State of the Biden-Harris transition: pandemic, economics, war-and-peace

The historian Heather Cox Richardson has been posting daily updates on American political developments on her Facebook account. In her entry for 11/16/2020, she described the current public posture of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris this way:

This afternoon Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris and President-Elect Joe Biden held a press conference outlining their economic strategy. They had just come from a strategy meeting with business leaders and union officials, and Biden seemed quite optimistic that the different groups had found common ground. In a notable change from his predecessor, Biden was transparent about who was at the meeting, identifying the attendees by name and position.

The plans Biden and Harris outlined essentially boiled down to what they had said on the campaign trail: they will bring jobs back to America by limiting federal contracts to companies in the country, support a $15 minimum wage, and support unions. Biden also reiterated that it is imperative for Congress to pass the Heroes Act, the $3 trillion coronavirus relief act the House of Representatives passed last May but which Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) refuses to take up. (“Heroes” stands for Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions Act.)

Biden reminded listeners that the states are in a crisis through no fault of their own, and they cannot fix it on their own, either. By law, virtually no state and local governments can operate with a deficit, while the federal government can. [my emphasis]

I don't have a problem with vague invocations of "working together". It's such standard political rhetoric that it alone doesn't signal much. But there is tremendous pressure from large Democratic donors for Democratic officials to "work together" with Republicans for actions that benefit the One Percent. So the real focus for people wanted to follow what's happening is the actual policies that emerge from this projected polite cooperation.

Richardson's summary indicates that Biden and Harris are so far sticking to major elements of their agreed program, the program that is the mandate on which they were elected. And since the Democrats typically are reluctant to fight for its own positions, that's a good sign, so far as it goes.

She also calls attention to the Republicans' cynical effort to withhold aid from states in order to drive them into bankruptcy. "But the process of driving states to that point means that Americans will lose their homes or their apartments, and be unable to afford food. And that is coming to pass. Today CBS News posted a video of thousands of cars lined up in Dallas, Texas, to collect boxes of food."

She directs our attention to an article from David Frum, the Shrub Bush speechwriter credited with coming up with the phrase "axis of evil," Why Mitch McConnell Wants States to Go Bankrupt The Atlantic 11/25/2020. He explains:

First, the country’s wealthiest and most productive states are overwhelmingly blue. Of the 15 states least reliant on federal transfers, 11 are led by Democratic governors. Of the 15 states most reliant on federal transfers, 11 have Republican governors.

Second, Congress is dominated by Republicans. Republicans controlled the House for eight of the last 10 years; the Senate for six. Because of the Republican hold on the Senate, the federal judiciary has likewise shifted in conservative and Republican directions.

A state bankruptcy process would thus enable a Republican Party based in the poorer states to use its federal ascendancy to impose its priorities upon the budgets of the richer states.

Frum's article also describes the important distinction betwee a state default and a state bankruptcy.

(BTW, even though I'm citing Frum here on something that's actually informative and helpful, I'm still going to keep referring to the following statement as The One True Thing David Frum Ever Said: "while Republican politicians fear their base, Democratic pols hate theirs"; Gibbs on the Left FrumForum 08/10/2010.)

Richardson explains:

The federal judiciary has shifted rightward in the last ten years, so bankruptcy would allow a federal judge to impose Republican priorities on Democratic states like New York, for example, states Republicans have little hope of controlling through elections. In such proceedings, the first things to go would be pensions and social welfare programs, while judges would protect bondholders, many of them wealthy people who pour money into the Political Action Committees of Republican politicians. [my emphasis]

It's important for us all to remember that Trumpism is not an aberration in the Republican Party. It was the Republican Party that produced Trumpism. The Republicans in Congress and the statehouses have no intention to enter some kind of strategic Bipartisanship with the Biden-Harris Administration to deal with the pandemic or the economic depression. Biden  may be able to peel off some Republican votes on individual measures having to do with those two major problems. But some kind of broad strategic cooperation of the kind that the Obama-Biden Administration pursued in vain for eight years is not in the cards. The only Grand Bargain the Republican Party will accept is one that enacts radical Republican policies.

Richardson provides this reminder that whatever he may have done right in foreign policy, by accident or otherwise, he did not have a pro-peace policy: "2018. Last Thursday, Trump asked his advisers whether he could do something about Iran’s main nuclear site, but appears to have been talked out of military action as they warned a military strike could escalate into a bigger conflict."

The New York Times reported that story: Eric Schmitt et al, Trump Sought Options for Attacking Iran to Stop Its Growing Nuclear Program 11/16/2020:

After Mr. Pompeo and General Milley described the potential risks of military escalation, officials left the meeting believing a missile attack inside Iran was off the table, according to administration officials with knowledge of the meeting.

Mr. Trump might still be looking at ways to strike Iranian assets and allies, including militias in Iraq, officials said. A smaller group of national security aides had met late Wednesday to discuss Iran, the day before the meeting with the president. ...

The episode underscored how Mr. Trump still faces an array of global threats in his final weeks in office. A strike on Iran may not play well to his base, which is largely opposed to a deeper American conflict in the Middle East, but it could poison relations with Tehran so that it would be much harder for President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. to revive the 2015 Iran nuclear accord, as he has promised to do. ...

The events of the past few days are not the first time that Iran policy has emerged in the final days of a departing administration. During the last days of the Bush administration in 2008, Israeli officials, concerned that the incoming Obama administration would seek to block it from striking Iran’s nuclear facilities, sought bunker-busting bombs, bombers and intelligence assistance from the United States for an Israeli-led strike.

Vice President Dick Cheney later wrote in his memoir that he supported the idea. President George W. Bush did not, but the result was a far closer collaboration with Israel on a cyberstrike against the Natanz facility, which took out about 1,000 of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges. [my emphasis]

In other words, a late-administration attack on Iran would be a continuation of a Republican precedent set by the Cheney-Bush Administration, not some uniquely Trumpian idea.

Richardson also comments on a reported argument within the Administration about drawdowns of troops in Afghanistan and Iraq, which the Pentagon opposes. Even Sen. Majority Mitch McConnell has publicly objected to the idea. The Times also reports on that controversy (Eric Schmitt et al, Trump Is Said to Be Preparing to Withdraw Troops From Afghanistan, Iraq and Somalia 11/16/2020):

Under a draft order circulating at the Pentagon on Monday, the number of U.S. forces in Afghanistan would be halved from the current deployment of 4,500 troops, officials said.

In Iraq, the Pentagon would trim force levels slightly below the 3,000 troops that commanders had previously announced. And in Somalia, virtually all of the more than 700 troops conducting training and counterterrorism missions would leave. ...

But the president’s aspirations have long run into resistance, as his own national security officials argued that abandonment of such troubled countries could have catastrophic consequences — such as when the United States pulled out of Iraq at the end of 2011, leaving a vacuum that fostered the rise of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

Mr. Trump has also repeatedly pushed to withdraw from Syria, but several hundred U.S. troops remain stationed there, partly to protect coveted oil fields held by American-backed Syrian Kurdish allies from being seized by the government of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. The current deliberations over withdrawals would not affect those in Syria, officials said.

The plan under discussion to pull out of Somalia is said to not apply to U.S. forces stationed in nearby Kenya and Djibouti, where American drones that carry out airstrikes in Somalia are based, according to officials familiar with the internal deliberations who spoke on the condition of anonymity. [my emphasis]

What's that you say? You didn't know the US military was stationed in Somalia and Kenya and Djibouti? You didn't know there was a country named Djibouti? You're not alone. The US reporting on US military activities abroad is pretty lacking. It's not nearly as interesting for TV pundits as, say, Hillary Clinton's emails.

The PBS Newshour repors on withdrawal discussions back in October, DOD surprised by Trump's intent to accelerate U.S. troop withdrawal from Afghanistan 10/09/2020:

When it comes to military interventions, war critics need to be able to walk and talk at the same time. One of the jaded pieces of conventional wisdom about war is that it's a hell of a lot easier to get into a war than to get out of one. And there are lots of vested interests, aka, the military-industrial complex, that want it to be hard to get out of a war. Or to withdraw US troops completely from a country where they have been at war.

But that said, blundering around is just not a good way to run foreign policy. US troops should have been out of Afghanistan and Syria and Somalia years ago. But the process of removing them does matter. Would it be reckless or irresponsible to cut the number of troops in Afghanistan by half right away? I seriously doubt it. But it's also a call that needs to be informed by accurate, on-the-ground information, and not all that can be made immediately public.

But open-ended commitments of troops can also be a bad idea. A really bad idea. And, at some point, if the US is going to remove troops from a country, they actually have to do it by some actual point in time. The pullout of troops from the Kurdish enclave in Syria was particularly problematic because it was not only sudden. It also directly empowered Turkey to undertake an ethnic cleansing operation immediately following the pullout.

But anyone wanting to defend Trump as a pro-peace President should take note in those stories that: (1) a serious discussion of a immediate military attack on Iran is under way; (2) the Afghanistan pullout plan reported does not envision a full withdrawal of all remaining troops (it's easier to augment an existing commitment of troops than to begin a new commitment after all troops are gone); and, (3) when Trump abandoned Kurdish allies to Turkish ethnic cleansing, he made sure to leave troops to guard oil wells in Kurdish territory. Trump has said publicly that he thought the US should just seize natural resources from countries we invade, a blatant violation of international law.

Trump is not a peace advocate and has definitely not been a peace President.