from politico recommended by george soros
OPINION | WASHINGTON AND THE WORLD
The Real Goal of Trump’s Middle East Plan
It’s not peace. It’s power.
WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 28: U.S. President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu participate in a joint statement in the East Room of the White House on January 28, 2020 in Washington, DC. The news conference was held to announce the Trump administration's plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images
By ROBERT MALLEY and AARON DAVID MILLER
01/28/2020 05:39 PM EST
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Robert Malley is president and CEO of the International Crisis Group. He was the White House coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa and Gulf Region under President Obama.
Aaron David Miller is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment and a former State Department Middle East analyst and negotiator in Republican and Democratic administrations.
The Trump administration’s long-awaited and ill-named peace plan has many objectives, but making peace isn’t among them.
Neither is jump-starting negotiations, or nudging the parties toward compromise, or even enshrining implicit, private understandings in the hope Israelis and Palestinians might eventually publicly espouse them—each one of which, as we know from successful and unsuccessful experience, has been featured as the goal of past American plans.
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The motives behind a document conceived without any Palestinian input, unveiled on the same day as an important vote in the Israeli parliament on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s immunity, and less than a year before Americans vote for their next president, are at once more mundane and more grandiose.
The mundane reasons, first. It’s hard not to see in the timing an effort by Trump to help Netanyahu in Israel’s elections six weeks from now, and, more than that, an effort by Trump to help Trump—to shore up support from evangelicals and conservative Republicans as he heads into his reelection campaign.
Critics argue that the administration ought to have waited for the outcome of the March Israeli elections and the formation of a new government, but that misses the point. To wait that long would mean waiting until May, if not longer should elections once again end inconclusively, which means taking the risk of not releasing it at all. Besides, the rollout provides a welcome distraction from the impeachment trial, allowing the president to claim he is dedicated to important matters of state as Democrats fiddle with crass politics.
Whether this ends up really helping either Netanyahu or Trump is unclear, although that too is beside the point. The Trump team believes the plan will help both its campaign and Netanyahu’s, whether they are right in that regard or not. Some right-wing constituencies may balk at the suggestion that this could lead to a Palestinian state—although that would occur well into the future and only if and when the Palestinians meet a series of unrealistic conditions. And even then, any putative state would be so fragmented, disjointed, surrounded by Israel and subject to Israeli security control that it would be at best a state in name only. Those critics likewise may be angry at the suggestion that the Palestinians could have a capital in East Jerusalem—although the parts of the city that the U.S. plan contemplates forming this capital are of such minor significance that most people would hardly equate them with Jerusalem itself. In theory, hard-line Israelis could also protest the notion that there will be no new settlements for years—but even that constraint is essentially meaningless, since the plan already munificently grants to Israel all the West Bank territory in which it has wished to build settlements.
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In short, this is a plan that gives Israel everything it wants, concedes to Palestinians everything Israel does not care for, tries to buy off the Palestinians with the promise of $50 billion in assistance that will never see the light of day, and then calls it peace.
So a politically expedient move intended to boost Trump and Netanyahu’s election chances, yes. But without any broader implication? Not so fast.
The ideas put forward by the administration may not tell us anything much about the future of Middle East peace, other than to make more plain what was already manifest—that the notion of a viable two-state solution increasingly is a thing of the past, and that the de facto annexation of West Bank territory may soon become de jure. Israelis for the most part will accept the proposal, Palestinians of all stripes will reject it and Arab states will utter bland pronouncements designed to neither upset a U.S. president whose reprisals they dread nor outrage their public opinions whose moods they fear. But those ideas tell us quite a bit about the unfolding nature of Trump’s foreign policy as an ever-expanding and ever-more aggressive attempt to erase traditional rules and impose new ones.
A line can be drawn from the decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, to the killing of Qassem Soleimani, to this attempt to fundamentally rewrite the parameters of an Israeli-Palestinian peace settlement at the Palestinians’ expense. Each reflects an administration increasingly confident in its way, indifferent to the views of others, enamored with the exercise of its own power, certain that it can change reality by the mere fact of enforcing its will. Each decision feeds on the prior ones, as the administration is emboldened by the absence of serious, immediate backlash to any of its precedent-shattering steps.
It was warned that transferring the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem could prompt massive anti-American protests in the Arab and Muslim worlds. The move was greeted with the equivalent of a diplomatic shrug. The administration was then cautioned that killing Soleimani would trigger dangerous Iranian retaliation, potentially leading to yet another costly U.S. war. Thirty Iranian ballistic missiles but no American deaths later, Trump’s team can yet again depict its critics as unduly alarmist.
There is a countervailing view, of course. Moving the embassy undermined any remaining pretense that the U.S. administration could play a mediating role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. As for Iran’s reaction to Soleimani’s killing, it may have been containable, but when is the last time a state launched a salvo of missiles on an American military base, and when is the last time the U.S. failed to respond? It is likely that neither Tehran nor its myriad militant nonstate allies have said their last word; rockets aimed at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad remind us of that. But much of that is conjecture, and for the most part the more serious costs that are mentioned lie in the future. For the Trump administration, speculation on what might lie ahead tomorrow is immaterial, for it discounts the transformational effect of what it has done now. The administration traffics in what is palpable; it deals exclusively with the here and now.
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So, when Palestinian indignation at a plan that runs roughshod over their aspirations is not matched by any concrete action, when Arab states react in muted tones to a proposal that negates any Muslim claim to Jerusalem’s holy sites, when European governments at best mouth well-worn support for an increasingly illusory two-state solution, the lesson the Trump administration will learn is that it can get away with what it does as long as it has the boldness to do it. Impunity will breed an encore.
It is easy to condemn the Trump administration for lacking a strategy. Easy, but wrong.
The Trump administration’s strategy is unfolding before our eyes, the sum total of every new step it takes. It reflects the Trump team’s conviction that power unexercised is power wasted, that power ought to be used to break up the ways of the past, and that past presidents spent far too much time fretting about how America’s rivals would react to our actions when America’s rivals ought to worry about how America will react to theirs. The collective bill at some point will come due, and it could be steep. Until then, the world will be dealing with an increasingly unshackled administration. Prospects for a fair and viable Israeli-Palestinian peace will be just one of its many casualties.
Thursday, January 30, 2020
Friday, January 17, 2020
Thursday, January 16, 2020
human capital and the poor
To Build Human Capital, We Need More and Better-Targeted Investments in Health – The GFF Provides an Innovative Path
Jim Yong Kim
Vice Chairman and Partner at Global Infrastructure Partners
When countries invest in people—particularly young people—they're investing in the future and giving the next generation an opportunity to achieve their dreams.
But every year, in countries across the world, too many dreams are cut short: more than 5 million mothers and children die from preventable causes. Globally, nearly a quarter of children under 5 are malnourished and 260 million are not in school.
In this age of rapidly advancing technology, where there is a growing demand for complex cognitive skills and problem-solving, this crisis should be a wake-up call.
With half of the world’s population still lacking access to basic health services, we urgently need more and better financing for health, especially in developing countries where health and nutrition needs are greatest.
This is why we launched the Global Financing Facility (GFF) in support of Every Woman, Every Child in 2015 with the United Nations, Canada, Norway, and other partners.
The GFF works with countries to transform how they invest in the health of their people. It works in three ways:
1) It helps governments build one vision and one plan to meet the health and nutrition needs of the country’s women, children and adolescents—of those who have been left furthest behind. The plan involves a range of partners, including civil society, health experts, multilateral and bilateral partners, private sector, and many others. It focuses on high-impact areas such as family planning, nutrition, maternal and newborn health. .
2) The GFF then works with countries to mobilize and coordinate financing behind the plan—bringing together increased domestic resources, bilateral financing, World Bank financing and the private sector—while increasing the efficiency and impact of investments. It focuses on filling the gaps to ensure women and children can access the basic health services they need to survive and thrive. The approach has a focus on results, ensuring the money invested provides a strong return on investment, which we measure in lives saved and improved.
3) The GFF also explores innovative ways to leverage and increase financing over the long term so countries can build and sustain primary health systems. These innovative financing mechanisms include loan buy-downs and funding packages when the money is invested in health and nutrition. To date, $482 million of GFF Trust Fund financing has been linked to $3.4 billion in World Bank financing, which is beginning to deliver health and nutrition outcomes. The GFF also collaborates with the private sector to deliver better results rapidly,, especially in fragile settings.
For example, in the northeast of Nigeria, where there has been long-lasting conflict and basic health services are lacking, the GFF partnership is helping to re-establish maternal, newborn and child health and nutrition services. By linking financing to results, local governments are making rapid progress, including increasing births attended by midwives from an estimated 5 percent coverage to 40 percent.
Like Nigeria, Cameroon is working with the GFF to increase its investment in health and nutrition. Cameroon is increasing its health budget allocation to the primary and secondary levels from a baseline of 8 percent in 2017 to 20 percent by 2020, which is leading to great progress. Family planning visits are surging, and many more women are going to their antenatal appointments.
And in Indonesia, the World Bank is supporting the government’s impressive effort to drastically reduce stunting, using a grass-roots approach employing community workers to deliver health, nutrition, water and sanitation, and early childhood education services to mothers and children. As part of the health plan, the GFF also provided a grant to look at the quality implementation and results of this program, including identifying the highest-priority investments, improving coordination, looking at scaling up the use of disruptive technology, and supporting financing reforms to improve efficiency and transparency.
At the World Bank, we recently launched the Human Capital Index, which is changing the conversation about human capital and accelerating more and better investments in people. We see platforms like the GFF as critical tools to help countries invest more, and more effectively, in their people.
On November 6, the World Bank will co-host the replenishment of the GFF in Oslo alongside the Governments of Norway and Burkina Faso and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The GFF’s replenishment event is a critical milestone that will enable the GFF to expand from 27 countries to as many as 50 countries with the greatest health and nutrition needs. This has the potential to contribute to saving as many as 35 million lives by 2030.
With millions of children growing up without adequate nutrition and health care, and mothers still dying from pregnancy and birth-related complications, there is no time to lose.
Saturday, January 11, 2020
burst of india
thank you for article 2020 Burst of Indian Spring by Javeed Mirza- its deep enough anthropologically: cross-culturally (but eg i need a more elementary version- how did the whole of india change negatively or positively when the brits moved the capital in 1913 from calcutta to delhi- a very retrograde move since at least as far as alumni of shipping engineers and oil ceos are concerned- india's joy of world trade needed to flourish organically out of both mumbai and kolkata not by masters of admin out of landlocked delhi)- - can i suggest you do the following
Henry Rosovsky - 1991 - Education
Norman Macrae, "The Most Important Choice So Few Can Make," The Economist, September 30, 1986. 14. I can think of no better example than my 110 THE ...
javeed- can you start up a readers club of indian spring among people whose family history empowers depth of care about future of india - particularly from their place of birth or family tree (as that provides a portrait of how tech has or has not come on in leaps and bounds)
maybe the people circulated can help scale such a club-mostofa knows sunita gandhi with school of 50000 students interested in reconciliation - indeed they are the only school unesco recognises for having such a curriculum which has kept the adults of the multi-ethnic lucknow harmonious- i also attended a 2004! global reconciliation summit 100 yards from parliament at the indira gandhi national cultural centre: chief guest at that time minster of education and information technology a good combo!- the problem was our papers including mine on universityofstars.com were due to be published but the next week the tsunami hit and all the grassroots networkers had years of urgent work to redo
let me be blunt both america and india need a 5g united states model but both have congresses living in era's of ordering people top-down that have not advanced in deep open space since the horse was the application man used to mediate with
- if india chooses now to align -to 5G - with trump or the west and not with the south or east- my prediction is hellish - not because i want it to be but because both mathematically and humanly it cannot consciously be anything else
I strongly recommend you see if you can fund three or more people able to advance your paper from different local viewpoints and then all go visit brac at the same time- brac has at least 7 moving parts - if you only want to see schools safiqul islam organises that every week for visitors- if you want to understand every partner sir fazle abed did deepest innovations with to advance womankind then you already know who to meet
cheers
chris macrae universityofstars.com +1 240 316 8157
ps the un report on digital cooperation fudged this issue when it reported last summer even though it was mainly compiled by an indian gentleman amandeep@digitalcooperation.org in geneva who had previously done great reports on future of ai in india-isnt there even one person in the india delegation to the un that will help you unite other delegations including the 40 plus nations that support http://www.educationaboveall.org whose qatar leaders you know well
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