Friday News Roundup — February 5, 2021
Political Incentives for Congressional Extremes; Nalvany Imprisoned, What’s Next for Putin?; Myanmar’s Coup
Good morning to you and happy Friday from Washington, D.C. This week saw action on the Hill, with the Senate moving ahead in the overnight vote-a-rama to approve a budget resolution to speed President Biden’s COVID relief plan. Vice President Harris, after 5 a.m. this morning, cast her first 51–50 vote — the first of likely many such votes. The resolution now moves to the House, which saw its own drama during the week (which Dan covers in more detail.) The resolution now carries with messaging amendments ranging from support for fracking and the embassy in Jerusalem to specifying the rollout of any minimum wage increases. While organizing the budgeting process, none of this has any force of law.
Still, compared to what has been the longest January in memory, the first week of February has been quieter and we look forward to the drama (and a little gluttony) on Super Bowl Sunday. Whether watching the big game, the commercials, or the puppy bowl, we hope you join us in resisting the temptation to throw that big party — and let declining pandemic numbers continue to improve.
Our 2021 Annual Report went live this week, and we hope you take a moment to check it out. In it you can learn more about our range of current programs, and how we continue our mission to understand the lessons of history, address the challenges of today, and educate the leaders of tomorrow.
This week, we also want to highlight the report issued by our political reform allies at FixUS, entitled, “Why is Governing No Longer Good Politics?” When this report asked former Members of Congress about the problems plaguing our governance and politics, CSPC President & CEO Rep. Glenn Nye addressed the incentives in our elections:
We have allowed political parties to craft an election system that benefits their own short-term advantages over the health of our democracy, and with their scorched-earth efforts to win majorities at all costs, the costs to our society are high…With election reforms that incentivize basic cooperation, like open primaries, instant run-offs, and an end to gerrymandering, we can have a system where good governing results in re-election. That will help break our current doom cycle.
Joshua reviewed 2034: A Novel of the Next World War by author Elliot Ackerman and former NATO SACEUR retired Admiral James Stavridis, which explores a fictional future conflict between the United States and China.
In this week’s roundup, Dan looks at the rift in the House GOP caucus, as we mentioned, as well as how political incentives shape populist and establishment incentives. Joshua covers the latest on Alexi Navalny following his return to jail and now additional charges. Michael analyzes the situation in Myanmar and the paucity of policy levers. As always, we wrap with news you may have missed.
Our Political Incentives Push Congressional Extremes
Dan Mahaffee
If modern politics is now drama — or better yet, soap opera — we are often focused on the characters’ personalities and their interplay. This week has been no exception, as the spotlights have shown on the divisions within the House Republican Caucus following the ascendancy of QAnon candidates, the aftermath of the January 6th insurrection, and the second impeachment of President Trump. The personalities are, frankly, tailor-made for such drama. On one hand, you have Georgia Rep. Majorie Taylor Greene representing the grassroots ascendancy of a QAnon-Trump populism, now stripped of her committee seats by a vote of all Democrats and 11 Republicans, and, on the other, Rep. Liz Cheney, still in place third in line in House GOP leadership, who voted in favor of impeaching President Trump following January 6th.
In personality-driven politics, they are perfect foils for coverage of this division within the GOP. Certainly, there is nothing new in American politics about big personalities, bitter feuds (both partisan and intraparty), and tensions between populists/outsiders and “the establishment.” Even absent Twitter, perhaps the biggest personality still looming in American politics still sought to weigh in — of course, supporting Greene and against Cheney. However, when we frame this as merely a contest of personalities and influence, we fail to understand what incentives are shaping American politics and what we might do about them.
That we have even arrived at this point demonstrates the collapse of the internal incentives that once guided Congressional politics. In the past, leadership controlled career paths for members by doling out committee assignments and controlling the path to powerful leadership positions. Comity and compromise were useful among fellow Members of Congress because it enabled logrolling — Hill-speak for favor trading — and earmarking needed to bring programs, projects, and pork back to the district. As Congress broke down in the legislative process, with leadership taking greater authority over regular order, Congress also ceded spending powers like earmarking to the Executive and these incentives were replaced by more divisive external incentives.
These external incentives have grown in this vacuum, fueled by societal, economic, and technological trends. To alliteratively describe them, they are: money, media, and mania.
It is no secret that a key, if not the key, to success and intraparty influence in current Congressional politics is the ability to raise money for the party. Donations from large corporate PACs are nice, but they tend to go through leadership. Politicians who can deliver small-dollar donors in competitive races, however, accrue favors and influence. The new twist in fundraising, however, is how corporate money responded to the post-election aftermath, particularly after the insurrection of January 6th. With major corporate donors eschewing contributions — with some singling out those who perpetuated election fraud lies — corporate “big money” is moving in towards the establishment figures, with those on the further populist or Trumpist right being forced towards “small dollar” donations from the grassroots. In the eight weeks after the election, then-President Trump raised $255.4 million, while Rep. Greene has continued to fundraise as she has courted controversy. Freshman Repubican firebrand Rep. Madison Cawthorn also demonstrated how merchandising plays a role now too:
Rep. Cawthorn also was clear about his approach, at least, for the team supporting him in office, as TIME reported that he emailed his GOP colleagues “I have built my staff around comms, rather than legislation.” After all, legislating requires the hard work of compromise, while partisan media — and their audiences — only ask for orthodoxy. For Republicans, in particular, the media ecosystem is now defined by embracing doubts about, or the wholesale delegitimization of, the 2020 election. Fox News’s newfound competition with Newsmax and OAN is the most visible part of this narrative struggle. When vying for a viewing audience that has a +10 favorability for Rep. Greene and a -28 for Rep. Cheney, with 72% still questioning the 2020 results’ validity, the anchors will hew to that just short of being sued for billions. In this information environment and catering to those voters, it’s no surprise that since January 6th, all but a handful of Republicans have found procedural, legal, or political excuses to avoid using the powers they have to hold former President Trump accountable — yet on a secret ballot, Rep. Cheney was supported by more than two-thirds of her caucus.
That in turn, represents the incentive of political mania, and how that traps both legislators — who will spurn Trumpism on a secret ballot yet openly support it — as well as our framing of politics. Mania helps feed the media — right wing media spent years tracking the statements of the ultra-progressive “squad” as if they spoke for all Democrats, and I do not doubt that left wing media will try to tie all Republicans to the position of the newly elected “sQuad” — thus rewarding the more extreme positions, as they draw more eyeballs. It should also not be lost on us that the attention is largely focused on younger, particularly female, politicians by older, largely male, political consultants and newsroom editors.
In order to draw more money out of supporters, the mania must be fed, so every slight or issue — reverberating off a media echo chamber — becomes an opportunity to fundraise further. Mania-fueled and -fueling populism is nothing new either, nor uniquely conservative. The support for Senator Bernie Sanders, ranging from energetic to off-putting, has been apparent on the left as well. Still, there is a clear contrast and no equivalency, with one movement wanting to declare martial law and execute the American elite after mass show trials, while the other wants them to pay more taxes.
Money, media, and mania are all factors driving the incentives of our politics, and there is little that legislators of either party can do to address them. However, these incentives thrive when our politics caters to increasingly smaller swaths of the electorate — which is driven by closed primaries, gerrymandered districts, and barriers to voting. Legislators of both parties can fix those mal-incentives, even if it challenges current political orthodoxies — especially for Republicans. While many Republicans, especially at the state level, appear to be doing the opposite, largely re-restricting voting as they embrace the narrative of a stolen election, it is worth remembering that Congressional Republicans by-and-large outperformed President Trump in an election that was marked by its mid-pandemic embrace of expanding voting access.
For Republicans, the 2020 results can be interpreted as a broader repudiation of Trumpism, yet a sign of a center-right electorate. Yet, the mania of the QAnon movement and Trumpism threatens to pull the GOP further right, threatening their standing among reliable, educated suburban voters; repelling corporate America; and turning states like Colorado and Virginia bluer, while tinging Arizona and Georgia increasingly purple. If one’s goal is to get more moderate Republicans elected, there must be more viable pathways for moderate Republicans. Broadening the Republican primary electorate, fostering more competition at the grassroots, and embracing electoral reforms can help build those pathways towards a party of limited government not looney theories. The future of the Republican Party may yet depend on how it looks at political reforms once dismissed as part of a Democratic wishlist.
Navalny Sentenced & Protests in Russia
Joshua Huminski
On Tuesday, Russian opposition figure Alexei Navalny was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison. He will serve only two years and eight months after time served whilst he was under house arrest. Addressing the court and the assembled media, Navalny said “The main goal of this trial is to scare a huge number of people. That’s how it works. They jail one person to scare off millions.”
That Navalny was to be jailed was not unexpected. The farce that the decision was apolitical all but fell apart when his sentence was announced on Russian media before it was read in court. Russia’s president Vladimir Putin is increasingly demonstrating an unwillingness to tolerate any dissent and Navalny’s steady ratcheting up of pressure on Putin and his siloviki guaranteed that the opposition figure would see jail time. Separately, Navalny was back in court on Friday, this time for criminal defamation charges stemming from comments he made in June 2020.
The international community condemned the arrest with U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken saying that Washington was “deeply concerned” with the arrest. Prior to the sentence, the Department of State issued a statement saying, “We call on Russian authorities to release all those detained for exercising their universal rights and for the immediate and unconditional release of Alexei Navalny,” It continued, “The United States will stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our allies and partners in defence of human rights — whether in Russia or wherever they come under threat.” The UK’s foreign secretary, Dominic Raab said, “Today’s perverse court decision shows Russia is failing to meet the most basic commitments expected of any responsible member of the international community.”
Whether this will actually translate into policy changes or action remains to be seen. Rather little was done following Navalny’s poisoning with a chemical weapon, which, arguably, is more incendiary than his actual arrest. (On an unrelated note, the doctor who first treated Navalny in Omsk died suddenly of a heart attack on Thursday). The United States and its European allies could easily apply sanctions, but this is something that Moscow almost certainly expects and has baked into the cost of doing business. Navalny himself released a list of 35 individuals he would like to see sanctioned, but again the efficacy of these measures, beyond immediate signaling, is likely to be limited.
Harsher options are available, such as restricting trade, preventing western businesses from working with their Russian counterparts, or barring access to certain sectors, but in the absence of a coordinated strategy, these are unlikely to be implemented. Longer-term actions, such as restricting the ability of illicit funds from accessing western markets would likely have a greater impact, but these policy changes require greater effort. Moreover, with the arrival of the Biden administration and its interest in re-engaging with European allies, it may be some time before a coordinated U.S.-EU/Europe strategy on Russia emerges.
Independent monitors suggest that at least 10,000 people were arrested in protests following the arrest and trial of Navalny. The arrests are so large that detention centers in Moscow are now full, and arrestees are being bussed outside of the city. Speaking to reporters, the Kremlin’s spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said, “There is no repression whatsoever. There are police measures against those who break the law.” He added, “There is no repression; I don’t agree with such emotional assessments. You forget that during the actions there were direct and multiple attacks on officers. The response was tough, but in line with the law.” It should be noted that some of the “attacks” were almost certainly staged.
The protests themselves are not purely Navalny-related. While he is certainly a driver behind them, it is more representative of a broader disaffection with the state of Russia today. The state of Russia’s economy, rising inequality, increasing food prices and decreasing incomes all are motivating the turnout for these protests, in addition to support for Navalny. Indeed, Putin’s approval rating amongst 18–24 is declining, with 46% saying they did not approve of the president, up from 31% last year. These protests should be seen as a broader expression of disenchantment with the state of contemporary Russia’s politics and economic situation, and not just the result of one man’s imprisonment.
The question now is what will Putin and the Kremlin do to target Navalny’s organization. True, they’ve managed to silence its head, but that does not mean a successor or stand-in will not emerge. Some, like Mark Galeotti, a noted Russia-expert, have suggested that Putin could attempt to target the key, irreplaceable figures such as his head of investigations, key spokespeople, media producers, and others. This effort, akin to targeting an insurgent or organized crime group, would undermine Navalny’s ability to operate whilst he is imprisoned. Indeed, this may already be underway as at the end of January, Russian authorities raided apartments and offices linked to Navalny and his organization.
Even whilst under arrest, Navalny demonstrated he can still be a gadfly to the Russian state, having released a video accusing Putin of extensive corruption and owning a $100 million Black Sea estate. In a highly choreographed exchange with students, Putin denied ownership of the sprawling compound saying, “Nothing that is listed there as my property belongs to me or my close relatives, and never did.” It should be noted that the Russian media encounter was almost certainly scripted with the question, the student, and the response highly vetted to ensure that Putin would control the narrative — this was not an extemporaneous encounter, nothing with Putin ever is. A billionaire and Putin’s childhood judo partner, Arkady Rotenberg, has claimed ownership of the compound, saying he intends to turn it into a luxury resort.
The extent of the crackdown is interesting. On Wednesday, the editor of a Russian news website founded by members of the punk rock and activist group “Pussy Riot” was sentenced to 25 days in jail for sharing a reference to the protests on Twitter. Despite the appearance, and characterization of Russia as a monolithic authoritarian state, there existed a surprisingly robust online opposition presence that was largely tolerated. The Kremlin largely, at least hitherto, saw these online pundits as nuisances, but not actual threats. That seems to have changed with the return of Navalny from Germany, the release of his latest video, and the subsequent protests. Whether this is a permanent shift, merely a reaction to the protests, or a heavy-handed response in hopes of forcefully tamping down opposition remains to be seen.
Indeed, the harsh response against Navalny’s protestors likely illustrates the concern Putin and the Kremlin have over the current situation — a weakened economy, increasing dissatisfaction with the regime, and now an opposition figure pointing out corruption and injustice. Putin could ill-afford to allow the situation to fester. Putin likely hopes that the protests die down — in and of themselves protests cannot result in regime change — and that increased pressure on Navalny and his organization will limit the longer-term damage. So long as the siloviki believe that their lot is better with Putin and that he retains the instruments of state power, there is very little the opposition can do to undermine his authority or accelerate his departure from office.
The Curtain Falls on Myanmar
Michael Stecher
Soldiers appeared on the streets of Naypyitaw, the capital of Myanmar, on Monday. The President of Myanmar, Win Myint, was arrested, as was the leader of the governing party, Aung San Suu Kyi. The acting president and the military’s commander-in-chief, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, declared a state of emergency. The army has begun a crackdown, arresting numerous parliamentarians, shutting down Facebook, and suspending the results of the November 2020 national elections. The United States quickly responded by declaring this a coup d’etat, which automatically triggers the suspension of some foreign assistance programs — though not all, since certain kinds of humanitarian assistance are exempted — and mulled imposing sanctions on the coup leaders. The United Nations Security Council considered a statement condemning the coup, but it was opposed by Russia and China.
A lot of the early commentary in the United States has tried to draw parallels between this coup and our own experience of political violence last month. Christina Ruffini of CBS News explicitly drew that connection in the State Department briefing call on Tuesday, asking whether President Trump’s allegations of voter fraud helped to either inspire or at least provide rhetorical support for the military’s claims in Myanmar. There is a certain superficial consonance at play: both the United States and Myanmar held elections in November that were generally regarded as free and fair; in both cases, the party that lost claimed that people had voted twice or engaged in other shenanigans. But the similarity actually runs the other way: President Trump adopted the age-old language and tactics of anti-democratic and authoritarian strongmen the world over; he did not innovate in this space. The appeal of this comparison, however, demonstrates how far away Myanmar is from our understanding of the world and how limited the United States’s policy levers are.
As a brief aside, there is widespread confusion about whether to call the country “Burma” or “Myanmar.” A previous military junta changed the official name from Burma to Myanmar after another crackdown on pro-democracy forces in 1989. The United States and the United Kingdom still call it Burma; the United Nations, the European Union, Japan, and many others go with Myanmar. Both names derive from the name of the majority ethnic group in the country, which is normally written in English as “Bamar.” Myanmar is the name in the literary, formal voice — sort of like the difference between tu and vous in French — that the government adopted to try and claim a sort of national-linguistic hegemony. The Roundup uses “Myanmar” on the theory that “a [government] has a right to change its name to whatever [they] want to change it to.” We will also refer to the boxer as Muhammad Ali, not Cassius Clay.
Since independence in 1948, the Bamar majority has tried to enforce order on minority populations that live in the rural highlands near the country’s borders with China, India, Laos, and Thailand. In the 1960s, a military junta took power and nationalized much of the economy, entrenching its economic and political power. In the late 1980s, a pro-democracy movement put pressure on the regime; Aung San Suu Kyi was the most famous member of this group. She won the Nobel Peace Prize for her non-violent protest work in 1991 and spent 15 years under house arrest. When the military dictator that took power in 1992 was looking to transition power, he crafted a new constitutional order in which the military would retain key elements of power, including a quarter of the seats in parliament and control of the defense and interior ministries, but would cede the rest of the government apparatus to a military-affiliated political party that would compete in free elections.
This reconstitution provided immediate benefits for the country as sanctions were eased and it was welcomed back into the global economic system. Aung San Suu Kyi was released from detention and lauded as a national hero. The party she led, the National League for Democracy (NLD) was brought into the system and she became the country’s international face and one of its most important leaders. She proved pliant to the military’s leadership, supporting the army as it conducted a campaign of genocide among the Rohingya Muslim population in Rakhine near the border with Bangladesh. Last November, however, NLD won an overwhelming majority in parliamentary elections. With that level of support, Aung San Suu Kyi and NLD could turn the tables on the leading generals with the support of reform-minded officers, or even possibly mobilize support for pushing the military out of politics altogether. That appears to have crossed a red line for the military, and they struck back hard.
The other common frame for understanding this week’s events is the competition for regional influence between the United States and China. The restoration of civilian rule was pushed in part by a desire to hedge against China’s growing economic weight in the country; attracting international investment would limit the country’s reliance on Chinese economic ties and the Belt and Road Initiative. That does not mean, however, that the coup leaders necessarily want to promote closer ties to Beijing. China has been a malicious actor in Burmese politics for decades. They supported a decades-long Maoist insurgency in the country and continue to maintain close ties with ethnic minority militia groups.
China is also a ready market for the natural resources these groups sell to fund their insurgencies, and its banking system enables smugglers and drug-traffickers (both major problems in the region). Especially as international pressure on Myanmar grew during the Rohingya genocide, China also tried to build a closer relationship with NLD, and Chinese direct investment in primary goods is a major driver of the economy. Economic gravity will always mean that China plays an important role for Myanmar, but the army is probably the sector of society that is least comfortable with Chinese influence.
Myanmar has suffered from an unending series of military conflicts dating back to the Japanese invasion in 1941. Decades of violence made the provision of physical security the essential purpose of the state, creating an army that was deeply embedded in politics. The legacy of the British Raj and decades of ethnic separatist movements have also built a national ideology that projects dominance from the Bamar center on the periphery. The only allies and enemies that matter to the military are within the country’s borders. For the military, the constitutional order existed to protect their power, and the NLD threatened to subvert that power.
The United States does not have a strong hand in Myanmar. Most of the military leadership is already under sanctions for their role in the Rohingya genocide. Broader sanctions would risk economic collapse and make China even more important to the country’s future. Nor are regional allies likely interested in a harder line. Japan, a major player in the country and a source of foreign direct investment, ignored the sanctions in the 1990s and has not made any loud noises this week. The same goes for South Korea. Thailand is unlikely to get into a finger-pointing exercise about whose generals overthrew what governments. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the 11-member regional organization that includes Myanmar, operates on consensus, which forecloses most responses. There will be no easy answers, but it is not enough to shrug and look away, and regional partnerships will be essential to ensuring that a terrible situation does not become worse.
News You May Have Missed
U.S. Naval Intelligence Director Urges China to Continue Investment in Anti-Ship Missle
Miles Esters
Vice Admiral Jeffrey Trussler, Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Information Warfare, said last week that he “hopes” that China’s military will continue to invest substantial capital into its anti-ship ballistic missiles (ASBMs) systems. Over the past years, China has developed one of the world’s largest stockpiles of highly advanced ASBMs as part of their anti-access/area-denial strategy. The idea behind this strategy is to deter U.S. carrier strike groups and their air wings from operating within striking range of mainland China, and giving China military dominance near its shores. VADM Trussler’s comments hint at the potential that the U.S. has developed sufficient countermeasures to limit the threat these missiles pose in a hypothetical conflict. In the era of great power competition with China and Russia, the United States military has had to redevelop its operating plans from countering international terrorism to the high-end threat posed by near-peer militaries. With this, the U.S. military has embarked on a series of modernization programs across all branches with the goal of developing a more flexible, agile, unmanned, and dispersed force. Nevertheless, China’s rapid modernization of its armed forces will continue to pose a challenge for the United States well into the future.
Erdogan’s Threat to University Protestor’s Free Speech
Sarah Naiman
After labelling protesting students as “terrorists,” President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed to end weeks of demonstrations at Bogazici University, one of Turkey’s most prestigious academic institutions. The protests began when Erdogan made a highly controversial decision on January 1, 2021 and appointed a new university rector. The appointment was contentious both because university rectors are traditionally elected by their academic peers and due to Bulu’s ties to Erdogan’s AK Party. In the country’s largest demonstrations since 2013, over 300 protestors have been detained across Turkey. Tension looms over Bogazici’s campus as “professors and students are most concerned about what his [Bulu’s] appointment means for the future of the university and its famously freethinking campus.” If Erdogan is successful in silencing one of his country’s premiere intellectual institutions, it would appear another of Turkey’s few remaining civil liberties will be greatly imperiled.
South Korean Crew Release in Iran
Jaqueline Ruiz
Last month, Iranian forces seized a South Korean ship claiming that South Koreans violated environmental protocols by polluting the sea. The owners of the vessel denied these allegations and said the ship was carrying 7,200 tons of chemicals of mostly methanol, but was not polluting the waters. South Korea accused Iran of seizing their ship to have leverage over the United States because of the American sanctions that have frozen billions of dollars in Iranian oil revenue in foreign banks. Iran has denied these allegations but has agreed to release the 19 crew members and the South Korean government has promised to address concerns over $7 billion in assets that are frozen in South Korean banks. Iranian officials are keeping the vessel and captain in custody pending an investigation into violations of maritime pollution law or for the return of the ransom / frozen assets.
The views of authors are their own, and not that of CSPC.