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      The Guardian view of US foreign policy: the case for democratic dominance | Editorial

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      The Guardian view of US foreign policy: the case for democratic dominanceEditorialChina will be the ghost at the gathering of America’s allies next month Joe Biden’s foreign policy doctrine views the future relationship between democracies and authoritarian regimes as a competitive one, accompanied by a battle of narratives. Nondemocratic regimes have become brazen in their repression and many democratic governments have regressed by adopting their tactics of restricting free speech and weakening the rule of law. The US, under Donald Trump, was not immune to such trends. One European thinktank warned last week that there remains a risk that the US could slip into authoritarianism.The Biden administration has announced the first of two virtual “summits for democracy” next month to bring together government, civil society and business leaders from more than 100 nations. This might seem a bit rich, given America’s history of befriending dictators and overthrowing elected leaders it did not like. Invitations have gone out to a group so broad it includes liberal democracies, weak democracies and states with authoritarian characteristics. Mr Biden deserves a cheer for seeking a renewal of democracy, asking attendees to reflect on their record of upholding human rights and fighting corruption.The world faces a return to great-power politics, where global rules take a backseat to historical spheres of influence. Russia’s menacing of Ukraine is a case in point. No one would choose this situation, but democracies have to face it. As the EU has noted, the high seas, space and the internet are increasingly contested domains. Mr Biden is a realist. He is prepared to cooperate with countries from Poland to the Philippines, where democracy has been going backward, to deter Moscow and Beijing. The world is also not black and white. India, a troubled democracy, watered down this month’s final Cop26 communique, backed by autocratic China.Beijing is the ghost at the US democracy-fest, a fact underlined by Mr Biden’s invite to Taiwan. Sino-US relations can be competitive, but not so fevered that neither can work together. Vaccine nationalism was a warning about how soft power could be weaponised. It’d be wrong to rationalise US actions by demonising its rivals. China’s alternative economic and political system does not make conflict inevitable, though Beijing’s sabre rattling and US defence spending makes it harder to dodge. This month’s videocall between US and Chinese presidents suggested their nations were lorries speeding along the highway of international relations and in need of a crash barrier.New rules of the road are essential in trade where Mr Biden has continued Mr Trump’s tariff hikes on Chinese exports. The US has seen a backlash to the economic upheaval induced by trade openness that should have been dealt with by redistributive policies. In their absence, the result was runaway US inequality and a richer, unequal China. Mr Biden argues he is making the economy work for ordinary Americans, and so helping recover their belief in democracy. Yet, without reform of global trade rules the benefits of higher US wages will flow largely to nations like China that suppress household income. In response, Mr Biden seeks coalitions with democratic allies to replace the current model of liberalisation. The Chinese historian Qin Hui contends that on the left globalisation is as popular in China as it is unpopular in the west. Prof Qin suggests that Chinese concern over growing inequality should be allayed by political reform so workers can strengthen their bargaining position. This seems a remote possibility. China has grown wealthy without becoming more democratic. Prof Qin’s views may resonate in Washington, but they strike the wrong note in Beijing, which has previously banned his work, and prefers instead slogans signalling a crackdown on high incomes. Mr Biden sees, both at home and abroad, democratic values under attack. The US president has identified the challenge. The hard part is to meet it.TopicsJoe BidenOpinionUS politicsUS foreign policyChinaeditorialsReuse this content More

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      US expected to remove Farc from international terrorist list

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      US expected to remove Farc from international terrorist listThe announcement comes five years after the demobilised rebel group signed a peace deal with the Colombian government The US is expected to remove the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) from its international terrorist list, five years after the demobilised rebel group signed a peace deal with the Colombian government and formed a political party.The announcement is expected to bolster the struggling peace process, which has been implemented haltingly as violence from dissident rebel groups and drug traffickers continues to trouble the South American nation.US officials quoted by Reuters and the Wall Street Journal said the move could happen as early as Tuesday afternoon, while the state department said that it had provided notifications to Congress on “upcoming actions” regarding the Farc.The US added the Farc to its terror list in 1997, when the rebel group was at the height of its power, commanding thousands of fighters and launching large-scale attacks on regional capitals and military bases. The group kidnapped thousands of politicians and ordinary Colombians, and planted landmines across the country.Colombia’s ex-guerrillas: isolated, abandoned and living in fearRead more“Taking the Farc off the list is long overdue, since the group that the state department listed doesn’t exist any more,” said Adam Isacson, the director for defense oversight at the Washington Office on Latin America (Wola), a thinktank. “13,600 guerrillas demobilized and became ex-guerrillas in 2017.”“More than four years later, more than 90% of them remain demobilized and transitioning to civilian life. To keep penalizing and shunning all contact with them is not only absurd, it’s counterproductive,” he said.The Farc took up arms against Colombia’s government in 1964, claiming to fight in defense of peasant farmers. They soon turned to drug trafficking and kidnapping for ransom to bolster their war chest, carrying out massacres and atrocities over decades of civil war that killed more than 260,000 and left more than 7 million displaced. Government forces, state-aligned paramilitary groups and other leftist rebels contributed to the bloodshed.A peace deal was signed in October 2016, formally ending the war and promising rural development, though the accord failed to pass a public referendum. Colombia’s then-president, Juan Manuel Santos, won a Nobel peace prize for his efforts despite the defeat, and subsequently ratified a revised peace deal via Congress the following month.But since the signing of the peace deal, the limitations on Farc members imposed by the terror listing have hindered the accord’s implementation, analysts say, as individually listed former combatants are unable to access the local banking system.“US sanctions have handicapped economic and political reintegration, penalizing ex-combatants who laid down their arms in good faith and continue to remain committed to the process despite enormous challenges,” said Elizabeth Dickinson, a Colombia analyst at the International Crisis Group (ICG). “We have heard testimonies of ex-combatants who have had to go from bank to bank in order to open accounts, a basic requisite to start cooperative agricultural projects.”The terror listing also hamstrung the US government’s ability to support and influence the peace deal, which was negotiated with the backing of then-president Barack Obama’s administration, Dickinson said.“US officials cannot meet with the former Farc, they cannot sit in the same room, USaid cannot provide financing to any projects whose beneficiaries include the Farc, or might include them,” Dickinson said. “Five years after the signing of the accord, these restrictions are illogical and counterproductive.”TopicsFarcColombiaAmericasUS politicsUS foreign policynewsReuse this content More

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      Xi Jinping expected in talks to tell Joe Biden to ‘step back’ on Taiwan

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      Xi Jinping expected in talks to tell Joe Biden to ‘step back’ on TaiwanWar of words begins before leaders’ meeting, with US president warned Taiwan is China’s ‘ultimate red line’ China’s president, Xi Jinping, is expected to warn his US counterpart, Joe Biden, to “step back” on the Taiwan issue in their first virtual meeting on Monday evening Washington time, according to Chinese state media.State media outlets such as China Daily are briefed by authorities on important issues such as China-US relations and have been accurate in reflecting the priorities of Chinese leaders.“The Taiwan question is the ultimate red line of China,” said a Monday editorial in the Global Times, a tabloid published by the ruling Communist party’s People’s Daily.“In order to reduce the risk of a strategic collision between China and the US, the latter must take a step back from the Taiwan question and show its restraint,” it added.The two leaders have talked twice by phone since Biden took office in January, but this video conference will be their most substantial discussion so far.It comes days after the two countries surprised analysts by agreeing at Cop26 in Glasgow to boost climate cooperation. But it also comes at a time of increasing friction over Taiwan – the most dangerous potential flashpoint between the two countries.On Tuesday, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) conducted the latest in a series of combat readiness exercises off the Taiwanese coast, while in a phone call on Saturday the nations’ top diplomats traded warnings about the island.Ahead of the meeting, China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, told the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, that any show of support for Taiwan’s independence would “boomerang” on the US. Blinken in turn raised concerns over China’s growing “military, diplomatic, and economic pressure” on the island.US allegations of repeated cyber-attacks from China, deep divisions over human rights in the Xinjiang region, Hong Kong and Tibet, as well as lingering trade disputes have also contributed towards the steady souring of relations.The US-China climate agreement is imperfect – but reason to hope | Sam GeallRead moreThe US is frustrated by Chinese obstruction of multilateral investigations of the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic, and has been angered by Chinese government pressure on US companies to lobby Congress to drop legislation Beijing does not like, as Reuters reported on Friday.The stakes have been raised by the rapid expansion of China’s military capabilities, including its nuclear arsenal. According to the US, Beijing has tested a new weapon, a nuclear-capable hypersonic glider launched from orbit, and China is reported to be building at least 250 new silos for long-range missiles.Expectations for the summit have been set low. There is not likely to be a joint statement, and the White House has indicated that Biden will not answer press questions after the talks are over.“Overall, in both Washington and Beijing, the expectation of convergence is pretty much dead. Instead, the relationship has become more transactional,” Scott Moore, the director of China programmes and strategic initiatives at the University of Pennsylvania, said.“For Biden, he is facing political challenges at home with the midterm elections looming [next year]. Therefore, he will likely face political constraints in terms of taking any actions that could be perceived or characterised as making significant concessions to China.”“For Xi, his biggest vulnerability is on the economic front. That’s why Beijing has been signalling its interest in making progress on trade. Recent comments from Biden administration officials suggest there is interest in engaging on these issues, but again there are likely to be significant political constraints.”Both leaders will seek to limit the dangers of the rivalry spiralling out of control.In a message to the National Committee on US-China Relations, Xi said that the bilateral relationship was at a “critical historical juncture”.“Both countries will gain from cooperation and lose from confrontation. Cooperation is the only right choice,” Xi said in his statement. In his message to the committee’s gala on 9 November, Biden also pointed to an “inflection point in history”.“From tackling the Covid-19 pandemic to addressing the existential threat of the climate crisis, the relationship between the United States and China has global significance.”The White House spokesperson, Jen Psaki, said Biden would be “clear and candid” about US concerns, but would look for ways to “responsibly manage competition” between the world’s two largest economies and also seek “to work together where our interests align”.Wang has said Monday’s summit is a potentially pivotal event in efforts to improve the trajectory in bilateral relations.“The two sides should meet each other halfway … ensuring that the meeting will be smooth and successful, and push Sino-US relations back on the track of healthy and stable development,” Wang said, according to a Chinese foreign ministry statement.Xi will be seeking to head off moves to boycott the Winter Olympics in China this year, and he is also expected to invite Biden to the games as a conciliatory gesture.But Taiwan remains on top of Xi’s talking points, particularly after a series of steps the Biden administration has taken to raise Taiwan’s status, which China sees as breaking with Washington’s long-held “one China policy”, recognising the People’s Republic as the sole sovereign Chinese government.“Beijing has noticed recent statements by senior Biden officials such as Jake Sullivan, saying that Washington no longer wants to change China’s system. It is a positive signal,” said Wang Huiyao, the president of the Centre for China and Globalisation, who also advises the Beijing government. “But if this is the case, the US should cease using Taiwan as a card to irritate China, and leave the Taiwan affairs to the peoples on both sides of the Taiwan strait.”Bonnie Glaser, the director of the Asia programme at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, said Beijing was concerned about whether the Biden administration was really sticking to its one China policy or whether there was “a lot of salami-slicing” going on. “They want to hear greater reassurance about what the US will and will not do with Taiwan,” she said.The US side will be pushing for more routine contacts between the defence and diplomatic establishments, but Xi is likely to resist any action that he sees as normalising the US role in China’s immediate neighbourhood.‘We need to be much clearer’: leading Democrat questions US strategy on defending TaiwanRead more“It’s something that the Chinese have so far been very resistant to because they don’t want to give the US military a licence to operate anywhere near their shores,” Glaser said.As for nuclear arms control, China has so far resisted any approaches on entering bilateral negotiations, and spurned Donald Trump’s attempts to start trilateral talks with Russia.“Sadly I don’t think it’s going to be a major topic at the meeting. The United States hasn’t proposed anything that China can talk about, and China doesn’t like to negotiate outside of the UN,” said Gregory Kulacki, the China project manager at the Union of Concerned Scientists.“They could make some sort of vague statement about wanting to check the nuclear arms race, but anything concrete coming out of it seems unlikely.”Reuters news agency contributed to this reportTopicsUS foreign policyXi JinpingJoe BidenChinaTaiwanAsia PacificUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Betrayal review: Trump’s final days and a threat not yet extinguished

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      Betrayal review: Trump’s final days and a threat not yet extinguished ABC’s man in Washington delivers a second riveting and horrifying read about how close America came to disasterTrumpworld is in legal jeopardy. The 45th president’s phone call to Brad Raffensperger, urging the Georgia secretary of state to “find 11,780 votes”, may have birthed a grand jury.‘A xenophobic autocrat’: Adam Schiff on Trump’s threat to democracyRead moreIn Manhattan, the outgoing district attorney, Cyrus Vance Jr, has empaneled one of those, to look at Trump’s business. As a Vanity Fair headline blared, “The Trump Organization should be soiling itself right now.”In Washington, the Department of Justice ponders the prosecution of Steve Bannon, chairman of Trump’s 2016 campaign and a pivotal figure in the “Stop the Steal” movement second time round.For Trump, out-of-office has not translated into out-of-mind. He thrives on all the attention.Amid it all, Jonathan Karl dives once again into the Stygian mosh pit, this time with Betrayal, a sequel to Front Row at the Trump Show, a New York Times bestseller.In that book, in the spring of 2020, ABC News’ chief Washington correspondent prophesied that “Trump’s war on truth may do lasting damage to American democracy”. Sadly, he wasn’t wrong. Front Row preceded by months a coup attempt egged on by a defeated president. Looking back, Trump’s embrace of birtherism, “alternative facts” and crowd violence were mere prelude to the chaos that filled his time in power, his final days in office and all that has come and gone since then.In his second book, under the subtitle The Final Act of the Trump Show, Karl gets members of Trump’s cabinet to speak on the record. They paint a portrait of a wrath-filled president, untethered from reality, bent on revenge.Karl captures Bill Barr denouncing Trump’s election-related conspiracy theories and criticizing his election strategy. Appearing determined to salvage his own battered reputation, Trump’s second attorney general tells Karl his president “was making it too much of a base election. I felt that he had to repair the bridges he had burned [with moderate voters] in the suburbs.”By that metric, Glenn Youngkin, Virginia’s governor-elect, has a bright future, a politician who puts suburban dads and rural moms at ease. No wonder Republicans think they have found a star, and with him a winning formula.As for Trump’s claims about rigged voting machines, Barr “realized from the beginning it was just bullshit” and says “the number of actual improper voters were de minimus”. No matter, to Trump: he continues to demand Republican legislatures carry out post-election audits.Karl delivers further confirmation of Mitch McConnell’s fractious personal relationship with Trump, a man the Kentucky senator reportedly repeatedly mocked. According to Karl, McConnell, then Senate majority leader, sought to formally disinvite Trump from Joe Biden’s inauguration. Kevin McCarthy, the chief House Republican, leaked the plan to the White House. In turn, Trump tweeted that he would not attend.McConnell attempted to thread the needle, placating Trump while keeping the GOP’s Koch brothers wing onside. But once he acknowledged Biden’s victory, the damage was permanently done. McConnell was an object of Trumpian scorn.That the senator jammed Amy Coney Barrett on to the supreme court days before the 2020 election and before that played blocking back for Brett Kavanaugh is now rendered irrelevant. Trump wants McConnell out of Senate leadership. Adding insult to injury, Trump recently told the Washington Post McConnell wasn’t a “real leader” because “he didn’t fight for the presidency”, and said he was “only a leader because he raises a lot of money”.“You know,” Trump said, “with the senators, that’s how it is, frankly. That’s his primary power.”He’s not wrong all the time.Betrayal also documents a commander-in-chief who scared his own cabinet witless. After Trump junked the Iran nuclear deal, for example, Tehran thumbed its nose back. Drama ensued, because Trump wanted to know his options.Chris Miller, then acting defense secretary, tells Karl that to dissuade Trump from ordering the destruction of Iran’s uranium enrichment program, he chose to play the role of “fucking madman” – his words, not Karl’s – which meant advocating that very course of action. According to Karl, not even Mike Pompeo, then secretary of state and an Iran hawk, played along.“Oftentimes with provocative people, if you get more provocative than them, they then have to dial it down,” Miller explains to Karl. “They’re like, ‘Yeah, I was fucking crazy, but that guy’s batshit.’”Here, the reader might pause to imagine a campaign slogan for Trump in 2024: “Fucking crazy, but not batshit”.On a similar note, Karl depicts Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s crony and attorney, as a walking timebomb. Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and chief adviser, avoided the former New York mayor. Mark Meadows, Trump’s last chief of staff, saw him as a corrosive force.“I’m not going to let Rudy in the building for any more of these,” Meadows reportedly told Chris Christie, New Jersey’s former governor, and Bill Stepien, Trump’s campaign manager, as they prepared for debates with Biden.These days, Giuliani is suspended from the bar, reportedly under investigation and unable to persuade Trump to pay his bills. Christie and Trump are at loggerheads too, over sins real and imagined, past and present.In Trump’s Shadow: David Drucker surveys the Republican runners and riders for 2024Read moreAs for Meadows and Stepien, they are in the crosshairs of the House select committee focused on the US Capitol attack. From the looks of things only Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, have so far remained intact, ensconced in Florida, sufficiently distanced from Big Daddy.Despite such fallout, Betrayal concludes with words of warning. Karl rightly contends that Trump’s “betrayal” of American democracy highlighted “just how vulnerable” the system is.“The continued survival of our republic,” he writes, “may depend, in part, on the willingness of those who promoted Trump’s lies and those who remained silent to acknowledge they were wrong.”In a hypothetical rematch, Trump leads Biden 45-43. Among independent voters, he holds a double-digit lead. Don’t hold your breath.
      Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show is published in the US by Dutton
      TopicsBooksDonald TrumpTrump administrationUS elections 2020US Capitol attackUS politicsRepublicansreviewsReuse this content More

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      Biden plays up positives but frustrations apparent after Cop26 talks

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      Cop26Biden plays up positives but frustrations apparent after Cop26 talksTrip to Glasgow was heavy on dire warnings but light on deep emissions cuts – and ended with him blaming China and Russia Oliver Milman@olliemilmanWed 3 Nov 2021 08.07 EDTLast modified on Wed 3 Nov 2021 11.05 EDTJoe Biden returned to the US in the pre-dawn gloom on Wednesday to a climate agenda still held in frustrating limbo by Congress, following his high-profile cameo at crunch UN climate talks in Scotland that was heavy on dire warnings but light on deep cuts to planet-heating emissions.Nuclear arms hawks give bureaucratic mauling to Biden vow to curb arsenalRead moreThe US president had aimed to arrive in Glasgow for the Cop26 summit with historic climate legislation in hand, which he could use to brandish at world leaders who still harbor resentments over four turbulent years of Donald Trump, where the climate crisis was variously ignored and mocked.Instead, the intransigence of Senator Joe Manchin, a centrist Democrat and leading beneficiary of fossil fuel industry largesse, has left the landmark climate bill pared back and not voted upon, its fate left uncertain throughout Biden’s trip.In Glasgow, Biden vowed America will “lead by the power of our example”, but was the target of activist protests over oil and gas leases issued back home, while leaders of several major emitters either did not show up or failed to submit vastly improved emissions reduction plans.Biden ended his time in Scotland by ladling blame upon China for not taking the climate emergency seriously.“The most important thing the president needed to do was reassure the rest of the world that the US is back in addressing this global crisis,” said Christy Goldfuss, an environment adviser to Barack Obama and now a policy expert at the Center for American Progress.“But we have to have some humility, we have ground to make up. We can’t reclaim the mantle of leadership until the US can deliver on its commitments. Every Democrat, apart from one senator, supports climate action. That is untenable and everyone understands that.”Biden has sought to play up the positives of his time at Cop26, where he has left negotiators to thrash out a deal aimed at averting disastrous global heating of beyond 1.5C. “I can’t think of any two days where more has been accomplished on climate,” he said.The highlights include a global pledge, led by the US and European Union, to slash methane, a potent greenhouse gas, by 30% by 2030, based on last year’s levels. More than 100 countries, including six of the 10 largest emitters of methane, have signed on to the agreement to cut methane, which is spewed out by oil and gas drilling operations and agriculture and is about 80 times more powerful in trapping heat than carbon dioxide.Biden backed this move with new regulations rolled out by the US Environment Protection Agency to cut methane emissions by about 75% from hundreds of thousands of oil and gas wells. “The pledge to cut methane is the single biggest and fastest bite out of today’s warming,” said Durwood Zaelke, president of the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development.There was also a sweeping accord, which Biden vowed to support with billions of dollars, to end deforestation within a decade. The pact encompasses 85% of the world’s forests, vital for biodiversity and to soak up excess carbon from the atmosphere, and is backed by Brazil, Russia and China, countries often reluctant to make such promises.But the US was clearly piqued at how little the relentless diplomacy of John Kerry, Biden’s climate envoy, had done to extract deeper emissions cuts from leading carbon polluters. Neither Russia’s Vladimir Putin nor China’s Xi Jinping, who both offered barely improved new targets at the talks, traveled to Glasgow. Biden’s frustration bubbled over as he prepared to depart on Tuesday.“The fact that China is trying assert a new role in the world as a world leader, not showing up? Come on,” Biden said. “It’s just a gigantic issue and they’ve walked away. How do you do that and claim to have any leadership now? Same with Putin in Russia: his tundra is burning. Literally his tundra is burning. He has serious, serious climate problems and he’s mum on his willingness to do anything.”The blame placed at Cop upon China, which is now the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, comes amid frayed US-China relations on several fronts. The Global Times, a newspaper run by China’s Communist party, said in an editorial that Washington’s attitude had made it “impossible for China to see any potential to have fair negotiation amid the tensions”.Goldfuss said: “The blame game is not something the US should be really playing right now given we have so much work to do ourselves.”Back home, Biden has acknowledged his presidency will probably be defined by the proposed reconciliation bill that contains $555bn in climate measures. The White House says the legislation would bring the country close to the president’s goal of cutting emissions in half this decade and help curb disastrous climate breakdown that is already unleashing severe heatwaves, floods and drought at home and around the world.The far-reaching legislation needs every Democratic vote to pass the Senate but West Virginia’s Manchin has questioned its scope, said it is filled with “gimmicks” and has already ensured that a centerpiece plan to phase out fossil fuels from the American electricity grid was axed from the bill.Democrats continue to fret over the fate of the bill, with a vote that could take place as early as this week, with Biden saying he is “confident we will get it done”. But climate campaigners say the president could do more without the help of Congress to stem the flow of fossil fuels that are causing the climate crisis.The opening week of Cop26 saw Biden’s administration announce it will sell off oil and gas drilling leases across 730,000 acres of the US west, with a further auction of 80m offshore acres of the Gulf of Mexico, an area larger than the UK, set to commence later this month. The International Energy Agency has said that no new fossil fuel projects can commence if the world is to keep to the agreed 1.5C warming limit.“With all eyes on Glasgow this week, the Biden administration seems to be turning its back on reality and throwing climate leadership into the toilet,” said Jeremy Nichols, climate and energy program director for WildEarth Guardians.TopicsCop26Joe BidenUS politicsDemocratsJohn KerryUS foreign policynewsReuse this content More

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      Master of the Game review: Henry Kissinger as hero, villain … and neither

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      BooksMaster of the Game review: Henry Kissinger as hero, villain … and neitherMartin Indyk’s well-woven biography is sympathetic to the preacher of realpolitik condemned by many as a war criminal Lloyd GreenSun 31 Oct 2021 02.00 EDTLast modified on Sun 31 Oct 2021 02.02 EDTAs secretary of state, Henry Kissinger nursed the 1973 Arab-Israeli war to a close. The disengagement agreements between Egypt and Israel ultimately yielded a peace treaty. The Syrian border remains tensely quiet. Unlike Vietnam, in the Middle East Kissinger’s handiwork holds.Friendly Fire review: Israeli warrior Ami Ayalon makes his plea for peaceRead moreThe Sunni Arab world has gradually come to terms with the existence of the Jewish state. Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan have diplomatic ties with Jerusalem. Relations with Saudi Arabia are possible.For Kissinger, student and preacher of realpolitik, peace was seldom an end in itself. His pivot to China was about boxing in the USSR. To him, the cold war and existing nation states were what mattered most. The Viet Cong earned a seat at the table because US troops were bogged down. The Palestinians were not so high on Kissinger’s agenda.Now comes Martin Indyk with a 688-page, well-woven history fittingly subtitled “Henry Kissinger and the Art of Middle East Diplomacy”. The book reflects the author’s admiration for and access to his subject.Kissinger last granted Indyk an interview at the age of 97. Now he’s 98. Indyk’s wife, Gahl Burt, once worked on Kissinger’s staff. Indyk himself is a veteran of the Clinton and Obama administrations. His gigs included ambassador to Israel and Middle East envoy. A former Australian national, he volunteered on a kibbutz. He checks many boxes.Master of the Game does convey a sense that Indyk wishes his own attainments equaled those of his subject. The Oslo Accords of 1993 and 1998 Wye River Memorandum between the Israelis and Palestinians quickly degenerated into the second intifada, flareups in Gaza and Hamas vying with the Palestinian Authority for power on the ground.In the Obama years, Israel emerged as a partisan flashpoint in the US, like abortion and taxes, to the chagrin of the Democratic establishment and Israel’s diplomatic corps but to the delight of the Republicans and Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s now former prime minister.In Master of the Game, Indyk lays out the run-up to the October war of 1973, the responses of the US and the USSR, and Kissinger’s nearly two-year hopscotch between Jerusalem, Cairo and Damascus.Indyk confirms what is widely known, that while Kissinger did not explicitly give Egypt the green light to attack Israeli-occupied Sinai, he was pleased with the outcome. The war and its aftermath presented the US with the opportunity to lure Egypt out of the Soviet orbit, even if Israel had to pay a price.The war Kissinger “had not expected at the moment”, writes Indyk, “would provide him with the opportunity to manipulate antagonisms”. Those, in turn, would help “begin the construction of what he intended to be a new, more stable American-led order in the Middle East”.Israeli combat deaths topped 2,600 – reportedly more than 1,000 in the war’s first five days. At the time, Kissinger noted that the latter figure would be proportionally equal to twice the number of US deaths in eight years in Vietnam. As a result, Kissinger coldly “assumed that when he needed Israel to accept a ceasefire it would have no choice but to do so”.Kissinger saw that a ceasefire would yield territorial concessions. He got that right but the pace was not necessarily to his liking. Disengagement arrived too quickly and then too slowly for him.In spring 1975, Gerald Ford announced the reassessment of America’s relationship with Israel. Months later, in early September, Egypt and Israel entered a second disengagement agreement, a precursor to the 1978 Camp David Accords hashed out by Jimmy Carter.While “Start-up Nation” has emerged as durable military power, Indyk yearns for peace between Israel and the Palestinians.After noting the Abraham Accords, agreements between Israel and Gulf states, Indyk contends that the “Trump administration actually made matters worse” by proposing a Palestinian entity “as a heavily circumscribed enclave within Israeli territory”. He also acknowledges that the accords took Israeli annexation of the West Bank off the table.As a Talmudic dictum goes, “avar zemano, batel korbano”. Loosely translated, the train has left the station. What applies to a sacrificial rite may pertain to politics. Even the peace process came with a sell-by date. Indyk admits that “the three presidents who succeeded Clinton” tried but failed to reach a lasting agreement, but while Jared Kushner failed to snag the deal of the century, his diplomatic achievement is tangible.In Trump’s Shadow: David Drucker surveys the Republican runners and riders for 2024Read moreIndyk also explores the competing tugs on Kissinger, a refugee, of loyalty, religion and ethnicity. Richard Nixon told Anatoly Dobrynin, the Soviet ambassador, Kissinger was prone to “indulge Israel’s nationalist sentiments”. On the other hand, Israeli protestors outside Kissinger’s hotel once bellowed: “Jew boy go home.” The Jackson-Vanick amendment, which linked preferred trade status for the USSR to its performance on emigration, infuriated Kissinger.Kissinger has plenty of detractors. Against the backdrop of Nixon’s Vietnam policy, the overthrow and assassination of Salvador Allende in Chile, genocide in Bangladesh and East Timor and a coup and invasion in Cyprus, he has been called a war criminal.On the right, the late Phyllis Schlafly dangled Kissinger’s otherness in the face of Ford’s bid for the nomination in 1976. She said Kissinger did not understand “typical American values” and claimed that the loyalty of the German-born and accented diplomat rested with a “supranational” order.Indyk writes: “When it came to managing violent middle eastern passions and preserving peace, history’s judgment should surely be that Henry Kissinger did well.”Reasonable people will freely differ.
      Master of the Game is published in the US by Knopf
      TopicsBooksUS foreign policyUS national securityUS politicsIsraelPalestinian territoriesMiddle East and North AfricareviewsReuse this content More

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      Biden heads to crucial climate talks as wary allies wonder if US will deliver

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      Cop26Biden heads to crucial climate talks as wary allies wonder if US will deliver President faces challenges to reassert US credibility after Trump but critics say Biden’s actions have yet to match his wordsOliver Milman@olliemilmanFri 29 Oct 2021 01.00 EDTLast modified on Fri 29 Oct 2021 04.17 EDTWith no major climate legislation firmly in hand and international allies still smarting after four bruising years of Donald Trump, Joe Biden faces a major challenge to reassert American credibility as he heads to crucial UN climate talks in Scotland.Is Joe Biden about to show up to Cop26 empty-handed? | Kate AronoffRead moreThe US president, who has vowed to tackle a climate crisis he has described as an “existential threat” to civilization, will be welcomed to the Cop26 talks with a sense of relief following the decisions of his predecessor, who pulled his country out of the landmark Paris climate agreement and derided climate science as “bullshit”.But Biden, who departed to Europe on Thursday and arrived in Rome on Friday morning for a G20 summit, will head to Glasgow with his domestic climate agenda whittled away by a recalcitrant Congress and a barrage of criticism from climate activists who claim Biden’s actions have yet to match his words.This disconnect has perturbed delegates keen to see a reliable American partner emerge from the Trump era, amid increasingly dire warnings from scientists that “irreversible” heatwaves, floods, crop failures and other effects are being locked in by governments’ sluggish response to global heating.“The US is still the world’s largest economy, other nations pay attention to it, and we’ve never had a president more committed to climate action,” said Alice Hill, who was a climate adviser to Barack Obama. “But there is skepticism being expressed by other countries. They saw our dramatic flip from Obama to Trump and the worry is we will flip again. A lack of consistency is the issue.”Laurence Tubiana, a French diplomat who was a key architect of the Paris agreement, said that Biden had put climate “at the top of his agenda” and that US diplomacy has helped eke some progress from countries such as Saudi Arabia, South Africa and India.But she added the US had a “historical climate credibility problem” and that other leaders fret about its domestic political dysfunction and long-term commitment.“We do worry, because it has happened before and could happen again,” she said. “The US is the world’s largest historical emitter and never passed a significant climate bill. [Biden] has still got a long way to go to make up for Trump’s lost years.”In a show of soft American power, Biden is bringing a dozen of his cabinet members to Glasgow, where delegates from nearly 200 countries will wrangle over an agreement aimed at avoiding a disastrous 1.5C of global heating, a key objective of the Paris deal. But perhaps the most consequential figure to the American effort, rivaling the president himself, is remaining at home – the West Virginia senator Joe Manchin.Manchin, a centrist Democrat, looms large at the talks having derailed the centerpiece of a landmark reconciliation bill that would slash US emissions. The White House still hopes the bill, which would be the first major climate legislation ever passed in the US, will help convince other leaders to also increase their efforts in Glasgow to head off climate breakdown.Cop26 delegates have become acutely aware of how Biden needs the vote of Manchin, who has close ties to the fossil fuel industry, to pass his agenda and help determine the future livability of places far from the West Virginia senator’s home state.“Bangladeshis probably know more about American politics than the average American does, people know about Joe Manchin,” said Saleemul Haq, director of the International Centre for Climate Change and Development, based in Bangladesh, which faces looming devastation from flooding. “Joe Manchin is in the pocket of the fossil-fuel industry and is trying to cut everything the coal lobby doesn’t want.“Biden’s agenda is stuck in Congress with his own senators and he hasn’t delivered anything near what the US should deliver. It’s just words. His actions are woefully inadequate.”Biden has admitted that “the prestige of the United States is on the line” over the reconciliation bill, according to Democrats who met with the president, but publicly he has remained upbeat. When John Kerry, Biden’s climate envoy, said that the failure to secure the legislation would be like “President Trump pulling out of the Paris agreement, again”, Biden gently rebuked him, saying that Kerry had indulged in “hyperbole”.“In every single day of this administration we’ve been driving forward a whole of government approach that sets us up to go into this climate conference with an incredible deal of momentum,” said an administration official.The White House has pointed to the rejoining of the Paris accords, the resurrection of several environmental rules axed by Trump and what it is calling the “largest effort to combat climate change in American history” with the reconciliation bill, which is still set to funnel hundreds of billions of dollars in support for solar and wind energy and electric vehicles.Progressives argue, however, that the Biden administration has done little to curb the fossil fuel industry, most notably in allowing two controversial oil projects, the Dakota Access pipeline and the Line 3 pipeline, to proceed. Just a week after the end of Cop26, the administration will auction off 80m acres of the Gulf of Mexico for oil and gas drilling, an area larger than the UK.“The president is doing so much, but he is simply not doing everything he can to deliver climate justice and save lives – and we need him to now,” said Cori Bush, a progressive Democratic congresswoman who has visited the site of the Line 3 construction in Minnesota.Protests have erupted in front of the White House over this record, with several young climate activists currently staging a hunger strike to demand Biden does more.“President Biden started very strongly by rejoining the Paris agreement but it’s been a frustrating past few months, things have slowed down,” said Jade Begay, a climate activist who is part of a White House advisory council. “Joe Manchin is holding hostage our survival on planet Earth for his own political career and people are really questioning if Biden will stick to his promises.”05:18The US has also declined to set an end date for the coal sector, unlike countries such as the UK and Germany. This position runs contrary to a key objective of the British government as Cop26 hosts, with Alok Sharma, the conference’s president, pledging the talks will help “consign coal to history”.Asked by the Guardian about the US’s stance on coal, Sharma said progress on the issue has been slow until now but “we want to see what is going to be possible” at the Glasgow summit. “I welcome the fact we now have an administration in the US that is very focused on taking climate action and supporting the international effort,” he said.Sharma added: “It is ultimately on world leaders to deliver. It is world leaders who signed up to the Paris agreement and … if I can put it like this, it is on them to collectively deliver at Cop.”TopicsCop26Joe BidenClimate crisisUS politicsUS foreign policyJoe ManchinnewsReuse this content More