Tag: Russia
Good luck
As of January 19, there were 1920 pardon and 11335 commutation petitions pending at the Justice Department. President Trump skipped over those in favor of pardoning a former sheriff who had defied a court order to stop racial profiling of Latinos. Sheriff Arpaio is 85 and still had an opportunity to appeal. He was in no danger of going to jail. What the President did was not a humanitarian gesture. He was sending, as he has repeatedly during his lifetime, a clear and unequivocal signal that he respects no law and adheres to the notion that whites are superior and deserve special treatment.
I trust the signal will not be lost on America’s rapidly growing Hispanic population, 29% of which voted for Trump despite his many anti-Latino statements: claiming Mexicans coming to the US were criminals and rapists, suggesting a judge born in Indiana could not be fair because his grandparents were Mexican, and promising to make Mexico pay for his border wall. The Republicans have long thought they needed to do something to recoup some socially conservative Latinos. Hard to see how that will happen now.
The White House also apparently fired Sebastian Gorka, the falsely credentialed “terrorism expert” on the White House staff. Gorka was more TV court jester than serious policy wonk, but Chief of Staff Kelly and others in the administration had had their fill of him. That is good. Among other things, he had a history of Hungarian ultra-nationalist and anti-Semitic activism. I suppose Jewish right-wingers, taken aback by Trump’s solicitude for neo-Nazis in the wake of their murder of a counter-protester in Charlottesville, pressured for Gorka’s removal.
Both these decisions were announced on a Friday evening as a massive hurricane bore down on the Texas Gulf Coast, with likely devastating consequences. No doubt someone thought the news of Arpaio’s pardoning, and maybe also Gorka’s firing, could be inundated along with Houston. Asked about what he had to say to people in the path of the hurricane, Trump was flippant: “good luck to everybody” he chimed.
Bearing down on Trump is an investigation of Russian meddling in the US election and hot ruble financing of Trump and Kushner real estate. The Congressional committees are not letting up and Special Counsel Mueller is issuing subpoenas, for which he needs to get grand jury approval. The Mueller team isn’t leaking at all (in contrast to a White House that can’t keep anything secret), so it is hard to know precisely what they are pursuing. But they have hired a lot of financial crime experts. So I am inclined to treat Mr. Trump to his own words: “good luck.” He is going to need it, though of course the Arpaio pardon signals clearly he will pardon himself and his family members if need be.
So are we. The North Koreans again launched missiles this morning, apparently in protest of an impending US-led military exercise. Pyongyang aimed its relatively short-range missiles in a non-threatening direction, but still. Trump’s bluster about stopping their missile development is proving just that: bluster. How will he react to North Korean defiance? Yes, we’ll need good luck, and wise heads, too.
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How low can he go?
Much lower I fear. While he has given a couple of half-sane, scripted speeches prepared with Chief of Staff Kelly’s approval, President Trump is still doing what he can to offend as soon as he is off the Teleprompter. Those who don’t approve of him are at this point about 60% of Americans and far higher percentages in most other countries. Russia and Israel are the exceptions. He is still launching ferocious attacks on the American media, retweeting anti-Semitic and racist tweeps, and slamming both Senate supporters and antagonists.
With August waning and an early Labor Day (September 4) looming in the US, prospects are for a difficult fall. The first item of business in the US Congress will be raising the debt ceiling and passing some sort of budget resolution. Trump has made that more difficult by insisting that the budget include money for the wall on the border he has promised the Mexicans would pay for. That’s a non-starter for the Democrats, who have some say in the Senate because 60 votes are needed on the budget issues. Tax reform, which so far means a big tax cut to businesses like Trump’s own, will have to wait. Never mind the promised trillion-dollar infrastructure program.
Trump wants the budget resolved by eliminating the filibuster and allowing bills to pass in the Senate with a simple majority. That is a proposition even more controversial than the wall, so he is publicly hounding Senate Majority leader McConnell into changing Senate rules to allow it. That’s not a way to make friends in the Senate, but so long as the Republicans control the House Trump can be sure it won’t impeach him (which has to precede sending him to the Senate for trial).
While America tries to sort out its internal political mess, the rest of the world is trying to make do without much clarity from Washington. In Asia, China is seizing the initiative on trade and finance, pushing its “belt and road” projects all the way to the Middle East and Africa. North Korea hasn’t tested a missile lately, and there seem to be talks about talks going on behind the scenes with the US, but the prospects of denuclearizing Pyongyang have dropped to zero.
In the Middle East, Syria’s President Assad is still advancing, as are the US-supported, Kurdish-led forces trying to take Raqqa from the Islamic State. The Syrian opposition is being pressed by the UN and everyone else to drop its demand that Assad step aside. Civilian casualties from American and other air attacks in the battle for Raqqa are mounting.
Defense Secretary Mattis is promising Turkey the US will help fight against Kurdish rebels inside Turkey and in Iraq, even as it supports their affiliates in Syria. That’s going to be a hard circle to square. Iraq is also making progress against the Islamic State, but Baghdad still hasn’t convinced its own Kurdistan to call off its independence referendum, scheduled for September 25 but increasingly in doubt.
Jared Kushner is plugging away at the Israel/Palestine issues, in visits to Ramallah, Cairo and Jerusalem. No one is expecting much to come of his efforts. The State Department has refused to reiterate US commitment to a two-state solution, which (as Matt Duss pointed out on Twitter) represents the single largest concession the Palestinians have made to date. Not that anyone had much doubt about which side the Trump Administration was on. We’ll presumably now be treated to the spectacle of Israel and the US proposing various confidence-building measures meant to make life and the economy more palatable for the occupied territories on the West Bank, while Jewish settlements expand and kill off any remaining hope for a two-state solution.
This is enabled in part by some Arab states coming to the conclusion that they care more about countering Iran than supporting the Palestinians. The Saudis and Emiratis seem prepared to collaborate with Israel against Iran, even if Qatar, Iraq, and Oman are headed in the opposite direction. Yemen no longer counts, since it is being obliterated in the Gulf-led war against the Houthi rebellion. Libya, Tunisia, and Morocco are likewise out of the game for now. Egypt and Jordan have made their peace with Israel and have no choice but to keep it.
Trump is increasingly marginalized from all these developments. Weakness at home leads to weakness abroad. His only major push on foreign policy lately has been the renewal and expansion of the American military push in Afghanistan. This allegedly new strategy closely resembles his predecessor’s effort to bring the Taliban to the negotiating table. Like Obama, Trump doesn’t want to be blamed for losing Afghanistan, even if it proves impossible to keep his promise to win there.
We can still sink lower: North Korea could test another missile, the Palestinians could tell Kushner where to go, Trump could renounce the Iran nuclear deal, and the country’s long recovery from the financial crisis of 2007/8 could end. But most of all: we could continue to fail to deal with a president who is unqualified, mean-spirited, incompetent, and divisive. Let’s hope Special Counsel Mueller comes up with something compelling, sooner rather than later.
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It keeps getting worse
The problem today is not Charlottesville. The problem is the White House, starting at the top. The President can’t bring himself to denounce white supremacists, or even to say that Nazi flags have no legitimate role in American politics, even if the constitution protects their display. His acolytes likewise willfully ignore white supremacists who have killed many more Americans since 9/11 than Islamist extremists have.
If you put America first and want to protect its citizens, you would deal with the violent protesters in Charlottesville first and the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria later. Or at least you would pay some attention to denouncing the thugs who think you are their leader–they gleefully shout “Heil Trump”–and skip the bromides about unspecified violence and vague “unity.”
You would also want to maintain America’s international credibility. Trump has spent the week shredding it. After threatening North Korea with “fire and fury” and claiming we are “locked and loaded,” it appears virtually none of the necessary preparations for military action against Pyongyang’s missile and nuclear programs have been taken. Forces have not been deployed, civilians have not been evacuated, and the Pentagon is denying that the use of force–notably not yet authorized by Congress–is imminent.
To top it off, Trump threatened military action also against Venezuela, where we would almost surely be better off to let nature take its course in ending President Maduro’s shambolic governance.
Trump’s threats are not credible, which means it will be far more difficult to mount a credible threat in the future. We are already at the point that many in the US government are ignoring the president: the Pentagon is not implementing his ban on transgender people, Secretary of State Tillerson is trying to stifle talk of war with North Korea, Republicans in Congress are heading towards a compromise on maintaining Obamacare. Other governments are laughing at Trump’s obsession with undoing whatever his predecessor did. If Trump fails to follow through on his threat against North Korea, and the North Koreans continue to test missiles and nuclear weapons, how much credibility will the United States have in the future?
Of course it is possible Trump will follow this week’s bluster with a cruise missile attack on North Korea, hoping to reproduce the applause he got after the attack on a Syrian air base in April and distract attention from the investigation of Russian interference in the election. But that attack was a one-off that has had little impact. Assad has continued to use small quantities of chemical weapons and to prioritize attacks against the relatively moderate opposition in Syria. A similar one-off against North Korea would predictably have no serious impact on its well-dispersed and hidden missile and nuclear programs.
Nor will many applaud. North Korea might strike back, most likely against Guam, but possibly also against Seoul or even Tokyo. How long do we think America’s friends and allies will remain friends and allies if Washington is seen as having started a war from which they will suffer the most? What are the odds that NATO could be held together once the Europeans conclude the President is rash, unreliable, and likely to provoke adversaries?
The Europeans can be sure of one thing, however: the adversary Trump will never provoke is Vladimir Putin. The reason is increasingly apparent: Russian money sustains Trump’s real estate empire, which was likely used to launder ill-gotten gains of Putin’s best friends. Trump can never turn on Putin, lest Putin pull the plug on Russian financing. This is blackmail, not collusion. We needn’t worry too much about Trump intentionally coming to blows with Moscow, which is using its leverage over the President to gain advantages in Syria.
Can Ukraine be far behind? My guess is that the Administration is busily trying to cut a deal on Ukraine, one that it could argue should lead to lifting of the sanctions on Russia. Fortunately, sharp eyes in Congress will examine any such proposition. It will be difficult for Trump to sell the Ukrainians short, the way he did the Syrian opposition.
The United States matters to friends, allies, and enemies less today than at any time during my lifetime, which corresponds to the entire post-World War II period. The damage to our web of alliances, our international credibility, and our position of leadership in the past seven months is gigantic. Generals Mattis, Kelly, and McMaster are proving incapable of blocking the President from his worst instincts. The only relief will come when Trump is gone. But none of us can tell when that might be. It keeps getting worse.
PS: It got worse within minutes of my publishing this piece. Trump said, in response to a car plowing into peaceful counterprotesters: “We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides. On many sides.”
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Job #1 in post-war Syria and Iraq
Not everyone will be as interested as I was in this detailed, hour-long briefing Friday on the war against ISIS, done by Special Presidential Envoy (for the global coalition to defeat ISIS) Brett McGurk:
Compliments to Brett for doing this in such a professional and informative way.
Some highlights in Syria:
- The ground war is going well, led by capable and effective (Kurdish-led) Syrian Democratic Forces moving towards Raqqa. President Trump’s delegation of tactical authority to field commanders has hastened the process. ISIS is losing territory rapidly.
- Deconfliction of SDF forces with Russian and Syrian government forces is functioning well near Raqqa and in the southwest, where the ceasefire is working.
- Displaced people in Syria are returning to their homes fairly quickly, once demining takes place. They flee towards the SDF, not towards ISIS-controlled territory.
- Humanitarian supplies have been pre-positioned and are proving adequate to meet demand, albeit with the usual logistical difficulties.
- The US will do “stabilization,” but not reconstruction or nationbuilding. Stabilization includes demining, rubble removal, restoring basic electricity and water supplies but no education or health services, which will be local responsibilities.
- The war against ISIS is part of a two-phase process, which includes political transition in Syria.
- The international community will not be prepared to fund the $200 billion (or multiples of that number) in reconstruction needs until President Assad is gone.
In Iraq:
- The Iraqi Security Forces have “not lost a battle” in the current campaign against ISIS.
- Mosul is a much larger challenge than Raqqa, involving more than ten times as many people.
- The US will not do long-term reconstruction; the Iraqi government will get funding from the IMF and World Bank. Kuwait will host a donor conference.
- The next battle will be for Tal Afar, then Hawija, then Al Qaim on the border with Syria.
- The US opposes the “ill-timed” and “ill-prepared” referendum on independence of Iraqi Kurdistan scheduled for September 25.
Plans are being laid for opening key border crossings between Syria and Jordan as well as between Iraq and Saudi Arabia. ISIS finances are drying up, and it can no long recruit or deploy significant numbers of foreign fighters.
I doubt the notion that big parts of Syria can be liberated with Bashar al Assad still in power in Damascus. His regime, with its Russian, Iranian and Shia militia allies, has been more than willing to attack any area outside government control, declaring it infested by terrorists. Will Moscow be ready, willing and able to restrain Bashar once Raqqa is in SDF control? Or will the Americans, anxious to depart as quickly as possible, negotiate its turnover to the Damascus?
We’ll have to wait and see whether the “no more than stabilization” approach Brett advocates, based he says on experience in Iraq after the US collapse of the Saddam Hussein regime, will work. No doubt devolving as much responsibility to local councils in Syria, which I gather are already operating for Tabqa and Raqqa, and to the Iraqi government is a good idea in theory. Local people know the social terrain far better than foreigners. The question is whether it will work in practice.
There are two big, immediate challenges: security (including keeping ISIS fighters from embedding in the local communities and preventing revenge killings) and property rights. Some local security forces have been trained, but it is not yet clear how effective they will be. Even if they are close to perfection, a major issue remains: where will miscreants be tried? A police force without a court system is an instrument of repression, not justice. The same issue arises with respect to property rights: who will decide who is the rightful owner of the apartments that remain standing? What property rights remain, if any, to those whose apartments have been destroyed?
Odds are the post-war period in Syria will be particularly messy, since not everyone is agreed on who holds legitimate authority. In Iraq, there is more consensus, but if Prime Minister Abadi fails to establish more inclusive governance, or allows the Shia popular mobilization forces involved in the liberation of Mosul to ride herd over the non-Shia populations of Ninewa, continuing insurgency could well be the outcome.
The Islamic State 2.0 (I count its original incarnation in Iraq as 1.0, before the migration to Syria) is close to defeat. Job #1 now is to prevent the emergence of Islamic State 3.0.
PS: One other thing. I’m concerned about Brett’s repeated indications that the coalition forces will take no prisoners but instead kill as many Islamic Staters as possible. There are laws of war that need to be observed, even if opponents don’t.
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Peace picks August 7-11
- Teleconference: What is the Future of U.S.-Russia Relations? | Monday, August 7 | 10:00 – 11:00 am | Wilson Center | Register Here | Relations between the United States and Russia continue to sour. New sanctions legislation in Washington – which arrived on President Trump’s desk with a veto-proof majority – prompted not only the ejection of U.S. diplomats from Russia, but a declaration by Minister Medvedev on the “end of hope” for improved ties. At the same time, presidents Trump and Putin appear to anticipate better days. How entrenched is the current state of affairs? Are there avenues left for cooperation? Join the Wilson Center as Deputy Director William E. Pomeranz of the Kennan Institute, Senior Fellow Maxim Trudolyubov, and Andrew Weiss of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace assess prospects for the U.S.-Russia relationship and unpack the Trump-Putin dynamic. Aaron David Miller will be moderating.
- Expanding the Role of Youth in Building Peace, Security | Tuesday, August 8 | 9:30 – 11:00 am| United States Institute of Peace | Register Here | While popular culture and public narratives depict young men mainly as perpetrators of violence, and young women mainly as victims, governments and civil society groups alike are working to elevate the critical role of youth in reducing violent conflict and extremism. That effort has seen added attention in the 19 months since a U.N. Security Council resolution focused governments on the task. The talk will feature panelists Aubrey Cox, senior program specialist at USIP; Rachel Walsh Taza, program coordinator at Search for Common Ground; Jenn Heeg, co-champion at YouthPower Learning; and Imrana Buba, founder of a Nigerian youth-led peacebuilding organization working amid the country’s conflict with the Boko Haram extremist group. Youth Coordinator Michael McCabe of USAID will moderate.
- Oil Corruption: How the United States Can Counteract a Curse | Tuesday, August 8 | 12:00 – 2:00 pm | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace | Register Here | The oil industry has been entangled in serious corruption controversies, from the legality of some companies’ stance on climate change to dealings with producer-country governments. In response, the U.S. government has shown leadership over the past decade in helping bring more transparency to the sector. What are the dimensions of this problem? What is the status of the U.S. commitment? Join Carnegie and Global Witness for an engaging discussion of new findings by Global Witness on Shell’s activities in Nigeria, why corruption in this key economic sector matters, and how the U.S. government—and companies—can be part of the solution. Panelists include Steve Coll of The New Yorker, Olarenwaju Suraju, Simon Taylor of Global Witness, and Sarah Chayes of Carnegie’s Democracy and Rule of Law Program.
- The Future of U.S.-Taiwan Relations in New Administrations | Friday, August 11 | 1:30 – 5:15 pm | Heritage Foundation | Register Here | Join the Heritage Foundation for a discussion of Taiwan’s critical cross-strait relations as well as future economic ties with the United States. Panels will include “Cross-Strait Relations and the U.S.” (2:15 pm) and “Future of Economic Relations between the U.S. and Taiwan” (4:00 pm). The keynote address will be given by Lyu-Shun Shen, former representative from the Taiwan Economic and Cultural Representative Office in Washington, D.C.
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What’s so grand about a jury?
The big news yesterday is that Special Counsel Mueller is using a grand jury in his investigation of Russian meddling in the US election. Most Americans know about grand juries primarily from notices they receive summoning them to serve on one. But that rarely happens. I’ve been summoned for jury duty many times and served on a petit jury at the municipal level. I don’t know anyone who has actually served on a Federal grand jury, which can sit for months if not years (usually not continuously but a few days a month).
But here is the short version of what is so grand about a Federal grand jury: it enables the prosecutor (in this case Special Counsel Mueller)
- To issue subpoenas (orders to produce evidence or to testify);
- Compel testimony in secret, without a lawyer representing the witness present;
- Indict (accuse) someone of a crime, provided 12 of the 23 members of the grand jury agree.
The proceedings of a grand jury are secret, but word of them leaks out as they send subpoenas to people. Their proceedings can take a long time, so news of one does not mean that an indictment is imminent. Nor does it tell us anything about who might be indicted for what crime.
That will be little comfort to the President of the United States. It is unclear whether he can be indicted by any body other than the House of Representatives (that’s what we call impeachment). There is no precedent for that. But his associates, family, and campaign officials are certainly indictable.
All indications are that Mueller is focused on financial matters, which may mean he is looking at whether Russian cash played a role in the campaign. Moscow is too smart to have put money directly into Trump’s election effort, which would violate US law. But it may well have made money available to the campaign through “cut outs,” Americans who contributed money provided by Russia.
More likely in my view is that the Trump and Kushner real estate empires are flush with hot Russian money that has purchased condos and golf club memberships and provided loans not available from other sources. In everyday parlance, this would amount to money laundering. And yes, American companies are supposed to conduct due diligence to ensure that financing comes from legitimate sources. Russian money could go a long way to explaining why Trump never criticizes Moscow and often takes its side on specific issues.
Trump’s reaction to the grand jury news was classic distraction: he announced he would have big news at his campaign-style rally in West Virginia last night. That turned out to be the Governor announcing he was switching from the Democratic to the Republican party, which he had left only two years ago. In a scripted speech read from a teleprompter, Trump also denounced the story of Russia’s meddling in the US election as a fabrication to excuse the biggest election loss in history. The loyalist audience loved it.
Trump’s remarks continue his efforts to undermine the Special Counsel, efforts that themselves may constitute obstruction of justice, and to deny what American intelligence agencies have long since concluded: Moscow intervened in the US election to undermine democracy and help elect Trump. If the jury gets to the bottom of why the President behaves this way, it will truly be grand.
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