World Politics News   Articles for World Politics Course

I try very hard to avoid posting opinion pieces, but there are, at times, issues that simply transcend simple analysis.  The US decision to restrict immigration into the country is one that defies clinical detachment.  Dylan Matthews has written an essay with a clear point of view and one that does not try to be even-handed, but makes an argument that I fully support: that the US policy is a horrific example of cruelty.   The policy cannot be reasonably justified in terms of security:

“The reasons for Trump’s ban on refugees could not be more feeble, and could not be more petty. It serves no actual security purpose. You have a better chance of getting killed by a train, or by your own clothes catching on fire, than by an immigrant terrorist attack. The odds of a refugee killing you in a terrorist strike are about 1 in 3.6 billion. That’s about four hundred times less likely than being hit by lightning twice. If you look back at significant terrorist attacks in the US like San Bernardino or the Pulse nightclub shooting or 9/11, exactly none of them would have been prevented by this policy.”

But the number of lives that have been disrupted and perhaps irrevocably compromised numbers in the hundreds of thousands.  And the reputation of the US will forever be damaged.

A group of Economists have created a new website entitled Econofact.  It was created in response to a widespread belief that many citizens are not getting accurate information about important policy issues.  Its format is straightforward: it identifies policy issues and then lists what the authors believe are corroborated sources of information relevant to the policy debate.  It is an interesting experiment.  I do not believe that any “fact” is free of subjectivity, but the decision to identify only those sources of information that are based on techniques that have passed a rigorous vetting process is a good step forward.  We’ll see how well the experiment works.

Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day.  Seventy-two years ago Soviet soldiers liberated the infamous concentration camp known today as Auschwitz-Birkenau.  There is a Twitter account that commemorates the day by listing the manifest of the St. Louis, a vessel filled with Jewish refugees that was turned away by the United States in 1939.  Virtually all those refugees ultimately died in concentration camps.  The day should remind us all that we have to take every measure possible to assure that the hatred that led to the holocaust never returns and that we all have an obligation to refugees who have no place to go.

Bloomberg has updated its list of countries in which President Trump has investments.  It is a very long list and raises serious questions about whether US policy toward those countries will be based on the American national interest or Trump’s personal interests.  This question is not one that citizens should be forced to ask.  The world is complicated enough without having to factor in a private interest.  As an example of why this is not just a theoretical matter, the countries that Muslim countries which will NOT be subjected to Trump’s immigration ban (Egypt, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Azerbaijan) are countries in which Trump has investments.  Don’t forget that the majority of the attackers in the 11 September tragedy were from Saudi Arabia.

Stephen Walt is one of the most intelligent and insightful analysts of world politics in the world today.  He views the world from a realist’s perspective and honors that tradition with clarity and hard evidence.  His initial take on President Trump’s foreign policy deserves to be taken quite seriously–he offers not just criticism but also points out the ways Trump’s inclinations could be channeled in a more productive and effective way.  Unfortunately, I doubt that he has the President’s ear.

Walter Scheidel is a Professor of History and Classics at Stanford University and he has just published a book, The Great Leveler: Violence and the History of Inequality from the Stone Age to the Twenty-First Century.  His hypothesis is that the only remedy to economic inequality is some sort of collapse: “the big equalizing moments in history may not have always had the same cause, but they shared one common root: massive and violent disruptions of the established order.”  I am looking forward to reading the book.

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto cancelled his meeting with US President Trump, signalling greater hostility between the two states over matters of trade, immigration, and the building of a wall along the border.  White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer indicated to reporters today that President Trump will impose a 20% tax on imports from Mexico in order to pay for the border wall.  President Trump promised that Mexico would pay for the wall, but an import tax would be paid by American consumers who purchase Mexican products.  Americans would pay for the wall, not Mexicans.  This sleight of hand is despicable.

The US State Department has just undergone a dramatic change.  The Undersecretary for Management, Patrick Kennedy, Assistant Secretary of State for Administration Joyce Anne Barr, Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Michele Bond, and Ambassador Gentry O. Smith, director of the Office of Foreign Missions all unexpectedly resigned.  They join Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security Gregory Starr and the director of the Bureau of Overseas Building Operations, Lydia Muniz, who both resigned on 20 January.  In essence, the entire senior management of the State Department has left: “’It’s the single biggest simultaneous departure of institutional memory that anyone can remember, and that’s incredibly difficult to replicate,’ said David Wade, who served as State Department chief of staff under Secretary of State John Kerry”.  The management of the State Department is extraordinarily complicated given the size and scope of the State Department’s physical footprint in the world and it is quite different from the more traditional roles we typically associate with the State Department.

It remains to be seen how the Trump administration will address the issue of climate change, but the initial indications, such as the appointment of Scott Pruitt to head the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), suggest that the US will not take the threat as seriously as it demands.  One of the important points of debate concern the costs of reducing the emission of greenhouse gases which some argue would be greater than the economic losses of climate change.  For most scientists, the costs of climate change will be significant although those costs will not be equally shared across the planet.  But we should also be aware that we are already paying a heavy economic cost for climate change.

A draft of President Trump’s Executive Order, “Protecting the Nation from Terrorist Attacks by Foreign Nationals”,  has been circulating and a great deal of attention has been focused on the apparent decision to block Muslims from specific countries from entering the US.  But Section 6 of the draft should also attract critical attention.  That section directs the Secretaries of State and Defense to come up with plans to provide “safe zones” in Syria.  The section is designed to provide cover against charges that refusing to admit Syrian refugees is essentially a death sentence for an incredibly vulnerable population (a problem that will become significantly more acute is Syrian President Assad remains in power and conducts a vendetta against those he presumes fought against his rule).  But, from a strategic point of view, establishing safe zones in Syria would involve a massive military intervention by the US in the six-year old civil war.  Such a move at this point would be a disaster.

The Economist Intelligence Unit publishes a yearly “democracy” index.  It is a ten-point scale which ranks countries on the basis of “electoral process and pluralism, the functioning of government, political participation, political culture, and civil liberties”.  These are admittedly subjective criteria, but the Economist does a very good job of trying to develop appropriate and accurate measures of these criteria.  On the basis of these criteria, the Economist has downgraded the US status as a democracy from the first to the second rank.  The downgrade is due to a decline in the government’s effectiveness and to political participation in the political process.   The downgrade certainly seems warranted.

In an interview with ABC News, President Trump asserted that torture works and that he would reinstate the practice.  Torture is currently illegal for any agent of the US, no matter where the torture occurs.  The vast bulk of evidence, including the opinions of President Trump’s Secretary of Defense and CIA Director, indicates that torture does not work and that it is profoundly counterproductive.  Let us hope that the current legal prohibitions against torture remain intact and that the US never again engages in this abomination.

President Trump has withdrawn the US from the Trans-Pacific Trade Partnership (TPP) the multilateral trade agreement drawn up by the US and other Pacific rim countries (except China).  The TPP was focused on much more than trade–it also included agreements on intellectual property rights, environmental protections, and global standards for workers’ rights.  The withdrawal marks a very sharp departure from US foreign policy since 1945 and a massive void in the global economic regime.  It may be the case that President Trump will try to negotiate substitute bilateral agreements, but China has already launched its own competing trade agreement, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).  RCEP is far less ambitious than the TPP but it excludes the US.

The States Negotiating within the RCEP

White House spokesperson, Sean Spicer, reiterated the position taken by Rex Tillerson, the Trump Administration’s nominee for Secretary of State, on the US position vis-a-vis Chinese claims in the South China Sea. In a press briefing he said that: “It’s a question of if those islands are in fact in international waters and not part of China proper, then yeah, we’re going to make sure that we defend international territories from being taken over by one country”.  China has advised the US not to intervene in the issue and warned it to behave with “caution.”  Both the US and China are forging a path into some very dangerous waters.

Israel has announced its intention to build 2,500 more settlement houses in the occupied West Bank.  This is the second such announcement Israel has made since the inauguration of President Trump.  In a marked departure from previous administrations, the US government chose not to comment on the announcement.  In the past, the US has always regarded such building as an obstacle to peace.  Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is scheduled to meet with President Trump soon.

Jessica T. Mathews has written a very well-documented essay on the world-views of President Trump’s foreign policy advisers for the New York Review of Books.  She points out how their worldviews differs substantially from the bipartisan consensus on foreign policy that has guided the US since 1945.  The departure from the rules-based international order to a more deal-oriented transactionalist perspective runs the risk of greater unpredictability and volatility in the international system.

The World Economic Forum was held last week in Davos, Switzerland.  It is an annual meeting of some of the richest people on the planet–of the 3,000 people who attended last week, there were 2,000 private jets that brought them there.  There was lip service to the idea of redistributing wealth to solve the problems of wealth inequality, but there did not seem to be much serious concern to the matter. 

Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, was the first Orthodox Jew to ever deliver a prayer at a US Presidential Inauguration and the first Rabbi in 30 years to deliver that blessing.   He was opposed by many Jews who did not think that President Trump spoke out strongly enough against anti-Semitism during the campaign.  But he also received hundreds of hateful messages after the inauguration.  President Trump should make a clear and powerful condemning such messages.

Israel has announced that it will build 600 new housing units in occupied East Jerusalem.  The plans had been on hold until after the inauguration of US President Trump.  The Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem, Meir Turgeman, explained that ““The rules of the game have changed with Donald Trump’s arrival as president….We no longer have our hands tied as in the time of Barack Obama. Now we can finally build.”  The move was announced after a telephone conversation between President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu.

Boundaries in the City of Jerusalem

Much of Great Britain’s nuclear deterrent is on a fleet of Trident submarines.  These submarines have been around for a very long time and are periodically updated.  It has been revealed that in a test last June, a nuclear missile aimed at a target off the coast of Africa veered off course and ended up off the coast of the US.  The failed test was not made public, even though there was a vigorous debate in Parliament about the future of the Trident program.  The matter will likely become a serious test of British Prime Minister Theresa May.

President Trump will meet with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto at the end of this month.  The announcement was made as President Trump also announced that he wanted to renegotiate the NAFTA treaty with Canada and Mexico.  The Mexican President is under great domestic pressure due to corruption scandals and high rates of inflation.  There is little question that the US ties to Mexico and Canada are its most important relationships, and they must be treated with the utmost respect and courtesy.

The New York Times ran a great article with reactions to President Trump’s inaugural address from leaders all over the world.  The reactions run the gamut from effusive support to dark predictions about the future.  It does seem to be the case, however, that the more authoritarian leaders, like President Duterte of the Philippines, show greater enthusiasm for President Trump. The reactions of European leaders express great concern for the future of US-European relations.

Handelsblatt is a German economic newspaper dedicated to European business.  Its editorial on President Trump’s inaugural speech is the harshest critique I have yet read.  It termed the address as “a veritable declaration of war”.  The editorial was written by the publisher of the newspaper and it ends with these words:

“America is now on the brink of a new period of polarization. The demons in this fraternal battle have been unchained. The greatness that Trump seeks will not be borne under these conditions. An icy wind is blowing across the land.”

President Trump should make the repair of US-European relations a top priority.  But Reuters also reports that the reaction in Asia was also quite negative.

Russia, Turkey, and Iran are convening a peace conference on Syria in Kazakhstan this week.  The US was invited to attend, but declined.  It may be the case that the Trump Administration will accept the invitation, but the presence of Iran makes that unlikely.  One should not expect much from the conference–it merely signals a belief on the part of the three conveners that Syrian President Assad is now firmly in power and a desire to begin reducing the costs of the conflict.  Whatever the discussions may entail, it is probably not the case that the suffering of the Syrian people–500,000 have died in the six year conflict–will be a top agenda item.

President Trump’s Inaugural Speech today contained a clear signal about how he thinks about American foreign policy.  He said:

“We assembled here today are issuing a new decree to be heard in every city, in every foreign capital and in every hall of power. From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land.

“From this day forward, it’s going to be only America first, America first. Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs will be made to benefit American workers and American families. We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our product, stealing our companies and destroying our jobs.

“Protection will lead to great prosperity and strength.”

The words hearken back to the Administration of Warren G. Harding whose campaign slogan, “A Return to Normalcy”.  The Harding years brought an abrupt end to American involvement in world affairs after World War I.  The word, “protection”, also has an unfortunate resonance with the benighted economic policies that led to and aggravated the Great Depression.   The rest of the world will likely parse out these words to an incredible degree to discover their true meaning.  I will also confess that I personally never thought I would hear the phrase “American carnage” in an Inaugural Speech.

The choice of “America First” as a slogan is singularly unfortunate.  It was the name of an organization in the United States that was adamantly opposed to US participation in World War II.   But many of its members were also highlly sympathetic to the war aims of Adolf Hitler;  according to Susan Dunn, America First was “the name of the isolationist, defeatist, anti-Semitic national organization that urged the United States to appease Adolf Hitler.”  It is most likely that President rump is unaware of the historical context of the phrase.

America First Conference, Chicago, 1941

The German response to the election of Donald Trump has been among the most negative in all the European countries.  Chancellor Merkel is perhaps the last leader of prominence who continues to support the liberal world order.  The assessment of Mr. Trump and his Cabinet officers is breathtakingly gloomy.  According to Spiegel:

“Government officials in Berlin speak of an ‘astounding mixture of arrogance and naiveté’ when discussing the conversations they have had with counterparts in the incoming administration. Shortly before Christmas, Merkel’s foreign policy adviser Christoph Heusgen traveled to the U.S. for talks with Michael Flynn, tapped by Trump as national security adviser. Around one year ago, Flynn was a paid speaker at an anniversary party for RT, the Russian propaganda broadcaster.

“Heusgen’s first impression of Flynn was sobering. At a conference of conservative parliamentarians in Berlin on Wednesday, Heusgen said that some members of the incoming administration ‘don’t have an exhaustive understanding’ regarding ‘certain problems facing the EU and their backgrounds.’ In other words: The new president’s team doesn’t have a clue about Europe.”

We will see the consequences of a lack of knowledge and an indifferent attitude more quickly than we suspect.

President-elect Trump roiled the waters in Europe when he declared that NATO was “obsolete”.  Since 1949, NATO has been the defensive alliance that united the strategic interests of Europe with those of the US.  At that time, the pre-eminent threat was the Soviet Union and the coherence of NATO doctrine was pretty straightforward.  But since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, many–not just Mr. Trump–have wondered whether NATO still has a mission.  One should remember, however, that alliances are very difficult to build from scratch and it may be the case that a similar threat to the Soviet Union is not the only justification for a defensive alliance.

The Washington Post has an article on the 9 top foreign policy issues facing the Trump  Administration as it takes office:  Daesh (the Islamic State), Afghanistan, North Korea, Ukraine, China and Trade, European alliances, the Iranian nuclear deal, Israel and Palestine, and the US-Mexican relationship.  Interestingly, it does not include the South China Sea, nor does it mention the rise of authoritarian regimes in the world.  Most glaringly, it does not include climate change.  Apparently, protecting international law, defending democracy and saving the planet are not serious issues. But, as with all lists, there are kibitzers.

Stephen Rose has written an essay for the Washington Monthly looking carefully at the voting choices made by various income classes in the US in the recent presidential election.  His analysis suggests that the main source of support for Mr. Trump came not from the lower classes, but from the white middle class who felt disenfranchised from the economic process that favored the upper middle and elite classes.  Mr. Trump’s victory is actually due to people who were actually fairly well-off, but who felt that they were not as well-off as they should have been.  If the analysis is accurate, then satisfying that group might be significantly more difficult than the explanation proffered by those who believe that it was the lower middle classes who propelled Mr. Trump.