(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
 . . . . . . . . . .



Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Foreign Affairs [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2024-07-28  

We begin today with Tony Romm of The Washington Post reporting about the embrace of the shoe salesman by the crypto industry.

Many of the nation’s leading cryptocurrency companies, executives, investors and fanatics are beginning to unite around former president Donald Trump, hoping their public embrace — and increasingly generous campaign checks — might entice and elect a presidential candidate who will spare the industry from federal regulation. [...] Under President Biden, the U.S. government has aggressively cracked down on crypto, seeking to protect average Americans from scams and prevent the largely anonymous tokens from enabling illicit activities. But the fierce oversight has chafed crypto advocates and angered wealthy political benefactors in Silicon Valley. To ward off new federal probes, environmental protections and financial regulations, they have gravitated toward Trump — even if they don’t always like him — in the hope that he will deliver relief in Washington. [...] Trump has gladly accepted the entreaties: Newly awash in crypto cash, he has celebrated bitcoin and other digital tokens, marking a shift from his time in office, when Trump proclaimed he was “not a fan” of bitcoin and linked such assets to drug sales. The early uptick in fundraising support has troubled some Democrats, who have scrambled to show they are not hostile to the industry.

And, of course, it was the crypto industry and other tech companies and “tech bros” that gifted Trump with JD Vance as a running mate and contributed to the national conversation about couch fu*king.

Jay Willis of Balls and Strikes takes a look at Vice President Harris’s stance on Supreme Court reform.

Already, there are hints that a President Harris would be considerably more open-minded about the subject than her predecessor. As a presidential candidate in May 2019, Harris blamed Republicans for creating a “crisis of confidence” in the Court, and said that she was therefore “interested in” and “open to” the idea of adding justices to it. “We have to take this challenge head on, and everything is on the table to do that,” she toldPolitico around the same time. As a senator from 2016 to 2020, Harris, like most Democratic senators from 2016 to 2020, was generally critical of Trump’s Supreme Court nominees. But unlike most Democratic senators, especially those of a certain age, her attacks often centered on the partisan behavior of the Republican justices, and on the importance of control of the Court to the conservative legal movement’s policy agenda. In 2019, for example, Harris called for the impeachment of Justice Brett Kavanaugh for lying during his confirmation hearings, arguing that his presence on the bench was an “insult to the pursuit of truth and justice.” And in 2020, she framed the rushed Barrett confirmation process as integral to right-wing attacks on the Affordable Care Act, and accused Republican senators of (once again) attempting to “bypass the will of the voters and have the Supreme Court do their dirty work.” [...] As vice president, Harris has not really broken from Biden’s cautious approach to Supreme Court reform. But her rhetoric has been sharper: Since the Court overturned Roe in 2022, for example, Harris has repeatedly attacked it for robbing half the country of bodily autonomy, and explicitly blamed Roe’s death on Trump and the justices he appointed...

Matina Stevis-Gridneff and Zolan Kanno-Youngs of The New York Times take a look at the impression that the Vice President has made on foreign leaders and diplomats.

In more than 30 interviews with officials on four continents, including foreign heads of state, senior diplomats and activists who have personally interacted with her, a consistent picture emerges. Ms. Harris can be many things at once: warm but steely on occasion; authoritative but personable. She has represented the United States frequently during trips to Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas, and has met with more than 150 world leaders. And she has attended three Munich Security Conferences — an annual staple for top-level foreign policy officials to meet and set the Western defense agenda. In recent months, she has also become more directly involved in discussions with global leaders on the conflicts in Ukraine and the Middle East. [...] What foreign policy remit she has had has been focused on Central America. Mr. Biden tasked her with working to improve conditions there — such as by fighting poverty and corruption — to discourage families from fleeing to the U.S.-Mexico border. As illegal crossings at the border soared, she has been criticized by Republicans and some Democrats who say she should have been more involved in enforcement efforts; her team argues that was not part of her role. [...] ...the consensus among foreign officials and diplomats is that Ms. Harris has a firm grip on international affairs.

Paul Adams, Barbara Plett Usher, and Ido Vock of BBC News report about Israel’s retaliatory. strikes against Hezbollah in Lebanon after 12 children and young adults were killed in a strike in the Golan Heights.

Early on Sunday, the IDF said it had conducted air strikes against seven Hezbollah targets "deep inside Lebanese territory". It is unclear whether there were any casualties. The rising tensions have the potential to trigger an all-out war between Israel and Hezbollah, whose forces have regularly exchanged fire since the outbreak of the Israel-Gaza war in October. Saturday's attack at the town's football pitch was the deadliest loss of life on Israel's northern border since the war began on 7 October. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had immediately vowed retaliation against Hezbollah, saying the group would "pay a heavy price". Hours later, the Israeli Air Force said it had struck "terror targets" including "weapons caches and terrorist infrastructure" overnight.

JJuan Diego Quesada and Alonso Moleiro of El País in English give us a preview of today’s Venezuelan elections.

Venezuela goes to the polls this Sunday in the midst of a great historical urgency, as if the country were at a crossroads. The permanence in power of Chavismo, which has ruled the destiny of the nation for 25 years, is in question for this presidential election, the sixth since Hugo Chavez’s irruption in 1998. In the Miraflores Palace, the tropical neo-baroque style seat of the government, full of paintings and busts of Simón Bolívar and Chávez himself, they do not quite understand how this situation has reached its limit. In its corridors, stupefaction prevails. A leader of the PSUV, the ruling party, says: “A correct risk analysis was not made.” President Nicolás Maduro and his advisors, all of them experienced in high voltage electoral processes, thought a couple of months ago that they had everything under control. It was a mirage. [...] At this point, only one can win. Maduro or Edmundo, Edmundo or Maduro. The numbers from the most reliable pollsters list the opposition candidate as the winner, some of them with a large margin of difference. Some analysts are skeptical of the polls, but still predict a victory for González. Chavismo has handled its own surveys that warned it of its moment of weakness, after a quarter of a century in power with a lot of wear and tear. A part of the electorate that has been loyal during this time has become disenchanted, and even the most orthodox Chavistas —10% of them, according to a poll— are considering the possibility for change. Maduro has recognized in his rallies his mistakes and his lack of speed in detecting in the very heart of his government a case of corruption of his Minister of Oil, Tareck El Aissami, estimated at more than $3 billion. However, he asks for a vote of confidence with the argument of the sustained growth of the economy since 2021 (this year, the GDP will grow by 4%) and the threat that his defeat would unleash an armed conflict. His inner circle admits they did not expect to face numbers like these for González, but according to their unpublished measurements, Maduro reaches the final stretch with an eight-point lead.

Finally today, Simon Weiss and Michael Beckley of War on the Rocks examine the conflict between the Philippines and China taking place in the South China Sea.

The Rodrigo Duterte administration (2016–2022) tried to shelve its territorial disputes with Beijing at various times and threatened to scuttle the U.S.-Philippine alliance. Yet Chinese military coercion toward the Philippines actually increased during Duterte’s term in office and was more intense than the coercion China directed at Vietnam — despite the fact that Hanoi aggressively expanded its military presence in the South China Sea. China also has harassed the Philippines more frequently than Japan, implying that China’s preferred target is a weak and floundering U.S. alliance rather than a strong one. [...] Coercing the Philippines enables China to confront the United States with a dilemma: defend a weak and shaky ally over its territorial claims or stand aside as China expands its control of the South China Sea and undermines U.S. alliance commitments. China could wipe out the two frigates and handful of corvettes that comprise the Philippine Navy in a single skirmish, so there is little risk for Beijing in shoving Philippine forces around — and potentially much to gain. The U.S.-Philippine alliance is a vital component of the U.S. defense perimeter in Asia, providing U.S. forces with their only major bases within unrefueled combat range of the Taiwan Strait and South China Sea, besides the two vulnerable bases on Okinawa, Japan that China has targeted with dozens of missiles. Yet the U.S.-Philippine alliance has often been tenuous since the Cold War, and Beijing has good reason to question how vigorously the United States would defend Filipino possessions in the South China Sea. “Would you go to war over Scarborough Shoals?” the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was overheard saying in 2016. Every time China batters Philippine forces unopposed, it shows observers worldwide that America’s answer is “no.” In addition, the Philippines is a symbolically important target for China. In 2016, Manila took Beijing to the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague and won, with the tribunal ruling that China’s South China Sea claims were null and void. In response, China declared that it would not be bound by the rulings of a “puppet” court half a world away. Ejecting Filipino forces from their isolated South China Sea outposts enables China to back up that declaration in dramatic fashion and demonstrate resolve to consolidate its territorial claims throughout the region.

Have the best possible day everyone!

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/7/28/2258681/-Abbreviated-Pundit-Roundup-Foreign-Affairs?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=trending&pm_medium=web

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/