foreignpolicy--2020-06-17--America’s Security Needs a Cooperative Rebuilding of Rare-Earth Supply Chains

Underpinning our modern economy are fewer than two dozen naturally occurring elements found near the bottom of the periodic table that few Americans even know exist .
These rare-earth minerals , such as neodymium and dysprosium , power everything from computer hard drives to the laser-guided missiles used to defend our nation .
The United States has historically dominated their production , but we are now reliant on China , which has seized a near-monopoly over the mining and processing industry after decades of painstaking planning .
This represents a major threat to American national security and a major vulnerability @ @ @ @ @ @ @ recent report in Foreign Policy , writers Keith Johnson and Robbie Gramer discuss the strategic vulnerabilities this dependence creates and describe a challenging yet important truth : American legislators have plenty of good policy ideas , but we have not yet succeeded in solving this problem .
Plans are many , but we lack a policy consensus in Congress .
We ’ ve seen well-thought-out legislative proposals .
We ’ ve seen proposals to increase federal investment in supporting and advancing American technological prowess in this area .
We ’ ve seen proposals @ @ @ @ @ @ @ American capital investment in this sector .
We ’ ve seen proposals to expedite permitting and systematically assess our domestic rare-earth resources , and to pursue creative solutions to extract rare-earth elements from the waste products of other industries .
The proliferation of plans brings new ideas to the table that represent important steps on the path to a more enduring solution .
I am encouraged to see growing interest in reshoring and investing in supply chains critical to the national interest such as pharmaceutical production .
We need to apply the same @ @ @ @ @ @ @ also pleased to see proposals to use tax policy to promote the sector—a good idea that mirrors my own proposals on how to incentivize capital investment in American critical industries .
All of the ideas on the table are important parts of this conversation .
What is missing from this growing stable of ideas , however , is the ability of the American rare-earth sector to coordinate and cooperate .
The obstacle at hand isn ’ t a lack of natural resources ; America has plenty of promising sites to mine .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and production , Beijing has effectively undercut the market , precluding a domestic industry from forming here .
If the United States can not find a way to allow and encourage that cooperation , it will fail to address the fundamental reality that China now wields total control over the pricing of these elements and can take retaliatory action against individual American actors trying to rebuild this critical industry .
China ’ s state-backed ability to crash the market at any time takes this problem out of the realm of ordinary market dynamics @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Johnson and Gramer report that we can not offer “ a market solution for a non-market problem.
” The problem is made all the more challenging because the United States must rebuild more than one piece of its rare-earth domestic supply chain .
The United States will remain vulnerable if just one piece—from mining to refining , all the way to the production of parts needed by end users—is reliant on China .
In other words , Americans can and should reduce regulatory burdens to improve our ability to mine these elements @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dependent on China for refining them into useful form unless and until we stand up an American capacity to do so .
Unless the United States confronts these realities , all the good ideas in the world will not be enough to stand up its own complete and resilient supply chain .
China ’ s ability to manipulate pricing ensures that normal economic rules don ’ t apply and threatens Americans ’ ability to compete .
Instead , we need to ensure that the industry as a whole can work tougher to mitigate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ enterprise can be bullied by Beijing into submission .
This is the goal of my RE-Coop 21st Century Manufacturing Act , which would direct the U.S. government to establish a Rare Earth Refinery Cooperative by convening private actors responsible for coordinating the establishment of a fully integrated domestic value chain .
The cooperative would serve the national interest by providing for the needs of American defense , as well as any industry or investors involved .
Johnson and Gramer conclude their report by noting that some experts suggest more creative policy may be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dicey market economics of rare-earth mining and processing altogether ” and offers stronger government support to the industry as a whole .
This is correct .
While one expert quoted in the article implies that the way to do this may be by leaning toward the nationalization of our rare-earths supply chain , I don ’ t believe we need to imitate China in order to beat China .
A federally convened , privately funded cooperative exempt from antitrust law would allow the industry to coordinate—and mitigate its risk .
The proposal would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by providing them an opportunity to invest together in American refining capacity , undertake that processing in an economically efficient manner , and share profits .
Over time , this would allow the development of a robust , integrated rare-earth mineral supply chain through further investment , while providing a buffer against possible retaliation from China ’ s potential abuse of its current pricing power .
We need to invest in American companies operating in critical sectors .
We need to incentivize their productive activity .
We need to remove federal barriers that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ solution to the rare-earths problem must also approach the issue more broadly .
The present situation threatens our national security , limits our economic productivity , and robs Americans of opportunities for dignified work .
Change must be part of a greater effort to reintegrate critical supply chains , aimed at the ultimate goal of defending—and , in this case , standing up—industries vital to the national interest .
This will include everything from basic pharmaceuticals and medical equipment to the high-tech industries needed to win the future .
Policymakers ’ ability to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ resilience and , where needed , to promote American industry ’ s ability to cooperate as well will determine the success of America and our global order for decades to come .

Underpinning our modern economy are fewer than two dozen naturally occurring elements found near the bottom of the periodic table that few Americans even know exist. These rare-earth minerals, such as neodymium and dysprosium, power everything from computer hard drives to the laser-guided missiles used to defend our nation. The United States has historically dominated their production, but we are now reliant on China, which has seized a near-monopoly over the mining and processing industry after decades of painstaking planning. This represents a major threat to American national security and a major vulnerability for the American economy.
Underpinning our modern economy are fewer than two dozen naturally occurring elements found near the bottom of the periodic table that few Americans even know exist. These rare-earth minerals, such as neodymium and dysprosium, power everything from computer hard drives to the laser-guided missiles used to defend our nation. The United States has historically dominated their production, but we are now reliant on China, which has seized a near-monopoly over the mining and processing industry after decades of painstaking planning. This represents a major threat to American national security and a major vulnerability for the American economy.
In a recent report in Foreign Policy, writers Keith Johnson and Robbie Gramer discuss the strategic vulnerabilities this dependence creates and describe a challenging yet important truth: American legislators have plenty of good policy ideas, but we have not yet succeeded in solving this problem. Plans are many, but we lack a policy consensus in Congress.
We’ve seen well-thought-out legislative proposals. We’ve seen proposals to increase federal investment in supporting and advancing American technological prowess in this area. We’ve seen proposals to provide a tax environment that incentivizes American capital investment in this sector. We’ve seen proposals to expedite permitting and systematically assess our domestic rare-earth resources, and to pursue creative solutions to extract rare-earth elements from the waste products of other industries.
The proliferation of plans brings new ideas to the table that represent important steps on the path to a more enduring solution. I am encouraged to see growing interest in reshoring and investing in supply chains critical to the national interest such as pharmaceutical production. We need to apply the same thinking to rare-earth minerals. I am also pleased to see proposals to use tax policy to promote the sector—a good idea that mirrors my own proposals on how to incentivize capital investment in American critical industries. All of the ideas on the table are important parts of this conversation.
What is missing from this growing stable of ideas, however, is the ability of the American rare-earth sector to coordinate and cooperate. The obstacle at hand isn’t a lack of natural resources; America has plenty of promising sites to mine. But with expensive start-up costs associated with refinement and production, Beijing has effectively undercut the market, precluding a domestic industry from forming here. If the United States cannot find a way to allow and encourage that cooperation, it will fail to address the fundamental reality that China now wields total control over the pricing of these elements and can take retaliatory action against individual American actors trying to rebuild this critical industry. China’s state-backed ability to crash the market at any time takes this problem out of the realm of ordinary market dynamics. Quoting an expert in this field, Johnson and Gramer report that we cannot offer “a market solution for a non-market problem.”
Mining The Future: A special report by FP Analytics details China’s control and influence in critical metals and minerals vital to global high-tech industry. Read here.
The problem is made all the more challenging because the United States must rebuild more than one piece of its rare-earth domestic supply chain. The United States will remain vulnerable if just one piece—from mining to refining, all the way to the production of parts needed by end users—is reliant on China. In other words, Americans can and should reduce regulatory burdens to improve our ability to mine these elements, but we will still be completely dependent on China for refining them into useful form unless and until we stand up an American capacity to do so. Unless the United States confronts these realities, all the good ideas in the world will not be enough to stand up its own complete and resilient supply chain.
China’s ability to manipulate pricing ensures that normal economic rules don’t apply and threatens Americans’ ability to compete. Instead, we need to ensure that the industry as a whole can work tougher to mitigate this threat, so that no single enterprise can be bullied by Beijing into submission.
This is the goal of my RE-Coop 21st Century Manufacturing Act, which would direct the U.S. government to establish a Rare Earth Refinery Cooperative by convening private actors responsible for coordinating the establishment of a fully integrated domestic value chain. The cooperative would serve the national interest by providing for the needs of American defense, as well as any industry or investors involved.
Johnson and Gramer conclude their report by noting that some experts suggest more creative policy may be required, which innovates past “the dicey market economics of rare-earth mining and processing altogether” and offers stronger government support to the industry as a whole. This is correct. While one expert quoted in the article implies that the way to do this may be by leaning toward the nationalization of our rare-earths supply chain, I don’t believe we need to imitate China in order to beat China.
A federally convened, privately funded cooperative exempt from antitrust law would allow the industry to coordinate—and mitigate its risk.
The proposal would help American firms that need rare-earth minerals by providing them an opportunity to invest together in American refining capacity, undertake that processing in an economically efficient manner, and share profits. Over time, this would allow the development of a robust, integrated rare-earth mineral supply chain through further investment, while providing a buffer against possible retaliation from China’s potential abuse of its current pricing power.
We need to invest in American companies operating in critical sectors. We need to incentivize their productive activity. We need to remove federal barriers that stand in their way. But any solution to the rare-earths problem must also approach the issue more broadly. The present situation threatens our national security, limits our economic productivity, and robs Americans of opportunities for dignified work.
Change must be part of a greater effort to reintegrate critical supply chains, aimed at the ultimate goal of defending—and, in this case, standing up—industries vital to the national interest. This will include everything from basic pharmaceuticals and medical equipment to the high-tech industries needed to win the future. Policymakers’ ability to coalesce around a common goal of national resilience and, where needed, to promote American industry’s ability to cooperate as well will determine the success of America and our global order for decades to come.


foreignpolicy--2020-06-17--In Pandemic Policy Response, the Left Has a Leg Up

In Pandemic Policy Response , the Left Has a Leg Up A week before he was replaced by Keir Starmer as leader of the British Labour Party , Jeremy Corbyn gave an interview to the BBC .
The coronavirus pandemic has discredited a decade of Conservative Party-imposed austerity , Corbyn claimed , and vindicated the case for the kind of expansive public spending he had called for during the 2019 U.K. general election .
In an article for the Guardian published on May 2 , less than a month after suspending his campaign for the presidency , U.S. Sen. Bernie @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Jayapal , echoed Corbyn ’ s sentiments .
Corbyn ’ s crushing defeat at the hands of Prime Minister Boris Johnson in the general election on Dec. 12 , and Sanders ’ subsequent inability to consolidate control of the U.S. Democratic Party primary race , might have marked the end of the democratic socialist movements that have emerged in Britain and the United States over the past five years .
Instead , as the coronavirus crisis has deepened , forcing more and more people out of work and onto the benefits system , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ see radical political space opening up in front of them .
COVID-19 has uncovered wide-ranging problems in Britain and the United States ’ deregulated labor markets and underfunded public services , erstwhile supporters of Corbyn and Sanders argue , pushing voters in both countries to embrace a suite of transformative left-wing policies .
The question , however , is whether the transatlantic left , now sidelined inside the U.K. Labour Party and marginalized inside the U.S. Democratic Party , can seize on this renewed sense of urgency to achieve tangible political gains—or if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the electorate ’ s rising appetite for state intervention .
Leftists on both sides of the Atlantic see radical political space opening up in front of them .
Joe Guinan , vice president of the Democracy Collaborative , a progressive policy institute in Washington that has helped build ties between leftists in Britain and the United States , thinks the response of incumbent right-wing leaders to the coronavirus has legitimized concepts long advanced by the left .
The historic fiscal stimulus packages enacted by both Johnson and U.S. President Donald Trump show that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” into public life , he told me , placing questions of economic ownership and redistribution at the heart of policymaking in London and Washington .
According to Guinan , the pandemic has demonstrated the necessity of public utilities such as Britain ’ s National Health Service and highlighted the key role of government in sustaining living standards through a welfare state .
It has also revealed what does and does not constitute “ essential work ” : “ We can live without the hedge funds , but we still need our bins @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Guinan said .
James Meadway , a former advisor to Corbyn ’ s shadow chancellor of the exchequer , John McDonnell , agrees .
Not only has the private sector suddenly become dependent on the state for its survival—the U.K. government is currently paying the wages of 8.4 million private-sector staff as part of its coronavirus furlough scheme—but workers in traditionally low-paid occupations such as transport and distribution are beginning to realize how valuable they are , he told me .
In fact , since the coronavirus lockdown , which saw an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of power in the workplace may have started to tilt in favor of employees—a trend illustrated by the spate of recent Amazon warehouse strikes in northern Italy , Michigan , and New York .
The apparent surge in worker activism could help arrest or reverse decades of trade union decline , bolstering organized labor—a key political base for the left—and strengthening demands for higher pay and better workplace protections .
“ If you say people are essential , that makes them powerful , ” Meadway said .
There ’ s evidence that public @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is increasingly sympathetic to the left ’ s cause .
Research published by YouGov in April found that 72 percent of Britons supported the introduction of a jobs guarantee—which would see the government provide work for anyone who needed it—and 51 percent backed the idea of a universal basic income paid by the state , to every eligible citizen , without means testing or employment requirements .
Meanwhile , in the United States , one recent survey indicated that 40 percent of voters were more likely to support single-payer health care as a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ States ’ unique experience of the disease—it currently has by far the highest coronavirus-related death toll of any country—is driving popular demand for health care reform , the data company Morning Consult noted on April 1 : “ As the domestic COVID-19 caseload spirals and economists predict a historic surge in unemployment , millions of Americans are bracing for potentially untenable health care costs and lapses in coverage , reviving questions about the viability of a health system that relies on binding insurance to employment.
” By June , more than 40 million @ @ @ @ @ @ @ many as 43 million were estimated to be at risk of losing their private health care coverage .
An ideological shift toward redistribution and higher public spending has been acknowledged by some of the most staunchly pro-business sections of the Western media .
“ Radical reforms … will need to be put on the table .
Governments will have to accept a more active role in the economy .
They must see public services as investments rather than liabilities , ” an editorial in the Financial Times stated on April 3 , as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ clear .
“ Much of today ’ s new government activism will recede along with the virus , ” the journalists Gerald F. Seib and John McCormick wrote in the Wall Street Journal on April 27 .
“ Yet conversations with a broad cross-section of political figures suggest there is little reason to expect a return to what had been the status quo on federal spending , or the prevailing attitude toward the proper role of government.
” Left-wing activists have no shortage of policy initiatives to draw on as they seek to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Corbyn and Sanders into concrete legislative action .
Miriam Brett , the director of research and advocacy at the London-based think tank Common Wealth , argues that major corporations—airlines , for instance—that are struggling to stay afloat in the face of global recession should only receive government support if they agree to strict bailout conditions .
Brett proposes that dividends and share buybacks should be suspended , the rights of workers and trade unions significantly expanded , and net-zero carbon targets integrated into corporate investment plans .
The goal of these reforms would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more direct control over the firms they work for , and make the economy at large more resistant to future shocks—whether generated by climate change , financial mismanagement , or another international health emergency .
Even in the absence of Corbyn as a galvanizing figurehead for the British left , Brett hopes her proposals will work their way into the mainstream of U.K. politics as the outbreak unfolds .
“ How political leaders respond to this crisis will be a test of their willingness to hardwire sustainability into everyday life , ” she @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be paying off .
On May 15 , North Ayrshire Council , a municipal political authority on the west coast of Scotland , announced plans to adopt a “ radical ” economic response to COVID-19 based on ideas advanced by campaigners such as Guinan and Brett .
As part of a wider “ community wealth building ” strategy , financial support would be provided to firms that promote employee ownership and public land would be utilized to tackle climate change , said councilor Joe Cullinane , a Labour Party politician .
“ As @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to build an economy that is resilient and fair , ” he stated .
On the other side of the Atlantic , Sanders supporters have been pushing for a “ green stimulus ” bill ” —not dissimilar to the senator ’ s Green New Deal—that would graft far-reaching environmental measures onto the federal government ’ s economic recovery plan .
On March 22 , an open letter to Congress signed by hundreds of grassroots campaigners from across the county called for $ 2 trillion of investment in environmentally friendly infrastructure jobs .
By @ @ @ @ @ @ @ renewables , the letter argued , lawmakers could help speed up “ a just transition off fossil fuels ” and make U.S. society “ stronger and more resilient ” in the years to come .
The letter was strategic , said one of the letter ’ s co-authors , Thea Riofrancos—an attempt to influence the ongoing rounds of stimulus funding being negotiated in Congress and equip progressive legislators with the “ institutional capacity ” necessary to implement “ shovel-ready projects ” once the lockdown has been lifted .
“ We need to start @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pandemic is over , ” Riofrancos said .
There is a sense that former Vice President Joe Biden , the Democratic Party ’ s presumptive presidential nominee , is vulnerable to pressure from the left , particularly on green issues .
On April 25 , Biden appeared to endorse the idea of a green stimulus bill and attacked the Trump administration ’ s bailout program for prioritizing big business over ordinary Americans .
Federal funds should be used to support “ environmental things that create good-paying jobs , ” Biden told Politico , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the financial industry .
Three weeks later , Biden teamed up with Sanders to announce the creation of six Unity Task Forces designed—ostensibly—to shape Biden ’ s policy platform ahead of the November general election .
Rep. Jayapal , a key ally of Sanders in the House of Representatives and long-time advocate of “ Medicare for All , ” was named co-chair of the health care task force , while Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez , another high-profile Sanders supporter , and Varshini Prakash , co-founder of the left-wing Sunrise Movement , would both serve @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ I believe in our movement ’ s ability to begin winning a Green New Deal under a President Biden , ” Prakash wrote on May 13 .
As Corbyn ’ s remarks in March suggest , the Anglo-American left clearly feels vindicated by the coronavirus crisis—or rather , by what it sees as the failure of neoliberal governments and markets to manage the social and economic effects of the pandemic .
But leftists aren ’ t uniformly optimistic about how the politics of this moment are likely to play out .
Some @ @ @ @ @ @ @ use the crisis to consolidate its political authority , for example by imposing stricter border controls or by taking advantage of contact tracing apps to expand government surveillance .
The right could also capitalize on the huge increases in public spending that Johnson and Trump have overseen .
Even before the pandemic , Johnson was keen to reconfigure his party as a champion of government investment—with the aim of permanently capturing the “ red wall ” seats in northern England that Labour lost to the Conservatives six months ago .
During the 2019 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ end to the austerity imposed by previous Tory governments and to start “ leveling up ” Britain ’ s core national infrastructure .
Now , as the pandemic rages and the National Health Service becomes the focal point of British political life , Johnson may be tempted to intensify this approach .
The left has much to fear from the Tories shedding free-market orthodoxy and “ draping themselves in the NHS , ” the socialist academic Leo Panitch , who has written extensively about politics in the U.K. , told me .
Likewise @ @ @ @ @ @ @ demands for deep cuts to public expenditure may be more muted in the coming months than they were in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash , clearing the way for Trump to present himself as the architect of a stimulus-led economic rebound before Americans go to the polls in November .
After a period of ascendancy , in its current post-Corbyn , post-Sanders predicament , the Anglo-American left finds itself once again relegated to the electoral margins , even as the policies it popularized—a fully funded health service , a state-backed income @ @ @ @ @ @ @ decisively into the political mainstream .
The result is a degree of strategic confusion : Campaigners loyal to Corbyn are debating whether or not to remain inside the Labour Party in the hope of pushing the comparatively moderate leadership of Starmer in a more radical direction ; Sanders supporters are weighing up the pros and cons of voting for Biden this fall or abstaining from the presidential election altogether .
Nonetheless , leftists in Britain and the United States remain convinced their ideas aren ’ t just relevant to the disruption caused by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .

A week before he was replaced by Keir Starmer as leader of the British Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn gave an interview to the BBC. The coronavirus pandemic has discredited a decade of Conservative Party-imposed austerity, Corbyn claimed, and vindicated the case for the kind of expansive public spending he had called for during the 2019 U.K. general election. In an article for the Guardian published on May 2, less than a month after suspending his campaign for the presidency, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, writing with U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, echoed Corbyn’s sentiments.
A week before he was replaced by Keir Starmer as leader of the British Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn gave an interview to the BBC. The coronavirus pandemic has discredited a decade of Conservative Party-imposed austerity, Corbyn claimed, and vindicated the case for the kind of expansive public spending he had called for during the 2019 U.K. general election. In an article for the Guardian published on May 2, less than a month after suspending his campaign for the presidency, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, writing with U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, echoed Corbyn’s sentiments.
Corbyn’s crushing defeat at the hands of Prime Minister Boris Johnson in the general election on Dec. 12, and Sanders’ subsequent inability to consolidate control of the U.S. Democratic Party primary race, might have marked the end of the democratic socialist movements that have emerged in Britain and the United States over the past five years. Instead, as the coronavirus crisis has deepened, forcing more and more people out of work and onto the benefits system, leftists on both sides of the Atlantic see radical political space opening up in front of them.
COVID-19 has uncovered wide-ranging problems in Britain and the United States’ deregulated labor markets and underfunded public services, erstwhile supporters of Corbyn and Sanders argue, pushing voters in both countries to embrace a suite of transformative left-wing policies. The question, however, is whether the transatlantic left, now sidelined inside the U.K. Labour Party and marginalized inside the U.S. Democratic Party, can seize on this renewed sense of urgency to achieve tangible political gains—or if the populist right will ultimately benefit from the electorate’s rising appetite for state intervention.
Leftists on both sides of the Atlantic see radical political space opening up in front of them.
Joe Guinan, vice president of the Democracy Collaborative, a progressive policy institute in Washington that has helped build ties between leftists in Britain and the United States, thinks the response of incumbent right-wing leaders to the coronavirus has legitimized concepts long advanced by the left. The historic fiscal stimulus packages enacted by both Johnson and U.S. President Donald Trump show that big government has come “roaring back” into public life, he told me, placing questions of economic ownership and redistribution at the heart of policymaking in London and Washington.
According to Guinan, the pandemic has demonstrated the necessity of public utilities such as Britain’s National Health Service and highlighted the key role of government in sustaining living standards through a welfare state. It has also revealed what does and does not constitute “essential work”: “We can live without the hedge funds, but we still need our bins emptied and our food stores stacked,” Guinan said.
James Meadway, a former advisor to Corbyn’s shadow chancellor of the exchequer, John McDonnell, agrees. Not only has the private sector suddenly become dependent on the state for its survival—the U.K. government is currently paying the wages of 8.4 million private-sector staff as part of its coronavirus furlough scheme—but workers in traditionally low-paid occupations such as transport and distribution are beginning to realize how valuable they are, he told me. In fact, since the coronavirus lockdown, which saw an unprecedented demobilization of labor, the balance of power in the workplace may have started to tilt in favor of employees—a trend illustrated by the spate of recent Amazon warehouse strikes in northern Italy, Michigan, and New York. The apparent surge in worker activism could help arrest or reverse decades of trade union decline, bolstering organized labor—a key political base for the left—and strengthening demands for higher pay and better workplace protections. “If you say people are essential, that makes them powerful,” Meadway said.
There’s evidence that public opinion in Britain and the United States is increasingly sympathetic to the left’s cause. Research published by YouGov in April found that 72 percent of Britons supported the introduction of a jobs guarantee—which would see the government provide work for anyone who needed it—and 51 percent backed the idea of a universal basic income paid by the state, to every eligible citizen, without means testing or employment requirements. Meanwhile, in the United States, one recent survey indicated that 40 percent of voters were more likely to support single-payer health care as a result of the pandemic. The United States’ unique experience of the disease—it currently has by far the highest coronavirus-related death toll of any country—is driving popular demand for health care reform, the data company Morning Consult noted on April 1: “As the domestic COVID-19 caseload spirals and economists predict a historic surge in unemployment, millions of Americans are bracing for potentially untenable health care costs and lapses in coverage, reviving questions about the viability of a health system that relies on binding insurance to employment.” By June, more than 40 million Americans had been made redundant and as many as 43 million were estimated to be at risk of losing their private health care coverage.
An ideological shift toward redistribution and higher public spending has been acknowledged by some of the most staunchly pro-business sections of the Western media. “Radical reforms … will need to be put on the table. Governments will have to accept a more active role in the economy. They must see public services as investments rather than liabilities,” an editorial in the Financial Times stated on April 3, as the scale of the pandemic was becoming clear. “Much of today’s new government activism will recede along with the virus,” the journalists Gerald F. Seib and John McCormick wrote in the Wall Street Journal on April 27. “Yet conversations with a broad cross-section of political figures suggest there is little reason to expect a return to what had been the status quo on federal spending, or the prevailing attitude toward the proper role of government.”
Left-wing activists have no shortage of policy initiatives to draw on as they seek to turn the energy and excitement inspired by Corbyn and Sanders into concrete legislative action.
Miriam Brett, the director of research and advocacy at the London-based think tank Common Wealth, argues that major corporations—airlines, for instance—that are struggling to stay afloat in the face of global recession should only receive government support if they agree to strict bailout conditions. Brett proposes that dividends and share buybacks should be suspended, the rights of workers and trade unions significantly expanded, and net-zero carbon targets integrated into corporate investment plans. The goal of these reforms would be to reduce inequality, give employees more direct control over the firms they work for, and make the economy at large more resistant to future shocks—whether generated by climate change, financial mismanagement, or another international health emergency. Even in the absence of Corbyn as a galvanizing figurehead for the British left, Brett hopes her proposals will work their way into the mainstream of U.K. politics as the outbreak unfolds. “How political leaders respond to this crisis will be a test of their willingness to hardwire sustainability into everyday life,” she said.
Such political efforts may already be paying off. On May 15, North Ayrshire Council, a municipal political authority on the west coast of Scotland, announced plans to adopt a “radical” economic response to COVID-19 based on ideas advanced by campaigners such as Guinan and Brett. As part of a wider “community wealth building” strategy, financial support would be provided to firms that promote employee ownership and public land would be utilized to tackle climate change, said councilor Joe Cullinane, a Labour Party politician. “As we emerge from COVID-19, we need to build an economy that is resilient and fair,” he stated.
On the other side of the Atlantic, Sanders supporters have been pushing for a “green stimulus” bill”—not dissimilar to the senator’s Green New Deal—that would graft far-reaching environmental measures onto the federal government’s economic recovery plan. On March 22, an open letter to Congress signed by hundreds of grassroots campaigners from across the county called for $2 trillion of investment in environmentally friendly infrastructure jobs. By channeling huge sums of public money into renewables, the letter argued, lawmakers could help speed up “a just transition off fossil fuels” and make U.S. society “stronger and more resilient” in the years to come. The letter was strategic, said one of the letter’s co-authors, Thea Riofrancos—an attempt to influence the ongoing rounds of stimulus funding being negotiated in Congress and equip progressive legislators with the “institutional capacity” necessary to implement “shovel-ready projects” once the lockdown has been lifted. “We need to start laying the political groundwork for when the pandemic is over,” Riofrancos said.
There is a sense that former Vice President Joe Biden, the Democratic Party’s presumptive presidential nominee, is vulnerable to pressure from the left, particularly on green issues. On April 25, Biden appeared to endorse the idea of a green stimulus bill and attacked the Trump administration’s bailout program for prioritizing big business over ordinary Americans. Federal funds should be used to support “environmental things that create good-paying jobs,” Biden told Politico, not to shore up Wall Street and the financial industry. Three weeks later, Biden teamed up with Sanders to announce the creation of six Unity Task Forces designed—ostensibly—to shape Biden’s policy platform ahead of the November general election. Rep. Jayapal, a key ally of Sanders in the House of Representatives and long-time advocate of “Medicare for All,” was named co-chair of the health care task force, while Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, another high-profile Sanders supporter, and Varshini Prakash, co-founder of the left-wing Sunrise Movement, would both serve on the climate change task force. “I believe in our movement’s ability to begin winning a Green New Deal under a President Biden,” Prakash wrote on May 13.
As Corbyn’s remarks in March suggest, the Anglo-American left clearly feels vindicated by the coronavirus crisis—or rather, by what it sees as the failure of neoliberal governments and markets to manage the social and economic effects of the pandemic. But leftists aren’t uniformly optimistic about how the politics of this moment are likely to play out. Some activists are worried that the right will use the crisis to consolidate its political authority, for example by imposing stricter border controls or by taking advantage of contact tracing apps to expand government surveillance.
The right could also capitalize on the huge increases in public spending that Johnson and Trump have overseen. Even before the pandemic, Johnson was keen to reconfigure his party as a champion of government investment—with the aim of permanently capturing the “red wall” seats in northern England that Labour lost to the Conservatives six months ago. During the 2019 U.K. general election, Johnson promised an end to the austerity imposed by previous Tory governments and to start “leveling up” Britain’s core national infrastructure. Now, as the pandemic rages and the National Health Service becomes the focal point of British political life, Johnson may be tempted to intensify this approach. The left has much to fear from the Tories shedding free-market orthodoxy and “draping themselves in the NHS,” the socialist academic Leo Panitch, who has written extensively about politics in the U.K., told me. Likewise, in the United States, Republican demands for deep cuts to public expenditure may be more muted in the coming months than they were in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crash, clearing the way for Trump to present himself as the architect of a stimulus-led economic rebound before Americans go to the polls in November.
After a period of ascendancy, in its current post-Corbyn, post-Sanders predicament, the Anglo-American left finds itself once again relegated to the electoral margins, even as the policies it popularized—a fully funded health service, a state-backed income, and stronger labor market protections—have moved decisively into the political mainstream. The result is a degree of strategic confusion: Campaigners loyal to Corbyn are debating whether or not to remain inside the Labour Party in the hope of pushing the comparatively moderate leadership of Starmer in a more radical direction; Sanders supporters are weighing up the pros and cons of voting for Biden this fall or abstaining from the presidential election altogether. Nonetheless, leftists in Britain and the United States remain convinced their ideas aren’t just relevant to the disruption caused by COVID-19, but crucial to resolving it.


foreignpolicy--2020-06-17--Sanctions Against Syria Will Help, Not Harm, Civilians

Sanctions Against Syria Will Help , Not Harm , Civilians In person , Caesar is calm and speaks patiently .
When he fled Syria , where he served as a military photographer , he brought with him 55,000 images of the burned , strangled , and whipped corpses that President Bashar al-Assad ’ s interrogators dispatched to the morgue .
Rage or depression would seem more appropriate for an individual who risked his life to deliver irrefutable proof of the Assad regime ’ s mass atrocities , only to see the massacres continue amid U.S. and allied inaction .
Instead @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sanctions against Assad .
On June 17 , almost six years after Caesar ’ s first public remarks in front of congressional leaders , the sanctions legislation that bears his name took effect after passing late last year as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020 .
The sanctions passed with firm backing from the White House and vocal support from both Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill .
The legislation is unlikely to have a sudden and dramatic impact on the Syrian economy ; rather , it aims @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the resources that fuel its atrocities .
The law also threatens to sanction any foreign company that contracts with the regime to participate in reconstruction efforts , which would relieve Russia and Iran of the costs of propping up a failed state .
An Iranian legislator recently said Iran had spent $ 20 billion to $ 30 billion on Syria , while foreign scholars have arrived at a figure as high as $ 15 billion per year , or $ 105 billion as of 2018 .
Russia spends an estimated $ 1 billion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it has loaned Assad $ 3 billion .
While U.S. President Donald Trump signed the Caesar sanctions into law last December , the legislation mandated a 180-day waiting period before the administration could impose new sanctions .
During those six months , a financial crisis in next-door Lebanon has had the kind of devastating impact on the Syrian economy that no sanctions regime could design .
Lebanon ’ s heavily dollarized economy served as Syria ’ s main source of hard currency amid U.S. and EU sanctions ; when Lebanese banks restricted access @ @ @ @ @ @ @ began to dramatically outstrip supply .
This culminated in the free fall of the Syrian lira , which traded at 515 to the dollar last June , and 1,500 just a month ago , before bottoming out at just under 3,200 to the dollar last week .
The collapse of the lira brought with it rapid inflation .
The United Nations ’ World Food Programme estimated in April that the cost of a basket of basic goods such as flour and oil had increased by 111 percent over the previous 12 months .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ on foreign aid , Syrians are increasingly going hungry , even in areas where Assad ’ s grip has long been firm .
Restrictions put in place to prevent the spread of COVID-19 made the situation more dire , although the regime has begun to lift them .
Last week , Assad fired Prime Minister Imad Khamis as public anger rose in areas under the regime ’ s control .
The population of major urban centers seems resigned to Assad ’ s rule , but there have been unprecedented protests in the southern @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for Assad ’ s ouster .
The deprivation Syrians were already enduring raises the perennial question of whether the sanctions will strike a balance between the pressure they exert on rogue regimes and the costs they inflict on civilians .
In the case of Syria , the grisly evidence of systematic mass torture has minimized the extent to which elected officials on either side of the Atlantic have questioned the justice of sanctioning Assad and his accomplices .
Still , there are a handful of analysts who equate the thinking behind the Caesar @ @ @ @ @ @ @ regime .
According to Aron Lund of the Century Foundation , “ Both sides seem to be operating on the principle of ‘ Assad or we burn the country.
’ ” Lund elaborated , “ One side has shown itself willing to bomb , starve and shell Syrian cities to cinders to prevent Assad ’ s removal .
The other side seems just as determined to destroy Syria ’ s economy and keep the war smoldering forever to stop Assad from claiming victory.
” Yet extensive U.S. and European efforts to relieve the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of cruel indifference .
For the duration of the war , they have paired their sanctions with billions of dollars of humanitarian aid every year , which is delivered mainly by the United Nations and its partner nongovernmental organizations .
The U.N. humanitarian response plan for 2019 entailed the provision of direct assistance to 9 million individuals in Syria .
To mitigate the suffering that persists despite historic levels of aid , what Syria needs is not fewer sanctions but a root-and-branch reform of the U.N. machinery for delivering aid , which Assad @ @ @ @ @ @ @ agencies have become de facto adjuncts to the siege of civilian populations and other war crimes .
Lengthy reports from human rights advocates , along with a disturbing internal review by U.N. staff , have documented the U.N. ’ s departure from the core humanitarian principles of neutrality , impartiality , and independence .
For years , the U.N. has let the Assad regime give direct aid to supportive populations while systematically blocking deliveries to areas outside of its control .
Besieging civilian populations is a war crime , yet convoys en route @ @ @ @ @ @ @ through besieged neighborhoods without aiding their inhabitants .
Annie Sparrow , a pediatrician and professor of public health , has monitored the World Health Organization ’ s deference to the regime , which included parroting the Syrian Ministry of Health ’ s denials of a polio outbreak despite evidence the disease had begun to spread .
In a February 2018 article for Foreign Policy , Sparrow also described how the WHO helped the Syrian military evade sanctions that were blocking the procurement of supplies for its blood bank .
This year , amid @ @ @ @ @ @ @ quickly to provide Assad ’ s Ministry of Health with test kits , lab equipment , and protective gear .
It was not until weeks later that aid began to trickle to regions in northeast and northwest Syria that Damascus does not control .
Critics of the Caesar Act also tend to rail against potential economic harms , while ignoring how sanctions may spare civilians from the regime ’ s atrocities .
Shortly after Trump signed the new sanctions into law , we reached out to Caesar , who lives in an undisclosed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
What should Americans know about Syria right now , we asked ?
“ God ’ s children are being killed today in Idlib and in the regime ’ s dungeons , ” Caesar said .
“ The search for justice and the ending of the machinery of death in Syria is a trust placed on my shoulders by the families and the souls of the thousands of victims whose horrific murder I documented.
” The Syrian Network for Human Rights estimates there are still 129,000 political prisoners by Syrian regime forces .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ 537 attacks on medical facilities by Russian and Syrian government forces , including facilities whose coordinates the U.N. shared with the Russian military in an effort to prevent accidental strikes .
Caesar ’ s point seems to be that sanctions are not about seeking retribution for the crimes of the past but denying Assad the resources to perpetrate new ones .
About a month after our exchange with Caesar , the regime and its sponsors launched an offensive to overrun Idlib province , the main rebel redoubt in the country ’ s northwest @ @ @ @ @ @ @ advance displaced 900,000 civilians , forcing many to live in tents or in the open amid freezing weather .
Children died from the cold and families burned to death when heaters lit their tents on fire .
A counterthrust by Turkish forces and their Syrian proxies put a halt to the offensive and resulted in another one of the tentative cease-fires that are a recurrent feature of the war .
It ’ s difficult to predict if tougher sanctions would delay or prevent the next attempt to subdue what ’ s left of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s finances are opaque , as is the extent of the subsidies provided by Russia and Iran .
Assessments will always employ a measure of guesswork .
Yet the same is true of claims that the Caesar Act or other sanctions will harm civilians .
Nine years of relentless war—much of it targeting civilians—is the main cause of deprivation .
So is the rampant corruption that distorts every aspect of the Syrian economy .
The crisis touched off by the collapse of the lira will further complicate any effort to distinguish the precise @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Caesar sanctions so tough is that they entail what financial analysts call secondary sanctions .
Whereas primary sanctions mainly forbid U.S. persons from making transactions with individuals and entities on the Treasury Department ’ s blacklist , secondary sanctions impose penalties on third-country persons who do business with those on this list .
The primary-versus-secondary distinction is not ironclad , since close cooperation with the regime may trigger penalties even under the primary authorities .
Thus , the U.S. has already penalized Lebanese and Emirati companies under pre-Caesar authorities .
Still , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ clearest change to U.S. law and sharply increases the risk to third-country firms .
In practice , the law strikes at the regime ’ s hope that it could pivot from war to reconstruction with the help of foreign corporations .
As Caesar told us , the law “ cuts off all international allies ’ attempts to polish [ the image of ] the Syrian regime and rehabilitate it again.
” Some Russian firms may be indifferent to the risk of sanctions , but Chinese firms—let alone Brazilian or Korean ones—are unlikely to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and market to gain a foothold in Syria .
The EU just renewed its sanctions in light of continuing atrocities , but if it ever lifted them , Caesar sanctions would still deter European companies from dealing with Assad .
The readiness of European firms to comply with U.S. secondary sanctions became clear when the Trump administration withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal and reimposed sanctions .
Major EU-based multinationals raced to pull out of projects in Iran despite their own governments ’ policy of promoting economic ties .
In principle , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Syrian private sector , yet the blacklisting of Assad ’ s pet oligarchs , whose reach extends throughout the economy , means that almost all sizable firms are off-limits .
The ongoing scandal surrounding Assad ’ s cousin Rami Makhlouf illustrates the extent to which oligarchs enjoy their wealth at the pleasure of the regime .
Makhlouf ’ s ascent began when he secured the right to operate the country ’ s first mobile service provider two decades ago .
His recent downfall became a public sensation when he posted a pair @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to stop authorities from abusing him on the pretext that he had failed to pay vast sums in taxes .
One school of thought holds that Assad turned on his cousin to secure the cash necessary to pay off Russian loans .
Others assert that first lady Asma al-Assad initiated the purge of Makhlouf to consolidate her own power .
Kheder Khaddour of the Carnegie Middle East Center has suggested that purging Makhlouf may backfire , since it will give other oligarchs a powerful “ incentive to make quick returns and profits , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ outside Syria to the fullest extent possible.
” It could have that effect , yet Makhlouf ’ s fate also suggests the extreme danger of crossing the regime .
Either way , Bashar al-Assad ’ s dominant concerns on the economic front will remain the currency crisis and inflation .
Another important feature of the Caesar Act is that it makes sanctions mandatory , rather than letting the U.S. executive branch decide when to apply them .
The current administration has been vigorous in its application of existing sanctions on Syria , although @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In light of strong support for Caesar sanctions on the Democratic side , there is a good chance that a future administration led by former Vice President Joe Biden would act in the spirit of the law .
Antony Blinken , a top Biden adviser , articulated last month the depth of his regret for Syria ’ s destruction in the Obama years , during which he served as a senior White House official .
“ We failed not for want of trying , but we failed .
We failed to prevent a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said.
“ It ’ s something that I will take with me for the rest of my days.
” Syrians have heard such words before , only to be gravely disappointed by both Republicans and Democrats .
The Caesar Act ensures at least a measure of action .
While sanctions alone are not a strategy , they are an integral element of any plausible approach to putting constant pressure on Assad .
It is worth restraining him , even if the odds of his departure—via negotiations or otherwise—seem remote .
The law also @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have not given up hope for a transition .
It will take many months , or even years , to assess the impact of Caesar sanctions .
Caesar himself knows the imperative of patience and restraints .
When we corresponded with him last December , he described how he had to hide his revulsion during the two years he spent collecting evidence of Assad ’ s crimes .
“ I could not let a single tear roll down my face , ” he wrote .
Any sign of sympathy would put him at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the next one left for the photographers .
Testifying before Congress in March , Caesar said , “ This law is a powerful message to all who support the Assad regime that the time for accountability and justice is coming and that no matter how long oppression lasts , there is no doubt that truth will prevail .
”

In person, Caesar is calm and speaks patiently. When he fled Syria, where he served as a military photographer, he brought with him 55,000 images of the burned, strangled, and whipped corpses that President Bashar al-Assad’s interrogators dispatched to the morgue. Rage or depression would seem more appropriate for an individual who risked his life to deliver irrefutable proof of the Assad regime’s mass atrocities, only to see the massacres continue amid U.S. and allied inaction.
In person, Caesar is calm and speaks patiently. When he fled Syria, where he served as a military photographer, he brought with him 55,000 images of the burned, strangled, and whipped corpses that President Bashar al-Assad’s interrogators dispatched to the morgue. Rage or depression would seem more appropriate for an individual who risked his life to deliver irrefutable proof of the Assad regime’s mass atrocities, only to see the massacres continue amid U.S. and allied inaction.
Instead, he has helped push for U.S. sanctions against Assad. On June 17, almost six years after Caesar’s first public remarks in front of congressional leaders, the sanctions legislation that bears his name took effect after passing late last year as part of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2020. The sanctions passed with firm backing from the White House and vocal support from both Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill.
The legislation is unlikely to have a sudden and dramatic impact on the Syrian economy; rather, it aims to sap the Assad regime gradually of the resources that fuel its atrocities. The law also threatens to sanction any foreign company that contracts with the regime to participate in reconstruction efforts, which would relieve Russia and Iran of the costs of propping up a failed state. An Iranian legislator recently said Iran had spent $20 billion to $30 billion on Syria, while foreign scholars have arrived at a figure as high as $15 billion per year, or $105 billion as of 2018. Russia spends an estimated $1 billion per year on the war, while it has loaned Assad $3 billion.
While U.S. President Donald Trump signed the Caesar sanctions into law last December, the legislation mandated a 180-day waiting period before the administration could impose new sanctions. During those six months, a financial crisis in next-door Lebanon has had the kind of devastating impact on the Syrian economy that no sanctions regime could design. Lebanon’s heavily dollarized economy served as Syria’s main source of hard currency amid U.S. and EU sanctions; when Lebanese banks restricted access, demand for U.S. dollars in Syria began to dramatically outstrip supply. This culminated in the free fall of the Syrian lira, which traded at 515 to the dollar last June, and 1,500 just a month ago, before bottoming out at just under 3,200 to the dollar last week.
The collapse of the lira brought with it rapid inflation. The United Nations’ World Food Programme estimated in April that the cost of a basket of basic goods such as flour and oil had increased by 111 percent over the previous 12 months. Already impoverished by the war and reliant on foreign aid, Syrians are increasingly going hungry, even in areas where Assad’s grip has long been firm. Restrictions put in place to prevent the spread of COVID-19 made the situation more dire, although the regime has begun to lift them. Last week, Assad fired Prime Minister Imad Khamis as public anger rose in areas under the regime’s control. The population of major urban centers seems resigned to Assad’s rule, but there have been unprecedented protests in the southern province of Suwayda, where demonstrators called for Assad’s ouster.
The deprivation Syrians were already enduring raises the perennial question of whether the sanctions will strike a balance between the pressure they exert on rogue regimes and the costs they inflict on civilians. In the case of Syria, the grisly evidence of systematic mass torture has minimized the extent to which elected officials on either side of the Atlantic have questioned the justice of sanctioning Assad and his accomplices. Still, there are a handful of analysts who equate the thinking behind the Caesar Act with the mentality of the Assad regime.
According to Aron Lund of the Century Foundation, “Both sides seem to be operating on the principle of ‘Assad or we burn the country.’” Lund elaborated, “One side has shown itself willing to bomb, starve and shell Syrian cities to cinders to prevent Assad’s removal. The other side seems just as determined to destroy Syria’s economy and keep the war smoldering forever to stop Assad from claiming victory.”
Yet extensive U.S. and European efforts to relieve the suffering of Syrian civilians belie such accusations of cruel indifference. For the duration of the war, they have paired their sanctions with billions of dollars of humanitarian aid every year, which is delivered mainly by the United Nations and its partner nongovernmental organizations. The U.N. humanitarian response plan for 2019 entailed the provision of direct assistance to 9 million individuals in Syria.
To mitigate the suffering that persists despite historic levels of aid, what Syria needs is not fewer sanctions but a root-and-branch reform of the U.N. machinery for delivering aid, which Assad has coopted to the point where U.N. agencies have become de facto adjuncts to the siege of civilian populations and other war crimes. Lengthy reports from human rights advocates, along with a disturbing internal review by U.N. staff, have documented the U.N.’s departure from the core humanitarian principles of neutrality, impartiality, and independence.
For years, the U.N. has let the Assad regime give direct aid to supportive populations while systematically blocking deliveries to areas outside of its control. Besieging civilian populations is a war crime, yet convoys en route to deliveries in regime-held areas would pass through besieged neighborhoods without aiding their inhabitants. Annie Sparrow, a pediatrician and professor of public health, has monitored the World Health Organization’s deference to the regime, which included parroting the Syrian Ministry of Health’s denials of a polio outbreak despite evidence the disease had begun to spread.
In a February 2018 article for Foreign Policy, Sparrow also described how the WHO helped the Syrian military evade sanctions that were blocking the procurement of supplies for its blood bank. This year, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the WHO moved quickly to provide Assad’s Ministry of Health with test kits, lab equipment, and protective gear. It was not until weeks later that aid began to trickle to regions in northeast and northwest Syria that Damascus does not control.
Critics of the Caesar Act also tend to rail against potential economic harms, while ignoring how sanctions may spare civilians from the regime’s atrocities. Shortly after Trump signed the new sanctions into law, we reached out to Caesar, who lives in an undisclosed country in Europe where he received asylum. What should Americans know about Syria right now, we asked? “God’s children are being killed today in Idlib and in the regime’s dungeons,” Caesar said. “The search for justice and the ending of the machinery of death in Syria is a trust placed on my shoulders by the families and the souls of the thousands of victims whose horrific murder I documented.”
The Syrian Network for Human Rights estimates there are still 129,000 political prisoners by Syrian regime forces. Physicians for Human Rights has evidence of 537 attacks on medical facilities by Russian and Syrian government forces, including facilities whose coordinates the U.N. shared with the Russian military in an effort to prevent accidental strikes.
Caesar’s point seems to be that sanctions are not about seeking retribution for the crimes of the past but denying Assad the resources to perpetrate new ones. About a month after our exchange with Caesar, the regime and its sponsors launched an offensive to overrun Idlib province, the main rebel redoubt in the country’s northwest. Within weeks, Assad’s advance displaced 900,000 civilians, forcing many to live in tents or in the open amid freezing weather. Children died from the cold and families burned to death when heaters lit their tents on fire.
A counterthrust by Turkish forces and their Syrian proxies put a halt to the offensive and resulted in another one of the tentative cease-fires that are a recurrent feature of the war. It’s difficult to predict if tougher sanctions would delay or prevent the next attempt to subdue what’s left of Idlib. Unsurprisingly, the regime’s finances are opaque, as is the extent of the subsidies provided by Russia and Iran. Assessments will always employ a measure of guesswork.
Yet the same is true of claims that the Caesar Act or other sanctions will harm civilians. Nine years of relentless war—much of it targeting civilians—is the main cause of deprivation. So is the rampant corruption that distorts every aspect of the Syrian economy. The crisis touched off by the collapse of the lira will further complicate any effort to distinguish the precise impact of Caesar sanctions.
What makes the Caesar sanctions so tough is that they entail what financial analysts call secondary sanctions. Whereas primary sanctions mainly forbid U.S. persons from making transactions with individuals and entities on the Treasury Department’s blacklist, secondary sanctions impose penalties on third-country persons who do business with those on this list. The primary-versus-secondary distinction is not ironclad, since close cooperation with the regime may trigger penalties even under the primary authorities. Thus, the U.S. has already penalized Lebanese and Emirati companies under pre-Caesar authorities. Still, the introduction of secondary sanctions is the clearest change to U.S. law and sharply increases the risk to third-country firms.
In practice, the law strikes at the regime’s hope that it could pivot from war to reconstruction with the help of foreign corporations. As Caesar told us, the law “cuts off all international allies’ attempts to polish [the image of] the Syrian regime and rehabilitate it again.”
Some Russian firms may be indifferent to the risk of sanctions, but Chinese firms—let alone Brazilian or Korean ones—are unlikely to risk their access to the U.S. dollar and market to gain a foothold in Syria. The EU just renewed its sanctions in light of continuing atrocities, but if it ever lifted them, Caesar sanctions would still deter European companies from dealing with Assad. The readiness of European firms to comply with U.S. secondary sanctions became clear when the Trump administration withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal and reimposed sanctions. Major EU-based multinationals raced to pull out of projects in Iran despite their own governments’ policy of promoting economic ties.
In principle, the law does not prohibit doing business with the Syrian private sector, yet the blacklisting of Assad’s pet oligarchs, whose reach extends throughout the economy, means that almost all sizable firms are off-limits. The ongoing scandal surrounding Assad’s cousin Rami Makhlouf illustrates the extent to which oligarchs enjoy their wealth at the pleasure of the regime. Makhlouf’s ascent began when he secured the right to operate the country’s first mobile service provider two decades ago. His recent downfall became a public sensation when he posted a pair of videos to Facebook imploring his cousin to stop authorities from abusing him on the pretext that he had failed to pay vast sums in taxes. One school of thought holds that Assad turned on his cousin to secure the cash necessary to pay off Russian loans. Others assert that first lady Asma al-Assad initiated the purge of Makhlouf to consolidate her own power.
Kheder Khaddour of the Carnegie Middle East Center has suggested that purging Makhlouf may backfire, since it will give other oligarchs a powerful “incentive to make quick returns and profits, and most probably to move their money outside Syria to the fullest extent possible.” It could have that effect, yet Makhlouf’s fate also suggests the extreme danger of crossing the regime. Either way, Bashar al-Assad’s dominant concerns on the economic front will remain the currency crisis and inflation.
Another important feature of the Caesar Act is that it makes sanctions mandatory, rather than letting the U.S. executive branch decide when to apply them. The current administration has been vigorous in its application of existing sanctions on Syria, although sudden reversals are also its hallmark. In light of strong support for Caesar sanctions on the Democratic side, there is a good chance that a future administration led by former Vice President Joe Biden would act in the spirit of the law.
Antony Blinken, a top Biden adviser, articulated last month the depth of his regret for Syria’s destruction in the Obama years, during which he served as a senior White House official. “We failed not for want of trying, but we failed. We failed to prevent a horrific loss of life,” Blinken said.“It’s something that I will take with me for the rest of my days.”
Syrians have heard such words before, only to be gravely disappointed by both Republicans and Democrats. The Caesar Act ensures at least a measure of action. While sanctions alone are not a strategy, they are an integral element of any plausible approach to putting constant pressure on Assad. It is worth restraining him, even if the odds of his departure—via negotiations or otherwise—seem remote. The law also sends a message to those Syrians who have not given up hope for a transition.
It will take many months, or even years, to assess the impact of Caesar sanctions. Caesar himself knows the imperative of patience and restraints. When we corresponded with him last December, he described how he had to hide his revulsion during the two years he spent collecting evidence of Assad’s crimes. “I could not let a single tear roll down my face,” he wrote. Any sign of sympathy would put him at risk, and his corpse might be the next one left for the photographers.
Testifying before Congress in March, Caesar said, “This law is a powerful message to all who support the Assad regime that the time for accountability and justice is coming and that no matter how long oppression lasts, there is no doubt that truth will prevail.”


foreignpolicy--2020-06-17--Trump’s Chilling Blow to the ICC

Trump’s Chilling Blow to the ICC

Last week , U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order imposing sanctions on several individuals associated with the International Criminal Court ( ICC ) .
The order is the latest salvo in an ongoing battle against the ICC , which the Trump administration has long sought to undermine in order to avoid accountability for itself and its allies .
The move is also part of a broader disengagement with the multilateral system .
The executive order , and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo ’ s accompanying statement invoking the “ nightmare ” of an American service member facing justice @ @ @ @ @ @ @ America first ” thinking at the core of the Trump administration ’ s foreign-policy ideology .
In this case it was coupled with another deeply flawed message : American exceptionalism when it comes to human rights .
As David Kaye wrote in this publication last week , “ [ t ] he phrase ‘ human rights ’ in American policy has almost always referred to what others violate , and it rarely comes back to what the U.S. government is obligated to protect at home .
The United States may use the language @ @ @ @ @ @ @ abuses against minorities worldwide , or violence against protesters in Venezuela , Hong Kong , Iran , and elsewhere , but it bristles when those same norms are deployed against it.
” This hypocrisy is particularly egregious because the United States has been at the center of the formation of the human rights system since its start .
When it comes to human rights and international law , and especially institutions of accountability such as the ICC , exceptionalist ideology is particularly problematic .
Although this administration may believe otherwise , no individual @ @ @ @ @ @ @ international institutions such as the ICC play a critical role in upholding .
And as a court of last resort , where cases are prosecuted when states are unable or unwilling to do so themselves , the ICC may be the only available process for holding perpetrators of crimes to justice .
These institutions and their staff need global support , not baseless personal attacks on their finances and movement .
To be clear , the ICC isn ’ t a perfect institution ; however , this executive order takes a destructive approach @ @ @ @ @ @ @ engagement .
The administration ’ s opposition to the court is largely predicated on two factors .
First is the ICC ’ s ongoing investigations into crimes committed in Afghanistan , including those that may have been committed by U.S. soldiers ( and potentially involving Pompeo himself ) .
Second is the ICC ’ s preliminary examination into crimes committed in the Palestinian territories by Israel .
The administration contends that these investigations are illegitimate because neither the United States nor Israel has ratified the Rome Statute that empowers the ICC .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ explicitly permits the exercise of jurisdiction when crimes are committed by non-parties on the territory of a state that is .
( Both Palestine and Afghanistan are parties . )
In other words , a state can not escape accountability for crimes committed outside its territory just because it hasn ’ t signed up to the ICC .
Accountability is something the Trump administration has long sought to avoid , and this stance has been paired with a wholesale retreat from the human rights framework .
In 2018 , the administration withdrew the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Rights Council .
In 2019 , Pompeo announced funding cuts to the Organization of American States based on a misrepresentation of a U.S. law that restricts lobbying on abortion .
Late last month , in the midst of a global pandemic , Trump announced the United States would sever ties with the World Health Organization .
The Trump administration ’ s rejection of the multilateral and international framework is also evident in the State Department ’ s Commission on Unalienable Rights , which was formed last year by Pompeo and seeks to ground @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nation ’ s founding principles.
” ( This includes an effort to narrow protections for sexual and reproductive rights and for LGBTQI individuals , against which our organization , along with others , has sued . )
This month , Reps. Jamie Raskin and Joaquin Castro wrote a letter to the commission raising concerns that it “ threatens to undermine the responsibility of the Department of State to comply with international human rights treaties , including those approved by Congress , such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.
” In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ attempt to single-handedly redefine human rights , not only for the United States but also globally , is arrogant at best and dangerous at worst , potentially causing harm to those in the United States .
The disdain for accountability , particularly when it comes to charges of corruption against its own officials , has certainly risen to new levels under this administration .
To be clear , these evasions of accountability aren ’ t limited to the Trump administration—Presidents Bill Clinton , George W. Bush , and Barack Obama all declined to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But the disdain for accountability , particularly when it comes to charges of corruption against its own officials , has certainly risen to new levels under this administration .
The trend thus lays bare the need for institutions like the ICC—not only to bring justice for international crimes in places like Sudan , Myanmar , and Libya , but also in the United States .
And yet , the United States has consistently kept or taken itself out of the international frameworks .
This is to the detriment of its population , limiting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rights and obligations under international law .
The United States ’ failure to ratify the Rome Statute can also be situated against the nonratification of a range of important human rights treaties , including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women , and the U.S. withdrawal from the general jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice—mechanisms that could force the United States to meet its international legal obligations .
The significance of such international institutions has become especially clear in recent weeks .
The families of George Floyd @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Jordan Davis , and Philando Castile , along with over 600 organizations from 60 countries , called on the Human Rights Council ( the very body the Trump administration withdrew from ) to create an independent inquiry into racist policing in the United States and the use of force against peaceful protesters and journalists .
The letter calls for the inquiry to not only provide recommendations on how to ensure that the United States upholds its human rights obligations , but also on what steps are necessary to ensure accountability for serious human @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the Human Rights Council is holding an urgent debate on this issue this Wednesday . )
This is a case in point that the United States needs international institutions like the ICC and United Nations to hold it accountable when its own government refuses to do so .
Without those , “ America first ” may be putting America ’ s people last .
Beyond the impact at home , Trump ’ s executive order against the ICC could have far-reaching international implications .
The order itself only creates an enabling framework @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it is unclear how or against whom it may be deployed .
But by casting a wide net over who and what types of activities can trigger sanctions , the order may create a chill around the ICC ’ s work and anyone who works with it in any number of ways , including though material support , providing expertise in ongoing investigations , staff , and potentially even victims and witnesses , as well as their counsel .
Further , the executive order threatens to stall the global fight against impunity for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ crimes , crimes against humanity , genocide , and aggression .
Much like how other countries that have long been skeptical or reluctant to follow international human rights norms have found new cover in the United States ’ regressive leadership on issues such as reproductive rights , this attack on the ICC may embolden other countries seeking to shirk responsibility for the commission of atrocities .
( Myanmar , for example , already constitutionally enshrines impunity for its armed forces and has similarly contested the ICC ’ s jurisdiction over crimes committed against @ @ @ @ @ @ @ may also damage the credibility of U.S.-supported efforts to create mechanisms and bodies for international justice , such as the ongoing investigation into crimes committed by the Islamic State .
The pursuit of accountability for these grave crimes is no doubt difficult and time-consuming , but , as the precedents of the Nuremberg tribunal remind us , it is deeply important .
With the global rise in authoritarianism , it also couldn ’ t be timelier .
Impunity is fundamentally a threat to the rule of law , both in the United States @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s efforts to destroy the multilateral system that the United States built is arrogant , short-sighted , and dangerous .
It is time for the United States to take seriously and engage meaningfully with its international obligations .
This is not merely an issue for conservative administrations , as even past liberal administrations have done little to embed human rights in the fabric of fundamental rights in the United States or hold accountable Americans who commit international crimes .
Steps in the right direction would include the ratification of the ICC ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nonconditional ratification and implementation of all fundamental human rights treaties , not a rapid retreat away from them .
The events of the last few weeks have brought into searing focus what widespread and systematic state violence against a country ’ s own populace looks like .
In a powerful reminder of Martin Luther King Jr. ’ s call that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere , the world has risen up in its call for accountability for those who killed Floyd , Taylor , and Ahmaud Arbery .
Whether crimes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the United States or by U.S. soldiers abroad in Afghanistan , Washington and the public owe the same commitment to the pursuit of justice and accountability wherever it occurs .
This should be what “ America first ” looks like .

Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order imposing sanctions on several individuals associated with the International Criminal Court (ICC). The order is the latest salvo in an ongoing battle against the ICC, which the Trump administration has long sought to undermine in order to avoid accountability for itself and its allies. The move is also part of a broader disengagement with the multilateral system.
Last week, U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order imposing sanctions on several individuals associated with the International Criminal Court (ICC). The order is the latest salvo in an ongoing battle against the ICC, which the Trump administration has long sought to undermine in order to avoid accountability for itself and its allies. The move is also part of a broader disengagement with the multilateral system.
The executive order, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s accompanying statement invoking the “nightmare” of an American service member facing justice abroad, exemplifies the kind of “America first” thinking at the core of the Trump administration’s foreign-policy ideology. In this case it was coupled with another deeply flawed message: American exceptionalism when it comes to human rights. As David Kaye wrote in this publication last week, “[t]he phrase ‘human rights’ in American policy has almost always referred to what others violate, and it rarely comes back to what the U.S. government is obligated to protect at home. The United States may use the language of human rights law to condemn official abuses against minorities worldwide, or violence against protesters in Venezuela, Hong Kong, Iran, and elsewhere, but it bristles when those same norms are deployed against it.” This hypocrisy is particularly egregious because the United States has been at the center of the formation of the human rights system since its start.
When it comes to human rights and international law, and especially institutions of accountability such as the ICC, exceptionalist ideology is particularly problematic. Although this administration may believe otherwise, no individual or government is above the law—a principle international institutions such as the ICC play a critical role in upholding. And as a court of last resort, where cases are prosecuted when states are unable or unwilling to do so themselves, the ICC may be the only available process for holding perpetrators of crimes to justice. These institutions and their staff need global support, not baseless personal attacks on their finances and movement. To be clear, the ICC isn’t a perfect institution; however, this executive order takes a destructive approach, while forgoing a range of constructive engagement.
The administration’s opposition to the court is largely predicated on two factors. First is the ICC’s ongoing investigations into crimes committed in Afghanistan, including those that may have been committed by U.S. soldiers (and potentially involving Pompeo himself). Second is the ICC’s preliminary examination into crimes committed in the Palestinian territories by Israel. The administration contends that these investigations are illegitimate because neither the United States nor Israel has ratified the Rome Statute that empowers the ICC. But that is a misinterpretation of the statute—which explicitly permits the exercise of jurisdiction when crimes are committed by non-parties on the territory of a state that is. (Both Palestine and Afghanistan are parties.) In other words, a state cannot escape accountability for crimes committed outside its territory just because it hasn’t signed up to the ICC.
Accountability is something the Trump administration has long sought to avoid, and this stance has been paired with a wholesale retreat from the human rights framework. In 2018, the administration withdrew the United States from the United Nations Human Rights Council. In 2019, Pompeo announced funding cuts to the Organization of American States based on a misrepresentation of a U.S. law that restricts lobbying on abortion. Late last month, in the midst of a global pandemic, Trump announced the United States would sever ties with the World Health Organization.
The Trump administration’s rejection of the multilateral and international framework is also evident in the State Department’s Commission on Unalienable Rights, which was formed last year by Pompeo and seeks to ground the human rights landscape “in our nation’s founding principles.” (This includes an effort to narrow protections for sexual and reproductive rights and for LGBTQI individuals, against which our organization, along with others, has sued.) This month, Reps. Jamie Raskin and Joaquin Castro wrote a letter to the commission raising concerns that it “threatens to undermine the responsibility of the Department of State to comply with international human rights treaties, including those approved by Congress, such as the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.” In other words, the administration’s attempt to single-handedly redefine human rights, not only for the United States but also globally, is arrogant at best and dangerous at worst, potentially causing harm to those in the United States.
The disdain for accountability, particularly when it comes to charges of corruption against its own officials, has certainly risen to new levels under this administration.
To be clear, these evasions of accountability aren’t limited to the Trump administration—Presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama all declined to become a party to the ICC. But the disdain for accountability, particularly when it comes to charges of corruption against its own officials, has certainly risen to new levels under this administration. The trend thus lays bare the need for institutions like the ICC—not only to bring justice for international crimes in places like Sudan, Myanmar, and Libya, but also in the United States.
And yet, the United States has consistently kept or taken itself out of the international frameworks. This is to the detriment of its population, limiting their recourse when the government violates fundamental rights and obligations under international law. The United States’ failure to ratify the Rome Statute can also be situated against the nonratification of a range of important human rights treaties, including the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women, and the U.S. withdrawal from the general jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice—mechanisms that could force the United States to meet its international legal obligations.
The significance of such international institutions has become especially clear in recent weeks. The families of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Michael Brown, Jordan Davis, and Philando Castile, along with over 600 organizations from 60 countries, called on the Human Rights Council (the very body the Trump administration withdrew from) to create an independent inquiry into racist policing in the United States and the use of force against peaceful protesters and journalists. The letter calls for the inquiry to not only provide recommendations on how to ensure that the United States upholds its human rights obligations, but also on what steps are necessary to ensure accountability for serious human rights violations. (Heeding this call, the Human Rights Council is holding an urgent debate on this issue this Wednesday.) This is a case in point that the United States needs international institutions like the ICC and United Nations to hold it accountable when its own government refuses to do so. Without those, “America first” may be putting America’s people last.
Beyond the impact at home, Trump’s executive order against the ICC could have far-reaching international implications.
The order itself only creates an enabling framework for economic and travel-related sanctions, and it is unclear how or against whom it may be deployed. But by casting a wide net over who and what types of activities can trigger sanctions, the order may create a chill around the ICC’s work and anyone who works with it in any number of ways, including though material support, providing expertise in ongoing investigations, staff, and potentially even victims and witnesses, as well as their counsel.
Further, the executive order threatens to stall the global fight against impunity for the most serious international crimes: war crimes, crimes against humanity, genocide, and aggression. Much like how other countries that have long been skeptical or reluctant to follow international human rights norms have found new cover in the United States’ regressive leadership on issues such as reproductive rights, this attack on the ICC may embolden other countries seeking to shirk responsibility for the commission of atrocities. (Myanmar, for example, already constitutionally enshrines impunity for its armed forces and has similarly contested the ICC’s jurisdiction over crimes committed against the Rohingya minority.) The order may also damage the credibility of U.S.-supported efforts to create mechanisms and bodies for international justice, such as the ongoing investigation into crimes committed by the Islamic State.
The pursuit of accountability for these grave crimes is no doubt difficult and time-consuming, but, as the precedents of the Nuremberg tribunal remind us, it is deeply important. With the global rise in authoritarianism, it also couldn’t be timelier. Impunity is fundamentally a threat to the rule of law, both in the United States and abroad.
The Trump administration’s efforts to destroy the multilateral system that the United States built is arrogant, short-sighted, and dangerous. It is time for the United States to take seriously and engage meaningfully with its international obligations. This is not merely an issue for conservative administrations, as even past liberal administrations have done little to embed human rights in the fabric of fundamental rights in the United States or hold accountable Americans who commit international crimes. Steps in the right direction would include the ratification of the ICC’s Rome Statute, as well as the nonconditional ratification and implementation of all fundamental human rights treaties, not a rapid retreat away from them.
The events of the last few weeks have brought into searing focus what widespread and systematic state violence against a country’s own populace looks like. In a powerful reminder of Martin Luther King Jr.’s call that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, the world has risen up in its call for accountability for those who killed Floyd, Taylor, and Ahmaud Arbery. Whether crimes are committed by U.S. police officers in the United States or by U.S. soldiers abroad in Afghanistan, Washington and the public owe the same commitment to the pursuit of justice and accountability wherever it occurs. This should be what “America first” looks like.