See it and weep
I “enjoyed” last night a showing at National Geographic of The Cave, a film about an underground hospital in Eastern Ghouta, outside Damascus, during the Assad regime’s five-year siege. Here is the precis from National Geographic:
Oscar nominee Feras Fayyad (“Last Men in Aleppo”) delivers an unflinching story of the Syrian war with his powerful new documentary, The Cave. For besieged civilians, hope and safety lie underground inside the subterranean hospital known as the Cave, where pediatrician and managing physician Dr. Amani Ballour and her colleagues Samaher and Dr. Alaa have claimed their right to work as equals alongside their male counterparts, doing their jobs in a way that would be unthinkable in the oppressively patriarchal culture that exists above. Following the women as they contend with daily bombardments, chronic supply shortages and the ever-present threat of chemical attacks, The Cave paints a stirring portrait of courage, resilience and female solidarity.
The documentary is excruciating. In cinema verite’ style it conveys a highly personalized account not just of the cruelty of the bombing but also of the tribulations of the hospital personnel and their patients.
This is not just war. It is war as crime. Every day brings bombardment of civilian targets, including this hospital (as well as many others). The Russian and Syrian aircraft, missile launchers, and chemical bombs pummel the area’s remaining inhabitants incessantly. Women and children are frequent victims.
The doctors and other personnel work with primitive means and what we can only assume is great skill. They are devoted beyond reason to staying and doing what they can to help. They break occasionally to watch classical music and dance performances on a cell phone, but that, food preparation, and a birthday celebration are the only apparent distractions. Otherwise they examine, advise, inject, operate, and bandage as if their own lives depend on their medical efforts, not those of anonymous neighbors.
The toll this takes is all too evident. These are ordinary people making superhuman efforts. Each has her or his own story, told in enough detail for us to understand that the pain is more than individual. Some have families who await them in safer places. All are choosing to stay and sacrifice to protect people they don’t know from the ravages of a regime they despise.
The gender dimension of the story is clear: the 30-year-old director of the underground hospital is a woman, a pediatrician. She seems a sensitive manager, but one with gigantic responsibilities entirely uncharacteristic of a woman in the patriarchal society in which she grew up. The director uses one of the patients, whom we might describe as a male chauvinist pig, to voice condescending disdain for her and her role. Most of the time though she is portrayed as doing her job in a way that the men surrounding her accept and enjoy. War dispenses with gender distinctions that make no sense given the challenges.
In the end, Eastern Ghouta falls after a chlorine attack. Hospital personnel evacuate. I was delighted to learn in the discussion afterwards that the hospital director survived, married, and now runs a charity devoted to female health care workers and female leaders in conflict zones. Even the tragedy of Syria produces good as well as evil. Feras Fayyad, whose previous film on the White Helmet rescue workers in Syria was nominated for an Oscar, merits at least that much honor again for this superb documentary.
See it and weep.
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Stevenson’s army, November 19
– There’s a deal to extend the CR until Dec 20.
– Administration delays its Huawei ban for another 90 days.
– USAF wants to cut its Global Hawk force.
– Politico says it’s “lights out” for the EMP program.
– On the 100th anniversary of Senate defeat of the Versailles treaty, Walter Russell Mead says the defeat didn’t matter as much as the death of Theodore Roosevelt. I do think it mattered. Even though the US was not really isolationist in the 1920s, it did sit out security issues, where it might have made a difference. More importantly, my research convinces me that the treaty could have been approved if Wilson had been willing to accept modest reservations. So the fault lies with him.
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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Yes, the Balkans can accede
This French non-paper is roiling the Balkans: while promising eventual accession for all the countries of the region, it proposes tightening up on conditionality and allowing for reversibility.
That is good, not bad. Sharply criticized for blocking the opening of negotiations with Albania and Macedonia, Paris is taking a major step in the right direction by reaffirming that the goal is full membership and specifying precisely what President Macron wants to re-initiate the accession process.
The criticism of this move comes from two directions.
Some see the non-paper as an effort to postpone re-initiation of the process with Macedonia and Albania even further. I suppose that is a likely effect, since it will take time for the European Union to sort out what it wants to do with the French proposal, but there is nothing to prevent Skopje and Tirana from using the time to adopt and implement as many parts of the acquis communautaire as they can. The “negotiations” are not really much more than verification of progress in achieving implementation. All candidate countries know what they need to do to qualify for the EU. The faster they get on with it, the quicker they will get there.
Others say there are aspects of the French proposal that fail to take into account what is already being done. I imagine that might be true. I am not in a position to judge the details. It will certainly take some time for the other member states to evaluate and propose revisions to what the French have put forward. But if the result is a clearer and stricter set of conditions for EU membership, I see no reason not to applaud. Backsliding is all too apparent in the Balkans, including in current member Croatia. Scholarship has revealed interesting reasons for this, including the way the EU is currently conducting the accession process. Straightening that out might not accelerate accession, but it would improve performance in the candidate states.
I am a fan of strict conditionality: there is no reason for current EU member states to invite as a new member any state that is unwilling to meet the requirements of membership. But how it is achieved–path dependency in political science terms–is important. Natasha Wunsch and Solveig Richter propose this:
If thorough democratic transformation still remains the EU’s goal in the region, conditionality needs to be complemented with a more comprehensive and deliberate empowerment of national parliaments and civil society actors as a counterweight to dominant executives. Favouring domestic deliberation rather than incentive-driven compliance should go a long way in ensuring the sustainability of rule of law and democratic reforms even once the Western Balkan countries have eventually become EU members.
I’m not sure this empowerment of civil society and national parliaments will be sufficient, but it seems to me a reasonable experiment to embark on. I think it also important to train up an independent civil service that remains in place with changing governments and to protect the independence of the judiciary and the media. The trouble with conditionality as currently pursued, as I read Richter and Wunsch, is that it strengthens executive power. Balancing that with constraining institutions is the right way to go.
In any event, those in the Balkans who want to see real reform should welcome the French proposal and hope the EU will get on expeditiously with whatever changes it wants to make in the accession process. And in the meanwhile, those serious about accession will be working hard implementing the acquis as swiftly as possible, to be ready when the political window to the EU opens once again.
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Stevenson’s army, November 18
– NYT has a trove of leaked Iranian intelligence reports showing its activities in Iraq.
– Inside Iran, the government has blocked the internet.
– China is criticizing US moves in South China Sea.
– US believes China recruits its overseas students as spies.
– Columnist suggests selling B-21 to Australia.
– NBC says Trump is angry at Pompeo.
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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Stevenson’s army, November 16
-WSJ has an article urging a US industrial policy which I find persuasive.
– The Nuclear Threat Initiative has a background paper on Russia’s new weaponry.
– TNSR has a roundtable on reforming the war powers processes.
– Bloomberg reviews the changing Trump trade policies.
– Meanwhile, Trump pardoned war criminals, contrary to DOD recommendations.
– South Korea rejects intelligence sharing with Japan.
And this from WSJ:
U.S. MILITARY reduces press access to combat troops
in Afghanistan. War correspondents accompanied Marines into the country
in 2001, and for years the Pentagon facilitated front-line visits.
After Special Forces and Rangers took the combat lead in 2014, embeds
became rarer.
In the past year, the number of embeds with the 13,000 U.S. troops remaining in the country has declined sharply. The message from Kabul HQ: “We do attempt to make every opportunity available to cover other events—such as the important train, advise and assist mission the Coalition of 40 nations is conducting.”
This year, the U.S. Embassy in Kabul has largely ceased speaking to the international media in the Afghan capital. Commanders and diplomats fear U.S. news coverage could lead President Trump to tweet a strategic reversal or further upend peace talks. They glimpsed that possibility with Trump’s surprise withdrawal from Syria.
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Two Americas
I won’t claim to have watched all of this, but some of you may want to see what integrity and dignity look like, since it has not been common in American public life lately:
I would say the same about George Kent* and Bill Taylor’s testimony from earlier in the week:
You don’t really need to watch much to understand that these are honest, sincere, knowledgeable, and capable people committed to serving America’s interests abroad. They respond cautiously but clearly to questions and project a coherent and compelling picture of American foreign policy in Ukraine.
The contrast with Donald Trump and his minions, who lie habitually and don’t hesitate to offer illogical and incoherent arguments, couldn’t be more dramatic. No matter how much the Republicans deny it, it is clear Trump sought to serve his own personal political interests by getting Ukraine to open an investigation of Joe Biden and his son, at the cost of weakening Ukraine in its fight against Russian aggression. If you can’t see the contrast, it’s time for a talk with your conscience.
The impeachment inquiry is revealing two America’s: one in which unrestrained pursuit of self-interest is paramount and another in which the nation’s interests and values come first. The real charge against Trump is inability even to conceive of the latter as he pursues the former.
But that is not how the indictment will read. More likely it will be something like the following:
- Corrupt abuse of power by trying to bribe Ukraine to open an investigation of a political opponent using military assistance appropriated by Congress.
- Illegally welcoming and accepting assistance from Russia in the 2016 presidential campaign.
- Obstructing justice during the Mueller investigation, intimidating witnesses with threatening tweets, and blocking Congressional oversight by ordering officials not to respond to subpoenas.
These are much more serious charges than against Bill Clinton, who lied to a grand jury about an affair with a White House intern. It is also arguably worse than the charges against Richard Nixon, which concerned a burglary and his attempts to cover up his role in ordering it.
As if to confirm his amorality, Trump yesterday pardoned three American soldiers accused of war crimes, over the objection of the Pentagon. The pardon power is unconstrained, so he will likely use it again in the cases of his seven campaign and administration officials already tried and convicted, including one of his best friends found guilty yesterday on seven criminal charges.
Clinton barely survived the vote in the Senate. Nixon resigned rather than allow that vote to seal his fate. Trump may survive and won’t resign. His only protection from financial and legal ruin is remaining in office. Removing him would require 20 honest Republicans to join with the Senate Democrats in finding him guilty as charged. There is no sign there are that many in the Senate. But if Trump loses a simple majority in the Senate, it would be a clear signal that his prospects in the 2020 election are fading. If ever the Republicans in Congress think they are going down with Trump, they may finally abandon him.
The rest of the world will need patience. The America of Yovanovitch, Packer, and Taylor is down but not out. Everywhere I go these days–mainly to talk with people from the Balkans, the European Union, and the Middle East–colleagues are longing for an America committed to democracy, human rights, integrity, and accountability. They can hardly believe it no longer exists in the White House. It does however exist and will return to power, I hope sooner rather than later.
*Apologies: I originally had “Packer” here. I’m reading that George’s bio of Holbrooke, so I plead crossed synapses.
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