32 United States The EconomistFebruary 3rd 2018
2 Critics call Mr Trump an appeaser of
despots. They were loud after his adminis-
tration said on January 29th that there was
no need to rush new sanctionson Russia
demanded by Congress in near-unani-
mous House and Senate votes last year.
Partisans will be wrangling for a while
over Mr Trump’s strange reluctance to con-
front Russia over election-meddling.
Meanwhile, in Washington and other capi-
tals, sanctions experts and government of-
ficials are puzzling overEO13818’s potential
import, for it is a tool to strike fear into the
stoniest oligarch’s heart.
On paper, the order implements a law
passed by Congress in 2016, the Global
Magnitsky Act (orGLOMAGto sanctions
wonks). In fact, says Robert Berschinski of
Human Rights First, a campaign group, it
magnifies the power ofGLOMAGby loos-
ening or deleting criteria for action written
into the original law, which in turn went
further than a first, Russia-focused Magnit-
sky Act passed in 2012 to honoura Russian
tax lawyer and whistle-blower, Sergei
Magnitsky, who died after torture in offi-
cial custody. EO13818 targets officials in any
foreign entity whose members have en-
gaged in “serious” human-rights abuse or
corruption. The original law targets “gross”
violations of internationally recognised
human rights, a higher standard. The law
of 2016 also explicitly reserves its protec-
tions for whistle-blowers working to ex-
pose law-breaking by officials, or cam-
paigners for human rights. EO13818 scraps
that requirement. It also ditches a clause re-
serving sanctions for those with “com-
mand responsibility” for malign acts.
Most dramatically, the order finds that
human-rights abuses and corruption have
reached such a pitch that they constitute
“an unusual and extraordinary threat to
the national security, foreign policy and
economy of the United States”. That legal-
ese about a standing national emergency
adds the full force of a second sanctions
law, the International Emergency Eco-
nomic Powers Act, to create “an incredibly
powerful global tool” to impose financial
sanctions and visa bans, says Mr Berschin-
ski, a former deputy assistantsecretary of
state for democracy, human rights and la-
bour in the Obama administration.
Scott Busby, who now holds that post,
says thatEO13818 is intended to make it eas-
ier to implement the “spirit” of Congress’s
law. For instance it can be “challenging” to
prove that a foreign official is in a chain of
command. The firstGLOMAG target list,
unveiled in December, named officials and
their cronies from China to Russia, Nicara-
gua to Myanmar. In internal debates Ste-
ven Mnuchin, the treasury secretary, is said
to have sought maximum flexibility when
crafting sanctions. Mr Trump’s soft-speak-
ing about strongmen is grounds for alarm.
But America’s human-rights monitors
have a big new stick. 7D
ENNIS RICHARDSON, Oregon’s sec-
retary of state, brought his children up
to be ready. “When a crisisarises, the time
for preparation has passed,” he would tell
them. Today Mr Richardson worries his
state is less prepared than it should be.
There is a 10% chance that in the next 30
years an earthquake between 8.0 and 9.0
in magnitude will rupture the Cascadia
subduction zone that runs along the coast
of Washington, Oregon and Northern Cali-
fornia. If the quake hit, it would trigger a
tsunami that could raze coastal houses and
infrastructure.
On January 25th Mr Richardson’s office
published a report describing how vulner-
able the state is to a Cascadia quake. To be-
gin with, it points out that the building
which houses Oregon’s emergency co-or-
dination centre has not been retrofitted to
withstand earthquakes. It estimates that a
big tremor combined with a tsunami could
claim 10,000 lives and cost $32bn in dam-
age and lost output in Oregon alone. Cal-
culations made in 2013 suggest that it
would take between one and three years
to restore drinking water and sewerage in
coastal areas. The wreckage left behind
would be enough to fill 1m refuse trucks.
The Pacific north-west is not the only re-
gion with a problem. The United States
Geological Survey (USGS), a scientific
agency of the federal government, says
there is a 99.7% chance that California will
suffer a quake larger than magnitude 6.7 in
the next 30 years. The Southern San An-
dreas Fault line, which runs close to Los
Angeles, is the most likely place for a large
quake. The Los Angeles metropolitan areahas taken steps to brace itself for shaking.
In 2015 the city council passed a law requir-
ing around 13,500 apartment buildings to
be retrofitted to withstand earthquakes. It
gave the owners of wood-framed apart-
ment buildings seven years to reinforce
them, while the owners of concrete struc-
tures got 25. In 2017 Santa Monica and West
Hollywood, two municipalities next to Los
Angeles, also adopted mandatory retrofit
measures. Implementing the laws will not
be straightforward. Property owners have
to find a way to meet the costs upfront,
which range from $60,000 to $130,00 for
wood buildings to millions of dollars for
concrete towers.
There is one glaring way in which Los
Angeles, the west coast and America as a
whole lag behind other quake-prone na-
tions: it has no early-warning system. Mex-
ico, Japan, Turkey, Romania, China, Italy,
and Taiwan all boast systems to warn resi-
dents ofimminent earthquakes. In Mexi-
co, alerts allowed residents to rush out of
buildings that were likely to collapse, and
to seek cover, before an 8.2-magnitude
quake shook the country’s southern coast
in September 2017. In Japan, every resident
with a mobile phone receives a text mes-
sage warning of imminent quakes. Even a
few seconds’ notice can mean “a doctor
taking his scalpel out of a patient, a dentist
removing his drill and manufacturers shut-
ting off equipment that leads to fires or
spills”, says Lucy Jones, a seismologist.
Later this year, after 12 years of research
and development, Shake Alert, an earth-
quake early-warning system designed
eventually to work up and down Ameri-
ca’s west coast, will be turned on. But at
least for now it will only be available on a
limited basis. Douglas Given, the earth-
quake early-warning co-ordinator atUSGS,
says about half the necessary stations have
been completed. USGShas said it will cost
$38.3m to complete the system and $16m a
year to operate it.
“Virtually everybody who hears about
it says ‘Gee! That seems awfully cheap,
why don’t we just do it?’” Mr Given adds.
But securing even that much funding has
been difficult. The budget proposed by the
presidentlast summer sought to eliminate
all federal money for Shake Alert. A con-
gressional committee later blocked the
cuts, allowing construction to continue.
California’s budget for the next fiscal year
proposes contributing $15m to the system,
but more financing is needed. “Unlike in
Japan, where earthquakes are a national
priority, in America earthquakes are
viewed as a west-coast problem,” laments
Mr Given. Adam Schiff, a congressman
from the Los Angeles area who has pushed
for the alert system, agrees. “Were we to
have a devastating earthquake in Califor-
nia tomorrow,” he muses, “there would be
the will for relief efforts. But we shouldn’t
wait for that.” 7Earthquake preparednessTen per cent
LOS ANGELES
America is not ready for the next big oneSan FranciscoLos AngelesWASHINGTONOREGONCALIFORNIASan DiegoCANADAMEXICOUNITED
STATESPACIFIC
OCEANJUAN
DE FUCA
PLATEPACIFIC PLATE NORTH
AMERICAN
PLATESeattlePortland
Cascadia subduction zoneSan Andreas FaultSelected
tectonic
fault linesDirection
of plate
movement500 km