tag:theconversation.com,2011:/us/topics/mike-pompeo-37450/articlesMike Pompeo – The Conversation2022-02-09T14:02:18Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1765972022-02-09T14:02:18Z2022-02-09T14:02:18ZWhite Malice: how the CIA strangled African independence at birth<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445362/original/file-20220209-13-1t2q9l4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Patrice Lumumba, left, first Prime Minister of independent Congo in 1960. The CIA celebrated his death. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Historian <a href="https://research.sas.ac.uk/search/fellow/185/dr-susan-williams/">Susan Williams</a> grew up in Zambia. Like other scholars of her generation raised in former settler societies of southern Africa, she empathises with the continent’s people.</p>
<p>Williams’ widely acknowledged new book, <a href="https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/white-malice/">White Malice – The CIA and the Neocolonisation of Africa</a>, adds to her track record, testifying to this engagement. Almost a forensic account, its more than 500 pages (supported by close to 150 pages of sources, references and index) are as readable as a <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/John-le-Carre">John le Carré</a> novel. </p>
<p>But make no mistake: Williams ruthlessly reveals through factual evidence the unsavoury machinations of the American <a href="https://www.cia.gov/">Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)</a> in Africa during the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Cold-War">Cold War</a> until the late 1960s. While scholarly analyses of this era have increased, the literature mainly focuses on how geostrategic aspects had an impact on international policy. In contrast, this is the first detailed account disclosing a Western dirty war through detailed quotes from original documents and by those involved.</p>
<p>Published in 2011, her investigative research titled <a href="https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/who-killed-hammarskjold-2/">Who Killed Hammarskjöld? The UN, the Cold War and White Supremacy in Africa</a> made history. The evidence strengthened suspicions that the plane crash that killed the United Nations Secretary General and 15 others on 17/18 September 1961 near Ndola, in then <a href="https://www.history.com/news/dag-hammarskjold-death-plane-crash">Northern Rhodesia</a>, was no accident. As continuously updated by the Westminster branch of the <a href="http://www.hammarskjoldinquiry.info/">United Nations Association</a>, the disclosures triggered <a href="https://theconversation.com/speaking-truth-to-power-the-killing-of-dag-hammarskjold-and-the-cover-up-65534">new investigations</a> by the UN.</p>
<p>In 2016 Williams published <a href="https://www.hurstpublishers.com/book/spies-in-the-congo-2/#:%7E:text=Spies%20in%20the%20Congo%20is,to%20build%20its%20atomic%20bomb">Spies in the Congo: The Race for the Ore that Built the Atomic Bomb</a>. The focus was on <a href="https://www.mindat.org/loc-4328.html">Shinkolobwe</a>, the world’s biggest uranium mine, in the Congolese Katanga province. Of crucial geostrategic importance, in the 1940s it supplied the <a href="https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/the-manhattan-project">Manhattan Project</a>, which produced the first atomic bombs, which devastated Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Shinkolobwe remained the main resource in the American nuclear arming of the 1950s.</p>
<h2>White Malice</h2>
<p>Williams’ new book seems like the third in a trilogy. Its title, White Malice, captures the racist arrogance of power, unscrupulously destabilising and (re-)gaining control over sovereign states as a form of colonialism by other means. </p>
<p>Not by coincidence, the book revisits the circumstances of Hammarskjöld’s death and the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/place/Katanga-province-Democratic-Republic-of-the-Congo">relevance of Katanga</a>. More room is devoted to a step-by-step account leading to the <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/L/bo20598433.html">elimination of Patrice Lumumba</a>, the first prime minister of an independent Congo.</p>
<p>Another major focus is on Ghana since independence <a href="https://www.history.ox.ac.uk/was-the-gold-coast-decolonised-or-did-ghana-win-its-independence">in 1957</a>. Documenting the continental role of <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Kwame-Nkrumah">President Kwame Nkrumah</a>, it explains why and how he was removed from office. His role in promoting <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/313574089_Kwame_Nkrumah_and_the_panafrican_vision_Between_acceptance_and_rebuttal">pan-Africanism</a> was equated with an anti-Western attitude. </p>
<p>All this is tied together by the interventions by the CIA and its predecessor, the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Office-of-Strategic-Services">Office for Strategic Services</a>, often in cahoots with the <a href="https://www.sis.gov.uk/">British MI6</a>. The detailed accounts offer insights into the secret operations then. The display of mindsets and their consequences do not require theory or analytical comment. The facts speak for themselves. </p>
<p>Both agencies shared access to the encrypted messages used in confidential communication by Hammarskjöld and other high-ranking UN officials. As quoted by Williams (p. 290), the CIA celebrated this as “the intelligence coup of the century”.</p>
<p>The UK and the USA have still not disclosed insider knowledge concerning the deaths of Hammarskjöld and his entourage. Their secret agents were also involved in deliberations to kill Lumumba. Though they weren’t directly participating in his abduction, torture and execution in Katanga, it suited their agenda.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="Book cover shows a map of Africa with its western parts in a sniper's sights." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445364/original/file-20220209-21-hhrw56.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/445364/original/file-20220209-21-hhrw56.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445364/original/file-20220209-21-hhrw56.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445364/original/file-20220209-21-hhrw56.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=824&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445364/original/file-20220209-21-hhrw56.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1035&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445364/original/file-20220209-21-hhrw56.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1035&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/445364/original/file-20220209-21-hhrw56.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1035&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Nkrumah was luckier. A state visit to Beijing saved his life, when in his absence the <a href="https://www.eaumf.org/ejm-blog/2018/2/23/february-24-1966-dr-kwame-nkrumah-overthrown-as-president-of-the-republic-of-ghana">military coup took place</a>. Nelson Mandela was also “spared” by being imprisoned for most of the next 30 years. His <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/content/page/trials-and-prison-chronology">arrest in South Africa in 1962</a> under the <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/dated-event/suppression-communism-act-no-44-1950-approved-parliament">Suppression of Communism Act</a> was based on information provided by the CIA (p. 474). </p>
<h2>Western mindset</h2>
<p>Williams quotes (p. 77) a high-ranking CIA agent to illustrate the overall Western mindset. He declared in 1957:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Africa has become the real battleground and the next field of the big test of strength – not only for the free world and the communist world but for our own country and our Allies who are colonialist powers.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The strategy included replacing independent nationalist leaders with <a href="https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/anthos/vol2/iss1/5/">“big men”</a> – autocrats who based their power on Western support, such as <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mobutu-Sese-Seko">Mobutu Sese Seko</a>. A track record in or commitment to democracy and human rights was not a prerequisite.</p>
<p>In contrast, leaders like Guinea’s <a href="https://www.britannica.com/biography/Sekou-Toure">Sékou Touré</a> were considered enemies. Arguing for a referendum rejecting continued dependency from France, he <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1984/03/28/obituaries/ahmed-sekou-toure-a-radical-hero.html">declared in 1958</a>: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Guinea prefers poverty in freedom to riches in slavery (p. 74).</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Cultural operations</h2>
<p>CIA operations were not confined to plots ending in brute force. Some were cultural programmes, unbeknown to many artists and scholars who received CIA sponsorship.</p>
<p>This included stipends to South African writers in exile, such as <a href="https://www.sahistory.org.za/people/eskia-mphahlele">Es'kia Mphahlele</a> and <a href="http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0259-01902011000100004">Nat Nakasa</a>, as well as the sponsoring of cultural festivals and conferences in Africa. Williams (p. 64) quotes the future Nobel laureate <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1986/soyinka/biographical/">Wole Soyinka</a>, who after discovering that he had unknowingly received CIA funds <a href="https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/1986/soyinka/biographical/">declared</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>we had been dining, and with relish, with the original of that serpentine incarnation, the Devil himself, romping in our post-colonial Garden of Eden and gorging on the fruits of the Tree of Knowledge.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In a spectacular disclosure (pp. 324-331) Williams presents details of CIA-funded concerts by <a href="https://npg.si.edu/exh/armstrong/">Louis Armstrong</a>, touring 27 African cities in 11 weeks during late 1960. This included a concert in Elisabethville, the Katanga breakaway province of Congo, at a time when Lumumba’s end was near. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/sep/12/louis-armstrong-and-the-spy-how-the-cia-used-him-as-a-trojan-horse-in-congo">According to Williams</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Armstrong was basically a Trojan horse for the CIA … He would have been horrified.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Facts, not fiction</h2>
<p>The US’s <a href="https://www.ushistory.org/us/53a.asp">obsessive anti-communism</a>, which escalated in the era of Senator Joseph McCarthy, at times took lethal forms when governments or leaders were considered to be obstructing Western interests. </p>
<p>A sense of guilt or remorse remains absent. Mike Pompeo says it all. Then CIA director from January 2017 to April 2018 and Donald Trump’s <a href="https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/people/pompeo-michael-r">Secretary of State</a>, “celebrated immorality”, as Williams drily comments (p. 515). “I was the CIA director,” Pompeo boosted in a quoted speech in 2019:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We lied, we cheated, we stole. We had entire training courses. It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The story, unlike John le Carré’s, is definitely not fiction. CIA operations, at times in collaboration with other Western intelligence agencies, were pursuing a hegemonic agenda with lasting impact.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/176597/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Henning Melber does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Detailed accounts from original documents offer insights into the secret operations of the CIA in Africa.Henning Melber, Extraordinary Professor, Department of Political Sciences, University of PretoriaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1716532021-11-12T13:34:54Z2021-11-12T13:34:54ZThe Hatch Act, the law Trump deputies are said to have broken, requires government employees to work for the public interest, not partisan campaigns<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/431379/original/file-20211110-19-1msqcmz.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C7%2C5061%2C3366&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">At least 13 former Trump administration officials, including Jared Kushner and Kayleigh McEnany, pictured here, violated the Hatch Act, according to a new federal investigation released Nov. 9, 2021.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/TrumpHatchAct/ccefacd6bbb840efb47c1dc4972f82c3/photo?Query=Trump%20Kushner&mediaType=photo&sortBy=arrivaldatetime:desc&dateRange=Anytime&totalCount=1895&currentItemNo=0">AP Photo/Alex Brandon</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Thirteen top officials of the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/09/us/politics/trump-officials-illegal-campaigning.html">Trump administration violated the federal law known as the Hatch Act</a>, which prohibits political campaigning while employed by the federal government. That’s the <a href="https://osc.gov/Documents/Hatch%20Act/Reports/Investigation%20of%20Political%20Activities%20by%20Senior%20Trump%20Administration%20Officials%20During%20the%202020%20Presidential%20Election.pdf">conclusion of a federal government report</a> issued by the Special Counsel, Henry Kerner. </p>
<p>The officials, including then-acting Secretary of Homeland Security Chad Wolf and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, “chose to use their official authority not for the legitimate functions of the government, but to promote the reelection of President Trump in violation of the law.” </p>
<p>The Trump administration members were not the first federal employees to <a href="https://www.governmentattic.org/41docs/OSChathActWarningLrtrs_2018-2020.pdf">have crossed the line</a> into prohibited political advocacy. Over the past few decades, government employees have been documented violating the Hatch Act in their offices, at meetings and in memos. And in a world awash in social media, it has become much easier for people to share their views about politics digitally.</p>
<p>But government employees work for the people of the United States. Paid with the tax dollars of Democrats and Republicans, they are supposed to work in the public interest, not use the power of the federal government to pursue partisan political causes. </p>
<h2>Public dollars, public mission</h2>
<p>The ideal of public employees as politically neutral is, at its core, driven by accountability. </p>
<p>For many government employees, the appearance of political impartiality is an overriding principle that governs their professional lives. Upholding this principle can even cause them to sacrifice their own electoral influence outside of the office.</p>
<p>I am a scholar of public policy and administration, and my research indicates that <a href="https://thebluereview.org/hidden-cost-primary-systems/">many would rather not vote in a party’s primary election</a>, where they would be required to publicly state what party they belong to.</p>
<p>Where is the line between professional standards and political speech?</p>
<p>Public servants, the argument goes, should be neutral and concerned only with implementing public policy that is decided by elected officials. This <a href="https://www.iapss.org/wp/2014/06/30/the-dichotomy-of-politics-and-public-administration-lessons-from-the-perennial-debate/">principle</a> has driven the field of public administration for more than 100 years. </p>
<p>Passed in 1939, the Hatch Act <a href="https://osc.gov/Services/Pages/HatchAct.aspx">prohibits</a> federal employees from running for partisan office, encouraging subordinates to engage in political activity, soliciting political contributions or engaging in political activity while on duty. It does not prohibit affiliating with a political party, discussing politics or attending fundraisers.</p>
<p>The Hatch Act generally only applies to federal employees. It does not apply to the president, vice president or Cabinet appointments. It can also cover state and local government employees, if their work is at least partially funded by federal dollars. <a href="http://www.ncsl.org/research/ethics/50statetablestaffandpoliticalactivitystatutes.aspx">Several states, such as Minnesota, North Carolina and Ohio, have additional laws</a> that can further restrict the political activity of public employees, even if their positions aren’t federally funded.</p>
<p>From 2010 through 2016, <a href="https://osc.gov/PublicFiles">the Office of the Special Counsel, or OSC, which investigates Hatch Act violations,</a> received an average of 315 Hatch Act complaints per year, which resulted in an average of 102 warning letters per year. An average of nine employees per year have resigned from their positions in response.</p>
<p>Some recent examples of Hatch Act violations include <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/24/AR2007052401130.html">asking others</a> to “help our candidates” and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/postal-service-broke-law-in-pushing-time-off-for-workers-to-campaign-for-clinton-investigation-finds/2017/07/19/3292741c-6ca0-11e7-b9e2-2056e768a7e5_story.html">pressuring supervisors</a> to allow employees time off in order to campaign for their union’s preferred candidate. Others <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/25/us/politics/25ethics.html">coordinated partisan elections</a> using taxpayer-funded resources. Even <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/onpolitics/2017/10/03/un-ambassador-nikki-haley-hit-hatch-act-reprimand/728611001/">retweeting a post from the president of the United States</a> on social media constituted a violation. </p>
<h2>From patronage to neutrality, via assassination</h2>
<p>During the early years of the United States, the federal government operated under a system known as “patronage.” </p>
<p>Under that system, a newly elected president could replace federal employees with a person of their choosing. Often, they chose only from among their supporters, campaign workers and friends. This was especially true if the presidency changed political parties. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211576/original/file-20180322-54903-1bi9wgl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211576/original/file-20180322-54903-1bi9wgl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=852&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211576/original/file-20180322-54903-1bi9wgl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=852&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211576/original/file-20180322-54903-1bi9wgl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=852&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211576/original/file-20180322-54903-1bi9wgl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1071&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211576/original/file-20180322-54903-1bi9wgl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1071&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211576/original/file-20180322-54903-1bi9wgl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1071&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Woodrow Wilson wrote an important essay on government employee neutrality before he became president.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Library of Congress</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The public bureaucracy was constantly changing, and few officials were around long enough to develop institutional memory. In addition, patronage led to the appointment of people who were not qualified for the positions they got, leaving the government inefficient and the public dissatisfied. </p>
<p>President <a href="http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/the-study-of-administration/">Woodrow Wilson,</a> prior to his presidency, and <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=NVoPAAAAYAAJ&pg=PR3#v=onepage&q&f=false">Frank Goodnow</a>, writing separately at the end of the 19th century, first articulated the theory that there should be a wall between elected officials who set public policy and the professional staff charged with implementing that policy. </p>
<p>A professional class of government employees was not the tradition of the United States at that time, and the public had to be convinced of its virtue. Wilson’s <a href="http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/the-study-of-administration/">essay</a> tried to help the wider population understand why civil service reforms were necessary.</p>
<p>There was another event that also helped move government employment from patronage to professionalism. In 1881, a man who felt he had been unfairly passed over for a patronage job shot and killed <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/garfield-assassination-altered-american-history-woefully-forgotten-today-180968319/">President James Garfield</a>. This assassination helped highlight the problems of the patronage system and led to the passage of the <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2018/01/16/pendleton-act-inaugurates-us-civil-service-system-jan-16-1883-340488">Pendleton Act in 1883</a>. That legislation instituted a merit-based civil service system that remains largely in place today.</p>
<p>Under the system instituted in 1883, only the top levels of federal agencies can be replaced by patronage appointments – friends, supporters and allies of the new administration. The remaining levels of rank-and-file staff are expected to be nonpartisan professionals. In many respects, the Hatch Act can be seen as an outgrowth of this ideal.</p>
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<h2>A ‘fanciful’ distinction</h2>
<p>The boundary between politics and civil service employees is not necessarily easy to see or maintain. Scholars have wrestled with whether government employees, charged with implementing vague public policy, can really be separated entirely from political concerns. </p>
<p>In fact, some scholars have rejected the separation as fanciful. In an important debate between preeminent public administration scholar <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/40861434?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents">Dwight Waldo and Nobel Prize-winning economist Herbert Simon</a>, Waldo argued that when some decision-making is left to administrators, an administrator’s own politics will influence those decisions. In short, public employees are not actually neutral. Simon, on the other hand, argued that efficient government required that administrative decisions should emphasize objective facts and not be influenced by a public employee’s personal values.</p>
<p>While most public administration scholars have moved beyond debate about the dichotomy itself, public employees still have to grapple with their proper role. And they do so as they work for elected policymakers, who themselves <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1081/PAD-100000713">still think that they are the only ones who should drive what all levels of government do</a>.</p>
<h2>Neutrality not getting easier</h2>
<p>For over a century, public employees have generally subscribed to an ethos that theirs is a professional role separated from the daily political grind. In the modern era, it takes far more discipline to maintain that separation. And it does not appear to be getting any easier.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211577/original/file-20180322-54893-1bpgl0t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/211577/original/file-20180322-54893-1bpgl0t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211577/original/file-20180322-54893-1bpgl0t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211577/original/file-20180322-54893-1bpgl0t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=516&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211577/original/file-20180322-54893-1bpgl0t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=648&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211577/original/file-20180322-54893-1bpgl0t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=648&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/211577/original/file-20180322-54893-1bpgl0t.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=648&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">CNBC reporter Christina Wilkie’s tweet about Kellyanne Conway’s attack on a Democratic political candidate; Conway was found to have violated the Hatch Act.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Twitter</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>In 2015, the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/federal-eye/wp/2015/11/13/no-tweeting-what-you-actually-think-about-clinton-or-carson-if-youre-on-the-clock-new-limits-on-feds/">Hatch Act was clarified</a> to prohibit federal employees from, among other things, liking or retweeting a political candidate while on the job, even during break time. Some in sensitive positions, like law enforcement or intelligence, are even prohibited from doing so during their off-hours.</p>
<p>Despite that attempt at clarity, in today’s hyperpartisan climate, social media and 24-hour connectivity have helped blur the line between a public employee acting in their official capacity and their private life. </p>
<p>The Trump administration officials’ violations help remind us that the line between political activity and professional neutrality still exists for federal employees. And in this increasingly connected world, the opportunities to fall short are plentiful.</p>
<p><em>This is an updated version of <a href="https://theconversation.com/federal-employees-work-for-both-democrats-and-republicans-even-kellyanne-conway-93165">an article</a> originally published on March 23, 2018.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/171653/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Matthew May does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>More than a dozen Trump administration officials are said to have violated a federal law that bars federal employees from political campaigning. They weren’t the first to have run afoul of the law.Matthew May, Senior Research Associate, Boise State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1448912020-08-26T13:03:57Z2020-08-26T13:03:57ZUS left isolated at UN after bid to reimpose sanctions on Iran – why did it even try?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/354677/original/file-20200825-18-tuulju.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=58%2C62%2C2937%2C1926&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mike Pompeo: on his own on Iran. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/us-secretary-state-mike-pompeo-delivers-1782468047">Ringo Chiu/Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Mike Pompeo was angry. The US secretary of state stood in the UN headquarters in New York on August 20 and <a href="https://www.state.gov/secretary-michael-r-pompeo-at-a-press-availability-11/">proclaimed a new axis of evil</a> between former American allies – the UK, France and Germany – and the Islamic Republic of Iran.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>They chose to side with ayatollahs. Their actions endanger the people of Iraq, of Yemen, of Lebanon, of Syria – and indeed, their own citizens as well.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Pompeo’s outburst was prompted by a very bad week for the US in the UN security council. On August 14, only the Dominican Republic <a href="https://eaworldview.com/2020/08/trump-humiliated-iran-arms-embargo/">supported</a> the Trump Administration’s resolution for an extension of the UN arms embargo on Iran, which is due to expire in October. Russia and China voted no. The other 11 members, including the Europeans singled out by Pompeo, abstained.</p>
<p>Then the following week, 13 of the 15 members of the security council objected to the US attempt to invoke “snapback” sanctions on Tehran. </p>
<p>The “snapback” provision was built into <a href="https://www.un.org/securitycouncil/content/2231/background">Resolution 2231</a>, which underpinned the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), known as the Iran nuclear deal. If any of the parties believes another had violated the terms, then a dispute resolution mechanism can be activated. If there is still no resolution, then UN sanctions on Iran dating from 2010 can be reimposed.</p>
<p>Pompeo claimed that Iran was in violation of the 2015 nuclear deal it had agreed with the 5+1 Powers (US, UK, France, Germany, China and Russia). But everyone else – except for the representative of the Dominican Republic, who said nothing – countered that because the Trump administration withdrew from the agreement in May 2018 it had no standing to demand UN sanctions. </p>
<p>On August 25, Indonesia, which currently holds the presidency of the UN security council, said <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/25/iran-sanctions-trump-administration-un-security-council">no further action</a> would be taken to impose snapback sanctions, drawing further ire from the US.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1296413933235036160"}"></div></p>
<h2>Hoisted by their hard line</h2>
<p>When the US withdrew in May 2018 and then imposed unilateral, comprehensive sanctions in November that year, Iran was in compliance with the deal. The <a href="https://www.iaea.org/newscenter/focus/iran/iaea-and-iran-iaea-reports">International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported</a> at quarterly intervals that Tehran remained within the agreed limits for production of low-grade uranium. </p>
<p>The Rouhani government, citing the US sanctions and <a href="https://eaworldview.com/2020/01/iran-daily-rouhani-to-europe-do-you-want-to-make-a-mistake/">failure to establish</a> a European economic link to bypass them, suspended adherence to some provisions from June 2019. In June, the <a href="https://www.defensenews.com/global/mideast-africa/2020/06/05/un-agency-says-iran-is-violating-all-restrictions-of-nuclear-deal/">IAEA confirmed</a> that the Iranians are increasing uranium enrichment to 4.5%, breaking the 3.67% limit set in the 2015 deal. However, Tehran has not returned to its pre-2015 production of 20% uranium.</p>
<p>The Trump administration has no wish to return to what Donald Trump called the “<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/president-donald-j-trump-cutting-off-funds-iranian-regime-uses-support-destructive-activities-around-world/">worst deal ever negotiated</a>” in American history. Instead, its strategy of maximum pressure on Tehran sought to condemn Iran’s regional operations in the Persian Gulf and in countries such as Syria, Yemen, Iraq and Lebanon. Then, in early January 2020, a US drone strike assassinated Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Quds Force responsible for Iranian military operations outside the country. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/what-next-for-irans-proxy-network-after-killing-of-qassem-soleimani-129303">What next for Iran's proxy network after killing of Qassem Soleimani</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Russia, China, the European powers, and almost all other security council members have reached a different conclusion on Iran. They concurred that the deal has to be maintained to prevent further confrontation throughout the Middle East and central Asia. In June, the UK, German and French foreign ministers <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iran-nuclear-europe/europe-tells-u-s-we-wont-back-unilateral-iran-sanctions-snapback-idUSKBN23Q1DB">were blunt</a> in their message to the Trump administration: snapback sanctions would have “serious adverse consequences” in the security council and they could not support it.</p>
<h2>Why go it alone?</h2>
<p>But this leaves the immediate question: why, given the inevitability of defeat on both the arms embargo and the snapback sanctions, did the Trump administration push so hard and so vociferously – and continue to do so?</p>
<p>A miscalculation of arrogance by Pompeo can’t be ruled out. And, of course, there is Trump’s relative ignorance of US-Iranian relations and the region – even as his camp were shaking a fist of fury, he was talking about the possibility of <a href="https://www.voanews.com/middle-east/voa-news-iran/kushner-makes-peace-overture-iran-trump-seeks-negotiations-if-re-elected">a high-profile meeting</a> with an Iranian leader.</p>
<p>But career staff in Washington will know that these are fantasies. There is no chance of Trump shaking hands with Iran’s president, Hassan Rouhani, or of the security council agreeing to impose snapback sanctions. </p>
<p>Trump’s circle, having shredded the diplomatic work of the Obama administration, want to box in a future Biden presidency. Their rhetoric about Iranian duplicity, menace and support of “terrorism” seeks to raise the domestic political bar for any resumption of talks, let alone a revised nuclear agreement. </p>
<h2>After November</h2>
<p>Although it’s not being said openly, almost everyone except Trump’s inner circle is awaiting his departure in January 2021 and the arrival of a Biden administration. </p>
<p>That will not bring a simple return to the status quo before the 2015 deal. A Democratic administration, both because of domestic pressure and concerns over Iranian military plans, will want some revision of terms; so will the Europeans, including over Tehran’s missile programs. Tehran will seek assurances against another unilateral US withdrawal from a deal and for the removal of comprehensive sanctions. But a return to acceptance of mutual interest in a deal, and of discussions of regional matters, will shift the priority to negotiations rather than confrontation.</p>
<p>Still, a second Trump term <a href="https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2020-election-forecast/">cannot be ruled out</a>. If Trump is reelected in November, then his administration is likely to pile on more pressure with additional unilateral sanctions, attacks on Iranian infrastructure, and threats to knock out more of Tehran’s commanders. The message will be clear: concede or we will break you.</p>
<p>Tehran is likely to reply: try it. Even as the Trump administration pursues its quest in isolation, that will turn the regional kaleidoscope into more collision and fragmentation, and force Iranians to endure more sacrifice for their leaders’ “resistance” to the US.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/144891/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Scott Lucas does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The US bid to impose so-called ‘snapback’ sanctions on Iran was roundly rejected by the UN security council.Scott Lucas, Professor of International Politics, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1433852020-08-05T12:29:58Z2020-08-05T12:29:58ZPompeo’s plan for a hierarchy of human rights could serve to undermine them all – including religious freedom<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351169/original/file-20200804-14-al2c64.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C5254%2C3458&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Critics have accused Mike Pompeo of sculpting policy out of his religious beliefs.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/secretary-of-state-mike-pompeo-clears-his-throat-as-he-news-photo/1209343602?adppopup=true">Leah Millis/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In pushing for religion to be given more prominence in U.S. foreign policy concerns, could Secretary of State Mike Pompeo be acting in bad faith?</p>
<p>That’s what many human rights groups believe. In <a href="https://www.humanrightsfirst.org/sites/default/files/CUR%20Report%20Comment%20NGO%20Letter%20Final%2020.07.30.pdf">a letter</a> dated July 30, a coalition of faith-based and secular civil liberty groups and leaders accused Pompeo of acting out of “personal political and religious beliefs.” It coincided with the last day of public consultation on a draft report by the Pompeo-appointed <a href="https://www.state.gov/commission-on-unalienable-rights">Commission on Unalienable Rights</a> that prioritizes religious freedom over other human rights.</p>
<p>As <a href="https://udayton.edu/directory/artssciences/hrc/inglis-shelley.php">a scholar of human rights and the law</a>, I understand these concerns. Valuing one human right over another undermines efforts to protect everyone’s rights, including the freedom of religion.</p>
<p>The 60-page draft report draws upon “biblical teachings” and “classical liberalism” to conclude that “foremost among the unalienable rights that government is established to secure, from the founders’ point of view, are property rights and religious liberty.”</p>
<p>It is a view grounded in a historical narrative of <a href="https://theweek.com/articles/654508/what-exactly-american-exceptionalism">American exceptionalism</a>. Indeed, launching the report, Pompeo declared: “America is special. America is good. America does good all around the world.”</p>
<h2>‘Ad hoc rights’</h2>
<p>Pompeo set up the <a href="https://www.state.gov/commission-on-unalienable-rights">Commission on Unalienable Rights with a mandate</a> to provide him with advice on human rights “grounded in our nation’s founding principles” and “the principles of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights” – an international agreement supported by the U.S. that sets out, but does not rank, universal human rights such as the rights to education, health and work and freedom of speech and assembly, and protections from torture and discrimination.</p>
<p>In an <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/07/16/pompeo-oped-commission-unalienable-rights/">op-ed in The Washington Post</a>, Pompeo stressed his goal was to distinguish between original “unalienable rights” and what he called “ad hoc rights” that have been added since the end of the Cold War.</p>
<p>The commission’s draft report seeks to do this by suggesting that some rights are “unalienable” in that they are inseparable from our humanity and equates these to human rights. Other rights are merely granted by governments.</p>
<p>The report implies that religious freedom and property rights are more important than other civil and political rights, like freedom of speech and assembly, or the right to vote. It also says economic, social and cultural rights should be treated differently in U.S. foreign policy.</p>
<p>Other rights – including those covering reproductive rights and LGBTQ protections – are dismissed by the commission as “divisive social and political controversies.” It further cautions against U.S. support for “new” rights. </p>
<p>Even before the report’s release, 400 U.S.-based human rights groups and experts noted in <a href="https://www.humanrightsfirst.org/sites/default/files/Unalienable-Rights-Commission-NGO-Ltr.pdf">a joint letter</a> that “it is a fundamental tenet of human rights that all rights are universal and equal.”</p>
<p>They also aired concern about the makeup of the <a href="https://www.state.gov/commission-on-unalienable-rights-member-bio">commission</a> – the majority of members are scholars of religious freedom with stances against abortion and the expansion of LGBTQ rights – among other issues. </p>
<p><a href="https://cdn.americanprogress.org/content/uploads/2020/07/20073155/Faith-Leaders-Statement-on-CUR-7-20-20-Final2.pdf">Religious leaders</a> and <a href="https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/distinctly-catholic/unalienable-rights-are-still-unassailable-despite-pompeo">faith-based media</a> are among those who have expressed concerns with the draft report.</p>
<h2>Undermining obligations</h2>
<p>Critics say that if the U.S. declares some rights are more important than others, the move will devalue all human rights – including religious freedom. Without freedom of speech and assembly, rights to health and education, and protection from discrimination and violence, freedom of religion doesn’t mean much. That is why human rights are considered indivisible, interrelated and interdependent. </p>
<p>It could also cast further doubt over the legitimacy and credibility of U.S. efforts to promote rights overseas. The concern is other countries may see the proposed approach as a green light to promote their own national sovereignty claims over their obligations to existing <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/professionalinterest/pages/internationallaw.aspx">human rights law</a> and standards – the latter which the commission’s report disparages as “drawn up by commissions and committees, bodies of independent experts, NGOs, special rapporteurs, etc., with scant democratic oversight.” </p>
<p>It is hard to separate the commission and the draft report from the <a href="https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/justifying-american-exceptionalism-commission-unalienable-rights-undermines-modern-human-rights/">the political agenda of the administration</a>, which has made <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/23/politics/donald-trump-religious-freedom-unga/index.html">religious freedom</a> a central plank of its <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-advancing-international-religious-freedom/">platform</a>. Likewise the commission’s report echoes the <a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Foreign-Policy/2019/0925/At-UN-Trump-tests-his-own-brand-of-multilateralism">disdain the Trump administration has displayed for international bodies</a>.</p>
<h2>Already a priority</h2>
<p>The establishment of Pompeo’s commission and its draft report differs from bipartisan efforts that had already placed an emphasis on religious freedom in U.S. foreign policy. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/105th-congress/house-bill/2431">International Religious Freedom Act of 1998</a> passed during the Clinton administration and amended in 2016 during the Obama administration, established the independent <a href="https://www.uscirf.gov/">U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom</a>, along with an <a href="https://www.state.gov/bureaus-offices/under-secretary-for-civilian-security-democracy-and-human-rights/office-of-international-religious-freedom/">Office of International Religious Freedom</a> in the State Department headed by an ambassador-at-large.</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>Congress receives an <a href="https://www.state.gov/international-religious-freedom-reports/">annual report on international religious freedom</a>, which evaluates other countries’ efforts to promote religious freedom. It focuses on acts of religious persecution and naming “<a href="https://www.heritage.org/global-politics/report/codifying-religious-freedom-us-foreign-policy-priority">countries of concern</a>,” which can result in <a href="https://www.lawfareblog.com/international-religious-freedom-act-primer">sanctions</a>. </p>
<p>But the office has been more active during the Trump administration. Pompeo used the launch of its <a href="https://www.state.gov/reports/2019-report-on-international-religious-freedom/">2019 annual report</a> – which singles out China as one of the worst offenders of religious freedom for its treatment of Uighurs – as an opportunity to heighten the <a href="https://www.state.gov/secretary-michael-r-pompeo-at-a-press-availability-on-the-release-of-the-2019-international-religious-freedom-report/">administration’s rhetoric</a> against China.</p>
<h2>Where from here?</h2>
<p>Having received public comments, the commission could, of course, substantially alter its draft report. But even before the end of the consultation period, it was reported that <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/30/politics/unalienable-rights-report-opposition-letter/index.html">Pompeo promoted</a> the draft as guidance for <a href="https://twitter.com/nahaltoosi/status/1285317636591693825">State Department staff</a> to follow. </p>
<p>The list of challenges to human rights in the U.S. and around the world is long and complex: rising authoritarianism and nationalism, a global pandemic, widespread protests demanding racial justice, climate change, new technologies and economic inequities, among others. The U.S. is only an effective advocate for the protection of human rights overseas, if it can ensure all rights for its own people equally. </p>
<p>But a meaningful deliberation about how the U.S. should protect and promote human dignity for all both domestically and internationally may require a very different approach than that of the Commission on Unalienable Rights.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/143385/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shelley Inglis does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A commission set up by the US Secretary of State says religious freedom and property rights should be elevated above other rights. It has prompted concern from faith-based and secular critics alike.Shelley Inglis, Executive Director, University of Dayton Human Rights Center, University of DaytonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1295372020-02-05T13:11:38Z2020-02-05T13:11:38ZHow the US repeatedly failed to support reform movements in Iran<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313381/original/file-20200203-41485-1w42dhp.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A demonstrator protesting a disputed election wearing a headband in support of the Green Movement, Tehran, June 15, 2009. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/female-demonstrator-wearing-a-green-headband-takes-a-news-photo/116256568?adppopup=true">Kaveh Kazemi/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>After <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-31/tracking-the-escalating-conflict-between-u-s-iran-quicktake">decades of conflict, recently escalated to near-war</a>, it appears there’s little chance that U.S. relations with Iran will ever improve.</p>
<p>For 40 years, the relationship between the U.S. and Iran has been marked by disagreement – but also by a series of missed opportunities. </p>
<p>Over the past two decades, a number of organic <a href="https://volunteeractivists.nl/en/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Civil-Society-in-Iran-and-its-Future-Prospects-pdf.pdf">Iranian activist movements have steadily been growing stronger</a>. </p>
<p>If, <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/06/20/exceptionally-american-historical-amnesia-behind-pompeos-claim-40-years-unprovoked">as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo alleges</a>, the U.S. has been worried about the Iranian regime for the past 40 years, why didn’t U.S. policies and policymakers support Iran’s numerous voices – growing louder and larger – calling for support to overthrow the hardline Islamists in power?</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313379/original/file-20200203-41495-15lbomd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313379/original/file-20200203-41495-15lbomd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313379/original/file-20200203-41495-15lbomd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313379/original/file-20200203-41495-15lbomd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313379/original/file-20200203-41495-15lbomd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313379/original/file-20200203-41495-15lbomd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313379/original/file-20200203-41495-15lbomd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Demonstrators claiming their votes had not been counted in a recent election march in Tehran, June 17, 2009.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/demonstrators-carrying-where-is-my-vote-posters-march-on-news-photo/116258258?adppopup=true">Kaveh Kazemi/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Important values shared</h2>
<p>Engagement is not the same thing as intervention. Engagement can mean support – including support of the causes that the majority of Iran’s population were calling for – from the entire global community. </p>
<p>And the support that many called for could help the people of Iran hold the regime accountable. </p>
<p>Iranian activists need international support to hold their government accountable. For instance, the Canadian and Ukrainian governments joined Iranian citizens’ <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/01/11/justin-trudeau-iran-ukraine-flight-752-097572">calls for investigation into the downing of Flight 752</a>. </p>
<p>Despite the monolithic portrayal of Iran by people like Mike Pompeo, John Bolton, or even <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/1993-06-01/clash-civilizations">historian Samuel Huntington</a> as diametrically opposed to all things “Western,” on many ordinary Iranians – young people and activists in particular – <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/06/the-iran-we-dont-see-a-tour-of-the-country-where-people-love-americans/258166/">share important values with Americans</a>. <a href="https://www.hrw.org/world-report/2019/country-chapters/iran">Iranians who have been taking to the streets</a> for the past several years have been calling for things like human rights, equality, women’s rights and government accountability. </p>
<p>And while the two governments have been in conflict, Iranian students at universities <a href="https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/iransource/us-iran-people-to-people-ties-an-enduring-and-mutually-beneficial-history/">have welcomed dialogue</a> with their Western counterparts. </p>
<p>Between 2000 and 2008, I spent extensive periods in Iran <a href="https://sundial.csun.edu/11418/archive/iranianyouthcontinuesexualrevolutionagainstgovernment/">conducting research with young people engaged in what they called a “sexual revolution,”</a> or “enqelab-i-jensi” in Persian. These youthful Iranians rejected the regime’s tyrannical control of the bodies of its people. </p>
<p>One example of the regime’s power: mandatory dress codes for all. The regime wanted to restore a moral order by rejecting what it viewed as <a href="http://www.oxfordislamicstudies.com/article/opr/t125/e2501">a toxic infatuation with the West, or “Westoxification</a>.”</p>
<p>As young activists – men and women alike – they resisted the regime by using their bodies to make a statement.</p>
<iframe src="https://cdn.knightlab.com/libs/timeline3/latest/embed/index.html?source=1lbZCBLjB3WGNLuiO7_pUiMfahVbpzoJTU-Wkqh_DWG0&font=Default&lang=en&initial_zoom=1&height=650" width="100%" height="650" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0"></iframe>
<h2>Tepid US response</h2>
<p>In 2009 many of the same young people who were active in the sexual revolution spilled into the streets in the thousands to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/world/middleeast/14iran.html">protest the re-election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad</a>. </p>
<p>A product of the hard-line Islamist movement, Ahmadinejad represented a move away from the opening up that his predecessor, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/18/world/middleeast/18iran.html">reformist President Mohammad Khatami</a> had introduced. Activists felt that in addition to moving the country backward, Ahmadinejad had won the presidency <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2009/08/20/how-ahmadinejad-stole-an-election-and-how-he-can-fix-it/">through election fraud</a>.</p>
<p>This was the beginning of the <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2010/01/06/think-again-irans-green-movement/">Green Movement, a civil rights-type movement</a> that <a href="https://iranprimer.usip.org/resource/green-movement">took the country by storm</a>. </p>
<p>Young and old poured into the streets, wearing green, chanting “not my president” and calling openly for regime change. <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/iran/2019-06-14/irans-green-movement-never-went-away">The Green Movement was one of the largest organized resistance efforts</a> the region had seen in decades, and was important in <a href="https://www.neisd.net/cms/lib/TX02215002/Centricity/domain/4966/mundocs/Green%20and%20Iranian%20Revolution.pdf">laying the ground work for the Arab Spring</a>.</p>
<p>Young Iranians were at the forefront of the Green Movement, calling for transparency in government decision making and elections. They begged the world for support, but few responded.</p>
<p>The U.S. preferred a more “hands off” approach. While Iranian activists had hoped that President Barack Obama would take a strong stance and call out the election fraud, when he did speak, his message was cautious. </p>
<p>“The world is watching and inspired by their participation, regardless of what the ultimate <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2016-08-24/why-obama-let-iran-s-green-revolution-fail">outcome of the election was</a>,” said Obama in 2009. </p>
<p>Many activists in Iran believe that the Green Movement was <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/10/obamas-flawed-record-in-the-middle-east/263126/">a missed opportunity for members of the U.S. government</a> to strongly support a resistance that could have forced the regime to reckon with its poor record on issues such as human rights and women’s rights. </p>
<h2>Pushing back the hijab</h2>
<p>In the years before and after the Green Movement, feminist activists continued to publicly call for regime change, often by highlighting the regime’s unequal treatment of women. </p>
<p>Between 2007 and 2009, many of the activists involved in the <a href="http://amnestymena.org/en/Magazine/Issue20/TheOneMillionSignatureCampaigninIran.aspx?media=print">One Million Signatures campaign</a> – a campaign in support of women’s equality – turned their efforts to the impending election of 2009, and then, subsequently, to the Green Movement.</p>
<p>In 2014, a social media campaign with the hashtag <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/topic/my-stealthy-freedom?CMP=ILC-refresh">#MyStealthyFreedom</a> spread rapidly, featuring images of Iranian women photographing themselves in public without their hijab. <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/08/03/631784518/in-iran-protests-women-stand-up-lift-their-hijab-for-their-rights">In 2018 public protests against mandatory veiling</a> swept the nation, with women standing publicly without headscarves in protest. </p>
<p>Again, Iranian feminists called for global solidarity. Again, the global community – including the U.S. – <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/03/07/the-flame-of-feminism-is-alive-in-iran-international-womens-day/">didn’t respond</a>. While public endorsement may have made it easier for the regime to accuse protesters of being in the pocket of <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-regime-still-fighting-the-great-satan-11551454517">the Great Satan</a>, as they called the U.S., a call on the regime to be accountable to its people by engaging local activists could have positively affected their cause.</p>
<h2>Trump speaks</h2>
<p>The resistance of feminist and human rights activists may have started out in the late 1990s in urban parts of the country – Tehran, Shiraz, Esfahan – among young people who for the most part identified as secular. But calls for regime change steadily increased across the entire country.</p>
<p>The Green Movement’s themes resurfaced in late 2017 and early 2018 in protests triggered by <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/15/world/middleeast/iran-gasoline-prices-rations.html">a rise in gas prices</a>. Millions of people of diverse socioeconomic backgrounds – including those who were secular as well as religious – <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2019/11/19/iranian-protesters-strike-at-the-heart-of-the-regimes-revolutionary-legitimacy/">marched in the streets to protest the government</a> and demand equality, accountability and transparency.</p>
<p>Another round of protests have erupted in the past few weeks since the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/02/middleeast/baghdad-airport-rockets/index.html">U.S. killing of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani</a> and the Iranian regime’s response, which included the <a href="https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/why-did-iran-finally-tell-truth-about-accidentally-shooting-down-flight-752-116861">downing of Flight 752</a>. When protesters spilled into the streets, Trump responded by applauding them, decrying the regime, and citing the protests as <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/01/11/trump-iran-protesters-tweets-097554">evidence of his strategy at work</a>. </p>
<p>But Trump’s words rang hollow. This was not the kind of engagement that local activists wanted. It yoked their cause to Trump himself – a leader who can easily be profiled by the regime in power as <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2020/01/donald-trump-tweet-iran-protest/604903/">a living embodiment of hostility to Iran</a>. </p>
<p>So as Iranians pour into the streets again, many of them are likely wondering why the U.S. has been passively watching – issuing a destructive tweet here and there – rather than engaging with progressive, liberal movements for change. </p>
<p>[ <em><a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=expertise">Expertise in your inbox. Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter and get a digest of academic takes on today’s news, every day.</a></em> ]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/129537/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Pardis Mahdavi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The conflict between Iran and the US has gone on for decades. A scholar of social movements in Iran asks why the US has consistently failed to support that country’s activist reform movements.Pardis Mahdavi, Director, School of Social Transformation, Arizona State UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1309782020-02-05T11:16:22Z2020-02-05T11:16:22ZHow US-UK intelligence sharing works – and why Huawei 5G decision puts it at risk<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313542/original/file-20200204-41503-1deq7yf.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C194%2C4064%2C2847&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The home of MI6 in central London. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Claudio Divizia/Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The UK’s decision to allow Huawei to build part of its 5G network despite US opposition threatens to undermine one of the world’s longest standing and most important intelligence partnerships. </p>
<p>There is no closer intelligence relationship between two countries than that between the UK and the US. Forged during the second world war, it developed through a series of memorandums of understanding between 1946 and 1948 to form <a href="https://www.e-ir.info/2014/01/08/buffeted-not-busted-the-ukusa-five-eyes-after-snowden/">the UKUSA agreement</a>. Since then, a huge volume of intelligence has been shared between the two countries.</p>
<p>The Huawei case is unusual in that the UK and US have disagreed publicly, whereas disputes on intelligence issues usually play out behind the scenes. It’s also the result of a deliberate policy choice by the UK. And it concerns communications technology – usually an area of close alignment.</p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/huawei-and-5g-uk-had-little-choice-but-say-yes-to-chinese-heres-why-130813">Huawei and 5G: UK had little choice but say yes to Chinese – here's why</a>
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<p>The US publicly opposed Huawei’s involvement and even sent <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/8bbb3d9e-3534-11ea-a6d3-9a26f8c3cba4">a delegation of officials</a> from the National Economic Council and National Security Agency (NSA) to argue its case. The US position is that Huawei is a tool of the Chinese Communist Party and allowing it to build parts of the UK’s 5G network would give the Chinese state access to vital infrastructure and the ability to conduct espionage on UK citizens. Despite this, the UK went ahead, albeit restricting the <a href="https://theconversation.com/huawei-and-5g-uk-had-little-choice-but-say-yes-to-chinese-heres-why-130813">firm to supplying non-core parts</a> of the network. This is a strange decision for the UK government to make as it has historically bowed to US pressure to preserve its most important alliance.</p>
<p>Elbridge Colby, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense in the Trump administration, <a href="https://twitter.com/ElbridgeColby/status/1223209251881017344">laid out possible retaliatory measures</a> against the UK by the US.</p>
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<p>The US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, offered conciliatory language on his visit to Britain days later. “They considered it carefully. I have respect for their sovereign decision,” he said, but noted that whether this would affect future cooperation “<a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/01/30/mike-pompeo-warns-huawei-not-trusted-congratulates-britain-escaping/">remains to be seen</a>”.</p>
<h2>Put out in the past</h2>
<p>Researching the workings of this relationship <a href="https://www.eurospanbookstore.com/secrets-and-spies.html">for a new book on UK intelligence</a>, I heard how tensions have arisen before that threatened the flow of information between the US and UK. </p>
<p>In 2010, the UK’s Court of Appeal <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/feb/10/binyam-mohamed-torture-ruling-evidence">ordered the release</a> of a summary of classified CIA information relating to the interrogation of a terrorism suspect, Binyam Mohammed. During the judicial process, the US threatened to withdraw intelligence cooperation and a letter was sent from the US intelligence community, following the appeal, making it clear that negative actions would follow should this be repeated. </p>
<p>A member of parliament’s intelligence and security committee, whom I interviewed, recalled speaking to the CIA soon afterwards and finding: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>They were really annoyed that their intelligence had been used in open court in that case and they were just quite rude … I remember one of them saying ‘If someone is about to blow up central London we will cooperate with you. Anything else, forget it’.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In fact, the relationship survived intact. But if that’s how the US responded when the UK government was compelled to act by a court of law, expect it to be even more angry behind the scenes by the UK making a choice of its own volition.</p>
<h2>What’s shared and when</h2>
<p>The latest falling out is over communications technology, which has up to now been the closest area of cooperation between the US and UK intelligence communities. Personnel from the NSA are routinely embedded in the UK’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) and vice versa. A former director of GCHQ told me that their US counterparts are “extremely generous in passing over knowhow about how you get technology to work”. The UK benefits significantly from its connections with much larger and better resourced US agencies such as the NSA.</p>
<p>This level of warmth was not apparent in the descriptions of officials from other UK agencies, especially the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6. A former UK intelligence officer explained, using the fictional country Ruritania as an example: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The way intelligence works, if I were to go to the Americans and say, ‘We’d really like to know something about Ruritania but we’re not able to collect anything, can you help?’, the answer would be ‘We’d love to help you, but we’ve got nothing’. Whereas, if I were to go to the Americans and say ‘We are worried about Ruritania, so we have started a collection programme and here is what we think … the Americans would say, ‘Well, that’s very interesting. We’ve got some reports that we can share with you’. That’s how it works. It’s always reciprocal. There are no free lunches.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>The risk in overruling US objections over Huawei is that it begins to undermine the closest aspects of cooperation, over communications and surveillance, and leads to a more transactional (and potentially fragile) relationship in the future. That could have a big impact on future intelligence sharing between the two countries.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/130978/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jamie Gaskarth received funding from the British Academy for a project on UK intelligence accountability, 2015-2018 (SG151249).</span></em></p>Tensions have emerged before over US-UK intelligence sharing, but the Johnson government’s decision over Huawei is different.Jamie Gaskarth, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1273562019-11-22T10:42:18Z2019-11-22T10:42:18ZUS no longer thinks Israeli settlements are illegal – this is a green light for more Palestinian displacement<p>When US Secretary of State <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/nov/18/us-israeli-settlements-no-longer-considered-illegal-palestinian-land-mike-pompeo">Mike Pompeo announced</a> that the US government will no longer view Israeli settlements in the West Bank as illegal, it was a dramatic departure from the stance of previous US administrations. </p>
<p>His predecessors held to the State Department’s 1978 legal opinion that the settlements are <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/20191118-us-no-longer-views-israeli-settlements-as-inconsistent-with-international-law-pompeo">“inconsistent with international law”.</a> But on November 18, Pompeo said the settlements are a matter for the Israeli courts, with the US holding “<a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2019/11/18/politics/pompeo-west-bank-settlements-announcement/index.html">no view</a>” on their legal status. </p>
<p>Elsewhere, Israeli settlements are widely <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/middle-east/2018-09-12/do-palestinians-still-support-two-state-solution">condemned</a> because they impede the creation of an independent Palestinian state and hinder the chances of a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/29/world/middleeast/israel-palestinians-two-state-solution.html">two-state solution</a> to the conflict. Their <a href="https://www.ochaopt.org/theme/humanitarian-impact-of-settlements">impact</a> on Palestinians’ daily lives is no less serious. </p>
<p>The creation of the state of Israel in 1948 led to the exile and expulsion of <a href="https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-204463/">at least 750,000 Palestinians</a>, according to the UN. Two decades later, around 300,000 Palestinians were <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/06/50-years-israeli-occupation-longest-modern-history-170604111317533.html">displaced in the 1967 War</a>. Israeli settlement makes displacement a <a href="http://www.internal-displacement.org/countries/palestine">continuing feature</a> of Palestinian life, with some families experiencing it repeatedly.</p>
<h2>Settlements on the West Bank</h2>
<p>The first settlements were built soon after the <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-39960461">1967 War</a>, which saw Israel occupy the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) and the Gaza Strip. In subsequent decades, hundreds of thousands of <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/meetthesettlers/">settlers</a> moved to the occupied territories. Their motivations include <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/20180509-ultra-orthodox-population-grows-israeli-settlements">religious conviction</a>, <a href="https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Jewish-nationalism-and-the-settlements-411954">nationalist ideology</a> and the economic lure of <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/business/israel-allocates-disproportionate-aid-to-settlements-study-finds-1.5466853">subsidised housing</a>. </p>
<p>As a result, the settlements <a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2016/12/30/14088842/israeli-settlements-explained-in-5-charts">expanded across</a> the occupied territory, with an <a href="https://www.visualizingpalestine.org/visuals/across-the-wall">infrastructure</a> growing up around them. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-do-israels-poorest-immigrants-vote-for-the-right-and-far-right-124233">Why do Israel's poorest immigrants vote for the right and far right?</a>
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<p>While Israel unilaterally withdrew its 22 settlements from <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/4235768.stm">Gaza</a> in 2005, along with four from the West Bank, it has <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/20/israel-new-settlement-benjamin-netanyahu-jared-kushner-amichai-amona">continued to expand</a> settlements. At the end of 2018, there were <a href="https://eeas.europa.eu/delegations/palestine-occupied-palestinian-territory-west-bank-and-gaza-strip/57606/six-month-report-israeli-settlements-occupied-west-bank-including-east-jerusalem-reporting_en">over 140 settlements</a> and more than <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-50468025">half a million</a> Israeli settlers living in the West Bank. </p>
<p>The route of the infamous Israeli <a href="https://www.btselem.org/topic/separation_barrier">separation wall</a> encloses most of these settlements. This lays the groundwork for their annexation, a policy Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/sep/10/netanyahu-vows-annex-large-parts-occupied-west-bank-trump">vowed he would pursue</a> during campaigning for Israel’s September election. Meanwhile, peace negotiations between the Israeli and Palestinian leadership <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-palestinians-plan-chronology/long-line-of-israeli-palestinian-peace-bids-precede-trump-push-idUSKCN1TQ0T2">remain at an impasse</a>, with no talks on the horizon. </p>
<p>The Israeli settlements go hand-in-hand with Palestinian displacement. Existing Palestinian communities have repeatedly been uprooted to create space for settlers. There is little clarity on the figures, with estimates ranging from <a href="https://eappi.org/en/resources/publications/silently-displaced-in-the-west-bank-part-1-2009">24,500 to 115,000</a> internally displaced Palestinians. Strikingly, <a href="https://www.amnestyusa.org/record-number-of-palestinians-displaced-by-unlawful-demolitions/">Amnesty International</a> found a correlation between accelerated settlement expansion and increasing rates of displacement. </p>
<p>Once settlements are established, settlers have exclusive access to <a href="https://www.visualizingpalestine.org/visuals/segregated-roads-west-bank">roads</a> and <a href="https://visualizingpalestine.org/visuals/3g-cellphone-coverage">facilities</a> from which their Palestinian neighbours are barred. Palestinian land has been <a href="https://eeas.europa.eu/delegations/palestine-occupied-palestinian-territory-west-bank-and-gaza-strip/68152/six-month-report-israeli-settlements-occupied-west-bank-including-east-jerusalem-reporting_en">regularly appropriated</a> to create this two-tier infrastructure.</p>
<p>Many elements of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank are organised around maintaining the settlements. The resulting military and settler presence stops Palestinians living in <a href="https://www.visualizingpalestine.org/visuals/identity-crisis-the-israeli-id-system">60% of the West Bank</a>. Checkpoints and roadblocks, justified as necessary for the settlers’ security, also impose severe restrictions on <a href="https://www.btselem.org/freedom_of_movement">Palestinian freedom of movement</a>. </p>
<p>Demolitions and property seizures in the West Bank in the first six months of 2019 adversely affected <a href="https://eeas.europa.eu/delegations/palestine-occupied-palestinian-territory-west-bank-and-gaza-strip/68788/six-month-report-demolitions-and-seizures-west-bank-including-east-jerusalem-01-january-%E2%80%93-30_en">nearly 40,000 Palestinians</a>, according to the EU. In the same period, 434 Palestinians in the West Bank were displaced by a range of Israeli policies. </p>
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<a href="https://theconversation.com/gaza-what-life-is-like-under-the-continuing-israeli-blockade-124528">Gaza: what life is like under the continuing Israeli blockade</a>
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<h2>Trump’s dismissal of Palestinians</h2>
<p>The displacement created by these settlement is especially loaded because of the long history of <a href="https://www.visualizingpalestine.org/visuals/an-ongoing-displacement-the-forced-exile-of-the-palestinians">Palestinian forced migration</a>. </p>
<p>Both the Palestinian refugees and the settlements are treated as “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/30/israel-palestinian-peace-talks-key-issues%20in%20the%20Israeli-Palestinian%20peace%20process">final status issues</a>” in peace talks, meaning that they should be resolved as part of a comprehensive peace agreement. The future <a href="https://www.un.org/press/en/2017/sgsm18814.doc.htm">status of Jerusalem</a>, claimed as a capital for both Israel and Palestine, also falls in this category. Since taking office, Donald Trump’s administration has sought to remove all three issues from the negotiating table. </p>
<p>First, Trump <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-will-trumps-declaration-on-jerusalem-mean-to-palestinians-88841">recognised Jerusalem</a> as the Israeli capital and moved the US embassy there. He then <a href="https://theconversation.com/trump-cuts-aid-to-palestinian-refugees-and-throws-their-future-into-doubt-90282">withdrew US funding</a> for the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA). Trump’s senior adviser and son-in-law Jared Kushner went on to <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-jared-kushners-deal-of-the-century-would-mean-for-palestinian-refugees-101150">call for UNRWA’s abolition</a>, advocating a reduction in the number of officially recognised Palestinian refugees <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/08/03/trump-palestinians-israel-refugees-unrwaand-allies-seek-end-to-refugee-status-for-millions-of-palestinians-united-nations-relief-and-works-agency-unrwa-israel-palestine-peace-plan-jared-kushner-greenb/">from 5 million to less than 100,000</a>.</p>
<p>Pompeo’s statement on the Israeli settlements marks the latest departure from previous anchors of US policy on the Israel-Palestine issue. By effectively endorsing the settlements, the Trump administration has signalled a green light for their continued expansion. As a result, further Palestinian displacement is virtually guaranteed.</p>
<p>There are signs of some international pushback against the direction of Trump’s policies in the region. <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-israel-usa-eu/eu-says-israeli-settlement-on-palestinian-territory-is-illegal-idUSKBN1XS2IL">The EU</a> condemned Pompeo’s statement and, <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/israel-settlements-illegal-palestine-west-bank-trump-pompeo-un-a9209366.html">along with the UN</a>, continues to maintain that Israeli settlements are illegal. No major world powers have followed suit in moving their embassies to Jerusalem. And despite calls from the US and Israeli governments to abolish UNRWA, its mandate was recently <a href="https://www.unrwa.org/newsroom/press-releases/overwhelming-vote-extend-unrwa-mandate-united-nations-fourth-committee">renewed</a> until 2023. </p>
<p>Yet at the same time, the significance of the Trump policy moves on Israel should not be ignored. The US administration is empowering the most extremist elements of Israeli politics. In the process, it is <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/06/24/trumps-deal-century-palestine-sideshow">enabling continuing rights abuses</a> – and ultimately facilitating further conflict.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/127356/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Anne Irfan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The US no longer views Israeli settlements on the West Bank as going against international law. What this means for Palestinians.Anne Irfan, Departmental Lecturer in Forced Migration, University of OxfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1171502019-05-15T12:47:32Z2019-05-15T12:47:32ZIs a war coming between the US and Iran?<p>You can’t say the world wasn’t warned. In February, US National Security Adviser John Bolton — a leading proponent of the disastrous 2003 Iraq War — <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/bolton-iran-ayatollah-many-years-trump-anniversary-1327159">sent a video</a> message to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 40 years after the creation of the Islamic Republic: “I don’t think you’ll have many more anniversaries to enjoy.”</p>
<p>Propelled in large part by Bolton, the Trump Administration <a href="https://theconversation.com/donald-trump-backs-out-of-iran-nuclear-deal-now-what-96317">withdrew in May 2018</a> from the 2015 nuclear agreement between the US and the 5+1 powers – the US, UK, France, Germany, Russia, and China. In November, Washington <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/05/iran-launches-military-drill-response-return-us-sanctions">imposed comprehensive sanctions</a> on Tehran, including on the energy and financial sectors. </p>
<p>But Bolton was signalling unsubtly: we can inflict more damage if we wish. So how far will the Trump administration go? And is there an imminent threat of war between the US and Iran?</p>
<p>On May 13, after weeks of escalation, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei, each took a rhetorical step back. In Moscow, alongside Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Pompeo <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-48272208">said the Trump administration</a> “fundamentally” did not seek a conflict. Addressing the president and other senior officials in Tehran the same day, Khamenei <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-iran-khamenei/irans-supreme-leader-says-there-will-be-no-war-with-us-idUSKCN1SK23T">asserted</a>: “Neither we nor they, who know war will not be in their interest, are after war.”</p>
<p>Still, there were other combative words and steps on both sides. Khamenei <a href="https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2019/05/14/595941/Iran-Leader">jabbed</a>: “In [its] policy of confrontation with the Islamic Republic, the US will definitely suffer defeat.” For his part, Pompeo said: “We have also made clear to the Iranians that if American interests are attacked, we will most certainly respond in an appropriate fashion.” Hours later, the administration ordered the <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/state-department-orders-non-emergency-personnel-leave-iraq-posts-n1005806">partial evacuation</a> of US embassy staff from Baghdad in Iran’s neighbour Iraq.</p>
<h2>Psychology of the drumbeat</h2>
<p>The threat of war is not just on the <a href="https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/1021234525626609666?lang=en">Twitter timeline</a> of US President Donald Trump. It is also in Pompeo traipsing through Europe, <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/us-secretary-of-state-pompeo-cancels-meeting-with-merkel-at-short-notice/a-48638667">cancelling a meeting</a> with the Germans – seen as too conciliatory towards the Islamic Republic – to twist the arm of the British to take action. And it is in the loudly-signalled move to the Persian Gulf of <a href="https://www.axios.com/us-navy-deploys-strike-group-to-iran-bolton-1e5b9298-f807-4db2-a4e7-ddd9f308db36.html">a naval strike group</a> with the USS Abraham Lincoln and bomber aircraft in early May, and the <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/u-s-bombers-arrive-in-qatar-amid-heightened-iran-tensions-1.7220579">positioning of more bombers</a> in Qatar.</p>
<p>It is US administration officials <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/13/world/middleeast/us-military-plans-iran.html">telling The New York Times</a> of a updated military plan tabled at a meeting of national security officials to send up to 120,000 troops to the Middle East if Iran attacks US forces or accelerates work on nuclear weapons – a plan ordered by Bolton and other hardliners. Trump subsequently <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2019/05/14/trump-troops-iran-1320748">dismissed the report</a> but said that if he did decide to become more aggressive with Iran, the US would: “send a hell of a lot more troops than that.”</p>
<p>But it is likely that all of this is for the illusion of war, rather than its launch. This is still jaw-jaw, but in the service of the US administration’s non-military schemes to topple Iran’s supreme leader.</p>
<p>The game – again far from subtle – is to break Iran’s economy. While the US ratcheted up sanctions during the Obama administration, the aim was to bring the Iranians into negotiations over their nuclear programme. This time, the ever-expanding blacklist has no vision of talks for a renewed agreement. Its aim is to constrict Iranian production, trade, and investment, driving up unemployment and driving down the currency. In support of this, the US could update past covert operations, such as the Stuxnet computer virus, to disrupt nuclear and other operations and – <a href="https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2019/03/15/591106/US-target-Tehran-powergrid">as an Iranian engineer claims</a> – attempt to take down Iran’s power grid.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/trumps-crackdown-on-irans-oil-exports-could-backfire-badly-with-serious-risks-to-global-economy-115852">Trump's crackdown on Iran's oil exports could backfire badly – with serious risks to global economy</a>
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</em>
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<h2>War by default</h2>
<p>But what if the overt sanctions and covert sabotage don’t bring about Khamenei’s departure? The vision of Bolton and his compatriots, egged on by certain Iranian diaspora groups, may be that Iranians will take to the streets in many hundreds of thousands, as they did in the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/8343494.stm">Green Movement</a> after the country’s disputed 2009 presidential election.</p>
<p>That vision is likely to be faulty. For almost a decade, the Iranian regime has decapitated dissent. The leaders of the Green Movement have been under house arrest since February 2011. Hundreds of activists, students, lawyers, labour leaders, and rights advocates are <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=24297&LangID=E">imprisoned or under perpetual threat of detention</a>. Communications are still restricted, with further threat of punishment.</p>
<p>Many inside Iran are just trying to survive, and the mood is resignation. Assuming they did return to the streets, the motive for many was and is still likely to be reform of the system, not revolution – particularly if the US is pursuing regime change.</p>
<p>So what then? With Khamenei unyielding to any demand from the streets, will Bolton, Pompeo and co. conclude that the hammer has to fall? The gambit may be to make the Iranians make the first forceful move, and then act on the pretext of self-defence.</p>
<p>We could already be at that point. There is no sign yet of Iranian speedboats buzzing the US carrier and its bombers, or Iran closing the oil waterway of the Strait of Hormuz. But, on May 12 four commercial ships, including two Saudi tankers, were damaged off the coast of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-48245204">what the country called</a> a “sabotage” attack. Two days later, Saudi Arabia said <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/76728798-7636-11e9-be7d-6d846537acab">two drones caused a fire</a> at oil pumping stations. Attacks by Iranian elements or their proxies? “False flags” to blame Tehran? Under either scenario, an escalation to more violent acts is possible.</p>
<p>There are many logical arguments why that escalation will not occur, however. The Islamic Republic’s factions, from Khamenei to the Revolutionary Guards, know that head-on confrontation with the US could be suicidal. American forces in a conflict that is far from straightforward is not a vote winner either for Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign. With the possible exceptions of Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, and UAE Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, almost every international actor – the UN, the European Union, China, Russia, the Organisation of Islamic Countries – will be opposed to war.</p>
<p>As Ilan Goldenberg of the Center for a New American Security <a href="https://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/War-with-Iran-forthcoming-Most-experts-say-they-dont-think-so-589552">summarised</a>: “Nobody wants a war.” Probably. But some officials in Washington may not be averse to a war that happens to come along. The title of Bolton’s <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-legal-case-for-striking-north-korea-first-1519862374">last major opinion article</a> in the Wall Street Journal before joining the Trump administration in April 2018 was: “The legal case for striking North Korea first.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/117150/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Scott Lucas does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Both Iran and the US say they are not seeking a war, but it could happen by default.Scott Lucas, Professor of International Politics, University of BirminghamLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1125882019-03-01T11:41:05Z2019-03-01T11:41:05ZIs it more dangerous to let Islamic State foreign fighters from the West return or prevent them from coming back?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261517/original/file-20190228-106338-2xzn7y.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Three British teenagers, including Shamima Begum, center, left the U.K. to join the Islamic State in 2015. Begum wants to return home now.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Mideast-Islamic-State-Ideology/de8ce3da9c28490abb1cc4d58c35bd97/2/0">AP/Metropolitan Police</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The United states and other countries around the world are dealing with the same question: Should their citizens who join foreign terrorist organizations and fight for them be allowed to return to their home country?</p>
<p>Many of the men and women who left their homes in the West to join the Islamic State group or similar terrorist organizations in Syria and Iraq as fighters or supporters now want to come home. <a href="https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/europe-confronts-problem-of-returning-isis-fighters-1.3799392">Their desire to return has coincided with</a> the defeats suffered by IS in the diminishing territory under its control. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/trump-wants-europe-take-back-isis-fighters-s-tricky-n972696">U.S. government argues that countries should take back</a> their foreign fighters and prosecute them rather than allow them to be free to act on the world stage. </p>
<p>But <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/dec/19/returning-jihadists-threaten-new-wave-of-terror-in-europe">other countries are more concerned with the threat</a> of returnees committing domestic terrorism. And, despite its arguments, the U.S. has recently moved to keep at least one <a href="https://www.al.com/news/2019/02/judge-grants-expedited-hearing-for-alabama-isis-bride-hoda-muthana.html">American-born</a> ISIS member from returning. </p>
<p>Determining which approach makes Western countries safest requires examining the facts about foreign fighters.</p>
<h2>Inconsistent US stance</h2>
<p>Only about 250 to 300 Americans are said to have left the country to join the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. The numbers who left Europe are much greater, 5,000 to 6,000, <a href="https://extremism.gwu.edu/sites/g/files/zaxdzs2191/f/TravelersAmericanJihadistsinSyriaandIraq.pdf">according to a 2018 report</a> from the Program on Extremism at George Washington University.</p>
<p>The United States and its allies recently split over the Trump administration’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/european-leaders-hit-at-trumps-demands-that-they-take-back-ex-isis-citizens-from-syria/2019/02/18/62a32794-338e-11e9-8375-e3dcf6b68558_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.58da28c923a3">insistence</a> that other governments bring home their citizens who joined the Islamic State. </p>
<p>Syrian rebel groups have detained hundreds of ISIS-affiliated Westerners, but have <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/20/world/middleeast/isis-syria-prisoner-release-trump.html">threatened</a> to release over 3,000 them if the United States withdraws its forces from the region. The Free Syrian Army has <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/02/25/british-isil-suspect-goes-missing-released-syria-amid-row-returning/amp/">already released</a> at least one British foreign fighter, and his whereabouts are now unknown. </p>
<p>But American officials have undercut their position by declaring that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/02/22/rule-by-tyranny-american-born-woman-who-joined-isis-must-be-allowed-return-lawsuit-says/?utm_term=.9ce4acb0f039">Hoda Muthana</a>, a young mother who left the United States to join IS, should not be permitted to return either, illustrating the inconsistency of the American approach to this issue.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1098327855145062411"}"></div></p>
<h2>Range of national policies</h2>
<p>The U.S. was actually the first country in the world to outlaw foreign fighting. Congress passed the initial legislation while George Washington was still president, despite the role of <a href="https://www.history.com/news/6-foreign-born-heroes-of-the-american-revolution">foreign volunteers in the American Revolution</a>.</p>
<p>Under U.S. <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/959">law</a>, individuals can lose their citizenship for joining a foreign army or armed group as an officer, or for joining forces hostile to the United States. </p>
<p>However, prosecutions have been rare. American foreign fighters through history have been charged instead with violations that are easier to demonstrate in court than fighting on foreign soil (which would require witnesses and testimony from abroad), such as handling <a href="https://news.vice.com/en_us/article/7xj7eq/the-all-american-life-and-death-of-eric-harroun">weapons of mass destruction</a> and providing <a href="https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/texas-man-arrested-attempting-provide-material-support-designated-foreign-terrorist">material support</a> for terrorist organizations. Unlike some allies, the U.S. has not attempted to prevent foreign fighters from returning by removing their citizenship. </p>
<p>Part of the disagreement between the U.S. and its allies over foreign fighters stems from the fact that every country has different policies concerning such returnees. </p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261521/original/file-20190228-106356-o8j5ee.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261521/original/file-20190228-106356-o8j5ee.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/261521/original/file-20190228-106356-o8j5ee.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261521/original/file-20190228-106356-o8j5ee.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261521/original/file-20190228-106356-o8j5ee.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261521/original/file-20190228-106356-o8j5ee.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261521/original/file-20190228-106356-o8j5ee.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/261521/original/file-20190228-106356-o8j5ee.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Warren Christopher Clark, 34, and Zaid Abed al-Hamed, 35, were among about 300 Americans who left or tried to leave the U.S. to fight with IS.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.stripes.com/news/kurdish-forces-two-american-isis-fighters-captured-1.563406">Stars and Stripes/Syrian Democratic Forces</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/france-to-take-back-isis-fighters-reversing-policy-in-wake-of-us-withdrawal-from-syria/2019/02/01/5d3de5a8-2648-11e9-b5b4-1d18dfb7b084_story.html?utm_term=.a876b0b7ed36">France</a> and <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/02/russia-27-children-isil-members-arrive-iraq-190210193040293.html">Russia</a> are among the countries in the process of taking some or all of their citizens back to face charges at home. <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-canada-must-prosecute-returning-isis-fighters-105198">Canada</a>, which has been divided by internal partisan debates, has switched approaches, from stripping citizenship to allowing foreign fighters to return and potentially face criminal charges. But the Canadian public safety minister dismissed the American call to reclaim its citizens as a mere “<a href="https://globalnews.ca/news/4934461/canadian-women-surrender-in-syria/">suggestion</a>.” </p>
<p>The U.K. has passed laws <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/shamima-begum-isis-british-citizenship-syria-sajid-javid-terorrism-government-latest-a8793541.html">stripping citizenship</a> from individuals who travel to join terror groups. In its own case of a young mother being held by rebels, it has argued that because her father was an immigrant from Bangladesh, she is eligible for citizenship from that country and her U.K. citizenship can be removed. </p>
<p>The U.S. has taken this approach <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2019/02/22/rule-by-tyranny-american-born-woman-who-joined-isis-must-be-allowed-return-lawsuit-says/?utm_term=.cbfacbbb6a00">in the Muthana case as well</a>. Its argument is that her father’s employment as a foreign diplomat means that she is not a citizen, despite having been born in America. </p>
<h2>Fears vs. facts</h2>
<p>One American response to the rise of IS was to push for passage of <a href="http://unscr.com/en/resolutions/doc/2178">two</a> United Nations <a href="http://unscr.com/en/resolutions/doc/2396">Security Council resolutions</a> that require every country in the world to try to stop their citizens from becoming “foreign terrorist fighters” and to track and prosecute them. </p>
<p>These resolutions are why some countries like <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-01-30/home-affairs-didnt-seek-fijian-advice-on-prakash/10763394">Australia</a> are eager to remove their foreign fighters’ citizenship status: If a foreign fighter can be stripped of citizenship retroactively, it is no longer an obligation for that country to return or prosecute them. </p>
<p>National responses have varied and are driven by domestic homeland security politics. Denmark has a successful <a href="https://borgenproject.org/aarhus-model-denmark-prevents-jihad-fighters/">reintegration</a> program that provides social services to help some returnees deradicalize and disengage. But opponents of this policy mounted challenges and won court rulings ensuring that Denmark can <a href="http://www.loc.gov/law/foreign-news/article/denmark-supreme-court-decides-loss-of-citizenship-can-come-after-joining-isis/">strip</a> citizenship as well. </p>
<p>Since <a href="https://extremism.gwu.edu/travelers">relatively few</a> Americans have gone to Syria and only a handful have returned, there has not been a national debate about returnees until the recent Muthana case. </p>
<p>Many national <a href="https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201314/cmselect/cmhaff/231/23105.htm">responses</a> have been prompted by fear of domestic terrorism. </p>
<p>The U.K. relied upon one 2013 study indicating that, in theory, as many as 10 percent of returnees could become terrorists. However, the same researcher found in 2015 that the rate was actually <a href="http://www.terrorismanalysts.com/pt/index.php/pot/article/view/440/html">.002</a> percent, and <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/isis-british-jihadis-return-uk-iraq-syria-report-islamic-state-fighters-europe-threat-debate-terror-a8017811.html">hundreds</a> of returnees have already been back for years with no sign of terror activity.</p>
<p>The local IS network behind the Paris and Brussels <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2016/03/30/europe/inside-paris-brussels-terror-attacks/index.html">attacks</a> included some returnees. </p>
<p>But otherwise foreign fighters have not produced a wave of domestic terrorism in the West. </p>
<p>My own <a href="https://www.american.edu/spa/news/malet-foreign-fighters.cfm?fbclid=IwAR1XBHWXX0XIHUEyn4m5wJOg3prWFRxbqggUt_iepsbGcR3AdjoCibCUQEM">research</a> indicates that most domestic terror plots by returnees, including successful attacks, occur only within the first few months and that there is no evidence of any long-term threats by returnee sleeper cells.</p>
<p>Foreign fighters who have been barred from their home countries have fanned the flames of terrorism and insurgency when left unchecked. Osama bin Laden was the most prominent of hundreds of such militants who created far more havoc than any returnees. And in the social media era, they do not even need to return home to reach domestic audiences. </p>
<p>The American government should weigh this evidence carefully as it moves to address the risks of ISIS returnees.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/112588/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Malet has received funding from the United States Department of Defense. </span></em></p>Many of the men and women who left homes in the West to join ISIS or similar terrorist organizations in Syria and Iraq as fighters or supporters now want to come home. Should they be allowed back?David Malet, Assistant Professor, American University School of Public AffairsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1110242019-02-05T11:39:54Z2019-02-05T11:39:54ZA nuclear treaty between Russia and the US is falling apart – can it be saved?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/257119/original/file-20190204-193203-2nnatg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, speaks to Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Russia-US-Arms-Treaty/a7487e777c624e729bee3bc4a1219213/5/0">Alexei Nikolsky, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Feb. 1 that the United States would withdraw from <a href="https://www.state.gov/t/avc/trty/102360.htm#text">its nuclear weapons treaty</a> with Russia.</p>
<p>Since the Obama administration, the U.S. has accused Russia <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/15/opinion/sunday/trump-russia-nuclear-treaty-inf.html">of being in violation</a> of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which prohibits the U.S. and Russia from developing a certain types of ballistic and cruise missiles. A day after Pompeo’s announcement, President <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/02/world/europe/russia-inf-treaty.html">Vladimir Putin announced</a> that Russia would also suspend its participation in the treaty.</p>
<p>The treaty is not dead yet. The announcements serve as the six month’s notice required by the treaty before parties can withdraw. There is still time to reconcile differences.</p>
<p>But I don’t think that will happen.</p>
<p>I <a href="http://www.ugapress.org/index.php/books/state_behavior_and_the_nuclear_nonproliferation_regime">worked on issues</a> related to arms control and nuclear nonproliferation at both the State Department and Department of Defense.</p>
<p>Here’s why a resolution is unlikely.</p>
<h2>Cold War context</h2>
<p>In the 1970s, the Soviet Union began placing missiles in strategic locations within its territory that could each carry three nuclear warheads a distance of about 2,500 miles. </p>
<p>These SS-20 missles were in a category of weapons called “intermediate-range ballistic missiles.” The missiles could strike almost all 29 member states of the North Atlantaic Treaty Orgnization with the exception of the U.S. and Canada.</p>
<p>At the time, NATO did not have a way to address the new threat through diplomacy with the Soviets. Nor did they have equivalent missiles capable of striking strategic locations in the Soviet Union from Western Europe.</p>
<p>The U.S. sought to reassure NATO allies and deter a nuclear Soviet attack on Western Europe. In the early 1980s, it placed <a href="https://fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/theater/pershing2.htm">the Pershing II ballistic missile</a>, as well as other missiles in Belgium, Italy, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom and West Germany. </p>
<p>The move was designed in part to counter the Soviet missile threat, and also <a href="https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/1026962.pdf">persuade the Soviets to negotiate</a> to limit the number of intermediate and short-range missiles on both sides in Europe and the Soviet Union.</p>
<h2>Terms of the treaty</h2>
<p>Negotiations between the U.S. and Soviet Union began in 1979 in the late stages of the Carter administration. The aim was to limit the number of intermediate-range missiles each could deploy. The negotiations carried over into the Reagan administration with various proposals on how many missiles each side could have and where they were be allowed to be placed.</p>
<p>In 1987, Mikhail Gorbachev proposed eliminating all short- and intermediate-range missiles. This led to the <a href="https://www.armscontrol.org/issue-briefs/2019-02/inf-treaty-crisis-background-next-steps">landmark INF Treaty</a> that banned the entire class of missiles. The treaty was signed by Presidents Reagan and Gorbachev on Dec. 8, 1987.</p>
<p>Both sides agreed to eliminate all existing cruise and ballistic missiles that could be launched from the ground (as opposed to from the sea or sky) and had a range between roughly 300 and 3,400 miles. They also pledged to “not have such systems thereafter.” </p>
<p>Before the treaty’s implementation deadline in 1991, the U.S. and Russia destroyed more than 2,500 missiles covered by the treaty.</p>
<h2>Nuclear powers beyond Russia</h2>
<p>The United States <a href="https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/INFtreaty">first became concerned</a> with Russian compliance with the treaty in 2014, when it alleged that Russia had tested a missile that violated the range restrictions of the treaty. Russia denied the accusation.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, countries such China, Iran or North Korea, are not constrained by any treaties related to developing missiles that can carry nuclear weapons. These countries <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/opinions/the-moscow-missile-mystery-is-russia-actually-violating-the-inf-treaty/">have continued to develop or are considering developing</a> such missile technology. </p>
<p><a href="https://sputniknews.com/world/2007021060519251/">Russia began to fear</a> in the mid-2000s that the treaty was constraining its military options.</p>
<p>Some analysts have argued the U.S. should abandon the INF Treaty for <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2018/10/23/how-china-plays-into-trumps-decision-pull-out-inf-treaty-with-russia/?utm_term=.1e13c28e9cc5">this same reason</a> – not because of Russian noncompliance, but because it limits U.S. military options <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2018/10/23/the-inf-treaty-hamstrings-the-u-s-trump-is-right-to-leave-it/?utm_term=.8bc8f3a606bb">vis-à-vis China</a>. The treaty prohibits the U.S. from putting ground-launched, short-range missiles in places like Japan. Trump’s national security adviser <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424053111903918104576500273389091098">John Bolton is a firm proponent</a> of this approach.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.vox.com/2019/2/1/18206619/inf-treaty-usa-russia-pompeo-trump">Prospects for the treaty</a> don’t look good. </p>
<p>Russia has long denied being in violation of the treaty. The Trump administration is skeptical of arms control in general and <a href="https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/USNuclearModernization">has plans to continue modernizing</a> the U.S. nuclear arsenal. </p>
<p>Unbound by the treaty, the U.S. could develop new nuclear weapons systems in East Asia to <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/2019/01/31/leaving-inf-treaty-won-t-help-trump-counter-china-pub-78262">counter Chinese military advances</a>. The treaty’s demise seems likely. What follows depends on several variables, especially the outcome of the U.S. 2020 presidential election.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/111024/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jeffrey Fields receives funding from the MacArthur Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation of New York. </span></em></p>A Cold War era treaty helped dismantle more than 2,500 missiles between the US and Russia.Jeffrey Fields, Associate Professor of the Practice of International Relations, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and SciencesLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1085912019-02-04T11:39:10Z2019-02-04T11:39:10ZWhy Jamal Khashoggi’s murder took place in a consulate<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/256714/original/file-20190131-108334-f2hxi6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Journalist Jamal Khashoggi at a 2014 press conference in Bahrain.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP/Hasan Jamali</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Journalist Jamal Khashoggi was brutally murdered by <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/10/alleged-saudi-hit-squad-linked-to-jamal-khashoggi-disappearance">an alleged Saudi “hit squad”</a> whose members have close ties to Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. </p>
<p>I’m a scholar of culture, politics, law and socio-economics who studies what I call “<a href="https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=28732">global borderlands</a>.” These are semi-autonomous places that are controlled by foreigners and where the laws that govern socioeconomic life differ from those that are outside its walls. </p>
<p>I believe that despite massive amounts of press attention, two important and related elements of Khashoggi’s murder remain underexamined.</p>
<p>First is the fact that his murder allegedly took place within a <a href="https://treaties.un.org/pages/viewdetails.aspx?src=treaty&mtdsg_no=iii-3&chapter=3&lang=en">consulate or embassy, a global borderland</a>. </p>
<p>Second is the fact that his alleged murderers included people traveling on diplomatic passports, who <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-10-10/diplomatic-immunity-clouds-jamal-khashoggi-case/10356566">were not entirely subject to the laws of the state – Turkey – they were visiting</a>.</p>
<p>These elements mean trying and punishing the alleged suspects in the Turkish, or even international, system is complicated – if not improbable.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/256719/original/file-20190131-124043-1wth0oc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/256719/original/file-20190131-124043-1wth0oc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/256719/original/file-20190131-124043-1wth0oc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256719/original/file-20190131-124043-1wth0oc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256719/original/file-20190131-124043-1wth0oc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256719/original/file-20190131-124043-1wth0oc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256719/original/file-20190131-124043-1wth0oc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256719/original/file-20190131-124043-1wth0oc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A security guard’s hand at the entrance to Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul, Turkey, Oct. 12, 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Turkey-Saudi-Arabia-Missing-Writer/dcfdd79ee14d46bfbeaef26f8b719efb/7/0">AP/Petros Giannakouris</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Long history of diplomatic immunity</h2>
<p>Diplomacy is the art of foreign relations. It has both a public and private face. </p>
<p>Official diplomats are representatives of the country that sends them to other countries, and they enjoy “diplomatic immunity,” which means they are exempt from the laws of the host country in which they are visiting.</p>
<p>This includes <a href="http://legal.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/conventions/9_1_1961.pdf">immunity</a> from any crime they commit in the host country. It also includes immunity from any civil or administrative laws, with a few key exceptions. </p>
<p>The practice of diplomats being granted immunity has a long history. Cultural anthropologist Jack Weatherford argues in his book, “<a href="https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/187628/genghis-khan-and-the-making-of-the-modern-world-by-jack-weatherford/9780609809648/">Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World</a>,” that Khan – in the 13th century – established diplomatic immunity for envoys and ambassadors throughout this empire, even for those from countries with which he was at war. </p>
<p>Historian Jeremy Black starts his book, “<a href="http://www.reaktionbooks.co.uk/display.asp?ISB=9781861898319&m=205&dc=856">A History of Diplomacy,”</a> with the story of how the execution by Persian leader Muhammad II of Khan’s diplomatic envoy sparked a war. </p>
<p>Modern diplomatic privileges are outlined in the <a href="http://legal.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/conventions/9_1_1961.pdf">1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations</a>; <a href="https://treaties.un.org/pages/viewdetails.aspx?src=treaty&mtdsg_no=iii-3&chapter=3&lang=en">192 countries</a> follow its guidelines. </p>
<p>Diplomatic immunity also extends to <a href="http://legal.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/conventions/9_1_1961.pdf">the physical places</a> of a diplomatic mission – the embassy or consulate as well as the residence of the head of the mission. </p>
<p>These places are “inviolable,” or unable to be entered by officials from the host country without explicit consent by officials from the sending country. </p>
<p>Documents and diplomatic bags – and the courier who is traveling with them – are also not subject to search from officials of the host country.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/256721/original/file-20190131-109820-t1ueag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/256721/original/file-20190131-109820-t1ueag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/256721/original/file-20190131-109820-t1ueag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256721/original/file-20190131-109820-t1ueag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256721/original/file-20190131-109820-t1ueag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256721/original/file-20190131-109820-t1ueag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256721/original/file-20190131-109820-t1ueag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/256721/original/file-20190131-109820-t1ueag.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Turkish security barriers block the road to Saudi Arabia’s consulate in Istanbul, Oct. 28, 2018.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Turkey-Saudi-Arabia-Writer-Killed/204aa157e64048ff80547fe1dd910bd7/211/0">AP/Lefteris Pitarakis</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Murder in a consulate</h2>
<p>A consulate is a symbol of the foreign state. It is governed by separate laws than those of the host state. Officials from the host state cannot enter a consulate property without permission. </p>
<p>These three facts help explain why Khashoggi was allegedly lured to and killed inside an embassy. There would be no fear about getting caught. Khashoggi could be <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/17/world/europe/turkey-saudi-khashoggi-dismember.html">killed, beheaded and dismembered</a> with impunity. </p>
<p>Turkish authorities couldn’t enter the embassy without permission from Saudi Arabia. When Turkish officials were finally allowed to enter the consulate, it was <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45812399">after cleaners already entered</a>. <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/turkey-releases-passport-scans-of-men-it-says-were-involved-in-journalists-killing/2018/10/16/f425892e-d163-11e8-83d6-291fcead2ab1_story.html?utm_term=.24c272adf71a">Areas of the consulate were also reportedly repainted</a> and <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/16/turkish-official-says-police-found-evidence-in-saudi-consulate-that-jamal-khashoggi-was-killed-there-ap.html">Turkish officials were told certain areas of the consulate were off-limits</a>. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/16/turkish-official-says-police-found-evidence-in-saudi-consulate-that-jamal-khashoggi-was-killed-there-ap.html">However, the cleaners may not have destroyed all the evidence</a>. </p>
<p>Turkish officials did search the nearby residence of the consul, which was where some of the vehicles that left the consulate drove to after Khashoggi was allegedly already killed. </p>
<p>Turkish officials also searched areas in the Belgrad forest and farmland in Yalova for Khashoggi’s remains because Saudi consulate vehicles were spotted heading that way <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-45812399">on the day he was killed</a>. </p>
<h2>No prosecution</h2>
<p>Members of the Saudi team alleged to have committed the murder arrived shortly before, and left Istanbul almost immediately after, Jamal Khashoggi’s murder. Most members of the group traveled on regular passports, their bags were put through airport security and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/19/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-king-salman-khashoggi.html">some were searched by hand</a>. </p>
<p>But at least one member of the seven people returning to Saudi Arabia was carrying a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/turkey-releases-passport-scans-of-men-it-says-were-involved-in-journalists-killing/2018/10/16/f425892e-d163-11e8-83d6-291fcead2ab1_story.html?utm_term=.24c272adf71a">diplomatic passport, while two carried “special” government passports</a>, indicating official government and diplomatic status. </p>
<p>This status is why Hulusi Akar, Turkey’s defense minister, has stated that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/19/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-king-salman-khashoggi.html">Khashoggi’s remains may have been carried</a> out of the country in these bags – they were not subject to search.</p>
<p>The diplomatic immunity of some members of the alleged hit squad allowed them to leave quickly, not be subject to search and not be prosecuted by the Turkish criminal justice system. </p>
<p>There is one way they could be prosecuted: if Saudi Arabia <a href="http://legal.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/conventions/9_1_1961.pdf">waived the diplomatic agent’s immunity</a> and allowed them to be tried in Turkey. There is no sign that Saudi Arabia will do this. </p>
<p>Other members of the group, traveling on regular – not diplomatic – passports, also left quickly. Because they are now outside of Turkey, the Turkish government has been unable to bring any of these alleged suspects before their court system. Turkey requested extradition of these people, but <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-46501472">Saudi Arabia refused to hand them over</a>.</p>
<p>The location of Khashoggi’s murder at a consulate appears purposeful, allowing the alleged murderers the time and inviolable space needed to kill him without any fear of interruption or interference from Turkish authorities.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/108591/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Victoria Reyes receives or has previously received funding from the American Sociological Association, National Science Foundation, and Institute of International Education</span></em></p>Jamal Khashoggi’s brutal murder happened at a consulate, a space not subject to the laws of the host country, Turkey. That means the alleged murderers did not fear interference by local authorities.Victoria Reyes, Assistant Professor, University of California, RiversideLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1004312018-08-01T10:39:16Z2018-08-01T10:39:16ZNew sanctions on Russia and Iran are unlikely to work. Here’s why<p>Sanctions are much in demand these days as a tool of American foreign policy. </p>
<p>Members of Congress want <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-russia-sanctions-idUSKBN1AC1U8">tough new sanctions</a> against Russia for its interference in American elections. Sanctions will <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/what-know-about-sanctions-north-korea">remain in place</a> against North Korea, the White House says, until Pyongyang shows progress toward denuclearization. After <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-donald-trumps-nuclear-deal-withdrawal-will-hurt-irans-dissenters-and-activists-96364">tearing up the Iran nuclear accord</a>, the Trump administration <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/06/us/politics/iran-sanctions-trump.html">restored sanctions</a> against Tehran in an effort to get a better deal on restricting its weapons and a change in its behavior. And even NATO ally Turkey <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-08-02/turkey-s-markets-plunge-into-the-unknown-after-u-s-sanctions">faces sanctions</a> for imprisoning several U.S. citizens and employees of its diplomatic mission.</p>
<p><a href="http://abc7news.com/politics/sec-of-state-tillerson-says-north-korea-sanctions-working-at-stanford-lecture/2960149/">Policymakers claim</a> that sanctions are an effective means of achieving policy goals, but is that true? Are new measures against Moscow and Tehran likely to be successful?</p>
<p>Research on sanctions by <a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/david-cortright-522739">myself</a> and others has shown that they can sometimes be effective. But there are three key elements: allies, a willingness to enforce them and incentives to bargain. The absence of all three means they probably won’t work with Russia and Iran.</p>
<h2>Unilateral sanctions rarely work</h2>
<p>Allies supporting and reinforcing sanctions are usually pivotal to making them stick. </p>
<p>Unilateral sanctions such as the proposed measures against Russia and Iran are seldom successful. Although the <a href="http://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/sanctions/ukraine-crisis/">European Union has placed sanctions</a> on Russia because of its actions in Ukraine, the <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-russia/new-u-s-russia-sanctions-push-slows-in-congress-before-recess-idUSKBN1KE32X">latest legislative measures</a> proposed in Congress would be unilateral.</p>
<p>In an increasingly globalized world, unilateral sanctions face huge obstacles – even when imposed by the <a href="https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/022415/worlds-top-10-economies.asp">largest economy</a>. A landmark study published in the 1990s by the Peterson Institute for International Economics found that unilateral U.S. sanctions achieved their foreign policy goals <a href="https://piie.com/commentary/testimonies/evidence-costs-and-benefits-economic-sanctions">only 13 percent of the time</a>. </p>
<p>The rare instances when unilateral sanctions work involve countries that have extensive trade relations with the U.S., clearly not the case with <a href="https://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/visualize/tree_map/hs92/import/usa/rus/show/2016/">Russia</a> or <a href="https://atlas.media.mit.edu/en/visualize/tree_map/hs92/import/usa/irn/show/2016/">Iran</a>. <a href="http://fortune.com/2014/03/18/u-s-russian-trade-relationship-there-really-isnt-one/">Russia</a> is low on the list of <a href="https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/statistics/highlights/toppartners.html">U.S. trading partners</a>, and Iran has had virtually no economic or commercial relations with the U.S. Neither country is dependent on U.S. trade or likely to submit to American economic pressure. </p>
<p>In addition, when a country faces sanctions, it can often seek commercial ties elsewhere. This was the case with Cuba. When the U.S. <a href="http://www.americanforeignrelations.com/E-N/Embargoes-and-Sanctions-Cold-war-sanctions.html">imposed sanctions</a> on its former trading partner after Fidel Castro came to power, Havana turned to Moscow for help and became a part of the communist bloc.</p>
<p>Iran, for its part, <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/05/08/fresh-u-s-sanctions-not-likely-to-strangle-irans-oil-market/">has diversified its economy</a> in the face of sanctions from the U.S. and other Western countries, shifting trade to the East and increasingly selling oil and buying goods in China, India and other Asian countries.</p>
<p>Washington is responding to Tehran’s circumvention strategy by <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-iran-sanctions-affect-countries-and-businesses-1525824925">threatening</a> to impose secondary sanctions against foreign companies that trade with Iran, barring them from doing business in the U.S. Extraterritorial sanctions such as these are <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/what-are-economic-sanctions">opposed by other countries as a violation of international law</a>. </p>
<p>European nations especially disagree with this approach and have <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/world-powers-back-iran-oil-exports-despite-us-sanctions-threat/">vowed to maintain trading relations</a> with Iran despite secondary sanctions. Russia and China <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/07/25/moscow-and-beijing-have-tehrans-back/link">also oppose</a> the new U.S. policy. </p>
<h2>Willingness to follow through</h2>
<p>This raises a second factor that influences whether sanctions work: Is the country issuing the sanctions willing and able to assure compliance with those measures? </p>
<p>The prospect of losing Iran’s 2 million barrels of oil a day is already <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/heres-what-sanctions-on-iran-could-do-to-global-oil-supply-and-prices-2018-05-04">roiling global markets</a>. To calm investors, the U.S. State Department <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/02/world/middleeast/us-iran-oil-imports-sanctions-.html">quietly announced in early July</a> that Washington would allow countries like China, India and Turkey to reduce oil imports from Iran “on a case-by-case” basis, signaling the U.S. will allow some states to maintain imports, thus limiting the impact of the sanctions. </p>
<p>In other words, the desire to mitigate the potential impact of new sanctions on global financial markets may outweigh the goals of imposing them in the first place.</p>
<p>A similar problem of weak compliance is affecting continued U.N. sanctions against North Korea. In the wake of the Trump-Kim summit and the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/07/02/president-trumps-exaggerated-claims-about-the-north-korea-deal/">president’s claim</a> that Pyongyang is no longer a nuclear threat, China and Russia have shown reluctance to continue enforcing sanctions. They recently <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/un-diplomats-russia-puts-hold-on-us-requests-over-nkorea/2018/07/19/49d6875e-8b7f-11e8-9d59-dccc2c0cabcf_story.html?utm_term=.3f11861c9400">blocked an effort within the U.N. Security Council</a> to condemn North Korean oil smuggling.</p>
<p>If the U.S. and major allies are unable or unwilling to pay the price of sanctions enforcement, effectiveness diminishes. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229136/original/file-20180724-194134-jsuxnq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/229136/original/file-20180724-194134-jsuxnq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229136/original/file-20180724-194134-jsuxnq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229136/original/file-20180724-194134-jsuxnq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=412&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229136/original/file-20180724-194134-jsuxnq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229136/original/file-20180724-194134-jsuxnq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/229136/original/file-20180724-194134-jsuxnq.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=518&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called the sanctions the administration plans to place on Iran the ‘strongest sanctions in history.’</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Pompeo-Australia-Meeting/c53f1da1457c4ad988ed495cbc5550bd/7/0">AP Photo/Jeff Chiu</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Coercion and compliance</h2>
<p>A third factor affecting success is the need to combine sanctions with diplomatic bargaining. </p>
<p>My <a href="https://sanctionsandsecurity.nd.edu/news/the-sanctions-decade-assessing-un-strategies-in-the-1990s/">research with George Lopez</a>, a <a href="https://politicalscience.nd.edu/faculty/faculty-list/george-lopez/">professor emeritus of peace studies</a>, shows that sanctions work best within a bargaining framework in which the imposition of coercive measures is combined with incentives for compliance. </p>
<p>The offer to lift sanctions can be an effective bargaining chip for persuading the targeted regime to accept compromise and alter its policies. This was the case in the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Dayton-Accords">1995 Dayton Peace Agreement</a>, when the offer to lift sanctions served as an inducement for Serbia to end its aggressive policies and accept a political settlement.</p>
<p>The irony in the case of Iran is that precisely this form of sanctions-based diplomacy was successful in achieving the <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/topics/iran-nuclear-deal-15757">2015 nuclear deal</a>. Rigorous U.S., U.N. and European Union sanctions were combined with an offer to lift them if Iran complied with demands to restrict its nuclear program and accept intrusive inspections. The International Atomic Energy Commission <a href="http://www.tehrantimes.com/news/421491/IAEA-reaffirms-Iran-s-compliance-to-nuclear-deal-for-10th-time">verified</a> on 10 separate occasions from 2016 through the early part of 2018 that Iran kept its side of the bargain, and sanctions were removed. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230011/original/file-20180731-136646-w9ii1d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/230011/original/file-20180731-136646-w9ii1d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230011/original/file-20180731-136646-w9ii1d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230011/original/file-20180731-136646-w9ii1d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=415&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230011/original/file-20180731-136646-w9ii1d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230011/original/file-20180731-136646-w9ii1d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/230011/original/file-20180731-136646-w9ii1d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=522&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The offer to end sanctions against Serbia is what led former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic to sign the Dayton Peace Agreement in 1995.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/David Longstreath</span></span>
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<h2>The lonely road</h2>
<p>For all these reasons, I believe the new U.S. policy of reimposing unilateral sanctions abandons a multilateral approach that was working in favor of a unilateral policy that has little chance of success. </p>
<p>The U.S. and EU sanctions on Russia for its policies in Ukraine may have some continuing effect, but the new measures under consideration in Congress are unlikely to have a major impact. </p>
<p>Policymakers may talk tough about threatening sanctions, but their policies are weak if they are unilateral and costly to implement. Sanctions work best when they are part of a multilateral diplomatic effort – like the Obama administration took on Iran – in which the offer to lift sanctions is used as an incentive to achieve a negotiated settlement.</p>
<p>The Trump administration may think that it can go it alone in foreign policy, but on sanctions, as on nonproliferation and other policies, multilateral cooperation is often the key to success. </p>
<p><em>This article was updated to include new information about sanctions against Iran.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/100431/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>I have raised funds from the US State Department for the Kroc Institute project monitoring the Colombia peace agreement. I am active with the NGO Win Without War, which conducts policy advocacy on progressive foreign policy issues.
</span></em></p>American policymakers and lawmakers are floating unilateral sanctions against Russia, Iran and even Turkey in an effort to change behavior. But research shows sanctions only work in narrow circumstances.David Cortright, Director of Policy Studies, Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre DameLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/986182018-06-20T07:53:22Z2018-06-20T07:53:22ZAs the US leaves the UN Human Rights Council, it may leave more damage in its wake<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/223965/original/file-20180620-126553-kp36n2.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Nikki Haley, the United States' Permanent Representative to the United Nations, has announced the US will withdraw from the UN Human Rights Council.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/EPA/Justin Lane</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Editor’s note: This is a longer read</em></p>
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<p>US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley and US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/19/us-quits-un-human-rights-council-cesspool-political-bias">announced the US was withdrawing from the UN Human Rights Council</a> (“HRC”).</p>
<p>In doing so, they claimed the council was a roadblock to genuine global human rights protection. This move by the Trump administration has been <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-un-human-rights-council-anti-israel-bias-remove-nikki-haley-reforms-donald-trump-united-nations-a7773256.html">anticipated for some time</a>. In a sense, the elephant has left the room. But in doing so, the elephant has belled the cat on a number of serious issues regarding the HRC. </p>
<p>Is the United States’ decision sound in terms of international human rights protection? Is it one that Australia, an HRC member from 2018-2020, should follow? </p>
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<h2>What is the Human Rights Council?</h2>
<p>The UN Human Rights Council was established in 2006 to replace the UN Commission on Human Rights, which ran from 1947 to 2006. By the time of its demise, the commission was criticised from all sides for being overly politicised. </p>
<p>The HRC’s 47 seats are divided between the five official UN regions in the following way: Africa (13); Asia (13); Latin America and the Caribbean (8); Western Europe and Other (7); Eastern Europe (6). The US (and Australia) is in the Western Europe and Other Group, known as WEOG.</p>
<p>One-third of the council is elected each year by the UN General Assembly, and members serve three-year terms. No member may serve more than two consecutive terms. A member can also be suspended from the council in a vote of two-thirds of the UN General Assembly: <a href="https://www.un.org/press/en/2011/ga11050.doc.htm">Libya</a> was suspended in 2011 after Muammar Gaddafi’s crackdown on Arab Spring protesters and armed dissidents. No other member has been suspended.</p>
<p>The HRC meets three times a year for a total of around ten weeks. Its 38th session has just begun. It also meets for one-day special sessions at the initiative of one-third of its members. It has so far held 28 special sessions.</p>
<p>The HRC’s functions include the drafting and adoption of new human rights standards, as arose in its first year with the adoption of new treaties dealing with the rights of people with a <a href="https://www.un.org/development/desa/disabilities/convention-on-the-rights-of-persons-with-disabilities.html">disability</a> and the scourge of <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/CED/Pages/ConventionCED.aspx">enforced disappearances</a>, as well as the adoption of the <a href="https://www.un.org/development/desa/indigenouspeoples/declaration-on-the-rights-of-indigenous-peoples.html">Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples</a> in 2007.</p>
<p>The HRC also authorises independent investigations into particular human rights issues, either <a href="http://spinternet.ohchr.org/_Layouts/SpecialProceduresInternet/ViewAllCountryMandates.aspx?Type=TM">thematic</a> (dealing with a human rights issue such as torture or LGBTI rights) or, more controversially, <a href="http://spinternet.ohchr.org/_Layouts/SpecialProceduresInternet/ViewAllCountryMandates.aspx">focused on a particular state</a>. At the time of writing, there are 46 thematic mandates and 12 country mandates for these “special rapporteurs”.</p>
<p>It has one major new function compared to its predecessor, the <a href="https://www.upr-info.org/en">Universal Periodic Review</a> (“UPR”), whereby the human rights record of every UN member is reviewed by the HRC (as well as all other “observer” nations) every five years.</p>
<p>The US’ grievances against the HRC arise with regard to the human rights records of its members, and its politicised character. Its key red line concern seems to be the HRC’s “unconscionable” and “chronic bias” against Israel (to quote from this morning’s press conference). These issues are examined in turn below.</p>
<h2>HRC membership</h2>
<p>Membership criteria as they stand are very soft: candidates commit to the highest standards of human rights, and states should take into account a nominee’s human rights record when voting. Both of these rules are basically unenforceable.</p>
<p>Human rights criteria were mooted as prerequisites for membership when the HRC was created. However, the UN’s nearly 200 members could not agree on substantive criteria, as they have very different views on human rights. The US, for example, wanted only “democratic nations” to be eligible. Such a criterion would have led to debates over the meaning of “democracy”, and would seem to prioritise civil and political rights over economic, social and cultural ones. A focus on the implementation of economic and social rights might have led to the exclusion from eligibility of the US itself. </p>
<p>In any case, the “measurement” and respective ranking of human rights records across states is contentious. While comparisons between two states may lead to easy conclusions over which one is better or worse, it is a fraught exercise across the entirety of the UN membership. </p>
<p>Procedural criteria, such as a nation’s record on ratification of human rights treaties, would be more objective. However, such criteria might have led to the exclusion of the two most powerful countries in the world – the US and China, which have both failed to ratify crucial treaties. <em>Realpolitik</em> indicates that such an outcome is very unlikely.</p>
<p>In the press conference, Haley and Pompeo decried the presence of human rights abusers on the council, including China, Cuba, Venezuela and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Consternation has also commonly been expressed over the common presence of Saudi Arabia and Russia on the HRC. Certainly, none of those states is remotely close to upholding the highest standards of human rights. Haley and Pompeo went further, claiming that these states manipulate the HRC to shield abusers and target blameless states in its resolutions.</p>
<p>So how bad is the HRC membership? <a href="https://freedomhouse.org/">Freedom House</a> is a non-government organisation (NGO) that rates states as “free”, “partly free”, or “not free”, according to certain civil and political rights criteria, such as press freedom. While Freedom House’s methodology is <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/11/07/why-do-we-trust-certain-democracy-ratings-new-research-explains-hidden-biases/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.2264620053e3">assailable</a>, I will use its rankings in assessing the current HRC, as the US itself historically uses them in making certain policy choices. </p>
<p>According to its <a href="https://freedomhouse.org/report/freedom-world-2018-table-country-scores">2018 rankings</a>, the <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/Pages/MembersByGroup.aspx">HRC of 2018</a> contains 21 “free” states, 12 “partly free”, and 14 “non-free”. </p>
<p>2018 is in fact one of the worst years in terms of the numbers of non-free HRC members. Nevertheless, free states always outnumber unfree states on the HRC, and can easily pass or block any resolution with the cooperation of just a few partly free states, if they vote together.</p>
<p>Any problem with “bad” resolutions on the HRC arises not from a preponderance of bad states, but from bloc voting within regions, like-minded groups and alliances.</p>
<h2>The phenomenon of clean slates</h2>
<p>Nevertheless, one can still fairly criticise the HRC for containing 14 non-free states. How do such states get elected? </p>
<p>A major problem for HRC elections is the issue of “<a href="https://www.openglobalrights.org/election-without-choice-clean%20slates-in-the-human-rights-council/">clean slates</a>”, whereby the number of candidates presented by a UN region correlates exactly to the number of seats it is scheduled to have elected at any particular time. For example, a region might put forward only two candidates for two seats. In such circumstances, the various candidates’ election seems to be a <em>fait accompli</em>. This phenomenon of clean slates was what Pompeo was referring to when he said that some states were elected by a rigged, collusive process.</p>
<p>Yet clean slates are a problem with all of the UN regions. The US itself was initially elected to the HRC on a <a href="https://www.un.org/press/en/2009/ga10826.doc.htm">clean slate in 2009</a>. Australia was elected to the HRC on a WEOG clean slate in 2017, due to <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/australia-nearly-a-shoo-in-for-un-human-rights-council-seat-as-france-drops-out-of-race">France’s belated withdrawal</a> of its candidature.</p>
<p>Genuine elections do occur when open slates are presented by regions. This is how <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/28/russia-denied-membership-of-un-human-rights-council">Russia was rejected</a> in 2016, an unprecedented and humiliating blow that probably led to Russia’s failure to even stand for election in 2017. Other serious human rights abusers, such as Azerbaijan, Sri Lanka and Belarus, have failed to gain seats in similar circumstances.</p>
<p>Although states are elected on a regional basis, each member must still attain the majority of votes in the general assembly in order to be elected. There remains a possibility that an unacceptable candidate will simply not reach that threshold, even in the case of a clean slate.</p>
<p>That possibility has in the past led to the late replacement of controversial candidates, such as <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-rights-un-council/kuwait-elected-to-u-n-rights-panel-instead-of-syria-idUSTRE74J5IO20110520">Syria’s replacement by Kuwait in 2011</a>. This author eagerly awaits the day when the General Assembly finally flexes its muscle by refusing to elect an entire clean slate, thus depriving a region of a seat for a year. Such an outcome, in the absence of a relevant reform, is one way to dissuade future clean slates.</p>
<p>Finally, while states – particularly WEOG countries – might rail against the awful records of other members, those sentiments might not be reflected in their actual voting. After all, voting is by secret ballot. For example, given that Saudi Arabia is a key US geopolitical ally, it seems likely that the US (and even Australia) has voted for it on occasion. Certainly, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/sep/29/uk-and-saudi-arabia-in-secret-deal-over-human-rights-council-place">the UK seems to have done so</a>.</p>
<p>The US is correct that membership criteria should be revisited. <a href="https://theglobalamericans.org/2017/05/two-reform-proposals-membership-un-human-rights-council/">Certain obstacles</a> could be put in the way of the worst abusers, such as compulsory open slates, public voting (which might help prevent UK votes for Saudi Arabia), and a requirement that an eligible state must allow visits by all special rapporteurs. </p>
<h2>Politicisation of the HRC</h2>
<p>As the HRC’s members are representatives of their governments, the HRC is a highly politicised body, like its predecessor. State governments are political constructs, so any institution made up of government representatives is inevitably political too.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, states will generally vote in favour of their national interests rather than human rights interests if the two should clash. Pompeo inadvertently admitted that this morning, when he praised Haley by saying that she always put “American interests first”. </p>
<p>Politicisation inevitably leads to the manifestation of political biases. The most notorious HRC bias concerns Israel. It seems that the US’ biggest complaint over the HRC, and the “red line” that has led to its withdrawal, is the HRC’s treatment of Israel.</p>
<h2>Israel and the HRC</h2>
<p>The HRC is biased against Israel. It has aimed <a href="http://www.algemeiner.com/2015/06/25/report-since-inception-unhrc-condemned-israel-more-than-rest-of-worlds-countries-combined/">a disproportionate number of resolutions</a> against that country. The HRC’s regular agenda of ten items contains <a href="https://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2017/03/268525.htm">only one item that focuses on a particular state, that state being Israel</a>. </p>
<p>Its special rapporteur mandate stands until the occupation is over, so its renewal is automatic rather than the subject of periodic debate, as is the case with other mandates. The mandate-holder <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/SP/CountriesMandates/PS/Pages/SRPalestine.aspx">investigates its actions</a> rather than those of the Palestinian authorities, whose abuses are largely ignored. </p>
<p>Israel has been the subject of more special sessions than any other state (more than a quarter of the 28 sessions). Having said that, it was the subject of the first three special sessions in 2006, and four of the first six, so the “hit rate” of 4 out of 22 is less stark since then.</p>
<p>Why is the HRC preoccupied with Israel? For a start, Israel has committed serious human rights abuses that are worthy of the HRC’s condemnation. It is absurd for Pompeo to have implicitly suggested that Israel has “committed no offence”. Any HRC bias does not mean that the substance of its criticisms is wrong. The <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/may/15/palestinians-to-bury-58-people-killed-in-us-embassy-protests">recent killings</a> of Palestinian protesters, <a href="https://www.lawfareblog.com/israel-and-targeted-killings-uncomfortable-questions">targeted killings</a>, illegal <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2017/02/01/middleeast/settlements-explainer/index.html">settlements</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/aug/29/palestine-evictions-human-rights-susiya-bedouin-un-security-council">forced evictions</a>, <a href="https://archive.org/details/TheGoldstoneReport-ReportOfTheUnitedNationsFactFindingMissionOnThe">war crimes</a>, the <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/locked-in-the-devastating-effects-of-israels-gaza-blockade-11389198">Gaza blockade</a> and, most fundamentally, an ongoing occupation of Palestine that has lasted for more than 50 years, will cause critics to proliferate. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/israel-is-prioritising-pr-over-peace-building-in-the-middle-east-96405">Israel is prioritising PR over peace-building in the Middle East</a>
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<p>Nevertheless, that does not explain the HRC’s disproportionate attention to one country, given the scale of human rights abuses by other states that receive far less attention.</p>
<p>Ardent supporters of Israel often contend that the bias is driven by <a href="https://www.unwatch.org/anti-semitism-a-fight-for-the-un/">anti-Semitism</a>. While such a motivation cannot be dismissed, there are other reasons that seem likely to be driving this phenomenon. The equation of “anti-Israel” with “anti-Semitic” is simplistic. </p>
<p>Israel has many enemies among UN states. Some have never accepted Israel’s right to exist, believing that it was established illegitimately on Arab (Palestinian) land. Indeed, the <a href="https://www.oic-oci.org/">Organisation of Islamic Cooperation</a> was set up in 1969 to unite Muslim states after the 1967 war in which Israel seized the occupied territories, so opposition to Israel has been an article of faith since its inception. The OIC routinely brings as much diplomatic pressure to bear on Israel as possible. As OIC states straddle the two biggest UN groupings, Africa and Asia, they can rely on significant bloc solidarity for support in their initiatives.</p>
<p>The racial element, whereby the Jewish State of Israel illegally occupies lands populated by Arabs in the occupied territories, attracts the ire of developing states, which have historical grievances regarding racial oppression. Yet other instances of racial tension – such as the oppression of the Tibetans, the Kurds, the West Papuans, the Tamils or the Chechens – fail to attract the same HRC scrutiny. </p>
<p>One difference is that Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian Territories is not recognised as legitimate by any other state, unlike for example China’s sovereignty over Tibet or Indonesia’s sovereignty over West Papua.</p>
<p>Indeed, increasing numbers of states have diplomatically recognised the occupied territories as the State of Palestine, and the UN General Assembly voted in <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-palestinians-statehood/palestinians-win-de-facto-u-n-recognition-of-sovereign-state-idUSBRE8AR0EG20121201">2012</a> to recognise Palestine as a non-member state.</p>
<p>Occupation also allows states to feel safe in attacking Israel without being too hypocritical. While human rights abuses are sadly common, the status of “occupier” is rare. Indeed, Israel is sometimes seen as a remnant of colonialism, and its actions certainly breach the right of self-determination enshrined in the <a href="http://www.un.org/en/charter-united-nations/">UN Charter</a>.</p>
<p>However, Israel is not the only occupier. Morocco has long annexed the [<a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/03/chief-regrets-western-sahara-occupation-comment-160328201619417.html">Western Sahara</a>], yet the global silence on that situation is deafening in comparison.</p>
<p>Israel is also seen as a surrogate for the West, particularly the US. Given that Israel is almost always defended within the UN by the US, and is often defended by much of WEOG, the question of “Israel-bashing” has become part of a greater North/South divide in the UN. Anti-American states such as Cuba, Venezuela, Ecuador and Russia see Israel as a US surrogate in the Middle East, and exploit the issue accordingly. </p>
<p>Bias against Israel is matched by biased displays of support for Israel by its allies, such as the US and Australia. <a href="http://foreignpolicy.com/2018/05/22/dont-blame-hamas-for-the-gaza-bloodshed/">For example</a>, the US instinctively presumed that the recent border killings were justified. Past bombings of Gaza (in 2009 and 2012) have been blithely dismissed by Australia as an exercise of <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/gillard-condemns-attacks-on-israel-20121116-29fx8.html">Israel’s right to self-defence</a>. But a legitimate case of self-defence can still result in an illegal use of excessive, indiscriminate or unnecessary force. </p>
<p>Regardless of its causes, the HRC’s perceived bias against Israel is counterproductive. It provides Israel with a ready-made argument to reject even legitimate condemnation, thus providing cover for human rights abuses. Indeed, claims of bias (within and outside the UN) have become a dominant part of the Middle East narrative on both sides, detracting from a focus on the actions of the actual protagonists. It has facilitated Israel’s progressive disillusionment with and disengagement from the UN, and now, the disengagement of the US. It reduces the HRC’s credibility and opens it up to charges of hypocrisy. None of these outcomes is useful for those who sincerely wish for improvements in human rights for all in Israel and the Palestinian occupied territories.</p>
<p>Finally, the biggest problem with the focus on Israel is the corresponding lack of focus on other serious human rights situations. While it is impossible to demand or expect that a political body, or even an apolitical one, should achieve perfect balance in its human rights focuses, it is fair to expect that such focuses not be way out of balance.</p>
<h2>The US and human rights</h2>
<p>Haley and Pompeo reassured us that the US will continue to play a leadership role in human rights, despite its withdrawal from the HRC. And certainly, the US’ role on the HRC was in many ways positive. For example, it took the lead in addressing impunity in <a href="https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/united-states-vital-role-un-human-rights-council">Sri Lanka</a>. The WEOG group suffers from some dysfunctionality on the part of EU states, which generally seek a common position. Strong non-EU voices are important in this regard.</p>
<p>Yet the US is as political as other players on the HRC. Just as some states instinctively oppose Israel, the US instinctively supports it. Neither position is principled. The US has also protected other allies, such as Bahrain.</p>
<p>Outside the HRC, US President Donald Trump is not a credible leader on human rights. He seems to have an affinity with leaders with horrible records, such as the Philippines’ <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/nov/13/trump-hails-great-relationship-with-philippines-duterte">Rodrigo Duterte</a>. Most recently, he responded to comments about North Korea’s human rights record, which is possibly the worst in the world, by praising the “<a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-06-13/trump-says-kim-will-do-right-thing-on-human-rights-abuses/9862192">talented</a>” Kim Jong-un. </p>
<p>And of course, the US has long had its own serious human rights problems, which are too numerous to mention, but which include <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torture_and_the_United_States">torture</a> and the <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/uk/06/prisons/html/nn2page1.stm">highest proportion of incarceration</a> in the world. Its recent decision to separate migrant children from their parents and intern them reflects its status as the only country in the world that has failed to ratify the <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2018/06/1012492">Convention on the Rights of the Child</a>. </p>
<p>Furthermore, it is nonsense for Pompeo to suggest that the HRC had sought to infringe on US sovereignty. This betrays a serious misunderstanding of the concept of sovereignty, indicating that it dictates immunity from criticism. It does not. </p>
<h2>Is the council salvageable?</h2>
<p>The US is correct to note there are major deficiencies in the current HRC. Is its response therefore the correct one? If so, that would seem to indicate that Australia should also quit the HRC. It is very unlikely that Australia will do so.</p>
<p>The HRC is the peak global intergovernmental human rights body, which may represent the world of today, warts and all. The battle for universal human rights observance will not be won by adopting an “us and them” mentality, which excludes significant numbers of countries in the world from “the human rights club”. Such a solution is more likely to lead to balkanised human rights discussions, and possible competing institutions inside and outside the UN. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/new-home-affairs-department-should-prompt-review-of-australias-human-rights-performance-81167">New Home Affairs department should prompt review of Australia's human rights performance</a>
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<p>The HRC must remain a forum where non-like-minded states, and civil society, can talk to each other, and occasionally cross divides to make important human rights decisions.</p>
<p>Furthermore, the HRC is meant to be a political body. <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/Pages/HumanRightsBodies.aspx">Other parts of the UN human rights machinery</a> are made up of independent human rights experts, and accordingly take a more impartial approach than the HRC. While their human rights findings are more credible, it also seems that states generally take their findings less seriously.</p>
<p>States tend to care more about what their peers think than what human rights experts might think. Hence, human rights would suffer in the absence of a relevant intergovernmental global body.</p>
<p>Despite its flaws, the HRC does make decisions that benefit human rights, even in the face of political lobbying by members with scurrilous motives. For example, a special rapporteur was appointed to investigate <a href="https://aawsat.com/english/home/article/1203256/un-rights-council-calls-iran-respect-human-rights">Iran</a> (after the application of US pressure), and it remains in place, despite that influential country’s forceful efforts to dismantle the mandate. A <a href="https://theconversation.com/un-fight-over-lgbt-protection-threatens-to-undermine-the-human-rights-system-68215">special rapporteur on LGBTI rights</a> was appointed in 2016, despite fierce opposition from the OIC and homophobic states, due to an alliance of developed and developing states, and civil society. </p>
<p>The HRC will continue to be an imperfect institution for as long as the UN is made up of states with imperfect human rights records. However, the council still can and must be improved.</p>
<p>But the worst way to achieve that goal is by just walking away.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/98618/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Joseph does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The UN human rights council can certainly be improved, but the worst way to do that is by walking away.Sarah Joseph, Professor, Director, Castan Centre for Human Rights Law, Monash UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/956982018-04-26T20:33:41Z2018-04-26T20:33:41ZPompeo confirmation makes Mideast war more likely<p>The United States Senate has confirmed CIA director Mike Pompeo, the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/13/us/politics/pompeo-cia-trump-secretary-of-state.html">hawkish former Kansas congressman</a>, as <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/26/us/politics/mike-pompeo-secretary-of-state.html">secretary of state</a>. He replaces Rex Tillerson, who was <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/13/politics/rex-tillerson-secretary-of-state/index.html">fired via Twitter</a> on March 13. </p>
<p>As a former Middle East analyst at the State Department, I believe that having Pompeo as America’s top diplomat will endanger the Iran nuclear deal. </p>
<p>In 2015, when he was in Congress, Pompeo voted against a multilateral agreement that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/07/15/transcript-obamas-news-conference-on-the-iran-nuclear-deal/">the Obama administration negotiated</a> to remove some international economic sanctions on Iran. In exchange, Iran would significantly scale back its nuclear program and submit to intrusive international inspections. </p>
<p>Backing out of that agreement could have dramatic foreign policy implications for the entire Mideast region.</p>
<h2>Iran deal in danger</h2>
<p>Donald Trump tapped Pompeo to replace Tillerson as secretary of state for reasons both personal and political. </p>
<p>The president reportedly <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/13/opinions/trump-flex-muscle-instinct-tillerson-borger/index.html">found Tillerson arrogant</a> and disrespectful. With Pompeo, on the other hand, Trump reports having very good “<a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/mar/13/pompeo-trump-developed-chemistry-daily-briefings/">chemistry</a>.”</p>
<p>Tillerson earned Trump’s ire by <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/trump-and-tillersons-biggest-policy-disagreements">disagreeing with him</a> on many substantive policy matters, perhaps chief among them Iran. Trump has been highly critical of the international nuclear agreement <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/13/us/politics/trump-iran-nuclear-deal.html">since his 2016 presidential campaign</a>, calling it “<a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-trump-iran/trump-election-puts-iran-nuclear-deal-on-shaky-ground-idUSKBN13427E">the worst deal ever negotiated</a>.” </p>
<p>He <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/07/19/the-u-s-and-iran-are-heading-toward-crisis/?utm_term=.15bdaae682e1">wanted to scuttle it</a> when it came up for recertification in July 2017, but Tillerson advised against it on both diplomatic and security grounds. </p>
<p>The former secretary of state was highly critical of Iran, condemning its <a href="https://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2018/01/277493.htm">regional aggression and meddling in the Syrian civil war</a>. </p>
<p>But I believe he understood, as <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/10/nuclear-iran-deal-trump-jcpoa/542457/">many other policy analysts do</a>, that backing out of the nuclear deal would destabilize the Middle East – and potentially put the world at risk – because Iran would likely react by restarting its nuclear program. </p>
<p>Despite Tillerson’s efforts, in October 2017 Trump finally decertified the Iran deal, which effectively opened the door for the U.S. Congress to reimpose sanctions. </p>
<p>In his January 2018 State of the Union address, <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/president-donald-j-trumps-state-union-address">he was more direct, calling on</a> lawmakers to “address the fundamental flaws in the terrible Iran nuclear deal.” </p>
<h2>Pompeo’s dangerous instincts</h2>
<p>Pompeo shares his boss’s dim view. </p>
<p>As a congressman, Pompeo called the Iran nuclear deal – which the Obama administration negotiated alongside the U.K., France, Germany and other key partners – “<a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/with-mike-pompeo-at-the-state-department-are-the-uber-hawks-winning">unconscionable</a>.” After Trump’s 2016 election, he stated that he was looking forward to “rolling it back.” </p>
<p>But during a <a href="https://theconversation.com/macron-trump-summit-has-high-stakes-for-frances-embattled-leader-95022">meeting with French President Emmanuel Macron</a>, Trump recently signaled he might consider <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/24/world/europe/trump-macron-iran-climate.html">salvaging the deal</a> – though he also called it “insane.” </p>
<p>Pompeo likewise moderated his tone during his confirmation hearings, saying that diplomatic efforts to “achieve a better outcome and better deal” could continue after May 12. That is the day that Trump must <a href="https://www.politico.com/story/2018/04/25/trump-iran-deadline-550844">decide whether to recertify the Iran agreement or allow sanctions to be restored</a>.</p>
<p>Congressional aides who have worked with Pompeo say that <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/03/mike-pompeo-could-be-a-successful-secretary-of-state-because-trump-trusts-him.html">he is a smart guy</a>, level-headed and reasonable. But he is also on record saying that Iran is “<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/13/mike-pompeo-on-national-security-issues.html">intent on destroying America</a>.” </p>
<p>The new secretary of state is not the only policy hawk to join Trump’s team in recent weeks. The new national security adviser, John Bolton, has <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/south-korea-worries-about-the-return-of-john-bolton-and-his-hawkish-views/2018/03/23/4adc68aa-2e6c-11e8-911f-ca7f68bff0fc_story.html?utm_term=.92a706102322">also been a vocal critic of the Iran deal</a>. </p>
<p>If the two of them egg on Trump’s belligerent instincts, I believe the Iran deal won’t last long.</p>
<h2>Destabilizing the Mideast</h2>
<p>In my opinion, scuttling the agreement could unleash a dangerous chain of events in the volatile Middle East. </p>
<p>If the U.S. reimposes sanctions on Iran, hard-liners there – who have always opposed the nuclear deal – would likely <a href="http://www.mei.edu/content/io/hardliners-accuse-eu-betraying-iran-nuclear-deal">pressure</a> Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to retaliate by restarting the country’s uranium enrichment program. </p>
<p>On April 22, the Iranian foreign minister essentially <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/irans-foreign-minister-warns-it-will-restart-nuclear-activities-if-us-withdraws-from-accord/2018/04/22/b5a07962-462f-11e8-827e-190efaf1f1ee_story.html?utm_term=.b728b7ed3504">confirmed</a> this plan, saying his country would begin “resuming at much greater speed our nuclear activities.”</p>
<p>If that happened, I believe Israel would feel justified in taking military action against Iran, which has been threatening its national security for decades. In doing so, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would have the behind-the-scenes backing of <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-42008809">Saudia Arabia, a regional power and longtime rival of Iran</a>, and possibly other states with a Sunni Muslim majority. </p>
<p>Iran is governed by conservative Shiite Muslim clerics. Sunni-majority countries like Saudi Arabia dislike Iran’s policy of <a href="http://carnegieendowment.org/2016/11/30/sectarian-dilemmas-in-iranian-foreign-policy-when-strategy-and-identity-politics-collide-pub-66288">financing violent Shiite militias</a> to push its sectarian agenda in Arab states with significant, and sometimes restive, Shiite populations. </p>
<p>Israel and Saudi Arabia <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/04/saudi-arabia-israel-oppose-iran-nuclear-deal-150401061906177.html">never supported the Iran nuclear deal</a>. They feared that lifting sanctions on Iran would merely give Tehran more resources to foment strife in the Arab world. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/An-Israel-Hezbollah-war-could-draw-in-Iran-US-intelligence-warns-545052">Analysts agree</a> that should some Sunni Arab countries team up with Israel against Iran, Iran would not limit itself to responding with missiles. It could also persuade its well-armed allies like <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/27/world/middleeast/hezbollah-iran-syria-israel-lebanon.html">Hezbollah</a> and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad to launch <a href="https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/241741">rocket attacks</a> on Israel, too.</p>
<p>I doubt Mideast war is the outcome Pompeo and Trump would seek by ending the Iran deal, but it may be just the disaster they create.</p>
<p><em>This is a revised version of an article <a href="https://theconversation.com/pompeos-rise-will-make-mideast-war-more-likely-93345">originally published on March 14, 2018</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95698/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gregory Aftandilian is a non-resident Fellow at the Arab Center, in Washington, D.C.</span></em></p>The new secretary of state once called the Iran nuclear deal ‘unconscionable.’ If he supports Trump’s instinct to scrap the agreement on May 12, it could unleash violence across the volatile Mideast.Gregory Aftandilian, Lecturer, Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/955652018-04-26T10:40:13Z2018-04-26T10:40:13ZSenate confirmation: The grilling can be grueling<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/216379/original/file-20180425-175047-1rsvk5d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Sens. Bob Corker and Bob Menendez look on during the second round of questioning of Secretary of State-designate Mike Pompeo.
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Alex Brandon</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>President Donald Trump’s <a href="https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/politics/Senate-Confirmation-Trump-State-CIA-Picks-476822783.html">nominee to head the CIA is facing a confirmation battle</a> in the Senate. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/24/us/politics/ronny-jackson-veterans-affairs.html">His nominee to Veterans Affairs, Ronny Jackson,</a> withdrew his controversial nomination before he even got to his confirmation hearing. And <a href="https://www.marketwatch.com/story/white-house-steps-up-campaign-for-pompeo-as-confirmation-battle-heats-up-2018-04-18">Mike Pompeo, Trump’s new Secretary of State, faced considerable Senate opposition</a> to his nomination.</p>
<p>Behind those battles lies the power of the president to nominate and the Senate <a href="https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RS20986.pdf">to confirm candidates for more than 2,000 positions</a> – including ambassadors, federal judges and Cabinet secretaries. </p>
<p>The Senate’s confirmation role is a fundamental governmental function, embedded into the U.S. Constitution <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/articleii">Article II, Section 2</a>, that preserves the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches. Its job of <a href="https://www.senate.gov/reference/glossary_term/advice_and_consent.htm">“advice and consent” on presidential nominees</a> aims to limit to the power of any one person or branch of government. </p>
<p>Some nominees face significant scrutiny from U.S. senators who customarily grill prospective government officials in open committee hearings. The committee then votes whether or not to advance the nomination to a full Senate vote, though it may also not vote at all on a controversial nominee.</p>
<p>Almost all nominees survive the confirmation process. Just a handful are forced to withdraw from consideration or come up short when put to a vote. <a href="https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RS20986.pdf">According to the Congressional Research Service, 99 percent of nominees are approved</a>.</p>
<h2>Rejected by the Senate</h2>
<p>But there have been exceptions. In 1987, <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/itsallpolitics/2012/12/19/167645600/robert-borks-supreme-court-nomination-changed-everything-maybe-forever">Ronald Reagan famously nominated Robert Bork</a> to the U.S. Supreme Court. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-bork-idUSBRE8BI0YA20121219">Bork’s controversial conservative views</a> on a number of legal matters, including privacy and civil rights, drew criticism from a number of senators who relentlessly questioned Bork. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1987/10/24/politics/borks-nomination-is-rejected-5842-reagan-saddened.html">His nomination was defeated by the U.S. Senate 58 to 42</a>.</p>
<p>While some are rejected by the Senate based on their policy positions, others fail to gain Senate support due to personal scandal. </p>
<p>George H.W. Bush’s pick for secretary of Defense, John Tower, faced questions about <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/history-reveals-why-trump-s-cabinet-picks-could-fail-get-n704056">excessive drinking and alleged philandering</a> in 1989. Tower, a former U.S. senator from Texas, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1989/03/10/us/senate-rejects-tower-53-47-first-cabinet-veto-since-59-bush-confers-new-choice.html">could not get enough votes from his former colleagues to be confirmed</a>. </p>
<h2>Forced to withdraw</h2>
<p>Some nominees choose to withdraw from consideration. </p>
<p>Bill Clinton’s nominee for attorney general, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1994/03/30/opinion/addressing-nannygate.html">Zoe Baird</a>, dropped out after reports that she had not paid taxes on wages for her domestic help. Former U.S. Sen. <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/02/03/daschle/">Tom Daschle</a>, President Obama’s original pick for Health and Human Services secretary, also withdrew his name from consideration due to tax problems. </p>
<p>But not every grilling is meant to derail a nomination. </p>
<p>As part of their role, senators <a href="https://www.law360.com/articles/976345/anticipating-senate-questions-for-uspto-director-nominee">may ask hard questions in order to get the nominee on the record</a> about his or her positions that may not yet be public. That way, they can hold the nominee accountable once they’ve been confirmed.</p>
<p><em>This article has been updated to reflect the withdrawal of Veterans Affairs nominee Ronny Jackson and the confirmation of Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/95565/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Capri Cafaro is affiliated with the Democratic Party both as a registered voter and a former elected official in Ohio. </span></em></p>Senate confirmation for many of President Trump’s nominees has been tough. In this speed read, The Conversation asks: What is Senate confirmation, and why do we do it?Capri Cafaro, Executive in Residence, American University School of Public AffairsLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/947152018-04-10T10:38:29Z2018-04-10T10:38:29ZWhy can’t Trump just take out Assad?<p>Once again, Syrian President Bashir Al-Assad is accused of using chemical weapons against his own people. Reports from multiple <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/08/world/middleeast/syria-chemical-attack-ghouta.html">sources</a> detail the attack, which appears incontestable despite Russian <a href="http://www.foxnews.com/world/2018/04/08/latest-russia-denies-reports-syrian-chemical-attack.html">denials</a>. </p>
<p>The Trump administration has responded by <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-signals-withdrawal-us-troops-syria-surprising-pentagon/story?id=54108338">whiplashing</a> from their stated position that American troops would be withdrawn soon to promising retaliation. Trump <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-04-09/trump-national-security-advisers-are-said-to-meet-on-syria">told reporters</a> at the White House on April 9 that the U.S. “cannot allow atrocities like that.” </p>
<p>Trump is now promising a “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-says-us-to-decide-on-response-to-atrocious-syria-chemical-attack-in-24-to-48-hours/2018/04/09/1398c5aa-3bfa-11e8-a7d1-e4efec6389f0_story.html?utm_term=.e357e7c8366c">major decision</a>” soon. </p>
<p>Last year at this time, military strikes in response to a Syrian chemical attack had little discernible effect. The targeted airfield was back in operation within <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/syria/syrian-air-base-operational-after-u-s-cruise-missile-strikes-1.5459046">24 hours</a> of the attack. This time, four things are likely to make the situation even more dire. </p>
<p>First, the ineffectiveness of last year’s strikes demands a stronger response now - a classic trap of warfare, which pushes belligerents into ever-increasing escalation. </p>
<p>Second, Mike Pompeo, Trump’s pick to replace former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, has a history of <a href="https://theconversation.com/pompeos-rise-will-make-mideast-war-more-likely-93345">belligerence</a>. Also of significance is the new National Security Adviser John Bolton, who has a well-documented <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2018/03/23/john-bolton-has-talked-about-bombing-north-korea-iran-and-syria/">preference</a> for military options. That leaves America ever-more militarized, even as <a href="https://theconversation.com/fewer-diplomats-more-armed-force-defines-us-leadership-today-92890">support for diplomacy continues to shrink</a>. </p>
<p>Third, increased Russian presence on Syrian soil means increased risk of Russian casualties in any action. </p>
<p>Fourth, in the time since last April’s airstrikes, the U.S. has still failed to produce a diplomatic and development strategy for Syria that would give military action containment and context. </p>
<p>As costly as <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/16/opinions/the-consequences-of-inaction-in-syria-robertson-opinion/index.html">inaction</a> has been in the seven years since the Arab Spring uprisings first took hold in Syria, history suggests that removing Assad in a hurry or raising the military stakes in absence of a strategy for diplomacy and reconstruction would be an even bigger mistake. In 16 years studying and working with <a href="http://pksoi.armywarcollege.edu/default/assets/File/Alpher%20Past.pdf">complex conflicts like Syria</a>, I have yet to see an exception to this rule.</p>
<h2>We know where this goes next</h2>
<p>Targeting Assad would likely give birth to the same kind of <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/13/world/africa/libya-power-vacuum/">catastrophe</a> we saw in Libya after Muammar Gaddafi’s fall. In Libya, with no true civil governance to hold the country together, tribal alliances collapsed and a four-way fight for power emerged. It continues even now, accented by a <a href="http://carnegieendowment.org/2018/02/10/when-islamic-state-came-to-libya-pub-75541">persistent</a> Islamic State presence. The power vacuum that would follow the sudden removal of Assad could be worse than the current warfare, and nourish the already fertile conditions for violent extremist and paramilitary actors.</p>
<p>Assad shouldn’t remain in power. He’s been proving that for seven years. But my experience tells me his removal should be political and legal. That process must come from the Syrians themselves, not from the outside. His departure should be negotiated with Syrian civil society leadership to legitimize the claim to power of a replacement civilian government.</p>
<p>Syrian society is far from whole enough now to provide impartial justice on its own, but it would be a mistake to respond to their crisis by taking more power away from them. Trump is dismissive of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/video/us/politics/100000005385078/president-trump-war-afghanistan-pakistan.html">nation-building</a>, but that implies large-scale American intervention to design and build systems for the Syrians. Assistance to the Syrians to help them design and build their own systems is an entirely different – and entirely necessary – endeavor. In the meantime, other options such as peacekeeping forces and the International Criminal Court should be considered at least as a placeholder. This won’t heal all ills - but it could <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/law/2017/dec/20/former-yugoslavia-war-crimes-tribunal-leaves-powerful-legacy-milosevic-karadzic-mladic">prevent some of the predictable regressions</a>. </p>
<p>Here’s why:</p>
<p><strong>Nature abhors a vacuum:</strong> Unlike in a game of chess, in war removing the king is not the end, but only another beginning. The idea that Syria still exists as it looks on the map is a fantasy. Syria won’t come cleanly back together should Assad disappear overnight. Tensions among rebel groups – which are <a href="http://www.rferl.org/a/syria-rebels-turn-against-each-other-islamic-state/28294933.html">already high</a> – and between pro- and anti-IS forces will only increase with one leader removed from the field. We can only attempt to predict where Assad’s loyalist forces will go with that leader removed. The Caliphate may be gone, but <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/isis-terror/isis-will-remain-threat-2018-experts-warn-n828146">ISIS remains</a>, as do recruiters for a list of other organizations.</p>
<p>In order for any military action to be beneficial, it needs to come in the context of a sound diplomatic plan to constrain unintended consequences with other actors – like Russia – and a sound locally driven plan to move from immediate containment of violence to a return of civilian Syrian leadership and security. Neither plan currently <a href="http://pksoi.armywarcollege.edu/default/assets/File/Alpher%20Past.pdf">exists</a>.</p>
<p><strong>What’s the endgame?</strong> The classic underpinnings of our own strategic doctrine stress that military action should never be taken without a <a href="http://www.classicsofstrategy.com/2016/01/liddell-hart-strategy-1954.html">clear goal</a> for a desired end-state. Retaliatory military strikes to punish Assad for using chemical weapons may seem necessary. Certainly, the use of these weapons must be prevented and civilian lives protected, but action – let alone an attempt to remove Assad himself – without a plan is an invitation to failure. </p>
<p>Last year’s limited strikes only increased the sense of crisis and confusion, with no appreciable gain. Most worrisome, now as <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2017/04/07/daily-202-13-questions-raised-by-trump-s-missile-strikes-on-syria/58e71532e9b69b3a72331e5c/?wpisrc=nl_daily202&wpmm=1">then</a>, it seems clear that Trump himself is driven by <a href="https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/01/30/donald-trump-syria-strategy-216551">caprice rather than a firm grasp on strategy</a> and consequence. In such a chaotic environment, this can only increase the risk of unintended consequences, while offering no advantage. </p>
<p><strong>Whither the ship of State?</strong> The U.S. Department of State is <a href="http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/alarmed-cuts-lack-leadership-200-us-diplomats-call/story?id=54094907">more fragile</a> now than it was a year ago. Offices that should manage complex <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/josh-rogin/wp/2017/01/26/the-state-departments-entire-senior-management-team-just-resigned/?utm_term=.de44b11ee08e">policies</a> and processes remain vacant, and the number of vacancies has increased. In normal times, these offices should provide much-needed analysis about dynamics and changes in conflict zones. They would also help to mitigate the heightened probability of accidental clashes with international actors such as Russia, Turkey, Iran and even Israel in the confusion and increased tension that follows military action. </p>
<p>Unless the United States is willing to commit to a sustained and substantial campaign or to throw its weight behind a political end to the war, any limited military action is an empty gesture. But even a sustained and substantial military campaign may ultimately be an empty gesture, unless it’s predicated on a sound diplomatic agenda. That agenda is the lynchpin - and it doesn’t exist.</p>
<p>There is, however, still time to avoid disaster. </p>
<p>There’s no time like the present for America to create the strategy it has thus far lacked. The U.S. has the experience, talent and resources to create a plan and a strategy – the missing part is the political will to produce it and follow through. Congress can muster the political will to push back on Russia and Iran diplomatically to avert further escalation. The State Department can be empowered to reduce tensions through non-military pressure. Despite its precarious position, it still has enough career officers to make this happen. USAID can provide the tools and material needed to knit Syrian society together again. The urge to rapid action is understandable, but history’s lessons are unavoidable: Acting without a plan or strategy only leads to further chaos. </p>
<p><em>This article updates <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-cant-america-just-take-out-assad-75980">one that originally ran on April 9, 2017</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/94715/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Alpher does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>History suggests it would be a big mistake.David Alpher, Adjunct Professor at the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, George Mason UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/934322018-03-15T09:17:55Z2018-03-15T09:17:55ZTrump should be the trigger for Africa to find common cause with Americans<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210505/original/file-20180315-104659-an5w3l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">US President Donald Trump after sacking Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA-EFE/Shawn Thew</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>To reassure and reiterate America’s commitments to a positive Africa agenda of cooperation US President Donald Trump sent his Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, to the continent in early March. But four hours after he arrived back in Washington after a whistle-stop tour of five African countries, Tillerson learned in a Trump tweet that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2018/03/13/world/africa/13reuters-usa-trump-africa.html">he had been fired</a>.</p>
<p>Africans had reasons to be sceptical about the Tillerson trip even before it began, as I argued before <a href="http://theconversation.com/three-reasons-why-africa-should-treat-tillerson-visit-with-scepticism-92849">he set off</a>. But I had not anticipated that Tillerson and his mission would also be dramatically and precipitately diminished.</p>
<p>It is unlikely that Africa-US relations will improve as long as Trump remains president. The president has appointed Mike Pompeo, director of the CIA, as his new secretary of state. Before joining the administration, Pompeo served as a conservative Republican congressman from <a href="https://www.biography.com/people/mike-pompeo-121317">rural Kansas</a>. He has no notable foreign policy experience, much less interest in or knowledge of, African affairs. </p>
<p>But that doesn’t mean that African leaders should throw up their hands in despair. The Trump era, if approached with wisdom, offers opportunities for new ways of examining issues, new alliances and new areas of cooperation. This is because Trump has triggered concerns that are shared by democrats on both sides of the Atlantic, such as the need to fight racism and the need for strong democratic institutions.</p>
<h2>Partnerships</h2>
<p>Africans, of course, have other important relationships to pursue with other non-African partners. Planning for the next Forum for China-Africa Cooperation, is well underway, and most African leaders are expected to attend the September gathering in <a href="http://www.focac.org/eng/">Beijing</a>. </p>
<p>Africa was also high on the agenda of last June’s G-20 summit in Germany, despite <a href="http://theconversation.com/africa-is-high-on-the-g20-summit-agenda-but-will-trump-thwart-progress-80029">Trump’s indifference</a> to the gathering.</p>
<p>But the US is too important for African countries to ignore. Preparing and promoting a more active and constructive African strategy for engaging America, whoever is in power, was discussed at a diverse gathering of scholars and officials at Wits University, on March 8 to 10. This also marked the official launch of a new African Centre for the <a href="https://www.wits.ac.za/media/wits-university/giving-to-wits/documents/Wits%20African%20Centre%20for%20the%20Study%20of%20the%20United%20States%202017.pdf">Study of the United States</a>.</p>
<p>Three aspirations of the new centre are noteworthy. One is that its agenda will be demand driven. This means it will be set by what Africans from around the continent most need – and want to know – to manage their relations with America. </p>
<p>Another is that the agenda will be much broader and deeper than conventional international relations and the foreign police agendas of sovereign states. </p>
<p>Thirdly, a multi-disciplinary approach to research and training will be adopted. The aim will be twofold. Firstly to achieve short-term political and policy relevance for Africa. Secondly, to illuminate longer term trends of integration regionally and globally that can accelerate as Africans and Americans learn and teach each other.</p>
<h2>Shared agendas</h2>
<p>One potentially positive, if unintentional, effect of Trump’s actions thus far, has been to stir up resistance and fresh soul-searching among Americans about basic issues and values that are shared with Africa. Several examples stand out: gender, race, economic inclusion, the freedom and integrity of the press, the judiciary and elections. All are complex yet crucial for sustainable democracy and constitutional order in African countries as well as the US.</p>
<p>Since Trump’s <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/the-inaugural-address/">inauguration</a> in January 2017, new political pressure has been unleashed for gender justice and equality. Campaigns such as the <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-rising-pressure-of-the-metoo-backlash">#MeToo movement</a>, for example, have quickly spread globally. If, as current US polling suggests, this influences voting patterns in upcoming Congressional and Presidential elections, there will likely be secondary foreign relations effects across Africa as well.</p>
<p>Trump has also been the catalyst for new degrees of both racial awareness as well as injustice. One of America’s leading black writers, Ta-Neshi Coats, aptly describes Trump as America’s “first white president’ in his book <a href="https://www.amazon.com/We-Were-Eight-Years-Power/dp/0399590560">We Were Eight Years in Power: An American Tragedy</a>. This is because Trump, unlike any of his predecessors, campaigns and rules as a white-ethnic-nationalist.</p>
<p>Africans need to critically assess whether, in reaction, a coalition of diverse identities predominates in upcoming elections. Either way, the outcome will have an impact on Africa-US relations.</p>
<h2>Containing Trump</h2>
<p>Three key elements essential to protecting and defending democracy – on the continent and elsewhere in the world – are now crucial in containing Trump’s threats to democracy.</p>
<p>One is maintaining the integrity of free and factual reporting by the media. The others are a strong and resilient independent judiciary, and credible elections. The world is living through a period of ill-liberalism. This is being marked by the triumph of strongmen over constitutional orders which has become a global scourge.</p>
<p>Trump will continue to dominate world headlines in 2018. But on July 18, South Africans and the world will pause to celebrate the centennial of the birth of Nelson Mandela. No one better exemplifies the democratic ideals that Trump defiles. Africans and Americans must rededicate themselves to strive for the standards Mandela revered. Perhaps then we will be touched again by what America’s greatest president, Abraham Lincoln, knew were <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/31631-we-are-not-enemies-but-friends-we-must-not-be">"the better angels of our nature”</a>.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/93432/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>John J Stremlau is a Wits Visiting Professor in International Relations, the 2017 Bradlow Fellow at the South African Institute of International Affairs (SAIIA), an unpaid Adviser to the African Centre for the Study of the United States (ACSUS), and a Board member of the Electoral Institute for Sustainable Democracy in Africa (EISA). </span></em></p>Relations between the US and Africa are unlikely to improve while Trump remains president. But that doesn’t mean the continent should remain passive.John J Stremlau, 2017 Bradlow Fellow at SA Institute of International Affairs, Visiting Professor of International Relations, University of the WitwatersrandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/933502018-03-15T01:58:10Z2018-03-15T01:58:10ZHaspel is Trump’s chance to reset his bad start with the CIA<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210804/original/file-20180316-104676-1sqeh0b.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Gina Haspel addresses The Office of Strategic Services Society in 2017.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CV2s9qTUNsM&t=57s">OSS Society</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The CIA had a tough first year under President Donald Trump. </p>
<p>It started with the president making a <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/trumps-vainglorious-affront-to-the-c-i-a">brashly political speech in front of the agency’s Memorial Wall</a>, which is hallowed ground to CIA officers. This was soon after Trump seemed to <a href="https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/819164172781060096?lang=en">compare U.S. intelligence agencies to Nazis</a>. More recently, Trump has <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/world/national-security/donald-trump-pursues-vladimir-putin-russian-election-hacking/?utm_term=.3fa1d7011b75">publicly challenged intelligence assessments</a> about Russian interference in the 2016 election. Republican leaders of the House intelligence committee have also <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/12/politics/house-republicans-russia-conclusions/index.html">undermined the CIA</a> by echoing the president’s criticisms. Even Republican Rep. Tom Rooney has said the committee has <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/12/politics/house-intel-rep-tom-rooney-russia-investigation-erin-burnett-outfront-cnntv/index.html">“lost all credibility”</a> due to its Russia investigation. </p>
<p>The president needs a CIA he can trust. The CIA, for its part, needs to feel its work is heard and respected by leaders committed to protecting American security. Although the president seemingly valued the contribution of Mike Pompeo as CIA director, that respect wasn’t reflected in the president’s attitude toward the agency as a whole. Until this relationship is repaired, the country will face unnecessary risks – and not only from Vladimir Putin and his cyber trolls. </p>
<p>So how can Haspel gain the president’s trust, while staying true to the CIA mission?</p>
<h2>A history of unease</h2>
<p>Trump is not the first president to be suspicious of the CIA. My <a href="https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/cia-and-the-politics-of-us-intelligence-reform/FDDB47B0D88F3F1FE128DB23964C9061">new book on U.S. intelligence reform</a> describes the often uncomfortable relationship between presidents and the agency. </p>
<p>President Richard Nixon thought the CIA was filled with <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=vAAtDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PA108&ots=xPKD5S6K4H&dq=nixon%20and%20the%20cia%20durbin&pg=PA108#v=onepage&q=nixon%20and%20the%20cia%20durbin&f=false">“Ivy League liberals” who had helped John F. Kennedy</a> defeat him in 1960, and who were trying to undermine his administration’s policies from Moscow to Vietnam. </p>
<p>Bill Clinton campaigned on <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=vAAtDwAAQBAJ&lpg=PA108&ots=xPKD5S6K4H&dq=nixon%20and%20the%20cia%20durbin&pg=PA186#v=onepage&q=clinton%20campaign&f=false">deep cuts to the intelligence budget</a>. His first director of the CIA, James Woolsey, was left out of major decisions – so much so that when a deranged pilot flew a small plane into the White House, people joked that it was <a href="https://millercenter.org/the-presidency/presidential-oral-histories/r-james-woolsey-oral-history-director-central">Woolsey trying to get a meeting with the president</a>.</p>
<p>Bad relations between a president and the CIA can have disastrous effects. Members of the George W. Bush administration believed the agency’s views on Iraq were too rosy, so they <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/iraq/2006-03-01/intelligence-policy-and-war-iraq">pushed for more aggressive analysis and bypassed the agency</a> to justify going to war. The Iraq War resulted in <a href="http://icasualties.org/Iraq/index.aspx">thousands of U.S. battlefield deaths</a>, <a href="https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/10/131015-iraq-war-deaths-survey-2013/">hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths</a>, and close to <a href="https://www.csis.org/analysis/us-military-spending-cost-wars">$2 trillion in direct U.S. spending</a> on the war. </p>
<p>If the president wants to benefit from the best information about the most important challenges facing America, he needs to believe the CIA is doing its job well. That trust starts at the top.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210410/original/file-20180314-113482-1srr18l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210410/original/file-20180314-113482-1srr18l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210410/original/file-20180314-113482-1srr18l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210410/original/file-20180314-113482-1srr18l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210410/original/file-20180314-113482-1srr18l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210410/original/file-20180314-113482-1srr18l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210410/original/file-20180314-113482-1srr18l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/210410/original/file-20180314-113482-1srr18l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Trump speaks at the CIA on Jan. 21, 2017.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Andrew Harnik</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Trump’s announced nominee to succeed Pompeo is a promising choice, though a controversial one. <a href="http://time.com/5198054/gina-haspel-cia-torture-senate/">Gina Haspel</a> is a decorated agency veteran, and would be the first woman to head the CIA. At least symbolically, her appointment helps address <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02684527.2014.913395?journalCode=fint20">the historical imbalance of female representation at the agency</a>. CIA insiders also <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/who-is-gina-haspel-cia-director-seasoned-spymaster-2018-03-13/">seem to respect her</a>. </p>
<p>Yet Haspel’s selection has raised concerns among many – including key Democrats on the Senate intelligence committee – regarding <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/trump-nominates-gina-haspel-to-head-cia-an-agency-veteran-tied-to-use-of-brutal-interrogation-measures/2018/03/13/bd47c8ce-26c6-11e8-874b-d517e912f125_story.html">her role in approving the torture of detainees</a> during the Bush years. She is even purported to have been at the heart of “<a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/id/22474868/ns/politics/t/mukasey-criminal-inquiry-begins-cia-tapes/#.Wqhj5OjwauU">tapegate</a>,” when videotapes showing prisoner torture were illegally destroyed at the agency. </p>
<p>Critics are right to condemn this history. Even though Haspel is likely be confirmed, she must work to restore confidence that she will follow the law and resist political influence. If she can do this, she will be well positioned to start rebuilding relations between the CIA and senior policymakers in both the White House and Congress.</p>
<h2>Haspel’s challenge</h2>
<p>Successful leadership is only one piece of the intelligence puzzle. For a more effective CIA, three things must happen.</p>
<p>First, the White House must stop challenging the professionalism of intelligence officers. Morale matters. While much of the CIA’s mission is defined by world events, it also tries to foresee and support the priorities of the president. If it’s not able or motivated to do this, America is more likely to blunder into foreign mistakes, including war.</p>
<p>Second, the congressional oversight committees must <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/08/us/politics/house-intelligence-committee-russia-nunes.html">stop bickering</a> and return to the bipartisan cooperation that was the norm for most of their 40-year history. This will be hard – these are not bipartisan times. But without effective oversight, the intelligence community can become either irrelevant or irresponsible in how it conducts its duties.</p>
<p>Finally, the CIA director cannot simply tell the president what he wants to hear. This is where Haspel’s career is important. After serving in several senior positions at the agency, her commitment to the CIA culture of speaking truth to power will be critical to her success. And if she and the CIA don’t have the respect and trust of the people making life-or-death decisions about national security, America – and the world – will face an even more uncertain future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/93350/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Brent Durbin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>A new head could help repair the president’s relationship with the spy agency, but only if leaders stop playing politics with intelligence.Brent Durbin, Associate Professor of Government, Smith CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/933452018-03-15T01:58:03Z2018-03-15T01:58:03ZPompeo’s confirmation will make Mideast war more likely<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/210408/original/file-20180314-113462-1yn8wop.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The newly nominated secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, is a foreign policy hawk who opposes the Iran nuclear deal. Scrapping it could unleash a chain reaction of violence across the Middle East.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The United States Senate has confirmed CIA director Mike Pompeo, the <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/with-mike-pompeo-at-the-state-department-are-the-uber-hawks-winning">hawkish former Kansas congressman</a>, as <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/26/us/politics/mike-pompeo-secretary-of-state.html">secretary of State</a>. He replaces Rex Tillerson, who was <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/13/politics/rex-tillerson-secretary-of-state/index.html">unceremoniously fired via Twitter</a> on March 13. </p>
<p>As a former Middle East analyst at the State Department, I believe that Pompeo’s new role as America’s top diplomat will have dramatic foreign policy implications in the Mideast region.</p>
<p>In 2015, Pompeo voted against a deal that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2015/07/15/transcript-obamas-news-conference-on-the-iran-nuclear-deal/">the Obama administration negotiated</a> to remove some international economic sanctions on Iran. In exchange, Iran would significantly scale back its nuclear program and submit to intrusive international inspections. </p>
<p>Pompeo’s tenure will endanger the Iran nuclear deal. As a congressman, Pompeo opposed the agreement as “<a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/with-mike-pompeo-at-the-state-department-are-the-uber-hawks-winning">unconscionable</a>.” After Trump’s election, he stated that he was looking forward to “rolling it back.” </p>
<p>During his confirmation hearing, Pompeo moderated his tune, promising he would seek to save the deal. Trump has also recently signaled he may be more open to salvaging it as well. Pompeo – with whom, Trump reports, he has <a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/mar/13/pompeo-trump-developed-chemistry-daily-briefings/">very good chemistry</a> – is also on record saying that Iran is “<a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/13/mike-pompeo-on-national-security-issues.html">intent on destroying America</a>.” </p>
<p>And if Trump scraps it, the whole Middle East could erupt in conflict.</p>
<h2>Iran deal in danger</h2>
<p>Pompeo was tapped to replace Tillerson as secretary of state for reasons both personal and political. </p>
<p>The president reportedly <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/03/13/opinions/trump-flex-muscle-instinct-tillerson-borger/index.html">found Tillerson arrogant</a> and disrespectful. </p>
<p>Tillerson earned Trump’s ire by <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/trump-and-tillersons-biggest-policy-disagreements">disagreeing with him</a> on many substantive policy matters, including the president’s decisions to withdraw from the Paris climate accord, recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and cozy up to Russia. </p>
<p>Perhaps most importantly, though, Tillerson defied Trump on Iran. Trump has been highly critical of the international nuclear agreement <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/13/us/politics/trump-iran-nuclear-deal.html">since his 2016 presidential campaign</a>, calling it “<a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-trump-iran/trump-election-puts-iran-nuclear-deal-on-shaky-ground-idUSKBN13427E">the worst deal ever negotiated</a>.” </p>
<p>He <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/07/19/the-u-s-and-iran-are-heading-toward-crisis/?utm_term=.15bdaae682e1">wanted to scuttle it</a> when it came up for recertification in July 2017, but his secretary of state advised against it on both diplomatic and security grounds. </p>
<p>Tillerson was strongly critical of Iran, condemning <a href="https://www.state.gov/secretary/remarks/2018/01/277493.htm">its regional aggression and its meddling in the Syrian civil war</a>. But I believe he understood, as <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/10/nuclear-iran-deal-trump-jcpoa/542457/">many other policy analysts did</a>, that backing out of the nuclear deal would destabilize the Middle East – and potentially put the world at risk – because Iran would likely react by restarting its nuclear program. </p>
<p>Tillerson, a former international business executive, was also more sensitive to the opinion of European allies than his boss. Rather than <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-5496969/Tillerson-sacking-spells-doom-Iran-nuclear-deal.html">sour</a> relations with the U.K., France, Germany and other key partners by terminating an agreement that they helped negotiate, he worked with the Europeans to come up with a compromise that Trump might find tolerable.</p>
<p>Secretary of Defense James Mattis agreed with Tillerson on Iran. The two of them periodically lobbied the president <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/despite-threats-trump-to-extend-sanctions-relief-for-iran-sources/">not to scrap the deal</a>, and their influence got the agreement recertified in July 2017.</p>
<p>But Trump <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2017/07/19/the-u-s-and-iran-are-heading-toward-crisis/?utm_term=.15bdaae682e1">resented being pressured</a>. Remember, this is a president who has openly stated that <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/11/03/561797675/im-the-only-one-that-matters-trump-says-of-state-dept-job-vacancies">only his views matter when it comes to foreign policy</a>. </p>
<p>Tillerson disagreed. As he said in his <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/03/full-text-rex-tillersons-remarks-after-his-firing/555506/">somber March 13 goodbye speech</a>, he believed his job as secretary of state was to serve the nation and defend the U.S. Constitution. </p>
<p>To Trump, Tillerson’s <a href="http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/tillerson-pompeo-2032236124">stance on Iran</a> wasn’t just a difference of opinion – it was, perhaps, an act of disloyalty.</p>
<h2>Pompeo’s dangerous instincts</h2>
<p>In October 2017, Trump finally decertified the Iran deal, which effectively opened the door for the U.S. Congress to reimpose sanctions. In his January 2018 State of the Union address, <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefings-statements/president-donald-j-trumps-state-union-address">he was more direct, calling on</a> lawmakers to “address the fundamental flaws in the terrible Iran nuclear deal.”</p>
<p>The newly nominated secretary of state shares the president’s dim view. </p>
<p>Congressional aides who’ve worked with him say that <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/03/mike-pompeo-could-be-a-successful-secretary-of-state-because-trump-trusts-him.html">Pompeo is a smart guy</a>, level-headed and reasonable. But if he eggs on Trump’s most belligerent instincts, I believe the Iran deal won’t last the year.</p>
<h2>Destabilizing the Mideast</h2>
<p>This could unleash a dangerous chain of events in the volatile Middle East. </p>
<p>If the U.S. reimposes sanctions on Iran, hard-liners there – who have always opposed the nuclear deal – would likely <a href="http://www.mei.edu/content/io/hardliners-accuse-eu-betraying-iran-nuclear-deal">pressure</a> Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to retaliate by restarting the country’s uranium enrichment program.</p>
<p>I believe Israel would then feel justified in taking military action against Iran, which has been threatening its national security for decades. In doing so, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would have the behind-the-scenes backing of <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-42008809">Saudia Arabia, a regional power and longtime rival of Iran</a>, and possibly other states with a Sunni Muslim majority. </p>
<p>Iran is governed by conservative Shiite Muslim clerics. Sunni-majority countries like Saudi Arabia dislike Iran’s policy of <a href="http://carnegieendowment.org/2016/11/30/sectarian-dilemmas-in-iranian-foreign-policy-when-strategy-and-identity-politics-collide-pub-66288">financing violent Shiite militias</a> to push its sectarian agenda in Arab states with significant, and sometimes restive, Shiite populations. </p>
<p>Israel and Saudi Arabia <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/04/saudi-arabia-israel-oppose-iran-nuclear-deal-150401061906177.html">never supported the Iran nuclear deal</a>. They feared that lifting sanctions on Iran would merely give Tehran more resources to foment strife in the Arab world. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/An-Israel-Hezbollah-war-could-draw-in-Iran-US-intelligence-warns-545052">Analysts agree</a> that should some Sunni Arab countries team up with Israel against Iran, Iran would not limit itself to responding with missiles. It could also persuade its well-armed allies like <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/27/world/middleeast/hezbollah-iran-syria-israel-lebanon.html">Hezbollah</a> and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad to launch <a href="https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/241741">rocket attacks</a> on Israel, too.</p>
<p>I doubt Mideast war is the outcome Pompeo and Trump would seek by ending the Iran deal, but it may be just the disaster they create.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/93345/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gregory Aftandilian is a non-resident Fellow at the Arab Center, in Washington, D.C.</span></em></p>Trump’s pick to lead the State Department believes Iran is ‘intent on destroying America.’ But ending the Iran nuclear deal could unleash a violent chain reaction, a Mideast scholar says.Gregory Aftandilian, Lecturer, Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/747392017-04-04T00:45:08Z2017-04-04T00:45:08ZHow Ayn Rand’s ‘elitism’ lives on in the Trump administration<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163680/original/image-20170403-21966-1htznjn.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/perspective/481293482/in/photolist-JwKMu-87NNJY-5ToRGh-d2Km-dYfsLP-9i65p1-awi32Z-33n1-qDJMhf-cQr1zL-cRKrr3-9udLYw-9uanSc-fJNyMY-4f5ndt-ej2RKo-6kxddV-6wZ2cQ-bX3PQ6-cRJUtJ-9TFPqQ-dVCDt8-cz2LHq-4MxMwY-6cL529-5ZAUwn-v8k1A-SdLY8z-52JCH5-ej2XW3-5ghwDp-5ghcTv-ej2BWA-cTWSxy-eiVUHP-fvEQjw-eaB6Uy-fvEPX1-eiW2NT-4zxmoy-ej2Rro-7rZRD-5ghJBR-7bAZzJ-5gmxoE-5gnfiY-5gmzBo-JQ9ww-bBkuwZ-2mHuTc">Elvert Barnes</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Trump’s secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, has <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2016/12/13/daily-202-ayn-rand-acolyte-donald-trump-stacks-his-cabinet-with-fellow-objectivists/584f5cdfe9b69b36fcfeaf3b/?utm_term=.7bc706cd74aa">said</a> Ayn Rand’s novel “Atlas Shrugged” is his favorite book. Mike Pompeo, head of the CIA, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2016/12/13/daily-202-ayn-rand-acolyte-donald-trump-stacks-his-cabinet-with-fellow-objectivists/584f5cdfe9b69b36fcfeaf3b/?utm_term=.7bc706cd74aa">cited</a> Rand as a major inspiration. Before he withdrew his nomination, Trump’s pick to head the Labor Department, Andrew Puzder, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2016/12/13/daily-202-ayn-rand-acolyte-donald-trump-stacks-his-cabinet-with-fellow-objectivists/584f5cdfe9b69b36fcfeaf3b/?utm_term=.7bc706cd74aa">revealed</a> that he devotes much free time to reading Rand.</p>
<p>Such is the case with many other Trump advisers and allies: The Republican leader of the House of Representatives, Paul Ryan, famously <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/07/7-ways-paul-ryan-revealed-his-love-for-ayn-rand.html">made</a> his staff members read Ayn Rand. Trump himself has said that <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2016/12/13/daily-202-ayn-rand-acolyte-donald-trump-stacks-his-cabinet-with-fellow-objectivists/584f5cdfe9b69b36fcfeaf3b/?utm_term=.2c86b5d9fc9e">he’s a “fan” of Rand</a> and “identifies” with Howard Roark, the protagonist of Rand’s novel, “The Fountainhead,” “an architect who dynamites a housing project he designed because the builders did not precisely follow his blueprints.”</p>
<p>As a philosopher, I have often wondered at the remarkable endurance and popularity of Ayn Rand’s influence on American politics. Even by earlier standards, however, Rand’s dominance over the current administration looks especially strong.</p>
<h2>What’s in common with Ayn Rand?</h2>
<p>Recently, historian and Rand expert <a href="https://history.stanford.edu/people/jennifer-burns">Jennifer Burns</a> wrote how Rand’s sway over the Republican Party is <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/03/03/ayn-rand-is-dead-liberals-are-going-to-miss-her/?utm_term=.3753ff7d205c">diminishing</a>. Burns says the promises of government largesse and economic nationalism under Trump would repel Rand. </p>
<p>That was before the president unveiled his proposed federal budget that <a href="http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/ct-trump-budget-20170315-story.html">greatly slashes</a> nonmilitary government spending – and before Paul Ryan’s Obamacare reform, which promised to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/mar/13/budget-office-republican-healthcare-coverage-deficit-costs">strip health coverage</a> from 24 million low-income Americans and grant the rich a generous tax cut instead. Now, Trump looks to be zeroing in on a significant tax cut for the rich and corporations. </p>
<p>These all sound like measures Rand would enthusiastically support, in so far as they assist the capitalists and so-called job creators, instead of the poor. </p>
<p>Though the Trump administration looks quite steeped in Rand’s thought, there is one curious discrepancy. Ayn Rand exudes a robust elitism, unlike any I have observed elsewhere in the tomes of political philosophy. But this runs counter to the narrative of the Trump phenomenon: <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/445255/thoughts-about-spinning-our-president">Central</a> to the Trump’s ascendancy is a rejection of elites reigning from urban centers and the coasts, overrepresented at universities and in Hollywood, apparently.</p>
<p>Liberals despair over the fact that they are branded elitists, while, as former television host Jon Stewart <a href="http://www.rawstory.com/2016/07/jon-stewart-shreds-gop-hypocrites-who-overlook-trumps-flaws-i-see-you-and-i-see-your-bullsht/">put</a> it, Republicans backed a man who takes every chance to tout his superiority, and lords over creation from a gilded penthouse apartment, in a skyscraper that bears his own name.</p>
<p>Clearly, liberals lost this rhetorical battle.</p>
<h2>What is Ayn Rand’s philosophy?</h2>
<p>How shall we make sense of the gross elitism at the heart of the Trump administration, embodied in its devotion to Ayn Rand – elitism that its supporters overlook or ignore, and happily ascribe to the left instead?</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163685/original/image-20170403-21976-1a3qgo1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163685/original/image-20170403-21976-1a3qgo1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163685/original/image-20170403-21976-1a3qgo1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163685/original/image-20170403-21976-1a3qgo1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=470&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163685/original/image-20170403-21976-1a3qgo1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=590&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163685/original/image-20170403-21976-1a3qgo1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=590&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163685/original/image-20170403-21976-1a3qgo1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=590&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">In this 1962 file photo Ayn Rand, Russian-born American novelist, is photographed in New York with Grand Central Terminal in the background.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Ayn Rand’s philosophy is quite straightforward. Rand sees the world divided into “makers” and “takers.” But, in her view, the real makers are a select few – a real elite, on whom we would do well to rely, and for whom we should clear the way, by reducing or removing taxes and government regulations, among other things.</p>
<p>Rand’s thought is intellectually digestible, unnuanced, easily translated into policy approaches and statements.</p>
<p>Small government is in order because it lets the great people soar to great heights, and they will drag the rest with them. Rand <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=eWZbq29waP8C&pg=PT23&lpg=PT23&dq=the+exceptional+men,+the+innovators,+the+intellectual+giants,+are+not+held+down+by+the+majority.+In+fact,+it+is+the+members+of+this+exceptional+minority+who+lift+the+whole+of+a+fre">says</a> we must ensure that “the exceptional men, the innovators, the intellectual giants, are not held down by the majority. In fact, it is the members of this exceptional minority who lift the whole of a free society to the level of their own achievements, while rising further and ever further.”</p>
<p>Mitt Romney <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2013/03/04/why-mitt-romneys-47-percent-comment-was-so-bad/?utm_term=.feb0071af4be">captured</a> Rand’s philosophy well during the 2012 campaign when he spoke of the 47 percent of Americans who do not work, vote Democrat and are happy to be supported by hardworking, conservative Americans.</p>
<h2>No sympathy for the poor</h2>
<p>In laying out her dualistic vision of society, divided into good and evil, Rand’s language is often starker and harsher. In her 1957 novel, “Atlas Shrugged,” she <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=bVyCd7da8OcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=atlas+shrugged&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi-j46L6O_SAhUIbiYKHaNtBkAQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=brains&f=false">says</a>, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The man at the top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most to all those below him, but gets nothing except his material payment, receiving no intellectual bonus from others to add to the value of his time. The man at the bottom who, left to himself, would starve in his hopeless ineptitude, contributes nothing to those above him, but receives the bonus of all their brains.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Rand’s is the opposite of a charitable view of humankind, and can, in fact, be quite cruel. Consider her attack on Pope Paul VI, who, in his 1967 encyclical <a href="http://w2.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-vi_enc_26031967_populorum.html">Progressio Populorum</a>, argued that the West has a duty to help developing nations, and called for its sympathy for the global poor.</p>
<p>Rand was appalled; instead of feeling sympathy for the poor, she <a href="http://en.liberpedia.org/Requiem_for_Man">says</a> </p>
<blockquote>
<p>“When [Western Man] discovered entire populations rotting alive in such conditions [in the developing world], is he not to acknowledge, with a burning stab of pride – or pride and gratitude – the achievements of his nation and his culture, of the men who created them and left him a nobler heritage to carry forward?”</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Telling it like it is</h2>
<p>Why doesn’t Rand’s elitism turn off Republican voters? – or turn them against their leaders who, apparently, ought to disdain lower and middle class folk? If anyone – like Trump – identifies with Rand’s protagonists, they must think themselves truly excellent, while the muddling masses, they are beyond hope. </p>
<p>Why hasn’t news of this disdain then trickled down to the voters yet?</p>
<p>The neoconservatives, who held sway under President George W. Bush, were also quite elitist, but figured out how to speak to the Republican base, in their language. Bush himself, despite his Andover-Yale upbringing, was <a href="http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/opinion/columnist/benedetto/2004-09-17-benedetto_x.htm">lauded</a> as “someone you could have a beer with.”</p>
<p>Trump has succeeded even better in this respect – he famously “tells it like it is,” his supporters like to <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/halim-shebaya/trump-tells-it-like-it-is_b_9836974.html">say</a>. Of course, as judged by fact-checkers, Trump’s relationship to the truth is embattled and tenuous; what his supporters seem to appreciate, rather, is his willingness to voice their suspicions and prejudices without worrying about recriminations of critics. Trump says things people are reluctant or shy to voice loudly – if at all.</p>
<h2>Building one’s fortune</h2>
<p>This gets us closer to what’s going on. Rand is decidedly cynical about the said masses: There is little point in preaching to them; they won’t change or improve, at least of their own accord; nor will they offer assistance to the capitalists. The masses just need to stay out of the way. </p>
<p>The principal virtue of a free market, Rand <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=bVyCd7da8OcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=atlas+shrugged&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi-j46L6O_SAhUIbiYKHaNtBkAQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=brains&f=false">explains</a>, is “that the exceptional men, the innovators, the intellectual giants, are not held down by the majority. In fact, it is the members of this exceptional minority who lift the whole of a free society to the level of their own achievements…” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163677/original/image-20170403-21960-ll8pim.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/163677/original/image-20170403-21960-ll8pim.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163677/original/image-20170403-21960-ll8pim.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163677/original/image-20170403-21960-ll8pim.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163677/original/image-20170403-21960-ll8pim.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163677/original/image-20170403-21960-ll8pim.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/163677/original/image-20170403-21960-ll8pim.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Ayn Rand opposed welfare for the poor.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/rationalthought/3447039194/in/photolist-6fAYEf-2LHfox-q2pXTF-gjjhVJ-bWWqA2-nRiJhR-5mVuLy-5XzZGN-nNgues-9uc559-9hctvL-vEQuL-7XApuC-cmAR6m-auGb3Q-aw56pr-9u8hac-q1RAFX-5VoL8M-9uauU6-7NfTkX-dX6zSh-8kjZ2o-87pbGm-6GjTr5-iGKia-fn4ft-6tn5y1-9u9Djg-5gn7jS-9hC4Li-6uZdMo-azhFHE-7AZbBp-dhh6C5-dfrMXk-aE7n5T-2n1eo-99TH2K-gZkBS-9amayy-5xdaz6-W2J7F-4pezyh-dhfTxr-qXDjr8-8FL8C3-rU6n6h-7vWBwJ-qnWmD">Kevin Copps</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/">CC BY-ND</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But they don’t lift the masses willingly or easily, she <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=bVyCd7da8OcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=atlas+shrugged&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi-j46L6O_SAhUIbiYKHaNtBkAQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=brains&f=false">says</a>: “While the majority have barely assimilated the value of the automobile, the creative minority introduces the airplane. The majority learn by demonstration, the minority are free to demonstrate.”</p>
<p>Like Rand, her followers – who populate the Trump administration – are largely indifferent to the progress of the masses. They will let people be. Rand believes, quite simply, most people are hapless on their own, and we simply cannot expect much of them. There are only a few on whom we should pin our hopes; the rest are simply irrelevant. Which is why she <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=eWZbq29waP8C&pg=PT56&lpg=PT56&dq=while+those+who+produce+and+provided+it+had+not+The+welfare+and+rights+of+the+producers+were+not+regarded+as+worthy+of+consideration+or+recognition.+This+is+the+most+damning+indictment+of+the+present+state+of+our+culture&source=bl&ots=NSWzyE6H5d&sig=TsH0VITbSHkdNfJHeBnflN0_bBY&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwij2PXcyoHTAhXD5CYKHXxSBWoQ6AEIHDAA#v=onepage&q=damning&f=false">complains</a> about our tendency to give welfare to the needy. She says,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>“The welfare and rights of the producers were not regarded as worthy of consideration or recognition. This is the most damning indictment of the present state of our culture.”</p>
</blockquote>
<p>So, why do Republicans get away with eluding the title of elitist – despite their allegiance to Rand – while Democrats are stuck with this title?</p>
<p>I think part of the reason is that Democrats, among other things, are moralistic.
They are more <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/nov/20/human-nature-politics-left-right">optimistic</a> about human nature – they are more optimistic about the capacity of humans to progress morally and live in harmony.</p>
<p>Thus, liberals judge: They call out our racism, our sexism, our xenophobia. They make people <a href="http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/01/political_correctness_as_a_tool_of_the_liberal_inquisition.html">feel bad</a> for harboring such prejudices, wittingly or not, and they warn us away from potentially offensive language, and phrases.</p>
<p>Many conservative opponents scorn liberals for their ill-founded naïve optimism. For in Rand’s world there is no hope for the vast majority of mankind. She <a href="http://en.liberpedia.org/Requiem_for_Man">heaps scorn</a> on the poor billions, whom “civilized men” are prodded to help.</p>
<p>The best they can hope for is that they might be lucky enough to enjoy the riches produced by the real innovators, which might eventually trickle down to them in their misery. </p>
<p>To the extent that Trump and his colleagues embrace Rand’s thought, they must share or approach some of her cynicism.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/74739/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Firmin DeBrabander does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Despite promises to rural working class, a philosopher argues, the Republican Party is still under the influence of the elitism of novelist Ayn Rand.Firmin DeBrabander, Professor of Philosophy, Maryland Institute College of ArtLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.