https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-04-28/the-trump-administration-can-t-have-it-both-ways-over-iran?sref=tp95wk9l

The State Department won’t get far by arguing the U.S. remains a participant in the nuclear deal.

The Trump administration is attempting to have it both ways over the Iranian nuclear deal. In an effort to extend an international arms embargo on the Islamic Republic beyond its scheduled expiration in October, the State Department is preparing to claim that the U.S. remains a “participant state” in the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action that Iran agreed with the world powers in 2015.

It has been nearly two years since President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from that deal, and started to impose harsh economic sanctions—periodically intensified—on the Islamic Republic. This has proved an effective tool to pressure other countries not to do business with Iran, even though United Nations-approved international sanctions on Iran were nominally eased when it signed the JCPOA.

But now the administration is worried that if the arms embargo is allowed to end, the terms of the deal would allow the regime in Tehran to purchase advanced weapons systems, such as fighter jets and tanks. The State Department is hoping to forestall that that eventuality by threatening to using the JCPOA to reinstate binding international sanctions within 65 days.

How would that work? First, the U.S. would have to invoke terms of the JCPOA that allow any other signatory to activate the dispute-resolution process if it believes Iran has violated the agreement. Iran has exceeded limits on stockpiling enriched uranium, among several other breaches.

A joint commission would then have 15 days for deliberations. If Washington isn’t satisfied—and it won’t be—the matter would be referred to the signatory foreign ministers for another 15 days of discussion. Presuming the Trump administration remains unmoved, the joint commission would then have five more days to hear from an advisory board.

The process would then shift to the UN Security Council, where Washington’s unilateral power would kick in. The council must pass a resolution to continue sanctions relief for Iran. Without such a resolution, the pre-JCPOA restrictions—including the arms embargo—would automatically snap back into effect. An American veto would ensure the resolution does not pass.

That, at any rate, is the theory. But the State Department hasn’t explained how the U.S. will justify invoking the terms of the JCPOA after Trump rejected the agreement. The European signatories—Germany, France and Britain—are unlikely to buy the claim that the U.S. remains a party to the deal. Russia and China definitely won’t. If the other parties won’t recognize the U.S. right to begin the dispute-resolution process and the joint commission never meets, the gambit would quickly fail.

For its part, Iran will see any effort to block arms purchases as grounds for additional provocations.

But the arms embargo isn’t the only objective here. A faction within the administration led by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien believes that, with U.S. sanctions having crippled Iran, now is the time to pile on more pressure and compel Tehran to come to new terms.

Trump’s sanctions have indeed damaged Iran’s economy, which is now receiving a further battering from the coronavirus crisis and the collapse in oil prices. In geopolitical terms, the Islamic Republic is under significant pressure in regional hotspots like Syria and Iraq.

The Iranians have responded with a string of provocations—including missile attacks by surrogate Iraqi militias against the U.S. military in Iraq and naval confrontations in international waters—that simultaneously indicate desperation and, arguably, justify yet more American pressure.

The Trump administration insists that its broader goal is to compel Iran to negotiate a better nuclear deal that also addresses Tehran’s missile program and its support for sectarian militia groups in neighboring Arab countries.

That’s a vital goal. So too is extending the arms embargo: An Islamic Republic with advanced weapons systems would be a far greater threat to its neighbors and to the wider world.

Effective and sustained pressure on Iran could help secure both objectives. The embargo, even if extended on paper, won’t be effective if Russia and China decide to sell weapons to Iran anyway. A serious diplomatic effort is required to convince them not to. This would need European support, not exasperation over at attempted legal workaround.

By trying to have its cake and eat it too, the Trump administration will only succeed in further alienating allies and damaging the global standing of the U.S.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-04-23/trump-may-determine-israel-s-annexation-schedule?sref=hm8oMGrA

The question is whether Netanyahu will want to spare the president a fresh headache ahead of the November election.

Israel’s new coalition government seems to be contemplating massive annexations of occupied Palestinian territories in the coming weeks. The person dictating the timetable may not be an Israeli at all, but President Donald Trump.

Article 29 of the national unity government agreement between Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party and Benny Gantz’s Blue and White coalition explicitly opens the door to annexations. Trump’s so-called “Peace to Prosperity” proposal announced on Jan 28 gave Israel license to permanently appropriate all existing settlements in the West Bank, plus the strategically crucial Jordan Valley. This would completely encircle any potential Palestinian entity within a greater Israeli state.

Netanyahu, fighting not only for reelection but also to avoid a criminal trial on corruption charges, leapt at the chance to announce that he would immediately annex much of the West Bank. Trump and his son-in-law—and advisor on the Middle East—Jared Kushner warned Netanyahu to wait.

Gantz adopted an incoherent policy in favor of annexation but only in coordination with the international community, whatever that means. During weeks of negotiations to form a government, Gantz insisted his party would not support unilateral annexation. But the new agreement marks his complete capitulation.

Netanyahu appears determined to go forward for personal, political and ideological reasons. And Gantz is no longer inclined to stop him.

There is an additional incentive for Netanyahu and his allies to move quickly: Trump is in big trouble politically. The coronavirus pandemic has decimated the U.S. economy, depriving the president of his main reelection pitch, and his poll numbers are sinking badly. Moreover, he will have to face the centrist veteran Joe Biden, a more formidable opponent than the avowedly socialist Bernie Sanders.

None of the leading Democrats have embraced the Trump proposal. So it would be reasonable for Netanyahu to conclude that this opportunity for Israel to seize large swaths of Palestinian territory with American approval may never be on offer again. Once the deed is done, it would be extremely difficult for another president, whether Biden or anyone else, to force an Israeli withdrawal.

Netanyahu may be willing to bear the costs annexation would impose on Israel, including another bloody conflagration with the Palestinians, serious damage to relations with Jordan, for long Israel’s closest ally in the Arab world. He may be willing to risk recent improvements in relations with other Arab states.

If anything gives the prime minister pause, it may be the knowledge that annexation would create another major headache for Trump, who has plenty of crises on his plate right now.

Trump may not care if there is an explosion of Palestinian anger, and the Arab states are unlikely to direct their anger at him. But an annexation drive would set off a debate within the U.S. over the nature of American support for Israel, which is neither in the interest of the president nor of the prime minister.

Few Democrats, including Jewish supporters of Israel, favor the annexation plan; internationalist Republicans in the Senate are also skeptical. On the eve Trump’s re-election bid, it would be politically awkward to abandon a decades-long bipartisan consensus for a two-state solution, with very limited domestic support and widespread anxiety about the consequences.

Much depends now on the signal Trump sends to Netanyahu. A green light would allow Israel to move rapidly on annexation, with only the current coronavirus crisis serving as any kind of brake.

A clear red light is unlikely: It would be hard for Trump, having essentially endorsed annexation earlier this year, to now do a volte-face. But he might be able to hold up the process by asking Netanyahu to wait for the Israeli-American “mapping committee”—which is to determine exactly which areas of the occupied West Bank Israel can be permanently annexed—to complete its task. The committee’s deliberations can then be dragged out until Trump feels politically secure enough.

A third possibility is a flashing yellow. Trump might quietly encourage Netanyahu to take something small for now, like the Israeli settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, which most Palestinians assume will eventually become part of Israel anyway. This would set the precedent, both in Israel and in Washington, without actually setting off a conflagration. Having thus laid the groundwork at little political cost, Trump and Kushner could make the annexations a second-term project.

That might make the implementation of Article 29 of the Netanyahu-Gantz deal contingent on the outcome of the U.S. election in November. The question is whether the prime minister and his hardliners are prepared to risk waiting.

https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/coronavirus-why-americans-won-t-fall-for-donald-trump-s-immigration-ploy-1.1010190

People will see through  yet another attempt by the President to distract them from his administration’s poor handling of the Covid-19 crisis in an election year.

On Monday night, US President Donald Trump went back to basics. He tweeted that because of the coronavirus and to protect jobs, he would “temporarily suspend immigration into the United States!”. When all else fails, as it has, Mr Trump predictably returned to two essential aspects of his worldview: economic nationalism and xenophobia.

What he presented as a blanket ban via executive order is not quite that, but is nonetheless almost unprecedented internationally and completely unprecedented in US history. It also cannot possibly counteract either the pandemic or unemployment crises.

The US is, after all, now the global epicenter of the pandemic with more confirmed cases (more than 800,000) than the next two countries, Spain and Italy, combined, and by far the largest number of deaths, at over 42,000.

Non-Americans arguably have more to fear from Americans than vice versa. Moreover, there is no evidence that immigration plays a crucial role in spreading the virus. That justification is a pretext.

Mr Trump endlessly points to his ban on the entry of Chinese travelers, although it was neither as unique nor early as he claims. Nor was it effective. It probably bought some time, but that was obviously squandered.

Moreover, Mr Trump has already suspended most entry into the US. Borders with Canada and Mexico are closed. Migrants, including asylum-seekers, are turned away at crossings. Consular services are shuttered and very few new visas are granted.

Green card recipients and immigrant visa holders cannot enter for at least the next 60 days, but many migrant workers can, including farm laborers and others essential to certain industries. So, many non-citizens will still be coming and going.

It is hardly about protecting jobs, either. Immigrants played no role in the unemployment surge caused by social distancing. Job losses in the US are more a function of globalization and widespread automation. Sectors like tourism and education will suffer immediately, leading to both immediate and longer-term opportunities lost for Americans.

Prohibiting immigration is not going to get Americans back to work. But it may change the subject, which is what Mr Trump really wants. This is likely to form a major part of his main re-election pitch, in effect Plan C for a second-term.

Plan A was to run on the strong, although debt-ridden, economy that he inherited from Barack Obama and arguably enhanced. Since employment is the ultimate lagging indicator, Mr Trump was the beneficiary of particularly strong jobs numbers, the cumulative fruits of over 10 years of uninterrupted economic growth. And he was fixated on getting the stock market to 30,000, which, tantalizingly, was almost reached on the eve of the pandemic-induced collapse.

Obviously, no one can run on the present economy, so Mr Trump pivoted to Plan B: running as an inspiring and unifying wartime president against “the invisible enemy”. But that stratagem quickly collapsed given the administration’s fumbling of the pandemic, confusion, misinformation, mixed-messaging, and embarrassing fiascoes involving equipment such as testing kits and personal protective gear.

Instead, Mr Trump has rapidly been divesting himself of responsibility, insisting that state governments alone are responsible for almost all aspects of battling the crisis, including testing and contact tracing, and when and how to reopen normal daily life.

Mr Trump has chosen to turn the lack of a national strategy into a virtue, shifting any blame entirely to states, singling out those controlled by members of the opposition Democratic Party.

So much for Plan B.

So, Plan C it is: a return to anti-immigrant and economic populist themes tinged with racial animosity and shot through with white nationalist appeal.

Mr Trump began his political career by describing immigrants, particularly Mexicans and other Latinos, in the language of disease. He insisted they were “spreading tremendous infectious disease”, as they “pour across the border”. He described immigration as a “tremendous medical problem”. Democrats, he warned, wanted immigrants to “infest our country”.

Now Mr Trump has simply flipped the metaphor, describing a virus as if it were an invading army of alien hordes and calling it “the Chinese virus” or “a foreign virus” — as opposed, presumably, to an all-American contagion which might be preferable to contract and die from.

Mr Trump has demonstrated he has little idea of how to govern on most issues, and particularly when it comes to combating a pandemic. But he is an impressive demagogue and campaigner. And he has found several ways to politicize the plague and turn it into a wedge issue on which he can run.

Even though almost all states are following his own social distancing guidelines, by siding with anti-mitigation protesters he is creating a political divide over public health security versus economic prosperity and personal liberty.

And by introducing the otherwise unrelated issue of immigration – which he effectively uses as a proxy for race and white power – into the swirl controversies surrounding the virus, he is again signaling to his largely white, Christian, non-college-educated and non-urban followers that he is championing their culture, communal political power, and even identity.

Putting such existential interests into play encourages the notion that the country as Americans know it is at stake. Mr Trump’s followers will then care little as to whether he is telling the truth on some relatively insignificant medical or public health issue. Many are already proclaiming their willingness to risk life and health, with the mayor of Las Vegas even offering her citizens as an experimental “control group”, in the name of individual freedom and economic recovery. And Mr Trump’s re-election.

Immigration is a powerful issue in America, especially with the President’s base. But more powerful in the minds of most Americans may be his astounding mishandling of this pandemic, the ensuing economic collapse and the widespread anger he relishes provoking.

https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/donald-trump-s-coronavirus-woes-have-been-made-worse-by-wisconsin-s-election-1.1007847

With his poll numbers falling, the president’s re-election campaign is evidently getting desperate.

Donald Trump just suffered arguably the worst week of his presidency. It is not only that the US reached the watershed of more than 4,500 coronavirus fatalities in 24 hours. More importantly, the Democrats are avoiding the kind of blunders Mr Trump relied on to get into office and is counting on to stay there.

His meteoric political career has been defined by opponents routinely destroying themselves on his behalf.

In the 2016 Republican primaries, an intra-party election process to choose its presidential candidate, the party establishment and other candidates were fixated on blocking Senator Ted Cruz, who they disliked and feared more than Mr Trump. When the dust settled, it was too late. Mr Trump had amassed a huge delegate lead and was well on the way to winning over the party rank-and-file. The Republican leadership never meaningfully resisted his now comprehensive takeover of the party.

The Democrats, too, and especially the Hillary Clinton campaign, never took Mr Trump seriously enough. This attitude was exemplified by then president Barack Obama’s reassurances to concerned US allies that a Trump victory was unimaginable. Mrs Clinton even ignored and took for granted key states such as Wisconsin, where she never campaigned, despite nervous entreaties by her husband, former president Bill Clinton, one of the few leading Democrats to have appreciated the danger Mr Trump truly posed to her White House bid.

Those days are over. No one underestimates Mr Trump anymore. This time the party leadership and the vast majority of Democratic voters have plainly realised that tacking strongly to the left with an avowedly socialist candidate like Bernie Sanders would be a blunder. In striking contrast to their disunity in 2016, they have united behind former vice president Joe Biden, and are building on the centrist and moderate approach that won them a victory in the 2018 mid-terms.

Last week, the last organised divisions evaporated. Mr Sanders suspended his campaign and endorsed Mr Biden. Mr Obama, who vowed not to take sides until the nomination was resolved, strongly endorsed his former vice president. So did Senator Elizabeth Warren, the one-time presidential contender, and several leading Republican activists.

The difficulties Mr Trump will face in dealing with Mr Biden were illustrated by his self-contradictory reactions.

On the one hand, Mr Trump yet again suggested that Mr Sanders, who does not claim this, was somehow cheated and that the Democratic primaries were rigged against him, although he was overwhelmingly defeated at the polls.

On the other hand, Mr Trump and his conservative allies allege that although Mr Biden won, he largely capitulated to Mr Sanders’ left-wing policies. As Mr Sanders’ supporters surely understand, this is false, although Democrats in general have moved somewhat to the left. But Mr Trump had his heart set on running against a socialist, so that label, no matter how preposterously, must now be affixed to Mr Biden.

Obviously, this narrative about Democratic leaders simultaneously cheating and capitulating is nonsensical. And the depth of Mr Trump’s likely difficulties in November were dramatically illustrated by Tuesday’s Wisconsin election.

The presidential primaries were not the most important races, although Mr Biden’s latest overwhelming victory against Mr Sanders secured those crucial endorsements. The main event was a Wisconsin state supreme court election – in many US states, judges are, bizarrely, elected by the public. A Trump-backed Republican incumbent, Daniel Kelly, was expected to win, particularly after Republican legislators and judges effectively forced voters to choose between risking their health or forsaking their vote.

But the Democratic challenger, Jill Karofsky, won by a large margin in a state that typically sees narrow victories on either side. Even if voters were punishing Republicans for their outrageous election shenanigans or the outcome was skewed by greater interest in the Democratic primary, this stunning result suggests that Republicans in general and Mr Trump in particular are in deep trouble in this crucial swing state.

And then there is the coronavirus pandemic. The Trump presidency sailed through three years virtually crisis-free, only to be hit by a maelstrom. The convulsion presents massive challenges but also huge political opportunities.

It wiped out Mr Trump’s main re-election pitch – a strong economy, albeit burdened with vast public and private debt, that he inherited from Mr Obama and extended – yet the pandemic was an extraordinary opportunity for him to rapidly scramble perceptions by improbably uniting the country around his leadership. Americans know they only have one president, and when a major crisis strikes, they overwhelmingly root for their national leader because they love their country.

Unfortunately, Mr Trump does not know how to unite. Dividing is his metier. And he does not know or care about governance, although he is a masterful campaigner. Predictably, then, he produced none of the leadership, in either words or deeds, that could have won him the potential widespread respect and gratitude that was suddenly available.

In the furnace of calamity, Mr Trump could have refashioned himself as a strong and inspiring, or at least effective, leader. To say the least, that has not happened.

He has even struggled to keep his story straight on any aspect of the crisis, including when he was informed about the virus, how seriously to take it, and what his role should and should not be.

Most recently, he abruptly shifted from asserting “total authority” and complaining about a “mutiny” by Democratic state governors, to rejecting any responsibility whatsoever and insisting states must make all key decisions.

Then he attacked Democratic state governments that are following his own social distancing recommendations, ominously tweeting “LIBERATE MINNESOTA!” followed by Michigan and Virginia. None of these states meet his own guidelines for re-opening.

But by siding with angry right-wingers railing against his own mitigation policies and condemning Democratic-led state governments, he is establishing a narrative of blame he may hope will allow him to escape responsibility for this calamitous failure even though there has been no national coronavirus strategy. “State governments failed you, not I,” is the emerging message.

Still, Mr Trump’s poll numbers are falling. His campaign just issued a telling letter claiming that Democrats are preparing to “steal the election”. That’s how bleak his re-election prospects are starting to look.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-04-17/libya-is-sliding-toward-partition?sref=btDWv5Tg

Despite international backing, neither side of the civil war can achieve a decisive victory.

It has now been a year since the start of the current phase of the Libya civil war  between eastern forces led by Khalifa Haftar, head of the rebel Libyan National Army, and the western forces loyal to the Government of National Accord in Tripoli. Neither seems capable of decisive victory, and with little prospect of a peaceful reconciliation, the possibility of partition—formal or informal—looms ever larger.

Both sides are receiving support from outside powers, for whom the contest for Libya is a struggle over regional natural resources and over the future of Islamist groups in the Arab world.

The LNA offensive that began a year ago was dubbed Operation Dignity; irony was an early casualty of the war. It was an attempt to extend Haftar’s control from the main eastern cities of Tobruk and Benghazi into the western coastal areas, and especially the capital. Because the GNA’s fighting forces include Islamist militias, Haftar cast his campaign as an effort to purge Libya of religious extremists and terrorists.

Tripoli has proven an elusive prize for the easterners. While the GNA, backed by Turkey, has been mainly on the defensive, Haftar is overstretched and has never seemed likely to overrun the capital—or  any of the other major western coastal cities. Instead, as the battle has intensified in recent weeks, the LNA has retaken three strategic cities near Tripoli.

Fayez al-Sarraj, prime minister of the GNA, has also stepped up rhetorical attacks against Haftar, ruling out any accommodation with the rebel commander.

Sarraj’s position has been greatly bolstered by a major intervention by Turkey, which has deployed its own troops to the conflict, as well as drones and other military equipment. Ankara has reportedly dispatched thousands of Syrian Islamist fighters to support the GNA and its allied Libyan Islamist militias.

Turkey’s interest in Libya is partly driven by ideology. The Islamists associated with the GNA are among its last allies standing in the Arab world, along with Qatar, Hamas and various Muslim Brotherhood parties. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is loath to let another Sunni Islamist power in the Arab world go down without a fight.

The GNA’s authority is also crucial to Turkish ambitions  in the eastern Mediterranean Sea: Ankara is attempting to control the exploitation, and especially the distribution, of large reserves of liquid natural gas. Having drawn an imaginary line from the northern Turkish shore to the coast of Tripoli, it is claiming joint control, with the Sarraj government—and against the interests and objections of Greece, Cyprus, Israel and Egypt—of nearly a third of the Mediterranean waters.

But even with Turkish backing, the LNA is unlikely to break out of its western redoubts. Haftar, like Sarraj, is the recipient of substantial foreign support and supplies, although perhaps not nearly as intensive or direct. The United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Russia all back his efforts, with occasional Emirati and Egyptian airstrikes against his enemies, and some Russian mercenaries fighting alongside his forces.

The stalemate over the past year suggests that a de facto partition may be developing, between an Islamist-dominated western Libya, with Turkish and Qatari support, and the Haftar-controlled east, with Egyptian and Gulf support.

One man who might have had a chance of uniting the two sides lost his own fight against the coronavirus on April 5, in Cairo: Mahmoud Jibril, Libya’s first post-Qaddafi prime minister. Jibril’s most striking legacy may be his July 2012 election victory in which his coalition of essentially secular political forces handily defeated the Islamist parties by emphasizing patriotism over religious fanaticism.

Jibril’s political genius lay in his ability to wield the flag against the Islamists, without allowing them to deploy the Koran against him. Indeed, he was able to use Islam itself to attack the Islamists, by asserting, “The Libyan people don’t need either liberalism or secularism, or pretenses in the name of Islam, because Islam, this great religion, cannot be used for political purposes. Islam is much bigger than that.”

But for all his skills, Jibril was unable to prevent his country’s drift toward civil conflict. He could not fight the growing power of independent militia groups and tried to contain them instead. Some condemned this strategy as “appeasement,” but it may have been all he could muster, especially since the international community, having taken its eye off Libya after Qaddafi’s death, failed to back him when he needed it most. As his country descended into all-out conflict, Jibril, who was no warlord, was pushed out of politics and into exile in the UAE and Egypt.

Libya, sliding toward a partition between Haftar and Sarraj, could really use a Jibril right now. None is in sight.

https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/is-donald-trump-s-us-sliding-towards-illiberal-democracy-1.1005011

Is Republican success in establishing minority rule at the nation and even state levels leading the US into a post-democratic era?

Since the end of the Cold War, American political scientists have fretted about the rise of illiberal democracies around the globe. Yet the US itself is increasingly becoming the inverse: a liberal non-democracy.

Popularized in a 1997 essay by Fareed Zakaria, the term “illiberal democracy” describes a political system with the trappings and formal processes of democracy – elections, multiple parties, privately-owned media and so on – but in which power is effectively autocratic. Venezuela, Turkey, Russia and Hungary might look democratic on paper, but are clearly not liberal.

The US is becoming strikingly undemocratic but does not resemble such “illiberal democracies”. The Republican Party is trying to systematize minority political rule despite an increasing liberalization of culture and society, which it is powerless to restrain. The US is thus essentially liberal, but increasingly not meaningfully democratic.

In the Donald Trump era, racism plainly lingers, but most racists passionately deny their racism. Misogyny, sexual assault and harassment persist but they are increasingly stigmatized and potentially dangerous to abusers. Homophobia has greatly decreased, and gay marriage is generally accepted. And despite a surge of nativism, most of US society is rapidly conceptualizing itself as a far broader ethnic and religious rainbow.

Illiberal democracies are often associated with “majoritarian authoritarianism” – the idea that anything over 50 per cent of the population, or even whoever gets the most votes, can do virtually anything, minority and individual rights notwithstanding. But US Republican power is not majoritarian, and it is out of step with most of these liberal social and cultural changes.

Mr Trump was elected president in 2016 despite getting almost three million votes less than his opponent Hillary Clinton. Similarly, the Republican “majority” in the Senate represents 15 million fewer Americans than the Democratic “minority”.

In several key swing states, the political outcome is similarly distorted. Partisan gerrymandering has meant that in the states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and North Carolina, for example, Democrats won 54, 53 and 51 per cent of votes in the last election but secured only 45, 47 and 45 per cent of legislative seats respectively.

As I noted recently on these pages, turnout in US elections is now all-important. There are considerably more Democrats, but Republicans are typically better at motivating and mobilizing their supporters. Still, Republicans increasingly concede that they simply do not represent a majority and that their national, and sometimes state-level, power often depends on limiting the number of citizens who vote.

Mr Trump recently claimed that if the country generally adopted voting by mail or other reforms making voting simpler and easier, “you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again”. Many Republicans have voiced similar sentiments. Last year, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell even described a proposal to facilitate voting by making election day a federal holiday “a political power grab” by Democrats.

The appalling spectacle last Tuesday in the state of Wisconsin, where the Republican legislature refused to consider postponing the election – despite the state being under lockdown due to the coronavirus – was a chilling demonstration of how this works. It could even serve as a dry run for potential efforts to use the pandemic to similarly boost Mr Trump’s chances in November.

Mr Trump urged Republicans to “fight very hard” against mail voting initiatives prompted by the pandemic, claiming – contrary to all evidence – that it invites massive fraud. Although he calls it “corrupt”, Mr Trump himself voted by mail in March, “because I’m allowed to”.

The Supreme Courts of both Wisconsin and the US separately split exactly along partisan lines on the Wisconsin election, with Republicans barring any extension of deadlines for absentee ballots – even though numerous voters applied for, but did not receive, them. Strikingly, both courts refused to meet in person for fear of infection, but then insisted Wisconsin voters must choose between risking their own lives or accepting disenfranchisement.

Under Mr Trump, Republican minority rule is rapidly dispensing with many traditional political guardrails and structural checks. The Republican Senate majority refused to hear a single witness in his impeachment trial, because any testimony was likely to be damning, and was open about its determination to acquit him no matter what.

Now, Mr Trump is taking advantage of the pandemic to purge government inspectors general who made the mistake of doing their duty and telling a variety of inconvenient truths. He seems keen to install cronies who will not engage in troublesome oversight, though that is exactly what inspectors general were created to do.

Republican minority rule is hardly without consequences, especially profound economic impact. The five-member Republican majority in the Supreme Court – itself established by Mr McConnell’s unprecedented and successful ploy of ignoring a well-qualified Democratic nominee for almost a year in hopes of adding another Republican instead – is aggressively conservative and seems fully committed to expanding Republican power.

The court could soon strike down the well-established constitutional guarantee of a woman’s right to reproductive choice, allowing state legislatures to effectively prohibit abortions. In many places, no doubt they will.

But most of the country will not. It will still be the case that while “red” America – constituting a Republican and conservative minority – wields political power, “blue” America – representing a Democratic and liberal majority – largely shapes the far deeper contours of culture and society.

This distinction is especially sharp among younger Americans, where Republican conservatives are an even smaller minority.

So, the US is not becoming an illiberal democracy. In most places, and for most of its citizens, it is still an essentially liberal country with a free press, significant personal freedom, largely functional national and state-level institutions, and a vibrant and viable political opposition.

Yet, many Republican leaders really are seeking to manipulate the US political system to entrench obviously undemocratic minority rule. That is increasingly becoming a reality. Mr Trump could well be re-elected with an even bigger vote deficit than in 2016, and that prospect is just the tip of a vast undemocratic iceberg.

Between the White House, the Senate and several key states, minority rule is no longer an American anomaly. Unless the evident Democratic majority reasserts itself nationally in November, or an unexpected Republican majority suddenly materializes, the US will take another major step to becoming a full-fledged liberal non-democracy.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-04-07/the-u-s-and-iran-are-inching-toward-confrontation-in-iraq?srnd=opinion

Tehran is seeking military leverage and Washington wants to capitalize on overlapping crises.

At the beginning of the year, the U.S. and Iran came close to war, following a series of attacks in Iraq. Now, as all three countries grapple with the coronavirus epidemic, another round of confrontation is looming.

Once again, rocket attacks by Iranian-backed militia groups on American targets in Iraq are driving the escalation. On March 11, an attack on Camp Taji attributed to the Kataib Hezbollah group killed two U.S. and one British servicemen. The next day, the U.S. retaliated with at least five attacks on group’s weapons depots.

It was strikingly reminiscent of the exchange of attacks that culminated in the January 3 killing, by a U.S. drone strike, of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani and Kataib Hezbollah leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. Iran’s retaliation did not take any American lives, but left scores of soldiers with hear trauma. An uneasy lull followed.

Now the two sides are again threatening each other with dire consequences. On April 1, Donald Trump said Iran was planning a “sneak attack on U.S. troops and/or assets in Iraq” and warned the next American “response will be bigger.” Iran responded that the U.S. would face “the fiercest response” to any counterstrike.

Why is this happening now? Because both sides see an opportunity.

The escalation is largely driven by Iran’s ongoing imperative to carve out some breathing space from the suffocating U.S. economic sanctions. Tehran is convinced that it needs some military leverage to achieve this. And Iraq is the place that Iran can challenge the U.S. directly, without having to pay the bills, literally and metaphorically. Many of the Iraqi militias, even those that take instructions from Tehran, are funded by the Iraqi government.

Iran now finds itself on the back foot across the region, as well as dealing with several crises at home. Its Lebanese ally, Hezbollah, are in the uncomfortable position of having responsibility—it prefers to have just power—in the middle of an economic catastrophe. In Syria, Iran is being increasingly elbowed to the sidelines by Russia, Turkey and the Assad regime. And in Iraq, its proxies allies have so far failed to secure their own candidate for the prime ministership and are trying to fend off an effectively pro-Western candidate, Adnan al-Zurfi, nominated by President Barham Saleh.

But Iran still has a trump card in Iraq: the Shiite sectarian militia groups collectively known as the Popular Mobilization Forces. Using them to attack the U.S. provides that military leverage with a degree of plausible deniability.

The regime in Tehran also needs to exert its authority over the militias. Al-Muhandis was the PMF’s unquestioned leader, but although Iran and its allies were able to replace him with another Kataib Hezbollah commander, Abu Fadak al-Mohammedawi, at least two other candidates have challenged his leadership. The coordination of the PMF groups is in relative chaos, and the authority of Abu Fadak—and hence of Iran—is yet to be consolidated. A bloody battle against U.S. troops in Iraq might help establish the new man’s credentials.

Moreover, Iran needs the PMF groups to consolidate their position within the Iraqi political structure and fend off a potential pro-U.S. prime minister.

The Iranian regime and revenge-seeking Iraqi militants aren’t the only ones yearning for a fight. A contingent within the Trump administration, led by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien, believes now is the time to escalate pressure on Iran, as it is battered by an economic crisis brought on by intensifying U.S. sanctions, the coronavirus epidemic, and the collapse in the price of oil, as well as a myriad of regional woes. The Pentagon has ordered commanders to draw up a plan to try to destroy Kataib Hezbollah’s capability to attack U.S. forces in Iraq.

This was strongly opposed by the senior U.S. commander in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Robert P. White. President Trump, too, appears reluctant to intensify the escalation with Iran under current circumstances.

But Iran and its Iraqi client groups may be encouraged by reports that U.S. forces are being consolidated into a smaller number of forward operating bases; the regime in Tehran believes this is an important step to the eventual removal of all American troops from Iraq. They will want to hurry the U.S. departure, but in a way that doesn’t invite massive retaliation.

American casualties from rocket fire would require Trump to act decisively to restore deterrence, which has weakened since the drone strike on Soleimani and Muhandis. Several Patriot missile batteries have been installed to protect bases from incoming rocket fire.

There are just too many itchy fingers on triggers in Iraq for anybody’s comfort.

https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/washington-is-failing-its-coronavirus-test-1.1002469

From the outset, the US response to the pandemic has been characterised by a shortage of testing kits, equipment and – most of all – leadership.

As the coronavirus pandemic rapidly develops into one of the greatest catastrophes in US history, Americans are starting to piece together the grim answer to the most obvious question: how did this happen? Obviously, it is difficult to prevent pandemics. And it has long been recognised that the world is highly vulnerable to such a calamity.

There was nothing inevitable, however, about the scope or scale of the human and economic toll on the US. It is now the main epicentre of the global pandemic. In raw numbers (assuming we have a full grasp of what transpired in China’s epidemic) and in per capita terms, the US is doing worse than most other affected nations.

Yet the US had vast advantages in terms of potential resources, scientific knowledge and capability, medical infrastructure and economic strength than many other countries, such as South Korea or Singapore, which have dealt with the coronavirus onslaught much better.

Americans will be wrestling with this national nightmare for decades once it is resolved. But even now, while we are still in the early stages, it’s entirely possible, and necessary, to identify the key errors that led to this historic fiasco. It is so dire that President Donald Trump now argues that if “only” 100,000-200,000 Americans die, that will prove he has done “a very good job.”

First, it was generally understood that the Barack Obama administration did not handle the 2014 Ebola outbreak particularly well. Consequently, that administration put in place a number of directorates, working groups, studies and other structures to avoid such errors in the future.
The Trump administration, however, seemed to regard all of this as unnecessary fat, and virtually all of it was eliminated or ignored. Moreover, the Centres for Disease Control were woefully understaffed, with over 700 unfilled vacancies in the Trump era, key stockpiles of medicines and equipment were left un-replenished, and a programme to mass-produce cheap ventilators was allowed to collapse due to big-business machinations.

Meanwhile, experts were warning, loudly, for much of the past decade, that a devastating pandemic was virtually inevitable. On January 3, the Trump administration was informed by intelligence agencies that the coronavirus was spreading in China, and within the following week the gravity of the peril was being emphasised in the president’s daily intelligence briefing.

On January 18, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar tried to warn Mr Trump of the growing danger but he dismissed him as “alarmist” and wanted to discuss regulating flavored vaping juices instead. In the subsequent days and weeks officials continued to try to warm of the urgent threat to public health security and lack of sufficient preparation and equipment.

During that period, Mr Trump and his supporters repeatedly dismiss the virus as totally under control, akin to the regular flu, likely to magically disappear, and of little consequence.

However, other parts of the government decided to try to act. In one of the most consequential failures, the once respected CDC decided, on January 15, to spurn a World Health Organization coronavirus test and, for some reason, created its own. Those first shipped on February 8, but the CDC tests were flawed and produced radically inaccurate results. Yet the government continued to rely on those inaccurate tests for 21 days.

Meanwhile, numerous private, commercial and university labs around the country were trying to develop their own coronavirus tests, but on January 31 Mr Azar catastrophically issued a health emergency declaration in the United States, which effectively quashed all of these nongovernmental test projects and burdened them with ludicrous amounts of pointless red tape from the Food and Drug Administration.

So at a time when testing was crucial, the government’s own test failed, it refused a WHO test and it effectively shut down all private efforts to create an effective test. Those restrictions were finally relaxed on February 29, but with many crucial weeks lost.

Americans will be wrestling with this national nightmare for decades once it is resolved

Also on January 31, Mr. Trump announced a travel ban from China. This was reportedly debated for almost a month, with tens of thousands of travellers entering before it took effect. This measure was always going to be of limited utility, although it probably bought time. Assuming it did, however, that time was once again squandered.

Meanwhile, Mr Trump continued to assert that everything was absolutely under control and there was nothing to worry about whatsoever. And the scarcity of tests meant the virus spread far and wide, virtually undetected.

When he was finally forced to take the pandemic seriously, in mid-March, Mr Trump tried to rebrand himself a national wartime leader against “an invisible enemy.” But in fact, there has been no overarching national policy at all.

States have been told to “go find your own” equipment, including ventilators, pitting different parts of the country against one another in a battle for meager supplies. After Mr Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, was inevitably given a key position in crafting this policy, he redefined the Strategic National Stockpile of supplies as belonging to the federal government for its use only. This novel definition was subsequently introduced into the government’s websites. It’s every man, city and state for themselves.

Meanwhile, even Mr Trump’s most distinguished scientific advisors say they cannot understand why the president refuses to issue a national “shelter in place” advisory, leaving it up to individual governors and even local officials. It is obvious that the virus cannot be contained simply in hotspots when people travel freely and several governors have refused to consider basic, common-sense measures in the national interest.

This gruesome tale of dereliction of duty, willful blindness, incompetence, bureaucracy run amok and mind-boggling failures of leadership is without doubt only the tip of the iceberg. In coming days, weeks and, indeed, years, more will become known.

As the death toll steadily balloons, the political, social and economic stakes in the battle over the narrative of what has gone so dreadfully wrong in the United States is rapidly mounting too.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-04-30/it-s-reform-or-ruin-for-lebanon?srnd=opinion&sref=tp95wk9l

The country’s political elite resists change, but growing anger about the economy could force a reckoning.

Against all the odds, Lebanon has managed to contain the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, at least for now. But few Lebanese are feeling much relief. Instead, protests are once again flaring as the economy continues to tailspin—with no serious plan to save it.

Lebanon faces mounting currency and debt crises; the Lebanese pound has halved in value since last October, when antigovernment street demonstrations first erupted. Back then, protesters were angry about mismanagement and corruption, and demanding economic and political reforms. Now the situation has deteriorated to the point that the protests are more about hunger than anger.

The political elites are bickering among themselves and appear to have no workable plan to get out of the crisis. Many wealthy Lebanese are simply fleeing, along with billions in capital. The government and its supporters have attempted to scapegoat Riad Salameh, governor of the Lebanese central bank, for the plunge in the value of wages and savings. The pound lost 12% of its value in a single day last week.

But Salameh has fired back, saying he has done nothing without the full knowledge and approval of the political leadership, and demanding accountability for government spending.

While politicians and economists have mulled the prospects of a “haircut,” whereby depositors and creditors lose a percentage of their holdings, this has already happened to the public at large because of the collapse in the currency. Lebanese feel they are, in essence, being beggared by the combined impact of rapid devaluation and rampant inflation on almost all basic goods. Before the coronavirus outbreak, the World Bank estimated that 45% of the Lebanese population would be below the poverty line. The government now says 75% of the population needs direct support.

No one thinks Salameh and the central bank are blameless, but he’s obviously right they are functionaries. The government, now entirely controlled by Hezbollah and its closest allies, has been resisting the only possible route to salvage the economy: a bailout from the International Monetary Fund, supported by other international lenders.

But if the Lebanese state and ruling elite want to avoid a complete social collapse, that may be their only option.

Many Lebanese are losing their patience. Earlier this week, violent demonstrations erupted in the northern city of Tripoli, with demonstrators attacking banks. (Because of a critical shortage of dollars, ordinary depositors are often unable to access their savings.) The protests have since spread to other cities, including the capital Beirut. There is little doubt they intensify.

The desperate state of the country was vividly illustrated by a telling exchange between protesters and security forces in Tripoli. When the demonstrators chanted that they were hungry, some officers replied, “We are hungrier than you.” The demonstrators responded, “Then what’s stopping you? Join us.”

For the moment, the security forces are doing the government’s bidding. But as hopelessness grows, institutions will fall apart.

The ruling circles, and above all Hezbollah, are resistant to reforms that would require them to give up the elaborate sectarian patronage networks that undergird Lebanese politics. But the IMF has made it clear that any bailout will come with significant strings attached.

Even Hezbollah knows they will have to do a deal with the Fund. But it will try to keep reforms to a minimum and ensure that they are strictly economic and not political. It may countenance some politically painful and even risky austerity measures including cuts in government jobs and wages, but it will fight—literally—to prevent real changes to the structure of decision-making, especially reforms that draw the country away from its sectarian and communal spoils system. If reform comes, political elites will devote all their energies to protecting their own slice of the patronage pie with little thought for anyone else.

The moment of truth is fast approaching for Prime Minister Hassan Diab, President Michel Aoun, their Hezbollah backers and the ruling elites in general. Estimates by experts such as former economy minister Nasser Saidi suggest they will need to borrow up to $25 billion in the next five years.

Other sources of funding, such as the oil-rich Gulf countries that have occasionally propped up the Lebanese economy, will not suffice. In any case, the pandemic and the collapse of oil prices have constrained their ability to help.

So, Lebanon’s ruling circles in Lebanon find themselves checkmated between the unsustainable political situation, exemplified by the increasingly angry protests, and unpalatable economic reforms. Soon, they will have to pick their poison.