Category: Uncategorized
Stevenson’s army, November 25
There hasn’t been much news about Congress lately, but today there is.
The appropriators have agreed on ceilings for the different bills, making passage likely before the Dec 11 deadline.
HASC chairman says USAF is playing runoff politics in Georgia.
Walter Oleszek, co-author of Congress & Its Members and a longtime CRS analyst, has a long paper explaining why the “regular order” of congressional business has fallen out of favor. FYI, I still favor it. This is a good summary of the reent evolution of lawmaking.
Happy Thanksgiving, wherever and with whomever.
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).
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Stevenson’s army, November 21
The House Majority Leader says earmarks will return next year. [Hooray!][CRS has more background info.]
OMB used same tactic to cut WHO payments it used to block Ukraine aid.
NYT has good explainer of the programs being ended by Treasury despite support from Fed.
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).
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
Stevenson’s army, November 19
– The acting SecDef signed an order elevating the Special Forces to a status equal to the Service secretaries. There’s confusion as to what this means in practice.
– A GMU institute has some ideas on the defense industrial base.
– Many voices have criticized the administration’s abrupt drawdown from Afghanistan. Andrew Bacevich offers a contrary view.
Politico offers some wise words on Sen. McConnell:
MCCONNELL HAS A MAXIM, though, and it’s quite easy to discern from watching the Capitol: If you can beat him, beat him. MCCONNELL is driven by power. If you have the votes to stop him from exerting his will, then do it, and if you can’t, then that’s too bad. He doesn’t care for letters urging him to do things, or press conferences calling him the devil. To call it bare-knuckle politics would be kind.
DEMOCRATS ARE EAGER TO REMIND that they don’t play MCCONNELL’S game. And that couldn’t be more evident.
MCCONNELL’S strength is that he has a united Senate GOP Conference at nearly all times. They follow him, and trust him. So, the road map for BIDEN here is quite clear. He has two general options: Can BIDEN create an environment in which he has a governing coalition willing to split with MCCONNELL? Or, more likely, can BIDEN — the self-styled master legislator — act quickly to move on areas in which the two sides have shared legislative priorities: Covid relief and perhaps a government funding deal, if that doesn’t get done this month.
ANOTHER THING THAT WILL DRIVE Republicans is a tough 2022 map. There are a bunch of potentially competitive states Republicans will have to wage races in, including FLORIDA, GEORGIA, IOWA, KANSAS, MISSOURI, NORTH CAROLINA, OHIO, PENNSYLVANIA and WISCONSIN.
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).
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
This is not about organ trafficking
I’ve now had a chance to at least skim the charges against Hashim Thaci, Kadri Veseli, and other KLA leaders indicted by the Specialist Chambers in The Hague. While triggered by the Marty report, the Specialist Chambers have adopted an expansive definition of the crimes they were investigating. I can’t even be sure from the redacted indictment whether it includes charges related to the organ-trafficking Marty alleged without, he himself admitted, sufficient evidence to stand up in court. If those crimes at the “yellow house” in northern Albania are included in this indictment, they are a small part of the whole.
What the court has done is to charge the KLA leadership with being a joint criminal enterprise that intentionally committed many and widespread war crimes and crimes against humanity. The victims were non-combatant civilian “opponents,” whose ethnic identity is not specified but clearly include Albanians as well as Serbs.
There will be many people in Serbia and some in Kosovo who rejoice at this indictment. The crimes, sometimes according to the indictment itself committed in the aftermath of Serb abuses against civilians, were apparent at the time of the war and in its aftermath. What the prosecutor seeks to show is that the criminality was not spontaneous or undisciplined behavior but rather an organized, concerted effort directed by the top KLA leadership.
Many of the details are redacted in the public version of the indictment, but some will presumably become public as the court proceeds with witnesses and other evidence. The defense will deny the charges. We’ll then all have a chance to judge for ourselves the validity of the prosecutor’s portrait of the KLA,
But what is already clear is the one-sided character of this judicial effort. Holding people accountable for war crimes and crimes against humanity has to be welcomed, but to do it for the KLA and not the Serbian security forces, which killed many more civilians than the KLA, is cockeyed. It is difficult not to see the current charges as part of a dramatic American tilt in Serbia’s direction and against Kosovo. While the Specialist Chambers pre-date President Trump, the current prosecutor was a Trump selection.
There were already three trials of Serbs at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia involving Kosovo. Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic died before his was completed. In the two others, six high officials of Yugoslavia and Serbia were convicted. They too were charged with a joint criminal enterprise, one aimed against Kosovo’s Albanians that explicitly sought to change the ethnic composition of the population.
If I read the Specialist Chambers’ mandate correctly, it does have jurisdiction over Serbian perpetrators in Kosovo during the period 1 January 1998-31 December 2000, though the Serbian parliament, unlike the Kosovo Assembly, has not agreed. The prosecutor’s claim to being fair would be much stronger if he had filed charges as well against Serbian commanders active in Kosovo during that time. There are commanders who were directly responsible for war crimes in Kosovo, and for the murder of three American Albanians in Serbia shortly after the war, who are still enjoying prominent positions in Serbian politics and the security forces.
Whether Serb or Albanian, those charged are innocent until proven guilty, at least in court. But in the public mind the KLA will be tarred by these proceedings while the Serbs will be seen in Kosovo as getting off. Even those Albanians who opposed violence at the time–and were potential victims according to this indictment–will feel compelled to defend resistance to Serbian abuses. The political impact in both Serbia and Kosovo could be substantial. Let us hope it will be in favor of greater mutual understanding and reconciliation, but I have my doubts.
Share this, I'll really appreciate it:
The broader picture isn’t pretty
While the victory of Joe Biden in the presidential contest is cheering, the broader picture isn’t pretty. It’s not only that President Trump got about 70 million votes, despite four years of erratic, corrupt, racist, misogynist, and incompetent governance. The “down ballot” contests went badly for the Democrats.
They gained two seats in the Senate, but that is not enough to wrest control from the Republicans. There is a slim chance they could win control in two Georgia run-offs on January 5, but the hopes they had of an unequivocal outcome did not materialize. A Republican majority in the upper house will severely limit Biden’s political freedom, as a majority is needed in the Senate not only for legislation but also for appointment of judges and Administration officials. Biden will need all the skills he built up over more than four decades in Congress to get Republicans to cross the aisle while holding on to his Democratic supporters. He will not be able without a Senate majority to admit DC and Puerto Rico as states, which should be the first priority of a Democratic-controlled Senate.
The picture in the House is better but not great. There the Democrats held on to their majority but may have lost a handful of seats.
The big problem is not in the House of Representatives but in the state houses and governorships, which will be redrawing Congressional districts next year on the basis of this year’s fraught census. It was conducted under non-ideal conditions due to the epidemic, and Trump is still trying to skew the results in the Republican direction by not counting non-citizens (as the constitution requires). The Republican-controlled state legislatures are past masters at gerrymandering Congressional districts to enhance Republican representation both in their own bodies and in the Congress.
How could this happen? In short, the blue wave met a red wave. Turnout was up from around 60% in 2016 to over 66% in 2020. I have a college classmate who argues that the main motivating issue was the economy. I doubt that. I think it was race. The “white” majority in the United States has discovered what the demographers have long known: their numbers are in relative decline. They fear this decline will lead to a decline in political power. We’ll need to await more detailed parsing of the results to be certain, but my guess is that some people disgusted with Trump nevertheless wanted to reassert traditional American values, which include white control of the levers of power.
Rick Perlstein on NPR this morning told you everything you need to know about the history of the factions within the Republican party that wanted to hold on to power without commanding a majority:
The Republican party has become overwhelmingly white, despite the small drift of black males in his direction. Nor does Trump’s ability to attract Cuban American and Venezuelan American votes prove the contrary. I’ll bet that the overwhelming majority of those who voted for Trump regard themselves as white. This will continue until we get rid of the Electoral College, admit DC and Puerto Rico as states, and make same-day registration a reality throughout the land. Then Republicans will need to appeal more broadly across racial lines to gain a majority. That is the direction it appeared Lincoln’s party was prepared to take in the early 2000s. It is a shame that approach did not prevail.
For now, though, guys like me will have to be relieved that Biden has triumphed. It was really close. Biden will end up with something like 5 million more votes than Trump and possibly as many electoral votes as Trump got in 2016. But Trump’s 70 million will have their say in an unrepresentative Senate and a gerrymandered House.
PS: On the lame duck months until January 20, here is a first approximation:
RSS - Posts
