foreignpolicy--2020-04-24--Pyongyang Might Be Ready for a Helping Hand From Seoul

Pyongyang Might Be Ready for a Helping Hand From Seoul South Korean President Moon Jae-in ’ s Democratic Party has significantly expanded his mandate through a stomping midterm election victory , giving him the political space to pursue long-held goals such as reviving cooperation with North Korea .
But just what such measures would look like in the era of the coronavirus , and whether Pyongyang will be interested , remain deeply uncertain .
North Korea responded aggressively to news of the outbreak , barring international tourists from Jan. 22 , even before China locked down Wuhan .
Pyongyang ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ dubious and its testing capacity is extremely low , but its ability to enforce restrictions on movement is high , allowing it , as best outsiders can tell , to partially contain the virus .
A complete national lockdown is unsustainable in the long term , however , so like other countries , it seems that for the next year to 18 months North Korea will pursue a strategy that goes back-and-forth .
Pyongyang will likely impose travel restrictions , limiting who can go in and out of the country , as well @ @ @ @ @ @ @ whenever the medical system is overburdened .
That gives South Korea time to build a collaborative initiative focused on the disease .
The pandemic , in one form or another , will be with us in 2021 .
Even if a vaccine is produced within the astonishingly short span of a year and distributed in the months afterwards , it is unlikely a developing economy pursuing a largely autarkic response to the pandemic will be on the shortlist for early mass vaccinations .
The World Health Organization and international health nongovernmental organizations will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ worldwide desperately struggle to cope with the impact of the virus .
Moreover , unlike during SARS in 2003 , North Korea faces considerable donor fatigue and sanctions—both connected to the nuclear issue .
Over the past several years , the United Nations has struggled to raise funding for aid projects in North Korea , NGOs have seen moneyed foundations look to markets elsewhere , while sanctions impede moving money in and out of the country , as well as the importation of goods that include metal or parts made in the United @ @ @ @ @ @ @ environment , combined with a near-certain global recession , means international aid agencies and other groups are less able to help North Korea fight the pandemic than they would have been had it occurred several years ago .
As such , the best partner for North Korea remains its southern neighbor .
The South Korean government took a comprehensive early-intervention approach once the virus was detected on Jan. 20 .
Its successes have been well publicized .
The country has also avoided the economically crippling lockdowns now prevalent in Europe and the United @ @ @ @ @ @ @ around 1 or 2 percent and , as of late April , new daily infections are consistently below 20 people .
Importantly , from the perspective of inter-Korean cooperation , both countries appear to have gotten control of the situation , even as the pandemic continues globally .
There will be no complete victory in the next few weeks or even months , but South Korea ’ s schools are set to reopen in May , and the country just conducted a nationwide election .
Pyongyang , with its recent Supreme People ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and other high-profile projects , also seems also to be approaching a kind of return to seminormality .
This means that both governments can approach the issue from a position of strength , making cooperation politically easier .
They could frame the initiative as a mutual strengthening of response capabilities , rather than one side providing aid to another .
There are a number of ways the two sides could assist one another .
One might be in ramping up production of masks and other personal protection equipment , not only to meet @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Korea has unused production facilities ; South Korea has global distribution networks that North Korea lacks .
With a sanctions waiver by the United Nations , the two sides could explore joint work on products that will be globally in demand for at least the next year , perhaps longer .
If a waiver isn ’ t granted , Seoul might consider putting revenue from such a venture directly into public health facilities in North Korea , through the purchase of testing kits , respirators , or other equipment .
This might avoid @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cash to North Korea , but would still require the Moon government to be willing to push Washington .
( Respirators , for example , could conceivably contravene the ban on import of metals under U.N. Security Council Resolution 2397 , Article 7 . )
One unknown factor is whether North Korea would accept such a workaround—its leaders do like cash , after all—and whether Moon ’ s willingness to challenge Washington has increased .
Another is whether the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has the bandwidth and interest in seeing Seoul @ @ @ @ @ @ @ starting point could be setting up a joint coronavirus research group to take advantage of the human talent on both sides of the border .
Such a team could conduct research into antibody tests , infection tests , or a vaccine .
A laboratory could be set up in the North Korean border city of Kaesong , staffed by scientists from both sides .
Pyongyang will resist appearing weak or in need of help at this moment , but cooperation would make sense for it in the medium term .
Given the willingness @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for this specific issue , COVID-19 cooperation could lead to North-South cooperation on broader health issues , especially those that have regional implications , such as tuberculosis and perhaps malaria—and to allow development aid even under strict sanctions .
The inter-Korean liaison office set up following the inter-Korean summit in Panmunjom in April 2018 is in prime position to take on a new , specific role as a joint Korean COVID-19 response center .
The office began operations in September 2018 , but following the failed summit in Vietnam between Trump and North @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Korea reduced staffing and interactions in March 2019 .
On Jan. 30 of this year , the office was shut completely because of the coronavirus outbreak .
The liaison office could be restarted in order to begin discussing issues related to coronavirus , even if immediate cooperation is not yet in the cards .
It ’ s hard to know how responsive North Korea will be to this .
Kim Jong Un sent a friendly letter to Moon in early March regarding the pandemic , but his sister , Kim Yo Jong , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is seen as her brother ’ s confidante , took a harsher tone in the same week , calling Seoul “ senseless ” for expressing concern about short-range missile tests conducted by the North .
Functional inter-Korean cooperation has ceased , and North Korea has clearly signaled that it is not currently interested in pursuing a breakthrough with the United States , a precondition upon which most inter-Korean projects depended .
That breakthrough might still be necessary , but it seems likely that Kim would like to explore whether Moon ’ s calculus @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the election .
Tragically , North Korea will be unwilling to share information if the coronavirus outbreak is worse than it has reported or if it continues to regard it as a national-security issue .
Pyongyang , as ever , is loath to expose weaknesses to its adversaries .
Even seeking personal protective equipment , sanitizer , or diagnostic equipment might be felt to be giving away too much information to the outside world .
If that mindset prevails , this moment will have to be added to a long and growing list @ @ @ @

South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s Democratic Party has significantly expanded his mandate through a stomping midterm election victory, giving him the political space to pursue long-held goals such as reviving cooperation with North Korea. But just what such measures would look like in the era of the coronavirus, and whether Pyongyang will be interested, remain deeply uncertain.
South Korean President Moon Jae-in’s Democratic Party has significantly expanded his mandate through a stomping midterm election victory, giving him the political space to pursue long-held goals such as reviving cooperation with North Korea. But just what such measures would look like in the era of the coronavirus, and whether Pyongyang will be interested, remain deeply uncertain.
North Korea responded aggressively to news of the outbreak, barring international tourists from Jan. 22, even before China locked down Wuhan. Pyongyang’s claims to have zero cases are dubious and its testing capacity is extremely low, but its ability to enforce restrictions on movement is high, allowing it, as best outsiders can tell, to partially contain the virus.
A complete national lockdown is unsustainable in the long term, however, so like other countries, it seems that for the next year to 18 months North Korea will pursue a strategy that goes back-and-forth. Pyongyang will likely impose travel restrictions, limiting who can go in and out of the country, as well as tighten social distancing rules for households whenever the medical system is overburdened.
That gives South Korea time to build a collaborative initiative focused on the disease. The pandemic, in one form or another, will be with us in 2021. Even if a vaccine is produced within the astonishingly short span of a year and distributed in the months afterwards, it is unlikely a developing economy pursuing a largely autarkic response to the pandemic will be on the shortlist for early mass vaccinations.
[Mapping the Coronavirus Outbreak: Get daily updates on the pandemic.]
The World Health Organization and international health nongovernmental organizations will likely be stretched thin as developing countries worldwide desperately struggle to cope with the impact of the virus. Moreover, unlike during SARS in 2003, North Korea faces considerable donor fatigue and sanctions—both connected to the nuclear issue. Over the past several years, the United Nations has struggled to raise funding for aid projects in North Korea, NGOs have seen moneyed foundations look to markets elsewhere, while sanctions impede moving money in and out of the country, as well as the importation of goods that include metal or parts made in the United States. This deterioration in the external environment, combined with a near-certain global recession, means international aid agencies and other groups are less able to help North Korea fight the pandemic than they would have been had it occurred several years ago.
As such, the best partner for North Korea remains its southern neighbor.
The South Korean government took a comprehensive early-intervention approach once the virus was detected on Jan. 20. Its successes have been well publicized. The country has also avoided the economically crippling lockdowns now prevalent in Europe and the United States. The death rate is hovering around 1 or 2 percent and, as of late April, new daily infections are consistently below 20 people.
Importantly, from the perspective of inter-Korean cooperation, both countries appear to have gotten control of the situation, even as the pandemic continues globally. There will be no complete victory in the next few weeks or even months, but South Korea’s schools are set to reopen in May, and the country just conducted a nationwide election.
Pyongyang, with its recent Supreme People’s Assembly meeting, universities restarting, and other high-profile projects, also seems also to be approaching a kind of return to seminormality. This means that both governments can approach the issue from a position of strength, making cooperation politically easier. They could frame the initiative as a mutual strengthening of response capabilities, rather than one side providing aid to another.
There are a number of ways the two sides could assist one another. One might be in ramping up production of masks and other personal protection equipment, not only to meet domestic needs but for export. North Korea has unused production facilities; South Korea has global distribution networks that North Korea lacks. With a sanctions waiver by the United Nations, the two sides could explore joint work on products that will be globally in demand for at least the next year, perhaps longer.
If a waiver isn’t granted, Seoul might consider putting revenue from such a venture directly into public health facilities in North Korea, through the purchase of testing kits, respirators, or other equipment. This might avoid the U.N. ban on transfer of bulk cash to North Korea, but would still require the Moon government to be willing to push Washington. (Respirators, for example, could conceivably contravene the ban on import of metals under U.N. Security Council Resolution 2397, Article 7.) One unknown factor is whether North Korea would accept such a workaround—its leaders do like cash, after all—and whether Moon’s willingness to challenge Washington has increased. Another is whether the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump has the bandwidth and interest in seeing Seoul initiate such proposals.
Read More Police block drivers in Cambodia during the coronavirus pandemic Police block drivers in Cambodia during the coronavirus pandemic Hun Sen’s Coronavirus Crackdown The Cambodian prime minister is using the pandemic as cover to silence his remaining critics. Argument | Lindsey Kennedy, Nathan Paul Southern A transport vehicle moves a camouflage, armored military vehicle across a bridge on a partly cloudy day. Beside the vehicle is a barricade topped with a sign with red and black text in Korean. A transport vehicle moves a camouflage, armored military vehicle across a bridge on a partly cloudy day. Beside the vehicle is a barricade topped with a sign with red and black text in Korean. A Korean Peace Treaty Would Be an Unforced Blunder Pyongyang shows no willingness to abide by any terms. Argument | Young Kim A man watches a television showing a news broadcast with file footage of North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Un, at the Seoul railway station in Seoul, South Korea. A man watches a television showing a news broadcast with file footage of North Korea's leader, Kim Jong Un, at the Seoul railway station in Seoul, South Korea. North Korea Does More Cyberspying Than You Think The Hermit Kingdom doesn’t just steal cryptocash; it steals state secrets—especially from neighbors. Exclusive | Rishi Iyengar
A less tricky starting point could be setting up a joint coronavirus research group to take advantage of the human talent on both sides of the border. Such a team could conduct research into antibody tests, infection tests, or a vaccine. A laboratory could be set up in the North Korean border city of Kaesong, staffed by scientists from both sides.
Pyongyang will resist appearing weak or in need of help at this moment, but cooperation would make sense for it in the medium term. Given the willingness of the international community to relax sanctions for this specific issue, COVID-19 cooperation could lead to North-South cooperation on broader health issues, especially those that have regional implications, such as tuberculosis and perhaps malaria—and to allow development aid even under strict sanctions.
The inter-Korean liaison office set up following the inter-Korean summit in Panmunjom in April 2018 is in prime position to take on a new, specific role as a joint Korean COVID-19 response center. The office began operations in September 2018, but following the failed summit in Vietnam between Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, North Korea reduced staffing and interactions in March 2019. On Jan. 30 of this year, the office was shut completely because of the coronavirus outbreak. The liaison office could be restarted in order to begin discussing issues related to coronavirus, even if immediate cooperation is not yet in the cards.
It’s hard to know how responsive North Korea will be to this. Kim Jong Un sent a friendly letter to Moon in early March regarding the pandemic, but his sister, Kim Yo Jong, who has risen in the ranks and is seen as her brother’s confidante, took a harsher tone in the same week, calling Seoul “senseless” for expressing concern about short-range missile tests conducted by the North. Functional inter-Korean cooperation has ceased, and North Korea has clearly signaled that it is not currently interested in pursuing a breakthrough with the United States, a precondition upon which most inter-Korean projects depended. That breakthrough might still be necessary, but it seems likely that Kim would like to explore whether Moon’s calculus vis-à-vis his superpower ally has changed after the election.
Tragically, North Korea will be unwilling to share information if the coronavirus outbreak is worse than it has reported or if it continues to regard it as a national-security issue. Pyongyang, as ever, is loath to expose weaknesses to its adversaries. Even seeking personal protective equipment, sanitizer, or diagnostic equipment might be felt to be giving away too much information to the outside world. If that mindset prevails, this moment will have to be added to a long and growing list of missed opportunities.


foreignpolicy--2020-04-24--Pakistan’s Government Is Caught Between a Mosque and a Hard Place

Pakistan ’ s Government Is Caught Between a Mosque and a Hard Place On April 18 , the Pakistani government reached an agreement with senior religious figures to keep mosques open during the holy month of Ramadan , which began in Pakistan on April 24 .
This is a concerning development , given the serious coronavirus risks posed by large numbers of worshippers crowding into small spaces for days on end for the long and intense prayers that usually occur during Ramadan .
While the agreement requires mosques to follow 20 rules—including having worshippers pray 6 feet apart , barring @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and banning handshakes—they will be difficult to enforce across Pakistan ’ s thousands of mosques .
Sanguine observers will argue that these health risks shouldn ’ t be overstated .
They will point to Pakistan ’ s warm climate , youthful demographics , and the widespread prevalence of a tuberculosis vaccine—all factors that some research suggests are keeping coronavirus numbers down and thereby limiting the pandemic ’ s impact in Pakistan , even if none of them are guarantees against the virus .
However , one can ’ t deny Pakistan ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and Iran , two of the countries hardest hit by the pandemic ; its cities are densely populated ; and its health sector is overburdened and capacity-constrained even under the best of circumstances .
The most recent data tells an ominous tale .
The numbers of confirmed coronavirus cases and deaths in Pakistan are much lower than those in many Western and East Asian countries ; as of April 24 , according to the Covid Watch Pakistan site , there were 11,155 cases and 237 deaths .
But the figures are rising rapidly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by more than 3,100 between April 18—the day the government agreed to keep mosques open—and April 23 .
This is the largest increase over any five-day period so far .
The true number of cases is likely higher , given that testing rates remain relatively low .
( In recent days , the daily number of government-administered tests has averaged about 6,000 in a nation of 200 million . )
Additionally—according to some experts—Pakistan ’ s lack of an effective mechanism to officially record deaths of any type may mean some coronavirus fatalities @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that “ without effective interventions there could be an estimated 200,000+ cases by mid-July ” in Pakistan .
In effect , Islamabad is allowing large numbers of people to congregate countrywide at a moment when social distancing could not be more crucial .
The decision , which was sharply criticized in an April 21 statement from senior Pakistani physicians , is all the more striking because governments in most other Muslim-majority countries have closed mosques during Ramadan .
But the central place that Islam @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and politics keeps Islamabad from closing the mosques and religious leaders from voluntarily shuttering them .
The political anthropologist Arsalan Khan traces the history of this dynamic—he calls it “ the politics around Islamic authority ” —in a useful recent essay .
In 1949 , two years after Pakistan gained independence as a new homeland for Muslims from colonial India , the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan passed an Objectives Resolution , which provided guidance for the development of the country ’ s first constitution .
It identified several principles to be included in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Sovereignty over the entire universe belongs to God Almighty alone and the authority which He has delegated it to the State of Pakistan through its people for being exercised within the limits prescribed by Him is a sacred trust ” and “ The principles of democracy , freedom , equality , tolerance and social justice as enunciated by Islam shall be fully observed.
” Such statements foreshadowed the deep links that would emerge between religion and state in Pakistan .
Fast forward to the 1980s , when President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq engineered a large-scale @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on the nation ’ s legal and education systems .
Islamization , not coincidentally , played out in an era when Pakistan was also tightening its ties with Islamists next door in Afghanistan , where it armed and funded mujahideen fighters resisting the Soviet occupation .
( Pakistan began pursuing ties with and providing military support to Islamist fighters in Afghanistan during the administration of Zia ’ s predecessor , Zulfikar Ali Bhutto . )
The result was an environment that enabled and empowered Islamic figures and institutions .
This has endured to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ consequences .
As Khan writes , “ Zia ’ s Islamisation expanded the political space for religious political parties and also led to the politicisation of the Islamic ulema who became increasingly involved in matters of the state.
” The clout of Pakistan ’ s religious communities manifests in many ways today .
They enjoy street power ( they can quickly mobilize large numbers of people ) , impunity ( the use of violence and hate speech by their hard-line factions often goes unpunished ) , political influence ( they get what they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of changes to parliamentary oaths they deem offensive to the removal of people they don ’ t like from government advisory councils ) , and strategic appeal for the state ( Islamist militants are used as armed assets to pursue foreign-policy objectives ) .
Islamabad has declined to take a tougher line on the mosque issue because it defers to the power of religious figures .
The government also fears the consequences if the kid gloves that it treats them with were to come off .
If it were to order all mosques @ @ @ @ @ @ @ At best , this would undermine the very social distancing that mosque closures would be meant to enforce .
At worst , there could be violence—and threats to the state—at a moment when the government is consumed with curbing the pandemic .
In 2018 , the Supreme Court ’ s decision to acquit a Christian woman languishing on death row on blasphemy charges sparked angry protests from Islamists who called for judges to be killed and soldiers to mutiny ( threats that prompted the government to arrest protest leaders ) .
The Pakistani @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a position where it must contemplate using force against religious protesters to curb unrest .
Violent crackdowns on Islamists—especially in a deeply conservative and religious state—risk triggering large-scale instability .
Pakistan ’ s ongoing economic problems—fueled largely by a debt crisis and guaranteed to worsen during the pandemic—add an additional level of volatility .
In 2007 , President Pervez Musharraf learned this lesson the hard way when he used force against religious students and militants holed up in Islamabad ’ s Red Mosque .
The operation killed dozens and spawned retaliatory attacks .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the Pakistani Taliban , which staged an unrelenting campaign of anti-state terrorism for nearly a decade .
The sobering lessons of 2007 haven ’ t been forgotten .
The clerics are aware of their clout and of their status as Frankenstein ’ s monster—a past creation of the state that the state can no longer control .
This helps explain why many mosque leaders oppose voluntarily shutting down mosques and calling for prayer at home .
In their public remarks , they acknowledge the risks posed by the coronavirus—and unlike some Pakistanis @ @ @ @ @ @ @ American or Israeli plot to weaken Muslims , they have largely avoided trumpeting conspiracy theories .
Yet they insist that religious duty requires that mosques remain open .
For Pakistani religious leaders , it ’ s ultimately less about considerations of God ’ s will and more about temporal matters of politics and money .
By closing their doors and turning away thousands of people—some of whom have shrugged off coronavirus concerns and stated their determination to pray at the mosque—they would be ceding political ground to a state that has rarely imposed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ loss of public support from their core constituency .
They would also risk losing out on the hefty financial contributions provided to mosques during Ramadan .
To be fair , Islamabad hasn ’ t simply sat on its hands .
This month , it tried to limit attendance in mosques by restricting the number of worshippers to five .
Police tried to enforce this regulation , with mixed results .
Government officials held a series of negotiations with religious leaders .
And the April 18 agreement does stipulate that the government could change @ @ @ @ @ @ @ isn ’ t working .
On April 23 , Prime Minister Imran Khan delivered an “ I did my best ” -type appeal .
In televised comments , he said the agreement was an ideal “ middle ground , ” given that Pakistanis were bound to insist on congregational prayer no matter what .
Still , in the end , Islamabad doesn ’ t have any good options .
It can call for a renegotiation of the agreement , which the clerics are likely to reject .
It can unilaterally call for mosques @ @ @ @ @ @ @ unrest .
Or it can just sit back , hold its nose , and hope against all odds that stepped-up testing and contract tracing will keep the pandemic at bay—and mitigate the harmful effects of a decision that risks hastening the spread of a virus that the country is woefully underequipped to stop .

On April 18, the Pakistani government reached an agreement with senior religious figures to keep mosques open during the holy month of Ramadan, which began in Pakistan on April 24.
On April 18, the Pakistani government reached an agreement with senior religious figures to keep mosques open during the holy month of Ramadan, which began in Pakistan on April 24.
This is a concerning development, given the serious coronavirus risks posed by large numbers of worshippers crowding into small spaces for days on end for the long and intense prayers that usually occur during Ramadan. While the agreement requires mosques to follow 20 rules—including having worshippers pray 6 feet apart, barring the entry of the old and ill, and banning handshakes—they will be difficult to enforce across Pakistan’s thousands of mosques.
Sanguine observers will argue that these health risks shouldn’t be overstated. They will point to Pakistan’s warm climate, youthful demographics, and the widespread prevalence of a tuberculosis vaccine—all factors that some research suggests are keeping coronavirus numbers down and thereby limiting the pandemic’s impact in Pakistan, even if none of them are guarantees against the virus.
However, one can’t deny Pakistan’s underlying vulnerability. It borders China and Iran, two of the countries hardest hit by the pandemic; its cities are densely populated; and its health sector is overburdened and capacity-constrained even under the best of circumstances.
[Mapping the Coronavirus Outbreak: Get daily updates on the pandemic.]
The most recent data tells an ominous tale. The numbers of confirmed coronavirus cases and deaths in Pakistan are much lower than those in many Western and East Asian countries; as of April 24, according to the Covid Watch Pakistan site, there were 11,155 cases and 237 deaths. But the figures are rising rapidly. The number of total cases rose by more than 3,100 between April 18—the day the government agreed to keep mosques open—and April 23. This is the largest increase over any five-day period so far.
The true number of cases is likely higher, given that testing rates remain relatively low. (In recent days, the daily number of government-administered tests has averaged about 6,000 in a nation of 200 million.) Additionally—according to some experts—Pakistan’s lack of an effective mechanism to officially record deaths of any type may mean some coronavirus fatalities are going unreported.
On April 23, World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that “without effective interventions there could be an estimated 200,000+ cases by mid-July” in Pakistan.
In effect, Islamabad is allowing large numbers of people to congregate countrywide at a moment when social distancing could not be more crucial. The decision, which was sharply criticized in an April 21 statement from senior Pakistani physicians, is all the more striking because governments in most other Muslim-majority countries have closed mosques during Ramadan.
But the central place that Islam has grown to occupy in Pakistani society and politics keeps Islamabad from closing the mosques and religious leaders from voluntarily shuttering them. The political anthropologist Arsalan Khan traces the history of this dynamic—he calls it “the politics around Islamic authority”—in a useful recent essay.
In 1949, two years after Pakistan gained independence as a new homeland for Muslims from colonial India, the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan passed an Objectives Resolution, which provided guidance for the development of the country’s first constitution. It identified several principles to be included in the constitution. They included: “Sovereignty over the entire universe belongs to God Almighty alone and the authority which He has delegated it to the State of Pakistan through its people for being exercised within the limits prescribed by Him is a sacred trust” and “The principles of democracy, freedom, equality, tolerance and social justice as enunciated by Islam shall be fully observed.” Such statements foreshadowed the deep links that would emerge between religion and state in Pakistan.
Fast forward to the 1980s, when President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq engineered a large-scale Islamization process that left a lasting imprint on the nation’s legal and education systems. Islamization, not coincidentally, played out in an era when Pakistan was also tightening its ties with Islamists next door in Afghanistan, where it armed and funded mujahideen fighters resisting the Soviet occupation. (Pakistan began pursuing ties with and providing military support to Islamist fighters in Afghanistan during the administration of Zia’s predecessor, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.)
The result was an environment that enabled and empowered Islamic figures and institutions. This has endured to the present day, with major political consequences. As Khan writes, “Zia’s Islamisation expanded the political space for religious political parties and also led to the politicisation of the Islamic ulema who became increasingly involved in matters of the state.”
The clout of Pakistan’s religious communities manifests in many ways today. They enjoy street power (they can quickly mobilize large numbers of people), impunity (the use of violence and hate speech by their hard-line factions often goes unpunished), political influence (they get what they want from the government— from the reversals of changes to parliamentary oaths they deem offensive to the removal of people they don’t like from government advisory councils), and strategic appeal for the state (Islamist militants are used as armed assets to pursue foreign-policy objectives).
Islamabad has declined to take a tougher line on the mosque issue because it defers to the power of religious figures. The government also fears the consequences if the kid gloves that it treats them with were to come off. If it were to order all mosques closed, protests would probably ensue. At best, this would undermine the very social distancing that mosque closures would be meant to enforce. At worst, there could be violence—and threats to the state—at a moment when the government is consumed with curbing the pandemic. In 2018, the Supreme Court’s decision to acquit a Christian woman languishing on death row on blasphemy charges sparked angry protests from Islamists who called for judges to be killed and soldiers to mutiny (threats that prompted the government to arrest protest leaders).
Read More Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (second from left) attends a meeting with Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan (third from right) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (second from left) attends a meeting with Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan (third from right) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China. Pakistan’s High-Stakes CPEC Reboot Pakistani officials struggle to balance a difficult program against a vital alliance. Argument | Michael Kugelman Lawyers supporting former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan denounce his arrest outside the High Court in Lahore, Pakistan, on Aug. 7. Lawyers supporting former Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan denounce his arrest outside the High Court in Lahore, Pakistan, on Aug. 7. What’s Next for Imran Khan’s Party? With Pakistan’s popular opposition leader jailed ahead of election, his supporters must find a way forward. South Asia Brief | Michael Kugelman Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif poses with lawmakers after the last session of the National Assembly in Islamabad. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif poses with lawmakers after the last session of the National Assembly in Islamabad. Pakistan’s Military Won’t Loosen Its Grip Imran Khan’s conviction shows why the country may be fated to hybrid rule. Analysis | Husain Haqqani
The Pakistani state does not want to be in a position where it must contemplate using force against religious protesters to curb unrest. Violent crackdowns on Islamists—especially in a deeply conservative and religious state—risk triggering large-scale instability. Pakistan’s ongoing economic problems—fueled largely by a debt crisis and guaranteed to worsen during the pandemic—add an additional level of volatility. In 2007, President Pervez Musharraf learned this lesson the hard way when he used force against religious students and militants holed up in Islamabad’s Red Mosque. The operation killed dozens and spawned retaliatory attacks. It also led to the formal establishment of the Pakistani Taliban, which staged an unrelenting campaign of anti-state terrorism for nearly a decade. The sobering lessons of 2007 haven’t been forgotten.
The clerics are aware of their clout and of their status as Frankenstein’s monster—a past creation of the state that the state can no longer control. This helps explain why many mosque leaders oppose voluntarily shutting down mosques and calling for prayer at home. In their public remarks, they acknowledge the risks posed by the coronavirus—and unlike some Pakistanis, who blame the virus on an American or Israeli plot to weaken Muslims, they have largely avoided trumpeting conspiracy theories. Yet they insist that religious duty requires that mosques remain open. For Pakistani religious leaders, it’s ultimately less about considerations of God’s will and more about temporal matters of politics and money.
By closing their doors and turning away thousands of people—some of whom have shrugged off coronavirus concerns and stated their determination to pray at the mosque—they would be ceding political ground to a state that has rarely imposed its will on them and risking the loss of public support from their core constituency. They would also risk losing out on the hefty financial contributions provided to mosques during Ramadan.
To be fair, Islamabad hasn’t simply sat on its hands. This month, it tried to limit attendance in mosques by restricting the number of worshippers to five. Police tried to enforce this regulation, with mixed results. Government officials held a series of negotiations with religious leaders. And the April 18 agreement does stipulate that the government could change its position if it believes the accord isn’t working.
On April 23, Prime Minister Imran Khan delivered an “I did my best”-type appeal. In televised comments, he said the agreement was an ideal “middle ground,” given that Pakistanis were bound to insist on congregational prayer no matter what.
Still, in the end, Islamabad doesn’t have any good options. It can call for a renegotiation of the agreement, which the clerics are likely to reject. It can unilaterally call for mosques to be shut, which may trigger unrest. Or it can just sit back, hold its nose, and hope against all odds that stepped-up testing and contract tracing will keep the pandemic at bay—and mitigate the harmful effects of a decision that risks hastening the spread of a virus that the country is woefully underequipped to stop.


foreignpolicy--2020-04-24--Guesswork and Rumors Make for Bad North Korea Policy

North Korea is a famously hard country to understand from the outside .
The satellite image of a dark North Korea surrounded by its well-lit neighbors , South Korea and China , captures the darkness that swallows up information there .
Even those of us who have studied North Korea extensively have , if we ’ re honest about it , little idea as to what its leaders are actually thinking or what they might do .
CNN ’ s April 21 article that questioned North Korean leader Kim Jong Un ’ s health , leading to a spate of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , is the latest reminder of the near-total absence of reliable information about North Korea .
Pyongyang ’ s opacity forces U.S. leaders to make decisions about war and peace on the basis of rumors and misinformation .
This situation can ’ t go on .
Although they have since made up , U.S. President Donald Trump and Kim were swapping threats of mutual annihilation just two years ago .
The risk of miscalculation is simply unacceptably high .
Washington and Pyongyang may not be able to resolve all of their disputes , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the establishment of embassies would go a long way in reducing the risk of lethal miscalculations .
If the United States could make such an arrangement with the Soviets during the Cold War , it should be able to do so with Kim today .
The closed nature of North Korea , the tendency of the United States and North Korea to view each other through the worst possible lens , and the decentralized media landscape in South Korea all limit U.S. understanding of fast-moving developments inside North Korea .
That thus demands @ @ @ @ @ @ @ United States and North Korea .
North Korea is principally hard to read because it is a closed country .
Reporters Without Borders ranks it as the worst country in the world for press freedom .
The Korean Central News Agency is the only permitted source of official news on North Korean affairs .
That creates a gulf in outside analysis .
Policy deliberations , nonpartisan commentaries , and independent analyses by the expert community rarely take place .
Articles about North Korea ’ s intentions are typically derived from Korean Central News @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with varying agendas and levels of familiarity with North Korean language , history , and cultural context , leaving plenty of room for misinterpretations—or , in some instances , groundless rumors .
The researcher Denny Roy famously noted that North Korea ’ s image as an irrational regime is the product of “ misunderstanding and propaganda ” designed to keep more powerful adversaries guessing .
An egregious example was when a self-proclaimed North Korea expert who said that Kim Jong Il died from diabetes in 2003 and that a double was running the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in 2011 . )
Nearly 70 years of limited interactions between the United States and North Korea have created unfamiliarities at a near-comical scale .
For instance , U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo once referred to Kim Jong Un as “ Chairman Un.
” The similar-sounding names of the Kim dynastic leaders Kim Il Sung , Kim Jong Il , and Kim Jong Un likely threw Trump off , too .
Opacity and lack of transparency not only afford total control to the Kim regime but also make North Korea policy an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
After decades of failed talks , the politically expedient position has been to err on the side of skepticism when it comes to North Korean overtures , even though both sides are guilty of playing politics by reneging on past agreements .
This bias toward cynicism means that the United States is more accepting of risks for escalation than of the risk of missing potential openings for de-escalation .
Former U.S. military and intelligence officials tend to be overrepresented in expert panels and congressional hearings throughout Washington , giving hawkish , regime @ @ @ @ @ @ @ result has been a dominant narrative that consistently overplays cynicism about North Korean overtures and overstates the United States ’ resolve in improving bilateral relations .
To Trump ’ s credit , after his initial saber-rattling , he has been more willing than most recent U.S. presidents to break the deadlock in bilateral relations and to meet with North Korean leadership .
But negotiations have stalled since last October , and talks are unlikely to resume before the U.S. presidential election in November .
As the CNN episode shows , high-level diplomacy has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ insights into even basic information , including the state of Kim Jong Un ’ s health or the possibility of a leadership change .
Absent a comprehensive deal that includes opening of diplomatic posts in each other ’ s country , the United States will always be playing catch-up to decipher North Korea ’ s behaviors and intentions .
Similarly , Pyongyang will always be disadvantaged when it comes to understanding how and why decisions are made in Washington and limited in its ability to make positive overtures .
The media landscape in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of North Korea .
Not all South Korean coverage of North Korean news is equal , as the Hallym University professors Kim Kyung-Hee and Noh Ghee-young documented in their 2011 study on South Korean newspapers ’ coverage of North Korea .
According to Kim and Noh , conservative newspapers in South Korea tended to have negative or neutral reporting on North Korea and relied on North Korean defectors for information more often than liberal newspapers .
On the other hand , liberal-leaning papers tended to be neutral or more positive in covering North @ @ @ @ @ @ @ government and American opinion-makers more often compared to conservative newspapers .
So the type of South Korean papers U.S. government officials or analysts read matters .
The over-reliance on anonymous sources for reporting in South Korea adds to the challenge .
According to a study on the use of anonymous sources by Korean Broadcasting System ’ s News9 and the BBC ’ s News at 10 , they appeared three times more in the Korean news program than in the British one .
This may point to a greater acceptance of anonymous reporting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ related to North Korea , where defectors and informants inside North Korea often serve as confidential sources .
Adding to the confused mix , mobile apps such as KakaoTalk facilitate rapid sharing of tabloid news and gossip ( jjirashi ) at lightning speed .
For instance , in 2016 , a KakaoTalk message claiming that Samsung Group Chairman Lee Kun-hee had died reached 48 million people within an hour , causing the market value of Samsung affiliates to fluctuate by 12 trillion won ( around $ 10 billion ) .
Lee had been @ @ @ @ @ @ @ likely gave the rumor plausibility .
The story was later found to be inauthentic .
Navigating the information gap is a major challenge for the U.S.-North Korea relations .
It erodes the ability to plan and respond to major developments , whether it is a sudden change in leadership , a global pandemic , or military maneuvers .
It prevents both countries from discerning facts from rumors , dramatically increasing the likelihood of fatal misinterpretations and miscalculations .
And it skews both sides to err on the side of cynical mistrust , which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and unnecessary escalations more likely .
To address this challenge , the United States and North Korea should prioritize opening official diplomatic posts in each other ’ s capitals .
To Trump ’ s credit , his administration stated its interest in opening a liaison office in Pyongyang in the lead-up to the Hanoi summit .
Since the failed summit , however , interest in establishing diplomatic recognition has waned .
The false rumor about Kim Jong Un ’ s impending death should serve as a warning .
The next rumor may claim @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nuclear attack , leaving U.S. decision-makers with little time to fact-check .
There are many things in the relationship with Pyongyang that Washington can not change .
But it can act to end the unnecessary blindness it has imposed on itself .

North Korea is a famously hard country to understand from the outside. The satellite image of a dark North Korea surrounded by its well-lit neighbors, South Korea and China, captures the darkness that swallows up information there. Even those of us who have studied North Korea extensively have, if we’re honest about it, little idea as to what its leaders are actually thinking or what they might do.
North Korea is a famously hard country to understand from the outside. The satellite image of a dark North Korea surrounded by its well-lit neighbors, South Korea and China, captures the darkness that swallows up information there. Even those of us who have studied North Korea extensively have, if we’re honest about it, little idea as to what its leaders are actually thinking or what they might do.
CNN’s April 21 article that questioned North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s health, leading to a spate of unverifiable speculation about his incapacity or death, is the latest reminder of the near-total absence of reliable information about North Korea. Pyongyang’s opacity forces U.S. leaders to make decisions about war and peace on the basis of rumors and misinformation.
This situation can’t go on. Although they have since made up, U.S. President Donald Trump and Kim were swapping threats of mutual annihilation just two years ago. The risk of miscalculation is simply unacceptably high. Washington and Pyongyang may not be able to resolve all of their disputes, but a broader agreement that allows for the establishment of embassies would go a long way in reducing the risk of lethal miscalculations. If the United States could make such an arrangement with the Soviets during the Cold War, it should be able to do so with Kim today.
The closed nature of North Korea, the tendency of the United States and North Korea to view each other through the worst possible lens, and the decentralized media landscape in South Korea all limit U.S. understanding of fast-moving developments inside North Korea. That thus demands more direct modes of communication between the United States and North Korea.
North Korea is principally hard to read because it is a closed country. Reporters Without Borders ranks it as the worst country in the world for press freedom. The Korean Central News Agency is the only permitted source of official news on North Korean affairs. That creates a gulf in outside analysis. Policy deliberations, nonpartisan commentaries, and independent analyses by the expert community rarely take place. Articles about North Korea’s intentions are typically derived from Korean Central News Agency statements and analyzed by outside experts with varying agendas and levels of familiarity with North Korean language, history, and cultural context, leaving plenty of room for misinterpretations—or, in some instances, groundless rumors. The researcher Denny Roy famously noted that North Korea’s image as an irrational regime is the product of “misunderstanding and propaganda” designed to keep more powerful adversaries guessing. An egregious example was when a self-proclaimed North Korea expert who said that Kim Jong Il died from diabetes in 2003 and that a double was running the country. (Kim Jong Il died in 2011.)
Nearly 70 years of limited interactions between the United States and North Korea have created unfamiliarities at a near-comical scale. For instance, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo once referred to Kim Jong Un as “Chairman Un.” The similar-sounding names of the Kim dynastic leaders Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il, and Kim Jong Un likely threw Trump off, too.
Opacity and lack of transparency not only afford total control to the Kim regime but also make North Korea policy an easy target for manipulation by Washington hawks. After decades of failed talks, the politically expedient position has been to err on the side of skepticism when it comes to North Korean overtures, even though both sides are guilty of playing politics by reneging on past agreements. This bias toward cynicism means that the United States is more accepting of risks for escalation than of the risk of missing potential openings for de-escalation.
Former U.S. military and intelligence officials tend to be overrepresented in expert panels and congressional hearings throughout Washington, giving hawkish, regime change-oriented views more mainstream coverage. The result has been a dominant narrative that consistently overplays cynicism about North Korean overtures and overstates the United States’ resolve in improving bilateral relations. To Trump’s credit, after his initial saber-rattling, he has been more willing than most recent U.S. presidents to break the deadlock in bilateral relations and to meet with North Korean leadership. But negotiations have stalled since last October, and talks are unlikely to resume before the U.S. presidential election in November.
As the CNN episode shows, high-level diplomacy has failed to give the Trump administration any insights into even basic information, including the state of Kim Jong Un’s health or the possibility of a leadership change. Absent a comprehensive deal that includes opening of diplomatic posts in each other’s country, the United States will always be playing catch-up to decipher North Korea’s behaviors and intentions. Similarly, Pyongyang will always be disadvantaged when it comes to understanding how and why decisions are made in Washington and limited in its ability to make positive overtures.
The media landscape in South Korea further complicates outsiders’ understanding of North Korea. Not all South Korean coverage of North Korean news is equal, as the Hallym University professors Kim Kyung-Hee and Noh Ghee-young documented in their 2011 study on South Korean newspapers’ coverage of North Korea. According to Kim and Noh, conservative newspapers in South Korea tended to have negative or neutral reporting on North Korea and relied on North Korean defectors for information more often than liberal newspapers. On the other hand, liberal-leaning papers tended to be neutral or more positive in covering North Korea-related news and tended to cite U.S. government and American opinion-makers more often compared to conservative newspapers. So the type of South Korean papers U.S. government officials or analysts read matters.
The over-reliance on anonymous sources for reporting in South Korea adds to the challenge. According to a study on the use of anonymous sources by Korean Broadcasting System’s News9 and the BBC’s News at 10, they appeared three times more in the Korean news program than in the British one. This may point to a greater acceptance of anonymous reporting in South Korea, especially on news related to North Korea, where defectors and informants inside North Korea often serve as confidential sources.
Adding to the confused mix, mobile apps such as KakaoTalk facilitate rapid sharing of tabloid news and gossip (jjirashi) at lightning speed. For instance, in 2016, a KakaoTalk message claiming that Samsung Group Chairman Lee Kun-hee had died reached 48 million people within an hour, causing the market value of Samsung affiliates to fluctuate by 12 trillion won (around $10 billion). Lee had been ill since May 2014, so that likely gave the rumor plausibility. The story was later found to be inauthentic.
Navigating the information gap is a major challenge for the U.S.-North Korea relations. It erodes the ability to plan and respond to major developments, whether it is a sudden change in leadership, a global pandemic, or military maneuvers. It prevents both countries from discerning facts from rumors, dramatically increasing the likelihood of fatal misinterpretations and miscalculations. And it skews both sides to err on the side of cynical mistrust, which in turn renders diplomatic breakthroughs more difficult and unnecessary escalations more likely.
To address this challenge, the United States and North Korea should prioritize opening official diplomatic posts in each other’s capitals. To Trump’s credit, his administration stated its interest in opening a liaison office in Pyongyang in the lead-up to the Hanoi summit. Since the failed summit, however, interest in establishing diplomatic recognition has waned.
The false rumor about Kim Jong Un’s impending death should serve as a warning. The next rumor may claim that Kim is about to launch a nuclear attack, leaving U.S. decision-makers with little time to fact-check. There are many things in the relationship with Pyongyang that Washington cannot change. But it can act to end the unnecessary blindness it has imposed on itself.


foreignpolicy--2020-04-24--In Latest Post-Impeachment Move, Trump Administration Shifts a Loyalist to the State Department

In Latest Post-Impeachment Move , Trump Administration Shifts a Loyalist to the State Department Alexander Alden , a political appointee under U.S. President Donald Trump , is being moved from the White House to the State Department to manage relations with Europe , including issues related to China and the coronavirus , according to current and former officials familiar with the matter .
Alden is expected to move from the National Security Council ( NSC ) to become a new deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs , where he will oversee relations with the European Union @ @ @ @ @ @ @ issues .
His portfolio is expected to include the pandemic response and China ’ s growing clout in Europe , as well as counter-terrorism and human rights .
Alden , a Trump appointee since 2017 , is the first political appointee to take up a senior post in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs since the impeachment investigation into Trump pushed senior bureau leadership into the national public spotlight late last year and prompted the firing or resignation of several senior officials .
He will be tasked with managing U.S. relations with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ recent years under the Trump administration—most recently with Trump ’ s decision to cut off U.S. air travel to Europe without first notifying his European counterparts .
Washington has been without an appointed envoy to the EU since Trump megadonor Gordon Sondland was sacked from the job in February following his testimony in the impeachment trial .
The impeachment trial and investigation centered on Trump ’ s moves to withhold military aid to Ukraine unless the Ukrainian government agreed to investigate Joe Biden , his Democratic rival in the 2020 presidential election .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs into the national spotlight , where they faced political attacks by the president ’ s allies after being subpoenaed to testify .
Trump was acquitted of the charges on mostly partisan lines .
Alden joined the Trump administration in 2017 as a special assistant in the Pentagon before becoming director for defense policy and strategy at the NSC .
He previously held roles at the Center for the National Interest and Center for Naval Analyses , national security-focused think tanks .
He joins the State Department @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , Julie Fisher , is expected to become U.S. ambassador to Belarus , if confirmed by the Senate .
The State Department and NSC did not respond to requests for comment .
Career diplomats who serve at the deputy assistant secretary level typically have decades of experience in diplomacy before taking on such a role .
Both Republican and Democratic administrations have made a practice of installing appointees with comparatively less experience and expertise in the State Department at that level .
The impeachment saga forced out several key figures from the bureau—including @ @ @ @ @ @ @ interim successor , William Taylor ; U.S. special envoy for Ukraine Kurt Volker ; and Sondland , the EU ambassador .
Trump ’ s handling of the impeachment investigation fueled criticism from former diplomats and Democratic lawmakers that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was not taking enough action to protect career civil servants from political targeting or retaliation .

Alexander Alden, a political appointee under U.S. President Donald Trump, is being moved from the White House to the State Department to manage relations with Europe, including issues related to China and the coronavirus, according to current and former officials familiar with the matter.
Alexander Alden, a political appointee under U.S. President Donald Trump, is being moved from the White House to the State Department to manage relations with Europe, including issues related to China and the coronavirus, according to current and former officials familiar with the matter.
Alden is expected to move from the National Security Council (NSC) to become a new deputy assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, where he will oversee relations with the European Union and the office of policy and global issues. His portfolio is expected to include the pandemic response and China’s growing clout in Europe, as well as counter-terrorism and human rights. Alden, a Trump appointee since 2017, is the first political appointee to take up a senior post in the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs since the impeachment investigation into Trump pushed senior bureau leadership into the national public spotlight late last year and prompted the firing or resignation of several senior officials.
He will be tasked with managing U.S. relations with Brussels, which have become strained in recent years under the Trump administration—most recently with Trump’s decision to cut off U.S. air travel to Europe without first notifying his European counterparts. Washington has been without an appointed envoy to the EU since Trump megadonor Gordon Sondland was sacked from the job in February following his testimony in the impeachment trial.
The impeachment trial and investigation centered on Trump’s moves to withhold military aid to Ukraine unless the Ukrainian government agreed to investigate Joe Biden, his Democratic rival in the 2020 presidential election. The ensuing saga dragged career diplomats under the Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs into the national spotlight, where they faced political attacks by the president’s allies after being subpoenaed to testify. Trump was acquitted of the charges on mostly partisan lines.
Alden joined the Trump administration in 2017 as a special assistant in the Pentagon before becoming director for defense policy and strategy at the NSC. He previously held roles at the Center for the National Interest and Center for Naval Analyses, national security-focused think tanks. He joins the State Department as another top official in the bureau, Julie Fisher, is expected to become U.S. ambassador to Belarus, if confirmed by the Senate.
The State Department and NSC did not respond to requests for comment.
Career diplomats who serve at the deputy assistant secretary level typically have decades of experience in diplomacy before taking on such a role. Both Republican and Democratic administrations have made a practice of installing appointees with comparatively less experience and expertise in the State Department at that level.
The impeachment saga forced out several key figures from the bureau—including Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch; her interim successor, William Taylor; U.S. special envoy for Ukraine Kurt Volker; and Sondland, the EU ambassador. Trump’s handling of the impeachment investigation fueled criticism from former diplomats and Democratic lawmakers that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was not taking enough action to protect career civil servants from political targeting or retaliation.


foreignpolicy--2020-04-24--A Tale of Two Rescue Plans

A Tale of Two Rescue Plans

It has been several weeks since Robert Shindler , an accountant based in Bradenton , Florida , who represents hundreds of small U.S. businesses , began trying to puzzle his way through the bureaucratic maze set up by Washington to dispense more than $ 2 trillion in rescue aid to mitigate the coronavirus shutdown .
And Shindler says he ’ s as angry now—and most of his clients are as cashless—as when he started applying for federal-sponsored loans at the beginning of April .
“ I ’ m seething , ” Shindler said in a phone interview .
Echoing the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said a blizzard of obscure rules , changes , exceptions , and a general lack of cooperation from major banks left most of his clients empty-pocketed .
And he ’ s certain things won ’ t be all that much better after President Donald Trump signs the new $ 484 billion replenishment fund on Friday—though it is more targeted to small businesses—with a huge queue of loan applicants already waiting .
“ In the first 30 seconds , the money will be gone , ” he said .
More than a month into @ @ @ @ @ @ @ clear that even as they have allocated a record amount of rescue money , Congress and the Trump administration have done little more than stick their fingers in a fast-crumbling dike .
U.S. jobless claims soared by another 4.4 million this week , tallying a total of 26.5 million unemployed—the highest figures ever recorded—and economists warn that despite the federal program and unprecedented credit easing by the U.S. Federal Reserve , many of these businesses and jobs will never come back .
U.S. unemployment is now at the highest levels since the Great @ @ @ @ @ @ @ disastrous program , ” said Joseph Stiglitz , a Nobel-winning economist at Columbia University .
“ The money is not going to where it ’ s needed most .
The most vulnerable are not getting the money .
The second point is that it was designed to encourage businesses to keep their workers , but no one trusted the Trump administration on debt forgiveness.
” ( Under the so-called Paycheck Protection Program , businesses were to be forgiven their government loans if they retained their workers . )
“ It has been a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ going to where it ’ s needed most.
” Other economists agree , saying it would have been far more effective and efficient for the U.S. government to have directly reimbursed businesses for maintaining their workforce during the shutdown , as was done in Europe , perhaps by using a simple tax code provision that allowed businesses to deduct payroll for furloughed workers from future tax returns .
“ I would have much preferred paying firms to keep their workers on the payroll—both for business continuity and for reducing uncertainty about re-employment on @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is not the system the U.S. went for , ” the Harvard University economist Dani Rodrik , who is the president-elect of the International Economic Association , said in an email .
“ To compensate , unemployment insurance is currently generous by U.S. standards.
” To be sure , backed by all those government trillions and Fed support , many U.S. banks are now more accommodating in forgiving interest and principal payments .
But Shindler said one of the biggest problems he faced with PPP was that “ every bank had a different @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Every day for five days in a row , they changed the application .
Everything that was simple became ridiculous .
If [ a company ’ s ] articles of incorporation didn ’ t exactly match the writing on the check they would reject it .
You have to understand how desperate this is .
We ’ re approaching April 30 .
People now will have to make a choice between the mortgage and the food .
There ’ s no more money coming in.
” By contrast , a number of other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , seem to be responding far better to the short-term economic challenges than the United States .
And that is especially true when it comes to offering aid to millions of workers thrown out of their jobs because of the pandemic , the lockdowns , and a halt to many activities , from plane travel to dining in restaurants .
Instead of a modest one-off state payment to help families through the crisis or trying to induce banks to help with loans or providing more unemployment insurance for laid-off workers , as has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ nearly all European countries are reimbursing workers ’ incomes directly through their employers at levels from about 60 to 90 percent of wages .
The differing responses in Europe and the United States to the unprecedented economic disruption from the pandemic highlight the role that different economic philosophies play during times of crisis .
If the no-holds-barred U.S. economic liberalism was already discredited after the 2008 financial crisis , to European eyes it looks even less appealing now .
If the no-holds-barred U.S. economic liberalism was already discredited after the 2008 financial crisis @ @ @ @ @ @ @ less appealing now .
“ It ’ s the comeback of the state in economic affairs—it began with the financial crisis but so much more now , ” said Jonathan Hackenbroich , who researches geoeconomics at the European Council on Foreign Relations .
“ It does put the laissez-faire model in the United States under pressure .
Longer term , we shall see—but right now , you can see the advantages of a more statist model.
” The New York University economist Paul Romer , another Nobel winner , told Foreign Policy that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in their more “ flexible ” labor system and free market approach , the ongoing crisis should finally deliver a death blow to the lingering Reaganite notion , which still infects both political parties , that government is usually the problem and almost never the solution .
“ There are many signs that we ’ ve let the capacity of our government deteriorate , ” Romer said .
“ That is part of what is surfacing right now : our lack of administrative capacity for execution .
One could also argue that the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that if we really believed in the flexibility of the labor market , we would have done more to separate health insurance from employment .
One of the big costs right now of this separation is that it ’ s the worst possible time to have so many people deprived of health insurance.
” Some economists like Stiglitz argue that the United States was less prepared for the pandemic than other advanced economies because in 2019 , more than 27 million Americans still did not have health insurance , while in other countries @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Development almost everyone is insured through a public or private scheme .
With so many workers now divorced from their employers and therefore health care , that number of U.S. uninsured is expected to swell dramatically even as the number of coronavirus infections in the United States approaches 900,000 , with more than 50,000 deaths recorded .
“ The COVID-19 pandemic found a perfect foothold in this land of poor health , inequality and income insecurity , ” Stiglitz writes in a forthcoming paper for the Roosevelt Institute .
“ The COVID-19 pandemic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of poor health , inequality and income insecurity.
” The Paycheck Protection Program ( PPP ) and other aspects of the rescue package have failed in many respects thus far , conveying most of the money to bigger businesses through major banks , including some that don ’ t need it , and giving many others short shrift before running out of funds in just two weeks .
An Associated Press investigation found that , since the program opened on April 3 , at least 94 companies that disclosed receiving aid were publicly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ over $ 100 million , and a new survey by Goldman Sachs revealed that only 29 percent of small businesses that applied for a PPP loan received money .
The new measure passed by the House on Thursday adds $ 310 billion to the PPP program and allocates more to smaller banks and another $ 60 billion for a separate small-business emergency loan and grant program .
It also provides $ 75 billion for hospitals and health care providers , and $ 25 billion for a new coronavirus testing program .
Some European @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to unemployment and government health care , and Germany is a case in point .
A decade ago , at the time of the financial crisis , the country put into place a program , called Kurzarbeit , meant to allow companies to keep workers on reduced hours , with their reduced paychecks underwritten by the state .
It was hugely successful at the time , keeping German unemployment steady even as other European countries saw joblessness soar after the crisis .
With a successful program already in place , Germany had little @ @ @ @ @ @ @ shocks unleashed this spring by the coronavirus .
Thousands of German companies , compared with just a trickle before the pandemic , applied to the government to take part in the program , which now offers families with dependents about 67 percent of their former salary and other short-time workers a little more than 60 percent .
Since the pandemic began , Germany has fine-tuned the program to offer more benefits and make sure more companies qualify .
“ The European model , where you have free markets but with a huge state @ @ @ @ @ @ @ crisis shows the benefits of that approach , ” Hackenbroich said .
“ Kurzarbeit is a specifically German concept that ’ s been very successful.
” “ The European model , where you have free markets but with a huge state framework … this crisis shows the benefits of that approach.
” Many other countries in Europe thought so .
French President Emmanuel Macron explicitly copied the German model for France ’ s work support scheme .
Denmark has eagerly taken on private sector salaries if companies avoid layoffs .
The Netherlands went @ @ @ @ @ @ @ percent of wages to avoid permanent layoffs .
The United Kingdom just extended its own work support program—which covers monthly earnings up to about $ 3,000—through June to make it easier for companies to retain employees for the anticipated post-crisis recovery .
“ The success of the German Kurzarbeit scheme during the financial crisis has led to it being widely copied , ” said Oxford Economics in a study this week on the European response to the pandemic .
“ We expect adoption of similar schemes will limit the hit to employment and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ restrictions are lifted.
” Compared with the unprecedented rise in unemployment in the United States , countries like Germany seem to be faring extremely well , though the latest official data—an unemployment rate of about 5.1 percent—predates the economic dislocation from the crisis .
To get an idea of the difference between German and U.S. labor market convulsions , one top German economist warned that unemployment could “ skyrocket ” to 5.9 percent this year due to the economic paralysis .
The U.S. unemployment rate is already approaching 20 percent .
Also in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ balance sheets are in the process of being destroyed for good—which is something that even the Fed , with its record lending and debt-underwriting , can hardly prevent .
For millions of Americans who are but a paycheck or two from becoming insolvent , those balance sheets will not recover .
“ The Fed can lend money but it doesn ’ t give away money .
… These are not liquidity issues .
They ’ re solvency issues , ” said Stiglitz , who fears that with the deficit climbing to upwards of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be reluctant to add more funds to the rescue .
As a result , he says , there is no longer any possibility of a sharp V-shaped recovery—in which conditions quickly return to economic health as before—but what economists call a more drawn-out U- or W-shaped recovery or , in the worst case , one shaped like an “ L ” —which means , in effect , a longer-term depression .
“ We ’ ve estimated the cost of just giving money to workers directly .
It ’ s a fraction of what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ saddest aspect of the U.S. response to the crisis , added Stiglitz , is what might have been .
“ We ’ ve estimated the cost of just giving money to workers directly .
It ’ s a fraction of what we ’ re now spending.
” Europe , of course , is hardly out of the woods ; added debt will weigh on the European Union for a long time as well .
As useful as the programs are to limit unemployment in the short term , they ’ re not cheap @ @ @ @ @ @ @ will cost at least 10 billion euros ( $ 11 billion ) .
France ’ s work support program has swelled in cost to 24 billion euros ( $ 26 billion ) .
Economists figure Britain ’ s generous salary support scheme could cost some 78 billion pounds ( $ 96 billion ) .
( For many countries , such as Denmark and Germany , the additional costs of short-work measures are modest because they ’ d be paying out full unemployment compensation if workers were laid off . )
And the very @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , northern countries is also sowing divisions inside the European Union over how to respond more broadly to the toll of the crisis .
European leaders met again virtually Thursday to discuss further rescue efforts .
One of the few ideas that has not been controversial at all is a 100 billion euro ( $ 108 billion ) European fund to support national salary support schemes as Kurzarbeit finds new adepts all over the continent .
Yet beyond that , and hundreds of billions of euros in loan guarantees , European leaders have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a rescue package they need or how to go about it .
Heavily indebted countries with rapidly growing unemployment , such as Spain and Italy , are pressing for more ambitious pan-European solutions .
Heavily indebted countries with rapidly growing unemployment , such as Spain and Italy , are pressing for more ambitious pan-European solutions , whether jointly issued debt to help those countries access credit or a massive 1.5 trillion euro ( $ 1.63 trillion ) fund proposed by the Spanish prime minister .
Spanish unemployment was at 14 percent before the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 20 percent this year .
But countries such as Germany and the Netherlands , where short-term measures have minimized the labor market pain , have so far resisted calls by Southern European countries to issue so-called “ coronabonds , ” fearing the short-term emergency will end up sucking them into a de facto fiscal union with more profligate countries .
The divides over how to deal with the fallout of the virus are exacerbating political divisions within Europe and could stoke more anti-European sentiment in peripheral countries that feel Brussels is hanging them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , meanwhile , will suffer its own unique reckoning unless new remedies are considered , some economists say .
As an alternative approach for the United States , Stiglitz recommended a European-style paycheck guarantee program , such as the one proposed by Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal , or a Paycheck Security Act , another proposal by independent Sen. Bernie Sanders and Democratic Sens .
Mark Warner , Doug Jones , and Richard Blumenthal .
Under such proposals , the government would make up for any firm ’ s shortfall in revenues , provided @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as yet there is little congressional support for these partisan plans .
“ We are testing our economic system in ways that it has never been tested before , ” Stiglitz writes in his forthcoming paper on the crisis .
“ Before the 2008 crisis , most economists didn ’ t focus much on credit interlinkages , and how the collapse of one bank could lead to a bankruptcy cascade .
Today , with so many firms in so many industries being so badly affected , there is a potential of a more @ @ @ @ @ @ @

It has been several weeks since Robert Shindler, an accountant based in Bradenton, Florida, who represents hundreds of small U.S. businesses, began trying to puzzle his way through the bureaucratic maze set up by Washington to dispense more than $2 trillion in rescue aid to mitigate the coronavirus shutdown. And Shindler says he’s as angry now—and most of his clients are as cashless—as when he started applying for federal-sponsored loans at the beginning of April.
It has been several weeks since Robert Shindler, an accountant based in Bradenton, Florida, who represents hundreds of small U.S. businesses, began trying to puzzle his way through the bureaucratic maze set up by Washington to dispense more than $2 trillion in rescue aid to mitigate the coronavirus shutdown. And Shindler says he’s as angry now—and most of his clients are as cashless—as when he started applying for federal-sponsored loans at the beginning of April.
“I’m seething,” Shindler said in a phone interview. Echoing the complaints of many other applicants, he said a blizzard of obscure rules, changes, exceptions, and a general lack of cooperation from major banks left most of his clients empty-pocketed. And he’s certain things won’t be all that much better after President Donald Trump signs the new $484 billion replenishment fund on Friday—though it is more targeted to small businesses—with a huge queue of loan applicants already waiting.
“In the first 30 seconds, the money will be gone,” he said.
More than a month into the economic lockdown, it is becoming clear that even as they have allocated a record amount of rescue money, Congress and the Trump administration have done little more than stick their fingers in a fast-crumbling dike. U.S. jobless claims soared by another 4.4 million this week, tallying a total of 26.5 million unemployed—the highest figures ever recorded—and economists warn that despite the federal program and unprecedented credit easing by the U.S. Federal Reserve, many of these businesses and jobs will never come back. U.S. unemployment is now at the highest levels since the Great Depression.
“It has been a disastrous program,” said Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel-winning economist at Columbia University. “The money is not going to where it’s needed most. The most vulnerable are not getting the money. The second point is that it was designed to encourage businesses to keep their workers, but no one trusted the Trump administration on debt forgiveness.” (Under the so-called Paycheck Protection Program, businesses were to be forgiven their government loans if they retained their workers.)
“It has been a disastrous program. The money is not going to where it’s needed most.”
Other economists agree, saying it would have been far more effective and efficient for the U.S. government to have directly reimbursed businesses for maintaining their workforce during the shutdown, as was done in Europe, perhaps by using a simple tax code provision that allowed businesses to deduct payroll for furloughed workers from future tax returns.
“I would have much preferred paying firms to keep their workers on the payroll—both for business continuity and for reducing uncertainty about re-employment on the part of furloughed workers—but clearly that is not the system the U.S. went for,” the Harvard University economist Dani Rodrik, who is the president-elect of the International Economic Association, said in an email. “To compensate, unemployment insurance is currently generous by U.S. standards.”
To be sure, backed by all those government trillions and Fed support, many U.S. banks are now more accommodating in forgiving interest and principal payments. But Shindler said one of the biggest problems he faced with PPP was that “every bank had a different theory on how to run it. Every day for five days in a row, they changed the application. Everything that was simple became ridiculous. If [a company’s] articles of incorporation didn’t exactly match the writing on the check they would reject it. You have to understand how desperate this is. We’re approaching April 30. People now will have to make a choice between the mortgage and the food. There’s no more money coming in.”
By contrast, a number of other developed economies, especially in Northern Europe, seem to be responding far better to the short-term economic challenges than the United States. And that is especially true when it comes to offering aid to millions of workers thrown out of their jobs because of the pandemic, the lockdowns, and a halt to many activities, from plane travel to dining in restaurants. Instead of a modest one-off state payment to help families through the crisis or trying to induce banks to help with loans or providing more unemployment insurance for laid-off workers, as has been done in the United States, nearly all European countries are reimbursing workers’ incomes directly through their employers at levels from about 60 to 90 percent of wages.
The differing responses in Europe and the United States to the unprecedented economic disruption from the pandemic highlight the role that different economic philosophies play during times of crisis. If the no-holds-barred U.S. economic liberalism was already discredited after the 2008 financial crisis, to European eyes it looks even less appealing now.
If the no-holds-barred U.S. economic liberalism was already discredited after the 2008 financial crisis, to European eyes it looks even less appealing now.
“It’s the comeback of the state in economic affairs—it began with the financial crisis but so much more now,” said Jonathan Hackenbroich, who researches geoeconomics at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “It does put the laissez-faire model in the United States under pressure. Longer term, we shall see—but right now, you can see the advantages of a more statist model.”
The New York University economist Paul Romer, another Nobel winner, told Foreign Policy that even though Americans have traditionally taken pride in their more “flexible” labor system and free market approach, the ongoing crisis should finally deliver a death blow to the lingering Reaganite notion, which still infects both political parties, that government is usually the problem and almost never the solution.
“There are many signs that we’ve let the capacity of our government deteriorate,” Romer said. “That is part of what is surfacing right now: our lack of administrative capacity for execution. One could also argue that the U.S. has been inconsistent in the sense that if we really believed in the flexibility of the labor market, we would have done more to separate health insurance from employment. One of the big costs right now of this separation is that it’s the worst possible time to have so many people deprived of health insurance.”
Some economists like Stiglitz argue that the United States was less prepared for the pandemic than other advanced economies because in 2019, more than 27 million Americans still did not have health insurance, while in other countries within the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development almost everyone is insured through a public or private scheme. With so many workers now divorced from their employers and therefore health care, that number of U.S. uninsured is expected to swell dramatically even as the number of coronavirus infections in the United States approaches 900,000, with more than 50,000 deaths recorded. “The COVID-19 pandemic found a perfect foothold in this land of poor health, inequality and income insecurity,” Stiglitz writes in a forthcoming paper for the Roosevelt Institute.
“The COVID-19 pandemic found a perfect foothold in this land of poor health, inequality and income insecurity.”
The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and other aspects of the rescue package have failed in many respects thus far, conveying most of the money to bigger businesses through major banks, including some that don’t need it, and giving many others short shrift before running out of funds in just two weeks. An Associated Press investigation found that, since the program opened on April 3, at least 94 companies that disclosed receiving aid were publicly traded, some with market values well over $100 million, and a new survey by Goldman Sachs revealed that only 29 percent of small businesses that applied for a PPP loan received money. The new measure passed by the House on Thursday adds $310 billion to the PPP program and allocates more to smaller banks and another $60 billion for a separate small-business emergency loan and grant program. It also provides $75 billion for hospitals and health care providers, and $25 billion for a new coronavirus testing program.
Some European countries have taken an entirely different approach to unemployment and government health care, and Germany is a case in point. A decade ago, at the time of the financial crisis, the country put into place a program, called Kurzarbeit, meant to allow companies to keep workers on reduced hours, with their reduced paychecks underwritten by the state. It was hugely successful at the time, keeping German unemployment steady even as other European countries saw joblessness soar after the crisis.
Empty chairs with notes reading "Our business needs help" stand in front of Berlin's Brandenburg Gate during a protest of gastronomers on April 24.
With a successful program already in place, Germany had little difficulty in responding to the labor market shocks unleashed this spring by the coronavirus. Thousands of German companies, compared with just a trickle before the pandemic, applied to the government to take part in the program, which now offers families with dependents about 67 percent of their former salary and other short-time workers a little more than 60 percent. Since the pandemic began, Germany has fine-tuned the program to offer more benefits and make sure more companies qualify.
“The European model, where you have free markets but with a huge state framework … you can definitely say this crisis shows the benefits of that approach,” Hackenbroich said. “Kurzarbeit is a specifically German concept that’s been very successful.”
“The European model, where you have free markets but with a huge state framework … this crisis shows the benefits of that approach.”
Many other countries in Europe thought so. French President Emmanuel Macron explicitly copied the German model for France’s work support scheme. Denmark has eagerly taken on private sector salaries if companies avoid layoffs. The Netherlands went even farther, underwriting up to 90 percent of wages to avoid permanent layoffs. The United Kingdom just extended its own work support program—which covers monthly earnings up to about $3,000—through June to make it easier for companies to retain employees for the anticipated post-crisis recovery.
“The success of the German Kurzarbeit scheme during the financial crisis has led to it being widely copied,” said Oxford Economics in a study this week on the European response to the pandemic. “We expect adoption of similar schemes will limit the hit to employment and ensure firms can quickly start production once restrictions are lifted.”
Compared with the unprecedented rise in unemployment in the United States, countries like Germany seem to be faring extremely well, though the latest official data—an unemployment rate of about 5.1 percent—predates the economic dislocation from the crisis. To get an idea of the difference between German and U.S. labor market convulsions, one top German economist warned that unemployment could “skyrocket” to 5.9 percent this year due to the economic paralysis. The U.S. unemployment rate is already approaching 20 percent.
Also in the United States, individual and business balance sheets are in the process of being destroyed for good—which is something that even the Fed, with its record lending and debt-underwriting, can hardly prevent. For millions of Americans who are but a paycheck or two from becoming insolvent, those balance sheets will not recover.
“The Fed can lend money but it doesn’t give away money. … These are not liquidity issues. They’re solvency issues,” said Stiglitz, who fears that with the deficit climbing to upwards of 15 percent of GDP, Congress will be reluctant to add more funds to the rescue. As a result, he says, there is no longer any possibility of a sharp V-shaped recovery—in which conditions quickly return to economic health as before—but what economists call a more drawn-out U- or W-shaped recovery or, in the worst case, one shaped like an “L”—which means, in effect, a longer-term depression.
“We’ve estimated the cost of just giving money to workers directly. It’s a fraction of what we’re now spending.”
The saddest aspect of the U.S. response to the crisis, added Stiglitz, is what might have been. “We’ve estimated the cost of just giving money to workers directly. It’s a fraction of what we’re now spending.”
Europe, of course, is hardly out of the woods; added debt will weigh on the European Union for a long time as well. As useful as the programs are to limit unemployment in the short term, they’re not cheap. Germany estimates that the expanded program will cost at least 10 billion euros ($11 billion). France’s work support program has swelled in cost to 24 billion euros ($26 billion). Economists figure Britain’s generous salary support scheme could cost some 78 billion pounds ($96 billion). (For many countries, such as Denmark and Germany, the additional costs of short-work measures are modest because they’d be paying out full unemployment compensation if workers were laid off.)
And the very success of mitigation measures in the richer, northern countries is also sowing divisions inside the European Union over how to respond more broadly to the toll of the crisis. European leaders met again virtually Thursday to discuss further rescue efforts. One of the few ideas that has not been controversial at all is a 100 billion euro ($108 billion) European fund to support national salary support schemes as Kurzarbeit finds new adepts all over the continent.
Yet beyond that, and hundreds of billions of euros in loan guarantees, European leaders have been unable to agree on how big a rescue package they need or how to go about it.
Heavily indebted countries with rapidly growing unemployment, such as Spain and Italy, are pressing for more ambitious pan-European solutions.
Heavily indebted countries with rapidly growing unemployment, such as Spain and Italy, are pressing for more ambitious pan-European solutions, whether jointly issued debt to help those countries access credit or a massive 1.5 trillion euro ($1.63 trillion) fund proposed by the Spanish prime minister. Spanish unemployment was at 14 percent before the virus outbreak and is expected to top 20 percent this year.
But countries such as Germany and the Netherlands, where short-term measures have minimized the labor market pain, have so far resisted calls by Southern European countries to issue so-called “coronabonds,” fearing the short-term emergency will end up sucking them into a de facto fiscal union with more profligate countries. The divides over how to deal with the fallout of the virus are exacerbating political divisions within Europe and could stoke more anti-European sentiment in peripheral countries that feel Brussels is hanging them out to dry.
The United States, meanwhile, will suffer its own unique reckoning unless new remedies are considered, some economists say. As an alternative approach for the United States, Stiglitz recommended a European-style paycheck guarantee program, such as the one proposed by Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal, or a Paycheck Security Act, another proposal by independent Sen. Bernie Sanders and Democratic Sens. Mark Warner, Doug Jones, and Richard Blumenthal. Under such proposals, the government would make up for any firm’s shortfall in revenues, provided that it retain its employees. But as yet there is little congressional support for these partisan plans.
“We are testing our economic system in ways that it has never been tested before,” Stiglitz writes in his forthcoming paper on the crisis. “Before the 2008 crisis, most economists didn’t focus much on credit interlinkages, and how the collapse of one bank could lead to a bankruptcy cascade. Today, with so many firms in so many industries being so badly affected, there is a potential of a more systemic collapse or credit gridlock.”