Beyond Labels

The Trump Administration has made substantial progress in broadening the number of Muslim-majority countries normalizing their diplomatic relations with Israel. But that progress has come at the cost of numerous “side-deals,” providing country-specific incentives. Several of the incentives offered are considered controversial. So this week’s topic will be:

Should the Biden Administration disavow agreements the Trump Administration has made with various countries in exchange for normalization of relations with Israel?

We can also discuss the parliamentary turmoil in Israel and how/whether that should affect the calculus.

Michael Sinclair has provided a handful of brief articles on the subject (all PDF’d for our discussion):

• Trump Incentives for Signing Peace Accords With Israel Could Be at Risk (NY Times)
• Trump’s Mideast deals are good for Israel. But they involve bad trade-offs (WaPo Opinion)

• As a Parting gift to Israel, the Trump Administration Pushes Sudan and Morocco to Recognized Israel (Wilson Center)
• Experts react: What the Morocco-Israel deal means for the Middle East (Atlantic Council)
• Israel, Morocco agree to normalize relations in US-brokered deal (Al Jazeera)
• Analyzing Trump’s Middle East peace (Jerusalem Post)

Remember: If you’d like to participate in the Zoom discussion, register on the Blue Hill Public Library events calendar.

As a follow-up to our discussion a couple of weeks ago about what President-elect Biden’s cabinet picks say about his upcoming Administration, we’ll focus in on the Secretary of Defense nominee and some people’s expressed concerns about how recently he retired from the Navy.

The discussion will be centered around this Op-Ed piece by Dennis Blair, former DNI and a Navy man himself. In the attached PDF, I attached both Blair’s commentary and some of the comments in response.

If you haven’t re-joined the Beyond Labels discussion (for now, via Zoom), you can register on the Blue Hill Public Library’s events calendar to get the Zoom link. We meet from 10:00am to noon every Monday.

On Dec. 14, we’ll explore the paths to implementing “universal healthcare” in the U.S. We’ll assume that “universal” coverage is the consensus goal, and discuss how to get there.

Paths

• Should it be done with a giant leap? Strong advocates seem to think so, but there are lots of unknowns (changes in behavior of providers, patients, others; cost; etc.).
• Should it be done incrementally, such as by expanding Medicare to cover broader age groups?
• Should a single system be implemented nationally, or should the details (or even adoption) be left to the individual states?

To Where?

• Should the U.S. create a unique system? <How would it be different from others? Why?>
• Should it copy one of the existing models of other countries? <Which one?>
• Should it expand an existing program (like Medicare)? <Does Medicare currently “work” for the country?>

I’m sure we’ll have a robust discussion and will hopefully gain some insights into the risks and opportunities with such a transformation.