https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/i-said-jen-psaki-isn-t-up-to-her-job-and-walked-into-a-rage-storm-1.1159124

Social media has impacted politics and discourse so profoundly and suddenly that it’s very difficult to gauge what it’s doing in real time – especially when one participates in it. I had just such an experience last week when on Twitter I questioned the effectiveness of President Joe Biden’s press secretary, Jen Psaki.

I have a mere 30,000 followers, but over 11,000 people replied. Most of them disagreed with me, some of them reasonably but others with outrage.

I found the novel experience interesting, and frequently amusing, but also instructive. My inclination is not to give it a second thought. Yet, at the request of the editors of this newspaper, I’m going to reflect on the lessons I drew from this rather minor, but truly surprising turn of events.

The first is that social media promotes, and almost requires, the instant response; a reliance on a “first thought, best thought” impulse that only works for certain creative artists – Andy Warhol, for example – who operate entirely by instinct.

The dangers for the rest of us are illustrated by the clumsy way I phrased the tweet in question: “Am I really the only one who can see Psaki isn’t up to this crucial role?” It’s a reasonable question, but pretty badly posed. It suggests my opinion is a fact, and sounds arrogant.

Moreover, to some people the phrasing that she “isn’t up to it” sounded misogynistic, as though any man passing judgment on the performance of any woman, even a senior public figure, is, by definition, re-enacting a sexist trope. I can understand wondering if that’s the case, but leaping to such a conclusion immediately renders everyone a stereotype.

Still, bad phrasing on my end. I was aiming at my usual politically informed interlocutors who both know my views and remember her as State Department spokesperson. Instead, I ended up getting the attention of a good chunk of a far broader public, some very irate.

It’s not clear how that happened, but it doesn’t matter. About half of the responders simply disagreed or replied, very reasonably, “yes” or “yes, you are alone”. But many others angrily assumed that I must be a passionate Donald Trump supporter, a notion likely to surprise readers of this newspaper. In addition, it was consistently asserted that I must have been satisfied with Mr Trump’s four mouthpieces, when in fact each was worse than the next and all totally incompetent.

The most unhinged replies were naturally also the most amusing. My favourite was one asserting that I “look like a child molester”, which I found as creative and magnificently off point as it was deranged. A good deal of creative abuse was hurled at me, but it’s impossible to take such silliness seriously.

This overwrought degree of emotional investment is partly the result of so many Americans being profoundly traumatised by four years of Mr Trump’s maladministration, endless lies and, eventually, effort to overturn a free and fair election. We are therefore now living in a moment, however fleeting, where questioning the performance of any aspect of the Biden administration can appear a wretched betrayal.

Moreover, because Ms Psaki is honest and probably about average for pre-Trump White House press secretaries, for many she is a breath of fresh air. My view is that, given the challenges they face, this administration needs exceptional talent, especially regarding outreach to a fractured nation. It was as if I had told people who hadn’t eaten for four years that the pack of cheese crisps they just found isn’t really all that nutritious.

In addition, many Americans have been drawn closely into the political realm because of the traumatic Trump experience. Many now paying close attention to Ms Psaki may not have paid much attention to White House press secretaries before four or five years ago. And even for those who do, or at least should, remember them, post-modern subjectivity – which is of course exemplified by Twitter – has a nasty habit of erasing historical memory like an overfilled hard drive.

All that matters is the here and now and our immediate reactions to that, and if it isn’t on television or social media, it isn’t happening at all. For adherents of QAnon and other conspiracy theories, although their collective delusions exist only on social media, they are more real than reality.

The evanescence of social media is the biggest argument against writing this column in the first place. By now, Twitter has moved on and it’s as if the whole thing never happened.

Beyond even the illusion of intimacy – and the misleading rush of dopamine users get from quick flashes of anger at heretics, or the much more damaging long infusions of dopamine that come from the false revelations of conspiratorial delusion – social media seems increasingly bound up with the demise of the political.

It’s been brewing for some time, but since the Trump presidency, what often passes for American civic engagement has become more emotional and affiliative than, strictly speaking, political on all sides. US politics is often called “tribal”, but these tribes are largely defined symbolically – by adhering to certain icons, including leaders, various forms of virtue signalling and political correctness, and, above all, sharing the same enemies. That, of course, is why it was assumed I must be a Trump follower.

But politics is about power, which requires organising and, in a country like the US, voting and raising money, not emoting. Large numbers of Americans on both the left and the right are wasting enormous amounts of energy shouting into social media echo chambers and mistaking that for political engagement. It’s not, because it won’t make a bit of difference. It turns citizens into what Prof Eitan Hersh aptly dubs “political hobbyists”.

The most extreme, horrifying example is the astonishingly large number of Trump supporters involved in the insurrectionary attack on Congress who, it turns out, didn’t bother to vote in the election they were rampaging to overturn.

That’s a million miles away from someone who simply mistakes outraged tweeting for political activism, and there is hardly any comparison. Yet both, in their own very different ways, demonstrate how umbrage can displace engagement, particularly when enveloped by the warm, narcissistic embrace of social media fantasies of intimacy, insight and empowerment.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-31/palestinian-reconciliation-remains-a-pipe-dream

Hamas and Fatah seem more serious than usual about unity, but the chances of it happening are slim.

For years, speculation that Hamas and Fatah are about to reconcile and agree on new Palestinian elections has been the stuff of silly-season journalism. Even when there have been formal announcements of intended rapprochement, the rival political factions have been too comfortable in their respective strongholds of Gaza and the West Bank, and too far apart ideologically, to follow through.

So when Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas last week again promised national reconciliation and new elections, it was a cue for eye rolling.

But both sides seem to be more sincere now than at any time since the last elections in 2006. Abbas decreed three specific dates: May 22 for the election to the legislature, July 31 for the presidential vote, and Aug. 31 for the reconstitution of the Palestinian National Council. That’s not an airy promise, it’s a very specific — and very ambitious — agenda.

Both sides, it would appear, are responding to a wave of reconciliation across the Middle East, which presents a new challenge to Palestinian national aspirations.

While bickering amongst themselves over turf and ideology, Hamas and Fatah have long relied on a unified block of Arab countries to pursue the broader Palestinian objective of independence from Israel. The 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, which promised normalization with Israel only after it withdraws from territories occupied in the 1967, served as a substitute for a Palestinian national strategy — and by extension, for a nationally-minded leadership.

But several Arab states are now pursuing normalization with Israel individually, weakening any leverage they may have had collectively. The Palestinian groups have little choice but to come up with a national strategy. That, in turn, would require unified purpose and credible institutions. Hence, the sudden seriousness about Hamas-Fatah reconciliation and national elections.

It helps that many foreign backers of both factions are pushing them towards reconciliation. Hamas is being pressed by Qatar, its main financier, as well as Turkey; Fatah by the UAE and Saudi Arabia, its key backers.

But not everyone is so keen. Egypt and Jordan, not coincidentally the two states that border Gaza and the West Bank, are decidedly nervous about the prospect, fearing chaos and uncontrolled change in volatile areas along their borders. They have more to lose than to gain, since the status quo suits both just fine.

Iran, too, only stands to lose from a successful Palestinian process. Tehran maintain links to Hamas and to some leaders in Gaza, but a reconciliation would squeeze it out and strengthen the influence of Turkey and Qatar on one side and the UAE and Saudi Arabia on the other.

Israel, too, appears to have little to gain from Palestinian reconciliation or elections. For Israeli leaders, Palestinian disunity forestalls compromise and provides cover for continuing and deepening the occupation.

And the view of the Americans and Europeans isn’t clear, especially given the fiasco of the 2006 legislative elections: Hamas triumphed, and the West essentially repudiated the results. A repeat of that result will be just as hard to swallow.

But it may never come to that: The political and structural obstacles to a national election are overwhelming. Although Hamas has made a significant concession in dropping its opposition to separate votes for the legislature and presidency, the two parties are divided on the distribution of power between the two institutions. Contemporary Arab politics almost always favors the executive, which doesn’t augur well for Hamas: It is much better at winning small local elections than at having one of its members accepted as a national leader.

The two factions haven’t yet agreed to a common set of rules for campaigning, or even voting. Hamas will likely demand a new electoral court to certify the results; Abbas won’t agree, since that would undercut his own authority.

It’s hard to imagine anything like normal campaigning, given restrictions of the Israeli occupation, especially the extreme difficulty of movement, and the readiness of both Palestinian sides to use violence in their own area of control. And it is unlikely that the losing side will respect the results.

It is much more probable that the election plan will fizzle out, and that attempts at reconciliation will end in the usual recriminations. Hamas will hunker down in its Gaza redoubt and launch sporadic rockets into Israel, while Abbas tries to restore relations with the U.S., secure more aid and rally international support.

Few people on earth need political change more than the Palestinians; even fewer are more hopelessly trapped in their status quo.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/biden-faces-an-uphill-battle-for-palestine-and-it-starts-in-east-jerusalem-1.1152547

A couple of jarring moments in the first days of his presidency demonstrate how challenging it will be for Joe Biden to repair US policy towards the Palestinians.

The first was a seemingly minor, but in fact highly instructive, kerfuffle over the language identifying the Twitter feed for the US ambassador to Israel. Shortly after Mr Biden was inaugurated, the account’s description was changed to say that the ambassador represents Washington in “Israel, the West Bank and Gaza” rather than simply Israel.

That’s obviously true. But it contradicts persistent efforts by the previous administration to reverse decades of US policy that recognised the distinction between Israel and the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967. Under Donald Trump, the State Department gradually eliminated almost all references to occupation, occupied territories and even, at times, “the West Bank and Gaza Strip” as entities distinct from Israel.

This idea was most prominently expressed in the so-called “Peace to Prosperity” plan issued in January 2020 that encouraged Israel to annex huge chunks of the occupied West Bank and would have effectively eliminated the potential for a Palestinian state. But it was also reflected in language in numerous State Department documents, including US passports, that appear to recognise Israel’s de facto sovereignty in occupied East Jerusalem and other parts of the West Bank.

The bottom line is that the Trump administration was opposed to a genuine, viable two-state solution whereas the Biden administration will seek to return to the US what had been a bipartisan consensus in favour of such an outcome. In that quest, they will enjoy the support of most professional diplomats at the State Department, who were deeply concerned by the Trump administration’s abandonment of both international law and the terms of the 1993 Declaration of Principles, which was signed by the US and Israel and forbids unilateral annexation.

So, it’s not surprising that somebody at the State Department moved immediately to correct the language on Twitter to reflect these understandings. However, conservative media and right-wing politicians such as Michael McCaul, the senior Republican on the House foreign affairs committee, howled in outrage.

The language was quickly restored to read simply “Israel” and the State Department insisted that it was all an inadvertent error and reflected no change in policy now or any planned one in the future.

That may be perfectly true. Someone certainly jumped the gun.

Yet while the language change was hasty, and clumsy in many ways, it nonetheless does reflect the kind of policy change towards the Palestinians the Biden administration could pursue, and the level of opposition that would face.

But the fact that such a simple, basic and, in a rational world, plainly unobjectionable phrase as “Israel, the West Bank and Gaza” could cause an uproar, and have to be withdrawn for reintroduction at some propitious future date, indicates how challenging it will be for the Biden administration to restore something as previously straightforward as the US commitment to a two-state solution.

That conundrum was further illustrated in the confirmation hearings for Secretary of State nominee Antony Blinken. He repeated the Biden administration’s commitment to a two-state outcome, but when asked if the US would maintain its embassy in Jerusalem and its current policies towards Jerusalem, Mr Blinken answered quickly and simply: “Yes and yes.”

Nobody expected Mr Biden to remove the US Embassy from Jerusalem. But Mr Trump’s recognition of Israel’s sovereignty in Jerusalem seems, particularly to Israel, to involve both West Jerusalem and occupied East Jerusalem. If that really is US policy, which was never made explicitly clear, and the Biden administration maintains it, then their purported commitment to a two-state solution isn’t serious.

A compromise on occupied East Jerusalem, and particularly the Muslim and Christian holy places in what is known as the “holy basin”, is an indispensable part of any viable two-state outcome. Israel’s position that all of Jerusalem is its “eternal and undivided capital” leaves little room for any such understanding.

Fortunately, there is a way out for Mr Biden on this, and, ironically, it was provided by Mr Trump himself. In his December 6, 2017 proclamation on Jerusalem, Mr Trump specifically stated that “the specific boundaries of Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem are subject to final-status negotiations”.

This phrase was never further explained, but it hangs over the proclamation as a crucial caveat. What Mr Biden needs to do, sooner rather than later, is to explain that this can only mean, and that US policy is, that Washington recognises Israel’s sovereignty in West Jerusalem but continues to view occupied East Jerusalem as a core final-status issue to be resolved only through negotiations as the 1993 Declaration of Principles stipulates.

It is not a difficult case to make, if you begin the conversation by asking what the “specific boundaries” passage was intended to signify and why it was included. In April 2017, Russia recognised West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and added that it looked forward to recognising the Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem. That declaration angered no one.

Right-wing Israelis, greater-Israel advocates, evangelical fundamentalist Christians and diehard supporters of Mr Trump may feign outrage. But it’s a necessary step if Mr Biden is interested in reestablishing the US position as one compatible with a viable peace.

The irony is that while Mr Biden is going to struggle mightily to restore this stance, it is hardly a major step forward. The two-state solution was moribund even before Mr Trump’s plan attempted to permanently bury it. Even if Mr Biden manages to exhume a pro-peace US policy, the two-state solution isn’t likely to emerge greatly reinvigorated.

Crucially, Israel is now moving at top speed to finalise a major new settlement cutting occupied East Jerusalem off from the West Bank. Mr Biden must take a strong stance against the Givat Hamatos project, which would achieve practically what Mr Trump’s rhetoric implied: that any Israeli compromise on Jerusalem is permanently off the table.

If that settlement is built, no amount of impeccable rhetoric or improved policies is likely to salvage the possibility of peace. Mr Biden can and must prevent it, but he will have to move quickly.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/the-reality-based-wing-of-the-republicans-must-work-with-biden-1.1147918

The reality-based wing of the Republicans must work with Biden
Truth must be shown to produce tangible benefits or the blitzkrieg of lies will triumph.

On Wednesday, Joe Biden will become the 46th US President, but he is inheriting a political landscape more destabilised than at any time in a century and, arguably, since the Civil War.

This unprecedented, although long-festering, national rupture, along with the coronavirus and economic crises, provide Mr Biden a rare contemporary opportunity to achieve historic greatness. No recent US president has confronted such existential national challenges.

Yet he must traverse an exceptionally volatile minefield of bitter disputes, mutual incomprehension and unanswered – and possibly unanswerable – conundrums.

The paramount task, reforming and repairing the US political system, is probably unattainable in the context of present divisions. The creaky, sometimes barely functional and painfully anachronistic US political system has been exposed as vulnerable and ill-suited to modern democratic governance.

It is burdened with procedures and institutions that have become conducive to minority rule, legal vagaries that require honesty and good faith to function properly and the extreme difficulty of holding a president accountable. The guardrails haven’t shattered, but they are alarmingly rickety and brittle.

The past few weeks demonstrated how realistically, with the connivance of a few well-placed state officials and federal judges, an incumbent US president could usurp an election while technically acting within the letter of the law, albeit in bad faith.

While many necessary reforms are obvious, they mostly require a set of political majorities to enact. So, they will probably have to wait.

Mr Biden’s domestic agenda was salvaged by the Georgia runoffs that gave his party the narrowest control of the Senate. But his more ambitious economic recovery plans, such as a massive infrastructure overhaul initiative, will likely require some Republican support. Recent experience suggests that even national emergencies often don’t ensure Republican co-operation with a Democratic President.

The new president also faces a now solidly ultra-conservative Supreme Court poised to invalidate anything truly ambitious he secures.

Republicans will be guided by an increasingly bitter power struggle between diehard supporters and aspiring successors of outgoing President Donald Trump and much of the traditional party leadership increasingly eager to get rid of him.

The deadly January 6 mob assault on Congress instigated by Mr Trump and which resulted in his immediate and bipartisan second impeachment by the House of Representatives has provided a golden opportunity for them.

Unlike with his first impeachment a year ago, this time enough Republican senators may well vote to convict Mr Trump, strip him of post-presidential amenities and ban him from holding federal office again.

But it won’t be easy. Mr Trump has effectively transformed his party into a kind of personality cult, as reflected by the 2020 Republican party “platform”, which merely pledged to follow his every lead.

Already his supporters are fighting back, attacking Congress from the outside, while inside it his House allies still trumpet the groundless myth of a “stolen election” and press to unseat Liz Cheney, the third ranking Republican in the house from her position of leadership because she voted to impeach the President.

Mr Trump remains immensely popular with the party base. But in the aftermath of the attack on Congress, his general public popularity has plummeted to unheard of depths for any sitting president, a mere 29 per cent approval.

Logic suggests the “Make America Great Again” movement has finally run out of steam. But millions of Americans have embraced irrational articles of faith such as the “stolen election” myth and even the fantastical conspiracy theory QAnon. So perhaps not.

Democrats also face a festering internal struggle between left-wing progressives and Mr Biden’s centrists. It’s relatively subdued at the moment, especially compared to the Republican internecine vendetta, but that probably won’t last.

It’s widely recognised that the US is culturally and politically divided between coastal and urban liberal areas versus mainly interior and rural or exurban conservative ones. These Americans inhabit separate and conflicting information ecosystems that produce increasingly irreconcilable narratives and perceptions.

Mr Biden wants to begin healing this schism. He knows he can’t get Americans to agree on much, but he seeks to restore basic trust among compatriots and in national institutions, and to re-establish a set of commonly accepted baseline facts from which even sharp political disagreements can be reasonably contested.

Yet as long as powerful actors believe they benefit from propagating falsehoods intended to produce discord, and from perpetuating the dysfunctional political structures that stoke such bitterness, real healing may prove elusive.

Americans are approaching a national schism so dire – and deeply rooted in deceptions that have been yoked to genuine, deep-seated fears about demographic, cultural, economic and technological transformation – that some form of “truth and reconciliation” process may be required.

There are several restorative initiatives that could, or at least should, be adopted. A major infrastructure project and other measures could bolster the middle class, especially outside major cities. A host of actions could reverse the unconscionable economic stratification between the super-rich and everyone else. Mandatory national service could act as a generational unity programme. But adopting any of these would be very difficult.

Reasserting the indispensability of truth is even more important, and yet far more daunting.

Truth can be ineffectual when people fear reality. Emotionally satisfying lies become appealing, and eventually delusion a way of life.

Ultimately, irrationality triumphs and up becomes down – Just as it did on January 6 when Capitol police officers were attacked and one murdered in the name of “law and order” and Congress besieged by insurrectionary hordes chanting “USA”.

Truth must be shown to produce tangible benefits. Otherwise, seductive, poisonous lies will remain potent among the enraged and the fearful.

The reality-based wing of the Republican leadership must recognise that its only hope of prevailing against the blitzkrieg of unhinged lies besieging its party and country is to abandon obstructionism for now and to work with Mr Biden to demonstrate that truth can deliver significant results for most Americans.

Otherwise, the attacks on the election, the Constitution and Congress will be just the beginning.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/us-capitol-fiasco-raises-serious-questions-about-trump-s-collusion-1.1143723

Trump leaves office thoroughly discredited and reviled, and probably the biggest loser in the history of the US presidency.

On Wednesday, the Donald Trump era in US politics  irreparably crashed and burned, with near-simultaneous catastrophes in Georgia and, especially, Washington.

In once-solidly Republican Georgia, the Democrats won both runoff races, unexpectedly seizing narrow control of the Senate, the upper house of Congress, the American legislature.

Under Mr Trump’s uncontested leadership, Republicans have lost the presidency and both houses of Congress, and he’s bequeathing them a furious, internecine battle.

Yet far, far worse followed.

As the world knows, a mass demonstration Mr Trump organised to confront and attempt to stop Congress’s ratification of the election results became, with grim predictability, a violent assault on the legislature by a furious, insurrectionary horde.

Mr Trump and his allies claim they never promoted violence, but their words on that day and before were clear and damning.

Therefore, the Democrats, many in the media and even some leading Republicans are holding him personally responsible for inciting the violence.

The security failure was so severe that if the rampaging pro-Trump rioters in the building had bombs, much of the US government, including the Vice President, could have been instantly wiped out. Congressional leaders realise how exposed, and thus how fortunate, they were.

The fiasco raises serious questions of incompetence or collusion, but it had two silver linings.

Republican leaders experienced the terror of the event personally. More importantly, the mob was denied a host of martyrs or the myth of violent repression by the “deep state”. Instead, they just dispersed in failure and, in many cases later, facing arrest, while Congress reconvened and confirmed the election results.

Yet six people died, including a Capitol Police officer. The killing of a police officer will mean that authorities will be resolutely determined to punish lawbreakers, who could face felony murder charges.

Even the President is potentially vulnerable to charges of incitement.

As the chaos unfolded and under tremendous pressure, Mr Trump eventually issued brief Twitter and video statements ostensibly intended to call for peace. But he emphasised his great love for the mob, said with evident pride that the day should be “remembered forever” and once again encouraged rage over what he claims, without evidence, was a stolen landslide election victory.

Although the message appealed for calm, in effect it was encouraging and vindicating the violence.

Mr Trump’s own former top Russia expert, Fiona Hill, explained, “The president was trying to stage a coup.” After all 10 living former defence secretaries intervened through a January 3 public statement warning the military to refuse to overthrow the system, she said, “Trump tried to incite it himself,” by instigating a riot. “This could have turned into a full-blown coup had he had any of those key [military] institutions following him. Just because it failed or didn’t succeed doesn’t mean it wasn’t real.”

This understanding is widespread and bipartisan.

Mr Trump’s already-tenuous political credibility – recently battered even more by the leak of a breathtakingly corrupt phone call demanding Georgia officials somehow “find” him enough nonexistent votes from November to “win” that state – disintegrated.

A slew of resignations followed, including by Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, special envoy to Northern Ireland Mick Mulvaney, deputy national security adviser Matthew Pottinger and economic adviser Tyler Goodspeed.

Late Thursday, Mr Trump finally condemned the violence, suddenly acknowledged Mr Biden will become president, and promised a peaceful transfer of power. Yet given the failed deadly insurrection, that promise is already shattered.

This reversal, which he reportedly regrets, was damage control to prevent additional senior officials from resigning, including national security adviser Richard O’Brien and acting homeland security secretary Chad Wolf. It apparently succeeded in keeping them in his government for a few more days.

But the ploy’s primary purpose was to resurrect the political viability of “Trump 2024”, the idea of another Trump term in four years.

That’s failed.

Senior figures on all sides have concluded that Mr Trump is dangerously reckless, and deeply disturbed and deluded.

Given the power of the US president, anxiety is profound. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi even consulted senior military officers about how to disregard or circumvent the possibility of an unhinged presidential nuclear attack order.

There have been acknowledged discussions among senior administration officials about using provisions in the 25th amendment of the US Constitution to remove Mr Trump against his will, but that’s highly unlikely.

Democratic leaders, major newspapers, and some senior Republicans called on Mr Trump to resign. Since he won’t, Democrats are preparing a second impeachment proceeding.

Another impeachment could be a purifying blob of symbolic hand-sanitiser to restore national political hygiene. But a Senate trial would have to come after Mr Biden takes office. It might be wiser to leave Mr Trump, as a private citizen, to prosecutors and courts.

The ultimate indicator of his sudden, spectacular downfall comes from social media, not politics. After years of cowering in fear of him, Twitter has banned Mr Trump permanently. Facebook has done so indefinitely.

Social media is now the epicentre of discursive and cultural power. Such raw power invariably and immediately senses when clout is suddenly lost, and pounces.

The most passionate votaries of Mr Trump – possibly around one quarter of committed Republicans – will still venerate him for now. But the rest of the country and his own party are already moving on, and eventually so will they.

In Georgia and Washington, Wednesday in America projected a split-screen image contrasting Mr Trump’s imaginary world, in which he’s the election winner and still politically potent, with reality, and between the rule of law versus its furious, violent enemies.For now, reality and the rule of law are prevailing.

There’s nothing Mr Trump fears more than being a “loser”. Yet he has lost both houses of Congress, the White House, his crucial social media platforms, political viability and whatever was left of his already-tattered reputation.

Yet rarely has an American politician been so thoroughly defeated, repudiated and reviled.

And never has an American president been exposed as such a total loser.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-01-06/qatar-embargo-may-be-ending-but-the-gulf-arab-dispute-is-unresolved?srnd=opinion&sref=tp95wk9l

The embargo may be over, but the ideological gap with its neighbors can’t be papered over.

The Qatar embargo, which has divided Gulf Arabs during almost the entirety of the Donald Trump administration, is finally approaching resolution. Just about everyone’s a winner in the short term, but since none of the underlying disputes have been resolved, the long-term prognosis remains questionable.

On Monday, the eve of the 41st summit meeting of the six-member Gulf Cooperation Council, Saudi Arabia announced it was reopening air routes to Qatar Airways and the land border between the two countries. The two other Gulf members of the quartet that had imposed the embargo, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, are expected to ease travel and trade restrictions. The fourth member, Egypt, will likely go along.

What’s unclear is what Qatar has been willing to give in order to get out of its regional isolation.

Doha will be dropping formal complaints and lawsuits against its GCC partners, but there are underlying political and ideological divisions that other Arab countries will expect Qatar to address as well.

The UAE has been especially at odds with Qatar over the legitimacy of Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood, which Doha strongly supports, in mainstream Arab politics. Riyadh shares some of these reservations, but is more incensed by Qatari support for Saudi opposition figures in the region and, allegedly, within Saudi Arabia itself.

The quartet’s main demands when the embargo was first imposed included a clean break with the Muslim Brotherhood and the closure of Qatar’s influential Al Jazeera TV network. It’s clear that channel isn’t going to shut down, but close observers will be watching for a shift in the editorial policies that Qatar’s neighbors believe threaten their interests.

These disputes are deep-seated, and this isn’t the first round of this confrontation. There was a similar, though less intense, version of the same standoff in 2013-14, which was resolved by a set of understandings that were vague and aspirational. Qatar’s commitments were implicit, to be demonstrated in practice rather than enumerated in writing. The embargo in 2017 was the neighbors’ way of saying Doha hadn’t kept its end of the bargain.

Will it do so now? Quite apart from keeping Al Jazeera on air, it is extremely unlikely that Qatar’s deepening ties to Turkey, which greatly exercise the Emiratis and Saudis, will be curtailed.

While the UAE may go along with the lifting of the boycott, its main concerns have not been resolved. Saudi Arabia, however, is more focused on the threat posed by Iran, and any prospect, however slim, to pull Doha away from Tehran is welcome.

For the Saudis, the Qatar boycott had long since reached the point of diminishing returns, but they didn’t see any immediate need to change course. But with the rising tensions with Iran and the imminent arrival of a Biden administration that is amenable to making a deal with Tehran, calculations have changed.

Opening Saudi air routes to Qatar Airways will deprive Tehran of about $100 million paid annually to Tehran for use of routes over Iran. The lifting of the embargo doesn’t mean Qatar will go from being a friend to a foe of Iran, but the Saudis will take comfort from reducing Doha’s dependence on the Islamic Republic, while bringing Gulf Arabs closer together in a pro-American coalition.

How long this rapprochement will last is a different question. The ideological chasm between the UAE and Qatar will remain as wide and as bitter as ever. While deferring to the Saudis, the Emiratis will regard Qatar as being on a kind of probation. The experience after 2014 is not encouraging.

Qatar would be making a big mistake to conclude that it has somehow prevailed in the dispute. The embargo demonstrated that its neighbors can live without Qatar far more easily than Qatar can function in isolation from them.

And since none of the core issues appear to have been resolved, a third Gulf Arab standoff in the foreseeable future remains a distinct possibility.

Qatar Boycott Ends, But Core Issues Remain Unresolved

Almost all sides are winners for now, but a third GCC confrontation remains possible.

After years of fruitless pressure from Washington and several false starts, a major reconciliation within the Gulf Cooperation Council at its 41st summit marks the de facto end of the boycott of Qatar by Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt. An agreement was signed at the January 5 summit in Saudi Arabia, whereby Saudi Arabia will reopen its land border with Qatar and overflight routes for Qatar Airways, relieving the most significant practical aspects of the boycott. Bahrain and the UAE will take similar measures. Qatar agreed to withdraw numerous formal complaints and international lawsuits against its neighbors and presumably take additional publicly unspecified steps to ease Saudi and other Gulf Arab concerns about its policies. And both sides committed to stopping the “media war” between them, though how far that will go remains to be seen.

However, many of the underlying causes of the standoff may not have been fully resolved. And as the recent boycott, which began in June 2017, was preceded by an earlier confrontation over Qatar’s policies in 2013-14, another confrontation in coming years remains distinctly possible.

The dispute is ending now due to a combination of pressure from the outgoing administration of President Donald J. Trump and incoming administration of President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. in Washington, rising tensions with Iran, and diminishing returns from the boycott itself. The reconciliation originates from Kuwaiti-mediated and Washington-supported understandings that are largely bilateral and instead almost led to a more limited rapprochement between Saudi Arabia and Qatar. An expected announcement about such a bilateral agreement in early December 2020 never materialized, apparently because there were last-minute renewed hopes that the UAE would be persuaded to join a broader Gulf Arab reconciliation.

When it became clear that the UAE had dropped its opposition to measures to end the boycott, the January GCC summit was moved to Al Ula, a major Saudi pre-Islamic archaeological and historical cultural heritage site being promoted for tourism and as a symbol of national identity rather than religious authority. That move indicated that Riyadh expected to announce an agreement in the context of the summit and wanted to take ownership of and promote the rapprochement.

The agreement is being heralded as a major breakthrough by all sides in the GCC. Turki Al-Sheikh, a senior advisor to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, tweeted imagery promoting Gulf Arab unity. UAE Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Anwar Gargash welcomed the restoration of Gulf unity in the interests of regional security and stability. For Qatar, the agreement is a huge breakthrough, as in the long run Doha must have working relations with its Gulf Arab neighbors, and it seems to have been greeted with joy and even relief.

Democrats and Republicans in Washington will also welcome this development. The Trump administration, which has been pressing for an end to the boycott for years without any progress, made engineering such a rapprochement between Washington’s Gulf Arab allies an end-of-term foreign policy priority. The administration will point to this development as another Middle East policy accomplishment for the outgoing president, especially since Trump’s son-in-law and Middle East envoy Jared Kushner participated in the signing ceremony in Saudi Arabia.

More importantly, the Biden administration made it clear behind closed doors that it did not wish to inherit this complication, and it appears this is one of several efforts by Riyadh to improve relations with Biden before he takes office. Reports indicate that concerns about relations with Biden and the Democrats motivated Saudi Arabia to move forward even without UAE cooperation in early December. But Riyadh was then able to secure a broader GCC settlement given that the UAE ultimately preferred that to a bilateral Qatari-Saudi deal that Abu Dhabi could not prevent.

Also prompting the reconciliation is the rapid rise of tensions between the United States and its Middle Eastern allies and Iran and its proxies, particularly in Iraq and Yemen. Concerns about potential clashes have intensified surrounding the first anniversary of the drone strike that killed Iranian military leader Qassim Suleimani and Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and a spike in saber rattling in the last days of the Trump administration, with its efforts to lock in sanctions and discourage diplomatic initiatives with Tehran by the Biden administration. The United States recently bolstered its naval and other forces, particularly its refueling capability, in the waters near Iran, following a series of rocket attacks by Iran’s proxy militia groups on U.S. targets in Iraq. And, Iran again disrupted maritime security by seizing a South Korean oil tanker near the Strait of Hormuz.

Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab countries, therefore, have an interest in strengthening relations with Washington as tensions with Tehran rise and, of course, bolstering their own cooperation in the process. Given the U.S. insistence on the need to end the boycott, those two goals are virtually interchangeable. In addition, by reopening Saudi overflight routes for Qatar Airways, the agreement will deny Iran $100 million annually that Qatar has been compelled to pay Tehran for the right to use its airspace instead. And Doha will now be less constrained by the need to maintain Iranian goodwill, given that its air access will no longer be dependent on Iran, though the two countries still share a gas field, which provides substantial income for Qatar.

Finally, for Saudi Arabia, the boycott had long ago begun to reach the point of diminishing returns. Whatever Riyadh might have been seeking to gain through the boycott had already been accomplished within its first year or could not be achieved by the boycott at all. Any point Saudi Arabia was trying to make either had been made or was not going to be made. Continuing the boycott was probably more a matter of disinterest by Saudi Arabia than a pointed, purposive policy.

For the UAE, by contrast, the deep-seated ideological conflict with Qatar (and its senior partner Turkey) over the legitimacy and viability of Sunni Islamist groups, such as the Muslim Brotherhood, in contemporary Arab politics remains entirely unresolved. Left on its own, the UAE probably would have continued the boycott until Qatar agreed to truly reshape its foreign policy with regard to Islamism. But with Saudi Arabia poised to make an agreement with Qatar, the UAE seemingly decided it was preferable to maintain a unified position with Saudi Arabia than persist with the boycott, which is primarily based on the closure of the Qatari border with Saudi Arabia and Saudi airspace. Nonetheless, it may be telling that the UAE is being represented by Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, the Emirati vice president and ruler of Dubai, rather than the crown prince of Abu Dhabi and de facto ruler of the UAE, Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, which may be seen as expressing Emirati reservations about the scope and prospects of the rapprochement.

Even though Saudi Arabia has pressed ahead despite UAE reservations, Emirati concerns that the underlying causes of this and the 2013-14 confrontation remain effectively unresolved appear well founded. Both confrontations occurred because aspects of Qatari foreign policy – its support for Islamist and other populist Arab political movements, close alliance with Turkey, increased sympathy for Iran (some of which can be traced to the effects of the boycott itself), and support for opposition groups and figures from, and within, neighboring Gulf Arab countries – are seen as incompatible with the essential national interests of Qatar’s larger neighbors.

There will no doubt be some changes to Qatari policies in response to the end of the boycott, but they will certainly fall far short of the initial 13 demands. And they will probably fall short of expectations embodied in the six-point plan, which was essentially a repetition of the 2014 agreement, that was issued a few weeks after the 13-point declaration. Not only will Al Jazeera not be shuttered; how much, if any, of its editorial tone will change is entirely unclear. There is no reason to think Doha will distance itself from Ankara. And Saudi Arabia, in particular, will be paying close attention to Qatar’s relationship with opposition figures and groups from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf and Arab countries.

For Qatar, these policies are an expression of its sovereign independence. And surviving the boycott, with a little help from its friends, and compelling its larger neighbors to come to what look like quite favorable terms from a Qatari perspective, could fuel a misguided sense of vindication. In turn, that could lead to a continued refusal to take the interests of its larger neighbors into consideration, relying on its partnership with Washington and close alliance with Turkey instead. If so, there is a strong potential for a repetition of the experience following the 2014 agreement, when Saudi Arabia and the UAE believed Qatar acted very cautiously for several months but within a year again seemed to be undermining their interests on a range of fronts.

The 2014 experience was a key factor in generating the anger that led to the 2017 boycott. But this dispute produced unprecedented levels of bitterness, feeling very personal to many citizens and leaving deep scars of anger, betrayal, and alienation that will not be easily overcome. This agreement, too, could collapse under the weight of the continued disagreements between Qatar and its larger neighbors, and another Gulf Arab confrontation could emerge before too long. That wouldn’t be in anybody’s interests, however, so the new agreement is a welcome opportunity to resolve these disagreements with less public rancor and strategic disruption.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/america-s-racial-reckoning-is-at-a-dangerous-point-1.1139726

The Republican slide towards antidemocratic authoritarianism is driven by racial anxieties and fear of losing control.

In 2020, the racial issues that perennially gnaw at the American soul erupted with the greatest intensity since the 1960s. While the present struggle is commonly viewed in social and cultural terms, it is fundamentally political. Above all, it is about defining the past in order to shape the future.

In the 1960s, at issue was the ongoing quest of African-Americans not to be subjected to overt or barely concealed discrimination. What’s at stake now – in a battle that will be played out for many coming years – is the power of white Christian Americans, who have dominated the country since its founding, to continue to define and embody the national identity and retain political supremacy.

The slide of the Republican Party towards authoritarianism – dramatically demonstrated by the vows of at least 140 Republicans in Congress to vote on January 6 to reject the election results simply based on the outcome – is largely driven by such anxieties. Republican leaders increasingly and unapologetically oppose not just widespread voting but respecting disappointing election results.

Historically, this is a familiar conundrum.

It is easy to embrace equality and even democracy as long as a community can still determine the national agenda. But when political equality threatens to undermine communal power and unseat the authority of a once-dominant group, anti-democratic practices can easily be recast as existential necessities.

The presidency of Barack Obama was viewed by many as unacceptable and a stark, alarming warning. Forced to choose between upholding democracy or risking their power, a significant proportion of white Christian Americans, especially outside the great cities, are embracing anti-democratic minority rule.

The Trump administration embodied such terrors, breaking with traditional Republican orthodoxy most dramatically on immigration. In a few months, Mr Trump and his base turned most mainstream Republican leaders from business-friendly immigration advocates into racial and cultural hysterics.

His election appeals to “suburban housewives” and obvious antipathy towards black-majority cities, their political legitimacy, and the threat their people supposedly pose to allegedly besieged white suburbia, encapsulate the racist subtext. His supporters aren’t merely concerned about the demographic emergence of a US with no clear ethnic majority, they dread losing control of the defining historical and political narratives.

Thanks to smartphones and social media, last year was a watershed on white perceptions of racism. Unending footage of racist abuses from often deadly police brutality, such as the killing of George Floyd, which sparked weeks of multi-racial protests, to incidents such as the recent physical attack on a black child falsely accused by a white woman of stealing her mobile at a New York hotel, broke through thick layers of past denial.

That African-Americans, particularly young men, are routinely treated unfairly and even brutally by the authorities, and sometimes by their fellow citizens, is now widely accepted. Once-hegemonic views that ongoing systemic racism is a myth or that racism was largely resolved by the civil rights movement of the 1960s are now broadly discredited.

That is a massive transformation of white perceptions, with huge implications. Overt opposition to racism, such as kneeling during the national anthem or in solidarity, was once vilified but is increasingly common and often adds to one’s respectability. Even Congress just overrode Mr Trump’s veto of a military spending bill he rejected because it instructs the military to stop honouring confederate generals who led the Civil War fight to preserve slavery.

Predictably, though, anti-racism and leftist forces are also prone to overreach.

Using the slogan “defund the police” to call for badly needed policing reform was a huge mistake if the goal is actual change, because it was easily made to sound like a call for no policing. The “Black Lives Matter” principle opposing police brutality had to overcome tough resistance, because although it obviously meant “black lives matter too” it was often misrepresented as “only”.

The well-intentioned and influential but badly botched “1619 Project”, which seeks to recast US history with slavery as its centrepiece, was correctly dismissed by leading liberal historians as clumsy and sometimes glaringly inaccurate. Cringe-worthy overreaching is amply illustrated by a San Francisco initiative to rename an “Abraham Lincoln school” because “the great emancipator” was insufficiently anti-racist.

Perhaps the widest, most telling chasm has opened over widespread workplace anti-racism training.

The Trump administration, which has banned such training for federal employees, and much of the right denounce any analysis of white privilege as “anti-American propaganda”. They fiercely, though preposterously, deny that there is an ongoing plague of implicit and institutionalised racial bias.

Yet such training can also involve negative stereotyping, with “whiteness” sometimes depicted as representing positive human traits such as “hard work” and “rational thinking”. Some courses can feel unfairly, even ritually, condemnatory of well-meaning white Americans. That’s distinctly unhelpful.

Assuming the US remains a democracy, which it fully became only after the Voting Rights Act of 1965 was implemented, the outcome of this macro-historical contest is unclear. Is the Trump presidency a last stand or the resurgence of traditional, intolerant white power?

A key unexpected feature of the 2020 election was a significant surge in support for conservative Republican candidates among some Latino and Asian-American communities. Despite nearly ubiquitous assumptions, non-white votes are not necessarily Democratic.

One likely gambit to bolster the self-identified white community’s political heft is the repetition of previous decisions (regarding Irish, Italians and so on) to redefine “whiteness” in a more inclusive manner. Millions now usually categorised as “Latinos” already essentially view themselves as “white”, so a simple adjustment of inherently arbitrary definitions can reshape the demographic equation overnight.

Liberals are winning most of the cultural, if not the often structurally lopsided political, battles. Momentum is with anti-racism. However, both sides in the contest for cultural hegemony and concomitant political dominance in coming decades are counting on facile, possibly incorrect, assumptions.

Republicans and their non-urban white conservative base probably don’t need to embrace overly racist identity politics or reject democracy to remain politically potent. But they seem convinced they do and that it is therefore rational and even defensible. That’s leading them in tragic and terrifying directions on both race and democracy.

https://www.thenationalnews.com/opinion/comment/trump-will-find-it-hard-to-pardon-himself-here-s-why-1.1135100

Sweeping and self-pardons may not stand up to legal challenges and state courts remain unfettered.

With less than a month remaining in office, Donald Trump is increasingly turning to the most monarchical and unchecked of presidential prerogatives: the pardon power.

He has already pushed the limits of that entitlement, treating it in a far more personalised, partisan and ideological manner than any of his predecessors. But additional political assumptions and constitutional questions may be tested as he moves to pardon more allies, family members and possibly even himself.

The British monarch’s pardon power was one of the few aspects of royal governance that the founders of the American constitutional republic wanted to retain. They saw it as a final recourse of grace and forgiveness that could help protect the ideal of justice tempered with mercy beyond the rigid requirements of the law.

The Constitution treats presidential powers as a kind of fiduciary responsibility and assumes the president will at least try to act in the public interest in all things, including pardons. More than any of his predecessors, Mr Trump is disregarding that standard.

Such deviations aren’t unknown. Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon and George HW Bush’s of several Iran-Contra scandal convicts were plainly political. And Bill Clinton pardoned his half-brother, a crony and a major donor.

But, in each case, those were exceptions.

Mr Trump, by contrast, has primarily deployed the pardon power in a self-serving manner. Legal scholars estimate that 60 of his 65 pardons have had clear personal or political motivations, as opposed to any disinterested concern about justice or mercy.

The last two batches in recent days were particularly disturbing. In an obvious effort to rebuke former special counsel Robert Mueller and discredit his 2016 election interference investigation, which Mr Trump derides as a “hoax” but which secured numerous guilty pleas and convictions, pardons have been issued to major and minor players alike.

They include his former national security adviser Michael Flynn, campaign manager Paul Manafort and several lesser figures. Of course, everyone who cooperated with the authorities, such as his former attorney Michael Cohen, has been ignored.

He has also pardoned several corrupt Republican politicians who were his ardent supporters, and his daughter’s father-in-law, Charles Kushner. Ivanka Trump’s children will have the unique distinction of one grandfather pardoning the other.

In none of those egregious cases is there any contrition, rehabilitation or evident mitigation beyond the President’s political or personal concerns. Former adviser Steve Bannon, accused of bilking gullible contributors to a phony border wall fund, could be next.

Perhaps most damaging to the national interest are pardons for four Blackwater mercenaries who committed a wanton 2007 massacre of innocent Iraqi civilians, killing at least 17 including several children. Blackwater was headed by one of the President’s close political allies, Erik Prince, brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

Mr Trump and his far-right base have a habit of embracing controversial figures charged with brutality in international conflicts. In November 2019, he infuriated the military by intervening on behalf of Eddie Gallagher, a Navy Seal charged with heinous abuses in Afghanistan.

In addition to outraging the memories of the victims and sabotaging efforts to enforce basic conduct standards for US operatives abroad, the Blackwater pardons are detrimental to US foreign policy. As pro-Iranian militias are attacking US interests in an avowed effort to drive the American military out of Iraq, they could put US personnel at risk by providing additional rationalisations for anti-American attacks.

Mr Trump is reveling in this final burst of unchecked authority and reportedly plans many more pardons, although it is a clear admission that he will be leaving office soon.

While he obviously relishes the near-absolute nature of the power, his expansive plans may reveal some unprecedented complications regarding pardons.

Nixon’s pardon was prospective, issued before any possible criminal charges, as well as sweeping and unspecified. While prospective pardons are probably valid, blanket “get-out-of-jail-free for anything you may have ever done” indemnifications are likely not.

The framers of the US Constitution, drawing on their British model, would have expected valid, enforceable pardons to refer to specific offenses.

Nixon was pardoned “for all [federal] offenses” during his time in office. That was never tested because he was never indicted. But if Mr Trump tried to issue such blanket clemency to his attorney Rudy Giuliani, some other ally, or his children, it could well be tested and prove unenforceable.

Such friends and relatives would also undergo the social and political stigma that can and should be attached to pardons, which do not wipe away the reality or guilt of an offense.

The Supreme Court has held that presidential pardons must be based on an assumption of criminal guilt, while accepting one communicates an admission of guilt. Among Ford’s main justifications for pardoning Nixon was that it definitively established his responsibility, and his admission of culpability (certainly for obstruction of justice), forestalling any further controversy.

Courts and the public have every right to know what crime is being pardoned. Yet there is no evident requirement for presidential pardons to be publicized, so theoretically they could be, in effect, secret until the recipient is indicted.

Mr Trump has claimed he has “the absolute right” to pardon himself, but that is extremely unlikely. No president has ever tried this, but since it would place a president literally above the law, it is almost certainly not constitutional. This incongruous possibility goes unmentioned in the Constitution, but it is referred to as a “grant”, which suggests a gift to someone else.

Even if Mr Trump were to successfully pardon his associates, and even himself, there is an additional wrinkle completely beyond his influence.

Presidential pardons only apply to federal offense. They do nothing to protect against prosecutions by state authorities, in this case mainly New York State.

Any criminal defendant would prefer trial in a New York State court than much stricter federal courts, but presidential pardons would not indemnify Mr Giuliani, the Trump family or the President himself from potential liability on state charges.

Should all else fail, federalism ensures that no one is truly above the law in the United States.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-12-23/biden-should-not-give-up-on-syria?sref=tp95wk9l

He should make it plain that there will be no reconstruction while Assad and his clique are running Damascus.

Tucked away in a little-noticed corner of the $900 billion coronavirus relief bill is an allocation of $40 million in “non-lethal stabilization aid” for Syria, with the proviso that none of it should be used to strengthen Iran and its militias, Russia or the government of Bashar Al Assad. This detail of one of the most important recent pieces of recent U.S. legislation illustrates the American conundrum over Syria that will soon be inherited by the new Biden administration.

Years of neglect have left the U.S. with very limited leverage, but Syria remains the epicenter of three key concerns: combating the destabilization of the Middle East, containing Iranian hegemony, and fighting still-potent terrorist groups like the Islamic State and Al Qaeda. Joe Biden will inherit a considerable mess.

President Barack Obama, never understood the importance of Syria, and the U.S. is still struggling to recover from his folding over the “redline” on use of chemical weapons. President Donald Trump made matters worse in attempting to withdraw all U.S. forces from Syria — upon being told soldiers would be required to secure Syrian oilfields, he agreed to a small presence, thereby maintaining some American leverage.

For a decade, skeptics have maintained it’s too late to achieve anything in Syria. But that was never correct.

What’s required is a middle ground between overly-ambitious goals and avoidable pitfalls, a strategy focused on accumulating limited achievements.

This does not require many — perhaps not even any— additional U.S. troops on the ground. But it requires a robust American re-engagement with Syria with clear objectives: weakening the grip of the Assad dictatorship, squeezing Iran and its proxies to the margins and ultimately out of the country; and preventing Turkey from crushing loyal U.S. allies against terrorism.

Biden should maintain pressure on the Assad dictatorship through sanctions. The Caesar Act sanctions which went into effect this year communicates that the reconstruction and international reintegration of Syria cannot be pursued under Assad and his clique. They’ve killed, tortured and displaced too many people, and a reconciliation with them is out of question. There’s room for much tougher sanctions against key regime cronies, institutions and businesses.

But the sanctions must be targeted in order to isolate the regime and its key backers, without punishing or weakening Syrian society. This can be achieved by providing humanitarian assistance exclusively through entities that aren’t manipulated by the regime and focusing aid in areas not under its control.

Biden should not reduce the small U.S. troop presence in Syria. These highly concentrated forces are among the few remaining obstacles to the creation of an Iranian-controlled military corridor arcing through the northern Middle East, from the Islamic Republic to Lebanon’s Mediterranean.

They also have a crucial counterterrorism role. The Islamic State and Al Qaeda are not yet defeated, despite Trump’s claims, and their ambitions remain centered in Syria.

The U.S. should reengage the diplomatic process with other external players, such as Russia and Turkey. The goals should be to isolate terrorist groups and prevent their resurgence, and to ensure that Iran and its Lebanese proxy, Hezbollah, don’t emerge as the big winners from the Syrian war.

Russia has operated in partnership with Iran in Syria, but since the main part of the civil war died down, after the fall of Aleppo to pro-regime forces in early 2017, Moscow and Tehran have found themselves pursuing different, and at times contradictory, goals. Moscow seeks calm in the areas of Syria it cares about, to secure its military bases and maintain growing ties to Gulf countries and Israel, while Iran pursues a path of broader confrontation, viewing Syria and Lebanon as assets in its agenda to expand its regional influence by leveraging confrontation.

One of Washington’s key early goals should be to convince Russia that its gains in Syria are threatened by the broader Iranian agenda for the region. In the long term, Tehran wants complete political control of Damascus, not shared influence with Moscow. 

Assad himself is not keen to be under the thumb of Iran and Hezbollah, and would prefer to be primarily a Russian client. Russian goals are limited and not in conflict with Assad’s agenda, while Iran demands far more of him and plainly views Syria as a potential battleground with Israel and other regional powers.

Washington and Moscow do not share many aims in Syria but there are some important areas of commonality, including combatting the Islamic State and Al Qaeda, and easing Iran out. Those goals are even shared with Assad, so progress on those fronts is possible even as the Damascus dictatorship remains sanctioned and stigmatized.

Finally, Washington should be very clear with Turkey that there are limits to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s hegemonic agenda in Syria. Biden would do well to recommit to Kurdish allies who fought so well against the Islamic State and have been targeted by the Turkish invasion in the north.

Biden must make it clear that while the U.S. recognizes Turkey’s need to protect its own territory, it is not free to occupy large chunks of Syria indefinitely or attack American allies with impunity. Curbing Turkish adventurism in Syria, the eastern Mediterranean, Libya and elsewhere requires a strong message to Ankara that it must decide if it wants to remain a partner to the U.S. and a NATO ally. Rearming and supporting the Syrian Democratic Forces is key to this, and to almost all U.S. goals in Syria.

This is not an agenda for Middle East adventurism. It’s simply a matter of identifying clear and narrow goals, and pursuing them with limited but sufficient means.