Not Peanuts (January 3, 2025)
Welcome to Home & Away. Here at Home, many woke up on New Year’s Day to news of a terrible terrorist attack in New Orleans that killed as many as fifteen, while a Tesla packed with explosives detonated outside of the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas, killing one and injuring others. Initial reports indicate that these attacks are not linked, while it still seems too soon to determine whether either was a part of some larger plot. What I do feel confident in saying is that we have to be better prepared for such attacks in the future.
More positively, I see some reason for optimism when I look Away at the year to come, with potential ceasefires in both Ukraine and Gaza, and possibly a grand bargain with Iran. And here at Home, there are already multiple signs that the incoming Trump administration will not be able to exercise power without constraint, which will tend to make for better policy and a more robust democracy. All this may of course prove to be wrong, but if so, there will be ample time to be down. For now, dry January need not be depressed January.
Fall-Out
I want to start with Syria for two reasons, one obvious, the other less so. The former is that as we often see in history, the victors tend to fall out once the glue provided by shared opposition to the former regime disappears. We are seeing some of this in Syria. There is a degree of score-settling, which to many in Syria I expect looks a lot like attacks on the Alawites, the ethnic minority to which the Assads belong. It is also hard not to worry that ISIS will exploit the situation for its own purposes. We are also seeing some foreign intervention. Israel seems to have settled into the south; it has no interest in seeing a unified Syria that can again constitute a threat. Turkey, I would wager, is preparing an assault on the Kurds even if in principle it wants Syria to calm down so millions of Syrian refugees in Turkey can return home. Turkish businessmen are also keen to help Syria rebuild. It will be interesting to see if the Turks hold off until after January 20 before going after the Kurds and, if they are so inclined, what sort of signal they receive from the Trump administration.
But the other reason to start with Syria has more to do with Home. We are beginning to see the inevitable second phase of the Trump revolution. Now that the Democrats have been defeated, the victorious coalition is fraying. Several fault lines are already visible. One has received considerable attention, namely, the differences between the pro-immigration technology crowd (the so-called tech bros, who favor granting a large number of H-1B visas for those with technology-related skills) and the MAGA traditionalists, who oppose immigration of any sort and believe these jobs can and should be filled by Americans. The president-elect seems to have come out in favor of the H-1B visas, although how many is unclear. I also suspect he will offset MAGA criticism of such a policy by some high visibility deportation efforts and, as we have seen in the wake of the New Orleans incident, linking of immigration to both criminality and terrorism regardless of the evidence.
Then there is a second fault line, on China. Here again there is a split between the technology types, who depend on access to the Chinese market or have a significant portion of their supply chains located in the country, and the MAGA types (led by Steve Bannon in this case) who see China as an existential threat. One early sign of this split was a little-noticed change between the spending bill Speaker Johnson put forward and the one that ended up passing after Elon Musk intervened: the former had a provision restricting outbound U.S. investment into China, while the latter omitted it. Now, Trump has asked the Supreme Court to postpone the TikTok ban while he works out some compromise. My sense is the president-elect wants to keep his TikTok following, make his friend Jeff Yass happy, and bank some goodwill to be used down the road with Xi Jinping. More important will be where the administration comes out on China, and whether it defines getting tough more in terms of tariffs and trade than on geopolitical issues such as Chinese pressure on Taiwan and support for Russia.
This infighting is taking place without the Democrats’ prodding or encouragement. They seem intent on devouring their own, most recently by blocking the bid by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, aka AOC, to become ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, a panel with a mandate to investigate. House Democrats instead voted in favor of Gerald Connolly, who among other things happens to be four decades older than the congresswoman from New York. My sense is what lies behind this is not just generational and personal but also political, presaging a struggle down the road between centrist and progressive Democrats. For now, though, it shows that losers can fall out just as easily as winners.
Not a Monk
Before I move on to other issues I want to say one more thing about tech bro numero uno, aka Prime Minister Elon Musk. He continues to demonstrate that genius and judgment do not necessarily go hand in hand. In this case it was an op-ed he penned for the German paper Welt am Sonntag, in which he endorsed the far-right AfD (Alternative for Deutschland) party, arguing that it is the “last spark of hope” for a Germany on “the brink of economic and cultural collapse” and that only it “can save Germany from becoming a shadow of its former self.”
Two things. One, Musk is no longer just a private citizen. Given his ties to Trump this will be seen as U.S. interference in German elections (and indeed Chancellor Olaf Scholz accused Musk of exactly that in his new year’s address), which are less than two months away, and where the far-right AfD is currently polling second to a center-right coalition. I see too that he is not limiting his political interference to Germany, calling as he is for new elections in the UK.
Second, there is the awkward reality that the AfD among other things favors a German exit from the EU and the Eurozone, opposes a European army, and is extreme in its anti-immigration, anti-Muslim politics, among other things saying “Islam does not belong to Germany. Its expansion and the ever-increasing number of Muslims in the country are viewed by the AfD as a danger to our state, our society, and our values.” The sympathetic-to-Russia AfD would also weaken Germany’s relationship with NATO, as the party has stated that it is “committed to the withdrawal of all Allied troops stationed on German soil, and in particular of their nuclear weapons” and that “wherever German Armed Forces, as part of NATO operations, are involved beyond the borders of its Alliance partners’ territory [it] shall, in principle, only be carried out under a UN mandate, and only if German security interests are taken into account.” There is a distinct German nationalist quality to the party manifesto that leaves me uneasy and then some. Read it and decide for yourself.
A Time to Wean
I thought I’d write about PBS and NPR. PBS gets maybe a third of its funding from the federal, state and local government, NPR a lower percentage. (The precise numbers are hard to pin down given the many indirect funding paths in play.) But whatever the amounts, now would be a good time for both organizations to wean themselves off of government funding as the DOGE boys are surely coming after them. Relying on continued government support guarantees fights down the road over content, staffing, and more. Plus, I believe going for self-sufficiency would actually be an effective fundraising argument. Those with resources could contribute to these important media properties and in the process do something to protect civil society and an independent media, both of which are central to American democracy.
39
This week saw the passing of Jimmy Carter, the 39th president of the United States. Carter is often described as the best former president, but this is damning with faint praise, failing to do justice to his tenure in the White House. He accomplished a great deal, especially in the foreign policy realm: the Camp David Accords, normalization with China, the SALT II nuclear arms control agreements, a military build-up in the wake of the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and the revolution in Iran, and the Panama Canal Treaty. Some dispute describing one or more of these as accomplishments, but I’m prepared to argue we were and are better off as a result. I see the president-elect has taken a page out of Ronald Reagan’s book and come to question the wisdom of the Canal treaty, but the pact allows us to use the waterway at a reasonable price and for whatever purposes. We would not have been able to do so if we were fighting a guerrilla effort in Panama. What threatens the Canal more than anything else is not China or Panama but climate change, something the incoming president tends to dispute.
Carter was a man of contradictions: passionately pro-peace but not a pacifist, an idealist who advocated for human rights but also entered into agreements with governments whose respect for human rights was minimal. He was something of an unexpected president. It was not just that he was a peanut farmer from the south whose time in public office consisted of one term as governor of Georgia; it was also that his ascendancy was made possible by the public reaction to Vietnam, Watergate, and President Ford’s pardon of Nixon. He was done in by inflation, the hostages held in Iran and the failed attempt to rescue them, and his all too often “eat your vegetables” public persona. He was right, but we don’t want to be told that every day. Americans prefer presidents like Reagan and Trump who make them feel better not worse. Full disclosure: I worked in Carter’s Defense Department. My take on President Carter can be found here.
Glass-gate
I will end with golf. Two readers expressed their unhappiness with me when I discussed Scottie Scheffler but not Nelly Korda, his opposite number as the best woman golfer on the planet, last week. And they have a point, in that Nelly Korda had a year on the golf course comparable to Scheffler’s (albeit without an Olympic gold medal). What she also managed to avoid was getting arrested. But now Scottie has one-upped her once again, this time by cutting his hand, an injury that will sideline him for as long as a month. Reportedly, the accident took place while he was preparing Christmas dinner. I for one don’t quite see how preparing dinner leads to a fistful of glass requiring surgery, but whatever. When I heard the news I assumed he did it washing up, but who knows? We may never get to the bottom of what really happened. Even so, I would anticipate a good many golfers, professional and amateur alike, will leap on this as an excuse not to wash the dishes.
For the record, I will not. First, I am not a good enough golfer to get away with not doing chores. Plus, I will confess, I actually enjoy cleaning up. I like the fact it has a beginning, a middle, and an end. I can see the results. There is a sense of accomplishment. I don’t know about you, but that distinguishes it from a lot else in this life.
As always, some links to click on. And feel free to share Home & Away.
Richard Haass in the news
Friday, December 27: Squawk Box (On the Russia-Ukraine war, the state of U.S.-China relations, and the fate of TikTok)
Monday, December 30: Morning Edition (A review of Carter's foreign policy and views on global affairs post presidency)
Monday, December 30: Morning Joe (2024 Reshaped the Middle East in a Most Surprising Set of Developments)
Check out The Bill of Obligations: The Ten Habits of Good Citizens
Hello