Sunday Times 2
Clinton-Trump battle: Lanka-linked US expert examines key issues
View(s):Joel Rubin says Hillary victory will split the Republican Party down the middle; rare window of opportunity to improve Sri Lanka-US ties
Joel Rubin: Washington wants to build a special partnership with Sri Lanka
By Ameen Izzadeen
Joel Rubin, 46, is a peace activist, women’s rights activist, health care activist, politician and now foreign policy consultant. Mr. Rubin, who also served as a deputy assistant secretary for legislative affairs in the State Department and now a Democratic Party activist, has a Sri Lankan connection. He is married to a Sri Lankan born American. His women’s right activism also has a Sri Lankan connection. That was due to a horrible experience his Sri Lankan mother-in-law went through in the United States. His health care activism is connected to his own health crisis, which began when he woke up one morning with ringing in his right ear. Tests showed the growth of a tumor on the nerves controlling balance and hearing on his right side. It was benign and successfully removed. Following surgery, he had a problem. He saw the world skewed. After months of rehabilitation, he is back to normal, though he is hard of hearing on the troubled ear.
Rubin, a political analyst whose views are often sought by US news channels, was in Sri Lanka last week, holidaying with his family. In an interview with the Sunday Times, he analysed the upcoming elections and Hillary Clinton policies.
nYou give priority to women’s issues and connect your activism with your mother-in-law, a Sri Lankan. Could you please share her story with our readers?
I am inspired everyday by the women in my life. I am married to an American born Sri Lankan, Nilmini. She is my blue sapphire and three daughers – Renuka, Araliya and Bahavana. Mithra, my mother-in-law, came to the United States in the 1960s, prior to Nilmini being born. When I ran for Congress there were issues that we wanted to talk about. Women empowerment was crucial to ensure that we had a just society. I was a peace volunteer. Beginning my professional career after college, I worked with women’s groups in the field in Costa Rica. My mother was a college professor. I assumed that the life at my home was the way it was. But by going overseas, it became clear to me that it wasn’t. In the United States women don’t get equal pay for equal work. It gets worse as one goes down the line – the white women with education, white women without education, black women with education and black women without education, minority women, immigrant women, it gets lower and lower. It is extremely unfair.
In my family, my mother-in-law suffered an overt form of discrimination, much worse than the economic inequality we were talking about. It was blatant racism and physical violence. Because she was a coloured woman, she was forcibly sterilised against her will after giving birth to my wife in Washington State. I will describe it as manipulated Eugenics. (Eugenics is a movement that existed in the 1920s and 30s and it sought to improve the genetic quality of the human population). After she gave birth, her husband went home. She was in hospital. It was normal. Then the doctor came in and told her, “No more brown babies for you.” He put her under anesthesia and sterlised her against her will – a traumatic example of discrimination and violence. I am so happy that she came forward and shared her story as part of my campaigning for Congress. For me it is an eye-opening.
This year, we have a woman running for president and that is bringing out a lot of questions and issues. It was just like when Barack Obama was running for president. A lot of people did not like an African American being the president. But now Hillary Clinton. Sri Lanka beat us to the punch in 1960, producing the first ever female head of government. Thanks Sri Lanka for paving the path.
Opinion polls show Hillary Clinton has a clear lead over Donald Trump. But we have not heard the debates yet. Will they tilt the scales?
The polls clearly show that Hillary has an eight to ten percent lead. The Brexit poll also showed the stay camp leading prior to the people. So People like me, as Democrats, get nervous about that. Even a ten point lead is not a guarantee. American politics is entering a period of strategic shift. Most people are not happy with what they see. Democrats were supportive of Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton is the establishment candidate. She is the well-known, well-funded and well-qualified candidate in the history of our party. Going up against Bernie Sanders, who was practically unknown and had never been a Democrat, she beat him but she had to adopt his progressive policies at the Democratic convention to call a truce with the progressive base. So now in many ways Bernie Sanders has shaped the policy platform of the Democratic Party. Hillary Clinton has smartly adopted it and brought it together to take the party to victory.
Trump, on the other hand, defeated the most competitive field of establishment candidates the Republicans have ever had and he did so with little money. Trump represents a Republican base which is anti-establishment. I think the debates would be the downfall of Trump. In the Republican Party debates, Trump was able to knock out the other candidates. He did, however, do that with language that is appealing to his base, but repulsive to Democrats and those in the middle which is where the votes are. So if Trump maintains that approach, he is in trouble. But Hillary has demonstrated her capacity to be different from those Republican candidates who were tongue-tied in the debates with Trump. In 2000 when she ran for the Senate, she ran against Republican Rick Lazio, and she infuriated him in the debate to the point where he got up from the podium, moved over and walked towards her in a threatening way. And then he pulled back. He lost the election. And then last year, she went to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to answer questions on her role in the Benghazi attack. Many thought it would be Hillary’s downfall but she testified for 11-and-a-half hours and defeated her distractors. She was calm and effective.
But the question now is: will Trump agree to the debates, because he is trying to argue that the debate schedule is rigged and unfair. Trump is one of those characters who, when he does not like where the result is going, tries to change the rules of the game.
Let’s assume that Hillary Clinton will make it to the presidency. But she is perceived as a hawk, the one who prodded President Barack Obama to go after Muammar Gaddafi and Bashar al Assad. Thus there is reasonable fear that she would bring more chaos to world, especially to West Asia?
I think it is a bit unfair characterisation of her. As Secretary of State for four years she successfully negotiated a deal with Russia to reduce nuclear weapons. Another of her feats was the round of diplomacy with Iran. Another was to negotiate a ceasefire with Israel and the Palestinians. Lots of her work was to promote women and girls in diplomacy and development. And there were also national security issues, battles and debates on Syria. It is recorded that she wanted to be more aggressive in the beginning but we weren’t. But when we look back at the results after 400,000 deaths in Syria and no clear end in sight, one can’t argue the path we have taken is successful. It is hard to say that what she was arguing for would have worked. We tried nothing but strong active diplomacy.
With regard to Libya, may be Hillary went with mainstream consensus, with the Arab League also coming up with a resolution to use force to stop Gaddafi. President Obama ultimately decided to authorise strikes on Libya but the biggest failure in Libya was the post-conflict situation. We were not as robust there as we could have been. Our ambassador Chris Stevens, a personal friend of mine, was killed. It was a nightmarish situation in Libya. It is not to say that keeping Gaddafi or not dealing with Gaddafi at that time would have led to a better outcome. So I don’t believe that Hillary coming in is going to be a military-first or shoot-first kind of presidency. She has surrounded herself with people who are major figures in diplomacy, some of the best minds we have on the diplomacy front, but also willing to use force as part of that package. On national security and foreign policy, Hillary as president can start work without a briefing needed to explain what agencies do what functions and it is incredibly advantageous in her case.
I fear the alternative and the alternative is a person who seems to have little or no value for America’s relationship around the world or treaty obligations. He does not seem to care about nuclear proliferation. He seems to be cavalier about nuclear weapons and about asking Russia to spy on the Democratic Party. He is an erratic character.
But despite all this advantage you talk about she still compromised national security by having a private email server?
Well she said she made mistakes and I take that word. FBI director James Comey himself said it was not something that warrants further action though he called it reckless. He did not claim that national security was compromised. It is a concern but it is a different question when you have one candidate saying we should invite a foreign government to spy on us, and the other saying she made mistakes.
You are a peace activist. President Obama was committed to the Middle East peace but he leaves office without achieving it. Can Hillary play the honest broker role and achieve the impossible which Mr. Obama naively, mistakenly or otherwise thought possible, given her pro-Israeli stance?
I helped start an organsiation called J-street which is an alternative pro-Israel peace lobby. Started by the pro-peace Jewish community – I am Jewish. I think it is in America’s interest to make peace between Israel and the Palestinians. As a supporter of Israel, I believe Israel needs to maintain its democratic and Jewish character and that’s the way we achieve peace with Palestinians. I care deeply about peace with the Palestinians. They need to have a just peace where they can build their own state and become part of the community of nations.
Hillary has been there for years. She was there in the 1990s and got some criticism for engaging with the Palestinians. Bill Clinton went to Gaza in the late 1990s. He sponsored the Oslo peace process. I think her experience as Secretary of State has taught her how hard it is to achieve peace. It has also taught her that in the American political context, at every level we are accountable to the American electorate. One has to make sure that we are bringing enough support along with it. Take for instance, the Iran nuclear deal. The people supported diplomacy with Iran. We were able to build a constituency that supported diplomacy though it was not popular with Israel and its hardline supporters in Washington. We have to create the space with intellectual and political support for policy makers to go for it.
Something on this line has to happen on the Israeli-Palestinian issue. But we won’t see in her someone who would force Israel into a deal, because we know that such an approach does not work. But I am dismayed and worried about the situation in Israel and Palestine. I was there and it was shocking to see the separation wall – a horrible thing to watch. I think it is hard to dissect what went wrong with President Obama’s efforts. He was pushing the Arab League, the Saudis and the Palestinians. I think he was right to push. He had the political space to do it. The problem was that others did not want to go along with him. Netanyahu did not make a real commitment to negotiate. The Palestinians had their own problems of government; the Saudis were not willing to make the extra leap for peace. Now we see a different world – the Syrian conflict, the post-Arab Spring and the post-Iran nuclear deal. The Israelis have started to reach out to neighbours – Egypt, the Gulf states, the Saudis who are looking at Iran warily. Hillary understands this reality. She is a traditionalist in the realist world.
The Republican Party was unable to produce a nationally accepted candidate. Is the GOP dead meat now?
It may be so well after the elections. This is the kind of election where Trump has done something we have never seen in modern American politics. One man has become a wrecking ball of the party. Trump is really blasting through all the traditional positions of the Republican Party and he is demoralising their leadership to the extent where they are facing the last gasp of influence. If he is defeated, it will be difficult for the Republicans to pick up the pieces. In 2012 after their defeat, the Republicans had an autopsy to figure out what went wrong. The autopsy advocated a rapport with the minorities and the Hispanics and called for a better foreign policy. Trump is doing the opposite of it. But he is popular among the Republican base. In the last decade or so, the Republican base has become more and more hawkish, more and more xenophobic, more and more conservative, more and more anti-government, and anti-establishment. The Tea Party movement was part of the process.
What Hillary is trying to do right now is to scoop up a significant amount of reasonable Republicans who are now homeless, who do not feel they have a party. Millions of Americans do not share Trump’s vision of the world and xenophobia and are comfortable with the Democrats. But in Clinton victory you can see a split in the Republican Party or a big mess.
Most social justice activists are happy to note the return of socialism to the mainstream US politics – as manifested in the campaign of Bernie Sanders. But still politics in the US is a game scripted by the One Percent or the Wall Street. How do you see this phenomenon?
I as a congressional candidate had to raise money. I raised nearly 400,000 dollars. I was on the phone six hours a day, asking people for money. That is not the way to run for public office and that is not the way to attract good people to run for office. We see a situation where elections have become expensive – could be a billion dollars at presidential level. The candidates have to go where the money is. And that is dangerous from the governance perspective because these people do have an outside influence on policy.
I do believe that bringing Bernie into the Democratic fold in the Hillary campaign is significant. People power – as signified by his supporters — has had an impact on the Democratic Party in the right way and it would show itself if they come out on election day. That’s how the progressives should demonstrate their power. If they stay at home or vote against her and if she loses, then they have lost everything. But if they come in their numbers and show her they can help her win the election, then they are in the room together with their demands that include $15 an hour minimum wage, strengthening social security and health care.
I do not think progressive politics is going away anytime. When I contested for Congress from a wealthy part of the country, I saw people support progressive positions. Though I did not win the election, the rival candidate who was arguing for those progressive positions won.
The United States was a co-sponsor of several human rights-related resolutions against Sri Lanka at the United Nations Human Rights Council. The Obama administration, following a change of Government in Sri Lanka last year, softened its stance and became more cooperative, probably because of geopolitical exigencies in view of China’s close relations with Sri Lanka. Do you think there will be a continuity of this policy under the next president?
I think there is a window of opportunity between the United States and Sri Lanka. We have a new American president coming in, and whenever that happens there’s a fresh look. In Sri Lanka, we see a relatively new government which is also doing things differently. The perception among the people who track this in Washington is that there’s an opening in Sri Lanka that is different from the recent past. The 2015 elections have brought in a government that has made public commitments to political reforms seen as a gateway to better relationship with the United States. The Obama administration wanted to explore openly and aggressively moves towards this relationship. That is why Secretary John Kerry came here, that is why Washington has appointed Atul Keshap, a personal friend of mine, as the ambassador. When he speaks, people in Washington listen. People are interested in the strategic relationship. From the American government’s perspective, programmes to strengthen democracy, civil society and human rights are also on the table. That is a good sign.
But this window of time is one where the political reforms process has catalysed new thinking in Washington about how to strengthen, build and grow this partnership successfully.
There is also the geostrategic question. There is China out there, while the US-India partnership is moving forward. Then the strategic location of Sri Lanka, the energy market in the shipping transit, counter terrorism, piracy and a whole bunch of factors we should be thinking about. But at the end of the day, it is the Sri Lankan people themselves who motivated this positive shift in bilateral relations. The new political opening here has allowed for an inflection point of thinking in Washington. So it is really a unique window.