https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/against-iran-the-us-needs-to-reactivate-its-cold-war-strategy-1.1192643

Since the so-called “Islamic revolution” of 1979, the problem of Iran has bedevilled every US president. Joe Biden is no exception. The challenge intensified following the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. But at no point in the past two decades has the US developed a viable long-term strategy for dealing with Iran.

Mr Biden has placed Iran at the top of his international priorities. That gives him the opportunity to craft a strategy that learns lessons from his predecessors’ successes and failures. Most importantly, he could establish a broad framework that avoids fragmented or contradictory partial solutions and that bequeaths coherence to his own successors.

A persistent lack of coherence has been central to his predecessor’s failures.

Although George W Bush reviled the Iranian regime as part of an “axis of evil”, he greatly strengthened Tehran by, among other things, invading Iraq, leaving the country shattered and largely dominated by Iranian proxies.

The 2015 nuclear deal was Barack Obama’s signature foreign policy achievement but it was both flawed and limited. The agreement merely postponed a reckoning over Iran’s nuclear ambitions for about a decade and resolved nothing. It also left Iran’s other destabilising policies, particularly its support for a network of sectarian armed gangs in neighbouring Arab countries, completely unaddressed.

If anyone in the Obama administration was hoping that the sanctions relief and international legitimacy provided by the nuclear deal would moderate Tehran’s behaviour, they were deeply disappointed.

Donald Trump promptly charged in the opposite direction, walking away from the agreement in 2018 and imposing a thoroughgoing regime of “maximum pressure” sanctions. But while the sanctions created significant economic hardship for Iran, Tehran’s regional behaviour became more belligerent than ever.

Because reality is complex, it isn’t automatically true that Iranian setbacks translate into American successes. Indeed, Mr Trump found no formula for achieving anything through the considerable pressure and leverage he accumulated.

Mr Biden inherits this legacy of profound confusion on one of his key priorities.

He clearly wants to revive nuclear diplomacy and even the 2015 agreement, but insists important lessons were learned from the failures and eventual collapse of the Obama approach.

The good news is that the Biden administration isn’t rushing into anything, and may even be dawdling a little.

The bad news is that senior administration officials may be so fixated on preventing Iran from going nuclear that some appear to think that this is the only really serious problem confronting Washington in the Middle East and that everything else is relatively minor.

Yet a single-minded fixation on reviving or even “fixing” the deal would trap Washington in the same fragmentary and contradictory framework responsible for 20 years of failure.

In an important new essay, Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace suggests a modified version of the “containment” policy the US deployed towards the Soviet Union and its network of allies to provide a rational, unifying structure to the US approach towards Iran over the long run.

Shifting to such a “Cold War” model begins by recognising that a meaningful rapprochement between Washington and an unreconstructed Islamic Republic is simply impossible. Opposition to the US is hardwired into the core identity of this regime.

Expecting anything else is naive.

Such a radical transformation in Iran’s worldview and policies towards the US and the rest of the Middle East would surely signal the end of the Islamic Republic as it has existed since 1979. Whether such a change is viewed as revolutionary, imposed on the state from outside the regime, or evolutionary, with existing structures taking the lead in such a shift, is irrelevant semantics. The resulting reality would be the same and utterly transformational.

Therefore, two key realities must be simultaneously acknowledged.

First, such a transformation must be the long-term goal of the US and its allies, because real reconciliation with this regime as it stands is not possible. But, second, such a change, no matter how vital, cannot be imposed from the outside.

The Obama administration appeared to be hoping that the nuclear agreement would strengthen “moderates” and encourage evolutionary change. It didn’t. The Trump administration seemed to be hoping “maximum pressure” would result in regime collapse. Not even close.

Neither aspiration was realistic, and the resulting policies were at least somewhat misguided and ultimately ineffective.

The containment framework Sadjadpour suggests would, drawing on the US’ broadly successful Cold War policies towards the Soviet Union, have three main prongs. It would seek to bolster US allies; undermine Iran’s own network of support; and use both carrots and sticks to influence Tehran’s policies. Its purpose would, eventually, be to provide a framework for fundamental, but domestically driven, change inside Iran.

Mr Biden’s goal of an early return to the nuclear agreement fits nicely into this framework, as long as it’s not an end in itself. So might a far broader diplomatic engagement with Iran if possible.

But the US would have to take care to strengthen ties to its own regional allies, all of which have a stake in keeping Iran non-nuclear.

Also indispensable would be major efforts to combat and fragment Iran’s regional network of violent gangs, primarily by strengthening the dilapidated Arab state structures that Iran’s militia proxies prey upon.

This approach also requires the careful reconceptualisation of both sanctions and engagement with Iran, all carefully tailored to promote Iranian civil society and turn social, political and nationalist aspirations against the regime itself.

The keys would be persistence, patience and the understanding that Iranians will only change their system when they are ready and on their own terms. Clearly there’s already a great deal to work with in Iranian society, but that can only be done with subtlety and a clear vision.

Such a framework can provide coherence and flexibility, allowing what might otherwise be contradictory impulses and policies to become mutually reinforcing.

Without a guiding strategic concept, based on the largely successful American approach to a far more challenging and dangerous Soviet adversary, Washington is likely to continue to stumble from one miscalculation and missed opportunity to another.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-03-28/india-and-pakistan-the-uae-is-seeking-a-new-role-as-peacemaker?sref=tp95wk9l

The tiny Gulf state dubbed “Little Sparta” has scaled back its military projection.

Nicknamed “Little Sparta” by American generals like former U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, the United Arab Emirates is widely acknowledged as a small country that punches far above its weight in military terms. But the tiny Gulf state also has outsized ambitions as a peace broker.

Its de facto ruler, Abu Dhabi’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, was the prime mover in last year’s Abraham Accords between Israel and several Arab states. Going further back, Emirati diplomats played a key role alongside their Saudi counterparts in mediating the 2018 peace deal between Ethiopia and Eritrea.

The UAE’s latest peacemaking project is arguably its most audacious ever. As Bloomberg reported last week, the Emiratis brokered the negotiations between India and Pakistan that led to an unexpected February 25 announcement that the South Asian rivals would respect their 2003 cease-fire agreement, despite heightened tensions between them.

The UAE is hoping to facilitate an exchange of ambassadors between New Delhi and Islamabad and restoration of trade links between the two countries. More ambitious still, it is aiming to secure a viable understanding on Kashmir, which has been the flashpoint for several wars since their 1947 partition upon independence from British rule.

The two nuclear-armed neighbors are locked in what may be the world’s most dangerous faceoff. The latest round of tensions began two years ago when 40 Indian soldiers were killed in a suicide bomb attack, claimed by a Pakistan-based terrorist group, in Kashmir. India retaliated by launching air strikes inside Pakistan. Since then, the leaders of the two countries, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Imran Khan, have blown hot and cold, with little progress toward peace — until last month’s announcement.

In many ways, the Emiratis are uniquely qualified to mediate between the two countries. It has strong trade and commercial ties to both, and is home to millions of Indian and Pakistani expatriate workers. And since the conflict is rooted in mistrust between Hindus and Muslims, the UAE’s credentials are strengthened by its aggressive promotion, at home and abroad, of a separation of politics and religion.

Kashmir has been a consistent rallying cry for terrorist groups and radical Islamist organizations, such as Al Qaeda, the Islamic State and the Taliban, which the UAE considers its most dangerous opponents. Helping to defuse the conflict would allow the Emiratis to strike a significant blow against violent extremists.

The South Asian initiative also plays into the UAE’s pursuit of other important foreign-policy objectives. It helps to deepen the partnership with Washington by paralleling American efforts to resolve the conflict in neighboring Afghanistan, where India and Pakistan have competing economic and security interests. At the same time. amity between its allies is doubly desirable for the UAE as American appetite to act in the Middle East appears to be waning.

In recent years, the UAE has shifted its attention away from military projection to diplomacy, investment and other forms of soft power. Most of the regional conflicts through which it has sought to advance its interests militarily, either directly or through proxies, are resolved or stale-mated, or have otherwise passed the point of diminishing returns.

The UAE has greatly reduced its footprint in Yemen and drawn down its forces in the Horn of Africa. It is looking to scale back in Libya, where it provided both air cover and material support for the rebel forces of Khalifa Haftar; the Emiratis are now backing a political solution to the civil war.

The UAE has also sought to reduce tensions with Iran and is leading Arab efforts to reengage with the regime of Bashar al-Assad in Syria, having concluded that the war there has effectively ended and that the only way to advance Emirati interests is through political, diplomatic and commercial means.

The UAE is hoping that India and Pakistan will take a similarly enlightened view of their conflict. If they do, some of the credit will redound to the Emiratis. And if not, “Little Sparta” will be credited for at least trying to make peace.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/the-latest-test-for-us-democracy-is-which-americans-get-to-vote-and-how-easily-1.1188511

American democracy keeps lurching from one existential crisis to another. Republicans and Democrats are now gearing up for a titanic struggle over voting itself.

It is partly an extension of the conclusive but bizarrely unresolved 2020 presidential election.

Despite US President Joe Biden’s decisive victory, Republican leaders continue to either bluntly claim or strongly imply that the result was tainted by widespread fraud. Former US President Donald Trump failed to overturn the outcome despite the most sustained effort to invalidate an election in US history.

In fact, the election was one of the cleanest ever, and saw the broadest public participation in a century.

Most Republicans believe Mr Biden won because of fraud, but only because most of their political and media leaders have relentlessly trumpeted this lie.

Mr Trump notes that 74 million Americans voted for him, a considerably larger number than in 2016 (when he still lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton by almost 3 million), and mocks the reality that Mr Biden got over 81 million votes. Obviously Mr Trump was an extremely polarising figure who convinced vast numbers to support him but a considerably larger group to vote him out.

That is simply unacceptable to him and many other Republicans.

Whether or not they endorse the “stolen election” mythology, Republicans have launched a massive state-level campaign to restrict ease of, and access to, voting throughout the country.

This attack on voting rights is unprecedented, at least since segregation and the systematic denial of African-American voting in the South until the 1960s.

Republican lawmakers in 43 states are pursuing 253 bills to significantly restrict voting access. They claim to be defending “election integrity,” as if there had been a significant degree of fraud in the last election. And, with breathtaking cynicism, they cite doubts among their supporters about the 2020 election, unfounded suspicions that these leaders themselves promoted in stark contradiction of the established facts.

Since Mr Trump’s defeat, a number of Republican leaders have effectively dropped all pretense that they seek to limit fraud rather than votes. They have plainly concluded that their only reliable path to national victory under current circumstances is to restrict by all possible means the number of Americans who participate in elections.

Many of these new state bills seek to end early voting, greatly restrict postal voting, and eliminate Sunday voting (favoured by African-American churchgoers), among other egregious measures. The obvious targets are ethnic minorities and the poor. Money purchases convenience, time and flexibility. The less cash you have, as a practical matter the harder it is to accommodate rigid rules and schedules.

Since there is a strong correlation between poverty and some core Democratic constituencies, particularly African-Americans and Latinos, restrictions that make voting more difficult for poorer people are assumed to be useful to Republicans.

Moreover, African-Americans and other minorities are much less likely to carry the kinds of identification documents some new rules would demand. The racial subtext is unmistakable.

Democrats, too, are confronting the issue, but at the federal level.

The House of Representatives recently passed a sweeping voting rights bill that would nationally mandate measures such as 15 days of early voting, unrestricted postal voting, automatic voter registration, and other provisions intended to maximise the number of Americans who vote.

This horrifies most Republican leaders. Texas Senator Ted Cruz even claims that Democrats are trying to ensure that “illegal aliens” and “child molesters” vote in large numbers. Such absurd hyperbole aside, most Republicans agree Democrats are trying to slant the playing field dramatically in their favour, and they are indeed.

Republican attitudes were summed up by Mr Trump last year, when he warned against “levels of voting that if you’d ever agreed to it, you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again.”

As he acknowledged, Republicans now fear they simply cannot prevail if there are high “levels of voting”. Following recent defeats, particularly stunning losses in formerly reliably Republican Georgia, the Republicans are seeking at the state level to make voting more difficult.

With equal certainty that high turnout favours them, Democrats are pushing in the opposite direction at the federal level.

Both sides are undoubtedly motivated by what they perceive as politically advantageous. But there is no denying that Republicans are frantically seeking to practically disenfranchise as many qualified voters as possible. With increasing frequency, the mask drops and they openly admit their goal is to lower turnout.

Republicans are, in effect, attacking democracy, or at least voting.

Right-wing anxiety about too many people voting is nothing new. In the 1960s, conservative guru William Buckley insisted the problem in the South was not too few Blacks voting but too many Whites.

A familiar semantic ruse notes that the US was established as “a republic” not “a democracy”.

That is true, but only insofar as, at the time of the founding, “democracy” suggested Athenian plebiscites on almost everything, while representative government with a strong default to majoritarian rule was precisely what was understood by a “republic”. Now, we call the system a “democracy”.

Depending on the fate of the filibuster, as I recently explained in these pages, Republicans may block the voting rights bill in the Senate, and even restrict voter access in some states.

But seeking to disenfranchise millions of Americans – now probably the issue on which, nationally, Republicans are most united – is not only unacceptable and embarrassing, but also surely doomed as a partisan strategy.

What’s being overlooked is that even Mr Trump did better than expected among African-American and Latino men, among others.

So, there is no reason to assume that a principled conservative agenda can’t ever defeat liberals, including among minority groups in a diverse and equitable society. But Republicans would have to significantly alter course.

They are probably right to fear that an increasingly authoritarian, philosophically anti-democratic, and effectively white supremacist agenda will ultimately doom their ability to compete nationally in the emerging multi-ethnic and multicultural America.

Yet as David Frum has argued, Republicans appear more willing to compromise democratic principles than these disturbing tenets. That could prove the gravest threat to American democracy since the Civil War.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-03-16/yemen-is-more-complicated-than-biden-thinks

Ending the war is not merely a matter of persuading the Saudis to leave.

The two main goals of President Joe Biden’s Middle East policy are clear enough: resuming nuclear diplomacy with Iran and ending the war in Yemen. But as Washington begins to engage with Yemen seriously, after four years of sustained disinterest under President Donald Trump, it is learning that the realities of that conflict are very different than many Americans imagined — and that the administration’s objectives will be hard to achieve.

 During the Trump presidency, Yemen was primarily viewed as Saudi Arabia’s problem. The war was cast as the consequence of Saudi aggression — specifically, Riyadh’s leadership of the Arab alliance against the Iran-backed Houthi rebels. As a result, it was assumed that ending the fighting was just a matter of compelling the Saudis to get out of Yemen.

This view served a political purpose: Democrats, in particular, used Yemen as a stick to beat Trump for his see-no-evil defense of Saudi Arabia, and especially its day-to-day ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. In Congress, there was a bipartisan effort to punish Riyadh for the humanitarian disaster unfolding in Yemen. But Trump’s veto power frustrated demands for the withdrawal of American support for the war in Yemen and ending U.S. arms sales to the Saudis.

Now that they are in power and Biden is actively seeking solutions, the Democrats are having to reassess their previous analysis of the problem. Biden’s special envoy on Yemen, the veteran diplomat Tim Lenderking, a highly respected veteran U.S. diplomat, is confronting the stark reality that ending the war isn’t about convincing the Saudis to go — they’ve wanted to, for several years. 

The main challenge is convincing the Houthis to allow the Saudis to leave on reasonable terms.

Having expended enormous resources in Yemen, Riyadh will want to leave behind some sort of power-sharing agreement between the Houthis and the internationally recognized government led by President Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi. The Saudis also need guarantees that the Houthis will cease cross-border raids and rocket attacks. 

But the Houthis, a Shiite militia that overthrew the Hadi government in 2015, have never shown any serious interest in peace. Since the war has gone fairly well for them, they have little incentive to stop fighting. And their Iranian patrons are certain to press them to keep the Saudis bogged down. The conflict in Yemen has given Tehran plausible deniability while repeatedly striking at its main regional rival in its exposed underbelly.

In theory, it shouldn’t be that difficult to incentivize the Houthis to come to terms. A political agreement would have to recognize and institutionalize the power they have accumulated over the past five years. 

However, there are a number of serious challenges. Since the war started, no one has been able to ascertain what the Houthi bottom line is, much less what kind of deal they might accept. Not only are they fanatical in the extreme —their rallying cry is “God is great! Death to America! Death to Israel! A curse upon the Jews! Victory for Islam!” — they are also internally divided. Their representatives at previous peace talks apparently did not represent the views and commitments of commanders on the ground.

Another problem is Hadi, who has his own history of recalcitrance. He is fearful of losing authority and exclusive international recognition, but unable to mount a serious military counterattack. Persuading the president to come to terms will be only somewhat less difficult than corralling the Houthis.

And then there are the Iranians, who seem perfectly happy to keep supplying the Houthis with arms while pronouncing piously about the humanitarian crisis in Yemen. 

The Biden administration has begun with an interesting mix of carrots and sticks, including the resumption of humanitarian assistance to areas controlled by the Houthis. It reversed Donald Trump’s last-minute designation of the Houthis as a terrorist organization in order to facilitate diplomatic contacts with Lenderking. Biden also ended U.S. military support for the Saudi-led coalition. 

But more recently, the Treasury Department imposed targeted sanctions on two senior Houthi leaders. And Lenderking has begin to openly question the rebels’ desire for peace.

American patience is being tested by a Houthi offensive against Marib, the government-held city in a hydrocarbon-rich region around 100 miles east of the capital Sanaa. The rebels have rejected U.S. calls for a cease-fire, and seem oblivious to the plight of hundreds of thousands of Yemeni refugees who live in tent cities in and around the city.

Ironically, it is the Saudis and their allies who may represent the best hope of preventing the Houthis from unleashing what the United Nations fears will be a fresh humanitarian catastrophe in Marib.

In Yemen, as the Biden administration is discovering, there are no good guys — or, as yet, good options.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/biden-s-covid-19-bill-might-be-his-most-powerful-political-weapon-1.1183984

With his ceaseless bluster and boasting, former president Donald Trump vowed to be a transformative American leader. Yet he proved more a symptom of disruption than an agent of change. Instead, it is his highly focused and low-key successor, Joe Biden, who is already well underway with the most ambitious transformative agenda in half a century.

In just a few weeks, Mr Biden secured a $1.9 trillion pandemic relief package that alone constitutes a comprehensive reorientation of government policy.

Its huge size isn’t terribly unusual, but the allocation is genuinely revolutionary.

Mr Trump’s 2017 tax cut cost about $2tn over 10 years but was heavily focused on benefiting the wealthy and corporations.

Barack Obama oversaw at least two major spending bills, the first targeting recovery from the economic meltdown in 2008. George W Bush, too, oversaw major spending for that recovery, his various wars and so on.

What’s unheard of is not the amount but that the spending is focused clearly at aiding disadvantaged Americans, including direct, one-time payments, extended unemployment benefits and, especially, measures targeting childhood poverty.

Since the mid-1960s, there hasn’t been any comparable effort to mobilise the power of government to assist working people and, especially, the poor. Republican critics grumble that this is Venezuela-style “socialism”. While it’s obviously nothing of the kind, it is clearly a step towards redistributing wealth in a society in which income stratification has become grotesquely unfair.

The changes will be truly significant.

The poorest fifth of households will see 20 per cent increases in income. A Washington-based think tank the Urban Institute estimates that just four provisions of the bill will reduce the national poverty rate by fully one third.

And the attack on poverty will be most beneficial to the neediest communities, with African-American poverty being reduced by 42 per cent, Hispanic by 39 per cent and 34 per cent for poor whites.

Perhaps the most far-reaching change is a new refundable child tax credit, which for the poorest will come in the form of monthly cash transfers, at a rate of $250 for each child over five and $300 for those younger.

No family can live off of those amounts, but they are clearly a major step towards a guaranteed minimum income, at least for children. And unlike with past support for children, these payments will not be tied to work requirements or other conditions.

Health insurance subsidies are greatly increased. There’s even a hint towards reparations for slavery, with $4 billion set aside to help black farmers.

When the dust settles on such spending, especially if measures such as the child tax credit become permanent, as Democrats confidently predict, the socio-economic landscape of the US will have been nudged in favour of the neediest people, particularly children.

It’s already clear that the role of the US government in shaping the lives of its citizens has been revolutionised.

The Republican mantra that tax cuts pay for themselves has been tested many times and irrefutably disproven. Democrats are now going to try to demonstrate that, over time, it is well-targeted social and economic spending that really can pay for itself.

As whoever authors the pseudonymous “James Medlock” Twitter account brilliantly phrased it: “The era of ‘the era of big government is over’ is over.”

That refers to a phrase used by former president Bill Clinton when he effectively eliminated traditional welfare in the 1990s.

But the idea is far older.

Since at least Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980, Republicans have been united around the claim that “government is not the solution to our problem, government is the problem”. Even many Democrats eventually came to share such suspicions.

Several factors have reversed this process, reviving the view, including among many Republicans, that government is a necessary force in shaping social and economic conditions.

Underlying the antipathy to social spending was a racist conviction among many whites that too much help was being given, at their expense, to presumptively unworthy citizens, particularly African Americans and Hispanics.

But in recent years, problems that used to plague minority-dominated inner cities, particularly chronic unemployment and the despair, alcoholism and addiction, and crime this produces, have migrated into white-majority rural areas while many cities are thriving.

The coronavirus pandemic also reminded everyone that there’s no alternative to federal authorities when coping with huge disasters.

Suddenly the government doesn’t look so bad to many Republicans.

Mr Trump also played a crucial role. He isn’t and never was a conservative. In fact, he was a fairly liberal Democrat (except on racial issues) for most of his life. As a Republican leader, he championed a populist agenda that in theory promised to use the government to deliver tangible benefits to ordinary voters.

Yet working with Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell and other conservatives, his only real domestic accomplishment was the tax cut for the rich. But he never stopped boasting about all the marvellous programmes he was just about to secure for working people.

His constituency was already primed to dump the Reagan-era allergy to government programmes. But Mr Trump delivered a rhetorical framework and political legitimacy.

So, the Biden spending bill is popular among Republicans, especially the less affluent.

That’s why Republicans in Congress, although none of them voted for the bill, and right-wing commentators put up no serious fight against the legislation. Instead, they raged impotently about preposterous non-issues – discontinued Dr Seuss children’s books and re-branded Mr Potato Head toys – completely unrelated to governance.

Four years ago, I wrote in these pages that Mr Trump had a remarkable opportunity to secure a lasting US political realignment by combining his economic nationalism with major government spending programmes, particularly on infrastructure, designed to create large numbers of good working-class jobs. His inability to do so undoubtedly contributed to his electoral defeat.

Frantic Republican claims to now be the party of the working-class ring desperately hollow, especially as Mr Biden has just taken a huge step towards such a realignment and embraced a lot of Mr Trump’s economic nationalism.

If he can maintain party unity, reform or repeal the Senate filibuster, or gain significant Republican cooperation in Congress, Mr Biden could become one of the most consequential presidents in US history.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/washington-is-broken-here-s-one-way-to-fix-it-1.1178711

New US President Joe Biden has hit the political ground running. Confronted by huge crises, most immediately the coronavirus pandemic and associated economic downturn, Mr Biden has wasted no time in initiating one of the most ambitious governance agendas in American history. But much of it may hang on the future of a poorly understood and arcane Senate rule known as the filibuster.

Democrats and Republicans are now split evenly in the 100-seat Senate, which must approve all legislation.

If there is a strict party-line vote of 50-50, Vice President Kamala Harris can cast a tiebreaking 51st vote. That solves Mr Biden’s problems if all Democrats support his preferred legislation and a simple majority is required for passage, as is the case in the House of Representatives and almost all legislative bodies around the world.

That’s how it was in the Senate, too, originally, but over time a system has evolved where, on most legislation, a super-majority of 60 is needed to “end debate” and allow a vote.

During the presidency of Barack Obama, the routine use of the filibuster by Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell – who said his main priority was to try to ensure that Mr Obama was a one-term president – illustrated how the filibuster has become a crippling obstacle.

It’s clear that elimination or reform of the filibuster is necessary for the US government to operate without relying almost entirely, as both Mr Obama and his successor Donald Trump did, on executive orders.

The US Senate is arguably the world’s most eccentric legislative body. And the filibuster is the most noxious of its byzantine maze of irrational rules. As Alexander Hamilton and other framers of the Constitution noted, the disastrous Articles of Confederation – the first American system – demonstrated that requiring super-majorities might seem to invite compromise, but in practice invariably promotes obstruction.

The Constitution avoided super-majorities except for impeachment and constitutional amendments because its framers had seen that minorities find it hard to resist the temptation to embarrass majorities by blocking them at every stage if they easily can – exactly as in the contemporary Senate.

The change developed slowly.

The Senate abolished the power of a simple majority to force a vote on an issue, essentially by mistake, when it revised its rules in 1806. This loophole was later seized upon by defenders of slavery led by the notorious Sen John Calhoun. Later still, it became a favourite tool of segregationists, led by Sen Richard Russell. In 1917, Senate Rule 22 set the required number to allow a vote at two thirds. In 1975, it was reduced to three fifths, or 60 votes.

During the 20th century, filibusters were rare, primarily used by southern senators to block civil rights legislation and defend white supremacy. In the 21st century, however, the filibuster has become a constant feature of all Senate business.

Mr Obama faced such obstructionism on his appointments that his Senate allies eliminated super-majorities for confirming officials in 2010. Republicans extended that to include Supreme Court nominations in 2017.

Mr Biden just got his $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package passed in both the House and the Senate, but only because of another bizarre rule: budget reconciliation. Created in 1974, it allows certain budgetary measures to be passed by simple majority – an obvious acknowledgment that the filibuster makes essential governance unworkable. “Reconciliation” is also how Mr Trump passed his only significant piece of legislation, a huge tax cut for corporations and the wealthy.

The Senate calls itself “the world’s greatest deliberative body”. That’s risible. In fact, it is no longer a deliberative body at all. These days, reconciliation aside, it is not a governing body either. As veteran Senate staffer Adam Jentleson explains in his new book Kill Switch, the Senate now typically functions as an override mechanism shutting down legislative work altogether.

That suits Republicans, who have in recent times become a persistently minority party. They have also become a doggedly obstructionist party, whose only guiding principle appears to be unshakable loyalty to Mr Trump and alignment with his mercurial views. But even before the Trump personality cult, Republicans were clear on what they categorically opposed, but had virtually no practical agenda. For example, they zealously opposed Obamacare, but for more than a decade have never proposed any healthcare alternative.

Mr Biden wants to follow the now-adopted coronavirus bill with a major infrastructure initiative, climate change proposals and other urgent measures. Since few Republicans appear willing to support even the coronavirus package, it is hard to see how Democrats can forgo reforming or eliminating the filibuster.

That won’t be easy. Even a simple majority will be elusive because some conservative Democratic senators, especially Joe Manchin of West Virginia, will probably resist major changes. That’s partly to mollify Republican-leaning constituents. More importantly, the filibuster ensures their institutional clout. Without it, Mr Manchin and the others would be far less relevant. As things stand, they are central to most horse-trading.

Major filibuster reform, at a minimum, is essential to Mr Biden’s prospects. Use of the filibuster could be restricted, the numbers required reduced, or other measures taken to limit its obstructionist power.

The filibuster originated in a mistake, mainly took shape in defence of slavery, was largely consolidated in defence of segregation, and now functions, as it always has, primarily as a tool of a recalcitrant minority blocking majority decisions. Indeed, it’s now central to chronic American minority rule.

Republicans will claim Democrats are acting cynically and will regret such reform when Republicans once again have a majority. But it’s irrelevant. Obstruction by Democrats wouldn’t be particularly preferable to that by Republicans. Obstruction itself is the problem.

The obvious institutional and political imperative for reform is far more important than motivations. And it’s likely that, without a powerful filibuster, the incentives and potential for cross-party compromises would actually greatly increase in the Senate.

Many Democratic traditionalists, including Mr Biden, are uneasy about reforming, let alone eliminating, the filibuster. But their agenda and fortunes depend on it. Moreover, elimination or at least reform of the filibuster would restore rationality and the original constitutional design to the Senate.

The excision of this malignant tumour from one of the central organs of the American body politic is one of the greatest legacies this Senate and the Biden administration can bequeath to future generations.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-03-02/germany-gives-syria-s-victims-hope-for-justice?srnd=opinion&sref=tp95wk9l

The dictator Bashar al-Assad may yet be rehabilitated, but not everyone will get away scot-free.

The barely-noticed conviction in Germany last week of a low-level Syrian official poses serious questions about universal jurisdiction over human-rights abuses, and how the world should deal with the regime of the dictator Bashar al-Assad. A court in Koblenz sentenced Eyad al-Gharib to four and a half years in prison, with credit for time served, for “aiding and abetting crimes against humanity.”

Gharib is one of over a million Syrians who have sought refuge in Germany over the past decade of conflict in their benighted homeland. When the uprising against the dictatorship began in 2011, he was an officer in the Syrian General Intelligence Directorate, the much-feared domestic security service. Gharib told German authorities that he and his colleagues were ordered to open fire on nonviolent protesters in a Damascus suburb that year, and that although he refused to shoot people, he did help round up protesters who ended up in jail, where they would be tortured and murdered.

Tens of thousands of Syrians have met that hideous fate in Assad’s prisons, which human-rights groups have described as slaughterhouses.

Gharib is also the key witness in the ongoing trial of one of his superior officers, Anwar Raslan, who is accused of participating in the systematic torture of approximately 4,000 Syrians that lead to at least 58 deaths. If convicted, Raslan faces a much more severe sentence.

These are the first two cases anywhere against the officials who have carried out one of the most brutal campaigns against ordinary people by their own government in recent decades. The trials of Raslan and Gharib represent important advances for the principle of universal jurisdiction for crimes against humanity.

Both men made their way to Germany separately by 2014 and applied for asylum. Raslan was identified from accounts of regime abuses given by numerous other refugees, corroborated by documents he signed in his role as a colonel in the notorious Branch 251. Gharib was mainly implicated by the accounts he provided voluntarily to German authorities. By 2018 German investigations were well underway, and their joint trial began in April 2020.

But the crimes themselves, as well as the defendants and the alleged victims were not subject to German jurisdiction at the time they were committed.

Governments, including that of the U.S., are generally opposed to the concept of universal jurisdiction, regarding it as an unwarranted usurpation of national sovereignty. But, as these Syrian cases in Germany demonstrate, it can sometimes offer the only path to enforcing basic standards of human conduct.

There is no prospect of any Assad’s officials being held accountable in Syria for abuses — many of them against unarmed, peaceful protesters — committed in the preservation of his brutal dictatorship. Thanks to the intervention of Russia, Iran and the Lebanese Hezbollah militia, the regime has survived and now controls most of the country.

The conundrum facing the international community is how to deal with the dictatorship. Some countries that previously backed the opposition to Assad are now coming around to the view that the only sensible course is to engage with him. The United Arab Emirates, for instance, restored diplomatic ties with Syria, and Emirati officials have gone so far as to praise Assad’s “wise leadership.” Just last week, Iraq’s foreign minister called for Syria to be welcomed back into the Arab League.

For now, the U.S., Europe and Saudi Arabia are keeping their distance, reluctant to shake Assad’s blood-stained hand. For Washington and Riyadh, there is the additional consideration that acknowledging his victory would be tantamount to endorsing Iranian suzerainty over Syria.

It is conceivable that the Americans and Saudis may accommodate themselves to an outcome that leaves Russia as the main power broker in post-war Syria, so long as it pushes Iran out of the picture. This might also suit Assad, since Moscow has more limited goals — and will therefore make fewer demands on Syrian sovereignty — than Iran and its proxy militias. Syria’s other major neighbor, Turkey, which is also wary of Tehran’s influence on Damascus, will likely go along with such a modus vivendi.

Assad will seek to play these forces against each other, satisfying no one but buying himself room to maneuver.

But lost in the debate over rehabilitating Assad is the question of justice for his victims: Over 500,000 Syrians have been killed and 11 million displaced over the past decade. Credit is due to Germany for taking in many Syrian refugees and applying universal jurisdiction to a few human-rights abusers among them. The rest of the world should be especially grateful to Germany because no one else is likely even to try.

Riyadh and Tehran are Both Put on Notice That Biden has a New Mideast Approach

Friend and foe have been informed that Biden won’t accept what Obama and Trump might have.

In his fifth week in office, by drawing clear limits for friend and foe alike, President Joseph R. Biden Jr. began to implement a distinctive approach to the U.S. role in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia suffered the rebuke, but also the important opportunity for reset, from the release of the unclassified summary of U.S. intelligence regarding the 2018 murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. And Washington’s principal antagonist, Iran, got its own unmistakable message through U.S. airstrikes targeting pro-Iranian groups at a highly strategic area on the Syrian-Iraqi border.

In both cases, the message was clear: This isn’t the ninth year of President Barack Obama’s administration, or a fifth year of Donald J. Trump’s presidency. Instead, the Biden administration, with its foreign policy crafted by two Obama veterans – Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan – is beginning to validate claims it has learned lessons from past mistakes and has a different, and tougher, approach. These two messages, while very different in most ways, can nonetheless both be summarized as: We are serious about our goals and you need to understand that or there will be consequences.

Intelligence Summary Release Sends Strong Message

The release of the unclassified summary looks like bad news for Saudi Arabia. The report formally reiterates what was clear soon after the murder: The U.S. intelligence community has a strong structural and circumstantial case that the mission to capture or kill Khashoggi was “approved” by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Yet there is no new information or anything that contradicts what careful observers have known for years about how the CIA reached this conclusion – most notably, a series of documented communications, although about what is not known, between the crown prince and a key aide widely believed to have been directly responsible.

Still, the report has immediate negative implications for bilateral relations because it publicly confirms the CIA’s conclusions. It again calls attention to the crime against Khashoggi and helps to reinforce the widespread belief that Mohammed bin Salman bears responsibility for the atrocity. The Department of the Treasury imposed new sanctions on some senior Saudi officials. The State Department announced a “Khashoggi Ban,” placing travel restrictions on 76 Saudi nationals accused of involvement in extraterritorial counterdissident activity and urged Riyadh to disband the Rapid Intervention Force implicated in the murder. And a statement by Representative Gregory W. Meeks, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, suggests that Congress may attempt to strengthen such sanctions or impose additional ones. Additionally, Biden has shifted the focus of presidential outreach to Riyadh. While the Trump administration communicated mainly with the crown prince, Biden has reinstituted diplomatic protocol with his first phone call instead to King Salman bin Abdulaziz, but it remains to be seen if this exclusive relationship can continue for long.

Biden Distinguishes His Approach From Trump’s

Arguably, by withholding this summary from the public, Trump damaged U.S.-Saudi relations and deepened the taint of the crime by casting it in the pall of a cover-up. That ensured that the issue would return to the front pages at least once more, albeit strategically timed for release on a Friday afternoon when news coverage is conveniently attenuated.

The Biden administration is clearly trying to distinguish itself from the Trump administration, especially in the perception of progressive activists and lawmakers – though many of them remain highly dissatisfied. The Biden administration seeks to reverse any sense its predecessor may have created that Washington does not care about the brutal killing of a Washington Post contributing columnist and U.S. permanent resident. The administration will not pretend Khashoggi’s murder didn’t happen or that it has no idea who is responsible, as the Trump administration effectively did. Nor will it continue to conceal unclassified U.S. intelligence about the killing from the public with no evident justification. And there are consequences, however limited.

This is also an effort to clear away the detritus of what Biden’s team regards as Trump’s woeful mishandling of the murder. Trump left the killing, and the unclassified summary, unaddressed meaningfully and therefore a constant irritant. The Biden administration’s moves not only put Riyadh, and specifically Mohammed bin Salman, on notice that such behavior will not be tolerated without a meaningful response, they seek to resolve the murder as a major bilateral issue.

Biden Also Seeks To Move Beyond the Khashoggi Murder

Yet the news is not all bad for Riyadh. These steps are also intended to make way for other U.S. policy goals that will require Saudi cooperation and a workable relationship despite lingering anger among Democrats against both Trump and Riyadh.

The Biden administration’s handling of this matter has been relatively subtle and deft. The sanctions, embarrassment, and condemnation are intended to be effectively proportional to the offense, not in moral terms certainly, but in the muddier context of statecraft and broader U.S. policy goals. The murder cannot be undone, and the administration has important Middle East imperatives.

Goals on Yemen and Iran Require Saudi Cooperation

Biden’s Middle East priorities are clear, not only from statements but also the special envoys he has appointed. Robert Malley is special envoy for Iran and nuclear diplomacy. Timothy A. Lenderking is special envoy for Yemen, seeking to end that devastating war. There are tellingly no special envoys for Israel/Palestine, Syria, Iraq, or other potential policy imperatives. The priorities, obviously, are Iran and Yemen.

That is why clearing the air with Saudi Arabia is at least as important to the Biden administration’s regional policies as it is politically necessary for progressive Democrats. Saudi Arabia is a key player on both these issues, directly in Yemen and indirectly, but crucially, regarding Iran. The intelligence summary release is intended to facilitate that, exactly as Biden implied in the prerelease telephone call with King Salman, which the administration treated as a prerequisite for publicizing the document. Biden specifically mentioned human rights, an issue Trump avoided, but the conversation focused on the mutual importance of an ongoing partnership. This is not mere rhetoric. If these key initiatives are to succeed, a successful reset of the Washington-Riyadh partnership is an indispensable first step.

Biden’s impact on Saudi calculations has been clear since his election victory. The most dramatic response was the resolution of the boycott of Qatar by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt, which Biden made clear he did not want to inherit from Trump. But it also included the release of political prisoners like women’s rights activist Loujain al-Hathloul, the release pending trial of two dual U.S.-Saudi nationals, and the commuting of harsh sentences of Shia activists. There have even been signs of stepped-up Saudi diplomacy on Yemen, in sync with Biden’s goals. If the initial effort was to influence Saudi conduct, it has already been at least somewhat successful.

Tehran Put on Notice: Obama is NOT Back

Saudi Arabia was not the only Middle Eastern country to receive a strong signal. Iran was put on clear notice that the Biden administration is not going to shy away from confrontation just because it seeks to revive U.S.-Iranian nuclear diplomacy. After two major rocket attacks on U.S. interests in Iraq by pro-Iranian Shia militia groups, on February 25 the Biden administration retaliated by attacking installations controlled by pro-Iranian armed groups in Syria.

The attack was carefully aimed at one of the most strategically sensitive areas in the Middle East, the crossing point for the main highway connecting western Iraq and eastern Syria. From Iran’s point of view, this is probably the most strategically significant real estate on earth far from its own borders. If the Iranians are ever to consolidate a militarily secured “land corridor” running from Iran, through Iraq and Syria, down into Lebanon and the Mediterranean coast, it will require uncontested dominance of precisely that area. That is why the remaining U.S. and allied forces in Syria are concentrated in this zone, which was always exempted from even the most sweeping military withdrawal plans floated by Trump.

When the Biden administration said, following the second major recent provocation in Iraq, which injured five Americans, that it would respond “in a time and place of our choosing,” it was serious. More importantly, the response was directed where it would inflict maximum strategic pain on Iran. Moreover, by striking Syria rather than Iraq, Biden minimized the chances that the retaliation could further inflame the volatile political situation inside Iraq itself. Again, this reaction seems to reflect a significant degree of skill and subtlety.

It also served as a test of the will of the Biden administration, particularly given the perception that the Obama administration was so focused on negotiations with Iran it was willing to tolerate otherwise unacceptable conduct. This perception was cemented not only by hesitation to retaliate against Iranian proxies in Iraq but also when Obama failed to respond to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s violation of his chemical weapons use “red line,” in large measure for fear of disrupting the dialogue with Tehran. Many critics of the Obama administration in the United States and the Middle East assumed, derisively, that Biden would repeat this error.

Instead of rushing back into an immediate process with Iran, the Biden administration held off, to Tehran’s frustration. Iranian efforts to press the issue began with threats to end international nuclear inspections and increase nuclear production, the seizing of a South Korean ship and arrest of a U.S. national on espionage charges, and, ultimately, the attacks in Iraq. Biden’s retaliation was followed by an Iranian refusal to attend a European-sponsored meeting with Iran. The U.S.-Iranian game of chicken on resuming negotiations therefore now includes reciprocal acts of violence sandwiched between mutual snubs.

As with the summary release and new sanctions against Saudi Arabia, the retaliation against Iran in Syria is intended to immediately clarify that the Biden approach isn’t a replay of either Obama’s reticence to confront Iran or Trump’s indulgence toward Saudi Arabia. Instead, the twin actions in late February demand that both U.S. partners and antagonists take the new administration seriously on its own terms and quickly develop a keen appreciation for what Biden and his team hope to achieve and are willing to accept from friend and foe alike.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/joe-biden-has-hit-iran-and-political-commentators-where-it-hurts-1.1174528

The Biden administration is starting to implement a novel approach towards Iran, which is a key foreign policy priority. Last week’s US air strike in Syria demonstrates that the numerous commentators who claimed to fully understand US President Joe Biden’s policy in advance have been jumping to unfounded conclusions. They appear to have been badly mistaken.

In 2016, former president Donald Trump made strident opposition to his predecessor Barack Obama’s participation in the nuclear agreement between six major international powers and Iran a theme of his candidacy. With typical hyperbole he called it “horrible” and “the worst deal in history”.

He said the same things about the North American Free Trade Agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Paris climate protocol and several other major accords. But Mr Trump and his allies had a particular antipathy for the JCPOA nuclear deal, and in May 2018 he withdrew the US from it all together.

Last year, in stark contrast, Mr Biden, who had served as Mr Obama’s vice president for eight years, ran in opposition to Mr Trump’s disavowal of the pact. He vowed to seek an early return to the deal, while conceding that it had flaws and limitations. Mr Biden agreed that additional understandings regarding timetables, sunsets, missile development and support for violent extremist groups are all required.

Many observers – both in the US and abroad, and proponents and opponents of the nuclear agreement alike – assumed they had Mr Biden all figured out. This would be, many said, effectively a return to the previous Democratic administration – year nine of the Obama era – at least as they imagined it had been and for good or ill.

They pointed to Mr Biden’s role as vice president, and that his Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan are also Obama administration veterans. And they noted that outreach to Iran would be led by Rob Malley, a prominent supporter of the agreement, under the direction of Wendy Sherman, its principal American architect during the Obama years.

When both sides assumed this means that Mr Biden will prioritise a resumption of nuclear diplomacy with Iran and, if possible, a return to the JCPOA, they were correct. He said as much. Supporters of the agreement rejoiced, while opponents gnashed their teeth.

They all failed to take seriously that Mr Biden, Mr Blinken and Mr Sullivan, among others, were serious when emphasising that they learned lessons during the Obama era, particularly regarding nuclear diplomacy with Iran. This was assumed to be just campaign rhetoric or, if not, then self-deceiving hubris.

But the real hubris belonged to those in both camps, and around the world, who believed they could intuit the Biden policy or simply extrapolate it from Obama approaches, as if nothing has changed, such leaders are incapable of adapting, or Mr Biden is simply a replica of Mr Obama.

These assumptions lacked an appreciation of presidential history. Mr Obama’s foreign policy differed markedly his first and second terms, as did George W Bush’s.

A static foreign policy would constitute brain-dead foolishness, ideological inflexibility and diplomatic malpractice. The context for statecraft is ever-changing and anyone who can’t learn lessons from errors is in the wrong profession.

Just a few weeks into his presidency, JCPOA opponents were already accusing Mr Biden of “weakness” and giving away the store to Tehran – largely because that is what they assumed he was going to do – while its supporters complained he had already waited too long.

Exhibit A for the right was three rocket attacks against US-related interests in Iraq in mid-February. The Biden administration’s statement that we will respond “in a time and place of our choosing” was assumed by both sides to be a typical rationalisation for not doing anything, which appalled the right and comforted the left.

Those suppositions were shattered by the February 26 air strikes against pro-Iranian militia facilities, which were carefully targeted at the most sensitive, significant piece of contested real estate for Iran in the Middle East: the Syria-Iraq crossing point and highway near Al Qaim.

This zone is key to Tehran’s main geostrategic goal, a militarily secured corridor from Iran through Iraq and Syria and into Lebanon.

At least 17 militants were reportedly killed. This was a significant but measured response, calibrated and targeted to maximise the blow to Iran and minimise blowback for Washington.

Though few care to acknowledge this, it looked a lot more like a Trump action, although with subtlety and skill, than an Obama one.

Right-wing critics are largely unimpressed, because their objections are mainly political and ideological rather than policy or results-oriented.

But leftists and others, who were exuberant about an anticipated return to Obama-era indulgence of Tehran’s misbehaviour to protect negotiations at all costs, are howling in outrage.

Trita Parsi of the Quincy Institute, a leading proponent of Iranian interests in Washington, denounced Mr Biden for betraying diplomacy and sabotaging negotiations, as if Iran’s proxies are not launching deadly attacks or that this should be tolerated with endless forbearance.

While voices on the right continue to insist Mr Biden is determined to shift US policy in Tehran’s favour despite the counterstrike, their counterparts on the left say he is exposed as just another imperialistic bully. Plus, his nominal allies in Congress complained he acted without legal authority, which Mr Biden rightly dismissed.

In fact, the retaliatory air strikes suggest Mr Biden is crafting a novel, workable policy that emphasises concerted, sustained outreach to Iran involving serious compromises, though not capitulation or giveaways, but that nonetheless attacks by Iranian-controlled extremists will not be tolerated.

The president said his message to Tehran is: “Be careful.”

Moreover, striking in Syria deftly avoided the trap of retaliation inside a politically volatile Iraq. Targeting an area of extreme strategic value to Tehran demonstrated an understanding of, and strong opposition to, Iran’s predatory regional ambitions. Mr Biden hit them where it hurts.

This is all very bad news for implacable opponents of diplomacy. And it is terrible news for Tehran and its fellow travelers. But it should be highly reassuring to the rest of us.