Diplomacy & Crisis News

As the country prepares for the first post-Mugabe elections, the United States and its allies must use all the leverage they have to demand genuine reform.

I first visited South Africa in 2008, when Thabo Mbeki was being outmaneuvered by Jacob Zuma, who forced out Mbeki and ascended to the presidency in spite of sexual assault and corruption charges. No one then understood how catastrophic Zuma’s eight years in power would be—but a report the other weekend demonstrates how he undermined critical democratic institutions, behaved as though he is not beholden to the law, and used the state to employ a Western accounting firm to create and spread fake news before the term was en vogue here. As President Trump forsakes allies and negotiates with North Korea, it is critical that we do not miss the forest for the trees, lest we find ourselves ten years from now, like many South Africans today, wondering why we did not stop him sooner.

Jacob Zuma, aided by KPMG, accused South Africa’s tax authority of politically motivated investigations and illegal spying as a precursor to asserting control of the tax authority and later the treasury. He waged a war on a government department to protect himself, his family, and his cronies and to hide illegal activity. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan briefly confirmed this week that the FBI did not illegally or inappropriately spy on the Trump campaign, only to talk back his statement under political pressure, as Trump continues to undermine the entirety of the FBI. Donald Trump, aided and abetted by the Republican Party, has led a public war against Mueller, so it should come as no surprise public approval of Mueller’s non-partisan investigation is at an all-time low, along partisan lines. Mueller is successfully identifying and prosecuting criminal acts; Trump is working to delegitimize our entire justice system in service of his personal interests.

Under South Africa’s post-Apartheid government, the number of people paying taxes quadrupled, surpassing even the United States for the rate of collection. The South African public did not know Zuma himself refused to pay taxes, but they resented endemic corruption while watching Zuma incapacitate the tax authority, driving down collection rates. Not only has Trump lauded tax avoidance like Zuma, but also the unfettered indulgences of Cabinet members Ben Carson and Scott Pruitt support the false narrative that such corruption is politics-as-usual, fostering cynicism about governance while the politically connected abuse power for personal gain. Endemic corruption of this nature undermines democracy at its core.

In perhaps the darkest of parallels, Zuma once mused to his tax commissioner, “Why must I go and answer questions in Parliament? Putin doesn’t go to Parliament to answer questions.” Trump’s admiration for Putin and Russia are well documented, as is his legal team’s argument for not answering the questions of Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Trump and his team argue they are above the law, with self-pardon power and the authority to end any investigation at any time. Trevor Noah’s early segment on Trump becoming our first African dictator is more prescient now than when it aired in October 2015, with Trump’s total disregard for transparency and democracy.

My first night back in the United States after I returned from South Africa included the infamous debate in which Donald Trump implicitly referenced the size of his genitals. Yes, that happened. Yes, he is President. Here’s the thing: I’m still optimistic about South Africa and its new President, Cyril Ramaphosa. I think he may be able to right the ship. But initial optimism has given way to recognition of the depth of the hole created by Zuma’s corrupt presidency (the currency has dropped more than 30 percent since the initial bounce after Zuma’s ouster). The question, then, is how deep of a hole will we let Trump dig us? Congressional Republicans have not exercised oversight, Trump may succeed in undermining Mueller’s investigation, and the Trump family continues to profit on executive decisions. How deep will we let him dig this hole before we reclaim our identity as the leading democratic nation on the planet?

Steven Leach is a conflict and development expert who lived and worked in sub-Saharan Africa for five years; he is also a Security Fellow with Truman National Security Project. Views expressed are his own.

The post On South Africa appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

Jürgen Habermas joue un rôle considérable dans l'histoire de la philosophie européenne et dans la manière dont elle est aujourd'hui structurée. Né en 1929, il est indéniablement l'intellectuel allemand le plus écouté de sa génération, et sa trajectoire est indissociable de celle de l'Allemagne — fédérale (...) / Idées, Communication, Intellectuels, Social-démocratie, Démocratie, Allemagne - 2018/07

As the U.S. defense secretary drifts further from President Donald Trump’s inner circle, his mission gets clearer: preventing war with Tehran.

With so much political, social, and financial capital invested in its national squad, why can’t Turkey qualify for a World Cup?

Cette recension a été publiée dans le numéro d’été de Politique étrangère (n° 2/2018). Marie-Claire Considère-Charon propose une analyse de l’ouvrage de Tony Connelly, Brexit & Ireland: The Dangers, the Opportunities, and the Inside Story of the Irish Response (Penguin Ireland, 2017, 384 pages).

L’ouvrage de Tony Connelly, journaliste et reporter à la radio irlandaise RTE, retrace l’évolution du processus de négociation du Brexit au prisme des intérêts irlandais et de cette relation unique avec le Royaume-Uni initiée par le traité anglo-irlandais de 1921, mise à l’épreuve par les trois décennies des Troubles, renforcée par une adhésion conjointe à la Communauté européenne en 1973, et enfin apaisée depuis l’aboutissement du processus de paix en Irlande du Nord et l’accord du Vendredi saint de 1998.

L’auteur s’emploie à suivre l’actualité du Brexit au niveau des pourparlers officiels tout en réalisant un travail sur le terrain auprès de représentants irlandais et nord-irlandais de filières et de sociétés très exposées aux « dommages collatéraux ».

Le récit commence avec l’annonce faite en janvier 2013 par David Cameron d’un référendum sur un éventuel retrait britannique de l’UE, et couvre la première phase des négociations jusqu’à l’automne 2017. Les 16 courts chapitres nous livrent des analyses très fournies, étayées de nombreux exemples et anecdotes qui, au risque de rompre le fil de la narration, aident le lecteur à percevoir les répercussions du Brexit à de multiples niveaux (institutionnel, économique, social et juridique).

Chiffres à l’appui, Connelly montre combien les économies de l’Irlande et du Royaume-Uni sont devenues, ces dernières décennies, interdépendantes et complémentaires. Le Royaume-Uni est un partenaire vital pour l’Irlande en matière de débouchés pour ses exportations dans les secteurs de l’agro-alimentaire (fruits, légumes viandes et produits laitiers) et des services. Cette relation serait fort mise à mal par l’instauration de tarifs douaniers et d’une nouvelle réglementation britannique en matière de sécurité alimentaire.

La question ultra-sensible de la frontière irlandaise, qui conditionne la mise en place d’un accord définitif, a ici toute la place qu’elle mérite. L’UE a financé une multitude de projets transfrontaliers, qui ont favorisé de nouvelles relations intercommunautaires dans un climat de confiance. Le vote britannique, qui risque d’isoler l’Irlande du Nord de l’UE, a fait resurgir le spectre du retour d’une frontière physique entre les deux Irlande comme limite extérieure obligée, alors que la fluidité des échanges l’avait rendue quasiment inexistante depuis l’accord du Vendredi saint. Ce retour, qui entraverait considérablement les échanges entre la République et l’Irlande du Nord, risquerait fort de raviver les tensions intercommunautaires et de porter un coup fatal au processus de paix. On peut également s’interroger sur le maintien de la zone commune de voyage entre l’Irlande et le Royaume-Uni, mise en place en 1923 et renforcée par l’accord du Vendredi Saint, qui assure la libre-circulation des citoyens britanniques et irlandais.

La démarche de l’histoire immédiate, à la charnière entre passé et présent, constitue un défi particulièrement difficile à relever. Les Anglais aiment à dire que « le diable est dans le détail ». Si les difficultés et les blocages que traversent les négociateurs du retrait britannique le montrent à foison, il en va de même à la lecture de cet ouvrage touffu où l’auteur s’efforce de cerner une réalité mouvante dans toute sa multiplicité et sa complexité.

Marie-Claire Considère-Charon

S’abonner à Politique étrangère

Canadian officials can learn from both U.S. successes and U.S. mistakes as they try to design tax, regulatory, enforcement, and public health measures in order to reap the benefits of legal marijuana while managing the very real risks.

Generals of an army accused of genocide have started putting troops in the dock, and it’s not because they care about human rights.

China's hasty international investments are beginning to drag down its own economy.

Maduro’s autocratic regime is going after María Corina Machado because she is fearless and incorruptible. She needs Washington’s support.

Au cinéma, le spectateur contemporain est un homme ou une femme pressé. Il faut que l'action s'engage dès la première image du film, que les séquences s'enchaînent à la vitesse d'une mitrailleuse lourde, que les plans se succèdent au rythme du battement d'ailes d'un colibri. Le spectateur contemporain (...) / Audiovisuel, Cinéma, Médias, Culture, Crise des valeurs, Industrie culturelle, Idées, Idéologie, Marketing, Mutation - 2018/07

Big buyers of Iranian oil such as China are seen as unlikely to cut purchases to zero, but sanctions will still send crude prices higher.

Le « félin de poche » a connu un sort tout particulier parmi les animaux domestiques. Silencieux, nyctalope et grand prédateur, il fut sacralisé dans l'Égypte ancienne, puis dénoncé comme diabolique au temps de la chasse aux sorcières. Il est aujourd'hui une icône des réseaux sociaux. / Animal, (...) / Animal, Histoire, Société, Culture, Littérature - 2018/07

European officials worry that Trump could roil yet another international summit.

On ne peut compter sur rien ni personne, sauf sur l'administration. Elle est même capable de nous faire trépasser de manière officielle alors que l'on respire encore. Un déboire que l'auteur-narrateur a réellement subi, et qu'il va faire fructifier : « À l'époque où j'ai reçu la nouvelle de ma mort, je (...) / Brésil, Inégalités, Fiction, Société - 2018/07

Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen has reportedly expressed reservations about the family separation policy. (Photo: Department of Homeland Security)

This is the second of two parts.

The CHIP Model Applied to the Border

To understand the fate of children at the border, it may be necessary to examine what else was happening at the time. Trump’s campaign and presidency have focused on the issue of illegal immigration, in particular on what he sees as a need for a wall running the length of the Mexican border, but despite the unity of rhetoric his party is divided on the issue. Populist Republicans may worry about immigrants suppressing wages or may simply want to stop the flow of foreigners into the country. No doubt there are some who believe the specious arguments that a wall is required for national security (although few Republican national-security experts are among them). But other Republicans worry about the electoral implications of alienating the entire Hispanic population for a generation or more. Small-government Republicans don’t want to spend the money. Pro-business Republicans favor the availability of cheap labor and may foresee the danger of a shrinking working-age population as a constraint on future economic growth and tax revenues, problems that could be easily remedied with increased—not decreased—immigration. (Many of the latter prefer a “guest worker” program, or legalization without citizenship; in other words, temporary cheap labor that will never be in a position to demand higher wagers, climb the socio-economic ladder, or vote for Democrats.) These internal divisions have been significant. After a year and a half of unified Republican government and a host of unilateral executive actions, there has been no progress in Congress on the president’s top priority.

This has prompted Trump on occasion to try to forge a bipartisan compromise. This has involved proposals, for example, that couple money for the wall with renewal of DACA for people already in the country (but with restrictions on future immigration). But once again many Republicans don’t like making concessions to Democrats; concessions that increase the number of Democrats will often decrease the number of Republicans. Also, hard-line Republicans who are often Trump supporters lobby against such deals, which they view as an unprincipled sell-out. Republican leaders in the House, moreover, are generally reluctant to endorse deals that do not have the backing of a majority of their members. (After all, remaining a leader requires the support of a majority of your members.) Thus, the deals tend to fall apart, often revoked by the president who proposed them.

The fate of the latest legislative attempt in the House—involving a hard-line Republican bill and a so-called consensus bill that represents a compromise among some of the House Republican factions—is still unclear. Speaker Paul Ryan, who wanted to avoid a divisive vote on immigration, especially in an election year, allowed a vote on the two GOP bills solely as a way to avoid a vote on any proposal supported by Democrats. (Ryan’s agreement to hold the vote successfully cut off progress toward a “discharge petition” that was being pushed by Democrats and Republican moderates frustrated by the lack of action on immigration and that would have led to votes on four bills, including the two GOP bills. Discharge petitions, through which a majority of House members can force votes against the will of the leadership, are exceedingly rare since majority-party members rarely want to alienate the majority-party leaders.) This strategy, however, did not improve their chance of passage. When the hard-line bill was voted down (193-231) on June 21, the vote on the consensus bill, which also appeared to lack sufficient support, was postponed to the following week. Neither bill was ever expected to pass in the Senate, which had already rejected one similar to the consensus bill.

In the meantime, what did the administration do? It created a new crisis on the border by taking children away from their parents. The president was apparently willing to end it in return for concessions from the minority party—well, not for concessions exactly, since all-Republican bills were the only option, but for votes. While blaming his own policy on the Democrats, Trump suggested such a trade via Twitter: “Democrats can fix their forced family breakup at the Border by working with Republicans on new legislation, for a change!” and “The Democrats are forcing the breakup of families at the Border with their horrible and cruel legislative agenda. Any Immigration Bill MUST HAVE full funding for the Wall, end Catch & Release, Visa Lottery and Chain, and go to Merit Based Immigration.” Or, as Attorney General Sessions put it, “We do not want to separate parents from their children. You can be sure of that. If we build a wall, we pass some legislation, we close some loopholes, we won’t face these terrible choices.”

Strategy or Chaos?

Was this an actual strategy to create an artificial crisis in order to extract concessions for ending it? As is so often the case with Trump, it is hard to say. Many argue that this presidency is motivated more by spontaneous impulse than by planned intrigue, so perhaps we cannot exclude the possibility that the situation arose by chance—part of the ongoing flow of chaos that is the Trump administration—even if it does fit the CHIP model. Attorney General Sessions certainly appears to like the policy; he was nearly giddy while quoting a Bible verse in its defense. Presidential adviser (and former Sessions senatorial aide) Stephen Miller has always favored this approach as well. It seems unlikely that either of them would gladly give up Zero Tolerance as a bargaining chip. On the other hand, Secretary Nielsen has reportedly resisted the separation of families and at one point nearly resigned. Moreover, once it was initiated and became controversial, substantial groups, including Republican-leaning groups, denounced it, such as the Southern Baptist Convention, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable, a dozen GOP senators, all living former first ladies, and behind the scenes the president’s wife and daughter. These factors favor discarding the policy, especially if Trump can be made to look the hero for resolving the crisis he manufactured and if it can be used to elicit votes from Democrats for a Trump “win.” Regardless of whether the policy was originally put forward as a bargaining chip, it was used that way when its unpopularity became manifest.

Resolution: Chaos and Deceit

The model failed. The House Republicans were—as in the case of Obamacare repeal—hopelessly divided and in some cases more interested in proving their purist bona fides than in actually legislating. Having been burned before, the Democrats were not interested in helping Trump out of his dilemma. Their experience of negotiating with Trump, the self-styled master of the art of the deal, had shown it to be a frustrating and dangerous game. Trump makes little effort to understand the issues under discussion, regardless of the topic; he appears incapable of thinking beyond the short term or of foreseeing the potential consequences of his actions; he cannot be trusted to carry out a commitment when he does make one; and his general behavior is such that Democratic constituents will resent any effort to accommodate him, even if it is justifiable. Instead, some Democrats (and some Republicans) proposed narrow legislation that would order the separation of families to cease, but Democratic leaders simply pointed out that the president created this problem and could stop it at any moment he chose.

Consequently, after days of insisting that he was helpless to act without legislation, Trump signed an executive order on June 20 undoing the policy of family separation but not the Zero Tolerance policy. As with the original Zero Tolerance decision, the new order was issued without guidelines for the people assigned to carry it out, sowing chaos. The Justice Department took it to mean that families were to be detained together. The Department of Homeland Security announced a suspension of referrals for prosecution in the case of adults with children, but it was initially unclear whether this was the department’s interpretation of the new order or the result of a lack of capacity to handle more children. The Defense Department was ordered to provide 20,000 beds on military bases, but it was unclear whether these were intended for children or whole families. A court was asked to revise the Flores settlement so that children could be detained with their parents beyond 20 days, but even the secretary of homeland security acknowledged that this was unlikely. (It is still possible for Congress to change the rules regarding how long children can be detained, even if its recent record of achievement is not encouraging.) Thus, the policy of family separation could be renewed in as little as thee weeks. Finally, the order made no mention of reuniting families that were already separated. The Trump administration appears to be infinitely better at creating chaos than it is at fixing it.

Trump personally responded to the chaos by doubling down on his demonization of illegal immigrants. He already had a history of denouncing members of the murderous MS-13 gang as “animals,” then using that to justify the deportation of illegal immigrants in general. On June 22 he met at the White House with the relatives of people who had been killed by illegal aliens. He has subsequently called for their expulsion without due process. Yet, while criminal elements can be found in any population, immigrants are statistically less likely than native-born Americans to commit crimes, and areas with large immigrant populations are less likely to be crime-ridden. (Illegal immigrants are more likely to commit crimes than legal immigrants, but still less likely than native-born Americans.) According to a report commissioned by Trump, they even add more to government revenues than they cost. Moreover, in Fiscal Year 2017, MS-13 members constituted only 0.075 percent of immigrants detained (yes, that is 75 one-thousandths of 1 percent); inclusion of the rival Barrio 18 gang increased the share to 0.095 percent. In any event, ICE neither targets MS-13 members for deportation nor tracks how many it has deported.

Finally, it is worth mentioning that, for all the popular images of ever growing masses swarming across the Rio Grande, the number of people crossing the border each year is less than a third of what it was a decade ago. (The rate has tipped up in 2018 over 2017, but 2017 was the lowest since 1971.) Overall, the illegal-alien population in the United States peaked back in 2000 and then again in 2007, fell a bit after the crash of 2008, and then leveled off. As of 2014, about two-thirds of unauthorized immigrants had lived in the country for ten years or more and only about 14 percent had arrived in the past five years. The unauthorized Mexican population has actually declined as more leave than enter, although the number of Central Americans has increased. Over the long run, the Central Americans may well follow a similar pattern of decline. Thus, not only was the immediate crisis on the border artificially manufactured by the Trump administration, possibly in a failed attempt to get his way in Congress, but the larger issue of illegal immigration is largely based on greatly distorted facts concerning both the rate of entry and the criminality of the entrants. Yet we will be living with the consequences of Trump chaos for some time to come.

The post Children at the Border, Part 2: Failure, Chaos, and Deceit appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

As schools become targets, young Afghans are living and working on the streets — and the government isn’t doing much to protect them.

>> Retrouvez l’article dont est extraite cette citation : « L’Union européenne et la lutte contre le terrorisme », écrit par Séverine Wernert, membre du cabinet de Julian King, commissaire européen chargé de l’Union de la sécurité, dans le numéro d’été 2018 de Politique étrangère (n° 2/2018). < <

A successful assault on the Yemen's biggest port would change the course of the war, but it could come at a steep cost.

Global oil markets are controlled by Russia and Saudi Arabia — despite America’s shale boom.