Robin Wright's Blog, page 3

The New Yorker

 After Twin Explosions, 
an “Apocalypse” in LebanonBy Robin Wright

Pity Lebanon. The charming Mediterranean nation, smaller than Connecticut, survived a fifteen-year civil war, from 1975 to 1990, that became a battlefield for the entire Middle East—sucking in arms, armies, and issues from around the world. It has endured bombings, hostage-takings, and mass killings by dozens of militias, including the powerful P.L.O. and Hezbollah, both of which used Lebanese soil in order to fight Israel. It has navigated the labyrinthine politics of eighteen religious sects, each officially recognized and allocated proportionate shares of government jobs. It picked up the pieces after the assassinations of Presidents and Prime Ministers, Cabinet members, and Members of Parliament and occupations by Syrian and Israeli troops. It’s been rocked by a series of national protests—from the Cedar Revolution, in 2005, that ousted one government, to the October, 2019, uprising that forced out another Prime Minister. For decades, Lebanon has defied the odds. During an interview on his old Comedy Central show, Stephen Colbert asked me which of the dozen wars that I’ve covered was my favorite. No question: Lebanon and its strife, for my wonderment of that country’s creative, resilient people and its physical beauty as well as the epic political stakes for the country, the region, and the world.

No longer. Lebanon is now on the verge of collapse. It was already a failing state before twin explosions ripped through Beirut’s scenic port, shortly after rush hour began, at 6 p.m. on Tuesday. The second blast set off a billowing mushroom cloud, reminiscent of a nuclear bomb, and registered seismic waves equivalent to a 3.3-magnitude earthquake. The explosion was heard as far away as Cyprus, an island more than a hundred and twenty miles to the northwest. The Lebanese government appealed to every ambulance in the country to head for Beirut. Read on...

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/after-twin-blasts-an-apocalypse-in-lebanon

The New Yorker

 Is America Becoming a Banana Republic?

By Robin Wright

In the early nineteen-hundreds, the American writer O. Henry coined the term “banana republic” in a series of short stories, most famously in one about the fictional country of Anchuria. It was based on his experience in Honduras, where he had fled for a few months, to avoid prosecution in Texas, for embezzling money from the bank where he worked. The term—which originally referred to a politically unstable country run by a dictator and his cronies, with an economy dependent on a single product—took on a life of its own. Over the past century, “banana republic” has evolved to mean any country (with or without bananas) that has a ruthless, corrupt, or just plain loopy leader who relies on the military and destroys state institutions in an egomaniacal quest for prolonged power. I’ve covered plenty of them, including Idi Amin’s Uganda, in the nineteen-seventies, Muammar Qaddafi’s Libya, in the nineteen-eighties, and Carlos Menem’s Argentina, in the nineteen-nineties.

During the heated Presidential campaign of 2016, the term made its way into mainstream American politics, often glibly. President Trump invoked it in October, 2016. “This election will determine whether we remain a free country in the truest sense of the word or we become a corrupt banana republic controlled by large donors and foreign governments,” he told a cheering crowd in Florida. After the second Presidential debate, in October, Robby Mook, the campaign manager for Hillary Clinton, countered, “Donald Trump thinks that the Presidency is like some banana republic dictatorship where you can lock up your political opponents.” The phrase has become an undercurrent in the national political debate ever since.

Over the past week, however, the President’s response to the escalating protests over the killing of George Floyd has deepened the debate about what is happening to America. Read on....

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/is-america-becoming-a-banana-republic

The New Yorker

 Why Trump Will Never Win 
His New Cold War with ChinaBy Robin Wright
Last week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited the Nixon Presidential Library, a nine-acre compound in Yorba Linda, California, which was partially reopened, amid the pandemic, just for the occasion. Pompeo placed a wreath of red, white, and blue flowers at Richard Nixon’s grave. He toured the museum, where he was photographed at an exhibit featuring life-size statues of Nixon reaching out to shake the hand of Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai, during that historic first visit by an American President to China, in 1972. After his tour, Pompeo walked to a dais overlooking the parking lot—where folding chairs for a small audience were set up six feet apart, in spaces normally reserved for tourist buses—and angrily declared that Nixon’s outreach to China a half century ago had utterly failed. He called on allies to create a new nato-like coalition to confront the People’s Republic and stopped just short of calling for regime change. Basically, he declared a new Cold War. Read on....https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/why-trump-will-never-win-his-new-cold-war-with-china

The New Yorker

 Trump’s Impeachment Revenge: Vindman Is Bullied Into Retiring

By Robin Wright Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, in full-dress Army uniform and with a Purple Heart pinned to his chest, ended his opening statement during the impeachment hearings on President Trump last fall by addressing his father. “Dad, my sitting here today in the U.S. Capitol, talking to our elected officials, is proof that you made the right decision, forty years ago, to leave the Soviet Union and come here to the United States of America, in search of a better life for our family,” he said. “Do not worry—I will be fine for telling the truth.” It was one of the most memorable moments in the historic hearings. With only the family’s suitcases and seven hundred and fifty dollars to his name, Vindman’s father had brought his three young sons and their grandmother to the United States in 1979, shortly after his wife died. All three Vindman boys ended up serving in the U.S. military, out of a “deep sense of gratitude,” as Vindman testified. Over the next four decades, Vindman amassed impeccable credentials: a Harvard degree, a dozen medals for military valor, diplomatic posts at the U.S. Embassies in Russia and Ukraine, and positions as a Russia specialist for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and at the National Security Council. Vindman and his twin brother, Yevgeny, were even featured in a PBS documentary by Ken Burns.Read on....https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/trumps-impeachment-revenge-alexander-vindman-is-bullied-into-retiring

The New Yorker

 To the World, We’re Now America the Racist and Pitiful

By Robin Wright

The real saga of the Statue of Liberty—the symbolic face of America around the world, and the backdrop of New York’s dazzling Fourth of July fireworks show—is an obscure piece of U.S. history. It had nothing to do with immigration. The telltale clue is the chain under Lady Liberty’s feet: she is stomping on it. “In the early sketches, she was also holding chains in her hand,” Edward Berenson, a professor of history at New York University, told me last week. The shackles were later replaced with a tablet noting the date of America’s independence. But the shattered chain under her feet remained.

The statue was the brainchild of Edouard de Laboulaye, a prominent French expert on the U.S. Constitution who also headed the French Anti-Slavery Society. After the Civil War, in 1865, he wanted to commemorate the end of slavery in the U.S., enshrined in the new Thirteenth Amendment, which, in theory, reaffirmed the ideals of freedom—this time for all people—first embodied in the Declaration of Independence. One has to wonder what Laboulaye would think of America today, amid one of the country’s gravest periods of racial turmoil since the Civil War. 

On the eve of America’s anniversary—our two hundred and forty-fourth—much of the world believes that the country is racist, battered, and bruised. “Europe has long been suspicious—even jealous—of the way America has been able to pursue national wealth and power despite its deep social inequities,” Robin Niblett, the director of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, also known as Chatham House, in London, told me. “When you take the Acela and pass through the poorest areas of Baltimore, you can’t believe you’re looking at part of the United States. There’s always been this sense of an underlying flaw in the U.S. system that it was getting away with—that somehow America was keeping just one step ahead of the Grim Reaper.” Read on...

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/to-the-world-were-now-america-the-racist-and-pitiful

The New Yorker

Trump’s Vacuous West Point Address and the Revolt Against It

By Robin WrightPresident Trump has enraged the U.S. military—from top to bottom. On June 11th, an angry and mournful letter signed by hundreds of graduates of West Point—spanning from the Class of 1948 to the Class of 2019—was posted on Medium. It addressed the Class of 2020. It cited the current “tumultuous time” in America: more than a hundred thousand deaths from a new disease with no known cure, forty million newly unemployed people, and a nation “hurting from racial, social and human injustice” after the murder of George Floyd. “Desperation, fear, anxiety, anger and helplessness are the daily existence for too many Americans,” the signatories wrote. They warned bluntly of leaders who “betray public faith through deceitful rhetoric, quibbling, or the appearance of unethical behavior.” They reminded students of the cadet honor code, which dictates not to “lie, cheat, or steal,” and not to tolerate those who do. Without naming names, they cited their fellow-graduates who are now in senior government positions and failing to uphold their oath of office. (The Defense Secretary, Mark Esper, and the Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, both graduated in the West Point Class of 1986.) They wrote that their appeal “is not about party; it is about principle.” And, after welcoming the newest class to the Army tradition of the “Long Gray Line,” they concluded, “Our lifetime commitment is to the enduring responsibility expressed in the Cadet Prayer: ‘to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong, and never to be content with a half-truth when the whole can be won.’ ” Read on...https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/donald-trumps-vacuous-west-point-address-and-the-revolt-against-it

The New Yorker

Trump Ready to Let Assad Stay on,
As Putin Declares Victory in Syria
By Robin Wright 
Despite the deaths of as many as half a million people, dozens by chemical weapons, in the Syrian civil war, the Trump Administration is now prepared to accept President Bashar al-Assad’s continued rule until Syria’s next scheduled Presidential election, in 2021, according to U.S. and European officials. The decision reverses repeated U.S. statements that Assad must step down as part of a peace process.
As recently as October, after a swing through the Middle East, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said, “The United States wants a whole and unified Syria with no role for Bashar al-Assad in the government. The reign of the Assad family is coming to an end..”
The U.S. decision reflects the Administration’s limited options, the military reality on the ground, and the success of Syria’s Russian, Iranian, and Hezbollah allies in propping up the beleaguered Assad regime. 

https://www.newyorker.com/sections/news/trump-to-let-assad-stay-until-2021-as-putin-declares-victory-in-syria

The New Yorker

Trump Sabotages His Own Mideast Peace Process
By Robin Wright
President Trump threw a diplomatic bomb into the Middle East peace process with his twin decisions to formally recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and to move the U.S. Embassy there from Tel Aviv. The decision broke with seven decades of U.S. policy by both Republican and Democratic Administrations. It defied every ally, save Israel, and disregarded a last-ditch global campaign that included key figures from the world’s three monotheistic religions—Pope Francis, the Organization of the Islamic Conference, and American Jewish groups. Trump’s decision fulfilled a campaign promise, but it threatened to unravel one of his top foreign-policy pledges: to broker peace between Israel and the Palestinians, who have already called for “three days of rage” in response.
Read on....
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/trump-sabotages-his-own-mideast-peace-process

The New Yorker

The Saudi Royal Purge--with Trump Consent
By Robin Wright 
With the tacit support of President Trump, King Salman of Saudi Arabia and his powerful son launched an unprecedented purge of their own family over the weekend. The major targets were royal brethren who controlled money, the media, or the military. Among the dozens arrested were eleven senior princes, several current or former ministers, the owners of three major television stations, the head of the most important military branch, and one of the wealthiest men in the world, who has been a major shareholder in Citibank, Twentieth Century Fox, Apple, Twitter, and Lyft.“It’s the equivalent of waking up to find Warren Buffett and the heads of ABC, CBS and NBC have been arrested,” a former U.S. official told me. “It has all the appearances of a coup d’état. Saudi Arabia is rapidly becoming another country. The kingdom has never been this unstable.”The purge sent shockwaves of fear through the kingdom—one of the world’s two largest producers and exporters of oil—as well as the Middle East, global financial markets, and the international community. The arrests continued on Monday, with no indication when the crackdown might end.Read on...https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-saudi-royal-purge-with-trumps-consent

The New Yorker

What Does the New York Attack Say About ISIS Now?
By Robin Wright 
Shortly after the terrorist attack in New York on Tuesday, a new account, @cnnbrea, which described itself as “CNN Breaking News,” appeared on Twitter. Its crude, explicit and ungrammatical tweets vowed more ISIS attacks on the United States. One warned: “O, Nation of Cross in America We will continue to terrorize you and ruin your lives.” It attached a photo of American police overlaid with a headline: “RUN The Islamic State is Coming.”
ISIS’s constantly evolving and mischievous propaganda is one of the few tools left for the group to spread its toxic message and inspire lethal attacks. It has now lost about ninety per cent of the territory that made up its pseudo-caliphate, which was the size of Indiana in 2014. Yet ISIS’s propaganda was sufficient to animate Saipov to carry out the worst terrorist attack in New York since 9/11—as he has now confessed, waiving his Miranda rights.
As John Miller, the New York Police deputy commissioner for intelligence and counterterrorism, told “CBS This Morning,” the United States has not yet figured out how to deal with the arc of radicalization. “This is something that has vexed us since 9/11,” he said. “We have no effective counter-message today.”
Read on....
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/what-the-new-york-attack-says-about-isis-now