Category: Daniel Serwer
The cabinet of horrors is getting confirmed
After an initial rejection of Matt Gaetz as Attorney General, President Trump is getting all of his nominees confirmed. Arguably several are as bad as Gaetz on the issues. But none of the others quite tops his paying for sex and doing drugs. They can nevertheless do a great deal of harm in office, so let’s review the bidding:
Attorney General Pam Bondi
Trump’s second choice intends to use the Justice Department’s tools against Trump opponents and in favor of his supporters. There is no pretense of independence in Bondi’s Justice Department. She has dropped criminal charges against New York City Mayor Adams because he supports Trump on immigration. She is suing New York State Governor Hochul and other officials because they don’t. The Justice Department is firing lawyers who participated in the prosecution of January 6 rioters.
We can expect this pattern to continue. A few more years of this and there won’t be independent-minded lawyers at Justice. They will all have caved to MAGAism. That is unprecedented. It also violates the principle of equal justice for all. What else would be expected from a President who has spent a career stiffing courts and evading accountability?
Health and Human Services Secretary Kennedy
An anti-vax zealot despite his denials, Kennedy will do his best to block vaccines and other public health measures. He will do nothing to protect the Centers for Disease Control and the National Institutes of Health from Trumpkin purges. While both institutions no doubt need reform, the meat ax approach of Elon Musk is already doing them irreparable damage. Kennedy won’t lift a finger to prevent drastic funding cuts.
The real meat and potatoes of HHS is in Medicare and Medicaid. The Republicans intend to gut Medicaid, which provides health care to the poor. They’ll be more careful with Medicare, which provides hospital and doctors to older Americans. But there are a thousand ways they can cut benefits and increase costs. Kennedy will do it.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard
Even Republicans know she is a peril to national security. But except for Senator McConnell they did not have the gumption to vote no. Her flaking for Russian President Putin and Syrian President Assad has been blatant. She couldn’t get any security clearance were she to apply for a mid-level job in the intelligence community. She’ll leak like a sieve, in all the wrong directions.
FBI Director Kash Patel
Not yet confirmed, but the worst of the lot. He has sworn to pursue revenge against Trump’s political enemies and to purge the FBI. He is also a liar, a perjuror, and an enthusiast for the January 6 rioters. Not to mention his anti-Semitic podcaster pal and performing propaganda services for the Russians and consulting for the Chinese.
The rest
I won’t even bother with Pete Hegseth. He has already sold out the Ukrainians and put the US in Russian President Putin’s pocket. No other Defense Secretary in my lifetime would not have resigned rather than follow Trump’s instruction to do that.
Sad to say, Marco Rubio, who knows better, is going along with dismantling USAID. He is also flogging Trump’s nonsense about Panama, Greenland, and Gaza.
Linda McMahon, Trump’s nominee to be the last Education Secretary, is telling Congress closing the Department will require Congressional approval. She’ll forget all about that once confirmed and go along with Elon Musk’s firing of 90% of the staff.
This really is a cabinet of horrors. The most unqualified people serving the least serious president in the history of the Union. Almost all now approved in the Senate of the United States with almost 100% Republican support. And almost 100% Democratic opposition.
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Trump reinvents the Foreign Service wheel
In an executive order issued yesterday, President Trump said the State Department has to implement the President’s foreign policy. Employees who don’t can be fired, he said. Secretary of State Rubio is tasked with reforming the Department to make sure the President’s will is done.
I have no objection to this in principle. It simply reiterates what I have long understood the role of the State Department to be. The problem isn’t with the objectives. It’s with Trump’s mistaken assumptions.
The reality
The assumption is that Foreign Service officers mostly dislike Trump and won’t implement his policies. The dislike for his policies is real. It will be hard to find a Foreign Service officer who wants the US to take over and own Gaza. Few would support tariffs on Canada and Mexico. Canada as the 51st state is not something American diplomats will want to negotiate. Ditto taking over the Panama Canal or Greenland.
Nevertheless, the mandate and tradition of the Service is clear: professional diplomats do what the President wants them to do. They will sometimes express their dissent, either informally or through a formal Dissent Channel message to the Secretary. But having stated their views, they do what they are told. Or resign. Or seek transfer to another job where the conflict does not arise.
I have been in situations where my personal and professional views differed from what I was supposed to do. I and others did not agree with Dick Holbrooke’s plan to end the Bosnian war. We objected to dividing the country into two ethnically defined entities. We spoke up in internal meetings and even appealed against the end-of-war ceasefire to the top of the State Department.
Overruled, I then did my best to contribute at Dayton to the outcome the President wanted. A German colleague and I negotiated the first agreement reached there. I also spent six months working hard in Bosnia to implement the divided solution I had opposed. And I spent another year supervising State Department intelligence analysts who identified threats to that outcome.
The consequences
The executive order reiterating in stentorian terms what is already understood will frighten some Foreign Service officers. They will be reluctant to speak up in dissent. Some will ask for transfers or resign. Others will have good job offers and take them. The President intends to intimidate. He will succeed.
Whether this is a problem depends on degree. The attempted firing of virtually all USAID officers is going to sharply reduce American capacity to provide foreign assistance. Trump apparently intends that. It will also reduce the capacity of those remaining to prevent waste, fraud, and mismanagement. That is a serious mistake.
But the longer term problem is recruitment. The Foreign Service needs experienced people with deep knowledge of other countries, their languages, their interests, and their cultures. Future classes of incoming diplomats will be sympathetic to the President’s America First agenda. They will fill the roles others have vacated. That is only natural. But that is not a way to get the experienced professionals diplomacy needs.
Yes, State needs cutting
I am not a die hard defender of the Foreign Service, the State Department, or USAID. I was Deputy Chief of Mission at US Embassy Rome in the early 1990s. After dissenting, I implemented budget-induced cuts of 10% of our Italian and American staff. It was painful to the people involved (and to me), but it did not seriously impair the Embassy.
I now believe the cut should have been much larger, starting with the excessive non-State Department staff. The US mission in Italy had 36 different agencies of the US government represented. That is typical of over-size US embassies. Unfortunately, the Trump Administration is calling for cuts in “national” (i.e. non-US) staff. That is the wrong end of the stick. The Americans are much more expensive. The national staff can be cut more readily once the American staff they support is reduced.
Yes, State needs cutting. But you have to start in the right place. Reinventing the wheel won’t get it done.
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Rescue USAID and refugee assistance now!
I signed on to this letter addressed to the Senate and House leadership with dozens of former colleagues and friends:
The Honorable John R. Thune, Senate Majority Leader
The Honorable Charles E. Schumer, Senate Minority Leader
The Honorable Mike Johnson, Speaker of the House
The Honorable Hakeem Jeffries, House Minority Leader
United States Capitol, Washington, DC
Dear Senators Thune and Schumer, and Representatives Johnson and Jeffries:
As former U.S. government officials who served in national security and humanitarian positions in both Democratic and Republican administrations, we write to ask you to take all steps in your power to urge rescission of the Trump administration executive orders and directives aimed at freezing U.S. foreign assistance and dismantling USAID. These directives inflict irreparable damage on hundreds of millions of people around the world, harm Americans by crippling our ability to protect U.S. citizens from disease and other harms, and invite China and other competitors to fill the gap we have created, thereby increasing their power and influence at our expense.
In the some 200 countries where hundreds of millions of people have benefited from U.S. aid, the bulk of such support has been economic and humanitarian assistance. When Presidents, Cabinet Secretaries, and Members of Congress are welcomed in countries of Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and South Asia, and Europe, the concrete manifestations of U.S. government support have been the humanitarian and development programs supported by USAID and the State Department’s humanitarian operations.
These operations represent less than one percent of the federal budget. At the same time, U.S. aid has amounted to between a quarter and a third of global assistance, roughly the same as the U.S. share of GDP among wealthy countries. It has given the United States enormous capacity for influence, while making our country the global leader in efforts to reduce human suffering and abject poverty.
These are the programs that President Trump and Elon Musk are decimating, as we write, while depriving the U.S. Congress of its constitutional and legislative roles.
It is difficult to capture in one letter the scope of what the Financial Times has accurately called the “willful sabotage of U.S. soft power.” But the human suffering that these cut-offs have caused is catastrophic and heartbreaking. Elon Musk’s measures have halted critical and highly effective life-saving initiatives, including programs that provide clean water to infants; healthcare to mothers who are expecting; food, shelter, and refuge for those fleeing persecution and disaster; and life-saving support to those suffering from disease.
In Kenya, Syria, Lebanon, and elsewhere, aid to survivors of torture was stopped in its tracks. Children and adult victims of war and terror who have relied on the United States have been left without care. And in poorer countries around the world, thousands of women and girls will die in the next 90 days due to complications of childbirth that might otherwise have been avoided through interventions funded by Congress and administered by USAID.
Even the highly visible PEPFAR program to combat AIDS, started by President George W. Bush and responsible for saving some 25 million lives, was frozen. Clinics were closed and HIV sufferers were denied access to antiretrovirals. While some services were resumed, crucial programs remained suspended and millions are affected.
In our own country, the suspension of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program has led to tragic stories of thousands who were ready to travel to the United States, including Afghans who helped to support U.S. goals in their country. This modest and carefully managed program has revitalized declining communities and strengthened the U.S. economy, and persuaded other countries to do their fair share.
The tragic stories go on and on and on, from the curtailing of remarkable U.S. efforts to limit the spread of tuberculosis and eradicate polio, to the ending of programs that have built local economies and have thereby discouraged migration to the United States, to the abrupt halt of the USAID-supported Famine Early Warning System (FEWS), the gold standard for anticipating and monitoring famines worldwide.
Due to horror stories shared with Members of Congress about the impact of the funding freeze, Trump administration officials have added some exemptions to the ban. But this piecemeal effort is a wholly inefficient, inadequate, and cynical way to proceed with reform. It has merely left hundreds of millions around the world in disbelief at how the United States could act in such an arbitrary and cavalier manner.
History will not look kindly on this avoidable tragedy – for the hundreds of millions in need, for U.S. leadership and moral authority around the world, and for U.S. national security, as global competitors like China and Russia rush to fill the gap we have created. It will be part of the legacy of this Congress if not reversed.
We implore you to urge President Trump to rescind the freeze, which curtails U.S. efforts to provide critical humanitarian aid and development support around the world, and undermines the Constitutional authority of Congress. In particular, we ask that you urge the President to resume the funding and operations of USAID and its overseas offices, as well as the humanitarian programs of the Department of State.
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Peace in our time will bring more war
Pete Hegseth announced a major change in US policy on Ukraine today. The most unqualified Defense Secretary ever offered to appease Russia by
- Ending US support for Ukraine’s membership in NATO;
- Abandoning Ukraine’s war goal of regaining control of all its sovereign territory;
- Anticipating an end to most US assistance to Ukraine;
- Excluding US troops from any post-war peacekeeping force;
- Asking European allies to provide such a force without a NATO Article 5 guarantee.
This gives Russian President Putin everything he hopes for except direct and immediate control over the government in Kyiv.
This is not peace through strength
Hegseth claimed he was proposing peace through strength. But that is pure illusion. He is pulling the rug out from underneath Ukrainian President Zelensky. At best (from Ukraine’s perspective), his remarks would make Ukraine a buffer state between NATO and Russia.
But maintaining Ukraine as a buffer state would be impossible. The Europeans would need to monitor a confrontation zone between Russia and Ukraine that is more than 1200 miles long. Kyiv, abandoned by the US, would want nuclear weapons to ensure Ukraine’s survival. That Russia would not allow.
Another Russian invasion of Ukrainian territory would be just a matter of time. And in the meanwhile Russia would be doing everything it could to bring down Zelensky. That wouldn’t be difficult if he agreed to anything like what Hegseth proposes.
I hardly need mention that partition of Ukraine as Hegseth proposes will have a dramatic impact in the Balkans. Serbia will try to grab territory in Bosnia and Herzegovina as well as Kosovo. American and European troops will be at risk.
Worse: appeasement of Russia in Ukraine will be a signal to Beijing that Washington won’t defend Taiwan. Some of that damage may already have been done with Hegseth’s speech. He has undermined the deterrence he claims to find vital.
Real peace through strength is the alternative?
The Biden Administration pursued a Goldilocks policy on Ukraine. Enough support to make Russia’s territorial gains slow and costly. But not enough to provoke Russia’s use of nuclear weapons, which Putin has contemplated in the event Moscow faced calamity.
That worked well enough given its objectives. But it wasn’t enough–nor did it intend–for Ukraine to win the war. Kyiv, like Moscow, is struggling with manpower shortages. The only way for it to win the war is with overwhelming technological superiority. Ukraine’s forces have developed a lot of their own weapons and tactics. But they will need more unqualified US and European support to win.
The alternative to Hegseth’s appeasement is to provide that support. That would be real peace through strength.
A Ukraine win would strengthen the West
The implications of Kyiv winning are good for the US and Europe. Moscow would then need to abandon its imperial ambitions. Putin might survive using repression, but only as a much-diminished figure at home and abroad. Russia’s economy and demography will need rebuilding. It will be at least another generation before Moscow can threaten a neighbor.
Reasonable people in Moscow would quickly switch the position on Ukrainian membership in NATO. They would come to see that as the best guarantee of a Ukraine without nuclear weapons. They know better than anyone else that NATO membership has kept Germany non-nuclear.
Europe would gain enormously from the opening of a peacetime free market with Ukraine reconstructing itself. The US would get the privileged access to Ukrainian rare minerals it seeks.
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Kosovo is democratic but complicated
Kosovo voted yesterday. The electoral mechanism seems to have worked reasonably well except for a cyberattack. That appears to have been overcome. Prime Minister Kurti (LVV) got 41%, his PDK opposition 22%, the LDK opposition 18%, and AAK (Ramush Haradinaj) 7%. Minorities will hold 20 seats. Turnout was relatively low (around 40%), despite a lively campaign. I haven’t yet seen how the preliminary percentages translate into parliamentary seats. That could change the picture.
For background, here is a primer. So far as I can tell, the EU observer mission has not yet reported its findings.
The winner loses…but the losers didn’t win
The Prime Minister led by an almost a 2/1 margin over his nearest competitor. But he lost his absolute majority in parliament. While minority votes could put him in the majority, he won’t get enough of them. He will now need the seats of either the PDK or the LDK to regain the majority. The freewheeling way he has governed will make that difficult. Both the PDK and AAK have said they are unwilling to govern with VV. Still, it can’t be ruled out, especially if he is willing to give up the prime ministry. The LDK seems more open to the idea.
The PDK, LDK, and AAK did not win either. Even if the PDK and LDK join together in coalition, they won’t have enough seats to gain the majority. Putting together a 3-party coalition isn’t going to be easy. Resentment of Kurti might help. The three opposition parties were united during the campaign in criticizing him. They don’t like his handling of the economy and blame him for strained relations with the US and EU.
What next
Parliamentary systems that produce ambiguous results of this sort generally need some time to work things out. Despite strains between them, I suppose President Osmani will give Kurti a chance to forge a parliamentary majority. If he fails, the PDK may get a chance to bring in a government that includes the other opposition parties.
If Kurti keeps the prime ministry in coalition with an opposition party, the US and EU will pressure him to consult more. They want him to show more flexibility in dealing with Serbia. That isn’t likely to produce results, given past experience.
Almost any conceivable alternative prime minister will try to reduce strains with the US and EU. All the other political parties have criticized Kurti for inflexibility.
But all have governed in the past, with not much better results when it comes to dealing with Serbia. Belgrade is likewise is inflexible in dealing with Pristina. It demands creation of an Association of Serb Majority Municipalities inside Kosovo with no quid pro quo.
The broader context
Kosovo’s future depends today more on what happens beyond its borders than on this ambiguous election result. Ric Grenell, Trump’s former envoy, is telling everyone in the Balkans he will again be in charge of the region. He loathes Kurti. Last time around, he tried to partition Kosovo. Likely he’ll try again. Or at least insist on self-governance for the Serbs in the north that compromises the country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. And he’ll wield control over NATO accession as a stick. He’ll also wield USAID assistance, which will need to be unfrozen.
Even without the American push for partition, any discussion of partition of Ukraine will open the question in the Balkans. Russia and Serbia will encourage Republika Srpska to secede from Bosnia and Herzegovina. They will also try to get the Serb-majority north to leave Kosovo. Moscow and Belgrade will figure the US and EU will be unprepared to defend either country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
While the Trump Administration is bad news for Kosovo, so too are future elections in Europe. Further strengthening of the right in Germany this month will stymie EU expansion, already slowed to a crawl.
Kosovo is a good example of successful democratization in the Balkans. But it is also complicated, both internally and in the broader geopolitical context.
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The bad ideas keep on coming
Two weeks have brought us these, just on the foreign policy front:
- Proposed take over Greenland, Panama Canal, Canada, and now Gaza.
- Eviscerated the world’s largest humanitarian agency, recalling all its overseas staff.
- Reached bogus deals to postpone promised tariffs on Mexico and Canada
- Failed to reach a deal with China, which retaliates.
- Arrested thousands of legal immigrants and try to deport them.
Gaza
Trump’s idea is to make Gaza “the riviera of the Middle East.” That’s not the crazy part. I’ve been there (between the two Intifadas, around 1999). Gaza would make a very nice resort community on the Mediterranean. It has beautiful beaches and a flat approach to the seaside. It could accommodate a good sized airport and seaport. When I was there, its hotels were capable of serving Kosher as well as Halal food, shipped from Israel.
But to accomplish his developer’s goal, Trump wants to remove the 2 million or so Palestinians who call Gaza home. When they visit soon, Egyptian President Sisi and Jordanian King Abdullah will tell him what they think of the idea. Neither is willing to accept large numbers of Palestinians even temporarily. Both think their more or less autocratic regimes would not survive such an influx. Neither would want to exclude the possibility of a Palestinian state in the future.
A US takeover of Gaza would require tens of thousands of troops for at least a decade of occupation. Not to mention tens of thousands of contractors to clear unexploded ordnance, clear rubble, and start reconstruction. The cost would be many billions even before beginning to construct the resort.
US occupation of Gaza would also end hopes of a Palestinian state. Hamas and Hizbollah terrorists, Houthi drones, and Iranian missiles would target the Americans. Defense would be costly. The opportunity costs of putting that many American troops into a static position in the Middle East would be astronomical.
The other real estate propositions
Trump’s other real estate propositions are no better. Greenlanders oppose becoming part of the US by a margin of more than 10/1. Canadians feel about the same way. Panama isn’t going to give up the Canal, which is not run by the Chinese, as Trump claims.
In short, none of these things are happening because they are all the fantasies of a failed real estate tycoon. Trump has been successful in tacking his name onto other people’s buildings, not in developing his own projects. That isn’t going to change.
USAID
I am no fan of USAID, but yanking its overseas personnel and abruptly closing its life-saving programs is irresponsible. Folding the agency into the State Department is not necessarily a bad idea. Canada, the UK, and Australia have all incorporated their aid agencies into their foreign ministries. But it has to be done carefully and thoughtfully, which is definitely not what we are seeing right now.
Aid should come in two varieties. One is unconditional humanitarian assistance needed to relieve human suffering. Food, water, health, and shelter for victims of natural disasters, poverty, and oppressive governments belong in this category.
The other is assistance on building governmental and nongovernmental institutions where people are striving for more open and just societies. Even if their governments are oppressive, we should be willing to consider assistance that will improve the situation. This latter type of assistance really does belong in the State Department. The humanitarian relief part should be freestanding.
Mexico and Canada
Mexico and Canada handled the tariffs well. They threatened to retaliate, then offered Trump concessions that they had already made during the Biden Administration. Canada is beefing up its border controls. Mexico has already deployed more troops to its border with the US. Trump swallowed these non-concessions and declared victory. Mexico did even better, as it got Trump to agree to limit arms trafficking from the US into Mexico. That has been a perennial Mexican complaint. Now they get to complain when the US fails to follow through.
It remains to be seen what will happen in 30 days, when the postponement of the tariffs expires. My guess is not much. Maybe another empty concession or two. Then return to the free trade agreement that Trump negotiated in his first term in office. Trump will declare it a win.
As for immigration, Southwest Land Border Encounters were way down already in November and December 2024. Trump can declare victory, ignoring the fact this was accomplished under Biden/Harris.
China
The 10% tariff on Chinese imports to the US is far less than Trump has sometimes bruited. Beijing was ready. It responded with both tariffs on imports to China from the US and limits on exports of rare earth metals. It also launched an antitrust investigation of Google and labeled a couple of US companies unreliable. Those latter moves are not for now important, but they may indicate one direction of Chinese policy in the future.
Americans buy a lot from China, on the order of $500 billion per year. Without equally priced other sources for the goods, the tariffs mean a $50 billion hidden tax increase on US consumers. That’s still relatively small. Wait until Trump gets to his 100% tariff.
Immigration
So far, the majority of people arrested in Trump Administration sweeps of immigrants have not been criminals. This isn’t surprising. All Administrations, including Biden’s, have kept themselves arresting and deporting criminal immigrants. Now the Administration has exceeded the capacity of Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities. So it is starting to release some detainees.
It is also flying hundreds on military planes out of the US to be repatriated. This is an expensive proposition. Someone will eventually tell the Defense Department to save its resources for a more useful purpose.
What could happen next?
Who knows. There is no lack of things we need to do. Trump can even be expected to stumble on a few.
Is there a better option for Iran than restoring maximum pressure? That is what the Administration is going to try to do. If that is preliminary to negotiations on both Iran’s regional malfeasance and its nuclear program, I’ll be for it.
The Administration seems headed for a tougher policy on Ukraine than many had thought possible. That’s good too, if it aims to end the Russian invasion and restore Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.
But the ratio of good ideas like those to bad ones is unlikely to be high. The bad ideas keep coming because the President has so many of them.
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