First

Trump sparks a debate over the future of American power .. By Ishaan Tharoor

— 17 décembre 2018 add comment

President Trump will retreat to his Florida resort at the end of this week. Nearing the halfway point of his term in office, his political isolation in Washington is deepening. A slew of candidates balked at taking the job of White House chief of staff — a post of tremendous influence that has in the age of Trump become a poisoned chalice from which few want to drink. A funding spat with the Democrats prompted Trump to vow a government shutdown, much to the chagrin of members of his own party. And the legal inquiries into the president’s campaign and businesses are mounting.

It’s not just Trump’s domestic agenda that’s facing scrutiny. Last week, Trump received a stinging bipartisan rebuke from Congress over his administration’s embrace of the Saudi-led war in Yemen and the particularly reckless royal holding power in Riyadh. The high-profile climate meetings that took place in Poland only underscored the extent to which this White House has alienated itself from the international mainstream on environmental policy — and highlighted, yet again, how the rest of the world is plowing ahead in spite of Trump, not with him.

Of course, Trump came to power vowing to be a disrupter on the global stage. He said he was intent on reforming a post-World War II international order that had outlived its usefulness for Americans. But the White House’s efforts overseas — including its rejection of the Paris climate accord, the waging of trade wars, the unraveling of the Iran nuclear deal, the persistent belittling of allies and the perplexing coddling of autocrats — have unsettled Washington as much as they have disturbed American partners abroad.

To be sure, discussions about the waning of the United States as the world’s sole superpower predate Trump. But two years of his tumultuous presidency have intensified Washingtonian angst about the future of American power and how America should seek to lead a more fractured planet — or whether it should try at all.

“It’s historical fact that great nations and empires all have a beginning and an end,” said James Jones, a retired U.S. general, former national security adviser to President Barack Obama and outgoing chairman of the Atlantic Council, speaking Friday in Washington at a forum hosted by his think tank. “There’s a naive belief in our country that there’s some sort of destiny, that the primacy of the United States is ensured for some reason forever. I don’t think that’s the case.”

 

To that end, the Atlantic Council, an organization deeply invested in the furtherance of American leadership, is planning on floating a new set of principles to safeguard the “rules-based order” — the euphemism often used to explain the status quo authored by the United States more than half a century ago. It wants to “revitalize” and “defend” this order, not just from the rising authoritarian might of China, but in the face of Trump’s own nationalist and protectionist agenda and those of his ilk.

At the forum, speakers warned of the White House’s disregard for “values-based” foreign policy — seen both in Trump’s cynical accommodation of figures such as the Saudi crown prince as well as his demagoguery over migrants and refugees coming to the United States. Washington, they feared, was seeing its credibility evaporate among allies. This sentiment was echoed by Jake Sullivan, a former Obama administration official and Hillary Clinton adviser, in a recent essay outlining what a liberal, post-Trump foreign policy ought to look like.

“An energized, inspiring, and ultimately successful foreign policy must cut through Trump’s false, dog-whistling choice between globalism and nationalism,” wrote Sullivan. “It must combine the best kind of patriotism (a shared civic spirit and a clear sense of the national interest) and the best kind of internationalism (a recognition that when your neighbor’s house is on fire, you need to grab a bucket). And it should reject the worst kind of nationalism (damn-the-consequences aggression and identity-based hate-mongering) and the worst kind of internationalism (the self-congratulatory insulation of the Davos elite).”

But that’s a tricky needle to thread. On the right, Trump and his lieutenants have spent their time in power casting the liberal pieties of the Obama era as supposed obstacles to the American national interest and see themselves at the forefront of a nationalist wave taking control across the world.

Among the Democrats, there’s a burgeoning debate about what kind of counter to “internationalism” ought to be embraced: It’s easy to scorn the “Davos elite,” but it’s another thing to pursue policies that target the power and privileges of influential multinational corporations or question the shibboleths of free trade and laissez-faire capitalism. It’s sensible to urge American restraint in the Middle East and other geopolitical flash points, but it’s harder to convince official Washington to eschew new military entanglements.

And though Trump and his political rivals may not agree on much, both may succumb to the old temptations of the Cold War.

At the Atlantic Council’s forum, the specter of China loomed over proceedings. Adm. Michael Rogers, a former head of the National Security Agency, feared China could outpace the United States in its abilities to wage cyberwarfare. Sen. Tom Cotton (R.-Ark.), a figure largely loyal to Trump, described China as “a unique adversary in the world.” Though Cotton’s hawkish views on Iran have earned him many detractors, there aren’t that many lawmakers on the other side of the aisle who would disagree with his antipathy toward Beijing.

That the United States is almost inexorably lurching into a great-power confrontation with China ought to be a concern, suggested Emma Ashford and Trevor Thrall of the libertarian Cato Institute. “The growing consensus on China is troubling. Having identified China as America’s biggest strategic challenge, neither party has identified a clear goal,” Ashford and Thrall wrote. “Nor have they articulated how a new approach to China would provide a foundation for a broader vision of American foreign policy . . . The risk of creating a self-fulfilling prophecy on China — through confrontation without purpose — is real.”

Analysts liken the febrile moment to an earlier era of 19th century politics, when Europe’s industrializing, imperial powers entered into alliances that ultimately convulsed the world into conflict.

“What we are seeing today resembles the mid-nineteenth century in important ways: the post — World War II, post — Cold War order cannot be restored, but the world is not yet on the edge of a systemic crisis,” wrote Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations.

A century ago, that crisis arrived. This time, the current crop of American politicians — Trump included — can still stave off calamity.

“Now is the time to make sure one never materializes, be it from a breakdown in U.S.-Chinese relations, a clash with Russia, a conflagration in the Middle East, or the cumulative effects of climate change,” Haass continued. “The good news is that it is far from inevitable that the world will eventually arrive at a catastrophe; the bad news is that it is far from certain that it will not.”

 

Here’s how Haass sets up his history lesson on the Concert of Europe: 

“If the end of every order is inevitable, the timing and the manner of its ending are not. Nor is what comes in its wake. Orders tend to expire in a prolonged deterioration rather than a sudden collapse. And just as maintaining the order depends on effective statecraft and effective action, good policy and proactive diplomacy can help determine how that deterioration unfolds and what it brings. Yet for that to happen, something else must come first: recognition that the old order is never coming back and that efforts to resurrect it will be in vain. As with any ending, acceptance must come before one can move on.

« In the search for parallels to today’s world, scholars and practitioners have looked as far afield as ancient Greece, where the rise of a new power resulted in war between Athens and Sparta, and the period after World War I, when an isolationist United States and much of Europe sat on their hands as Germany and Japan ignored agreements and invaded their neighbors. But the more illuminating parallel to the present is the Concert of Europe in the nineteenth century, the most important and successful effort to build and sustain world order until our own time. From 1815 until the outbreak of World War I a century later, the order established at the Congress of Vienna defined many international relationships and set (even if it often failed to enforce) basic rules for international conduct. It provides a model of how to collectively manage security in a multipolar world.

« That order’s demise and what followed offer instructive lessons for today—and an urgent warning. Just because an order is in irreversible decline does not mean that chaos or calamity is inevitable. But if the deterioration is managed poorly, catastrophe could well follow.”

• A report prepared for the Senate that provides the most sweeping analysis yet of Russia’s disinformation campaign around the 2016 election found the operation used every major social media platform to deliver words, images and videos tailored to voters’ interests to help elect President Trump — and worked even harder to support him while in office, report my colleagues:

“The report, a draft of which was obtained by The Washington Post, is the first to study the millions of posts provided by major technology firms to the Senate Intelligence Committee, led by Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.), its chairman, and Sen. Mark Warner (Va.), its ranking Democrat. The bipartisan panel hasn’t said if it endorses the findings. It plans to release it publicly along with another study later this week.

« The research — by Oxford University’s Computational Propaganda Project and Graphika, a network analysis firm — offers new details on how Russians working at the Internet Research Agency, which U.S. officials have charged with criminal offenses for meddling in the 2016 campaign, sliced Americans into key interest groups for targeted messaging. These efforts shifted over time, peaking at key political moments, such as presidential debates or party conventions, the report found.”

• At a time when Congress is trying to challenge Trump’s pursuit of war in Yemen, my colleague Liz Sly points in a lengthy piece to a hidden war that the president has advanced in Syria:

“The commitment is small, a few thousand troops who were first sent to Syria three years ago to help the Syrian Kurds fight the Islamic State. President Trump indicated in March that the troops would be brought home once the battle is won, and the latest military push to eject the group from its final pocket of territory recently got underway.

« In September, however, the administration switched course, saying the troops will stay in Syria pending an overall settlement to the Syrian war and with a new mission: to act as a bulwark against Iran’s expanding influence.

« That decision puts U.S. troops in overall control, perhaps indefinitely, of an area comprising nearly a third of Syria, a vast expanse of mostly desert terrain roughly the size of Louisiana.

« The Pentagon does not say how many troops are there. Officially, they number 503, but earlier this year an official let slip that the true number may be closer to 4,000. Most are Special Operations forces, and their footprint is light. Their vehicles and convoys rumble by from time to time along the empty desert roads, but it is rare to see U.S. soldiers in towns and cities.

« The new mission raises new questions, about the role they will play and whether their presence will risk becoming a magnet for regional conflict and insurgency.”

• An investigation by the New York Times digs up damning evidence of how the powerful U.S. consulting firm McKinsey abets anti-democratic regimes and practices. It kicks off its story at a desert retreat for the company’s associates in China:

“For a quarter-century, the company has joined many American corporations in helping stoke China’s transition from an economic laggard to the world’s second-largest economy. But as China’s growth presents a muscular challenge to American dominance, Washington has become increasingly critical of some of Beijing’s signature policies, including the ones McKinsey has helped advance.

« One of McKinsey’s state-owned clients has even helped build China’s artificial islands in the South China Sea, a major point of military tension with the United States.

« It turns out that McKinsey’s role in China is just one example of its extensive — and sometimes contentious — work around the world, according to an investigation by The New York Times that included interviews with 40 current and former McKinsey employees, as well as dozens of their clients.

« At a time when democracies and their basic values are increasingly under attack, the iconic American company has helped raise the stature of authoritarian and corrupt governments across the globe, sometimes in ways that counter American interests.”

‘The watchdog of society’ 

In Cameroon English-speaking separatists are fighting the largely French-speaking government to establish a new nation. And journalists covering the violence are increasingly finding themselves behind bars on a surprising charge: fake news.

The latest case centers on the killing of an American missionary from Indiana, who was shot dead 12 days after his family moved to this central African country in October. In the immediate aftermath of his death, in one of the country’s unstable regions, Cameroonian journalist Mimi Mefo Takambou sought to find out who killed him. But after she cited social media reports that claimed the Cameroonian military had shot Charles Wesco, she was accused of publishing fake news online and later arrested.

Mefo, who works for Equinoxe TV, is one of more than a dozen journalists who have been jailed or questioned this year in Cameroon, a once-peaceful country that is spiraling into civil war in its English-speaking regions. As of early December, seven journalists were in custody. Two have since been released, but Cameroon remains the second-leading jailer of journalists in sub-Saharan Africa after Eritrea, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. 

Press advocates see a recent uptick in accusations of fake news as the government’s attempt to stifle reporting on the growing internal crisis. But the government claims the spread of deliberately inaccurate information has distorted and inflamed the conflict. Mefo’s case is particularly sensitive because Cameroonian authorities feared the killing of an American could disrupt ties with Washington, a key security partner.

Richard Tamfu, the lead lawyer on Mefo’s case, said even a short detainment can inflict damage. “It’s a really scary situation because most journalists will not want to speak out now.” he said.

For Mefo, who has reported extensively on the crisis in the Anglophone regions, Wesco’s killing is just one in a series of opaque incidents in which it is difficult for anyone, even journalists, to discern who was responsible. That doesn’t mean they should stop reporting, she said.

“The place of the journalist is not behind bars,” she said. “We are the watchdog of society.” — Siobhán O’Grady

 

The preview

It’s a big week in U.S. courts. On Tuesday, former national security adviser Michael Flynn will be sentenced for lying to the FBI in interviews concerning his contacts with Russia. Since pleading guilty, Flynn has been cooperating with the Mueller investigation, which has recommended no prison time for him. Flynn’s lawyers have also urged leniency, alleging that agents did not warn him before interviewing him that it was a crime to lie to the FBI.

And in New York, Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein heads to court Thursday to face five charges of sexual assault and rape.Weinstein has pleaded not guilty and his defense will likely argue the charges should be dropped.

Also Thursday, Russian President Vladimir Putin will give his annual news conference. It’s one of the few times a year the president makes himself available to the press, and past conferences have gone on for hours. In 2008, the conference lasted 280 minutes, according to the Russian news agency TASS. As my colleagues described last year’s news conference: “Equal parts news conference and political carnival, the annual event provides a sounding board for Putin.”

Sunday marks the start of long-awaited presidential elections in Congo. The vote was delayed two years by current President Joseph Kabila, who has been in power for 17 years. Concerns of whether the election will be fair and peaceful are mounting. As the BBC reports, on Thursday a fire struck one of the country’s main electoral commission centers, “destroying more than two-thirds of the electronic voting machines allocated for the capital Kinshasa.” Kabila, meanwhile, doesn’t seem keen to stay out of power for long. He told my colleague Max Bearak he would not rule out running again in 2023.

And in somber news, Friday marks the 30th anniversary of the day the Pan Am flight carrying 259 people exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland. Investigators said a bomb had been planted on the jet at the direction of then-Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. Only one man, a Libyan official named Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, was convicted of the attack, leaving many to question who else was responsible. — Ruby Mellen

Laisser un commentaire

Votre adresse de messagerie ne sera pas publiée. Les champs obligatoires sont indiqués avec *