Joe Biden
Subterms
More stories
Benjamin Netanyahu’s Nine Political Lives
When Benjamin Netanyahu became prime minister for the second time in March 2009, it was not long after Israel had conducted three weeks of sustained air attacks on the enclave of Gaza. More than 1,100 Palestinians died in that campaign. About a dozen Israelis also perished, four from friendly fire, the rest from rockets coming from Gaza.
Operation Cast Lead, as it was called, was supposed to eliminate the offensive capabilities of Hamas, a Palestinian faction with political and military wings that had taken over Gaza the year before. The Israeli operation also featured a ground offensive with thousands of troops and tanks. There was nothing surgical about the strikes or the intervention. At least half of the Palestinian casualties were estimated to be civilians. The UN-sponsored Goldstone report identified “actions amounting to war crimes” committed by both sides.
The US Is Complicit in the Atrocities Israel Commits
READ MORE
From the start, the conflict pitted David against Goliath, with their Biblical roles reversed. Israel deployed overwhelming force on top of the economic blockade it had imposed on Gaza after Hamas took over. It was the Israeli Goliath that declared a unilateral ceasefire in January 2009 from what it considered a position of strength. Although the Palestinian David didn’t come close to knocking out the Israeli giant, Hamas did manage to survive the onslaught. It has remained in control of Gaza ever since.
Acting With Impunity
Operation Cast Lead took place during the lame-duck period before Barack Obama took over from George W. Bush. The Bush administration followed several decades of US foreign policy by supporting Israel during the conflict, as did Congress. The Obama administration did not substantially deviate from this consensus, but it did attempt modestly to level the playing field by criticizing Israel’s aggressive settlement policy and providing a bit more assistance to the Palestinian Authority.
.custom-post-from {float:right; margin: 0 10px 10px; max-width: 50%; width: 100%; text-align: center; background: #000000; color: #ffffff; padding: 15px 0 30px; }
.custom-post-from img { max-width: 85% !important; margin: 15px auto; filter: brightness(0) invert(1); }
.custom-post-from .cpf-h4 { font-size: 18px; margin-bottom: 15px; }
.custom-post-from .cpf-h5 { font-size: 14px; letter-spacing: 1px; line-height: 22px; margin-bottom: 15px; }
.custom-post-from input[type=”email”] { font-size: 14px; color: #000 !important; width: 240px; margin: auto; height: 30px; box-shadow:none; border: none; padding: 0 10px; background-image: url(“https://www.fairobserver.com/wp-content/plugins/moosend_form/cpf-pen-icon.svg”); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position: center right 14px; background-size:14px;}
.custom-post-from input[type=”submit”] { font-weight: normal; margin: 15px auto; height: 30px; box-shadow: none; border: none; padding: 0 10px 0 35px; background-color: #1878f3; color: #ffffff; border-radius: 4px; display: inline-block; background-image: url(“https://www.fairobserver.com/wp-content/plugins/moosend_form/cpf-email-icon.svg”); background-repeat: no-repeat; background-position: 14px center; background-size: 14px; }.custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox { width: 90%; margin: auto; position: relative; display: flex; flex-wrap: wrap;}
.custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox label { text-align: left; display: block; padding-left: 32px; margin-bottom: 0; cursor: pointer; font-size: 11px; line-height: 18px;
-webkit-user-select: none;
-moz-user-select: none;
-ms-user-select: none;
user-select: none;
order: 1;
color: #ffffff;
font-weight: normal;}
.custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox label a { color: #ffffff; text-decoration: underline; }
.custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input { position: absolute; opacity: 0; cursor: pointer; height: 100%; width: 24%; left: 0;
right: 0; margin: 0; z-index: 3; order: 2;}
.custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input ~ label:before { content: “f0c8”; font-family: Font Awesome 5 Free; color: #eee; font-size: 24px; position: absolute; left: 0; top: 0; line-height: 28px; color: #ffffff; width: 20px; height: 20px; margin-top: 5px; z-index: 2; }
.custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input:checked ~ label:before { content: “f14a”; font-weight: 600; color: #2196F3; }
.custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input:checked ~ label:after { content: “”; }
.custom-post-from .cpf-checkbox input ~ label:after { position: absolute; left: 2px; width: 18px; height: 18px; margin-top: 10px; background: #ffffff; top: 10px; margin: auto; z-index: 1; }
.custom-post-from .error{ display: block; color: #ff6461; order: 3 !important;}Netanyahu, when he took over in 2009, understood that Israel could act largely with impunity in Gaza. Because of its militant and fundamentalist orientation, Hamas didn’t generate a lot of warm fuzzy feelings in the West, or even in some quarters of the Palestinian community for that matter. So, Israel felt confident enough to ignore the UN inquiry and shrug off the Obama’s administration’s mild criticisms. Meanwhile, it continued to outsource its policing of the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority (portrayed in graphic detail in the Israeli TV show “Fauda”).
In November 2012, Israel launched another attack against Hamas and Gaza, Operation Pillar of Defense, that ended with a ceasefire brokered largely by Egypt. This time, however, Netanyahu was attuned to the political advantages of attacking his nemesis. The prime minister had already called for early elections, which would take place in January 2013. The week-long bombardment of Hamas — on top of the exchange that freed Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit in 2011 — made it relatively easy for Netanyahu to win the election and form a new government.
The 2012 ceasefire didn’t last. Both sides continued sporadic attacks, and Israel maintained its economic blockade of Gaza. A reconciliation between Hamas and Fatah led to a unity government for the Palestinians in June 2014, which Netanyahu saw as a threat to his divide-and-conquer tactics.
All of this served as a backdrop to a more sustained third round between Israel and Hamas that took place over the summer of 2014. It was another lopsided conflict that left more than 2,200 Gazans and 73 Israelis dead. Another UN report detailed potential war crimes on both sides. And Netanyahu’s Likud scored another political victory in national elections the following March, after the prime minister vowed that he would prevent a Palestinian state if he won.
Political Survivor
Bibi is a political survivor. He is now Israel’s longest-serving prime minister. He has weathered social protests, a raft of corruption charges and the persistent condemnation of international authorities for policies that trample the rights of Palestinians and military actions that have killed scores of civilians.
One major reason for his political longevity is the collapse of the Israeli left. The Labor Party has seen a catastrophic drop in its vote totals, and it now has only one more seat in the Knesset than the other left-wing party, Meretz (together the two parties have 13 seats, less than half of what Likud alone controls). To stave off the centrist parties, Netanyahu has at one point or another counted on the political support of actors further to his right, like the Religious Zionist Party and Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beiteinu.
Netanyahu and Hamas Are Playing a Deadly Game
READ MORE
But it’s really been Hamas that has saved Bibi’s skin time and again. In 2009, Hamas served as a justification for steering the country into an even more hard-right direction. In 2012, the Israeli government killed Hamas commander Ahmed Jabari, which precipitated the rocket attacks from Gaza that in turn served as the pretext for Operation Pillar of Defense. This year, Netanyahu could count on Hamas again to launch rocket attacks in response to Israel’s eviction of Palestinians from East Jerusalem, itself part of a much wider effort to displace Palestinians in favor of Jewish settlers, as well as a police raid on al-Aqsa mosque during Ramadan prayers.
The Palestinian Authority protested both actions. So did the Arab world, the international community and demonstrators throughout the United States. But it was Hamas and its perennial quest to become the face of Palestinian resistance that once again has served as the anvil for Bibi’s hammer. In the 1980s, Israeli hard-liners helped create the organization to divide and weaken the Palestinian movement.
Hamas has been a gift to hard-liners ever since. And, once again, Palestinians have suffered the most from this confrontation. In the current conflict, the death toll in Gaza has risen above 200, half of them women and children. Around a dozen Israelis have died in the rocket fire from Gaza. The only winner: Benjamin Netanyahu.
What’s Next for Netanyahu?
Netanyahu has managed to sell himself as indispensable to the Israeli right, which has been ascendant ever since he appeared on the political scene in the 1990s. His alliance with Trump produced nearly everything Israel’s right wing has wanted from the United States. The Trump administration gave the okay to Israel’s annexation of the Golan Heights and the transfer of the US Embassy to Jerusalem. It supported without reservation the Jewish settlement of the Occupied Palestinian Territories. It removed funding and recognition from Palestinian entities.
As he promised in 2015, Netanyahu has moved the goalposts in Israel’s struggle with Palestinians to such a degree that the two-state solution has practically disappeared from the political agenda. With Israel blockading Gaza and whittling away at Palestinian territory in the West Bank, Palestinians have less and less of a state to stand in. The Palestinian Authority, led by Mahmoud Abbas for as long as Netanyahu has been prime minister, has been incapable of stopping Bibi.
Embed from Getty Images
Abbas and his Fatah party have lost so much support among Palestinians that they had to postpone elections this year to avoid outright repudiation at the polls. Only Hamas, with a fanaticism equal to Netanyahu’s, has put up any significant resistance.
Netanyahu is seven years younger than Joe Biden and three years younger than Donald Trump. He has no intention of retiring to an olive farm any time soon. He is staying in power not simply because he likes the perquisites of the office like Trump or because he has some vision of “building back better” like Biden. Bibi dreams of annexing as much of the West Bank as he can, defeating Hamas militarily and politically, and reducing the Palestinian community to nothing more than a source of cheap labor for Israeli farms and factories. Nearly everything he has done geopolitically has been toward that end, like negotiating diplomatic recognition deals with Arab states (UAE, Morocco) and humoring Jared Kushner’s “deal of the century” of buying Palestinian sovereign aspirations with the Gulf’s largesse.
Of course, Netanyahu would also like to see regime change in Iran and the neutering of Hezbollah in Lebanon, but those longer-term goals depend a great deal on factors beyond his immediate control. Trump was an ideal partner for realizing these dreams. No doubt Bibi imagined that he could continue to change enough facts on the ground during Trump’s second term to reduce Palestine to the level of Abkhazia or, better yet, the former state of Biafra. But for the voters in a few key swing states, Netanyahu nearly got what he wanted.
Meanwhile, in the last two years alone, Israel has had four national elections, and the only constant has been Bibi. The corruption charges against him alone should have doomed his career. He faces three cases of bribery, fraud and breach of trust. In Trumpian fashion, Bibi has tried to turn the tables by asserting that the charges are an “attempted coup.” In the most recent election, Netanyahu and his allies didn’t win enough votes to form a new coalition government. Opposition leader Yair Lapid was given a chance to form an anti-Netanyahu coalition spanning the political spectrum. He was in the middle of fashioning this unwieldy coalition when the current crisis conveniently (for Netanyahu) broke out.
Biden vs. Bibi
Joe Biden is cut from the same cloth as Obama when it comes to US policy toward Israel. Once elected, Biden quickly restored aid to Palestinian organizations and resumed diplomatic relations with the PLO, though both efforts now run up against provisions enacted by the Trump administration.
But in other respects, Biden has made it clear that he does not want to put additional pressure on Israel. He’s not going to reverse Trump’s moves on the Golan Heights and Jerusalem. He lacks even the lukewarm determination of Obama to push back on Israeli settlements. In the current conflagration, the most he’s willing to do is support a ceasefire but so far, he’s leaving it up to the combatants to find their own way to a settlement.
Netanyahu might have worried that he would be dealing with “Obama part two” with Biden. Instead, he faces an American president who has no real interest in investing any political capital to achieve an Israeli-Palestinian deal. The Middle East is knocking on America’s door, and Biden is pretending to be focussing on home repairs.
The problem for Biden is that others want to change the foreign policy consensus on Israel. Criticism of Israeli policy is becoming more commonplace in Congress, with several US politicians now willing to call the socio-ethnic division in the country by its true name: apartheid. Opposition to an over $700 million arms package to Israel was gaining ground within the Democratic Party before the Biden administration managed to persuade the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee to reverse his plea to postpone the deal.
Embed from Getty Images
Meanwhile, protests in solidarity with Palestinians are spreading around the United States, with an astonishing 4,000 people mobilizing in Patterson, New Jersey. Even within the American Jewish community, the disgust with Netanyahu and the direction he has taken Israel has become palpable. Peter Beinart, who has been forced by Israel’s occupation and settlement policies to reevaluate his liberal Zionism, recently wrote in The New York Times in support of a Palestinian right of return as a first step in rewinding the historic injustices that Netanyahu has only aggravated.
But, of course, Beinart is not the Israeli prime minister. Nor is he the US president or even the head of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. His views, however commendable, lack any traction among the powerful in Washington and Jerusalem — for now, at least.
Cycle of Violence
Just before the current violence broke out, Netanyahu was facing the prospect of a broad coalition forming a new government and ousting him from his position. That coalition fell apart shortly after the conflict commenced. So, either Netanyahu will manage to woo a couple more politicians to join his camp or there will soon be yet another election. Either way, as in 2013, Netanyahu will likely solidify his hold on power thanks to his hard-line approach to Hamas.
It’s hard not to conclude that the Israeli prime minister deliberately stoked tensions and escalated the conflict for his own political benefit. Bibi has been wagging the dog practically since he took office. After each cycle of divisive politics within Israel and fratricidal violence between Israel and Palestine, Netanyahu has emerged victorious. To break the cycle of violence that has engulfed the region in 2009, 2012, 2014 and now today, the Israeli opposition has to break Netanyahu politically once and for all.
Given how right wing the political climate has become in Israel, defeating Netanyahu won’t immediately end settlements, lift the blockade on Gaza or usher in the right of return for Palestinians. Indeed, many Israelis are willing to support political forces even more right-wing and militant than Netanyahu. But the dozen years of Netanyahu’s reign have been a terrible era for Palestine, a second nakba, a death by a thousand cuts. Sending Bibi into retirement would create at least a chance of something new — perhaps something better.
*[This article was originally published by Foreign Policy in Focus.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
- in US Politics
‘A radical change’: America’s new generation of pro-Palestinian voices
It just so happened that Joe Biden was due to visit Detroit, home to the biggest Arab American community in the country, at the height of the latest upsurge in Israeli-Palestinian violence.The sight of the presidential motorcade on Tuesday passing through a protest bedecked with Palestinian flags – and of Biden himself in heated discussion with Rashida Tlaib, the first Palestinian woman to be elected to Congress, on the Detroit airport tarmac – vividly illustrated the rapid shifts under way in US politics.Welcoming Friday’s ceasefire, Biden said he would continue what he called his “quiet, relentless diplomacy”. But his emphasis through 11 days of bombs, rockets and bloodshed, on Israel’s right to self-defence, his refusal to demand a ceasefire or to join a UN security council statement to that effect, have exacted a political cost in the very constituency that was decisive in getting him elected.In many ways, Biden was following a well-trodden path for US presidents, but the political downside of doing so is much greater now than it would have been just a few years ago, before a new generation of Democrats such as Tlaib arrived in Congress, and before the Black Lives Matter campaign made common cause with the Palestinians.The same broad coalition that saved Biden’s primary campaign and helped get him across the line in November, could now become a powerful counterweight to the pro-Israeli traditions of the Democratic party.“We’re in a moment of profound flux in society in general and things are moving very, very quickly and sometimes it takes moments like these to see how far things have shifted,” said Abdul El-Sayed, an epidemiologist, formerly Detroit’s former health director and candidate for governor, who addressed the protesters in Michigan on Tuesday.“Joe Biden has, throughout his political history, been very, very good at reading the changes in temperature that occur, and I hope that he registers the fact that the base has also moved on this issue.”Also in the crowd on Tuesday was Reuben Telushkin, a Black Jewish activist who is national organiser for Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP). He said the Black Lives Matter movement has reinforced an alliance between Palestinians and African Americans.“People were connecting in the streets, connecting online and so pre-existing solidarities were deepening, but also average, maybe more apathetic folks, were being politicised,” Telushkin said.He pointed to the impact of protests in Ferguson in 2014, when it was discovered the same US-made teargas canisters were being used on Black American demonstrators in Missouri and against Palestinians on the West Bank.“Palestinians were demonstrating their solidarity by sending tweets to the protesters in Ferguson about how to treat teargas,” Telushkin said. “So it was a really material link.”A new vocabulary has entered the US debate on Israel and Palestine, particularly since Human Rights Watch published a report last month that described the status quo as apartheid, a description that echoed on the floor of the House of Representatives and on MSNBC by presenter Ali Velshi.“That is a radical change. Normally you’d be at risk of losing your job if you spoke up for Palestinian human rights,” said Edward Ahmed Mitchell, the deputy executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.The models Bella and Gigi Hadid, whose father was born in Palestine, used their social media platforms, with a combined following of 108 million, to highlight the plight of the people of Gaza and the West Bank.“This political activism has been building for decades,” said Salih Booker, president of the Center for International Policy. “It’s hard to point to exactly what grain of sand has now been added to this side of the scales, but I think we’re approaching a new tipping point where the entire debate is being reframed.”Beth Miller, government affairs manager for JVP Action, the group’s political advocacy arm, said: “This idea that you could be ‘progressive except for Palestine’ is falling apart, and people understand that now there is no such thing as ‘progressive except for Palestine’.”US public sympathies are still mostly with the Israelis rather than the Palestinians. The ratio was 58% to 25% in a Gallup poll in March, but that still reflected a steady swing towards the Palestinians over recent years and the survey was taken before the most recent eruption of violence.Similarly the centre of gravity in the Democratic party is still sympathetic towards Biden’s approach, but the direction of change is away from the reflexive support for Israel that has been the president’s hallmark throughout his long political career.As a sign of things to come, progressives point to the ouster of the formerly powerful, pro-Israel chair of the House foreign affairs committee, Eliot Engel, by a political newcomer, Jamaal Bowman, in a Democratic primary last July. Bowman has since supported a bill that would regulate US military aid to Israel.“The conversation has to change before the policy can change,” Mitchell said. “And right now we are seeing a radical change in the conversation surrounding Palestine.” More
- in US Politics
The Guardian view on the US and Israel: time for change | Editorial
One of the grimmest aspects of the conflict that has unfolded over recent days is its sheer familiarity, especially to those living through it. Even the youngest have faced this violence too many times before: the Norwegian Refugee Council reported that 11 of the children killed by Israeli airstrikes in Gaza over the past week were participating in its psychosocial programme to help them deal with trauma. In all, 228 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip have died, at least 63 of them children, while 12 people in Israel, including two children, were killed by rockets fired by Palestinian militant groups. Both parties disregard the lives of civilians. But it is overwhelmingly Palestinian children who have died, lost parents or siblings, and whose homes, schools and health services have been hit. Late on Thursday, Israel announced a ceasefire after 11 days of violence, with Hamas confirming that the truce would begin overnight. It had become evident that both sides were looking for an exit, and Joe Biden had strengthened his language the day before, telling Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, in a phone call that he “expected a significant de-escalation today on the path to a ceasefire”. This too is familiar: the US beginning by talking only of Israel’s right to defend itself, and blocking efforts to exert pressure at the UN, but talking tougher once a resolution looked more plausible (whether to use limited leverage wisely or, less generously, to look like it has influence).The administration is said to believe it is better to lobby in private than pronounce in public; while such formulations are often convenient, it does appear to have been pressing harder behind the scenes. The approach reflects the president’s style of business and the bitter experience of the Obama administration, for which Mr Netanyahu showed such contempt – eventually prompting the US to refuse to veto a landmark UN vote demanding a halt to settlements in the occupied territories. But Donald Trump’s unalloyed enthusiasm for Mr Netanyahu, and the gifts he handed over, weakened the Palestinians and emboldened the Israeli prime minister.Mr Trump’s successor has returned to the status quo ante in US relations with Israel. But something has changed: his party and parts of the public are shifting. An influx of progressive Democrats to Congress, and the energy of the Black Lives Matter movement, have brought renewed support for the Palestinian cause. Many in the American Jewish community, particularly in younger generations, are increasingly critical of Israel. This time, the conflict appears to have captured public attention.Mr Biden has plenty to preoccupy him at home and internationally. Essentially, he wants all this to go away. But this latest violence has shown that it will keep returning until the real problems are addressed. The injustice of occupation has been compounded as settlements change the facts on the ground to make a viable Palestinian state look ever less possible, while Israel denies its Palestinian citizens the same rights as Jews. The US may prefer not to think about all this for now. But in the long run, Israel may find that it cannot count on such a compliant partner. More
- in US Politics
The US should nationalize the Greyhound bus company. Hear me out | Bhaskar Sunkara
Joe Biden’s love of trains is well known. “Amtrak Joe” has vowed to invest in America’s crumbling railways and encourage Americans to embrace clean and green mass transit over gas-guzzling automobiles. For decades, the American left has urged the government to make massive investments in rail travel for just these reasons. Yet there is another simple, cheap, and instant way to upgrade our public transit infrastructure, reduce carbon, alleviate traffic, and provide efficient and affordable intercity travel: the government should buy Greyhound.Greyhound Canada recently announced that the company plans to permanently cease operations there. The move was yet another sign that the financial woes of the inter-city motorcoach industry are not going away. Since the pandemic no transport industry has been more hurt than commercial bus lines. Nearly all schedules for the entire industry were shut down for months with no end in sight; Greyhound USA has recently been able to reopen most of its scheduled routes, but a continued depression in ridership means the company can’t keep all of its lines open. Greyhound has even resorted to selling stations in Chicago and Denver.Unlike most major transport industries, inter-city bus operators received very little help from the United States government during the pandemic. Commercial airlines got a whopping $60bn, Amtrak got $1.5bn, and public transit was awarded a much-needed $30bn to keep the trains, buses, and trolleys moving. Yet motorcoaches – which collectively make nearly 600 million passenger trips a year in the United States, and employ around 100,000 workers – received a paltry $100m.Despairing bus industry executives organized a “Rolling Rally” in Washington to demand more cash. While the sector has since received slightly greater attention it’s unlikely that the funds will be enough to make up for the loss in ridership, which dipped to historic lows.A cash handout is effectively a bet that the industry will recover to pre-Covid profits and grow after; right now that’s not a bet any private investor would make.Low-cost air travel and affordable car travel, have made things difficult for the intercity bus industry. Yet bus travel does maintain a great advantage over both rail and air competition: the sheer number of destinations a rider can choose. Using America’s already nationalized interstate system, Greyhound alone still services some 2,400 station stops. Unfortunately, this practical strength is also a business weakness.Greyhound is in trouble, which means the feds can buy the company for cheap … the federally owned bus system could pay for its own operating cost through faresA daily roundtrip from Newport News to Norfolk is significantly less profitable than hourly trips to and from a major hub such as New York City. Lacking extensive regulation and government subsidy, Greyhound executives are forced to focus their investments on the most profitable schedules while ditching small-town and rural communities. Yet this is another bind: while coastal schedules have the highest ridership they also face the stiffest competition from budget and Chinatown bus lines such as Megabus and from Amtrak and regional rail. The profit squeeze is tight and it will only get tighter.So the only way to save the intercity bus system as it exists is to greatly increase ridership to and from low-priority destinations while staying competitive on the highly profitable coastal corridors. In order to do both, you need to greatly reduce the price of fares – which have increased in recent years and are more expensive than comparable service in other countries.That’s where the US government comes in.Greyhound is in trouble, which means the feds can buy the company for cheap. Once purchased, the government could temporarily ignore the profit problem and focus on rescuing the fleet – providing affordable travel as a public good. Just as the US post office does not use a dime of taxpayer money, the federally owned Greyhound bus system could pay for its own operating cost through fares; without the burden of costly executives and grubby shareholders, the organization would likely save a great deal of money in overhead.The benefits of an old-fashioned nationalization scheme like this are enormous. It would simultaneously save the Greyhound bus system, which transports up to 17 million people a year, put it to good public use with positive impacts elsewhere in the economy, and protect thousands of stable union jobs. But there’s another, less obvious benefit.The British environmentalist George Monbiot raised eyebrows a few years ago when he argued that, as far as carbon emissions are concerned, our best bet is not just to rebuild and expand the railways but instead to provide nearly universal motorcoach transit.Switching from car to coach, Monbiot noted, cuts carbon by an astonishing 88%. And these efficiencies could be dramatically increased in a relatively short period of time by improving the bus fleet technology with all-electric vehicles and by some clever infrastructure tweaks.For one, let’s move bus stations out of city centers and to the edges of major hub cities, nearer to the interstate highways. By getting rid of the awful winding trips buses make in and out of city centers, motorcoaches would be free to hit the open road and speed off to their destination. Even better, let’s add dedicated motorcoach lanes to major highways to help speed bus travel. Highway bus lanes would not only provide speedier service for bus passengers but also greatly alleviate overall traffic. Each full coach would replace many cars’ worth of traffic. And, as Monbiot notes, the buses would effectively advertise themselves: individual motorists, watching buses zoom by them, will soon realize that if you want to get somewhere fast, the bus is the way to go.With a few small tweaks, a government-owned Greyhound system could go from clunky, expensive, and slow to efficient, affordable, and speedy. But such a transformation would require a state visionary enough to challenge the dogmas of private market competition. More
- in US Politics
South Korea’s balancing act will test Biden’s plan to get tough with China
When the South Korean president goes to Washington DC on Friday, his discussions with Joe Biden about China will test the limits of the US president’s rhetoric to “work with [its] allies to hold China accountable”. It will also exhibit the dilemma faced by middle-sized powers such as South Korea.The White House spokesperson, Jen Psaki, said last month that Moon Jae-in’s visit “will highlight the ironclad alliance between the United States and [South Korea], and the broad and deep ties between our governments, people and economies”.But observers of the relationship think that, despite the talk of a strong alliance, it is unlikely South Korea will even go as far as its neighbouring Japan in showing a united front with Washington on the approach to China.Shortly after the Japanese prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, visited Biden in the US capital last month, a joint statement issued by the two leaders underscored “the importance of peace and stability across the Taiwan strait” and encouraged “the peaceful resolution of cross-strait issues”.It was the first time since 1969 that Washington and Tokyo had referred to Taiwan in a written statement, a move that some saw as a manifestation of the US’s unity with one of its most significant allies in the region.Analysts said such a public position on an extremely sensitive subject was unlikely to be found in Moon’s discussion with Biden this week, even though a recent Pew poll showed that 75% of South Koreans feel “somewhat” or “very unfavourable” towards China.Japan and South Korea confront a common dilemma when it comes to China. They are both key US allies, but both trade heavily with China, said Haruko Satoh of the Osaka School of International Public Policy in Japan, who studies Korea and Japan in the evolving China-US relations.“[But] if the US-China competition is a given, Japan is more of a balancing power in these new dynamics because of its size of population and economy. By contrast, Korea is a much more vulnerable player, especially considering how dependent South Korea is on China’s vast market,” she said.For South Korea and Japan, China and then the US are the top two export markets. But Seoul’s economy is even more heavily dependent on Beijing, accounting for nearly 26% of South Korea’s exports last year, followed by the US at 14.5%. Japan exported 22% of its goods to China last year, with 18.5% to the US.“When it comes to China, South Korea takes a two-pronged approach that pleases both Beijing and Washington,” said Ramon Pacheco Pardo, the KF-VUB Korea chair at the Brussels School of Governance.“But the bottom line of Moon’s approach is that he is not going to criticise China so publicly as other US allies have done,” said Pacheco Pardo. “In some ways it shows Biden the limits to how much his allies are willing to be openly critical of China on things such as human rights.”Ahead of Moon’s visit, his government announced that South Korea would “partially” join the US-led quadrilateral security dialogue (Quad) by cooperating with the forum on coronavirus vaccines, climate change and new technologies. It is noticeable that the security aspect of this involvement is missing.Beijing has repeatedly accused Quad of a US-led clique that reflects Washington’s “cold war mentality”. It has also urged Seoul to clarify its position on it. A ruling party official told Korean press that the US had been asking Seoul to join, “but we think we can cooperate with the Quad countries on a case-by-case basis in fields where we have a contribution to make”.This half-in, half-out approach has so far proved less direct and confrontational to China – and to some extent more effective, according to Pacheco Pardo. It also reflects old lessons from the past that still cast a shadow over South Korea’s China policy.Five years ago, when Seoul agreed to host the US anti-missile system Terminal High Altitude Area Defence (Thaad), China came up with a host of measures in what analysts believed was economic retaliation. Beijing saw the ultimate target of Thaad as China itself.One of South Korea’s biggest companies, Lotte, had several of its stores in China shut down overnight for agreeing a land swap deal with the South Korean government for the deployment of Thaad. Online and offline boycotts ensued by Chinese consumers. Chinese tourists – who once flooded the streets of Seoul and Jeju Island – disappeared.Tellingly, Washington provided little support to Seoul on this matter. “South Korean policymakers felt abandoned at the time. They will now think that if previous US administrations didn’t support South Korea under such circumstances, why would the current Biden administration do so when it happens again?” said Pacheco Pardo.John Nilsson-Wright, a Korea Foundation Korea fellow at the London-based thinktank Chatham House, said: “That is precisely why it’s harder for Seoul to push a security line against China if Beijing holds the bigger sway in market access.”Shortly after the Thaad saga, South Korea’s then foreign minister, Kang Kyung-wha, laid out three “noes” in parliament. Two of them were no additional deployment of Thaad, and no forming a military alliance with the US and Japan.Of course, the issue of North Korea and China’s role in it also sways Moon’s thinking. But there is another reason that could explain his approach to the US and China, according to Nilsson-Wright.“Like many countries, South Korea has also been asking itself: what if a ‘Trump 2.0’ turns up in the next few years? This would then put South Korea in an even more awkward position having been caught in the middle.” More
