Welcome to the first edition of The Burn Bag Newsletter. This week our writers explore aspects of the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act that you might have overlooked, analyze how sovereignty over Western Sahara affects President-elect Biden’s diplomatic agenda, and identify the public health priorities necessary to prepare for the next pandemic.
First, a note about this newsletter.
In this week’s episode of The Burn Bag Podcast, Eurasia Group President and Founder Ian Bremmer said:
“I do believe that the United States today is, by far, the most politically divided and dysfunctional of all of the advanced industrial nations.”
With trust in the American federal government near the lowest it’s been in modern history, after decades of declining activity in Congress, and as political polarization hurtle to extremes, Bremmer’s belief is, at the very least, uncontroversial.
Reestablishing trust in government, (re)discovering a formula for effective governance, and reuniting a divided citizenry are each monumental tasks. Keeping the country safe is another, one we can’t afford to let grind into dysfunction with the rest.
At The Burn Bag Newsletter, we offer two ingredients for upholding national security: clarity and talent. Our writers are young and earnest: students and young professionals, they are aspiring public servants and burgeoning policy wonks alike in their desire to do something. That something is this.
Our mission is twofold:
The Burn Bag Newsletter aims to deliver apolitical analysis of the policy decisions and environments that affect American national security.
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Defense
Beyond the Headlines: 2021 National Defense Authorization Act Reforms, April Song
In The Bag: In addition to providing defense appropriations for FY2021, the 2021 NDAA implements long-awaited bipartisan changes to safeguards against financial crimes, creates a ban on shell companies, and even takes a small step towards demilitarizing the police.
The 2021 NDAA significantly overhauls the current Anti-Money Laundering (AML) regime, originally created by the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) of 1970 and modified by the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001. The 2021 NDAA significantly overhauls the current Anti-Money Laundering (AML) regime, originally created by the Bank Secrecy Act (“BSA”) of 1970 and modified by the USA PATRIOT Act of 2001. This new “AML/BSA regime” requires certain disclosures of information on beneficial owners to Treasury’s FinCEN bureau; increases penalties for violations; and codifies a risk-based approach that will guide priorities, programs, and polices. It also sets in motion a bevy of regulatory reviews and required reports (including one on money laundering by China) and expands definitions of transactions to include cryptocurrency.
Also included is the Corporate Transparency Act, which effectively bans shell companies by requiring the true, human owners of companies to disclose their identities both at the point of formation and any point of change in ownership. This was the result of over a decade of effort by unusually bipartisan coalitions. The legislation provides one year for Treasury to enact it, after which the U.S. will no longer be one of the easiest places in the world to form an anonymous shell company.
Finally, the NDAA contains a narrow amendment to the Department of Defense’s 1033 program, which authorizes the transfer of military equipment to state and local law enforcement agencies. It was curtailed by former President Obama in 2015, the year broader reforms were originally proposed by Brian Schatz (D-HI) and Rand Paul (R-KY). The executive restriction was rescinded by President Trump in 2017, and its counterpart in Congress was narrowly rejected by the Senate 51-49 in July 2020. Passage of the NDAA with this amendment represents a marginal victory for the movement to demilitarize police forces in the United States.
Why It’s Burning: By obfuscating the transfer and ownership of money in the United States and among its partners, corporate secrecy can fuel corruption and other domestic and transnational crime. By transferring military equipment to state and local police departments, the DoD’s 1033 program begets the use of weapons of war on American streets. This year’s NDAA implements steps to curtail them both.
Diplomacy
Maintaining Moroccan Sovereignty Over Western Sahara Risks Strengthening Non-State Actors, David Carpenter
In The Bag: President Trump’s recent unilateral decision to recognize Moroccan sovereignty over the disputed Western Sahara region could strengthen support for non-state actors and complicate Biden’s diplomatic agenda in the region.
On December 10, 2020, President Trump declared that the U.S. would recognize Moroccan sovereignty over the disputed Western Sahara region otherwise under de facto control of the self-proclaimed Sahrawi Arab Democractic Republic. The decision is a move away from international norms on Western Sahara: most states either recognize the region’s self-governing status or take a neutral stance, while the U.N. lists it as a distinct non-self-governing territory.
Trump’s decision stems from his administration’s push towards improving Arab-Israeli relations: under the agreement, the U.S. recognizes Western Sahara as part of Morocco in return for Moroccan renewal of relations with Israel. While the Moroccan government may have been eager to accept any terms in exchange for U.S. recognition of its sovereignty over Western Sahara, the deal has antagonized local non-state actors and will continue to complicate diplomacy in the region.
The vast majority of Arabs in the region do not support recognizing Israel. So far, nearly all Arab countries that have normalized relations with Israel are autocracies relatively unresponsive to the opinions of their citizens. The only Arab country recognized as a strong democracy, Tunisia, has been vocal in its rejection of Israeli normalization, providing a window into how Arabs across the region may feel about the Moroccan government’s decision. Failing to account for how Arab citizens react to the growing acceptance of Israel in mainstream Arab political circles could prove a major miscalculation by their governments and may only bolster the approval of non-state actors that oppose such normalization.
This problem is compounded by the fact that, since the U.S.-Morocco deal, activists in Western Sahara and Palestine have released statements of cooperation, potentially symbolizing regional attitudes among similar non-state groups. Considering high disapproval within the Arab world for both this specific deal and Israeli normalization in general, solidarity between and support for non-state actors as a result of this agreement are likely to grow.
All of these factors will make President-elect Biden’s regional strategic goals more complicated, and may even require a reversal of course with Morocco on this issue. This is not without its own risks. Support for Israel is relatively high in the U.S., and any action which could be construed as anti-Israel could create domestic political issues for President Biden. At the same time, a continuation of Trump’s Middle East policy will only serve to further alienate Arabs in the region.
Why It’s Burning: Biden may have to walk a fine line between supporting Western Saharan self-determination and making a softer push for recognition of Israel in the Arab world. Continuing Trump’s hardline push for Israeli normalization will only further isolate the U.S., risking emboldening non-state actors.
Pandemic
Global Health Security and Public Health Preparedness Key to Handling the Next Pandemic, Divya Gumudavelly
In The Bag: Governments that prioritize both global health security and public health preparedness are the best protected against novel viruses. The successes and failures of global pandemic responses reflect the degree to which countries did so.
Global health security largely refers to building laboratory capacity for testing, vaccine production, and surveillance. Public health preparedness pertains to a health system’s ability to deploy security functions and provide protections to the community, like implementing lockdown policies, disseminating accurate information about the health threat, and ensuring citizens have equal and equitable access to healthcare services. A country’s synchrony between the two is a rare combination but paramount to success.
The inflection points in case numbers can be attributed to this dissonance. Take African countries, which have experience in public health preparedness from handling malaria and Ebola epidemics but weaknesses in global health security investments. From the outset, many of these countries demonstrated foresight in their pandemic responses, with statewide lockdowns and quarantine measures that resulted in a controlled disease spread in the early days of the pandemic. In November 2020, Africa accounted for 3.6% of the world’s cases, tantamount to its 3.6% of the world’s population. Additionally, coordinated regional efforts through the Africa Task Force for Novel Coronavirus enabled early detection and screening at airports and maximized the use of isolation spaces previously used during the 2014 Ebola outbreak.
However, the region suffers from weak testing and limited hospital infrastructure. The continent falls millions short of the 74 million required tests needed to adequately survey the spread of coronavirus. At the same time, more than 70 countries have restricted exports on pandemic gear, including PPE, viruses, and tests. This places African health systems in an extremely vulnerable position; without vaccines and future treatments, African countries will have to rely on social and behavioral change to limit disease spread. With exponential population growth, such a reliance is a faint hope.
The United States, on the contrary, ranks high in global health security for pandemic preparedness yet has one of the highest number of cases per capita globally. The country relies on a fragmented public health system that has worked to its disadvantage. The lack of clear coordination among health departments has led to incorrectly forecasting the spread of the disease, causing delays in testing and PPE production despite having the capacity to do so. The uninsured population has increased since the onset of the pandemic as well, dis-incentivizing individuals from receiving preventative care or treatment.
Moving forward, countries cannot take proficiency in either category alone to mean they are adequately prepared for the next pandemic. Beyond internal reforms — including establishing unified political fronts on public health messaging and pandemic resource allocation — strengthening internal cooperation will be key for marshaling the global resources required to fight the next pandemic.
Why It’s Burning: Understanding the foundations of a successful public health response to a pandemic is critical to improving global pandemic defense. By prioritizing global health security internationally and public health preparedness domestically, the international community will be best prepared to address pandemics to come.
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