foreignpolicy--2020-02-11--Scotland’s Leaders Are Using Independence to Distract From Scandal

Scotland ’ s Leaders Are Using Independence to Distract From Scandal The Scottish independence referendum in 2014 was supposed to be a once-in-a-generation event .
Yet just over five years later , the main policy goal of the Scottish National Party ( SNP ) for 2020 is holding another vote .
The justification given is that Brexit has changed everything and that the people of Scotland—who overwhelmingly supported Remain by 62 percent to Leave ’ s 38 percent—were effectively voting six years ago to stay in both the European Union and the United Kingdom .
That ’ s a fair @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , especially given that the economic situation is even less favorable to Scottish independence than before .
Every year sees the North Sea oil fields—the crown jewel of Scottish finances—diminish a little more , for starters .
But a scandal-ridden SNP also has some very personal reasons to get another referendum as soon as possible—which have very little to do with the Scottish people ’ s choices .
To be sure , SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon is riding high as one of the most successful and popular politicians in the U.K. She completely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ though she is exclusively a regional politician with a secessionist agenda , she is more popular among Scots at the national level than any political leader in the U.K .
It might seem against her own political interest and that of her party to keep flogging this particular dead horse to see if it comes back to life .
If Sturgeon does manage to get her second vote , a premature second independence referendum might once again lose , and if that happens , both Sturgeon and the SNP will be sunk , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But Scottish independence is the raison d ’ être for the SNP and for Sturgeon ’ s entire political career .
Not only are they mostly sincere believers in the cause , but the political incentives demand it .
The SNP ’ s political high is thanks to the aspiration for independence—and while it ’ s broad , that sentiment is more for Scotland than for the SNP itself .
If the SNP stops pushing , there is a real danger that the nationalist vote will splinter .
And if that happens , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of nationalist/unionist party political hotchpotch that is paralyzing the devolved government in Northern Ireland .
The rise to political prominence of the SNP since devolution in 1998 has been one of the most significant political achievements for any political party in modern British politics .
In a system hostile to single-issue politics , the SNP has managed to get its cause to the forefront of national politics .
And by wielding it , the SNP has claimed 13 years in power as the governing party in Scotland and an outsized voice and weight @ @ @ @ @ @ @ became the third-largest national party since the Liberal Democrats crashed and burned in 2015 .
Yet there are even more acute reasons for Sturgeon to be beating the drum of a second independence referendum in the coming months .
Alex Salmond , the former leader of the SNP who built the party into the political force it is in Scotland and led it into the first independence referendum , will be standing trial for alleged sex offenses in March .
Some expect this to be the most significant trial in Scotland since the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with some 300 police officers involved already , also one of the biggest .
Salmond is claiming that the accusations are politically motivated , and the issue is hugely polarizing even within the SNP itself .
This makes the trial a very delicate moment for Sturgeon because various wings among the party faithful take diametrically opposing views on Salmond ’ s claims and credibility .
One wrong word or emphasis from Sturgeon and the party could fracture .
In this context , Sturgeon is desperate to focus the attention of her party in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is therefore opportune that the Brexit situation has put a second independence referendum firmly on the agenda—if one thing can get the SNP faithful to look away from the past scandal , it is the plausible promise of independence in the future .
Sturgeon will keep reminding her party members to keep their “ eyes on the prize ” in the following months because she must .
Yet there ’ s also a political distraction needed .
The SNP ’ s actual record in governance is hardly impressive .
It was Salmond who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Tartan Tory ” conservative roots to the left-wing social democratic platform it holds today—but that platform has largely failed to deliver .
To be sure , there ’ s one big success—the channeling of an active , multiethnic civil nationalism that has made Scotland a more open and friendly place today and put a lid on the kind of ugly ethnic majoritarianism that is emerging all over Europe .
In fact , just before the last referendum , 64 percent of Scottish Asians polled said they would vote for independence .
But much @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Scottish National Health Service , though somewhat more protected from the U.K.-wide austerity imposed from Westminster under David Cameron , continues to be plagued by high-profile failures and scandals , most of which can be traced directly to government failures .
Education has also suffered from pressures imposed by political choices , leading to Scotland underperforming the rest of the U.K. and the international competition , despite the SNP setting itself up as a champion of education , in contrast to the Conservative government at Westminster .
The justice and prisons system are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ continue to be an unmitigated failure , most evident in the drugs crisis , where Scotland ’ s fatalities are worse than anywhere in the EU .
Emerging systemic social issues stemming from economic trends such as youth unemployment continue to go unaddressed , with inevitable dire consequences .
Local councils have been financially suffocated and unable to serve their local residents , with predictably devastating consequences .
It is hard to find an area of devolved administration that is not struggling .
After 13 years of social democratic SNP governance , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The SNP argues that any Scottish government—SNP or otherwise—would be fiscally constrained by the choices made by the Westminster government .
And to be fair , the party has used the limited financial tools available , such as income tax differences , to mitigate some of the most stringent austerity policies coming down from Westminster .
But public spending per capita remains significantly higher in Scotland than the rest of the U.K. Part of that is thanks to the marginally higher tax in Scotland , but most of it is due to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Scotland more money from the central Westminster government .
Every Scot gets 117 percent of the U.K. average spending per capita , compared with 97 percent in England—a scheme worked out partially to compensate for the low population density and relative poverty , partially as a sop to keep them in the union .
That means that the dirty secret of the current Scottish government is that its problem is not mostly financial .
Rather , it is one of poor management and misuse of power .
Even with more money than any @ @ @ @ @ @ @ just used it poorly and often squandered the extra fiscal cushion it had in boneheaded ways .
From the Edinburgh tram scandal of 2014 to the latest ferry scandal , a devastating pattern has emerged .
The SNP , as a government , systematically prioritizes the perceived party electoral marketing value of projects and policies over their economic and social value to Scotland as a whole and systematically neglects the operational and implementation challenges of the projects it backs , leading to an eye-watering waste of public money .
And to top it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and done , no individual minister , or indeed the party as a whole , is ever held accountable for any of it—because the over-riding push for independence keeps the voters together and allows scandals to be nearly ignored .
After 13 years in government , neither Sturgeon nor the SNP can come before the Scottish electorate on their record .
Aside from the independence issue , their record in government is , under the most generous description , one of generally positive messaging and intentions and mediocre to dismal implementation .
Those @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the drums of independence as much as Brexit is : If the SNP does not keep dangling the promise of a new Scotland in front of the faithful , it has nothing else to run on .
It may well be true that the prospect of Scottish independence has never been as close or as urgent as it is this year for Scotland as a whole .
But it is equally true that if the prospect of independence disappears , the SNP ’ s record in government will come into sharp relief , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the party .

The Scottish independence referendum in 2014 was supposed to be a once-in-a-generation event. Yet just over five years later, the main policy goal of the Scottish National Party (SNP) for 2020 is holding another vote. The justification given is that Brexit has changed everything and that the people of Scotland—who overwhelmingly supported Remain by 62 percent to Leave’s 38 percent—were effectively voting six years ago to stay in both the European Union and the United Kingdom.
The Scottish independence referendum in 2014 was supposed to be a once-in-a-generation event. Yet just over five years later, the main policy goal of the Scottish National Party (SNP) for 2020 is holding another vote. The justification given is that Brexit has changed everything and that the people of Scotland—who overwhelmingly supported Remain by 62 percent to Leave’s 38 percent—were effectively voting six years ago to stay in both the European Union and the United Kingdom.
That’s a fair point—and the strongest case the SNP has, especially given that the economic situation is even less favorable to Scottish independence than before. Every year sees the North Sea oil fields—the crown jewel of Scottish finances—diminish a little more, for starters. But a scandal-ridden SNP also has some very personal reasons to get another referendum as soon as possible—which have very little to do with the Scottish people’s choices.
To be sure, SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon is riding high as one of the most successful and popular politicians in the U.K. She completely dominates the Scottish political landscape, and though she is exclusively a regional politician with a secessionist agenda, she is more popular among Scots at the national level than any political leader in the U.K.
It might seem against her own political interest and that of her party to keep flogging this particular dead horse to see if it comes back to life. If Sturgeon does manage to get her second vote, a premature second independence referendum might once again lose, and if that happens, both Sturgeon and the SNP will be sunk, this time actually for a generation.
But Scottish independence is the raison d’être for the SNP and for Sturgeon’s entire political career. Not only are they mostly sincere believers in the cause, but the political incentives demand it. The SNP’s political high is thanks to the aspiration for independence—and while it’s broad, that sentiment is more for Scotland than for the SNP itself. If the SNP stops pushing, there is a real danger that the nationalist vote will splinter. And if that happens, Scotland will end up with the kind of nationalist/unionist party political hotchpotch that is paralyzing the devolved government in Northern Ireland.
The rise to political prominence of the SNP since devolution in 1998 has been one of the most significant political achievements for any political party in modern British politics. In a system hostile to single-issue politics, the SNP has managed to get its cause to the forefront of national politics. And by wielding it, the SNP has claimed 13 years in power as the governing party in Scotland and an outsized voice and weight in Westminster to boot, where it became the third-largest national party since the Liberal Democrats crashed and burned in 2015.
Yet there are even more acute reasons for Sturgeon to be beating the drum of a second independence referendum in the coming months.
Alex Salmond, the former leader of the SNP who built the party into the political force it is in Scotland and led it into the first independence referendum, will be standing trial for alleged sex offenses in March. Some expect this to be the most significant trial in Scotland since the conviction of the Lockerbie bombers and, with some 300 police officers involved already, also one of the biggest.
Salmond is claiming that the accusations are politically motivated, and the issue is hugely polarizing even within the SNP itself. This makes the trial a very delicate moment for Sturgeon because various wings among the party faithful take diametrically opposing views on Salmond’s claims and credibility. One wrong word or emphasis from Sturgeon and the party could fracture.
In this context, Sturgeon is desperate to focus the attention of her party in just about any other direction. It is therefore opportune that the Brexit situation has put a second independence referendum firmly on the agenda—if one thing can get the SNP faithful to look away from the past scandal, it is the plausible promise of independence in the future. Sturgeon will keep reminding her party members to keep their “eyes on the prize” in the following months because she must.
Yet there’s also a political distraction needed. The SNP’s actual record in governance is hardly impressive. It was Salmond who moved the party away from its “Tartan Tory” conservative roots to the left-wing social democratic platform it holds today—but that platform has largely failed to deliver. To be sure, there’s one big success—the channeling of an active, multiethnic civil nationalism that has made Scotland a more open and friendly place today and put a lid on the kind of ugly ethnic majoritarianism that is emerging all over Europe. In fact, just before the last referendum, 64 percent of Scottish Asians polled said they would vote for independence. But much else is a slow-burning disaster.
The Scottish National Health Service, though somewhat more protected from the U.K.-wide austerity imposed from Westminster under David Cameron, continues to be plagued by high-profile failures and scandals, most of which can be traced directly to government failures.
Education has also suffered from pressures imposed by political choices, leading to Scotland underperforming the rest of the U.K. and the international competition, despite the SNP setting itself up as a champion of education, in contrast to the Conservative government at Westminster.
The justice and prisons system are “on the brink.” Social policies continue to be an unmitigated failure, most evident in the drugs crisis, where Scotland’s fatalities are worse than anywhere in the EU. Emerging systemic social issues stemming from economic trends such as youth unemployment continue to go unaddressed, with inevitable dire consequences.
Local councils have been financially suffocated and unable to serve their local residents, with predictably devastating consequences. It is hard to find an area of devolved administration that is not struggling. After 13 years of social democratic SNP governance, the social fabric of Scotland is severely strained.
The SNP argues that any Scottish government—SNP or otherwise—would be fiscally constrained by the choices made by the Westminster government. And to be fair, the party has used the limited financial tools available, such as income tax differences, to mitigate some of the most stringent austerity policies coming down from Westminster.
But public spending per capita remains significantly higher in Scotland than the rest of the U.K. Part of that is thanks to the marginally higher tax in Scotland, but most of it is due to the Barnett formula that has historically granted Scotland more money from the central Westminster government. Every Scot gets 117 percent of the U.K. average spending per capita, compared with 97 percent in England—a scheme worked out partially to compensate for the low population density and relative poverty, partially as a sop to keep them in the union.
That means that the dirty secret of the current Scottish government is that its problem is not mostly financial. Rather, it is one of poor management and misuse of power. Even with more money than any other part of Britain, the SNP just used it poorly and often squandered the extra fiscal cushion it had in boneheaded ways.
From the Edinburgh tram scandal of 2014 to the latest ferry scandal, a devastating pattern has emerged. The SNP, as a government, systematically prioritizes the perceived party electoral marketing value of projects and policies over their economic and social value to Scotland as a whole and systematically neglects the operational and implementation challenges of the projects it backs, leading to an eye-watering waste of public money. And to top it all off, when all is said and done, no individual minister, or indeed the party as a whole, is ever held accountable for any of it—because the over-riding push for independence keeps the voters together and allows scandals to be nearly ignored.
After 13 years in government, neither Sturgeon nor the SNP can come before the Scottish electorate on their record. Aside from the independence issue, their record in government is, under the most generous description, one of generally positive messaging and intentions and mediocre to dismal implementation.
Those politics are driving the constant beating of the drums of independence as much as Brexit is: If the SNP does not keep dangling the promise of a new Scotland in front of the faithful, it has nothing else to run on. It may well be true that the prospect of Scottish independence has never been as close or as urgent as it is this year for Scotland as a whole. But it is equally true that if the prospect of independence disappears, the SNP’s record in government will come into sharp relief, and that will spell very real trouble for the party.


foreignpolicy--2020-02-11--Friedrich Merz Is Ready to Bury Angela Merkel

When Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer was first elected to the leadership of Germany ’ s Christian Democratic Union ( CDU ) party , it seemed that Chancellor Angela Merkel had secured her legacy .
Instead , she had colluded to reveal her own inadequacy .
Kramp-Karrenbauer will now preemptively pass the chancellor ’ s coveted baton to someone eager to use it as a weapon against Merkel herself and the entire era of German politics she has presided over .
Kramp-Karrenbauer was the chancellor ’ s hand-picked successor .
In comparison to the young and relatively untested Jens Spahn , who also @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2018 , she seemed measured and well-reasoned .
In comparison to the strident political veteran Friedrich Merz , another challenger , she seemed like a safe bet to keep the party from a sharp rightward shift .
Kramp-Karrenbauer was relatively sober and restrained .
She differed from Merkel on a handful of important political positions—most notably , she ’ s been emphatic in her opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage—but she largely fell in line with the chancellor on economic issues .
Most notably , despite some indications that Kramp-Karrenbauer might personally have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ immigration , she adopted Merkel ’ s stance on Germany ’ s most divisive issue , promising generous immigration policies and a hard demarcation between the centrists in the CDU and the extremists in the Alternative for Germany ( AfD ) .
Kramp-Karrenbauer always inhabited an untenable position—though Merkel ’ s personal popularity quickly rebounded after 2015 ’ s refugee crisis , her party suffered ; those to the right of center complained that her immigration policies were unreasonably generous and would drive Germany into both financial ruin and cultural disarray .
Merkel @ @ @ @ @ @ @ meanwhile , was far from enough to entice left-of-center voters , whose furor over lackluster action on global warming , rising housing prices , and continued privatization rivals that of the right-wingers—though it ’ s rarely expressed with the same implicit violence .
Merkel ’ s ability to manage these tensions over the past few years depends on her political adroitness , yes , but also on her personal authority and the aura that attaches to her as the last member of the ancien régime .
Even with those assets , Merkel ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Kramp-Karrenbauer assumed its leadership .
Merkel resigned her position as the head of the CDU after the party lost double digits in its share of the vote in regional elections in Bavaria and Hesse , leading to widespread discontent within the party .
Kramp-Karrenbauer ’ s career was also riddled with unforced errors , though .
One sometimes had the feeling that she had announced a culture war and nobody else came .
When a German YouTube star attacked the CDU shortly before the European elections last May , she responded hyperbolically , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ propaganda ; she compared same-sex marriage to incest ; and she made juvenile jokes about intersex people .
In the end , she seemed like a jester .
Her reactionary sexual politics fell on deaf ears among German conservatives , even as they provoked outrage and fear among broad swaths of the public .
Kramp-Karrenbauer proved not only to be inept as a spokesperson for the party , however ; she also revealed herself to be a poor manager of the CDU ’ s internecine squabbles .
After disappointing results in the European @ @ @ @ @ @ @ at both leftists , who she alleged were eroding popular support for the Volksparteien that had held extremists at bay since World War II , and simultaneously the right wing of her own party , who she accused of undermining the campaign ’ s messaging and unity .
For Merkel , however , the last straw came when Kramp-Karrenbauer failed to maintain party discipline in the aftermath of regional elections in Thuringia .
Because of a deeply divided electorate and the strength of the AfD , the state was unable to form a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
When the parliament met recently to appoint a leader for the state ’ s government , however , members of the CDU joined with members of the AfD to elect Thomas Kemmerich of the economically liberal Free Democratic Party to the position of minister president , shattering a taboo that had barred extremist parties from participation in governing coalitions since World War II .
For all of Kramp-Karrenbauer ’ s failings , there was something comforting about her leadership of the CDU—though nicknames like “ Merkel 2.0 ” and “ Mini-Merkel ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is easy to see why they were so popular for a while .
If Kramp-Karrenbauer lacked Merkel ’ s stern competence , she had something of the chancellor ’ s earnestness and solidity .
More importantly , however , she promised to continue a familiar legacy of governance .
Whether a more talented politician might have been able to carry that legacy into one or more terms as chancellor is an open question .
Even in the best of cases , however , it ’ s impossible to imagine that such governance would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ resentment , ecological anxieties , and economic frustration .
Like President Emmanuel Macron in France , Chancellor Kramp-Karrenbauer would likely have struggled to continue a legacy that seems increasingly inadequate in today ’ s world .
Since Kramp-Karrenbauer did blunder her way out of office , however , the future of the CDU—and of Germany more generally—has very much come up for debate .
The three most popular contenders for the party ’ s leadership represent very different futures for the CDU .
Jens Spahn , the 39-year-old minister of health , bears @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Pete Buttigieg that extends beyond his age and sexual orientation .
Like the Buttigieg , Spahn promises a revitalization of the current consensus , with a nuanced position on immigration , progressive stances on LGTBQ+ rights , and a focus on efficiency and tax cuts .
Spahn , however , despite arguably being a more accomplished politician than Buttigieg , lacks some of the latter ’ s wunderkind qualities , and his candidacy has failed to generate much excitement .
Moderate party insiders have focused hopes primarily on Armin Laschet , the head @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the country ’ s most populous state .
Laschet has a knack for party politics , a reputation for pragmatic governance , and an ability to build broad coalitions .
On immigration , he may be to the left even of Merkel—he made a widely publicized visit to a Jordanian refugee camp during the refugee crisis and has consistently argued for a humanitarian approach to refugees .
He ’ s also positioned himself against austerity in Greece , arguing that drastic measures against Greece could only lead to a weakened European Union and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the continent .
A CDU led by Laschet would almost certainly seek support in building a coalition government from the left , especially from the recently ascendant Greens .
If Spahn would stay the course and Laschet would veer a bit to the left , Friedrich Merz would tack hard to the right , pushing the CDU toward the AfD in an attempt to recapture voters that have fled to the populist right in past elections .
Merz , an old rival of Merkel ’ s , left politics in 2009 after getting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ interim , he led investment firm BlackRock ’ s German operations .
Since announcing his return to politics in the race that led to Kramp-Karrenbauer ’ s appointment to the leadership of their party , Merz has been advocating radically restricted immigration policies , and he is regularly in the headlines for his critical stance toward Merkel ’ s leadership .
In moments , he plays the populist to a T—pandering to nativist sentiments and promising large-scale tax rebates for average Germans .
It ’ s also apparent , however , that the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ flubbed in the election against Kramp-Karrenbauer when he claimed that he considered himself to be a member of the upper middle class , causing a late-night host to joke , “ People who have more than one airplane probably aren ’ t middle class anymore.
” It ’ s also unclear how Merz would form a governing coalition .
The center-left Social Democrats , already embattled for their coalitions with Merkel ’ s government , would almost certainly refuse to enter into a coalition with Merz .
Indeed , Merz himself has renounced @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
It ’ s hard to imagine that the Greens could collaborate with him without bleeding votes to other left-wing parties .
In the long run , then , he might have to make a modified argument about containing right-wing extremism—one that took the AfD ’ s votes to form a coalition even while promising to contain its most radical elements .
In this case , it ’ s unclear who would be using whom .
German anxiety about extremism has largely been effective in insulating the AfD thus far .
Furthermore , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Though Björn Höcke , the leader of the party ’ s far-right splinter group , is often presented as a charismatic strongman , he remains divisive even within the AfD and is almost entirely despised outside of it .
Instead , it is ostensibly centrist leaders like Merz who present the greatest threat .
That Germans would consider voting for a far-right leader should hardly surprise close observers of the country ’ s politics—an undercurrent of right-wing radicalism has always infected German politics , including in the CDU .
Indeed , there are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be to the right of Merz : Interior Minister Horst Seehofer , for example , or Hans-Georg Maaßen , the former head of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution , Germany ’ s internal security agency .
Furthermore , a number of long-term sociological investigations have found widespread support for right-wing radicalism within the German populace .
That a centrist party like the CDU might be led by a politician making nativist claims and praising his own business acumen can hardly be seen as unprecedented , either within Germany or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the right .
Merz bears another , more surprising similarity to other populist leaders , however : his entanglement in allegations of corruption .
In the midst of his campaign against Kramp-Karrenbauer in 2018 , the offices of BlackRock in Germany , which hired Merz in 2016 , were raided for suspected complicity in a series of dividend-stripping schemes that defrauded European taxpayers of at least 55 billion euros , about $ 60 billion .
Given the high value that Germans have traditionally placed on both honesty and fiscal responsibility , this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to become chancellor .
Yet the story barely registered .
Merz ’ s stray remark about being middle class almost certainly hurt him more than the reasonable suspicion that he played an integral role in stealing billions of euros from German taxpayers .
One feels certain that earlier generations of Germans would rather have demanded his head than elevated him to the head of state , but that may be no guide to the future .
After all , who would have imagined that the leadership of the U.S. party with the most @ @ @ @ @ @ @ forgive Russian interference in American elections ?

When Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer was first elected to the leadership of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, it seemed that Chancellor Angela Merkel had secured her legacy. Instead, she had colluded to reveal her own inadequacy. Kramp-Karrenbauer will now preemptively pass the chancellor’s coveted baton to someone eager to use it as a weapon against Merkel herself and the entire era of German politics she has presided over.
When Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer was first elected to the leadership of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party, it seemed that Chancellor Angela Merkel had secured her legacy. Instead, she had colluded to reveal her own inadequacy. Kramp-Karrenbauer will now preemptively pass the chancellor’s coveted baton to someone eager to use it as a weapon against Merkel herself and the entire era of German politics she has presided over.
Kramp-Karrenbauer was the chancellor’s hand-picked successor. In comparison to the young and relatively untested Jens Spahn, who also vied for the party leadership in December 2018, she seemed measured and well-reasoned. In comparison to the strident political veteran Friedrich Merz, another challenger, she seemed like a safe bet to keep the party from a sharp rightward shift. Kramp-Karrenbauer was relatively sober and restrained. She differed from Merkel on a handful of important political positions—most notably, she’s been emphatic in her opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage—but she largely fell in line with the chancellor on economic issues. Most notably, despite some indications that Kramp-Karrenbauer might personally have tended toward a more conservative position on immigration, she adopted Merkel’s stance on Germany’s most divisive issue, promising generous immigration policies and a hard demarcation between the centrists in the CDU and the extremists in the Alternative for Germany (AfD).
Kramp-Karrenbauer always inhabited an untenable position—though Merkel’s personal popularity quickly rebounded after 2015’s refugee crisis, her party suffered; those to the right of center complained that her immigration policies were unreasonably generous and would drive Germany into both financial ruin and cultural disarray. Merkel’s progressive stance on immigration, meanwhile, was far from enough to entice left-of-center voters, whose furor over lackluster action on global warming, rising housing prices, and continued privatization rivals that of the right-wingers—though it’s rarely expressed with the same implicit violence.
Merkel’s ability to manage these tensions over the past few years depends on her political adroitness, yes, but also on her personal authority and the aura that attaches to her as the last member of the ancien régime. Even with those assets, Merkel’s party was on the decline when Kramp-Karrenbauer assumed its leadership. Merkel resigned her position as the head of the CDU after the party lost double digits in its share of the vote in regional elections in Bavaria and Hesse, leading to widespread discontent within the party.
Kramp-Karrenbauer’s career was also riddled with unforced errors, though. One sometimes had the feeling that she had announced a culture war and nobody else came. When a German YouTube star attacked the CDU shortly before the European elections last May, she responded hyperbolically, claiming that his work was akin to propaganda; she compared same-sex marriage to incest; and she made juvenile jokes about intersex people. In the end, she seemed like a jester. Her reactionary sexual politics fell on deaf ears among German conservatives, even as they provoked outrage and fear among broad swaths of the public.
Kramp-Karrenbauer proved not only to be inept as a spokesperson for the party, however; she also revealed herself to be a poor manager of the CDU’s internecine squabbles. After disappointing results in the European elections last spring, Kramp-Karrenbauer lashed out at both leftists, who she alleged were eroding popular support for the Volksparteien that had held extremists at bay since World War II, and simultaneously the right wing of her own party, who she accused of undermining the campaign’s messaging and unity. For Merkel, however, the last straw came when Kramp-Karrenbauer failed to maintain party discipline in the aftermath of regional elections in Thuringia. Because of a deeply divided electorate and the strength of the AfD, the state was unable to form a governing coalition after elections this past October. When the parliament met recently to appoint a leader for the state’s government, however, members of the CDU joined with members of the AfD to elect Thomas Kemmerich of the economically liberal Free Democratic Party to the position of minister president, shattering a taboo that had barred extremist parties from participation in governing coalitions since World War II.
For all of Kramp-Karrenbauer’s failings, there was something comforting about her leadership of the CDU—though nicknames like “Merkel 2.0” and “Mini-Merkel” rubbed her the wrong way, it is easy to see why they were so popular for a while. If Kramp-Karrenbauer lacked Merkel’s stern competence, she had something of the chancellor’s earnestness and solidity. More importantly, however, she promised to continue a familiar legacy of governance. Whether a more talented politician might have been able to carry that legacy into one or more terms as chancellor is an open question. Even in the best of cases, however, it’s impossible to imagine that such governance would have been able to fully contain nativist resentment, ecological anxieties, and economic frustration. Like President Emmanuel Macron in France, Chancellor Kramp-Karrenbauer would likely have struggled to continue a legacy that seems increasingly inadequate in today’s world.
Since Kramp-Karrenbauer did blunder her way out of office, however, the future of the CDU—and of Germany more generally—has very much come up for debate. The three most popular contenders for the party’s leadership represent very different futures for the CDU.
Jens Spahn, the 39-year-old minister of health, bears a resemblance to the American presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg that extends beyond his age and sexual orientation. Like Buttigieg, Spahn promises a revitalization of the current consensus, with a nuanced position on immigration, progressive stances on LGTBQ+ rights, and a focus on efficiency and tax cuts. Spahn, however, despite arguably being a more accomplished politician than Buttigieg, lacks some of the latter’s wunderkind qualities, and his candidacy has failed to generate much excitement.
Moderate party insiders have focused hopes primarily on Armin Laschet, the head of the CDU in North Rhine-Westphalia, the country’s most populous state. Laschet has a knack for party politics, a reputation for pragmatic governance, and an ability to build broad coalitions. On immigration, he may be to the left even of Merkel—he made a widely publicized visit to a Jordanian refugee camp during the refugee crisis and has consistently argued for a humanitarian approach to refugees. He’s also positioned himself against austerity in Greece, arguing that drastic measures against Greece could only lead to a weakened European Union and increased opportunities for Russian influence to penetrate the continent. A CDU led by Laschet would almost certainly seek support in building a coalition government from the left, especially from the recently ascendant Greens.
If Spahn would stay the course and Laschet would veer a bit to the left, Friedrich Merz would tack hard to the right, pushing the CDU toward the AfD in an attempt to recapture voters that have fled to the populist right in past elections. Merz, an old rival of Merkel’s, left politics in 2009 after getting marginalized by the chancellor. In the interim, he led investment firm BlackRock’s German operations. Since announcing his return to politics in the race that led to Kramp-Karrenbauer’s appointment to the leadership of their party, Merz has been advocating radically restricted immigration policies, and he is regularly in the headlines for his critical stance toward Merkel’s leadership. In moments, he plays the populist to a T—pandering to nativist sentiments and promising large-scale tax rebates for average Germans. It’s also apparent, however, that the role isn’t native to him—he flubbed in the election against Kramp-Karrenbauer when he claimed that he considered himself to be a member of the upper middle class, causing a late-night host to joke, “People who have more than one airplane probably aren’t middle class anymore.”
It’s also unclear how Merz would form a governing coalition. The center-left Social Democrats, already embattled for their coalitions with Merkel’s government, would almost certainly refuse to enter into a coalition with Merz. Indeed, Merz himself has renounced the possibility of a traditional grand coalition. It’s hard to imagine that the Greens could collaborate with him without bleeding votes to other left-wing parties. In the long run, then, he might have to make a modified argument about containing right-wing extremism—one that took the AfD’s votes to form a coalition even while promising to contain its most radical elements. In this case, it’s unclear who would be using whom. German anxiety about extremism has largely been effective in insulating the AfD thus far. Furthermore, the right-wing party lacks effective leadership. Though Björn Höcke, the leader of the party’s far-right splinter group, is often presented as a charismatic strongman, he remains divisive even within the AfD and is almost entirely despised outside of it.
Instead, it is ostensibly centrist leaders like Merz who present the greatest threat. That Germans would consider voting for a far-right leader should hardly surprise close observers of the country’s politics—an undercurrent of right-wing radicalism has always infected German politics, including in the CDU. Indeed, there are many figures in the party who may be to the right of Merz: Interior Minister Horst Seehofer, for example, or Hans-Georg Maaßen, the former head of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, Germany’s internal security agency. Furthermore, a number of long-term sociological investigations have found widespread support for right-wing radicalism within the German populace. That a centrist party like the CDU might be led by a politician making nativist claims and praising his own business acumen can hardly be seen as unprecedented, either within Germany or in the midst of a global shift to the right.
Merz bears another, more surprising similarity to other populist leaders, however: his entanglement in allegations of corruption. In the midst of his campaign against Kramp-Karrenbauer in 2018, the offices of BlackRock in Germany, which hired Merz in 2016, were raided for suspected complicity in a series of dividend-stripping schemes that defrauded European taxpayers of at least 55 billion euros, about $60 billion. Given the high value that Germans have traditionally placed on both honesty and fiscal responsibility, this might have seemed disqualifying for someone aspiring to become chancellor.
Yet the story barely registered. Merz’s stray remark about being middle class almost certainly hurt him more than the reasonable suspicion that he played an integral role in stealing billions of euros from German taxpayers. One feels certain that earlier generations of Germans would rather have demanded his head than elevated him to the head of state, but that may be no guide to the future. After all, who would have imagined that the leadership of the U.S. party with the most ardent Cold Warriors would eventually rush to forgive Russian interference in American elections?


foreignpolicy--2020-02-11--Does Modi’s Election Loss in Delhi Matter?

Welcome to Foreign Policy ’ s weekly South Asia Brief .
The highlights this week : Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi ’ s party suffers an electoral loss , a suicide attack targets a military academy in Kabul , and Bangladesh celebrates a world cup win .
If you would like to receive South Asia Brief in your inbox every Tuesday , please sign up here .
The Aam Aadmi , or “ Common Man , ” Party ( AAP ) will return to power in the Indian state of Delhi after winning 62 out of 70 seats in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , according to results released Tuesday .
The results represent a resounding local victory for the AAP .
Prime Minister Narendra Modi ’ s Bharatiya Janata Party ( BJP ) won the remaining eight seats .
The results bring to a close a divisive and ugly campaign in the capital .
In recent weeks , BJP leaders suggested a vote for the AAP was akin to supporting Islamist “ terrorism , ” continuing their strategy of dividing Indians along religious lines .
The BJP also accused the AAP ’ s leader , Delhi @ @ @ @ @ @ @ supporting Muslims and promoting the ongoing protests against India ’ s controversial Citizenship Amendment Act .
Local issues .
Will the AAP ’ s win be the start of a larger national movement ?
Recent history suggests one should be skeptical .
Kejriwal ’ s performance in Delhi is seen as the result of local welfare policies : free health care and bus fares for women , cheaper water and electricity , and improved state-run schools .
The AAP also steered clear of engaging the BJP in its divisive culture war and name-calling @ @ @ @ @ @ @ instead focused on his record as a relatively effective administrator of policies .
It ’ s unclear whether the same strategies could work for AAP—or any other opposition party—at the national level , where Modi remains widely popular .
Will this affect Modi ?
While the results in the Delhi state elections represent a steep loss for the BJP , it still gained five seats since the last contest in 2015 and increased its vote share by 10 percentage points .
While some observers pegged the vote as a referendum on Modi and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Amendment Act demonstrations—the results do little to change the status quo in Delhi or nationally .
The BBC ’ s Soutik Biswas cites Yogendra Yadav , an elections expert and former AAP member , who says that India ’ s voters may be “ ticket splitting ” : strategically picking the BJP at the national level and other parties in local elections .
If true , then the Delhi results and other recent state-level setbacks for the BJP won ’ t significantly affect the next national election in 2024 .
Much can change @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s primary national opposition remains weak—the Indian National Congress party , for example , won no seats in Delhi—the electoral snub and the sustained strength of national protests are chastening for the BJP .
With the economy continuing to look anemic and unemployment at a 45-year high , each new setback for Modi has the potential to escalate to encompass wider concerns .
Trump ’ s India visit confirmed .
On Monday , the White House confirmed what media reports have suggested for weeks : U.S. President Donald Trump and first lady Melania @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Ahmedabad on Feb. 24 .
Ahmedabad is in Prime Minister Narendra Modi ’ s home state of Gujarat .
Meanwhile , Reuters reports that India plans to announce a $ 2.6 billion purchase of military helicopters and equipment from the U.S. firm Lockheed Martin as New Delhi attempts to capture public attention around Trump ’ s visit .
Nepal ’ s census to count LGBTQ .
When Nepal conducts its next census in June 2021 , it will for the first time allow citizens to identify as male , female , or “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ While there is no follow-up question , the move could allow LGBTQ people better access to education and health programs and will enable planning for government quotas and social security provisions .
A trial census will be held next month .
Afghan military school targeted .
At least six people died in Kabul in a suicide attack targeting a government-run military academy on Tuesday morning .
Several others were injured in the explosion .
The Marshal Fahim military academy has been the target of several past attacks .
The U.S. Special Inspector General @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Tuesday examining the human cost of the reconstruction effort in Afghanistan .
The findings show that there were 5,135 military and civilian casualties during reconstruction work in the country between 2002 and 2018 , with the highest number coming from road work .
On Saturday , Buddhists will mark Nirvana Day , when they believe the Buddha achieved nirvana after the death of his physical body .
Our question : Which South Asian country is home to the site where the Buddha was born ?
Scroll down for the answer .
Shhh , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a Mumbai Uber driver , Rohit Singh Gaur , overheard a passenger ’ s phone conversation about the ongoing protests against India ’ s controversial citizenship law .
He didn ’ t like what he heard .
Instead of taking the poet and activist Bappadittya Sarkar to his destination , he took him to the police station , where Sarkar was questioned and released .
A few days later , the Mumbai BJP chief Gaur an “ Alert Citizen Award.
” Uber , meanwhile , blocked Gaur ’ s account as it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The Facebook-owned messaging service WhatsApp is already a dominant form of communication in India , but it ’ s now moved a step closer to taking on the growing digital wallet market .
The National Payments Corporation of India has given Facebook permission to roll out its WhatsApp Pay service , which will soon provide competition for Google Pay , as well as local companies PhonePe and Paytm .
Amnesty .
The Man Booker Prize-winning author Aravind Adiga ’ s new novel , Amnesty , which goes on sale next week , tells @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Australia who has information about a murder but struggles with going to the police for fear of deportation .
The novel , excerpted in the New York Times , offers rich insights into the lives of immigrants .
“ There is a buzz , a reflexive retinal buzz , whenever a man or woman born in India , Pakistan , Sri Lanka or Bangladesh sees another from his or her part of the world in Sydney—a tribal pinprick , an instinct always reciprocal , like the instantaneous recognition of homosexuals in a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Cricket World Cup .
Bangladesh won the under-19 Cricket World Cup in Potchefstroom , South Africa , on Sunday after defeating India , considered the favorite , in the tournament final .
The victory marks Bangladesh ’ s first world cup title in cricket and sparked wild celebrations on the streets of Dhaka .
While Siddhartha Gautama , or the Buddha , attained enlightenment in Bodh Gaya in present-day India , he was born in Lumbini , now in modern-day Nepal , in 623 B.C .
The Buddha ’ s birthplace has been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
That ’ s it for this week .
We welcome your feedback at newsletters @ foreignpolicy.com .
You can find older editions of South Asia Brief here .
For more from FP , subscribe here or sign up for our other newsletters .

Welcome to Foreign Policy’s weekly South Asia Brief. The highlights this week: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party suffers an electoral loss , a suicide attack targets a military academy in Kabul, and Bangladesh celebrates a world cup win.
Welcome to Foreign Policy’s weekly South Asia Brief. The highlights this week: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party suffers an electoral loss, a suicide attack targets a military academy in Kabul, and Bangladesh celebrates a world cup win.
If you would like to receive South Asia Brief in your inbox every Tuesday, please sign up here.
Modi Suffers Defeat in Delhi Elections
The Aam Aadmi, or “Common Man,” Party (AAP) will return to power in the Indian state of Delhi after winning 62 out of 70 seats in the Legislative Assembly elections held on Feb. 8, according to results released Tuesday. The results represent a resounding local victory for the AAP. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) won the remaining eight seats.
The results bring to a close a divisive and ugly campaign in the capital. In recent weeks, BJP leaders suggested a vote for the AAP was akin to supporting Islamist “terrorism,” continuing their strategy of dividing Indians along religious lines. The BJP also accused the AAP’s leader, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, of secretly supporting Muslims and promoting the ongoing protests against India’s controversial Citizenship Amendment Act.
Local issues. Will the AAP’s win be the start of a larger national movement? Recent history suggests one should be skeptical. Kejriwal’s performance in Delhi is seen as the result of local welfare policies: free health care and bus fares for women, cheaper water and electricity, and improved state-run schools. The AAP also steered clear of engaging the BJP in its divisive culture war and name-calling.
Kejriwal, who is Hindu, instead focused on his record as a relatively effective administrator of policies. It’s unclear whether the same strategies could work for AAP—or any other opposition party—at the national level, where Modi remains widely popular.
Will this affect Modi? While the results in the Delhi state elections represent a steep loss for the BJP, it still gained five seats since the last contest in 2015 and increased its vote share by 10 percentage points. While some observers pegged the vote as a referendum on Modi and the BJP—especially in light of the anti-Citizenship Amendment Act demonstrations—the results do little to change the status quo in Delhi or nationally.
The BBC’s Soutik Biswas cites Yogendra Yadav, an elections expert and former AAP member, who says that India’s voters may be “ticket splitting”: strategically picking the BJP at the national level and other parties in local elections. If true, then the Delhi results and other recent state-level setbacks for the BJP won’t significantly affect the next national election in 2024.
Much can change in four years. While Modi’s primary national opposition remains weak—the Indian National Congress party, for example, won no seats in Delhi—the electoral snub and the sustained strength of national protests are chastening for the BJP. With the economy continuing to look anemic and unemployment at a 45-year high, each new setback for Modi has the potential to escalate to encompass wider concerns.
What We’re Following
Trump’s India visit confirmed. On Monday, the White House confirmed what media reports have suggested for weeks: U.S. President Donald Trump and first lady Melania Trump will travel to New Delhi and Ahmedabad on Feb. 24. Ahmedabad is in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state of Gujarat. Meanwhile, Reuters reports that India plans to announce a $2.6 billion purchase of military helicopters and equipment from the U.S. firm Lockheed Martin as New Delhi attempts to capture public attention around Trump’s visit.
Nepal’s census to count LGBTQ. When Nepal conducts its next census in June 2021, it will for the first time allow citizens to identify as male, female, or “others (sexual/gender community).” While there is no follow-up question, the move could allow LGBTQ people better access to education and health programs and will enable planning for government quotas and social security provisions. A trial census will be held next month.
Afghan military school targeted. At least six people died in Kabul in a suicide attack targeting a government-run military academy on Tuesday morning. Several others were injured in the explosion. The Marshal Fahim military academy has been the target of several past attacks.
The U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction released a report on Tuesday examining the human cost of the reconstruction effort in Afghanistan. The findings show that there were 5,135 military and civilian casualties during reconstruction work in the country between 2002 and 2018, with the highest number coming from road work.
Question of the Week
On Saturday, Buddhists will mark Nirvana Day, when they believe the Buddha achieved nirvana after the death of his physical body. Our question: Which South Asian country is home to the site where the Buddha was born?
A) Nepal
B) India
C) Sri Lanka
D) Bhutan
Scroll down for the answer.
South Asia Inc.
Shhh, Uber’s listening. Last week, a Mumbai Uber driver, Rohit Singh Gaur, overheard a passenger’s phone conversation about the ongoing protests against India’s controversial citizenship law. He didn’t like what he heard. Instead of taking the poet and activist Bappadittya Sarkar to his destination, he took him to the police station, where Sarkar was questioned and released. A few days later, the Mumbai BJP chief gave Gaur an “Alert Citizen Award.” Uber, meanwhile, blocked Gaur’s account as it investigates the matter.
Wallet wars. The Facebook-owned messaging service WhatsApp is already a dominant form of communication in India, but it’s now moved a step closer to taking on the growing digital wallet market. The National Payments Corporation of India has given Facebook permission to roll out its WhatsApp Pay service, which will soon provide competition for Google Pay, as well as local companies PhonePe and Paytm.
Odds and Ends
Amnesty, Aravind Adiga, Scribner, 272 pp., Feb. 18
Amnesty. The Man Booker Prize-winning author Aravind Adiga’s new novel, Amnesty, which goes on sale next week, tells the story of a young undocumented immigrant in Australia who has information about a murder but struggles with going to the police for fear of deportation. The novel, excerpted in the New York Times, offers rich insights into the lives of immigrants.
“There is a buzz, a reflexive retinal buzz, whenever a man or woman born in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka or Bangladesh sees another from his or her part of the world in Sydney—a tribal pinprick, an instinct always reciprocal, like the instantaneous recognition of homosexuals in a repressive society,” Adiga writes.
Cricket World Cup. Bangladesh won the under-19 Cricket World Cup in Potchefstroom, South Africa, on Sunday after defeating India, considered the favorite, in the tournament final. The victory marks Bangladesh’s first world cup title in cricket and sparked wild celebrations on the streets of Dhaka.
And the Answer Is…
A) Nepal.
While Siddhartha Gautama, or the Buddha, attained enlightenment in Bodh Gaya in present-day India, he was born in Lumbini, now in modern-day Nepal, in 623 B.C. The Buddha’s birthplace has been designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.
That’s it for this week.
We welcome your feedback at newsletters@foreignpolicy.com. You can find older editions of South Asia Brief here. For more from FP, subscribe here or sign up for our other newsletters.


foreignpolicy--2020-02-11--2 Easy Ways to Shrink America’s Overseas Footprint

During last month ’ s Democratic debate , a curious consensus emerged on stage among the candidates on foreign policy .
When asked how they would wield American power in the Middle East , the candidates all but admitted that U.S. military dominance abroad no longer served the interests of the United States at home .
Former Vice President Joe Biden compared the 2003 invasion of Iraq , which he voted for in the Senate , to America ’ s failure in Vietnam .
Sen. Amy Klobuchar , one of Biden ’ s rivals for the centrist vote , proclaimed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ our troops home.
” Sen. Elizabeth Warren pithily summed up her thoughts : “ We need to get our combat troops out .
They are not helping create more safety for the United States or the region.
” They ’ re right .
Now is the opportune moment for the United States to detach itself from a commitment to global primacy defined by America ’ s Cold War past : its excessive defense budget ( larger than the next seven countries combined ) and military presence on all seven continents .
As the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In the 21st century , finally rid of colonial empires and Cold War antagonism , America has the opportunity to practice responsible statecraft , directed toward the promotion of peace.
” There is a growing belief among foreign-policy experts that America ’ s overseas footprint is strategically untenable and financially unsustainable .
Overseas adventures are also political poison .
Then-presidential candidate Donald Trump weaponized this rhetoric against his Republican primary opponents and in the general election against Hillary Clinton—who , he was fond of noting , also voted for the Iraq War .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ House in October 2019 , the now president said , “ We ’ re getting out .
Let someone else fight over this long blood-stained sand .
The job of our military is not to police the world.
” But a better U.S. foreign policy does not just mean avoiding another ground war in the Middle East .
For even as aversion toward U.S. primacy has become an acceptable stance , that same establishment—which includes Biden—has warned against downsizing U.S. influence abroad out of concern for the security of countries that rely on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by China , as well as other concerns , such as Iran ’ s efforts to develop nuclear weapons , have also derailed a practical discussion of how primacy can be abandoned .
“ China wants to replace the United States as the strongest and most influential power in Asia and beyond , ” the Council on Foreign Relations warned in a recent report .
Here is the logic : If the United States abandons primacy , it will cede control of world affairs to authoritarian regimes .
The world needs U.S. dominance @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that great for the United States itself .
But the United States can take concrete steps to end its primacy in global economic development and military spending , two of the most prominent areas of influence , without imperiling U.S. security .
Democratizing food distribution and foreign aid , cutting and eliminating unnecessary military spending , and converting superfluous defense programs to peacetime purposes are all feasible steps that the United States can take to reduce its outsized influence in global affairs to the benefit of its allies and a more democratic foreign @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a change of presidents but a change in how Americans see their relationship to the world .
The United States has global responsibilities , but it does not have global control .
To remake America ’ s foreign policy , we must first be honest about the extent to which the country ’ s politics , economy , and military still constrict the ability for other regions or governments to solve or share responsibility for their problems .
However , U.S. primacy does not need to be squandered .
Those seeking to remake @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on the institutions that underpin U.S. primacy to end it .
The United States can thus rely on its economic primacy to end a foreign policy—in terms of food inequity and military spending—that fails to accommodate the public ’ s interests and that makes militarism a fait accompli .
Food has been a major source of America ’ s primacy for nearly a century .
Due to generous farm subsidies implemented during the Great Depression , by the mid-1960s the United States had become the world ’ s leading exporter of grain .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ cheap wheat exports and increased food aid through Public Law 480 , also known as the Food for Peace program .
The wheat not sold to developing countries , on highly concessional terms , was stockpiled .
While this ensured relatively stable , predictable , and low food prices for those countries , it also left the United States with an unhealthy level of influence on global food markets , a system that both fuels inequality and conflict abroad and promotes the interests of giant multinational corporations over American farmers .
The last @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of this dysfunction .
Between 2005 and 2008 , global market prices for staples like corn , wheat , and rice doubled or tripled , some within months .
This meant serious trouble for countries in the Middle East and North Africa , where citizens spend upwards of 75 percent of their incomes on food—more than half of which is imported from abroad .
To put it simply , many millions of poor people in poor countries could not afford to buy or grow their own food—and they still can not .
U.S. @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the price shock .
Pitched as a green solution to high oil prices ( and backed with billions of dollars in subsidies ) , in 2005 the United States became the world ’ s leading producer of ethanol .
Food prices tripled not because the world was not producing enough food ; the problem was that the world ’ s biggest food producer had just removed a large percentage of its production from global supply .
Nor has the ethanol boom been all that beneficial for American farmers , who financed it with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , net farm incomes ( adjusted for inflation ) sat at about $ 80 billion , about the same as in 2003 .
By comparison , during the same time total U.S. farm debts climbed from about $ 250 billion to almost $ 400 billion .
This power can be wielded for much better ends .
Flexible-fuel SUVs powered ( partly ) by corn will not stop climate change , and multibillion-dollar subsidies for biofuels would be much better spent helping American farmers pay off the debts they accrued growing them .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ States can not use its existing primacy for good—indeed , when 1 out of 4 metric tons of corn and wheat exported globally comes from a U.S. farm , it must .
The foreign aid budget must be increased , but equally significant will be increasing contributions to agricultural development programs in other countries to eventually replace that aid .
The practice of dumping U.S. agricultural exports under the guise of aid hurts farmers in poor countries while diverting much-needed funds from health , education , and other areas of development ; U.S. @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is one flagrant example .
It is also in clear violation of World Trade Organization law , a fact not lost on China when the United States accuses it of doing the same for steel .
On the military front , the United States must eliminate anachronistic defense programs that reflect an indefinite commitment to primacy .
The most blatant example of these defense projects is the F-35 combat aircraft .
Expected to cost American taxpayers a total of $ 1.5 trillion over 30 years , the F-35 ’ s expense has made @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Defense Department ’ s perspective .
But the F-35 is also a manifestation of how the United States has relied on primacy through arms sales , cajoling allies and enemies alike to abide its dictates , often to the detriment of global stability .
From its inception , the F-35 represented a relic of the Cold War—enticing current and prospective allies ( no matter how checkered their human rights records ) with U.S. predominance premised on massive air power .
Possession of the F-35 would deter aggression from neighboring states—or so it was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Cold War mentality of an arms race , as the technological fetishism surrounding the F-35 invariably offers comparisons with the inferiority of China ’ s own joint strike fighter , the J-20—which then forces China ( and Russia ) to reinvest in military production , exacerbating the impression of a looming new Cold War .
The presumed implications of the F-35 for great and small powers alike are obvious : Align with U.S. military superiority , or face certain defeat in the event of a global conflict between the United States and China @ @ @ @ @ @ @ coercive diplomacy through arms sales usually backfires .
The Trump administration ’ s decision to cut off sales and production of the F-35 in Turkey , for instance , has only compelled Turkey to further cement diplomatic ties with Russia .
There is no reason to expect that planned F-35 sales to countries such as Poland and Saudi Arabia will lessen great-power tensions between the United States and Russia or lessen Middle East tensions .
Eliminating the F-35 can also be an opportunity for the United States to back preexisting treaties that regulate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ F-35 over the heads of friends and foes like a proverbial Sword of Damocles , the United States ’ coercive unilateralism has made a global problem worse .
Despite the dubious benefits of the F-35 to U.S. national security , calls to end production of the plane have gone unheeded .
Justifications for continued production of the F-35 have been grounded in the desire for the United States to maintain air superiority but also to generate jobs at home .
The plane ’ s contractor , Lockheed Martin , boasts that the F-35 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and its allies ” in approximately “ 45 states and Puerto Rico ” ; while Trump promotes the F-35 as a jobs creator and an opportunity to “ celebrate the triumphant return of American manufacturing ” —in his view .
Ending sales of the F-35 program abroad must therefore coincide with a renewed project of defense conversion at home , one that echoes efforts at the end of the Cold War by a coalition of grassroots activists , congressional officials , and community members .
The vast national economic network of defense industries @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they have historically engendered , has often stymied coalition building on behalf of a peacetime economy and has subverted social democracy in the name of military Keynesianism .
( Even Sen. Bernie Sanders has been forced to defend F-35 deployment in Vermont , given the “ reality of the damn plane.
” ) Since 77 percent of Americans are opposed to using defense funds to create jobs in their districts , favoring instead sectors like health care , infrastructure , and clean energy , this is smart defense—and foreign—policy .
A wholesale rejection @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unlikely to come from the current foreign-policy establishment—one willing to entertain the decline of primacy but largely in the abstract .
It will most likely require those on the anti-war left and right—or the right Democratic presidential candidate—to make these changes .
But doing so will lesson geopolitical tensions , making the United States more welcomed abroad and more prosperous at home .

During last month’s Democratic debate , a curious consensus emerged on stage among the candidates on foreign policy. When asked how they would wield American power in the Middle East, the candidates all but admitted that U.S. military dominance abroad no longer served the interests of the United States at home. Former Vice President Joe Biden compared the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which he voted for in the Senate, to America’s failure in Vietnam. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, one of Biden’s rivals for the centrist vote, proclaimed she had “long wanted to bring our troops home.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren pithily summed up her thoughts: “We need to get our combat troops out. They are not helping create more safety for the United States or the region.”
During last month’s Democratic debate, a curious consensus emerged on stage among the candidates on foreign policy. When asked how they would wield American power in the Middle East, the candidates all but admitted that U.S. military dominance abroad no longer served the interests of the United States at home. Former Vice President Joe Biden compared the 2003 invasion of Iraq, which he voted for in the Senate, to America’s failure in Vietnam. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, one of Biden’s rivals for the centrist vote, proclaimed she had “long wanted to bring our troops home.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren pithily summed up her thoughts: “We need to get our combat troops out. They are not helping create more safety for the United States or the region.”
They’re right. Now is the opportune moment for the United States to detach itself from a commitment to global primacy defined by America’s Cold War past: its excessive defense budget (larger than the next seven countries combined) and military presence on all seven continents. As the historian Stephen Wertheim has written, “In the 21st century, finally rid of colonial empires and Cold War antagonism, America has the opportunity to practice responsible statecraft, directed toward the promotion of peace.”
There is a growing belief among foreign-policy experts that America’s overseas footprint is strategically untenable and financially unsustainable. Overseas adventures are also political poison. Then-presidential candidate Donald Trump weaponized this rhetoric against his Republican primary opponents and in the general election against Hillary Clinton—who, he was fond of noting, also voted for the Iraq War. In a special address from the White House in October 2019, the now president said, “We’re getting out. Let someone else fight over this long blood-stained sand. The job of our military is not to police the world.”
But a better U.S. foreign policy does not just mean avoiding another ground war in the Middle East. For even as aversion toward U.S. primacy has become an acceptable stance, that same establishment—which includes Biden—has warned against downsizing U.S. influence abroad out of concern for the security of countries that rely on American power.
The looming challenges posed by China, as well as other concerns, such as Iran’s efforts to develop nuclear weapons, have also derailed a practical discussion of how primacy can be abandoned. “China wants to replace the United States as the strongest and most influential power in Asia and beyond,” the Council on Foreign Relations warned in a recent report. Here is the logic: If the United States abandons primacy, it will cede control of world affairs to authoritarian regimes. The world needs U.S. dominance, even if it’s not that great for the United States itself.
But the United States can take concrete steps to end its primacy in global economic development and military spending, two of the most prominent areas of influence, without imperiling U.S. security. Democratizing food distribution and foreign aid, cutting and eliminating unnecessary military spending, and converting superfluous defense programs to peacetime purposes are all feasible steps that the United States can take to reduce its outsized influence in global affairs to the benefit of its allies and a more democratic foreign policy.
These changes require not just a change of presidents but a change in how Americans see their relationship to the world. The United States has global responsibilities, but it does not have global control. To remake America’s foreign policy, we must first be honest about the extent to which the country’s politics, economy, and military still constrict the ability for other regions or governments to solve or share responsibility for their problems.
However, U.S. primacy does not need to be squandered. Those seeking to remake U.S. foreign policy must therefore—at least initially—rely on the institutions that underpin U.S. primacy to end it. The United States can thus rely on its economic primacy to end a foreign policy—in terms of food inequity and military spending—that fails to accommodate the public’s interests and that makes militarism a fait accompli.
Food has been a major source of America’s primacy for nearly a century. Due to generous farm subsidies implemented during the Great Depression, by the mid-1960s the United States had become the world’s leading exporter of grain. In response, the U.S. government promoted cheap wheat exports and increased food aid through Public Law 480, also known as the Food for Peace program. The wheat not sold to developing countries, on highly concessional terms, was stockpiled. While this ensured relatively stable, predictable, and low food prices for those countries, it also left the United States with an unhealthy level of influence on global food markets, a system that both fuels inequality and conflict abroad and promotes the interests of giant multinational corporations over American farmers.
The last global food crisis was a prime example of this dysfunction. Between 2005 and 2008, global market prices for staples like corn, wheat, and rice doubled or tripled, some within months. This meant serious trouble for countries in the Middle East and North Africa, where citizens spend upwards of 75 percent of their incomes on food—more than half of which is imported from abroad. To put it simply, many millions of poor people in poor countries could not afford to buy or grow their own food—and they still cannot.
U.S. food primacy was the primary cause of the price shock. Pitched as a green solution to high oil prices (and backed with billions of dollars in subsidies), in 2005 the United States became the world’s leading producer of ethanol. Food prices tripled not because the world was not producing enough food; the problem was that the world’s biggest food producer had just removed a large percentage of its production from global supply. Nor has the ethanol boom been all that beneficial for American farmers, who financed it with little left to show. In 2018, net farm incomes (adjusted for inflation) sat at about $80 billion, about the same as in 2003. By comparison, during the same time total U.S. farm debts climbed from about $250 billion to almost $400 billion.
This power can be wielded for much better ends. Flexible-fuel SUVs powered (partly) by corn will not stop climate change, and multibillion-dollar subsidies for biofuels would be much better spent helping American farmers pay off the debts they accrued growing them. But this does not mean that the United States cannot use its existing primacy for good—indeed, when 1 out of 4 metric tons of corn and wheat exported globally comes from a U.S. farm, it must. The foreign aid budget must be increased, but equally significant will be increasing contributions to agricultural development programs in other countries to eventually replace that aid. The practice of dumping U.S. agricultural exports under the guise of aid hurts farmers in poor countries while diverting much-needed funds from health, education, and other areas of development; U.S. aid to Haiti after the 2010 earthquake is one flagrant example. It is also in clear violation of World Trade Organization law, a fact not lost on China when the United States accuses it of doing the same for steel.
On the military front, the United States must eliminate anachronistic defense programs that reflect an indefinite commitment to primacy. The most blatant example of these defense projects is the F-35 combat aircraft. Expected to cost American taxpayers a total of $1.5 trillion over 30 years, the F-35’s expense has made it too big to fail from the Defense Department’s perspective.
But the F-35 is also a manifestation of how the United States has relied on primacy through arms sales, cajoling allies and enemies alike to abide its dictates, often to the detriment of global stability. From its inception, the F-35 represented a relic of the Cold War—enticing current and prospective allies (no matter how checkered their human rights records) with U.S. predominance premised on massive air power. Possession of the F-35 would deter aggression from neighboring states—or so it was thought.
The F-35 therefore reifies the Cold War mentality of an arms race, as the technological fetishism surrounding the F-35 invariably offers comparisons with the inferiority of China’s own joint strike fighter, the J-20—which then forces China (and Russia) to reinvest in military production, exacerbating the impression of a looming new Cold War. The presumed implications of the F-35 for great and small powers alike are obvious: Align with U.S. military superiority, or face certain defeat in the event of a global conflict between the United States and China.
History shows, however, that coercive diplomacy through arms sales usually backfires. The Trump administration’s decision to cut off sales and production of the F-35 in Turkey, for instance, has only compelled Turkey to further cement diplomatic ties with Russia. There is no reason to expect that planned F-35 sales to countries such as Poland and Saudi Arabia will lessen great-power tensions between the United States and Russia or lessen Middle East tensions. Eliminating the F-35 can also be an opportunity for the United States to back preexisting treaties that regulate international arms sales. By hanging the F-35 over the heads of friends and foes like a proverbial Sword of Damocles, the United States’ coercive unilateralism has made a global problem worse.
Despite the dubious benefits of the F-35 to U.S. national security, calls to end production of the plane have gone unheeded. Justifications for continued production of the F-35 have been grounded in the desire for the United States to maintain air superiority but also to generate jobs at home. The plane’s contractor, Lockheed Martin, boasts that the F-35 is “powering job creation for America and its allies” in approximately “45 states and Puerto Rico”; while Trump promotes the F-35 as a jobs creator and an opportunity to “celebrate the triumphant return of American manufacturing”—in his view.
Ending sales of the F-35 program abroad must therefore coincide with a renewed project of defense conversion at home, one that echoes efforts at the end of the Cold War by a coalition of grassroots activists, congressional officials, and community members. The vast national economic network of defense industries, and the jobs and economic growth they have historically engendered, has often stymied coalition building on behalf of a peacetime economy and has subverted social democracy in the name of military Keynesianism. (Even Sen. Bernie Sanders has been forced to defend F-35 deployment in Vermont, given the “reality of the damn plane.”) Since 77 percent of Americans are opposed to using defense funds to create jobs in their districts, favoring instead sectors like health care, infrastructure, and clean energy, this is smart defense—and foreign—policy.
A wholesale rejection of U.S. primacy in these terms is unlikely to come from the current foreign-policy establishment—one willing to entertain the decline of primacy but largely in the abstract. It will most likely require those on the anti-war left and right—or the right Democratic presidential candidate—to make these changes. But doing so will lesson geopolitical tensions, making the United States more welcomed abroad and more prosperous at home.


foreignpolicy--2020-02-11--Trump’s Middle East Peace Plan Isn’t New. It Plagiarized a 40-Year-Old Israeli Initiative.

U.S. President Donald Trump and his top aides pride themselves on thinking outside the box and boldly challenging conventional wisdom .
“ We ’ ve taken an unconventional approach , ” Jared Kushner , Trump ’ s son-in-law and the architect of the recently released U.S. Israeli-Palestinian peace plan , boasted of his work .
“ If people focus on the old , traditional talking points , we will never make progress , ” he argued .
But the Trump plan is actually as traditional as it gets .
In fact , it bears striking resemblance to another plan published @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 1979 , the World Zionist Organization released a plan titled “ Master Plan for the Development of Settlements in Judea and Samaria , 1979–1983 , ” written by Matityahu Drobles , a former member of the Knesset for the Herut-Liberal Bloc—a precursor to today ’ s Likud party—and the head of the World Zionist Organization ’ s Settlement Division , the body responsible for planning and building settlements .
His plan was basically a detailed attempt to execute the then-Agriculture Minister Ariel Sharon ’ s plan for settlement expansion—a task that successive Israeli @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the following four decades , placing 640,000 settlers in key areas throughout the West Bank .
Trump ’ s vision is actually Drobles 2.0 .
Trump ’ s and Drobles ’ s plans share a conviction that there should never be any true Palestinian sovereignty over the land .
Trump ’ s plan admits that it “ necessarily entails the limitations of certain sovereign powers in the Palestinian areas.
” Or as Drobles put it , “ it is now important to emphasize , primarily through action , that the autonomy [ being @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Accords ] does not and will not apply to the territories but rather to the Arab population alone.
” In other words , Trump , like Drobles 40 years ago , insists on absolute Israeli control over land , while outsourcing administration of the non-Jewish residents of that territory .
Palestinian control over land has never been on the table .
Beyond the issue of territorial sovereignty , both plans agree on permanent Israeli control over the West Bank .
As Trump and Kushner put it , “ the State of Israel will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Palestine.
” Or in Drobles ’ s words , “ There can not be any shadow of a doubt about our intention to maintain perpetual control over the territory of Judea and Samaria.
” In discussing the importance of Israel ’ s eastern border along the Jordan River , Trump and Kushner ’ s plan justifies perpetual Israeli control over the Jordan Valley : “ the Jordan Valley provides a steep , approximately 4,600 foot physical barrier against an external attack from the east .
Israeli forces deployed along the eastern slopes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hold off a numerically superior army until the State of Israel completed its reserve mobilization.
” The same discussion about Israel ’ s eastern border appears in Israeli planning documents as early as the July 1967 Allon Plan—a plan created by then-Labor Minister Yigal Allon that recommended the annexation of the Jordan Valley in order to move Israel ’ s eastern border to the Jordan River and to create a buffer zone between Palestinians in the West Bank and Jordan .
Drobles took this idea and ran with it , referring to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ our first defensive wall in the east.
” While Trump and Kushner like to present their work as groundbreaking , the groundwork for the Jordan Valley ’ s annexation was in place decades ago .
The similarities expressed in both plans show the extent to which Trump ’ s plan is an extension of decades of Israeli policy .
This is nowhere clearer than in Trump ’ s promise that Israel “ will not have to uproot any settlements.
” This assertion is nothing but an entrenching of the status quo , making @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The reality that Trump wants to enact is a fully fractured Palestine—more of an archipelago than a state .
But this has always been the intention of the settlement enterprise .
It is important , Drobles wrote in 1979 , “ to settle the land between the [ Arab ] minority population centers and their surroundings , in order to minimize the danger of the development of an additional Arab state in this territory .
Since it will be cut off by Jewish settlements , it will be hard for the minority population @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Now , four decades later , Drobles ’ s dream has almost become a reality if Trump ’ s plan becomes a vision for the future .
Yet there is one difference between Drobles and Trump .
Drobles was honest enough to admit what he was doing ; he was explicit that what his map described was not a Palestinian state but the means to prevent one .
Trump and Kushner support the exact same line of thinking , yet they call this collection of bantustans a plan for “ two states.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ , but the Trump plan has nothing new to offer .
The plan ensures there will never be a Palestinian state in the West Bank , which has been the core principle underlying Israeli policy since 1967 .
What is new is the audacity of calling the leftover bits and pieces of land not taken up by settlements a state .
If the international community does not see beyond this facade , the untenable plan they have laid out will become the baseline for future negotiations .
The Arab League and other leaders @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hope of negotiated peace in the region must therefore come together in rejecting their plan , refusing to join Trump in swapping out Drobles ’ s talk of “ permanent control ” for the words “ State of Palestine.
” This is the only way to halt the Trump administration ’ s trampling of international law and its effort to grant Washington ’ s stamp of approval for advancing annexation and apartheid in the West Bank .

U.S. President Donald Trump and his top aides pride themselves on thinking outside the box and boldly challenging conventional wisdom. “We’ve taken an unconventional approach,” Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and the architect of the recently released U.S. Israeli-Palestinian peace plan, boasted of his work. “If people focus on the old, traditional talking points, we will never make progress,” he argued. But the Trump plan is actually as traditional as it gets. In fact, it bears striking resemblance to another plan published more than 40 years ago. In 1979, the World Zionist Organization released a plan titled “Master Plan for the Development of Settlements in Judea and Samaria, 1979–1983,” written by Matityahu Drobles, a former member of the Knesset for the Herut-Liberal Bloc—a precursor to today’s Likud party—and the head of the World Zionist Organization’s Settlement Division, the body responsible for planning and building settlements. His plan was basically a detailed attempt to execute the then-Agriculture Minister Ariel Sharon’s plan for settlement expansion—a task that successive Israeli governments carried out with great zeal over the following four decades, placing 640,000 settlers in key areas throughout the West Bank. Trump’s vision is actually Drobles 2.0.
1979 Drobles Plan vs. 2020 Trump Plan Left: The author’s recreation of the Israeli-Palestinian map included in the Drobles plan.
Right: The map included in the Trump plan.
Trump’s and Drobles’s plans share a conviction that there should never be any true Palestinian sovereignty over the land. Trump’s plan admits that it “necessarily entails the limitations of certain sovereign powers in the Palestinian areas.” Or as Drobles put it, “it is now important to emphasize, primarily through action, that the autonomy [being negotiated as part of the Camp David Accords] does not and will not apply to the territories but rather to the Arab population alone.” In other words, Trump, like Drobles 40 years ago, insists on absolute Israeli control over land, while outsourcing administration of the non-Jewish residents of that territory. Palestinian control over land has never been on the table.
Beyond the issue of territorial sovereignty, both plans agree on permanent Israeli control over the West Bank. As Trump and Kushner put it, “the State of Israel will maintain overriding security responsibility for the State of Palestine.” Or in Drobles’s words, “There cannot be any shadow of a doubt about our intention to maintain perpetual control over the territory of Judea and Samaria.”
In discussing the importance of Israel’s eastern border along the Jordan River, Trump and Kushner’s plan justifies perpetual Israeli control over the Jordan Valley: “the Jordan Valley provides a steep, approximately 4,600 foot physical barrier against an external attack from the east. Israeli forces deployed along the eastern slopes of the West Bank hill ridge could hold off a numerically superior army until the State of Israel completed its reserve mobilization.”
The same discussion about Israel’s eastern border appears in Israeli planning documents as early as the July 1967 Allon Plan—a plan created by then-Labor Minister Yigal Allon that recommended the annexation of the Jordan Valley in order to move Israel’s eastern border to the Jordan River and to create a buffer zone between Palestinians in the West Bank and Jordan. Drobles took this idea and ran with it, referring to the settlements of the Jordan Valley as “our first defensive wall in the east.” While Trump and Kushner like to present their work as groundbreaking, the groundwork for the Jordan Valley’s annexation was in place decades ago.
The similarities expressed in both plans show the extent to which Trump’s plan is an extension of decades of Israeli policy. This is nowhere clearer than in Trump’s promise that Israel “will not have to uproot any settlements.” This assertion is nothing but an entrenching of the status quo, making the splintering of Palestinian territory permanent. The reality that Trump wants to enact is a fully fractured Palestine—more of an archipelago than a state.
But this has always been the intention of the settlement enterprise. It is important, Drobles wrote in 1979, “to settle the land between the [Arab] minority population centers and their surroundings, in order to minimize the danger of the development of an additional Arab state in this territory. Since it will be cut off by Jewish settlements, it will be hard for the minority population to create territorial contiguity and political unity.” Now, four decades later, Drobles’s dream has almost become a reality if Trump’s plan becomes a vision for the future.
Yet there is one difference between Drobles and Trump. Drobles was honest enough to admit what he was doing; he was explicit that what his map described was not a Palestinian state but the means to prevent one. Trump and Kushner support the exact same line of thinking, yet they call this collection of bantustans a plan for “two states.”
Kushner claims to want new ideas, but the Trump plan has nothing new to offer. The plan ensures there will never be a Palestinian state in the West Bank, which has been the core principle underlying Israeli policy since 1967. What is new is the audacity of calling the leftover bits and pieces of land not taken up by settlements a state.
If the international community does not see beyond this facade, the untenable plan they have laid out will become the baseline for future negotiations. The Arab League and other leaders who haven’t yet abandoned any hope of negotiated peace in the region must therefore come together in rejecting their plan, refusing to join Trump in swapping out Drobles’s talk of “permanent control” for the words “State of Palestine.”
This is the only way to halt the Trump administration’s trampling of international law and its effort to grant Washington’s stamp of approval for advancing annexation and apartheid in the West Bank.