AIPAC admits progressives are deserting Israel

Democratic Senator Charles Schumer at the AIPAC Policy Conference in Washington, DC, on 5 March.Michael BrochsteinSIPA USA

Michael F. Brown- 16 March 2018

AIPAC sought to rally progressives to its side at its annual policy conference in Washington last week.

Largely, it didn’t work.

The Israel lobby giant is simply on the wrong side of too many progressive concerns – and not just Palestinian rights, but free speech as well.

Legislation pushed last week by AIPAC has been criticized as a violation of the First Amendment.
The American Civil Liberties Union has acknowledged recent tweaks to the legislation that targets the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement for Palestinian rights.

But the ACLU’s director Faiz Shakir and staff attorney Brian Hauss wrote US lawmakers on 6 March to tell them that the civil rights organization “continues to strongly urge you to oppose the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, S. 720.”

They noted that “the amended bill still unconstitutionally targets political boycotts for criminal penalties,” and that if passed the ACLU would consider mounting a court challenge.

AIPAC officials were well aware of the problematic nature of the legislation in briefing their supporters the day before their 6 March lobby day.

Marvin Feuer, the group’s director of policy and government affairs, acknowledged to the audience they might get “pushback” that the legislation restricts free speech. He then claimed that nothing in the bill prevents constitutionally protected speech and that the rewritten language targets only commercial conduct.

But the ACLU explains in its letter to lawmakers how the changes in the bill do nothing to make it less of a threat to free speech. The civil liberties group points out that political boycotts were recognized as constitutionally protected free expression by the US Supreme Court in 1982, in a landmark case stemming from the civil rights movement.

Since the beginning of March, AIPAC’s supporters have convinced four senators, one of them a Democrat, to sign on to the bill.

These four join Maryland Senator Ben Cardin and 51 other co-sponsors of the legislation in disregarding concerns about fundamental constitutional rights.

Senator Kirsten Gillibrand removed her co-sponsorship last summer over precisely such worries.

Most striking about the whole legislative push is that more than a week later AIPAC could only muster four new co-sponsors in the Senate and nine in the House, though Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, a vice chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, was one of three Democrats to add her name.

The lack of overwhelming support flies in the face of a claim from Steven Rosen, at the time AIPAC’s director of foreign policy, telling journalist Jeffrey Goldberg years ago: “You see this napkin? In 24 hours, we could have the signatures of 70 senators on this napkin.”

The failure to add a significant number of new names suggests AIPAC may be having trouble rallying Democrats. So far just 14 of the 49 Democrats in the Senate have backed the bill.

Internal progressive struggle

Mort Fridman, AIPAC’s president, acknowledged the problems the organization is facing shoring up broad support for Israel in the US.

“The progressive narrative for Israel is just as compelling and critical as the conservative one,” he said in remarks aimed at more left-leaning listeners. “There are very real forces trying to pull you out of this hall and out of this movement and we cannot let that happen – we will not let that happen!”
Yet it is hard to see how AIPAC can claim to be a home for progressives when it is the venue that greetedpresidential candidate Donald Trump with raucous applause in 2016. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu garnered similar enthusiasm this year.

President Trump, more than any other American politician, is splitting apart the bipartisan support Israel has received for decades.

Grassroots Democrats, who despise the president’s open bigotry, may be realizing that the same hatred that drives him on domestic issues leads him to support Israel’s discriminatory and freedom-denying actions against Palestinians. Or at least, the general atmosphere of stark political polarization makes it easier to oppose Trump on a range of issues, including Israel.

Democratic presidential candidates trying to get to the left and in stride with the direction of their constituents are grappling with how they should position themselves on Israel.

Senator Bernie Sanders led the way during the 2016 presidential campaign when he chose to skip the AIPAC conference (though he did deliver a speech via video).

Breaking with the usual orthodoxy that disregards Israel’s occupation and violence against Palestinians, Sanders acknowledged, “it is important to understand that today there is a whole lot of suffering among Palestinians and that cannot be ignored. You can’t have good policy that results in peace if you ignore one side.”

Sanders has hardly been bold on Palestinian rights – and continues to oppose the BDS movement – but such basic common sense is very rare among Democratic politicians, including those tipped as 2020 presidential hopefuls.

California Senator Kamala Harris spoke at this year’s conference as she did last year.

In an off-the-record speech, Harris claimed that as a child, she never sold Girl Scout cookies, but instead went around raising money for the Jewish National Fund, a group backed by the Israeli government that is involved in the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians and the colonization of their land.
Harris made a very similar statement last year at AIPAC, repeating the standard claim by Israel advocates that the Zionist expulsion of Palestinians and settler-colonization of their land “made a desert bloom.”

This means that for years she was actively campaigning for a discriminatory organization.
Lands controlled by the JNF, including those taken from Palestinians, are open for purchase only by Jews and the organization has publicly admitted that it upholds a discriminatory policy.

Harris was a child at the time and didn’t know any better. Today, as an adult and US senator, she ought not to brag about fundraising in order to throw Palestinians off their land.

Likewise, the Democratic Party has some reckoning to do ahead of the 2020 campaign regarding its longtime participation in anti-Palestinian discrimination.

The party is not going to get any closer to addressing this rights-denying history by kowtowing to AIPAC and its ongoing advancement of Israeli policies that subjugate Palestinians.

Senator Schumer part of the problem

Charles Schumer, the Democratic leader in the US Senate, who calls himself a “guardian of Israel,” delivered a speech loaded with anti-Palestinian sentiment and religious intolerance.

Referring to “Eretz Israel” – a Hebrew term Zionists use to assert that Jews have a biblical right to take Palestinian land – he claimed: “We say it’s our land. The Torah says it. But they [Palestinians] don’t believe in the Torah. So, that’s the reason there is not peace. They invent other reasons, but they do not believe in a Jewish state.”

Schumer’s language makes clear he does not believe in equal rights for Palestinians. Schumer would quickly agree that a white Christian US would be unacceptable to tens of millions of American citizens, but fails to grasp why Palestinians reject the notion of a “Jewish state” that asserts supremacy over them.

Schumer piled on against dispossessed Palestinians by speaking of “an evil campaign to push Israel into the sea” with no acknowledgment of the one million Palestinians who were, in fact, pushed out in 1948 and 1967.

It is this sort of anti-Palestinian rhetoric that grassroots Democrats are increasingly rejecting.

AIPAC has acknowledged its challenge with political progressives, but has failed to come up with an adequate response. That is because it is incapable of a convincing response so long as it rejects equal rights for Palestinians.

At G-20, Trump tasks Mnuchin with selling the world on ‘America First’

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin at the Boeing headquarters in St. Louis on Wednesday. (Nick Schnelle/For The Washington Post)

By Damian Paletta March 16 at 7:33 AM Email the author

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin travels to Buenos Aires Monday to meet with global finance ministers itching for a fight over President Trump’s new tariffs on steel and aluminum.

But Trump might have found his ideal emissary in Mnuchin, who has shown a deft ability to draw his foreign counterparts close while simultaneously advancing Trump’s “America First” agenda.

Mnuchin’s ability to toggle between diplomat and loyal soldier will be put to the test like never before in Argentina, as Trump is preparing to unleash tariffs that could impact more than a dozen U.S. allies, many of which are confused about details and threatening to retaliate.

The meeting comes as the White House is in a major shift on trade policy, with Trump preparing to impose tariffs and other measures he promised as a presidential candidate. At the meeting in Argentina, Mnuchin will be forced to explain these measures, and in some cases deliver them.

At the same time, allies aren’t waiting long to threaten retaliation. On Friday, the European Union made public a 10-page-list of American products that are potential targets for tariffs if Trump does not give the E.U. a reprieve from its new steel and aluminum tariffs.

The treasury secretary is one of few survivors of the White House clash between “globalists” and “nationalists,” leaving him both close to Trump and one of the few officials business and foreign leaders can appeal to as they plead for restraint.

“I’ve known the president for a long time,” Mnuchin said in an interview ahead of his trip to the international gathering of countries referred to as the G-20. “I’m one of the few people on the Cabinet who has worked with him from the campaign. I understand these issues. I’ve been talking to him. I’ve been talking to my counterparts.”

It hasn’t been easy. Mnuchin has worked hard to develop close ties with Canadian Finance Minister Bill Morneau at a time when Trump keeps antagonizing Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau over how to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Morneau came to Washington last year for Mnuchin’s wedding. Trump told a private audience on Wednesday that he had made up facts during a debate with Trudeau about trade imbalances, and then on Thursday publicly accused the Canadian leader of lying.

It’s these sorts of broadsides that have led analysts to think the recent White House turmoil and turnover will only make it harder for Mnuchin and Trump’s remaining advisers to steer him in any direction or even negotiate on his behalf, particularly on issues such as imports and exports. Mnuchin will be meeting next week with the top finance ministers from countries including China, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom.

Several have threatened to retaliate with their own tariffs against U.S. goods if Trump follows through.

“There is going to be a fair degree of skepticism about anything Mnuchin says that suggests the U.S. may pull back on its threats of tariffs and other trade sanctions against its allies,” said Eswar Prasad, a trade expert and professor at Cornell University. “And frankly, I think recent developments have undercut the credibility of any American official who claims to speak for the administration on any policy because anything they say can be reversed in short order by a presidential tweet.”

 

Mnuchin has an expansive background in banking and investing, but in some ways he is an atypical treasury secretary. He has rushed to the president’s defense on issues far outside his purview, such as the firing of FBI Director James B. Comey, Trump’s response to a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, and Trump’s criticisms of professional football players who kneel during the national anthem.

This has opened Mnuchin up to criticism that he panders to Trump, with former treasury secretary Lawrence Summers saying in a Twitter post last year that “Steven Mnuchin may be the greatest sycophant in Cabinet history.” He was heckled during a recent speech at the University of California at Los Angeles, and has also had to deal with criticism for his past use of government planes.

Mnuchin has mostly brushed this aside, though, declining to be rattled by the criticism, and also declining to respond to the sharp barbs from Summers.

“I’ve been very comfortable giving my views,” Mnuchin said, referring to his relationship with Trump. “Sometimes they’ve been similar to [the president’s]. Sometimes they haven’t. But also, at the end of the day, I’ve very comfortable with the fact that he’s the president and it’s his decision.”
It’s this sort of careful balancing act that has helped Mnuchin expand his influence both inside and outside the White House in the past year.

Mnuchin’s trip could come the same week Trump imposes tariffs on steel and aluminum imports, while simultaneously slapping $30 billion or more in tariffs on a range of Chinese products. The White House is negotiating with several countries on ways to avoid these tariffs, but Mnuchin said Trump feels strongly that steps such as this are necessary to help U.S. manufacturers.

“If you are not prepared to do things, you are not going to have results,” Mnuchin said. “While on the one hand I can say our objective is to not have a trade war, that’s consistent with the president saying we can win a trade war.”

Trump is still threatening to withdraw from NAFTA and rip apart a trade agreement with South Korea, things that he largely put on hold last year when National Economic Council Director Gary Cohn and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson repeatedly urged caution.

But Cohn and Tillerson are leaving, leading business executives and foreign leaders to rely on Mnuchin to convey their angst to the White House.

So far, it’s the Europeans who appear the most confused by Trump’s new trade decisions, in part because he seems the most unwilling to offer them exemptions to the new tariffs.

“I’m sure behind the scenes messages will be delivered, because too much is at stake and trade wars are lose-lose situations,” said Marietje Schaake, a member of the European Parliament. Trump has leveled some of his most antagonistic trade threats at Europe, saying he will slap a large tariff on the import of German automobiles unless they make it easier for U.S. companies to sell products in Europe.

Mnuchin’s first trip to a G-20 meeting came last year in Germany, where he was practically gang-tackled by foreign finance ministers who were still coming to terms with Trump’s presidency.
At the end of each meeting, the finance ministers publish a document, referred to as a communique, that represents their shared beliefs. Mnuchin stunned them all by refusing to agree to include past language that warned against the perils of protectionism.

Then-German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble expressed frustration at the time, saying the United States was at an internal “impasse” and wouldn’t agree to anything.

“Obviously [Mnuchin] had had no mandate to talk about any definitions or interpretations of what the U.S. administration means by ‘fair trade,’ and that is something we have to accept for the time being,” Schäuble said last year.

But foreign leaders have seen Mnuchin grow into his role in the past year, and they are less likely to try to force him to accept their views than last year because he showed them he could dig in if necessary.

“What I realize a year later into this is — not that the communique isn’t important — but what’s more important is people understanding our policies and having good two-way communication about our policies,” Mnuchin said.

He played a key role in helping the White House’s push to overhaul the tax law last year, and now he has a daily meeting on how to implement the sweeping changes. While Trump has called for repealing the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law, Mnuchin has pursued a more cautious approach and sought specific changes, a strategy that appears to be working its way through Congress.

He also played a lead role in helping Trump select Jerome H. Powell as the next chairman of the Federal Reserve, people involved in the process said, suggesting Trump trusted his guidance over others. Powell was seen as more palatable to business executives and Wall Street and he received widespread support from Democrats and Republicans.

U.S. lawmakers are also watching Mnuchin more closely, given the departures all around him.
“He’s got a lot on his shoulders now,” said Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.). “Looking for a free- trader in the White House is kind of tough right now. He certainly is not an evangelist like Cohn was on this. He seems more reticent to speak up on something that differs from where the president has been. Gary Cohn did that.”

Amind an ongoing struggle between White House “globalists” and “nationalists,” Mnuchin has avoided being labeled as either. He has at times backed different camps during different fights. He quietly helped lead the White House’s push to quash a proposed border-adjustment tax last year that could have driven up costs on imports, aligning with Cohn and resisting pressure from people such as former chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon.

But he has also spoken in favor of the numerous tariffs Trump plans to pursue, an issue that helped drive Cohn out of the White House.

“I think if you look back at the last year, we’ve been very transparent,” Mnuchin said. “I don’t think there should be surprises. We have broadcasted very clearly going back to the campaign what the president’s economic agenda is.”

Erica Werner contributed to this report.

How did the Florida bridge collapse? Questions swirl over firms who built walkway

Police department says criminal charges were possible after inquiries into the collapsed bridge that killed at least six are completed


 CCTV footage shows moment Florida bridge collapses – video

Richard Luscombe in Miami@richlusc-Fri 16 Mar 2018 17.28 GMT

Homicide detectives opened an investigation on Friday into the collapse of a new footbridge that killed at least six people at Miami’s Florida International University (FIU), as questions began to swirl about the companies behind the structure’s controversial design and construction.

Juan Perez, the director of Miami-Dade police department, said criminal charges were possible once exhaustive inquiries by his detectives and state and federal authorities were complete.

Meanwhile, teams of rescue workers and engineers with heavy lifting equipment began the slow and dangerous task of lifting the unstable remains of the 950-ton concrete structure from vehicles that were crushed when the bridge came down early on Thursday afternoon.

One of the victims was student Alexa Duran, 18, who was driving her car under the bridge when it fell. “My little girl was trapped in the car and couldn’t get out,” her father, Orlando Duran, told local press. He was on a trip to London when he got the news and said he was dreading the return.
“This is going to be the longest and saddest trip of my life,” he said.

Doctors at the Kendall regional medical centre continued to treat 10 trauma patients, two of them in critical condition.

Perez said federal investigators would look into every element of the tragedy. They will examine the innovative “accelerated assembly” technique used by Miami-based Munilla Construction Management (MCM) to piece together the $14.2m single-span bridge on a remote sitebefore it was lifted into place last Saturday.

On Thursday, emergency services had been racing to find survivors in the rubble using hi-tech listening devices, sniffer dogs and search cameras. By Friday, the operation turned fromrescue to recovery.

Workers will painstakingly break down the giant chunks of fallen concrete so they can be removed safely.

“Our priority is to get to the victims and recover the people that are below that bridge so their families can have appropriate burials and ceremonies,” Perez said.

The bridge, which was not scheduled to open officially until next year, was meant to improve student safety as they crossed one of the busiest highways in the county from their campus to the town of Sweetwater, about 45 minutes west of Miami, where many of them live.

“We’ve got to look at the reality there may be some negligence down the line,” Perez told Miami radio station WIOD. “[The inquiries] will help determine whether someone is liable for this. It’s obviously an accident either way. We have to look to see if somebody contributed to that accident.”

At a morning press briefing, Perez said a team of prosecutors led by the Miami-Dade state attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle had visited the site of the collapse on Friday morning to assist the inquiry.

State officials revealed on Thursday night that the university’s bridge-build team, which included MCM and the Tallahassee-based Figg Bridge Group, had hired a third-party company to conduct an independent, secondary design review of the project, and that that contractor was not pre-qualified by the Florida transport department to do the work.

Carlos Giménez, the Miami-Dade mayor, said he believed MCM workers were conducting a stress test on the bridge when it collapsed, while Florida’s junior US senator, Marco Rubio, tweeted that support cables were being tightened.

Asked at the press conference why traffic passing under the bridge had not been halted, Perez said: “These are the answers we are looking for as well.”

So far, neither MCM nor Figg has responded to questions about the tragedy other than through social media posts expressing sympathy for the victims and promising full cooperation with continuing investigations.

Both companies have safety records that are giving rise to questions. A TSA worker at Fort Lauderdale airport filed a lawsuit against Munilla alleging “shoddy work” that caused injuries in another footbridge project.

The Miami Herald, meanwhile, said that sites constructed by MCM had been investigated by federal authorities eight times since 2013, resulting in four separate fines for violations.

MCM is owned by five brothers from the Munilla family, several of them former students at FIU. The company has built terminals at south Florida’s airports and cruise ports, and a school for the US government at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba.

Figg, the company behind major bridge construction projects including the Sunshine Skyway over Tampa Bay, was fined by the Virginia labor department after the collapse of a section of the South Norfolk Jordan Bridge on to railway tracks in 2012, according to the Virginian-Pilot.

Mark Rosenberg, the president of FIU, said the university was heartbroken about the death of the as yet unnamed student.

“This bridge was about goodness, now it’s about sadness,” he said. “Everybody’s in shock and we just want answers.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report

Inside the Trump Circus of Corruption

Photo Credit: Michael Vadon / Flickr Creative Commons

By Heather Digby Parton / Salon-March 16, 2018, 10:40 AM GMT

Police department says criminal charges were possible after inquiries into the collapsed bridge that killed at least six are completed

After Economic Adviser Gary Cohn's resignation in the wake of President Trump's impulsive tariff announcement and the abrupt dismissal of Secretary of State Rex Tillerson this week, it's assumed that Trump's apparent decision to throw caution to the wind and follow his gut will lead to more firings, perhaps immediately. It's not as if he's being coy about it. Trump keeps saying that he's "almost" got the administration he wants, every time the press queries him about the massive turnover.

This has all of Washington on a sort of death watch, wondering whether the rumors that National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster is out are true. Then there's the greatest thorn in Trump's side, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, as well as Veterans Affairs Secretary David Shulkin, who is in a pitched battle with his own staff.

Axios' Jonathan Swan quoted a White House staffer summing up the atmosphere these days:

This is the most toxic working environment on the planet. Usually tough times bring people together. But right now this atmosphere is ripping people apart. There's no leadership, no trust, no direction and [at] this point there's very little hope. Would you want to go to work every day not knowing whether your future career was going to be destroyed without explanation?

That is in apparent reference to the fact that people are being summarily dismissed and marched out of the White House without even being able to gather their personal items, almost on a daily basis. This is said to often be because of failure to gain security clearance, and then "serious financial crimes," in the case of Trump's personal assistant John McEntee -- who was fired earlier this week. (He was immediately hired by the 2020 Trump campaign as a "senior adviser," so his career seems to be on track.)

One thing Trump's game of musical chairs is accomplishing is that it's become almost quaint to worry about the massive amount of corruption within the administration. It is now so commonplace that when it becomes public there is a moment of hand-wringing in the press and then ... nothing happens. For all the turnover in this administration, virtually none of it has been because of the self-dealing and profiteering that's reported virtually every day.

One cabinet member who was forced to resign over his nearly half-million dollars in travel expenses in the first few months of the administration was former HHS Secretary Tom Price. If anyone thought the president was making an example of him, it didn't take. Since then, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has also been taken to task for excessive travel costs and EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt racked up huge bills for personal travel, insisting he needed the extra security of first-class travel because someone once shouted something insulting at him in coach. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, a man worth $300 million, requested government planes that cost $25,000 an hour to fly him and his wife to their European honeymoon.

Meanwhile, the office redecorating costs are skyrocketing under the Trump administration. It was reported this week that HUD Secretary Ben Carson fibbed when he said he didn't know anything about the $31,000 dining room table that he and his wife ordered for his office (even as he is overseeing massive cuts to programs for poor people). Zinke spent $139,000 to replace three doors, and Pruitt has built a $43,000 "cone of silence" for his office so that nobody overhears his top-secret environmental policy phone calls.

Carson and Zinke are still Trump favorites, and there's talk of promoting Pruitt to the Department of Justice if Trump finally gets around to firing Jeff Sessions. (What could be better for the country than a deeply paranoid attorney general?)

The wealthiest man in the administration is Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, and, according to this article by David Dayen at the Intercept, his conflicts of interest are massive -- even aside from his holdings in Russian, interests that look suspicious under current circumstances. After the release of the Paradise Papers, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., complained that Ross had seriously misled the Congress in his confirmation hearings and compared his financial statements to "Russian nesting dolls." He's never been more influential in the cabinet.

Then there are the Trumps and the Kushners. The emoluments issue seems to have disappeared, despite the fact that foreign governments are routinely spending massive sums at Trump hotels to curry favor with the president, and God only knows what they're doing at his foreign properties.
Donald Trump continues to do almost weekly promotional appearances at this resorts and golf properties, charging people big bucks for access to him and pocketing the money. CNN reported on Wednesday that the Defense Department spent nearly $140,000 at Trump properties in the first few months of the administration on meals and lodging. Another $17,000 was spent at the troubled Panama hotel (now no longer under Trump management), for reasons that are obscure.

The Trumps have even tried to use the presidential seal to sell their cheap branded merchandise:

ProPublica

✔@ProPublica

The presidential seal being sold on mugs at Trump Tower.

[breaths]

It’s illegal to use the seal for commercial purposes. https://twitter.com/BySteveReilly/status/971164396444684288 …

8:14 PM - Mar 6, 2018

• 53K
• 29.5K people are talking about this

You can say one thing for Trump. He never leaves even one dime on the table.

I wrote about Donald Trump Jr.'s Indian adventure awhile back, selling foreign policy and condos in one whirlwind trip. Now it looks like Ivanka Trump herself is finally coming under scrutiny. She did not divest her holdings in the Trump Organization and is receiving more than a million dollars a year from projects with state-owned companies around the world, even as she works in the White House without proper clearance and travels the globe as a representative of the U.S. government. It's astonishing that she is getting away with this.

But that's nothing compared to her husband Jared Kushner, who secured loans for himself and his family in excess of half a billion dollars after meetings in the White House about possible infrastructure projects. Then there are the suspicions that Kushner pressured the government of Qatar to bail out his family debt and changed American foreign policy to punish the Qataris when they didn't come across.

This is just the corruption we know about. Some of it is penny-ante and some of it is massive in scale. There's skimming from the taxpayers and leveraging government policy for personal gain. As in a banana republic or a mob-run kleptocracy, it's pervasive in every part of the administration, woven into the fabric of everyday business. But because this presidency is such an epic disaster in every way, all of this looks like a third-order scandal.

The Middle East Needs a Steady Boyfriend

Arab countries suddenly find Vladimir Putin attractive because they feel neglected by Washington.

Vladimir Putin in front of a map of Arab countries on April 27, 2005 in Cairo. 27 April 2005 in Cairo. (YURI KADOBNOV/AFP/Getty Images)

BY STEVEN A. COOK-

MARCH 16, 2018, 12:43 PM
When Russia intervened in Syria in September 2015, it came as a surprise to almost everyone.

Moscow had been down and out for so long that the idea that it could project power beyond its own “near abroad” had not occurred to anyone almost 25 years. Russia President Vladimir Putin’s decision to save Syrian President Bashar al-Assad from himself changed all that.

Since then, two radically different conceptions of Russian power have emerged. Within the Beltway, many analysts have come to understand the Russian demonstration of power and influence in the Middle East as an indicator that the global rivalry between Washington and Moscow of the past is also the present and future. Yet there also remains a small group of dissenters — Russia specialists, former U.S. officials, and journalists — to this view. They believe the Russians are actually quite weak, financially strapped, and caught in Syria. The best they can say is that Putin is playing a bad hand well.

Appealing as this counterintuitive claim may be, it is inaccurate. The Russians have a strategy and staying power. The question is: What does the United States do about it?

On Dec. 26, 1991, the hammer and sickle of the Soviet Union was lowered from the flagpole atop the Kremlin for the last time. This was a terrible day for Putin — not because he is an unreconstructed communist, but rather because he is a proud nationalist. Now it’s payback time for almost three decades of Moscow’s humiliation. And what better place to start than the Middle East, where the United States is already widely resented even among its allies.

Since Moscow’s demonstration of strength (with Iran’s help) in Syria, the Russians have asserted themselves as a credible alternative to the Americans with traditional U.S. allies. With arms sales, economic deals, and diplomatic maneuvering, Russia has been effective in pulling Turkey and Egypt away from the United States, though not completely, and closer to Russia’s orbit. Saudi Arabia’s King Salman traveled to Moscow last October — the first ever visit by a Saudi king — to talk oil prices and hedge against American retrenchment. And now that the United States is the world’s leading producer of petroleum, there is likely to be more cooperation between the Russians and the Arab Gulf states in an effort to ensure that global oil prices are favorable to their interests. Even the Israelis have repeatedly beaten a path to Moscow over the last few years in hopes of persuading Putin to look after their interests in Syria.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Steven A. Cook is the Eni Enrico Mattei senior fellow for Middle East and Africa studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. His new book, False Dawn: Protest, Democracy, and Violence in the New Middle East, was published in June.

This is a solid record of achievement. In the span of less than a decade, the Middle East has gone from a region in which the United States was overwhelmingly predominant to one that Washington and Moscow contest. In Syria, the Russians have demonstrated political will and staying power. This is more important than, for example, the size of Russia’s economy, which has been used as an indicator of Moscow’s weakness. To believe that Russian power is ephemeral risks instilling ideas and assumptions about the world that breed complacency. Washington needs the exact opposite.
So, what should the United States do about Russia in the Middle East? Before doing anything, policymakers must recognize reality: The Russians are not going away, they have a strategy to weaken the West, and it starts in the Middle East. Moreover, Moscow no longer has the ideological baggage of communism, making it easier for it to make inroads in the region.

The next step is for the same officials to ask themselves two questions: First, what is important to the United States in the Middle East? The answer is fairly straightforward — containing Iran, countering terrorists, helping to ensure Israel’s security, and making sure no country dominates the region. Second, what is it that makes leaders in the region seek closer ties with Moscow? The answer here is less tangible and somewhat controversial, but it boils down to leadership and commitment.

The Turks, Egyptians, Israelis, Saudis, and Emiratis are sophisticated observers of American politics. They recognize that the political dysfunction of Washington can affect bilateral relations. Over the last decade, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Israel have become divisive topics in the United States. There is also the spectacle of the American legislative and executive branches being unable to manage the most routine tasks of governance without getting bogged down in ideological warfare. This makes leaders in the Middle East who have long relied on American security nervous that the United States is in decline, and they have thus begun to pursue, however tentatively, another option — Russia. Consequently, one of the best things Americans can do to counter the Russians in the Middle East is to set aside the partisan warfare that is weakening and destabilizing the United States. Given the current circumstances, this is a difficult task, but unless Congress and the White House get serious about the Russian threat, they will hand parts of the Middle East over to Moscow in what would surely be one of the greatest unforced errors in American foreign policy.

At the same time, Washington needs to make a commitment to the security of its friends and allies, even if that requires a certain amount of stomach-churning moral compromise. If these countries share the broad interests of the United States, then it is important for Washington to support them in word and deed. And that does not just mean selling them “beautiful weapons” as U.S. President Donald Trump famously remarked during his visit to Saudi Arabia in the spring of 2017. It means making hard decisions like accepting and supporting the Turkish position not just on the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), but also their affiliate, the People’s Protection Units (YPG), which has served as Washington’s principal ally in the fight against the Islamic State in Syria. This would, in turn, require the deployment of more American troops to Syria to hold the line against the Islamic State and to deter Iran.

It also means restoring military assistance to Egypt despite the brutality of Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s rule, and giving the Israelis a green light to do what they believe is necessary to protect themselves from Iran and Hezbollah in Syria and Lebanon, obviating the need for Israeli leaders to constantly seek Moscow’s assistance and reassurances. And finally, it means using American military force to destroy the capacity of the Iranians and the Houthis in Yemen to threaten the security of Saudi Arabia, thereby allowing the Saudis to extract themselves from a debilitating conflict. Leaving the Saudis to bleed in Yemen is not just a strategic gain for Tehran, but also for Moscow, which would be only too happy to see Washington’s primary Arab ally stuck there and in need of a lifeline that U.S. policymakers are too ambivalent to provide.

The Russians are stronger than they have been in recent decades, but that does not mean they are strong. Moscow’s demonstration of military force in Syria is primarily against poorly trained militias, bands of extremists, and innocent children. The gunfight between Russian “mercenaries” and American soldiers in February that reportedly killed most of the Russian forces and no Americans indicates that whatever brute force Russia can bring to bear, they are simply no match for the United States. This is a fact that the U.S. ambassadors, envoys, and sons-in-law need to convey to decision-makers in Cairo, Ankara, and other capitals where Moscow is selling its military hardware.

To emphasize the point, the United States must call Russia’s bluff. There have been a few too many times when Washington has lamely protested the Russian military’s “unsafe maneuvers” in the air or on the high seas. Like the shootout in the Syrian desert, the United States has to make it clear that there are consequences for this military trolling. There are, of course, risks of escalation in this approach, but there are also significant disadvantages to demonstrating weakness in the face of Russian provocations. Finally, the United States would do itself some good if it engaged in its own information warfare campaign, emphasizing how many Syrians the Russians have killed, how many Muslims Vladimir Putin has slain in Chechnya, and how many extremists Moscow has created in the process.

If the United States is, as Secretary of Defense James Mattis averred in January, in a new era of great power competition, it is time the United States treated the situation as seriously as it is. Putin must be disabused of the notion that the Middle East is the most propitious place to begin weakening the West and the United States. Americans once before contained and rolled back Moscow’s influence in the region; there is no reason to believe that they cannot do it again — but only if they have the wisdom to recognize what is important in the world right now and the collective stomach to meet the challenge. It is no longer clear to those in the Middle East that they do.

Rise of Xi and the Asian dream

2018-03-16

China’s President Xi Jinping is now a virtual leader for life after the Communist Party on Sunday removed the presidential term limits from the constitution.  Xi is undoubtedly the most powerful world leader today. 

What does Sunday’s landmark event mean to the people of China and the rest of the world?  Though the move is certainly not in tune with democratic principles, to the ordinary Chinese people, who do not have much yearning for western-style democracy, Sunday’s historic change could mean development at double speed. 

First, it must be made clear that Xi becoming president for life is, by no means, China endorsing dictatorship. Xi cannot be compared with a dictator like Saddam Hussein, who was a law unto himself. In China, the Communist Party regulates politics and Xi will have to abide by party rules and the constitution. 

The ultimate aim of politicians is to grab power. But freedom from fear and hunger is the people’s ultimate expectation from politicians.  For the people, it does not matter whether a politician given to democratic ideals or an undemocratic ruler fulfils their expectations.  The bottom line is, as poet Alexander Pope said, ‘For forms of government, let fools contest, whatever is administered best is best.’ In rich countries such as Switzerland and Singapore, party politics does not play a significant role in people’s lives.  People in these countries do not worry about their next meal.  Neither do they live in fear, for they see the supremacy of the rule of law in practice.  In China, a country known for the rule of law, what people expect is freedom from poverty.  China, through its controlled economic liberalization policies, has enabled hundreds of millions of people to free themselves from the poverty trap over the past ten years.  Some 20 percent of China’s 1.4 billion people – that is a staggering 280 million people --are in the US$ 40,000+ a year (more than Rs. 6.2 million a year or Rs. 512,000 a month) income bracket.  The only other country which has so many people in the US$ 40,000+ income bracket is the United States. 

China, through its controlled economic liberalization policies, has enabled hundreds of millions of people to free themselves from the poverty trap over the past ten years

Experts believe if China’s economy grows at a healthy rate of 5-7 percent, 40 percent of China’s population will enter the US$ 40,000+ income bracket in the next 15 years.  The achievement could come much faster if the economy grows at more than 7 percent a year. This is what President Xi is targeting – to make China great again by freeing its people from the poverty trap.  There are some 2,200 dollar billionaires in the world – of them 568 are in China. The US comes a close second with 518 billionaires.  Xi wants to make more and more Chinese people rich and he has a great vision for it.  He believes his giga project -- the One-Belt-One-Road Initiative also known as the Belt-and-Road Initiative (BRI) – will catapult China into the sphere of prosperity.  

It is with this multitrillion-dollar BRI that China is trying to create a new world economic order.  Yes, it is inevitable that the new order will be China-centric, though, through regional cooperation, it could be made Asia-centric. 

In October last year, President Xi got his name engraved in the Constitution, thus becoming the third leader to do so after Mao Zedong, the founder of the Communist State in 1949, and Deng Xiaoping, who introduced the socialist market economy.  

In recent months, India together with the US, Japan and Australia – the so-called Quad -- has been mulling over the possibilities of launching a counter BRI

Addressing the October sessions of the People’s Congress, Xi spelt out his ‘Thoughts on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era’.  He outlined specific policies on the BRI, the modernisation of society and the armed forces; and target dates for establishing China’s position in the world.  He said the policies were aimed at making China a top innovative nation by 2035 and a nation with global influence by 2050. This Sunday, Xi took a giant stride towards making these goals a reality.

Now that Xi has become a life-long feature in world politics, the rest of the world needs to treat him and his pet BRI project with the seriousness they deserve.  

There is much at stake for smaller countries which try to balance their China relations with equally strong relations with the United States, Japan and India – countries which view China’s global ambitions with suspicion.  Sri Lanka’s foreign ministry should assess the emerging Xi-led world economic order and take measures to benefit from it.  A point to keep in mind: China will step up its assertive diplomacy. Xi’s BRI project is a boon for Asia. Asian powerhouses such as Japan and India should view China as an opportunity rather than a rival. Together they can chart the course for world peace through greater economic relations. 

India, especially, need not get dragged into moves to counter China’s growing global influence.  In recent months, India together with the US, Japan and Australia – the so-called Quad -- has been mulling over the possibilities of launching a counter BRI.  India is building Iran’s Chabahar port as a joint venture and a corridor linking the southern Iranian port with Afghanistan’s iron rich Hajigak area. In addition, India has also invested in a road network connecting India with Myanmar and Thailand in moves seen as countering China’s BRI.  Now the Quad plans to revive the former US President Barack Obama’s Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). The Donald Trump administration which withdrew from the TPP is now having second thoughts about it.  Obama vowed he would not allow China to dictate the terms of the world economy when he launched the TPP as part of his ‘Pivot to Asia’ strategy to contain China.  Officials from the Quad countries have clarified that this plan was not a “rival” but an “alternative” to the BRI. The project is being given an Indo-Pacific characteristic, highlighting India’s pivotal role.  

Although China has extended a cautious welcome to the alternative BRI, the countermove by the Quad has the undercurrents of a growing cold war and will add to world tension.  Already Russian President Vladimir Putin – who will also, like Xi, remain president for long years to come – has fired warning shots at the West, boasting about Russia’s one-upmanship in smart weapons.  Moreover, Britain’s dispute with Russia over the nerve gas attack on a former Russian double agent and his daughter is also threatening world peace.

China and India were the best of friends before the two countries went to war in 1962 over a border dispute.  It was India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru who brought Communist China to the world stage.  Nehru, who invited China’s Premier Zhou Enlai to the 1955 Afro-Asian conference in Bandung, was a true Asian.  Together they worked out the Panchaseela principles for co-existence.  Even before India got independence, Nehru dreamt of Asian unity and in March 1947, he convened the Asian Relations Conference in New Delhi. But sadly, the right wing Narendra Modi Government has abandoned this Asian dream and is seen to be delighted over the fact that the US is relying on it in its power rivalry with China.

But this policy in the long term will not serve India. This is because China under President Xi is likely to prevail. India needs to revive Nehru’s Asian dream.  If India needs to check China’s dominance, then it, together with Japan and Australia, should join China’s BRI project as equal partners.  Asia’s economic powerhouses together need to shape the world economic and political order.  That’s the way forward for Asia.

TDP quits PM Modi's coalition in blow ahead of election

N. Chandrababu Naidu, chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, speaks during the India Economic Summit 2014 at the World Economic Forum in New Delhi November 6, 2014. REUTERS/Anindito Mukherjee/Files

MARCH 16, 2018

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - The Telugu Desam Party (TDP) quit Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s coalition on Friday blaming it for a lack of financial support, officials said, in a blow to the coalition ahead of national elections next year.

The TDP controls 16 lawmakers in India’s 545-member parliament, but Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition remains in majority.

The party, that runs Andhra Pradesh, had been demanding greater financial assistance ever since the division of the state in 2014 which it says led to loss of revenue.

“We tried our best to be together but the present government ignored the sentiments and emotions of the people of Andhra Pradesh,” Y.S. Chowdary, a TDP member of parliament, said.

Last week, the party pulled its two federal ministers from the government after talks with Modi’s emissaries failed and on Friday it announced it was pulling all its MPs out of the federal coalition.

The loss of the regional ally is the second since January when the right wing Hindu group, the Shiv Sena, announced it would not run in next year’s national election in alliance with the BJP.

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Modi has run the ruling coalition with a tight hand, analysts say. The BJP blamed the TDP for the row and said it would build up its own strength in Andhra Pradesh.

“People of Andhra Pradesh have now realised that the TDP is resorting to lies to cover up its inept governance,” said BJP spokesman G.V.L.N. Rao.

The BJP’s troubles with its regional partners come at a time opposition parties are trying to band together ahead of next year’s election.

Dalai Lama wants China and Tibet to learn from the European Union

Dalai Lama speaks at an event in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, on Sept 10, 2017. Source: Reuters/Clodagh Kilcoyne

 16th March 2018

CHINA and Tibet can exist together in the “spirit” of the European Union, the Dalai Lama said in a video message to a save-Tibet organisation based in Washington DC.

The spiritual leader is considered a dangerous separatist by Beijing. Nine years after Chinese troops seized control of Tibet in 1950, he was forced to flee to India after an abortive uprising against Chinese rule. There, he set up a government in exile in the foothills of Dharamsala.

He says he only seeks autonomy for his homeland, not outright independence. He has also expressed a desire to return to Tibet.

SEE ALSO: Tibet ‘not seeking independence’, says Dalai Lama as China lashes out at India

“I always, you see, admire the spirit of (the) European Union,” the Dalai Lama said in the video to the International Campaign for Tibet on Thursday.

“Common interest (is) more important rather than one’s own national interest. With that kind of concept, I am very much willing to remain within the People’s Republic of China. The Chinese word, “gongheguo” (republic), shows some kind of union is there.”

Intl Campaign Tibet

@SaveTibetOrg

We are deeply honored to receive this special video message from His Holiness the #DalaiLama, expressing his support and his hopes for our work for #Tibet in the coming years:

3:03 pm · 15 Mar 2018

We are deeply honored to receive this special video message from His Holiness the #DalaiLama, expressing his support and his hopes for our work for #Tibet in the coming years: pic.twitter.com/hAWYkJuZr5

— Intl Campaign Tibet (@SaveTibetOrg) March 15, 2018

3:03 pm · 15 Mar 2018

China says Tibet in an integral part of its territory and has been for centuries. Beijing also says its rule ended serfdom and brought prosperity to what was a backward region, and that it fully respects the rights of the Tibetan people.

Beijing has long seen the Dalai Lama as the leader of “Tibetan independence,” but the spiritual leader is preaching a more muted message of “meaningful autonomy.”

SEE ALSO: Rohingya crisis: Dalai Lama says Buddha would have helped Muslims

“I always describe that the supporter of the Tibetan cause is not pro-Tibet, but rather pro-justice,” he said in the video to the decades-old movement.

While the Dalai Lama reiterated his desire for reconciliation as Xi Jinping begins his second five-year term as China’s president, he also said the Tibetan issue was not about to go away.

“Among the Chinese hard-liners, in their mind, it seems some kind of dilemma is there about their present policy – whether, you see, it can solve Tibetan problem or not,” he said.

Additional reporting by Reuters