foreignpolicy--2020-07-22--Biden and the Ghosts of Iraq

Biden and the Ghosts of Iraq

Biden and the Ghosts of Iraq One early evening in November of 2005 , I found myself walking through Union Station in Washington , D.C. , with then-Sen. Joe Biden .
The train that was to ferry us to his resident city of Wilmington , Delaware , had already completed boarding , so we were striding at a very fast clip .
Still , the senator kept talking the entire way .
I ’ d asked him a question as we walked , and he was still answering it as we disembarked in Wilmington 75 minutes later .
That question @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , had Biden voted in favor of giving President George W. Bush the authority to wage war in Iraq ?
Biden ’ s answer boiled down to this : He had believed that the authorization vote would give the president leverage to force the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to effectively relinquish his illicit weapons program .
Further , he had believed that Bush would not blunder recklessly into war .
The senator ’ s windy monologue featured multiple digressions relating to the Bush family ’ s wealth , to Vice President Dick Cheney @ @ @ @ @ @ @ futile valor of Secretary of State Colin Powell .
But those cameos were themselves illustrative of the greater tragedy .
For Biden , it had come down to who to trust .
He trusted that Saddam—who , the day after the United States was attacked on Sept. 11 , 2001 , crowed that America “ reaps the thorns its rulers have planted in the world ” —was an evil megalomaniac who possessed weapons of mass destruction .
He trusted that Bush would consult with Biden and other foreign-policy sages before committing to military @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to war and everything subsequently went to hell , he trusted that the public would themselves entrust people like Biden—who was then gearing up for his second run at the presidency—to make things right .
At the time , both of us ( and , for that matter , the rest of Washington ) were unaware of two rather unusual letters that had been written less than a month after 9/11 .
The author of them was Tariq Aziz , Saddam ’ s deputy prime minister .
Aziz had sent them one week @ @ @ @ @ @ @ national security advisor to President Ronald Reagan , Frank Carlucci , who in turn dutifully forwarded them to Bush ’ s assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs , Bill Burns .
In the letters , Saddam ’ s right-hand man asked that the dictator ’ s churlish remarks “ be disregarded.
” Aziz insisted that the Iraqi regime was “ ready to meet any American official , publicly or secretly , to discuss issues of mutual concern .
At any rate Iraq has suffered from terrorism ” —including , he maintained @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Aziz himself .
The deputy prime minister was explicitly imploring the Bush administration : Ignore my boss ’ s bluster—he ’ s just playing to his base .
We are not your enemy .
We should be allies in the war on terror .
Burns didn ’ t recall anything about the letters ( which had been retrieved in a Freedom of Information Act request by George Washington University ’ s heroic National Security Archive team ) when I showed them to him in 2018 .
The assistant secretary understandably had other preoccupations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , of course , one should consider the source .
Why trust Saddam ’ s advisor ?
At the time of that visit with Burns , Donald Trump had been president for a year .
A key to Trump ’ s astonishing victory over Hillary Clinton was the complete breakdown of public trust in what the Republicans termed the Washington “ swamp ” —and , as Barack Obama had done in his presidential campaign eight years earlier , Trump repeatedly scorned Clinton and other Beltway sages who had supported Bush ’ s decision @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that ill-fated decision , Trump shrewdly recognized , transcended blood and treasure .
An entire generation had come of age knowing that Washington was not on the level .
Why trust the White House anymore ?
Why trust intelligence specialists ?
Why trust Congress ?
Why trust the media ?
And so , it followed , why not consider trusting a boastful reality TV star and compulsive disruptor whose Washington inexperience could be cast as a crowning virtue ?
That the Iraq War made possible the presidencies of first Obama and then Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was not why I set out three years ago to write my new book , To Start a War : How the Bush Administration Took America into Iraq .
Having already written an in-depth book about Bush ’ s presidency , what continued to eat at me was not so much that consequential decision ’ s obvious legacy but what the United States failed to learn from it .
Not by design , my book arrives at a time of national crisis , when polls suggest that Americans are fed up with the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But Biden is not yet a shoo-in in the November election .
Though the pandemic has revealed a nationwide yearning for straight talk and scientifically validated guidance , recoiling from the White House ’ s antics has not translated into a reacquired appreciation of old hands on the Hill like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell , for example—or , for that matter , of the media .
Respect for such institutions remains abysmal .
Biden therefore remains afflicted with an indelible weakness—an inability to convince voters that 45 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a surefire cure for what now afflicts the United States .
After all , what did all that expertise get Americans two decades ago ?
George W. Bush brought with him to the White House a highly skilled staff , featuring a star-studded foreign-policy team that had worked in government going back to the Ford administration .
The new president managed to pass major bipartisan legislation with a Congress that was enjoying a relatively even-tempered interval between Newt Gingrich and the Tea Party .
Meanwhile , newsrooms were well resourced and not yet @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which is to say that Bush ’ s first year in office came at a time when Washington was at a peak of functionality .
But the same Washington did not know what it did not know .
During Bush ’ s first eight months in office , not one member of the White House press corps asked any question to press secretary Ari Fleischer about al Qaeda .
Fleischer himself had only recently learned of the organization , when Vladimir Putin brought up the subject during Bush ’ s summit with the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s national security team—Cheney , Powell , Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld , and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice—had each been out of government for eight years or more .
Their experience was shaped primarily by the Cold War and secondarily by the 100-hour-long hot war known as Operation Desert Storm .
Saddam ’ s behavior , before and since the U.S.-led coalition routed Iraqi troops out of Kuwait , was seen as that of a murderous barbarian .
At a National Press Club luncheon on Sept. 10 , 2001 , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Iraqi dictator a “ certifiable maniac.
” “ 9/11 changed everything , ” I must have heard a hundred times in the course of my book reporting .
In retrospect , it ’ s remarkable to see how little change the attacks immediately brought about—and not simply because Bush famously urged Americans a month later “ to go about their business.
” Though the nation ’ s capital had suddenly lost its sense of impregnability , its fearful leaders continued to embrace time-honored predilections .
Among these was that Saddam Hussein was a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dictator had the capability of attacking the U.S. homeland was wafer-thin ; that he might confederate with those who had attacked the United States , even less so ; that he harbored any ambition to attack the United States himself , nonexistent .
Indeed , the letters sent by Aziz to Carlucci shortly after the 9/11 attacks suggesting the opposite—that the Iraqi regime wished to ally itself with the United States against a common enemy—were only the latest such overtures , the others having been previously transmitted throughout the 1990s by Iraq ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the CIA .
Now : Should one do business with so unsavory an actor as Saddam ?
Presidents Jimmy Carter and Reagan had been down this road before , with mixed results .
But by 9/11 , it was all but universally acknowledged—above all , by Washington ’ s most experienced hands—that the United States could not do business with Saddam .
He was , after all , a “ certifiable maniac.
” U.S. history is littered with examples not only of the laxity Americans exhibit toward their morally challenged allies but also @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Saddam was many horrible things , but he was not suicidal .
Most everybody in Washington , including the press , failed to see this , and failed as well to appreciate the complicated game of survival he was playing as a secular dictator living next door to the Islamic theocracy of Iran .
Instead , went the groupthink : A maniac was capable of anything .
A maniac would never dispose of his deadly weapons .
A maniac would surely use those weapons—or , as Bush hypothesized about Saddam without a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from Democrats or the media , “ would like nothing more than to use a terrorist network to attack and to kill and leave no fingerprints behind.
” Even before Feb. 5 , 2003 , when Powell laid out the soon-to-be-disproven case that Iraq had violated U.N. resolutions by retaining a weapons program , Biden was already sold on the subject , declaring a week before Powell ’ s speech , “ Every world leader in Europe and the Middle East knows he ’ s in material breach.
” This assumption , like @ @ @ @ @ @ @ maniac , ” was akin to a family fable , a convenient verity that somehow gained credibility over the years even as it took on more hyperbole .
During the campaign , Biden has passed on opportunities to elaborate his lessons learned from the Iraq experience .
That ’ s not to say he hasn ’ t learned any .
A nuclear physicist on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee ’ s payroll , Peter Zimmerman , had warned the committee ’ s chairman , Biden , of flaws in the prewar intelligence .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ listening .
The question is , who would a President Biden listen to now ?
As to who duped whom in the Iraq saga , the blame deserves a wide distribution .
Ultimately , however , it ’ s all in the family—and that , I believe , is the lesson worth absorbing from this tragic episode .
Today , even as Americans suffer the latest reminder of what happens when leadership fails them , a long-overdue dialogue about race and power is also underway .
The two conversations belong together .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of unchecked police brutality , and of the omnipresent monuments to a slaveholding past , Americans are in effect acknowledging an insularity that is racist , but not only that .
A democracy whose leaders listen only to each other is as prone to degeneration as any incestuous family .
It ’ s unknowable , of course , whether the United States would have gone to war against Iraq had the so-called experts in the White House Situation Room included smart and accomplished newcomers to Washington who could see the “ certifiable ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ What we do know is that the tale said more about the tellers than most of them will yet admit .

One early evening in November of 2005, I found myself walking through Union Station in Washington, D.C., with then-Sen. Joe Biden. The train that was to ferry us to his resident city of Wilmington, Delaware, had already completed boarding, so we were striding at a very fast clip. Still, the senator kept talking the entire way. I’d asked him a question as we walked, and he was still answering it as we disembarked in Wilmington 75 minutes later. That question was: Why, three years earlier, had Biden voted in favor of giving President George W. Bush the authority to wage war in Iraq?
One early evening in November of 2005, I found myself walking through Union Station in Washington, D.C., with then-Sen. Joe Biden. The train that was to ferry us to his resident city of Wilmington, Delaware, had already completed boarding, so we were striding at a very fast clip. Still, the senator kept talking the entire way. I’d asked him a question as we walked, and he was still answering it as we disembarked in Wilmington 75 minutes later. That question was: Why, three years earlier, had Biden voted in favor of giving President George W. Bush the authority to wage war in Iraq?
Biden’s answer boiled down to this: He had believed that the authorization vote would give the president leverage to force the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to effectively relinquish his illicit weapons program. Further, he had believed that Bush would not blunder recklessly into war. The senator’s windy monologue featured multiple digressions relating to the Bush family’s wealth, to Vice President Dick Cheney’s nefariousness, and to the futile valor of Secretary of State Colin Powell. But those cameos were themselves illustrative of the greater tragedy.
For Biden, it had come down to who to trust. He trusted that Saddam—who, the day after the United States was attacked on Sept. 11, 2001, crowed that America “reaps the thorns its rulers have planted in the world”—was an evil megalomaniac who possessed weapons of mass destruction. He trusted that Bush would consult with Biden and other foreign-policy sages before committing to military force. And if it came down to war and everything subsequently went to hell, he trusted that the public would themselves entrust people like Biden—who was then gearing up for his second run at the presidency—to make things right.
At the time, both of us (and, for that matter, the rest of Washington) were unaware of two rather unusual letters that had been written less than a month after 9/11. The author of them was Tariq Aziz, Saddam’s deputy prime minister. Aziz had sent them one week apart from each other to a former national security advisor to President Ronald Reagan, Frank Carlucci, who in turn dutifully forwarded them to Bush’s assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, Bill Burns. In the letters, Saddam’s right-hand man asked that the dictator’s churlish remarks “be disregarded.” Aziz insisted that the Iraqi regime was “ready to meet any American official, publicly or secretly, to discuss issues of mutual concern. At any rate Iraq has suffered from terrorism”—including, he maintained, several assassination attempts against Saddam and Aziz himself. The deputy prime minister was explicitly imploring the Bush administration: Ignore my boss’s bluster—he’s just playing to his base. We are not your enemy. We should be allies in the war on terror.
Burns didn’t recall anything about the letters (which had been retrieved in a Freedom of Information Act request by George Washington University’s heroic National Security Archive team) when I showed them to him in 2018. The assistant secretary understandably had other preoccupations in the wake of 9/11. And, of course, one should consider the source. Why trust Saddam’s advisor?
At the time of that visit with Burns, Donald Trump had been president for a year. A key to Trump’s astonishing victory over Hillary Clinton was the complete breakdown of public trust in what the Republicans termed the Washington “swamp”—and, as Barack Obama had done in his presidential campaign eight years earlier, Trump repeatedly scorned Clinton and other Beltway sages who had supported Bush’s decision to invade Iraq. The toll of that ill-fated decision, Trump shrewdly recognized, transcended blood and treasure. An entire generation had come of age knowing that Washington was not on the level. Why trust the White House anymore? Why trust intelligence specialists? Why trust Congress? Why trust the media? And so, it followed, why not consider trusting a boastful reality TV star and compulsive disruptor whose Washington inexperience could be cast as a crowning virtue?
That the Iraq War made possible the presidencies of first Obama and then Trump is hard to refute. But this was not why I set out three years ago to write my new book, To Start a War: How the Bush Administration Took America into Iraq. Having already written an in-depth book about Bush’s presidency, what continued to eat at me was not so much that consequential decision’s obvious legacy but what the United States failed to learn from it.
Not by design, my book arrives at a time of national crisis, when polls suggest that Americans are fed up with the Trump administration’s pervasive amateurism. But Biden is not yet a shoo-in in the November election. Though the pandemic has revealed a nationwide yearning for straight talk and scientifically validated guidance, recoiling from the White House’s antics has not translated into a reacquired appreciation of old hands on the Hill like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, for example—or, for that matter, of the media. Respect for such institutions remains abysmal.
Biden therefore remains afflicted with an indelible weakness—an inability to convince voters that 45 years’ worth of government experience represents a surefire cure for what now afflicts the United States. After all, what did all that expertise get Americans two decades ago? George W. Bush brought with him to the White House a highly skilled staff, featuring a star-studded foreign-policy team that had worked in government going back to the Ford administration. The new president managed to pass major bipartisan legislation with a Congress that was enjoying a relatively even-tempered interval between Newt Gingrich and the Tea Party. Meanwhile, newsrooms were well resourced and not yet convulsed by the internet. All of which is to say that Bush’s first year in office came at a time when Washington was at a peak of functionality.
But the same Washington did not know what it did not know. During Bush’s first eight months in office, not one member of the White House press corps asked any question to press secretary Ari Fleischer about al Qaeda. Fleischer himself had only recently learned of the organization, when Vladimir Putin brought up the subject during Bush’s summit with the Russian leader in June 2001. Bush’s national security team—Cheney, Powell, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice—had each been out of government for eight years or more. Their experience was shaped primarily by the Cold War and secondarily by the 100-hour-long hot war known as Operation Desert Storm. Saddam’s behavior, before and since the U.S.-led coalition routed Iraqi troops out of Kuwait, was seen as that of a murderous barbarian. At a National Press Club luncheon on Sept. 10, 2001, the featured speaker, Biden, termed the Iraqi dictator a “certifiable maniac.”
“9/11 changed everything,” I must have heard a hundred times in the course of my book reporting. In retrospect, it’s remarkable to see how little change the attacks immediately brought about—and not simply because Bush famously urged Americans a month later “to go about their business.” Though the nation’s capital had suddenly lost its sense of impregnability, its fearful leaders continued to embrace time-honored predilections.
Among these was that Saddam Hussein was a threat to America. Evidence that the dictator had the capability of attacking the U.S. homeland was wafer-thin; that he might confederate with those who had attacked the United States, even less so; that he harbored any ambition to attack the United States himself, nonexistent. Indeed, the letters sent by Aziz to Carlucci shortly after the 9/11 attacks suggesting the opposite—that the Iraqi regime wished to ally itself with the United States against a common enemy—were only the latest such overtures, the others having been previously transmitted throughout the 1990s by Iraq’s United Nations Ambassador Nizar Hamdoon to the CIA.
Now: Should one do business with so unsavory an actor as Saddam? Presidents Jimmy Carter and Reagan had been down this road before, with mixed results. But by 9/11, it was all but universally acknowledged—above all, by Washington’s most experienced hands—that the United States could not do business with Saddam. He was, after all, a “certifiable maniac.”
U.S. history is littered with examples not only of the laxity Americans exhibit toward their morally challenged allies but also of how comically they demonize their adversaries. Saddam was many horrible things, but he was not suicidal. Most everybody in Washington, including the press, failed to see this, and failed as well to appreciate the complicated game of survival he was playing as a secular dictator living next door to the Islamic theocracy of Iran. Instead, went the groupthink: A maniac was capable of anything. A maniac would never dispose of his deadly weapons. A maniac would surely use those weapons—or, as Bush hypothesized about Saddam without a shred of evidence but with little pushback from Democrats or the media, “would like nothing more than to use a terrorist network to attack and to kill and leave no fingerprints behind.”
Even before Feb. 5, 2003, when Powell laid out the soon-to-be-disproven case that Iraq had violated U.N. resolutions by retaining a weapons program, Biden was already sold on the subject, declaring a week before Powell’s speech, “Every world leader in Europe and the Middle East knows he’s in material breach.” This assumption, like that of Saddam being a “certifiable maniac,” was akin to a family fable, a convenient verity that somehow gained credibility over the years even as it took on more hyperbole.
During the campaign, Biden has passed on opportunities to elaborate his lessons learned from the Iraq experience. That’s not to say he hasn’t learned any. A nuclear physicist on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s payroll, Peter Zimmerman, had warned the committee’s chairman, Biden, of flaws in the prewar intelligence. Biden later apologized to Zimmerman for not listening. The question is, who would a President Biden listen to now?
As to who duped whom in the Iraq saga, the blame deserves a wide distribution. Ultimately, however, it’s all in the family—and that, I believe, is the lesson worth absorbing from this tragic episode. Today, even as Americans suffer the latest reminder of what happens when leadership fails them, a long-overdue dialogue about race and power is also underway. The two conversations belong together. In finally addressing America’s ongoing tolerance of unchecked police brutality, and of the omnipresent monuments to a slaveholding past, Americans are in effect acknowledging an insularity that is racist, but not only that. A democracy whose leaders listen only to each other is as prone to degeneration as any incestuous family. It’s unknowable, of course, whether the United States would have gone to war against Iraq had the so-called experts in the White House Situation Room included smart and accomplished newcomers to Washington who could see the “certifiable” for the tall tale it was. What we do know is that the tale said more about the tellers than most of them will yet admit.


foreignpolicy--2020-07-22--Israel’s Cautionary Coronavirus Tale

Israel’s Cautionary Coronavirus Tale

TEL AVIV , Israel—Israel had been one of the early success stories in the fight against the coronavirus , using high-tech surveillance for contact tracing and enforcing strict curfews that quickly brought down the number of active cases across the country .
In late May , when that number dipped below 2,000 , Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared victory , telling Israelis they could get back to normal .
“ Have a cup of coffee or a beer , ” he said .
“ Have a good time.
” Now , two months later , the country is facing an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ daily new cases per capita second only to the United States among developed nations and critical cases rising fivefold over the last month .
But instead of reprising Israel ’ s vigorous response to the first wave , Netanyahu ’ s government has waffled , announcing restrictions and then backtracking , as Israelis protest in the thousands against any measures that would deepen their economic woes .
In the past week alone , Netanyahu has faced strikes by social workers and nurses , a rebellion by restaurateurs who vowed to flout any new @ @ @ @ @ @ @ police outside his Jerusalem residence .
The result has been a disaster for the Israeli leader , whose approval rating for his handling of the pandemic has dropped almost 30 points since May .
It has also been a cautionary tale about governance that responds well to emergencies but fails to organize for a sustained fight and about the distractions of politics and populism .
“ Our rapid success—globally recognized—was to our detriment , ” said Ran Balicer , the chief innovation officer at Israel ’ s largest HMO , Clalit Health Services @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pandemic response .
“ There was a false sense of assurance … and there was impatience in following the recommendations of [ health ] professionals , present company included , to have a two-week assessment period after every step of the easement.
” In some ways , Israel was uniquely positioned to fight the pandemic .
War-weary Israelis are accustomed to swiftly transition to an all-hands state of alert .
When the government announced an early travel ban and lockdown in March , Israelis obediently went into quarantine .
Israel benefited from its @ @ @ @ @ @ @ health care system , and digital health care records that allowed officials to warn at-risk individuals to take precautions .
The measures kept Israel ’ s hospitals from overflowing and its mortality count low .
( It remains under 500 even now , as the cases spike . )
Netanyahu used the state emergency and warlike warnings of mass casualties to successfully pressure his political rival , Benny Gantz of the centrist Blue and White party , to join his government .
In May , Netanyahu had his “ mission accomplished ” moment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ restaurants .
In short order , his attention turned to other things , including a plan to annex Palestinian territory in the occupied West Bank and his ongoing corruption trial .
With the virus relatively contained , public health experts said , Netanyahu ’ s government had a chance to build a long-term coping strategy by bulking up contact tracing , data collection , testing capacity , and synchronization among government ministries and local authorities .
Instead , issues related to the virus were relegated to the government ’ s back burner .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ awe , quick wins , and not necessarily taking into account the long-term ramifications , ” said Peter Lerner , the former chief foreign spokesperson for the Israeli military .
“ Everybody thought there was going to be a second hit , but no one knew how to plan for it .
In the time that Israel had , you didn ’ t see a huge shift in getting ready for the next wave.
” An early mistake came with the reopening of some schools in May .
Within two weeks , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ class size in half and use a hybrid of distance learning and in-class instruction .
High schools and middle schools resumed activity too soon after elementary schools , leading to outbreaks among pupils that spread to adults .
Sigal Sadetsky , who this month resigned as the top public health official in the Israeli Health Ministry , blamed the resurgence in part on the lack of discipline in reopening .
Though the number of daily cases was ticking up , the government went ahead and lifted restrictions on catering halls and locales hosting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ weddings and parties and helped send Israel into a second-round “ tailspin , ” Balicer said .
All the while , Israel ’ s government failed to bulk up investment in its underfunded health care system .
Though considered one of the most efficient in the world , it has shortages of hospital beds and nurses .
Public health experts also complain that the government did not enhance the data collection and analysis necessary to assist in daily policy .
“ Many of the processes that were started to be put in place @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were abandoned midway when it seemed like the war was over , ” Balicer said .
“ Command and control centers were really successful but were all but taken apart.
” Taking a cue from the government and eager to get back to normal , Israelis became complacent and played down the lurking threat .
In recent weeks , frustration over the botched reopening has fueled a wave of anti-government protests among small-business owners .
The demonstrations have drawn aggressive crackdowns by police .
With Israel unemployment exceeding 20 percent , public opinion @ @ @ @ @ @ @ polling by Channel 12 , 49 percent of Israelis believe his handling of the pandemic has been poor , compared with 46 percent who believe it has been good .
In May , the numbers were 23 percent and 74 percent , respectively .
“ Public health communication , and risk communication , was lacking , ” said Eyal Leshem , the head of the Center for Travel Medicine and Tropical Diseases at Israel ’ s Sheba Medical Center .
“ When the public was warned that tens of thousands of people would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they lost trust .
Now that people are warned about the second wave , they mistrust the government.
” The protests have included a cross-section of Israelis .
Some Orthodox Jews , traditionally supporters of Netanyahu ’ s right-wing bloc , took part in the Jerusalem rallies .
In secular Tel Aviv , a strip of restaurants and bars on one main thoroughfare hung signs criticizing government policies .
“ The government is killing us and not corona , ” one said .
“ For two months , it wasn ’ t a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the pipe dream of annexation and attacking the judicial system , and he wasn ’ t on top of things , ” said Amos Harel , a military commentator for the liberal Haaretz newspaper .
“ He is less popular than he was at any stage in the last two years.
” Highlighting the government ’ s chaotic response , restrictions on restaurants were announced and then lifted within a few hours last Friday .
Separately , a legislator from Netanyahu ’ s party refused to approve a government plan to shut down @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ease criticism that his government had been insensitive to the economic pain of the lockdowns , Netanyahu announced $ 1.7 billion in stipends for all Israelis—a plan criticized by economic analysts as ineffective .
“ We haven ’ t reopened in the best way .
We opened too fast .
We need a closure—a partial closure , ” Communications Minister Yoaz Hendel conceded in an interview with Israel ’ s Army Radio .
Balicer and Harel predicted that Israel would eventually gain control of the pandemic , but government officials remain at odds @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ It all seems a specific Israeli failure , ” Harel said .
“ This is supposed to be the start-up nation , we are supposed to be good with data .
… Compared to other developed countries , we are doing very badly .
”

TEL AVIV, Israel—Israel had been one of the early success stories in the fight against the coronavirus, using high-tech surveillance for contact tracing and enforcing strict curfews that quickly brought down the number of active cases across the country. In late May, when that number dipped below 2,000, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared victory, telling Israelis they could get back to normal. “Have a cup of coffee or a beer,” he said. “Have a good time.”
TEL AVIV, Israel—Israel had been one of the early success stories in the fight against the coronavirus, using high-tech surveillance for contact tracing and enforcing strict curfews that quickly brought down the number of active cases across the country. In late May, when that number dipped below 2,000, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared victory, telling Israelis they could get back to normal. “Have a cup of coffee or a beer,” he said. “Have a good time.”
Now, two months later, the country is facing an aggressive resurgence of the virus, with daily new cases per capita second only to the United States among developed nations and critical cases rising fivefold over the last month.
But instead of reprising Israel’s vigorous response to the first wave, Netanyahu’s government has waffled, announcing restrictions and then backtracking, as Israelis protest in the thousands against any measures that would deepen their economic woes. In the past week alone, Netanyahu has faced strikes by social workers and nurses, a rebellion by restaurateurs who vowed to flout any new restrictions, and clashes between protesters and police outside his Jerusalem residence.
The result has been a disaster for the Israeli leader, whose approval rating for his handling of the pandemic has dropped almost 30 points since May. It has also been a cautionary tale about governance that responds well to emergencies but fails to organize for a sustained fight and about the distractions of politics and populism.
“Our rapid success—globally recognized—was to our detriment,” said Ran Balicer, the chief innovation officer at Israel’s largest HMO, Clalit Health Services, who advises the government on the pandemic response. “There was a false sense of assurance … and there was impatience in following the recommendations of [health] professionals, present company included, to have a two-week assessment period after every step of the easement.”
In some ways, Israel was uniquely positioned to fight the pandemic. War-weary Israelis are accustomed to swiftly transition to an all-hands state of alert. When the government announced an early travel ban and lockdown in March, Israelis obediently went into quarantine.
Israel benefited from its geopolitical isolation, a relatively efficient national health care system, and digital health care records that allowed officials to warn at-risk individuals to take precautions.
The measures kept Israel’s hospitals from overflowing and its mortality count low. (It remains under 500 even now, as the cases spike.) Netanyahu used the state emergency and warlike warnings of mass casualties to successfully pressure his political rival, Benny Gantz of the centrist Blue and White party, to join his government.
In May, Netanyahu had his “mission accomplished” moment, announcing the reopening of bars and restaurants. In short order, his attention turned to other things, including a plan to annex Palestinian territory in the occupied West Bank and his ongoing corruption trial.
With the virus relatively contained, public health experts said, Netanyahu’s government had a chance to build a long-term coping strategy by bulking up contact tracing, data collection, testing capacity, and synchronization among government ministries and local authorities. Instead, issues related to the virus were relegated to the government’s back burner.
“It’s always shock and awe, quick wins, and not necessarily taking into account the long-term ramifications,” said Peter Lerner, the former chief foreign spokesperson for the Israeli military. “Everybody thought there was going to be a second hit, but no one knew how to plan for it. In the time that Israel had, you didn’t see a huge shift in getting ready for the next wave.”
An early mistake came with the reopening of some schools in May. Within two weeks, the government largely abandoned a plan to divide class size in half and use a hybrid of distance learning and in-class instruction. High schools and middle schools resumed activity too soon after elementary schools, leading to outbreaks among pupils that spread to adults. Sigal Sadetsky, who this month resigned as the top public health official in the Israeli Health Ministry, blamed the resurgence in part on the lack of discipline in reopening.
Though the number of daily cases was ticking up, the government went ahead and lifted restrictions on catering halls and locales hosting large events. The virus spread at weddings and parties and helped send Israel into a second-round “tailspin,” Balicer said.
All the while, Israel’s government failed to bulk up investment in its underfunded health care system. Though considered one of the most efficient in the world, it has shortages of hospital beds and nurses. Public health experts also complain that the government did not enhance the data collection and analysis necessary to assist in daily policy.
“Many of the processes that were started to be put in place for data for analytics and contact tracing were abandoned midway when it seemed like the war was over,” Balicer said.
“Command and control centers were really successful but were all but taken apart.”
Taking a cue from the government and eager to get back to normal, Israelis became complacent and played down the lurking threat.
In recent weeks, frustration over the botched reopening has fueled a wave of anti-government protests among small-business owners. The demonstrations have drawn aggressive crackdowns by police.
With Israel unemployment exceeding 20 percent, public opinion has turned against Netanyahu. According to polling by Channel 12, 49 percent of Israelis believe his handling of the pandemic has been poor, compared with 46 percent who believe it has been good. In May, the numbers were 23 percent and 74 percent, respectively.
“Public health communication, and risk communication, was lacking,” said Eyal Leshem, the head of the Center for Travel Medicine and Tropical Diseases at Israel’s Sheba Medical Center. “When the public was warned that tens of thousands of people would die and millions would be infected, they lost trust. Now that people are warned about the second wave, they mistrust the government.”
The protests have included a cross-section of Israelis. Some Orthodox Jews, traditionally supporters of Netanyahu’s right-wing bloc, took part in the Jerusalem rallies. In secular Tel Aviv, a strip of restaurants and bars on one main thoroughfare hung signs criticizing government policies. “The government is killing us and not corona,” one said.
“For two months, it wasn’t a priority for Netanyahu. He was pursuing the pipe dream of annexation and attacking the judicial system, and he wasn’t on top of things,” said Amos Harel, a military commentator for the liberal Haaretz newspaper. “He is less popular than he was at any stage in the last two years.”
Highlighting the government’s chaotic response, restrictions on restaurants were announced and then lifted within a few hours last Friday. Separately, a legislator from Netanyahu’s party refused to approve a government plan to shut down public swimming pools and beaches. To ease criticism that his government had been insensitive to the economic pain of the lockdowns, Netanyahu announced $1.7 billion in stipends for all Israelis—a plan criticized by economic analysts as ineffective.
“We haven’t reopened in the best way. We opened too fast. We need a closure—a partial closure,” Communications Minister Yoaz Hendel conceded in an interview with Israel’s Army Radio.
Balicer and Harel predicted that Israel would eventually gain control of the pandemic, but government officials remain at odds over whether another lockdown is needed.
“It all seems a specific Israeli failure,” Harel said. “This is supposed to be the start-up nation, we are supposed to be good with data. … Compared to other developed countries, we are doing very badly.”


foreignpolicy--2020-07-22--TikTok Really Is the Central Front in the U.S.-China Tech War

TikTok Really Is the Central Front in the U.S.-China Tech War Can you explain the future of the internet in 15 seconds while lip-syncing your favorite dance-pop track ?
If so , you belong on TikTok , the vertical video app popular with Generation Z and with ( until recently ) as many as 1 billion users .
Until recently because on June 29 , TikTok was banned in India , along with 58 other Chinese smartphone apps , including the messaging giant WeChat , the Clash of Kings mobile video game , and Baidu maps .
India , which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ other than China , accounted for nearly half of users downloading the TikTok app in 2019 .
If the future of the internet will be determined by a technology war between the United States and China , India is the key emerging-market battleground .
The digital rupture between China and India virtually ensures that the latter will land firmly in American cyberspace .
India ’ s app ban came in the wake of border skirmishes with China that resulted in dozens of deaths—but officially , the Chinese app ban is linked to concerns @ @ @ @ @ @ @ data .
There have long been serious security issues about the collection , retention , and analysis of personal data by Chinese companies .
But this time , India went further : It announced that the operations of the 59 Chinese apps were “ prejudicial to [ the ] sovereignty and integrity of India.
” India isn ’ t alone in raising privacy concerns over TikTok , the first Chinese app to have gone viral worldwide , to the level of a national security threat .
American analysts have recently made similar arguments @ @ @ @ @ @ @ use TikTok to spread disinformation to influence U.S. politics , extend Chinese censoring practices abroad , or collect personal data to blackmail Americans , over 40 million of whom downloaded the app in 2019 .
At first glance , it may seem ridiculous to investigate a Chinese app that is primarily used by teenagers to post silly dance videos .
At first glance , it may seem ridiculous that the U.S. Treasury ’ s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States ( CFIUS ) would be investigating a Chinese app that is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dance videos ( though it does sometimes host serious political content as well ) .
Yes , TikTok has been accused of suppressing videos about pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong and removing a video ( since restored ) that was critical of China ’ s human rights record , but many U.S. companies have been accused of doing much worse .
Privacy concerns and algorithms with a political filter can be troubling but hardly rise to the level of national security threats .
Hawkish commentators , including U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo @ @ @ @ @ @ @ find reasons to ban TikTok , apparently feeling that there ’ s a problem but failing to put their finger on it .
The critics are right .
TikTok and other Chinese social media apps really do pose a threat to national security , even if the threat is hard to identify because it can ’ t be isolated in any one spot .
The threat lies in the virtual networks that connect the dots of users and content , not in the dots themselves .
The battle for ( social ) network @ @ @ @ @ @ @ geoeconomics .
From the outside , TikTok looks like a video-sharing service , but seen from the inside , it ’ s an enormous social graph connecting a billion users , many billions of videos , music publishers , advertisers , and of course the company ’ s own servers .
That social graph is also generated by a messaging system and a payments network , both built on the success of the video service .
Although TikTok ’ s videos consist mainly of user-generated content , the platform is more like an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of YouTube .
The short-format videos demand constant user engagement , generating high interaction levels and a reported average view time of 45 minutes a day .
Close China watchers know very well how games can be leveraged into network power : TikTok ’ s Chinese competitor WeChat used gamification to build its empire .
Owned by the Shenzhen-based company Tencent , WeChat began as a simple messaging utility , similar to Facebook ’ s WhatsApp , but hit on the idea of using virtual red envelopes to encourage users to send micropayments @ @ @ @ @ @ @ red envelopes gamified the Chinese custom of giving cash gifts for special occasions , allowing users to offer gifts as small as 1 Chinese cent and to set up little games of their own for giving them .
For example , a common game is to offer a small packet to the first one of your friends who claims it .
More ominously , the social graphs that underlie TikTok can also be used for security profiling , contact tracing , and even blackmail .
Once WeChat had developed a large social graph @ @ @ @ @ @ @ messaging and financial transactions , it began offering a wide array of services , including ride hailing ( via DiDi , China ’ s answer to Uber ) , apartment hunting , and video games .
WeChat ’ s archrival Alibaba ( often called “ China ’ s Amazon ” ) quickly copied the strategy to help build up its own payments service , Alipay , now rebranded under the umbrella of Alibaba ’ s Ant Financial .
Ant Financial ’ s 2017 bid to buy the U.S. payments company MoneyGram was stymied @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reason : Though viral teen videos may be ( mostly ) harmless , control over a country ’ s payments infrastructure is serious business .
The United States routinely leverages its influence over global payments networks to apply financial sanctions on recalcitrant regimes .
Recognizing this , China , Russia , and Iran have each developed domestic alternatives to the U.S.-dominated SWIFT interbank payments system .
They have also developed their own credit card systems as alternatives to Visa and Mastercard .
In China , where mobile payments are now ubiquitous , WeChat @ @ @ @ @ @ @ market that nearly exceeded $ 50 trillion in transactions in 2019 .
Were a Chinese company to gain such dominance over mobile payments in another country , whether India , another neighbor , or even the United States , it would give the Chinese government a powerful tool for imposing financial pressure or sanctions of its own .
Payments processing , however , is only the very sharp tip of the social networking iceberg .
The social graphs that underlie TikTok and other social apps can form the basis for telecommunications , marketing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a host of other services .
More ominously , they can also be used for security profiling , contact tracing , and even blackmail .
It was presumably such fears that led CFIUS to force the Chinese company Beijing Kunlun Tech to sell the LGBTQ dating app Grindr to a U.S.-based company in 2019 .
Of course , the personal data held by the app might be seen as compromising , even in today ’ s sexually enlightened world , and it probably didn ’ t help Grindr ’ s case that it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to third parties .
But the social graph owned by Grindr is potentially much more dangerous , showing the chains of connections between people who may not even know they are linked .
The European Union probably has sufficient geoeconomic power to regulate and ultimately control the social networks that operate within its jurisdiction .
India may have to use the blunter instrument of banning .
The United States probably has enough influence to force a company like ByteDance , the Chinese company that owns TikTok , to divest any subsidiaries that operate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not hesitate to wield that influence .
To ban TikTok outright , as India has , would be profoundly illiberal—but to allow it to grow unhindered would be foolishly risky .
It may not be fair that the United States , alone among the world ’ s countries , can force foreign firms to restructure their businesses to suit its national security needs .
Nonetheless , this is the geoeconomic reality that multinational firms must face .
China can afford to wall off its internet entirely ; India can shut out specific apps @ @ @ @ @ @ @ regulatory compliance .
Only the United States can reshape the structure of the internet itself .
That power should be used carefully and sparingly , but TikTok is a case where it should be applied .
As bizarre as it may sound , TikTok really does pose a serious threat to U.S. and other nations ’ national security .
Other Chinese-owned social networking apps are less dangerous because they have demonstrated limited appeal outside China .
TikTok is the first one to break its cultural bonds and go viral in the rest of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ crucial test case that will set the precedent for how free societies handle Chinese social networks .
To ban it outright , as India has , would be profoundly illiberal .
To allow it to grow unhindered , however , would be foolishly risky .
Severing TikTok ’ s operational links to China through a forced divestiture may be the best solution that lets the app ’ s owners reap a just reward while protecting the world from the consequences of enjoying those silly dance videos just a little too much .

Can you explain the future of the internet in 15 seconds while lip-syncing your favorite dance-pop track? If so, you belong on TikTok, the vertical video app popular with Generation Z and with (until recently) as many as 1 billion users.
Can you explain the future of the internet in 15 seconds while lip-syncing your favorite dance-pop track? If so, you belong on TikTok, the vertical video app popular with Generation Z and with (until recently) as many as 1 billion users.
Until recently because on June 29, TikTok was banned in India, along with 58 other Chinese smartphone apps, including the messaging giant WeChat, the Clash of Kings mobile video game, and Baidu maps. India, which has more internet users than any country other than China, accounted for nearly half of users downloading the TikTok app in 2019. If the future of the internet will be determined by a technology war between the United States and China, India is the key emerging-market battleground. The digital rupture between China and India virtually ensures that the latter will land firmly in American cyberspace.
India’s app ban came in the wake of border skirmishes with China that resulted in dozens of deaths—but officially, the Chinese app ban is linked to concerns over privacy and the misuse of user data. There have long been serious security issues about the collection, retention, and analysis of personal data by Chinese companies. But this time, India went further: It announced that the operations of the 59 Chinese apps were “prejudicial to [the] sovereignty and integrity of India.”
India isn’t alone in raising privacy concerns over TikTok, the first Chinese app to have gone viral worldwide, to the level of a national security threat. American analysts have recently made similar arguments, suggesting that the Chinese government could use TikTok to spread disinformation to influence U.S. politics, extend Chinese censoring practices abroad, or collect personal data to blackmail Americans, over 40 million of whom downloaded the app in 2019.
At first glance, it may seem ridiculous to investigate a Chinese app that is primarily used by teenagers to post silly dance videos.
At first glance, it may seem ridiculous that the U.S. Treasury’s Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) would be investigating a Chinese app that is primarily used by teenagers to post silly dance videos (though it does sometimes host serious political content as well). Yes, TikTok has been accused of suppressing videos about pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong and removing a video (since restored) that was critical of China’s human rights record, but many U.S. companies have been accused of doing much worse. Privacy concerns and algorithms with a political filter can be troubling but hardly rise to the level of national security threats. Hawkish commentators, including U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, often seem to be flailing to find reasons to ban TikTok, apparently feeling that there’s a problem but failing to put their finger on it.
The critics are right. TikTok and other Chinese social media apps really do pose a threat to national security, even if the threat is hard to identify because it can’t be isolated in any one spot. The threat lies in the virtual networks that connect the dots of users and content, not in the dots themselves.
The battle for (social) network dominance is at the heart of contemporary geoeconomics. From the outside, TikTok looks like a video-sharing service, but seen from the inside, it’s an enormous social graph connecting a billion users, many billions of videos, music publishers, advertisers, and of course the company’s own servers. That social graph is also generated by a messaging system and a payments network, both built on the success of the video service. Although TikTok’s videos consist mainly of user-generated content, the platform is more like an addictive video game than a Chinese version of YouTube. The short-format videos demand constant user engagement, generating high interaction levels and a reported average view time of 45 minutes a day.
Close China watchers know very well how games can be leveraged into network power: TikTok’s Chinese competitor WeChat used gamification to build its empire. Owned by the Shenzhen-based company Tencent, WeChat began as a simple messaging utility, similar to Facebook’s WhatsApp, but hit on the idea of using virtual red envelopes to encourage users to send micropayments to each other. WeChat’s red envelopes gamified the Chinese custom of giving cash gifts for special occasions, allowing users to offer gifts as small as 1 Chinese cent and to set up little games of their own for giving them. For example, a common game is to offer a small packet to the first one of your friends who claims it.
More ominously, the social graphs that underlie TikTok can also be used for security profiling, contact tracing, and even blackmail.
Once WeChat had developed a large social graph consisting of people densely tied together by messaging and financial transactions, it began offering a wide array of services, including ride hailing (via DiDi, China’s answer to Uber), apartment hunting, and video games. WeChat’s archrival Alibaba (often called “China’s Amazon”) quickly copied the strategy to help build up its own payments service, Alipay, now rebranded under the umbrella of Alibaba’s Ant Financial. Ant Financial’s 2017 bid to buy the U.S. payments company MoneyGram was stymied by CFIUS resistance.
And with good reason: Though viral teen videos may be (mostly) harmless, control over a country’s payments infrastructure is serious business. The United States routinely leverages its influence over global payments networks to apply financial sanctions on recalcitrant regimes. Recognizing this, China, Russia, and Iran have each developed domestic alternatives to the U.S.-dominated SWIFT interbank payments system. They have also developed their own credit card systems as alternatives to Visa and Mastercard.
In China, where mobile payments are now ubiquitous, WeChat and Alipay together dominate a mobile payments market that nearly exceeded $50 trillion in transactions in 2019. Were a Chinese company to gain such dominance over mobile payments in another country, whether India, another neighbor, or even the United States, it would give the Chinese government a powerful tool for imposing financial pressure or sanctions of its own.
Payments processing, however, is only the very sharp tip of the social networking iceberg. The social graphs that underlie TikTok and other social apps can form the basis for telecommunications, marketing, credit scoring, transportation, and a host of other services. More ominously, they can also be used for security profiling, contact tracing, and even blackmail. It was presumably such fears that led CFIUS to force the Chinese company Beijing Kunlun Tech to sell the LGBTQ dating app Grindr to a U.S.-based company in 2019. Of course, the personal data held by the app might be seen as compromising, even in today’s sexually enlightened world, and it probably didn’t help Grindr’s case that it was caught reporting users’ HIV status to third parties. But the social graph owned by Grindr is potentially much more dangerous, showing the chains of connections between people who may not even know they are linked.
The European Union probably has sufficient geoeconomic power to regulate and ultimately control the social networks that operate within its jurisdiction. India may have to use the blunter instrument of banning. The United States probably has enough influence to force a company like ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, to divest any subsidiaries that operate in the United States. It should not hesitate to wield that influence.
To ban TikTok outright, as India has, would be profoundly illiberal—but to allow it to grow unhindered would be foolishly risky.
It may not be fair that the United States, alone among the world’s countries, can force foreign firms to restructure their businesses to suit its national security needs. Nonetheless, this is the geoeconomic reality that multinational firms must face. China can afford to wall off its internet entirely; India can shut out specific apps; the EU can bludgeon companies into regulatory compliance. Only the United States can reshape the structure of the internet itself. That power should be used carefully and sparingly, but TikTok is a case where it should be applied.
As bizarre as it may sound, TikTok really does pose a serious threat to U.S. and other nations’ national security. Other Chinese-owned social networking apps are less dangerous because they have demonstrated limited appeal outside China. TikTok is the first one to break its cultural bonds and go viral in the rest of the world. It is thus the crucial test case that will set the precedent for how free societies handle Chinese social networks. To ban it outright, as India has, would be profoundly illiberal. To allow it to grow unhindered, however, would be foolishly risky. Severing TikTok’s operational links to China through a forced divestiture may be the best solution that lets the app’s owners reap a just reward while protecting the world from the consequences of enjoying those silly dance videos just a little too much.


foreignpolicy--2020-07-22--Trump Mulls Withholding Aid to Ethiopia Over Controversial Dam

The Trump administration is weighing withholding some aid to Ethiopia over a Nile dam project that has severely strained its relationship with downstream countries Sudan and Egypt , six officials and congressional aides familiar with the matter told Foreign Policy .
The massive dam , Africa ’ s biggest , has become a flash point of geopolitical tensions between Egypt and Ethiopia , with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi hinting that his country could use military force to halt the project .
Many in Egypt fear the dam could threaten its water supplies .
But some U.S. officials said the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ over policy within the U.S. government , ever since Sisi asked President Donald Trump to help mediate negotiations over the dam last year .
U.S. participation in four-way talks over the dam earlier this year , led by the Treasury Department , helped advance talks .
However , Ethiopia refused to sign a final agreement .
Now there ’ s growing concern that the Trump administration is putting its thumb on the scales to favor Egypt at the expense of Ethiopia—even as new signs of progress emerge in negotiations .
“ The Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that it has to take Egypt ’ s side on this , ” said one U.S. official familiar with the matter .
“ Nobody in the White House seems to be looking at this through the Africa lens and its impact on Ethiopia , which is equally important , ” the official added .
“ This is just shooting ourselves in the foot.
” A Treasury Department spokesperson said the administration is working as an impartial mediator .
“ The sole objective of the U.S. government has been , and continues to be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Sudan in reaching a fair agreement on the filling and operation of [ the dam ] that addresses the interests of all three countries , ” the spokesperson said .
On Tuesday , Ethiopia said the three countries had made “ major ” progress on their dispute in talks brokered by the African Union , and they agreed to more negotiations aimed at a comprehensive solution on water issues around the dam .
The announcement sends a positive signal to some U.S. officials and observers who feared that if Ethiopia continued filling the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with Egypt , regional tensions could boil over into a military confrontation .
Two administration officials who spoke to Foreign Policy cast the announcement as an indication that negotiators have laid the groundwork for a final agreement .
“ The Trump administration ’ s engagement has helped Egypt , Ethiopia and Sudan make more progress in negotiations over the last nine months , than the last nine years , ” said one .
“ The considerable work by Egypt , Ethiopia , and Sudan over the last nine months shows it is possible @ @ @ @ @ @ @ balanced agreement if there is a commitment among all to do so.
” In the “ major common understanding ” reached Tuesday by Ethiopia , Egypt , and Sudan , the three countries agreed to have more technical discussions on the pace of the reservoir fill and drought mitigation measures with an eye toward inking a final agreement .
Several U.S. officials said that the Trump administration could move forward with aid cuts to Ethiopia if negotiations hit another impasse and the sides can ’ t reach a final deal .
The idea @ @ @ @ @ @ @ upper Nile River , in the Ethiopian highlands , has been a dream since the days of Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie in the 1960s .
But it wasn ’ t until 2011 that the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam got underway in earnest—and ever since , relations with the downstream countries Sudan and Egypt have been fraught .
For Ethiopia , whose citizens bankrolled the $ 4.6 billion project , the dam is not just a way to provide electricity to a power-starved corner of the continent but has become a point of national @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s ambitions as a regional power .
Though the U.S. State Department traditionally handles diplomatic issues , Trump abruptly tapped Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to lead mediation efforts during a phone call with Sisi last year .
Some U.S. officials said that has led to growing divisions between Treasury and State and confusion at embassies in Africa over how Washington is handling the negotiations .
Others dismissed this narrative , insisting that the two agencies were coordinating closely .
“ Secretary Mnuchin and Secretary Pompeo have worked in close coordination throughout this process @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and State , ” the Treasury spokesperson said .
Foreign Policy was told that the State Department has been involved in every meeting on the issue since Washington began facilitating negotiations from November 2019 through this February .
Ethiopia made it clear that it would continue the dam project despite lingering disagreements with other Nile-dependent countries , and in fact it began filling the massive reservoir behind the dam this month , taking advantage of Ethiopia ’ s rainy season .
Egyptians fear Ethiopia will fill the dam over a period of just @ @ @ @ @ @ @ off water supplies that Egypt needs downstream , especially for agriculture .
The Ethiopian government says the pace of filling shouldn ’ t affect Egypt ’ s allotment of water , and it further maintains that Egypt has used more Nile water than it ’ s entitled to for decades .
This month , the Treasury Department asked the State Department for a rundown of all U.S. aid pledged to Ethiopia , a move three officials said is aimed at withholding some or all of the non-humanitarian aid as leverage if the negotiations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ withhold U.S. aid , however , would rest with the White House or Congress .
It ’ s not clear what specific aid would be withheld if the administration carried out the plan under consideration , several officials said .
One point of leverage under discussion is projects from the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation ( DFC ) that could spur up to $ 5 billion in investments , two officials said .
In fiscal year 2019 , the United States provided a total of $ 824.3 million in assistance to Ethiopia , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ aid , a State Department spokesman said .
Officials stressed that no aid funding for humanitarian needs would be held up .
The spokesman declined to comment further on interagency deliberations .
The White House did not respond to request for comment .
Several U.S. officials , speaking on condition of anonymity , said some at the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development opposed withholding aid from Ethiopia , fearing it would damage already fraying relations between Addis Ababa and Washington at a precarious point in Ethiopia ’ s political transition @ @ @ @ @ @ @ singer late last month sparked a surge in protests and fueled religious and ethnic tensions in the country , marking one of the biggest challenges yet for the country ’ s stability under Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed .
One official said the State Department is “ slow walking ” the request from Treasury .
Three other officials gave conflicting accounts of whether the Treasury Department is cutting the State Department out of talks : Two said this was the case , and even top U.S. diplomats stationed in Egypt , Ethiopia , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The third official said this was untrue and reiterated that the negotiating teams and U.S. embassies are coordinating closely .
When approached for comment on whether DFC projects to Ethiopia are in consideration of being held up , a DFC spokeswoman said : “ We have worked closely with Ethiopia on key reforms to advance competitive , open markets , which helps position Ethiopia for a significant DFC commitment that would catalyze billions in financing from the private sector .
Private sector investment would help create jobs and increase economic opportunity in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has tried to exert pressure on Ethiopia to halt filling the dam both through the Trump administration and through meetings at the United Nations Security Council .
Fraught diplomatic negotiations between Egypt and Ethiopia have for years centered on how quickly Ethiopia would fill the dam .
Egypt has pushed Ethiopia to slowly fill the dam over the course of a decade or more—which could delay the dam ’ s provision of large amounts of electricity—while Ethiopia pushed to fill the dam in three years .
Another lingering point of contention between the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ take to alter the filling schedule in case of drought , to ensure that a sudden spell of dry years during the filling process doesn ’ t leave Egypt starved for water .

The Trump administration is weighing withholding some aid to Ethiopia over a Nile dam project that has severely strained its relationship with downstream countries Sudan and Egypt, six officials and congressional aides familiar with the matter told Foreign Policy .
The Trump administration is weighing withholding some aid to Ethiopia over a Nile dam project that has severely strained its relationship with downstream countries Sudan and Egypt, six officials and congressional aides familiar with the matter told Foreign Policy.
The massive dam, Africa’s biggest, has become a flash point of geopolitical tensions between Egypt and Ethiopia, with Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi hinting that his country could use military force to halt the project. Many in Egypt fear the dam could threaten its water supplies.
But some U.S. officials said the project has also fueled divisions and confusion over policy within the U.S. government, ever since Sisi asked President Donald Trump to help mediate negotiations over the dam last year.
U.S. participation in four-way talks over the dam earlier this year, led by the Treasury Department, helped advance talks. However, Ethiopia refused to sign a final agreement. Now there’s growing concern that the Trump administration is putting its thumb on the scales to favor Egypt at the expense of Ethiopia—even as new signs of progress emerge in negotiations.
“The Trump administration has gotten it into its head that it has to take Egypt’s side on this,” said one U.S. official familiar with the matter. “Nobody in the White House seems to be looking at this through the Africa lens and its impact on Ethiopia, which is equally important,” the official added. “This is just shooting ourselves in the foot.”
A Treasury Department spokesperson said the administration is working as an impartial mediator. “The sole objective of the U.S. government has been, and continues to be, to assist Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan in reaching a fair agreement on the filling and operation of [the dam] that addresses the interests of all three countries,” the spokesperson said.
On Tuesday, Ethiopia said the three countries had made “major” progress on their dispute in talks brokered by the African Union, and they agreed to more negotiations aimed at a comprehensive solution on water issues around the dam. The announcement sends a positive signal to some U.S. officials and observers who feared that if Ethiopia continued filling the reservoir behind the dam without an agreement with Egypt, regional tensions could boil over into a military confrontation.
Two administration officials who spoke to Foreign Policy cast the announcement as an indication that negotiators have laid the groundwork for a final agreement. “The Trump administration’s engagement has helped Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan make more progress in negotiations over the last nine months, than the last nine years,” said one. “The considerable work by Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan over the last nine months shows it is possible to come up with a fair and balanced agreement if there is a commitment among all to do so.”
In the “major common understanding” reached Tuesday by Ethiopia, Egypt, and Sudan, the three countries agreed to have more technical discussions on the pace of the reservoir fill and drought mitigation measures with an eye toward inking a final agreement.
Several U.S. officials said that the Trump administration could move forward with aid cuts to Ethiopia if negotiations hit another impasse and the sides can’t reach a final deal.
The idea of a massive hydroelectric project on the upper Nile River, in the Ethiopian highlands, has been a dream since the days of Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie in the 1960s. But it wasn’t until 2011 that the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam got underway in earnest—and ever since, relations with the downstream countries Sudan and Egypt have been fraught. For Ethiopia, whose citizens bankrolled the $4.6 billion project, the dam is not just a way to provide electricity to a power-starved corner of the continent but has become a point of national pride and emblematic of the country’s ambitions as a regional power.
Though the U.S. State Department traditionally handles diplomatic issues, Trump abruptly tapped Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin to lead mediation efforts during a phone call with Sisi last year. Some U.S. officials said that has led to growing divisions between Treasury and State and confusion at embassies in Africa over how Washington is handling the negotiations.
Others dismissed this narrative, insisting that the two agencies were coordinating closely. “Secretary Mnuchin and Secretary Pompeo have worked in close coordination throughout this process, as have the teams at Treasury and State,” the Treasury spokesperson said. Foreign Policy was told that the State Department has been involved in every meeting on the issue since Washington began facilitating negotiations from November 2019 through this February.
Ethiopia made it clear that it would continue the dam project despite lingering disagreements with other Nile-dependent countries, and in fact it began filling the massive reservoir behind the dam this month, taking advantage of Ethiopia’s rainy season. Egyptians fear Ethiopia will fill the dam over a period of just a few years, which could choke off water supplies that Egypt needs downstream, especially for agriculture. The Ethiopian government says the pace of filling shouldn’t affect Egypt’s allotment of water, and it further maintains that Egypt has used more Nile water than it’s entitled to for decades.
Rising Water Levels in the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam Reservoir
This month, the Treasury Department asked the State Department for a rundown of all U.S. aid pledged to Ethiopia, a move three officials said is aimed at withholding some or all of the non-humanitarian aid as leverage if the negotiations stall. Any decision to alter or withhold U.S. aid, however, would rest with the White House or Congress.
It’s not clear what specific aid would be withheld if the administration carried out the plan under consideration, several officials said. One point of leverage under discussion is projects from the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) that could spur up to $5 billion in investments, two officials said. In fiscal year 2019, the United States provided a total of $824.3 million in assistance to Ethiopia, of which $497.3 million was humanitarian aid, a State Department spokesman said. Officials stressed that no aid funding for humanitarian needs would be held up. The spokesman declined to comment further on interagency deliberations.
The White House did not respond to request for comment.
Several U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said some at the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development opposed withholding aid from Ethiopia, fearing it would damage already fraying relations between Addis Ababa and Washington at a precarious point in Ethiopia’s political transition.
The killing of a prominent Ethiopian singer late last month sparked a surge in protests and fueled religious and ethnic tensions in the country, marking one of the biggest challenges yet for the country’s stability under Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed.
One official said the State Department is “slow walking” the request from Treasury.
Three other officials gave conflicting accounts of whether the Treasury Department is cutting the State Department out of talks: Two said this was the case, and even top U.S. diplomats stationed in Egypt, Ethiopia, and Sudan are cut out of talks. The third official said this was untrue and reiterated that the negotiating teams and U.S. embassies are coordinating closely.
When approached for comment on whether DFC projects to Ethiopia are in consideration of being held up, a DFC spokeswoman said: “We have worked closely with Ethiopia on key reforms to advance competitive, open markets, which helps position Ethiopia for a significant DFC commitment that would catalyze billions in financing from the private sector. Private sector investment would help create jobs and increase economic opportunity in the country.”
In recent months, Egypt has tried to exert pressure on Ethiopia to halt filling the dam both through the Trump administration and through meetings at the United Nations Security Council.
Fraught diplomatic negotiations between Egypt and Ethiopia have for years centered on how quickly Ethiopia would fill the dam. Egypt has pushed Ethiopia to slowly fill the dam over the course of a decade or more—which could delay the dam’s provision of large amounts of electricity—while Ethiopia pushed to fill the dam in three years. Another lingering point of contention between the two countries is what steps Ethiopia might take to alter the filling schedule in case of drought, to ensure that a sudden spell of dry years during the filling process doesn’t leave Egypt starved for water.


foreignpolicy--2020-07-22--U.S. Closes Chinese Consulate in Houston Amid Surge in Chinese Espionage Cases

U.S .
Closes Chinese Consulate in Houston Amid Surge in Chinese Espionage Cases The Trump administration ordered the closure of the Chinese consulate in Houston by Friday , a significant diplomatic escalation between the two rival powers .
U.S. officials who spoke to Foreign Policy indicated that the consulate closure is a response to a surge in Chinese espionage in the United States .
Washington directed the closure of the consulate “ to protect American intellectual property and Americans ’ private information , ” State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus said on Wednesday .
Ortagus did not cite a specific incident @ @ @ @ @ @ @ raised accusations that China violated U.S. sovereignty .
The closure was announced after a sweeping indictment was unsealed in federal court in Washington state outlining years of Chinese state-directed hacking and theft of intellectual property affecting victims across the United States and in other countries .
“ The United States will not tolerate the PRC ’ s violations of our sovereignty and intimidation of our people , just as we have not tolerated the PRC ’ s unfair trade practices , theft of American jobs , and other egregious behavior .
President Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ relations , ” Ortagus said , referring to the People ’ s Republic of China .
Chinese officials have vowed retaliation , raising the likelihood that a U.S. consulate in China will be forced closed in response .
“ The U.S. has far more diplomatic missions and staff working in China .
So if the U.S. is bent on going down this wrong path , we will resolutely respond , ” Wang Wenbin , a foreign ministry spokesman , said to reporters on Wednesday .
Reuters reports suggest that the U.S. consulate in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ How China chooses to retaliate could determine whether the situation spirals , said Larry Pfeiffer , who served as CIA chief of staff under former CIA Director Michael Hayden .
“ If they want to keep it from escalating then picking a place like Wuhan wouldn ’ t be a bad one , ” said Pfeiffer , noting that U.S. diplomats were already evacuated from the consulate earlier this year during the coronavirus outbreak .
“ If they closed our Hong Kong or Shanghai consulate , that would be seen as an escalation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have maintained that China , like other rival powers and the United States itself , uses its embassies and consulates for spying under the guise of routine diplomatic work .
“ There ’ s always a certain amount of spy versus spy that gets tolerated , but this would suggest to me that the Chinese have stepped outside those norms of normal espionage , ” Pfeiffer said .
The United States ordering the closure of foreign diplomatic missions is a rarely used diplomatic step .
The Trump administration in 2017 ordered Russia to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of being a base for espionage—as relations worsened between the two countries .
Republican Sen. Marco Rubio , acting chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee , tweeted : “ # China ’ s Houston consulate is a massive spy center , forcing it to close is long overdue.
” “ We are under siege from Chinese espionage , and they traditionally use their consulates for propaganda and espionage , ” said Daniel Hoffman , a former senior executive Clandestine Services officer with the CIA who served three times as station chief overseas .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ large manufacturing center , aeronautics , oil field equipment , high-tech , all things that would be of interest to China , ” he added .
China also apparently used the consulate in Houston as a base to pressure and intimidate U.S. energy firms that were carrying out projects in the disputed areas of the South China Sea .
“ In the bigger scheme of things , this is looking awfully like a 21st-century cold war , ” Hoffman said .
FBI Director Christopher Wray warned earlier this month that Chinese espionage was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the United States economic and national security during a speech at the Hudson Institute in Washington , D.C .
He cautioned that China was using a multifaceted approach “ to become the world ’ s only superpower by any means necessary , ” and he said that the FBI is now opening a new China-related counterintelligence case roughly every 10 hours .
“ The People ’ s Republic of China has engaged for years in massive illegal spying and influence operations throughout the United States against U.S. government officials and American citizens , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Policy .
“ These activities have increased markedly in scale and scope over the past few years.
” China ’ s top spy agency , the Ministry of State Security , maintains an intelligence unit in California , likely run out of its consulate in San Francisco , according to a 2018 investigation from Politico .
Chinese hackers indicted this month in Washington worked with the Ministry of State Security .
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo , in a speech in February before the National Governors Association , accused China of meddling in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in New York , in Illinois , in Texas , and two in California , bound by the diplomatic responsibilities and rights of the Vienna Convention , are very politically active at the state level , as is the embassy right here in Washington , D.C. , ” Pompeo said .
Pompeo said that in August 2019 , former Mississippi Gov .
Phil Bryant “ received a letter from a diplomat in the consul ’ s office in Houston , threatening to cancel a Chinese investment if the governor chose to travel to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the closure on Wednesday , local authorities in Houston responded to reports of fires at the Chinese consulate , with witnesses reporting people in the consulate compound were burning files in trash cans , according to the Houston Chronicle .
The United States has consulates in Chengdu , Guangzhou , Shanghai , Shenyang , and Wuhan , as well as its embassy in Beijing .

The Trump administration ordered the closure of the Chinese consulate in Houston by Friday, a significant diplomatic escalation between the two rival powers. U.S. officials who spoke to Foreign Policy indicated that the consulate closure is a response to a surge in Chinese espionage in the United States.
The Trump administration ordered the closure of the Chinese consulate in Houston by Friday, a significant diplomatic escalation between the two rival powers. U.S. officials who spoke to Foreign Policy indicated that the consulate closure is a response to a surge in Chinese espionage in the United States.
Washington directed the closure of the consulate “to protect American intellectual property and Americans’ private information,” State Department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus said on Wednesday. Ortagus did not cite a specific incident that prompted the move, but she raised accusations that China violated U.S. sovereignty. The closure was announced after a sweeping indictment was unsealed in federal court in Washington state outlining years of Chinese state-directed hacking and theft of intellectual property affecting victims across the United States and in other countries.
“The United States will not tolerate the PRC’s violations of our sovereignty and intimidation of our people, just as we have not tolerated the PRC’s unfair trade practices, theft of American jobs, and other egregious behavior. President Trump insists on fairness and reciprocity in U.S.-China relations,” Ortagus said, referring to the People’s Republic of China.
Chinese officials have vowed retaliation, raising the likelihood that a U.S. consulate in China will be forced closed in response. “The U.S. has far more diplomatic missions and staff working in China. So if the U.S. is bent on going down this wrong path, we will resolutely respond,” Wang Wenbin, a foreign ministry spokesman, said to reporters on Wednesday. Reuters reports suggest that the U.S. consulate in Wuhan could be closed in retaliation.
How China chooses to retaliate could determine whether the situation spirals, said Larry Pfeiffer, who served as CIA chief of staff under former CIA Director Michael Hayden. “If they want to keep it from escalating then picking a place like Wuhan wouldn’t be a bad one,” said Pfeiffer, noting that U.S. diplomats were already evacuated from the consulate earlier this year during the coronavirus outbreak. “If they closed our Hong Kong or Shanghai consulate, that would be seen as an escalation,” he said.
U.S. officials have maintained that China, like other rival powers and the United States itself, uses its embassies and consulates for spying under the guise of routine diplomatic work.
“There’s always a certain amount of spy versus spy that gets tolerated, but this would suggest to me that the Chinese have stepped outside those norms of normal espionage,” Pfeiffer said.
The United States ordering the closure of foreign diplomatic missions is a rarely used diplomatic step. The Trump administration in 2017 ordered Russia to shutter its consulate in San Francisco—also accused of being a base for espionage—as relations worsened between the two countries.
Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, acting chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, tweeted: “#China’s Houston consulate is a massive spy center, forcing it to close is long overdue.”
“We are under siege from Chinese espionage, and they traditionally use their consulates for propaganda and espionage,” said Daniel Hoffman, a former senior executive Clandestine Services officer with the CIA who served three times as station chief overseas. “Houston is a big city, large manufacturing center, aeronautics, oil field equipment, high-tech, all things that would be of interest to China,” he added.
China also apparently used the consulate in Houston as a base to pressure and intimidate U.S. energy firms that were carrying out projects in the disputed areas of the South China Sea.
“In the bigger scheme of things, this is looking awfully like a 21st-century cold war,” Hoffman said.
FBI Director Christopher Wray warned earlier this month that Chinese espionage was the “greatest long-term threat” to the United States economic and national security during a speech at the Hudson Institute in Washington, D.C. He cautioned that China was using a multifaceted approach “to become the world’s only superpower by any means necessary,” and he said that the FBI is now opening a new China-related counterintelligence case roughly every 10 hours.
“The People’s Republic of China has engaged for years in massive illegal spying and influence operations throughout the United States against U.S. government officials and American citizens,” a State Department spokesperson told Foreign Policy. “These activities have increased markedly in scale and scope over the past few years.”
China’s top spy agency, the Ministry of State Security, maintains an intelligence unit in California, likely run out of its consulate in San Francisco, according to a 2018 investigation from Politico. Chinese hackers indicted this month in Washington worked with the Ministry of State Security.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in a speech in February before the National Governors Association, accused China of meddling in U.S. state affairs. “Chinese consulates in New York, in Illinois, in Texas, and two in California, bound by the diplomatic responsibilities and rights of the Vienna Convention, are very politically active at the state level, as is the embassy right here in Washington, D.C.,” Pompeo said.
Pompeo said that in August 2019, former Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant “received a letter from a diplomat in the consul’s office in Houston, threatening to cancel a Chinese investment if the governor chose to travel to Taiwan.”
“Phil went anyway,” Pompeo said.
As the State Department announced the closure on Wednesday, local authorities in Houston responded to reports of fires at the Chinese consulate, with witnesses reporting people in the consulate compound were burning files in trash cans, according to the Houston Chronicle.
The United States has consulates in Chengdu, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Shenyang, and Wuhan, as well as its embassy in Beijing.