Governing in prose
Biden's delayed security strategy, Iran's crackdown, and Haiti's breakdown
For the 2020 elections, candidate Joe Biden was the first among the large field of Democratic presidential contenders to complete a comprehensive questionnaire on foreign policy for the Council on Foreign Relations. But it’s taken President Joe Biden nearly two years in office (21 months to be exact) to come forth with a National Security Strategy, released Oct. 11. “You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose,” Mario Cuomo famously said. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan put blame for the delay on the changed landscape since Biden took office. In remarks delivered at Georgetown University this week, he highlighted the renewed “competition between the major powers to shape the future of the international order.” The strategy itself put it more bluntly: “The post-Cold War era is definitively over.”
Welcome to this weekend edition of Globe Trot.
China is the relentless focus of Biden’s new strategy, with the administration at the same time unveiled the most stringent export controls on technology exports to the country in decades—restrictions that are part of larger, aggressive plan to counter the Chinese military’s rapid technological advances.
Standing at the edge of a third five-year term in power at the 20th Communist Party Congress starting tomorrow (Oct. 16), Xi Jinping’s endgame is to prepare China for conflict with the United States.
Russia “now poses an immediate and persistent threat to international peace and stability,” the Biden document reads, the leading edge in a growing struggle between democracies and autocrats.
And yet, between the week’s bridge attack in Crimea and Russia’s bombing of civilian targets in Kyiv and other cities, Ukraine showed why it’s winning and Russia why it’s losing the war.
Instead of “melodramatizing the danger” by fretting aloud about a nuclear “Armageddon,” Biden should give a national address explaining American interests in preserving an international order and coming to the aid of countries like Ukraine, writes Kori Schake.
Iran: One month after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini engulfed all of Iran’s major cities in protests, a U.S. panel says religious freedom violations are at the heart of the government’s brutal crackdown. The deadly clashes have targeted Sunni Muslims and Kurds, both ethnic and religious minorities in Iran. The crackdown has killed nearly 200, including 23 minors.
“We urge the Biden administration to support a UN Commission of Inquiry on Iran to ensure that Iranian security forces cannot silence Iranians seeking religious freedom,” said U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom chairman Nury Turkel.
At the same time, Iran has fired at least 73 missiles on Kurdish areas in neighboring Iraq, part of wider Iranian threats in the region that also serve to deflect attention from domestic protests.
Afghanistan: Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced additional sanctions against the Taliban for its ongoing repression of women and girls in Afghanistan.
The move came only days after the first face-to-face interaction between top U.S. and Taliban officials since al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri was killed by the United States in a drone strike in Kabul on July 31. The meeting’s emphasis was on counterterrorism.
American officials have continued to engage the Taliban but accused its leaders of knowing about Zawahiri’s whereabouts, thus harboring terrorists it claims it will fight. Said one former Afghan official:
“It is clear that ISIS has turned into a milk cow for [the] Taliban. On the one hand, a certain group massacres our compatriots, and on the other hand, prepares the ground for attracting foreign aid under the name of ‘fighting terrorism.’”
Afghan women are bearing the brunt of the U.S. withdrawal and Taliban takeover. While Taliban officials issued few decrees coping with poverty, food shortages, and unemployment, they issued 34 decrees rolling back the rights of women and girls, reports Naheed Farid, an Afghan member of Parliament whose escape from Taliban control I covered last year.
Haiti: Powerful gangs continue to block a main fuel terminal, crippling the country’s basic water and food supplies and bringing tens of thousands of residents closer to starvation. The crisis brought an about-face from the Biden administration this week, as the U.S. drafted a UN Security Council resolution that would support the immediate deployment of a rapid action force to Haiti.
Mexico: Tropical Storm Karl drenched the Gulf coast and flooded the streets of Acapulco, only days after Hurricane Julia flooded the region and left at least 28 people dead in Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua.
Venezuela: The administration will consider a temporary parole program to allow Venezuelan migrants with ties to the U.S. to enter via ports of entry, instead of unlawfully crossing the border before [legally] requesting asylum. The program would be similar to one that has allowed Ukrainians to seek temporary refuge in the U.S., according to the National Immigration Forum.
Lebanon recorded its first death from cholera, a rapidly spreading but easily treatable disease that usually affects the world’s poorest populations. The WHO says that climate change has “turbocharged” the cholera spread, tripling the fatality rate over the past five years. Yet current outbreaks also reflect internal conflict and failed-state turmoil.
Covid-19: Despite a new wave of Covid-19 cases in the West, Japan has joined Bhutan, New Zealand, and other countries in lowering strict travel protocols.
The Omicron variant is so ubiquitous in the Western Hemisphere, we might forget it was discovered and sequenced in South Africa: “Researchers in Africa have to produce at least twice as much to get less than half the respect of researchers from high-income countries,” writes Tulio de Oliveira.
I’m touring … The most visited websites in the world. They might surprise you (though it’s no surprise Amazon is the most visited site in North America). Also, I’ll be in Chicago next week to see the Humanitarian Disaster Institute at Wheaton College, Syrian refugee families, and more.
Hey Mindy, you'll be in my neck of the woods, the colors are really coming in, enjoy!