Chris Hedges's Blog, page 12

Companies Trim Outlooks, Travel and Staff as Virus Spreads

GROUNDED AIRPLANES: United Airlines will cut international and U.S. flying, freeze hiring and ask employees to volunteer for unpaid leave as it struggles with weak demand for travel because of the new virus outbreak. United said Wednesday it will reduce passenger-carrying capacity 20% on international routes and 10% to 12% in the U.S. United executives expect the reductions will carry into May. Beyond that, it depends what happens to bookings over the next few weeks. United’s CEO and president say they hope the moves are enough, but the nature of the outbreak requires the airline to be flexible in how it responds.

ALTERED EXPECTATIONS: General Electric Co. General Electric believes the viral outbreak could have a negative impact of about $300 million to $500 million on its first-quarter industrial free cash flow. Operating profit for the period could be hurt by about $200 million to $300 million. GE said that the expectations are incorporated into its full-year 2020 outlook. Major corporations like Apple, Microsoft and Visa have already cut expectations.

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RATIONING: Kroger Co., the nation’s biggest independent grocer, is placing limits on the number of certain products that customers buy as its shelves are cleared by people doing heavy stocking in preparation for any spread of the virus. “Due to high demand and to support all customers, we will be limiting the number of sanitization, cold and flu related products to 5 each per order. Your order may be modified at time of pickup or delivery,” the company said on its website. Amazon is warning same-day grocery customers that delivery may be limited. Target and Walmart are scrambling to replenish shelves with basics like canned goods, toilet paper and other household essentials, but have yet to announced rationing.

TRAVEL RESTRICTIONS: The International Air Transport Association says that January had the slowest monthly year-over-year growth since April 2010, at the time of the volcanic ash cloud crisis in Europe that led to massive airspace closures and flight cancellations. “January was just the tip of the iceberg in terms of the traffic impacts we are seeing owing to the COVID-19 outbreak, given that major travel restrictions in China did not begin until 23 January,” said Alexandre de Juniac, the group director general.

Delta will reduce its weekly flying schedule to Japan through April 30 and suspend summer seasonal service between Seattle and Osaka for 2020 in response to reduced demand due to COVID-19.

Amazon has asked its 800,000 employees worldwide to postpone non-essential travel. It is also conducting some job interviews on video conference calls instead of in its offices. Ford Motor Co. has banned all domestic and international travel, unless approved at the highest levels of the company.

General Motors CEO Mary Barra said Wednesday that all international travel by employees has been restricted.

NETWORKING IS NOT WORKING: Starbucks converted its big annual shareholders meeting in hometown Seattle to a virtual only event due to concerns about the virus. The meeting will still be held on March 18 as originally planned. The party-like event which attracted 4,000 shareholders last year was supposed to be held at a theater in downtown Seattle. A virus cluster has emerged in Washington state, however, with nine deaths reported.

The 40th Seafood Expo North America/Seafood Processing North America, scheduled for later this month in Boston, has been postponed. The largest such event in North America typically attracts about 20,000 people. Organizers cited concerns about safety and travel restrictions. The event takes place in Boston’s Seaport district.

The International Monetary Fund said its spring meetings in Washington, D.C., along with those of the World Bank, will now be “virtual” to limit the risk from traveling.

The Global Gaming Expo Asia scheduled for later this month in Macao has been pushed back to the end of July. More than 13,000 people attended last year’s expo.

General Motors asked employees who have traveled within the past 14 days to China, South Korea, Japan, Iran or Italy to skip the high-profile roll out of the company’s new slate of electric vehicles, according to CEO Mary Barra.

F5 Networks Inc. postponed its analyst and investor event due to the virus outbreak. The company was scheduled to hold the event in New York this week. The cloud technology company, based in Seattle, also postponed its annual user conference scheduled for mid-March in Orlando, Florida.

CLOSE TO HOME: Amazon says one of its employees in Seattle has contracted the new coronavirus. “We’re supporting the affected employee who is in quarantine,” it said in a prepared statement. Amazon said earlier this week that two of its employees in Milan, Italy, have contracted the virus and are quarantined.

Aflac announced Wednesday that a temporary worker at its call center in Kobe, Japan is infected with the virus. The individual had attended an event in Osaka where multiple participants also contracted the virus. The company said it’s continuing to monitor the recovery of the infected individual, who is being instructed to refrain from coming into the office.

STAFF REDUCTIONS: Finnish national carrier Finnair is planning temporary layoffs between 14 days up to one month for its entire staff based in Finland due to the economic impact caused by coronavirus to the airline’s operations.

More than 6,000 Finnair employees will be affected.

The Finnish flag carrier, which has a total staff of nearly 7,000, has strongly focused on Europe to Asia flights from its Helsinki hub and has been forced to temporarily cancel flights to mainland China and other Asian destinations because of the coronavirus.

THE MACRO VIEW: The head of the 189-nation International Monetary Fund said Wednesday that the economic impact of the spreading coronavirus will be more serious than originally thought.

The IMF is now prepared to make support quickly available to low-income countries through a $50 billion emergency fund that the group maintains to help nations facing an economic crisis, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said.

“We unfortunately over the past week have seen a shift to a more adverse scenario for the global economy,” said Georgieva.

The IMF’s forecast in January that the global economy would rebound to growth of 3.3% this year, up from 2.9% last year, is no longer reliable.

“We know the disease is spreading quickly with over one-third of our membership affected directly,” Georgieva said. “This is no longer a regional issue. It is a global issue calling for a global response.”

SHORT SUPPLY: A U.N. agency estimated Wednesday that a shortage of industrial parts from China caused by the coronavirus outbreak has set off a “ripple effect” that caused exports from other countries around the world to drop by $47 billion last month.

The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development says that figures from Chinese businesses suggest an annualized 2% decline in output in China. That has led to shrinking supplies for automotive, chemicals, communications and other industries in many countries, in turn reducing their export capacity.

The agency says the preliminary figures show that industries outside of China that rely on components, parts and other inputs from the country aren’t able to export goods as much as they had before the virus erupted. The outbreak began in the city of Wuhan, shutting down factories and quarantining workers at home.

The drop in Chinese output results in a “ripple effect throughout the global economy” that rises “to the tune of a $50 billion fall in exports across the world,” said said Pamela Coke-Hamilton, director of the UNCTAD international trade and commodities division.

Exports from the European Union alone made up for about one third of that, or nearly $15.6 billion. Exports of the United States were second, at nearly $5.8 billion, and Japan was third at almost $5.2 billion.

SHAKEN: The release of the James Bond film “No Time To Die” is being pushed back several months because of concerns about coronavirus. MGM, Universal and producers Michael G. Wilson and Barbara Broccoli announced on Twitter Wednesday that the film will be released in November, rather than next month as originally planned. “No Time To Die” will now hit theaters in the U.K. on Nov. 12 and worldwide on Nov. 25. Publicity plans for the film in China, Japan and South Korea had already been canceled because of the outbreak.

Trump’s Wall Is an Endless Source of Embarrassment

Big, high walls can be troublesome. Ask Humpty Dumpty.

However, for a real-life, epic story about wall troubles, ponder the trials and tribulations of our very own president. He can’t seem to get his “big beautiful wall” funded or even taken seriously, much less built.

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Trump has continuously demanded that Congress shell out more than $10 billion taxpayer dollars to erect a monster of a wall across some 2,000 miles of the U.S. border with Mexico, ranting that his magnificent edifice would keep “aliens” from entering the U.S. from the south.

But even when his own party controlled both houses of Congress, his grand scheme went unloved, unfunded, and unbuilt. Still, he persists.

In January, he directed officials to put up a demonstration section of his 30-foot-tall wall to show the world how effective the Trump bulwark would be. But the thing blew over! Not from a hurricane-force storm, but from moderate winds topping out at only 37 miles an hour.

Embarrassing.

More embarrassing was a personal visit Trump made to San Diego last September for a media event hailing a new supertech model of wall that he declared would be “virtually impossible” for violators to climb, signing his name on the structure. “I tell you this strongly,” Humpity-Trumpity said, “No more people can come in.”

But a climbing group in Kentucky built a replica of that wall and held an up-and-over competition — the winning time was 13.1 seconds! Dozens of competitors easily topped it, including an eight-year-old girl and a guy who climbed it one-handed while juggling various items with his other hand.

Trump has, however, proven that one thing truly is impenetrable: his head. Absolutely no embarrassment, logic, or factual evidence can enter his locked mind and show him how silly this extravagant folly is.

Clashes Erupt on Greece-Turkey Border as Migrants Seek Entry

KASTANIES, Greece — Greek authorities fired tear gas and stun grenades to drive away a crowd of migrants making a push to cross the border from Turkey on Wednesday, as pressure on Greece continued after Turkey declared its previously guarded gateways to Europe open.

Turkish authorities said gunfire from the Greek side killed one person and wounded five others — an assertion the Greek government rejected as “fake news.”

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The clashes were near the border village of Kastanies, along a border fence that covers much of the frontier not demarcated by the Evros river.

Turkey made good on a threat to open its borders and allow migrants and refugees to head for Europe last week. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s action triggered days of violent clashes at the Greece-Turkey land border.

Thousands of migrants and refugees have gathered at the frontier, and hundreds more have headed for the Greek islands from the Turkish coast.

The office of Ekrem Canalp, governor for the Turkish border province of Edirne, said one migrant was killed and five others wounded after Greek police and border units fired tear gas, blank rounds and live ammunition at migrants gathered between the Turkish and Greek border crossings of Pazarkule and Kastanies.

Greek government spokesman Stelios Petsas categorically denied any migrants had been wounded or killed by Greek authorities.

“The Turkish side creates and disperses fake news targeted against Greece. Today they created yet another such falsehood,” he said. “There is no such incident with fire from the Greek authorities,” he said.

Greek authorities said Turkish police were firing tear gas at Greek authorities, and supplied video they said backed their assertion.

During the clashes earlier Wednesday, reporters on the Greek side of the border heard what sounded like gunfire, though it was unclear whether this was live ammunition. A group of people could be seen carrying something which could have been a person between them, and running to the Turkish border post. Shortly afterward, and ambulance was heard leaving.

Reporters on the Turkish side saw at least four ambulances leave the area.

The head of emergency services at Edirne’s Trakya University Hospital, Burak Sayhan, told journalists six people had been admitted to the emergency department Wednesday, including one who was dead on arrival. He said one person had been shot in the head, two had gunshot wounds to their lower and upper extremities and one had a broken nose.

Greece has also come under migration pressure from the sea. Greek islands that are relatively short distance from Turkey by water are seeing even more new arrivals. A child died when the dinghy he was in capsized off the coast of the Greek island of Lesbos earlier this week.

Gale-force winds and rough seas hampered sea crossings Wednesday.

Greece sent a navy ship to Lesbos to house more than 400 of the new arrivals. Tension has mounted with some local residents on the island, where the main migrant camp is massively overcrowded.

The government has called the situation a direct threat to Greece’s national security and has imposed emergency measures to carry out swift deportations and freeze asylum applications for one month. Migrants have been reporting being summarily pushed back across the border into Turkey.

The mass movement to Greece’s borders of migrants and refugees, the majority of who appeared to be from Afghanistan, has appeared organized. Buses, minibuses, cars and taxis were provided in Istanbul to ferry people to the border, while some of those who managed to cross have said they were told by Turkish authorities to go to Greece.

Turkey’s announcement that its border to Europe was open came amid a Russia-backed Syrian government offensive into Syria’s northwestern Idlib province, where Turkish troops are fighting.

The offensive has killed dozens of Turkish troops and sent nearly a million Syrian civilians toward Turkey’s sealed border. However, Oleg Zhuravlev, head of the Russian military’s coordination center in Syria, said Tuesday claims about a humanitarian crisis in Idlib were false.

European Union interior ministers held emergency talks to show solidarity with Greece and to drum up more equipment to bolster the 27-country bloc’s outside border with Turkey. Other officials accused Turkey of “blackmail” for waving migrants through.

The European Commission has praised Greece as “the shield” on Europe’s external borders. Commission Vice-President Margaritis Schinas said “there are 20,000 people that have been instrumentalized by buses to be sent, creating an unprecedented situation.”

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian, speaking Wednesday at the French Senate, said the “migratory pressure is at Europe’s door, … That migratory pressure is being organized by President Erdogan’s regime to blackmail the European Union. The EU won’t give in to blackmail.”

Turkey, for its part, accused Greece of mistreating refugees.

Erdogan on Wednesday called on Greece and other European nations to respects migrants’ rights. He screened a photograph depicting Greeks who reportedly found refuge in Syria in 1942, saying: “Greeks who try all kinds of methods to keep refugees away from their countries — from drowning them at sea to shooting at them with bullets — should not forget that they may need to be shown the same mercy some day.”

He also accused EU countries of hypocritical behavior, saying they had rushed to Greece’s help “with money, boats and soldiers” to prevent a new influx of migrants but ignored Turkey’s plight concerning 3.7 millions Syrian refugees on its territory.

Meanwhile, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia pledged to help Greece to deal with pressure along its border. The four countries have been known for their tough stance against migrants and rejected an EU plan to redistribute refugees in member states.

European Council head Charles Michel was meeting with Erdogan in Ankara Wednesday, while EU Vice President Josep Borrell and Commissioner for Crisis Management Janez Lenarcic were holding talks with Turkish Vice President Fuat Oktay.

Speaking to reporters after a meeting with Erdogan, Borell said that the EU delegation asked Turkey “not to encourage the further movement of refugees and migrants toward the EU borders.”

“We had the opportunity to express our understanding of the difficult situation Turkey is currently facing but also stressed that the current developments at the European borders is not leading to any solution,” he said.

Borell said Turkish officials’ response was that Turkey was not encouraging people to move but that “they cannot prevent people from doing so.”

Greek authorities said there were about 15,000 people along the Greek-Turkish land border on Wednesday, and they had blocked 27,832 attempts to cross the border between Saturday morning and Wednesday morning. A total of 220 people who managed to cross were arrested.

____

Fraser reported from Ankara, Turkey. Elena Becatoros in Athens, Sylvie Corbet in Paris and Karel Janicek in Prague contributed to this report.

Anti-Virus Measures Take Drastic Turns in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Italy

BANGKOK — Saudi Arabia banned citizens from performing the Muslim pilgrimage in Mecca, Italy weighed closing schools nationwide and Iran canceled Friday prayers for a second week as nations scrambled Wednesday to control the coronavirus outbreak.

From religion to sports, countries were taking drastic and increasingly visible measures to curb the new coronavirus that first emerged in China and was spreading quickly through Europe, the Mideast and the Americas.

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In the United States, frustration mounted over U.S. officials’ delays and missteps in testing people for the virus.

Deaths spiked in Iran and Italy, which along with South Korea account for 80% of the new virus cases outside China, according to the World Health Organization. In all, more than 94,000 people have contracted the virus worldwide, with more than 3,200 deaths.

“People are afraid and uncertain. Fear is a natural human response to any threat,” said WHO’s leader, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “But as we get more data, we are understanding this virus and the disease it causes more and more.”

WHO said about 3.4% of people infected with the COVID-19 virus globally have died, making it more fatal than the common flu. The figure was a bit of a surprise, since a study last week in the New England Journal of Medicine assessing data from more than 30 Chinese provinces estimated the death rate was 1.4%.

Death rates in outbreaks are likely to skew higher early on as health officials focus on finding severe and fatal cases, missing most milder cases. WHO says the majority of people with the new coronavirus experience only mild symptoms, but the risks rise with the age of the patient and for those with any underlying health conditions.

In Daegu, the South Korean city at the center of that country’s outbreak, a shortage of hospital space meant about 2,300 patients were being cared for in other facilities while they awaited a hospital bed. Attending a meeting on quarantine strategies in Daegu, Prime Minister Chung Se-Kyun sought to assure his country, saying “We can absolutely overcome this situation. … We will win the war against COVID-19.”

South Korea reported 435 new infections Wednesday, far smaller than its high of 851 a day earlier. A total of 5,621 people in South Korea have contracted the virus and 32 have died.

Iran reported 92 deaths among its 2,922 confirmed cases, the most of any country outside of China. Among the ill are members of the government, and the country cancelled Friday prayers for the second week in a row.

“The virus has no wings to fly,” noted Health Ministry spokesman Kianoush Jahanpour. “We are the ones who transfer it to each other.”

In Israel, religious practice also faced new disruption: The country’s chief rabbi urged observant Jews to refrain from kissing mezuzot, small items encasing a prayer scroll posted by Jews on doorposts. Observant Jews typically touch the item and then kiss their hands when walking through a doorway. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also urged people to adopt the Indian greeting of “namaste,” with hands together, rather than a handshake.

The virus has spread beyond clusters throughout Germany and France, prompting officials to tell soccer players to simply disperse — without shaking hands — after lining up. Referees and coaches will no longer shake hands either.

The U.N. health chief has warned sharply against hoarding medical supplies, saying they are needed to protect health care workers on the front line. Accordingly, the Czech Republic, Russia and Germany announced bans on exporting protective gear like masks. That followed a similar move by France, where major hospitals have seen their masks stolen by the boxful.

Italy’s virus deaths rose 79. Its outbreak has been concentrated in the northern region of Lombardy, but fears over how the virus is spreading inside and outside the country has prompted the government to consider whether to close all schools nationwide for two weeks. Education Minister Lucia Azzolina told reporters that a final decision on that hadn’t been made yet.

In the U.S., more than 120 cases have been reported. Nine people have died, all in and around Seattle, Washington. On Capitol Hill, lawmakers were expected to finalize an agreement Wednesday on a $7.5 billion emergency bill to fund work on a virus vaccine and other measures.

India, meantime, tightened the export of 26 key drug ingredients used in pharmaceutical manufacturing, a potentially disruptive move taken as its caseload rose to 28 on Wednesday.

China reported 119 new cases Wednesday, all but five in the outbreak’s epicenter of Wuhan. In a sign of the shifting threat, Beijing’s health commissioner said two new cases in the Chinese capital were apparently infected abroad, in Iran and Italy.

The state-run Xinhua News Agency said Hubei province, where Wuhan is located, was expected to gradually shut down its hastily built temporary hospitals.

“We believe this decline is real,” WHO outbreak expert Maria Van Kerkhove said of China. The country has reported 80,270 infections and 2,981 deaths from the COVID-19 illness.

Doctors working in Wuhan told reporters by video conference Wednesday that hospitals there have an increasing number of empty beds but cautioned there is always the possibility of a new spike of infections.

“The war is not over,” said Dr. Cao Bin, who specializes in respiratory research. “The disease is not only a Wuhan disease, and not only a China disease, but also a global disease.”

The outbreak was blamed for market instability around the globe. Businesses of all types were experiencing economic woes as travel and tourism plummeted and worried consumers changed their habits.

“People are afraid to touch anything or take anything from us,” said Maedeh Jahangiri, a perfume seller at a mall in the Iranian capital of Tehran. “Everyone is at a loss.”

Saudi Arabia imposed the ban on residents making the Mecca pilgrimage a week after it closed the holiest sites in Islam to foreigners because of the coronavirus.

Japan’s prime minister, who ordered schools closed nationwide last week, was pressing for legal backing to declare a state of emergency if needed.

In France, the Louvre finally opened Wednesday after days of meetings to reassure workers worried about catching the virus from the museum’s thousands of daily visitors.

In the U.K., the number of virus cases jumped to 85 but Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s government has warned that is expected to rise dramatically. It unveiled a detailed, worst-case plan to fight the virus, but was at a loss for words Wednesday when asked about measures to protect lawmakers and staff in London’s crowded Parliament. Lawmakers in Britain skew older.

The government will “say a little bit more in the next couple of days about what we’re going to do to delay the advance of coronavirus in Parliament and at other large gatherings,” Johnson said.

___

Hinnant reported from Paris. Contributors include Nicole Winfield in Rome; Kim Tong-Hyung and Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul, South Korea; Yanan Wang and Ken Moritsugu in Beijing; Aniruddha Ghosal in New Delhi; John Leicester in Paris; and Maria Cheng and Jill Lawless in London.

Bloomberg Drops Out of Presidential Race, Endorses Biden

NEW YORK — Billionaire Mike Bloomberg ended his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination on Wednesday and endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden. It was a stunning collapse for the former New York City mayor, who had his 2020 hopes on the Super Tuesday states and pumped more than $500 million of his own fortune into the campaign.

Bloomberg announced his departure from the race after a disappointing finish on Super Tuesday in the slate of states that account for almost one-third of the total delegates available in the Democratic nominating contest. He won only the territory of American Samoa and picked up several dozen delegates elsewhere. Biden, meanwhile, won big in Southern states where Bloomberg had poured tens of millions of dollars and even cautiously hoped for a victory.

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Two of his former Democratic rivals, Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg, dropped out of the race and endorsed Biden as the moderate alternative to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders just the day before Super Tuesday.

Bloomberg ran an unprecedented campaign from the start. His late entrance into the race in November prompted him to skip campaigning in the first four voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. He hung his success on Super Tuesday, spending at least $180 million on advertising in those states, but had planned to continue deep into the primary calendar, already spending millions on advertising in states like Florida, Michigan and Pennsylvania. Before results poured in on Tuesday, he projected confidence while campaigning in Florida, only to have his aides say the campaign would reassess the next day.

Voters ultimately rejected Bloomberg’s argument that he was the candidate best poised to take on Republican President Donald Trump. The president, for his part, had paid close attention to the Democratic nominating contest and had been especially fixated on Bloomberg. Trump regularly railed against his fellow New Yorker on Twitter, mocking his short stature by calling him “Mini Mike” and claiming Bloomberg was the candidate he wanted to run against. On Tuesday, he called the results a “complete destruction” of Bloomberg’s reputation.

Bloomberg, 78, is one of the world’s richest men, worth an estimated $61 billion. His fortune flows from the financial data and media company that bears his name, which he started in the 1980s. In addition to serving 12 years as New York mayor, he endeared himself to progressive groups by pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into fighting climate change and curbing gun violence.

In the early weeks of his campaign, he used his vast fortune to introduce himself to voters outside New York on his own terms, and his rivals accused him of trying to buy the party’s nomination and the White House. As voting drew closer, the former Republican was forced to confront his Democratic rivals head on by appearing alongside them on a debate stage. His first performance was shaky and uneven and caused voters to view him with a more critical eye.

He proved unable to overcome consistent criticism of New York’s use of the stop-and-frisk police practice under his tenure as mayor, which disproportionately targeted young black and Latino men for searches aimed at finding weapons. The practice ended after a federal judge declared it unconstitutional, and Bloomberg apologized for using it weeks before announcing his presidential run.

He similarly faced pointed criticism — primarily from rival Elizabeth Warren — about the treatment of women at his company, Bloomberg LP. Under pressure from Warren, he said in mid-February he would release three women who sued him for harassment or discrimination complaints from confidentiality agreements. Women who worked for Bloomberg were featured in a commercial praising Bloomberg’s and the company’s treatment of women, and his longtime partner Diana Taylor defended him as a champion of women.

Bloomberg was dogged by accusations he was trying to buy the Democratic presidential nomination. His vast fortune proved a perfect foil for Sanders, who has said billionaires should not exist at all. Indeed, Bloomberg had a vast circle of influence from his spending on key causes like gun control as well as his philanthropic efforts to boost American cities and provide leadership training for mayors. Dozens of prominent mayors rallied behind his candidacy.

That, combined with Biden’s resurgence in South Carolina and the rallying of the party’s moderate wing behind him, doomed Bloomberg’s case that he was the best candidate to take on both Sanders and Trump.

What’s next for Bloomberg is unclear. He’d pledged to keep campaign offices open in key general election battleground states to help the Democrats defeat Trump even if he lost the party’s nomination. But Sanders’ campaign has said they do not want the help.

___

Jaffe reported from Palm Beach, Florida.

The Pentagon Loves Wasting Our Tax Money

Hold on to your helmets! It’s true the White House is reporting that its proposed new Pentagon budget is only $740.5 billion, a relatively small increase from the previous year’s staggering number. In reality, however, when you also include war and security costs buried in the budgets of other agencies, the actual national security figure comes in at more than $1.2 trillion, as the Trump administration continues to give the Pentagon free reign over taxpayer dollars.

You would think that the country’s congressional representatives might want to take control of this process and roll back that budget — especially given the way the White House has repeatedly violated its constitutional authority by essentially stealing billions of dollars from the Defense Department for the president’s “Great Wall” (that Congress refused to fund). Recently, even some of the usual congressional Pentagon budget boosters have begun to lament how difficult it is to take the Department’s requests for more money seriously, given the way the military continues to demand yet more (ever more expensive) weaponry and advanced technologies on the (largely bogus) grounds that Uncle Sam is losing an innovation war with Russia and China.

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And if this wasn’t bad enough, keep in mind that the Defense Department remains the only major federal agency that has proven itself incapable of even passing an audit.

An investigation by my colleague Jason Paladino at the Project On Government Oversight found that increased secrecy around the operations of the Pentagon is making it ever more difficult to assess whether any of its money is well spent, which is why it’s important to track where all the money in this country’s national security budget actually goes.

The Pentagon’s “Base” Budget

This year’s Pentagon request includes $636.4 billion for what’s called its “base” budget — for the routine expenses of the Defense Department. However, claiming that those funds were insufficient, Congress and the Pentagon created a separate slush fund to cover both actual war expenses and other items on their wish lists (on which more to come). Add in mandatory spending, which includes payments to veterans’ retirement and illness compensation funds and that base budget comes to $647.2, t billion.

Ahead of the recent budget roll out, the Pentagon issued a review of potential “reforms” to supposedly cut or control soaring costs. While a few of them deserve serious consideration and debate, the majority reveal just how focused the Pentagon is on protecting its own interests. Ironically, one major area of investment it wants to slash involves oversight of the billions of dollars to be spent. Perhaps least surprising was a proposal to slash programs for operational testing and evaluation — otherwise known as the process of determining whether the billions Americans spend on shiny new weaponry will result in products that actually work. The Pentagon’s Office of Operational Test and Evaluation has found itself repeatedly under attack from arms manufacturers and their boosters who would prefer to be in charge of grading their own performances.

Reduced oversight becomes even more troubling when you look at where Pentagon policymakers want to move that money — to missile defense based on staggeringly expensive futuristic hypersonic weaponry. As my Project On Government Oversight colleague Mark Thompson has written, the idea that such weapons will offer a successful way of defending against enemy missiles “is a recipe for military futility and fiscal insanity.”

Another proposal — to cut A-10 “Warthogs” in the Pentagon’s arsenal in pursuit of a new generation of fighter planes — suggests just how cavalier a department eager for flashy new toys that mean large paydays for the giant defense contractors can be with service members’ lives. After all, no weapons platform more effectively protects ground troops at a relatively low cost than the A-10, yet that plane regularly ends up on the cut list, thanks to those eager to make money on a predictably less effective and vastly more expensive replacement.

Many other proposed “cuts” are actually gambits to get Congress to pump yet more money into the Pentagon. For instance, a memo of supposed cuts to shipbuilding programs, leaked at the end of last year, drew predictable ire from members of Congress trying to protect jobs in their states. Similarly, don’t imagine for a second that purchases of Lockheed Martin’s F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, the most expensive weapons system in history, could possibly be slowed even though the latest testing report suggests that, among other things, it has a gun that still can’t shoot straight. That program is, however, a pork paradise for the military-industrial complex, claiming jobs spread across 45 states.

Many such proposals for cuts are nothing but deft deployments of the “Washington Monument strategy,” a classic tactic in which bureaucrats suggest slashing popular programs to avoid facing any cuts at all. The bureaucratic game is fairly simple: Never offer up anything that would actually appeal to Congress when it comes to reducing the bottom line. Recently, the Pentagon did exactly that in proposing cuts to popular weapons programs to pay for the president’s wall, knowing that no such thing would happen.

Believe it or not, however, there are actually a few proposed cuts that Congress might take seriously. Lockheed Martin’s and Austal’s Littoral Combat Ship program, for instance, has long been troubled, and the number of ships planned for purchase has been cut as problems operating such vessels or even ensuring that they might survive in combat have mounted. The Navy estimates that retiring the first four ships in the program, which would otherwise need significant and expensive upgrades to be deployable, would save $1.2 billion.

The Pentagon’s Slush Fund: the Overseas Contingency Operations Account

Both the Pentagon and Congress have used a war-spending slush fund known as the Overseas Contingency Operations account, or OCO, as a mechanism to circumvent budget caps put into place in 2011 by the Budget Control Act. In 2021, that slush fund is expected to come in at $69 billion. As Taxpayers for Common Sense has pointed out, if OCO were an agency in itself, it would be the fourth largest in the government. In a welcome move towards transparency, this year’s request actually notes that $16 billion of its funds are for things that should be paid for by the base budget, just as last year’s OCO spending levels included $8 billion for the president’s false fund-the-wall “national emergency.”

Overseas Contingency Operations total: $69 billion

Running tally: $716.2 billion.

The Nuclear Budget

While most people may associate the Department of Energy with fracking, oil drilling, solar panels, and wind farms, more than half of its budget actually goes to the National Nuclear Security Administration, which manages the country’s nuclear weapons program. Unfortunately, it has an even worse record than the Pentagon when it comes to mismanaging the tens of billions of dollars it receives every year. Its programs are regularly significantly behind schedule and over cost, more than $28 billion in such expenses over the past 20 years. It’s a track record of mismanagement woeful enough to leave even the White House’s budget geeks questioning nuclear weapons projects. In the end, though — and given military spending generally, this shouldn’t surprise you — the boosters of more nuclear weapons won and so the nuclear budget came in at $27.6 billion.

Nuclear Weapons Budget total: $27.6 billion

Running tally: $743.8 billion

“Defense-Related” Activities

At $9.7 billion, this budget item includes a number of miscellaneous national-security-related matters, including international FBI activities and payments to the CIA retirement fund.

Defense-Related Activities total: $9.7 billion

Running tally: $753.5 billion

The Intelligence Budget

Not surprisingly, since it’s often referred to as the “black budget,” there is relatively little information publicly available about intelligence community spending. According to recent press reports, however, defense firms are finding this area increasingly profitable, citing double-digit growth in just the last year. Unfortunately, Congress has little capacity to oversee this spending. A recent report by Demand Progress and the Project On Government Oversight found that, as of 2019, only 37 of 100 senators even have staff capable of accessing any kind of information about these programs, let alone the ability to conduct proper oversight of them.

However, we do know the total amount of money being requested for the 17 major agencies in the U.S. intelligence community: $85 billion. That money is split between the Pentagon’s intelligence programs and funding for the Central Intelligence Agency and other “civilian” outfits. This year, the military’s intelligence program requested $23.1 billion, and $61.9 billion was requested for the other agencies. Most of this funding is believed to be in the Pentagon’s budget, so it’s not included in the running tally below. If you want to know anything else about that spending you’re going to need to get a security clearance.

Intelligence budget total: $85 billion

Running tally: $753.5 billion

The Military and Defense Department Retirement and Health Budget

While you might assume that these costs would be included in the defense budget, this budget line shows that funds were paid by the Treasury Department for military retirement programs (minus interest and contributions from those accounts). While such retirement costs come to $700 million, the healthcare fund costs are actually a negative $8.5 billion.

Military and Department of Defense Retirement and Health Costs total: -$7.8 billion

Running tally: $745.7 billion

The Veterans Affairs Budget

The financial costs of war are far greater than what’s seen in the Pentagon budget. The most recent estimates by Brown University’s the Costs of War Project show that the total costs of the nation’s main post-9/11 wars through this fiscal year come to $6.4 trillion, including a minimum of $1 trillion for the costs of caring for veterans. This year the administration requested $238.4 billion for Veterans Affairs.

Veterans Affairs Budget: $238.4 billion

Running tally: $984.1 billion

The International Affairs Budget

The International Affairs budget includes funds for both the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development. Numerous defense secretaries and senior military leaders have urged public support for spending on diplomacy to prevent conflict and enhance security (and the State Department also engages in a number of military-related activities). In the Obama years, for instance, then-Marine General James Mattis typically quipped that without more funding for diplomacy he was going to need more bullets. Ahead of the introduction of this year’s budget, former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Admiral Mike Mullen told congressional leaders that concerns about great-power competition with China and Russia meant that “cutting these critical investments would be out of touch with the reality around the world.”

The budget request for $51.1 billion, however, cuts State Department funding significantly and proposes keeping it at such a level for the foreseeable future.

International Affairs Total: $51.1 billion

Running tally: $1,035.2 billion

The Homeland Security Budget

The Department of Homeland Security consists of a hodgepodge of government agencies, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the Transportation Security Administration, the U.S. Secret Service, Customs and Border Protection, and the Coast Guard. In this year’s $49.7 billion budget, border security costs make up a third of total costs.

The department is also responsible for coordinating federal cyber-security efforts through the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. Despite growing domestic cyber concerns, however, the budget request for that agency has fallen since last year’s budget.

Homeland Security total: $52.1 billion

Running tally: $1,087.3 billion

Interest on the Debt

And don’t forget the national security state’s part in paying interest on the national debt. Its share, 21.5% of that debt, adds up to $123.6 billion.

Interest on the debt total: $123.6 billion

Final tally: $1,210.9 billion

The Budget’s Too Damn High

In other words, at $1.21 trillion, the actual national security budget is essentially twice the size of the announced Pentagon budget. It’s also a compendium of military-industrial waste and misspending. Yet those calling for higher budgets continue to argue that the only way to keep America safe is to pour in yet more tax dollars at a moment when remarkably little is going into, for instance, domestic infrastructure.

The U.S. already spends more than the next seven countries combined on a military that is seemingly incapable of either winning or ending any of the wars it’s been engaged in since September 2001. So isn’t it reasonable to suggest that the more that’s spent on what’s still called national security but should perhaps go by the term “national insecurity,” the less there is to show for it? More spending is never the solution to poor spending. Isn’t it about time, then, that the disastrously bloated “defense” budget experienced some meaningful cuts and shifts in priorities? Shouldn’t the U.S. military be made into a far leaner and more agile force geared to actual defense instead of disastrous wars (and preparations for more of the same) across a significant swath of the planet?

Biden Wins 8 Super Tuesday States; Sanders Takes California

WASHINGTON — A resurgent Joe Biden scored sweeping victories across the country with the backing of a diverse coalition and progressive rival Bernie Sanders seized Super Tuesday’s biggest prize with a win in California as the Democratic Party’s once-crowded presidential field suddenly transformed into a two-man contest.

The two Democrats, lifelong politicians with starkly different visions for America’s future, were battling for delegates as 14 states and one U.S. territory held a series of high-stakes elections that marked the most significant day of voting in the party’s 2020 presidential nomination fight. The winner will take on President Donald Trump in the November general election.

The other two high-profile candidates still in the shrinking Democratic field, New York billionaire Mike Bloomberg and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, were teetering on the edge of viability. Warren finished in an embarrassing third place in her home state, and Bloomberg planned to reassess his candidacy on Wednesday after spending more than a half billion dollars to score a single victory — in American Samoa.

The new contours of a nomination fight pitting Biden against Sanders, each leading coalitions of disparate demographics and political beliefs, were crystallizing by day’s end as the former vice president and the three-term senator spoke to each other from dueling victory speeches separated by 2,500 miles (4,000 kilometers) Tuesday night.

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“People are talking about a revolution. We started a movement,” Biden charged in Los Angeles, knocking one of Sanders’ signature lines.

And without citing his surging rival by name, Sanders swiped at Biden from Burlington, Vermont.

“You cannot beat Trump with the same-old, same-old kind of politics,” Sanders declared, ticking down a list of past policy differences with Biden on Social Security, trade and military force. “This will become a contrast in ideas.”

The balance of Super Tuesday’s battlefield — with Biden winning at least eight states and Sanders four — raised questions about whether the Democratic primary contest would stretch all the way to the July convention or be decided much sooner.

Biden’s strong finish punctuated a dramatic turnaround in the span of just three days when he leveraged a blowout victory in South Carolina to score sweeping victories on Tuesday that transcended geography, class and race. And lest there be any doubt, he cemented his status as the standard-bearer for the Democrats’ establishment wing.

The former vice president showed strength in the Northeast with a win in Massachusetts, won Minnesota in the upper Midwest and finished on top across the South in Virginia, Alabama, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas — in addition to Oklahoma.

Sanders opened the night as the undisputed Democratic front-runner and was in a position to claim an insurmountable delegate lead. And while he scored the night’s biggest delegate-prize in California, he scored just three other decisive victories, winning his home state of Vermont, along with Utah and Colorado.

Still, Sanders proved he could deliver in perhaps the greatest test of his decadeslong political career. His success was built on a base of energized liberals, young people and Latinos. And his conclusive win in California marks a huge reversal in a state he lost four years ago.

Biden racked up his victories despite being dramatically outspent and out-staffed. Moderate rival Bloomberg, for example, poured more than $19 million into television advertising in Virginia, while Biden spent less than $200,000.

A key to Biden’s success: black voters. Biden, who served two terms as President Barack Obama’s vice president, won 60% of the black vote in Alabama, where African Americans made up more than half the Democratic electorate on Tuesday. Bloomberg earned 25%, and Sanders won about 10% of African American votes, according to AP VoteCast, a wide-ranging survey of the electorate.

The Democratic race has shifted dramatically over the past three days as Biden capitalized on his commanding South Carolina victory to persuade anxious establishment allies to rally behind his campaign. Former rivals Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg abruptly ended their campaigns in the days leading up to Super Tuesday and endorsed Biden.

In Biden and Sanders, Democrats have a stark choice in what kind of candidate they want to run against Trump.

Sanders is a 78-year-old democratic socialist who relies on an energized coalition of his party’s far-left flank that embraces his longtime fight to transform the nation’s political and economic systems. Biden is a 77-year-old lifelong leader of his party’s Washington establishment who emphasizes a more pragmatic approach to core policy issues like health care and climate change.

Across the Super Tuesday states there were early questions about Sanders’ claims that he is growing his support from his failed 2016 presidential bid.

Biden bested him in Oklahoma, though Sanders won the state against Hillary Clinton four years ago. In Virginia, where Democratic turnout this year surpassed 2016’s numbers by more than 500,000 votes, Sanders’ vote share dropped significantly. And in Tennessee, Democratic turnout was up more than 30% from 2016, but Sanders’ raw vote total was only a few hundred votes greater than four years ago.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg was trying to look beyond the primary to the November election against Trump, who racked up easy victories in lightly contested Republican primaries across the country.

“We have the resources to beat Trump in swing states that Democrats lost in 2016,” he said Tuesday night while campaigning in Florida.

The billionaire former New York mayor, who threw more than a half a billion dollars into the Super Tuesday states, will reassess his campaign on Wednesday, according to a person close to his operation who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations.

Warren was also fighting to be optimistic.

Facing a roaring crowd in Michigan before news of her disappointing home-state finish was announced, she called on her supporters to ignore the political pundits and predictions as her advisers insist she’s willing to go all the way to a contested convention in July even if she doesn’t claim an outright victory anywhere.

“Here’s my advice: Cast a vote that will make you proud. Cast a vote from your heart,” Warren declared. She added: “You don’t get what you don’t fight for. I am in this fight.”

With votes still being counted across the country, The Associated Press has allocated 362 to Biden, 285 delegates to Sanders, 30 to Bloomberg, 20 to Warren and one for Rep. Tulsi Gabbard. The numbers are expected to shift dramatically throughout the night as new states, none bigger than California, report their numbers and as some candidates hover around the 15% vote threshold they must hit to earn delegates.

The ultimate nominee must ultimately claim 1,991 delegates, which is a majority of the 3,979 pledged delegates available this primary season.

___

Associated Press writers Zeke Miller and Brian Slodysko in Washington and Kathleen Ronayne in Los Angeles contributed to this report.

Devastating Tornadoes Kill 25 in Tennessee

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Rescuers searched through shattered Tennessee neighborhoods for bodies Tuesday, less than a day after tornadoes ripped across Nashville and other parts of the state as families slept. At least 25 people were killed, some in their beds, authorities said.

The twisters that struck in the hours after midnight shredded more than 140 buildings and buried people in piles of rubble and wrecked basements. The storms moved so quickly that many people in their path could not flee to safer areas.

“It hit so fast, a lot of folks didn’t have time to take shelter,” Putnam County Mayor Randy Porter said. “Many of these folks were sleeping.”

The governor declared an emergency and sent the National Guard to help with search-and-rescue efforts. An unspecified number of people were missing.

Early findings by National Weather Service survey teams indicated that the damage in Nashville and Wilson County to the east was inflicted by a tornado of at least EF-3 intensity, the agency said.

One twister wrecked homes and businesses across a 10-mile (16 kilometer) stretch of Nashville that included parts of downtown. It smashed more than three dozen buildings, including destroying the tower and stained glass of a historic church. Another tornado damaged more than 100 structures along a 2-mile (3.2-kilometer) path of destruction in Putnam County, wiping some homes from their foundations and depositing the wreckage far away.

Daybreak revealed landscapes littered with blown-down walls and roofs, snapped power lines and huge broken trees, making many city streets and rural roads impassable. More than a dozen polling stations were also damaged, forcing Super Tuesday voters to wait in long lines at alternative sites.

In Putnam County, 80 miles (128 kilometers) east of Nashville, houses and businesses were completely flattened. In one neighborhood, volunteers found five bodies. Neighbors and sheriff’s officers were still looking for two more.

Nashville residents walked around on streets and sidewalks littered with debris, in neighborhoods where missing walls and roofs left living rooms and kitchens exposed. Mangled power lines and broken trees came to rest on cars, streets and piles of rubble.

“We are resilient and we’re going to rebuild,” Nashville Mayor John Cooper said.

During Gov. Bill Lee’s tour of Putnam County, homeowners dug through debris, trying to salvage any items not destroyed. One young woman held up a clean green blouse while standing on a second floor of a home that had no roof.

President Donald Trump spoke with the governor by phone and pledged federal assistance, the White House said. Trump also announced plans to visit the disaster area on Friday.

In Nashville, the twister’s path was mostly north and east of the heart of downtown, sparing many of the city’s biggest tourism draws — the honky tonks of Broadway, the Grand Ole Opry House, the storied Ryman Auditorium and the convention center.

Instead the storm tore through the largely African American areas of Bordeaux and North Nashville as well as neighborhoods transformed by a recent building boom. Germantown and East Nashville are two of the city’s trendiest hotspots, with restaurants, music venues, high-end apartment complexes and rising home prices threatening to drive out longtime residents.

“The dogs started barking before the sirens went off. They knew what was coming,” said Paula Wade, of East Nashville. “Then we heard the roar … Something made me just sit straight up in bed, and something came through the window right above my head. If I hadn’t moved, I would’ve gotten a face full of glass.”

The roof came crashing down on Ronald Baldwin and Harry Nahay in the bedroom of their one-story brick home in East Nashville. “We couldn’t get out,” Baldwin said. “And so I just kept kicking and kicking until we finally made a hole.”

The roaring wind woke Evan and Carlie Peters, also in East Nashville, but they had no time to reach the relative safety of an interior bathroom.

“Within about 10 seconds, the house started shaking,” Carlie Peters said. “I jumped on top of the ground. He jumped on top of me. The ceiling landed on top of him. … we’re grateful to be alive.”

With more than a dozen Super Tuesday polling places in Nashville’s Davidson County damaged, voters were sent to other locations, some of them with long lines. Election officials in Putnam County advised voters in eight precincts with damaged polling locations to vote at the main election office in Cookeville.

“None of us are yelling at each other, so that’s good,” said Ryan Rayburn of Nashville, who waited about 90 minutes to vote at the Cleveland Park Community Center, where people were sent after their regular precincts were closed due to storm damage.

There were abundant examples of strangers helping people whose homes or communities had been hit.

A van of longtime customers at a Putnam County eatery — who proudly stated they ate there every morning — arrived to help clear debris just as the governor stopped by to tour the devastation.

In the small town of Baxter, Mike Stephens was awakened when a big tree crashed through the roof of his house. He started cleaning up as soon as the sun rose. He cut up one tree and had help from a neighbor with a backhoe and a man who stopped by with a chainsaw.

“I’ve only met him once, and he just happened to show up while we’re out here,” Stephens said of his neighbor. “And then this other guy he just happened to stop by. I don’t know him.”

Wayne Stephens, a technician at a local car dealership, had Tuesday off from his job. With no damage to his home, he got in his truck with his chainsaw. He’s not related to Mike Stephens and had never met him. He said he only wanted to help “as much as I can.”

___

Associated Press writers Kristin Hall, Jonathan Mattise and Mark Humphrey in Nashville; Adrian Sainz in Memphis; Teresa Walker and Wade Payne in Cookeville; Rebecca Reynolds Yonker in Louisville, Kentucky; and Jay Reeves in Birmingham, Alabama, contributed to this report.

Human Rights Watch’s Tie To Saudi Billionaire Revealed

In 2010, Human Rights Watch published a report documenting labor violations against foreign workers at Jadawel International, a Saudi Arabian construction company. Foreign workers, according to the report, “hadn’t been paid for months” at the company’s Dhahran and Riyadh compounds. Their residency permits had expired, leaving them both unpaid and trapped in the kingdom, forced to keep working.

Advocates demanded that Saudi Arabia’s labor office investigate the situation and compensate the workers. Two years later, The Intercept reports, Human Rights Watch accepted a $470,000 donation from the MBI Al Jaber Foundation. Mohamed Bin Issa Al Jaber, the foundation’s founder and chairman, is the owner of Jadawel International — which means that Human Rights Watch accepted a donation from a billionaire real estate magnate it accused of worker abuse.

According to The Intercept, the funding came with strings attached: “[I]t could not be used to support the group’s LGBT advocacy in the Middle East and North Africa.”

A 2012 fundraising policy states that the organization will not accept funding from companies that have been the subject of Human Rights Watch work. The organization has since returned the Al Jaber donation.

During the course of The Intercept’s reporting, Human Rights Watch released a statement calling the donation a “deeply regrettable decision” that “stood in stark contrast to our core values and our longstanding commitment to LGBT rights as an integral part of human rights. … [W]e also regret that the grant was made by the owner of a company that Human Rights Watch had previously identified as complicit in labor rights abuse.”

Jadawel International is not the only company to use the kafala (Arabic word for sponsorship) system, which, as Amnesty International explains, “ties the legal residency of the worker to the contractual relationship with the employer.”

A number of countries, including Saudi Arabia, Lebanon and Qatar, have been under fire for doing the same thing. In Qatar, workers have to obtain a no-objection certificate from an employer in order to change jobs. Al-Jazeera reported in October that Qatar was planning to abolish the kafala system, but another Human Rights Watch report in February shows that delayed wages remain.

Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth told The Intercept that while the Al Jaber donation amounted to $470,000, there was an additional pledge that never materialized. As The Intercept explains,“Roth was himself involved in soliciting the donation, according to an internal Human Rights Watch email sent last month and obtained by The Intercept. The email was written on behalf of the group’s international board of directors and signed by the board’s co-chairs, Amy Rao and Neil Rimer.”

Rimer and Rao wrote in an email obtained by The Intercept that “by accepting a pledge excluding its use for work on a group whose rights we strive to protect, the people involved at Human Rights Watch, Inc. made a serious error in judgment.” They added, “Ken Roth, the most senior person at HRW involved with soliciting this pledge, accepts full responsibility for this mistake.”

The Human Rights Watch board, according to Rimer and Rao’s email, had just recently learned about the donation, though, as The Intercept points out, the MBI Al Jaber Foundation announced it on its website in 2013. Rimer and Rao’s statement does not name Al Jaber or Jadawel International, but the identity of both were confirmed to The Intercept by Human Rights Watch staff.

Human Rights Watch promised to address the situation. “To prevent this from happening again,” its statement says, “we have created an additional policy explicitly prohibiting restrictions on gifts that would exclude particular social groups or fundamental rights issues.”

Read the full story here.

For Afghanistan, the Doha Accord Is Just the Beginning

Truthdig is proud to present this article as part of Global Voices: Truthdig Women Reporting, a series from a network of female correspondents around the world who are dedicated to pursuing truth within their countries and elsewhere.

In normal times, Saturday would have been a red-letter day. The deal signed by the Taliban and the U.S. in Doha, Qatar, promised peace to a land torn by war for over four decades.

But these are not normal times — at least not in South Asia — and the euphoria that usually accompanies a deal signed to end war was missing.

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In Pakistan, feelings were mixed. Words like “historic,” “landmark,” “welcome” and “immediately important” were interspersed with such terms as “cautious,” “responsible” and “careful.”

That’s because peace in the true sense of the word has been elusive in the region. Although the deal has been concluded, peace is conditional on so many ifs and buts that one can only hope for the best. While welcoming the Doha accord, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan described it as the start of the peace and reconciliation process in Afghanistan. But he also warned all stakeholders “to ensure that spoilers are kept at bay.”

Who could be the spoilers? Potentially there are many. The most likely are Afghanistan’s own leaders, who are squabbling among themselves over the recent presidential election results. That is not a trivial matter, because the immediate measure needed to start the peace process is the intra-Afghan dialogue scheduled for March 10. Ashraf Ghani, the incumbent president, who is accused of gaining an electoral victory through fraudulent means, is now prioritizing his political success over peace in the region. Even before the ink on the Doha accord was dry, he rejected the provision for the exchange of prisoners that requires 5,000 Taliban captives to be released as a price for the freedom of 1,000 Afghan troops.

We will have to keep our fingers crossed as we wait to see how the wind blows. There are too many Afghan contenders for power, and it is natural to expect them to seek a seat at the negotiating table and have a say in the future of the country. Who will call the shots? Ghani, America’s key ally in Kabul, has a fragile hold on power and faces a tough challenge from his numerous rivals. He is highly vulnerable, and this power struggle could give the Taliban — the strongest of the lot — the upper hand, but not without igniting another insurgency.

The Doha deal also provides for the withdrawal of American and NATO troops, nearly 13,000 of which remain in Afghanistan. Five thousand of these will be pulled out by May; the remainder will go home by April 2021.

Khan was right when he claimed vindication of his view that peace can only come to the region through a negotiated arrangement. He also was correct in warning against spoilers. Afghanistan has always been vulnerable to foreign interests, and past experience has shown how the Afghans have suffered because their underdeveloped, poverty-stricken country has become a haven for self-serving outsiders. This has happened before. It could happen again.

After the Soviet troop withdrawal from Afghanistan following the 1988 Geneva accords, the region was engulfed in a political vacuum. That was not surprising. The U.S. had already lost interest in post-Geneva events in Southwest Asia, believing that Pax Americana had been ushered in to ensure the United States’ global supremacy. It was left to Pakistan to bear the brunt of the Afghan quagmire left behind by the end stage of the Cold War. That created the conditions conducive to the birth of the Taliban under the supervision of Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistan’s spy agency.

This is unlikely to happen this time. There has been a shift in Pakistan’s military strategy. The army appears to be serious about cracking down on terrorism, hence the push for peace from the Pakistan-backed Taliban. Pakistan’s role in promoting the Doha Accord has been widely acknowledged. The Pakistani foreign minister’s presence in Qatar at the scene of the signing ceremony was highly significant.

But when Afghans fight, they love to invite foreign allies. The withdrawal of U.S. troops may be a positive step. But President Trump cannot afford to wash his hands of South Asian politics, as he seems to be doing. His recent trip to New Delhi did not go down well with opinion leaders in Pakistan. Even his offer to mediate on Kashmir, which the government in Islamabad welcomed, failed to make the designed impact. As a prominent opposition leader pointed out, Trump’s statements in India indicated his desire to have it play the role of policeman in the region. Trump refrained from commenting on India’s autocratic policy on Kashmir, which has been under a lockdown since August. He was also strangely silent on the controversial citizenship law that has angered many in both India and Pakistan. Trump’s visit to India at this point was not timely, and it has sent wrong signals to South Asia.

The most worrisome aspect of these developments is the fear — voiced by feminists and progressives all over the region — that the Doha accord is no more than a “dressed-up U.S. surrender that will ultimately see the Taliban return to power.”

If the Doha accord is treated as a pretext for Trump to turn his back on world affairs and foreign policy as he faces the American electorate in 2020, he may well be leading his country into another disaster.

Russia and China have shown a steady interest in Afghanistan throughout the 15 months that the on-again, off-again Doha dialogue took place. In fact, there were occasions when talks between the Taliban and other Afghan leaders were facilitated by Moscow.

The post-Doha phase will be the crucial stage, when the future of Afghanistan will be decided for its men, as well as its women.