peacefare.net

Fighting words have frightful consequences

The second impeachment trial of Donald Trump starts tomorrow. He is accused of inciting the January 6 attack on the Capitol. His lawyers are arguing two things:

1. He can’t be convicted because he is no longer in office.
2. As a citizen with constitutional rights, whatever he said before and on January 6 is entitled to protection as freedom of speech.

These arguments are nonsense.

He wouldn’t be impeachable if he were no longer in office, but preventing the trial and conviction would mean he can’t be held accountable for acts committed while in office and is therefore above the law. You can’t uphold an oath to protect the Constitution if you are prepared to put a former president beyond the law. Besides, there is a precedent for a trial after someone (a Secretary of War, not a president) left office.

Freedom of speech has its limits. Most notoriously you aren’t entitled to yell “fire” in a crowded theater if there is no fire. That is analogous to what Trump did before and on January 6: he lied about the election having been stolen and then told his supporters to march on the Capitol, a move not included in their demonstration permit, and fight to prevent the tabulation of the Electoral College results. The merits of the case are clear.

But the politics are just as clear: all but a handful of Republican Senators are committed to voting against conviction. They are both wedded to Trump as their party leader and fearful of any criticism from him that could hurt their prospects in primary elections. No one in Washington is currently expecting 17 Republicans, the number needed for a two-thirds vote to convict, to defy Trump.

This will look like a defeat for the Democrats, but I have to wonder about its longer-term impact. Sticking with Trump is causing prominent Republicans and thousands of rank-and-file members to leave the GOP. The numbers are less significant than the quality. President Biden is already more popular than Trump ever was while in office. If he were to remain anywhere near his current approval ratings, lots of Americans will not be feeling the usual need to punish the incumbent in 2022’s mid-term election. The argument is even stronger for 2024, provided Biden is successful in ending the epidemic and reviving the economy.

That’s a big if. But it would be hard to fault the Administration yet in its pursuit of these two top priorities. Vaccines are flowing more rapidly and masks are being required more widely. Plans for reopening schools are progressing. So, too, is the Congressional effort to approve a $1.9 trillion relief package, if necessary by avoiding the Senate filibuster (which would require 10 Republicans to side with the Democrats in approving the package). Biden talked unity at his Inauguration, and he clearly would prefer it, but he isn’t waiting for the Republicans to make nice.

That’s good negotiating strategy from the candidate who didn’t write The Art of the Deal. Republicans will come around if they see that the American people prefer what Biden is offering. It has to be big and effective to be convincing. Only if he can convince Republicans he’ll do it without their votes will at least some of them be prepared to vote with him. I’d expect some last-minute compromises–Biden has already indicated he is willing to delay doubling the minimum wage. That is likely wise, as unemployment is still high and needs to get down to its prior lows before the economy will be in a position to both pay and still continue to create jobs.

All this leaves foreign policy, the major concern of peacefare.net, playing second fiddle. But without recovery from the virus and the recession, America won’t be able to play the leadership role in the world that Biden aspires to. He has been skillful in making some quick moves–extending the strategic arms treaty with Russia and enabling humanitarian aid to continue to go to Yemen by canceling Trump’s last-minute designation of the Houthis as terrorists are savvy moves.

Biden is still in a stand-off with Iran over who returns first to compliance with the nuclear deal, but let’s hope he soon finds a formula for getting back in and once again putting Tehran at least a year from gaining nuclear weapons. There too Trump’s fighting words have had frightful consequences.

No need to reconcile with Trumpism, only defeat it

This is the best I’ve seen on the chronology of 1/6 events:

But this from The New Yorker is the best I’ve seen conveying the motives and impunity of the participants (sorry it won’t embed). The religiously motivated and overwhelmingly white male rioters felt entitled. Some of them came prepared to capture or kill members of Congress. There is no doubt what they would have done had they gotten hold of Nancy Pelosi. There is also no doubt who inspired their attack on The Capitol: President Trump and Senators Cruz and Hawley.

Less clear is how much coordination there was before the attack. Certainly the White House communicated with the demonstration organizers about his appearance at the Ellipse. The question is what the President understood about their intentions thereafter. Several members of Congress have reported on tours of The Capitol, which is closed to visitors during the Covid-19 epidemic, conducted the day before the riot. Those will have been organized by members of Congress or their staffs. There are also indications that some rioters knew the layout of the offices, though they appear not to have known about escape routes.

I would want much more clarity on these issues and others before any trial in the Senate. That and likely interference with President-elect Biden’s legislative agenda argue for a pause on delivering the impeachment to the upper house. Delay also has the virtue of leaving Trump in suspense, thereby preventing him from rousing his followers for another attack on The Capitol or another outrage for fear of generating a guilty verdict, reached with Republican support. There should be a trial, but there is no need for alacrity.

In the meanwhile, we are all anticipating Trump’s pardons for his family, his associates, and maybe himself, as well as anyone else who pays the right fixers and makes the right promises. But there is no requirement that pardons be publicized. So we may not learn about them before the Inauguration. There is not even a requirement that a pardon be written, though a verbal one with no supporting documentation wouldn’t likely stand up in court. Trump could however give signed notes to each person pardoned to produce only when they are indicted, months or even years later. A self-pardon is a manifest absurdity. You can’t “grant” yourself something. Doing so would be the epitome of corruption: abuse of public office for private gain.

Some are urging that Biden pardon Trump, claiming that reconciliation and bipartisanship would then be easier. I don’t buy that argument at all. Reconciliation is only possible with accountability. Bipartisanship is going to work with people who voted to certify the election results, not those who refused to do so. Biden should do nothing to reduce the growing split in the Republican Party, which has the potential to purge it of Trumpism, or at least to generate a new, truly conservative party that might cooperate with more moderate Democrats on issues like Covid-19, the economy, police brutality, and climate change.

The extremists who refused to certify votes knew full well that there was no widespread or systematic fraud in the election, evidence for which would have shown up by now. What they and the rioters were saying is that the votes of black and brown people in Democratic cities should not be counted. They filed dozens of law suits with that as the explicit objective. They were defending white privilege and power. Trumpism is, at its heart, racism. There is no need to reconcile with it, only defeat it.

Biden needs to clean the Augean nuclear stables

Former IAEA nuclear inspector Pantelis Ikonomou writes:

US president-elect Biden assumes responsibility Wednesday facing an extraordinary reality: nuclear risks. Ahead even of climate change and disruptive technologies, nuclear weapons pose a vital challenge to world leaders. Shifting geopolitics have raised nuclear risks higher than ever before. Intent, accident, or miscalculation could lead to a nuclear apocalypse. According to the Atomic Scientists, the its Doomsday Clock is closer to midnight than at any time since1947: 100 seconds.

Biden, commander-in-chief of the world most powerful nuclear arsenal, is urgently called to overcome numerous legacies of his predecessor:

• Trump disliked arms control and multilateralism and considered treaties and international agreements unacceptable legal restraints on US freedom.
• Trump  withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which eliminated an entire class of nuclear missiles in Europe.
• Trump’s 2018 Nuclear Posture Review included deployment of new low-yield nuclear weapons, making the use of such mass destruction armaments more tempting.
• Trump announced non-extension of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) between USA and Russia, set to expire in February 2021, due in part to Beijing’s refusal to join because of its disproportionately smaller nuclear arsenal.
• President Trump’s erratic behavior on 6 January  2021, inciting insurrection against his own country,  points out the need for establishing procedures that limit a US president’s exclusive authority to order a nuclear strike.

In addition, two on-going nuclear sagas will challenge Biden’s courage and decisiveness right away:

Iran

Trump’s decision in 2018 to withdraw unilaterally from the 2015 nuclear deal shredded an achievement of 12 years of intense multilateral diplomacy and re-activated tensions with. The US withdrawal overturned all fundamental restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program, damaging a proven approach to countering proliferation based on international monitoring and verification. The US neglected the authority and competence of the UN watchdog IAEA, undermined international confidence in the UN Security Council and in multilateral diplomacy, and jeopardized the global nuclear non-proliferation architecture.

Rejoining the 2015 Iran deal, as Biden pledged to do upon taking office, is complex and risky. Tehran, in reaction to the US withdrawal, is growing its uranium enrichment capacity in violation of the agreement. Moreover, its parliament voted to end IAEA inspections next month if the US does not lift key sanctions. The IAEA maintains that the Iran deal would not be implementable without amendments agreed by all parties involved. Israel, America’s top strategic ally in the region but an alleged nuclear proliferator, along with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf partners, keep urging  Washington to refrain from any compromise with Tehran, while the EU says it will redouble efforts to save the nuclear agreement.

North Korea

Diplomatic efforts to solve the almost three decade-long North Korean nuclear issue have desolately failed.  During Trump’s years, Washington oscillated between theatrical summits and hyperbolic threats, while Pyongyang continued to develop its long-range nuclear strike capability in secret. The option of forcing North Korea to nullify its nuclear capability is no longer realistic. Pyongyang has no other strategy available for deterring its decapitation.

Circumstances are not propitious

Continuation in the current course could lead to nuclear breakouts in the vulnerable regions of Middle East and East Asia. Biden, in his interview with The New York Times on 2 December 2020, recognized this grave likelihood by referring to ”Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and other countries” as potential nuclear proliferators.

The 2019 Munich Security Conference found that in seven major countries (France, Germany, USA, Japan, Canada, UK and Russia) when answering the question: “Which of the three countries—USA, Russia or China—do you consider as the biggest threat to your country?” citizens of France, Germany, Canada and Russia consider the US the greatest threat to their country while the Japanese consider the US as the second biggest threat by a small margin after China. America is perceived as presenting the biggest threat to peoples of almost all major world powers!

Biden’s upcoming challenges call to mind the myth of Hercules’ labor:  cleaning the Augean stables.

PUTSCH! It will fail, but it is a bad omen

Pro-Trump extremists stormed the Capitol today and halted the constitutional process of confirming the Electoral College votes. The President encouraged this violent attack on the transition of power. Capitol Police seem to have been lamentably unprepared, despite weeks of advance notice. They did little to stop the assault. You can imagine what would have happened had they been chanting “Black Lives Matter.”

The proper response is for the Congress to meet in an alternate location this evening and quickly accept the electoral result. The House should re-impeach President Trump tomorrow and the Senate vote to remove him from office. Vice President Pence should be sworn in to finish out Trump’s term while he is arrested for inciting violence.

None of my daydream will happen, because the Republicans won’t be on board and the Democrats will hesitate. A dozen Republican Senators had already loudly pledged to object to the certification of the electoral votes. They too are morally responsible for the deplorable behavior of the rioters, who are virtually all white and male.

So I’ll offer a more realistic scenario. The Congress should meet tomorrow to complete the certification of the electoral votes. As soon as the two new Democratic Georgia Senators are able to take their seats, the Congress should pass a corona virus bill providing $2000 relief payments to less well off Americans and financing for the states to accelerate Covid19 testing and vaccinations as well as reopening of schools and support for small businesses. Biden should sign it on January 20.

Congress should also vote to admit Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia (to be known as the Douglas Commonwealth) as states. This would enfranchise their more or less 3.8 million citizens and ensure a majority in both Houses that supports the constitution for the foreseeable future, or at least until the Republican party figures out it will need to appeal more broadly in order to regain power.

Whether that all happens or not, the putsch will fail. But it should never have happened and bodes ill for the future. Trump has managed to convince a significant part of the population that they have good reason to object to the electoral outcome, despite the failure to produce any evidence of electoral fraud, his loss of 62 court cases, and the illogic of asserting that the Democrats somehow stole the presidency but neglected to steal more House and Senate seats.

None of that matters because the real cause of the resentment lies elsewhere. Trump’s diehard supporters resent losing power to people they think are not their equals, because they are black, immigrants, women, gays, socialists, communists, and other unworthies. White supremacy is not just about people saying they are superior because they are white. It’s about supposing that you are the victim of persecution by people who are not like you.

“A house divided against itself cannot stand,” Lincoln said channeling Mark 3:25 and Matthew 12:25. America is certainly a house divided. It is a bad omen.

Free at last, by a hair, with work to do

The outcomes of the two Georgia Senate run-off races run yesterday are dramatic. Democrat Raphael Warnock has won by a hair. Democrat Jon Ossoff is leading with mostly mailed-in absentee ballots, which generally favor the Democrats, remaining to count. The Democrats appear certain to take control of the Senate in addition to the House of Representatives and the White House, enabling Joe Biden to pursue what he promised during the electoral campaign with vigor. The Grim Reaper, aka Mitch McConnell, will lose the capacity to block anything he disikes from reaching the floor of the Senate.

At home, this will mean many things: Trump’s populist ethnic nationalist racism will be discredited, the Republican party may have to retool in a more truly conservative direction, democracy will be able to show that it can govern effectively, and Biden or Kamala Harris can hope to campaign in 2024 with a record of success behind them. Health care, energy, education, income taxes, and many other areas will be opened to reform. There is also the real possibility of terrorist violence by Trump supporters, whose more extremist wing will be gathering today in Washington to protest the certification of the presidential election result in Congress.

The Georgia race had nothing at all to do with international affairs, but its ramifications are significant also abroad. The United States has demonstrated that it could recover from ethnonationalist populism by democratic means. Other countries may follow suit: Hungary? Poland? Israel? Serbia? India? None of their would-be nationalist autocrats are delivering results for their countries’ economies and fights against Covid-19 much better than Trump did in the US. And they all start, as Trump did, down by the percentage of minorities who won’t vote for them. While each country has its own political dynamics, the global tide may have turned.

Also important: Democratic control of the House and Senate will enable Biden to try to defeat Covid-19 and restore the economy without being blocked at every turn by current Senate Majority Leader McConnell. Biden aims to vaccinate 100 million Americans in his first 100 days (which will be mid-April). The vaccine rollout so far has been much slower. The economy, which has recovered about halfway from the depths of the epidemic, is now faltering. The Democrats will use control of Congress to fund both a stronger vaccination effort and payments to lower income people and small businesses as well as safer reopening of schools. If by summer the US is back to steadier economic growth and herd immunity is reached, Biden will be a hero at home and far stronger abroad.

Today though will be devoted not to celebrating the Georgia victory but to defeating Republican attempts to change the electoral votes as they are reported to the Congress. The normally pro forma process will be lengthy and contentious as the certified results from some “battleground” states are debated and voted on. But in the end, the Congress will acknowledge Biden’s victory, removing the final hurdle to his inauguration January 20. We are free at last, by a hair, but with lots of work to do.