Day: March 10, 2020
Stevenson’s army, March 10
-CSIS ran a pandemic war game last fall and has lessons applicable to the coronavirus problem.
– Here’s a summary of the law Congress passed last week to respond medically to the coronavirus. The administration is now considering new legislation to respond to the economic effects and looming recession.
-NYT details many of the ways North Korea has evaded sanctions and made money.
– Daily Beast says Taliban leader whom Trump talked to is on targeted kill list.
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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At risk
President Trump, concerned about the stock market’s more than 20% falloff, is still minimizing the risk and pushing for aid to the travel industry (including his own hotels of course) as well as a payroll tax cut, which he hopes will bury the memory of his massive tax cut for the wealthy in 2017. Neither move will do much for the non-payroll poor, who either vote for or against him because he is a racist. There is no buying them off his poor opponents or his poor proponents. He knows it.
I suppose his economic moves might cheer the markets temporarily, but there is no way we don’t get a big slowdown and likely a contraction this quarter and into the next. The failure of the US government to act promptly against Covid-19, has condemned us all to self-quarantine. While the economy is digitalizing, face-to-face interaction is still indispenable to industries that handle physical stuff and important to others, like teaching international relations. Presidents Xi and Trump may want to purvey happy talk, but reality bites.
It’s biting me too. I’m scheduled to travel to San Antonio Sunday and Atlanta during the following week to visit with our grandchildren, whom I haven’t seen since Thanksgiving. I’m not really worried about protecting myself from the virus. Lots of sanitizer and surgical masks will do a decent job of that, with some residual risk. But if we happen to cross paths with an infected person and are advised to self-quarantine, we could end up stranded for a couple of weeks in one of the destinations or the other. As attractive as that might be for seeing the grandchildren, it won’t help me get my work done. Nor will housing a grandparent for an unexpectedly long period, sick or not, be easy on the kids. So we need to choose between taking the risk or canceling the trip. Ugh.
Many millions of people are now making similar decisions. The Italian government has made it for them: stay home except for work and emergencies it says. I won’t be surprised if we end up there, but the President is still thinking more about his re-election prospects than about the welfare of the American people. Fortunately, they get the final say. How anyone watching the bozotic performance of this Administration in responding to Covid-19 would want it back in office come November is beyond me. It would be fitting if the germophone fell to a virus. Trump is at risk.
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