United States | Terrorism, refugees and 2016

Unfinest hour

The responses of many Republican state governors and presidential candidates to the Paris attacks have been lamentable

|WASHINGTON, DC

AT SOME point next year, when Republicans and Democrats have each chosen a presidential candidate, it is possible that voters will witness a serious debate about national security—and notably how to fight the fanatics of Islamic State (IS). For now alas, the Paris attacks have instead dragged an already ugly contest further down the path of partisan name-calling, empty bluster and fear-mongering.

A televised debate between Democratic presidential hopefuls on November 14th showed the strains of being an incumbent party in the White House when a hard-to-solve crisis has left the public frightened, angry and divided about the best solutions to pursue. The front-runner, Hillary Clinton, waffled as she defended President Barack Obama’s broad approach to foreign policy, which she implemented for four years as his secretary of state.

Yet the immediate aftermath of the Paris attacks proved more perilous for the Republicans, as party leaders and presidential candidates offered quick fixes with deeper roots in panic than in logic. Their first target was Mr Obama’s proposal to admit at least 10,000 Syrian refugees to America next year—an idea that Republicans called “lunacy” and a recipe for terrorist infiltration—though to put it in context, 1.5m refugees may reach Germany this year. In the wake of the Paris atrocities and news reports that one of the attackers passed through Greece as a would-be refugee, more than half the country’s governors, all but one of them Republican, either asked or demanded that the federal government stop sending Syrian refugees to their states. Though refugees admitted to America undergo between 18 months and two years of screening by intelligence agencies, Republicans in Congress threatened to block Syrian resettlement programmes. They note that the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigations, James Comey, said that a lack of information from Syria makes it impossible to offer an “absolute assurance” that extremists would be spotted.

Presidential candidates took that alarm to a higher level. The front-running Republicans, the businessman Donald Trump and the retired brain surgeon Ben Carson, want a halt to refugee admissions from Syria, with Mr Carson proposing close surveillance of those Syrian refugees already in America and Mr Trump vowing to expel them. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, a hardliner who dreams of inheriting Mr Trump’s voters should the billionaire’s campaign implode, has proposed a law banning Muslims from Syria from seeking asylum in America, and admitting only Christians.

Once, such positions would have sent establishment candidates fleeing. But Jeb Bush, a former governor of Florida whose own bid for the White House is not in good shape, suggested that America should offer a haven only to Syrians who “clearly aren’t going to be terrorists”, citing orphans and Christians as people to consider for admission. Other relative moderates in the presidential pack, such as Senator Marco Rubio of Florida and Governor Chris Christie of New Jersey, explained, more in sorrow than anger, that the Obama administration cannot, or cannot be trusted to, vet Syrian refugees. Under prodding from a radio interviewer, Mr Christie said he would not even make an exception for “orphans under five [years old]”.

Dissenting voices, such as the governor of Washington state, Jay Inslee, have noted that refugees undergo more intensive screening than other arrivals to America, especially those who come as tourists. Mr Inslee, a Democrat, urged fellow-politicians to heed the lessons of history and remember when fear prompted such tragic policies as the internment of Japanese-Americans in the second world war. He has a point: most of the Paris attackers had European Union passports and thus could enter America on a visa-waiver programme which relies entirely on screening and no-fly lists to keep terror suspects out. One Republican presidential candidate, Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, has an answer to that point. He proposes a moratorium on issuing visas for citizens of countries with what he calls major jihadist activity, and a 30-day waiting period to screen would-be travellers from visa-waiver countries, a step that he admits would be “dramatic”.

Speaking from Asia, Mr Obama sharply criticised Republican rhetoric suggesting that Christians are more deserving of American help than Muslims, saying that some language coming out of the presidential contest amounts to a “potent recruitment tool” for extremists. Rebukes of that sort from Mr Obama enrage hawkish Republicans, who accuse the president of appeasing foes by declining even to use the term “radical Islam”, and of alienating allies needed for the fight against IS.

What he said

Strikingly though, when the 2016 field of Republican presidential candidates offer strategies for the Middle East, they overlap with Mr Obama’s quite a bit.

One big area of difference involves no-fly zones over Syria, which are backed by several Republican candidates as well as Mrs Clinton, though Mr Obama and his team have always said that their costs outweigh their benefits. Not for the first time, Mr Trump goes further, offering a solution that is both grandiose and detail-free. He proposes taking “a big swatch of land” in Syria and building “a big beautiful safe zone.” Not to be outdone, Mr Carson wants “sanctuary zones” in Iraq and Syria to be run by “local moderate forces” without a “significant” on-the-ground presence from Western armies.

But like Mr Obama, most Republican candidates want local Muslim allies to do most of the fighting. Several would greatly increase arms flows to Kurdish fighters, with Mr Cruz calling the Kurds “fantastic fighters” who should provide “boots on the ground” against IS. From the back of the presidential pack, Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina would send 10,000 ground troops to fight IS. Mr Rubio calls it “premature” to say how many American combat troops might be needed.

Conscious that hauling up the drawbridge to Muslim refugees might not be the best way of rallying Muslim allies, some Republicans tout plans for winning hearts and minds. Governor John Kasich of Ohio says that America should refocus its public diplomacy and international broadcasting, creating a new federal agency with a clear mandate to promote such “core Judeo-Christian Western values” as human rights, democracy and freedom of religion. The instinct to persuade is a good one. But unless would-be presidents stop pandering to fear back home, they will struggle to win a global battle of ideas.

This article appeared in the United States section of the print edition under the headline "Unfinest hour"

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