Tag: 2020 Election
Stevenson’s army, December 6
Peter Beinart disparages the goal of American foreign policy leadership.
The Hill says maybe the polls weren’t so wrong.
WaPo writer says NDAA offers an alternative China policy.
Study blames diplomats’ illnesses on microwaves.
I’d forgotten how close Congress came to abolishing electoral college in 1969. WaPo tells the story.
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.
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Stevenson’s army, November 28
WaPo says the administration is giving career protections to political appointees and stripping it from careerists at OMB.
NYT has details of the confused effort to reform WHO.
Nimitz to the Persian Gulf. What next?
WSJ tells why Netanyahu-MBS meeting failed.
Politico has background on Jake Sullivan.
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).
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Stevenson’s army, Novemberr 27
WaPo reports closure of 10 US bases in Afghanistan.
China escalates trade war with Australia.
Fight in Taiwan parliament over allowing US pork imports.
David Brooks on US political divisions.
Puzzling purge of Defense Policy Board.
Former APSA Fellow Paul Musgrave reviews IR theory in light of Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
You don’t have to know details of the Amendment Tree in the Senate, only that it is the way the majority leader can block consideration of any amendments. Here’s a detailed example from last year.
And attached is an excerpt from a CRS paper that shows how often it has been used lately.
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).
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Eighteen good things to be thankful for
It’s Thanksgiving in the US, when usually we gather in extended families, quarrel vociferously, and eat and drink far too much. No gathering this year due to the corona virus, but lots of good things to be thankful for:
- A peaceful election with a clear result and a decent man as winner.
- The recommitment of my country to democracy, the rule of law, and human rights.
- All the poll workers and election boards that prepared well and executed to virtual perfection.
- The courts that have dismissed frivolous lawsuits, in defiance of the President.
- The voters who turned out (or in the case of mailed ballots turned in) in record numbers to make their will known.
- The media who didn’t fall for lies and Russian-, Chinese- or Iranian-sponsored memes.
- The health care workers who have tried so hard to keep us safe and cure us when we get ill.
- No serious symptoms among a few infected colleagues.
- Whoever published the genome of the corona virus, thus enabling quick work to develop a vaccine.
- The scientists who labor to invent vaccines and develop treatments for Covid-19.
- The millions of essential workers who have been delivering our food and mail, picking up our trash, guarding our workplaces, running the internet, and doing all the rest that makes staying home and social distancing possible.
- My students and fellow professors, who have risen to the challenge of remote learning with willing spirits.
- My colleagues all over the globe, who are hosting meetings and engaging across borders as never before.
- Health institutions worldwide that have refused to cave even under enormous strain.
- The political leaders who have shown that vigorous, early action can limit spread of the virus.
- Fellow citizens who wear masks and keep their distance.
- A city that has taken the epidemic seriously and continues to do so.
- Two wonderful sons, two equally wonderful daughters-in-law, three fantastic grandchildren, and a wife who also loves them all.
I’ll stop there, as 18 is also a good number signifying “life” in Hebrew. May all my readers be as fortunate as I am in this unsettled and risky world!
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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).
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The nightmare is over, now the hard work begins
I spent an hour this morning on Zoom with Italian colleagues at the Institute of International Affairs (IAI) talking about the American election and its consequences for foreign policy. Here are the points I prepared for them,
most of them all too obvious I’m afraid:
- While Biden is better informed and experienced on foreign policy than any president in decades, his most immediate priorities will be domestic: first and foremost stopping Covid-19 infections and moving as quickly as possible to revive the American economy, which is still in bad shape, and fix our social cleavages, which are severe.
- That said, he is putting in place a formidable foreign policy team: Tony Blinken, Jake Sullivan, Avril Haines and Linda Thomas-Greenfield are among our finest. Janet Yellen at Treasury will make an excellent counterpart on the economic side.
- Jake and Tony are both strongly committed to a revived domestic economy and solutions to America’s social challenges as prerequisites for a strong international role. You can expect them to be less transactional but just as aggressive as Trump on trade and investment issues, where America will need to satisfy more of the demands of its domestic producers.
- Missing so far from the Biden team is the Secretary of Defense. I’d still bet on Michele Fluornoy, but I admit I have little idea why she hasn’t been named yet. Defense industry ties may be the reason.
- Whoever gets Defense, Biden will seek to reinvigorate trans-Atlantic ties. He has a basically positive attitude towards NATO and America’s allies, whom he views as force multipliers whose basic values are aligned with ours.
- He is not opposed, as Trump was, to the European Union. I doubt he will prioritize a free trade agreement with the UK and might even try to revive the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership with Europe, or something like it.
- Willingness of the US to return to the JCPOA will help his effort to renew the Alliance, but it will require reciprocal Iranian willingness to return to the status quo ante. I’m not convinced Tehran will be willing before the June presidential election, and maybe not even after.
- Biden will want to cooperate quickly with Europe in responding to Russia’s regional challenges in the Baltics, the Balkans, and especially Ukraine, though he will be hampered on Ukraine by the allegations against his son Hunter.
- The US will return, likely on Day 1, to the Paris Climate Change Agreement, which I trust will be a welcome move in Europe.
- The big looming problem for both the US and Europe is how to meet China’s global economic and political challenge. Biden will want to pursue both cooperation and competition with China.
- He is not interested in a new cold war, but he will be far more committed globally to democratic values and human rights than Trump has been. He will not be sword dancing in Riyadh, encouraging President Xi to imprison Uighurs, or staying silent about repression in Hong Kong.
- Renewed American support for human rights and democracy will unsettle relations not only with China but also with the Gulf, Israel, Brazil, and possibly with Hungary and Poland.
- Biden will not be able to restore everything to where things stood four years ago. He’ll need to prioritize.
- But I think all those who want to see American global leadership based on a rational assessment of both values and interests will feel a lot better about things on January 21 than they did on November 2. The nightmare is over, but the hard work is just beginning.
In addition to foreign policy, the Italians pressed me on the future of the Republican Party and reports that black men and Hispanics shifted towards Trump. I responded more or less this way:
- The numbers are still iffy, but at least some of the shift among Hispanics was due to mostly white Venezuelans and Cubans who fled socialist countries and were frightened when Trump told them Biden was a socialist. Some Latinos in Texas appear to have shifted as well, possibly due to the employment impact of border wall construction.
- The Republican Party now has a choice to make between continuing as a right-wing extremist and racist party or reverting to right-of-center social and economic conservatism. Trump will try to keep the party on the former track and can boast of an enormous turnout of voters, and relative victories in the House races, to help him. So far, only Senator Romney seems courageous enough to point in the direction of more conventional conservatism. We’ll have to wait and see which direction Republicans choose.
On the domestic side, I also emphasized the importance of the January 5 Senate run-off elections in Georgia, which will determine how far Biden can go on the legislative front.
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