Month: October 2018
Impact of the election on foreign policy
What do the elections mean for American Foreign Policy?
Who’s in? Who’s out? Who gains power? Who loses?
The day after the midterm congressional elections, SAIS professors sift the tea leaves and offer insights into what the outcomes mean for American foreign policy.
At a minimum, the 116th Congress will have nearly 100 new members. New people will chair key committees. Party control may change.
Will the new Congress support President Trump’s foreign policies or try to restrict them? Will national security budgets go up or down? What should we expect?
Panelists:
Eliot Cohen, Vice Dean for Education and Academic Affairs & Robert E. Osgood Professor of Strategic Studies
Eric Edelman – Roger Hertog Distinguished Practitioner-in-Residence, Philip Merrill Center for Strategic Studies
Sarah Sewall – Speyer Distinguished Scholar and Professor, Kissinger Center
Charles Stevenson – Acting Associate Director, American Foreign Policy Program
Discussion moderated by: Daniel Serwer, Academic Director of Conflict Management & American Foreign Policy.
Wednesday, November 7, 2018
│ 1619 Massachusetts Avenue, NW │ Room 806 4:45 pm – 6:30 pm │
RSVP to: Starr Lee
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Electoral con
Sure, the immigrant caravan is real. It may even have a few thousand people in it. But it represents no serious threat to the United States, which faces such caravans occasionally and handles them properly without significant press attention. In accordance with US law, individuals present their asylum claims, which require a “well-founded fear of persecution,” at the border. Some will initially be accepted for adjudication, but most will eventually be turned down. Some migrants may try to sneak across the border. Most will be caught and sent home.
The President has pumped up fear of the caravan for electoral purposes. It resonates with his base, which is located mainly in areas with few immigrants. Areas with more know there is little to fear and much to be grateful for: immigrants do jobs most American citizens would prefer not to do and under current conditions of full employment don’t have to do. Thank the Obama expansion, not the slower growth in jobs under Trump, for that. Immigrants have also founded a good number of America’s most iconic and successful companies.
The deployment of the US military to the border is part of the con, intended to underline the seriousness of the threat and get Trump supporters to the polls. There is no evidence to support the President’s claim that there are “unknown Middle Easterners” in the caravan. The army will do little at the border but administrative and logistical support for Customs and Border Patrol, which might free up a few agents to process asylum claims. There will be no pitched battle with the unarmed, mostly women and children, who are in the caravan, which won’t arrive at the border for a month or more.
The one clear impact of this con so far is that it inspired the murder of 11 Jews in a Pittsburgh synagogue on Saturday. The perpetrator posted what he was doing: he was “going in” to stop the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, which provides assistance to immigrants after they reach the US, from threatening genocide against “his people.” It should be no surprise that Jewish community leaders and the city’s mayor are not welcoming the President’s visit to Pittsburgh today. The Jewish community leaders are saying he should renounce white nationalism first. The mayor is saying the families should bury their dead first.
President Trump has proved himself really good at conning people. The immigration con is but one example. He spent years before coming to office conning people into buying lousy investments. He notoriously failed to pay numerous subcontractors who worked on his hotel construction projects. His most lucrative business has been licensing his name, not providing goods or services. Nice work if you can get it.
Americans go to the polls next Tuesday, though early voting has started in most states and is booming. The Republicans are running on a platform that says they support health insurance for people with pre-existing conditions, something they have consistently opposed, including in court, but now recognize as popular. They are trying to forget about their giant tax cut for the rich. The President even promised one for the middle class before the election, but that canard couldn’t fly: Congress is already out of session and on the hustings.
Polling still suggests the Democrats will win the House while the Republicans will maintain control of the Senate. But Trump’s approval rating dropped sharply this week, along with the stock market. He has invested heavily in the immigration con. Will Americans buy it, or not?
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Your Saturday video, delayed
I spent a few minutes Saturday with CGTN answering questions about statements at the Manama Dialogue as well as the French/German/Russian/Turkish meeting on Syria in Istanbul:
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Peace Picks: October 29 – November 4
- What Really Works to Prevent Election Violence? | Monday, October 29 | 9:30 am – 11:30 am | United States Institute of Peace | 2301 Constitution Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20037 | Register Here
One in five elections worldwide is marred by violence—from burned ballot boxes to violent suppression of peaceful rallies, to assassinations of candidates. A USIP study of programs to prevent violence suggests focusing on improving the administration and policing of elections. The study, of elections in Kenya and Liberia, found no evidence that programs of voter consultation or peace messaging were effective there. Join USIP to discuss this important new report.
Governments and international organizations invest in many programs—youth engagement, election observation, police training, and civic education—to help poorly governed states or developing democracies hold credible elections. USIP’s new report, “What Works in Preventing Election Violence,” is a piece of the evidence needed to learn which programs work and which do not. Elections experts from Kenya, Liberia and leading U.S. pro-democracy institutions will review the findings of this report against their own experiences. Take part in the conversation on Twitter with #ElectingPeace.
Speakers
Pat Merloe
Senior Associate and Director for Election Programs, NDI
John Tomaszewski
Africa Director, IRI
Joshua Changwony
Deputy Executive Secretary, Constitution and Reform Education Consortium (CRECO, Kenya)
Oscar Bloh
Chairman, Elections Coordination Committee (ECC, Liberia)
Inken von Borzyskowski
Assistant Professor, Florida State University
Jonas Claes, facilitator
Senior Program Officer, Center for Applied Conflict Transformation, USIP
Debra Liang-Fenton, facilitator
Senior Program Officer, Center for Applied Conflict Transformation, USIP
2. Thinking Strategically About Human Rights Challenges in Negotiations with North Korea | Monday, October 29 | 10 am – 11 am | Heritage Foundation | 214 Massachusetts Ave NE Washington, DC 20002 | Register Here
Prior to the summit between President Trump and Kim Jong-un, the international community underscored the need to raise human rights concerns in negotiations with North Korea. Despite President Trump’s focus on North Korea’s human rights challenges at the State of the Union and notable meetings with North Korean refugees, human rights were seemingly left out of the conversation in Singapore. Since that time, the U.S. government has said little on human rights issues and reports from South Korea indicate that human rights are not a priority there either. The prospect of a second summit between Trump and Kim is an opportunity where the administration can and should express concerns over Kim Jong-un’s egregious human rights track record. Join us for a conversation on how and why raising human rights issues advances U.S. national security objectives.
Featuring
Jung Pak, Ph.D.
Senior Fellow and SK-Korea Foundation Chair in Korea Studies, Brookings Institution
Greg Scarlatoiu
Executive Director, The Committee for Human Rights in North Korea
Dan Aum
Director of the Washington, D.C. Office , National Bureau for Asian Research
Hosted by:
Olivia Enos
Policy Analyst, Asian Studies Center
3. Unraveling the Web: Dismantling Transnational Organized Crime Networks in the Americas | Tuesday, October 30 | 1 pm – 3:35 pm | American Enterprise Institute, Cohosted by Federalist Society | 1789 Massachusetts Avenue NW Washington, DC 20036 | Register Here
The United States and its neighbors face an ever-evolving threat of transnational organized crime. Last year, AEI released a tactical report on how US policymakers and law enforcement can target this threat. The Trump administration has been proactive in confronting threat networks close to home in the Americas. However, there is much more work to be done to dismantle criminal syndicates. How can policymakers bolster regional security cooperation, help local economies affected by these groups, and ensure US agencies have the resources they need for this fight?
Join AEI and the Federalist Society for a discussion on the Trump administration’s options in the fight against transnational organized crime in the Americas. Assistant Secretary for Terrorist Financing Marshall Billingslea will deliver opening remarks, followed by panel discussions.
Agenda
12:45 PM
Registration
1:00 PM
Opening remarks:
Marshall Billingslea, US Treasury Department
1:35 PM
Q&A
1:45 PM
Panel discussion I
Participants:
Douglas Farah, IBI Consultants
Emanuele Ottolenghi, Foundation for Defense of Democracies
Celina Realuyo, National Defense University
Moderator:
Roger F. Noriega, AEI
2:20 PM
Q&A
2:30 PM
Break
2:35 PM
Panel discussion II
Participants:
William Brownfield, US Department of State (former)
Clay R. Fuller, AEI
Patrick Hovakimian, Department of Justice
Welby Leaman, Walmart
Moderator:
James Dunlop, Jones Day
3:25 PM
Q&A
3:35 PM
Adjournment
4. The Protection of Civilians in U.S. Partnered Operations | Tuesday, October 30 | 3 pm – 4:30 pm | Center for Strategic and International Studies in partnership with the Center for Civilians in Conflict and InterAction| 1616 Rhode Island Avenue, NW Washington DC 20036 | Register Here
Join us for the report launch of “The Protection of Civilians in U.S. Partnered Operations,” a joint initiative between the CSIS International Security Program, the Center for Civilians in Conflict, and InterAction. The event agenda is as follows:
Agenda
3:00 PM – 3:10 PM: Briefing: Report Findings
- Daniel R. Mahanty, Director of the U.S. Program, Center for Civilians in Conflict
- Jenny McAvoy, Director of Protection, InterAction
3:10 PM – 4:30 PM: Moderated Discussion: Protection of Civilians in U.S. Partnered Operations
- Charles “Cob” Blaha, Director, Office of Security and Human Rights, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, U.S. Department of State
- Alexandra Boivin, Head of Regional Delegation for the United States and Canada, International Committee of the Red Cross
- Amanda Catanzano, Senior Director, International Programs Policy and Advocacy, International Rescue Committee
- Mark Swayne, Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Stability and Humanitarian Affairs, Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, U.S. Department of Defense
- Moderator: Melissa Dalton, Senior Fellow and Deputy Director, International Security Program, and Director, Cooperative Defense Project, Center for Strategic and International Studies
5. The China Debate: Are US and Chinese long-term interests fundamentally incompatible? | Tuesday, October 30 | 3:30 pm – 5 pm | Brookings Institution, Cohosted by Yale Law School | 1775 Massachusetts Avenue NW Washington, DC 20036 | Register Here
The first two years of Donald Trump’s presidency have coincided with an intensification in competition between the United States and China. Across nearly every facet of the relationship—trade, investment, technological innovation, military dialogue, academic exchange, relations with Taiwan, the South China Sea—tensions have risen and cooperation has waned. To some observers, the more competitive nature of U.S.-China relations was long in the making; to others, it is the outgrowth of recent decisions made by leaders in Washington and Beijing.
On Tuesday, October 30, Evan Osnos will moderate a public debate about the future of U.S.-China relations. Two teams of distinguished experts will examine whether or not U.S. and Chinese interests are “fundamentally incompatible,” as a recent survey by Foreign Affairs posed. Both sides will consider areas where U.S. and Chinese vital interests converge and diverge, whether each country’s national ambitions are reconcilable with the other’s goals, how the United States can best manage great power competition with China, and how domestic politics factor in within each country.
Moderator:
Evan OsnosP
Nonresident Fellow – Foreign Policy, John L. Thornton China Center
Team Yes:
Evan Medeiros
Penner Family Chair in Asian Studies – Georgetown University
Thomas Wright
Director – Center on the United States and Europe, Senior Fellow – Foreign Policy, Project on International Order and Strategy
Team No:
David M. Lampton
Hyman Professor and Direcotr of China Studies Emeritus – Johns Hopkins University SAIS
Susan A. Thornton
Senior Fellow – Paul Tsai China Center, Yale Law School, Former Acting Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs – U.S. Department of State
6. Saving Democracy: The Constitutional Dimension | Thursday, November 1 | 9 am – 10:15 am | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | 1779 Massachusetts Avenue NW Washington, DC 20036 | Register Here
With global democracy facing serious doubts about its basic health and longevity, comparative studies of safeguards and threats to democracy are multiplying. University of Chicago law professor Tom Ginsburg will join Carnegie’s Thomas Carothers to discuss the constitutional dimensions of democratic decay and survival.
In a new book, How to Save a Constitutional Democracy, Ginsburg and Aziz Z. Huq analyze lessons from around the world about how constitutions sometimes help and sometimes hurt democracy, including a hard comparative look at the U.S. Constitution and its role in America’s democratic troubles. In this session, Ginsburg will present the main findings of their study, including proposals for legal and constitutional measures that can help reduce the risk of democratic backsliding in both the United States and younger democracies around the world.
TOM GINSBURG
Tom Ginsburg is Leo Spitz professor of international law, Ludwig and Hilde Wolf research scholar, and professor of political science at the University of Chicago
THOMAS CAROTHERS
Thomas Carothers is senior vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. In that capacity he oversees all of the research programs at Carnegie. He also directs the Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program.
7. Course Change or Full Speed Ahead? Post-Midterm U.S. Foreign Policy’s Impact on Indo-Pacific | Friday, November 2 | 11 am – 12 pm | Stimson Center | 1211 Connecticut Avenue, NW, 8th Floor, Washington DC. 20036 | Register Here
The United States midterm elections may determine whether U.S. foreign policy changes course in 2019 or holds steady. Under the Trump administration, the U.S. foreign policy agenda has undergone some changes, rarely mentioning U.S. values and at times displaying disconnect between rhetoric and policy implementation. Particularly in the Indo-Pacific region, where the Trump administration has discussed disengagement and international cooperation by turns, post-election U.S. foreign policy will impact how current shifts in the security environment play out. After the midterms, will Congress forge a new consensus on how foreign policy should be conducted? Or if there is no course change, what will be the potential consequences for future presidents’ foreign policy agenda? Join Stimson and the Canon Institute for Global Studies for a seminar to discuss these questions, as well as how U.S. foreign policy looks from the outside, and what impact it will have on the Indo-Pacific and beyond.
Featuring:
DEREK MITCHELL, President, National Democratic Institute (NDI) Ambassador
KUNI MIYAKE, Research Director for Foreign and National Security Affairs, Canon Institute for Global Studies (CIGS)
DANIEL TWINING, President, International Republican Institute (IRI)
YUKI TATSUMI, Co-Director, East Asia Program, Stimson (moderator)
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Not senseless
As always, the American media are reporting on the murder of 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue as a “senseless” killing. That isn’t right. There is a great deal of sense in this and most other mass murders, even if it can be difficult to figure out the logic of the perpetrator. No one seems to have done that yet for the Los Vegas shooting that killed 50 people not much more than a year ago.
In this case, we already know what sense the murder made to the perpetrator. He posted just before the event that he was attacking Jews because the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) helps refugees settle in the US. The perpetrator was not a Trump supporter, as he felt Trump was not sufficiently nationalist and was surrounded by Jews. He regarded immigration as genocide against his own people. The Pittsburgh shooting was, as Dan Byman suggests, politically motivated and therefore terrorism.
Feeling victimized is often a prelude to violence. That is why President Trump’s tirades about the migrant caravan headed for the US through Mexico are so dangerous. He has made his supporters feel they are under attack. Those at the fringe of right-wing politics and emotional imbalance will lash out violently, not only against Jews but also against Muslims, Hispanics, blacks, and other minorities. Anti-Muslim incidents are up sharply since 2014, while anti-Jewish incidents are up sharply this year.
We can rely on President Trump to continue his tirades about immigration, since that is the best card he has in the run-up to the November 6 Congressional election. His racist sentiments are finding a strong echo in rural, less educated, male, white America. His denunciations of the synagogue attack sound scripted and insincere. He initially blamed the synagogue for the incident, noting that it lacked an armed guard inside.
Trump’s National Rifle Association supporters will appreciate that plug for their “guns everywhere” solution to gun violence.
The response of the rest of us has to be determination to change the balance of power in the country, tilting it back towards people who advocate tolerance, oppose gun and gender violence, and recognize the important contributions immigrants make to American society. The odds of that in the House are looking good, 6 in 7. But they are almost as strong (5 in 6) in favor of Republicans keeping control of the Senate, which is far more important because of the Senate’s role in approving judicial and other presidential appointees.
Democratic control of the House, should it happen, will however provide opportunities for oversight, including through subpoenas for miscreants, and debate that have been almost entirely lacking for the past two years. A Democratic House needs to shed light on the intolerance, violence, and prejudice against immigrants that makes sense to Trump’s supporters and begin to offer an attractive alternative that will appeal to independents who occupy the crucial middle ground in American politics.
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Cancer of the status quo
The Carnegie Endowment for Middle East Peace hosted two panels on Tuesday for the release of their new study Arab Horizons: Pitfalls and Pathways to Renewal. The report was the second major installment within the Arab Horizons project launched by Carnegie 3 years ago. William Burns, president of Carnegie, introduced the report and discussed the history of the Arab Horizons project, saying, “the object was straightforward, if ambitious: to look beyond the tumult around us, to the long-term trajectory of the region, its people and its place in the world. What we wanted to offer was an updated picture of the human and political landscapes of the region, building less on pronouncements and prescriptions from Washington, and more on the perspectives from Carnegie’s network across the Arab world.”
“The Arab regional order is collapsing: politically, economically, socially even. We don’t have answers to any of these questions, but… lets go back to first principles and try to provide a road map for leaders, policy makers, activists and citizens.”
– Perry Cammack
The first report, Arab Fractures, Burns described as an updated assessment of the Middle East, “by the region, for the region, for all those with a stake in its future.” The latest installment, Pitfalls and Pathways to Renewal, offered a set of principles and recommendations, “to address the stark diagnosis” in the first report.
Burns acknowledged Jamal Kashoggi as one of the project’s partners and addressed his abduction and murder as indicative of the lack of tolerance for “stubborn, independent journalists, unafraid to speak truth to power” within the current social contract of the Arab world. “It’s a region where authoritarians feel the wind in their sails, and it is a time where democracies around the world, including my own, are adrift and losing their way.” Burns lamented ailing institutions and the increasing politics of fear, but, “all of this reminds us of the urgent task of rewriting the social contract in the Arab world.” Social contract was the buzzword of the day throughout a discussion which was at turns hopeful for the talents of the Arab people and scathingly critical of the leadership from their governments.
The first discussion featured Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights 2014-2018 and former Jordanian Ambassador to the US, and moderator Marwan Muasher, vice president for studies at Carnegie and former Jordanian foreign minister. Reminiscing with each another, Zeid laughed over past tensions between two career civil servants who shared a vision for the future of their country, but at times disagreed on how to get there. He shared with the crowd how after his retirement from the civil service he and Marwan sat down over ceviche in New York to chat, and Marwan took the opportunity to ask him, “How many of my instructions as foreign minister do you think you actually implemented as the ambassador?” “For you, my friend” Hussein replied, “maybe 70%.”
Hussein communicated through anecdotes, walking through pivotal moments and realizations in his career which shaped his outlook on the region and the world. Again and again his stories homed in on key policy grievances in the Middle East: lack of commitment to individual rights and free thought. This problem is symptomatic of an incomplete transition from tribal to modern states and a stubborn unwillingness by Arab politicians to call a spade a spade or confront their failures.
The second panel featured Marwan Muasher again, along with Perry Cammack, a fellow in the Middle East program at Carnegie, both contributors to the report, along with Rabah Azreki, chief economist for the Middle East and North African Region at the World Bank and Hala Aldosari, a researcher and scholar on human rights and women’s health at the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice. Elise Labott, CNN’s global affairs correspondent, moderated.
“The Arab world has two choices and two choices only: either the headache of change or the cancer of the status quo”
– Marwan Muasher
Discussion reverted repeatedly to stagnation and change, locked in conflict. The oil economy has long sustained rentier states, headed by leaders who resisted change as a matter of principal. As oil prices drop, the social bargains they supported are buckling, explaining the events Muasher described as the last kick of authoritarianism in the region. It all led neatly to one pressing need: to renew the social contract in the Arab world in a way that puts citizens first.
The West errs in seeing each new generation of the old guard as reformers. Symbolic gestures along the lines of Saudi Arabia allowing women the right to drive, even while imprisoning Saudi activists who advocated those reforms, are evidence of an empty promise designed to stall the will of the people, not further it. The idea that change in the Middle East needs to be led by authoritarian reformers is false. In fact the people have been leading.
As the discussion swayed between hope and fear for the near future of the Arab world, a central narrative emerged: the Arab world desperately needs change, the people know this, and yet as change hurtles towards them at frightening speed, the current political leaders cling desperately and futilely to the status quo. A diverse wealth of human capital promises to hold the keys to that change if their leaders will only invest in them and hand them the reins. What remains to be seen is if change will be given or taken.
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