Can America’s Divisions be Healed?

By Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

This past semester, in a course on American political culture, one of the books we used was Richard Kreitner’s Break it Up: Secession, Division, and the Secret History of America's Imperfect Union.

A writer for the left liberal Nation magazine, Kreitner’s thesis is that, virtually from its foundation, the United States has had one or more regions, or groups of people, so angry with the post-1789 political order that they would rather leave the Union. The horrific Civil War of 1861-1865, fought over the issue of African American slavery, is only the best-known of such attempts.

Kreitner’s incisive analysis delves into how secession, division and other forces that separate Americans have played into the nation’s history, from revolutionary days until now.

Have we, in the Donald Trump era, entered another such age? President Trump’s victory in the 2016 election left liberals aghast; they refused to accept it and called themselves a “resistance.” This time around, a majority of Republicans, including members of Congress, believe Joe Biden stole the election through “ballot-harvesting” mail in votes. In effect, the equivalent of stuffing ballot boxes.

Biden has said the country’s democracy was “pushed, tested and threatened” and “proved to be resilient, true and strong.” Does he really believe that?

Consent-based political systems require shared, fundamental “ends.” In his 1957 book An Economic Theory of Democracy, economist Anthony Downs wrote: “A two-party democracy cannot provide stable and effective government unless there is a large measure of ideological consensus among its citizens.” The “means” may sustain dispute, but foundational assumptions must be shared.

Not anymore in today’s America, it seems. The strife is economic, cultural and political. Not only do the two political parties adhere to different views, but they inhabit increasingly different economies and environments.

A Sept. 19, 2019 Brookings Institution study by Mark Muro and Jacob Whiton, “America has Two Economies -- and They are Diverging Fast,” notes that the people in each of these do completely different jobs, in different industries, in different places, for different pay.

The gulf in living standards between prosperous areas in California or on the East Coast and much poorer sections in the country is immense and reflects this abyss.

The ramifications are concerning. For example, the donors to American politicians in all 50 states are concentrated in a few ZIP postal codes. Of those that delivered the most campaign funding for the Democrats in 2020, four of the top five were in New York City, followed by Chevy Chase, Maryland, a suburb of Washington, D.C. Other top Democratic ZIPs this year were Silicon Valley, and Cambridge, Massachusetts, in greater Boston.

New York City was also over-represented among donors to the Republican Party, whose donor base is more geographically diverse, with a lot of money coming from Dallas, Atlanta, Las Vegas, and Palm Beach, Florida.

The influence of money has polarized politics and has led to a major shift in the American public’s political values over the past two decades.

The share of Americans with ideologically consistent values has increased over this time and these political values also have become more strongly associated with partisanship.

Partisan identities have become much more closely aligned with other social identities. Partisan divides now overlay religious divides, cultural divides, geographic divides and racial divides. Americans feel like two peoples because they have become two peoples.

Politics has devolved into a contest between two sides where there is no bargaining, because there are no negotiable principles, just team loyalties. In 1960, five per cent of Republicans and four per cent of Democrats did not want their children to marry across party lines. Today, a majority of both hold this view.

Observes James Hankins, a professor of history at Harvard University, in his article “Hyperpartisanship: A Barbarous Term for a Barbarous Age,” published in the winter 2020 Claremont Review of Books, “Partisanship is normal; hyperpartisanship is not.”

Hyperpartisans live in bubbles, writes Hankins, cut off from rival claimants to public authority by mutual incomprehension and mutual revulsion. They are dogmatic, intolerant, unable to sympathize with alien points of view.

“Opponents are demonized, their reputations destroyed by all means possible. Democratic deliberation becomes impossible and political deal-making -- the normal business of interest-group politics in pluralist societies -- is despised as an intolerable violation of principle. Politics turns into a battle between non-negotiable demands. Compromise is impossible; the enemy must be crushed.” That way lies disaster.

When both of those sides are convinced that the other does not respect them, and does not think them equal or worthy, is reconciliation possible?

A chasm has opened up. Unfortunately, the usual way that polities exit from periods of hyperpartisanship is via war, revolution, or tyranny, Hankins cautions. Not a very comforting thought, is it.

 

Few Global Bright Spots in a Year to Forget

By Henry Srebrnik, [Saint John, NB] Telegraph-Journal

The year of the pandemic has been the year from hell. In 2020, we faced a global medical disaster not seen in more than a century.

COVID-19 has overshadowed every other story, and its consequences will be felt next year and for many years to come. Lockdowns, social restrictions, fatalities, and a global economic downturn resulted. It’s by far the biggest event of 2020.

What else will the year be remembered for? Most notably, the continued rise of China as a world power; the defeat of Donald Trump in the November presidential election in the United States; and the prospects for peace between Israel and many of the Arab countries in the Middle East.

We all know the grim statistics around the coronavirus. More than 1.7 million deaths worldwide, including at least 320,000 in the United States and more than 14,000 in Canada. When the various vaccines will finally wind it down, the celebrations will equal those like the V-E and V-J days that ended the Second World War.

While the European Union has faced unprecedented fractures due to the pandemic, with Hungary and Poland, in particular, showing increasing irritation with the bureaucrats in Brussels, China has gone from strength to strength. It has already outlasted Donald Trump’s attempt to slow its path to becoming the hegemonic power in East Asia – and perhaps farther afield.

The coronavirus early in the year posed a domestic crisis for President Xi Jinping, the country’s most powerful leader in decades, as well as a setback to his ambitions to project China’s power on the global stage. But Xi has managed to overcome this setback and place his country in a strong position heading into 2021.

China’s success in containing COVID has allowed Beijing to focus on longer term economic and development goals, as outlined in the 14th Five Year Plan. Since 1953, these have been the guiding documents signaling the policy direction for the country’s future economic and social development.

While observers will have to wait until March for the release of the full plan, the Communist Party leadership has indicated that it aims for China becoming a “moderately developed” economy by 2035 with a per capita GDP of about US$30,000, nearly three times the 2020 level.

China will continue the transition from producing cheap low-tech goods to be the high-end and specialized producer of goods and it will encourage the transition to “tech self-sufficiency.”

In foreign policy, Beijing will continue to aggressively build its air, land and naval forces, and project power in the East and South China Seas, testing American, Japanese, Taiwanese and South Korean reactions. It has become more strident in its insistence that Taiwan is an indissoluble part of the Chinese nation and must return to the motherland.

Great power rivalry is at the core of China’s relationship with Washington. Divergences between their political structures are bringing irreconcilable differences to the fore. The rivalry has become a clash of values.

The United States sees China as a repressive regime that will use its economic clout to punish its foes and limit criticism from overseas, while China sees the United States as a hegemony that wants to stunt the growth of, and sow division within, its rival. This is a narrative that Xi has used to enhance the Communist Party’s legitimacy and his own consolidation of power.

China has also recently clashed with India along their contested Himalayan border, the latest skirmish in a conflict that has simmered since May. Tensions have continued to rise, with both sides reinforcing their troops in the area.

China is increasingly willing to leverage its growing economic and military power to advance its national interests in Asia, especially over disputed territory. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi feels growing pressure from populists to push back, despite the potential short-term economic consequences.

In the U.S., we near the end of the Donald Trump saga, with the outgoing president metaphorically being dragged out of the White House kicking and screaming that the election was “stolen” by the Democrats. This type of behaviour is a sign of the deep polarization that has become endemic in the United States.

Along with the nationwide protests led by Black Lives Matter that followed the death of George Floyd last May, the pandemic destroyed Donald Trump’s presidency. But he was already under constant and fierce attack.

But this was nothing new, really. The last four presidents have, for one reason or another, been considered illegitimate by wide sectors of the country.

George W. Bush was handed victory over Al Gore by the Supreme Court in 2000, and it’s possible that the latter might have otherwise prevailed. Barack Obama faced the “birther” claims that he was ineligible to assume the office because he had been born outside the country. Donald Trump was faced from Day One by a “Resistance” that insisted he was placed in office by Vladimir Putin (who, by the way, remains firmly in control of Russia).

And now, large numbers of Republican legislators and voters are convinced the Democrats engaged in fraud through the use of mail-in ballots to overcome what were substantial leads by Trump on election night in a number of states that he narrowly lost. Absolutely nothing will convince them otherwise. So it’s now Joe Biden’s turn to face this challenge. Is the United States becoming virtually ungovernable?

Meanwhile, is peace – or at least normalization – breaking out in the Middle East? The new ties between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan, and Morocco have marked the beginning of a new regional order. Oman may be next.

While cooperation on security and economic matters between Israel and many Arab states had been growing for years, this year saw economic, security, and pragmatism trump ideological considerations. They will now maneuver more openly and effectively in response to perceived shared regional threats from Iran and Turkey.

Joe Biden’s promise to take a harder stance on Saudi Arabia on its human rights record and its war in Yemen may move Riyadh, which fears Iran above all else, closer to Israel as well.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who dreams of the past glories of the Ottoman Empire, has of late issued numerous threats against not just Israel, but also Greece and the Greek-run part of Cyprus, and Ankara is now militarily involved in the anarchy that has enveloped Libya.

Iran remains the wild card in the region. In 2020 it continued to send weapons to Hezbollah in Syria and Lebanon, Shiite militias in Iraq, and Houthis in Yemen. Barack Obama’s 2015 nuclear deal, cancelled by Trump in 2018, did nothing but embolden Tehran.

With Trump gone, will the Tehran regime expect to see the Biden administration return to diplomacy in order to thwart its regional ambitions and desire to wipe Israel off the map?

Latin America has been hard hit by the pandemic, with staggering death tolls in Brazil and Mexico. But Brazil’s populist president Jair Bolsonaro seems to have weathered the storm. As for the two Marxist regimes in Cuba and Venezuela, both are in a bad state.

Over the past three years post-Castro Cuba has been hit hard by the U.S. embargo of Venezuela, which undercuts Caracas’ ability to provide external support. As for Venezuela itself, political discontent under President Nicolas Maduro, in power since 2013, has been fuelled by hyperinflation, power cuts, and shortages of food and medicine. More than five million Venezuelans have left the country in recent years.

Venezuela held parliamentary elections on Dec. 6, but they were boycotted as fraudulent and illegal by the opposition led by Juan Guaido, the speaker of the outgoing National Assembly. Things will only get worse in 2021.

 

Is Ghana Still a Democracy?

By Henry Srebrnik, [Fredericton, NB] Daily Gleaner

The West African nation of Ghana held presidential and legislative elections on Dec. 7, with incumbent President Nana Akufo-Addo from the center-right New Patriotic Party (NPP) again besting opponent John Dramani Mahama of the center-left National Democratic Congress (NDC) with a slim majority of 51.59 per cent of the vote against Mahama’s 47.36, thus avoiding a second round.

The two also went head-to head in 2016, when Akufo-Addo defeated Mahama, who had himself four years earlier won the presidency against then challenger Akufo-Addo. In 2008, running on the NPP banner, Akufo-Addo lost to the NDC’s John Atta Mills, who died in office.

This will be Akufo-Addo’s final term in accordance with the Ghanaian constitution. Mahama’s defeat in the 2016 presidential race had marked the first time since the reintroduction of democratic rule that an incumbent president had stood for re-election and lost.

Both men hail from long-established political families. Akufo-Addo’s father, Edward, was one of the so-called “Big Six” who led Ghana to independence in 1957. John Mahama’s father, Emmanuel Adama, was one of the first ministers of state for the northern region under Ghana’s first president, Kwame Nkrumah.

Akufo-Addo’s NPP and Mahama’s NDC each won 137 seats. One constituency was won by an independent candidate.

Youth unemployment, security concerns and effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on the economy were among the top issues Ghanaians were considering when voting. The NPP administration had introduced free senior high school, which the party campaigned heavily on.  

This was the first time that an election was held without the presence of former president Jerry Rawlings, who died Nov. 12. Rawlings, a military officer, came to power in a coup d'état in 1979 and headed a military junta until 1992.

Although the election was peaceful, the post-campaign period was contentious. There had already been clashes between NPP and NDC supporters, with some killed, as well as attacks on Electoral Commission officials.

Moreover, civil society representatives raised concerns about what they claimed were alarming levels of ethnocentric hate speech used by politicians and alleged abuse of state resources.

Ethnolinguistic affiliations play a role in Ghana, opposing the poorer North to the wealthier Ashanti region. Politicking and political communication in Ghana during elections rely heavily on ethnic influence, with the NDC representing the Ewe in the poorer Northern Volta region, and the NPP representing the Akans in the Ashanti region.

Ethnic polarisation has aligned with political polarisation to the extent that most people who belong to a certain ethnic group become members of a particular political organization or party aligned with it.

The NDC has rejected the results and said they planned to appeal. Mahama warned his opponent not to “steal” the election, accusing the sitting president of using the military to intimidate voters, and saying the verification process hadn’t been followed, making the vote “illegal.” He also claimed his party really won 140 parliamentary seats.

John Boadu, general secretary of the NPP warned about the implications of accusations coming from the NDC. “Creating insinuations creates a lack of credibility on our whole election process.”

This is a disturbing turn of events because Ghana has held competitive multiparty elections and undergone peaceful transfers of power between the two main political parties since 1996, following the resumption of democracy, with the NPP victorious four times, the NDC three.

Ghana is one of only four sub-Saharan African countries ranked “free” in 2020 on the Freedom of the World index that measures political rights and civil liberties. One reason? Ghana has a strong and independent media and consistently ranks in the top three countries in Africa for freedom of speech and press freedom.

As Joseph Yaw Asomah, a sociologist at St. Thomas University in Fredericton asserts, Ghanaian private media address political corruption through investigative reporting, agenda-setting, providing a forum for anti-corruption discussions, and acting as a pressure group for institutional and legal reforms as well as political accountability.

But the improper exploitation and deployment of ethnic sentiments for party support can pose a danger to democratic development. Ahead of the election, Mahama and Akufo-Addo had signed a peace pact committing to non-violence regardless of the outcome of the vote. We’ll see if this holds.

 

China's Reach is Extending to the Caribbean

By Henry Srebrnik, [Fredericton, NB] Daily Gleaner

Jamaica has emerged as an anchor of Chinese activity in the Caribbean. It has received more Chinese government loans than any other Caribbean island nation, according to the Inter-American Dialogue, which closely tracks Chinese government financing in the region.

Over the past 15 years, Beijing has lent Jamaica some $2.1 billion for building roads, bridges, a convention centre and housing, according to the group. Grants have financed a children’s hospital, schools and an office building for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, among other projects, according to the Planning Institute of Jamaica.

And direct investments from Chinese firms in Jamaica poured more than $3 billion into projects like bauxite mining and sugar production.

China’s efforts in Jamaica are part of its global strategy to forge deep economic ties and strong diplomatic relationships around the world, in part through the building of major infrastructure projects under its ambitious Belt and Road Initiative, the  global strategy adopted by Beijing in 2013 to invest in nearly 70 countries and international organizations.

Jamaica, near the geographic centre of the Caribbean region, became a partner in the initiative in April 2019, in order to develop Special Economic Zones and ports so that its global logistics hub would become an essential component of the project.

Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness met with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang in Beijing in November of 2019, to discuss further economic cooperation. Also addressed were renewable energy, border security, agriculture, health care, and higher education.

While the Jamaican government announced that it would stop negotiating new loans from China, it would continue to cooperate with the Chinese on major infrastructure projects through joint public-private partnerships.

Jamaican officials maintain that outstanding Chinese loans are not putting an extraordinary burden on the country. They amount to about four per cent of Jamaica’s total loan portfolio.

In turn, the United States has stepped up warnings about the risks of doing business with Beijing, underscoring what it says are potential hazards ranging from shoddy construction to predatory loans and espionage.

The current American ambassador to Jamaica, Donald Tapia, cautioned against installing fifth-generation mobile networks made by Huawei and ZTE, two Chinese firms. Tapia called China “a dragon with two heads.”

He scolded China for its geopolitical game of chess, centred, he said, on extracting natural resources with ulterior motives. When they go into a country, he warned. they go after two things -- the minerals and the ports. “I could tell you horror stories of countries where they have taken over the ports because those countries could not pay for their investment.”

During a visit to Jamaica Jan. 22, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with Prime Minister Holness and told him it was “tempting to accept easy money from places like China.”

The Chinese Embassy in Kingston, responding to Pompeo’s remarks, said it had deepened its involvement with Caribbean states “on the basis of mutual respect, equality and mutual benefit.”

“It seems that some U.S. politicians cannot go anywhere without attacking China, tarnishing China’s reputation, starting fires and fanning the flames and sowing discords,” the Chinese Embassy declared. “They can go on talking the talk if they so wish, but we will continue walking the walk. The world will tell plainly who is stirring up trouble and who is trying to make a difference.

“Latin America and the Caribbean countries, as independent sovereign countries, have every right to determine their own foreign relations including choosing their trade and investment partners. Others are in no position to impose interference or coercion out of ulterior motives.”

The pandemic has allowed China to strengthen the relationship further by donating or selling personal protective equipment, in what has come to be called “mask diplomacy.” The Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi, pledged in July that China would extend $1 billion in loans for vaccines to Latin American and Caribbean countries.

A crucial motivation for China’s Caribbean strategy also involves winning over the four remaining nations that officially recognize Taiwan instead of China as the country’s legitimate government, though this does not affect its policy towards Jamaica. Kingston established diplomatic relations with Beijing in 1972 and is one of nine in the region that recognize the People’s Republic.

 

Jamaica’s Brutal Colonial Legacy

By Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

The Caribbean island of Jamaica has a population of less than three million, yet this small country has a global importance greater than many that are far bigger. This is the focus of The Confounding Island: Jamaica and the Postcolonial Predicament, Harvard University sociologist Orlando Patterson’s recently published book.

Himself Jamaican, Patterson contends that the extremely brutal history of the island’s slave system explains much of modern Jamaica’s dysfunction, including a high incidence of violence: last year 1,332 people were murdered, a per capita rate three times higher than the average for Latin America and the Caribbean.

In January 2018, due to rampant violence and murders, the government of Jamaica declared States of Emergency and Zones of Special Operations for several parishes.

Numerous historians have documented that more abducted Africans were brought to Jamaica over the course of the slave trade than were imported to the entire continent of North and Central America and the enslaved were worked to death. Poverty remained the lot of most of its population after slavery was abolished and even after independence in 1962.

On paper, the country created a Westminster system of parliamentary democracy, with the consolidation of the country’s two main political parties, the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) and the People’s National Party (PNP), both founded in the early 1940s. The 63 members of the House of Representatives are elected in single-member constituencies by first-past-the-post voting.

On Sept. 3, the centre-right JLP won 49 of 63 seats in a general election. Prime Minister Andrew Holness had called for the early vote in what analysts saw as a bid to capitalise on people’s satisfaction with his economic agenda and early response to the COVID-19 virus.

The result was one of the larges margins of victory in decades, with the JLP gaining 17 new seats, but also one of the lowest voter turnouts at 37 per cent. The left-of-centre PLP, under Peter Phillips, remained in opposition, with 14. The two parties have monopolized power since independence.

In 2011 Holness lost an election to the PNP’s Portia Simpson Miller, the country’s first female head of government. Four years later, the tables were turned, and Holness beat Miller.

All of this hid another reality: by the time it was granted independence, Jamaica had established a pattern of political clientism which permeated partisan politics. The fact that jobs, houses, and other rewards were distributed and controlled by the victors of an election added to the stakes of party affiliation.

For politicians, the dispensation of patronage proved a powerful means of securing electoral support, and thus violence erupted around it. After all, for members of the various constituencies, ensuring that their candidate won was tied very directly to the material conditions of their lives. As one commentator put it, “when your party is in you eat; when the other man’s party is in you starve.” Under these circumstances, violence began to supplement the electoral process.

It led ultimately to the two parties losing control of their respective gangsters, who ran their own protectionist shadow governments within the poor and violent slum areas around Kingston and Spanish Town, commonly referred to as “garrison communities.”

By the 1970s, near civil war between gangs acting as proxies for the political parties left hundreds dead from gun battles. I travelled around Jamaica on public buses in 1975-1976 and it was indeed fraught with danger, especially in and around Kingston.

This was the period when government was controlled by the PLP under Prime Minister Michael Manley, whose brand of democratic socialism “scared the professional and capitalist classes,” writes Paterson (who served as a special advisor to Manley from 1972 to 1979).

Patronage, however, is not the only way that “the democratic process both enables and is enabled by violence,” he asserts. While we tend to think the ballot replaces the bullet, Patterson maintains that in Jamaica the bullet followed the ballot. Democratization coincided with extreme levels of violence.

The forms of mobilization that large-scale democracies require tend to calcify political identities and exacerbate conflict, he concludes, and he demonstrates how parties and elections inspire a solidarity and loyalty that ultimately entrench divisions and violence within a society. He calls this the “tribalism” of democracy. It’s a problem in all too many countries.

 

Trump's Surprising Success Among Minorities

By Henry Srebrnik, [Fredericton, NB] Daily Gleaner

As we know, President Donald Trump’s four years in office saw charges of racism and nativist xenophobia constantly levelled against him. So, in the 2020 election, how did he fare with the groups who were the main targets of his alleged wrath? Surprisingly, better than we might have expected.  

For the second straight presidential election, the polling industry missed the mark, though it was not as blatant as in 2016, when polls were certain that Donald Trump would lose to Hillary Clinton.

This has now happened twice in a presidential row. Perhaps once is a fluke, but twice shows inherent problems. My guess is that far less attention will be paid to polls in the future.

While Joe Biden won the White House this year, it didn’t signal the blue tidal wave that Democrats expected. Rather, Trump’s supporters kept pace.

As we search for reasons why polling seems to capture Democratic vote share but not Republican, a narrative is emerging: Minority groups included “shy” Trump voters the pollsters missed, and probably some respondents refused to answer honestly.

The less than impressive Biden victory supports the theory that there was a shift among minority voters, who moved slightly towards Trump, cutting into Biden’s margins. Biden underperformed compared to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 numbers among voters of colour and other minorities who usually tilt Democratic. They still voted for the party, but by smaller margins than four years ago.

The AP VoteCast, a survey of the U.S. electorate conducted over several days before Nov. 3, and continuing until the polls closed, included interviews with more than 110,000 people across the U.S.

The survey was conducted online and via telephone. The margin of error was 0.6 percentage points for voters and 0.9 percentage points for non-voters, 19 times out of 20.

AP VoteCast found that African Americans remained overwhelmingly Democratic, with only eight per cent supporting the GOP. Even here, though, the vote for Trump increased by about two per cent.

The numbers were more mixed for other groups that Democrats assumed were in their corner because of ethnic or religious identity.

Some 28 per cent of Asians voted for Trump, up five per cent, and, perhaps most surprising, so did a full 35 per cent of Hispanic and Muslim voters. Trump also received 30 per cent of the Jewish vote, up six percent from 2016, despite being accused of anti-Semitism throughout his four years in office. 

Trump’s performance among Latinos, up three per cent nationally, alarmed the Democrats. He won 47 per cent of the Hispanic vote (as well as 41 per cent of the Jewish vote) in Florida, and it helped him keep the Sunshine State. He also gained Latino support in the Rio Grande Valley in south Texas and held the Lone Star State as well.

Trump was also accused by those on the left of the spectrum of being anti-Muslim, if not indeed an Islamophobe. But Trump’s support grew by approximately four percentage points among this growing sector of the American population.

This trend has been causing consternation and disbelief within progressive circles who mechanically assume members of marginalized groups view themselves primarily or wholly in terms of their ascriptive identities.

What else may have motivated such voters this year? Many Blacks and Latinos are devout Christians and “pro-life,” hence supported Republicans. And some African Americans were pleased with the low unemployment numbers and Trump’s desire to reduce the injustices of mass incarceration, which disproportionately affects them.

Many small business owners from minorities liked Trump’s economic policies. For example,Vietnamese Americans, many of them entrepreneurs, actually favoured Trump outright. Among Jewish voters, Trump’s perceived pro-Israel positions were a major factor.

People are not automatons or robots. They have agency and free will. Is it not possible those who didn’t follow the left-wing dogma that they should be unthinking Democrats are assimilating more fully into an American culture in which they feel freer to define themselves?

In fact, Biden might have white men, more than any other group, to thank for entering the White House. In 2016, Trump won white men by a margin of 31 percentage points over Clinton. This time? Just 23 percentage points over Biden.

 

Does Joe Biden Have a Plan for iran?

By Henry Srebrnik, [Fredrickton, NB] Daily Gleaner

The most important foreign policy decision facing incoming U.S. President Joe Biden will be his position on Iran, in particular its ongoing nuclear program.

Biden has pledged to rejoin the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the deal with Iran negotiated by Barack Obama in 2015.

Under the accord, signed that July with a group of countries known as the P5+1 – China, France, Germany, Great Britain, Russia and the United States -- Iran agreed to limit its nuclear activities and allow visits by international inspectors in return for the lifting of crippling economic sanctions.

Obama’s administration expressed confidence that the JCPOA would prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapons program in secret.

Iran had insisted that its nuclear program was entirely peaceful, but many in the international community remained doubtful about Tehran’s intentions.

Iran had two facilities, Natanz and Fordo, where uranium hexafluoride gas was fed into centrifuges to separate out the most fissile isotope, U-235.

Low-enriched uranium, which has a 3-4 per cent concentration of U-235, can be used to produce fuel for nuclear power plants. Weapons-grade uranium is 90 per cent enriched and it can be used to make reactor fuel, but also nuclear weapons.

Before July 2015, Iran had a large stockpile of enriched uranium and almost 20,000 centrifuges, enough to create eight to 10 bombs. Under the JCPOA, it was limited to installing no more than 5,060 of the oldest and least efficient centrifuges at Natanz until January 2026.

Under the deal, Iran gained access to more than $100 billion in assets frozen overseas and was able to resume selling oil on international markets and using the global financial system for trade.

Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, claiming the agreement was doing nothing to stop Tehran from moving forward with plans to gain nuclear military capability, withdrew from the JCPOA in May 2018. Six months later, he reinstated all previous sanctions.

Biden has signalled his willingness for America to rejoin the nuclear deal and has offered Iran a “credible path back to diplomacy.” In an article entitled “Why America Must Lead Again,” published in the March/April 2020 issue of Foreign Affairs, he asserted that “the United States cannot be a credible voice while it is abandoning the deals it negotiated.”

Biden argued that Trump’s termination had prompted Tehran to jettison the nuclear limits established under the nuclear deal. “Tehran must return to strict compliance with the deal. If it does so, I would rejoin the agreement and use our renewed commitment to diplomacy to work with our allies to strengthen and extend it.”

But despite more than two years of Trump’s policy of “maximum pressure,” the Islamic Republic is closer to acquiring the technology needed for a nuclear weapon than ever. Iran has resumed some of its previously suspended nuclear-related activities and has continued, if not expanded, its missile program.

In its latest report issued mid-November, the watchdog International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) stated that Iran was enriching uranium to a purity of up to 4.5 per cent, in violation of the threshold agreed to in 2015, at advanced centrifuges that it had installed underground at its Natanz site.

It also said Iran’s explanation for the presence of this nuclear material was “not credible.” Tehran’s explanation as to how and why these particles were found by agency inspectors at the site was unsatisfactory.

The report came out two weeks after Iran revealed an elaborate tunnel network for missiles that are probably capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. Iran already has the largest and most diverse ballistic missile arsenal in the Middle East and such missiles are not covered by the JCPOA.

Is the Islamic Republic challenging the incoming Biden administration? Iran’s leaders have indicated that their own policies would not change based on the result of the American presidential election. On the contrary, they have demanded compensation for economic damages incurred because of the sanctions.

Tehran keeps moving forward with its nuclear program and blatantly violates all its commitments in the JCPOA, despite the growing economic hardships and other setbacks it has suffered. Even if the next administration does manage to reinstitute the JCPOA in some form, it will likely be a rather different accord.

 

France Gets Tough on Terrorism

By Henry Srebrnik, [Frederickton, NB] Daily Gleaner

A recent series of murders has brought a hardening of French attitudes towards terrorism. President Emmanuel Macron has sought to make a critique of Islamism a signature issue before the 2022 presidential campaign.

France has faced terrorism before, most notably on Jan. 7, 2015, when terrorists forced their way into the offices of the French satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo in Paris. Incensed at the publication of a series of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad, which is prohibited by Muslim law, they killed 12 people and injured 11 others.

When Charlie Hebdo republished the caricatures this past September, it triggered a new chain of events that included two stabbings outside the newspaper’s former offices, the beheading of a teacher near Paris, and the murders of three people inside a church in Nice.

In a speech Oct. 2, Macron declared that the “ultimate goal” of Islamists is to “take complete control.” He categorized “Islamist separatism” as a “parallel society” that “leads to denial of the Republic’s laws.”

The Oct. 16 murder of schoolteacher Samuel Paty, in particular, caused an uproar. He had shown students caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, as part of a lesson on free expression, while allowing Muslim students to be excused from class.

It took place in the context of the high-profile trial of accomplices of the January 2015 Charlie Hebdo attackers.

The killing of a teacher at a public school was seen as an attack on the very foundation of French citizenship. Macron called him “the face of the Republic.” Paty was a strong believer in laicité, the strict secularism that separates religion from the state in France.

Paty was posthumously granted France’s highest award, the Légion d’Honneur, and commemorated in a national ceremony at the Sorbonne in Paris on Oct. 21. Macron, eulogizing Paty, told his audience: “I have named the evil. The actions have been decided on. We have made them even tougher. And we will carry them to their conclusion.”

The country’s interior minister, Gerald Darmanin, describing France as fighting a “civil war” to defend the French secular and unitary Republic, announced police operations against “the enemy within, insidious and extremely well organized.”

The steps included expelling some 200 imprisoned foreigners suspected of terrorist links, carrying out raids and banning a Muslim group accused of “advocating radical Islam” and hate speech.

Macron has also bridled at criticism from the Western media. “France is fighting against Islamist separatism, never against Islam,” he wrote to the Financial Times on Nov. 4 after it published an opinion piece that Macron asserted had unfairly accused him of stigmatizing French Muslims for political purposes.

“For over five years now, and since the attacks on Charlie Hebdo, France has faced a wave of attacks perpetrated by terrorists in the name of an Islam that they have distorted. Some 263 people -- police officers, soldiers, teachers, journalists, cartoonists, ordinary citizens-- have been assassinated in our homeland,” he responded in the Financial Times.

Macron also expressed irritation about American coverage of the government’s response. He pointed to the New York Times, which was highly critical of Macron’s plans, referring to a “broad government crackdown against Muslim individuals and groups” in an Oct. 21 article.

A Washington Post article of Oct. 30 also accused the government of adopting “reactionary language” and directing its rhetoric “toward criminalizing and stigmatizing France’s Muslim population.”

“Our democracy was established against the Catholic Church and the monarchy, and laicité is the way that democracy was organized in France,” sociologist Dominique Schnapper explained in the New York Times Oct. 26.

Caroline Fourest, a teacher, journalist, and co-founder of the feminist, secularist anti-racist journal ProChoix, in an article published Nov. 9 on the Tablet website, wondered “Why the American Press Keeps Getting Terror in France Wrong.”

She suggested that for them the “fight against racism required them to close their eyes to the mortal dangers of terrorism and fundamentalism -- and to ally with enemies of free speech, open debate, and other foundational values of free societies.”

Yet Macron found himself mocked by dozens of journalists. “Why is defending the principles of free speech and the separation of church and state so hard for Americans these days?” she wondered.

 

Nigerian Troubles Hit Close to Home

 By Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

We live in a globalized world, and this is especially true if you are an academic. At UPEI, international students make up a very significant part of the student body. They bring different points of view and knowledge to the classroom.

I’m always glad that they make up a large part of my classes. But their problems are often those taking place back in their home countries.

Many Canadians are unaware of the recent spate of protests in Africa’s most populous country, Nigeria, revolving around police brutality.

Nigeria is home to more than 300 ethnic groups, including three dominant ones: the Igbo in the south-east, the Yoruba in the south-west, and the Hausa in the north. Northerners have ruled the country for 38 out of the last 60 years, mostly via military coups. The Igbo tried, but failed, to secede from the country in a brutal war that lasted from 1967 to 1970.

Conversations usually revolve around which ethnic group gets what, when, and how. Or how fairly a person from one group was treated compared to one from another. It’s called “getting our piece of the national cake.”

Large protests in the country began in early October, with mostly young people demanding the scrapping of a notorious police unit, the Special Anti-Robbery Squad (SARS). As the #EndSARS hashtag went viral, the demonstrations grew in size, demanding broader reforms in the way Nigeria is governed.

In an attempt to quell the unrest, the SARS unit was dissolved on Oct. 11, but the protests escalated after shootings in the nation’s biggest city, Lagos, on Oct. 20, when according to the rights group Amnesty International, security forces killed at least 12 people.

Lagos and other parts of the country saw buildings torched, shopping centres looted and prisons attacked.

Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari called for an end to the protests in a televised speech, urging protesters to stop demonstrating and instead engage with the government "in finding solutions.” He admitted that almost 70 people had been killed in the protests against police brutality.

Officials introduced a curfew in Lagos state, and the governor, Babajide Sanwo-Olu, published a list of 23 police officers who were charged with various offences. He indicated he had published the list to show he was “rebuilding Lagos and ending police brutality.”

President Buhari’s address to the nation missed the point, according to blogger and columnist Japheth Omojuwa. Buhari called for an end to the protests and the beginning of a dialogue, but he refused to apologize and “will be remembered for threatening Nigerians just because they asked their government to commit to justice.”

Meanwhile, I received an email from an excellent student in one of my courses, informing me that her parents, who live near Port Harcourt, in Rivers State, were in danger. The city is in the Niger Delta, the centre of Nigeria’s oil industry.

She wrote that “there is a massacre happening in my hometown right now as I type to you.” Some criminals that took advantage of the protests to end police brutality had been moving from house to house killing people and setting houses on fire, she explained. Fortunately, a few days later, her mother managed to re-establish contact and told her they were unhurt. But for days she had little else on her mind. I asked her if I could mention this in an article on Nigeria and she said yes.

The region has suffered extreme environmental damage from decades of indiscriminate petroleum waste dumping. Protestors have been jailed and even murdered, among them the environmental and political activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, who was executed by the military 25 years ago.

His "crime”? His attempts to save the land and water of his fellow Ogoni people, a very small ethnic group within Nigeria, numbering less than a million in a country of more than 200 million.

After his death, several Ogoni parties brought about lawsuits against the oil giant Shell for their role in both Saro-Wiwa’s trial and execution and in their treatment of Ogoni lands over the past decades.

Meanwhile, many Nigerians are looking forward to the 2023 presidential elections and using the lessons learnt during the recent protests to field a candidate to campaign on issues relevant to this youthful nation, where more than 60 per cent are under the age of 24.

 

America's Jewish Community Deeply Divided Over Politics

By Henry Srebrnik [Fredericton, NB] Daily Gleaner

Out of the 14.5 million Jewish people now in the world, 47 per cent reside in Israel. Its Jewish population is 6,841,000. It is the only country with a Jewish majority.

American Jews, at 5,700,000 make up almost 40 per cent of world Jewry, but these numbers continue to show a slow downward trend, due, among the non-Orthodox, to low birth rates, marriages with non-Jews, and assimilation. They comprise just two per cent of the American population.

The majority of Americans, living in a liberal state based on a civic form of nationhood, view states founded on ethnicity and religion as discriminatory forms of political organization.

But ethnic democracies like Israel don’t assimilate, homogenize or try to enforce the neutrality of the public domain. They are particularistic rather than universalist, and embrace the mores and values of a specific culture. Ethnic democracies grant rights to all citizens, but only insofar as those rights don’t interfere with the goal of self-determination for the dominant group.

Today, most American Jews are already secular people, who know little about “real, existing Judaism” -- that is, a knowledge of the theology and liturgy, the ability to read Hebrew (or Yiddish), and so forth.

They have converted to the liberal American creed, and it certainly takes precedence over any lingering attachment to an Israel that is increasingly seen as an ethnocracy with even elements of “theocracy.”

So Jewish Americans are splitting between two camps: less religious “universalistic” Jews who are far less interested in, or even skeptical about, Israeli political issues and “tribal” Orthodox Jews who align more with the Jewish state.

The two groups are now dramatically diverging. The nonpartisan AP VoteCast Survey of the 2020 national electorate, conducted over several days before Nov. 3, and continuing until the polls closed, included interviews with more than 110,000 people across the U.S.

(The survey was conducted online and via telephone. The margin of error was 0.6 percentage points for voters and 0.9 percentage points for non-voters, 19 times out of 20.)

AP VoteCast found that of the three per cent of the electorate that was Jewish, 68 per cent voted for Joe Biden, and 30 per cent for Donald Trump. And the two groups are dramatically split by degree of religious observance and attitudes towards Israel and Zionism.

The former care primarily about issues in American society, like immigration, health care, or human rights, while the latter pray for the coming of the Messiah to lead Jews back to the Holy Land.

Jonathan Tobin, editor in chief of the Jewish News Syndicate noted that the 2020 campaign made us realize “that the talk of two distinct warring American Jewish tribes, that neither understand nor want much to do with each other, is not a metaphor. It is a harsh reality.”

Jews constitute some of Trump’s fiercest opponents – and his most fervent supporters. Many on the left laboured for his defeat,  while those on the right thought he was not just worthy of re-election but also Israel’s best friend. In numerous Jewish neighbourhoods across America, friends and even relatives have stopped speaking to each other.

But even those liberal Biden voters might be surprised to learn that the price of their own well-being in America might one day be to give up their support, however lukewarm, for Israel and Zionism – that is, Jewish self-determination -- altogether.

The rise of a certain kind of progressivism in some corners of the left, including among the radical members in the Democratic Congressional caucus, seeks to make support for Israel a political and moral sin, linking it, however speciously, to the evils of racism. They are committed to the view that Jews are white, and that the Jewish state is an expression of “white supremacy.”

The rise of the anti-Israeli Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement in colleges and elsewhere does not bode well. Its advocates consider racism inherent in the Jewish “ethnostate” and the ideology that birthed it.

It will be increasingly difficult for most Jews in America to withstand this zeitgeist shift in their social milieu. So other than the self-contained Orthodox, it is conceivable that most secular liberal Jewish Americans will eventually be assimilated into the larger culture, and this divide will wither away. Their grandchildren won’t care, and maybe won’t even know, that they are of Jewish descent.

 

Europe is Reeling Under the Pandemic's Second Wave

By Henry Srebrnik, [Fredericton, NB] Daily Gleaner

COVID-19 has played no ideological favourites in the western world. It has proved catastrophic throughout Europe and North America, regardless of the political parties in power.

The immense death toll in the United States, in sheer number of infections and deaths, dwarfed any other country. But this may be changing, as a second wave of the pandemic is now hitting Europe full force. Will its leaders fare any better than Donald Trump did in trying to control it?

The population of the European Economic Area (EEA), comprising the countries of the European Union, the European Free Trade Association, and the United Kingdom, is approximately 528 million people, some 200 million more than the American total of 328 million.

As of early November, the total death toll stemming from the coronavirus since the start of the pandemic in the 32 countries of the EEA was some 223,000 deaths, compared to 232,000 in the United States.

The U.K. has reported some 47,000 deaths; Italy, 39,000; France 37,500; Spain, 36,000; Belgium, 12,000; and Germany, 11,000.

While the American figure per capita is huge, at 720 deaths per million, it is actually surpassed by Belgium, with an enormous toll of 1,022 per million, and Spain, at 762 per million.

The U.K. is not far behind the U.S., with 697 deaths per million; Italy is at 644, and France at 544.5. Only Germany, with 127, is doing better.

But things are becoming dire in Europe. Most countries are reporting more infections per day than they were during the first wave last spring. Spain and France saw new records on Nov. 2 with the former reporting 55,000 new cases and the latter 52,000.

The view of health experts now is that Europe’s strategy for exiting its spring lockdowns failed. Either politicians ignored their advice, or the systems weren’t in place to implement it correctly. New measures are now being instituted.

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez asked lawmakers to approve an extension until May 2021 of the country’s state of emergency. The measure puts into place a national nightly curfew and allows regions to impose more localized restrictions, such as limiting movement outside city limits on weekends.

French President Emmanuel Macron has declared a nationwide lockdown until Dec.1. People must stay in their homes except to buy essential goods, seek medical attention or use their daily one-hour allocation of exercise. They are still able to go to work if their employer deems it impossible for them to do the job from home.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced a partial, month-long shutdown in England, including nonessential businesses such as restaurants, pubs, and hairdressers. People are allowed to leave home for only a short list of reasons including exercise. Travel is also discouraged.

The lockdown is supposed to end on Dec. 2, but cabinet minister Michael Gove cautioned that this couldn’t be guaranteed “with a virus this malignant, and with its capacity to move so quickly.”

Germany has adopted similar measures, with people confined to their homes, and all bars, restaurants, theatres, cinemas, gyms and other leisure facilities closed and concerts cancelled, during a four-week “wave-breaker” shutdown that seeks to force daily new infections back down to manageable levels.

Germans have been asked not to travel, and hotels are barred from accommodating tourists. Private gatherings will be limited to 10 people from a maximum of two households.

“We will do try to do everything politically so that this is limited to November,” Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters. But she stressed that “we are very much dependent on the majority of people simply being sensible.”

Belgian virologist and government adviser Marc Van Ranst pointed to Germany’s partial lockdown, commenting that “we should have done this six weeks ago.” The country’s surging cases forced it to move some severely ill patients to neighbouring Germany

In Italy, Italian Premier Giuseppe Conte announced new restrictions, including the closure of shopping malls and museums on weekends. Movement between regions are limited and a “late-evening” curfew is in place.

“We are aware of the frustration, the sense of loss, the tiredness of citizens,” declared Conte, as he defended his government’s decision. Clearly, people are despondent, as Europe faces a long cold winter.

 

Welcome to the Kamala Harris Presidency

By Henry Srebrnik, [Fredericton, NB] Daily Gleaner

In summer 2019 I wrote a number of articles suggesting that the Democratic Party’s best chance of beating President Donald Trump would be by nominating California Senator Kamala Harris.

That didn’t happen, but, in a roundabout way, might she still become president?

After all, how is one to understand how a feeble, almost 78- year-old man, during a pandemic and crisis around white racism, could end up being the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate this year? This is someone who first sought the nomination in 1988 -- 32 years ago.

But I think I understand why Congressman Jim Clyburn, the African American kingmaker from South Carolina, turned Joe Biden’s prospects around in that state’s Democratic primary last February, and made certain Biden would get the nomination.

Though they have tried to hide it until the election was over, Biden has been fading fast. Right until the end, he spent much of his time at home in little Delaware.

Biden did little campaigning, always in front of small audiences, took almost no questions from reporters, and refused to sit down for interviews with journalists not hand-picked by his staff.

In more normal times this would have demonstrated that he was physically simply not up to the demands of the job. Fortunately for those who will catapult him to victory, this was not much of a problem in 2020, as they could point to COVID-19.

So here was the Clyburn deal: The Democratic Black caucus in Congress would back Biden and allow him to finally become president, on condition he select as vice-president the person who not too long afterwards would take over. This was Kamala Harris, a Black woman, who might on her own have lost to Trump, perhaps due to racism.

The South Carolina state Democratic Party is predominantly African American – whites in the state are largely Republicans – so Clyburn could in effect control the process.

Hence we went from a raucous primary scramble, with both Biden and Harris polling poorly and donors deserting them, to a sudden triumph for Biden almost overnight.

Clyburn obviously told Biden that he could get the former vice-president over the hump on Super Tuesday if he agreed to choose Harris as his running mate.

The two other major contenders, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, immediately folded their tents and endorsed Biden. This, too, must have been part of some grand bargain.

No doubt Barack Obama was in on this all along and he’ll be part of the team behind the scenes, in what amounts to a “semi third term.” After all, American Democrats revere him, and he received the most slanted media honeymoon in history.

No previous president has been so transparently partisan. Think of the animus other ex-presidents may have felt towards their successors, but none identified himself with a political “resistance” to a sitting president.

One small piece of evidence leading to the conclusion that Harris may soon take over was a piece of news that appeared in early October. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi indicated she wants to establish a commission to evaluate the fitness of a president under the terms of the 25th Amendment to the Constitution.

This wasn’t, she emphasized, just about Donald Trump. There was the need “for us to create a process for future presidents.” Was Pelosi using Trump as a stalking horse to get an early start on replacing Biden soon after he wins the election?

Mike McCormick, who worked with Biden from 2011 to 2017, in September told the Washington Free Beacon that the presidential candidate is “not the same Joe Biden. He’s lost a step and he doesn’t seem to have the same mental acuity as he did four years ago.”

McCormick noted that Biden seemed to get “lost” during interviews and no longer had the ability to smoothly go off script and connect naturally with his audience.

So maybe it was no slip of the tongue when both Biden and Harris, at separate rallies, called their campaign “Harris-Biden” while campaigning in Florida in mid-September, with Harris referring to the Democratic ticket as the “Harris administration, together with Joe Biden.”

I guess she already knew what lay ahead. Can you spell “placeholder?”

 

The U.S. Senate Races in New England

By Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

Four of our six neighbouring New England states are holding contests for the United States Senate in this election cycle.

In our closest American state, Maine, Democratic challenger Sara Gideon will defeat U.S. Senator Susan Collins, the four-term Republican incumbent. In Massachusetts, Democrat Ed Markey, the state’s junior senator, is sailing to an easy victory over his Republican opponent, Kevin O'Connor.

New Hampshire’s Jeanne Shaheen, the sitting incumbent Democratic and a former governor, will beat Republican Corky Messner. And in Rhode Island, Senator Jack Reed will easily win a fifth term in office against the Republican challenger Allen Waters. The region is a Democratic stronghold, so none of this is a surprise.

In 2014, 68 per cent of Maine voters cast a ballot for Susan Collins, and she had one of the highest state approval ratings in the Senate.

As an independent, pragmatic centrist who supports abortion access and LGBTQ rights, Collins was ranked as the most bipartisan member of the U.S. Senate in the 116th Congress. But she’s in trouble, fighting a flood of ads and rising anti-Trump fervor.

There has been a record amount of spending in this election – some $115 million in TV ads. Gideon, a four-term state senator, has proved to be a prolific fundraiser, dramatically outpacing Collins.

Issues include the COVID-19 pandemic, health care, the economy, and climate change. Criticism of Donald Trump’s handling of the pandemic has helped Gideon, while Collins has campaigned around ensuring small businesses get the attention they need during the emergency.

The death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, leaving an opening on the Supreme Court, became a major issue.

Whereas most Republicans wanted Trump to have the Senate confirm a new appointee, Collins opposed holding a quick vote and opposed the nominee, Amy Coney Barrett. Colins also faced backlash for voting to confirm Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2018, and from supporting Trump during his impeachment proceedings.

In Massachusetts, the Republican candidate, Kevin O’Connor, tried to contrast Ed Markey’s liberal stance on racial issues and police brutality. Markey wants to disarm police of “weapons of war.” Ginsburg’s death also featured prominently in the contest. Markey, predictably, was firmly opposed to filling the Supreme Court opening, contending that Barrett was “a far-right, extremist judge.”

The two candidates also clashed on the issues of climate change and medical care. Markey has spent $13.8 million in his Senate re-election campaign as opposed to O’Connor’s $460,003.

In New Hampshire, polls show Jeanne Shaheen far ahead of Corky Messner. The Granite State campaign has also been affected by Ginsburg’s death. Shaheen opposed any replacement until after the election, while Messner wanted the nomination to move forward.

Shaheen has been campaigning around abortion rights. She also accused Messner of using attack ads paid for by “dark money” groups and of trying to suppress the vote.

Rhode Island will re-elect Jack Reed by a wide margin over Allen Waters, a Black Republican with conservative values. This is virtually a non-contest; Reed has raised more than $3.5 million dollars, while Waters has been running a shoestring campaign on little more than $20,000.

Reed opposed Barrett’s nomination, calling it an “unprecedented process to drag the Court down an extremist, polarized path” in order “to terminate the Affordable Care Act” (Obamacare).

Barrett was confirmed Oct. 26 – Collins was the only Republican to vote against her -- and the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear arguments on Nov. 10 regarding the law.

 

Trump Will Likely Lose, But he Doesn't Deserve to

By Henry Srebrnik, [Moncton, NB] Times &Transcript

Donald Trump will most likely go down to defeat on Nov. 3 — and most Canadians will breathe a sigh of relief.

They could no more conceive of voting for him than of casting their ballot for Benito Mussolini or Francisco Franco. But was there anything at all positive in Trump’s four years as president?

First, let’s take one thing off the table right away: Trump is not a “fascist.” Fascists like Franco and Mussolini were warmongers and controlled private armies or were themselves officers. They took power through coups d'état or street violence. 

Even if coming to power through legal means, fascists quickly suspended constitutions and assumed dictatorial powers.

They didn’t wait four years and face defeat in a subsequent election, with most of the media and civil society vociferously opposed to them.

Actually, Trump is a right-wing nationalist and isolationist. Even his impeachment earlier this year relating to a phone call to a Ukrainian president was nothing but political theatre on the part of the Democrats.

Now, let’s look at Trump’s actual record, as opposed to his undeniably terrible persona. In terms of the economy, unemployment in the United States had fallen to its lowest level in 50 years. The rate was only 3.5 per cent this past February, and for Black workers, it fell to an all-time low.

As a result of the Coronavirus pandemic the unemployment rate did rise to almost 15 per cent in April but had fallen back to 7.9 per cent by October.

In 2019, median household income shot up 6.8 per cent. To understand how impressive this is, consider that from 1967 to 2018, the average annual increase was a mere 0.6 per cent. The bottom fifth of households saw their incomes climb 10 per cent while the top five per cent saw their share of total income drop.

Trump pledged when elected to reduce illegal immigration and has done so. The closing of the last gaps in the border fortifications between Mexico and the United States is progressing. Trump also ordered the recruitment of some 10,000 new immigration and customs officers and 5,000 border guards as soon as he took office

He concluded agreements with Mexico, Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador stipulating that migrants should apply for asylum in the respective Central American countries when they enter them on their way to the U.S.

Mexico also committed to limiting migration from central America to the United States by deploying its National Guard and improving its own protective fences and walls. By 2017, the number of illegal border crossings in the south of the U.S. had sunk to its lowest level in 17 years, and it dropped by 84 per cent between May 2019 and May 2020.

As for foreign policy, Trump brokered the treaties between Israel and the Gulf states of Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, with perhaps more countries soon to sign on. He also virtually eliminated the Islamic State as a force in the Arab world. And the withdrawal of troops from Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq were positive steps.

Michael Doran, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington, in a Sept. 22 article on the Tablet website, wrote that “Trump’s masterstroke came by breaking the hold of the Washington foreign policy establishment on the Middle East peacemaking business. In denigrating his accomplishment, the leading lights of American foreign policy have also conveniently erased from memory their unblemished record of outrageously bad predictions.”

But just as important, perhaps more so, has been Trump’s pressure on Iran, the world’s foremost enabler of instability in the Middle East and elsewhere.

He withdrew in 2018 from the flawed Iran nuclear deal negotiated in 2015 under President Barack Obama, and he has imposed several rounds of American sanctions on Iran.

In January, Trump ordered the killing of Iranian Major General Qasem Soleiman, head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force, and a major perpetrator of terrorism in the region.

Finally, he strengthened Washington’s relationship with Taiwan in the face of Chinese threats.

But Trump may soon be replaced by a career politician who has little to show for his 48 years in federal politics. Truly, no good deeds go unpunished.