Philippa Kaur

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    What Explains Donald Trump’s Foreign Policy?

    Ever since his inauguration in 2017, US President Donald Trump has placed an emphasis on unilateralism and the rejection of international organizations and treaties as the hallmarks of his foreign policy.

    Trump has assumed an aggressive modus operandi in dealing with US partners worldwide and alienated many allies. He repealed US participation in the UN Human Rights Council, UNESCO, the 2015 Paris Climate Accord, the Treaty on Open Skies, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, and the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Even in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, he pulled the US out of the World Health Organization.

    The president has pledged to draw an end to the “forever wars” the United States has been involved in over the past couple of decades, and he has challenged the view that America should be the world’s “policeman.” At the same time, his Middle East policy has been nothing short of hawkish, and he has dragged the United States to the brink of war with Iran.

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    Some observers explain Trump’s overseas agenda by noting that he has been hellbent on scoring political points by hurling out of the window the foreign policy legacy of his predecessor, Barack Obama. Others say he has been focused on pulling off his “America First” policy, premised on putting US commitments and global leadership on the backburner and emphasizing the empowerment of the national economy.

    Stephen Zunes is a professor of politics and international studies at the University of San Francisco. A leading scholar of the US affairs in the Middle East, he is a senior policy analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus and an associate editor of the Peace Review journal. His latest book is “Western Sahara: War, Nationalism, and Conflict Irresoluton.”

    In this edition of The Interview, Fair Observer talks to Zunes about Trump’s foreign policy challenges, his relationship with autocrats and his strategy in the Middle East.

    The transcript has been edited for clarity. This interview took place in summer 2020.

    Kourosh Ziabari: In a recent article on Foreign Policy, the former undersecretary of state for political affairs, Wendy Sherman, claimed that President Trump — after three and a half years in office — has “developed no foreign policy at all” and that his approach to foreign affairs has been one “without objectives, without strategy, [and] without any indication that it protects and advances US interests.” Is Trump’s foreign policy as disastrous as Sherman describes, or is she saying so merely as a former Obama administration official with partisan interests?

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    Stephen Zunes: This is a reasonably accurate statement. Indeed, many Republicans feel the same way, believing Trump has wasted an opportunity to further a more active foreign policy advancing their more hegemonic and militaristic agenda by failing to fill a number of important State Department positions and failing to articulate a clear policy.

    By all accounts, Trump is profoundly ignorant of even the most basic facts relevant to foreign policy — the names and locations of foreign countries, modern diplomatic history and other things which most reasonably well-educated Americans know. His refusal to even read policy briefs his advisers have written up for him has made it impossible for him to develop any kind of coherent foreign policy agenda. His view toward foreign relations is largely transactional — what you can do for me will determine US policy toward your country — and therefore not based on any overall vision of advancing US interests, much less international peace and security.

    His efforts to push foreign governments to pursue policies designed to help his reelection led to his impeachment earlier this year, but the Republican-controlled Senate refused to convict him despite overwhelming evidence of illegal activities in this regard.

    Ziabari: Some of the major foreign policy challenges of the Trump administration emanated from the threats apparently posed to the United States by Iran, North Korea, China and Russia. How has Trump dealt with these challenges? A June 2020 poll by Gallup found that only 41% of US adults approve of Trump’s performance in foreign policy. Is there a yardstick by which we can measure the president’s success in his overseas agenda?

    Zunes: Virtually every administration, regardless of party, has tended to exaggerate overseas threats to varying degrees, and this is certainly true with Trump. There have been real inconsistencies, however. For example, he has been far more tolerant toward North Korea, which has violated previous agreements and pursued its nuclear weapons program, than he has been toward Iran, which had dramatically reduced its nuclear capabilities and was scrupulously honoring its nuclear agreement prior to the US withdrawal from the Iran [nuclear] deal. Similarly, he has tolerated a series of provocative actions by Russia while obsessively targeting China.

    While hypocrisy and double standards is certainly not a new phenomenon in US foreign policy, Trump’s actions have taken this to a new extreme and have severely weakened US credibility in the international community.

    Ziabari: How has foreign policy historically influenced the prospects of politicians winning elections in the United States? Do you expect President Trump’s divisive foreign policy decisions to derail his chances of being reelected in November? 

    Zunes: Foreign policy is even less of a factor in this year’s election than usual, so it is unlikely to determine the outcome. Ironically, as in 2016, Trump may run to the left of the Democratic nominee, so, despite Trump’s impetuous and problematic foreign policy leadership, foreign policy issues may actually weigh to his advantage.

    During the 2016 campaign, Trump successfully, if somewhat disingenuously, was able to portray himself as a president who would be more cautious than his Democratic opponent regarding unpopular US military interventions overseas. Despite having actually supported the invasion of Iraq, Trump was largely successful in depicting himself as a war opponent and Hillary Clinton as a reckless militarist who might get the United States in another round of endless wars in the Middle East. An analysis of voting data demonstrated that a significant number of voters in northern swing states who supported the anti-Iraq War Barack Obama in the 2008 and 2012 elections switched to supporting Trump in the 2016 election over this very issue, thereby making possible his Electoral College majority.

    Already, the Trump campaign has begun targeting Joe Biden on this very issue. Biden played a critical role as head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in pushing the war authorization through the Democratic-controlled Senate, limiting hearings and stacking the witness list with war opponents. He has also repeatedly lied about his support for the [Iraq] war — even after inspectors had returned and confirmed the absence of the weapons of mass destruction that he and President Bush falsely claimed Iraq still possessed — giving the Trump campaign an opening to press this issue even more.

    Meanwhile, Biden has alienated many rank-and-file Democrats by pushing through a party platform calling for tens of billions of dollars of unconditional taxpayer-funded arms transfers to Israel while not even mentioning, much less condemning, the Israeli occupation and settlements. It criticizes efforts by both the United Nations and civil society campaigns to end the occupation as somehow unfairly delegitimizing Israel itself. This comes despite polls showing a sizable majority of Democrats oppose the occupation and settlements and support conditioning aid.  

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    Neither candidate appears willing to reduce the United States’ bloated military budget or end arms transfers to dictatorships. However, Biden has promised to end support for Saudi Arabia’s devastating war on Yemen and the longstanding US backing of the Saudi regime, as well as reverse Trump’s escalation of the nuclear arms race, both of which are popular positions.

    Meanwhile, Biden has won over the vast majority of the foreign policy establishment, including quite a few Republicans, who have been appalled by Trump’s treatment of traditional allies and cozy relations with the Russian regime. How much impact this will have on swing voters, however, remains to be seen.

    Ziabari: Trump’s pullout from the Iran nuclear deal was one of his major and contentious foreign policy decisions. In a poll conducted shortly after he announced the US withdrawal, CNN found 63% of Americans believed the United States should stick with the accord, while only 29% favored abandoning it. Last year, a Pew Research Center poll revealed 56% of the respondents did not have faith in the president’s ability to handle the crisis with Iran. Has the Trump administration’s maximum pressure campaign against the Islamic Republic yielded the results it was expected to achieve?

    Zunes: Iran already made enormous compromises in agreeing to the JCPOA required it to destroy billions of dollars’ worth of nuclear facilities and material while neither the United States nor any of Iran’s nuclear-armed neighbors — namely Israel, India and Pakistan — were required to reduce their arsenals or any other aspects of their nuclear program. Iran agreed to these unilateral concessions in return for a lifting of the debilitating sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council.

    Despite full Iranian compliance with the agreement, the United States not only re-imposed its own sanctions, but it effectively forced foreign governments and countries to do the same at an enormous cost to the Iranian people. Hardline elements in the Iranian government, who opposed the agreement on the grounds that the United States could not be trusted to uphold its end of the deal, feel they have been vindicated, and moderate elements in the government are on the defensive.

    Some fear that the goal of the Trump administration in tearing up the agreement was to encourage the Iranians to resume their nuclear program, which is exactly what happened, in order to provoke a crisis that could give the United States an excuse to go to war.

    The mistake the United States made in Vietnam was seeing the leftist revolution against the US-backed regime in Saigon in terms of its communist leadership rather than the strong nationalist sentiments which propelled it. Washington could not understand why the more troops we sent and the more bombs we dropped actually strengthened the opposition.

    Similarly, looking at the Iranian regime in terms of its Islamist leadership misses the strong nationalist sentiments in that country. While a growing number of Iranians oppose the authoritarianism, conservatism and corruption of the clerical and military leadership, a large majority appear to support the regime in its confrontation with the United States. Iranians, like the Vietnamese, are among the most nationalistic people in the world. Iran, formerly known as Persia, has been a regional power on and off for the past 2,500 years and does not appreciate being treated in such a dismissive way. The more pressure on Iran, the greater the resistance.

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    Concerns raised by the Trump administration about the Iranian regime — its repression, discrimination against women and religious minorities, support for extremist groups, interference in other countries, among other points — are indeed valid. Yet each of these issues are also true, in fact, even more so, when it comes to Saudi Arabia and other close US allies in the region. The problem the United States has with Iran, therefore, is not in regard to such negative behavior, but the fact that Iran is the most powerful country in the greater Middle East that rejects US hegemony. Iran was willing to compromise on its nuclear program, but it is not going to compromise when it comes to its sovereignty.Ziabari: One of the critical points President Trump’s opponents raise about him is his affinity for autocratic leaders and dictators. He has — on different occasions — praised, congratulated or invited to the White House President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines; President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi of Egypt; President Vladimir Putin of Russia; the far-right leader of the French party National Rally, Marine Le Pen; and the supreme leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Un. Why is Trump attracted to these unpopular leaders? Can it be attributed to his desire for becoming a president for life? 

    Zunes: Most US presidents have supported allied dictatorships. Under both Republican and Democratic administrations, US arms have flowed to autocratic regimes in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other repressive Arab regimes as well as dictators in Africa, Asia and, in previous years, Latin America as well.

    What makes Trump different is that while previous administrations at least pretended to support improved human rights in these countries, and often rationalized for arms transfers and other close relations as a means of supposedly influencing them in that direction, Trump doesn’t even pretend to support political freedom and has even praised their repressive tactics.

    There is little question that Trump himself has autocratic tendencies. The US Constitution prevents him from becoming president for life and other more overt autocratic measures, but he has certainly stretched his presidential authority in a number of very disturbing ways.

    Ziabari: Rescinding international agreements, reducing the commitments of the US government abroad and embracing unilateralism have been the epitome of Trump’s foreign policy. This is believed to have created rifts between the US and its traditional allies, particularly in the European Union and NATO. Some observers of US foreign policy, however, say the gulf has been exaggerated and that the United States continues to enjoy robust relations with its global partners. What are your thoughts?

    Zunes: Due to the United States’ economic and military power, most foreign governments have little choice but to work closely with Washington on any number of issues. However, the United States is no longer looked at for leadership in ways it had been previously. This decline has been going on for some time, accelerating during the George W. Bush administration and paused during the Obama administration, but it has now plummeted under Trump to a degree that it is not likely to recover. The rejection of basic diplomatic protocols and other traditions of international relations repeatedly exhibited by Trump has alienated even some of the United States’ more conservative allies.

    While Joe Biden is certainly far more knowledgeable, experienced and diplomatic in his approach to foreign policy than the incumbent president, his support for the Iraq invasion, the Israeli occupation and various allied dictatorships has also made him suspect in the eyes of many erstwhile allies. And many allies have already reset their foreign policy priorities to make them less dependent on and less concerned about the United States and its priorities.

    Ziabari: President Trump appears to have taken US-Israel relations to a new level, making himself known as the most pro-Israel US president after Harry Truman, as suggested by several commentators and pundits, such as the renowned political analyst Bill Schneider. Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, defunded UNRWA, closed down the Palestine Liberation Organization’s office in Washington and unveiled the “deal of the century,” a much-hyped peace plan for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that Palestinian factions rejected outright on account of being overly biased in favor of Israel. Why has Trump prioritized pleasing the Israelis and advancing their territorial ambitions?

    Zunes: The right-wing coalition governing Israel shares Trump’s anti-Arab racism, Islamophobia and contempt for human rights and international law, so this is not surprising. While Democratic administrations rationalized their support for Israel on the grounds that it was a liberal democracy — at least for its Jewish citizens — what draws Trump to Israel is the right-wing, anti-democratic orientation of its current government.

    Though Trump has brought US support for Israeli violations of international legal norms to unprecedented levels, in practice — at least for Palestinians living under occupation — it has made little difference. For example, previous administrations did not overtly recognize Israeli settlements and annexation as Trump has, saying such issues should be resolved in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. However, this policy ignored the gross power asymmetry between the Palestinians under occupation and the Israeli occupiers, an imbalance compounded by the fact that as the chief mediator in negotiations, the US has also served as the primary military, economic and diplomatic supporter of the occupying power.

    By refusing to condition the billions of dollars’ worth of unconditional military aid to Israel on Israeli adherence to international law and human rights norms and blocking the United Nations Security Council from enforcing — or, in some cases, even passing — resolutions calling for Israeli compliance with its international legal obligations, it gave Israel’s right-wing government no incentive to make the necessary compromises for peace. In many respects, Trump’s policies have simply codified what was already going on under previous administrations.

    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 Trump Administration Targets Critical Race Theory

    In his latest attack on democratic values and principles, US President Donald Trump issued executive orders purging critical race theory (CRT) from diversity training in US federal agencies. According to the first order issued on September 4, “The divisive, false, and demeaning propaganda of the critical race theory movement is contrary to all we stand for as Americans and should have no place in the Federal government.” The order refers to diversity training that involves discussions of white privilege and the systemic forms of racism that are embedded within US history and institutions. According to the president’s most recent Executive Order on Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping issued on September 22, the so-called “destructive ideology” of white privilege is “grounded in misrepresentations of our country’s history and its role in the world.”

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    It is significant that these directives follow months of nationwide protests against racism in policing and the criminal justice system. The interdisciplinary field of critical race theory occupies an important position in the ideological basis of the Black Lives Matter movement. Activists protesting against systemic racism have made a point of acknowledging the many important critical race theorists and philosophers of the past and present who have advanced struggles for racial justice. The radical right has taken note of the relationship between CRT and Black Lives Matter. Breitbart News, for example, defines CRT as “the leftist, racist doctrine that forms the intellectual underpinnings of Black Lives Matter, Antifa, and other radical organizations currently engaged in unrest on America’s streets.”

    Context and Reaction

    The Trump administration’s censorship of CRT is an effort to counter the scholarly and intellectual critique that has been integral within advocacy and policy change to advance racial, sex and gender justice. It is the ability of CRT to name and challenge systemic racism that makes it confrontational to the ability of white and male privilege and power to remain unmarked, unnamed and unchallenged. In their response to Trump’s directive, the deans of all five California’s law schools stated that “CRT invites us to confront with unflinching honesty how race has operated in our history and our present, and to recognize the deep and ongoing operation of ‘structural racism,’ through which racial inequality is reproduced within our economic, political, and educational systems even without individual racist intent.”

    Critical race theory has been put into practice through diversity education and training, showing how racism and sexism are not merely beliefs held and perpetuated by individuals, but that these and other forms of discrimination and exclusion are institutional and systemic. To eliminate CRT is to censor words and concepts like intersectionality, implicit bias, stereotyping, stigma, whiteness, white privilege and systemic and institutional racism, which effectively closes down processes of naming and unlearning unearned privileges associated with one’s race and gender.

    CRT and cognate forms of diversity training have become important means of advancing the equal recognition and rights of those who have been historically excluded and victimized on the basis of their race, gender, disability or sexual orientation not only in the United States but in many parts of the world. In South Africa (the main context in which this author conducts research and teaching), CRT has been integral within efforts to name and challenge the persistence of white supremacy and white privilege in public and private sectors. Critical diversity studies has also emerged as a recognized academic field and area of professional development and training in South Africa.

    While diversity training within US federal agencies is the immediate target of President Trump’s executive orders, scholars have raised alarm about implications for CRT as an area of scholarship. The Association of American University Professors issued a statement highlighting this concern, arguing that the order “denies and dismisses the efforts of experts across a wide variety of disciplines — such as law, history, social sciences, and humanities — to help us better understand and reckon with our legacy of slavery and persistent institutional racism.”

    Right-Wing Hostility

    Radical-right hostility toward the intellectual left is nothing new. In the United States, a right-wing intelligentsia has taken shape over the past 40 years, largely funded by conservative corporate philanthropic organizations. As Donna Nicol reports, conservative  American critics have accused race and ethnic studies, as well as women’s studies, of being anti-Western and anti-American, arguing that these disciplines radicalize students toward “social anarchy” and undermined the American “free enterprise system.” The September 22 executive order, which accuses CRT of being a form of “propaganda” that amounts to “offensive and anti-American race and sex stereotyping and scapegoating,” grants this hostility new levels of power, influence and acceptability.

    The recent orders that ban CRT in diversity training for US federal agencies is a warning that US-based critical academics are joining the ranks of critical scholars internationally who are facing repression by radical-right populist leaders. Trump’s blitz on critical race theory comes amidst a trend of growing attacks on academic freedom in many other parts of the world. Censorship of CRT also comes amidst the president’s refusal to condemn white supremacist organizations. His comments during a recent debate for these groups to “stand back and stand by” was lauded by the self-described “Western chauvinist” Proud Boys as a call to arms.

    On the one hand, then, the Trump administration and other populist regimes’ agendas against the naming and interrogation of white supremacy may be indicative of their awareness that they are losing ground against anti-racist and anti-colonial movements for social justice and are feeling a threat to their hegemony. On the other hand, the banning of critical race theory in US federal agencies is indicative that academic freedom is the next democratic principle at stake and that critical scholars, especially those in publicly-funded institutions of higher learning, have good cause to be alarmed.

    *[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

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    The Future of the Iran Nuclear Deal

    The future of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — the Iran nuclear deal — is uncertain. In the absence of US leadership, representatives of the United Kingdom, Germany, France, China, Russia and Iran met on September 1 in Vienna to discuss the accord.

    The deal, which imposes limitations on Iran’s civilian nuclear enrichment program, was agreed in July 2015 between the Iranians and the P5+1 group — China, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and the United States — and implemented six months later. The deal was struck when the Obama administration was in the White House following years of negotiations. The JCPOA gave Iran relief from international economic sanctions in return for dismantling major parts of its nuclear program and giving access to its facilities for inspection.

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    Yet ever since Donald Trump was elected president of the United States in November 2016, the future of the JCPOA has hung in the balance. Trump made it a campaign promise to pull out of the Iran deal. He kept his word and officially withdrew the United States from the JCPOA in May 2018, saying the deal is “defective” and did not address Iran’s ballistic missile program or its interference in the affairs of other countries in the Middle East.

    Washington has since reinstated US sanctions on Iran and sought to penalize any nation doing trade with the Iranians, which has led to widespread criticism. In response, Iran has resumed its uranium enrichment at the Fordow nuclear plant, which is banned under the JCPOA.

    The events surrounding the Iran deal have seen their ups and downs, but one thing is for sure: The collapse of the JCPOA is in no one’s best interest.

    A Rocky Year

    Several incidents have marked 2020 as a critical year for Iran. In January, the US assassinated Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in an airstrike in Baghdad, which led to a further escalation in tensions. In response, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said, “Severe revenge awaits the criminals.” The Iranians later revealed they would no longer comply with the limits set to uranium enrichment under the nuclear deal.

    In July, a fire broke out in Natanz, Iran’s enrichment site. The Iranian Atomic Energy Organization claimed the explosion was the result of “sabotage,” and officials further stressed that the incident “could slow the development of advanced uranium enrichment centrifuges.” Both the assassination of Soleimani and the explosion in Natanz have rocked the nuclear deal, which is standing on its last legs.

    Making Promises and Breaking Them

    The JCPOA is not the first international agreement the US has withdrawn from under the Trump administration. In August 2019, the US officially pulled out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, an agreement signed by Washington and Moscow in 1987 that sought to eliminate the arsenals of short and intermediate-range missiles of both countries. Russia reciprocated and called the INF Treaty “formally dead.” Just months later, in May 2020, the US announced its decision to withdraw from the Open Skies Treaty, an accord that allows unarmed aerial surveillance flights over dozens of countries.

    When it comes to bilateral agreements, the world has experienced challenges with enforcing arms control and nonproliferation agreements, particularly since Trump was elected. The New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) — which, despite its own uncertainty, is the last remaining arms control pact between the US and Russia — is one clear example. The fact that Trump wants to strike a new deal with Iran but is quick to pull the trigger at torpedoing international agreements — including the 2015 Paris Climate Accord — does not bode well for building trust with the Iranians.

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    Considering that US–Iran diplomatic relations are a nonstarter under the Trump administration, the result of the US presidential election on November 3 will be critical. President Trump has promised to reach a new deal with Iran “within four weeks” if he is reelected. If he wins, his administration would have to reshape its approach toward Iran in a constructive way to meet the timeline he has set. On the other hand, if Democratic nominee Joe Biden wins, his administration would likely rejoin the JCPOA, as well as seek additional concessions from Tehran. In a recent op-ed for CNN, Biden stated, “If Iran returns to strict compliance with the nuclear deal, the United States would rejoin the agreement as a starting point for follow-on negotiations.”

    Biden served as the vice president under the previous Obama administration, which, together with the P5+1 group, negotiated the JCPOA back in 2015. Therefore, it is safe to say that the future of the nuclear deal might just rest on the outcome of the US election.

    A Regional Arms Race

    For now, however, the US withdrawal from the JCPOA has weakened the impact of the accord. More importantly, the near-collapse of the deal could have a direct impact on the next Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Review Conference in 2021, potentially drawing criticism from non-nuclear-weapon states that may wish to pursue civilian programs of their own.

    The JCPOA is not only important for global nonproliferation efforts, but also for stability in the Middle East. The complete failure of the deal would have severe implications. It would make neighboring countries feel less secure. As a result, this would encourage not just states but potentially non-state actors — such as terrorist groups — to focus on developing nuclear weapons. This would lead to an arms race in the geostrategic Middle East.

    Developing a civilian nuclear program is a long and expensive process that involves extensive oversight by international bodies. Therefore, while it may be an unlikely scenario, regional states like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates may think that nuclear weapons are essential for national security due to their rivalry with Iran and start building their own arsenal. The potential collapse of the JCPOA clearly has global ramifications that could be catastrophic for nuclear nonproliferation.

    Sanctions on Iran

    On August 20, France, Germany and the UK issued a joint statement saying they do not support the US request for the UN Security Council to initiate the “snapback mechanism” of the JCPOA, which would reimpose the international sanctions against Iran that were lifted in 2015. As the US is no longer a party to the JCPOA, it has limited influence over its enforcement. Therefore, the Security Council rejected the US move.

    The Iranian economy was already fragile before President Trump withdrew from the JCPOA, and US-enforced sanctions are further complicating the situation. High living costs, a deep recession and plummeting oil exports are just the tip of the iceberg.

    The Instrument in Support of Trade Exchanges (INSTEX) is seen as an important mechanism to organize trade between Germany, France and Britain on the one side, and Iran on the other. INSTEX allows European companies to do business with Iran and bypass US sanctions. On March 31, these three European countries confirmed that INSTEX had “successfully concluded its first transaction, facilitating the export of medical goods from Europe to Iran.”

    Although INSTEX can be helpful for Iran, US sanctions have dealt a fatal blow to the country’s economy. According to the World Bank, Iran’s GDP “contracted by 7.6% in the first 9 months of 2019/20 (April-December 2019),” mostly due to a 37% drop in the oil sector.

    For the US, sanctions are a strategic way to deter Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Yet they can also be counterproductive. Iran is aware of the strategic benefit the JCPOA has for other states. This includes global and regional security. In this regard, the joint statement on upholding the nuclear deal during the recent meeting in Vienna came as no surprise. But if multilateral sanctions are reimposed, that could be the final straw for Iran. This may lead the Iranians to walk away from the JCPOA and up the game with its nuclear program.

    Nuclear Nonproliferation

    With all of this in mind, it is vital that the remaining parties to the JCPOA continue with constructive dialogue to try to uphold the agreement. Everyone benefits from the deal, and its success depends on each side’s fulfillment of their responsibilities and commitments, particularly Iran’s full compliance.

    Most importantly, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action is necessary for the future of nuclear nonproliferation. If the deal collapses, then the world enters uncharted territory.

    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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    France’s Problem With Freedom of Expression

    The French nation has expressed its unqualified horror and revulsion at the brutal assassination of a teacher last Friday by a deluded fanatic convinced he was applying some kind of divinely ordained justice. Any crime directed against a person because of their beliefs or positions on issues of political significance effectively wounds the human collectivity itself. It denies the most basic principles of any human society.

    We live in a society in which acts of this kind are repeated frequently enough for us to seek the means of understanding the psychology behind them. Society typically reacts initially with a feeling of dismay and fear. It attempts to purge its emotion before seeking to unearth the meaning behind such acts. In the public accounting that follows inevitably two extreme reactions emerge.

    The first comes from those who focus on the fact that the perpetrator’s motivation stemmed from the perception of a real injustice that needs to be addressed. Because every act of violence, including domestic crimes, contains a meaning and a motive, this analysis is justified. It becomes extreme as soon as the focus on understanding leads to dismissing the act as simply an illegitimate form of protest or even justifying it as an act of war.

    The reaction at the opposite extreme comes from those who use the act to extend responsibility to entire groups of people. This implicitly and sometimes explicitly accuses a significant portion of an entire community of approving such acts to the point of encouraging other individuals to engage in similar acts. The assumption is objectively true in times of political or cultural clash, though it usually applies to a limited number of individuals. It becomes extreme when it attributes complicity to an entire community, threatening retribution beyond the scope of criminal justice.

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    Alas, both extreme reactions inevitably appear in the aftermath of crimes like this one. For the moment, no one has claimed complicity or sought to justify the murder, certainly not France’s Muslim community. The entire political class in France has mobilized to categorically condemn the act, refusing to emit any sympathy for the killer’s possible motives. Some politicians, however, have detected an opportunity to exploit the shock to further their own ends.

    Emmanuel Macron has long understood the electoral value of casting suspicion on France’s Muslim community. The president recently renewed his effort to stake an anti-immigrant position in anticipation of the 2022 election. As soon as the news of the teacher’s assassination broke, Macron called it “a terrorist attack.” Prime Minister Jean Castex claimed to understand the deceased killer’s deeper, broader motives: “Secularism, the backbone of the French Republic, was targeted in this vile act.”

    Macron managed to suggest the blame should be placed on a vast category of people sharing the same worldview. “They’ll never succeed,” he asserted. “Obscurantism will not win.”

    Here is today’s 3D definition:

    Obscurantism:

    A term of insult used by dogmatic rationalists to condemn other people for failing to adhere to every one of their dogmas, including their political opinions, which they firmly believe represent scientific truth and philosophical correctness.

    Contextual Note

    Merriam-Webster offers this definition of obscurantism: “opposition to the spread of knowledge: a policy of withholding knowledge from the general public.” Macron conflates the assassination of a teacher with an attack on knowledge itself. But in the era of sophisticated hyperreality, governments, including Emmanuel Macron’s, systematically seek to suppress the spreading of knowledge they find disagreeable while, in the name of national security, withholding from the general public knowledge they deem too precious to share. They also manipulate the media to circulate knowledge that comforts the beliefs associated with their ideology.

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    The background to this story reveals a series of events that call into question two belief systems: one dogmatically religious, the other dogmatically secular. The assassin believed that the teacher, who claimed to use the cartoon to illustrate the secular dogma of “freedom of expression” was an active infidel assaulting Islam in the classroom. The cartoon in question depicted Mohammed with the message “a star is born” on his naked buttocks. The Muslim girl present saw this as pornographic.

    The teacher could have taught his course on freedom of expression in the way education has done for centuries, by verbally explaining the events surrounding the 2015 attack on the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. But in our age of audiovisual media, he chose to use a visual prop. Understanding that the images may be toxic for some — one of his students advised him against showing the photo — instead of changing course, he took the extraordinary initiative of inviting Muslim children to leave the room. Because one girl decided to stay and subsequently described what she had seen to her parents, the lesson provoked a public scandal. The school attempted to deal with the issue in a series of meetings.

    None of the commentators seems to have remarked that, though framed as voluntary, the teacher’s suggestion that the Muslims leave the room was a divisive, humiliating and discriminatory act. Imagine the effect of a German teacher in the 1930s inviting Jewish children to leave the room before a lesson on the “Elders of Zion.” Or a teacher in an American school inviting Christian children to leave the room during an illustrated lesson on pornography in the modern world. What responsible educator could be so lacking in cultural delicacy as to fail to assess the psychological impact of such an initiative?

    Macron’s government calls this an attack on secularism. The absurdity of the complaint becomes evident when we consider that the content of the lesson, illustrated by controversial imagery, refers to religion. The French have elevated the idea of secularism — laïcité — beyond the status of the simple principle of the separation of church and state. It has become a republican dogma, with all the irrationality associated with any ideological dogma. The dogma admits two interpretations: that neutral secularism banishes the question of religious beliefs from public life and that aggressive secularism claims superiority over religion.

    The assassinated teacher appears to have applied the second. For a history teacher, he also seems to have been curiously unaware of the historical context. For three decades, the Western world has experienced the troubling ambiguities of what Samuel Huntington called “the clash of civilizations.” Teachers in today’s multicultural societies should be aware of danger zones and understand how to navigate them with ordinary delicacy. They should also be aware that in the West’s specific culture of exacerbated individualism, unhinged individuals who decide they have a mission often feel empowered by the culture itself to carry out the mission to prove their identity.

    Historical Note

    Treating this assassination as a crime by an unhinged individual would have had no electoral value for Macron. He needed to make it not just political but philosophical. The journal L’Obs quotes Macron as saying: “He wanted to overthrow the Republic and the Enlightenment. This is the battle we are facing, and it is existential.”

    Macron wants us to believe that the 18-year-old assassin is a political and cultural revolutionary intent not only on overthrowing the French republic but endowed with the greater historical mission of canceling the nation’s proudest accomplishment, the 18th century Enlightenment, consigning to the dustbin of history Diderot, Voltaire, Montesquieu, Condorcet and the other thinkers of the age.

    The Guardian reported this observation by Macron: “One of our compatriots was assassinated today because he taught pupils freedom of expression, the freedom to believe and not believe.” Is that really what the teacher was teaching? The Charlie Hebdo affair was essentially about the freedom to use commercial media to shame a group of believers. That could have been an interesting topic to explore as a feature of modern history. It wouldn’t have required showing provocative cartoons to 13-year-olds, who in any case are too young to appreciate the economic and cultural intricacies of the controversy.

    One interesting historical development might have been to highlight the parallel phenomena of Donald Trump and Charlie Hebdo, who have more than one thing in common. That might have contributed to a reflection on the relationship between politics and the media. But none of that would serve the cause of Macron’s future electoral chances.

    *[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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    The Indian Government Is Not Letting a Pandemic Go to Waste

    Indian culture venerates tools of trade. Indeed, a special day in the festival calendar is dedicated to worshiping them. In this context, tractors and farm implements are considered almost sacred. Burning a tractor is one of the most symbolic forms of protest. Members of the main opposition party decided to engage in precisely this act. They recently burned a tractor in the high-security zone of India Gate in New Delhi.

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    As per the World Bank, 41.5% of Indians are employed in agriculture. Another 20% are dependent on it. This has implications for Indian politics. Support of farmers is critical to winning elections. Agriculture is to India what the military-industrial complex is to the US. Politicians promise goodies and operate elaborate patronage systems in rural India to secure votes.

    The chaos, unruliness and terrible state of Indian cities can partly be explained by the disproportionate doling out of subsidies to rural areas. This leaves little money for urban infrastructure, which is almost invariably ramshackle across the country. Most state governments in India are headed by rural politicians. Even Karnataka, which is home to Bengaluru, the information technology capital of the country, is no exception.

    The Biggest Reform Since 1991

    With such powerful vested interests, hinting at reform is a tall proposition. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has done the unthinkable. It has dismantled state control over agricultural markets. Opposition parties are protesting because they represent rural power brokers who are deeply upset. By freeing farmers from such power brokers, the Modi government has ushered in a brave new era both for Indian politics and the economy. 

    A little bit of context is essential to understand the true implications of this move. Until now, farmers were forced to sell their produce to agricultural produce market committees (APMCs). They are dominated by rural politicians and local bigwigs who exploit farmers. For decades, farmers got pitiably low amounts while consumers paid ridiculously high prices. The middlemen who run APMCs pocketed the difference.

    At a time when GDP has been shrinking and COVID-19 has been barely tackled, the Modi-led government has introduced the most significant economic reforms since 1991. In that historic year when the US fought Iraq in the Gulf War and the Soviet Union fell, India liberalized its economy and ushered in an era of high growth. The liberalization of agricultural markets will boost farm incomes significantly. With about 60% of India’s population reliant on agriculture and allied activities, this move will increase domestic demand and bolster Modi’s political base. In addition to this, Modi is also pioneering a scheme inspired by Peruvian economist Hernando De Soto’s work that seeks to better define the property rights of the farmers.

    Other Major Measures

    Apart from agricultural liberalization, the Modi government has instituted other far-reaching reforms. It has simplified longstanding labor laws that held back manufacturing. The Modi government has also curbed the flow of foreign funding into India’s nonprofits. Many of them have been opponents of the Modi government and its policies. Now, these nonprofits stand weakened, leaving the BJP in a stronger position.

    Another development has strengthened the BJP. For decades, Bollywood has been a bastion for opponents of the ruling party. Recently, the film industry has been in trouble. The death of a small-town actor has put the spotlight on nepotism and corruption in Bollywood. Some key figures are now under investigation. As a result, Bollywood’s criticism of the BJP has become muted in some quarters but more strident in others. Bollywood’s target is a section of the media that it deems to be sympathetic to the BJP’s brand of politics.

    Embed from Getty Images

    Such is the BJP’s domination that its ambitious legislative agenda has escaped public scrutiny and effective opposition. In June, these authors sent out a brief that explained how the ruling party needed just seven more members of parliament to control the 245-member Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the parliament. Now, the BJP has achieved that control and its MPs are ramming through reforms their party deems fit.

    Foreign correspondents working for big media outlets in New Delhi who frequent the Khan Market have failed to understand the major implications of recent moves. The Modi-led government has embarked on a new chapter. The legislative reforms it is pushing through are ambitious, far-reaching and potentially transformative. While COVID-19 is ravaging the country and China is making threatening moves on its border, India has bet boldly on big reforms. The BJP might reap a rich political harvest as a result.

    Yet even as it seems all smooth sailing for the BJP, the ruling party faces a big risk. Voters expect it to govern well. So far, several key reforms and policy initiatives have failed miserably. India’s colonial-era bureaucracy has built toilets and opened bank accounts because these did not threaten its power. In contrast, measures that threatened bureaucratic privilege, such as manufacturing reforms or indirect tax reforms, have been quietly scuttled.

    If India’s powerful bureaucracy tries similar tricks with the latest set of reforms, the ambitious Modi government might finally turn on the purveyors of red tape themselves.

    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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    What Would a Biden Victory Spell for US-Turkish Relations?

    In an interview for a new book from Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward, US President Donald Trump says: “I get along very well with Erdogan, even though you’re not supposed to because everyone says, ‘What a horrible guy.’” A lot is revealed in that statement. The key lies in the phrase “you’re not supposed to.” It implies there is a moral authority vetting such preferences and that he is dismissive of that moral authority.

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    Of course, it says more about the moral fault lines at the heart of US politics than it does about US-Turkish relations. These fault lines are being given the scorched earth treatment once more as the election season draws to a close. But what does the future hold for US-Turkish relations, once so unshakable and now so fractious, despite President Trump’s personal warmth toward Recep Tayyip Erdogan? Will it make any difference if the old man at the helm is Joe Biden instead?

    Let the Old Men Talk

    As the above quote reveals, much about US-Turkish relations today is being driven by personalities. Individuals always matter in international relations, but their importance is accentuated by the rise of figures who command strong populist appeal, who are firmly embedded in positions of power and who espouse an essentially patriarchal and conservative vision of the exercise of that power. It means relations are not the smooth ride they were during the Cold War era. Today, these populist figures thrive on being bullish and awkward leaders.

    In Donald Trump, Turkey’s leader, like many others, has found a man with whom they can engage. Indeed, President Erdogan is said to have a regular hotline to the White House. The US president is openly admiring of strong and often autocratic leadership. It’s a style he clearly feels he epitomized in the business world and which he has brought to his presidency. That his tenure as the president of the United States may be briefer than that of many of the populist and autocratic leaders he admires is the one spoiler.

    It may also be a spoiler for the US more broadly. In the past few years, such world leaders have grown self-confident in the global order lead by Donald Trump. A Biden administration that chastises them for their faults on human rights, conflict resolution or democratic norms might well receive a hostile response. This poses a conundrum for the United States. A president who set out specifically to put America first may have made it far harder for a successor who wants to begin collaborating again.

    What Would Biden Do?

    The signs are that as president, Joe Biden would not have as easy a relationship with Erdogan as Trump has had. Given that getting on with Turkey has increasingly come to mean getting on with its president, this matters a great deal. Almost a year ago, Biden said in an interview with The New York Times that he regarded Erdogan as an “autocrat.” He also expressed misgivings about Turkey’s actions in Syria, confrontations in the eastern Mediterranean about energy resources, and the stationing of NATO nuclear weapons on Turkish soil.

    Though these comments went unacknowledged at the time, the Turkish government has since raised heated objections as Biden’s presidential bid has gathered steam. There will also be real concerns in Ankara about Biden’s longstanding support for Kurdish rights, including his belief that President Trump has dealt shoddily with his nation’s Kurdish allies in Syria after they helped to subdue the Islamic State group. Such a position would bring back some of the tensions of the Obama presidency.

    Clearly, upon gaining the presidency, one would expect a measure of realignment from the Biden White House. The former vice president’s strong stance against Erdogan would have to become more nuanced as occurs for all those who gain actual power. President Erdogan is not an autocrat. He may have authoritarian instincts, but autocrats do not allow elections with credible results, nor do they allow their opponents to win the mayoralty in their largest cities. 

    The complex and competing tensions of the region in which Turkey lies will necessitate the US working with Turkey to a large degree. That requires finding common ground and mutual interest. But necessity can only get you so far. To generate any real warmth to his relationship with President Erdogan, Joe Biden will have to reveal some dissatisfaction with the global status quo or at least some sympathy with those, such as the Turkish president, who are driven by this belief.  That such concern genuinely motivates Biden might be a hard sell.  

    No Smooth Rides

    Nothing about the past few years of US-Turkish relations has been smooth, from the furor over the jailing of American pastor Andrew Brunson to the simmering Turkish anger at US refusal to extradite Fethullah Gulen, the head of the movement held responsible in Turkey for the failed 2016 coup attempt. That incident, which has defined the trajectory of the country over the past five years, was a pivotal one not only internally but also externally.

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    Russian President Vladimir Putin was quick and decisive in backing Erdogan at a point when the success of the coup was still unclear. The US, on the other hand, was less wholehearted, and there was the sense that it hesitated and that US personnel might even have been complicit at the Incirlik airbase in southeastern Turkey. In moments of crisis, you learn whom you can really trust. In the personality politics of today, President Erdogan learned much from that episode. It fed into his already established worldview in which the West was inherently predatory and untrustworthy.

    None of this means that Turkey or its president are wedded to deep friendships with US opponents such as Russia, Iran or China. Indeed, Turkey’s relations with Russia over the past five years have been exceptionally turbulent. But it does mean that Turkey has, in President Erdogan, a pugnaciously nationalist leader who is unafraid of picking fights. It means he has picked several with the US itself, and yet, with President Trump at the helm, you always feel that, however unsavory things get, the Turkish president is always half-admired for his obstinate aggression.

    If there is a new president in the Oval Office come 2021, it will pose many more challenges for both sides. The relationship will not be easy, and without the bromance that occasionally surfaces between the current leaders, it could be a more dangerous one. US-Turkish strategic goals have been diverging for years. This causes systemic strain to the relationship. The Trump presidency may, inadvertently, have eased some of that strain, but it will not go away. A president less in tune with the current administration in Ankara could tear it further apart. For bilateral relations, for NATO and for the whole Middle East and Mediterranean region that could be a very destabilizing prospect.

    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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    Femicide Continues to Plague Mexico

    President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (AMLO) won the 2018 election on a campaign of combating the underlying causes of the social ailments impacting Mexican society. He vowed to fight violence and narcotics trafficking by eliminating its root cause, poverty. His plan was summarized by his tagline, “hugs, not bullets.” AMLO has sought to be the voice of the marginalized and to end the endemic corruption in Mexican politics. In September, during his state of the union speech, he claimed that most crime was down under his administration, including kidnapping, robbery and femicide. His track record thus far, however, disproves his claims and leaves much to be desired, especially when it comes to violence against women.

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    On August 3, the president celebrated a victory over the arrest of one of Mexico’s most wanted criminals, Jose Antonio Yepez Ortiz, “El Marro,” the alleged leader of the Santa Rosa de Lima cartel. That win was soon followed by the extradition from Spain of Emilio Lozoya, ex-chief of the state-owned oil company, PEMEX, on bribery and money laundering charges, which ultimately implicated ex-presidents and various congressmen.

    Gender-Based Violence

    While Lopez Obrador touted these examples as clear evidence of his administration’s success, he, like many populists in the region, believes that he can shape public opinion and reality solely through his own declarations, despite all the evidence to the contrary. However, on the heels of these so-called victories, a July government report captured a staggering statistic: 17,493 homicides in the first half of 2020, indicating a nearly 2% increase since last year, putting 2020 on track to be the deadliest year on Mexico’s record. 

    Among the record-breaking homicides figure lies a much greater policy failure to combat femicide — the murder of women based on their gender. Femicide is up 9.2% compared to the first half of 2019, totaling 489 deaths through June this year according to the Secretariat of Security and Civilian Protection (SSPC). Femicide shot up by 36% alone from May to June. While violence against women has long been problematic in Mexico, COVID-19 lockdowns have only worsened the situation by forcing many victims into dangerous circumstances with their aggressors. 

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    Budget cuts to federal and state programs due to the economic recession and diminishing tax revenues will likely make it harder to respond to domestic abuse calls and to prosecute femicides. Amid these extraordinary developments, AMLO’s response so far has been to downplay the chronic nature of gender-based violence in Mexico. 

    Emergency calls show just how endemic the violence really is. Through the end of July, the emergency helpline had received 154,610 calls reporting gender violence incidents, up 47% from 2019, according to the SSCP. AMLO has claimed in a press conference that 90% of these calls are “false.” While experts agree many of the calls are “inadmissible” or “unfounded,” due to poor connections, the victims hanging up and even prank calls, inadmissible calls don’t exceed 77%.

    The president is attempting to use the inadmissibility argument to refute the verified emergency call statistics of his own government. The figures also cannot account for the many victims who do not contact authorities out of fear. According to an independent NGO, 9 out of 10 women do not report gender-based violence in Mexico. Rather than providing compassion and answers to victims, the president has selfishly claimed that his opponents are using femicide statistics for political attacks.

    Economic Impacts

    Beyond the physical trauma, domestic and state abuse against women can also have profound effects on women’s economic well-being. According to a 2018 report by the National Institute of Statistics and Geography of Mexico (INEGI), over 19 million women reported being victims of domestic abuse, with 64% of incidents leading to severe violence. As a result, each victim lost an average of 30 days of paid and 28 days of unpaid work annually. INEGI estimates that between October 2015 and October 2016, the total cost of lost income by women who missed work due to domestic violence amounted to 4.4 billion pesos ($184 million).

    These losses often perpetuate women’s dependence on their aggressors, worsening what already are unequal economic circumstances. According to the United Nations Development Program’s (UNDP) Gender Development Index, women on average earn $11,254 per year, less than half of men, who make $24,286. More women rely on informal employment, with 56.6% working in the informal sector (excluding agriculture) compared to 48.4% of men. The Mexican Social Security Institute noted that women only comprise 38% of social security beneficiaries. This economic and labor inequality has meant that women have been disproportionately hit by the COVID-19 lockdowns, rising unemployment and lack of access to social security benefits. 

    AMLO has failed to adequately respond to the issue, and the situation is likely to worsen unless the government makes a concerted effort. In August, a reporter confronted the president about a June report showing a cut of 37.5 million pesos to the National Commission to Prevent and Eradicate Violence Against Women. After the president’s denial, the government released a statement saying that no such cuts would be made because fighting gender violence was an essential task.

    However, the response still falls well short of a meaningful attempt to stamp out the endemic issues in the criminal system and within Mexican machismo culture at large. The president’s austerity measures cannot come at the expense of rising femicide rates and violence against women throughout the country. Rather, a July report from the UNDP recommends that the government take on more debt to spend on protecting the most vulnerable groups from the socio-economic effects of the pandemic.

    As endemic as femicide is in Mexico — it trails only Brazil’s total number of cases in Latin America — gender-based violence is a pandemic that is claiming the lives of countless victims across the hemisphere. According to the United Nations’ Gender Equality Observatory for Latin America and the Caribbean, the countries with the highest rate of femicide per 100,000 women are: El Salvador (6.8), Honduras (5.1), Bolivia (2.3), Guatemala (2.0) and the Dominican Republic (1.9). Mexico’s rate of femicide is 1.4, which suggests that in addition to national measures taken to halt this pandemic, Latin America as a region has much work to do to protect the well-being of half of its citizens. 

    *[Fair Observer is a media partner of the Young Professionals in Foreign Policy.]

    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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    David Gelernter: The Making of a Trumpista

    After four years of the Trump presidency, it is still not entirely clear why a substantial number of voters in 2016 cast their ballots for a candidate who made it glaringly obvious that he lacked many of the most basic character traits needed to qualify for America’s highest political office. At the end of his tenure, fraught with some of the worst incidences of corruption, deceit and plain incompetence, it boggles the mind why anyone in their right mind would still support Donald Trump. Yet according to the most recent polls, around 40% of eligible voters still do.

    In a previous article, I have tried to explain why evangelicals and large parts of traditional Catholics have to a large degree stuck with Trump, despite his obvious moral flaws which are fundamentally at odds with the teachings of the Bible. Apparently, they don’t really care, as long as Trump pretends to take their concerns seriously. This means restoring Christianity’s traditional central role in American society, “valorizing” Christian beliefs too long subjected to ridicule and disdain, and actively promoting the one issue most important to them: the reversal of Roe v. Wade, which put American women in a position where they were free to choose what to do with their bodies.

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    Numerous observers have written about the second group of Trump supporters, the white supremacists — white voters obsessed with, and anxious about, the rapidly changing composition of America’s population. They could probably care less about abortion, given the fact that abortion is significantly more prevalent among African American than white women. In fact, in 2008, abortion rates among black women were five times as high as among white women; among Hispanic women, twice as high. For hardcore white supremacists, this obviously is good news, given their fears of being “out-birthed” by non-whites. Trump’s “nudge nudge, wink wink” when it came to the white supremacist Proud Boys thugs during the first debate with Joe Biden was a clear appeal to the white supremacist vote.

     American Entropy

    Little has been written about a third group, which is perhaps the most interesting of all, given their ideational stance, which eludes easy classification. One of its most paradigmatic representatives, I would suggest, is David Gelernter, a brilliant professor of computer science at Yale University, an iconoclast and intellectual maverick, whose intellectual curiosity has extended well beyond his main field of study.

    Gelernter attained renown — a modicum of fame he certainly could have done without — in 1993 as one of the victims of Ted Kaczynski, better known as the Unabomber. The professor lost a hand in the terror attack as well as suffering severe damage to internal organs and one of his eyes. Gelernter incurred Kaczynski’s wrath for his enthusiastic support of technological progress. Technological innovation, the Unabomber’s letter addressed to Gelernter charged, was only possible because “techno-nerds” like him made it “inevitable.” And with it a list of negative consequences, such as the invasion of privacy and environmental degradation.

    The attack confirmed what Gelernter appears to have suspected for some time — that America had become hostile to technology and pessimistic about the future. How could this happen? According to a lengthy New York Times expose from 1995, in Gelernter’s view, the United States had achieved something of a “technological and economic utopia — and the country subsequently imploded with its own success.” Evoking the second law of thermodynamics, he charged that “the entropy of American society” had “increased enormously,” and there was no way to put things back together again. What was left was a retreat to pure nostalgia, a yearning for a time when there was still a strong notion of civic virtues, when there were strong moral values and strict rules for sex and marriage and the interactions of people and authorities.

    On the flip side, what was left was a strong sense that American civilization was on the decline, provoking Gelernter’s outrage and indignation. The main reason: the incursion of “moral relativism” into the fabric of American society in the wake of ’68, which had fatally undermined what hitherto had held Americans together as Americans, their way of life — strong time-honored moral principles.

    Fast forward some 20 years. The year is 2016, and Donald Trump has emerged as the Republican frontrunner in the race for the presidency. Gelernter has chosen sides. In his view, there is only one way to protect the American nation from Hillary Clinton, and that is to vote for Donald Trump. To be sure, Trump was nothing but “an infantile vulgarian” who “had all the class and cool of a misbegotten 12-year-old boy.” But this was nothing compared to the likes of Clinton and Obama, that “third-rate tyrant” who has nothing but contempt for ordinary people, who “doesn’t give a damn what people think.”  

    Trump, on the other hand, is someone the “empty gin bottle [voters] have chosen to toss through the window,” reflecting voters’ recognition of “the profound contempt for America and Americans that Mrs. Clinton and President Obama share and their frightening lack of emotional connection to this nation and its people.”

    Contempt for Democracy

    In light of what has transpired since the beginning of this pandemic, with a president devoid of any sense of human empathy for the tens of thousands of victims of his callousness, exhibiting brazen contempt for even the people in his direct entourage, these observations sound eerily prescient, if in a fundamentally opposite sense. Unfortunately, Gelernter so far appears to have shied away from addressing Trump’s mishandling of the COVID-19 crisis. Even iconoclasts appear to have a hard time dealing with cognitive dissonance.

    In my book, this amounts to intellectual dishonesty — the refusal to own up to one’s unwavering support for a man who would rather risk destroying the very fabric of American democracy than concede defeat. But then, subverting the constitutional order, undermining existing institutions and rigging the results of elections has been one of the hallmarks of populist regimes, from Perón to Chavez, from Morales to Maduro. Populists have little love left for democracy if it does not go their way. Ironically enough, in late 2015, in a commentary for the ultra-conservative Washington Examiner, Gelernter accused the American left for seemingly having “lost its taste for democracy.”

    Today, contempt for democracy is one of the hallmarks of Trumpism. As one of his minions in the Senate recently reiterated his party’s position, America was not a democracy, nor was democracy an objective. America was a republic, dedicated to the pursuit of material happiness, and that’s it. For neutral observers, the Republicans’ objection to characterizing their country a democracy was and continues to be, as John Haltiwanger writes for Business Insider, “tied to the fact Republicans have reason to fear a system in which a majority of Americans have more say.” And given the direction of America’s demographics, fear appears to be turning into a nightmare triggering what sociologists call a “moral panic.”

    It is this moral panic which might explain Gelernter’s lashing out on the left in a 2018 Wall Street Journal commentary titled “The Real Reason They Hate Trump.” With “they” he obviously referred to “the left.” Gelernter’s central thesis was that the left hated Trump because Trump was “a typical American —except exaggerated.” Hating Trump, Gelernter asserted, meant hating “the average American — male or female, black or white.” And hating the average American meant hating America, what it is, what it stands for, meaning its “exceptional and unique destiny.”

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    This in itself was not a new thought. As early as 2005 Gelernter, in an essay on “Anti-Americanism and Its Enemies” which appeared in Commentary, had argued that America was “superior to all others — morally superior, closer to God.” Americans were God’s new chosen people, “a unique collective instrument of God in the affairs of the nations,” with a distinct “divine mission to all mankind.”

    Those who hated America, did so because they hated the American interpretation of Christianity, if not Christianity itself. At the time, Gelernter’s focus was particularly on Islamic fundamentalism, hardly surprising after 9/11. In the years that followed, Gelernter’s focus shifted increasingly to what he believed were the domestic enemies of Americanism — the liberal Left, which rejected the notion that the US was meant to be the greatest county in the world. This, of course, was a notion Trump apparently wholeheartedly embraced, exemplified by his “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan.

    The accusation that they hate their own nation has been one of the main tropes on the populist radical right against the left, not only in the United States, but also in Europe. In both cases, the right’s charge has been that the left defends the rights of minorities to a decent life not out of concern for universal human rights but because they hate their “own” people, who in reality should always come first because they hate their own country and everything it stands for. On this reading, the left have nothing but contempt for their own country because they don’t really consider it their home. Their home is elsewhere, anywhere (in David Goodhart’s sense of the word), in the empty space between Berlin, London, New York and Paris, always on the move, nowhere at home, and certainly not in their own country.

    Sense of Nostalgia

    Gelernter’s unwavering support for Donald Trump, despite his misgivings about the president’s boorish behavior, was to a large extent grounded in that sense of nostalgia which is one of the defining facets of contemporary radical right-wing populism, whether in the United States or in Europe. Nostalgia for the “small-town America” of his youth — Gelernter grew up on Long Island — his “plea for the past” irrevocably lost, reflected in his book on the 1939 World Fair, informed his intellectual trajectory following the Unabomber attack, from techno-geek to Trump apologist.

    In the process, Gelernter expressed his misgivings about a whole range of ills and evils that in his view had befallen postmodern American society, each one attributable to the liberal left. At the same time, he adopted the major tropes central to contemporary radical right-wing populism, in Europe and the US.

    Political correctness: In 2016, Gelernter wrote an essay in the Washington Examiner where he claimed that political correctness was “the biggest issue facing America today.” Political correctness, he maintained, actually was a misnomer, disguising “the real nature of this force, which ought to be called invasive leftism or thought-police liberalism or metastasized progressivism.” Its primary victims — the traditional American mainstream, “working- and middle-class white males and their families,” furious about the havoc political correctness had wreaked on American society for decades, “made worse by the flat refusal of most serious Republicans to confront it.”

    But now there was hope because with Donald Trump, there finally was a GOP candidate who dared to stand up against political correctness. He was the only candidate who found the right words to appeal to his “unprivileged, unclassy supporters” who sense “that their children are filled full of leftist bile every day at school and college” but don’t have the “time or energy to set their children straight.”

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    Feminism: In an article from 2008 that appeared in The Weekly Standard, Bill Kristol’s neocon flagship published by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation empire, Gelernter attacked American feminism for having degraded the English language. In the past, the author asserted, English had been there for everyone. Starting “in the 1970s and ’80s, arrogant ideologues began recasting English into heavy artillery to defend the borders of the New Feminist state.” This was largely in line with his earlier charge that prominent American feminists “cast women in the black victim role, men as the bigoted white oppressors.” Feminists routinely attacked women who chose their family over a career. Yet, as Gelernter put it in a Commentary article from 1996, mothers should stay home. If they failed to do so, it was not primarily the result of economic necessity or social pressures to keep up with “the Joneses” next door, but because feminists had convinced them that for a woman to “be worthy of respect is to do what men do” (a line from Goethe’s “Egmont”). Once again, there is a strong whiff of nostalgia informing the analysis, a yearning for the times before “Motherhood Revolution,” perfectly reflected in the black and white TV series “Leave It to Beaver.”

    Not Just a Theory

    Evolution: It is well known that one of the core constituency of Donald Trump are evangelicals. Evangelicals voted for Trump not because they believed that Trump was a dedicated Christian. Quite the opposite: They voted for him because they believed that he would restore Christianity to its rightful place at the center of American life and, equally important, that he would do whatever possible to reverse Roe v. Wade by appointing anti-abortion justices to the Supreme Court. One of the most important dogmas among American fundamentalist Christians is the belief that God created the world and human beings over a period of six days (on the seventh He took a break and rested), some 10,000 years ago.

    It stands to reason that for evangelicals, Darwinism is the bête noire par excellence. To be sure, over the past decades, the Darwinist paradigm has come under close scrutiny. A number of its propositions, in light of new empirical findings, have been challenged and revised.

    However, Darwinism is not only a theory, subject to scientific falsification, but also a creed. And on the American radical populist right, it has been treated as such. This might explain why Gelernter’s widely noted take on the subject, “Giving Up Darwinism,” appeared in 2019 in the Claremont Review of Books. A rather obscure magazine, the Claremont Review gained notoriety with the publication of “The Flight 93 Election,” a pro-Trump polemic that appeared in September 2016 on its website. “Published under the pseudonym Publius Decius Mus, the essay compared the American republic to a hijacked airliner, with a vote for Donald J. Trump as the risky, but existentially necessary, course.”

    In the years that followed, the Claremont Review turned into “the academic home of Trumpism.” Under the circumstances, Gelernter’s essay on Darwinism takes on a “meta-political” meaning, an affirmation of being part of the tribe. It logically follows from a sentence in his essay on political correctness, his observation that “Political correctness holds that Christians are a bygone force, reactionary, naïve, and irrelevant.”

    Human responsibility for global warming: In June of this year, about two-thirds of Americans thought the federal government should do more with respect to climate change. More than three-quarters thought the US should prioritize renewable sources of energy. In 2016, Donald Trump campaigned on a platform that promised he would save coal while promoting other fossil fuels. The plea secured him crucial support in coal-dependent states in the Appalachian region, such as West Virginia and Kentucky.

    Coal is known as a major contributor to anthropogenic climate change. This is, of course, if you believe, like most scientists do, that humans bear responsibility for global warming and climate change. Trump, as is well known, doesn’t. In radical right-wing populist doctrine, climate change is but a “hoax,” as Trump claimed during the campaign, and the concern about climate change is nothing but alarmism provoked by the liberal left as a new ploy to undermine the capitalist system and prevent Americans from living as if there were no tomorrow.

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    Enter David Gelernter. In early 2007, Gelernter was among the forerunner for the position of science advisor for the Trump administration. At the time, he was under scrutiny, among other things on the question of global warming. When pressed he admitted he did not believe humans were responsible for climate change, even if he noted that he was not in a position to make an informed judgment. As he put it in an interview with The Scientist, “The evidence I’ve seen has not convinced me that the cause of this global warming or an appreciable contribution [to it] is human activity.” In the end, it did not matter. Despite his embrace of climate skepticism, he was not nominated. Perhaps, despite his own distaste for intellectuals, he was too much of an intellectual for a president who has shown nothing but contempt for them. Given David Gelernter’s status as a leading American scientist and intellectual with wide-ranging interests far beyond his immediate field — thus hardly the “typical” Trump supporter — his trajectory from techno-nerd to a convinced Trumpista is more than fascinating. It allows us to understand to what degree the combination of a deep sense of nostalgia and an equally profound disenchantment with the postmodern “left” prepares the ground for a mindset and psychological disposition that elevates a boorish loudmouth without substance and moral decency to an icon of redemption and revival.

    For some reason, Gelernter has been remarkably silent over the past year or so. Nothing on the president’s remarkable track record with regard to COVID-19, nothing on the eruption of racism-inspired violence during Trump’s tenure and the Black Lives Matter movement. It would also be interesting to read his views on Trump’s nomination for the Supreme Court of a mother who certainly has not taken his advice to stay at home.

    I have contacted Gelernter via email to find out what he thought about Trump’s blatant disregard for the suffering of the victims of COVID-19 (“It is what it is”), a reflection of his obvious contempt for the average American. He never responded. And yet, for some reason, I suspect that in November, Gelernter is not going to fall for Trump once again.

    *[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