Philippa Kaur

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    America’s Reputation May Bounce Back After Trump, But Will the Country?

    Donald Trump used to care what the world outside America thought of him. Before he ran for president, he was focused on turning his business into a global brand. The name “Trump” was supposed to connote all the luxury and success of the elite lifestyle. Trump hotels, Trump golf courses, Trump books and TV shows and knick-knacks: Donald Trump’s ability to sell all of that depended on his reputation as a globally successful businessman and negotiator.

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    Sure, the guy was a fraud. He wasn’t so much a negotiator as a shake-down artist. His businesses failed and went bankrupt. He had to be bailed out by his father and, later, by unscrupulous bankers. Everything about Donald Trump was a lie even before the man opened his mouth, which then added exponentially to the mendacity.

    Question of Perception

    But Trump has built his brand on the basis of perception. With his Brioni suits and inflated asset sheet, the man looks the part of a billionaire well enough to have played one on television. His hotels appear to be expensive, his casinos glitzy and his golf courses well-groomed. His reality TV show “The Apprentice” was edited to make its star look managerial rather than erratic and foolish.

    Then Trump moved from reality show to reality. Even with a team of spinmeisters, Donald Trump in the White House lost control of perceptions. His presidency couldn’t be reedited to make him look good. The corrupt underlings, the outrageous nepotism, the impeachable offenses in foreign policy, the brazen shift of wealth upward and the coddling of dictators were all on full display well before the pandemic hit and the economy tanked.

    Trump managed to elude removal and maintain his base of support despite all the bad press. But facts are stubborn things, as President John Adams once said, and the coronavirus numbers are particularly damning. If the United States had handled COVID-19 the way our neighbor to the north did, more than 100,000 Americans would still be alive today.

    Let’s dwell on that number for a moment: 100,000. Trump used to boast that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters. With his bungled response to COVID-19, the president has gone from murder to mass murder. The “excess” casualties of the pandemic are akin to Trump pulling out not a gun on Fifth Avenue but a 10-kiloton improvised nuclear device capable of killing tens of thousands of people. Yet, despite the carnage, Trump maintains a stable base of support among just under 45% of voters.

    The world outside the United States is not fooled, however. According to a new Pew Research Center poll, only 16% of those polled across 13 major countries have any confidence in Donald Trump as a leader. That’s lower than European heads of state like Germany’s Angela Merkel (76%) and France’s Emmanuel Macron (64%), but it’s even lower than the generally negative perception of Russia’s Vladimir Putin (23%) and China’s Xi Jinping (19%). Trump couldn’t even generate majority support among right-wing parties in the countries surveyed. The closest he comes is in Spain, where only 45% of far-right Vox party supporters have confidence in the US president.

    The truly startling fact about the Pew poll is that the 13 countries included are all American allies. And it’s not just their perception of Trump. It’s also their impression of the United States. The share of the public that holds a favorable view of America has dropped to new lows in the United Kingdom, Japan, Canada and Australia. In only one country in the survey, South Korea, did a majority of the population (59%) have a positive assessment of America.

    Who Needs Love?

    Trump doesn’t seem to care very much about his plummeting reputation abroad. At the moment, he’s not focused on building resorts and selling Trump-branded products. For the last three years, he’s cared only about reelection. Winning a second term far outweighs any other personal indicators of worth or wealth. Spain, South Korea, Australia? These are not swing states. The citizens of other countries do not vote in US elections.

    Heck, Trump doesn’t even seem to care about the fires rampaging through the West Coast since there’s little he can do to win Electoral College votes in California and Oregon. The current US president does not consider blue states to be truly American. This is what it means to be a right-wing populist. You redefine “the people” to include only your supporters. Everyone else is anti-American. The logical conclusion of such thinking is to allow “the people” to vote and keep everyone else from the polls.

    If you’re a Trump supporter, you probably don’t care what the world thinks about you or your president. You believe that the world is divided into “shithole” countries that fear America and hoity-toity elitist countries like France and Germany that look down on America. As an exception to the rules, the United States stands alone. It doesn’t need the world’s love.

    If you despise Trump, you probably don’t care much about the Pew poll either. If Trump is defeated in November, America’s reputation will recover. That’s what happened, after all, when Barack Obama took over from George W. Bush. But here’s why the poll is important, even if Trump loses decisively in two months. 

    Regardless of the precise election results in November, a significant portion of the American population will have voted for a demonstrably incompetent, racist sociopath. You can be forgiven for pulling the lever for an untested politician, the world may allow. But continuing to support someone with Trump’s dismal track record may not reflect well on Trump’s base or, frankly, the country as a whole.

    Such a faction could maneuver itself back into power. They’ve taken over the Republican Party, and they’ve gone all-in for Trump. Congress will soon have its first QAnon believer in Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene. Is a QAnon caucus, promoting its conspiracy theory of Satan-worshipping pedophiles ruling the world, far behind?

    Why trust such a country? Why invest in such a country? Why call such a country an ally?Yes, of course, everyone knows that democracies can throw up unpredictable leaders every now and then. But outsiders may well conclude that Trump is so far outside the parameters of normal as to call into question the very democratic system in the United States.

    Infectious Delusions

    The United States has relinquished global leadership. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, given the quality of American leadership over the years. The international community should now be disabused of any illusions that the United States is acting on behalf of the good of the globe. When it comes to addressing climate change, for instance, other countries should lead. The same holds true for safeguarding public health, remedying global economic inequality, and restraining the arms trade. The United States has had a lousy global record on these issues and a pretty lousy domestic record, too.

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    The downside is that the United States isn’t passing on its mantle of global leadership, as Britain did to America after World War II. The tragedy here is not that there isn’t a logical successor but that the United States didn’t invest at least some of its political and economic capital into building stronger international institutions that could serve as collective global leadership.

    The “Trump effect” has been very limited globally. Brazilians elected their “Trump of the Amazon” Jair Bolsonaro. A couple countries have opted for outsiders, like comedian Volodymyr Zelensky in Ukraine. But otherwise, it appears that the disastrous record of Donald Trump has served as a form of immunization. What country would voluntarily embark on the same trip to Crazytown that the United States has taken over the last three years?

    It’s worth repeating here that even right-wing populists generally think that Trump has done a poor job and the United States screwed up its pandemic response. Even if illiberal nationalism continues to prevail in places like Russia, China, Hungary and Turkey, the peculiar American variant of this disease known as Trumpism has fortunately proven to be an ideological dead end globally.

    Politically speaking, the world will survive the Trumpocalypse. The United States is a different matter. Trumpism, like COVID-19, has both exposed and amplified the manifold defects of this country, from widespread racial injustice to a failing social safety net. All the world’s a stage, as the bard once said, and the international community has front row seats to watch, with a mixture of pity and fear, the tragic downfall of the once-great United States.

    *[This article was originally published by Foreign Policy in Focus.]

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

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    Will This Be the Election to End All Elections?

    When drafting the United States Constitution in 1787, the Founding Fathers of the new nation sought to formalize the nature of what they wished to be an innovative form of government. Trying to reconcile the irreconcilable, they devised a series of complex arrangements designed to ensure that the country would exist not as a simple nation-state governed by a hierarchy along the European model, but as a fragmented association of local governments, called states. These fundamentally autonomous entities would share a general political philosophy and mutually ensure their collective defense.

    Among the innovative but historically bizarre innovations was the mode of calculating representation in the federal government based on population. More than half of the states allowed slavery. In the southern states, slaves were the working class and represented an important percentage of the population. To satisfy the demands of those states to include slaves in the calculation while depriving them of all human rights and considering them nothing more than property, the founders agreed to count slaves considered at three-fifth the value of free white citizens. 

    The founders created one other bold innovation. Because there was no unified nation, the president of the United States would not be elected by the American people, but by a kind of negotiation among the states. Each state could send a slate of electors to an institution called the Electoral College to express its preference for a presidential candidate. If any historical model existed for this “democratic” innovation, it was the Vatican’s system for electing a pope.

    For decades after its founding, a growing number of Americans in the North found slavery to be not only inconsistent with the democratic aspirations of the young nation but also in violation of the stirring ideal expressed by a former president and slaveholder who, in 1776, proclaimed that “all men are created equal.” But slavery was one of the essential pillars of a Constitution that was designed to allow states to run their own affairs. Calling slavery into question challenged an essential premise of a Constitution built around tolerating it. 

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    When the Southern states seceded from the federal union, the entire logic of the original Constitution imploded. After the Union victory, the US should have written a new Constitution. Instead, the Congress amended the existing one, keeping much of its dead wood. What emerged was a Constitution that turned the original concept of the nation on its head. Americans were henceforth called upon to pledge their allegiance to an “indivisible” nation, meaning that the states were now more like provinces or semi-autonomous districts than what they had been previously: the political core of the system.

    Thanks to this patchwork, the nation was unified. The American people theoretically became more important than the states as the ultimate reference in the definition of rights. The implicit sovereignty of the individual states was compromised but not erased from the Constitution. It was as if a diversity of clans suddenly decided it was just one big, happy family.

    Another ambiguous shift in the democratic concept was taking place in the background. By 1880 every state accepted to cast their votes in the Electoral College for the presidential candidate on the basis of the popular vote within the state. Unlike the abolition of slavery, this shift required no modification of the Constitution. Accordingly, as the Supreme Court declared in Bush v. Gore in 2000, states “can take back the power to appoint electors.” 

    The Trump 2020 campaign noticed this loophole. The states can choose to ignore the popular vote. In a sobering article for The Atlantic, Barton Gellman writes that Republicans are “discussing contingency plans to bypass election results and appoint loyal electors in battleground states where Republicans hold the legislative majority.” Gellman pressed the Trump campaign to explain its eventual strategy and only received this response: “It’s outrageous that President Trump and his team are being villainized for upholding the rule of law and transparently fighting for a free and fair election.”

    Here is today’s 3D definition:

    Free and fair election:

    The title habitually used by parties to describe elections which they have found the means to distort and even overturn the results of — a phenomenon formerly observed with some frequency in some South American and African republics and which, since the year 2000, has become a respected trend in at least one North American nation.

    Contextual Note

    The hypothesis laid out by The Atlantic is that Republican governors could declare the official results suspect and arbitrarily nominate electors favorable to Trump to vote in the Electoral College. Were this to happen, there is no question that Democrats and indeed most Americans would call foul. The nation would be faced with a constitutional crisis of major proportions, leading to serious civil unrest and possibly a citizens’ civil war.

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    Most reasonable people would see this as the kind of outlandish violation of democracy that only someone as brazen as Donald Trump would dare to attempt. They could not imagine that any respectable politician would accept to be party to such a transparently anti-democratic ploy, tantamount to a coup d’état that could irreparably tarnish their reputations.

    But Gellman cites Lawrence Tabas, the Pennsylvania Republican Party’s chairman, who appears to find the scenario palatable: “It is one of the available legal options set forth in the Constitution.” Another Republican, Pennsylvania’s state Senate majority leader, Jake Corman, used the classic I- would-never-do-this-by-choice argument: “We don’t want to go down that road, but we understand where the law takes us, and we’ll follow the law.”

    For many assertive Americans, the law has become the screen behind which major offenses against public morality can conveniently be justified. If it’s legal, it’s moral, and hey, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. Everyone is expected to use the advantages the law provides. Politics is all about gaining and holding on to power anyway. The law provides the required setting. 

    Historical Note

    The laws written in 1787 that President Trump’s people are relying on were written for a totally different political entity. But for them, everything the Constitution contains, however inappropriate to today’s world, is sacred. Whether it’s gun rights or the Electoral College, Americans must learn to live with it and even love it.

    Because of the mythology surrounding its Constitution, the United States has become a nation that attributes an inordinate amount of its authority to lawyers. It was, after all, the first nation in history to be defined by law rather than secular cultural heritage. Americans see the Constitution as the nation’s virtual birth certificate. The Constitution can be amended, but it can never be replaced. In contrast, since the founding of the US, France has had five different republics, each with a new constitution. The French are currently toying seriously with the idea of moving on to drafting a sixth one.

    The impending constitutional crisis is unprecedented, though Gellman refers to one similar incident that occurred in 1876, a contested election between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel Tilden. One major difference is that neither candidate was an incumbent who could use the tools of presidential power. Another notable difference is that neither had quite the reputation that Donald Trump has of twisting both the law and the truth to secure a “deal” on the terms he prefers.

    Gellman warns the nation that these are not normal times: “Something far out of the norm is likely to happen.” The consequences are impossible to predict. “The political system,” he tells us, “may no longer be strong enough to preserve its integrity.” Is the sacred Constitution in peril?

    Democrats appear to be hoping that Joe Biden will emerge victorious, either on election day or after months of legal wrangling and the trauma of massive civil protest. They believe his victory will usher in a return to “normalcy” and business as usual, similar to the Obama years. But before he can begin the rituals of governing, whenever that may occur, the life of the nation is likely to have undergone a series of radical changes. Alongside an ongoing pandemic, a deepening economic crisis and a general loss of faith in all forms of institutional authority, the vaunted system of checks and balances imagined by the founders in 1787 may find itself both seriously unchecked and totally unbalanced.

    *[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 Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

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

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    When God Hates America

    Anyone familiar with the ritual called the State of the Union is also familiar with the fact it invariably ends with the exhortation “God bless America.” Few are probably aware of the fact that the first president to utter it was none other than Richard Nixon, who “dropped the phrase during an attempt at damage control for the burgeoning Watergate scandal on April 30, 1973.” God did bless America at the time, if only by ridding the country of “Tricky Dick.”

    Yet it is probably fitting that it was Nixon who first came up with this phrase. Nixon represents something that is fundamental to the human condition, at least in its American form: the drive to succeed, no matter what, the force of self-delusion (“I’m not a crook”) and the fundamental hypocrisy that is central to the American experience.

    Nixon marks the origins of much of what is wrong today in the United States. It was his so-called Southern strategy — the appeal to the worst racist animus of white voters in the South — that not only won him the election, twice, but which marked the Republican Party for decades to come. Donald Trump owes his victory in the presidential election of 2016 to a large extent to Richard Nixon — a victory that has poisoned the country beyond repair.

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    Trump’s callous response to some of the worst calamities in recent history, from the disastrous impact of COVID-19 to the hellish wildfire inferno engulfing the western states, suggests that God has been looking less than kindly on his “city upon a hill” envisioned to represent a model of Christian charity, as John Winthrop put it in 1630. In fact, one might even suspect that God has come to hate it — that he hates it so much, in fact, that he allowed for the election of Donald Trump, the worthy heir to Richard Nixon.

    Nixon, of course, was a crook. But compared to Trump, he was one of Woody Allen’s “smalltime crooks,” little more than a minor league player. At the same time, however, he prepared the ground and paved the way for the current president who has made the appeal to white anxiety and resentment central to his administration. Trump, of course, has gone out of his way to invoke God’s blessing, waving the Bible (albeit upside down) in front of a church “he rarely attends and whose leaders and congregation work against the policies he trumpets,” in a craven attempt to play to his base: the dwindling number of fundamentalist Christians who consider him their last bulwark against an increasingly discombobulating, if not threatening, reality.

    Walking With Dinosaurs

    Donald Trump is the epitome of the stereotypical American, boisterous and narrowminded (“still the greatest country in the world”), hypocritical to the max (waving a Bible while boasting that he can grab any woman by her private parts and get away with it), and completely oblivious to how the rest of the world regards the US these days (“we should have more people from Norway” at a time when no Norwegian in his or her right mind would want to move to a “shithole country” like the US). At the same time, he is reminiscent of the playground bully who runs away crying, like Scut Farkus’ toadie, Grover Dill, in “A Christmas Story” (“I’m gonna tell my dad”) — when somebody dares to stand up to him, particularly if it is a woman.

    The United States is still the most (practicing) Christian nation among advanced Western democracies. In the most recent Pew survey on religion in America, around two-thirds identified as Christians. To be sure, this was substantially lower than just a decade ago. Yet compared to Western Europe, it is a remarkably high level. This, however, is only part of the story. What is considerably more important is the fact that a substantial number of Americans insist on taking the Bible literally, as the absolute Truth, even if that truth runs against not only science but even common sense (who in their right mind would believe that Jesus walked with dinosaurs?).

    Now, one would expect that those who profess to be genuinely dedicated Christians would follow what the good book teaches. Basic exhortations such as don’t lie, don’t cheat, be kind, compassionate and merciful toward your fellow sister and brother, independent of their ethnic background, economic circumstances or sexual orientation. And, above all, be humble and don’t take the moral high ground with that smug self-righteousness, which is particularly irritating in the eyes of the Lord, whom America’s dedicated Christians claim as their ultimate authority.

    As is written in Isaiah 64:6, “all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags.” Or as Jesus once put it, “Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven” (Luke 6:37). For the self-righteous, such sentiments are alien. The self-righteous are hypocrites who condemn others in order to show that they are morally superior. The Pharisees are a prime example of this kind of smug self-righteousness, which Jesus condemns in the most scathing terms.

    In the United States, the equivalent are TV “evangelists” such as Pat Robertson, the host of the “700 Club,” a Christian news and TV program with an audience going into the millions. Or there are Christian “leaders” such as Jerry Falwell Jr., the disgraced former president of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, whose sexual shenanigans were too much even for evangelicals who have no qualms supporting a president who has boasted of getting away with … see above.

    And there are TV and radio commentators such as Tucker Carson at Fox News, who is still trying to figure out how to find his way out of Trump’s backside, and Rush Limbaugh, famous for dismissing COVID-19 as nothing more than the common flu and, later on, after tens of thousands of Americans had died from the respiratory disease, charging that following medical experts and wearing masks was “un-American” and nothing “compared to the way we have overcome enemies and obstacles in our past.”

    It would be easy to dismiss the likes of Robertson, Falwell Jr. and Limbaugh as somewhat picturesque if unhinged cranks were it not for the fact that their impact on ordinary people has been, and continues to be, far more pernicious than COVID-19 could ever achieve. There are good reasons to suspect that the Trump administration’s position on COVID-19, global warming and climate change, and white-on-black racism derives from a common root: the belief that the end is near. I am not referring to the end of COVID-19, or the end of the American empire, but of the end of humanity — the end of the world as we know it.

    Fulfillment of Prophecy

    In my former life, I had the opportunity to spend a year as an exchange student with a “fundamentalist” Christian family in Texas. They were some of the most generous people I have ever had the opportunity to encounter. They lived their faith, and it showed. The also introduced me, a Bavarian Catholic who had spent the past eight years of his life in a Catholic boarding school, to a world largely informed by the scripture’s teachings.

    For the first time, I was confronted not only with some of the major Old Testament prophets such as Daniel, but also with the Book of Revelations and its exegesis. Here, the most important book at the time, at least among true believers, was Hal Lindsey’s “The Late Great Planet Earth,” which sold millions of copies. The book was very much informed by the Cold War. In Lindsey’s exegesis of the Revelations, Gog and Magog, the “forces” from the north threatening Israel, is the Soviet Union attacking Israel with Mi-24 helicopters (John’s giant locusts). After Gog and Magog’s annihilation, there will be a war “between the Western powers and the Chinese, which will culminate in the end of the world in a thermonuclear blast.” So much for Hal Lindsey.

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    Nevertheless, the book was turned into a film, with Orson Welles, of all people, serving as the narrator. Both book and movie are based on John’s Apocalypse, which tells of the tribulations visited upon humanity heralding in the end of the world, the last judgment. True believers, of course, most of them Americans, were spared the pain. They were snatched from the earth in a process of divine kidnapping that swept them up into heaven from where they could gloat — the rapture. Evangelical writers, always eager to make a buck from the gullibility of true believers, turned the narrative into a series of books, “Left Behind,” which scared the daylights out of lukewarm believers and turned the authors into millionaires. This might sound funny, ludicrous, kooky, off the deep end were it not for the fact that it appears to inform major figures in Trump’s inner circle.

    One of the central dogmas among those who believe in the truth as revealed by John in the Apocalypse is that the end of history — and the return of Christ — is contingent on the Jews rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem. For a long time, this was inconceivable, given the fact that the site of the temple is occupied by two of Islam’s holiest shrines, the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque.

    Until Trump, American presidents have shied away from sanctioning Israel’s claim to all of Jerusalem. Diehard evangelicals have lobbied for decades that the American government do whatever possible to hasten the process. Presumably, this would allow the Jews to rebuild the temple. This, presumably, would entail destroying the Muslim shrines, which, in all probability, would trigger an all-out confrontation with the Muslim world.

    But in the self-contained world of American “dispensationalism,” Trump’s 2017 decision to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem was therefore widely seen as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy. Trump himself acknowledged that the move was largely “for evangelicals” rather than Jews who appeared to be rather unenthusiastic about it. But then why would they, given the fate that according to evangelicals awaits many of them during the time of tribulations? Hint: a large number will be “purged out and removed” — a euphemism, I guess, for saying they will go straight to hell.

    Apocalyptic Tales

    With Donald Trump, staunch believers in this kind of apocalyptic tales have assumed influential positions in the administration, above all Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former Housing Secretary Ben Carson, who is a Seventh-day Adventist, a Christian sect that holds that “almost all evangelical Christians will soon join with Satan to oppose Jesus Christ.” It stands to reason that their views on history and reality have had some influence on policy. Take, for instance, the environment. According to “rapture theologists,” the earth was given to humanity for its use. Therefore, environmentalism is nothing but “blasphemy.”

    According to one of the most influential “theological” voices in the White House, humans will not destroy the planet because God will “continually renew the face of the earth until He forms a new heaven and a new earth in the end times.” In any case, given the imminent approach of the end of the world, the destruction of the natural environment is hardly of vital concern.

    Embed from Getty Images

    In a similar vein, Trump’s lackluster response to the coronavirus pandemic might have something to do with the fact that among evangelicals, COVID-19 has been seen as a boon. As a leading contributor to the Trump campaign has put it, “The kingdom of God advances through a series of glorious victories, cleverly disguised as disasters.” In response to the pandemic, “millions of Americans” were turning to Jesus Christ, in the process augmenting the pool of likely Trump voters.

    In less than two months, the American electorate is going to vote for the country’s leader. Evangelicals will be a major force; so will be other Christians, including Latino Catholics. As it stands now, there is a chance that Trump will get reelected as a result. Evangelicals will be voting for Trump, but not because they believe that he is model Christian. Quite the opposite. They will vote for him because they believe that he is “God’s tool.” In the aftermath of the 2016 election, polls revealed substantial numbers of white Protestants believing that Trump was “anointed by God.” They also revealed that only a very small minority thought he was elected because God approved of his policies.

    Given what the Gospels have to say about Christ’s positions, it is fairly unlikely that God would approve of Trump’s “big, beautiful wall” or his more or less tacit support of racists and conspiracy theorists. This leaves only one alternative: God chose Trump to punish America for its blatant hybris, hypocrisy and self-righteousness. The Gospel tells us that God “so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Today, it seems that God hates America so much that he brought Donald Trump down upon it so that it understands the full extent of his wrath. Forget about God blessing America. He has better things to do.

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

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    The US Must Support Sudan’s Path to Democracy

    In the aftermath of the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain formalizing diplomatic relations with Israel on August 13 and September 11, respectively, many experts predict that Sudan will be the next Arab state to follow suit. The main reason for this pertains to the fact that the Trump administration has been putting pressure on Khartoum to abandon the Arab Peace Initiative (API) and open up full-fledged ties with Tel Aviv. Undoubtedly the White House would desperately like to see Sudan take this step prior to America’s presidential election in November.

    In a characteristically transnational manner, President Donald Trump and those around him, such as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and adviser Jared Kushner, are reportedly making a quid pro quo deal with Khartoum. The US State Department will remove Sudan from the State Sponsors of Terrorism (SST) list in exchange for Khartoum normalizing relations with the Jewish state. Nonetheless, this is a cynical and misguided way for the Trump administration to approach Sudan as it disregards the significant ways in which Sudan has changed its policies, both domestically and internationally. Ultimately, it would serve US national interests to immediately remove Sudan from this list regardless of Khartoum’s stances on Israel and the API.

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    Since Sudan’s former president Omar Hassan al-Bashir fell from power in the spring of 2019, the country’s democratic experiment has faced myriad challenges. From COVID-19 to human rights abuses committed by the Sudanese military and major economic problems, Sudan has been dealing with many difficult issues amid the post-Bashir period. Today, there is no denying that the popular and non-violent revolution which ended Sudan’s three-decades-long dictatorship is fragile. International support for Khartoum is necessary for Sudan’s democratic struggle to succeed.

    Yet this is not forthcoming, due to a lack of focus in US foreign policy that has resulted in insufficient attention being paid to the specific policy drivers that must be implemented if Washington can hope to engage constructively with Sudan’s democratic process. It would behoove officials in Washington to adopt policies that result in the US helping, rather than hindering, Sudan’s difficult transition to democracy and civilian rule.

    Struggle for Democracy

    After Bashir’s ouster in a palace coup in April 2019, Sudan’s revolutionaries, millions of whom spent months on the streets pressuring the dictator to step down, continued protesting in favor of civilian leadership. In contrast to the many Egyptians who supported the military-backed coup in Egypt that toppled their country’s president, Mohammed Morsi, in July 2013, Sudan’s wider public knew not to blindly trust the country’s military to defend a democratic revolution. By June 3, 2019, hardline elements tied to the Bashir regime, including militants from the notorious Janjaweed militia, massacred Sudanese protesters in the capital, resulting in roughly 120 deaths and hundreds of injuries.

    Yet about two months after that atrocity, Sudan’s military and civilian revolutionaries agreed to a political compromise that came up with a government that is led by civilians but also maintains significant military representation.

    Since August 2019, a sovereign council consisting of six civilian and five military officials has been governing Sudan. Additionally, Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok heads a technocratic cabinet comprised of civilians. Sudan plans to run free and democratic elections in 2022, with the interim period of time supposed to give Sudanese civil society an opportunity to regrow after being harshly oppressed under Bashir’s rule. During the present period, there has been a restoration of the freedoms of assembly, press and speech. But the democratic transition was agreed upon in the pre-COVID-19 era and at a time when impacts of the pandemic on public health, the economy and society could not possibly have been foreseen.

    For Sudan’s government, the gravest risk is that it will lose its legitimacy among more Sudanese citizens if the country’s economic situation remains bleak. Youth unemployment stands around 40% and could widen societal divisions if left unaddressed or if tackled in ways that exacerbate and widen existing fault-lines and inequalities. Long lines for petrol as well as staple foods are common in Sudan, where the country’s annual inflation rate reached 167% in September. The global coronavirus pandemic and the lockdown have only exacerbated the country’s economic problems and made it more urgent that actions be taken as soon as possible to support the political transition underway in Sudan rather than wait until 2022, by which time the impact of economic and social dislocation generated by the current crisis might be too late to effect a positive democratic outcome.

    Harm of US Sanctions

    “The single biggest obstacle to Sudan’s economic recovery is the continued U.S. economic sanctions, which … not only impacts trade with and investment from the United States, but from other countries and multilateral entities as well,” explained renowned American Middle East scholar, Dr. Stephen Zunes. Other experts such as the Atlantic Council’s Cameron Hudson agree that Sudan’s long-term economic progress depends on Washington removing its sanctions on Khartoum. Imposed by the US in 1993 when Washington labeled Sudan a state sponsor of terrorism, these sanctions were aimed at punishing Bashir’s government for its links to Osama bin Laden and other global terrorists, plus the regime’s sponsorship of armed Palestinian and Arab groups like Hamas, the Abu Nidal Organization, the Fatah-Revolutionary Council, Hezbollah, Jamaat al-Islamiyya and Egyptian Islamic Jihad.

    Yet today, Sudan’s post-Bashir government is not sponsoring any Salafi-jihadi terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda or the Islamic State (IS). In fact, even Bashir’s government was not doing so during its final years in power. In its 2015 country report on terrorism, the US State Department stated that Washington and Khartoum “worked cooperatively in countering the threat posed by al-Qa’ida and ISIL.”

    Thus, Washington’s current policy vis-à-vis Sudan suffers from being stuck in a previous era in which leaders, institutions and both regional and global circumstances were fundamentally different and in no way reflect the considerable changes in Sudanese politics over the past year and more. Hudson described the continued designation of Sudan as a state sponsor terrorism as representing to many “an anachronism and a symbol of Washington’s own lethargy in updating its policy toward Khartoum.” In sum, problems which the US had with Bashir’s regime decades ago should not be “effectively punishing [the Sudanese] further for having overthrown [the Bashir] dictatorship,” as Zunes argues.

    Last year, Prime Minister Hamdok spoke before the UN General Assembly and addressed Washington’s outdated policies in relation to Sudan: “The Sudanese people have never sponsored, nor were supportive of terrorism. On the contrary, those were the acts of the former regime which has been continuously resisted by the Sudanese people until its final ouster. These sanctions have played havoc on our people, causing them untold misery of all types and forms.” There is a risk that the longer these sanctions remain in place, the more the US becomes vulnerable to narratives that portray bureaucratic inertia in responding to changing circumstances as something more sinister, ascribing to Washington malign policy motivations that damage America’s standing and public diplomacy interests.

    A major concern is that Sudan’s economic situation and COVID-19 crisis could jeopardize the country’s transition to democracy. If the period of time between now and the planned 2022 elections is defined by economic crises and resultant social and political unrest, other actors including the military or conservative Islamists tied to the Muslim Brotherhood may find themselves best positioned to take power. The Sudanese public, so energized by the revolutionary success of 2019, may quickly become disillusioned if it perceives its struggle to have been in vain or to have been betrayed. The experience of disillusioned activists in Tunisia and Egypt has shown how some may be drawn toward radicalization if they feel there is no realistic alternative to an authoritarian status quo.

    Policy Recommendations

    In order to best secure the hopes for a future Sudan led by inclusive, secular, moderate and democratic civilians, the US government should end all its sanctions on Khartoum and establish fully normalized diplomatic relations with Sudan. Thus, given the urgency of helping Sudan preserve its hard-fought-for democratic gains since 2019 and US interests in seeing a smooth transition occur in the country, below are four key policy recommendations.

    Embed from Getty Images

    First, Washington should remove Sudan’s designation on the US State Sponsors of Terrorism list. Sudan’s inclusion on the SST list not only bars the US from economically assisting Sudan but mandates that Washington prevent the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and other global financial institutions from giving Sudan loans or other forms of assistance. As coronavirus spreads across Sudan, the authorities have had a more difficult time coping with the pandemic because the World Bank came under US pressure in April 2020 to exclude Sudan from a list of developing countries that received help from a $1.9-million emergency fund. Furthermore, the designation requires US citizens to obtain the Treasury Department’s approval prior to engaging in any financial transaction with these Sudanese government. So long as Sudan is on the SST list, it will be difficult to imagine the impoverished country receiving sufficient levels of investment and trade in order to develop and prosper in the future.

    Second, the US should lift all other remaining sanctions on Khartoum and encourage multinational institutions to help Sudan, especially amid the global COVID-19 crisis. Because Omar al-Bashir ascended to power in an Islamist-driven military coup in 1989, and the military that took power in the 2019 palace coup did not come to power as a result of a democratic election, there remain prohibitions under Section 7008 of the State Department Foreign Operations funding. In practice, this prevents the US from providing much assistance to any country where the “military has overthrown, or played a decisive role in overthrowing, the government.”

    Yet the US should not wait to pull these prohibitions until after the 2022 elections, which is what Washington currently plans to do. Darfur-related sanctions are also still enforced, which as Hudson argues “will continue to have a dampening effect on outside investment until durable peace and credible accountability mechanisms have been implemented.” These sanctions deter banks and other financial institutions around the world from taking the risks that currently come with Sudan-related opportunities. Thus, lifting these sanctions could help boost Sudan’s foreign investment climate.

    Third, Washington should reverse its decision, made in February 2020, to end migrant visas from Sudan. This move basically brings all immigration from Sudan to a complete halt, and it will continue to do so even in the post-COVID-19 period if not addressed. As experts such as the Chatham House’s Matthew T. Page have explained, Trump’s domestic political agenda of taking hard stances on immigration issues amid his reelection campaign was largely behind this policy decision, which targeted Sudan and three other African countries. In the process, however, the US loses influence in these developing nations that see the American door slamming on them as only further reason to invest in even deeper ties with China and Russia.

    Finally, the US should stand with Sudan’s government in solidarity against COVID-19. While the US should first end sanctions on Sudan, which would help combat the spread of coronavirus in the country and among its neighbors, Washington should also give Khartoum aid to help the Sudanese authorities deal with the pandemic within their own borders. As other states worldwide have practiced “coronavirus diplomacy” to boost their humanitarian credentials, this demonstration of American soft power could secure some goodwill from the Sudanese public following decades of negative relations between Washington and Khartoum.

    Key Interests

    Ultimately, there is no good reason for the US to be working to undermine Sudan’s democratic experiment, even if that is not the intent but rather the unfortunate byproduct of a bureaucracy that is slow to respond, giving the impression of stasis. Perceptions often play a key role in shaping emerging realities, and for the Sudanese, who feel that their actions in ousting a dictator are deserving of American support, there may not be an open-ended window before expectation turns to disillusionment.

    Moreover, there are key American interests that can be advanced through a US-Sudan rapprochement that follows an unwinding of Washington’s sanctions on Khartoum. In terms of competition among global powers, Washington has long-term foreign policy interests in establishing a positive relationship with post-Bashir Sudan. Washington’s sanctions on Sudan, as well as outright American hostility against the country — most exemplified by the Clinton administration’s decision to bomb a factory in Khartoum in 1998 — have only pushed the country closer to China, Russia, and at previous junctures Iran too.

    Although Sudan is not a high-ranking issue of interest to the diplomatic establishment in Washington nor to the US public, the American and Sudanese people alike could stand to gain in many ways if their governments reconcile and work toward a more cooperative relationship following a rapprochement. As a farmland-rich country situated along the Red Sea at the intersection of the Arab and African worlds, Sudan represents an important part of the conflict-prone Horn of Africa. In this volatile part of Africa, many powers — China, Israel, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Russia, United Arab Emirates, etc. — are scrambling to consolidate their clout, and the US certainly has its own interests in the immediate and broader neighborhood.

    Embed from Getty Images

    While the focus on countering terrorism and violent extremism has, to an extent, taken center stage in the US, measures taken now that support the political transition to democracy and strengthen Sudan’s economy can have a significant impact in bolstering Sudanese resilience to potential shocks such as COVID-19 that, if mishandled, could undermine much of the progress made on the security and stability fronts.

    Yet beyond such strategic interests shaped by Sudan’s geopolitical position in the wider African, Arab and Islamic regions, the US would in an ideational sense be living up to its professed values if Washington adopted new policies that are aimed at supporting the Sudanese people in their struggle for democracy following 30 years of brutal dictatorial rule. Ultimately, the US is sending the wrong message when it emphasizes the importance of human rights but turns its back on Sudan’s non-violent, democratic revolutionaries while engaging openly with highly authoritarian states around Sudan such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

    From a soft power and public diplomacy perspective, too, greater support for Sudan would be a significant tool for the US to project as the world retreats into a great power rivalry synonymous with the Cold War in the 20th century, not least because the African continent has emerged as one of the frontlines for such perceived geopolitical competition with China.

    *[Fair Observer is a media partner of Gulf State Analytics.]

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

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    Kashmir’s History and Future Meet in Literature

    For as long as one can remember, the stunningly beautiful valley of Kashmir has been a tinder box of clashing ideologies and religious beliefs. In the not too distant past, it was known as the land of Rishis, holy seers who combined the profound philosophies of Hinduism, Buddhism and Sufism to create a uniquely syncretic spiritual tradition.

    Today, it is the site of a bitter territorial dispute between India and Pakistan, a conflict that has resulted in scores of casualties and the forced expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Pandits, as Kashmir’s Hindus are commonly referred to.

    Author Rakesh K. Kaul’s first novel, “The Last Queen of Kashmir” (Harper Collins India, 2015), tries to shed light on the roots of this conflict by going back in time to explore the dramatic life of Kota Rani, the last ruler of the Hindu Lohara dynasty in Kashmir. Kota ruled as monarch until 1339, when she was deposed by Shah Mir, who became the first Muslim ruler of Kashmir.

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    His most recent work, “Dawn: The Warrior Princess of Kashmir” (Penguin India, 2019), is an unexpected foray into the far distant future. Set in 3000 AD, the book combines artificial intelligence, genetics and quantum theory with the ancient wisdom of Kashmir’s traditional Niti stories, which inspire Dawn to overcome seemingly impossible odds to save humanity from impending destruction.

    In this guest edition of The Interview, Vikram Zutshi talks to Rakesh Kaul about the inspiration behind his two novels, childhood memories of his strife-torn homeland and how his grandfather, the famed Kashmiri mystic Pandit Gopi Krishna, guides the trajectory of his life and work.

    Vikram Zutshi: You have written what is possibly the first science fiction novel set in Kashmir. What inspired you to choose the genre of science fiction to tell this story and how does it adapt itself to Kashmiri history and culture?

    Rakesh Kaul: I wish I could claim the honor of being a pioneer with “Dawn: The Warrior Princess of Kashmir.” But much as I admire them, I have many literary ancestors who are the equals of Joseph Campbell, George Orwell and Aldous Huxley. I am a mere upholder of a literary tradition that is over 2,000 years old. Western science fiction imagines possibilities like time travel, space exploration, parallel universes, extraterrestrial life. There are robots who are more advanced in their intelligence than humans.

    But all these themes were part of the stories in Kashmir, plus more. “Dawn” has in it an ancient story about a robot city with a remarkable safety override. The Puranic story of Indra’s net holds within it the concept of recursive universes. The pinnacle of these stories is of course the collection of stories in the Yoga Vasistha.

    The word “sahitya,” which means “literature,” was coined by Kuntaka in Kashmir. Within sahitya, there was a genre which dealt with all the above-mentioned themes but went beyond. One could say that if science fiction’s domain was all the possibilities within the bounded universe, then in Kashmir specifically — and India generally — the stories explored all the possibilities within the unbounded inner-verse.

    So, if you like “1984” or “Brave New World,” which are sci fi classics, then “Dawn” is going to take you to a whole new level. Even more than Joseph Campbell, the stories that I have brought are not mere myths or fantasies; they reveal a cognitive organ and knowledge acquisition capability which unlocks the deterministic laws of nature in a manner that science is just beginning to grapple with.

    Zutshi: What does the story arc of the central character, Dawn, tell us about the state of the world today?

    Kaul: All science fiction stories in the West and their Indic counterparts, the Niti stories, deal with the existential question of the arc of one’s way of life. The mind is seduced by utopia and yet ends up in dystopia. One ignores at one’s peril the addictive narrative wars happening today that are shaped and served by technology. The world, whether global or local, is heading toward a duality of monopolistic cults that fiercely demand total obeisance. Non-conformity results in a flameout at the hands of troll armies.

    Artificial intelligence is the omniscient eye watching over us. What we cannot ignore is that computer power is doubling every 20 months, data every six months, and the AI brain every three months. The champions of AI are promising that we will have sentience in 30 years. That is a close encounter of the third kind. That is within the lifespan of the readers. The danger to you as an individual has never been greater. One cannot take lightly the rising depression and suicide graphs coupled with desperate drug usage. Hence, the vital necessity for Dawn. 

    Dawn is the last girl left standing on earth in 3000 AD. She is facing an army of weaponized AIs and mind-controlled automatons; they rule over a deadly world where men have lost their souls and women have been slain — all heading to Sarvanash, the Great Apocalypse. This is a story of a close encounter of the seventh kind. How does Dawn arm herself? Can she win? Great Niti stories remind us that if the mind is a frenemy, then the need to nurture what is beyond the mind that one can turn to and trust is paramount. The Dawn lifehack that is presented is time-tested but oh so amazingly simple, yet powerful.

    Zutshi: Is the characterization of the main protagonist based on a real-life person?

    Kaul: “Dawn” in Sanskrit is “usha.” Usha is the most important goddess in the Rig Veda, the oldest extant text in the world. By contrast, none of the goddesses that we think about today are even mentioned there. Dawn is the harbinger of the rebirth of life each morn. She is the only Indian goddess who has spread around the world. Usha’s cognates are Eos in Greek, Aurora in Roman and Eostre in Anglo-Saxon [mythology], which is the root of the word Easter —the festival of resurrection. Interestingly, Usha is also the name of the sanctuary city where the Sanhedrin, [Israel’s] rabbinical court, fled to in the 2nd century. She is also the goddess of order, the driver away of chaos and darkness. She is dawn, she is hope, she is the wonder leading to resurrection.

    Humans recognized her wonder a long time ago. They imagined Dawn born at the birth of the universe, whose one-pointed mission is to make darkness retreat and drive ahead fearlessly.

    But Dawn is also a tribute to the warrior princesses of Kashmir, a land which was celebrated for its women in practice and not just poetry. They were not merely martial warriors, nor just holy warriors or ninja warriors, but much more. The Kashmiris enshrined the dawn mantra within themselves, men and women, and repeat it to this day. In my novels, the protagonists repeatedly draw upon it.

    Zutshi: You have spoken about Niti, the traditional storytelling technique of Kashmir. Please elaborate on Niti for the lay reader and how it informed your work. 

    Kaul: “Niti” means “the wise conduct of life.” The first collection of Niti stories from Kashmir is the 2,000-year-old celebrated Panchatantra, which is the most translated collection of stories from India. Kashmiri stories have found their way into the Aesop and Grimm fairy tales, Chaucer and Fontaine.

    The Kashmiris maintained that one is born with only one birthright, namely the freedom to achieve what is one’s life quest. So, the existential question is, What is the “way of life” by which one can maximize one’s human potential? The Kashmiris defined life’s end goal in heroic terms as unbounded fulfillment while alive, not limited by the physical and encompassing the metaphysical. But how does a mere Niti story enable you to achieve fulfillment and consciousness? Niti’s cultural promise is that it enables one to face any threat, any challenge in reaching one’s goal as one travels through time and space.

    How does Niti work? Let us start with the Western perspective first. Descartes famously said that wonder was the first passion of the soul. Kashmir spent a thousand years studying this phenomenon and helps us penetrate deeper here. When we have an experience that is a total surprise, we go WOW — an acronym for “wonder of wonder.” When we go wow, it is expressing, How can this be? We not only accept the limited capacity of our senses and the mind, but we also have a profound moment of self-recognition that there is an unlimited capacity in us to experience what lies beyond our knowledge.

    The wormhole between the two brings the relish of the state of wonder which in India was described as “adbhuta rasa” in the text “Natyashastra,” written by another Kashmiri illuminati, “adbhuta” meaning “wonder” and “rasa” meaning “juice.” So, in the wow moment you momentarily taste the wonder juice. All Niti stories are written in the adbhuta rasa literary style, and so is Dawn.

    Zutshi: Your first novel, “The Last Queen of Kashmir,” inspired by the story of Kota Rani, was a hit with Kashmiris in India and the diaspora. What would you like readers to take away from the book and how is it relevant in our times?

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    Kaul: Yes, much to my surprise the novel received critical acclaim and sold out! The second edition will be coming out worldwide in a month or so, with another beautiful cover of Kota Rani! “The Last Queen of Kashmir” is a historical epic about a great queen from India who informs and inspires. It engages audiences while serving as a cautionary tale for today. It was a precursor of what is now being called fail-lit. Much like Icarus, Kashmir’s humanist civilization of oneness and inclusivity flew too close to the Sun.

    The story provides lessons on the importance of protecting, preserving and perpetuating our social freedoms in a unified society from being divided by religious and cultural conflict. Kota Rani’s story shows that we should look for leaders who protect freedom and defeat the pied pipers within who threaten us with tyranny in the guise of offering utopia.

    Yet, “The Last Queen of Kashmir” is eventually a resurrection story to show us how the light of knowledge and the power of freedom can conquer all enemies. Kota was described as always captivating, never captive. It is a highly recommended read for all women because its notion of femininity and feminine power may surprise them. Kota Rani is memory and Dawn is imagination. Both are reflections of the same double reflexive power. Memory is what makes who you are, and imagination is what makes who you can be. 

    Zutshi: As a Kashmiri Hindu who moved to the United States fairly early in life, what are your earliest memories of your ancestral homeland? What do you hope to see in Kashmir’s future?

    Kaul: My earliest memories are of the journey that we would take to my homeland from Delhi, where my parents had migrated to after the Kabali raids in October 1947. I remember my mother dropping a coin into the raging river Jhelum and praying for a safe journey as the bus would slowly creak across the hanging bridge in the hill town of Ramban.

    Once there was portage across the old Banihal tunnel, where a section had caved in, only small, open jeeps could ferry us with our bags from our buses across to the waiting buses on the other side. The old tunnel was dark with a few small lamps that only accentuated the shadows. There were sections which were deliberately left bare in the older tunnel so that the massive water flow inside the mountain could rush out. They did not have the technology in those early days to divert the water. The sound of the rushing water still resonates inside me.

    Kashmir was a place of sensory overload. I would sip the nectar endlessly from the honeysuckles, pluck the cherries growing in our garden. My cousin would rent a boat, and much like Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn we would paddle through the water canals in our neighborhood raiding the mulberry trees growing by the banks of the river. We would wake up early in the morning and go for a hike to Hari Parvat, walking through the Shia neighborhoods with the graveyards. Once we saw a crowd of [Shia] self-flagellate as part of their religious observances, and we hid until they passed by. There would be other mob gatherings, but we were culturally trained to avoid them.

    Once a year, we would go to my grandfather’s retreat overlooking the Nishat. It was a huge apple orchard. Evening time we would scurry back to the cabin because then the bears would come from the other side of the hill. Night was their foraging time.

    Nothing compared, though, to the experiences when the family would rent a houseboat, technically a doonga. We would go to the shrine of Khir Bhavani for a week. The boat would move slowly, and there would be endless tea poured from the samovar accompanied by the local breads. Family life seemed to have kith and kin as an integral part. There was a feeling of intimate connectivity. At night, all the cousins would gather. We would spread the mattresses on the bottom of the boat and share the blankets. Then it was storytime. The girls would cry that we were scaring them when the boys would share the monster stories. But they would not leave the group because they did not want to miss out. I have brought some of these Kashmiri monsters and their stories into “Dawn.” 

    But, ultimately, Kashmir was about the mystic experience. I would sit in the inner sanctorum of our small temple at the end of the bridge on our little canal. There was barely space for a few. I would watch the water drops drip endlessly on the lingam. The small trident would be by the side. I would look at the paintings on the wall, each one a story and wonder about it all. The best, of course, would be the nighttime aarti at Khir Bhavani. It seemed that all of humanity was there with a lit lamp in their hands. The faces of the devout women and girls would be luminous, the moonlight would give them a sheen. There was beauty, love and innocence in the air.

    As a Kashmiri, I would want the lakir ka fakir (blind ideologues) to disappear and the artist to reign supreme. Translation: Those who police others either morally or ideologically or religiously or by force of arms should go bye-bye. The rest will follow naturally, and the valley will emerge from its long, deep darkness.

    Embed from Getty Images

    Zutshi: You are the grandson of famed Kashmiri mystic, Pandit Gopi Krishna. In what way have his work and teachings informed and influenced the trajectory of your life?  

    Kaul: The Pandit was the last rishi of Kashmir, a lineage that goes back to the formation of the valley by Rishi Kashyapa. Deepak Chopra said of him, “Pandit Gopi Krishna was a pioneer in the land of spirituality. His insights into the quantum nature of the body predate the scientific discoveries of today. I salute this great sage and scientist of the twentieth century.” Dr. Karan Singh, the crown prince of Kashmir who gave the eulogy at his funeral said, “In the 19th century, India gave the world Ramakrishna; in the 20th century it has given the world Gopi Krishna.”

    I suppose he shaped me even before I was born. He made the decision that he was going to marry my mother without giving any dowry to break that pernicious social custom. His father-in-law begged him, [saying] that they had bought a priceless wedding sari the day that my mother was born. But to no avail. My mother was married in a simple cotton sari. My inception was in simplicity.

    He was my first guru, and he continues to guide me. I learned from him the critical importance of being a family man, of community service, especially toward widows and destitute women, of being a fearless sastra warrior, of words being bridges, about poetry and the arts and, best of all, about the worlds beyond. I treasure his letters. I can never forget the talk that he gave at the United Nations where 600 Native American elders attended. It was a prophecy come true for them where it was stated that a wise man from the East would come and give them wisdom in a glasshouse.

    Would I have dared to embark on a 12-year journey to bring the story of a hidden Kota Rani without the inspiration of what it took him to bring his story to the world? No. Especially when writing “Dawn,” his work was invaluable in steering me in describing the close encounter of the seventh kind. What is the biotechnology of the evolutionary force within us? And then in the epilogue for “Dawn,” it is all him because only he has traveled there. Even now as I write this, his beaming face smiles at me. I smile back.

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

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    Is Assad Gearing Up for a Final Push in Syria?

    Ceasefires in Syria come and go, and so do the meetings between the outside players who hold it in their hands to determine if an end to the country’s 9-year civil war is in sight. The most recent meeting in Ankara between Turkish and Russian military officers was intended to discuss issues at a “technical level” in both the Syrian and Libyan theaters of war. Not much was achieved, with Turkey’s Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu reportedly calling the session “unproductive.” The minister called for the ceasefire to continue and insisted that “there must be more focus on political negotiations,” a sentiment few can disagree with but one that seems most unlikely to be realized in the near to middle future.

    Russia’s state-controlled Sputnik news agency reported that what it called a “source” had said that the Turks had declined to evacuate five observation posts in Syria’s Idlib province. According to the source, “After the Turkish side refused to withdraw the Turkish observation points and insisted on keeping them, it was decided to reduce the number of Turkish forces present in Idlib and to withdraw heavy weapons from the area.”

    A Coming Catastrophe

    Whether that is the case has yet to be confirmed. However, it was enough for the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW) to issue a somber warning: “Turkey may have agreed to cede control of Southern Idlib to pro-Assad forces in a meeting with Russia September 16. If the reports of a deal are true, a pro-Assad offensive is likely imminent.”

    Embed from Getty Images

    The ISW buttresses its argument by noting that Turkey had already withdrawn hundreds of its forces from southern Idlib on September 8. Turkey’s claim that the withdrawal is the result of rising tensions with Greece over hydrocarbon reserves in the eastern Mediterranean were treated with skepticism by the ISW: “Turkey may have used its dispute with Greece as cover for action consistent with an impending deal with Russia in Idlib.”

    This may, indeed, be the “political negotiations” that Cavusoglu was speaking of. If so, and if an assault on what remains of Idlib in rebel hands is imminent, then it signals likely catastrophe for civilians trapped between advancing Assad forces and jihadist militias. Were the US not in the middle of a presidential race and were the incumbent in the White House not so inclined to call for the complete withdrawal of US forces from Syria (only to change his mind when presented with the outcomes of such a move), then there would be grounds for more hope for the civilian population of Idlib.

    But such is not the case. And beyond President Donald Trump’s view that, as he expressed it, “People said to me, ‘Why are you staying in Syria?’ Because I kept the oil, which frankly we should have done in Iraq,” uncertainty about just what America’s intentions in Syria are remains very much in play. It is a factor that other external players, that is the Russians, the Turks and Iran, can all exploit as they seek to advance their strategic efforts at the expense of the Syrian people.

    Old Enemies

    It is a situation that has left the 500 or so US troops still in Syria and their allies, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), in a vulnerable and exposed place, a point the Pentagon clearly gets, even if the commander-in-chief doesn’t. Announcing a deployment of Bradley fighting vehicles to Eastern Syria on September 19, a Pentagon spokesperson stated: “These actions are a clear demonstration of US resolve to defend Coalition forces in the [Eastern Syria Security Area], and to ensure that they are able to continue their Defeat-ISIS mission without interference. The Defense Department has previously deployed Bradleys to northeast Syria pursuant to these goals.”

    That deployment reflects a growing concern that, as documented by ISW and others, the Islamic State (IS) is resurging in Syria. Its recent attacks have been aimed at tribal elders who support the SDF and at efforts to develop governance capabilities that benefit civilians by removing festering grievances that the jihadists seek to exploit.

    For their part, the Russians, playing on fears that the SDF Kurdish leadership has concerning an abrupt American withdrawal, may strive to build on pushing the Kurds to seek some sort of rapprochement with Damascus, thus hastening a US departure. In that regard, it is worth noting that the Russians were crucial to a deal in October last year that saw the Kurds cede territory to Assad forces and withdraw rather than face a Turkish offensive in northern Syria.

    Meanwhile, the ISW’s Jennifer Cafarella argues that a sudden withdrawal without a strategic endgame plays straight into the hands of not just Russia and Iran; it emboldens a rising IS and empowers the jihadist ideology it shares with America’s oldest enemy in its war on terror, al- Qaeda.

    Al-Qaeda has played a long game, happy for IS to take the brunt of the West’s military response. Cafarella says that while a global coalition led by America came together to defeat the caliphate (and force ISI into a guerrilla insurgency), the same cannot be said for al-Qaeda. “We have not been able to reach the same level of understanding with our allies and partners and that is in part because Al Qaeda is playing this much more sophisticated political game that in the long run, I do very much worry, could outflank us.”

    *[This article was originally published by Arab Digest.]

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

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    The US Presidential Election and the Armies of the Night

    In a compelling article published on Fair Observer earlier this week, Volker Perthes, director of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), speculates on the theme of “what Trump will leave behind” if he loses the November election. The author offers an enlightening perspective on the choices available to people and governments in the rest of the world regarding an American presidential election that promises not so much clarification as a new phase of aggravated confusion.

    Perthes is not optimistic about the outcome of the election, whoever is declared the winner. He focuses on the choices other nations must make at a moment marked both by the twin phenomena of a long-term trend of American decline and the fireworks Americans expect to witness when the results begin trickling in on the evening of November 3. Across the political spectrum, Americans are preparing for some serious post-election trauma.

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    Perthes is guilty of slightly understating the reality of politics in the United States today when he writes that “there is the political polarization in the US, which is as intense as it was during the Vietnam War.” But he is perfectly accurate when he adds that “neither the political nor social divisions in America will simply disappear with a change of political direction.” Perthes’ analysis is correct but he errs, as Europeans tend to do, by being too polite when he compares today’s polarization with that of the Vietnam War era. It is exponentially greater.

    Here is today’s 3D definition:

    Political polarization:

    The intended consequence of a cleverly managed electoral system designed to meet the requirements of a consumer culture that reduces the notion of political choice to exactly two products that are only distinguishable by their packaging.  

    Contextual Note

    The war in Vietnam pitted the hardline anti-communist defenders of the idea that the US was the “world’s policeman” against those who were committed to a more relaxed way of realizing the American dream. It was a largely generational divide rather than an ideological one. For American youth, raised in the new post-World War II consumer culture, every individual entering adulthood had to make a crucial decision while moving on from the years in which the study of schoolbooks vied for their attention with fun. They now had to begin focusing on constructing their identity as responsible consumers.

    The draft and the prospect of two years fighting in the jungles of Vietnam represented a serious obstacle in their quest to define a respectable consumer lifestyle for themselves. This forced many of them to consider the more radical consumer choice of simply dropping out. If they could manage to avoid the draft, that might translate as either living on a commune in the wilderness or, for some, in an urban neighborhood colonized by the promoters of flower power.

    In other words, the polarization at work at the time became a contest pitting a majority of adults — traditional Republicans and establishment Democrats — who supported what President Dwight Eisenhower had called the dominant military-industrial complex against a highly visible contingent of intellectuals, hippies and peaceniks seeking to redefine what being a consumer and enjoying American prosperity meant. The most conservative hawks preferred reducing the polarizing choice war to the simple idea of “It’s America — Love It or Leave It.” The rebellious youth who experienced the “summer of love” preferred to both love it and symbolically leave it, following LSD promoter Timothy Leary’s advice: “Tune in, turn on, drop out.”

    Today’s polarization is far more complex and far more dangerous. It cuts across a variety of categories, political, economic and cultural. Ultimately, it opposes contrasting styles of collective identity. It plays out in a variety of combinations in connection with the extreme individualism at the core of US culture shared by the entire population. “Love it or leave it” defined a consumer choice. If the rebellious youth at the time failed to show the appropriate amount of love for the system, the solution was to send the police, the FBI or the National Guard to step in, as they did at Kent State University in 1970. As a child of the 1960s, Donald Trump remembers that logic and is now seeking to duplicate it.

    The difference today is symbolized in the person of 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse. The new message is “love it … or face the wrath of other armed citizens.” Thanks to two presidents, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, the police have morphed into a military force armed with equipment designed for counterinsurgency in the Middle East. But their ability to win wars in other countries or on domestic city streets has been thrown into doubt. “We the people,” brandishing their guns and flaunting their Second Amendment rights, are ready to take over where armed authority has failed. Donald Trump and Fox News have encouraged them to rise in mass to the challenge.

    Historical Note

    Fifty years ago, the symbolism of political polarization focused on the great American tradition that led to the nation’s founding: a popular revolution. The new symbolic reference has lost all its revolutionary fervor. If a symbolic reference is needed, it can only be civil war. The conflict that emerged in the 1960s pitted rebellious youth against an oppressive authority. In the Trump era, the legitimacy of any institutional authority has been undermined to the point that armed citizens appear to be ready to take things in their own hands.

    Things were much simpler back in the 1960s. Nobody was happy with Lyndon Johnson’s war. For conservative Republicans and establishment Democrats loyal to Johnson (and later Nixon), the war should have been prosecuted more aggressively since the aim was to prove once and for all that American might is right. For the nation’s youth, who were being asked to participate in the fighting, pursuing war was unjustified morally and politically. They felt it as a betrayal of the promise made to the consumer society.

    The protests against the war led to an asymmetrical struggle between the American prosperity machine that refused to admit its dependence on a neocolonial foreign policy and a vast segment of the population that believed the American dream was about enjoying that prosperity rather than dying to defend it. There was no real contest other than psychological warfare and the occasional skirmish.

    Even the idea of “love it or leave it” reflected the culture of the consumer society. The hawks were simply offering youngsters an alternative. They refused to understand that, because of the draft, the choice young men had was not a simple binary one. Loving it meant dying for a cause that had no meaning they could understand. Reacting like the consumers they had been conditioned to be, some came up with the idea of escaping to Canada as an attractive third choice. Canada represented the same culture, but without the war.

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    Richard Nixon abolished the draft in 1973. All subsequent wars have been fought by a professional military. Young men can now concentrate on other things, such as how they might pay off their student loans over the next 20 or 30 years of their lives. Today’s polarization is also generational, but it is no longer about overseas wars. The difference today is that the youth, for the first time, has become aware of the oligarchic nature of both political parties and the fact that it serves to protect those who suffer the least from the ills of society.

    But there is another difference, far more significant. Those ready to defend the system against the multiracial protesters with their personal arsenal are equally defiant of the controlling oligarchy. Only they fear and hate any group that they do not culturally identify with. They fear that reforms intended to redress ills that may even affect their lives translate as the imposition of new rules or restrictions on their way of life. Many are ready to go to battle to prevent change to a system that has encouraged what they see as “alien” tendencies. They value their possessions and feel that that ownership itself is being threatened.

    One thing they own in increasing numbers is a gun and rounds of ammunition. They are currently preparing for battle. This is not merely polarization. It is the prelude to civil war, but one of a new kind, with no organized opposing armies.

    *[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 Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

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

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    Is America Edging Toward a “Racial Holy War”?

    Since the Vietnam War era in the United States, radical-right groups have articulated an apocalyptic vision under which white people would be restored to their “rightful place” of dominance on the North American continent. Over the years, various groups and personalities have expressed this vision in slightly different ways, though have involved the toppling of the government followed by extensive bloodletting. The term “RAHOWA” — racial holy war — originated with Ben Klassen and his World Church of the Creator, and was then taken up by Matt Hale and his successors.

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    Another key figure from this generation of white nationalists, Tom Metzger, founder of the White Aryan Resistance (WAR), argued that “white revolution is the only way” to achieve the restoration of Aryan dominance. Inspired by William Pierce’s 1978 novel “The Turner Diaries,” Robert Mathews and his Silent Brotherhood sought to ignite RAHOWA in the early 1980s by launching a terrorist campaign in the American Northwest before the FBI and other law enforcement agencies brought his adventures to an abrupt end. Louis Beam, a former Klan leader and long-time advocate of white racial revolution, thought that “leaderless resistance” might lead the way toward RAHOWA. 

    New Era

    The tactics these 20th-century advocates of RAHOWA planned to employ required a vivid imagination to be taken seriously. The late Richard Girnt Butler, then head of the Aryan Nations, remarked that Mathews “had made his move too soon” — as if a few more months would have made a difference in the outcome. In fact, at the time, neither small groups of would-be Nazis such as the Silent Brotherhood nor the “lone wolves” had the slightest chance of igniting a racial holy war. They tended to be self-defeating and more than slightly ridiculous.

    The atmosphere in which successor generations of radical-right groups such as the Atomwaffen Division, Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Fraternal Order of Alt-Knights or the Boogaloo Boys operate has changed significantly from the post-Vietnam era, in ways that seem more favorable to revolutionary objectives. The internet has been a boon to and an essential tool of these newer contestants.

    Today’s radical rightists can, inter alia, recruit members, share conspiratorial and apocalyptic visions with large online audiences, send messages or memes to various targets (such as Jewish journalists during the 2016 presidential campaign) organize in-person gatherings (like the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017), and display pictures of like-minded militants in action.

    Further, the United States is far more polarized than it was in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. Thanks in part to Fox News, right-wing talk radio celebrities, Breitbart News and the various other online outlets (including The Daily Stormer) for the expression of inter-group hostility, trust in government institutions is at an all-time low. The same generalization applies to interpersonal trust, at least since polling on these questions began in the 1950s. Americans not only mistrust government institutions but mistrust one another as well.

    Donald Trump was elected president in 2016 based largely on his ability to channel this mistrust as well as support for white nationalist violence. As David Neiwert put it in his 2017 book, “Alt America,” “Trump seemed to encourage the violence directed both at protestors at his rallies and at minorities generally, by expressly suggesting  the use of assaults and threats against them in his fiery rally speeches.” Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric, before and after the election, has helped to legitimize the radical right’s racist and anti-Semitic threats, fomenting violence to a wider-than-usual audience.

    In office, Trump has done what he could to loosen the guardrails of constitutional government, by seeking to “capture the referees.” In other words, he has sought to strengthen the executive’s control over government functions at the expense of congressional authority and various federal regulatory bodies, including the Federal Election Commission. He has encouraged his audiences to violate norms of civil conduct. Trump has also sought to “capture the referees” by appointing to the federal judiciary right-wing ideologues with limited courtroom experience. The justice department under Attorney General William Barr has become an instrument in the pursuit of Trump’s personal vendettas.

    Inflection Point

    Against this background, and with Trump seeking reelection, the United States faces a serious crisis involving the COVID-19 pandemic, high levels of unemployment and a massive wave of protests ignited by police killings of defenseless African Americans, most notably the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Some observers think the country has reached an inflection point at which the democratic order is under serious threat.

    The present situation is one that groups on the extreme right could only have imagined a few decades ago. Among the new radical-right aggregations, the Boogaloo Boys, distinguished by wearing Hawaiian shirts over combat paraphernalia, hope to exploit the current racial unrest and promote an atmosphere conducive to civil war. Acting as agents provocateurs, Boogaloo Boys members have participated in the Black Lives Matter demonstrations. They carry out violent attacks on the authorities and encourage other protesters to do the same. In this way, they hope to provoke an excessively violent reaction by the police and other authorities. The Boogaloo Boys and their “compatriots” hope to set off an escalatory spiral of violence leading to a white backlash and something approaching race-based civil war.

    This Boogaloo approach will probably not achieve its ultimate objective. Nonetheless, their tactics seem more plausible, given the current situation, than those attempted by their late 20th-century radical-right predecessors. This new path to right-wing revolution bears considerable resemblance to the so-called strategy of tensions pursued by Italian neo-fascists and rogue police officers in the late 1960s and early 1970s, during Italy’s Gli Anni di Piombo — Years of Lead. In the Italian case, exposure by journalists and the commitment of Italy’s elected officials to defend the country’s democracy prevented a right-wing seizure of power. Let us hope the same holds true for the United States.

    *[Fair Observer is a media partner of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right.]

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