signals

WASHINGTON — President Clinton signaled Tuesday that he might be able to reach agreement with the new Republican congressional majority on school prayer.

“I’ll be glad to discuss it with them,” the President said at a press conference at an economic conference in Jakarta, Indonesia. “I want to see what the details (of a school prayer proposal) are. I certainly wouldn’t rule it out. It depends on what it says.”

In Washington, White House Chief of Staff Leon E. Panetta indicated further agreement with GOP leaders, saying that trade and congressional reform are two issues that the two sides can agree on.

Emerging from the first post-election meeting between an Administration official and the new Republican leadership, Panetta rejected proposed Republican tax cuts, however, saying that they would swell the federal deficit and weaken what has been a strengthening economy.

“I have always supported voluntary prayer in the schools,” Clinton said in Jakarta. “I have always thought that the question was when does voluntary prayer really become coercive to people who have different religious views from those who are in the majority in any particular classroom. . . .

“Obviously, I want to reserve judgment, I want to see the specifics. . . . And again, I would say this ought to be something that unites the American people, not something that divides us. . . . The American people do not want us to be partisan, but they do want us to proceed in a way that is consistent with their values and that communicates those values to our children.”

Panetta made an hourlong “courtesy call” on Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), who is expected to be Speaker of the House in the next Congress, and Sen. Bob Dole (R-Kan.), who is expected to be Senate majority leader, at Dole’s Capitol Hill offices.

After the session, Panetta said that if the Republicans are serious about balancing the federal budget in five years, their proposed tax cuts and increased defense spending would require cutting a trillion dollars from the federal government at the same time.

“Whatever the outcome of the election, we all have a responsibility of helping to move this country forward,” Panetta said. “We have to be very straight with the American people.”

Neither Dole nor Gingrich commented after the meeting.

Earlier, Alice Rivlin, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, told reporters at a breakfast meeting that the proposed Republican tax cuts, if enacted, would swell inflation, ignite interest rates and “probably throw the economy into recession.”

The likely new chairman of the House Budget Committee, Rep. John R. Kasich (R-Ohio), accused her of “alarmist and inflammatory” rhetoric.

Panetta called the congressional vote scheduled for later this month on a new world trade agreement “the first test of the relationship” between the Democratic Administration and the new Republican majority in Congress–although that majority will not be seated until January.

Gingrich and other GOP leaders have generally indicated that they will support the trade agreement in the lame-duck session. But Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), the likely new chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, signaled his intention to delay consideration of the pact.

In a letter to the President, Helms threatened to make trouble later on foreign policy matters unless Clinton agrees to put off the trade vote until next year.

Helms’ letter said: “I can assure that it will have an exceedingly positive effect on my making certain that the Administration positions on all foreign policy matters during the 104th Congress will be considered fully and fairly.”

Panetta said that there are other reforms that the Clinton Administration and the Republican leadership agree on, including lobbying reform, campaign finance reform, welfare reform, health care reform and the line-item veto. Referring obliquely to the Helms threat, he added that foreign affairs is an area where it is “extremely important” that Congress and the White House work together.

He also said that he praised Gingrich for his promise to cut House committee staffs by one-third and noted that the Clinton Administration had cut the White House staff by 25% and the executive branch by some 270,000 jobs.

But on economic policy, Panetta declared: “As the President has made clear . . . the important thing is that (tax cuts) are paid for, and that they not increase the deficit. . . .

“That is a very fundamental discipline that we have put in place in the budget process here on Capitol Hill and throughout the government,” he said, and if tax cuts are not matched with spending cuts, “you are simply increasing taxes on our kids for the future.”

In their “contract with America,” House Republicans have promised what they call a middle-class tax cut, including a repeal of the so-called “marriage tax,” a tax credit to families making up to $200,000 per year for each child they have, and broader eligibility for individual retirement accounts.

Other Republicans, including the probable new chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Bill Archer (R-Tex.), have proposed cutting capital gains taxes.

“Whatever we do is going to be paid for by spending cuts,” Archer said in an interview on “The McNeil/Lehrer NewsHour.” He suggested that $50 billion could be saved over five years in welfare reform alone. “This is tough, but the American people are prepared for us to be tough.”

* POLITICAL VETERANS: Majority in new Congress have past political experience. A20

‘Contract with America’: The full text of the Republican “contract with America” is available on the TimesLink on-line service. Also available are biographies of Newt Gingrich and up-and-coming GOP leaders. Sign on and click “Special Reports” in the Nation & World section.

Details on Times electronic services, B4

The abduction of Nicolás Maduro is part of a larger pattern. It belongs to the same doctrine that flattened Gaza under the language of “self-defence” and threatened Iran with “locked and loaded” retaliation while bypassing diplomacy and international law. In each case, Washington has used force not as a last resort but as a sharp instrument of statecraft, corroding the norms it once claimed to uphold. From Gaza’s ruins to Tehran’s anxieties and now Caracas’s violation, the message is unmistakable: sovereignty is conditional, law is optional, and power is the ultimate decider, echoing the famous phrase of the Florentine Niccolo Machiavelli: “A prince never lacks legitimate reasons to break his promise.” This is not containment. It is a contagion designed to restructure the Middle East and the Global South in ways the United States can no longer control.

The world recoiled in horror not because Donald Trump seized Nicolás Maduro, but because the United States kidnapped a sitting head of state. This was not law enforcement. It was a flagrant display of imperial power that shreds the last remaining threads of an international order based on sovereignty and the rule of law. The avalanche of global condemnation gathering force across Latin America, Africa, and much of the Global South reflects a more profound truth. This act cannot be justified under any moral, legal, or strategic framework.

To dress the operation up as a “war on drugs” is a grotesque lie. Washington knows Venezuela is not the primary source of the narcotics devastating American communities. Mexico holds that distinction. Venezuela may be a transit point, but it is not the engine of the crisis. The drug narrative functions as a fig leaf, a familiar pretext used whenever the United States decides to impose its will by force. It is the same feeble justification that accompanied interventions from Panama to Honduras, from Iraq to Afghanistan.

This was not about narcotics. It was about power.

The capture of Maduro marks a dangerous escalation: the extraction of a foreign leader under the banner of domestic prosecution. Even Washington’s refusal to recognize Maduro as Venezuela’s legitimate president does not grant it the right to violate another country’s territorial integrity. The UN Charter is unambiguous. The use of force against a sovereign state is illegal except in self-defence or with Security Council authorization. Neither condition exists here.

Legal scholars have been blunt. The operation violates Article 2(4) of the UN Charter and risks constituting a crime of aggression. By normalizing regime change through force, the United States invites other powers to follow suit. Washington can abduct leaders it dislikes; why should Beijing, Moscow, or Ankara restrain themselves? The erosion of norms does not stop at one border.

In the US, the constitutional damage is equally severe. Congress alone has the authority to declare war, yet Trump launched what is effectively a regime-change operation without congressional authorization. This is executive overreach of the most dangerous kind, hollowing out the separation of powers and turning military force into a presidential tool of convenience. It is not a strength. It is recklessness.

Trump styles himself as the “President of Peace,” boasting that he ended eight wars. Yet his actions tell a different story. Venezuela is now destabilized, its region inflamed, its sovereignty trampled. The Southern Hemisphere has taken note. For countries long scarred by American interventions, this episode confirms their worst suspicions: that US rhetoric about democracy masks a hunger for control.

The economic implications are impossible to ignore. Venezuela holds the world’s largest proven oil reserves. Within days of Maduro’s capture, US officials were already discussing Venezuela’s oil future on global markets. This is the Monroe Doctrine reborn in its crudest form: this hemisphere is ours, and we will take what we want.

History offers no comfort here. Vietnam consumed fifteen years and millions of lives. Iraq shattered an entire region and birthed endless war. Panama and Honduras left scars that never healed. Each intervention was justified as necessary, temporary, and righteous. Each ended in strategic failure and moral disgrace.

The ghosts of the Bay of Pigs in Cuba linger. That humiliating fiasco taught the world that American power, when untethered from reality, defeats itself. Today, as Trump eyes Greenland and toys with fantasies that would fracture NATO, the same hubris is on display. The difference is that now the damage spreads faster and wider.

International reaction has been swift. Emergency sessions at the United Nations exposed Washington’s isolation. Allies wavered. Adversaries smiled. As Napoleon once advised, “When your enemy is making mistakes, let him continue”. In Beijing, Moscow, and beyond, leaders are laughing as the United States dismantles its own credibility.

The legal process ahead only deepens the peril. Maduro’s trial, if it proceeds, will inevitably raise questions of head-of-state immunity and jurisdiction. A ruling ordering his release would not merely embarrass Trump; it would detonate his presidency. Trump himself seems to sense this fragility, publicly warning that failure in the upcoming elections could lead to his impeachment. The strongman façade cracks easily when power depends on impunity.

What remains is the damage to America’s standing. This operation tells the world that US law is selective, its principles negotiable, its commitments disposable. It confirms that might has replaced right, and that international law applies only to the weak. Trump, obviously, has not read Dwight D. Eisenhower’s prophetic warning: “A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.”

Trump’s kidnapping of Maduro will not be remembered as a victory against crime. It will be remembered as a sad chapter when the United States abandoned even the pretence of moral leadership and dismissed the warning of the first American president, George Washington, against “foreign entanglement.” It accelerated the decline of an empire already drowning in debt, addicted to foreign adventures, and blind to the cost of its own arrogance.

The tragedy is not only Venezuela’s. It is America’s. An empire that kidnaps leaders in the name of justice has already lost the very thing it claims to defend.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.

Jan. 1 (Asia Today) — Kim Tae-woo, director of nuclear security research at the Korea Institute for Military Affairs, said the security outlook on the Korean Peninsula remains grave as North Korea continues missile activity and China advances new weapons systems.

In a column, Kim pointed to North Korea’s missile launches late last year and its unveiling of what he described as a nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarine under construction. He also cited reports of a Chinese hypersonic glide vehicle test.

Kim said the White House in December released a four-chapter National Security Strategy that he described as notably different in tone and language from past versions. He said it explicitly embraces “America First” and frames policy around U.S. national interests.

Kim said the strategy argues that post-World War II U.S. leaders wrongly believed taking on global burdens served U.S. interests. He said it criticizes free trade for weakening U.S. industry and portrays alliances in transactional terms, arguing some allies shifted security costs to Washington or drew it into conflicts not tied to core U.S. interests.

Kim wrote that the strategy’s stated goals include U.S. survival and security, neutralizing external threats and unfair trade, maintaining the strongest military and nuclear arsenal, developing next-generation missile defense, sustaining a dynamic economy, protecting industrial and energy capacity and preserving leadership in science, technology and soft power.

He said the document defines core U.S. interests as maintaining dominance in the Western Hemisphere, protecting freedom of navigation and supply lines in the Indo-Pacific, restoring what it calls Western civilization’s identity and self-reliance in Europe, preventing hostile forces from dominating Middle Eastern energy and preserving U.S. leadership in cutting-edge science.

Kim said the strategy lists U.S. political institutions, economic innovation, financial leadership, technological and military strength, alliance ties, geographic advantages and natural resources as key tools. He said it also lays out guiding principles including a focus on core security interests, “peace through strength,” a preference for non-intervention and demands for greater allied defense spending.

On regional policy, Kim said the strategy describes the Western Hemisphere as a zone where the United States will seek to maintain dominance, prevent external threats and block illegal immigration, drug trafficking and human trafficking, while expanding partnerships and, if needed, redeploying forces to address urgent threats.

For Asia, Kim said the strategy emphasizes economic security and military deterrence while criticizing past assumptions that integrating China into the global economy would lead it to accept a rules-based order. He said it targets China’s state-led industrial practices, intellectual property theft and efforts to restrict access to resources such as rare earths. He added that it also says the United States will not accept persistent trade deficits with allies including Japan, South Korea, Australia, Canada and European partners.

On deterrence, Kim said the document maintains existing U.S. declaratory policy on Taiwan and calls deterring conflict in the Taiwan Strait a U.S. interest, arguing this requires conventional military superiority and greater allied cost-sharing and roles. He said it also warns that rival control of the South China Sea would pose a serious threat to U.S. interests and calls for cooperation from Asian nations from India to Japan to keep sea lanes open.

Kim said the Europe section urges European countries to reclaim identity and self-reliance and criticizes what it calls weakening economic weight and lax immigration policies. He said it presses Europe to pursue strategic stability with Russia, treat NATO less as an ever-expanding alliance and open markets to U.S. goods while offering fair treatment to U.S. companies.

Kim said the Middle East and Africa sections are comparatively brief, focusing on burden-sharing and limiting long-term intervention. He said the document argues the Middle East’s strategic value has declined due to increased U.S. oil production, while emphasizing preventing hostile control of energy and maritime routes such as the Strait of Hormuz, countering terrorism, supporting Israel and expanding the Abraham Accords. On Africa, Kim said it calls for selective engagement tied to resource security.

Kim argued the strategy no longer reflects the image of the United States as an “Uncle Sam” defender of liberal democracy and human rights. He said it does not emphasize strengthened combined defense and extended deterrence, and he wrote that it does not mention North Korea’s nuclear program or the North Korean threat. He said South Korea appears only a few times, largely in contexts that call for greater allied defense burdens and fair trade.

Kim said South Korea has limited options, even if concerns grow about the reliability of U.S. commitments after what he described as a blunt statement that the era of America carrying the world order is over. He wrote that South Korea should treat a “changing America” as the new normal, keep the alliance as the cornerstone of its security and approach talks on tariffs, investment and alliance modernization as critical.

The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of this publication.

– Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI

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