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      in US Politics

      Ron DeSantis to meet UK ministers on tour to boost foreign policy credentials

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      Ron DeSantis is due to spend Friday in Britain on the last leg of a world tour aimed at enhancing his foreign policy credentials before an expected run for the Republican nomination.Formally, DeSantis will meet the foreign secretary, James Cleverly, and the business secretary, Kemi Badenoch, in his role as governor of Florida, the third most populous US state.Nigel Farage’s new rightwing Reform UK party is also trying to secure a meeting with DeSantis, Politico reported on Thursday.Despite being greeted by the prime ministers of Japan and South Korea on earlier legs of the trip, he won’t meet the British prime minster, Rishi Sunak – in part because it is not standard diplomatic protocol for a prime minister to meet a US governor, UK officials say.There is additionally an issue of logistics, with Sunak in Scotland on a pre-planned trip to the Conservatives’ conference there.DeSantis’s visit is not completely on a pretext. The UK regularly ranks as Florida’s top business partner, and there are more than 600 British businesses in the state, employing more than 50,000 Floridians. However, the timing of DeSantis’s tour, which has also included Japan, South Korea and Israel, has been dictated by the brewing primary contest with Donald Trump. It is a race in which he is trailing badly, though as he pointed out on the Japanese leg of the trip, the numbers could change when he formally declares his bid.The fact he has not officially entered the race has not stopped attacks from the Trump camp, who view him as the only serious challenger. While Trump boasts of his personal rapport with some of the world’s leaders, suggesting it gives him a unique ability to resolve big conflicts around the world, DeSantis’s previous experience abroad is limited to his deployment as a legal adviser to a Navy Seal team in Iraq, and some limited travel as Florida governor. This trip, and the accompanying footage of handshaking with foreign officials, will provide a rebuttal to claims he is too inexperienced in the ways of the world to be president.“It’s an irony that people like him who make the case that America should focus more on itself, also sees it as indispensable to go around and present themselves in a dog and pony show to the world,” Elisabeth Braw, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, said.Trump is due to be in the UK next week for a visit to his golf course in Scotland.Such tours are a rite of passage for presidential candidates. In 2008, Barack Obama, who also had a foreign policy experience deficit, visited Afghanistan, Iraq, Jordan, Israel, Germany, France and the UK. On the last three stops, Obama met Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy and Gordon Brown. But, unlike DeSantis, he had already secured the nomination at that point.The inclusion of Tokyo and Seoul in DeSantis’s tour is telling, a reflection of how the centre of US foreign policy has shifted.“I think it really does indicate a growing focus in US foreign policy generally, but even in the public consciousness, on the Indo-Pacific, on competition with China,” Emma Ashford, a senior fellow at the Stimson Center thinktank, said. “I think the fact that he chose to go there really does suggest that’s the direction foreign policy is moving.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIsrael has long been a must-do for US presidential hopefuls on tour, though now that is more true of Republicans, who are generally in lockstep with Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-right government, than Democrats. It has been called the “new Iowa” for Republican hopefuls – a primary for the Jewish and evangelical vote.In his speech at the Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem on Thursday, DeSantis repeated a story about how he had used water from the Sea of Galilee to baptise his children. He talked about “Judeo-Christian values” binding the two countries. The only mention of the world “Palestinian” was in a line about terrorism.DeSantis disowned the Biden administration’s criticism of Netanyahu’s efforts to curb the independence of the judiciary, saying: “It shouldn’t be for us to butt in to these important issues”, but there was nothing of substance separating his position from Trump’s.The one area of policy difference with the Republican frontrunner is over Ukraine. DeSantis’s support for a ceasefire and for less US involvement sparked a backlash from the more hawkish end of the Republican party, and Cleverly can be expected to echo those misgivings. DeSantis has tried to hedge his position, potentially opening space between his stance and Trump’s pro-Moscow inclinations.DeSantis’s world tour has come at an awkward time, as support among congressional Republicans has slid towards Trump in his absence, but the fact that he felt he had to leave the US at all, suggests that the maxim foreign policy does not matter in US presidential elections is not always true.“Differences over foreign policy can matter in the team-building phase of the campaign,” Daniel Drezner, professor of international politics at Tufts University, said. “This seems like a box-checking exercise and actually a horribly timed one from DeSantis’s perspective, because the last thing you want to do, when your campaign is faltering, is go overseas.” More

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      in Elections

      ‘I’ve never been more optimistic’: Biden’s farewell speech in County Mayo – video highlights

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      Joe Biden concluded his visit to Ireland with a passionate riverside address to tens of thousands of people in his ancestral town in County Mayo. The US president turned his farewell speech in Ballina into a celebration of Irish and American values, saying: ‘My friends, people of Mayo, this is a moment to recommit our hearts, minds and souls to the march of progress.’ Biden landed in Belfast, Northern Ireland, and met the UK prime minister, Rishi Sunak, before embarking on a four-day tour More

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      in US Politics

      Arlene Foster ‘wrong’ to say Joe Biden hates UK, says Irish deputy PM

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      Ireland’s deputy prime minister, Micheál Martin, has criticised remarks by the former Democratic Unionist party leader, Arlene Foster, who said Joe Biden “hates” the UK.Martin said Foster was “wrong”, saying her remarks about the US president were “misplaced” as Biden did not hate anyone. “I’m very surprised by that comment,” Martin told RTÉ’s This Morning on Friday.“The one word that you do not associate with Joe Biden is the word ‘hate’. He’s the antithesis of that. He’s the opposite of that. He always speaks about the dignity of every human person. He’s more love than hate by a country mile.”Biden has spoken about the importance of treating everyone with dignity in each of the three speeches he has given on his four-day trip to the island of Ireland.Martin said: “I think it’s a wrong comment by Arlene. In fact, he often references his British heritage as well in terms of his uncle had been involved in the British navy and I think he gave a personal anecdote about that. So I think that was misplaced. He’s not that type of person.”Foster doubled down on her remarks earlier this week, saying on Thursday that the president had “disdain” for the UK.Martin, asked if Foster should withdraw her remarks, said: “Look, people make comments. I just have to say that I would refute it. I don’t have any sense, having met with Joe Biden on quite a number of occasions now, that he hates anybody.”Foster claimed she was reflecting on Biden’s past affinity with the nationalist position in Northern Ireland but others, including the taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, said the US president was proud of his Irish heritage but also of the special relationship with the UK.On Thursday, Biden risked irritating Foster and other critics further when he urged the UK to “work closer with Ireland” on strengthening efforts to sustain peace in Northern Ireland.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe row over Foster’s remarks has marred the three-day love-in Biden is enjoying in the Republic of Ireland.He completes his visit on Friday with another heavy schedule in the west of Ireland, before leaving on Air Force One at about midnight.Before that, he will visit Knock at about lunchtime and pray at the nearby basilica and Marian shrine, an important Catholic pilgrimage site said to mark the apparition by Mary, the mother of Jesus, in 1879.He will then honour his son Beau, who died of brain cancer in 2015, during a private visit to the Mayo Roscommon hospice. The hospice has previously paid tribute to Beau Biden, a former Delaware attorney general. In 2017, Joe Biden travelled to the Mayo town to turn the first sod on the site for the new hospice complex, and he again paid tribute to the €6.3m palliative care centre when it opened two years ago.The US president will then visit a genealogy and heritage centre established to help descendants of Irish people who emigrated to the US, including his ancestors on his father’s side, before a final keynote speech outside a cathedral in Ballina. More

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      in US Politics

      The man who connected Bill Clinton and Gerry Adams: Politics Weekly America podcast

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      Next week, Joe Biden and Bill Clinton will arrive in Northern Ireland to join commemorations of the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday agreement. Clinton is now celebrated as one of the key players behind the agreement, but he didn’t do it alone. It took years of background efforts – of secret meetings, discreet lobbying and high-risk shadow diplomacy, by people whose names we’ve never known – to convince the United States to get involved.
      This week, Jonathan Freedland speaks to one of those people, Niall O’Dowd, who tells the extraordinary story of how he built a secret channel between Clinton and the Irish republican movement

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

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      in US Politics

      Pacific trade deal is more useful to Joe Biden than it is to the UK’s economy

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      Tory MPs hailed the UK’s entry last week into the Indo-Pacific trading bloc as a major step on the road to re-establishing Britain as a pioneer of free trade.It was a coup for Rishi Sunak, said David Jones, the deputy chairman of the European Research Group of Tory Eurosceptics, who was excited to be aligned with “some of the most dynamic economies in the world”.Trade secretary Kemi Badenoch also used the word “dynamic” to describe the 11 members of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). She pushed back against criticism that signing a trade deal with a loose collection of countries on the other side of the world would only add 0.08% to the UK’s gross national product, and then only after 10 years of membership. That figure was an estimate by civil servants 10 years ago, she said in an interview with the Daily Mail. The CPTPP is more important these days.And it might be, but not for the trade it facilitates. The significance lies in the geopolitical realignment it promotes and how such pacts could harm future Labour governments.The CPTPP was signed on 8 March 2018. Australia, Brunei, Canada, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand and Singapore were the first to form a bloc before being joined in the five years that followed by Vietnam, Peru, Malaysia and Chile.Former president Barack Obama hoped the US would also be a founder member before coming up against a Republican Congress that disagreed. Later, Donald Trump abandoned the deal altogether.Obama wanted to throw a friendly arm around Pacific countries threatened by China’s increasingly aggressive attitude to its neighbours – or, looked at another way, maintain open markets for US goods and services across south-east Asia in opposition to Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road investment initiative. Joe Biden, despite having control of Congress, refused to consider reopening talks about US membership, paving the way for China to apply in 2021.Thankfully for Biden, Britain’s application preceeded Beijing’s by six months, putting the UK ahead in the queue; quickly it became apparent that Britain’s role could be to help block China’s entry to the CPTPP without the US ever needing to join. For the Americans, the potential loss of trade was a side issue.Brexit was never considered by Washington to be a positive development, but there was a silver lining once it became clear the UK could be deployed more flexibly in a fight with China – a confrontation that Brussels has so far backed away from.The Aukus defence pact between Australia, the UK and US is another example of this anti-China coalition – and of Sunak’s efforts to win back Washington’s approval.The move also plays to a domestic agenda. In the same way that Margaret Thatcher’s sale of state assets – from council housing to essential utilities – denied Labour the means to directly influence the economy without spending hundreds of billions of pounds renationalising those assets, so global trade deals undermine Labour’s promise to use the state to uphold workers’ rights and environmental protections.Secret courts form the foundation stone of most trade deals and allow big corporations to sue governments when laws and regulations change and deny them profits.Badenoch’s civil servants say they are comfortable with the investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) tribunal system because the UK government has never lost a case.However, a government that wanted to push ahead at a faster pace with environmental protections, carbon taxes, or enhanced worker’s rights might find themselves on the wrong end of a court judgment.The TUC’s general secretary, Paul Nowak, was quickly out of the blocks to voice these fears when the deal was announced on Friday. That is why the EU parliament has forced Brussels to ban ISDS clauses from future trade deals.Sunak, on the other hand, appears comfortable with the prospect of CPTPP countries beginning to dictate how the UK considers basic rights – and how this could become the price of easier trade, and more importantly, foreign policy. More

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      in US Politics

      The Guardian view on Iraq, 20 years on: the costs of war | Editorial

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      It did not take long for anyone to realise that the Iraq war was the disaster that many had predicted; not much longer than it took to confirm that it was launched on a lie and that there were no weapons of mass destruction. Whatever relief or joy was felt by Iraqis at the fall of Saddam Hussein’s violent and oppressive regime, it was soon subsumed by the horror of what followed. The body count and wider damage have not stopped rising since. When the 10th anniversary arrived, Islamic State (IS), birthed by the war’s fallout, had yet to make its frightening rise to establishing a “caliphate”. Two decades on from the beginning of the war, with the “shock and awe” assault of 19 March 2003, we are still fathoming the impact of the US-led and UK-backed invasion.The toll has been felt most of all, of course, within Iraq itself. Hundreds of thousands of civilians died in the violence that followed. The Costs of War project estimates that several times as many may have died from knock-on effects. More than 9 million Iraqis were displaced. Thousands of coalition personnel, mostly American, were killed. Trillions of dollars that could have been spent on improving lives were instead squandered destroying them. Much of the Pentagon spending went to just five huge corporations.The catastrophe was compounded by the failure to plan for what came next. Iraqis watched as power stations and national treasures were looted, while American troops guarded the oil ministry and Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, glibly dismissed the turmoil: “Freedom’s untidy”. The security vacuum and de-Ba’athification strategy fomented sectarianism not only in Iraq itself, but far beyond its borders – and fuelled terrorism that has proved not only most deadly in the region, but has taken lives in the west, too. Later decisions such as support for Nouri al-Maliki made matters worse.The invasion curtailed hopes of stabilising Afghanistan, by drawing away attention, resources and troops. It strengthened and emboldened Iran. It reinforced North Korea’s conviction that it was essential to acquire and defend WMDs. It hastened the end of the brief unipolar moment and undercut visions of a rules‑based global order. A military adventure conceived by many of its players as a brash reassertion of US supremacy in the wake of the September 11 attacks only weakened and undermined the country – all the more so after the horrors of Abu Ghraib and wider brutality against civilians. Russia and China took note. So did the global south, hindering efforts to garner support for Ukraine. It was hardly the first time America’s foreign policy had clashed with its declared ideals, but it had not been so public and inescapable since Vietnam. Liberal interventionism was badly discredited. The refugee flows produced by regional instability, along with IS-led or -inspired attacks in Europe, contributed to growing ethno-nationalism and fuelled support for Brexit.Iraq currently appears relatively calm. But US troops are still present due to the ongoing battle against IS. Though there is now a government, following a year of deadlock after elections and an outburst of violence in Baghdad, the state remains unable to keep the lights on or provide clean water. Politicians and officials have pocketed billions.More than half of Iraqis are too young to remember life under Saddam Hussein. Some now aspire to a society and government that looks beyond sectarianism and towards a brighter future, as the 2019 Tishreen movement, and the re-emergence of participants in 2021’s elections, showed. Yet the low turnout underscored that others have given up on democracy, thanks to those who boasted that they were bringing it to justify their war. It may be many more years before we fully reckon the effects of the catastrophe unleashed two decades ago. More

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      in US Politics

      Will UK follow US in demanding TikTok be sold by its Chinese owner?

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      When asked this week whether the UK would ban TikTok on government phones, Rishi Sunak’s response signalled a change in stance: “We look at what our allies are doing.”Previously ministers had seemed sanguine, even saying that whether or not the app stayed on someone’s phone should be a matter of “personal choice”.Not any more. The UK’s allies are turning against TikTok and it was when Sunak said he was watching their actions closely that a government ban became inevitable. The US, Canada and the EU’s executive arm have already decided to strip the app from official devices. It is now a matter of geopolitical choice.TikTok is owned by the Beijing-based ByteDance. The fear among its critics on both sides of the Atlantic is that the Chinese state can access data generated by its more than 1 billion users and manipulate its recommendation algorithm in order to push a China-friendly point of view to unsuspecting users.There is no hard evidence this is the case and TikTok says it would refuse any data request from the Chinese government, although the UK government cited concerns about “the way in which this [user] data may be used” for the ban on Thursday. But tensions over Taiwan, concerns that China will supply weaponry to Russia, the shooting down of a spy balloon that hovered over the US and warnings of state espionage have created a toxic backdrop to those denials. And on Monday a refreshed integrated review of UK defence and foreign policy described China as an “epoch-defining” challenge.TikTok’s reputation was severely damaged last year when ByteDance admitted employees had attempted to use the app to spy on reporters.TikTok will be concerned that Sunak will match each upward ratchet in pressure from his counterparts. On Wednesday the Biden administration demanded the platform’s Chinese owner sell the app or face a complete ban. Will the UK ultimately threaten the same?If geopolitics is the leading factor in these moves, as opposed to hard proof that TikTok poses a security threat, then it is likely every deterioration in relations between China and the west will push the app further along the road to a complete ban or forced divestment from its owners in the UK and elsewhere. Indeed, a forced sale in the US – if the Chinese government lets TikTok’s owners do so – could lead to TikTok being peeled off from ByteDance in its entirety.The shooting down of a Chinese spy balloon off the east coast of the US last month was followed by reports that negotiations between TikTok and the Biden administration over a deal to resolve security concerns had stalled, while this week the White House gave its support to a Senate bill giving the president the power to ban TikTok.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionTikTok’s attempts to assuage those concerns – for instance announcing plans to store US and European user data on third-party data servers – seem to have failed with the current American president in the same way they did with his immediate predecessor, who also tried to force a divestment of TikTok’s US business. The backstop used by TikTok’s critics is the existence of Chinese laws that could force ByteDance to cooperate with Beijing authorities, including the national intelligence law of 2017, which states that all organisations and citizens shall “support, assist and cooperate” with national intelligence efforts. For many, this is enough evidence.Perhaps eliminating the concerns over Chinese interference by selling TikTok to non-Chinese investors is the only way to quell the critics. But there are plenty of other aspects of the Chinese tech industry – from Huawei mobile phones to other electronic devices – that are just as capable of eliciting similar fears. Without strong supporting evidence there is no way of knowing how proportionate the UK government is being – and the same could be true for moves against other Chinese tech interests. More