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      Gentleman Joe versus the Maga champion? Machiavelli would die laughing…

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      OpinionDonald TrumpGentleman Joe versus the Maga champion? Machiavelli would die laughing…Simon TisdallThe longer President Biden plays the nice guy, the more harm Donald Trump will do to America’s democracy and international standing Sun 8 Aug 2021 02.10 EDTNine months after the election he comprehensively lost, the spectre of Donald Trump – darkly menacing, subversive and apparently immune from prosecution – continues to cast a shadow over US democracy and America’s global standing, distorting policy and poisoning political life. How can this be? Why is this horror movie still running?Trumpism, like other fascist variants, is a disease, a blight – a noxious far-right populist-nationalist miasma that taints and rots all it touches. Older Europeans share a folk memory of fascism. But too many Americans just don’t get it. The will to stamp out this sickness before it returns in more virulent form is alarmingly lacking.By refusing to confront his crooked predecessor and bring him to justice, Joe Biden feeds delusional Trump’s sense of godlike impunity, and the dread prospect of a blasphemous second coming. To a watching world, his paralysis smacks of weakness. It puzzles friends. It leads foes to hope that he, not Trump, is the blip.Maybe Biden lacks the killer instinct. Yet you don’t have to be Niccolò Machiavelli to know Trump poses an existential threat to democratic norms. There will be no reciprocal forbearance, no forgiveness, if he gets a second chance, only vendettas, score-settling and ever greater abuse of power.For now, Trump skulks at Mar-a-Lago, biding his time and endorsing loyalists for future contests. He claimed a success last week when an arch-sycophant won a congressional race in Ohio. He’s raising money – his war chest already totals over $100m. Polls show he remains easily the most popular presidential choice among Republican voters.Stripped of its social media platforms, his spiteful voice does not carry as it once did – though he found space last week to attack “woke” women soccer players. But this relative quiet is deceptive. There’s a phoney war going on ahead of next year’s midterm election campaign – which Trump views as a warm-up for 2024.Author Michael Wolff last month warned complacent Democrats that Trump was preparing for battle. “Trump [is] always ready to strike back harder than he has been struck, to blame anyone but himself, to take what he believes is his… Sound the alarm,” Wolff wrote. He said he was certain Trump would run again.Who will cure this disease? Who can cleanse this blemish from the face of America? Disqualifying him as criminally unfit for public office is the obvious way to avert more West Wing mayhem. Yet “Gentleman Joe” and his fight-shy attorney general, Merrick Garland, keep pulling their punches. What of the numerous counts of obstruction detailed by Robert Mueller’s Russia inquiry? No action by Garland’s justice department. What about multiple allegations of corruption and tax fraud? No federal prosecution in sight. Or a string of alleged sexual assaults? No criminal charges pending.Asked what he would do about Trump’s crimes, Biden said last August that to pursue his predecessor in court would be “very unusual”. It was “not good for democracy to be talking about prosecuting former presidents”. In short, he’d prefer to ignore the problem.Yet since he spoke, Trump has fomented insurrection – the 6 January assault on Congress – for which hundreds have been charged, though not he. He pushes his mendacious, destabilising “big steal” narrative. It has also emerged he pressured the justice department, as well as state officials, to discredit the election.It’s not “good for democracy” to ignore blatantly unconstitutional wrongdoing by its highest office-holder. Doing so helps Trump dismiss everything as a hoax. It sets a dreadful political and ethical precedent at home. It damages America’s reputation abroad. But still Biden and Garland sit on their hands.Trump blight is meanwhile taking a terrible toll. In deference to him and his base, it seems, cruel anti-migrant policies remain in place, progressive action on racial justice has stalled, and attacks on voting rights advance. The Republicans are now more cult than party.This poisoning of the body politic extends overseas, too. Why, for example, should Tunisia’s president heed US homilies about democratic principles and the rule of law when they go undefended in America itself? Why should China? Why should anyone take Biden’s presidency seriously if the Maga champ can run rings around him from a Florida golf cart?Iran vividly illustrates Trump’s malign influence at work. When he stupidly abandoned the 2015 nuclear pact, he empowered Tehran’s hardliners. Now they have seized Iran’s presidency, exploiting fears of Trump’s return. They warn the US cannot be trusted. It’s a message with legs.The coddling of dictators from Moscow to Manila, the 2020 Taliban talks giveaway in Doha (which led directly to today’s Afghan meltdown), Jared Kushner’s Middle East peace-for-cash scam, and official denial of the climate crisis are all additional products of Trump blight. Biden struggles daily with the toxic fallout.Some argue that Trump disease is exaggerated, that Biden’s bipartisanship is producing results – witness his new infrastructure plan. But if the impression takes hold that he cannot put his own house in order, the world – and American voters – will turn their backs on him.Bottom line: the once and future king’s foreign fiascos continue to bedevil America abroad in the same way his corrosive contempt for democracy, law and common decency divides and debilitates it at home. Surely this situation cannot go on.Trump-backed coal lobbyist wins Republican congressional primary in OhioRead moreWhat other leader in the world would allow serial wrongdoing to go unpunished, would tolerate unceasing acts of subversion and disruption by so prominent and hostile a figure? If he wasn’t already dead, Machiavelli would die laughing.Too-nice Joe must stop being polite, take the gloves off – and neutralise the Trump variant before it hits pandemic levels. Isolation and social distancing would help. So lock him up!TopicsDonald TrumpOpinionJoe BidenUS politicscommentReuse this content More

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      Battle for the Soul: can Joe Biden beat Trump’s Republicans in the war of words?

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      Joe BidenBattle for the Soul: can Joe Biden beat Trump’s Republicans in the war of words? The president appeals to the ‘civil religion’ of Washington and Kennedy. His opponents use weasel words and seek to limit democracy. The stakes could not be higherMichael CornfieldSun 8 Aug 2021 02.00 EDTLast modified on Sun 8 Aug 2021 02.01 EDTJoe Biden declared his third candidacy for president on 25 April 2019 in a three-and-a-half minute video. The format was new, but for Biden relied on an old-fashioned conception of masculinity.Want to make Jim Jordan sing about the Capitol attack? Ask Jefferson Davis | Sidney BlumenthalRead moreHe talked about the 12 August 2017 neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, about which Donald Trump (in)famously said there were “very fine people on both sides”. The incident provided Biden with a good vs evil story frame, which he entered as a sort of superhero.“At that moment,” Biden intoned, as viewers saw white supremacists marching with torches, “I knew the threat to this nation was unlike any I had seen in my lifetime.”
      I wrote at the time that we’re in the battle for the soul of this nation. Well, that’s even more true today. We are in the battle for the soul of this nation.
      If we give Donald Trump eight years in the White House, he will forever and fundamentally alter the character of this nation. Who we are. And I cannot stand by and watch that happen.
      The core values of this nation, our standing in the world, our very democracy, everything that has made America, America, is at stake.
      Captain America, out of retirement and to the rescue. The Charlottesville setting, adjacent to Thomas Jefferson’s home, Monticello, supplied Biden with a pretext to quote the Declaration of Independence. And the video displayed, in colonial cursive font, passages many Americans could recite from memory.The “battle for the soul of America” narrative frame served Biden well. It helped differentiate Biden’s criticism of Trump, as both personal and constitutional. It converted his age into a campaign asset: a man with historic consciousness would be a good choice for Democrats, a party that usually opted for youth. And it ennobled his call for unity as the solution to Trump’s divisiveness. A Biden victory would win the battle for the soul through an appeal to transcendent patriotic values.Two men, longtime adviser Mike Donilon and the historian Jon Meacham, have worked on Biden’s speeches and the “soul” verbiage. But regardless of the authorial division of labor, it has been Biden’s sign-off, delivery, and persona which give the phrase its public meaning.During the campaign, Biden repeated his theme in speeches on national holidays and historic anniversaries, often in Pennsylvania: at an 18 May 2019 campaign kick-off rally at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia; in a 2 June 2020 speech at Philadelphia City Hall (commenting on the eruption of protest for the George Floyd death and the president’s use of tear gas at Lafayette Square in Washington); and on 6 October 2020 at the Gettysburg battlefield:
      You and I are part of a covenant, a common story of divisions overcome and hope renewed. If we do our part, if we stand together, if we keep faith with the past and with each other, then the divisions of our time will give way to the dreams of a brighter, better future. This is our work. This is our pledge. This is our mission.
      Pennsylvania is both the state where Biden was born and a perennial swing state. As the city where America’s foundational documents were written and signed, Philadelphia stands out in the national imagination as the Jerusalem of what sociologist Robert Bellah termed the “civil religion”. In his 1966 analysis of inaugural addresses from Washington to Kennedy, Bellah noted that presidents up to the incumbent at that time, Lyndon Baines Johnson, enlarged and deepened their rhetoric by invoking God. It was neither the God of any particular denomination nor a perfunctory bow to the religiosity of the American people. Rather, such references to God legitimated political authority by “supplying moral consensus amidst continuous political change”. Invocations of the civil religion reassure and integrate the disparate members of a pluralistic capitalist society.Biden relied more on the word “soul” than “God” but the functionality was the same. “Soul” is also a word with extensive philosophical and religious lineage. It denotes the essence of a being (or nation, or people). It connotes reason, feeling, presence, expressivity, depth, the substance of a style. In running for president, Biden was embarked on a moral crusade. He was battling, as he put it in another frequently used phrase, for “hope over fear, unity over division, and truth over lies”.And “the idea of America” at the seat of the civil religion was not an empty notion. Jill Lepore’s 2018 one-volume history of the US identified “These Truths” as the nation’s core values: political equality, natural rights, popular sovereignty and the meta-truth that they are “self-evident”, Benjamin Franklin’s Enlightenment amendment to Jefferson’s “sacred and undeniable”.Like most campaign slogans, “battle for the soul of America” was an expedient coinage, tinged in this case with a touch of bravado. Yet it has become uncannily apt. Some Americans continue to resist “these truths” and others. And so Biden has justly continued to use the phrase as president.In his inaugural address two weeks after the assault on the Capitol and Congress he quoted Abraham Lincoln’s attestation that “my whole soul is in it” as he signed the Emancipation Proclamation, and reiterated his claim that national unity was essential “to restore the soul and to secure the future of America”. On Memorial Day, at Arlington National Cemetery:
      The soul of America is animated by the perennial battle between our worst instincts – which we’ve seen of late – and our better angels. Between “Me first” and “We the People”. Between greed and generosity, cruelty and kindness, captivity and freedom.
      These Truths review: Jill Lepore’s Lincolnian American historyRead moreOn 13 July, back at the National Constitution Center, Biden zeroed in on the opposition:
      It’s no longer just about who gets to vote or making it easier for eligible voters to vote. It’s about who gets to count the vote – who gets to count whether or not your vote counted at all. It’s about moving from independent election administrators who work for the people to polarized state legislatures and partisan actors who work for political parties.
      To me, this is simple: This is election subversion. It’s the most dangerous threat to voting and the integrity of free and fair elections in our history …
      We have to ask: Are you on the side of truth or lies; fact or fiction; justice or injustice; democracy or autocracy? That’s what it’s coming down to …
      The Republicans on the other side peddle disinformation and bank on partisan polarization. They seek to negate the truth of the 2020 election results and tilt the certification process against a reoccurrence in 2024. Under the banners of a “stolen” and “rigged” election and a vastly exaggerated claim of election “fraud”, they are conducting feckless audits and enacting voter suppression laws in battleground states, including Pennsylvania. They blocked the establishment of an independent commission to investigate the riot on the day they voted to decertify the election. Biden also cited Jim Crow in view of the racial dimensions of the soul battle. The opposition has launched a coded attack on a misappropriated academic term, “Critical Race Theory”.The soul battle is distinct from the programmatic initiatives and negotiations being conducted under another Biden slogan, “Build Back Better”. In that political domain differences can be monetized and split without recourse to dire dichotomies. However, the emotions summoned over voting cannot be easily compartmentalized and hived off from the dollar figures.Wake review: a must-read graphic history of women-led slave revoltsRead moreThe soul battle also bears on the effort to persuade Americans to get vaccinated, both in Biden’s exhortations to get the shot which appeal to patriotic duty and the opposition’s efforts to brand resistance to vaccination as a stand for freedom against the government. Analyzing that argumentation requires an essay unto itself, although I note in passing that Biden’s rhetorical approach has eschewed the designation of a “czar” to coordinate the administration’s public appeals and briefings, which would put distance between the soul battle and the urgent project of pandemic mitigation. As it is, government messaging on Covid runs through the president and state governors. And it is certainly valid to see the battle against the virus as a test of the force of reason in politics.Occasions for more soul speechmaking dot the national calendar. A rally in Washington DC on 28 August will commemorate Dr Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” address, which the president will probably recognize but not attend. The 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks will necessarily reference the pullout of troops from Afghanistan, but Biden could also validate the House inquiry into the Capitol riot as being in the spirit of the 9/11 Commission. Thanksgiving is the quintessential holiday of the American civil religion. More occasions will crop up after congressional voting on the For the People and John Lewis Voting Rights Acts.But before any of those holidays or events surface on the civil religion calendar there is next Thursday, 12 August, the fourth anniversary of the battle that marked Biden’s starting point. He might do well to travel to Charlottesville and speak at the downtown spot vacated by the 10 July removal of the Robert E Lee statue that sparked the Unite the Right rally. It would be a sign that the mostly nonviolent but deeply conflicted war over the idea of America – for that is what a series of battles amounts to – is being won.TopicsJoe BidenBiden administrationUS politicsDemocratsRepublicansUS voting rightsProtestfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Trump may be fading away, but Trumpism is now in the American bloodstream | Jonathan Freeland

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      OpinionDonald TrumpTrump may be fading away, but Trumpism is now in the American bloodstreamJonathan FreedlandHe left in disgrace, yet all signs point to a third presidential run. And his disdain for facts is now an article of Republican faith Fri 6 Aug 2021 09.00 EDTLast modified on Fri 6 Aug 2021 12.53 EDTWe have so much to worry about, it’s a relief that at least one big source of angst is no longer there to keep us up at night. Given how much psychic energy so many – inside the US and out – once devoted to him, how he came to invade even our dreams, there is solace in the fact that these days we need pay no more attention to Donald Trump. Right? I’m afraid not.True, the great orange spectre has disappeared from the social media timelines, exiled by the emperors of Facebook and Twitter, reduced to starting his own blog to get around the ban – an effort that, like so many Trump enterprises before it, was quietly abandoned in failure. It lasted a month.So each morning no longer begins with a peek through splayed fingers at the phone to see what fresh horror Trump has committed. But just because he is out of daily sight does not mean he should be out of mind. Tragically, to the world’s most powerful democracy and all those who, for better or worse, are tugged like the tides by its lunar pull, Trump still matters. He cannot yet be consigned to the past, because he is affecting the present and looms over the future.The clearest evidence is the expectation that he will win the Republican presidential nomination for a third time and be the party’s next choice for the White House. You need only take a look at admittedly premature polls of the putative Republican field for the next election: he’s at the top, every time, with 76% of Republicans viewing him favourably. It was scarcely a shock when the Trump-backed candidate beat better-qualified rivals to win a Republican congressional primary in Ohio this week. Not for nothing does the former Bush speechwriter David Frum say of Trump, “Unless he’s dead or otherwise unable by then, he’s the likeliest 2024 nominee.”At the risk of haunting your dreams all over again, that is a daunting prospect. For election day 2024 will be just a few days shy of Joe Biden’s 82nd birthday. If the president runs, he would be asking to remain in the Oval Office until he is 86. Many Americans would hesitate before granting that request. (At a mere 78, Trump will be able to run as the youth candidate.) But if it’s not Biden, if it’s Kamala Harris – or, frankly, almost any other Democrat – Trump will be able to hum the familiar culture-war tunes that brought him victory in 2016 and took him perilously close in 2020.But let’s say that scenario is both too distant and too gloomy. Let’s say that, for whatever reason, it pans out differently. Even then, there is little scope to relax. Because even if Trump never returns, Trumpism is already in the American bloodstream.Some hoped that the 6 January attempted insurrection might finally break the spell, disenchanting those Republicans who had remained loyal to Trump in the belief that, even if he was gross, crude and bigoted, extravagantly selfish and self-regarding, he was ultimately harmless. The optimists reckoned that the sight of the head of the US government rousing a mob to storm the US Capitol – a mob bent on using force to overturn the results of a democratic election – would finally persuade most Republicans that on this critical point their political opponents were right: Trump did, after all, pose a grave threat to the republic.But it has not worked out that way. Republicans in the House voted against impeaching Trump for his crime, while Republicans in the Senate voted to acquit him of it. Dissenters have been ostracised. Even her pedigree as the daughter of a conservative hardliner has not protected Liz Cheney, expelled from the House leadership for standing against the great leader. Riding high instead are the conspiracy theorist Marjorie Taylor Greene and her comrade Matt Gaetz, the latter reportedly under investigation for sex trafficking, because they pass the only litmus test that matters: loyalty to Trump.Jared Kushner’s hidden genius? To make terrible decisions – yet keep failing upwards | Arwa MahdawiRead moreThe baseless claim that the 2020 election was stolen, that Donald Trump remains the true president and that Biden is a usurper, was once merely the stuff of Trump’s fever dreams, a psychological mechanism to protect his ego from the truth of defeat. But “Stop the Steal” is now an article of Republican faith. Nine months on, a majority of Republicans believe Trump won and Biden lost, against all the evidence and a string of court judgments finding every claim of voter fraud to be groundless.It seems nothing will shift the conviction of the faithful, not even the latest confirmation that it was Trump, not Biden, who was determined to rob the people of their democratic will: “Just say that the election was corrupt [and] leave the rest to me,” Trump told his acting attorney general last December, according to a newly released note taken by the latter’s deputy. Meanwhile, an Arizona state senator has called for election officials to be held in solitary confinement. The Republican tribe cleave loyally to the other defining feature of 2020 Trumpism: the refusal to believe in the reality of Covid and to do what’s needed to thwart the virus. And so the single greatest predictor of whether an American has been vaccinated or not is whether they voted for Biden or Trump last November. As of last month, 86% of Democrats had received at least one shot; among Republicans it was only 45%.That’s no surprise when Republican politicians compare the vaccination drive to the Nazi persecution of the Jews or to the KGB knock on the door and when Republicans at state level have forced out public health officials for pushing the vaccine too energetically.Of course, these twin tenets of Trumpism are conjoined. What they share is disdain for expertise and contempt for facts, whether the experts be scientists or election officials and whether the facts relate to the nature of a virus or the sum total of votes cast last November. Trumpism demands instead that the facts bend the knee before the mighty helmsman. It is truth that must defer to the ruler, not the other way around.Occasionally, you see a Republican who understands what’s happened to their party. There’s a snippet of video in which it pays to watch the face of the governor of Arkansas as an anti-vaxx heckler shouts down a briefing from a state medical official. In that moment, the governor seems to know that his party no longer believes in science or democracy, that the virus of Trumpism has infected its every organ. Whether or not Trump himself returns is almost secondary. The disease has already devoured the political party that constitutes half of America’s body politic – and it’s not done yet.
      Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist
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      Is Dissolution a Solution for Bosnia and Herzegovina?

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      The latest crisis in Bosnia and Herzegovina was provoked by the outgoing high representative, the Austrian diplomat Valentin Inzko, and his July move to enact the amendment to the country’s criminal code. Among other things, Article 1 (Amendment to Article 145a of the Criminal Code) specifies that whoever denies the crime of genocide, crimes against humanity or a war crime as established by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) or a court in Bosnia and Herzegovina may face up to five years in prison.

      The article also states that “whoever gives a recognition, award, memorial, any kind of memento, or any privilege or similar” to a person sentenced for genocide, crimes against humanity or a war crime will be punished by imprisonment for a term “not less than three years.” Decisions made by the high representative have the power of state laws.

      In Republika Srpska, one of the constitutive parts of Bosnia and Herzegovina, this move is perceived as a direct attack on the leadership in Banja Luka. The reason is the disputed qualification of the July 1995 Srebrenica massacre, where, according to some estimates, more than 8,000 Muslim Bosniak men were killed by the Bosnian Serb forces. In a number of rulings, the ICTY qualified the massacre as a genocide. While Republika Srpska does not deny the existence of the crime, it contests the genocide designation.  

      25 Years On, The Dayton Peace Agreement Is a Ticking Time Bomb

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      Many scholars have questioned the validity of such a categorization in view of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and the way this term has been used in legal practice prior to the ICTY ruling. The 2020 concluding report by the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Suffering of All People in the Srebrenica Region Between 1992 and 1995, produced by a group of 10 international scholars from countries like Israel, US, Nigeria, Germany and Japan, among others, was the latest to raise concerns around the use of this terminology.

      In response to the decision of the high representative, Milorad Dodik, the Serb member of the presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, called for a meeting of the parliament of Republika Srpska in order to come up with a legal response to Inzko’s decision, which would render this, as well as any future decisions by the high representative, ineffective in its territory. Dodik also threatened, not for the first time, to proclaim the independence of Republika Srpska if the pressures and attacks from the office of the high representative, together with those coming from the federation, continue.

      An Impossible Situation

      Bosnia and Herzegovina, once a constitutive part of the Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia, was established as an independent state by the General Framework Agreement for Peace in Bosnia and Herzegovina, known as the Dayton Peace Agreement, concluded in Dayton, Ohio, on November 21, 1995, and signed in Paris on December 14 that year.

      The Dayton Accords put an end to the armed conflict that followed the disintegration of Yugoslavia, in which about 100,000 people lost their lives. It created a complicated and highly inefficient state consisting of two entities, each with its own government: Republika Srpska, with Serbs as the ethnic and majority, and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, with Muslims/Bosniaks — since the 1990s, many (former) Muslims in Bosnia and Herzegovina identify ethnically as Bosniaks — as the majority and Bosnian Croats as a constitutive ethnic group, yet in reality an ethnic minority.

      Later on, the federation was further split into 10 cantons, each with its own government. In addition to the two parliaments, there is a parliamentary assembly at the level of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which consists of the House of Peoples and the House of Representatives. In theory, the country’s highest executive body is the collective presidency that consists of three members from each of the major ethnic groups and decides by consensus, which, in practice, means that its work is often blocked. However, the real sovereign in Bosnia and Herzegovina is not its people, the parliament or the presidency, but the high representative.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Annex 10 of the Dayton Accords instituted the Office of the High Representative. Initially envisioned as an international chair with the mandate to oversee the implementation of the agreement, the office was radically transformed in 1997 with the so-called Bonn Authority, when the Peace Implementation Council gave the Office of the High Representative almost limitless powers in Bosnia and Herzegovina without any democratic legitimacy. Using the power granted to them by the Bonn agreement, many representatives have behaved as colonial governors, vetoing and overruling decisions made by local authorities at all levels of government, removing democratically elected officials, and arbitrarily changing state legislation.

      Bosnia and Herzegovina found itself in an impossible situation. Its highly dysfunctional political system is often criticized in the West for the lack of democracy, transparency and accountability, and yet the Western powers fully support the Office of the High Representative that, itself undemocratic, only prevents the development of democratic institutions in the country.

      Conflicting Visions

      In addition to this already complicated institutional setup, it is clear that visions for the future of Bosnia and Herzegovina sharply differ between its two constitutive entities. In Bosnia and Herzegovina — especially among the Muslim/Bosniak majority — there is strong support for a unitary state, the prerequisite of which would be the disintegration of the two entities mandated by the Dayton Accords.

      On the other hand, the leaders of Republika Srpska, enjoying strong popular support, see its existence, with all of the competencies initially bestowed upon it, as the prerequisite for the existence of Bosnia and Herzegovina, as established in Dayton. Every attempt to diminish Republika Srpska can only lead to the disintegration of Bosnia and Herzegovina. If done violently, it can lead to a new war.

      In this highly charged atmosphere, the question of how to describe the Srebrenica massacre is extremely important. Republika Srpska has often been called a “creature of genocide” by many local Bosniak politicians and journalists. In Banja Luka, this is perceived as a way of delegitimizing Republika Srpska. For this reason, there is a fear that popularizing the term “genocide” as a way of describing the massacre — and now outlawing any questioning of this qualification — may be used as a political instrument against Republika Srpska with the intent to create a unified Bosnian state in which the Serbs would be marginalized and oppressed.

      Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

      Bosnia and Herzegovina, no doubt, represents an epic failure of Western policies toward the region. It is a dysfunctional state, in which local nationalist elites on all sides don’t need a political program to be reelected; the mere existence of nationalist elites in one entity has been sufficient to keep them in the position of power in the other. A significant number of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s citizens do not perceive this state as their country. With two fundamentally conflicting visions for the future, the only way to keep a pretense of a functioning state is through the existence of the undemocratically appointed foreign governor.

      In such a situation, one cannot but wonder why Western powers consistently obstruct any discussion of alternative options for Bosnia and Herzegovina. Is it because opening that question would expose decades of their ineffective and highly destructive policies toward both the country and the region? Or is this instability in the interest of both those Western centers of political and economic power as well as local political elites?

      Given the deadlock and the level of tension generated and perpetuated by the mainstream media, it seems that a peaceful dissolution of Bosnia and Herzegovina along the lines of its constitutive entities would be a much better long-term solution. It may even be the only viable solution that could prevent further suffering of the people in Bosnia and Herzegovina and its rapid depopulation, which has been unfolding as a result of economic depression and the lack of faith that the situation will improve in the foreseeable future. A peaceful dissolution could lead to more stability in the region and to better functioning of democratic institutions without (neo)colonial governors. 

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

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      Joe Biden Faces a Dilemma Over Iran

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      Everything old is new again, at least when it comes to US President Joe Biden’s deterrence credibility problem with Iran. This must seem like déjà vu to him, since he witnessed similar dynamics play out during an earlier stint at the White House.

      Several weeks ago came news that the FBI had foiled a brazen scheme by an Iranian intelligence network to kidnap an Iranian-born US citizen who is a prominent critic of the Islamic Republic.  The apparent plan was to abduct her from the streets of Brooklyn, spirit her to Venezuela via “maritime evacuation” using “military-style speedboats” and from there deliver her to Iran.  The plan was part of a broader scheme entailing the seizure of other individuals in Canada and the United Kingdom.

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      The elaborate operation, which the head of the FBI’s New York field office described as “not some far-fetched movie plot,” is a flagrant gesture on Iran’s part at a time when the Biden administration is seeking to diplomatically engage Tehran on nuclear proliferation issues. What stands out from this episode is how much Tehran is willing to extend US–Iranian hostility onto the American homeland and how little it seems to fear the prospect of retaliation.

      The Saudi Ambassador

      The thwarted abduction is reminiscent of an even more audacious scheme on US territory by Iranian agents a decade ago. In the fall of 2011, the FBI broke up an operation to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington. The plan was directed by the Quds Force, an elite branch of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that conducts clandestine operations beyond the country’s borders. The plot involved blowing up the Saudi diplomat at an upscale restaurant popular among Washington’s political elite, followed by the bombing of the Saudi and Israeli embassies in Washington and in Argentina. The high likelihood of mass casualties at the restaurant was dismissed by the operation’s US-based organizer as “no big deal.”

      Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

      The plot organizer sought to outsource the bombings to the Los Zetas drug cartel in Mexico, which the FBI later described as having “access to military-grade weaponry and explosives, and has engaged in numerous acts of violence, including assassinations and murders.” As part of the deal with the cartel, the organizer promised to funnel tons of opium from the Middle East to Mexico. The plan unraveled when the organizer reached out to an individual he believed was a cartel member but who was actually an informant for the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). 

      Reporting on the foiled plot, the Washington Post commented that it resembled “an international cloak-and-dagger operation that reads like the plot of a Bond novel.” Robert Mueller, the FBI director at the time, noted that “Though it reads like the pages of a Hollywood script, the impact would have been very real and many lives would have been lost.” James R. Clapper, the US director of national intelligence, cautioned that “some Iranian officials — probably including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei — have changed their calculus and are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real or perceived US actions that threaten the regime.”

      At the time, the Obama administration was looking to wind down the military conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as find a way to halt Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Although then-Vice-President Biden described the botched assassination plot as “an outrage that violates one of the fundamental premises upon which nations deal with one another”, the White House did little beyond prosecuting the hapless Iranian organizer and imposing sanctions on several Quds Force officials.

      James Mattis on Obama’s Response

      The tepid response was particularly criticized by General James Mattis, the head of the US Central Command (CENTCOM), which directs military operations in the greater Middle East. He was dismayed that President Barack Obama kept the details of “the enormous savagery of the intended attack” from the American public and failed to respond forcefully to the provocation.

      Obama would eventually fire Mattis from his CENTCOM post, in part due to the latter’s frequent criticism of the president’s approach toward Iran. Once in civilian life, Mattis publicly lambasted Obama’s response to the attempted assassination. Speaking at a conference in 2013, he claimed the plot was the result of a decision “taken at the very highest levels in Tehran.” He further asserted that “We caught them in the act and yet we let them walk free,” and “They have been basically not held to account. … I don’t know why the attempt on [the Saudi ambassador] wasn’t dealt with more strongly.”

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      In his 2019 memoir, Mattis blamed the lax US reply on Obama’s keenness to strike a nuclear deal with Iran. He also elaborated on his earlier criticism, lamenting that “We treated an act of war as a law enforcement violation.” He added:

      “Had the bomb gone off, those in the restaurant and on the street would have been ripped apart, blood rushing down sewer drains. It would have been the worst attack on us since 9/11. I sensed that only Iran’s impression of America’s impotence could have led them to risk such an act within a couple of miles of the White House, Absent one fundamental mistake — the terrorists had engaged an undercover DEA agent in an attempt to smuggle the bomb — the Iranians would have pulled off this devastating attack. Had that bomb exploded, it would have changed history.”

      In the end, it was Obama’s successor who delivered the kind of reprisal Mattis thought necessary. In early January 2020, the Trump administration launched a drone strike that killed Major General Qassem Soleimani, the long-time Quds Force commander, while he was on a secret visit to Baghdad. Hundreds of miles away on the very same night, a drone strike in Yemen targeted but missed Abdul Reza Shahlai, a senior leader in the Quds Force. Washington had long accused Soleimani and Shahlai of being the key Iranian officials in putting the bomb plot into motion.

      Biden’s Conundrum

      Like Obama, President Biden now confronts a conundrum: how to shore up eroding US deterrence resolve vis-à-vis an increasing risk-acceptant Tehran while also keeping it in good enough humor to extract significant nuclear concessions. So far, he has eschewed Mattis’ advice about how to dissuade Iran from mounting further attacks on American soil.

      In contrast to his outrage a decade ago, Biden has opted to keep personally silent about the Brooklyn abduction plot while his administration treats it as a matter for law enforcement. It seems unlikely that the incoming Iranian president, Ebrahim Raisi, will find this response a cause for restraint.

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