thenation--2020-11-16--There Are More People Being Displaced Than Ever Before

I saw them for only a few seconds .
One glimpse and they were gone .
The young woman wore a brown headwrap , a yellow short-sleeved shirt , and a long pink , red , and blue floral-patterned skirt .
She held the reins of the donkey pulling her rust-pink cart .
Across her lap lay an infant .
Perched beside her at the edge of the metal wagon was a young girl who couldn ’ t have been more than eight .
Some firewood , rugs , woven mats , rolled-up clothing or sheets , a dark green @ @ @ @ @ @ @ jerry can were lashed to the bed of the cart .
Three goats tied to the rear of it ambled along behind .
They found themselves , as I did , on a hot , dusty road slowly being choked by families who had hastily hitched up their donkeys and piled whatever they could—kindling , sleeping mats , cooking pots—into sun-bleached carts or bush taxis .
And they were the lucky ones .
Many had simply set out on foot .
Young boys tended small herds of recalcitrant goats .
Women toted dazed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a roadside tree , a family had stopped and a middle-aged man hung his head , holding it in one hand .
Earlier this year , I traveled that ochre dirt road in Burkina Faso , a tiny landlocked nation in the African Sahel once known for having the largest film festival on the continent .
Now , it ’ s the site of an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe .
Those people were streaming down the main road from Barsalogho about 100 miles north of the capital , Ouagadougou , toward Kaya , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this year , due to the displaced .
Across the country ’ s northern stretches , other Burkinabe ( as citizens are known ) were making similar journeys toward towns offering only the most uncertain kinds of refuge .
They were victims of a war without a name , a battle between Islamist militants who murder and massacre without compunction and armed forces that kill more civilians than militants .
I ’ ve witnessed variations of this wretched scene before—exhausted , upended families evicted by machete-wielding militiamen or Kalashnikov-carrying government troops , or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ traumatized people plodding down lonesome highways , fleeing artillery strikes , smoldering villages , or towns dotted with moldering corpses .
Sometimes motorbikes pull the carts .
Sometimes , young girls carry the jerry cans on their heads .
Sometimes , people flee with nothing more than what they ’ re wearing .
Sometimes , they cross national borders and become refugees or , as in Burkina Faso , become internally displaced persons , or IDPs , in their own homeland .
Whatever the particulars , such scenes are increasingly commonplace in our @ @ @ @ @ @ @ possible way , unremarkable .
And though you would hardly know it in the United States , that ’ s what also makes them , collectively , one of the signature stories of our time .
At least 100 million people have been forced to flee their homes due to violence , persecution , or other forms of public disorder over the last decade , according to UNHCR , the United Nations refugee agency .
That ’ s about one in every 97 people on the planet , roughly one percent of humanity @ @ @ @ @ @ @ given their own state to homestead , it would be the 14th largest nation , population-wise , in the world .
By the end of June , according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center , an additional 4.8 million people had been uprooted by conflict , with the most devastating increases in Syria , the Democratic Republic of Congo , and Burkina Faso .
Yet , as dismal as these numbers may be , they ’ re set to be dwarfed by people displaced by another signature story of our time : climate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been put to flight by fires , derechos , and super storms , and so much worse is yet to come , according to experts .
A recent forecast suggests that , by the year 2050 , the number of people driven from their homes by ecological catastrophes could be 900 % greater than the 100 million forced to flee conflicts over the last decade .
Women , children , and men driven from their homes by conflict have been a defining feature of modern warfare .
For almost a century now , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and again .
“ Newly routed civilians , now homeless like the others with no idea of where they would next sleep or eat , with all their future lives an uncertainty , trudged back from the fighting zone , ” the legendary Eric Sevareid reported , while covering Italy for CBS News during World War II .
“ A dust-covered girl clung desperately to a heavy , squirming burlap sack .
The pig inside was squealing faintly .
Tears made streaks down the girl ’ s face .
No one moved to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was a cataclysmic conflagration involving 70 nations and 70 million combatants .
Fighting stretched across three continents in unparalleled destructive fury , including terror bombing , countless massacres , two atomic attacks , and the killing of 60 million people , most of them civilians , including 6 million Jews in a genocide known as the Holocaust .
Another 60 million were displaced , more than the population of Italy ( then the ninth-largest country in the world ) .
An unprecedented global war causing unimaginable suffering , it nonetheless left far fewer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by conflicts and crises as 2019 ended .
How can violence-displaced people already exceed World War II ’ s total by almost 20 million ( without even counting the nearly five million more added in the first half of 2020 ) ?
The answer : These days , you can ’ t go home again .
In May 1945 , the war in Europe came to an end .
By the beginning of September , the war in the Pacific was over , too .
A month later , most of Europe ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from the Soviet Union , 1.5 million French , 586,000 Italians , 274,000 Dutch , and hundreds of thousands of Belgians , Yugoslavs , Czechs , Poles , and others—had already returned home .
A little more than a million people , mostly Eastern Europeans , still found themselves stranded in camps overseen by occupying forces and the United Nations .
Today , according to UNHCR , ever fewer war refugees and IDPs are able to rebuild their lives .
In the 1990s , an average of 1.5 million refugees were able to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 10 years , that number has dropped to around 385,000 .
Today , about 77 % of the world ’ s refugees are trapped in long-term displacement situations thanks to forever wars like the conflict in Afghanistan that , in its multiple iterations , is now in its sixth decade .
War on ( of and for ) Terror One of the most dramatic drivers of displacement over the last 20 years , according to researchers from Brown University ’ s Costs of War project , has been that conflict in Afghanistan and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the US military has launched or participated in since 2001.
” In the wake of the killing of 2,974 people by al-Qaeda militants that September 11th and the decision of George W. Bush ’ s administration to launch a Global War on Terror , conflicts the United States initiated , escalated , or participated in—specifically , in Afghanistan , Iraq , Libya , Pakistan , the Philippines , Somalia , Syria , and Yemen—have displaced between 37 million and 59 million people .
While US troops have also seen combat in Burkina Faso @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of dollars of “ security assistance ” into that country , its displaced aren ’ t even counted in the Costs of War tally .
And yet there ’ s a clear link between the US-backed overthrow of Libya ’ s autocrat , Moammar el-Gadhafi , in 2011 and Burkina Faso ’ s desperate state today .
“ Ever since the West assassinated Gadhafi , and I ’ m conscious of using that particular word , Libya has been completely destabilized , ” Chérif Sy , Burkina Faso ’ s defense minister , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ While at the same time it was the country with the most guns .
It has become an arms cache for the region.
” Those arms helped destabilize neighboring Mali and led to a 2012 coup by a US-trained officer .
Two years later , another US-trained officer seized power in Burkina Faso during a popular uprising .
This year , yet another US-trained officer overthrew yet another government in Mali .
All the while , terrorist attacks have been ravaging the region .
“ The Sahel has seen the most dramatic escalation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to a July report by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies , a Defense Department research institution .
In 2005 , Burkina Faso didn ’ t even warrant mention in the “ Africa Overview ” section of the State Department ’ s annual report on terrorism .
Still , more than 15 separate American security assistance programs were brought to bear there—about $ 100 million in the last two years alone .
Meanwhile , militant Islamist violence in the country has skyrocketed from just three attacks in 2015 to 516 in the 12 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the Pentagon ’ s Africa Center .
The violence in Burkina Faso has led to a cascade of compounding crises .
Around 1 million Burkinabe are now displaced , a 1,500 % increase since last January , and the number only keeps rising .
So do the attacks and the fatalities .
And this is just the beginning , since Burkina Faso finds itself on the front lines of yet another crisis , a global disaster that ’ s expected to generate levels of displacement that will dwarf today ’ s historic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by desertification and environmental degradation since at least the 1960s .
In 1973 , a drought led to the deaths of 100,000 people there and in five other nations of the Sahel .
Severe drought and hunger struck again in the mid-1980s and aid agencies began privately warning that those living in the north of the country would need to move southward as farming became ever less feasible .
By the early 2000s , despite persistent droughts , the cattle population of the country had doubled , leading to increasing ethnic conflict between @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The war now tearing the country apart largely divides along those same ethnic lines .
In 2010 , Bassiaka Dao , the president of the confederation of farmers in Burkina Faso , told the United Nations news agency , IRIN , that the impacts of climate change had been noticeable for years and were getting worse .
As the decade wore on , rising temperatures and new rainfall patterns—droughts followed by flash floods—increasingly drove farmers from their villages , while desertification swelled the populations of urban centers .
In a report published earlier @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Global Protection Cluster , a network of nongovernmental organizations , international aid groups , and United Nations agencies , noted that in Burkina Faso “ climate change is crippling livelihoods , exacerbating food insecurity , and intensifying armed conflict and violent extremism.
” Sitting at the edge of the Sahara Desert , the country has long faced ecological adversity that ’ s only worsening as the frontlines of climate change steadily spread across the planet .
Forecasts now warn of increasing ecological disasters and resource wars supercharging the already surging phenomenon of global @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by the Institute for Economics and Peace , a think tank that produces annual global terrorism and peace indexes , two billion people already face uncertain access to sufficient food—a number set to jump to 3.5 billion by 2050 .
Another one billion “ live in countries that do not have the current resilience to deal with the ecological changes they are expected to face in the future.
” The report warns that the global climate crisis may displace as many as 1.2 billion people by 2050 .
On the Road to Kaya @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to the mother and two children I spotted on the road to Kaya .
If they ended up like the scores of people I spoke with in that market town , now bulging with displaced people , they ’ re facing a difficult time .
Rents are high , jobs scarce , government assistance all but nil .
People there are living on the edge of catastrophe , dependent on relatives and the kindness of new neighbors with little to spare themselves .
Some , driven by want , are even heading back @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to gather firewood .
Kaya can ’ t deal with the massive influx of people forced from their homes by Islamist militants .
Burkina Faso can ’ t deal with the one million people already displaced by conflict .
And the world can ’ t deal with the almost 80 million people already driven from their homes by violence .
So how will we cope with 1.2 billion people—nearly the population of China or India—likely to be displaced by climate driven-conflicts , water wars , increasing ecological devastation , and other unnatural disasters @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the decades ahead , ever more of us will find ourselves on roads like the one to Kaya , running from the devastation of raging wildfires or uncontrolled floodwaters , successive hurricanes or supercharged cyclones , withering droughts , spiraling conflicts , or the next life-altering pandemic .
As a reporter , I ’ ve already been on that road .
Pray you ’ re the one speeding by in the four-wheel-drive vehicle and not the one choking in the dust , driving the donkey cart .

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.
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I saw them for only a few seconds. One glimpse and they were gone. The young woman wore a brown headwrap, a yellow short-sleeved shirt, and a long pink, red, and blue floral-patterned skirt. She held the reins of the donkey pulling her rust-pink cart. Across her lap lay an infant. Perched beside her at the edge of the metal wagon was a young girl who couldn’t have been more than eight. Some firewood, rugs, woven mats, rolled-up clothing or sheets, a dark green plastic tub, and an oversized plastic jerry can were lashed to the bed of the cart. Three goats tied to the rear of it ambled along behind.
They found themselves, as I did, on a hot, dusty road slowly being choked by families who had hastily hitched up their donkeys and piled whatever they could—kindling, sleeping mats, cooking pots—into sun-bleached carts or bush taxis. And they were the lucky ones. Many had simply set out on foot. Young boys tended small herds of recalcitrant goats. Women toted dazed toddlers. In the rare shade of a roadside tree, a family had stopped and a middle-aged man hung his head, holding it in one hand.
Earlier this year, I traveled that ochre dirt road in Burkina Faso, a tiny landlocked nation in the African Sahel once known for having the largest film festival on the continent. Now, it’s the site of an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe. Those people were streaming down the main road from Barsalogho about 100 miles north of the capital, Ouagadougou, toward Kaya, a market town whose population has almost doubled this year, due to the displaced. Across the country’s northern stretches, other Burkinabe (as citizens are known) were making similar journeys toward towns offering only the most uncertain kinds of refuge. They were victims of a war without a name, a battle between Islamist militants who murder and massacre without compunction and armed forces that kill more civilians than militants.
I’ve witnessed variations of this wretched scene before—exhausted, upended families evicted by machete-wielding militiamen or Kalashnikov-carrying government troops, or the mercenaries of a warlord; dust-caked traumatized people plodding down lonesome highways, fleeing artillery strikes, smoldering villages, or towns dotted with moldering corpses. Sometimes motorbikes pull the carts. Sometimes, young girls carry the jerry cans on their heads. Sometimes, people flee with nothing more than what they’re wearing. Sometimes, they cross national borders and become refugees or, as in Burkina Faso, become internally displaced persons, or IDPs, in their own homeland. Whatever the particulars, such scenes are increasingly commonplace in our world and so, in the worst possible way, unremarkable. And though you would hardly know it in the United States, that’s what also makes them, collectively, one of the signature stories of our time. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann
At least 100 million people have been forced to flee their homes due to violence, persecution, or other forms of public disorder over the last decade, according to UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency. That’s about one in every 97 people on the planet, roughly one percent of humanity. If such war victims had been given their own state to homestead, it would be the 14th largest nation, population-wise, in the world.
By the end of June, according to the Internal Displacement Monitoring Center, an additional 4.8 million people had been uprooted by conflict, with the most devastating increases in Syria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Burkina Faso. Yet, as dismal as these numbers may be, they’re set to be dwarfed by people displaced by another signature story of our time: climate change.
Already, shocking numbers have been put to flight by fires, derechos, and super storms, and so much worse is yet to come, according to experts. A recent forecast suggests that, by the year 2050, the number of people driven from their homes by ecological catastrophes could be 900% greater than the 100 million forced to flee conflicts over the last decade. Current Issue View our current issue
Worse Than World War II
Women, children, and men driven from their homes by conflict have been a defining feature of modern warfare. For almost a century now, combat correspondents have witnessed such scenes again and again. “Newly routed civilians, now homeless like the others with no idea of where they would next sleep or eat, with all their future lives an uncertainty, trudged back from the fighting zone,” the legendary Eric Sevareid reported, while covering Italy for CBS News during World War II. “A dust-covered girl clung desperately to a heavy, squirming burlap sack. The pig inside was squealing faintly. Tears made streaks down the girl’s face. No one moved to help her…”
The Second World War was a cataclysmic conflagration involving 70 nations and 70 million combatants. Fighting stretched across three continents in unparalleled destructive fury, including terror bombing, countless massacres, two atomic attacks, and the killing of 60 million people, most of them civilians, including 6 million Jews in a genocide known as the Holocaust. Another 60 million were displaced, more than the population of Italy (then the ninth-largest country in the world). An unprecedented global war causing unimaginable suffering, it nonetheless left far fewer people homeless than the 79.5 million displaced by conflicts and crises as 2019 ended.
How can violence-displaced people already exceed World War II’s total by almost 20 million (without even counting the nearly five million more added in the first half of 2020)?
The answer: These days, you can’t go home again.
In May 1945, the war in Europe came to an end. By the beginning of September, the war in the Pacific was over, too. A month later, most of Europe’s displaced—including more than 2 million refugees from the Soviet Union, 1.5 million French, 586,000 Italians, 274,000 Dutch, and hundreds of thousands of Belgians, Yugoslavs, Czechs, Poles, and others—had already returned home. A little more than a million people, mostly Eastern Europeans, still found themselves stranded in camps overseen by occupying forces and the United Nations.
Today, according to UNHCR, ever fewer war refugees and IDPs are able to rebuild their lives. In the 1990s, an average of 1.5 million refugees were able to return home annually. For the last 10 years, that number has dropped to around 385,000. Today, about 77% of the world’s refugees are trapped in long-term displacement situations thanks to forever wars like the conflict in Afghanistan that, in its multiple iterations, is now in its sixth decade.
War on (of and for) Terror
One of the most dramatic drivers of displacement over the last 20 years, according to researchers from Brown University’s Costs of War project, has been that conflict in Afghanistan and the seven other “most violent wars the US military has launched or participated in since 2001.” In the wake of the killing of 2,974 people by al-Qaeda militants that September 11th and the decision of George W. Bush’s administration to launch a Global War on Terror, conflicts the United States initiated, escalated, or participated in—specifically, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, the Philippines, Somalia, Syria, and Yemen—have displaced between 37 million and 59 million people.
While US troops have also seen combat in Burkina Faso and Washington has pumped hundreds of millions of dollars of “security assistance” into that country, its displaced aren’t even counted in the Costs of War tally. And yet there’s a clear link between the US-backed overthrow of Libya’s autocrat, Moammar el-Gadhafi, in 2011 and Burkina Faso’s desperate state today. “Ever since the West assassinated Gadhafi, and I’m conscious of using that particular word, Libya has been completely destabilized,” Chérif Sy, Burkina Faso’s defense minister, explained in a 2019 interview. “While at the same time it was the country with the most guns. It has become an arms cache for the region.”
Those arms helped destabilize neighboring Mali and led to a 2012 coup by a US-trained officer. Two years later, another US-trained officer seized power in Burkina Faso during a popular uprising. This year, yet another US-trained officer overthrew yet another government in Mali. All the while, terrorist attacks have been ravaging the region. “The Sahel has seen the most dramatic escalation of violence since mid-2017,” according to a July report by the Africa Center for Strategic Studies, a Defense Department research institution.
In 2005, Burkina Faso didn’t even warrant mention in the “Africa Overview” section of the State Department’s annual report on terrorism. Still, more than 15 separate American security assistance programs were brought to bear there—about $100 million in the last two years alone. Meanwhile, militant Islamist violence in the country has skyrocketed from just three attacks in 2015 to 516 in the 12 months from mid-2019 to mid-2020, according to the Pentagon’s Africa Center.
Compounding Crises to Come
The violence in Burkina Faso has led to a cascade of compounding crises. Around 1 million Burkinabe are now displaced, a 1,500% increase since last January, and the number only keeps rising. So do the attacks and the fatalities. And this is just the beginning, since Burkina Faso finds itself on the front lines of yet another crisis, a global disaster that’s expected to generate levels of displacement that will dwarf today’s historic figures.
Burkina Faso has been battered by desertification and environmental degradation since at least the 1960s. In 1973, a drought led to the deaths of 100,000 people there and in five other nations of the Sahel. Severe drought and hunger struck again in the mid-1980s and aid agencies began privately warning that those living in the north of the country would need to move southward as farming became ever less feasible. By the early 2000s, despite persistent droughts, the cattle population of the country had doubled, leading to increasing ethnic conflict between Mossi farmers and Fulani cattle herders. The war now tearing the country apart largely divides along those same ethnic lines.
In 2010, Bassiaka Dao, the president of the confederation of farmers in Burkina Faso, told the United Nations news agency, IRIN, that the impacts of climate change had been noticeable for years and were getting worse. As the decade wore on, rising temperatures and new rainfall patterns—droughts followed by flash floods—increasingly drove farmers from their villages, while desertification swelled the populations of urban centers.
In a report published earlier this year, William Chemaly of the Global Protection Cluster, a network of nongovernmental organizations, international aid groups, and United Nations agencies, noted that in Burkina Faso “climate change is crippling livelihoods, exacerbating food insecurity, and intensifying armed conflict and violent extremism.”
Sitting at the edge of the Sahara Desert, the country has long faced ecological adversity that’s only worsening as the frontlines of climate change steadily spread across the planet. Forecasts now warn of increasing ecological disasters and resource wars supercharging the already surging phenomenon of global displacement. According to a recent report by the Institute for Economics and Peace, a think tank that produces annual global terrorism and peace indexes, two billion people already face uncertain access to sufficient food—a number set to jump to 3.5 billion by 2050. Another one billion “live in countries that do not have the current resilience to deal with the ecological changes they are expected to face in the future.” The report warns that the global climate crisis may displace as many as 1.2 billion people by 2050.
On the Road to Kaya
I don’t know what happened to the mother and two children I spotted on the road to Kaya. If they ended up like the scores of people I spoke with in that market town, now bulging with displaced people, they’re facing a difficult time. Rents are high, jobs scarce, government assistance all but nil. People there are living on the edge of catastrophe, dependent on relatives and the kindness of new neighbors with little to spare themselves. Some, driven by want, are even heading back into the conflict zone, risking death to gather firewood.
Kaya can’t deal with the massive influx of people forced from their homes by Islamist militants. Burkina Faso can’t deal with the one million people already displaced by conflict. And the world can’t deal with the almost 80 million people already driven from their homes by violence. So how will we cope with 1.2 billion people—nearly the population of China or India—likely to be displaced by climate driven-conflicts, water wars, increasing ecological devastation, and other unnatural disasters in the next 30 years?
In the decades ahead, ever more of us will find ourselves on roads like the one to Kaya, running from the devastation of raging wildfires or uncontrolled floodwaters, successive hurricanes or supercharged cyclones, withering droughts, spiraling conflicts, or the next life-altering pandemic. As a reporter, I’ve already been on that road. Pray you’re the one speeding by in the four-wheel-drive vehicle and not the one choking in the dust, driving the donkey cart.


thenation--2020-11-16--Nebraska’s Last Blue Electoral Vote?

Nebraska’s Last Blue Electoral Vote?

For four hours in 2016 , state Senator Ernie Chambers spoke on the floor of the Nebraska Capitol in order to kill a bill championed by the Republican Party .
Dressed in blue jeans and a short-sleeved sweatshirt , Chambers—an expert in Nebraska ’ s legislative rules and one of the state ’ s few Black lawmakers—ran down the clock .
He talked about mountain lion hunting , the deterioration of his own memory , and whether or not the famed Nebraska author Willa Cather was a lesbian .
“ I ’ m having so much fun , it has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ recalled after he successfully thwarted the bill .
At issue was whether Nebraska would continue to split its Electoral College votes like Maine or if it would move to a winner-take-all system like the other 48 states .
Barack Obama embarrassed Nebraska Republicans when he carried Omaha ’ s electoral vote in 2008 , and the state GOP wanted to prevent Hillary Clinton from doing the same .
Previous attempts to squash vote splitting failed , but four years ago Republicans dominated the legislature .
Initially , it looked like they would get @ @ @ @ @ @ @ filibuster helped maintain Nebraska ’ s unusual system .
Nebraska began splitting its Electoral College votes in 1991 after state Senator DiAnna Schimek introduced a bill that allowed Nebraska ’ s congressional districts to individually count their presidential votes .
Schimek , a registered Democrat , had Republicans cosponsor the bill to give it bipartisan support .
“ There is nothing in this bill in any way , shape , or form that is politically motivated , ” stated one of the bill ’ s Republican cosponsors , David Bernard-Stevens , during a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ election in a particular state that basically says that the minority voters , whether it be Republican or Democrat , irregardless [ sic ] of which state we ’ re talking about , that the minority voters will have no one representing their vote at the national level at the Electoral College because of traditions brought up winner-take-all to me does not meet the rule principles of democratic elections that we hold so dearly.
” Although the state heavily favors Republicans , the Omaha-based second district has twice awarded its electoral vote to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this year .
And for a brief moment , it appeared that Omaha ’ s Biden vote could determine the presidential race .
Not surprisingly , both the Nebraska Republican and the powerful Republican governor , Pete Ricketts , support a return to the winner-take-all format .
Republican legislators have tried to make that happen at least 16 times since 1991 , according to the Omaha World-Herald .
When I asked Schimek if Republicans would try again , she told me , “ I feel rest assured that there will be a bill @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the nation ’ s only nonpartisan , single-house legislature .
In recent years , however , the body has become more polarized , after Ricketts spent his own money on local races to oust more moderate Republican incumbents who voted against his policies .
In 2016 , Al Davis , then a state senator and a registered Republican , voted to make Nebraska a winner-take-all state .
Davis , who had irked his party by voting against the death penalty and was up for reelection at the time , said he supported the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as a Republican , and I was getting pressure from the Republican Party to do so.
” He now regrets that vote and wishes he had resisted GOP pressure .
After Biden won Omaha , Davis congratulated Schimek for making it possible .
Davis said that after he left the legislature , he became a strong believer in “ liberating congressional districts.
” He supports Nebraska ’ s current electoral model , because it brings the state money and attention .
“ If you liberate those districts , people are going to go @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Senator Sue Crawford , a Democrat who represents an area just outside Omaha ’ s city limits , said that Nebraska ’ s electoral system can benefit everyone in the state , not just Democrats .
Instead of ignoring Nebraska as a for-sure Republican win , splitting the votes makes the state more competitive , which brings in revenue and attention from both political parties .
“ We were important , ” said Democrat Kim Robak , a lobbyist and former lieutenant governor .
“ Donald Trump came here in the waning hours @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in that district from both sides .
It puts us on the radar screen .
We are no longer a flyover state that [ national political parties ] can ignore.
” A filibuster-proof coalition will be required to change the allotment of Nebraska ’ s Electoral College votes .
To prevent a state senator from stonewalling , a bill would need 33 votes in the 49-member body .
There are probably just enough Democrats and moderate Republicans in the legislature to prevent the GOP from abolishing the splitting of the votes in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ There will be pressure applied by the state Republican Party to change the electoral selection method back to winner-take-all , ” said Greg Adams , a Republican who served as speaker of the legislature in 2013 .
But doing so will be difficult .
“ Our distribution methodology is a bit like the Electoral College itself , pretty hard to change.
” Another option for state Republicans is pass a ballot initiative , an idea that ’ s already being floated .
Ricketts , a multimillionaire from a family worth billions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ initiatives in the past .
He spent $ 300,000 to successfully reinstate the death penalty and $ 250,000 in an unsuccessful attempt to oppose casino gambling .
If Republicans prioritize changing the way the state allocates electoral votes , then it wouldn ’ t be surprising to see the governor and wealthy party backers put the issue on the ballot .
“ If you were to ask me what the what the best chance of getting it done , it would be through an initiative that was adequately funded , ” said veteran @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a cheap state to fund .
You know , a couple million dollars goes a long ways here.
” For a ballot initiative to succeed , deft marketing will be required .
Like the unicameral legislature , Nebraska ’ s electoral distribution is an eccentric feature that ’ s become part of the state ’ s identity .
But Nebraska is very conservative , and 91 of the state ’ s 93 counties voted for Trump .
Mailers and robocalls emphasizing that Nebraska ’ s voting methods helped elect a Democratic president would @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Nebraska ’ s electoral allocation stays in place for the immediate future , Biden ’ s win gives Republicans further incentive to gerrymander Omaha ’ s district in a way that would make it more difficult for Democrats to win there in the future .
The second district is one of the most competitive in the country .
A decade ago , shortly after Obama carried Omaha , Republicans gerrymandered the district to protect an at-risk congressional seat .
Next year , redistricting will happen again , and Omaha will be a prime @ @ @ @ @ @ @ vote for Biden showed how efforts by local representatives like Schimek and Chambers can affect national politics .
When Nebraska ’ s electoral splits comes up in debate in the next legislative session , there will be more on the line than a low-population state ’ s quirky voting system .
What will be determined is whether a politically unconventional state can remain independent from its dominant party .

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For four hours in 2016, state Senator Ernie Chambers spoke on the floor of the Nebraska Capitol in order to kill a bill championed by the Republican Party. Dressed in blue jeans and a short-sleeved sweatshirt, Chambers—an expert in Nebraska’s legislative rules and one of the state’s few Black lawmakers—ran down the clock. He talked about mountain lion hunting, the deterioration of his own memory, and whether or not the famed Nebraska author Willa Cather was a lesbian. “I’m having so much fun, it has to be a sin,” Chambers recalled after he successfully thwarted the bill.
At issue was whether Nebraska would continue to split its Electoral College votes like Maine or if it would move to a winner-take-all system like the other 48 states. Barack Obama embarrassed Nebraska Republicans when he carried Omaha’s electoral vote in 2008, and the state GOP wanted to prevent Hillary Clinton from doing the same. Previous attempts to squash vote splitting failed, but four years ago Republicans dominated the legislature. Initially, it looked like they would get their wish. But Chambers’s filibuster helped maintain Nebraska’s unusual system.
Nebraska began splitting its Electoral College votes in 1991 after state Senator DiAnna Schimek introduced a bill that allowed Nebraska’s congressional districts to individually count their presidential votes. Schimek, a registered Democrat, had Republicans cosponsor the bill to give it bipartisan support.
“There is nothing in this bill in any way, shape, or form that is politically motivated,” stated one of the bill’s Republican cosponsors, David Bernard-Stevens, during a 1991 hearing. “To have an election in a particular state that basically says that the minority voters, whether it be Republican or Democrat, irregardless [sic] of which state we’re talking about, that the minority voters will have no one representing their vote at the national level at the Electoral College because of traditions brought up winner-take-all to me does not meet the rule principles of democratic elections that we hold so dearly.”
Although the state heavily favors Republicans, the Omaha-based second district has twice awarded its electoral vote to a Democrat—Obama in 2008 and Joe Biden this year. And for a brief moment, it appeared that Omaha’s Biden vote could determine the presidential race.
Not surprisingly, both the Nebraska Republican and the powerful Republican governor, Pete Ricketts, support a return to the winner-take-all format. Republican legislators have tried to make that happen at least 16 times since 1991, according to the Omaha World-Herald. When I asked Schimek if Republicans would try again, she told me, “I feel rest assured that there will be a bill again soon.” Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann
Nebraska is home to the nation’s only nonpartisan, single-house legislature. In recent years, however, the body has become more polarized, after Ricketts spent his own money on local races to oust more moderate Republican incumbents who voted against his policies. In 2016, Al Davis, then a state senator and a registered Republican, voted to make Nebraska a winner-take-all state. Davis, who had irked his party by voting against the death penalty and was up for reelection at the time, said he supported the bill, because “I was running as a Republican, and I was getting pressure from the Republican Party to do so.” Current Issue View our current issue
He now regrets that vote and wishes he had resisted GOP pressure. After Biden won Omaha, Davis congratulated Schimek for making it possible. Davis said that after he left the legislature, he became a strong believer in “liberating congressional districts.” He supports Nebraska’s current electoral model, because it brings the state money and attention. “If you liberate those districts, people are going to go there,” he said.
State Senator Sue Crawford, a Democrat who represents an area just outside Omaha’s city limits, said that Nebraska’s electoral system can benefit everyone in the state, not just Democrats. Instead of ignoring Nebraska as a for-sure Republican win, splitting the votes makes the state more competitive, which brings in revenue and attention from both political parties.
“We were important,” said Democrat Kim Robak, a lobbyist and former lieutenant governor. “Donald Trump came here in the waning hours of the election. Money was spent in that district from both sides. It puts us on the radar screen. We are no longer a flyover state that [national political parties] can ignore.” Related Article In Nebraska, a House Undivided May Fall Ross Benes
A filibuster-proof coalition will be required to change the allotment of Nebraska’s Electoral College votes. To prevent a state senator from stonewalling, a bill would need 33 votes in the 49-member body. There are probably just enough Democrats and moderate Republicans in the legislature to prevent the GOP from abolishing the splitting of the votes in the next session, but margins are slim.
“There will be pressure applied by the state Republican Party to change the electoral selection method back to winner-take-all,” said Greg Adams, a Republican who served as speaker of the legislature in 2013. But doing so will be difficult. “Our distribution methodology is a bit like the Electoral College itself, pretty hard to change.”
Another option for state Republicans is pass a ballot initiative, an idea that’s already being floated. Ricketts, a multimillionaire from a family worth billions, has dropped his money on ballot initiatives in the past. He spent $300,000 to successfully reinstate the death penalty and $250,000 in an unsuccessful attempt to oppose casino gambling. If Republicans prioritize changing the way the state allocates electoral votes, then it wouldn’t be surprising to see the governor and wealthy party backers put the issue on the ballot.
“If you were to ask me what the what the best chance of getting it done, it would be through an initiative that was adequately funded,” said veteran lobbyist Walt Radcliffe. “Nebraska is a cheap state to fund. You know, a couple million dollars goes a long ways here.”
For a ballot initiative to succeed, deft marketing will be required. Like the unicameral legislature, Nebraska’s electoral distribution is an eccentric feature that’s become part of the state’s identity. But Nebraska is very conservative, and 91 of the state’s 93 counties voted for Trump. Mailers and robocalls emphasizing that Nebraska’s voting methods helped elect a Democratic president would find a receptive audience.
Even if Nebraska’s electoral allocation stays in place for the immediate future, Biden’s win gives Republicans further incentive to gerrymander Omaha’s district in a way that would make it more difficult for Democrats to win there in the future. The second district is one of the most competitive in the country. A decade ago, shortly after Obama carried Omaha, Republicans gerrymandered the district to protect an at-risk congressional seat. Next year, redistricting will happen again, and Omaha will be a prime target.
Omaha’s providing a vote for Biden showed how efforts by local representatives like Schimek and Chambers can affect national politics. When Nebraska’s electoral splits comes up in debate in the next legislative session, there will be more on the line than a low-population state’s quirky voting system. What will be determined is whether a politically unconventional state can remain independent from its dominant party.


thenation--2020-11-16--The Coup That Succeeded

The Coup That Succeeded

Donald Trump ’ s pitiful attempts to cling to power have made a farce out of one of the key rituals of democracy , the peaceful transfer of power .
Trump refuses to concede , is flooding the courts with frivolous lawsuits designed to stop certification of the vote , keeps urging state legislators to intervene in the picking of electors , and is egging on street conflicts between his supporters and his opponents .
All of this is dismaying and destructive to democracy , but unlikely to result in the coup Trump so clearly wants .
The key institutions @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the military , and Republican state legislators in swing states—are all resisting Trump ’ s cajoling .
On Sunday night , Trump tweeted , “ I WON THE ELECTION !
” Aspirational proclamations , even with all-caps and an exclamation mark , can ’ t change reality .
Trump has lost the election .
But even as Trump ’ s performative coup is failing , a little-noticed news story highlights the fact that Trump ’ s threat to democracy goes well beyond his public antics .
Behind closed doors , Trump is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Mussolini of his public pronouncements .
Singularly ignorant of the mechanics of policy-making and the most intellectually incurious president in history , Trump is an easy mark for entrenched interests who want to manipulate him to secure their agenda .
Trump has outsourced almost all the consequential decisions of his presidency , perhaps nowhere more than in foreign policy .
This has led not to the playacting coup that Trump is now pushing but to a genuine erosion of democracy .
Not a Coup but a Cover-Up and a Con Game On November @ @ @ @ @ @ @ site devoted to national security , published an interview with outgoing Syria envoy Jim Jeffrey where he boasted about using deception to thwart Trump ’ s attempts to draw back troops from the Middle East .
A career civil servant who has held top positions in many administrations , Jeffrey is the embodiment of the national security establishment that has successfully commandeered foreign policy in the power vacuum created by Trump ’ s feckless leadership .
In December of 2018 , Trump ordered the removal of troops from Syria .
This led to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with Defense Secretary James Mattis resigning in protest .
Behind the scenes , military leaders and their allies in the government were able to make sure Trump ’ s orders weren ’ t carried out .
“ What Syria withdrawal ?
There was never a Syria withdrawal , ” Jeffrey told Defense One .
“ When the situation in northeast Syria had been fairly stable after we defeated ISIS , [ Trump ] was inclined to pull out .
In each case , we then decided to come up with five better arguments @ @ @ @ @ @ @ And we succeeded both times .
That ’ s the story.
” But this policy achievement was built on lies .
Trump was led to believe the United States had only 200 troops in Syria .
In reality , more than 900 military personnel continue to be part of the mission .
“ We were always playing shell games to not make clear to our leadership how many troops we had there , ” Jeffrey confessed .
The real number was always “ a lot more than ” Trump thought .
Jeffrey is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ under Trump the American government has achieved a level of stability in the Middle East that eluded George W. Bush and Barack Obama .
But this political achievement , even if one accepts Jeffrey ’ s goal to bolster Middle East autarchies , was built on lies that undermine American democracy .
Trump , like him or not , was duly elected and sworn into office .
The control of foreign and military policy by elected officials is essential .
Trump , to be sure , bears much of the blame for this @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a recalcitrant bureaucracy , but Trump , because of his limited understanding of how policy is made and his unrivaled laziness , didn ’ t even bother to put up a fight .
Presidents like Nixon and Obama have achieved foreign policy breakthroughs by outsmarting the national security establishment .
Trump never lifted a finger to push for his goals .
The Trump era has been characterized by not just one coup attempt but rather a series of rolling coups—some by Trump himself and some against him .
The coups that have empowered @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Bob Woodward ’ s Fear opens with a striking example of Trump ’ s weakness in the face of staffers whose true loyalty is to the national security establishment .
In September 2017 , Trump wrote a letter to the president of South Korea ending the free trade agreement the United States had with that country .
According to Woodward , Trump ’ s economic adviser Gary Cohn and his staff secretary Rob Porter were extremely agitated by that letter , fearing it would endanger relations with South Korea .
Woodward states @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the American presence in South Korea represents the essence of national security.
” Worried about the consequences of Trump ’ s gambit , neither Cohn nor Porter tried to talk him out of it .
Instead , Cohn simply pilfered the letter .
“ I stole it off his desk , ” Cohn explained .
“ I wouldn ’ t let him see it .
He ’ s never going to see that document .
Got to protect the country.
” When other copies of the letter were produced , Porter stole those @ @ @ @ @ @ @ eventually forget that he wrote the letter .
This proved to be the case .
The theft of the letters ended Trump ’ s attempt to use trade as a diplomatic weapon against South Korea .
To Coup or Not to Coup Not a Coup but a Cover-Up and a Con Game According to Woodward , “ It was no less than an administrative coup d ’ état , an undermining of the will of the president of the United States and his constitutional authority.
” Woodward presents this coup as wholly admirable @ @ @ @ @ @ @ picture of Cohn ( “ 6-foot-3 , bald , brash and full of self-confidence ” ) and Porter ( “ 6-foot-4 , rail-thin…an organization man with little flash who had attended Harvard and Harvard Law School and been a Rhodes Scholar ” ) .
The narrative Woodward constructed is of brave government officials protecting national security from Trump ’ s worst instincts .
Woodward glosses over the inconvenient fact that Trump was elected while Cohn and Porter were not .
Nor is the national security establishment , which set the values Cohn and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ styles himself as a populist champion fighting the “ deep state.
” In reality , the deep state , if by that we mean the permanent national security establishment , has bested Trump again and again .
Trump ’ s own coups have failed ; the national security establishment ’ s coups have succeeded .
Joe Biden is not likely to face similar coups , if only because he shares the values of the national security establishment .
The more worrying legacy of Trump , however , is that some future president might @ @ @ @ @ @ @ promised : end the forever wars .
This hypothetical future president will face a national security establishment that feels , by the precedents of the Trump era , that it has the right to bamboozle elected officials .
Unless there is a reckoning with the national security establishment , American democracy will be at risk .
That will remain true even after Trump leaves office .

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Donald Trump’s pitiful attempts to cling to power have made a farce out of one of the key rituals of democracy, the peaceful transfer of power. Trump refuses to concede, is flooding the courts with frivolous lawsuits designed to stop certification of the vote, keeps urging state legislators to intervene in the picking of electors, and is egging on street conflicts between his supporters and his opponents. All of this is dismaying and destructive to democracy, but unlikely to result in the coup Trump so clearly wants. The key institutions that Trump needs for a coup—the courts, the military, and Republican state legislators in swing states—are all resisting Trump’s cajoling.
On Sunday night, Trump tweeted, “I WON THE ELECTION!” Aspirational proclamations, even with all-caps and an exclamation mark, can’t change reality. Trump has lost the election.
But even as Trump’s performative coup is failing, a little-noticed news story highlights the fact that Trump’s threat to democracy goes well beyond his public antics. Behind closed doors, Trump is a very different figure from the aspiring Mussolini of his public pronouncements. Singularly ignorant of the mechanics of policy-making and the most intellectually incurious president in history, Trump is an easy mark for entrenched interests who want to manipulate him to secure their agenda.
Trump has outsourced almost all the consequential decisions of his presidency, perhaps nowhere more than in foreign policy. This has led not to the playacting coup that Trump is now pushing but to a genuine erosion of democracy. More From Jeet Heer The Indigenous Roots of Robbie Robertson’s Rock and Roll Revolution August 14, 2023 Why Does This Racist Keep Getting Silicon Valley Money? August 11, 2023 When Phallocrats Go Limp August 4, 2023
On November 12, Defense One, a news site devoted to national security, published an interview with outgoing Syria envoy Jim Jeffrey where he boasted about using deception to thwart Trump’s attempts to draw back troops from the Middle East. A career civil servant who has held top positions in many administrations, Jeffrey is the embodiment of the national security establishment that has successfully commandeered foreign policy in the power vacuum created by Trump’s feckless leadership.
In December of 2018, Trump ordered the removal of troops from Syria. This led to pushback from the foreign policy establishment, with Defense Secretary James Mattis resigning in protest. Behind the scenes, military leaders and their allies in the government were able to make sure Trump’s orders weren’t carried out. “What Syria withdrawal? There was never a Syria withdrawal,” Jeffrey told Defense One. “When the situation in northeast Syria had been fairly stable after we defeated ISIS, [Trump] was inclined to pull out. In each case, we then decided to come up with five better arguments for why we needed to stay. And we succeeded both times. That’s the story.”
But this policy achievement was built on lies. Trump was led to believe the United States had only 200 troops in Syria. In reality, more than 900 military personnel continue to be part of the mission. “We were always playing shell games to not make clear to our leadership how many troops we had there,” Jeffrey confessed. The real number was always “a lot more than” Trump thought. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Current Issue View our current issue
Jeffrey is proud of his actions and believes that under Trump the American government has achieved a level of stability in the Middle East that eluded George W. Bush and Barack Obama. But this political achievement, even if one accepts Jeffrey’s goal to bolster Middle East autarchies, was built on lies that undermine American democracy. Trump, like him or not, was duly elected and sworn into office. The control of foreign and military policy by elected officials is essential. Trump, to be sure, bears much of the blame for this travesty. All presidents have to fight a recalcitrant bureaucracy, but Trump, because of his limited understanding of how policy is made and his unrivaled laziness, didn’t even bother to put up a fight. Presidents like Nixon and Obama have achieved foreign policy breakthroughs by outsmarting the national security establishment. Trump never lifted a finger to push for his goals.
The Trump era has been characterized by not just one coup attempt but rather a series of rolling coups—some by Trump himself and some against him. The coups that have empowered the national security establishment are especially worrying.
Bob Woodward’s Fear opens with a striking example of Trump’s weakness in the face of staffers whose true loyalty is to the national security establishment. In September 2017, Trump wrote a letter to the president of South Korea ending the free trade agreement the United States had with that country. According to Woodward, Trump’s economic adviser Gary Cohn and his staff secretary Rob Porter were extremely agitated by that letter, fearing it would endanger relations with South Korea. Woodward states as a matter of fact that “the American presence in South Korea represents the essence of national security.”
Worried about the consequences of Trump’s gambit, neither Cohn nor Porter tried to talk him out of it. Instead, Cohn simply pilfered the letter. “I stole it off his desk,” Cohn explained. “I wouldn’t let him see it. He’s never going to see that document. Got to protect the country.”
When other copies of the letter were produced, Porter stole those. The gambit was that Trump would eventually forget that he wrote the letter. This proved to be the case. The theft of the letters ended Trump’s attempt to use trade as a diplomatic weapon against South Korea. To Coup or Not to Coup Not a Coup but a Cover-Up and a Con Game Jeet Heer
According to Woodward, “It was no less than an administrative coup d’état, an undermining of the will of the president of the United States and his constitutional authority.” Woodward presents this coup as wholly admirable and necessary. He paints a glowing picture of Cohn (“6-foot-3, bald, brash and full of self-confidence”) and Porter (“6-foot-4, rail-thin…an organization man with little flash who had attended Harvard and Harvard Law School and been a Rhodes Scholar”). The narrative Woodward constructed is of brave government officials protecting national security from Trump’s worst instincts. Woodward glosses over the inconvenient fact that Trump was elected while Cohn and Porter were not. Nor is the national security establishment, which set the values Cohn and Porter adhered to, elected.
Trump styles himself as a populist champion fighting the “deep state.” In reality, the deep state, if by that we mean the permanent national security establishment, has bested Trump again and again. Trump’s own coups have failed; the national security establishment’s coups have succeeded.
Joe Biden is not likely to face similar coups, if only because he shares the values of the national security establishment. The more worrying legacy of Trump, however, is that some future president might want to actually do what Trump only promised: end the forever wars. This hypothetical future president will face a national security establishment that feels, by the precedents of the Trump era, that it has the right to bamboozle elected officials. Unless there is a reckoning with the national security establishment, American democracy will be at risk. That will remain true even after Trump leaves office.


thenation--2020-11-16--Biden Signals Flexibility on North Korea, but Peace Groups Are Wary

The friendly interplay last week between Moon Jae-in , the president of South Korea , and Joe Biden , the incoming president of the United States , signaled subtle but important differences about how to make peace with a nuclear-armed North Korea .
On Thursday , Moon , who has made engagement with the North the hallmark of his presidency , followed other world leaders in congratulating Biden for his election victory .
In a 14-minute telephone call , he pledged to “ communicate closely ” with Biden ’ s incoming administration “ for a forward-looking development of the alliance @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and the establishment of lasting peace.
” The president-elect responded in kind , reaffirming the US security commitment to South Korea and expressing his desire “ to strengthen the US-ROK alliance as the linchpin of security and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region.
” Both statements were designed to show that their alliance , formalized in 1954 just after the Korean War , is still alive and kicking .
Biden ’ s use of the term “ Indo-Pacific ” with Moon , however , was surprising .
It was coined by the Pentagon during @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s expanded regional alliance system in Asia .
Known within national security circles as “ The Quad , ” the NATO-like grouping now includes the United States as well as the pro-American governments of India , Japan , and Australia .
The now-renamed US Indo-Pacific Command , the foundation of the new four-way alliance , is widely understood to be aimed at containing China .
‘ We Need to Move From a Wartime Mentality to a Peacetime Mentality ’ South Korea—despite its own bilateral alliance with the Pentagon—has not formally joined the Quad @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ground between the United States and China .
By suggesting that South Korea be part of it , therefore , Biden was indicating in a subtle way his tilt toward multilateralism , Trump ’ s bête noire .
But Biden ’ s gesture could also indicate a harder line toward both China and North Korea that the South doesn ’ t support and could further complicate the US-ROK alliance , said Henri Feron , a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and a fierce critic of US policy .
“ Biden @ @ @ @ @ @ @ engagement strategy , in much the same way as George W. Bush clashed with [ former President ] Kim Dae-jung 20 years ago , ” he told The Nation in an interview .
Kim , who led the democratic opposition during South Korea ’ s period of authoritarian rule , was the architect of Seoul ’ s “ Sunshine Policy , ” which led to the first-ever summit between North and South in 2000 .
But he saw his policies crumble when Bush rejected diplomacy and placed the North on his “ axis @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Iran and Iraq .
In that context , Biden ’ s comments Thursday may explain his unusual preelection overture to South Korea .
On October 29 , just five days before the election , he published a “ special contribution ” in Yonhap , the Korean government-owned news service , to differentiate himself from Trump .
The outgoing US president won grudging respect in South Korea by negotiating with Kim in 2018 , but he also alienated many by demanding that South Korea quintuple its sizable financial contribution to the 28,500 US troops @ @ @ @ @ @ @ distance himself from that policy and impress South Korea with his interest in a negotiated resolution with the North .
“ As President , I ’ ll stand with South Korea ” by strengthening the alliance “ rather than extorting Seoul with reckless threats to remove our troops , ” he promised .
He also acknowledged “ the pain of division ” in Korea and promised to engage in “ principled diplomacy ” toward the goal of “ a denuclearized North Korea and a unified Korean Peninsula.
” That contrasted sharply with Biden @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump ’ s one-on-one talks with Kim , whom he called a “ thug ” and even compared to Adolf Hitler .
Moreover , Biden ’ s endorsement of “ principled diplomacy ” would mark a break from the policies of the Obama administration , which refused for eight years to seriously engage with North Korea as part of its “ strategic patience ” approach , which viewed the North as an illegitimate , “ rogue ” state ready to collapse at any moment .
Biden ’ s message in Yonhap was seen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ indirect message to the Moon Jae-in government , ” a reliable source in Seoul who is close to the South Korean president told The Nation .
“ I believe Biden is far better than Trump in dealing with the alliance , ” he wrote in an e-mail .
“ The Moon government will accommodate when and if US demands are reasonable .
As to the ROK-US alliance , I do not see any major problems.
” On the other hand , this source acknowledged , most of Biden ’ s team , including @ @ @ @ @ @ @ central roles in Obama ’ s failed policies , which relied heavily on sanctions and military pressure to force North Korea ’ s hand .
“ There seems to be a danger of the return of old ‘ strategic patience , ’ ” he told me .
“ Too many hard-liners who do not have a proper and updated understanding of North Korea seem to be surrounding Biden.
” “ I hope the administration stays in touch with the Moon government closely and allows Seoul to interact with Pyongyang before Biden ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The North will be happy to talk to Biden ’ s USA if the latter abandons a unilateral maximum-pressure approach.
” He added , “ Of course , the North should abstain from undertaking missile and nuclear testing.
” Some US experts fear those tests could start up again anytime .
On November 9 , the progressive Hankyoreh urged the incoming administration to adopt a new policy and avoid pressuring South Korea to join its anti-China coalition .
“ We must persuade Biden not to return to strategic patience , ” the newspaper @ @ @ @ @ @ @ offers “ an alliance-focused foreign policy that ’ s more predictable than Trump ’ s maverick behavior , ” his administration “ is also likely to push harder for South Korea to join its campaign to contain China through trilateral military cooperation with the US and Japan , ” it argued—presciently , it turned out .
Besides Blinken , who was Obama ’ s deputy national security adviser , Biden ’ s top picks for national security posts reportedly include Michèle Flournoy , a former Pentagon official and current defense consultant and investor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ deputy director of the CIA during the Obama administration and one of Obama ’ s key advisers on Korea .
All were well-known hawks on North Korea , but also played critical roles in expanding the US regional military alliance in Asia .
Their attitude toward the North was summarized a few years ago by Jeffrey Bader , a Brookings Institution scholar once known as the “ architect ” of the Obama-Biden policy toward North Korea .
“ Many of us believed that the most likely long-term solution to the North ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s collapse and absorption into a South-led reunified Korea , ” Bader wrote in his 2012 memoir about the Obama administration .
President Moon , who was the chief of staff to the late President Roh Moo-hyun during an earlier period of engagement with the North , is well aware of Obama ’ s record on North Korea ( he made that clear when I interviewed him in 2017 ) .
On Monday , he told Korea reporters that he will soon open “ multi-sided ” communications with Biden ’ s team to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the alliance .
Moon also expressed hope that “ the two Koreas , as parties ( directly ) concerned regarding the Korean Peninsula issue , will be able to play a more important role ” in the peace process .
That seemed to underscore his wish , stymied by Trump , to expand economic and cultural ties with North Korea as a way to build the atmosphere for a peace settlement on the peninsula .
Many in South Korea believe that Biden ’ s long history with Korea , including his friendship @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Americans seeking to unite with their families in North Korea , bodes well for the future .
Through his surrogates , Biden has signaled that he would talk to Kim , but only after his government and foreign policy team had completed the necessary groundwork for a serious negotiation .
Biden has also pledged to expand humanitarian assistance to the North and make it easier for international organizations to provide that help .
“ Joe Biden understands that the North Korea issue is pretty complicated and you can ’ t just solve it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” Brian McKeon , a close Biden aide and former Pentagon official , told Yonhap News in October .
“ I think he would be willing to meet with ( Kim ) if it was part of an actual strategy that moves us forward on the denuclearization objective.
” The first test of Biden ’ s pledge to work with Seoul to create a “ lasting peace ” in Korea will come when he meets soon with President Moon , as they pledged to do in their call last week .
The Korean @ @ @ @ @ @ @ resume its talks with Kim Jong-un , and his supporters are urging him to get that process moving .
In a rather audacious move on Friday , Representative Lee Nak-yon , the chairman of Moon ’ s Democratic Party , said he would urge Biden to reaffirm the joint statement of principles signed by President Trump and Chairman Kim at their 2018 summit in Singapore as the “ starting point ” for his future negotiations .
The Trump-Kim statement , which is often criticized for lacking specifics , committed the United States and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , ” cooperate with the South “ to build a lasting and stable peace regime , ” and work toward “ complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
” “ It has legitimacy and authority , and to its content the South and North Koreas and the U.S. have all agreed , ” said Lee .
How Biden responds to such a proposal will explain a lot about his intentions .
Without a fundamental change in US policy , South Korea could be left on its own .
During Trump ’ s talks with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the US government and the hawkish think tanks that drive American policy with the importance of ending the Korean War through a peace treaty , which North Korea has been seeking for years and US peace groups believe would be an important breakthrough for the Korean Peninsula .
The Democratic leadership has not shown any interest , either .
Biden ’ s people “ fail to acknowledge the unresolved state of the Korean War and what role that plays in the continuous standoff ” on the peninsula , said Christine Ahn , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Women Cross DMZ .
“ Despite paying lip service to diplomacy , a Biden administration seems ready to continue the failed hawkishness that has driven North Korea policy for decades , ” she said in an interview just before Biden ’ s election .
A congressional resolution calling for a peace agreement in Korea now has 52 sponsors , including the first Republican , Ahn said .
Biden ’ s likely national security adviser Blinken underscored Ahn ’ s concerns in a detailed interview with CBS News on September .
A Biden administration @ @ @ @ @ @ @ closely with allies like South Korea and Japan ” and encourage China to “ build genuine economic pressure to squeeze North Korea to get it to the negotiating table .
We need to cut off its various avenues and access to resources—something we were doing very vigorously at the end of the Obama-Biden administration.
” Starting off with that kind of pressure would be a fatal mistake , said Feron of the Center for International Policy .
“ Unless Moon can convince Biden to send conciliatory signals to Pyongyang , it is likely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ long-range missile tests and a renewed escalation in military tensions , ” he predicted .
Feron also pointed to recent remarks on the alliance from Lee Soo-hyuck , South Korea ’ s ambassador to Washington , that underscore the tension between Seoul and Washington over these issues .
“ Just because Korea chose the U.S. 70 years ago does not mean it has to choose the U.S. for the next 70 years , too , ” Lee told a subcommittee of the Korean National Assembly in October .
“ Korea can choose to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it is able to love the country and if it serves the nation ’ s interests.
” That seems to be a good summary of where the two countries stand today , on the brink of a new era in Washington .

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The friendly interplay last week between Moon Jae-in, the president of South Korea, and Joe Biden, the incoming president of the United States, signaled subtle but important differences about how to make peace with a nuclear-armed North Korea.
On Thursday, Moon, who has made engagement with the North the hallmark of his presidency, followed other world leaders in congratulating Biden for his election victory. In a 14-minute telephone call, he pledged to “communicate closely” with Biden’s incoming administration “for a forward-looking development of the alliance, the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula and the establishment of lasting peace.”
The president-elect responded in kind, reaffirming the US security commitment to South Korea and expressing his desire “to strengthen the US-ROK alliance as the linchpin of security and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific region.” Both statements were designed to show that their alliance, formalized in 1954 just after the Korean War, is still alive and kicking.
Biden’s use of the term “Indo-Pacific” with Moon, however, was surprising. It was coined by the Pentagon during the Trump administration to describe America’s expanded regional alliance system in Asia. Known within national security circles as “The Quad,” the NATO-like grouping now includes the United States as well as the pro-American governments of India, Japan, and Australia. The now-renamed US Indo-Pacific Command, the foundation of the new four-way alliance, is widely understood to be aimed at containing China. Related Articles Progressives Slam Biden’s Foreign Policy Team Tim Shorrock ‘We Need to Move From a Wartime Mentality to a Peacetime Mentality’ Tim Shorrock
South Korea—despite its own bilateral alliance with the Pentagon—has not formally joined the Quad but instead has been seeking a middle ground between the United States and China. By suggesting that South Korea be part of it, therefore, Biden was indicating in a subtle way his tilt toward multilateralism, Trump’s bête noire. But Biden’s gesture could also indicate a harder line toward both China and North Korea that the South doesn’t support and could further complicate the US-ROK alliance, said Henri Feron, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy and a fierce critic of US policy. Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection How the “Brooks Brothers Riot” Set the Stage for Insurrection Chris Lehmann
“Biden could clash with Moon Jae-in’s engagement strategy, in much the same way as George W. Bush clashed with [former President] Kim Dae-jung 20 years ago,” he told The Nation in an interview. Kim, who led the democratic opposition during South Korea’s period of authoritarian rule, was the architect of Seoul’s “Sunshine Policy,” which led to the first-ever summit between North and South in 2000. But he saw his policies crumble when Bush rejected diplomacy and placed the North on his “axis of evil” list, along with Iran and Iraq.
In that context, Biden’s comments Thursday may explain his unusual preelection overture to South Korea. On October 29, just five days before the election, he published a “special contribution” in Yonhap, the Korean government-owned news service, to differentiate himself from Trump. The outgoing US president won grudging respect in South Korea by negotiating with Kim in 2018, but he also alienated many by demanding that South Korea quintuple its sizable financial contribution to the 28,500 US troops on its soil. Current Issue View our current issue
Biden sought to distance himself from that policy and impress South Korea with his interest in a negotiated resolution with the North. “As President, I’ll stand with South Korea” by strengthening the alliance “rather than extorting Seoul with reckless threats to remove our troops,” he promised. He also acknowledged “the pain of division” in Korea and promised to engage in “principled diplomacy” toward the goal of “a denuclearized North Korea and a unified Korean Peninsula.”
That contrasted sharply with Biden’s condemnation during the campaign of Trump’s one-on-one talks with Kim, whom he called a “thug” and even compared to Adolf Hitler. Moreover, Biden’s endorsement of “principled diplomacy” would mark a break from the policies of the Obama administration, which refused for eight years to seriously engage with North Korea as part of its “strategic patience” approach, which viewed the North as an illegitimate, “rogue” state ready to collapse at any moment.
Biden’s message in Yonhap was seen in Korea as “a sort of indirect message to the Moon Jae-in government,” a reliable source in Seoul who is close to the South Korean president told The Nation. “I believe Biden is far better than Trump in dealing with the alliance,” he wrote in an e-mail. “The Moon government will accommodate when and if US demands are reasonable. As to the ROK-US alliance, I do not see any major problems.”
On the other hand, this source acknowledged, most of Biden’s team, including his top adviser Antony Blinken, played central roles in Obama’s failed policies, which relied heavily on sanctions and military pressure to force North Korea’s hand. “There seems to be a danger of the return of old ‘strategic patience,’” he told me. “Too many hard-liners who do not have a proper and updated understanding of North Korea seem to be surrounding Biden.”
“I hope the administration stays in touch with the Moon government closely and allows Seoul to interact with Pyongyang before Biden’s inauguration,” he wrote. “The North will be happy to talk to Biden’s USA if the latter abandons a unilateral maximum-pressure approach.” He added, “Of course, the North should abstain from undertaking missile and nuclear testing.” Some US experts fear those tests could start up again anytime.
On November 9, the progressive Hankyoreh urged the incoming administration to adopt a new policy and avoid pressuring South Korea to join its anti-China coalition. “We must persuade Biden not to return to strategic patience,” the newspaper said in an editorial. While Biden offers “an alliance-focused foreign policy that’s more predictable than Trump’s maverick behavior,” his administration “is also likely to push harder for South Korea to join its campaign to contain China through trilateral military cooperation with the US and Japan,” it argued—presciently, it turned out.
Besides Blinken, who was Obama’s deputy national security adviser, Biden’s top picks for national security posts reportedly include Michèle Flournoy, a former Pentagon official and current defense consultant and investor, and Avril Haines, who was deputy director of the CIA during the Obama administration and one of Obama’s key advisers on Korea. All were well-known hawks on North Korea, but also played critical roles in expanding the US regional military alliance in Asia.
Their attitude toward the North was summarized a few years ago by Jeffrey Bader, a Brookings Institution scholar once known as the “architect” of the Obama-Biden policy toward North Korea. “Many of us believed that the most likely long-term solution to the North’s nuclear pursuits lay in the North’s collapse and absorption into a South-led reunified Korea,” Bader wrote in his 2012 memoir about the Obama administration.
President Moon, who was the chief of staff to the late President Roh Moo-hyun during an earlier period of engagement with the North, is well aware of Obama’s record on North Korea (he made that clear when I interviewed him in 2017). On Monday, he told Korea reporters that he will soon open “multi-sided” communications with Biden’s team to ensure there is no “vacuum” in the alliance.
Moon also expressed hope that “the two Koreas, as parties (directly) concerned regarding the Korean Peninsula issue, will be able to play a more important role” in the peace process. That seemed to underscore his wish, stymied by Trump, to expand economic and cultural ties with North Korea as a way to build the atmosphere for a peace settlement on the peninsula.
Many in South Korea believe that Biden’s long history with Korea, including his friendship with Kim Dae-jung and support for Korean Americans seeking to unite with their families in North Korea, bodes well for the future. Through his surrogates, Biden has signaled that he would talk to Kim, but only after his government and foreign policy team had completed the necessary groundwork for a serious negotiation. Biden has also pledged to expand humanitarian assistance to the North and make it easier for international organizations to provide that help.
“Joe Biden understands that the North Korea issue is pretty complicated and you can’t just solve it with a couple of leader-to-leader summits,” Brian McKeon, a close Biden aide and former Pentagon official, told Yonhap News in October. “I think he would be willing to meet with (Kim) if it was part of an actual strategy that moves us forward on the denuclearization objective.”
The first test of Biden’s pledge to work with Seoul to create a “lasting peace” in Korea will come when he meets soon with President Moon, as they pledged to do in their call last week. The Korean leader badly wants the United States to resume its talks with Kim Jong-un, and his supporters are urging him to get that process moving.
In a rather audacious move on Friday, Representative Lee Nak-yon, the chairman of Moon’s Democratic Party, said he would urge Biden to reaffirm the joint statement of principles signed by President Trump and Chairman Kim at their 2018 summit in Singapore as the “starting point” for his future negotiations.
The Trump-Kim statement, which is often criticized for lacking specifics, committed the United States and North Korea to build “new relations,” cooperate with the South “to build a lasting and stable peace regime,” and work toward “complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”
“It has legitimacy and authority, and to its content the South and North Koreas and the U.S. have all agreed,” said Lee. How Biden responds to such a proposal will explain a lot about his intentions.
Without a fundamental change in US policy, South Korea could be left on its own. During Trump’s talks with Kim, President Moon failed to impress the US government and the hawkish think tanks that drive American policy with the importance of ending the Korean War through a peace treaty, which North Korea has been seeking for years and US peace groups believe would be an important breakthrough for the Korean Peninsula. The Democratic leadership has not shown any interest, either.
Biden’s people “fail to acknowledge the unresolved state of the Korean War and what role that plays in the continuous standoff” on the peninsula, said Christine Ahn, the founder and executive director of the pro-engagement Women Cross DMZ. “Despite paying lip service to diplomacy, a Biden administration seems ready to continue the failed hawkishness that has driven North Korea policy for decades,” she said in an interview just before Biden’s election. A congressional resolution calling for a peace agreement in Korea now has 52 sponsors, including the first Republican, Ahn said.
Biden’s likely national security adviser Blinken underscored Ahn’s concerns in a detailed interview with CBS News on September. A Biden administration, he said, would “work closely with allies like South Korea and Japan” and encourage China to “build genuine economic pressure to squeeze North Korea to get it to the negotiating table. We need to cut off its various avenues and access to resources—something we were doing very vigorously at the end of the Obama-Biden administration.”
Starting off with that kind of pressure would be a fatal mistake, said Feron of the Center for International Policy. “Unless Moon can convince Biden to send conciliatory signals to Pyongyang, it is likely that we will soon see North Korean long-range missile tests and a renewed escalation in military tensions,” he predicted. Feron also pointed to recent remarks on the alliance from Lee Soo-hyuck, South Korea’s ambassador to Washington, that underscore the tension between Seoul and Washington over these issues.
“Just because Korea chose the U.S. 70 years ago does not mean it has to choose the U.S. for the next 70 years, too,” Lee told a subcommittee of the Korean National Assembly in October. “Korea can choose to keep siding with the U.S. only if it is able to love the country and if it serves the nation’s interests.” That seems to be a good summary of where the two countries stand today, on the brink of a new era in Washington.