Sudan's Suffering

 

On April 15 of this year the 5.7 million residents of Khartoum woke up in the middle of a vicious pitched battle between two heavily armed military forces. Tanks rumbled through normally quiet suburbs, artillery shells rained down on informal settlements, fighter jets roared overhead and soldiers raided the food and medical supply warehouses of international aid agencies and wandered the streets looting whatever they could find.  The road from the city to Port Sudan on the Red Sea was closed, cutting the city off from supplies and making escape from the city impossible.

To understand how the largest city in Sudan, its political, economic and social center turned into a battlefield with no escape and nowhere to hide, we need to revisit Sudan's recent history.

We can skip over some 5,000 years of recorded history by noting that the Blue Nile flowing from Ethiopia and the White Nile flowing from Tanzania meet at Khartoum and then flow north to create Egypt. The 1884 Berlin Conference on Africa "gave" Egypt to the United Kingdom although the British always had to pretend that they were really just guests of the Kingdom of Egypt. It also gave Britain control of the territory south of Khartoum through the Sahara desert down into sub-Saharan Africa and for good measure, the British territory extended far to the west. The arbitrary lines on a map lumped together a majority population that had been influenced by the Arab and Islamic invasion of the 8th and 9th centuries and is largely semi-nomadic camel and sheep herders, some of whom had been key middlemen in transporting Black African slaves across the Sahara. A significant minority of the people included in the south and west of Sudan are Black African subsistence farmers who were Christians or traditional animists. A final segment of the population are the urbanized citizens of Khartoum, linked to Egypt historically, culturally and economically.

A Hopeful Future

When Sudan gained independence in 1956, there was immense optimism that the waters of the Blue and the White Nile could be used to create an enormous agricultural area. There were dreams of Sudan as "The Bread Basket of the Middle East." But instead Sudan endured 40 years of political instability with weak and inept civilian governments alternating with equally inept military regimes. That ended in 1989 when Omar al-Bashir led yet another military coup but managed to consolidate power and create an increasingly repressive regime. Despite the facts that a significant minority of Sudanese were not Muslim and Islam as practiced in Sudan was tolerant and relaxed, al-Bashir forged an alliance with conservative Islamist clerics and announced plans to "Islamicize" Sudan. That led to two major revolts, one in the South and the other in the western province of Darfur. The brutal and bloody civil war in the South dragged on until 2011 when the al-Bashir regime gave up and a poplar referendum ratified the creation of the new nation of South Sudan. With the regular army preoccupied with the fighting in the South, the rebellion in Darfur was opposed by a series of militias from the semi-nomadic camel herders. The various militias were quickly organized into a single force by Mohamed Hamdan “Hemedti” Dagalo with direct support from al-Bashir as the "Janjaweed" and began a rampage of arson, rape, murder and looting against the Black African farming villages that resulted in an estimated 400,000 deaths and over 2 million refugees in camps dependent on international aid organizations. [The atrocities perpetrated in Darfur became an international cause celebre in the early 2000's and led the International Criminal Court to indict Omar al-Bashir for crimes against humanity.] al-Bashir worked with Hemedti to reorganize and re-brand the Janjaweed as the Rapid Support Force (RSF) as an important counter weight to the Sudanese military and additional prop for his rule.

Hopes Dashed Again

By 2021 Sudan was increasingly isolated and the foreign aid that was a major element of the economy was drying up. The government's response to shortages of food and supplies and spiraling inflation was so inept that a coalition of Khartoum civilian elites and senior military officers ousted al-Bashir and installed a transitional government with a strong civilian presence and both army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the RSF's Hemedti. It seemed Sudan was on the verge of a democratic future. That dream did not last and al-Burban and Hemedti took power in (yet another) coup with al-Burban the ostensible number 1 and Hemedti as number 2. They oversaw the indictment and conviction of al-Bashir on bribery and corruption charges and put him in jail for two years but refused to turn him over to the International Criminal Court.

Almost immediately the pair began arguing over plans to integrate Hemedti's RSF forces into the Sudanese Armed Forces. Once the RSF disappeared into the regular army, Hemedti would be without a power base and source of income. The three years al-Burban offered was hardly enough time to prepare for a comfortable retirement; Hemedti figured ten years would be about right.

This was not an abstract argument about personnel and organizational flow charts. Most of the roughly 100,000 RSF fighters had come to the Khartoum area to support Hemedti's role in the coup leadership and it was not clear how long he could find the money to support them. Not surprisingly there were very tense relationships between the RSF fighters and the Sudanese soldiers as they patrolled the streets of Khartoum.

WAR 2023

It is not clear what ignited the violence between the two armed groups in April but much of the violence was aimed at controlling international aid agencies, medical facilities and food warehouses as well a civilian infrastructure like electricity generation, roads into and out of Khartoum, and the airport.

There is no easy escape for the millions of people caught in the fighting in the capital. The airport is a battleground and there are no flights. The United States, the United Kingdom and Saudi Arabia manged to broker a brief cease fire to allow the evacuation of international aid workers and embassy personnel overland to Port Sudan on the Red Sea and on to Egypt. But the ceasefire evaporated and the highway from Khartoum to Port Sudan was closed again. Even when sporadic cease fires are negotiated to allow shipments of food and medical supplies into Khartoum, civilians are unable to leave since they lack transport and the all-important exit visas they need to leave Port Sudan.

The explanation for the attacks on international aid agencies, medical facilities and food storage sites lies, I think, in the nature of the RSF forces. The typical recruit is a young man from rural northern Sudan with little education and not much future beyond semi-nomadic camel herding. Joining a militia means getting a regular paycheck, meals and housing, a group to belong to and the thrill of firing an assault rifle. It is just plain cool to put on your camo fatigues and ride around in the back of a Toyota pickup with your gun and buddies. It also offers the chance to extort money or goods from villagers or even to attack and loot hapless farmers who are the traditional enemies of nomads. The RSF troops have the equipment and weapons of a modern army and some military training (from Wagner group mercenaries and others) but they do not have the discipline and focus of professional armies which puts civilians who cross their path in grave danger of robbery or worse. I do not know where the RSF gets its funding, but suspect it comes from oil-rich conservative Islamist individuals in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf.

In Khartoum, aid organizations and medical centers are attacked because they have things that are worth taking and civilians in their houses are attacked because city dwellers are resented and scorned for their Westernized ways and they have things worth taking. Once fighting broke out in the capital, it meant the government and regular army could no longer control the rest of the country and the RSF unleashed a furious assault in Darfur, resurrecting the nightmare of rape, mass murder and pillage of 2003 -2005. The fortunate ones will be able to make it to refugee camps in Chad which still shelter thousands of people from the horrors of 20 years ago.

Perhaps because of the limits on my knowledge of the situation and the key players, it is difficult to see and quick or easy solution. For the two major players: the Sudanese Armed Forces' al-Burban and the RSF's Hemedti, this is both business and personal. The business part is straightforward -- controlling the government presents opportunities to skim and divert foreign aid funds and tax revenues and to collect a little something for approving plans for construction or mining operations. (When al-Bashir was accused and convicted of bribery and corruption, his long time cronies in the government and military and Khartoum's civilian elites were shocked, yes, shocked and appalled to think that such things were being done ...) That might allow for some sort of power (and revenue) sharing agreement but the conflict is also personal. The two men neither like nor trust each other and any attempt to integrate the RSF into the regular forces means the end of Hemedti's career as player in Sudanese politics. There is no way to split the difference.

As I mentioned, the United States, the UK and Saudi Arabia, along with Egypt, are playing the central role in trying to end the violence. Sudan's neighbors, such as Chad and Libya, are greatly concerned about Sudan's impact on their own stability and internal conflicts. I think the only hope for at least a temporary solution is the withdrawal of RSF forces from Khartoum and Darfur. As long as the fighting continues the 5.7 million citizens of Khartoum are trapped in their homes with dwindling food supplies, limited access to water and non-existent medical services. Thousands of Darfur citizens are reported on the move from their villages to the comparative safety of refugee camps in Chad amid rumors and reports of atrocities evoking the agony of 20 years ago.

Israel's Winter of Discontent

 

The term "existential crisis" has been so over used it has become a tired cliche. But sometimes issues do pose fundamental challenges to the physical or political survival of a country. The controversy in Israel over the judicial "reforms" and other items in the package of concessions Benjamin Netanyahu made to extreme ultra-Orthodox and settler parties to cobble together a ruling coalition is one such issue. What is at stake is not just the relationship between the judiciary and the Knesset (Israel's parliament) but the future of Israeli society.

Governmental Structure

Israel, like the United Kingdom, does not have a written constitution that limits the scope and power of the government. But there are 13 "Basic Laws" passed from 1950 to 1992 that the High Court of Israel has declared to be the equivalent of a written constitution and empower the Court to review and reject laws passed by the Knesset.

In Israel, as in the United Kingdom and all other parliamentary systems, a majority of the members of the Knesset select the Prime Minister and senior government officials. The tension between the executive and legislative branches that is a central feature of the Untried States constitution is absent. The only check on a Prime Minister is the necessity to keep a majority of the Knesset happy. Israel, unlike the United States or United Kingdom, has a single chamber legislature so there is no tension between an upper house (like the U.S. Senate with a Democratic majority) and lower house (like the U.S. House of Representatives with a Republican majority.) And in Israel, as in the United Kingdom and other parliamentary systems but quite unlike the United States, local provincial or state governments are not independent and in tension with the national government.

Israel uses a proportional representation system to allocate the 120 Knesset seats and a party with as little as 5% of the vote may have several seats. As a result Israeli politics can be highly fragmented and a government formed from a coalition of parties, sometimes proving the old adage that politics makes strange bedfellows. In a coalition government that has only a narrow majority, where every vote counts, a party with as few as four or five seats can wield disproportionate power and influence.

The changes the Netanyahu government proposed earlier this year would negate the High Court's role as arbiter of the unwritten constitution embodied in the Basic Laws, replacing judicial review of Knesset legislation with Knesset review of judicial decisions and giving the government of the day exclusive control of judicial appointments. The basic rationale for the changes is that unelected judges should not be able to override the actions of the democratically elected parliament.

The triggering incident for the reform agenda seems to have been the decision last January regarding Aryeh Deri, leader of the ultra-Orthodox party Shas whose 11 votes are critical to the ruling coalition. Netanyahu appointed Deri health and interior minister despite Deri's conviction for tax evasion. When that was challenged on the grounds that Israeli law forbids convicted felons from serving in the cabinet, the Knesset passed a new law stating that as long as the conviction did not involved jail time, it did not disqualify the person. The High Court declared that bit of legislation unconstitutional and Deri was fired from the cabinet (but not the Knesset.) The fact that Netanyahu himself is currently on trial for bribery and corruption is an important part of the context.

The deep divisions in Israeli society make the consequences of this crisis even more serious and explain the depth of the passion and commitment of the hundreds of thousands of protesters. This battle, serious as it is, is seen as only the first episode in a series of events that could change the fundamental nature of Israeli society.

Divisions in Society and Politics

The founding generation of Israeli leadership was marked by social democratic ideals of Western European Zionism and the Utopian socialism of many of the Jews who immigrated to Palestine in the 1920's and 30's. Well before independence in 1949 there was a well-developed system of support for new arrivals to meet their physical needs and to integrate them into the emerging society. The first arrivals after the end of World War II were Holocaust survivors and refugees from Central and Eastern Europe known as "Ashkenazim" or European Jews. The next wave, after Independence, were Jews from the Middle East and North Africa (known as Sephardim) who were culturally and socially more like their former Arab and Muslim neighbors than the Ashkenazim. Despite the best efforts of the settlement agencies, the differences in education and culture meant that many Sephardim and their children ended up with lower levels of education, income and social status.

The different perspectives and experiences of Ashkenazim and Sephardim led to the emergence of political movements opposed to the Labor Party which had dominated Israeli politics. The opposition coalesced around the Likud party. The party's base was Sephardic and its ideology placed more stress on Jewish identity and nationalism than social democratic values. In 1976 it eclipsed Labor in the Knesset and made Menachim Begin Prime Minister. Likud, the party of Benjamin Netanyahu, remains the single largest party in Israel with 32 of the 120 Knesset sets, while Labor has dwindled to a paltry 4 and its adherents have splintered into several centrist parties.

The Ultra-Orthodox

Haredi Judaism, often referred to as ultra-Orthodox, emerged in Eastern Europe in the early 20th Century alongside the earlier Hasidic movement. Both reject the intellectual, social and material transformations that began with the Enlightenment and define modern Europe and North America, as well as the large majority of Israelis. Religious, social and economic behavior is based on a very literal reading of the Torah. The rules and prescriptions in the book of Leviticus for example, are taken at face value.

Because its adherents wore distinctive traditional clothing and most lived in small towns, they were exceptionally vulnerable to being swept up in the Holocaust. Most of those who did survive arrived in Israel in the wave of post-war immigrants (others came to the United States.) But unlike other new arrivals, they had no interest in being assimilated into the emerging Israeli society, regarding themselves as the only authentic Jews and the only ones living a truly righteous life. In addition the ultra-Orthodox believe that a Jewish state will not be established until the Messiah comes which makes the Zionist vision of a modern state illegitimate and justifies refusal to comply with governmental regulations.

Successive Israeli governments have been generally tolerant of ultra-Orthodox views and concerns. Two of the concessions made to ultra-Orthodox communities are particularly significant (and irritating to many other Israelis): military service and education. All Israeli citizens are obliged to serve in the Israeli Defense Force (IDF) (24 months for women; 32 for men) and then in the active reserve for at least ten years. (Active reserve means that you may be writing code for the latest killer app one day and driving an Abrams tank across the desert the next.) Ultra-Orthodox men and women are exempt. Ultra-Orthodox children may attend religious schools instead of secular state schools and ultra-Orthodox men usually continue their education in a yeshiva studying the Torah and rabbinic commentaries, often until they marry, often with a subsidy from the government. (Women do not go to school beyond the equivalent of high school but are expected to marry and have children as soon as possible.) Ultra-Orthodox and other conservative communities are much more common and influential in Jerusaled than most other cities, such as Tel Aviv.

Because of their narrowly religious education and traditional social roles, ultra-Orthodox men (women do not work outside the home) are usually confined to low paying jobs even as they are trying to support large families. Ultra-Orthodox communities have some of the highest poverty rates in Israel.

Despite deep reservations about the legitimacy of the state, ultra-Orthodox Israelis do participate in politics and there are several ultra-Orthodox parties in the Knesset. These parties have become increasingly important in the ruling coalitions Netanyahu has put together, wielding far more power than their 13% of the population would suggest. Over the past few decades they have become increasing important in social policy, from definitions of who is a Jew and thus entitled to a right of return, to increasing subsides for religious students.

Settlers

In the 1990's the demise of the Soviet Union freed Russian Jews to emigrate and some 190,000 came to Israel. The agencies charged with socializing new immigrants were not equipped to handle such a large number and many new arrivals quickly moved on to West Bank settlements. This major increase in settlers has led to rapid growth in new settlements (often despite High Court rulings that they are illegal,) increased the militancy of settlers' leadership and led to contentious, often violent interactions between settlers and Palestinians. Itamar Ben-Gvir is the leader of one of the most militant pro-settler parties in the current cabinet. He is proud of the fact that he has been indicted over 50 times for hate speech and inciting violence; only one of those indictments resulted in a conviction. One of the concessions Netanyahu made to get the settlers' parties into his coalition was to create a "national guard" to serve under Ben-Gvir's Interior ministry. The guard's vaguely defined mission would be to focus on unrest and violence in the West Bank, on the grounds that the IDF, Shin Bet (equivalent of the FBI), and the regular police force are too busy with other duties and issues.

The threat of a radical change in the role of the courts in Israeli politics, the proposal for a national guard outside the established security system, promises of increased support and benefits for the ultra-Orthodox have driven tens of thousands of Israelis to the streets in recent weeks. A particularly telling clue about how deeply disturbed many middle-of-the-road, moderate Israelis are about the issues is the fact that several hundred reserve officers signed a letter stating that they would not serve in the IDF if the judicial proposal went through. (This is more than 1960's "Hell no, I won't go" Vietnam resistance. The IDF is a proud symbol of Israeli strength and national pride. It is one of the most respected institutions in the country.

The protesters are clear: These proposals are a direct, existential threat to a democratic Israel. Netanyahu has agreed to delay consideration of his judicial program until the end of Passover, on April 13. There is undoubtedly some very serious discussions and negotiations going on behind the scenes, we may soon know if they will succeed.

Some Thoughts on Afghanistan

The start of understanding Afghanistan begins, I think, with a question: Which Afghanistan are we talking about?

There is largely urbanized Afghanistan with a significant population of well educated young women and men working in jobs directly or indirectly supported by international aid groups or foreign aid. And a larger group of city dwellers working in small shops and factories or involved in an informal economy of street vending and hustles. Mobile phones are omnipresent, internet access is available, there are multiple TV channels and movie theaters. There is also a large expat population including military personnel, diplomatic staff and people working for international organizations such as Oxfam, Doctors Without Borders and a number of United Nations agencies. That's about a quarter of the Afghan population and it is concentrated in Kabul.

And there is rural Afghanistan, home to about 70% of all Afghans, making the country one of the least urbanized in the world. Half of the people in rural areas fall below the UN's definition of poverty, struggling to get by on subsistence farming. In some parts of the country opium poppies provide a cash crop although most of the profit goes to middlemen and local tribal leaders (or the Taliban). The best guess is that 43% of the people can read and write in their native languages; there are only four countries with lower rates. The sex disparity is striking: 54% male literacy; 30% female. Most people live in small villages in hilly and mountainous areas where communication between villages is challenging and communication with the outside world rare. Despite what has been the world's highest infant mortality rate, rural families tend to be large. Large families, limited arable land and persistent poverty mean that there is a large number of young men available for recruitment by local bandit groups, militias or the Taliban.

In much of the world the push of poverty and the pull of opportunity and excitement lead to young men and women leaving their traditional villages for the city. In Afghanistan, even among the young, the city remains an alien, threatening place.

I think the 2001 invasion of was justified by our self interest in protecting us from terrorist attacks. When the Taliban regime refused to cooperate with us to act against Al Qaeda after 9/11, we and our NATO allies joined forces with groups inside Afghanistan who were waging an insurgent struggle against the regime. The initial goal was to work with the Taliban's Afghan opponents and create a stable government that could exert enough control over the country to prevent it from again becoming a base for attacks on us or our friends. The recent suicide bombing in Kabul is a pointed reminder of how critical control of the Afghan countryside, once and future home to terrorist groups, is to American security.

Afghanistan has never had a unified national government that exercised control over the diverse ethnic, regional and local groups. Traditional monarchs with hopes of modernizing the country were swept aside by more impatient young reformers whose attempts at highly coercive reforms led to the popular uprising that provoked the Soviet invasion. The Taliban, with a lot of support from Pakistan and the United States, emerged as the most powerful of the several groups that composed the mujaheddin resistance to the Soviets. The Taliban absorbed or defeated the other militias and controlled the government from 1996 to 2001.

The Taliban was based in the ethnically Pashtun parts of rural Afghanistan. The leadership used a particularly harsh and punitive variant of Islam to express and justify a puritanical and repressive patriarchal regime. The regime's excesses provoked armed resistance in those parts of Afghanistan populated by one of the 12 major ethnic groups other than the Pashtuns. By 2001 the Taliban had lost control of much of the country, had alienated many Afghans, was faced with a collapsing economy and was ripe for replacement.

But replacement with what? The Afghan opponents of the Taliban were not a unified force and as a collection of largely rural, non-Pashtun factions had little credibility in the cities or most of the countryside. There was no national elite or political parties that could provide leadership and no national institution that could provide security, justice, education or medical care. In a country where about three quarters of the population were subsistence farmers living in small villages in isolated valleys separated by towering mountains, there were few economic resources to support the widespread desire for a better life. And the hundreds of thousands languishing in refugee camps in Pakistan who had fled the Taliban included large proportion of the few Afghans who had modern educations and skills.

Establishing a government that can effectively rule a country involves development along three inter-related dimensions: economic, social and political.

Frank Zappa would add a fourth essential precondition: a national beer. If that's true Afghanistan is doomed since alcohol is illegal.

The human toll of the past includes 8,000 U.S. and NATO soldiers, contractors and aid workers, and as many as 240,000 Afghans. The United States, Europe, the United Nations and non-governmental agencies have spent more than two TRILLION dollars on aid projects. What has been achieved?

Economic development: Afghanistan remains one of the poorest countries in the world. The largest single component in the national economy is foreign aid. The lack of easily exploitable resources, difficult geography and physical insecurity make it unattractive to foreign investment. There are some wealthy Afghans but some have gotten rich by exploiting poor farmers and many by siphoning off aid money and extorting bribes from aid organizations. That wealth has been parked in bank accounts and assets outside the country. On the whole, Afghanistan is not any better off than it was twenty years ago.

Social development: This is an area where there has been demonstrable change for the better. The country has a long way to go but literacy rates, especially for women, have improved. Twenty years ago the infant mortality rate in Afghanistan was the highest in the world. That rate has been cut in half. Especially in Kabul, a significant number of well educated, highly skilled young men and women have begun to create a contemporary social, intellectual and artistic culture. (Since many of them have worked for or with American forces and international aid agencies they have been among the most desperate to flee the Taliban.)

Political development: The internationally backed regime that evolved over the past twenty years did not have the kind of popular support that makes a regime legitimate. Popular support is based on two things: a belief that the regime and its leaders have a right to rule and the regime's ability to deliver the goods. In Afghanistan the right to rule is rooted in tribal and Islamic tradition and seriously undermined by the perception of foreign involvement. And none of the governments installed after 2001 could deliver even the most basic goods: physical security, economic improvement, honest local administration.

The U.S. and NATO military contingents did not develop an effective strategy for keeping villagers safe from local bandits, the remnants of the Taliban and other insurgent groups. No matter how well intentioned or "culturally sensitive" western military units and the Afghan forces they trained were, they were seen as an alien army that might storm in during the day but went home at night. That left villagers, local police and government officials, at the mercy of whomever was lurking in the dark. The lack of physical security doomed attempts to link villages to larger markets or diversify into cash crops other than opium. From top to bottom many government employees routinely supplemented their income by demanding bribes and kickbacks. The message to ordinary citizens was clear: we are not here to make your life better, we're here to make money for ourselves. This pattern marked the national army, as well. While some officers were dedicated and professional, others were siphoning off money meant for payrolls and equipment.

Most Afghans were well aware of what the Taliban did when they were in power in a village or region and were not supporters. But the national government was no better and, in the countryside, tainted by association with foreign invaders and evils of city life. The Afghan army depended on American trainers, logistical support and air strikes. When that disappeared, large numbers of soldiers saw no reason to fight to defend a corrupt government based on urban elites.

As Yogi Berra reportedly said, "It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future." Nonetheless:

Humanitarian disaster: Drought, Covid, warfare, and inflation have already created a dire situation with half the population relying on food aid from the outside. Food and medical supplies have been coming into the country through the Kabul airport and four border crossings with Pakistan. Once the U.S. military leaves the airport will there by anyone left to run it? Will it be safe, or even possible for large scale shipments to arrive? Will the truck convoys be allowed to continue and will they be safe from bandits and hijackers? Some foreign aid workers, especially UN personnel and international non-governmental organizations have decided to stay in Afghanistan, but will they be able to maintain the distribution networks? The UN World Food Programme's supplies in the country will be exhausted by the end of September and it does not have sufficient cash on hand to buy enough food to get through the winter. Medical personnel were already scarce in Afghanistan and many Afghan doctors and nurses have left the country, as have international medical workers.

Economic collapse: One quarter of the Afghan Gross Domestic Product is foreign aid. The United States and European Union countries are not going to send money to a Taliban regime in the near future. A large proportion of the money sent to Afghanistan in the past is physically held by international banks or embedded in national budgets. The United States has already frozen several billion dollars that the new government cannot spend. We will probably try to use the promise of aid to to induce the Taliban to refrain from doing the sorts of things that are central to their stated principles and beliefs. Add in the billions of dollars diverted from past aid by corrupt officials that ended up in foreign bank accounts. Most of the hundreds of thousands of Afghans fleeing the country by airlift or crossing into Pakistan are arriving with only a few possessions. Some, like ex-President Ghani, are headed to the Gulf or Europe with very large bank accounts.

Anarchy: The Taliban is not a unified, hierarchical organization, There are distinct factions who have been able to coordinate their military activities but have differing views on what should be done now and clashing personal ambitions. The leaders who negotiated with the Trump administration and have been in contact with the Biden administration are veterans of the anti-Soviet war who have spent a considerable amount of the past twenty years outside the country. Even if they had been fully committed to the promises they made in exchange for U.S. withdrawal, they did not have the power to carry them out. It is not clear that the senior military leaders in the various Taliban factions can always control the fighters on the streets. You have spent much of your life, and lost many comrades, fighting to rid the country of foreigners and their corruption. And now you're supposed to be polite and respectful to immoral women and men?

The Taliban may be able to establish a degree of control and stability in Kabul and the provincial capitals despite the fact that it is not seen as legitimate or desirable by a large proportion of the citizens because it has a large coercive capability. But the suicide bombing at the Kabul airport focused attention on the fact that Taliban does not control much of the countryside and is itself under attack by armed groups.

This is one of those situations where you desperately hope you are wrong, but I think the suffering of Afghanistan is just beginning.

 

Palestinians and Israelis: Clashing Polticial Identities

 

I think the Israeli-Palestinian conflict can be most usefully understand as a clash of ethno-political identities. There are two communities whose identity is rooted in the same land. These identities have co-evolved in the 20th Century, making the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians a modern phenomenon. [The facile "those people have been hating and fighting for thousands of years" and the implicit corollary shrugging of shoulders and "it's hopeless" attitude is false and trivializing.]

In the late 19th Century Zionism emerged as a modern Jewish identity, focused on a people (ethnicity) and a potential state. By the turn of the 20th Century Zionism was a political ideology dedicated to creating a nation-state that would be Jewish ethnically but secular and socialist.

World War I saw the rapid emergence of nationalism in the Middle East as the Turkish Ottoman Empire collapsed. When the British and French divided up the Middle East into colonies (complete with borders that made more sense to map makers in Paris and London than the people on the ground), they laid the geographical foundation for modern national identities to emerge.

The first wave of Jewish immigrants, most of whom were fervent Zionists, began to arrive in Palestine with the support (most of the time) of the British colonial administration. They were largely Western European and North American in origin and thought of Palestine as a "land without people for a people without land." But a sense of Palestinian nationalism was emerging at the same time, creating a people who were already on the land. The fact that the Jewish immigrants were European and supported by the occupying British basically guaranteed that "we" Palestinians would view the new arrivals as "the other."

A distinctive Israeli identity emerged in the 20s and 30s as more Jews arrived and the community found itself increasingly at odds with the British. In the immediate aftermath of World War II a wave of survivors of the war and Holocaust arrived in Palestine and an armed struggle broke out between the British and the Zionists, even as the Palestinians were resisting continued British rule.

The experience of persecution in Eastern Europe and the genocide of World War II led to an emphasis on toughness, self reliance and assertive self-defense among the new Israelis and the attack on the new state in 1948 by Arab armies cemented a sense of being surrounded by enemies and under constant threat of annihilation. After the 1948 war a large number of Jews came to Israel from ancient Jewish communities in North Africa and the Middle East, often because they now feared their Arab (and Persian) neighbors. That sense persists today and has been reinforced by suicide bombings and other acts of violence by Palestinians. At some profound level Israelis feel deeply insecure and surrounded by enemies who wish them dead.

At the same time, the Palestinians experienced several events that defined them (to themselves) as victims of grave injustice. The Naqba, the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people from their homes in what is now Israel and the conquest of the West Bank by Israel in the 1967 war has led to three generations of refugees who live in refugee camps. All Palestinian live with day-to-day hassles and indignities as they go about their lives in the occupied West Bank or Gaza.

In the 21st Century Israeli politics has been dominated by a series of right wing governments featuring a growing role for representatives of the million or so settlers in the West Bank, predominantly Russian immigrants and highly ideological Europeans and Americans. An equally important new major force in politics has been the ultra-orthodox Jewish community which is passionately committed to undoing the secular basis of the Zionist Israeli state and turning it into a religiously observant, explicitly Jewish state. Sometimes lost in all the talk about a Jewish state and Israeli identity is the fact that about 20% of the citizens of Israel are Arab and Muslim or Christian, not Jewish.

Historically Israel has been very effective at socializing newcomers and integrating them socially, economically and politically but the wave of Russian immigrants was uninterested in being socialized and set out into the West Bank to establish settlements beyond the reach of the civilian agencies. They continued what they had learned about politics and life as citizens of the old Soviet Union -- not liberal democracy. Netanyahu's various governments have been increasingly anti-Arab, pro-expansion and assertively nationalistic, relying on undemocratic (if not anti-democratic) movements.

At the same time, the hopes of the Palestinians for an independent state, preferably democratic, have faded. When the Palestine Authority (PA) was created by the 1993 Oslo Accords, Yasser Arafat became the President because he headed the (PLO), the biggest faction among the various liberation groups, and positions in the new government were generally filled by former members of armed militant groups.

It seems to be an almost inescapable tragedy that men who are willing to risk their lives for the freedom of a people tend to become corruptly self-serving once they are in positions of power and the PA quickly became riddled with corruption at all levels. The territory covered by the PA is two quite distinct (and physically separated) areas: the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. In 2006 the militant Hamas movement won legislative elections in Gaza (not, for most voters, because of its pledge to destroy Isreal or willingness to wage continuing war, but because many voters were fed up with the PLO and other parties dominating the PA and voted for Hamas as a protest.) Hamas became the government in Gaza and both Israel and Egypt instituted a policy of boycott and isolation that exacerbated poverty and corruption.

Some conclusions:

Despite overwhelming military superiority, Israelis live in a culture of insecurity. The fact that both Jordan and Egypt have long since made peace with their neighbor and Syria is hardly a threat does not counter the gut feeling of being surrounded by a sea of hostile enemies. The rockets from Gaza may be fairly small and close to 90% intercepted but they have an enormous symbolic and psychological impact.

Netanyahu's governments have increasingly relied on and actively supported anti-democratic, anti-Arab and overtly racist movements, and Israeli public opinion has shifted to the right. There is precious little room for a peace movement.

The Palestinian Authority has lost its initial legitimacy and survives as a political force only because of a refusal to hold elections for parliament. The majority of people on the West Bank have grown up knowing only an inept government and Israeli occupation.

Hamas controls Gaza with an efficient security force; there is no room for political discussion. Half of all Gazans have known nothing but Hamas rule and economic hardship and have little or no sympathy for Hamas' ideology of destroying Israel and creating an Islamic state.

Netanyahu's departure will leave an excruciatingly fragile coalition in his place that will be unable to undertake even modest initiatives. The ONLY thing all members of the coalition can agree on is "Bye Bye Bibi!"

Even if Israel were ready to negotiate a two state future for itself and the Palestinians, there is no one on the other side with whom to negotiate. Even if the Palestinians were ready to negotiate a two state solution for themselves and the Israelis, there is no one on the other side with whom to negotiate.

If a two state solution is impossible, Israel faces an existential crisis: it can absorb the West Bank and Gaza and become a democratic state that offers a vote to each person at the cost of losing a Jewish identity; or it can become a fully Jewish state and continue to occupy the West Bank, at the cost of losing its democratic and traditionally Jewish values of justice and equality.

On the whole, Israel's Arab citizens have kept themselves aloof from the struggles of Palestinians in the West Bank or Gaza and focused more on improving their second class status in Israeli society and politics. There were a few signs during the recent war against Gaza that younger Israeli Arabs are beginning to identify themselves as Palestinians and part of the same community as Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza. This may be no more than the flash of heat lightning in the desert night, or it may be the start of a profound shift in the underlying dynamics.

The Shifting Sands of the Middle East

 

The Biden administration has already made it clear that it will have a different approach to the Middle East. This seems like a good time to try to outline some of the major challenges it will face. I think there are three major countries that will command the lion's share of the U.S. attention: Iran, Israel and Saudi Arabia.

This is a necessarily simplistic approach that understates the extent to which relations with one of these countries directly affect relations with the other two. It also ignores the implications of policy for countries outside the Middle East. The obvious case in point is the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (the official name of the "Iranian nuclear deal") which requires the U.S. to seek the cooperation of not only Britain, France and Germany, but also Russia and China.

Iran: Enemy or Opponent.

The Trump administration made it clear that it regarded Iran as an enemy to be blamed for a wide range of "nefarious actions" and coerced with "maximum pressure" to comply with American demands. Leaving the nuclear deal and reinstating U.S. sanctions that made it extremely difficult for Iran to sell its oil on the open market was intended to inflict serious and widespread economic pain on Iran. And it did. The logic of causing widespread hardship for your enemy's population is that they will blame their leadership and its policies for their suffering and there will be serious anti-regime sentiment. But all the evidence, from studies of bombing Germany in World War II to the reaction of Americans to 9/11, suggests that people do not blame their leaders for their suffering but blame the foreigners who are inflicting the punishment. Iran has not reduced its support for its allies in Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen and elsewhere, nor has it stopped development of short and medium range ballistic missiles. The other five signatories to the nuclear deal have made serious efforts to to ease Iran's economic burdens and maintain the broad outlines of the agreement, while other outside actors have resorted to sabotage and targeted assassinations to try to cripple Iran's nuclear program. Nonetheless Iran has resumed the uranium enrichment that the world found so alarming five years ago.

Announcing the intention to rejoin the nuclear deal is easy; doing it is hard. Rejoining means lifting a series of economic sanctions imposed by the Trump administration and dealing with the fact that Iran is out of compliance with the specific terms of the deal covering the enrichment of uranium. The United States position is that it cannot lift the sanctions until Iran is back in compliance; Iran insists it cannot shut down the centrifuges until the United States lifts the sanctions. It will take some sophisticated diplomacy and hard bargaining behind the scenes to square the circle so each side can get what it needs without seeming to capitulate to the other. The most optimistic feature of the Biden team's approach to Iran is that it includes some of the most important players in the Obama administration's successful negotiation of the original deal. The hope is that the Iranians will respond to people with whom they have dealt in the past and can somehow be persuaded that whatever is agreed to now will not be swept aside by the next administration in Washington.

Which Israel?

The skill of Benjamin Netanyahu in cultivating a personal relations with Donald Trump was matched only by his skill in creating the myth that supporting Israel meant supporting Netanyahu and his right wing government. The governing coalition has pursued conservative religious, social and economic policies, emphasized Jewish national identity, and an anti-Arab attitude that, for some of the more extreme parties, was unabashedly racist. A socially conservative, somewhat xenophobic American administration with a soft spot for tough guy rulers would be predisposed to back Netanyahu. And the prominent place of American supporters of Netanyahu and his more hard line allies in Trump's circle of friends and informal advisors, along the special place support for Israel has in the evangelical Christian community led to a series of actions that undermined any chance America could be seen as an honest broker in peace talks.

March 23 is a momentous day in the history of Israel. For the fourth time in the past two years, Israeli voters will go to the polls to decide whether Benjamin Netanyahu will continue his tenure as Israel's longest serving Prime Minister. Israelis do not actually vote for Prime Minister and the actual question on the ballot is which party the voter prefers. But the national campaign and all the media coverage make it clear that regardless of which party the voter selects, they are voting for a member of a coalition that will either return Netanyahu or replace him.

The Israeli system is quite different from the American Not only is it a parliamentary system in which the leader of the party (or parties) with the most seats in the Knesset becomes Prime Minister, but representatives are not chosen by geographical constituencies. Instead there is only one ballot with all the eligible parties listed. Knesset seats are assigned based on the percentage of the national vote a party receives and each party has its own list of candidates that it uses to fill as many seats as it has won. As long as a party gets 3.5% of the national vote, it is entitled to at least one seat. It has been 50 years since one party actually won a 61 seat majority; Israeli governments are coalitions of medium-sized and small parties creating either a center-left or center-right government. The system has given outsized weight to small parties representing West Bank settlers or ultra-Orthodox religious groups.

Israelis are faced with the fourth national election in two years because the country is deeply polarized between more liberal, secular voters and more conservative and religious voters. The coalitions Netanyahu has put together have collapsed because they have included very small parties that have made demands that other coalition members would not agree to.

There are two elements in the coming election that make it different from the preceding three. One is that Yair Lapid, the opposition leader in the Knesset, is better known and more popular than Netanyahu's previous opponents. The other is the fact that Netanyahu has been charged with several counts of corruption and is actually on trial, with court proceedings suspended until after the election.

A continuation of Netanyahu's government with its close ties to the Republican party, evangelicals and conservative American Jewish groups will provide a direct challenge to the Biden administration's stated desire to have a more even handed approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, forestall Israeli plans to annex parts of the West Bank, and restrain the rapidly expanding network of settlements. A potentially fragile coalition put together by Netanyahu opponents would be easier for Biden to work with but would be unlikely to significantly curtail support for settlements or countenance the reversal of the most egregious Trump administration moves, including moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and annexing parts of the Golan Heights.

Any Israeli government in the near future would be either flatly opposed to dealing with the Palestinians or too weak to seriously negotiate. At the same time the Palestinian Authority is headed by 1970's era guerrillas and riddled with opportunists for whom a government position is a license to steal via bribes and kickbacks. The regime is not able to spare the Palestinians the indignities and aggravations associated with the Israeli occupation, the encroachments of the settlers, and the frustrations of a venal and largely incompetent bureaucracy and has only tepid support among Palestinians, particularly the half of the population who are less than 23 years old.

The House of Saud: The King's Dilemma

Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud is the King of Saudi Arabia and Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques. At 85, he is the last living son of Abdul Azziz ibn Saud, the founder of the kingdom. (Ibn Saud is reputed to have had around 100 wives and even more concubines, making him the literal as well as figurative "father of his country.") His son Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (aka MBS) is the heir apparent to the crown and is already regarded as the real ruler of the country.

The departure of Trump and MBS's BFF Jared Kushner has already begun to rebalance the U.S.- Saudi relationship from a narrow focus on the Saudis as leaders of an anti-Iran coalition and customer for lucrative arms sales to a more nuanced approach that identifies areas in which our interests are similar and areas in which we are sharply opposed. The Biden administration cannot and will not treat the Saudis as either allies who can do no wrong nor pariahs who can do no right. The tacit support the administration gave to releasing the CIA report on bin Salman's direct complicity in the murder of Adnan Kashoggi followed by the administration's refusal to publicly condemn or sanction him is an example of trying to thread the needle of a complex relationship.

Under Mohammed bin Salman's leadership, Saudi Arabia had played a more assertive role in the Middle East, including turning the civil war in Yemen into the worst humanitarian disaster in the world today. The Trump administration , despite bipartisan opposition from Congress, encouraged the disastrous intervention in the name of opposing Iran and arms sales. That support has already been reversed.

The conflict in Yemen began as a revolt against the government in San'a by northern tribes. Since the Houthi tribes of the north are largely Shi'a Muslim and the groups controlling the government in the south are largely Sunni Muslim, the Saudis perceived the hidden hand of Shi'a Iran at work and began a massive military intervention. When Iran did begin to support the Houthis, the violence escalated to include indiscriminate bombing of civilians and blockades of key ports that prevented food and medicine from reaching as much as 80% of the population.

Mohamed bin Salman was initially hailed as a reformer who would removed the most onerous and outrageous restrictions on women and begin to move Saudi Arabia into the modern world. I think it is fair to say that he has pursued a moderately reformist agenda but within the constraints of "the king's dilemma": a would-be reforming monarch can either resort to increasingly harsh and repressive measures to try to control the scope and pace of reform at the risk of a revolution or allow reforms to proceed to the point that the monarchy morphs into a much diminished constitutional monarchy. There are many examples of the failure of the first strategy; from the perspective of an absolute monarchy like Saudi Arabia, the success of a series of British monarchs in giving up the ability to rule in exchange for the right to reign symbolically is not a very attractive model.

Governments, as the Biden team should already have learned, do not have the luxury of asking various parts of the world to just chill and be patient until we can get around to you guys. China, Russia, and Western Europe demand immediate attention. And as the rest of world comes to realize the impact of the Covid pandemic on the less developed nations of world, Americans will no longer be able to echo the 19th Century British Prime Minister who disdainfully dismissed much of the world as "...people about whom we know little and care less."

The Price of the Pandemic

In the middle of a committee mark up session for a major spending bill, one Senator was moved to observe, “A billion here, a billion there … after a while you're talking about real money.” Today, it’s a trillion here, a trillion there adding up to real budget deceits and the National Debt.

I’d like to discuss three things: what are we talking about, why does it matter, and the political battle ahead.  

A really important caveat: my area of expertise has always been international, not U.S. politics, so this piece should be taken with more than the usual grain of salt.

Federal Deficits and National Debt

The Deficit

Most years the Federal government runs a budget deficit because it spends more money than it raises in taxes and fees. There are two main forces driving budget deficits: the politics of taxing and spending and deliberate policy. In an annual ritual of “let’s pretend” the President submits a proposed national budget to Congress. The White House pretends that this is a realistic and thoughtful proposal and Congress pretends that it will take it seriously. In fact the President's budget proposal is deliberately unrealistic, designed to appeal to the base. Members of Congress know that the real budget will come out of an array of House and Senate committees that individually and collectively will make decisions about spending and taxes.

Despite repeated efforts to reform and rationalize the process, the Congressional system for developing a budget is decentralized and piecemeal, with individual committees working through different sections of the budget and not surprisingly, hearing from lobbyists, interest groups, representatives of Executive branch departments, and people dependent on various programs who want to make sure their particular program is funded. Meanwhile other committees are responsible for tax policy, with lots of helpful advice from those who want to make sure their favorite part of the tax code is protected, and a different committee is ultimately responsible for reconciling all these disparate pieces into a package that can be passed by the House and by the Senate.

The second major factor driving deficits is “counter-cyclical spending” – the idea that the Federal government should increase spending or cut taxes, even as revenue declines, during economic downturns. The current series of Coronavirus relief bills is the perfect example. The second half of the counter-cyclical theory – raise taxes and/or cut spending when times are good is a lot harder to implement.

The 2017 tax cuts had already created a major deficit before the Coronavirus hit.* So far about $3 trillion has been spent on emergency relief and Congress is working on another bill that could easily run to another trillion dollars in debt.

*The tax cuts were justified by the promise that they would cause the economy to grow by at least 3% a year and thus pay for themselves in increased revenue. Growth has been well less than that in all but one quarter since then.

The National Debt

The government sells bonds to finance the debt. U.S. bonds are attractive investments for foreign governments and extremely wealthy investors because they are super safe and a source of dollars. Once upon a time governments stored their national treasure as gold. But gold is expensive to store, of limited use in international trade, and just sits there in the vault. U.S. bonds don’t require fortified vaults to store, the dollar is the foundation of global trade, and bonds get you interest payments in U.S. dollars. And government bonds are secure; the United States is not going to default on interest payments or devalue the dollar and wipe out your national treasury.

So What?

The budget deficit tends to stimulate the economy and encourage growth because it means more money out into the hands of consumers. It also means the government is competing with other investors in the bond market and tends to drive up interest rates. Too much deficit leads to inflation; too little deficit can slow the economy by decreasing demand and reducing the money supply. The role of Federal Reserve is to try to regulate interest rates to compensate for the effects of too much or to little deficit spending.

In the short term National Debt matters because paying interest on the bonds that finance it takes a large bite out of the Federal budget, money that could be better spent on infrastructure or expanding health care or reducing taxes.

In the longer term, the size of the Debt impacts the relationship of the U.S. economy to the rest of the world and the ability to maintain a strong and growing economy.

A country's credit rating is not based on the amount of debt but the ratio of debt to Gross National Product. That has varied over the years: immediately after World War II it was at 122%, in 1960 the National Debt was 53% of GDP, in 1980 it dropped to 35%, in 2000 it was 58%.

But today’s 25 trillion (and counting) debt is 115% of the 22 trillion dollar U.S. economy. If this were the situation in any other country in the world alarm bells would be ringing in international financial circles and the dollar would be plummeting like a stone. The fact that neither of these things is true underscores how much the U.S. benefits from the factor that global market runs on dollars. Because the dollar is the basic currency for international transactions, the U.S. is the largest economy in the world, and we have never defaulted on a bond, we are uniquely able to sell bonds to finance our debt. Other rich developed countries can finance their much smaller debt by selling some bonds and borrowing from institutions like the European Central Bank but usually must satisfy bond buyers or lenders that the deficit is only temporary. Poorer countries have a hard time selling their bonds and end up borrowing from international banks at high interest rates or seeking help from the International Monetary Fund which insists that governments adopt a program of reducing spending and raising revenues before they can continue to get loans. Any other country in the world with our pattern of deficit and debt would be forced to impose an austerity program on its citizens, slashing pensions and public spending and raising taxes.

As the global economy expands and other countries catch up to the U.S., international investors and national governments have attractive alternatives to U.S. bonds for their money and the U.S. will have to pay higher and higher interest on its bonds. The interest rate on government bonds affects the interest rates throughout the economy and can simultaneously cause high inflation and retard growth. No one can say for sure when, but if current trends continue, there will come a day when interest on the Debt will become unsustainable. At some point an out of control National Debt will create such high inflation coupled with slow growth and absorb so much of the national budget that other countries and international investors will decide that U.S. bounds are not a good investment and we’ll be forced to turn to the International Monetary fund for a loan to keep us going. And then the United States will get the same treatment other global debtors receive – posterity budgets that slash spending on domestic programs, significantly higher taxes, and pressure to sell off national assets to private investors.

The Politics of Debt Reduction

Taxing and spending are where the political rubber hits the road. Decisions about the budget deficit and reducing the National Debt will be driven by ideology, partisanship, interest groups, and individual legislators’ beliefs about who deserves help from the government. It can’t be done any other way: there is no “objective” or scientific way of making decisions that rest on basic value judgments.

National politics will be dominated by the Covid-19 pandemic for the next few years. I think the 2020 election will be a referendum on President Trump’s handling of the pandemic. The necessity to maintain a reasonable annual deficit and trim the National Debt will cast a long shadow over all tax and spending questions for several years to come. The economic challenges posed by the pandemic will require difficult and painful measures. Most serious economists believe that it is sheer magical thinking to expect the economy to suddenly rebound in the next few months even if Covid were to miracuously disappear.

The politics of coping with the situation are complicated by the current rampant partisanship in Congress. In the past there have been some members of Congress who were focused on governance as well as partisanship and individual issues and could get together behind the scenes to negotiate a compromise package. The fact that many had been in Congress a long time and had established personal relationships helped. That is not true in 2020.

The politics are further complicated by the fact that the Senate and House are controlled by different parties who have had very little interest in cooperating and that fact that the White House does not have the ability or inclination to play an active and effective leadership role in developing and promoting legislative solutions.

But even if control of the White House and/or the Senate and House changes after November, the struggle to respond to the economic challenges facing the Federal government and many state governments will be defined by the clash of two frameworks. Democrats will stress the centrality of increasing taxes to reduce the deficit and begin to pay down the National Debt; Republicans will stress the importance of cutting spending.

The Democrats will propose tax increases that are the mirror image of President Trump’s 2017 package: skewed heavily toward the wealthy and large corporations. They will vigorously resist proposals to reduce spending on social programs aimed at the poor and middle class while trying to eliminate “corporate welfare” programs and reduce defense spending. The emphasis on raising revenue will get an assist in 2025 when the provisions of the 2017 tax package that reduced taxes for individuals expire unless there is a deliberate decision to continue them.

The Republican position will emphasize spending reductions everywhere except defense and oppose tax increases. Republicans tend to be especially skeptical of that part of domestic spending that offers benefits or services to which a person is entitled based on age (Social Security, Medicare), income (Medicaid, SNAP), or status (student loans, disability income). Under the rubric of “entitlement reform” Republicans have frequently sought to reduce benefits and restrict enrollment on the grounds that these programs are spiraling out of control. Cutting entitlements has usually depended on the strengthen of the constituency supporting the program. SNAP (the successor to food stamps), for example, has been vulnerable to cuts because it does not have a large body of passionate defenders in Congress and its recipients, largely low income women and their children, are not a significant voting block. And it has been relatively easy to maintain comparatively low payments to doctors and hospitals for Medicaid because providers can either charge other patients more or decline to accept any Medicaid patients. (Democrats are not immune to the temptation to cut programs with high costs and no potent organized constituency.)

Social Security and Medicare are very large and growing entitlement programs that have passionate Congressional supporters and their beneficiaries tend to be very consistent voters who are extremely sensitive to threats to their benefits. Given their size and impact on the budget, Social Security and Medicare have been prime targets for “entitlement reform” for years but their political foundations make them risky targets for budget hawks. Social Security is funded by payroll taxes that go into a specify fund within the Federal budget. It is easy to see that at some point in the future, as Baby Boomers retire and the U.S. population in general ages, that current levels of payroll tax will not generate enough money to cover the benefits sent to seniors. That leads to three possibilities. 1) raise the retirement age, which was done in 1983, so that from 1983 to 2027 it would gradually creep up from 65 to 67; 2) raise the payroll tax limit. When your income reaches a particular level, $140,000 this year, you and your employer stop paying 6.2% of your wages into Social Security. Perhaps the most logical response, but likely to face strong opposition from everyone making more than $140k and their employers; 3) reduce the monthly Social Security benefit and annual Medicare benefits. The political calculation changes dramatically if you leave benefits intact for people currently in the programs but reduce them for future retirees, especially if the reductions are phased in over a number of years. The expectation would be that future retirees would not miss benefits they’ve never had.

The same budget crunch of rapidly growing expenses and precipitously declining revenue afflict state and local governments as well. Many state and local budgets were already struggling with the twin impacts of escalating unfunded pension costs and the lingering impact of the 2008 recession. The fact that the states hardest hit by both the recession and the pandemic are politically blue, with large urban populations and strong public employee unions and are typically struggling with unfunded pension deficits makes Federal assistance a highly partisan issue. Both President Trump and Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell have been decidedly unsympathetic to their problems and openly reluctant to support “bail out” packages.

When members of Congress from both parties come to believe that the post-pandemic world demands action on both the Federal deficit and National Debt and that states and municipalities can’t just declare bankruptcy and start over, there will be action at the national level.

How much will be done and who will bear the burden will depend on the 2020 election and changes in the political landscape and economy over the next few years.

Mr. Mayhem on the Loose?

Allstate Insurance has gotten a lot of advertising mileage out of Mr. Mayhem. I believe that we are going through a fundamental change in the overall strategic dynamic in the region that threatens to turn Mr. Mayhem loose in the Middle East.

President Trump’s decision to pull back the token U.S. Special Forces troops working with the Syrian Kurds paved the way for the Turkish incursion. The decision to acquiesce in the potential crushing defeat of our closest allies in the fight against ISIS and push them into the arms of the Russians and Iranians is probably the final stage in the reorientation of U.S. policy. Not that long ago the United States was the most important external player in Middle East politics. Often American diplomacy was sophisticated and skillful and sometimes it was naive and bumbling, but in general, the United States was a force for moderation and conflict avoidance and helped provide a certain amount of stability in the region.

The Bush administration's ill-fated adventure in regime change in Iraq marked a major change in the American role. The military became the driver of U.S. policy in place of diplomats and the aim of policy changed from balance and stability to assertive intervention. The Obama administration promised to pivot away from the Middle East to focus on Asia but events on the ground including the rise of ISIS, the Arab Spring, and the Syrian civil war, as well as a well intentioned but futile attempt to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that was probably the dying gasp of a two state solution, drew it back. Obama continued the Bush administration's reliance on the military to shape policy. Now Trump has effectively removed the U.S. as a major player.

At the risk of over-simplification, American policy has been reduced to three simple elements: unquestioned support for whatever Netanyahu and the Israeli right wing want; support for Saudi Arabia as the leader of an anti-Iran coalition; and maximum economic pressure on Iran that has yet to produce any positive results. Missing is even lip service to human rights or democratic values, missing is an active diplomacy that identified and promoted common interests across a range of issues and countries, missing is a sophisticated and multi-dimensional response to Iranian influence.

I want to focus on three countries where the apparent abdication of an active role for American diplomacy and military strategy will have significant short and long term effects.

Syria

The withdrawal of the largely symbolic American military forces removed the only obstacle to an invasion of Northern Syria by the Turkish armed forces. It also removed the United States as a participant in shaping the future of Syria.

In the short term, Turkey will establish a so-called buffer zone in northern Syria which will push Kurdish armed forces 20 miles further away from Turkey. The 5 day truce announced with such great fanfare on October 17 is not a triumph of American diplomacy getting Turkish President Erdogan to do something he wasn't already inclined to do. Since the agreement does not mention, let alone require, Turkish withdrawal from the territory they have conquered, it is merely American acquiescence in Turkey’s success. This will allow the Turks to resettle many of the 3.6 million Syrian refugees currently living in Turkey and separate Turkey’s Kurdish population from their Syrian compatriots, weakening their ability to resist attempts to destroy their culture and identity.

As a reminder, the Kurds are a distinct ethnic group spread across Turkey, Syria, Iraq and Iran. Kurds follow Sunni Islam but they are not Arabs and the Kurdish language unique. Kurdish representatives went to the Versailles Peace Conference at the end of World War I but their hopes that the promise of self determination for nations would apply to them were dashed. The Kurds in Northern Iraq have created a state within a state, with almost complete autonomy from the Baghdad government. The Syrian Kurds, operating as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), defeated ISIS and liberated the territory held by the Caliphate. The United States supplied air power, weapons, and advisors, while Kurdish soldiers fought and died on the ground.

The American withdrawal has left the Kurds feeling abandoned and betrayed and desperate in the face of the Turkish military. After years of intense fighting against the Assad regime, the SDF has announced an agreement to allow regime forces into the areas they controlled until the Turks invaded.

In the short term, the Assad regime and its Russian and Iranian backers are the big winners. The last area of resistance will quickly be brought under control and the civil war will be over. What began for many Syrians as a hopeful movement for democracy and regime change will end in abject failure.

In the longer run, Syria will become a grindingly poor country with huge swaths of territory that are not controlled by anyone. The civil war has been devastating to the Syrian economy and imposed immense suffering on millions of people. Armed resistance will end but the divisions and scars of the brutal war will remain. The international community will not participate in the rebuilding of Syria. Neither Iran nor Russia have the economic resources to rebuild the country. The thousands of middle class professionals who have fled the civil war and made it to Europe or Jordan are not likely to return to a shattered and chaotic country.

Somewhere around 12,000 ISIS fighters were being held in camps guarded by Kurdish troops, including many that the United States regarded as “high value.”. Those guards will, if they have not left already, be withdrawn to resist the Turkish invasion and there isn’t any other force that can replace them. It is highly likely that the surviving ISIS leadership and the newly freed fighters will manage to establish control over a significant area and announce the reemergence of the Caliphate. Not only will ISIS itself be reinvigorated in its battle against the West, but the ISIS-inspired groups throughout the Middle East and North Africa will resume their assaults on local governments and western interests.

Israel

Syria is not the only country in the Middle East in the midst of a major change that will be complicated by America’s precipitous withdrawal from Middle Eastern politics.. Benjamin Netanyahu has dominanted Israeli politics for the last 25 years. He has succeeded in making his staunchly nationalist and anti-Arab perspective, that stresses an image of an embattled Israel surrounded by enemies in the Middle East and anti-Semites in Europe, the dominant view, even among those who are opposed to his conservative social views. Since neither the right of center Likud party nor the slightly left of center Labor party has been able to win a clear majority in Israel’s parliament for the past few years, the choice in Israel has been between a Netanyahu led coalition of Likud plus small ultra-right parties representing the most militant settlers and extremely conservative ultra-Orthodox religious groups or a Labor based coalition with small liberal parties. Elections last Apricot revealed declining support for Netanyahu but he managed to patch together yet another ultra-right, ultra-orthodox coalition that lasted only a few months. Another round of elections in September showed further erosion of support for Netanyahu, despite his heavily promoted close ties to President Trump. Netanyahu himself has become a major issue, as he is likely facing prosecution on corruption and bribery charges. In the short run, most observers think that the Netanyahiu era in Israel is over. because any coalition he might cobble together will not be stable, the government will fall quickly and he will end up in court.

In the longer run, Israel will have to deal with the existential crisis of the Palestinians. The threat to Israel’s existence is not from some kind of invasion or even an armed insurrection in the West Bank. The Israeli Defense Forces and security agencies can deal with any violent external or internal assault. But the idea of creating a separate, independent, state for the Palestinians is dead. The 1992 Oslo Accords that seemed to provide a path to a two state solution now seem quaintly antique. Most of the West Bank is walled off from Israel proper, and settlements continue to expand. Some settlements are suburbs around Jerusalem that draw young Israelis seeking affordable housing; some are deeper in Palestinian territory and draw militant settlers (largely immigrants from Russia, the U.S. and Europe) who believe themselves to be fulfilling a religious duty to occupy all the territory God apparently granted to Abraham in the Hebrew Scripture (the Old Testament).

There are two fundamental sets of values that define Israelis’ national identity. One is that Israel is a Jewish state, although there is disagreement about the extent to which Jewishness is tied up with religious practice. The other is that Israel is a democracy. If Israel is to continue to control the West Bank and Gaza Strip, perhaps even annexing large areas (as Netanyahu has promised during his latest campaign) either Jewish identity or democracy will have to be abandoned. There are approximately 7 million Jewish citizens of Israel, and 1.7 million Arab citizens. There are roughly 4.7 million Palestinians in the West Bank. If Israel were to annex all of the West Bank, on the grounds that it is historical Judea and Samaria and properly part of Israel, Jews would become a minority within a very few years. But if Israel does not annex the West Bank, it will have to continue to treat the occupied territories (as the rest of the world call the West Bank) as a de facto colony which would threaten both core Jewish values and core democratic values.

Saudi Arabia

In the short run, the Saudis have been big winners under Trump’s foreign policy. The U.S.-Saudi alliance, based on interlocking economic, strategic, and personal ties, has been strengthened by the administration's focus on Iran as the enemy in the Middle East, the public relations campaign to sell Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MBS) as a bold reformer, and the Crown Prince’s ability to establish a close personal relationship with Trump and Jared Kushner. Thus Trump and his administration refused to believe that MBS was responsible for the murder of Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul last year and the administration has continued to support the bloody Saudi led war in Yemen despite Congressional disapproval. Even as Trump was ordering the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Syria and acquiescing in Turkey’s invasion, the administration was sending 1,000 additional troops to Saudi Arabia.

In the long run, Saudi Arabia faces some major problems. One is the fact that the Saudis are punching above their weight when they try to lead the fight against Iran. They cannot match the size of the Iranian military, their critical oil facilities are vulnerable to attack, and the restive shi’a dominated western provinces are potentially vulnerable to Iranian influence. As long as the United States is a generous and reliable ally, the Kingdom can lead the anti-Iran coalition. But the extent and consistency of that support is increasingly depended on President Trump and his inner circle. The next American President will not offer the same level of unquestioning support. Even now the Saudis may have some doubts about U.S. support given our inability to assemble an international naval force to deter attacks on oil tankers in the Persian Gulf and our failure to orchestrate a response to the September drone and missile attack on Saudi oil facilities. (To be fair the Trump administration has leaked the news that the U.S. did launch a “secret” cyberattack on some Iranian computers.)

A second long term problem is the stability of the regime. It is as if the royal family has made a bargain with the citizens: we’ll provide you with a rich and comfortable life if you forswear politics and accept conservative religious control over public life. “Reforms,” such as the recent granting of driver license to women and some curtailing of the more egregious actions of the Committees for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, suggest that the bargain may be fraying at the edges. A growing population and stable or even declining oil revenues threaten the Kingdom’s ability to support young Saudis in the style to which they have become accustomed.

The region may not feel the full effects of Mr. Mayhem, but it will certainly be less stable and governments will find it increasingly diffident to provide the level of economic and social development and physical security that would allow people to transcend ethnic and religious divisions.