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.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-02-23/iran-and-the-arab-states-need-to-start-talking

They should start by agreeing to cooperate on maritime security.

The U.S. and Iran appear poised to resume diplomacy, with a view to reviving the multilateral nuclear deal scrapped in 2018 by President Donald Trump. Last week, the Biden administration said it would accept a European invitation to participate in meetings with Iran the other signatories to the agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.

But one of the most significant flaws of the JCPOA was that it did not address the tensions between Iran and its Gulf Arab neighbors. This omission rendered the agreement highly vulnerable to pressure within the American political system, informed — and at times encouraged — by some Gulf governments. If the new Biden initiative is to be successful, this needs to be remedied.

How, though? Although the Biden team has said it will consult with Iran’s neighbors, there’s little prospect that the U.S. will be able to bring the Arab states to the negotiating table, alongside the other world powers, with the Islamic Republic. Iran has said it won’t abide by such an arrangement, and the other signatories aren’t especially keen on the idea.

What’s needed is parallel dialog between Iran and the Arabs, most notably Saudi Arabia. Getting this started will not be easy, but not impossible either.  There has already been some outreach toward Iran — especially from the United Arab Emirates but also Saudi Arabia. Iran, too, has signaled an interest in open-ended talks.

High-level interest in dialog is reflected in two extraordinary opinion columns coauthored by Saudi intellectual Abdulaziz Sager, who is close to King Salman’s circles, and Iran’s former nuclear spokesperson, Hossein Mousavian, who is familiar with the national security apparatus in Tehran. The first, in May 2019, simply called for regional dialog. Last month, the two again wrote jointly, laying out 12 fundamental principles for talks.

But the principles don’t add up to a plausible process. Iran has been pushing for a regional security framework. This is a worthy long-term goal, but it is a big leap from the current tensions to such a broad understanding. The practical course is for both sides to build confidence over time and in stages, starting with the least contentious issues.

Maritime security, for instance, is very much in their common interest, since Iran and its Gulf Arab neighbors all export hydrocarbons through the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman. Tehran plainly felt excluded from the de facto Gulf maritime security arrangement. In pushing back against the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” sanctions, Iran repeatedly attacked commercial shipping in the Gulf waters, sending the clear message: If we can’t sell our oil, nobody can.

A formal Arab-Iranian understanding to ensure maritime security in the Gulf would be an obvious win-win for everyone. When Iran eventually resumes full-scale oil exports, it will have a stake in preventing disruption of the sea lanes.

Arab-Iranian cooperation on ending the war in Yemen is a heavier lift, but achievable. Saudi Arabia needs a way out of that quagmire, but the Iran-backed Houthi rebels currently have no incentive to provide one. Tehran could help by pulling back its own military support — just as the Biden administration has for the Saudi-led coalition — and pressing the Houthis to enter peace negotiations, and half cross-border attacks into Saudi territory.

Iran has found harassing Saudi Arabia in Yemen to be a useful way to keep its rival busy in a conflict that’s not a major strategic concern for Tehran. Helping the Saudis find a face-saving exit from the conflict would give the Iranians a path towards more serious dialogue with their neighbors and a way to show the Islamic Republic can be a force for stability in the region, and not just an agent of chaos.

Harder still will be to get a hands-off agreement on countries like Syria and Iraq, where the Arabs believe Iran wields undue influence through proxy militias, and Tehran says the Arab states are working with the U.S. and Israel to encircle Iran. But if both sides can agree, as Sager and Mousavian suggest, to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all states, direct interference could conceivably be contained, if not eliminated.

The biggest challenge will be the question of non-state actors, in particular Iran’s network of proxy militias in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and elsewhere. This is obviously intolerable for its neighbors and incompatible with regional stability. Yet it is the main means by which Iran projects its power and influence in the Arab world.

One of the key goals of Arab-Iranian dialogue would be the delineation of spheres of influence. For that to work, Iran will have to decide where its priorities lie. If it wants a regional security framework, then it must allow the states of the region to exercise sovereign authority without being undermined by armed gangs. If it wants to maintain a network of fanatical and sectarian militia groups in other countries, then there can’t be a regional security framework.

But at the very least, dialog between Iran and its Arab neighbors would give both sides a clear picture of their options.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/rush-limbaugh-is-gone-has-he-taken-the-republican-party-with-him-1.1169913

If Biden can succeed in ambitious governance, Limbaugh/Trump-style of grievance may be doomed.

The United States is plainly undergoing an historic social and political transformation. The outcome is in doubt, but the competing worldviews are clear. The true contest isn’t essentially between Republicans and Democrats or even left versus right, but an agenda of governance and results versus a largely performative politics of bombast and outrage.

Last week, a key architect of indignation politics passed away. Veteran radio host Rush Limbaugh did more than almost anyone to evangelise raw demonisation. Without Limbaugh’s decades of rage-fuelled diatribes, the ultimate practitioner of grievance politics, Donald Trump, probably couldn’t have become president.

Unlike Mr Trump, who spent decades as a fairly liberal Democrat (with the notable exception of some of his views on race), Limbaugh was always a passionate and extreme right-winger. Yet his broadcasts were notably unfettered by any consistent philosophical or policy orientation.

Indeed, he rarely engaged in substantive arguments at all. He almost invariably championed Republican presidents and whatever was the most right-wing iteration of the party at any given time.

He was, therefore, at the beginning of his career an ardent supporter of Ronald Reagan and a champion of Mr Trump at the end of it, despite the vast chasm between those two presidents on a range of key issues, including immigration, race, trade, alliances, multilateralism and deficit spending, among many others.

Limbaugh never acknowledged these vast contradictions, or explained why he and most Republicans had changed their minds so drastically on such fundamental questions or which orientation was correct and why.

He is typically referred to as a “conservative”, but if that is meant to imply someone with a coherent philosophy of government and society, he was never any such thing.

He certainly was right-wing, in the sense of being a political and social reactionary scandalised and offended by any effort to redress traditional inequalities – especially discrimination against racial and ethnic minorities, particularly African-Americans, women and LGBTQ communities.

For Limbaugh, like Mr Trump, political orientation isn’t primarily defined by one’s own orientation, let alone what one intends to achieve through governance or policies. Instead, one is defined by what and, especially, who one passionately denounces.

Most contemporary Republican politics is primarily about demonstrating that one has the correct enemies, and Limbaugh shoulders much of the responsibility for that. When Mr Trump and other Republican demagogues recite litanies of grievance and demonisation of others, they are simply replicating the style and substance of Limbaugh’s highly influential radio programmes.

He was a crucial figure on the right because he demonstrated that there is an enthusiastic cultural and political market for overtly and passionately reactionary rhetoric. He was also a key pioneer of a now-popular dodging tactic for populist politicians when they go too far, which is to claim they are just kidding and then promptly reiterate the offensive remark.

Limbaugh was almost never actually joking, and neither are the others. They trust their followers to enjoy thoroughly the theatrically disingenuous disavowals.

Limbaugh was a pioneer in popularising wild conspiracy theories, including the fabrication that Barack Obama was not born in the US and was, therefore, an illegitimate president.

That cynical lie was, of course, the starting point of Mr Trump’s political career. The former president acknowledged his manifest debt to Limbaugh by awarding him the prestigious Medal of Freedom last year.

The politics of pure performance and endless grievance are hardly restricted to the right, and can easily be identified among some prominent left-wing Democrats. But, at least at the national level, there is still a genuine political commitment among most left-wing democrats to achieving results, at least economically.

Meanwhile, performative grievance politics has come to dominate the Republican Party at the state level, in the House of Representatives and, especially, among the party base. Some Senate Republicans are the last significant bastion of even an attenuated, strikingly limited, results-oriented conservativism. But that group may be headed towards extinction.

Mr Trump has little chance of being reelected president. Yet his grip on the party and its voters remains rock-solid. If his current Republican critics like Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell ever really try to marginalise him and his style, any success will be partial and require a long, slow process.

By contrast, Democrats under Joe Biden have collectively bet on the politics of tangible deliverables for most Americans. They rallied around a candidate, and now president, who wastes virtually no time on grievances and is focused instead on some of the most ambitious government initiatives in decades.

Recognising the depth of America’s crises, and taking his cue from former president Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who led the US out of the Great Depression, Mr Biden is beginning with a massive $1.9 trillion Covid-19 relief measure that seems likely to pass into law. Beyond that he is plainly hoping to secure major infrastructure, climate change and other programmes that would significantly reshape the role of government in the lives of ordinary Americans.

If Mr Biden can secure a large part of this extraordinarily ambitious agenda – much of which is extremely popular among voters, including many Republicans – that would probably reshape the political landscape for at least a generation in favour of Democrats.

Republicans in Congress and the Supreme Court may try to block these measures. But success feeds itself, and a $1.9tn stimulus initiative could be a decisive early intervention.

If Mr Biden’s gamble pays off, the nearly simultaneous passing of Limbaugh and Mr Trump’s presidency could prove the death knell for right-wing performative and grievance politics. With Democrats producing tangible results for most Americans, if Republicans remain addicted to performative indignation, their party could become largely uncompetitive at the national level.

The future of Republicans, therefore, probably depends largely on the fortunes of Democrats. For now, though, the rhetoric of outrage championed by Limbaugh seems thoroughly dominant.

Limbaugh was among the most consequential commentators in American history. Yet his impact was largely to poison the cultural waters he powerfully prowled, and he may prove to have been steering Republicans towards political oblivion.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/trump-may-have-been-acquitted-but-this-is-far-from-an-exoneration-1.1165936

Seven Republicans, instead of just one last year, found him guilty – a historically unprecedented rebuke.

For a few minutes on Saturday morning in the US, it looked as though the plans of both Republican and Democratic leaders for the second impeachment trial of former US President Donald Trump were suddenly disintegrating. For their own reasons, each wanted to avoid any prolonged proceeding involving witness testimony.

Everything was going as expected, with Mr Trump headed towards acquittal but several Republicans probably voting against him.

But on Friday night, Republican Representative Jaime Herrera Beutler confirmed that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy told her that he called Mr Trump during the January 6 attack on Congress, begging for help. Mr Trump refused, expressed no concern about safety, and praised the rioters as “more upset” about the election than Republican lawmakers.

This flatly contradicts trial claims by Mr Trump’s lawyers that the former president had no idea about the violence at Congress, was horrified and immediately sent help.

All of that is obviously untrue, but it is instructive that his dereliction of duty included a real-time, expletive-laden shouting match with his chief enabler in Congress.

This revelation posed quandaries for both sides. Democrats couldn’t ignore such powerful evidence of Mr Trump’s guilt. Republicans couldn’t dismiss it because it came from their own colleagues.

So, they jerry-rigged a compromise that left Mr Trump acquitted – again – on a jurisdictional technicality. Seven Republicans, instead of just one last year, found him guilty. Though 17 were needed to convict him, this is a historically unprecedented rebuke.

It never made any sense, except politically, to try Mr Trump for inciting the January 6 insurrection without seeking more evidence, especially of the president’s words and deeds on that day. His own testimony was plainly indispensable.

He was invited to testify but declined, absurdly dismissing the trial as unconstitutional. Yet Congress could have compelled his testimony. If fact-finding were its paramount purpose, it certainly would have.

There are dozens of relevant witnesses and key documents. But both sides feared a lengthy and contentious process. After all, efforts to secure testimony from Former White House counsel Donald McGahn for last year’s impeachment are still being litigated.

Republicans, overwhelmingly still loyal to Mr Trump, fear additional evidence because the former president manifestly did exactly what the article of impeachment accuses him of. He is plainly guilty.

They were mostly determined to acquit him anyway, but the stronger the case against him, the worse the Republicans look. An accumulation of damning evidence could shift public opinion, further increasing pressure.

They have every reason to fear him. In a recent survey, about one third of Republicans said they would definitely join a new Trump-led party if one were formed, and another third said they would consider it.

Such numbers tend to render bloody insurrection somewhat less objectionable.

Meanwhile, President Joe Biden has made it abundantly clear he wants to move on from Mr Trump and focus on his own agenda.

He believes providing deliverables to much of the public that is hugely suffering from the coronavirus and economic crises is the key to a successful presidency and even an unusually positive midterm election performance.

The new president is focused on results, legislation and confirmation of officials. He therefore views the past conduct and political future of his predecessor as an annoying distraction and opposed any protracted process.

The stunning new evidence, which only emerged through the press and not the impeachment process, threatened to undo the tacit understanding for a quick resolution.

Democrats absolutely had to ensure it became part of the record. Backed by several Republicans, they passed a resolution allowing for witnesses and new evidence.

Mr Trump’s supporters were obviously alarmed that more evidence might make acquitting him even more shameful and embarrassing. And Mr Biden’s camp faced the unpalatable prospect of weeks, and probably months, of ongoing tumult, likely only resulting in Mr Trump’s eventual acquittal anyway.

Senate Republicans were also reportedly threatening to block Covid-19 relief efforts if the impeachment trial was prolonged, and Democrats had contacted many former Trump aides who did not wish to testify.

So, both sides pulled back by agreeing to enter Ms Herrera Beutler’s statement into the record, proceed to closing arguments and take the final vote.

Senate Republicans have walked a remarkably timorous middle ground in dealing with Mr Trump since the November election. They declined to help him overthrow the US system and stay in office despite a decisive loss. But they have now refused to hold him accountable for his numerous unprecedented, improper and unlawful actions, including the attack on Congress, to try to do just that.

They have not stood firmly with or against him, being – as the Bible says of those who cannot commit – “neither hot nor cold” but “lukewarm”. They will hope not to be “spat out”, as the verse suggests such ambivalence provokes.

Democrats have deeply disappointed their supporters by not pursuing more evidence at the trial.

But their goal couldn’t really have been to convict Mr Trump and bar him from future office. That was never plausible. Instead, it was clearly to create public awareness and establish an official record. In that, it had already succeeded.

Republican senators claim they voted not guilty based on the specious assertion that former officials cannot be impeached and tried. The Constitution’s language, precedent and traditions all clearly demonstrate they can. And the Senate, which alone decides this matter, last week confirmed that.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said he acquitted Mr Trump on this spurious and formally-foreclosed basis, even though he admits “there is no question – none” that the former president is “practically and morally responsible” for the January 6 mayhem.

More facts must now be pursued by a national commission or at least Congressional hearings.

Congress could adopt a censure resolution, or even use section 3 of the 14th amendment to bar Mr Trump from federal office. Or Democrats could just move on, as Mr Biden wants.

If nothing else, the Senate trial produced the first unified, coherent narrative of January 6, and it is exceptionally damning.

Mr Trump may have been legally acquitted and thus not banned from re-election. But he was morally convicted of inciting an insurrection against the state that was entrusted to him to protect and that may have all but foreclosed his dreams of a presidential comeback.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-02-09/a-vital-instrument-of-american-soft-power-needs-saving

If Biden is serious about repairing America’s image in the Middle East, he should start with Lebanon’s most important institution.

One of the greatest American educational institutions in the world isn’t in the United States, it’s in Beirut. Now, after 155 years of invaluable service, its future is under serious threat.

The American University of Beirut, which is chartered and accredited in New York state, is the quintessence of everything generations of Americans worked to build in the Middle East since the 19th century. It’s also arguably the most important institution in Lebanon, easily the country’s largest employer after the state.

Over the past year, it has been wracked by a set of crises worse than any it has faced, including the challenges it overcame during the country’s 15-year civil war between 1975-1990. Saving the AUB and securing its future is key to salvaging Lebanon itself.

Founded as the Syrian Protestant College in 1866 by American missionaries, and renamed in 1920, the university has trained tens of thousands of academics (my father included) and professionals who have served societies around the region, and indeed the world. Notable alumni include three presidents, including current Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, over a dozen prime ministers, former Occidental Petroleum head Ray R. Irani, the late architect Zaha Hadid, and 19 of the international delegates at the foundation of the United Nations.

The AUB has also been the most important vehicle for promoting American culture, values and learning in the Arab world. It represents the most positive aspect of what the U.S. offers the Middle East — a region where, since the 1960s, American influence has been seen as suspect if not predatory. Saving the university is therefore essential to repairing and rejuvenating the American relationship with the Arab world.

The association with the U.S. also means the AUB has its share of enemies and has endured more than its share of pain. In 1984, its president, Malcolm Kerr. was assassinated by a Hezbollah-affiliated organization called Islamic Jihad. During the civil war, 30 of its faculty and staff were kidnapped, including several professors. And in 1991, the 125th anniversary of its founding, a bomb attack by pro-Iranian militants destroyed the university’s fabled College Hall administration building and its iconic clock tower.

But the unparalleled economic, social and political crises that have beset Lebanon in the past year represent a greater threat that the AUB has known before. It goes beyond the threats of violence to its staff, which university officials say have escalated alarmingly amid the political turmoil.

The massive Aug. 4 port explosion inflicted millions of dollars of damage on the campus. And since the AUB includes a medical school and hospital complex, like its peers everywhere else, it is being overwhelmed by the coronavirus pandemic.

Lebanon’s financial meltdown is also taking a heavy toll on the university. The near-bankrupt state owes the medical school $150 million in arrears. The dire state of the economy has made it difficult for students to pay tuition fees. The collapse of the Lebanese pound, and proposed “haircuts” for depositors to rescue it, has diminished the value of the university’s assets and reserves, and hindered its ability to raise money within the country.

Revenues for 2020-21 are projected to fall 60%, and university expects losses to the tune of $30 million. The school may lay off up to 25% of its staff and close whole departments.

Fadlo Khuri, the university’s first Lebanese-American president, is counting from help from abroad. In 2020, AUB got $30 million in support for its $423 million operating budget from the U.S. government through various programs, mainly USAID. Khuri hopes that contribution will rise to $50 million. He’s also counting on a bigger grant in Covid aid that the $2.5 million the U.S. gave last year.

Khuri is also hoping to raise more money from the AUB’s far-flung alumni and from philanthropic organizations. These sources have been yielding about $70 million annually, but the president is seeking to increase that to $100 million.

He knows that the AUB is not the only institution that is trying to tap these sources. There are other schools in the Middle East that need  support but none come close to having a comparable cultural and economic impact in the region.

There will be some pushback in Washington from those who worry that strengthening major Lebanese institutions like AUB would automatically strengthen Hezbollah, the Iranian-backed militia the U.S. has designated as a terrorist group. But such fears are misplaced. If anything, the university is a strong bulwark against the region’s religious fundamentalists, sectarian extremists and violent radicals of all kinds, including Tehran’s Lebanese proxies.

Any serious policy of containing and marginalizing Hezbollah has to begin with strengthening and bolstering the institutions of the Lebanese state and society—and there’s no better place to start than the AUB.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/biden-wants-america-to-re-engage-with-the-world-that-s-a-tough-sell-1.1161348

Donald Trump’s foreign policy was among the most unorthodox features of his disruptive presidency. Last week, new US President Joe Biden announced at the State Department that “America is back”. Perhaps, but it isn’t going to be easy.

Mr Biden is trying to revive a bipartisan foreign policy consensus shaped by the Second World War, the Cold War and the post-Cold War era. It emphasised fixed or long-standing alliances; fostering international order based on rules or at least understandings; and trying to balance, when possible, American values with national interests, with the understanding that, over the long run, that adds to the US competitive advantage against undemocratic rivals.

Mr Trump wanted none of it. He cast this as a suckers’ game, with Americans being exploited, especially financially, by putative partners. Instead, he embraced an effectively mercantilist approach, seeking to extract maximum short-term, especially financial, advantage. He had no interest in promoting traditional US values, which he doesn’t seem to share.

Moreover, he regarded fixed and long-standing alliances as suspect, burdensome and even destructive. He made no secret of even wanting to withdraw the US from Nato.

Mr Biden campaigned as Mr Trump’s antithesis in many ways. The watchword of his presidency, thus far at least, is the restoration of “regular order”, both at home and abroad.

On January 22, new Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin became Mr Biden’s second confirmed cabinet member. He immediately telephoned Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg to reiterate Washington’s commitment to the alliance. Nato has committed to increasing participation in the missions in Afghanistan and, especially, Iraq, in a manner that is yet to be defined. So, there’s positive outreach in both directions.

Yet Nato remains a regrettably representative anachronism.

It was established as an anti-Soviet alliance, but the USSR is long gone. The lack of an ongoing consensus raison d’etre makes the organisation vulnerable to internal discord, with at least one member state, Turkey, pursuing a highly aggressive agenda at the expense of other members’ interests and international stability. The absence of a clear mission leaves Nato vulnerable to criticism like Mr Trump’s, who treated it as an unprofitable protection racket.

Even if Mr Trump had secured a second term, he probably couldn’t have fully withdrawn from or dismantled Nato. But Mr Biden probably won’t be able to fully repair the damage done over the past four years, or, even more seriously, paper over the actually existing flaws glaringly exposed by Mr Trump’s attitude.

The end of the Cold War not only stripped Nato of its foundational purpose, it yanked away the external threat that informed all post-Second World War iterations of US internationalism and that ensured the unbroken primacy of such policies.

It took many years and the radical over-extension, informed by neoconservative hubris, of the first George W Bush term, but eventually the absence of a “Soviet menace” led to the re-emergence of isolationism in US foreign policy. It finally arrived in the modified form of Mr Trump’s “America First” quasi-mercantile agenda.

That stance remains popular among right-wing Republican voters. And there is an analogous neo-isolationist orientation growing among left-wing Democrats. The two often find themselves incongruously aligned, and they have joined forces in a relatively new Washington foreign policy think tank.

Some aspects of the Trump approach in fact have roots in Barack Obama’s administration. But they developed considerable momentum under Mr Trump.

Not entirely dissimilarly to his predecessor, Mr Biden’s foreign policy promises to secure tangible benefits to ordinary Americans. But, unlike Mr Trump, it intends to be seen as actually delivering them.

In essence, Mr Biden has outlined a modified version of “America First”, especially since he has little choice but to focus on American domestic crises. Only a remarkable series of foreign policy successes could fully restore traditional US internationalism, but Mr Biden wants to take it as far as possible.

His opening agenda reflects this emerging paradigm.

The reassertion of values includes objecting strongly to the coup in Myanmar, taking a far stronger rhetorical line with Russia (while simultaneously extending the New Start treaty with Moscow for an additional five years), and reopening US immigration.

The recommitment to multilateralism involves rejoining the World Health Organisation and the Paris climate accord.

Conflict resolution will be a key theme, including a major push already under way to help end the war in Yemen. Many Democrats will support this as a supposed repudiation of Mr Trump and step towards restoring international order, but it is much easier said than done.

The key will be somehow convincing the Houthis to make the political and security commitments necessary to allow Saudi Arabia to withdraw, as it clearly wants to. Although Secretary of State Antony Blinken acknowledged in his Senate confirmation testimony that the Houthis are clearly responsible for the conflict, few in Washington seem to comprehend the immense difficulties in trying to negotiate with them.

Rebuilding a nuclear dialogue with Iran is a key priority, but the administration hasn’t gone further than hinting at a possible “freeze” whereby both sides do nothing to further violate the nuclear deal. Progress will be much slower and more difficult than many hoped.

The philosophical core of Mr Biden’s speech was: “There’s no longer a bright line between foreign and domestic policy.”

This sentence reflects his two guiding concepts. First is a return to “regular order” both in the US system and in international relations. Second is the commitment to ensure American “working families” experience the benefits of robust international engagement, effectively his own version of “America First”.

It is an overdue recognition that internationalists failed to convince ordinary Americans that they indeed benefit from global engagement. That failure made it possible for Mr Trump and others to paint international commitments as an intolerable burden or worse.

In addition to facing enormous challenges at home, including the coronavirus and economic crises and poisonous political divisions and mistrust, Mr Biden seems to be embracing the task of reconstructing an American consensus for internationalist engagement. It might be his most ambitious undertaking of all.