Month: September 2019
L’état, c’est moi
The intel community whistleblower complaint made public today focuses mainly on President Trump’s aggressive effort to enlist Ukrainian President Zelensky’s help in the 2020 election. But the campaign law violation is the least of the issues, as Robert Litt, former General Counsel of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, made clear on NPR this morning. The main point is that the President used the call to pressure a foreign leader to help his political campaign, using a hold on aid to Ukraine as leverage.
This is classic use of public position for private gain, the very definition of corruption. It is an abuse of power that may also rank as extortion and bribery, with the aid used as a bribe. Trump has no compunction about this, because he recognizes no distinction between his private interests and those of the nation. L’état, c’est moi is his guiding principle.
Impeachment for “high crimes and misdemeanors” is the proper response under the constitution, which provided this remedy explicitly for this problem: abuse of public office. The House of Representatives will now come up with a bill of particulars, likely to include not only this phone call but also obstruction of justice in the Russia probe, acceptance of “emoluments” from foreign governments, and use of government funds to enrich Trump’s several failing real estate ventures. The Democratic-controlled House should be able to vote impeachment well before the November 2020 election.
The Republican-controlled Senate shows some minor signs of departing from 100% loyalty to Donald Trump, but still there is no reason to believe the two-thirds vote required to remove him from office is possible, no matter the validity of the charges. Timing of impeachment is therefore an important issue: should the Democrats do it quickly, taking advantage of their current momentum, but giving the Senate ample time in which to acquit the President? Or should impeachment come shortly before the election, perhaps even making completion of a trial in the Senate impossible before the election?
Either way, the 2020 election is shaping up as a referendum on Trump. There will be lots of weighty issues: above all the domestic economy, taxes, health care, tensions with Iran, China, and Russia. But in the end the main issue will be whether the country is in good hands or not. Right now, more than half the country disapproves of the President’s performance, lots of potential Democratic candidates are polling well against Trump, and even a generic Democrat beats him on the national level. But 2016 demonstrated how little any of that matters: the presidency is decided in the electoral college, not in the popular vote, and polling more than a year out has little relevance.
Reelecting Trump would do exponentially more damage than electing him in the first place. As I’ve argued elsewhere, the tide already is turning against Trump’s ilk in other countries: Vladimir Putin, Boris Johnson, Abdul Fatah al Sisi, Erdogan, Mohammed bin Salman, and Netanyahu are all in trouble, even if they manage to cling to power. Trump’s victory would stem the tide. Trump’s defeat would demonstrate unequivocally that the age of would-be autocrats ruling by personal fiat is finished.
If Americans want to be governed as the constitution provides, by law rather than personality, they’ve got to ensure that the state is far more than a person and his interests. The opportunity will come on November 3, 2020.
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Stevenson’s army, September 26
The papers are filled with impeachment stories. Enough already. There are a couple of detailed timelines on Ukraine, one from Lawfare and the other from Just Security.
The most interesting item for me is this from NBC News, describing the strange role of the part-time State Dept special envoy for Ukraine matters, named by Tillerson, whose lobby firm also works for Ukraine govt. He put Giuliani in touch with Zelensky’s aide. Weird arrangement.
Defense News has a good backgrounder on US military aid to Ukraine.
WSJ has scary article on how widespread drone capabilities are.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. If you want to get it directly, To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Imbalanced Region
On September 20 the United States Institute of Peace (USIP) hosted a panel discussion entitled “Red Sea Rivalries: Middle East Competition in the Horn of Africa” to introduce and discuss a new report from the International Crisis Group (ICG) on the influence of Gulf Countries on the Horn of Africa. Opening remarks were delivered by Ambassador Johnnie Carson and Robert Malley, President of ICG. Elizabeth Dickinson, ICG’s Arabian peninsula analyst and Dino Mahtani, ICG’s Africa program deputy director outlined the report’s findings. UN advisor Nicholas Haysom, African Union Chief of Staff to the High-Level Implementation Panel Abdul Mohammad, and former Egyptian Ambassador Hesham Youssef provided commentary.
Malley described three key findings: first, the Gulf must stop exporting its conflicts to the Red Sea region; second, the Red Sea countries should negotiate collectively with the Gulf; and third, Western countries have a role to play in these conflicts but have only recently begun to do so.
Dickinson argued that Gulf competition in the Red Sea region is part of wider strategy throughout North Africa and the Sahel. Qatar and the UAE-Saudi alliance’s interventions in Sudan are related to its actions in Chad and Niger, the three countries bordering the stronghold of the UAE’s Libya proxy General Haftar. She also argued that the Gulf countries do not consider the Horn of Africa part of a different continent in which they are foreign meddlers. Rather, they think of the Red Sea as part of their region and their role in it as a natural extension of longstanding historical ties.
Mahtani emphasized that he is cautiously optimistic about the prospect of a stable dynamic between Gulf countries and domestic actors in Sudan. The killing of 120 people in Khartoum in June by General Hemeti’s forces pushed his Emirati and Saudi backers to show contrition. In July, an attempted coup by Qatar-backed members of Sudan’s military showed that Hemeti faced strong enough opposition to prevent him from ruling through coercion alone. Mahtani argued that this reality may push the UAE to compromise with Qatar on Sudan. This could lay the groundwork for future cooperation between the two countries on their overall plans for Sudan’s post-Bashir development.
Mahtani contrasted this to the situation in Somalia, where the federal government in Mogadishu is aligned with Qatar while regional political leaders receive support from the UAE and Saudi Arabia. He also described the UAE’s indirect support of al-Shabab through purchases of Somali charcoal, a significant source of funding for the militant group. In exchange, al-Shabab has increased the number of their attacks this summer and targeted a delegation of Qataris and Somali federal government employees, acting as “subcontractors for political violence.” Several panelists agreed that the Gulf rivalries have contributed to political fragmentation and violence in Somalia and will likely continue to do so indefinitely.
Both Dickinson and Mahtani emphasized the role that multilateralism can play in addressing the power asymmetry between the Gulf countries and those in the Horn of Africa. They argued that Horn of Africa countries can increase their bargaining power by negotiating jointly with the Gulf through regional multilateral organizations like the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD) or the African Union. The United States rarely involves itself but when it does it can make a big difference to the effectiveness of these multilateral discussions. In Sudan, the Quad talks among the United States, United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE facilitated the power sharing compromise.
Mohammad agreed that Africa’s strong tradition of multilateralism could benefit the countries of the Horn of Africa and added that it could provide an example of positive multilateral relations to the Gulf countries. He argued that while Gulf countries have weaponized the GCC against each other in recent years, adopting an African-inspired culture of multilateralism could provide a means to transcend conflict in the Middle East. Hesham agreed that multilateralism in this part of the world is important but argued that it will not solve the problem of asymmetry in the bilateral relationships between Gulf states and Horn of Africa countries.
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Impeachment, sort of
Speaker Pelosi announced a formal “impeachment inquiry,” to be conducted by six House committees. Pay close attention to her words:“Today, I am announcing the House of Representatives is moving forward with an official impeachment inquiry,” she said at a Tuesday afternoon press conference, after hours of meetings with Democratic leaders, committee chairs, and the rest of the House Democratic Caucus. “I am directing our six committees to proceed with their investigations under that umbrella of impeachment inquiry.” BTW, she also quoted in Latin the phrase Caesar used when he crossed the Rubicon to attack Rome.
This responds to the political pressure in her caucus but doesn’t require anyone to vote on it yet. In 1973 and 1998, the House formally voted to begin an impeachment inquiry. Not this time, at least not yet. CNN reported that she discarded the idea of a special committee because it would anger the 6 chairmen who have the jurisdiction now for issues likely to be part of any impeachment.
[FWIW, I still doubt that the transcript due to be released today will be clear and compelling enough to convince undecideds, and I still believe that if the goal is to remove Trump from office, the advocates still lack the GOP support needed to accomplish that.]
WaPo reports that Giuliani took over from the regular executive branch people and processes to run Ukraine policy, leading to confusion and anger among the professionals.
NYT has an interesting story on how Trump’s international phone calls are conducted.
House Republicans are considering changing their term limit rules because of so many retirees.
Congress often outsources strategy on foreign policy to others. It created the Quadrennial Defense Review in 1986 and regularly requires an outside panel to review the QDR. It requires the President to submit a National Security Strategy and other such documents. In 2006 it created a special panel to study Iraq policy. Yesterday came the report of a similar panel created last year to study Syria policy. Here’s a story and the actual exec summary.
It’s always worth reminding people, as 538 does, that there really are very few independent voters, and not many of them are centrist or moderate.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. If you want to get it directly, To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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Find a way out
It would be hard to add much to what others have written justifying impeachment of President Trump. Certainly any Democratic president doing what Trump has done would have long ago been impeached, including by the current Democratic-controlled House. The only serious argument against impeachment is the Republican-majority Senate’s unwillingness to convict and remove him from office. That argument can be countered: without impeachment, Trump will be able to run in 2020 claiming (convincingly only to his die-hard supporters) that even the Democrats have not found anything he did that was wrong.
Underlying many of Trump’s impeachable offenses is one big one: he has erased the line between public and private interest. The usual American definition of corruption is use of public office for private gain. If you erase the line between public and private interest, nothing is corrupt: you can use government funds to have military air crews, security people, and White House staff stay at hotels you own. You can favor diplomats and business people who patronize your resorts. You can play inordinate amounts of golf on government time, you can give classified information to foreigners you regard as friends, and of course you can pressure a foreign government to investigate already debunked allegations against your likely opponent in the next election.
Trump has no concept of the public interest. He is all about himself. This is the essence of his character: narcissism. Morality, principles, norms, standards, and procedures are all irrelevant. Facts are what he determines them to be. Global warming isn’t happening. A hurricane headed up the East Coast of the US will hit Alabama. Relationships are what he says they are. He is in love with Kim Jong-un, who is good because he sends Trump nice letters despite the blatant cruelty of his ferociously dictatorial regime. Good people are people who are good to Trump. One day that is John Bolton. Bad people are people Trump doesn’t like. A few weeks later that is again John Bolton.
Right now Trump is focused on Iran. He shows no sign of understanding that he caused the current crisis with Iran by withdrawing from the nuclear deal. Iran is bad. So maximum pressure, mainly through sanctions, is justified, even if they affect food and medicine, even if America’s European allies won’t join in, and even if the result is a devastatingly accurate missile attack on Saudi oil production facilities. The failure of the US to live up to its obligations, undertaken by a previous president, doesn’t matter to Trump. He doesn’t like that previous president and is unconcerned with moral standing or legality.
What counts is only what Trump defines as reality: the Iranians are bad and the nuclear deal is bad, though he is hard put to identify why except that it expires. So he withdrew, making the constraints on Iran expire even faster than they would have under the deal. Only W’s invasion of Iraq comes close to hurting American standing in the world and international interests as much as withdrawal from the nuclear deal. Trump doesn’t care about American standing and interests but only about his own personal gratification. The crowds at his rallies roar approval, and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Mohammed bin Salman concur, when Trump denounces the nuclear deal. That’s enough.
I’d much rather see Trump impeached for his failed approach to Iran than for a dumb phone call implying a cut off of Congressionally appropriated funds if Ukraine doesn’t do as asked. But impeachment for mishandling Iran isn’t likely, so next best would be an exit from the escalatory spiral with Tehran. The Iranians are still offering a way out: “permanent for permanent” as Foreign Minister Rouhani puts it: permanent lifting of sanctions in 2023 by the US Congress in exchange for a permanent bar on Iran obtaining nuclear weapons, written into law. Jason Rezaian. who knows Iran far better than I do, thinks something much more modest is all that can be done: lifting of sanctions that affect food and medicine in return for freeing of US prisoners in Iran.
Whichever: the important thing is to find a way out. The Trump Administration is about to enter an intense period of investigation with impeachment all but certain. The risks that domestic political pressure will incentivize a desperate president to do stupid things are going to be very high. The important thing is to find a way out of the escalatory spiral with Iran so that doesn’t happen.
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Stevenson’s army, September 24
The Post and Times say President Trump ordered a hold on US military aid to Ukraine a week before his July 25 call to Zelensky but officials had unclear explanations.
WSJ says he then ordered release of the aid in September just before a Durbin amendment was about to be approved by the Appropriations Committee, with Sen. Graham’s support.
Politico says Speaker Pelosi may create a special committee to investigate. [Shades of Benghazi? This does have the advantage of slowing the push for impeachment, which makes no strategic sense, since Trump can’t be ousted without GOP Senate votes.]
At UNGA, European leaders blame Iran for the Saudi attacks.
In London, the British supreme court has unanimously ruled against Boris Johnson.
Political falling out: New York magazine reports on the growing split between Democrats and Silicon Valley.
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson distributes this almost daily news digest of foreign/defense/national security policy to “Stevenson’s army” via Googlegroups. I plan to republish here. If you want to get it directly, To get Stevenson’s army by email, send a blank email (no subject or text in the body) to stevensons-army+subscribe@googlegroups.com. You’ll get an email confirming your join request. Click “Join This Group” and follow the instructions to join. Once you have joined, you can adjust your email delivery preferences (if you want every email or a digest of the emails).
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