Diplomacy & Crisis News

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.

Qui sont les intellectuels français ? Une figure rare et démographiquement menacée si l'on en croit l'édition 2002 du Dictionnaire des intellectuels français, de Jacques Julliard et Michel Winock (Seuil), qui n'en dénombrait que 140 encore en vie, avec une moyenne d'âge de 74 ans... Bien peu au (...) / France, Idées, Intellectuels, Libéralisme, Médias, Mouvement de contestation, Politique - 2006/05 Bulletin de santé

A temporary Taliban truce, despite the opportunity it presents, doesn’t mean peace is about to break out anytime soon.

But some analysts say it’s a small price to pay for the possibility of peace with North Korea.

Le contrat première embauche (CPE) n'est pas une foucade du premier ministre Dominique de Villepin et de son gouvernement. Avec, en apparence, les jeunes pour seule cible, il s'inscrit dans la droite ligne de la « stratégie de Lisbonne » de l'Union européenne, entérinée en mars 2000 par le sommet des (...) / Inégalités, Jeunes, Libéralisme, Protection sociale, Technologies de l'information, Travail - 2006/04 Bras de fer

As the United States retreats from the world, Moscow and Beijing seek to gut U.N. programs, cut staff.

 

In an exclusive interview, Iraqi lawyer Ammar Al Hamadani stated: “I love and support the State of Israel as well as the Jewish people across the world. I congratulate both the American and Israeli governments for transferring the US Embassy to Israel’s eternal capital city of Jerusalem. In addition, I ask for the establishment of diplomatic relations and economic ties between Iraq and Israel, which would initiate with the opening of an Israeli Embassy in Baghdad and an Iraqi Embassy in Jerusalem.”

This is not the first time that Al Hamadani spoke out in favor of the Jewish community. Last year, in an interview he gave to Israel Hayom, he proclaimed that the expulsion of Iraq’s Jews and the seizure of their property was “unconstitutional and inhumane,” stressing with sadness that the laws that prompted the Iraqi Jewish community into exile remain in force today “despite the political change that took place in Iraq in 2003 and the enactment of a new Iraqi Constitution in 2005 in which we had some hope for change for Iraqi Jews in a democratic, federal and multi-cultural Iraq.”

During the interview, Al Hamadani emphasized that it is unlawful to strip any Iraqi of their citizenship for any reason and it is the right of “any Iraqi who has lost his citizenship for either political, racist or sectarian reasons to request the restoration of citizenship.” However, Al Hamadani noted that while the Iraqi Constitution permitted the restoration of Iraqi citizenship for those who lost it for the above reasons, Iraqi Jews were excluded: “Iraqi Jews remain depraved of justice under the new Iraq in such a crude violation of the constitution.”

Today, Al Hamadani is working to defend the rights of Jews in Iraq and the greater Middle East. In an exclusive interview, he stated: “I will not withdraw or retract my defense for the Jewish people and Israel despite the threats to my life by the Iranian militias in Iraq. I defend the human rights of the religious minorities in Iraq. My work is motivated by humanity and professionalism.” The Jews of Iraq indeed have suffered greatly. Salima Shachouda was a member of Baghdad’s ancient Jewish community who recently passed away. She once told me in an exclusive interview about all of the suffering that she endured during the Farhud pogrom, which was one of the many massacres implemented against Jews in the Arab world in the period leading up to Israel’s Independence: “During the Farhud, they came and killed everyone, making mass graves. They were the size of my house.”

Iraqi Jewish women’s suffering was immense during the Farhud. They would cut open the stomachs of pregnant women and rape young girls en masse. She noted that if a Jewish woman left her home without wearing an abaya (Islamic face covering), the masses in Iraq at that time interpreted it as an invitation to rape her. According to Shachouda, the Iraqi Arabs committed many atrocities against the Jewish people during this period of time including cutting off the leg of a child and playing with the amputated leg.

For many Iraqi Jews, the horrors of the Farhud pogrom and other instances of persecution that they experienced in the period leading up to their expulsion from the country are quite livid. The Jewish refugees from Arabic speaking countries remember the atrocities that they experienced as if it was yesterday for to date throughout the Arab world, the Jewish people are deprived of their legal and historical rights. In 1945, around a million Jews lived in the Arab world. Some of these Jewish communities pre-dated the existence of Islam itself. Between 1948 and 1972, around 850,000 Jews were compelled to flee these countries due to the existence of anti-Jewish pogroms, massacres and state-orchestrated oppression. Some countries like Iraq and Egypt literally expelled their Jewish community. The Jews from Arab countries had their property confiscated by the government. These refugees and their descendants were never compensated for their suffering.

According to Kurdish Jewish dissident Sherzad Mamsani, to date, Iraqi Kurdistan is the only region of Iraq where Jews can reclaim their stolen assets and property: “In April 2015, the Kurdish Parliament passed a piece of legislation where all of the lands and assets taken and confiscated by the Iraqi government in the name of sectarianism, religious violence and domestic politics can be returned to their rightful owners. For the past 70 years, this piece of legislation is the first time that we see this much veracity and equality shown to our religion and cause.”

However, he noted that the Iraqi authorities do not share the same mindset as the Kurdistan Regional Government: “To this day, this kind of legislation and law doesn’t exist in neither the Iraqi legal framework nor in the mindset of the people who lead the Iraqi government. They are not united and they are fighting among themselves about the differences between Sunnis and Shias. Therefore, it is a far-fetched idea that they will accept other religions as well. They have occupied all of the assets and the lands belonging to Jews, Christians, moderate Sunnis, Yezidis, Kakaes, Faylis and Zoroastrians.”

Nevertheless, a growing number of non-Kurdish Iraqis are increasingly sharing views that differ from the ruling Iraqi government when it comes to the Jewish people and the State of Israel. Not too long ago, Miss Iraq Sarah Idan visited Israel, where she proclaimed to Israel’s Channel 2 News: “I don’t think Iraq and Israel are enemies. I think that maybe the governments are enemies with each other. With the people, there are a lot of Iraqi people that don’t have a problem with Israelis and the Jewish people.”

In addition, the Jerusalem Post reported that the Israeli Foreign Ministry recently launched an “Israel in Iraqi Dialect” Facebook page after numerous followers on the Israeli Foreign Ministry’s Arabic Facebook page requested a page that was more geared towards an Iraqi audience. According to the report, Yonatan Gonen, who heads the Foreign Ministry’s Arabic branch on digital diplomacy, stated: “We are seeing an openness and an understanding that Israel is an established fact” in countries like Iraq, Morocco and even some of the Persian Gulf countries.

According to Levana Zamir, the head of the Central Organization of Jews from Arab and Islamic countries, many Arabs today recognize that expelling the Jews from the Muslim world was a mistake: “In Egypt, Amin Al Mahdi, an Egyptian journalist, wrote a book titled The Other Opinion. The book was translated into Hebrew. He said that when Egypt is a democratic country, we will have peace. He cried in his book that Nasser expelled the Jews. He said only Egypt lost by it. Now after Al Mahdi, we have other people saying the same thing. Maged Farag said all of this on the Egyptian TV. He came to Israel for an art exhibition.”

Zamir stated that an Egyptian Jewish painter had an exhibition on what Egypt looked like based on her memories of her life in the country before the Jews were expelled. Farag originally invited her to Egypt to display her artwork in his country club but when Mubarak fell, his country club was bombed and the country was not safe so she had her exhibition in Jerusalem instead: “We were all there, all of the Jews from Egypt. We came with two buses. Magid Farad met my grandchildren and we continued by Facebook. Once he was back in Egypt, the TV wanted to interview him and asked him how he could do such a thing. They accused him of normalizing Israel. He said, look, we have normalization between the governments, so why not the people? It’s time to finish all of these wars. He is very courageous. We all applauded him.” According to Zamir, peace will only come to the Middle East when Arabs like Ammar Al Hamadani, Amin Al Mahdi and Magid Farad speak out against the injustices experienced by the Jews in the Arab world.

Zamir is a strong advocate of establishing an international fund to compensate both Jewish and Palestinian refugees who were compelled to flee their homes either during or following Israel’s War of Independence: “We have to do what Bill Clinton said. I have $21.5 billion from Europe, Japan, the US and Ehud Barak will add to this fund. We will give compensation but no right of return, not for us and not for them.” She noted that Jews cannot live in Arab countries today as churches and even mosques are getting blown up, so it is only fair that both sides receive compensation without a right of return.

Zamir believes that establishing a fund like this is a tool for peace for it will give the Jewish refugees from Arab countries the peace of mind that they deserve. At the same time, she believes that it can help foster a solution for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict by removing grievances held by both sides. Therefore, Zamir argues that such a fund should be established irrespective of the status of negotiations for it will remove a major stumbling block for a resolution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She thinks that this international fund should be pursued for it is our best hope of reducing tensions between both sides and encouraging a more peaceful tomorrow.

However, David Bedein, who heads the Center for Near East Policy Research and Israel Resource News Agency, stressed that a process needs to be introduced to ensure that the money that goes to help Palestinian refugees is used for its intended purposes given that the Palestinian Authority and its officials have pocketed foreign aid for themselves or used it to pay the salaries of terrorists imprisoned inside Israeli jails. He feels that it is critical that any money that is given as part of such an international fund is only used to compensate Jewish refugees from Arab countries and to help Palestinian refugees build homes, start businesses to finance themselves, educate their children, provide health care, etc.

However, while Zamir argues for an international fund to compensate refugees and Bedein warns about the importance of adding safeguards for such a fund, David Dangoor, the Vice President of the World Organization of Jews from Iraq, stressed in an article that he wrote in the Jerusalem Post that dialogue between Iraqis and Israelis as well as Jews and Muslims is badly needed for a brighter future: “Greater interaction can only be beneficial for greater harmony, understanding and acceptance in our region and beyond.”

The post Iraqi lawyer calls for establishment of diplomatic relations with Israel appeared first on Foreign Policy Blogs.

« On s'aimait pas alors tout nous était égal On nous aimait pas alors on a fait du mal. » Magyd Cherfi, chanteur, ex-leader du groupe Zebda. Pour qu'une poudrière explose, il faut à la fois de la poudre et un détonateur. Sans détonateur, la poudre n'exploserait pas. Sans poudre, le détonateur ferait (...) / Algérie, France, Colonialisme, Communisme, Extrême droite, Immigrés, Inégalités, Intégration sociale, Jeunes, Racisme, Travail, Violence, Banlieue - 2005/12 Dés-intégration

Cette recension a été publiée dans le numéro d’été de Politique étrangère (n° 2/2018). Sophie Boisseau du Rocher, chercheur associé au Centre Asie de l’Ifri, propose une analyse croisée des ouvrages de Valérie Niquet, La puissance chinoise en 100 questions (Tallandier, 2017, 272 pages), Philippe Delalande, La Chine de Xi Jinping. Ambitions et résistances (L’Harmattan, 2018, 200 pages) et Nadège Rolland, China’s Eurasian Century? Political and Strategic Implications of the Belt and Road Initiative (The National Bureau of Asian Research, 2017, 208 pages).

C’est un euphémisme : la Chine nous interroge… Parmi les multiples ouvrages consacrés à l’expression de sa puissance et aux enjeux qu’elle soulève, trois méritent l’attention.

Valérie Niquet propose une analyse des questions qu’elle estime les plus pertinentes pour comprendre cet « objet de fantasmes », « vital pour mieux saisir les évolutions du monde contemporain ».

Destiné à un public intéressé mais pas forcément spécialiste, son livre se découpe en grandes sections (histoire, culture et société, politique…) et en courts chapitres, qui répondent à des interrogations à la fois générales (« quelles sont les séquelles du maoïsme ? ») ou précises (« quel est le rôle de la Chine au G20 ? »). À chaque fois, le ton est simple, loin du jargon : Valérie Niquet a l’expérience du terrain qui autorise l’analyse critique et distante. Les réponses sont claires, les chiffres bien sélectionnés pour étayer le propos, même si l’on regrette le manque d’approfondissement des sujets les plus sensibles. En général, l’auteur porte un regard assez dubitatif, qui insiste beaucoup sur les faiblesses, voire les contradictions du régime mais qui, trop technique, ne développe peut-être pas assez les dynamiques qui se mettent durablement en place. L’ouvrage, qui sera très utile aux néophytes et aux étudiants, manque sans doute d’un appareil bibliographique qui aurait permis à ceux qui souhaitent « aller plus loin » de se mieux nourrir.

La Chine de Xi Jinping fait un point – lui aussi rapide – sur l’état de la Chine et les choix de son président. Si Philippe Delalande expose les grands défis (le parti, l’économie, les relations avec les États-Unis…) et les ambitions de Xi Jinping (reprendre en main le parti, accéder à une économie d’innovation, participer au règlement des grands problèmes du monde…), on peut regretter l’absence d’une logique d’ensemble, voire d’hypothèses fortes. Le livre comprend quelques analyses intéressantes (notamment sur la mer de Chine du Sud), mais il survole beaucoup de points ; cette faiblesse n’est en outre, pas palliée par un appareil bibliographique étayé. L’ouvrage, trop descriptif, manque de nervosité. Paru début 2018, il semble déjà daté quand il estime peu probable, car « fort complexe et hasardeuse », une réforme constitutionnelle qui permettrait à Xi Jinping de briguer un troisième mandat à la présidence de la République populaire de Chine. On sait aujourd’hui que cette réforme a été menée à bien. Enfin, l’auteur éveille souvent la curiosité, l’intérêt (« les trois défis de l’avenir »), laissant pourtant le lecteur sur sa faim.

Ce n’est pas le cas de l’ouvrage de Nadège Rolland, publié en 2017 par le National Bureau of Asian Research. Il s’agit ici d’une recherche approfondie sur les Routes de la soie (BRI), la fameuse initiative géopolitique globale de Xi Jinping. Pour ceux qui veulent avoir une vision précise et contextuelle de la BRI, ce livre est fort instructif, et s’appuie sur une bibliographie diversifiée et sérieuse. Non seulement cet ouvrage explique comment Xi Jinping a repris, en les assortissant des « caractéristiques chinoises », des initiatives antérieures lancées par les Japonais, les Sud-Coréens, les Américains ou certaines institutions internationales, mais il fait aussi un travail d’analyse passionnant sur les raisons qui ont conduit le régime chinois à adopter ce projet, tout en développant une prospective sur le monde transformé par ces Routes. Dans cet exercice, il nous permet d’aller au-delà du lyrisme des uns et du scepticisme des autres. En filigrane, cet ouvrage pose les bonnes questions sur une ascension chinoise qui, sous couvert d’une diplomatie harmonieuse et pacifique, bouleverse la géoéconomie et la géopolitique mondiale contemporaine, pour dessiner un XXIe siècle en accord avec « la grande renaissance de la nation chinoise ».

Sophie Boisseau du Rocher

S’abonner à Politique étrangère

The United States needs a new approach to trade policy, one that does more than seek to maximize overall economic growth, particularly when the benefits go disproportionately to global corporations and the wealthy.

Au Caire, le changement est dans l'air. Tout au long de l'année, des gens de divers horizons, de la gauche aux islamistes, ont manifesté contre la décision du président Hosni Moubarak, au pouvoir depuis un quart de siècle, de se présenter à nouveau à l'élection présidentielle. « Kefaya » (« assez ») : (...) / Égypte, Proche-Orient, Élections, Femmes, Islam, Religion - 2005/09 Souverainetés

Toutes les enquêtes le montrent, la lecture en général et celle d'ouvrages de fiction en particulier, concurrencées par les nouveaux loisirs électroniques, sont en net recul depuis vingt ans dans les grands pays occidentaux. A une exception près : les romans policiers, dont les ventes demeurent en (...) / Culture, Littérature, Livre, Société, Fiction - 2005/08 Le temps des utopistes

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has quoted a Bible verse, which merely says to obey the law, to justify taking children from their parents. (Photo: U.S. Department of Justice)

This is the first of two parts.

Has the Donald Trump administration instituted a practice of using children as hostages in Congressional negotiations? In April the administration introduced an extraordinary policy of separating children from their families in the case of people crossing the border illegally and, apparently, in the case of some legal entrants as well. The reasons given for doing this have varied. Attorney General Jeff Sessions told us it was a conscious policy intended to deter people from even trying to cross the border. Secretary of Homeland Security Kirstjen Nielsen asserted that there was no such policy at all. After its unpopularity was highlighted, Trump declared that it had been forced on the administration by a law passed by Democrats. The latter argument suggests that the Trump administration had given up on even trying to make sense. This was a matter of discretion. And, by the way, the administration had been talking about intentionally separating children from parents as a deterrent for over a year.

Technically, the new policy—known as Zero Tolerance—was to subject adults crossing the border illegally to criminal prosecution, of which family separation is merely a foreseeable—and intended—consequence. Presumably, this is why Nielsen believed she could argue that there was no new policy of family separation; criminal prosecution was the new policy. The new Zero Tolerance approach was consistent with the law, but it was in no sense required by the law. Crossing the border without authorization is a federal misdemeanor (only reentry after deportation being a felony). Previous administrations, including Trump’s until April, dealt with it in a civil procedure. The typical sentence in such cases is time served, a $10 fine, and immediate removal. Criminal prosecution requires detention in a federal facility. Under a 1997 consent decree known as the Flores settlement (from the case Flores v. Reno), children cannot be kept in detention for more than 20 days. That is the root of the dilemma.

Since the children cannot be detained for long, previous administrations have released detained families and told them to come back when their court hearing is scheduled, which can be after a considerable time. The Trump administration and its supporters refer to this as “catch and release” and assert that, once released, none of those people will ever come back. Having anticipated that outcome, they apparently conclude that it must be true. Otherwise, by “none” they must mean 99.8 percent. According to NPR’s John Burnett, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials recently told him that “99.8 percent of participants enrolled in alternatives to detention successfully make it to immigration court.” (Alternatives to detention may include electronic ankle monitors and periodic check-ins with ICE, telephone check-ins with electronic voice recognition, or a mobile phone app called SmartLINK.) This is the basis on which the Trump administration detains thousands of people, separates their children from them, transfers the children to the Department of Homeland Security Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), and then transports those children to other states with no provision made for how they are to be reunited (because the ORR system was not designed for small children, toddlers, and infants taken from their parents).

It should be noted that, despite the rhetoric, the administration was still not prosecuting all immigration violations. As former U.S. Attorney Barbara McQuade has pointed out, the Justice Department prosecutes roughly 70,000 cases a year, including about 20,000 immigration offenses. Prosecuting all immigration offenses would raise the total to 300,000, which would overwhelm the department’s capacity even if it were to drop all other cases. The rest were still being “caught and released.” Nevertheless, the number of people detained for prosecution has risen sharply.

Why was this happening? It may be that the administration created a needless crisis precisely so that it could offer to end it as a “concession” in return for concessions from Democrats in Congress.

The CHIP Model

A possible model for this can be seen in last year’s controversy regarding of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). CHIP was created in the 1990s by the Clinton administration and a Republican Congress. It has not been a center of controversy; unlike the Affordable Care Act, Republicans had not made an issue of repealing it. Nevertheless, it was allowed to expire at the end of September 2017. Little action would have been required to renew it, but Congress’s Republican leaders claimed they were simply too busy to attend to it. Many pundits and commentators were left confused.

To understand the fate of CHIP, it is necessary to examine what else was happening at that time. Congress had returned from its summer recess with a large agenda of unattended items that had to be addressed by September 30. These included funding for emergency hurricane relief, appropriations to keep the government running in the fiscal year starting October 1, and a vote to raise the debt ceiling. In particular, the need to raise the debt ceiling was—as repeatedly in the past—indisputably necessary but politically hazardous because many voters interpret such votes as fiscally irresponsible, a view that Republicans have done much to encourage. (In actuality, they merely authorize the government to make payments to which it has already obligated itself through the appropriations process.) Congressional leaders would need at least some Democratic votes on the appropriations and debt questions because some Republicans, as a matter of principle, refuse to vote for spending or for anything related to debt regardless of the circumstances.

Trump, in one of his more effective moments as president, bypassed the Republican leadership and made a deal directly with Democrats for votes to fund hurricane relief and to postpone the appropriations (by means of a continuing resolution) and debt ceiling decisions until December 8. Republican leaders were irate, although unwilling to contradict the president in public. Not only had they been left out of the negotiations, but the outcome would require them to take unpopular votes in September and then again in December. (They had wanted to push the debt ceiling decision, in particular, past the 2018 midterm elections.) Moreover, they would need to win Democratic votes again in December, and the Democrats would demand concessions. Compromising with Democrats—and giving them leverage over Republicans in decision making—is always unpopular these days, especially within the House Republican caucus.

At about the same time, perhaps to appease his Republican colleagues, Trump revoked President Barack Obama’s executive order authorizing Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), a program that allowed people who had been brought into the country illegally as children to remain and acquire work permits. DACA was popular among Democrats but not among Republicans. (Although Republicans insisted that Obama’s original DACA executive order was unconstitutional, it’s Trump’s order revoking it that has been held up by the courts.)

So, what did the Republicans in Congress do? They allowed CHIP to expire, creating a new, unrelated crisis in which concern, while widespread, was especially strong among Democratic constituents. A few months later, they magnanimously agreed to renew CHIP in a deal that effectively killed a Democratic demand to renew DACA in the form of legislation. It appears that the whole situation had been invented solely so it could be given away as a “concession” in return for real concessions from the other side.

Continued in Children at the Border, Part 2: Failure, Chaos, and Deceit

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