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      Trump ‘Could Tip an Already Fragile World Order Into Chaos’

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      Two weeks ago, The Washington Post published “A Trump Dictatorship Is Increasingly Inevitable. We Should Stop Pretending,” by Robert Kagan.Four days later, The Times published “Why a Second Trump Presidency May Be More Radical Than His First,” by Charlie Savage, Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman, one in an ongoing series of articles.On the same day, The Atlantic released the online version of its January/February 2024 issue; it included 24 essays under the headline “If Trump Wins.”While the domestic danger posed by a second Trump administration is immediate and pressing, Russia, China, North Korea and Iran — sometimes referred to as the “alliance of autocracies” — have an interest in weakening the global influence of the United States and in fracturing its ties to democracies around the globe.“Clearly, this coalition threatens global security and deterrence and requires policies suited to the assaults Russia and China regularly conduct,” Stephen Blank, a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute, wrote in a recent column published in The Hill, “The ‘No Limits’ Russo-Chinese Alliance Is Taking Flight.”In a 2020 essay, Michael O’Hanlon, the director of foreign policy research at Brookings, pointed out that “many Americans” question whethera global economy and alliances around the world are good for them. As the election of Donald Trump had proved in 2016, numerous voters are willing to rethink our place in the world. If we do not listen to that message, the entire domestic basis for a strong United States and an engaged foreign policy leadership role could evaporate.This conversation, “more than any other,” O’Hanlon wrote, “is the debate we need to have as a country.”If Donald Trump is re-elected, how will the former president — who has openly praised dictators like Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, who has questioned the value of NATO and who has denigrated key allies — deal with the “the 4 plus 1 threat matrix — the five main threats of Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and transnational violent extremism or terrorism”?To gauge the range of possible developments in a second Trump administration, I asked specialists in international affairs a series of questions. On the basic question — how damaging to American foreign policy interests would a second Trump administration be? — the responses ranged from very damaging to marginally so.Constanze Stelzenmüller, director of the Center on the United States and Europe at Brookings, is quite worried.Asked if Trump would withdraw from NATO — a major blow to European allies and a huge boost for Vladimir Putin — Stelzenmüller replied by email:Very likely. We know that from [former ambassador to the United Nations, John] Bolton’s book and from recent reporting out of Trump’s inner circle. Sumantra Maitra’s dormant NATO article, much read at NATO, suggests a suspension or withdrawal-lite option — but even that would fatally undercut the credibility of Article V.(Article V of the NATO agreement asserts that “the parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them.”)Sumantra Maitra is a visiting senior fellow at Citizens for Renewing America, a pro-Trump think tank. His essay calls for retrenchment of America’s financial and logistical support of NATO, just short of withdrawal:A much more prudent strategy is to force a Europe defended by Europeans with only American naval presence and as a logistics provider of last resort with the U.S. reoriented toward Asia. West Europe will not be serious about the continent’s defense as long as Uncle Sam is there to break the glass during a fire.Stelzenmüller wrote that she sees little or no chance that a Trump administration would join an alliance of Russia, China, North Korea and other dictatorships, “but would Trump see himself as a friend of the authoritarians? Absolutely.” Under Trump, “the spectrum would clearly shift to a much more transactionalist, pro-authoritarian or even predatory mode. That alone could tip an already fragile world order into chaos.”Sarah Kreps, a political scientist at Cornell, suggested that “if past is prologue, we could expect Trump to harp on the issue of free riding but not actually do anything different. He’ll probably do a lot of heckling that’s unmatched by actual policy change.”In this context, Kreps continued, “it will be left to the career diplomats to do the heavy lifting behind the scenes to provide the alliance glue while Trump is hammering the capitals about burden sharing.”How about NATO?“The alliance has such deep roots now and has ebbed and flowed in terms of its strength, but the structural factors present right now will be more powerful than any individual president.”I asked Kreps whether it was conceivable that Trump could join a Russia-China-North Korea coalition.“Again, past being prologue here, we have good reason to think that he talks friendly to autocrats, but won’t act.”How would Trump change the role of the United States in foreign affairs?“I would expect to see more of what we saw in the last administration: a lot of bluster, a lot of braggadocious declarations about how countries are taking the United States seriously now, but not a lot of change.”Kreps was the least alarmed of those I contacted concerning a second Trump administration.Philipp Ivanov, a senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute, staked out a middle — but hardly comforting — ground. In an email, he wrote that because of their conflicting interests, “it’s highly unlikely China, Russia, North Korea and Iran will ever form an alliance.”Instead, he described their ties as “a network of highly transactional bilateral relationships — a marriage of convenience — that lacks basic trust, let alone the kind of common strategic vision and military interconnectedness that characterize the U.S. alliances.”Their only commonality, Ivanov argued,is an autocratic or dictatorial governance and a shared objective to disrupt and undermine U.S. power. All four actors realize that individually or together they cannot seriously challenge American hegemony or compete with its alliance system, but they can wreak havoc, threaten and weaken resolve in their respective spheres of interest.The re-election of Trump would, in Ivanov’s view,undermine the significant efforts of the Biden administration to rebuild, strengthen and reimagine American alliance system in Europe and Asia — from rallying the Europeans to support Ukraine to a comprehensive strengthening of strategic and military relations with Korea, Australia, Japan and Philippines to balance Chinese power.Ivanov believes Trump would face insurmountable obstacles if he attempted to withdraw from NATO, but thatUnder Trump, America’s international image in a democratic world is likely to suffer. The biggest risks to U.S. foreign policy are Trump’s disdain for alliances, transactional approach to foreign and security policy, overly aggressive approach to China and Iran, and a more forgiving attitude to Putin and Kim.Pyongyang, Moscow, Beijing and Tehran will cheer his re-election, but its leaders will be quietly anxious about his next moves.Jonathan M. Winer, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for international law enforcement, who is now a scholar at the Middle East Institute, put it this way:Trump’s election would, of course, help Russia, threaten Ukraine and threaten western alliances, starting with NATO itself. Trump has it in for Ukraine, as reflected in the fraying of Ukrainian support within the elements of the Republican congressional caucus that is closest to Trump.Trump has repeatedly expressed his admiration for autocrats. He also already threatened to pull out of NATO during his first term, and attacked democratic European leaders almost as often as he praised the autocratic leadership of China, North Korea, and Russia.Trump is an authoritarian nationalist. He fits right into the mold of the “autocrats,” as his teasing statement to Sean Hannity — and in a very recent Iowa town hall — that he would only behave in a dictatorial fashion on ‘day one’ of his presidency.While it is inconceivable that Trump could realign the United States with China, Russia and North Korea, Winer wrote, “what he could do is make the U.S. ‘neutral,’ just as the American First movement professed ‘neutrality’ in relation to the fascist threat prior to Pearl Harbor.”Some experts pointed out that Trump could make specific policy decisions that might not appear significant to Americans, but that have great consequence for our allies — consequences that could lead in at least one case to further nuclear proliferation.Bruce Bennett, a senior defense analyst at the RAND Corporation, wrote to me in an email that “many in the Republic of Korea national security community are concerned about the North Korean nuclear weapon threat and whether they can really trust the United States security commitment in the aftermath of the U.S. pullout from Afghanistan, which hit the ROK much harder than I think most Americans realize.”Bennett cited the “fear that if Trump is elected president in 2024, he will talk about removing some U.S. forces from Korea. Whether or not such action actually begins, there is a risk that the Republic of Korea would react to such talk by once again starting a covert nuclear weapon development effort.”James Lindsay, senior vice president at the Council on Foreign Relations, referring in an email to the perceived threat emanating from the “alliance of autocrats,” observed:If “alliance” is only intended to mean general cooperation among China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran, then that is clearly happening. North Korea and Iran are supplying Russia with artillery shells and drones. Russia is supplying China with energy. China is supplying Russia with political cover at various international venues over the war in Ukraine.Lindsay argued:Trump could effectively gut NATO simply by saying he will not come to the aid of NATO allies in the event they are attacked. The power of Article V rests on the belief that alliance members, and specifically, the most powerful alliance member, will act when called upon. Destroy that belief and the organization withers. Walking away from Ukraine would damage the alliance as well even though Ukraine is not a member of NATO. Member countries would read it as a signal that Trump is abandoning Europe.One of the major risks posed by a second Trump administration, Lindsay wrote, is thatTrump’s hostility toward alliances, skepticism about the benefits of cooperation writ large, and his belief in the power of unilateral action will lead him to make foreign policy moves that will unintentionally provide strategic windfalls to China, Russia, Iran or North Korea. The scenario in which he withdraws the United States from NATO or says he will not abide by Article V is the most obvious example. His intent will be to save money and/or free the United States from foreign entanglements. But Vladimir Putin would love to see NATO on the ash heap of history.Lindsay described decisions and policies Trump may consider:It’s easy to imagine other steps Trump might take, given his past actions and current rhetoric, that would similarly give advantage to Beijing, Moscow, Tehran or Pyongyang: abandoning Ukraine; questioning the wisdom of defending Taiwan; terminating the alliance with South Korea; ignoring Iranian aggression in the Middle East; recognizing North Korea as a nuclear power; and imposing a 10 percent, across-the-board tariff on all goods.On a larger scale, it would be difficult to overestimate the degree to which a second Trump term would represent a major upheaval in the tenets underlying postwar American foreign policy.Mark Medish is a former senior director of the National Security Council for Russian, Ukrainian and Eurasian Affairs. He argued in an email that “Trump’s rise represented a repudiation of the so-called ‘bipartisan consensus.’ For decades during the Cold War, there was a broad agreement in the US elite and our political culture that we had a clear enemy, the U.S.S.R. and the rest of the Communist bloc.”While there was significant disagreement within this consensus, Medish wrote, “we always knew who the enemy was, whether the Soviet Union or the perpetrators of 9/11.”During the 2016 campaign and his term in office, according to Medish, Trumptook on the establishment and attacked this bipartisan consensus, pointing to failures from Vietnam to Iraq and Afghanistan. The outside world, particularly our rivals and enemies, perceived this shift as a turning point toward U.S. detachment and decline and made them eager to push the envelope — to test whether the U.S. had indeed lost its “strategic depth.”Trump’s re-election, according to Medish, “would provide further evidence — in the eyes of Moscow, Beijing, Pyongyang and Tehran — of U.S. disarray and the decline of the West.”Medish made the claim that “the challenge for the U.S./West is less military/economic than political. If the political and institutional center does not hold, the rest does not matter so much.”Why?Because our unmatchable power and vitality has been civilizational — the West has thrived through organic growth and it has prevailed globally by attraction, not primarily by force or threats. We are not the Roman Empire, we are the Roman Republic. Trump is a Rubicon-crosser not only on foreign policy, but also domestically. This disruption is the biggest threat to our security.Paul Poast, a political scientist at the University of Chicago, forthrightly agreed that “there is absolutely a push against the U.S.-led ‘liberal international order’ and that this push is being led by China, Russia, along with ‘junior partners’ like North Korea and Iran.”Poast, however, disagreed with many of his colleagues on the prospects for NATO under a second Trump administration.Trump had actually become a “NATO fan” by the end of his term. The key is whether NATO allies, and specifically the next Secretary General, take measures that appease Trump’s demands. In many respects, Trump would just be taking to the extreme what the U.S. has long done with NATO: push and manipulate the allies to do what is in the U.S.’s interest.I asked Robert Kagan what foreign policy might look like in a second Trump administration.“What will Trump do? Who knows?,” Kagan replied. “Who knows whether Trump himself has a foreign policy.” Trump “will certainly not have pro-liberal prejudices as most previous U.S. presidents have, at least since World War II. He will make common cause with right-wing forces in Europe, as he did in his first term.”Kagan’s conclusion?“Trump’s foreign policy will be unpredictable because we haven’t had a dictator as commander in chief. It will be uncharted territory.”During Trump’s term in office, virtually everyone — his adversaries, his allies, the media — consistently underestimated his willingness to break rules. He is a man without borders, without conscience, without dignity, ethics or integrity, committed only to what he perceives to be in his own interest. He admires dictators who rule without constraint, and if he believes it would be to his advantage to join them, there is nothing — in his mind or his character — that would stop him.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More

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      Nikki Haley Renews Call for TikTok Ban After Bin Laden Letter Circulates

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      The presidential candidate has argued that social media platforms should better police certain users and content, prompting backlash from some Republican rivals.Nikki Haley ratcheted up her calls this week for the U.S. government to ban TikTok, the Chinese-owned social media platform, after some users, weighing in on the war between Israel and Hamas, promoted “Letter to America,” a text written by Osama bin Laden after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.Ms. Haley, a Republican presidential contender and former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under President Donald J. Trump, argued that the document was another example of foreign adversaries using social media to spread anti-American propaganda to young people.“That’s why you have to ban TikTok,” Ms. Haley said at a town hall in Newton, Iowa, on Friday. “Nepal just came out yesterday, and they’re banning it because they see what’s happening in their country. India did it. Why are we the last ones to do it?”In bin Laden’s letter, the mastermind of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, which killed nearly 3,000 people, defended the terrorists’ actions. He wrote that American taxpayers had been complicit in harming Muslims in the Middle East, including destroying Palestinian homes. He also said that Americans were “servants” to Jews, who controlled the country’s economy and media. Bin Laden was killed by U.S. military and intelligence operatives in 2011.In a statement on X, TikTok responded to Ms. Haley’s calls for a ban — which she also posted on social media Thursday — by saying that the circulation of bin Laden’s letter violated the platform’s rules banning support for terrorism and that it was policing related content accordingly.“We are proactively and aggressively removing this content and investigating how it got onto our platform,” the company said. “The number of videos on TikTok is small and reports of it trending on our platform are inaccurate.”A spokesman for the company told The New York Times on Thursday that most of the views of the videos came after news organizations wrote about them, and that the letter had also “appeared across multiple platforms and the media.”Ms. Haley’s crusade against TikTok has become a flashpoint in the Republican presidential race, coinciding with her rise in the polls. Mr. Trump, her former boss, continues to be the overwhelming front-runner, but Ms. Haley, a former South Carolina governor, is trying to overtake Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida for second place.At the Republican debate last week in Miami, she clashed with Vivek Ramaswamy, the biotech entrepreneur, over calls for a TikTok ban. He mentioned that her daughter had an account on the platform, drawing Ms. Haley’s ire and leading her to call Mr. Ramaswamy “scum.”Ms. Haley has knocked Mr. Ramaswamy for joining TikTok after he had previously referred to the app as “digital fentanyl.” In the days following the debate, she has contended that social media platforms should better police certain users and content, prompting criticism from some of her rivals. Her call on Tuesday for social media companies to verify the identity of users and to bar people from posting anonymously was panned by Mr. DeSantis, Mr. Ramaswamy and others as unconstitutional and a threat to free speech.“You know who were anonymous writers back in the day?” Mr. DeSantis wrote on X. “Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison when they wrote the Federalist Papers.”Ms. Haley told CNBC a day later that her comments were directed at foreign adversaries, not Americans.At town halls for her campaign in Iowa on Thursday and Friday, Ms. Haley continued to press on TikTok and brought up the letter by bin Laden.“Now you have members of our younger generation, they’re saying now they understand why he did it. That’s disgusting,” she said at a town hall in Newton on Friday. “That’s not America doing that. That’s China doing that.”Ms. Haley has assailed what she calls “foreign infiltration” into American society by hostile governments. She has particularly focused on propaganda and disinformation, which she says is being distributed by China, Russia and Iran to young Americans through TikTok and other social media platforms. She has also argued that young Americans are more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause because of “pro-Hamas videos on TikTok.”She has also hammered the rise of Chinese investment in communities across the country, particularly the acquisition of farmland and agricultural technology — an acute anxiety in rural states like Iowa.Linda Schroeder, of Dubuque, said Ms. Haley’s focus on the issue is what put the candidate over the top as her choice.“Why are we allowing it? For them to be here,” Ms. Schroeder said after hearing from Ms. Haley. “I grew up with 14 other siblings on a farm, and we still have the farm, and we’ll keep it.” More

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      Israeli Army Escorts Journalists to Gaza Hospital, and More

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      The New York Times Audio app is home to journalism and storytelling, and provides news, depth and serendipity. If you haven’t already, download it here — it’s available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter.The Headlines brings you the biggest stories of the day from the Times journalists who are covering them, all in about 10 minutes.A view of Al-Shifa Hospital in a darkened Gaza. Israel says Hamas maintains a command center beneath the hospital, a claim rejected by Hamas and hospital officials.Mohammed Saber/EPA, via ShutterstockOn Today’s Episode:The Israeli Army Escorted Times Journalists to Al-Shifa, a Focus of Its Invasion, by Philip P. Pan and Patrick KingsleySantos Won’t Seek Re-election After House Panel Finds Evidence of Crimes, by Grace AshfordSean Combs Is Accused by Cassie of Rape and Years of Abuse in Lawsuit, with Ben SisarioEmily Lang More

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      The War Between Israel and Hamas Is Splintering the Democratic Coalition

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      The Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel and Israel’s retaliatory strikes on Gaza are creating a fissure between Democratic constituencies crucial to President Biden’s campaign for a second term in the White House.The Nov. 2 Quinnipiac University Poll found that half of all voters approved of the way Israel is responding to the Oct. 7 attacks, while 35 percent disapproved. Among all voters, however, one key subgroup dissented — 18-to-34-years-olds — a constituency that provided Biden with enough votes in 2020 to put him over the top. These young voters faulted Israel’s response to the attacks, 52-32 percent.Exit poll data from 2020 shows that Donald Trump beat Biden by small margins among the 60 percent of the electorate that was 45 or older, that Biden won 52-46 among the 23 percent of voters aged 30 to 44 and that the one bloc decisively in favor of Biden was voters aged 18 to 29, who made up 17 percent of the electorate and backed the Democratic nominee 60-36.Perhaps equally significant, in March 2023, more than six months before Hamas’s attack on Israel, Gallup found that “sympathy toward the Palestinians among U.S. adults is at a new high of 31 percent, while the proportion not favoring either side is at a new low of 15 percent. The 54 percent of Americans sympathizing more with the Israelis is similar to last year’s 55 percent, but it is the lowest since 2005.”This shift in American public opinion toward Palestinians provides crucial insight into what my Times colleagues Jennifer Medina and Lisa Lerer wrote on Oct. 20:Progressive Jews who have spent years supporting racial equity, gay and transgender rights, abortion rights and other causes on the American left — including opposing Israeli policies in Gaza and the West Bank — are suddenly feeling abandoned by those who they long thought of as allies. This wartime shift represents a fundamental break within a liberal coalition that has long powered the Democratic Party.There is, Medina and Lerer add:a politically engaged swath of American Jewry who are reaching a breaking point. They have long sought an end to the Israeli government’s occupation of the West Bank and blockade of Gaza, supported a two-state solution and protested the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu.But in the Hamas attacks, many saw an existential threat, evoking memories of the Holocaust and generations of antisemitism, and provoking anxiety about whether they could face attacks in the United States. And they were taken aback to discover that many of their ideological allies not only failed to perceive the same threats but also saw them as oppressors deserving of blame.Bruce Cain, a political scientist at Stanford, replied by email to my question on the domestic political consequences of the violence in the Middle East:For Democrats, the Gaza war exacerbates pre-existing coalitional tensions along age, racial, religious, and ideological lines. The pro-Hamas faction is younger, nonwhite, Muslim and secular, and more progressive. The pro-Israel faction is older, whiter, Jewish and Christian, and more centrist.Biden cannot afford to lose even thin slices of the Democratic electorate, Cain argued: “As the Siena/NYT poll indicates, small swings in turnout of the Democratic base can doom Biden. This is what happened to Hillary behind the blue curtain in 2016.”“The longer and bloodier the war,” Cain added, “the harder it will be for the Democratic coalition.”I asked Norman Ornstein, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, “Do you see the conflict hurting Biden’s prospects or helping them?” He replied by email: “Right now, there is no question it is dividing the Democratic base and hurting Biden’s approval.” But, Ornstein quickly added, “the election is a year away, and, more important, all will be shaped by the outcome of the conflict.”Biden’s support of Israel has produced exceptional, if not unprecedented, dissent among party loyalists and government employees.On Nov. 3, Liz Skalka, Daniel Marans and Akbar Shahid Ahmed reported on the HuffPost website that more than 50 staff members of the Democratic National Committee had signed a letter calling for a cease-fire in Gaza.“As strategic partners to the administration … we feel it is the D.N.C.’s moral obligation to urge President Biden to publicly call for a cease-fire,” they wrote. “With the number of civilian deaths growing rapidly each day, we must be clear: the Israeli government’s unrelenting military bombardment and blockading of vital supplies entering Gaza must end.”Along similar lines, a Nov. 1 Foreign Policy article by Robbie Gramer disclosed that there was a “storm of dissent brewing in the State Department.”A group of State Department employees opposed to administration policies is gathering signatures for a “dissent cable,” Gramer wrote, a formal procedure created by the State Department “to allow its users the opportunity to bring dissenting or alternative views on substantive foreign policy issues.”Gramer reported that “many U.S. diplomats were privately angered, shocked and despondent by what they perceived as a de facto blank check from Washington for Israel to launch a massive military operation in Gaza at an immense humanitarian cost for the besieged Palestinian civilians in Gaza.”In a separate Nov. 3 Foreign Policy article, “More U.S. Officials Are Anonymously Calling for a Gaza Cease-Fire,” Amy Mackinnon and Gramer wrote:Hundreds of USAID (United States Agency for International Development) officials have reportedly signed a letter calling on the Biden administration to push for “an immediate cease-fire and cessation of hostilities” in the Israel-Hamas war, according to a copy of the petition obtained by Foreign Policy.On Nov. 3, 56 Democratic members of the House and two senators wrote to Antony Blinken, the secretary of state, demanding that the administration “make clear that Israel must conduct military operations within the scope of international law and minimize civilian harm.”“We must continue to hold ourselves and our closest allies to the highest standards of conduct,” the authors of the letter went on to say,even at times of great tragedy and violence. While we firmly believe in Israel’s right to defend itself, we are gravely concerned by Israel’s military operation and conduct that fails to limit harm to noncombatants and vulnerable populations. Nearly 9,000 Palestinians have been killed, including over 3,600 children. Abiding by international law is not only morally imperative, but also legally required per international humanitarian law, and strategically important to prevent regional escalation and to preserve global support for Israel’s response to Hamas’s attack.One underlying reason the Israel versus Hamas conflict — including both the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas on Israel and the subsequent Israeli counterattack on Gaza — is particularly problematic for Democrats is that psychological research shows that liberals are more inclined to feel empathy than conservatives.In a May 2018 paper, “Are Liberals and Conservatives Equally Motivated to Feel Empathy Toward Others?” Yossi Hasson, Maya Tamir, Kea S. Brahms, J. Christopher Cohrs and Eran Halperin reported that “on average and across samples, liberals wanted to feel more empathy and experienced more empathy than conservatives did.”Their conclusion found support in a paper that was published in May, “Ideological Values Are Parametrically Associated With Empathy Neural Response to Vicarious Suffering,” by Niloufar Zebarjadi, Eliyahu Adler, Annika Kluge, Mikko Sams and Jonathan Levy of Aalto University in Finland. The five authors used neuroimaging “to reveal an asymmetry in the neural empathy response as a function of political ideology.”The research by Zebarjadi and her four colleagues “revealed a typical rhythmic alpha-band ‘empathy response’ in the temporal-parietal junction. This neural empathy response was significantly stronger in the leftist than in the rightist group” of those studied.Jeremy Konyndyk, who served as the director of USAID’s Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance from 2013-17, gave voice to this empathy in an interview with Politico about the Israel/Hamas conflict:What the rest of the world sees is that when civilian apartment buildings are bombed by Russia in Ukraine, the U.S. government forcefully condemns this as illegitimate. And when they see similar tactics being used by the I.D.F. in Gaza, they see lock-step support from the U.S. government. This dramatically undermines the credibility of international humanitarian law.The fundamental foundation of international law is that certain things are wrong full stop because it happens to humans. That’s why it makes the attacks by Hamas wrong — deeply horrific and a grave violation of international humanitarian law. And that’s why it makes war crimes in response wrong.One of the striking findings in polling conducted in the aftermath of Oct. 7 is how much more supportive young voters are of Hamas and how much less supportive they are of Israel.The Oct. 19 Harvard-Harris poll asked 2,116 registered voters: “In general in this conflict do you side more with Israel or Hamas?”By 84 to 16 percent, voters chose Israel, with everyone 25 or older backing the Jewish state by three to one or better. The one exception was voters 18 to 25, with 52 percent saying they sided with Israel and 48 percent with Hamas.Asked “Do you think the Hamas killing of 1,200 Israeli civilians in Israel can be justified by the grievances of Palestinians or is it not justified?” an overwhelming majority of registered voters surveyed, 76 percent, said it could not be justified; 24 percent said it could be.Among the youngest voters, however, 51 percent of those 18 to 24 said the killing “can be justified by the grievance of Palestinians” and 49 percent said it cannot be. Voters 25 to 34 were split, 48 percent saying the killing of Israelis can be justified, 52 saying it cannot.In researching their March 2022 article, “The Young American Left and Attitudes About Israel,” Laura Royden and Eitan Hersh, political scientists at Harvard and Tufts, “surveyed 3,500 U.S. adults, including oversampling of 2,500 adults aged 18-30” to explore why “young people and the ideological far left have developed distinctly negative views toward Israel.”“In June 2021,” they write, “immediately following armed conflict in Israel and Palestine, liberal Democrats were three times more likely than conservative Republicans to say that the U.S.A. was too supportive of Israel. Three in five Republicans, but only one in five Democrats, agreed in May 2021 that it was very important for the U.S.A. to help protect Israel.”Among Democrats aged 18-35, however, they found that “respondents were three times more likely to say the U.S.A. should lean more toward Palestinians than Israel.”Digging deeper, Royden and Hersh found a clear ideological and age pattern:On both ideological extremes, more young adults than older adults hold an unfavorable view of Israel. Moderate young adult favorable attitudes toward Israel (58 percent) is indistinguishable from moderate older adults (at 62 percent). The difference is largest on the far left, where Israel favorability is 27 percentage points less among younger very liberal adults (at 33 percent) for young adults compared with older adults (at 60 percent). Young very conservative adults are supportive of Israel (66 percent), but substantially less so than older very conservative adults (82 percent). Clearly, the most left-leaning young adults have the lowest rating of Israel.If many young people are disaffected with the Biden administration’s handling of the conflict between Hamas and Israel, their discontent pales in comparison with that of Muslim and Arab Americans.The Arab American Institute commissioned John Zogby Strategies to conduct a survey of 500 Arab Americans between Oct. 23 and Oct. 27. For Biden, the results were striking: “Support for President Biden in the upcoming election has plummeted among Arab Americans voters, dropping from 59 percent in 2020 to 17 percent, a 42-point decrease.”Two-thirds of Arab Americans “have a negative view of President Biden’s response to the current violence in Palestine and Israel,” according to the poll. “A strong majority of Arab Americans believe the U.S. should call for a cease-fire on the current violence.”In terms of partisan identification, Zogby wrote in his summary, the surveymarks the first time in our 26 years of polling Arab American voters in which a majority did not claim to prefer the Democratic Party. In 2008 and 2016, Democrats outnumbered Republicans by two to one. In this poll, 32 percent of Arab Americans identified as Republican as opposed to just 23 percent who identified as Democrats.In 2020, Biden carried Michigan by 154,181 votes. Arab Americans played a significant role in his victory there.Farah Pandith, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, pointed out in an email that until recently, Muslim Americans had become a core Biden constituency:In 2020, American Muslims were involved in fund-raising and volunteering in the Biden campaign. They were mobilizing themselves to get Muslims out to vote, to educate and to — importantly — be publicly seen doing so. With so much hardship in the years post 9/11 and accusations that American Muslims could not be loyal Americans and practicing Muslims, this dedicated effort is compelling. These generations not only wanted to debunk that false narrative, but they wanted to see their candidate win — believing that Biden would understand their lived experience in America in a post 9/11 world and govern accordingly.Now, Pandith wrote, “it is clear that the hard-won trust and warm relationship Biden enjoyed with the vast number of American Muslims has been diminished. For many, their confidence in and loyalty to Biden has seemed to evaporate.”I asked a political operative closely tied to the Biden campaign — who insisted on anonymity in order to speak forthrightly — about the ramifications of the struggle between Israel and Hamas:There are open wounds and we are far from the war’s end. And there are hostages still out there. And Americans both tire and get bored with foreign conflicts after the messy part is done. But I do know one thing: Trump was the president of the Muslim ban and he called for a Muslim ban 2.0, so I don’t think a lot of Arab Americans are going his way. I think there is time for Biden to get them back. Not all of them.Julie Wronski, a political scientist at the University of Mississippi, argued by email that concern over Biden’s problems in dealing with the Mideast conflict may be overblown:Americans traditionally do not hold consistent or well-informed opinions on foreign policy. The further a foreign conflict or global issue is removed from people’s day to day lives, the less they are going to hold any meaningful opinion about it or use it to guide their political preferences.In addition, Wronski continued, “the role of negative partisanship may outweigh Muslim Americans’ criticisms of Biden’s foreign policy.” Some voters may defect to a third-party candidate or abstain from voting, but “a potential second Trump term can be more threatening to Muslim Americans domestically, given Trump’s record and rhetoric toward minority and marginalized groups, than Biden’s foreign policy agenda.”I asked Stephen Ansolabehere, a professor of government at Harvard, for his perspective. He replied to my query by email:My sense right now from our data is that Biden is in a very complicated political situation. Jewish voters, while only 2 percent of the electorate, provided key support (and voted about 70 percent for Biden) in pivotal states, where every group counts. Biden did even better among Muslim voters, winning 90 percent of the vote. Muslims are only about one-half of one percent of the electorate. Both groups are small shares of the overall vote, but they both vote Democratic. Biden risks alienating one Democratic group or the other if this is not handled right.Above all though, the situation in the Middle East is terrible. It is a human tragedy. Every president in modern history has tried to find a resolution to the Israel-Palestine question. Biden now faces the task of containing this conflict so that it does not escalate into a broader Middle East war. There’s not much upside here, politically or morally, just avoiding potentially terrible outcomes.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      The Growing Republican Battle Over War Funding

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      Rob Szypko, Carlos Prieto, Stella Tan and Dan Powell and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicIt’s been one month since the attack on Israel, but Washington has yet to deliver an aid package to its closest ally. The reason has to do with a different ally, in a different war: Speaker Mike Johnson has opposed continued funding for Ukraine, and wants the issue separated from aid to Israel, setting up a clash between the House and Senate.Catie Edmondson, who covers Congress for The Times, discusses the battle within the Republican Party over whether to keep funding Ukraine.On today’s episodeCatie Edmondson, a congressional correspondent for The New York Times.Speaker Mike Johnson’s decision to force a stand-alone vote on aid for Israel has set up a confrontation between the House and Senate over how to fund U.S. allies.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesBackground readingThe Republican-led House approved $14.3 billion for Israel’s war with Hamas, but no further funding for Ukraine.Speaker Johnson’s bill put the House on a collision course with the Senate.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.Catie Edmondson More

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      Joe Biden Knows What He’s Doing

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      There’s a gathering sense that President Biden’s response to the war in Gaza may cost him the 2024 election. A recent Gallup poll showed that his support among Democrats has slipped 11 points in the past month to 75 percent, the lowest of his presidency. On Friday my colleagues in the newsroom reported on a growing backlash against Biden coming from young and left-leaning voters.Does this mean that standing with Israel could be politically fatal for Biden? I don’t think so, and to understand why, it’s important to understand the core responsibilities of an American president.In 2012, when I was a partisan supporter of Mitt Romney, there was one message from President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign that I thought made the most succinct and persuasive case for his second term. It was delivered most memorably by then-Vice President Biden, of all people, at the 2012 Democratic National Convention. He said that Obama had “courage in his soul, compassion in his heart and a spine of steel,” and then Biden delivered the key line: “Osama bin Laden is dead, and General Motors is alive.”While I believed that Romney would do a better job as president than Obama, that sentence affected me so much — not just because it happened to be true but also because it resonated with two of a president’s most vital tasks: preserving prosperity at home and security abroad. A war-weary nation longed for a clear win, and a people still recovering from the Great Recession needed economic stability. The killing of bin Laden was the greatest victory of the war on terrorism, and the preservation of General Motors, an iconic American company, resonated as a national symbol as important as or more important than the number of jobs saved.Now fast-forward to August 2024, when Biden will speak on his own behalf in Chicago at the next Democratic convention. Will he be able to tell the American people that he did his job? Will he be able to make that claim in the face of international crises more consequential than anything either Obama or Donald Trump faced during their presidencies?Consider what he confronts: a brutal Russian assault on a liberal democracy in Europe, the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust and an aggressive China that is gaining military strength and threatens Taiwan. That’s two hot wars and a new cold war, each against a nation or entity that forsakes any meaningful moral norms, violates international law and commits crimes against humanity.In each conflict abroad — hot or cold — America is indispensable to the defense of democracy and basic humanity. Ukraine cannot withstand a yearslong Russian onslaught unless the United States acts as the arsenal of democracy, keeping the Ukrainian military supplied with the weapons and munitions it needs. America is Israel’s indispensable ally and close military partner. It depends on our aid and — just as important — our good will for much of its strength and security. And Taiwan is a target of opportunity for China absent the might of the United States Pacific Fleet.And keep in mind, Biden is managing these conflicts all while trying to make sure that the nation emerges from a pandemic with inflation in retreat and its economy intact. In spite of economic growth and low unemployment numbers that make the American economy the envy of the world, Americans are still dealing with the consequences of inflation and certainly don’t feel optimistic about our economic future.Biden is now under fire from two sides, making these challenges even more difficult. The populist, Trumpist right threatens his ability to fund Ukraine, hoping to engineer a cutoff in aid that could well lead to the greatest victory for European autocrats since Hitler and then Stalin swallowed European democracies whole in their quest for power and control.At the same time, progressives calling for a cease-fire in Gaza threaten to hand Hamas the greatest victory of its existence. If Hamas can wound Israel so deeply and yet live to fight again, it will have accomplished what ISIS could not — commit acts of the most brutal terror and then survive as an intact organization against a military that possesses the power to crush it outright. I agree with Dennis Ross, a former U.S. envoy to the Middle East: Any outcome that leaves Hamas in control in Gaza “will doom not just Gaza but also much of the rest of the Middle East.”And hovering, just outside the frame, is China, watching carefully and measuring our will.I understand both the good-faith right-wing objections to Ukraine aid and the good-faith progressive calls for a cease-fire in Israel. Ukraine needs an extraordinary amount of American support for a war that has no end in sight. It’s much easier to rally the West when Ukraine is on the advance. It’s much harder to sustain American support in the face of grinding trench warfare, the kind of warfare that consumes men and material at a terrifying pace.I also understand that it is hard to watch a large-scale bombing campaign in Gaza that kills civilians, no matter the precision of each individual strike. Much like ISIS in Mosul, Hamas has embedded itself in the civilian population. It is impossible to defeat Hamas without harming civilians, and each new civilian death is a profound tragedy, one that unfolds in front of a watching world. It’s a testament to our shared humanity that one of our first instincts when we see such violence is to say, “Please, just stop.”This instinct is magnified when the combination of the fog of war and Hamas disinformation can cause exaggerated or even outright false claims of Israeli atrocities to race across the nation and the world before the full truth is known. The sheer scale of the Israeli response is difficult to grasp, and there is no way for decent people to see the death and destruction and not feel anguish for the plight of the innocent.The combination of tragedy, confusion and cost is what makes leadership so difficult. A good leader can’t overreact to any given news cycle. He or she can’t overreact to any specific report from the battlefield. And a good leader certainly can’t overreact to a negative poll.I’ve long thought that politicians’ moment-by-moment reaction to activists, to members of the media and to polls is partly responsible for the decline in trust in American politicians. What can feel responsive in the moment is evidence of instability in the aggregate. The desperate desire to win each and every news cycle leads to short-term thinking. Politicians put out fires they see on social media, or they change course in response to anger coming from activists. Activists and critics in the media see an outrage and demand an immediate response, but what the body politic really needs is a thoughtful, deliberate strategy and the resolve to see it through.No administration is perfect. Americans should object, for example, to the slow pace of approving each new weapons system for Ukraine. But in each key theater, Biden’s policies are fundamentally sound. We should support Ukraine as long as it’s necessary to preserve Ukrainian independence from Russian assault. We should stand by Israel as it responds to mass murder, including by supporting a lawful offensive into the heart of Gaza. And we should continue to strengthen alliances in the Pacific to enhance our allies’ military capabilities and share the burden of collective defense.And we should do these things while articulating a moral vision that sustains our actions. On Thursday, John Kirby, the National Security Council coordinator for strategic communication, did just that. First, in an interview on “Morning Joe,” he described the efforts to aid Gazan civilians — a humanitarian and legal imperative. He made it clear that the United States is working to preserve civilian life, as it should.Later on Thursday, he also provided a wider moral context. Asked at a news conference about Biden’s observation that innocents will continue to die as Israel presses its attacks, Kirby responded with facts we cannot forget: “What’s harsh is the way Hamas is using people as human shields. What’s harsh is taking a couple of hundred hostages and leaving families anxious, waiting and worrying to figure out where their loved ones are. What’s harsh is dropping in on a music festival and slaughtering a bunch of young people just trying to enjoy an afternoon.”By word and deed, the Biden administration is getting the moral equation correct. There should be greater pressure on Hamas to release hostages and relinquish control of Gaza than there should be pressure on Israel to stop its offensive. Hamas had no legal or moral right to launch its deliberate attack on Israeli civilians. It has no legal or moral right to embed itself in the civilian population to hide from Israeli attacks. Israel, by contrast, has every right to destroy Hamas in a manner consistent with the laws of war.If Biden can persevere in the face of the chaos and confusion of war abroad and polarization at home, all while preserving a level of economic growth that is astonishing in contrast with the rest of the world, he’ll have his own story to tell in Chicago, one that should trump the adversity of any given moment or the concern generated by any given poll. If Biden can do his job, then he can take the stage in Chicago with his own simple pitch for re-election: In the face of disease, war, inflation and division, the economy thrives — and democracy is alive.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Trump and GOP Candidates Call for Campus Crackdowns Against Anti-Israel Speech

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      The G.O.P. field, including former President Trump, has been wading into the emotional debate among students playing out over the deadly war between Hamas and Israel.As tensions mount on U.S. college campuses over the war in Gaza, several Republican presidential candidates are proposing a crackdown on students and schools that express opposition to Israel, appear to express support for the deadly Hamas attacks or fail to address antisemitism.Former President Donald J. Trump, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina have called for the federal government to revoke international students’ visas, while others have suggested that universities should lose public funding.After students at George Washington University projected messages on Tuesday onto the side of a campus building — including “Glory to our martyrs,” “Divestment from Zionist genocide now” and “Free Palestine from the river to the sea,” a phrase that encompasses all of Israel as well as Gaza and the West Bank — two candidates argued almost immediately that the students or the universities, or both, should be punished.“If this was done by a foreign national, deport them,” Mr. Scott wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Wednesday morning. “If the college coddles them, revoke their taxpayer funding. We must stand up against this evil anti-Semitism everywhere we see it — especially on elite college campuses.”Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota wrote: “Antisemitism cannot be tolerated. Period. The students responsible should be held accountable and if the university fails to do so it should lose any federal funding.” He indicated in another post that he would “fully enforce” a Trump-era executive order to use Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to revoke federal funding for any university that “enables” antisemitism.They and other Republicans are wading into an emotional debate on college campuses over Hamas’s attack on Israel, Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, and the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict — turning the opinions of individual students and student groups, starting at Harvard and New York University, into national flash points. Days of simultaneous pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel demonstrations have exposed painful divisions, including significant and potentially consequential ideological rifts between donors, students and faculty members.The suggestion of punishing anti-Israel views is part of a broader campaign against liberal-leaning campus environments, which many Republicans claim indoctrinate students. But it is also in tension with other parts of that campaign: In many cases, the same candidates have previously condemned what they described as censorship of students who expressed conservative opinions.Mr. Scott was a co-sponsor of a Senate resolution in 2021 that called on colleges and universities to “facilitate and recommit themselves to protecting the free and open exchange of ideas” and argued that “restrictive speech codes are inherently at odds with the freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment.”Mr. Burgum signed legislation in North Dakota, also in 2021, that forbade universities in the state to discriminate against student organizations or speakers based on their viewpoint.When asked where Mr. Scott drew the line between protected and unprotected speech, his campaign did not comment on the record but cited a previous statement in which he called it a “fine line.” Mr. Burgum’s campaign pointed to the Trump executive order as requiring action.Separately, on Tuesday, the chancellor of the State University System of Florida wrote in a letter to university presidents that he had determined — “in consultation with” Mr. DeSantis — that two campus chapters of the group Students for Justice in Palestine “must be deactivated.”The national Students for Justice in Palestine organization released guidance to campus chapters earlier this month calling for demonstrations “in support of our resistance in Palestine.” The guidance called Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which killed more than 1,400 people, “a surprise operation against the Zionist enemy” and “a historic win for the Palestinian resistance.”It added, “This is what it means to Free Palestine: not just slogans and rallies, but armed confrontation with the oppressors.”The letter from the chancellor, Ray Rodrigues, said the chapters had violated a Florida law against providing “material support” to “a designated foreign terrorist organization.”“The State University System will continue working with the Executive Office of the Governor and S.U.S.’s Board of Governors to ensure we are all using all tools at our disposal to crack down on campus demonstrations that delve beyond protected First Amendment speech into harmful support for terrorist groups,” it said. “These measures could include necessary adverse employment actions and suspensions for school officials.”The national Students for Justice in Palestine organization did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The letter came a few days after Mr. DeSantis declared at a campaign event in Iowa that, if elected president, he would revoke the visas of students who supported Hamas. He did not say how he would determine who fell into that category; some public commentary has applied the label “pro-Hamas” to demonstrators expressing broader support for Palestinians or opposition to Israel’s military actions in Gaza, which have killed more than 6,500 people, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza. (Its figures could not be independently verified.)Mr. Trump made the same proposal at his own recent event in Iowa, also not providing details. “Under the Trump administration, we will revoke the student visas of radical anti-American and antisemitic foreigners at our colleges and universities, and we will send them straight back home,” he said.Nikki Haley, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, joined Mr. Scott and Mr. Burgum in saying she would cut federal funding to colleges that did not condemn students who supported Hamas.“No more federal money for colleges and universities that allow antisemitism to flourish on campus,” Ms. Haley wrote on X, arguing that the promotion of certain opinions in relation to the Hamas attack constituted “threatening someone’s life” and was “not freedom of speech.”Only one candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy, publicly rejected efforts to punish schools or individual students for anti-Israel or pro-Palestinian statements.“Colleges are spaces for students to experiment with ideas & sometimes kids join clubs that endorse boneheadedly wrong ideas,” he wrote on X this month in response to an uproar over a letter from student groups at Harvard that held “the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.”He added: “It wasn’t great when people wearing Trump hats were fired from work. It wasn’t great when college graduates couldn’t get hired unless they signed oppressive ‘DEI’ pledges. And it’s not great now if companies refuse to hire kids who were part of student groups that once adopted the wrong view on Israel.” More

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      La retórica de Donald Trump se ha vuelto más amenazadora. Se puede hacer algo

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      La vida de Donald Trump ha sido una clase magistral de evasión de consecuencias.Seis de sus empresas han sido declaradas en bancarrota, pero él sigue siendo aclamado como un visionario de los negocios. Se ha casado tres veces, pero sigue siendo amado por los evangélicos. Ha pasado por dos juicios políticos, pero sigue siendo uno de los principales candidatos a la presidencia de Estados Unidos. Durante años, los críticos de Trump han creído que llegaría un momento de rendición de cuentas, a consecuencia, por ejemplo, de alguna pesquisa de Bob Woodward o una investigación Robert Mueller. Pero luego llegaba la decepción.Ahora Trump pasa por otro momento de aparente peligro al empezar a enfrentarse a sus acusadores en procedimientos judiciales, penales y civiles. Aún faltan meses para que se conozcan los veredictos de estos casos, pero él está reaccionando con la aparente confianza de que las consecuencias de sus acciones, como siempre, no lo perjudicarán. Pero es igual de importante preguntarse cómo afectará a otros la respuesta de Trump a su último aprieto, especialmente a quienes ahora son objetivo de su indignación.En las últimas semanas, los jueces del caso de fraude civil de Trump en Nueva York y de su proceso penal en Washington han emitido órdenes de silencio limitadas que le prohíben intentar intimidar a testigos y otros participantes en los juicios. (El viernes, Trump fue multado por violar una de esas órdenes). Si Trump las acata —algo que no es seguro—, las directivas no prohíben la gran variedad de amenazas y ataques que Trump ha hecho y da señales de que seguirá haciendo. El discurso actual del expresidente es una amenaza inminente para sus objetivos y quienes los rodean.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please More