Önder Özar Diplomasi Sevgisi: CNN Fareed's Global Briefing : Trump and the Law, Then there were 31, Iran too ımpoverished to change

Tuesday, April 4, 2023

CNN Fareed's Global Briefing : Trump and the Law, Then there were 31, Iran too ımpoverished to change

Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN's Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by Global Briefing editor Chris Good

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April 4, 2023

Trump and the Law

As was anxiously anticipated, former US President Donald Trump was arraigned today in a Manhattan court, pleading not guilty to 34 felony charges of falsifying business records. To Fareed, the case against Trump appears to be a stretch. Trump’s indictment by a Manhattan grand jury relates to a hush-money payment made (by Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen) to porn star Stormy Daniels before Election Day in 2016. At CNN Opinion, Fareed wrote on Sunday that it feels flimsy to prosecute Trump for the alleged falsification of business records, normally a misdemeanor, in relation to an alleged felony. (That alleged felony concerns campaign-finance laws: Money spent leading up to an election, for the purpose of influencing its outcome, must be reported. Per Cohen’s past guilty plea, the hush money fit that bill.) Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, Fareed noted, is an elected official who ran on a record of having helped sue Trump before. “Given the circumstances,” Fareed wrote, “this case has the feel of zealous prosecutors minutely examining all possibilities to find some violation of the law. This upends the notion in Anglo-Saxon law that you first have a crime and then search for the criminal, rather than first looking at the person and searching to see if he or she has committed a crime.”

… and the Fallout

As for the political fallout, various insights have been offered. At The Atlantic, veteran political journalist Mark Leibovich writes that now would be a great time for the Republican Party to break its Trump fever and distance itself from the former president—but instead, high-profile GOP politicians have either defended Trump or demurred, indicating his sway remains intact. At The New Yorker, Clare Malone notes the palpable flashback quality of current events: the return of a nonstop, Trump-dominated news cycle. And as for the city where all this is happening, The New York Times’ Mara Gay writes in a column: “A kind of collective angst over the Trump prosecution has settled over New York City, where many deeply disdain him but seem unconvinced he will ever truly be held to account.” It should be noted strongly that Trump is presumed innocent; whether he did anything requiring accountability will be adjudicated in court, as the city—and the country—looks on with curiosity and anxiety.

Then There Were 31

NATO gained its 31st member today, with the accession of Finland to the alliance after Turkey granted its approval. (Neighboring Sweden, which had applied to join NATO at the same time as Finland, remains locked in negotiations with Ankara over Sweden’s approach to Kurdish militants. Hungary is also holding out, citing diplomatic and political friction with Stockholm.) What does Finland’s addition mean for NATO? At The Wall Street Journal, John R. Deni opines that “it’s difficult to overstate the significance … We’ve likely seen no comparable boost to the strength of Western security since West Germany joined the alliance in 1955. … NATO hasn’t gained such a militarily capable member since Spain joined in 1982. Although Finland has a relatively small active-duty force of roughly 30,000 troops, it’s backed up by a large reserve of citizen-soldiers. Every young Finnish man is required to perform military service. When fully mobilized, Finland can field a force of 280,000 with some of the most advanced artillery and tanks in the world.” Finland’s geography will make it much easier for NATO to defend its longer-standing Russia-bordering member countries Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, should that be necessary, Deni writes. Russia can be expected to react to Finland’s accession, however, Nicholas Lokker and Heli Hautala write for War on the Rocks. Russia has already said it will take “counter-measures,” and Lokker and Hautala write that NATO members should be wary of potential Russian “gray zone” initiatives (which stop short of war), warning of potential attacks on energy pipelines or undersea cables, or even “acts of terrorism against Western officials.”

Iran: Too Impoverished to Change?

Iran’s massive protests have reportedly waned since late 2022, and at Foreign Affairs, Esfandyar Batmanghelidj argues Western economic sanctions on Iran have diminished the chances of a popular movement forcing the country to change. “The most recent protest movement faltered in part because of the state’s violent response,” Batmanghelidj writes. “But Iranian protesters have faced down the brutality of security forces before. A more important factor appears to be Iran’s ongoing economic crisis … Years of stifling sanctions … have made most Iranians so financially insecure that they can no longer act as agents of change. … In a seminal 1977 paper, the sociologists John McCarthy and Mayer Zald argued that ‘resources are necessary for engagement in social conflict’ and ‘must be aggregated for collective purpose’ if a movement is to succeed. In their view, participants in a movement must be able to provide money and time to the cause, and the more resources they can aggregate, the more likely it is that the social movement can develop the formal organizations needed to triumph. Subsequent empirical research supports this theory—including in the case of Iran.”

In Batmanghelidj’s view, the West should consider ways to make it easier for Iran’s diaspora to send remittances home and for Iran’s “young, urbanized population to freelance remotely for foreign clients.”