Category: Daniel Serwer
Thanksgiving anxieties are justified
Today is the autumn pause the United States calls Thanksgiving. It is pretty much the most popular holiday across the entire population, marked by people of all religions and ethnicities. Unlike so many other American holidays, it is mainly noncommercial. We gather with family and friends for a giant afternoon meal to say thanks for whatever blessings have graced us.
I’m fine
We are in Savannah this year with two sons, two granddaughters, and two grandsons. We’ll go soon to a cousins’ beautiful house on the marshes outside of town for the traditional family feast. We’ll eat and drink as much as we all like. The generations will meet, the youngest for the first time, or refamiliarize themselves. We are, so far as I know, a prosperous and happy family. The family quarrels that plague some Thanksgiving dinners will be, thankfully, absent.
That said, I can’t help but note that I will not be content. The election result is a good part of the reason. While my personal welfare is not at stake, I fear for my country and its less fortunate citizens and non-citizens.
The economic risks
It is hard not to notice that the risks ahead are great. The current economic recovery began in 2009 under President Obama. President Trump’s botched reaction to the COVID-19 epidemic interrupted it, but it got back on track with President Biden. The growth trajectory has passed its 15th, year. We are overdue for a recession, even disregarding the announced policy choices of the new Administration.
President Trump’s re-election makes one all but certain. His insistence on raising tariffs and expelling immigrants will re-ignite inflation. The Fed will have to slow or even reverse the decline it has begun in interest rates. Trump’s announced effort to shrink the Federal government will fail to reach its goal of cutting $2 trillion. But whatever layoffs the new Administration achieves will contribute to unemployment. The budget cuts will also slow the economy.
The social risks
While the economy slows, the new Administration will be cutting holes in the social safety net. Abolishing the Obamacare subsidies for health insurance isn’t going to happen. But the Republican Congress will seek to reduce them. It will also try to limit access to Medicaid, which provides health services to the poor. Trump won’t cut Social Security benefits, but he will try to raise the age of eligibility. Trump will aim to extend the tax cuts he introduced in 2017, which favor upper incomes. That will also be fine with me, but it still isn’t right.
He will also further limit abortion and LGBTQ rights and make education more Christian, less liberal, and less public. These are the essential demands of his evangelical base.
The political risks
Trump wants to prosecute his detractors. His two nominees for Attorney General are people who would gladly do that. Even unfounded investigations will cost Democrats and journalists both time and money. Such investigations will help him keep political opposition from growing. The Supreme Court’s decision to give official presidential acts with immunity will help to unshackle his worst impulses. With the two Houses of Congress under Republican control, he has little to fear from that corner.
Trump will want to appoint more Supreme Court justices, to guarantee continuation of the Republican majority. Justices Alito and Thomas can be expected to retire so that he can name younger clones. Press speculation suggests Trump wants a new FBI director. This despite the fact that the one he appointed in 2017 would normally serve ten years.
Trump’s re-election will embolden his base. It will continue to gerrymander House districts, limit voting rights, and destroy diversity programs. The goal will be to make those who hold power in America as white and male as possible. That is already clear in the Cabinet he has been naming.
Foreign policy
Trump’s future course in foreign affairs is more difficult to predict. The President has a great deal of latitude in foreign policy. Trump’s appointments so far are a mixed bag. Marco Rubio as Secretary of State and Michael Waltz as National Security Adviser are well within the normal political spectrum. So too is Ukraine envoy Keith Kellogg. He is an advocate of giving Ukraine what it needs to reach a satisfactory negotiated settlement with Russia.
None of those are friends of Russian President Putin. But Tulsi Gabbard is. If confirmed, she will be Director of National Intelligence. Teamed with a very partisan John Ratcliffe at CIA, Trump can be assured of no resistance from the intel community.
Trump’s choice of Mike Huckabee, an evangelical stalwart, as ambassador to Israel guarantees a pro-Netanyahu policy. On Palestinian issues, including Gaza and the West Bank, we should expect Trump to be even more pro-Israel than Biden.
On lots of other foreign policy issues, there are few indications. Waltz is a China hawk but it is not clear what that will mean for the American commitment to Taiwan. In the past, Trump has been a “maximum pressure” guy on Iran. But what that might mean now that Iran is a nuclear threshold state isn’t clear.
The State Department will no doubt suffer a serious purge as well as a massive voluntary exodus of talent. But will that liberate Trump to do as he pleases? Or will it limit capabilities and lead to focus on future issues? Hard to tell.
Bottom line
Trump menaces many of the values I am grateful for. Thanksgiving anxieties are justified.
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Trump likes incompetence and chaos
Marco Rubio and Michael Waltz, the projected Secretary of State and National Security Advisor respectively, are fig leaves. Trump proposed them first to hide the ugly reality that followed.
Lowering the bar
His aim is to name people who will make him seem normal. This is difficult. He is a rapist and convicted felon who improperly stored classified material and imperiled US security. As President, Trump cozied up to Putin and incited a riot against the 2020 election result. He ran his businesses in ways that infringed on legal requirements and drove them into bankruptcy.
In this context, Tulsi Gabbard, Pete Hegseth, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and Matt Gaetz fit well.
Gabbard, the nominee for Director of National Intelligence, is also a Putin sycophant and flak for Syrian President Assad.
Hegseth, the Fox News nominee for Defense Secretary, is a Christian nationalist and womanizer. He has no visible qualifications for the job except service in the Army as a major. The US Army has more than 16,000 of those.
Kennedy, nominated to lead Health and Human Services, is a flake. His “Make America Healthy Again” website doesn’t bother with discussion of the issues he is interested in. It goes straight to selling swag. In his bio, it highlights his environmental activism, entirely out of tune with Trump. But he is an anti-vaccine activist as well, claiming that all he wants is good scientific data. But he ignores the excellent scientific data already available on vaccines.
Matt Gaetz has sex with underage women, some of whom he pays for the privilege. His nomination for Attorney General was worthy of Trump. Sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein claimed Trump made a sport of sleeping with his friends’ wives. Gaetz has now withdrawn his name. Maybe Trump will give him a position that doesn’t need confirmation.
Normally when a nomination doesn’t succeed a president will pick someone less prone to controversy. I suppose the choice of Pam Bondi, former Florida Attorney General, might be seen that way. But she is ethically challenged and may not stand up well under intense scrutiny.
Exaggerating what he can do
While lowering the bar for personnel, Trump is also boasting about the incredible things he will achieve. He aims to deport millions of undocumented immigrants. His billionaire friends will cut trillions in government expenditure. He will end the Ukraine war in 24 hours.
Much of this is not going to happen. Here too Trump is setting a bar. While on personnel he sets it low, on policy he sets it high. The moves he favors on immigrants and government expenditure will generate thousands of lawsuits. The stimulus to the legal profession will be unprecedented.
The result will be chaos, something Trump enjoys. He will use it to claim extraordinary powers for the presidency. He disdains democracy and seeks unfettered power. The current Supreme Court majority, which has already given him immunity from prosecution for official acts, will back him wholeheartedly.
Encouraging international chaos
On the foreign policy front, it is harder to predict the outcome. But let’s try.
If Trump ends military aid, Kyiv will have to negotiate an unsatisfactory outcome with Moscow. The result will be partition. Russia will keep most of the territory it occupies now. The Europeans will have to patrol a demilitarized zone. And rump Ukraine will face a prolonged period of instability as the Russians wage hybrid warfare against Kyiv.
Irredentist ambitions will explode worldwide. Serbia will aim to gain territory in the Balkans. China will continue its expansion in the East and South China Seas, and set its sights on Taiwan. Russia will try for Moldova and Georgia. India and Pakistan may go at it over Kashmir. Israel will annex whatever it wants of the West Bank and Gaza.
There are about 150 outstanding border disputes worldwide. Even if only a handful get worse, the international community will have a hard time managing them.
The President can impose tariffs without Congressional approval. They will re-ignite inflation in the US and have a devastating effect on the US and world economies. That will cause the Fed to slow the decline of interest rates, or maybe raise them again. Other countries will retaliate against US goods, slowing the US economy further. Even without the tariffs, the US expansion that started with Obama
A difficult four years
Trump will relish this chaos as well. But it is not good for the United States, which can barely manage one serious crisis at a time.
The current US expansion started during Obama’s presidency, in the aftermath of the financial crisis. Except for the COVID-19 recession Trump aggravated with an inept response to the epidemic, it has continued unabated since. Even without Trump’s chaos, the expansion would be unlikely to last much longer.
We are in for a difficult four years. Tighten you seat belt.
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Trump’s first foreign policy failure
I find it hard to cheer the widening of any war. But President Biden’s decision to allow Ukraine to strike deeper inside Russia is an exception. It has become necessary in response to Moscow’s persistence in pursuing its invasion despite colossal losses.
I am not really cheering the move. It’s more like recognizing its grim necessity.
The gains are small but the losses are big
The Russians have advanced, albeit marginally, over the past year, mainly in Donbas. The gains in 2024 amount to less than 1% of Ukraine’s territory. The advances since 2022 have cost around 700,000 Russians killed and wounded, according to the Ukrainians. Russian military casualties are now estimated at around 40,000 per month. That’s why President Putin doesn’t want to mobilize Russians again. They are souring on his war.
The losses on the Ukrainian side are no doubt large as well, though not the 700,000 or so Moscow claims. Russia is simply mirroring the number projected in the West for its own losses. But Ukraine before the war had a population of about 37 million. Russia’s was almost four times that number. In a war of attrition, Russia has more bodies to throw at Ukraine than Ukraine has to throw at Russia. And more elite political willingness to accept those losses. Putin doesn’t tolerate dissent.
Russia also continues to attack civilians and civilian infrastructure using drones and missiles. To judge by news reports, Ukraine’s attacks on civilians are minor by comparison.
Escalation but will it make a difference?
Biden’s decision apparently applies to MGM-40 Army Tactical Missile System (aka ATACMs) with a range of about 190 miles. It is reportedly limited for now to countering Russian advances in Kursk oblast, which the Ukrainians invaded in August. The decision responds to the deployment there of North Korean troops in support of the Russian army.
Moscow is portraying this deployment as adding fuel to the fire. That is a reasonable assessment, but the fire will not be in Ukraine. Most of the gigantic country remains beyond their range. The ATACMs can however reach a lot of military targets inside Russia. Whether that is a game changer, or they are too little too late, is unclear for now.
What is clear and what isn’t
The Ukrainians and Russians are racing for gains against the January 20 deadline in the US. Both expect President Trump, once inaugurated, to try to force a negotiated settlement to the war. Reports suggest he would require Ukraine to cede, at least temporarily, Russian occupied areas. It would also commit Kyiv to not joining NATO for decades.
That would be a one-sided settlement in favor of Moscow. And it would need the Europeans to deploy peacekeepers to guard a demilitarized zone between the two sides.
None of the parties will find the Trump idea attractive. Putin seems ready to reject it. He wants all of Ukraine permanently within the Russian sphere of influence and outside NATO. The Europeans, who have failed at peacekeeping between Israel and Lebanon, won’t want to do guard a demilitarized zone. Ukrainian President Zelensky doesn’t want to cede territory or be barred from NATO.
That doesn’t mean it won’t happen. Trump will threaten to withhold aid to Ukraine. The Europeans won’t compensate Kyiv and will want to limit the Russian advance. Putin is facing increasing economic and popular pressure at home. Zelensky may get boxed in.
Partition has consequences
The consequences of decades-long partition will be tragic. The Russians will insist on Zelensky’s removal, or defenestrate him at the first opportunity. Western investment in Ukraine will dry up. Its economy will shrivel. People will emigrate. Moscow proxies will take over, as they have in Georgia and Chechnya. Putin will have won.
Partition of Ukraine will echo elsewhere. Serbia will see it as an opportunity to take northern Kosovo. Republika Srpska will try to secede from Bosnia and Herzegovina. Irredentist ambitions worldwide will flower. China will want to assert sovereignty over Taiwan. Israel will annex the West Bank and northern Gaza. Dozens of border disputes in other regions will exacerbate.
Trump’s partition of Ukraine will be his first but not his only foreign policy failure.
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Group rights encourage tyranny
My inbox floweth over. I’ve received two long letters arguing that the European Court of Human Rights should affirm its recent Kovačević v. Bosnia and Herzegovina decision. One comes mainly from the Bosnian diaspora in the US and Europe:
The other comes from the Democratization Policy Council:
The authors argue their cases well. Those concerned with the fate of Bosnia and Herzegovina should give them close attention.
What’s it all about?
I’ll take a less legalistic perspective and try to avoid reference to the details. The basic issue is the one Timothy Snyder refers to as “who belongs to the state”? But in the 21st century I think it better to ask “to whom does the state belong?”
The US constitution is clear on this question: it belongs to “we, the people.” This simple formula has many ramifications. American history has seen the individual rights originally reserved to rich, white men inexorably extended to all American citizens. The US Constitution recognizes groups rights only for American Indians. Sadly, the US government has honored those more in the breach than in the observance.
In the Balkans, most of the constitutions can be summarized in an equally simple formula: “we the peoples.” The Bosnian constitution specifically names Bosniaks, Croats, and Serbs. It provides those groups with rights and powers in addition to those assigned to individuals and other groups. To gain power under this constitution you need to identify with one of the “constituent peoples.”
This all but guarantees the permanence in power of political parties that associate themselves with ethnic groups. Non-ethnic parties are disadvantaged. In its not-yet-final decision the ECHR has decided that this ethnonationalist constitution discriminates against people who do not identify with one of the ethnic groups. That makes it impermissible in a member state of the Council of Europe. The European Convention on Human Rights applies directly in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
What difference does it make?
It makes a big difference. Without the empowerment of ethnic groups, the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina would have many more ways in which to organize themselves and their politics. Ethnonationalist leaders would no longer have a monopoly on power. More conventional left and right parties could gain greater weight.
That is why the ethnonationalists, their co-nationals in Zagreb and Belgrade, and their apologists worldwide oppose the proposed ECHR decision. If implemented, it would disempower all of them. So they resist. The ethnonationalists have still not implemented a 2009 ECHR decision to allow citizens who don’t identify with the three main ethnic groups to serve in the presidency.
The Kovačević decision is more sweeping. It essentially requires a complete rewrite of the Dayton constitution that ended Bosnia’s 1992/5 war. Instead of group rights, individual rights would predominate. The geographical structure of the country, based on the warring parties, would have to be changed. The Croat/Bosniak Federation and Republika Srpska could dissolve in favor of strengthened municipal governance.
That would eliminate much unnecessary expenditure on intermediate levels of governance. In many municipalities, one ethnic group or another would dominate. But all municipalities would be required to respect the rights of the minority. At the “state” level, politicians would have the option of organizing across ethnic lines. Appealing to your own ethnic group would of course still be permitted. But access to power would no longer depend on ethnic identity.
Bosnians need to decide
How to rewrite their constitution is up to the citizens of Bosnia. But I don’t wish for them any less than I wish for myself. I would not trade my individual rights in the US for any form of group rights. That is because the courts can be relied on to enforce my individual rights. I wish nothing less for Bosnians: rule of law that guarantees implementation of individual rights. Power should flow from the choices of individuals, organized how they prefer. Forcing people into an ethnic mold is not freedom. Group rights encourage tyranny.
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Trump’s cabinet of horrors
What wasn’t clear yesterday is today. Donald Trump’s national security and foreign policy appointments will be more like his extremist immigration nominees than like yesterday’s headliners. Marco Rubio at State and Michael Waltz as National Security Advisor are the only arguably sane appointments. They are the adults in the room, which means they won’t last. The others are right-wing crackpots. They’ll be around for four years.
The intel community
Intelligence gets the worst of it. The highly partisan John Ratcliffe as CIA director was a preview, not an anomaly. Tulsi Gabbard will become Director of National Intelligence, overseeing the (is it still 17?) intelligence agencies. Once a Democratic member of Congress, she is now a born again Trump Republican and Putin apologist. She is flaky and capricious.
It is difficult to picture either of these people telling Trump something he doesn’t want to hear. Which is what intel chiefs often need to do.
Diplomacy
In addition to Rubio, diplomacy gets Elise Stefanik as UN ambassador. A member of Congress from New York State, she is an avowed opponent of the UN. She will strongly oppose continued assistance to Palestinians.
Evangelical pro-Israel enthusiast Mike Huckabee will serve as ambassador in Jerusalem. A former Governor of Arkansas, he will provide strong support to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. He will also encourage those in Netanyahu’s coalition who want to annex the West Bank and Gaza.
Homeland Security
Kristi Noem, Governor of North Dakota who proudly shot a dog and a goat she “hated,” will run this mega-department. You can read about some of her other “batshit” moments here. She is a Trump enthusiast of course.
Defense
Pete Hegseth, a National Guard major, gets the Defense Department. The blatantly unqualified Fox News talking head opposes women and LGBTQ people in the military. He sports Christian tattoos, including “Deus vult” (God wills it). That is pretty much the equivalent of “insha’allah,” an expression Arabs use many times per day. But unlike the Arabic phrase, which everyone uses, the Latin one is used mainly by right-wing extremists, including neo-Nazis. Trump has charged Hegseth with getting rid of any generals who have promoted diversity, equity and inclusion.
SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson says Trump has declared war on the Pentagon.
Attorney General
Republican Congress Member Matt Gaetz will head the Department of Justice. The list of ethics charges against him is long. He will not just kill any cases the Justice Department is pursuing against Trump. He will also protect other Trumpkins while pursuing charges against Democrats.
What is this?
This is a cabinet of horrors. Its distinguishing characteristics are unquestioning loyalty to Donald Trump, right-wing devotion, and profound lack of experience and competence. What could go wrong?
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Immigration is clear, national security not
Trump’s appointments so far merit a first look. What do they suggest about the direction of the next Administration?
Deportation is for real
The appointments of Steven Miller as deputy chief of staff, Tom Homan as “border czar” (a White House appointment?), and Kristi Noem as Homeland Security Secretary send a clear message. They suggest that Trump is doubling down on deportation of undocumented immigrants. He proposes to start with those who have criminal convictions, in the US or abroad. But is a small percentage of the targeted population. Any convicted in the US are deported upon release. US Border Patrol has arrested about 17000 “criminal noncitizens” so far this year.
Focus on immigrant criminals was an election-year gimmick. Trump is really after the millions of undocumented immigrants living in the US who are not criminals. He wants to use the US Army to support that effort, which is estimated to cost more than $300 billion. Crime rates in this undocumented immigrant population are lower than among American-born citizens.
The disruption to the US economy, especially in some of the areas that voted most heavily for Trump, is likely. Especially if Homan follows through on threats to conduct workplace raids and deport whole families, massive economic damage will ensue.
Foreign policy is unclear
The signals on foreign policy are less clear. The named National Security Advisor, Michael Waltz, is a former Green Beret and China hawk. He is called a Ukraine skeptic, but that is vague. Would he advise against continued assistance to Ukraine in current circumstances? Or would he want it augmented to ensure a negotiated settlement on Ukraine’s terms?
The nominee for Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, is similarly ambiguous. He favors a negotiated end to the war that maintains Ukrainian sovereignty. It is not clear what that means, though the Kyiv Post assumes it means concession of some territory to Russia in exchange for peace. Rubio is also an Iran hawk who favored the disastrous 2018 withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal. That diplomatic malpractice resulted in Iran becoming a nuclear threshold state today.
The alternatives to Waltz and Rubio, even though both have become Trump sycophants, could have been worse. Former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn is a nut job. Ric Grenell, a former Trump ambassador in Berlin and momentarily Director of National Intelligence, is a grifting dimwit. Grenell may still be in the running for a high position at State or elsewhere, so no one should assume yet that he is out of the running completely. He never had the stature to be Secretary of State, but that would not have prevented Trump from nominating him. He has strong business ties to Jared Kushner. That could be his trump card.
Defense: even more unclear
Trump hasn’t named a Secretary of Defense yet.* If it is to be Iowa Senator Joni Ernst, fans in Kosovo will cheer. The Kosovo Security Force collaboration with the Iowa National Guard has been consistently fruitful. It has also spun off academic, government, and commercial cooperation.
But there are lots of other candidates according to Fox News, including Grenell. Whoever gets the job will face enormous challenges. Defense of US interests abroad requires that Washington remain committed to NATO and other alliances in the Pacific. Trump has continued to be more critical of allies than of Vladimir Putin.
The Kremlin has denied Trump urged the Russian President to show restraint in Ukraine. That could suggest the beginning of some strain between Trump and Putin, but I’ll believe it when I see it.
A bit better than last time around, but not for Gaza and Lebanon
Trump’s appointments so far have all been loyalists, to him personally and to election denial. But they are also people who are arguably more suitable than some of his previous choices. He is getting through the process quickly and cleanly. There are lots of rumors, but little hesitation or confusion. Trump chief of staff Wiles is doing her job well.
In late breaking news, former Arkansas Governor Huckabee will be ambassador to Israel. That confirms what sensible people knew. Trump will back Netanyahu 100%. Not because of the Jews, who voted overwhelmingly for Harris, but because of the Christian Evangelicals. The wars in Gaza and Lebanon will end only when Netanyahu wants them to. Trump will back Netanyahu even more than Biden did.
*After I published this, Trump announced a Fox News talking head, Pete Hegseth, as his pick for Defense. I know nothing about him but what I read on Wikipedia. I respect his military service, but he hardly seems even close to the qualifications required of a Defense Secretary. And lobbying for pardons for convicted war criminals is disqualifying. He is certainly far below Joni Ernst in stature. Trump’s nominee to head the CIA, is John Ratcliffe. He had trouble winning Senate confirmation as Director of National Intelligence in the first Trump administration. Ratcliffe is notable for his lack of professional intelligence qualifications and partisan posturing.
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