| | | | Fareed: The Cowardice of America's Elites | | In his latest Washington Post column, Fareed takes on "the delayed, qualified and mealy-mouthed reactions of many in America's leadership class" after Charlottesville:
"With some honorable exceptions, men and women who usually cannot stop pontificating on every topic on live TV have suddenly gone mute on the biggest political subject of the day."
"Where are evangelical Christian leaders on a matter of basic morality? Do they have a burning moral duty to speak out against transgender bathroom access but not neo-Nazi violence?"
"The United States once did have more public-minded elites," Fareed explains. "But they came from a small, clubby world, the Protestant establishment. Not all were born rich, but they knew they had a secure place atop the country."
"Today we have a more merit-based elite, what is often called a meritocracy. It has allowed people from all walks of life to rise up into positions of power and influence. But these new elites are more insecure, anxious and self-centered."
The public figures who deserve praise this week? The military brass, Fareed writes:
"In a remarkable act of leadership for people who actually work under the president, the heads of five branches of the armed forces independently issued statements unequivocally denouncing racism and bigotry," Fareed writes. "Perhaps it is because the military remains an old-fashioned place, where a sense of honor, standards and values still holds."
| | Did Bannon Accomplish His Goals? | | While Democrats might celebrate the firing of Steve Bannon, "his work is largely done," argues Justin Gest in the Guardian.
Though some of Bannon's biggest goals like pursuing economic war with China and overhauling the tax code have yet to be completed, "the low-hanging fruit in his 'economic nationalism' agenda has been picked," Gest writes, citing the Trump administration's attempts at a Muslim ban, withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, renegotiation of NAFTA, and criticism of removal of Confederate monuments, among other so-called "achievements."
"Even if they are not implemented, they also have a symbolic quality that shows white people with cultural anxieties that the administration empathizes and stands with them," Gest writes.
"Bannon's most attainable, sustainable – and most frightening – achievement is white Americans' renewed sense of racial consciousness; a sense of shared destiny that was once shamed as unpalatable and ignored by mainstream politicians," Gest argues.
"He has wielded pervasive fear about demographic change into immense, cathartic political capital in support of Trump and his crusade against political correctness, foreigners and other threats to the historic American social hierarchy."
-- In Buzzfeed, however, Ben Smith explains why Bannon failed to achieve his one overarching goal: "a major realignment of American politics":
"Bannon has a bizarre dual role as Trump's ideologist: He's the guy selling a new cross-racial coalition; and he's the chief arsonist of that coalition, using racism as a kind of cultural token for anti-elite politics," Smith writes. "The congressional coalition he imagines, in which Democrats cross the aisle to join Trump under the red flag of socialism, is now laughable."
"Bannon might be forgiven by being puzzled that liberals who spent their careers fighting the class war would let a little thing like white nationalism get in their way," Smith writes.
"But this is where class-based movements in American politics have always washed up. For race has trumped class. And what Bannon used to talk about as a strategy can probably better be seen now as the excuse, explanation, or diagnosis for a presidency that's failing."
| | Missed Opportunity for the U.S. in Latin America | | | Following Vice President Mike Pence's trip to Latin America, the Economist explains why "the prevailing attitude in the region can look like resentment of Trump's America, without much fear":
"The single most striking impression of this tour is its smallness. Mr Pence… has asked each government in turn for modest, and in some cases puzzling, things. He has not described grand visions for pan-American cooperation of the sort once espoused by President George H.W. Bush, who called for a free trade area of the Americas stretching from Alaska to Patagonia.
"Mr Pence has focused on policies that matter immediately to Mr Trump back home: sanctions on North Korea, more pressure on the autocratic left-wing regime in Venezuela, or better local access for specific American products and services," the Economist notes. "To a remarkable extent, his hosts have not feared ignoring Mr Pence in places where those American requests make no sense or do not match local priorities."
"This president, foreign officials lament, seems neither to know nor to care that the whole region is made anxious and unhappy by Mr Trump's scorn for Mexico, his threats to tear up the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) with Mexico and Canada, and his cancellation of America's membership of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, an ambitious trade pact that includes some countries in Latin America," according to the Economist.
"Meanwhile, Chinese officials are a constant presence in Latin American capitals, as they sign new commercial deals, offer hefty investments and seek to build new networks of influence across the Pacific region."
| | Russia's Actions Backfired: Ignatius | | Russian President Vladimir Putin overreached by meddling in the U.S. election, argues David Ignatius in the Washington Post:
"The Kremlin is still issuing cocky statements accusing the United States of 'political schizophrenia' in its response to Russian hacking," Ignatius writes. "And there are vestiges of the triumphal tone I encountered in Moscow this summer — a sense that the United States is in decline and that a mistreated but resurgent Russia is in the driver's seat. But Russia's confidence must be flagging."
"Interference in the U.S. election has created antibodies to Russian power: America is angry, Europe is newly vigilant, and Syria and Ukraine are becoming quagmires. Moscow remains a dangerously ambitious revanchist power, but its geopolitical goals look harder to achieve now than they did a year ago," Ignatius argues.
| | GPS Preview: Former CIA Deputy Director David Cohen | | Global Briefing spoke with former CIA Deputy Director David S. Cohen about recent developments on North Korea. Cohen will be discussing Iran's nuclear program and the politicization of U.S. intelligence on GPS this Sunday at 10 a.m. and 1 p.m. ET on CNN.
What are the risks of the type of rhetoric on North Korea that we heard last week from President Trump?
I think it's unhelpful for a number of reasons. The first, of course, is that stooping to the level of Kim Jong Un really plays into what Kim wants, which is to be viewed as a peer to the great powers, and particularly to the United States. But a war of words with President Trump not only elevates Kim on the world stage -- it also helps him exert control over his country.
Another problem is that the greatest risk of an actual war with North Korea doesn't come from some bolt from the blue from the North Koreans. Instead, it comes from a misunderstanding by the North Koreans that we are about to attack, invade and overthrow the regime. That's what Kim authentically fears. This sort of rhetoric increases the likelihood that he will misperceive something, and could see U.S.-South Korean military exercises, for example, as the leading edge of an invasion.
The third problem is that President Trump seemed to draw a red line over North Korea's threats. He either follows through on that threat, which would be a horrendous error of historic proportions, or he doesn't, and the red line he drew is ignored, and the credibility of the United States suffers as a result.
How does the Trump administration's public shaming of China and its role complicate this?
I think the public shaming of China is a mistake -- that's not the way to get the Chinese government to cooperate with us. I do think that involving China in this effort is critical for the obvious reason that most of North Korea's economic activity is through China -- both its legitimate activity and its illicit activity.
What should the goal be now? Does the United States need to accept North Korea as a nuclear power?
Our policy should be that we never accept North Korea as a nuclear state. I think we should be pursuing at least two things simultaneously. One is ensuring that our deterrence is clear and our defenses are effective. On the second track, we should be exploring the possibility of a negotiation and some reasonable resolution that reduces the risk that we are currently facing.
Is that possible with the Kim regime in place?
I think it's worth exploring. I don't think anyone can have any real confidence that a negotiation will be successful with the Kim regime. After all, it sees nuclear weapons as the guarantor of the regime's survival. But it would be foolhardy to just forgo any effort to test the proposition that there is a way to improve our security situation through some kind of negotiated resolution.
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