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.

 

The Ever-Shifting Contours of Hungarian Politic

By Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

In a tour de force published earlier this year, University of California at Berkeley Professor John Connelly surveys the past thousand years in his book From Peoples into Nations: A History of Eastern Europe. It will be the standard text for years to come.

One of these peoples, the Magyars, or Hungarians, have played a major role in the region. By the late middle ages, the medieval Kingdom of Hungary was an important Christian state. That kingdom, however, was destroyed by the Ottoman Turks at the Battle of Mohacs in 1526, when Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent wiped out much of Hungary’s nobility and clergy.

Defence against Ottoman expansion shifted to the Habsburg emperors of Austria, and by 1700 all of Hungary had come under their rule. In 1867 Hungary became an autonomous partner in the renamed Austro-Hungarian Empire, but the “Dual Monarchy” was defeated in the First World War and the empire dissolved.

The post-war collapse of the Habsburg and three other major empires led to the formation of new states throughout the region, each determined to establish boundaries that would provide it with the largest possible territory.

Some succeeded, others failed, and this was particularly true of the nations defeated in the war. For instance, the map known as the “Carte Rouge,” created by the Hungarian Count Pal Teleki in 1918, represented the density of different Hungarian regions’ by ethnic population.

Created as a scientific backing for Hungary’s position at the peace talks after the end of the conflict, it was of little help. The 1920 Treaty of Trianon saw defeated Hungary lose two-thirds of its pre-war territory and some 60 per cent of its population. It remains a sore point among Hungarians to this day.

Hungary, an ally of Nazi Germany in the Second World War, again ended up on the losing side, and became a Soviet Russian satellite state. Although the 1956 uprising failed, Communism in Hungary thereafter tended to be more tolerable than in other states behind the Iron Curtain.

The decades of the 1960s-70s saw economic reforms, known as the “New Economic Mechanism, popularly called “Goulash Communism.”

So by the time the Cold War ended, the country was virtually free of Marxist dogma. In 1989, there were few doubts about the bright democratic future of post-communist Hungary. But it hasn’t turned out that way. Instead, there has been a bitter repudiation of liberal democracy itself.

Some fifteen years ago, Hungary looked firmly like a success story, having made considerable progress on all sorts of metrics of democracy, rule of law, and institutional quality. Today, on measures such as Freedom House’s Freedom of the World Index, the World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators, and the Cato Institute’s Human Freedom Index, Hungary has undergone a degree of “democratic backsliding” or “de-democratization.”

In the 1990s the judiciary was insulated from political pressures, following recommendations by international authorities. Hungary’s constitutional court was also hailed as one of the strongest in the world, pushing back assertively against government legislation, including striking down its fiscal consolidation package in 1995.

It also deployed the doctrine of an “invisible constitution,” filling the gaps in the text of the constitution by borrowing from international law and developing and applying its own abstract concepts, such as human dignity.

Yet far from entrenching the principles of judicial independence in Hungarian legal practice and political life, these early reforms led to a backlash and ultimately to the full-fledged politicization of the courts under the rule of Prime Minister Viktor Orban and his FIDESZ party.

In elections held in 2010, Orban secured a constitutional majority and passed a new Fundamental Law with FIDESZ votes only. By doing so, he also ensured that the entire pre-2011 jurisprudence of Hungary’s constitutional court went out the window.

Since then, we have seen the forced retirements of large numbers of judges, compromising the judiciary’s integrity; crackdowns on independent media; and the branding of foreign-funded non-governmental organizations as “foreign agents.”

Orban has also hounded the western-oriented Central European University out of the country and forced the university to move to Vienna. However, the European Court of Justice recently ruled that Orban’s decision was not in line with European Union law.

Some analysts blame this as resentment against those forces, spearheaded by the United States and Western Europe, which sought to turn Hungary and other Eastern European nations into copies of the West, without much regard for local realities. It may be a bitter lesson in ideological “overreach.”

 

Donald Trump Deserves the Nobel Peace Prize

By Henry Srebrnik, [Fredericton, NB] Daily Gleaner

On Oct. 9, we learned who won the Nobel Peace Prize. It wasn’t Donald Trump – though it should have been. Instead, it went to the UN World Food Programme, “for its efforts to combat hunger.”

 Many people or organizations have been chosen since it was established in 1901, including some whom history later demonstrated were unworthy of it. Some recent recipients were activists whose work had little to do with relations between states.

In other cases, obvious candidates were bypassed, often for ideological reasons. Donald Trump was one of the latter.

The prize is awarded, according to the selection committee, “to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.”

In September, Trump was nominated by Christian Tybring-Gjedde, a member of the Norwegian parliament, who lauded Trump for his efforts toward resolving protracted conflicts worldwide.

“I think he has done more trying to create peace between nations than most other Peace Prize nominees,” stated Tybring-Gjedde, citing Trump’s role in the establishment of relations between Israel and the Gulf states of Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.

He also praised Trump for “creating new dynamics in other protracted conflicts, such as the Kashmir border dispute between India and Pakistan, and the conflict between North and South Korea.”

Trump brokered the Abraham Accords, the treaties between Israel, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates, signed at the White House Sept.15. The documents represent a significant symbolic and substantive breakthrough in the relationships between Israel and the Arab world.

Included is a reference to the Arab and Jewish common heritage, as descendants of Abraham, and the need “to foster in the Middle East a reality in which Muslims, Jews, Christians and peoples of all faiths are committed to a spirt of coexistence, mutual understanding, and respect.”

As part of this deal, Israel agreed to suspend annexation of more Palestinian land in the West Bank. It enhances peaceful relations between Israel and moderate Arab states as well as a possible precursor to progress with the Palestinians.

Other countries, including Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, and Sudan, may eventually come on board. Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan, cautiously welcomed the agreement and Riyadh may eventually normalize relations with Israel. It also, of course, foils to some extent the ability of Iran to make mischief in the Persian Gulf.

Also, Israel and Lebanon have agreed to conduct negotiations on their mutual maritime border, with the U.S. as mediator.

The agreement was the most significant advance in Arab-Israeli relations since Egypt and Israel made peace in 1979 – for which Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat were jointly honoured with the peace prize.

And in 1994 Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres, and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat received it for signing the Oslo Accords – which didn’t bring peace.

There are other accomplishments. Donald Trump brought the leaders of Kosovo and Serbia, two bitter enemies, to the White House on Sept. 4 to sign an agreement for economic cooperation.

Serbia agreed to move its embassy to Jerusalem, while Kosovo will be recognizing Israel and also planning to locate its embassy there. “It took decades because you didn’t have anybody trying to get it done,” Trump told Serbian President Aleksander Vucic and Kosovo’s Prime Minister Avdullah Hoti.

The contrast with Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, is telling. Obama gained the prize just a year after winning office, basically for aspirational speeches. The former secretary of the Nobel Peace Prize committee, Geir Lundestad, admitted in 2015 that Obama failed to live up to expectations.

Last year’s recipient, Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali, was honoured for resolving the border conflict with neighbouring Eritrea. Commendable, but not as important as what Trump has achieved.

And unlike previous presidents, Trump has not blundered into new military conflicts. Very few American troops have been killed on his watch.

So why didn’t Trump win the Nobel Peace Prize? Because he is reviled by a chattering class which differs from him ideologically, and which doesn't want to see him re-elected.

In Hong Kong, Things go from Bad to Worse

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

Police in Hong Kong arrested at least 60 protesters for “unlawful assembly” on Oct. 1 They had gathered for a demonstration, timed to coincide with China’s National Day, to draw attention to Beijing’s increasing influence in the semi-autonomous territory.

On June 30, a new national security law went into effect in Hong Kong. The former British colony, under Chinese rule since 1997, had seen Beijing tighten its grip over the past few years, but this, as pro-democracy protester Joshua Wong tweeted, “marks the end of Hong Kong that the world knew before.” 

It signaled President and Communist Party leader Xi Jinping’s desire to seize more control in order to squash pro-democracy protests in the city. The scale and intensity of Hong Kong’s protest movement and growing calls for democracy, and even some calls for independence, caught China’s leaders off guard.

“There was this idea before about China being cautious and trying to cultivate its soft power around the world,” remarked Jean-Pierre Cabestan, a political science professor at Hong Kong Baptist University. “Those times are gone with Xi Jinping.”

The law supersedes Hong Kong’s Basic Law and the “one country, two systems” that was supposed to remain in effect until 2047. It effectively puts an end to the territory’s autonomy.

The Hong Kong government is establishing a national security council headed by a chief executive as well as a new central government commission. It will become the highest executive body in Hong Kong and enable Beijing to supervise local authorities in executing the law.

In addition, the chief executive will also be able to select judges to handle national security cases, which experts warn could jeopardize the city's judicial independence.

The new law jeopardizes civil liberties and Hong Kong’s independent judicial system, which has allowed the financial hub to thrive over the decades economically. It is so broad that it effectively criminalises dissent and is meant to silence the protest movements that have grown in numbers and intensity since 2013.

The new national security law was met with defiance, as protesters took to the streets in defiance of the sweeping security legislation. It happened to coincide with an annual rally marking the anniversary of the colony’s takeover by China in 1997. In Beijing, Zhang Xiaoming, executive deputy director of Beijing’s Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, described the new security law as a “birthday gift” to Hong Kong.

The protests in Hong Kong had intensified in June 2019 after Carrie Lam, chief executive of  the Hong Kong government, tried to enact an extradition law that would have allowed residents to be transferred to the mainland to face an often harsh judicial system.

China has denounced the protests as acts of terrorism and accused Western nations of fomenting the unrest.

On July 31, Chief Executive Carrie Lam announced that she was postponing the Sept. 6 legislative elections, citing the COVID-19 pandemic.

“This postponement is entirely made based on public safety reasons, there were no political considerations,” she claimed. However, the opposition accused the government of using the pandemic as a pretext.

Opposition activists had hoped to obtain a majority in the Legislative Council. Pro-democracy candidates had made unprecedented gains in 2019 district council elections, winning 17 out of 18 councils.

By the time those elections happen in 2021, opposition candidates will have been excluded from the ballot.

Hong Kong’s economic stature was supposed to guarantee its liberties -- instead, it is now losing both. In 1997, it had an economy worth about a quarter of China’s. Today, that share has shrunk to less than three per cent.

 “I foresee that the international status of Hong Kong as a city will be gone very soon,” remarked Dennis Kwok, an opposition lawmaker. Financial institutions are eyeing Singapore as a safer haven.

But Hong Kong, a British creation with its own political culture, retains its separate identity, nurtured over almost two centuries. This has only strengthened during the past year, and that will perhaps be the most salient result of the protest movement.

Hong Kong’s seven million citizens have a long history of resisting imperialism, both British and Chinese, and they will continue that tradition into the future.

 

A Frozen Conflict Zone Heats up in the Caucasus

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

Will Armenia and Azerbaijan engage in full-scale war over Nagorno-Karabakh? It’s beginning to look that way, as this “frozen” conflict heats up.

The unresolved battle over Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous region of about 4,400 square kilometres with a population of roughly 150,000 ethnic Armenians, continues to be a problem for the South Caucasus region.

 Should the conflict re-ignite, it would spread catastrophe over a wide region, impacting not just Armenia and Azerbaijan, but Georgia, Russia, Turkey, and even Iran.

After all, Armenians, an ancient Christian nation, and Azeris, a Muslim people, have had little love lost between them in the area they share in the southern Caucasus.

Each has also had a powerful ally over the centuries, based on their respective faiths, with Russian Orthodox tsarist Russia coming to the aid of the Armenians, while the Ottoman Turks supported the Azeris. They speak a Turkic language, though, like Iranians, they practice Shia Islam, whereas the majority of Turks are Sunnis.

The leaders of Turkey and Azerbaijan often refer to themselves as “one nation and two states,” and Turkey’s 300-kilometre border with Armenia has been closed since 1993 as a gesture of support over Nagorno-Karabakh, causing severe economic problems for landlocked Armenia.

This too factors into the conflict, as there remains the memory among Armenians of the Ottoman Turkish genocide during World War I, in which at least one million Armenians were massacred.

In late September, a new round of fighting over the disputed mountainous region resumed. The fighting now appears to be spilling out of Nagorno-Karabakh, with Armenia and Azerbaijan trading accusations of direct fire on their borders.

Azerbaijan’s Defence Ministry said Armenian forces shelled the Dashkesan region in Azerbaijan, while Armenian officials said Azerbaijani forces opened fire in the Armenian town of Vardenis.

Azerbaijan is frustrated that after nearly three decades there has still been no progress towards settling the conflict, including the return of seven adjacent Azeri territories currently under Armenian control.

Turkey openly backs Azerbaijan and there are signs it is actively engaged in the fighting. It also appears a proxy force of Syrian fighters has been deployed from southern Turkey to Azerbaijan. Indeed, in a major escalation, Armenia claims Turkey shot down one of its fighter jets.

“Armenia should withdraw from the territories under its occupation instead of resorting to cheap propaganda tricks,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s aide Fahrettin Altun stated.

But Russia, which has a mutual defence pact with Armenia and a military base there, has been more circumspect, calling for a ceasefire. It helped negotiate a ceasefire in 2016 after the so-called “April War,” in which some 200 soldiers and civilians were killed, and the two sides came close to all-out war.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan told Russian media the atmosphere was not right for talks while military operations were ongoing. Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, also speaking to Russian outlets, ruled out any talks given Armenia’s current stance.

 The Soviet Union created the Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Region within Azerbaijan in 1924, when over 94 per cent of the region's population was Armenian. As the Azerbaijani population grew, the Karabakh Armenians chafed under the discriminatory rule of what became the Soviet Socialist Republic of Azerbaijan.

The conflict dates in its modern form to 1988, when Armenian deputies to the National Council of Nagorno-Karabakh voted to unify that region with Armenia. Although Armenia did not formally respond, this act triggered an Azerbaijani massacre of more than 100 Armenians in the city of Sumgait, just north of Baku. A similar attack on Azerbaijanis occurred in the Armenian town of Spitak.

Large numbers of refugees left Armenia and Azerbaijan as pogroms began against the minority populations of the respective countries. Meanwhile, in a December 1991 referendum, Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh approved the creation of an independent state.

The dispute over the status of the territory has been costly: during the initial fighting, as the Soviet Union collapsed, around 30,000 people died and more than a million were displaced on both sides.

After a ceasefire agreement was signed in 1994, a situation of “no war, no peace” has prevailed punctuated by periodic border clashes. By this time the Armenian side had gained de facto control over a territory comprising not just Nagorno-Karabakh itself but a large swathe of land outside the region as well, amounting to just under 14 per cent of the internationally recognized territory of Azerbaijan.

The Nagorno-Karabakh polity, which calls itself Republic of Artsakh, is really a de facto Armenian entity, but it is not recognised as a sovereign polity by any other internationally recognized country, including even Armenia.

Only three other entities, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, and the Transnistria, themselves breakaway regions which seceded from Soviet successor countries, have granted it recognition. For every-day purposes it has become a province of Armenia. Indeed, Serzh Sargsyan, president of Armenia from 2008 to 2018, is himself from Nagorno-Karabakh.

The UN Security Council has said it confirmed its “full support” for the role of the co-chairs of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Minsk Group, comprising France, Russia and the United States, who have mediated peace efforts. The council encouraged the parties to work closely with the co-chairs “for an urgent resumption of dialogue without preconditions.” But this is falling on deaf ears at the moment.

 

Nothing to Celebrate as Lebanon Turns 100

By Henry Srebrnik, [Charlottetown, PEI] Guardian

This year marks the 100^th anniversary of the creation of Lebanon. Given the mess the country is in, there’s been little to celebrate.

On Aug. 4, a massive explosion tore apart a large part of Beirut’s port, killing over 190 people, wounding thousands more, and leaving some 250,000 homeless.

The blast came at a difficult time for Lebanon, which is mired in an unprecedented economic crisis. The currency has crashed, throwing more than half the country’s five million people into poverty. Unemployment stands at 25 per cent and now a third of the population is living below the poverty line.

The economic situation had already triggered large anti-government protests. So bad as things have been these past few years, they got even worse For many, this new disaster seemed like the last straw.

Prince Edward Island’s Lebanese community has been raising funds to help alleviate the suffering, but it can only do so much.

Why does tiny Lebanon even exist? The idea of a separate Lebanon, carved out of a larger vague region that was called Syria under the Ottoman Turks, came from France. It was designed to give Lebanon’s Christians, especially those who belonged to the Maronite Church, their own homeland.

In the second half of the 19th century, France increasingly positioned itself as a “protector” of Arab Christian groups, intervening to protect them during conflicts.

With the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War, France and Great Britain established their rule over the Fertile Crescent under a system of Mandates, under the legal and diplomatic aegis of the League of Nations. These mandates, really colonies, included Palestine, Transjordan, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq. The Syrian and Lebanese mandates were held by France.

Incorporating the largely Sunni Muslim lands of the Bekaa Valley and adding further new territory along the coast to the north and in the Shia majority south, all outside of the Christian heartland around Mount Lebanon, the 1920 borders of this Greater Lebanon included a substantial percentage of Muslims who never reconciled themselves to the state.

Lebanon became independent in 1943 under a National Pact forged by Christian and Sunni Muslim elites from Beirut, with no input from the Shia. It was a complex political system that ensured Christian hegemony.

French financial, commercial and cultural interests would continue to be interwoven with the Maronite community in particular. More generally, access to political and economic power was organised around sectarian identities.

To this day, parts of the country’s elite speak French, and at many schools, French is spoken in class. A vast number of wealthy Lebanese own a second home in France.

This system remained relatively stable until the 1970s. But after a 16-year civil war and the intervention of foreign powers, including Iran, Israel and Syria, it fell apart and the Christians no longer dominate.

Indeed, the state-within-a-state known as Hezbollah, the Shi’ite militant party whose armed strength far exceeds that of the country’s own military, has a hammerlock on Lebanon’s politics.

Though Lebanon is effectively a failed state, there is still a soft spot for it in the heart of the country that gave it birth. Since the August disaster, French President Emmanuel Macron has visited twice. Arriving on Aug. 6, he was mobbed walking about in the Christian districts of Beirut.

Macron met with officials from the eight largest political groups. They were given a so-called “French Paper,” a draft program for a new government. He set deadlines for them to take action and told them he’d be back in December to check on progress.

Meanwhile, a petition circulated online calling for Lebanon to be placed “under French Mandate for the next ten years.” Attracting more than 61,000 signatures, it condemned Lebanon’s officials and its “failing system, corruption, terrorism and militia.” French rule, it asserted, would establish “a clean and durable governance.”

Lebanon is at “risk of disappearing” without crucial government reforms, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said Aug. 27. “The international community will not sign a blank cheque” otherwise, he warned in a radio interview.

Back in Beirut on Sept. 1, Macron alluded to France’s long history of involvement in the country and again insisted that the Lebanese elite must meet popular demands for reform by revising the existing political structure – ironically, the one initially created by Paris a century ago.

To help Lebanon overcome its endemic malaise, Paris has taken a variety of steps: encouraging and promoting internal Lebanese dialogue through international and intra-Lebanese conferences, sending French leaders to the country on frequent visits, mobilizing international economic assistance, and attempting to strengthen the Lebanese army so it can become a national military force with sufficient strength to counter Hezbollah’s army.

Macron’s visits have raised further expectations that change will finally come to lift Lebanon out of its dire political and economic troubles, all of which were exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and the catastrophic explosion at the port.