On June 16, 2015, Donald Trump declared that he would be running for president of the United States of America. From that moment on, gender issues took center stage in U.S. media discourses, either due to Trump’s previous remarks that had been caught on tape, or the derogatory insults that had been thrown at his opponent, Hillary Rodham Clinton. While some pundits and media put the issue down to “locker room talk”— a reflection of his supposed alpha-male dominance and thus capability to govern—the discourse reflects an ongoing struggle in U.S. politics and policies, at home and abroad, about gender roles, rights, and the American family.

Similar to increased tensions driven by Trump’s campaign and subsequent presidency, the political dynamics concerning gender, women, and family planning have become increasingly contentious. Mobilized by conservative Christian religious ideology and Republican party dynamics that are based in a particular moral and ethical reasoning—and often run in contrast to scientific evidence—the Trump administration has sought to systematically dismantle existing domestic and international agreements, commitments, and funding for women’s health services and family planning. 

For context, the environment surrounding gender rights—specifically in relation to U.S. politics—has been a consistent point of political contention. Prior to Trump’s candidacy and subsequent election, the United States had taken, at times, positions on the issue of women’s rights, including reproductive rights, that had been marred in controversy, resulting in regressive domestic and international policies in comparison to other Western states. For example, the United States was part of a globally transforming position to provide legal and safe access to abortion with the 1973 Supreme Court decision on Roe vs. Wade, joining a handful of states globally that had removed a complete ban on abortion. Although the court’s decision should have settled the matter, the decision on Roe vs. Wade has been a continuous point of controversy that haunts U.S. politics until today. 

Because of conflict over the decision, many state legislators have passed laws making it almost impossible for women to access safe abortions. This includes banning some of the safest medical procedures and imposing medically unnecessary requirements on clinics and providers, such as obligating clinics to meet the requirements of ambulatory surgical centers, a costly and unnecessary set of requirements for clinics providing abortions. Although this may seem like a fringe issue, it has affected a wider spectrum of political decisions regarding the role and rights of women, women’s health, and gender.

Bearing the brunt of the political debate on women’s reproductive rights have been Planned Parenthood clinics, which provide information on and access to abortions, among other health services for women. These other services cover a much wider spectrum of women’s health issues, including breast cancer screening and long-term family planning. Still, many social conservative Republican politicians argue for their closure. In support of this point of view, prior to his election, President Trump threatened to defund the organization at a federal level. Yet, in the same speech, he also praised Planned Parenthood clinics for offering essential services to millions of women. Here lies the contradiction: the opposition to abortion, despite Planned Parenthood not even using federal funds for these services, overrides the reality of essential healthcare to women in need. 

Restricting Funding

Partially fulfilling his election promise, Trump implemented a set of new rules in 2019 to limit funding available to the organization. The first rule, tabled in February 2019, barred organizations that provided abortion referrals from receiving family planning money, meaning that doctors cannot refer a patient for abortion, even when medically necessary. This has arguably created barriers between doctors and patients by effectively putting a gag order on a doctor’s ability to advise patients on all available options, even in cases when the patient is in distress or urgently requires such services. Second, in December 2019, a rule was put forward by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) that sought to complicate abortion coverage for insurance companies. The Trump administration moved to curb abortion access by increasing the administrative burden on insurance companies, adding to their costs, in order to dissuade insurers—including those offering coverage through the Affordable Care Act—from offering abortion and family planning coverage. Not only have both rules threatened access to care for millions of U.S. citizens, but the most affected have been low-income, African–American, and women of color. This is reflected in existing mortality rates across the United States, with the country having one of the highest rates of pregnancy and childbirth-related deaths among developed countries; that number increasing exponentially among Black, Hispanic, and Native American women. 

With low-income, minority-ethnic women being the most impacted by these rule changes, it is not surprising that international policy under the Trump administration has also impacted similar demographics. That being said, the United States has historically taken a rigid position on funding international programs related to family planning, particularly if abortion is offered. After the Supreme Court decision on Roe vs. Wade in 1973, the U.S. Agency for International Development prohibited the use of U.S. funds for “information, education, training, or communication programs that seek to promote abortion as a method of family planning”. 

Furthermore, the Reagan administration in the 1980s withheld funding to the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA). Support for this UN body was contentious because of the belief that it supported China’s sterilization and abortion practices concerning its “one child policy”. Similarly, the United States refused to ratify the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) because of the unsupported notion that the convention would bind the United States to policies allowing “abortion on demand”. Here, and as is evident in the domestic policy context, the issue of abortion in the U.S. political landscape has generated an environment that has put additional limitations on the physical autonomy of women, often most severely impacting low-income and minority ethnic demographics, and consequently limiting access to other necessary health services. 

Global Women Impacted

After the election in 2016, U.S. involvement in global women’s rights became even more restrictive. In 2019, U.S. representatives to the United Nations were accused of watering down the language on the Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) and refusing to reaffirm U.S. commitment to the Beijing Declaration which reaffirms equal rights to women and men, to which the United States was a key signatory in 1995. The U.S. delegation had been accused of undermining Western efforts to ensure basic standards for women’s health, requesting that references to “sexual reproductive rights” as a human right be removed. The delegation included anti-abortion conservatives that had previously campaigned for abstinence-only sex education and lobbyists for Evangelical Christian groups. 

In addition to the Trump administration’s attempt to dilute existing international commitments on women’s rights and reproductive health, the United States has cut funding to the UNFPA, pulling $32.5 million, citing the program’s support of abortion practices. In the wake of this decision, UN officials have reiterated that the program does not support abortion and only uses funds to provide women with access to safe childbirth and outreach programs for individuals facing gender-based violence. 

While the issue of women’s reproductive rights has been a consistent point of contention in the United States, the Trump administration’s position on the CSW and Beijing Declaration marks a noted turn from positions of previous U.S. administrations that had been supportive of these international commitments. Previous U.S. administrations have worked with Western allies to advocate for women’s rights, particularly on global health policy. Although these agreements are not legally binding, they have offered a framework for engagement, empowering activists who would point out the tacit support of international powers and thus use by civil society organizations to pressure their governments to advance laws and policies. 

For women’s civil society organizations in the global south, access to reproductive health is an important feature of women’s health, helping to deflect reproduction of social inequalities and increase economic engagement. Where there has been constrained access to reproductive health services, there have been high numbers of preventable deaths. Limited access to health services has also been correlated to increased rates of HIV infection. By curtailing reproductive health services to women, or weakening international agreements concerned with women’s rights and health, the result is increased numbers of premature and preventable mortality rates among women. Yet, it is not only women that are affected by these decisions; the limitations placed on women’s access to health services impacts children and increases rates of stillbirths. 

While the impact on children may not be direct, the negative consequences can be traced back to these policy positions. Studies have shown that, because women are—by and large—the caregivers in a family, they are more likely to reinvest their income into their families. On average, women reinvest 90 percent of their income in maintaining a household; in comparison, men average 30–40 percent. What this means is that children who lose their mothers are more likely to fall into systemic poverty, if they survive past the age of two. When women’s health is prioritized, not only is the quality of family life upgraded, but there are greater systemic benefits overall, including higher levels of GDP and increased opportunities to break cycles of poverty.

While the positives of investing in women’s reproductive health are particularly evident, governments have been reluctant to make the necessary commitments. Governments, globally, have cited, primarily, a mix of ideological, religious, and cultural reasons for being disinclined to invest in women’s reproductive health. These reasons resonate across North–South and West–East divisions, where women tend to engage in invisible forms of labor, leading to assumptions that investment in their bodies and health is considered a frivolous expenditure that risks the moral degradation of society. Although abortion is probably the most controversial aspect of women’s health, reproductive rights, and family planning, it is also a quintessential issue of female agency. Whether one agrees or disagrees with the procedure, the restraints imposed on women remove their bodily autonomy and reproduce gendered social and political disparities, patriarchal values, and paternalist governance. 

In relation to current U.S. political trends that rely on moral reasoning for the curtailing of women’s reproductive rights, it is expected beyond reasonable doubt, that the impact on women’s health and reproductive rights, domestically and globally, would be negatively impacted should President Trump be reelected. Indicative of this future are not only threats to existing domestic programs and attempts to water down language in international agreements and commitments, but the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the U.S. Supreme Court. Although female representation in high office of government is important, Barrett’s politics are distinctly patriarchal. Since being nominated by the president, information on Barrett’s ties to a socially conservative religious group that propagates “traditional” gender roles and female subservience poses a potential threat to civil rights legislation related to gender and sexuality, including her support for overturning Roe vs. Wade. Similarly, Trump’s Supreme Court nominee reflects U.S. policy choices on a global stage, particularly with regards to the CSW, where the individuals engaged in global discussions on women’s rights, despite being women, actively sought to dilute existing commitments.  

Funding From Other Countries?

Should Trump be reelected for a second term, and if he continues with the same political agenda as his first term, we can only hope that other countries will step in to support and fund programs related to women’s rights and healthcare. Despite affirmations from other Western states to uphold international agreements and maintain commitments related to women and gender policy, there continues to be a number of problems. First, newly empowered ideologues, working locally in the global south, are lobbying domestic governments against family planning access. Second, there is the issue of a damaged global U.S. reputation. 

With regards to the former, despite appearing far-fetched, the social conservative base that has supported Trump and his vice-president, Mike Pence, has been actively engaged in petitioning governments across Africa to criminalize sexual deviancy based on moral and religious platforms. It therefore would not be surprising if those groups, or groups with similar objectives, actively sought to constrain women’s access to reproductive health for moral and religious reasons. As for the United States’ own domestic policy toward reproductive health and family planning, the most affected will be low-income and minority-ethnic women, who otherwise depend on international advocacy and programs related to women’s health access. In relation to the second point, although one can only speculate how a diminished global reputation will impact international U.S. leadership, we can assume that other governments will effectively undermine established U.S. norms and structures. This could provide opportunities to some governments to withdraw from agreements and treaties, ignore them altogether, or refuse to cooperate with international organizations on the status of women. 

In contrast, running against Trump, former Vice-President Joe Biden has promised to expand healthcare access and tackle inequalities inherent to women’s healthcare. His domestic promises, as stated in his election campaign, would be reflected in renewed international commitments. Biden has promised to curtail U.S. mortality rates among women during pregnancy and childbirth by developing policies that put women’s health at the forefront by investing in preventative care and early support. He has also promised to stop states from violating Roe vs. Wade, restore funding to Planned Parenthood, reverse gag orders that prevent doctors from talking to patients about abortions, and seek to ratify CEDAW. Biden’s promises are wide-ranging: not only do they go beyond domestic and international commitments to women’s health and safety, but they also will actively attempt to rectify economic inequalities in wage gaps, childcare, and access to education. 

While Biden and his running mate, Kamala Harris, have a significant and diverse political platform, the ability to enact these changes will largely depend on the make-up of the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate. Should the Democratic party sweep the elections, maintaining a hold on the House of Representatives and overturning Republican control of the Senate, Biden will be able to follow through on his domestic and international policies unencumbered. This will facilitate reengagement with progressive policies and help the United States rebuild its global reputation, inclusive of areas to do with women’s reproductive health and with reaffirmations and reengagement in the work conducted by international organizations to advocate for and provide assistance to women. In the case that the Democratic party does manage to gain control over the executive and legislative branches of the U.S. government, the United States would be able to reinvest and ratify agreements, but it remains to be seen whether trust in U.S. global leadership can be redeemed.

The best outcome following the 2020 elections is, without doubt, a Biden victory that fulfills the broad political promises on women’s rights; engages in a platform of political pragmatism; and breaks away from an obsession with the politics of abortion. However, a victory that gives way to such a sweeping cultural-political transformation will also depend on an outcome that flips the Senate in favor of a Democratic majority. Most affected by these outcomes, however, are the lives of low-income and minority women in the United States and abroad—particularly those that benefit from public funding and international programs. The myopic focus on abortion has had, and continues to have, a wider impact that diverts attention, not just from issues of female bodily autonomy, but from crucial access to health services and from beneficial political platforms used to engage in advocacy. 

From May to August 2020, protests calling for justice for black people in the United States were held from Minneapolis to Portland; New York City to its surrounding suburbs; London to South Africa; and Iraq to Palestine. These are not new, they are the latest step in a racial justice movement that has been in effect for more than a century. However, today’s movement is unprecedented in scope; this time, anger has found a new outlet in social media, demands have taken a fiscal orientation, and, as a result, protests have reverberated far wider than they had before.

After Michael Brown was killed in 2014, the largest racial justice demonstrations seen since the 1960s erupted in the city of Ferguson, Missouri. In 2020, the deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd, among many others, incited protests that dwarfed Ferguson, both throughout the United States and abroad.

If today’s moment is to be analyzed, the victims that inspired it deserve to have their stories told. Forty-six-year-old George Floyd was killed on May 25 when Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin knelt on his neck for eight minutes and forty-six seconds, despite the illegality of the restraint and Floyd’s pleas of “I can’t breathe.” On May 29, Chauvin was arrested and charged with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter; on June 3, those charges were upgraded to include second-degree murder, and three other officers who were involved—Thomas Lane, J. Alexander Kueng, and Tou Thao—were also charged.

Protests began in Minneapolis after a cell phone video showing Floyd’s death was circulated online, and the demonstrations quickly reverberated through surrounding states. At that point, the story of Breonna Taylor, a twenty-six-year-old medical worker from Louisville, Kentucky, also gained traction. Taylor was shot dead in her bed on the night of March 13. Police officers had entered her home under the authority of a no-knock warrant in connection to a drug case, and later realized that they had entered the wrong house. The officers’ names are Brett Hankinson, Jonathan Mattingly, and Myles Cosgrove. Though none have been charged for Breonna’s death, her boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, was charged with assault and attempted murder for firing his gun in defense, unaware of who was barging into the home. The charges against Walker have been dropped, but there has been no accountability for the killing. Of the three officers, only Hankinson has been fired from the police force.

Although Black Americans make up 13 percent of the U.S. population as of 2019, they comprise  23 percent of the victims of police brutality; 1,098 Americans were shot and killed by police in 2019, 249 of which were Black. Each year, a few stories make national news; consider Tamir Rice, Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, Philando Castile, Stephon Clark, and Sandra Bland. However, the vast majority of the stories of the black victims of American policing remain untold. Social media is making some progress in putting names to this statistic. However, drawing attention to the scope of the policing problem is just one tenet of the movement’s objective. To prevent further deaths, the movement seeks to dramatically alter the ways that communities solve problems.

“What Do We Want?” “Justice!”

The objectives of the 2020 movement can be boiled down to one core demand: “Quite simply, it is to keep from dying,” Stefan Bradley, professor of African–American studies at Loyola Marymount University and author of Upending the Ivory Tower: Civil Rights, Black Power and the Ivy League, told the Cairo Review. Hence the movement’s rallying cry: “Black Lives Matter” (BLM).

As a result, the phrase “defund the police” has become part of the movement’s lexicon. The language reflects the idea that taxpayers deserve resources that work for them; thus, the movement to defund looks to lower police budgets and reallocate their funds toward underfunded preventative crime measures such as social work, education, and mental health resources. On June 8, Congressional Democrats introduced the Justice in Policing Act of 2020, which includes a bundle of reforms, requiring the use of body cameras, banning chokeholds, ending no-knock warrants in drug cases, and making lynching a federal hate crime. But, there was no mention of ending federal funding for local police, which reached over $1 billion in fiscal year 2020 through various initiatives. 

In addition, many are arguing that reforms just do not work. In an op-ed for the New York Times, anti-criminalization organizer Mariame Kaba pointed out that reforms rely on the assumption that rules will be followed; although Minneapolis had passed a “duty to intervene” policy in 2016 in an attempt to force officers to hold each other accountable for inappropriate use of force, Keung, Lane, and Lao stood by as Derek Chauvin killed George Floyd. “What we’ve got to get to is the culture of policing at this point,” said Bradley, noting that it was the culture of policing that caused the other three officers to value Chauvin’s seniority over Floyd’s life.

Some activists take the call to defund a step further; for them, it demands the complete abolition of police forces. “We can build other ways of responding to harms in our society,” Kaba wrote. She suggested that “trained ‘community care workers’ could do mental health checks if someone needs help. Towns could use restorative-justice models instead of throwing people in prison.” Such models include holding offenders accountable by rehabilitating their relationship with victims and their families rather than isolating them in the criminal justice system.

The abolition argument asserts that reform is impossible in a system with inherent malintent. Federally-funded, official “police departments” began to spring up in the North in the nineteenth century, but during the post-Civil War Reconstruction of the late 1800s in the southern United States, “many local sheriffs functioned in a way analogous to the earlier slave patrols, enforcing segregation and the disenfranchisement of freed slaves,” writes Olivia B. Waxman for Time. Those slave patrols were fully sanctioned in any state where slavery was legal, and had the authority to enter lodgings, quell uprisings, inflict punishment, and return slaves who had run away from their plantations.

African slavery was fully institutionalized when the first trading ship from Angola arrived in Jamestown as early as 1619. All this is to demonstrate that the United States benefited from African subordination before it even became a state that could sanction it on its own; racial violence toward Black people is in the country’s DNA, and it created a hierarchy that was grandfathered into the creation of “American” institutions. 

 Though “slavery,” in the strictest sense of the word, was ended by the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865, this is a half-blind interpretation of history. Historically, every structure of racial oppression in the United States has been abolished simply to be rebranded; slavery warped into sharecropping agreements, which warped into Jim Crow segregation, which warped into a system of mass incarceration and violent policing that disproportionately affects Black people. As such, the fight for racial justice has evolved in turn. Abolitionists became the civil rights leaders of the 1960s, the Black Panther Party and the followers of Martin Luther King, Jr., who became the people on the streets today.

The Social Media Vector

Social media was integral in the formation and organization of the 2020 protests, and further distinguishes the 2020 movement from past phases of the racial justice struggle. “Anyone who has one of these,” said Diana Carlin, Professor Emerita of Communication at St. Louis University, holding up her phone, “is a journalist and can tell a story.” 

 The American public was brought face-to-face with police brutality when a video of Floyd’s death captured by seventeen-year-old Darnella Frazier went viral. As individuals took their phones to protests, they shed light on brutal tactics used by police to repress the demonstrations, which just further galvanized support for the cause. T. Greg Doucette, a Virginia-based attorney, is just one example of the rise in citizen journalism. His “Police Brutality Mega-Thread” on Twitter documented over 850 instances of excessive force against protestors from May to July 31, 2020.

Doucette documented a host of the tactics utilized by police, including the use of rubber bullets and tear gas. As of June 18, the New York Times had documented the use of tear gas in one hundred U.S. cities, despite the substance’s illegality in warfare under the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). USA Today reported on June 22 that at least seven people had lost eyes after being shot with rubber bullets, which are sometimes used even despite bans within local departments. Law enforcement justify their use of force under the pretext of quelling looting, rioting, and other violence aimed at officers. However, although acts of violence have been committed by some protesters, over 93 percent of protests have been peaceful, and the level of violence committed by law enforcement has exceeded what is necessary. 

At the end of July, the city of Portland emerged as the epicenter of violence. The beginning of August marked over sixty consecutive nights of protest in the city. Like its counterparts in other U.S. cities, Portland’s demonstrations were mostly peaceful; however, after a federal courthouse was vandalized and fire was set to the Portland Police Association, federal agents entered the city under the authority of an executive order issued on June 26 to protect monuments and statues. These federal officers began seizing protesters from the street, transporting them in unmarked vans, and detaining them without cause. Though the federal agents vacated the city in the beginning of August, they left behind a legacy of state-sanctioned brutality. Physicians for Human Rights concluded that the response by federal agents that it documented in Portland was “disproportionate, excessive, and indiscriminate, and deployed in ways that caused severe injury to innocent civilians, including medics”. President Trump dismissed reports about these abuses as “fake news”.

 Lastly, journalists in the United States have themselves been targeted by police. The U.S. Press Freedom Tracker documented over six hundred press freedom violations in the country from May 26 to August 6. In its own analysis on press freedom violations with Bellingcat, The Guardian wrote: “Reporters in Minneapolis, Louisville, or the dozens of other places that witnessed protests and riots in the days after the alleged murder of George Floyd were not killed or prosecuted, as they increasingly are elsewhere in the world. But they were blinded, beaten, maced, and arrested by police in numbers never before documented in the U.S.” Moreover, The Guardian notes that, in seven out of ten instances, journalists attacked by police forces were visibly displaying press credentials. Take, for example, CNN reporter Omar Jiminez, who was arrested along with his production team while broadcasting on-air. It is worth noting that Jiminez is Black and Latino, and that white CNN reporter Josh Campbell was allowed to remain in the area.

Partners in Solidarity

“We always said Ferguson was everywhere, but I don’t know if we ever imagined this kind of reaction throughout the world,” Bradley said, remarking that it would have been unfathomable in 2015 to imagine solidarity protests in over forty countries like those that have been held since May. This global spread is also unique to the 2020 phase of the racial justice movement, and owes at least part of its breadth to the role of social media. 

The countries standing in solidarity with the United States are diverse; protests have been held on every continent besides Antarctica. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization and former British Commonwealth countries led the solidarity protests, with demonstrations in twenty-four cities in the United Kingdom; thirteen in Australia; six in Germany and France each; and four in Canada. Activists in Middle Eastern countries have also responded, including in Israel, Turkey, Lebanon, Iraq, and Palestine. In Bethlehem, Palestinian artist Taqi Spateen painted a mural of George Floyd on the barrier wall separating Israel from the West Bank. “I want the people in America who see this mural to know that we in Palestine are standing with them, because we know what it’s like to be strangled every day,” Spateen said in an interview with Mondoweiss. “I want justice, not O2,” the mural proclaims in English.

As seen in the Palestinian case, the global protests often refract the message of BLM to their own governments. In Australia, for instance, protests are in solidarity with the country’s Aboriginal population as much as they are for George Floyd. Since 1991, over four hundred Aboriginal people have died in police custody, and Aboriginal adults are fifteen times more likely than their non-Aboriginal counterparts to enter the prison system. “Australia is not innocent,” the country’s protesters shouted.

Bradley spoke to the effect that watching global protests for Black justice has had on him, having grown up being taught that America was supposed to fight for freedom for others. “I never thought I’d get to the point where there are people in other nations lobbying for justice for American citizens in such a loud and resonant way,” Bradley told the Cairo Review “I feel comforted that the world recognized us, but I also feel embarrassed that that had to happen.” 

What Now?

It has been proven that protests can force change. George Floyd’s killers are being prosecuted, and twelve cities have heeded the call to cut police budgets. However, most budget cuts remain incremental. New York City cut funding to the New York Police Department by the largest dollar amount—$1 billion from roughly $5.6 billion in FY20—but it had the largest budget in the country to begin with, and about half of that “reduction” is accounted for by shifting personnel and departments to other agencies, writes Steve Malanga for the Manhattan Institute.

Some officials have voiced support for radical change—a veto-proof majority of the Minneapolis City Council voted to disband their police department, and the same quorum of the Seattle City Council voted to slash the police budget by 50 percent—but their promises have been blocked by bureaucracy and are yet to be realized on the ground. Though “Breonna’s Law,” which bans no-knock warrants, was passed in Louisville, her killers walk (and work) freely.

In these cases, officials make clear that they view placation, or acts that appease the public but are not serious steps toward reform, as an adequate substitute for justice. Take, for instance, the assortment of murals proclaiming “Black Lives Matter” that have appeared across the country. BLM murals have been publicly funded in over thirty states; however, those same states refuse to make tangible changes to their budgets (i.e. New York). Art is powerful, but the people know when it’s being used as an opiate.

However, at least the movement has thrust such conversations into the spotlight, Bradley and Carlin agreed. With the movement plastered across social media, it is difficult for politicians to skirt the subject. Bradley acknowledged that structural change will be more difficult at the federal level, which is distanced from local police units. However, there is a common desire among protesters for a change in the administration come November. “I think for a lot of young people—particularly those who are coming of age, turning 18 years old, voting in their first election—this is going to be a changing of the guard in a lot of ways,” he said. “But, I’m also skeptical of the contingent of people that says ‘If you vote, all this will go away’. That’s not how American history works,” he warned. It is not enough just to create laws; they need to be enforced as well. At the end of the day, there’s a culture constituted by community–police relations that needs to be drastically changed.

Instead, in Ferguson, some of the activists become candidates for political roles, Bradley continued. This is already happening via state primaries. In August, Cori Bush, who was a lead organizer of the Ferguson movement, ousted twenty-year incumbent William Lacy Clay in the Missouri Democratic Primary. This new wave of leaders is already being bred. In the United States, 90 percent of adult social media users are between the ages of eighteen and twenty-nine, many of whom took to and used Instagram, their third-most favored platform, as a  depository for activism and justice. After George Floyd’s death, users began to share petitions, links to organizations seeking donations, photos of protests, antiracist readings, and other informational plaques on their Stories with unprecedented frequency. 

The watershed moment that racial justice organization is at in 2020 is not the movement’s first, nor will it be the last. But, to make progress, the country needs to understand just how deep the issue cuts; to think that racism is relegated to the past or that racial justice organization is uniquely modern is yet another symptom of white supremacy. Without first extinguishing this core fallacy, any change will fail to assess the entirety of the problem. What’s different about today’s moment is that, with the world completely connected online, it is significantly more difficult to turn a blind eye to the history of your country. And, with the world at a unique pause, the manpower dedicated to sharing information has significantly increased. Hence, the creation of new ideas, like defunding the police. What is yet to be seen is if the momentum can make its way to the polls—not only on November 3, but at the local level—and whether sitting politicians will have the courage to respond to their constituents’ demands.

Amidst the hand-wringing, multiple webinars, and reams of studies about the relevance of the United Nations 75 years after its founding in San Francisco, discussion of the deficiencies in the UN’s process to appoint senior leaders has been relegated to a sideshow in the macro debates over the future of multilateralism. As a former UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs (2012-2018), I was a direct beneficiary of political influence over UN hiring. As such, I recognize and accept that what I intend here to be constructive criticism and suggestions to rebalance the appointment process will be interpreted by some as rank hypocrisy. On the other hand, I don’t speak out of self-interest.  

Politics has always scented senior UN appointments. But as global polarization deepens, political bullying over UN hiring at the upper level risks becoming a stench, weakening the septuagenarian body’s independence and effectiveness.  Of course, there is a root tension between the impartiality that UN officials swear to uphold and the influence that the UN Secretary-General (SG) may desire from his senior advisors on their respective national capitals. For example, appointing U.S. citizens to head UNICEF and the World Food Program is surely expected to facilitate continued U.S. financial support for their operations. Finding and keeping the balance between these two priorities is one thing we must address. 

Political influence over senior UN appointments will not disappear, and a glance at the European Union’s painful efforts to assign EU member state officials into slots every five years or how the African Union (AU) commissioners are chosen reveals that the UN is hardly alone in facing political jockeying over senior positions. Currently, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe is paralyzed by political bickering, with all key positions being filled ad interim. But serious efforts to reinvigorate the UN system should include a rebalancing in the direction of the impartial, effective leadership envisioned in the United Nations Charter, even if political realities mean that the results will fall short of the absolute standard defined seventy-five years ago at its signing in San Francisco.  

A Spectrum of Compliance with the UN’s Oath of Office

Appointed by Ban Ki-Moon in his second term as SG, I also served under Antonio Guterres during his first fifteen months in office. Neither the Obama nor Trump administrations ever put me in a position that violated my oath of office as an international civil servant (even if UN colleagues suspected otherwise). Perhaps Ban hoped I would have possessed magic with Washington rather than merely serving as (what I have described) as a “translator” of Washington’s policies for him. The question remains whether I was less useful to Ban because I was so attentive to the impartiality required by my UN service.  

For others serving at the Under-Secretary-General (USG) and Assistant-Secretary-General (ASG) levels in either UN headquarters or in the field, the picture is mixed: some USGs and ASGs, especially those (few and declining in number) “career” appointees who rise from within the UN ranks, take the oath to UN impartiality quite seriously. Others remain in varying levels of allegiance or sensitivity to their home governments, often because they expect to return to their government service after leaving the UN.  

Several examples illustrate how wide the spectrum can be for independence of one’s home government. One of my predecessors as Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, Kieran Prendergast, did not disguise his conviction that the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was wrong on all levels, upsetting the Blair Government in his native United Kingdom. By contrast, after concluding his tenure as Under-Secretary-General for the UN’s Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA), Chinese national Wu Hongbu told CCTV that he represented Chinese interests inside the UN Secretariat, citing his expulsion of the head of the World Uyghur Congress from the  U.N. Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in 2017, a partisan maneuver Wu’s successor attempted again in subsequent years.  The perception inside the UN is that Paris’ monitoring of the Department of Peacekeeping Operations (DPKO, now the Department of Peace Operations) comes closer to the Chinese oversight of DESA than to the British and, now, United States’ benign neglect of the Department of Political Affairs (now Political and Peacebuilding Affairs) when led by UK and U.S. nationals.

The problem goes beyond P5 allegiances simply overriding a good faith interpretation of the UN oath of office. One USG invariably found ways to route his UN travel via his home capital, arriving back to New York gushing with refreshed enthusiasm for his country’s autocratic leader. An ASG noisily and intentionally drew attention to herself fleeing a banquet in her home country when Ban Ki-moon, visiting there, advocated for LBGTQ rights, despite host government hostility. Despite these examples, there are impressive UN officials at all levels and from all parts of the world who continue to take their oaths of office seriously. 

When Peace Operation Appointments are Politicized 

The process for appointing UN special representatives and special envoys (positions mostly at the USG level) heading peacekeeping operations and special political missions is tailor-made for political interference. To appoint these officials, the SG submits a letter to the fifteen Security Council members announcing his intended nominee, and Council members have forty-eight hours in which to “break silence”—i.e. voice their objections.  If no objections are raised, the appointment becomes effective.  

In this case, the veto-holding five permanent members (P5) and the elected ten members (E10) are equivalent: Any member can “break silence” and derail an appointment. In practice, the E10 rarely object, and the P5 are notified of nominations quietly in advance, to spare the SG, the P5 member, and the proposed candidate the more public rejection of “breaking the silence.” It should go without saying that having qualified leadership in UN peace operations, typically dealing with some of the world’s most dangerous conflict situations, requires both the Secretary-General in his search and the Council members in their endorsement to put the credentials of the proposed candidate above political calculations.  

Political bullying over Sudan and Libya 

Attempts this year to fill the heads of UN political missions in Sudan and Libya demonstrate how far UN hiring has diverged from this goal and from the ideals set forth in the Charter. They also reveal the extent to which over-politicization of appointments has undermined the UN’s work in two critical theatres. In Sudan, despite pushback from other Security Council members (and outright opposition from Russia and China), the French persisted for months in an ultimately unsuccessful effort to persuade Guterres to appoint a French national to head the UN’s nascent political mission in Khartoum, delaying its establishment at a critical moment in Sudan’s delicate political transition. France even induced senior Sudanese officials to lobby Guterres on behalf of this particular individual (who happened to be married to a Sudanese national with ties to one political faction in Khartoum). This would be the UN equivalent, entirely inappropriate, of Khartoum defining to Washington who the U.S. ambassador to Sudan should be. Had the French heavy-handedness succeeded, one wonders how the French national would have transcended perceptions that, rather than impartially representing the UN, he was carrying out French policies.   

In the case of senior UN leadership in Libya, the United States was the bully, although in opposition to candidates rather than in advocacy of any U.S. citizens.  Reminiscent of former U.S. ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley’s February 2017 move to short-circuit the appointment of the highly respected former Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad merely because of his nationality, Washington blocked two recent proposals by Antonio Guterres to head the United Nations Support Mission in Libya (UNSMIL).

The backstory reflects Guterres’ fervent courtship of the AU, with its 54 member states representing over a quarter of UN membership. AU officials, still smarting over being sidelined during the 2011 Libyan uprising, advocated replacing UNSMIL with a joint UN-AU mission. While the AU mantra “African solutions for African problems” applies in many cases, Libya’s conflict is also an Arab, European, and international problem. Moreover, the track record of joint missions, reporting to divergent bodies, is not promising (e.g., Darfur, Somalia, the UN-Arab League envoys to Syria). With no Security Council enthusiasm for a joint mission, Guterres promised AU leaders that, when Ghassan Salamé departed his post as UNSMIL head, he would compensate for the lack of a joint mission by appointing an African national as UNSMIL’s next head.  

Citing health reasons, Salamé resigned in March 2020. His position as head of UNSMIL remains vacant, as the United States blocked one African candidate proposed by Guterres and refused to give the green light on a second African candidate. But not wanting to be seen as stiffing Africa or rejecting altogether Guterres’ second choice (an experienced woman who served as her country’s foreign minister), the United States seized the opportunity of UNSMIL’s September mandate renewal to persuade the Security Council to create a new Libya special envoy position, to be located outside of Libya, to whom the UNSMIL head (now called “coordinator”) would report. In theory this allows Guterres to put his African candidate in Tripoli but in a subordinate position to the new special envoy (never mind that this bifurcated mission contradicts the usual American emphasis on budget-cutting and simplification of UN peace operations). Guterres’ candidate would surely hesitate about reporting to a special envoy rather than directly to the SG and Security Council. As a further complication, the three African members of the Security Council (known as the “A3”) had threatened for weeks to “break silence” in objection to any proposed special envoy candidate who is not an African national.

China has recently joined the game of alternately blocking and pushing candidates. Even before joining Russia to block the French candidate for the UN’s Sudan mission, Beijing pressured Guterres to appoint, in January 2019, a Chinese national as Special Envoy for the Great Lakes region of Africa. By all accounts, Xia Huang is qualified for the position, and one can hardly blame China—now the UN’s second-largest contributor to both the regular and the peacekeeping mandatory assessments—for expecting that a Chinese national would, for the first time, head a UN peace operation, as French, American, and British nationals have done repeatedly for years.  

Losing out on gender parity

Commendably, Guterres has effectively used the appointments of special representatives, special envoys, and their deputies to advance his goal of gender parity throughout the UN. More than 50 percent of his appointments to these positions since assuming office in January 2017 have been women. Today, the two largest UN political missions—in Afghanistan and Iraq—are both led by women (whose political deputies are also women), as is the head of the UN’s largest peacekeeping operation, MONUSCO, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The political mission in Iraq and the peacekeeping operation in Cyprus both have women in all top leadership positions. This is welcome news: there were no women as either heads of mission or their deputies in 1996, when Boutros Boutros Ghali served as UN Secretary-General.

But the picture is less encouraging when one looks only at the heads of mission, not the deputies. Even with progress under Guterres, of the 39 total peace operations (that is, peacekeeping operations, special political missions, and special or personal envoys) currently fielded by the UN, only 10 are headed by women,  (a few slots, including Libya and Sudan, are vacant). As Guterres looks to increase the number of women deployed at senior levels, there is a potentially deleterious impact of member states pushing favorite candidates for USG-level heads of peace operations: the candidates pushed by member states, and often accepted by the SG, are almost invariably men. Acceding to member state lobbying of male candidates to head peace operations at the USG level risks relegating qualified women to the secondary ASG-level slots.

Recommendations for a More Impartial UN

A few fixes, consistent with the Charter and the General Assembly resolutions, would start to clear away some of the political pollution over USG and ASG appointments. Given ongoing debates about the future of the multilateral system including the UN, officials at the UN and within member states may wish to consider the following among proposed reforms:

• Requiring those appointed at the USG or ASG level to resign from national government service. Currently, a USG or ASG can serve the UN while on leave of absence from national service. The perception, if not always reality, is that one cannot be impartial on matters related to national polities if expected to return to national service after leaving the UN.     
• Mandating a “cooling off” period of one year after UN employment, in which certain national positions would be off limits. While perhaps difficult to enforce, this would (like the above recommendation) reduce the temptation or perception of pandering to national governments while still in UN service in hopes of future employment.    
• Rotating the nationalities of persons in leadership positions, at least within the UN Secretariat and the peace operations, consistent with the General Assembly’s intentions and starting with P5 nationals.  French nationals have served as Under-Secretaries-General for Peacekeeping since 1997. Chinese nationals have led the Department of Economic and Social Affairs (DESA) since 2007, and three U.S. citizens have served sequentially as Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs in the same 13-year period.  British nationals have served as UN Humanitarian Coordinator continually since 2007. Russian citizens have enjoyed a near monopoly on the leadership of the UN’s Geneva headquarters for two decades, and Moscow will now presumably expect Russian nationals to succeed each other in the new USG-level counterterrorism advisor slot. The perception of entrenched P5 fiefdoms is not good for UN credibility in an increasingly multipolar world.  
• Appointing P5 nationals proposed by P5 capitals to ASG-level Secretariat slots rather than USG positions. ASG positions are more numerous (with five ASGs reporting to the two Under-Secretary-Generals for Political Affairs and Peacekeeping Operations) and would convey similar benefits to the UN (or P5 capitals) as USG-level positions, in terms of being able to interpret P5 policies for UN staff. This would allow geographic rotation at the USG level, to allow more influential roles from nationals of other states in both the Global North and Global South. Having Indians, Germans, South Africans, and others in USG positions would help keep these countries constructively engaged with, and invested in, the UN. This would not preclude having qualified P5 nationals serve as USGs elsewhere, such as heading peace operations, but it would end the P5 monopoly on heading Secretariat departments.    
• Reserving a portion of USG and ASG positions for those high-quality international civil servants who have built successful careers inside the United Nations. For decades, the UN has recruited senior leaders from both outside and inside the UN, in theory drawing from the best of new blood and experienced hands. But in recent years the mix has become unbalanced toward outsiders pushed by member states. However qualified those who can be deemed “political appointees” may be, there is a cost to morale, productivity, and retention of career officials in the UN, if they see no chance for promotion to leadership positions. A UN drive for “agility,” superficially unobjectionable, risks becoming an excuse for sidelining even the most qualified career professionals to clear the way for more member state nominees, especially if the 38th floor occupied by the SG and inner cabinet prioritize member state relations over UN principles and UN staff morale. 
• Emphasizing via a General Assembly resolution or an SG policy decision that member states are not the ones to select who will represent the United Nations in their countries, just as host countries do not select who their bilateral partners will deploy as ambassadors. Guterres could have stopped the machinations over the Sudan envoy immediately, had he warned the Sudanese that their lobbying was inappropriate. Member states would retain, via the process of diplomatic agrément and visa issuance, the ability to reject SG nominees considered unacceptable, but they could not hand-pick the UN representative and usurp the prerogatives of the SG and the Security Council. 

Achieving the Inside-Outside Balance

Given that the United Nations rests on the support of member states, it is unrealistic to imagine that, even if these recommendations were adopted, politics regarding senior-level UN appointments will evaporate under a renaissance of global goodwill. Secretaries-General, no longer viewed as having the same authority as Dag Hammarskjold (the second SG to hold the post, 1953-1961), will continue to seek support from member states, including by pandering to at least some appointment demands. Yet, the fact that both large and small states still compete for their nationals to be appointed to senior-level UN positions is perhaps a hopeful sign that these states continue to see the UN as relevant 75 years after its founding. It would be more worrying if P5 and others simply did not care who filled key slots.  

Nor, for that matter, are all political appointees by definition “bad” and all UN career employees “good,” in terms of the quality of their work and their embodiment of the spirit of the UN Charter. Sometimes the opposite is true, with national capitals proposing highly qualified individuals. Nor are all “outsiders,” for that matter, candidates of their governments. To name one example, Guterres proposed Ghassan Salamé for Libya because of his experience and qualifications, not because of any (non-existent in any case) Lebanese lobbying.  

In the best examples, appointees from the outside bring the networks and energy of major capitals to the United Nations, as well as different skills and experiences.  Career officials offer essential institutional memory and an understanding of how to draw upon the complex—and often infuriating but inescapable—UN system to achieve results. Geographic diversity of UN staff at all levels would signal that the organization accurately reflects its membership and contains the contacts, knowledge and experience to deal with challenges wherever they arise in the globe.

As any study of UN operations or other bureaucratic institutions shows, individuals make the difference between a successful or failed operation. A healthy combination of qualified, effective, geographically diverse “insiders” and “outsiders” at the UN’s senior ranks should be the goal, but with renewed emphasis on the impartiality required for international service. After all, when it comes to the peace and security issues that are at the heart of the UN’s purpose, UN legitimacy rests on  both impartiality and universality.

Last September, for the first time in three-quarters of a century, the United Nations General Assembly failed to bring together the heads of state and government who traditionally flock to New York each year to participate in its high-level debate. Courtesy of COVID-19, messages were kept virtual with digital technology conveying pre-recorded speeches, as a single attendant from each member state sat behind their corresponding country plates at UN headquarters. The British media spoke of a seventy-fifth “unhappy birthday”.  

However, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres had already adopted a somber tone since before the transformation of the health alert into a global pandemic. In January 2020, he conjured the “Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” to identify the most serious challenges facing the international community today: an increase in geopolitical tensions, the climate crisis, rising inequality at the heart of inequitable globalization, and the ominous side of the technological revolution. In his opening statement before an empty General Assembly hall last month, he brought up a fifth horseman: the global health crisis unleashed by the new coronavirus—described as the greatest test since the creation of the United Nations, and a defining moment for modern society. What are the implications of this diagnosis for the future of multilateralism?

Some observers suggest that multilateralism had been undergoing a long crisis since the Al-Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001. The universal manifestations of solidarity toward the victims of those attacks were still fresh in our memories, as the real and perceived interconnection between terrorism and security in the Middle East further inflamed an already unstable region.  As the only source of legitimacy for military intervention in situations other than self-defense, the Security Council was placed under stress by the war in Iraq, raising doubts as to the enduring relevance of a core obligation inherent to the multilateral system. With the benefit of hindsight, former Secretary-General Kofi Annan would contend in his memoirs that “far worse would have been a rubber stamp for a war fought on false premises. From such a misjudgment, the road back to credibility and legitimacy in the eyes of the world would have been far harder”.

The so-called unipolar moment may have peaked in 2003, with a trend toward multipolarity gaining visibility after the 2008 financial crisis, when the G-7 was replaced by a more inclusive group of twenty participants at the annual summits on economic coordination. Current international dynamics are often labeled as multipolar, even if considerable military and economic power continues to be wielded by the United States, and China’s path toward the number one position in terms of GDP places it in a category by itself.  It appears that remnants of unipolarity still coexist, along with elements of bipolarity. When Secretary-General Guterres speaks of “multidimensional multipolarity”, he seems to be hinting at this complex geopolitical rearrangement, in which the diplomatic, economic, or military capabilities to influence outcomes are undergoing a significant process of redistribution.  

Threats to the Global Economy and Security

Guterres has also alluded to a “Great Fracture” as an especially dangerous scenario in which the two largest economies, with their own priorities and internet capacities, risk creating a new global geo-strategic and military divide. Needless to say, the sort of international cooperation required to confront the current health and climate challenges, along with the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, is not made easier by a geopolitical transition that is challenging multilateralism in new ways.  

The UN at 75 faces a complex crossroads. It is possible to argue, however, that if the UN and the Bretton Woods institutions survived the Cold War and held their sway during the unipolar moment, there is no structural reason why they should be unable to retain their roles, and even thrive, in a more multipolar world. It is also possible to state that multilateralism has been delivering important results in the early 21st century. The consensus decisions achieved in 2015—with the adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change—are noteworthy examples.         

The picture is less encouraging when it comes to the promotion of peace and security. Indeed, the strategic perils announced by the First Horseman of the Apocalypse mentioned by the Secretary-General pose a systemic threat, rife with problematic consequences for the entire gamut of issues requiring international cooperation: from health and the environment to sustainable development and human rights. Yet, even in this domain, the panorama is not entirely negative. The call for a global ceasefire, prompted by the pandemic, has received significant support from governments, civil society and academia, and has created opportunities for diplomacy. 

While the dangers posed by an increasing number of nuclear warheads places the world under higher levels of alert, and the threat of nuclear proliferation persists, a Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons was successfully negotiated with the active involvement of non-governmental participants. Thanks to its central role, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) was awarded the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize. The Norwegian Nobel Committee explicitly admitted that it was under no illusion that an international prohibition would eliminate nuclear weapons. The prize can be interpreted, however, as recognition that a pioneering brand of multilateralism, which opens the door to civil society, can raise awareness and pressure the general public to unite around vital goals for humankind.

In his 2014 book entitled “World Order”, former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger undertakes a valuable and insightful analysis of our contemporary international environment. He says today’s unprecedented geopolitical transition coexists with manifestations of radical ideologies that contemplate a withdrawal from the sovereign nation State paradigm created through the treaties of Westphalia in 1648. In answer to the question “where do we go from here”, Kissinger establishes upfront that “a reconstruction of the international system is the ultimate challenge to statesmanship in our time”. The penalty for failing, he adds, is not necessarily a major war, but principally “an evolution into spheres of influence identified with particular domestic structures and forms of governance”—a landscape similar to the ‘Great Fracture’ mentioned by Guterres. Kissinger’s vision for the future is articulated as “a world order of states affirming individual dignity and participatory governance, and cooperating internationally in accordance with agreed-upon rules”.   

Security Council Reform?

In UN terms, references to “participatory governance” and “agreed-upon rules” bring to mind the decision-making processes and composition of the organization’s principal organs, on the one hand, and the importance of ensuring that international law is upheld by all and allowed to evolve, on the other. In no other forum within the UN system is the deficit in equitable participation more obvious than in the Security Council. With the redistribution of diplomatic influence, it has become vital and urgent to expand the organ entrusted with the primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security.   

An obsolete Security Council is incompatible with the kind of strengthened multilateral system required to navigate the current turbulence just as the G7 was considered insufficiently inclusive to face the 2008 economic crisis. But beyond the need for participatory mechanisms there is scope for seeking to refine the conceptual frameworks for the promotion of a more peaceful world. This is already happening, to some extent, as the twin resolutions on ‘sustaining peace’ adopted by the Security Council and the General Assembly in 2016 indicate. Attempts at refining conceptual tools, however, presuppose a reaffirmation of the lasting relevance of key Charter provisions. The future of modern society and international cooperation would indeed be at stake should the core understandings outlawing the use of force suffer any erosion. These Chapter VII constraints on unilateralism represented a step forward for civilization in 1945 and have acquired a lasting stature.         

To put an end to the multiple conflicts that continue to inflame numerous parts of the world –Africa and the Middle East in particular– Secretary-General Guterres has called for a ‘surge’ in diplomacy. To ensure that countries do not relapse into conflict and that situations of tension do not degenerate into belligerence, he has prioritized ‘prevention’ in the agenda for sustaining peace. These are not revolutionary ideas, but rather simple admonitions that reflect the painful lessons of the past few years in which military interventions, irrespective of their motives, have created more problems than solutions.     

In remarks to the Security Council, as he began his tenure at the UN in 2017, Guterres argued in favor of a need to ‘rebalance our approach to peace and security’, which he considers to have been previously dominated by responding to conflict rather than preventing war and sustaining peace. According to this reasoning, he acknowledges that member states have been mistrustful of placing an emphasis on prevention, due to understandable concerns over sovereignty. While recognizing that prevention should never be used to serve hidden agendas, Guterres considers, rather, that “prevention is best served by strong sovereign states acting for the good of their people”.  

In a 2018 report on Peace Building and Sustaining Peace, the secretary-general stated in his conclusions that “sustaining peace is first and foremost a responsibility of member states. The mirror image of a United Nations system that is better oriented toward prevention, human rights and sustainable development is a membership that sees these as mutually reinforcing, sovereignty-affirming and within national interests.”

The notion of prevention as a sovereignty enhancer introduces a new perspective to discussions that began during Annan’s tenure, in the aftermath of Rwanda and Srebrenica. A moral imperative to exercise a collective responsibility in preventing such atrocities from ever happening again – including through military intervention if necessary – led many to view sovereignty as an obstacle to prevention. The notion of a “responsibility to protect” (R2P) sought to overcome a possible incompatibility between respect for the non-interference Charter provisions of Article 2.7 and a moral duty to defend human lives. R2P gained general acceptance in the 2005 UN World Summit Outcome and entered the halls of the Security Council in 2011, through UN Resolution 1973 on the Libyan crisis. Another set of concerns was brought to the fore by interventions which instead of promoting peace and stability ended up disseminating war and terrorism, even if unintentionally. A Responsibility while Protecting (RwP) was posited as a necessary corollary to R2P, in a note circulated by the Delegation of Brazil to the Security Council (UN General Assembly – Security Council. Document A/66/551 – S/2011/701).       

A State Responsibility

As the host country to the 2019 Aswan Forum on Sustainable Peace and Development in Africa, Egypt embraced the view that conflict prevention is a state responsibility, requiring leadership and commitment. The Forum’s set of conclusions proposes a “paradigm shift from crisis management to sustainable peace and development”, while endorsing the idea that conflict prevention can become a sovereignty enhancer. This may seem like a minor modulation, but its systemic implications should not be underestimated. In a broader sense, Harvard Professor Stephen Walt adopts a similar stance in a 2020 article entitled “Countries should mind their own business: two cheers for a classic idea that’s been out of fashion for too long”. 

Walt is straightforward in pointing out that those who interfere in foreign countries “rarely understand what they are doing, and even well-intentioned efforts often fail due to ignorance, unintended consequences or local resentment and resistance”. No roundabout formulas are employed in identifying Libya as an example of the above. As he reminds us, “the idea that individual nations should be (mostly) free to chart their own course at home remains deeply embedded in the present world order”. His conclusion is that respect for boundaries and sovereignty will ultimately help countries with different values to cooperate on critical issues. 

The concept of the sovereign territorial state may have been with us since the 1648 treaties of Westphalia, but, in contrast with 17th century Europe, we have today a body of universally accepted international laws and principles around which to unite and cooperate. Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd recently stated that, although the UN at 75 has demonstrated a vocation for longevity, one should not assume it is capable of automatic “self-regeneration”. As the international community grapples with a complex crossroads confronting multilateralism, the necessary vehicles to move in the right direction include a reaffirmation of important established norms, overdue structural reforms, and a renewed look at ideas that may have seemed old-fashioned until recently.   

The United Nations (UN) deserves the celebration of its 75th anniversary.  It is an enormous step forward in the organization of relations between nation states and, timidly, between humans. Along with the system of agencies, programs, and funds to which it gave its name, it has been hailed for what it has achieved, but also been a subject of attacks and abuse. This tension between praise and denunciation is inherent in the charter of the UN and in the international system within which the organization operates. This tension is not a shortcoming of the UN. It reflects the ideals and realities of the international state system that created the organization and still conditions its subsistence at present and in the foreseeable future. The ideals resulted in significant progress for humankind. The realities condemned the organization to failings in a host of political and economic questions.

The Tensions

There are several manifestations of the tension between ideals and realities. However, two deserve to be initially discussed. In the first words of the preamble of the UN Charter, “We the peoples of the United Nations” proclaim the organization’s ideals. The “peoples” declare some lofty ends that they are determined to achieve, but a few paragraphs later the “peoples” leave it to their governments to agree to the charter that established the organization. The first tension is between the peoples that declare the ends and the states that establish the organization or join it later. States are represented by their governments, which are only responsible for the safety, security, and wellbeing of their own peoples. For many governments, these objectives have absolute primacy, irrespective of the interests of other peoples that partook in the solemn declaration of the lofty ends. This is obvious in the nationalism and populism that spread across the globe from North America to Europe to Africa and Asia at the beginning of the third decade of  the 21st century.   

The second manifestation of tension in the UN charter is an extension of the first and can be found between the crucial first two articles of the charter. Article 1 on the purposes of the United Nations defines the ideals that moved the founders to establish the organization. These purposes include maintaining international peace and security; developing friendly relations among nations based on respect for the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples; achieving international cooperation in solving international economic, social, cultural, and humanitarian problems and in promoting human rights and fundamental freedoms; and being a center for harmonizing national actions to attain these common ends. These lofty ideals and goals for humankind have been uncontested in all cultures over the ages. 

Article 2 lays down seven principles that the organization should observe in the realization of its purposes. These principles include the sovereign equality of member states; members fulfilling obligations assumed under the charter in good faith; settlement of international disputes by peaceful means; and member states refraining from threat or use of force against territorial integrity or political independence of any state. The prohibition of war, theretofore legitimate, as a means to realizing states’ objectives and interests, is an immense achievement of the United Nations that constrains states’ actions in the interest of the entire community of nations and peoples. 

But there is a principle which inserts a measure of reality and opens the door for circumscribing the hopeful aspirations of the community of “peoples”: non-intervention by the United Nations in matters which are essentially within the domestic jurisdiction of any state. Undoubtedly, this principle has its justifications as it preserves the independence of states and protects them from intervention in their internal affairs orchestrated by the influence of powerful states in decision-making processes. This principle preempts possible outcomes of power disparities and, as such, is welcome. However, it can also undermine the realization of the UN’s purposes. At different points in time, some member states may consider harmonizing national actions and cooperating in solving common issues and in promoting human rights and fundamental freedoms as interventions in their internal affairs. Two purposes of the United Nations would thus be frustrated. 

Tension also exists within the principles of the United Nations. While Article 2 explicitly provides for the sovereign equality of member states, an implicit principle of inequality is hidden in articles 23 and 27. In these two articles, five states are given permanent seats in the Security Council and then granted veto power over the decisions on the maintenance of peace and security that may be reached by other “equal” member states. The justifications of these privileges can be understandable: without them the United States and the Soviet Union would not have joined the United Nations. A universal organization without the two most powerful states at the end of World War II would have neither made sense nor been effective. The lessons of the United States not joining the League of Nations a generation earlier and thus contributing to the League’s inability to prevent World War II were only too recent.

Finally, tension exists between the norms of the United Nations and the distribution of power in the larger international system. In the General Assembly, the one-state, one-vote formula—materializing the principle of sovereign equality of member states—is the means to decision-making, with no veto power for any state. Even if resolutions were generally adopted by consensus in the last several decades, it is difficult to go against the large majority of developing countries that by far outweigh great powers. Many resolutions are thus adopted that are not to the liking of these powers. This makes them consider that the equality principle undermines the military, political, and economic power which they hold and that they would like to benefit from their dealings in the international system. They do not openly criticize the General Assembly’s one-state, one-vote formula. Nonetheless,  to make up for this “unfair treatment”, great powers, especially the United States, attack the United Nations, question its legitimacy, cast doubt on its honesty, and interfere with its functioning, in particular by withholding payment of their assessed contributions to the organization’s budget. The United Nations secretariat, which  implements the General Assembly’s resolutions, in particular, is the object of these attacks.      

The review above does not regret the tensions but rather registers them. These tensions did not keep the United Nations from making great strides forward in the last seventy-five years. But failings also marked the history of the organization. Hereafter, the examples of progress and failing registered by the United Nations will be particularly but not exclusively drawn from the Middle East and Africa.  

Progress Realized by the United Nations

The ideals that inspired the United Nations were powerful enough to draw the organization toward the realization of a number of its purposes. Decolonization and the access to independence for states in Africa, Asia, the Caribbean, and the Pacific Ocean are possibly the foremost achievements of the United Nations, by which the organization wiped out the affront that large swaths of humankind experienced since the 18th and 19th centuries. This is a materialization of the principle of equal rights and self-determination of peoples that is one purpose of the United Nations. It is true that most newly independent states still suffer from underdevelopment and an unjust international economic system. But independence is a necessary, even if insufficient step, toward full emancipation and justice. 

Operationalizing the collective security principle enshrined in the charter, referred to in the principles of the organization as “enforcement measures under Chapter VII”, the United Nations intervened militarily to liberate Kuwait in 1991 and restore its independence.  

The United Nations could creatively interpret the charter to remedy breaches to international security in cases of divergence between permanent members of the Security Council. This creative interpretation was applied for the first time in Egypt to remedy the breach in international peace and security that the Suez campaign represented in 1956, and ten times thereafter. 

Still in the Middle East, the United Nations deployed its first military observers on the truce lines between the Arab States and Israel in 1948. In the 1970s, it deployed disengagement forces between Egypt and Israel, between Syria and Israel, as well as an interim force in south Lebanon to keep Israeli forces in check. 

In Africa, the United Nations mobilized action against the crime of Apartheid, including the adoption of a specific convention to eliminate it, until it was finally vanquished. It was under UN auspices that Namibia became independent from South Africa in 1990.

Since the 1960s, the United Nations has adopted successive international development strategies intended to further the development of newly independent and other developing states. In 1974, it went a significant step further with  the adoption in the General Assembly of Resolutions 3101 and 3102 on the establishment of a new international economic order (NIEO) that was more just and conducive to development. The NIEO receded into oblivion and the development strategies did not produce their intended results. But it is not the United Nations that should be faulted for that. It is rather that the United Nations cannot affect the functioning of the world economy and politics. There is too little and ever declining United Nations influence relative to the global economic and political environment. Since the 1980s, the regular budget of the United Nations has been under constant pressure, with zero growth rates in real and even in nominal terms for much of the period.

The legislative role of the United Nations has been nothing short of outstanding. It negotiated and adopted norms of international law in a number of significant areas. Inter alia, the General Assembly adopted conventions governing the seas, outer space, and the environment as well as treaties on the codification of international law. 

In the field of human rights, the United Nations adopted eight major conventions and related protocols that give legally binding effects to the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. This is a materialization of a clearly formulated purpose of the organization. But the implementation of these conventions in ways that effectively protect the exercise of human rights and fundamental freedoms comes up against the principle of non-intervention in member states’ internal affairs. Invoking this principle is at times justified. At other times, it is not, and only serves to justify authoritarian modes of governing that scorn human value and despise what freedom could bring to societies. This is an embodiment of the tension between the purposes and principles of the United Nations. 

The Failings

The implicit principle of the United Nations, which consecrates the primacy of five members, bears the greater responsibility in the United Nations’ failings in a number of questions affecting international peace and security. The first of these questions is Palestine and by extension the Middle East problem. This is not the place to trace a history of the Palestinian question. Suffice it to say that the purposes of maintaining international peace and security and the principle of self-determination of peoples were not sufficient to push for a settlement of the Palestinian question that included the exercise by the Palestinian people of their right to self-determination, albeit in only a small part of mandate Palestine. The permanent members of the Security Council could not live up to their supposedly prime responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security. In particular, the United States specifically and repeatedly abused its veto power to obstruct the adoption of resolutions it deemed to be against Israel’s interests. 

The United Nations continues to be helpless before the Syrian tragedy. It could do nothing to prevent or to stop the civil conflict and the destruction of Syria. Russia’s threat to use its veto power frustrated any effort to adopt a resolution on the situation in Syria. Ironically, the grounds for the threat were the abuse of the Council’s resolution on Libya, which was used to change the regime there rather than protect the Libyan population.

Because permanent members did not want to act, in Rwanda, the United Nations stood by as 800,000 people were massacred in 1994. In the following year, the organization could neither prevent nor stop the Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia. 

Extended sanctions were imposed on Iraq in the 1990s that brought hunger, disease, and suffering to the Iraqi population without affecting its supposedly targeted leadership. Another failing was that the organization stood by watching the world hegemon intervene militarily in a member state without the authorization of the Security Council, as was explicitly mandated against in Article 42 of the charter. This was the case of the U.S. intervention in Iraq in 2003. A similar intervention was that of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Kosovo in 1999.    

The Way Forward

The Middle East is the theater of quite a few examples of failings and abuse of the United Nations. This makes the skepticism in the region about the organization understandable. But is this helplessness and abuse not compensated for by the organization’s specific interventions in the region such as in Egypt, Kuwait, and Lebanon, and by its functions and universal roles? In its interventions, the United Nations is an actor. In its role of development of international law, the United Nations is a forum where developing countries come together in defense of their interests. Middle East states are among these developing countries. Collectively, they are in a much stronger position than they can ever be individually. Middle East countries also benefit from the exchange of experience and knowledge that is at the heart of international cooperation.

Reform of the United Nations is not the subject of this short article. However, when considering reform, the observer finds that such a process would be about relaxing the tensions discussed above. This is not an easy undertaking considering the present state of the international system. Even though they are at times abused and hamper the purposes of the United Nations, the principles of non-intervention in internal affairs and of the defense of sovereignty protect member states from undue interference. 

It is obvious to all concerned that the reform of the Security Council is the principal bone of contention in the reform of the United Nations.  It can indefinitely put off meaningful reform because the “unequal” members of the organization are not close to relinquishing their privileges. A meaningful reform of the Security Council is therefore difficult to envisage for the moment. Nonetheless, a reasonably modest one should be attempted. 

The overall reform of the United Nations does not only concern the Security Council. Reform does not need to take up the tensions directly and frontally. Thought could be given to developing structures of economic and social cooperation governed by the one-state, one-vote formula. Multiplying the democratic organs of the organization should water down the privileges accorded to permanent members in the peace and security sector of the organization. It would hopefully also contribute to altering the distribution of power in the environing international system that conditions the functioning of the United Nations.

We are, as a species, a distractible lot—especially at a time of seemingly endless diversions, news events large and small, and discord that stretches across the globe, from Hong Kong to Venezuela to Belarus. Yet, there are trends that deserve our focus, and the deaths of at least eighty-five people over the last two years at the hands of gunmen driven by white supremacist hatred cannot be ignored.

On October 27, 2018, a gunman shouting “All Jews must die” stormed the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in the United States and slaughtered eleven congregants as they gathered to pray. Not five months later, on March 15, 2019, another gunman posted a white supremacist manifesto online referring to the slaughter in Pittsburgh, then live-streamed a rampage through Christchurch, New Zealand, where he slew fifty-one Muslims at two different mosques. A month later, at a Chabad synagogue in Southern California, a white supremacist killed one worshipper and wounded three others, including the rabbi, after posting another manifesto that praised the killers in Christchurch and Pittsburgh.

On August 3, 2019, a 21-year-old man posted his own white supremacist manifesto, then drove more than one thousand kilometers to El Paso, Texas and opened fire in a Walmart retail store, intending to repel what he saw as a “Hispanic invasion”. When the rampage ended, twenty-two were dead, victims of an ideology that appears to be spreading wherever white people proclaim that they are being “replaced” by black and brown-skinned people. 

The response to the El Paso slaughter on 8chan, an online free-for-all chat board frequented by white supremacists, was instructive. “Contrary to popular belief, we do not hate spics, n**gers, or even arabs (sic), and near enough without exception are happy to have them live IN THEIR OWN LANDS,” wrote one poster minutes after the shooting. “The only issue is them coming to our lands, but we do not BLAME THEM for that. We BLAME THE JEWS.”

Those mass shootings—plus another deadly December shootout at a Kosher grocery store in Jersey City, New Jersey that took three more lives; a Hanukkah stabbing in Monsey, New York, that same month; and the deaths of nine more at the hands of a white supremacist in Hanau, Germany, in February—are only the ones we are aware of. Smaller, less-visible episodes have surely taken place without receiving as much attention. Mass shootings at schools in Florida and Texas were less directly connected to white supremacist ideology, but the gunmen involved appear to at least have been exposed to “theories” variably known as “White Genocide” or “The Great Replacement”, the notion that a tide of black and brown people is rising to eradicate the white race at the behest and orchestration of the evil genius Ashkenazi Jew. 

These murders are only the ones that came to fruition. The Anti-Defamation League, a Jewish-led American civil rights organization dedicated to combating bigotry, recently wrote that at least twelve white supremacists had been arrested in the United States in the year after the Pittsburgh attack on allegations that they were plotting or threatening anti-Semitic attacks. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) both affirmed this fall that white supremacist extremism is the biggest domestic threat that the world’s remaining superpower faces.

Some of the plots that have been foiled could have been horrific. When Christopher Hasson, a self-proclaimed white supremacist and U.S. Coast Guard officer, was arrested in February 2019, he had amassed an enormous arsenal of shotguns; handguns; semiautomatic, military-style assault rifles; ammunition; and a “kill list” that included some of the most prominent leaders of the United States’ Democratic Party. “We need a white homeland as Europe seems lost,” Hasson wrote in his own manifesto, inspired by other white supremacist killers—especially the deadliest of them all, Anders Breivik, who murdered seventy-seven people in Norway in 2011.

The ideological web that connects Breivik to all the killers who followed him is spreading through dedicated white supremacist websites like The Daily Stormer, unregulated online chat sites like 4chan and 8chan, and allegedly “well-regulated” social media sites like Twitter and Facebook, where racist and anti-Semitic content is supposed to be banned, but white supremacists gamely evade the content police. On October 8, 2019, YouTube purged a video uploaded to its servers by the violent neo-Nazi Atomwaffen Division. Two days later, the same video was re-uploaded to an account with the same display name and copied dozens of times. 

“YouTube is either unable or unwilling to employ comprehensive and consistent methods to tackle the problem of white supremacism on their platform,” wrote the Counter Extremism Project, a technology group working to counter online extremist messaging, from white supremacy to violent Islamism.

If anything, the coronavirus pandemic and resulting lockdowns and economic recession will foster still more extremism. Anti-Semitic conspiracy theories tracing the creation and spread of the virus to billionaire investor George Soros and a secretive Jewish cabal have ricocheted around the internet. In its annual “threat assessment”, the DHS highlighted the extremism churning beneath a locked-down society’s surface.

American Jewish Response

The reaction of American Jews to the rise of deadly anti-Semitism seems to range from denial to befuddled inaction to rank both as side-ism. When Donald Trump began shifting the blame of unrest to the left and a loose-knit group of radicals known as “Antifa”, the American Jewish Committee joined in the effort to find an equivalence between leftwing and rightwing violent extremism—despite the conclusion of Trump’s own government that rightwing extremism poses a far more pronounced danger. Admittedly, it is all so new. While violent bigotry and white supremacism are sewn into the fabric of American life, anti-Semitic violence is not, at least not on the massive scale shown by the former in the last two years. A nation founded on the creed that “all men are created equal” could not have cradled race-based slavery for 250 years (from the arrival of the first African slaves to our shores in 1619), hatched the Ku Klux Klan, and embraced the public terror of lynching without white supremacist ideology. 

Anti-Semitism—targeted hatred and discrimination aimed at Jews—has existed in what is now the United States since twenty-three Portuguese Jews from the Netherlands disembarked in what was then New Amsterdam in 1654. Peter Stuyvesant, the Dutch colonial governor and father of New York City, wrote to the directors of the Dutch West Indies Company, “We have, for the benefit of this weak and newly developing place and the land in general, deemed it useful to require them [the Portuguese Jews] in a friendly way to depart, praying also most seriously in this connection, for ourselves as also for the general community of your worships, that the deceitful race—such hateful enemies and blasphemers of the name of Christ—be not allowed to further infect and trouble this new colony.” 

Despite such anti-Semitism, Jews stayed in North America and thrived, and while acts of violence toward Jews, such as the lynching of Leo Frank in 1915 or the bombings of southern synagogues in the 1950s and 1960s, at times shocked the nation’s conscience, they did not come to be indelibly identified with Jewish life in America. The massacre at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, with eleven killed, was the deadliest act of violence against Jews in the 365 years that Jews have lived in North America. That is remarkable considering the history of racist bloodletting in the United States, from the massacre of about 300 indigenous Lakota people at Wounded Knee, South Dakota in 1890 to Tulsa, Oklahoma, where as many as three hundred African-Americans were killed by a white mob in 1921.

When my book (((Semitism))): Being Jewish in America in the Age of Trump was published in the spring of 2018, it went through the history of the emerging white supremacist “alt-right” threat, the deadly white nationalist march in Charlottesville, Virginia in 2017 that took the life of an antiracist counter-protester, and the swarming bigots on the internet who were and are willing to destroy the lives of anyone who catches their eyes. 

The book was inspired by my own experiences during the 2016 presidential election, when an organized online mob targeted Jewish journalists like myself with an endless barrage of threats, violent images, taunts, and trickery. The online assault forced me to examine this new breed of anti-Semitism and grapple with the forces unleashed by Donald Trump’s nationalist movement. I started with a warning: “The Jew flourishes when borders come down, when boundaries blur, when walls are destroyed, not erected.” Trump’s brand of intolerant nationalism was on the rise globally, from Washington to Warsaw, Manila to Milan, Budapest to Brasilia. I wanted American Jewry to take heed that such forces historically have tended to turn against us. 

I am convinced that more rightwing anti-Semitic bloodshed is inevitable. But Jews in America have not responded with anything like united resolve; rather, there is fear. 

In a poll of American Jewry taken by the American Jewish Committee ahead of the first anniversary of the Pittsburgh massacre, 84 percent of respondents said they think anti-Semitism has increased in the United States in the past five years. About 20 percent said they had been the target of anti-Semitic remarks online, while 23 percent said they had been targeted by anti-Semitic comments in person or through mail or phone. A third of American Jewry said they have avoided outward displays of their faith—jewelry with Jewish symbols or wearing a skullcap—for fear of a hostile response. 

Yet, an organized, sustained effort to counter rising intolerance is not greatly evidenced. In my book, I wrote of what I called “The Israel Deception”, the all-consuming debate over Israel that has distracted American Jewry from the trends in our own society that could do real harm. The “alt-right”, a name that rightwing bigoted nationalists gave themselves, emerged in the later years of George W. Bush’s White House in 2007 and 2008, when some fringe conservatives, disenchanted with Bush’s foreign policy adventurism and the collapse of the global financial system, turned inward. Yet, Jews did not notice this gathering storm until 2016, with the rise of Trumpism and that movement’s merger with the existing alt-right. Why? Because in the complacency of the Obama era, American Jews fought with each other or with outside forces almost exclusively over the Jewish state Israel.

Predictably, my calling out “The Israel Deception” only heightened the preoccupation. As I travel the country discussing my book, I am almost always confronted with Israel. To differing degrees, Jewish audiences have told me that I have it all wrong: that the real threat to Jewry comes not from the violent right but from the intolerant left. And by “leftwing anti-Semitism”, what they really mean is rising anti-Israel attitudes. In East Hampton, New York, after I was accused of being a self-hating Jew, I was told in the sanctuary of the Jewish Center, “the number of rightwing anti-Semites could fit in this room. The number of leftwing anti-Semites would fill this city.” 

Confused Conflict: Israel, Anti-Zionism, and Anti-Semitism

By the calculus of Trump’s Jewish apologists, Trumpist nationalism is not a manifestation of the threat facing Jews, and President Trump is not part of the problem; he is the savior, the greatest American friend that Israel ever had.

After Pittsburgh, I figured that such relativism would fade away. Surely my co-religionists would see that while anti-Israel sentiments can at times spill into anti-Semitism, the young activists leading the anti-Zionist movement do not carry semiautomatic weapons and periodically open fire. I was wrong. The fighting between those warning against the anti-Semitic left and those fearing the anti-Semitic right has gone on unabated.

The inclusion of Israel in that debate has been confusing, in part because of the actions of Israel’s leadership. Yes, I warned, and still believe, intolerant nationalism is almost always catastrophic for Jews. When politicians begin defining who is and is not truly of a nation, who is and is not a true German, a real comrade of the Soviet Union, or a loyal citizen of Gaul, they usually choose Jews as the essence of the outsider in their midst—with lethal consequences. 

However, nobody has been more adept at bigoted nationalism than Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Few have used national identity as deftly or been more willing to openly scapegoat the ethnic outsider—the Palestinian or the Arab Israeli—to rally voters to his side. Even Trump has tried (poorly) to keep a few black entertainers or Latino businessmen in his camp as testifiers to his true pluralistic heart. Netanyahu long ago dispensed with such niceties, even making common cause with nationalists like Hungary’s former Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, who have dabbled in political anti-Semitism themselves. Confusing, I say, because if anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism, and if Israel’s longest-serving prime minister is the world’s foremost exemplar of Zionism as well as nationalism, how could nationalism be equated with anti-Semitism? 

And how could the movements behind Trump or Orbán or Brazil’s President Jair Bolsanaro be threats if those men are so aligned with Israel’s leadership? To many American Jews, especially older Jews, the Netanyahu–Trump alliance has been licensed to turn away from the growing pile of corpses left in the wake of the white nationalist movement. 

And don’t think the white nationalists haven’t noticed. Their leaders, like Richard Spencer, often say they are pro-Israel, because to them, Israel is the ethno-nationalist state they crave. If the Jews can have their own state, why can’t white people? In his rambling manifesto, a bizarre question-and-answer with himself, the New Zealand shooter asked, “Are you an anti-Semite?” He answered, “No, a Jew living in Israel is no enemy of mine, so long as they do not seek to subvert or harm my people.”

Demographics are not, however, on the side of those Jews unwilling to confront bigotry in the name of their allegiance to Israel or to its perceived protector, Donald Trump. 

Those who claim that “leftwing anti-Semitism” is the real threat have already lost the generation of American Jews currently at universities or emerging from them. Most of those young American Jews do not share the blind loyalty to Israel that their parents and grandparents had, and have, and have tried to instill in them. If they are not openly hostile to Israel, they are largely indifferent, attracted to Judaism’s commitment to social justice but not its sense of nationhood. 

The world’s struggles with the coronavirus pandemic will only hasten this generational shift. American Jews coming of age during the worst public health crisis in a century have seen the dangers of an incompetent government response and are not likely to fall for rhetorical feints like warnings of a rising, dangerous left or an appeal to solidarity with Israel. Ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities in and around New York City have joined Trump and his most ardent followers in railing against the public health strictures of masks and social distancing, even attacking journalists. But they are a tiny minority in a larger American Jewish community that has firmly sided with established science and epidemiology.

All of that is more bad news for old-line Jewish organizations like the American Jewish Committee and the Jewish Federations, which were falling away even before the pandemic. Newer, smaller Jewish organizations like Bend the Arc, focused on social justice in the United States, not support for Israel, are on the rise. 

Toward A True Schism or New Coalition?

If young Jews are told that their Jewish identity revolves around their identification with the Jewish state Israel, they will make their choice and walk away. That is what even liberal pro-Israel groups like J Street and the New Israel Fund are finding. The world’s two remaining great Jewish populations—Israeli and American—appear to be heading toward a schism, a true break. This break is based on a clear ideological divide between one population—Israeli, that believes that ethnic identity and national cohesion are fundamental to its survival—and the other, American, that increasingly feels that ethnic identity and nationalism are threats to its survival. The latter believes that only with the reemergence of tolerant pluralism can the American Jewish community regain its sense of security.

I do not posit this schism as a good thing. In a world where Jews are a tiny, always threatened sliver of the population, the cleaving of the last two significant Jewish populations is an existential threat to Judaism itself. Moreover, the adherence of Jewish civil rights groups like the Anti-Defamation League to the fundamental, non-negotiable belief in Israel as an autonomous Jewish homeland is becoming a real impediment to their core civil rights missions in the United States. 

At multiple events around my book, I have been paired with a representative of the Anti-Defamation League, who was confronted by black or Muslim activists who see no way to separate the Anti-Defamation League’s civil rights mission from its Zionism. 

When I wrote the chapter “The Israel Deception”, my counsel was that Jewish, Muslim, immigrant, African-American, and LGBT rights organizations needed to agree to disagree on the Israel–Palestine issue and set it aside to make common cause against intolerance and bigotry. I would never say that Jewish civil rights groups need to renounce Zionism or their support for Israel as a Jewish state to pursue coalition building. That is completely unfair. 

But I do now see that simply setting aside the issue may be impossible. Instead, groups like the Anti-Defamation League need to find some common denominator with other civil rights groups on Israel, Gaza, and the occupied West Bank. That common cause could be civil rights—or human rights—for all people living in Israel and the territories. 

While it may be naïve to believe that issues of national and political sovereignty can be hived off from human rights, I do believe all actors in an anti-bigotry coalition can at least agree that the human rights and dignity of Palestinians, Israeli Arabs, Druze, and yes, Israeli Jews, need to be safeguarded. 

To underscore its commitment to that notion, the Anti-Defamation League should take the significant step of embracing legislation, written by an American member of Congress named Betty McCollum, that for the first time would use American military aid to Israel as leverage to demand more humane treatment of Palestinian children in the West Bank. Saying that U.S. military assistance cannot be used to jail children does not seem too much to ask, and an affirmative gesture like that could at least jumpstart coalition-building between established Jewish groups and the vibrant young activists in Black Lives Matter and other nascent civil rights movements.

These are enormous and intractable issues: the rise of intolerance globally, the conflict between Jews and Palestinians that predates even the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948, and the looming schism between American and Israeli Jews. But they are all intertwined. Sadly, they must be confronted together.

In the early hours of October 12, 1958, in my hometown white supremacists calling themselves the “Confederate Underground” exploded fifty sticks of dynamite in a recessed doorway at my synagogue in Atlanta, the Temple. At an earlier time, in 1915, a congregant of the same synagogue, Leo Frank, was dragged out of a prison in Milledgeville, Georgia, and lynched by an anti-Semitic mob for a murder he almost certainly did not commit. Frank’s lynching sent the Jews of my southern city into a defensive crouch. Half of Atlanta’s Jewish population simply left.

In 1958, the response to the Temple bombing was different. Rabbi Jacob Rothschild’s sermon that Friday was entitled “And None Shall Make Them Afraid”. Ralph McGill, the editor of the Atlanta Constitution, wrote the words of the re-emergent citizen of the world, where identity is both universal and nonexistent. “You cannot preach and encourage hate for the Negro and hope to restrict it to that field,” he advised. “When the wolves of hate are loosed on one people, then no one is safe.”

As the United States approaches an election of multigenerational import, an election that could decide its future, those are words to remember. The threat of white supremacist intolerance and hate is not theoretical; it is here. The carnage does not lie. 

The response of the Jewish population and the population at large needs to match it. The mobilization during this election season has to be shaped not against a particular candidate, but around the ideals that the United States has long represented, however inconsistently and incompletely: freedom in a multiethnic, multiracial, multireligious democracy, tolerant of dissent but not of bigotry. Hard choices are overdue, as there will be sacrifices needed to defend democratic pluralism…and the wolves of hate are already loosed.

Political Narratives in the Middle East and North Africa: Conceptions of Order and Perceptions of Instability. Edited by Wolfgang Mühlberger, Toni Alaranta, Springer, 2020

As part of Springer’s series on “Perspectives on Development in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Region”, this edited volume focuses on the importance of political narratives in making sense of the complexities of the MENA countries. The volume addresses this subject from a cross-disciplinary perspective utilizing linguistics, political science, International Relations (IR), and comparative Middle Eastern studies. From Christina Lin’s chapter in the volume, narratives are defined as “compelling story lines which can explain events convincingly from which inferences can be drawn” (Freedman 2006). She further explains that: “Strategic narratives, or stories with a political purpose used by actors to affect the behavior of others, may thus have a major impact on the international order.” Given that the MENA region is often seen as a problematic, conflict-ridden area of the world, narratives at the local, regional, and global levels compete to explain the sources of problems and conflicts in the region in order to mobilize support for particular collective action and/or policy responses.

The editors have organized the volume with an introduction that provides the conceptual framework for the substantive chapters, which are divided into two parts—Part I: Non-State Actors and Regional Powers: Narrating and Reshaping Order and Part II: Global Players’ Narratives Towards MENA Instability—and then ending with a concluding chapter. Part I of the volume focuses on local and regional actors in the MENA region, namely narratives of Hezbollah activists over the decision to send fighters to Syria, the clash between Israeli and Palestinian metanarratives, competing narratives influencing Turkey’s foreign policy in the region; and the role of narratives in the rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia in establishing hegemony in this area of the world, leading to division in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Part II of the volume focuses on the narratives of the following global actors who have strategic interests in the region: Russia, China, the United States, and the European Union.

Every chapter in this volume is strong.  Even though the focus of the volume is on the MENA region post-Arab Spring, current narratives have histories.  Each contributor provides empirical evidence in the form of key historical events and material conditions as the context for how narratives emerge, disappear, reappear, and transform over time as well as how competing narratives struggle for hegemony at the local, regional and global levels. The chapter on Hezbollah militants’ narratives’ contribution is that it gives voice to the party activists (“ordinary people”) instead of party elites. The author, Erminia Chiara Calabrese, shows the variation in narratives among activists in regards to Hezbollah’s decision to send fighters to Syria to support the Al-Assad regime, with some activists expressing distress that Hezbollah had become involved in the affairs of another country instead of focusing on protecting Lebanon. Moreover, the chapter demonstrates how activists adjusted their narratives over time to accept Hezbollah’s involvement in the Syrian civil war. The party leadership was able to convince activists that Hezbollah’s intervention was needed to prevent Syria’s civil war from spilling into Lebanon as well as to prevent a pro-Western/pro-Israeli government being installed in Syria, both of which would threaten the Lebanese Shia community.

The strength of the chapter on the clash of Israeli and Palestinian narratives is its demonstration of the power of narratives to constrain groups in conflict into entrenched positions. As the author, Olli Ruohomäki, explains: “The Palestinian metanarrative describes a people unjustly deprived of its land by invaders. The Israeli metanarrative, on the other hand, depicts the justified return of a historically dispossessed diaspora to the land of its ancestors. There is little understanding, respect or acknowledgement of what the other side perceives to be its narrative”. After detailing the development of the metanarratives and how they have influenced the policies and practices of the respective parties, the conclusion argues that as a first step to ending the impasse in the Israeli/Palestinian case requires that each side become “…acquainted with, respect and acknowledge each other’s metanarratives”.

The chapter on Turkey’s contribution highlights how competing narratives at the national level gain hegemony.  Its focus is on “…the political narrative used for rationalizing, explaining and justifying Turkey’s foreign-policy behavior in the post-2011 Middle East”. The chapter’s author, Toni Alarenta, goes on to explain the historical context of how domestic factors influenced long term foreign policy traditions. Since the founding of the Turkish republic, there have  been two competing significant “strategic culture traditions” that have influenced foreign policy, the Republican and the Imperial. The Republican tradition is rooted in the secular-nationalist Kemalist modernization project, which advocated that religion should not be a key part of Turkey’s national and state identity. In terms of foreign policy, this tradition promoted national sovereignty and argued against external interference in a country’s internal conflicts. In contrast, the Imperial tradition that emerged in the 1950s is “…explicitly grounded on historical-civilizational assumptions that religious identification plays a major if not the leading role in the life of a political community”.  Since 2002, the current ruling regime, the Justice and Development Party (AKP), has drawn on the latter narrative tradition to justify its aspirations for Turkey becoming a regional power post-Cold War.  More recently, the Imperial tradition has been  used to justify the AKP government’s interventionist post-2011 Middle East policy, especially in Syria but also in Libya, Egypt, and Iraq. The AKP saw the Arab uprisings as an opportunity for Turkey to provide order to the region by creating a foreign policy narrative that mainly targets “…Islamic-Conservative constituencies, traditionally represented by the Muslim Brotherhood movement…”. However, Alaranta concludes that the appeal of Turkey’s narrative justifying that it become a regional power will be limited by its “…domestic authoritarian system and interventionist foreign-policy behavior: it will at best able to appeal to certain Muslim Brotherhood constituencies in various Middle Eastern countries.”

The strength of the chapter on the Gulf is that it demonstrates how the competition between narratives at the regional level affect stability in the Gulf region. The author, Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, traces the post-2011 uprising situation back to 1979, the year of the Iranian revolution as well as Shia-led protests in the Eastern Province and the takeover of the Grand Mosque in Mecca by Sunni fundamentalists, which shook Saudi Arabia in November and December of 1979, respectively. As a result, Saudi government policy became more Islamized in an effort to reassert its position as the leader of Sunni Islam with Iran’s revolutionary government trying to do the same with Shia Islam, marking the beginning of their rivalry that was exacerbated by the Iran/Iraq war in the 1980s. Then Coates Ulrichsen argues that “…the rise of sectarian identity politics in the region after the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003…”, led to a prevalent security narrative that influenced how Gulf states dealt with each other. Security concerns increased for the Gulf due to the Arab uprisings and Syrian civil war that began in 2011 and the emergence of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) in 2014. In this context, regime response to uprisings in Bahrain, Yemen, Kuwait, and parts of Oman and Saudi Arabia was to blame external forces—Iran in the case of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia and the Muslim Brotherhood in areas where Sunnis participated in protests—deflecting from the domestic causes of dissent in order to reestablish order. Moreover, the Iran/Saudi Arabia rivalry led them to take opposing sides in Yemen’s civil war, which has devastated the country; while Qatar’s support of the Muslim Brotherhood and uprisings in North Africa, and its economic and political relationship with Iran has put it in conflict with Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain. Since 2014, this conflict has come to a head twice which, Coates Ulrichsen argues, has “…created a new regional fault line that has triggered a new set of polarizing narratives and has undone four decades of cautious integration of the six Arab Gulf States within the GCC.” With the GCC’s inability  to resolve the dispute, the lack of trust and severed ties between the conflicting parties could have serious security implications for years to come.

On the global level, Russia, China, the United States and the European Union have competing narratives for understanding and bringing stability to the region. While each chapter goes through the specific histories and developments for each of these actors’ narratives, I would summarize the narrative approaches into two main camps. On the one side, the US and EU subscribe to the “liberal international order” narrative which supports democracy promotion, human rights, and market liberalization while still protecting Western economic and security interests. This has often led to contradictory policies (e.g. former U.S. President George W. Bush’s so-called Freedom Agenda) with disastrous results for the MENA region. On the other side, part of Russia and China’s narrative is critique that the “…Western democracy-promotion narrative is seen to undermine state sovereignty, create chaos, encourage violence, and promote deep-seated conceptions of double standards”. Instead this camp seeks to work with MENA regimes to build bilateral economic ties with the end result, they hope, being economic development, stability and peace. However, Alaranta argues in the conclusion of this volume that this approach: 

…is constrained by a lack of emancipatory and utopian elements. In other words, they contain intellectually comforting elements in terms of avoiding increased violence and chaotic developments resulting from Western-led forced regime change. However, as long as the Middle Eastern states are deeply authoritarian and reluctant to allow even the most basic democratic rights, the conservative narratives advocated by Russia and China fail to provide an emotionally comforting vision of a more democratic future for the peoples of the Middle East.

In sum, I found this volume to provide  an interesting and compelling argument on how narratives can shape understandings of order and instability in the region; as well as on the role of competing narratives at the local, regional, and global levels in further exacerbating conflict. I would recommend this book for international relations and comparative politics courses on the Middle East as a companion piece to political economy approaches to gain a fuller understanding of the region.

In 2015, the United Nations proudly announced the Sustainable Development Agenda with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). They were considered an improvement over the earlier set of Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in that they were more comprehensive and with better agreed to measures for performance: 169 targets and more than 230 indicators. The intention was to use them to guide world development from 2015-2030 with the aim of ending poverty, achieving peace and ensuring a more sustainable future for all. Nearly all countries signed on. 

Five years into implementation, what has been achieved and what is still lacking? And to what extent has the COVID-19 virus impacted implementation? 

In the annual Sustainable Development Goals Report for 2020, the United Nations states that progress has been achieved in realizing the SDGs in many places, but that more needs to be done. Areas where progress has been achieved included: maternal and child health, access to safe water, a drop in a number of communicable diseases, expanding access to electricity and having more women representatives in parliaments. 

In an attempt to adopt an optimistic perspective, the UN showcases good practices in achievement of the goals, so that other countries can derive lessons and possibly replicate the success stories. Yearly celebrations, coinciding with the UN Public Service Day on June 23, are organized to recognize and award public servants around the world who have success stories to share demonstrating innovative and effective service delivery approaches in line with the SDGs. 

However, over the five years of implementation, many challenges have been identified as hindering  the full realization of the SDGs. Economist Jens Martens, for one, claims that there is very little to celebrate after five years of implementation, that countries are “completely off-track” regarding many of the 17 SDGs, including being off track on poverty eradication, reduction of hunger around the world, and dealing with climate change. He adds that things have drastically worsened as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, perceived by many as an unprecedented crisis. 

A closer look at the type of hurdles and challenges discussed, shows that some of them can be classified as pre-COVID-19 challenges and some as post-COVID-19. For example, pre-COVID challenges include faults found with the rating system for world performance on SDGs implementation, the excessive politicization related to reporting on achievements, the inability of many developing countries to collect and report on the various indicators agreed to, and other contextual challenges in various nations. Although it is voluntary, there is a lot of politics involved in reporting on the achievement of the SDGs. Especially when reporting on SDG 16, related to achieving effective, accountable and inclusive institutions, the situation is very fluid. Nations pick and choose what to report on and no one argues, or contradicts these reports when presented during the UN National Assemblies held for that purpose. Criticism is directed as well to the overall general ratings given to countries referencing their success in achieving the SDGs, based on the SDG Index developed by Jeffrey Sachs. In this system, a number of Scandinavian countries are ranked as top performers although they are recognized as excessive consumers of natural resources, which defies the concept of sustainability. As for the measurement indicators, many developing countries have classified the indicators as either Tier II or Tier III indicators, meaning that either data for them is not available, or that countries do not have the required resources and capacities to collect and analyze. Other pre-pandemic challenges hindering better performance in achieving the SDGs are related to the contextual setup in many of the developing world nations. In the African continent for example, Pre-COVID-19 hindrances to implementation of the SDGs included issues related to poor governance systems, weak statistical institutions, overall limitation in resources and rapid population growth rates in some countries. 

As for the estimated negative impact of the pandemic on SDG progress, it is quite alarming to say the least. According to SDG Report 2020, on a global basis, 71 million people may fall into extreme poverty in 2020, denoting the first rise in global poverty since 1998. Half the global workforce, may have lost 60% of their income during the first month of the pandemic. About 1.6 billion workers in the informal sector worldwide are in danger of losing their jobs. Women and children are amongst the groups hit the hardest by the pandemic, due to the disruption, and sometimes suspension, of vaccination and regular health services. Nearly 70 countries were reported to have stopped their vaccination programs during the pandemic. This may lead to rising numbers of infant and maternal deaths; hundreds of thousands more infant deaths expected, and tens of thousands increase in maternal deaths in 2020. With school closures and nearly 90% of students worldwide having to stay home, over 370 million missed the school meals they drastically needed. And with more poverty, there will be an expected escalation in many other problems like child marriage, child trafficking and child labor. 

The situation is worse off in Africa. The SDGs Center for Africa reports that the continent is off-track in achieving 13 of the 17 SDGs. A preliminary assessment of the impact of COVID-19 on the SDGs in Africa points to an expected additional 60 million Africans being pushed into poverty, the worsening of food insecurity and more than doubling the number of people facing hunger, increased unemployment, rising debt and more difficulties faced in financing the SDGs. 

Recommendations:

A new initiative titled: “The Decade of Action”, was started by the UN in recognition of the fact that ten years are left for the full realization of the goals, and therefore everyone—governments, civil society, private sector and citizens of the world—need to act together and work on accelerating the achievement of the SDGs. Obviously, this is much easier said than done. A number of scholars have been sharing their thoughts about what needs to come next and the need for more specific directions to guide us on the way forward. Following is a synopsis of some of these ideas: 

• More Serious Commitment by Government: First governments need to take the SDGs more seriously. Lots of time and effort get wasted in official meetings and reporting tasks that are often quite politicized. 
• More Active Monitoring and Reporting Role for the Civil Society: For overcoming the problem of excessive politicization in reporting on some SDGs, especially SDG 16, there needs to be a mechanism whereby civil society organizations, academia and research centers play a more dominant role in collecting data, monitoring and reporting on performance. It should not be left solely to nation states and their Voluntary National Reports, but shadow reporting by independent more objective civic society organizations is called for.
• Securing More Funding Resources and Technical Assistance to Developing Countries: International funding organizations such as the World Bank need to play a more active role. In their 2020 article on the SDGs, World Bank Group’s Senior Vice President for the 2030 Development Agenda Mahmoud Mohieldin and Special Representative to the UN Jos Verbeek give three main suggestions for speeding up the SDGs implementation over the coming years through the World Bank’s active involvement as an intermediary firstly through attracting the private sector to finance SDG related programs; secondly, by providing knowledge products about development, and thirdly, by supporting the data frameworks needed for tracking progress in achieving the SDGs.
• Building Up Statistical Institutes and Capacities: The call for further support of countries’ statistical data collection, analysis and reporting efforts has been seconded by the UN Secretary General as a prerequisite for monitoring progress on SDGs. Many national statistical offices stopped operation during the pandemic and this may lead to a huge setback in reporting unless international development organizations jump in and provide the needed technical and financial support. 

Overall, the benefits of the SDGs are great, but implementation can be improved on by overcoming the identified hurdles.

The U.S. presidential election on November 3 promises to be one of the most consequential in recent memory, with far reaching implications for Americans and the global community alike. Insofar as Israelis and Palestinians are concerned, the differences between President Donald Trump and his Democratic challenger former Vice-President Joe Biden could not be more stark. In his distinctly iconoclastic approach to the conflict, Trump has upended one sacred pillar of international diplomacy after another, including the long-cherished goal of two states for two peoples in Israel and Palestine and the very principles that undergird it. For his part, Biden has pledged to reverse the most destructive of these policies in a bid to salvage what remains of a two-state solution and restore U.S.-Palestinian relations. 

Nonetheless, despite their radically different approaches to Israel/Palestine, realities on the ground under a second Trump term or a Biden administration may ultimately produce the same outcome: the death of a two-state solution and the consolidation of a one-state reality. In the end, the future of the conflict and its resolution may have less to do with who resides in the White House than with developments within the Palestinian national movement.

Trump’s Continued Assault on Two States

Since Trump’s decision last December to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, overturning seventy years of U.S. policy and a longstanding international consensus, his administration has systematically worked to dismantle what remained of the Oslo Peace Process and the prospect of a genuine two-state solution. The Trump administration has recognized Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem, scrubbed references to Israeli “occupation” from the U.S. government’s lexicon, and unilaterally declared that Israeli settlements were not illegal. In doing so, it has mounted a full frontal assault on United Nations Security Council Resolution 242 and the “land for peace” formula, which have undergirded both U.S. policy and the peace process for more than half a century.

Meanwhile, the closure of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) mission in Washington and the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem, along with elimination of all aid to Palestinians including U.S. assistance to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), have brought U.S.-Palestinians relations to a historic low. The Trump vision, released in January, which calls for a Palestinian entity made up of disconnected territorial units surrounded and controlled by Israel—effectively consolidating the status quo—is more akin to the bantustans of Apartheid South Africa than anything that might be reasonably called a state. 

A second Trump term would likely put the final nail in the coffin of a two-state solution—in which case, we are likely to see an even more aggressive effort to implement the vision laid out in the 2020 Trump plan, with or without Palestinian participation. The current surge in Israeli “facts on the ground”—in terms of settlement approvals and construction, home demolitions, and land confiscations, particularly in East Jerusalem and Area C (an Oslo II administrative division representing over 60 percent of the West Bank, which is committed to be gradually transferred to Palestinian jurisdiction)—is likely to intensify considerably. We could also see the erasure of previous “red lines”—Israeli projects deemed unacceptable by the international community and effectively put on hold, such as construction in the “E1” corridor east of Jerusalem and the forced relocation (ie, expulsion) of Palestinian communities from areas coveted by Israeli settlements. Although currently suspended, Israeli plans to formally annex large swaths of the West Bank, as called for in the Trump Vision, would almost certainly be back on the table, especially if the Palestinians continue to reject engaging with the Trump plan, as we would expect them to do.

A second Trump term will bring an even greater push for the normalization of relations between Arab states and Israel, in lieu of progress on the Palestinian front—the so-called “outside-in” approach. This would further marginalize the Palestinians, both in terms of a political issue and as actors with agency. In that case, the Palestinian leadership is likely to come under intense pressure by the Trump administration to accept the new terms of reference. Those terms are, namely, permanent autonomy instead of sovereignty, exclusive Israeli sovereignty over all of Jerusalem including occupied East Jerusalem, and the permanence of existing Israeli settlements. The Trump administration’s assault on Palestinian refugee rights is likely to intensify as well, for example, by pushing for permanent re-absorption in host countries like Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan or pursuing concerted attempts to eliminate UNRWA. 

With Palestinian statehood effectively off the table, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’s leadership (or that of his successor) will be confronted with an unprecedented existential crisis. Calls for dissolving the Palestinian National Authority (PA), now deprived of its raison d’être, and turning “the keys” over to the Israeli occupation will take on new urgency and seriousness in Palestinian civil society and among political elites. The public will more readily embrace a one-state solution with equal rights for all, particularly if accompanied by high-profile defections from Abbas’ Fatah faction. For its part, Fatah, which has staked its political fortunes on the achievement of a two-state solution, would be forced to revise its program or face irrelevance. Even if the PA does not disband voluntarily, current trend lines suggest its collapse may be more a question of when than if. Internal political division and fragmentation along with institutional stagnation (the Palestinian Legislative council has not convened in more than thirteen years) have all but paralyzed Palestinian politics. A sharp drop in international donor aid, including sweeping aid cuts by the Trump administration, as well as the loss of tax transfers collected by Israel on the Palestinians’ behalf, have put the PA on the brink of financial bankruptcy. Moreover, thanks to COVID-19 and the loss of key donations from Arab states, the PA has lost half of its revenue since the start of 2020 alone.

Even as traditional Arab support for Palestinians appears to be drying up, there is growing solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for freedom in the international community. The demise of a two-state solution, particularly if coupled with formal annexation, is likely to intensify the “apartheid” narrative as well as increase support for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) against Israel. This is particularly true in Europe and North America, where Palestinian activism has converged with broader calls for social and racial justice such as the Movement for Black Lives and the “Me Too” movement. The Trump administration’s assault on the last vestiges of a two-state solution will likely also lead to more serious and robust discussions in Washington, Brussels, and other foreign capitals on alternatives to two states, such as binationalism and confederation. This collapse of the two-state framework will be particularly problematic for European Union officials and for U.S. Democrats, both of whom remain firmly committed to a two-state solution but have so far been reluctant to use meaningful leverage or otherwise pressure Israel to achieve that goal. The imminent death of two states will further embolden the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, where the idea of some form of aid (to Israel) conditionality is already gaining traction, at the expense of the party’s more moderate or establishment wing, which would already be thoroughly discredited in the wake of a humiliating defeat at the hands of Trump, should it come to pass.

Biden: Return to the Status Quo Ante

On the other hand, we would expect a Biden administration to take a radically different approach to Israel and Palestine. A Biden victory come November will no doubt revive hopes for a two-state solution and give Palestinian leaders a much-needed reprieve. However, a Biden administration is unlikely to break with past approaches to the conflict or fundamentally alter dynamics on the ground. For one, Biden along with his running mate, California Senator Kamala Harris, has kept to the traditional pro-Israel line of the party establishment. Like most of his predecessors, Biden has pledged to maintain Washington’s “unstinting support” for Israel. Biden has openly opposed Israel’s occupation and yet personally intervened to ensure the word “occupation” did not appear in the Democratic Party platform. Although polls show broad support among the Democratic party rank and file for things like placing conditions on U.S. aid to Israel and even boycotts, Biden has strongly rejected both. When Democratic hopefuls Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, both of the progressive wing of the party, suggested they might consider leveraging Israel’s $3.8 billion annual aid package to prevent it from moving forward with annexation, Biden dismissed the idea as “bizarre.” Despite his own public opposition to Israeli annexation, Biden has categorically ruled out the possibility of tying U.S. military assistance to Israel’s actions.

More to the point, the Biden campaign has already made clear that a future Biden administration would seek to reverse many of the most damaging Trump policies in the hope of “keep[ing] the prospect of a negotiated two-state outcome alive.” To that end, Biden has pledged to restore U.S. aid to the PA and to UNRWA and reestablish political and diplomatic ties with the Palestinians by reopening the U.S. Consulate-General in Jerusalem and the PLO embassy in Washington—steps that will undoubtedly be welcomed by the Palestinian leadership and the broader international community. However, such efforts are likely to be severely constrained by existing laws and by Congress, traditionally a bastion of bipartisan pro-Israel sentiment. The March 2018 Taylor Force Act prohibits U.S. assistance to the PA until the PLO stops making payments to the families of Palestinians killed or imprisoned by Israel. The Anti-Terrorism Clarification Act (ATCA) passed in October 2018, allows for U.S. lawsuits to be applied to the PA once U.S. funding is accepted, effectively ending all U.S. economic, humanitarian, and security assistance to the Palestinians. On the other hand, Biden has said that he would not reverse Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem or move the U.S. embassy back to Tel Aviv, and has not indicated whether he would reverse U.S. recognition of the Golan Heights. 

With the goal of two states and U.S.-Palestinian relations now at an all-time low, any attempt to roll back Trump’s scorched-earth policies will seem like meaningful progress. But merely going back to the status quo ante (or some approximation of it) is probably not enough to produce a credible peace process or salvage a two-state solution. Indeed, the Oslo process had been dying a slow, tortured death since the Al-Aqsa Intifada of the early 2000s and effectively ceased to function during the Obama administration. While the Trump administration has sought to do away with Resolution 242 and “land for peace” on an explicit basis, previous administrations had already eroded the established ground rules of the peace process by accommodating settlement expansion for “natural growth” in East Jerusalem, the large settlement blocs and other exemptions.

A Biden administration would probably seek some sort of Israeli commitment not to move ahead with formal annexation and perhaps refrain from other “red line” projects. It is, however, unlikely to seriously challenge more routine settlement activity, home demolitions, land confiscations and other “facts on the ground” that have steadily chipped away at the possibility of two states for more than fifty years. Beyond urging the parties to restart direct negotiations, however, a Biden presidency is unlikely to expend much political capital in a Palestinian-Israeli resolution or put any meaningful pressure on Israel. Moreover, in the absence of serious pressure or meaningful consequences, Israeli leaders will have no incentive to make any of the difficult and politically unpopular decisions needed to achieve a two-state solution, such as the removal of tens (possibly hundreds) of thousands of Jewish settlers, transferring biblically-sensitive areas to Palestinian sovereignty, or ceding control over significant portions of Jerusalem. As a result, the demise of both the PA and a two-state solution is likely to continue, albeit at a slower pace than under a Trump administration.

Wildcards: U.S. & Palestinian Politics

There are two additional wildcards that could change these trajectories in the coming years, namely developments within U.S. and especially Palestinian internal politics. The steady rightward shift in Israeli politics and the apparent triumph of the “Greater Israel” vision has alienated Democrats, moderates and progressives alike. 

“I think it’s a serious mistake, a fundamental mistake for the occupation of the West Bank to now become annexed property,” Biden said at a campaign event in Iowa last December. “That is not consistent with the United Nations position, and that’s not consistent with ours.”

Meanwhile, 107 House Democrats sent separate letters to the administration condemning its decision to reverse longstanding U.S. policy on Israeli settlements and expressing their opposition to Trump’s so-called “Deal of the Century” as being “incompatible with peace”.

Yet, while mainstream Democrats have limited their critiques to Israeli settlements, annexation, and other direct threats to a two-state solution, progressives have emphasized the need to focus on Palestinian rights as well. Indeed, a small but vocal cohort of progressive Congress members, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (a.k.a. AOC) and fellow “Squad” members Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, are already shifting the debate and challenging political orthodoxies on Israel/Palestine. These progressive voices are likely to continue doing so regardless of who wins the White House in 2020. This is also evident in Minnesota Congresswoman Betty McCollum’s landmark bill aimed at ending Israeli military detention of Palestinian children—the first bill ever introduced in Congress in support of Palestinian human rights. Further evidence of this shift in narrative includes the recent decision by AOC, an icon of the progressive left, to pull out of an event honoring the late Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin following an outcry from Palestinian-Americans.

The House is already in Democratic hands and is likely to remain so after November. In the event of a Biden victory, Democrats would have a decent chance of flipping the Senate as well. With Democrats controlling the White House and one or both houses of Congress, the intra-party debate among Democrats would effectively become a national debate. Were Trump to be reelected, on the other hand, it would deal a massive blow to the Democratic establishment, including the current Democratic leadership in Congress, and further polarize the party. Either way, progressive voices are likely to remain on the rise and continue shifting the debate. Moreover, 2020 is likely to bring even more progressive voices to Congress, as well as a more intensive and frank debate on Israel/Palestine—the likes of which we have not seen on Capitol Hill in several decades.

Even more crucial are developments on the domestic Palestinian front, particularly in the event of a leadership change. The recent U.S.-brokered normalization deals between Israel and both the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Bahrain have simultaneously highlighted the Palestinian leadership’s lack of a cohesive strategy and, somewhat ironically, breathed new life into Palestine’s otherwise stagnant political environment. Both Abbas’s Fatah faction and its Hamas rivals have blasted the normalization deals as a betrayal of the Palestinian cause. Both parties have accused the UAE and Bahrain of shattering the Arab consensus, as laid out in the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, by which Arab states would normalize relations with Israel only in return for Israel ending its occupation and allowing the establishment of a viable and genuinely independent Palestinian state.

Faced with what they regarded as an existential threat to the Palestinian national movement, the two rival factions have reportedly agreed to a new reconciliation deal. As a result, Abbas is expected to call for sequential elections, perhaps as early as spring 2021, for the Palestinian Legislative Council, PA president, and perhaps most importantly, the Palestine National Council—the PLO’s moribund parliament-in-exile from which the umbrella organization’s leadership is to be drawn. Such elections, were they to take place, would be a major step toward reviving Palestinian institutions and political life, particularly if it includes reforming and reconstituting the PLO to make it genuinely inclusive and representative; a major step toward clarification of the roles of the PA and the PLO, which have been blurred over the years, and a clear path of succession for both institutions.

This is a tall order, and its success is anything but assured, especially given the many previous reconciliation efforts that have come and gone. Nevertheless, much depends on what happens if and when Abbas, now in his mid-80s, departs from the scene, which could very well take place on the next U.S. president’s watch. The matter of who or what may succeed Abbas raises many unanswered (and perhaps unanswerable) questions. What kind of power struggle are we likely to see, first within Fatah and then between Fatah and Hamas? Will Abbas’s departure help or hinder Palestinian reconciliation and the emergence of a unitary polity? Will a new leadership, if and when it emerges, still be committed to the goal of two states, or will it move more in the direction of younger Palestinians who are increasingly in favor of one state with equal rights? How much longer can the PA, which is already deprived of funds and losing legitimacy, survive? If the PA does collapse, who or what might fill the vacuum? Will there be another armed uprising against Israeli military rule, or will Palestinians adopt nonviolent resistance? Can the PLO be reformed and reconstituted, or will Palestinians opt to replace it? 

Underlying all of the above, meanwhile, is the question of how Israel and other external actors will respond to these scenarios. Will Israel allow elections to take place, particularly in East Jerusalem? If so, will it and the wider international community accept the outcome of the elections? Will Israel seek to exploit a Palestinian power vacuum, for example by promoting its own alternative leadership? Is there a future for a U.S.-led peace process in the wake of Oslo’s collapse? If not, what, if anything, might replace it?

All of these issues raise important questions about the future of the Palestinian national movement, the answers to which will likely be far more central in shaping Israeli-Palestinian dynamics in the coming period than when, how or if negotiations resume under a Trump or a Biden administration.

“A detrimental or calamitous situation… arising from the powerful combined effect of a unique set of circumstances”: a perfect storm.  

Since the middle of March, 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the United States, the world’s largest economy and oldest democracy has proved itself  incapable of handling a unique set of circumstances: the highest number of COVID-19 cases and deaths worldwide; a lack or shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE), ventilators, testing equipment, and hospital beds; millions out of work; millions losing health insurance; increased homelessness; multitrillion dollar deficits to forestall a recession; a digital divide impacting virtual learning; a federal system of government that leaves major health and safety decisions to states put to the test; contradictory information from health officials and government leaders on how to address the pandemic; politicization of mask-wearing and social distancing; natural disasters from forest fires and tropical storms; and protests over a rash of killings of unarmed Black men and women that highlighted four hundred years of systemic racism (some leading to violence from both the Right and Left). 

While other countries began to return to “normal” during the summer, COVID-19 cases continued to climb in the United States as the economy reopened. By October 14, over 215,000 had died and new cases increased over the previous two weeks. Two of the new cases were the president and first lady. Many Americans shake their heads wondering when locusts will blacken the skies or frogs will begin jumping in the streets. And, if the modern equivalent of the Biblical ten Egyptian plagues is not enough, all of this occurs during a presidential election year in a politically polarized America. 

The world watched it all in amazement that there are so many cracks in the country’s foundation. In 2016, Donald Trump’s claim that America was no longer “great” merited a divided response, as did his averment immediately before the pandemic that the country was better off four years later. Today, it is clear that neither debate is relevant, as the United States struggles to contain a perfect storm for which it was unprepared. Some wonder if the country is capable of cleaning up the detritus and starting anew. Thus, these questions are posed: how does the world view the pandemic-challenged United States, and why did things go so wrong? 

The U.S. Standing in the World

If a pandemic spreads by travel across a flat world, news of pandemic response failures and social unrest in a country travels equally fast in a technologically-connected world. Scenes of overworked and overwrought health care providers using makeshift PPE or peaceful and violent protests over the police killings of unarmed African-Americans flash across the globe in real time. Stories of foreign interference in U.S. elections and warnings by the U.S. president that elections are rife with fraud—and so voters should illegally vote twice to lay bare the system’s imperfections—circulate worldwide and tarnish the archetypal image of the model Western democracy. Images of armed protestors challenging governors’ pandemic orders or vigilantes confronting and even killing those protesting for racial justice suggest that the Wild West of 1950s American television still exists—with weapons far more lethal than a trusty six-shooter. Two individuals were even arrested recently in a plot to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer and try her for “violating the Constitution” (i.e. refusing to fully reopen the state of Michigan). Unemployment statistics, forced evictions, long lines at food pantries, and hundreds of thousands without utilities after storms reveal a country without a social safety net or adequate infrastructure. In seven months, the world’s image of the United States dramatically changed, and its world standing continued its downward spiral. 

Favorable external views of the United States have dropped since Donald Trump took office. A Pew Research Center report on U.S. favorability in October 2018 noted that, among twenty-four countries, only three—Israel, Kenya, and Russia—reported positive changes since the end of the Obama presidency. Twelve of the remaining twenty-one had double-digit drops, including neighbors Mexico (a thirty-four point slump) and Canada (twenty-six). The writers attributed the decline to “the widespread perception that the United States does not consider the interests of other countries when making foreign policy decisions.” 

A more recent Pew study released on September 15, 2020, shows further decline:  the number of countries “with a favorable view of the United States is as low as it has been at any point since the Center began polling on this topic nearly two decades ago.” Among the thirteen countries surveyed, a median of 15 percent approved of the way the United States handled the pandemic. 

President Trump’s decision to cut funding to the World Health Organization during a pandemic and not participate in their vaccine research underscores that perception. Yet, even in January, prior to the COVID-19 outbreak in the United States, a Pew study noted that “opinions of the U.S. vary substantially across the globe,” with “a median of 53 percent of adults” in the twenty-four countries having a favorable view. This was a decrease from the “64 percent who had a positive view at the end of the Obama administration.” The report also noted that “confidence in U.S. President Donald Trump is low, though not as low as it was shortly after he took office.” By September 2020 the Pew survey showed even lower confidence in the U.S. president, with ratings between a low of 9 percent in Belgium and a high of 25 percent in Japan. In a report released in April 2020 from 2019 data, Pew noted: “Overall, both Canadians and Mexicans use mostly negative or neutral words to describe the United States, and only a small portion mention a positive word.” The report concluded that events since the pandemic have “potentially affected the lens through which people view the United States,” and the September Pew report echoed that conclusion. 

The word “potentially” is an understatement. Multiple international newspapers have taken the United States’ failures in its crosshairs. One of the articles most commented on in the U.S. press and widely shared on social media came from Irish opinion writer Fintan O’Toole in The Irish Times, who wrote: “The country Trump promised to make great again has never in its history seemed so pitiful.” An April headline in The Guardian under a photo of President Trump—hands outstretched, mouth open in what appears to be a cry for help, and eyes looking terrified—exclaimed, “US’s global reputation hits rock-bottom over Trump’s coronavirus response”. The article opined that “Trump’s ineptitude and dishonesty in handling the pandemic, which has left foreign observers as well as Americans gasping in disbelief, is proving a bridge too far. Erratic behavior, tolerated in the past, is now seen as downright dangerous. It’s long been plain to many in Europe, that Trump could not be trusted. Now he is seen as a threat.” And this was before Trump declared, upon his release from the hospital after being treated for COVID-19: “Don’t be afraid of COVID. Don’t let it dominate your life.” Public health experts, journalists, survivors, and those who lost family to the virus swiftly and emphatically denounced the irresponsible nature of the statement coming from a man who had treatment no other American could access.

A poll conducted by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) released in June showed that eleven thousand respondents across nine European countries had a negative perception of the United States. Perceptions become reality; experts have pointed out that the United States’ declining stature has economic and political consequences. Key U.S. allies cited China as taking on a larger role on the world scene. The ECFR poll found that “25 percent of people polled in Italy saw China as the most useful ally in the crisis, a result which could be due to China sending ventilators, medical experts and personal protective equipment to Italy.” At the same time, the United States was in no position to assist any other country, as it couldn’t satisfy its own pandemic needs. Trump’s attempts to redirect blame by dubbing COVID-19 the “China Virus” didn’t resonate outside the United States; and, it is doubtful that it resonates much beyond his conservative base, since the source is now less important than the response. 

But, it is not just the pandemic response that has the world reassessing its views of the United States. Trump’s claims of voter fraud in the upcoming election put the United States in need of international election-watchers rather than being a leader in observing elections worldwide. The Guardian reported on an Organisation for Security and Cooperation’s (OSCE) Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights’ (ODIHR) recommendation that five hundred monitors be sent to the United States. The monitors began arriving on September 25 to “closely follow fundamental components of the election”. ODIHR cited growing problems with voter suppression and challenges of pandemic voting that have decreased general trust in the administration and call the election’s integrity into question. For example, at his first debate with Joe Biden, President Trump urged  his supporters to “keep an eye out” at the polls, and refused in the same debate to promise a peaceful transition of power if he loses. Regardless of the outcome of the election, if there is serious doubt about the integrity of the results, the world may be watching more protests in the streets. 

Black Lives Matter Goes Global

When a country is locked down for months, people live in fear of an unseen enemy; U.S. unemployment is higher than at any time since the Great Depression, parents are struggling to work from home and educate their children, messages from politicians contradict science and create confusion, and minorities are more likely to contract and die from the disease than white Americans. This is  a formula for civil unrest. All the metaphorical tinder box needs to ignite is a match. For the United States, that match came on May 25 in the form of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota, who died when a police officer put a knee on his neck and suffocated him while he gasped out the words “I can’t breathe”. 

When a cellphone video of his death went viral, the balloon of tension that has swelled with the deaths of other Black Americans killed by police over the years burst. News of the February shooting of Ahmaud Arbery, an unarmed jogger, by three white men in Georgia came to light in early May. No one was arrested until a video was shared. The story of Breonna Taylor, an unarmed African-American woman who was shot in March when Louisville, Kentucky police knocked down her door with a no-knock warrant, also hit the news in the beginning of May. 

When George Floyd died and the floodgate broke, Americans took to the streets in mostly peaceful demonstrations about both police violence and underlying systemic racism that affects aspects of Black lives in numerous ways. America was mobilized to look at its racist history in ways that it hadn’t previously. The dearth of distractions—carpools for sports and school activities, social events, travel, and other life activities—imposed by quarantine perhaps contributed to forcing Americans to focus. 

Whatever the reasons, it wasn’t just the United States that watched and reacted. Trump’s use of force on peaceful protestors near the White House to clear a path for him to take photos in front of a church holding a Bible was international news. Not since the use of dogs, fire hoses, and tear gas on peaceful protestors during the Civil Rights Movement had there been so much news footage of forceful response to demonstrations. Protestors and journalists, including some foreign, were jailed, and the United States’ moral authority regarding free speech and human rights was diluted. One example of the dilution of the United States’ ability to call out human rights violations abroad was  a Chinese official’s much-quoted response to a U.S. diplomat’s criticism of Chinese actions in Hong Kong. When Morgan Ortagus, a Department of State official, accused China in a tweet of breaking promises to Hong Kong as a result of imposition of Chinese security laws that impact Hong Kong’s autonomy after pro-democracy protests, China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying tweeted, “I can’t breathe”. Another response came from senior United Nations (UN) officials from Africa, who issued a statement condemning police brutality in the United States and called for a UN inquiry into abuses in both the United States and other countries. 

With tens of thousands worldwide joining the protests in solidarity, the United States indirectly caused the rest of the world to look at their own racism. Demonstrators in Japan were photographed holding signs stating that “Racism Exists in Tokyo,” and South African rugby players created a controversy similar to U.S. football player Colin Kaepernick’s when part of the team took a knee before the start of the game to proclaim that Black Lives Matter while others stood, refusing to participate. The Guardian acknowledged the UK’s shortcomings and wrote of “the commonality of black struggles elsewhere, and more broadly the fight for human rights.” In some ways, Americans’ public acknowledgement of its racist past and failure to acknowledge systemic racism through marches and signs in cities large and small is a step toward restoring the country’s self-image of checking its imperfections and finding grassroots ways to hold public officials accountable. However, the September 2020 Pew study of world perceptions of the United States noted that there have been steady declines related to respect for personal freedoms in the, and directly cited concerns about racial injustice as a cause.

How Did It Happen?

For the world to make sense of the news headlines coming out of the United States since March, it is necessary to understand the complex domestic political climate and its origins. The current political climate is the cumulation of forty years of changing views on the role of government, social issues, and individual rights: the last deeply rooted in an American psyche distrustful of government after British rule and nurtured by a rugged individualism that hankers back to Manifest Destiny. 

The roots of the political divide that propelled Donald Trump into the presidency rest with Ronald Reagan and the rise of the “new Right”. Reagan outlined his political philosophy of limited government in a speech, “A Time for Choosing,” in 1964 and embraced its tenets during his presidency. In a 1983 speech entitled “The Evil Empire,” Reagan rallied evangelicals and many other Americans with these words: “This administration is motivated by a political philosophy that sees the greatness of America in you, her people, and in your families, churches, neighborhoods, communities—the institutions that foster and nourish values like concern for others and respect for the rule of law under God.” Reagan’s antigovernment, antitax, antiregulation, and anticommunist message, along with his belief in American exceptionalism and family values, redefined the Republican Party and led to Christian nationalism. Reagan’s antiabortion rhetoric in his 1983 speech appealed not only to the evangelicals to whom it was given, but also to Catholics, thus creating a coalition that shifted some traditionally Democrat voters to the Republicans. They were wedged out as attention shifted to social issues and guns, and this eventually led to a 1994 Republican takeover of Congress and a steady increase in Republican control of governorships and state legislatures. In 1981 Democrats held twenty-seven governorships, but by 2016 it was sixteen with Republicans controlling two-thirds of state legislatures. In 2016, Republicans controlled both Houses of Congress. Public satisfaction with Congress was at eighteen percent—down from a high of 84 percent after 9/11. 

As a political outsider, Trump capitalized on the antigovernment atmosphere and low Congressional approval of 2016 with his “drain the swamp” message. He maintained control of the religious Right despite his three marriages and predatory attitudes toward women as expressed in the “Access Hollywood” tapes released during the campaign. His assurances that he would appoint prolife judges—which he has—helped achieve his victory. Twenty-six percent of Republicans listed Supreme Court appointments to protect gun rights and restrict abortion rights as primary reasons for a Trump vote. Adding to Trump’s coalition were the Americans who felt left out of the economic recovery during the Obama administration. While jobless figures were low in 2016—4.7 percent compared to 10 percent in 2009—real wages were stagnant, and the rich–poor gap was growing. Many jobs went overseas, and sectors such as mining and manufacturing were on a decline. Trump promised to bring them back and punish China for its unfair trade practices.  

Trump’s message also played into white fears of marginalization stemming from demographic shifts and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. As a result of immigration and lower birth rates among white Americans, the United States is on target to become a majority “minority” country by 2050. Illegal immigration was at its lowest since 2004 in 2016; however, Trump played into fears about job loss and terrorism and capitalized on systemic racism to blame immigrants for many of the problems disaffected voters experienced. Because of the country’s Electoral College, Trump lost the popular vote but won narrowly in several “battleground” states that were most susceptible to his message because of high immigration numbers or loss of manufacturing jobs. Low voter turnout among minorities in those states also contributed.

In January 2020, at the start of a presidential election year, Donald Trump was facing a Senate vote on the articles of impeachment for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress passed by the Democrat-controlled House on December 18. The charges stemmed from allegations that Trump tried to influence Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky with a threat to withhold military aid and a White House invitation unless he provided incriminating information on Democrat opponent Joe Biden’s son, Hunter, who had worked as an advisor to a Ukrainian natural gas company. Trump was also accused of obstructing the Congressional investigation. 

The Republican-controlled Senate exonerated Trump on February 5; while awaiting the outcome, Trump assured his supporters and world leaders that it was all a hoax as he went about the business of the presidency and his campaign. During the proceedings, Trump’s reelection hopes were riding high with a mix of low unemployment at 3.5 percent and stock markets continuing an upward trend. It helped that there was no clear Democratic challenger at that point in time. The Democrats had a cast of twenty competing in contentious debates for their party’s nomination and two of the top candidates, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, were considered far-Left with Sanders a self-proclaimed Socialist. Joe Biden, the early favorite, was stumbling in the debates as political opponents who were children, teens, or not even born when he became a Senator in 1973 attacked his record in ways that often appeared to surprise him. There was no clear favorite after the first few rounds of primaries in February. The Democrats appeared to be giving Trump enough material for his campaign ads regardless of who the candidate was. 

And then came March and COVID-19’s rampage.

The Pandemic Response in the United States

It is well documented that Donald Trump downplayed the pandemic’s nature and severity. Prepublication reviews of Bob Woodward’s book Rage about the Trump presidency revealed that the President admitted to Woodward in February that the virus spread was airborne and more serious than the flu, but that he didn’t want to tell the American people because he didn’t want them to “panic”. 

The first case of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, occurred in November 2019, with Chinese officials notified in December. The virus was not reported to the World Health Organization until January 8, 2020. There were media reports about a new virus originating in China with cases outside the country, but it was not until January 21 that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in the United States announced the country’s first case in Washington state. The potential severity and likelihood of spread was not emphasized, especially by the government. Between January 22 and March 11, Trump did everything he could to reassure Americans that there was nothing to worry about even though he knew better. He claimed: “And we have it totally under control”; “It’s going to disappear. One day, it’s like a miracle, it will disappear”; “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. . . .Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”; and “Just stay calm. It will go away.” His advisors, however, were telling him that it could affect millions. Trump’s one action to deter the spread was a travel ban on non-U.S. citizens coming from China effective February 2. The CDC began screening passengers from Wuhan and imposing quarantines. Yet, even with the ban, it is estimated that over forty thousand travelers from China entered the country. On March 13, the president declared a national emergency and called for fifteen days of social distancing—later extended to thirty—but did not invoke a national stay at home order as was done in other countries. 

What ensued is a “crazy quilt” of responses across the country due to a constitutional provision that gives states the authority to deal with emergencies since they are closer to the problem. It is a system that sounds good in theory, but proved unworkable for something like a virus that does not respect invisible state borders. Some governors such as New York’s Andrew Cuomo—the site of the pandemic’s epicenter for many weeks—took control and implemented measures to shut down the state and enforce recommended public health procedures such as masks. New York and states surrounding it that implemented similar procedures are now among the lowest in terms of cases in the country, and they have banned visitors from high incidence states to prevent a recurrence. Other states such as South Dakota, which has a Republican governor who refused to issue stay at home or mask orders because “the people themselves are primarily responsible for their safety,” saw surges in September and October. A motorcycle rally in South Dakota was responsible for 20 percent of the new cases nationwide in August. Seven months after the national emergency declaration, the United States has two hundred and fifteen thousand deaths and is approaching eight million cases with predictions of over four hundred thousand deaths by January 2021. The end is not in sight, and won’t be until there is a vaccine with widespread distribution. 

Words Matter 

Whether it was Ronald Reagan espousing a philosophy that led to the current political divisions, Donald Trump calling the virus a hoax and downplaying its threat after recovering himself, or protestors chanting for justice, the  events of the past seven months can be traced back to words. Moreover, film footage and images of police brutality or peaceful protestors with a message of justice often say more than words. Words and images create reality. 

There is no denying that the United States is no longer viewed as the beacon of democracy and human rights that it once was, but the country has weathered other periods when the world watched in shock as it failed to live up to its ideals. Ultimately, the United States is a government of “We the People”. The power to restore its stature rests in the people; the November election will tell a great deal about their desire to do so.

It’s difficult to come to terms with the fact that Libya has been in a state of turmoil, declining living conditions, and civil war for almost a decade. The Libyan conflict is one which has been largely overshadowed in the media and in diplomacy since the reignition of crisis in 2014. Recently, there has been some movement on the diplomatic front to reach a settlement and end the turmoil. However, the conflict is extremely complicated, with several different governments, armies, and militias supported by different outside players, reflecting regional tensions such as those between Egypt and the UAE on one hand and Turkey and Qatar on the other. Despite some media coverage on the recent diplomatic initiatives, the general public’s exposure to information on the matter is limited–which is why having experts and people on the ground that can break down the complicated subject is crucial. 

On October 7, Nabil Fahmy, founding dean of the School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the American University in Cairo and former Egyptian foreign minister, hosted a Tahrir Dialogue webinar titled “Libya: Is a Settlement in the Making?” It was moderated by Ibrahim Awad, director of the Center for Migration and Refugee Studies at AUC, with Libyan politician Mohamed Dayri and AUC’s former president Lisa Anderson as speakers.

Dayri, who was the foreign minister of Libya’s Tobruk-based House of Representatives from 2014 to 2019, paints a rather dismal picture of current life in what Awad describes as a “failed state,” saying that outsiders have little knowledge of what Libyans have grown increasingly frustrated with. Suffering from widespread corruption, deteriorating living conditions, prolonged power blackouts, a worsening pandemic situation, and war fatigue, Libyans took to the streets to protest against corruption, leading to the resignation of the Prime Minister of the Eastern Libyan government, Abdallah Al-Thani, and his cabinet. The rival Government of National Accord’s (GNA) Prime Minister Fayez Al-Sarraj also announced that he would be stepping down by the end of October.

Despite the grim outlook, Awad sees “glimpses of hope,” citing recent talks in Berlin, Bouznika, Montreux, and Hurghada. Dayri explains that the Montreux talks produced a roadmap for a fifth transitional period over eighteen months and designation of a presidential council which ensures equal representation for the country’s three provinces. He continues saying that the Hurghada talks, hosted later in September, got the GNA and Libyan National Army (LNA) to meet and discuss security matters, bringing up the removal of militia, the possibility of unification, and how to secure Sirte, a coastal city contested during the civil war and previously controlled by ISIS. The United Nations Support Mission in Libya has been involved in all the aforementioned initiatives, and Dayri says that UN-led talks should take place soon as well.

Nevertheless, Anderson, who is a special lecturer at Columbia University and the author of The State and Social Transformation in Tunisia and Libya, 1830-1980, is wary of being optimistic for a settlement. She recognizes that there has been more action on the diplomatic front than there has been in a long time, but she makes the important distinction that as more diplomatic efforts fail, the more likely that there would be subsequent efforts that also fail. She points out the “profound skepticism” bordering on cynicism that people have with regards to the efforts of the last nine years to bring them together and laments that “people are almost afraid to be hopeful”. Despite this, Anderson concedes that the fact that the opposing sides are at the same table together is cause for hope.

Many Challenges Lie Ahead

Dayri also recognized the challenges, and presented a number of guidelines to manage the political transitionHe says that the political dialogue may be tied to a tight deadline, referring to Al-Sarraj’s decision to tender his resignation by the end of October, thus putting pressure on the governments and international community to make key decisions before then. Dayri stresses the need to avoid political expediency that may be counter-productive in the long term. Furthermore, he emphasizes the role of inclusivity as a cornerstone to any settlement, citing the trap of 2015, where Article 8 of the Libyan Political Agreement was “designed to exclude the LNA general commander”. This, he says, should be avoided.

The former foreign minister continued to highlight other challenges, saying that it is important for the international community to reach an agreement as well as ensure its effective implementation. This agreement shouldn’t just be a power-sharing deal, like the settlement produced in 2015, but should rather build institutions, introduce economic reforms, and introduce a new constitution that ensures presidential elections by the end of the upcoming transitional period. Dayri points to the lack of nuance in the overused phrase that: “Libyans should be able to agree and settle their problems,” and he reaffirmed the important role of the international community in fostering an agreement on Libya, stressing that the conflict cannot be solved unilaterally. At the moment, he’s afraid that not all stakeholders are “on the same wavelength” and fail to find consensus on the appointment of the new UN special envoy. Dayri rightfully claims that more diplomatic action is needed in order to bring to the fold all those involved in the Libyan crisis.

International Power Play

Of course,action required by international actors is one of a cooperative, constructive nature. Unfortunately, a wide array of international actors are involved in Libya in all the wrong ways. Fahmy criticized the “silliness of big powers”—not being able to reach a consensus regarding the appointment of the UN special envoy and  not wanting to lose, yet not wanting to invest enough to gain. Accordingly, Fahmy highlights the important role of Egypt and Turkey in the conflict. Anderson agrees with the general sentiment, describing the big powers’ neglect of Libya as “unbelievably irresponsible,” hoping that a change in the U.S. administration might bring a change to its policy in Libya. She further criticizes the carelessness with which external powers treat Libya, acting as if it’s a “playground” to play out regional and international rivalries. According to Anderson, for every local actor, there’s an “external patron” pulling the strings. This hinders progress not only locally, but also on the level of international forums, even when the discussions are between local actors, as there are always considerations given to the reaction of external patrons.

Other than the feud between Egypt and Turkey, she points to the divisions in the Gulf being played out in Libya, despite neither Qatar nor the United Arab Emirates really being interested in the conflict in Libya. Similarly, she criticizes the behavior of France, Russia, and the United States, and expressed concern that whatever presence the United States has seems designed to counter that of Russia (who supports General Haftar while the GNA has NATO support with the exception of France who is at odds with Turkey).

Anderson believes that changes in the regional and international spheres will be quite helpful in implementing  a roadmap in Libya, echoing Dayri’s remarks. Both of them encourage the idea of a detente, an easing of relations between Egypt and Turkey, and between the UAE and Qatar. Anderson suggests that Libya can serve as an experimental ground for warming of relations between regional powers, “calmy agreeing to disagree” rather than escalating the confrontation. Yet that is optimistic as she’s willing to be on the matter, suggesting that agreement on matters of regional tension is unlikely in the short term, and that the manner of disagreement is the realistic target for change. Dayri stresses the importance of finding a leader in the fragmented international community (bilaterally or through mediation from the United States or Russia), as he does not see one right now, despite previous attempts by Italy, France, and Germany.

Domestic Woes

Domestically, the situation is no less complicated, and no less challenging. Dayri indicates the existence of radicals within key stakeholders both in the west and east of Libya, “pushing for a military solution as we speak”. Anderson agrees, adding that there are political opportunists everywhere, with many who stand to lose by any settlement. These spoilers will prove to be troublemakers, and their “entrenched interests” and the violence and corruption that come out of them are a major source of disturbance for any potential movement forward. However, Anderson does see an opportunity for what she calls the “responsible Libyan elite” to make compromises and strive for a sustainable solution, enough to override the ill will of spoilers.

Yet, one must be careful not to overstate the divisions within Libya. Libya’s administration is divided, and that is a crisis that has to be tackled. However, from a geographical perspective, Anderson says that despite Libya being as vast as it is, the notion that the people from the different regions do not know each other is not true. She states that there has been a lot of movement between regions since the second half of the twentieth century, and that the situation in Libya isn’t comparable to the ethnic tension that brought down Yugoslavia, for instance. Dayri agrees, citing mixed marriages and the movement and flow of people, saying there is some semblance of national unity. Awad sees these points as a foundation upon which a settlement can be built. “The foundations are solid,” he exclaims optimistically. However, recent developments since 2014 have created some cracks within the Libyan population, with those in the south and the east feeling marginalized, as oil dividends have mostly gone to the west, according to Dayri. He is of the opinion that Libya “needs to look at decentralizing its political system,” but he stresses that all Libyans are eager to see a united Libya. He dismisses the idea of a split country, a fractured Libya.

“There is a thirst for unity and the end of a conflict that has plagued our country for the last nine years.” Such a notion is easy to get behind. The sooner a solution is found, the more stable, and prosperous, the Middle East, North Africa, and Mediterannean region will become. Failure has been a consistent theme of the past, and it promises to be a dark shadow looming over the future if domestic, regional, and international actors don’t set their priorities straight and put the welfare of the Libyan people above all other considerations. Yet some experts believe there is a way out, as rough and gradual as it may be, and there is hope. There wouldn’t have been much of a discussion otherwise.

In any other U.S. election year, political wrangling and maneuvering are enough to keep observers entertained and provide them with ample issues to debate.

But this year, against the backdrop of protests against racial discrimination and police brutality, and the deadly COVID-19 pandemic, which has divided the electorate on how it should be handled; the United States is going through what many say is an identity crisis that will inevitably impact the rest of the world. 

In a talk co-hosted by Harvard’s Kennedy School, two Egyptian scholars, Tarek Masoud and Karim Haggag, gathered to discuss the question of how the American political scene will affect the Middle East. This particular series, titled “USA 2020: The View from the Arab World”, is part of the Kennedy School’s fall 2020 Middle East Initiative (MEI). 

Masoud, who is the Sultan Qaboos Bin Said of Oman Professor of International Relations at Harvard’s Kennedy School, explained that when foreigners look at the United States today, they shake their heads saying that the country is weaker and more fragile than it has ever been. While the wane of American power  itself is debatable, he said this impression overseas stems from things such as how U.S. President Donald Trump has mishandled the COVID-19 pandemic and the protests on racial discrimination in major cities. 

“We are used to hearing American pundits comment on the crises and dysfunctions of the Arab world, but now that it is the United States that is crisis-ridden and dysfunctional, we thought it only fitting that we should reach out to Arab intellectuals to help us make sense of it all,” said Masoud. 

Masoud, the director of the program, and MEI Visiting Fellow Haggag, who is a Professor of Practice at The American University in Cairo (AUC), presented their first guest, former Egyptian Foreign Minister Nabil Fahmy, with some of the social and political challenges that have come to the fore in the United States, and how these have some in the Middle East worried.

Identity Crisis or Loss of Vision?

“I don’t think anybody can understand America until they actually visit, and fly from east to west, and west to east. I am saying this because you can understand the size of America, the wealth, the power, the monotony, and the diversity all in one. This allows you to understand the thought process in many degrees,” said Fahmy, founding Dean of the School of Global Affairs and Public Policy and an ambassador to the United States from 1999 to 2008.

Having been born in the United States and having spent much of his life managing Egypt’s relationship with the superpower, Fahmy agrees that America is in crisis. However, the crisis has more to do with the United States trying to figure out exactly what course it wants to take than merely partisan politics or racism.

“It’s not only about race. It’s about other aspects. Do you want to be an international power? Do you want to be in isolation? Do you want to think only in terms of immediate or long-term effects? Do you feel a responsibility toward the rest of the world, either allies or not? I would argue even, do you want to be domestically tolerant or intolerant? These are some of the things the country is going through, and it’s challenging,” explained Fahmy. 

The former foreign minister said the rest of the world views the United States from two perspectives. On the one hand is  ‘Hollywood’ and the ‘larger than life’ aspect of the American Dream; on the other is the perspective of political, military and economic power. 

In both those accounts, the image of the United States has been hurt, he says, and its status as a global leader and superpower that can do no wrong has been shaken.

This will push Americans and many overseas to rethink America’s position, and this exercise in itself is necessary because it will eventually lead to “a collective America, a tolerant America, and an America that supports international order”.

“Everything will be looked at more realistically and rationally which is good, because it is unfair to hold the country to a standard that is impossible to achieve.”

A New Crisis Vs. An Unresolved Issue

In 2020, Americans faced the harsh realities of persistent racial inequalities and discrimination, which Fahmy says had never been fully resolved.

In recent years, police brutality cases were often in the media and the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, founded in 2013, began protesting against racism, police brutality, and for more policy changes that would enable ‘black liberation’. However, racism in the United States has existed ever since the colonial era. While the Civil War from 1861 to 1865 led to the abolition of slavery, discrimination continued in the form of legal and systemic segregation. Similar to BLM, between the 1950s and 1960s, the Civil Rights Movement began in the United States when many citizens wanted equal rights under the law. 

“I think what’s new [today] is the expectations. One would assume that you’ve gone through the issue of being more tolerant, that the United States would now be talking about a democratic system that is much more refined than it was in the 1960s; but to see that happening again raises the question of whether the initial questions back then were solved or not,” said Fahmy. 

This has also shaken the myth of American cultural supremacy. At one point, many looked to the United States as a role model, but the domestic issues which ferociously boiled to the surface in 2020 have left those “fans” backing away.

This has damaged the perception of America’s political spheres of influence. 

Fahmy alluded to the Truman Doctrine, which was established by former U.S. President Harry Truman during the Cold War to curb the Soviet Union’s expansion by ensuring security and support to all of America’s allies.

The United States at the time could provide security, but the situation today is uncertain. 

“People are questioning today if they can continue to [provide security]. Will America be a reliable security partner in the future? The problem isn’t that America needs to provide security for all, I am not a proponent of that. I actually believe we should all provide our own security but be assisted by friends and allies. However, if U.S. security is being questioned, this provides an incentive for adversaries to the country directly, and adversaries of allies to become more aggressive,” Fahmy said. 

Key Player in Regional Stability

In the Middle East, the United States has been traditionally viewed as a key player in regional stability, but recent politics have caused its allies and other countries to doubt Washington’s resolve and resilience. Haggag said that the overall U.S. posture toward the Middle East region has changed, and it’s been seen as pivoting towards Asia instead to counter China’s growing influence there. 

“This has been the case under the previous administration [Barack Obama] and an issue of continuity with this current administration. How does the Arab world relate to this changing posture of the United States towards the Middle East when for America, the Middle East doesn’t occupy the central place it once did in its foreign policy?” Haggag questioned. 

Asian states such as China and India have expanded their own influence over the rest of the world, and hence the ‘Pivot to Asia’ eventually came to be during Obama’s administration. Obama’s administration had previously stated how it sees major opportunities for the United States in Asia, including access to a new market all while protecting U.S. security interests in the region. 

As a result, Arabs have a fear that even a partial United States pullout from the Middle East will leave a power vacuum.

But Fahmy disagrees. While regional competition may exist with Russia, he argued, and slowly with China too, the size and power of American shoes are too big to fill.

“I would argue that the United States will continue to play a strong substantial role in the international paradigm at least for generations to come… But security concerns have to be dependent on every country’s capacity, locally and regionally,” said Fahmy. 

In his view, Arab countries need to be less dependent on the United States, but it’s not as if the country is  being replaced by another superpower. American policy in the region has changed, and the Arab world needs to understand Washington’s new capacities. 

“You could argue that the United States is not involved in those arenas [Arab countries] by design. If you look at the last two American presidents, a powerful reason both Obama and Trump got elected is because they explicitly disavowed the interventions of the Bush administration, and other administrations, in the thorny politics of the Middle East,” said Masoud. 

At the same time, he added that Arab leaders are not looking for a United States that is as heavily involved as it once was in the invasion and occupation of Iraq, nor do they want a completely uninvolved U.S. Middle East policy, either. The key is in being moderate. 

Arab Support for Trump

But how does that explain Trump’s popularity among some regional leaders?

Haggag explained that, “there seems to be a dichotomy of Arab perception…The relationship between key Arab rulers, including Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, and this president [Trump] seems to be favourable; but when it comes to citizens of Arab states, they do not view the United States president favourably.”

Fahmy explained that this dichotomy has nothing to do with the actual U.S. president, but rather the policies and the priorities of leaders. Arab leaders are torn between their own immediate concerns and strategic interests. 

“I can see how leaders, at least some in the Arab region, would be more in support of Donald Trump than the general public in the Arab region because of their own responsibilities. Major countries, whether the United States or my own country, need to be able to balance the immediate concerns and the strategic interests. We can’t play one versus the other,” said Fahmy. 

Masoud pinpointed that Arab leaders have a close relationship with Trump because they fear Iran’s growing military and political influence in the region, and the rise of violent extremist militia movements in countries such as Syria. “Trump says what they want to hear,” he added. 

The Middle East’s Gulf countries have long feared Iran’s influence and expansionism in the region, especially since Iraq collapsed after the 2003 invasion and could no longer serve as a security buffer. 

These oil-rich countries have looked on in shock as Iran exerted  influence over Syrian, Lebanese, Iraqi, and Yemeni affairs. For countries impacted, the Trump administration is known to be hostile to Iran, having withdrawn from the nuclear deal, and re-imposed sanctions in 2018. The hostility between Iran and the United States peaked with Trump’s presidency as the two countries were close to major military tension in the 2019/2020 Persian Gulf Crisis.

“Irrespective of who is elected [November 3], a lot of Arab countries will have high points and low points and they will come in a different sequence,” said Fahmy. He went on to explain that the reason why Trump holds significant support from Arab leaders is because of their shared priorities, such as dealing with Iran and extremism. 

Fahmy explained that this is all a matter of priorities, in the sense that it may be easier to deal with Trump now in the short term, but in the longer term, it may be problematic policy-wise. “His positions are contrary to the traditional Arab rights. That will further fuel the difference between the public and authorities in Arab countries.” 

He says the more critical issue is how the United States has moved away from right and wrong in terms of international law, how the Middle East has suffered the consequences. Fahmy gave the example of the invasion of Iraq in search of weapons of mass destruction that, as it turned out, did not even exist. There was no legal basis for the invasion and this explains how “when it comes to America’s political needs, even before the current president, they forgot right and wrong, and decided to go ahead with this plan because it was in their interests,” said Fahmy. 

Perhaps what sets Trump apart, Fahmy concluded, is that he enunciates these plans more openly. This goes back to an earlier point on how the identity crisis in the United States is similar to what the Middle East has been going through domestically and internally, he explained, linking immediate concerns with the long term needs that bring Arab leaders to be more in support of Trump than of Biden at this moment in time. 

“The United States is mixed up with Trump, and drawing the line depends on what the issue that concerns you is; and the same applies in the Middle East. In the case of immediate concerns and pressing issues, this is what draws some Arab leaders to Trump, and not the general public,” he said.