Peter L. Berger's Blog

Putin, Trump, and the Pandemic

As COVID-19 continues to claim lives and roil markets, it is also transforming political fortunes—not least those of Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. Both have faced blistering criticism for their oversight—or lack thereof—of the pandemic response in their countries. Both have doubled down on longstanding habits of deflection and delegation that are ill-suited for coping with a global pandemic. And both might discover that the coronavirus crisis will affect their ability to stay in power.

Putin’s Best Laid Plans

April 22 was supposed to be a big day for Putin. It was today that Russians were supposed to have voted for a major change in their country’s constitution to allow Putin to run again for President after his current term expires in 2024. May 9 was set to be another important milestone for the Russian leader, who had planned elaborate ceremonies to mark the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II.

Instead, the pandemic forced him to postpone both the April 22 vote and the May 9 festivities. Even before the virus hit Russia in a serious way, Putin was struggling to muster support for his plan to stay in office for another decade or more. According to one pre-pandemic poll by the Levada Center, Putin did not have majority support among the overall population for extending his stay in the presidency: 48 percent of Russians surveyed approved of the amendment to erase presidential term limits for Putin, while 47 percent disapproved. While another Levada poll released the same day showed that 52 percent of those planning to vote supported the change, versus 28 percent opposed it, a bare majority is never enough for an authoritarian leader like Putin who seeks overwhelming endorsement.

Russia has not conducted a free and fair vote in many years, and Putin will surely resort to his usual fraud and vote-rigging to secure the necessary sizable majority. But as the pandemic worsens in Russia, and if Putin gets blamed for an inadequate response, he will have less room politically to engage in electoral manipulation. That means vote-rigging in a rescheduled plebiscite could trigger protests the likes of which Russia has not seen since 2011-2012.

Staying in power is Putin’s number one objective, in order to protect his assets, accumulated over decades of corruption. At the same time, Putin’s inept leadership has made achieving this goal more difficult. He has squandered two decades in power by failing to diversify Russia’s economy from its dependence on oil and gas while significantly increasing the state’s role in the economy. He has incurred serious sanctions from the West. He has no plans for righting Russia’s teetering economy, which has been stagnant since the drop in the price of oil—now plummeting to new depths—and his invasion of Ukraine, a situation now made much worse by the pandemic. (Some predict a fourfold rise in unemployment, to roughly 11 percent of the workforce.)

Under Putin, Russia has also seen relations with many of its neighbors deteriorate significantly. In a major change from just seven years ago, a majority of Ukrainians support joining NATO thanks to Putin’s invasion, and view Putin’s Russia as a major threat. Many Belarusians have protested against Russian efforts to subsume their country under a Russian-controlled union state. Many Georgians despise Putin for his occupation of 20 percent of their territory.

Putin wanted to ram through his constitutional changes now, because the passage of time is likely to make the situation less controllable for him. While Putin’s ratings soared after his illegal annexation of Crimea and invasion of the Donbas, that boost in the polls has worn off as Russians have grown weary of his overseas adventures. A March poll by the Levada Center gave Putin a rating of 63 percent—an enviable score by Western standards, to be sure, but one approaching his 2013 low of 61 percent. More concerning for Putin was yet another poll by Levada showing that people’s trust in him personally had dropped from 59 percent in November 2017 to 35 percent this past January.

To some in Russia, Putin has restored the country to great power status, and made the economy rebound from its nadir in the 1990s. The speaker of the Russian Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, in pressing for passage of Putin’s constitutional reforms, recently quipped, “Today, given the challenges and threats that exist in the world, oil and gas are not our advantages,” he said. “As you can see, both oil and gas can fall in price. Our advantage is Putin, and we must protect him.” In the past, Volodin has made similarly slavish claims; in 2014, he said, “There is no Russia today if there is no Putin.”

To more clear-eyed observers, however, Putin is known for aligning Russia with fellow brutal authoritarian leaders in Syria and Venezuela. His interest is in staying in power and enriching himself, not looking out for the interests of the population. The pandemic is sure to heighten this perception among Russians. Why, Russians might ask, are we sending forces and providing money to prop up leaders like Assad and Maduro?

Putin has made a big deal during the pandemic of Russian assistance to countries like Italy, Serbia, and even the United States. Putin’s propaganda stunts are likely to backfire, however, as Russia itself experiences shortages of needed medical supplies in many cities and towns. Russian opposition leader Aleksei Navalny summed up the sentiments of many on Twitter: “Doctors and nurses in the whole country are sitting without masks and getting each other sick. This is monstrous. Putin is crazy.”

Unlike Trump, Putin does not hold daily press briefings. In fact, the Russian government provides little news and information to a population hungering for it. Instead, local officials have stepped in to fill the void. Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin has risen to the occasion, enforcing stringent measures that essentially have locked down the capital city. As Putin retreated to his country estate, the head of Russia’s coronavirus task force, Tatyana Golikova, assured Putin in mid-March that “there is no reason at all to panic,” while Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov was pooh-poohing the threat, telling reporters as late as March “There is de facto no epidemic” in Russia. It was left to Sobyanin and others to sound the alarm. That hasn’t stopped Putin from criticizing local leaders, however. “This reserve (of time) can melt quickly, it must not be spent thoughtlessly, it must be used in the most efficient way,” Putin scolded regional officials in a televised meeting held by video link.

Putin has a history of disappearing from the public scene when times are tough—after the sinking of the Kursk submarine in August 2000, for instance, and following the assassination of Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov in February 2015. For an authoritarian leader who has decisively concentrated power in his hands, Putin can also be very indecisive at times; the pandemic is only the most recent example. The question is whether his handling of the crisis will wound him mortally. “The situation is under full control,” Putin claimed April 19 as the number of cases in Russia skyrocketed, a claim reminiscent of reassurances by Trump and others in his administration during the early days of the U.S. outbreak that proved to be wildly inaccurate. “All of our society is united in front of the common threat,” Putin added.

Trump’s Re-Election Prospects

When 2020 started, Trump was feeling good about his re-election chances. And after his impeachment acquittal, he was left riding an economic wave with very low unemployment and a booming stock market. He relished the prospect of facing off against either Senator Elizabeth Warren or Senator Bernie Sanders. Former Vice President Joe Biden looked like a badly wounded candidate on his last legs.

Come November, however, Trump will indeed square off against Biden, who does well in most polls against Trump. The American economy, Trump’s top talking point, has plummeted as a result of the shutdown. Unemployment has surged past 22 million in just one month, and the stock market, with big ups and downs, is not where Trump hoped it would be. Reopening undoubtedly will boost the economy, but doing so prematurely could come at a huge cost in lives.

At the outset of the pandemic, Trump got a momentary bump in the polls, as most presidents do during times of crisis, but even then he could not consistently reach 50 percent support. More recent polls show his numbers dropping. In fact, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey, “Trump’s overall job rating has changed little since late March (March 19-24) . . . . Currently, 44% approve of the way Trump is handling his job as president, while 53% disapprove.” That figure, Pew notes, is “among the highest ratings of his presidency”—which does not bode well for Trump come November. Another poll by the Washington Post and University of Maryland showed 54 percent of those surveyed giving Trump negative marks for his handling of the crisis.

In contrast to Putin, who has taken a very low-key approach in handling the crisis, Trump is a never-ending presence. After more than a month of suggesting the pandemic was inconsequential, his daily White House press briefings with claims of “total authority” feed the image of him as a wannabe strongman. So, too, do statements like this one from April 13: “The President of the United States calls the shots,” and governors “can’t do anything without the approval of the president.” Despite such imperious assertions, Trump has refused to use the Defense Production Act to its fullest capacity and has deferred most decisions to the governors, hoping to absolve himself of both responsibility and blame, should it come. Avoiding responsibility and refusing to take tough decisions are traits Trump and Putin have in common, as the Russian leader also has deferred to local authorities on major decisions.

Trump, consistent with his “America First” strategy, has offered little help to other countries in need during the pandemic and has even tried to block shipments destined for other countries and reroute them stateside. One exception, however, has become fodder for the Democrats. Trump allowed medical supplies to be shipped to China, despite the shortage of such supplies in the United States and the fact that China has been the target of well-deserved criticism for its cover-up of the crisis in Wuhan. Trump also has offered to provide ventilators to Russia—“they’re having a hard time in Moscow. We’re going to help them,” he said—an offer the Russians have described as “kind.”

All of this will complicate Trump’s re-election prospects. In contrast to Russia’s pre-determined elections, those in the United States can produce surprising results, as evidenced by Trump’s own victory in 2016. Trump’s support for conservative lawmakers’ efforts to suppress voter turnout and opposition to mail-in voting suggest, however, he wants to do whatever he can to ensure victory again.

Fears that he may face legal challenges and/or criminal charges the day he leaves the White House may give Trump additional incentive to tilt the election process in his favor. As he did in 2016, when he refused to say whether he would accept defeat at the polls, Trump is already raising questions about the legitimacy of this year’s election.

Grading Putin and Trump

Compared to leaders of countries like Germany, South Korea and Taiwan, both Putin and Trump have been widely criticized for how they have handled the pandemic. Both sought to downplay the severity of the crisis in its early days. Trump did not want to spook the markets and risk harming the economy. Putin was intent on holding his April 22 vote and May 9 Victory Day ceremony. Neither was interested in sounding the alarm early on for fear of upsetting the apple cart.

After instituting a partial travel ban on foreign nationals coming from China in late January, Trump squandered the month of February when he could have mobilized the full forces of the U.S. government to prepare for an outbreak. Nearly two-thirds of Americans (65 percent) say Trump was “too slow to take major steps to address the threat…when cases of the disease were first reported in other countries,” according to a Pew Research survey.

A recent poll by the University of North Florida showed 53 percent of Floridians disapproving of Trump’s handling of the crisis and 58 percent said they do not trust the President “to provide reliable information about the coronavirus;” only 41 percent said they did. Such results suggest that when it comes to life-and-death issues, Americans want to turn to a trusted source—and Trump, with his campaign rally-like press briefings, is not that source.

Trump’s claim that he “takes no responsibility at all” for any mistakes in responding to the crisis is not unlike Putin’s hands-off approach. In the United States, we have seen many governors and local leaders rise to the occasion in response to the crisis. In determining when and how to “reopen” the economy, Trump has punted those decisions to the governors.

Putin, who did virtually nothing to prepare Russia for an outbreak even as the rest of the world was experiencing one, initially wanted to convey the image that everything in Russia was under control, and his grip on most news outlets enables him to perpetuate Kremlin lies. Even so, a recent poll by the Levada Center found that 24 percent completely distrust the official information about the coronavirus situation that is disseminated in the media, and 35 percent only partially trust it.

Both Trump and Putin have demonstrated little empathy for those suffering from the pandemic. Putin’s lack of compassion has been a trademark for years. When asked by Larry King about what happened to the Kursk submarine in 2000, Putin callously said, “It sank,” offering no words of condolence for the families of the 118 sailors who perished. In the United States, Americans expect their President to relate to the pain that they are feeling. When asked weeks ago by a reporter what he would say to those suffering from the virus, Trump instead launched into an attack on the reporter, Peter Alexander of NBC News. That may play well to his base, but it is unlikely to win over others.

The approaches adopted by Trump and Putin initially did not prevent the very outcomes they feared—panicked markets, a declining economy, and canceled events. As commentator Maksim Trudolyubov put it, “For once, Vladimir Putin followed in the path of his American counterpart, President Trump, and with similar results—a greater risk of catastrophe that might have been avoided.” They both failed to take necessary measures to prepare for a major outbreak. The resulting toll—medically and financially—on people in both Russia and the United States is bound to damage the standing of both leaders.

Putin cannot ignore popular sentiment, even if the bubble in which he lives largely disconnects him from it. He was spooked by the “color revolutions” in Georgia and Ukraine in 2003 and 2004, the Arab Spring movement in 2011, and the second revolution in Ukraine in 2014. He blamed the United States for fomenting them and feared that Russia was next on the list. Massive protests over his handling of the pandemic would scare Putin all over again, though assembling for demonstrations in Russia, already significantly constricted before the pandemic, is even more difficult to do now amid fear of contagion.

Whereas Putin fears mobilization of the population, Trump appeals to the mob to “liberate” various states from stringent shutdown measures. His tweets target mostly Democratic governors in states like Michigan, Minnesota, and Virginia. Leaving aside the public health concerns when many protestors show up without masks in close proximity, Trump is playing with fire by inciting crowds to turn against their state and local leaders. Instead of promoting unity at a time of major crisis, Trump is turning to ugly populist appeals that could spin out of control and lead to violence.

Putin and Trump: Friends in Need…

Amid the raging pandemic, Trump praised Putin for the Russian leader’s shipment of medical supplies to New York. “Russia sent us a very, very large planeload of things, medical equipment, which was very nice,” Trump said March 30. Oblivious to the points Putin was trying to score in sending such aid, Trump added, “I’m not concerned about Russian propaganda.”

At the same time that Putin was sending a planeload of dubious assistance to New York, his henchmen were launching a vigorous disinformation campaign suggesting that the United States was responsible for the pandemic and that American servicemen in Lithuania were spreading the virus. Consistent with the Kremlin’s years-long disinformation campaign, pro-Putin Russian media ridiculed the lack of personal protective equipment in the United States, the need for help from Russia, and the chaos in many American hospitals. None of this seems to have bothered Trump, nor has Russian criticism of Trump’s decision to suspend funding for the World Health Organization.

Meanwhile, Putin has sustained and in some cases increased his other nefarious activities despite the pandemic. In recent days Putin has bolstered mercenary forces in Libya, maintained support for Assad, signaled continuing support for Maduro, sustained his campaign against Ukraine, and pushed the demarcation line further into Georgian territory.  The latter issue reached the point where the U.S. Embassy in Tbilisi issued a statement condemning Russia’s aggressive ‘borderization’ actions along the boundary line of South Ossetia: “We condemn any actions by the de facto authorities in Tskhinvali that aggravate tensions and distract from urgent efforts to safeguard the lives and health of the affected populations, particularly . . . against the backdrop of the global pandemic crisis.”

In short, the Putin regime continues to threaten U.S. interests even as the pandemic itself threatens Putin’s own legitimacy. In March, Putin sought to hurt American shale-oil production by launching a price war with Saudi Arabia to undermine U.S. energy independence and exports to Europe. Oil and gas constitute more than half of Russia’s exports and roughly one third of its GDP, and the coronavirus pandemic is driving down demand. This could leave Russia with an enormous glut, forcing it to temporarily shut down some of its energy fields.

Since the price war, Russia did help negotiate an “OPEC Plus” deal to cut output and stabilize oil prices—hashed out in numerous phone conversations between Trump and Putin, as the Washington Post’s David Ignatius reported earlier this month. But this has hardly resolved the matter, with oil prices tumbling to record lows this week. While the oil shock will disadvantage Russia as well as the United States, it should also remind Washington that Moscow’s “cooperation” in the energy sector is neither well-intentioned nor effective.

A report by Russia’s TASS news agency claimed that the two leaders did not discuss sanctions during their phone calls. That is hard to believe, since Putin has made lifting sanctions during the pandemic a major topic in G-20 discussions, the United Nations and elsewhere. He and Trump face two problems in this regard, however. First, sanctions do not apply to humanitarian needs; second, the American President does not have the authority, under legislation passed by Congress in 2017, to lift sanctions on his own without congressional approval. So even were Trump eager to accommodate Putin, in fact, thankfully, he can’t.

The two leaders presumably discussed cooperation in dealing with the pandemic, and they also might have broached the issue of arms control. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov renewed Russia’s interest in arms control discussions, but Trump has indicated he wants China to be part of any new arms control initiatives; Beijing has firmly rejected such notions. Thus, one should not expect any breakthroughs in this area.

Finally, it is easy to imagine that during their phone conversations, the two leaders might have taken a few moments to commiserate about the turn in their respective political fortunes. There is little, however, that either can do to help the other politically. Trump cannot unilaterally lift sanctions on Russia, nor do the symbolic favor of attending the now-cancelled May 9 ceremony. Even a Putin offer to interfere in the election again in favor of Trump could backfire. Given Putin’s track record in consolidating power, it would be unwise to bet against him muddling through, and Trump should never be underestimated. That said, one cannot help but wonder whether political changes may be coming in Washington or Moscow—or both—come 2021.

The post Putin, Trump, and the Pandemic appeared first on The American Interest.

How the Oil Shock Will Contain Putin

Two weeks ago, the movers and shakers in the oil-producing universe tried to convince the world they were on the cusp of a truly significant agreement that would slow the financial hemorrhaging of the market. Instead, they delivered nothing more than a slight ripple in a growing, fetid pond. The Saudis with deep pockets and untold cash reserves were able to claim that OPEC discipline had triumphed over Russian cockiness and Putin’s ill-advised scheme to free ride on OPEC without abiding by the rules. Moscow believes it got a win by bringing the United States to the table and forcing countries like Mexico to agree on cuts. But the overall drop in production, barely 10 million barrels per day (bbl/d), pales in comparison to the steadily declining daily consumption of oil in excess of 25M bbl/d, with the bottom nowhere in sight. The historic drop in oil prices this week makes it clear that there is little the Saudis or Russians can do to halt this downward spiral.

As the global economy and oil prices began to reel from COVID-19, Russia decided to protect its oil revenues by breaking off cooperation with the Saudis, a policy that it had pursued since the drop in oil prices in 2014. This was a return to the traditional Kremlin policy of free riding on disciplined OPEC production cuts designed to bolster oil prices when global demand drops. Not surprisingly, when Moscow decided to drop its deal with OPEC, Riyadh responded not by decreasing production, which it would have done if the Kremlin had gone along, but increasing it, which drove the price of a barrel of oil down precipitously. This too was nothing new. The Saudis have used this tactic within OPEC for years when other oil producers cheated on agreed production limits during periods of slack oil demand.

These decades-low oil prices—combined with a glut of gas on the world market—will begin to take a significant toll on the Russian economy, which depends on fossil fuel for over 60 percent of its exports and over 30 percent of its GDP. When the price of oil collapsed in 2014, it led to major inflation in Russia, a net importer of goods that many other countries actually produce. In just a few months the ruble plunged relative to Western hard currency. The same is happening now. On March 3, just before the Kremlin oil decision, the ruble traded at 64 to the U.S. dollar. Since then it has depreciated by 25 percent to 80 to the dollar. The impact of oil prices flirting with $15 per barrel for the foreseeable future, and a gas glut that makes what Russia used to charge seem like a far-off fantasy, will have substantial implications for the Russian economy.

In a further sign of Russian eagerness to shore up its fossil-based economy, and to get around the targeted and effective U.S. Nord Stream 2 sanctions (which caused the Russian-contracted Swiss firm to pull out of the deal), the Russians have re-engaged the Danish Energy Agency to take another look at the agreement, which would allow Russia to complete the final 100 miles of gas pipeline in the Baltic Sea. The Danes—rightly concerned that pipeline-laying vessels using anchors would cause an untold environmental disaster in the Danish economic zone—would only agree to the dynamic positioning of pipe-laying ships. Moscow is scrambling to find a homegrown alternative or get the Danes to remove their “no anchors” caveat. The delays in completing Nord Stream 2 coincident with a drop in gas prices makes it less likely that Russia will be able to recoup their pipeline investment for a very long time. And it is by no means certain that the project will be completed.

The question is whether this economic gut punch will have an impact on the Kremlin’s adventurist foreign policy. Russia’s ability to invade, occupy, and annex the territory of its neighbors—Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine—is often tied to Putin’s version of a cost-benefit analysis. In Moldova, where both Russian troops and Russian-backed separatists control over 10 percent of the territory, Russia engaged in an exceedingly violent and deadly conflict over Transnistria in the early days of Moldovan independence, overwhelming the relatively tiny Moldovan military. The costs to Russia were minimal.

Russia’s invasion of Georgia occurred when oil was over $100 a barrel and the most well-trained and equipped Georgian forces were deployed in Iraq. Once again, the Kremlin blamed the invasion on so-called separatists in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, who were never known to possess the type of sophisticated military equipment Russia claimed they had used. The costs to Russia were higher because Putin underestimated both the will and training of Georgian forces, but still quite manageable because the Western reaction was weak. There were no Western sanctions. Then French President Sarkozy negotiated a ceasefire friendly to Moscow and the West did nothing as Moscow violated that ceasefire.

Putin went into Ukraine—oil was again at $100 a barrel—because he once again anticipated an easy win. It is true that he faced no real opposition in seizing Crimea. Ukraine, under Western pressure to do nothing, permitted the Kremlin’s little green men to take the peninsula. The West responded with condemnation and weak sanctions. But then Putin miscalculated, believing that there was substantial support in Donbas for some form of separation from Kyiv and that he could launch a covert war relying principally on local fighters. That did not pan out, and Russia was surprised by strong Western sanctions. While those sanctions have not persuaded the Kremlin to cease its aggression in Donbas, they have helped deter escalation, and they cost the Russian economy over 1 percent of GDP per year. This is a substantial economic hit, but one that Putin has been able to carry—until now. The new COVID-19 economic normal and the tanking fossil fuel market, combined with Ukraine and Russia’s Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline sanctions, may be more than Putin can tolerate.

Out-of-area deployments have added to the costs of Putin’s foreign policy. While the Russian government has declined to provide comprehensive information estimates, the Moscow Times put it at $4 million per day or over $1.4 billion per year. This too used to be manageable, but the price tag will grow as Iran’s own economic woes, exacerbated by the heavy toll of COVID-19, may force Moscow to play a larger role and pay a larger amount to stay in the Middle East. Can Russia sustain its current operational tempo on all these fronts in the face of what will be a massive loss of income?

While the economic pain may have yet to cross Putin’s threshold, Russia, like every other country, will succumb to this new reality. Putin’s official popularity ratings have dropped to the low 60 percent range and, perhaps more importantly, for over a year polls have shown that a large majority of the Russian people think the country is going in the wrong direction. They also think that more resources should be spent on domestic problems and that Russia should pursue policies that improve relations with the West.

Putin, of course, is no democrat; he can choose to ignore public opinion. But with oil prices at inconceivable lows, the Kremlin will have to make serious decisions on where to invest what will be increasingly limited resources. Russia’s military has historically been more active when fossil fuel energy prices soar and less so when they fall. When the economic crunch hits, Russia tends to cut back on training and exercises (often with devastating consequences) before it disrupts actual operations. But this is no ordinary shift in market forces. It is a combination of Putin’s hubris in starting an oil war he thought he could win combined with a crisis nobody saw coming. Something will have to give. Recovery will be difficult for almost every country, but especially so for a country almost solely dependent on carbon earnings.

The post How the Oil Shock Will Contain Putin appeared first on The American Interest.

The Pandemic and a Free Press

The evidence is fast accumulating that autocrats and aspiring strongmen regard the coronavirus as a unique opportunity to expand their political control. Even before the pandemic, leaders like Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, India’s Narendra Modi, and Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan were systematically dismantling the infrastructure of democracy—by threatening independent judiciaries and anti-corruption agencies, stamping on minority rights and civil liberties, and putting term limits in the crosshairs. In anointing Xi Jinping as potential leader for life, the Chinese Communist Party cast aside the lessons of the Mao era, a mistake the Kremlin is poised to emulate in its scheme to extend Putin’s rule until 2036.

In the modern autocrat’s playbook, though, Chapter One is invariably devoted to eroding the freedom of the press. Among Putin’s first moves in power was to destroy media pluralism by seizing control of the major national television stations. In China, Xi has strangled burgeoning investigative journalism and reinforced the Communist Party’s control over the internet and social media, fervently seeking to prevent sensitive ideas, especially any that cast democracy in a positive light, from raising doubts about Xi Jinping Thought. Other illiberal leaders, in countries that have yet to become full-blown autocracies, have also made media freedom a central target. Thus Orbán has gained a strong grip over the media during his ten years in power while avoiding the outright censorship of China or the journalist assassinations that have marked Putin’s rule.

In the social media era, complete regime dominance of political messaging is regarded as neither healthy nor feasible. Strongmen tolerate the appearance of media pluralism by permitting a few outlets with limited audiences in the capital cities, along with some critical voices on social media. Even in this domain, though, regimes have increasingly been passing laws that threaten fines and jail time for online critics. Hungary has recently joined this disreputable group by threatening to imprison anyone guilty of “spreading false information about the epidemic.”

Barring broader political reform, such restrictions are never relaxed, only strengthened, as autocrats act on the theory that some media control is never enough. With COVID-19 offering the world’s autocrats new pretexts to expand that control, it is worth considering how they have done so in the past—and what lessons that history might hold for us today.

The prospect that press freedom will further erode due to the pandemic is especially painful for post-Communist societies. Total control over information was a pillar of the Soviet system, whose censorship extended well beyond the events of the day and the private lives of the leadership. Only one interpretation of history was permitted, and only one set of aesthetic standards.

The United States and other democracies were able to puncture the information curtain through short-wave radio broadcasts, especially the government-sponsored Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. These broadcasters became known as surrogate stations, assuming the role of an opposition media within the broadcast target country. Radio Free Europe boasted substantial audiences throughout Eastern Europe; its Polish and Romanian broadcasts were thought to have more listeners than the state-run Communist propaganda machine.

In the Soviet Union, censorship was more effective. The leadership imposed something akin to a total information blackout on both natural and man-made disasters. In one notable case, a toxic spill at the Mayak nuclear reprocessing site in 1957, thought to have killed several hundred, went unreported. Likewise, no mention was made in the Soviet press of the 1962 massacre of unarmed workers in Novocherkassk by Red Army troops and KGB officers. In another unreported incident in present-day Yekaterinburg in 1979, an outbreak of anthrax resulting from nearby military activity killed 64 people. And of course, there was the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, which, for a critical initial period, the Soviets tried to hide from the world and their own people.

With Mikhail Gorbachev’s introduction of glasnost, that censorship quickly unraveled. Gorbachev never received due credit from the West for having freed the Soviet Union from its suffocating information controls. Autocrats despised the father of glasnost and perestroika as a weakling. To this day, cadres of the Chinese Communist Party devote extensive study to the Gorbachev period with an eye to avoiding the mistakes that brought down the USSR. Putin, who has described the Soviet collapse as the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century,” likewise regards Gorbachev with contempt. When Putin oversaw a school history curriculum revision early in his rule, he made sure that Gorbachev was depicted as ushering in a period of fragility, chaos, and geostrategic decline. Glasnost destroyed the Soviet Union, and today’s autocrats are determined that this monumental mistake will not be repeated.

At the same time, China and Russia recognized that a return to full-blown totalitarianism was not an option. In the new post-Soviet world, repression would be carefully calibrated, and the need to suppress inconvenient ideas would be balanced against the need to participate fully in the global economy.

Putin, Erdogan, and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez all exploited past crises to justify the suppression of a critical press. For Putin the final straw was the 2004 Beslan school massacre, which took more than 300 lives; for Erdogan and Chavez, botched coup attempts. To replace media pluralism, Putin pioneered a system that has been embraced by other strongmen, combining a measure of censorship, a carefully rationed opposition media, and a regime-favorable “media” apparatus that is unabashedly propagandistic. The propaganda is much more sophisticated, modern, and strategic than the old Pravda format, with more emphasis on demonizing adversaries at home and abroad and, increasingly, heavily concentrated on the failures of democracy rather than on extolling the Putin model.

On the theory of never letting a good crisis go to waste, the world’s strongman leaders can be expected to exploit the pandemic to achieve an even tighter grip on the media. Here are several possible developments to watch for:

First, we can expect China to accentuate a trend towards the extension of its global propaganda and social media disinformation. This could serve multiple purposes, most notably the promotion of Beijing’s explanation of the virus’s origins. In the past, the objective has been to convince foreign countries to refrain from publicly criticizing Beijing’s domestic repression and aggressive foreign policy, including bullying of Hong Kong, interference in Taiwan, or claims to sovereignty in the South China Sea.

At the same time, the Communist regime also needs to keep an eye on the response of its own citizens to such a crackdown. Chinese authorities’ efforts to silence early warnings by reporters, doctors, and others to alert the public about the impending epidemic turned Li Wenliang, a whistleblower doctor in Wuhan who died from COVID-19, into a hero and martyr. Authorities have detained others who have shared information about the virus.

China has also encountered growing pushback from prominent political figures in the United States, Australia, Canada, and other democracies over a series of domestic and foreign policy issues. A member of the U.S. House of Representatives, Representative Jim Banks (R-IN), has urged the State Department to call on China to investigate the disappearance of three Chinese citizen journalists who sought to expose the impact of the coronavirus on Wuhan. This follows on a series of punitive actions by Beijing toward American journalists, including China’s recent expulsion of American reporters from the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, and the New York Times.

Second, America and other democracies should pay special attention to developments in countries like India, Hungary, Poland, the Philippines, and Brazil, where democratic norms are currently under assault by strongmen. In these countries, the ruling parties still confront an active opposition at the polls, a press that has not yet been completely extinguished, protests (albeit not under current virus constraints) and competition, sometimes vigorous, at the local level. Orbán, Modi, and Duterte have already cited the fight against COVID-19 as reason to threaten the press, and new legislation and decrees have opened the door to prison sentences for reporting that raises questions about the government’s pandemic strategy. Preventing the total obliteration of an independent press in such countries is a critical goal.

Third, we should expect an assertive campaign from autocrats to persuade their populations—and the world—that censorship is a prudent step not only while the pandemic rages but even after the disease is conquered. Until recently, autocrats were content to argue that restrictions on freedom were in keeping with the preferences of domestic constituencies and in line with local cultures. Democracy may be an ideal system for the United States, their argument went, but Russia (or China or Iran) has chosen a different path. More recently, both Russia and China have begun making a case that their autocratic systems are more efficient and nimble and deliver for the people. And yet in Russia, a recent poll by the Levada Center found that 24 percent of Russians completely distrust the official information about the coronavirus situation that is disseminated in the state media, and 35 percent only partially trust it. The mounting toll in Russia, despite Putin’s efforts to control the narrative, may well accelerate growing distrust in the regime.

Finally, what might coronavirus portend for the press in the United States? Certainly President Trump’s steady attacks over the years on the “mainstream media”—calling them “fake news” and “enemy of the people”—have taken a toll at a time when Americans should be relying more than ever on professional journalism. A recent CBS News poll said 13 percent of Republicans trusted the news media for information about the virus, versus 72 percent of Democrats. While some media errors have contributed to that deficit, the President’s browbeating has only exacerbated the problem.

But Trump’s strategy to undermine the media’s credibility and to put forward his own spin may have its limits. Particularly notable is the steady increase in viewership for network news during the crisis, with millions turning to CBS, ABC, and NBC to stay abreast of the latest developments.

The end of the public health crisis will leave the world facing major economic problems. There will be arguments for dispensing with elections and parliaments. In some countries, an outspoken press may become treated as a luxury that can no longer be tolerated; even in ours, many news outlets will struggle to survive. In these unprecedented times, it is worth recalling the famous words of Thomas Jefferson: “[W]ere it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.” During a crisis like this one, and for whatever comes after it, we actually need both.

The post The Pandemic and a Free Press appeared first on The American Interest.

Fear and Loathing in Philadelphia

If Benjamin Rush was certain of anything, he was certain of the cause. “I sit down at a late hour,” he wrote to his wife Julia from Philadelphia on the evening of August 21, 1793, “to inform you that a malignant fever has broken out in Water Street. . . . It is supposed to have been produced by some damaged coffee which putrefied on one of the wharves near the middle of the above district. The disease is violent and of short duration.”

It had been a tumultuous year for Philadelphia, then the nation’s capital. The beginning of George Washington’s second presidential term had been marked by escalating political conflict within his cabinet that reflected the partisan passions igniting among the citizenry. While Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton furiously debated whether the United States should join Revolutionary France in a war against Great Britain, the city’s residents (wearing hats whose black or colored cockades respectively identified them as Federalists or Republicans) brawled in the streets and threatened, as John Adams later recalled, “to drag Washington out of his House, and effect a Revolution in the Government.”

Pandemonium hadn’t always characterized Philadelphia. In fact, it had cultivated a reputation as a major center of culture and learning, housing not only the American Philosophical Society but the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, one of the first American medical associations. “From Philadelphia there will proceed rays of knowledge and federal sentiments . . . that shall irradiate the whole United States,” Rush had proclaimed when pitching the city as a seat for the federal government to Adams in 1789. “Here the human mind is in a state of fermentation. . . . Here the people and their rulers will be alike. . . . Here learning, manufactures, and human improvements of every kind thrive and flourish.” Rush was confident that Philadelphia would propel the young republic to a brilliant future where Enlightenment rationality suffused politics, guided technological development, and guaranteed human progress. Four years later, a virulent epidemic illuminated just how hollow that certainty had been.

Rush realized that the malady he was confronting bore similarities to “yellow fever” that he had treated as a doctor’s apprentice in 1762. Revisiting his notes from that period “with anticipating horror,” he found that the symptoms—headache, nausea, delirium, and a yellowish tinge to the eyes and skin—and timeline (“few survive the fifth day”) were nearly identical. The disease was known to kill 20 people daily at its peak. 38 had died in the week since his first alarming letter to Julia.

In what historian Mark A. Smith characterized as “one of the earliest appeals by an American government to a medical organization,” Mayor Matthew Clarkson called on the College of Physicians to identify the plague’s origins and devise policies to contain it. The organization quickly produced an 11-point plan. It advised Philadelphians to avoid those who appeared ill, mark the houses of the infected, clean the city’s streets, and erect a hospital dedicated to the treatment of yellow fever patients. It also recommended the silencing of bells. As Rush explained in his Account of the Bilious Remitting Yellow Fever, As It Appeared in Philadelphia, negative emotions—namely fear and grief—were believed to make individuals more susceptible to illness. “[Fear] debilitates, only because it abstracts its antagonist passion of courage,” Rush noted, invoking the language of equilibrium. “In many people the disease was excited by a sudden paroxysm of fear.” As bells customarily signaled funerals in the city, the College thought it would be best to muffle them lest they scare Philadelphians to death.

The College’s decisive recommendations were a credit to its mission to diffuse modern knowledge, but the united front fell apart once its members began debating the fever’s origins. Most physicians in the 18th century believed that disease occurred when external forces, either environmental or emotional (like a prolonged state of terror), imbalanced the body. An impassioned argument developed between the opposing camps of “localists” such as Benjamin Rush, who blamed a concentration of malignant air in the city for the fever’s spread, and “contagionists” such as Adam Kuhn, who contended that the epidemic had accompanied the recent influx of refugees fleeing rebellion in the French colony of Saint Domingue. In a way, they were both right—the culprit was the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which had originated in the West Indies but thrived in Philadelphia’s summer climate and passed infected blood between victims—but this etiology would only be confirmed by Cuban and American doctors a century later.

Vitriol grew as the dispute moved from cause to cure. Rush recommended a system of “bleeding and purging,” which, though brutal, he believed was so straightforward that a 12-year-old could learn how to administer it in a few hours. Rush’s republican optimism had embittered him towards the medical academy whose internecine squabbles rendered them impotent in previous crises, and he argued that it was “time to take the cure of pestilential fevers out of the hands of physicians, and to place it in the hands of the people.” Kuhn explicitly rejected Rush’s approach, which he and his fellow contagionists considered “murderous,” and instead advocated for a complicated regimen of teas, weak wines, and Spanish bark coupled with cold baths. His prescription incensed Rush. “Kuhn’s publication has done immense mischief,” he angrily scribbled to his wife. “Many doctors will follow him, and scores are daily sacrificed to bark and wine. My method is too simple for them. They forget that a stone from the sling of David effected what the whole armory of Saul could not do.”

With the medical community fracturing along political lines, Philadelphia’s newspapers followed suit. John Fenno’s Federalist Gazette of the United States exclusively printed directions from Alexander Hamilton’s personal physician, who echoed Kuhn’s recommendations. Andrew Brown’s Federal Gazette attempted to serve as an impartial forum, but as Smith has detailed it ended up overwhelmingly publishing Rush’s notes as the number of infections exploded. The laity meanwhile flooded publications with letters containing their own folk remedies, which ranged from diffusing tobacco smoke to mixing a solution known ominously as “Vinegar of the Four Thieves.” Though some hoped to profit from the catastrophe by advertising their concoctions, others were simply trying to navigate the devastating uncertainty generated by the medical establishment’s indecision. “No circumstances has added more distress to the present calamity, than the disagreement of the physicians about the disease” fretted an anonymous author at the suitably titled Independent Gazetteer.

As doctors feuded, government leaders fled the capital along with 20,000 Philadelphians. In response to the loss of leadership Clarkson organized a governing committee of two dozen citizen volunteers who agreed to remain in the city to supervise the public hospital (located in an abandoned mansion known as “Bush Hill”) and coordinate resources to manage the crisis. It is hard to overstate the daunting task they faced. Even if 18th century medicine misunderstood fear’s role in affecting physiological health, terror certainly exacerbated yellow fever’s weakening of Philadelphia’s body politic. Refusing to abandon his patients, Rush grimly chronicled how the virus frayed familial bonds, recalling scenes of children pushing parents out of their homes at the first sign of illness and spouses abandoning each other in their gravest hours. Streets that had once been bustling with commercial activity lay desolate, save for looting of shuttered shops and the carting of “solitary corps[es]” to burial. Neighbors who wore mourning bands were shunned as potential vectors for the pestilence. By the end of September, Rush estimated that graveyards were admitting 100 new occupants a day. The city that promised to be a beacon of human accomplishment was rapidly turning into an exhibition of humanity’s corruption.

Nevertheless, the chaos produced unlikely heroes. Jean Devèze, one of the refugees held under suspicion by the contagionists, was a French-trained doctor who had experience treating yellow fever in Saint Domingue. He received an appointment at Bush Hill, which was under the direction of Stephen Girard, a fellow French immigrant who had settled in Philadelphia at the outbreak of the American Revolution. Devèze espoused a medical philosophy that contrasted sharply with both Rush and Kuhn’s sensibilities. Rather than trying to wrangle symptoms to submission through a general, unyielding formula, Devèze believed in treating each patient individually, carefully negotiating between letting “nature” run its course in “destroying the morbific cause” and intervening “when nature is inactive.” As he concluded in his own tract on yellow fever, “Any one who, seduced by the brilliancy of a system, will force nature by the rules of the method he has adopted, he, I say, is a scourge more fatal to the human kind than the plague itself would be.” While the Bush Hill hospital did not promise a miracle cure, Girard and Devèze’s reasonable protocols and clean, orderly facilities turned it into a symbol of hope for the suffering city.

Aiding physicians at Bush Hill and across the rest of Philadelphia were members of the city’s free black community. Under the mistaken conviction that individuals of African descent were immune to the fever, Clarkson and Rush had written to the Free African Society begging that they stay in the city to nurse the sick. Absalom Jones and Richard Allen, clergymen of the African Church of Philadelphia, took the initiative to organize assistance. In addition to tending to victims, black men and women took over other essential public functions, transporting ill patients to hospitals, organizing funerals, monitoring shopfronts to prevent robbery, and rescuing orphaned children. In the process, they served on the front lines of the battle against fear. In their own account of their organization’s experience during the epidemic, Jones and Allen described how black Philadelphians prevented a white man from beating his neighbor to death in a panic-induced rage after he discovered that she was recovering from the fever. In another episode, black volunteers stood their ground when a white man threatened to shoot them for collecting bodies that had piled in the street. “We buried him three days after,” they stoically concluded.

What ended the horror was neither bleeding, bark, nor baths, but frost. The November cold killed off the virus’s mosquito hosts, allowing Philadelphians to cautiously reclaim their desolated city. Yellow fever had decimated their population, killing roughly five thousand citizens. It had also shattered the Panglossian expectation that Philadelphia would seamlessly midwife the new world order promised by Rush and other leaders of the early Republic.

Attempts to derive meaning from the carnage emerged even before the epidemic had fully abated. Building on the prevailing theory of how disease infiltrated the body, writers often centered on the political, moral, and economic imbalances that plagued Philadelphia prior to the fever’s onslaught. In mid-October, the National Gazette (run by Jefferson acolyte Philip Freneau) published an anonymous op-ed that identified the “creep” of “aristocratic sentiments” in American society as proof of civic enervation that drove individuals in fear to embrace despotism. Lutheran minister Justus Christian Henry Helmuth faulted the arrival of a circus theater in the city, which he believed eroded morals and warranted punishment from God. Others blamed Philadelphia’s growing industrialization and the crowded urban planning that drew citizens away from agricultural lifestyles considered physically and spiritually healthier. Rush even stretched divine correction to include landlords who overcharged on rent: “They have been one of the procuring causes in my opinion of the late judgment of God upon our city.”

But perhaps the greatest source of disequilibrium was the very notion that the United States could, through reason and certainty alone, master the human condition. In Feverish Bodies, Enlightened Minds: Science and the Yellow Fever Controversy in the Early American Republic, Thomas Apel outlines how yellow fever studies published at the end of the 1790s reluctantly refuted the expectation that the American republic could escape the cyclical ravages of disease that characterized most of history. For example, the educator Noah Webster, an American nationalist, exhaustively surveyed case studies of previous epidemics in hopes of identifying a discernible pattern that could help arrest future outbreaks in the country. In the end, he was forced to admit that America’s unrelenting urbanization made future scourges inevitable. Unwilling to part with the Enlightenment belief in a universe “governed by uniform laws,” however, Webster argued that plagues were actually an intervention by “the great AUTHOR” to check society’s destabilizing hubris and reorient it towards virtue.

These were all very American responses to a catastrophe. But none better exemplified the early Republic’s ideals than the voluntary associations that stepped in to offer structure and succor as other institutions failed in Philadelphia. When the federal government faltered and animosity immobilized members of the medical academy, Clarkson’s citizen’s committee, the immigrant-run Bush Hill hospital, and members of the Free African Society did what they could to save their city from being eaten alive by fear. The minutes of the citizen’s committee particularly read like a reassuring register of normalcy against an apocalyptic background, noting gradual improvements at Bush Hill, distributions of food and supplies, relocated orphans, and detailed lists of those whom the plague killed and spared. They also recorded the steady stream of donations that arrived from towns and cities across the United States, often denoted specifically “for the use of the poor.” If there was one immutable law governing all epidemics, it was (in Rush’s words) that “the poor are everywhere the principal sufferers.” To this he could have appended the truism that no good deed goes unpunished—Jones and Allen spent much of the 1790s refuting outlandish but predictably racist claims that the Free African Society had inflated nursing wages during the calamity.

While this diverse cast of ordinary men and women succeeded in preserving Philadelphia, the city did not return to its former stature. It had never meant to stand as the capital for long anyway (Jefferson and Hamilton having bargained its removal to the Potomac a few years prior), but as historian Eve Kornfeld has argued the fever played a unique role in destroying Philadelphia’s “unified intellectual community, supreme confidence, and developing cultural primacy.” Nevertheless, the wreckage of Philadelphia’s intellectual infrastructure inspired buds of new medical and philosophical associations that rooted themselves from Massachusetts to South Carolina, along with a rich literature on the study of pestilence. Although the United States demonstrated that it was not immune to the ravaging effects of fear and disease, it succeeded in sustaining a culture of inquiry and civic responsibility that would do more in coming years to mitigate public health emergencies than any of Rush’s romantic proclamations. It had just learned to better respect the limits of human knowledge, appreciate the stores of its civic capital, and to live with the weight of uncertainty. Even so, it is an albatross that will never sit comfortably on the shoulders of our republic, which longs so deeply to be exceptional.

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Patronage and the Pandemic

In her testimony to the House Judiciary Committee last December, Stanford Law Professor Pamela Karlan floated a now-prescient hypothetical: what would we think if Trump conditioned disaster relief on a state’s willingness to go after his political opponents? Today, we are faced with the possibility that the President will use this crisis as an opportunity not only to demonize the opposition, but also to punish the states unlikely to support him, and reward those that do. This politicization and personalization, shocking in peacetime, is particularly corrosive in a time of pandemic and crisis.

The politicization of government resources often smacks of corruption, even when it is not illegal. Impartiality is a cornerstone of the rule of law. But in practice, adhering to impartiality is challenging. The centuries-old practice of patronage, whereby government benefits are allocated according to criteria of loyalty or support rather than of impartiality, is one of the most difficult problems to eradicate in democracies. In the United States, it took a series of high-profile corruption scandals and a presidential assassination in the late 19th century before leaders implemented safeguards against patronage. These safeguards replaced patronage with meritocratic hiring and promotion in the civil service (the Pendleton Act) and banned political activities by Federal employees (the Hatch Act), for example. While we know that politicians can still exercise discretion in how resources are allocated, we no longer expect our leaders to think like old-school ward bosses when distributing aid.

How, then, might we think about what’s happening in the midst of a global pandemic that has essentially shut down the American economy? While we don’t have all the answers just yet, there are early indicators that the President is using wide latitude to direct supplies to his supporters and to benefit businesses close to him.

Politicization of resources is both more likely and more obvious when resources are scarce. There were problems with the Federal stockpile of supplies in the early weeks of the COVID-19 crisis. Not only were supplies limited, but the stockpile itself was underfunded, and overseen by unclear lines of authority. Beginning in late March, oversight of the stockpile was transferred to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), but FEMA and the administration have been opaque about the decision-making process behind allocation of supplies.

In early April, hospitals and clinics across seven states reported to the Los Angeles Times that supplies they had ordered were being seized. FEMA has denied the seizures of materials such as personal protective equipment (masks and gloves) and COVID-19 test kits. Last week, a letter to the New England Journal of Medicine detailed the interdiction of supplies by the FBI and Department of Homeland Security somewhere in the mid-Atlantic; the supplies were going to facilities in Massachusetts. While the Federal government could theoretically coordinate supplies among the states, Trump has instead told governors to procure supplies for themselves on the open market, pitting them against not only each other, but against the Federal government as well.

Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who early in the crisis was denounced as a “half-wit” by the President, noted that vendors were being told not to send supplies to Michigan amidst the President’s attacks. Similarly, he attacked Governor Jay Inslee of Washington as a “snake,” and last week the PeaceHealth hospital group (which operates hospital in Washington and Oregon) noted supplies they ordered had been diverted by the Federal government. Trump has demanded appreciation from governors, noting that the Federal government is not a “shipping clerk.” He instructed Vice President Mike Pence to ignore certain governors seeking Federal assistance: “If they don’t treat you right, I don’t call.”

The governors of many states have pleaded with the President to ramp up production of medical supplies by invoking the Defense Production Act; Trump has asked them to stop complaining. Last week, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform released data on the distribution of supplies to states. The LA Times calculated that supplies did not seem to be distributed according to states’ requests, or according to need. Medical workers in hard-hit areas like New Jersey, New York, Washington, and Michigan received little relative to states like Montana and Nebraska. Similarly, the Paycheck Protection Program’s coronavirus-relief loans being administered by the Small Business Administration went disproportionately to small states that vote Republican; California, New York, and Washington, DC received the fewest loan approvals.

We are still in the middle of this crisis, with more supplies and loans yet to be administered. Perhaps by the end of this, the amount that states received from the Federal government will better reflect the states’ populations or rates of COVID-19 infections. But the early indications seem to be that the Trump Administration openly politicized the disbursement of aid, with potential life-and-death consequences. While this may seem routine given decades of rising polarization and routine Trumpian politics, we need to be vigilant against a return to patronage practices that further undermine democracy. 

Patronage also allows for rent-seeking by certain industries and businesses with connections to political leaders. When politicians use their influence to provide contracts or opportunities to their families or businesses, patronage edges closer to outright corruption. In developing and implementing Federal loans and bailouts for coronavirus relief, Trump has tried to protect his own business interests, and is using family connections to choose companies receiving government aid. Further, he is using the distribution of funds both to decrease congressional oversight and to replace potential opponents with political loyalists.

Unlike other Presidents who divested themselves from their business interests, Trump placed control of the Trump Organization in the hands of his three children. He then gave his daughter, Ivanka Trump, and her husband, Jared Kushner (who also runs his own company) security clearances and White House jobs. In congressional debates about the coronavirus stimulus package, the Senate tried to bar businesses controlled by the nation’s elected leaders from receiving loans. A Republican version of the bill, on the other hand, allowed the Secretary of the Treasury to distribute funds to businesses (including hospitality and hotels) without needing to report the distribution.

Ultimately, while the bill’s language does not allow the President to benefit directly from the bailout, his hotels and wineries could still qualify for loans. More troublingly, Trump issued a signing statement with the coronavirus relief bill that the inspector generals overseeing funds must report directly to him, instead of Congress; Trump also sacked the independent inspector general overseeing the disbursement of funds at the Pentagon, Glenn Fine. (This happened alongside the sacking of Michael Atkinson, the inspector general of the intelligence community, who handled the whistleblower complaint about Trump’s actions in Ukraine that led to his impeachment.)

In addition to the politicization of coronavirus aid, Trump is also directing family members to intervene in decisions about which industries will be tapped for procurement of medical supplies. On Thursday, April 2, Jared Kushner led the White House’s coronavirus briefing; he is now working directly with FEMA to oversee distribution of medical supplies. He referred to the Federal stockpile as “ours” (that is, the Federal government’s) as opposed to that of the states; he touted his ability to manage what people need better than state leaders can. While Kushner does not have an official position, he is reportedly overseeing the supply-chain group within Mike Pence’s official task force. He has invited personal friends from private industry to bring an “entrepreneurial approach” to the task force, and he reached out to his sister-in-law’s (the model Karlie Kloss’s) emergency-room-physician father for advice on supplies.

So far, his supply chain group is intervening to favor large American companies, running counter to FEMA’s practice of procuring supplies from small local vendors at the regional level. The Federal government is subsidizing companies like FedEx, UPS, and DuPont that help “redirect” supplies through a partnership called Project Airbridge. Further, while these companies must manufacture products for the Federal stockpile, they are free to sell roughly half of these supplies on the open market as well.

It is not unusual for the government to work with private industries in wartime, or during crisis—indeed, in the United States, there is a long history of it. The problem is when politicians use these connections for material benefit, allowing the enrichment of themselves or of their allies. Building an impartial administrative state at the national and local levels was one of the foremost challenges in the history of American democracy. The Trump Administration has sidelined experts in favor of family and loyalists; it has shrouded its decisions in secrecy; and it has given preferential treatment to businesses and industries in which it has personal interests. Once this is all over, we will need a full, transparent accounting of the politics behind this crisis—and potentially a new set of laws that reclaim the values that govern our democracy.

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The National Party Conventions Under Coronavirus

National party conventions are one of the great informal institutions in American—and arguably world—politics. First adopted by the short-lived Anti-Masonic Party in Baltimore in 1831, the original convention template has survived in the same essential form into 2020. This hardly means that there have not been noteworthy adjustments within this template. Indeed, these often serve as important registers of, and modest reciprocal contributions to, major changes in the larger American politics around them. So the facts behind both assertions—a stable institution coupled with internal updates—get reliably dusted off as each new convention year arrives. And then came the COVID-19 pandemic. If it was hard to escape the standard convention chronicle, it became harder to avoid the arguments about whether an electronic alternative, a “virtual convention,” was on the horizon, and what it would mean if it was.

The original convention design was a response to pressing practical problems, involving the construction of a lasting political party in a geographically dispersed nation with little in the way of inter-state communication. So the convention device became a way, and ultimately the leading way, to pull regional and local branches of an aspiringly national party together, while allowing it to create a single presidential nominee. Copied in 1832 by the Democrats, eight years later by their main opposition, the Whigs, and then by the nascent Republicans in 1856, the device has ever since been the means of confirming major-party nominees for president. In itself, this is a remarkable story of institutional continuity, for a device that is not part of the formal framework of government but has become central to the way that framework operates.

Now-classical components of a convention followed, and these have been essentially stable as well, so stable that they create an implicit formula in the heads of the major players. Under this formula, delegates to the national party convention are created in the states, through state chapters of the national party. They assemble centrally on a given date to adopt rules of procedure, certify the credentials of other delegates, and offer a fresh interpretation—a “platform”—for an evolving party program. And with all of that accomplished, usually in a pro forma fashion but sometimes after extended disputation, the convention moves on to crown the presidential nominee and shift the party focus to a general election campaign.

Such conventions have never failed to assemble in the designated place at the designated time, though the Democrats have had some close calls. The Democratic convention of 1860, an important prelude to the Civil War, met, recessed, reconvened, and then splintered into three proto-parties, each with its own presidential nominee. Conversely, the Democratic convention of 1872 assembled for only six hours and endorsed the nominee of another proto-party, the short-lived Liberal Republicans, in that sense never achieving a separate nomination of its own. And the Democratic convention of 1924 went for 17 days and 103 ballots before finding its essential compromise. It is no accident that the Democrats were the party achieving all of these problematic milestones, since they required a two-thirds majority from their founding until 1936, while the Whigs and then the Republicans stuck with a simple majority throughout.

Otherwise, a set of more modern adjustments characterized the convention form as it returned for 2020. The biggest was the informal disappearance of actual nomination-making: The two contests of 1952 would be the last in American history to require as much as a second ballot before the nominee was confirmed. This exile of the effective nomination was then formalized after 1968, when a reformed process for delegate selection tied delegates to presidential contenders and ran the nominating bandwagon through a sequence of effective—and cascading—presidential primaries. Along the way, these reforms changed the social identity of the delegates themselves. Previously, they were party officials and public office-holders. Afterward, they were issue activists whose principle loyalties were to a candidate, a cause, or a group, and not to the political party.

Many other things changed in tandem with those shifts. When the function of the convention was no longer to nominate a president, its main function became instead public relations and publicity. The nominee was introduced and publicized of course; for many people, this constituted their first actual introduction to a specific individual. Yet many other political figures—and not just the other, losing aspirants—could hope to use podium time to advance their own causes, constituencies, or careers. So a subset of these struggles for podium time involved not just the question of who could secure it, but when such appearances would occur, that is, whether they brought any hope of being covered by the decreasing window of podium coverage from national television networks.

That was the orthodox modern world when the Republicans decided to go to Charlotte and the Democrats to Milwaukee in order to realize these ongoing possibilities in 2020. And then came COVID-19, so suddenly and with such force that it brought into question every aspect of this long institutional evolution and its concrete contemporary applications. Two fresh questions became especially insistent. First, what are the operational implications of an international pandemic for the national party conventions of 2020? And second, what will the chosen options say about the convention template and in its links to the larger society around it?

In the simplest terms, the impact of coronavirus on convention planning roughly followed the trajectory of its impact on public health, though relevant concerns and calculations had to differ additionally by party. By tradition, the incumbent party goes last, and the challenging party goes first. This allows the party in office to concentrate its resources for a short but intense fall campaign, just as it allows the party out of office, lacking a leadership record and ordinarily fronting a less well-known nominee, to begin work early. Tradition was only exaggerated in 2020, when the Republicans planned for the last week in August, the final week before the traditional Labor Day kick-off to the fall campaign, while the Democrats pulled away in the other direction, back to the second week in July. As is often the case in modern American politics, this placement was reinforced by a desire not to conflict in a major way with the 2020 Olympics, with their potential to dominate both coverage and audience.

So the Democrats were fated to face the earlier decisions about what, if anything, a pandemic implied for the conduct of their convention. Generically, convention planning is a three-cornered negotiation, involving a subcommittee of the party’s national committee, a host committee from the chosen city, and the staff of the expected nominee—easy for the Republicans in 2020, harder for the Democrats. In its details, convention planning becomes more or less a two year process, first forcing interested cities to demonstrate a suitable hall for the main event, sufficient housing for delegations, guests, and the media, a diverse array of meeting rooms and additional venues, plus a focused transportation system. The winner must then go on to link these all-encompassing needs together in some master arrangement.

Yet having answered those questions and moved toward application in a pandemic-free environment, what were the options for this Democratic discussion as COVID-19 became rapidly more intrusive? Among Democratic discussants, the first response was much like the initial response of the national government: Let’s stay aware of the potential threat but hope that it will go away. Yet as the pandemic blew up with impressive speed in the larger society during March, so did anxieties, local and national, about what to do with the convention. The three corners of the discussion were careful to say little in public about the threat to an orthodox convention on the established calendar, but the options were simple and stark:

Conduct the convention as planned, the preference of all major players on both sides of the partisan aisle but increasingly implausible for the Democrats, while remaining more open-ended for the Republicans;
Move the Democratic date farther back into the summer, though the logistics of such a move were enormous, since they entailed giving up halls, hotels, venues, and facilities, then reclaiming them all in the same place at a later date;
Move the locale of the convention if, as seemed likely, a comprehensive move in the same place proved impossible, though this would entail condensing what was inherently a two-year planning process into a couple of months somewhere else; or
Figure out how to hold a “virtual convention.” Everyone could talk about it; no one was enthusiastic about it; and no one knew what it meant.

In extremely short order, the pandemic removed the first option, even as it remained the abstract preference of the major players. Though recognizing the new reality was at least equally facilitated by the sharp and condensed rise of Joe Biden as the apparently inevitable nominee. So the Biden camp could take a leadership role in ongoing three-cornered discussions, and Biden himself went on to speculate aloud about the impossibility of July in Milwaukee for a gathering of somewhere north of 30,000 participants in a one-block space. The third option, a different time in a different city, was always trumped by the second, a different time in the same city, if it could actually be accomplished. To the surprise of most observers, it could, and the Democratic convention announced a new time for 2020, still in Milwaukee but now in the week immediately before the Republican convention.

Yet the fourth option, the virtual convention, was by then receiving serious attention as well, not just by the established players but now, quite centrally, by the media that would have to cover such a thing. Examples of a virtual gathering were readily available; educational institutions and business organizations were already doing their version of it. On the other hand, the mechanics of its operation in the convention context could be known only as and when it was actually implemented: The details were every bit as seat-of-the-pants as those guiding the Anti-Masonic convention of 1831. Yet if this was truly uncharted territory, it was clear that the pandemic might well compel it. So someone, and presumably lots of “someones,” would have to think about: 1) What would be gained by sustaining the convention through a virtual format?; 2) What would be lost in the absence of the usual participatory version?; and 3) What would these answers say about the evolution of American politics more generally?

By definition, the major gains derived from salvaging something rather than nothing from the usual convention products, though the scale of these contributions was hard to estimate in the abstract, that is, in the absence of any virtual experience. At the top of the list was the fact that the convention serves as the first real introduction of two major-party contenders for president of the United States for a sizable minority of the general public. Ordinarily, there would have been an extended nominating campaign beforehand, providing this introduction for another sizable minority. Yet this year, much of that had evanesced after Super Tuesday, as primaries were effectively uncontested and campaigns were confined to the candidate’s home studio. So that role, even of a virtual institution, might be more important than usual. Seen from the other side, this is also ordinarily the first major opportunity for the nominee to introduce himself as a potential president, in the fashion that he wishes to be seen, that is, without alternative interpretations from internal party opponents or the external news media.

And the impact is always a public relations bounce for the nominee, with only the rarest of exceptions. The size of this particular gain can vary substantially: The fall campaign would become the ultimate answer to the question of whether the bounce can be sustained, though this would now be tied directly to how much of a virtual convention was available to the public, and how much that public watched. At the same time, this is effectively the only opportunity for each of the major parties to present themselves to the general public in a collective physical portrait. Beyond that, the convention is an opportunity to hammer the themes that ostensibly explain why you should be supporting not just this particular nominee but this larger party, and why you should not be supporting the other.

Nominees and party leaders might even hope for some fresh advantages from the virtual format. If no one assembles as a body at the convention site, for example, and if the convention thus survives essentially as a central feed for the mass media—who themselves no longer need to be present on anywhere near the scale of the past—then much of the residual conflict that continued to inhabit actual conventions might disappear as well. Imagine the Clinton nomination of 2016 in the physical absence of any Sanders delegates. Their votes would still get tallied electronically, from home, but we would already know that outcome. And how would anyone even generate rules, credentials, or platform challenges, now that supporters could not roam from delegation to delegation seeking support? All of that might appeal to the party and its nominee.

Which leads to the other side of the same coin: What (or what else) would be lost in the process of going virtual? Because this involves items from an orthodox convention which recur regularly, it is possible to be less speculative here. Thus national party conventions are also major sites for state party politics, being conducted for a week in the belly of the national party. A few states actually have gubernatorial races the following off-year; many have Senate races; all have House contests. So gubernatorial, Senate, and House candidates can (and do) meet, greet, and build links not only to local politicos across their state, but to interested persons from outside state boundaries, often in the form of donors, often in the form of issue activists. To that end, state parties normally begin their day with a delegation breakfast, introducing not just state-based contenders, actual and potential, but visiting party leaders from around the country, supporting the candidate and, once again, themselves. During the day, these state parties can go so far as to assemble on an otherwise empty convention floor, to film state-based candidates speaking to an enthusiastic (albeit very narrowly photographed) audience.

And there is also always a welter of introductions, presentations, and rallies by interest groups of all sorts in the national convention environs: public land users, Hispanic women, tax reformers, marijuana partisans, school lunch providers, and on and on. A full calendar of such events reliably dwarfs the official calendar of podium presentations, even when the latter includes all of those that do not occur during prime coverage hours. Indeed, those of us who regularly attend these quadrennial gatherings make a kind of parlor game out of seeing whether we can spot rising stars or rising causes from within this confused conglomerate of efforts at political attention. And on top of all this, there is always a great deal of (at least attempted) money-raising, along with an even greater deal of contact-making and coalition-forming.

Finally, then, what would all of this contribute to—and reveal about—a larger American politics? On its own terms, the virtual convention may be the next logical evolutionary step for presidential nominations. Conventions, able to construct delegate majorities rather than just confirming them, made these nominations from 1832 through 1952. After that, the nomination exited the convention and moved into the sequence of presidential primaries plus the occasional state caucus that sprang up in the aftermath of sweeping reform of the delegate selection process. What remained in the hall was a struggle over utilizing press attention, either to launch the general election campaign or to support various alternative candidates, constituencies, and causes. Political parties much preferred the former over the latter.

Yet as the story got closer to the current moment, parties became more and more successful at containing even these public relations struggles, while the mass media responded by decreasing the scale of their coverage of what were viewed as decreasingly suspenseful contests, focused largely on harvesting the very media attention that was being withdrawn. So there were already, within both parties and over the last several conventions, serious private conversations on whether the convention should be notably shortened, based on the implicit premise that there are just not four-plus days of “news” left. Such a shortening would allow (and force) the parties to focus actively on the central themes that their nominee wants to present, along with their own description of what it means to be a Democrat or a Republican.

In some sense, then, the virtual convention may just be forcing the issue and driving toward those moves. Though in the end, if this is a potential turning-point for a longstanding but informal institution, the devil may still be in the details. A virtual convention—or two—that appear to have worked reasonably well can be very different from one (or two) that are largely a catalog of unintended consequences. The former, a benevolent virtual (non)gathering, will at least bring those private conversations about convention fortunes into the explicit debate. The latter, unforeseen consequences of producing diverse but widespread disappointments should more or less automatically produce nostalgia for a long-lived but not necessarily well-loved institution. And the next three months may well tell that story.

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Why King Abdullah Is King

Leaders around the world are enjoying a “rally around the flag” moment as they take charge of their nations’ fight against COVID-19. Jordan’s King Abdullah is no exception. After 21 years on the throne, he is at the height of his popularity, buoyed by a nationwide sense that the former special forces commander has wisely deployed the national institution with which he is most closely associated—the Jordan Arab Army—in a no-holds-barred effort to lockdown the kingdom and prevent the pandemic from inflicting catastrophic damage. As one journalist, usually a sharp critic of the king, wrote me: “I am sincerely complimenting the king—and still pinching myself—but he really has been superb.”

One sign of Abdullah’s popularity is a photo circulating on Facebook and Twitter showing him at the center of a throng of cheering Jordanian soldiers, an image that conjures up similar pictures of his father—King Hussein—surrounded by adoring troops at previous moments of triumph. The message is unmistakable: Abdullah is his father’s son, acting today with the same drive, determination, and leadership that characterized Hussein’s stewardship of the country under pressure. For a monarchy that has to continually take the temperature of often-restive public opinion, the visual (and hence psychological) connection between Hussein and Abdullah is a major plus.

Eventually, though, this moment will pass and, as is the way of the world, memories will fade and critics will again grow sharp. In the Jordanian version of “what have you done for me lately,” many will forget how Abdullah handled the pandemic the way they forgot how he handled other crises, from the fallout of the September 11 attacks to America’s invasion of Iraq, from terrorism in Amman and the subsequent rise of ISIS to the mass influx of Syrian refugees, from the local ripples of the April Spring to the Trump Administration’s feared “deal of the century.”

Instead, they will focus on his mistakes, of which he has surely had his share. That path will inevitably lead some of them down a winding road to the original critique against him, the two-decade-old charge that Abdullah’s reign is an accident of history, the last, lingering side-effect of a debilitating cancer treatment that sapped his father both of physical strength and mental acuity. Despite more than two decades on the throne, some whisperers in Amman will still say Abdullah’s reign—allegedly born in the fog of Hussein’s diminished capacity—was illegitimate when it started and remains so today.

It is not my job to fight Abdullah’s political battles, but on this issue, I have special knowledge. The whisperers, when they re-emerge, will be wrong. Here’s why.

Some context: I first traveled to Jordan in 1985 for an Arabic language program at Yarmouk University in the northern city of Irbid. During the course of that eye-opening summer, I had two royal encounters: a handshake with Queen Noor, Hussein’s fourth wife, at a meet-and-greet reception for American students at the royal palace in Amman, and a quick hello to then-Prince Abdullah, Hussein’s eldest son and then-captain of the Jordanian national race car team, when our Yarmouk contingent crossed paths with the team at the pool of the Petra Hotel.

But I didn’t meet King Hussein himself until four years later, in 1989, when I was back in Amman doing research for my Oxford doctoral dissertation. My topic was Jordanian domestic politics in the 1950s. Specifically, I was fascinated with how this small, nearly landlocked, resource-poor, refugee-rich country at the center of one of the world’s leading conflict zones survived the tumultuous years after the assassination of its founder, Hussein’s grandfather, the first King Abdullah.

For my research, I interviewed dozens of elderly ministers, courtiers, and generals, used my wiles to gain entry to the collection of banned books, pamphlets, and memoirs that filled the “Forbidden Room”—al-ghurfa al-mamnua’—at the University of Jordan, and was the first Western researcher to mine the fascinating resources of the Jordanian national archives. I was also fortunate to meet frequently with some of the king’s most senior palace advisors and even to have several audiences with King Hussein himself.

Early on, I realized that the best way to ensure that meetings with Hussein were meaningful was not to waste time on contemporary politics. I never used the occasion to ask about the latest twist or turn in his quiet diplomacy with Israel, the latest move in his decades-long contest with Yasser Arafat, or the latest development in his up-and-down relations with Washington. After all, these were the same questions famous journalists flocked to Amman to ask Hussein and he was unlikely to tell me anything that he hadn’t already told them.

Instead, I always focused our interviews on history—his recollections of characters, episodes, and crises from his youth. I asked Hussein about pivotal moments, such as his decision to fire the legendary Arab Legion commander Glubb Pasha in 1956 and then his success in putting down a coup plot from Jordanian radicals within the same army just a few months later. And I asked about his evolving relations with Western powers, from his dependence on the often-domineering British to his reliance on an America that, in his view, too naively wooed the man he viewed as his most dangerous nemesis, Egypt’s Gamal Abdul Nasser.

Most of all, I asked Hussein about his family. This wasn’t always easy. A reserved man of military bearing, Hussein was not one to trade in family gossip or seek to settle scores through the medium of an historian. Rather than volunteer insights from his youth, he often fell back on stylized versions of stories re-told a thousand times from his autobiography, ghost-written by a British journalist. Perhaps that is because he saw and heard tragedies that no boy, teenager, or young man should have to witness: from his grandfather’s murder at al-Aqsa Mosque, which nearly killed him too; to his father Talal’s public outbursts, triggered by a tragic mental illness; to the gruesome execution of the Iraqi branch of his family during the revolution against Hashemite rule there in 1958.

I did my best to treat our conversations and those with his close advisors with care and discretion. My focus was on the historical value of their remarks, not on what might titillate palace observers. The result was that I never cited anything about the royal family unless it helped answer the fundamental question of my research—the source of Jordan’s political survival.

Perhaps it was that care and discretion which kept me in good stead with King Hussein after the dissertation was completed and eventually published as a book. We continued to meet—periodically and infrequently, I won’t exaggerate—in Amman and at River House, his American home-away-from-home in Potomac, Maryland.

It was in River House, in June 1996, that I had my last face-to-face conversation with Hussein. It was, in my view, the most intimate and revealing conversation we ever had.

I remember it like yesterday. My arrival at the house corresponded with the departure of Judith Kipper, a former television producer and fixture on the Washington Middle East scene, who I met in the driveway. When I entered, the house seemed almost empty—there appeared to be no one there except an aide or two and the king. We sat in a comfortable living room, filled with plush, light-colored armchairs and sofas and adorned with large, metal-framed family photographs. Almost immediately, the king picked up a pack of cigarettes and lit up. That’s what got us started.

“I see you’re still smoking, Your Majesty,” I said, implicitly questioning the judgment of a man who had surgery to excise a cancerous tumor in his urinary tract and remove a kidney four years earlier.

“Yes, sir,” he said—he invariably called people sir, an affectation from his boarding school days—“but as you see, they are Marlboro LIGHTS.”

That exchange triggered a conversation we had never had before, a discussion about fate, risk, and choices. In my (albeit limited) experience, Hussein was not generally retrospective, not the sort to be preoccupied with second-guessing critical decisions or revisiting doubts he may have had about choosing this or that course of action. When you live on the edge as he did—facing multiple coups and assassination plots, continual palace intrigue and the occasional war, plus the calamities of his grandfather’s murder, father’s illness, and the sudden, violent death of a wife (Alia, his third) in a helicopter crash—there is little time to meditate on the if-onlys and what-might-have-beens. The fact that he was willing to entertain an entire conversation on this topic was something special.

Eventually, the discussion turned more reflective than ever. I asked Hussein, who was 60 at the time, what he considered his greatest regret. I had expected him to say something about the loss of Jerusalem, which Jordan had ruled from 1949 to 1967 but which Israel took in the June war and was never going to cede back to the Jordanians. But he thought for a moment and then said something totally unexpected.

“My greatest regret is the terrible injury I did to my son, Abdullah,” said Hussein.

“Terrible injury?” I asked. Then I quickly realized what he was saying. “Are you referring to taking the crown princeship away from him?”

“Yes,” he said. “I know how painful this was. And I vow that before I die, I will repair this. I will correct what I did.”

Let me explain: Abdullah, born in January 1962, was Jordan’s crown prince until he was three years old, when advisors convinced the king that it was too dangerous to have a toddler as heir when there were so many threats on the king’s life. It didn’t help, palace lore added, that the toddler’s mother—Hussein’s second wife, Muna—was born Toni Avril Gardiner, the daughter of a British officer, not a selling point at a moment of intense Arab nationalism across the Middle East. Heeding his advisors’ counsel, Hussein had Jordanian law amended in 1965 to name as crown prince his youngest brother, the then-18-year-old Hassan.

At the time of my River House meeting with Hussein, Hassan had ably and loyally served as crown prince for 30 years, most recently playing a key role in Jordan’s decision to make formal peace with Israel. But the king had just told me, in the privacy of his living room, that the greatest pain he carried was from stripping his son of his birthright—and it was it was obvious that Hussein was the one pained by this, not the toddler. And he told me in words that were crystal clear that he eventually planned to change the order of royal succession and restore his eldest son to the role of future king.

I was numb. This was not some intimate detail about a royal figure from decades past; this was a bombshell about who would serve as Jordan’s next king. My heart raced. Still, I went on with the conversation without revealing how excited I was to have been told Hussein’s innermost thoughts on perhaps the most important question of his life—who would succeed him.

Unusually, it didn’t take much prompting from me for him to continue. After his statement promising to return Abdullah to the crown princeship, he explained how important it was to him to take care of his nephews Talal and Ghazi, sons of his middle brother, Muhammad, who himself had served as crown prince for the decade before Abdullah’s birth. Then, after a brief remark underscoring the importance of preserving the unity of the family for the next generation, the king’s moment of reflection passed and the conversation quickly came to an end.

As I got up from the couch and began to take my leave, Hussein looked directly at me and said, “What I just told you, sir, I would be grateful if you kept to yourself.” I gave him my word.

It wasn’t always easy to keep that promise. When Hussein ultimately changed the line of royal succession just two weeks before his death, there were those in Amman who claimed this was a mercurial decision influenced by the heavy dose of medication he was taking for the pain of his advanced cancer. Some suggested the king acted in pique at the alleged offenses of his brother Hassan and members of Hassan’s family. The upshot was to imply that the re-appointment of Abdullah as crown prince and, ultimately, his elevation to the throne was not only a sudden decision but somehow illegitimate, tainted by the cloud of illness and the intrigue of palace courtiers taking advantage of Hussein’s diminished capacity.

From my own conversation with Hussein nearly three years before his death, I knew these rumors were wrong—they were wrong when Hussein died in 1999 and they remained wrong two decades later. When Abdullah marked 20 years on the throne a year ago, the time had come, I decided, to put to rest the canard that Hussein’s shift in succession two weeks before he died was a sudden, deathbed impulse and to explain my understanding of his intent, based on his own words to me. At the late monarch’s request, I had kept the conversation to myself for almost a quarter century, but I concluded that I had fulfilled my promise to Hussein and could now, with clear conscience, tell this story. The first to know should be Abdullah himself, so I looked for an opportunity to tell the king what his father had told me.

My chance came last November. Just before escorting Abdullah into a New York ballroom, I was fortunate to have nearly thirty minutes alone in a small hotel sitting room with him, his wife Queen Rania, and their eldest son, Crown Prince Hussein. With no courtiers or photographers present, it was just the four of us, on modest wooden chairs, sitting close to each other, our knees almost touching.

In that intimate setting, I finally had the opportunity to tell the royal family about the private conversation I had nearly 25 years ago with Abdullah’s father.

I explained that Hussein had long planned to change the order of succession, that restoring his eldest son was a way to repair a painful hurt he believed had been inflicted on Abdullah decades earlier, and that the fundamental decision had nothing to do with Hussein’s alleged dissatisfaction with Hassan or his family. (Indeed, never once in our conversations did Hussein utter a critical word about Hassan; to the contrary, any reference to Hassan was animated with big brotherly affection.) And now, at a moment when Abdullah’s popularity is sky-high and this revelation can’t be viewed as special pleading to help him weather some crisis or scandal, I am telling the story publicly for the first time.

In retrospect, Hussein’s decision to restore Abdullah to the position of crown prince and heir was not very complicated. It is a story of kings and commoners alike; it is a story as old as time itself. It is the story of a father and his son.

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Beware the Lion in the Kremlin

Attend almost any major global summit and you may spy a lion in sheep’s clothing, pretending to belong to the flock of the civilized nations of the world. When back at home, this same lion, its claws peeking out behind its paws, pads around the halls of the Kremlin, seeking his next prey abroad while also eyeing his compatriots closer to home.

We all know that a lion will not be satiated with just one meal—after depleting one pasture of its livestock, it will venture onto another. We also know that a lion will not settle for grass when a juicy lamb is grazing nearby. It stands to reason, then, that we also cannot expect a lion to settle for plants when we, tantalizingly fresh red meat ourselves, are the ones trying to feed it, however timidly and tentatively, from behind a ramshackle fence we are hesitant to reinforce.

Yet, this is just how leaders of the world dance around Vladimir Putin, choosing not to hear the clack of his claws in their marble state halls. After years of watching him hunt, we should know better than to assume we can negotiate with Putin’s yearning for territorial expansion and regional hegemony. Indeed, we must not assume that this lion will ever stop eating—or that we will never be subjects of its hunger.

When we allow smaller, outlying members of our flock to be picked off, we encourage such predators to come back for more.

Many weaker nations have experienced this fate, often after falling for the false promise of “negotiations” with a lawless opponent. The pattern is familiar: what might first seem a reasonable geopolitical compromise becomes a precedent exploited by the Kremlin to fuel its territorial aspirations. Consider Georgia, for instance, a country 141 times smaller than the United States and 146 times smaller than Europe. What happened in South Ossetia in 2008 did not stay in South Ossetia, as we saw with Crimea in 2014. And what happened in Crimea did not stay in Ukraine’s southernmost peninsula, as we saw with Donbass a few months later. Russia’s flexes of power will not abate when any one territory falls into its orbit. As Moscow’s sphere grows, so will its reach further over land and sea, carrying implications for countries near and far from the borders of the Russian Federation. The United States has particular cause to be worried, after Russia’s misadventures in Syria and the Kremlin’s rampant, shameless, and ongoing interference in American politics.

In the current coronavirus crisis, it is especially disheartening to see the United States accepting “humanitarian aid” from Russia—and paying the Kremlin for it! Just as China, after covering up the virus and allowing it to spread (while continuing to imprison investigative journalists as they try to document the pandemic), now sends medical supplies to the United States and Europe, so does Russia now seek to enlarge its “soft power.” Buyer beware: we Ukrainians saw what Moscow’s “humanitarian aid” looked like in the Donbass, when big white trucks brought soldiers in, and took industrial machinery and other valuables out.

Even while trying to manage the COVID-19 crisis, America and its allies must choose where to stage their defense against Russia. For now, the central battleground remains Ukraine—the largest buffer between Europe and Moscow. Ukraine thus matters. My native land, Crimea, a crossroads of civilizations through the centuries, must not be forgotten.

During President Trump’s recent impeachment, many prominent leaders and members of the American public voiced distrust of my country and our people, claiming Ukraine is deviant or corrupt. Yet we remain America’s steadfast friend in the region, while continuing the fight for our own freedom and self-determination. The struggles of the Ukrainian people may often feel distant to those in North America. But the cries emanating from Crimea and the Donbass herald a rising threat to democracies much older and stronger than that of Ukraine, whose nascent democracy is still vulnerable—or so believes the lion in the Kremlin.

Should we misdiagnose Moscow’s intentions; should we ignore the unabashed violence being perpetrated by Russia; should we pretend that the lion amongst us is a lamb, we will face far graver consequences than merely the massacre of one nation. If the West fails to provide Ukraine with meaningful support now, Eastern Europe will be the next course on the menu—and the United States, though an ocean away, will also pay a significant price.

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The Kremlin’s Crumbling Walls

When Vladimir Putin sketched out possible changes to Russia’s 1993 constitution and abruptly dismissed long term Prime Minister Medvedev on January 15, he was presumably hoping he would thereby give a needed boost to his presidency and also promote its longer-term viability. Putin was still seen then as the unchallenged leader of his country, but for all his command of the immediate future, there was also growing mistrust of the administration he headed. The belief that Putin was somehow exempt from its failings and corruption had been largely outgrown. Trust in Putin personally had diminished, according to polls by the respected Levada Center, from 59 percent in November 2017 to 35 percent this past January. 

The protest wave provoked by governmental actions designed to fix elections in Moscow and a number of other urban centers in late July and early August 2019 was only the most recent evidence of division between “us” and “them” in Russia. “They” were only interested in themselves. The Kremlin had not addressed Russia’s economic or social interests despite fair words from Putin since he had been returned to the Kremlin once again in May 2018. His coterie had meanwhile reinforced the fear that underlay their rule by building up the repressive machinery already at its disposal. The foreign adventures that once had popular appeal were costing money that could have been used to raise standards of living, and were still unresolved. And besides, Putin had been there so long, had no new policies to offer, yet seemed immovable. Putin’s January 15 move was unexpected, but its main message was no surprise. The Russian public knew his purpose was to clear the way past the constitutional prohibition of his looking beyond the end of his current term in the Kremlin in 2024, either for another term or more as President or, if not that, a way to remain in control through some other artifice. Other ways to achieve the same objective, such as to complete the Russia-Belarus Union envisaged by agreements between the two countries signed in Yeltsin’s time—and thereby to create a new country for Putin to lead—had not proved fruitful. The succession question was becoming critical. Putin was the only candidate available if the system he headed was to remain, at least so far as its dominant figures and their interested parties were concerned.

This reality had to be disguised in public presentation. Putin was in practice confessing to his regime’s failure over two decades to erect a viable structure to govern the Russian state over the longer term. Authoritarian governments dominated by “strong men” drain the institutions that balance better ordered states with long-term prospects. “Strong men” don’t allow potential rivals to accrue independent authority beneath them. Nor do those in their circle tolerate rivals that might outpace them. Transition from one ruler to another is by struggle within the central cabal or by its eventual collapse. Russia is no exception. Putin’s claim has been that his purpose is to modernize Russia’s constitution. He has not said whether or not he will run again in 2024. He will need some assurance that his initiative has adequate public backing before he can do that with confidence.

The Nature of the Changes

The constitutional modifications suggested by Putin in January appeared to some, particularly outside Russia, to suggest that the intention was to build up the power of Russia’s Parliament, or Duma, as well as to discipline the country’s national and regional structures. President Putin promised actions to the benefit of Russia’s citizenry. There were, however, contradictions within the ideas put forward by the President as to the Duma’s future relationship with Russia’s executive authorities that further limited parliamentary powers. There were no signs that elections would in future become more genuinely democratic. The powers of the presidency were to be heightened, and the qualifications to be fulfilled for election to public office tightened. The option of Putin transitioning to some form of supreme authority in the event that a successor should be appointed for due and foreordained election to the Kremlin from within the circle of the presently ruling group seems not to have been abandoned. 

The end to authorized discussion came with a rush on March 10. The constitutional amendment proposed by a member of the United Russia party at the last minute to abolish the relevant two-term restriction was not debated either before or after President Putin was asked to speak to the Duma about the proposal that afternoon. He explained to the House that democracy could only be built on the basis of established order, illustrating his point by recalling that there had been no such term limit for the major part of the history of the United States, for example. The Constitutional Court, he acknowledged, would of course have to be consulted on all the changes proposed by the Duma. The Duma readily endorsed the removal of the two-term restriction. The Constitutional Court rapidly endorsed it as well, along with the rest of the agenda presented by the Duma on March 11. That menu included other changes in fundamental contradiction with Russia’s 1993 Constitution. One, for instance, asserted the primacy of Russian Law over International Law—and thereby gave the Kremlin freedom to override Russia’s previously accepted international obligations at will. 

However one might choose to present it, this was disgraceful. Both the Court and the Duma were craven. When Putin spoke of order being a necessary foundation for democracy, he meant order as he defines it, not a system of order wherein he is answerable to the people and to an independent judiciary. The talk of the present constitution as Russia’s Fundamental Law was belied by the casual ease with which it was defiled. There should have been a referendum before President Putin signed off on the changes. An ill-defined and unprecedented “popular vote,” complete with a readily manipulable counting process to validate its eventual verdict on the “reforms,” was promised for April 22. It was subsequently postponed on the grounds that the coronavirus infection made that the wrong time. If it ever takes place, it will be a vote on the constitutional changes as a package, not on the discrete proposals that form it. And as for the main question behind the January 15 initiative—how to fix the succession yet preserve the regime—the result is useless. Putin may or may not run again in 2024. If he gets away then with yet another six years in the Kremlin, the same question will be postponed until 2030. If he retains control by having a yes-man come in as President in 2024 the problem will still be: after Putin, what?

What Now?

Speculation as to why addressing the 2024 issue was judged urgent at the beginning of the year was rife, along with the question of why it had to be settled in such a short time. There were some who claimed that Putin was critically ill and might not survive the year. Others argued that it was necessary to get changes through while the present Duma was in office because of the risk that the next parliamentary elections would mean the decimation of United Russia, the Kremlin’s pawn, and/or civic unrest. Particular issues were cited, like the need to get rid of the article in the Constitution giving primacy to international over Russian law, because of the Hague tribunal’s ongoing exploration of the 2014 Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 shootdown. My own view, for what it’s worth, is that Lev Gudkov (the guiding spirit of Levada polling and a leading Russian sociologist) was on the mark when he told the independently minded newspaper Novaya Gazeta on March 20 that it was mounting fear of the regime losing popular support that pushed Putin and the Presidential Administration into action.

The overall result was damaging to the regime and to Putin personally. It was presumably believed at the outset by Putin insiders that constitutional adjustments intended to ensure continuity after 2024 would reassure Russians apprehensive about the unknown and unknowable consequences of the President’s departure from office that year. The intention was that proposals for constitutional change should be seen as general improvements, and that the question of whether or not Putin should return once again to power in some form in 2024 was not their defining purpose. Hence the call for suggestions from the public as to further improvements to be considered. Hence, too, Putin’s continuing ambivalence as to whether or not he will go for a third term in the present series. He needs the “popular vote” in his favor first. He may not get it. The public saw the issue posed in the constitutional debate as whether or not Putin’s rule should be prolonged for six or more years come 2024. The poll findings indicated in March that around half of the electorate would vote against the constitutional package, and hence a third term for Putin in 2024.

Putin and the regime as a whole have been further damaged by their failure to handle the coronavirus challenge effectively. (Lilia Shevtsova gives an authoritative account.) Putin himself has been largely silent, pushing the responsibility for dealing with it onto Russia’s regions. The Governors have been given neither guidance nor money. One result has been for some regions to demand that Russians from outside their territories, and Moscow or St. Petersburg in particular, undergo quarantine if they enter their jurisdictions. No use has been made of the substantial funds available to the central authorities, even to finance the “holidays” decreed by Putin to last until the end of April. The “vertical of power” has acted more like an agent of anarchy, not the directive instrument of efficient authoritarianism it is supposed to have been. 

Outcomes

While it would be rash to predict what happens next in Russia, the essential problem facing the regime will not go away. Putin might be compelled, if he is to survive in office until 2024, to declare a state of emergency, with the coronavirus challenge as an excuse, and still greater reliance on the security forces as a means of supporting the vulnerable and in the end incoherent regime he has built. It is questionable how far he might revive or refresh the personal charisma that would be needed to sustain such a path or bequeath it safely to an effective successor in a similar mold. It is equally hard to see how Putin might take the alternative and (for him and his coterie) risky path of growing at least the initial strands of responsible, accountable, and reliable government. 

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Behind Putin’s Power Grab

When Vladimir Putin became President in 2018 for the fourth time, Russians steeled themselves for a long six years of Brezhnev-style sclerosis, knowing that no real political revival could take place until this last term was up. Under the Russian constitution, Putin could not legally assume the presidency in 2024—at least not without rewriting existing laws. Thus, when on January 15 Putin ordered his cabinet to resign and announced that the Russian constitution had become outdated and needed to be amended, analysts jumped to the conclusion that Putin had decided on the “Kazakhstan model” for staying in power.

Kazakhstan’s President Nursultan Nazarbaev stepped down last year and assumed the leadership of the Security Council for life; Putin’s proposed amendments seemed to gesture in the same direction. Putin proposed upgrading the role of the Russian Federation State Council (Gossovet)—currently a largely ceremonial body composed of state governors and chaired by the President—for the first time directly writing its powers into the constitution, and giving it wide advisory and oversight functions in both foreign and domestic matters. At the same time, he talked about weakening the role of the presidency, both by affirming existing term limits and restoring a role for the Duma (Russia’s Parliament) in approving the President’s picks for Prime Minister and his cabinet, thus bringing “more balance between power branches.”

What followed was bizarre. After almost two months of poorly orchestrated theater—from coming up with an impromptu people’s council of celebrities and public figures who were assigned to work on new constitutional provisions, to setting up a national people’s vote on the amendments—Putin went back to the drawing board. Appearing before the Duma in March, Putin announced that for the sake of stability and “at our current stage of development,” it would be necessary to retroactively nullify his previous terms served, thus allowing him to run again. Given how elections work in Russia, Putin was declaring himself President for Life, and in doing so transforming Russia into an authoritarian monarchy.

It took the Russian Duma one day to pass the amendments and a couple of days more for Russian regional parliaments to approve them before Putin signed it all into law. The only thing that had remained from the original January plans was the provision that the amendments would be voted on by the Russian people in a referendum on April 22. And even that idea was scrapped as the COVID-19 emergency overtook Russia.

So why did things play out this way? As Valentina Matvienko, the Speaker of the upper chamber of the Duma, noted, if Putin had always wanted to remain President, he could have done so in a much simpler way. Why first offer to step aside—even if only symbolically—before reversing himself? And even more puzzlingly, why did Putin initiate the big changes now, four years ahead of his fourth presidential term’s end? We may never know for sure, but one explanation seems plausible: as he has throughout his time in power, Putin was making a play for improving relations with the West.

On May 9, Russia would have hosted its annual World War II Victory Day parade. (These, too, were recently called off due to the virus.) The celebrations were supposed to have been even more grandiose than usual, as this year marks the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II. The Kremlin had invited, among others, U.S. President Donald Trump, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and French President Emmanuel Macron. The last time Putin had tried to host such a high-profile event was in 2014 at the Sochi Olympics. In anticipation of the spectacle and eager to improve relations with the West, he had pardoned Mikhail Khodorkovsky and Pussy Riot in a grand gesture of goodwill. Of course, history intervened and no one came to Putin’s party: Ukraine’s Maidan revolution upset his plans.

It’s plausible to assume that Putin was going to give it another try with Western leaders. After all, rhetoric on Russia had already started to shift across the West, with not just Donald Trump but also Emmanuel Macron talking about rapprochement. Putin perhaps sensed an opportunity. A grand gesture of promising to step down from the presidency, calling early elections, and continuing to control things from the Gossovet could have served as a pretext for a discussion of the lowering of Ukraine-related sanctions.

Paradoxically, even as the pandemic wrecked Putin’s plans, it has heightened the importance of sanctions relief. The collapse in the global demand for oil pinched budgets. And the deal Russia signed with OPEC, wherein it agreed to further cut its oil production, was described by Lukoil CEO Leonid Fedun as a betrayal equivalent to the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.

Domestically, what should have been a COVID quarantine was sold as a month-long “holiday,” with employers obliged to pay full salaries to employees during that time. Facing a downturn, many started firing people anyway. Unemployment benefits were matched to the minimum wage, and mortgage payments were deferred for those whose income fell by more than 30 percent. To pay for this, Putin announced new taxes on dividends and interest that Russian companies paid abroad, as well as on interest earned at home on any bank deposits over $12,500.

It’s in this context that one might understand Putin’s hasty decision to send “aid” to Italy and the United States. Even as Russia shows itself increasingly unprepared for the virus, these gestures can best be seen as attempts to soften Russia’s image abroad. And even though the Kremlin denied that sanctions had anything to do with their outreach, sanctions are clearly on the agenda. Several days ago in discussing COVID-19, Putin called on the West to lift sanctions on food and medications, despite the fact that Western sanctions on food and medicine have never been considered. Indeed, it was Putin’s decision to ban imports of Western food as a reaction to his cronies being sanctioned by the West.

It’s hard to tell how the pandemic will play out in Russia, but there is plenty of reasons for Putin to worry that things won’t go smoothly.

Capacity-wise, Russia is not in good shape. Ten years ago, Putin called for the “optimization of healthcare in Russia,” which led to the closing of half of Russia’s hospitals in the period of 2010-2015 (down to 5,400 in a country of 146 million people), with 35 percent of the country’s medical workers laid off through 2019. To make things worse, the “holiday” language used by the Kremlin encouraged citizens from Moscow to go on literal holidays across the country, spreading the virus to the much poorer regions.

Politically, it has already been difficult. Putin has thus far spoken to the nation about the crisis four times, and like President Donald Trump, he has tended to try to both downplay the crisis and shift responsibility. His second address particularly frustrated and angered even his loyalists, who were expecting tougher measures. Instead, Putin talked about granting new powers to regional governors and demanded that they step up and handle the crisis on their own, without help from the federal center. The institutional weakness of the centralized Russia that Putin has built was immediately felt. Three governors—people appointed by Putin directly, not elected officials—resigned in protest. And both the Chechen dictator Ramzan Kadyrov as well as the governor of Karelia Artur Parfenchikov simply ignored an order from the new Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin to keep internal Russian borders open.

The Kremlin’s unspoken motto for the past ten years has been “If not Putin, then who?” implying that he is the only person capable of keeping the nation safe in the face of all sorts of (imaginary) threats. Any institutions meant to check and balance the President are said to only frustrate Putin’s good-faith efforts at improving Russia’s lot. On the other hand, Russia’s liberal opposition has stuck to its motto “Russia without Putin.” COVID-19, at least for now, is giving the country a taste of what that looks like.

Historically, this has been a classic Putin play: lay low when trouble first emerges, and then reappear at a later date and take credit for taking charge. This time, it may not be going according to plan. Putin’s spokesman Dmitry Peskov has briefed the press that Putin himself is in isolation, even though most of the country has not been ordered to quarantine. Thus far, it’s not playing well with the public.

In March, after all the Constitutional amendments had been passed, The Washington Post published an editorial that ended this way:

Mr. Putin said the revamped constitution was designed for “a longer historical term, at least 30-50 years.” Here’s betting that neither it, nor Mr. Putin’s rule, lasts as long as he expects.

While counting on Putin’s imminent demise has not historically been a great bet, it’s at least better odds today. Russians are comparing this latest episode to the inefficacy of Boris Yeltsin’s final year in power. Yeltsin never recovered from that. Vladimir Putin might not, either.

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