So far, however, Trump and the media that follow his every word have been largely silent about what his reelection would mean for US foreign policy. Citing his recent promise of “a four-year plan to phase out all Chinese imports of essential goods,” The New York Times did recently conclude that a renewed trade war with China “would significantly disrupt the U.S. economy,” leading to a loss of 744,000 jobs and $1.6 trillion in GDP. Economic relations with China are, however, but one piece of a far larger puzzle when it comes to future American global power, a subject on which media reporting and commentary have been surprisingly reticent.

So let me take the plunge by starting with a prediction I made in a December 2010 TomDispatch piece that “the demise of the United States as the global superpower could come far more quickly than anyone imagines.” I added then that a “realistic assessment of domestic and global trends suggests that in 2025, just 15 years from now, it could be all over except for the shouting.”

I also offered a scenario hinged on — yes! — next November’s elections. “Riding a political tide of disillusionment and despair,” I wrote then, “a far-right patriot captures the presidency with thundering rhetoric, demanding respect for American authority and threatening military retaliation or economic reprisal. The world pays next to no attention as the American Century ends in silence.”

Back then, of course, 2025 was so far off that any prediction should have been a safe bet. After all, 15 years ago, I was already in my mid-60s, which should have given me a “get-out-of-jail-free” card — that is, a reasonable chance of dying before I could be held accountable. But with 2025 now less than a year away, I’m still here (unlike all too many of my old friends) and still responsible for that prediction.

So, let’s imagine that “a far-right patriot,” one Donald Trump, does indeed “capture the presidency with thundering rhetoric” next November. Let me then don the seven-league boots of the historical imagination and, drawing on Trump’s previous presidential record, offer some thoughts about how his second shot at an America-first foreign policy — one based on “demanding respect for American authority” — might affect this country’s global power, already distinctly on the decline.

As our Lonely Planet Guide to a country called the future, let’s take along a classi study former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote in retirement in 1997. Drawing on his view that Eurasia remained the “central basis for global primacy,” he argued that Washington had to do just three things to maintain world leadership: first, preserve its position in Western Europe through the NATO alliance; second, maintain its military bases along the Pacific littoral to check China; and finally, prevent any “assertive single entity” like China or Russia from controlling the critical “middle space” of Central Asia and the Middle East. Given his past record and current statements, it seems all too likely that Trump will indeed badly damage, if not destroy, those very pillars of American global power.

Wrecking the NATO alliance

Trump’s hostility to alliances in general and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in particular is a matter of historical record. His hostility to NATO’s crucial mutual-defense clause (Article 5) — requiring all signatories to respond if one were attacked — could prove fatal. Just days after his 2018 sycophantic summit with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, Fox News host Tucker Carlson asked Trump, “Why should my son go to Montenegro to defend it from attack?”

Weighing his words with uncharacteristic care, Trump replied: “I understand what you’re saying. I’ve asked the same question.” He then offered what could, in a second term, prove a virtual death sentence for NATO. “Montenegro,” he said, “is a tiny country with very strong people … They’re very aggressive people. They may get aggressive, and congratulations, you’re in World War Three.”

Since then, of course, Putin has invaded Ukraine and Biden’s White House has rallied NATO to defend that frontline European state. Although Congress approved a massive $111 billion in aid (including $67 billion in military aid) for Ukraine in the war’s first 18 months, the Republican-led House has recently stalled President Biden’s request for an additional $67 billion critical to Kyiv’s continued resistance. As the campaign for his party’s nomination gathers momentum, Trump’s pro-Putin sentiments have helped persuade Republican legislators to break with our NATO allies on this critical issue.

Keep in mind that, right after Russia invaded in February 2022, Trump labeled Putin’s move “genius,” adding, “I mean, he’s taking over a country for $2 worth of sanctions. I’d say that’s pretty smart.” Last September, after Putin thanked him for claiming that, were he still president, he could end the war in 24 hours, Trump assured Meet the Press: “I would get him into a room. I’d get Zelensky into a room. Then I’d bring them together. And I’d have a deal worked out.”

In reality, a reelected Trump would undoubtedly simply abandon Ukraine, at best forcing it into negotiations that would be tantamount to surrender. As formerly neutral nations Finland and Sweden have rallied to NATO and alliance stalwarts like Britain and Germany make major arms deliveries to Ukraine, Europe has clearly labeled Russia’s invasion and war an existential threat. Under such circumstances, a future Trump tilt toward Putin could swing a wrecking ball through the NATO alliance, which, for the past 75 years, has served as a singular pillar in the architecture of US global power.

Alienating allies on the Pacific littoral

Just as NATO has long served as a strategic pillar at the western end of the vast Eurasian landmass, so four bilateral alliances along the Pacific littoral from Japan to the Philippines have proven a geopolitical fulcrum for dominance over the eastern end of Eurasia and the defense of North America. Here, the record of the first Trump administration was, at best, mixed. On the credit side of history’s ledger, he did revive “the Quad,” a loose alliance with Australia, India and Japan, which has gained greater coherence under President Biden.

But only time spared Trump’s overall Asian diplomacy from utter disaster. His obsessive personal courtship of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un, marked by two meaningless meetings and the exchange of 27 mash notes, failed to produce any sign of Pyongyang’s (nuclear) disarmament, while weakening America’s alliance with long-standing ally South Korea. Although Japan’s prime minister obsequiously paid court to Trump, he battered that classic bilateral alliance with constant complaints about its cost, even slapping a punitive 25% duty on Japanese steel imports.

Ignoring the pleas of close Asian allies, Trump also canceled the Trans-Pacific Partnership, leaving the door open for China to conclude its own Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership with 15 Asia-Pacific countries that now account for nearly a third of Beijing’s foreign trade. Another four years of Trump’s “America first” diplomacy in the Pacific could do irreparable damage to those key strategic alliances.

Further south, by using Taiwan to both confront and court Chinese President Xi Jinping, while letting the Philippines drift toward Beijing’s orbit and launching a misbegotten trade war with China, Trump’s version of Asian “diplomacy” allowed Beijing to make some real diplomatic, economic, and military gains, while distinctly weakening the American position in the region. Biden, by contrast, has at least partially restored it, a strengthening reflected in a surprisingly amicable San Francisco summit last November with President Xi.

In South Asia, where the bitter rivalry between India and Pakistan dominates all diplomacy, Trump trashed a 70-year military alliance with Pakistan with a single New Year’s Day message. “The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years,” Trump tweeted, “and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools … No more!” Since then, Pakistan has shifted decisively into Beijing’s orbit, while India now plays Moscow and Washington off against each other to its economic advantage.

Just as Trump’s posture toward Europe could swing a wrecking ball through the NATO alliance in a second term, so his mix of economic nationalism and strategic myopia could destabilize the array of alliances along the Pacific littoral, toppling that second of Brzezinski’s three pillars for American global power.

That “assertive single entity” in Central Asia

And when it comes to that third pillar of US global power — preventing any “assertive single entity” from controlling the “middle space” of Eurasia — Trump failed woefully (as, in fact, had his predecessors). After announcing China’s trillion-dollar Belt & Road Initiative in 2013, President Xi has spent billions building a steel grid of roads, rails, and pipelines that crisscross the middle space of that vast Eurasian landmass, an enormous new infrastructure that has led to a chain of alliances stretching across central Asia.

The power of China’s position was manifested in 2021 when Beijing helped push the US military out of Afghanistan in a deft geopolitical squeeze-play. More recently, Beijing also brokered a breathtaking diplomatic entente between Shi’a Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia, stunning Washington and many Western diplomats.

Trump’s Middle East policy during his first term in office was focused solely on backing right-wing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, canceling a nuclear agreement with Iran, seconding his marginalization of the Palestinians, and promoting Arab recognition of Israel. Since the Hamas terrorist attack of October 7 and Netanyahu’s devastating assault on Gaza’s civilian population, President Biden’s reaction was skewed in an almost Trumpian fashion toward Israel, with a consequent loss of influence in the wider region. And count on one thing: An incoming Trump administration would only compound the damage.

In short, Beijing is already toppling the third pillar of American global power in that critical “middle space” of Eurasia. In a second Trump term, an unchecked Chinese diplomatic and economic juggernaut could arguably grind that pillar into rubble.

Africa in the “World Island”

In fact, however, no matter what Brzezinski might have thought, there are other pillars of world power beyond Eurasia — above all, Africa. Indeed, British geostrategist Halford Mackinder, the author of the global geopolitical analysis that deeply influenced the former national security adviser, argued over a century ago that the locus of global power lay in a tri-continental combination of Europe, Asia, and Africa that he dubbed “the world island.”

In the age of high imperialism, Europe found Africa a fertile field for colonial exploitation and, during the Cold War, Washington added to that continent’s suffering by making it a superpower surrogate battleground. But Beijing grasped the human potential of Africa and, in the 1970s, began building lasting economic alliances with its emerging nations. By 2015, its trade with Africa had climbed to $222 billion, three times the United States’. Its investments there were then projected to reach a trillion dollars by 2025.

Recognizing the strategic threat, President Barack Obama convened a 2014 summit with 51 African leaders at the White House. Trump, however, dismissed the entire continent, during a 2018 Oval Office meeting, as so many “shithole countries.” The Trump administration tried to repair the damage by sending First Lady Melania off on a solo trip to Africa, but her bizarre colonial outfits and ill-timed administration cuts in foreign aid to the continent only added to the damage.

In addition to a storehouse of natural resources, Africa’s chief asset is its growing pool of human talent. Africa’s median age is 19 (compared to 38 for both China and the US), meaning that, by 2050, that continent will be home to a full one-third of the world’s young. Given his fraught record with the region, Trump’s second term would likely do little more than hand the whole continent to China on a gold-plated platter.

South of the border

Even in Latin America, the situation has been changing in a complex fashion. As a region informally incorporated into the American imperium for more than a century and suffering all the slights of an asymmetric alliance, its increasingly nationalist leaders welcomed China’s interest in this century. By 2017, in fact, Chinese trade with Latin America had hit a substantial $244 billion, making it — yes! — the region’s largest trading partner. Simultaneously, Beijing’s loans to Caribbean countries had reached a hefty $62 billion by the end of the Trump administration.

Except for drug interdiction and economic sanctions against leftist regimes in Cuba and Venezuela, the Trump White House generally ignored Latin America, doing nothing to slow China’s commercial juggernaut. Although the Biden administration made some diplomatic gestures toward the region, China’s trade rose relentlessly to $450 billion by 2022.

Reflecting a bipartisan indifference in this century, a reelected Trump would likely do little to check China’s growing commercial hegemony over Latin America. And the region would undoubtedly welcome such indifference, since the alternative — along with draconian moves at the US–Mexican border — might involve plans to fire missiles at or send troops to knock out drug labs in Mexico. The backlash to such unilateral intervention amid panic over immigration could cripple US relations with the region for decades to come.

In the world that a second Trump term might face in 2025, American global power will probably be far less imposing than it was when he came into office in 2016. The problem won’t be that this time around he’s already appointing advisers determined to let Trump be Trump or, as the The New York Times put it recently, who are “forging plans for an even more extreme agenda than his first term.” By every significant metric — economic, diplomatic, and even military — US power has been on a downward slide for at least a decade. In the more unipolar world of 2016, Trump’s impulsive, individualized version of diplomacy was often deeply damaging, but on at least a small number of occasions modestly successful. In the more multipolar world he would have to manage nearly a decade later, his version of a unilateral approach could prove deeply disastrous.

After taking his second oath of office in January of 2025, Trump’s “thundering rhetoric, demanding respect for American authority and threatening military retaliation or economic reprisal,” might indeed fulfill the prediction I made some 15 years ago: “The world pays next to no attention as the American Century ends in silence.”

[TomDispatch first published this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Donald Trump Could Destroy US Hegemony on the World Stage appeared first on Fair Observer.

The situation highlighted the paradox of the entire Turkish election. After a year of record inflation, historic lows for the Turkish lira and a devastating series of earthquakes, all odds seemed to favor the opposition. However, the economic difficulties faced by Turkish citizens did not dissuade a majority from voting for Erdoğan. On the night of his victory, the president spoke from the balcony of a compound that had cost north of $600 million, or about 15 billion liras at today’s exchange rate. He addressed supporters—many from low income brackets—who had seen their lira savings erode and their cost of living double in the last 18 months. Several observers questioned the choice of platform and asked how citizens could freely elect a leader whose policies created such tangible difficulties.

Harnessing the economy as a rhetorical tool

It has been argued that Erdoğan’s victory depends on his constituency’s willingness to ignore the state of the economy. After all, economic crises generally bode poorly for incumbent governments. In Turkey this effect should hold doubly true, since Erdoğan’s unorthodox views on economics—in particular his insistence on slashing interest rates—directly contribute to inflation and the depreciation of the lira. While supporters might hope that Erdoğan’s unorthodox position on interest rates could be vindicated in the long run, it would make sense to avoid mentioning economic topics at a time when the pain is still so acutely felt by every family in the country.

Yet the Erdoğan campaign chose a different approach, bringing the economy to the forefront of political rhetoric. In the leadup to the election, Erdoğan promised to continue slashing interest rates, encouraged citizens to take pride in the lira and even highlighted his own economic bona fides. Over the past years, these messages have been wrapped in rhetoric that’s unusually politicized for such economic topics, with the president going so far as to state, “If they have their dollar, we have our Allah.” Pro-Erdoğan commentators frequently argue that Western governments try to undermine the Turkish economy and devalue the lira. In Erdoğan’s words, his policy constitutes nothing short of an “economic war of independence” where Turkey is “fighting against the interest rate lobby” and “enemies of production and employment.”

This rhetorical approach works surprisingly well. Erdoğan can pinpoint how slashing interest rates helps Turkish citizens in direct ways, by easing access to mortgages and commercial credit. Even the approval rates for loans reflect this political strategy, with small and medium-sized businesses, domestic employers, lira-heavy corporates, and export-oriented firms seeing a steep rise in credit approvals. Meanwhile, the second-order effects of slashing interest rates—namely the slump in demand for liras in international currency markets and the inflation caused by higher costs for importers and increased spending by domestic consumers—are too abstract for most citizens to consider. This leaves Erdoğan with a unique ability to claim credit for the benefits of low interest rates while blaming the more indirect negative consequences on foreign actors. 

A uniquely receptive audience

Turkish economic history lends tailwinds to Erdoğan’s narratives on the economy. Interest rates in Turkey have historically been high by Western standards. Even in the last five years, Erdoğan occasionally made concessions that allowed the central bank to significantly raise its policy rate—with the results usually proving very short-lived. Turkish citizens have witnessed a steady and seemingly inexorable weakening of their currency, regardless of different interest rate policies. This peculiarity has led some Turkish economists to infer that Turkey must deviate from developed countries in its economic policy. Considering the experience of the average household, it is easy to understand Turkish citizens’ aversion to conventional economic wisdom and their openness to strong rhetoric on economics. 

Another aspect of Turkish economic history lends credence to Erdoğan’s arguments. Historically high inflation and the unpredictability of the lira’s exchange rate in the 80s and 90s—well before the first Erdoğan government—led citizens to change domestic assets into foreign currency deposits. This “dollarization” of the Turkish economy has continued, with 56% of deposits now held in foreign currency or gold. Such dollarization carries risks for countries since it reduces the government’s monetary control, creates more volatile inflation, and raises risk in the banking system due to uncovered foreign liabilities. Moreover, the concept of dollarization relates directly to the debate on interest rates. Historically high interest rates made borrowing in liras unattractive to most Turkish citizens, and the resulting preference for dollar-based loans contributed to the liability dollarization of the Turkish economy. The increasing preference for dollars among the domestic population further exacerbated the instability of the lira.

Clearly, dollarization cannot be blamed on foreign actors, since Turkish citizens made their own decisions to open dollar accounts and take dollar-based loans. However, viewed as a characteristic of the current economy, Turkish citizens understandably worry about the predominance of foreign currencies and the instability this causes for the lira. Erdoğan’s economic messaging astutely builds on this concern, harnessing patriotic and anti-dollar slogans to support the multiple de-dollarization policies the government has implemented over the past years. Even from a conventional economic perspective, de-dollarization efforts hold merit, although the social consensus around them is built with simplified explanations.

Naturally, the label of de-dollarization should not exempt individual policies from scrutiny. Certain measures, such as Erdoğan’s flagship policy of slashing lira-based interest rates, can cause harm even if they nominally contribute to de-dollarization. But to truly understand how these policies are received by the majority of the population, observers must acknowledge Turkey’s unique historical experience with high interest rates and an overly dollarized economy. These factors make Turkish voters more receptive to the kind of political rhetoric and economic experimentation that Erdoğan has pursued.

The dangers of raising rates

A further characteristic of Erdoğan’s economic narrative is that it constrains any attempt to change course. In the leadup to the May elections, opposition leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu criticized Erdoğan’s economic policies and signaled his intention to reassert the independence of the central bank. However, he kept relatively silent about concrete plans to raise interest rates. His hesitation is understandable because the Turkish economy now runs on the cheap access to capital Erdoğan has enforced. With inflation still above 40%, a hypothetically victorious opposition government would have needed to raise rates drastically—potentially targeting a central bank policy rate between 30% and 50%—to quickly bring the real (inflation-adjusted) interest rates out of the red. 

Households would immediately feel the burden of such a dramatic rate increase, as consumer loans, credit card debt and mortgages become prohibitively costly, the equity value of real estate property falls, and corporate credit dries up. Meanwhile, Turkish banks would experience similar issues. Government regulations require banks to buy government bonds, which drives down Turkish bond yields and thus artificially reduces the worth of these bonds as assets to the banks. Rapidly increasing interest rates would widen this spread and leave banks with strongly under-valued bond assets on their balance sheets. 

Coupled with currency instability and a presumably higher ratio of non-performing loans, banks would therefore be hard-hit by a steep rate increase. Their capital adequacy ratio (the portion of the bank’s outstanding loans that are covered by their assets) would fall from 17% to an estimated 12%—risky territory by Turkish standards. Banks would respond by severely cutting back lending and imposing tougher conditions for credit approval, thus further restricting the economy’s access to capital. In such an extremely tight monetary environment, corporations would respond with layoffs, possibly putting the economy on track for a true recession. 

Given the severity of these impacts, Kılıçdaroğlu and his allies found their range of maneuver constrained. After all, it is impossible for a politician to campaign on a recession platform. Erdoğan could credibly communicate a message centered on employment and growth, arguing that millions of jobs depend on him remaining in power and continuing his loose monetary policy. Meanwhile, voters began to associate the opposition and their international advocates with the prospect of recession and unemployment, which rendered the electorate more receptive to Erdoğan’s rhetoric on foreign threats to the economy.

The dangers of not raising rates

Understandably, the Erdoğan campaign neglected to highlight one fundamental fact about the economy: that recession may be inevitable even if the president stays in power. As late as last year, the government might have hoped Turkey could use its high growth—7.6% year-over-year in the second quarter of 2022, now down to a still-strong 4%—to “outgrow” inflation. This view is made more attractive by the fact that Turkey does not have a classic fiscal problem and avoided steep deficits in the years leading up to the election, thus eliminating one of the root causes of inflation found elsewhere in the world. But severe risks attend Turkey’s extraordinarily loose monetary policy, primarily in the form of continued currency depreciation. The lira has already fallen more than 20% since the election. Despite recent loans from foreign governments and foreign currency loans from Turkish private banks, the central bank has exhausted most of its convertible foreign exchange reserves in a bid to prop up the lira prior to the election. This leaves no ammunition to respond to future fluctuations.

This circumstance holds three distinct dangers for Turkey. First, in a country so heavily dependent on imports, a drop in the value of the lira immediately raises costs for Turkey’s many importers, who then pass on these costs to consumers in the form of higher prices. The central bank has exhausted its tools to directly strengthen the lira, leaving Turkey more vulnerable than ever to this form of pass-through inflation.

Second, Turkey may find itself in a balance of payments crisis, where the stock of foreign currency available proves inadequate to cover the cost of imports. The influx of foreign currency during the summer tourist season can delay this crisis. However, increased demand for energy imports during the winter looms large. Turkey no longer has the resources to cover the gap, even if some natural gas from Russia can be imported on credit. 

Third, Turkey experiences a surprising degree of balance sheet risk. Despite a historically healthy fiscal policy and low public debt, Turkey’s central bank hosts a number of “hidden” liabilities. In its search for foreign currency to support the lira, the central bank has frequently borrowed dollars from Turkish commercial banks. The result has been to migrate the foreign currency balance sheet risks of private banks to the public sector. The central bank will need to find the foreign currency to cover eurobonds it didn’t issue, as well as the liquidity to reimburse private banks’ dollar deposits should people ever try to withdraw their money. With the central bank’s foreign exchange reserves exhausted, the only way these obligations can be met is by selling liras—thus further weakening the exchange rate.

What does the future hold for the Turkish economy?

While rate increases cannot directly regenerate foreign exchange reserves, a significant rate hike could theoretically ease the effects of these crises. Bringing inflation-adjusted interest rates above zero would dampen domestic spending by making deposits more attractive, thereby curbing inflation. Higher interest on lira deposits would also attract foreign investors to buy liras, thereby potentially ending the currency’s downward spiral while restoring foreign exchange reserves thanks to an uptick in FDI. 

In the weeks following the election, the imminence of multiple crises led many observers to believe that Erdoğan had no option but to backtrack on his long-held position and raise interest rates. Signs appeared that Erdoğan himself—along with key coalition partners—had begun to consider the idea. The reinstatement of former Merrill Lynch economist Mehmet Şimşek to the post of finance minister and the tapping of former First Republic executive Hafize Gaye Erkan to lead the central bank highlighted this possibility. International financial institutions watched eagerly, predicting that the policy rate—kept at 8.5% since March—would rise drastically to somewhere between 20% and 40%.

Once in their new positions, however, Şimşek and Erkan found themselves constrained by the same problems that plagued the opposition on the campaign trail. Much of the credibility built by Erdoğan during this election hinges on his ability to stick to his economic views, grow employment, continue providing benefits and avoid the kind of recession that voters feared from a Kılıçdaroğlu administration. Any interest rate hikes that drastically tightened the economy’s access to capital would ripple through the job market and evaporate credit. A significant change would prove especially dangerous for the ruling party as the country prepares for local elections next March, where Erdoğan’s AK Party will seek to regain control of the Istanbul and Ankara mayor’s offices.

As a result, when the central bank’s Monetary Policy Committee on June 22nd finally announced an increase in its policy rate from 8.5% to 15%, observers were disappointed. With inflation still at 40%, real interest remains squarely in the negative zone. While some analysts believe that further gradual hikes may follow—a position expressed by Erkan herself—the market shows unequivocal pessimism. Instead of the increase in value that economists expected from a rate hike, the lira fell a further 7% against the dollar. Ironically, this depreciation may further discredit conventional economists and make the Turkish population even more receptive to Erdoğan’s unorthodox views. It could also serve as a rhetorical tool to justify a return to Erdoğan’s usual interest-slashing policies.

The observers now surprised by the lackluster hike in the policy rate are ignoring the fundamental lessons of Erdoğan’s economic rhetoric over the past three years. The president’s insistence on low interest rates is more than a personal belief: it is a core tool of political communication. Instead of avoiding economic discussions, Erdoğan brought the economy to the front and center of campaign rhetoric. The president harnessed Turkish citizens’ unique openness to interest rate experimentation while shrewdly embedding economic topics in the core messages of national pride and self-reliance that increasingly motivate the electorate. Meanwhile, the opposition found itself tainted by the fact that a radical pivot on interest rates would end access to cheap capital and endanger jobs—the same dilemma that now constrains Erdoğan’s own finance minister.

It should not surprise us that Erdoğan proved willing to moderately raise rates on June 22nd. Several precedents exist for such a move—and all have proved temporary. Much like in past rate hikes, Erdoğan is ardently voicing that his fundamental position on interest remains unchanged, and that it is a “delusion” to think otherwise. The counterintuitive fall of the lira after the June 22nd announcement may help cement his view. We must therefore not conclude that the Turkish government is pivoting to a conventional economic stance. Difficult times lie ahead, when the electorate’s vote of confidence in Erdoğan’s unorthodox monetary policy must be balanced with the need to fix looming economic crises. It will not be an easy task. 

[Lane Gibson edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Erdoğan’s Shrewd Rhetoric on the Turkish Economy appeared first on Fair Observer.

A disruptive, charismatic candidate

After serving a four-month sentence, Erdoğan presented himself as a leader who could successfully reconcile Islam with democracy. He founded the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in 2001 and led them to victory in the 2002 general election. Since he was ineligible to stand for elections in 2002 due to his conviction, he would have to wait to become prime minister in 2003.

The rise of the AKP was welcomed by the Turkish population, and the West viewed the progress in Turkey with optimism. As the Prime Minister, Erdoğan led the Turkish economy to be the 18th largest in the world. Erdoğan dismissed apprehensions of any anti-Western advances and pushed Turkey’s bid to join the European Union. He bolstered relations with the US and stated his intent to resolve the country’s territorial dispute with Cyprus.

Is a New Islamic Conservatism on the Horizon?

While Erdoğan was seen as a leader who could peacefully merge Islam and democracy, he gradually displayed a more Islamist and authoritarian side. AKP clashed with secular parties in 2007 when attempts to elect an AKP presidential candidate with an openly Islamic ideology were blocked. In 2010, the Erdoğan administration lifted the ban on the wearing of headscarves on university campuses. This was an early warning sign of a crackdown on Turkish democracy and secularism. Following this, Erdoğan’s position started to come under scrutiny, and a constitutional court began hearing a case that called for dismantling the AKP and banning Erdoğan and other members. The AKP survived the case, and it subsequently passed constitutional legislation that brought the military under greater control from civilian courts while simultaneously increasing the parliament’s power to appoint judges.

From democratic leader to modern sultan

Erdoğan had risen to power in 2002 as a messianic figure for Muslims in Turkey who felt repressed by the secular order. While his initial policies did not have an Islamic leaning, by 2011, Erdoğan was referring to the AKP election win as a victory for Turkey’s Ottoman heritage. In the summer of 2013, the government violently cracked down on a peaceful protest in Istanbul against an urban development plan. This was a decisive turning point, signifying the start of Erdoğan’s authoritarian rule. The incident triggered widespread protests against the government and raised concerns over the government’s interference in citizens’ lives. Further, Erdoğan took the incident as an opportunity to jettison several liberal AKP members, including then-President Abdullah Gül, who was denied the possibility to return to the party ranks after his presidential term ended.

Erdoğan subsequently took over as the first directly elected president, something made possible by a 2007 constitutional referendum. Turkey until this point had used a parliamentary system of democracy, where the head of state was elected by the legislature and held a ceremonial position. Erdoğan appointed former foreign minister Ahmet Davutoğlu as the prime minister, but later dismissed him due to his reluctance to support his ambitions to end the parliamentary system. Erdoğan replaced him with Binali Yıldırım, who was prepared to facilitate the constitutional amendments required to transform the political system into that of a presidential republic.

The Bottom Line: Kemalism Just Won’t Win

Erdoğan used the attempted military coup against him in 2016 to gain public support for a crackdown on his opponents. Erdoğan’s attack on Turkish democracy reached its apotheosis when the Turkish citizens voted on a constitutional amendment that officially transformed Turkey from a parliamentary democracy into a presidential one. Erdoğan became the first president under the new system in July 2018.

Party and presidential control erode Turkish institutions

This change in the system is worrying. The new constitution strengthens the powers of the president by granting him the power to issue presidential decrees to ensure the implementation of the law. Additionally, the president can issue a state of emergency. The president is no longer constitutionally required to remain politically neutral and can retain ties to his political party. Since the new constitution also grants the president the power to appoint and dismiss high-level public executives, including the vice president and cabinet ministers, this allows him to fill important places with members of his own political party.

The new constitution massively undermines the Grand National Assembly, Turkey’s unicameral parliament. If the president’s party controls the majority of seats in the Assembly, the president can control parliament and its agenda, rendering the governmental checks and balances redundant.

FO° Exclusive: Turkey’s Erdoğan Is Now Sultan

The government has also brought universities under direct control and ended the traditional right of state universities to appoint their own rectors, thus curbing academic freedom. The military has been severely weakened due to the post-coup crackdown by the government. Further, the government has exercised more direct control of the central bank. The previously improving Turkish economy has plummeted, and the Turkish lira has steadily lost value in recent years.

Turkey’s assertive stance puts NATO ties in question

In foreign policy, Turkey has sought to establish itself as a regional power and has recently even played a prominent role in mediating between Russia and Ukraine. The country, historically close to the West, has been at odds with it recently due to its increasing ties with Russia and its autocratic turn. Currently, Turkey’s future in NATO and EU membership seems uncertain as long as Erdoğan stays in power.

The election last month was arguably the most difficult test Erdoğan has ever faced. With the collapsing economy and the devastating impact of the recent earthquakes, Erdoğan’s position looked under scrutiny in the opinion polls before the election. However, Erdoğan managed to emerge as the winner, defeating the candidate of the united opposition, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu.

Kılıçdaroğlu had portrayed this election as a fight for democracy and promised to restore the parliamentary system of democracy. This election was the most important one for Erdoğan, as it was a test of his new political system.

Turkey’s political landscape has shifted dramatically since Recep Tayyip Erdoğan assumed power in 2003. The political structure of the country has changed, and the AKP has launched a systematic attack on the country’s secular order. Erdoğan’s reinvigoration by this electoral victory may result in further erosion of Turkish democracy and of its relations with the West. All eyes are now set on Ankara as Erdoğan’s march towards regional power status and authoritarianism continues.

[Anton Schauble edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post With Erdoğan’s Victory, Turkey’s Startling Slide Into Authoritarianism Continues appeared first on Fair Observer.

“Chad, you surely remember that back in 2019 the Trump administration made the extraordinary decision that a man called Juan Guaidó, who had never been elected or even considered as a presidential candidate, should be recognized as the legitimate president of Venezuela. Donald Trump justified this by claiming the democratically elected President Nicolás Maduro was a dictator who had managed democracy in his favor. After his withdrawal from the Paris climate accords and the Iran deal, Trump had acquired a reputation for making peremptory foreign policy decisions. Astonishingly, the European Union despite having made known its discomfort with Trump’s policies and personality, followed suit, recognizing Guaidó as Venezuela’s president. Two years later, in January 2021, just before the end of Trump’s term, the EU quietly withdrew their recognition of Guaidó. How can we explain the Europeans’ willingness to do something so obviously arbitrary and undemocratic?”

Chad surprised me by immediately resorting to a familiar strategy designed to dismiss probing questions.

“It’s important to note that the issue of recognizing Juan Guaidó as the legitimate president of Venezuela is a complex and multi-faceted one, and opinions on this matter can vary.”

Usually Chad takes some time before reaching the conclusion that there are too many contradictory opinions to take any one of them seriously. This time I had to react.

“Stop, stop! Please, Chad. I understand. No need to continue. Once you’ve trotted out your patented ‘complex and multifaceted,’ there’s no reason to add any other arguments to it. Case closed.”

Chad paused, stared at me for a moment and then insisted on adding this reflection. “The decision by some European nations to recognize Juan Guaidó may have been influenced by pressure from the United States. Historically, the United States has had strong ties with Europe, and there may have been a desire to align with American policy, particularly under the Trump administration.”

The Trump factor

Now the alacrity of Europeans  to follow the Trump administration surprised me, so I followed up with this question. “Why would you think the Europeans are ‘particularly’ inclined to follow Trump’s lead? That sounds contradictory to me.”

Chad apologized for giving a wrong impression and clarified by asserting that “the United States has historically been an important ally and partner for many European nations, and there is often a desire to maintain a close relationship and align on key policy issues. Despite concerns and disagreements with certain aspects of the Trump administration’s policies, European nations generally value the transatlantic relationship and may have felt compelled to maintain some level of cooperation or alignment, including in matters related to Venezuela.”

Now we were making some progress. The real question concerns what kind of relationship is implied when one party fells “compelled” to fall in line with another party’s arbitrary policies. This evoked in my mind more recent events and shared my .thought with Chad.

“Would that justify French President Emmanuel Marcron’s recently expressed concern about European nations falling into the role of what he called vassals of the US on the Taiwan situation with China.”

“Yes,” Chad responded, “the concerns expressed by President Emmanuel Macron about European nations potentially becoming vassals of the United States are valid and reflect a broader discussion within Europe regarding strategic autonomy and the balance of power in international relations. Macron, along with other European leaders, has emphasized the need for Europe to assert its own interests and pursue a more independent foreign policy.

Chad then surprised me by another assertion. “European nations, including France, have expressed the view that they should maintain their own strategic interests and make decisions based on their own assessments of geopolitical risks and opportunities.”

“Wait a minute,” I exclaimed. “I admit that France has insisted on strategic autonomy at least since De Gaulle, and maybe Germany has at times shown tendencies in that direction. But I don’t see any other European countries taking that stance, especially now that they have aligned behind the US as the leader of NATO in confronting Russia, despite the damage not just to their sense of autonomy but also their economy. Germany in particular has abjectly accepted policieis and acts by the US that have had the effective of crippling its economy.”

NATO’s strategic ambiguity

Chad’s response was predictable.

“It is important to note that European countries also value the transatlantic relationship and recognize the benefits of cooperation with the United States, particularly within the NATO framework. NATO serves as a vital alliance for collective defense and has played a crucial role in deterring potential security threats, including from Russia.”

“As Trump himself pointed out,” I retorted, “Europeans have become complacent with a situation in which the US makes the essential investment in their defense. But that has impeded even the hope of autonomy. And now they are enduring the consequences of Washington’s aggressive policy aimed at weakening Russia. This has produced a profound feeling of malaise. Although, no one seems willing to rock the boat for the moment, the economic consequences will eventually take their toll on European solidarity. I know you don’t know the answer to this, but, given your understanding of past historical trends, at one point will either the governments change course or the people revolt? Or will they only change course if the people revolt?”

I knew Chad would both acknowledge my point and find a way of avoiding a direct answer.

“The economic consequences of certain policies or actions, as you mentioned, can certainly impact European solidarity and influence public sentiment. Economic factors have historically played a role in shaping political landscapes and driving changes in policies. However, it is important to remember that political decisions are multifaceted, and a range of factors, including geopolitical considerations and national interests, come into play.”

I should have known that this would lead to the inevitable “multifaceted” defense strategy. If there’s one thing Chad will always teach us, it’s that whenever are crucial decision needs to be made, those who see no interest in challenging the status quo will always have a sledge hammer response that is specifically intended to sound delicate and nuanced.

I couldn’t, however, disagree with Chad’s final conclusion.

“Ultimately, the future course of European governments and the responses of the people will depend on a complex interplay of political, economic, and social dynamics.”

It’s always about interplay, a concept far more interesting, dynamic and instructive than simply noticing that issues tend to be “complex and multifaceted.” The very idea of interplay contains the concept of play, which means that something will have to give and history will see an outcome. That outcome will produce another instance of interplay.

In other words, Francis Fukuyama was wrong. There is no end to history. The vassals can continue to hope they will one day be free.

*[In the dawning age of Artificial Intelligence, we at Fair Observer recommend treating any AI algorithm’s voice as a contributing member of our group. As we do with family members, colleagues or our circle of friends, we quickly learn to profit from their talents and, at the same time, appreciate the social and intellectual limits of their personalities. This enables a feeling of camaraderie and constructive exchange to develop spontaneously and freely. For more about how we initially welcomed Chad to our breakfast table, click here.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Breakfast with Chad: the Vassalization of Europe appeared first on Fair Observer.

Nevertheless, the turnout for the Turkish elections was high, higher than turnouts are in most Western democratic states. Turnouts in dictatorships across the region are pitifully low, caused no doubt by apathy due to the lack of any real choice—unless, of course, they are the fanciful “99.9% support” type of turnout.

Despite this, coverage of these elections has portrayed them as a contest between a dictator (as Erdogan has been described time and again) against a democrat. Opposition presidential candidate Kemal Kilicdaroglu was painted as a humble civil servant who had risen to take on the strongman in a David versus Goliath political moment.

A working-class hero

It matters that Kilicdaroglu was not an emergent democratic grassroots candidate, but the predictable consensus candidate of a broad six-party opposition alliance. He has been the leader of the main opposition Peoples’ Republican Party (CHP) for 13 years. In that time, he has consistently lost at the ballot box to Erdogan. 

The now casual and commonplace description of Erdogan as a dictator in Western media also misses another key point. Unlike most real dictators, who tend to be opportunist ex-military figures, or career politicians who are often scions of influential families, Erdogan is the real deal, and his supporters know it. He rose from humble origins in Istanbul’s Kasimpasa neighborhood. He is in many ways unpolished. He is also sincere in his religious faith. His working-class roots and his understanding of how this constituency thinks—because he thinks like them—provide Erdogan an authenticity that you cannot simply manufacture.

All the onions and kitchen sinks in Turkey cannot obscure the fact that Erdogan is the figurehead for a constituency that was systemically disenfranchised for much of the modern Republic’s history. This is at the root of his enduring appeal. It is a populist appeal, but it is no less real for that.

Erdogan has made his life’s work the restoration of the dignity of a class of Turkish society that has felt marginalized and scorned by elites since at least the foundation of the modern republic, and arguably since the rise of westernizing reformist governments in the final years of the Ottoman Empire. 

In the pre-Erdogan era (and for a long time after it had begun), women who chose to wear a headscarf could not get an education or work for the public sector. Consider that fact for a moment. Women can wear headscarves to school or work in most secular Western states, and yet a state often viewed as Islamic by outsiders outlawed it.

Is a New Islamic Conservatism on the Horizon?

For his constituency, Erdogan’s tenure has been a very real revolution in their life circumstances. These core changes are important. The average voter sets them against the more recent economic pain. They weigh the two. Basic goods have become painfully expensive, but recently gained political freedoms are also precious. These are fundamental political considerations.

A popular, but not invincible, leader

Erdogan has made big mistakes. The economy is reeling from ill-judged policies and nepotism. The swing to nationalist policies and hardline confrontation with Kurds in the wake of the coup attempt of 2016 has brought with it intractable problems internally and externally for Turkey. The president’s post-coup paranoia of real or invisible enemies has made many old friends in his Justice and Development Party (AKP) lose faith with him, and his authoritarian style has alienated key Islamist figures who would make his government stronger.

When you consider all this, it is testament to the well of goodwill he is able to draw from that he still won fairly comfortably. However, it is easy to ascribe too much of the credit for Erdogan’s success to his own charisma and political know-how. Much of the cause of the result of this election was also of the opposition’s own making.

If the opposition alliance had really committed to challenging Erdogan, they should have found someone who didn’t require Erdogan’s core constituency to betray the legacy of what Erdogan has built. The leader of the CHP was never going to be that figure.

A clear majority in Turkish society does not want a return to a Western-backed secular nationalist elite, as exists in much of the Arab world and did exist for most of the history of the Turkish republic. Erdogan has made another path possible. His tenure is far from fully successful, but for him to be usurped, he needs to be beaten on his own terms.

The person to do so has not appeared, or, at any rate, not been chosen to run as a candidate against him. As has been repeated by much of the media, even a CHP candidate such as Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu would have been a much more serious challenge, given his significant appeal with voters.

But to be genuinely successful at cutting into the AKP vote, an opposition candidate would have to reflect more of the conservative opposition to Erdogan, which did exist in the six-party alliance. This alliance included Meral Aksener’s Iyi Party, Ali Babacan’s Democracy and Progress Party (DEVA) and Ahmet Davutoglu’s Future Party (GP).

In Babacan and Davutoglu, the alliance had two party leaders who were former members of the ruling AKP and former cabinet ministers. If they had led the opposition platform, that would have asked much more uncomfortable questions of the Erdogan campaign. As it was, the old lines of political and social loyalty were relatively undisrupted.

What will Erdogan leave to history?

The opposition must now reflect on the reality Erdogan has created and the need to realign their approach in the hope of denting Erdogan’s appeal. The president himself, however, has an opportunity. He is in his final term as president and has the chance to cement a legacy.

In appointing Mehmet Simsek as his new finance minister, he is making one clear signal in that direction. He knows that economic stability built AKP success in the 2000s. It nearly undid them in the 2020s. He needs to stabilize the currency to continue the prosperity that he has offered his constituency.

The other element is perhaps harder, but carries an even greater prize. It is the Kurdish question, Turkey’s eternal question.

Ironically, Erdogan’s revolution, for all its significance, has followed many of the trends long established by secular elites in Turkey. When his back was to the wall in the aftermath of the 2016 coup attempt, Erdogan turned to the hardline nationalists of the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) for support. In so doing, he undid any attempt to solve the Kurdish question through political dialogue. The resulting mess has festered within Turkey and has had high costs for the nation’s position in the region, leading to policy choices in Syria and Iraq that do not necessarily benefit Turkey in the long term.

What Is Erdogan’s Real Plan for Kurds?

In the wake of another victory, could this be the moment that an Erdogan now beyond the need for reelection takes on the role of a Father of the Nation, in much the way that Ataturk once did, and offers the ultimate magnanimous gesture? Could he find a political settlement to the Kurdish question that he might force through with his political capital?

If he did so, he could change the geopolitical dynamics of the region fundamentally, offering Turkey a vision of a foreign and domestic policy based not on anxiety and defense, but on economic and social opportunity. That might be the catalyst for an even more successful future than anyone could have imagined today.

[Anton Schauble edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post The Bottom Line: Kemalism Just Won’t Win appeared first on Fair Observer.

The debt ceiling in the United States originated from the need to control government spending and ensure fiscal responsibility. Initially, Congress had to authorize each new batch of debt issued, a cumbersome process that was modified with the passage of the Second Liberty Bond Act of 1917. This act established an aggregate amount, or debt ceiling, to govern the total debt to be issued. Since World War II, the debt ceiling has been adjusted over 100 times to accommodate the country’s evolving financial needs.

The concept of a debt ceiling, however, itself poses logical inconsistencies. All federal government spending is already authorized by Congress, making it contradictory to prevent the Treasury Department from raising the necessary debt to fund these authorized expenditures. In other words, Congress forbids spending which it has already mandated. Reaching the debt limit forces the government to choose between not fulfilling previously agreed obligations or defaulting on existing debt service. Either of these would be a violation of obligations established by law, and would therefore have severe implications for the US economy.

Implications of reaching the limit

Reaching the debt ceiling carries significant implications for the US economy. It can lead to a government shutdown, disrupt essential services, and even result in default on financial obligations, jeopardizing the nation’s creditworthiness. Credit rating agencies closely monitor debt ceiling debates. If they were to downgrade the federal government’s credit rating, this would increase borrowing costs and undermine investor confidence. Uncertainty surrounding the debt ceiling, even if it is not eventually reached, also introduces volatility into financial markets and can impact global economic stability.

An Outstanding Deep Dive Into the American Economy

Government default entails the non-payment of interest or principal on its obligations. This triggers a credit event that has far-reaching consequences. Individuals and institutions relying on government funds would not receive payments. Credit default swaps (CDSs)—insurance contracts taken out against credit events—would be triggered, potentially causing financial difficulties for institutions which have written CDSs. Rating agencies would downgrade the US credit rating, impacting other borrowers, and Treasury securities would no longer serve as acceptable collateral for institutional borrowing, leading to a collapse of credit availability, choking the economy and leading to a severe contraction.

Rating agencies such as Fitch and Standard & Poor’s have expressed concerns about the United States’ credit rating, despite the recent agreement on the debt ceiling. A potential downgrade could have implications not only for the US but also for all other borrowers whose credit rating is usually influenced by the sovereign rating. With the US bond market dominating global markets, the loss of the anchor role of US Treasuries, which form a substantial part of institutional portfolios worldwide, could create disarray in international bond markets.

Partisan shenanigans and a borrowing spree

The debt ceiling has become a contentious political issue in recent decades, with both major parties sharing responsibility for substantial increases in outstanding debt. The threat of a debt default has often been used as a bargaining tool in political negotiations. However, neither party wants to bear the blame for driving the country into a crisis, resulting in a risky game of chicken in which each party attempts to see who will budge first and agree to concessions favorable to the other party’s spending policy. This raises questions about whether the debate really revolves around the debt itself. The recent deal, featuring a suspension of the debt limit, essentially provides the Treasury the freedom to borrow as much money as needed until January 2025—a carte blanche.

The government’s account at the Federal Reserve, the Treasury General Account (TGA), has almost been depleted. It will have to be replenished to 600 billion US dollars (it peaked at 1.8 trillion US dollars during the pandemic). Those funds will have to be raised by raising additional debt—on top of money needed to fund the current federal fiscal deficit of around 2 trillion dollars. As I mentioned in a previous article, it is not apparent who would buy that amount of Treasury securities. The Federal Reserve might be forced to reverse its plan to slowly shrink its balance sheet, having to absorb additional government debt.

Who Will Buy America’s Debt Now?

After borrowing 726 billion dollars during the second quarter of 2023, the Treasury Department expects to raise another 733 billion dollars in the following quarter. Total government debt is hence guaranteed to continue rising at a fast pace. Having briefly been arrested at 31.4 trillion dollars (the amount of the debt ceiling), federal debt is expected to exceed 50 trillion dollars by 2033. The exponential growth of government debt is going to continue unabated.

The spending bill includes some mild cuts of non-military discretionary spending in 2024, and a limit of all discretionary spending in 2025. Military spending, however, will increase further, to 886 billion US dollars in 2024, and 895 billion in 2025, a 23% increase over the amount spent in 2022.

The bill’s drafters found other devices to cut costs. 20 billion dollars originally awarded to the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) to fight tax evasion will be clawed back. The bill imposes new requirements for adults to maintain access to food stamps. It also ends the freeze on student loan repayments. In short: money taken from the poor is being given to the military and to people crafting “innovative” tax returns.

Hidden under the surface-level negotiations was a fight over permit reform. Local governments had the ability to block interstate pipelines and electricity lines by dragging out the permitting process. Alternative energy companies need new transmission lines to transport energy produced by wind and solar farms towards population centers near the coasts. Fossil fuel companies need pipelines to move abundant natural gas from sparsely populated areas with shale reservoirs towards the big cities or harbors for export. In the end, the Mountain Valley Pipeline, bringing natural gas from the Marcellus shale fields in West Virginia to Virginia, made it into the bill, securing Senator Joe Manchin’s vote.

A proposal to end recurring debt ceiling drama

US lawmakers recognize the insanity of recurring debt ceiling debates, especially since it is a question of funding spending that has already been authorized by Congress once.

One option contemplates a bureaucratic rather than a legislative solution. This would involve the Treasury Department disregarding the debt ceiling and continuing to issue debt. The perspective finds support in the 14th Amendment of the US Constitution, which states that “the validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law…shall not be questioned.” However, pursuing such a unilateral move could result in a legal dispute and potentially generate still more uncertainty.

Another suggestion entails the Treasury minting a platinum coin with a denomination of 1 trillion US dollars, as it is legally permitted to do. This coin would then be deposited with the Federal Reserve in exchange for a credit of 1 trillion dollars. However, Treasury Secretary Yellen has dismissed this idea, noting that the Federal Reserve is unlikely to agree to such a proposal.

It is worth noting that the US government has in fact experienced instances of default in the past. Esteemed Wall Street veteran Jim Grant argues that a default can occur through a unilateral change in payment terms, resulting in a diminished financial obligation, such as forced currency redenomination. Two events over the past century align with this definition. Firstly, the devaluation of the dollar relative to gold under US President Roosevelt in 1933, when the gold price was raised from $20.67 to $35 per ounce. Secondly, the “temporary” suspension, which has since become permanent, of the dollar’s convertibility into gold by US President Nixon in 1971.

In reality, persistent inflation can be viewed as another form of default, albeit spread out over many years. Over time, the US dollar has lost approximately 97% of its purchasing power since the establishment of the Federal Reserve in 1913. While the dollar remains an effective medium of exchange, it has proven to be a poor long-term store of value due to the erosion of its purchasing power through inflation.

If spending is not controlled, the government will find one way or another of making ends meet, and all too often it is the consumer who foots the bill.

[Anton Schauble edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post What You Need to Know About the Debt Ceiling appeared first on Fair Observer.

In a country where the criminal justice system is tasked with so much more than it is designed to do and funded to do, it can seem slow to act and too susceptible to manipulation by those with resources. Meanwhile, the poor, the disadvantaged, and Black and Brown miscreants get outsized law enforcement attention that generally results in negative outcomes. 

So, take it seriously when an elected criminal prosecutor confronts evasion, threats, and the rigors of a long road ahead with an uncertain outcome to indict the rich and powerful, not to mention a former president of the United States. 

Trump’s Troubles With the Law

Further, the fraud indictment of Trump in New York is not trivial. The charges are serious and represent the first commitment to seek to impose a measure of criminal accountability on a dangerous and powerful man who has seemingly had his way with the justice system since the cradle.

The New York indictment alleges 34 felony counts of fraudulently falsifying business records to conceal criminal conduct. It is accompanied by a 13-page statement of facts. The case is about fraudulent concealment from the public of critical negative information concerning two of Trump’s alleged adulterous sexual adventures and, most importantly, fraudulent concealment of this information in the critical days before Trump’s unexpected 2016 presidential victory.

Further, there seems to be a growing consensus that there will be more criminal indictments to come and that these indictments will focus on Trump’s misconduct while in office or just after leaving office, not while seeking office. In this context, it is noteworthy that Trump was twice impeached for actions during his presidency without consequence, a backdrop that only adds to the clamor among progressives for a flood of indictments and associated perp walks.

To add to the excitement, Trump was just found personably liable for sexual abuse and defamation in a suit brought by a woman for sexually assaulting her years ago in a department store dressing room and then publicly lying about it. That sure sounds a bit like the underlying notion in the New York indictment – get caught in a messy sexual encounter, and then lie about it to avoid accountability. The New York indictment adds criminal fraud and allegations of hush money payments to the mix.

All of this comes amid the steadily increasing fervor of support from the 30% or more on the far right of the already right-wing Republican Party who are fully committed to a Trump rerun. This stunningly unprincipled patch of humanity seemingly will follow Trump anywhere, support his “vision” for America, and continually fail to get the message that their hero is incapable of sorting fact from fiction.

Republicans Still Love Trump

In today’s political climate, the Republican Party’s incapacity to set Trump adrift provides the best path to the best outcome for Democrats in the 2024 presidential election. Democrats can only hope that the true Trump believers will deliver to him the coveted 2024 Republican nomination for president or at the least remain so committed to a Republican Party implosion that Trump will make it almost impossible for the resulting nominee to win.

While this is hardly a sure path to victory, it may well be the best hope going forward as long as the Biden/Harris ticket remains the only presently viable option for the Democrats. So keep those indictments coming. While the New York indictment is an important and emphatic first attempt at imposing a measure of criminal liability and accountability on Trump, it is cautionary to note that for years Trump has gotten away with whatever criminal misconduct seemed to underpin so much of his successful lifelong grift. Maybe one day soon, in some jurisdiction, we will get a real mug shot and a set of cuffs.

To be sure, there is more to this than my antipathy and that of others toward Trump and his cronies. Rather, it is a deep conviction that if our institutions fail us now, America is headed into an abyss from which it will be very difficult to emerge. So, stopping Trump, his acolytes, his supporters, his donors, and the racist Christian right from realizing their ambitious plan for transforming the nation in their image has palpable immediacy now.

And it is not just Trump. The right-wing “aristocracy” has polluted all three of the branches of the US government with a crush of highly-educated, wealthy, interconnected, and morally bankrupt vermin seeking only the power to impose their will on the rest of us while playing by their own set of rules. Somehow Trump became and continues to be a convenient tool for undermining confidence in American institutions through unabashedly attacking historical facts and creating a threatening national tableau for those ignorant enough to buy into the notion of an existential threat to a way of life that never was.

It would be comforting to believe in cycles and in the someday emergence of new and enlightened interpretations of constitutional fundamentals that could help shape a safe, moral, diverse, and prosperous national future. Or, for the faithful, to believe that there is a god who has chosen this moment in time to screw around with America but who will eventually turn his playful attention back to Nigeria or Pakistan. For my part, however, I don’t believe in inevitable cycles, or in the fundamental wisdom of a document written two hundred years ago, or in god.

Instead, I am trying to believe that the young people of this nation may get off their cellphones long enough to reshape the electorate to reflect an understanding that our collective conscience demands so much more than the dark and shallow version of America in which those young people now live. It is also possible that elements within the aging generation of which I am a part will recognize the tainted legacy we are leaving behind and use some of our time and resources to try to rearrange that balance sheet.

While I await the revolution of the young and a renewed commitment of the aged, I will take a moment to enjoy every Trump indictment and hope that each one makes the right-wing aristocracy and its racist and White Christian collaborators just a bit less sure of themselves as they worry that I am coming for their guns.

[Hard Left Turn first published this piece.]

[Erica Beinlich edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Trump’s Monumental Lies Without Consequences Endanger a Nation appeared first on Fair Observer.

The signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994 brought about a significant shift in the dynamics of US-Mexico relations. While NAFTA aimed to promote economic growth and development, it also had unintended consequences for Mexican farmers and small-scale industries. The influx of subsidized American agricultural products led to the displacement of local farmers and increased unemployment. This economic upheaval, coupled with the lure of higher wages and employment opportunities to the north, further fueled migration from Mexico to the United States. 

A Teetering System

After years of stabilizing or even declining numbers of undocumented, unauthorized, or illegal migrants (pick your term) crossing the southern border, the influx has recently exploded and remains at stratospheric levels. The Migration Policy Institute estimated that around 79% of the undocumented immigrant population in the United States in 2018 originated from Mexico and Central America, including countries such as El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras.

The numbers tell us that the US has an immigration crisis. Past reforms have attempted to address the complexities of the border but have failed. The Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) of 1986 sought to grant amnesty to undocumented immigrants while simultaneously increasing border enforcement measures. However, the implementation of IRCA faced challenges, and subsequent reforms failed to provide a comprehensive solution. The absence of a clear path to legal status for those unauthorized immigrants who arrived after the IRCA, coupled with inadequate border security measures, contributed to an ongoing cycle of unauthorized migration.  

Since early 2021, there has been a notable increase in the number of individuals attempting to cross the US-Mexico border. The reasons behind this surge are multifaceted and can be attributed to a combination of push and pull factors. Economic challenges, violence, political instability, natural disasters, and the desire to reunite with family members already in the United States are among the factors that drive individuals to leave their home countries and seek entry into the United States. On top of that, the Biden Administration has a history of sending mixed signals to migrants. 

The influx of migrants has overwhelmed border facilities and strained the resources of immigration agencies, such as Customs and Border Protection and the Office of Refugee Resettlement. The capacity to process and house migrants has been stretched thin, resulting in overcrowded detention centers and temporary facilities. The situation has raised concerns about the conditions in which migrants are held, including issues of overcrowding, limited access to healthcare, and inadequate facilities to accommodate families and unaccompanied minors.

The increase in migrant arrivals has also strained the capacity to handle asylum claims and legal processing. The backlogs in immigration courts have further prolonged the time it takes to resolve cases, leaving individuals in limbo and creating challenges for managing the flow of migrants.

Trump Policies Dismantled

While the issue predates the Biden administration, it is crucial to analyze how President Joe Biden’s policies have shaped the current immigration crisis at the border.

From day one, Biden has prioritized dismantling the immigration policies implemented by his predecessor. His eagerness to erase any trace of Donald Trump’s immigration legacy has left our border vulnerable and created a magnet for illegal immigration. During his presidency, Donald Trump implemented various immigration policies aimed at reducing the influx of undocumented immigrants into the United States. While these policies were controversial and faced criticism from many quarters, supporters argue that they had notable effects on immigration patterns.

Here are some of Trump’s key immigration policies:

Border Security and Wall Construction: Trump made border security a priority and pushed for the construction of a physical barrier along the US-Mexico border. Although significant portions of the wall were replacement or reinforcement of existing barriers, it aimed to deter illegal crossings. 

Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP): The MPP, also known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy, required individuals seeking asylum at the southern border to wait in Mexico while their claims were processed in US courts. Supporters argue that this policy helped manage the influx of asylum seekers and reduced the incentive for fraudulent claims. 

Title 42: It was introduced in March 2020 by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) under the Trump administration. This policy invoked a public health provision, allowing the swift expulsion of individuals who posed a risk of spreading infectious diseases, including COVID-19. It acted as a necessary and effective tool to protect both Americans and migrants themselves from potential health hazards.

Title 42 proved crucial in managing the overwhelming surge of illegal immigration at the southern border. By enforcing swift deportations, it discouraged the dangerous practice of human smuggling and reduced the strain on our already burdened immigration system. Curiously, the Biden Administration fought Title 42 expulsions even as it officially maintained the COVID crisis was ongoing.

Asylum Policy Changes: The Trump administration implemented several changes to the asylum system, including the expansion of “safe third country” agreements and imposing stricter requirements on asylum seekers. These policies aimed to limit the number of individuals qualifying for asylum and expedite the asylum process. 

Immigration Enforcement: Trump focused on ramping up immigration enforcement, empowering Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to target undocumented immigrants, including those with criminal records. This led to increased apprehensions and deportations. 

Indifference by Design

The most egregious aspect of Biden’s approach lies in his weakening of border enforcement measures. The termination of the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), has resulted in a surge of illegal border crossings. By allowing migrants to enter the United States while awaiting court proceedings (that more often than not are skipped anyway), Biden has effectively created a “catch and release” system that encourages further illegal entry. 

The Biden Administration, led by its disdain for immigration enforcement, In May 2021 began winding down Title 42. The impact of repealing Title 42 has been swift and devastating. The number of illegal border crossings has skyrocketed to levels unseen in recent history, overwhelming Border Patrol agents and immigration facilities. Our border communities are forced to bear the brunt of this burden, grappling with the consequences of uncontrolled immigration.

Furthermore, Biden’s reckless expansion of immigration enforcement priorities is a slap in the face to law-abiding citizens. The administration’s focus on dismantling ICE and limiting deportations has created a dangerous environment where criminal illegal aliens are shielded from justice. This flagrant disregard for public safety and the rule of law undermines the very fabric of our society.

While the Biden administration claims to prioritize “humane” immigration policies, it conveniently ignores the humanitarian crisis that its own policies have exacerbated. The overcrowded detention facilities, unsanitary conditions, and the exploitation of vulnerable migrants are all consequences of an open-borders agenda. By failing to provide a deterrent and a clear message that illegal entry will not be tolerated, Biden’s policies perpetuate a cycle of human suffering and incentivize more dangerous journeys.

Sound Immigration Policies, Not Border Chaos

It is not a matter of heartlessness or xenophobia to demand secure borders and a rational immigration system. The United States has a rich history of legal immigration, and we have always welcomed those who abide by our laws. However, Biden’s policies prioritize the desires of foreign nationals over the well-being of American citizens.

The solution lies in a balanced approach that combines border security, immigration enforcement, and compassionate solutions for those seeking legal entry. This means investing in technology and infrastructure to secure our borders, reforming our broken immigration system, and prioritizing the interests and safety of American citizens.

The Biden administration’s reckless disregard for the rule of law and the sovereignty of our nation will have lasting consequences. It is high time that we recognize the dangers of these policies and demand a return to a sensible, secure, and fair immigration system that puts America and its citizens first. Our nation’s future depends on it.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post The Truth About Joe Biden’s Immigration Policy appeared first on Fair Observer.

Another major party is the People’s Democratic Party (HDP). Its support base has been largely Kurdish. In the early years of Erdoğan’s rule, the HDP supported his government. Now, the party is supporting Kılıçdaroğlu. 

The first round of the presidential election will be held on May 14. According to recent polls, Kılıçdaroğlu is currently ahead of Erdoğan. Opposition party leaders are confident that they will win with Kılıçdaroğlu as their candidate. This victory is unlikely to be because of the opposition’s policies, discourse or promises. The opposition is likely to win because the economy is in a tailspin and the Erdoğan government has botched earthquake relief efforts. 

A Country in Peril

The Turkish economy has declined rapidly, especially in the last two years. One of the most important indicators of this economic regression is the depreciation of the Turkish Lira (TL). According to the central bank data from March 2021, 1 US Dollar equaled 7.5 TL, and 1 Euro was worth 8.95 TL. Today, those ratios have changed dramatically, with 1 US Dollar now worth 18.8 TL, and 1 Euro fetching 20.35 TL. The collapse of the Turkish currency has led to rampant inflation and massive difficulties for most people.

According to TURKSTAT, the official statistical institution, the annual inflation rate in 2022 was 64%. However, according to ENAG, an independent statistical institution, inflation was 112% in 2022. Besides, in the latest Food Safety report of the World Bank, Turkey had the fifth highest food inflation in the world.

Inflation has affected every area of the economy from the automotive to the real estate sector. One of the most concerning areas affected is the housing market, as hundreds of thousands of houses have been built in the last two decades. Despite the increase in housing supply, prices have increased dramatically in the last two years. In some places, housing prices have tripled. In other places, housing prices have increased eightfold. As a result, it has become exponentially more difficult for young people to buy a home.

Erdoğan’s government has been hit hard by two major earthquakes that took place in Southeastern Turkey on February 6, 2023. The first earthquake had a magnitude of 7.8, and the aftershock that accompanied it approximately 10 hours later had a magnitude of 7.5. Erdoğan lost a great deal of votes during these earthquakes. More than 47,000 people died, over 160,000 buildings were damaged or destroyed and cities turned into heaps of rubble.

The late arrival of rescue and aid activities resulted in even more deaths. A humanitarian organization called the Red Crescent (known in Turkey as Kizilay) was the subject of widespread outrage when it sold 2,050 tents to another charity organization for a 46 million TL profit. Critics condemned Kizilay for not providing the tents to the thousands of displaced Turkish citizens in need of shelter free of charge.

Erdoğan is on the ropes. Yet it is important to remember that he has more than 20 years of political experience. Erdoğan has won every election he has entered for the past few years. He is a savvy political operative and could still win the forthcoming election as well.

Since first coming to power in 2003, Erdoğan has built up a formidable political base. He has millions of loyal supporters, who blindly support him. They are primarily middle-aged, religious, conservative and nationalist voters who see Erdoğan as the leader who gave them a voice. Erdoğan also has a huge media presence. He uses news outlets to disseminate propaganda. If Erdogan makes a speech anywhere, almost all news outlets scramble to broadcast it live. 

Erdoğan’s control over the media is not total though. There are still multiple opposition outlets. They regularly call for the end of the Erdoğan era. Yet that end is not guaranteed. The opposition has been accused of complacency and many of its supporters are getting nervous. Kılıçdaroğlu is currently ahead in the polls. However, any assumption that the election is already in the bag could be a historical mistake. 

A Turning Point for Turkey

Erdoğan has historically benefitted from the fragmentation of the opposition parties. This time, however, the opposition has found a way to unite, despite differing identities and ideologies. 

Many of the opposition parties were founded by former ministers and prime ministers who once served in Erdoğan’s administration. For example, the DEVA Party was founded by Ali Babacan, who served as Turkey’s economy minister for 13 years. Part of Babacan’s tenure was under Erdoğan’s premiership.  If Babacan wins the election, many believe he will be able to reform the Turkish economy and revive Turkey’s lost democratic ideals. 

Another former ally turned opposition leader is Ahmet Davutoğlu. Davutoğlu served as Erdoğan’s prime minister, before stepping down from the position in 2016. Davutoğlu opposed Erdoğan’s increasingly authoritarian policies and went on to found the Gelecek Party, which is also known as the Future Party. Davutoğlu’s party has also joined the opposition coalition.. Many predict that the coalition of these parties will win over a significant number of voters who previously supported Erdoğan.

However, nothing is certain yet. Erdoğan could still win. If he does despite such unfavorable circumstances, the united opposition parties will have failed miserably. If Erdoğan loses, the election will prove historic. It will mark a watershed where a fragmented opposition united to unseat an authoritarian president.

Turkey will experience an intense election campaign in the coming weeks. The election has the potential to radically change Turkey’s political system. The opposition has promised to replace the current presidential form of government and return to the parliamentary one that  Erdoğan dismantled. If Erdoğan is reelected, his strong one-man regime will persist and weaken Turkish democracy further. Needless to say, his election is a major crossroads for the country, and will directly shape Turkey’s political, economic and social future.
[Hannah Gage edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post What You Need To Know About Turkey’s Upcoming Election appeared first on Fair Observer.

A year and a half later, it’s worth reflecting on where the United States stands when it comes to both that forever war against terrorism and war generally. As it happens, the war on terror is anything but ended, even if it’s been overshadowed by the war in Ukraine and simmering conflicts around the globe, all too often involving the United States. In fact, it now seems as if this country is moving at breakneck speed out of the era of Forever War and into what might be thought of as the era of Eternal War.

Granted, it’s hard even to keep track of the potential powder kegs that seem all too ready to explode across the globe and are likely to involve the US military in some fashion. Still, at this moment, perhaps it’s worth running through the most likely spots for future conflict.

Russia and China

In Ukraine, as each week passes, the United States only seems to ramp up its commitment to war with Russia, moving the slim line of proxy warfare ever closer to a head-to-head confrontation between the planet’s two great military powers. Although the plan to avoid a direct confrontation with Russia clearly remains in effect, once taboo forms of support for Ukraine have over time become more acceptable.

As of early March, the United States, one of more than 50 countries offering some form of support, had allocated aid to Ukraine on 33 separate occasions, amounting to more than $113 billion worth of humanitarian, military, and financial assistance. In the process, the Biden administration has agreed to provide increasingly lethal weaponry, including Bradley fighting vehicles, Patriot missile batteries, and Abrams tanks, while pressure for even more powerful weaponry like Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMs) and F-16s is only growing. As a recent Council on Foreign Relations report noted, Washington’s aid to Ukraine “far exceeds” that of any other country.

In recent weeks, the theater of tension with Russia has expanded beyond Ukraine, notably to the Arctic, where some experts see potential for direct conflict between Russia and the US, branding that region a “future flashpoint.” Meanwhile, Russian President Vladimir Putin recently raised the possibility of storing tactical nuclear weapons in neighboring Belarus, perhaps more of a taunt than a meaningful gesture, but nonetheless another point of tension between the two countries. 

Leaving Ukraine aside, China’s presence looms large when it comes to predictions of future war with Washington.  On more than one occasion, Biden has stated publicly that the United States would intervene if China were to launch an invasion of the island of Taiwan. Tellingly, efforts to fortify the US military presence in the Asia-Pacific region have ratcheted up in recent months.

In February, for example, Washington unveiled plans to strengthen its military presence in the Philippines by occupying bases in the part of that country nearest to Taiwan. All too ominously, four-star Air Force General Mike Minihan went so far as to suggest that this country might soon be at war with China. “I hope I am wrong. My gut tells me [we] will fight in 2025,” he wrote in a memo to the officers he commands in anticipation of a future Chinese move on Taiwan. He also outlined a series of aggressive tactics and weapons training maneuvers in preparation for that day. And the Marines have been outfitting three regiments for a possible future island campaign in the Pacific, while war-gaming such battles in Southern California.  

North Korea, Iran, and the War on Terror

North Korea and Iran are also perceived in Washington as simmering threats.

For months now, North Korea and the US have been playing a game of nuclear chicken in parallel shows of missile strength and submarine maneuvers, including the North’s mid-March launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of carrying a nuclear warhead and, at least theoretically, reaching the US mainland. In its leader Kim Jong-un’s words, it was intended to “strike fear into the enemies” of his country. In the last days of March, his military even launched a reputed underwater nuclear-capable drone, taking the confrontation one step further. Meanwhile, Washington has been intensifying its security commitments to South Korea and Japan, flexing its muscles in the region, and upping the ante with the biggest joint military drills involving the South Korean armed forces in years.

As for Iran, it’s increasingly cooperating with an embattled Russia when it comes both to sending drones there and receiving cyberweapons from that country. And since Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the JCPOA nuclear treaty with Iran in May 2018, tensions between Washington and Teheran have only intensified. International monitors have recently concluded that Iran may indeed be approaching the brink of being able to produce nuclear-grade enriched uranium. At the same time, Israel has been ramping up its threats to attack Iran and draw the United States into such a crisis.

Meanwhile, smaller conflicts are sizzling around the globe, many seemingly tempting Washington to engage more actively. On President Biden’s agenda in his recent meeting with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, for instance, was the possibility of deploying a Canadian-led multinational force to Haiti to help quell the devastating gang violence ravaging that country. “We believe that the situation on the ground will not improve without armed security assistance from international partners,” a National Security Council official told NPR’s Morning Edition ahead of the summit. Trudeau, however, backed away from accepting such a role. What Washington will now do — fearing a wave of new immigrants — remains to be seen.  

And don’t forget that the forever war on terror persists, even if in a somewhat different and more muted form.  Although the US has left Afghanistan, for instance, it still retains the right to conduct “over the horizon” air strikes there. And to this day, it continues to launch targeted strikes against the al-Shabaab terror group in Somalia, even if in far lower numbers than during the Trump years when drone strikes reached an all-time high of more than 200. So far, the Biden administration has launched 29 such strikes in the last two years.

American drone attacks persist in Syria as well. Only recently, in retaliation for a drone attack against US troops there that killed an American contractor and wounded another, as well as five soldiers, the Biden administration carried out strikes against Iranian-backed militias. According to National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby, President Biden has still not ruled out further retaliatory acts there. As he told Margaret Brennan on Face the Nation at the end of March, referring to ISIS in Syria, “We have under 1,000 troops [there] that are going after that network, which is, while greatly diminished, still viable, and still critical. So we’re going to stay at that task.”

Other than Syria and Iraq (where the US still has 2,500 troops), the war on terror is now particularly focused on Africa. In the Sahel region, the swath of that continent just below the Sahara Desert, including Chad, Niger, Nigeria, Mauritania, and Sudan, among other countries, the legacies of past terrorism and the war in Ukraine have reportedly converged, creating devastatingly unstable and violent conditions, exacerbating what USAID official Robert Jenkins has called “decades of undelivered promises.”

As journalist Walter Pincus put it recently, “With little public notice, the two-decades-long US war on terrorism continues in the Sahel.” According to the 2023 Global Index for Terrorism, that region is now the “epicenter of terrorism.” The largest US presence in West Africa is in Niger, which, as Nick Turse reports, “hosts the largest and most expensive drone bases run by the US military,” intended primarily to counter terrorist groups like Boko Haram, al-Qaeda, and the Islamic State. Weapons from the war in Ukraine have found their way to such terrorist groups, while climate-change induced weather nightmares, deepening food insecurity, and ever more dislocated populations have led to an increasingly unstable situation in the region. Complicating things further, the Wagner group, the Russian mercenary paramilitary outfit, has been offering security assistance to countries in the Sahel, intensifying the potential for violence. US military forces and bases in the region have grown apace as the war on terror in Africa intensifies.

Legislative Support for Eternal Warfare

Legislative moves in Congress unabashedly reflect this country’s pivot to Eternal War. Admittedly, the push for an ever-expanding battlefield didn’t start with the great-power conflicts leading today’s headlines. The 2001 congressional Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF), which paved the way for the invasion of Afghanistan, gave the president essentially unlimited authority to take offensive action in the name of countering terrorism by not naming an enemy or providing any geographical or time limits. Since the fall of 2001, just as Representative Barbara Lee (D-CA) predicted while casting the only vote against it, that AUMF has served as a presidential “blank check” when it comes to authorizing the use of force more or less anywhere.

Former State Department lawyer Brian Finucane has pointed out that the perpetuation of “much of the legal, institutional, and physical infrastructure that underpin this decades-long” war on terror is now being extended to the Sahel, no matter the predictable results. As Soufan Group terrorism expert Colin Clarke told me, “A global war on terrorism has never been winnable. Terrorism is a tactic. It can’t be fully defeated, just mitigated and managed.”

Nevertheless, the 2001 AUMF remains on the books, available to be tapped in ever-expansive ways globally. Only this month, Congress once again voted against its repeal.

Admittedly, the Senate did recently repeal the 1991 and 2002 authorizations for the use of force that undergirded the Iraq War of 1991 and the 2002 invasion of that country. Notably, a new amendment proposed by Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) to also create an AUMF against Iran-backed militias in the region was defeated. As recent military engagements in Syria have shown, new authorizations have proven unnecessary.

Congress seems to be seconding the move from Forever War to Eternal War without significant opposition. In fact, when it comes to funding such a future, its members have been all too enthusiastic. As potential future war scenarios have expanded, so has the Pentagon budget which has grown astronomically over the past two years. In December, President Biden signed the 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, which granted the Pentagon an unprecedented $816.7 billion, 8% more than the year before (with Congress upping the White House’s suggested funding by $45 billion).

And the requests for the 2024 budget are now in. As Pentagon expert William Hartung reports, at $886 billion dollars, $69 billion more than this year’s budget, Congress is on a path to enacting “the first $1 trillion package ever,” a development he labels “madness.” “An open-ended strategy,” Hartung explains, “that seeks to develop capabilities to win a war with Russia or China, fight regional wars against Iran or North Korea, and sustain a global war on terror that includes operations in at least 85 countries is a recipe for endless conflict.”

Whatever Happened to the Idea of Peace?

When it comes to the war in Ukraine, there is a widely shared sense that it’s going to last and last — and last some more. Certain experts see nothing short of years of fighting still on the horizon, especially since there seems to be little appetite for peace among American officials.

While French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz have reportedly urged Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to consider peace talks, they seem to have few illusions about how long the war is likely to go on. For his part, Zelensky has made it clear that, when it comes to Russia, “there is nothing to talk about and nobody to talk about over there.” According to Alexander Gabuev, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the mood in both Moscow and Kyiv could be summed up as “give war a chance.”

China is, it seems, an outlier when it comes to accepting a long-term war in Ukraine. Even prior to his visit to Russia in late March, President Xi Jinping offered to broker a ceasefire, while releasing a position paper on the perils of continued warfare and what a negotiated peace might aim to secure, including supply-chain stability, nuclear power plant safety, and the easing of war-caused global humanitarian crises. Reportedly, the summit between Xi and Putin made little headway on any of this.

Here in the US, calls for peace talks have been minimal. Admittedly, last November, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley reportedly told the Economic Club of New York, “When there’s an opportunity to negotiate, when peace can be achieved, seize it. Seize the moment.” But there has been no obvious drive for diplomatic negotiations of any sort in Washington. In fact, John Kirby, the National Security Council spokesperson, responded to President Xi’s proposal this way: “We don’t support calls for a ceasefire right now.” The Russians, he claimed, would take such an opportunity “to only further entrench their positions in Ukraine… [and] rebuild, refit, and refresh their forces so that they can restart attacks on Ukraine at a time of their choosing.”

Disturbingly, American calls for peace and diplomacy have tended to further embrace the ongoing war. The New York Times editorial board, while plugging future peace diplomacy, suggested that only continued warfare could get us to such a place: “[S]erious diplomacy has a chance only if Russia accepts that it cannot bring Ukraine to its knees. And for that to happen, the United States and its allies cannot waver in their support [of Ukraine].” More war and nothing else, the argument goes, will bring peace. The pressure to provide ever more powerful weapons to Ukraine remains constant on both sides of the aisle. As Robert Wicker, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee put it, “[T]his approach of ‘more, better, faster’ would give the Ukrainians a real shot at victory.”

Whether in Ukraine, in the brewing tensions of what’s being called a “new cold war” in Asia, or in this country’s never-ending version of the war on terror, we now live in a world where war is ever more accepted as a permanent condition.  On the legal, legislative, and military fronts, it has become a mainstay for what passes as national security activity. Some of this, as many critics contend, is driven by economic incentives like lining the pockets of the giant weapons-making corporations to the tune of multibillions of dollars annually; some by what passes for ideological fervor with democracy pitched against autocracy; some by the seemingly never-ending legacy of the war on terror.

Sadly enough, all of this prioritizes killing and destruction over life and true security. In none of it do our leaders seem to be able to imagine reaching any kind of peace without yet more weapons, more violence, more conflicts, and more death.

Who even remembers when World War I was known as “the war to end all wars”? Sadly, it seems that the era of Eternal War is now upon us. We should at least acknowledge that reality.

[TomDispatch first published this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Can the US End its Frightening Addiction to War? appeared first on Fair Observer.

Sunak’s rise and the number of minority candidates who ran for the top job in the previous party leadership race demonstrate a key fact: the Tories are brimming with ethnic diversity. Six of the original eleven candidates, Kemi Badenoch, Suella Braverman, Rehman Chishti, Sajid Javid, Rishi Sunak, and Nadhim Zawahi, come from ethnic minorities. Such a diverse group of contestants was no fluke. It was the result of targeted approaches, particularly toward South Asians in the UK, and a willingness to propel ethnic minority MPs into ministerial offices.

The Christian Democratic Union (CDU), the center-right party of Germany, does not represent ethnic minorities in the same way as the Tories. The Conservative Party could potentially serve as a model for the CDU.

Merkel’s Cabinets – Ethnic Diversity Missing

A comparison of Boris Johnson’s and Angela Merkel’s cabinets highlights the ethnic diversity gap between the Tories and the CDU. Boris Johnson’s first cabinet, from July to November 2019, was already ethnically more diverse than that of his predecessors. In Johnson’s second and last cabinet, about 25% of cabinet ministers had an ethnic minority background. The percentage of ethnic minorities in the UK is only 14%, making this overrepresentation remarkable.

Merkel’s four cabinets during her 16-year tenure from 2005 to 2021 reveal a contrasting picture. Under Merkel, not a single CDU cabinet minister came from an ethnic minority background. This is striking because ethnic minorities comprise 26% of Germany’s population. While 34% of Tory MPs come from ethnic minorities, the figure is only 4.1% for the CDU.

Neglecting German Turks for Too Long

The rise of ethnic minorities in the Conservative Party has roots in the 1980s. The Tories identified the South Asian community as a target group. Margaret Thatcher’s government was particularly successful in winning over prosperous East African Indians. Her party slowly detached itself from its xenophobic legacy, epitomized most starkly by Enoch Powell’s “Rivers Of Blood” speech.

On the other hand, the CDU failed to make such an appeal to the German Turks, the largest ethnic minority comprising more than 1.2 million voters.  In fact, in 1982, Helmut Kohl’s government tried to lure the immigrant Turks from the 1960s to return to their homeland with an incentive of a return payment. In leaked confidential conversations with none other than Margaret Thatcher, Kohl communicated his ultimately unexecuted intention to reduce “Turks in Germany […] by 50% […] It would be impossible for Germany to assimilate the Turks in their present numbers […] Turks come from a very distinctive culture and would not be easily integrated.”

Furthermore, in the 1990s, Kohl’s so-called “asylum compromise” restricted the possibility of invoking the fundamental right of asylum. Consequently, the CDU lost trust among the German Turks. Added to that, the CDU conducted election campaigns ignoring the German Turks by opposing their demand for dual citizenship.The “C” that stands for Christian in the party name also had a deterrent effect on  many Turks. Meanwhile, some conservative values of German Turks are close to those of the CDU. As migration researcher, Haci-Halil Uslucan told the newspaper, Der Tagesspiegel: “If the CDU does not emphasize the “C” too strongly, it is very close in terms of its attitude to a large part of the population of Turkish origin.“

The CDU eventually recognized German Turks as potential voters and managed to loosen the traditional electoral grip of the Social Democrats (SPD) on German Turks in its favor for the last two federal elections. The SPD’s failure to enforce dual citizenship while in power and the belated expulsion of Thilo Sarrazin, a party member and author who published books with Islamophobic undertones, alienated German Turks from the SPD.

Besides the inadequacies of the SPD, Merkel’s well appreciated refugee policy, which allowed 890,000 asylum seekers to enter Germany in 2015, drew German Turks to the CDU. “I am also the Chancellor of German Turks.”, canvassed Merkel in 2016, reinforcing her commitment to fortify Germany as an immigration society.

No Political Will at the Highest Levels of Power

Merkel’s already belated commitment further fueled the lack of representation of federal cabinet ministers from ethnic minority backgrounds since no further action was taken. 

The CDU has hardly shown any interest in awarding the highest party and executive offices to MPs from ethnic minority backgrounds. Before, during and after Merkel’s tenure, hardly any MP’s from ethnic minority backgrounds were awarded the highest party and executive offices from high-powered intra-party figures of the CDU. 

In contrast, the Tories underpinned their courtship of South Asians through political action at the highest levels of power. In 2015, former prime minister David Cameron resolutely said, “The first black or Asian prime minister will be a conservative”. Under the slogan “2020 Vision“, he pledged to increase the proportion of parliamentary party members with an ethnic minority background by 2020. 

Boris Johnson built upon this vision with his ethnically diverse cabinets, though his underlying motives for these appointments to offices are open to debate. Johnson calls himself a “one-man melting pot” in light of his Turkish and Russian-Jewish family history and his second wife being of Indian origin. However, Priti Patel, Alok Sharma, and Rishi Sunak’s appointments to their ministerial posts could be viewed as rewards for their pro-Brexit stances. The same rationale can be applied to the appointments of Suella Braverman, Kemi Badenoch, and Kwasi Kwarteng into Truss’s “most right-wing cabinet for a generation”, all of whom also voted for Brexit.

In comparison, the CDU has a lack of similar influential political figures willing to promote ethnic minority representation in government offices. During her four terms, Merkel missed a vital opportunity to hire more personnel from ethnic minority backgrounds into the CDU/CSU’s Bundestag parliamentary groups. Instead of seizing this opportunity, she simply failed to concretise her lip service. 

Armin Laschet, Merkel’s direct successor as party leader, could have been a rare facilitator of change and spearheaded a more diverse government. He proved his credentials as the integration minister of Germany’s most populous state North Rhine-Westphalia, calling for more ethnic minority MPs in 2010. He also published a book entitled “The Upstart Republic: Immigration as an Opportunity“ the year before, highlighting his pro-immigration stance. 

After he was elected North Rhine-Westphalia’s Minister-President, Laschet set an example by appointing a Turk, Serap Güler, as State Secretary for Integration in 2017. To this date, Güler is considered one of the few prominent German Turks in the CDU who could ascend to the federal party’s highest ranks in the years to come. In an interview with the Turkish newspaper Hürryiet during the Bundestag election campaign in 2021, Laschet displayed his determination to canvas German Turks.

When asked whether there would be a CDU minister with an ethnic minority background under his chancellorship, he replied, “We’ll talk about the cabinet formation after the Bundestag elections. But in fact, [our Bundestag is] not really diverse […]. If a quarter of the population has an immigration biography, but in a parliamentary group, there are only one or two people, that is not representative. […] I would like to see more people with immigration history, including more people of Turkish origin […] in the Bundestag – and the federal government.” Yet, he was defeated by Olaf Scholz after a disastrous election campaign, handing over the party chair to Friedrich Merz after just a year. 

More Ethnic Minority Representation Under Merz?

The successful careers of Rishi Sunak, Kwasi Kwarteng, and Sajid Javid, among others within the party, should serve as a target position for the CDU. The Tories have been accused of mere symbolism as there has been a lack of substantive representation in terms of policies benefiting ethnic minorities. Despite this, the party has continued to recognize that ethnic minority representation within the cabinet has to reflect the UK’s realities of an immigration society and is paramount to winning new electoral majorities. 

The CDU still lags behind the Tories in representing minorities. They have been late in approaching ethnic minority target groups such as the German Turks. The belated avowals of CDU politicians of Germany as a society with a high number of immigrants and the lack of political  will to represent them have led to inadequate representation of minorities as MPs and ministers. It is doubtful if this representative deficit will be rectified under Merz, the present party leader and staunch conservative.
Despite promising to modernize and open up the party to new target groups, Merz has done the opposite. He countered his promise by advocating for more restrictive immigration policies and pronouncing the target of winning back voters from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). This does not bode well for ethnic diversity in the CDU and will ensure that the representative deficit continues.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Could a Rishi Sunak Rise to the Top in Germany? appeared first on Fair Observer.

Even the nations of Europe most loyal to NATO have begun to understand the danger of committing to a war that they perceive as having less and less to do with Ukraine and everything to do with Washington’s belief in its capacity to control the global economy, even at the cost of undermining the economy of its allies.

Wars are expensive and produce a wide range of annoying effects. They end up taking a toll on people’s psyche. And though most of the time what the people think and want generally has little effect on policy, when elections roll around, their psyche might end up mattering. And even if the US manages to control the message at home, it counts on its allies, whose media are much harder to control from Washington.

The grief attached to the Ukraine war has begun to rattle some people in Washington. The Washington Post featured an article this week with the title: “U.S. privately asks Ukraine to show it’s open to negotiate with Russia.” The three journalists who authored the article describe the delicate task the US government is faced with today, as many leaders in Europe are beginning to worry precisely about the state of their populations’ psyche.

Chorus for Peace in Ukraine Sings Louder

READ MORE

As the article’s title indicates, it isn’t a question of making decisions or revising policy. The point is “to show” something, not to make it happen. Politics will also produce a particular version of hyperreality, in which things need not be real. They must simply appear to be real.

The article claims to share with its readers the true motives of the White House, “according to people familiar with the discussions.” It takes the trouble to clarify what this “show” of being open does not mean. “The request by American officials is not aimed at pushing Ukraine to the negotiating table, these people said. Rather, they called it a calculated attempt to ensure the government in Kyiv maintains the support of other nations facing constituencies wary of fueling a war for many years to come.”

Americans can thus be reassured. The “show” isn’t: an attempt to provoke the unimaginable: actual negotiations with the diabolical Vladimir Putin. It’s nothing more than a “calculated attempt” to show something that isn’t true.

Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Calculated attempt:

Carefully fabricated lie designed to create an impression opposite to visible reality

Contextual note

The trio of The Washington Post journalists articulate with precision what’s behind this need for a calculated attempt. “US officials,” they report, “acknowledge that President Volodymyr Zelensky’s ban on talks with [Putin] has generated concern in parts of Europe, Africa and Latin America, where the war’s disruptive effects on the availability and cost of food and fuel are felt most sharply.” In other words, this is neither a diplomatic nor a political problem. It certainly isn’t inviting a debate about the morality of war or promoting the advantages of peace. No, it’s about the image of a policy that is beginning to fray some people’s nerves in other parts of the world. In short, it’s a PR problem. The task at hand is damage control.

One person cited in the report has even given it a name. “Ukraine fatigue is a real thing for some of our partners,” according to one of their anonymous officials. Notice this official’s emphasis on the idea of Ukraine fatigue being “a real thing.” It’s the fatigue that’s real and worrying, not the horrors associated with the war or its consequences for humanity at large. 

Is Thinking Now Forbidden in the Media?

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One interesting and revealing remark in this article concerns The Washington Post’s analysis of the state of opinion in the US, where “polls show eroding support among Republicans for continuing to finance Ukraine’s military at current levels.” The Biden administration and The Washington Post’s want readers to believe that only Republicans are questioning the unlimited generosity of the White House in its commitment to prolonging the war. In fact, a significant minority of Democrats (19%) also oppose even supporting the Ukraine war effort, let alone signing a blank check.

American media and US politicians appear to be complicit in seeking to maintain the perception of an absolute contrast between the two dominant parties, even when, more often than not, they rarely disagree, especially on foreign policy. The insistent focus on a binary contrast and party rivalry conveniently serves to deviate attention from the more fundamental issues that neither of the parties seems eager to address.

Historical note

Most people are now aware of the fact that after a series of traumatic events we are living through a momentous period of history: four years of Donald Trump in the White House, three years of Covid and the dramas attached to it, the chaotic US withdrawal from the oldest of its “forever wars” in Afghanistan, and the Russian invasion of Ukraine followed by the apoplectic if not apocalyptic reaction of the nations associated in NATO, to say nothing of the increasingly visible effects of climate change. All these things have heightened everyone’s uncertainty about the future and of the trajectory of human history. 

Today’s journalism has an uncomfortable relationship with history. Journalists have traditionally preferred highlighting the drama of simple oppositions, of contests that pit one side against the other. They prefer reducing questions to the level of black and white decision-making. But history will always be complex. At moments of radical transition or transformation, simple oppositions cannot do justice to reality. Believing they can make things even more desperately complex. In this case it raises the very real prospect of nuclear war.

The Washington Post’s journalists acknowledge the growing complexity but decline to make sense of it. Here is how they describe the quandary the US is faced with. “The discussions illustrate how complex the Biden administration’s position on Ukraine has become, as U.S. officials publicly vow to support Kyiv with massive sums of aid ‘for as long as it takes’ while hoping for a resolution to the conflict that over the past eight months has taken a punishing toll on the world economy and triggered fears of nuclear war.”

In Times of War History Goes Missing

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The journalists even highlight what has become an embarrassing historical fact, adding to the complexity. “While Zelensky laid out proposals for a negotiated peace in the weeks following Putin’s Feb. 24 invasion, including Ukrainian neutrality and a return of areas occupied by Russia since that date, Ukrainian officials have hardened their stance in recent months.” But that is as far as they accept to go.

Unsurprisingly – because that would truly complicate things – they don’t ask themselves the essential questions any journalist aware of these facts should focus on. Who are these “Ukrainian officials?” What is their relationship with Zelenskyy or Zelenskyy’s with them? What avowable or unavowable logic is behind the “hardening” that took place? Do the hardliners represent average Ukrainians or, as some have suggested, groups of radical nationalists with strong neoNazi sympathies? Are there other identifiable interests inside or outside Ukraine that have produced this hardening?

All mainstream journalists in the US appear not to be curious about these questions. Or perhaps they are instructed not to be curious in public. As the kerfuffle within the Democratic party around progressives timidly recommending negotiations showed, seeking peace is a forbidden topic of discussion. Policy, everywhere and always, is about power plays. So why shy away from tracking and analyzing them, especially when the stakes may be nuclear war?

For the media, the answer to that question is easy. Just as at the time of George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, journalists interested in keeping their jobs have been given a task to accomplish: make sure that the nation remains unified behind its leaders. It’s an argument that has some merit. But when things become this complex and downright dangerous, it may be time to reconsider its wisdom.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of Fair Observer Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post The Biden Administration Makes a Show Of Being Open appeared first on Fair Observer.

This law intends to give parents greater control over their children’s upbringing and comes at the heels of a raging debate around critical race theory (CRT) and its purported instruction in schools (K-12). Debates around the bill also culminated in the passage of another bill- HB 7:The Individual Freedom bill, which quite ironically curtails speech by prohibiting classroom instruction, curricula design, and workplace training on particular kinds of discussions about race, color, sex, or national origin. Once again, the law does not define what those restricted forms of speech are. The intent of this law is to crack down on what DeSantis calls “wokeness”.

Advancements in Gay and Lesbian Rights over the Years: What went wrong?

While these two laws are specific to Florida residents, ongoing hysteria over sexuality, gender, and race in American classrooms has a long political and legal history. On the issues of sexuality and gender in particular, the United States has made tremendous progress over the years. Pew research data show that three decades ago, nine-in-ten American adults (89%) would have been upset if their child told them they were gay. But by 2015, that number fell to just four-in-ten adults (39%). On the issue of same-sex marriage too, support has risen meteorically over the years. In 2005, only 36% of adults favored legalizing same-sex marriage, while a much larger 53% opposed it. By 2015, opinions flipped and 57% of adults favored same-sex marriage, while only 39% opposed it. However, this support/opposition was pretty much confined to party lines, with 65% of Democrats and 65% of Independents showing support for same-sex marriage, compared to only 34% of Republicans (as of 2015). At the time of this Pew survey, same-sex marriage was already legal in 36 states and the District of Columbia but wasn’t yet legal nationwide. Yet almost 75% of voters across party lines believed it would inevitably become the law of the land (this indeed occurred in the landmark 2015 US Supreme Court ruling, Obergefell v. Hodges). So how did the United States go from legalizing same-sex marriage in 2015 to banning certain types of classroom and workplace discussions on gender and sexuality in 2022?

Most of the activism over the past three decades focused on securing rights for gay and lesbian Americans, which meant same-sex marriage was typically the key issue at stake. As far back as 1986, the US Supreme Court ruled in Bowers v. Hardwick that the US Constitution did not grant homosexuals the constitutional right to engage in same-sex conduct (“sodomy”) even within the privacy of their homes. Further, the Court repudiated a lower court’s ruling that ‘gay rights’ emanated from the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Seventeen years later in 2003, this judgment was overruled in Lawrence v. Texas, in which the same Court held that the reasoning in Bowers was flawed because the Fourteenth Amendment did in fact protect homosexual people’s liberty to engage in private and consensual same-sex conduct. 

By this time, debates around the (ill)legality of same-sex marriage had also taken center stage in American politics, with Congress passing the now-infamous Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) in 1996. DOMA defined marriage as a “legal union between one man and one woman” for federal purposes (under Section 3 of DOMA) and allowed states not to recognize same-sex marriages recognized in other states if they so wanted (under Section 2 of DOMA). Section 3 of DOMA was eventually overturned by the Supreme Court in United States v. Windsor (2013), and Section 2 fell in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015). With Obergefell legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide, any state ban on same-sex marriage was invalidated, effectively overturning DOMA. 

It should be noted that Windsor and Obergefell were decided by narrow 5-4 margins, and both victories emanated from decades of sustained efforts by gay and lesbian lawyers and activists. Such was the opposition they faced that a detailed 45 page report by the Committee on the Judiciary accompanied the DOMA legislation, which cited the need for an Act like DOMA. The report spelled out the fear that legalizing same-sex marriage, even at the state level, would “divide people unnecessarily” and adversely affect governmental interets. These interested were not confined to “defending and nurturing” heterosexual marriage but encompassed a fear of state sovereignty “subversion” and the “impingement” of scarce government resources. 

At that time, no state in the US had yet recognized same-sex marriage. However, in May 1993, the Hawaiin Supreme Court held in Baehr v. Lewin that the denial of marriage licenses to same-sex couples may constitute discrimination on the basis of sex. It was this ruling in Hawaii that then-Congressman Charles Canady and others called a “significant threat to traditional marriage laws,” leading to multiple same-sex marriage bans and restrictions across the length and breadth of the US over the next three decades, with DOMA being just the beginning.

While gay rights activists may have ultimately won the same-sex marriage debate, new and unfamiliar issues now animate voters, specifically conservatives. These issues include the rights of transgender people and those beyond the lesbian and gay sexuality spectrum (i.e. those beyond the “L” and”G” of LGBTQ+). Since 2017, sixteen states have considered passing “bathroom bills” that would prohibit transgender and gender non-conforming people from accessing multiuser restrooms, locker rooms, and other sex-segregated facilities of their choice. Instead, these laws would compel them to use rooms corresponding with their biological sex. As recent as April 2022, Alabama’s state legislature passed an expanded “bathroom bill” that would not only limit transgender and gender-nonconforming people’s bathroom access but also prohibit certain discussions of gender and sexuality in classrooms from kindergarten through fifth grade (very similar to Florida’s HB 1557). 

Florida’s law has been named the “don’t say gay” law by opponents because of its vague language proscribing classroom discussions on gender and sexuality in any manner not conducive to state standards. Moreover, parental notification rules in the law have raised speculation by critics that teachers may be compelled to “out” LGBTQ+ students to their parents under this law. Conservatives, however, have pushed back on these claims, arguing instead that the law “protects” children from sexual predators and “groomers“. By re-defining this law as an “anti-grooming” law, conservatives effectively draw from age-old tropes about homosexuality, such as the idea of a “gay agenda”- one that popular American evangelical commentator and theologian Dr. R. Albert Mohler Jr. once described as “propaganda for immorality” and “poisonous to Christian morality.” He was, however, referencing the increasing representation of gay and lesbian characters in Hollywood. Nonetheless, the same reasoning is applied by conservatives today to address gender and sexuality in school pedagogy. 

What lies ahead?

Ever since Lia Thomas became the first transgender athlete to win the NCAA swimming title, conservative media has run a series of non-stop transphobic smear campaigns against her, which included multiple instances of intentional misgendering that eventually ignited a new debate about ‘women’s rights’ and the ‘protection of women’s sports’. Some US States have already passed laws banning transgender girls and women from participating in sports corresponding with their gender identity, while others have banned gender-affirming care for minors with gender dysphoria. This fixation with ‘protecting’ women and children has now become a common thread in many Republican-backed laws – from anti-abortion “pro-life” bills, to “don’t say gay” bills, to the slew of anti-transgender bills. The conservatives of today may have made a begrudging truce with same-sex marriage, but they still consider other LGBTQ+ issues a form of “dangerous woke propaganda” that is detrimental to children.

Clearly the path ahead is rocky. While gays and lesbians may have won the hard-fought right to marry, there is still a long way to go. Americans are still uncomfortable discussing sexuality, gender identity, and gender nonconformity, and only time will tell how all of this will play out in the courts and in the upcoming midterm elections.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post With Midterm Elections just days away, LGBTQ+ issues continue to provoke American conservatives appeared first on Fair Observer.

Compared to a range of other industrial countries, the SGI 2022 shows that the US remains a weak performer in terms of sustainable policies in general (rank 33 out of 41 nations) and it receives middling scores overall (rank 22) with regard to economic policies – a topic which looms large for almost every US voter. 

Will American Democracy Perish Like Rome’s?

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The SGI 2022 US Report explains that “GDP growth bounced rapidly back, returning to robust levels in 2021,” which coincides with the first year of the Biden administration. Massive emergency spending, which had already started under former president Trump, “included payments to individuals and firms, as well as expanded tax credits and unemployment benefits”. Based on the SGI findings on economic performance, while the incumbent president’s party could be vulnerable, slight increases in some policy indicators since the Trump years, especially economic measures, also suggest that the incumbent majority party is unlikely to face a thumping defeat.  

The party polarization indicator of SGI – where the US is ranked as the most polarized country – makes it plausible that both sides of a politically divided voting public feel energized in this election year, albeit for different reasons. Democrat optimism regarding their party’s chances to contain losses is driven by the recent Supreme Court decision Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization that ended the nationwide constitutional right to abortion that had existed since the Roe v. Wade decision of 1973. At least initially, the Dobbs decision had a significant energizing effect, especially on women, steering them towards Democratic candidates. In contrast, polls taken until the early fall of 2022 seemed to indicate that Republican-leaning conservative voters in small-town America may have felt complacent after the success of the conservative movement’s decades-long effort to strike down Roe v. Wade. 

The Trump effect

Former president Trump remains a central, and polarizing figure. Trump continues to claim falsely that the 2020 election was stolen and he has remained in the public gaze amid Congressional investigations into the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol and his handling of classified documents. As a consequence, Democrats’ campaigns focus on perceived threats to US democracy by Trump and his followers. From the perspective of SGI 2022, this strategy is obvious, but not risk-free. While the report states that there is “increasing tension over the conduct of elections”, and “voting rights have become a contested issue, with the Republican party seeking to suppress low-income and minority votes”, it is also true that Democrats have failed to pass a major voting-rights act through Congress despite their majority. The United States falls into the upper-middle ranks (rank 15) in terms of democracy quality.

The Next Surge of Trumpism

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Meanwhile, the Republican electorate is reveling in President Biden’s approval ratings of well below 50 percent, though ratings are not as low as it was a few months ago. In the polls, it is inflation, not abortion or democracy, that tops potential voters’ concerns. Recent economic data—which showed ongoing inflation—will keep it there. Nearly every US household is grappling with higher costs, energy and gasoline prices. But only Republican-leaning voters see inflation as the number one issue, blaming it squarely on Joe Biden and the Democrats. For Democrat-leaning voters, however, inflation is important but does not top the agenda, seen instead in the context of global economic disruptions following the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine. For these voters, abortion rights for women after the Dobbs decision is the top issue. The number two and three issues for Republican-leaners are immigration/border control and rising crime. For the Democrat-leaning constituencies these topics matter less. For them, a close second after abortion rights is saving US democracy from the perceived attack by MAGA-Republicans, followed by health care.  

It’s the economy, stupid

But the mobilization of white suburban Republican and independent women who may be worried about the cost of living, school decisions or rising crime could neutralize or offset the impact of those who are mobilized by abortion and the threat to US democracy. As a consequence, Republicans aim to focus voters’ attention on crime and immigration and away from abortion. Meanwhile, rising prices and inflation remain a factor everywhere and will ultimately decide at least the House elections. 

In sum, the midterms are more than just a referendum on President Biden. A few weeks before election day, predictions of sweeping Republican gains have been tempered by the changing political climate, thanks in large part to the Dobbs decision, although the Republicans remain favored to take control of the House. In the final weeks, amid economic jitters, elections could turn on how much sustaining energy the Dobbs decision provides for Democrats or whether it fades in the face of so-called “kitchen table” concerns. 

What happens now in 2022 will also lay foundations for the presidential elections of 2024. If Trump-backed Republican Senate candidates like Herschel Walker in Georgia or J.D. Vance in Ohio do badly on November 8, 2022, Trump is less likely to be nominated as their 2024 presidential candidate. If Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida is re-elected as governor of the sunshine state for a second term, this will give him momentum for a likely bid for the White House. Conversely, if the Democrats manage to keep their Senate majority and win statewide races for governor and/or the Senate in crucial presidential battlegrounds like Michigan, Wisconsin or Pennsylvania, it would likely fuel confidence for a President Biden re-election campaign for 2024. On the other hand, if the Democrats fare badly in the midterms and other state elections on November 8, 2022, the current president faces rising pressure not to seek a second term. 

[We thank the Sustainable Governance Indicators (SGI) project of the German Bertelsmann Foundation for this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Much More than Congress is at Stake this Midterm appeared first on Fair Observer.

The nation is so awash in grifting that most refuse to see it for what it is.  Simply put, to grift is “to obtain money or property illicitly.” While this notion can have a certain charm to it, as we envision a petty crook at work, it has at its core the intent to defraud.  And that fraud can sometimes be on a grand scale. By its very nature, grifting is insidious.  The grifter always puts his/her interests first and always at the expense of others. Today, it is often disguised as entitlement.

We recently watched a hurricane rip through parts of Florida with tragic consequences.  Even as the hurricane made landfall and before damage assessments could be started, Florida’s Governor DeSantis was begging the federal government for disaster relief.  This is the same governor who routinely rails against federal government interference in the affairs of the state of Florida and is a partisan hardliner for limited government and states’ rights.  However, as soon as their proverbial hands are out, DeSantis and others like him always fail to mention their dogma that their entitlement to federal funding is unencumbered by any responsibility.  That is the grift.

Alternate Reality Is All the Rage in Election Time America

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Florida has always had hurricanes and has never had a state or local income tax.  Floridians are always being flooded out, but the state does not require or provide affordable flood insurance options.  As soon as the hurricane is about to hit, the grifter governor and his brethren move in.  You can see their opening pitch: “we are as ready as we can be and Floridians have been here before and know how to weather the storm.”

The problem is that they know that both assertions are simply untrue. Florida was not ready for the hurricane and they did not know how to get through it.  Most importantly, the grifting governor knew that the federal government would bail him out. That is an example of unconscionable entitlement without responsibility.  And the rest of us fall for it every time.  In the blink of an eye, the grifter governor has moved the shells around and found his mark.  And the mark is us. Next up, be sure to watch that same grifter governor quickly pivot to bashing the federal government to score political points in his present reelection bid.

Big Pharma’s master class in grift

Another fertile ground for the grand scale grift is the pharmaceutical industry’s advertising of prescription drugs. This one implies the potential for serious public harm.  Just in case you think that nobody has figured out that greed and deception are at the heart of this advertising, it is instructive to know that the US is one of only two countries in the world that even permits direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs (along with New Zealand).

But if this were just a generally bad idea for medical reasons, we would hardly know of it. What makes it so special is that this is such a good idea for the pharmaceutical companies that they don’t care if it is a really bad idea for desperate people seeking pharmaceutical remedies for serious conditions.  In America, the big pharma grifters are directly marketing their product to countless people desperate to overcome the ravages of cancer, schizophrenia and bipolar depression, debilitating skin conditions, autoimmune disease, and every variety of intestinal disorder, to name just a few.

Big pharma’s strategy is clear. Identify a serious medical condition, target desperate people with the condition, and then provide the chemical fix, replete with photos and staged footage of formerly desperate people now happily cured.  Oh, and don’t forget to tell them about all the things that can go wrong, not to take the fix if you are allergic to its ingredients (incredible),  and to check in with your doctor to get that prescription that will surely restore your health in spite of the risks.  Remember, as well, that the desperate consumers pay for the advertising aimed at getting them hooked and that none of this comes with a money back guarantee.  Is there a more insidious grift imaginable?

The Rise and Fall of US Democracy

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Grand-scale scams like the Florida grift and the big pharma grift are sustained by the steady drumbeat of grifts from advertisers, entertainment and sports “celebrities,” self-promoting “influencers,” and real and fake doctors, chefs, attorneys and the like pushing products and services for their profit.  And without regard for the illusions and deceptions needed to get there.

If you’re American you should be aware of the process. Turn on your television for five minutes or do a little online research about something you might want to buy.  Before you can tune it out, it’s there, the grift.  One telltale sign is a “celebrity” selling something for the common man, something they have almost surely never used, eaten, put on their feet, used to disguise body odor, or soothingly rubbed on themselves.  If not a celebrity, how about an actor playing a sincere smiling everyman ready to share the secrets to the success he only got once he started using some previously unknown product.

Grifters in the consumer’s paradise

Attorneys shilling court cases and supposed doctors and dentists shilling everything are ubiquitous.  Your teeth can be white and your skin can be wrinkle free, if only….  “But wait, order now and you will get a second tube absolutely free,” and they will throw in a toothbrush and free shipping.  All you have to do is order now because the special offer won’t last forever and oblige you and pay some extra and unspecified “handling” fee.

To pay for this and to get that absolutely incredible set of coveted non-stick pots and pans, you need only “call now” and pony up with your credit card.  Or if a lawsuit’s pot of gold is your weakness, just sign on the dotted line with some sincere or angry “attorney” who will surely get you your very own entitlement from the settlement fund that this particular “attorney” is uniquely positioned to secure for you and then share with him.  And don’t forget cryptocurrency, credit cards, apps that do everything for “free,” and dog food that will make you and your dog salivate.

One grift builds on the next.  American society is saturated with this stuff.  So much so that when the grand grifters come along, we are hard pressed to see the fraud within.  And this brings us to the grandest grift of all, the Trump grift.  With Don Jr, Eric, Ivanka, the My Pillow guy, Kanye West, and a band of sycophant Republicans by his side, the sky has been the limit.

To give Trump his due, he is really good at something.  Now it is way past time to make him pay a steep price for the damage done, the lives lost, and the gains fraudulently received.  Further, the steepest price should be reserved for his corrupt assault on the institutional framework of government that the nation requires to meet the needs of its communities and its people.

*[This article was first published on the author’s blog, Hard Left Turn.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post America is Now Awash in Grift appeared first on Fair Observer.

US President Joe Biden has boldly claimed that the war in Ukraine will last “as long as it takes,” clearly meaning that the US will do everything in its power to make it last. For the media, that means months, if not years of sensational war stories as well as continuous coverage of a talented Ukrainian actor in the role of president. But the idea of another forever war stretching out for years to come risks turning off a population weary of being told that growing domestic problems are less important than the sacred duty of fueling a conflict in Eastern Europe.

Fortunately, Vladimir Putin’s sometimes heated rhetoric has allowed Joe Biden to feed the media with some authentic fear by evoking the risk of Armageddon, a term that should certainly resonate with Christan fundamentalists. It also revives for those who are old enough to remember memories of the golden years of the real Cold War, when people were investing in bomb shelters. It was a time when, at any random moment, Americans might be spontaneously visited by the vision of a mushroom-shaped cloud suddenly appearing at the end of the road stretching out before them as they drove back home from work. By the mid-1960s, they could begin wondering whether the hippies hadn’t made the right decision of tuning in, turning on and dropping out. That was truly a period of nuclear optimism. Thanks to the hippies, American consumers felt they still had a choice. Even Stanley Kubrick learned “to stop worrying and love the bomb.”

The hyperreal ocean of electronic media we bathe in today has changed our perception of the very real risks that surround us. No one under the age of 50 today can truly appreciate the deeper anguish that characterized the nuclear age during the original Cold War. A headline in Insider from last Saturday epitomizes the change of atmosphere:“Putin’s nuclear threats are pushing people like Trump and Elon Musk to press for a Ukraine peace deal. A nuclear expert warns that’s ‘dangerous.’”

Yes, peace has become dangerous. The first paragraph makes its case: “An understandable desire to avoid a nuclear war could actually make the world more dangerous if it means rushing to implement a ‘peace’ in Ukraine that serves Russian interests, an expert told Insider.”

Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Understandable desire:

A temptation whose attraction appears legitimate while recognizing that no virtuous person should succumb to it

Contextual note

The journal provides the author, Charles R. Davis, with the title, “Senior Reporter at Insider.” Senior clearly means experienced and well-paid. It does not mean over 50. Like many younger journalists, Davis believes his job starts with communicating his (and his journal’s) values to his readers even before reporting the news. He effectively does so by expressing his condescending judgment of weak-minded people who succumb to their “understandable” desires. The value he adheres to is the hallowed American ideal of assertiveness, or in this case, extreme assertiveness. The enemy of assertiveness is humility and a culpable preference for “peace” over war. It is usually referred to as appeasement.

Davis takes the astonishing step of accusing Donald Trump and Elon Musk of failing to be adequately assertive. But that is not all. They have failed in their civic duty for a specific reason: their unreasoned fear of nuclear war. They fail to understand that nuclear war is not something to fear. It is a useful concept real Americans must learn to enthusiastically embrace, not as a desired outcome of their actions, but as the trump card Americans play in the favorite game practiced by the daring minds on Wall Street: Liar’s Poker.

The reasoning of people like Davis – and the same may paradoxically be said of Joe Biden, though he is clearly over 50 – reposes on the belief that nuclear war is too surreal to ever become real. Davis clearly agrees with the man he interviewed, Pavel Podvig, “an expert on Russia’s nuclear doctrine and capabilities at the UN Institute for Disarmament Research.” As is common in today’s journalism, instead of challenging the “expert,” Davis prefers to record uncritically his assertions and denigrate the reasoning of his critics.

Davis begins subtly, by attempting to sound objective when describing what he holds to be the position of Tump, Musk  and other Kremlin apologists and spineless appeasers. “Some observers, in good or bad faith,” Davis writes, “have cited the possibility of the unthinkable as all the more reason to negotiate a ceasefire and have at times criticized the US administration they see as leading the world to the precipice of nuclear conflict with its steady stream of aid to Ukraine.”

By inserting “in good or bad faith” in the opening clause, Davis calls into question the sincerity of the critics. More significantly, by focusing on the fear of a nuclear holocaust, he consciously omits another complementary and more substantial argument: that extended wars spreading massive suffering locally and across the globe are in no one’s interest. They merit being resolved rather than prolonged “as long as it takes.”

The recent forever wars in Afghanistan and Iraq should offer convincing evidence of the validity of a futile course of action that has nothing to do with a nuclear threat. But Davis clearly assumes his mission of using the nuclear pretext to justify the White House’s adamant position that negotiations are out of the question. Davis dismisses that position as “capitulation, dressed up in a universal desire for peace.”

This is clearly not reporting. It is the language of bellicose propaganda.

Historical note

According to MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough, Trump, as president, asked a foreign policy expert the question, “if we have nuclear weapons, why can’t we use them?” Any moral philosopher would consider the question legitimate and probably necessary. Anyone with access to nuclear devices should seek to answer that question. But the anecdote served the virulently anti-Trump media agenda of mocking what they viewed as Trump’s failure to comprehend what everyone in Washington understands without ever having to ask or answer the question.

It’s not, after all, as if no ambiguity exists. Fifty years ago, in November 1962, during the Cuban missile crisis in a meeting with President John F Kennedy, General Curtis LeMay, a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, advocated nuking Cuba. He had obviously framed his own answer to Trump’s future question. Historian David Coleman described the scene. “LeMay had told Kennedy that the course the President had settled on – a naval blockade of Cuba – was a bad idea and was ‘almost as bad as the appeasement at Munich.’ And at another point of this November 16 meeting, he advocated “solving” the problem, by which he meant implementing CINCLANT OPLAN 312-62, the air attack plan for Cuba.”

It was only decades later that the world learned about Kennedy’s choice of negotiating directly with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev rather than risking nuclear war. What had to remain hidden from the public and even the Chiefs of Staff was the major concession Kennedy made to remove the nuclear arsenal the US had installed in Turkey targeting Russia.

Davis somewhat comically believes that by pursuing its belligerent goal of weakening Russia “the US and its allies could hold onto the moral high ground.” Does he really believe the global community perceives the US as being a moral actor? Countries representing the overwhelming majority of the world’s population have, alas, evinced what Davis should acknowledge as an “understandable desire” for peace and avoiding nuclear war.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of Fair Observer Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Insider Makes the Case for Nuclear War appeared first on Fair Observer.

Throughout the summer, the president hoped to have made his point. But then came the dreaded October surprise. Biden appeared shocked by what The Washington Post described as a “move by OPEC Plus last week to cut its oil output by 2 million barrels a day,” a decision that would most certainly “boost oil prices in the United States and worldwide.”

MBS should have known that bucking the always wisely calculated requests of the United States can be risky. The US will not brook insubordination. In this case, Biden’s reaction appears to be deeper than usual. Reducing production and letting prices drift upwards is one thing. Choosing the worst possible moment to do so is another. As The Post notes, “its timing a month before the midterm elections was a political blow to Biden that some in the president’s circle saw as a personal shot at the president.”

The insult MBS inflicted was so severe the White House is now officially calling into question the formerly stable and traditionally tight relationship that literally oiled the American global economic empire over the past 80 years. “President Biden,” we learned last week, “is kicking off a process of reevaluating, and potentially altering, the U.S. relationship with Saudi Arabia following the announcement by a Saudi-led coalition that it would slash oil production.”

Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Reevaluating a relationship:

In US foreign policy, applying a variable set of often extreme punitive measures leveled against any disrespectful ally who fails to toe the line

Contextual note

An article co-signed by The Washington Post and AP offered this tasty morsel designed to further embarrass Biden: “Saudi Arabia said Thursday that the U.S. had urged it to postpone a decision by OPEC and its allies — including Russia — to cut oil production by a month.” The White House desperately wanted to prevent a spike in gas prices ahead of November’s midterm elections.” This is clearly a low blow. Normally, diplomacy avoids deconstructing the ally’s partisan motives. The Saudis are telling Americans that Biden is more focused on electing Democrats to Congress than easing the pain of American citizens.

Gambrell notes that “the Saudi Foreign Ministry’s lengthy statement showed how tense relations between the two countries have become.” Tense is the right word. The past tense may henceforth be required when narrating the once unbreakable Saudi-US friendship, which, built around the petrodollar, had more closely come to resemble a collusion.

Biden’s team denied any purely electoral motivation. Instead, White House staffer John Kirby accused Saudi Arabia of coercing other OPEC members into endorsing a decision they didn’t agree with. Washington added the inevitable insinuation that the Saudis were “siding with Russia in its war in Ukraine.” The Saudis in turn responded that the decision was technical. Delaying it for a month would have had “negative economic consequences.” They took the moral high ground, claiming that they were guided by their “noble objectives to protect the global economy from oil market volatility.”

This is the kind of accusatory dialogue that occurs when two nations eager to vaunt their commitment to “noble objectives” suddenly fall to quarreling. Each wants the world to understand that its mission consists of sacrificing its self-interest for the well-being of the entire planet. Who could doubt America’s commitment to justice in the world or the Saudis’ to the stability of markets?

With neither side willing to back down, the debate ended with Biden predictably promising the kind of punishment for nonconformity the US routinely applies, while at the same time refusing to define what form it might take. “I’m not going to get into what I’d consider and what I have in mind,” Biden insisted. “But there will be — there will be consequences,” he maintained, with a more menacing tone.

Historical note

Though some claim it is all about the Saudis’ hope to see Donald Trump in the White House again, the rift between the US and Saudi Arabia is real and is likely to be lasting. It may have begun with the gruesome murder of Jamal Khashoggi four years ago, but it has now become a major geopolitical psychodrama, linked to the polarizing effect of the war Ukraine.

Alliances deemed unbreakable are now unequivocally exposing their fragility. New alliances will undoubtedly emerge. To what end, nobody knows. The US, ensconced in its “as long as it takes” posture, appears to have fabricated in Ukraine its latest “forever war.” By excluding any consideration of a negotiated settlement, it has brought the world to the brink of a nuclear holocaust. The escalating instability of a geopolitical reality no longer controlled by Washington, and even less by the United Nations, appears to be approaching a tipping point. When things get that grim, new configurations of alliances become as inevitable as they are unpredictable.

Here is how John Kirby put it: “In light of recent developments and the OPEC Plus decision about oil production, the president believes we should review the bilateral relationship with Saudi Arabia and take a look to see if that relationship is where it needs to be.” Only in American culture can a relationship be thought of as something to be defined in terms of what it “needs to be.” What could possibly be the criteria for defining such needs?

So, Washington is busy working on a new needs analysis. The Washington Post reveals that “calls to revisit America’s support for Saudi Arabia have emerged in Congress and elsewhere. Officials said Tuesday that Biden is doing so, but they offered no details on how the relationship might shift or what policies the president is considering.” We will only know once Biden begins his effort to “discuss this relationship with members of Congress.” That should produce some exciting dialogue focused on formulating and meting out appropriate punishment for the Saudis’ bad behavior. It is expected to include “limiting security cooperation; reducing arms sales; and removing OPEC Plus’s exemption from U.S. antitrust laws.”

Congressman Chris Murphy from Connecticut made this revealing comment: “The whole point of looking the other way when it comes to the Saudi war in Yemen and their awful human rights record was to make sure they would pick us in the middle of an international crisis, and instead they chose the Russians.” Punishment is clearly required.

Murphy’s comment sounds like the complaint of a lover who has been jilted. That means emotion is likely to trump reason. But it gets worse. CNN reports that the White House circulated “draft talking points” that “warned that it could be taken as a ‘hostile act.’”

Nostalgic for the halcyon days of the Cold War, the US has spent the past 30 years turning the ghost of an eviscerated post-Soviet Russia into not just a theoretical enemy but a frightening bugbear. It began when US experts intervened to redesign Russia’s economy along the lines of their neoliberal “rules-based order.” When that experiment failed and Vladimir Putin began his work of reverting to a Tsarist style of authority to restore order, Russia the new US ally became Russia the much-needed traditional adversary.

Can the same thing happen with Saudi Arabia? It seems unlikely for multiple reasons. But if an adversarial relationship develops, who will the Saudis turn to and what will that mean for the balance of power across Africa, the Middle East and Asia and the ability of the US to maintain its global hegemony?

The increasingly hyperreal and hyper-militarized US once again seems surprised by events it can’t control. Welcome to the very real 21^st century.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten genera“I’m not going to get into what I’d consider and what I have in mind. But there will be — there will be consequences.”tions of readers of the news. Read more of Fair Observer Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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How do Rome and Tagliacozzo come into the picture in an article on Afghanistan?

Well, both places are relevant because my friend Tonino Bettanini is a philosopher, a politician and a Renaissance man with much expertise on Afghanistan. He was presenting his latest book, Bruxelles, Les Pelouses des Anglais (Brussels, the Lawns of the English) at the prestigious 38^th mid-summer international festival of Tagliacozzo. Fortuitously, Stefano Pontecorvo, a noted Italian diplomat and author was also presenting his book at the same time. Pontecorvo was  NATO’s last senior civilian representative to Afghanistan and served as Italy’s ambassador to Pakistan.

Furthermore, Pontecorvo spent his childhood in the 1960s in Kabul and Islamabad, where his father also served as a diplomat. The  good ambassador was presenting his book, L’ultimo aereo da Kabul (The Last Flight from Kabul), which describes the last few days of NATO’s hurried withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 and his own departure on one of the last flights out from Kabul. 

Going to Tagliacozzo did not only give me an hour with one of Italy’s most talented and colorful diplomats, it also gave me Pontecorvo’s point of view on the current situation in Afghanistan. This was a godsend because the US had just killed Ayman al-Zawahiri on July 31. Obviously, Italy’s star diplomat had a lot to say and I have done a lot more thinking on the matter since.

Why kill al-Qaeda’s Ayman al-Zawahiri?

The killing of Ayman al-Zawahiri, the lackluster, pedantic idealogue of Al-Qaeda, brings a strange closure to the US “War on Terror,” which began with 9/11.  Egyptian-born al-Zawahiri, was known to be a confidant of Saudi Osama bin Laden, who was America’s public enemy number one, until he was found and killed in Abbottabad, Pakistan, over 10 years ago.

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The world had all but forgotten about al-Zawahiri and al-Qaeda. This organization had declined dramatically since the days of bin Laden and was no longer the most dangerous global Islamic terrorist organization. More deadly organizations such as ISIS have taken its place. Islamic terrorism has evolved extensively since bin Laden and al-Zawahiri masterminded the attacks on New York and, before 9/11, on several other US targets. The aging al-Zawahiri neither had the finances nor the sophistication to upgrade to “Terrorism 4.0,” a concept popularized by Adewunmi J. Falode in 2018. Falode argues this terrorism “has two basic and definable characteristics: it is fratricidal and genocidal in nature.”

The killing of al-Zawahiri marks the end of a chapter for the US. However, its timing, significance and collateral results open uncomfortable questions. Since the killing of Osama bin Laden by the Obama administration in which Biden was vice president, al-Zawahiri’s role and importance has been downgraded by intelligence and political analysts. After bin Laden’s death, al-Zawahiri was proclaimed the leader of al-Qaeda. Under his leadership, the organization was unable to launch any significant attack on the West.

After hurriedly abandoning Afghanistan less than a year ago, the Biden administration has steered clear of South Asia. This has allowed China and Russia to increase their influence in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The region is now literally in flames. Myanmar is being ruled by a pro-China military junta that executes democracy activists arbitrarily. The Taliban control Afghanistan. The Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) are at war with the Pakistani establishment despite Pakistan’s close relationship with the Afghan Taliban and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) exercising much control over the Haqqani network. Both Pakistan and Sri Lanka are facing unprecedented economic catastrophes.

As if the mess in South Asia and Ukraine was not enough, Speaker Nancy Pelosi had to fly to Taiwan to fan flames in East Asia too. Curiously, this is precisely the time that the Biden administration authorized a drone strike to kill the most famous face in the US after bin Laden. That al-Zawahiri might never have been that relevant or important an operative is immaterial. It made Americans feel good and took Pelosi as well as Ukraine off the headlines for a day or two.

Not only Indian analysts but also South Asia expert Michael Kugelman, suggest Pakistan might have had a role to play in al-Zawahiri’s killing. The army and the ISI need US support. So does the ragtag coalition government led by Shehbaz Sharif who is dealing with “an ailing economy amid political turmoil.” To ride out the crisis, Pakistani bigwigs have done what they always do: go with a begging bowl to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). With US support, Pakistan could get the latest installment of funds from the IMF and avoid defaulting on its debt a la Sri Lanka.

Other analysts suspect that “Mullah Yaqoob, Afghanistan’s defense minister and son of the late Taliban founder Mullah Omar, disclosed al-Zawahiri’s location during his recent visit to Qatar.” Who enabled the killing of al-Zawahiri is neither here nor there. The key question here is simple: what does it achieve?

Justice, Revenge or Convenient Distraction?

One argument for killing al-Zawahiri is it brings this terrorist to justice. A reason to kill is America’s emotional need for revenge, which curiously might not be that different from the Pashtun tradition of badal. As this author mentioned earlier, the killing might just have been a convenient distraction at an inconvenient time.

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The Russia-Ukraine War is not going terribly well. Boris Johnson and Mario Draghi, two great proponents of war, have been defenestrated. The Russians are making slow but steady and bloody progress. Inflation has ripped through the global economy, putting hundreds of millions at risk of starvation. Biden, Pelosi and their fellow Democrats are increasingly nervous about November’s midterm elections. The word on the street in Washington is that Democrat staffers are now gunning for lobbying positions in anticipation of the defeat of their bosses.

The youthful-looking 82-year-old Pelosi has flown to Taiwan arguably to boost Democrat poll prospects and burnish her legacy. This visit has been an unmitigated disaster. The Economist has opined that her “trip to Taiwan highlights America’s incoherent strategy” and that the Biden administration’s foreign policy is a mess.

After al-Zawahiri’s killing, the farce of the 2020 Doha Agreement has been formalized. The Taliban never observed this agreement. It is fair to say that it paved the way for the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul. After all, al-Zawahiri was living in a building owned by the Haqqanis in a posh Kabul neighborhood. The Haqqanis are infamous and powerful. They hold key positions in the Taliban government. As per the BBC, the Haqqani network is “one of the region’s most powerful and feared militant groups.” With al-Zawahiri’s killing, the US has joined the Taliban in signaling that the Doha agreement is dead and buried six feet under.

The Consequences of Killing an Aging Has-Been

The Biden administration might have scored a big point at home by killing al-Zawahiri. However, this killing will not go down well with the Haqqani network. As per the honor code of the Pashtuns, which is known as Pashtunwali, they are now duty bound to avenge the killing of a guest. After all, al-Zawahiri was under the protection of the Haqqanis and they have now lost face. Honor dictates that they act against the US.

As and when the Haqqani network strikes, Pakistan will find itself in a tight spot. Pakistani elites need to keep Uncle Sam in good humor. Inflation is rising, unemployment is skyrocketing and the state’s coffers are empty. For the 23^rd time since 1958, Pakistan needs loans from the Washington-based IMF. This is only possible with US blessing. If the ISI-backed Haqqani network strikes American targets, any politician in Washington will find it hard to make a case for Pakistan getting more IMF cash.

There is another fly in the ointment. Pakistan is not only suffering from economic meltdown but also political turmoil. The Afghan Taliban brokered talks between Pakistan and the outlawed TTP. They have ended in deadlock. A spike in cross-border terrorist attacks by the TTP have followed. In retaliation, Pakistan has launched airstrikes in Afghanistan targeting the TTP. This has led to a dangerous deterioration in the internal security situation in Pakistan.

The jihadist groups that the still somewhat secular Pakistani military backed to dominate Afghanistan and undermine India are now turning against their masters. It is yet another case of Dr. Victor Frankenstein not being able to control his monster. In Islamabad’s case, it has to deal with too many monsters.

Pakistan’s turn to violence is also because the state has become completely dysfunctional. The populist Imran Khan has been turfed out by Pakistan’s traditional dynasties. Military rule failed the country and now democracy is not delivering either. Kleptocratic elites are packing off their children abroad in droves. It is an open secret that property prices in Dubai go up when IMF money comes into Pakistan. The people are fed up with the system and are turning to jihadis for recourse.

Pakistan’s colonial state has been unable to deliver basic services to its people. This includes elementary education. Religious schools termed madrassas have stepped in to fill the void. These madrassas teach millions of male children the Quran and the teachings of the prophet. Numerous reports by various intelligence agencies and think tanks chronicle how these schools have increased fanaticism and become breeding grounds for terror. The Taliban are their most illustrious alumni. Even China’s CCTV News, generally not known for its worldliness, has now started making documentaries on madrassas.

Reports that Pakistan provided the information that led to al-Zawahiri’s killing will cause many, if not all, of radical Islamist Frankenstein’s monsters to turn on their master. Terror incidents are likely to increase in the country. Even if Pakistan is absolved of blame, the blame may land on Yaqoob. This will pit the Loy Kandahar faction led by Yaqoob and Mullah Baradar against the Haqqani network, creating conditions for yet another civil war in Afghanistan.

As Pontecorvo aptly summed up, “When Osama bin Laden flew to Afghanistan in the early 1990s as a guest of Mullah Omar, he started marrying Arab fighters to local women and vice versa. This created over 300 mixed Arab-Pashtun families who were part of bin Laden’s al-Qaeda entourage. Now, many of them are senior members of the Haqqani network, including Sirajjuddin Haqqani himself. These families have both Arab and Pashtun blood, making it improbable that al-Qaeda and the Loya Paktia faction of the Haqqani network will ever separate.” The killing of al-Zawahiri might set off the Loya Paktia and the Loy Kandahar factions of the Taliban against each other.

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Apart from triggering fratricidal fighting within the Taliban, al-Zawahiri’s killing will cause an upheaval in al-Qaeda itself. A new leadership will take over and might be leaner, meaner, younger, hungrier and bloodier than bin Laden’s sidekick. In fact, the killing might lead to just the sort of CEO change that al-Qaeda needed.

The Biden administration has clearly not thought beyond its nose while killing al-Zawahiri. This White House is proving to be fractious, overstretched and incompetent in its foreign policy decisions. Instead of closure to the trauma of 9/11, al-Zawahiri’s killing has opened a Pandora’s box in one of the most dangerous times since 1945.

This is not only my thinking but also those of my eminent Italian friends with whom I enjoyed an aperitivo in the glorious piazza of Tagliacozzo before driving back home.

(In an era of a global pandemic, social media wars and explosively evolving geopolitics, the human spirit and its expression have suffered the most. With apologies to Edward Morgan Forster, “Rome, with a View” is a view of humanity from an interesting perspective. The author, a third culture kid, gathers from his various perches in the eternal city of Rome — Caput Mundi,  the capital of the ancient world — the whispers of wisdom through the ages imperfectly and perhaps even unwisely.)

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Al-Zawahiri’s Killing Will Increase Global Chaos and Insecurity appeared first on Fair Observer.

This aggressive response of MBS is unprecedented in US-Saudi relations. It demonstrates that MBS has consolidated his power within the kingdom. It also reveals how high oil prices have given MBS much economic clout. He now clearly believes that Saudi Arabia doesn’t need the US in the same way his predecessors did.  If anything the shoe is on the other foot. Biden is heading into midterms that his party is likely to lose heavily because of surging inflation driven by high energy costs. The American president needs MBS to pump more oil.

Rising Oil Prices Boost Saudi Economy

The latest economic forecasts have put more wind in MBS’s already expansive sails. London-based Capital Economics estimated that Saudi Arabia’s GDP might have grown by 10% in the first half of 2022 thanks to high oil prices. In their words:

“The oil sector has sustained its strong momentum. Production rose from 10.36mn bpd in April to 10.42mn bpd in May, translating into growth of 22.9% y/y….  Looking ahead, the prospects for the oil sector look very bright. The decision by OPEC+ to raise its output quotas by 50% in July and August will provide an additional boost to Saudi production. And if, as we expect, OPEC+ removes the shackles of quotas beyond September, Saudi Arabia is one of the few members that will be able to capitalise and we think that output will reach a record high by late-2023.

Capital Economics says the economy, and particularly the private sector, will be further boosted by the loosening of fiscal policies now underway and the distinct possibility of a VAT cut.  The VAT tax rate was tripled in 2020 to 15%. This increase was to shore up government finances under strain because of the then low oil prices.

Biden and MBS hit an impasse on the issue of human rights. That is immaterial. In truth, human rights was not a priority for the US president. What is significant is that Biden and BMS issued a  shared communique on the economic quagmire in which Lebanon is currently stuck.

As reported by L’Orient Today:

In a joint statement, the two men “noted the importance of forming a government and implementing structural and global reforms in politics and economy so that Lebanon can overcome its crisis and not constitute a launchpad for terrorists, drug trafficking and criminal activities which threaten its stability (and) the region’s security.”

Using the King Salman Relief Center the kingdom funneled $36 million in humanitarian aid to Lebanon in March. That was followed in April by the full restoration of diplomatic relations that had ruptured over critical comments by Lebanese politicians over the Yemen war.

The Lebanese Economic Crisis

Since 2019, Lebanon has endured a complex economic and financial crisis, deepened by political deadlock, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the Beirut Port explosions in August 2020 and now the global food and fuel crisis. As the World Bank has highlighted, the ongoing political paralysis is destroying “key pillars of Lebanon’s post-civil war political economy.”  It cites the collapse of most basic public services and the flight of young Lebanese from a failed country in a colossal brain drain.  Both these phenomena will inflict further damage going forward. “Meanwhile,” the report acidly notes: “the poor and the middle class, who were never well served under this model in the first place, are carrying the main burden of the crisis.”

The comic Keystone Cops quality of the current situation emerged yet again on Tuesday in a farcical judicial matter. Ghada Aoun is the presiding judge in a case against Riad Salameh, the governor of Lebanon’s central bank Banque de Liban (BDL). Aoun attempted to haul BDL’s big boss Salameh in front of court. Aoun first sent state security officers to storm Salameh’s residence in El Metn, a posh neighborhood in Rabieh, an upscale northern suburb of Beirut. When the officers did not find the governor at home, Aoun packed them off to the BDL offices in central Beirut. Again, they did not find Salameh.

The Aoun gambit did accomplish a couple of things. First, it rebuked the current caretaker prime minister Najib Mikati who called the incident a “raid for show.” Second, it led to a three-day strike by outraged BDL employees. The head of the BDL union declared: “We refuse to be treated with militia-like methods. We are not defending Riad Salameh but rather this institution, and these methods are unacceptable to us.”

The bank employees join several other strikers, among them university lecturers and public sector employees. In a broken country, gallows humor is now the order of the day. L’Orient Today summed up the current situation brilliantly:

“Do you need an “Ikhraj Eid” (extract of civil registry)? Sorry, it’s not possible. Do you need a passport? Sorry, it’s not possible. The public sector is collapsing as employees continue in their fifth week of an open-ended strike. Everyone is striking… The problem is that they are still being paid in lira. It is the government’s cowardly strategy of reducing the sector’s headcount through attrition. Expenses will definitely drop, but so will revenues. Where are the thinking heads? And they say they want to approve the 2022 budget! With what numbers? More made up ones.”

Lebanon is hurtling to disaster and time is running out.

[Arab Digest first published this article and is a partner of Fair Observer.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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There was great interest in, and much speculation about, the outcome of US President Joe Biden’s July visit to Saudi Arabia. Once it moved from “will he, won’t he” to “yes, he will,” it gave rise to a cottage industry of op-eds, analyses, and roundtables. There was much talk about Biden and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) making up with the US, Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords. Aramco increasing oil production, Israeli security gaining primacy and the US leading the creation of a so-called Middle East Defense Alliance, including the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) and Israel—and, crucially, what the US and Saudi “asks” of each other might be. 

In the end, the meeting’s outcome was modest, but critical—it re-established a direct line between the White House and the Saudi leadership (read MBS). This was most likely the optimum result for this administration—not a relationship overhaul or reset, but a recognition that functionality must win out and thus communication at the top was restored.

The US-Saudi Relationship Was Never in Danger

Contrary to public perception, the fundamental relationship was never actually in peril.  Granted, certain elements came under pressure, especially due to respective domestic political considerations, and personal tensions over difficult issues such as human rights, press freedoms, the Yemen conflict and the Khashoggi murder that played out on the international stage.

As is the case for all new incumbents, Biden’s initial focus was to set himself apart—by some distance—from his predecessor, as much for his international as for his home audience. His was a particular mission to return the US to the more stable and reliable foreign policy upon which the world had come to depend. However, in the Middle East, his challenge was different. The leadership in Saudi Arabia had fully embraced former president Trump, while in the West, political watchers had waited in vain for the crown prince’s brash style to be tamed by the weight of office. But MBS was never socialized by his position of power, leaving the incoming Biden administration to shift gears and, in the eyes of Democrats, course-correct to a more traditional approach towards the Kingdom.

Biden’s assertive attitude towards Riyadh—from campaign through to entering the Oval Office—was more to address Democrat concern over Trump’s turning a blind eye towards behavior considered morally questionable by the US political left than it was to chastise the Gulf state. His pressing priority was to show moral strength to his party, and he made a series of decisions that set him on a collision course with MBS. His early announcement that he would speak only to King Salman, citing protocol, was a clear snub to MBS. Biden intended to deliver a message: we are going to play by the rules, and we expect you to do so too. In February 2021, the White House did two things. First, it released the CIA report on the Istanbul murder of Jamal Khashoggi. The report found that MBS had personally ordered the assassination of the Saudi journalist Adnan Khashoggi. Second, the White House halted US support for offensive operations in Yemen and suspended sales of specific weapons to Saudi Arabia.

MBS Plays Hardball

In response, MBS took his own hard line, which was intended to show both the Saudi population and international leaders that Riyadh’s policies will not be determined, or unduly influenced, by the US. He was striking out and his sentiment was widely shared by many Saudis and others in the Gulf. MBS was the personification of the feeling that Washington no longer calls the shots in the Middle East. With the advantage of youth, MBS basically shrugged his shoulders at Biden and said “whatever” as evidenced in his interview with The Atlantic in March.

The US calculus towards Saudi Arabia changed when Russia invaded Ukraine. The US and its European allies sought to respond to Russian aggression even as oil prices spiraled to around $140 per barrel. Rising oil prices left Biden with little choice other than to reach out directly to MBS after attempts to do so by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan failed. Sullivan was unable to persuade the Saudi leadership to increase production and offset crippling price hikes. 

MBS’s’ well-publicized refusal to take Biden’s “oil call” in March was something of a pinnacle moment. It not only inflamed personal animosity between Biden and MBS, but it also impressed upon both of them the necessity to dial things down and work together for the sake of their mutual national interests. Buoyed by a combination of high oil prices and the fact that he was feted by French President Emmanuel Macron and UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, MBS must have felt vindicated that Biden wanted to visit. Global events had forced another gear change in the White House: Biden succumbed to realpolitik and met MBS in Riyadh, fist bump and all.

Convergent Interests

But underneath the public spat and the personal tensions, the multifaceted dimensions of bilateral ties—defense, trade, finance and investment—continued at pace, and in both directions. The trade volume between the two countries reached close to $25bn in 2021, a 22% increase from 2020. There was a significant rise in non-oil exports from the Kingdom to the US. Now, Biden is slowly thawing on defense sales with whispers that restrictions may be reconsidered in the near future. Some might point to the need for more oil on the market to combat high gasoline prices as a driving force, while others note a broader strategy to push Arab-Israeli security cooperation to counter Iran, particularly now that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) seems to be dead. Earlier this year, the US allowed the sale of Patriot missiles and anti-ballistic defense systems to Riyadh following Houthi attacks against the Kingdom. If the shaky, but still holding, recently extended truce in Yemen becomes a permanent ceasefire, the scope of US weapons sales to Saudi Arabia may broaden yet again.

While the Biden-MBS meeting drew most media attention, and many analysts, including your authors, rolled their eyes at the suggestion of yet another so-called Arab NATO project, the Jeddah visit did lay down some tracks towards developing a multilateral regional security framework. Instead of focusing on the harder security elements such as air and missile defense, the US and Saudi Arabia will seek to bring onboard the members of the ‘Negev 9’ by engaging with them at different times, paces and spaces on softer security issues in a bid to work towards greater multilateral security integration, but with no precise end date in mind.

By doing so, the Biden administration is continuing a long-held tradition of trying to develop a regional security architecture that incorporates Israel—following the success of the Abraham Accords—and advances Israel’s long trek to normalization of ties with Arab states. If successful, it would, on the one hand, allow the US to remain central to regional security and, on the other, reduce its level of commitment, as regional partners increasingly share the burden.

There is no question that the US would like to spend less time and energy on helping manage regional affairs, particularly given its focus on China. Its pursuit of a new regional security architecture bringing together ‘like-minded’ states to work collaboratively is a long-term project that may benefit from the catalyst of technological leapfrogging that could spur quicker and more comprehensive cooperation. But there can be no doubt that its success will only be realized if Washington shows unwavering commitment and constantly reassures regional leaders that they are valued and are never to be forgotten. Fist bumping with MBS may have stuck in Biden’s craw, but he knew that it was a necessary step to not only to open up critical communications between the White House and the Saudi leadership, but also to serve as a milestone in galvanizing regional partners into a security framework to meet the challenge of Iran in a post-JCPOA era.

[Arab Digest first published this article and is a partner of Fair Observer.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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The Italian prime minister leaves Italy in a much better shape than he found it. It is only thanks to Mr. Draghi that The Economist crowned Italy the country of the year for 2021. Indeed, as the British newspaper wrote last December, “it is hard to deny that the Italy of today is a better place than it was in December 2020”. 

Response to COVID-19

Italy’s COVID-19 vaccination rate is among the highest in Europe. Besides, il Bel Paese is set to receive nearly $192 billion (€191.5 billion) from the European Commission’s Next Generation EU, a €750 billion recovery fund designed to boost the bloc’s economic growth hampered by the pandemic. Italy is getting more funds than any other EU country.

The Italian prime minister planned to make efficient use of the EU money. In fact, his reform-rich Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP) had persuaded European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to disburse more than $25 billion (€24.9 billion) in pre-financing and the first tranche of over $21 billion (€21 billion) of the total sum. Italy also requested the second tranche, of over $21 billion (€21 billion) too, at the end of last month. These allocations, though, are conditional on Italy meeting the objectives set in the NRRP. So far, the Italian  government has reached all 45 milestones and targets. With Super Mario gone, however, it is extremely unlikely that Italy will continue to do so.

According to Istat, the Italian GDP grew by 6.6% during Draghi’s first year in office, the highest rate since 1976. Bear in mind that the eurozone’s third largest economy was the first European country to be hit by the pandemic. However, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has sent energy, food and commodity prices soaring. And as a consequence, the Italian GDP contracted by 0.2% in the January-March quarter of 2022. 

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The Draghi administration instituted damage control measures to reduce the impact of the war on the economy early on. It is for this reason that Minister of the Economy and Finance Daniele Franco estimated “robust growth” for the GDP in the second quarter in a speech at the Italian Banking Association (ABI). Neither did Franco know nor could he possibly predict that Giuseppe Conte’s party would unleash hell in Palazzo Madama. Conte was Draghi’s predecessor and has been the president of the populist Five Star Movement since August 2021.

To understand why Draghi came under pressure, we need some country-specific context. A gifted economist, Draghi took charge of a coalition government to nurse the Italian economy back to life. At the time, Italy was on the brink of collapse due to COVID-19. After Russia invaded Ukraine, economic recovery slowed down and Draghi’s coalition partners saw this as a good time to sabotage him. The center-right Forza Italia of former premier Silvio Berlusconi, the right-wing League of Matteo Salvini and the Five Star Movement led by Conte decided it was time to pull the rug under Draghi.

As support collapsed, Draghi resigned. Italian President Sergio Mattarella promptly rejected Draghi’s resignation. This did little to stop markets from panicking. At a time when eurozone inflation is reaching a record 8.5%, the spreads between Italian 10-year government bonds (BTPs) and German Bunds have risen to new highs. On July 20, Draghi addressed the Italian Senate and declared that he was willing to stay on as prime minister if the coalition parties backed his reform agenda. Unfortunately, the above-mentioned parties did not even have the decency to show up in parliament for the vote of confidence. This forced Draghi to resign despite winning the confidence vote.

Draghi’s final resignation prompted markets to react even worse than before. The Italy-Germany bond spreads shot up to 243 points. They only started to go down again when the ECB announced it would raise interest rates and launched the Transmission Protection Instrument (TPI), a new tool to tackle financial fragmentation in the euro area.

Renewed Credibility and Influence Abroad

With his considerable experience, statesmanlike stature and personal connections, Draghi has restored Italy’s credibility on the European and international stage in his short tenure as prime minister. Thanks to him, Italy successfully led the G20 and COP26 throughout 2021. Italy also (pro)actively participated in G7, NATO, and EU Summits, as well as other high-profile events such as the International Conference on Libya and the Summit for Democracy. Draghi’s deft diplomacy demonstrates how committed he is to strengthening multilateralism and democratic values. As a result, Italy has gained in strength, influence and credibility abroad under his sapient premiership.

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As the political crisis unfolded, Super Mario was still hard at work. On July 19, he spoke with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy who thanked Draghi for his “significant personal contribution to granting Ukraine the status of a candidate country for EU membership”. The day before, Draghi was in Algeria where he signed several agreements, including an energy deal enabling Italy to reduce gas imports from Russia. The Italian government has signed similar deals with Angola, the Republic of Congo, Mozambique, Egypt, Bahrain, Qatar, Turkey and Azerbaijan.

In fact, in May the Trans Adriatic Pipeline (TAP) brought 10 billions cubic meters of gas from Baku, Azerbaijan all the way to Melendugno, Southern Italy in the span of a weekend. Similar negotiations with Israel and Libya are ongoing. By seeking to diversify gas supplies and investing in renewable energy projects, Draghi has been trying to reverse decades of dependence on Russian energy. Following Draghi’s resignation, however, Russia has increased its gas supplies to Italy by 71,4% in just one day.

As The Financial Times recently pointed out, Draghi “is (or at least was) shifting the power dynamics within the EU”. Proximity to the Mediterranean Sea and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region is no longer perceived as a liability. The risk of increased migration is now trumped by the opportunity of importing non-Russian gas and oil into Europe. 

Even as Draghi nudged the EU in a new direction, he deepened ties with France, the outgoing president of the Council of the EU. On November 26, 2021, the two EU founding members signed the Quirinale Treaty, a historic deal to strengthen cooperation between Italy and France.

The agreement is very similar to the Élysée Treaty between France and Germany which celebrates its 60th anniversary next year. The EU’s biggest economy assumed the presidency of the G7 in January. Yet the post-Angela Merkel traffic-light coalition has struggled to speak with one voice and retain its leadership role in Europe. For all its promises to increase defense spending and deliver lethal weapons to Ukraine, Germany is still very reliant on Russian energy. Hence, it has proved reluctant to suspend the Nord Stream 2 Pipeline and support a full embargo on Russian oil and gas. 

Until a few weeks ago, Italy was the second largest importer of Russian gas, next only to Germany. Yet the Draghi administration has been bold enough to back all sanctions on Russia proposed by the EU and its North American allies.

Stronger Transatlantic Ties

On the other side of the Atlantic, US President Joe Biden and his administration have been looking at Draghi’s Italy with renewed interest and respect. The recipient of The Atlantic Council’s 2022 Distinguished Leadership Award has proved to be a strong leader and a committed transatlantic partner. 

Is Russia’s War in Ukraine Creating a New European Security Architecture?

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Draghi has been pushing for the development of a strong European defense to complement NATO and took a tougher stance vis-à-vis both Russia and China than his predecessors long before Russia’s aggression against Ukraine began. In his May address to the European Parliament, the Italian prime minister urged greater European coordination on defense. The economist also made the case for more efficient defense spending among EU member states, something that would greatly benefit NATO as well since 21 (soon 23) EU countries are also NATO allies.

Unfortunately, Draghi did not have it all his own way though. Despite his calls to increase Italy’s defense budget, the Boot will not hit NATO 2% GDP defense spending target until 2028. Nevertheless, in the eyes of US Defense Secretary Lyloyd Austin, Italy remains “one of Europe’s most reliable security providers”. 

Last year, Italy celebrated 160 years of diplomatic ties with Washington and also marked 70 years of NATO’s presence on its soil. The country is currently leading the NATO mission in Iraq and is supposed to take the lead of the mission in Kosovo in the fall. Italy’s Eurofighter jets have been stationed in Romania since November 2021 and the country has been supporting NATO all the way from the Baltic to the Mediterranean. In addition, since Russia’s invasion began, Draghi has been striving to provide heavy weapons to Ukraine despite the strong opposition from within his coalition. He has even looked to strengthen defense cooperation with Japan amid concerns that China might be preparing to attack Taiwan.

Thanks to this renewed international credibility, Italy has reclaimed its rightful place within the Quint, an informal framework used by the United States, France, Germany, the UK and now Italy again to discuss and coordinate their foreign policy on matters of common interest.

Political Mayhem Returns

Draghi’s premiership has undoubtedly transformed Italy into a power player in Europe and positioned it to be a stronger and more credible ally for NATO and the US. However, as  basketball legend Kobe Bryant once said “Job is not finished”. Draghi needed more time in office to undertake all the reforms envisaged in the NRRP to modernize Italy. Instead, Italy’s best player was fouled by his own teammates and sent to the locker room in the middle of the game. His season is over. 

Despite not being an elected official, Draghi enjoyed the support of both politicians and ordinary citizens. Since he first tendered his resignation, there have been protests in Italy’s main cities and petitions signed by nearly 2,000 mayors and governors and 100,000 Italians demanding that Draghi stay on in the nation’s top job until the next elections, originally scheduled for March 2023. Now that Draghi has resigned, Italy will go to the polls in September. 

Sadly, Draghi’s ambitions for Italy clashed with the country’s grim political reality. The notoriously Russian-friendly Five Star Movement, League and Forza Italia are jeopardizing Draghi’s hard-fought legacy of credibility for the country. By behaving so irresponsibly, they are throwing Italy into political and economic instability once again. If Super Mario could not change Italy, then no one else can. The premature ending of Draghi’s government is bad news not only for hardworking Italians, but also for the EU, NATO and Ukraine, who might soon lose a key partner in its fight for freedom. In the Kremlin, on the other hand, this is a cause for celebration because whoever is elected this fall will never be as pro-Europe and pro-US as Mario Draghi.

Mr. Prime Minister, you will be missed!

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Italy, Europe, and the World Needed Super Mario to Stay On appeared first on Fair Observer.

As a rising Islamist politician, the football-playing Erdoğan took on corrupt Scotch-drinking elites and a power-drunk military. He was even banned from politics for a while. Yet Erdoğan came roaring back and, unlike the recently dethroned Johnson, has emerged as the strongman of his nation.

A Truly Historic Leader

Even his critics would concede that Erdoğan has etched his name in Turkey’s history. He is the most significant leader of the country since Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the general who created the modern Turkish state on the dying embers of the Ottoman Empire. Atatürk dragged the country screaming and kicking into secularism and towards Europe. In a land were the sultan was seen as the caliph by the Muslim world, Atatürk abolished the caliphate.

For all of Atatürk’s herculean efforts, much of Turkey was far too religious to turn secular like Europe. The elites of Istanbul inhaled the liberating air of Europe but, over time, lost touch with their people. The secular military managed to keep “Muslim parties in check and rebellious Kurds under control” through military coups. In 1997, the military forced an Islamist prime minister to resign. Then, Erdoğan was a young mayor of Istanbul.

The World This Week: Blood on the Bosporus as Purge Follows Failed Coup

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To cut a long story short, the Islamist tide could not be held back by the military dam. Eventually, Erdoğan led them to power. He cut the wings of the military, initiated a rapprochement with the recalcitrant Kurds and made Islamism the new guiding principle of the country, both at home and abroad. Out went Kemalism, in came Erdoğanism. In the early days, this meant moving closer to Europe to avoid yet another military coup and fairly sound management of the economy.

As war rages between Russia and Ukraine, the early era of Erdoğan seems a lifetime away. In June, some researchers estimated inflation in Turkey to be 160%, more than twice the official estimate of 79%. The country is also facing a currency crisis. In 2021, the Turkish lira fell by 44% against the dollar. In 2022, the lira is in freefall, the current account deficit (imports minus exports) is rising and the budget deficit (expenditures minus revenues) has reached a record high. Millions of workers, young people and pensioners have fallen below the poverty line, which is set at $1,200 a month for a family of four. While much of the economic pain was inevitable given the global economic downturn, some of it is self-inflicted. By stubbornly insisting on cutting interest rates at a time of soaring inflation, Erdoğan has scored a spectacular own goal.

Elections and Revolutions Depend on the Price of Bread

The Turkish economy has struggled with its economy long before Erdoğan. With an oversized military, Turkey spent too much on defense. The country has long relied on dollar-denominated debt, which leaves it very exposed to external shocks. As a NATO member and a frontline state against the erstwhile Soviet Union, Turkey was regularly bailed out by the US and institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Like Pakistan, Turkey extracted geopolitical rent from the West and bailouts have been par for the course. Only last year, the IMF doled out $6.3 billion to Turkey.

The World This Week: Sultan Erdogan Tightens Grip on Turkey

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Erdoğan has been putting a gun to the head of European leaders to wring some cash out of them. In 2016, the European Commission coughed up over $6.6 billion (€6 billion) for Turkey to host refugees and not disgorge them into the EU member states. Like a good bazaar merchant, Erdoğan has somehow kept the Turkish economy from falling into collapse because the US, the EU, the IMF and NATO all need Turkey for one reason or another. It is too important to fail.

Even geopolitical rent and political blackmail have limits. They do not yield infinite amounts of cash or gold. When inflation rises, central banks raise interest rates so that people keep their money in the bank instead of spending them on goods and services or assets. Inflation is a regular feature of the Turkish economy. In the 1980s and 1990s prices soared. Then, the central bank raised interest rates and brought it under control.

Erdoğan wants his central bank to keep interest rates low. Some of his key supporters have long been small businessmen who resent high interest rates. Turkish economists privately tell this author that Erdoğan thinks raising interest rates would put a spoke in the wheels of the economy. Like many politicians who want economic growth, Erdoğan wants to print money to achieve it. After all, he is doing what the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank did when they printed money through their policy of quantitative easing.

The US and European central banks have since reversed course in the face of rising inflation. Erdoğan has held the fort and pressured his central bank to cut rates instead. This means there is more money sloshing around in the Turkish economy than necessary. With oil, food and commodity prices high thanks to the Russia-Ukraine War, Erdonomics has sent prices soaring even further.

Turks are scrambling to get rid of liras as fast as they can. They are buying dollars, properties (prices are up by 182% over the past year), cars, electronics and other consumer goods, and even high-risk volatile assets such as overpriced stocks and cryptocurrencies. Turkey might not be Sri Lanka yet but Erdonomics is causing its economy to collapse.

Over the last few years, he has become a de facto sultan. He has built Ak Saray, a pure white palace of 1,000 rooms on 50 acres of Atatürk Forest Farm, after razing Atatürk’s country lodge to the ground. Hagia Sophia is no longer a museum but a mosque. Secular Kemalist Turkey is dead. Istanbul’s elites have been defenestrated. Critics have been castrated. Furthermore Erdoğan has been able to project himself as a key leader of the Muslim world and won much popularity in places like Palestine and Pakistan. Recently, he even changed Turkey’s name to Türkiye.

In his 19 years in office, Erdoğan has accomplished a lot. He has changed the nature of the state and the arc of Turkey’s destiny. Yet he is increasingly vulnerable. Turkey may not be Sri Lanka yet but it is in turmoil. Elections and revolutions depend on the price of bread. Erdonomics has set that on fire. At some point, the mob might turn on the sultan.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Sultan Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s Erdonomics is Driving Turkey to Disaster appeared first on Fair Observer.

No one knows how this meal will end. Ukraine is eager to force Russia to disgorge what it’s already devoured, while the still-peckish invader clearly has no interest in leaving the table.

This might seem like an ordinary territorial dispute between predator and prey. Ukraine’s central location between east and west, however, turns it into a potentially world-historical conflict like the Battle of Tours when the Christian Franks turned back the surging Umayyad army of Muslims in 732 AD or the withdrawal of US forces from Vietnam in 1975.

The pivotal nature of the current war seems obvious. Ukraine has for some time wanted to join western institutions like the EU. Russia prefers to absorb Ukraine into its russkiy mir (Russian world). However, this tug of war over the dividing line between East and West isn’t a simple recapitulation of the Cold War. Russian President Vladimir Putin clearly has no interest in reconstituting the Soviet Union, much less in sending his troops westward into Poland or Germany, while the US isn’t wielding Ukraine as a proxy to fight the Kremlin. Both superpowers have far more circumscribed aims.

Dirty Oil v Clean Energy

Nonetheless, the war has oversized implications. What at first glance seems like a spatial conflict is also a temporal one. Ukraine has the great misfortune to straddle the fault line between a 20^th century of failed industrial strategies and a possible 21^st century reorganization of society along clean energy lines.

In the worst-case scenario, Ukraine could simply be absorbed into the world’s largest petro-state. Or the two sides could find themselves in a punishing stalemate that cuts off the world’s hungriest people from vast stores of grain and continues to distract the international community from pushing forward with an urgently needed reduction of carbon emissions. Only a decisive defeat of Putinism—with its toxic mix of despotism, corruption, right-wing nationalism, and devil-may-care extractivism—would offer the world some sliver of hope when it comes to restoring some measure of planetary balance.

Ukraine is fighting for its territory and, ultimately, its survival. The West has come to its aid in defense of international law. But the stakes in this conflict are far more consequential than that.

What Putin Wants

Once upon a time, Vladimir Putin was a conventional Russian politician. Like many of his predecessors, he enjoyed a complicated ménage à trois with democracy (the boring spouse) and despotism (his true love). He toggled between confrontation and cooperation with the West. Not a nationalist, he presided over a multiethnic federation; not a populist, he didn’t care much about playing to the masses; not an imperialist, he deployed brutal but limited force to keep Russia from spinning apart.

Putin also understood the limits of Russian power. In the 1990s, his country had suffered a precipitous decline in its economic fortune, so he worked hard to rebuild state power on what lay beneath his feet. Russia, after all, is the world’s largest exporter of natural gas, its second-largest oil producer, and its third-largest coal exporter. Even Putin’s efforts to prevent regions from slipping away from the Russian sphere of influence were initially constrained. In 2008, for instance, he didn’t try to take over neighboring Georgia, he just forced a stalemate that brought two breakaway regions into the Russian sphere of influence.

Meanwhile, Putin pursued strategies aimed at weakening his perceived adversaries. He ratcheted up cyberattacks in the Baltics, expanded maritime provocations in the Black Sea, advanced aggressive territorial claims in the Arctic. He also supported right-wing nationalists like France’s Marine Le Pen and Italy’s Matteo Salvini to undermine the unity of the EU. In 2016, he even attempted to further polarize American politics via dirty tricks in support of Donald Trump.

Always sensitive to challenges to his own power, Putin watched with increasing concern as “color revolutions” spread through parts of the former Soviet Union—from Georgia in 2003 and Ukraine in 2005 to Belarus in 2006 and Moldova in 2009. Around the time of the 2013-2014 Euromaidan protests in Ukraine, he began shifting domestically to a nationalism that prioritized the interests of ethnic Russians, while cracking down ferociously on dissent and ramping up attacks on critics abroad. An intensifying sense of paranoia led him to rely on an ever-smaller circle of advisors, ever less likely to contradict him or give him bad news.

In the early 2020s, facing disappointment abroad, Putin effectively gave up on preserving even a semblance of good relations with the United States or the EU. Except for Viktor Orbán in Hungary, the European far-right had proven to be a complete disappointment. Putin’s fair-weather friend Donald Trump had lost the 2020 presidential election. Worse yet, European countries seemed determined to meet their Paris climate accord commitments, which sooner or later would mean radically reducing their dependence on Russian fossil fuels.

In contrast to China’s eagerness to stay on good terms with the United States and Europe, Putin’s Russia began turning its back on centuries of “westernizing” impulses to embrace its Slavic history and traditions. Like North Korea’s Kim Jong-un and India’s Narendra Modi, Putin decided that the only ideology that ultimately mattered was nationalism, in his case a particularly virulent, anti-liberal form of it.

All of this means that Putin will pursue his aims in Ukraine regardless of the long-term impact on relations with the West. He’s clearly convinced that political polarization, economic sclerosis, and a wavering security commitment to that embattled country will eventually force Western powers to accommodate a more assertive Russia. Putin might not be wrong.

Whither the West?

Since the invasion of Ukraine, the West has never seemed more unified. Even previously neutral Finland and Sweden have lined up to join NATO. The US and much of Europe have largely agreed when it comes to sanctions against Russia.

Still, all is not well in the West. In the US, Trumpism continues to metastasize within the Republican Party. According to a January NPR/Ipsos poll, 64% of Americans are convinced that democracy is “in crisis and at risk of failing.” Meanwhile, in a surprising Alliance of Democracies Foundation poll last year, 44% of respondents in 53 countries rated the US, a self-proclaimed beacon of liberty, as a greater threat to democracy than either China and 38 percent) or Russia who got 38% and 28% of the votes respectively.

In Europe, the far-right continues to challenge the democratic foundations of the continent. Uber-Christian Viktor Orbán recently won his fourth term as Hungary’s prime minister. The super-conservative Law and Justice Party is firmly at the helm in Poland. The anti-immigrant, Euroskeptical Swiss People’s Party remains the most significant force in that country’s parliament. The top three far-right political parties in Italy together attract nearly 50% of the vote in public opinion polls.

Meanwhile, the global economy, still on neo-liberal autopilot, has jumped out of the pandemic frying pan into the fires of stagflation. With stock markets heading into bear territory and a global recession looming, the World Bank recently cut its 4.1% growth forecast for 2022 to 2.9%. The Biden administration’s perceived failure to address inflation may deliver the Congress to Republican extremists this November and social democratic leaders throughout Europe may pay a similar political price for record-high Eurozone inflation.

Admittedly, the continued military dominance of the US and its NATO allies would seem to refute all rumors of the decline of the West. In reality, though, the West’s military record hasn’t been much better than Russia’s performance in Ukraine. In August 2021, the US ignominiously withdrew its forces from its 20-year war in Afghanistan as the Taliban surged back to power. This year, France pulled its troops from Mali after a decade-long failure to defeat al-Qaeda and Islamic State militants. Western-backed forces failed to dislodge Bashar al-Assad in Syria or prevent a horrific civil war from enveloping Libya. All the trillions of dollars devoted to achieving “full-spectrum dominance” couldn’t produce enduring success in Iraq or Somalia, wipe out terrorist factions throughout Africa, or effect regime change in North Korea or Cuba.

Despite its overwhelming military and economic power, the West no longer seems to be on the same upward trajectory as after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Back in the 1990s, Eastern Europe and even parts of the former Soviet Union signed up to join NATO and the EU. Russia under Boris Yeltsin inked a partnership agreement with NATO, while both Japan and South Korea were interested in pursuing a proposed global version of that security alliance.

Today, however, the West seems increasingly irrelevant outside its own borders. China, love it or hate it, has rebuilt its Sinocentric sphere in Asia, while becoming the most important economic player in the Global South. It’s even established alternative global financial institutions that, one day, might replace the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank. Turkey has turned its back on the EU (and vice versa) and Latin America is heading in a more independent direction. Consider it a sign of the times that, when the call went out to sanction Russia, most of the non-Western world ignored it.

The foundations of the West are indeed increasingly unstable. Democracy is no longer, as scholar Francis Fukuyama imagined it in the late 1980s, the inevitable trajectory of world history. The global economy, while spawning inexcusable inequality and being upended by the recent pandemic, is exhausting the resource base of the planet. Both right-wing extremism and garden-variety nationalism are eroding the freedoms that safeguard liberal society. It’s no surprise, then, that Putin believes a divided West will ultimately accede to his aggression.

The Ukraine Pivot

There’s never a good time for war. But hostilities have flared in Ukraine just as the world was supposed to be accelerating its transition to a clean-energy future. In another three years, carbon emissions must hit their peak and, in the next eight years, countries must cut their carbon emissions by half if there’s any hope of meeting the goals of the Paris climate accord by 2050. Even before the current war, the most comprehensive estimate put the rise in global temperature at a potentially disastrous 2.7° Celsius by the end of the century (nearly twice the 1.5° goal of that agreement).

The war in Ukraine is propelling the world full tilt in the opposite direction. China and India are, in fact, increasing their use of coal, the worst possible fossil fuel in terms of carbon emissions. Europe is desperate to replace Russian oil and natural gas and countries like Greece are now considering increasing their own production of dirty energy. In a similar fashion, US is once again boosting oil and gas production, releasing supplies from its Strategic Petroleum Reserve, and hoping to persuade oil-producing nations to pump yet more of their product into global markets.

With its invasion, in other words, Russia has helped to derail the world’s already faltering effort at decarbonization. Although last fall Putin committed his country to a net-zero carbon policy by 2060, phasing out fossil fuels now would be economic suicide given that he’s done so little to diversify the economy. And despite international sanctions, Russia has been making a killing with fossil-fuel sales, raking in a record $97 billion in the first 100 days of battle.

All of this could suggest, of course, that Putin represents the last gasp of the failed petropolitics of the 20^th century. But don’t count him out yet. He might also be the harbinger of a future in which technologically sophisticated politicians continue to pursue their narrow political and regional aims, making it ever less possible for the world to survive climate change.

Ukraine is where Putin is making his stand. As for Putinism itself—how long it lasts, how persuasive it proves to be for other countries—much depends on China.

After Putin’s invasion, Beijing could have given full-throated support to its ally, promised to buy all the fossil fuels Western sanctions left stranded, provided military equipment to buoy the faltering Russian offensive, and severed its own ties with Europe and the US. China could have broken with international financial institutions like the World Bank and the IMF in favor of the New Development Bank and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, its own multinational organizations. In this way, Ukraine could have turned into a genuine proxy war between East and West.

Instead, Beijing has been playing both sides. Unhappy with Putin’s unpredictable moves, including the invasion, which have disrupted China’s economic expansion, it’s also been disturbed by the sanctions against Russia that similarly cramp its style. Beijing isn’t yet strong enough to challenge the hegemony of the dollar and it also remains dependent on Russian fossil fuels. Now the planet’s greatest emitter of greenhouse gases, China has been building a tremendous amount of renewable energy infrastructure. Its wind sector generated nearly 30% more power in 2021 than the year before and its solar sector increased by nearly 15%. Still, because of a growing appetite for energy, its overall dependence on coal and natural gas has hardly been reduced.

Reliant as it is on Russian energy imports, China won’t yet pull the plug on Putinism, but Washington could help push Beijing in that direction. It was once a dream of the Obama administration to partner with the world’s second-largest economy on clean energy projects. Instead of focusing as it has on myriad ways to contain China, the Biden administration could offer it a green version of an older proposal to create a Sino-American economic duopoly, this time focused on making the global economy sustainable in the process. The two countries could join Europe in advancing a Global Green Deal.

In recent months, President Joe Biden has been willing to entertain the previously unthinkable by mending fences with Venezuela and Saudi Arabia in order to flood global markets with yet more oil and so reduce soaring prices at the pump. Talk about 20^th century mindsets. Instead, it’s time for Washington to consider an eco-détente with Beijing that would, among other things, drive a stake through the heart of Putinism, safeguard Ukraine’s sovereignty, and stop the planet from burning to a crisp.

Otherwise, we know how this unhappy meal will end—as a Last Supper for humanity.

*[This article was originally published by FPIF.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post China Will Decide Who Wins the Fight: Russia or the West appeared first on Fair Observer.

Unlike President Harry Truman, who in December 1963 expressed his exasperation with the CIA’s acquired taste for skulduggery, Biden sees all virtue and no vice in the history of an agency created under Truman’s watch. Weeks after the assassination of President John F Kennedy, Truman had the temerity to pen an op-ed column for The Washington Post decrying the CIA’s betrayal of the mission with which he had endowed it: to gather facts and inform the president as transparently as possible. That presumably also implied refraining from acts such as fabricating facts or assassinating a sitting president.

Biden wants today’s CIA to understand that he feels none of Truman’s exasperation. He asserted to the faces of a new generation of operatives that for three quarters of a century “our nation’s intelligence professionals have worked unceasingly and sacrificed willingly to make our country safer.  And that’s not hyperbole.  That’s a simple, straightforward fact.”

Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Hyperbole:

A deliberate exaggeration of the truth, the preferred figure of speech of politicians who depend on it to put to sleep the public’s capacity for critical thinking and reduce every issue to a binary opposition.

Contextual note

One thing it would be fair to say about Joe Biden is that he never gives up. His persistence in supporting the war in Ukraine to the last Ukrainian is a testament to his perseverance. As are the rhetorical devices Biden uses and abuses, over and over again. In last week’s speech to the CIA, the president insisted on three occasions that hyperbole is not hyperbole. “And again, not hyperbole, you are clearly the best in the whole world,” he insisted. Later in the speech, he offered a second example of non-hyperbole: “We’re the most unique nation in the history of the world.  That’s not hyperbole.” Whether it is or isn’t, some people would complain that there is no such thing as degrees of uniqueness. One can be unique but not the “most unique.” Which is one indication that what Biden claims is simply hyperbole!

At another point in the speech, after praising “the quiet bravery of the women and men of this agency” that has resulted “in lives saved, in crises averted, in truths revealed, in decisions of the 75 years of American presidents made better because of the insights you’ve provided,” he asserts “that’s not exaggeration.” Truman might have responded: “Of course it isn’t exaggeration, it’s a downright lie.”

On his trip to Poland at the end of March to bolster NATO and congratulate himself on his courageous decision to impose US drastic sanctions on Russia, Biden did an equally convincing demonstration of his skill of using the word hyperbole three times in the same speech.

“The fact of the matter is that you are the finest — this is not hyperbole. You’re the finest fighting force in the history of the world.”

He later added:

“Thank you very, very much for all you do. And it’s not hyperbole to suggest you’re the finest fighting force, not in the world — in the world (sic). That’s not hyperbole.”

Any expression of value, formulated in absolute terms, such as “the finest fighting force in the history of the world,” is likely to be hyperbole. Biden’s formulation can be nothing other than a hyperbole, which means, it is not to be taken literally. So why take the trouble to deny it, and no less than three times?

Biden’s trope belongs to a category of rhetorical figures called apophasis. Like most tropes it can be used cleverly (comically) and produce a strong effect. When a politician asserts: “I refuse to discuss the rumor that my opponent is a drunk” or when the candidate Donald Trump said of his rival, Carly Fiorina, “I promised I would not say that she ran Hewlett-Packard into the ground, that she laid off tens of thousands of people and she got viciously fired. I said I will not say it, so I will not say it.” Trump knew his audience would receive that self-contradiction as high comedy and an effective blow to his opponent.

Most masters of rhetoric style will point out that hyperbole should be used sparingly. It carries a serious risk of sounding phony. They also presume that a good politician will try to avoid sounding phony for fear of losing credibility with voters. So why does Biden constantly return to phony-sounding talk?

Biden’s addiction to hyperbole that he denies is hyperbole highlights a feature of linguistic practice that lies at the core of US culture. Most professional rhetoricians in the US understand that people recognize hyperbole and do not take it literally. It serves to make a strong point that can subsequently be nuanced.

Biden is different. In denying that his hyperboles are hyperboles, he is denying nuance. Like any carnival barker or conman, his rhetoric reflects a belief that Americans crave flattery, even hyperbolic flattery. When people feel flattered they are vulnerable to any other insincere message you propose, especially when convincing them to buy something. Perhaps he learned this from his father, who was a successful car salesman.

In US culture, so heavily influenced by the pragmatism of PT Barnum, it is considered a form of primordial wisdom to “give people what they want to hear.” It is much easier and far more effective than bothering about establishing the truth. US culture uncritically celebrates success, rarely questioning how it was achieved. The ethically suspect idea of “anything that works” has achieved the status of “common sense” in US culture. It is a softer version of “the ends justify the means.”

The problem for society and politics is that such a success-oriented and salesman-defined culture upends the value of sincerity in human relations. It encourages lying. This culture is what guides most US media in crafting their reporting to the perceived desires—rather than the needs—of their target audiences. What “works” doesn’t have to be true.

Historical note

Biden is known for tirelessly repeating the same formulation on multiple occasions. If it works once, the logic is, it will work every time. He isn’t alone. It’s a trick skillful politicians have used throughout history, from Cato’s Carthago delenda est (“Carthage must be destroyed”) to presidential candidate Kennedy’s standard phrase to introduce any discussion of foreign policy: “We live in a world that is half-slave and half-free.”

It would hardly be hyperbole, however, to suggest that Biden may be in a category of his own, so frequent is his practice. How many times have we heard Biden say, “we lead not by the example of our power, but by the power of our example” as if it was an original thought and a deeply moral realization that had just popped into his head? He pulls the rabbit out of his rhetorical hat once again in his speech to the CIA. Back in January 2021, we commented that when he included it in his inauguration speech with this friendly advice: “a witty rhetorical figure loses its quality of wit when parroted over and over again.”

Biden has a litany of other examples, such as when he insists that “we can define America in one word: Possibilities.” And then there’s his favorite, “there has never been anything we haven’t been able to do when we’ve done it together,” which, on occasion, he mangles to mean its opposite (“There’s never been anything we’ve been able to accomplish when we’ve done it together,” spoken at the Democratic convention that nominated him in 2020).

Critics may conclude that mindless repetition occurs when the rational content of discourse vanishes. In Biden’s case one may wonder if it was ever there. At 79 going on 80, Biden, apparently seeking to run again in 2024, is already the “most unique” president, if age is the criterion. And that is most certainly not hyperbole.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Fair Observer Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Biden’s Hyperbolic Fawning Before the CIA appeared first on Fair Observer.

P.S. Each heading is a quote from something somewhere or other. To the person who emails me 11 correct identifications, I’ll buy you a drink at Martin’s Tavern…or we can have a friendly chat over the phone while I’m at Martin’s having a drink. Why 11? Because that’s how we play NumberWang around here.]

“Milton Friedman isn’t running the show anymore.”                                                
Joe Biden – April 2020

Glibly thus did then-presidential candidate Joe Biden describe his economic vision for America on the campaign trail in April 2020. Had he not so clearly delineated his economic approach against that of the Nobel Prize-winning economist of the Chicago School, comparisons between Republican policies and Democratic policies might be murkier. The results of Biden’s 2021 stimulus package are now in. As senior economists at the US Treasury warned him, this package was bound to be inflationary and has proven to be so. Good old Milton Friedman would have told him the same. It is clear now as to who is running the economic show.

When Biden spoke those words, I was reminded, as I am more so now, of the t-shirts that were in vogue in my youth that read:

“God is dead.”

                        -Nietzsche

“Nietzsche is dead.”

                        -God

President Pangloss might think the economy is going great guns. He might even think that Afghanistan was a success. Maybe the fanboys actually believe we have the “fastest-growing economy in the world” (not true) or that core inflation is down (wrong again), but most Americans are not quite as convinced. They’re worried about inflation and consumer sentiment plunged to an all time low. The Business Roundtable CEO Economic Outlook Index has declined dramatically in six months. After 18 months of Biden’s presidency, and amidst the January 6 Committee’s anti-Trump extravaganza, people prefer Trump to Biden in a head-to-head contest.

Given the dire state of affairs, this would be the time for the president to get serious, demonstrate clear thinking and come up with new ideas. Instead, Biden has published a rather curious op-ed detailing his plan to tackle inflation in The Wall Street Journal. Sadly, this plan amounts to very little. Biden grandly promises three things:

1. To leave the Federal Reserve alone,
2. To push green energy, and
3. To reduce the deficit.

To use this Irish Catholic president’s own words, this plan is malarkey.

“Don’t use three words when one will do, don’t shift your eyes, look always at your mark but don’t stare, be specific but not memorable, funny but don’t make him laugh, he’s gotta like you then forget you the moment you’ve left his sight…”

Biden’s op-ed is rather prolix. He uses a lot of words but says little and is utterly forgettable. There is another point to remember. The law prohibits Uncle Joe from playing footsie or getting handsy with the Federal Reserve. So, the president is promising not to do what the law tells him not to do. No shit, Sherlock!

In recent months, the Federal Reserve has not exactly covered itself with glory. The cover story of the April 23^rd-29^th edition of The Economist was “The Fed That Failed.” I agree. I’m not sure I have faith in the very people who ignored inflation as a “transitory” phenomenon. Yet I would prefer they deal with inflation instead of Uncle Joe.

Ah, dream too bright to last!

Ah, starry hope! that didst arise

But to be overcast!

Biden’s second promise kicks the fever dream of ideologues on the left. They believe that a Green New Deal would build infrastructure, create jobs, and bring down inflation at the same time. It would be a magic bullet or, even better, a bullet train to the Promised Land.

This green romance does not seem to survive first contact with reality though. Nickel prices may not be at the highs they soared to in March but they are still bloody high, and you can’t go green without Class 1 nickel. Even if we did have reasonable nickel prices, the US has a single nickel mine, the Eagle Mine in Michigan. There is simply not enough nickel to go green. 

Furthermore, as we learned from the energy crisis of the 1970s, it’s not great to put all your eggs in a foreign-sourced basket. This is what the Biden administration has ended up doing by canceling the mining leases of the Twin Metals mining project that was the other nickel mine in the US. 

Twin Metals claims it has 99% of US nickel reserves, yet Biden’s Interior secretary said she “can’t answer” if it will ever be allowed. We import a lot of nickel. In fact, Russia is one of the main suppliers of nickel to the US. So, nickel mines in the US make eminent sense. Instead, the administration seems to be hell bent on killing nickel babies in their cradles and putting clean energy security at the mercy of the likes of Russia.

It is not just nickel that is scarce. We have a single US mine for rare earths. China produces four times what we do and makes up 60% of the rare earths global market. There’s no way we can be a green energy powerhouse when China has six state-owned mining companies while the US has only one, single mine: Mountain Pass. We very much have a simple problem; the US lacks the raw materials to go green.

It is not just raw materials that are the problem. When it comes to solar power, 90% of all panels installed in the US come from China and Southeast Asia. Note that panels from the latter part of the world are manufactured by Chinese companies. These companies have been accused of dumping solar panels into the US market, undercutting American companies in the process. These companies petitioned the US Commerce Department, which launched an investigation into the matter.

Under the Biden administration, that investigation has been practically buried. So, China will continue to corner the market in solar and we will offshore our green energy to the Middle Kingdom. Under President Pangloss, we will build the entire US green economy around the kindness of strangers from sea to shining sea.

I would think that the key lever to control inflation would be to curb energy prices. Since February 24 when Russia invaded Ukraine, there has been a supply shock when it comes to oil and natural gas. For years, the Democrats have been squeezing domestic energy production and distribution in an idealistic and ideological pursuit of making the US cleaner and greener. They have killed offshore drilling, fracking, shale gas, the Keystone XL pipeline and the like.

Today, the US needs more domestic production and distribution if it is to control inflation and achieve energy security. Yet the Biden administration seems to be unable to dismount from its ideological high horse. The president is busily sending oil execs nasty letters, canceling oil and gas lease auctions, and doing his best to make sure the US doesn’t have any lease sales while he’s in office. 

Biden has anointed Amanda Lefton to draw up the US offshore energy policy. She has drafted a five-year leasing plan that was released on July 1, in a pre-July 4 holiday Friday afternoon news dump. This makes drilling all but impossible in the waters off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. If this does not tighten energy supply, I don’t know what else will.

Instead of producing more oil and natural gas, the US seems to be looking to import them from abroad, including Iran and Venezuela. Surely, it is unlikely that their production methods are cleaner than US ones. Also, why should US taxpayer money go to foreign ones, especially those with a history of hostility to Uncle Sam.

It is not only production but also refining capacity that needs to go up in the US. That would lower oil prices at the pump and bring down inflation. Yet Chevron’s CEO, Mike Wirth, recently said he didn’t envision a new US refinery ever. What is going on?

Refineries are capital intensive. As Wirth said, “You’re looking at committing capital 10 years out, that will need decades to offer a return for shareholders, in a policy environment where governments around the world are saying we don’t want these products.” Given the likes of Lefton in charge, it makes little sense for Wirth or any oil and gas executive to make capital investments in the US.

In the country of the motor car, Biden has promised to eliminate fossil fuels. He has turned up the rhetoric against oil companies. Recently, the president said, “Exxon made more money than God last year” before angrily telling the company “Start investing. Start paying your taxes.” For all its faults, it is highly unlikely that Exxon stopped doing either.

Few know that oil companies have to pay royalties when they drill on federal lands. These have remained flat for more than a century, but recently the Biden administration hiked up royalties by a whopping 50%. Given surging inflation, this is not exactly the best time to hike up royalties. Biden claims oil companies aren’t investing and are gouging consumers. It seems that the Biden administration is doing the gouging instead. Note that gasoline prices went up by over 40% during the first year of the Biden presidency. Blaming the “Putin price hike” for all the US energy troubles is a bit too clever by half.

Lately, I feel the haters eatin’ away at my confidence
They scream out my failures and whisper my accomplishment

Biden’s third promise is to reduce the deficit. In his op-ed, Biden’s claims that he has already done so. Yet the president feels that people do not give him credit for his many accomplishments. Is this true?

Let us just examine one of the accomplishments for which Biden pats himself on his back. The president claims that he has reduced the deficit this year. Given that he passed the $1.9 trillion COVID stimulus last year, a reduction in the deficit this year was not such a big deal. As pointed out earlier, economists in the US Treasury had told senior officials in the Biden administration that the stimulus would be inflationary as it has clearly proved to be.

Biden has also signed into law further spending of $1.1 trillion on “infrastructure,” which takes his total expenditure to $3 trillion already. Ironically, little of the money earmarked for infrastructure will actually be spent on infrastructure. Yet Biden has the cajones to tout his credentials as a deficit reducer. 

In reality there are three reasons why he isn’t increasing the deficit in a wild blowout. First, the US Congress has put the kibosh on Build Back Better, which originally planned to spend approximately $4.5 trillion over 10 years. Second, the COVID panic is finally over in the US. Third, tax receipts are way up because job numbers are up with COVID under control and inflation-triggered wage increases have put people in higher tax brackets.

At a time when the stock markets have crashed and people are feeling poorer, Biden makes another curious argument in his op-ed. He will dramatically increase the budget for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to collect “taxes Americans already owe.” As many others have done before him, the president is promising to reduce the infamous “tax gap,” the $600 billion that the IRS loses out on because of unreported payments (often in cash) and the sheer complexity of the US tax code. While I support collecting taxes that are owed, significantly increasing the size of a tarnished, partisan IRS at a time of economic and political uncertainty does not make sense.

While concluding this op-ed, Biden does what any good politician does in a campaign. He paints his Republican rivals as barbarians at the gate who would sack the US economy. Most Americans now no longer buy Biden’s shtick. They have lost confidence in his competence to run the economy and the midterms are likely to reflect that fact.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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US President Joe Biden and many Democrats have argued for a Green New Deal. They seem to emulate Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal that pulled the US out of the Great Depression. They believe that public investment in green energy and new technologies will fight climate change, create high-paying jobs in the US and boost the American economy.

We spoke to Contributing Editor Christopher Roper Schell, a Capitol Hill veteran who has also worked on the Pentagon, to make sense of the Green New Deal in the context of soaring oil and gas prices, and the prospect of blackouts.

Christopher Roper Schell on Joe Biden’s Energy Policy

(We have edited this transcript lightly for clarity.)

Is clean energy a mirage? 

Christopher Roper Schell: It depends on what you mean by clean energy. 

If you think windmills and solar panels are going to run the US electric grid, that’s not going to happen.

What we need is baseload power and baseload power is going offline primarily because of the economic incentives behind green energy in the United States. Interestingly, CO₂ has been declining substantially, primarily because natural gas is simply cheaper.

What we’ll have to concern ourselves with is to ensure that we do not have the blackouts we’re being warned against. A semi-regulatory body has issued a warning that up to 2/3 of America could experience blackouts this summer. That is simply unacceptable to Americans and a green energy future that eventually has blackouts is not going to transpire.

What is the significance of high gas and nickel prices? 

Christopher Roper Schell: For the Greens, high gas prices are the point: they actually want gasoline prices to go up. However, Americans have rejected this.

They’re getting a look at what a potential carbon tax would look like, and they don’t like it. The Biden administration has tried to suffocate traditional energy sources such as natural gas and oil. In fact, the Chevron CEO said last week that he didn’t envision another refinery ever in the United States.

There’s clearly a rebellion against high gas prices and also against nickel prices. Nickel goes into almost everything that’s green and the US doesn’t produce that much of it. There is one single nickel mine in the US.

And we’re seeing nickel prices that are at peaks that we have not seen for the last 30 years. America cannot go green without producing a lot of nickel cheaply, and that’s not happening. 

Watch the full video here

Is there a supply-side threat from China? 

Christopher Roper Schell: Yes, there is. China produces four times more rare earths than America does. China has six rare earths mining companies. America has one mine.

In terms of solar panels, most of the US solar panels that are installed come from foreign shores; about 90% in fact. 

Interesting story — Auxin Solar is this little bitty US domestic solar panel producer, and they have filed a complaint with the Commerce Department. The Commerce Department began investigating and the installation of solar panels completely froze in this country. Ultimately, the Biden administration stepped in and declared that there would be no new tariffs on imported solar panels to prevent the market from collapsing.

So in this rush to green utopia, the administration decided that it’s OK to support China and to essentially leave their own domestic suppliers out to dry. 

Is the Keystone XL pipeline the answer? 

Christopher Roper Schell: No one disputes that Keystone XL would have produced 830,000 barrels of oil a day. That’s a drop in the bucket in terms of global consumption.

The big problem today is that we just need to produce more oil and currently producers are not responding to price signals. Why? Because they’ve been punished.

Last week, Biden said of Exxon, pay your taxes. I didn’t know that oil producers had ever stopped paying taxes, but the president is using all sorts of regulatory methods to disincentivize the production of oil and gas.  Amongst other things, as I mentioned earlier, he’s not holding lease sales. I know he will say that there are already loads of outstanding leases, but that also means that they need permits. And oftentimes, the Biden administration has not allowed permits.

Either way, it’s better to get oil from places like the US and Canada via Keystone vis-à-vis places like Iran and Venezuela. 

Is the Green New Deal now dead? 

Christopher Roper Schell: Let me put it this way, no politician right now is saying if you like your new high gas prices, you can keep your new high gas prices. 

[There is now no appetite for] a carbon tax. The Green Deal is dead if it ever was alive. While people may virtue signal with their post-consumer cup or rich people may drive around feeling very fancy in their electric cars, the fact is that most people aren’t willing to make the major compromises they will have to make for a Green New Deal type future.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Why Joe Biden’s Green Energy Policy is Dead appeared first on Fair Observer.

Then-presidential candidate Biden’s comment undermined the near century-long relationship of deeply interwoven national interests between America and Saudi Arabia. This has ramifications that include the history of the mass murder on 9/11 and the slaughter of Khashoggi, who had at one time been editor of the Saudi newspaper, Al Watan, as well as being longtime advisor to Saudi Intelligence chief Prince Turki Al-Faisal.

Neither an American President nor a Saudi Prince can escape these harsh realities.

Saudi Arabia’s proven oil reserves run deep, as it is home to the world’s largest oil field, and the country clearly holds primacy in the oil and gas basin. With 298 billion barrels of proven oil reserves, according to 2019 estimates, only Venezuela edges ahead of Saudi Arabia at 302 billion barrels.

US reserves stand at 69 billion barrels, in the top 10 nations worldwide, but as the most prolific consumer at almost 17.2 million barrels per day, or 20% of the world’s supply, as revealed by US Energy Information data, US supplies may diminish before those of Saudi Arabia.

This is a key factor in the US-led drive to pursue renewable energy that will perhaps liberate the United States from dependence on hydrocarbons, exacerbated by the high cost of gasoline. Exorbitant prices at the pump are influenced by the pandemic, the war in Ukraine and the trend of price volatility since April 2020.

Balancing Biden’s diplomatic rhetoric

Instead of a sweeping rebuke, perhaps an acknowledgement of the heinous crime without the excoriation of the US’ most valuable ally in the Muslim-majority world, would have been more astute. This is a region where memories are measured by the reigns of monarchs and time dates back to the Hijra, the Prophet Mohammed’s divinely ordained decampment from Mecca, in the year 622 of the modern era.

Middle East’s rulers and officials will trace Biden’s legacy back to President Barack Obama’s policies, which further divided a Muslim world already wrenched apart by the global war on terror. Obama’s presidency in this region is defined for many by a US stance that empowered Islamists over Muslims and favored cultivating the mothership of Islamism, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, under former Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi. 

Many in the region also say the era also empowered the AKP Islamists founded by Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan at the expense of the persecuted Kurds. Some report these US policies also emboldened Shia Islamist Iran during their colonization and proxy wars in Iraq, Syria, Libya and Yemen’s internecine civil war.

Yet despite being embroiled in Yemen in the South and being flanked by a deeply conflicted Iraq and failed Syrian state, Saudi Arabia is demonstrating a certain facility at playing the long game.

On the threshold of Biden’s visit, Saudi Arabia’s allies are now confronting a nuclear power in Iran that has enriched sufficient uranium to be weaponized. Iran recently disconnected 27 monitoring camera-feeds to the international atomic energy agency.

In Northern Tehran at the Saadabad Palace, President of Iran Sayyid Ebrahim Raisolsadati and Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro of Venezuela signed a 20-year cooperation deal to rebuild Venezuela‘s refining capabilities. This will enable Iranian engineers to help process Venezuela‘s crude oil in exchange for Iranian condensates to make Venezuela‘s oil more attractive on the global market.

Also in the region, Israel is reportedly escalating its own aggressive activities aimed at defanging nuclear Iran while forming security alliances not only with the Abraham Accords’ nations but also with Saudi Arabia.

Biden states that he is attending the summit in Saudi Arabia to solidify US national security in the region and beyond. But the region, including the two custodians of the world’s oldest Abrahamic religion and its youngest – Israel and Saudi Arabia – are no longer heeding US intentions. They are reportedly following their own regional security concerns and increasingly shared foreign policies.

Saudi Arabia is complicated and critical for the US

In the last 20 years since leaving Saudi Arabia where I practiced medicine and performed the Hajj, there has been an undeniable expansion of both the voice and rights for men and women.

Since 2013, the Majlis al-Shura Consultative Council (a legislative consultancy in existence since 1926) has instituted, by law,  a mandatory 20% quota for women representatives. Saudi Arabia has become more porous to the international world as both its intellectual liberals and its orthodox clerics enjoy expanded accessibility by the Saudi public. This is posing a new challenge to the Saudi monarchy, which must manage the impact of clerics with millions of followers on social media channels.

Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 conceived by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to realize Saudi Arabia’s post-petrochemical future, includes the goal of a vast expansion of its international tourism that attracts millions of religious pilgrims from around the world. In 2019 the country expanded access to tourists through e-visas, a program launched just before the global pandemic.

To be sure, political dissent is not tolerated in Saudi Arabia and remains a global human rights concern. Khashoggi’s reported political dissidence resulted in his state-sponsored assassination. More recently, in March 2022, Saudi authorities carried out a mass execution of 81 men.

These painful realities must inform and shape both the current diplomacy and the direction of future policies between the US and Saudi Arabia, a relationship that will continue long after Biden’s administration ends.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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The headlines in the United States have all been about Ukraine, inflation, and gun violence. Biden’s trip was designed to prove that the United States is in fact focused on one thing above all: China, China, China.

The strengthened alliance with South Korea is a signal to Beijing that the more accommodating era of the Moon Jae-in administration is over. The Quad meetings are part of a strategy of countering China’s ambitions in the region including its ports and bases along the Asian littoral. And the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework is a deliberate effort to roll back China’s considerable economic ties with its neighbors.

If you believe that China is the most important threat to US interests, all of these moves make perfect sense. Indeed, Biden’s trip to Asia generally received positive marks from the foreign policy elite in Washington, DC. Virtually the entire US expert class believes that it is necessary to confront China.

Push Reset Button with Beijing

This fear of China, however, has created a certain blindness. By going all out to contain this rival superpower, the United States is missing a golden opportunity. The Biden administration should be taking advantage of the war in Ukraine to push the reset button with Beijing. Closer relations with China would serve to isolate Russia, reorient the global economy in a more sustainable direction, and even reduce inflation in the United States.

The easiest and most obvious policy change the Biden administration should make involves the Trump-era tariffs on Chinese products. Indeed, some members of the administration, notably Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, have indicated support for reducing the tariffs. Tariff reductions could bring inflation down within a year by a full percentage point. That would be good news for US consumers and businesses—and for the Democratic Party’s political prospects.

Beijing would obviously welcome this move. It would also provide an opening for US negotiators to try an even bolder gambit, one that recalls an earlier geopolitical venture by the administration of Richard Nixon. In the 1970s, Nixon and his top advisor Henry Kissinger orchestrated an opening with Communist China. It was not a particularly happy time in China. The country was still in the midst of its murderous Cultural Revolution, and the elderly Mao Zedong was an increasingly erratic leader.

But Nixon and Kissinger saw an opportunity to drive a wedge between the two chief communist powers: China and the Soviet Union. It was of utmost importance for the United States to prevent any serious rapprochement between Moscow and Beijing. Moreover, Kissinger wanted to put pressure on the Soviets to be more compromising in arms control negotiations. Also driving the opening was a US business community that was cautiously optimistic about the profits that could be made in the Chinese market.

In many ways, the gamble worked perfectly. The United States was able to negotiate a détente with the Soviet Union that lasted, more or less, until the end of the 1970s. The Nixon-Kissinger policy also helped guide China out of its Cultural Revolution and into a more sensible engagement with the outside world.

Of course, the United States is now angry that China has proven so successful in engaging with its neighbors and the global economy. Beijing is no longer content to play a subordinate role. It is challenging the US position as the world’s top economy. It is also flexing its muscles near its borders—in the South China Sea and perennially with Taiwan—and challenging US claims that it is the preeminent Pacific power.

Go Back to the Future

But, as in the 1970s, there are still some very good reasons why the United States should open the door once again to China. Russia and China have formed an energy partnership based on their mutual fossil fuel needs (Russia to export, China to import). They have a shared distrust of certain liberal tenets concerning, for instance, free elections and freedom of speech. They have both aligned themselves with other authoritarian governments for their own security interests. If push comes to shove, Russia and China could form the basis of an anti-Western alliance.

But such an alliance is not inevitable. The Kremlin has long worried about Chinese designs on the Russian Far East. China is appalled at the way Russia has violated the sovereignty of its neighbors like Ukraine. Most importantly, China wants to preserve its more-or-less good economic relations with the West, while Russia seems to have given up on any potential rapprochement by doubling down with its invasion of Ukraine.

To further isolate Putin, the Biden administration should step in to offer Beijing a wide-ranging set of negotiations to normalize trade, address outstanding questions like intellectual property rights, and come to some shared understanding of the rules of the road in places like the South China Sea.

Perhaps most importantly, the United States has to offer China a different kind of energy partnership than what the Kremlin is promising. Instead of fossil fuels, Washington should expand the clean energy collaboration that the Obama administration began with Beijing. Together, the United States and China can lead the world into a new era of renewables that is far and away more compelling—and urgently needed—than the dirty energy paradigm that Russia is offering.

Is it too hard to imagine Biden turning his back on the foreign policy consensus in Washington in order to push the reset button on relations with China?

Perhaps.

But Biden as a presidential candidate promised to make Saudi Arabia a “pariah.” Now, President Biden is planning a visit this month to Riyadh, despite Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s assassination of a US journalist and the multiple war crimes the Saudi leader has committed in his war in Yemen. The reason for this reconciliation is quite simple and quite narrow: Biden wants to persuade the Saudis to put more oil into global markets to drive down the price of gas in the United States.

Surely if Biden is willing to make friends with the assassin of Riyadh, he can mend fences with Beijing for a much larger set of benefits and the prospect of a much more advantageous peace.

*[This article was originally published by FPIF.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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The designation conformed to a statement that Biden made to His Highness Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al-Thani, the emir of Qatar, during his visit to Washington in late January 2022.  During the visit, Biden had sent a letter to the US Congress indicating his intention to give Qatar the designation of  a major non-NATO ally. In the letter, the president acknowledged “Qatar’s many years of contributions to US-led efforts in the US Central Command area of responsibility” and recognized that the US had a “national interest in deepening bilateral defense and security cooperation with the State of Qatar.” 

BIden’s designation for Qatar has a historical basis. For years, Qatar has supported US foreign policy objectives. The country has hosted and provided substantial financial support for the Al Udeid Air Base and engaged with the US on issues of strategic importance, including its recent assistance in relocating thousands of Afghans and its ability to serve as an effective mediator in critical situations. The designation  promises to deepen US-Qatar ties in the future.

What Does This Designation Really Mean?  

What are the legal foundations for the designation and its implications for Qatar? Under a federal statute, the US president has the unilateral power to designate a country a major non-NATO ally with the requirement that Congress receive notice in writing at least 30 days before this designation. As aptly noted, the designation alone does not make Qatar a NATO member and thus the collective security obligations and mutual defense benefits under NATO are not applicable to this GCC country.  

Yet, in addition to recognizing the close military ties between Qatar and the US, the designation as a major non-NATO ally ensures defense trade and security cooperation benefits. Qatar is now eligible for loans, research, training, and development, as well as gaining priority access to US military equipment and the ability to bid on certain US Department of Defense contracts. 

In the past, other regional players have benefitted from the designation. Their experience highlights the importance of a military and defense relationship for any GCC state with the US, especially given recent events. For example, Kuwait has benefitted from arms sales through the Foreign Military Sales Program. This strengthened the capabilities of the Kuwaiti military and enhanced the country’s security. 

The Biden administration has given $1 billion to the US Army Corps of Engineers and other US companies to build Kuwait’s new defense ministry headquarters. A training initiative, the International Military Education and Training (IMET) program, enables Kuwaiti students to be trained at US military institutions at a discounted rate.

Capacity building is one of the main incentives for US-Qatar cooperation, which is of great importance to this GCC state. Its defense regime is relatively young and capable of playing an influential role due to the country’s proximity to both Saudi Arabia and Iran. Qatar can also play a key role as a mediator in the region. In the light of the above, the designation as a major non-NATO ally has critical long-term benefits to the country.

The new development also certainly signals closer cooperation between the US and Qatar. Historically, these designations tend to be mutually beneficial. In the case of Qatar, increased engagement with the US promises to strengthen its status as a security leader in the Middle East and benefit both the region as well as its superpower friend.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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Though actively encouraged – or at least enthusiastically predicted – by Biden’s State Department, the Russian invasion of Ukraine had the inevitable, embarrassing effect of upsetting the global oil market. Prices at the pump in the US began climbing vertiginously upwards. MBS, the best friend of Trump’s corrupt son-in-law Jared Kushner, proved deaf to Washington’s entreaties to increase production to relieve the pressure on prices.

Biden’s dilemma with rising prices at the pump was compounded by his intention, displeasing to the Saudis, to return to the Iran nuclear deal from which Trump had withdrawn. His latest response to the crisis or degraded relations with the traditional Saudi ally appears to be as surprising as many other turnarounds: a return to the totally discredited Trump-Kushner “deal of the century” touted to solve the perennial Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Trump’s Farcical “Vision for Peace” in the Middle East

READ MORE

“The Biden administration,” Axios reported last week, “has been quietly mediating among Saudi Arabia, Israel and Egypt on negotiations that, if successful, could be a first step on the road to the normalization of relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel.”

In diplomatic parlance, quietly means conducted in a way that, even if leaked, the public may not take notice. Normalization is a little trickier, providing the Devil’s Dictionary entry of this week.

Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Normalization:

In diplomacy, an arrangement ensuring that the interests of the most powerful and influential will be defined as a norm that everyone – including the victims of such arrangements – must respect, if not honor.

Contextual note

Quoted by The Intercept, Sarah Leah Whitson, executive director of Democracy in the Arab World Now, clarifies the meaning of normalization in this context. “Normalization? What’s that looking like? An apartheid government signing a deal with unelected tyrants in the region? What kind of normal is that?”

This raises a series of other questions for President Joe Biden and the Democrats. How “normalized” can things get in the Middle East under Biden before voters at home accuse him of betraying his own “moral stance” regarding the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi? How will this affect whatever progress Biden’s team hopes to make with the Iran deal, which is ongoing but appears seriously stalled? Finally, what effect will the knowledge of the expected normalization have on the Palestinian question itself? There seem to be a few contradictions that will someday have to be resolved.

Trita Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, explained to The Intercept that America’s role as a security partner in the process will have the effect of incentivizing America’s partners “to pursue reckless policies with the impression that the United States will fix it for them at the end of the day.” This has become a recognizable pattern with increasingly disastrous direct or indirect consequences, from Vietnam to Ukraine.

All this highlights a serious turning point in geopolitics. For decades the “Pax Americana” was considered an inviolable norm, the key to normality across much of the face of the globe. The implicit role of the US as the benevolent overseer of the security – not just of its allies but of entire regions – has increasingly become the object of explicit critique. The interests and actions of the US were long considered synonymous with the famous “rule of law” that held the world together financially, commercially and militarily.

It could be that the strongest sign of a declining empire – and a calling into question of the meaning of a particular “rule of law” – is precisely the shift from implicit, automatic acceptance to explicit critique and indistinct rumblings of discontent. Anything that is implicitly accepted by a majority of nations becomes the standard by which normalization of relationships will be achieved.

When implicit acceptance becomes fragile, the norms themselves may shift. Norms, after all, are fundamentally pragmatic and have no inherently positive moral status. They are defined statistically as practices that are so common they become features of the behavioral landscape. Once a practice is accepted, it may be disapproved by significant minorities, but it cannot be seriously contested. That is why diplomacy more often than not results in a fait accompli. That is also why private gun ownership in the US is considered an inviolable right. It’s a right that produces multiple and increasingly frequent wrongs.

Historical note

The idea behind normalization has always been semantically related to the reduction of tensions. In some people’s minds it is associated with the obtention of peace. But normalization describes a process of moving towards a goal, whereas peace describes a stable status, or the goal itself. As Trita Parsi explains, the eventual normalization now being negotiated “reduces tensions between Saudi and Israel while cementing enmity with Iran. That is not a peace agreement.”

The history of the word normalization reveals something about the role the idea has taken on in the modern world. It is a distinctly modern term. At the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 that ended Europe’s horrific Thirty Years’ War pitting Protestant and Catholic polities against one another, no one would have thought of the solution as normalization. At the time, no ideal existed that people might be tempted to call “normal.” Westphalia nevertheless marks the moment the idea of the nation state began to emerge as the norm for political organization.

The word normalization first appeared in written English in the middle of the 19^th century as a scientific term. According to Merriam-Webster it was only following the First World War “that the words normalize and normalization were used to refer to the act of achieving political stability between two nations.” It is also the moment, in 1920, when the future president Warren G Harding produced his campaign slogan –  “Return to Normalcy” – coining a word many still considered barbaric. 

For all its faults, Harding’s idea of normalcy expresses a truly modern concept, an unstated ideal associated with the emerging consumer society. Normal life consists not of soldiers going to war, but of average Joes competing for a job that enables them to work for a corporation where they produce and, even more importantly, consume. Normal human beings shouldn’t even think about politics –  though they should be prepared for war if their nation decides to go to war. In other words, between wars, there really should be something called normalcy.

The contrast between normalcy and war thus became a binary constant in Americans’ thinking. This was a moment in history in which people began to think that war might not be a “normal” occurrence, whereas in the European tradition dating from feudal times, war was the usual form of competition. It is hardly coincidental that World War I was the first major war in which a wide variety of powerfully efficient technologies became the “norm” for weaponry and in which civilian populations were suddenly affected in novel ways and on more massive scales than in the past.

The First World War was quickly given the misnomer of “the war to end all wars” by its survivors. Two decades later, a bigger war to end all wars occurred. And though we are still awaiting the possibility of a third world war, all kinds of wars have been conducted since the last world war. Normalizing has become a lost art to the extent that peace between ideological or cultural adversaries now depends largely on trade relations that are too costly to call into question rather than the existence of a peace-enforcing authority.

But perhaps fond memories of how the original Cold War correlated with a phase of unrivaled prosperity for the consumer society have left their imprint on decision-makers inside the Beltway. Despite nearly provoking a nuclear conflagration on at least two occasions the first time around, they appear tempted to have a go at a 21^st century Cold War, convinced as they seem to be that what made the American empire then can save it from its precipitous decline today. They may see that as just another attempt at normalization.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of Fair Observer Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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I began a life-long understanding of the island nation decades ago in my graduate studies. Last December, I spent three weeks there, engaging with Cubans in many cities about their lives. I spoke with a range of demographics, from humble cabbies to senior Communist leaders. I was shocked at the depth of desperation of the people, who have no alternative but to queue up for exhausting hours each day to buy a few rationed basic foods. Most items are available only to those who receive currency from émigré relatives, and the US sanctions even block international donations of medical supplies.  

Most people I met knew little but deprivation, yet harbored no disdain for US citizens.  I never sensed anything but interest in and respect for this Americano. Whether such a charitable response is borne out of the memory of Fidel Castro’s legendary approach of brotherhood with Americanos, or the fact that so many must rely on overseas donations, the reality is that there has always been a wide-open door in Cuba for amicable Cuban-American relations.  

The Strong Do What They Can and the Weak Suffer What They Must

Even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the UN estimated that the US embargo had cost Cuba $130 billion since 1962. This is a terrible cost for a tiny impoverished island. In last year’s UN General Assembly, virtually every one of 184 member countries voted in favor of a resolution to demand the end of the US economic blockade on Cuba.  Contrary to its intentions, this de facto blockade does not much impact the government elites in Cuba. In spite of a professed socialist system, there is a small subset of Cubans with political leverage enjoying  luxury. But, since the Cuban government can continue to point to a proximate enemy as the cause for suffering — especially since the misplaced policies of the Trump administration — it can avoid blame and the inequities persist.  

I have long been familiar with the charity and sacrifices of the Cuban people. I worked alongside many Cubans during Haiti’s recovery from the 2010 earthquake. As a US Foreign Service  officer, I worked in many Latin American countries and witnessedthe incredibly positive impact of the Cuban doctors and medics.  

As a counterpoint, I retain insights into the perspective of  Cuban-Americans from living in South Florida for many years. My father’s second wife was a Cuban-American who immigrated to the US in the 1960s. I would often listen to her excoriate Fidel Castro and hone my Spanish by tuning into Miami-based radio stations that regularly condemned the Cuban Revolution. 

Over the years, Cubans have faced increasing and unhealthful privations. Obesity and diabetes caused by nutritional deficits are a growing cause of premature deaths that well exceeds those caused by COVID-19. Thousands of Cubans find no recourse but to make the life-threatening journey by land or sea to the US as refugees and end up becoming financial burdens to the US taxpayer. The number of Cubans arriving at the US-Mexico border is presently at the highest level in more than a decade.  

Because the nation has found itself in a virtual state of war since the early 1960s, the authoritarian government was able to muffle the spontaneous cries for libertad last July by thousands in the streets of key Cuban cities  quickly and expeditiously. Dissenters were arrested or exiled. Sham trials have followed since and arbitrary punishments meted out. Subsequent protests have, for the most part, been stymied for fear of reprisals. The Cuban people desperately yearn to be unshackled from both the blockade and their government — yet without bloodshed.

Joe Biden Reaches Out But Not Much

President Joe Biden recently made some helpful but limited removals of US embargo restrictions. The Wall Street Journal was not pleased. Yet the real trouble with Biden’s measures was not that they did too little, not too much. This was a huge missed opportunity. Biden could have improved bilateral relations in the context of Russia’s invasion and genocide of the Ukrainian people.

After additional US warfare materials arrived in Ukraine in early February 2021, Russia threatened to retaliate by moving troops or military equipment to Cuba. The US government could have revisited its approach to the Cuban government and reduced tensions. Innovation and vision were some of the few remaining practical options in this extremely dangerous  situation. Removing the counter-productive US embargoes would have signaled to Russia constructive intentions regarding their allies, and the onus might have inclined V. Putin to likewise pull back the  concerning troops on Ukraine’s borders. Such timely response would not have been a quid pro quo, but rather one of many positive effects of a fresh U.S. policy toward Cuba. Alas, the door was closed in February, tens of thousands have been killed, millions have been uprooted, much of the nation has been leveled, and utter famine from absent wheat crops confronts much of the developing world.  

The visions and voices of thousands of long-suffering Cubans I encountered remain fixed in my memory. Yet, in spite of its proximity to the United States, the plight and misery of Cubans somehow remain veiled for most in the West. Cuba, as all marginalized nations throughout the world, must now confront impending famine and even mass starvation given disruption of grain production and exports from Russia and Ukraine.  

When it comes to Cuba, I believe the Biden administration is now on the right track. But the administration must urgently implement more common sense political and economic solutions to the grave humanitarian crises caused by a counter productive, decades-long, and devastating US embargo of Cuba.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Time for the US to Rethink Its Failed Cuba Policy appeared first on Fair Observer.

Even as US President Joe Biden leaves for his inaugural Asia visit, American foreign policy is in turmoil in the aftermath of the disastrous Vietnam-like withdrawal from Afghanistan and the catastrophic Russia-Ukraine War. 

Therefore, we spoke to Contributing Editor Christopher Roper Schell, a Capitol Hill veteran who has also worked on the Pentagon, to make sense of Biden’s foreign policy.

Christopher Roper Schell on Joe Biden’s Foreign Policy

How do you rate Joe Biden’s foreign policy?

Christopher Roper Schell: Biden’s foreign policy is coalition-based but it is weak and naive.

Why? Because it doesn’t contemplate realpolitik. Some people don’t care about your rules-based order or the values that matter so much to you, or ideals that are inconsequential in the face of power. In many ways he is a lot like Obama 2.0. Biden doesn’t necessarily enforce things, he just states what cannot be done.

What must not be done? The red line in Syria comes to mind for Obama. And Biden seems to be making himself another version of Obama. Policy is based on the notion that this is who we are. This statement often employed by Biden and by Obama alike is utterly meaningless.

Perhaps the most ridiculous thing is that Biden is negotiating simultaneously with the Iranians as he seeks to curtail Russia. However, he cowers every time Russia mentions a nuclear weapon. Well, what do you think the Iranians and the others are thinking? Get a nuclear weapon as soon as possible and no one messes with you. 

Did Biden play his cards well against Russia in Ukraine?

Christopher Roper Schell:  Biden was initially strong out of the gate. His decision to reveal classified information relating to a supposed false incursion by the Ukrainians, which the Russians would then use as a provocation to retaliate, was a great idea, as was his decision to provide a list of names of the people Moscow could have used to run Ukraine. 

However, from thereon Biden’s will flagged. Indeed, he was dragged virtually kicking and screaming to impose sanctions. Once he saw that the Congress was going to act, Biden didn’t want to be left behind. Similarly, when the Russians withdrew from Northern Ukraine, we should have been arming Mariupol to the teeth. We did not do this.

So, there seems to be an absence of confidence or will to provide any real defense to the Ukrainians. For example, the MiGs out there should have been sent to Ukraine. If the US could not send the entire planes, why not chop them up into parts and send them to Ukraine? Or leave the keys in the car and say we don’t know who took them…

So we are left in a situation where there could potentially be a frozen conflict for a long time. Ukraine could be left as a rump state. And there doesn’t seem to be the will to ensure that Russia loses, as Biden claims he wants. 

What do you make of Biden’s withdrawal from Afghanistan?

Christopher Roper Schell: It was a masterstroke. It was brilliant. It was perfectly executed, no, I’m kidding you. It was a dumpster fire. It was a mess. Now I grant you Trump left Biden in a bad position. Right? Right? 

Withdrawal timelines being what they are, Biden didn’t have a lot of good options but I mean, really, this was the best you could make of this? I mean, the region is now a mess.

For the American side, there hadn’t been casualties in a year. We had 2,500 to 3,500 people there keeping the top on this. And we withdrew everyone on such an artificial political timeline like 9/11. 

That’s the day you decide that you’re going to pull out, and when that doesn’t work and you see it’s kind of sort of going south, you think, oh, I know this isn’t working out. Let’s like move the timeline up, ’cause that’s way better, right? No, no.

Biden wanted a triumphant political 9/11 20-year wrap up ceremony. Instead, he got Saigon and I guarantee you his advisers were like no helicopters on rooftops, no helicopters on rooftops. And when he got helicopters on rooftops, those same advisers were probably saying nobody’s falling from the sky. Guess what? He got bodies falling from the sky strangely reminiscent of 9/11, and it was an absolute debacle. And of course this also eroded American credibility. I mean, regionally, once again it’s a complete mess. So, dumpster fire!

How has Biden handled the Middle East?

Christopher Roper Schell: The Middle East is a mess. What else is new? However, the new caveat here is that Biden has absolutely infuriated the Saudis, and he’s done so on numerous and different fronts. I wrote about this in my first The View from the Carriage House.

And Biden has completely alienated the Saudis. They won’t even take his calls, and he’s asking them to pump more oil. Not going to happen. At the same time, Biden is negotiating a contract with the Iranians, the Saudis’ mortal enemy. So what do you think the Saudis are going to do?

You’re talking about delisting the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). You’re talking about giving the Iranians all sorts of goodies. We’ve already delisted the Houthis and we also wouldn’t even sell the Saudis Patriot Missiles. So they’re quite frustrated and the place is a mess and we don’t seem to be making any headway on the Iranian Deal.

It’s a wash-rinse-repeat cycle of negotiations, pocketed gains, going back to the negotiation table, so the Middle East in general is not going well at all. 

Has Biden done well with allies like France, Australia and India?

Christopher Roper Schell: France is America’s oldest ally, which is why it got a little bit awkward in the room when the Aussies decided to buy US submarines and not French submarines. The French seemed to be caught off guard by this and Biden was too. Biden claimed that honest to God he didn’t know that the French hadn’t been told.

Which kind of makes sense. I do think he probably was the last guy to know. Nonetheless the Aussies are getting serious. They were sanctioned by China in a pretty profound way and they have recognised that China is a threat. The French are OK, you know, some fences have been mended there.

Perhaps most interesting is the relationship with India, which is founded on the QUAD. And I think America has to come to a better understanding to get on top of India. The US has to recognize that India can’t just throw away 70% of its military hardware, which is Russian. It has to remember that the old non-alignment days weren’t truly non-aligned, that there was a bit more of a Russian influence, and the time has come to recognize India’s past but also forge a very strong relationship moving forward.

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Making Sense of Joe Biden’s Foreign Policy appeared first on Fair Observer.

The most striking bit of gossip that I picked up was that British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has knocked up his nanny and is expecting what might be his twelfth child. As rumors go, this might be as fictional as Nessie, the Loch Ness monster. After all, rumors have swirled in London and various capitals around the world for ages about the salacious private lives of the great men of the realm.

Yet I could not help but think that rumors about Johnson are taking this green and pleasant land back to the future. The current prime minister is supremely powerful. All Tory grandees have been defenestrated. The likes of William Hague and Kenneth Clarke may still go around giving speeches but they do not matter anymore. Unlike Winston Churchill or Margaret Thatcher who surrounded herself with big beasts in the cabinet, Johnson is now the only big beast among pygmies. Unlikely though this may sound, such concentration of power harks back to a bygone era.

Falstaffian Churchill-Worshiping Henry VIII

Johnson may play the buffoon but he is a classicist with a keen sense of history. He is one of the great characters of Eton, a great school that produced the likes of the Duke of Wellington and Orwell. As a child, young Johnson wanted to be world king. Later, he downgraded his ambitions and gunned to be prime minister. Not only has Johnson got to 10 Downing Street, he has got there in style and has etched his name in the history books. This Falstaffian figure fond of wine, women and song has delivered Brexit and won a thumping reelection.

In many ways, Big Boris is the modern Henry VIII who has broken with Europe. It may turn out to be a jolly good thing in the future as debt-ridden aging Europe fails to deal with its mounting debts, stubborn unemployment and now rising inflation. In the long run, Brexit might still turn out to be a jolly good thing after all. Johnson might end up like the historic Henry VIII figure who set England on the path of glory and empire.

Johnson, who is obsessed with Winston Churchill, is doing quite well out of the Russia-Ukraine War. Like his hero, the prime minister is enjoying his finest hour. He has boldly taken on the transparently villainous Vladimir Putin and turned the screws on Russian oligarchs who, until not too long ago, bought houses, yachts and football clubs. A few weeks ago, BoJo (a popular nickname for Johnson in the UK) dashed to Kyiv for a walkabout with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Yet not all has been going well for Big Boris since he moved into 10 Downing Street. Brexit was a long drawn-out affair. The Partygate scandal continues to rumble on. Tory grandees and the notoriously savage British press continue to hammer Johnson. The Economist has claimed “foot-dragging, hard-heartedness, ineptitude and dishonesty”to be  typical of BoJo’s government. The venerable 1843 publication has gone on to say repeatedly that the Johnson “government is a fundamentally unserious government led by fundamentally unserious people.”

Most recently, BoJo lost what Al Ghaff and I have called “the most consequential local elections in decades.” Yet he remains firmly in the saddle because this “sly fox disguised as a teddy bear” has chewed up the little rabbit coming out of the Tory hat named Rishi Sunak.

Cummings and Goings

The recent rumors about Johnson’s latest amorous adventure might be much ado about nothing. After all, nothing has stopped BoJo in the past. He is the great survivor of British politics. Nearly 18 years ago, Michael Howard sacked BoJo for lying about an affair. BoJo came roaring back and is still riding high.

Yet there is always a sneaking suspicion that one day BoJo might not be able to manage yet another James Bond-style close shave. As the adage goes, even the canniest of cats have only nine lives. It is not without reason that Dominic Cummings, once an unlikely ally of Johnson, called him “a shopping trolley smashing from one side of the aisle to the other.” Some of BoJo’s critics point to his private life as proof of Cummings’ observations and Spitting Image has repeatedly taken the mickey out of BoJo for never taking precautions. 

Two years ago, when BoJo’s now wife and then girlfriend was expecting their baby, Private Eye mocked Big Boris for fathering what was rumored to be his tenth child. Carrie Johnson has now given birth to another child, bringing that number to 11. BoJo has produced enough progeny to form a football (soccer for Americans) team. Now, rumors emerge that the man advised to “lock up [his] willy” might have failed to do so again. This time, his nanny is the lady in question.

Already, BoJo’s nanny has been in the news. Apparently, Conservative donors have been ponying up the cash to pay for his lifestyle. This allegedly includes the salary of the nanny. Early this month, The Times — the real one in London, not The New York Times that is a target of my learned colleague Peter Isackson — asked, “Can Boris Johnson afford to be prime minister?” 

Given BoJo’s posh lifestyle and, presumably, “off the record, on the QT, and very hush-hush” payments for his many children, The Times’ question is most pertinent. Another Boris, the blond tennis superstar Boris Becker, once known for his booming serve and partying lifestyle, is in jail over bankruptcy charges. BoJo is unlikely to end up like Becker but he is clearly a prime minister under strain. If rumors of another child with the nanny are not just smoke without fire, then the BoJo shopping trolley might be careening completely out of control.

When is Private Life a Public Issue?

Rumors about BoJo’s child number 12 for the man in Number 10 raise a key issue about the private lives of public figures. In puritanical America, politicians were and, with the exception of Donald Trump, still are generally damned for what many Europeans might term moments of weakness or mere piffle. Gary Hart’s presidential campaign imploded when a lissome model was found on his lap. David Petraeus had to resign as the director of the CIA for an extramarital affair and the ensuing kerfuffle. Such errant behavior is seen to be a reflection of poor character that disqualifies people from public office.

In France, presidents have long had mistresses. It almost seems that it is a prerequisite for the job and perhaps demonstrates nimble management skills required of any inhabitant of the Élysée Palace. BoJo has long maintained that his private life is his private life and that is that. In 2013, a British judge disagreed. He refused BoJo a gagging order concerning an illegitimate child taking the view that the public had a right to know about BoJo’s “reckless” conduct.

As my dear Dutch friend Jarst de Jong put it best, BoJo’s private life is a matter of public importance. It gives insight into the character and judgment of the British prime minister. A Jarst said pithily, anyone can cheat once because no one is a saint. A second time may be understable as well. But when someone cheats repeatedly and lies about it, then it reveals their lack of trustworthiness. BoJo seems to repeatedly betray those who love and trust him. That might not be the most desirable trait for any leader. 

BoJo’s repeated scandals also reveal a certain lack of awareness and understanding of risk. Taking risks is part of leadership but taking risks without understanding what consequences they entail is a dangerous habit. BoJo has long had a reputation for recklessness but has got away with the risks he has taken so far. Maybe, the twelfth child might inspire a play like The Twelfth Night.

Perhaps the UK could heed the words of Max Hastings, a man who first hired Johnson and packed him off to Brussels. Hastings also gave BoJo the “lock up” advice, which has so far gone unheeded. In 2018, Hastings wrote, “Johnson’s glittering intelligence [was] not matched by self-knowledge.” Calling BoJo, “Blackadder in a blond wig” with “remarkable gifts,” Hastings called Big Boris “flawed by an absence of conscience, principle or scruple.” The contrast with Gaitskell whose tombstone says fortitudo et integritas could not be starker.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Do Rumors of Boris Johnson’s Purported Twelfth Child Matter? appeared first on Fair Observer.

[We’re going to try something new here at Fair Observer. I live in a small, quirky carriage house in Washington, DC, and this column is my view of DC as I see things. If I don’t get too much hate mail, then maybe we’ll keep it rolling. On the other hand, if I get enough hate mail, maybe I’ll keep doing it “just for the sake of my own stupid pleasure.” Let’s find out.

P.S. Each heading is a quote from something somewhere or other. To the person who emails me 11 correct identifications, I’ll buy you a drink at Martin’s Tavern…or we can have a friendly chat over the phone while I’m at Martin’s having a drink. Why 11? Because that’s how we play NumberWang around here.]

“Water, water every where, / Nor any drop to drink.”

After spending trillions and trillions of dollars on COVID, much of it recklessly, Congress is digging through the couch cushions to find another $10 billion for actual COVID treatment. How did this happen? 

Start off with the fact that most of the money was thrown at transfer payments, not on treatment. To a degree this was entirely understandable, but the level of fraud that has come to light is staggering. Both parties spent like drunken sailors, but the most egregious was US President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion extravaganza as the pandemic was waning. That law, amongst other things, bought tremendous “relief” to the poor, pitiful state governments that are presently drowning in cash. We also had a million other things that were tangentially related to treating the coronavirus. Oh, and we bought inflation with that money. Maybe you’ve heard something about that?

I’m not saying the Republicans were any less scattershot, but they spent the money when a) the virus was a real unknown, and we were going into the lockdown blind, and b) we had not developed an actual, real, very good vaccine. When Biden splurged cash, several vaccines were already in production. The issue now seems to be whether to use unspent funds from other COVID programs to spend it on… wait for it… actual COVID treatment. What an idea! Yet here we are in a panic over what is, relative to other COVID spending, a drop in the bucket.

Speaking of panic… 

“It was like when you make a move in chess and just as you take your finger off the piece, you see the mistake you’ve made, and there’s this panic because you don’t know yet the scale of disaster you’ve left yourself open to.”

Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona must be in a panic these days. Around the turn of the year he was perp-walked into a volley of machine gun fire on the Build Back Better bill that failed, and his “yea” vote has come back to haunt him. Perhaps that’s why he’s so eager to embrace immigration sanity. 

Title 42 was a Trump administration program that prevented immigrants from entering the US during COVID. Lifting such a restriction is understandable now that the pandemic is on the wane. However, this does not jive with retaining restrictions that the Biden administration seems to be fond of. The Department of Justice is appealing the revocation of the public transportation mask mandate by the court. 

This inconsistency is largely immaterial relative to the burning issue of asylum seekers. The “Remain in Mexico” policy keeps asylum seekers south of the border while their claims are heard in the US. The Biden administration sought to end this policy, which Texas is currently enforcing. The administration’s lawyers took Texas to the Supreme Court on Tuesday, April 26. Clearly, immigration will be on the ballot come midterms in November.

The combination of “Remain in Mexico” and Title 42 prevented the spread of COVID and avoided a bum-rush to the US border. If both of them were to go, there would be a tsunami of immigration. The Democrats in swing states might find voters would like them to be giving a damn about this issue, which hits headlines as immigrants surge and families are inevitably broken up every summer.

“This is family business,
And this is for everybody standin’ with us”

And while we’re talking about dealing with families, there’s a distinct disjoint between the rhetoric surrounding Florida’s “Don’t say gay” law, a mischievously if ingeniously labeled piece of legislation, and its popularity. This law does not want kindergarten children taught liberal sex education. When told what’s in the law and not just spoonfed the hashtag du jour, folks seem to like it. Go figure.

Polite circles won’t mention this, but according to a poll by Public Opinion Strategies, Democratic voters support the law by 55% to 29%. Biden voters swing 53% to 30% in its favor. Even those who “know someone LGBTQ” go 61% for and 28% against, and just to show that Disney is on the wrong side of this, parents like the law to the tune of 67% to 24%. Disney brought a knife to a gunfight by supporting this law. 

Social mores may have brought “a whole new world,” but Disney seemed to have wished upon the wrong star, and its special treatment by the state of Florida is over. Governor Ron DeSantis signed a bill into law that revokes the status of Disney’s independent district, Reedy Creek. There’s now even talk of taking away the entertainment behemoth’s preferential copyright treatment.

Turns out running your own independent “Magic Kingdom” is a lot less expensive than letting the government run the show. Sure, Disney could probably fix potholes and run emergency services and utilities better and cheaper. Once the new law takes effect, Disney will also lose control of land use, building standards, and environmental protection that it has enjoyed for decades. Insiders predict Disney will have to pony up tens of millions of dollars annually to the government now and join the hoi polloi.

If Disney is going to support progressive policies, what could be more progressive than letting government get more involved? Slate frets that Disney will no longer be able “to manage its own streets, permitting, bond issuance, and so forth.“ Wait, I thought corporate control over things government usually does was a great threat to “our democracy.” At least that is what left-leaning publications like Slate tell me.

But lo and behold, even Mother Jones is defending corporate personhood, an idea hitherto hated by Democrats, with a headline stating Disney’s Civil Rights were violated. To be fair, Mother Jones has said it stands against corporate personhood but dislikes Republican hypocrisy. However, the defense of Disney’s special privileges by blue-blooded Democrat-supporting publications certainly seems incongruous. However, there might be a way out of this Disney-Florida impasse. The law doesn’t come into force until June 1, 2023, so there’s plenty of negotiating to be had.

Part of the problem was the over-the-top language Disney’s CEO Bob Chapek chose when he called the Florida bill “yet another challenge to basic human rights.” Mr. Chapek, Bob. May I call you Bob? Bob, didja read the bill? This isn’t Bucha where basic human rights are being violated. No cluster munitions spray labeled “for the children” are being dropped. These are first world concerns at best. A pertinent section of the law reads “Classroom instruction by school personnel or third parties on sexual orientation or gender identity may not occur in kindergarten through grade 3 or in a manner that is not age-appropriate.” Bob, take a deep breath: this is not exactly a Nuremberg Trial transcript.

When I think of Bob’s situation, it reminds me of what happened to Rob Manfred, the commissioner of Major League Baseball (MLB). He moved last year’s All-Star Game from Georgia to Colorado in the wake of the supposed “voting rights” kerfuffle. He was then reminded of MLB’s cozy relationship with China and the fact that though he opposed showing ID to vote, you needed one just to work concessions at the game. So, Mr. Manfred was against IDs for the purposes of voting, but in favor of them if you wanted to hawk beer under his banner. Because… yeah, that totally makes sense. Finally, there was this gem. Turns out the Commish is a member of the tony Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia. Was he going to stand by his principles and resign from such a toxic Georgian institution? Apparently not. All of this over a bill he likely didn’t read or understand.

I have no horse in this race, except I wish companies would simply stick to their knitting and stop virtue signaling at every turn. For years companies figured it was worth the signal to prevent marches, employee walkouts, and internet shenanigans, and that more conservative minds would grit their teeth and get on with life, but that thinking may be coming to an end. Fine by me.

One of the underreported friends lost by the US is Saudi Arabia. Recently the Saudis have cogitated on the idea of accepting yuan for oil, thus undermining the petrodollar. Who can blame them? Biden has done everything possible to infuriate our ally.

Those in the Biden Administration scratch their heads and wonder why the Saudis won’t play ball and just pump more oil, but a quick recap leaves little to the imagination. Start off by campaigning with the friendly overtures of calling the House of Saud a “pariah.” Then declare that Saudi Arabia would “pay the price” for, amongst other things, having a government with “very little social redeeming value,” and you start to get the picture.

After such pronunciations, Biden went on to withhold support for Saudis’ defense against the Houthis and no longer designate this Yemeni group as terrorist. His administration withheld Patriot missiles from the Saudis, fundamentally breaking the long understanding that the US provided the Saudis defense cover while they dutifully pumped oil. Also of note was Biden’s decision to release a CIA report in February 2021 that said Mohammed bin Salman, AKA MBS, was responsible for the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Come September, MBS was so hot on the subject he started yelling at Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser, when asked about the murder.

To top it off, the Biden administration has further inflamed relations with Saudi Arabia by trying to cobble together a nuclear pact with the Iranian regime, the sworn enemy of the Arabs. This project seems doomed. For all the humiliating US prostrations before Iran, including an offer to drop the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps from the terrorist list, the Ayatollahs appear unmoved. US flirtations with Iran might not have succeeded but it has caught the eye of Saudi Arabia, and it’s not winning Biden any friends over there. Even before recent Saudi-US tensions, the Asia Pivot under Barack Obama and the flaming dumpster fire left behind by Biden in Afghanistan were perceived as waning US interest in the Middle East.

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Having run an expensive election campaign, Biden should know that money talks. Beijing purchases 1.8 million barrels of Saudi oil per day and the Kingdom has become China’s top oil supplier. The petrodollar may soon be in limbo, and with it the old deal between the US and Saudi Arabia that originally propped up the dollar. Starting in 1974, Saudi Arabia agreed to price oil in dollars in return for Washington providing arms, oilfield security, and defense cover to Riyadh. Now we have a situation where Saudi and the United Arab Emirates won’t even take Biden’s call, won’t pump more oil, and MBS is yelling that the US should “forget about its request to boost oil production.” Hell’s bells.

HMU @: christopher.roper.schell@fairobserver.com

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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Ending the War in Ukraine

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Ridiculous as it might sound, it is my tiny attempt to act against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, to somehow fight this sense of helplessness, being forced to watch the events unfold, without being able to do much.

Building Up to War in Ukraine

It all started a couple of days before February 24, which is when Russia invaded Ukraine. I was preparing for a trip to Kyiv to check on my friends in the Ukrainian capital. Following the latest developments, I tried to find any information that would confirm what the Russian ambassador to the EU had stated on February 16. Vladimir Chizhov said there would “be no escalation in the coming week, or in the week after that, or in the coming month.” Saying one thing and doing another has long been part of the Russian political playbook. Yet the cynicism in saying that wars in Europe “rarely start on a Wednesday” — in reference to US intelligence reports — just to actually invade eight days later is unacceptable.

On Sunday, February 20 at around 10 pm, I ultimately decided not to set the alarm for later that night in order to arrive at the airport on time. I went to bed with a heavy heart and a sense of cowardice: I decided not to travel to Kyiv. I felt as if I had betrayed the Ukrainian people, especially my friend, who assured me that everything was fine and everyone was calm. Over the next few days, I tried to drown out the voice in the back of my head saying, “You should have gone” by repeating this mantra to myself: If you bring an umbrella, it will not rain.

And then we all heard the news. I can only imagine how it must have felt to be actually woken up by air raid sirens — it’s unfathomable. I saw a map of Ukraine showing where the Russian bombs hit. I reached out to friends and colleagues in these places. So far, they are fortunately all fine. I admire their strength and bravery for remaining in Ukraine.

Back in the office in Vienna, I sat with my colleagues. While we tried to at least grasp what this meant for all of us, we began to realize that this was not just another crisis; this was a decisive development in history. This is war in Europe. It is not the first conflict in Europe since the end of World War II. It is not even the first in Ukraine; the country has been at war since 2014. Back then, during the Revolution of Dignity, the Euromaidan, Ukrainians gave their lives for democracy, our democracy.

That is precisely why it is only logical for Ukraine to apply for membership in the European Union. Although there is no shortcut to joining the EU, under certain circumstances, it can become possible. Membership in the union should not only remain symbolic. I have written more about this here. In fact, I have been arguing with colleagues about granting such rights to all eastern partnership target countries since 2009. This would, of course, not have prevented anything today. Other actions might have, such as reducing the import dependency on natural resources after the Russia–Ukraine gas crisis of the same year.

But there is no use in dwelling on the past. Instead, I want to think about the future. Therefore, I have compiled five different scenarios about how the situation in Ukraine could develop. None of them must become a reality, and some of them, hopefully, will not.

1: All-out (Nuclear) War

Nuclear war is certainly the worst-case scenario for all sides. An increasingly frustrated and isolated Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, decides to use tactical nuclear weapons to submerge the Ukrainian resistance. Even if it will “only” involve non-nuclear attacks continuing the obliteration of whole cities and committing war crimes, the democratic international community seriously asks themselves if they can allow this to happen.

Even if they do, the probability that Putin will stop at the border with Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, the Baltics or Finland is delusional. Consequently, NATO, sooner or later, has to get involved, resulting in World War III.

I believe that we are actually already at war since February 24 but haven’t realized it yet. It might also continue as a war of attrition and continue indefinitely.

2: Novorossiya

This second scenario refers to what Putin himself mentioned in one of his infamous television Q&As in 2014. It has been used in various contexts, with reference to Alexander Dugin, but also as an idea raised by the so-called People’s Republics in Donetsk and Luhansk of the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine. The planned confederation was ultimately not implemented.

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The reference dates back to a more or less geographically same area referred to as “New Russia” during the Soviet era until the turn of the century. In any case, Putin mentioned the cities of Kharkiv, Luhansk, Donetsk, Kherson, Mykolaiv and Odessa — essentially the whole Black Sea coast of Ukraine, linking up the Russian Federation with Transnistria. Since the Transnistria War in 1992, Russian troops have been stationed in the breakaway territory, which is officially part of Moldova.

This scenario involves the creation of many more “people’s republics,” which are under the influence — politically and economically — of the Kremlin and dependent on it. Recognition of such republics by Moscow or even integration into the Russian Federation is also a possibility.

Further separatist regions beyond Ukraine are also declared, expanding Russian influence even more. This takes place mostly in the Caucasus, but also in the direction of the former spheres of influence of the Soviet Union.

3: Fragmentation

In a more hopeful scenario, Putin’s aggression leads to destabilization within the Russian Federation. While having to devote a majority of the country’s military capacities but also attention and political capital toward Ukraine, old separatist attempts resurface.

The control over Chechnya is substantially weakened due to the de-facto defeat of Ramzan Kadyrov’s forces. But also further disintegration occurs. Not necessarily violently, but more economic-based toward dependence of Siberia on China or Vladivostok on Japan. The resulting fragmentation and volatility have major consequences for the whole neighborhood but also geopolitically.

4: Coup d’état

There have been (too optimistic) rumors about a possible coup being planned by the Federal Security Service (FSB) of Russia. Leaks from the “Wind of Change” lead to an ousting of Putin and his closest circle.

While it cannot be ruled out, there should not be any false hope. If the security forces and/or the military carry out a coup d’état, we will not see any democratic regime change.

Most likely, the people belonging to the closest circle of power are replaced, but the mafia system continues with a new godfather who ends the war but distributes the spoils. It is also possible that we will see a military hard-liner taking charge, which could then end in scenario one.

5: Democratic Revolution

The most optimistic, but unfortunately most unlikely, scenario would foresee the sanctions against Russia and the isolation of the federation as leading to the people bringing regime change and possibly democratization.

In a Maidan-style occupation of the Red Square, Putin is unable to suppress the opposition any longer. It takes a lot of time to account for past actions, reconciliation and anti-corruption measures, but the missed opportunity of the 1990s is finally taken up. Coupled with the enlarged EU economic and security cooperation, there is now a counterpart to the geopolitical volatility caused by China’s ambitions and the political instability of the United States.

The Outlook

Regardless of which direction the situation takes (although I most certainly have a preference), it is necessary to be prepared for all eventualities. It is a good sign that there has been enough awareness for Ukraine as well as the necessity to think about the economic requirements to rebuild after the war.

Nevertheless, it is possible to achieve peace, especially with regard to the importing of oil and gas from Russia. Far too often, we are focused on the immediate costs and do not look at the possibilities. A transition to renewable energy is more necessary than ever, but the hesitancy has kept us dependent on Moscow. Just imagine what the situation would have looked like if a transition had been sped up in 2009.

Hopefully, we have finally learned the lesson. After all, the price we pay is just money. Ukraine is paying with its life, its infrastructure and, ultimately, its future.

*[Fair Observer is a media partner of the Institute for the Danube Region and Central Europe.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post What Is Vladimir Putin’s Endgame? appeared first on Fair Observer.

Less officially, President Joe Biden has been emphasizing the emotional side of US motivation when he wants to turn Russia into a “pariah,” while branding its president as a “war criminal” and a “murderer.” Biden’s rhetoric indicates clearly that whatever purely legal and moral point the United States cites to justify its massive financial engagement in the war, its true motivation reflects a vigilante mindset focused on regime change.

A Russian-American Game of Mirrors

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The administration denies it has regime change on its mind. But Ferguson cites a senior administration official who privately confided that Biden’s “end game now … is the end of Putin regime.” The historian concludes that rather than seek a negotiated end to the war, the US “intends to keep this war going.”

As usual in foreign policy matters, Ferguson notes a certain convergence of viewpoint from his own government. He quotes an anonymous source affirming that the United Kingdom’s “No. 1 option is for the conflict to be extended and thereby bleed Putin.” A little later in the article, Ferguson qualifies as “archetypal Realpolitik” the American intent “to allow the carnage in Ukraine to continue; to sit back and watch the heroic Ukrainians ‘bleed Russia dry.’”

Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Bleed (a country):

To encourage and prolong an unnecessary and unjustified conflict in the interest of sucking the life out of the political establishment of a declared enemy, a process that usually automatically implies sucking the life out of at least one other country, including eventually one’s own

Contextual Note

Ferguson dares to question the dominant belief in the US that bleeding Russia is a recipe for success. “Prolonging the war runs the risk not just of leaving tens of thousands of Ukrainians dead and millions homeless, but also of handing Putin something that he can plausibly present at home as victory,” he writes.

When the focus is both on bleeding and prolonging the combat, there is a strong likelihood that the bleeding will be shared. If a boxer sees a cut over his opponent’s eye, he may strategically focus all his punches on the opponent’s face hoping for a technical knockout. But, by focusing on the loss of blood, he may drop his guard with the risk of getting knocked out or opening his own bleeding wound.

“I fail to see in current Western strategizing any real recognition of how badly this war could go for Ukraine in the coming weeks,” Ferguson observes. The reason may simply be that the hyperreal moment the Western world is now living through is proving too enjoyable to critique, at least for the media. The more horror stories of assaults on innocent civilians make their way into the headlines, the more the media can play the morally satisfying game of: here’s one more reason to hate Vladimir Putin.

If the White House is focused, as it now appears, not on saving Ukrainian democracy but on bleeding Russia, all the stories of Russian abuse of brave civilians are designed with the purpose of prolonging the war, in the hope that, discredited by Putin’s failure to break Ukraine’s resistance, Russians will revolt and depose the evil dictator. In the meantime, those Ukrainians who manage to survive are being asked to play the supporting role of watching their country reduced to ruins.

Ferguson speculates that US strategists have come to “think of the conflict as a mere sub-plot in Cold War II, a struggle in which China is our real opponent.” That would be an ambitious plan, riddled with complexity. But the Biden administration has demonstrated its incapacity to deal effectively even with straightforward issues, from passing the Build Back Better framework in the US to managing a pandemic.

The Ukraine situation involves geopolitics, the global economy and, even more profoundly, the changing image of US power felt by populations and governments across the globe. At the end of his article, the historian describes this as an example of dangerous overreach, claiming that “the Biden administration is making a colossal mistake in thinking that it can protract the war in Ukraine, bleed Russia dry, topple Putin and signal to China to keep its hands off Taiwan.”

Historical Note

One salient truth about Americans’ perception of the Ukraine War should be evident to everyone. Today’s media thoroughly understands the American public’s insatiable appetite for the right kind of misinformation. Niall Ferguson makes the point that the US government may nevertheless be inept in providing it. The history of misinformation in times of war over the past century should provide some clues.

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In 1935, Major General Smedley Butler wrote a book describing the logic behind his own service on several continents. Its title was “War Is a Racket.” He described the American vision of war as a quest for corporate profit. He tried to warn the nation of the inhumanity of such an approach to the use of military force. He manifestly failed because he was late to the game. Back in 1917, Edward Bernays, the “father of Public Relations,” seduced the American public into believing that the only motive for the nation’s invasions and wars is the spreading of democracy. It was Bernays who provided Woodrow Wilson with the slogan “make the world safe for democracy.”

For the rest of his life, Bernays not only helped private companies boost their brands, he also consulted on foreign policy to justify regime change when it threatened a customer’s racket. In 1953, working for United Fruit, he collaborated with President Dwight Eisenhower’s secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, and his brother, CIA Director Allen Dulles, to overthrow Jacobo Arbenz, the elected president of Guatemala. Arbenz had a plan to redistribute to the country’s impoverished peasants “unused land” monopolized by United Fruit. In a 2007 article for the Financial Times, Peter Chapman recounted that both Dulles brothers were “legal advisers” to United Fruit. Chapman notes that the company was also involved in the 1961 CIA-led Bay of Pigs invasion.

In other words, concerning their impact on the American psyche, Bernays the PR man defeated Butler, celebrated at the time as America’s greatest living war hero. His fame was such that a group of powerful fascist-leaning businessmen tried to recruit him to overthrow President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the infamous 1933 “Business Plot.”

Americans continue to rally around Bernays’ genius for reducing a suspect ideology to a catchy slogan. American interventions abroad are framed as noble efforts to support democracy and promote American business (Butler called them rackets). It’s a population of avid consumers of the media’s plentiful supply of misinformation.

There are nevertheless odd moments when real information breaks through, though it rarely leaves much lasting impact. Last week, the Pentagon leaked news contradicting the narrative the State Department, the intelligence community and US media have unanimously adopted and promoted. In the Defense Department’s view, Russia’s invasion is not an example of unrestrained sadism toward the Ukrainian people. “As destructive as the Ukraine war is,” Newsweek reports, “Russia is causing less damage and killing fewer civilians than it could, U.S. intelligence experts say.”

The US military establishment calls it the “Russian leader’s strategic balancing act,” observing that Russia has acted with restraint. It realistically assesses that, far from seeking to subdue and conquer Ukraine, Putin’s “goal is to take enough territory on the ground to have something to negotiate with, while putting the government of Ukraine in a position where they have to negotiate.”

Ferguson has gleaned his own evidence concerning US and UK strategy that “helps explain, among other things, the lack of any diplomatic effort by the U.S. to secure a cease-fire. It also explains the readiness of President Joe Biden to call Putin a war criminal.” Peace is no objective. Punishment is. This is a case where the Pentagon has received the message of Smedley Butler and dares to contradict an administration guided by the logic of Edward Bernays.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Fair Observer Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post When Will We Know the Bleeding Truth? appeared first on Fair Observer.

Under this agreement, the Taliban are obligated to take measures to prevent terrorist groups from threatening the security of the US and its allies and to engage in a comprehensive intra-Afghan dialogue that would produce a political settlement. The hasty US troop withdrawal in August 2021 emboldened the Taliban to disregard their obligations under the deal and encouraged them to prioritize political takeover instead of a sustainable peace mechanism for Afghanistan.

Afghanistan’s Public Intellectuals Fail to Denounce the Taliban

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The Doha Agreement and its contents undermined the sovereign government of Afghanistan at the time and provided an upper hand to the Taliban in both war and peace. Certain assurances in the deal enabled the Taliban to become stronger in both battlefield action and narrative propagation.

These include the agreement’s references to a “new post-settlement Afghan Islamic government”; clauses on the release of Taliban combatants referred to as “political prisoners”; indirect legitimization of the Taliban shadow government by virtue of stipulations such as “the Taliban will not provide visas, passports, travel permits, or other legal documents”; and a complete lack of any mention of human rights protections in Afghanistan.

Another Case of Failed Peacemaking

The agreement is not the only pact that was expected to bring a peaceful end to the conflict in the country. In 1988, the Geneva Accords concluded under the auspices of the UN between Afghanistan and Pakistan, with the US and the Soviet Union serving as state guarantors, provided an overall framework for the settlement of the Afghan conflict and the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan. Likewise, the Bonn Agreement in 2001 — irrespective of whether it is categorized as a peace deal —established a process to manage the political transition in the post-Taliban Afghanistan. It briefly outlined steps from the formation of an interim administration to the development of a new constitution and holding elections.

However, neither the Geneva Accords nor the Bonn Agreement were successful and ultimately failed to foster conditions necessary for enabling a comprehensive settlement to Afghanistan’s complicated problem. More recently, the Taliban’s abject disregard for their commitments under the Doha Agreement, combined with the United States’ rushed exit, sped up the Taliban’s reemergence, once again closing an already narrow window of opportunity for achieving a durable political solution to the protracted conflict in Afghanistan.

There is indeed a qualitative difference between the Geneva Accords, the Bonn Agreement and the Doha Agreement. However, one of the key reasons for their failure, among other factors, is that they are silent on the main cause of the conflict in Afghanistan — i.e., ethnic conflict.

Afghanistan is a multiethnic country where the various ethnic groups are also geographically fragmented. Historically, divisions over who should lead the country and how have been among the core contentious issues in Afghanistan. Disagreements on this matter have manifested in violent ways in the 1990s and non-violent ways in the outcome of four presidential elections held based on the 2004 constitution. Overlooking of the main cause of the conflict and an absence of a viable mechanism for power redistribution among ethnic groups is a common thread that connects each of the three agreements that failed and continued to fuel instability.

The Current Situation

Less than two years since the Doha Agreement was signed, in August 2021, Kabul, the Afghan capital, fell to the Taliban. In the aftermath of this development, residences of several former government officials, particularly those from the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF), were raided and these personnel members were either killed or imprisoned. A UN report found that over 100 personnel from the Afghan security forces and others associated with the former Afghan government have been killed in the country, despite the Taliban announcing a general amnesty. 

Moreover, despite the demands from the international community for the formation of an inclusive government, respect for human rights and counterterrorism assurances, the Taliban have refused to make any concessions. They have brazenly continued suppressing all dissenting voices, severely limiting women’s rights and persecuting civil society members and journalists.

Peace in Afghanistan?

It was apparent from day one that the prospects of the post-July 2018 efforts for a political settlement in Afghanistan were uncertain at best. The Doha Agreement simply laid out a possible schedule for the US withdrawal instead of guarantee or measures enabling a durable political settlement or peace process. The Taliban too negotiated the deal with the US with the aim of winning the war rather than seeking a peace deal or political settlement with their opponents.

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The chaotic withdrawal of American forces and the mayhem at Kabul airport — which was reminiscent of the US pullout from Vietnam — has not only damaged the image of a powerful country like the US around the world, but has also established its reputation as an unreliable ally in times of difficulty. Given historical patterns and the Taliban’s track record, in the absence of any qualitative change of circumstances on the ground, the international community’s positive overtures to the Taliban might be yet another folly.

As it stands, the prospects for peace in Afghanistan will remain distant for as long as the Taliban own the entire political apparatus rather than participate as a party in an inclusive and representative government and respect dissenting voices. In the meantime, the international community should use sanctions mechanisms and official recognition as the few remaining tools of leverage to hold the Taliban accountable to their commitments and to international legal standards.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post The Prospects of Peace in Afghanistan appeared first on Fair Observer.

Initially, he’d hoped to do so by seizing Kyiv, replacing the government and absorbing as much of Ukrainian territory into Russia as he thought feasible. Now, after the resistance of the Ukrainians, he is looking to eliminate their country by a different method. He will bomb it into submission from the air and depopulate the country by turning millions of its citizens into refugees.

Is Peace Possible in Ukraine?

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The outflow of Ukrainians has the additional benefit, from Putin’s point of view, of putting pressure on the rest of Europe and sowing discord among NATO members. Putin saw how effective Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko was last year in using several thousand desperate migrants from the Middle East as a weapon to provoke European countries. Putin is calculating that a wave of refugees several orders of magnitude larger will swell the anti-immigrant sentiment that has strengthened far-right parties and put the European project at risk.

So far, neither of these strategies is working. With a few exceptions, the European far right has abandoned Putin, and the EU has embraced a double standard on immigration by extending a welcome to Ukrainians that few countries were willing to offer to those fleeing from Afghanistan or Syria.

Meanwhile, NATO is emerging from this crisis with greater cohesion. Putin has forgotten an elemental lesson of geopolitics: a common threat serves as the glue that holds alliances together.

For all of these reasons, Putin is not interested in ending his war in Ukraine. Simply put, as Russian spokesman Dmitry Peskov recently verified, the Russian president has not yet achieved his aims. But he might be forced to end his war for other reasons.

The View from Kyiv

Volodymyr Zelensky has a very clear strategy for ending the war in his country. The Ukrainian president is mobilizing his defenses at home and his supporters abroad. He hopes he can achieve a stalemate on the ground and force Russia to compromise at the negotiating table.

So far, in the first month of the war, both strategies have met with success. The Ukrainian military has blocked the Russian advance on all the major cities, forcing the Kremlin to rely more heavily on an increasingly indiscriminate air war.

The Russian military has expanded its control over the Donbas region in the east. It has taken one major city, Kherson, in the south. But it has not been able to overcome the defenders of Mariupol, a port that represents the last major obstacle to connecting the Crimean peninsula by land to Russia proper.

According to Western intelligence estimates, the Russian army has so far lost at least 7,000 soldiers while 20,000 more have been wounded, which would mean that Russian forces inside Ukraine have been reduced by a third. Unless the Kremlin can send in a lot of reinforcements — Belarussians, Syrians — it will have difficulty taking any major Ukrainian cities, much less hold on to them for any period of time. Ukrainians are returning to the country to take up arms, and volunteers are signing up to fight alongside Ukrainian soldiers, so David is starting to bulk up against Goliath.

Meanwhile, on the international front, the sanctions have attracted widespread support, although some powerful countries like China and India continue to support Putin economically. Some of the sanctions target the lifestyles of the rich and powerful, such as asset freezes and travel bans for top officials. Other measures are beginning to affect ordinary Russians, such as all the job losses from Western businesses like UpWork and Starbucks pulling out of the country.

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However, a number of companies are suspending operations in a manner that tries to avoid hurting their Russian staff, like McDonald’s continuing to pay their employees even if the restaurants are closed. Also, the sanctions do not target essentials like medicines. Still, the sanctions are expected to drive Russia into a significant recession, with the economy shrinking by as much as 7%. In 2020, the Russian economy contracted by 3 percent as a result of the COVID shutdowns, which at the time was considered a major setback.

Losses on the battlefield and in the global economy are what’s likely to force Putin to end his war before he gets what he wants. No diplomatic solution is possible without this kind of pressure.

Terms on the Table

The major issue going into the war will likely be the major compromise coming out of the war: Ukraine’s status in the European security system.

Putin not only wants NATO membership off the table for Ukraine, he would like to see the security alliance rewind the clock to 1997 before it expanded into Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. However bone-headed NATO expansion was — and it truly was a major blunder on the part of the West — Putin is not going to be able to negotiate a significant drawdown of the alliance’s footprint. Indeed, as a result of the invasion of Ukraine, NATO may well expand to include Finland and Sweden, for starters.

Ukrainian neutrality, on the other hand, is very much a possibility. A report last week about a 15-point draft of a preliminary deal included “Kyiv renouncing its ambitions to join NATO and swear off hosting foreign military bases or weaponry in exchange for security guarantees from countries such as Britain, the United States or Turkey.”

Security guarantees? That’s precisely what NATO membership is supposed to provide. And it’s difficult to envision any of the countries mentioned agreeing to come to Ukraine’s defense in the case of a subsequent Russian attack. They are quite clearly not doing so now. Still, if renouncing NATO membership gets Russia to pull back and stop its air attacks, it would be a worthwhile quid pro quo to pursue.

But then the other major sticking point enters the picture: territory. How much would Russia actually pull back? Would it give up the gains it has made so far in the war? Would it stop championing independence for Donetsk and Luhansk? Would it give back Crimea?

Ukraine to date has refused to acknowledge even the loss of Crimea, so compromise will be challenging. But Zelensky has hinted at the potential of rethinking Ukraine’s borders, contingent on a referendum on the necessary constitutional changes. Perhaps an agreement to return to the status quo ante — with some strategic ambiguity about the final status of Crimea and the Donbas — might be a feasible interim agreement.

The last major question is the composition of the Ukrainian government. Putin has called for the “de-Nazification” of Ukraine. In the best-case scenario, he might be willing to accept some restrictions on the participation of the Azov Battalion in the military. In the worst-case scenario, Putin will not stop until he has installed a “friendly” government in Kyiv.

The threat of Russian influence in Ukraine was a main motivation for Zelensky recently to ban 11 political parties, including the largest opposition party, the pro-Russian Opposition Platform for Life. On the one hand, Ukraine’s democracy is one of its main selling points, so any restrictions on that democracy tarnishes its image. On the other hand, Putin has no qualms about exploiting divisions within Ukrainian society and would rely on these opposition parties to staff any future “friendly” government. Some democratic governments like Germany and Spain have banned political parties that pose a national security threat to their democratic governance.

Zelensky is also well aware of the three foiled assassination plots on his life, all sponsored by Russia. The likelihood that anti-war elements within Russia’s own intelligence services tipped off the Ukrainians suggests that Putin has as much to worry about hostile elements within his political ranks as Zelensky does.

Getting to Yes

The various peace deals that are leaked to the press could signify combat fatigue, particularly on the Russian side. Or it could be a ploy by Putin to lull his interlocutors into thinking that because they’re dealing with a reasonable negotiating partner it’s important to hold off on another round of sanctions or arms sales.

While I have no illusions about Putin — I think he’s a ruthless fascist — it’s still important to offer him diplomatic off-ramps. There’s nothing more dangerous than a cornered dictator with nuclear weapons.

The goal must be to stop the war and preserve what’s left of Ukrainian sovereignty. Russian troops must leave; the Ukrainian people must decide their leadership, not the Kremlin. Meanwhile, it’s likely that the vast majority of Ukrainian refugees want to return home and rebuild their country, just as the bulk of Kosovars did after the end of the war with Serbia in 1999. The West must be at least as generous with resettlement and reconstruction funds as it has been with arms deliveries.

The Kosovo case is instructive for another reason. Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic, a communist apparatchik turned political opportunist who became a vehement nationalist when circumstances propelled him in that direction, over-reached in 1999 in an effort to prevent Kosovo from becoming independent. His military campaign failed, and the very next year, the opposition swept him from power in elections. By 2001, he was arrested in Serbia and then delivered to the war crimes tribunal in the Hague. He died in disgrace.

Putin certainly wants to avoid that fate. Megalomania, however, has nudged him in that direction. So, now begins the challenge of peeling away Putin’s sense of his own invincibility—first in Ukraine, then in Russian politics, and finally in the court of international law.

*[This article was originally published by FPIF.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Ending the War in Ukraine appeared first on Fair Observer.

One good example is an article in The American Purpose by the National Endowment for Democracy’s vice-president for studies and analysis, Christopher Walker. In the piece titled, “The Kleptocratic Sources of Russia’s Conduct,” Walker builds his case around the idea that “Vladimir Putin and his gang are fixated on wealth and power.” The author admits being inspired by political analyst Daniel Kimmage, who in 2009 produced what Walker terms a “clear-eyed assessment of Putin’s Russia.” He cites this wisdom he gleaned from Kimmage: “The primary goal of the Russian elite is not to advance an abstract ideal of the national interest or restore some imagined Soviet idyll,” but “to retain its hold on money and power.”

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Kimmage sums up one difficulty Americans have felt when dealing with Putin as an ideological adversary. Whereas the Soviet Union’s embrace of communism made the ideological gap visible even to moronic voters, Putin reigns over a nation that American consultants transformed in the 1990s into a capitalist paradise (i.e., a paradise for owners of capital). To distinguish Putin’s evil capitalism from America’s benevolent capitalism, Kimmage called the Russian version a “selectively capitalist kleptocracy.”

Walker notes that “the system of ‘selectively capitalist kleptocracy’ in Russia that Daniel Kimmage described” 13 years ago has now “evolved in ways that are even more threatening to democracy and its institutions.”

Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Kleptocracy:

The form of government universally adopted by all powerful nations at the end of the 20^th century.

Contextual Note

An acerbic critic might be excused for not feeling particularly illuminated to learn that Putin and his cronies “are fixated on wealth and power.” Who would expect them to have a different philosophy and mindset than the leaders of every other powerful country in the world? The list includes those that claim to be faultless democracies, committed to implementing the will of the people. The first among them is, of course, the United States, but France, the United Kingdom and others adhere to the same sets of values, even if each of them has worked out more subtle ways of applying them. And, of course, Saudi Arabia stands at the head of everyone’s class as the exemplar of leaderships fixated on wealth and power.

Kimmage’s description of Russia as a “selectively capitalist kleptocracy” may be helpful in ways he may not have intended. Russia’s selective capitalist kleptocracy contrasts with America’s non-selectively capitalist kleptocracy. The real question turns around what it means to be selective or non-selective. Walker makes no attempt to differentiate the two because he believes the term kleptocracy only applies to Russia. But statistics about wealth inequality reveal that the American capitalist system has become a plutocracy that can make its own claim to being a kleptocracy.

In 1989, the top 10% of income earners in the United States earned 42% of the total income, which is already significant. In 2016, they accounted for 50%. “By the start of 2021, the richest 1% of Americans held 32% of the nation’s wealth,” according to The New York Times. Between the start of 2020 and July 2021, “the richest 1% gained $10 trillion” in accumulated wealth.

The gap is destined to keep widening. Unlike Putin’s oligarchy, composed of his “selected” friends and other winners of Russia’s industrial casino, the 1% in the US have non-selectively emerged to constitute a kleptocratic class that, thanks to a sophisticated system of governance, writes the laws, applies the rules and captures the new wealth that is programmed to gravitate towards them.

Kimmage’s idea of a fixation “with wealth and power” correctly describes the mindset of the members of the American kleptocratic class, whether they are entrepreneurs with names like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates, or politicians like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama who rose from poverty to convert power into riches and earn their place as servants of the kleptocratic class.

Unlike Putin’s mafia-like political culture, the system in the US is subtle and sophisticated. It contains convenient paths to join the kleptocratic class, such as a Harvard or Stanford degree. But mostly it relies on fixation. Within the US kleptocratic class diversity exists. Some may be more focused on power (including cultural power) than wealth. But the fascination with both wealth and power is common to all. The system is built on the symmetrical principle that wealth feeds power and power feeds wealth.

Walker accuses Putin of another grave sin, beyond kleptomania but including it: expansionism. He denounces the “spread of the roots and branches of a transnational kleptocratic system that stretches well beyond the Russian Federation to pose a multidimensional threat to free societies.”

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How could a discerning reader not notice the dramatic irony here? Has Walker forgotten that Putin’s complaint about NATO is that, despite promises made to the contrary, it has spent 30 years aggressively expanding toward Russia’s most sensitive borders? Putin may be interested in expansion, but Eastern Europe has become a slow tug-of-war in which NATO, under US impulsion, has been the most active and insistent aggressor.

In short, Walker has produced an essay that correctly identifies very real political evils within the Russian system. But they share the same basic traits as the politico-economic culture of the West under US leadership. In an absolute failure of self-recognition, Walker somehow manages to avoid acknowledging his own culture’s image reflected back to him into the mirror that has become the target of his complaints. That is because, in this article, he has focused on producing just one more example of what has now become the shameless, knee-jerk propaganda that pollutes Western media in this climate of an existential war from which the US has abstained, preferring to let the Ukrainians endure the sacrifice for the sake of American principles.

Historical Note

In the 17^th century, European history began a radical transformation of its political institutions lasting roughly 300 years. After England’s Puritans beheaded their king and declared a short-lived Commonwealth, European intellectuals began toying with an idea that would eventually lead to the triumph of the idea, if not the reality of democracy, a system Winston Churchill generously called “the worst form of government except for all the others.”

For the best part of the 19^th and 20^th centuries, representative democracy became the standard reference for everyone’s idea of what an honest government should be like, while struggling to find its footing with the concurrent rise of industrial capitalism. Capitalism generated huge inequality that seemed at least theoretically anomalous with the idea of democracy.

During the late 20^th century, industrial capitalism that had previously focused on production, productivity and mass distribution, gave way to financial capitalism. This new version of capitalism focused uniquely on wealth and power. In other words, democracies switched their orientation from a belief in their citizens’ anarchic quest for personal prosperity in the name of the “pursuit of happiness” to the elite’s concentrated focus on the acquisition and accumulation of money and clout.

This new social model merged the logic of democratically designed institutions with economic and legal mechanisms that created a sophisticated system at the service of a small number of individuals who understood and controlled the levers of wealth and political power. Their major cultural achievement consisted of giving a sufficiently wide base to this new form of plutocracy that disguised its kleptocratic reality.

For nearly half a century, the Cold War promoted the spectacle of a combat between democratic capitalism and autocratic communism. Both sides seized the opportunity to build military powerhouses that could provide an effective shelter for the kleptocratic class. Once the heresy of communism was banished from Russia, it could morph, under Boris Yeltsin and then Vladimir Putin, into a caricature of the much more subtle kleptocracy encapsulated in Reaganomics.

The Russian and American versions of economic power management shared the same orientations but deployed them in contrasting ways. Kleptocratic rule was at the core of both. Using a musical analogy, the American philharmonic version of kleptocracy was delivered in Carnegie Hall, with a fully orchestrated score. Russia offered an improvisational version delivered by local musicians in an animated tavern. In both cases, as the proverb says, “he who pays the piper calls the tune.”

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Fair Observer Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post A Russian-American Game of Mirrors appeared first on Fair Observer.

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“All experts,” the avowed Erdogan supporter continued, agreed that Washington was escalating the crisis to solidify its dominance in Western Europe. With that, Barlas also echoed the general mood in Turkey. It is fortunate, he said, that Russia’s president is much more reasonable and wiser than his American counterpart, Joe Biden.

The Bond Between Erdogan and Putin

This positive image of Putin and Erdogan’s familiarity with the Kremlin leader is no accident. Particularly since the failed coup attempt in Turkey in 2016, Erdogan has, with Putin’s help, been able to position himself independently of — and sometimes even against — the United States and Europe on key foreign policy issues.

In Syria and Azerbaijan, Ankara and Moscow succeeded in marginalizing Western actors. In Libya and the eastern Mediterranean, Turkey acts as a competitor or even adversary to member states of the European Union.

Turkey’s flirtation with Moscow led to concerns that Ankara might turn away from Europe altogether. That contributed to the EU’s kid-glove approach to Turkey in the eastern Mediterranean and Cyprus. It also resulted in Washington’s belated reaction to Turkey’s acquisition of Russia’s S-400 missile defense system with sanctions. It is true that Turkey has experience with Putin as a cool strategist and ruthless power politician in conflicts such as the one in Syria. But Erdogan has always seemed to succeed in avoiding escalation.

Despite all of Ankara’s tension with Moscow, Erdogan’s rapprochement with Russia has brought him much closer to his goal of strategic autonomy for his country from the West. Turkey skillfully maneuvered between the fronts of global rivalry and was able to considerably expand its scope and influence in just a few years.

In this seesaw policy, however, Turkey is behaving much more confrontationally toward Western states than toward Russia. For years, the government press has painted a positive picture of Russia and a negative one of the United States and Europe. This is not without effect on Turkish public opinion. Around a month before Russia attacked Ukraine, in a poll carried out by a renowned opinion research institute, a narrow relative majority of 39% of respondents favored foreign policy cooperation with Russia and China instead of Europe and the United States.

In the first days after Russia’s invasion, Ankara’s policy followed exactly the aforementioned pattern. Turkey condemned the attack, but it is not participating in sanctions against Russia. In the vote on suspending Russia’s representation rights in the Council of Europe, Turkey was the only NATO state to abstain and, as such, is keeping its airspace open to Russian aircraft.

The West is paying particular attention to whether and how Turkey implements the Treaty of Montreux. The 1936 treaty regulates the passage of warships through Turkey’s Dardanelles and Bosporus Straits into the Black Sea. It limits the number, tonnage and duration of stay of ships from non-littoral states in the Black Sea. In the event of war, the convention stipulates that the waterways must be closed to ships of the parties to the conflict, and it entrusts Ankara with the application of the treaty’s regulations

Ankara Swings Around

It took Turkey four days to classify the Russian invasion as “war.” However, Ankara is still reluctant to officially close the waterways — as the treaty stipulates — to ships of parties to the conflict, Russia and Ukraine. Instead, Ankara is warning “all countries, Black Sea riparian or not,” against sending warships through the straits.

In the literal sense, this step is not directed unilaterally against Moscow, but it also makes it more difficult for NATO ships to sail into the Black Sea. According to the treaty, however, the waterways may only be closed to warships of all countries if Ankara considers itself directly threatened by war. Consciously creating ambiguity, Turkey has triangulated between the West and Russia.

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Almost imperceptibly at first, however, a reversal has now set in. There are four reasons for this. First, the West is showing unity and resolve unseen since the Cold War, and its sanctions are undermining Russia’s standing in the world. Second, Putin is losing his charisma as a successful statesman and reliable partner. Third, Ankara realizes that Putin’s vision of a great Russian empire could provoke more wars. Fourth, the ranks of the adversaries are closing and it is becoming more difficult for Turkey to continue its seesaw policy.

Thus, strongly pro-Western tones have emerged from Ankara in recent weeks. Turkey will continue to support Ukraine in consultation with the West, according to the president’s spokesman. Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu now claims to have contradicted Russia’s wishes for the passage of warships through the Bosporus “in all friendship.” President Erdogan is also in favor of admitting Ukraine to the European Union and Kosovo to NATO.

Moreover, Ankara is not contradicting reports by Ukrainian diplomats that Turkey is supplying more armed drones and training pilots to fly drones. On March 2, Turkey joined the vast majority of states in the UN General Assembly’s condemnation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine that asked Russia to “immediately, completely and unconditionally withdraw all of its military forces.” Two days later, during the extraordinary meeting of NATO’s foreign ministers, Turkey supported the deployment of NATO’s Response Force to NATO countries neighboring Ukraine.

It looks like Putin is not only bringing long-lost unity to the EU, but he is also reminding Turkey of the benefits of its Western ties. Western states should realize that only more unity among themselves and more determination will make Turkey reengage with the West.

*[This article was originally published by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), which advises the German government and Bundestag on all questions relating to foreign and security policy.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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Although South Korea has reduced its prior strict contact tracing policies, the percentage of critically ill patients is less than the country’s last peak in December 2021. The key question now is what the South Korean public thinks about the government’s COVID-19 response.

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South Korea’s 2020 national assembly election was internationally praised for balancing ease of voting amid pandemic restrictions and provided a blueprint for other countries, with President Moon Jae-in’s administration largely praised for its efficient response to the pandemic. South Korea even allowed citizens who have tested positive to cast a ballot at the polls once they recovered, even if voting had officially ended. 

However, with cases rising in late 2021, evaluations of the Moon administration’s handling have soured, although still hovering around 40% — the highest in the country’s democratic history for an outgoing president and similar to his vote share in 2017. Yet Yoon and the Democratic Party’s Lee Jae-myung, both polling under 40% in the run-up to the election, declined to outline any pandemic response plan until November, when there was already a shortage of hospital beds — likely a result of the government’s “living with COVID” plan. 

Similarly, minor candidates have not presented clear COVID-19 policies. Even beyond the “living with COVID” strategies, candidates have not shared concrete plans to build back infrastructure after the public health crisis. 

To understand South Korean evolving perceptions of COVID-19 policies, we conducted a pre-election web survey of 945 South Koreans on February 18-22 via Macromill Embrain using quota sampling on gender, region and age. We asked respondents to evaluate on a five-point Likert scale the following statement: “I am satisfied with the South Korean government’s response to the coronavirus outbreak.”

We found, at best, mixed support for the government’s response, with overall disagreement outpacing agreement — 43.6% versus 35.8%. As before, perceptions deviate on party identification, with supporters of the ruling Democratic Party (DP) largely satisfied with the response (64.8%), while supporters of the main conservative party, the PPP, are largely dissatisfied (71.4%). 

Supporters of the two smaller parties, the progressive Justice Party and the center-right People’s Party, showed responses that were more mixed, perhaps because candidates had not emphasized COVID-19 policies in campaign rhetoric. Regression analysis finds that women and older respondents are more supportive of COVID-19 policies, while after controlling for age, gender, education, income and political ideology, supporters of the DP were still more likely to evaluate pandemic policies favorably while PPP supporters were less likely to do so. 

Noting this partisan divergence, we next wanted to identify whether views on COVID policy may have indirectly influenced support for one candidate over another. Regression analysis finds that even after controlling for demographic factors and party identification, satisfaction with COVID-19 policies negatively corresponds with voting for Yoon and positively for Lee. 

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However, we also found that views of COVID-19 policies largely correspond with evaluations of President Moon’s job performance, questioning whether these measures were driving evaluations of Moon or whether perceptions now may simply be picking up sentiments regarding Moon irrespective of the actual policies. Further analysis shows that including evaluations of Moon’s performance in our earlier statistical models results in the COVID-19 evaluation failing to reach statistical significance. 

Whereas COVID-19 policies helped Moon Jae-in’s party in 2020 win a clear majority in the national assembly, our evidence suggests evaluations now may have contributed to an anti-incumbency vote even as both of the major candidates lack clear policy prescriptions related to the pandemic. Regardless, President-elect Yoon will need to address a changing COVID-19 environment amid a fatigued and divided Korean public.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

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India’s abstentions have led to much heartburn in the US and Europe. One high-flying national security lawyer in Washington argued that India was wrong to ignore Russia tearing down Article 2(4) of the Charter of the United Nations. Like many others, he took the view that India has sided with an aggressive autocrat, weakened its democratic credentials and proved to be a potentially unreliable partner of the West. The Economist has called India “abstemious to a fault.”

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In particular, serving and retired American and British diplomats have been wringing their hands at India’s reticence to vote against Russia. For many Americans, this is a betrayal of the good faith that the US has reposed in India by giving the country a special nuclear deal in 2008 and designating India as a “major defense partner” in 2016. In 2018, the US elevated India to Strategic Trade Authorization tier 1 status, giving India license-free access to a wide range of military and dual-use technologies regulated by the Department of Commerce, a privilege the US accords to very few other countries. On Capitol Hill, India’s abstention is further viewed as an act of bad faith because many members of Congress and senators worked hard to waive sanctions against India. These were triggered by the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act when India bought Russian S-400 missile systems. 

Many Western business leaders are now wondering if India is a safe place to do business after the latest turn of events. For some in the West, this is yet another example of India slipping inexorably down the slippery slope of authoritarianism under the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Two Unfriendly Nuclear Neighbors

Such fears are overblown. India remains a thriving democracy. Elections just took place in five states after colorful political campaigns. Infrastructure development in India is going on at a record pace and growth remains high amidst inflationary pressures. Despite some blunders such as the 2016 demonetization of high-denomination currency notes and the botched 2017 rollout of the goods and services tax, the Modi-led BJP has become more market-friendly.

As per the World Bank’s Doing Business 2020 report, India ranked 63 out of the surveyed 190 countries, a marked improvement from the 134 rank in 2014 when Modi came to power. Like the US, India is a fractious and, at times, exasperating democracy, but it is a fast-growing large economy. Even as US manufacturers Chevrolet and Ford exited the Indian market, Korean Kia and Chinese MG Motor India have achieved much success.

India is also proving to be a major force for stability in the region. After “America’s Afghanistan’s fiasco,” India has been picking up the pieces in an increasingly unstable region. The country is now providing humanitarian assistance to the Afghan people even as the US has abandoned them. Thousands of trucks roll out daily from India to Afghanistan via Pakistan as part of India’s effort to feed millions of starving Afghans. India is delivering 50,000 tons of wheat to a country led by the Taliban. Earlier, India sent 500,000 coronavirus vaccines as well as 13 tons of essential medicines and winter clothing to Afghanistan. Despite its reservations about the new regime in Kabul that offered refuge to hijackers of an Indian plane in 1999 and sent jihadists to Kashmir, a government branded as anti-Muslim by The New York Times is behaving magnanimously to help millions of Afghans facing starvation.

Despite its thriving democracy and growing economy, India remains a highly vulnerable nation in an extremely rough neighborhood. To its west lies an increasingly more radical Pakistan that, in the words of the late Stephen Philip Cohen, uses “terror as an instrument of state policy in Kashmir.” To its east lies an increasingly aggressive China led by President Xi Jinping assiduously using salami-slicing tactics to claim more Indian territory. In sharp contrast to the US, India has two nuclear-armed neighbors and faces the specter of a two-front war given what Andrew Small has called the China–Pakistan axis.

National security that occupies much headspace in Washington is a constant headache for New Delhi. Multiple insurgencies, street protests, mass movements, foreign interference and the specter of nuclear war are a daily worry. During the Cold War, Pakistan was an ally of the US and benefited greatly from American funding of the Afghan jihad against the Soviet Union. A 1998 report by Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) tells us India was among the top three recipients of Soviet/Russian weapons from 1982 to 1996. 

More recently, India has diversified its arms imports. A 2021 SIPRI fact sheet makes clear that India is now the biggest importer of French and Israeli arms. From 2011-15 to 2016-20 Russian arms exports to India dropped by 53%, but the country still remained the top importer. In 2016-20, Russia, France and Israel’s share of India’s arms imports comprised 49%, 18% and 13% respectively. A retired assistant chief of the integrated staff estimates that around 70% of India’s military arsenal is of Russian origin.

Given Indian dependence on Russian military hardware, it is only natural that New Delhi cannot afford to annoy Moscow. Critical Russian spares keep the defense forces combat-ready. For high-tech weaponry, which has the added advantage of coming at affordable prices, India relies on Russia. Moscow has also shared software and proprietary interaction elements for weapons delivery systems with New Delhi. Furthermore, Russia allows India to integrate locally-made weapons into its fighter jets or naval vessels unlike the US or even France. 

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From New Delhi’s point of view, the India–Russia military-technical cooperation is even more valuable than Russian military kit. Unlike the West, Russia has been willing to transfer technology, enabling India to indigenize some of its defense production. This began in the 1960s when India moved closer to the Soviet Union even as Pakistan became a full-fledged US ally. Since then, Moscow has shared critical technologies over many decades with New Delhi. India’s supersonic anti-ship missile BrahMos that the Philippines recently bought is indigenized Russian technology as is India’s main battle tank.

As a vulnerable nation in a rough neighborhood, India relies on Russia for security. Therefore, New Delhi decided it could not upset Moscow and abstained at all forums.

The China Factor

There is another tiny little matter worrying India. It is certain that Xi is observing and analyzing the Russian invasion of Ukraine. As a revisionist power, China seeks to overturn the postwar order. Beijing has designs on Taiwan and territorial disputes with many of its neighbors. Its most recent armed confrontation occurred with India though. Since that June 2020 clash, Indian and Chinese troops are locked in a stalemate that repeated rounds of talks have failed to resolve.

More than anyone else, India fears a Russia–China axis. If Moscow threw in its lot with Beijing, India — deprived of technology and critical spares — might face a military catastrophe. If Russia sided with China in case of a conflict between the two Asian giants, India would face certain defeat.

Recent military cooperation between Russia and China has worried India. A few months ago, a flotilla of 10 Russian and Chinese warships circumnavigated Japan’s main island of Honshu for the very first time. This joint exercise demonstrated that Russia and China now have a new strategic partnership. Despite their rivalry in Central Asia and potential disputes over a long border, the two could team up like Germany and Austria-Hungary before World War I. Such a scenario would threaten both Asia and Europe but would spell disaster for India. Therefore, New Delhi has been working hard to bolster its ties with Moscow.

In December 2021, Russian President Vladimir Putin flew to India to meet Modi. During Putin’s trip, both countries signed a flurry of arms and trade deals. Apart from declarations about boosting trade and investment as well as purchasing various military equipment, Russia transferred the technology and agreed to manufacture more than 700,000 AK-203 rifles in India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh where the BJP has just been reelected. In the words of a seasoned Indian diplomat Ashok Sajjanhar, Putin’s visit “reinvigorated a time-tested strategic partnership between India and Russia.”

Sajjanhar left unsaid what astute Indian diplomats say in private. India’s close relationship with Russia is insurance against China. New Delhi wants Moscow to act as a moderating influence on Beijing and act as an honest broker between the two Asian giants. India believes that there is no power other than Russia that could act as its bridge to China.

The Weight of History

When Sajjanhar was speaking about a time-tested relationship, he meant decades of close India–Russia ties. During World War II and in the run-up to independence in 1947, the US earned much goodwill because Franklin D. Roosevelt championed the Atlantic Charter, promising independence to the colonies. However, relationships soured soon after independence because India chose socialism under its first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru.

When the US conducted a coup against the democratically elected Iranian government of Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953, India came to view the US as a neocolonial power. It is easy to forget now that Washington backed the interests of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company over those of the government of Iran, triggering trepidation among Indian leaders who remembered clearly that their country was colonized by the British East India Company. The coup gave both capitalism and the US a bad name and pushed New Delhi closer to Moscow.

In the following years, India’s ties with the Soviet Union strengthened. As Pakistan became a firm Cold War ally of the US, India embraced socialism ever more firmly and became a de facto Soviet ally, claims of non-alignment notwithstanding. In 1956, the Soviet tanks crushed the Hungarian Revolution. Nehru censured Moscow in private but refused to condemn Soviet action even as he railed against the Anglo-French intervention in the Suez. As per Swapna Kona Nayudu’s well-researched paper for the Wilson Center, New Delhi now became “a crucial partner in international politics for Moscow.”

In 1968, the Soviets crushed the Prague Spring, an uprising in then-Czechoslovakia that aimed to reform the communist regime. Nehru’s daughter, Indira Gandhi, was prime minister, and she publicly called for the Soviets to withdraw their troops. In the UN Security Council, though, India abstained in the vote on the Czechoslovakia matter, attracting widespread condemnation from the American press.

Three years later, India went to war with Pakistan to liberate Bangladesh. This did not go down well in the US, despite the fact that the military dictatorship of Pakistan was inflicting murder, torture and rape in a genocide of horrific proportions. During the 1971 India–Pakistan War, Richard Nixon called Gandhi a “bitch” and Henry Kissinger termed Indians as “bastards.” Indian diplomats repeatedly point out that Nixon and Kissinger ignored their own diplomats like Archer Blood who valiantly spoke truth to power about Pakistani atrocities, a story chronicled superbly by Princeton professor Gary J. Bass in “The Blood Telegram.” Instead, they sent vessels from the Seventh Fleet to intervene on Pakistan’s behalf. It was the Soviets who came to India’s rescue by sending their naval vessels to counter the American ones.

India repaid Moscow’s 1971 favor when Soviet troops invaded Afghanistan. In 1980, India refused to condemn this invasion at the UN. During the decade that followed, the US funded the mujahideen in Afghanistan through Pakistan. Relations between the US and Pakistan became closer than ever at a time when General Zia-ul-Haq launched Operation Tupac to “bleed India through a thousand cuts” by championing insurgencies within India. First Punjab and then Kashmir went up in flames. Terrorism became a feature of daily life for India, but the US turned a Nelson’s eye to the phenomenon until the grim attacks of September 11, 2001.

Since those attacks, India and the United States have moved closer together. Thousands of Indian students study in the US every year, American investment has flowed into India and defense cooperation has steadily increased. The US views India as a valuable partner to contain the rise of an aggressive China, and New Delhi cares more about Washington than any other capital on the planet.

Even as US–India ties have deepened, New Delhi has retained close ties with Moscow. Russia continues to build nuclear power plants in energy-hungry India. Plans to import more Russian oil and gas have also been in the works. Because of these ties, India did not condemn Russian action against Crimea in 2014. The left-leaning government in power at that time went on to say that Russia had “legitimate” interests in Ukraine.

It is important to note that no opposition party has criticized the government’s position. Shashi Tharoor, a flamboyant MP of the Indian National Congress party who said that India was on “the wrong side of history,” got rapped on the knuckles by his bosses. The opposition and the government have almost identical views on the matter. Neither supports Russian aggression against Ukraine, but no party wants to criticize an old friend of the nation.

Political Factors, Domestic and International

War in Ukraine is obviously not in India’s interest. India imports energy, and rising oil prices are going to unleash inflation in an economy with high unemployment. This worries both political and business leaders. In its statement at the UN, India called for peace and diplomacy. In official statements, India has also expressed support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. India does not in any way support Russian aggression but cannot criticize Moscow for a host of reasons described above as well as often overlooked political factors.

Indian leaders have also been preoccupied with elections in five critical states. Political analysts consider these elections to be a dress rehearsal for the 2024 national elections. With stakes so high, the ruling BJP was under pressure to bring home thousands of Indian students studying in Ukraine safely. For this, India relied on Russia. While some might say this necessitated a Faustian silence, 18,000 Indian lives were at stake.

India also had reservations about Ukraine. Reports of Indian students facing racism in Ukraine have been doing the rounds on social media. These may be info ops by Russians, but they have touched a chord among the masses. Press reports of fleeing Indian students facing racism and segregation at the Ukrainian border have not helped, nor have memories of Ukrainian arms deals with Pakistan, which have triggered Indian suspicions. Even though India is against the conflict, New Delhi does not want to forsake an old friend and support a potentially hostile power.

India also suspects the motives of the West in taking on Putin. There is a strong feeling across nearly all political parties that the US would not show the same concern for a non-white nation in Asia or Africa. Left-leaning parties point out that the US and the UK based their 2003 invasion of Iraq on a pack of lies. A popular Indian television anchor has railed against the “racist reportage” of Western media that treats blue-eyed, blonde Ukrainian refugees differently to Syrian or Afghan ones.

There is also another matter driving India’s hesitation to go along completely with the US in targeting Russia. An increasing trust deficit between the Democrats and the BJP is harming US–India relations. For years, The New York Times and The Washington Post have relentlessly criticized the BJP, accusing the party of being authoritarian, if not fascist. Even food aid to the impoverished citizens in Taliban-led Afghanistan did not get any recognition from the papers of record in New York and Washington.

Billionaires like George Soros who support Democrats have been vocal against the BJP and Modi. Their foundations have also funded Indian organizations opposed to the BJP. Americans see this funding as an expression of idealism that seeks to promote civil society and democracy. On the other hand, many Indians see American funding as a sinister ploy to weaken the nationalist BJP and replace them with weak, pliant leaders. Indians are also irked by the fact that Democrats rarely give credit to the BJP for winning elections, the democratic proof of its platform’s popularity.

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Democrats have also been pressuring India to legalize gay marriage, forgetting that the issue is pending before the Indian Supreme Court. Indians point out that it was the British who decreed “unnatural” sexual acts” as not just illegal but also imprisonable during Queen Victoria’s heyday. The BJP has already come out in favor of legalizing homosexuality but has no power to intervene in a matter pending before the court. The failure of Democrats to recognize this reeks of a white savior complex that destroys trust between Washington and New Delhi. 

Many BJP leaders are convinced that the Democrats are plotting some sort of a regime change in the 2024 elections. They believe there is an elaborate game plan in place to discredit Modi and the BJP. In this worldview, the Democrat establishment is manipulating discourse and peddling narratives that could lead to some version of the Orange Revolution in India. They are convinced that once Putin goes, Modi might be next. Even though India is opposed to a war that is severely hurting its economy, this fear of Western interference in domestic political matters is one more reason for India to abstain from turning on its old friend Russia.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post India’s Reasons For Abstaining in the UN on Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine appeared first on Fair Observer.

And yet, three weeks into the war, the no-fly zone proposal just won’t die. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky begs for air support almost daily. In protests and social media posts, millions of ordinary people around the world ask NATO to #closethesky. 

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Here in America, a nationwide poll showed that 74% of Americans support a no-fly zone. And earlier this month, 27 foreign policy experts published an open letter requesting a limited no-fly zone over humanitarian corridors. 

If a no-fly zone is so obviously impractical, why are we still talking about it? The answer — which is conspicuously missing from mainstream Western discourse — lays bare the fundamental problem in the US response to the war. 

A False Dichotomy

Politicians and the media offer a single simplistic argument against protecting Ukraine’s airspace: Russia’s nuclear arsenal. Almost every official statement, article and op-ed can be summarized in one sentence: A no-fly zone would start World War III.

But here’s the part no one says out loud: What happens if the West doesn’t institute a no-fly zone? Will such a move keep us safe from nuclear Armageddon? Can the US manage to stay out of this war and out of Russia’s crosshairs? 

Vladimir Putin’s rhetoric — and his actions — offer a clear answer. The US can avoid direct confrontation but at a price: handing the Russian leader an absolute, total victory. In Ukraine, of course, but also in Moldova and Georgia and perhaps the Baltics, and who knows where else? And, of course, carte blanche to commit whatever atrocities he’d like worldwide (à la Syria). 

If Putin cannot win, he will lash out against enemies real and imagined. At that point, it won’t matter whether those enemies have instituted a no-fly zone. Putin has already likened sanctions and weapons deliveries to declarations of war on Russia, creating a ready excuse for retaliation. He’s set up a false narrative about Ukraine building a nuclear bomb, building a rationale to use his own nuclear weapons. 

America’s Choice 

The real question before the US government isn’t whether to institute a no-fly zone. It’s whether America is ready to help Ukraine win or prefers to stand by and watch the rise of a new Russian empire. 

If not, we must stand up to Putin now. There are multiple viable policy options for doing so. One is arranging a no-fly zone administered by the United Nations rather than NATO. Another is sending Ukraine decommissioned Western fighter jets and several dozen volunteer air force vets who would be granted Ukrainian citizenship. Yet another would be to send only jets — Ukrainian fighter pilots have confirmed that they can, in fact, learn to fly Western jets in just a few days. 

The specific mechanism matters less than the political will — the decision to send Putin a clear message that the US will not let him take Ukraine, backed up by sufficient military support. This option is not risk-free. But it’s impossible for Ukraine to prevail without angering Putin. 

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Is the risk worth it? Ukrainians believe so because they see something most Americans haven’t yet figured out: World War III has already started. Putin’s grand ambitions are reminiscent of a certain German dictator 80 years before him, as is the US strategy of appeasement. In the end, US involvement is inevitable, so why not be strategic and proactive rather than reacting years later when the human and economic costs of Putin’s empire-building are too high to be ignored? 

Of course, the US government may disagree with this perspective and opt for appeasement 2.0. Maybe this time around, the unstable dictator will be more reasonable?

If this is the case, and the US government is not ready to stand up to Putin, it’s essential to make it clear that Zelensky is on his own. If we cannot make a commitment to let Ukrainians win, we should let them lose. Ukraine’s government deserves an honest understanding of what it can and can’t expect from the US so it can make decisions accordingly.  

The Worst of Both Worlds

So far, American politicians have spurned both of these options. Instead, they’re pursuing an immoral, dangerous fantasy, waiting for someone to stop Putin without America getting its hands dirty. To this end, they offer half-measures that drag out the conflict and cost thousands of lives. They wear blue and yellow, they send aid and enact sanctions, but they consciously steer clear of any support that could lead to a Ukrainian victory. 

This brings us back to the absurd situation we started with: ongoing calls for an impossible no-fly zone, which we can now see are absolutely logical. Let’s review.

America: Ukraine, we support you in your brave fight for freedom!

Ukrainians and their friends abroad: Great! So, the one thing we need is support with our airspace.

America: No can do. But believe us — we’re on your side here and we’re ready to help! 

Ukrainians: Thank you. We’re dying here and we can’t win without air support. 

America: Once again, no. But we stand with you.

This hypocrisy goes well beyond the debate over the no-fly zone. For instance, on March 6, Secretary Blinken gave the green light for Poland to donate its fighter jets to Ukraine. When Poland agreed to cede the jets to the US for immediate transfer to the Ukrainian army, American officials backpedaled in a truly impressive display of doublespeak. 

Ukraine cannot win this war without the US taking tangible steps to protect Ukrainian airspace. Pretending otherwise and willfully extending the bloodshed with partial measures is the worst possible option for the United States. 

The US government doesn’t owe Ukraine support. But it does owe Ukraine an immediate end to the falsehoods and the empty words — a bullshit ceasefire, if you will. An admission that, no matter how many civilian deaths, no matter what kind of banned weapons Russia uses or how many war crimes it commits, no matter if Russia drops a nuclear bomb on Kyiv, the US will not step in. 

Until then, Russia pushes new boundaries every day with impunity, Ukraine holds out hope for help that will never come and Joe Biden wavers while children die. 

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post American Hypocrisy and Half-Measures Damn Ukraine and Help Russia appeared first on Fair Observer.

Should We Lift the Ban on Russian Sport?

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Now, with the war in Ukraine, that soft power is facing a major crisis. Since Russia launched its invasion at the end of February, many ballet performances are being canceled around the world: The Bolshoi Ballet’s summer season at London’s Royal Opera House, “Swan Lake” by the Royal Moscow Ballet at the Helix Theatre in Dublin and concerts by the Vienna Philharmonic — led by the Russian conductor and Vladimir Putin’s supporter, Valery Gergiev — at the Carnegie Hall in New York have all been called off. 

The Danish minister of culture, Ane Halsboe-Jorgensen, suggested the Musikhuset Aarhus, Scandinavia’s largest concert hall, should cancel Russian National Ballet’s performance. The UK tour by the Russian State Ballet of Siberia has been interrupted as a stand against the war. 

Because of the conflict, former dancers and Ukraine natives Darya Fedotova and Sergiy Mykhaylov changed the name of their school from the School of Russian Ballet to the International Ballet of Florida. Tyneside Cinema, in Newcastle, canceled the screenings of Bolshoi Ballet’s “Swan Lake” and “Pharaoh’s Daughter.” A Japanese ballerina with the Russian Ballet Theater in Moscow, Masayo Kondo, is dancing for peace during a tour in the US, but a restaurant refused to serve lunch to the cast when they learned they were from Russia. 

Business Card

The boycotts may just be starting, bringing financial loss to Russia’s cultural establishment amid already crippling economic sanctions. But the damage to Russian ballet’s soft power can be even more everlasting, taking years to recover. After all, soft power is the ability to seduce rather than coerce, strengthen a nation’s image abroad and thus enhance cultural and diplomatic relations as well as tourism. It takes years, even decades, to cultivate the tradition, like Hollywood in the US, the carnival in Brazil and MAG (manga, anime, games) culture in Japan.

Both the USSR and Russia could never compete with truly global pop-culture exports emanating from America. There were no music icons to rival Michael Jackson, blockbusters like “Star Wars” or TV stars like Oprah. The country produced incredible cultural products, especially when it came to film. Sergei Eisenstein’s “Battleship Potemkin” (1925), Andrei Tarkovsky’s sci-fi “Solaris” (1972) and Alexander Sokurov’s “Russian Arc” (2002) are masterpieces that earned Russian cinema a place in every art book and class around the world, but they were far from being international hits. 

Russian composers like Igor Stravinski and Alexander Scriabin, and writers such as Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Lev Tolstoy, similarly occupy high positions in the world’s literary and music canons but can hardly be described as widely popular, especially in the Anglophone cultural sphere. 

Ballet, on the other hand, has always been a lucrative export for Russia. In her book “Swans of the Kremlin,” Christina Ezrahi looks at how Russian ballet, whose tradition stretches back to the imperial court as a celebration of the Romanov dynasty, with ballet schools established during the rule of Empress Anna Ioannovna in the 18^th century, has grabbed the world’s attention. Following the 1917 revolution, Anatoly Lunacharsky luckily convinced Vladimir Lenin not to destroy the Bolshoi because peasants and workers flocked to the theater despite the chaos of the civil war years. 

Art and Politics

Although theaters like the Bolshoi may appear as a microcosmos of liberal art, in Russia’s history, ballet has always had close ties with political power. Stalin was an opera aficionado and used to arrive at the Bolshoi by a secret entrance and watch alone. After the signing of the non-aggression pact with Germany in 1939, he took Hitler’s foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop to see Galina Ulanova dance at the Bolshoi. 

During the Soviet era, ballet served as a visiting card for Russian diplomats. In “American-Soviet Cultural Diplomacy,” Cadra Peterson McDaniel demonstrates how the Kremlin used the Bolshoi ballets as a means of cultural exchange, weaving communist ideas such as collective ownership of the means of production and the elimination of income inequality discretely into the storylines along with pre-revolutionary dance aesthetics during 1959 US tour.

Other artists were also crucial for projecting Soviet cultural soft power at the time, like the world-famous cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich and his wife, the opera singer Galina Vishnevskaya. But they faced tough competition from Tchaikovsky’s ballet hits like “The Nutcracker.” 

Ballet served a purpose during the putsch of 1991, which signaled the beginning of the Soviet Union’s collapse, when instead of announcing the attempted coup against Mikhail Gorbachev, “Swan Lake” was broadcast on national television on a loop. The export of Russian ballet increased during the Yeltsin years as the Bolshoi had to tour to compensate for an unstable economy while enjoying the opening up of the country after decades behind the Iron Curtain. 

President Putin’s two decades in power may have allowed for economic recovery, but Russian ballet suffered from scandals like the acid attack on Bolshoi’s artistic director Sergei Filin in 2013. The scandal garnered the attention of the international media following stories about the toxic culture at the Bolshoi and its close affiliation with the Kremlin, tarnishing Russian ballet’s appeal.

The connection between Bolshoi and the power structure in Russia is so vivid that artists were directly affected as the result of the invasion of Ukraine. Tugan Sokhiev, the chief conductor at the Bolshoi, resigned after coming under pressure to condemn Russian actions. Fearing that musicians are becoming “victims of so-called ‘cancel culture,’” he worried he “will be soon asked to choose between Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Shostakovich and Beethoven, Brahms, Debussy.” Two Bolshoi dancers, Brazilian David Motta Soares and Italian Jacopo Tissi, also resigned, citing solidarity with Ukraine. 

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As someone who appears to favor the outdoors, sports and guns, it’s unlikely that President Putin will see ballet as a priority to be shielded from Western sanctions and boycotts. There is, in fact, little he could do, especially given the current restrictions on travel in and out of the country. There is, of course, the question of whether boycotts of the arts are justified, considering that other countries have a history of political intervention, like China in Hong Kong or the US in Iraq, but their cultural products were not banned from movie theaters and art exhibitions. 

It may find itself caught in another historic moment, but Russian ballet’s cultural soft power survived the tsars, revolutions, famine, dictatorship and the fall of empires. In the end, dance will likely outlast autocracy.  

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Russian Ballet Under Fire — Can the Industry Dance Out of This One? appeared first on Fair Observer.

25 Years On, The Dayton Peace Agreement Is a Ticking Time Bomb

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The Russian president has already held numerous official consultations with Bosnian Serb leader Milorad Dodik, the latest one taking place in December 2021. During his second consecutive meeting with Putin in the midst of the 2014 Ukraine crisis, Dodik shared his unequivocal affiliation with Moscow, saying: “Naturally, there is no question that we support Russia. We may be a small and modest community, but our voice is loud.” As Russia’s current military intervention progressed in Ukraine, Dodik also spoke to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov about the “implementation of agreements” reached during the last meeting with Putin.  

Putin’s Proxy in Bosnia

In the quarter of a century since the signing of the Dayton Accords, Bosnia and Herzegovina has been the site of occasional political crises but has never come close to military conflict. In recent months, however, Dodik has doubled down on his efforts to tear apart the postwar constitutional order of the country’s two constitutive entities, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Republika Srpska. Emboldened by the resurrection of Russia’s power, he pressed ahead with his nationalist political agenda aimed at dismantling institutional arrangements that have gradually restored peace and security over the last 25 years. As a result, Dodik was blacklisted by the US government in January this year.

In December 2021, lawmakers loyal to Dodik advanced their secession bid and voted 49-3 in favor of starting a procedure for Republika Srpska to withdraw from central government mechanisms such as common defense, judiciary and intelligence, to name a few. They have also decided that within six months, the government in Banja Luka must recreate its own legislation governing such institutions. 

To show it means business, Republika Srpska paraded paramilitary forces on January 9 in a nationalist celebration declared illegal by the constitutional court of Bosnia and Herzegovina; among the participants were the Night Wolves, a black-uniformed group of Russian nationalist pro-Kremlin bikers. On February 10, Republika Srpska’s national assembly adopted the draft version of a law to create a separate judicial system from the rest of the state. Regarding his future plans, Dodik said he won’t be daunted by opposition from the Western centers of power, suggesting that Moscow and Beijing will help if the West imposes sanctions. 

Notwithstanding Russia’s local proxy, fanning existing flames in Bosnia and Herzegovina could be a rational adventure from Putin’s viewpoint for additional reasons. First, Serbian and Turkish reactions could fit the wider Russian agenda if this trajectory with opposing power dyads within the Bosnian state takes a turning point. 

Second, Putin is aware of the EU’s record of conflict management in ex-Yugoslavia, and Bosnia in particular, in the early 1990s. It failed miserably to secure the peace in the heart of Europe, when the EU was a rising star and Russia was at its weakest point. Third, extending the current EUFOR peace mission in Bosnia may be vetoed by Russia at the UN Security Council in November. 

It is worth remembering that Bosnia and Herzegovina doesn’t have NATO’s Article 5 mutual defense guarantee to fall back on, and that President Joe Biden’s promise to defend every inch of NATO is meaningless for Sarajevo. Washington’s official position on protecting the parameters of the Dayton Agreement is as vague as its strategic ambiguity toward Taiwan.  

Serbia and Turkey in the Bosnian Theater

President Putin has many good reasons to count on Serbia to exploit Bosnia and Herzegovina‘s internal weakness. Belgrade largely relies on Russian weaponry and strong nationalist sentiments with the secessionist movement in Republika Srpska. Serbia’s national defense strategy, officially promoted in late 2019, transcends national boundaries in its content, marking a shift from defensive sovereignty to a more offensive approach. 

Serbia’s home minister, Aleksandar Vulin, the former defense minister who officially promoted this strategy, often exudes self-congratulatory confidence that the Western Balkans region is there for Serbia’s taking. At the ruling Serbian Progressive Party congress in July last year that took place a few months before the joint Serbian-Russian “Slavic Shield” military exercise, Vulin forcefully stated that “Creating the Serbian World, where the Serbs would live and be united, is the task of this generation of politicians.”

Serbia has also accelerated military spending at a faster rate for several years now for no rational reason except regional supremacy. According to Global Fire Power, its current defense budget is almost twice that of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Albania, Northern Macedonia, Montenegro and Kosovo combined. Serbia’s reliance on Russian and Chinese military support has also been reinforced. In 2019, it received donations of fighter jets, tanks and armored vehicles from Russia. In 2020, it bought CH92-A drones and FK-3 surface-to-air missiles from China and then purchased, at Putin’s suggestion, the Pantsir S-1 air defense system. 

It is critical to understand why Serbia is arming so fast: From a realist perspective, its behavior could only become assertive, and more so if Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine succeeds.

Turkey is probably the second regional contender to be caught in the Bosnian fire for both domestic and external factors. Under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Ankara has been projecting soft power throughout the Balkans, particularly in Bosnia and Herzegovina, relying on historical, cultural and economic ties. Turkey has also actively participated in all three peacebuilding missions in Bosnia and Herzegovina: IFOR (1995-97), SFOR (1997-2004) and is currently among EUFOR’s 20 contributing countries. 

However, in case of conflict, Ankara represents an imraportant geopolitical substitute should EUFOR abandon its commitments or if Russia vetoes its mandate at the Security Council. Western powers have for far too long watched from the sidelines and have practically allowed this trajectory with opposing power dyads within the Bosnian state to take root. Hence, Turkey won’t shy away from using its military clout in the region.

The conventional logic of Turkish enmity with Serbia sets Ankara and Moscow on a collision course because Vladimir Putin perceives Republika Srpska and Serbia as natural, historic and strategic allies. However, Russia would not necessarily oppose a Turkish role in the Balkans as long as Ankara’s move triggers some cracks within the Euro-Atlantic alliance. It also seems plausible for Turkey and Russia — historically perceived as brothers by the two confronting parties in the Bosnian theater — to test their mediating capacity modeled after the Astana format launched after the Russian and Turkish interventions in Syria. 

Given their animosity with Russia or Turkey, some European powers would expectedly oppose their interference in Bosnia and Herzegovina on geopolitical grounds, while the more liberal ones will raise ideological concerns. Speaking on the subject of the priorities of the French presidency of the EU that began on January 1, President Emmanuel Macron assessed that the Western Balkans “is going through new tensions today. History is coming back. Sometimes tragedy is coming back.” 

Macron also insisted on the “very special responsibility” toward these countries in terms of fighting external interference. What Macron fears is that extra-regional actors like Russia or Turkey could fill the vacuum, in which case power relations would inevitably become subject to reconfiguration. This scenario is not unfeasible as Russia does not project power in the Balkans for the sake of challenging Turkish interests in the first place. Its prime goal is to replace the existing US-led liberal, institutional and rules-based order with a more anarchic, illiberal and multipolar structure that fits Russia’s image. 

A Slippery Slope for the EU and US

At first sight, a local collision in Bosnia and Herzegovina would bear a striking resemblance to what transpired in Ukraine in 2013-14. Without full integration into the EU or NATO, Bosnia and Herzegovina is also a vulnerable target, just like Ukraine has proven to be. Bosnia and Herzegovina is also divided along similar geopolitical and domestic lines, between pro-NATO aspirations in Sarajevo and anti-NATO tendencies in Banja Luka. 

However, Bosnia and Herzegovina’s instability is far more complex than the crisis in Ukraine for one structural reason: It is not in Russia’s near abroad but in the European underbelly, which presents both an opportunity and a threat for all opposing sides at the local, regional and international level.

The EU has for some time failed to find a unified response to the Bosnian crisis, let alone taking concrete measures, except increasing EUFOR mission by an additional 500 troops. While some founding member states, including Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium, urged sanctions against Milorad Dodik during a recent EU foreign ministers’ debate, newer members like Hungary, Slovenia and Croatia oppose them. In fact, some European populist leaders have been staunch supporters of the Russian proxy in Bosnia and Herzegovina. 

Croatian President Zoran Milanovic stated recently that he was against the EU imposing sanctions against Dodik, saying that “If someone from Croatia votes for those sanctions, for me they will be a traitor.” Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban offered €100 million ($110 million) in financial aid to Republika Srpska. Orban also opposed placing EU sanctions on Dodik, signaling an early warning that the EU, as a whole, may be unable to secure a peaceful Bosnia and Herzegovina, which again resonates with the EU’s poor historical record of conflict management in the region.

Hence, one should not exclude a possibility that EUFOR troops could be evacuated from Bosnia and Herzegovina one day altogether, much in the same way the Dutch UNPROFOR battalion was pulled from Srebrenica in July 1995, failing to prevent the Srebrenica genocide from taking place and making a mockery of UN resolutions on safe heavens. Should there be a prospect for this failure being repeated, the EU might decide to pass the buck on to Washington.

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In that case, small-nation turmoil and squabbles among Balkan nations could transform into a great-power rivalry. Will President Biden accept that call given his unreadiness for direct confrontation with Moscow? The US would face a choice between realist logic, which is to revert European security to Europeans, or a more liberal and interventionist approach, which is to prevent Russia’s unchecked incursion toward NATO’s eastern border. 

There is still time for the US to deflate Republika Srpska’s rebellion and put it back in the political arena. Former Bosnian presidency member Haris Silajdzic recently suggested placing a small NATO brigade in Brcko, the site of fierce battles during the wars of the 1990s, and a few battalions on the Bosnia and Herzegovina-Serbian border. If the US passes the buck back to the EU — which Russia and Serbia will celebrate — the West needs to fasten its seatbelts and brace for impact. More so than the war in Ukraine, a conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina has the capacity to trigger a regrettable European history.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Is Bosnia-Herzegovina Next on Russia’s Radar? appeared first on Fair Observer.

What England’s Premier League Did for Football

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I have no idea whether Russian President Vladimir Putin is familiar with Ferguson’s motivational strategies nor whether he has even heard of him (though I suspect he has). Yet they are improbable kindred spirits. Putin seems to share with Ferguson a defensive or paranoid attitude predicated on the conviction that they are surrounded by enemies. It’s possible to imagine Putin addressing his aides with the kind of blistering, expletive-fueled tirade that used to be known in football circles as the hairdryer treatment. 

Sweeping Russophobia 

The siege mentality that was integral to Ferguson’s success is easy for Putin: The rest of the world actually is against him and his subjects. I’ll exclude Belarus (and, for the time being, China), but pretty much everywhere else has decided that the seemingly obsessive Putin is leading his country maniacally toward self-destruction, probably taking a good portion of the rest of the world along for the ride.

Let me define Russophobia as a strong and irrational dislike of Russia and all things Russian, especially the political system of the former Soviet Union as well as its current leader. In Ukraine, ruling parties have pursued a nationalist Russophobic agenda at least since 2018. The sharp increase in worldwide Russophobia since the invasion — or liberation, depending on your perspective — of Ukraine is unprecedented, at least in my experience. 

The collective punishment of all Russians, whatever their status, affiliation or political outlook for what appears to be Putin’s war, is going to have effects, an unintended one being that it will probably encourage national solidarity in Russia. It’s unlikely to turn people against the man in the Kremlin and is much more likely to encourage the kind of paranoid mentality that would make Sir Alex envious.

Russian oligarchs, like Chelsea Football Club’s owner (for the time being) Roman Abramovich, will no doubt be angry, particularly at having to dispose of his £150 million London home. But they are not going to renounce Putin: A new home like the one Mikhail Khodorkovsky, Russia’s former oil tycoon, was given at the YaG-14/10 penal colony in Siberia for 10 years might await.

Consumer brands such as Apple, Nike and Ikea have pulled out of Russia, followed by PayPal, Visa and MasterCard. Sales of certain Russian vodkas outside Russia have stopped. The broadcaster RT has been removed from British, American and other platforms, presumably to protect guileless viewers becoming brainwashed by Putin’s propaganda.

Sports Boycott

The Russophobic blizzard has swept into sport too. Football’s governing organization FIFA has suspended Russia from international games, thus eliminating the country from the forthcoming World Cup (Russia is currently appealing this). The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has recommended to sports organizations that they deny the participation of Russian and Belarusian athletes, even as representatives of the Russian Olympic Team or any other spurious denomination. 

Formula 1 has terminated its contract with the Russian Grand Prix. The International Paralympic Committee has banned Russians from the Winter Olympics (again subject to appeal.) A full-scale sports boycott of Russia is in the air, probably affecting all athletes, even professional tennis players like Daniil Medvedev, who currently lives in Monaco. The question is, will the sports boycott and other prohibitions actually hasten a cease to the hostilities in Ukraine or will they instead have a paradoxical effect?

The only comparable precedent we have is in South Africa under apartheid. The IOC withdrew its invitation to South Africa to the 1964 Summer Olympics when the country’s interior minister Jan de Klerk insisted that the national team would not be integrated. It would, he said, reflect the segregation of South African society — in other words, the team would be white. Other sports followed the IOC’s example until, in 1977, the embargo was enshrined formally in the Gleneagles Agreement, which effectively turned South Africa into a sports outcast. 

Countries that kept their sporting links with South Africa were themselves ostracized, or blacklisted, as it was known. Individual athletes were forced to compete outside South Africa. Zola Budd and Sydney Maree were notable examples, Budd moving to the UK, Maree to the US. The boycott was eventually removed when apartheid fell in 1990, its total disappearance celebrated in the 1995 Rugby World Cup that which took place in South Africa and was won by an ethnically diverse home team.

We often look back and think the much-publicized sports boycott was a determining factor in ending apartheid, and it’s satisfying to imagine that the fusion of sport and politics produced a joyous and wonderful culmination. Certainly, the sports prohibition was an awareness-raiser and effectively signaled the rest of the world’s abhorrence of constitutional racism. 

But it dragged on over two decades and there is, inconveniently, no conclusive evidence that it had any impact on President F. W. de Klerk’s decision to lift the ban on the African National Congress and other black liberation parties, allowing freedom of the media and releasing political prisoners. Nelson Mandela was freed from prison after 27 years, on February 11, 1990. 

Money And Morals 

The sports boycott embarrassed South Africa as the current cold-shoulder will embarrass Russia. It may also have also have persuaded South Africans, in particular white South Africans, that their prolonged period of misfortune was the result of the antipathy of the outside world. That is probably what will happen in Russia. Citizens will be exasperated when their access to consumables is strangled and they can’t use credit cards to purchase whatever products are left. They’ll probably resent being restricted to Russians-only sport. 

But it won’t make a scrap of difference to the wider conflict and might in fact strengthen the resolve of the Russian people. This is not the narrative we are offered by the media, of course. 

The longer Russia is starved of international sport, the more credible the siege theory will become. In any case, the boycott will be fractured. Money often strains morals, especially in professional sports. For all the proscriptions and threats of blacklisting, South Africa was still able to offer enough filthy lucre to attract world-class cricketers, including Geoff Boycott, footballers such as Bobby Moore, boxers like Santos Laciar and other athletes. Even the African American promoter, Don King, a staunch critic of apartheid, had agreements with South African boxing, revealed by The New York Times in 1984. 

The same will happen in Russia. If it prevails in Ukraine, the probability is that there will be some form of state under the full or partial political control of Moscow, meaning no softening on the various debarments. The sports boycott will expand. This will leave major sports organizations with a new question: Do they recognize Ukraine as an independent sporting nation as it has been since 1991, or as a Russian colony, dependency or protectorate? Ukrainian athletes so far haven’t been excluded from international competitions. If they were, the cruelty would be redoubled. It would be a repugnant collision of injustices. 

Perhaps justice would be better served if the block on Russian sport were lifted. I know this sounds counterintuitive and might appear to reward, or at least accept, an aggressive act. But I take counsel from the adage that two wrongs don’t make a right. An action, no matter how heinous, is never a justification for wrongful behavior.

Many readers will not interpret a sports boycott as wrongful behavior, merely a reaction to provocation. Perhaps. But it would be foolish to hyperbolize the importance of sport; obviously it is not as serious as war, or a million other things. So, why hurt people who are not responsible for the original sin? Anyway, in a practical sense, it would serve to show that while the leadership in Moscow may indeed be execrated, the 144 million Russian people are not.

*[Ellis Cashmore is co-editor of Studying Football.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Should We Lift the Ban on Russian Sport? appeared first on Fair Observer.

Is Ukraine Likely to Join the EU Any Time Soon?

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The inclination will be to put China in the same basket as Russia, even if China is still being cautious about its next steps. Many other countries will be pushed to choose. One country, Turkey, will soon face difficult choices, since balancing acts may not be enough this time around.

A Tough Balance Between the West and Russia

Turkey has been trying to diversify and balance its alliances between the West and others for a long time now. Turkey is a NATO member that possesses Russian anti-aircraft missile systems, namely the S-400. This purchase not only led to CAATSA sanctions by the United States — which was a first against a NATO ally — but also the removal of the country from the F-35 program.

These measures did not hinder Turkey’s special relationship with Russia. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan always maintained personal relations with his counterpart in Moscow, Vladimir Putin. Even when they were at opposite ends of the theater of power — in Syria or Nagorno-Karabakh, for example — they kept talking. This did not change even after Turkey shot down a Russian plane in November 2015. Turkey’s dependence on Russian gas and tourism has also been a reason for their continued dialogue. Turkey also awarded the construction of its nuclear power plant — the Akkuyu plant — to Russia.

Today, Turkey is staying out of the sanctions schemes of the European Union and NATO. It has also tried juggling the Ukrainian demand to close the Turkish Straits to Russian warships — even if the Montreux Convention upholds the demand. Turkey stated that the Russian attack “is a grave violation of international law and poses a serious threat to the security of our region and the world.” It has hesitated, however, to move beyond that declaration. When the pressure mounted — masterfully and publicly handled by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky — and other actors continued to announce historic decisions one after the other, Turkey had to make a decision on the Straits.

It is important to remember that Turkey has also sold drones to Ukraine in the recent past and signed a free trade agreement, meaning that it was in a strong position to claim that it has supported Ukraine. Turkey even offered to mediate between Russia and Ukraine, but the offer has not been accepted as of yet.

The longer Russian aggression continues, the more Turkey will be pushed to move more decisively. Even Switzerland declared that it will apply the EU’s sanctions on Russia. Candidate countries are also encouraged to follow the course. Soon, there will be no more room for strategic ambiguity.

And When the Dust Settles?

However, there is even a broader question that requires strategic thinking. When the dust settles, where would Turkey like to stand when the European security architecture of the 21^st century is being discussed? Where it was in the 20^th century — a member of NATO, the Council of Europe, an integral element of the so-called Western order — or with the “others”? Turkey has spent recent years trying not to choose and playing all sides against each other when necessary.

The year 2022 was going to be decisive with regard to the European security architecture, even without a war on the continent. Europeans are already working on the publication of the “strategic compass” in addition to NATO’s strategic concept, which will be discussed in Madrid in June. These thought-provoking exercises have become even more significant in light of recent developments.

The historic steps that both the EU and some of its member states are taking will set the tone when it comes to the European security architecture. In addition to the sanctions package, the EU is sending lethal weapons to a third country under the European Peace Facility. Germany is increasing its defense spending to more than 2% of its GDP while facilitating a one-off investment of €100 billion ($109 billion) for the Bundeswehr.

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One should also underline the exemplary coordination between the EU and NATO. Nothing strengthens the transatlantic bond more than a Russian threat to the continent. Geopolitical challenges that were not expected in the 21^st century are going hand in hand with the necessity for drastic moves. Concepts such as sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity, which are protected under international law, have become even more visible. One thing to expect now is that different camps across the world will close ranks.

Will Turkey’s importance increase for the West, as it had during the Cold War? Maybe. It will surely play an important role in the Black Sea, especially when it comes to the Straits. However, once the cleavages between democracies and autocracies deepen, the state of affairs in Turkey will be even more important.

Right now, these changes have caught Turkey off guard. The Justice and Development Party (AKP) is tired after 20 years in power. The government it leads is mostly seen as authoritarian by many in Europe. The Turkish economy is in never-ending decline. It is hard to look for long-lasting consensus in a society once it has become extremely polarized. This is not necessarily the best time to set directions for the decades to come. But the country may have no choice.

Last but not least, the Ukraine crisis has demonstrated the importance of well-functioning relations with neighbors for European sovereignty. It is important to underline once again that European security is not only about the EU, but also its neighborhood. As an integral piece of European security architecture in the 20^th century, Turkey will need to define where it stands very clearly. It is not only about who wins and who loses, but also about who will adapt to the changes that Europe is going through. It is time for reaffirmations for everyone. It would be beneficial for the European continent as a whole if Turkey also closed ranks with its traditional allies.

*[This article was originally published by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), which advises the German government and Bundestag on all questions relating to foreign and security policy.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Is There Any Place Strategic Ambiguity in Europe? appeared first on Fair Observer.

Is Europe’s Newfound Unity a Liberal Illusion?

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After Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy signed his country’s application for candidate status, the European Parliament adopted a resolution calling “for the EU institutions to work towards granting EU candidate status to Ukraine.” In this vein, European Parliament President Roberta Metsola confirmed that “we recognize Ukraine’s European perspective.” In addition, a group of eight member states expressed support for EU institutions to “conduct steps to immediately grant Ukraine [an] EU candidate country status and open the process of negotiations” as they “strongly believe that Ukraine deserves receiving an immediate EU accession perspective.”

No Direct Path

Ukraine’s path toward the EU was never a straight line leading up to this point. While former President Leonid Kuchma formulated Ukraine’s wish to join the EU throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, the bloc was initially reserved with regard to these aspirations. A Partnership and Cooperation Agreement (PCA) between the EU and Ukraine entered into force in March 1998, but a lack of implementation, as well as the upsurge of autocratic tendencies in Ukrainian domestic politics, led former European Commission President Romano Prodi to formulate the “sharing everything with the Union but institutions” paradigm. 

In 2002, Prodi declared that we “cannot simply ignore what is happening beyond our borders. Neither can we solve problems with our new neighbours simply by letting them join the Union.” He was referring to endemic corruption, severe impediments to the rule of law or lack of freedom and independence of the media that continue to plague the country. Freedom House still labels Ukraine as only “partly free.”

Despite this, EU–Ukraine cooperation intensified throughout the years with the adoption of an EU–Ukraine Action Plan and Kyiv joining the Eastern Partnership within the European Neighborhood Policy (ENP) framework. While the ENP establishes a “special relationship with 16 of its closest neighbours who are currently not considered potential candidates for joining the EU,” Ukraine maintained its rhetoric of a pro-EU membership course. 

The aftermath of the Euromaidan protests, the inauguration of a new Ukrainian government and the signing of the EU–Ukraine Association Agreement in June 2014 were accompanied by contradictory statements on the question of Ukrainian membership aspirations on the part of the EU. Stefan Fule, the EU commissioner for enlargement and European neighborhood policy, argued in favor of Ukraine‘s admission in the long term. 

Additionally, from 2014 onward, the European Parliament repeatedly stated in its resolutions that UKraine has “a European perspective” and that “pursuant to Article 49 of the Treaty on European Union, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine — like any other European state — have a European perspective and may apply to become members of the Union provided that they adhere to the principles of democracy, respect fundamental freedoms and human and minority rights and ensure the rule of law.”

In contrast, then German Chancellor Angela Merkel emphasized in 2015 that the Eastern Partnership shall not be understood as an “instrument for EU-accession” and that “Ukraine must first meet all the envisaged conditions.” Even more explicitly, former EU Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker maintained that “Ukraine will definitely not be able to become a member of the EU in the next 20 to 25 years, and not of NATO either.”

Drawing Closer

Juncker’s position and the EU’s more cautious reactions regarding Ukraine’s membership aspirations mark a considerable contrast to the current discourse within the bloc. But while von der Leyen’s address to the European Parliament is a positive step forward, it does not mean that the discursive shift on the subject will necessarily lead to Ukraine’s accession. Instead, such rhetoric contributes to rendering this policy option more appropriate and legitimate. 

In order to open this “policy space,” as Lene Hansen, professor of international relations at the University of Copenhagen, put it in 2006, Ukraine’s drawing closer to the bloc must be presented as a course of action that conforms with the EU’s identity.

Following this line of thought, in her speech, von der Leyen highlighted Ukraine’s European character. Not only did she declare that the outbreak of war in Ukraine means that “War has returned to Europe” (even though war has been ongoing in Eastern Ukraine since 2014), she also refers to Kyiv as a “European capital” and argues that “the European Union and Ukraine are already closer than ever before.” Von der Leyen also emphasized that “Nobody in this hemicycle can doubt that a people that stands up so bravely for our European values belongs in our European family.”

References to values do not only function as a means to construct a sense of community with Ukraine. They also establish a clear line of difference to Russia. In this respect, von der Leyen cites a Ukrainian newspaper stating that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine marks “a clash of two worlds, two polar sets of values.” Von der Leyen builds on this quote and argues that “this is a clash between the rule of law and the rule of the gun; between democracies and autocracies; between a rules-based order and a world of naked aggression.” 

She draws a clear line not only between the EU itself but also other actors who share these values and Russia on the diametrically opposed side. That Ukraine continues to struggle with corruption, restricted political rights and civil liberties as well as a weak rule of law does not fit into this discourse and so is no longer relevant.

Von der Leyen holds that “If Putin was seeking to divide the European Union, to weaken NATO, and to break the international community, he has achieved exactly the opposite. We are more united than ever.” Indeed, this perfectly reflects what Australian political scientist David Campbell pointed out already in the beginning of the 1990s, namely that foreign policy discourses lend themselves particularly well to the establishment of an understanding of the inside as opposed to the (threatening) outside — that is, to construct identity through difference. 

In that sense, the EU does not only have to “stand up against this cruel aggression” due to the values that it shares with Ukraine and deems attacked by the actions of Russian President Vladimir Putin, but also because “The destiny of Ukraine is at stake, but our own fate also lies in the balance,” as von der Leyen states. Thus, the EU’s own security and freedom are closely linked to the situation in Ukraine.

Diplomatic Tightrope

While von der Leyen’s address to the European Parliament perfectly supports the discursive shift that is currently taking place within the EU regarding closer cooperation with Ukraine, she emphasizes that “There is still a long path ahead.” It remains unlikely that the EU will admit Ukraine via an accelerated procedure in the midst of an ongoing war; this would override the Copenhagen Criteria that determine whether a state is eligible to accede to the EU.

Nevertheless, the current discourse lays the foundation for consolidating and popularizing the demand for Ukraine’s accession. Hence, it is now up to the EU to find ways to reconcile this discourse with Russian concerns and to de-escalate the ongoing conflict. 

According to Hiski Haukkala, a professor of International Relations at the University of Tampere, from 2014 onward, the EU has tried to perform a balancing act between showing solidarity with Ukraine and condemning Russia’s attempts to deter Kyiv from following a pro-European path while simultaneously trying to allay Moscow’s unease regarding these developments.

Similar to Ukraine’s aspiration to join NATO, Haukkala foresaw in 2015 “that both EU–Russia relations and the wider European security order will be in for a wider and longer disruption than has currently been witnessed” due to this increasing collision. This is exactly the situation we find ourselves in at the moment.

How can the EU preserve its credibility after stating that Ukraine “belongs to the European family” and that its “own fate also lies in the balance” without adding fuel to the fire of Russia’s security concerns? What the EU needs now is a clear strategy regarding a sustainable postwar European security order that must be, whether we like it or not, coordinated with Moscow. This does not mean that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is justified by supposed Russian security concerns. 

Nevertheless, this war must end immediately in order to avert an immense humanitarian crisis and to prevent the war from spilling to neighboring countries. Considering that Georgia and Moldova are reported to be waiting to hand in their EU membership application any minute now, the union needs a more robust, diplomatically sensitive strategy toward the eastern countries with which it maintains association agreements. The EU urgently needs to provide answers to the question of how it could strive for further eastern enlargement without it being met with Russian aggression. 

When asked about the earliest possible date for Ukrainian accession, von der Leyen replied that “This is hard to say. … Reforms have to be done, processes have to be set up.” This indicates that a clear approach toward Europe’s eastern neighborhood and to Russia in particular is still wanting.

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In her speech, Ursula von der Leyen adopted the phrase “Slava Ukraini” — “Glory to Ukraine” — used by President Zelenskyy during his address to the European Parliament. The phrase is a greeting that became closely connected to the Euromaidan protests in contemporary Ukrainian public consciousness. It conveys the vision of an independent and free Ukraine seeking cooperation with the EU. 

While the European Union’s discourse demonstrates that this vision already resonates more strongly than ever before, it seems unlikely that Ukraine will be able to join the EU anytime soon. The European Council has to unanimously approve a country’s application, which will remain unrealistic as long as the core problem of overcoming the dividing line between the West and the EU on the one hand and Russia on the other remains unresolved.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Is Ukraine Likely to Join the EU Anytime Soon?  appeared first on Fair Observer.

We invite readers to join us by submitting their suggestions of words and expressions that deserve exploring, with or without original commentary. To submit a citation from the news and/or provide your own short commentary, send us an email.

March 7: Unity

Like many voices in the West, The Economist appears delighted by one of the effects of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. The title of a current article contains the self-congratulatory message: “Russian aggression is prompting rare unity and severe reprisals.” The New York Times made the same point with its own more melodramatic rhetoric. “In a few frantic days,” a trio of Times reporters wrote, “the West threw out the standard playbook that it had used for decades and instead marshaled a stunning show of unity against Russia’s brutal aggression in the heart of Europe.” 

Unity is stunning, and The Economist’s “severe reprisals” are the icing on the cake that demonstrate the West’s vaunted ability, according to The Times, to respond “on a global scale and with dizzying speed.” So why is beleaguered Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy now complaining about not getting the support he expected?

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The suffering of the Ukrainian people and their president’s complaints apparently haven’t dampened the West’s penchant for self-congratulation. Carl Bildt, the former Swedish prime minister, writing for The Washington Post, goes further in summing up US optimism: “It’s too early to think in these terms, but a NATO that perhaps also has Sweden and Finland as members should be ready to invite both Ukraine and Russia to join.” 

It’s the dream of every politician inside the Beltway and nearly everyone in Arlington and Langley: the evocation of a new Europe enthusiastically and harmoniously united under the US military leadership. Bildt nevertheless concludes on a note of appropriate humility and even a dose of realism: “But before we get there, much will happen, little of which we can foresee today.”

Harvard University also noticed the phenomenon, which it describes as “a much-needed wake-up call for Europe.” In the interest of offering some much-needed perspective, Harvard mobilized two serious thinkers for a panel discussion. The noted theorist and professor of international affairs, Stephen Walt, argued that “the war in Ukraine has in some respects dispelled a whole series of liberal illusions that misled many people during the post-Cold War period.”

This remark is particularly apt at a time when the entire US establishment, led by a Democratic administration that has been obsessed by the Russian threat since losing the 2016 election to Donald Trump, is currently using the power of the media to recreate a dangerously bellicose Cold War atmosphere.

Walt’s analysis dares to call into question the major assumptions inculcated by US media in its presentation of the stakes of the current crisis. He unveils some of the “liberal illusions” that other less charitable analysts might more appropriately call a case of systemic, voluntary blindness. Among the illusions he cites “the idea that a major war could never happen again in Europe, and that the spread of economic interdependence and the expansion of NATO would mean that ‘eventually all of Europe would be a vast zone of peace.’”

These were essentially acts of faith shared by every administration and promoted by the massive security state and military-industrial for the last 30 years. They stemmed from the neoliberal conviction that a stable American economy required a system based on subsidizing an industrial core focused on military technology that was also indirectly coupled with the consumer market. The military side, through the global presence of US armed forces, guaranteed unencumbered access to the resources required to produce the technology. The military also served as the initial outlet for the technology’s use.

This rational system supposedly respectful of free markets that was launched in the aftermath of World War II rapidly turned into a “liberal” version of a new version of state socialism with global reach. It imperceptibly acquired the attributes needed to build a modern hypertechnologized hegemon. 

Alas, its very scope and several of the mistakes it produced along the way made the formerly invisible model of state socialism visible to critics. It became increasingly clear that the institutions of a democratic nation had become dominated by a financial and political elite. They even had a name, “the 1%.” They banded together to fuel, manage and monitor the system they had put in place. Politics was redesigned to meet their needs rather than those of the people.

Liberal Orthodoxy at the Service of State Socialism

The world has seen three contrasting models of state socialism in the past century, as well as a fourth and highly aggressive one — fascism. That one was thankfully eliminated at the end of the Second World War, discredited for providing a model that was too in your face. Fascism’s focus on military technology and the media’s role in disseminating nationalistic propaganda nevertheless provided models that influenced the other versions of state socialism. The three other more solidly built models are those of the Soviet Union, the US and China.

The Soviet model ultimately failed because it was frozen into an ideology crafted in the 19^th century that took no account of an evolving world. The American model gradually took form, initially as a reaction to the particularly aggressive version of laissez-faire capitalism that emerged in the late 19^th century. Its taming began in the 20^th century with the anti-trust movement. 

Eschewing any form of collectivist ideology, the US model subtly and nearly invisibly imposed its collectivist nature through its understanding of the power of media and the birth of the “science” of public relations, pioneered in the early decades of the 20^thcentury by Ivy Lee and Edward Bernays. These consultants worked in the darker shadows of the corridors of political and economic power. Unlike Marx and Lenin, they were cleverly prevented by their handlers from being seen on center stage as they honed the powerful ideology that undergirded the new American version of state socialism. They and their ideology remained too invisible to criticize.

The new ideology nevertheless didn’t go unnoticed. Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky engaged a valiant effort to articulate criticism of it in their book “Manufacturing Consent.” And they did so with great precision. But their thesis focusing on the oppressive power of the media at the service of a corporate and governmental oligarchy became known only to a marginal segment of the population. 

The new ideology nevertheless didn’t go unnoticed. Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky engaged a valiant effort to articulate criticism of it in their book “Manufacturing Consent.” And they did so with great precision. But their thesis focusing on the oppressive power of the media at the service of a corporate and governmental oligarchy became known only to a marginal segment of the population. The media it criticized predictably ignored it, ensuring the invisibility of the true structure of a system of state socialism. 

In traditional centralized power systems — and this is true in many nations even today — the lack of cultural influence of their media forces them to resort to direct censorship. In an evolved system in which the media has attained a superficial image of autonomy, government censorship serves no purpose because it can count on the media to self-censor. Indeed, any attempt to censor calls attention to what the government prefers people simply to ignore.

China has turned out to be a special case. With the Communist Party running the government, it is archetypically a socialist state. But it has learned some of the lessons provided by the US example, including the admiration of personal wealth stemming from the traditional Chinese celebration of prosperity.

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Because many Westerners have traditionally labeled Chinese culture “inscrutable,” American establishment strategists, attracted by the dynamics of the Chinese economy but repelled by its political culture, appear to be floundering about in their quest to categorize the evil they desperately want to see as the essence of a perceived powerful rival. It was easy for Americans to dismiss the Soviet Union as a relic of a 19^th-century worldview. In contrast, China’s state socialism is oriented toward the future, notably with its emphasis on technology and proactive concern with infrastructure. 

Moreover, in too many ways, China’s state socialism resembles the US version, which means criticizing China might invite self-criticism. Worse, instead of placing all its faith in the ruling class as the US does with its trickle-down economics, China factors into many of its policies the needs of the entire population. That, as Edward Bernays might remark, gives it a certain PR advantage.  

At the Harvard event, the Atlantic Council’s Benjamin Haddad represented a point of view more consistent with the optics of the US security state. But, in contrast with The Post’s editorialist, he noted that “something much deeper is happening in Europe that will have really long-term consequences.” He has dared to express the heterodox view that, instead of perceiving an increased need for NATO, Europe may now be calling into question its traditional acceptance of US leadership.

As such debates continue in the US, the Ukrainian people and President Zelenskyy appear to be losing patience with NATO and the US, who have expressed their undying love for the country while refusing to save it from a situation they created. They may be well placed to appreciate Stephen Walt’s observation that “powerful countries often do pretty horrible things when they feel, rightly or wrongly, that their security is being endangered.” The US and NATO are more worried about their own security than Ukraine’s. On that, they are in total agreement with Vladimir Putin.

Why Monitoring Language Is Important

Language allows people to express thoughts, theories, ideas, experiences and opinions. But even while doing so, it also serves to obscure what is essential for understanding the complex nature of reality. When people use language to hide essential meaning, it is not only because they cynically seek to prevaricate or spread misinformation. It is because they strive to tell the part or the angle of the story that correlates with their needs and interests.

In the age of social media, many of our institutions and pundits proclaim their intent to root out “misinformation.” But often, in so doing, they are literally seeking to miss information.

Is there a solution? It will never be perfect, but critical thinking begins by being attentive to two things: the full context of any issue we are trying to understand and the operation of language itself. In our schools, we are taught to read and write, but, unless we bring rhetoric back into the standard curriculum, we are never taught how the power of language to both convey and distort the truth functions. There is a largely unconscious but observable historical reason for that negligence. Teaching establishments and cultural authorities fear the power of linguistic critique may be used against their authority.

Remember, Fair Observer’s Language and the News seeks to sensitize our readers to the importance of digging deeper when assimilating the wisdom of our authorities, pundits and the media that transmit their knowledge and wisdom.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Is Europe’s Newfound Unity a Liberal Illusion? appeared first on Fair Observer.

We invite readers to join us by submitting their suggestions of words and expressions that deserve exploring, with or without original commentary. To submit a citation from the news and/or provide your own short commentary, send us an email.

March 4: Tragic

Even though he hesitated until the last minute to make it official on Thursday, everyone in France knew that their president, Emmanuel Macron, would be up for reelection in a contest whose first round will take place on April 10, followed by the second-round runoff on April 24.

The strategic delay in his decision-making has been officially explained by the combination of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis and the much more recent Russian invasion of Ukraine, a dossier for which Macron has been very active in recent months. The race is very difficult to call given the range of opponents, but Macron is favored to win the first round. Though it’s anyone’s guess how the second round may play out or even who the opposing candidate is likely to be.

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With the Ukraine crisis dominating the headlines, Macron stepped up this week, almost at the same time as US President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address, to give a rousing speech with a similar theme, insisting on solidarity with the Ukrainians and the defense of democracy. But unlike his American counterpart, whose speech read like a celebration of his administration’s and his nation’s moral commitment to the Ukrainian cause, Macron went a bit further, invoking the “tragic” dimension of the current situation with these words: “To this brutal return of tragedy in history, we owe it to ourselves to respond with historic decisions.” He added the idea that “Europe has entered a new era” and hinted that it would be an era defined in terms of “energy independence” and “European defense.”  

Macron’s vision of a different future may be interpreted more as a campaign promise than a realistic forecast of how European identity will evolve in the future. But it is a theme that Macron has heavily invested in, an idea he has been promoting for a long time. Despite past failure to move the needle, he may be onto something this time concerning the future of Europe’s security policies, which are as much under attack as Kyiv itself.

The crisis in Ukraine reveals not only the threat Russia potentially represents for some European nations, but also the risk associated with Europe’s dependence on Russia’s natural gas. Even more significantly — though discussion of this topic must wait for some sort of resolution to the Ukrainian drama — the crisis has revealed the troubling degree to which European countries have become the hostages of the monster known as NATO.

The calling into question of NATO may sound paradoxical at the very moment when every country in the prosperous West has expressed its heartfelt solidarity with Ukraine and its bitter condemnation of Russia’s invasion. Many commentators have waxed lyrical about the “unification” of Europe in opposition to Russia and see this as a prelude to the reinforcement of NATO. That is possible, but at this early stage in the conflict, it sounds like a hasty conclusion.

Macron is hinting at a world beyond NATO. He is certainly right to assume that he isn’t the only European leader who, without complaining too loudly, is privately assessing Washington’s responsibility in the conflict. After all, the US is the nation that, despite France and Germany’s resistance, drew the red line defending the iron-clad principle of Ukraine’s inalienable right to join NATO.  

Macron’s position should help his chances in the coming election. He cannot be accused of electoral opportunism as he has proved himself consistent and sincere in his mission to redefine Europe’s security in European rather than North Atlantic terms. It hasn’t worked yet despite his and, to some extent, Germany’s previous efforts, but that predictable disappointment occurred before the tragedy that is now engulfing Europe. When the dust settles on the Russia-Ukraine crisis, all Europeans (and maybe even the UK’s Boris Johnson) will begin parsing the complex lessons produced by a terribly mismanaged fiasco that is still ongoing and shows some signs of possibly leading to a nuclear conflagration.

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For the moment, the Americans have presented the Russian assault as a combat between good and evil. Europe and its media have, in their very real but to some extent staged outrage, followed suit. But at some point in the near future, Europeans will sit down and attempt to assess not just the winners and losers as the US tends to do, but the volume of evil that is attributable to both sides. European cultures tend to be far less binary and Manichean than US culture, which has demonstrated in this crisis its inimitable capacity to discard the kind of nuance that can, at least on some occasions, actually prevent or at least forestall tragedy.

The idea of tragedy, understood to be a noble art form, is taken seriously in France, a nation that produced two famous authors of tragedy, Corneille and Racine. Apart from a brief episode in the 18^th century (partly due to jealousy), France has always admired Shakespeare and Schiller. The French know that authentic tragedy is never about the battle between good and evil. The literary genre that exploits that kind of binary logic is called melodrama. Tragedy always contains something corresponding to Aristotle’s intuition of its being built around the notion of a tragic flaw.

In his analysis of Oedipus Rex, Aristotle attributed the flaw to the tragic hero, seen as admirable and good, but affected by something that undermines his good fortune. But the flaw may also exist in the system and its rules, in the government or the culture of the play, in the environment in which tragic heroes and heroines are permitted to act. As one famous tragic hero noted, there may be “something rotten in the state of Denmark,” something that to which the tragedy itself is drawing the audience’s attention.

When he characterizes the Ukraine conflict as a tragedy, Emmanuel Macron, like other Europeans familiar with the history of the past century, is thinking not so much of the literary tradition as the devastating wars that have taken place on the continent’s soil. This is a privilege not equally available to Americans, whose only lasting memory of war on their own soil is that of a civil war that happened over 150 years ago.

The idea of history Americans learn at school and through the media, even in the case of their own civil war, is always about a struggle between good and evil. Slavery defined the South as evil, despite the fact that Southerners were true Americans. Because all conflicts are framed as a combat between good and evil, Americans are encouraged to think of their nation as a “force for good.” America is exceptional and has been called the “indispensable nation.” Many attribute to the French leader Charles de Gaulle the reflection that “the graveyard is full of indispensable people.” History too is full of indispensable nations and even empires.

Today, everyone in Europe perceives the Ukraine situation as a worrying tragedy that is still building toward its most destructive climax. But for Macron, whose reelection is far from assured within the chaotic political environment that currently reigns in France, it may turn out to be a serendipitous tragedy. It may turn out to be the moment of enlightenment in which his dream of a Europe no longer tethered to the United States may define and implement its own security system. As he begins to hone his official reelection campaign, Macron can pursue that goal and, at the same time, hope that it will convince his electors that he’s the one who can carry it out. 

Why Monitoring Language Is Important

Language allows people to express thoughts, theories, ideas, experiences and opinions. But even while doing so, it also serves to obscure what is essential for understanding the complex nature of reality. When people use language to hide essential meaning, it is not only because they cynically seek to prevaricate or spread misinformation. It is because they strive to tell the part or the angle of the story that correlates with their needs and interests.

In the age of social media, many of our institutions and pundits proclaim their intent to root out “misinformation.” But often, in so doing, they are literally seeking to miss information.

Is there a solution? It will never be perfect, but critical thinking begins by being attentive to two things: the full context of any issue we are trying to understand and the operation of language itself. In our schools, we are taught to read and write, but, unless we bring rhetoric back into the standard curriculum, we are never taught how the power of language to both convey and distort the truth functions. There is a largely unconscious but observable historical reason for that negligence. Teaching establishments and cultural authorities fear the power of linguistic critique may be used against their authority.

Remember, Fair Observer’s Language and the News seeks to sensitize our readers to the importance of digging deeper when assimilating the wisdom of our authorities, pundits and the media that transmit their knowledge and wisdom.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy.

The post Emmanuel Macron’s Chance to Appear Transformative appeared first on Fair Observer.