foreignpolicy--2020-06-22--Top Trump Pentagon Nominee Walks Back Offensive Tweets

U.S. President Donald Trump ’ s embattled pick to be the Pentagon ’ s top policy official is walking back Islamophobic and offensive tweets unearthed earlier this month that led several Democrats to oppose his nomination .
Anthony Tata , a retired Army brigadier general and a longtime defender of Trump on Fox News who is the White House ’ s intended nominee to be undersecretary of defense for policy , caused a firestorm on Capitol Hill when CNN revealed 2018 tweets that falsely referred to former President Barack Obama as a Muslim and a “ terrorist leader.
” In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was sent to Sen. Jim Inhofe , an Oklahoma Republican , and Sen. Jack Reed , a Rhode Island Democrat , the chairman and ranking member on the Senate Armed Services committee , Tata said he had come to “ deeply regret ” the tweets and called them an “ aberration in a four-decade thread of faithful public service.
” “ I have a strong record of inclusivity and bipartisanship in my commentary .
However , I did misspeak in 2018 on Twitter in hyperbolic conversations , ” Tata wrote .
“ There @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for which I take complete responsibility and also fully retract and denounce.
” Tata used much of the eight-paragraph letter to bolster his case for the Pentagon job , touting his military service in Bosnia , Macedonia , Kosovo , and Afghanistan , and his work in the Washington , D.C. , and Wake County , N.C. , public school systems .
Tata retired from the military in 2009 after the Army found that he committed adultery with at least two women during a past marriage and forged a court order in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be able to judge me on my entire 30+ year career and record of achievement and not a few regrettable tweets I fully denounce , ” Tata wrote in the margin at the end of the letter .
But the news of Tata ’ s tweets—which included a spat with former CIA Director John Brennan—already sent Congress into a tailspin last week , with six Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee publicly opposing his nomination .
Tata was tapped to replace John Rood , whom Trump fired in February after Rood opposed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ military aid for Ukraine .
Reed , in an unprecedented statement through spokesman Chip Unruh last week , said that “ there are real warning signs flashing ” with Tata ’ s nomination and that he would oppose it if it moved forward .
Reed ’ s opposition to the nomination cuts against his usual preference to only comment on nominees after testimony , according to a statement Unruh gave to Politico last week .
The former brigadier general has not yet received a date for a hearing before the committee .
Former @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Massachusetts and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York also said they would oppose Tata , as did Hawaii ’ s Sen. Mazie Hirono , Michigan ’ s Sen. Gary Peters , and Connecticut ’ s Sen. Richard Blumenthal .
Tata is currently serving in the Pentagon as a senior advisor to Defense Secretary Mark Esper , Foreign Policy first reported in May .
CNN ’ s review of Tata ’ s tweets and appearances on Fox News and talk radio pointed to a pattern of partisan jabs at Obama and congressional Democrats .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ anti-Semite ” in a 2018 radio appearance after saying the former commander in chief “ really disliked Israel ” the year before .
He also said now-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Maxine Waters , both California Democrats , “ have always been the same violent extremists.
” Tata had already been under fire from the Muslim civil rights advocacy group Council on American-Islamic Relations for falsely portraying British Muslim men as engaging in gang rape as a rite of passage in a spy novel released in 2019 .
But the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ point for several prominent retired generals who had endorsed Tata ’ s nod to take over the Pentagon ’ s policy shop , including a former U.S. Central Command chief , retired Gen. Joseph Votel , and a former U.S. Special Operations Command chief , retired Gen. Tony Thomas .
Both pulled their support for the embattled nominee .
Votel told Foreign Policy on Monday that Tata ’ s disavowal would not change his decision to oppose the nomination .
Tata ’ s selection to be the Pentagon ’ s top policy official @ @ @ @ @ @ @ loyalty to Trump are leaving in favor of White House partisans , with two of the agency ’ s highest-ranking women leaving in just the last week .
On Wednesday , Kathryn Wheelbarger resigned from her role performing the duties of assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs , just days after she was passed over for a leading Defense Department intelligence job amid concerns over her loyalty to Trump .
Elaine McCusker , the Pentagon ’ s acting comptroller , resigned on Tuesday after her nomination for the permanent post was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ House ’ s halting of military aid to Ukraine .
Meanwhile , with Trump ’ s first National Security Advisor Michael Flynn cleared by the Justice Department of charges of lying to the FBI , the Defense Department has recently opened its doors to officials linked to the former Army general .
Simone Ledeen , the daughter of Flynn ’ s co-author on a 2016 book about the threat posed by “ radical Islam , ” took the helm of the Pentagon ’ s Middle East shop in April , followed by Ezra @ @ @ @ @ @ @ director under Flynn , who joined the agency as deputy assistant secretary of defense for counternarcotics .
Correction , June 22 , 2020 : Anthony Tata ’ s retirement from the Army became effective in 2009 .
A previous version of this article misstated his retirement date .
Elaine McCusker submitted her resignation on Tuesday .
A previous version of this article misstated her resignation date .

U.S. President Donald Trump’s embattled pick to be the Pentagon’s top policy official is walking back Islamophobic and offensive tweets unearthed earlier this month that led several Democrats to oppose his nomination.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s embattled pick to be the Pentagon’s top policy official is walking back Islamophobic and offensive tweets unearthed earlier this month that led several Democrats to oppose his nomination.
Anthony Tata, a retired Army brigadier general and a longtime defender of Trump on Fox News who is the White House’s intended nominee to be undersecretary of defense for policy, caused a firestorm on Capitol Hill when CNN revealed 2018 tweets that falsely referred to former President Barack Obama as a Muslim and a “terrorist leader.”
In a letter obtained by Foreign Policy that was sent to Sen. Jim Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, and Sen. Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat, the chairman and ranking member on the Senate Armed Services committee, Tata said he had come to “deeply regret” the tweets and called them an “aberration in a four-decade thread of faithful public service.”
“I have a strong record of inclusivity and bipartisanship in my commentary. However, I did misspeak in 2018 on Twitter in hyperbolic conversations,” Tata wrote. “There is no excuse for those comments, for which I take complete responsibility and also fully retract and denounce.”
Tata used much of the eight-paragraph letter to bolster his case for the Pentagon job, touting his military service in Bosnia, Macedonia, Kosovo, and Afghanistan, and his work in the Washington, D.C., and Wake County, N.C., public school systems. Tata retired from the military in 2009 after the Army found that he committed adultery with at least two women during a past marriage and forged a court order in the case.
“Gentlemen—I hope you will be able to judge me on my entire 30+ year career and record of achievement and not a few regrettable tweets I fully denounce,” Tata wrote in the margin at the end of the letter.
But the news of Tata’s tweets—which included a spat with former CIA Director John Brennan—already sent Congress into a tailspin last week, with six Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee publicly opposing his nomination. Tata was tapped to replace John Rood, whom Trump fired in February after Rood opposed the White House’s freeze on military aid for Ukraine.
Reed, in an unprecedented statement through spokesman Chip Unruh last week, said that “there are real warning signs flashing” with Tata’s nomination and that he would oppose it if it moved forward. Reed’s opposition to the nomination cuts against his usual preference to only comment on nominees after testimony, according to a statement Unruh gave to Politico last week. The former brigadier general has not yet received a date for a hearing before the committee. Former Democratic presidential contenders Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York also said they would oppose Tata, as did Hawaii’s Sen. Mazie Hirono, Michigan’s Sen. Gary Peters, and Connecticut’s Sen. Richard Blumenthal. Tata is currently serving in the Pentagon as a senior advisor to Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Foreign Policy first reported in May.
CNN’s review of Tata’s tweets and appearances on Fox News and talk radio pointed to a pattern of partisan jabs at Obama and congressional Democrats. Tata referred to Obama as an “anti-Semite” in a 2018 radio appearance after saying the former commander in chief “really disliked Israel” the year before. He also said now-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Maxine Waters, both California Democrats, “have always been the same violent extremists.”
Tata had already been under fire from the Muslim civil rights advocacy group Council on American-Islamic Relations for falsely portraying British Muslim men as engaging in gang rape as a rite of passage in a spy novel released in 2019. But the release of the tweets proved a turning point for several prominent retired generals who had endorsed Tata’s nod to take over the Pentagon’s policy shop, including a former U.S. Central Command chief, retired Gen. Joseph Votel, and a former U.S. Special Operations Command chief, retired Gen. Tony Thomas. Both pulled their support for the embattled nominee.
Votel told Foreign Policy on Monday that Tata’s disavowal would not change his decision to oppose the nomination.
Tata’s selection to be the Pentagon’s top policy official comes as top officials questioned over their loyalty to Trump are leaving in favor of White House partisans, with two of the agency’s highest-ranking women leaving in just the last week.
On Wednesday, Kathryn Wheelbarger resigned from her role performing the duties of assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, just days after she was passed over for a leading Defense Department intelligence job amid concerns over her loyalty to Trump. Elaine McCusker, the Pentagon’s acting comptroller, resigned on Tuesday after her nomination for the permanent post was rescinded. McCusker had opposed the White House’s halting of military aid to Ukraine.
Meanwhile, with Trump’s first National Security Advisor Michael Flynn cleared by the Justice Department of charges of lying to the FBI, the Defense Department has recently opened its doors to officials linked to the former Army general.
Simone Ledeen, the daughter of Flynn’s co-author on a 2016 book about the threat posed by “radical Islam,” took the helm of the Pentagon’s Middle East shop in April, followed by Ezra Cohen, a former National Security Council director under Flynn, who joined the agency as deputy assistant secretary of defense for counternarcotics.
Correction, June 22, 2020: Anthony Tata’s retirement from the Army became effective in 2009. A previous version of this article misstated his retirement date.
Elaine McCusker submitted her resignation on Tuesday. A previous version of this article misstated her resignation date.


foreignpolicy--2020-06-23--When Did Racism Become Solely a Domestic Issue?

When Did Racism Become Solely a Domestic Issue ?
As Black Lives Matter protests spread around the globe , scholars of international relations are resurrecting difficult conversations about the detrimental ways in which the field has ignored race and racism .
Those who study history and Africana studies have long shown how racism weaves through national and international affairs , knotting domestic and foreign policy at key junctures .
Many IR experts , however , have carefully avoided reflecting on the role race plays in our field .
If IR scholars hope to truly understand the current global turbulence , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t be solely a domestic issue .
The exploration of race is hardly foreign to IR ; up until World War II , the study of race and of IR were inexorably linked through a debate over imperial administration ( in which colonies are governed in order to maintain the rule of a white and usually overseas elite over a nonwhite indigenous populace ) .
Throughout the 20th century , Black intellectuals , organizations , and movements considered racism in the United States to be a global issue that demanded a similarly global @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the African American sociologist W.E.B .
Du Bois famously proposed the color line as the “ relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa , in America and the islands of the sea.
” He viewed it as an analytical device with which to unpack the trajectory of U.S. development as part of a global power relations , even employing it as a tool to reexamine the international causes of World War I .
By the end of the next world war , domestic racism within the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shaping world affairs .
In 1945 , Metz Lochard , the Haitian-born editor in chief of the influential African American newspaper the Chicago Defender , proposed that : “ The World Security Conference in San Francisco has but one meaning to the Negro people—that is , how far democratic principles shall be stretched to embrace the rights of our brothers in the colonies and to what extent the American Negro ’ s own security at home shall be guaranteed.
” Lochard ’ s hopes were widely shared .
For many Black Americans the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for redressing the racism that was endemic in the United States .
At the end of 1948 , the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was unanimously adopted by the U.N. General Assembly .
In 1951 , a triad of left-leaning groups ( the International Labor Defense , the National Negro Congress , and the National Federation for Constitutional Liberties ) came together in Detroit to form the Civil Rights Congress .
The organization documented cases of racial violence with a view to charging the United States with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the U.N .
The right was no less aware of the impact of domestic racism on U.S. international relations .
During the same period , Frank E. Holman , a Rhodes scholar and president of the American Bar Association , argued that international human rights treaties would erode domestic liberties .
Holman ’ s campaign focused the attention of Southern senators on the prospect that the Genocide Convention , if ratified by the United States , would act as a lever to force the enactment of federal anti-lynching legislation .
( Such legislation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ found their way into the Bricker Amendment , which sought to curtail the president ’ s constitutionally mandated treaty-making powers .
The amendment was only narrowly defeated , but in 1953 President Dwight D. Eisenhower bowed to such pressures and effectively recused the United States from a leadership role in promoting human rights instruments .
Washington then ratified no more international human rights treaties until 1977 .
And it did not ratify the Genocide Convention until 1988 .
African American activists and organizers did not wait for the state ; they pursued their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 1963 inauguration of the Organization of African Unity , Malcolm X created a year later the Organization of Afro-American Unity to push for Black freedom—not as a domestic civil rights issue but as an international human rights issue .
Part of the original purpose of the Organization of African Unity was to confront apartheid and its pernicious influence on the front-line states that bordered South Africa .
In 1969 , President Richard Nixon set U.S. foreign policy on a course of cooperation rather than confrontation with apartheid South Africa .
That course changed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Reagan ’ s veto of the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act in 1986 .
During this time period , apartheid became an increasingly important issue through which domestic and international concerns for racism conjoined .
Starting in the late 1970s , African American opposition to apartheid South Africa intensified .
In 1979 , Jesse Jackson , while pivoting from civil rights movements to electoral politics , visited South Africa .
His subsequent bid for the Democratic presidential nominee in 1984 buoyed the Congressional Black Caucus in its push for an anti-apartheid foreign policy .
Two @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Bob Dole confessed that the debate over sanctions had “ now become a civil rights issue.
” None of this happened in the absence of grassroots organizing .
Indeed , the 1980s anti-apartheid movement is , in at least some way , a continuation—or afterlife—of the 1950s and 1960s civil rights movement ( also called the “ Freedom Movement ” by many of its proponents ) .
Take , for instance , Ella Baker , a critically important organizer in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and a keen advocate for voting rights .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the 1970s .
Or consider Angela Davis , who provides a direct and living connection between the older Freedom Movement and the more recent Movement for Black Lives .
In 1984 , Davis supported the International Longshore and Warehouse Union in San Francisco as its members refused to unload South African cargo for 11 days .
It is iconic , to say the least , that on Juneteenth 2020 , the ILWU once again shut down the port , this time to protest homegrown police violence and racism , with Davis once again @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the mid-1980s , the anti-apartheid movement was increasingly led by students , notably Black students .
In 1988 , Barbara Ransby , a University of Michigan graduate , founded the Ella Baker-Nelson Mandela Center for Anti-Racist Education .
The center sought to link the anti-apartheid struggle to U.S. struggles that arose out of what Ruth Wilson Gilmore has described as the “ organized abandonment ” of poor and Black neighborhoods at the city and municipal level .
Over the years , organizers increasingly fixed their attention on the resurgence of police violence against @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the Movement for Black Lives are multiple and braided , they at least partially track what Du Bois understood to be the global color line .
In the United States , Cold War and post-Cold War geopolitics have brought counterinsurgency strategies and militarized policing home to U.S. citizens—especially poor and the Black citizens .
Understanding such connections will make for a richer field of international relations , and there are resources waiting in history and Africana studies .
It is not that domestic issues—or perhaps more accurately city or neighborhood issues—are less @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lived experience of racism and the political struggles that ensue .
But what is clear is that racism should be conceived as both a domestic and a foreign-policy issue .
IR scholars must take notice if they wish to adequately prepare their students for this new juncture in the life of the nation .

As Black Lives Matter protests spread around the globe, scholars of international relations are resurrecting difficult conversations about the detrimental ways in which the field has ignored race and racism. Those who study history and Africana studies have long shown how racism weaves through national and international affairs, knotting domestic and foreign policy at key junctures. Many IR experts, however, have carefully avoided reflecting on the role race plays in our field. If IR scholars hope to truly understand the current global turbulence, we must recognize that racism can’t be solely a domestic issue.
As Black Lives Matter protests spread around the globe, scholars of international relations are resurrecting difficult conversations about the detrimental ways in which the field has ignored race and racism. Those who study history and Africana studies have long shown how racism weaves through national and international affairs, knotting domestic and foreign policy at key junctures. Many IR experts, however, have carefully avoided reflecting on the role race plays in our field. If IR scholars hope to truly understand the current global turbulence, we must recognize that racism can’t be solely a domestic issue.
The exploration of race is hardly foreign to IR; up until World War II, the study of race and of IR were inexorably linked through a debate over imperial administration (in which colonies are governed in order to maintain the rule of a white and usually overseas elite over a nonwhite indigenous populace). Throughout the 20th century, Black intellectuals, organizations, and movements considered racism in the United States to be a global issue that demanded a similarly global solution. In the early 1900s, the African American sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois famously proposed the color line as the “relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea.” He viewed it as an analytical device with which to unpack the trajectory of U.S. development as part of a global power relations, even employing it as a tool to reexamine the international causes of World War I.
By the end of the next world war, domestic racism within the United States remained critical to understanding and shaping world affairs. In 1945, Metz Lochard, the Haitian-born editor in chief of the influential African American newspaper the Chicago Defender, proposed that: “The World Security Conference in San Francisco has but one meaning to the Negro people—that is, how far democratic principles shall be stretched to embrace the rights of our brothers in the colonies and to what extent the American Negro’s own security at home shall be guaranteed.”
Lochard’s hopes were widely shared. For many Black Americans the United Nations seemed to offer new avenues for redressing the racism that was endemic in the United States. At the end of 1948, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was unanimously adopted by the U.N. General Assembly. In 1951, a triad of left-leaning groups (the International Labor Defense, the National Negro Congress, and the National Federation for Constitutional Liberties) came together in Detroit to form the Civil Rights Congress. The organization documented cases of racial violence with a view to charging the United States with genocide at the Paris General Assembly of the U.N.
Freedom Movement Protests
The right was no less aware of the impact of domestic racism on U.S. international relations. During the same period, Frank E. Holman, a Rhodes scholar and president of the American Bar Association, argued that international human rights treaties would erode domestic liberties. Holman’s campaign focused the attention of Southern senators on the prospect that the Genocide Convention, if ratified by the United States, would act as a lever to force the enactment of federal anti-lynching legislation. (Such legislation remains unenacted today). These fears found their way into the Bricker Amendment, which sought to curtail the president’s constitutionally mandated treaty-making powers. The amendment was only narrowly defeated, but in 1953 President Dwight D. Eisenhower bowed to such pressures and effectively recused the United States from a leadership role in promoting human rights instruments. Washington then ratified no more international human rights treaties until 1977. And it did not ratify the Genocide Convention until 1988.
African American activists and organizers did not wait for the state; they pursued their own international response. Inspired by the 1963 inauguration of the Organization of African Unity, Malcolm X created a year later the Organization of Afro-American Unity to push for Black freedom—not as a domestic civil rights issue but as an international human rights issue.
Part of the original purpose of the Organization of African Unity was to confront apartheid and its pernicious influence on the front-line states that bordered South Africa. In 1969, President Richard Nixon set U.S. foreign policy on a course of cooperation rather than confrontation with apartheid South Africa. That course changed direction only when Congress overrode President Ronald Reagan’s veto of the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act in 1986. During this time period, apartheid became an increasingly important issue through which domestic and international concerns for racism conjoined.
Starting in the late 1970s, African American opposition to apartheid South Africa intensified. In 1979, Jesse Jackson, while pivoting from civil rights movements to electoral politics, visited South Africa. His subsequent bid for the Democratic presidential nominee in 1984 buoyed the Congressional Black Caucus in its push for an anti-apartheid foreign policy. Two years later, Republican Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole confessed that the debate over sanctions had “now become a civil rights issue.”
None of this happened in the absence of grassroots organizing. Indeed, the 1980s anti-apartheid movement is, in at least some way, a continuation—or afterlife—of the 1950s and 1960s civil rights movement (also called the “Freedom Movement” by many of its proponents). Take, for instance, Ella Baker, a critically important organizer in the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and a keen advocate for voting rights. Baker took up the anti-apartheid cause in the 1970s. Or consider Angela Davis, who provides a direct and living connection between the older Freedom Movement and the more recent Movement for Black Lives. In 1984, Davis supported the International Longshore and Warehouse Union in San Francisco as its members refused to unload South African cargo for 11 days. It is iconic, to say the least, that on Juneteenth 2020, the ILWU once again shut down the port, this time to protest homegrown police violence and racism, with Davis once again lending support to the effort.
By the mid-1980s, the anti-apartheid movement was increasingly led by students, notably Black students. In 1988, Barbara Ransby, a University of Michigan graduate, founded the Ella Baker-Nelson Mandela Center for Anti-Racist Education. The center sought to link the anti-apartheid struggle to U.S. struggles that arose out of what Ruth Wilson Gilmore has described as the “organized abandonment” of poor and Black neighborhoods at the city and municipal level. Over the years, organizers increasingly fixed their attention on the resurgence of police violence against Americans of color.
While the roots of the Movement for Black Lives are multiple and braided, they at least partially track what Du Bois understood to be the global color line. In the United States, Cold War and post-Cold War geopolitics have brought counterinsurgency strategies and militarized policing home to U.S. citizens—especially poor and the Black citizens. Understanding such connections will make for a richer field of international relations, and there are resources waiting in history and Africana studies. It is not that domestic issues—or perhaps more accurately city or neighborhood issues—are less important when it comes to examining the lived experience of racism and the political struggles that ensue. But what is clear is that racism should be conceived as both a domestic and a foreign-policy issue. IR scholars must take notice if they wish to adequately prepare their students for this new juncture in the life of the nation.


foreignpolicy--2020-06-23--Trump Administration Unveils Security Council Resolution Extending Iran Arms Embargo

The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump introduced a long-awaited U.N. Security Council ( UNSC ) draft resolution extending an arms embargo on Iran that is due to expire in October , setting the stage for a great-power clash and likely veto in the U.N. ’ s principal security body , according to a copy of the draft obtained by Foreign Policy .
The U.S. draft resolution would oblige nations , including the United States , to take active measures to prevent Iran from supplying , selling , or transferring arms to other countries , unless the Security Council committee @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The measure would also require all U.N. member states to inspect cargo transiting through their territory to check for illicit arms imports or exports from Iran , and grant them authority to seize and destroy such weapons .
It would also impose an asset freeze and travel ban on individuals responsible for violating the arms embargo , and authorize states to “ seize , inspect , freeze ( impound ) , confiscate , and dispose of any vessel in their ports.
” In an effort to ratchet up pressure on Iran , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ António Guterres report any attacks by armed groups that threaten regional stability or interference in the freedom of navigation in the region .
The resolution would also establish a special council committee to monitor compliance with the sanctions and appoint a panel of eight experts to investigate and compile information on potential violations of the embargo .
If passed , the resolution would fall under Chapter VII of the U.N. charter , making it legally binding and enforceable .
But the U.S. measure , according to several U.N. Security Council diplomats , stands @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 15-nation council .
One council diplomat said that the U.S. initiative might not even receive the minimum threshold of nine votes it needs in the council that would force a veto from one of the permanent Security Council members .
“ This is not something that they are trying to get through the council , ” said the diplomat .
Some council diplomats and other nonproliferation experts see the U.S. move as a way to score political points at home , not to do anything about Iran ’ s destabilizing activities in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ says that the objective of this exercise is to go through the arms embargo resolution , and when it fails , to use that as an excuse to get a snapback of the embargo , and if and when that fails too , to use as a political talking point in the election campaign , ” said Mark Fitzpatrick , a former State Department nonproliferation official now at the International Institute for Strategic Studies .
Since China and Russia are almost certain to ignore any U.N. arms embargo forced by U.S. maneuvers , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ability to cause mischief will be minimal , he said .
“ It ’ s not actually about stopping any arms from China and Russia , it ’ s about winning a political argument , ” he said .
The draft also condemns a string of alleged armed attacks by Iran against the United States , Iraq , and Saudi Arabia , including the September 2019 drone and missile attack against two Saudi oil installations and a Dec. 27 strike allegedly by an Iranian-backed militia against an Iraqi military base in Kirkuk province @ @ @ @ @ @ @ death of a U.S. citizen and injured several U.S. and Iraqi personnel .
The 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action ( JCPOA ) envisioned the expiration of a sweeping U.N. arms embargo on Iran after five years if Tehran complied with its obligation to scale back its nuclear activities and subject its program to expanded international monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency .
Iran had largely complied with its obligations until Trump withdrew the United States from the agreement in May 2018 and reintroduced a series of U.S. sanctions against the country @ @ @ @ @ @ @ key tenets of the JCPOA , including enriching uranium to purity levels higher than what is allowed in the deal and increasing the stockpiles of enriched uranium , according to assessments from the International Atomic Energy Agency .
China and Russia , which wield veto power over Security Council decisions , have signaled their unwillingness to approve the resolution .
Other signatories of the Iran deal—Britain , France , and Germany—have all supported retaining arms embargoes on Iran , but they also came out against the Trump administration ’ s threat to reimpose @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Washington and its closest European allies over Iran .
“ We firmly believe that any unilateral attempt to trigger UN sanctions snapback would have serious adverse consequences in the UNSC , ” the foreign ministers of Britain , France , and Germany said in a statement on June 19 .
“ We would not support such a decision which would be incompatible with our current efforts to preserve the JCPoA.
” The foreign ministers also cautioned that lifting the U.N. conventional arms embargo “ would have major implications for regional security and stability @ @ @ @ @ @ @ U.N. arms embargo , the European Union has its own ban on sending conventional weapons and missile technology to Iran through 2023 .
Senior U.S. officials have said that Russia and China would be poised to sell conventional arms to Iran if the U.N. embargo expires .
A State Department spokesperson told Foreign Policy that “ failing to extend the arms embargo will risk even greater violence in the Middle East.
” The spokesperson added that the U.S. is “ hopeful ” that the draft resolution will be supported by the Security Council @ @ @ @ @ @ @ upheld similar restrictions in the past .
“ Given that Iran ’ s activity continues to pose a threat to international peace and security , we do not see any reason why [ the ] Security Council consensus on this issue should have changed , ” the spokesperson said .
The Trump administration ’ s push to reimpose sanctions opened a unique legal debate over the United States ’ current standing with the JCPOA .
The Trump administration has argued that it is still legally a party to the deal the president disavowed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of sanctions .
This argument has angered top diplomats from other countries that were signatories to the deal , who said the United States couldn ’ t have it both ways .
Brian Hook , the Trump administration ’ s top Iran envoy , said in an interview with Foreign Policy last month that the president remains open to “ sitting down ” with Tehran for talks on a new deal .
He said that the United States would still maintain its expanding sanctions regime on Iran in the meantime .
“ We @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have a good policy in place .
The regime needs to decide when it wants to come to the table , ” he said .
Foreign Policy reporters Keith Johnson and Jack Detsch contributed to this report .
Update , June 23 , 2020 : This story was updated to include comments from a State Department spokesperson .

The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump introduced a long-awaited U.N. Security Council (UNSC) draft resolution extending an arms embargo on Iran that is due to expire in October, setting the stage for a great-power clash and likely veto in the U.N.’s principal security body, according to a copy of the draft obtained by Foreign Policy .
The administration of U.S. President Donald Trump introduced a long-awaited U.N. Security Council (UNSC) draft resolution extending an arms embargo on Iran that is due to expire in October, setting the stage for a great-power clash and likely veto in the U.N.’s principal security body, according to a copy of the draft obtained by Foreign Policy.
The U.S. draft resolution would oblige nations, including the United States, to take active measures to prevent Iran from supplying, selling, or transferring arms to other countries, unless the Security Council committee overseeing U.N. sanctions approves such transfers. The measure would also require all U.N. member states to inspect cargo transiting through their territory to check for illicit arms imports or exports from Iran, and grant them authority to seize and destroy such weapons.
It would also impose an asset freeze and travel ban on individuals responsible for violating the arms embargo, and authorize states to “seize, inspect, freeze (impound), confiscate, and dispose of any vessel in their ports.” In an effort to ratchet up pressure on Iran, the resolution would request that U.N. Secretary General António Guterres report any attacks by armed groups that threaten regional stability or interference in the freedom of navigation in the region. The resolution would also establish a special council committee to monitor compliance with the sanctions and appoint a panel of eight experts to investigate and compile information on potential violations of the embargo.
If passed, the resolution would fall under Chapter VII of the U.N. charter, making it legally binding and enforceable. But the U.S. measure, according to several U.N. Security Council diplomats, stands little chance of being adopted by the 15-nation council. One council diplomat said that the U.S. initiative might not even receive the minimum threshold of nine votes it needs in the council that would force a veto from one of the permanent Security Council members. “This is not something that they are trying to get through the council,” said the diplomat.
Some council diplomats and other nonproliferation experts see the U.S. move as a way to score political points at home, not to do anything about Iran’s destabilizing activities in the region.
“The skeptic in me says that the objective of this exercise is to go through the arms embargo resolution, and when it fails, to use that as an excuse to get a snapback of the embargo, and if and when that fails too, to use as a political talking point in the election campaign,” said Mark Fitzpatrick, a former State Department nonproliferation official now at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Since China and Russia are almost certain to ignore any U.N. arms embargo forced by U.S. maneuvers, the practical impact on Iran’s ability to cause mischief will be minimal, he said.
“It’s not actually about stopping any arms from China and Russia, it’s about winning a political argument,” he said.
The draft also condemns a string of alleged armed attacks by Iran against the United States, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia, including the September 2019 drone and missile attack against two Saudi oil installations and a Dec. 27 strike allegedly by an Iranian-backed militia against an Iraqi military base in Kirkuk province, Iraq, which resulted in the death of a U.S. citizen and injured several U.S. and Iraqi personnel.
The 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) envisioned the expiration of a sweeping U.N. arms embargo on Iran after five years if Tehran complied with its obligation to scale back its nuclear activities and subject its program to expanded international monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Iran had largely complied with its obligations until Trump withdrew the United States from the agreement in May 2018 and reintroduced a series of U.S. sanctions against the country.
Since then, Tehran has violated key tenets of the JCPOA, including enriching uranium to purity levels higher than what is allowed in the deal and increasing the stockpiles of enriched uranium, according to assessments from the International Atomic Energy Agency.
China and Russia, which wield veto power over Security Council decisions, have signaled their unwillingness to approve the resolution. Other signatories of the Iran deal—Britain, France, and Germany—have all supported retaining arms embargoes on Iran, but they also came out against the Trump administration’s threat to reimpose sanctions, highlighting the sharp disagreements between Washington and its closest European allies over Iran.
“We firmly believe that any unilateral attempt to trigger UN sanctions snapback would have serious adverse consequences in the UNSC,” the foreign ministers of Britain, France, and Germany said in a statement on June 19. “We would not support such a decision which would be incompatible with our current efforts to preserve the JCPoA.”
The foreign ministers also cautioned that lifting the U.N. conventional arms embargo “would have major implications for regional security and stability” but stressed that even without a U.N. arms embargo, the European Union has its own ban on sending conventional weapons and missile technology to Iran through 2023. Senior U.S. officials have said that Russia and China would be poised to sell conventional arms to Iran if the U.N. embargo expires.
A State Department spokesperson told Foreign Policy that “failing to extend the arms embargo will risk even greater violence in the Middle East.”
The spokesperson added that the U.S. is “hopeful” that the draft resolution will be supported by the Security Council, stating that China and Russia have upheld similar restrictions in the past. “Given that Iran’s activity continues to pose a threat to international peace and security, we do not see any reason why [the] Security Council consensus on this issue should have changed,” the spokesperson said.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo argued on Twitter Tuesday that if the arms embargo expires, Iran would be able to purchase Russian and Chinese jets, allowing Tehran to potentially threaten Europe and Asia, though Pompeo used one-way flight ranges for those aircraft to exaggerate their potential threat.
The Trump administration’s push to reimpose sanctions opened a unique legal debate over the United States’ current standing with the JCPOA. The Trump administration has argued that it is still legally a party to the deal the president disavowed, allowing it to trigger the snapback of sanctions. This argument has angered top diplomats from other countries that were signatories to the deal, who said the United States couldn’t have it both ways.
Brian Hook, the Trump administration’s top Iran envoy, said in an interview with Foreign Policy last month that the president remains open to “sitting down” with Tehran for talks on a new deal. He said that the United States would still maintain its expanding sanctions regime on Iran in the meantime.
“We’re in no hurry. We have a good policy in place. The regime needs to decide when it wants to come to the table,” he said.
Foreign Policy reporters Keith Johnson and Jack Detsch contributed to this report.
Update, June 23, 2020: This story was updated to include comments from a State Department spokesperson.


foreignpolicy--2020-06-23--Sweden’s Coronavirus Failure Started Long Before the Pandemic

But that image has been questioned over the past few months .
Sweden has become a global outlier in ignoring calls for coronavirus lockdowns .
While Italy ’ s piazzas were empty and the French needed a permit to go jogging , Swedes were still sitting knee-to-knee drinking beers in Stockholm ’ s trendy Sodermalm district .
As more countries imposed lockdowns , many public health experts argued that Sweden was giving priority to its economy rather than protecting the lives of its citizens .
Swedish authorities have repeatedly disputed that claim , arguing that the country ’ s goal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ countries , namely to make sure its health care system is not overburdened , while protecting society ’ s most vulnerable—the only difference being that the government ’ s public health agency has issued recommendations rather than mandating certain behaviors , what ’ s considered a “ light-touch strategy.
” In the past month , the criticism has grown louder as Sweden ’ s death toll , which last week passed 5,000 , has raced beyond that of its Scandinavian neighbors , eclipsing the second-hardest hit country in the region , Denmark , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ deaths per million residents .
The high numbers have led Norway and Denmark , which opened up tourism between their countries in mid-June , to exclude Sweden from the travel bubble .
Even more detrimental to Sweden ’ s credibility is the fact that a large portion of deaths has occurred among the elderly—the very people the strategy was meant to protect .
To many , this is proof that Sweden ’ s strategy has failed .
Even Anders Tegnell , Sweden ’ s state epidemiologist and the architect of the light-touch strategy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ have died and that , if he ’ d had the information available today back in March , he might have supported stricter measures within certain sectors of society .
However , Tegnell still maintains that his overall strategy has not failed and that no one knows exactly what measures should have been taken .
Of course , it would be easy to dismiss Tegnell ’ s comments about “ potential for improvement ” as an abdication of responsibility .
But a closer look reveals a more complex reality .
Some criticisms of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ premature , and others should rather be directed at mistakes made long before the current health crisis—namely the decline of central government oversight and , especially , a decadelong neglect of Sweden ’ s elderly population .
“ Influenza , for example , has an R0 of about 2 , which means that , on average , one infected person would transmit the virus to two others , ” said Stephen Morse , professor of epidemiology at the Columbia University Medical Center .
That means that half the population would need to be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ immunity .
Assuming that the novel coronavirus ’ s R0 is a bit higher than influenza , Morse reckons that 60 to 70 percent of a population would have to contract the virus , assuming that infection provides lasting immunity .
A pure herd-immunity approach would simply let COVID-19 burn through the population unhindered , which is not the approach in Sweden .
A pure herd-immunity approach would simply let COVID-19 burn through the population unhindered , which is not the approach in Sweden , where large crowds are banned and people have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Rather , Tegnell , the head of the Public Health Agency of Sweden , has repeated ad nauseam that the strategy is to slow the spread while achieving herd immunity as a byproduct .
However , debating who is following a herd-immunity approach might be missing the point .
After the now-infamous Imperial College London study was released in March , predicting a grim 510,000 deaths in Britain and 2.2 million in the United States in the event of an unmitigated spread , both British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and U.S. President Donald @ @ @ @ @ @ @ their economies open .
Tegnell—even though he dismissed the Imperial study as flawed—would for political reasons want to avoid courting international opprobrium by explicitly embracing a herd-immunity approach .
Terminology and politics aside , critics should focus on the scientific argument behind Sweden ’ s light-touch strategy , namely that there is no satisfying evidence that draconian lockdowns reduce long-term mortality rates .
This was summed up by Johan Giesecke , Sweden ’ s former state epidemiologist and a current advisor to the Public Health Agency , in a recent article published in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ little we can do to prevent this spread : a lockdown might delay severe cases for a while , but once restrictions are eased , cases will reappear , ” he wrote .
“ I expect that when we count the number of deaths from COVID-19 in each country in 1 year from now , the figures will be similar , regardless of measures taken.
” This might appear odd , considering the whole world has been told that social distancing is the chief tool in limiting loss of life .
But this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be true in the short term .
“ Most of what we know about the social distancing and lockdown measures are analogies from the 1918 influenza outbreak , where social distancing measures , like closing restaurants and banning large gatherings , seemed to reduce mortality in mostly big cities as these lockdowns went into place , ” said Tara Smith , epidemiologist and professor at the College of Public Health at Kent State University .
The Swedish argument is that if a country can maintain adequate health care capacity throughout the crisis , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be to delay deaths as the curve equals out across countries over time .
But without proper data on how mortality rates developed over a longer period of time after restrictions were lifted , previous pandemics offer a poor blueprint , especially because governments ’ capabilities to track , test , and treat infections have changed dramatically since the aftermath of World War I .
Instead , the Swedish argument is that if a country can maintain adequate health care capacity throughout the crisis , the only benefit of a lockdown would be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ out across countries over time—assuming that governments that flattened the curve through lockdowns will inevitably face a second wave .
On April 29 , a modeling study from the Public Health Agency estimated that more than half a million people in Stockholm County , which is about 20 to 25 percent of its population , had been infected .
But the results from the first antibody tests , published May 20 , show that only 7.3 percent have developed antibodies in Stockholm .
As antibody development is typically delayed by a few weeks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ today , but it ’ s still considerably lower than what the Public Health Agency had predicted .
And , perhaps more importantly , scientists still don ’ t know what kind of immunity people gain after recovering from a COVID-19 infection .
A recent preprint from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City found that more than 99 percent of the 1,300 study participants who had been infected eventually developed antibodies .
While this is encouraging , Linda Saif , a virologist and immunologist at Ohio State @ @ @ @ @ @ @ common cold-causing viruses and SARS suggest that the severity of the infection correlates with the level of future immunity .
“ Particularly younger people may develop asymptomatic or milder infections , ” Saif explained .
“ If those infections are mainly in the upper respiratory tract—so that they don ’ t develop the whole lung pathology but more like a superficial lung infection—the immunity is often short-lived.
” For hospitalized patients with severe symptoms , some evidence suggests they may develop stronger immune responses with higher levels of antibodies .
This has been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , where it ’ s been predicted that immunity lasts for two to three years .
“ I think the burning issue is the asymptomatic population , ” Saif said .
“ How many of those people have in fact developed antibodies ?
Once you know that , you can base your strategy on that number.
” Sweden , however , does not know that number yet—and the lack of data strains the credibility of an argument assuming that asymptomatic individuals will develop enough antibodies to gain immunity and thereby help neutralize the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ scenario where asymptomatic infections don ’ t produce immunity raises the question of what the alternative would be—in the absence of a vaccine—as perpetual lockdowns could eventually translate into economic meltdown .
“ If lockdowns become economically as well as socially unsustainable and authorities are forced to suddenly ease regulation , many new cases can rapidly flare up and overload the health care system , ” said Carl Fredrik Barrenäs , a researcher at the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology at Sweden ’ s Uppsala University .
“ But if the spread @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to reimpose quarantine measures.
” On the other hand , as pointed out by Pieter Trapman , a professor of mathematics at Stockholm University who specializes in the modeling of infectious diseases , more stringent quarantine measures could have delayed or prevented deaths among the most vulnerable until there was better testing , tracing , and treatment and more conclusive scientific data had been collected—something governments that imposed stricter lockdowns will benefit from .
“ Sweden doesn ’ t have the time to learn now , ” he said .
“ There might @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people a better chance of survival , which Denmark could then apply if they reach their peak at a later stage.
” On May 6 , a report showed that in Stockholm County , residents had been infected in 212 out of 400 nursing homes .
An ensuing report showed that as of June 1 , 2,036 people age 70 or older had died from COVID-19 in nursing homes across the country , while an additional 1,062 who died of the coronavirus received professional care at home .
Yet , in a recent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that a lockdown could have prevented this problem : “ We have a hard time understanding how a lockdown would stop the introduction of the disease into the nursing homes , ” he said .
But Tegnell ’ s argument ignores a very basic observation based on readily available data .
Eleanor Murray , an assistant professor of epidemiology at Boston University , argues that “ Lockdowns probably did help in many places to reduce the infection spreading in nursing homes.
” Murray said that there are essentially two factors at play , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ virus is introduced to a nursing home at all and the second being how it spreads once introduced .
In the case of Sweden , a report from one of the country ’ s largest labor unions shows that 40 percent of its members working at Stockholm nursing homes are unskilled workers employed on short-term contracts with hourly wages , while 23 percent are temps .
That means younger people working multiple jobs , which means more points of contact and higher risk of transmission .
Certainly , a lockdown would have reduced @ @ @ @ @ @ @ while having drinks or traveling on crowded buses , and it would also have kept family visitors—some of whom may have been asymptomatic—out of nursing homes .
However , instead of shutting down the whole economy , Swedish authorities chose the more surgical approach of banning visitors and issuing health , safety , and hygiene recommendations to nursing homes .
The problem was twofold : Visitors were banned too late and the elderly care sector lacked the resources and training to follow the government ’ s guidelines .
Why the government didn ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nationally until April 1—when the virus was already inside one of three nursing homes in Stockholm—is perplexing .
The risk that low-paid workers—who often live with large numbers of people and take public transport to work—might be exposed was clear .
Likewise , the fact that some visitors would ignore government recommendations was always obvious .
Sure , it ’ s true that Swedish culture has a conformist streak , but assuming that young people , who believed they were healthy , would not go see their parents and grandparents is the type @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the outside world , rather than the country ’ s own government .
“ We failed to protect our elderly .
That ’ s really serious and a failure for society as a whole.
” Either way , by the end of April , authorities admitted to failure , with Health and Social Affairs Minister Lena Hallengren stating : “ We failed to protect our elderly .
That ’ s really serious and a failure for society as a whole.
” In February , when Tegnell ’ s Public Health Agency still @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the virus spreading in Sweden—viewing the spread of public panic as the greater risk—authorities assured citizens that Sweden ’ s preparations were “ currently ” good .
Not everyone bought it .
A hailstorm of opinion articles pointed out that preparation for the current situation is no preparation at all ; epidemics grow exponentially , so authorities must prepare for several weeks or months ahead of the curve .
A prominent medical journal noted in late February that Sweden had Europe ’ s lowest number of ICU beds per capita and that current @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 100 additional patients assuming 14 days of emergency care .
Similarly , Sweden ’ s military reserves of protective equipment , including gas masks , have progressively shrunk since the end of the Cold War at a much higher rate than in neighboring Finland , where large reserves have been kept and materials maintained .
As late as 2014 , the Swedish government burned 7.3 million masks , which had been left to deteriorate for decades .
Unsurprisingly , the elderly care sector has been part of this larger systemic pattern of neglect @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , data from the National Board of Health and Welfare shared with daily Svenska Dagbladet showed that 40,000 people , or 15.6 percent of all who received some type of elderly care , were undernourished , partly owing to lack of manpower and training .
Following the heatwave of 2018 , another study showed that some 600 additional deaths had occurred compared to the previous year—the majority of which happened in nursing homes and hospitals lacking air conditioning .
In the past few months , reports of scarce resources and inadequate training have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a large conglomerate owning 30 nursing homes across the country , where staff members have testified about a lack of protective equipment and workers moving between healthy and infected residents .
One of the homes is now under criminal investigation for misconduct , but the group ’ s CEO has said that proper preparations in nursing homes were not possible , as “ the elderly care sector and the broader society were not prepared.
” Sweden ’ s 5,161 fatalities from COVID-19 represent a death toll of 511 per million inhabitants , compared @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Denmark , and 59 in Finland .
Sweden ’ s 5,161 fatalities from COVID-19 , as of June 23 , represent a death toll of 511 per million inhabitants , compared to 46 in Norway , 104 in Denmark , and 59 in Finland .
Swedes , and the rest of the world , are now wondering why Sweden failed where its neighbors did not .
And , indeed , the partial explanations and overall sense of confusion are far from satisfying .
Tegnell says nursing home residents in Sweden are older than @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are larger than in Norway , Prime Minister Stefan Löfven says assuring adequate emergency resources are the responsibility of the regions , and when confronted with evidence of the elderly care sector ’ s lack of preparedness , the Public Health Agency ’ s general director , Johan Carlson , said he was surprised .
It ’ s probably all true .
And while it ’ s frustrating that everyone admits failure but no one admits fault , looking for a scapegoat is futile .
This isn ’ t the mistake of one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ strategy as a whole .
The Löfven administration did right by granting experts power free from political interference .
But even the best leaders can ’ t repair a larger systemic failure in a matter of months .
The crisis Sweden is seeing today is the consequence of a government that has handed over responsibility to regions and counties at the expense of central oversight and , more importantly , a social democracy that has progressively abandoned its chief mission : protecting the most vulnerable .
The Swedish government has now decided to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 220 million ) to training and resources for the elderly care sector .
This is a welcome initiative , but it ’ s regrettable that it took the largest health crisis in recent memory to get there .

A woman sits outside her nursing home in Stockholm on May 4. Sweden, whose softer approach to the coronavirus has garnered international attention, admits it failed to adequately protect the elderly, with around half of its COVID-19 deaths occurring among nursing home residents. JONATHAN NACKSTRAND/AFP via Getty Images
The world has long looked to Sweden as a model society. The Nordic country of 10 million is known for its robust welfare state—where citizens enjoy a high standard of living, equal rights, and social security. In the past few decades, Sweden has also taken a place on the international stage as a humanitarian superpower, starting in the 1990s when it accepted 100,000 refugees fleeing the carnage of the Balkans and later during the Syrian crisis when it took in more refugees per capita than any other European country.
But that image has been questioned over the past few months. Sweden has become a global outlier in ignoring calls for coronavirus lockdowns. While Italy’s piazzas were empty and the French needed a permit to go jogging, Swedes were still sitting knee-to-knee drinking beers in Stockholm’s trendy Sodermalm district. As more countries imposed lockdowns, many public health experts argued that Sweden was giving priority to its economy rather than protecting the lives of its citizens.
Swedish authorities have repeatedly disputed that claim, arguing that the country’s goal is no different from that of other countries, namely to make sure its health care system is not overburdened, while protecting society’s most vulnerable—the only difference being that the government’s public health agency has issued recommendations rather than mandating certain behaviors, what’s considered a “light-touch strategy.”
In the past month, the criticism has grown louder as Sweden’s death toll, which last week passed 5,000, has raced beyond that of its Scandinavian neighbors, eclipsing the second-hardest hit country in the region, Denmark, with more than three times as many deaths per million residents. The high numbers have led Norway and Denmark, which opened up tourism between their countries in mid-June, to exclude Sweden from the travel bubble.
Swedish epidemiologist Anders Tegnell of the Public Health Agency is interviewed following a coronavirus press conference in Solna, Sweden, on April 9.
Even more detrimental to Sweden’s credibility is the fact that a large portion of deaths has occurred among the elderly—the very people the strategy was meant to protect. To many, this is proof that Sweden’s strategy has failed. Even Anders Tegnell, Sweden’s state epidemiologist and the architect of the light-touch strategy, has admitted that too many people have died and that, if he’d had the information available today back in March, he might have supported stricter measures within certain sectors of society. However, Tegnell still maintains that his overall strategy has not failed and that no one knows exactly what measures should have been taken.
Of course, it would be easy to dismiss Tegnell’s comments about “potential for improvement” as an abdication of responsibility. But a closer look reveals a more complex reality. Some criticisms of the Swedish COVID-19 response may still be premature, and others should rather be directed at mistakes made long before the current health crisis—namely the decline of central government oversight and, especially, a decadelong neglect of Sweden’s elderly population.
The chief claim made by critics of the Swedish approach is that the country’s goal is herd immunity. Herd immunity is when a full population is protected before all of its members are immune. This occurs when those infected are surrounded by people who have achieved immunity either through vaccination or by catching and recovering from a disease; while the occasional contact is still susceptible and the odd transmission happens, it’s not enough to sustain the disease. Exactly what level of immunity will protect the herd depends on the transmissibility of the disease, which is often described through a metric known as the basic reproductive number, R0.
“Influenza, for example, has an R0 of about 2, which means that, on average, one infected person would transmit the virus to two others,” said Stephen Morse, professor of epidemiology at the Columbia University Medical Center. That means that half the population would need to be infected with the disease to gain herd immunity. Assuming that the novel coronavirus’s R0 is a bit higher than influenza, Morse reckons that 60 to 70 percent of a population would have to contract the virus, assuming that infection provides lasting immunity.
A pure herd-immunity approach would simply let COVID-19 burn through the population unhindered, which is not the approach in Sweden.
A pure herd-immunity approach would simply let COVID-19 burn through the population unhindered, which is not the approach in Sweden, where large crowds are banned and people have been encouraged to practice social distancing. Rather, Tegnell, the head of the Public Health Agency of Sweden, has repeated ad nauseam that the strategy is to slow the spread while achieving herd immunity as a byproduct.
However, debating who is following a herd-immunity approach might be missing the point. After the now-infamous Imperial College London study was released in March, predicting a grim 510,000 deaths in Britain and 2.2 million in the United States in the event of an unmitigated spread, both British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and U.S. President Donald Trump dropped their initial plans to keep their economies open. Tegnell—even though he dismissed the Imperial study as flawed—would for political reasons want to avoid courting international opprobrium by explicitly embracing a herd-immunity approach.
Terminology and politics aside, critics should focus on the scientific argument behind Sweden’s light-touch strategy, namely that there is no satisfying evidence that draconian lockdowns reduce long-term mortality rates.
Karin Hildebrand, a doctor in an intensive care unit at Sodersjukhuset hospital in Stockholm, disinfects a protective face mask after treating patients with COVID-19 on June 11.
This was summed up by Johan Giesecke, Sweden’s former state epidemiologist and a current advisor to the Public Health Agency, in a recent article published in The Lancet.
“There is very little we can do to prevent this spread: a lockdown might delay severe cases for a while, but once restrictions are eased, cases will reappear,” he wrote. “I expect that when we count the number of deaths from COVID-19 in each country in 1 year from now, the figures will be similar, regardless of measures taken.”
This might appear odd, considering the whole world has been told that social distancing is the chief tool in limiting loss of life. But this might, as Giesecke argued, only be true in the short term.
“Most of what we know about the social distancing and lockdown measures are analogies from the 1918 influenza outbreak, where social distancing measures, like closing restaurants and banning large gatherings, seemed to reduce mortality in mostly big cities as these lockdowns went into place,” said Tara Smith, epidemiologist and professor at the College of Public Health at Kent State University.
The Swedish argument is that if a country can maintain adequate health care capacity throughout the crisis, the only benefit of a lockdown would be to delay deaths as the curve equals out across countries over time.
But without proper data on how mortality rates developed over a longer period of time after restrictions were lifted, previous pandemics offer a poor blueprint, especially because governments’ capabilities to track, test, and treat infections have changed dramatically since the aftermath of World War I.
Instead, the Swedish argument is that if a country can maintain adequate health care capacity throughout the crisis, the only benefit of a lockdown would be to delay deaths as the curve equals out across countries over time—assuming that governments that flattened the curve through lockdowns will inevitably face a second wave. On April 29, a modeling study from the Public Health Agency estimated that more than half a million people in Stockholm County, which is about 20 to 25 percent of its population, had been infected. But the results from the first antibody tests, published May 20, show that only 7.3 percent have developed antibodies in Stockholm.
As antibody development is typically delayed by a few weeks, the number might be slightly higher today, but it’s still considerably lower than what the Public Health Agency had predicted. And, perhaps more importantly, scientists still don’t know what kind of immunity people gain after recovering from a COVID-19 infection. A recent preprint from the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City found that more than 99 percent of the 1,300 study participants who had been infected eventually developed antibodies. While this is encouraging, Linda Saif, a virologist and immunologist at Ohio State University, pointed out that studies on common cold-causing viruses and SARS suggest that the severity of the infection correlates with the level of future immunity.
“Particularly younger people may develop asymptomatic or milder infections,” Saif explained. “If those infections are mainly in the upper respiratory tract—so that they don’t develop the whole lung pathology but more like a superficial lung infection—the immunity is often short-lived.”
For hospitalized patients with severe symptoms, some evidence suggests they may develop stronger immune responses with higher levels of antibodies. This has been the case with the related SARS virus, where it’s been predicted that immunity lasts for two to three years. “I think the burning issue is the asymptomatic population,” Saif said. “How many of those people have in fact developed antibodies? Once you know that, you can base your strategy on that number.”
Sweden, however, does not know that number yet—and the lack of data strains the credibility of an argument assuming that asymptomatic individuals will develop enough antibodies to gain immunity and thereby help neutralize the virus in the broader population.
A medical staffer at Sophiahemmet hospital in Stockholm talks on a phone at the entrance to a tent used for testing and receiving potential coronavirus patients April 7.
A scenario where asymptomatic infections don’t produce immunity raises the question of what the alternative would be—in the absence of a vaccine—as perpetual lockdowns could eventually translate into economic meltdown.
“If lockdowns become economically as well as socially unsustainable and authorities are forced to suddenly ease regulation, many new cases can rapidly flare up and overload the health care system,” said Carl Fredrik Barrenäs, a researcher at the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology at Sweden’s Uppsala University. “But if the spread increases drastically, it might be hard to reimpose quarantine measures.”
On the other hand, as pointed out by Pieter Trapman, a professor of mathematics at Stockholm University who specializes in the modeling of infectious diseases, more stringent quarantine measures could have delayed or prevented deaths among the most vulnerable until there was better testing, tracing, and treatment and more conclusive scientific data had been collected—something governments that imposed stricter lockdowns will benefit from. “Sweden doesn’t have the time to learn now,” he said. “There might be information coming about which gives hospitalized people a better chance of survival, which Denmark could then apply if they reach their peak at a later stage.”
With so many known unknowns, there is currently only one viable measurement for success: how well the most vulnerable have been protected.
On May 6, a report showed that in Stockholm County, residents had been infected in 212 out of 400 nursing homes. An ensuing report showed that as of June 1, 2,036 people age 70 or older had died from COVID-19 in nursing homes across the country, while an additional 1,062 who died of the coronavirus received professional care at home.
Yet, in a recent press conference, Tegnell rejected the idea that a lockdown could have prevented this problem: “We have a hard time understanding how a lockdown would stop the introduction of the disease into the nursing homes,” he said.
But Tegnell’s argument ignores a very basic observation based on readily available data. Eleanor Murray, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Boston University, argues that “Lockdowns probably did help in many places to reduce the infection spreading in nursing homes.” Murray said that there are essentially two factors at play, the first being whether or not the virus is introduced to a nursing home at all and the second being how it spreads once introduced.
In the case of Sweden, a report from one of the country’s largest labor unions shows that 40 percent of its members working at Stockholm nursing homes are unskilled workers employed on short-term contracts with hourly wages, while 23 percent are temps. That means younger people working multiple jobs, which means more points of contact and higher risk of transmission. Certainly, a lockdown would have reduced the risk of these workers getting infected while having drinks or traveling on crowded buses, and it would also have kept family visitors—some of whom may have been asymptomatic—out of nursing homes.
However, instead of shutting down the whole economy, Swedish authorities chose the more surgical approach of banning visitors and issuing health, safety, and hygiene recommendations to nursing homes. The problem was twofold: Visitors were banned too late and the elderly care sector lacked the resources and training to follow the government’s guidelines.
Why the government didn’t close the doors to nursing homes nationally until April 1—when the virus was already inside one of three nursing homes in Stockholm—is perplexing. The risk that low-paid workers—who often live with large numbers of people and take public transport to work—might be exposed was clear. Likewise, the fact that some visitors would ignore government recommendations was always obvious. Sure, it’s true that Swedish culture has a conformist streak, but assuming that young people, who believed they were healthy, would not go see their parents and grandparents is the type of fantasy about Swedish exceptionalism usually reserved for the outside world, rather than the country’s own government.
“We failed to protect our elderly. That’s really serious and a failure for society as a whole.”
Either way, by the end of April, authorities admitted to failure, with Health and Social Affairs Minister Lena Hallengren stating: “We failed to protect our elderly. That’s really serious and a failure for society as a whole.”
In February, when Tegnell’s Public Health Agency still claimed there was a small risk of the virus spreading in Sweden—viewing the spread of public panic as the greater risk—authorities assured citizens that Sweden’s preparations were “currently” good. Not everyone bought it.
A hailstorm of opinion articles pointed out that preparation for the current situation is no preparation at all; epidemics grow exponentially, so authorities must prepare for several weeks or months ahead of the curve. A prominent medical journal noted in late February that Sweden had Europe’s lowest number of ICU beds per capita and that current PPE supplies would reach maximum capacity at 100 additional patients assuming 14 days of emergency care. Similarly, Sweden’s military reserves of protective equipment, including gas masks, have progressively shrunk since the end of the Cold War at a much higher rate than in neighboring Finland, where large reserves have been kept and materials maintained. As late as 2014, the Swedish government burned 7.3 million masks, which had been left to deteriorate for decades.
A memorial to coronavirus victims is set up in Stockholm’s Mynttorget square April 29, featuring candles, flowers, and handwritten notes, some of which express frustration over Sweden’s softer approach to handling the pandemic.
Unsurprisingly, the elderly care sector has been part of this larger systemic pattern of neglect and lack of oversight. In 2017, data from the National Board of Health and Welfare shared with daily Svenska Dagbladet showed that 40,000 people, or 15.6 percent of all who received some type of elderly care, were undernourished, partly owing to lack of manpower and training.
Following the heatwave of 2018, another study showed that some 600 additional deaths had occurred compared to the previous year—the majority of which happened in nursing homes and hospitals lacking air conditioning. In the past few months, reports of scarce resources and inadequate training have multiplied, a ripe example coming from a large conglomerate owning 30 nursing homes across the country, where staff members have testified about a lack of protective equipment and workers moving between healthy and infected residents. One of the homes is now under criminal investigation for misconduct, but the group’s CEO has said that proper preparations in nursing homes were not possible, as “the elderly care sector and the broader society were not prepared.”
Sweden’s 5,161 fatalities from COVID-19 represent a death toll of 511 per million inhabitants, compared to 46 in Norway, 104 in Denmark, and 59 in Finland.
Sweden’s 5,161 fatalities from COVID-19, as of June 23, represent a death toll of 511 per million inhabitants, compared to 46 in Norway, 104 in Denmark, and 59 in Finland. Swedes, and the rest of the world, are now wondering why Sweden failed where its neighbors did not. And, indeed, the partial explanations and overall sense of confusion are far from satisfying. Tegnell says nursing home residents in Sweden are older than in Norway, Giesecke says nursing homes are larger than in Norway, Prime Minister Stefan Löfven says assuring adequate emergency resources are the responsibility of the regions, and when confronted with evidence of the elderly care sector’s lack of preparedness, the Public Health Agency’s general director, Johan Carlson, said he was surprised.
It’s probably all true. And while it’s frustrating that everyone admits failure but no one admits fault, looking for a scapegoat is futile. This isn’t the mistake of one person or a failure of the Swedish strategy as a whole. The Löfven administration did right by granting experts power free from political interference. But even the best leaders can’t repair a larger systemic failure in a matter of months.
The crisis Sweden is seeing today is the consequence of a government that has handed over responsibility to regions and counties at the expense of central oversight and, more importantly, a social democracy that has progressively abandoned its chief mission: protecting the most vulnerable.
The Swedish government has now decided to allocate 2.2 billion Swedish krona ($220 million) to training and resources for the elderly care sector. This is a welcome initiative, but it’s regrettable that it took the largest health crisis in recent memory to get there.


foreignpolicy--2020-06-23--Bolton’s Book Is a Terrifying Warning About What Trump Could Still Do

Bolton ’ s Book Is a Terrifying Warning About What Trump Could Still Do Americans ’ notorious lack of geographic knowledge has given rise to a staple of television comedy : the person-in-the-street ambush interview , where the hapless victim is often asked to point out countries or U.S. states on a map .
Hilarity ensues .
Former National Security Advisor John Bolton ’ s book , The Room Where it Happened , features another hapless American wrestling with geographic questions , such as whether Finland is part of Russia .
The problem with this comic setup , of course @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the White House , and the not-so-hapless victim is the president of the United States.The problem with this comic setup is that the scene is playing in the White House , and the not-so-hapless victim is the president of the United States .
Geopolitical ignorance ceases to be funny when pratfalls impact U.S. national security .
Trump ’ s ignorance about the role allies and NATO play in U.S. national security has led him to say and do things in Europe that have led allies ’ trust in the United States to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in 2017 had him question the U.S. commitment to the alliance ’ s mutual defense guarantee—Article 5 , its very reason for existence—and it got worse from there .
His ignorance of how NATO is funded and of where allies are in fact deficient has led him to charge that allies are taking advantage of the United States .
One of the more chilling accounts of Trump ’ s ignorance was the August 2019 videoconference about U.S. assistance to Ukraine .
Bolton quotes Trump saying , “ I don ’ t give a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Vice President Mike Pence to call NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg to tell him that NATO should pay Ukraine $ 250 million in assistance .
Not only is this not how NATO ’ s finances work , but the reason for the request , Bolton relates , was that Trump didn ’ t want to negatively impact relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin by giving direct U.S. support for Ukraine .
Bolton claims he was the one to talk Trump down from the tree when he was going to pull the United States out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2018 summit , which would have handed ( and could still hand ) Putin the greatest strategic gift at U.S. expense that any leader could dream of .
While that calamity was avoided this time , Bolton is no longer there to install guardrails to keep the NATO pullout from actually happening .
The world got a little foretaste with Trump ’ s unwise decision this month to withdraw 9,500 troops from U.S. bases in Germany , blindsiding the Pentagon , NATO , and Germany .
It was the latest example of Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of Germany , vindictiveness to the point of obsession , as Bolton shows in his book .
Like a NATO pullout would , the troop decision undermines U.S. national security in Europe and the world .
( It bears endless repeating : Those troops aren ’ t there on Germany ’ s behalf , but because they are at the core of global U.S. force projection , defense logistics , and medical operations . )
But John Bolton should be fair : What other New York real estate mogul and reality show personality @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nuclear weapons , or how NATO is funded ?
And Trump is not the first president to arrive at the White House with an inadequate understanding of his foreign-policy portfolio .
Harry S. Truman famously didn ’ t know about work on the atomic bomb , Ronald Reagan was often criticized for not knowing the substance of his own foreign policy , and George W. Bush was confused about whether there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq .
Like most newly elected presidents , Bill Clinton arrived focused on domestic issues , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dictum , “ It ’ s the economy , stupid.
” Balkan geography soon changed that perspective.It was the latest example of Trump ’ s ignorance—and , in the case of Germany , vindictiveness to the point of obsession .
But what those presidents did bring to the office was enough awareness of their own limitations and enough self-confidence to admit that they didn ’ t know everything , and to surround themselves with aides who knew more than they did .
That didn ’ t mean these presidents couldn ’ t think @ @ @ @ @ @ @ advisors .
What those presidents did was learn from their advisors , listen to their advice , and then make their own decisions .
Much to his chagrin , John Bolton found that was not happening in the White House .
Instead , the so-called adults in the room have departed , replaced with sycophants or loyalist junior staffers whom other administrations would never have entrusted with a senior role .
While usually at the center of controversy , Bolton remains respected enough in Washington to have been considered the last adult to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump announced his departure with a tweet last September .
Not that it mattered much , because this president doesn ’ t listen to staff anyway , unless they are related to him .
A gut player , the president likely didn ’ t read Bolton ’ s memos or listen to his briefs anyway .
Trump decides by instinct , one that has been honed in the dog-eat-dog world of Queens and Manhattan real estate , not in geopolitics .
One suspects that Bolton wrote his book not out of concern about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but out of peevishness that his advice was being ignored .
If one considers Bolton ’ s book a warning and a wake-up call about how Americans elect their presidents , how can voters determine if presidential candidates have foreign-policy chops ?
Primary debates could focus more on foreign policy than they do .
Candidates could do more than just publish a ghost-written article in Foreign Policy and actually talk geopolitics on the campaign trail .
But the public ( and the U.S. media ) has an important role to play , too @ @ @ @ @ @ @ interest in foreign policy .
For too long , there has not been enough interest in foreign policy beyond barroom talk and a few platitudes about China .
If the American people want a president who considers foreign policy to be more than just a source for a slogan or two to help them get reelected , then they must demand one and show they have the chops to know a foreign-policy faker when they see one .
They shouldn ’ t need a book by Bolton to warn about the disasters that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ no depth in policy at all .
But , frankly , the only way to ensure the next president can handle a portfolio of which they have a limited grasp is to elect presidents with the self-confidence and the wisdom to hire advisors smarter than they are .
Bolton assumed that would be his role .
He was wrong : He was serving a president who , on absolutely any issue from military strategy to the medical treatment of COVID-19 , believes he is the smartest one in the room .
A president @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the advice of advisors , but after reading background papers and listening to advisors like Bolton , that president will likely know that Finland is not part of Russia .

Americans’ notorious lack of geographic knowledge has given rise to a staple of television comedy: the person-in-the-street ambush interview, where the hapless victim is often asked to point out countries or U.S. states on a map. Hilarity ensues. Former National Security Advisor John Bolton’s book, The Room Where it Happened, features another hapless American wrestling with geographic questions, such as whether Finland is part of Russia. The problem with this comic setup, of course, is that the scene is playing in the White House, and the not-so-hapless victim is the president of the United States.The problem with this comic setup is that the scene is playing in the White House, and the not-so-hapless victim is the president of the United States.
Americans’ notorious lack of geographic knowledge has given rise to a staple of television comedy: the person-in-the-street ambush interview, where the hapless victim is often asked to point out countries or U.S. states on a map. Hilarity ensues. Former National Security Advisor John Bolton’s book, The Room Where it Happened, features another hapless American wrestling with geographic questions, such as whether Finland is part of Russia. The problem with this comic setup, of course, is that the scene is playing in the White House, and the not-so-hapless victim is the president of the United States.The problem with this comic setup is that the scene is playing in the White House, and the not-so-hapless victim is the president of the United States.
Geopolitical ignorance ceases to be funny when pratfalls impact U.S. national security. Trump’s ignorance about the role allies and NATO play in U.S. national security has led him to say and do things in Europe that have led allies’ trust in the United States to plummet. His earliest interaction with NATO in 2017 had him question the U.S. commitment to the alliance’s mutual defense guarantee—Article 5, its very reason for existence—and it got worse from there. His ignorance of how NATO is funded and of where allies are in fact deficient has led him to charge that allies are taking advantage of the United States.
One of the more chilling accounts of Trump’s ignorance was the August 2019 videoconference about U.S. assistance to Ukraine. Bolton quotes Trump saying, “I don’t give a shit about NATO,” before ordering Vice President Mike Pence to call NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg to tell him that NATO should pay Ukraine $250 million in assistance. Not only is this not how NATO’s finances work, but the reason for the request, Bolton relates, was that Trump didn’t want to negatively impact relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin by giving direct U.S. support for Ukraine.
Bolton claims he was the one to talk Trump down from the tree when he was going to pull the United States out of NATO at the alliance’s 2018 summit, which would have handed (and could still hand) Putin the greatest strategic gift at U.S. expense that any leader could dream of. While that calamity was avoided this time, Bolton is no longer there to install guardrails to keep the NATO pullout from actually happening. The world got a little foretaste with Trump’s unwise decision this month to withdraw 9,500 troops from U.S. bases in Germany, blindsiding the Pentagon, NATO, and Germany. It was the latest example of Trump’s ignorance—and, in the case of Germany, vindictiveness to the point of obsession, as Bolton shows in his book. Like a NATO pullout would, the troop decision undermines U.S. national security in Europe and the world. (It bears endless repeating: Those troops aren’t there on Germany’s behalf, but because they are at the core of global U.S. force projection, defense logistics, and medical operations.)
But John Bolton should be fair: What other New York real estate mogul and reality show personality knows such things as whether Britain has nuclear weapons, or how NATO is funded? And Trump is not the first president to arrive at the White House with an inadequate understanding of his foreign-policy portfolio. Harry S. Truman famously didn’t know about work on the atomic bomb, Ronald Reagan was often criticized for not knowing the substance of his own foreign policy, and George W. Bush was confused about whether there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Like most newly elected presidents, Bill Clinton arrived focused on domestic issues, led by his campaign’s famous dictum, “It’s the economy, stupid.” Balkan geography soon changed that perspective.It was the latest example of Trump’s ignorance—and, in the case of Germany, vindictiveness to the point of obsession.
But what those presidents did bring to the office was enough awareness of their own limitations and enough self-confidence to admit that they didn’t know everything, and to surround themselves with aides who knew more than they did. That didn’t mean these presidents couldn’t think for themselves or were hostage to their advisors. What those presidents did was learn from their advisors, listen to their advice, and then make their own decisions. Much to his chagrin, John Bolton found that was not happening in the White House.
Instead, the so-called adults in the room have departed, replaced with sycophants or loyalist junior staffers whom other administrations would never have entrusted with a senior role. While usually at the center of controversy, Bolton remains respected enough in Washington to have been considered the last adult to have remained in the White House before Trump announced his departure with a tweet last September. Not that it mattered much, because this president doesn’t listen to staff anyway, unless they are related to him. A gut player, the president likely didn’t read Bolton’s memos or listen to his briefs anyway. Trump decides by instinct, one that has been honed in the dog-eat-dog world of Queens and Manhattan real estate, not in geopolitics. One suspects that Bolton wrote his book not out of concern about where the nation was headed under Trump but out of peevishness that his advice was being ignored.
If one considers Bolton’s book a warning and a wake-up call about how Americans elect their presidents, how can voters determine if presidential candidates have foreign-policy chops? Primary debates could focus more on foreign policy than they do. Candidates could do more than just publish a ghost-written article in Foreign Policy and actually talk geopolitics on the campaign trail. But the public (and the U.S. media) has an important role to play, too, by taking more than a passing interest in foreign policy. For too long, there has not been enough interest in foreign policy beyond barroom talk and a few platitudes about China. If the American people want a president who considers foreign policy to be more than just a source for a slogan or two to help them get reelected, then they must demand one and show they have the chops to know a foreign-policy faker when they see one. They shouldn’t need a book by Bolton to warn about the disasters that can come from electing a president with no depth in policy at all.
But, frankly, the only way to ensure the next president can handle a portfolio of which they have a limited grasp is to elect presidents with the self-confidence and the wisdom to hire advisors smarter than they are. Bolton assumed that would be his role. He was wrong: He was serving a president who, on absolutely any issue from military strategy to the medical treatment of COVID-19, believes he is the smartest one in the room. A president doesn’t always have to take the advice of advisors, but after reading background papers and listening to advisors like Bolton, that president will likely know that Finland is not part of Russia.