360 - Travel Bans are Counter-Productive and Loaded with Hate and Harm

Haitians need a place of refuge, not a thoroughly chilling ban on entering the United States. Afghans who fought alongside Americans for a decade in a bitter war against the Taliban, deserve to settle in the U. S. If Burmese or Christian Karen and Karenni from Myanmar can escape military rule and ceaseless warfare in Myanmar, we should welcome them. What is this hatred of foreigners, of people who are different and of different hues than ourselves?

This Monday morning Trump's wholesale travel ban, and not only on Muslim majority countries, goes into effect. In addition to the places just mentioned, the Trump complete ban (presumably engineered by deputy white house chief of staff Stephen Miller) applies to Chad, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, and -- mysteriously --the Republic of Congo.

Trump says citizens of those countries characteristically overstay their visas. He also somehow blames those countries, but not our long-term dictatorial ally --Egypt-- for last week's killing in Boulder, CO of Jewish protestors by an Egyptian young man who had long overstayed his visa. "We don't want them," Trump declared in one of his usual antagonistic fusillades.

But China does. Already China welcomes at least 50 percent more African students than the U.S. does. Trump's new bans, plus his meritless attack on Harvard and other American universities, will give even further advantage to China in the battle for Africa's hearts and minds. Why should we lose out needlessly? Soft power seeds the future.

There is no evidence that Congolese overstay their visas more than Algerians or Moroccans. Indeed, citizens of the Republic of Congo typically want to travel to France, the former colonial power. That Congo has hardly any relations with the U. S., and to prevent the occasional inhabitant of that Congo from visiting Washington or Boston serves no evident policy goals. Can Miller and Trump have confused the Republic of Congo (capital: Brazzaville) with the much larger and much more troubled Democratic Republic of Congo (capital: Kinshasa)?

Trump's attack on Brazzaville, as well as his bans on the other named nations, plus the announced partial bans on travelers from Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela, illustrate the kinds of unthinking ignorance that is inherent in the White House. But it also reflects Trump's gutting of the State Department, with the loss of decades of institutional knowledge. In previous institutional eras, the Congos would not have been confused, Somalia and Chad -- potential allies in pursuit of American strategic interests in northern Africa -- would not have been singled out. Nor would harmless Sierra Leone and Togo, pro-American until this morning, have been singled out for obloquy.

A case could easily be made for extra scrutiny of visa granting to Venezuelans, Iranians, Libyans, and Sudanese. After all, the Sudan is still consumed by a conflict that has cost at least 150,000 lives since April 2023. A civil war rages that pits a United Arab Emirates' supported militia called the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) against the regular Sudanese army. Both sides want control of gold, Sudan's lucrative major resource. The ethnically Arab RSF also seeks to push African tribespeople out of Darfur, where gold is mined, into next door Chad. Genocidal conditions prevail, just as they did in 2003-2005. We certainly want to prevent the perpetrators of genocide from entering the U. S. easily. But why not ease the way for refugees from Sudan now that it is in turmoil? Compared to many African domains, before the war Sudan could claim a thriving middle class that had made striking contributions to Western thought and culture. This is a time to welcome refugees, not bar them.

With a Cuban refugee as secretary of state, barring new Cubans should make no sense. Indeed, welcoming Cuban boat people once was an official policy to show how Cubans flee communism for a better way of life in the U.S. Why not continue to encourage Cubans to find a better life in the U.S.? Cubans have already contributed significantly to making America great. Why cut them off now, in a show of bluster?

Equatorial Guinea and Eritrea are harsh dictatorships whose methods of rule and deprivations of their peoples should publicly be singled out for criticism by Trump. But banning those who can somehow manage to get away should appeal to Washington. Cutting them off serves no American foreign policy security purpose. Nor does the ban on Turkmenistan, a madcap dictatorship and major producer of natural gas, accomplish any clear foreign policy goal. Does Trump even know where it is and what it does? Getting Turkmenistan on our side could help in the battle against Russia and Iran. But in a diminished and ignored State Department, dare anyone say?

None of this (or almost any other) Trump initiative makes sense. But this travel ban business only shows how cruelly and foolishly he can flex his power. Today's move is therefore, as we academics say, expressive rather than instrumental. In other words, it has no strategic value and is at its most deficient regarding Haiti.

We ruled Haiti undemocratically and racially between 1915 and 1934. We helped to facilitate the harsh despotic rule of Michigan-trained Francois (Papa Doc) Duvalier and his hapless son, Jean-Claude (Baby Doc) Duvalier in the 1960s and 1970s. We have never slowed the illegal export of guns of mass destruction from Florida to Haiti. Gangs now use those guns to terrorize Haitians and ransack, kidnap for ransom, and kill for sport within Port-au-Prince, the capital. We owe Haiti assistance to eradicate the gangs and return the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere to security and safety. Banning all Haitians on spurious grounds does a disservice to our obligations to Haitians and to the modern observance of protecting close neighbors that is intrinsic to today's version of the Monroe Doctrine.

Americans, as well as Haitians, could thank Trump profusely for making their lives more miserable than before. The same complaint should be issued against the bans on most of the other named countries, excepting only places like Iran and Venezuela. They serve little purpose, are scattershot, and in both the long- and short-runs, counter-productive. They make the U.S. less safe, less attractive. And China scores another one of our own goals!

Subscribers: I will be in Sweden this week, again without a computer. But this Newsletter will return next week. Please stay tuned.