The New Yorker

The Miracle of Breeding a Panda Cub During a Pandemic

By Robin Wright

In a year of tortured politics, nationwide protests, and a highly contagious pandemic, our troubled republic finally has something to celebrate. Washington, D.C., has a panda cub. Mei Xiang, a mellow matriarch who weighs in at two hundred and thirty pounds, gave birth to a tiny, hairless pink cub weighing just ounces, at 6:35 p.m. Friday, at the National Zoo. The wee panda, the size of a butter stick, introduced itself with a howling squawk. The birth defied the zoological odds—Mei’s advanced age, the life-long failure of her partner panda, Tian Tian, to figure out how to mate, the zoo’s inability to extract fresh sperm from him fast, and, especially, the many complications from the covid-19 pandemic. A week after the pandemic forced the National Zoo to close, on March 14th, Mei began to ovulate. Most of the zoo’s staff were ordered to stay at home or reduce hours. In a race against time, a small team of reproduction specialists—all willing to risk the rules of social distancing—thawed eight hundred million sperm to artificially inseminate Mei, knowing that it probably wouldn’t work. “It’s overcoming the odds, and if there was ever a need for a sense of overcoming the odds, it’s now,” Brandie Smith, the zoo’s deputy director, told me. “People need this. It’s the story of hope, and the story of success, and the story of joy.” Read on....

 https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/the-miracle-of-breeding-a-panda-cub-in-a-pandemic

The New Yorker

Israel's New Peace Deal Transforms the Middle East 

By Robin Wright

In 1982, a Palestinian fighter told me a dark joke on the day that the Israeli invasion of Lebanon forced six thousand P.L.O. guerrillas to retreat on ships for distant lands. The story began with God telling President Ronald Reagan, the Soviet leader, Leonid Brezhnev, and the P.L.O. chief, Yasir Arafat, that he would answer one question from each of them. Reagan went first. “How long will it be before capitalism rules the world?” he asked. God replied, “A hundred years.” Reagan began to cry. “Why?” God said. “Because it won’t happen in my lifetime,” the President responded. Brezhnev then asked, “How long will it be before the whole world is Communist?” God replied, “Two hundred years.” Brezhnev began to cry because that, too, wouldn’t happen in his lifetime. Then Arafat asked, “God, how long will it be before there is a state for my people in Palestine?” And God cried.

On Thursday, the White House announced a historic agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, an oil-rich sheikhdom and long-time ally of the Palestinians, to normalize diplomatic relations. The surprise deal—expected to be signed at a White House ceremony in the coming weeks—will include opening embassies, trade and technology exchanges, direct flights and tourism, and coöperation on energy, security, and intelligence. In Tel Aviv, the city hall lit up with side-by-side flags of Israel and the U.A.E. The Israeli President, Reuven Rivlin, invited the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohammed bin Zayed, to visit. Read on...

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/israel-peace-deal-united-arab-emirates-transforms-the-middle-east

The New Yorker

 After Twin Explosions, 
an “Apocalypse” in Lebanon

By Robin Wright

Pity Lebanon. The charming Mediterranean nation, smaller than Connecticut, survived a fifteen-year civil war, from 1975 to 1990, that became a battlefield for the entire Middle East—sucking in arms, armies, and issues from around the world. It has endured bombings, hostage-takings, and mass killings by dozens of militias, including the powerful P.L.O. and Hezbollah, both of which used Lebanese soil in order to fight Israel. It has navigated the labyrinthine politics of eighteen religious sects, each officially recognized and allocated proportionate shares of government jobs. It picked up the pieces after the assassinations of Presidents and Prime Ministers, Cabinet members, and Members of Parliament and occupations by Syrian and Israeli troops. It’s been rocked by a series of national protests—from the Cedar Revolution, in 2005, that ousted one government, to the October, 2019, uprising that forced out another Prime Minister. For decades, Lebanon has defied the odds. During an interview on his old Comedy Central show, Stephen Colbert asked me which of the dozen wars that I’ve covered was my favorite. No question: Lebanon and its strife, for my wonderment of that country’s creative, resilient people and its physical beauty as well as the epic political stakes for the country, the region, and the world.

No longer. Lebanon is now on the verge of collapse. It was already a failing state before twin explosions ripped through Beirut’s scenic port, shortly after rush hour began, at 6 p.m. on Tuesday. The second blast set off a billowing mushroom cloud, reminiscent of a nuclear bomb, and registered seismic waves equivalent to a 3.3-magnitude earthquake. The explosion was heard as far away as Cyprus, an island more than a hundred and twenty miles to the northwest. The Lebanese government appealed to every ambulance in the country to head for Beirut. Read on...

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/after-twin-blasts-an-apocalypse-in-lebanon

The New Yorker

 Is America Becoming a Banana Republic?

By Robin Wright

In the early nineteen-hundreds, the American writer O. Henry coined the term “banana republic” in a series of short stories, most famously in one about the fictional country of Anchuria. It was based on his experience in Honduras, where he had fled for a few months, to avoid prosecution in Texas, for embezzling money from the bank where he worked. The term—which originally referred to a politically unstable country run by a dictator and his cronies, with an economy dependent on a single product—took on a life of its own. Over the past century, “banana republic” has evolved to mean any country (with or without bananas) that has a ruthless, corrupt, or just plain loopy leader who relies on the military and destroys state institutions in an egomaniacal quest for prolonged power. I’ve covered plenty of them, including Idi Amin’s Uganda, in the nineteen-seventies, Muammar Qaddafi’s Libya, in the nineteen-eighties, and Carlos Menem’s Argentina, in the nineteen-nineties.

During the heated Presidential campaign of 2016, the term made its way into mainstream American politics, often glibly. President Trump invoked it in October, 2016. “This election will determine whether we remain a free country in the truest sense of the word or we become a corrupt banana republic controlled by large donors and foreign governments,” he told a cheering crowd in Florida. After the second Presidential debate, in October, Robby Mook, the campaign manager for Hillary Clinton, countered, “Donald Trump thinks that the Presidency is like some banana republic dictatorship where you can lock up your political opponents.” The phrase has become an undercurrent in the national political debate ever since.

Over the past week, however, the President’s response to the escalating protests over the killing of George Floyd has deepened the debate about what is happening to America. Read on....

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/is-america-becoming-a-banana-republic

The New Yorker

 Why Trump Will Never Win 
His New Cold War with China

By Robin Wright

Last week, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited the Nixon Presidential Library, a nine-acre compound in Yorba Linda, California, which was partially reopened, amid the pandemic, just for the occasion. Pompeo placed a wreath of red, white, and blue flowers at Richard Nixon’s grave. He toured the museum, where he was photographed at an exhibit featuring life-size statues of Nixon reaching out to shake the hand of Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai, during that historic first visit by an American President to China, in 1972. After his tour, Pompeo walked to a dais overlooking the parking lot—where folding chairs for a small audience were set up six feet apart, in spaces normally reserved for tourist buses—and angrily declared that Nixon’s outreach to China a half century ago had utterly failed. He called on allies to create a new nato-like coalition to confront the People’s Republic and stopped just short of calling for regime change. Basically, he declared a new Cold War. Read on....

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/why-trump-will-never-win-his-new-cold-war-with-china

The New Yorker

 Trump’s Impeachment Revenge: Vindman Is Bullied Into Retiring

By Robin Wright 

Lieutenant Colonel Alexander Vindman, in full-dress Army uniform and with a Purple Heart pinned to his chest, ended his opening statement during the impeachment hearings on President Trump last fall by addressing his father. “Dad, my sitting here today in the U.S. Capitol, talking to our elected officials, is proof that you made the right decision, forty years ago, to leave the Soviet Union and come here to the United States of America, in search of a better life for our family,” he said. “Do not worry—I will be fine for telling the truth.” It was one of the most memorable moments in the historic hearings. With only the family’s suitcases and seven hundred and fifty dollars to his name, Vindman’s father had brought his three young sons and their grandmother to the United States in 1979, shortly after his wife died. All three Vindman boys ended up serving in the U.S. military, out of a “deep sense of gratitude,” as Vindman testified. Over the next four decades, Vindman amassed impeccable credentials: a Harvard degree, a dozen medals for military valor, diplomatic posts at the U.S. Embassies in Russia and Ukraine, and positions as a Russia specialist for the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and at the National Security Council. Vindman and his twin brother, Yevgeny, were even featured in a PBS documentary by Ken Burns.

Read on....

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/trumps-impeachment-revenge-alexander-vindman-is-bullied-into-retiring

The New Yorker

 To the World, We’re Now America the Racist and Pitiful

By Robin Wright

The real saga of the Statue of Liberty—the symbolic face of America around the world, and the backdrop of New York’s dazzling Fourth of July fireworks show—is an obscure piece of U.S. history. It had nothing to do with immigration. The telltale clue is the chain under Lady Liberty’s feet: she is stomping on it. “In the early sketches, she was also holding chains in her hand,” Edward Berenson, a professor of history at New York University, told me last week. The shackles were later replaced with a tablet noting the date of America’s independence. But the shattered chain under her feet remained.

The statue was the brainchild of Edouard de Laboulaye, a prominent French expert on the U.S. Constitution who also headed the French Anti-Slavery Society. After the Civil War, in 1865, he wanted to commemorate the end of slavery in the U.S., enshrined in the new Thirteenth Amendment, which, in theory, reaffirmed the ideals of freedom—this time for all people—first embodied in the Declaration of Independence. One has to wonder what Laboulaye would think of America today, amid one of the country’s gravest periods of racial turmoil since the Civil War. 

On the eve of America’s anniversary—our two hundred and forty-fourth—much of the world believes that the country is racist, battered, and bruised. “Europe has long been suspicious—even jealous—of the way America has been able to pursue national wealth and power despite its deep social inequities,” Robin Niblett, the director of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, also known as Chatham House, in London, told me. “When you take the Acela and pass through the poorest areas of Baltimore, you can’t believe you’re looking at part of the United States. There’s always been this sense of an underlying flaw in the U.S. system that it was getting away with—that somehow America was keeping just one step ahead of the Grim Reaper.” Read on...

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/to-the-world-were-now-america-the-racist-and-pitiful

The New Yorker

Trump’s Vacuous West Point Address and the Revolt Against It

By Robin Wright

President Trump has enraged the U.S. military—from top to bottom. On June 11th, an angry and mournful letter signed by hundreds of graduates of West Point—spanning from the Class of 1948 to the Class of 2019—was posted on Medium. It addressed the Class of 2020. It cited the current “tumultuous time” in America: more than a hundred thousand deaths from a new disease with no known cure, forty million newly unemployed people, and a nation “hurting from racial, social and human injustice” after the murder of George Floyd. “Desperation, fear, anxiety, anger and helplessness are the daily existence for too many Americans,” the signatories wrote. They warned bluntly of leaders who “betray public faith through deceitful rhetoric, quibbling, or the appearance of unethical behavior.” They reminded students of the cadet honor code, which dictates not to “lie, cheat, or steal,” and not to tolerate those who do. Without naming names, they cited their fellow-graduates who are now in senior government positions and failing to uphold their oath of office. (The Defense Secretary, Mark Esper, and the Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, both graduated in the West Point Class of 1986.) They wrote that their appeal “is not about party; it is about principle.” And, after welcoming the newest class to the Army tradition of the “Long Gray Line,” they concluded, “Our lifetime commitment is to the enduring responsibility expressed in the Cadet Prayer: ‘to choose the harder right instead of the easier wrong, and never to be content with a half-truth when the whole can be won.’ ” Read on...

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/donald-trumps-vacuous-west-point-address-and-the-revolt-against-it

The New Yorker

The Secret Project That Led to Black Lives Matter Murals Coast to Coast

by Robin Wright

This past Thursday, at 6 p.m., Keyonna Jones received an unexpected call from a fellow-artist, about a secret project starting in just a few hours. Was Jones available? The mother of two kids under ten, Jones scrambled to find child care. At eight o’clock, she joined a Zoom call; the lead artist explained that Muriel Bowser, the mayor of Washington, D.C., had commissioned eight artists to paint a mural of fifty-foot-high letters spelling out “Black Lives Matter” across two blocks of the street leading to the White House. “This needed to be perfect,” Jones, the executive director of the Congress Heights Arts and Culture Center, told me. The group plotted how to make the mural—in a bold shade of yellow—where to get supplies, and the logistics of finishing by midday. Several were nervous about the political consequences. “Some were unsure of the possible backlash—if it was a political play between the mayor and President Trump. They didn’t know if the mayor would back them up if something happened, or if President Trump would retaliate,” Jones recalled. Four days earlier, federal and local law-enforcement officials had used flash grenades, chemical spray, and smoke to drive hundreds of mostly peaceful protesters out of the area around the White House so Trump could walk to St. John’s Church and wave a Bible, briefly, in front of photographers. The mural was supposed to finish in front of the church. “In the Zoom call, it got a little uncomfortable,” Jones, who is African-American, recalled. The artists agreed that they would participate only if they could remain anonymous. Jones was the only member of the group who would talk to me on the record. Read on...

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/the-secret-project-that-led-to-black-lives-matter-murals-coast-to-coast

The New Yorker

 Fury at America and Its Values Spreads Globally

By Robin Wright 

America is on the defensive worldwide over the murder of George Floyd and all that the killing implies about race, values, and leadership—not to mention common decency—in the United States. On Sunday, thousands defied a government lockdown in Britain to march through the streets of London—from the famed Trafalgar Square, past the Houses of Parliament, along and across the River Thames, to the U.S. Embassy—to protest the murder of an unarmed black man by white police in Minneapolis, four thousand miles away. The coronavirus pandemic—and its risks—be damned. “The death of George Floyd has rightly ignited fury and anguish not just in the USA but around the world,” London Mayor Sadiq Khan tweeted. “No country, city, police force or institution can be complacent about racism and the impact this has.” He also warned about the dangers of infection from covid-19 at crowded protests. “Lockdown has not been lifted,” he tweeted. “The virus is still out there.” The protest nonetheless went on for hours, including a sit-in in front of the Embassy. Homemade cardboard signs read “White silence is violence” and “Do I matter only after death? #GeorgeFloyd.” Hundreds more turned out in northern Manchester, and more still in the Welsh capital of Cardiff, around its historic castle, to protest racism in America. Three more protests—in a country that is America’s closest ally—are planned over the next week. Read on...

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/after-the-killing-of-george-floyd-fury-at-america-and-its-values-spreads-globally

The New Yorker

 Some Zoos, and Some of Their Animals, May Not Survive the Pandemic

By Robin Wright

In late March, an elegant four-year-old tiger named Nadia, at the Bronx Zoo, developed a dry cough and lost her appetite. The zoo had been closed for eleven days because of the coronavirus pandemic, and no employee had symptoms of the new coronavirus sweeping across New York. Out of an abundance of caution, the veterinary staff tested Nadia in April, as her problems persisted. It was not a simple swab. The zoo had to anesthetize the two-hundred-pound cat and take samples from her nose, throat, and respiratory tract, then ship them off to veterinary labs at Cornell University and the University of Illinois. Nadia is also no ordinary tiger. Malayan tigers are among the world’s most endangered animals; with fewer than two hundred and fifty left in the wild, they are threatened with extinction because of human poaching and loss of habitat. Nadia was born at the Bronx Zoo, as part of its Malayan-tiger breeding program. Her covid-19 test came back positive. By the end of April, seven other big cats—four more tigers, in addition to three lions who live in a separate exhibit—also tested positive, through samples of their feces. The zoo concluded that they had all been exposed to a human, probably a zoo employee, who was asymptomatic. The news about Nadia stunned staff at more than two hundred accredited U.S. zoos (not including animal “exhibitors,” like Joe Exotic, of “Tiger King” fame) and more than ten thousand zoos around the world. Within twenty-four hours, many introduced stricter handling protocols, more protective gear, and social distancing between humans and zoo animals—not just tigers but also other animals now believed to be vulnerable to covid-19, from great apes to ferrets and even skunks.

But Nadia’s test result six weeks ago was only the beginning of an unprecedented series of crises—some existential—faced by zoological parks dedicated to the study and survival of thousands of the Earth’s other animal species. Unlike entertainment centers, movie theatres, or sports stadiums, zoos can’t simply shut their doors or tell staff to work from home. Zoos still have to feed and care for animals—nearly a million, from six thousand species (a thousand of them endangered or threatened) in the United States alone—at a time in which revenues have plummeted to nothing. Read on....

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/some-zoos-and-some-of-their-animals-may-not-survive-the-pandemic

The New Yorker

Can the Middle East Recover from the Coronavirus and Collapsing Oil Prices?

By Robin Wright

A year ago, Iran marked its National Army Day with a flashy display of its military might. As new tensions flared with the Trump Administration, tanks and long-range missiles loaded on flatbed trucks rolled through the streets of Tehran. Neat formations of troops showcased the Army’s diversity—ethnic Turkmen wore fuzzy white-fur hats and maroon robes, and tribal Arabs were in brown capes with black-and-white checkered headdresses. Special-forces soldiers in khaki fatigues and crisp berets goose-stepped past President Hassan Rouhani and the Islamic Republic’s top military brass. This year, it was a very different show—and a different message. With more than a hundred thousand confirmed cases of covid-19 in Iran, the Army Day parade featured troops goose-stepping in hazmat suits and face masks, columns of ambulances, flatbed trucks converted into mobile clinics, and military vehicles spewing huge clouds of disinfectant into the air. Members of the Army band performed—six feet apart. The Iranian President skipped the show. “The enemy now is hidden and doctors and nurses are at the frontlines of the battlefield,” he said, in a message to the nation’s military. “Our army is not a symbol of militarism but a manifestation of supporting the nation and upholding its national interests.”

The Middle East, the world’s most volatile region for more than seven decades, has been ravaged over the past two months by twin disasters—the coronavirus pandemic and the historic collapse of global oil prices. Iran was the region’s original epicenter of the coronavirus. But, by Wednesday, seventeen Arab countries, Iran, and Israel reported a total of more than two hundred and twenty thousand cases, with more than nine thousand dead. Read on....

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/can-the-middle-east-recover-from-the-coronavirus-and-collapsing-oil-prices

The New Yorker

Is America’s “One Nation, Indivisible” Being Killed Off by the Coronavirus?

By Robin Wright

Shortly after noon on Thursday, Dayna Polehanki, a Michigan state senator, was confronted by armed protesters marauding through the capitol, in Lansing, and demanding an end to the coronavirus lockdown. “Directly above me, men with rifles yelling at us,” Polehanki tweeted frantically from the Senate floor. The accompanying picture, shot from her desk, showed men in fatigues, with assault rifles, in the gallery above. “I was a high-school teacher for almost twenty years and I was aware someone could come in and shoot things up. I consider myself a tough gal, but this seemed all too real,” she told me the following day. “When anger is stoked like that, and people have guns, things can go wrong.” She said her hands shook as she took the picture.

The protest erupted as the Michigan legislature debated whether to extend the state of emergency issued by Governor Gretchen Whitmer, which was about to expire. Under Michigan law, all political signs are banned from the capitol, so protesters at the “American Patriot Rally” had to leave their banners and placards at the door, but not their loaded weapons, which are legal to carry in public, even in the legislature. “I’m afraid that is the way it is in Michigan right now,” Polehanki said. Read on....

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/is-americas-one-nation-indivisible-being-killed-off-by-the-coronavirus

The New Yorker

 Who Is “Worthy”? Deaf-Blind People Fear That Doctors Won’t Save Them from the Coronavirus

By Robin Wright

Rebecca Alexander volunteered shortly after Governor Andrew Cuomo appealed for mental-health professionals to help counsel first responders traumatized by the covid-19 crisis. A New York psychotherapist, she has taken calls from a young nurse who had trouble sleeping because she was haunted by the sounds of dying patients gasping for breath. A doctor described getting instructed not to intubate anyone over eighty on the day his mother turned eighty-two. A pediatric nurse who specialized in infant diseases recounted her lack of training after being abruptly transferred to caring for adults in acute respiratory failure. Several confessed their own extreme distress at pushing the limits of their bodies physically and emotionally. “Constantly being on the front lines is taking a toll on them,” she told me.

What none of the people pouring out their problems to Alexander knew is that she is legally deaf and blind—and has her own deep fears about how the new coronavirus threatens the estimated 2.4 million Americans, and millions more across the globe, who, like her, rely on touch to communicate, navigate, and care for themselves. “When you don’t have vision or hearing or both, you rely heavily on other senses,” she said. “For us, that other sense is touch.” But touch is now the most prevalent means of spreading covid-19. Read on...

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/who-is-worthy-deaf-blind-people-fear-that-doctors-wont-save-them-from-the-coronavirus

The New Yorker

 How Much Can the Human Spirit Endure in Isolation?

By Robin Wright

April in Washington, D.C., is normally the month of nature’s renewal—and my favorite—for the pastel blossoms of azaleas and tulips, the shades of green in new grass, the warming temperatures, and the soft light that lingers into evening. This spring, the window is the prism of human existence—looking through the glass and waiting for the pestilence to pass. From my window, I can see a pear tree shedding white flowers to make way for sprouting leaves. Little else is happening on the other side of the pane. As eerie as this spring has already been, Surgeon General Jerome Adams warned on Sunday that this week will be “the hardest and saddest” in most Americans’ lives. “This is going to be our Pearl Harbor moment, our 9/11 moment, only it’s not going to be localized. It’s going to be happening all over the country,” he said, on Fox News.

I began to wonder how much the human spirit can endure—and for how long. We’re only in the first wave of the coronavirus pandemic, with a second wave expected in the fall. “Catastrophizing is really bad for your mental health,” Samuel Paul Veissière, a co-director of the Culture, Mind and Brain Program at McGill University, told me. “You bring depression into being by worrying. And that has an impact on quality of life and immune functions.” To circumvent the numbing fear of becoming the next numeral in a running tally of cases, I started playing a mental game—identifying the people I’ve known or covered who were imprisoned, isolated, or banished in far worse conditions. Covering the world’s wars and political hellholes, there have been many—some famous, many little-known. Each of their stories reaffirmed what humans are capable of bearing—and eventually overcoming. Read on....

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/how-much-can-the-human-spirit-endure-in-isolation