Monthly Archives: July 2024

Great Power Conflict in the Far East.

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            Ah, the 1990s!  The Soviet Union collapsed; its Eastern European subject states escaped from Communism; the Peoples’ Republic of China got religion in the form of a transition to capitalism (if not democracy); and all sorts of places junked much of the state-centered economic system that they had established during the Cold War.  Thereafter, China became increasingly tightly bound to the West.  It imported capital, technology, and “know-how” in exchange for cheap manufactured goods.  Meanwhile, the old Soviet Union came apart like a leper in a hot tub, while Russia itself plunged into corruption and economic chaos.  The United States employed its victory to push forward the boundaries of the “one right way”: free markets, an open world economy, democracy, human rights, and cultural freedom. 

            What a difference thirty years makes.  First, the economic component (labelled “globalization”) is under attack and in retreat.  Second, the political component (democratization, human rights) has not developed at the pace expected by many people.  (The unfulfilled promise of the economic and political components explains much about the flood of migrants from authoritarian developing countries into democratic developed countries.)  Third, the post-Cold War American-dominated world politico-economic system is under attack.[1] 

            At the heart of the matter lies China.  Zi Jinping’s “Belt and Road” initiative envisions building strong bonds, at the least, with surrounding countries.[2]  On the one hand, it means a focus on Central Asia.  On the other hand, it means domination of the little countries around the South China Sea.  Eventually, it may mean entirely driving the United States out of the Far East.  In the meantime, Russia’s war against Ukraine and Iran’s disruption of the Middle East pre-occupy the United States. 

            Vladimir Putin has been pursuing the resurrection of Russian power for two decades.  To this end he has used political manipulation, the fostering a Eurasian economic community among former members of the Soviet Union, the disruption of American policies in the Middle East, and war.  He has sought to escape isolation by tightening Russia’s relations with China, North Korea, and Iran.[3] 

            All through the Cold War, India was “neutral” on the side of the Soviet Union and at odds with China.  The Sino-Soviet conflict worked to India’s advantage.  Then the collapse of the Soviet Union and China’s post-Mao economic and military transformation left India adrift.  Now, the working alliance between China and Russia leaves India in a more awkward position. 

            Real conflicts still divide China and Russia.  Putin’s desire to reunite the old Soviet Union (or recreate the Tsarist Empire) run cross-wise to Zi’s ambitions in Central Asia.  Putin’s recent tightening of relations with North Korea intrudes on an area of Chinese interest.  Putin’s recent visit to Vietnam may have vexed Zi because Vietnam is one of those nations around the South China Sea that China hopes to dominate. 

            No one should expect these conflicts to disrupt cooperation between China and Russia in the near term.  First they have to topple the Americans. 

[1] Walter Russell Mead, “Asia’s New ‘Game of Thrones’,” WSJ, 9 July 2024. 

[2] See: Belt and Road Initiative – Wikipedia; or Jane Perlez and Yufan Huang, “Behind China’s $1 Trillion Plan to Shake Up the Economic Order,” NYT, 13 May 2017. 

[3] All of which serve as “enablers” of his war against Ukraine. 

Trump-secutions.

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“Lawfare” is a slippery term for a slippery subject.  One definition is: “the use of legal systems and institutions to damage or delegitimize an opponent, or to deter an individual’s usage of their legal rights.”[1]  The goal of “lawfare” is to delegitimize an opponent in the court of public opinion, or to bleed their economic resources. 

At the heart of the investigations and prosecutions of former President Donald Trump lie three problems.[2]  First, Donald Trump faced a legal onslaught during his time as President.  He survived a protracted investigation of alleged “collusion with Russia” that turned up little but evidence of misbehavior by his political opponents.[3]  He underwent a prolonged parallel investigation by the House Intelligence Committee; Then he survived not one, but two self-inflicted impeachments.  In the case of the impeachments, he escaped in large measure thanks to party solidarity holding, regardless of the merits of either case.  Then Congress’s “January 6 Committee” elicited voluminous testimony on Trump’s attempts to overturn the election of 2020, culminating in the riot at the Capitol building.[4]  The varied presidential investigations and trials were all undertaken by his enemies.[5]  “Teflon Don” beat the rap each time.  He seemed primed to walk off into the sunset unscathed.  All of this enraged many Democrats. 

Second, there came the post-presidential legal prosecutions.  All were all undertaken by Democrats.  In the majority of cases, these were highly partisan Democrats elected in wildly anti-Trump districts, sometimes after pledging to prosecute Trump for something.[6]  As a result, the prosecutions can be portrayed as “lawfare,” rather than the pursuit of justice.[7]  In the case of delegitimization, Biden election ads on television constantly hit Trump as a “convicted felon.”  In the case of exhausting resources, Trump has used money donated to his campaign to pay for the legal expenses.  By June 2024, the meter had hit $80 million.[8] 

Third, the cases have not under-cut Trump’s popularity with a large segment of voters.[9]  Nor will conviction prevent him from serving a second term as President.[10]  Perhaps seeing those cases as “lawfare,” many voters shrug off the claims.[11]  On the one hand, almost continuously from 1 March to 10 July 2024, Trump has maintained a narrow lead in polls over President Biden.[12]  His share has never fallen below 40 percent in that period.  On the other hand, Trump’s conviction by Alvin Bragg met an immediate answer from pro-Trump small-donors: $34.8 million in a single day.  A further $111.8 million flowed in during June 2024.  None of the donors seem to object to their money being diverted to paying Trump’s legal bills.  Perhaps they see it as all part of the same campaign? 

Finally, there are the unexpected consequences.  In August 2023, Special Counsel Jack Smith obtained an indictment of Donald Trump for four crimes related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election.  In October 2023, Trump’s lawyers claimed that the indictments should be dismissed on grounds of presidential immunity.  In December 2023 the presiding judge rejected the claims by Trump’s lawyers.  Trump announced that he would appeal.  Jack Smith, determined to keep the case moving forward with dispatch, asked the Supreme Court for an expedited decision on the limits of presidential immunity.   The Supreme Court turned him down flat.  The appeals court then rejected the claim of immunity.  Trump announced that he would appeal and asked that the case be paused until after the election of November 2024.  Jack Smith again stomped on the gas by asking the Supreme Court to hear the case right away.  This time he got what he wanted.  The Supreme Court issued its decision on 1 July 2024.[13] 

            That decision greatly extended the previous view of presidential immunity to all official acts within the President’s core areas of responsibility—those not shared with another branch of government.  So, to paraphrase one of the earlier judges, Joe Biden could order SEAL Team 6 to kill Donald Trump, then would have to be impeached before he could be tried.  Would he be convicted? 

[1] See: Lawfare – Wikipedia  This is different from “Lawfare,” the website.  See: Lawfare (website) – Wikipedia 

[2] Aruna Viswanatha and Sadie Gurman, “Trump Prosecutions Have Been Political Gift,” WSJ, 6-7 July 2024. 

[3] Well, they nailed Paul Manafort and Rick Gates for financial misdeeds related to Ukraine long before they became associated with the Trump campaign; they got George Papadopoulos for making false statements to the FBI; they got General Michael Flynn (ret.) for making false statements to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador during his brief tenure as National Security Adviser.  See: Inspector General, Department of Justice, A Review of Various Actions by the FBI and DOJ in Advance of the Elections of 2016 (2018);  The Mueller Report: Report on the Investigation into Russian Interference in the Presidential Election of 2016 (2019); Inspector General, Department of Justice, A Review of Four FISA Applications and Other Aspects of the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane Investigation (2019); Report of Special Counsel John Durham, Report on Matters Related to Intelligence Activities and Investigations Arising Out of the 2016 Presidential Campaigns (justice.gov) (2023). 

[4] The January 6 Report: Final Report of the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the U.S. Capitol (2022). 

[5] In the case of the 6 January Committee, the nominations of two Republican Trump-supporters to the committee were rejected by the Speaker of the House, while two anti-Trump Republicans were accepted and three of the Democratic managers from Trump’s impeachments were also included. 

[6] Letitia James, during her campaign for the New York Attorney General’s Office in 2018, promised to prosecute Donald Trump, whom she described as an “illegitimate president” and she won; in January 2022, she filed a fraud lawsuit against the Trump Organization for overstating the value of assets in loan applications.  In 2021, Alvin Bragg won election as District Attorney for New York County (Manhattan).  “A key issue in the election was which candidate would be best equipped to criminally prosecute or civilly sue former President Donald Trump.” 2021 New York County District Attorney election – Wikipedia.  Bragg won conviction using a “novel” legal theory.  Trump won 12 percent of the vote in the county in 2020.  Fulton County, Georgia, District Attorney Fani Willis has charged Trump and a host of others under Georgia’s RICO law for election fraud.  Biden won 72 percent of the vote in Fulton county in 2020, Trump won 26 percent.  Willis’s case has been delayed—and may be completely derailed–by the intrusion of what seem to be irrelevant issues.  Jack Smith acting for the Department of Justice, has charged Trump with election interference in Washington, DC, and with unlawfully retaining secret government documents in Florida. 

[7] See: “Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia” (dir. Sam Peckinpah, 1974).  Actually, don’t see it.  Awful movie. 

[8] How are Trump’s legal bills and the 2024 campaigns being funded? There’s a lot we don’t know | CNN Politics 

[9] Holman Jenkins of the Wall Street Journal has long argued that the federal prosecutions, at least, were intended to rally support for Trump at the expense of other Republicans.  Trump, he thinks, is the only Republican that Joe Biden can beat.  For the latest installment in this argument, see Holman Jenkins, “Team Biden’s Cynical Gambit,” WSJ, 10 July 2024.  However, Trump led in the primaries from first to last.  

[10] Although, who knows?  We might see journalists stuck reporting from the “Florence, Colorado, White House.”  There are half a dozen restaurants in the town of 3,500 people.  THE 10 BEST Restaurants in Florence (Updated July 2024) (tripadvisor.com) 

[11] A WSJ poll found respondents almost equally split between those who believed that Trump’s conviction showed that the system works to hold people accountable (47 percent) and those who believed that the courts respond to political pressure (49 percent).  This matches pretty well with support for the two men in polls. 

[12] Trump’s conviction was followed by a decline in his lead over Biden from 1.7 percent on 30 May to Biden being ahead by 0.2 percent on 25 June 2024.  Then came the first presidential debate.  Over the following two weeks, Trump went from 0.2 percent down to 2.1 percent up.  National : President: general election : 2024 Polls | FiveThirtyEight 

[13] Trump v. United States (2024) – Wikipedia 

Never Mind the Politics.

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Never mind the politics that dominate in the media coverage of President Joe Biden. Never mind “Can he still beat Donald Trump?” Never mind “If he does win, can he hold it together–even stay alive–through a second term?” Never mind “If Biden does go, how do we get in a possible winner as nominee?” Never mind the “But he’s got the delegates locked up, and he’s determined to run, and we’re mostly old ourselves, so we might have to retire, so there’s no solution to the problem.” Never mind that, among the Democrats, the knives are out and scores are being settled through leaks and blaming. Never mind the Republicans chortling “told ya so.” Never mind any of it. Focus on the essentials.

Many Americans watched as much as they could stand of the first debate against Trump. Many Americans watched the “extended” (22 minutes) interview with George Stephanopoulos. The latter did nothing to repair the damage done by the former. He has “good” days and “bad” days. All of those days run between 10:00 AM and 4:00 PM. Before or after that, he isn’t reliably present. He’s best when reading a prepared statement from a teleprompter. Sometimes he makes do by reading public statements from 3×5 cards or having his staff point out where everybody else is in the binder of documents. His staff tries to shield him from extended exchanges with reporters and donors.

Foreign leaders saw what Americans saw. Some of those leaders are “friendly.” It must give them pause to think of the “leader of the Free World” in such a decrepit state. Some of those leaders are “enemies.” (Again, never mind the “challenging the rules-based international order” stuff. They are enemies out to bring us down.)

China, Russia, North Korea, and Iran all threaten different interests of the United States. If they believe that the United States will be slow to respond to a threat or action, if they think that delay and uncertainty will let them get a bite at the apple, then they will do what their rulers deem to be in the best interests of their regimes. They don’t have to coordinate a plan beforehand. They just need to be agile and ready to pounce. They will see our weakness and harm us, perhaps destroy us.

If you need an example, look at Benjamin Netanyahu. President Biden flew to Israel to offer solid American support after the Hamas attack of 7 October 2023. Netanyahu is nothing if not predatory and a sharp observer of the people with whom he has to deal. He surely read Biden like an open book. Since then, he has continually defied Biden over the war in Gaza. Part of that reflects American domestic politics during an election year. Part of it reflects Netanyahu’s judgment that Biden will be uncertain, wavering, and just a bunch of talk in his response to Israel’s actions.

The evident already-occurred mental and physical decline of President Joe Biden represents a grave threat to the national security of the United States. It will only worsen in time.

Crisis and Succession.

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Logically, if Joe Biden is cognitively unfit to serve as President six months from now, then it is because he is cognitively unfit to serve as President right now.[1]  The objection to removing him from President right now appears to be that he is a nice man and it would hurt his feelings.  So, the best that we are going to get is a pained, but dignified announcement that he will not seek re-election and that he releases his delegates for the convention in August 2024. 

            Vice President Kamala Harris is often mentioned as Biden’s logical successor.  How will Harris fare if she seeks a term as President in her own right? 

Theodore Roosevelt succeeded William McKinley, then won a term in his own right. 

Calvin Coolidge succeeded Warren G. Harding, then won a term in his own right. 

Harry Truman succeeded Franklin D. Roosevelt, then won a term in his own right. 

Richard Nixon followed Dwight Eisenhower, then failed to win a term in his own right. 

Lyndon B. Johnson succeeded John F. Kennedy, then won a term in his own right. 

Hubert Humphrey followed Lyndon Johnson, then failed to win a term in his own right. 

Gerald Ford succeeded Richard Nixon, then failed to win a term in his own right. 

George H. W. Bush followed Reagan and won a term in his own right. 

Al Gore followed Bill Clinton, then failed to win a term in his own right. 

Thus, between 1900 and 1964, four of five former Vice Presidents won the presidency in their own right.  So, the odds are good? 

Not necessarily.  Since 1964, one of four former Vice Presidents won in their attempt to win election as President in their own right.[2]  Why the change?  I don’t know. 

Those odds argue against any coronation of Vice President Harris as the Democratic nominee in 2024.  In turn, holding a truly open convention would allow a bunch of aspiring politicians to duke it out in smoke-filled[3] back rooms.  This might not produce a winner, but neither will Biden or—by the odds—Harris. 

However, past performance is no guarantee of future results.  Harris supporters can point to George H.W. Bush as a counter-example.[4]  It could happen. 

[1] Look up Woodrow Wilson and Edith Galt Wilson.  Or Winston Churchill’s second time as prime minister. 

[2] I omit Joe Biden because he did not try for election as President until after a full term out of office.  Others may well disagree with my decision.  That’s what makes horse races. 

[3] Yes, I do know that no one smokes any more.  I’m just having a hard time coming up with “la juste mot.”

[4] They may have to put up with some eye-rolling from their audience in response. 

Thinking About What Is Possible.

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            The Democratic Convention will be held in Chicago from 19 to 22 August 2024. 

            The second Presidential Debate will be held on 10 September 2024. 

            Election Day is 5 November 2024. 

            It seems likely at this moment that President Joe Biden will continue his campaign for re-election.  He is described as “huddling” with his family, all strong supporters of his continuing his campaign.  Perhaps not the most objective bunch of people to consult, but there you have it.  Doubtless many other people—“the inner circle,” really rich donors, campaign people, pollsters, leading Democratic politicians—will also be consulted. 

If the Democrats are going to stick with President Joe Biden, then they are going to have to hope that he doesn’t suffer some cognitive mishap between now and Election Day.  In particular, they have to hope that the debate on 10 September is not a re-run of 27 June.  If he does suffer another melt-down—either in public or among the elites during some critical event—it will not be possible to sweep that under the carpet.  Also, it will discredit many of these people if they remove him as the candidate after having sworn up-and-down that he just had a “bad day” in June. 

            If the Democrats are going to force out President Biden as their standard-bearer, then they will have to do it by mid-August at the latest.  They can’t wait around to see how the 10 September debate turns out.  Forcing out President Biden by mid-August would allow them to either converge behind Vice President Kamala Harris or hold an open convention.  In either case, the sooner, the better.  There are only about six weeks left before mid-August. 

            Many people hold Vice President Harris in low regard.  Many Democrats probably would prefer that she not get the nomination.  She herself probably would very much like to be president.  She is unlikely to go quietly unless she gets a better offer.  The obvious solution is for her to move to the Supreme Court.  However, there are no current vacancies.  What to do? 

            The obvious (to me) solution is for Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor to resign her position in order to become…IDK, Ambassador to the United Nations?  How to get Sotomayor to resign from the Supreme Court?  Well, there is the still-unresolved matter of who leaked the draft opinion of the Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade.  This amounted to a significant breach of Court policy and decorum.  It seems hardly possible for the leaker to remain on the Court.  So, before mid-August, there may be a leak to the press on recent discoveries achieved through forensic computer investigations. 

            If President Biden cannot be persuaded to leave and he leads the Democrats to defeat, there will be the “told you so” issue to trouble Democratic solidarity after the election.  If President Biden can be persuaded to leave, there will remain the “jump” or “pushed” issue to trouble Democratic solidarity both before and after the election.  Forcing out a Hispanic woman to be able to then force out an Afro-South Asian woman to be able to put in a White person will trouble Democratic solidarity.  Supposedly, “the prospect of being hanged concentrates the mind wonderfully.” 

            It could be an eventful Summer.