Month: July 2020
Stevenson’s army, July 7
-Columbia prof Robert Jervis has a devastating critique of John Bolton’s new book and of his performance as national security adviser.
– NYT review Bob Gates’ new book favorably. I’ve just finished reading it and support his call for strengthening the non military tools of foreign policy.
-NYT assesses Biden’s performance as VP on foreign policy and personal diplomacy.
– Phil Gordon as a good piece on post-Trump China policy.
– WSJ reminds us of the severe drop in remittances by foreign workers because of the pandemic.
– New Yorker has a thoughtful piece comparing how Germany confronted its Nazi past and how the US might deal with its legacy of racism.
– Politico has story and links to official documents on the administration’s new exclusions of foreign students.
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. 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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Stevenson’s army, July 6
– “Middle East intelligence” sources tell the NYT that Israel was responsible for the explosion at Iran’s nuclear enrichment facility.
-Both US and China have major naval operations now in South China Sea.
– FP says WH personnel will conduct loyalty interviews with DOD political appointees.
– AP says Trump-connected lobbyists captured billions in pandemic funds,
– Defector details weakness and corruption in North Korean military.
-LA Times says WH has agreed to keep 4000 US troops in Afghanistan after US elections.
-And for this week of 90+ degree weather, New Yorker has a 1998 article on life before air conditioners. [I remember]
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Peace Picks | July 6 – 10
Notice: Due to recent public health concerns, upcoming events are only available via live stream.
- Online Event: CSIS Debate Series: Great Power Competition | July 7, 2020 | 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM EST | Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS) | Register Here
Since the start of the Trump Administration, the United States has identified strategic competition with China and Russia as a core objective in sub-Saharan Africa. In the National Security Strategy, National Defense Strategy, and President Trump’s Africa Strategy, the U.S. government committed itself to counter threats posed by its global rivalries. In December 2018, then-National Security Adviser John Bolton claimed Beijing and Moscow’s activities “stunt economic growth in Africa; threaten the financial independence of African nations; inhibit opportunities for U.S. investment; interfere with U.S. military operations; and pose a significant threat to U.S. national security interests.”
In its fifth and final debate, the CSIS Africa Program asks former U.S. policymakers and African leaders if great power competition is the most constructive framework for formulating and implementing U.S. policies in sub-Saharan Africa. Does it promote stability, prosperity, independence, and security on the African continent? What are the opportunities and risks embedded in this concept? Does it effectively incorporate African perspectives and agency? And how does it evolve during a global pandemic?
Speakers:
Dr. Oby Ezekwesili: Public Policy Analyst & Senior Economic Advisor, Africa Economic Development Policy Initiative
Ken Ofori-Atta: Minister for Finance & Economic Planning, Ghana; Co-Founder, Databank Group
Gayle Smith: President & CEO, ONE Campaign
Juan Zarate: Senior Adviser, CSIS; Chairman & Co-Founder, Financial Integrity Network
Judd Devermont: Director, CSIS Africa Program - Israel’s Growing Ties With the Gulf Arab States | July 7, 2020 | 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM EST | Atlantic Council | Register Here
Once thought to be irreconcilable adversaries, Israel and the Gulf states have quietly grown closer in recent years. Drawing the two camps together is a slew of security, political, and economic interests that in light of changing regional geopolitics, is now out from under the table. Yet the unresolved Palestinian issue as well as limited ties in a number of sectors pose barriers to normalization.
In their just-launched issue brief Israel’s growing Ties With the Gulf Arab States (PDF coming soon), Jerusalem-based journalist Jonathan Ferziger and National Defense University Professor Gawdat Bahgat trace the remarkable evolution of these relationships in recent years. Joining them to discuss suggestions for policymakers are Anne W. Patterson, former Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs,and Marc J. Sievers, Nonresident Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council and former US Ambassador to Oman.
Speakers:
Dr. Gawdat Baghat: Professor of National Security Affairs, National Defense University
Jonathan Ferziger: Former Chief Political Reporter for Israeli and Palestinian Affairs, Bloomberg News
Ambassador Anne W. Patterson: Former Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs
Ambassador Mark J. Sievers: Non-Resident Senior Fellow, Atlantic Council - The Scramble for Libya: A Globalized Civil War at Tipping Point | July 8, 2020 | 9:30 AM – 10:45 AM EST | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | Register Here
In the wake of recent battlefield developments in Libya, regional and global powers are maneuvering for influence and supremacy, with far-reaching implications for Libyan sovereignty, stability, and cohesion. What are the interests and goals of these interveners and what prospects remain for peaceful settlement? How have these states weaponized media narratives to augment their military meddling, and what is the effect both inside Libya and abroad?
A distinguished panel of scholars will offer insights into Russian, Turkish, Emirati, Egyptian, and French roles, as well as Libyan perspectives on foreign actors.
Speakers:
Dmitri Trenin: Director, Carnegie Moscow Center
Sinan Ulgin: Visiting Scholar, Carnegie Europe
Jalel Harchaoui: Research Fellow, Conflict Research Unit, Clingendael Institute
Khadeja Ramali: Libyan Researcher (Specialty: Social Media Analysis)
Frederic Wehrey: Senior Fellow, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace - Congressional Perspectives on US-China Relations | July 8, 2020 | 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM EST | U.S. Institute of Peace | Register Here
The U.S.-China relationship is having an increasingly profound impact on the global economy and plays a crucial role in influencing the international order. The House of Representatives’ bipartisan U.S.-China Working Group provides a platform for frank and open discussions and educates members of Congress and their staff. These congressional perspectives toward China have influence over U.S. policy and the bilateral relationship, particularly regarding oversight of the global coronavirus pandemic, implementation of phase one of the U.S.-China trade agreement, and Beijing’s imposition of a controversial new national security law in Hong Kong.
Join USIP as we host the co-chairs of the U.S.-China Working Group, Rep. Rick Larsen (D-WA) and Rep. Darin LaHood (R-IL), for a conversation that explores key issues facing the U.S.-China relationship, shifting views in Congress on the topic, and the role of Congress in managing rising tensions and facilitating engagement between the two countries.
Speakers:
Representative Rick Larsen (D-WA): U.S. Representative from Washington
Representative Darin LaHood (R-IL): U.S. Representative from Illinois
The Honorable Nancy Lindborg: President & CEO, U.S. Institute of Peace - Information in Iran: How Recent Global Events Are Used to Shape & Skew Reality | July 9, 2020 | 9:00 AM EST | Atlantic Council | Register Here
While there has been significant attention given to foreign influence operations by state-actors like Iran, far less has been given to how global events shape—and skew—the reality depicted by the Iranian regime to the Iranian people. Over the past months, Iran has faced new challenges and opportunities in the information landscape – domestically, regionally, and internationally.
Iran has been especially hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has been exacerbated by heavy-handed censorship about the threat of the disease and the government’s response. The situation has been compounded by an influx of general health misinformation about coronavirus that proved fatal to hundreds of Iranian citizens.
Across the Middle East, COVID-19 is the latest topic in a long-running contest of narratives between regional adversaries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The competition is not new, but the topics certainly change with the news.
The Iranian regime has also attempted to shift attention toward other country’s shortcoming in responding to COVID-19 and capitalize on unrest elsewhere, especially racial justice protests over the killing of George Floyd in the United States. This is the latest in an effort not to proactively push propaganda with a focus on domestic control in the face of Iran’s own ongoing protest movement and international competition against adversarial nations.
This digital panel discussion will examine Iran’s information environment in the face of the latest global developments. This event, hosted by the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab and Middle East Program, will provide an overview of these overlapping information conflicts.
Speakers:
Emerson T. Brooking: Resident Fellow, Digital Forensic Research Lab, Atlantic Council
Holly Dagres: Non-Resident Fellow, Atlantic Council
Simin Kargar: Non-Resident Fellow, Digital Forensic Research Lab, Atlantic Council
Michael Lipin: Voice of America
Farhad Souzanchi: Director of Research & Media, ASL19
- How to Lose the Information War: Russia, Fake News, and the Future of Conflict | July 9, 2020 | 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM EST | Wilson Center | Register Here
Since the start of the Trump era, and as coronavirus has become an “infodemic,” the United States and the Western world have finally begun to wake up to the threat of online warfare and attacks from malign actors. The question no one seems to be able to answer is: what can the West do about it?
Nina Jankowicz, the Disinformation Fellow at the Wilson Center’s Science and Technology Innovation Program, lays out the path forward in How to Lose the Information War: Russia, Fake News, and the Future of Conflict. The book reports from the front lines of the information war in Central and Eastern Europe on five governments’ responses to disinformation campaigns. It journeys into the campaigns the Russian and domestic operatives run, and shows how we can better understand the motivations behind these attacks and how to beat them. Above all, this book shows what is at stake: the future of civil discourse and democracy, and the value of truth itself.
Jankowicz will delve into the case studies in the book and the broader implications of disinformation for democracy in discussion with Asha Rangappa, Senior Lecturer at Yale University’s Jackson Institute for Global Affairs and former FBI counterintelligence agent and with Matthew Rojansky, Director of the Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute.
Speakers:
Nina Jankowicz: Disinformation Fellow, Wilson Center
Asha Rangappa: Senior Lecturer, Yale University Jackson Institute for Global Affairs
Matthew Rojansky: Director, Kennan Institute, Wilson Center
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Some cheer for the 4th
It’s hard to work up the usual patriotic optimism this year. The United States faces a quadruple whammy: a re-surging Covid-19 epidemic, the major economic slowdown it has caused, a popular rebellion against police violence and racism, and revelations that President Trump failed to respond to Moscow’s payment of bounties to Taliban who kill Americans in Afghanistan. The President is trying to distract attention from all four, but that really is impossible.
We all, including his supporters, know that
- He is responsible for the failed response to the epidemic,
- Congress has shaped the response to the recession,
- He has nothing constructive to say or do about systemic racism, because he himself is a racist, and
- President Putin is his control.
Trump still has a significant but declining coalition based on white nationalism, evangelical Christianity, and right-wing cultural issues, including abortion, gay rights, and and support for religious schools. But he has already lost the popular vote, if only because he will lose New York State and California by landslides while in Texas and Florida he can do no better than eke out a narrow win. Nothing he can do between now and November 3 will change those dynamics, which may turn worse for him rather than better. Unless he really botches this campaign, Joe Biden will get at least five million more votes than Trump, coming close to doubling Hillary Clinton’s margin.
Trump can however still win in the Electoral College, which is all that really counts. For the non-Americans in my readership, let me explain that the winner in an American election gets the most “electoral votes,” which are not distributed proportionally to population of each the states. Less populous states are far more heavily weighted in the distribution of “electoral votes.” Systems like this are known to political scientists as “consociationalism,” or more simply as “power-sharing.” They do not accord “one person one vote.”
Donald Trump’s support is concentrated in more rural, less populous states, so he can lose the popular vote but still win in the Electoral College. It is not a thing or a place but a date in January on which “electors” in each of the states meet in their own capitals to cast their votes, in most states for the winner of the popular vote in that state, and send them to Washington for tabulation.
Even that cockamamie process may not be able to give Trump the help he needs. He is weakening in “red” (reliably Republican) states and polling behind Biden in key “battleground” (swing or purple) states. He is losing ground among whites, even white males but especially white women in the suburbs. The Economist has Biden with about a 9 in 10 chance of winning the Electoral College. No incumbent has come back from Trump’s kind of polling in recent decades and his numbers are declining (courtesy of G. Elliott Morris):
If things continue in the current direction, Biden could end up with more than 400 electoral votes (270 out of 538 are needed to win), which would be remarkable (Trump won with 304 in 2016).
If the Democrats do win in a landslide and take not only the White House but also the Senate and the House of Representatives, the stage will be set for a dramatic swing of the pendulum. Even a return to moderate politics after the extremism of the Trump years will give us all a big jolt. Biden is no radical, but he will feel the push of his party to the left on race, environment, healthcare, taxation, and other issues.
On the foreign policy front, Biden will return to a more traditional American approach: multilaterally when we can, unilaterally when we must. He’ll be a much more full-throated supporter of liberal democracy and NATO, try to take America back into the Paris climate accord, the Iran nuclear deal, and possibly even the Trans Pacific Partnership, reverse Trump’s support for Israeli expansionism, and try to find ways of peacefully counterbalancing Russia and China. Experience counts in foreign policy. Biden has lots of it.
First though he has to win. The election is just four months off. If Trump continues to alienate swing voters and the economic recovery stalls, you can bet on a more familiar patriotism for next July.
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Stevenson’s army, July 2
In addition to the usual press coverage below, Charlie wrote a piece today about the significance of July 2:
This year July 3 is the official federal holiday. It really should be today.
The 4th of July really ought to be celebrated on the 2nd, for it was on July 2, 1776, that the Continental Congress voted, 12 states for, none against, that the colonies “are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states.” The next day, John Adams wrote to his wife, “The second day of July, 1776, will be the most memorable epoch in the history of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary Festival…. It ought to be solemnized with bonfires and illuminations, from one end of this continent to the other….”
In fact, the 3rd and 4th of July were taken up with debate and amendments to the 1,338-word explanation written by Thomas Jefferson and a small committee. A vote approving the text was taken on the 4th, but the actual parchment was not signed until August 2. That document used the July 4 date, and we’ve been stuck with it ever since.
There’s another reason for celebrating July 2 — for it was on that date, eleven years later in the same building in Philadelphia, that the Constitutional Convention broke its deadlock over how to organize the new government. Virginia had proposed proportional representation by population, including slaves. The small states, led by New Jersey proposed equal representation of the states in Congress. The debate and defeat of various plans left many small state delegates angry and frustrated, and drove the convention to the verge of collapse. Many considered leaving the convention if their rights were not protected. Delegates on both sides became more heated and intransigent.
The small states had a point. The three largest states of Virginia, Pennsylvania and Massachusetts had 45% of the U.S. population and would need only one other state to have a working majority over all other states. On many issues the three most southern states – Georgia and the Carolinas – sided with the big three. Though small at the time, they all expected to grow much larger and saw such an informal alliance as helpful to their other interests.
On July 2, 1787, Oliver Ellsworth of Connecticut pressed his resolution for equal representation in the Senate, but with some absentees and some still unexplained vote switches, the delegates tied on the question. That was a parliamentary defeat for the small states, but a game-changing, emotional victory because it kept alive their alternative. On reflection, other delegates realized that this issue of Senate composition could destroy any chance at government reform. They agreed to turn the question over to a committee, and three days later, the committee recommended equal votes in the Senate. At the end of the tumultuous week, the delegates approved the plan.
This broke the logjam on other issues as well. With small state rights protected, their delegates were more willing to strengthen the executive and the central government. By mid-July, delegates agreed on a single executive and gave him veto power.
Those are two strong reasons for venerating and celebrating July 2 — with “bonfires and illuminations” and good beer.
– DOD has a formal report to Congress on overall policy.
– Meanwhile the administration tries to explain its response to reports of Russian bounties.
– China is cracking down in Hong Kong. Here’s the text of the new law.
-Israel is delaying on annexation.
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. 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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Stevenson’s army, July 1
– NYT details numerous Russian activities against US
– WSJ says NSA and CIA disagreed over Russian bounty evidence.
– NYT says US warned Russia of Chinese military buildup.
– NDAA provision would put DOD in charge of Energy Dept weapons budget.
-Fight continues over HFAC chairmanship.
– Many former congressmen are now foreign agents.
– New study documents US heavy use of contractors abroad. Here’s the study
– Germany is cracking down on right-wing extremism in its special forces.
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. 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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