Tag: United States
The end is nigh 2019
Except for my 401k, the teens have not been a great decade. We’ve watched the Arab spring turn into the Arab civil wars, Russia reassert itself annexing Crimea and invading Ukraine, China increase its overt and covert challenges to the US, and North Korea defy American efforts to limit or eliminate its nuclear and missile programs. The US has initiated trade wars, withdrawn from international commitments (including the Paris climate change accord as well as the Iran nuclear deal and the intermediate nuclear forces agreement), and abandoned its support for democracy and rule of law, not only but importantly in Israel and Palestine.
Several of these developments could worsen in 2020. The Iran/US tit-for-tat is more likely to escalate than de-escalate. Some Arab civil wars like Yemen and Syria are burning out, but others are spreading beyond the Arab world, with Turkey intervening in Syria and Libya, Russia and Egypt in Libya, and Iran in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. Russia is not advancing in Ukraine, but it seems disinclined to withdraw via the Minsk II agreement that would re-establish Ukraine’s control over its southeastern border with Russia and allow a significant degree of autonomy for Luhansk and Donetsk. China and the US have reached a limited and partial agreement on trade, but no more comprehensive accord is in sight. North Korea is bound to test more missiles, if not nuclear weapons.
US mistakes are especially concerning. The withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal has freed Iran to begin to violate its provisions, accelerating the date at which Tehran will have all the technology it needs to make nuclear weapons. Global warming is accelerating and the arms race with Russia is quickening. NATO is not brain dead, but US leadership of the alliance is more in doubt than ever before due to the President’s inability to recognize the real advantages a multilateral partnership gives to American power projection. American abandonment of even the pretense of evenhandedness in Israel’s conflict with the Palestinians has opened the door to extremist Jewish ambitions to annex the West Bank.
Only 11 months remain before the next US presidential election. It will focus mainly on domestic issues like the economy, health care, religion, and race. But there can be no doubt the United States is less well positioned internationally than it was in January 2017, when President Trump took office. The rest of the world increasingly regards the U.S. as a menace to peace and security, not its guarantor. Excessive reliance on military force and erratic decisionmaking have reduced American influence. Even the relatively strong economy, which has continued to grow at the pace established in the Obama administration and thereby reduced unemployment to historic lows, has not propped up American prestige, because of Trump’s trade wars. Enthusiasm for America is at a nadir in most of the world.
We can hope for better and toast the prospects this evening. But there is little reason to believe the United States is going to recover until it gets new leadership, not only in the White House but also in the Senate, where the new year will see some semblance of a “trial” of President Trump on self-evident impeachment charges. He tried to extort Ukraine into investigating a political rival for his personal benefit using US government resources and has withheld cooperation with the resulting investigation. But few if any Republican Senators seem ready to acknowledge the facts. I might hope Chief Justice Roberts will refuse to preside over a sham procedure and insist on testimony, but he has given no hint of that yet.
America is a great country. It has survived many mistakes. But whether it can get through the next year without doing itself irreversible harm is in doubt. It could “acquit” and re-elect a president most of the world regards as more of a threat to peace and security than Vladimir Putin. Or it could, against the odds, redeem itself and its role in the world with a conviction, a good election free of international interference, and inauguration of someone the world and most its citizens can respect. Take your choice, America.
And happy New Year!
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Stevenson’s army, December 23
As we all know, little of significance ever happens between December 23 and January 2. But there are still interesting things to read.
-Did you know [I didn’t] that the OSS had a design bureau that had a major impact on postwar design of things like the UN logo, the WH Situation Room, and molded chairs?
– ProPublica analysis says poor software contributed to the USS McCain’s collision.
– More items buried in the NDAA are surfacing: a study about Djibouti required; withdrawal from the Open Skies Treaty blocked.
– Case closed. Saudi courts sentence 5 underlings to death because of the Khashoggi murder. Senior officials exonerated.
– FP says the administration is planning to create a special envoy and task force for the Sahel.
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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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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Legitimacy counts
For only the third time in American history, the House of representatives, voting along partisan lines, impeached a president yesterday. President Trump now faces a trial in the Senate, where virtually all of the Republicans are committed to following Majority Leader McConnell’s lead. He has announced himself not impartial, despite the oath he will be required to swear, and is coordinating with the White House on how to proceed.
The debate yesterday was a bore. If someone said something new, it escaped me. Democrats relied mainly on the facts elicited in public hearings that demonstrated the President
- had used his public office to seek and extort illegal Ukrainian help against a political rival, using his private lawyer as his main agent, and
- obstructed Congress’ efforts to obtain testimony and documents relevant to the proceedings.
The Republicans simply asserted that the above facts had not been demonstrated and criticized the process, claiming that parts of it were conducted in secret (even if Republicans were present in the closed-door hearings) and that no witness had testified to the President’s direct involvement (most of the witnesses who could have done so were prevented by the President). One Republican even claimed that Jesus had been given more rights in his trial by Pontius Pilate. This silliness merits no response.
One Republican claim deserves deeper consideration: that the Democrats are trying to overturn the results of the 2016 election. That is literally untrue, since removal of Trump from office by the Senate would bring Vice President Pence to the Oval Office, not Hillary Clinton. But the Republican claim reflects a real concern: Trump, whose 63 million votes (he actually got less than that) the Republicans repeatedly cited yesterday in the House, lost the popular vote to Clinton, who got close to 66 million votes. Trump won only because of the Electoral College, created in the 18th century to share power between more populated states and less populated ones. It gives a voter in Wyoming something like three times the weight of a voter in California or New York.
Trump is unlikely to do better in the popular vote in 2020. California and New York, which voted 62% and 59% for Clinton, both suffered big losses in the Republican tax cuts of 2017. Trump is loathed in both the first and third most populous states in the country. Texas, which Trump won with 52%, is turning increasingly purple, if not blue. It is hard to picture how Trump will make up in the rest of the country for the tilt to the Democrats–any Democrat–in the next election’s popular vote totals.
But these three populous states are arguably the most disadvantaged in the Electoral College. So it is easy to imagine that Trump might win in the Electoral College with, let us guess, 5 million fewer popular votes than the Democratic candidate.
This is a serious problem with no easy solution. It is serious because power in a republic needs to come from the people and the people need to have equal rights. There is no divine right, or right of less populous states, to choose leaders.
It can’t be fixed easily because amending the Constitution to eliminate the Electoral College would require a 2/3 majority in both Houses of Congress as well as approval in 3/4 (38 out of 50) of the states. The Electoral College’s perverse effect on the popular vote can also be undone by a “National Popular Vote Interstate Compact,” in which the states agree to award their Electoral College votes to the popular vote winner. It would be activated once states with a majority of the electoral votes agree. But that ongoing effort is unlikely to produce results before the 2020 election.
Both Democrats and Republicans know this: Trump did not win the popular vote in 2016 and won’t in 2020. Republicans need to ferociously assert his legitimacy because he lacks the approval of the plurality of voters. Democrats will try in the Senate trial to ensure that he is de-legitimized further.
The trial in the Senate has the potential to make or break Trump. Speaker Pelosi is holding out on formally notifying the Senate of the impeachment until McConnell provides assurance of a serious process, with witnesses, including those prevented from testifying in the House. I don’t really see what leverage she has–the Democratic Senators who are candidates for President will want the trial early in January so they can get back on the campaign trail–but I certainly understand what is at stake. Legitimacy counts.
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Little England
The Curator Emerita of the Smithsonian and I spent last week in London. You’d think we would have something interesting to say about the election and Brexit.
We don’t.
The fact is no one we spoke to mentioned the election or Brexit without prompting. When prompted, the people we were talking with made it clear they would not vote for Boris Johnson and opposed Brexit, but their preferences varied. This, in a nutshell, is a major reason for the Conservative landslide, which gave Prime Minister Johnson control of parliament. The Brexiteers remained overwhelmingly united within the Conservative fold, disappointing the Brexit Party. The anti-Brexit vote got split up among Labour, Lib Dems, Greens, Scottish Nationalists, and others. And Labour managed to put forward the worst candidate ever: manifesto thumping Jeremy Corbyn.
The most overt political voice we heard all week was a demonstration heading up Haymarket to Piccadilly Circus chanting “Boris Johnson is not our prime minister!” It was mostly younger people shouting with real passion, but not enough votes.
Others we spoke with just wanted it all over. They seemed tired of talking about it. Unlike Americans, whose daily conversation in the capital is all about Donald Trump, many in London seemed to want to ignore Boris Johnson. Life, and even politics, has so much more to offer.
That said, no one should underestimate the impact of what the Brits have done. I’ll be surprised if it takes their economy less than a generation to recover, as companies that once used the United Kingdom as their base for European operations are moving out, any trade deal with the EU will not be as advantageous as membership, and the UK’s government budget will need to expand to make up for the functions the EU used to perform and for the 4.5 billion-pound abatement the UK received in 2018 as a member state.
Perhaps just as significant: the Kingdom is unlikely to remain united. Both Northern Ireland and Scotland want to stay in the EU. Scotland is on track for a second referendum on secession, sooner rather than later. Northern Ireland is bound to be disappointed with whatever Brexit brings, as it will increase either the trade barriers with the rest of Ireland or with Britain.
Anyone who think the US will rush to the rescue with some fantastic deal on trade and investment is smoking our latest legalized substance. The UK has far less negotiating leverage without the rest of the EU than it will in a bilateral transaction.
What it boils down to is Little England, not the Global Britain the prime minister has promised.
I hasten to add that we spent a wonderful, even if rainy, day in Cambridge, where I had visited 55 years ago while hitchhiking around England and Wales. Great Saint Mary’s Church, which was open, and Trinity College Chapel, which was not, are reminders of how much England has endured and survived. Seeing The Backs again was a thrill, even in typical Cambridge weather:
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Trump and anti-regime protests worldwide
Notable protests against ruling regimes are occurring these days in Iraq, Lebanon, Iran, and Hong Kong. Recent months have seen similar protests in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Sudan. These are not your garden variety protests for more jobs or better wages, against police abuse and corruption, or in favor of improvements in education and health care. They are “regime change” protests: cases in which citizens have concluded that the social contract between themselves and their government no longer serves their interests. Rather than asking for reform, the protesters are asking for fundamental changes in the way they are governed.
Most of these protests are against regimes the US doesn’t much like. Washington is happy to see the Islamic Republic targeted not just inside Iran but also–despite good relations with Baghdad and Beirut–in Iraq, where Iranian consulates have been burned, and Lebanon, where Hizbollah is suffering criticism. The Bolivian president demonstrators chased from power, Evo Morales, was no friend of the US. Washington would like the same thing to happen to Nicolas Maduro in Venezuela. In Sudan the Americans helped broker the agreement that deposed President Omar al-Bashir, whom the International Criminal Court indicted for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide in Darfur.
Hong Kong is a case of its own. There the protests are in favor of preserving the justice system’s autonomy and expanding democratic representation. President Trump, engaged in a massive tariff war with China, has been hesitant to criticize Beijing for fear of the cost to his trade agenda. But Congress compelled him to sign a bill providing for the possibility of sanctions against Chinese and Hong Kong officials responsible for repression of protests. The bill passed both Houses with veto-proof majorities. It will be difficult, however, to convince Trump to use the authority provided, unless he feels it will help in some way his trade agenda.
With that exception, the protests seem good to President Trump. But take another look.
These protests are without exception in favor of more liberal democracy and rule of law, not less. In Iran, demonstrators want the fall of a regime that is an anocracy: it mixes democratic forms like elections and a parliament with a dictatorship of the Supreme Leader, backed by security forces loyal to him and not the elected President. In Lebanon and Iraq, the protests have targeted systems that share power on the basis of ethnicity rather than equal rights. Bolivian President Morales’ cardinal sin was tampering with election results, Venezuelan President Maduro has resisted yielding power to a constitutionally elected successor, and Sudanese President al-Bashir was a dictator ousted by the military but in response to popular demand.
Looked at this way, the protests are all antithetical to Trump’s ambitions inside the US:
- he seeks less participation in US elections, not more, and re-election not with the popular vote but with the vote in the Electoral College;
- he is refusing to cooperate with Congress’ constitutionally authorized impeachment proceedings;
- he has sought to enhance presidential power, not limit it;
- he has appealed to his base in blatantly ethnic, white nationalist terms; and
- he is seeking to insulate the US military from accountability and to make it beholden exclusively to him.
The goals of the regime-change demonstrators worldwide point precisely in the opposite directions.
Bottom line: the world the demonstrators want is not Trump’s world. It is the liberal democratic world ruled by law that he is seeking to destroy. You know whom I am rooting for.
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