America, Out of Control

Republicans in Chaos

With just 141 days until the 2020 presidential election, the cracks are starting to show at Republicans party establishment. Over just the past few weeks, we have seen the spate of condemnations of President Trump from the most distinguished Republicans, who formerly hold offices within the administration, Secretary of Defense, chief of staff, director of national intelligence.  Reports also indicate many of the party’s notable names, including former President George W Bush and Colin Powell the 65th US Secretary of State won’t be voting for Trump in November. There is also bad polling news for Trump everywhere, in particular in swing states, indicating he is trailing his Democratic rival by two-digit points. Trump as president has seemed to welcome chaos, perhaps he believes that he blooms in chaos. The chaos theory has taken a turn in recent weeks, however.

Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone

Seattle, the capital of Washington state, like most cities in the US, witnessed major protests in the days following George Floyd’s death in the custody of Minneapolis police. The Seattle police abandoned a precinct in the Capitol Hill neighborhood and handed the area over to the protesters they had clashed with for days. The protesters then occupied the area and established the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone. They call to defund the police force, some other cities have gone further, seeking dismantling the law enforcement. President Trump has branded the protest society a group of “ugly anarchists” and “domestic terrorists,” and in his tweet threatened the governor and the mayor to take their city back, otherwise he will do it himself. But the city’s mayor says Trump doesn’t get it, it is a group of people gathering lawfully and exercising their first Amendment of right of free speech. The Governor of Washington state tweeted back “a man (Trump) who is totally incapable of governing should stay out of Washington state’s business, stop tweeting.”

Anti-Confederacy, a Renewed Culture War

Amid weeks of protests over systemic racism, the US is facing a renewed culture war over symbols of the Confederacy. The most famous American confederacy consisted of the southern states who fought the Northern states in the American Civil War, while preserving slavery that almost tore the country apart more than 150 years ago. Many statues of Confederacy’s leaders along with dozens of other confederate monuments in different states have been removed and some vandalized.

Could the U.S. Superpower Commit Suicide?

Though Russian troops gather on Ukraine’s border, and civil war devastates Aleppo, the view from Washington still sees the ‘big story’ of this century as the rise of China and the mischief it entails. The big question is about the potential switch from an American to an Asian century and the bloody reckoning this could bring with it. Are America and China on collision course in the tradition of Athens and Sparta, or Imperial Germany and Edwardian Britain?

Some observers, such as Graham Allison and Joseph Nye of Harvard University, and recently strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski,sense that the problem is all Greek.

Syria, the Case for Intervention

The Syrian pot continues to boil, with fighting in Damascus, the aerial bombing of towns around the country, and reports that Washington is beginning to consider helping arm the rebels. President Bashar al-Assad’s fall may now be inevitable, but it could yet be drawn out. And none of these developments alone contains the prospect of ending violence in the country any time soon.

The longer the Syrian civil war drags on, the more likely it becomes that Mr Assad’s departure will only open a wider, more sectarian, civil conflict with unsettling ramifications for several neighboring states.

In Bosnia, in Kosovo and in Libya the US and its allies have in the past employed air power to expedite a satisfactory end to civil wars. It is time to consider doing the same in Syria.

The Next Proxy War

How the United States can use the Syrian civil war to prepare the region — for Iran.

In a recent op-ed in the Washington Post, Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Joseph Lieberman argued for stepped-up U.S. intervention in Syria’s civil war. They called for providing Syria’s rebels with weapons, training, and intelligence. They also called on the United States to support the establishment of safe zones inside Syria, to be protected by U.S. air power and other capabilities (but not American ground troops). Failure to take these steps, they argued, would prolong Syria’s bloody civil war, boost the role of Islamic radicals such as al Qaeda, increase the chance that Syria’s chemical weapons will end up in dangerous hands, and cause the U.S. to be shut out of the country after the Assad regime falls.