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Politics

Juicio político y resto del mundo

Nov 20, 2019 Carl Bildt

ESTOCOLMO – Una vez más, Estados Unidos transita el profundo drama de un juicio político a un presidente. Pero, a diferencia del pasado, esta vez las repercusiones en el resto del mundo podrían ser considerables.

Consideremos los dos precursores modernos a la investigación, que se lleva a cabo dentro del proceso de destitución actual, sobre los esfuerzos del presidente estadounidense Donald Trump para persuadir al gobierno ucraniano de anunciar una investigación penal sobre uno de sus contendientes demócratas, el exvicepresidente Joe Biden, y su hijo. El primero fue la crisis, de lenta gestación, que comenzó con el allanamiento a medianoche de las oficinas del Comité Demócrata Nacional en 1972 y llegó a consumir al sistema político estadounidense durante dos años, culminando con la renuncia del presidente Richard Nixon en agosto de 1974. La segunda fue la investigación del fiscal especial sobre el presidente Bill Clinton, quien fue llevado a juicio político por la Cámara de Representantes de EE. UU. en 1998, pero absuelto por el Senado en febrero de 1999.

En ambos casos, el origen de la crisis fue local. Nixon fue acusado de abusar de su cargo con fines políticos internos y, luego, de obstruir la investigación. Clinton fue acusado de perjurio y otros abusos relacionados con su comportamiento personal. El caso contra Trump es muy distinto: la política exterior estadounidense está en el propio centro de la acusación.

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Carl Bildt

Writing for PS since 2009
112 Commentaries

Carl Bildt was Sweden’s foreign minister from 2006 to 2014 and prime minister from 1991 to 1994, when he negotiated Sweden’s EU accession. A renowned international diplomat, he served as EU Special Envoy to the Former Yugoslavia, High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, UN Special Envoy to the Balkans, and Co-Chairman of the Dayton Peace Conference. He is Co-Chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations.

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j. von Hettlingen Nov 21, 2019

Carl Bildt says the ongoing impeachment inquiry into Trump’s abuse of power will have wider consequences on US foreign policy than previous impeachments in recent history.
During Watergate, administration officials and Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s secretary of state and national security adviser, “kept the ship afloat, with both the Vietnam War and US-Soviet relations remaining high on the agenda.” US foreign relations did not appear to have suffered any significant damage. Throughout the Clinton impeachment drama, “which coincided with the run-up to the Kosovo War, US diplomacy and foreign policymaking did not suffer any major disruptions.”
According to the author, unlike earlier proceedings in the Watergate scandal in 1973 and the Lewinsky affair in 1998, which were domestic issues, “the Ukraine scandal threatens to jam up the entire machinery of US foreign policy.” This country has gained much global attention recently due to its prominent role in the ongoing impeachment inquiry. Yet, America’s relations with Ukraine “are not some peripheral issue,” because its’ “policy is born of its commitments to European and international security.”
However, US foreign policy toward Ukraine is in shambles. The current events in Washington is affecting Ukraine’s relations with the US. Several key officials who used to deal with Kyiv — Kurt Volker, Fiona Hill, Rick Perry — have left or are leaving the government, after testifying. One source of anxiety in Kyiv is the military aid Trump held up in an effort to pressure President Volodymyr Zelensky into investigating his political rival, Joe Biden. It was only released after Ambassador William Taylor and lawmakers from both parties intervened. Nevertheless misgivings about the future relations will not go away.
While the US and the EU are supporting Ukraine to defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity since Russia’s annexation of Crimea and incursions into Eastern Ukraine in 2014, this country has never been a “central foreign-policy concern” for Trump. Mike Pompeo is more interested in appeasing his boss's friends abroad than promoting America’s soft power, suggesting that all American foreign policy is as misbegotten as the Ukraine portfolio. Sadly it will not get better anytime soon. On his watch the State Department has become the vehicle for Trump's personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner to advance their own interests.
World leaders have reasons to worry that US foreign policy for the rest of 2020 will be unpredictable and pose a threat to global stability. The first is that Trump lacks political acumen and knowledge in geopolitics – he relies fully on gut feelings. The second is that his staff’s instincts do not appear to be much better – they are appointed not based on merits but on loyalty, allowing a bunch of low calibre officials to do Trump’s errands overseas, beclowning American foreign policy.
It’s not just Ukrainian officials who worry. No foreign partner can trust this administration as long as Trump is in office.
Former White House chief of staff John F. Kelly noted last week, “It pains me to see what’s going on because I believe if I was still there or someone like me was there, [Trump] would not be kind of, all over the place.”
Kelly thought a number of “adults in the room” would constrain Trump. Indeed, it is hard to deny that the number of outrageously stupid mistakes emerging from the White House has increased since their departure.
There is also the fear that Trump might take the whole country, or even the world down with him, if he feels cornered and sees no way out.
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Joseph Zorzin Nov 21, 2019

So, what's so terrible about investigating Hunter Biden? I wish I could make $50,000/month on the board of a Ukrainian gas company. I probably know more about the subject than Hunter but my dad wasn't the American VP. But the Democrats seem to think it's a terrible thing to investigate him. Sure, Trump is obnoxious, but the Demorcats are self-righteous and excessively politically correct and I think as a result of the Democrat hypocrisy, Trump will get another 4 years.
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Petey Bee Nov 21, 2019

The Trump administration is without a doubt the greatest domestic disaster to befall the US since Bush II.

However, it must be said that by some quantitative measures, the Trump team has managed improvements over the far more coherent Obama administration. These measures include number of civilians killed needlessly, number of wars started, and amazingly enough, number of people deported.

Historians will one day tell us whether these reductions were due to a combination of principled and unprincipled "resistance" to the chief executive, innate incompetence, or simply a shortage of policy areas that are still available to be screwed up.

But it is a fascinating irony, that the institutional centers of the "foreign policy consensus", are the ones on which most Democrats now place their hope for protection from abuse of power - when the very same institutions, under both Bush and Obama, engaged in spectacular acts of abuse of power. (most obviously, lying to start multiple devastating wars, but also allying with terrorists, engaging in torture, war crimes, random dronings of civilians justified by technological targeting that never actually knows the face of the target (yes, actual policy), plainly authoritarian legal changes under the patriot act, AND systematically lying to Congress about all of the above. Come to think of it, some of the exact individuals who made this false testimony in the bush-obama years, are now leading the efforts to protect the nation from Trump.

In short, opponents of the rising militarism and authoritarianism are facing a dilemma. Oppose Trump and become de-facto allied with a subset of the architects of the worst Bush era abuses - or - Support Trump and thereby support another subset of the architects of the worst Bush era abuses.

I would humbly suggest that we can do better by avoiding both of these miserable options. Why legitimize some of the most destructive and vicious parts of the "foreign policy apparatus", just because they claim to be saving us from the enemy of the week? Instead, defeat Trump at the ballot box (which will be easy if we heed lessons of 2016, rather than hiding from them), and then send the warmongers into retirement, along with the kleptocrats and their monopolist cronies. The US and the rest of the world will both be better off.
- P. Kamath Nov 21, 2019
  
  Are you suggesting ‘do nothing’ and let people decide political direction and evolution of the nation’s future to voters’ judgement? Set adrift?
  - Petey Bee Nov 21, 2019
    
    One option is to take a chance on the judgment of voters, who may or may not choose Trump as president (I don't expect they will unless Democrats give them no attractive alternatives), and may or may not choose a Republican Congress (same), and if they choose both, then we open the possibility of the further development of authoritarian powers that have been collecting in the US executive under the excuse of the "war on terror" of the past 2 decades. That is one possibility out of several.
    
    Another possibility is to throw my support in with existing groups of militarists within the executive agencies, who are currently defying Trump, but in the very recent past have been demonstrably guilty of the same abuses we all fear Trump may also do. They are asking for the de-facto veto power over major branches of government which, as written, they ought to report to. The reason is to stop Trump, but that is very much like the excuse of terrorism they previously used to build and then abuse their power. The side effect of supporting them would be to shift the ability to abuse power into hands that have recently done so. That is another possibility. It is alarmingly popular.
    
    I find the first possibility more benign.
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