A20 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.THURSDAY, AUGUST 1 , 2019
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR[email protected]LOCAL OPINIONSJoin the debate at washingtonpost.com/local-opinionsT
HE UNITED STATES, which on a bipartisan
basis led the world into a post-World War II
era of increasingly free trade and, over time,
widely shared prosperity, is now poised to
retreat from trade — also on a bipartisan basis. This
is the distressing implication of the new trade policy
proposal unveiled by a leading Democratic contend-
er for president, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.).
As the Trump administration scraps trade agree-
ments and picks tariff fights around the world,
Ms. Warren offers ideas that differ, somewhat, in
language from President Trump’s but resemble
them closely in protectionist spirit. “We will engage
in international trade — but on our terms and only
when it benefits American families,” her plan says.
All that’s missing are the actual words “America
First.” The main difference between Ms. Warren and
Mr. Trump is that the president primarily vilifies the
United States’s trading partners — everyone from
China, which really does play unfairly, to Canada, an
ally with which this country has relatively balanced
trade — while Ms. Warren blames “big multination-
al corporations” for their lack of “loyalty or alle-giance to America.” Business has profited from
U.S. trade policy, she claims, while “everyone else
has paid the price.” Everyone? Even farmers and
workers in export industries? Even U.S. consumers
who benefit from less expensive goods? The truth
about trade is that it creates losers in the U.S. econo-
my but also winners. Like Mr. Trump, Ms. Warren
accentuates only the negative.
She does so in support of a program that would
make all U.S. trade negotiation positions public as
talks proceed, to end secret corporate influence,
without explaining why any other country would
agree to conduct talks in front of the cameras. She
says the United States will make other countries’
adherence to high standards of human rights,
environmental and labor protection, such as the
elimination of all “domestic fossil fuel subsidies,” a
precondition of trade talks. As Ms. Warren acknowl-
edges, the United States itself could not meet her
preconditions, though she is “committed to fixing
that as President.”
On the core of Mr. Trump’s policy — tariffs —
Ms. Warren waffles, calling them “an importanttool” that must be “part of a broader strategy.” She’s
for a tax on imported goods to offset carbon-
intensive production abroad, which functions very
much like a tariff, absent an equivalent carbon tax
on U.S.-made goods. Ms. Warren’s main beef with
recent trade deals is that they protect longer
intellectual property rights for drug companies,
though even this is not a simple matter, because too
little protection could discourage needed innova-
tion. Still, the good news, such as it is, about her plan
is that, while it would make new trade agreements
nearly impossible, it would not necessarily unravel
existing ones.
At the Detroit Democratic debate Tuesday night,
former Maryland congressman John Delaney and
former Colorado governor John Hickenlooper
gamely pointed out the fact that Ms. Warren was
abandoning the party’s more balanced traditions, as
practiced most recently under President Barack
Obama. Pushback from Democrats such as these is
now all that’s standing between the world and a
risky new trade-unfriendly political consensus in
the United States.A bipartisan retreat
Ms. Warren’s trade ideas closely resemble the protectionist spirit behind Mr. Trump’s tariffs.
As a teacher and researcher in the field of higher
education administration, I was dismayed to read
Will E. Young’s “Inside Liberty University’s culture
of fear” [Outlook, July 28], about the university
leadership’s repressive approach to student jour-
nalism. Mr. Young’s portrayal of the faculty — in
large part denied any prospect of tenure, kept on
short leashes via year-to-year contracts, the threat
of late-notice removal and by policing of their
political views — was also deeply disturbing.
I immediately checked on Liberty’s accredita-
tion. It is indeed accredited by the Southern
Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on
Colleges, a regional accrediting body recognized by
the Education Department and the Council forHigher Education Accreditation.
But the Southern Association of Colleges and
Schools Commission on Colleges’s “Principles of
Accreditation” underline “the right of students to... open expression and exchange of ideas,” “the
right of faculty members to teach, investigate, and
publish freely” and “the tradition of shared govern-
ance” between administration and faculty.
Mr. Young’s article suggests that Liberty’s respect
for such principles might merit examination. One
hopes that Liberty’s representative on the Southern
Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on
Colleges’s Board of Trustees would see this as an
opportunity, not a threat.
Eric R. Terzuolo, Washington
Freedom of speech only for some
ABCDE
AN INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER
H
UANG QI, one of China’s most prominent
human rights activists who has already
spent nearly half of the past two decades in
prison and state detention, was sentenced
Monday to 12 years in prison. His supposed crime
was leaking state secrets, but in actuality his only
offense was speaking out against government wrong-
doing. The harsh punishment — which could amount
to a death sentence, given his frail health — is the
latest sign of the extreme lengths that President Xi
Jinping’s Communist Party will go to silence political
dissent.
In 1998, the veteran “cyber-dissident” set up
64 Tianwang, a website initially designed to investi-
gate and report on Chinese citizens who had disap-
peared. Named for the violent June 4, 1989, Tianan-
men Square crackdown on pro-democracy protest-
ers, Mr. Huang’s website continues to use a nation-
wide network of volunteers to document theincreasingly dire human rights situation in China,
albeit it is blocked on the mainland. His tireless
efforts landed him five years in prison in 2000 for
“state subversion” and three years in 2009 for investi-
gating the deadly collapse of poorly constructed
schools during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake.
In addition to the prison sentence, Mr. Huang was
deprived of political rights for four years and fined
20,000 yuan, approximately $3,000. After three
years of pretrial detention, Mr. Huang’s medical
condition continues to deteriorate, with reports of
kidney and heart diseases, possible emphysema and
inflammation in the lungs. He has, so far, been
denied proper medical treatment.
The government’s harassment and abuse of
Mr. Huang extend beyond him. His mother, Pu Wen-
qing, was detained incommunicado for several
weeks in 2018 after appealing for her son’s urgent
medical release. The 86-year-old has been underguarded house arrest since February. Additionally,
two of Mr. Huang’s lawyers were disbarred for
representing him in court — further isolating the
ailing man.
Unfortunately, Mr. Xi’s broad campaign to silence
critical thought shows no sign of slowing down.
Mr. Huang is just one of countless individuals who
have been abused because of their dedication to
human rights and refusal to buckle to the propa-
ganda of the Chinese regime. Among those who have
died in state custody or soon after their release: 2010
Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, Cao Shunli,
Tenzin Delek Rinpoche and, in July this year, Ji Sizun.
More than a dozen international human rights
groups, including the United Nations, have pushed
for Mr. Huang’s immediate release. Instead of arbi-
trarily imprisoning Mr. Huang for baseless crimes for
which he has suffered enough, China should heed the
calls for clemency.China’s war on critical thought
A dissident’s 12-year imprisonment could be a life sentence.
O
N FRIDAY, a pillar of global security will
expire. Perhaps no one will notice when the
Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty of
1987 slips into oblivion; the threat of nuclear
attack in just minutes that seemed so unnerving
during the late 20th century has now faded into a
distant memory, lost to complacency at the Cold War’s
end. But the demise of the INF Treaty should teach a
lesson.
Arms control, creating verifiable treaties to limit
and reduce nuclear, chemical and biological weap-
ons, had its mystique: obtuse concepts, exotic hard-
ware and mind-bending negotiations. But at its core,
arms control was about political willpower. In the
case of the INF Treaty, President Ronald Reagan and
Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev summoned enough
of it to eliminate an entire class of deployed weapons,
the ground-based missiles with a range of between
300 and 3,400 miles, and their launchers. The treaty
made the world safer not only by removing a nuclear
threat to Europe but also by introducing novel mea-
sures such as intrusive verification and on-site in-
spections.
In recent years, the United States detected that
Russia, under President Vladimir Putin, was develop-
ing, testing and eventually deploying a ground-based
cruise missile, the 9M729, prohibited by the treaty.
The Obama administration protested the violation to
Russia, repeatedly, to no avail; President Trump
announced Oct. 20, 2018, that the United States
would withdraw. The political will to stick with it was
gone — Russia broke it, and Mr. Trump no longer had
the desire to stick around.
National security adviser John Bolton said Tuesday
in a speech at the National Conservative Student
Conference that the 2010 New START accord limiting
strategic or long-range nuclear weapons was “flawed
from the beginning” and “unlikely” to be renewed
when it expires in 2021. “Why extend a flawed system
just to say you have a treaty?” he asked. Mr. Bolton and
Mr. Trump have held out the prospect of a negotiationthat would include China’s nuclear weapons. This
sounds reasonable, but China’s nuclear arsenal is only
a fraction of what Russia and the United States
maintain, and Beijing has ruled out negotiating. So is
this administration serious or just creating a diver-
sion? Likewise, Mr. Bolton said New START was
flawed because it did not include short-range or
tactical nuclear weapons, which have never been
covered by treaty. Again, a reasonable goal, but the
New START accord was meant to limit the long-range
globe-spanning ballistic missiles, not the tacticalweapons. Is the administration really serious about
tackling this difficult new area of negotiations or just
manufacturing a smokescreen?
To rectify these “flaws” in arms control takes
political will, not just facile one-liners. Without INF
and New START, the world will have fewer restraints
on nuclear weapons. Will that somehow be safer?
Where is the political determination to carry on the
hard work — the negotiating — to avert another
nuclear arms race? So far, it is not evident. Time to
make a difference, not just a point.A nuclear treaty’s
final word
On Friday, the INF vanishes. What it
should teach us about tomorrow.ABCDE
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The Washington Post
1301 K St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20071 (202) 334-I take exception to the suggestion in the July 28
front-page article “Whispers of concern on Mueller’s
sharpness” that 74-year-old former special counsel
Robert S. Mueller III’s more than six hours of
testimony was anything but a marvel. Consider
listening to dozens of interrogators, half of whom
were self-aggrandizing and seeking to belittle the
enormous work of the special counsel’s report on
efforts to destroy our democracy. I wanted to
applaud when Mr. Mueller asked one who spent
much of his time politically grandstanding what his
question was.
Forgetful? Hardly. Quite to the point. Quite sharp
to ask for page citations within a 400-page docu-
ment to verify the language being thrown at
him. Mr. Mueller is to be admired for sticking to his
assertion to deal only with what the report said and
to abide by Attorney General William P. Barr’s
admonition not to expand on report topics that did
not produce an indictment.
Marolyn Hatch, GaithersburgMr. Mueller was plenty sharp
I agree with Colbert I. King’s July 27 op-ed,
“Despairing over the Democrats,” and his concern
that the trajectory Democrats are on might end up
with history repeating itself next year. The sorry
state of Democratic politics is that there are clearly
too many Democratic candidates for president, all
pulling money from one another and criticizing each
other and their platforms — instead of focusing on a
president who has consistently undermined our
democratic principles.
All Americans concerned about the state of our
democracy should take heed of Mr. King’s warning
that the Democratic Party needs to quit “pulling
itself apart over political agendas having less to do
with defeating Trump and more with scoring ideo-
logical victories among themselves.” We need to
send a very clear and strong signal to our Democrat-
ic candidates to set their egos aside and focus on
changing the president in 2020. I hope I echo the
concern of many who want to see the Democrats
start pulling together, weeding out the field of
candidates to a few and stop drawing money from
one another. Let’s concentrate on winning our
country back to the democratic principles that we
have had for more than 200 years by defeating
President Trump in 2020.
Nancy Kegan Smith, AlexandriaDon’t repeat history in 2020
The July 27 Religion article “Jews differ on
Trump’s remarks against ‘Squad’ ” created a false
equivalence between President Trump’s reactions
and the views of the Squad of four freshman
congresswomen. Instead, the focus should remain
on their policy positions and votes.
To date, they’ve gotten a lot of attention, including
praise from some in the American Jewish communi-
ty and a surprising number of their Democratic
Party colleagues. But they have yet to suffer any
consequences, such as from a primary opponent in
2020 who might give one or more of them an
incentive to soften or renounce their strongly held
but misguided beliefs.
Lawrence M. Lesser, Rockville‘The Squad’ has had it easy
Reading Dana Milbank’s July 28 Sunday Opinion
column, “Putin’s meddling enabler: Mitch McCon-
nell,” brought me to the conclusion that our system
of government is seriously flawed if one man (or
woman) can impede the progress of every legislative
effort to combat foreign interference, Russian or
otherwise, in our elections.
Mr. Milbank’s column, coupled with the July 28
front-page article on the growing “trolling” industry
in the Philippines, “Online trolls are shaping poli-
tics,” creates a plainly terrifying scenario.
And now we are to lose the leadership of Director
of National Intelligence Daniel Coats. It only gets
worse.
Judith MacArthur, RockvilleMr. McConnell has too much power
In his July 29 op-ed, “Impeachment, Trump and
#MoscowMitch,” E.J. Dionne Jr. encouraged Demo-
crats not to argue among ourselves lest we lose the
chance to win the next election. But Mr. Dionne gave
no indication which positions should be abandoned
and which positions should be accepted. If we are to
avoid infighting, which side would Mr. Dionne have
stand down?
Tim Clair, ColumbiaDefining your platform
Regarding the July 27 front-page article “Justices
say wall plan can proceed”:
Will Congress please, please keep trying to stop
our wannabe dictator in chief president from de-
stroying our Constitution and republic before it’s too
late? The Supreme Court’s lifting of an injunction on
funding the “wall” is a massive cut to our country’s
reason for being. We are quickly dying a painful
death of a thousand cuts, and Congress is doing little
to stop the bleeding.
Edward J. Pastula, New CarrolltonCut to the quick
EDITORIALSTOM TOLESRegarding Steven Pearlstein’s July 28 Business
column, “Elizabeth Warren’s plan for private equity
has good aims but misses the mark”:
Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Mass.) aca-
demic background is law, not economics. Her career
includes teaching and practicing law. As president,
she would need a knowledgeable Council of Eco-
nomic Advisers. As Alan Blinder, who served as a
member of then-President Bill Clinton’s Council of
Economic Advisers in 1993 and 1994, states in
“Advice and Dissent”: “Politicians use economics in
the same way that a drunk uses lamp-posts — for
support rather than illumination.”
In the case of our current president, Mr. Blinder’s
“lamppost theory of economics” applies to all areas
of government, not just economics. The “good aims”
of Ms. Warren suggest to me that she would be more
inclined to look for illumination in economics and in
other areas of government.
Bruce Herbert, McLeanEconomic illumination needed