foreignpolicy--2020-02-14--Boris Johnson Is Shutting the Door on Child Refugees

Boris Johnson Is Shutting the Door on Child Refugees It was May 2014 when 16-year-old Tedros fled Eritrea after becoming a military target for suspicion of smuggling .
Giving his parents no notice of his departure , he slipped over the border into Ethiopia , and from there traversed Sudan , Libya , Italy , and France by himself until finally settling in Britain .
Of the family of six he left behind , his youngest brother , Danni—both names are pseudonyms to protect their identities—would follow the same route four years later .
Now , after U.K. Prime Minister @ @ @ @ @ @ @ refugee protections from the European Union withdrawal bill last month prior to Britain ’ s Jan. 31 departure from the EU , the brothers hope other young people like them will continue to have the same chance they did .
In the final stretch of his journey , Tedros recalled living on a river ’ s edge in Calais , France , among strangers , dependent on a charity that provided food each day .
“ There ’ s no protection there , ” Tedros said of the camp , formerly referred to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ young adults were at risk of exploitation and trafficking .
Both Tedros and Danni had stayed in the camp , though years apart , prior to forging a new home in Britain .
“ They are young … they are desperate to join family , they will take whatever chance they get , ” Tedros said .
Danni , he said , was desperate .
Tedros contacted the British Red Cross to help him reunite with his brother , who was nearly 13 when he left for the same arduous journey .
From @ @ @ @ @ @ @ organization that provides aid to unaccompanied children , reunited the brothers under the Dublin III Regulation , established by the EU in 2013 to transfer asylum claims to Britain and other member states , guaranteeing unaccompanied child refugees the right to reunification with family members.There are currently an estimated over 4,000 unaccompanied minors in Lesbos , Greece , and a few hundred in northern France .
The brothers ’ story is not unique .
Since 2010 , Britain has granted protection to over 12,000 unaccompanied minors .
There are currently an estimated 4,000 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and a few hundred in northern France , many living on the outskirts of formal camps .
In both 2015 and 2016 , over 1 million people applied for asylum in Europe—the worst refugee crisis since World War II .
After three years of political instability during which Britain sought to withdraw from the European Union , calls for sweeping immigration reform to wrest control over Britain ’ s borders dominated the national narrative .
In the week leading up to Brexit , Johnson ’ s government introduced plans for a new points-based @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and the removal of protective measures for refugee children as part of the EU withdrawal bill—even as the House of Lords voted to restore the refugee protections after Brexit .
Despite being enshrined in British and international law , and former Prime Minister Theresa May including the Dublin Regulation in her former Brexit bill , last week members of Parliament gave a final stamp of approval , voting 348 to 252 against the Lords ’ amendment , ceasing to allow unaccompanied child refugees such as Danni to be reunited with family members @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is bitterly disappointing , ” said Alf Dubs , a Labour Party member of the House of Lords and an ardent defender of unaccompanied child refugees given his own experience being evacuated from Czechoslovakia as part of the Kindertransport—a British effort that welcomed 10,000 children over the course of nine months beginning in 1938 .
“ What could be more humane than arguing for child refugees to be able to join relatives in this country ?
” Dubs wrote in an emailed statement.Britain ’ s Conservative Party has long been hostile toward migrants @ @ @ @ @ @ @ including the amendment in the EU withdrawal bill “ weakened their negotiating flexibility , ” making political pawns of young people who take life-risking measures to flee to safety , a Home Office minister assured the House of Lords that the amendment would be included in the immigration bill set to be introduced later this year during the 11-month transition period .
But the compassion extended to child refugees 80 years ago has all but faded .
Even as the government says it “ intends to seek a family reunion agreement with the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ simultaneously withdrew all legal obligations to do so and refrained from making similar commitments for adults .
In 2018 , Britain transferred 209 migrants out of the country under the Dublin Regulation , while accepting 1,215—a paltry figure when compared to Germany ’ s acceptance of 7,580 migrants that year .
Britain ’ s Conservative Party has long been hostile toward migrants .
But at a moment when Britain claims to be reclaiming its sovereignty and hails Brexit as a “ moment of real national renewal , ” the government is backtracking rather @ @ @ @ @ @ @ protecting basic human rights and international obligations upheld by national and international humanitarian and refugee laws under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child .
The debate over how Britain handles immigration is being led by a prime minister who once referred to black people as “ picaninnies ” and compared Muslim women wearing burqas to “ bank robbers ” and “ letterboxes ” —a testament to how the government ’ s xenophobic rhetoric has aroused anti-immigration sentiment and fueled outmoded policies .
Home Secretary Priti Patel , a daughter @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the 1960s prior to then-Ugandan President Idi Amin ’ s decision to expel the country ’ s Asian minority in 1972 , has argued for the government ’ s commitment to restructure an immigration policy that has “ failed for too long.
” But she , among others , has failed to prove precisely how 1,200 unaccompanied child refugees per year pose a threat to the U.K. ’ s 66 million citizens .
The persistence of the government ’ s hostility toward migrants , particularly low-skilled workers , from an economic perspective @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that although changes could reduce pressures on the National Health Service , schools , and social housing , it will increase pressure on social care , including health care for elders and foster care for the young , by failing to fill a shortage of low-wage positions largely occupied by foreign workers .
Johnson ’ s plans for immigration reform led to some embarrassment recently when a report last month from the Migration Advisory Committee , a government-appointed panel , rejected Johnson ’ s proposed Australian-style points-based system , essentially deeming it futile @ @ @ @ @ @ @ talent visa parameters for scientists and mathematicians were too narrow .
More broadly , the government ’ s new policies will do little to thwart unaccompanied children attempting to reach Britain , who will now seek to come without legal support , giving them a further incentive to rely on illegal routes to Britain .
Just last November , 39 Vietnamese citizens were found dead in a refrigerated truck outside London , the latest example of the perilous journey migrants are willing to take.The persistence of the government ’ s hostility toward migrants @ @ @ @ @ @ @ economic perspective , makes little sense .
“ Many of the children we support have lost their parents but they have grandparents , siblings , aunts , and uncles living in the UK and ready to care for them , ” said Beth Gardiner-Smith , the CEO of Safe Passage , whose latest reports reveal that of the 12,000 or so unaccompanied minors who have gained protection in Britain since 2010 , only 700 arrived through government support schemes .
“ It is illogical that these children be denied safe passage to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but to consider smuggling just to reach their loved ones , or to grow up alone without the care of their family many surviving in camps and car parks across Europe , ” Gardiner-Smith said in a statement .
For decades , the story of Britain has largely been one of immigration .
Figures in recent years show migrants from the European Economic Area contribute £78,000 ( around $ 100,000 ) to government funding in their lifetime , more than the average British adult .
But as the country now forges a new @ @ @ @ @ @ @ exacerbating fault lines between older and younger generations and only allowing wealthier migrants to reap the economic rewards , the withdrawal of child refugee protections and family reunion policies is not merely a nativist promise fulfilled—it ’ s a stark reminder of the government ’ s inhumane policy toward migrants who have historically led periods of national renewal .
“ If the government says they still support child refugees , ” said the former child refugee Dubs , “ the big question is not whether they support them—everyone does that in theoretical terms—but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it ?
”

It was May 2014 when 16-year-old Tedros fled Eritrea after becoming a military target for suspicion of smuggling. Giving his parents no notice of his departure, he slipped over the border into Ethiopia, and from there traversed Sudan, Libya, Italy, and France by himself until finally settling in Britain. Of the family of six he left behind, his youngest brother, Danni—both names are pseudonyms to protect their identities—would follow the same route four years later.
It was May 2014 when 16-year-old Tedros fled Eritrea after becoming a military target for suspicion of smuggling. Giving his parents no notice of his departure, he slipped over the border into Ethiopia, and from there traversed Sudan, Libya, Italy, and France by himself until finally settling in Britain. Of the family of six he left behind, his youngest brother, Danni—both names are pseudonyms to protect their identities—would follow the same route four years later.
Now, after U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government removed child refugee protections from the European Union withdrawal bill last month prior to Britain’s Jan. 31 departure from the EU, the brothers hope other young people like them will continue to have the same chance they did.
In the final stretch of his journey, Tedros recalled living on a river’s edge in Calais, France, among strangers, dependent on a charity that provided food each day. “There’s no protection there,” Tedros said of the camp, formerly referred to as the Jungle, where children and young adults were at risk of exploitation and trafficking. Both Tedros and Danni had stayed in the camp, though years apart, prior to forging a new home in Britain. “They are young … they are desperate to join family, they will take whatever chance they get,” Tedros said.
Danni, he said, was desperate. Tedros contacted the British Red Cross to help him reunite with his brother, who was nearly 13 when he left for the same arduous journey. From there, Safe Passage, an international organization that provides aid to unaccompanied children, reunited the brothers under the Dublin III Regulation, established by the EU in 2013 to transfer asylum claims to Britain and other member states, guaranteeing unaccompanied child refugees the right to reunification with family members.There are currently an estimated over 4,000 unaccompanied minors in Lesbos, Greece, and a few hundred in northern France.
The brothers’ story is not unique. Since 2010, Britain has granted protection to over 12,000 unaccompanied minors. There are currently an estimated 4,000 unaccompanied minors in Lesbos, Greece, and a few hundred in northern France, many living on the outskirts of formal camps. In both 2015 and 2016, over 1 million people applied for asylum in Europe—the worst refugee crisis since World War II.
After three years of political instability during which Britain sought to withdraw from the European Union, calls for sweeping immigration reform to wrest control over Britain’s borders dominated the national narrative. In the week leading up to Brexit, Johnson’s government introduced plans for a new points-based system, a new global talent visa, and the removal of protective measures for refugee children as part of the EU withdrawal bill—even as the House of Lords voted to restore the refugee protections after Brexit.
Despite being enshrined in British and international law, and former Prime Minister Theresa May including the Dublin Regulation in her former Brexit bill, last week members of Parliament gave a final stamp of approval, voting 348 to 252 against the Lords’ amendment, ceasing to allow unaccompanied child refugees such as Danni to be reunited with family members in Britain after Brexit.
“It is bitterly disappointing,” said Alf Dubs, a Labour Party member of the House of Lords and an ardent defender of unaccompanied child refugees given his own experience being evacuated from Czechoslovakia as part of the Kindertransport—a British effort that welcomed 10,000 children over the course of nine months beginning in 1938. “What could be more humane than arguing for child refugees to be able to join relatives in this country?” Dubs wrote in an emailed statement.Britain’s Conservative Party has long been hostile toward migrants.
As members of Parliament declared that including the amendment in the EU withdrawal bill “weakened their negotiating flexibility,” making political pawns of young people who take life-risking measures to flee to safety, a Home Office minister assured the House of Lords that the amendment would be included in the immigration bill set to be introduced later this year during the 11-month transition period.
But the compassion extended to child refugees 80 years ago has all but faded. Even as the government says it “intends to seek a family reunion agreement with the EU for separated children,” it simultaneously withdrew all legal obligations to do so and refrained from making similar commitments for adults. In 2018, Britain transferred 209 migrants out of the country under the Dublin Regulation, while accepting 1,215—a paltry figure when compared to Germany’s acceptance of 7,580 migrants that year.
Britain’s Conservative Party has long been hostile toward migrants. But at a moment when Britain claims to be reclaiming its sovereignty and hails Brexit as a “moment of real national renewal,” the government is backtracking rather than making progress when it comes to protecting basic human rights and international obligations upheld by national and international humanitarian and refugee laws under the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The debate over how Britain handles immigration is being led by a prime minister who once referred to black people as “picaninnies” and compared Muslim women wearing burqas to “bank robbers” and “letterboxes”—a testament to how the government’s xenophobic rhetoric has aroused anti-immigration sentiment and fueled outmoded policies.
Home Secretary Priti Patel, a daughter of Ugandan Asians who moved to Britain in the 1960s prior to then-Ugandan President Idi Amin’s decision to expel the country’s Asian minority in 1972, has argued for the government’s commitment to restructure an immigration policy that has “failed for too long.” But she, among others, has failed to prove precisely how 1,200 unaccompanied child refugees per year pose a threat to the U.K.’s 66 million citizens.
The persistence of the government’s hostility toward migrants, particularly low-skilled workers, from an economic perspective, makes little sense. Critics contend that although changes could reduce pressures on the National Health Service, schools, and social housing, it will increase pressure on social care, including health care for elders and foster care for the young, by failing to fill a shortage of low-wage positions largely occupied by foreign workers.
Johnson’s plans for immigration reform led to some embarrassment recently when a report last month from the Migration Advisory Committee, a government-appointed panel, rejected Johnson’s proposed Australian-style points-based system, essentially deeming it futile, and said Johnson’s global talent visa parameters for scientists and mathematicians were too narrow.
More broadly, the government’s new policies will do little to thwart unaccompanied children attempting to reach Britain, who will now seek to come without legal support, giving them a further incentive to rely on illegal routes to Britain. Just last November, 39 Vietnamese citizens were found dead in a refrigerated truck outside London, the latest example of the perilous journey migrants are willing to take.The persistence of the government’s hostility toward migrants, particularly low-skilled workers, from an economic perspective, makes little sense.
“Many of the children we support have lost their parents but they have grandparents, siblings, aunts, and uncles living in the UK and ready to care for them,” said Beth Gardiner-Smith, the CEO of Safe Passage, whose latest reports reveal that of the 12,000 or so unaccompanied minors who have gained protection in Britain since 2010, only 700 arrived through government support schemes.
“It is illogical that these children be denied safe passage to the UK, left with no other choice but to consider smuggling just to reach their loved ones, or to grow up alone without the care of their family many surviving in camps and car parks across Europe,” Gardiner-Smith said in a statement.
For decades, the story of Britain has largely been one of immigration. Figures in recent years show migrants from the European Economic Area contribute £78,000 (around $100,000) to government funding in their lifetime, more than the average British adult.
But as the country now forges a new future by tightening its immigration policy and exacerbating fault lines between older and younger generations and only allowing wealthier migrants to reap the economic rewards, the withdrawal of child refugee protections and family reunion policies is not merely a nativist promise fulfilled—it’s a stark reminder of the government’s inhumane policy toward migrants who have historically led periods of national renewal.
“If the government says they still support child refugees,” said the former child refugee Dubs, “the big question is not whether they support them—everyone does that in theoretical terms—but what are they going to do about it?”


foreignpolicy--2020-02-14--Will China Uphold Its End of the Trade Deal?

Will China Uphold Its End of the Trade Deal ?
Here is today ’ s Foreign Policy brief : The phase one U.S.-China trade deal enters into force as the coronavirus outbreak puts China ’ s commitments in doubt , British Chancellor Sajid Javid resigns , and Trump plans to divert funds from the Pentagon in order to build his U.S.-Mexico border wall .
We welcome your feedback at morningbrief @ foreignpolicy.com .
The phase one U.S.-China trade deal enters into force today , with the United States cutting tariffs on $ 120 billion of Chinese goods in half and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ U.S. goods , including cars , crude oil , and soybeans .
Chinese officials have said they are committed to working with the United States on eliminating all trade war tariffs .
U.S. President Donald Trump has lauded the deal as a “ groundbreaking ” first-term accomplishment .
But the coronavirus outbreak means China likely won ’ t be able to meet some of its limited commitments , particularly $ 40 billion in additional U.S. farm goods purchases over the next two years—something U.S. National Security Advisor Robert O ’ Brien admitted this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ certainly disrupt the global supply chain .
“ There ’ s no doubt that the virus could have an impact on the U.S. economy and also the world economy , ” O ’ Brien said .
Energy trade doomed .
The coronavirus has already had an impact on energy markets , with global demand for crude oil projected to decline in the first quarter of the year for the first time in a decade .
The United States was also banking on China making $ 50 billion in additional oil and natural gas @ @ @ @ @ @ @ energy trade was a centerpiece of the phase one deal .
That looks even more unrealistic now , FP ’ s Keith Johnson reports .
New Huawei charges .
An indictment unsealed on Thursday revealed that Huawei , the Chinese telecommunications firm that has been a major trade deal sticking point , has been charged with racketeering conspiracy for an alleged effort to steal intellectual property from U.S. technology companies .
The Trump administration says Huawei poses a national security risk as it supplies 5G networks around the world .
Sajid Javid resigns @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as Britain ’ s second-most powerful politician abruptly resigned on Thursday during Prime Minister Boris Johnson ’ s cabinet reshuffle .
Javid was reportedly offered the job again on the condition that he fire all of his advisors and accept those appointed by the prime minister ’ s office .
The ultimatum was widely seen as the work of Johnson advisor Dominic Cummings , with whom Javid had repeatedly clashed .
Javid said that “ no self-respecting minister ” could accept such an ultimatum and his refusal to cave earned him rare praise @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Javid was replaced by Rishi Sunak , a 39-year old former banker who is estimated to be the richest member of the House of Commons .
Trump plans to divert defense funds for border wall .
To finance a long-promised wall along the southern border , Trump is preparing to divert $ 3.8 billion from Pentagon programs , FP ’ s Lara Seligman reports .
It ’ s the second year in a row that Trump is raiding the Department of Defense ’ s coffers , but this time a significant chunk of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ war account known as the Overseas Contingency Operations fund .
The money would otherwise be used to build ships , F-35 fighter jets , and Army vehicles .
Sinn Fein government looks unlikely .
Ireland ’ s largest party , Fianna Fail , said Thursday that it won ’ t consider a coalition government with Sinn Fein , the left-wing nationalist party that upended Irish politics when it won the most first-preference votes in last Saturday ’ s elections .
The move makes it difficult for Sinn Fein , the former political wing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ take power .
Fianna Fail is likely to enter into talks with Prime Minister Leo Varadkar ’ s Fine Gael .
If the deadlock forces a second election , Sinn Fein could get a boost .
Will China accept the WHO ’ s help ?
A day after China ’ s Hubei province reported a major rise in coronavirus cases based on a new testing method , it appears reluctant to accept the help of a World Health Organization ( WHO ) advance team of experts that arrived in Beijing earlier this week @ @ @ @ @ @ @ when or how the full WHO team will assess the virus outbreak .
Chinese President Xi Jinping , meanwhile , is trying to contain the political damage of the epidemic : He ousted two party officials in Hubei province on Thursday .
Ethiopia ’ s internet law .
On Thursday , Ethiopia ’ s parliament passed a law that will allow jail terms for people whose social media posts are judged to have fueled unrest or violence .
Though Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has enacted reforms in Ethiopia—releasing political prisoners and journalists—he has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ groups say the new law could just inflame tensions .
A U.S. consulate in Greenland .
The Trump administration ’ s budget proposal , revealed this week , allocated $ 587,000 to a new consulate in Greenland—reflecting growing concerns about Russian and Chinese moves in the Arctic .
But the planned consulate also comes just months after Trump floated a plan to buy the island from Denmark , FP ’ s Robbie Gramer reports .
Bolsonaro ’ s cabinet .
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro announced a new chief of staff on Thursday : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of staff of the army .
Braga will take office next week , becoming the seventh military advisor in the president ’ s 20-person cabinet .
Bolsonaro is skeptical of politicians : He came to power on a pledge to break away from traditional parties .
Poland ’ s biggest utility company PGE , which generates electricity mostly by burning coal , is looking for a new chief executive .
A Polish Greenpeace activist , Pawel Szypulski , has said he will apply for the job—with a plan to eliminate coal from power @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s biggest coal plant .
“ One can no longer continue the business as if there is no climate crisis , ” Szypulski said .
“ I will apply for the job today.
” For more from FP , visit foreignpolicy.com , subscribe here , or sign up for our other newsletters .
Send your tips , comments , questions , or corrections to morningbrief @ foreignpolicy.com .

Here is today’s Foreign Policy brief: The phase one U.S.-China trade deal enters into force as the coronavirus outbreak puts China’s commitments in doubt, British Chancellor Sajid Javid resigns, and Trump plans to divert funds from the Pentagon in order to build his U.S.-Mexico border wall .
Here is today’s Foreign Policy brief: The phase one U.S.-China trade deal enters into force as the coronavirus outbreak puts China’s commitments in doubt, British Chancellor Sajid Javid resigns, and Trump plans to divert funds from the Pentagon in order to build his U.S.-Mexico border wall.
If you would like to receive Morning Brief in your inbox every weekday, please sign up here.
Phase One U.S.-China Trade Deal Takes Effect
The phase one U.S.-China trade deal enters into force today, with the United States cutting tariffs on $120 billion of Chinese goods in half and China reciprocating on $75 billion of U.S. goods, including cars, crude oil, and soybeans. Chinese officials have said they are committed to working with the United States on eliminating all trade war tariffs. U.S. President Donald Trump has lauded the deal as a “groundbreaking” first-term accomplishment.
But the coronavirus outbreak means China likely won’t be able to meet some of its limited commitments, particularly $40 billion in additional U.S. farm goods purchases over the next two years—something U.S. National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien admitted this week. He added the coronavirus would certainly disrupt the global supply chain. “There’s no doubt that the virus could have an impact on the U.S. economy and also the world economy,” O’Brien said.
Energy trade doomed. The coronavirus has already had an impact on energy markets, with global demand for crude oil projected to decline in the first quarter of the year for the first time in a decade. The United States was also banking on China making $50 billion in additional oil and natural gas purchases this year and next year; energy trade was a centerpiece of the phase one deal. That looks even more unrealistic now, FP’s Keith Johnson reports.
New Huawei charges. An indictment unsealed on Thursday revealed that Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications firm that has been a major trade deal sticking point, has been charged with racketeering conspiracy for an alleged effort to steal intellectual property from U.S. technology companies. The Trump administration says Huawei poses a national security risk as it supplies 5G networks around the world.
What We’re Following Today
Sajid Javid resigns as British Chancellor. The man regarded as Britain’s second-most powerful politician abruptly resigned on Thursday during Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s cabinet reshuffle. Javid was reportedly offered the job again on the condition that he fire all of his advisors and accept those appointed by the prime minister’s office.
The ultimatum was widely seen as the work of Johnson advisor Dominic Cummings, with whom Javid had repeatedly clashed. Javid said that “no self-respecting minister” could accept such an ultimatum and his refusal to cave earned him rare praise from voices across the political spectrum. Javid was replaced by Rishi Sunak, a 39-year old former banker who is estimated to be the richest member of the House of Commons.
Trump plans to divert defense funds for border wall. To finance a long-promised wall along the southern border, Trump is preparing to divert $3.8 billion from Pentagon programs, FP’s Lara Seligman reports. It’s the second year in a row that Trump is raiding the Department of Defense’s coffers, but this time a significant chunk of the funds will come from a controversial war account known as the Overseas Contingency Operations fund. The money would otherwise be used to build ships, F-35 fighter jets, and Army vehicles.
Sinn Fein government looks unlikely. Ireland’s largest party, Fianna Fail, said Thursday that it won’t consider a coalition government with Sinn Fein, the left-wing nationalist party that upended Irish politics when it won the most first-preference votes in last Saturday’s elections. The move makes it difficult for Sinn Fein, the former political wing of the Irish Republican Army, to take power. Fianna Fail is likely to enter into talks with Prime Minister Leo Varadkar’s Fine Gael. If the deadlock forces a second election, Sinn Fein could get a boost.
Will China accept the WHO’s help? A day after China’s Hubei province reported a major rise in coronavirus cases based on a new testing method, it appears reluctant to accept the help of a World Health Organization (WHO) advance team of experts that arrived in Beijing earlier this week. It’s not yet clear when or how the full WHO team will assess the virus outbreak. Chinese President Xi Jinping, meanwhile, is trying to contain the political damage of the epidemic: He ousted two party officials in Hubei province on Thursday.
Keep an Eye On
Ethiopia’s internet law. On Thursday, Ethiopia’s parliament passed a law that will allow jail terms for people whose social media posts are judged to have fueled unrest or violence. Though Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed has enacted reforms in Ethiopia—releasing political prisoners and journalists—he has struggled to contain ethnic violence. Rights groups say the new law could just inflame tensions.
A U.S. consulate in Greenland. The Trump administration’s budget proposal, revealed this week, allocated $587,000 to a new consulate in Greenland—reflecting growing concerns about Russian and Chinese moves in the Arctic. But the planned consulate also comes just months after Trump floated a plan to buy the island from Denmark, FP’s Robbie Gramer reports.
Bolsonaro’s cabinet. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro announced a new chief of staff on Thursday: Gen. Walter Braga, previously the chief of staff of the army. Braga will take office next week, becoming the seventh military advisor in the president’s 20-person cabinet. Bolsonaro is skeptical of politicians: He came to power on a pledge to break away from traditional parties.
Odds and Ends
Poland’s biggest utility company PGE, which generates electricity mostly by burning coal, is looking for a new chief executive. A Polish Greenpeace activist, Pawel Szypulski, has said he will apply for the job—with a plan to eliminate coal from power production by 2030. PGE owns Europe’s biggest coal plant. “One can no longer continue the business as if there is no climate crisis,” Szypulski said. “I will apply for the job today.”
That’s it for today.
For more from FP, visit foreignpolicy.com, subscribe here, or sign up for our other newsletters. Send your tips, comments, questions, or corrections to morningbrief@foreignpolicy.com.


foreignpolicy--2020-02-14--How to Stop the Next Pandemic Before It Starts

How to Stop the Next Pandemic Before It Starts Outbreaks are inevitable .
Whether they become pandemics—the uncontrolled spread of contagious diseases across countries and continents—depends on our response .
Pandemics have always depended upon fast travel networks and dense populations , once relatively unusual , now a global norm from Nairobi to Jakarta .
The Ebola virus outbreak in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo is one such pandemic threat .
After more than 18 months , just three cases are left .
Yet Congo and many other deeply vulnerable countries in Africa and elsewhere are already screening @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the latest scourge .
The spectrum of illness the virus causes is now referred to as COVID-19 , a label that looks more like a license plate than a diagnosis .
The coronavirus is still technically only epidemic—it has not yet moved in significant numbers outside of China .
As of Feb. 14 there were over 60,000 confirmed cases in China and fewer than 500 cases in 24 other countries .
Four of those countries report cases where infection occurred outside China and outside the reporting country .
Transmission between humans has occurred @ @ @ @ @ @ @ limited to intimate contacts .
Cases on a cruise ship of 3,600 passengers , involuntarily quarantined , jumped to 174 , while the virus jumped ashore anyway .
Residents of a Hong Kong building infected 10 floors apart raise concerns of transmission through buildings—and of considerable concern is the transmission to 11 people by an apparently asymptomatic British citizen .
Today ’ s report of 1,716 infected healthcare workers in China already exceeds the global total of healthcare workers infected during SARS in 2002-2003 .
Uncertainty is the defining characteristic of any new @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of transmission : how far and wide it will spread .
Contagion and lethality are not fixed quantities but variables that change according to control measures , demographics , and quality of accessible health care .
How should the world respond as the threat mounts that the virus will go global ?
China has quarantined over 80 million people .
Door-to-door searches for suspect cases are warehousing people in makeshift quarantine camps .
Mandatory cremation , already a touchy subject , is fueling further upset .
Hubei residents are now into their fourth @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are tightening across the rest of the nation .
Mainland China has been quarantined from Hong Kong .
Over 50 countries have implemented travel bans or restrictions .
Before moving further down this path of coercion and limitation , it is worth knowing how this became the norm and considering whether these kinds of measures are the wisest response .
This helps to put pandemics into perspective .
A pathological obsession with highly visible and fast-moving biothreats must not distract from attention to broader public health measures and access to modern medicine for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bias in epidemic control responses , with their emphasis on quarantine and monitoring , is one of social exclusion .
Epidemiology has a xenophobic quality , and the political character of pathogens determines the pathway of pandemics .
No state can fully control the course of a virus , but the decisions about who lives and who dies are shaped by models that may not be the wisest , or the most effective , ways of considering global health .
Outbreaks are caused by zoonoses—diseases that jump from animals to humans .
As @ @ @ @ @ @ @ contact , this was , historically , a slow process .
Malaria , for instance , took millennia to jump from primates to humans .
Yet in the last 50 years , more than 300 pathogens have appeared or reappeared , driven by climate change , desertification , increased interactions between animals and humans , weak health systems , population growth , and urbanization .
Typically , outbreaks are contained using public health measures of quarantine , isolation , surveillance , and vaccination .
This disease-control approach targets a single pathogen at a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a bacterial disease primarily transmitted by fleas living on black rats .
Plague struck rapidly , caused agonizing and degrading symptoms , and killed fast—typically within three days .
With an average kill rate around 70 percent , there were sometimes too few living people left to bury the dead .
The second great global pandemic of plague , beginning in 1347 and lasting until the 17th century , killed approximately 100 million people—a quarter of the world ’ s population at the time .
The resulting widespread panics drove the first @ @ @ @ @ @ @ following centuries .
Naval blockades , military quarantines , and cordons sanitaires were used to isolate cities and even entire countries .
Boards of health identified suspect cases in door-to-door searches and forcibly imprisoned the infected in pest houses , a nasty innovation designed to protect other citizens , and they required family members exposed to plague to adopt a household quarantine for 40 days .
Compulsory burial of the dead was enforced .
Social distancing was facilitated by carrying a 3-foot pole to keep others at a safe distance .
In the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the spread of smallpox , a viral disease transmitted only by humans , was facilitated by increasing urbanization and crowded living conditions .
It killed one-third of those it infected—and permanently scarred all survivors .
The English physician Edward Jenner ’ s smallpox vaccine , developed in 1796 , provided a new public health measure of mass protection from the 1800s on .
By the early 19th century the idea of contagion was catching on .
Although tuberculosis was the leading killer , it was cholera , the latest emerging threat , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ symptoms and killing within hours .
Europeans who assumed Western civilization was immune to what they called “ Asiatic cholera ” were appalled when it arrived .
Cholera drove the filth theory of disease .
This aimed to prevent diseases by removal of filth using emerging technology : drains , sewers , water pipes .
Although successful in reducing mortality , filth theory was based on the narrowest vision of public health and came at the expense of dealing with the much broader causes of disease .
When a third cholera pandemic arrived @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be permanently infested with a disease they preferred to associate with filth and poverty .
They scapegoated Muslims making the hajj as travel by ship became more common .
In 1851 , the first of 14 international sanitary conferences ( distant precursors to the World Health Organization ) , saw French efforts to implement a travel ban on Muslim pilgrims from traveling by sea , going so far as to recommend using colonial power to seal off the entire Middle East , a quarantine effort that would have been at least commensurate with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the modern consensus on public health standards came in 1892 , after the opening of the Suez Canal for use by all countries in 1869 made standardized quarantine regulations necessary .
Participating states approved and ratified the first of four International Sanitary Regulations , the forerunner of today ’ s International Health Regulations , which commit all governments to stopping the spread of infectious disease and other global threats .
In the second half of the 19th century , germ theory , promoted by the French biologist Louis Pasteur , was consolidated @ @ @ @ @ @ @ first the bacterium causing tuberculosis and then cholera , and the Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis pioneered disinfectant and hand-washing .
Germ theory led to the biomedical model of illness , which assumes that each disease has a specific cause .
It also led to tropical medicine , a medical construct designed as an instrument of cultural and ideological hegemony .
Diseases that had been barriers to European colonization fell under the assault of the new technologies , carving safer spaces for Western power out of fever zones .
In Europe and North America @ @ @ @ @ @ @ reformed urban living through public health programs that improved living conditions across a broad spectrum of diseases : safe water , sanitation , waste collection , sewage disposal , ventilation , and so on .
In the tropics , metropolitan powers applied tropical hygiene .
Public health campaigns targeted single diseases specifically chosen to protect Europeans against the most menacing “ tropical ” threats .
This approach—the West ’ s selective xenophobic attitude toward the global south—mirrors the Sanitation Conference in 1851 and the international response to the coronavirus today .
Then , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( WHO ) redefined health as “ a state of complete physical , mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.
” This was a radical shift from the “ absence of disease ” definition used by the Sanitary Conferences .
To enable this positive vision , the 1946 International Health Conference extended WHO from a narrow focus of negative aspects of public health—vaccination and tools to combat infection—to the positive aspects : better food , physical education , medical care , and health insurance .
Health and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ systems would serve to create “ a common front against poverty and disease ” to protect all countries .
But this new model couldn ’ t survive the simultaneous onset of the Cold War .
The superpowers preferred a model of global health cooperation grounded in the international politics of disease control .
This exerted pressure on WHO to default to disease control , widely considered suitable for the focus on medical and scientific technologies .
Today , the international response is still focused largely on diseases posing a threat to the West @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on containment .
Endemic diseases that kill far more people , such as malaria , cholera , and TB , receive much less funding and attention , and root causes are not addressed .
Pathogens follow familiar routes .
Germs are frequent flyers .
So the extent of global contagion and risk of sustained transmission and endemicity depends on global cooperation .
The international response to the coronavirus outbreak is just the latest example .
Although many Western countries benefit from the latest biomedical diagnostics and finest available medical care , much of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The failure to invest in public health and access to health care means much of the world remains ill equipped to detect viral threats , protect front-line health care workers , prevent nosocomial transmission ( which occurs within medical establishments ) , and treat those who fall ill. Because of such factors , the kill rate of a virus depends in significant part on the quality of health care in a country , while its contagiousness is enhanced in health facilities lacking effective infection prevention control measures such as gloves , goggles , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ increases the risk of nosocomial infection of both patients and health care workers .
Today , the coronavirus disease may not be the first priority for health care workers or communities without access to health care .
Weak health care systems in many countries have hospitals that lack constant electricity and running water .
Few can guarantee oxygen therapy , let alone offer intensive-care treatment .
This means there is little incentive for people who are ill to voluntarily present for testing for the coronavirus , even when testing is available .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ necessarily mean that the global spread has stabilized at the current 24 countries or that no local spread is occurring .
Africa ’ s lack of cases , despite a high flow of traffic with China , is likely due to the continent ’ s lack of diagnostic capacity .
So too may be Indonesia ’ s and Pakistan ’ s , among others .
If the virus makes it through the local summer in Africa or Indonesia , year-round transmission can occur .
That would increase the likelihood of the coronavirus becoming @ @ @ @ @ @ @ And the virus would cause annual outbreaks every flu season , posing a sustained threat .
Although great hopes are being placed on a vaccine , a deployable vaccine is at best a year away .
Vaccines are effective measures to prevent childhood illnesses .
However , they can also divert us from public health measures that are as—and sometimes more—important .
It was clean drinking water , sanitation , sewage control , and less crowded living that led to huge advances in human well-being , producing longer and healthier lives—not vaccinations alone @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tomorrow , would it work ?
Vaccines don ’ t protect us—vaccinations do .
The anti-vaccine movement dates back to the smallpox vaccine , which despite its enormous success encountered public resistance .
The near-global surge of measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases is a barometer of distrust in vaccines and authorities .
That ’ s a particularly critical question in China , where a range of scandals have driven mistrust .
The emergence in several countries of vaccine-derived poliovirus ( a live polio vaccine that mutates into a virulent form ) reflects critically @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a weakened and poor population , vaccine uptake , and hence immunity , is compromised by severe malnutrition , malaria , and other diseases .
Vaccines are also expensive—as is the process of distributing them .
Congo ’ s ongoing Ebola outbreak illustrates the difficulties this involves .
For the first time , we have diagnostics , a vaccine , and effective treatment .
Yet the epidemic persists , with a mortality rate still at 65 percent .
Although Ebola is the first epidemic in a conflict zone , the biggest problem is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the response .
The biomedical model subordinates people to the disease .
The world needs a model that puts people first .
Just as individual health is not the absence of disease , at a societal or even global level , the health of a population can not be defined by the absence of outbreaks .
This long-standing obsession with disease control and biomedical bias diverts from the importance of access to health care .
This is international dereliction of duty that is inimical to the control of global threats .
Under @ @ @ @ @ @ @ universal health care is a mantra , WHO can transcend this exclusively disease-centric approach and reinforce the need for systemic reorientation in how the international community responds to threats .
Right now , there is no putting the coronavirus back in the bottle .
It is time to expand from firefighting to fireproofing .
Even if containment limits the spread of disease , other outbreaks will keep happening , as long as animals ’ diseases keep jumping to humans .
Pandemics are the single biggest threat humanity faces .
The question is : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ our collective will to prevent them ?

Outbreaks are inevitable. Whether they become pandemics—the uncontrolled spread of contagious diseases across countries and continents—depends on our response. Pandemics have always depended upon fast travel networks and dense populations, once relatively unusual, now a global norm from Nairobi to Jakarta.
Outbreaks are inevitable. Whether they become pandemics—the uncontrolled spread of contagious diseases across countries and continents—depends on our response. Pandemics have always depended upon fast travel networks and dense populations, once relatively unusual, now a global norm from Nairobi to Jakarta.
The Ebola virus outbreak in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo is one such pandemic threat. After more than 18 months, just three cases are left. Yet Congo and many other deeply vulnerable countries in Africa and elsewhere are already screening for novel coronavirus, expected to be the latest scourge. The spectrum of illness the virus causes is now referred to as COVID-19, a label that looks more like a license plate than a diagnosis.
The coronavirus is still technically only epidemic—it has not yet moved in significant numbers outside of China. As of Feb. 14 there were over 60,000 confirmed cases in China and fewer than 500 cases in 24 other countries. Four of those countries report cases where infection occurred outside China and outside the reporting country. Transmission between humans has occurred in at least 12 countries, predominantly limited to intimate contacts.
Cases on a cruise ship of 3,600 passengers, involuntarily quarantined, jumped to 174, while the virus jumped ashore anyway. Residents of a Hong Kong building infected 10 floors apart raise concerns of transmission through buildings—and of considerable concern is the transmission to 11 people by an apparently asymptomatic British citizen. Today’s report of 1,716 infected healthcare workers in China already exceeds the global total of healthcare workers infected during SARS in 2002-2003.
Uncertainty is the defining characteristic of any new pathogen. Analysts cannot be certain of transmission: how far and wide it will spread. Contagion and lethality are not fixed quantities but variables that change according to control measures, demographics, and quality of accessible health care.
Before moving further down this path of coercion and limitation, it is worth knowing how this became the norm and considering whether these kinds of measures are the wisest response.
How should the world respond as the threat mounts that the virus will go global? China has quarantined over 80 million people. Door-to-door searches for suspect cases are warehousing people in makeshift quarantine camps. Mandatory cremation, already a touchy subject, is fueling further upset. Hubei residents are now into their fourth week of total lockdown, while restrictions are tightening across the rest of the nation. Mainland China has been quarantined from Hong Kong. Over 50 countries have implemented travel bans or restrictions.
Before moving further down this path of coercion and limitation, it is worth knowing how this became the norm and considering whether these kinds of measures are the wisest response. This helps to put pandemics into perspective. A pathological obsession with highly visible and fast-moving biothreats must not distract from attention to broader public health measures and access to modern medicine for the populations they infect.
The biomedical bias in epidemic control responses, with their emphasis on quarantine and monitoring, is one of social exclusion. Epidemiology has a xenophobic quality, and the political character of pathogens determines the pathway of pandemics. No state can fully control the course of a virus, but the decisions about who lives and who dies are shaped by models that may not be the wisest, or the most effective, ways of considering global health.
Outbreaks are caused by zoonoses—diseases that jump from animals to humans. As jumping the species barrier requires considerable personal contact, this was, historically, a slow process. Malaria, for instance, took millennia to jump from primates to humans. Yet in the last 50 years, more than 300 pathogens have appeared or reappeared, driven by climate change, desertification, increased interactions between animals and humans, weak health systems, population growth, and urbanization.
Typically, outbreaks are contained using public health measures of quarantine, isolation, surveillance, and vaccination. This disease-control approach targets a single pathogen at a time. This process began with plague, a bacterial disease primarily transmitted by fleas living on black rats. Plague struck rapidly, caused agonizing and degrading symptoms, and killed fast—typically within three days. With an average kill rate around 70 percent, there were sometimes too few living people left to bury the dead. The second great global pandemic of plague, beginning in 1347 and lasting until the 17th century, killed approximately 100 million people—a quarter of the world’s population at the time.
The resulting widespread panics drove the first organized attempts at public health over the following centuries. Naval blockades, military quarantines, and cordons sanitaires were used to isolate cities and even entire countries. Boards of health identified suspect cases in door-to-door searches and forcibly imprisoned the infected in pest houses, a nasty innovation designed to protect other citizens, and they required family members exposed to plague to adopt a household quarantine for 40 days. Compulsory burial of the dead was enforced. Social distancing was facilitated by carrying a 3-foot pole to keep others at a safe distance.
In the 18th century in Europe and the Americas, the spread of smallpox, a viral disease transmitted only by humans, was facilitated by increasing urbanization and crowded living conditions. It killed one-third of those it infected—and permanently scarred all survivors. The English physician Edward Jenner’s smallpox vaccine, developed in 1796, provided a new public health measure of mass protection from the 1800s on.
By the early 19th century the idea of contagion was catching on. Although tuberculosis was the leading killer, it was cholera, the latest emerging threat, that was most feared—striking suddenly with humiliating symptoms and killing within hours. Europeans who assumed Western civilization was immune to what they called “Asiatic cholera” were appalled when it arrived.
Cholera drove the filth theory of disease. This aimed to prevent diseases by removal of filth using emerging technology: drains, sewers, water pipes. Although successful in reducing mortality, filth theory was based on the narrowest vision of public health and came at the expense of dealing with the much broader causes of disease.
When a third cholera pandemic arrived, xenophobic Westerners became afraid Europe would be permanently infested with a disease they preferred to associate with filth and poverty. They scapegoated Muslims making the hajj as travel by ship became more common. In 1851, the first of 14 international sanitary conferences (distant precursors to the World Health Organization), saw French efforts to implement a travel ban on Muslim pilgrims from traveling by sea, going so far as to recommend using colonial power to seal off the entire Middle East, a quarantine effort that would have been at least commensurate with those in China today.
The beginnings of the modern consensus on public health standards came in 1892, after the opening of the Suez Canal for use by all countries in 1869 made standardized quarantine regulations necessary. Participating states approved and ratified the first of four International Sanitary Regulations, the forerunner of today’s International Health Regulations, which commit all governments to stopping the spread of infectious disease and other global threats.
In the second half of the 19th century, germ theory, promoted by the French biologist Louis Pasteur, was consolidated after the German doctor Robert Koch isolated first the bacterium causing tuberculosis and then cholera, and the Hungarian physician Ignaz Semmelweis pioneered disinfectant and hand-washing.
Germ theory led to the biomedical model of illness, which assumes that each disease has a specific cause. It also led to tropical medicine, a medical construct designed as an instrument of cultural and ideological hegemony. Diseases that had been barriers to European colonization fell under the assault of the new technologies, carving safer spaces for Western power out of fever zones.
In Europe and North America, hygiene drove a sanitarian movement that reformed urban living through public health programs that improved living conditions across a broad spectrum of diseases: safe water, sanitation, waste collection, sewage disposal, ventilation, and so on. In the tropics, metropolitan powers applied tropical hygiene. Public health campaigns targeted single diseases specifically chosen to protect Europeans against the most menacing “tropical” threats. This approach—the West’s selective xenophobic attitude toward the global south—mirrors the Sanitation Conference in 1851 and the international response to the coronavirus today.
Then, in 1946, the World Health Organization (WHO) redefined health as “a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.” This was a radical shift from the “absence of disease” definition used by the Sanitary Conferences.
To enable this positive vision, the 1946 International Health Conference extended WHO from a narrow focus of negative aspects of public health—vaccination and tools to combat infection—to the positive aspects: better food, physical education, medical care, and health insurance. Health and social measures developed through national public health systems would serve to create “a common front against poverty and disease” to protect all countries.
But this new model couldn’t survive the simultaneous onset of the Cold War. The superpowers preferred a model of global health cooperation grounded in the international politics of disease control. This exerted pressure on WHO to default to disease control, widely considered suitable for the focus on medical and scientific technologies.
Today, the international response is still focused largely on diseases posing a threat to the West, and the official focus is still on containment. Endemic diseases that kill far more people, such as malaria, cholera, and TB, receive much less funding and attention, and root causes are not addressed.
Pathogens follow familiar routes. Germs are frequent flyers. So the extent of global contagion and risk of sustained transmission and endemicity depends on global cooperation.
The international response to the coronavirus outbreak is just the latest example. Although many Western countries benefit from the latest biomedical diagnostics and finest available medical care, much of the world lacks adequate health care.
The failure to invest in public health and access to health care means much of the world remains ill equipped to detect viral threats, protect front-line health care workers, prevent nosocomial transmission (which occurs within medical establishments), and treat those who fall ill.
Because of such factors, the kill rate of a virus depends in significant part on the quality of health care in a country, while its contagiousness is enhanced in health facilities lacking effective infection prevention control measures such as gloves, goggles, gowns, and patient isolation. This increases the risk of nosocomial infection of both patients and health care workers.
Today, the coronavirus disease may not be the first priority for health care workers or communities without access to health care. Weak health care systems in many countries have hospitals that lack constant electricity and running water. Few can guarantee oxygen therapy, let alone offer intensive-care treatment. This means there is little incentive for people who are ill to voluntarily present for testing for the coronavirus, even when testing is available.
The limited number of diagnosed cases does not necessarily mean that the global spread has stabilized at the current 24 countries or that no local spread is occurring. Africa’s lack of cases, despite a high flow of traffic with China, is likely due to the continent’s lack of diagnostic capacity. So too may be Indonesia’s and Pakistan’s, among others.
If the virus makes it through the local summer in Africa or Indonesia, year-round transmission can occur. That would increase the likelihood of the coronavirus becoming endemic and epidemic, like malaria. And the virus would cause annual outbreaks every flu season, posing a sustained threat.
Although great hopes are being placed on a vaccine, a deployable vaccine is at best a year away. Vaccines are effective measures to prevent childhood illnesses. However, they can also divert us from public health measures that are as—and sometimes more—important. It was clean drinking water, sanitation, sewage control, and less crowded living that led to huge advances in human well-being, producing longer and healthier lives—not vaccinations alone.
And if we had the vaccine tomorrow, would it work?
Vaccines don’t protect us—vaccinations do. The anti-vaccine movement dates back to the smallpox vaccine, which despite its enormous success encountered public resistance. The near-global surge of measles and other vaccine-preventable diseases is a barometer of distrust in vaccines and authorities. That’s a particularly critical question in China, where a range of scandals have driven mistrust. The emergence in several countries of vaccine-derived poliovirus (a live polio vaccine that mutates into a virulent form) reflects critically low rates of vaccination. And in a weakened and poor population, vaccine uptake, and hence immunity, is compromised by severe malnutrition, malaria, and other diseases. Vaccines are also expensive—as is the process of distributing them.
Congo’s ongoing Ebola outbreak illustrates the difficulties this involves. For the first time, we have diagnostics, a vaccine, and effective treatment. Yet the epidemic persists, with a mortality rate still at 65 percent. Although Ebola is the first epidemic in a conflict zone, the biggest problem is not insecurity but lack of public trust in the response.
The biomedical model subordinates people to the disease. The world needs a model that puts people first. Just as individual health is not the absence of disease, at a societal or even global level, the health of a population cannot be defined by the absence of outbreaks.
This long-standing obsession with disease control and biomedical bias diverts from the importance of access to health care. This is international dereliction of duty that is inimical to the control of global threats.
Under Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, for whom universal health care is a mantra, WHO can transcend this exclusively disease-centric approach and reinforce the need for systemic reorientation in how the international community responds to threats.
Right now, there is no putting the coronavirus back in the bottle. It is time to expand from firefighting to fireproofing. Even if containment limits the spread of disease, other outbreaks will keep happening, as long as animals’ diseases keep jumping to humans.
Pandemics are the single biggest threat humanity faces. The question is: Do we collectively care enough to exercise our collective will to prevent them?


foreignpolicy--2020-02-14--Pompeo Aims to Cut Funds for Program Honoring Envoy Killed in Benghazi

Pompeo Aims to Cut Funds for Program Honoring Envoy Killed in Benghazi As a little-known congressman from Kansas , Mike Pompeo once said his top priority was getting to the bottom of the killing of J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi , Libya , calling them heroes who had been let down by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other Democratic leaders who put politics above the safety of their own people .
But as U.S. secretary of state , Pompeo is now pressing Congress to eliminate a $ 5 million contribution to a charity dedicated to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to zero out funding for the Stevens Initiative , which promotes online exchanges among students in the United States and the Middle East and North Africa , is buried on page 33 of the State Department ’ s fiscal year 2021 budget proposal , along with proposed cuts for cultural exchange and study programs for Arab Israelis , Tibet , Taiwan , Timor Leste , and others .
The program , according to officials familiar with the matter , came about in part at the urging of Stevens ’ s family after the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the 2012 attack on the U.S. government facilities there .
“ [ Stevens ’ s ] interest was in communities we couldn ’ t otherwise reach , ” said one official who worked with Stevens and spoke on condition of anonymity .
Naming a program focused on cultural exchange after Stevens was an apt way to honor the late ambassador for both the family and the department , the official said .
The Stevens funding is one of a slew of programs on the chopping block under public diplomacy .
The budget proposal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by $ 95.7 million from its fiscal year 2020 budget estimate of $ 619.5 million .
It also calls for the elimination of more than $ 173 million for the U.S. Agency for Global Media , which runs the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty , major U.S.-funded international broadcasters and news outlets .
A spokesperson for the State Department noted that despite the elimination of a line item funding the Stevens Initiative in the Trump administration ’ s budget proposal , the department would still have the flexibility to fund @ @ @ @ @ @ @ item .
However , the official , who spoke under the condition of anonymity , gave no indication that the department intended to do so .
State ’ s Educational and Cultural Exchange office , which has funded the Stevens Initiative , has requested a total of $ 310 million for fiscal year 2021 , the official added .
If approved , the money would be used to fund “ educational and cultural exchange programs that target populations and regions of strategic importance to U.S. national Security and foreign policy objectives.
” No @ @ @ @ @ @ @ office ’ s funding priorities “ until a final budget is approved and enacted , ” the spokesperson added .
A U.S. official who spoke to Foreign Policy said proposals to zero out the funding for the Stevens Initiative and cuts to public diplomacy overall run counter to “ everything [ Stevens ] stood for ” as a diplomat .
“ Part of the reason his family made the argument in the first place they should name a program after him is because he was very open in advocating for exchanges with other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Stevens , a highly respected career foreign service officer , joined the State Department in 1991 and served in posts across the Middle East during his two decades in government .
He was the first U.S. ambassador in over 30 years who was killed in the line of duty and one of only six in U.S. history killed by militants , according to the State Department ’ s Office of the Historian .
The recipient of the State Department funding in question , the Stevens Initiative , is affiliated with the Aspen Institute @ @ @ @ @ @ @ We have enjoyed a great relationship with the State Department , the work that we do has a lot of impact with the students we serve and the program has enjoyed bipartisan support from Congress , ” Mohamed Abdel-Kader , the executive director of the Stevens Initiative , told Foreign Policy when asked about the proposed cuts .
The initiative has reached tens of thousands of students since its inception through virtual cultural exchanges , according to the Stevens Initiative website .
It received $ 5 million in State Department funding in fiscal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the State Department budget documents .
Officials say some of the steep proposed cuts to the State Department are driven by the White House ’ s Office of Management and Budget , including significant cuts to funding for public diplomacy .
Attacks on U.S. diplomatic and CIA compounds in Benghazi , Libya , in 2012 sparked a years-long hyperpartisan investigation on Capitol Hill over whether Clinton and other Obama administration officials failed to protect Stevens and the other Americans , the information management officer Sean Smith and the CIA contractors Tyrone Woods @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to accusations from former State Department officials and members of Stevens ’ s family that Republican lawmakers were politicizing the deaths of Americans in the run-up to the 2016 elections .
Pompeo was an outspoken member of the committee overseeing the Benghazi investigation who once accused Clinton of “ put [ ting ] her own political legacy ahead of the people that she sent into harm ’ s way .
”

As a little-known congressman from Kansas, Mike Pompeo once said his top priority was getting to the bottom of the killing of J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi, Libya, calling them heroes who had been let down by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other Democratic leaders who put politics above the safety of their own people.
As a little-known congressman from Kansas, Mike Pompeo once said his top priority was getting to the bottom of the killing of J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in Benghazi, Libya, calling them heroes who had been let down by then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other Democratic leaders who put politics above the safety of their own people.
But as U.S. secretary of state, Pompeo is now pressing Congress to eliminate a $5 million contribution to a charity dedicated to Stevens’s memory. The proposal to zero out funding for the Stevens Initiative, which promotes online exchanges among students in the United States and the Middle East and North Africa, is buried on page 33 of the State Department’s fiscal year 2021 budget proposal, along with proposed cuts for cultural exchange and study programs for Arab Israelis, Tibet, Taiwan, Timor Leste, and others.
The program, according to officials familiar with the matter, came about in part at the urging of Stevens’s family after the U.S. ambassador to Libya was killed in the 2012 attack on the U.S. government facilities there. “[Stevens’s] interest was in communities we couldn’t otherwise reach,” said one official who worked with Stevens and spoke on condition of anonymity. Naming a program focused on cultural exchange after Stevens was an apt way to honor the late ambassador for both the family and the department, the official said.
The Stevens funding is one of a slew of programs on the chopping block under public diplomacy. The budget proposal calls for decreasing funding for public diplomacy by $95.7 million from its fiscal year 2020 budget estimate of $619.5 million. It also calls for the elimination of more than $173 million for the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which runs the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, major U.S.-funded international broadcasters and news outlets.
A spokesperson for the State Department noted that despite the elimination of a line item funding the Stevens Initiative in the Trump administration’s budget proposal, the department would still have the flexibility to fund programs like it under a separate line item. However, the official, who spoke under the condition of anonymity, gave no indication that the department intended to do so.
State’s Educational and Cultural Exchange office, which has funded the Stevens Initiative, has requested a total of $310 million for fiscal year 2021, the official added. If approved, the money would be used to fund “educational and cultural exchange programs that target populations and regions of strategic importance to U.S. national Security and foreign policy objectives.” No specific decisions will be taken on the office’s funding priorities “until a final budget is approved and enacted,” the spokesperson added.
A U.S. official who spoke to Foreign Policy said proposals to zero out the funding for the Stevens Initiative and cuts to public diplomacy overall run counter to “everything [Stevens] stood for” as a diplomat. “Part of the reason his family made the argument in the first place they should name a program after him is because he was very open in advocating for exchanges with other societies,” the official said.
Stevens, a highly respected career foreign service officer, joined the State Department in 1991 and served in posts across the Middle East during his two decades in government. He was the first U.S. ambassador in over 30 years who was killed in the line of duty and one of only six in U.S. history killed by militants, according to the State Department’s Office of the Historian.
The recipient of the State Department funding in question, the Stevens Initiative, is affiliated with the Aspen Institute, a nonprofit think tank. “We have enjoyed a great relationship with the State Department, the work that we do has a lot of impact with the students we serve and the program has enjoyed bipartisan support from Congress,” Mohamed Abdel-Kader, the executive director of the Stevens Initiative, told Foreign Policy when asked about the proposed cuts.
The initiative has reached tens of thousands of students since its inception through virtual cultural exchanges, according to the Stevens Initiative website. It received $5 million in State Department funding in fiscal years 2019 and in 2020, according to the State Department budget documents.
Officials say some of the steep proposed cuts to the State Department are driven by the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, including significant cuts to funding for public diplomacy.
Attacks on U.S. diplomatic and CIA compounds in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012 sparked a years-long hyperpartisan investigation on Capitol Hill over whether Clinton and other Obama administration officials failed to protect Stevens and the other Americans, the information management officer Sean Smith and the CIA contractors Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty. The investigations led to accusations from former State Department officials and members of Stevens’s family that Republican lawmakers were politicizing the deaths of Americans in the run-up to the 2016 elections.
Pompeo was an outspoken member of the committee overseeing the Benghazi investigation who once accused Clinton of “put[ting] her own political legacy ahead of the people that she sent into harm’s way.”