Excerpts from recent editorials in the United States and abroad:
Oct. 17
The Washington Post on the U.S. looking to the Pacific Islands:
The Biden administration last month recognized the Cook Islands and Niue as “ sovereign and independent states ” and promised to open diplomatic relations. The United States opened a new embassy in the Solomon Islands in January and another in Tonga in May. A U.S. Embassy is promised for Vanuatu next year. Peace Corps volunteers are returning to Fiji, Samoa and Tonga.
On top of all that, the administration is seeking some $40 million from Congress for infrastructure development in the South Pacific, along with other new investments.
That’s an awful lot of sudden diplomatic attention to a remote grouping of 14 sparsely populated island nations whose combined economies are about that of Vermont. Tiny Niue has fewer than 2,000 people. The Solomon Islands is a relative giant with around 750,000 inhabitants.
What’s behind this sudden flurry of activity in a faraway, largely forgotten expanse of the Pacific Ocean?
The obvious answer is China, which has been making its own recent moves to step up its diplomatic engagement with the Pacific islands. China’s efforts appeared successful last year, when Beijing signed a security pact with the Solomon Islands. The announcement of that accord blindsided the United States, as well as its two key allies in the region, Australia and New Zealand, who feared China might be about to establish a military base in the area.
Despite the United States offering some ritualistic, mostly rhetorical nods to the islands’ strategic importance and their historical resonance — the bloody battle of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands marked a major engagement for U.S. forces during World War II — administrations of both parties in recent decades have treated the islands mostly with indifference.
When Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to Fiji last year, it was the first such high-level visit to that island nation in 36 years. Blinken held a video meeting with other Pacific island leaders. But he was outdone a few months later by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who visited eight Pacific island nations — Fiji, the Solomon Islands, Kiribati, Samoa, Tonga, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and East Timor.
Biden had hoped to be the first sitting U.S. president to visit the Pacific islands last May, but he was forced to cancel his planned trip to deal with an unnecessary debt ceiling standoff in Washington. Chinese President Xi Jinping, facing no such domestic constraints, has made two extended trips to the region, in 2014 and again in 2018.
China can boast of more than $2.7 billion of investment in Pacific island nations, including projects from its Belt and Road Initiative. The country also assisted the region with vaccines and medical supplies during the coronavirus pandemic. But aside from the Solomon Islands, Beijing’s efforts appear to have stalled. The Pacific islands declined to sign a regional security pact with China. They actually prefer Washington’s embrace — if the United States would only pay them some attention.
The island nations could provide a potentially reliable bloc of votes in China’s favor in the U.N. General Assembly. Also, China is constantly on the lookout for new diplomatic allies in its ongoing competition with the self-ruled island of Taiwan. In 2019, two of the countries, the Solomon Islands and Kiribati, switched diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to Beijing.
But the Pacific island nations don’t want to be seen as anyone’s pawns on a strategic chessboard, including Washington’s. Their top concern is dealing with the impacts of global climate change, because they are quite literally on the front lines. The low-lying islands are already experiencing rising sea levels, coastal erosion and storm surges. Some are in danger of disappearing.
So the Biden administration is correct in devoting a large portion of its promised assistance to technology, through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, to build more rapid communications and early warning systems, and to improve disaster preparedness for typhoons, tsunamis and other severe weather events.
Predictably, China, through its state-controlled media outlets, has criticized the latest U.S. initiatives in the Pacific. “This is entirely an act of hegemonism,” the Communist Party-owned tabloid Global Times wrote in an unsigned opinion piece.
But the administration’s efforts in the Pacific are better late than not at all. The priorities seem right — infrastructure and combating the effects of climate change. A planned follow-up visit to the region next month by Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, will help convince Pacific islanders that this newfound attention is more than fleeting.
The broader lesson should be that in the global competition with a more assertive China, neglect of any country or region is not an option. It’s a lesson that should be carried to Africa, South America and other too-often-ignored corners of the world.
ONLINE: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/10/17/pacific-islands-china-us-diplomatic-competition/
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Oct. 14
The New York Times on Israel and its response to attacks by Hamas
Israel stands on the verge of invading Gaza in response to the terrorist attacks by Hamas that many, including Israel’s leaders, have compared to Sept. 11 not just because of the scale and savagery but also because the terrorists sought to destroy the tranquility of daily life. They killed the very young and the very old, the strong and the weak, civilians and soldiers; they took some 150 hostages, including children, and survivors said the attackers raped women — all to send a message that no Israeli was safe.
Israel has a responsibility to its citizens to hold accountable the perpetrators of this violence, but as Secretary of State Antony Blinken said this week, “How Israel does this matters.”
Israel cannot win this war just by killing all the terrorists. It is determined to break the power of Hamas, and in that effort it deserves the support of the United States and the rest of the world. But it can succeed only by upholding the rules and norms of behavior that Hamas so wantonly ignores. What Israel is fighting to defend is a society that values human life and the rule of law. To do that, the means and the ends of its military response must be consistent.
Israel’s goal is to destroy Hamas; in doing that, it should not lose sight of its commitment to safeguard those who have not taken up arms.
The Israeli Army acknowledges and espouses an obligation not to target civilians for military purposes, and to avoid actions that inflict disproportionate harm on civilians, such as destroying an entire city block to kill fighters in a specific building that could be targeted more precisely. But this war is unfolding in an atmosphere of intense emotion, notably in the recent remarks by Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant, who said that Israel was fighting “human animals.”
Israel is preparing to send its young men and women into battle, where they will face an enemy that does not respect the same rules of warfare that they have committed to.
Hamas is known to hide its fighters among civilians, and an indifference to their suffering is central to its brand of terrorism. Hamas is using the people of Gaza as human shields against Israel’s bombing campaign, and as Gazans try to escape, Hamas still holds the hostages who were kidnapped last Saturday. The group has threatened to kill them one by one with every airstrike that hits Gazans in their homes.
Israeli soldiers will look to their leaders to guide their actions and decisions on the battlefield to make sure that they, unlike Hamas, make distinctions between civilians and combatants.
Protecting civilians is also the most sensible way forward. Ending Hamas’s control over Gaza is an essential step, but a military victory will not mean much if young Gazans regroup under another extremist banner. Israel and its allies — and the Palestinians and their allies — have a shared interest in setting Gaza on a path to a different future. To do that, Palestinians first need to see that their lives and their safety are taken into account by Israel in its conduct of this war.
On Thursday, Israel announced that more than one million Palestinians had 24 hours to exit northern Gaza, prompting panic, confusion and immediate objections from the United Nations, which pleaded with Israeli officials to rescind the order. As Secretary General António Guterres noted, the order “applies to a territory that is already besieged, under aerial bombardment and without fuel, electricity, water and food.”
Directing civilians to move out of targeted areas is a valuable way to minimize casualties, but it works only if those who are ordered to evacuate have somewhere to go, a safe route and means to get there and sufficient time to make the journey. The Israeli military widened that 24-hour window and clarified that Gazans would have time on Saturday to move south “without any harm.” Mr. Blinken said Friday that the United States is working with the International Committee of the Red Cross to create safe zones, which could help to limit civilian casualties.
Hamas has a long history of exploiting the rules of war for its own purposes, and it is likely to take advantage of any arrangements such as these intended to protect civilians. But that does not absolve Israel of the responsibility to try.
Israel should also take steps to ensure the safety of journalists and humanitarian workers in the conflict zone. They perform a critical role in wartime by documenting what is happening. That documentation makes it possible for all participants in a conflict to be held accountable for their conduct, by the citizens of their own nations and by the rest of the world, as in Ukraine, where journalists have documented evidence of war crimes in Bucha. At least 11 United Nations workers and 11 journalists have already been killed in this war. Where journalists and aid organizations are not able to bear witness, there is no accountability.
The United States has offered firm support for Israel in its hour of agony. But friendship also requires speaking hard truths. Mr. Blinken and President Biden have spoken in general terms about the importance of minimizing civilian casualties; they should make clear to Israel that the relationship between the two nations is rooted in a commitment to democracy, human rights and the rule of law.
In counseling restraint, the United States can point to the lessons of its own recent history. For two decades, America waged a global campaign against terrorism, all too often ignoring international law when those rules seemed inconvenient. In doing so, America weakened the world’s commitment to those rules and helped embolden a new generation of extremists.
Israel finds itself at war because of the depravity of Hamas. Further bloodshed now appears unavoidable, but the way Israel fights will begin to determine what happens next: Defeating Hamas will make Israel safer; showing disregard for the killing of civilians will not.
ONLINE: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/14/opinion/israel-gaza-war.html
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Oct. 12
The Los Angeles Times on the U.S. economy:
The U.S. economy is in the early stages of an once-in-a-lifetime shift from an economy powered by fossil fuels. To prevent catastrophic climate change we have to switch quickly to electric vehicles and appliances fueled by renewable energy.
But it shouldn’t come at the expense of good-paying jobs — and it doesn’t have to.
Now that the electrification revolution is solidly underway — with electric car sales surging and electric heat pumps outselling gas furnaces — bad-faith actors are trying to exploit workers’ anxieties about their role in a zero-emission future. That effort has been on display most recently in the autoworkers’ strike against the Big Three carmakers.
When former President Trump visited Michigan last month, he said electric vehicle mandates will kill the U.S. auto industry so it doesn’t matter what sort of contract autoworkers secure. “In two years you’re all going to be out of business,” he said, adding that “your jobs will be gone forever.”
It took only a few days for the United Auto Workers to expose that lie with its Oct. 6 announcement that General Motors committed to put its battery manufacturing operations under the union’s national agreement.
“We’ve been told the EV future must be a race to the bottom, and now we’ve called their bluff,” UAW President Shawn Fain said.
Workers have legitimate reasons to worry that as automakers shift to EVs they will shut down internal combustion engine and transmission plants and replace them with low-wage battery factory jobs. But the agreement with GM shows that is a choice, and that tackling climate change by shifting to a zero-emission economy does not have to mean leaving workers behind.
The federal subsidies in the Inflation Reduction Act, the landmark climate law President Biden signed last year, are understandably fueling uncertainty about autoworkers’ place in an electric future. The law’s incentives have spurred a flood of new clean-energy projects, including plans for private investment of more than $80 billion in electric vehicle plants and battery factories, most of them in the emerging “battery belt,” an area stretching from Michigan to Georgia.
It’s a historic opportunity to bring back U.S. manufacturing jobs while tackling the existential threat of climate change. But as the auto industry restructures, it must do so in a way that’s fair to workers and produces vehicles that are affordable to consumers.
So far, red states with lower wages and less union representation have the most new clean-energy projects. That makes it all the more important that automakers offer livable wages and labor protections and do right by the workers who are building the future. That won’t be accomplished by emulating Tesla. It may produce some of the nation’s top-selling electric vehicles, but its nonunionized factories pay lower wages and have a history of complaints about difficult and unsafe working conditions.
Some workers may fear that vehicle electrification will leave them behind. But there is no evidence that it will cause a broad swath of blue-collar jobs to disappear or become “lower paid, less skilled or less desirable,” said Sanya Carley, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania who has studied autoworkers in the Midwest and Appalachian coal mining communities. “It’s a false dichotomy to say that we need to pursue decarbonization or equity. We can do both at the same time.”
Contrast that with Trump’s opportunistic defeatism, which only plays into the hands of oil and gas companies that stand to profit from any delay in phasing out their polluting products.
Fortunately, Biden understands that the energy transition does not have to come at the expense of good-paying, middle-class jobs. Many of the Inflation Reduction Act’s tax incentives for clean energy projects are tied to higher labor standards. Biden has joined autoworkers on the picket line and wants more union-led training and apprenticeship programs to make sure that workers displaced by the shift are first in line for electric vehicle and battery manufacturing jobs.
“We’re going to leave nobody behind,” Biden said last month in Detroit.
Biden and other leaders have a lot of work ahead to deliver on that promise, but it’s right to demand that good-paying jobs are a nonnegotiable part of our zero-emission future.
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Oct. 15
The Wall Street Journal on an antitrust reckoning for realtors:
As powerful lobbies go, few have more clout than the Realtors. But the cartel faces a major legal challenge on Monday when a federal jury trial begins in a class action against its rules that raise the cost of buying and selling homes (Burnett v. National Association of Realtors).
The National Association of Realtors requires its 1.5 million or so members to comply with numerous rules that inflate their pay. Missouri home sellers are arguing in the lawsuit that a rule requiring them to make a blanket offer of compensation to any potential buyer’s broker violates the Sherman Antitrust Act.
The Realtors require this offer if a seller wants the home listed on an affiliated multiple-listing service, which is a database of homes for sale that serves the same purpose as a stock exchange. While innovation and competition have slashed stockbroker commissions, the commission on home sales has stayed basically flat for decades at 6%, split evenly between the buyer and seller agents.
In other developed countries, buyer brokers are far less common and get paid by their clients, on average about 1.5%. This makes sense since the buyer broker is supposed to negotiate for his client against the seller. Having the seller pay the buyer broker creates a conflict of interest. It also prevents a buyer from paying his broker based on performance.
That means there’s little incentive for buyer brokers to negotiate better deals for clients, especially since they earn bigger commissions on higher-priced homes. The Realtors claim in defense that their code of ethics requires agents to “protect and promote the interests of the client.” But buyers might not know they are getting a raw deal.
It’s clear from the evidence presented by the plaintiffs that the Realtors’ primary interest is ensuring buyer brokers make a 3% commission no matter what. Brokerage firms train agents to set overall commission rates at 6%, split evenly between the buyer and seller agents. “Once you start cutting commissions, you can never stop,” one firm’s training document said. “Charge everyone the same and let them know it.” Ninety percent of transactions offer buyer agent commissions of exactly 3%.
The Realtors deny that buyer brokers “steer” their clients away from homes that offer lower commissions, but a study published last week provides contrary evidence. Lower commission listings receive fewer page views on real-estate listing Redfin ’s website and take significantly longer to sell because brokers are less likely to forward them to clients.
The Realtors also claim their rules benefit consumers by giving them “access to the largest database of properties available” and reducing out-of-pocket costs. But commissions get baked into home prices. If not for the Realtors’ rule, many buyers wouldn’t use brokers or would negotiate lower commissions. Home prices would likely fall.
Sellers could decide they want to pay the buyer broker. But the Realtors’ requirement that they do so looks like a quintessential trade practice that the Sherman Act prohibits. The rule’s harmful effects are compounded by other anti-competitive Realtor rules, such as one that requires members who list properties in an alternative database to list them as well on a multiple-listing service (MLS).
This rule is being challenged under the Sherman Act in two other lawsuits. In one case, the real-estate start-up PLS.com sought to provide brokers an alternative platform to “pocket list” homes. Pocket-listing is when seller agents distribute information about homes to a small network of buyers outside an MLS. It’s similar to trading stocks over the counter.
Some sellers prefer not to list their homes on an MLS because they don’t wish to share all of the information that the Realtors’ databases require. Sellers that pocket-list also don’t have to pay a commission to the buyer broker. As demand for pocket listings soared last decade, PLS.com gained 20,000 members and started to threaten the MLSs.
The Realtors’ response? Require agents who post listings on PLS.com to also publish those listing on an MLS. Agents who don’t comply face penalties, including fines and suspension from the MLS. After the Realtors adopted this policy, agents dropped their listings from PLS in part because home sellers didn’t want their information shared on the MLS.
A Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals panel last year overruled a lower court’s dismissal of PLS.com’s lawsuit against the Realtors. Its policy “shares all the hallmarks of a group boycott” and impaired PLS.com’s ability to compete “on almost any dimension” by requiring seller brokers to supply MLSs “even if PLS’s product is better on the merits,” wrote Judge Milan Smith.
We’re no fans of most antitrust suits, but the evidence is strong that Realtors’ practices are classic antitrust violations that harm consumers. The Realtors may own the U.S. Congress, but perhaps independent courts won’t be so intimidated.
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Oct. 17
The Guardian on the U.S. pivoting toward the Middle East:
In the wake of the carnage wrought by Hamas in southern Israel, killing at least 1,300 people; with bombs still raining upon Gaza, having killed at least 3,000; and with 199 children and adults still held hostage, the horror is increased by the prospect of this violence begetting more.
The US hopes two aircraft carrier groups in the eastern Mediterranean, non-stop shuttle diplomacy by the secretary of state and a presidential visit to Israel will see off the twin spectres of even greater humanitarian disaster in Gaza and regional catastrophe drawing in Hezbollah in Lebanon and perhaps others. Officially, Joe Biden’s visit to Israel on Wednesday will demonstrate that the US stands with Israel. It may offer Benjamin Netanyahu, disgraced in the eyes of his nation, a political lifeline. But if it is a warning to Hezbollah and Iran, it is also being used to rein in Mr Netanyahu. The US reportedly agreed to the trip only after Israel agreed to move on humanitarian aid and safe areas for civilians to avoid the bombing.
But the statement that the two countries will “develop a plan” for delivery is noticeably modest. Even if implemented, it might not hold. Though Israel told the US it would restore the water supply to southern Gaza on Monday, those on the ground report only tiny quantities getting through. And while aid is essential, delivering food and medicines is hard to do and of limited use while air strikes continue.
More critical may be the fact that the US, with its own disasters in Afghanistan and Iraq in mind, is pressing Israel to think hard about its plan for Gaza. President Biden warned publicly on Sunday that occupying Gaza would be a mistake. At that point, a ground incursion was regarded as imminent. But his visit has pressed pause, and on Tuesday, the IDF spokesperson Richard Hecht remarked: “Everyone’s talking about the ground offensive. It might be something different.”
What happens in Gaza is likely to determine what happens in the north. On Monday, Israel gave an unprecedented order for residents close to the Lebanon border to evacuate south. The area has already seen rocket and missile attacks and border skirmishes. Hezbollah and Israel have trodden carefully since the 2006 war, for which Lebanese civilians mostly paid, though the militant group has built up its fire power and tested the boundaries. But Hezbollah has indicated that it has two red lines: the forcible displacement of large numbers of Palestinians outside Gaza – though Egypt has made it clear it does not want them – and a ground invasion aiming to destroy Hamas: Israel’s stated intention. Behind Hezbollah stands Iran; its foreign minister has warned of “multiple fronts” opening against Israel if it continues to kill civilians in Gaza.
Iran does not want to lose Hezbollah, its main proxy force. But nor does it want to see Hamas wiped out. If that looks likely, experts suggest that it would probably also ask Iraqi militias to deploy to Syria or Lebanon. Washington has sent clear warnings to Tehran to stay out of it, while also indicating that it is not looking for a fight. The danger is that while neither the US nor Iran want to be drawn in further, the dynamics on the ground have their own momentum.
The unendurable violence witnessed this month in part has its roots in the belief of the US and other governments that the conflict at the heart of the Middle East was unsolvable but manageable, and could be sidelined. Many warned at the time that was wrong. It appears all the more impossible to manage now – and yet that is precisely why the US and others must attempt to do so.
The Associated Press
