foreignpolicy--2020-06-24--If Americans Grappled Honestly With Their History, Would Any Monuments Be Left Standing?

The United States of America was born in a state of profound hypocrisy ; freedom and oppression were twin bedfellows from the start , nursed in the very households of iconic Founding Fathers like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson .
At the heart of this hypocrisy , of course , was race , and nothing—not Civil War , slavery ’ s abolition , constitutional amendments , or civil rights legislation—has made the issue go away .
And 244 years later , with another July Fourth upon us , Americans are still struggling over this moral conundrum by protesting in large @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the flagrant killing of a helpless Black man under the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer—with no obvious resolution in sight .
Despite fleeting hopes that Americans had finally transcended the issue after Barack Obama ’ s election as the first African American president , it remains central to America ’ s conflicted self-identity .
Last week , Americans celebrated the Juneteenth holiday marking the news in 1865 that Black slavery had ended .
And yet the uncomfortable truth is that many white Americans probably had never heard of Juneteenth ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t familiar with it , according to a new Harris poll ) , which is celebrated in many African American households as their own independence day—indicating that a segregation of mind and heart as well as community still persists in the country .
A lot more Americans have heard of Juneteenth now : Race is once again reigniting tortured debates that date back to the earliest days of the republic , and no one seems immune , least of all the founders .
We now know that Jefferson , whose hallowed monument on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ declaration of the “ self-evident ” truth that “ all men are created equal ” —and whose life example Ronald Reagan once said we should wear “ on our soul forever ” —was not the man most Americans are taught he was : a reluctant slaveholder who was trapped in his times .
Jefferson did deplore slavery in principle , but his voluminous letters and writings also show that he was a blatant racist who turned his slaves into collateral for bank loans and believed them inferior human beings .
He once wrote @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ the mule is to the horse ” —though Jefferson fathered Black children whose paternity he never acknowledged even as they served him dinner at Monticello as his slaves , historians have documented .
We are reminded that the putative father of this country , George Washington , was another slave owner who rebuffed efforts by some of his more enlightened comrades , including his trusted aide Alexander Hamilton , to free Black soldiers in exchange for their service during the Revolution .
Yet to a degree that remains little-known among most Americans @ @ @ @ @ @ @ conflicted over race .
Washington had a much more progressive view of race than Jefferson did—and became the only founder to set yet another critical precedent for the young nation by freeing all his slaves in his will .
Even among these two very consequential fellow Virginians , there were sharp differences of opinion over the treatment of Black Americans that might have caused American history to turn out very differently , according to the prominent presidential historian Joseph Ellis .
He calls the early years of the republic a “ Shakespearean tragedy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ emancipation .
Had Presidents Jefferson and Washington lived long enough to witness the Civil War , Ellis said in an interview , “ Jefferson would have sided with the Confederacy , and Washington would have sided with the North.
” But all such nuances have been lost in the current furor .
To a degree that perhaps hasn ’ t been seen since the tumultuous 1960s , Americans are reckoning , sometimes angrily , with a racist past for which the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery , the 14th Amendment guaranteeing equal treatment under @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Voting Rights acts , and other legal remedies have proved to be mere emollients for a deeper malady .
Many are now asking : Why pretend that our great and glorious American history was greater and more glorious than it really was ?
Perhaps it ’ s time to rewrite that history—from the beginning .
This , in turn , has become a practical debate about how many of America ’ s revered monuments to its past—the “ prodigious ” honorific structures that Alexis de Tocqueville once remarked Americans love to build—should all @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Donald Trump himself helped to start this debate in 2017 following the murder of a protester by a white supremacist .
After asserting there were “ very fine people on both sides ” of the rival white supremacist and anti-racist demonstrations centered around a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville , Virginia , Trump tweeted that if Americans started pulling down statues of Confederate generals , they were embarking down a slippery slope : “ Robert E Lee , Stonewall Jackson – who ’ s next , Washington , Jefferson @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this position in recent weeks , adding that he would also refuse to rename famous U.S. military bases named after confederate generals , such as Fort Bragg in North Carolina , which honors Braxton Bragg , a U.S. Army officer who later joined the Confederacy .
Yet some Americans say that ’ s just what should happen .
Last week , a group of New York City Council members formally petitioned Mayor Bill de Blasio to remove a statue of Thomas Jefferson from City Hall .
At the University of Missouri , thousands @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that a statue of Jefferson be removed from the quad .
In Portland , Oregon , demonstrators earlier this month pulled down a large bronze statue of Washington , wrapped its head in an American flag , and lit the flag on fire .
Last weekend , another Washington statue in Baltimore was defaced with red paint , with the words “ Destroy Racists ” scrawled on the base .
And , on Sunday , New York ’ s American Museum of Natural History decided to remove a statue of President Theodore Roosevelt—another @ @ @ @ @ @ @ American character—that shows him on horseback flanked by a Native American and an African American on foot .
The reason was that the statue “ explicitly depicts Black and Indigenous people as subjugated and racially inferior , ” de Blasio said in a statement .
But if today ’ s so-called cancel culture eventually extends its way to presidents like Roosevelt and the Founding Fathers , new problems crop up .
If you cancel out the good history with the bad—if you cancel out Thomas Jefferson—what kind of country are you left with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ first African American appointed to the Virginia Supreme Court , once remarked , “ Although Jefferson was imperfect , he had a perfect idea.
” Even Martin Luther King Jr. invoked Jefferson ’ s declaration of equal rights as a “ sacred obligation ” in in his 1963 “ I Have a Dream ” speech , calling it “ a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir ” —but which the country , to date , had “ defaulted on ” for Black Americans .
President James Madison kept slaves @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was also one of the chief fathers of the Constitution , whose First Amendment affords Black Americans the very freedoms they are now exercising to speak their minds and assert their rights .
Issac J. Bailey , a journalist and scholar and the author of the forthcoming Why Didn ’ t We Riot ?
A Black Man in Trumpland , said he believes “ we have to do a lot more grappling with the legacies of men like Washington and Jefferson , ” but he doesn ’ t advocate the removal of their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Confederate statues , because Confederate monuments and memorials went up largely in the early 20th century and later as a clear pushback to civil rights gains by Black people .
They are specifically about explicit white supremacy and the honoring of men who were literal traitors to the U.S. ” “ That ’ s the easy part , though , ” Bailey wrote in an email .
The issue is more complex when it comes to Washington and Jefferson .
“ I ’ ve heard the argument that they are being honored @ @ @ @ @ @ @ done , not for the evil they perpetuated .
I get that .
But why do they get that kind of treatment when we ’ d never do the same for architects and participants of the Holocaust who went on to do great things , including helping the U.S. put a man on the moon and unleashing the kinds of technologies that we take for granted today , technologies that have made it possible for things like the smart phone , GPS and the like ?
We would never say let ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ during the Holocaust .
Why do we so easily do the same for wealthy white men who profited and participated directly in this country ’ s original sin ?
” It is a debate that has gone global .
In the United Kingdom , statues of Prime Minister Winston Churchill have been defaced , in response to his racist and imperialist attitudes ( among other things , Churchill fiercely opposed Indian independence and once called Mahatma Gandhi a “ half-naked fakir ” ) .
Protests in Europe , Africa , and Asia have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ United States or view it as an example are aligning with the Black Lives Matter movement—and using it to highlight racism in their own societies .
Such international attention has a long lineage : Since the birth of the United States , racism in America has deeply dismayed those in other countries who were eager to endorse the founders ’ attempt to create history ’ s first republic built on “ laws , and not men.
” The founders themselves were regularly criticized from abroad for their hypocrisy .
“ How is it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ liberty among the drivers of negroes ?
” the English writer Samuel Johnson observed mordantly in 1775 , as American complaints against the tyranny of the British crown gained momentum .
Great friends and allies of the founders , like the Marquis de Lafayette , pleaded with them to end slavery .
The Revolutionary War hero Tadeusz Kosciuszko , a Polish military engineer whose command of English was uncertain , actually had Jefferson draft his will donating his wealth to the emancipation and education of slaves .
( Jefferson failed to execute it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ underscored how raw this two-and-a-half-century-old wound remains .
George Floyd ’ s death in Minneapolis in May at the hands of a white officer who has since been charged with second-degree murder , and the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter campaign , have exposed the degree to which police departments have turned into the symbol of a white America that still seeks to oppress minority Americans .
The recent police killings of African Americans in cities from Atlanta to Minneapolis also bitterly tainted the celebration of Juneteenth , which marks the day @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , formally announced the end of slavery in the state of Texas , over two years after the Emancipation Proclamation , and the beginning of “ an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves.
” That promise , along with President Abraham Lincoln ’ s proclamation of a “ new birth of freedom ” out of the Civil War , didn ’ t quite pan out either .
“ I ’ m just shocked it keeps going on , that we haven ’ t gotten over @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Henry Wiencek , the author An Imperfect God : George Washington , His Slaves and the Creation of America and Master of the Mountain : Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves .
“ One of the most shocking things is white people are doing these things [ shooting and killing blacks ] in full view of the cameras.
” Trump ’ s presidency has plainly helped to reignite these passions , as he rose to power in part by openly exploiting white racist fears of the so-called browning of America .
“ In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” said Sharon Murphy , a historian at Providence College , who argues that Trump ’ s racially and ethnically divisive presidency helps explain why the recent Black Lives Matter protests drew many more white Americans than those that followed the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson , Missouri , six years ago .
“ In his time , Martin Luther King mainly criticized the moderate [ whites ] , not the hardcore racists , for not speaking out .
In some ways , the last three years have made those moderates @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
As Eduardo Porter argues in his recent book , American Poison , the country ’ s entire social welfare contract since the New Deal has been fatally undermined by white animosity toward minority beneficiaries .
“ What Trump has exposed in his presidency is there ’ s a significant portion of the American populace that has never accepted the full implications of the civil rights movement , ” Ellis , the presidential historian , told Foreign Policy .
“ When they watch protesters they only see rioters.
” Even so , Wiencek @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the streets could help promote a healthy debate that should cast a new light on who the founders were and what they really believed—and , by extension , what America really stands for .
You don ’ t have to tear all the statues down , they say—but you should at least change the inscriptions on them to better reflect who these people really were .
And Americans should consider erecting new statues to long-forgotten heroes like Lt. Col. John Laurens , a young white South Carolinian aristocrat who repeatedly and passionately @ @ @ @ @ @ @ being killed in the Revolutionary War .
“ At the very least , we have to be willing to tell the full story of what those men did—making it clear on those massive monuments and memorials we ’ ve dedicated to them , ” said Bailey , himself a South Carolinian .
“ It should no longer simply be a treat to visit such sites .
More Americans need to understand [ these men ’ s ] role in the systemic rape and murder and enslavement of Black people even as they got @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Founding Fathers have argued it is unfair to project today ’ s racial norms on men who lived in another time .
But some historians point out that in many other respects , the Jeffersons and Madisons managed to brilliantly transcend their times ; otherwise , Americans might still be living under a monarchy today .
“ The founders were geniuses in many respects , ” Ellis said .
“ They could imagine before anybody else a large republic .
They could imagine the separation of church and state .
Nobody thought you @ @ @ @ @ @ @ could not imagine a racially equal society.
” But human progress can ’ t be measured in lifetimes ; it comes in fits and starts , and right now Americans are caught up in another major fit about who they are and want to be .
All in all , said Thomas Sugrue , a New York University historian and the author of Not Even Past : Barack Obama and the Burden of Race , the George Floyd protests , coming amid a pandemic that has hurt Black and minority communities the most @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from the briefest of national dreams that began with Obama ’ s inauguration .
“ There was a moment around the election of Barack Obama that the country finally felt it overcame its history , that finally we ’ re in a post-civil rights era .
It wasn ’ t true , ” Sugrue said .
Instead came what the pundit Van Jones called a “ whitelash , ” ushering in the Trump era of deeper division .
“ While I don ’ t want to diminish the changes that have happened since @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lot of problems unaddressed , ” Sugrue said .
“ The most persistent are all the issues that have come to the surface , racial inequity in policing … but an even deeper racial inequality and segregation in the housing market—as well as the steady resegregation of American schools and cities .
There ’ s not going to be any single answer .
Policing is intertwined with system of racial segregation .
You can ’ t address the police problem only in terms of internal reforms.
” And there is still , Ellis @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tacit conversation occurring every day on the Mall in Washington—among the monuments themselves .
“ If you go to the Mall and stand in a place where you can see the Lincoln Memorial , the Jefferson Memorial , and the Martin Luther King Memorial , imagine an ongoing dialogue among those three giants , ” he said .
“ Jefferson believed slavery was wrong , but he didn ’ t have the courage to do anything about it .
Lincoln did , but he never could imagine that the races could live together @ @ @ @ @ @ @ basis .
Then there ’ s King standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial giving his ‘ I Have a Dream ’ speech , saying , ‘ I have come to collect on a promissory note written by Thomas Jefferson.
’ ” The full debt has not yet been paid , and the dialogue goes on .

The United States of America was born in a state of profound hypocrisy; freedom and oppression were twin bedfellows from the start, nursed in the very households of iconic Founding Fathers like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. At the heart of this hypocrisy, of course, was race, and nothing—not Civil War, slavery’s abolition, constitutional amendments, or civil rights legislation—has made the issue go away. And 244 years later, with another July Fourth upon us, Americans are still struggling over this moral conundrum by protesting in large numbers in the streets—most recently in response to the flagrant killing of a helpless Black man under the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer—with no obvious resolution in sight.
The United States of America was born in a state of profound hypocrisy; freedom and oppression were twin bedfellows from the start, nursed in the very households of iconic Founding Fathers like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. At the heart of this hypocrisy, of course, was race, and nothing—not Civil War, slavery’s abolition, constitutional amendments, or civil rights legislation—has made the issue go away. And 244 years later, with another July Fourth upon us, Americans are still struggling over this moral conundrum by protesting in large numbers in the streets—most recently in response to the flagrant killing of a helpless Black man under the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer—with no obvious resolution in sight.
Despite fleeting hopes that Americans had finally transcended the issue after Barack Obama’s election as the first African American president, it remains central to America’s conflicted self-identity. Last week, Americans celebrated the Juneteenth holiday marking the news in 1865 that Black slavery had ended. And yet the uncomfortable truth is that many white Americans probably had never heard of Juneteenth (nearly half of the population wasn’t familiar with it, according to a new Harris poll), which is celebrated in many African American households as their own independence day—indicating that a segregation of mind and heart as well as community still persists in the country. A lot more Americans have heard of Juneteenth now: Race is once again reigniting tortured debates that date back to the earliest days of the republic, and no one seems immune, least of all the founders.
We now know that Jefferson, whose hallowed monument on the National Mall in Washington quotes his declaration of the “self-evident” truth that “all men are created equal”—and whose life example Ronald Reagan once said we should wear “on our soul forever”—was not the man most Americans are taught he was: a reluctant slaveholder who was trapped in his times. Jefferson did deplore slavery in principle, but his voluminous letters and writings also show that he was a blatant racist who turned his slaves into collateral for bank loans and believed them inferior human beings. He once wrote that Blacks compared to whites were as “the mule is to the horse”—though Jefferson fathered Black children whose paternity he never acknowledged even as they served him dinner at Monticello as his slaves, historians have documented. We are reminded that the putative father of this country, George Washington, was another slave owner who rebuffed efforts by some of his more enlightened comrades, including his trusted aide Alexander Hamilton, to free Black soldiers in exchange for their service during the Revolution.
Yet to a degree that remains little-known among most Americans, even the founders themselves were deeply conflicted over race. Washington had a much more progressive view of race than Jefferson did—and became the only founder to set yet another critical precedent for the young nation by freeing all his slaves in his will. Even among these two very consequential fellow Virginians, there were sharp differences of opinion over the treatment of Black Americans that might have caused American history to turn out very differently, according to the prominent presidential historian Joseph Ellis. He calls the early years of the republic a “Shakespearean tragedy” compounded of missed opportunities for early emancipation. Had Presidents Jefferson and Washington lived long enough to witness the Civil War, Ellis said in an interview, “Jefferson would have sided with the Confederacy, and Washington would have sided with the North.”
But all such nuances have been lost in the current furor. To a degree that perhaps hasn’t been seen since the tumultuous 1960s, Americans are reckoning, sometimes angrily, with a racist past for which the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery, the 14th Amendment guaranteeing equal treatment under the law, the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts, and other legal remedies have proved to be mere emollients for a deeper malady. Many are now asking: Why pretend that our great and glorious American history was greater and more glorious than it really was? Perhaps it’s time to rewrite that history—from the beginning.
This, in turn, has become a practical debate about how many of America’s revered monuments to its past—the “prodigious” honorific structures that Alexis de Tocqueville once remarked Americans love to build—should all be torn down. Ironically, President Donald Trump himself helped to start this debate in 2017 following the murder of a protester by a white supremacist. After asserting there were “very fine people on both sides” of the rival white supremacist and anti-racist demonstrations centered around a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, Virginia, Trump tweeted that if Americans started pulling down statues of Confederate generals, they were embarking down a slippery slope: “Robert E Lee, Stonewall Jackson – who’s next, Washington, Jefferson? So foolish!” Trump reiterated this position in recent weeks, adding that he would also refuse to rename famous U.S. military bases named after confederate generals, such as Fort Bragg in North Carolina, which honors Braxton Bragg, a U.S. Army officer who later joined the Confederacy.
Yet some Americans say that’s just what should happen. Last week, a group of New York City Council members formally petitioned Mayor Bill de Blasio to remove a statue of Thomas Jefferson from City Hall. At the University of Missouri, thousands of students have signed a petition demanding that a statue of Jefferson be removed from the quad. In Portland, Oregon, demonstrators earlier this month pulled down a large bronze statue of Washington, wrapped its head in an American flag, and lit the flag on fire. Last weekend, another Washington statue in Baltimore was defaced with red paint, with the words “Destroy Racists” scrawled on the base. And, on Sunday, New York’s American Museum of Natural History decided to remove a statue of President Theodore Roosevelt—another Mount Rushmore giant who helped define the American character—that shows him on horseback flanked by a Native American and an African American on foot. The reason was that the statue “explicitly depicts Black and Indigenous people as subjugated and racially inferior,” de Blasio said in a statement.
A statue of former President Theodore Roosevelt stands in front of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City on June 22. The city recently announced that the statue, which also features a Native American and a Black man standing at Roosevelt’s side and has been the object of controversy for years, will be removed.
But if today’s so-called cancel culture eventually extends its way to presidents like Roosevelt and the Founding Fathers, new problems crop up. If you cancel out the good history with the bad—if you cancel out Thomas Jefferson—what kind of country are you left with? As John Charles Thomas, the first African American appointed to the Virginia Supreme Court, once remarked, “Although Jefferson was imperfect, he had a perfect idea.” Even Martin Luther King Jr. invoked Jefferson’s declaration of equal rights as a “sacred obligation” in in his 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech, calling it “a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir”—but which the country, to date, had “defaulted on” for Black Americans. President James Madison kept slaves in the White House, but he was also one of the chief fathers of the Constitution, whose First Amendment affords Black Americans the very freedoms they are now exercising to speak their minds and assert their rights.
Issac J. Bailey, a journalist and scholar and the author of the forthcoming Why Didn’t We Riot? A Black Man in Trumpland, said he believes “we have to do a lot more grappling with the legacies of men like Washington and Jefferson,” but he doesn’t advocate the removal of their statues. “They are different from the Confederate statues, because Confederate monuments and memorials went up largely in the early 20th century and later as a clear pushback to civil rights gains by Black people. They are specifically about explicit white supremacy and the honoring of men who were literal traitors to the U.S.”
“That’s the easy part, though,” Bailey wrote in an email. The issue is more complex when it comes to Washington and Jefferson. “I’ve heard the argument that they are being honored for the great things they’ve done, not for the evil they perpetuated. I get that. But why do they get that kind of treatment when we’d never do the same for architects and participants of the Holocaust who went on to do great things, including helping the U.S. put a man on the moon and unleashing the kinds of technologies that we take for granted today, technologies that have made it possible for things like the smart phone, GPS and the like? We would never say let’s honor them despite the evils they wrought during the Holocaust. Why do we so easily do the same for wealthy white men who profited and participated directly in this country’s original sin?”
It is a debate that has gone global. In the United Kingdom, statues of Prime Minister Winston Churchill have been defaced, in response to his racist and imperialist attitudes (among other things, Churchill fiercely opposed Indian independence and once called Mahatma Gandhi a “half-naked fakir”). Protests in Europe, Africa, and Asia have suggested that many people who admire the United States or view it as an example are aligning with the Black Lives Matter movement—and using it to highlight racism in their own societies. Such international attention has a long lineage: Since the birth of the United States, racism in America has deeply dismayed those in other countries who were eager to endorse the founders’ attempt to create history’s first republic built on “laws, and not men.” The founders themselves were regularly criticized from abroad for their hypocrisy. “How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?” the English writer Samuel Johnson observed mordantly in 1775, as American complaints against the tyranny of the British crown gained momentum. Great friends and allies of the founders, like the Marquis de Lafayette, pleaded with them to end slavery. The Revolutionary War hero Tadeusz Kosciuszko, a Polish military engineer whose command of English was uncertain, actually had Jefferson draft his will donating his wealth to the emancipation and education of slaves. (Jefferson failed to execute it.)
The Parliament Square statue of Britain’s wartime leader Winston Churchill stands defaced as activists gather in mass protest against racism in London on June 7.
All of this has only underscored how raw this two-and-a-half-century-old wound remains. George Floyd’s death in Minneapolis in May at the hands of a white officer who has since been charged with second-degree murder, and the resurgence of the Black Lives Matter campaign, have exposed the degree to which police departments have turned into the symbol of a white America that still seeks to oppress minority Americans. The recent police killings of African Americans in cities from Atlanta to Minneapolis also bitterly tainted the celebration of Juneteenth, which marks the day a Union major general, Gordon Granger, formally announced the end of slavery in the state of Texas, over two years after the Emancipation Proclamation, and the beginning of “an absolute equality of personal rights and rights of property between former masters and slaves.” That promise, along with President Abraham Lincoln’s proclamation of a “new birth of freedom” out of the Civil War, didn’t quite pan out either.
“I’m just shocked it keeps going on, that we haven’t gotten over it yet,” said another historian, Henry Wiencek, the author An Imperfect God: George Washington, His Slaves and the Creation of America and Master of the Mountain: Thomas Jefferson and His Slaves. “One of the most shocking things is white people are doing these things [shooting and killing blacks] in full view of the cameras.”
Trump’s presidency has plainly helped to reignite these passions, as he rose to power in part by openly exploiting white racist fears of the so-called browning of America. “In some ways he ripped the band-aid off,” said Sharon Murphy, a historian at Providence College, who argues that Trump’s racially and ethnically divisive presidency helps explain why the recent Black Lives Matter protests drew many more white Americans than those that followed the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, six years ago. “In his time, Martin Luther King mainly criticized the moderate [whites], not the hardcore racists, for not speaking out. In some ways, the last three years have made those moderates take a stand,” she said. As Eduardo Porter argues in his recent book, American Poison, the country’s entire social welfare contract since the New Deal has been fatally undermined by white animosity toward minority beneficiaries.
“What Trump has exposed in his presidency is there’s a significant portion of the American populace that has never accepted the full implications of the civil rights movement,” Ellis, the presidential historian, told Foreign Policy. “When they watch protesters they only see rioters.”
Even so, Wiencek and other historians suggest the recent tumult in the streets could help promote a healthy debate that should cast a new light on who the founders were and what they really believed—and, by extension, what America really stands for. You don’t have to tear all the statues down, they say—but you should at least change the inscriptions on them to better reflect who these people really were. And Americans should consider erecting new statues to long-forgotten heroes like Lt. Col. John Laurens, a young white South Carolinian aristocrat who repeatedly and passionately urged Washington to move toward emancipation before being killed in the Revolutionary War.
A statue of Thomas Jefferson stands next to a stack of bricks marked with the names of people he enslaved—all under the words of the Declaration of Independence—at the Smithsonian In-stitution’s National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington on Sept. 14, 2016.
“At the very least, we have to be willing to tell the full story of what those men did—making it clear on those massive monuments and memorials we’ve dedicated to them,” said Bailey, himself a South Carolinian. “It should no longer simply be a treat to visit such sites. More Americans need to understand [these men’s] role in the systemic rape and murder and enslavement of Black people even as they got rich off slavery.”
Defenders of the Founding Fathers have argued it is unfair to project today’s racial norms on men who lived in another time. But some historians point out that in many other respects, the Jeffersons and Madisons managed to brilliantly transcend their times; otherwise, Americans might still be living under a monarchy today. “The founders were geniuses in many respects,” Ellis said. “They could imagine before anybody else a large republic. They could imagine the separation of church and state. Nobody thought you could do that then. But they could not imagine a racially equal society.”
But human progress can’t be measured in lifetimes; it comes in fits and starts, and right now Americans are caught up in another major fit about who they are and want to be. All in all, said Thomas Sugrue, a New York University historian and the author of Not Even Past: Barack Obama and the Burden of Race, the George Floyd protests, coming amid a pandemic that has hurt Black and minority communities the most, have proved the rudest of awakenings from the briefest of national dreams that began with Obama’s inauguration. “There was a moment around the election of Barack Obama that the country finally felt it overcame its history, that finally we’re in a post-civil rights era. It wasn’t true,” Sugrue said. Instead came what the pundit Van Jones called a “whitelash,” ushering in the Trump era of deeper division.
“While I don’t want to diminish the changes that have happened since the 1960s, that period left a lot of problems unaddressed,” Sugrue said. “The most persistent are all the issues that have come to the surface, racial inequity in policing … but an even deeper racial inequality and segregation in the housing market—as well as the steady resegregation of American schools and cities. There’s not going to be any single answer. Policing is intertwined with the system of racial segregation. You can’t address the police problem only in terms of internal reforms.”
And there is still, Ellis said, a kind of tragic if tacit conversation occurring every day on the Mall in Washington—among the monuments themselves. “If you go to the Mall and stand in a place where you can see the Lincoln Memorial, the Jefferson Memorial, and the Martin Luther King Memorial, imagine an ongoing dialogue among those three giants,” he said. “Jefferson believed slavery was wrong, but he didn’t have the courage to do anything about it. Lincoln did, but he never could imagine that the races could live together in the same society on an equal basis. Then there’s King standing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial giving his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech, saying, ‘I have come to collect on a promissory note written by Thomas Jefferson.’”
The full debt has not yet been paid, and the dialogue goes on.


foreignpolicy--2020-06-24--To Fix Policing in the United States, Follow Its Guidelines Abroad

To Fix Policing in the United States , Follow Its Guidelines Abroad Day after day , protesters in cities across the United States are taking to the streets with the firm conviction that policing is broken and systemic change is needed to eradicate race-based police violence .
Protesters demand changes to use-of-force policies , broader police reforms , or the defunding of local police departments .
This patchwork of solutions shouldn ’ t come as a surprise to U.S. government officials .
In fact , many of them mirror precisely the approaches the United States teaches other countries when advising @ @ @ @ @ @ @ other forms of violence .
Over the past decade , the two of us have worked for or on behalf of the United States to help foreign governments reform their national-security and law-enforcement systems—and build the capacities of key community and civil-society partners .
Despite differing contexts , many of the solutions we have been advocating for overseas need to be applied in the United States .
Our colleagues abroad have been reaching out in recent weeks , concerned about policing in the United States and how U.S. President Donald Trump is seeking @ @ @ @ @ @ @ down on what he perceives to be his political opponents .
It reminds them , they tell us , of what they hoped to avoid in their own countries .
As trainers and advisors , we had grown used to holding up a U.S. tradition of democratic policing , without fully acknowledging that it was seriously compromised in our home country .
Now the entire world is witness not only to a Minneapolis police officer openly murdering a defenseless citizen , but to Trump sending military troops into the streets of Washington tear-gassing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from authoritarian regimes , misusing counterterrorism measures to target peaceful protesters .
This painful episode has revealed that rather than being a model for others to follow when it comes to policing and preventing violence , the United States in fact shares many of the problems of the countries it advises .
There is a lack of mutual trust between local communities and police .
There is also an overmilitarization of the police ’ s tactics and equipment ; a lack of adequate investments in local social services , health care , employment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of involvement by necessary civil-society partners .
These are the very concerns we start with when working with foreign governments .
To prevent violence , we typically tell them , fundamental changes are needed in each of these areas .
Without mutual trust and a healthy multidimensional relationship between community and security forces—and without the involvement of community-based organizations and civil-society partners—it is impossible to stem the violence .
The prospect for change in the United States—particularly given its complex federal system—is extremely challenging .
The United States has 50 states , thousands @ @ @ @ @ @ @ departments which are independently operated and answer to local governments and the voters who put them in office .
The U.S. Department of Justice and other federal agencies have some influence , authority , and resources , but change will have to be approached in a much more piecemeal way , one city or state at a time .
But there is already a blueprint for high-level assistance as local governments move ahead .
In 2014 , following the killing of Michael Brown , then President Barack Obama signed an executive order establishing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The task force was charged with identifying best practices and offering recommendations on how policing practices can promote effective crime reduction while building public trust .
Among the six pillars developed by that task force are many of those lessons we had been sharing abroad : One notes the absolute centrality of building trust and nurturing legitimacy on both sides of the police-citizen divide ; another states that community policing should be the guiding philosophy for all stakeholders .
These recommendations are necessary , and closely aligned with what we and others @ @ @ @ @ @ @ other countries .
However , what we do not have in the United States is a feasible mechanism for widespread systemic reform in policing , such as the model used to overhaul policing in Northern Ireland ( short of congressional action to pass new laws , which in the current political environment seems doomed to fail ) .
Any police reforms , therefore , will need to be complemented by significant investments in community-based services and institutions that have long been neglected .
What ’ s needed in the United States is not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ capacity-building in low-resource communities to strengthen community-based services and supports that can mitigate the life-threatening and public health consequences of inequality and police violence .
In this dystopian climate , teaching other countries about preventing terrorism and violence is practicing reverse American exceptionalism : Don ’ t mind us .
Do what we say , not what we do .
But across the United States and the globe , now , people are rallying against police violence and demanding more violence prevention measures .
If local governments have the courage and conviction to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ build the capacities of other community-based services and supports , they will serve as a global model .
Then the United States can rightfully claim to its foreign partners that it knows from its own country and its own troubled history how to make the changes that really matter .

Day after day, protesters in cities across the United States are taking to the streets with the firm conviction that policing is broken and systemic change is needed to eradicate race-based police violence. Protesters demand changes to use-of-force policies, broader police reforms , or the defunding of local police departments.
Day after day, protesters in cities across the United States are taking to the streets with the firm conviction that policing is broken and systemic change is needed to eradicate race-based police violence. Protesters demand changes to use-of-force policies, broader police reforms, or the defunding of local police departments.
This patchwork of solutions shouldn’t come as a surprise to U.S. government officials. In fact, many of them mirror precisely the approaches the United States teaches other countries when advising them on the prevention of terrorism and other forms of violence. Over the past decade, the two of us have worked for or on behalf of the United States to help foreign governments reform their national-security and law-enforcement systems—and build the capacities of key community and civil-society partners. Despite differing contexts, many of the solutions we have been advocating for overseas need to be applied in the United States.
Our colleagues abroad have been reaching out in recent weeks, concerned about policing in the United States and how U.S. President Donald Trump is seeking to use his counterterrorism powers to crack down on what he perceives to be his political opponents. It reminds them, they tell us, of what they hoped to avoid in their own countries. As trainers and advisors, we had grown used to holding up a U.S. tradition of democratic policing, without fully acknowledging that it was seriously compromised in our home country. Now the entire world is witness not only to a Minneapolis police officer openly murdering a defenseless citizen, but to Trump sending military troops into the streets of Washington tear-gassing peaceful protesters and, borrowing a tactic from authoritarian regimes, misusing counterterrorism measures to target peaceful protesters.
This painful episode has revealed that rather than being a model for others to follow when it comes to policing and preventing violence, the United States in fact shares many of the problems of the countries it advises. There is a lack of mutual trust between local communities and police. There is also an overmilitarization of the police’s tactics and equipment; a lack of adequate investments in local social services, health care, employment, and education; and a lack of involvement by necessary civil-society partners.
These are the very concerns we start with when working with foreign governments. To prevent violence, we typically tell them, fundamental changes are needed in each of these areas. Without mutual trust and a healthy multidimensional relationship between community and security forces—and without the involvement of community-based organizations and civil-society partners—it is impossible to stem the violence.
The prospect for change in the United States—particularly given its complex federal system—is extremely challenging. The United States has 50 states, thousands of municipalities, and 17,985 separate police departments which are independently operated and answer to local governments and the voters who put them in office. The U.S. Department of Justice and other federal agencies have some influence, authority, and resources, but change will have to be approached in a much more piecemeal way, one city or state at a time.
But there is already a blueprint for high-level assistance as local governments move ahead. In 2014, following the killing of Michael Brown, then President Barack Obama signed an executive order establishing the Task Force on 21st Century Policing. The task force was charged with identifying best practices and offering recommendations on how policing practices can promote effective crime reduction while building public trust. Among the six pillars developed by that task force are many of those lessons we had been sharing abroad: One notes the absolute centrality of building trust and nurturing legitimacy on both sides of the police-citizen divide; another states that community policing should be the guiding philosophy for all stakeholders.
These recommendations are necessary, and closely aligned with what we and others from the United States have been teaching other countries. However, what we do not have in the United States is a feasible mechanism for widespread systemic reform in policing, such as the model used to overhaul policing in Northern Ireland (short of congressional action to pass new laws, which in the current political environment seems doomed to fail).
Any police reforms, therefore, will need to be complemented by significant investments in community-based services and institutions that have long been neglected. What’s needed in the United States is not just long-overdue police reforms, but massive capacity-building in low-resource communities to strengthen community-based services and supports that can mitigate the life-threatening and public health consequences of inequality and police violence.
In this dystopian climate, teaching other countries about preventing terrorism and violence is practicing reverse American exceptionalism: Don’t mind us. Do what we say, not what we do.
But across the United States and the globe, now, people are rallying against police violence and demanding more violence prevention measures. If local governments have the courage and conviction to make lasting changes in policing and can build the capacities of other community-based services and supports, they will serve as a global model. Then the United States can rightfully claim to its foreign partners that it knows from its own country and its own troubled history how to make the changes that really matter.


foreignpolicy--2020-06-24--How to Aid Syria Without Aiding Assad

How to Aid Syria Without Aiding Assad

How to Aid Syria Without Aiding Assad The Syrian regime has been violating humanitarian neutrality for the past nine years , and the humanitarian community is paralyzed about what to do .
This is skewing assistance to more than 16 million Syrians in need , two-thirds of whom remain in areas outside government control or in neighboring countries .
While donors plan to renew their humanitarian financial pledges in Brussels on June 29 , another Russian veto could in the coming weeks dismantle what remains of the vital U.N. cross-border assistance mechanism , simultaneously increasing the Syrian regime ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The United States and Europe account for 90 percent of funding of humanitarian assistance to the Syrian people .
By dispatching their funding differently inside and outside the U.N. framework , they have leverage—and they must use that leverage to restore humanitarian neutrality and ensure aid helps people in need rather than the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad .
The humanitarian response in Syria is both a logistical masterpiece and an ethical conundrum .
The United Nations has set up a very robust coordination mechanism , supporting NGOs inside Syria and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ received considerable funding ( more than $ 3 billion in 2019 ) , and reached millions of people while developing the world ’ s most closely scrutinized system for cross-border deliveries , especially to prevent jihadi groups from diverting resources .
At the same time , the Syrian regime has committed systematic violations of the humanitarian principles of impartiality , neutrality , and independence .
There are countless examples of the weaponization of humanitarian resources to the regime ’ s benefit .
Aid is not neutral when delivered mostly to loyalists through regime @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Crescent or the Syria Trust for Development led by Assad ’ s wife .
U.N. agencies have hence been accused of collusion with and submission to Damascus .
The regime has also constantly militarily targeted health facilities , schools , and humanitarian actors—a seemingly deliberate violation of international humanitarian law .
A certain degree of pragmatic coordination with local authorities is , of course , necessary in most war zones .
However , while a few NGOs operating from Damascus manage to operate independently , most of them have submitted themselves to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with blackmail over visas and numerous bureaucratic impediments , U.N. agencies and most NGOs have accepted extensive control from the regime , including submitting each project to its approval .
As a result , they have delivered aid disproportionately to regime areas .
U.N. agencies also failed to fully take advantage of options to move cross-border aid into non-regime areas .
The U.N. Security Council created a dedicated mechanism in 2014 which authorizes humanitarian actors to use border crossings to deliver assistance to Syria from Turkey , Iraq , or Jordan without the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lack of impartiality from certain U.N. agencies in Damascus recently impacted the COVID-19 response .
The World Health Organization ( WHO ) assisted Damascus in February , but did not use cross-border corridors in northwest Syria until late March and delivered equipment in northeast Syria in May only to regime emissaries .
While a few NGOs operating from Damascus manage to operate independently , most of them have submitted themselves to the Assad regime ’ s conditions .
The paradox is that U.N. assistance to Syrians is mostly funded by countries opposed to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ $ 19 billion and $ 11 billion respectively since 2011 , Europe and the United States provide around 90 percent of U.N. funding .
However , key donors such as the U.S. Agency for International Development and the European Commission have been reluctant to push back against diversions of U.N. support to regime cronies and loyalists .
They have likely feared being accused by humanitarian actors of politicizing assistance and did not want to weaken U.N. agencies further .
They may have also feared the regime could react by further blocking assistance to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in regime areas never received the same level of scrutiny as cross-border delivery to opposition areas .
Such shortcomings left NGOs that refused to disclose activities to Assad regime officials with little choice but to work under the radar , with limited access to U.N. coordination and money .
Since the defeat of the Islamic State , cities such as Raqqa have largely missed out on U.N. aid because of regime pressure on U.N. agencies , and assistance has largely been provided separately from Iraq by the U.S. and European donors , through @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is a minor contributor to U.N. assistance ( 0.3 percent in 2019 ) but has wielded disproportionate influence over humanitarian operations by systematically backing Assad ’ s weaponization of aid .
Russia shielded Damascus from any consequences after it bombed humanitarian groups .
Russia also gradually worked to undermine the cross-border mechanism .
In January it vetoed the renewal of the Yarubiyah crossing , located on the Iraqi-Syrian border , while it would now support the delivery of medical equipment from Iraq to northeast Syria as part of the COVID-19 response .
Moscow @ @ @ @ @ @ @ requires humanitarian actors to coordinate with a country ’ s authorities .
However , the Geneva Convention does not stipulate that this grants a country ’ s authorities the right to violate other provisions of international law .
On the contrary , the convention forbids denying access to aid for “ arbitrary or capricious ” reasons .
Sovereignty is not superior to humanitarian protection .
In reality , Moscow ignores the regime ’ s violations .
Its narrative only aims to justify the regime ’ s domination over U.N. agencies and neglects the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ such as the right to food or medical support .
In the Kremlin ’ s view , U.N. agencies ’ submission to the regime is simply the result of the balance of power .
The solution is neither to make the U.N. a scapegoat nor to cut off funding to Syria , where more assistance is needed .
Organizations who do recognize Syrians ’ humanitarian rights can not be expected to solve structural problems alone .
Donors have the capacity to fix the humanitarian framework in Syria by allocating their funding differently .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ remains of the cross-border mechanism .
Its scope was already reduced in January under Resolution 2504 , from four crossings to two , Bab al-Salam and Bab al-Hawa , at the Syrian-Turkish border , after Russia and China vetoed the renewal of the Yarubiyah crossing from Iraq and the Ramtha crossing from Jordan ; this reduced mechanism will expire on July 10 .
The number of trucks bringing in assistance from Turkey using the two remaining border crossings has increased by more than 130 percent since 2019 , but these evident humanitarian needs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ veto again to end the mechanism .
The European Union ’ s June 29 pledging conference on Syria provides a timely opportunity for big donors—such as the United States , Europe , and Canada—to announce , first , that cross-border funding managed from Turkey will not be relocated to Damascus if Resolution 2504 is not renewed , and second , that stricter operation guidelines and independent project monitoring are required to operate in regime areas .
A key challenge for the United States and its allies—inside and outside the U.N. Security Council—is to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , from bilateral talks with Russia and Turkey to personal diplomacy at the ministerial level and outreach to the U.N. secretary-general , to find a compromise with Moscow to preserve the two border crossings from Turkey and to improve access to northeast Syria .
If the cross-border mechanism is not renewed , donors should pool the funds that would have gone to it and direct those contributions outside the U.N. framework .
And even if it is renewed , key donors should still condition their funding of U.N. operations based in Damascus and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ respect of humanitarian standards .
If agencies such as the WHO in Damascus do not clarify their relations with the regime , donor governments should shift funding to other agencies or fund NGOs outside of the U.N. framework .
Local Syrian NGOs have built up extensive skills and could be supported directly .
Pooling funding outside the U.N. system could increase direct assistance to northeast Syria from Erbil in Iraq , in the same way that the humanitarian hub in Gaziantep , Turkey , supports northwest Syria .
These measures might create costs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ worthy investment to prevent diversion to the Assad regime .
Shifting partners based on stricter guidelines would create a sense of competition the U.N. secretary-general could use to strengthen internal accountability and help NGOs negotiate higher humanitarian standards with Damascus .
Russia , China , Iran , and others argue that , since Assad has effectively won the war , sanctions should be lifted to allow development aid from the World Bank , the International Monetary Fund , the United States , and Europe to flow .
While sanctions should be targeted and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , it ’ s hard to see how lifting them now would not lead to even bigger diversion of aid to the regime than in the past .
More assistance to Syrians is needed , but calls to centralize operations in Damascus ignore how fragmented the humanitarian situation in Syria still is .
While 6.4 million out of the 16.6 million Syrians in need of assistance live in regime areas , Damascus keeps blocking access to former rebel areas it now controls , such as Eastern Ghouta near the Syrian capital , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Daraa .
Another 5.6 million Syrians are refugees in neighboring countries and risk arrest if they come back .
At least 2.8 million people in humanitarian need live in the northwest under the control of jihadists or pro-Turkish Islamist groups , and 1.8 million are in the northeast under the control of the U.S.-allied Syrian Democratic Forces .
Each situation requires specific solutions in the absence of a political settlement .
Allowing Damascus to have full control over international assistance will neither help alleviate civilian suffering nor stabilize the country .
Using existing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of humanitarian principles is essential .
The United States and Europe could also explore new options , such as working with the Syrian diaspora and their NGOs to increase remittances and financial assistance sent to Syria , which is probably the most direct and effective support average Syrians can receive .
Syrians who fled the regime know best who needs help and how to avoid extortions and diversions .
Humanitarian organizations are rightly wary of donors ’ pressures because they fear being instrumentalized , yet the level of regime interference in their work @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ago .
The destruction of humanitarian principles in Syria will have a terrible , lasting effect on how the U.N. operates elsewhere in the world if donors , agencies , and NGOs do not fix the system .
The Syrian conflict has shown that the devil—and what remains of donors ’ leverage—lies in the details .

The Syrian regime has been violating humanitarian neutrality for the past nine years, and the humanitarian community is paralyzed about what to do. This is skewing assistance to more than 16 million Syrians in need, two-thirds of whom remain in areas outside government control or in neighboring countries. While donors plan to renew their humanitarian financial pledges in Brussels on June 29, another Russian veto could in the coming weeks dismantle what remains of the vital U.N. cross-border assistance mechanism, simultaneously increasing the Syrian regime’s leverage over nongovernmental organizations and U.N. agencies.
The Syrian regime has been violating humanitarian neutrality for the past nine years, and the humanitarian community is paralyzed about what to do. This is skewing assistance to more than 16 million Syrians in need, two-thirds of whom remain in areas outside government control or in neighboring countries. While donors plan to renew their humanitarian financial pledges in Brussels on June 29, another Russian veto could in the coming weeks dismantle what remains of the vital U.N. cross-border assistance mechanism, simultaneously increasing the Syrian regime’s leverage over nongovernmental organizations and U.N. agencies.
The United States and Europe account for 90 percent of funding of humanitarian assistance to the Syrian people. By dispatching their funding differently inside and outside the U.N. framework, they have leverage—and they must use that leverage to restore humanitarian neutrality and ensure aid helps people in need rather than the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.
The humanitarian response in Syria is both a logistical masterpiece and an ethical conundrum. The United Nations has set up a very robust coordination mechanism, supporting NGOs inside Syria and in neighboring countries. U.N. programs have received considerable funding (more than $3 billion in 2019), and reached millions of people while developing the world’s most closely scrutinized system for cross-border deliveries, especially to prevent jihadi groups from diverting resources.
At the same time, the Syrian regime has committed systematic violations of the humanitarian principles of impartiality, neutrality, and independence. There are countless examples of the weaponization of humanitarian resources to the regime’s benefit. Aid is not neutral when delivered mostly to loyalists through regime organizations such as the Syrian Arab Red Crescent or the Syria Trust for Development led by Assad’s wife. U.N. agencies have hence been accused of collusion with and submission to Damascus. The regime has also constantly militarily targeted health facilities, schools, and humanitarian actors—a seemingly deliberate violation of international humanitarian law.
A certain degree of pragmatic coordination with local authorities is, of course, necessary in most war zones. However, while a few NGOs operating from Damascus manage to operate independently, most of them have submitted themselves to the Assad regime’s conditions. Faced with blackmail over visas and numerous bureaucratic impediments, U.N. agencies and most NGOs have accepted extensive control from the regime, including submitting each project to its approval. As a result, they have delivered aid disproportionately to regime areas.
U.N. agencies also failed to fully take advantage of options to move cross-border aid into non-regime areas. The U.N. Security Council created a dedicated mechanism in 2014 which authorizes humanitarian actors to use border crossings to deliver assistance to Syria from Turkey, Iraq, or Jordan without the Assad regime’s approval. This lack of impartiality from certain U.N. agencies in Damascus recently impacted the COVID-19 response. The World Health Organization (WHO) assisted Damascus in February, but did not use cross-border corridors in northwest Syria until late March and delivered equipment in northeast Syria in May only to regime emissaries.
While a few NGOs operating from Damascus manage to operate independently, most of them have submitted themselves to the Assad regime’s conditions.
The paradox is that U.N. assistance to Syrians is mostly funded by countries opposed to Assad. With a total contribution of $19 billion and $11 billion respectively since 2011, Europe and the United States provide around 90 percent of U.N. funding. However, key donors such as the U.S. Agency for International Development and the European Commission have been reluctant to push back against diversions of U.N. support to regime cronies and loyalists. They have likely feared being accused by humanitarian actors of politicizing assistance and did not want to weaken U.N. agencies further. They may have also feared the regime could react by further blocking assistance to non-loyalists. As a result, deliveries in regime areas never received the same level of scrutiny as cross-border delivery to opposition areas.
Such shortcomings left NGOs that refused to disclose activities to Assad regime officials with little choice but to work under the radar, with limited access to U.N. coordination and money. Since the defeat of the Islamic State, cities such as Raqqa have largely missed out on U.N. aid because of regime pressure on U.N. agencies, and assistance has largely been provided separately from Iraq by the U.S. and European donors, through NGOs not registered in Damascus.
Moscow is a minor contributor to U.N. assistance (0.3 percent in 2019) but has wielded disproportionate influence over humanitarian operations by systematically backing Assad’s weaponization of aid. Russia shielded Damascus from any consequences after it bombed humanitarian groups. Russia also gradually worked to undermine the cross-border mechanism. In January it vetoed the renewal of the Yarubiyah crossing, located on the Iraqi-Syrian border, while it would now support the delivery of medical equipment from Iraq to northeast Syria as part of the COVID-19 response.
Moscow’s argument is that international law requires humanitarian actors to coordinate with a country’s authorities. However, the Geneva Convention does not stipulate that this grants a country’s authorities the right to violate other provisions of international law. On the contrary, the convention forbids denying access to aid for “arbitrary or capricious” reasons. Sovereignty is not superior to humanitarian protection.
In reality, Moscow ignores the regime’s violations. Its narrative only aims to justify the regime’s domination over U.N. agencies and neglects the humanitarian rights of the Syrian population, such as the right to food or medical support. In the Kremlin’s view, U.N. agencies’ submission to the regime is simply the result of the balance of power.
The solution is neither to make the U.N. a scapegoat nor to cut off funding to Syria, where more assistance is needed. Organizations who do recognize Syrians’ humanitarian rights cannot be expected to solve structural problems alone. Donors have the capacity to fix the humanitarian framework in Syria by allocating their funding differently.
The priority should be to protect what remains of the cross-border mechanism. Its scope was already reduced in January under Resolution 2504, from four crossings to two, Bab al-Salam and Bab al-Hawa, at the Syrian-Turkish border, after Russia and China vetoed the renewal of the Yarubiyah crossing from Iraq and the Ramtha crossing from Jordan; this reduced mechanism will expire on July 10. The number of trucks bringing in assistance from Turkey using the two remaining border crossings has increased by more than 130 percent since 2019, but these evident humanitarian needs may not prevent Russia from using its veto again to end the mechanism.
The European Union’s June 29 pledging conference on Syria provides a timely opportunity for big donors—such as the United States, Europe, and Canada—to announce, first, that cross-border funding managed from Turkey will not be relocated to Damascus if Resolution 2504 is not renewed, and second, that stricter operation guidelines and independent project monitoring are required to operate in regime areas.
A key challenge for the United States and its allies—inside and outside the U.N. Security Council—is to use all the tools they can muster, from bilateral talks with Russia and Turkey to personal diplomacy at the ministerial level and outreach to the U.N. secretary-general, to find a compromise with Moscow to preserve the two border crossings from Turkey and to improve access to northeast Syria.
If the cross-border mechanism is not renewed, donors should pool the funds that would have gone to it and direct those contributions outside the U.N. framework. And even if it is renewed, key donors should still condition their funding of U.N. operations based in Damascus and disburse funds differently, depending on the respect of humanitarian standards. If agencies such as the WHO in Damascus do not clarify their relations with the regime, donor governments should shift funding to other agencies or fund NGOs outside of the U.N. framework. Local Syrian NGOs have built up extensive skills and could be supported directly.
Pooling funding outside the U.N. system could increase direct assistance to northeast Syria from Erbil in Iraq, in the same way that the humanitarian hub in Gaziantep, Turkey, supports northwest Syria. These measures might create costs for donors, but would be a worthy investment to prevent diversion to the Assad regime. Shifting partners based on stricter guidelines would create a sense of competition the U.N. secretary-general could use to strengthen internal accountability and help NGOs negotiate higher humanitarian standards with Damascus.
Russia, China, Iran, and others argue that, since Assad has effectively won the war, sanctions should be lifted to allow development aid from the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the United States, and Europe to flow. While sanctions should be targeted and their impact on the population regularly assessed, it’s hard to see how lifting them now would not lead to even bigger diversion of aid to the regime than in the past.
More assistance to Syrians is needed, but calls to centralize operations in Damascus ignore how fragmented the humanitarian situation in Syria still is. While 6.4 million out of the 16.6 million Syrians in need of assistance live in regime areas, Damascus keeps blocking access to former rebel areas it now controls, such as Eastern Ghouta near the Syrian capital, and barely controls other areas, such as Daraa.
Another 5.6 million Syrians are refugees in neighboring countries and risk arrest if they come back. At least 2.8 million people in humanitarian need live in the northwest under the control of jihadists or pro-Turkish Islamist groups, and 1.8 million are in the northeast under the control of the U.S.-allied Syrian Democratic Forces. Each situation requires specific solutions in the absence of a political settlement.
Allowing Damascus to have full control over international assistance will neither help alleviate civilian suffering nor stabilize the country. Using existing funding in ways that address current violations of humanitarian principles is essential. The United States and Europe could also explore new options, such as working with the Syrian diaspora and their NGOs to increase remittances and financial assistance sent to Syria, which is probably the most direct and effective support average Syrians can receive. Syrians who fled the regime know best who needs help and how to avoid extortions and diversions.
Humanitarian organizations are rightly wary of donors’ pressures because they fear being instrumentalized, yet the level of regime interference in their work should have triggered a collective reaction long ago. The destruction of humanitarian principles in Syria will have a terrible, lasting effect on how the U.N. operates elsewhere in the world if donors, agencies, and NGOs do not fix the system. The Syrian conflict has shown that the devil—and what remains of donors’ leverage—lies in the details.


foreignpolicy--2020-06-24--Forget the Book. Bolton’s Legacy Is a Nuclear Arms Race.

As soon as John Bolton left the White House , it was inevitable that U.S. President Donald Trump would distance himself from both the person and any criticism , such as what the former national security advisor has now laid bare in his tell-all book .
Many of Bolton ’ s ideas , however , remain the basis for the Trump administration ’ s foreign policy , especially in the area of nuclear security and arms control .
Much like after his stint in the George W. Bush administration , where he was undersecretary of state for arms control and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wake of destruction that will undermine U.S. security for many years to come .
Every nuclear challenge facing the United States today has gotten worse since Trump took office , and the failure to deal effectively with Iran , North Korea , and Russia is in large part the result of Bolton ’ s ideas.Every nuclear challenge facing the United States today has gotten worse since Trump took office .
The failure to deal with them effectively ( on Iran , with North Korea , and with Russia ) is in large part @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
And , in fact , many of the risks Trump inherited stem from actions Bolton took or championed when he served under Bush .
In just a few years—between 2001 and 2005—Bolton pushed for and enabled three calamitous decisions : the withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Moscow , the abandonment of the 1994 Agreed Framework with North Korea , and the invasion of Iraq over imaginary weapons of mass destruction .
From these three decisions , one can draw direct lines to the ongoing arms race with Russia , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 50 nuclear weapons or more , and the ascendency of Iran in the Middle East .
This legacy was the resume that Bolton presented Trump , one that Trump found compelling enough that he put Bolton in charge of an interagency process that the president has shown no interest in guiding or using to any lasting benefit .
As Trump said about foreign policy and the U.S. State Department in 2017 , he is “ the only one that matters.
” The policy results under Trump and Bolton have been sadly predictable .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the Iran nuclear deal , which had successfully stopped Tehran ’ s nuclear weapons program dead in its tracks .
That ’ s the very same weapons program that grew when Bolton was in office under Bush , before there was a deal .
As soon as Bolton was back in the White House , he helped push Trump to take the final steps to violate the deal and reimpose sanctions despite Iran ’ s compliance .
After the United States abandoned the agreement , Bolton and his like-minded allies in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and for all to prevent a future administration from being able to rebuild the international consensus embodied in the Iran deal .
Today , Iran ’ s nuclear enrichment capabilities are growing again , as is its defiance of the international community .
For Bolton , this is actually a good thing , as it may force the United States once again to pursue regime change in Tehran—because for Bolton , you don ’ t negotiate with bad regimes , you change them .
On North Korea , Bolton ’ s fingerprints may @ @ @ @ @ @ @ overestimated his own prowess and negotiating skills , his willingness to negotiate directly with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un provided an opening for progress—a feat neither of his last two predecessors achieved .
Sadly , the long odds of success were made even longer by Trump ’ s own lack of preparation , and then they became all but insurmountable when Bolton went rogue , citing the Libya model for disarmament as his vision for a deal with North Korea .
The gruesome fate of now-dead former Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hope there was for progress quickly died out .
One wonders if Trump even knew that it was Bolton who helped kill the 1994 nuclear agreement with North Korea under Bush , and thereby opened the door to what is now a large and growing nuclear force that is unsettling the entire region .
Bolton also has long lamented the United States ’ use of negotiated , verified arms control agreements to address the nuclear balance with Russia .
It was Bolton who used his new perch as U.S. national security advisor to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Nuclear Forces Treaty and to announce the process of pulling out of the Open Skies Treaty , which regulates unarmed reconnaissance flights and has roots in the Dwight D. Eisenhower era .
The move was familiar to anyone who watched Bolton play a key role in getting George W. Bush to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile ( ABM ) Treaty in 2002 .
Back then , U.S. experts ( and Russia ) warned that the consequence of killing the ABM Treaty would be a buildup of new Russian nuclear forces .
And what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that : the development of a range of novel systems such as new heavy land-based missiles , nuclear-powered cruise missiles , and nuclear-tipped long-range torpedoes .
All of these systems are good at one thing : evading U.S. missile defense capabilities .
To Bolton , however , these systems are not signs of Russia ’ s response to the U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty but proof of Russia ’ s ill intent toward the United States .
He sees them as new threats to be countered , not contained .
Like Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or accepting of personal responsibility for past actions .
The accelerating arms race between the United States and Russia will be one of Bolton ’ s lasting legacies to the world .
Unfortunately , part of his dangerous work may be completed long after he was fired by Trump : the slow and painful death of the last remaining cap on nuclear forces in Russia and the United States—the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty , or New START .
In their animus against this last surviving U.S.-Russian arms control agreement , Trump and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Barack Obama ’ s administration in 2010 , New START was therefore born of original sin in the eyes of Trump , who has never met an Obama deal he liked .
Bolton , repeating the same argument that got Trump to kill the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty—that China was not a party to the bilateral U.S.-Russian pact—provided Trump with the rationale he needed to avoid extending the agreement as permitted by its terms .
Despite Moscow ’ s repeated offers to unconditionally extend the treaty , Washington ’ s negotiating stance is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ then no deal .
Never mind the fact that the U.S. intelligence community has confirmed Russia ’ s continued compliance with New START , and that there is nearly unanimous support for extending the treaty among the U.S. military and nuclear security community .
Forget that there is no way to have China join a bilateral treaty without re-approval by the U.S. Senate .
Also leave aside the fact that China has only one-tenth the number of nuclear weapons of either Russia or the United States , and has consistently declined interest in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Russian numbers come down to China ’ s level .
And forget as well the embarrassing reality that Trump declared that China must join the treaty without first informing either Britain or France , close U.S. allies with arsenals roughly the size of China ’ s .
The collaboration between Trump and Bolton to kill deals , each for their own personal reasons , remains intact despite their public rift .
Others have addressed Bolton ’ s decision not to voluntarily testify during the impeachment process , deciding instead to collect a reported @ @ @ @ @ @ @ book .
But even if he had acted with honor during Trump ’ s impeachment , his impact and legacy are the impairment of U.S. security and the steady growth of nuclear threats .
There are reasonable debates to be had on when and how arms control can support U.S. security goals , and when to exit treaties that no longer serve those aims .
In the Obama administration , we had such debates over the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces and Open Skies treaties too .
Bolton ’ s continued role in aiding Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ leadership and nuclear agreements , however , will cement Bolton ’ s legacy as one of the most consequential and negative influences on U.S. security policy for decades to come .
Regardless of how many books Bolton sells and barbs he trades with Trump , it is the United States , its allies , and global stability that will suffer the most .

As soon as John Bolton left the White House, it was inevitable that U.S. President Donald Trump would distance himself from both the person and any criticism, such as what the former national security advisor has now laid bare in his tell-all book.
As soon as John Bolton left the White House, it was inevitable that U.S. President Donald Trump would distance himself from both the person and any criticism, such as what the former national security advisor has now laid bare in his tell-all book.
Many of Bolton’s ideas, however, remain the basis for the Trump administration’s foreign policy, especially in the area of nuclear security and arms control. Much like after his stint in the George W. Bush administration, where he was undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, Bolton leaves behind a wake of destruction that will undermine U.S. security for many years to come. Every nuclear challenge facing the United States today has gotten worse since Trump took office. The failure to deal with them effectively (on Iran, with North Korea, and with Russia) is in large part the result of Bolton’s ideas. And, in fact, many of the risks Trump inherited stem from actions Bolton took or championed when he served under Bush.
In just a few years—between 2001 and 2005—Bolton pushed for and enabled three calamitous decisions: the withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with Moscow, the abandonment of the 1994 Agreed Framework with North Korea, and the invasion of Iraq over imaginary weapons of mass destruction. From these three decisions, one can draw direct lines to the ongoing arms race with Russia, North Korea’s possession of perhaps 50 nuclear weapons or more, and the ascendency of Iran in the Middle East. This legacy was the resume that Bolton presented Trump, one that Trump found compelling enough that he put Bolton in charge of an interagency process that the president has shown no interest in guiding or using to any lasting benefit. As Trump said about foreign policy and the U.S. State Department in 2017, he is “the only one that matters.”Every nuclear challenge facing the United States today has gotten worse since Trump took office, and the failure to deal effectively with Iran, North Korea, and Russia is in large part the result of Bolton’s ideas.
The policy results under Trump and Bolton have been sadly predictable. Bolton was an early and persistent critic of the Iran nuclear deal, which had successfully stopped Tehran’s nuclear weapons program dead in its tracks. That’s the very same weapons program that grew when Bolton was in office under Bush, before there was a deal. As soon as Bolton was back in the White House, he helped push Trump to take the final steps to violate the deal and reimpose sanctions despite Iran’s compliance. After the United States abandoned the agreement, Bolton and his like-minded allies in the administration tried to bury the deal once and for all to prevent a future administration from being able to rebuild the international consensus embodied in the Iran deal. Today, Iran’s nuclear enrichment capabilities are growing again, as is its defiance of the international community. For Bolton, this is actually a good thing, as it may force the United States once again to pursue regime change in Tehran—because for Bolton, you don’t negotiate with bad regimes, you change them.
On North Korea, Bolton’s fingerprints may never wash off. While Trump badly overestimated his own prowess and negotiating skills, his willingness to negotiate directly with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un provided an opening for progress—a feat neither of his last two predecessors achieved. Sadly, the long odds of success were made even longer by Trump’s own lack of preparation, and then they became all but insurmountable when Bolton went rogue, citing the Libya model for disarmament as his vision for a deal with North Korea. The gruesome fate of now-dead former Libyan leader Muammar al-Qaddafi was not lost on Kim, and whatever hope there was for progress quickly died out. One wonders if Trump even knew that it was Bolton who helped kill the 1994 nuclear agreement with North Korea under Bush, and thereby opened the door to what is now a large and growing nuclear force that is unsettling the entire region.
Bolton also has long lamented the United States’ use of negotiated, verified arms control agreements to address the nuclear balance with Russia. It was Bolton who used his new perch as U.S. national security advisor to get Trump to withdraw from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and to announce the process of pulling out of the Open Skies Treaty, which regulates unarmed reconnaissance flights and has roots in the Dwight D. Eisenhower era. The move was familiar to anyone who watched Bolton play a key role in getting George W. Bush to withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in 2002. Back then, U.S. experts (and Russia) warned that the consequence of killing the ABM Treaty would be a buildup of new Russian nuclear forces. And what we see now in Russia is exactly that: the development of a range of novel systems such as new heavy land-based missiles, nuclear-powered cruise missiles, and nuclear-tipped long-range torpedoes. All of these systems are good at one thing: evading U.S. missile defense capabilities. To Bolton, however, these systems are not signs of Russia’s response to the U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty but proof of Russia’s ill intent toward the United States. He sees them as new threats to be countered, not contained. Like Trump, Bolton is not strong in self-reflection or accepting of personal responsibility for past actions.
The accelerating arms race between the United States and Russia will be one of Bolton’s lasting legacies to the world. Unfortunately, part of his dangerous work may be completed long after he was fired by Trump: the slow and painful death of the last remaining cap on nuclear forces in Russia and the United States—the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New START.
In their animus against this last surviving U.S.-Russian arms control agreement, Trump and Bolton were united. Negotiated by President Barack Obama’s administration in 2010, New START was therefore born of original sin in the eyes of Trump, who has never met an Obama deal he liked. Bolton, repeating the same argument that got Trump to kill the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty—that China was not a party to the bilateral U.S.-Russian pact—provided Trump with the rationale he needed to avoid extending the agreement as permitted by its terms. Despite Moscow’s repeated offers to unconditionally extend the treaty, Washington’s negotiating stance is that if Beijing does not join, then no deal. Never mind the fact that the U.S. intelligence community has confirmed Russia’s continued compliance with New START, and that there is nearly unanimous support for extending the treaty among the U.S. military and nuclear security community.
Forget that there is no way to have China join a bilateral treaty without re-approval by the U.S. Senate. Also leave aside the fact that China has only one-tenth the number of nuclear weapons of either Russia or the United States, and has consistently declined interest in joining any such treaty until U.S. and Russian numbers come down to China’s level. And forget as well the embarrassing reality that Trump declared that China must join the treaty without first informing either Britain or France, close U.S. allies with arsenals roughly the size of China’s. The collaboration between Trump and Bolton to kill deals, each for their own personal reasons, remains intact despite their public rift.
Others have addressed Bolton’s decision not to voluntarily testify during the impeachment process, deciding instead to collect a reported $2 million advance for a tell-all book. But even if he had acted with honor during Trump’s impeachment, his impact and legacy are the impairment of U.S. security and the steady growth of nuclear threats. There are reasonable debates to be had on when and how arms control can support U.S. security goals, and when to exit treaties that no longer serve those aims. In the Obama administration, we had such debates over the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces and Open Skies treaties too. Bolton’s continued role in aiding Trump’s carpet-bombing campaign against both U.S. leadership and nuclear agreements, however, will cement Bolton’s legacy as one of the most consequential and negative influences on U.S. security policy for decades to come. Regardless of how many books Bolton sells and barbs he trades with Trump, it is the United States, its allies, and global stability that will suffer the most.