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      ‘Momentous error’: Italian businessman mistakenly blacklisted by Trump to sue

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      A small business owner in Italy is preparing to sue the US Treasury after accidentally being put on a sanctions blacklist before Donald Trump left the presidency.Alessandro Bazzoni, who owns a graphic design company in Sardinia, has been unable to trade since 19 January, when his business was slapped with sanctions as part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on blacklisted Venezuelan crude oil.In a case of mistaken identity, the US Treasury erroneously blacklisted Bazzoni’s graphic design company, SeriGraphicLab, along with a restaurant and pizzeria in Verona owned by another businessman called Alessandro Bazzoni. Both were removed from the blacklist on 31 March. But while the restaurant owner’s bank account has been reactivated, the blunder led to the Sardinian businessman’s account being closed.“It was a momentous error on their part, and one that is having serious implications as it is preventing me from working,” he said.Bazzoni, who works independently, was able to withdraw the money that was in his account but can no longer trade because, as per Italian law, he needs a bank account in order to receive payments from clients. The absence of a bank account also means he cannot access the financial support he is entitled to receive as part of the Italian government’s Covid-19 relief scheme.“I have to go to another bank to see if I can open an account there,” he said. “But for now, I cannot sufficiently operate my business, so much so I have started to look for other jobs.”Bazzoni claims the US Treasury did not notify him about being on the sanctions blacklist, nor did it apologise for the mistake.“The only notification I got was from my bank telling me my account was closing,” he said.He has made a legal complaint to the Italian police, with the aim of suing the Office of Foreign Assets Control, a unit of the US Treasury.In 2019, Trump’s government imposed sanctions on Venezuela’s state oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), in an attempt to force the resignation of the president, Nicolás Maduro, whom the US accused of corruption, human rights violations and rigging his 2018 re-election. On his last day in office, Trump sanctioned a network of oil firms and individuals tied to PDVSA.A US Treasury official told Reuters that the department realised the companies were owned by different individuals than the Bazzoni it blacklisted in January.The Guardian has contacted the US Treasury for a response to the Sardinian businessman’s case. “First and foremost, I want an apology,” said Bazzoni. More

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      'Blindsided': Biden faces tough test in reversing Trump's cruel border legacy

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      Lauded for his human touch, Joe Biden is facing an early political and moral test over how his government treats thousands of migrant children who make the dangerous journey to America alone.

      Officials say the number of people caught attempting to cross the US-Mexico border is on pace to hit its highest number for 20 years. Single adults and families are being expelled under coronavirus safety rules inherited from Donald Trump.
      But a growing number of children, some as young as six years old, from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras are arriving at the southern border without parents or guardians. These minors are brought to border patrol facilities – where many languish in cramped, prison-like conditions for days on end.
      The fast-developing humanitarian emergency shows how Biden’s determination to break from Trump’s harsh, nativist crackdown in favour of a more compassionate approach has collided with the reality of finite resources and a broken system.
      “I do think that they were blindsided by this surge,” said María Teresa Kumar, founding president of the grassroots political organisation Voto Latino. “As someone that monitored this a lot, I didn’t see that coming and I don’t think the community saw that coming. It took everybody by surprise.
      “It is heart-wrenching knowing that there are children that are cold and don’t have family. It’s one of these cases where there seems to be no right answers. Knowing the people inside the administration are very much on the side of immigrants speaks to me that there are real moral dilemmas happening right now and I would not want to be in that position.”

      Democrats have called the situation a “challenge” and “problem” and blamed Trump’s legacy. Republicans have rushed to brand it the first “crisis” and “disaster” of Biden’s presidency. The battle is proof that border access remains one of the most complex, emotive and radioactive issues in American politics.
      Trump launched his campaign for the presidency by promising to build a wall, routinely vilified migrants and, ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, spoke often of an “invasion”. Biden stopped construction of the wall and promised to unwind Trump’s zero-tolerance policies.
      The number of “encounters” between migrants and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has increased every month since April 2020. But when 100,441 migrants were reported attempting to cross the border last month, it was the highest level since March 2019 and included a particular rise in unaccompanied children.
      Many such children head to the US to reunite with family members or escape poverty, crime and violence. Central America has been hit by hurricanes and the economic fallout of Covid-19. In an ABC interview this week, Biden denied that more migrants were coming because he is “a nice guy”, insisting: “They come because their circumstance is so bad.”
      Under Trump, unaccompanied children were sent straight back to Mexico. Biden decided they should go to a border patrol facility and, within 72 hours, be transferred to the health department with a view to being placed with a family member or sponsor.
      However, it has quickly become clear the system is not fit for purpose, leaving about 4,500 children stuck in facilities designed for adult men. Lawyers who visited one facility in Texas described seeing children sleeping on the floor or on metal benches and being allowed outside for a few minutes every few days.
      The administration is scrambling to find more capacity, opening emergency shelters and using a convention centre in Dallas to house up to 3,000 teenage boys. It also deployed the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), which typically responds to floods, storms and other disasters, to help shelter and transport children at least until early June.
      Republicans seized on that move as evidence a disaster is unfolding. The House minority leader, Kevin McCarthy, led a delegation of a dozen Republicans to El Paso, Texas, and spoke of “the Biden border crisis”, adding: “It’s more than a crisis. This is human heartbreak.”
      The message has resounded through a conservative media that finds Biden an elusive target. Trump made wildly exaggerated claims in a Fox News interview: “They’re destroying our country. People are coming in by the hundreds of thousands, And, frankly, our country can’t handle it. It is a crisis like we have rarely had and, certainly, we have never had on the border.”
      For Republicans, reeling from election defeat, internal divisions and failure to block Biden’s $1.9tn coronavirus relief bill, the border offers a political lifeline.
      Henry Olsen, a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center thinktank in Washington, said: “If the numbers go down next month this isn’t a crisis, but I think what they are expecting is that they’re not going to go down and that this is going to be something that will be an enduring and endemic problem.
      “It’s something that energises and unites the Trump voting coalition and could easily be seen as a failure on behalf of the administration by just enough of the people who voted for him but aren’t hardcore Democrats. So I think it’s a very smart move by Republicans to play this out and Biden needs to figure out how you can be compassionate while not being naively welcoming. He has not yet figured out how to do that.”

      Others, however, regard the Republican response as predictable ploy by a party obsessed with demonising migrants. Kumar said: “They’re phonies and it is coldly calculated because they know they have problems with suburban white women voters, and they are trying to make a case for it for the midterms.
      “It’s cynical and gross because when children were literally dying at the border, when they had a president that was teargassing refugees, not one of them stood up. It’s callous and cold political expediency and it’s shameful.”
      The White House has pointed out that the Trump administration forcibly separated nearly 3,000 children from parents, with no system in place to reunite them. Alejandro Mayorkas, the first migrant and first Latino in charge of the Department of Homeland Security, told Congress: “A crisis is when a nation is willing to rip a nine-year-old child out of the hands of his or her parent and separate that family to deter future migration. That, to me, is a humanitarian crisis.”
      Mayorkas argues that Trump’s decision to cut staffing, bed capacity and other resources was reckless given the likelihood that the number of migrants would rise again as the pandemic waned.
      “The system was gutted,” he said, “facilities were closed and they cruelly expelled young children into the hands of traffickers. We have had to rebuild the entire system, including the policies and procedures required to administer the asylum laws that Congress passed long ago.” More

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      Golden Trump statue turning heads at CPAC was made in … Mexico

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      A golden statue of Donald Trump that has caused a stir at the annual US gathering of conservatives was made in Mexico – a country the former president frequently demonized.The statue is larger than life, with a golden head and Trump’s trademark suit jacket with white shirt and red tie. Video and pictures of the tribute being wheeled through the halls of the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando, Florida, went viral on Friday.The conference is seen as a vital gathering of the Republican right, and this year has become a symbol of Trump’s continued grip on the party, despite being cast out of office after two impeachments, seemingly endless parades of scandals and a botched response to the coronavirus pandemic that has cost half a million lives in the US.Now the artist behind the huge statue of Trump – Tommy Zegan – has revealed that the object was made in Mexico; a country that has been the target of much Trump racist abuse over his political career, and somewhere he has literally sought to build a wall against.“It was made in Mexico,” Zegan told Politico’s Playbook newsletter. Zegan, who lives in Mexico on a permanent resident visa, described the transport of the monument to CPAC in full to Playbook.Politico reported: “Zegan spent over six months crafting the 200lb fiberglass statue with the help of three men in Rosarito. He transported it to Tampa, Florida, where it was painted in chrome, then hauled it from there to CPAC.” More

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      Man leaves church and reunites with family after years in sanctuary from deportation

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      After three and a half years living inside a Missouri church to avoid deportation, a Honduran man has finally stepped outside, following a promise from Joe Biden’s administration to let him be.Alex García, a married father of five, was slated for removal from the US in 2017, the first year of Donald Trump’s administration. Days before he would have been deported, Christ Church United Church of Christ in the St Louis suburb of Maplewood offered sanctuary.Sara John of the St Louis Inter-Faith Committee on Latin America said García’s decision to leave the church came after Immigration and Customs Enforcement declared that he was no longer a deportation priority and that the agency would not pursue his detention or removal.García, braced by a hand on his shoulder from a son and fighting back tears, told a cheering crowd of about 100 people that he was separated from living with his family for 1,252 days.“Hi everyone,” García said. “Thank you everyone for showing support for me and my family. Today is the day I’m going to get out of sanctuary after three years and a half.”“We are not done yet,” García said, reading from a written statement. “There is still so much work that has to be done,” he added, noting that he would be fighting for “permanent protection”.In his first weeks as president, Biden has signed several executive orders on immigration issues that undo his predecessor’s policies, though several Republican members of Congress are pushing legal challenges.Myrna Orozco, organizing coordinator at Church World Service said 33 immigrants remain inside churches across the US and that number should continue to drop.“We expect it to change in the next couple of weeks as we get more clarity from Ice or [immigrants] get a decision on their cases,” Orozco said.Others who have emerged from sanctuary since Biden took office include José Chicas, a 55-year-old El Salvador native, who left a church-owned house in Durham, North Carolina, on 22 January. Saheeda Nadeem, a 65-year-old from Pakistan, left a Kalamazoo, Michigan, church this month. Edith Espinal, a native of Mexico, left an Ohio church after more than three years.In Maplewood, emotion spilled out during a brief ceremony marking García’s departure. The church’s bell tolled. Mayor Barry Greenberg’s voice broke as he told García he couldn’t grant him US citizenship, but he could make him an honorary citizen of Maplewood. He presented a key to the city that García’s young daughter immediately took out of the box to play with.“Oh God, we want to burst into song!” Pastor Becky Turner said during a prayer, but noting that prayer “isn’t enough. We have to do the work that we pray for.”Garcia’s exit came just two days after Representative Cori Bush, a St Louis Democrat, announced she was sponsoring a private bill seeking permanent residency for Garcia. Bush said on Wednesday that she will still push the bill forward.“Ice has promised not to deport Alex, and we will stop at nothing to ensure that they keep their promise,” Bush said in a statement.García fled extreme poverty and violence in Honduras, and after entering the US in 2004, he hopped a train that he thought was headed for Houston – but instead ended up in Poplar Bluff, Missouri, a town of about 17,000 residents in the south-eastern corner of the state.He landed a job and met his wife, Carly, a US citizen, and for more than a decade they lived quietly with their family.In 2015, García accompanied his sister to an immigration office for a check-in in Kansas City, Missouri, where officials realized García was in the country illegally. He received two one-year reprieves during Barack Obama’s administration. More

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      'Deeply alarming corruption': US bill would sanction Honduran president

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      A group of influential Democratic senators are introducing legislation which would sanction the president of Honduras – an alleged drug trafficker and key US ally – and cut off financial aid and ammunition sales to the country’s security forces which are implicated in widespread human rights abuses and criminal activities.The Honduras Human Rights and Anti-Corruption Act, co-sponsored by Senators Jeff Merkley, Bernie Sanders, Patrick Leahy, Ed Markey, Elizabeth Warren, Dick Durbin, Sheldon Whitehouse and Chris Van Hollen, would suspend certain US assistance to the Central American country until corruption and human rights violations are no longer systemic, and the perpetrators of these crimes start facing justice.Joe Biden has vowed to tackle the root causes of migration from Central America’s northern triangle – Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador – the most violent region in the world outside an official war zone, which accounts for most migrants and refugees seeking safety and economic opportunities in the US.This bill makes clear that tackling migration from Honduras will be impossible if the US continues to prop up the president, Juan Orlando Hernández, and the security forces.It lays bare the violence and abuses perpetrated since the 2009 military-backed coup, as a result of widespread collusion between government officials, state and private security forces, organized crime and business leaders.It also catalogues the systematic use of force against civilians, a clampdown on the freedom of speech and protest, and targeted attacks such as arbitrary arrests, assassinations, forced disappearances and fabricated criminal charges against human rights and environmental defenders, political opponents and journalists.In the past year alone, at least 34,000 citizens have been detained for violating curfew and lockdown restrictions including nurse Kelya Martinez, who earlier this month was killed in police custody.“The United States cannot remain silent in the face of deeply alarming corruption and human rights abuses being committed at the highest levels of the Honduran government,” said Merkley, who serves on the Senate foreign relations committee. “A failure to hold President Hernández, national officials and the police and military accountable for these crimes will fuel widespread poverty and violence and force more families to flee their communities in search of safety.”This is the first time the Senate has proposed legislation which could genuinely threaten the post-coup regime, which has used drug money, stolen public funds and fraud to maintain its grip on power with few consequences from the international community.Hernández, who has been identified as a co-conspirator in three major drug trafficking and corruption cases brought by New York prosecutors, would be investigated under the Kingpin Act to determine whether he is a designated narcotics trafficker – a criminal status given to drug bosses like Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán.Hernández has repeatedly denied any links to drug trafficking including prior knowledge about his younger brother’s cocaine and arms deals for which he was convicted in New York last year.The bill also details Hernández’s role in the demise of the rule of law in the country: as a congressman, he supported the 2009 coup, and later created the militarized police force which is implicated in extrajudicial killings, oversaw a purge of the judiciary and pushed through unconstitutional reforms in order to stay in power and shield corrupt officials from prosecution.Hernández, who has so far enjoyed a close relationship with key military and political leaders, would have his US visa revoked and assets frozen as part of the proposed sanctions.The bill would also ban the export of munitions including teargas, pepper spray, rubber bullets, water cannons, handcuffs, stun guns, Tasers and semi-automatic firearms until the security forces manage 12 months without committing human rights violations. Financial assistance including equipment and training would also be suspended, though waivers in the national interest would remain possible. The US would also vote against multilateral development bank loans to the security forces.“This legislation is designed to send a clear message to Biden that it will be impossible to tackle the root causes of migration without getting rid of Hernández and withdrawing support from the security forces which have a long track record of corruption, organised crime and repression,” said Dana Frank, professor of history at the University of California and author of The Long Honduran Night: Resistance, Terror, and the United States in the Aftermath of the CoupIn order for the restrictions to be lifted, Honduran authorities would need to demonstrate that it had pursued all legal avenues to prosecute those who ordered, carried out and covered up high-profile crimes including the assassination of indigenous environmentalist Berta Cáceres, the killing of more than 100 campesinos in the Bajo Aguán, the extrajudicial killings of anti-election fraud protesters, and the forced disappearance of Afro-indigenous Garifuna land defenders. More

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      New stars on the American flag? Fresh hope as Puerto Rico and DC push for statehood

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      One of the most powerful prosecutions of former US president Donald Trump last week came from Stacey Plaskett of the US Virgin Islands, the first delegate from an American territory to hold the position of impeachment manager.Yet Plaskett’s status meant that she was unable to vote for Trump’s impeachment because she has no vote on the floor of the House of Representatives. The US Virgin Islands has no representation at all in the Senate. Its residents cannot even vote for president.The anomaly illuminates America’s long unaddressed colonial history that leaves five territories floating in constitutional limbo, their residents – most of them people of color – effectively treated as second-class citizens.But with the impetus of last summer’s protests against racial injustice, and the election of a Democratic president, one of those territories – Puerto Rico – is aiming to become the 51st state of the union. A parallel effort by Washington, District of Columbia (DC), is also closer than ever to its similar goal.‘It is incredibly important to take a step back and look at who actually has real representation in democracy,” said Stasha Rhodes, campaign manager of 51 for 51, an organization pushing for DC statehood. “If you think about all the players that you mentioned, they all have a common thread: they’re all people of color. Does America have a true democracy if so many people of color are standing outside looking in and are not able to fully participate?”There are five inhabited US territories: American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands. Apart from American Samoa, people born in the territories are US citizens and pay federal taxes such as Medicare and social security, though not federal tax on locally sourced income. Each territory sends a delegate to the House who can debate legislation and sit on committees but is not able to actually vote.Puerto Rico was a Spanish colony until 1898 when it fell under US control as part of the terms that ended the Spanish-American war. In 1917 the Jones Act granted Puerto Ricans US citizenship and in 1952 it became a commonwealth of the US – but still without voting rights in American presidential elections.Over the past half century Puerto Rico has held six non-binding referendums on its status and last November voted 52%-47% in favor of statehood, a cause boosted by grievance over the federal government’s inadequate response to Hurricane Maria in 2017. In an interview last week with Axios on HBO, Governor Pedro Pierluisi said “Congress is morally obligated to respond” and predicted that a House bill will be introduced next month.George Laws Garcia, executive director of the Puerto Rico Statehood Council, said: “You have a bunch of unelected individuals making decisions on behalf of the people of Puerto Rico over the desires and ideas and perspectives of the local elected officials, which I think is basically blatant colonialism.“We had Hurricane Maria and the earthquakes and now Covid and, in all these instances when Puerto Rico needs federal resources, federal support, federal action, we don’t have the capacity to hold elected officials in Washington accountable for what they do because they don’t ever get any votes from Puerto Rico, and that includes the president as well as members of Congress.”It is Congress that would have to approve the creation of any new state for the first time since Hawaii in 1959.Republicans have cast the move as an unconstitutional power grab likely to give Democrats two extra seats in the Senate. Martha McSally, then a senator for Arizona, told NBC News last year that should Puerto Rico gain statehood, Republicans will “never get the Senate back again”.Although Democrats control the House, a statehood bill would face a far tougher passage in the evenly divided Senate, where 60 votes are required to thwart the “kill switch” of a Republican filibuster. Despite progressives pointing to the racist history of the filibuster, key Democrats Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema have already indicating unwillingness to eliminate it.Garcia added: “The prospects of statehood are incredibly challenging, but they’ve been challenging for every other territory that has ever been admitted as a state. In my lifetime, it’s certainly the best possible odds that we could have.”Almost all of Puerto Rico’s residents are Hispanic while nearly half of DC’s are African American. But as the nation’s capital, DC comes from a different historical, economic and constitutional perspective.Its 700,000-plus residents – higher than the populations of Vermont and Wyoming – pay more per capita in federal income taxes than any state. They gained the right to vote in presidential elections in 1961 but still lack a voting member in the House or a voice in the Senate.The movement for DC statehood is bigger and better organized than ever before. Last June the House passed a bill that approved it, the first time a chamber of Congress had advanced a DC statehood measure. It never stood a chance in the Republican-controlled Senate but Black Lives Matter protests in Washington gave the cause added potency.Rhodes of 51 for 51 said: “Our most celebrated civil rights leaders were fighting for access to democracy. If you think about John Lewis and Martin Luther King, they were all fighting for access to voting and access to representation and so here in 2021 we’re still fighting in Washington DC for equal representation and a clear chance at participation in democracy.”One key obstacle was removed when Trump, who had vowed “DC will never be a state” because it would be sure to elect Democratic senators, was beaten in the presidential election by Joe Biden, who has voiced support for the campaign.Then came the insurrection at the US Capitol on 6 January. Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, told reporters earlier this month: “If the District of Columbia could operate as a state, (what) any governor can do is to call out the National Guard without getting the permission of the federal government. It shouldn’t have to happen that way.”Eleanor Holmes Norton, DC’s nonvoting member in the House, reintroduced the statehood bill last month, while Democratic Senator Tom Carper of Delaware reintroduced his companion statehood bill which currently has 39 Democratic cosponsors.Meagan Hatcher-Mays, director of democracy policy for the grassroots movement Indivisible, said: “It’s an issue of basic fairness. DC is not all government bureaucrats and lawyers. There are actual real people who live here, many of whom were tasked with cleaning up the mess of the January 6th insurrection. Those are DC residents and they have no vote in Congress at all and so it would seem to me that it would be a pretty easy lift for every Democrat in the Senate to say that’s wrong.”Hatcher-Mays, a former aide to Holmes Norton, added: “We need to eliminate the filibuster to make DC the 51st state. This is the closest we have ever been to getting DC statehood and, if it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen this Congress, and it really has to happen or otherwise the Senate is in trouble. It’s really unrepresentative of the country as a whole and making DC a state would go a long way towards fixing that problem.”This is about making America a more perfect unionThe issue has cast light on the democratic deficit of the Senate, where small predominantly white states get two seats each, carrying as much weight as vast, racially diverse states such as California. In 2018 David Leonhardt, an opinion columnist at the New York Times, calculated that the Senate gives the average Black American only 75% as much representation as the average white American, and the average Hispanic American only 55% as much.Furthermore, in the 232-year history of the Senate there have only been 11 Black senators and Plaskett was the only elected Black woman at the impeachment trial. In such a context, Republicans’ opposition to statehood has been described as a bid to protect white minority rule.LaTosha Brown, cofounder of Black Voters Matter, said: “At the end of the day, you have states from Utah to Montana to others that have gained statehood early on with less question, with less critique than DC and Puerto Rico. It is a fundamental democratic flaw and it reeks of hypocrisy. The only reason why it is a debate or even a question is because of who makes up the majority of both of those places.”A previous bid for DC statehood was defeated in the Democratic-controlled House by an almost 2-1 margin in 1993 with President Bill Clinton reluctant to engage. This time, with Biden making racial justice a priority, the mood is different. There is a sense that Democrats’ control of the White House, Senate and House provides a historic opportunity.Donna Brazile, a former interim chair of the Democratic National Committee, said: “This is about making America a more perfect union. It’s the oldest constitutional democracy in the world and yet some of its citizens do not have all the full voting rights because of where they reside. If we’re going to end racial injustice in America and talk about a new beginning for the country, we can’t sidestep old issues.” More

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      The Good American review: Bob Gersony and a better foreign policy

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      What adjective should describe “the American” active in foreign policy? Graham Greene chose “quiet”, as his character harmed a country he did not understand. Eugene Burdick and William Lederer used “ugly”.
      Robert D Kaplan, one of America’s most thoughtful chroniclers of foreign affairs, proposes “good” to describe Bob Gersony, who in “a frugal monastic existence that has been both obscure and extraordinary” has devoted his life to using the power and treasure of the US to serve others through humanitarian action.
      A son of Holocaust refugees, he never held a formal government position. He was instead a contractor for the state department, USAid or the United Nations. Yet his work improved the lives of millions, saving many, and corrected policies that might otherwise have been implemented by “ugly” or “quiet” figures who did not understand the countries in which they operated.
      Gersony’s method was simple: to conduct interviews through a trusted translator with individuals fleeing conflict, to stay “in continuous, tactile contact with the evidence”. It was exhausting work in extraordinarily difficult circumstances but his information, transmitted to senior policymakers in highly detailed “Gersony reports”, was both essential and frequently (as in Mozambique and Bosnia) the opposite of what the policy community believed or wished to believe.
      The truth about a place “emerges from the bottom up”, he said, and thus “you must always believe refugees”.
      Accountability, absolute integrity, objectivity and boldness in speaking to authority were his watchwords. His independence meant personal insecurity. He often shared a simple shack with a translator and slept with his notes under his pillow. Personal danger and hardship were part of the job, yet in no other way could the truth emerge and successful policy be formulated.
      “When you listen to ordinary people,” Gersony believed, “there is so much wisdom.”
      Kaplan calls Gersony “a business-oriented math brain with a non-ideological conservative streak … think of him as an emotionally tortured character straight out of a Saul Bellow novel, engrossed throughout his life in the brooding and dangerous tropical settings defined by Joseph Conrad.”
      This is also the story of another era of US foreign policy, one in which realism and humanitarianism combined to include human rights in the national interest, against the backdrop of the cold war, so often hot in the developing world. Human rights and grand strategy complemented each other. Gersony had bosses who were “authentic, heartland Americans … the ultimate selfless public servants … deeply moral without being ideological, while operating at the top of the power structure”.
      Gersony started in Guatemala, where he began a language school and after the 1976 earthquake worked with relief organizations. He took charge of hurricane relief in Dominica, standing up to the prime minister, asserting, “If you empower people, they won’t be corrupt.” Moving on to El Salvador in the civil war, he recommended massive employment programs for displaced persons, building sewage canals and cobblestone streets – practical improvements that also discouraged guerrillas from attacking the people.
      His solutions were often elegantly simple because they provided the dignity of work and reflected what people actually wanted. And yet, as Kaplan writes, “He still had no credentials … in the ordinary careerist sense, he had risen as far as he ever would.” For Kaplan, as for Gersony, “a meaningful life is about truth, not success.”
      The assignments kept coming: Vietnamese boat people in Thailand; Sudan and Chad; Honduras, where his counterintuitive but accurate recommendation showed once again that “ground-level fieldwork … triumphs over the discussion of big abstract ideas”. In Uganda’s Lowero Triangle, he uncovered genocide with the unexpected help of a British officer advising President Obote. The secretary of state, George Shultz, cut off aid.
      As Kaplan writes, “History pivoted in southern Africa thanks to Bob Gersony.” After an unusual meeting with Shultz and Maureen Reagan, daughter of the president, the US did not aid Renamo guerrillas in Mozambique. Gersony tackled a highly complex situation in Somalia and in the aftermath of the Rwandan genocide worked with UNHCR on the repatriation of Hutus. As one official said, his unwelcome truth-telling “stopped the killing machine”. He worked in northern Uganda with World Vision long before Joseph Kony became a hashtag. Knowing the dangers of travel in that region, “he treated the motor pool chief like a high official”.
      Gersony worked tirelessly. “If we skipped lunch,” he said, “we could interview one more refugee, and each refugee was precious – you never knew which one would yield a breakthrough in understanding.”
      By Kaplan’s own admission, his book is also something of his own story, a lament for a time when internationalist moderates dominated both parties and the foreign service enjoyed “the last golden age of American diplomacy … when the bureaucracy at all levels had sufficient money and rewarded talent” in furthering “that sturdy, moderate national security consensus that no longer exists”.
      Embed
      Kaplan does not quite regret the end of the cold war but he does note the resulting separation between idealism and power.
      Indeed, Gersony’s career ended in a very different world. Kaplan sees Plan Colombia, an early 2000s push against leftwing guerrillas and drug cartels, as “a precursor for the fiascos in Afghanistan and Iraq”, where gigantic projects and a “dysfunctional interagency process” often failed for lack of perspective. Gersony’s later tasks included tracking food assistance for North Korea, examining the Maoist insurgency in Nepal (and wishing USAid had continued road-building there), and disaster planning in Micronesia, where “in this emerging naval century … Oceania was indeed at the heart of geopolitics” and control of shipping lanes.
      Can realism and idealism combine again? Only through what the French academic Gérard Prunier wrote about Gersony’s “great respect for the factual truth. The world is not just an interpretation or a place for competing narratives.” In the end, Kaplan’s life of Gersony recalls the advice of another quintessential American, Mark Twain: “Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest.”
      The Good American is published in the US by Random House More