Tag: United States
Calm in the eye of the storm
I’m in Atlanta, poll-watching for the Georgia Democratic Party. I’ve done it in Egypt, Libya, Albania, and elsewhere, but never before in the US. We own a house in Atlanta down the street from elder son Jared and his family. But no, we are not moving here. We are only trying to view the election from a more interesting angle than DC. There more than 90% of the population will vote Harris.
Roving
I am an “outside” poll watcher for Fulton County (Atlanta) early voting. The county is deep blue, not red. “Inside” poll watchers need to be credentialed for a specific polling place and can do it only there. That means six or seven hours per day for two weeks inside the same place. I don’t envy them. Credentials are not needed for outside poll watchers, who don’t enter the polling place except to visit the toilets.
I’m being used as what the State Department would call a “rover.” I go wherever the county Voter Protection chief, Melissa, sends me. That is mostly to places where the Democrats lack coverage. Fulton County is big–I’ve had to drive as much as 25 miles from my house. Traffic is horrendous, but patience and Googlemaps get me there in my 18-year-old Honda Fit.
What I do
My task is to look for issues and incidents. I do this mainly by approaching voters as they leave the polling place to ask how things went. Did they need to wait in line? For how long? Were things running smoothly?
So far, the answers have all been cheery and positive. People here are really happy after voting. Only one of the six polling places I’ve visited had a line. That one was less than a half hour wait. That line was gone an hour later. Everywhere else, people have been voting in less than five minutes or so.
Near some polling places, police sit discreetly in patrol cars, away from the main entrance. None of those I encountered had seen any problems. The few election workers I’ve run into likewise report no difficulties. I haven’t even had a complaint about a misspelled name or one missing from the voter roll. Georgia allows open carry of long guns. I haven’t seen any.
I also haven’t run into any Republican poll watchers. Maybe some are inside the polling places I’ve visited. It would be interesting to hear their impressions.
Value added
I report my lack of incidents and issues dutifully on an app as well as by text to Melissa. She reminds me that a good day in voter protection is a boring one. My value added is providing notice that things are okay at and near polling places where her coverage is spotty.
I’ll continue my roving for the next two weeks or so. I don’t imagine it will all be as uneventful as the last two days. But there is no way of knowing. The press is reporting record early voting turnout so far. That bodes well for the Democrats, who have encouraged people to vote early. But of course I have no idea how the people I talk to vote. And no real sense of how the rest of Georgia will tilt.
I’m in the eye of the storm. It’s calm here, until it’s not.
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A true conservative would vote Harris
I don’t have a lot of Republican friends. That’s true. But for those Republicans I know identity is the reason for their attachment to that party. One was born into a family in Arizona in which no one had ever voted for a Democrat. Another, an otherwise first-rate political analyst, simply believes what Republicans say and doubts what Democrats say. He puts the burden of proof on his opponents.
Neither of these colleagues has ever before supported across-the-board tariffs or deportation of immigrants. They both pride themselves on not being racists. Yet they will vote for a candidate who wants to impose broad tariffs and deport millions. Trump is also a confirmed white supremacist and has promised to restrict minorities from moving to the suburbs. Republican identity trumps [pun intended] their policy preferences. It shifts the burden of proof, so here are some proofs.
The domestic issues
To be fair, traditional Republicans are in a difficult spot. The Republican party they knew and loved favored lower taxes and high defense expenditures. It has evaporated. Trump’s Republican party favors lower taxes only for the truly wealthy and abandonment of defense obligations.
Presidents Reagan and George W. Bush welcomed immigrants. Trump blames them for crimes they haven’t committed, as he did for the Central Park five. He wanted them executed, which is what he wants for immigrants who kill “Americans.” The five, all Black, were innocent.
Traditional Republicans do have reason to dislike Kamala Harris’ policy proposals. They fear extra spending for her housing, healthcare, education, and other “social” programs would explode the deficit. But they should be aware that the data is clear. Trump did that, even before the COVID-19 epidemic. Her spending proposals will have to pass in Congress. Trump’s promise of tariffs he can levy without Congressional approval
There is a decades-long history of lower percentage debt increases under Democratic than Republican presidents:
This is at least in part due to Republican control of one or both Houses of Congress. That’s a good reason for a Republican debt hawk to vote for some down-ballot Republicans. But it is not a good reason to vote for Trump.
Foreign policy
On foreign policy, the situation is even clearer. Both Trump and Harris are hawkish on China and protective of Israel. But Trump reached a trade agreement with China that Beijing didn’t implement. He did nothing to respond. The trade agreement also cost the US budget a great deal due to related agricultural subsidies. They continue. Trump would back Israel to the hilt. Harris wants to rein it in, provide humanitarian assistance to Palestinians, and prevent a wider war.
Trump has threatened to abandon allies in Europe and to end support for Ukraine. Harris backs the NATO allies and Kyiv. Most NATO members are now fulfilling their 2024 NATO commitment to spend 2% of GNP on defense. The big jumps came under Biden, after the Russian expansion of the Ukraine invasion. They did not come under Trump. Allied solidarity in supplying Ukraine has helped to counter Russia’s expansionist impulse and reduce the threat to other “frontline” states.
Putin’s Russia is an expansionist, imperial power trying to correct what it regards as history’s mistakes. If Moscow wins in Ukraine, it will try again in Moldova and eventually Poland and other former Soviet satellites. It is not exaggerating to say Ukrainians are dying to prevent Americans and Europeans from fighting.
Trump has encouraged South Korea and Japan to think about getting their own nuclear weapons. That he thinks would reduce US commitments in Asia. It is a truly bad idea, as it would leave Asian security at risk of a nuclear confrontation. The US would not control the outcome.
Trump has signaled he would not help defend Taiwan. China will take advantage of that signal. Biden’s expressed willingness to support Taiwan has arguably forestalled a Chinese effort to take it over.
If you are a true Republican, vote Harris
Half of Trump’s former cabinet secretaries are not supporting his re-election bid. Nor is his Vice President, about whose safety during the January 6 riot Trump was unconcerned. Former Vice President Cheney, a staunch conservative, and his also conservative daughter Liz are voting for Harris. So too is Mark Milley, Trump’s Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, along with hundreds of other retired generals. Milley regards Trump as “fascist to the core.”
Preventing Trump from doing what he has pledged to do should outweigh any remaining identity issues. A true Republican would vote Harris.
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A Balkans agenda for the lame duck
We are entering the final stretch before the US election. That means a lame duck period for lower priority parts of the world like the Balkans until January 20. Neither Kamala Harris nor Donald Trump is likely to say anything about the region before November 5. Even after Inauguration Day it will be some time before the new administration focuses on the Balkans.
We can guess their views
Harris’ views on the Balkans are unknown. But she has spent a career prosecuting criminals and defending equal rights. That likely tells you something about her attitude toward corruption and ethnonationalism. Trump is a corrupt white supremacist who tried to partition Kosovo while in the White House. If elected, he will no doubt empower Ric Grenell or his doppelganger to try again in Kosovo and Bosnia. Serbia has leverage on Trump. Jared Kushner has been looking for investment opportunities there.
What should the people at the State Department and in the White House do in this lame duck period? They should seek to correct the mistakes of the last three years, which have produced mainly diplomatic failure in the Balkans. The Biden Administration mistakenly focused on creating a statutory Association of Serb Majority Municipalities in Kosovo. In Bosnia, it rightly sought to disempower ethnonationalist politicians, but it succeeded mainly with Bosniaks. Those priorities condemned Biden’s Balkan policies to strategic defeat. They also alienated Kosovars and Bosniaks, America’s best friends in the region.
Here are a few ideas to correct course. Assuming that Harris will be elected, as I fondly hope, these thoughts aim to reduce the sway of ethnic nationalism. They would also increase the functionality of governance in still-fragile Kosovo as well as Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Some ideas
- Consult with Kosovo Prime Minister Kurti on a joint plan to establish beyond doubt his country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. This should include an end to Belgrade intimidation of Serbs who join Kosovo security institutions and wider international recognition.
- Adopt as the official US stance conditional support for a nongovernmental Association of Serb Majority Municipalities. The municipalities themselves should form this Association consistent with the Kosovo constitution. The conditions should include Belgrade fulfillment of its obligations under the agreement in which Pristina agreed to the Association.
- Tell Belgrade publicly that it needs to produce accountability for the Serbian government malfeasance of last year. That includes the kidnapping of Kosovo police, rioting against KFOR, and the Banjska terrorist plot.
- Stop the bad-mouthing of Serbian environmentalists who oppose the Rio Tinto lithium plant. Start publicly criticizing corruption and growing autocracy in Belgrade.
- End the Bosnia High Representative’s intervention to reverse the European Court of Human Rights ruling in the Kovacevic case. The ECHR ruling promises a big step in reducing ethnic nationalist control of state institutions in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
- Develop criminal charges in the US against the leading Serb and Croat advocates (Milorad Dodik and Dragan Covic) of ethnonational division in Bosnia.
There are some tall orders in this list. But the failure of three years of misguided US and EU diplomatic efforts suggests a dramatic turn is needed.
The resistance will be strong
Serbia’s President Vucic is committed to the “Serbian world” goal of governing Serbs in neighboring countries. He has succeeded in Montenegro. The government in Podgorica is under Serbia’s thumb. In Bosnia and Kosovo, only de facto partition can deliver success to Serbia. Belgrade will resist all the above moves, as will their proxies in the neighboring countries.
Belgrade is at risk of falling irreversibly under the influence of Russia and China. The US needs to counter that influence with sticks as well as carrots. The carrots only appeasement approach has failed. Here is the result:
The Americans will be far more effective at all of this if the EU and UK will act in tandem. The UK will likely follow a strong US lead. The EU may not follow right away, That makes another task for the lame duck interval: getting Brussels on board.
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The war Netanyahu wanted is at hand
Prime Minister Netanyahu has spent the 31 years since the Oslo accords seeking two principal foreign policy goals: preventing establishment of a Palestinian state and destroying the Islamic Republic of Iran. He is on the verge of getting a chance to achieve both. In the process, he is ending Israeli democracy, earning the enmity of much of the Arab street, and drawing the US into another Middle East war. I don’t like the result, but he is definitely stalwart.
Obliterating the idea of a Palestinian state
I recall in the mid-1990s a discussion at a mutual friend’s house with the then National Security Advisor to Vice President Gore. Leon Fuerth believed that Netanyahu would eventually come around to accepting a Palestinian state. I had my doubts. I still think I was right.
Netanyahu spent many years thereafter pumping up the idea that Israel was under siege, both by the Palestinians and the Iranians. The Second Intifada and the wall Israel built to isolate itself, successfully, from the West Bank boosted his credibility. Once Hamas took over Gaza from the Palestinian Authority in 2006/7, he worked hard to keep the two governing bodies separate. Dividing the Palestinians was one way to make sure they couldn’t get what they wanted.
Defeating Iran
Hezbollah is Iran’s most important ally/proxy in the region. Israel has now destroyed perhaps 50% of its rocket and missile supplies and killed an even greater proportion of Hezbollah’s leaders. The pager/walkie-talkie attack two weeks ago maimed thousands of its cadres. Israeli troops are now on the ground in southern Lebanon seeking to push Hezbollah forces north of the Litani River.
Netanyahu is imagining that regime in Iran is imminent:
He will be content with the results of yesterday’s 180-missile Iranian attack. Israel appears to have suffered little damage and no known strategic losses. Many of the missiles were destroyed before hitting their targets by US, Israeli, and other unnamed defenses.
Retaliation is nevertheless all but certain. Netanyahu has been looking for an opportunity to hit Iran for decades. The Israelis will likely aim for nuclear and oil production facilities. The nuclear facilities will be difficult to destroy, as vital ones are ensconced well under ground. The best the IDF can hope for is to block some of the access routes. The oil facilities are more vulnerable. Oil and natural gas are Iran’s major exports. If they don’t flow, the economy will deflate.
Restraint is not in the cards
The Americans and Europeans will be urging restraint on Israel. They don’t want a regional war. Netanyahu isn’t listening. His own political future depends on continuing the fighting and achieving a spectacular military success. Hamas has denied him that in Gaza. So far, Hezbollah has proven an easier target. Netanyahu knows President Biden will do nothing to Israel’s block arms supplies. And he wants to boost Trump’s chances of winning the presidency. So he has no reason to restrain an attack he has wanted to launch for decades.
Netanyahu’s governing coalition has only a thin majority in the Knesset. But his allies and his own Likud political party have given him a blank check in pursuing a regional war. The Arab states are protesting the war in Gaza but doing little to prevent Israel from attacking Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, and Iran. All of them are anathema to the Gulf monarchies. The Arab street is still sympathetic to the Palestinians, but it has little say. Restraint is not in the cards.
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It’s about Iran as well as the Palestinians
Israel is now conducting a different war in Lebanon than the one it has conducted in Gaza. As Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib (@afalkhatib) has noted, “Gaza is a war of revenge, not precision.” So far, the war in Lebanon has been far more precise and targeted, though of course it has also killed hundreds of innocent civilians.
The “precision” war
This is likely to continue. The Israelis know most Sunnis, Christians, and Druze in Lebanon do not trust Shia Hezbollah. There is no point in hitting them. Support for President Assad’s war against the (mainly Sunni) Syrian opposition and involvement in Lebanon’s corrupt sectarian politics have blotted Hezbollah’s copybook. Leveling communities that don’t like Hezbollah would make no sense.
Hezbollah opposes the existence of Israel, but it has done little for the approximately 200,000 Palestinians who live in Lebanon. The Israelis are letting it be known that they are contemplating a ground invasion, but that is likely to be unrewarding. The Israel Defense Force will prefer to continue to destroy Hezbollah large rocket and missile inventory from the air. Any ground incursion is likely to be limited to the south.
The Arab openness
The Jordanian Foreign Minister yesterday made the Arab and Muslim position clear:
This is not new for the Jordanians, who protect Israel’s security every day, in return for Israeli help with internal security. But “all of us are willing to right now guarantee the security of Israel” is a bold formula, even with the traditional conditions that follow. He was apparently speaking after a meeting of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation, whose 57 members include the non-Arab Muslim states.
There is more Muslim and Arab acceptance today of Israel’s existence than at any other time since 1948. But Israel isn’t paying any attention. Why not?
Two reasons
The first reason is the one Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safadi cites. Netanyahu wants to prevent the formation of a Palestinian state. He has devoted the last 30 years to that cause. He is not going to give it up now.
Just as important: for him, the fight with Hamas and Hezbollah is about Iran, not only Palestine. The IDF is well on its way to destroying Tehran’s best deterrent, which was Lebanese Hezbollah’s stock of rockets and missiles. Tehran’s Syrian deterrent is already in tatters. Hamas isn’t destroyed but will need time to recover. So Netanyahu is clearing the way for an Israeli attack on Iran, focused on its nuclear facilities. I find it hard to understand how Iran would use a nuclear weapon against a place as small as Israel without killing a lot of Muslims. But Israeli prime ministers have been willing to do some frightening things to prevent neighbors from getting nukes.
The consequences
With its deterrent gone and at risk of losing its nuclear assets, Tehran will likely amp up its nuclear program. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps will no doubt see production of nuclear weapons as a necessary deterrent against an Israeli attack. An Iranian sprint for nuclear weapons will ignite Turkiye and Saudi Arabia rivalry. That would make four nuclear or near nuclear powers in the Middle East, with many complicated relations among them. It is hard to see how that will serve Israeli or American interests.
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Not only wider, but higher
Israel yesterday bombed Hezbollah headquarters in Dahiyeh, south of Beirut’s center, and killed its leader, Hassan Nasrallah. Israelis are celebrating:
So are anti-Assad Syrians in Idlib:
Decapitation ups the ante
This Israeli move signals that Prime Minister Netanyahu wants not only to widen the war from Gaza to Lebanon but also wants to up the ante. The assassination of an enemy leader forecloses negotiations and makes it harder to manage the conflict. Israel’s successful cell phone/walkie-talkie attack less than two weeks ago had already infuriated and discombobulated Hezbollah’s militants. The loss of its leader of more than three decades will cause further confusion and distrust in their ranks.
The impact of decapitation on insurgencies is a subject of debate. There is evidence that decapitation can shorten anti-terrorist campaigns, increase the odds of insurgent defeat, and decrease conflict intensity. Others think decapitation has greater chances of success in countering insurgency “when conducted by local forces against a centralized opponent in conjunction with larger counterinsurgency operations.” Those conditions were not fulfilled in yesterday’s raid. Local forces did not conduct it, Hezbollah is a networked opponent, and there was no “larger” counterinsurgency operation.
That said, Hezbollah will need time to regroup. The Israelis likely also killed some of Nasrallah’s lieutenants. A leadership strike of this sort requires inside intelligence. Somehow Israel knew where the Hezbollah leaders were at a specific time. Hezbollah depends a great deal on personal trust among its adherents. The choice of a new leader and the search for a culprit will disrupt that network for some time to come. That may not prevent retaliation in the form of rocket attacks, but those have been militarily ineffective.
Mixed reaction in Lebanon and the Arab world
Lebanese will have a mixed reaction: horror at the civilian lives lost in buildings in the capital, but also some Schadenfreude. Hezbollah has lost its heroic mettle for many Lebanese, both because it went to war against the Syrian opposition and because it is now part of a corrupt, self-perpetuating elite in Lebanon that has delivered little in recent years to its citizens. Even before the Beirut port explosion in 2020, the Lebanese economy’s wheels were coming off. The Lebanese pound has lost well over 90% of its value. Most of the population is impoverished, frustrated, and desperate.
The
The Arab world will likewise have a mixed reaction. Most Arab elites are allergic to Islamist movements like Hamas and Hezbollah. Before today’s event, they were protesting mistreatment of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank but doing little about it and nothing to defend Hamas and Hezbollah, which are Iranian allies. However, most Arab streets are sympathetic to the Palestinians and want the Gaza war to end (as do most Israelis). That was Hezbollah’s declared aim. It was rocketing Israel since October 8 of last year, it said, to get Israel to end the Gaza war.
It will be interesting to see now whether the Arab street gets agitated enough to change the Arab world’s relative quiescence (relative, that is, to its past military attacks on Israel). The Syrian exception (see video above) is due to Hezbollah’s fighting the opposition on behalf of President Assad.
The West won’t cry crocodile tears but needs to worry
The West won’t mourn Nasrallah, but many in Europe and the US will worry that his death will incentivize a major Hezbollah retaliation. While its rockets have so far caused little strategic damage in Israel, the Israelis would likely respond with further escalation. That will heighten the hostilities. Neither the US nor Europe wants a the wider war heightened.
The West will also need to worry about Hezbollah operations beyond Israel. Hezbollah has terrorist cells in many countries, including the US, which presumably supplied the large bombs that leveled Hezbollah headquarters. US embassies and government offices in Washington could become targets.
Iran is in a bind
Tehran has been trying to avoid war with Israel, which has demonstrated it could bomb Iran’s nuclear sites. Now two of its key allies have suffered a great deal of damage. Israel has not destroyed Hamas, but Iran needs to be concerned how long it will take for Hamas to regain its former military strength. Now Israel has decapitated Lebanese Hezbollah, killed other leaders, and injured thousands of its militants in addition to destroying a significant percentage of the rockets and missiles Iran has supplied.
Asking Tehran to continue to show restraint may be asking too much. Advocates of Iran’s nuclear program in Tehran will be emboldened. They will argue that Israel is looking for war with Iran and that only acquiring nuclear weapons will prevent an Israeli attack. That in turn could create incentives for Turkey and Saudi Arabia to get nukes. Their leaders have both said they will match Iran’s nuclear capabilities. The Middle East with four nuclear weapons states will not be a safe place.
There is another way out. Tehran could tell Hezbollah to withdraw north of the Litani River, as required by the UN Security Council, and end the rocket attacks. This would enable Israelis to return to their homes along the border with Lebanon. It would also give the US leverage in pressing Israel for a ceasefire and prisoner/hostage exchange in Gaza. The war there would be unlikely to end entirely, as Netanyahu needs the war to continue until he can declare unequivocal victory. But relative calm could allow far more humanitarian aid and early reconstruction assistance to flow.
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