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      Is the Long War Finally Ending?

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      In October 1944, with the end of World War II in sight, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin passed a note back and forth to each other at a conference in Moscow. On the piece of paper, Churchill had assigned percentages to several Eastern European countries. Stalin amended the numbers and Churchill agreed. The deal remained secret for nearly a decade.

      The percentages on the piece of paper referred to the amount of influence that the Soviet Union and the West would wield in Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Greece, with the first three countries falling in the Soviet sphere, control divided evenly in Yugoslavia, and Greece staying in the Western camp. It was the first major articulation of the geopolitical “spheres of influence” that would characterize the Cold War era.

      What an Afghan Peace Deal Could Look Like

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      During the first post-war elections in Eastern Europe, communist and non-communist parties vied for power, eventually cobbling together different versions of coalition governments. Ultimately, however, the communist parties seized control, except in Greece, where the West intervened in a civil war to help defeat leftist insurgents. By 1948, the region looked very much like the agreement that Churchill and Stalin had drawn up.

      The Long War

      Today, the end of a much longer war appears to be approaching. The fighting in Afghanistan has lasted nearly two decades, the most protracted conflict the United States has ever endured. This war is, in turn, part of a much larger battle that has been variously described as “America’s endless wars,” the “war on terror” or simply the “long war” that began in the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001, though earlier skirmishes took place during the 1990s.

      The Biden administration is currently trying to negotiate a spheres-of-influence arrangement in Afghanistan that resembles what Churchill laid out in 1944. The American-backed government in Kabul, according to this proposal, would share power with the insurgent Taliban forces as an interim step until elections can be held under a new constitution.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Such a deal would make it easier for the United States to withdraw all of its 3,500 soldiers from Afghanistan by May 1, as laid out in a peace deal signed in 2020. Even if that withdrawal goes through, however, the institutional apparatus of the larger “long war” will still be operational. US forces remain in Iraq and Syria, and the Pentagon eyes the civil war in Libya with concern.

      In all, after drawdowns in Afghanistan and Iraq, about 50,000 US troops are stationed in the greater Middle East, with 7,000 mostly naval personnel in Bahrain, 13,000 soldiers in Kuwait and a roughly equal number in Qatar, 5,000 in the United Arab Emirates and several thousand in Saudi Arabia. US Special Forces are also scattered across Africa, while the United States is still conducting air operations throughout the region.

      But, as in 1944, the preliminary discussion of a power-sharing arrangement in Afghanistan suggests that the active phase of the “long war” is coming to an end. The specific US adversaries — al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and various smaller global actors — have more or less been defeated. Local groups that have battled US forces, like the Taliban, remain powerful, as do adversarial governments like Bashar al-Assad’s in Syria, but they don’t pose a threat to the US homeland. Larger geopolitical rivalries, with Russia and Iran in particular, continue to shape the conflicts in the region, but the US has already established an uneven pattern of engagement and containment with these actors.

      If history is to be replayed, the United States will wind down direct combat in favor of a tense cold war and intermittent “out-of-area” operations. The end of this “long war” against the architects of the 9/11 attacks and their supporters is long overdue. The Biden administration is eager to focus on “building back better” at home, enjoy a post-war economic expansion and beef up the US capacity to challenge China and, to a lesser extent, Russia. The administration is reassessing its military capabilities to reflect these priorities.

      All of this begs the question: Will it be possible to avoid repeating the 1945 scenario by ending the “long war” and not replacing it with a cold war?

      After promising to end the forever wars during the 2020 election campaign, President Joe Biden is eager to enjoy his own “mission accomplished” moment in Afghanistan. But that pledge comes with a couple asterisks.

      For one, Biden would like to maintain a “counterterrorism” force in Afghanistan with the permission of the Taliban. Such an agreement would parallel the arrangement in Iraq, where the government allows around 2,500 US troops to focus on suppressing any remnants of the Islamic State (as well as reining in Iran-backed paramilitaries). Second, Biden has in the past broached the possibility of moving US military bases from Afghanistan to Pakistan, where they would continue to serve their counterterrorism function. It’s not at all clear whether the Taliban or Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan would be enthusiastic about these options.

      At the moment, the United States is paying a relatively low price for its continued presence in Afghanistan. After last year’s peace deal, there haven’t been any US combat deaths in the country, which means that Afghanistan is basically absent from the hearts and minds of Americans. The US foreign policy community would like to preserve that status quo as long as possible, particularly given the post-withdrawal prospects of “ethnic cleansing, mass slaughter and the ultimate dismemberment of the country,” as Madiha Afzal and Michael O’Hanlon of Brookings have written. Similar arguments were made around the proposed withdrawal of the bulk of US troops from Iraq, and yet those worst-case scenarios haven’t come to pass.

      In recent days, the warnings about Afghanistan have increased. According to The New York Times:

      “American intelligence agencies have told the Biden administration that if U.S. troops leave before a power-sharing settlement is reached between the Taliban and the Afghan government, the country could fall largely under the control of the Taliban within two or three years after the withdrawal of international forces. That could potentially open the door for Al Qaeda to rebuild its strength within the country, according to American officials.”

      It doesn’t take an intelligence agency to predict that the Taliban will play a major role in any future Afghanistan, with or without a power-sharing settlement. The Taliban control about 20% of the country with as much as 85,000 full-time soldiers (though the areas under Taliban control are relatively underpopulated). At the same time, the insurgents are active over a much larger stretch — as much as 70% of the country — and are putting pressure on a number of key cities, including Kunduz in the north and Kandahar in the south.

      Embed from Getty Images

      In other words, there’s a good possibility that regardless of power-sharing arrangements, the Taliban will simply take over the country, much as the communists did throughout Eastern Europe in the late 1940s. Given the record of the Taliban’s last sojourn in power, the prospect of a reestablishment of their rule is very sobering.

      But the US has failed in two decades to defeat the Taliban with the full force of its military. Keeping a few thousand soldiers in the country is not going to change the balance of power on the ground. “The hawks argue that to leave Afghanistan is simply unthinkable until someday when they have finished winning the war,” writes Scott Horton in his new book, “Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism.” “But they lost the war more than a decade ago, and no one who protested against Trump’s drawdown had a single coherent thing to say about how staying there is supposed to somehow change the reality of Taliban power in that country.”

      Won’t Afghanistan again become a safe haven for international terrorists once the US troops withdraw along with their NATO partners? For all their immersion in Islamic religion and culture, the Taliban are Pashtun nationalists interested above all in kicking out the foreigners. They’re not big fans of the Islamic State group, but they do maintain a close relationship at the moment with the 200-250 al-Qaeda militants in the country. Take NATO out of the equation, however, and that relationship will likely fray at the seams, particularly if international recognition, access to the global economy and the support of powerful neighbors like Russia and Iran depend on a verifiable divorce.

      When he proposed the two spheres of influence, Churchill was not relying on the goodwill of the Soviet state. The British leader hated Stalin and communism. He was taking a clear-eyed look at the balance of power at the time and striking what he thought was the best deal he could, even if that meant “losing” most of Eastern Europe. A power-sharing arrangement with the Taliban that “loses” Afghanistan is comparably pragmatic. But will it be accompanied by other, equally pragmatic policies to bring the long war to an end?

      The Rest of the War

      The “endless wars” are obviously not just being fought by the 3,500 troops in Afghanistan and 2,500 soldiers in Iraq. As the Bush administration transitioned to the Obama era and war fatigue began to set in, the United States shifted its focus from ground operations to an air war. In Afghanistan for instance, as the number of troops declined from a high of 100,000 in 2011, the number of airstrikes steadily increased, with a peak in terms of bombs dropped in 2018 and 2019 and a consequent rise in casualties. “The number of civilians killed by international airstrikes increased about 330 percent from 2016, the last full year of the Obama Administration, to 2019, the most recent year for which there is complete data from the United Nations,” reports Neta Crawford of the Costs of War project. Throughout the greater Middle East, the United States has launched in excess of 14,000 drone strikes, which have killed as many as 16,000 people, including several hundred children.

      Since taking office, as I note in my recent study of Biden’s take on multilateralism, the new administration has launched two airstrikes, one against Iranian targets in Syria on February 25 and the other in Iraq on February 9 against the Islamic State. The Syrian attack, in particular, has prompted a bipartisan effort in Congress to repeal the Authorizations for the Use of Military Force (passed in 1991 and 2002) in order to narrow the presidential ability to launch future airstrikes.

      Meanwhile, the administration has yet to report any drone strikes. This is in marked contrast to the strikes that Barack Obama and Donald Trump ordered almost immediately upon taking office as well as the escalation in attacks that took place in Trump’s final months. In one of its first orders, the Biden administration issued a temporary halt to any drone strikes outside of combat areas such as Afghanistan and Syria. As Charli Carpenter, an expert in the laws of war, points out:

      “Essentially what Biden is doing is he’s moving the barometer back to where it was before Trump devolved authority for drone strikes away from the executive branch and into the hands of commanders. What that means is that anytime a drone strike is envisioned, it needs to be approved by the White House. There’s going to be a much higher level of oversight and much more concern over the legal nuances of each strike. It will just make drones harder to use, and you can imagine the weaponized drones will only be used in the most extreme cases.”

      In addition to initiating a review of drone strikes, the administration has launched a probe into Special Forces operations to ascertain whether they have adhered to the Pentagon’s “law of war” requirements. In effect, the Biden administration is applying greater oversight across the range of military operations to bring them into closer compliance with international rules and regulations. Such oversight, however, does not imply the end of the endless wars.

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      For that to happen, the United States would have to dramatically shrink its global military footprint, the constellation of US bases around the world that serve as the launching pad for myriad operations. About 220,000 military and civilian personnel operate in more than 150 countries and over 800 overseas military bases. A significant chunk of the Pentagon’s $700 billion-plus budget goes toward maintaining this immense archipelago of force.

      In early February, the Biden administration also announced a Global Posture Review to assess the US. footprint. Such a review is much needed. After all, did this massive apparatus save a single one of the more than half a million Americans who have died from COVID-19? Is the Pentagon protecting the United States from climate change (or merely contributing to the problem with its own carbon emissions and its protection of overseas fossil fuel production and distribution)? And all that “forward-based defense” has done absolutely nothing to safeguard US infrastructure from cyberattacks like the SolarWinds hack (that, by the way, gained access to the emails of Trump’s cybersecurity team at the Department of Homeland Security).

      For the time being, the architects of the Global Posture Review are thinking primarily of refocusing “strategic capabilities” against China in the Far East and Russia in the Arctic. But that just replaces one set of threats with another, which will adjust the footprint without actually reducing it.

      So, let’s remember that the 3,500 American troops in Afghanistan are just the tip of the iceberg. For the United States to avoid the fate of the Titanic — also famous at one time for being immense and impregnable — it had better address the rest of the icy hazard of war.

      *[This article was originally published by FPIF.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in US Politics

      Biden administration plans historic $5bn investment to combat gun violence in hard-hit areas

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      The Biden administration plans to invest $5bn toward gun violence prevention in the nation’s most hard-hit areas as part of a key infrastructure package announced this week.This investment marks an important step in acknowledging the disparate impact of gun violence and is the first time the government has set aside this much money at one time to address community violence holistically over a multi-year period.“Historically, the federal government’s approach, particularly when faced with surges in gun homicides, is to fund strategies that over-police,” said Paul Carillo, community violence initiative director for the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, in a statement. “The Biden administration demonstrated a commitment to addressing the root causes.”The proposal comes as America has witnessed a significant increase in gun violence during the pandemic. Los Angeles has recorded an 11-year high in homicides. Philadelphia is seeing one of the highest annual gun violence rates in half a century.Joe Biden has long been a firm advocate for gun control and has called for bans on assault weapons and universal background checks. He has reiterated his resolve after the first high-profile mass shootings of his tenure in the White House.But advocates have long called on the administration to address the less-acknowledged, but more prevalent, incidents of gun violence that plague city streets which are concentrated among Black and Latino communities.Biden’s $5bn proposal would work to create and scale up community-based violence prevention strategies. The money would be allotted over eight years and go toward employing street outreach workers, making violence prevention work sustainable, and giving organizations a steady stream of funds so they can lessen their reliance on competitive one-time grants.Funds earmarked for localities where shootings are surging are meant to help underserved communities rebound from pandemic-related losses and heal from the sustained spike in homicides. The money would also contribute to programs such as summer jobs and training opportunities for those most at risk of being affected by gun violence as a victim or would-be shooter, a White House administrator said.“It’s been a long time coming and we think this plan is a great signal that this work is finally being taken seriously,” said Dr Antonio Cediel, campaign manager for LIVE FREE, a national violence prevention organization.“This creates a whole new set of opportunities. We have to tackle gun violence where it is most concentrated,” Cediel added. “These strategies have track records and we know they work. It’s just a matter of scaling them up.”Cediel was one of 10 gun violence prevention advocates who met with Susan Rice, Biden’s domestic policy adviser, to call for the administration to take dramatic action and focus on the Black and Brown communities that face the highest levels of gun violence.Other advocacy groups, including March for our Lives and Amnesty International, have celebrated the announcement. A statement from Amnesty International USA read, “After years of inaction from the federal government on gun violence, President Biden’s plan to invest in our communities demonstrates hope that those most affected by this violence will receive help.” Everytown for Gun Safety applauded the plan, “This funding will save lives.”We applaud @POTUS for proposing $5B to support community violence prevention programs as part of the #AmericanJobsPlan.For decades, these Black-led organizations have reduced violence with these critically important programs—this funding will save lives. https://t.co/CcWcDMQc2T— Everytown (@Everytown) March 31, 2021
      Biden on Wednesday described his infrastructure plan as, “a once-in-a-generation investment in America”. Other proposals include expansive updates to the nation’s roads, water systems, and electrical grids, and – if it passes – could create an estimated 100,000 jobs, Biden said during the plan’s unveiling.“Our infrastructure is crumbling. These are among the highest value investments we can make. We can afford to make them. We can’t afford not to.” Biden said. More

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      in US Politics

      Biden’s cabinet meeting proves the reality TV presidency wasn't renewed

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      Poor old Joe Biden. He might have won the electoral college and the popular vote but he’ll never feel the love of his underlings like Donald Trump did.
      The former president’s first full cabinet meeting in June 2017 remains an unparalleled opera of oleaginousness. Secretary after secretary all but flung themselves at his feet, sang songs of praise and paid homage to the divine emperor of the universe.

      Has any parent ever known such undying adoration from their child? Only King Lear from Goneril and Regan, perhaps. And most telling was the fact that the world was allowed to see it. Trump made sure it was one more chapter in his reality TV presidency.
      Not really Biden’s style. His first cabinet meeting on Thursday was relocated to the East Room because of coronavirus restrictions – the 16 permanent members wore face masks and sat in a giant square with empty chairs between them – but was otherwise a return to the staid old way of doing things.
      The main item on the agenda was not the American president’s sculpted handsomeness, nor his towering intellect, nor his indubitable virility, nor his ability to hit holes in one, but merely his freshly announced $2tn infrastructure plan.
      Flanked by the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, and the defense secretary, Lloyd Austin, with the vice-president, Kamala Harris, opposite, Biden said he was asking five cabinet members to “take special responsibility to explain the plan to the American public”.
      He took no questions from the media and, after less than two and a half minutes, reporters were ushered out. “I thank the press for being here, but I’ll talk to you all later.” More

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      in US Politics

      The Guardian view on the US infrastructure plan: Joe Biden's bold bet | Editorial

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      President Joe Biden is governing like a man in a hurry. Three weeks ago, he persuaded the US Congress to pass his $1.9tn Covid stimulus package. This week, he began the task of building congressional support for an even larger jobs and infrastructure renewal plan. The package is worth at least another $2tn. It involves massive investment in transport, housing and commercial buildings, green jobs, social care and much else besides. Further spending plans on “human infrastructure” – in the shape of aid to the poor, to parents and to women – are expected in a few weeks’ time. The total cost may end up close to £4tn.This week’s package involves several bold bets whose outcomes should be closely watched in America and beyond. Mr Biden’s central proposition is that the federal government can resume the activist role in economic growth that it played in the mid-20th century under leaders from Franklin Roosevelt to Richard Nixon. This comes with a second twist, that the activist role can deliver tens of thousands of well-paid and unionised climate change and clean-technology jobs, rather than those that involve pouring concrete or boosting fossil fuel consumption. Wrapped into this is a third gamble, that the United States can take on and defeat China and other Asian economies to become a global leader in the semiconductor, electric battery and electric vehicle industries.Spending of $213bn on energy-efficient housing and construction, and of $174bn on electric vehicle incentives are the centrepieces of the package. Given that the US is the planet’s second largest fossil fuel emitter, these are the right priorities. Whether they go far enough is more doubtful. In a country with more than 276m vehicles, the planned 500,000 vehicle charger points by 2030 will not go far, for example. But improved high-speed broadband in rural and urban America is desperately needed, not least to reduce inequality. More traditional infrastructure projects such as roads and bridges, rail and disaster resilience are part of the package. Airports, on the other hand, come low down the pecking order.The president is also making a big gamble on taxation. Unlike the stimulus package, the new spending will be paid for by new corporate taxes and taxes on the wealthy, not by new borrowing. Eight years of planned new spending will demand 15 years’ worth of new taxes, the White House says. Mr Biden plans to raise corporate tax rates from 21% to 28%. This falls well short of the 35% rate that was slashed by Donald Trump in 2017. The top rate of income tax is expected to rise from 37% to 39.6%, precisely reversing a Trump cut. Even so, Mr Biden’s initiative offers a huge ideological and fiscal challenge to the small state, low tax orthodoxies that have shaped politics in the US and beyond since the Ronald Reagan era 40 years ago.Partly for that reason, Mr Biden faces an even tougher road in getting Congress to back him. While many Democrats say that the plan does not go far enough, others cavil at its size and implications. With wafer-thin Democratic majorities in both houses, and the Republican party obdurate in its opposition, the president is unlikely to get his way without concessions on both wings.If this suggests an ultimately doomed effort to re-energise bipartisan politics in an era of ideological confrontation, it is important at the same time to recognise the historic nature of the president’s basic proposition. Mr Biden may be acting like a man who is aware his congressional base may not outlast 2022. But he is also trying to show that government is still capable of doing big things, and even of proving that democratic capitalism can work. More

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      Biden announces 'once-in-a generation' $2tn infrastructure investment plan – video

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      Joe Biden unveiled what he called a ‘once-in-a-generation’ investment in American infrastructure, promising the nation his $2tn plan would create the ‘strongest, most resilient, innovative economy in the world’. Biden’s proposal to the nation still struggling to overcome the coronavirus pandemic would rebuild 20,000 miles of roads and highways and repair the 10 most economically significant bridges in the country. Biden added other projects would confront the climate crisis, curb wealth inequality and strengthen US competitiveness

      Biden unveils ‘once-in-a generation’ $2tn infrastructure investment plan
      Biden’s $2tn infrastructure plan aims to ‘finally address climate crisis as a nation’
      Biden’s big infrastructure bet could define his legacy – for better or worse More

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      in US Politics

      Biden plans to spend $100bn to bring affordable internet to all Americans

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      Joe Biden’s massive infrastructure bill will prioritize broadband expansion as a top goal, earmarking $100bn to bring affordable internet to “all Americans” by 2029.The plan, details of which the White House released in a fact sheet on Wednesday afternoon, seeks to reach “100% high-speed broadband coverage” across the US. It will do so while prioritizing broadband networks “owned, operated by, or affiliated with local governments, non-profits, and cooperatives” in a clear rejection of partnerships with big tech firms.After Covid-19 forced many Americans to work and attend school from home, the disparities between Americans with and without reliable access to internet have become more visible, the Biden administration said, citing “a stark digital divide”.“The last year made painfully clear the cost of these disparities, particularly for students who struggled to connect while learning remotely, compounding learning loss and social isolation for those students,” the administration wrote.Biden’s $2tn plan addresses four major categories: transportation and utility grids, broadband systems, community care for seniors, and innovation research and development. The proposal would be paid for by permanently raising the corporate tax rate from 21% to 28%, according to sources cited by Politico.The administration seeks to bring broadband to the 35% of rural Americans who lack access to internet at minimally acceptable speeds, calling it the “electricity of the 21st century” and comparing it to the 1936 Rural Electrification Act, which sought to bring electricity to every home in the US.The billions in broadband funds include money set aside for building internet infrastructure on tribal lands, which will be created in consultation with tribal communities, the administration said. Civil rights and internet freedom advocates celebrated the announcement on Wednesday.“The President’s broadband announcement is a win for every family and business in America, in every part of the country,” said James P Steyer, founder and CEO of Common Sense, a nonprofit digital advocacy group. “Broadband for all is a policy whose time has come.”The $100bn dedicated to broadband dwarfs funds proposed in other bills addressing the digital divide. Earlier in March, James E Clyburn of South Carolina and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota announced their own bill that would invest $94bn to close the digital divide. That bill was widely endorsed by human rights groups.In a statement on Wednesday, House speaker Nancy Pelosi praised the bill’s “significant” investment plan for broadband access and said she was hopeful the bill would see support from Democrats and Republicans.“Investments in infrastructure have long been bipartisan, and in that spirit, we hope to craft and pass a historic package to Build Back Better: creating jobs, justice and opportunity for all,” she said. More

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      Biden's big infrastructure bet could define his legacy – for better or worse

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      Joe Biden, the oldest US president ever elected, seems keenly aware of the sentiment expressed in the Broadway musical Hamilton: “History has its eyes on you.”
      Before taking office he reportedly read biographies of Franklin Roosevelt, who steered the nation through the Great Depression. Recently, at an eerily quiet White House, he hosted presidential historians to explore the virtues of thinking big – or more precisely, the perils of thinking small.
      And on Wednesday, promoting a suitably audacious $2tn infrastructure package, Biden made clear that he has an eye on posterity. “I’m convinced that, if we act now, in 50 years people are going to look back and say this was the moment that America won the future,” he said.

      But often what seems inevitable with hindsight was rarely that way in the moment. The 46th president now faces a tough political grind to turn his expensive vision into reality.
      Indeed, his recent $1.9tn coronavirus relief package will probably look like a breeze by comparison. That plan saw Biden hailed as an unlikely progressive hero and prompted Maureen Dowd, a columnist at the New York Times, to quip: “Democrats are thinking that if he keeps it up, they’ll soon be picking up their chisels to carve his face on Mount Rushmore.”
      In truth, it was a case of desperate times calling for desperate measures. Overall the US government – first under Donald Trump, then under Biden – has now thrown more than $6tn at the once in a century pandemic. “It was an emergency,” the current president acknowledged on Wednesday. “We needed to act to save jobs, to save businesses and to save lives, and that’s what we did.”
      Now comes a bigger ask that will truly test Biden’s Rushmore credentials. Infrastructure – even the word is deadening and uninspiring – is a hardy perennial that everyone wants to get done but no one is willing to pay for. Trump’s “infrastructure week” became a running joke.
      Biden can expect pushback not only from Republicans but moderate Democrats worried about what the required tax hikes will mean for their electoral chances. Progressives and climate activists, meanwhile, have already argued that his new plan does not go far enough. Democratic unity is about to undergo a serious stress test.
      Biden’s strengths, however, were on display on Wednesday in Pittsburgh, the city in his home state of Pennsylvania where he launched his campaign for president two years ago.
      He won that campaign partly because he is seen as unpretentious and lacking artifice. His blue collar background in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and unpolished demeanor make it hard to accuse him of belonging to the metropolitan elite. He is not a champagne socialist so much as a grandfather with grit and a surprising radical streak. “I’m a union guy,” he said.
      So it was that Biden’s “American Jobs Plan” speech took place not with a slick presentation but in the echoey Carpenters Pittsburgh Training Center, where the customary row of US national flags was offset by uneven planks of wood in the wings.
      Removing a black face mask, Biden, wearing dark suit, blue tie and white shirt, promised “not a plan that tinkers around the edges. It’s a once-in-a-generation investment in America unlike anything we’ve seen or done since we built the interstate highway system and the space race decades ago. In fact, it’s the largest American jobs investment since world war two.”
      No, infrastructure is not as pressing an emergency as a virus that has killed more than half a million Americans, yet many a visitor to the US has been surprised to find that the richest, most powerful country in the world can often feel like its roads and railways are held together by double-sided sticky tape.
      And now China is breathing down its neck. “Our infrastructure is crumbling,” Biden said. “We’re ranked 13th in the world.”
      Not long ago there were fears that Biden would be hopelessly naive about Republican intentions and expect the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, to play ball like in the good old days. The coronavirus relief bill showed how improbable that is. Biden’s White House has concentrated instead on how popular the measure is among Republican mayors and voters.
      That is likely to be the strategy again – for example, the appeal of bringing broadband to remote areas. As McConnell and co prepare to rage about tax increases, Biden made a direct case: “No one making under $400,000 will see their federal taxes go up. Period. This is not about penalizing anyone. I have nothing against millionaires and billionaires. I believe in American capitalism.”
      Still, months of haggling in Congress await.
      Republicans are not buying Biden’s claims of bipartisanship. Democrats who swallowed their objections to certain elements of the coronavirus relief for the sake of urgency are unlikely to be so forgiving this time. Wednesday’s announcement may well prove to be legacy-defining, but not necessarily in a manner of Biden’s choosing. More