https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/for-the-palestinians-and-israel-the-trump-peace-plan-is-a-lose-lose-1.983338

History suggests that acting cruelly simply “because we can” has grim implications for the “strong” as well as the “weak”

The 21st century is starting to look a lot like the 19th century. President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have formed a joint American-Israeli committee to carve up the occupied West Bank with zero Palestinian input. It recalls the starkest days of predatory colonialism such as the Berlin Conference of 1884-85, which regulated European colonisation and trade in Africa. It also echoes ancient tragedies.

Mr Trump’s proposal, roundly rejected by the Palestinians and the Arab League, encourages Israel to annex vast tracts of occupied Palestinian land in stark contradiction to the United Nations charter and numerous other international prohibitions against the acquisition of territory by war, including all relevant UN Security Council resolutions.

It shreds the 1993 Declaration of Principles which Israel and the US signed along with the Palestine Liberation Organisation and Russia. Article V specifies “final status” issues to be decided only through direct negotiations, including borders and settlements.

So much for that.

Like an imperial suzerain, Mr Trump is claiming the right to authorise Israel to disregard international law and its own treaty commitments. Further, he believes that the areas Israel may annex remain to be negotiated between Israel and the US, rather than with the Palestinians.

So, the US and Israel have formed a joint “mapping committee” to determine, based on Israel’s territorial ambitions and Mr Trump’s political interests, exactly which areas Israel will annex and what will be left for a phony Palestinian state that would strongly resemble an apartheid-era South African Bantustan.

The brazenness and brutality of the plan was eloquently expressed by Mr Netanyahu during a February 16 speech in Jerusalem to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organisations.

He flatly stated that such annexations are “not conditional in any way on Palestinian acceptance of the Trump plan. Whether they accept it or not, it’s going to happen”. “The weak don’t survive,” he declared. “Only the strong survive.”

Students of history will immediately recognise in this speech, and the broader plan, the attitude that the 5th century BCE historian Thucydides attributed to the Athenians in the Melian Dialogue: “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.”

Mr Trump and his adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner defend their annexation initiative by claiming it “recognises reality”, meaning that Israel is simply unwilling to compromise and allow a meaningful Palestinian state because it does not have to.

“You, by giving in, would save yourselves from disaster; we, by not destroying you, would be able to profit from you,” the Athenians warned the Melians. That is also the clear message of Mr Kushner’s document and Mr Netanyahu’s comments.

When the US-Israeli-Palestinian summit at Camp David failed in 2000, it was clear that the most likely outcome was that Israel would eventually try to impose by force the kind of partial, highly circumscribed “statehood”, combined with annexation, formula that the Palestinians rejected at the negotiating table. They would do this not because it was wise, reasonable, legal, just or logical, but because enough Jewish Israelis desperately want to keep hold of these territories for religious, historical, economic and/or strategic reasons – and Palestinians completely lack the leverage to compel them not to.

So, most of the era following the signing of the Oslo Accords – which came to a formal and ignominious end with the publication of the Trump plan in January – was characterised by steady Israeli settlement-building and deepening the matrix of control on the ground. It was also defined by adroit Israeli resistance to all international pressure to meaningful territorial compromises.

Even when then US president Barack Obama secured a partial settlement construction freeze from Israel for 10 months in 2009, settlement construction did not, in fact, slow, let alone stop. There were enough exceptions, grandfathering clauses and other provisions to prevent that. Had it been extended any longer, it would have started to slow the entrenchment of the occupation, but Israel refused to consider that despite extremely generous US inducements.

Yet Israel was prevented from formally annexing settlements or the Jordan Valley because the US was a signatory to the 1993 Declaration of Principles, and remained committed to a two-state solution. With Mr Trump, all of that has changed. Now Israel is dealing with an administration in Washington that does not feel constrained by international law, signed treaty obligations or human rights.

Mr Trump’s administration enthusiastically embraces the logic of power that would enable Israel to conduct large-scale annexations precisely because it can.

But even if Israel seizes the settlements and the Jordan Valley, it will not have resolved the Palestinian issue. The logic of “the strong do what they can” therefore sets up an even more chilling future scenario. The Israelis will be more committed than ever to keeping hold of these territories but will be completely unable to politically incorporate the Palestinians.

For “the strong”, there is an obvious solution that could well become irresistible. Mass displacement leaving a small remnant of Palestinians, at most, in the areas that Israel intends to permanently control would provide the elusive solution. This could be done in the name of self-defence or military necessity, particularly if, or rather when, another major Palestinian uprising against occupation erupts.

Can anyone still believe that the US, let alone the world, would do anything serious about it?

Yet it is worth considering how Thucydides implicitly interpreted the Athenian cruelty he depicted towards the Melians, who were completely massacred or enslaved. In his immortal account of the Peloponnesian Wars, this exercise of strength in the form of brutal cruelty certainly seems to have sown the seeds for a hubristic Athens’ eventual defeat at the hands of Sparta.

The great Athenian historian illustrated not only the logic of unbridled power but also the grim implications that holds for the “strong” as well as the “weak”.

Many friends of Israel are seriously questioning how anything resembling a “democratic” or even meaningfully “Jewish” state can be sustained if the Trump plan is realised. Palestinians clearly stand to lose everything in the short run. But by embracing brute force and radical overreach simply because they can, Israelis may too in the long run.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-02-19/desperation-might-just-drive-lebanon-to-reform

If international donors hold firm to their conditions for a bailout, economic and political change may be possible.

The most severe of Lebanon’s intersecting crises is the country’s seemingly inexorable spiral toward economic catastrophe. In only the latest of many harbingers of doom, the likelihood of a default on a government bond due next month has sent stocks crashing to a 15-year low.

It’s not just investors who’re spooked. The national carrier, Middle East Airlines, was panicked into announcing that it would no longer accept Lebanese currency for payments. The decision was quickly rescinded, but it was a stunning vote of no-confidence in the pound, and by extension the economy and the government.

Lebanese authorities have asked the International Monetary Fund for guidance on stabilizing the economy, but international bailout conditions are likely to be painful. A team of IMF experts is scheduled to begin consultations next week.

But it is possible—if only just—to see a silver lining in all this. The desperate need for a bailout, combined with the ongoing people-power movement in the streets, could finally prompt significant economic and political reforms.

The intersection between the economic and political crises isn’t lost on anyone, at home or abroad. The World Bank’s Middle East representative, Ferid Belhaj, has called for reforms, issuing a stark warning for Lebanese leaders: “You cannot continue doing what you’ve been doing for years when you see what the reaction on the street is, and when you see what the state of the economy is.”

The massive street protests that began last October were initially centered on socio-economic grievances, but quickly evolved into a rejection of the entire political elite. The protests continue, but not with the breadth and intensity they had before. It remains to be seen whether the movement is fading, or whether it will regroup and make another major push for political reforms.

The newly-installed Prime Minister Hassan Diab, an ally of Hezbollah, has little breathing room, however. He is being snubbed by Gulf Arab countries that have long been crucial to the Lebanese economy, through aid and remittances from expatriate Lebanese workers. Only Qatar has agreed to receive him. The other Arab countries have clearly indicated they aren’t interested in propping up a government installed, they believe, to do the bidding of the Iran-backed group.

Capital investment has dried up despite another interest-rate cut. The all-important remittances, largely from the Gulf, are in freefall. In the last six months of 2019, Lebanese banks lost $10 billion of deposits, and the country is experiencing a rapidly-intensifying liquidity crisis, with dollars in short supply.

The most immediate threat is a $1.2 billion Eurobond that matures in March and does not appear payable. The IMF may suggest debt-holders must write off up to 70% of such investments, prompting another slide in the already beleaguered pound.

Diab knows an international bailout is the only way out of this mess. But the West and the Gulf countries, and even multilateral institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank, have made it clear they will not rescue Lebanon unless there are substantial, and painful, economic reforms—including currency devaluation, reduced subsidies and public-sector employment, and a crack-down on corruption.

And this would almost certainly involve significant political change as well. Greater transparency and accountability are crucial to any long-term Lebanese economic recovery. But the current political order has proven incapable of such tough measures and many of the leading national political figures are – as the protesters insist – deeply implicated in endemic corruption.

Nor will the changes be limited to domestic politics. To get long-term international support, Diab will be under pressure to finally enact the “dissociation policy” his predecessors have talked up for years but never implemented. This rather vague policy commits the Lebanese government “in all its components” to refrain from involvement in any regional conflicts or the affairs of other Arab states. To have any meaning, this would require Hezbollah to give up its cherished role as cat’s-paw for Iran in places like Syria, Iraq and Yemen.

But who will bell that cat? Hezbollah has just erected a statue of the slain Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani as a symbol of its—and Iran’—power over Lebanon. Diab’s best hope is that the Hezbollah leadership recognizes that they are inextricably bound to the rest of the Lebanese system, and that if the economy completely collapses, so will their finances.

If Diab is serious about mobilizing an international rescue, he needs to move quickly on the reforms that will be required by donors, especially the reduction of  of the national debt and an end to the looting of national wealth by the elites. I wouldn’t hold my breath, though. Diab is, as the protesters have been saying,  part of the elite.

Still, even if the Lebanese ruling class is determined to keep changes to the minimum necessary to ensure international support, as long as the donors stay firm on their demands for reform, they can begin to push the ossified power structure toward change. And if the protesters keep up the pressure on the streets, they may be able to force the implementation of constitutional provisions to create a more democratic and non-sectarian lower house in parliament.

If a combination of domestic and international pressure in the context of the emerging economic implosion is not enough to impose serious change on Lebanon, it’s hard to imagine what could.

https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/president-bernie-sanders-will-pose-problems-for-arab-countries-1.979794

In the unlikely event the Democratic Party contender beats Trump in this year’s election, his policies will not serve the US well, either domestically or abroad

Along with an apparently sound economy, Donald Trump’s greatest advantage going into November’s US presidential election will be his near-total grip on the Republican Party. Except for one senator – Mitt Romney of Utah, who voted to remove him from office at his impeachment trial – and one governor – Phil Scott of Vermont, who has endorsed one of his marginal rivals – Mr Trump indisputably dominates his party.

Regarding the Democratic Party, there are two competing narratives.

The first holds that, if you combine their aggregate numbers both during the 2018 midterms and the primaries thus far, Democratic centrists are emerging as the dominant force in the party. That would greatly distinguish the Democrats from the Republicans, who largely swung to the extreme right in the aftermath of Barack Obama’s sweeping presidential and congressional victories in 2008.

The second narrative holds that the hard-left Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has himself already become the dominant figure due to his close second-place finish in Iowa and a narrow victory in New Hampshire. Whether or not he wins the nomination, some argue, Mr Sanders has already transformed the Democratic conversation.

We’ve seen this movie before.

Mr Sanders commands the undying loyalty of approximately 25 per cent of his party’s base voters. In hotly contested primaries, he faces a divided field of largely mainstream rivals. He is opposed by the party establishment. Indeed, he has never even been a formal member of the party. And he is noted for radical views formed in the 1980s, if not the 1970s.

If that sounds familiar, that is because it precisely describes Mr Trump’s own position in the early stages of the Republican primaries four years ago.

Mr Sanders and Mr Trump share other characteristics.

Both are given to magical thinking and wild promises. Both have long histories of being suspicious of foreigners and trade. And both tend to appeal to the emotional and tribal sentiments of their base. These are not uniters, but rather finger-pointing and grievance-driven dividers – though one champions race and the other class.

There is another suggestive parallel in their mutual lack of transparency. Mr Trump has denied Americans the customary courtesy of releasing his tax returns though it is unclear exactly what he is hiding. Meanwhile, Mr Sanders has refused to divulge his health records, even though he is a 78-year-old man who in October returned to the campaign trail a few days after suffering a myocardial infarction, which damages and heart muscles, and mandates weeks of rest. Americans have no idea what his likely longevity might be.

Even without seeing his actual medical records, one might question whether his decision to resume campaigning was reckless in the extreme. It raises the issue of his overall judgment and perhaps a willingness to court disaster – even to his continued existence – in order to pursue political goals. The implications for the country are not reassuring.

Aside from sharing an attachment to Russia, Mr Trump and Mr Sanders are two of the more passionate proponents of the neo-isolationism that has gripped the imagination of the Democratic left as well as the Republican right, as typically defined by now-cliched diatribes against “endless wars”.

This is crucial because, if he is elected, Mr Sanders’ far-reaching policy goals on the economy and climate change, among other things, are very unlikely to pass even a Democratic-controlled Congress. However, foreign policy is an area in which presidents have wide – at times, almost unfettered – power.

Both Democrats and Republicans have, since the end of the Cold War – and particularly since the debacle of the 2003 invasion of Iraq – debated the usefulness of international engagement and leadership to ordinary Americans.

Mr Trump’s impulse is to oppose such engagement but his evident desire to look tough to his base sometimes prompts him in a different direction. Mr Sanders shares the disengagement impulse, although he appears to have no attachment to macho posturing. Mr Trump leads a party that is deeply divided between isolationists and hawks, and he continuously tacks between the two. It is not clear that a Sanders-led Democratic Party will be similarly split.

A President Sanders could pose serious problems for Arab countries. He played a significant role in the extraordinary vote last April, eventually vetoed by Mr Trump, through which Congress sought to use the War Powers Act to end all US support for the Arab intervention in Yemen.

Mr Sanders says he wants to withdraw all US forces from Iraq, Afghanistan and Syria by the end of his first term, and redirect spending away from international engagement, particularly military outlays, and towards domestic investments. He is likely to prioritise re-engaging with Iran by unilaterally lifting sanctions.

Under either Mr Trump or Mr Sanders, the US is likely to continue to withdraw from international leadership and especially the use of force.

Mr Sanders, who is Jewish, is popular among many Arab and Muslim Americans because he is perceived as a forthright critic of Israel. Compared to Mr Trump, he certainly is. And he is one of the few leading American politicians to suggest using aid to Israel as leverage on peace. But his essential position would return the US to a traditional two-state approach.

Mr Sanders has a long history of supporting far left-wing authoritarians, including the Sandinista government in Nicaragua, the Castro regime in Cuba, the now-defunct Soviet Union and others. His Democratic rivals have been circumspect on such issues, and Mr Trump – obviously delighted by the prospect of running against him and not a more formidable challenger – has kept his powder dry as well.

However, when and if Mr Trump and the Republican media machine unleash on Mr Sanders’ domestic and international views, the consequences could be devastating. Think Jeremy Corbyn – times 10.

In a battle of fabulist demagogues, it would be foolish to bet against Mr Trump.

https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/all-the-president-s-opponents-donald-trump-has-embarked-on-a-dangerous-mission-1.976381

A concerted effort to punish the whistleblower, the witnesses and those who co-operated with the impeachment probe undermines American democracy.

So, the heads are going up on pikes after all.

During US President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial, the lead Democratic Party prosecutor, Adam Schiff, cited reports that Republican Party senators were warned that if they wavered, their “heads would be on pikes”. Republicans feigned outrage. Last week, Mr Trump was acquitted by the Senate Republican majority, which had vowed to do just that before the witness-free trial – essentially just a debate – began. Several of the so-called moderates who were indignant about Mr Schiff’s “pikes” remark justified their acquittal votes by saying the president had “learned” a lesson and would be chastened.

That would be a rational response. But less than 48 hours after the verdict, the president initiated what will almost certainly be an extended campaign of vengeance against his perceived enemies. First to go were two key witnesses against the president and, to add an appropriate level of fear, an innocent bystander.

Few will weep for Gordon Sondland, just fired as US ambassador to the European Union, who donated $1 million to Mr Trump’s inauguration festivities. He is unlikely to get a refund. Yet it is shocking to see anyone dismissed for merely testifying to the US Congress.

Far more disturbing was the summary ouster from the National Security Council staff of Lt Col Alexander Vindman, a decorated Iraq war veteran, and his otherwise uninvolved twin brother, Lt Col Yevgeny Vindman. Both were marched out of their White House offices by armed security guards.

This first round of payback came immediately after Mr Trump railed against the “crooked”, “vicious”, “horrible”, “bad”, “dirty”, “evil and sick” people who had not sided with him. His spokeswoman vowed that such people “should pay”. At the annual National Prayer Breakfast, the president said he rejects the core Christian doctrine of loving your enemies and suggested that his supporters were all pious people while his opponents – including Senator Mitt Romney, a Republican who voted to convict him, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – simply use religion to conceal their wicked deeds.

The campaign of intimidation is plainly just beginning. Another likely victim is the whistleblower who first alerted Congress to the president’s efforts to coerce Ukraine into announcing an investigation into Joe Biden, Mr Trump’s possible opponent in the 2020 presidential election, and his son. Indeed, Senator Rand Paul – a Trump ally – has been attempting to expose this whistleblower by name, making further punishment possible. Also at risk is the inspector general of the intelligence community, Michael Atkinson, who allowed the whistleblower’s complaint to be passed to Congress – as legally required.

The Vindmans, the whistleblower and Mr Atkinson all followed the law and did their duties. But they enraged Mr Trump and so must “pay”. Many other officials could similarly be in jeopardy. Republican senators are preparing hearings against Mr Biden and his son. Officials from the Department of Justice are being investigated for having themselves investigated the Trump campaign. And the administration is reportedly searching for ways to strike back at Mr Schiff, Mr Romney and Ms Pelosi, among others.

Mr Trump claimed “full vindication and exoneration” by the Senate. But, in fact, not only was the trial a mockery of any judicial proceeding, and the only Senate trial in US history in which no witnesses were allowed, many of the key senators who ultimately sided with him acknowledged that Democrats had proven their case and that what the president had done was inappropriate, troubling and wrong. Yet except for Mr Romney, all concluded the correct response was to acquit Mr Trump and endorse his re-election.

Meanwhile, Mr Trump seems not only un-chastened, but enraged and even emboldened. He has specialised in using the powers of his office to attack his perceived enemies in an unprecedentedly personalised and vindictive manner. For example, he repeatedly urged his officials to persecute and legally prosecute his opponents, particularly Hillary Clinton, his presidential opponent in 2016, and James Comey, the former FBI director.

To get back at CNN he tried to block the acquisition of AT&T by CNN’s parent company, Time Warner. Also angered by Washington Post reporting, he has moved to block Amazon from being considered for major government contracts and to try to double what the US Postal Service charges Amazon for deliveries. Both Amazon and the Post are owned by Jeff Bezos.

The Department of Homeland Security is no longer providing crucial travel services to New Yorkers, which looks like a first measure against New York, a hotbed of ” the resistance”.

Undoubtedly more metaphorical heads on pikes will soon decorate the Washington landscape.

Meanwhile, Mr Trump’s children are being lionized like royalty. The National Association of Manufacturers is bestowing its prestigious Alexander Hamilton award to his daughter, Ivanka, because, they preposterously claim, “Like no one in government has ever done, she has provided singular leadership and shown an unwavering commitment to manufacturing.”
Servility, not achievement or competence, is now the coin of the realm.

Republicans in Congress show few signs of discomfort with the budding retaliation campaign, and those that have urged caution were reportedly rebuffed. The president has plainly drawn the inevitable lesson. Throughout his life he has relied on bluster, bullying and threats and has got away with skirting laws, norms and conventions. And most of his supporters will cheer the persecution of the likes of Lt Col Vindman, his brother and the whistleblower.

The last major democratic guardrail still standing is the November election. Mr Trump’s popularity numbers are robust and the sound economy he inherited from Barack Obama remains hardy. Besides, having just got away with an attempt to subvert the coming election, Mr Trump might be tempted to try again.

If he is re-elected by whatever means, there is every danger that the accelerating slide towards American autocracy could well be completed.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-02-05/time-for-palestinians-to-present-their-own-peace-plan?srnd=opinion

To undermine the Trump proposal, Mahmoud Abbas must show flexibility and compromise.

The Palestinian leadership has publicly responded to President Trump’s so-called peace proposal with “a thousand no’s.” So far, so predictable. But if President Mahmoud Abbas has any hope of limiting the damage from the Trump plan—which gives Israel license to annex large parts of the West bank and leaves the Palestinians at best trapped in an unworkable Bantustan—he needs to craft a more serious rejoinder.

U.S. officials have invited the Palestinians to come up with a counteroffer; Arab and European governments would welcome one that validates their opposition to the Trump plan and continued commitment to the two-state framework. Abbas has said he will present a proposal in the next couple of weeks, likely at the United Nations.

The momentum is on his side. The Europeans have rejected the plan, pointing out that it is utterly at odds with international law, existing agreements and understandings. There was some initial ambivalence from the Arabs: Seeking closer ties to Israel in their confrontation with Iran, some Arab countries had hoped to embrace the proposal. Ambassadors from the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Bahrain were present at the launch ceremony. But an Arab League summit unanimously rejected the proposal as “unjust,” and warned Israel not to proceed with its annexation plans. The Arab position was reiterated by the 57-state member Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

The Trump plan poses the greatest threat to potential Palestinian independence in decades, yet it has also strengthened Abbas’ authority at home by uniting the political factions, including Hamas, in opposition to it and, perforce, around his national leadership.

The stage is perfectly set for Abbas to present a bold new Palestinian vision for peace with Israel. The easy, and wrong, thing to do—and going by his track record, what he is most likely to do—would be to simply frame the Palestinian position as a vague, two-state formula based on UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338, and the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative. This was exactly the position he took at the UN last year, but times have changed dramatically.

A reprise of that speech might be politically popular with Palestinians, where Abbas would be seen as sticking to their national talking points. But it would achieve nothing for them: the Trump plan has already altered the political landscape, and it may not be long before Israeli annexation irreversibly changes facts on the ground too.

To undermine the Trump initiative, Abbas will need to show political courage and leadership—and flexibility. His own plan should embrace significant compromises on key final-status issues.

If he can’t produce a detailed conceptual map of proposed borders for the Palestinian state—those details would require negotiating with Israel–Abbas can at least identify some of the Jewish settlements that Palestinians are willing to trade for equal areas of unpopulated land in Israel, and a transit corridor to Gaza. He can concede that most Palestinian refugees will have to make do with compensation and citizenship in a Palestinian state rather than a return to what is now Israel. (He can cite himself as an example of this, as he has in the past.)

He can commit to reasonable security arrangements and a non-militarized state along Costa Rican lines—with police and security forces but no standing military, and committed to staying out of all conflicts—but  not one controlled or surrounded by Israel.

And he can affirm that Jerusalem would serve as the capital for both Israel and Palestine.

But Abbas should also insist that the Palestinian state be fully sovereign and in control its borders, airspace and electromagnetic spectrum and coastline.

Finally, he should agree that such an understanding would be an end of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and to all claims against each other.

All this would be entirely consistent with the positions the Palestinian leadership has presented at the negotiating table for decades, but has never honestly explained to its own public. As a result, such a plan would be controversial among Palestinians, but Abbas should point out that the Trump proposal is a national emergency, requiring the breaking of some political taboos.

At the UN, Abbas should also hold up a copy of the signature page of 1993 Declaration of Principles, signed by the Palestinian Liberation Organization, Israel and the U.S., and note that it is formal and binding. He can easily demonstrate that his vision is entirely consistent with its provisions while the Trump proposal is not. All negotiations, he should insist, must be based on this signed and agreed-upon framework, and not some new diktat from the White House.

If Palestinians respond with such a serious counteroffer, they will reinforce Arab and European opposition to the Trump proposal, and make any Israeli annexation effort far more difficult and costly. They will also greatly strengthen the hands of those in Washington who are committed to restoring sanity and viability to U.S. policy on Israel and Palestine.

https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/it-s-not-donald-trump-but-leading-republicans-who-are-posing-a-challenge-to-the-us-constitutional-order-1.973046

The lengths the Senate has gone to get the president acquitted has troubling implications for the country’s constitutional order

As evidence surrounding US President Donald Trump and the Ukraine scandal mounts almost daily, the Republican Party-controlled Senate voted on Friday to refuse to hear any witnesses or subpoena relevant documents. He is therefore set to be acquitted next week after the only Senate impeachment “trial” in US history without any witnesses.

Truth has, predictably, been the first casualty.

The Senate did not even want to hear from John Bolton, the former national security adviser, who has written a draft book claiming that, as early as last May, the president was plotting to leverage US military aid to coerce Ukraine into publicly smearing Joe Biden, Mr Trump’s potential opponent in the 2020 presidential election, as well as his son. He reportedly details the involvement of other senior figures, including Mr Trump’s lead impeachment attorney, Pat Cipollone.

On Saturday, the White House moved to suppress 24 emails that purportedly also document the president’s intentions towards Ukraine.

To justify their unprecedented aversion to information, Senate Republicans have floated some especially ridiculous arguments.

Lisa Murkowski of Alaska denounced the Democratic Party’s partisanship while joining almost all her fellow Republicans in defending their leader against the facts. She complained that the trial was not fair, but somehow blamed the House of Representatives for this – and not the White House, which suppressed critical testimony and documents, nor the Senate, including herself, which is cheerfully refusing them.

Lamar Alexander of Tennessee admitted that the Democrats proved their case against Mr Trump, but argued that, therefore, there is no need for any further evidence. He argued that while the president’s actions were clearly “inappropriate”, that was no reason to remove him from office, or punish him in any way. Indeed, he endorsed Mr Trump for re-election.

The party is ratifying a new and dangerous standard of presidential immunity and impunity. Mr Trump’s lawyers and most elected Republicans, either implicitly or explicitly, are arguing that the removal of a president requires a criminal act that is also politically corrupt.

One Trump lawyer, Alan Dershowitz, claimed that not only would a president have to be guilty of a statutory crime, his motive would also have to be corrupt. Mr Trump therefore cannot be removed because the House only charged him with corruption and abuse of office, not a criminal act.

Mr Trump’s defenders add there can be no question of corruption if, in abusing his authority, a president believes he is acting in the public interest – even if simply by securing his own re-election. If Mr Trump was trying to subvert the coming election by coercing Ukraine into smearing his opponent, so long as he believes he is the right person for the job, this theory holds that would be just fine.

All told this creates a shocking standard, almost every element of which is a severe blow to the traditional American constitutional order. It strongly suggests that a president could, for example, try to ensure his re-election by using his vast law enforcement authority to jail his opponents en masse, and that would not be impeachable.

That would render American democracy practically meaningless.

There might be some slow-witted Republican House members who sincerely believe that Mr Trump did nothing wrong or that such presidential impunity is constitutionally valid. But almost all senators know better.

Some undoubtedly fear Mr Trump’s wrath and the backlash of his passionate supporters. But Mr Alexander, 79, is retiring. His example suggests that Republicans do not require ulterior motives or bizarre delusions. Ideological affiliation and pure power politics explain their eagerness to defend Mr Trump despite everything – and, indeed, to heartily endorse him for re-election.

Marco Rubio of Florida summed up this astounding position by arguing that even when there are ample grounds to remove a president, implicitly as of now, that does not mean the Senate should do it. Obviously not, if you or your party might be harmed in the process.

Republicans seem to be embracing and ratifying the White House’s argument that a sitting president cannot be charged with a crime or in any way investigated by law enforcement, can absolutely stonewall Congress, and only be impeached or removed based on this almost impossible, virtually monarchical, standard.

The last democratic guardrail still standing is the presidential election in November. Even then, it is expected that, as in 2016, Mr Trump could well win with only a minority of popular votes through the quirks of the federal electoral college system.

Republican Senators point to the coming election, even though the Constitution does not provide any such impeachment exemption. It should be “left up to the people”, they said.

That flies in the face of the US constitutional system but, more importantly – and the lingering problem of minority rule aside – blatant election manipulation has already begun.

Mr Trump has just got away with an extensive effort at doing so via Ukraine. The Senate’s refusal to hear evidence was mainly motivated not to justify their upcoming acquittal of the president, which was apparently set in stone, but to deny the voting public the chance to hear people such as Mr Bolton and see the documents that detail the whole story.

The relevant portions of Mr Bolton’s book could well be suppressed, if not permanently, at least until November. The administration has put an indefinite hold on its publication, while it is “reviewed” to protect classified information and, strikingly, vast claims of “executive privilege”.

Would Democrats perform better under similar circumstances? One cannot be sure, though they have never put themselves in such a predicament.

American democracy is experiencing a profound crisis. But it is not Mr Trump who poses the primary challenge to the US constitutional order. It is the leadership and most elected officials and the institutions of the Republican Party.