foreignpolicy--2020-10-14--Xi Just Grabbed More Bureaucratic Power

Xi Just Grabbed More Bureaucratic Power

Welcome to Foreign Policy ’ s China Brief .
The highlights this week : A change to Chinese Communist Party meeting procedure gives President Xi Jinping a new weapon , Beijing censors a museum exhibit in Inner Mongolia , and how the Korean pop group BTS upset Chinese nationalists .
If you would like to receive China Brief in your inbox every Wednesday , please sign up here .
A new set of regulations for how the top bodies of the Chinese Communist Party ( CCP ) hold meetings gives President Xi Jinping yet another tool in his quest for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The big change is that Xi , as the CCP ’ s general secretary , now has the authority not just to convene meetings of the seven-member Standing Committee and the 25-member Politburo—but also to explicitly set the agenda for them .
That is a powerful weapon in the CCP , where procedural authority really matters .
The change allows Xi to exclude topics that could question his decisions or undermine him .
Xi has long shown paranoia about the emergence of a meaningful rival or successor .
And meetings can be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in control , for example , there were periods when he refused to hold any Standing Committee meetings , forcing the other leaders to come to him directly for approval of any decision .
Deng himself used such meetings to undermine and belittle his predecessor , the somewhat hapless Hua Guofeng .
Power in the CCP , like the Soviet Union ’ s Communist Party before it , is a mix of personal connections and bureaucratic weight that is hard to decipher .
The rules do matter , especially when it comes to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
But the real skill is in the string-pulling to ensure the decisions made at the top-level meetings fall in one ’ s favor .
While in charge , Mao Zedong upended the existing rules of the party , using mob appeal and improvised new formats to cement his own rule .
Xi , despite the frequent comparisons to Mao , has built his power on very different lines .
Under Xi ’ s rule , the CCP has codified disciplinary rules , with the aim of minimizing any sign of dissent .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ inside the party , especially in comparison to the relatively freewheeling days of the 1990s and 2000s , when internal discussion could be contentious and outspoken .
Now , as one junior central government official told me this year , “ They ’ re all just waiting to hear what they ’ re supposed to say before they say it.
” Genghis who ?
In another sign of increasing ethnonationalism , a French museum was forced to pull out of an exhibition on the Mongols co-hosted with an Inner Mongolian museum after the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ empire , ” “ Genghis Khan , ” and “ Mongol.
” China has often attempted to appropriate Mongolian history—it was ruled by Mongol conquerors between 1279 and 1368—and even claimed the leader Genghis Khan as Chinese .
This level of censorship is new , however .
Along with the fierce crackdown against protests in Inner Mongolia in the last few weeks , it may indicate future cultural wars—and clashes with the Mongolian government in Ulaanbaatar , which fiercely defends its own heritage .
Mini-outbreak in check .
In many countries , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a small and unnoticed cluster .
In Qingdao , China , it prompted citywide testing , with all 9 million city residents set to be checked .
( As of this writing , 3 million had been tested so far . )
China ’ s mass testing , combined with centralized quarantine , has been one of its most successful weapons in its triumph over the coronavirus .
PLA vs. ARMY .
The Korean band BTS , one of the world ’ s most popular pop groups , was attacked this week in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Van Fleet Award for improving U.S.-South Korea relations , with a speech that supposedly offended Chinese feelings .
There was no mention of China in the speech , though BTS did say , “ We will always remember the history of pain that our two nations shared together and the sacrifices of countless men and women ” —a reference to the Korean War that was apparently sufficient to trigger Chinese nationalists online .
Ads featuring BTS promptly disappeared online in China .
Meanwhile , the BTS fandom—known as ARMY—besieged Chinese media .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the “ Milk Tea Alliance , ” a cross-national group of East Asians who resent China ’ s aggressive online nationalism .
The Shenzhen model .
Xi ’ s speech on Wednesday in Shenzhen , the southern Chinese manufacturing giant that borders Hong Kong , reaffirmed the new CCP line on the economy : a focus on domestic consumption and Chinese innovation—and nervousness about the international scene .
It ’ s a tricky message in Shenzhen , a city that is often pitched as an alternative to Hong Kong , despite lacking the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hong Kong ’ s prosperity looking shaky , Shenzhen may be appealing to international firms that still want to stay in China—under Beijing ’ s new rules .
New money .
A fascinating report from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute lays out China ’ s electronic currency plans and their implications for business .
While it is only in the early stages , Beijing has long harbored ambitions of shaping the global order through currency power , as the United States did with the dollar .
When I spoke to one of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the professor Shi Yong , back in 2013 , he also highlighted the power of surveillance in electronic transactions for , as he saw it , benevolent ends such as fighting corruption .
Financial services targeted .
While the U.S. bans on Chinese services like WeChat and TikTok have been temporarily halted by judicial order , the Trump administration still has Chinese technology in its sights , with payment apps the likely next victim .
Even in China , the sector has a dubious history , but bans would hit Chinese tech @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ahead of its counterparts in the United States , where even regular bank transfers and card usage are decades behind European standards , and it has a real chance to establish itself as the global standard as other countries scramble to digitize payments .
The Quiet Americans : Four CIA Spies at the Dawn of the Cold War—A Tragedy in Three Acts , by Scott Anderson This isn ’ t a China book as such , although the shock of the “ fall of China ” to the Communists reverberates through it .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , it ’ s fascinating reading—especially about how good intentions can turn into devil ’ s bargains with autocrats .
The Soviet Union genuinely had high-level spies in the United States and United Kingdom , for example , but the witch hunt for them did as much damage as their treachery .
Equally , Chinese espionage and coercion in the West are very real , but overreaction and racism could prove equally poisonous .
That ’ s it for this week .
We welcome your feedback at newsletters @ foreignpolicy.com .
You can @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
For more from Foreign Policy , subscribe here or sign up for our other newsletters .

Welcome to Foreign Policy’s China Brief. The highlights this week: A change to Chinese Communist Party meeting procedure gives President Xi Jinping a new weapon, Beijing censors a museum exhibit in Inner Mongolia, and how the Korean pop group BTS upset Chinese nationalists.
Welcome to Foreign Policy’s China Brief. The highlights this week: A change to Chinese Communist Party meeting procedure gives President Xi Jinping a new weapon, Beijing censors a museum exhibit in Inner Mongolia, and how the Korean pop group BTS upset Chinese nationalists.
If you would like to receive China Brief in your inbox every Wednesday, please sign up here.
Two-Fisted Tales of Communist Party Procedure
A new set of regulations for how the top bodies of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) hold meetings gives President Xi Jinping yet another tool in his quest for total control over politics in his country. The big change is that Xi, as the CCP’s general secretary, now has the authority not just to convene meetings of the seven-member Standing Committee and the 25-member Politburo—but also to explicitly set the agenda for them.
That is a powerful weapon in the CCP, where procedural authority really matters. The change allows Xi to exclude topics that could question his decisions or undermine him.
Xi has long shown paranoia about the emergence of a meaningful rival or successor. And meetings can be surprising battlefields. While Deng Xiaoping was in control, for example, there were periods when he refused to hold any Standing Committee meetings, forcing the other leaders to come to him directly for approval of any decision. Deng himself used such meetings to undermine and belittle his predecessor, the somewhat hapless Hua Guofeng.
Power in the CCP, like the Soviet Union’s Communist Party before it, is a mix of personal connections and bureaucratic weight that is hard to decipher. The rules do matter, especially when it comes to the small group meetings that determine policy. But the real skill is in the string-pulling to ensure the decisions made at the top-level meetings fall in one’s favor.
While in charge, Mao Zedong upended the existing rules of the party, using mob appeal and improvised new formats to cement his own rule. Xi, despite the frequent comparisons to Mao, has built his power on very different lines.
Under Xi’s rule, the CCP has codified disciplinary rules, with the aim of minimizing any sign of dissent. That has resulted in a chilling effect inside the party, especially in comparison to the relatively freewheeling days of the 1990s and 2000s, when internal discussion could be contentious and outspoken. Now, as one junior central government official told me this year, “They’re all just waiting to hear what they’re supposed to say before they say it.”
What We’re Following
Genghis who? In another sign of increasing ethnonationalism, a French museum was forced to pull out of an exhibition on the Mongols co-hosted with an Inner Mongolian museum after the Chinese government insisted on removing the terms “empire,” “Genghis Khan,” and “Mongol.” China has often attempted to appropriate Mongolian history—it was ruled by Mongol conquerors between 1279 and 1368—and even claimed the leader Genghis Khan as Chinese.
This level of censorship is new, however. Along with the fierce crackdown against protests in Inner Mongolia in the last few weeks, it may indicate future cultural wars—and clashes with the Mongolian government in Ulaanbaatar, which fiercely defends its own heritage.
Mini-outbreak in check. In many countries, nine confirmed cases of COVID-19 would be a small and unnoticed cluster. In Qingdao, China, it prompted citywide testing, with all 9 million city residents set to be checked. (As of this writing, 3 million had been tested so far.) China’s mass testing, combined with centralized quarantine, has been one of its most successful weapons in its triumph over the coronavirus.
PLA vs. ARMY. The Korean band BTS, one of the world’s most popular pop groups, was attacked this week in Chinese media for accepting the James A. Van Fleet Award for improving U.S.-South Korea relations, with a speech that supposedly offended Chinese feelings. There was no mention of China in the speech, though BTS did say, “We will always remember the history of pain that our two nations shared together and the sacrifices of countless men and women”—a reference to the Korean War that was apparently sufficient to trigger Chinese nationalists online.
Ads featuring BTS promptly disappeared online in China. Meanwhile, the BTS fandom—known as ARMY—besieged Chinese media. They may be the latest recruits to the “Milk Tea Alliance,” a cross-national group of East Asians who resent China’s aggressive online nationalism.
Tech and Business
The Shenzhen model. Xi’s speech on Wednesday in Shenzhen, the southern Chinese manufacturing giant that borders Hong Kong, reaffirmed the new CCP line on the economy: a focus on domestic consumption and Chinese innovation—and nervousness about the international scene. It’s a tricky message in Shenzhen, a city that is often pitched as an alternative to Hong Kong, despite lacking the same transparency.
With the pillars of Hong Kong’s prosperity looking shaky, Shenzhen may be appealing to international firms that still want to stay in China—under Beijing’s new rules.
New money. A fascinating report from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute lays out China’s electronic currency plans and their implications for business. While it is only in the early stages, Beijing has long harbored ambitions of shaping the global order through currency power, as the United States did with the dollar.
When I spoke to one of the architects of China’s financial monitoring, the professor Shi Yong, back in 2013, he also highlighted the power of surveillance in electronic transactions for, as he saw it, benevolent ends such as fighting corruption.
Financial services targeted. While the U.S. bans on Chinese services like WeChat and TikTok have been temporarily halted by judicial order, the Trump administration still has Chinese technology in its sights, with payment apps the likely next victim. Even in China, the sector has a dubious history, but bans would hit Chinese tech firms hard.
Chinese fintech is years ahead of its counterparts in the United States, where even regular bank transfers and card usage are decades behind European standards, and it has a real chance to establish itself as the global standard as other countries scramble to digitize payments.
What We’re Reading The Quiet Americans: Four CIA Spies at the Dawn of the Cold War--a Tragedy in Three Acts, Scott Anderson, Penguin Random House, Sept. 2020, .
The Quiet Americans: Four CIA Spies at the Dawn of the Cold War—A Tragedy in Three Acts, by Scott Anderson
This isn’t a China book as such, although the shock of the “fall of China” to the Communists reverberates through it. But as a second cold war dawns, it’s fascinating reading—especially about how good intentions can turn into devil’s bargains with autocrats. The Soviet Union genuinely had high-level spies in the United States and United Kingdom, for example, but the witch hunt for them did as much damage as their treachery.
Equally, Chinese espionage and coercion in the West are very real, but overreaction and racism could prove equally poisonous.
That’s it for this week.
We welcome your feedback at newsletters@foreignpolicy.com. You can find older editions of China Brief here. For more from Foreign Policy, subscribe here or sign up for our other newsletters.


foreignpolicy--2020-10-14--Iraq’s Future Isn’t Oil, It’s Sustainable Electricity

Iraq sits on one of the world ’ s largest oil reserves , making it a major regional and international actor .
But as the world ’ s economy transitions away from reliance on fossil fuels and toward more sustainable sources of power , it has become a top priority in Iraq to also transition away from its dependency on the petrodollar .
During my 18-month tenure as Iraq ’ s Minister of Electricity ( October 2018-May 2020 ) , my colleagues and I worked to initiate concrete steps to electrify Iraq ’ s vital energy sector in order to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the fight against the Islamic State and guarantee its long-term status as a regional hub of energy .
Our logic was straightforward : In order to electrify Iraq ’ s national economy , it was imperative to work toward a power renaissance , a national development policy aimed at reversing an annual $ 30 billion in lost opportunity costs in the energy sector and ultimately acting as a force for greater stability and economic prosperity .
In order to physically generate more power , it was also crucial to balance what was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of competition between multinational corporations that hindered progress and delayed deliverables .
Iraq ’ s power sector suffers from a plethora of problems .
The country ’ s complex bureaucracy often hinders progress by focusing on ineffective short-term micro-technical solutions , instead of longer-term macro-institutional reforms .
There is also a chronic inability to manage raw material for fuel in tandem with other energy portfolios and the wider business value chain .
The sector is susceptible to the conflicting agendas of Iraq ’ s wide array of political actors that undermine a unified @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it in mismanagement , and miring it in corruption.In order to electrify Iraq ’ s national economy , it was imperative to work toward a power renaissance .
Upon taking office in October 2018 , we promptly became aware that Iraq had received a series of road maps from foreign entities that offered guidelines for electrifying the country .
These included proposals from Siemens of Germany , General Electric of the United States , and various others from Chinese and regional companies .
These proposals proved valuable , but the country ultimately needed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with both multilateral organizations and our partners in the region and beyond , we strove to realize the aim of an Iraqi roadmap while cherry-picking the best commercial options to complement the national plan .
As a result , our national development plan had both domestic and international dimensions .
An Iraqi road map needed to strike a balance between Iraq ’ s immediate energy requirements—namely , a reliable power supply for all Iraqis—and ambitious targets for energy independence , to be reached by 2030 .
We also planned to ensure that the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ toward management of the fuel mix with a focus on gas to power as well as generating 30 percent of the country ’ s power supply from renewable resources .
Our efforts held broad transformative potential for Iraq , both in terms of governance and so-called Ease of Doing Business , a metric used by the World Bank to assess an environment ’ s suitability for foreign business .
We always took into consideration the harmonization and alignment of federal and provincial dynamics of governance .
This dynamic dovetails with the larger vision @ @ @ @ @ @ @ local private sector and international conglomerates .
As part of this process , we sought to streamline and accelerate the privatization of state-owned enterprises .
Our plan also went directly to the heart of Iraq ’ s foreign policy .
To realize our aim of electrifying the Iraqi economy and achieving sustainable energy independence , we had to delicately leverage the country ’ s regional relationships to create wider inter-connectivity between Iraq and other sources of electricity in the Middle East in order to reduce our dependency on Iranian electricity .
Our strategy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ energy hub and a vibrant utility market for the region , with grid interconnectivity .
Such an endeavor could make Iraq a regional energy hub for decades to come , maximizing its place in regional geopolitics .
There is also the separate but related security dimension .
Keeping the lights on does not merely enable economic progress .
It also strengthens the country ’ s national security because it both bolsters the state ’ s capacity to defeat threats and also sustains its victory in areas liberated from the Islamic State , which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ boost its legitimacy among those who might be susceptible to the ideology of armed groups.Iraq ’ s stability is an integral part of global security , and the international community must support efforts in Iraq to achieve energy stability .
This dimension is also international .
Power provision acts as a buffer against extremism by building and supporting local economies that prevent internal mass displacement and an exodus of refugees at regional levels .
This issue affects the welfare of countries beyond Iraq , especially in Europe , and otherwise it could lead @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
We successfully delivered electricity to liberated provinces and fast-tracked the development of major projects in the middle and southern provinces .
But although many of these projects were completed , they require the attention and due diligence of future governments to be maintained and expanded .
In this equation , it is not only imperative for Iraq to achieve a power renaissance but also for the international community to aid it , especially considering the broader international implications .
Iraq ’ s stability is an integral part of global security , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Iraq to achieve energy stability in order to advance regional security .
Failing to work toward this objective could jeopardize Iraq ’ s security and thereby upend the uneasy sense of peace that the region has generally settled into since the defeat of the Islamic State .
A stable Iraq upholds the world ’ s energy security and , by extension , the global economy .
Achieving long-term energy security in Iraq should not be exclusively Iraq ’ s priority ; it must be part of a broader effort by the international community @ @ @ @ @ @ @ country and beyond .
As the world continues to grapple with the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic and considers a future in which climate change is an everyday reality , helping to transform Iraq could be the first step in a wider effort to prepare the world for a new future .

Iraq sits on one of the world’s largest oil reserves, making it a major regional and international actor. But as the world’s economy transitions away from reliance on fossil fuels and toward more sustainable sources of power, it has become a top priority in Iraq to also transition away from its dependency on the petrodollar. During my 18-month tenure as Iraq’s Minister of Electricity (October 2018-May 2020), my colleagues and I worked to initiate concrete steps to electrify Iraq’s vital energy sector in order to help stabilize the country in the aftermath of the fight against the Islamic State and guarantee its long-term status as a regional hub of energy.
Iraq sits on one of the world’s largest oil reserves, making it a major regional and international actor. But as the world’s economy transitions away from reliance on fossil fuels and toward more sustainable sources of power, it has become a top priority in Iraq to also transition away from its dependency on the petrodollar. During my 18-month tenure as Iraq’s Minister of Electricity (October 2018-May 2020), my colleagues and I worked to initiate concrete steps to electrify Iraq’s vital energy sector in order to help stabilize the country in the aftermath of the fight against the Islamic State and guarantee its long-term status as a regional hub of energy.
Our logic was straightforward: In order to electrify Iraq’s national economy, it was imperative to work toward a power renaissance, a national development policy aimed at reversing an annual $30 billion in lost opportunity costs in the energy sector and ultimately acting as a force for greater stability and economic prosperity. In order to physically generate more power, it was also crucial to balance what was then an exceptionally unfair and unhealthy degree of competition between multinational corporations that hindered progress and delayed deliverables.
Iraq’s power sector suffers from a plethora of problems. The country’s complex bureaucracy often hinders progress by focusing on ineffective short-term micro-technical solutions, instead of longer-term macro-institutional reforms. There is also a chronic inability to manage raw material for fuel in tandem with other energy portfolios and the wider business value chain. The sector is susceptible to the conflicting agendas of Iraq’s wide array of political actors that undermine a unified national vision for running it, entrenching it in mismanagement, and miring it in corruption.In order to electrify Iraq’s national economy, it was imperative to work toward a power renaissance.
Upon taking office in October 2018, we promptly became aware that Iraq had received a series of road maps from foreign entities that offered guidelines for electrifying the country. These included proposals from Siemens of Germany, General Electric of the United States, and various others from Chinese and regional companies. These proposals proved valuable, but the country ultimately needed an Iraqi national road map.
Working with both multilateral organizations and our partners in the region and beyond, we strove to realize the aim of an Iraqi roadmap while cherry-picking the best commercial options to complement the national plan. As a result, our national development plan had both domestic and international dimensions.
An Iraqi road map needed to strike a balance between Iraq’s immediate energy requirements—namely, a reliable power supply for all Iraqis—and ambitious targets for energy independence, to be reached by 2030. We also planned to ensure that the latter would be sustainable, by moving toward management of the fuel mix with a focus on gas to power as well as generating 30 percent of the country’s power supply from renewable resources.
Our efforts held broad transformative potential for Iraq, both in terms of governance and so-called Ease of Doing Business, a metric used by the World Bank to assess an environment’s suitability for foreign business. We always took into consideration the harmonization and alignment of federal and provincial dynamics of governance. This dynamic dovetails with the larger vision of opening traditionally government-held sectors to the local private sector and international conglomerates. As part of this process, we sought to streamline and accelerate the privatization of state-owned enterprises.
Our plan also went directly to the heart of Iraq’s foreign policy. To realize our aim of electrifying the Iraqi economy and achieving sustainable energy independence, we had to delicately leverage the country’s regional relationships to create wider inter-connectivity between Iraq and other sources of electricity in the Middle East in order to reduce our dependency on Iranian electricity. Our strategy was focused on turning Iraq into an energy hub and a vibrant utility market for the region, with grid interconnectivity. Such an endeavor could make Iraq a regional energy hub for decades to come, maximizing its place in regional geopolitics.
There is also the separate but related security dimension. Keeping the lights on does not merely enable economic progress. It also strengthens the country’s national security because it both bolsters the state’s capacity to defeat threats and also sustains its victory in areas liberated from the Islamic State, which is especially important as it tries to boost its legitimacy among those who might be susceptible to the ideology of armed groups.Iraq’s stability is an integral part of global security, and the international community must support efforts in Iraq to achieve energy stability.
This dimension is also international. Power provision acts as a buffer against extremism by building and supporting local economies that prevent internal mass displacement and an exodus of refugees at regional levels. This issue affects the welfare of countries beyond Iraq, especially in Europe, and otherwise it could lead to the recurrence of the Islamic State.
We successfully delivered electricity to liberated provinces and fast-tracked the development of major projects in the middle and southern provinces. But although many of these projects were completed, they require the attention and due diligence of future governments to be maintained and expanded. In this equation, it is not only imperative for Iraq to achieve a power renaissance but also for the international community to aid it, especially considering the broader international implications.
Iraq’s stability is an integral part of global security, and the international community must support efforts in Iraq to achieve energy stability in order to advance regional security. Failing to work toward this objective could jeopardize Iraq’s security and thereby upend the uneasy sense of peace that the region has generally settled into since the defeat of the Islamic State. A stable Iraq upholds the world’s energy security and, by extension, the global economy.
Achieving long-term energy security in Iraq should not be exclusively Iraq’s priority; it must be part of a broader effort by the international community to secure peace and stability in the country and beyond. As the world continues to grapple with the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic and considers a future in which climate change is an everyday reality, helping to transform Iraq could be the first step in a wider effort to prepare the world for a new future.


foreignpolicy--2020-10-14--Scholars Fear a More Nationalist Supreme Court Under Barrett

With the presidential election just three weeks away , almost all the questions asked of U.S. Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett at her confirmation hearings this week have focused on hot-button domestic issues—especially Democratic concerns that she will fulfill President Donald Trump ’ s wishes and vote to overturn abortion rights , the Affordable Care Act , and same-sex marriage .
But though Barrett ’ s record on international issues is scant , some legal scholars fear that her impact will be just as lasting on America ’ s role in the global system .
They believe that she @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Antonin Scalia , and tilt the court toward rejecting international law , preventing future presidents from unilaterally negotiating global agreements such as the Iran nuclear deal and leaving the fate of ongoing military campaigns entirely in the hands of the White House without legal restraint .
Barrett herself , asked briefly by Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley in the third day of hearings Wednesday about the role of international law , expressed extreme skepticism about its utility in making any judgements on the court , saying , “ I would never want to say @ @ @ @ @ @ @ possible.
” But she then asserted : “ In my view the U.S. Constitution is the compact of the fundamental law of the American people ” and should not be “ controlled ” by “ the laws passed by other countries.
” “ That ’ s an outrageous and incredibly disappointing thing for her to say , ” said Karen Greenberg , a legal expert on national security and civil liberties at Fordham University .
“ It ’ s not about being beholden or subject to international law ; it ’ s about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was one of the original designers of [ such as the United Nations Charter ] .
It mischaracterizes the relationship between international law and U.S. law , and it affords another way of avoiding international obligations.
” Another prominent legal scholar , Harold Koh , agreed that Coney Barrett ’ s response appeared to betray some ignorance about how international law is deeply intertwined with U.S. policy .
“ Her errors are concluding that these concepts like equality or liberty are American property as opposed to values shared by many countries , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and assistant secretary of human rights at the State Department .
“ She also seems not to grasp how critical the role of the U.S. has been in making and shaping international law , assuming instead that it is somehow being ‘ imposed ’ on Americans , as opposed to being made by Americans .
“ Until now she has been vague about her judicial philosophy , ” added Koh , who is today the Sterling professor of international law at Yale University .
“ But most likely , Judge Barrett ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ suggests that she will join the majority , nationalist group of justices who tend to defer to executive power , decline to treat international law as a significant constraint on national action , decline to exercise judicial power on international matters unless Congress has clearly so directed , decline to look beyond national law to foreign law for constitutional insights , and show little deference to the rulings of other international tribunals or bodies.
” That could roll back decades of progress on an array of human rights , international agreements such as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ accepted U.S. obligations to the international community .
“ On each of these points , she represents a dramatic shift from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg , who was a transnationalist justice , respectful of international and foreign legal traditions , ” said Koh .
What that might mean in practice is a court that over the long term spurns observance of global rules .
“ At a minimum , the Supreme Court can be expected to limit the constitutional power of the United States to enter into , or comply with existing , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Golove , a specialist in the constitutional law of foreign affairs at New York University .
“ But the impact could be much broader , including , for example , calling into question the constitutionality of some environmental treaties.
” In one such case in 2007 , Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency , an earlier , more liberal Supreme Court ruled that the EPA had the obligation to regulate greenhouse gases in case the Senate failed to ratify the Kyoto Protocol .
In an answer to a direct question at the hearings on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ whether she believes global warming is man-made .
Trump has consistently cast doubt on the seriousness of the climate change crisis Though Chief Justice John Roberts has occasionally sided with the liberal side , and another Trump-appointed justice , Neil Gorsuch , might still prove a swing vote on some key decisions , a Supreme Court with a 6-3 conservative majority could also decide the policy toward national emergencies such as COVID-19 on First Amendment grounds .
“ We might well , for example , see the court take a more assertive position @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , like freedom of religion , ” Golove said .
The U.S. military ’ s never-ending anti-terrorism campaigns could be the most immediate victim of a new conservative court—leaving its legal context unresolved in the long term .
If Barrett is confirmed as expected , along partisan lines , the court ’ s conservative majority will likely leave the fate of terrorist suspect detainees at Guantánamo Bay , Cuba—as well as other suspected enemy combatants—in permanent limbo .
Just last month , a Trump appointee on the Court of Appeals in the D.C @ @ @ @ @ @ @ due process rights at all .
“ It was a further step than we ’ ve ever seen before , ” Greenberg said .
The new court would also likely hold an expansive view of the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force that has been used by every president since George W. Bush to justify a virtually permanent war against terrorists almost anywhere .
“ Is it a law like the Bible , forever ?
” Greenberg said .
“ The idea of an ever-expansive war power doesn ’ t really jell.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ threatens to narrow Washington ’ s concept of human rights .
In July , Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered the report of the State Department ’ s Commission on Unalienable Rights , which sought to reduce human rights to the “ founding principles ” of the United States .
It implied a retreat from human rights applied around the world , especially when it comes to abortion and reproductive rights , but also including treaties that support LGBTQ rights , the prohibition of torture , or ways to protect racial minorities , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ discrimination .
“ There has certainly been a significant push by Trump and Pompeo in particular to develop a hierarchy of rights , and the rights left behind are first reproductive and LGBTQ rights , ” said Andrea Prasow of Human Rights Watch .
She said the administration , using subtle legal arguments , is essentially trying to roll back international legal commitments made by Washington ever since the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights .
With Barrett on the court , that conservative goal could be in sight .
In her writings @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has often seemed to question the validity and constitutionality of international law .
In a 2010 scholarly article , “ Substantive Canons and Faithful Agency , ” she argued that judges who “ depart from the most textually plausible interpretation of statutory language function as something other than faithful agents of Congress ” and are acting as “ a protector of international law.
” That , according to Koh , would put her in line with other conservative , nationalist justices like Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito .
Commenting on another case in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ laws and traditions of foreign countries are fair game or out of bounds in the interpretation of our Constitution.
” “ Many conservatives are skeptical of international agreements across the board , as infringements of U.S. sovereignty , ” Golove said .
That ’ s one reason international treaties—which require two-thirds ratification by the Senate—have fallen by the wayside .
In turn , Democrats have embraced executive orders as the only practical way for the United States to engage constructively with the world , as the Obama administration did with the Iran nuclear @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But even that foreign-policy tool could be at risk in the next Supreme Court .
“ It is certainly conceivable that the conservatives on the court could start to call these alternative mechanisms for making international agreements into question , with potentially monumental impacts on the nation ’ s foreign affairs , ” Golove said .
The concerns aren ’ t limited to the world at large .
Legal experts also worry Barrett could accelerate the decline of the norms of U.S. democracy , thus further damaging America ’ s place in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Barrett refused to directly answer questions about the peaceful transfer of power—which Trump has suggested he might not honor .
She also said she couldn ’ t answer whether Trump has the power to delay an election , even though the Constitution clearly gives Congress the power ( under an 1845 law ) to set the date of Election Day .
Barrett also avoided answering most questions about Republican efforts to restrict voting rights , and she hedged over how she might rule on the Affordable Care Act , LBGTQ rights , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ right to life , ” the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling affirming abortion rights , though she pledged to keep “ an open mind.
” She has repeatedly said of the late Justice Scalia , for whom she was a law clerk , “ His judicial philosophy is mine , too.
” Though she also said during the hearings she didn ’ t intend to follow Scalia ’ s thinking in every case , Barrett openly identifies herself as a “ textualist ” or “ originalist ” —meaning she will refuse to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it literally says .
The irony is rich , Koh said .
The Founding Fathers were deeply concerned with international law and America ’ s standing in the world .
“ Barrett often claims to be an originalist , which should mean she ought to be an internationalist , since our early American justices—John Marshall , John Jay , Oliver Ellsworth—were all also internationalists , ” Koh said .
“ But other claimed originalist justices have not carried through on their ‘ originalism ’ when it comes to showing a ‘ decent respect @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the words of the Declaration of Independence .
”

With the presidential election just three weeks away, almost all the questions asked of U.S. Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett at her confirmation hearings this week have focused on hot-button domestic issues—especially Democratic concerns that she will fulfill President Donald Trump’s wishes and vote to overturn abortion rights, the Affordable Care Act, and same-sex marriage.
With the presidential election just three weeks away, almost all the questions asked of U.S. Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett at her confirmation hearings this week have focused on hot-button domestic issues—especially Democratic concerns that she will fulfill President Donald Trump’s wishes and vote to overturn abortion rights, the Affordable Care Act, and same-sex marriage.
But though Barrett’s record on international issues is scant, some legal scholars fear that her impact will be just as lasting on America’s role in the global system. They believe that she will follow her mentor, former Justice Antonin Scalia, and tilt the court toward rejecting international law, preventing future presidents from unilaterally negotiating global agreements such as the Iran nuclear deal and leaving the fate of ongoing military campaigns entirely in the hands of the White House without legal restraint.
Barrett herself, asked briefly by Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley in the third day of hearings Wednesday about the role of international law, expressed extreme skepticism about its utility in making any judgements on the court, saying, “I would never want to say never, because it’s certainly possible.” But she then asserted: “In my view the U.S. Constitution is the compact of the fundamental law of the American people” and should not be “controlled” by “the laws passed by other countries.”
“That’s an outrageous and incredibly disappointing thing for her to say,” said Karen Greenberg, a legal expert on national security and civil liberties at Fordham University. “It’s not about being beholden or subject to international law; it’s about recognizing internal covenants that the United States was one of the original designers of [such as the United Nations Charter]. It mischaracterizes the relationship between international law and U.S. law, and it affords another way of avoiding international obligations.”
Another prominent legal scholar, Harold Koh, agreed that Coney Barrett’s response appeared to betray some ignorance about how international law is deeply intertwined with U.S. policy. “Her errors are concluding that these concepts like equality or liberty are American property as opposed to values shared by many countries,” said Koh, a former legal advisor and assistant secretary of human rights at the State Department. “She also seems not to grasp how critical the role of the U.S. has been in making and shaping international law, assuming instead that it is somehow being ‘imposed’ on Americans, as opposed to being made by Americans.
“Until now she has been vague about her judicial philosophy,” added Koh, who is today the Sterling professor of international law at Yale University. “But most likely, Judge Barrett’s history as a scholar and a judge suggests that she will join the majority, nationalist group of justices who tend to defer to executive power, decline to treat international law as a significant constraint on national action, decline to exercise judicial power on international matters unless Congress has clearly so directed, decline to look beyond national law to foreign law for constitutional insights, and show little deference to the rulings of other international tribunals or bodies.”
That could roll back decades of progress on an array of human rights, international agreements such as the Paris climate pact, and other accepted U.S. obligations to the international community.
“On each of these points, she represents a dramatic shift from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who was a transnationalist justice, respectful of international and foreign legal traditions,” said Koh.
What that might mean in practice is a court that over the long term spurns observance of global rules.
“At a minimum, the Supreme Court can be expected to limit the constitutional power of the United States to enter into, or comply with existing, human rights treaties,” said David Golove, a specialist in the constitutional law of foreign affairs at New York University. “But the impact could be much broader, including, for example, calling into question the constitutionality of some environmental treaties.” In one such case in 2007, Massachusetts v. Environmental Protection Agency, an earlier, more liberal Supreme Court ruled that the EPA had the obligation to regulate greenhouse gases in case the Senate failed to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.
In an answer to a direct question at the hearings on Wednesday, Coney Barrett declined to say whether she believes global warming is man-made. Trump has consistently cast doubt on the seriousness of the climate change crisis
Though Chief Justice John Roberts has occasionally sided with the liberal side, and another Trump-appointed justice, Neil Gorsuch, might still prove a swing vote on some key decisions, a Supreme Court with a 6-3 conservative majority could also decide the policy toward national emergencies such as COVID-19 on First Amendment grounds. “We might well, for example, see the court take a more assertive position scrutinizing COVID emergency regulations on constitutional grounds, like freedom of religion,” Golove said.
The U.S. military’s never-ending anti-terrorism campaigns could be the most immediate victim of a new conservative court—leaving its legal context unresolved in the long term. If Barrett is confirmed as expected, along partisan lines, the court’s conservative majority will likely leave the fate of terrorist suspect detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba—as well as other suspected enemy combatants—in permanent limbo. Just last month, a Trump appointee on the Court of Appeals in the D.C. Circuit denied that detainees have any due process rights at all. “It was a further step than we’ve ever seen before,” Greenberg said.
The new court would also likely hold an expansive view of the 2001 Authorization for Use of Military Force that has been used by every president since George W. Bush to justify a virtually permanent war against terrorists almost anywhere. “Is it a law like the Bible, forever?” Greenberg said. “The idea of an ever-expansive war power doesn’t really jell.”
A 6-3 court with Barrett also threatens to narrow Washington’s concept of human rights. In July, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo delivered the report of the State Department’s Commission on Unalienable Rights, which sought to reduce human rights to the “founding principles” of the United States. It implied a retreat from human rights applied around the world, especially when it comes to abortion and reproductive rights, but also including treaties that support LGBTQ rights, the prohibition of torture, or ways to protect racial minorities, children, and people with disabilities from discrimination.
“There has certainly been a significant push by Trump and Pompeo in particular to develop a hierarchy of rights, and the rights left behind are first reproductive and LGBTQ rights,” said Andrea Prasow of Human Rights Watch. She said the administration, using subtle legal arguments, is essentially trying to roll back international legal commitments made by Washington ever since the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. With Barrett on the court, that conservative goal could be in sight.
In her writings as well as her testimony, Barrett has often seemed to question the validity and constitutionality of international law. In a 2010 scholarly article, “Substantive Canons and Faithful Agency,” she argued that judges who “depart from the most textually plausible interpretation of statutory language function as something other than faithful agents of Congress” and are acting as “a protector of international law.” That, according to Koh, would put her in line with other conservative, nationalist justices like Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito.
Commenting on another case in 2013, she asked whether “the laws and traditions of foreign countries are fair game or out of bounds in the interpretation of our Constitution.”
“Many conservatives are skeptical of international agreements across the board, as infringements of U.S. sovereignty,” Golove said. That’s one reason international treaties—which require two-thirds ratification by the Senate—have fallen by the wayside. In turn, Democrats have embraced executive orders as the only practical way for the United States to engage constructively with the world, as the Obama administration did with the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate agreement. But even that foreign-policy tool could be at risk in the next Supreme Court.
“It is certainly conceivable that the conservatives on the court could start to call these alternative mechanisms for making international agreements into question, with potentially monumental impacts on the nation’s foreign affairs,” Golove said.
The concerns aren’t limited to the world at large. Legal experts also worry Barrett could accelerate the decline of the norms of U.S. democracy, thus further damaging America’s place in the world. In hearings this week, Barrett refused to directly answer questions about the peaceful transfer of power—which Trump has suggested he might not honor. She also said she couldn’t answer whether Trump has the power to delay an election, even though the Constitution clearly gives Congress the power (under an 1845 law) to set the date of Election Day.
Barrett also avoided answering most questions about Republican efforts to restrict voting rights, and she hedged over how she might rule on the Affordable Care Act, LBGTQ rights, and, as a professed believer in the “right to life,” the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling affirming abortion rights, though she pledged to keep “an open mind.”
She has repeatedly said of the late Justice Scalia, for whom she was a law clerk, “His judicial philosophy is mine, too.” Though she also said during the hearings she didn’t intend to follow Scalia’s thinking in every case, Barrett openly identifies herself as a “textualist” or “originalist”—meaning she will refuse to interpret the Constitution beyond what she believes it literally says.
The irony is rich, Koh said. The Founding Fathers were deeply concerned with international law and America’s standing in the world. “Barrett often claims to be an originalist, which should mean she ought to be an internationalist, since our early American justices—John Marshall, John Jay, Oliver Ellsworth—were all also internationalists,” Koh said.
“But other claimed originalist justices have not carried through on their ‘originalism’ when it comes to showing a ‘decent respect to the opinions of mankind,’ in the words of the Declaration of Independence.”


foreignpolicy--2020-10-14--Trump’s Foreign-Policy Adventures Haven’t All Flopped

President Donald Trump ’ s ascent to the White House stunned Washington ’ s national security establishment and unleashed frantic debates over the fate of the liberal international order , U.S. hegemony , and the future of democracy .
Nervous allies wondered if Trump would abandon NATO , start a war with North Korea , or demolish the international trading system .
Four years on , how do those early predictions and worries hold up ?
Alliances are still standing ( if frayed ) , America ’ s hard power remains unrivaled ( for now ) , and Trump steered @ @ @ @ @ @ @ blunders like the war in Iraq or the 2011 intervention in Libya .
Even some of Trump ’ s fiercest critics acknowledge that the administration has notched some important foreign-policy successes—most notably on China and in the Middle East .
Interviews with a dozen seasoned foreign-policy experts show that there ’ s actually no clear verdict on Trump ’ s foreign policy .
To many on the left—and even some conservatives—none of the administration ’ s victories outweighs the damage that Trump has done to the office of the presidency or his response @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 221,000 Americans so far .
But many Trump supporters and conservative policy experts argue that , setting aside the president ’ s Twitter feed and a bitter partisan climate in Washington , his administration has done what mattered most : strengthened U.S. hard power and better positioned the country for what lies ahead .
With Trump ’ s first—and perhaps only—term in office ending soon , his foreign-policy successes can be grouped into three broad categories : big victories , partisan victories , and technocratic victories .
The big victories .
For starters @ @ @ @ @ @ @ administration has systematically turned the U.S. national security apparatus away from decades of focus on the Middle East toward an era of renewed great-power competition , rousing Washington to the view that Beijing represents the greatest existential threat to the United States in coming decades .
The administration has pushed back against Chinese influence operations and raised global awareness of the threat posed by China ’ s fast-developing technology , especially in next-generation mobile communications .
It has taken steps to reduce U.S. reliance on China for critical materials needed for economic and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ support for Taiwan—including several pending arms sales—and taken a harder line on Beijing ’ s land grab in the South China Sea .
And working through the Indo-Pacific “ Quad ” group , the Trump administration has coordinated regional policy with India , Japan , and Australia .
The administration has also laid the groundwork for ambitious plans to dramatically bulk up the U.S. Navy to over 350 ships—or possibly even 500—a long-term plan that some defense hawks have cheered as the military threat from China grows .
“ Getting the United States @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with the [ Chinese Communist Party ] is the most significant achievement of this administration , ” said Rebeccah Heinrichs of the Hudson Institute .
“ Even if this was their one and only term , they ’ ve done the country a great service by moving the ball down the field on China.
” Then there ’ s Israel .
Trump ’ s decision to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem drew warnings of uprisings in the region and conflict with Palestinians—but neither came to pass .
In the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ enjoyed broad bipartisan backing and is now largely seen as irreversible ; Democratic presidential nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden said he would keep the embassy in Jerusalem if elected , even as historic bipartisan support for Israel looks to be eroding in Democratic circles .
The Trump administration also claimed credit for normalizing relations between Israel and two of Washington ’ s closest allies in the Middle East , the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain .
The move , which the White House heralded as “ the dawn of a new @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Democratic and Republican lawmakers alike as a rare spot of good news .
Still , some experts questioned whether Trump was claiming credit for diplomatic dealings that were long in the works ; the UAE and Israel , for example , had been cooperating on security matters behind the scenes for years .
“ You ’ ve got to give them some credit for the Abraham Accords , ” said Emma Ashford , a foreign-policy expert with the Atlantic Council , referring to the deal by its official name .
“ This isn @ @ @ @ @ @ @ policy , but getting some of the Gulf states to come out and admit they were actually more friendly with Israel , that ’ s something that ’ s an achievement.
” And then there ’ s the Islamic State .
Under the Trump administration , the United States rolled back the terrorist group ’ s physical caliphate and , in October 2019 , killed its leader , Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi .
At its peak in 2014 , the Islamic State controlled over 41,000 square miles of territory between Iraq and Syria—roughly the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ million people under its control .
The defeat of the group was a significant military achievement for the Trump administration , even if it was due in part to the military strategy set in motion late in the Obama administration .
The one big caveat : The Islamic State ’ s ideology lives on , and groups operating under its banner continue to stage attacks in Afghanistan , Iraq , Syria , Egypt , and West Africa .
The partisan victories .
Trump fulfilled his campaign promise to withdraw from the 2015 Iran @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hallmark diplomatic achievement .
Paired with the so-called “ maximum pressure campaign , ” perhaps no other Trump foreign-policy priority has drawn higher praise from Republicans—and sharper rebukes from Democrats—than Iran .
Trump ’ s withdrawal from the nuclear deal was cheered by conservatives who saw it as a grave foreign-policy misstep that would strengthen the hand of Washington ’ s archfoe in the region .
They also praised the president for ordering the killing of a top Iranian general , Qassem Suleimani , seen as an architect of Iran ’ s network @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that targeted U.S. and allied troops .
Critics counter that , thanks to the U.S. withdrawal from the nuclear deal , Iran has restarted its nuclear program and is a lot closer to being able to build a nuclear weapon than when Trump took office .
Meanwhile , conservative foreign-policy experts also cheer the Trump administration for withdrawing from Cold War-era arms treaties that they say hamstrung America ’ s ability to counter powers like China and Russia .
Trump ’ s abandonment of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty , after years of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of all NATO members .
“ That was a huge diplomatic achievement in and of itself , ” Heinrichs said .
But the effort to reshape arms control has had its misses , too .
Efforts to broaden the decade-old New START agreement with Russia to include China floundered , and the treaty looks set to expire early next year , which critics say raises the specter of another arms race .
Finally , under Trump , the United States has also paired back its funding for international organizations and withdrawn from institutions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ U.N. Human Rights Council , and UNESCO , the institution ’ s cultural and education organization .
His supporters say such moves at the United Nations were sorely needed course corrections to draw attention to the institutions ’ anti-Israel bias and , in the case of the Human Rights Council , its hypocrisy for allowing some of the world ’ s worst human rights abusers , like China and Venezuela , to join .
Critics on the left counter that the moves undercut U.S. international standing and gave China space to increase its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ technocratic victories .
Overshadowed by the big foreign-policy moves and frequent Trump scandals , the administration made important strides that never made national news but could have important impacts on U.S. foreign policy in the future .
Some of these changes could last through a drastically different Democratic administration .
Apart from Trump ’ s repeated effort to decimate the foreign aid budget , and spurred on by Congress , his administration also carried out important reforms of U.S. foreign aid machinery , overhauling the U.S. Agency for International Development and bolstering America @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s checkbook diplomacy with the creation of the International Development Finance Corp .
Though it went unnoticed due to the abrupt departure of John Bolton , Trump ’ s third national security advisor , last year the president unveiled new counterterrorism sanctions powers for the federal government that one State Department official described as “ the most significant update to our terrorism sanctions authorities since the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.
” The new authorities allow government agencies to go directly after leaders of terrorist groups and target groups ’ financiers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ who participated in training to commit acts of terrorism .
Prior authorities were more limited .
When countries began locking down their borders in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic , hundreds of thousands of Americans abroad were trapped and scrambling for ways to get home .
After a very rough start , the State Department undertook an unprecedented campaign to repatriate Americans and by June had coordinated the return of over 100,000 Americans abroad—a significant logistical feat .
A lion ’ s share of the credit goes to the rank and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ some experts pointed to this as an underappreciated achievement of the Trump administration nonetheless—and perhaps the only bright spot in the administration ’ s pandemic response .
Misfires and missed opportunities .
Of course , apart from all these achievements , Trump orchestrated or stumbled through some significant foreign-policy misfires : an impasse on North Korea denuclearization negotiations ; a long-delayed Israeli-Palestinian peace plan that stumbled out of the gate ; a fiery impeachment trial ; an absence of any action on climate change ; and unfulfilled promises to fully extricate U.S. troops @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Afghanistan .
“ If you consider things like the war in Afghanistan , the U.S. troop presence in Syria or Iraq , Trump came into office promising he would end these conflicts and end nation-building , and he hasn ’ t done that , ” Ashford said .
“ The missed opportunities is a category you really can ’ t discount.
” And hanging over everything is the coronavirus pandemic , which several senior U.S. diplomatic and defense officials referred to as the biggest national security failure in modern U.S. history .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the world ’ s population but 20 percent of the total COVID-19-related deaths , and it has spurned an international campaign to coordinate developing a vaccine .
“ The COVID crisis is the first international crisis since pre-World War II days where there ’ s been zero U.S. international leadership , ” said Thomas Wright of the Brookings Institution .
“ In fact , the president in particular has actively impaired efforts of cooperation .
We ’ ve seen the consequences of that pretty dramatically.
” For all the victories that Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ some experts insist that the losses , missed opportunities , and collateral damage weigh much heavier in the balance .
“ The losses far outweigh the gains , ” said Kori Schake , the director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute .
“ Moreover , the gains were possible without the losses .
”

President Donald Trump’s ascent to the White House stunned Washington’s national security establishment and unleashed frantic debates over the fate of the liberal international order, U.S. hegemony, and the future of democracy. Nervous allies wondered if Trump would abandon NATO, start a war with North Korea, or demolish the international trading system.
President Donald Trump’s ascent to the White House stunned Washington’s national security establishment and unleashed frantic debates over the fate of the liberal international order, U.S. hegemony, and the future of democracy. Nervous allies wondered if Trump would abandon NATO, start a war with North Korea, or demolish the international trading system.
Four years on, how do those early predictions and worries hold up? Alliances are still standing (if frayed), America’s hard power remains unrivaled (for now), and Trump steered well clear of any costly new military blunders like the war in Iraq or the 2011 intervention in Libya. Even some of Trump’s fiercest critics acknowledge that the administration has notched some important foreign-policy successes—most notably on China and in the Middle East.
Interviews with a dozen seasoned foreign-policy experts show that there’s actually no clear verdict on Trump’s foreign policy. To many on the left—and even some conservatives—none of the administration’s victories outweighs the damage that Trump has done to the office of the presidency or his response to the pandemic that has killed over 221,000 Americans so far.
But many Trump supporters and conservative policy experts argue that, setting aside the president’s Twitter feed and a bitter partisan climate in Washington, his administration has done what mattered most: strengthened U.S. hard power and better positioned the country for what lies ahead.
With Trump’s first—and perhaps only—term in office ending soon, his foreign-policy successes can be grouped into three broad categories: big victories, partisan victories, and technocratic victories.
The big victories. For starters, there is China. The Trump administration has systematically turned the U.S. national security apparatus away from decades of focus on the Middle East toward an era of renewed great-power competition, rousing Washington to the view that Beijing represents the greatest existential threat to the United States in coming decades.
The administration has pushed back against Chinese influence operations and raised global awareness of the threat posed by China’s fast-developing technology, especially in next-generation mobile communications. It has taken steps to reduce U.S. reliance on China for critical materials needed for economic and national security. The administration has redoubled support for Taiwan—including several pending arms sales—and taken a harder line on Beijing’s land grab in the South China Sea. And working through the Indo-Pacific “Quad” group, the Trump administration has coordinated regional policy with India, Japan, and Australia. The administration has also laid the groundwork for ambitious plans to dramatically bulk up the U.S. Navy to over 350 ships—or possibly even 500—a long-term plan that some defense hawks have cheered as the military threat from China grows.
“Getting the United States on sounder footing to confront and compete with the [Chinese Communist Party] is the most significant achievement of this administration,” said Rebeccah Heinrichs of the Hudson Institute. “Even if this was their one and only term, they’ve done the country a great service by moving the ball down the field on China.”
Then there’s Israel. Trump’s decision to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem drew warnings of uprisings in the region and conflict with Palestinians—but neither came to pass. In the United States, the embassy move has enjoyed broad bipartisan backing and is now largely seen as irreversible; Democratic presidential nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden said he would keep the embassy in Jerusalem if elected, even as historic bipartisan support for Israel looks to be eroding in Democratic circles.
The Trump administration also claimed credit for normalizing relations between Israel and two of Washington’s closest allies in the Middle East, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. The move, which the White House heralded as “the dawn of a new Middle East,” was praised by Democratic and Republican lawmakers alike as a rare spot of good news. Still, some experts questioned whether Trump was claiming credit for diplomatic dealings that were long in the works; the UAE and Israel, for example, had been cooperating on security matters behind the scenes for years.
“You’ve got to give them some credit for the Abraham Accords,” said Emma Ashford, a foreign-policy expert with the Atlantic Council, referring to the deal by its official name. “This isn’t an earth-shattering change in foreign policy, but getting some of the Gulf states to come out and admit they were actually more friendly with Israel, that’s something that’s an achievement.”
And then there’s the Islamic State. Under the Trump administration, the United States rolled back the terrorist group’s physical caliphate and, in October 2019, killed its leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. At its peak in 2014, the Islamic State controlled over 41,000 square miles of territory between Iraq and Syria—roughly the size of Pennsylvania—and had more than 7 million people under its control. The defeat of the group was a significant military achievement for the Trump administration, even if it was due in part to the military strategy set in motion late in the Obama administration. The one big caveat: The Islamic State’s ideology lives on, and groups operating under its banner continue to stage attacks in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and West Africa.
The partisan victories. Trump fulfilled his campaign promise to withdraw from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, Barack Obama’s hallmark diplomatic achievement. Paired with the so-called “maximum pressure campaign,” perhaps no other Trump foreign-policy priority has drawn higher praise from Republicans—and sharper rebukes from Democrats—than Iran. Trump’s withdrawal from the nuclear deal was cheered by conservatives who saw it as a grave foreign-policy misstep that would strengthen the hand of Washington’s archfoe in the region. They also praised the president for ordering the killing of a top Iranian general, Qassem Suleimani, seen as an architect of Iran’s network of dangerous militias across the Middle East that targeted U.S. and allied troops.
Critics counter that, thanks to the U.S. withdrawal from the nuclear deal, Iran has restarted its nuclear program and is a lot closer to being able to build a nuclear weapon than when Trump took office.
Meanwhile, conservative foreign-policy experts also cheer the Trump administration for withdrawing from Cold War-era arms treaties that they say hamstrung America’s ability to counter powers like China and Russia. Trump’s abandonment of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, after years of Russian violations, won the universal backing of all NATO members. “That was a huge diplomatic achievement in and of itself,” Heinrichs said.
But the effort to reshape arms control has had its misses, too. Efforts to broaden the decade-old New START agreement with Russia to include China floundered, and the treaty looks set to expire early next year, which critics say raises the specter of another arms race.
Finally, under Trump, the United States has also paired back its funding for international organizations and withdrawn from institutions like the World Health Organization, the U.N. Human Rights Council, and UNESCO, the institution’s cultural and education organization. His supporters say such moves at the United Nations were sorely needed course corrections to draw attention to the institutions’ anti-Israel bias and, in the case of the Human Rights Council, its hypocrisy for allowing some of the world’s worst human rights abusers, like China and Venezuela, to join. Critics on the left counter that the moves undercut U.S. international standing and gave China space to increase its influence in the United Nations.
The technocratic victories. Overshadowed by the big foreign-policy moves and frequent Trump scandals, the administration made important strides that never made national news but could have important impacts on U.S. foreign policy in the future. Some of these changes could last through a drastically different Democratic administration.
Apart from Trump’s repeated effort to decimate the foreign aid budget, and spurred on by Congress, his administration also carried out important reforms of U.S. foreign aid machinery, overhauling the U.S. Agency for International Development and bolstering America’s ability to compete with China’s checkbook diplomacy with the creation of the International Development Finance Corp.
Though it went unnoticed due to the abrupt departure of John Bolton, Trump’s third national security advisor, last year the president unveiled new counterterrorism sanctions powers for the federal government that one State Department official described as “the most significant update to our terrorism sanctions authorities since the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.” The new authorities allow government agencies to go directly after leaders of terrorist groups and target groups’ financiers and accountants, as well as individuals who participated in training to commit acts of terrorism. Prior authorities were more limited.
When countries began locking down their borders in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, hundreds of thousands of Americans abroad were trapped and scrambling for ways to get home. After a very rough start, the State Department undertook an unprecedented campaign to repatriate Americans and by June had coordinated the return of over 100,000 Americans abroad—a significant logistical feat. A lion’s share of the credit goes to the rank and file in the diplomatic corps, but some experts pointed to this as an underappreciated achievement of the Trump administration nonetheless—and perhaps the only bright spot in the administration’s pandemic response.
Misfires and missed opportunities. Of course, apart from all these achievements, Trump orchestrated or stumbled through some significant foreign-policy misfires: an impasse on North Korea denuclearization negotiations; a long-delayed Israeli-Palestinian peace plan that stumbled out of the gate; a fiery impeachment trial; an absence of any action on climate change; and unfulfilled promises to fully extricate U.S. troops from costly wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan.
“If you consider things like the war in Afghanistan, the U.S. troop presence in Syria or Iraq, Trump came into office promising he would end these conflicts and end nation-building, and he hasn’t done that,” Ashford said. “The missed opportunities is a category you really can’t discount.”
And hanging over everything is the coronavirus pandemic, which several senior U.S. diplomatic and defense officials referred to as the biggest national security failure in modern U.S. history. The United States accounts for 4 percent of the world’s population but 20 percent of the total COVID-19-related deaths, and it has spurned an international campaign to coordinate developing a vaccine.
“The COVID crisis is the first international crisis since pre-World War II days where there’s been zero U.S. international leadership,” said Thomas Wright of the Brookings Institution. “In fact, the president in particular has actively impaired efforts of cooperation. We’ve seen the consequences of that pretty dramatically.”
For all the victories that Trump and his supporters can point to, some experts insist that the losses, missed opportunities, and collateral damage weigh much heavier in the balance.
“The losses far outweigh the gains,” said Kori Schake, the director of foreign and defense policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. “Moreover, the gains were possible without the losses.”


foreignpolicy--2020-10-14--Counter China by Making Guam a State

Counter China by Making Guam a State

In late September , Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said that “ everything is on the table ” if Democrats retake the U.S. Senate next month , including statehood for Puerto Rico and Washington , D.C .
If Congress is going to add one or more new states , it should also consider the 230,000 Americans of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands .
This isn ’ t a partisan idea .
Together , Guam and the Marianas would be the ultimate swing state .
( Mariana Islanders have repeatedly voted to merge with Guam as a step toward statehood @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Puerto Rico , they currently do not get electoral votes in the presidential race .
But Guam does hold nonbinding straw polls .
Guamanians appear to have voted for the winner in eight out of the last 10 presidential elections : six times Democrat , four times Republican .
Giving them two senators , a voting representative , and three electoral votes wouldn ’ t disrupt Washington ’ s delicate partisan balance .
If anything , it would open up more space for bipartisanship , political moderation , and compromise .
The most @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
True , Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands combined have less than half the population of the current smallest state , Wyoming .
But small size hasn ’ t stopped territories from becoming states before : When Alaska joined the country , its population was similarly small .
And although many Americans would struggle to find Guam and the Marianas on a map—they are an ocean away from the continental United States , closer to Beijing than to Honolulu—the American citizens there are not any less American .
Precisely because of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unique strategic value—and are also uniquely vulnerable .
Guam has been a possession of the United States since the Spanish-American War in 1898 .
Imperial Japan seized it on Dec. 8 , 1941 , hours after it attacked Pearl Harbor .
Three years later , the Allies retook Guam , along with the rest of the Marianas .
Of the 128,000 U.S. troops who took part in this campaign , known as Operation Forager , 8,125 were killed or lost .
But their sacrifice was not in vain .
After the U.S. Navy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ airfields off of which it bombed Japan , sealing the Allied victory in World War II .
Ever since , much to the frustration of Chinese military strategists , U.S. bases in Guam have been the bedrock of the regional security order .
Guam is at risk , and more so with each passing year .
U.S. military installations make up almost a third of the island ’ s land area .
Military personnel and their families are deeply interlinked with the local economy .
Yet the territory itself is not formally incorporated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that Guam is “ just a military base ” makes it a more attractive target for U.S. adversaries that would not dare target an American state like Hawaii .
In a conflict in the Pacific , Guamanian civilians could be among the first American casualties .
In 2016 , when China ’ s DF-26 intermediate-range missiles became operational , Chinese social media commentators dubbed them “ Guam killers.
” In 2017 , when U.S. President Donald Trump threatened North Korea with “ fire and fury , ” Pyongyang threatened to strike near Guam @ @ @ @ @ @ @ credible threats .
Guam is well within range of North Korea ’ s Hwasong-12 missiles .
But the strategic logic for making Guam a state is about much more than defense .
Statehood would be a powerful statement that Washington is committed to defending the “ free and open ” rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific region .
It would help the diplomatic effort to prevent the Philippines , a key U.S. ally in the South China Sea , from completing its strategic pivot toward alignment with China .
( In 2016 , on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Rodrigo Duterte announced his “ separation from the United States , ” proclaiming that “ America has lost ” economic and military supremacy in the Western Pacific . )
Guam statehood would also reassure Japan , South Korea , and Taiwan that the United States will come to their aid in a crisis .
Finally , statehood for Guam and the Northern Marianas would send a powerful message to Beijing .
Although Chinese diplomats and scholars deny it , China ultimately seeks to drive the United States out of Asia .
Washington must @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
After the success of Operation Forager in 1944 , two Marines were photographed on a Guamanian beach , proudly holding up a sign .
“ Marines salute Coast Guard for their big part in the invasion of Guam , ” it read .
“ They put us here and we intend to stay.
” Nearly eight decades later , Congress should take note .
The United States is a Pacific power .
By making Guam a state , lawmakers can ensure that it always will be .

In late September, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said that “everything is on the table” if Democrats retake the U.S. Senate next month, including statehood for Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. If Congress is going to add one or more new states, it should also consider the 230,000 Americans of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands.
In late September, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said that “everything is on the table” if Democrats retake the U.S. Senate next month, including statehood for Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. If Congress is going to add one or more new states, it should also consider the 230,000 Americans of Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands.
This isn’t a partisan idea. Together, Guam and the Marianas would be the ultimate swing state. (Mariana Islanders have repeatedly voted to merge with Guam as a step toward statehood.) As U.S. territories, like Puerto Rico, they currently do not get electoral votes in the presidential race. But Guam does hold nonbinding straw polls. Guamanians appear to have voted for the winner in eight out of the last 10 presidential elections: six times Democrat, four times Republican. Giving them two senators, a voting representative, and three electoral votes wouldn’t disrupt Washington’s delicate partisan balance. If anything, it would open up more space for bipartisanship, political moderation, and compromise.
The most obvious counterarguments relate to size and distance. True, Guam and the Northern Mariana Islands combined have less than half the population of the current smallest state, Wyoming. But small size hasn’t stopped territories from becoming states before: When Alaska joined the country, its population was similarly small. And although many Americans would struggle to find Guam and the Marianas on a map—they are an ocean away from the continental United States, closer to Beijing than to Honolulu—the American citizens there are not any less American. Precisely because of the enormous geographic distance, these territories have unique strategic value—and are also uniquely vulnerable.
Guam has been a possession of the United States since the Spanish-American War in 1898. Imperial Japan seized it on Dec. 8, 1941, hours after it attacked Pearl Harbor. Three years later, the Allies retook Guam, along with the rest of the Marianas. Of the 128,000 U.S. troops who took part in this campaign, known as Operation Forager, 8,125 were killed or lost. But their sacrifice was not in vain. After the U.S. Navy liberated the islands, it built the airfields off of which it bombed Japan, sealing the Allied victory in World War II. Ever since, much to the frustration of Chinese military strategists, U.S. bases in Guam have been the bedrock of the regional security order.
Guam is at risk, and more so with each passing year. U.S. military installations make up almost a third of the island’s land area. Military personnel and their families are deeply interlinked with the local economy. Yet the territory itself is not formally incorporated into the United States. The notion that Guam is “just a military base” makes it a more attractive target for U.S. adversaries that would not dare target an American state like Hawaii.
In a conflict in the Pacific, Guamanian civilians could be among the first American casualties. In 2016, when China’s DF-26 intermediate-range missiles became operational, Chinese social media commentators dubbed them “Guam killers.” In 2017, when U.S. President Donald Trump threatened North Korea with “fire and fury,” Pyongyang threatened to strike near Guam with “enveloping fire.” These are credible threats. Guam is well within range of North Korea’s Hwasong-12 missiles.
But the strategic logic for making Guam a state is about much more than defense. Statehood would be a powerful statement that Washington is committed to defending the “free and open” rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific region. It would help the diplomatic effort to prevent the Philippines, a key U.S. ally in the South China Sea, from completing its strategic pivot toward alignment with China. (In 2016, on a trip to Beijing, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte announced his “separation from the United States,” proclaiming that “America has lost” economic and military supremacy in the Western Pacific.) Guam statehood would also reassure Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan that the United States will come to their aid in a crisis.
Finally, statehood for Guam and the Northern Marianas would send a powerful message to Beijing. Although Chinese diplomats and scholars deny it, China ultimately seeks to drive the United States out of Asia. Washington must make clear that Beijing will never succeed.
After the success of Operation Forager in 1944, two Marines were photographed on a Guamanian beach, proudly holding up a sign. “Marines salute Coast Guard for their big part in the invasion of Guam,” it read. “They put us here and we intend to stay.” Nearly eight decades later, Congress should take note. The United States is a Pacific power. By making Guam a state, lawmakers can ensure that it always will be.


foreignpolicy--2020-10-14--Exiled Tibetans Suffer as WeChat Bans Leave Home Even Further Away

Exiled Tibetans Suffer as WeChat Bans Leave Home Even Further Away NEW DELHI—Karma Tenzin knows that he will never be able to visit his mother in Tibet .
He only wants to know if she is fine .
When he was 10 years old in 1994 , Tenzin ’ s parents paid a professional smuggler 700 yuan ( around $ 85 , and around a year ’ s rural household income ) to take him out of Tibet while the rest of the family stayed behind .
He walked for 14 days with a group of 20 refugees in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ police and border guards , and crossed over to Nepal , eventually reaching his current home of India .
He hasn ’ t seen his mother since then .
But a few years ago , they started communicating over WeChat , a Chinese messaging app owned by Tencent , that allowed them to make video calls , share pictures and messages , and transfer money .
“ While I could not physically touch [ my family members ] , I could at least see them , ” Tenzin said .
But on June @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with 58 other Chinese apps , after a deadly border clash with China in the Galwan River Valley resulted in the death of 20 Indian soldiers .
It was the most violent face-off between the two sides in around 50 years .
As the tension persisted at the border , calls for banning Chinese products gained momentum in India .
Over the next two months , the Indian government banned over 200 Chinese mobile apps , including Alibaba Group ’ s UC Browser and ByteDance ’ s widely popular app TikTok .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ critics the move was kneejerk nationalism amid a surge of anti-Chinese feeling .
Since then , Tenzin has been trying to establish contact with his mother .
“ I haven ’ t heard a word from my family in the last two months , ” he said .
“ I am most worried about my mother .
She is very old .
And not too well .
I am used to being away from my family .
But I really need to know how she is.
” Tenzin is hardly the only one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fled their homeland after 1959 when the Dalai Lama escaped to India , fearing persecution by the Chinese authorities , and sought asylum there .
The Dalai Lama eventually established the Tibetan government-in-exile in the northern city of Dharamshala , which remains the center of Tibetan life in India .
There are about 90,000 Tibetans in India today , including Tibetans who have never seen their home country ; the population was once larger , but many have migrated to Europe or North America .
Tenzin Dalha , a research fellow at the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that despite the security risks associated with WeChat , 71 percent of Tibetans in India used it to communicate with their families back home .
“ There was a wide communication gap between people inside and outside Tibet because China blocks all other global social media apps , and phone calls are regularly intercepted by the Chinese authorities , ” Dalha said .
“ When WeChat was first introduced in 2011 , there was practically no other medium connecting people on both sides .
So it filled that vacuum and became their primary @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as well as cybersecurity researchers around the world have constantly warned of the censorship and surveillance mechanisms of WeChat .
The Trump administration has also sought to ban the app in the United States .
A May report by Citizen Lab , a research center in Canada , said that WeChat conducts surveillance of images and files by users even outside of China and uses the data to train censorship algorithms .
In 2017 , China passed a law making it obligatory for all Chinese companies to share the data they gather .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Tibetan community in India .
“ They basically compromised privacy for convenience , ” Dalha said .
The app fostered conversations not only around politics but also culture and day-to-day life in Tibet .
“ Similarly , journalists and stringers in Tibet used it to share information from the territory with the diaspora , ” Dalha added .
“ It was the first time people in exile could know so much about people in Tibet , ” said Lobsang Gyatso Sither , the Digital Security Program director at the Tibet Action Institute .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ online spaces meant that it served many other functions within the diaspora .
“ Many Tibetan students , especially those pursuing monastic education , used to receive funds from their families through WeChat , ” Dalha said .
“ Many people also used to contribute money to the monasteries in India through it .
Even Indian businesspersons with trade ties with China were using it to conduct monetary transactions .
They are all left in the lurch now.
” Wangchen Topgyal , a law student in Bengaluru , said that the ban has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his family but has also left him struggling for funds .
“ I used to speak with my mother every week .
My family also used to send me money through the app to support my education , ” he said .
“ But now none of that is happening .
I had to recently start a small business to sustain myself.
” Topgyal is currently using DingTalk , an Alibaba Group-owned app , to talk to his family , although he said that they do not yet know how to use it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ against the use of DingTalk .
“ I have been advising people not to use it , as Alibaba Group has close ties with the Chinese government , and all the data would be shared with them .
It ’ s unsafe , ” he said .
Many have been forced to use virtual private networks , which can mask a user ’ s location , to be able to continue using WeChat .
But there are frequent interruptions , according to Dalha , and not everybody can afford the paid channels .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Tibetans found themselves adopting habits of self-censorship in order to be able to stay on the app—and it was used to spy on the diaspora , which is frequently targeted by Chinese intelligence .
Many activists working for the Tibetan freedom struggle are supporting the WeChat ban .
Sither of the Tibet Action Institute is one of them .
“ I think it is an opportunity to … move away from WeChat and think about safer and better alternatives , ” he said .
“ Everyone knows that WeChat censors and monitors content @ @ @ @ @ @ @ arrested or detained for sharing pictures of the Dalai Lama , soldiers , or anything that the Chinese government deems politically sensitive .
The risk for common Tibetans is huge.
” In March this year , the Chinese authorities arrested 10 people in Lhasa , Tibet , for spreading “ rumors ” about the coronavirus on WeChat .
In March 2019 , they detained a 45-year-old man for sharing books on the Dalai Lama ’ s teachings via the platform .
“ Because people know that WeChat is under surveillance , they tend @ @ @ @ @ @ @ when people start self-censoring , it gives a lot of power to the Chinese government , ” Sither added .
He suggests using alternative applications such as Signal , Elyments , or Wire , some of which allow users to chat anonymously .
But Tenzin said that his mother does not use any of these apps , much like Topgyal ’ s family .
He is instead trying to connect with a friend in his hometown in Tibet who uses a virtual private network .
“ I left him a message , requesting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ get me her phone number .
As of now , I haven ’ t heard anything from him , ” he said .
Sither acknowledged that it is a big challenge to get people inside Tibet to use alternate apps : “ I understand that it is harder in Tibet than in India .
There is a need for awareness campaigns and public education that reaches everyone inside Tibet.
” But until that happens , a large part of the community is practically cut off from their families and homeland .
“ I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” Tenzin said .
“ I would often imagine that the Chinese authorities would someday detain my mother and block all my communication links with her and I would never be able to speak with her again .
I accepted this as my life , my karma .
But I always expected the trouble to come from the Chinese side , not the Indian government .
”

NEW DELHI—Karma Tenzin knows that he will never be able to visit his mother in Tibet. He only wants to know if she is fine.
NEW DELHI—Karma Tenzin knows that he will never be able to visit his mother in Tibet. He only wants to know if she is fine.
When he was 10 years old in 1994, Tenzin’s parents paid a professional smuggler 700 yuan (around $85, and around a year’s rural household income) to take him out of Tibet while the rest of the family stayed behind. He walked for 14 days with a group of 20 refugees in the punishing Himalayan weather, evading the Chinese police and border guards, and crossed over to Nepal, eventually reaching his current home of India.
He hasn’t seen his mother since then. But a few years ago, they started communicating over WeChat, a Chinese messaging app owned by Tencent, that allowed them to make video calls, share pictures and messages, and transfer money. “While I could not physically touch [my family members], I could at least see them,” Tenzin said.
But on June 29, India banned WeChat, along with 58 other Chinese apps, after a deadly border clash with China in the Galwan River Valley resulted in the death of 20 Indian soldiers. It was the most violent face-off between the two sides in around 50 years.
As the tension persisted at the border, calls for banning Chinese products gained momentum in India. Over the next two months, the Indian government banned over 200 Chinese mobile apps, including Alibaba Group’s UC Browser and ByteDance’s widely popular app TikTok. The government cited national security, but to critics the move was kneejerk nationalism amid a surge of anti-Chinese feeling.
Since then, Tenzin has been trying to establish contact with his mother. “I haven’t heard a word from my family in the last two months,” he said. “I am most worried about my mother. She is very old. And not too well. I am used to being away from my family. But I really need to know how she is.”
Tenzin is hardly the only one in this situation. Thousands of Tibetans fled their homeland after 1959 when the Dalai Lama escaped to India, fearing persecution by the Chinese authorities, and sought asylum there. The Dalai Lama eventually established the Tibetan government-in-exile in the northern city of Dharamshala, which remains the center of Tibetan life in India. There are about 90,000 Tibetans in India today, including Tibetans who have never seen their home country; the population was once larger, but many have migrated to Europe or North America.
Tenzin Dalha, a research fellow at the Tibet Policy Institute in Dharamshala, said that despite the security risks associated with WeChat, 71 percent of Tibetans in India used it to communicate with their families back home. “There was a wide communication gap between people inside and outside Tibet because China blocks all other global social media apps, and phone calls are regularly intercepted by the Chinese authorities,” Dalha said. “When WeChat was first introduced in 2011, there was practically no other medium connecting people on both sides. So it filled that vacuum and became their primary mode of communication.”
Indian intelligence agencies as well as cybersecurity researchers around the world have constantly warned of the censorship and surveillance mechanisms of WeChat. The Trump administration has also sought to ban the app in the United States. A May report by Citizen Lab, a research center in Canada, said that WeChat conducts surveillance of images and files by users even outside of China and uses the data to train censorship algorithms. In 2017, China passed a law making it obligatory for all Chinese companies to share the data they gather.
Yet WeChat had become indispensable for the Tibetan community in India. “They basically compromised privacy for convenience,” Dalha said. The app fostered conversations not only around politics but also culture and day-to-day life in Tibet. “Similarly, journalists and stringers in Tibet used it to share information from the territory with the diaspora,” Dalha added.
“It was the first time people in exile could know so much about people in Tibet,” said Lobsang Gyatso Sither, the Digital Security Program director at the Tibet Action Institute.
WeChat’s total dominance of Chinese online spaces meant that it served many other functions within the diaspora. “Many Tibetan students, especially those pursuing monastic education, used to receive funds from their families through WeChat,” Dalha said. “Many people also used to contribute money to the monasteries in India through it. Even Indian businesspersons with trade ties with China were using it to conduct monetary transactions. They are all left in the lurch now.”
Wangchen Topgyal, a law student in Bengaluru, said that the ban has not only cut the communication channels with his family but has also left him struggling for funds. “I used to speak with my mother every week. My family also used to send me money through the app to support my education,” he said. “But now none of that is happening. I had to recently start a small business to sustain myself.”
Topgyal is currently using DingTalk, an Alibaba Group-owned app, to talk to his family, although he said that they do not yet know how to use it properly.
Dalha, however, cautions against the use of DingTalk. “I have been advising people not to use it, as Alibaba Group has close ties with the Chinese government, and all the data would be shared with them. It’s unsafe,” he said.
Many have been forced to use virtual private networks, which can mask a user’s location, to be able to continue using WeChat. But there are frequent interruptions, according to Dalha, and not everybody can afford the paid channels.
At the same time, though, Tibetans found themselves adopting habits of self-censorship in order to be able to stay on the app—and it was used to spy on the diaspora, which is frequently targeted by Chinese intelligence. Many activists working for the Tibetan freedom struggle are supporting the WeChat ban. Sither of the Tibet Action Institute is one of them.
“I think it is an opportunity to … move away from WeChat and think about safer and better alternatives,” he said. “Everyone knows that WeChat censors and monitors content. More and more people are getting arrested or detained for sharing pictures of the Dalai Lama, soldiers, or anything that the Chinese government deems politically sensitive. The risk for common Tibetans is huge.”
In March this year, the Chinese authorities arrested 10 people in Lhasa, Tibet, for spreading “rumors” about the coronavirus on WeChat. In March 2019, they detained a 45-year-old man for sharing books on the Dalai Lama’s teachings via the platform.
“Because people know that WeChat is under surveillance, they tend to self-censor out of fear. And when people start self-censoring, it gives a lot of power to the Chinese government,” Sither added. He suggests using alternative applications such as Signal, Elyments, or Wire, some of which allow users to chat anonymously.
But Tenzin said that his mother does not use any of these apps, much like Topgyal’s family. He is instead trying to connect with a friend in his hometown in Tibet who uses a virtual private network. “I left him a message, requesting him to go to my mother and get me her phone number. As of now, I haven’t heard anything from him,” he said.
Sither acknowledged that it is a big challenge to get people inside Tibet to use alternate apps: “I understand that it is harder in Tibet than in India. There is a need for awareness campaigns and public education that reaches everyone inside Tibet.”
But until that happens, a large part of the community is practically cut off from their families and homeland.
“I think I was always prepared for this,” Tenzin said. “I would often imagine that the Chinese authorities would someday detain my mother and block all my communication links with her and I would never be able to speak with her again. I accepted this as my life, my karma. But I always expected the trouble to come from the Chinese side, not the Indian government.”