| | | | Fareed: Why I Support Impeachment | | "I have long opposed the various efforts to impeach President Trump. Overturning an election should be a rare event, undertaken in only the most extreme circumstances," Fareed writes in his latest Washington Post column. "But the events of the past few weeks have led me to support an impeachment inquiry."
Even more troubling than Trump's Ukrainian phone call has been his refusal to cooperate with the House's impeachment inquiry, Fareed writes. "Trump is effectively rejecting Congress's ability to hold him accountable," Fareed argues. All modern presidents have expanded executive power, but "Trump is on a different planet," refusing requests for documents, steering money toward a project Congress didn't fund, and reportedly promising pardons to administration officials. "Were Trump's position to prevail, the US president would become an elected dictator," Fareed concludes. | | How to Get the US and Iran Talking | | For months, speculation has swirled over whether the US and Iran can resolve their tensions; recently, momentum reportedly stalled when Iran demanded sanctions relief before it would agree to hold a high-level meeting. At the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Mahsa Rouhi proposes a compromise to move things forward: The US should partially and temporarily rescind oil sanctions, allowing Iran's top customers to resume purchases while the US and Iran start talking. (America had granted sanctions waivers to a handful of Iran's top buyers, but it stopped issuing them earlier this year, imposing its oil sanctions across the board.)
As Eldar Mamedov writes at LobeLog, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif were burned by President Trump's withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal, which validated hardliners' suspicions about US duplicity. Rouhani can't meet with Trump unless the rest of Iran's political system buys in, which won't happen unless Trump lifts some sanctions. In her blog post, the IISS's Rouhi suggests an in-between measure that might enable talks to begin. "Although a summit or meeting probably would not yield any substantive outcomes, it might at least break the ice, generate a modicum of goodwill, and lead to more fruitful negotiations in the near future," she writes. | | Impeachment Lessons from South Korea | | As House Democrats proceed with impeachment, they can draw a lesson from South Korea, S. Nathan Park writes in Foreign Policy. In 2016, as then-President Park Geun-hye faced allegations of improper influence by her "spiritual adviser," Park admitted publicly that the adviser had reviewed her speeches. Park seemingly had a "concrete floor" of 35% electoral support (more or less what polls have reflected for Trump), and South Korea's Democratic party—Park's opposition, which enjoyed a new majority in the country's single-house legislature, after big midterm wins—was reluctant to impeach her. South Korea's Democrats proceeded slowly, and the strategy paid off, as they ultimately recruited enough votes from Park's supporters for impeachment to advance.
Park was ultimately removed, and the lessons are twofold according to S. Nathan Park: One is that despite entrenched party support for a leader, impeachment can succeed. The second is that activists play a separate role from legislators. South Korea saw millions protest to demand Park's ouster, and while legislators were right to be cautious, it took public pressure to move impeachment forward. | | International agreements on the acceptance of refugees have formed a tentpole of the liberal world order, Nanjala Nyabola writes for Foreign Affairs, but the global asylum system is now in peril. "Around the world, rich and poor countries alike are pulling up their drawbridges, slashing the number of refugees they are willing to accept, and denying asylum to those who might have been admitted in the past," Nyabola writes.
Kenya is building a wall on its border with Somalia; Bangladesh hopes to repatriate Rohingya refugees to Myanmar; Venezuelan refugees are met with skepticism in Latin America and the Caribbean; and, of course, the US government has resisted admitting asylum-seekers across its southern border. It's the culmination of a long slide, Nyabola writes: After the Cold War, countries began treating refugees as temporary, housing them in camps instead of resettling them permanently within their borders or in a third country. As climate change figures to see more people displaced in coming decades, asylum is poised to meet an untimely end as an established practice, Nyabola writes, due to ambivalent attitudes by world governments. | | | | | | |
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