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.

Victor Menaldo, University of Washington

As Donald Trump’s second inauguration fast approaches, concerns he threatens American democracy are rising yet again. Some warnings have cited Trump’s authoritarian rhetoric, willingness to undermine or malign institutions meant to constrain any president, and a combative style that strives to stretch executive power as far as possible.

Authoritarianism erodes property rights and the rule of law, so financial markets typically respond with alarm to political unrest. If major investors and corporations really believed the United States was on the brink of dictatorship, there would be large-scale capital flight, equity sell-offs, spikes in U.S. credit default swaps or rising bond yields unexplained by typical macroeconomic factors such as inflation forecasts.

Instead, there have been no systematic signs of such market reactions, nor an investor exodus from American markets. Quite the contrary.

This absence of alarm is not conclusive proof that democracy is safe forever, nor that Trump cannot damage American democracy at all. But it does suggest that credible institutions and investors who literally bet on political outcomes for a living do not view an American autocracy as imminent or even likely.

This is probably because the mechanics of upending American democracy would entail surmounting a thick tangle of constitutional, bureaucratic, legal and political obstacles. As a political economist who has written widely about the constitutional foundations of modern democracies, I submit it’s far more complicated than one man issuing brash executive orders.

Presidents have long seized more power

Throughout American history, presidents have achieved far greater expansions of executive power than Trump did in his first term.

Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War, allowing detention without trial. He bypassed Congress through sweeping executive actions, most notably the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared freedom for enslaved people in Confederate states.

Woodrow Wilson created administrative agencies and imposed draconian censorship during World War I via the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918.

Franklin D. Roosevelt’s court-packing plan failed to pass, but it still cowed the Supreme Court into deference. His New Deal bureaucracy centralized vast powers in the executive branch.

Lyndon B. Johnson obtained the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, transferring major war-making powers from Congress to the presidency. Richard Nixon invoked executive privilege and ordered secret bombings in Cambodia, steps that largely bypassed congressional oversight.

George W. Bush expanded executive prerogatives after 9/11 with warrantless wiretapping and indefinite detention. Barack Obama faced criticism for the dubious legal rationale behind drone strikes targeting U.S. citizens deemed enemy combatants abroad.

These historical examples should not be conflated with an actual ability to impose one-man rule, though. The United States, whatever its imperfections, has a deeply layered system of checks and balances that has repeatedly stymied presidents of both parties when they tried to govern by decree.

Trump’s openly combative style was in many ways less adept at entrenching presidential power than many of his predecessors. During his first term, he broadcast his intentions so transparently that it galvanized numerous institutional forces – judges, bureaucrats, state officials, inspectors general – to resist his attempts. While Trump’s rhetoric was more incendiary, other presidents achieved deeper expansions of the executive branch more discreetly.

Trump’s Jan. 6 plan was never realistic

Trump’s failure to impose his will became particularly evident on Jan. 6, 2021, when claims that an “auto-coup” was afoot never translated into the real-world mechanics that would have kept him in office beyond the end of his term.

Even before the Electoral Count Reform Act made the process clearer in 2022, scholars agreed that under the 12th Amendment the vice president’s role in certifying the election is purely ministerial, giving him no constitutional basis to replace or discard certified electoral votes. Similarly, state laws mandate that certification is a mandatory, ministerial duty, preventing officials from arbitrarily refusing to certify election results.

Had Pence refused to certify the Electoral College vote count, it is more likely than not that courts would have swiftly ordered Congress to proceed. Moreover, the 20th Amendment fixed noon on Jan. 20 as the end of the outgoing president’s term, making it impossible for Trump to remain in power just by creating delay or confusion.

The idea that Pence’s refusal to certify could erase state-certified votes, or coerce Congress into accepting alternate slates, had no firm grounding in law or precedent. After Jan. 20, the outgoing president would simply cease to hold office. Thus, the chain of events needed for an auto-coup to occur in 2021 would have fallen apart under the weight of well-established procedures.

A massive bureaucracy

Potential avenues of power consolidation during Trump’s impending second term are equally narrow. The federal bureaucracy makes it exceedingly difficult for a president to rule by fiat.

The Department of Justice alone comprises roughly 115,000 employees, including over 10,000 attorneys and 13,000 FBI agents, most of them career civil servants protected by the Civil Service Reform Act and whistleblower laws. They have their own professional standards and can challenge or reveal political interference. If an administration tries to remove them en masse, it runs into protracted appeals processes, legal constraints, the need to conduct a bevy of lengthy background checks and a crippling loss of institutional knowledge.

Past episodes, including the George W. Bush administration’s politically motivated dismissals of U.S. attorneys in 2006 and 2007, illustrate that congressional oversight and internal department practices can still produce major pushback, resignations and scandals that thwart political interference with the Justice Department.

Independent regulatory agencies also resist being dominated by the president. Many are designed so that no more than three out of five commissioners can belong to the same political party, ensuring some measure of bipartisan representation. Minority commissioners can deploy a host of procedural tools – delaying votes, demanding comprehensive studies, calling for hearings – that slow down or block controversial proposals. This makes it harder for a single leader to unilaterally impose policy. Those minority commissioners can also alert the media and Congress to questionable moves, inviting investigations or public scrutiny.

In addition, a 2024 Supreme Court ruling shifted the power to interpret federal laws, as passed by Congress, away from executive branch government agencies. Now, federal judges play a more active role in determining what Congress’ words mean. This requires agencies to operate within narrower bounds and to produce stronger evidence to justify their decisions. In practical terms, an administration now has less leeway to stretch statutes for partisan or authoritarian ends without encountering judicial pushback.

Layers of defenses

American democracy has vulnerabilities, and other democracies have collapsed under powerful executives before. But in my view, it’s not reasonable to draw definitive lessons from a tiny number of extreme outliers, such as Hitler in 1933 or the handful of elected leaders who staged more recent auto-coups in fragile or developing democracies such as Argentina, Peru, Turkey and even Hungary.

The United States stands out for having a complex federal system, entrenched legal practices and multiple layers of institutional friction. Those protections have historically proven adept at limiting presidential overreach – whether subtle or bombastic.

In addition, state-level politicians, including attorneys general and governors, have repeatedly demonstrated their willingness to challenge federal overreach through litigation and noncooperation.

The military’s professional culture of civilian control and constitutional fidelity, consistently upheld by the courts, provides another safeguard. For instance, in 1952 the Supreme Court ruling in Youngstown Sheet and Tube Co. v. Sawyer reversed President Harry Truman’s order that the military seize privately owned steel mills to ensure supply during the Korean War.

All those institutional checks are further buttressed by a robust civil society that can mobilize legal challenges, advocacy campaigns and grassroots resistance. Corporations can wield economic influence through public statements, campaign funding decisions and policy stances – as many did in the aftermath of Jan. 6.

Taken together, these overlapping layers of resistance make the path to autocracy far more challenging than many casual observers might assume. These protections also may explain why most Americans are resigned to Trump’s second term: Many may have come to realize that the nation’s democratic experiment is not at stake – and probably never was.

Victor Menaldo, Professor of Political Science, Co-founder of the Political Economy Forum, University of Washington

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

Asher Kaufman, University of Notre Dame

A much-anticipated Gaza ceasefire and hostage deal is set to take effect on Jan. 19, 2025 – subject to an Israeli government vote on the package scheduled for the morning of Jan. 16.

The breakthrough comes 15 months into the bloody conflict sparked by an Oct. 7 2023, attack by Hamas gunmen in which about 1,200 Israelis were killed and 251 hostages taken. In the subsequent bombing and siege of the Gaza Strip, some 45,000 Palestinians have been killed.

But why has the breakthrough happened now, and what does this mean for the long-term prospects of a more permanent peace? The Conversation turned to Asher Kaufman, an expert on Israeli history and professor of peace studies at University of Notre Dame, for answers.

What is the main content of the deal?

Not all the details have been ironed out or released. But what we do know is this:

The deal is divided into three stages. In the first stage, 33 women, children and men who are sick or over the age of 55 will be released in stages over 42 days. The hostages, thought to have been held by Hamas in its network of tunnels under Gaza since Oct. 7, include two American nationals. In total, 94 hostages remain in captivity, including 34 thought to be dead.

The Israeli military will also allow Palestinians forced to leave northern Gaza to return, although much of the area and their homes are in complete ruins.

On the 16th day of implementation, negotiations will begin regarding the next stage of the deal, which will include the release of the remaining hostages taken by Hamas. As part of this stage, Israel will withdraw its forces to a defensive belt that will serve as a buffer between the Gaza Strip and Israel.

In exchange for freeing the hostages, Israel will release Palestinian prisoners according to an agreed-upon ratio for each Israeli dead or living civilian or soldier hostage. In the initial wave, hundreds of Palestinian women and children currently held in Israeli prisons will be freed. Also, Israel will allow more humanitarian assistance to flow into Gaza.

The third stage of the deal will include the release of the remaining dead hostages and will focus on the reconstruction of Gaza supervised by Egypt, Qatar and the United Nations. At this stage, Israel will be expected to fully withdraw from the Gaza Strip.

How significant is the breakthrough?

Fifteen months of war has devastated Gaza. This deal opens the possibility of ending the fighting there and could allow for the first steps toward reconstruction and stabilization in the Palestinian enclave.

It could also allow the incoming Trump administration to focus on other issues that are more central to its foreign policy agenda, such as a potential new deal with Iran and the resumption of normalization talks between Israel and Saudi Arabia, connected to the creation of a new security alliance with the U.S.

For Israel, it means the possibility of an end to its longest war, which has cost a fortune, eroded its international standing and severely divided its society between supporters and opponents of the government. It could end the state of emergency that has been in effect since Oct. 7, 2023, allowing Israeli society to begin its own recovery.

What issues remain outstanding?

There are big question marks over the later stages of the deal. Important members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition, including Minister of National Security Itamar Ben-Gvir and Minister of Finance Bezalel Smotrich, have been accused of being more interested in a permanent occupation of the Gaza Strip than in the release of the hostages. As such, they will be loath to agree to any measures that would lead to a handing over of governance and security in the enclave to Palestinians.

Throughout the conflict, the Israel government has made it clear that it envisions no role for Hamas in a post-conflict Gaza. But Hamas’ main rival, the Palestinian Authority, has little credibility among Gaza’s residents. It leaves a gaping question of who will govern in Gaza.

There is also concern that if Israel was genuinely interested in full implementation of the deal, it could have reached an agreement that includes the complete withdrawal from Gaza in return for release of all hostages, rather than an agreement implemented in stages.

Why did talks succeed now, but earlier attempts fail?

This deal has been on the table at least since May 2024. But Netanyahu and his government have opposed it due mainly to their desire that Israel remain in control of Gaza.

Some of his government ministers also want to establish Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip and have explicitly spoken about creating the conditions for reducing the numbers of Palestinians in the strip.

Critics of Netanyahu have also suggested that the prime minister wanted to prolong the war as long as possible because it served him politically.

But the entry of Donald Trump into the equation after his election as U.S. president changed the dynamics between Israel, Hamas and the U.S.

Trump wants to be seen as a deal-maker on the global stage, and Netanyahu – a close ally of the Republican – feels inclined to help Trump on this matter. The timing of the deal allows Trump to claim a role, while also allowing Joe Biden to leave office with a foreign policy “win.”

There are also hopes in Israel that forging a deal now clears the way for the resumption of normalization talks between Israel and Saudi Arabia – a process kick-started under Trump’s first administration.

Netanyahu may be betting on a deal with Saudi Arabia to balance out his tarnished reputation at home as the Israeli leader in control when the Oct. 7 massacre occurred.

How will the deal play out in Israel’s fractious politics?

This is the big question that will determine the fate of the deal in the long term.

Its provisions contradict fundamentally the aspirations of many members in Netanyahu’s ruling coalition – and they may do the best they can to sabotage it.

It is still not clear if these right-wing holdouts will exit the government or stay in the coalition under the belief that the latter phases of the deal are not going to be implemented.

What does it mean for the future of Hamas and its role in Gaza?

The agreement does not specify conditions to replace Hamas’ rule in Gaza.

Netanyahu has so far objected to any efforts to facilitate the return of the Palestinian Authority or allow any other Arab or international consortium to run civilian affairs in the strip.

Hamas, for its part, has no interest in facilitating its replacement by other governing bodies and ceding control of Gaza. But having lost key members of its leadership over the course of the war, the militant group is in a less powerful position than it was before Oct. 7.

A cynical view might be that having a weakened Hamas remain in power may actually serve Netanyahu’s interests, allowing him to manage the Israeli-Palestinian conflict rather than trying to resolve it. This had been his approach before Oct. 7, and there are no indications that it has changed.

Asher Kaufman, Professor of History and Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame

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