[Juan Tovar Ruiz, La doctrina en la política exterior de Estados Unidos: De Truman a Trump ( Madrid: Catarata, 2017) 224 pages.]

review / Xabier Ramos Garzón

Every change in the White House leads to an analysis of the outgoing president's policies and to speculation about the policies of the incoming president. Given the weight of the United States in the world, the vision on international affairs of each administration is decisive for the world order. Juan Tovar Ruiz, professor of International Relations at the University of Burgos, deals in this book with the essence of the foreign policy of each president - mainly from Truman to Trump (Biden's, logically, is yet to be defined) - which in many cases follows a defined road map that has come to be called "doctrine".

Among the book's strengths are the fact that it combines several points of view: on the one hand, it covers, from the realist point of view, the structural and internal effects of each policy, and on the other, it analyzes the ideas and interactions between actors taking into account the constructivist point of view. The author explores the decision-making processes and their consequences, considers the ultimate effectiveness of American doctrines in the general context of international relations, and examines the influences, ruptures and continuities between different doctrines over time. Despite the relatively short history of the United States, the country has had an extensive and complex foreign policy which Tovar, focusing on the last eight decades, synthesizes with special merit, adopting a mainly general point of view that highlights the substantive.

The book is divided into seven chapters, organized by historical stages and, within each, by presidents. The first chapter, by way of introduction, covers the period following the independence of the United States until the end of World War II. This stage is sample as a core topic in the future American ideology, with two particularly decisive positions: the Monroe Doctrine and Wilsonian Idealism. The second chapter deals with the First Cold War, with the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson doctrines. Throughout the chapter, the different postulates are contextualized and the issues that were core topic in the creation of doctrines that only affected the foreign policy of the moment, but were imbricated in the core of American political thought are pointed out. The third chapter deals with the Distension, the period between 1969 and 1979 in which the doctrines of Nixon and Carter took place. The fourth chapter takes us to the Second Cold War and the end of the US-USSR confrontation, a time when we find the doctrines of Reagan and Bush senior. From this point, the following chapters (fifth, sixth and seventh) deal with the Post-Cold War period, with the doctrines of Clinton, Bush junior and the most recent ones - therefore still subject to study - of Obama and Trump.

In the conclusions, the author summarizes each of the chapters on the basis of academic or political characterizations and makes some qualifications, such as warning that in his opinion Obama's foreign policy is rather a "non-doctrine", since it combines elements of different ideologies and is partly contradictory. Obama dealt with various conflicts in different ways: he dealt realistically with "wars of necessity" (Afghanistan) and in agreement with the liberal internationalist approach with conflicts such as Libya. Although the flexibility pursued by Obama may be considered a weakness by some, since he did not follow a firm and marked policy, it can also be seen as the necessary adaptation to a continuously changing environment. There are many occasions when an American president, such as Bush Jr., has pursued a rigid foreign policy, ideologically speaking, that ultimately achieved little practical success written request

Another example of a variant of the conventional doctrine that the author sample is the "anti-doctrine" carried out by Trump. The man who was president until 2021 implemented a policy characterized by numerous contradictions and variations with respect to the role that the US had been playing in the world, thus casting doubts and uncertainties on the expected performance of the American superpower. This was due to Trump's political inexperience, both domestically and domestically, which caused concern not only among international actors but also in the core of Washington itself.

From the analysis of the different doctrines presented in the book, we can see how each one of them is adapted to a specific social, historical and political context, and at the same time they all respond to a shared political tradition of a country that, as a superpower, manifests certain constants when it comes to maintaining peace and guaranteeing security. But these constants should not be confused with universal aspects, since each country has its own particularities and specific interests: simply adapting U.S. positions to the foreign policy plans of other countries can lead to chaotic failures if these differences are not recognized.

For example, countries such as Spain, which depend on membership of the European Union, could not enter into random wars unilaterally as the United States has done. However, Spain could adopt some elements, such as in subject decision making, since this subject of doctrines greatly facilitates objectifying and standardizing the processes of analysis and resolutions.

Temporary Protected Status for Venezuelans and pending TPS termination for Central Americans amid a migration surge at the US-Mexico border

The Venezuelan flag near the US Capitol [Rep. Darren Soto].

ANALYSIS / Alexandria Angela Casarano

On March 8, the Biden administration approved Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for the cohort of 94,000 to 300,000+ Venezuelans already residing in the United States. Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, and Haiti await the completion of litigation against the TPS terminations of the Trump administration. Meanwhile, the US-Mexico border faces surges in migration and detention facilities for unaccompanied minors battle overcrowding.

TPS and DED. The case of El Salvador

TPS was established by the Immigration Act of 1990 and was first granted to El Salvador that same year due to a then-ongoing civil war. TPS is a temporary immigration benefit that allows migrants to access education and obtain work authorization (EADs). TPS is granted to specific countries in response to humanitarian, environmental, or other crises for 6, 12, or 18-month periods-with the possibility of repeated extension-at the discretion of the Secretary of Homeland Security, taking into account the recommendations of the State Department.

The TPS designation of 1990 for El Salvador expired on June 30, 1992. However, following the designation of Deferred Enforced Departure (DED) to El Salvador on June 26, 1992 by George W. Bush, Salvadorans were allowed to remain in the US until December 31, 1994. DED differs from TPS in that it is designated by the US President without the obligation of consultation with the State Department. Additionally, DED is a temporary protection from deportation, not a temporary immigration benefit, which means it does not afford recipients a legal immigration status, although DED also allows for work authorization and access to education.

When DED expired for El Salvador on December 31, 1994, Salvadorans previously protected by the program were granted a 16-month grace period which allowed them to continue working and residing in the US while they applied for other forms of legal immigration status, such as asylum, if they had not already done so.

The federal court system became significantly involved in the status of Salvadoran immigrants in the US beginning in 1985 with the American Baptist Churches v. Thornburgh (ABC) case. The ABC class action lawsuit was filed against the US Government by more than 240,000 immigrants from El Salvador, Guatemala, and former Soviet Bloc countries, on the basis of alleged discriminatory treatment of their asylum claims. The ABC Settlement Agreement of January 31, 1991 created a 240,000-member immigrant group (ABC class members) with special legal status, including protection from deportation. Salvadorans protected under TPS and DED until December 31, 1994 were allowed to apply for ABC benefits up until February 16, 1996.

Venezuela and the 2020 Elections

The 1990's Salvadoran immigration saga bears considerable resemblance to the current migratory tribulations of many Latin American immigrants residing in the US today, as the expiration of TPS for four Latin American countries in 2019 and 2020 has resulted in the filing of three major lawsuits currently working their way through the US federal court system.

Approximately 5 million Venezuelans have left their home country since 2015 following the consolidation of Nicolás Maduro, on economic grounds and in pursuit of political asylum. Heavy sanctions placed on Venezuela by the Trump administration have exacerbated-and continue to exacerbate, as the sanctions have to date been left in place by the Biden administration-the severe economic crisis in Venezuela.

An estimated 238,000 Venezuelans are currently residing in Florida, 67,000 of whom were naturalized US citizens and 55,000 of whom were eligible to vote as of 2018. 70% of Venezuelan voters in Florida chose Trump over Biden in the 2020 presidential elections, and in spite of the Democrats' efforts (including the promise of TPS for Venezuelans) to regain the Latino vote of the crucial swing state, Trump won Florida's 29 electoral votes in the 2020 elections. The weight of the Venezuelan vote in Florida has thus made the humanitarian importance of TPS for Venezuela a political issue as well. The defeat in Florida has probably made President Biden more cautious about relieving the pressure on Venezuela's and Cuba's regimes.

The Venezuelan TPS Act was originally proposed to the US Congress on January 15, 2019, but the act failed. However, just before leaving office, Trump personally granted DED to Venezuela on January 19, 2021. Now, with the TPS designation to Venezuela by the Biden administration on March 8, Venezuelans now enjoy a temporary legal immigration status.

The other TPS. Termination and ongoing litigation

Other Latin American countries have not fared so well. At the beginning of 2019, TPS was designated to a total of four Latin American countries: Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, and Haiti. Nicaragua and Honduras were first designated TPS on January 5, 1999 in response to Hurricane Mitch. El Salvador was redesignated TPS on March 9, 2001 after two earthquakes hit the country. Haiti was first designated TPS on January 21, 2010 after the Haiti earthquake. Since these designations, TPS was continuously renewed for all four countries. However, under the Trump administration, TPS was allowed to expire without renewal for each country, beginning with Nicaragua on January 5, 2019. Haiti followed on July 22, 2019, then El Salvador on September 9, 2019, and lastly Honduras on January 4, 2020.

As of March 2021, Salvadorans account for the largest share of current TPS holders by far, at a total of 247,697, although the newly eligible Venezuelans could potentially overshadow even this high figure. Honduras and Haiti have 79,415 and 55,338 TPS holders respectively, and Nicaragua has much fewer with only 4,421.

The elimination of TPS for Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, and Haiti would result in the deportation of many immigrants who for a significant continuous period of time have contributed to the workforce, formed families, and rebuilt their lives in the United States. Birthright citizenship further complicates this reality: an estimated 270,000 US citizen children live in a home with one or more parents with TPS, and the elimination of TPS for these parents could result in the separation of families. Additionally, the conditions of Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, and Haiti-in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, recent natural disasters (i.e. hurricanes Matthew, Eta, and Iota), and other socioeconomic and political issues-remain far from ideal and certainly unstable.

Three major lawsuits were filed against the US Government in response to the TPS terminations of 2019 and 2020: Saget v. Trump (March 2018), Ramos v. Nielsen (March 2018), and Bhattarai et al. v. Nielsen (February 2019). Kirstjen Nielsen served as Secretary of Homeland Security for two years (2017 - 2019) under Trump. Saget v. Trump concerns Haitian TPS holders. Ramos v. Nielsen concerns 250,000 Salvadoran, Nicaraguan, Haitian and Sudanese TPS holders, and has since been consolidated with Bhattarai et al. v. Nielsen which concerns Nepali and Honduran TPS holders.

All three (now two) lawsuits appeal the TPS eliminations for the countries involved on similar grounds, principally the racial animus (i.e. Trump's statement: "[Haitians] all have AIDS") and unlawful actions (i.e. violations of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA)) of the Trump administration. For Saget v. Trump, the US District Court (E.D. New York) blocked the termination of TPS (affecting Haiti only) on April 11, 2019 through the issuance of preliminary injunctions. For Ramos v. Nielson (consolidated with Bhattarai et al. v. Nielson), the US Court of Appeals of the 9th Circuit has rejected these claims and ruled in favor of the termination of TPS (affecting El Salvador, Nicaragua, Haiti, Honduras, Nepal, and Sudan) on September 14, 2020. This ruling has since been appealed and is currently awaiting revision.

The US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) have honored the orders of the US Courts not to terminate TPS until the litigation for these aforementioned cases is completed. The DHS issued a Federal Register Notice (FRN) on December 9, 2020 which extends TPS for holders from Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, and Haiti until October 14, 2021. The USCIS has similarly cooperated and has ordered that so long as the litigation remains effective, no one will lose TPS. The USCIS has also ordered that in case of TPS elimination once the litigation is completed, Nicaragua and Haiti will have 120 grace days to orderly transition out of TPS, Honduras will have 180, and El Salvador will have 365 (time frames which are proportional to the number of TPS holders from each country, though less so for Haiti).

The Biden Administration's Migratory Policy

On the campaign trail, Biden repeatedly emphasized his intentions to reverse the controversial immigration policies of the Trump administration, promising immediate cessation of the construction of the border wall, immediate designation of TPS to Venezuela, and the immediate sending of a bill to create a "clear [legal] roadmap to citizenship" for 11 million+ individuals currently residing in the US without legal immigration status. Biden assumed office on January 20, 2021, and issued an executive order that same day to end the government funding for the construction of the border wall. On February 18, 2021, Biden introduced the US Citizenship Act of 2021 to Congress to provide a legal path to citizenship for immigrants residing in the US illegally, and issued new executive guidelines to limit arrests and deportations by ICE strictly to non-citizen immigrants who have recently crossed the border illegally. Non-citizen immigrants already residing in the US for some time are now only to be arrested/deported by ICE if they pose a threat to public safety (defined by conviction of an aggravated felony (i.e. murder or rape) or of active criminal street gang participation).

Following the TPS designation to Venezuela on March 8, 2021, there has been additional talk of a TPS designation for Guatemala on the grounds of the recent hurricanes which have hit the country.

On March 18, 2021, the Dream and Promise Act passed in the House. With the new 2021 Democrat majority in the Senate, it seems likely that this legislation which has been in the making since 2001 will become a reality before the end of the year. The Dream and Promise Act will make permanent legal immigration status accessible (with certain requirements and restrictions) to individuals who arrived in the US before reaching the age of majority, which is expected to apply to millions of current holders of DACA and TPS.

If the US Citizenship Act of 2021 is passed by Congress as well, together these two acts would make the Biden administration's lofty promises to create a path to citizenship for immigrants residing illegally in the US a reality. Since March 18, 2021, the National TPS Alliance has been hosting an ongoing hunger strike in Washington, DC in order to press for the speedy passage of the acts.

The current migratory surge at the US-Mexico border

While the long-term immigration forecast appears increasingly more positive as Biden's presidency progresses, the immediate immigration situation at the US-Mexico border is quite dire. Between December 2020 and February 2021, the US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) reported a 337% increase in the arrival of families, and an 89% increase in the arrival of unaccompanied minors. CBP apprehensions of migrants crossing the border illegally in March 2021 have reached 171,00, which is the highest monthly total since 2006.

Currently, there are an estimated 4,000 unaccompanied minors in CBP custody, and an additional 15,000 unaccompanied minors in the custody of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

The migratory CBP facility in Donna, TX designated specifically to unaccompanied minors has been filled at 440% to 900% of its COVID-19 capacity of just 500 minors since March 9, 2021. Intended to house children for no more than a 72-hour legal limit, due to the current overwhelmed system, some children have remained in the facility for more than weeks at a time before being transferred on to HHS.

In order to address the overcrowding, the Biden administration announced the opening of the Delphia Emergency Intake Site (next to the Donna facility) on April 6, 2021, which will be used to house up to 1,500 unaccompanied minors. Other new sites have been opened by HHS in Texas and California, and HHS has requested the Pentagon to allow it to temporarily utilize three military facilities in these same two states.

Political polarization has contributed to a great disparity in the interpretation of the recent surge in migration to the US border since Biden took office. Termed a "challenge" by Democrats and a "crisis" by Republicans, both parties offer very different explanations for the cause of the situation, each placing the blame on the other.

Iranian hackers forged pre-election mailings of the Proud Boys, but the actual post-election performance of this and other groups proved more disruptive

If in the 2016 U.S. presidential election foreign meddling operations were led by Russia, in the 2020 election the focus was on Iranian hackers, because of the novelty they represented in a field of operations where Russians and Chinese were also active, each pursuing their own interests. In particular, Tehran was hoping for a defeat of Donald Trump so that his Democratic successor would reverse the harsh sanctions regime imposed against the Iranian regime. But those actions in cyberspace by Iran, Russia and China were ineffective due to the heightened alertness of American security and intelligence agencies. In the end, these outside attempts to discredit U.S. democracy and undermine voter confidence in its electoral system were dwarfed by the damage caused by the domestic chaos itself.

Assault on Capitol Hill, Washington, Jan. 6, 2021 [TapTheForwardAssist].

article / María Victoria Andarcia

Russia was always in the eye of US security during the 2020 election year, after its interference in the presidential election four years earlier was established. However, while the main concern remained Russia and there were also fears of an expansion of China's operations, Iran grabbed the headlines in some of the warnings issued by US authorities, probably because of the ease with which they were able to attribute various actions to Iranian actors. Despite this multiple front, the development the ballots did not yield any evidence that the foreign disinformation campaigns had been effective. The rapid identification of the actors involved and the offensive reaction by U.S. security and intelligence services may have prevented the 2016 status . As the Atlantic Council has noted, this time "domestic disinformation overshadowed foreign action."

Given the direct consequences that Joe Biden's arrival in the White House may have on Washington's policy towards Iran, this article pays more attention to Iranian attempts to affect the development the US elections. The incidence of Iranian operations was minimal and had a lower profile than those carried out by Russia in 2016 (a country that in turn had less involvement than in those previous elections).

Iranian operations

In May and June 2020, the first movements in Microsoft accounts were recorded, as later revealed by the company itself. An Iranian group called Phosphorus had succeeded in gaining access to accounts of White House employees and Trump's re-election campaign team. These were early signs that Tehran was mounting some subject of cyber operation.

In early August, the director of the Center for Counterintelligence and National Security, William Evanina, accused Tehran - as well as Moscow and Beijing - of using disinformation on the Internet to "influence voters, unleash disorder and undermine public confidence" in the system. Regarding Iran it stated, "We assess that Iran seeks to undermine U.S. democratic institutions and President Trump, and to divide the country ahead of the 2020 election." She added that Iranian efforts were focused on spreading disinformation on social media, where it circulated anti-U.S. content. Evanina attributed as the motivation for these actions the Iranian perception "that President Trump's re-election would result in a continuation of U.S. pressure on Iran in an effort to encourage regime change."

In the wake of the televised discussion between Trump and Biden on September 29, Twitter deleted 130 accounts that "appeared to originate in Iran" and whose content, which it had put the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) on knowledge , was intended to influence public opinion during the presidential discussion . The company offered only four examples. Two of the accounts were pro-Trump: in one the Username was @jackQanon (in reference letter to the conspiratorial group QAnon) and the other expressed support for Proud Boys, a far-right organization with supremacist links that Trump had order "be on guard and be vigilant". The other two accounts had expressed pro-Biden messages.

In mid-October, the director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, referred in a press conference to Iranian and Russian cyber actions as a threat to the electoral process. According to Ratcliffe, the Iranian operation consisted primarily of a series of e-mails purporting to be sent by the Proud Boys group . These emails contained threats of physical force for those who did not vote for Trump, and were intended to instigate violence and damage Trump's image by associating his campaign with radical groups and efforts to intimidate voters. Interestingly, the Proud Boys would later gain prominence for themselves in the post-election rallies in Washington and the takeover of the Capitol.

While Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Said Jatibzadeh denied these accusations, stressing that "Iran is indifferent to who wins the US elections", the US authorities insisted on their version and the US Treasury department s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) sanctioned five Iranian entities for having attempted to undermine the presidential elections. According to the OFACstatement , the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Quds Force used Iranian media as platforms to spread propaganda and disinformation to the U.S. population.

agreement to OFAC, the Iranian audiovisual communications business Bayan Gostar, a regular collaborator of the Revolutionary Guard, had "planned to influence the election by exploiting social problems within the United States, including the COVID-19 pandemic, and by denigrating U.S. political figures." Iran's Islamic Radio and Television Union (IRTVU), which OFAC considers a propaganda arm of the Revolutionary Guard, and the International Virtual Media Union "assisted Bayan Gostar in his efforts to reach U.S. audiences." These media outlets "amplified false narratives in English and published derogatory propaganda articles and other content directed at the United States with the intent to sow discord among the U.S. audience."

Post-election performance

The United States claims that Iranian interference was not limited to the elections, which were held on November 3 (with an unprecedented level of advance and postal voting), but continued afterwards in the following weeks, trying to take advantage of the confusion caused by the questioning of the electoral result maintained by the Trump Administration. Days before Christmas, the FBI and the department Homeland Security department s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) disclosed that Iran was allegedly behind a website and several social media accounts aimed at provoking further violence against various U.S. officials. The website titled "Enemies of the People" contained photographs and staff information of both officials and private sector staff involved in the process of counting and authenticating votes cast in the election, sometimes in the face of allegations of fraud maintained by Trump and his supporters.

The action attributed to Iran can be interpreted as a way to avenge the drone strike ordered by Washington to assassinate Qasem Soleimani, head of the Qurds Force in Iraq, for whose death on January 3, 2020 Tehran had vowed retaliation. But above all it reveals an ongoing effort by Iran to alleviate the effects of the Trump-driven U.S. "maximum pressure" policy. Given Biden's expressed intention during the election campaign to change U.S. foreign policy toward the Islamic Republic, the Islamic Republic would have the opportunity to receive more lax U.S. attention if Trump lost the presidential election. Biden had indicated that if he came to power he would change policy toward Iran, possibly returning to the nuclear agreement signed in 2015 on the condition that Iran respect the limits on its nuclear program agreed to then. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was considered a milestone in the foreign policy of then President Barack Obama, but then the Trump Administration decided not to respect it because it considered that issues such as Iran's missile development and its military interference in other countries in the region had been left out.

A few days before the inauguration of the new American president, Iranian President Hassan Rohani urged Biden to lift the sanctions imposed on the Islamic Republic and return to the 2015 nuclear agreement . Iran hopes that the Biden Administration will take the first steps to compensate for the actions of the previous administration and thus move towards a possible understanding between the two nations. The decision to return to the agreement will not be made immediately as Biden inherits a divided country and it will take time to reverse Trump's policies. With the Iranian presidential elections approaching in June of this year, the Biden administration is buying time to attempt a reformulation that will not be easy, as the context of the Middle East has changed substantially in the last five years.

[Barack Obama, A Promised Landdiscussion: Madrid, 2020), 928 pp.]

review / Emili J. Blasco

A president's memoirs are always an attempt to justify his political actions. Having employee George W. Bush less than five hundred pages in "Decision Points" to try to explain the reasons for a more controversial management in principle, that Barack Obama uses almost a thousand pages for the first part of his memoirs (A promised land only covers the third year of his eight-year presidency) seems an excess: in fact, no U.S. president has ever required so much space in this exercise of wanting to tie up his bequest.

It is true that Obama has a taste for the pen, with some previous books in which he has already shown good narrative skills, and it is possible that this literary inclination has defeated him. But probably more decisive has been Obama's vision of himself and his presidency: the conviction of having a mission statement, as the first African-American president, and his ambition of wanting to bend the arc of history. When, with the passage of time, Obama begins to be just one more in the list of presidents, his book vindicates the historical character of his person and his achievements.

The first third of A Promised Land is particularly interesting. There is a cursory review of his life prior to entrance politics and then the detail of his degree program leading up to the White House. This part has the same inspirational charge that made so attractive My Father's Dreams, the book that Obama published in 1995 when he launched his campaign for the Illinois State Senate (in Spain it appeared in 2008, as a result of his campaign for the presidency). We can all draw very useful lessons for our own staff improvement: the idea of being masters of our destiny, of becoming aware of our deepest identity, and the security that this gives us to carry out many enterprises of great value and transcendence; to put all our efforts into a goal and take advantage of opportunities that may not come again; in final, to always think out of the box (when Obama saw that his work as senator of Illinois had little impact, his decision was not to leave politics, but to jump to the national level: He ran for senator in Washington and from there, only four years later, he reached the White House). These pages are also rich in lessons on political communication and electoral campaigns.

But when the narrative begins to address the presidential term, which began in January 2009, that inspirational tone falters. What was once a succession of generally positive adjectives for everyone begins to include diatribes against his Republican opponents. And here is the point that Obama does not manage to overcome: giving himself all the moral merit and denying it to those who, with their votes in congress , disagreed with the legislation promoted by the new president. It is true that Obama had a very frontal civil service examination from the Republican leaders in the Senate and the House of Representatives, but they also supported some of his initiatives, as Obama himself acknowledges. For the rest, which came first, the chicken or the egg? Large sectors of the Republicans immediately jumped on the bandwagon, as soon evidenced by the Tea Party tide in the 2010 mid-term elections (in a movement that would eventually lead to support for Trump), but it is also because Obama had arrived with the most left-wing positions in American politics in living memory. With his idealistic drive, Obama had set little example of bipartisan effort in his time in the Illinois and Washington Senate; when some of his reforms from the White House were blocked in congress, instead of seeking an accommodation -accepting a politics of the possible- he went to the streets to confront citizens with politicians who opposed his transformations, further entrenching the trenches of one and the other.

The British historian Niall Ferguson has pointed out that the Trump phenomenon would not be understood without Obama's previous presidency, although the bitter political division in the United States is probably a matter of a deep current in which leaders play a less leading role than we would suppose. Obama saw himself as the ideal person, because of his cultural mix (black, but raised by his white mother and grandparents), to bridge the widening rift in American society; however, he was unable to build the necessary ideological bridges. Bill Clinton faced a similar Republican blockade, in the congress led by Newt Gingrich, and made useful compromises: he reduced the ideological burden and brought an economic prosperity that relaxed public life.

A Promised Land includes many of Obama's reflections. He generally provides the necessary context to understand the issues well, for example in the gestation of the 2008 financial crisis. In foreign policy he details the state of relations with the major powers: animosity towards Putin and suspicion towards China, among other issues. There are aspects with different possible ways forward in which Obama leaves no room for a legitimate alternative position: thus, in a particularly emblematic topic , he charges against Netanyahu without admitting any mistake of his own in his approach to the Israeli-Palestinian problem. This is something that other reviews of the book have pointed out: the absence of self-criticism (beyond admitting sins of omission in not having been as bold as he would have wished), and the failure to admit that in some respects perhaps the opponent could have been right.

The narrative runs with a good internal rhythm, despite the many pages. The volume ends in 2011, at a random moment determined by the extension foreseen for a second submission; however, it has a climax with sufficient force: the operation against Osama bin Laden, for the first time told in the first person by the person who had the highest level of command. Although the Degree involvement of other hands in the essay is unknown, the work has a point of lyricism that connects directly with Los sueños de mi padre and that financial aid to attribute it, at least to a great extent, to the former president himself.

The book contains many episodes of the Obamas' domestic life. Obama's constant compliments to his wife, his admiration for his mother-in-law and the continuous references to his devotion to his two daughters could be considered unnecessary, especially because of their recurrence, in a political book. Nevertheless, they give the story the staff tone that Obama has wanted to adopt, giving human warmth to someone who was often accused of having a public image of a cold, distant and overly reflective person.

▲ Joe Biden and Barack Obama in February 2009, one month after arriving at the White House [Pete Souza].

COMMENTARY / Emili J. Blasco

This article was previously published, somewhat abbreviated, in the newspaper 'Expansión'.

One of the great mistakes revealed by the U.S. presidential elections is to have underestimated the figure of Donald Trump, believing him to be a mere anecdote, and to have disregarded, as whimsical, a large part of his policies. In reality, the Trump phenomenon is a manifestation, if not a consequence, of the current American moment and some of his major decisions, especially in the international arena, have more to do with national imperatives than with fickle occurrences. The latter suggests that there are aspects of foreign policy, manners aside, in which Joe Biden as president may be closer to Trump than to Barack Obama, simply because the world of 2021 is already somewhat different from that of the first half of the previous decade.

First, Biden will have to confront Beijing. Obama began to do so, but the more assertive character of Xi Jinping's China has been accelerating in recent years. In the superpower struggle, especially for dominance in the new technological era, the United States has everything at stake vis-à-vis China. It is true that Biden has referred to the Chinese not as enemies but as competitors, but the trade war was already started by the Administration of which he was Vice-President and now the objective rivalry is greater.

Nor is the withdrawal of the United States the result of Trump's madness. Basically, it has to do, to simplify somewhat, with the energy independence achieved by the Americans: they no longer need oil from the Middle East and they no longer have to be in all the oceans to ensure the free navigation of tankers. The 'America First' was somehow already started by Obama and Biden will not go in the opposite direction. So, for example, no major involvement in European Union affairs and no firm negotiations for a free trade agreement between the two Atlantic markets can be expected.

In the two main achievements of the Obama era - the nuclear agreement with Iran sealed by the United States, the EU and Russia, and the reestablishment of diplomatic relations between Washington and Havana - Biden will find it difficult to follow the path then defined. There may be attempts at a new rapprochement with Tehran, but there would be greater coordination against it on the part of Israel and the Sunni world, instances that now converge more. Biden may find that less pressure on the ayatollahs pushes Saudi Arabia toward the atomic bomb.

As for Cuba, the return to dissent will be more in the hands of the Cuban government than in those of Biden himself, who in the electoral loss in Florida has been able to read a rejection of any condescension with Castroism. Some of the new restrictions imposed by Trump on Cuba may be dismantled, but if Havana continues to show no real willingness to change and open up, the White House will no longer have to continue betting on political concessions to credit .

In the case of Venezuela, Biden will probably withdraw a good part of the sanctions, but there is no longer room for a policy of inaction like that of Obama. That Administration did not confront Chavismo for two reasons: because it did not want to bother Cuba given the secret negotiations it was holding with that country to reopen its embassies and because the level of lethality of the regime had not yet become unbearable. Today, international reports on human rights are unanimous on the repression and torture of the Maduro government, and also the arrival of millions of Venezuelan refugees in the different countries of the region make it necessary to take action on the matter. Here it is to be hoped that Biden can act in a less unilateral manner and, without ceasing to exert pressure, seek coordination with the European Union.

It often happens that whoever arrives at the White House takes care of national affairs in his first years and later, especially in a second term, focuses on leaving an international bequest . Because of age and health, it is possible that the new tenant will only be in office for a four-year term. Without Obama's idealism of wanting to "bend the arc of history" - Biden is a pragmatist, a product of the American political establishment - nor businessman Trump's rush for immediate gain, it is hard to imagine that his Administration will take serious risks on the international scene.

Biden has confirmed his commitment to begin his presidency in January by reversing some of Trump's decisions, notably on climate change and the Paris agreement ; on some tariff fronts, such as the outgoing administration's unnecessary punishment of European countries; and on various immigration issues, especially concerning Central America.

In any case, even if the Democratic left wants to push Biden towards certain margins, believing that they have an ally in Vice-President Kamala Harris, the president-elect can make use of his moderation staff : the fact that he has obtained better result in the elections than the party itself gives him, for the time being, sufficient internal authority. For the rest, the Republicans have held up quite well in the Senate and the House of Representatives, so that Biden arrives at the White House with less support on Capitol Hill than his predecessors. That, in any case, may help to reinforce one of the traits most valued today in the Delaware politician: predictability, something that the economies and foreign ministries of many of the world's countries are anxiously awaiting.

The current president made only one visit, also in the framework the G-20, compared to the six that Bush and Obama made in their first four years.

International travel does not tell the whole story about a president's foreign policy, but it does give some clues. As president, Donald Trump has only traveled once to Latin America, and then only because the G-20 summit he was attending was being held in Argentina. It is not that Trump has not dealt with the region -of course, the policy towards Venezuela has been very present in his management, but not having made the effort to travel to other countries of the continent reflects well the more unilateral character of his policy, little focused on gaining sympathy among his peers.

▲ signature in Mexico in 2018 of the free trade agreement between the three North American countriesdepartment of State, USA].

article / Miguel García-Miguel

With only one visit to the region, the U.S. president is the one who has made the fewest official visits since Clinton's first legislature, who also visited the region only once. In contrast, Bush and Obama paid more attention to the neighboring territory, both with six visits in their first legislature. Trump focused his diplomatic campaign on Asia and Europe and reserved Latin American affairs for visits by the region's presidents to the White House or to his Mar-a-Lago resort.

In fact, the Trump Administration spent time on Latin American issues, taking positions more quickly than the Obama Administration, as the worsening Venezuelan problem required defining actions. At the same time, Trump has discussed regional issues with Latin American presidents during their visits to the United States. There has been, however, no effort at multilateralism or empathy, going out to meeting them in their home countries to discuss their problems there.

Clinton: Haiti

The Democratic president made only one visit to the region during his first term in office. After the Uphold Democracy operation to refund Jean-Bertrand Aristide to power, on March 31, 1995, Bill Clinton traveled to Haiti for the transition ceremony organized by the United Nations. The operation had consisted of a military intervention by the United States, Poland and Argentina, with UN approval, to overthrow the military board that had forcibly deposed the democratically elected Aristide. During his second term, Clinton paid more attention to regional affairs, with thirteen visits.

Bush: free trade agreements

Bush made his first presidential trip to neighboring Mexico, where he met with then-President Fox to discuss a variety of issues. Mexico paid attention to the U.S. government's attention to Mexican immigrants, but the two presidents also discussed the operation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which came into force in 1994, and joint efforts in the fight against drug trafficking. The U.S. president had the opportunity to visit Mexico three more times during his first term to attend multilateral meetings. Specifically, in March 2002, he attended the International lecture on Financing for development, organized by the United Nations and which resulted in the Monterrey Consensus; Bush also took the opportunity to meet again with the Mexican president. In October of the same year he attended the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) summit, which that year was held in the Mexican enclave of Los Cabos. Finally, he set foot on Mexican soil once again to attend the Special Summit of the Americas held in Monterrey in 2004.

During his first term in office, Bush promoted the negotiation of new free trade agreements with several American countries, which marked his Administration's policy in relation to the Western Hemisphere. In the framework of this policy, he traveled to Peru and El Salvador on March 23 and 24, 2002. In Peru he met with the President of that country and with the Presidents of Colombia, Bolivia and Ecuador, in order to reach an agreement to renew the ATPA (Andean Trade Promotion Act), by which the US granted tariff freedom on a wide range of exports from those countries. The matter was finally resolved with the enactment in October of the same year of the ATPDEA (Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act), which maintained tariff freedoms in compensation for the fight against drug trafficking, in an attempt to develop the region economically to create alternatives to cocaine production. Finally, in the case of El Salvador, he met with the Central American presidents to discuss the possibility of a Free Trade Agreement with the region (known in English as CAFTA) in exchange for a reinforcement of security in the areas of the fight against drug trafficking and terrorism. The treaty was ratified three years later by the U.S. congress . Bush revisited Latin America up to eleven times during his second term.

Own elaboration with data from the Office of the Historian.

Obama: two Summits of the Americas

Obama began his tour of diplomatic visits to Latin America by attendance the V Summit of the Americas, held in Port-au-Prince (Trinidad and Tobago). The Summit brought together all the leaders of the sovereign countries of the Americas except for Cuba and was aimed at coordinating efforts to recover from the recent crisis of 2008 with mentions of the importance of environmental and energy sustainability. Obama attend again in 2012 the VI Summit of the Americas held this time in Cartagena de Indias (Colombia). No representatives from Ecuador or Nicaragua attended this Summit in protest against the exclusion of Cuba to date. Neither the President of Haiti nor the Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez attended, alleging medical reasons. The summit again discussed Economics and security issues with special relevance to the war against drugs and organized crime, as well as the development of environmental policies. He also took advantage of this visit to announce, together with Juan Manuel Santos, the entrance into effect of the Free Trade Agreement between Colombia and the US, negotiated by the Bush Administration and ratified after some delay by the US congress . The Democratic president also had the opportunity to visit the region on the occasion of the G-20 meeting in Mexico, but this time the main topic revolved around solutions to curb the European debt crisis.

In terms of bilateral meetings, Obama made a diplomatic tour between March 19 and 23, 2010 to Brazil, Chile and El Salvador, meeting with their respective presidents. He used the occasion to reestablish relations with the Brazilian left that had governed the country since 2002, to reiterate his economic and political alliance with Chile and to announce a US$200 million fund to strengthen security in Central America. During his second term he made up to seven visits, including the resumption of diplomatic relations with Cuba, which had been paused since the triumph of the Revolution.

Trump: T-MEC

Donald Trump only visited Latin America on one occasion to attend the G-20 meeting , a meeting that was not even regional, held in Buenos Aires in December 2018. Among the various agreements reached were the reform of the World Trade Organization and the commitment of the attendees to implement the measures adopted in the Paris agreement , with the exception of the US, since the president had already reiterated his determination to withdraw from the agreement. Taking advantage of the visit, he signed the T-MEC (Treaty between Mexico, the United States and Canada, the new name for the renewed NAFTA, whose renegotiation had been a Trump demand) and met with the Chinese president in the context of the trade war. Trump, on the other hand, did not attend the VIII Summit of the Americas held in Peru in April 2018; the trip, which was also supposed to take him to Colombia, was canceled at the last minute because the US president preferred to remain in Washington in the face of a possible escalation of the Syrian crisis.

The reason for the few visits to the region has been that Trump has directed his diplomatic campaign towards Europe, Asia and to a lesser extent the Middle East, in the context of the trade war with China and the loss of power in the US international landscape.

Own elaboration with data from the Office of the Historian.

Only one trip, but monitoring of the region

Despite having hardly traveled to the rest of the continent, the Republican candidate has paid attention to the region's affairs, but without leaving Washington, as there have been seven Latin American presidents who have visited the White House. The main focus of the meetings has been economic development and the strengthening of security, as usual. Depending on the reality of each country, the meetings revolved more around the possibility of future trade agreements, the fight against drugs and organized crime, preventing the flow of illegal immigration to the United States or the search to strengthen political alliances. Although the US government website does not list it as an official visit , Donald Trump also met at the White House in February 2020 with Juan Guaidó, recognized as president in charge of Venezuela.

Precisely, if there has been a common topic to all these meetings, it has been the status of the economic and political crisis in Venezuela. Trump has sought allies in the region to encircle and pressure the Maduro government, which is not only an example of continuous human rights violations, but also destabilizes the region. The strong civil service examination the regime served Donald Trump as propaganda to gain popularity and try to save the Latino vote in the November 3 elections, and that had its award at least in the state of Florida.

Own elaboration with data from Office of the Historian.

COMMENTARY / Rafael Calduch Torres*.

As tradition dictates since 1845, on the first Tuesday of November, on the 3rd, the voting inhabitants of the fifty states that make up the United States will take part in the fifty-ninth Election Day, the day on which the Electoral high school is formed, which will have to choose between keeping the forty-fifth President of the United States of America, Donald Trump, or electing the forty-sixth, Joe Biden.

But the real problem facing not only the inhabitants of the USA, but also the rest of the world's population is that both Trump and Biden have their international strategy as a core topic at home, following in the wake of the change that took place in the country after the 9/11 attacks and whose fundamental result has been the absence of effective leadership of the American superpower in the last twenty years. For if there is one thing that must be clear to us, it is the fact that none of the candidates, as their predecessors did not, has a plan that would allow them to resume the international leadership that the United States enjoyed until the end of the 1990s; On the contrary, what urges them is to solve domestic problems and subordinate international issues, which a superpower of the stature of the United States must face, to the solutions adopted internally, which is one of the serious strategic errors of our era, since strong international leaderships that are coherent with the management of domestic problems have historically allowed the creation of meeting points in American society that cushion divisions and bring cohesion to the country.

However, despite these general similarities there is a clear difference between the two candidates when it comes to addressing international issues that will affect the results of the choice Americans will make on Tuesday.

"The Power of America's example". With this slogan, Biden's general proposal , much clearer and more accessible than Trump's, develops a plan to lead the democratic world in the 21st century based on using the way in which America's domestic problems will be solved as an example, binding and sustaining its international leadership; it goes without saying that the mere assumption that the internal problems of the United States are not exactly extrapolable to the rest of the international actors is not even taken into account.

Thus, the Democratic candidate , using a rather traditional rhetoric on the dignity of leadership, uses the connection between domestic and international reality to propose a program of national regeneration without specifying how this will restore the lost international leadership. This approach will be based on two main pillars: the democratic regeneration of the country and the reconstruction of the US class average which, in turn, will make it possible to underpin other international projects.

Democratic regeneration will be based on the strengthening of the educational and judicial systems, transparency, the fight against corruption or the end of attacks on the media, and is proposed as an instrument for the reestablishment of the country's moral leadership which, in addition to inspiring others, would serve for the US to transfer these US national policies to the international arena, for others to follow and imitate them through a sort of global league for democracy that seems very nebulous.

In the meantime, the reconstruction of the class average, the same to which Trump appealed four years ago, would involve greater investment in technological innovation and supposedly greater global equity in international trade, from which the United States would benefit the most.

Finally, all of the above would be complemented by a new era in international arms control through a new START treaty between the US and Russia, US leadership in the fight against climate change, an end to interventions on foreign soil, particularly in Afghanistan, and the reestablishment of diplomacy as the backbone of US foreign policy.

"Promises Made, Promises Kept!What is Trump's alternative? The current President does not reveal what his projects are, but he does propose a review of his "achievements" which, we understand, will give us an idea of what his foreign policy will be, which will revolve around the continuity of the US trade rebalancing based, as up to now, on shielding US companies from foreign investment, the imposition of new tariffs, the fight against fraudulent trade practices, especially by China, and the restoration of US relations with its allies in Asia/Pacific, the Middle East and Europe, but without specific proposals.

With regard to the area of security, treated in a differentiated manner by Trump, the recipe is the increase in defense spending, the shielding of US territory against terrorism and opposition to North Korea, Venezuela and Iran, which will be joined by the maintenance and expansion of the recent campaign of actions directed specifically against Russia, with the declared goal of containing it in Ukraine and preventing cyber-attacks.

But the reality is that both candidates will have to face global challenges that they have not considered in their programs and that will condition them decisively in their mandates, starting with the management of the pandemic and its economic effects on a global scale and including the growing competition from the European Union, especially as its common military and defense capabilities develop.

As we have just seen, none of the candidates will offer new solutions and therefore the situation is not likely to improve, at least in the short term.

* PhD in Contemporary History, graduate in Political Science and Administration. Professor at UNAV and UCJC.

[Bruno Maçães, History Has Begun. The Birth of a New America. Hurst and Co. London, 2020. 203 p.]

review / Emili J. Blasco

What if the United States were not in decline, but quite the opposite? The United States could actually be in its beginnings as a great power. This is what Bruno Maçães argues in his new book, the degree scroll -History Has Begun- in a certain sense refutes Fukuyama's end of history, which saw the democratization of the world at the end of the 20th century as the culmination of the West. Precisely, the hypothesis of the internationalist of Portuguese origin is that the USA is developing its own original civilization, separate from what has been understood until now as Western civilization, in a world in which the very concept of the West is losing strength.

Maçães' work follows three lines of attention: the progressive separation of the USA from Europe, the characteristics that identify the specific American civilization and the struggle between the USA and China for the new world order. The author had already developed aspects of these themes in his two immediately preceding works, already reviewed here: The Dawn of Eurasia y Belt and Roadand now focuses on the US. The three titles are basically a sequence: the progressive dissolution of the European peninsula in the Eurasian continent as a whole, the emergence of China as the superpower of this great continental mass and the remaining role of Washington on the planet.

As to whether the U.S. goes up or leave, Maçães writes in the book's introduction, "Conventional wisdom suggests that the United States has already reached its peak. But what if it is simply now beginning to forge its own path forward?" The Issue is written before the coronavirus crisis and the deep unease now apparent in American society, but even before that some signs of U.S. domestic unrest, such as political polarization or divergence over the direction of its foreign policy, were already evident. "The present moment in the history of the United States is both a moment of destruction and a moment of creation," says Maçães, who considers that the country is going through "convulsions" typical of this process of destructive creation. In his opinion, in any case, they are "the birth pangs of a new culture instead of the death throes of an old civilization".

It could be thought that the United States is simply evolving towards a mixed culture, the result of globalization, so that the influence that some European countries have had in shaping U.S. society in recent centuries is now being joined by Asian immigration. In fact, it is expected that by mid-century immigrants from the other side of the Pacific will outnumber those arriving from Mexico and Central America, which, although imbued with indigenous cultures, largely follow the Western paradigm. Between the first European and the new Asian heritage, a "hybrid Eurasian" culture could develop in the United States.

In fact, at one point in the book, Maçães asserts that the United States "is no longer a European nation," but "in fundamental aspects now seems more similar to countries like India or Russia or even the Republic of Iran." However, he disagrees with this hybrid Eurasian perspective and argues instead for the development of a new, indigenous American society, separate from modern Western civilization, rooted in new sentiments and thoughts.

When describing this different way of being, Maçães deals mainly with some manifestations, from which he gradually deduces deeper aspects. "Why do Americans speak so loudly?" he asks, referring to one such symptom. His theory is that American life emphasizes its own artificiality as a way of reminding its participants that, at bottom, they are experiencing a story. "The American way of life is consciously about language, storytelling, plot and form, and is meant to draw attention to its status as fiction." An entire chapter, for example, is devoted to analyzing the importance of television in the US. In the midst of these considerations, the reader may come to think that the reasoning has been drifting towards a cultural essay , leaving the field of international relations, but in the conclusion of the work the ends are conveniently tied up.

Having left this loose end here, the book goes on to analyze the pulse between Washington and Beijing. He recalls that since its rise as a world power around 1900, the permanent strategic goal of the United States has been to prevent a single power from controlling the whole of Eurasia. Previous threats in that sense were Germany and the USSR and today it is China. Normally, Washington would resort to the balance of power, using Europe, Russia and India against China (using a game historically employee by Great Britain for the goal of preventing a single country from controlling the European continent), but for the time being the US has focused on directly confronting China. Maçães sees the Trump Administration's policy as confusing. "If the US wants to adopt a strategy of maximum pressure against Beijing, it needs to be clearer about the end game": is this to constrain Chinese economic power or to convert China to the Western model , he asks. He intuits that the ultimate goal is to "decouple" the Western world from China, creating two separate economic spheres.

Maçães believes that China will hardly manage to dominate the supercontinent, since "the unification of the whole of Eurasia under a single power is so far from being inevitable that in fact it has never been achieved". In any case, he considers that, because of its interest as a superpower, the US may end up playing not so much the role of "great balancer" (given the weight of China it is difficult for any of its neighbors to exercise a counterweight) as that of "great creator" of the new order. "China must be trimmed down in size and other pieces must be accumulated, if a balance is to be the final product," he asserts.

It is here that the American character as a builder of stories and narratives finally comes back into the picture, with a somewhat flimsy argument. Maçães can see the US succeeding in this task of "great creator" if it treats its allies with autonomy. As in a novel, his role as narrator "is to bring all the characters together and preserve their own individual spheres"; "the narrator has learned not to impose a single truth on the whole, and at the same time no character will be allowed to replace him." "For the United States," Maçães concludes, "the age of nation-building is over. The age of world building has begun."

▲ Minneapolis street crossing where George Floyd was stopped by local police [Fibonacci Blue].

COMMENTARY / Salvador Sánchez Tapia [Brigadier General (Res.)].

In a controversial public statement made on June 2, U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to deploy units of the Armed Forces to contain riots sparked by the death of African-American George Floyd at the hands of a police officer in Minnesota, and to maintain public order if they escalate in the level of violence.

Regardless of the seriousness of the event, and beyond the fact that the incident has been politicized and is being employee as a platform for expressing rejection of Trump's presidency, the possibility raised by the president poses an almost unprecedented challenge to civil-military relations in the United States.

For reasons rooted in its pre-independence past, the United States maintains a certain caution against the possibility that the Armed Forces can be employed domestically against citizens by whoever holds power. For this reason, when the Founding Fathers drafted the Constitution, while authorizing congress to organize and maintain armies, they explicitly limited their funding to a maximum of two years.

Against this background, and against the background of the tension between the Federation and the states, U.S. legislation has tried to limit the employment the Armed Forces in domestic tasks. Thus, since 1878, the Posse Comitatus limits the possibility of employing them in the fulfillment of missions for the maintenance of public order which it is the responsibility of the states to carry out with their own means, including the National Guard.

One of the exceptions to this rule is the Insurrection Act of 1807, invoked precisely by President Trump as an argument in favor of the legality of an eventual employment decision. This, despite the fact that this law has a restrictive spirit, since it requires the cooperation of the states in its application, and because it is designed for extreme cases in which they are unable, or unwilling, to maintain order, circumstances that do not seem applicable to the case at hand.

The controversial nature of the advertisement is attested to by the fact that voices as authoritative and so little inclined to publicly break its neutrality as that of Lieutenant General (ret.) James Mattis, Secretary of Defense of the Trump Administration until his premature relief in December 2018, or that of Lieutenant General (ret.) Martin Dempsey, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Board between 2011 and 2015, have spoken out against this advertisement , thus joining the statements made by former presidents as diverse as George W. Bush and George W. Bush, who have spoken out against it. ) Martin Dempsey, head of the board Chiefs of Staff between 2011 and 2015, have spoken out against this employment, joining the statements made by former presidents as diverse as George W. Bush and Barak Obama, or those of the Secretary of Defense himself, Mark Esper, whose position against the possibility of using the Armed Forces in this status has recently been made clear.

The presidential advertisement has opened a crisis in the usually stable US civil-military relations (CMR). Beyond the scope of the United States, the question, of deep significance and affecting the core of CMR in a democratic state, is none other than whether or not to use the Armed Forces in public order or, in a broader sense, domestic tasks, and the risks associated with such a decision.

In the 1990s, Michael C. Desch, one of the leading authorities in the field of CMR, identified the correlation between the missions entrusted to the Armed Forces by a state and the quality of its civil-military relations, concluding that externally oriented military missions are the most conducive to healthy CMRs, while internal missions that are not purely military are likely to generate various pathologies in such relations.

In general, the existence of the Armed Forces in any state is primarily due to the need to protect it against any threat from outside. In order to carry out such a high task with guarantees, armies are equipped and trained for the lethal employment force, unlike police forces, which are equipped for a minimal and gradual use of force, which only becomes lethal in the most extreme, exceptional cases. In the first case, it is a matter of confronting an armed enemy that is trying to destroy one's own forces. In the second, force is used to confront citizens who may, in some cases, use violence, but who remain, after all, compatriots.

When military forces are employed in tasks of this nature, there is always a risk that they will produce a response in accordance with their training, which may be excessive in a law and order scenario. The consequences, in such a case, can be very negative. In the worst case scenario, and above all other considerations, the employment may result in a perhaps avoidable loss of life. Moreover, from the point of view of CMR, the soldiers that the nation submission for its external defense could become, in the eyes of the citizenry, the enemies of those they are supposed to defend.

The damage this can produce for civil-military relations, for national defense and for the quality of a state's democracy is difficult to measure, but it can be intuited if one considers that, in a democratic system, the Armed Forces cannot live without the support of their fellow citizens, who see them as a beneficial force for the nation and to whose members they extend their recognition as its loyal and disinterested servants.

Abuse in the employment the Armed Forces in domestic tasks may, in addition, deteriorate their already complex preparation, weakening them for the execution of the missions for which they were conceived. It may also end up conditioning their organization and equipment to the detriment, once again, of their essential tasks.

On the other hand, and although today we are far away and safe from such a scenario, this employment may gradually lead to a progressive expansion of the tasks of the Armed Forces, which would extend their control over purely civilian activities, and which would see their range of tasks increasingly broadened, displacing other agencies in their execution, which could, undesirably, atrophy.

In such a scenario, the military institution could cease to be perceived as a disinterested actor and come to be seen as another competitor with particular interests, and with a control capacity that it could use for its own benefit, even if this were opposed to the nation's interest. Such a status, in time, would lead hand in hand to the politicization of the Armed Forces, from which would follow another damage to the CMR that would be difficult to quantify.

Decisions such as the one targeted by President Trump may ultimately place members of the Armed Forces in the grave moral dilemma of using force against their fellow citizens, or disobeying the President's orders. Because of its gravity, therefore, the decision to commit the Armed Forces to such tasks should be made on an exceptional basis and after careful consideration.

It is difficult to determine whether the advertisement made by President Trump was just a product of his temperament or whether, on the contrary, it contained a real intention to use the Armed Forces in the disturbances that are dotting the country, in a decision that has not occurred since 1992. In any case, the president, and those advising him, must assess the damage that can be inferred from it for civil-military relations and, therefore, for the American democratic system. This without forgetting, moreover, the responsibility that falls on America's shoulders in the face of the reality that a part of humanity looks to the country as a reference letter and a model to imitate.

[Joseph S. Nye. Do Morals Matter? Presidents and Foreign Policy from FDR to Trump.. Oxford University Press. New York, 2020. 254 pp]

review / Emili J. Blasco

The question that serves as the degree scroll for the new book by Jospeh Nye, known to the general public for having coined the expression "the most important thing in the world". soft powerThe author's entrance is not a concession to secularized thinking, but rather a lack of boldness in asserting the importance of ethical reflection in foreign policy decisions, an importance that, despite the question mark, one senses is defended by the author.

In fact, the question itself is a core topic in the discipline of international relations. A common approach is to see the world scenario as a conjunction of states that struggle against each other, in an anarchic dynamic where the law of the strongest prevails. Internally, the state may be driven by criteria of the common good, attending to the different needs of its inhabitants and making decisions at the national or local level through democratic processes. But beyond its own borders, does the legitimacy granted by its own voters not require the president to guarantee the security of its citizens against external threats and to safeguard the national interest against that of other states?

The fact that the state is the basic subject in international relations marks, of course, a dividing line between the two spheres. And therefore the question of whether the ethical discernment demanded of the leader in the domestic sphere should also be demanded of him in the foreign sphere is fully pertinent.

Only from extreme positions that consider that the state is a wolf for the state, applying the Hobbesian principle to international order (disorder) (and here there would be no supra-state to discipline this tendency of the state-individual), can it be defended that amorality governs all against all. On a lower rung is the so-called offensive realism and, on a lower rung, defensive realism.

Nye, a scholar of international relations, believes that realist theory is a good starting point for any president when defining a country's foreign policy, given that he must be guided especially by the ethics of responsibility, as he fulfills a "fiduciary role." "The first moral duty of a president is that of a trustee, and this begins with ensuring the survival and security of the democracy that elected him." But from this point on, the possibilities for international partnership and mutual benefit must also be explored, not closing the entrance to approaches of liberalism or cosmopolitanism.

"When survival is at stake, realism is a necessary basis for a moral foreign policy, though not sufficient," says Nye, for whom it is a "matter of Degree." "Since there is never perfect security, the moral question is what Degree of security should be assured before other values such as welfare, identity or rights become part of a president's foreign policy." He adds, "Many of the most difficult moral decisions are not all-or-nothing [...] The difficult moral decisions are in the middle. While it is important to be cautious about the dangers of a slippery slope, moral decisions rest on matching ends and means with each other." He concludes that "the maintenance of international institutions and regimes is part of moral leadership".

From the very beginning of the book, Nye uses the three conditions that have traditionally been used in moral treatises to judge an action as ethically good: that the intention, the means and the consequences are good at the same time.

Using these three yardsticks, the author analyzes the foreign policy of each of the U.S. presidents since World War II and establishes a final ranking that combines both the morality of their actions on the international scene and the effectiveness of their policies (because it is possible to have an ethical foreign policy that does little to further a country's national interests).

Thus, of the fourteen presidents, he considers that the four with the best grade in that combination are Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower and Bush I. In the middle he places Reagan, Kennedy, Ford, Carter, Clinton and Obama. And as the four worst he mentions Johnson, Nixon, Bush II and ("tentatively incomplete") Trump. Having made the ranking, Nye warns that he may have given precedence to the Democratic administrations for which he worked.

The book is a quick review of the foreign policy of each presidency, highlighting the presidents' doctrines, their successes and failures (as well as examining the ethical component), so it is also interesting as a succinct history of U.S. international relations over the past eighty years.

The aspect of morality perhaps lacks a greater academic foundation, since it is a discipline that has been especially studied since the scholastic era. But Nye's purpose was not to delve into this subject, but to offer a brief study of applied morality.

Reading Nye is always thought-provoking. Among other reflections he makes might be the idea of the new prospects that would have opened up for the world if particularly propitious times had coincided in the calendar. In particular, he suggests that if Brezhnev and his gerontocratic generation had left earlier and the USSR had also been beset by serious economic problems earlier, Gorbachev might have come to power coinciding with Carter's presidency; what they would have achieved together is, however, the realm of speculation.