Fault Lines (August 2, 2024)
Welcome to Home & Away. It is difficult and depressing to absorb the fact that the summer is half over. But it is not as difficult and depressing as the Middle East. As always, everything is relative.
Dilemmas
I will start with Away, but before I get into the specifics, I want to make a general point. The United States is the most powerful country in the world, but power and influence are two very different things. We are seeing that played out in several parts of the world, where the limits of U.S. influence are apparent.
First Venezuela. It seems highly (as in 99 percent) likely that last Sunday’s election was stolen by the regime of Nicolas Maduro. The opposition estimates that 60-70 percent of the voters favored Edmundo Gonzalez, who was the opposition candidate only because the Maduro regime barred Maria Corina Machado from running. The government refuses to allow an independent agency (as opposed to one it controls) to review the voting.
The question is what to do about it. Not to do something is an option, but it would dilute the proposition that the United States stands for democracy and for basic rights. Acquiescing could also encourage other autocrats to rig elections as they might decide they had little to fear and much to gain.
But to favor acting hardly settles the matter. Act how? It is something of a dilemma. The reflexive response is to impose sanctions. But sanctions make little sense. Venezuela is already one of the most sanctioned countries in the world and the Maduro regime has remained in power for over a decade despite such sanctions. Additional sanctions would increase the misery of the people while the regime would find ways to skirt them, with countries including Russia, China, Cuba, and others helping Maduro. And increased sanctions would swell the number of people leaving the country, increasing the pressure on already-overwhelmed neighbors and the United States.
It might be best for the Biden administration to work with regional states led by Brazil so as not to make it easy for the regime to pound an anti-American nationalist drum. Collective actions delegitimizing and shunning the Maduro regime might help. So too would ensuring the truth reaches the population and funneling resources to the opposition. But there is no easy fix so long as the security forces remain loyal to the regime and are both willing and able to strong arm and arrest the opposition.
A second major story was the prisoner exchange between the United States and Russia. Ensuring the safety of American citizens and freeing them from wrongful detention is a fundamental responsibility for any president, and the Biden administration should be commended for securing the release of these innocent Americans along with a number of Russian political prisoners. At the same time, such swaps constitute a dilemma, in that there is an inherent unevenness to them. Innocent people who never should have been arrested (such as Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former Marine Paul Whelan) are traded for killers and spies. What is more, such deals can encourage further unwarranted arrests, as Putin and other autocrats look for bargaining chips, as well as persuade Putin he can act with impunity and eventually get his people back.
What else to say about this exchange? It was a triumph of diplomacy for one thing, involving as it did more than a dozen individuals from several countries. It showed the value of close partnerships with allies. These deals tend to be a long time in the making and then they happen. Just why it all came together now is not yet clear. I will confess to being surprised, as I thought Putin would want to reward a President Trump with an early success. Whatever the motives, no one should read into it as being anything more than a transaction; we are not embarking on a new and better chapter with Putin’s Russia.
Unsympathetic Quakes
The biggest story, or more accurately stories, are to be found in the Middle East. I have long compared the region to a part of the world with multiple fault lines. Any one can produce an earthquake at any time, and any one can set off additional instability in what geologists call sympathetic quakes.
It is ten months since the quake that was October 7 ushered in a costly war in Gaza. Soon thereafter the always uneasy fault line that exists between Israel and Hezbollah, which has its base in southern Lebanon, began to shake. There have also been sympathetic quakes in the West Bank, where there are growing clashes between Israeli settlers and Palestinians. There have been attacks by Iran on Israel and vice-versa. Even the Yemen-based Houthis have gotten into the act by attacking Israel directly, which then responded against targets in Yemen.
Gaza is no longer the principal area of military concern as Israel has all but run out of major military targets there. Thousands of Hamas fighters remain, but there is no feasible plan for eliminating them. Chances for a ceasefire were never good given the gap between the Hamas and Israeli requirements; prospects are even worse now in the aftermath of what by all accounts appears to have been Israel’s assassination of Ismail Haniyeh, who led the group’s political office. So what will likely ensue is a low-level, open-ended conflict in the Gaza Strip. A return of the remaining hostages does not look to be in the cards any time soon. Any doubt their return is not a high priority for the Netanyahu government was eliminated by the killing of Hamas’s chief negotiator.
The bigger immediate danger is in the north, on the Israel-Lebanon border. Armed exchanges between Israel and Hezbollah are growing deadlier, the most recent being what appears to have been a Hezbollah attack on a village in the Golan Heights that left a dozen Druze children dead. Then Israel retaliated with a targeted killing of Fuad Shukr, the right-hand man of Hezbollah’s leader, in Beirut. The question is whether the two sides can find a way not to allow things to escalate or, better yet, to calm things and pull back forces so tens of thousands of Israelis can return to their homes in northern Israel and an even larger number of Lebanese can return to their homes in southern Lebanon. This is possible but a very long shot.
The most dangerous quake, though, could come between Israel and Iran. The assassination of Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, which occurred just after he had attended the inauguration of Iran’s new president and met with the Supreme Leader, makes it all but certain an embarrassed Iranian regime will retaliate against Israel. Just how and when and where remains unknown. The last time Iran struck Israel directly was in April (also in the aftermath of an assassination, that time in Damascus) and it nearly triggered a costly war. What made it possible to avoid one was the fact that the Iranian drone and missile attack caused little damage, allowing Israel to respond modestly. It was a close-run thing.
If that were to change this time around, if Israelis were to die as a result of an Iranian attack, Israel would be tempted to respond big, possibly against sites associated with Iran’s nuclear program. Israel might also want to come down hard to get Iran to rethink its support for its armed proxies. There might even be those in Israel who would hope a large-scale response would trigger regime change. I am skeptical any response would accomplish any of the above; the real question is whether matters would settle after an exchange as they did last time or continue to escalate between the two countries, possibly expanding to the rest of the region or even beyond.
I want to return to a theme I mentioned at the beginning of this section, namely that while the United States possesses vast power its influence is limited. On one hand, Israel’s targeted assassinations of both Shukr and Haniyeh are consistent with U.S. advice that it avoid actions that cause massive civilian casualties, such as the killing of Mohammed Deif, the leader of Hamas’s armed wing. On the other hand, the assassination of Haniyeh is hard to square with U.S. calls for a ceasefire and a return of hostages.
We will know soon enough if Israel heeds calls for restraint in southern Lebanon and in the wake of Iran’s all but inevitable retaliation. I would just add the United States has a major stake in how all this plays out, as any war with Iran would further deplete U.S. defense equipment and munitions stockpiles or possibly draw the United States in as a participant. All of which is to say the Biden administration ought to be thinking hard about conditions it might attach to arms provided to Israel going forward.
Adaptation
Here at Home, I want to take a moment to focus on President Biden’s initiative to reform the Supreme Court. Biden proposed that justices be term limited and that they be required to act consistent with a code of conduct. None of this is going to happen any time soon, but that doesn’t mean the proposal is stillborn. Political ideas can take time to ripen, and it is quite possible the day will come when there is a willingness to impose term limits on the court. Think about it: it took more than 150 years for us to agree to a two-term limit for presidents. Higher ethical standards could also come about, possibly if they are mandated for members of Congress as well, which come to think of it wouldn’t be a bad thing.
Kamala (as in KA-ma-la, not ka-MAL-a) Harris is off to a strong start. It was fun to watch her work the crowd in Georgia. My sense is she is more comfortable with and a better fit for the political moment than she was five years ago when she ran for the Democratic nomination for president. It also seems she is enjoying getting out from under some of the constraints all vice presidents must live with.
By contrast, the would-be vice president on the Republican side is not off to a good start. J.D. Vance has alienated a large number of people (not just childless women with cats) in a small amount of time. The best move for Trump would be to swap him out for someone more seasoned and less radical. There is precedent. George McGovern did it in 1972 when several weeks after the Democratic convention that summer he dropped Senator Thomas Eagleton (who it was revealed had been hospitalized for depression and undergone electroshock therapy) in favor of Sargent Shriver. Trump could possibly make lemonade out of lemons by saying he disagrees with Vance’s views on women and abortion, a move that might help him with women and would be accepted by a base that is prepared to accept just about anything and everything he says and does.
The odds are against him doing it, though, as Trump is not comfortable admitting mistakes. Meanwhile, his own rhetoric is getting more and more extreme, suggesting to Christians that if they come out and vote for him this time they won’t need to vote again in four years as everything will be fixed, whatever that means for future elections and the right to vote. And then he said Kamala Harris would be like a play toy for world leaders, predicting that “they’re gonna walk all over her.” He then added, “I don’t want to say as to why, but a lot of people understand it.” Lots of dog whistling going on here.
And as if all that wasn’t enough, he questioned her “Blackness” at a conference for Black journalists at the same time he claimed those entering the country were taking “Black jobs.” What we are witnessing is a blend of misogyny and racism calibrated to appeal to his base. But it could easily backfire, galvanizing women and minorities and a good many others to come out in support of his opponent. One can only hope.
My sense is that Trump assumed he’d be running against Biden and would win handily. He is having difficulty with the new situation. What comes to mind is something from the world of sports. What I have in mind is a team preparing for the Super Bowl against an opponent with a drop-back passer, only to find out on game day the rival quarterback got injured and has been replaced by someone who likes to roll out and run. We will see if Trump has it in him to call an effective audible.
For some time I’ve thought that the next president will be the person who can make the election a referendum on his or her opponent. Weeks ago, Trump was ahead and on his way to win as Biden had become the issue. Now Harris is taking the lead as Trump—the person and the policies—are becoming the issue. She will win this November if this persists.
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Richard Haass in the news
Wednesday, July 31: MSNBC Andrea Mitchell Reports
Friday, July 26: CNN Amanpour