View from America
By M. R. Josse
GAITHERSBURG, MD: In the smoldering ruins of the Donald J. Trump administration ending in less than two days as of this writing, the imminent transfer of power, mid-day 20 January 2021, promises to be like no other in living memory.
Apart from violent threats from far-right bigots – the core of the so-called Trump ‘base’ – in the middle of a raging pandemic, there is the looming overhang of a divisive Senate trial against Trump, after he becomes a private citizen.
That will happen in the wake of the recent second impeachment of President Trump where 10 Republican members of the House joined 222 Democrats for the article’s final passage and adoption, making it the most bipartisan of all such impeachment votes in American history, say experts.
More long-term, grave unanswered questions about the health of American democracy – and of national unity – are bound to reverberate and carom across this continent-sized land, far into the future.
Security beefed-up in Washington DC for the inauguration ceremony of President Joe Biden
UNPRECEDENTED
While Americans and, indeed, the world continue to be fed a daily, or even hourly, stream of unnerving videos of the savage 6 January 2021 attack by a motley mob of far-right domestic terrorists on the U.S. capitol, during a joint session of Congress, some 25,000 military personnel have been deployed as a deterrent to another such attack, providing Washington D.C. the unlovely trappings of, say, the ‘green belt’ in an occupied Baghdad, Iraq of yore.
In other words, the optics today around the nation’s capital are embarrassingly at variance from those of the much-acclaimed ‘shining city on the hill’ or the spectacle of the routine seamless transfer of presidential power from one administration to another that one had so gotten used to over the years – and which was the envy of so many.
As matters stand currently, however, Trump not only intends to be AWOL at the inauguration ceremony – pared down to skeletal form – but to revel, earlier and grotesquely, in a military parade and ceremonial send-off, red carpet walk, a 21-gun salute and all, before Air Force One air-lifts him and his personal entourage to his Florida resort-home.
Vice-President Mike Pence has reportedly indicated that he would attend the swearing-in ceremony for President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.
Notably, that massive deployment of armed force comes against the backdrop of “concerning online chatter” vis-a-vis dire threats to the Inauguration, as indicated to CNN by FBI Director Christopher Wray who disclosed that 200 suspects of the 6 January insurrection had been identified and more than 100 arrested, to date.
What’s more, aside from Washington D.C., all 5O state capitals are now reportedly on ‘high alert’ – on guard against 6 January copy-cat mob assaults from myriad ultra-right outfits.
BIDEN’S DAUNTING TASKS
Biden, as the 46th president of the United States, will have to immediately encounter an enormous array of formidable tasks for which he and his team of competent and experienced colleagues seem well prepared.
One of his major initial steps will be to ensure the passage of a $ 1.9 trillion stimulus plan to help the American economy recover from the ravages of the coronavirus pandemic, including the implementation of his goal of providing 100 million covid-19 jabs in his first 100 days of office. Daily deaths from the disease are reported in their thousands while almost 400,000 have lost their lives.
Biden intends to speed the rollout and manufacture of the two vaccines currently being employed by medical professionals. A third is expected in the country by the end of the month; yet another in the next month or so.
That clear and obvious priority aside, the incoming president would have to deal – and this possibly ruthlessly – with the newly-exposed scourge of domestic violence. Though it of course remains to be seen how exactly Biden and his band plan to eradicate that cancer on America’s body politic, one major overarching priority of the Biden administration, or, so one is informed, will be priority of healing the searing inequity of racism and bridging the yawning political divisions that obtain today.
Such fissures were not only starkly exposed to the world to witness and gasp at; they were amplified during Trump’s divisive four-year term of office and the toxicity of his exaggerated claims and outright lies, including the mother of all: that he won the 2020 presidential election in a landslide!
Prof. Cynthia Miller-Idriss of American University, and author of ‘Hate in the Homeland’ in an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, informs that there has for some time now been a ‘coming together of normally separated, far-right extremist groups due to their sense of insecurity and entitlement’ ultimately coalescing in their collective threats to the established order such as witnessed recently.
Rather chillingly, she opines that what we have experienced lately in America is ‘not the end of a movement but the beginning of another’ whose form and future dimensions remain to be seen. As a coda, she reminds that there is extant a global movement of far-right extremists, and refers to attacks they perpetrated against the established order in Germany, Britain, New Zealand and Norway.
Be that as it may, Biden plans to sign a blizzard of executive orders in his first few days in office. Apart from negating some of Trump’s blatantly outlandish policies, he plans that America rejoin the Paris Climate Accord and reverse Trump’s ban on individual travel to the United States by people from mostly-Muslim countries.
There is currently a vigorous public debate on whether Biden should hasten Trump’s Senate trial, or postpone matters so that the Senate could first facilitate the passage of his key policy priorities, as also confirm appointments of his senior cabinet colleagues. Though we will know soon enough what will eventually transpire in that respect, it is notable that Biden has himself told the Senate that it is possible to pursue both impeachment and “other urgent business”, simultaneously.
Meanwhile, New York Times reports that Trump allies have collected for themselves thousands of dollars from around 100 people seeking pardons or commutations from Trump before departure from the White House, Wednesday morning. Clearly more will be known about this scandal, ere long.
DIPLOMATIC VANDALISM
Less noticed, but only marginally less significant, are some cynical pre-transition gambits by the Trump administration’s State Department – led by its rotund vicar, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo – at what may justly be called pure ‘diplomatic vandalism’, to borrow the neat phraseology of former British Foreign Secretary, David Milliband.
These include, at the very 11th-hour, the decision to designate Yemen’s Houti rebels – anathema of the Saudis, who have been pampered and fawned upon by Trump – as a foreign terrorist organization. It is bound only to worsen Yemen’s war-ravaged humanitarian crisis.
That shortlist includes Pompeo’s decision, 16 January, lifting all formal restrictions on contacts between the United States and Taiwan. This is a purely symbolic move not only reflective of Trump’s deep animus against China but one which it will not be able to implement. It was meant perhaps only to block Biden’s foreign policy agenda. Incidentally, Pompeo, like Trump, is inordinately fond of calling covid-19 the ‘Wuhan virus’.
According to Susan Glasser of the New Yorker, expounding on CNN, Pompeo is one of the most unsuccessful American secretaries of state. This is reflected in Iran, she argues, which, despite all manner of American sanctions, is not only still standing but has been able to move forward on its path towards nuclear weapons capability.
Incidentally, via its ally Israel, the outgoing Trump administration 27 November killed Iran’s top nuclear scientist Mosen Fakrizadeh in a move clearly designed to complicate things for Joe Biden who has made public his intention to restart diplomatic engagement with Tehran, after he assumes his high office.
Then, there is Cuba. In an endeavour to plant landmines for Biden, Trump’s State Department opted to classify Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism, reversing the steps that the Obama administration had taken in delisting Cuba in 2015 as part of a broader U.S.-Cuba thaw.
Finally, Pompeo’s dismal international standing was brought into sharp light recently. As disclosed by Glasser, Pompeo had to put off his farewell trip to Europe “after he received indications that he would not be received by his European counterparts.” Anyone surprised?
NEPALI DELIGHTS
All of which reminds me that Foreign Minister Pradeep Gyawali’s much-hyped, just-concluded three-day official visit to India was a damp squib – having failed even to snatch a brief courtesy call on Prime Minister Narendra Modi who, incidentally, now has his share of political woes.
While that contrasts sharply with how Indian officials, no matter how junior, manage to jaw-bone with senior Nepali politicos and officials at the drop of the proverbial Nepali topi, Gyawali had to content himself with a brief meeting with Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, instead.
The latter, as all remember, inaugurated a road to China through Nepali territory not too long ago! A photograph of the two, swirling on the internet, shows one humble and head down and the other poker faced and triumphant-looking. No prizes for correct guesses.
Those who had fondly imagined that there would also be bilateral talks on the disputed border were flummoxed: nothing of the kind came to pass. Regarding the promised covid-19 vaccines to Nepal – I’ll believe it when they do actually arrive in Nepal. How about you?
What has been most absorbing about Nepalese affairs in the past week or so is that, all of a sudden, talk of Prime Minister Oli’s ouster has been replaced with babbling about elections. Wow – after all the sound and fury about demonstrations of assorted forms across Nepal! What happened, yaar?
Apparently, the Supreme Court has still miles to go before it pronounces on the ‘dissolution of parliament’ issue. No less significant to my simple mind is that there is consistently less speculation about the restoration of the monarchy or on whether India is backing the pro-Oli or pro-Prachanda/Nepal grouping of the NCP.
And less guff about NC’s Sher Bahadur Deuba once again becoming prime minister: why so? No one mentions, even in passing, what the Army might, or might not, do.
Finally, while many of our Kathmandu lads and lassies were agog with the reenactment by the Army of Pritihinarayan Shah’s storied march from Gorkha to Kathmandu, I was even more struck that, on that hallowed anniversary, NC biggies, Deuba and Ram Chandra Poudel, were busy adorning a talkathon, not on the Bada Maharaja, but on Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi!
Is there anything more to say?
The writer can be reached at: manajosse@gmail.com
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