Our freedoms come at a cost, one that Americans still are willing to pay

Elections are really complex accounting practices. It’s not just a final vote count that is fraught and difficult. Citizens going to the polls must consciously make multiple personal calculations: Will taxes rise? How much should individuals pay for healthcare? Must we spend heavily on defense?

In America’s democracy, we also reckon — often unconsciously — what we are willing to pay for our fundamental liberties. What is the price of freedom? It seems like a straightforward question. The answer, however, is anything but simple.

The desire for freedom has deep historical roots. Philosophers have forever talked about free will and the nature of liberty. In the modern era, American colonists fought a revolution to be free from oppressive “taxation without representation” levied by the British crown. READ MORE

“A Christmas Carol” — Courtesy of the Chinese Navy

What happens when China decides to dominate the world’s semiconductor chip production by taking over democratic Taiwan? A look at the not-so-distant Christmas-future…

Christmas Eve, 2020—President Trump is still loudly contesting the November election results in courtrooms and the media. The Electoral College chose Biden-Harris after several red-state electors defected, justified by an overwhelming national popular vote for the Democratic ticket.

The newly elected Democratic Senate is days from taking over, and Mitch McConnell is rushing through last-minute judicial appointments. McConnell is also busy finalizing legislation giving the Executive sweeping policing powers in the face of daily national demonstrations protesting the election outcome. Growing street confrontations are cited as the reason the outgoing president deployed the National Guard to major cities nationwide. READ MORE

Where in the world would Trump go if he lost and left the country? He’s got options

Losing an election can be tough. President Trump has publicly mused that being defeated could be so devastating it could cause him to leave the country.

Anyone who was conscious in 2016, however, will know that election predictions and polling numbers are not the same as Electoral College outcomes. Anything can happen. In short, Trump will not be calling a travel agent anytime soon.

If, however, Joe Biden does become the 46th president of the United States and Trump starts seriously thinking about self-imposed exile, where might he go?

The possibilities are endless. But desirable destinations are few and far between. As he looks at the map and tries to find a place to land, he might want to see where other fallen leaders have trod.

Some of his contemporary foreign colleagues struggle to hold onto power, many have planned an emergency exit strategy and keep an eye on the door — just in case they suddenly need to skedaddle. READ MORE

Kamala Harris’ cultural background will make her a player on the global stage

California is waiting to be welcomed back into the national conversation after four years of disrespect and neglect from the White House. In a Joe Biden-Kamala Harris administration, not only will California’s favorite daughter bridge the widened — and widening — federal-state divide, she will team with a President Biden to rebuild America’s powerful role in the world.

In fact, Harris could be key to building new strategic global relationships and alliances. (Disclosure: My wife and I are Harris’ longtime friends.) While Biden shores up NATO, reaffirms multilateral agreements and Zoom calls his close foreign-leader friends, Harris will also bring unique foreign-policy advantage to the table. READ MORE

The ‘Quad’ nations, including the U.S., play a high-stakes game with China

Cricket or baseball? Can these two bat-and-ball sports, and the nations that support them, find a common language and work toward common goals — not just in sport, but in loose alliance? Four countries that are big into cricket and baseball are also working together trying to keep the world safe for democracy.

India and Australia are cricket nations. Japan and the United States are all about baseball. Together, the four nations are known as the “Quad” — “Quadrilateral Strategic Dialogue” — and they are invested in securing the Indo-Pacific region. That’s the vast swath of land and sea from the Pacific Ocean to the Indian Ocean.

At the same time that the 60-game Major League Baseball season is in playoffs, high-level Quad political representatives met face-to-masked-face in Tokyo. Their goal? Figure out how to play ball together and keep China from winning the game of global competition. READ MORE

Candidates can’t forget that international tensions come to roost in the U.S., too

The presidential debate Tuesday devolved into a political food fight, where assaulting speech became a verbal pie in the public’s face. Lost in the noise was any calm substance or serious questions about foreign policy.

The 21st century debate now produces more heat than light. These exercises allow candidates to target a sliver of Americans in a handful of states who somehow remain undecided. More important, they aim to excite and motivate the majority of already decided voters to go mark their ballots.

Debates are not ideological jousts about America’s role in the world. They are mostly focused on domestic challenges. The new twist in 2020? An incumbent president unbecomingly used the platform to launch wild attacks on his opponent instead of telling, for example, Russia’s Vladimir Putin to stuff it. READ MORE

Trump scapegoats China, but banks and businesses operating there are the real thieves

China was America’s whipping boy again this week. President Donald Trump used his United Nations General Assembly speech to accuse and to threaten Beijing for its role in covering up the early stages of the pandemic. He said that the U.N. “must hold China accountable for their actions.”

In other words, China must pay. Tough words with the promise of an even tougher response.

But rhetoric is where the toughness ends because China continues to profit from Washington’s indifference, political ineptitude and irresponsible policies. In reality, American farmers, consumers and middle-class citizens are paying the heftiest price for China’s misbehavior, rights abuses, cyber-espionage and intellectual-property theft. READ MORE

In Iran and Egypt, the pursuit of happiness is almost criminal

John Lewis was recently laid to rest and as his coffin was being walked out of Atlanta’s Ebenezer Baptist Church, everyone in the pews was asked to dance to Lewis’s favorite Pharrell Williams song, “Happy.” Solemnity mixed with sheer joy that day to span the spectrum of Lewis’s life — from struggle to song.

Congressman Lewis loved this song and it showed. A video of him dancing to the tune went globally viral a few years ago. Around the same time that Lewis’s video was circulating, Iranian citizens were being arrested and jailed for doing the same thing: Dancing freely and joyously to that positively infectious hit song.

Iran, and recently Egypt, has cracked down on the expression of creative personal freedom. These thinly legitimated dictatorships have made it a point to be big-time party poopers.

Why is America shielding foreign terrorists from the death penalty?

Bill Barr is killing Americans but sparing terrorists.

In July, the U.S. attorney general directed his Department of Justice to resume the death penalty. Since his directive this summer, he’s used lethal injection to kill five federal Death Row inmates.

Barr executed five murderers, rapists and torturers of children and the elderly. Men who inflicted unimaginable pain and suffering on their victims and surviving families. Barr unapologetically resumed capital punishment after a two-decade hiatus, “bringing justice to the most horrific crimes.” Barr’s tough on crime.

Unless, of course, he’s not… READ MORE

Bad-boy foreign leaders shouldn’t underestimate Trump’s appetite for election-year drama

Turkey, Russia and China are just three countries taking advantage of the moment to act aggressively around the world and test American resolve. All three are betting that the United States is too mired in crisis to react powerfully to strategic challenges overseas. All three might be making a miscalculation.

Turkey is threatening its neighbors and claiming new maritime borders; Russia is poisoning its opposition and posturing around Belarus; and China continues to build up its defense forces while cracking down on dissent at home and abroad. It’s all a potently toxic brew of hyper-national ambitions heartily guzzled by Presidents Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.

They are drunk with the idea that right now is their time to act aggressively because America can’t or won’t seriously engage to stop them. If they’re right and can achieve their goals because America continues to stand on the sidelines, they win their bet without paying a hefty price. READ MORE

This time, we need international observers to monitor America’s troubled elections

Authoritarian nations, semi-legitimated dictatorships and dying democracies are regularly subjected to international observers whom they grudgingly allow into their countries to monitor elections. The United States sends teams of former government officials and private-sector volunteers around the world to certify —and sometimes condemn — election practices and results. They bear witness to vote tampering, citizen intimidation, ballot stuffing, polling place irregularities and outright stolen elections. They also often get to watch inspiring people power and real democracy at work.

It’s now America’s turn.

This year, the global democratic community needs to gear up and step in to oversee, monitor and judge the fairness of November’s U.S. presidential election. Germany, Sweden, Japan, India, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, Chile, Ethiopia, Tunisia, Israel, and other nations all need to up their game. They should immediately train and send new volunteers to conduct sweeping election monitoring across America, mostly in tough battleground states. READ MORE

Putin is counting on your vote in November. Are you in with ‘Vova?’

Vladimir Putin is on the ballot this November.

You won’t see his name or watch his ads. But make no mistake, Putin has a lot riding on this election and he’s counting on your vote.

What will a vote for Putin mean?

First, Putin is looking to reshape the world order in a way that benefits Moscow, builds his personal power and establishes him as the world’s toughest leader capable of outrageous cunning, manipulation and disruption.

A successful outcome — meaning President Trump is re-elected — means his Russia will be able to wantonly throw its weight around globally. He will assertively create unseen but ever-present fear and dependence in neighboring nations including Belarus, Ukraine, the Baltic states and Georgia. Russia’s renewed and enhanced influence also will be felt in countries farther away and immediately affected by America’s acquiescence to Putin’s newfound power. Countries such as Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba. READ MORE

There’s nothing like using cheap Russian oil and an iron fist to stay in office

All-star authoritarians are a ruble a dozen in Russia these days. Vladimir Putin leads the pack, of course, but there are plenty of local and regional tough guys running their neighborhoods and governments like mob bosses. Many of them are direct offshoots of Putin’s United Russia party, some are even worse. Ultra-nationalists in the far east of the country are protesting their inability to run their own government and local syndicates, complaining that Moscow insists on central control over the means of corruption.

Russia is not the only former Soviet state that is stuck with megalomaniacal overlords. Next door and related, Belarus — the country also known as White Russia — is a paragon of parasitic politics. Run by the same guy since 1994, Belarus is heading toward “elections” next month where the main opposition candidates have been disqualified or arrested.

A vlogger, a banker and a diplomat were all running against incumbent President Alexander Lukashenko and have dubiously found their way into the political penalty box, or jail. In their stead, their spouses have stepped in to strut their candidacies and keep the erstwhile candidates’ messages alive. Surprisingly, there is an early anti-establishment groundswell coalescing around the candidacy of Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, the wife of popular Belarus online journalist vlogger Sergei Tikhanovsky. She been dismissed by Lukashenko, who said the demanding presidential pressures of governing would cause Svetlana to “collapse, poor thing.” READ MORE

A tough leader enacted tough policies, and wiped out COVID-19 in New Zealand

Florida is a red-hot COVID zone, Texas is on a one-way ride up the infection escalator and California is reversing course after early lockdown success. Together, these three states make up 20 percent of all new global coronavirus cases. The United States is a pandemic-policy mess, and the whole world is watching the meltdown.

Not every nation, however, is experiencing Washington’s infighting, chaotic approach and inability to implement a nationally coordinated pandemic response. New Zealand is an odd exception in a coronavirus world in turmoil.

How did such a small place take on such a big role on the world stage to lead the fight against infection’s spread throughout its country? READ MORE

China, Russia aren’t putting plans to exploit Antarctica’s resources on ice

New York continues to slowly open up after being the nation’s hottest of COVID-19 hotspots while the incidence in Brazil spikes, and cases explode in Latin America and South Asia.

There is one place, however, that has been far from infections and safe from the need for serology testing: Antarctica. It’s not exactly a holiday destination, but this continent is sparsely inhabited, plays an important global research role and, so far, is safe from nearly every disease known to man. If the hot zone is where disease can break out, the frozen zone of the South Pole is where human disease rarely ventures.

Antarctica, however, also happens to be the least hospitable place on Earth. That doesn’t mean that adventurers, researchers and nations stay away. In fact, it is an attractive continent for explorers who care to trek on pristine ice. It’s also a perfect laboratory for investigating geologic history, climate change and whales, and for filming cute movies about penguins. READ MORE