Day: November 28, 2020
Stevenson’s army, November 28
WaPo says the administration is giving career protections to political appointees and stripping it from careerists at OMB.
NYT has details of the confused effort to reform WHO.
Nimitz to the Persian Gulf. What next?
WSJ tells why Netanyahu-MBS meeting failed.
Politico has background on Jake Sullivan.
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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The whining never stops, but the counting will
Here is the President of the United States, defeated soundly in an election almost four weeks ago, still complaining about supposed fraud, evidence for which his lawyers have been unable to produce in court. He is still hoping to get a case in front of the Supreme Court, where he figures his three appointees will back him, but that is now unlikely. Trump is finished as President, which is why he feels the need to remind the reporter that he still occupies the position.
He continues to insist falsely that the election results are due to fraud for several reasons:
- It helps him to raise money, including in ways that will enable him eventually to pocket the funds.
- It signals his racist followers that he remains one of them, as his fraud complaints focus on cities with large black populations.
- It keeps his base loyal and the Republican Party under his control.
- It enables him to capture media attention that would otherwise drift to Biden.
- He hopes to convince the President-elect to cut a deal that will prevent future prosecution of himself, his family, and his loyalists.
That isn’t likely, but in the meanwhile Trump also intends to exercise as much power as possible before January 20. Yesterday it was leasing Arctic land for oil and gas drilling and killing a leading Iranian nuclear scientist. He apparently intends to pursue every bad idea he and his cabinet can generate, in a desperate effort to prevent President-elect Biden from reversing course. The one idea of his own he appears not to want to pursue is a Covid-19 relief bill. The Senate Republicans don’t want him doing that as they gear up for returning to opposition to all Democratic spending proposals.
Meanwhile, the counting, recounting, and auditing of votes is proceeding. No significant irregularities or miscounting has been discovered. Michigan has certified its election results in favor of Biden with a small increase to Biden in Milwaukee. Wisconsin has completed its recount with a slight increase to Biden. Georgia and Pennsylvania are close to the finish line. There is no real possibility of any change in the result and Trump knows it. The Electoral College outcome December 14 is clear: 306/232, precisely the same as Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton that he has often described as a landslide. It wasn’t, nor is it now, but it is definitive.
Trump will leave the White House January 20. But I imagine he won’t attend the inauguration. No one needs him there, and he can likely attract more media attention by holding his own anti-inauguration elsewhere. The whining never stops, but the counting will.
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A big potential success at risk
The International Crisis Group, the Organization of the African Unity, and others are rightly focused on preventing a humanitarian disaster in Tigray, where Ethiopian forces are threatening to take the regional capital Mekelle from the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). Tens of thousands have already fled the Tigray Region into Sudan and many other civilians may suffer horribly if the regional capital is assaulted. Reports of atrocities by both sides are rife.
My students and I met last January with TPLF officials and party members during our 12-day study trip to Ethiopia, when we were focused on the full range of ethnic conflicts brewing not only in the far north but also in the Oromo and Amhara regions as well as in the Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People’s Region. Ethiopia, a country of more than 80 different and often intermingled ethnic groups, has enormous potential for internal ethnic conflict:
But the current conflict, severe as it is and could become in Tigray, is not really about Tigray. It is about Addis Ababa and who holds power there. The TPLFers we met with made it absolutely clear that they did not regard Abiy Ahmed, Ethiopia’s Nobel-Prize winning Prime Minister, as legitimate. In the Tigrayan view, he had usurped power by taking control of the ruling party, the Ethiopian People’s Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF) and then moving its resources to his own Progress Party without the required consultation with the Tigrayans, who had in the past dominated the leadership not only of the EPRDF but also the army and other key institutions.
In September the TPLF insisted on holding elections in the Tigray region despite Abiy Ahmed’s postponement of national elections due to the Covid-19 epidemic. Ninety-eight per cent voted for the TPLF. Then, according to the Prime Minister, the TPLF attacked Ethiopian government forces stationed in the region. The message was clear: the TPLF wanted to control its own region without interference or presence from the Addis Ababa government. It is not surprising Abiy Ahmed reacted to the challenge to his authority.
It is going to take more than a ceasefire and accommodation of some sort in the Tigray region to settle things down, though that is the vital first step. The Ethiopian government, which frames the whole matter as a law enforcement issue, wants to arrest and try the TPLF leadership. The TPLF, with overwhelming support in its own region, wants at least autonomy if not (constitutionally guaranteed) secession, though some Tigrayans might be bought off with power-sharing of some sort in Addis Ababa. Certainly the Tigrayan loss of power there is strongly felt, not least because Abiy Ahmed’s much-vaunted agreement to end Ethiopia’s hostilities with Eritrea requires Tigrayan forces to withdraw from territory they have occupied for more than 20 years.
Even if the Tigray conflict is resolved, Ethiopia faces half a dozen other internal conflicts that might and do lead to so far localized violence. And its dispute with Egypt over control of the Blue Nile remains unresolved. Ethiopia is filling the lake behind the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam, but at a rate that for now will not drastically affect the flow of the Nile downstream. With more than 100 million people, Ethiopia is the second largest in Africa. Its success would be a big contribution to stability in the Horn and prosperity in much of the continent. But the risks are real.
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