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Politics books

Chaos Under Heaven: Trump as raging bull in a China policy shop

March 14, 2021 by Staff Reporter

Covid-19 has left more than 530,000 Americans dead and China’s standing with the US at a historic low. Only Iran and North Korea fare worse. US opinion is no outlier. China’s reputation has taken a beating in Australia, the UK, Sweden, the Netherlands and Germany. Images of tanks rolling through Tiananmen Square in summer 1989 have been supplanted by Beijing stonewalling on the origins of the plague.

In Chaos Under Heaven, the Washington Post reporter Josh Rogin reminds us that under Xi Jinping, China halted the export of personal protective equipment made by US companies, sent defective PPE to the Netherlands and barred Australian beef exports after Canberra called for an inquiry into the genesis of Covid-19. In Rogin’s telling, China’s “mask diplomacy” was a blunt instrument, designed to still criticism abroad and sow fear at home.

Rogin delivers a needed modicum of clarity. Under the subtitle Trump, Xi and the Battle for the Twenty-First Century, he lays out what the US and its allies got wrong about China over decades, strife within the Trump administration and personal financial conflicts that affected US policy. Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, and Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump feature heavily. But Hunter and James Biden bear watching too.

McConnell’s wealth is tethered to his wife’s family interest in Chinese shipping. Angela Chao, his sister-in-law, is chief executive of the business and sits on the board of the Bank of China. Most recently, the US transportation department inspector general reported that Elaine Chao, McConnell’s wife and Trump’s transportation secretary, escaped criminal investigation after the justice department weighed in.

In fall 2019, McConnell and Trump thwarted progress on the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy bill, which had cleared the Senate foreign relations committee, then controlled by Republicans. Back in 1992, McConnell backed legislation enacted in connection with the autonomy of Hong Kong. As late as summer 2019, he wrote an op-ed in support. Time – and perhaps marriage – can change perspective.

Rogin has longtime interests in human rights and the far east. He spent the early days of his career at the Asahi Shimbun, a Japanese daily, and more recently rubbed shoulders with an informal group of opponents to the Chinese regime, which he calls the “Bingo Club”. One member was Peter Mattis, a former CIA analyst and nephew of James Mattis, Trump’s first defense secretary. During the 2016 Republican convention, Rogin broke the story of the Trump campaign “gutting” the GOP’s anti-Russia platform on Ukraine.

Chaos Under Heaven moves quickly, is well-written and draws the reader in. Rogin makes clear that tension between Beijing and Washington will probably remain for the foreseeable future. China’s economy and military continue to grow, America’s social chasms remain on display. Under Xi, don’t expect the Middle Kingdom to back down.

One of Rogin’s central points is that Trump correctly identified the threat and challenge posed by China yet proved incapable of formulating a coherent strategy and sticking with it. Much of the time, he conflated personal relationships with the national interest. As his approach to North Korea showed, not everyone was buying what he was selling. His effort to draw China into that quagmire was a bust. The art of the deal is way harder than Trump trumpeted.

On the ground, the food fights of 2016 carried over to the White House. The West Wing was riven with factions. Wall Street transplants, military veterans and diehard Maga-ites exchanged verbal blows. The former reality show host zigged and zagged, blowing hot and cold as TV and his moods took him.

During the 2016 transition, Trump accepted a congratulatory phone call from Tsai Ing-wen, president of Taiwan. Not surprisingly, China was angered – it regards the island as its own. Ambiguity toward Taiwan was central to US rapprochement with China in the 1970s. Trump walked his words back, invited Xi to Mar-a-Lago and treated him to the “most beautiful piece of chocolate cake that you’ve ever seen”.

As for Trump’s take on Taiwan, he told a senator it was “like two feet from China” and the US was “8,000 miles away”. Trump chillingly added that if the Chinese were to invade, “there isn’t a fucking thing we can do about it”. So much for US policy.

Trump’s inability to forge working alliances hampered US responses. Confronting China required playing well with others. Trump proved unable to set aside personal pique and drive a consensus forward. At times he caved on the technological threat China posed, for the sake of scoring an elusive trade deal.

Elaine Chao with her husband, the Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell. Photograph: Michael Reynolds/EPA

On the plus side of the ledger, the conduct of Beijing during the pandemic made governments realize “their dependence on China was a political vulnerability”. The UK reversed course and banned Huawei, the Chinese communications Goliath, from its networks.

No book about Trump is complete without at least one salacious morsel. Chaos Under Heaven conveys that Trump came to believe an unfounded rumor that Gen HR McMaster, his second national security adviser, was conducting an extramarital affair. As expected, Trump could not keep the news to himself.

At a crowded Oval Office staff meeting, the former president queried: “Have you heard who McMaster is fucking?” Ever the puritan, Trump warned: “He’s gonna get us all in trouble if he can’t keep his dick in his pants.” The Manhattan district attorney is still investigating all things Trump, including payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal.

Rogin observes that Trump was “great at flipping over the chess board but he couldn’t set the board back up again”. That said, he had “shifted the conversation about China in a way that cannot be undone”.

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Filed Under: POLITICS, US Tagged With: Asia Pacific, Books, China, Culture, Donald Trump, Politics books, Trump administration, US foreign policy, US national security, US news, US politics, World news

Lucky review: how Biden beat Trump – and doubters like Obama and Hillary

March 7, 2021 by Staff Reporter

Seven million votes more was almost not enough. Had 45,000 gone the other way in Arizona, Georgia and Wisconsin, Donald Trump would still be president. Calls to defund the police nearly cost Joe Biden victory and led to a more than a dozen-seat loss for House Democrats.

Lucky is an apt title for Allen and Parnes’s third book.

“In 2016, Trump had needed everything to go wrong for Hillary Clinton to win,” they write. “This time, Biden caught every imaginable break.”

Their joint take on Biden is a prism and scorecard that gives added understanding to the seemingly never-ending war of 2020. Allen is a veteran political writer at NBC News digital, Parnes reports for the Hill. They deliver.

Subtitled How Joe Biden Barely Won the Presidency, Lucky is the first full-length campaign postmortem. It makes the silent parts of the conversation audible and reminds the reader the past is always with us.

The authors convey the cultural dimensions of Biden’s win. He was an old-time north-eastern pol who repeatedly bore witness to personal tragedy. So long in the Senate, he prided himself on his capacity to compromise and reach across the aisle, a trait that Allen and Parnes report elicited scorn from Elizabeth Warren.

Biden also sought to maintain a “close relationship with the police and the civil rights community”, in his own words. It was no accident South Carolina emerged as Biden’s firewall in the primary, or that James Clyburn, a 15-term congressman and the most senior Black member of the House, was pivotal in digging Biden out of a deep hole.

In the election’s aftermath, Clyburn attributed Democratic underperformance to the move to defund the police and the mantras of the left.

“I’ve always said that these headlines can kill a political effort,” he told NBC. For good measure, Clyburn added: “Sometimes I have real problems trying to figure out what progressive means.”

On the other hand, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama come across as out of sync. We are told that Clinton, the “vampire in the bullpen”, harbored thoughts of another run – until late 2019.

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The fact Clinton lost in 2008 and 2016 had not totally dulled her capacity to believe she could unify party and country. Lucky captures Biden in 2016, calling the former secretary of state a “horrible candidate” who failed to communicate what she actually stood for.

Unlike Clinton, Biden understood that simply drawing a contrast with Trump would not be sufficient. Yet Clinton did see that the 2020 Democratic nominee, whoever it was, would be in a fight for “the very soul of the nation”. Charlottesville provided that epiphany to Biden.

Obama too does not fare too well, a fair-weather friend to his vice-president on several occasions, overly concerned with protecting his own legacy. He got some very important stuff wrong. Biden was more attractive and viable than the 44th president and his coterie thought.

In the authors’ telling, Obama was temporarily enamored with Beto O’Rourke. Like Kamala Harris, the former Texas congressman’s candidacy was over before the first primary. For both, stardom did not translate into staying power.

Then, at an event with Black corporate leaders in the fall of 2019, Obama amplified Warren’s chances and trash-talked Pete Buttigieg, then mayor of South Bend, Indiana. Obama reportedly said: “He’s the mayor of a small town. He’s gay, and he’s short.” Unlike Buttigieg, Warren never won a primary. She also finished third in Massachusetts – her own state.

As for Biden, one source describes Obama’s support as “tepid at best”. Obama tacitly backed Biden just days before Super Tuesday in March. Months later, he took his time congratulating Biden on his election win.

Biden’s so-called “brother” failed to call him “on election day, or the next day, or the next, or the next”, according to Allen and Parnes. Obama waited until Saturday 7 November, “the day the networks had finally called the election”. The audacity of caution.


Biden and Hillary Clinton laugh during a portrait unveiling on Capitol Hill in December 2016. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

Synchronously, the authors find room for the Biden campaign to unload on Andrew Cuomo and his capacity for fluffing his own ego. The New York governor’s five-minute convention speech devoted only its last eight seconds to the nominee.

“They put his speech on our doorstep, lit it on fire, rang the door-bell and then ran away,” a campaign insider says. To think, in December the press reported Cuomo to be a contender for attorney general.

Lucky is nothing if not clear-eyed. Trump roiled the nation’s waters but failed to bring a decisive shift to its politics. He energized and polarized the electorate along lines of class and education.

Republicans, once the party of the John Cheever’s country club set, had become home to white voters without four-year degrees. In other words, 3 November delivered an outcome – not resolution.

At Trump’s instigation, our semi-civil civil war turned hot and bloody. It wasn’t antifa but a weaponized segment of Trump’s base that stormed the US Capitol. The 6 January insurrection claimed lives, ruined others and brought the Confederate flag into the halls of Congress: a chilling first.

Democracy and process prevailed. The constitutional architecture “held firm”. But for how long?

As Allen and Parnes observe: “Luck, it has been said, is the residue of design. It was for Joe Biden, and for the republic.”

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Filed Under: POLITICS, US Tagged With: Barack Obama, Biden administration, Books, Culture, Democrats, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Politics books, Republicans, US elections 2020, US news, US politics, World news

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