The Washington Post - 07.08.2019

WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 7 , 2019. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A23

BY JOHN R. ALLEN

AND BRETT MCGURK

W

e both served as presidential

envoys leading the U.S. global

campaign to defeat the Islamic

State terrorist group. In doing

so, we worked with all departments and

agencies of the U.S. government to develop

a comprehensive and multifaceted cam-

paign to defeat Islamic State terrorists on

the battlefield, but also, and crucially,

through counterfinance, countermessag-

ing and information-sharing across the

United States and globally. U.S. leadership

and determined diplomacy built one of the

largest coalitions in history, now standing

at n early 80 partners.

These efforts have stopped attacks and

saved lives. In 2014, the Islamic State was a

global force, seemingly unstoppable, oper-

ating with free rein in cyberspace and on

widely available social media platforms. It

was committing a cts of genocide, enslaving

thousands of women and girls, and plan-

ning terrorist attacks from its havens in

Syria that w ould later be carried out on the

streets of Paris, Brussels, Istanbul, N ice and

elsewhere. It had open access to military

equipment and weapons flowing into Syr-

ia. Its ideology spread to the United States

and inspired attacks in Florida, Texas and

California.

Throughout, nobody questioned Ameri-

ca’s resolve to find and defeat these terror-

ists and protect the homeland. Whenever

one of us would hear excuses for terrorism

from regional leaders in the Middle East —

for example, condemning Islamic State

atrocities but agreeing with underlying

political grievances — we gave such argu-

ments no quarter or excuse. There is no

political justification for acts of mass mur-

der of civilians. When political leaders give

such acts cover, even inadvertently, the

movement spreads and innocent people

die.

The United States now faces a new na-

tional security threat. The enemy is not the

Islamic State but domestic and home-

grown white nationalist terrorism. And

“terrorism” i s the term that must be used.

The strain of thought driving this terrorism

is now a global phenomenon, with mass

atrocities in Norway, New Zealand, South

Carolina a nd also, law enforcement author-

ities suspect, El Paso. The attacks are

cheered on by adherents in dark (but r eadi-

ly accessible) corners of the Internet. The

terrorist acts may differ from Islamic State

attacks in degree, but they are similar in

kind: driven by hateful narratives, dehu-

manization, the rationalization of violence

and the glorification of murder, combined

with ready access to recruits and weapons

of war.

The first step to overcoming this d anger-

ous strain of violence i s to speak clearly and

without equivocation. It is terrorism di-

rected at innocent American civilians. If

the Islamic State or al-Qaeda were commit-

ting such a cts, the nation would mobilize as

one to overcome it. The U.S. government

would deploy a ll legal means at i ts disposal

to root out the facilitators of violence and

protect the American people from further

harm. The United States would speak with

a clear voice and lead the world in a

determined response, strengthening alli-

ances and sharing information with its

allies. Unfortunately, when it comes to

white nationalist terrorism, President

Trump speaks with equivocation, and his

rhetoric, wittingly or not, has the effect of

providing cover for extremists who excuse

their actions in the language of political

grievance.

The United States must take a leadership

role in overcoming this scourge of terror-

ism before it gets worse. Left unchecked,

the risks increase of an attack on the level o f

the 1995 truck bombing of the Alfred P.

Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma

City, which killed 1 68 people.

FBI Director Christopher A. Wray two

weeks ago warned that most terrorism-

related arrests this year are linked to white

supremacist terrorism. The country now

confronts a national security emergency on

par with the Islamic State threat. It de-

mands moral clarity and a call from the

Oval Office directing all assets of the feder-

al government t o develop a comprehensive,

long-term campaign to protect all Ameri-

cans. If the president will not act, then

Congress and state and local governments

must instead. The matter is too urgent to

wait for new national leadership — at stake

is nothing less than the protection of the

American people and o ur way of life.

Focusing on this domestic threat must

not diminish American efforts to combat

and contain international terrorism. But

placing an equal emphasis on the battle

against white nationalist terrorism will be

the first step in turning around what is now

a dangerous national d isgrace.

John R. Allen, president of the Brookings

Institution, is a retired four-star Marine Corps

general. Brett McGurk is the Payne

Distinguished Lecturer at Stanford University

and nonresident senior fellow at the Carnegie

Endowment for International Peace. Both were

special presidential envoys for the Global

Coalition to Counter ISIS.

Domestic terrorism

can’t be ignored

aspen, c olo.

W

here is the United States
heading in its confronta-
tion with China, which
moved this week from a
trade dispute to a currency battle —
with more dangerous tests in Hong
Kong and Ta iwan looming ominously
in the background?
Does the United States have a strat-
egy in this cascading competition? Do
America’s military and diplomatic
tools match the scope and subtlety of
the challenges ahead? Is America’s
growing anxiety a bout Beijing c reating
a policy panic that overstates the Chi-
nese threat and understates U.S.
strength?
This “Battle for Primacy” with Chi-
na was the topic of this week’s annual
meeting of the Aspen Strategy Group,
a group of former secretaries of state,
national security advisers and other
senior former and current officials,
supplemented b y some journalists and
think-tank analysts, that has been
gathering here since 1984.
“The consensus of our meeting was
that this is by far the greatest nati-
onal-security challenge the U.S. faces
for the next few decades,” s aid Nicho-
las Burns, a Harvard professor and
former undersecretary of state who
serves as the group’s director. The
forum agreed that “the foundation of
our policy toward China has to be the
internal strength of the United S tates,”
he said.
Over the three days of discussion, I
heard broad support for other specific
themes: China has become a potent
rival in military power, t echnology and
economic clout, and President Trump
was right to take a tougher line on
Chinese trade practices than had his
predecessors. But Trump’s policy has
been a changeable collection of tactics
more than a systematic plan for deal-
ing with China — it’s “an a ttitude more
than a strategy,” as one member of the
group put it.
Trump’s tariffs have produced an
escalating tit-for-tat pattern that this
week spread to currency, as China let
the r enminbi fall sharply a nd the Unit-
ed States responded by branding Bei-
jing as a “currency manipulator.” For-
mer treasury secretary Lawrence H.
Summers, not usually an alarmist,
warned Monday in a tweet that “We
may well be at the most dangerous
financial moment since the 2009 Fi-
nancial Crisis.”
“The public anger and frustration
toward China are there, but the policy
and strategy are not,” Sen. Jack Reed
(D-R.I.) told the group. Kevin Rudd, a
former Australian prime minister,
warned the American gathering: “A t
present, you don’t have a strategy.
That’s j ust a reality.”
What concerned the group was that
Trump’s economic jousting is taking
place against a backdrop o f potentially
explosive security challenges — the
growing citizen protests in Hong K ong
and a January election in a Ta iwan that
Beijing sees as a rebellious province.
These two political battles carry a risk
of Chinese military intervention for
which the United States isn’t well pre-
pared.
Philip Zelikow, a former State De-
partment official who teaches at the
University of Virginia, warned that he
sees “a one-in-three chance of major
crisis over Taiwan in the next year or
so.” The group p ondered how the Unit-
ed States should react to a Chinese
intervention, however unlikely.
U.S. military options would be risky
in a Ta iwan crisis. In more than a
dozen war games over the past decade,
news reports have said the imaginary
U.S. side has lost. “The force we have
isn’t going to win,” cautioned Chris
Brose, former staff director of the Sen-
ate Armed Services Committee. In a
confrontation across the Ta iwan
Strait, warned another former senior
official, “a carrier task force won’t last
one minute, Okinawa will be a place
for s oldiers t o die.”
The group agreed that the United
States must prepare for a long, difficult
period of competition with a China
that can no longer be regarded as a
benign partner. “Friction is the new
normal,” said David Shambaugh, a
China scholar who teaches at George
Washington University.
But as the discussion progressed,
group members increasingly stressed
that it was important for the United
States not to overreact, in Ta iwan or
elsewhere, and t o remember America’s
abiding strengths — if it can solve its
current political problems.
The Aspen conversation wasn’t a
call to arms against C hina, b ut rather a
call to prudent n ational security policy.
China is gaining weight in the seesaw
of power, said Harvard professor
Graham Allison, but the United States
retains the balance if it keeps faith
with allies such as Japan and Europe
and b rings them to the c ompetition.
Rudd summed up the need for clear
American strategy in this contest: “It’s
50-50 how it turns out,” he told the
group. “It depends on what you do —
and y our confidence i n yourselves.” I t’s
a long game, one that requires the
most precious and scarce resources in
today’s America — patience, unity and
resolve.
Twitter: @IgnatiusPost

DAVID IGNATIUS

Overreacting

to the China

challenge

T

o understand the roots of the

white rage that President Trump

taps into with unerring and un-

conscionable precision, it helps to

look at a recent news article from South

Africa.

That country’s history, of course, exhib-

its the most extreme form of white power.

The white minority denied the black ma-

jority the most rudimentary rights for

decades. Then, in 1994, apartheid crum-

bled, and a democratically elected govern-

ment took office that, remarkably and

wisely, refused to exact vengeance for

decades of oppression. Even today, whites

occupy an economically privileged posi-

tion in South Africa. Their a verage income

is five times that of blacks. More than half

of blacks live below the poverty line,

compared with less than 1 percent of

whites.

Ye t, rather than being grateful for the

forbearance of the black majority, many

South African whites, especially those

from the working class, smolder with

resentment. Their bitterness erupted dur-

ing and after an emotional confrontation

in 2017 at the Johannesburg outpost of a

casual restaurant chain called the Spur

Steak Ranches. Videos show a white man

arguing vociferously with a black woman

over the behavior of her kids. As the New

York Times notes, “The white man yanks

the arm of a black boy, before threatening

to hit the black woman and trying to

overturn a table where her small children

were sitting.” A few days later, the restau-

rant chain apologized to the woman and

banned the man from entering its restau-

rants because of his “unacceptable ac-

tions.” Many whites were outraged at the

treatment of the abusive customer and

announced a boycott of the Spur restau-

rants. The boycott continues to the pre-

sent day, hurting the restaurants’ sales in

white areas.

Pretty crazy — and pretty telling. What

it reveals is the sense of outrage that white

people feel when they fear they are losing

their privileged position to people of color.

From their perspective, after having been

on top for so long, any attempt to redress

past wrongs or foster equal treatment feels

as if they are the victims of an anti-white

vendetta. A 2018 PRRI-MTV poll found

that 55 percent of white respondents in the

United States think that discrimination

against whites has become as big a prob-

lem in America as discrimination against

blacks and other minority groups.

Needless to say, this perception is at

odds with reality. Whites are still much

better off than blacks. The poverty rate

among African Americans is 21.8 percent;

among whites, 8.8 percent. The median

wealth of black households is $17,409;

among whites, $171,000. The homeowner-

ship rate for blacks is 41.2 percent; among

whites, 71.1 percent. There is also mani-

fold evidence of continuing discrimina-

tion against African Americans. It’s hard

to imagine a white man being choked to

death by police, as Eric Garner was in New

York, for illegally selling c igarettes. Or two

white men being evicted by police from a

Starbucks for asking to use the bathroom

without ordering anything, as two black

men were in Philadelphia.

These facts do not, however, compute

with whites who are convinced that

they’re the real victims. Notwithstanding

his occasional, insincere denunciations of

racism, President Archie Bunker is the

channeler and champion of white griev-

ances. In 1989, right after calling for the

death penalty for the Central Park Five

(five minority teenagers who were later

exonerated of rape), Trump told an inter-

viewer: “A well-educated black has a tre-

mendous advantage over a well- educated

white in terms of the job market.... If I

were s tarting off today I would love to be a

well-educated black because I really be-

lieve they do have an actual advantage

today.” (Of course, if Trump were actually

“a well-educated black” a nd became p resi-

dent, he’d have some poorly educated

racist demanding to see his birth certifi-

cate.)

That is the bigoted mind-set that leads

Trump to spray kerosene on brushfires of

racial conflict across America. He tells

women of color to “go back” t o where they

come from and uses dehumanizing lan-

guage (“infested,” “breeding”) to describe

minorities, even while claiming, prepos-

terously, “ I am the least r acist person there

is anywhere in the world.”

Like many of his followers, Trump m ust

imagine that white supremacy i s the natu-

ral order of things and that a ny attempt to

deliver justice for minorities who have

been discriminated against for centuries

is an indicator of anti-white prejudice.

The most extreme form of this outlook can

be found among white supremacists such

as the gunman who allegedly slaughtered

22 people in El Paso on Saturday. The

suspect claimed to be acting in response

“to the Hispanic invasion of Te xas” — a

state that was part of Mexico before being

invaded b y Anglos. Even many w hites who

aren’t driven to violence display a version

of this victimhood mind-set. They view

accusations of racism as a far bigger

problem than racism itself, and blame

“social justice warriors” rather than white

racists for inflaming racial tensions.

White people can be pretty clueless. (I

know, I’m one myself.) Get a grip, folks.

We’re not the victims here. Thinking that

we are is not just wrong. It’s dangerous.

It’s a mind-set that can justify everything

from a public temper tantrum to a shoot-

ing spree.

Twitter: @MaxBoot

MAX BOOT

Get a grip, white people

W

hen it comes to gun control,

conservatives have been for-

tunate in t heir enemies. Every

time there is a mass shooting,

the l eft renews its calls for g un control, b ut

it spends a great deal of energy on futile

and ahistorical arguments about the

wording of the Second Amendment, or

making hackle-raising, i nvidious c ompar-

isons with Europe. And when it comes

time to actually suggest what should be

done, Democrats generally suggest pol-

icies recycled from the 1994 crime bill,

such as background checks and a ban on

assault weapons. There’s little evidence

that these policies did anything to curb

gun v iolence the first time they were tried,

which undercuts the calls for redoubling

those efforts.

Yes, conservatives have been fortunate

in their opponents. But when it comes to

gun control, the right has been equally

unfortunate in its allies, and in the end,

that may matter much m ore.

Forget the arguments about whether

President Trump’s rhetoric about immi-

grants did or didn’t cause the alleged El

Paso shooter to go on a murderous ram-

page. I’m talking about a much more

treacherous c onservative a lly: the N ation-

al Rifle A ssociation.

Every time there’s a mass shooting, the

NRA rushes to suggest that the real prob-

lem is mental illness or violent video

games or anything except guns. These

claims have little evidence behind them,

but of course that’s beside the point — the

NRA just wants to say something that

sounds vaguely plausible and doesn’t in-

volve restricting guns. And that single-

minded focus on simply avoiding gun

restrictions has carried them to victory

after v ictory.

But a closer look at t hat gun b ill demon-

strates why those victories may prove

Pyrrhic.

Former vice president Joe Biden has

been taking a lot of grief from young

progressives over that bill, which

he helped author as a senator. To a rising

generation of a ctivists, the bill’s e mphasis

on tougher prison sentences represents a

“new Jim Crow.”

But as James Forman Jr., a former

public defender, pointed out in his 20 17

book “Locking Up Our Own,” t he policies

advanced in the legislation had a great

deal of support from African Americans,

who were among the biggest victims of

criminal predation. Which points us to

the true driving force behind the 1994

crime b ill, a nd its counterparts at t he s tate

and local level, one that the young activ-

ists are missing, even though it’s right

there in t he name: crime.

Between 1960 and 1991, the United

States’ violent crime rate nearly quadru-

pled, from less than 200 per 100,000 citi-

zens to 758. Anyone who lived in a city

during that era remembers what it felt like

to never quite stop being afraid of victim-

ization. As a teenager growing up in New

York City, I was forbidden by my p arents —

not at all overprotective — to ride the

subway system after dark. Though these

sorts of strictures offered only modest pro-

tection; a classmate was brutally mugged

on Park Avenue, in broad daylight.

The left took most of the blame for the

crime increase, because for most of the

20th century it had been working t o make

the criminal-justice system more hu-

mane. Those reformers w ere r ight a bout a

lot of things: Harsh punishment is moral-

ly problematic and often, perhaps usual-

ly, counterproductive. It’s also incredibly

costly — for taxpayers, prisoners and the

communities those prisoners are drawn

from.

Unfortunately, w hen crime rates began

to rise, the timing made it look a s if liberal

policies were the culprit. That was prob-

ably unfair, but by the 1990s, the country

was too frightened to listen to any more

liberals murmuring a bout h ow h ard c rim-

inals had it. Thus, t he 1 994 crime bill.

Many of the policies in that bill failed.

The longer sentences didn’t do much to

deter c riminals, and the gun-control mea-

sures didn’t do much to reduce gun vio-

lence. But the American public wasn’t

going to give the left another 50 years to

work on c rime’s “ root causes.”

The right should take note: Just as

Americans were not going to let their

cities turn into slaughterhouses, they are

not going to let their Walmarts become

war zones.

If tragedies like last weekend’s shoot-

ings in El Paso and Dayton, Ohio, keep

happening at the current rate, the Ameri-

can public is eventually going to demand

that the government take guns out of

private hands. None of the firewalls that

have worked thus far will hold. Constitu-

tions can be amended, or courts packed

with judges who read them differently.

Even seemingly impregnable political co-

alitions can be broken by the weight of

enough dead bodies. So if the right is

interested in keeping its guns, it needs to

get even more interested in finding an

alternative policy that will actually work

for the country to keep men with guns

from doing terrible t hings.

Twitter: @asymmetricinfo

MEGAN MCARDLE

How conservatives

can keep their guns

LACY ATKINS/ASSOCIATED PRESS

Rescue crews in the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995.

T

reasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin

on Monday named China a curren-

cy m anipulator — the first manipu-

lation designation in a generation

— and said he would ask the International

Monetary Fund to intervene. Mnuchin

made clear he was doing President Trump’s

bidding after the Chinese central bank

allowed its currency to decline by more

than 2 percent below the psychologically

important level of seven yuan, or renminbi,

to the dollar.

Currency manipulation is an important

issue and has been recognized as such by

the international community. When a

country intervenes in the foreign-

exchange market t o depress its currency so

as to promote exports and discourage im-

ports, something equivalent to imposing

tariffs on imports and providing subsidies

to exports is happening. This is especially

of concern when, as in the case of countries

previously deemed manipulators, a coun-

try is running a substantial trade surplus.

China does not come close to fitting this

template. Over the past eight years, it has

reduced its trade surplus from more than

8 percent of gross domestic product to

essentially zero in response to U.S. pres-

sure. Its interventions in currency markets

over the past several years have been to

prop up its currency rather than to drive it

down. And the move down in the yuan on

Monday was not artificial — it was an

entirely natural market response to newly

imposed U.S. tariffs. Without some mer-

cantile advantage, and with ongoing ef-

forts to prop up the exchange rate and so

raise export prices and reduce import

prices, there is no credible manipulation

claim here.

By labeling as Chinese currency ma-

nipulation an exchange-rate move that was

obviously a natural response to his boss’s

policies, the secretary has damaged his

credibility and that of his office. It will be

harder now in the next difficult financial

moment for Treasury Department pro-

nouncements to be credited by market

participants. Having seen the United

States label China a manipulator, the world

will wonder whether and how the United

States will get China to change its ex-

change-rate policies. If Chinese policies do

not change, we will have only demonstrat-

ed our impotence to China and the world.

Why is that desirable?

Further, the president’s flailing bluster,

in which the treasury secretary is now a full

participant, risks real economic damage as

businesses and consumers become fearful

and hold off on spending. There is a

growing concern that exchange-market

developments will be an excuse for yet

more tariffs against China, or for the Unit-

ed States to start buying up Chinese cur-

rency. Markets in recent days have reacted

in ways suggesting high alarm, with inves-

tors flooding into safe-haven assets such as

bonds, gold and even bitcoin, and flooding

out of riskier assets such as stocks and

loans to businesses. The risk of recession

going forward might now be as high as any

time since the 2008 financial crisis.

There is a final problem with the Treas-

ury Department’s manipulation claims.

The United States has an enormous agenda

with China — North Korea, Ta iwan, Hong

Kong, aggressiveness in the Pacific region,

unfair trade practices and much more. We

have only limited capacity to shape Chi-

nese behavior. Should we not focus on

areas where our position is clearly right

and the stakes are high rather than areas

where our claims are dubious and prosecu-

ting them damages our economy?

Lawrence H. Summers is a professor at and

past president of Harvard University. He was

treasury secretary from 1999 to 2001, and an

economic adviser to President Barack Obama

from 2009 through 2010.

LAWRENCE H. SUMMERS

Mnuchin dings his credibility