a keynote address to assess urgent priorities and potential pathways forward for Yemen.
Speakers:
Bruce Abrams assumed duties as deputy assistant administrator in USAID’s Middle East Bureau in January 2017. His portfolio includes USAID programs in Yemen, Tunisia, Morocco, Libya, the technical support team and the Middle East Regional Platform. Abrams joined the Middle East bureau after serving as deputy mission director in USAID Zimbabwe.
Sama’a Al-Hamdani is an independent researcher and analyst focusing on Yemen. She is currently a visting fellow at the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies (CCAS) at Georgetown University and a research fellow at the Sana’a Center for Strategic Studies (SCSS). Al-Hamdani is also the director of the Yemen Cultural Institute for Heritage and the Arts (YCIHA), a nonprofit based in Washington DC dedicated to Yemeni arts and heritage.
Marcia Biggs is a special correspondent for PBS NewsHour, for whom she has recently won a Gracie Allen Award, a First Place National Headliner Award, and a New York Festivals World Medal. Her expertise lies in the Arab world, with over a decade of experience in the Middle East, five years of which were spent living in Lebanon. Most recently, she became one of the few television journalists to cover the crisis in Yemen, which she did in a four part series for PBS, “Inside Yemen.”
Ambassador Ahmed Awad Bin Mubarak assumed his duties as the ambassador of the Republic of Yemen to the United States in August 2015. Formerly, Ambassador Bin Mubarak was the director of the presidential office and chief of staff. Prior to taking up his appointment as the director, Ambassador Bin Mubarak was appointed on January 2013 secretary general of Yemen’s National Dialogue Conference (NDC), leading a team of over 120 staff facilitating the mediation process among the participating 565 delegates, and providing technical assistance to NDC working groups.
Amb. (ret.) Gerald Feierstein is director for government relations, policy and programs at MEI. He retired from the U.S. Foreign Service in May 2016 after a 41-year career with the personal rank of career minister. As a diplomat he served in nine overseas postings, including three tours of duty in Pakistan, as well as assignments in Saudi Arabia, Oman, Lebanon, Jerusalem, and Tunisia. In 2010, President Obama appointed Amb. Feierstein U.S. Ambassador to Yemen, where he served until 2013. From 2013 until his retirement, Amb. Feierstein was principal deputy assistant secretary of State for Near Eastern affairs.
Latifa Jamel is the chairperson of Justice for Women and Children. Originally from Taiz, she is a Yemeni journalist and political activist. She served as board members in Yemen Aid, International Council of Rights and Freedoms, and Yemeni American Coalition. She previously worked as an academic advisor and head of Social Studies department in local schools within Taiz.
Timothy Lenderking is the deputy assistant secretary of state for Arabian Gulf affairs in the Near East Bureau at the U.S. Department of State. He is a career member of the senior Foreign Service. Lenderking served previously as the deputy chief of mission at the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, from 2013-2016. He served as the director of the Pakistan office at the Department of State from 2010-2013. From 2008-2010, Lenderking completed two tours in Baghdad, the first as the senior democracy advisor at the US Embassy, and the second as the policy advisor to LTG Charles Jacoby, Commanding General of Multi-National Forces Iraq (MNF-I), based at Camp Victory.
6. The Limits of Punishment: Transitional Justice and Violent Extremism | Friday, October 5th, 2018 | 10:30 am – 12:00 pm | Brookings Institution | 1775 Massachusetts Ave. NW Washington, DC 20036 | Register Here
In countries where jihadi groups have gained control over territory and populations, states face the challenge of dealing with individuals accused of association with those groups. Governments have too often responded in heavy-handed ways, penalizing broad segments of local populations suspected of having supported the group, often on the basis of thin or non-existent evidence. Such excessively punitive and dragnet approaches risk backfiring by exacerbating local grievances, conflating victims with perpetrators, and laying the groundwork for future violence.
On October 5, the Foreign Policy program at Brookings and the United Nations University’s Centre for Policy Research (UNU-CPR) will present a discussion of alternative strategies and justice issues for countries affected by jihadi violence. Experts will present the findings of three fieldwork-based case studies of Nigeria, Somalia, and Iraq, which analyze these states’ approaches to accountability and rehabilitation of Boko Haram, al-Shabab, and Islamic State affiliates. Panelists will also discuss the potential application of transitional justice tools; conditional amnesties; defectors programs; and disarmament, demobilization, and rehabilitation approaches to transitions away from conflict in such settings.
Panelists will include Lana Baydas, an independent human rights expert; Vanda Felbab-Brown, senior fellow with the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence at Brookings; and Cale Salih, research officer at UNU-CPR. Landry Signé, a David M. Rubenstein Fellow in the Africa Growth Initiative at Brookings, will provide introductory remarks and moderate the discussion. After the program, panelists will take questions from the audience.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Like this:
Like Loading...
Tags :
Bourguiba, China, Civil War, Democracy and Rule of Law, Extremism, North Korea, Russia, Social Media, Soviet Union, Syria, Tunisia, United States, Yemen
Macedonia’s referendum Sunday asks its electorate:
Do you support EU and NATO membership by accepting the agreement between Republic of Macedonia and Republic of Greece?
The “Prespa” agreement in question is one that will change the country’s official name to Republic of North Macedonia and enable it to enter NATO next year and start accession negotiations, with entry whenever it is fully qualified and the existing members ratify its accession. The referendum is nonbinding and needs to pass with 50% voting yes and 50% f registered voters going to the polls.
The majority requirement will likely be met, but a boycott may prevent voting from reaching the 50% of registered voters. Even then the parliament could proceed with the agreement, which will require constitutional changes voted by a 2/3 majority as well as legislation. But proceeding in that way is not pretty and will present enormous challenges.
The agreement changes the country’s official name but leaves its citizens and everyone else with the freedom to continue to call it Macedonia, themselves Macedonians, and their language Macedonian. This to me is analogous to the United States of America, my country’s official name: most of refer to America (the beautiful) from time to time, ourselves Americans (despite Canadian as well as Central and Latin American objections), and our language English (which many English people may doubt but tolerate). Ambiguities and contradictions abound in language and identity.
Some object to this agreement because it entails limitations on sovereignty: the right of the Republic of Macedonia to call itself what it wants, not only internationally but also internally. That is correct, but many international agreements entail limitations on sovereignty. That is the point: sovereigns can do what they find in their interest, including limiting their own sovereign powers. The agreement also entails limitations on Greek sovereignty. It will no longer be able to veto NATO or EU membership. That is the basic bargain here: a change in official name in exchange for an end to the Greek veto of Macedonia’s primary foreign policy goals.
The agreement does other things as well: it ends any irredentist claims to each others’ territory as well as cross-border incitement, it affirms the distinct historical and cultural contexts in which “Macedonian” and “Macedonian” are used (thus ending Greek claims to exclusivity in their use), it provides a mechanism for reviewing and revising historical and other presentations (including textbooks), and significantly increases bilateral diplomatic, political, economic, scientific, and other cooperation. This is an agreement that aims to end a more than 25-year dispute that has plagued the Balkans and caused serious delays in Macedonia’s political and economic progress.
The Balkans has suffered in the past decade from a sense of stagnation, disappointment, and even despair. The agreement, if implemented, will also give new momentum to the region. While Macedonia’s citizens should of course be concerned first and foremost with their own interests, they should also be aware that the Prespa agreement will re-energize the Euroatlantic ambitions of others, especially in Kosovo, Serbia, and even Bosnia and Herzegovina. Forward motion is what keeps bicycles, and Balkan countries, from instability.
So I would urge Macedonia’s citizens to turn out and vote yes. I will continue to call your country Macedonia until you ask me to stop. Your culture and history will suffer no harm from this agreement, as its main provisions on those issues are subject to future negotiation and Macedonian approval. Your entry into NATO will reduce ethnic tensions and give your army enormous opportunities to improve its effectiveness and contribute to peace and security worldwide. Your opening of negotiations for EU accession will encourage vital political and economic reform. You have a great deal to gain, and little to lose.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Like this:
Like Loading...
Serbian President Vucic has announced that his efforts to get something in negotiations with Kosovo have failed. What could he mean, and what does the announcement portend? It is hard to tell, but my guess is that Vucic has come to realize that there will be no unilateral partition of Kosovo.
That is what Vucic wanted: the northern majority-Serb municipalities in exchange for some sort of recognition of rump Kosovo. Kosovo President Thaci has made it clear he would only agree to some version of that proposal if Kosovo gets equivalent territory in southern Serbian municipalities that have Albanian majorities as well as UN membership.
The Serbian security services have no doubt told Vucic that is unacceptable. The land/people swap just isn’t going to work out, as it fails to protect vital interests of both Belgrade and Pristina: the former is concerned about its main route to the sea through southern Serbia and the latter with its main water supply in the north. Moreover, Serbia can no longer–if it ever could–commit to UN membership for Kosovo, which is blocked by a Russian veto in the Security Council.
The failure of this proposition is a relief, as it will avoid raising questions about borders in Macedonia, Bosnia, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine. Vucic and Thaci may regret it, but the rest of the world should rejoice that Putin has not been handed a prize he would use to try to shift borders to accommodate Russians in what he regards as his “near abroad.” We should also be glad that Serbia itself, Spain, China, and other countries with ethnically diverse regions will not find ethnic secessionists re-empowered.
So far so good, but what about Kosovo? What are its prospects if the land/people swap is dead?
Again I’m guessing, but I think there are still deals to be had. They will not involve UN membership, because Russia now has its own interests in blocking that unless it gets satisfaction on South Ossetia, Abkhazia, Transnistria, Crimea, and Donbas. But Pristina still wants and needs bilateral recognition, or at least de facto acknowledgement of it authority on all the territory of Kosovo, not least so that it can join multilateral organizations as well as settle issues still outstanding with Belgrade: unpaid pensions, state property, border demarcation, Serbian efforts to prevent Serbs from joining its police and security forces, protection of Serbs and Serb religious sites throughout Kosovo, and creation of a Kosovo army.
Belgrade has wanted to use the creation of an Association of Serb Municipalities, something that has already been agreed, to create in Kosovo a de facto self-governing Serb “entity,” analogous to Republika Srpska (RS) in Bosnia, with veto powers in Pristina. Vucic is likely now to double down on that idea, but it is clearly something Thaci cannot deliver. The Kosovo constitutional court has already ruled out anything analogous to the RS, which has rendered governance in Bosnia dysfunctional. The votes for a constitutional amendment to enable creation of a Serb entity in Kosovo simply don’t exist in the Kosovo Assembly.
Nor do the votes exist in the Serbian parliament for changing its constitution, which claims Kosovo is an integral part of Serbia. Those votes are unlikely to emerge before EU accession is imminent. At that point, Serbia can expect to get nothing in return, since all the leverage will be with the EU, which will not accept Serbia until normalization with Kosovo is a done deal.
So whatever emerges now is likely to be messy. That is not unusual. Colleagues in KIPRED have done us all a favor by reviewing some available options that have proved feasible elsewhere. I’d suggest Vucic and Thaci read that fine paper. They’ve both got good thinkers available. Put them in the same room to come up with something viable for both parties. And in the meanwhile focus political efforts on preparing their electorates for the inevitable compromises.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Like this:
Like Loading...
RSS - Posts
