https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/changing-the-us-census-is-an-attempt-to-alter-the-character-of-the-nation-itself-1.854249

Including a question that asks if respondents are American citizens is a calculated ploy to erase large numbers of non-white residents from the process.

The Donald Trump presidency arouses such passion because core American national questions are often at stake. Behind the incomprehensible tweets, weird outbursts. shady operators and paid-off porn stars, the character of the country is frequently being contested.

Several crucial themes, especially the demographic and cultural nature of US society, and the role and credibility of the judiciary, are distilled in a new Supreme Court case.

Last week, oral arguments were heard in Department of Commerce v New York, a lawsuit challenging a Commerce Department plan to cook the books in the upcoming census by asking if respondents are US citizens.

That question hasn’t been asked of everyone since 1950, because, as the Commerce Department’s own experts maintain, it will produce a significant undercount of roughly six to seven million people.

The US Constitution calls for an “actual enumeration” of all people in the country, not just citizens, every 10 years.

But, given the current climate of fear and anger regarding immigration, suddenly asking everyone this loaded question will lead many, especially Latinos, to not respond and therefore not be counted.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, a noted Trumpian with, to put it gently, anti-immigrant attitudes, is insisting on adding this question precisely because he knows that will be the result. It’s exactly what he wants.

The thinly disguised raison d’être of the Trump administration is to champion supposedly besieged white ethnic interests.

The relationship of racial and ethnic groups, and various regions, with the government in the next decade will be largely shaped by the census.

If between six and seven million people, mainly of Latino origin, can be simply wiped off the books, there will be colossal repercussions.

Areas of high immigration will find themselves underfunded, underserved, and disadvantaged in almost every way government operates.

The congressional and other elected representation of these districts will be significantly weakened, while residents of other areas that are not undercounted will be relatively strengthened.

It’s instantly obvious how deeply this will advantage the Republican Party and its voter base, at the expense of the Democratic Party and its constituencies. The change will be far-reaching, fundamental and will take at least 10 years to repair.

Like so much else in Mr Trump’s agenda, it’s a futile but damaging effort to turn back the tide of history, which is generating irreversible demographic and cultural changes in the United States.

That intention is implicit in Mr Trump’s slogan, “Make America Great Again”, which suggests that in the good old days of racial segregation, rampant discrimination and a clear white demographic majority the country was better off.

But if you can’t turn back history, at least you can manipulate essential data in an attempt to politically downplay and hamper the emerging new reality, which is what Mr Ross is trying to do.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-04-26/sudan-protests-ignite-turkish-saudi-competition


Pro-democracy protests have reignited a strategic clash between coalitions led by Saudi Arabia and Turkey. Neither side favors democracy.

Sudan wasn’t exactly a rich country even before sanctions were imposed against it and it lost oil-rich South Sudan in 2011. The country has been especially shaky following a military coup three weeks ago that inspired protests against the decades-old dictatorship of General Omar Bashir.

So you’d think that a pledge of $3 billion in emergency aid from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, announced on April 21, would be unanimously welcomed.

The Gulf countries plan to deposit $500 million into the Sudanese central bank to prop up the ailing currency, and to deliver the rest in food, medicine and fuel. What’s not to like?

It’s impossible to gauge Sudanese public sentiment, but some protesters aren’t happy. They say they fear that conservative Gulf rulers are trying to stop a revolutionary process in its tracks.

They note these same countries also rushed to support the Egyptian government of President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi in 2013, following the ouster the elected Muslim Brotherhood-dominated government in response to similar street demonstrations in Cairo.

Since then, Egypt has experienced both alarming political repression and impressive economic revitalization.

The Gulf countries are obviously seeking to stabilize the situation in Sudan, which is crucial to Egyptian security and important to their joint intervention against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen.

Their critics charge that these countries are acting in Sudan out of hostility to democratic change and that their aid is intended to prop up a new autocratic junta. The Gulf countries insist they are only trying to help,

But the struggle over Sudan is more complicated.

It’s happening amid a burgeoning rivalry between the two Gulf powers and a newly assertive regional coalition led by Turkey and Qatar that promotes what they call “revolutionary” change in the Arab world, not to build democracies but to empower their Islamist Muslim Brotherhood allies.

Sudan has long been a wild card in the competition among Middle Eastern regional alliances.

Before the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings, Sudan was closely identified with Muslim Brotherhood groups and, like many of them, was loosely affiliated with Iran under the rubric of an “axis of resistance” against Israel, the West and the Arab status quo.

During the Arab Spring era, however the Saudis wooed Khartoum away from Iran and into a broad anti-Iranian Sunni coalition.

But with the war in Syria subsiding in the past 18 months, and Turkey emerging as leader of an assertive new Sunni Islamist coalition, Turkey and Qatar have been attempting to win over the Sudanese strongman with support and investments.

Especially significant was a $4 billion deal signed in March 2018 for Qatar to help develop Sudan’s Red Sea port of Suakin and give Turkey a naval outpost there.

When protests first broke out in January, Bashir, who has been indicted by the international criminal court for murder and other crimes against humanity and is cautious about travel, went directly to Qatar to seek financial and diplomatic support.

At the very least, he was clearly willing to play both sides against the other.

The tumult in Khartoum gives Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. a chance to prevent Sudan from drifting into Ankara’s orbit.

It’s especially helpful to the Saudis that the Sudanese generals who have taken over are close to Riyadh. But unless Islamists had taken charge, the Gulf coalition would probably have swung into action to try to restore order and keep any new Sudanese government in their camp.

The pro-democracy movement in Sudan has been inspiring, and it’s heartening to see another brutal dictator overthrown, especially one wanted for war crimes and genocide.

But neither Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E. nor Turkey and Qatar are interested in Sudanese democracy for its own sake. Both sides, after all, had been competing for the affections of the same murderous dictator, and seemed perfectly comfortable with him as long as he cooperated with them.

There are no pro-and anti-democracy coalitions among Middle Eastern states, or “revolutionary” versus “counterrevolutionary” ones either.

The outcome in Sudan is entirely in the hands of the Sudanese. But in the regional competition for influence, the Saudis and Emiratis seem to be winning out over the Turks and Qataris.

https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/the-us-border-crisis-is-one-of-donald-trump-s-own-making-1.848474

Donald Trump began his political career by railing against foreigners and migrants, denouncing Mexicans as “rapists” and Muslims as “terrorists” and vowing to “fix” the “broken borders” of the US.

But after two years of Mr Trump’s government, with the US facing an unprecedented crisis at its southern border, one might conclude his handling of the issue has been disastrous.

This year the US is on track to receive more than one million migrants, mostly from Central America, a huge number by any standards and far more than the system can cope with. These are largely families with children, surrendering voluntarily to border patrol officers at the earliest opportunity and applying for asylum.

Still, you’d be mistaken to conclude Mr Trump is a complete failure on his signature campaign issue.

To the contrary, his near-singlehanded creation of an undeniably out-of-control predicament isn’t the result of incompetence or idiocy, as his detractors suggest.

While Mr Trump simply does not do policy and governance, he is a proven master at demagogic politics.

The US president is, in fact, the primary beneficiary of this chaos, which is why he has worked so hard to create it.

In the 2016 primaries, he stood out from the large pack of credible, mainstream Republicans, mainly because of his hostility to foreigners in general, and migrants in particular.

He was plainly betting that he could win by stoking the racial anxieties of white Americans, given the demographic and cultural transformation of the US which, according to national census predictions, will mean white people will no longer be a majority in the US by 2045 for the first time in the country’s history.

Mr Trump attacked immigration to exploit such fears and suggest he would preserve and defend the traditional white, Christian, communal power and privilege that many Americans think is under attack.

He was not subtle about this. And he clearly believes such messaging is primarily how he was able to win the White House, despite losing to Hillary Clinton by nearly three million votes.

After the dreadful drubbing the Republicans took in the midterm elections in November last year, any ideas Mr Trump might have had about running on any other issue in 2020 have clearly been jettisoned.

The tax cuts he secured for the wealthy and corporations were not popular. Healthcare is an utter bust for Republicans. Only a fringe of social conservatives is obsessed with appointing right-wing judges.

His key issue was, and still is, immigration as a proxy for white power.

So the last thing Mr Trump wants is any resolution or even improvement of the immigration issue.

Instead, he is counting on endless, bitter fights about immigration that allow him to pose as the indignant champion of white America, against the treasonous liberals who want to hand the country over to the Mexican “rapists” and Muslim “terrorists” pouring over the border to – as he insists – steal jobs and kill people.

That’s why Mr Trump didn’t bother asking Congress to fund his border wall project when his party controlled the legislature for the first two years of his presidency. As soon as Democrats had the power to block it, this funding suddenly became a pressing issue, even prompting Mr Trump to impose a lengthy partial federal government shutdown.

Clearly, he doesn’t care about actually building a wall or he would have done it when it was relatively easier. What he wants is not a wall but an endless fight about a wall. And he’s got it.

The same goes for curtailing immigration. Many of his pronouncements, such as repeatedly threatening to close the border but not actually doing so, or vowing to tighten criteria for granting asylum, inevitably produce surges of people trying to cross into the US as soon as they can. There is a new rush to get into the US each time he makes such a statement and cynically exacerbates the problem.

This immigration crisis is a self-fulfilling prophecy for Mr Trump. He described a border crisis that didn’t exist, enacted measures to ensure one would develop and he is now flailing around with dramatic threats, grand gestures and sound and fury signifying nothing. That is exactly what he wants and why he is carefully avoiding doing anything that might improve the crisis. He has even cut aid to Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador, the very countries whose violence and poverty migrants are fleeing in the first place, a move which can only prompt an increase in numbers at the border.

Mr Trump is clearly determined to spend the 18 months before the next election posing as the saviour of white America. The most obvious way he can do that is by stoking fears of migrants, especially given that terrorism in the US is now almost entirely committed by white nationalist extremists.

Expect him to continue exacerbating the immigration crisis while raging against it – and avoiding taking any steps that might ease or resolve it. That’s working for him perfectly.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-04-12/saudis-mistake-their-alliance-with-trump-for-an-alliance-with-the

In just a few years, the kingdom’s most important constituency could be the U.S. Democratic Party.

Last week my Bloomberg opinion colleague Eli Lake asked whether Democrats want to maintain the alliance with Saudi Arabia. This question should also be posed in reverse: Does Saudi Arabia want to maintain the alliance with the U.S. rather than just Trump administration?

The Saudi government is not doing enough to protect the relationship. It’s drawing bipartisan criticism such as the recent congressional vote to end involvement in the Yemen war. But worse, it’s becoming a partisan issue between Republicans and Democrats.

That’s incredibly dangerous. The U.S.-Saudi relationship has been resilient precisely because it’s indispensable.

The Persian Gulf is still the jugular vein of the oil-reliant global economy and strategically crucial to U.S. global strategy.

Americans could walk away from the Gulf. But that would mean essentially abandoning the project of international leadership altogether.

If the U.S. wants to stay, it needs a main local partner.

One option is Iran, which disagrees with the U.S. on almost everything. The second is Saudi Arabia, which largely wants the same outcomes the U.S. does.

It’s not much of a choice for American leaders.

It’s even less of a conundrum for Riyadh.

Saudi Arabia needs a global patron to secure its interests. Russia and China couldn’t do that even if they wanted to.

For now, only Washington can. So, the Saudis don’t have any real alternative either.

That’s why this alliance has been so durable. It survived the Arab-Israeli wars, the 1973 oil embargo, the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the 2003 invasion of Iraq.

The current crisis isn’t happening in a vacuum, but it’s also not being propelled by such momentous developments.

Instead it’s driven by mutual misperceptions in the triangular relationship among Republicans, Democrats and Saudis.

In the Trump era, everything is becoming polarized. There’s even an effort to turn the ultimate foreign policy consensus, the “special relationship” with Israel, into a partisan standoff between Republicans and Democrats.

But the Israelis have a solid bipartisan support base. The Saudis don’t.

This crisis has its origins in the Obama era, when the Saudis became alarmed at U.S. nuclear negotiations with Iran, reaction to the Arab Spring protests, and Obama’s statements about “free riders” and how they should “share the Middle East” with Iran.

When the Trump administration began, both Washington and Riyadh reveled in the supposed “reset” capped off by Trump’s first overseas trip, which was to Saudi Arabia.

Since then, both the administration and the Saudi government have been treating the relationship as a personalized one with the president and his family.

The Saudis are understandably gratified by the withdrawal from the nuclear agreement and the “maximum pressure” campaign against Iran.

But, in the meanwhile, the message has been inadvertently communicated to Riyadh that the real partnership is not with the U.S. in general but with the Trump administration or, at best, the Republicans.

That’s incredibly dangerous because Democrats are integral to American decision-making and are already starting to regain government authority.

The biggest danger for the Saudis is that Democrats will come to forget that the alliance began with Franklin Delano Roosevelt and has been supported by almost all of their own leaders for many decades.

Instead they may come to view the alliance with Saudi Arabia as a Republican, Trumpian error that should be corrected.

Having concluded this, they may then look for the alternative Democratic policy and, remembering only Obama’s nuclear negotiations with Iran, conclude that their party stands for outreach to Tehran.

Already there are loud voices on the Democratic left strongly implying a preference for partnering with Tehran over Riyadh.

Unfortunately, some Saudis are acting as if that was a predictable or standard Democratic attitude. It’s not. It’s new and dangerous.

Democrats, and even some Republicans, are correctly horrified by the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul last year, are concerned about human rights and the treatment of dissidents and women’s rights activists, and are raising serious concerns about the war in Yemen.

That doesn’t make any of them anti-Saudi. It means there are some serious issues that need to be dealt with on both sides of the equation to fix a fraying friendship.

Saudi Arabia shouldn’t misinterpret legitimate criticisms and concerns as a rejection of the alliance. And it’s especially troubling that some Saudi media in both English and Arabic seem to be falling into this partisan trap by attacking Democrats as such. Arresting American citizens doesn’t help either.

Instead, Saudi Arabia should act swiftly to ensure this entirely avoidable crisis is reversed and the relationship repaired. The best way to do that is to engage with Republicans and Democrats, and take criticisms seriously, not personally.

Otherwise, Riyadh may find that its alliance with Washington is supported by only one party or faction that may not be in power much longer.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-04-04/israel-arab-alliance-hangs-on-palestinian-peace

Israelis are relying on closer ties with Gulf states. The election next week will help determine how tight they can become.

About two years ago, an opportunity emerged to revive the Israeli-Palestinian peace process by bringing Israel and Gulf Arab countries closer together. It didn’t happen, and the last chance may depend on next week’s election in Israel.

The opportunity for a new strategic partnership was based on mutual antipathy to Iran. Shared Israeli and Arab opposition to the Iran nuclear agreement and Iran’s use of terrorist groups like Hezbollah to destabilize the region started to overcome decades of hostility.

The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump was quick to recognize the opportunity and pitched it as a way of reviving Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, which haven’t resulted in any agreements since 2005 and collapsed completely after President Barack Obama failed to secure a settlement freeze from Israel in 2011.

The idea was that Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and their allies could provide new incentives for Israel to make concessions to the Palestinians, and more inducements and Arab political cover to the Palestinians to make concessions of their own.

It hasn’t gone well.

While there has been diplomatic activity, most recently a visit by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Oman and his meeting with Gulf leaders at a Warsaw strategy conference in February, Israel and the Gulf Arab countries aren’t actually forming an open alliance against Iran. There’s been some clandestine intelligence-sharing and commerce with Israeli cyber-security firms, but that’s about all.

Contrary to Israeli and American hopes (and Palestinian fears), Gulf Arab countries are insisting on movement toward an Israeli-Palestinian peace agreement. Gulf Arab governments consider the Israeli occupation of the West Bank a threat to their security and stability.

The Trump administration apparently didn’t understand this, and has repeatedly blocked the path to the kind of progress the Gulf governments want to see.

First, the U.S. recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital without distinguishing between West Jerusalem and the city’s occupied East, which fed the deepest suspicions of Arabs and Muslims. It also wrecked the peace framework reached in 1993 that set Jerusalem and four other subjects aside as key “final status” issues to be determined only by agreement and after other key issues were resolved.

Then, the U.S. cut off most ties and funding to Palestinians, undercutting any efforts by Gulf countries to prod the Palestinians back into U.S.-brokered talks.

Finally, by endorsing Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights last month, the White House handed Israel another victory at Arab expense and in defiance of international law.

Since the Jerusalem announcement, Saudi King Salman has seized hold of the Palestinian issue personally and repeatedly clarified that Saudi Arabia would not alter its commitment to creating a Palestinian state with its capital in Jerusalem.

Hopes of bringing Israel and Gulf countries together are fading but not extinguished, as recent statements by the U.A.E. minister of state for foreign affairs, Anwar Gargash, demonstrate.

In a March interview, Gargash lamented the Arab history of ignoring and boycotting Israel, which he called “very, very wrong.” But he also insisted that Gulf countries need “progress on the peace front” to facilitate “the strategic shift” to a rapprochement with Israel, which he evidently favors.

It’s been clear for a couple of years that several key Gulf countries were open to mutually reciprocal small steps: Arab moves toward diplomatic recognition of Israel in exchange for Israeli steps toward easing the plight of the Palestinians and facilitating renewed negotiations.

Gulf Arab openness to creating this virtuous circle with Israel has been met with effusive Israeli enthusiasm about a new relationship, but frostiness on concrete steps toward lessening tensions with Palestinians, except for failed Egyptian-led efforts to ease the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.

The current ultra-right Israeli governing coalition, in which Netanyahu is among the most liberal members, is not likely to change the dynamic.

Hope depends on Israel’s April 9 election to deliver either a new government or a different Netanyahu-led coalition that’s open to engaging Palestinians as a response to Gulf overtures.

The Blue and White Party that’s challenging Netanyahu is led by several former generals and has adopted a tough negotiating stance towards the Palestinians. But it’s also criticized Netanyahu for avoiding talks and has pledged to resume peace efforts. Its leaders say they understand Israel’s security needs better than he does; if so, they will not let an opportunity pass.

In recent years, Israeli officials have often boasted about “our Sunni Arab allies” in the struggle to contain Iran. As things stand, that’s hyperbole.

The strategic alliance that Israel wants is possible. But it depends on a recognition by Israeli leaders that the Gulf Arab governments must be able to point to progress toward advancing Palestinian rights.