Gregory F. Treverton, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

A ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas is expected to take effect on Jan. 19, 2025, according to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken. Even as Israel’s cabinet delayed until Jan. 17 its vote to ratify the complex deal, Blinken said he is “very confident this is moving forward.”

The U.S., Qatar and Egypt helped broker the deal, which followed negotiations that had many starts and stops in 2024. Representatives of the Biden administration and President-elect Donald Trump worked together to advance the agreement, and both leaders took credit for the expected return of an estimated 100 Israeli hostages – both living and dead – and a complete ceasefire in the Gaza Strip.

Amy Lieberman, a politics and society editor at The Conversation, spoke with Gregory F. Treverton, who served as the chairperson of the U.S. National Intelligence Council during the Obama administration, to better understand what the United States’ role in this agreement says about American influence in the Middle East.

What is unusual, if anything, about the role of the US in this deal?

So far, the U.S. has not had very much influence in attempts to end the conflict. One reason is that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears allergic to taking advice from the U.S. What is striking now is that some combination of Donald Trump coming to power and Joe Biden leaving office has made a difference – and possibly made Netanyahu more willing to take political risks with his governing coalition and to sign on to the deal.

It is more or less the same kind of deal that the U.S. presented in May 2024. So, it is hard to know whether Trump moved the dial by his past threats to punish Hamas and by pressuring Netanyahu, or whether Hamas felt like it has been weakened and lacks outside support from weakened allies like Iran. Or a combination of these factors.

We also know that there are some last-minute hiccups with the deal, so it isn’t over yet. But there is real progress and hope, and that reflects a lot of the Biden administration’s hard work over the past 15 months.

The proposed deal has three phases that will last more than four months. Because it starts doesn’t mean it will get to the end. And the agreed end is very, very vague, with a revamped Palestinian Authority taking over Gaza – something Netanyahu has said he doesn’t want.

The deal has been brokered largely by the U.S., Egypt and Qatar. There is not a serious international monitor of the deal beyond the political pressure of these countries.

What do you make of Trump’s and Biden’s teams working together on this?

It is not unprecedented. Typically, during ordinary transitions between administrations, there is a lot of cooperation and working together.

What is unusual is that you would perhaps not have expected this kind of collaboration, given the hostility between Trump and Biden and their teams. Biden has said that his administration and the Trump team have been “speaking as one team.” In that sense, it is a bright spot in U.S. politics as of late and returns to a more normal pattern in U.S. foreign policy where there has been cooperation between outgoing and incoming administrations.

It is unusual that Steve Witkoff, Trump’s designated Middle East special envoy, went on his own to meet with Netanyahu in January and reportedly influenced Netanyahu’s decision to accept a deal that he previously rejected. Many special envoys require confirmation by the Senate, though they can hold the post temporarily without it. They also need security clearances, so that limits some of the things they can do.

What else is notable about the US role in the deal?

It is striking that for all his efforts, Biden seemed to have so little influence on Netanyahu. This has been very difficult for Biden politically. He wanted to get a ceasefire deal done, but he also wanted to stop the suffering in Gaza and didn’t want to look like he was giving Israel a blank check to do whatever it wanted.

In the process, the U.S. has been labeled as partially responsible for the tens of thousands of Palestinian deaths, which some people would call a genocide. This has done a lot of damage to the United States’ global reputation, and that will take some time to repair.

Trump is entirely unpredictable. He may continue to pressure Netanyahu or he may decide that Netanyahu can do whatever he wants.

What does this deal tell us about the standing of the US in the Middle East?

In some ways, I think it shows the United States’ diminished influence on the Middle East. On the other hand, the geopolitics of other regional conflicts and political changes, like the fall of the Assad government in Syria and the weakening of Hezbollah and Iran over the past year or so, have given certain opportunities to Israel, and therefore the U.S. This includes continuing the Abraham Accords, an agreement the Trump administration helped negotiate in 2020 to normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel.

The Saudis have been clear that they won’t make an agreement with Israel if there is not a state or something else designated for the Palestinians. It may turn out that this current deal, if implemented, offers enough for the Palestinians for the Saudis to also make an agreement with Israel.

Gregory F. Treverton, Professor of Practice in International Relations, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Jason Oliver Evans, University of Virginia

Since 1983, when President Ronald Reagan signed Martin Luther King Jr. Day into law, many Americans have observed the federal holiday to commemorate the life and legacy of the civil rights leader, Baptist minister and theologian.

MLK Day volunteers typically perform community service that continues King’s fight to end racial discrimination and economic injustice – to build the “beloved community,” as he often said.

King does not fully explain the phrase’s meaning in his published writings, speeches and sermons. Scholars Rufus Burrow Jr. and Lewis V. Baldwin, however, argue that the beloved community is King’s principal ethical goal, guiding the struggle against what he called the “three evils of American society”: racism, economic exploitation and militarism.

As a Baptist minister and theologian myself, I believe it is important to understand the origins of the concept of the beloved community, how King understood it and how he worked to make it a reality.

Older origins

Although King popularized the beloved community, the phrase has roots in the thought of 19th-century American religious philosopher Josiah Royce.

In 1913, toward the end of his long career, Royce published “The Problem of Christianity.” The book compiles lectures on the Christian religion, including the idea of the church and its mission, and coined the term beloved community. Based on his readings of the biblical gospels, as well as the writings of the apostle Paul, Royce argued that the beloved community was one where individuals are transformed by God’s love.

In turn, members express that love as loyalty toward each other – for example, the devoted love a member of the church would have toward the church as a whole.

While Royce often identified the beloved community with the church, he extends the concept beyond the walls of Christianity. In any type of community, Royce argued, from clans to nations, there are individuals who express love and devotion not only to their own community, but who foster a sense of the community that includes all humankind.

According to Royce, the ideal or beloved community is a “universal community” – one to which all human beings belong or will eventually belong at the end of time.

‘Beloved’ diversity

Twentieth-century pastor, philosopher, mystic, theologian and civil rights leader Howard Thurman retrieved Royce’s idea of the beloved community and applied it to his life and work, most notably in his 1971 book “The Search for Common Ground.”

Thurman first used the term in an unpublished and undated article: Desegregation, Integration, and the Beloved Community. Here, he argued that the beloved community cannot be achieved by sheer will or commanded by force. Rather, it begins with transformation in each person’s “human spirit.” The seeds of the beloved community extend outward into society as each person assumes the responsibility of bringing it to pass.

Thurman envisioned the beloved community as one that exemplifies harmony – harmony enriched by members’ diversity. It is a community wherein people from all racial, national, religious and ethnic backgrounds are respected, and where their human dignity is affirmed. Thurman was convinced that beloved community was achievable because of the dedication he saw from activists during the struggle for racial integration.

During his lifetime, Thurman sought to build this beloved community through his activism for racial justice. For example, he co-founded the Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples, an interracial and interfaith community in San Francisco, which he co-pastored from 1943 to 1953.

Thurman’s writings and activism deeply influenced King. Burrow argued that it is not entirely clear when and where King first learned the concept of beloved community. Yet King emphasized its importance in much of his writing and political action.

Love and action

In simplest terms, King defined the beloved community as a community transformed by love. Like Royce, he drew his understanding of love from the Bible’s New Testament. In the original Greek, the Gospels use the word “agape,” which suggests God’s self-giving, unconditional love for humanity – and, by extension, human beings’ self-giving, unconditional love for each other.

According to Baldwin, however, King’s understanding of the beloved community is better understood against the backdrop of the Black church tradition. Raised in the Ebenezer Baptist Church of Atlanta, King learned lessons on the meaning of love from his parents, Rev. Martin Luther King Sr. – Ebenezer’s pastor, who was also a leader in the local chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People – and Alberta Christine Williams King.

One of the distinctions in King’s thought is that he believed the beloved community could be achieved through nonviolent direct action, such as sit-ins, marches and boycotts. In part, he was inspired by Thurman, who had embraced the nonviolence at the heart of Mahatma Gandhi’s resistance against the British in India. For King, nonviolence was the only viable means for achieving the United States of America’s redemption from the sin of racial segregation and white supremacy.

For King, therefore, the beloved community was not merely a utopian vision of the future. He envisioned it as an obtainable ethical goal that all human beings must work collectively toward achieving.

“Only a refusal to hate or kill can put an end to the chain of violence in the world and lead us toward a community where men can live together without fear,” King wrote in 1966. “Our goal is to create a beloved community and this will require a qualitative change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives.”

Searching for the beloved community today

King’s idea of the beloved community has not only influenced people affiliated with the Christian tradition but also people from other faiths and none.

For instance, scholars Elizabeth A. Johnson, bell hooks and Joy James have reflected upon the meaning of the beloved community amid ongoing challenges such as global climate change, sexism, racism and other forms of structural violence.

People around the world continue to draw insight and inspiration from King’s thought, especially from his insistence that love is “the most durable power” to change the world for the better. Questions remain about whether his beloved community can be realized, or how. But I believe it is important to understand King’s ethical concept and its continuing influence on movements that seek an end to injustice.

Jason Oliver Evans, Research Associate and Lecturer, University of Virginia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Jaime L Kucinskas, Hamilton College

On the eve of Donald Trump’s inauguration as the 47th president of the United States, some people who work for the federal government are concerned.

Trump and his allies have repeatedly promised to dismantle the administrative state and fire those they perceive as disloyal. Trump’s former – and likely future – director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, for example, has threatened to “put bureaucrats in trauma.” That includes the possibility of weakening rules meant to protect public servants from political interference.

Amid these threats and loyalty tests used to vet potential appointees, many career civil servants fear that they may end up in ethical binds, caught between the instructions of their bosses and their duty to serve the American people.

During the first Trump presidency, I spoke with 66 career civil servants working across agencies, including in some of the most contested parts of the government. I tracked their experiences and challenges over the course of the administration from 2017 until 2020, doing 116 interviews in all. These form the basis for my forthcoming book, “The Loyalty Trap.” This work identified some of the ways longtime government workers managed to stay sane, keep their jobs and continue to serve the American people.

Maintaining quality work

As happened during Trump’s first term, government employees are being advised by experienced colleagues to “stay calm and keep their head down,” as The Washington Post reported. Some are already trying to protect potentially politicized work. For instance, they are trying to revise job titles that use terms such as diversity or climate. They aim to use words less likely to be targeted by the incoming administration, referring more obliquely to climate change and civil and human rights protections.

This pressure is real: During Trump’s first presidency, a number of federal civil servants I talked to described their mental health declining, and declining morale, productivity and innovation at work.

Among a sizable proportion of the people I spoke with, the pressures at work became too much; about a quarter of those I spoke with quit during the first Trump administration.

Those who stayed faced Trump appointees’ suspicion, threats of political retribution and sidelining of expert guidance. Many reported feeling quite alone. Nearly all sought to remain loyal to serving the presidential administration. But in the face of leadership’s threats and conflicting advice, some of which they said they believed could be potentially illegal, and without clear guidance from above, some workers became unable to do their jobs.

As one middle-aged midlevel manager told me when a senior employee in his agency was removed from her position after some Trump allies publicly criticized work in the agency, “They found someone to punish. And that obviously had a very chilling effect on everyone.” The manager said it’s “terrifying” to see people who may have lost their jobs simply because they did those jobs properly.

Under these conditions, he said, helping appointees sometimes meant “just doing little, quite frankly … just doing what’s necessary, and it means waiting to help educate folks about what their options are as we go forward, as opposed to getting too fired up about things. Because it’s safer.”

He also noted the binds midlevel employees faced as appointees fought over policy agendas levels above them. The appointees, he said, “want things which are in direct contradiction of each other … and so I don’t know what’s going on. I don’t know what all this stuff means.”

Being stuck in such chaotic situations made this employee feel trapped between choosing to be “a slick salesman and come out of it looking good,” but then facing “unintended consequences down the line.” Or, “You could also be not a slick salesman, have trouble now, but maybe no unintended consequences down the line. So take your pick, and neither of them sound very great.”

Some career civil servants avoided sharing their woes and challenges with each other, not wanting to burden others facing difficult situations as well or fail to uphold their own professional standards. As one lawyer working in international affairs told me, “There’s no point in really commiserating – everybody has their particular burden to carry – and a lot more just frustration that normal processes just aren’t working.”

Yet, even among those who felt most alone, I found they had many experiences in common with others who also felt isolated in trying to walk a precarious moral and ethical tightrope between their desire to faithfully serve the elected president – under chaotic leadership and insufficient and sometimes questionably legal guidance – and do quality work upholding the law and benefiting the nation and the American public.

Keeping government functioning

Some civil servants said they tried to keep their departments running smoothly by doing their work as they had been doing before the Trump administration. In light of conflicts between appointees, Trump family members, the president and other Trump allies with unspecified roles, some waited to receive formal orders from authorized supervisors. Fearing retribution, they waited rather than anticipating guidance – as they might have done under leaders with more clear directives who fostered more workplace trust, communication and adhered to organizational structures.

Civil servants also emphasized the importance of documenting illegal behavior and other gross ethical transgressions witnessed at work, even if they chose not to share their records at the time. When they felt that they were in more psychologically safe working conditions under different leadership, or that they could help hold others accountable for illegal or inappropriate behavior, some reported them to official channels such as their department’s inspector general’s office or to congressional oversight committee staff.

Some of those in the most politicized parts of the government emphasized trying to maintain islands of functioning even in seas of disarray. One senior leader spoke of trying to maintain the “overall footprint of the program” and “strong staff,” even as he adhered to instructions from the administration to reduce the scale of their work.

Those who seemed to manage the best, in the most chaotic and politicized locations in the government, reported having strong interpersonal connections within their units, as well as outside the government. They reported being able to maintain their moral and ethical integrity at work thanks to support from supervisors, mentors and colleagues with shared commitments to the public, democracy, agency missions, the law and the Constitution. Some reported the importance of maintaining their personal moral compass by doing local volunteer work, through support from their families and friends, and participation in religious organizations.

When their values and commitments contrasted with the first Trump administration’s agenda, some civil servants reported trying to speak up to superiors and elicit more feedback before decisions were made. A few reported slow-walking work they thought was harmful to the public or to the nation’s best interests. In general, though, after appointees made decisions, civil servants said they did their best to respect and support them and the elected president.

Jaime L Kucinskas, Associate Professor of Sociology, Hamilton College

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.