https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/the-us-is-to-blame-for-its-foreign-policy-paralysis-over-the-past-decade-1.957399

A lost consensus about national goals has left successive governments in Washington rudderless, increasingly distracted and lacking clear purpose on the global stage.

Conventional wisdom increasingly holds that the US is struggling through a long goodbye from a traditional role of Middle East leadership. But if so, why?

American officials invariably insist Washington remains the driving force. Almost 10 years ago, then secretary of state Hillary Clinton declared a “new American moment” of global leadership. A year earlier, then president Barack Obama told a Cairo audience that he sought “a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world”. For all its “America first” rhetoric, the Donald Trump administration has similarly trumpeted US engagement in the region and the world.

On paper and in all spheres, the US remains by far the biggest international player in the Middle East. Yet a combination of policy failures and misjudgements has weakened its credibility and soured the American public on deep engagement in the region.

After the end of the Cold War, underscored by the liberation of Kuwait from Iraqi occupation in 1991, many in Washington imagined a unipolar world with the US acting as unchallenged superpower into the foreseeable future. If that was ever real at all, it was certainly temporary.

Nowhere was this more evident than in the Middle East.

The failure of the Bill Clinton administration to secure a Palestinian-Israeli peace agreement at Camp David in the summer of 2000 and prevent the Second Intifada – from which the peace process has never recovered – now seems the start of a long decline.

The 2003 invasion of Iraq was undoubtedly a major turning point, particularly for the American public’s striking Middle East fatigue. The George W Bush administration charged into Iraq on the flimsiest of pretexts, with no clear sense of what it wanted or how any of those things could be accomplished. The result was a predictable debacle.

The Obama administration, building on that legacy of failure, added an aura of unreliability.

Traditional allies, including the Gulf countries, Israel and others, watched with dismay as Washington abandoned then Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak to his fate in 2011 when he was forced to step down, suggesting that in this case at least loyalty proved a one-way street. The signing of the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran appeared to confirm many of these fears. Mr Obama also highlighted a “pivot to Asia”, chided Gulf countries as “free riders” and emphasised “burden sharing”. He allowed the Syrian regime to cross an announced “red line” on the use of chemical weapons without any negative consequences.

Mr Trump has continued all these trends and added wild unpredictability to the mix. Obviously, there is no guarantee he will not suddenly reverse his foreign policies if he feels that will play well to his domestic political base.

But behind this sorry tale of largely avoidable strategic deterioration in what remains an evidently vital region lie a number of voluntary and involuntary reactions.

The US is generally overextended and a multipolar world was the inevitable successor to the Cold War bipolar reality, rather than an “end of history” unipolar fantasy. So, the US has been in relative decline but from heights that were artificially exalted, historically peculiar and obviously unsustainable.

The most salient feature of this decline, however, is volitional – or at least hardwired into American democracy. It is also characteristic of American fumbling in other crucial international arenas such as the Korean Peninsula.

In Middle Eastern terms, the question can be easily framed thus: how is it that the relatively feeble Russian Federation is the emerging powerbroker and friend to all in the region while the relatively mighty US routinely sidelines itself? The answer is that Russia knows what it wants, defines its goals narrowly and acts resolutely to secure its specific interests. The US does none of those things, making itself an impossibly clumsy, bumbling whale, bested by relative minnows.

It is not just that, as a democracy, the US is trapped in inevitable conflicts between Democratic and Republican parties, or liberals and conservatives, or even internationalists and isolationists. All of that is true and the rise of the neo-isolationists of the Trump-era is a major challenge to US global engagement. But the greater problem is far deeper: even within a given administration or faction, there is rarely a clear, coherent and broadly-shared understanding of the political goal of many given diplomatic or military interventions. In the absence of a broadly-accepted and bipartisan framing narrative such as the Cold War and a clearly dangerous defining foe like the Soviet Union, the American system has a hard time achieving unity of purpose.

This harkens back to the disastrous period of incoherence between the two world wars, which the “America first” slogan also invokes.

Even within specific administrations in Washington, this is a perennial problem. After a long internal struggle, the Bush administration determined to invade Iraq. At the time, I counted 13 distinctly-different stated reasons for doing that yet almost none of its main proponents agreed on what the priorities should be. So, of course the US failed in Iraq. It never agreed on what it was doing. There was no broadly-accepted metric for measuring success or failure because there was no agreed-upon benchmark for such a judgment. Therefore, failure was guaranteed.

This problem has continued to the present day. Mr Trump seeks one set of policies in Syria, Iraq, Iran and, of course, Ukraine while many of his senior officials, and the military, view things very differently – as the impeachment inquiry has demonstrated. And, in Mr Trump’s case at least, it is not possible for him to stamp his mark on the administration because even he is not sure what he is going to want tomorrow and how he could defend it. And even when he thinks he does, what about everyone else?

Contrast this to Vladimir Putin’s Russia or Xi Jinping’s China. The cliche is, you can’t get what you want until you know what you want. For US foreign policy, this is becoming a crippling conundrum. The US cannot achieve or recognise foreign policy success because it does not have anything close to a shared definition of it.

https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/impeachment-trial-more-americans-are-starting-to-believe-trump-puts-his-own-interests-before-the-country-1.954959

Even parts of his Evangelical support base are beginning to fall out of love with the ‘morally lost and confused’ US president.

On Wednesday, the US House of Representatives adopted two articles of impeachment against Donald Trump. So, the president has been impeached and there will now be a trial in the Senate, right? Well, not so fast. In the Trump era, nothing is ever quite what it seems.

House speaker Nancy Pelosi has suggested that she might not formally forward the articles to the Senate or name the House’s “managers” – or prosecutors – until she is satisfied that the Senate will hold a serious proceeding.

By simply adopting the articles, the Democratic-led House of Representatives did not automatically empower the Senate to take over the process. Constitutional lawyers are even abstrusely debating whether Mr Trump has been impeached technically yet.

The move to withhold the articles is risky but also politically masterful by Ms Pelosi, who has time and again proven to be Mr Trump’s most formidable opponent.

She never wanted to impeach the president, preferring to focus on defeating him in the election. She understood that the Republican Senate majority has never been prepared to remove Mr Trump from office, no matter what facts emerge about him.

However, her hand was forced by Mr Trump himself when the White House released a summary of a July 25 telephone conversation with the newly elected president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, that appears to show him leveraging US military aid to secure the announcement of an investigation into the son of leading Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden.

That seemed such an apparently glaring abuse of power, especially as investigations are still ongoing into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, that Ms Pelosi ran out of arguments and options. Almost every witness in the House inquiry made matters worse by emphasising that Mr Trump sought a quid pro quo with Mr Zelenskiy.

As I have noted several times in these pages, impeachment is fraught with peril for Democrats because Senate Republicans can hold any kind of trial they want. Mr Trump passionately wants them to put the Bidens and other Democrats on trial instead of him, but Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell has planned a short process without any testimony by witnesses or new documents.

During Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial in 1999, such fact-finding was dispensed with because an extensive record was already established and both sides agreed it would have been a pointless waste of time. Today no such consensus exists because the White House refused to co-operate in any way, most key witnesses refused to testify and no requested documents were provided. Many key facts clearly remain undiscovered.

Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer requested testimony from acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, former national security adviser John Bolton, White House aide Rob Blair and budget official Michael Duffey.

Mr McConnell flatly refused. Republicans want nothing to do with fact-finding because what has already been established is damning enough and they do not know what might be next. Additional evidence could easily put them in an impossible position.

Ms Pelosi has hit on an artful way of satisfying Democrats without falling into a Republican trap. Mr Trump has been impeached but the House won’t let the Senate dismiss the entire matter through a perfunctory procedure with a preordained outcome.

This certainly intensifies the appearance that Democrats are manoeuvring politically rather than ethically or patriotically. But that is undoubtedly a price worth paying under the circumstances.

If the Senate will not agree to a serious trial, Democrats can continue to investigate the president as he languishes under the shadow of impeachment. It ensures that Mr Trump cannot have his day in court –unless Democrats have theirs too.

Mr Trump often chides and mocks Democrats for pursuing his impeachment and claims all this will be helpful to him in the 2020 election.

More often, though, he fulminates about how terribly unfair this impeachment is, comparing it to a coup and worse.  His December 17 letter to Ms Pelosi is easily the most bizarre ever penned by a US president, and may in future be studied in academic disciplines other than history and political science.

At the House impeachment debate, his Republican allies tried to outdo each other in following his lead.

One claimed Mr Trump had fewer rights than the victims of the Salem witch trials of 1692. Another compared impeachment to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour in 1941. One Trump acolyte even said Pontius Pilate had granted more due process to Jesus before his crucifixion.

Clearly this is not actually helpful to Mr Trump. A growing body of polling data from the likes of Politico, Quinnipiac and even Fox News suggests that more Americans now support impeachment, and even conviction and removal, than oppose it. Before the impeachment inquiry began, the opposite was the case. This is especially dangerous for Mr Trump because his governing coalition, which has never been a majority, is so thin that he can scarcely afford to lose any of it.

Plainly feeling vulnerable, Mr Trump appears more sensitive than ever to any potential deviation from absolute loyalty.

In a serious blow, the leading American evangelical magazine Christianity Today wrote in a scathing editorial that the president should be removed from office, calling him “a near perfect example of a human being who is morally lost and confused”.

To offset the impact that could have on his most loyal constituency, Mr Trump will inaugurate a new “evangelicals for Trump” organisation on January 3 next year.

Democrats will take significant political hits for withholding impeachment articles. Mr McConnell will probably breathe a sigh of relief. But Mr Trump will not.

The facts unearthed by the impeachment inquiry and the president’s reactions have taken their toll. It would be a political blunder for Democrats not to try to build on that foundation.

The president is a master of commanding the loyalty of his base. But the growing indication from those polls suggests that the patience of many Americans is wearing thin, as more come to believe that Mr Trump consistently puts his own interests, and not America, first.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-12-19/a-compromise-prime-minister-won-t-end-lebanon-s-chaos?srnd=opinion

The Hezbollah-backed Hassan Diab is unlikely to satisfy protesters who want their political system transformed.

News that Lebanon may finally get a new prime minister, nearly two months after the last one quit, is unlikely to end demonstrations that have wracked the country for weeks. The protesters, who have remained in the streets since bringing down the previous government, have made it abundantly clear they want to see the back of the entire political elite. They will not be impressed by the nominee, former education minister Hassan Diab.

That Diab is backed by the two major Iran-backed Shiite factions, Hezbollah and Amal, will likely make him even less credible in the eyes of the protesters. Those two groups have in recent days been staging angry, raucous counter-protests, deliberately raising the specter of sectarian conflict in a country that bears the scars of previous such conflagrations.

Hezbollah, in particular, is desperate to protect the existing political order, one that maximizes its influence and minimizes its responsibility. No one stands to lose more from the sweeping reforms demanded by the protesters: a complete overhaul of the political system, undertaken by a government of unaffiliated technocrats.

This is anathema to Hezbollah and its allies, which have prospered from a political arrangement that apportions power along sectarian lines: the Maronite Christians have a lock on the presidency, the prime minister is always a Sunni, and the speaker of parliament is unfailingly Shiite. Any political reform that could change this cosy arrangement—and the rigid gerrymandering of parliament along communal lines—would threaten all sectarian parties. But Hezbollah is more likely than the others to resist such change with violence.

Hezbollah’s weapons, and its backing by Iran, allow it to blackmail the rest of the country. This sub-national and unaccountable group has its own independent foreign and defense policies. As long as that continues, the Lebanese state is fundamentally hollow and militants call the shots where and when they really want to.

Hezbollah and its allies—particularly President Michel Aoun and his much reviled son-in-law, Foreign Minister Gibran Basil—have rejected the protesters demands for a technocratic government of outsiders. In their desperation to preserve the old order, Aoun and Basin tried to persuade Hariri to stay on; he refused. They will likely throw their weight behind Diab. (The nominee doesn’t seem to have any backing from his fellow-Sunnis, which doesn’t help his credibility.)

And what if, as is likely, the new man is rejected by the protesters? It is conceivable Hezbollah will go back to the drawing board, and seek another compromise candidate who preserves the status quo.

But the portends from earlier this week are alarming. On Monday, groups of Hezbollah and Amal supporters rampaged in the streets of Beirut, attacking protesters and fighting with security forces. This continued unabated for three days. They were supposedly enraged by a video by an allegedly drunk Sunni man insulting Shiites, but this was plainly pretext; such insults are hardly uncommon, and the response was aimed directly at the protest movement that threatens Hezbollah’s interests.

The counter-protests suggest the political stalemate between the demonstrators and the most determined protectors of the sectarian order is coming to a head. Hezbollah’s message is clear: if it needs to use violence to prevent real reforms in Lebanon, it will.

For many Lebanese, this message is a frightening reminder of the 1975-1990 civil war. The non-sectarian nature of the current protests had revived the ideal of Lebanon as a modern national project that would eventually transcend communal and confessional disparities and suspicions. That vision was never fully realized, but nonetheless prevailed in the national discourse until it was crushed by the civil war and replaced with the rigid and corrupt sectarian order that the protesters are now challenging. But Hezbollah, formed after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, has no institutional memory of the pre-civil war Lebanon; it knows only the uneasy equilibrium of unstable forces that followed.

Nobody beholden to Hezbollah, as Diab will be, can be the agent of change Lebanon needs. The protesters know this, and will not stand down. Beirut must brace for more violence.

https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/freedom-to-criticise-israel-is-dealt-another-blow-in-the-us-1.952425

An unnerving exception to American norms and protections of free speech is being carved out to limit and punish criticism of Zionism, Israel and even the occupation that began in 1967. A new executive order signed last week by US President Donald Trump which redefines Judaism as a “race” or a “national origin” under the terms of the potent Civil Rights Act, rather than as a religion, is a turning point in efforts to use government authority to suppress criticism of Israel on university campuses.

Mr Trump’s appointment of Kenneth Marcus to head the Office of Civil Rights at the education department was bound to lead to this, given that he has a long track record as a pro-Israeli hardliner and is one of the most vociferous advocates of such suppression.

By redefining Judaism as a “national origin” in the eyes of the US government for the first time, Mr Trump is essentially handing Mr Marcus the means to crack down on criticism of Israel in universities – traditionally forums of academic freedom that might now be coerced into suppressing such speech on their campuses for fear of losing vital federal funding.

The new order also lends official US government endorsement to a fundamental, but highly debatable, assertion of Zionism: that Jews are not defined only by religion or ethnicity but as a national group.

Efforts to sanction Israel by enforcing existing university regulations forbidding investments in any country that practices apartheid, a holdover from the campaign against systematic racism in South Africa, have not stuck anywhere in the US

This claim is also at the heart of the “dual loyalty” smear that many US anti-Semites deploy against Jews, suggesting they are more faithful to Israel than their own country. Even Mr Trump has suggested as much on several occasions.

For the past decade, advocates of Israel and Palestinians in the US have attempted to weaponise institutional and national authorities against one another. In this most unequal of struggles, the Israeli side has proven much more successful yet again.

Numerous state legislatures have adopted laws that not only denounce but also sanction and punish anyone who actively supports or advocates the BDS movement, often by denying employment or contracts. Such measures invariably conflate Israel with its settlements in occupied territory.

Yet university campuses are the epicentre of this battle. Pro-Palestinian efforts in the US have largely centred around the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which encourages a boycott of Israeli products. It has generated a great deal of rhetoric and passion but little success.

Efforts to divest from Israel by enforcing existing university regulations forbidding investments in any country that practices apartheid, a holdover from the campaign against systematic racism in South Africa, have not worked anywhere. Even when student governments have endorsed this idea, university officials have refused to accept that Israel fits that definition.

Most US campaigns have sought to target Israel generally rather than the occupation and so have met with insurmountable opposition. Contrast that with potent initiatives by many European governments to oppose Israel’s illegal settlements by refusing to do business with them because they are a clear violation of Palestinian human rights under the Fourth Geneva Convention.

For their part, in addition to numerous lawsuits against the Palestinian Authority, pro-Israel groups have sought to stigmatise and even punish BDS advocacy and other criticism of Israel by asserting that it is inherently antisemitic.

The argument is in essence a dispute about Zionism, with each side accusing the other of racism by endorsing or opposing it.

BDS campaigners and many other pro-Palestinian advocates view Zionism as a political ideology or orientation, and hence just as legitimately liable to be critiqued or rejected as any other. But many supporters of Israel have increasingly adopted the view that any wholesale rejection of Zionism is not only antisemitic but a primary contemporary form of antisemitism.

They say a rejection of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state that dedicates itself exclusively for the exercise of Jewish national rights and identity – as Israel’s policies since its founding in effect have done and its recently adopted nation-state law overtly declares – is racist. And they say it denies Jews the right to national self-determination that all other people supposedly enjoy. Only Israel, they claim, is subjected to a widespread attack on its fundamental legitimacy, and they argue that can only be due to antisemitism.

Many supporters of Israel have increasingly adopted the view that any wholesale rejection of Zionism is not only antisemitic but the primary contemporary form of antisemitism

The BDS movement and many other pro-Palestinian groups often take the opposite view. They argue that support for Zionism is racist because it advocates Jewish supremacy over Palestinians. They point to the historic dispossession and exile of millions of Palestinians and the ongoing discrimination against and disenfranchisement of most Palestinians living under Israeli rule. Indeed, they claim, their support for a one-state solution in which all citizens will be treated equally is the only formula for averting racism.

This is hardly the only emotionally charged debate on US campuses but it might be the only one in which institutional and governmental power in the US is being deployed to muzzle one side.

Mr Marcus has already sought to use the power of the administration to coerce several universities into suppressing criticism of Israel, by professors and students alike. Federal funding is a powerful tool.

He and the US administration insist these efforts have nothing to do with clamping down on free speech – but of course they do. Indeed, that is their obvious intention. If one defines harsh criticism of Israel or opposition to Zionism as inherently antisemitic and attempts to punish it, a crucial channel of debate, thought and discourse is being officially and deliberately shut down.

Alarmingly, the very important and otherwise honourable movement to uphold traditional free-speech values on US campuses usually ignores this organised and official effort to police thinking on Israel and the Palestinians.

But one thing is certain: for supporters of Israel and the occupation, this effort to secure government protection from criticism is anything but a sign of strength. It is a howling cry of weakness.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-12-13/the-gcc-split-with-qatar-will-mend-but-slowly

It was too much to expect the feud, years in the making, to end at the Riyadh summit.

The 40th Gulf Cooperation Council meeting in Riyadh this week did not, as some had hoped, bring to an end the isolation of Qatar. But it did show that relations between the parties on either side of the embargo continue to improve, suggesting that their dispute will be overcome as slowly and incrementally as it developed.

As with other recent summits, the Qatar’s ruler was invited to Riyadh; this time, there was some optimism Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani might attend, not least to reciprocate for the participation of other GCC soccer teams in the recent Gulf Cup in Doha. Instead, the emir instead sent his prime minister, Abdullah Bin Nasser Al Thani.

Was it, or was it not, a gesture of goodwill? On the one hand, it was the highest-level Qatari participation in a GCC summit since the start of the embargo. On the other, the prime minister has attended more routine Gulf Arab meetings. This perfectly sums up the state of tension between an ongoing stalemate and a slowly developing rapprochement.

First, a quick recap. In June 2017, three GCC states—Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain—along with Egypt formally isolated Qatar, cutting diplomatic ties and transportation links. The embargo was more than a “boycott,” as the quartet put it, and less than a “blockade,” as Doha and its allies described it.

The goal was to force Qatar to abandon policies of support for opposition movements in other Arab countries, and its close relations with non-Arab regional powers such as Turkey and Iran. The quartet accuses Qatar of backing the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamists, left-wing Arab nationalists, and terrorist groups like the Taliban and Hamas. Also, Doha hosts Al Jazeera, the TV network with an editorial line that tends to favor all anti-status quo and oppositional forces in the region.

The embargo was the culmination of years of bickering, including an earlier break in relations in 2014 over much the same set of issues.

Each side hoped to force the other to capitulate by winning support from the U.S. Initially, President Donald Trump seemed to favor the quartet, while his Department of Defense was sympathetic to Qatar, and the State Department wanted to mediate between the quarreling Arabs.

After months of skillful diplomacy in Washington, and a series of agreements with the U.S., ranging from the monitoring of terrorism-financing to resolving civil-aviation disputes, Qatar was hopeful that Trump would intervene on its behalf. The quartet restricted its attentions largely to the White House while the Qataris also took their case to the broader Washington policy conversation, with considerable success.

In the end, however, both parties were disappointed: the U.S., mindful of its vital political, military, diplomatic and intelligence ties to them all, refused to take sides.

Meanwhile, Turkey and Iran came to Qatar’s aid, providing it with various forms of reassurance—ranging from new flight routes and emergency food supplies in the early days of the embargo to military displays of support. As a result, Qatar was able to weather the onslaught and find a way to live with the new normal of isolation from its immediate neighbors.

Still, the resulting stalemate has come at a cost to all the parties. If Qatar has survived, it can hardly be said to have thrived: billions of dollars were withdrawn from Qatari banks, its airline, airport and tourism were walloped, and economic growth slowed. The quartet, too, has incurred losses, particularly the UAE emirate of Dubai, which has suffered a significant blow to its brand as the regional hub of a system of global interaction: isolating a wealthy neighbor contradicts that ethos of interconnectedness.

So all the parties involved have been looking for a way out; Kuwait and Oman, caught in the GCC crossfire, have tried to mediate. The turning point may have been the severe crisis afflicting Iran, whose 1979 “Islamic” revolution was the proximate cause for the GCC’s founding. Recent protests in Iraq and Lebanon, and then in Iran itself, have challenged social and political orders designed to maximize the Islamic Republic’s regional hegemony. Tehran and its allies do not appear to have a plausible response, other than brute force and repression.

This crisis means that Iran’s regional rivals, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, no longer feel—as they have since U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003—that Iran is gaining strength at every turn, accumulating a disproportionate regional advantage.

The risks in inviting a regional rapprochement with Qatar, therefore, have decreased greatly. Add to this the fact that nothing further is to be gained from extending an isolation campaign that is yielding diminishing returns, and you understand why Riyadh, in particular, has been testing the waters for an end to the GCC dispute.

For now, the UAE remains a holdout, arguing that Doha has not adequately addressed the issues that led to its isolation. But the Emiratis have tended to follow the Saudi lead on GCC matters, and will likely do the same over Qatar.

None of this will happen in a hurry—maybe not even in time for the next GCC summit next year in Bahrain. But the dispute with Qatar grew over years and even decades, and will take time to resolve. But the fact that the Gulf Arabs are headed toward a rapprochement is cause enough for cheer

https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/democrats-are-walking-into-a-trumpian-trap-by-rushing-the-impeachment-process-1.948433

Two weeks ago, I warned that the Democratic Party was making a big mistake by rushing to pass articles of impeachment in the House of Representatives and force a Senate trial of US President Donald Trump. The intervening days have greatly expanded the number of analysts agreeing that Democrats are mishandling the process of trying to hold Mr Trump accountable for allegedly trying to leverage US foreign policy to smear his political opponents.

Three major recent developments intensified these concerns.

First, important facts continue to come to light, including further evidence that the Ukrainian government was well aware of the withholding of US aid – through which Mr Trump allegedly sought to pressure Kiev to announce an investigation into unsubstantiated corruption claims against Hunter Biden, the son of his leading Democratic rival Joe Biden. There is also new evidence that Mr Trump and his associated had extensive telephone conversations most probably dedicated to this caper.

Second, Democrats have accelerated their rush towards impeachment by the House of Representatives possibly before Christmas.

By rushing, Democrats are playing into some of Donald Trump’s greatest strengths. He thrives on speed and chaos. One scandal follows so fast upon the next that no one can stay focused and it all becomes a dizzying blur.

Third, the baton has been passed from the house intelligence committee to the judiciary committee, which would adopt and forward impeachment articles to the full house.

The judiciary committee held its first hearing last week featuring four constitutional scholars. Three advocated impeachment with potent legal and analytical arguments. However, the fourth, Jonathan Turley, had warnings for both sides.

Although called by Mr Trump’s Republican allies, he did not support their main arguments. He agreed that Mr Trump might well have committed impeachable offenses, most notably during his July 25 phone call with Volodymyr Zelenskiy, the Ukrainian president, which he said was “anything but ‘perfect’,” as the president insists.

Most Republicans have dismissed the inquiry as a ridiculous waste of time. By contrast, Mr Turley argued that the Democrats can and should increase their efforts to develop the case. His legal arguments seemed weak compared to those of his colleagues. However, his political point that the general public has not been convinced and that much more testimony and documentation is required for impeachment to make sense was powerful.

His claim that by not suing for such testimony in court, Democrats are abusing their power is hugely overblown. But they are certainly abandoning the institutional imperative to re-establish the US Congress’s authority to compel testimony and obtain documents despite Mr Trump’s unprecedented stonewalling.

The White House has refused all congressional requests for documents and ordered all executive branch employees not to testify, although several have anyway.

But crucial testimony is required from acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and his aide Robert Blair, energy secretary Rick Perry and his former chief of staff Brian McCormack, secretary of state Mike Pompeo and his counsellor Ulrich Brechbuhl, defense secretary Mark Esper, national security council lawyer John Eisenberg and his deputy Michael Ellis, various officials from the office of management and budget, and, most notably, former national security adviser John Bolton (who has suggested he is aware of lots of undiscovered information about the Ukraine scandal).

Democrats have not subpoenaed most of these officials for fear of endless litigation, though there are potential ways around that pitfall.

It is also essential that they confront and defeat a series of interconnected claims being made by the White House that essentially place the president above the law. The administration claims the president not only cannot be charged with a crime but cannot even be investigated under any circumstance by any law enforcement authorities, state or federal. It also claims that only the executive, not Congress, can investigate any violations of law. And, finally, it claims the president has “absolute immunity” from congressional investigation and testimony applicable to all current and former employees and to all documents.

If Congress and the courts fail to quash such vast claims of executive impunity, the US will effectively have temporary, elected monarchs and impeachment will be meaningless because establishing the facts will be practically impossible.

The Democrats’ haste is especially troubling because it is so evidently political: a prolonged impeachment process does not fit their partisan schedule regarding the primary and general elections in 2020. They do not want their candidates mired in impeachment disputes while they are trying to secure the nomination and win back the White House. But this greatly bolsters the otherwise weak Republican case that this impeachment is essentially a political exercise. Legally, morally and constitutionally, it is not. Democrats have a devastating case against Mr Trump. However, tactically and strategically, it increasingly appears political.

Without the upcoming elections, Democrats would surely be hunkering down for an unyielding struggle to assert the rights of Congress and build the legal and political case against Mr Trump with the general public. And by rushing, Democrats are playing into some of Mr Trump’s greatest strengths. He thrives on speed and chaos. One scandal follows so fast upon the next that no one can stay focused and it all becomes a dizzying blur.

If Democrats were serious about impeachment, they would counteract this Trumpian fog of misdirection and information overload with clarity, repetition, persistence and endless amplification of the basic facts that are already established and certainly appear impeachable.

As Harvard professor Noah Feldman noted at the hearing, impeachment is part of the Constitution precisely because its framers feared that “a president might use the power of his office to influence the electoral process in his own favour”. That is precisely what Mr Trump appears to have attempted.

This is also the main argument Democrats use to justify their haste: if there is an ongoing corrupt effort to misuse the powers of the presidency to rig the upcoming election, it must be stopped immediately or the results will be tainted forever. They point to the president’s private attorney, Rudy Giuliani, continuing to ostentatiously meet with pro-Moscow Ukrainians to promote long-debunked conspiracy theories blaming Ukraine for meddling in the 2016 election.

Such fears are not ridiculous. But they are not sufficient either.

The purpose of protracted hearings would not be, as analyst Michael Tomasky suggested, to simply accumulate more articles of impeachment. It is to ensure that Congress establishes the facts, effectively communicates them to the public and reasserts its indispensable investigative authority.

If all that comes at a significant political cost, Democrats are duty-bound to pay it. Otherwise, it will be hard to counter the argument that for them this is indeed just another political game.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-12-07/lebanon-is-not-a-hezbollah-state

The country’s military has demonstrated reassuring independence from the Iran-backed militia, and deserves American support.

On Monday, the Trump administration finally released $105 million in annual aid to the Lebanese Armed Forces that had been appropriated by Congress but, like the more notorious hold on military assistance to Ukraine, was inexplicably delayed by the White House.

Better late than never, particularly since the Lebanese military has been protecting protesters in the streets of Beirut and other cities from intimidation by the pro-Iranian militias of Hezbollah and Amal.

The Lebanese protests, now coming close to their third month, are a powerful rebuttal to the pernicious notion that all of Lebanon, or even just the Lebanese state, is simply an extension or a tool of Hezbollah, and should be therefore treated as a terrorist entity and pariah.

Hundreds of thousands of Lebanese, from all walks of life and throughout the country, have been protesting the entire socioeconomic and political establishment. Their anger isn’t directed primarily against Hezbollah or Iran, but against the entire power structure in the country, which they blame for mismanaging the economy and enriching itself at the expense of the general population.

Obviously, this threatens everyone who benefits from the status quo. But the threat to Hezbollah and its allies is particularly severe.

Through force and guile, Hezbollah has maneuvered over the decades to maximize its influence in Lebanon, ensuring that it remains the most potent armed force in the country, while minimizing its responsibility for the failures of the state.

It poses as a revolutionary group focused on combating Israel and only a small party of the government with a few minor ministries. In reality, it is by far the most powerful force in the country, maintaining its own foreign and defense policies, independent of the Lebanese government.

Hezbollah initially pretended to side with the protesters. But its leader, Hassan Nasrallah, quickly changed his tune and decided that the protests were “inauthentic” and manipulated by foreign “hidden hands.”

This is because any profound change to the political order in Lebanon must have one of two negative effects for Hezbollah. If the upheaval leads to real change, the group’s leverage can only decrease. Alternatively, if things don’t change, Hezbollah will become increasingly associated in the public mind with the corruption and repression that props up the system that maximizes its influence. Hezbollah’s bluff will be called, and its role exposed. Either outcome is a long-term threat to Hezbollah’s credibility and power.

So, the organization has been trying to disrupt the protests through threats and intimidation by goons. Protesters from Shiite communities have been repeatedly filmed “apologizing” to Hezbollah and its leadership, or to the state, for “insulting” them in the demonstrations. This is a familiar strong-arm tactic, in which the gun behind the camera cannot be seen by the viewer but is clearly evident in the expression of the victim. It has also been deployed by the regime in Tehran to try and undermine recent protests in Iran.

This is why supporting the Lebanese army is urgent and important. The army is the primary national institution that can serve as a bulwark against thoroughgoing Hezbollah domination. In recent weeks, it has repeatedly intervened on behalf of the demonstrators when they were attacked by gangs of Hezbollah and Amal thugs.

It is likely that the original impulse to withhold the congressionally-appropriated U.S. aid to the Lebanese military originated from the wrongheaded notion that Lebanon equals Hezbollah and therefore shouldn’t get any American support. Senator Chris Murphy, who lobbied for the release of the funds, has said that “there is at least one person at the [National Security Council] who wants to punish Lebanon for having a political relationship with Hezbollah.” Given that numerous commentators with close ties to the administration have been pushing for just such a perspective, that’s not surprising.

But the protests, and the army’s performance in recent weeks, have shattered this myth.

The protests represent the rejection of the sectarian order in Lebanon, and the resurrection of the pre-Civil War vision of Lebanon as a modern, unified nation-state with a national consciousness beyond communalism. That threatens much of the power structure, but it is a mortal danger to Hezbollah and its nefarious state-within-a-state in Lebanon.

Everyone interested in combating Hezbollah domination of Lebanon and power in the Middle East ought to take advantage of this opportunity and understand that the Lebanese state isn’t equivalent to Hezbollah. To the contrary, it is the alternative to Hezbollah. As such, it deserves support rather than isolation.

Cost-sharing talks with South Korea and nuclear negotiations with the North both come due on Dec. 31. Then what?

Under the rubric of “America first,” the Donald Trump administration has pioneered a radical departure in US foreign policy from that of all its Democratic and Republican predecessors since the second world war. Mr Trump’s approach to international relations breaks with tradition by being willing to fawn over and coddle autocratic adversaries while taking a harsh, even bullying attitude towards traditional, democratic allies.

The downsides of both seem to be coalescing in the Korean Peninsula.

Mr Trump has generated an unprecedented crisis in relations with South Korea. And his vacillation between thundering threats and sentimental overtures towards North Korea appears similarly headed towards a potentially catastrophic meltdown.

The crisis with South Korea is particularly perplexing. South Korean President Moon Jae-in shares Mr Trump’s enthusiasm for improved relations with North Korea and he has showered effusive praise on the US president for facilitating greatly increased dialogue between Washington and Seoul with Pyongyang.

Moreover, recently Mr Moon and Mr Trump have been able to work together to avoid a looming meltdown in relations between Seoul and Tokyo, a crucial element in the tripartite alliance.

South Korea had been threatening to withdraw from the 2016 General Security of Military Information Agreement which provides for close intelligence sharing with Japan because of a burgeoning trade dispute. Under US pressure, Seoul also dropped a formal complaint against Japanese trade restrictions at the World Trade Organization, at least for now.

Continued tensions, some of which date back to the brutal Japanese occupation of Korea before and during the second world war, are likely and a trade war remains possible. Japan’s increasing uncertainty about US reliability and anxiety about North Korea are prompting new levels of re-armament and regional assertion that can only feed South Korean suspicions.

However, Mr Moon wisely placed national interests above his political interests and nationalistic sentiment in South Korea to drop the trade complaint, salvage the intelligence agreement and preserve the three-way alliance with the United States.

Rather than building on this significant achievement, Mr Trump is demanding that Seoul pay vastly more to support the US military presence in its country. Two years ago, South Korea agreed to pay just under $1 billion annually, about 20% of the US cost.

This year Mr Trump is demanding more than five times that. This isn’t just belligerent, unreasonable or designed to be humiliating, although it is all of those. It seems intentionally designed to be practically and, especially, politically impossible.

No matter how much he treasures the alliance with Washington, Mr Moon cannot accede to such a radical increase, especially when South Korea just paid 90% of the $11 billion cost for a new US military base at its largest overseas installation, Camp Humphreys.

To rub salt in the wound, the US delegation summarily walked out of the last set of negotiations, apparently in a theatrical huff representing Mr Trump’s pique at Seoul’s inevitable balking at what looks and feels like a protection racket shakedown.

Underlying all of this, of course, is Mr Trump’s long history of insisting that US troops ought to be entirely withdrawn from South Korea. That is the most obvious explanation for why he might make impossible demands on what is otherwise regarded as an old, crucial and trusted ally. (Similar extortionate demands for vastly increased funding of overseas US forces are being made of Japan, among others.)

South Korea is so alarmed by all this that earlier this month it signed a far-reaching defense agreement with China, an obvious act of considerable desperation.

The main beneficiary of any US military drawdown, let alone withdrawal, from South Korea – and even these tensions between Seoul and both Washington and Tokyo – is, of course, North Korea. The raison d’être of the Pyongyang regime is the expulsion of US forces from the Korean Peninsula and its reunification under the Kim dynasty.

Yet if South Korea is one of the prime examples of how Mr Trump’s bullying approach to traditional allies is leading to disaster, his love-hate relationship with Kim Jong-un is a textbook illustration of the pitfalls of his equally unorthodox approach to adversaries.

Mr Trump likes to claim that, had he had not been elected in 2016, the US would have soon been in a nuclear war with North Korea. That is absurd hyperbole, but he did inherit a tense situation from Barack Obama, who pointedly told him that Pyongyang would be his biggest international problem.

Mr Trump’s response to the ongoing conundrum of North Korea’s nuclear weapons and missile development and testing, was to threaten “fire and fury such as the world has never seen.” But then he initiated an affectionate dialogue with Mr Kim, even saying more than once that the two had “fallen in love,” and melodramatic but content-free summit meetings in Singapore, Vietnam and the Demilitarized Zone between the two Koreas.

All Mr Trump has been able to extract from Mr Kim were some human remains, possibly of US soldiers killed in the Korean War, and a few hostages. There has been no agreement by North Korea to nuclear disarmament, and not even an inventory of its nuclear assets.

Mr Kim is increasingly showing every indication of running out of patience waiting for sanctions relief. North Korea recently tested new rockets and has shown signs of activity at several nuclear weapons centers. It appears Mr Kim is ready to return to a policy of provocations if he remains frustrated, and he does seem to be in a position to squeeze Mr Trump, his “beautiful letters” notwithstanding.

Bullying allies for extortion payments creates senseless crises. Alternately threatening and cajoling adversaries, and relying on Mr Trump’s personality and television imagery, does nothing to extract concessions from hostile tyrants.

Both burden-sharing negotiations with the South and nuclear talks with the North expire on December 31. Mr Trump doesn’t seem to have an alternative plan in either case.

The wrongheaded ineffectiveness of trying to coerce friends while seducing enemies is becoming readily apparent in both halves of the Korean Peninsula.