Las Vegas Review-Journal (Sunday)
Editorial Roundup
Recent editorials in newspapers in the United States and abroad:
The Washington Post on Haiti needing help from Washington (April 10):
Haiti passed a grim milestone in February, when the traditional presidential inauguration day came and went with no president taking the oath of office, no realistic prospect of presidential elections, and no established consensus on how to restore some semblance of functioning democracy in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country. Meanwhile, the Biden administration props up an interim prime minister whose writ, so far as it runs, is to preside over a government with no claim to legitimacy.
That prime minister, Ariel Henry, was named to the job by President Jovenel Moïse, who was assassinated two days later, before Henry could be sworn in. On Feb. 7, Moïse’s term expired. Henry has said he will organize elections this year, but that promise is empty, given how farfetched it is that balloting could be staged amid rampant insecurity and the current power vacuum.
A potentially hopeful sign was the emergence last year of a coalition of civic organizations that proposes installing an interim government for two years, after which elections would be held. The coalition, which calls itself the Montana Accord, after a hotel in the capital where it meets, consists of political parties, faith groups, professional associations, human rights organizations and trade unions.
However broad-based, the coalition has no more constitutional legitimacy than does Henry. Moreover, its plan to run the country with a prime minister plus a five-member council exercising presidential powers is unwieldy, to say the least. Even if it assumed power by some unforeseeable means, there is no credible prospect that it would establish control over the nearly 15,000-member police force, which is rife with corruption. Without that, chances are nil that it could stabilize Haiti, mount elections and resuscitate the economy.
The country of more than 11 million has just a handful of elected officials, the terms of scores of others having expired in the absence of elections. Henry took office largely on the strength of support from a U.S.-led group of ambassadors. But the government and national institutions are in shambles.
Moreover, Henry’s commitment to bring Moïse’s killers to justice has proved not just hollow but suspicious after a report that he was in contact with a key suspect before and just after the assassination. Although signs point to the involvement of drug-trafficking figures in the president’s killing, most of the kingpins who have been implicated remain at liberty. Haiti’s own authorities have made no meaningful progress in the murder investigation. Meanwhile, according to The Post, U.S. prosecutors, who allege that the killing was partly planned in the United States, have charged two suspects and are seeking the extradition of a third.
The Biden administration has ruled out sending troops, instead paying lip service to finding a Haitian-led exit from the crisis. If there is such a way out — a big if — it might consist in a consensus between the Montana Accord coalition and Henry’s own forces. Forging such an agreement should be high on the Biden administration’s agenda. But there is little sign Washington is paying attention to events in the impoverished country — despite its long history of devolving into crises that then become impossible to ignore.
The Guardian on dilemmas presented by the war in Ukraine (April 8):
Thousands of civilians, including many children, were waiting to be evacuated to safety in the Kramatorsk railway station in eastern Ukraine on Friday morning when two missiles, later reported to be cluster weapons that are banned under international law, exploded in their midst. At least 50 people died, and more than 100 others were injured. A message in Russian on the surviving casing of one missile read “For the children.” Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, understandably described the attack as the action of “an evil that has no limits.”
Even amid so many other horrors in Russia’s war on Ukraine, the Kramatorsk attack stands out for heartless brutality. It is a week now since Russian forces began to retreat after their invasion stalled around Kyiv. During that time, reporters have filed horrific revelations of the carnage and destruction that the defeated Russians left behind them. Evidence from places such as Bucha, Irpin, Hostomel and Borodianka, in all of which Ukrainian civilians appear to have been summarily murdered, has appalled the civilized world. War crime charges rightly seem certain to be brought against Russia. Now the crimes of Kramatorsk must be added to the charge sheet.
The past 10 days mark an important change in the dynamics and location of the Ukraine war. But it is not a simple or conclusive change yet. Ukrainian resistance, aided by Western weaponry and technology, has secured a notable military victory by forcing the Russians to retreat. Kyiv is, for now, able to come back to a kind of life; a few refugees have begun returning from the West, and Western leaders, including the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, have traveled there to show solidarity. Russian troops have now left the Sumy region in the north-east. Ukraine has also regained control of its border with Belarus.
But the war itself is far from over. Moscow’s forces are regrouping in the east, following Russia’s decision to make the Donbas region its primary focus. This is somewhat easier territory for them logistically and politically. It heralds a further assault in Mariupol, fresh offensives in Donbas (of which the missile attack on Kramatorsk station is part) and against Odesa, all of which will stretch Ukrainian supply lines and resources. As a result, Zelenskyy has increased his calls for further Western military aid.
After a week like the last one, he has morality more than ever on his side. He is also likely to feel less pressure to seek a compromise peace deal. Yet by making these appeals, the Ukrainian president has helped to trigger a new and intense phase of debate in the Western democracies about how far they are really willing to go in supporting Ukraine militarily. This has exposed genuine differences about real dilemmas. The Czech Republic has supplied Soviet-era tanks, Poland is considering following suit and Slovakia has sent air defense systems. The U.S., Britain and France are more cautious, yet all of them have been quietly and incrementally crossing the military threshold they adopted in February that only defensive support would be given. Some in the West want them to go further.
This important argument is now taking place in real time. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s welcome visit to Downing Street on Friday was very much part of this process; an announcement about anti-tank weapons was expected. Britain, like all the Western allies, needs to be more open about the choices we and our allies face as a result of the new phase in Ukraine. At the very least, there is now a powerful case for parliament to be recalled, so that the very serious military options now under active consideration by governments can be more openly examined.
The Wall Street Journal on former U.S. President Barack Obama’s history with Russia (April 8):
Russia’s bloody invasion of Ukraine has sparked an Olympic sprint of sorts as politicians run away from their abysmal records regarding Vladimir Putin. Few are running faster than former President Barack Obama, who this week tried to rewrite the history of his own Russia policies.
“As somebody who grappled with the incursion into Crimea and the eastern portions of Ukraine, I have been encouraged by the European reaction (this time),” Obama said at an event in Chicago. “Because in 2014, I often had to drag them kicking and screaming to respond in ways that we would have wanted to see from those of us who describe ourselves as Western democracies.”
As for Putin, the former U.S. president purports to be surprised by the Russian leader’s brutality. “I don’t know that the person I knew is the same as the person who is now leading this charge. He was always ruthless. You witnessed what he did in Chechnya, he had no qualms about crushing those whom he considered a threat. That’s not new. For him to bet the farm in this way — I would not have necessarily predicted from him five years ago.”
Obama managed to say all this with a straight face while speaking at an event about “disinformation” in politics.
Start with Obama’s claim he was a champion of harsher measures against Russia after the invasion of Crimea and eastern Ukraine in 2014. His administration imposed only mild, targeted sanctions on Russia — and then joined with Moscow to negotiate a nuclear deal with Iran. He refused to sell Javelin antitank weapons to Ukraine. Germany pushed ahead with its Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline in this era with nary a peep from Washington until the Trump administration.
Obama also can’t claim as much ignorance as he does now about Putin’s intentions and methods at the time. Putin had risen to power allegedly by bombing apartment buildings in Russia, as U.S. intelligence no doubt knew or highly suspected, and even Obama concedes Putin’s 1999 assault on Grozny in Chechnya was “ruthless.”
There also were the 2006 assassinations of journalist Anna Politkovskaya and Putin critic Alexander Litvinenko, Putin’s provocative speech criticizing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in Munich in 2007, and the 2008 Russian invasion of Georgia.
In 2009 Obama nonetheless dispatched Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to Geneva to negotiate a “reset” on relations with her Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov. In 2012 Obama accused Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney of hewing to a retrograde 1980s foreign policy for viewing Russia as a threat, while telling Putin henchman Dmitry Medvedev when he thought no one was listening that he’d have more latitude to cut Putin some slack after the U.S. election.
Some reset. In addition to the Crimea and Donbas invasions, 2014 saw the shootdown of a Malaysian Airlines flight by Russia-linked forces in eastern Ukraine. Russia’s cluster bombing of Aleppo in Syria followed in 2015-16. Putin’s suppression of domestic dissent accelerated, and he amped up his rhetoric against NATO and an independent Ukraine. And don’t forget the meddling in the 2016 U.S. election, which Obama punished with wristslap sanctions only after Donald Trump won.
Obama’s main concession to Russian reality was to lobby NATO allies to increase their annual defense spending to 2% of GDP, although for the most part they ignored him. One can almost understand why they did, since they saw him cozying up to Putin on Iran while talking down the Russia threat.
All of this is relevant now because the Biden administration is loaded with men and women who worked for Obama and shared his misjudgments about Russia. The conceit in many quarters on the left is that Putin has changed, or is deranged, such that his Ukraine invasion couldn’t have been foreseen.
But Obama’s weakness toward Russia, reinforced by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel, is one reason Putin felt he could act with increasing aggressiveness and get away with it. No one should believe Obama’s varnished Russia history.
The Los Angeles Times on steps Congress can take to battle the climate crisis (April 8):
The latest United Nations climate report couldn’t be clearer: We are at a planetary crossroads.
If we don’t act now to go beyond current pledges and cut fossil fuel emissions in half by 2030, it will be impossible to keep the heating of the Earth below a crucial 2.7-degree Fahrenheit limit and avoid increasingly severe devastation and suffering. We can still avert catastrophe, but there is only a narrow window left to end the era of fossil fuels.
In the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, scientists from around the globe spell out, in cautious yet exacting language, that what is blocking the replacement of dangerous fossil fuels with clean renewable energy is not technology, but politics.
“One factor limiting the ambition of climate policy has been the ability of incumbent industries to shape government action on climate change” and lobby more effectively than those who would gain from carbon-cutting policies, the report says.
Politicians, and the self-interested fossil fuel companies they serve, are the reason we are spiraling toward calamity. Wealthy countries like the United States, whose dumping of pollution into the atmosphere has done the most to cause the climate crisis, have a responsibility to take the lead, and our elected leaders need to overcome resistance from dirty industries.
There are steps President Joe Biden and Congress can and should take immediately to spur the adoption of renewable energy, like wind and solar, electric vehicles, water heaters, heat pumps and battery storage, while taking on the oil, gas and coal industries whose products are fueling wildfires, storms, heat waves, drought, global instability and war.
Without any action from Congress, Biden can use his authority under the Defense Production Act to quickly ramp up the manufacturing and deployment of clean energy technology, including efficient electric heat pumps, which are air-conditioning-like appliances that both heat and cool homes and will immediately reduce fossil fuel consumption by replacing models that burn climate-polluting natural gas.
Biden has already invoked the Cold War-era law to encourage domestic production of critical minerals like lithium, nickel and cobalt that are used in electric vehicle batteries, and before that, to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic. And he banned imports of Russian oil and gas by executive order. The invasion of Ukraine has only underscored the global security imperative of ending our reliance on fossil fuels. If war and disease are reasons enough to warrant such action, the climate crisis is an even greater one.
Using defense powers to boost U.S. production of heat pumps at low cost has reportedly been studied by the White House. The idea has been gathering support among environmental groups and Democratic lawmakers as a way to respond to climate change and help Europe reduce reliance on Russian gas, similar to the “Lend-Lease” program that the U.S. used to help allies during World War II.
If Biden won’t act on his own, Congress should push him.
A bill introduced Wednesday by Democratic Reps. Cori Bush of Missouri and Jason Crow of Colorado, as well as Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., would do that, using the Defense Production Act to increase domestic production of renewable energy technology. The Energy Security and Independence Act would “invest $100 billion in reinvigorating the domestic clean energy industrial base,” provide $30 billion to help weatherize and insulate 6.4 million homes and “$10 billion to procure and install millions of heat pumps, significantly reducing consumption of imported fossil fuels,” according to a summary from Bush’s office.
But lawmakers need to do more. They must find a way to pass key climate provisions from Biden’s all-but-dead Build Back Better Act, including renewable energy incentives for wind and solar and electric vehicle tax credits that would accelerate these zero-emission technologies. They can also get behind the Big Oil Windfall Profits Tax, a bill introduced last month by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., that seeks to deter the petroleum industry from profiteering as gas prices surge by returning some of its revenues to consumers in quarterly rebates.
This kind of climate action may seem unlikely or even laughably ambitious, given the dysfunction in Congress, its failure to respond to decades of escalating warnings from scientists and the stranglehold of polluting industries. But if there ever were a time to press hard and go big to save our planet, it is now.