Tag: gaza
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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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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Four more years is four too many
It’s a sad day for America. Not only has Donald Trump re-entered the White House. His wealthy buddies are no longer hiding their allegiances. Elon Musk is not only supporting Alternative für Deutschland. He is copying a salute most Germans still remember with shame.
Off to the expected scams
Trump’s first moves are against immigrants and in favor of the fossil fuel industry. Ignoring the 14th amendment, he is trying to deprive people born in the US of citizenship it provides. He has also blocked asylum seekers. Raids that will round up legal as well as illegal immigrants are imminent. Trump wants to get rid of Biden’s efforts to slow global warming and accelerate oil, gas, and coal production. He is withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement, which allows Washington to define its own measures to prevent climate change. He has also ordered withdrawal from the World Health Organization.
Trump is also promising Tik Tok relief from a law that provides for no possibility of relief from the president. He is pardoning 1500 criminals, most of whom attacked the Capitol violently on January 6, 2021. The Trump family has launched a crypto “memecoin” that has already put billions in his pockets. It will implode, like other such frauds, plundering late-comer investors. Trump’s threatened 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico February 1 will cause a major trade war. That will jack up inflation and impoverish many people in the Western Hemisphere.
Don’t lose sight of the baseline
Biden is leaving office with an extraordinary record of achievement. Federal and state prosecutors, including in deep red states, have found no reason to prosecute any Biden Administration political appointees. None have resigned in scandal. Biden pardoned his family not because they had done something wrong but because he rightfully feared Trumped-up charges against them. Trump’s nominee for FBI Director has promised such revenge. Note he did not pardon himself.
The economic stats at the end of 2024 are these:
- Unemployment 4.1% (12/24)
- GDP growth 3.0% (IV 24)
- Inflation 2.9% (2024)
- Budget deficit $2T (2024)
- Stock market (DJ) 43k, more or less
What are the odds that Trump will beat all these benchmarks? Close to zero. Three of them? Not much higher. We’ll have to wait and see.
Here are just a few other Biden claims:
—Strongest economy in the world —Nearly 16 million new jobs, a record —Wages up —Inflation coming down —Racial wealth gap lowest in 20 years —Historic infrastructure investments —Lower prescription drug costs —Record health insurance coverage —Most significant climate law ever —First major gun safety law in 30 years —First Black woman on Supreme Court —Help for 1 million veterans exposed to toxins —Violent crime rate at 50-year low —Border crossings lower than when Trump left office
Foreign policy
I fault Biden for his sloppy handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal and his failure to rein in Israel in Gaza. That undermined his claim that America stands up for democracy. He responded reasonably well and quickly to the fall of Assad in Syria. With Iran, Biden failed to revive the nuclear agreement. That has left a big challenge for Trump. But if Biden had succeeded, Trump would have withdrawn again.
Biden was great reunifying and rallying NATO to support for Ukraine. Fearful of provoking war between the US and Russia, however, Biden was too hesitant in providing long-range weapons. I hope Trump will give Kyiv all it needs to win. In the Balkans, Biden’s knowledgeable minions were miserably unsuccessful.
Biden was good on China, Taiwan, India, and Asia in general. But he couldn’t refocus more attention there due to events in the Middle East. We’ll have to see if Trump does better.
Next four years
Half the country did not think this was enough. They disliked Kamala Harris, an articulate, experienced, competent, Black and Indian woman. She had been a successful prosecutor and a senator. They thought they would do better with a convicted felon, womanizer, racist, and flim-flam man. I’ll be interested to hear what they have to say after four more years of his bombast.
PS: Let me be clear: four more yours is four too many. But the last thing I would want is to see the Vice President in the Oval Office. He is arguably worse.
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Beyond ceasefire, what can really happen?
The Gaza ceasefire went into effect today, after a few hours delay. Reports are that humanitarian supplies are entering. Hamas and Israel are arranging or exchange of hostages and prisoners. This phase is to last 6 weeks, after which a more permanent cessation of hostilities is to commence. What are the prospects for a longer agreement?
The next phase
Secretary of State Blinken helpfully outlined the Biden Administration’s plans for phase 2 at the Atlantic Council last week:
We believe that the Palestinian Authority should invite international partners to help establish and run an interim administration with responsibility for key civil sectors in Gaza, like banking, water, energy, health, civil coordination with Israel. The international community would provide funding, technical support, and oversight. The interim administration would include Palestinians from Gaza and representatives from the PA—selected following meaningful consultation with communities in Gaza—and would hand over complete responsibility to a fully reformed PA administration as soon as it’s feasible.
The administrators would operate in close cooperation with a senior UN official, who should oversee the international stabilization and recovery effort.
An interim security mission would be made up of members of partner nation security forces and vetted Palestinian personnel. Its responsibilities would include creating a secure environment for humanitarian and reconstruction efforts and ensuring border security, which is crucial to preventing smuggling that could allow Hamas to rebuild its military capacity. We would stand up a new initiative to train, to equip, to vet a PA-led security force for Gaza to focus on law and order and gradually take over for the interim security mission.
These arrangements would be enshrined in a UN Security Council resolution.
Some of our partners have already expressed their willingness to contribute troops and police for such a mission—but if, and only if, it is agreed that Gaza and the West Bank are reunified under a reformed PA as part of a pathway to an independent Palestinian state.
This depicts a fairly conventional late 1990s style “integrated” intervention. The UN Security Council authorized interim administrations like this in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1995), East Timor (1999), and Kosovo (1999). They were not brilliantly successful, but they markedly improved the situation in all three places. Blinken omits one essential ingredient for success: executive authority. The UNSC will need to empower the interim authorities to issue laws, arrest people, and use force to protect civilians.
One new wrinkle here is the Palestinians, who are divided politically and geographically. Palestinian Authority (PA) President Abbas has already declared its readiness to take on its assigned role. I don’t know anyone who would agree with that proposition, as he has done little to reform it. Besides, it is going to have trouble gaining traction in territory ruled by Hamas for almost two decades. Hamas has said it is prepared to give up its governance role. But at least some of the remaining Hamas militants are going to make sure the PA has a hard time.
Other new wrinkles
I see little prospect that the current Israeli government will accept what Blinken proposes. Netanyahu will not want the ceasefire to last past 6 weeks. That would mark the beginning of the end for him. His right-wing coalition partners had a hard time accepting the ceasefire. They will not accept an international administration whose mandate includes eventual creation of a Palestinian state. In addition, if the war ends or his government collapses, Netanyahu will have to face prosecution and elections. He doesn’t want that.
It will not be possible to start up an international administration without Israeli cooperation. Neighbors are vital factors in determining the success or failure of post-war stabilization and reconstruction. Arab Gulf states won’t agree to contribute troops, police, and money without Israeli approval.
What remains of Hamas will also oppose the next phase, which threatens to end its rule permanently. After 6 weeks of recuperation and attempts to re-arm, extremists in Hamas will try to derail the process. It will only take an attack or two on innocent Israelis to restart the war.
The final new wrinkle
If ever we get to the next phase, it will be in the Trump Administration. In his first term, Trump gave the Israelis 100% support. He abandoned support for the two-state solution and moved the US embassy to Jerusalem. He accepted annexation of the Golan Heights and West Bank settlements as legal. His negotiators put forward a peace plan that paid little attention to the Palestinian goal of statehood.
Trump is reputed to have played a key role in getting the ceasefire. But he did that by threatening Hamas, not the Israelis. Blinken in his remarks at the Atlantic Council suggested that
Israelis must abandon the myth that they can carry out de-facto annexation without cost and consequence to Israel’s democracy, to its standing, to its security.
Trump isn’t going to tell them that. It will happen only if Israelis go to the polls and elect a government committed to Israeli democracy. That is what Netanyahu and his right-wing allies will try to prevent. If they succeed, the war will go on.
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An opportunity that may be missed
The Middle East is in a rare period of rapid change. The Assad regime in Syria is gone. Its successor is still undefined and uncertain. Israel has crippled Iran’s Hamas and Hizbollah allies. It is trying to do likewise to the Houthis in Yemen. Egypt is on the sidelines, preoccupied with civil wars in Libya and Sudan. A weakened Iran is contemplating whether nuclear weapons would help to restore its regional influence.
The global powers that be are not anxious to get too involved. Russia, stretched thin, let Syria go. The United States is inaugurating a president known to favor withdrawal from Syria. He will support almost anything Israel wants to do. China is doing its best to guarantee access to Middle East oil but wants to avoid political involvement. The European Union has a similar attitude.
So what will be the main factors in determining the future of the Middle East? Who has power and influence in the region and outside it?
Turkiye
The Turks are so far the big winners in Syria. They are getting an opportunity to send back Syrian refugees and will try to decimate their Syrian Kurdish enemies. They have influence over the ruling Hayat Tahrir al Sham (HTS) leadership in Damascus, whom they supplied and unleashed.
When it comes to reconstruction in Syria, Turkish companies are experienced and nearby. Turkish pockets aren’t as deep as American or Chinese pockets. But they are deep enough to get things started fast, especially if World Bank money is put on the table.
The Turks will try to convince the Americans to leave. They’ll argue that they can and will suppress Islamic State and other terrorists. They may even promise to allow the Kurds to continue their local governance structures. But they would want the Syrian Kurds to cut their ties to Kurdish terrorists inside Turkey.
The Turks will want a not-too-Islamist government in Damascus, something akin to their own. Syria has an enormously diverse population. HTS governance in Idlib was autocratic. But that was during the civil war. It will be much harder to impose that on Damascus after liberation from Assad. Syrians want their freedom. Turkiye has an interest in their getting it. Only inclusive governance will permit the return of refugees.
The Gulf
Some of the big money for reconstruction in Syria will come from the Gulf. The Saudis may be willing, if they gain some political influence in the bargain. How they use that influence will be important. In the Balkans 30 years ago they sponsored Wahabist clerics and mosques. Mohammed bin Salman has marginalized those within Saudi Arabia. We can hope he will not export them now. But he will, like the Turks, want a strong executive in Damascus.
What Syria needs from the Gulf is support for inclusive, democratic governance. The UAE will weigh in heavily against Islamism, but the Emirates are far from democratic or inclusive. Qatar, more tolerant of Islamism, will prefer inclusion, if only because the Americans will pressure them to do so.
Israel
Prime Minister Netanyahu has not achieved elimination of Hamas in Gaza. But he has weakened it. The Israelis have been far more successful in Lebanon, where they have dealt heavy blows to Hezbollah. They are also destroying many Syrian military capabilities. And they have seized UN-patrolled Syrian territory in the Golan Heights and on Mount Hermon.
Israel had already neutralized Egypt and Jordan via peace agreements. Ditto the UAE and Bahrain via the Abrahamic accords, though they were never protagonists in war against Israel. It would like similar normalization with Saudi Arabia. Now Israel controls border areas inside Lebanon and Syria. Repression on the West Bank and attacks on the Houthis in Yemen are proceeding apace.
Netanyahu is resisting the end of the Gaza war to save his own skin from the Israeli courts and electorate. Whether he succeeds at that or not, his legacy will be an “Israeli World.” That is a militarily strong Israel surrounded by buffer zones. But he has done serious damage to Israeli democracy and society.
Iran
Iran is weakened. That will encourage it to quicken the pace of its nuclear program. It won’t go all the way to deploying nuclear weapons. That would risk giving the Israelis an excuse for a massive attack, or even a nuclear strike. Nor can Ankara adopt the Israeli policy of opaqueness, as it is a signatory of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. That requires openness to inspections. So transparency about its nuclear threshold status is the likely policy.
Bottom line
Turkiye, Israel, and the Gulf (especially Saudi Arabia) are the big winners from the current Middle East wars. They would be even stronger if they were to cooperate. All have an interest in preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons, in stabilizing Syria, and in preventing terrorist resurgence. So does the US. There is an opportunity, but one that may be missed.
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