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      America’s democracy is in crisis – how can Joe Biden fix voting rights?

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      When Joe Biden is inaugurated next month, he will inherit an America where democracy is in crisis.The 2020 election exposed the urgent need to protect the right to vote in America. Throughout the year, voters waited hours in line to cast their ballots, some until the early hours of the morning. Democrats and voting rights groups brought an explosion of lawsuits seeking to ease restrictions around mail-in voting as Republicans around the country refused to budge.The president-elect’s ability to fix these problems hinges significantly on whether or not Democrats win two runoff Senate races in Georgia, giving them full control of Congress and the White House. If Democrats do take full control, they are likely to move sweeping voting reforms, including requiring automatic voter registration across the country and restoring the full protections of the Voting Rights Act.But if Democrats fail to retake the Senate, Biden will be more limited in what he can do to fix voting rights. The US constitution gives the president almost no power over elections, instead entrusting that authority to state legislatures and Congress. Nonetheless, there are a few key areas where Biden could act unilaterally.2020 censusBiden may immediately have the opportunity to undo some of Donald Trump’s unprecedented meddling in the 2020 census, the critical decennial survey that determines how many seats in Congress each state gets and how $1.5tn in federal funds get allocated. Even after the Census Bureau faced severe delays, the Trump administration has rushed the agency to complete its work before Trump leaves office, raising significant questions about the quality and accuracy of the census data.The rush is probably linked to an executive order the president issued last summer, seeking to exclude undocumented immigrants from the data used to apportion congressional seats. The US government has long allocated congressional seats based on the total population and Trump’s change would probably cause immigrant-rich states like California and Texas to lose congressional seats while benefiting conservative, whiter places. The US supreme court recently dismissed a lawsuit challenging the measure, saying it was premature, but a majority of the justices did not weigh in on the merits.The Census Bureau recently disclosed, however, it may not be able to deliver apportionment data to Trump before he leaves office. If Biden takes office before the data is produced, he could rescind Trump’s memo order undocumented people excluded from the apportionment count. Even if Trump sends the data, there may be procedural mechanisms for the US House to invite the new president to revise it.Either way, the Biden administration will take on a census “that faced unprecedented disruption due to the pandemic, but also because of unprecedented political interference in the modern era”, said Terri Ann Lowenthal, a census consultant.“I think the Biden administration rightly can, and should, look at ways that the current administration’s actions may have affected decisions by career Census Bureau officials to ensure the most accurate and high quality census possible,” Lowenthal said. “And if the new administration determines that the Census Bureau wasn’t able to do its best work, free from political or partisan considerations, I think the new administration would be justified in directing the Census Bureau, through the commerce secretary, to revisit whatever work it’s already done.”Expanding voter registrationThe constitution allows each US state to set its own voter registration rules, but Biden could use an existing federal law to significantly expand voter registration opportunities. A 1993 statute, the National Voter Registration Act, requires nearly every state to offer people the opportunity to register to vote when they interact with the DMV and other state agencies.Federal agencies, however, like the Department of Veterans Affairs, Social Security Administration and the Indian Health Service, can choose to offer voter registration services if a state requests it, but are not required to do so. Biden could change that and issue an executive order requiring federal agencies to accept if a state asks them to serve as a voter registration agency under the law.“That would go a long way to addressing the fact that there are tens of millions of eligible citizens who are not on the rolls,” said Chiraag Bains, director of legal strategies at Demos, a civil rights thinktank that has advocated for the change.Such a change could make a big difference for Native Americans, a group for whom voter turnout has historically lagged behind national rates. The Indian Health Service, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, provides medical care to approximately 2.5 million Native Americans and Alaska Natives. Designating US Customs and Immigration Services a voter registration agency under the law could also expand voter registration for the nearly quarter-million people who become naturalized citizens each year, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.The Department of JusticeSince Trump took office, the voting section at the Department of Justice (DoJ), charged with enforcing America’s most powerful voting rights laws, has not made much of an effort to protect voting rights. In fact, the department has been nearly silent on the topic. The only high-profile cases the department has been involved in have been ones where it has aligned with states to defend voting restrictions, including Ohio’s aggressive voter purge policy and Texas’ voter ID law.As president, Biden will appoint both an attorney general and someone to oversee the department’s civil rights division, which houses the voting section. Both of those officials could signal that voting rights enforcement is a major priority for the department and push the department to be more aggressive in bringing voting rights suits.The justice department’s absence in the voting rights arena makes a big difference, former department officials and civil rights advocates told the Guardian earlier this year. The justice department has significant resources to bring voting rights cases and can deter bad actors from passing measures that make it harder to vote.The justice department also represents the views of the United States, carries credibility in court that attracts the attention of judges. The justice department does not typically get involved in many voting rights disputes, but when it does, courts listen.“It’s not going to be easy. The courts have gotten considerably more conservative and hostile to voting rights claims. But the justice department has to be a player in this and it’ll be good to have them on the right side of voting rights cases again,” Bains said. More

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      Trickle-down economics doesn't work but build-up does – is Biden listening? | Robert Reich

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      How should the huge financial costs of the pandemic be paid for, as well as the other deferred needs of society after this annus horribilis?Politicians rarely want to raise taxes on the rich. Joe Biden promised to do so but a closely divided Congress is already balking.That’s because they’ve bought into one of the most dangerous of all economic ideas: that economic growth requires the rich to become even richer. Rubbish.Economist John Kenneth Galbraith once dubbed it the “horse and sparrow” theory: “If you feed the horse enough oats, some will pass through to the road for the sparrows.”We know it as trickle-down economics.In a new study, David Hope of the London School of Economics and Julian Limberg of King’s College London lay waste to the theory. They reviewed data over the last half-century in advanced economies and found that tax cuts for the rich widened inequality without having any significant effect on jobs or growth. Nothing trickled down.Meanwhile, the rich have become far richer. Since the start of the pandemic, just 651 American billionaires have gained $1tn of wealth. With this windfall they could send a $3,000 check to every person in America and still be as rich as they were before the pandemic. Don’t hold your breath.You don’t need a doctorate in ethical philosophy to think that now might be a good time to redistribute some of richesStock markets have been hitting record highs. More initial public stock offerings have been launched this year than in over two decades. A wave of hi-tech IPOs has delivered gushers of money to Silicon Valley investors, founders and employees.Oh, and tax rates are historically low.Yet at the same time, more than 20 million Americans are jobless, 8 million have fallen into poverty, 19 million are at risk of eviction and 26 million are going hungry. Mainstream economists are already talking about a “K-shaped” recovery – the better-off reaping most gains while the bottom half continue to slide.You don’t need a doctorate in ethical philosophy to think that now might be a good time to tax and redistribute some of the top’s riches to the hard-hit below. The UK is already considering an emergency tax on wealth.The president-elect has rejected a wealth tax, but maybe he should be even more ambitious and seek to change economic thinking altogether.The practical alternative to trickle-down economics might be called build-up economics. Not only should the rich pay for today’s devastating crisis but they should also invest in the public’s long-term wellbeing. The rich themselves would benefit from doing so, as would everyone else.At one time, America’s major political parties were on the way to embodying these two theories. Speaking to the Democratic national convention in 1896, populist William Jennings Bryan noted: “There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that, if you will only legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea, however, has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous, their prosperity will find its way up through every class which rests upon them.”Build-up economics reached its zenith in the decades after the second world war, when the richest Americans paid a marginal income tax rate of between 70% and 90%. That revenue helped fund massive investment in infrastructure, education, health and basic research – creating the largest and most productive middle class the world had ever seen.But starting in the 1980s, America retreated from public investment. The result is crumbling infrastructure, inadequate schools, wildly dysfunctional healthcare and public health systems and a shrinking core of basic research. Productivity has plummeted.Yet we know public investment pays off. Studies show an average return on infrastructure investment of $1.92 for every public dollar invested, and a return on early childhood education of between 10% and 16% – with 80% of the benefits going to the general public.The Covid vaccine reveals the importance of investments in public health, and the pandemic shows how everyone’s health affects everyone else’s. Yet 37 million Americans still have no health insurance. A study in the Lancet estimates Medicare for All would prevent 68,000 unnecessary deaths each year, while saving money.If we don’t launch something as bold as a Green New Deal, we’ll spend trillions coping with ever more damaging hurricanes, wildfires, floods and rising sea levels.The returns from these and other public investments are huge. The costs of not making them are astronomical.Trickle-down economics is a cruel hoax, while the benefits of build-up economics are real. At this juncture, between a global pandemic and the promise of a post-pandemic world, and between the administrations of Trump and Biden, we would be well-served by changing the economic paradigm from trickle down to build up. More

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      'Folks, we're in crisis': Joe Biden introduces environmental advisers

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      President-elect Joe Biden announced a racially diverse slate of environmental advisers on Saturday, to help his administration confront what he called “the existential threat of our time, climate change”.Biden touted his selection of Deb Haaland as the first Native American secretary of the interior, which has wielded influence over the nation’s tribes for generations.North Carolina official Michael Regan is slated to be the first African American man to run the Environmental Protection Agency. A state environmental head since 2017, he has made his name pursuing clean-ups of industrial toxins and helping low-income and minority communities significantly affected by pollution.“Already there are more people of color in our cabinet than any cabinet ever,” Biden said. Six members of his proposed cabinet are African American.His commitment to diverse picks including a record number of women, he said, “opens doors and includes the full range of talents that we have in this nation”.“We literally have no time to waste,” Biden told reporters in Wilmington, Delaware, citing out-of-control wildfires that have devastated the western states, tropical storms that “pummelled” the south, and record floods and droughts that have ravaged the agricultural midwest.“Folks, we’re in a crisis,” Biden said. “Just like we need a unified national response to Covid-19, we need a unified national response to climate change. We need to meet the moment with the urgency it demands, as we would during any national emergency.”Biden’s approach is a shift from that of Donald Trump, whose presidency has been marked by efforts to boost oil and gas production while rolling back government measures intended to safeguard the environment. The Trump administration is seeking to start as many initiatives as possible before Biden takes power.Biden, who has said he will seek US re-entry into the Paris climate deal, from which Trump withdrew, will therefore try to undo or block as much of Trump’s work as possible. There also will be an emphasis on looking out for low-income, working class and minority communities hit hardest by fossil fuel pollution and climate change.Biden called his team “brilliant, qualified, tested and barrier-busting”.The former two-term Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm is in line to be energy secretary. Biden’s nominee to head the Council on Environmental Quality is Brenda Mallory. The CEQ oversees environmental reviews for virtually all major infrastructure projects and advises the president on major environmental issues. If confirmed, Mallory would be the first African American to hold the position since it was created more than 50 years ago.Two members of the team do not require Senate confirmation. They are Gina McCarthy, as national climate adviser, and Ali Zaidi, her deputy. McCarthy was EPA administrator from 2013 to 2017, during Barack Obama’s second term.Biden has promised to make tackling the climate crisis one of the pillars of his administration. But with a slim majority in the House of Representatives and control of the Senate undecided, he and his team may have to turn away from Congress and instead rely on rules from regulatory agencies to enact sweeping change.The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report More

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      Joe Biden will face an inbox of complex foreign policy problems from the start

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      Joe Biden’s foreign policy in-tray is only looking more difficult as he approaches inauguration day – even as the US still confronts the pressing issue of record coronavirus deaths and infections.The massive and ongoing hack of US federal agencies – blamed on Russia – has so far elicited no response from Donald Trump, who has a long history of denying or downplaying Russian interventions.Iran, say reports, has restarted work on its nuclear site at Fordo.Then there is the knotty issue of what direction relations with China will follow after four years of mounting friction with Trump’s Washington.On top of all that add North Korea, which – despite Trump’s flip-flopping between threats and craven courting – now has both longrange missile capabilities on top of being a nuclear power, a huge failure in terms of US longterm policy.Some hangovers of the Trump era will be easier to fix – not least rapidly rejoining the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Accord. But the thorniest issues are likely to be circumscribed by the overwhelming pressure of domestic considerations – especially if Republicans retain control of the Senate and continue in a spirit of obstructionism.Most pressing right now, however, is how to respond to Russia if its agencies are confirmed as being behind the latest hack.In the aftermath of the SolarWinds hack, Biden has signaled that he is considering a far more proactive response to state-sponsored hacking.“We need to disrupt and deter our adversaries from undertaking significant cyber attacks in the first place,” Biden said in a statement.“Our adversaries should know that, as president, I will not stand idly by in the face of cyber assaults on our nation.”What is less clear is what that means in practical terms. One first step would be for the incoming administration to explicitly point the finger of blame.“I would imagine that the incoming administration wants a menu of what the options are and then is going to choose,” said Sarah Mendelson, a Carnegie Mellon University public policy professor and former US ambassador to the UN’s Economic and Social Council.“Is there a graduated assault? Is there an all-out assault? How much out of the gate do you want to do?”In some respects, the hack – if formally laid at the feet of the Kremlin – may offer an opportunity for Biden not only to draw a clear line with Trump’s dealings with Putin but also to carve out a more muscular response than Barack Obama managed after Russian interference in the 2016 election.Iran is more complex.While Tehran has indicated that it was keen quickly to reopen talks with the US about the nuclear deal, it has also used Washington’s withdrawal from nuclear deal to build up its bargaining chips again in terms of stockpiles of nuclear material and allegedly undertaking new work.Biden will also be confronted by the same lobbying from Israel and Republicans in Congress who set themselves against the original Iran nuclear agreement – and who will remain determined to undermine any new version of the deal.All of which poses the question of how Biden will run his foreign policy confronted with so many challenges.Biden’s instincts for a well-managed technocratic foreign policy are heavily oriented toward longstanding democratic institutions and alliances. But as Thomas Wright, a senior fellow in the Project on International Order and Strategy at the Brookings Institution, wrote in a paper in November, the current moment may call for a more aggressive approach not least on China.Biden has indicated that he sometimes chafed against Obama’s more cautious approach.Perhaps the biggest question relates to this.The isolationism and withdrawal from the world of the Trump years built on trends already apparent under his predecessor – not least Obama’s reluctance to get further entangled in the Middle East in Syria. In that respect, the domestic foreign policy consensus that Biden grew up with may no longer actually exist.“[Biden] obviously trusts many of Obama’s senior officials and is proud of the administration’s record. At the same time, he chafed against Obama’s caution and incrementalism – for example, Biden wanted to send lethal assistance to Ukraine, when Obama did not,” wrote Wright.“Biden has spoken more explicitly than Obama about competition with China and Russia, and he favours a foreign policy that works for the [US] middle class.”Again, Wright sees an opportunity in the policy on China if Biden chooses a tougher approach than Obama, who he served under.“Biden should use competition with China as a bridge to Senate Republicans. Their instinct may be obstructionist, particularly because Trump is pressuring them not to recognize Biden’s win as legitimate, but many of them also know that the US cannot afford four years of legislative gridlock if it is to compete with China.” More

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      From A Very Stable Genius to After Trump: 2020 in US politics books

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      A long time ago, in 1883, a future president (Woodrow Wilson, a subject of this year’s reckonings) studied political science at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, in a classroom in which was inscribed the slogan “History is Past Politics, Politics is Present History”, attributed to Sir John Seeley, a Cambridge professor.That was before the era of the made-for-campaign book.Politics books in this election year fell into three broad categories. The ordinary, ranging from “meeting-and-tells” to campaign biographies that outlived their relevance. The interesting, those which made tentative starts at history or contained some important revelations. And the significant, those few whose value should live past this year because they actually changed the narrative – or are simply good or important reads.Perhaps unsurprisingly, the books also fell in descending categories numerically. Carlos Lozada of the Washington Post read 150 books on Donald Trump and the Trump era for his own book, What Were We Thinking. Virtually all readers, however, will be content with simply a “non-zero” number, to quote a Trump campaign lawyer.First, the ephemera and the expected offerings of any election year. Scandals in and out of government; tales of the extended Trump family; attempts at self-justification; books, some entertaining, by correspondents; how-to guides to politics meant to be read and applied before November.The permutations and penumbras of the 2016 campaign continued to produce new books: Peter Strozk’s Compromised is the story of the origin of the investigation into the Trump campaign from one FBI agent’s perspective, strong stuff and persuasive though omitting facts inconvenient to him. Rick Gates’ Wicked Game contains some new inside scoop, but the real stuff presumably went to the Mueller investigation of which Strzok was briefly a part. Donald Trump Jr’s Liberal Privilege had a double mission: to encourage votes for the father in 2020 and perhaps for the son in 2024. American Crisis, New York governor Andrew Cuomo’s early book on the coronavirus outbreak, highlighted his programmatic vision rather than soaring prose, a choice appropriate for the year but quickly forgotten as the pandemic rages on.Second come those books that made one sit up a bit to pay attention: a new insight, important facts revealed; “worth a detour”, in the language of the Michelin guides. Psychologist and presidential niece Mary Trump’s Too Much and Never Enough explained the pain of the Trump family over two generations and how that pain has influenced our national life for ill. David Frum was among the first to predict Trump’s authoritarian dangers. This year, Trumpocalpyse, well-written and insightful as always, focused on the attacks on the rule of law and “white ethnic chauvinism” as hallmarks of Trumpism, whether its supporters are poor or elite. Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker, Pulitzer-winning Post reporters, chronicled Trump more deeply and successfully than most in A Very Stable Genius. Trump’s anger at the book showed they hit their target.Stuart Stevens’ It Was All a Lie takes Republican history back a few decades in a punchy mea culpa whose themes will be important in the debate over the future of the GOP. Among the Democrats, a rare good work by a politician, Stacey Abrams’ Our Time Is Now, as well as her triumph in political organizing in Georgia, marks her as an important force.For quality in financial journalism and the importance of its topic, not least to current and future investigations of Trump and the Trump Organization, Dark Towers by David Enrich on Deutsche Bank offers as full an analysis of the bank and its relation to Trump as is likely to be public absent a further court case in New York.Andrew Weissmann, a senior prosecutor with the Mueller investigation, wrote Where Law Ends, a strongly-written account in which he regrets his boss not having pursued further, notably in not issuing a subpoena to Trump and then in not making a formal determination as to whether the president would be charged with obstruction of justice. Weissmann’s frustration is understandable, but readers may judge for themselves how fair or not he is to the pressures and formal restrictions on Mueller himself.There is a subcategory here, of books on foreign and security policy. HR McMaster’s Battlegrounds attempts to explain his working theories (“strategic empathy”) modified for current realities and arguing against American retrenchment and isolation. In The Room Where It Happened, former national security adviser John Bolton told of Trump begging for China’s assistance and wrote that Trump was not “fit for office” – the tale would have been better told to the House impeachment committee. David Rohde’s In Deep demolished the theory of the “deep state”. Barry Gewen delivered a new biography of Henry Kissinger’s life and work. Traitor, by David Rothkopf, sought to chronicle the Trump administration while seeking to reverse its effects and giving a history of American traitors.Finally, the significant – those few books that contributed importantly to the year’s narrative, or that deserve a reading next year.There was another Bob Woodward book, Rage – with tapes. The big news was that Trump was aware of the dangers of Covid-19 yet chose not to publicize them and that Dan Coats, then director of national intelligence, thought Putin had something on Trump. Woodward got the stories others chased. Michael Schmidt’s Donald Trump v the United States is another serious book, with a strong argument of how deeply the attacks on the rule of law by the Trump administration, notably by Trump himself, threaten democracy. Schmidt’s recounting of efforts to prosecute Hillary Clinton and James Comey are sobering, and his revelations on how the Mueller investigation was narrowed to focus on criminality rather than Russian influence in 2016 form a useful corrective to Weissmann.Politics meets history in a few volumes, notably Thomas Frank’s plea against populism, The People, No, contrasting Trump unfavorably with FDR. Peter Baker and Susan Glasser teamed for a masterpiece biography of former secretary of state James Baker, The Man Who Ran Washington, that reminds us what (and whom) the Republican party used to call leadership. It’s a serious book that recalls Baker, Gerald Ford’s campaign manager in 1976, did not challenge the election result because Ford lost the popular vote. It also shows the truth in Seeley’s aphorism about the relation of politics and history, with many insights into one of the best recent practitioners of politics, fondly remembered for his statesmanship at the end of the cold war.Molly Ball’s well-researched and enjoyable biography of Nancy Pelosi makes sense of the most powerful woman in American history. Thomas Rid’s Active Measures, on disinformation and political warfare – Clausewitz for the cyber era – finds fresh urgency in light of recent revelations about major cyberattacks on the US government.Two books merit a final mention. As the Trump administration comes to a close, Ruth Ben-Ghiat analysed Trump’s actions and personality from the comparative perspective of fascist leaders since Mussolini and chillingly noted not only the actions that pointed to authoritarianism, but how deep the danger of going down that path.Strongmen is a vital book and a warning. Ben-Ghiat sees in Trump a “drive to control and exploit everyone and everything for personal gain. The men, women and children he governs have value in his eyes only insofar as they fight his enemies and adulate him publicly. Propaganda lets him monopolize the nation’s attention, and virility comes into play as he poses as the ideal take-charge man.” Dehumanizing rhetoric and actions against immigrants (and even members of Congress) and appointments of people whose motivation was loyalty rather than law has real cost to a political system whose fragility at points is evident. It takes both individual action and courageous will to preserve democracy.On a happier note, Bob Bauer and Jack Goldsmith in After Trump offer a legal, sometimes quite technical roadmap to reform of many norms of government that have been eroded. Some are obvious, others will prove controversial, but let this urgent discussion begin with Congress and the Biden administration.Of which, this year also saw the publication of A Promised Land, the first volume of memoirs from Barack Obama, whom the new president served as vice-president. Well-written despite being policy heavy, at times deeply moving, at others not as detailed as many readers might wish (despite its length), Obama is reflective both about the nature of power and about himself. More, his book serves once again to remind the world of the contrast between him and his successor. He is rightly proud to have written it – and to have written it by hand, to encourage his own deep thoughts about his presidency and the country he was honored, and sometimes troubled, to lead.To learn more about the president to come, Evan Osnos’ Joe Biden: American Dreamer is an excellent place to start: his political skills, life tragedies and conviviality are here in equal measure. Osnos ends with a Biden speech about dispelling America’s “season of darkness” – a fervent hope for the new year ahead. More

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      Dr Jill Biden says op-ed attack a surprise – but won't let president-elect fight back

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      Dr Jill Biden has said her doctorate, the subject of a controversial opinion column in the Wall Street Journal, is one the achievements of which she is most proud. “That was such a surprise,” she told CBS Late Show host Stephen Colbert on Thursday, seated next to her husband, Joe Biden. “It was really the tone of it … He called me ‘kiddo’. One of the things that I’m most proud of is my doctorate. I mean, I worked so hard for it.”Writing for the Journal, Joseph Epstein, a former adjunct professor at Northwestern University, suggested her doctorate in education from the University of Delaware did not entitle her to use the honorific “Dr”, as she was not medically qualified. Her use of “Dr” therefore “feels fraudulent, not to say a touch comic”, he wrote.The column met with widespread outrage and accusations of sexism, as well as delight in the apparent hypocrisy of many attendant rightwing attacks. The Journal’s editorial page editor defended the column, calling its critics “overwrought”.Dr Biden’s thesis was on maximising student retention in community colleges. She also has two Masters degrees. She has said she will continue to work in education while she is first lady.“I taught all eight years while I was second lady, right,” she told Colbert, referring to the eight years in which her husband was vice-president to Barack Obama.“I’m really looking forward to being first lady and doing the things that I did as second lady. Carrying on with military families and education and free community college, cancer [research] that, you know, Joe and I have both worked on. And then I’m going to teach as well.”She also said her husband had attended when she defended her doctoral thesis – “I got to hand her her doctorate on the stage, University of Delaware,” he said – and expressed thanks to those who defended her against Epstein’s attack.“Look at all the people who came out in support of me,” she said. “I mean, I am so grateful and I was, you know, I was just overwhelmed by how gracious people were.”Colbert asked the president-elect if the column had made him want to stand up for his wife, “to like get out the pool chain and go full Corn Pop on these people”.That was a reference to remarks for which he was criticised in the Democratic primary, when he reminisced about facing down a bully at a pool in the Delaware of his youth.The president-elect seemed tempted, but Dr Biden said: “The answer is no.”He said: “I’ve been suppressing my Irishness for a long time.”He was also asked if he will be willing to work with Republicans who have attacked him and particularly his son, Hunter Biden.“If it benefits the country, yes, I really mean it,” he said. “It doesn’t mean I wasn’t angry. This doesn’t mean if I were back in the days in high school, I wouldn’t say, ‘Come here, you know, and go a round.”Perhaps sensing a relapse – Biden began his presidential run saying he wanted to fight Donald Trump – Dr Biden interjected again.“But you have to take the high road,” she said. More

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      Washington’s Sanctions on Turkey Are Another Gift to Putin

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      The latest sanctions against Turkey introduced by Washington on December 13 were invoked under the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, a US federal law that imposes economic sanctions on Iran, Russia and North Korea. The act came into effect in August 2017. This is the first time it has been used against an ally and, what makes it even more remarkable, an ally who is also a NATO member.

      Why Populists at the Helm Are Bad for the Economy

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      As reported by AFP, “The sanctions target Turkey’s Presidency of Defense Industries, the country’s military procurement agency, its chief Ismail Demir and three other senior officials. The penalties block any assets the four officials may have in U.S. jurisdictions and bar their entry into the U.S. They also include a ban on most export licenses, loans and credits to the agency.”

      Long Anticipated

      The decision, long anticipated — and long resisted by President Donald Trump — came about because of Ankara’s refusal to back down from the purchase of the Russian S-400 missile defense system. Turkey announced back in 2017 it was going ahead with the deal, after feeling it had been rebuffed in its efforts to acquire the US Patriot system at what it considered a fair price and by the refusal of the US to allow for a transfer of the system’s technology.

      Tied into the politics swirling around the S-400 is the F-35, the stealth fighter jet the sale of which to the United Arab Emirates has caused ripples of anxiety in Israel. And given the ambitions of and mutual animosities between Mohammed bin Zayed, the Abu Dhabi crown prince and de facto UAE ruler, and Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, there are, without doubt, similar feelings of anxiety in Ankara, though for different reasons.

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      The Americans took the sale of 100 F-35s to Turkey off the table because of concerns that the presence of the S-400 would potentially enable the Russians to acquire in-depth knowledge of the stealth fighter. In July last year, the White House released a statement that said, in part, that “Turkey’s decision to purchase Russian S-400 air defense systems renders its continued involvement with the F-35 impossible. The F-35 cannot coexist with a Russian intelligence-collection platform that will be used to learn about its advanced capabilities.”

      It was a decision that President Trump, eyeing the half a billion dollars the deal was worth, only grudgingly agreed to. “It’s not fair,” he said. And he groused: “Turkey is very good with us, very good, and we are now telling Turkey that because you have really been forced to buy another missile system, we’re not going to sell you the F-35 fighter jets. It’s a very tough situation that they’re in, and it’s a very tough situation that we’ve been placed in, the United States.”

      Trump, it hardly needs to be said, blamed the Obama administration, claiming his predecessor had blocked the sale. As ever with this president, that’s not true. (For readers who are interested in the actual story, the defense and security site War on the Rocks provides a blow by blow account which can be found here.)

      More in Sorrow

      Though Erdoğan and Trump have had a good relationship, the US president has no time now for anything other than his increasingly pathetic and forlorn crusade to stay in the White House. He couldn’t be bothered to veto the bipartisan decision to invoke sanctions on Turkey. It was left to the outgoing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to try to paper over the cracks. In a statement couched in a tone of “more in sorrow, than in anger,” Pompeo said: “Turkey is a valued ally and an important regional security partner for the United States,” adding that “we seek to continue our decades-long history of productive defense-sector co-operation by removing the obstacle of Turkey’s S-400 possession as soon as possible.”

      The Turks were having none of it. And from them, there was plenty of anger and no sorrow. Calling the decision “inexplicable,” the Turkish Foreign Ministry delivered a blunt rejoinder: “We call on the United States to revise the unjust sanctions (and) to turn back from this grave mistake as soon as possible. Turkey is ready to tackle the issue through dialogue and diplomacy in a manner worthy of the spirit of alliance. (The sanctions) will inevitably negatively impact our relations, and (Turkey) will retaliate in a manner and time it sees appropriate.”

      Purring like the proverbial Cheshire cat was Vladimir Putin. The sanctions, though less harsh than might have been anticipated, play well to his strategy of pulling a NATO member, one with the second-largest standing army in the pact, closer to Moscow. Building on initiatives in Syria where Russian and Turkish forces are jointly policing a shaky ceasefire and on the deal the two countries brokered in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, the Russian president has further strengthened his hand.

      Faced with an already challenging Middle East portfolio, it is yet another Trumpian mess that the incoming president, Joe Biden, and his pick as secretary of state Antony Blinken, will have to contend with.

      *[This article was originally published by Arab Digest.]

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