Category: Uncategorized
Guilty as charged
The opening of the trial proceedings in the Senate has already produced an obvious result: the President has no defense against the charge that he tried to use US government aid to gain a personal political advantage over a potential rival, then obstructed Congress in its investigation. White House lawyers are not claiming he didn’t try to extort the Ukrainians to announce an investigation of Joe Biden, only that he was free to do it and to block witnesses and documents the House of Representatives requested.
This amounts to the inverse of nolo contendere, in which a defendant doesn’t admit guilt, but accepts punishment. Trump is admitting the facts, but the Republican-controlled Senate is protecting him from the penalty provided in the Constitution, removal from office. It has the power under the Constitution to do that and is exercising it with vigor, preventing even submission of documentary evidence and witness testimony to the wrongdoing.
The big question is how the country will react to a President who believes he can abuse power as much he wants and suffer no consequence. According to the first poll taken since the articles of impeachment were delivered to the Senate, a thin majority of Americans now believes he should be removed from office, a wider margin believes the charges against him are true, and two-thirds believe the proceedings in the Senate should include testimony from witnesses.
If confirmed, those results would be a substantial deviation from the trend line in recent months, which is basically flat. The partisan divide is still wide and Republicans in the Senate continue to believe that their prospects in the November election are more threatened by Trump-allied challengers in the primaries than by Democrats at the polls. None of the supposed Republican moderates in the Senate have budged from the majority on the many Democratic proposals to bring witnesses and documents into the process.
The Republicans have an option if the going gets rough. They could decide to defenestrate Trump and put Vice President Pence in his place. More genuinely conservative than Trump on social and religious issues, Pence could be relied on to appoint judges who would please the anti-abortion, pro-Christian, Republican base as well as continue the anti-immigration crusade (double meaning intended) Trump has conducted. What Pence lacks is even a rudimentary personality, never mind charisma.
The Democrats are meanwhile still engaged in the fratricidal warfare of the presidential primaries. For now the presidential hopefuls seem mostly incapable of refocusing their attacks on Trump rather than each other. That isn’t good, but the next month or two may well sort out who the candidate will be. If that doesn’t happen, the Democrats could go to the mid-July convention in Milwaukee without a candidate. A “brokered” convention would not be a good thing.
But the biggest single factor in the next election will be the economy. Trump’s bragging at Davos this week was based on falsehoods. The Obama expansion has continued, but growth is now slowing, though not dramatically yet. The Trump tax cut did little to stimulate the economy but a great deal to balloon the government deficit. The trade deal with China failed to correct most of the structural issues that have given the US such a large bilateral deficit. The trade deal with Mexico made desirable updates. Hourly wages have begun to perk up, but inequality continues its long rise.
The picture is worse on the national security front. The fights Trump has picked with North Korea, Venezuela, and Iran have produced no good results for the US. He has nothing to show for his lovefest with Russian President Putin, who still sits on a big piece of Ukraine. The Israel/Palestine peace plan is a bust. The NATO allies despise the President and are holding their breath for him to leave office. He ignores Latin America and Africa (to their benefit more than likely) while talking tough on China but doing precious little.
If there were professor who could judge the Trump Administration on its economic, social, and national security merits, it would get an F. He is not only guilty as charged, but incompetent as well.
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My Epiphany
I’m still in Addis Ababa, where Timkat (Epiphany) was observed yesterday afternoon and today, in commemoration of Christ’s baptism. It’s a scene worthy of description.
Yesterday the Arks of the Covenant, draped in embroidered cloths and shielded by a canopy, were taken from Addis’ churches in processions to a few locations.
This morning I went to Jan Meda, described as a horse race ground on Googlemaps but really a giant park so far as I could see. Tens of thousands of Ethiopians, many dressed in a spectacular variety of religious garb, assembled for an event that focused primarily on religion. The chanting was vaguely familiar (Jews chant in minor keys too) but of course incomprehensible to me. I was assured it was mostly praises to God. The MC of the religious ceremony would occasionally and helpfully say a few words of introduction in English, emphasizing the ecumenical, egalitarian, multiethnic, and international dimensions of the event.
A good number of people took advantage of the spray from a hose to get soaked and presumably baptized (or re-baptized), but there was a lot else going on. Donkey rides, face painting, cotton candy, soccer games, and a seemingly simplified version of roulette were all available. The street fair vibe was mostly out at the edges of the crowd and in the surrounding streets. There was also a distinct patriotic dimension: lots of green, yellow, and red paraphenalia hawked along with water, soft drinks, and various snacks and sweets.
A word about the crowd: I’d have been frightened if they had been Americans. Getting in and especially out of Jan Meda required funneling hundreds of people down to a narrow passage. Ethiopians may stand much closer to you than Americans, but they don’t push and shove or even get impatient. They wait patiently and move quickly to take advantage of the first opportunity. Best to watch your wallet and cell phone, but this crowd would be harder to provoke to stampede than those in many other countries. At least I hoped that was the case.
The streets outside Jan Meda can get pretty raucous. Beer is cheap here, and many Christian Ethiopians enjoy it. I am told the stimulant qat is also available, but I didn’t see any. The alcohol causes behavior to deteriorate. They may grab an arm, or cheer the passing half dozen whites, whom usually they ignore except for the occasional extra gesture of welcome. Single women, I am told, get harassed.
The police were out in force. They gave people heading for the religious event a cursory patdown, looking presumably for weapons, and held the crowd back periodically to prevent a crush. The Federal and Addis Ababa forces were armed only with batons. I didn’t see any used, though I am told they often are. The mounted police were skilled in pushing back the crowd from the procession, though dummies like me kept on trying to press forward for photos.
Bottom line: Ethiopians enjoy Timkat to the hilt. I did too.
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Moscow owns Syria
Bassam Barabandi writes:
Russian President Putin’s visit to Syria this week was planned along the lines of one last year, which also came in the Russian holiday season. Putin then gave a speech directly to the Russian soldiers at the Russian Hmeimim base, to which Syrian President Assad was asked to come without knowing Putin would be present. Assad’s role during both visits shows how marginalized he is. The main message sent to other countries is the vast extent of Russia’s influence in the areas the Assad regime controls, the government, and institutions.
Putin aimed in his more recent visit to respond to current events and to reduce Iran’s influence in Syria, as part of a tacit agreement among Western countries, Israel, and Russia to neutralize Syria as an arena for Iranian revenge for the killing of Iranian military commander Soleimani. Putin went to Damascus this time, but his main meetings were outside the media spotlight with Russian field commanders and Assad-regime Syrians close to Russia. Assad did not attend those two-hour long meetings. He only appeared after the fact accompanying Putin to the airport.
We can expect major changes within the Assad regime that will increase Russia’s influence and may lead to a violent confrontation with pro-Iranian loyalists. Putin’s failure to visit Assad at his palace was a signal that Russia is not wedded to the Syrian President. Such a visit would have constituted explicit recognition by Russia of the sovereignty of Syria and the legitimacy of Assad as its president. More importantly, it would have been a clear and strong message to all parties that Russia does not see a substitute for Assad as president in the next stage.
What happened was the opposite. Assad’s remarks were devoted to thanks to Russia and glorification of Putin and his forces. Russia now owns Syria, whose president has limited executive authority. Syrian decisions today come from Moscow. Even if Assad were to leave, this situation would persist. Syria’s dependency could extend for long decades to come, with or without Assad.
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Strategic nonsense
Dimitri Trenin has it partly right in a tweet this morning:
If Iran retaliates against #SoleimaniKilled strategically, rather than emotionally, its targets will not be individual US diplomats and various assets in the Middle East, but the very US presence in Iraq & Syria. US vs Iran is a highly asymmetric conflict.
The American government has already urged all Americans to leave Iraq, because of the security risk. That will end most private sector and other civilian US efforts there.
The military presence is also at risk, more for political rather than security reasons. The politics will be overwhelmingly against the US, not only because Soleimani was killed but also because his agent in Iraq, Popular Mobilization Forces leader and Kataib Hizbollah commander al-Muhandis, was also killed, apparently without the permission of or warning to the Iraqi government. An Iraqi government already in turmoil–the prime minister is waiting to be replaced–will now face parliamentary demands to kick the American troops out. That would be a big win for Iran.
The Americans are already mostly out of Syria, which is under Iranian and Russian tutelage. Rather than limiting Iran’s regional power projection, the assassination of Soleimani has opened an opportunity to consolidate its Iraqi link.
But Trenin misses another strategic point: Iran now has an opportunity to ditch the nuclear deal completely and restart its effort to gain all the technology needed for nuclear weapons. The logic is compelling: the Americans feel free to assassinate Iranians because they do not fear Iran’s paltry conventional military capabilities. Hardliners in Tehran don’t even have to be very hardline to argue that getting nuclear weapons would make Washington treat Iran with the respect and deference President Trump accords Kim Jong-un. The Europeans, Russians, and Chinese will be much less likely to come to America’s side on the nuclear issue in the wake of this assassination.
The Trump Administration is arguing that it killed Soleimani because he was plotting to kill more Americans, which is likely correct since he has spent much of the past several decades doing just that. But will this assassination protect Americans? Soleimani will be replaced. Muhandis will be too. Their replacements will be people who can be relied upon to target the United States, one way or another.
It is also being argued (General Keane did it on NPR this morning) that the Americans, having failed to respond to several Iranian provocations in the Gulf, needed to do something to restore deterrence. That makes President Trump’s relatively small mistakes an excuse for a great big one. It was indeed astounding that the Americans did nothing in the aftermath of attacks on Gulf shipping and Saudi oil production facilities. Proportional responses would have been appropriate.
A disproportionate one suggests the Americans think they can break the Iranians. That is doubtful. Iran is in big economic trouble and its people have been protesting against Tehran’s regional adventures. Iraqis have also been protesting the Islamic Republic’s overweening influence in their country. Now those dissenting voices are likely to be muted if not silenced. Iran and Iraq, which in the 1980s fought a ferocious war with each other, are now going to be largely united against the Americans.
These assassinations look to me like precisely what you would expect of a President under siege domestically and looking for a quick win internationally. Tactical success. Strategic nonsense.
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Xi/Bismarck
My SAIS colleague Charlie Stevenson, of Stevenson’s Army fame, distributed this comment today. While I disagree in general on industrial policy, which is a trap we should allow the Chinese to fall into, R&D and protection of intellectual property are certainly important.
Stimulated by a student paper which I hope will eventually be published, I see that there are valuable ways of thinking about US-Chinese relations that go beyond our current focus on things like “the Thucydides Trap” or “a new Cold War.” One of the flaws in these popular analogies is that they quickly lead inexorably to self-fulfilling prophecies, the ill-fitting anti-Soviet playbook, or even nuclear war.
Other ways of looking at the US-Chinese competition include rivalries in Europe in the 18th and 19th centuries. The most optimistic and least applicable analogy is the peaceful British-American transition detailed in Kori Schake’s Safe Passage. Another example is the British-French rivalry following the Seven Years’ War in 1763. French officials consciously adopted a policy to “enfeeble” the British, first by strengthening their continental alliances and then by trying to dismember the British empire, starting with support for the American rebels. That worked – until the costs of that global war and other domestic problems triggered a revolution in Paris.
I’m especially intrigued by a third example: the British-German rivalry in the several decades before the First World War. I was aware of the military arms race between the two countries but needed reminding of the much greater breadth of the competition. Three Princeton economists show how Germany sought to leap ahead of Britain by promoting national technologies, using financial tools, blunt tariffs, and even massive infrastructure projects like the Berlin-to-Baghdad railway, which would have ended Berlin’s reliance on the Suez Canal. [A German geographer coined the “silk road” term.]
Consciously or not, China already seems to be copying Bismarckian Germany’s multi-pronged approach, competing with America in trade, technology, finance, and infrastructure, as well as alliances and weaponry. I worry that the United States has been narrowly focused on military capabilities and espionage, while giving insufficient attention to other technology matters and broader diplomatic and economic relations. My takeaway is that we need a deliberate industrial policy including large government R&D expenditures and targeted technology trade measures.
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Stevenson’s army, December 3
– Despite the best efforts of foreign leaders to cozy up to
President Trump, he seems eventually to sour on them. Yesterday it was Brazil & Argentina.
– Revealing interview with SFRC Chaiman Risch, now sour on Turkey.
– WSJ says US intelligence says Iran is in serious economic trouble.
– Politico says GOP has given up trying to limit presidential trade powers.
– Australia is setting up a special unit to monitor Chinese interference.
– China is requiring facial recognition for new phones.
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. If you want to get it directly, 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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