Philippa Kaur

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    Could There Be War With Russia?

    First, let’s be clear: Russia already invaded Ukraine. At the end of February 2014, Russian soldiers without insignia seized key facilities in Crimea and then helped secessionists in eastern Ukraine some weeks later. Crimea is now under Russian control and a civil war continues to flare up over the breakaway regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in the east.

    Second, the United States has repeatedly provoked Russia by pushing the boundaries of NATO ever eastward. Virtually all of Eastern Europe is part of the military alliance, and so are parts of the former Soviet Union such as the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Ukraine is in a halfway house called “NATO Enhanced Opportunities Partners” and it has contributed to NATO-led missions.

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    A majority of Ukrainians — those not living in Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk — support NATO membership, according to a November 2021 poll. Such poll results are no surprise given that membership would provide Ukraine with the additional insurance of NATO’s collective defense clause. Of all the countries considering membership in NATO, Ukraine is the one that most threatens Russia’s national interests in what it calls the “near abroad.”

    That’s some of the necessary context to the recent news that Russia has been massing around 100,000 soldiers along its border with Ukraine, coupled with medium-range surface-to-air missiles. Russia argues that such maneuvers are purely precautionary. Ukraine and its supporters think otherwise.

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    The United States has rallied its allies to warn Russian President Vladimir Putin not to invade Ukraine. It has promised to levy additional economic sanctions against Moscow as well as send more US troops to Eastern Europe to add to the several thousand American soldiers in Poland as well as those stationed at four US military bases in Bulgaria, a military facility on Romania’s Black Sea coast and elsewhere. The Biden administration has been clear, however, that it wouldn’t send US soldiers to Ukraine to confront Russian invaders.

    Putin, meanwhile, has demanded that Ukraine’s membership in NATO be taken off the table. He has also called for an immediate security dialogue with the United States and has been strategizing with China’s Xi Jinping on how to coordinate their policies.

    The transfer of troops to the Ukrainian border may simply be a test of the West’s resolve, an effort to strengthen Putin’s hand in negotiations with both Kyiv and Washington, a way of rallying domestic support at a time of political and economic challenges or all of the above. Given enormous pushback from the Ukrainian army among other negative consequences of a military intervention, a full-scale invasion of Ukraine is not likely in the cards. Putin prefers short wars, not potential quagmires, and working through proxies wherever possible.

    A hot war with Russia is the last thing the Biden administration wants right now. Nor is an actual détente with Moscow on the horizon. But could Putin’s aggressive move raise the profile of US-Russia relations in such a way as to lay the foundation for a cold peace?

    Fatal Indigestion?

    The civil war in Ukraine does not often make it into the headlines these days. Ceasefires have come and gone. Fighting along the Line of Contact that separates the Ukrainian army from secessionist forces breaks out sporadically. Since the beginning of the year, 55 Ukrainian soldiers have died and, through the end of September, so have 18 civilians, including four children. Many residents of the border towns have fled the fighting, but millions who remain require humanitarian assistance.

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    For the Russian government, this low-level conflict serves to emphasize its main message: that Ukraine is not really a sovereign country. Moscow claims that its seizure of Crimea was at the behest of citizens there who voted for annexation in a referendum. It argues that the breakaway provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk are simply exercising their right of self-determination in a political climate that discriminates against Russian speakers. Such fissures in the territory of Ukraine, according to this logic, suggest that the government in Kyiv doesn’t have complete control over its borders and has thus failed at one of the principal tests of a nation-state.

    For Ukraine, the issue is complicated by the presence of a large number of Russian-language speakers, some of whom feel more affinity for Moscow than Kyiv. A 2019 law that established Ukrainian as the country’s primary language has not helped matters. Anyone who violates the law, for instance, by engaging customers in Russian in interactions in stores, can be subjected to a fine. So far, however, the government hasn’t imposed any penalties. That’s not exactly a surprise given that the current president, Volodymyr Zelensky, who objected to the law when he was running for office, is more comfortable speaking Russian in public.

    Despite its domestic challenges and the recent history of Russian military incursions, Ukraine is very much a country. It is a member of the United Nations. Only a handful of states — Somalia, Palau — have neglected to extend it diplomatic recognition. There is no strategic ambiguity about Ukraine’s place in the international order as compared to, say, Taiwan.

    Not even Putin, despite his paeans to “one Russia,” realistically contemplates trying to absorb a largely resistant country into a larger pan-Slavic federation with Russia and Belarus. After all, Moscow has had its challenges with the much smaller task of integrating little Crimea into the Russian Federation. Upgrading the peninsula’s infrastructure and connecting it to the Russian mainland has cost tens of billions of dollars even as the sanctions imposed by the West have cost Russian corporations more than $100 billion. A water crisis in Crimea — because Ukraine blocked the flow from the Dnieper River into the North Crimean Canal — has offset the infrastructure upgrades Moscow has sponsored, leading to speculation last year that Russian would invade its neighbor simply to restart the flow of water.

    Invading Ukraine to resolve problems raised by the earlier invasion of Crimea would turn Vladimir Putin into the woman who swallowed a fly (and then swallowed a spider to catch the fly, then a bird to catch the spider and so on). Such a strategy promises larger and more diverse meals followed by the inevitable case of fatal indigestion.

    An Improbable Peace?

    So far, the Biden administration has offered a mix of threats and reassurances in the face of a possible Russian invasion. New sanctions and the dispatch of additional troops to Eastern Europe have been balanced by the refusal of the administration at this point to consider any direct involvement in Ukraine to counter Russian forces. Biden communicated this strategy not only in speeches, but in a two-hour telephone call with Putin last week. It was, by all accounts, a diplomatic conversation, with no bridge-burning and no Donald Trump-like fawning.

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    Biden and Putin may meet in early 2022. If that sounds like deja vu, you’re right. After Russia mobilized troops on Ukraine’s border last April, a Biden–Putin summit took place in mid-June in Geneva. Long ago, North Korea discovered that missile launches were an effective way of getting Washington’s attention. Russia can no longer count on Trump’s affection for authoritarian leaders to secure summits, so it has now adopted the North Korean approach.

    The important thing is that Putin and Biden are talking and that the respective diplomatic establishments are engaging with one another. The problem is that both leaders face domestic pressure to take a more aggressive stance. In the United States, bipartisan efforts are afoot to send Ukraine more powerful armaments and escalate the threats against Moscow. In the Russian Duma, far-right nationalists like Vladimir Zhirinovsky and putatively left-wing leaders like Communist Party head Gennady Zyuganov have at one point or another called for the outright annexation of Ukraine’s Donbass region. Also, the approval ratings of both Putin and Biden have been dropping over the last year, which provides them with less maneuvering room at home.

    To resolve once and for all the territorial issues involving Ukraine, the latter has to be sitting at the table. The civil war, although still claiming lives, is thankfully at a low ebb. But it’s important to push through the implementation of the 2014 Minsk accords, which committed Ukraine to offer special status to Donetsk and Luhansk that would provide them greater autonomy within Ukrainian borders. Ukraine can bring such a compromise to the table by pushing stalled constitutional amendments through the parliament.

    Crimea is a different problem. Even if Ukraine has international law on its side, it cannot easily roll back Russian integration of the peninsula. As the Brookings Institution’s Steven Pifer points out, success might be the best form of revenge for Ukraine. If the country manages to get its economic act together — a difficult but not impossible task — it will present itself as a better option for Crimeans than being Moscow’s charity case. Queue a second referendum in which Crimea returns to Ukraine by popular demand.

    The question of NATO membership should be treated with a measure of strategic ambiguity. The US government won’t categorically rule out Ukrainian membership, but it also can deliberately slow down the process to a virtual standstill. Russia has legitimate concerns about NATO troops massed on its border. Putin’s demand that the alliance not engage in a military build-up in countries bordering Russia is worthwhile even outside of its value as a bargaining chip.

    Another major thorn in US-Russia relations is Washington’s opposition to the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline to Germany. Obviously, it should be up to Germany where it gets its energy, and surely Russia is no worse than some of the places the US has imported oil from in the past (like Saudi Arabia). But the Nord Stream 2 pipeline is yesterday’s problem. The pipeline will soon become a huge stranded asset, a piece of infrastructure that will send unacceptable amounts of carbon into the atmosphere and will be made redundant by the falling price of renewable energy. The European Union, additionally, is considering a Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism that will only add to the cost of imported natural gas, stranding that particular asset even earlier than expected.

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    Everyone talks about the United States and China working together to battle climate change. The same spirit of cooperation should animate US-Russia relations. The Russian government has been a little bit more forthcoming of late on setting decarbonization goals, but it has a long way to go, according to the analysis of these three Russian environmental activists.

    Imagine Washington and Moscow working together to wean themselves off of their mutual dependency on fossil fuels. Let’s call it a “green détente” that includes regular “carbon control” summits designed to reduce mutual emissions, much as arms control confabs have aimed to cut back on nuclear armaments.

    Of course, there are plenty of other issues that can and will come up in talks between the two superpowers: denuclearization, cyberwarfare, the Iran nuclear agreement, the future of Afghanistan, UN reform. Sure, everyone is talking about avoiding worst-case scenarios right now. The conflict over Ukraine and the conflict inside Ukraine are reminders that the United States and Russia, despite powerful countervailing pressures, can indeed go to war to the detriment of the whole world. Perhaps Putin and Biden, despite the authoritarian tendencies of the former and the status-quo fecklessness of the latter, can act like real leaders and work together to resolve mutual problems that go well beyond the current impasse in Ukraine.

    *[This article was originally published by FPIF.]

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

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    Yahoo’s Demonstration of How to Lie With Statistics

    Attempting to elucidate the meandering melodrama surrounding US President Joe Biden’s famous Build Back Better (BBB) legislation, still hanging in the balance, Yahoo’s senior columnist, Rick Newman, offers a wonderful example of how to twist statistics to mean close to the opposite of what they signify.

    Newman is a traditionalist who fears promoting new projects that imply a commitment to serious federal expenditure in a time of uncertainty. Earlier this year, relieved by Donald Trump’s departure from the White House, Newman was willing to entertain the idea that Biden might turn out to be a transformative president. But as soon as Larry Summers and others triggered a panicked reaction to the threat of inflation, his conservative instincts kicked back in. Newman obviously does not want to see the BBB legislation pass Congress.

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    To make his case in a column with the title “Why Build Back Better Is So Unloved,” Newman appeals if not to the will of the people, then at least to the mood of the people. “Democrats,” he writes, “are pressing legislation that clearly lacks what you could call a popular mandate.”

    Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

    Popular mandate:

    A mythical beast lurking at the core of modern democracies whose cacophonous scream is believed by the faithful to express an intention labeled “the will of the people”

    Contextual Note

    Does the idea of a popular mandate have any meaning at all in the current version of democracy? Biden won the election in November 2020 mainly because many Americans were tired of President Trump, not because of his vision of the future. Despite a significant margin in the popular vote, no one felt Biden had achieved a popular mandate. 

    At the same time, polls consistently show that, among the pressing issues, Americans give top priority to health care. A clear majority, including in the Republican camp, favors the idea of Medicare for All, a policy Biden has never endorsed. It could be argued that the policy has a popular mandate. But neither party was willing to select a candidate who endorsed it. This disconnect demonstrates that there exists no necessary correlation between what the people may be clamoring for and what their elected representatives are willing to do.  

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    Newman is certainly right about the lack of enthusiasm for Build Back Better. He goes on to make some valid points about the reasons it has not sailed to an easy victory in the halls of Congress. But to make the case that it is “unloved,” he has to twist not only the statistics but also a number of facts.

    Let’s begin with the statistics. Here is how Newman presents his case: “Voters aren’t all that enthused. Just 41% of respondents in a recent NPR/Marist poll said they support the BBB legislation, with 34% opposed and 25% unsure. Support for the bipartisan infrastructure bill Biden signed in November was 56%. That 15-point gap in support is the difference between legislation Americans want Congress to pass, and legislation they don’t.”

    There is a bit of trickery here. In his title, Newman called the legislation “unloved.” Here, he says voters are not “all that enthused.” Following the logic of the English language, this literally means they are enthused, but less intensely than expected. In idiomatic use, however, it is an understatement, a cliché that people use to express the opposite: that people dislike it. That’s fair enough because we all use the same idioms. But then Newman says, “Just 41% … said they support the BBB.” “Just 41%” here means the same thing as a paltry 41%. It’s a way of calling the legislation a loser, not even close to a majority and therefore manifestly not a “popular mandate.”

    But any statistician who reads this will note that, given the fact that 25% were unsure, the only significant numbers to compare are the 41% favorable and the 34% opposed. What that means, if we apply a proportionate distribution between the unsure, is that those in favor would represent 55% and the opposed 45%, a 10-point margin. A candidate achieving that margin of victory would be deemed by the media to have won a popular mandate.

    Instead, Newman compares BBB’s tepid 41% with the 56% score obtained in polls last September by the bipartisan infrastructure bill now signed into law. In that poll, only 17% were unsure. If we convert the numbers of that poll in the same manner, we arrive at 67% approving and 33% disapproving. 

    No one would doubt that such a result deserves to be called a popular mandate. But, in this comparison, the 15-point gap Newman claims as the difference would only be 11 points. The real question is purely rhetorical: Where does Newman situate the borderline between enthusiastically endorsed and unloved? Is it somewhere between 56% and 67%? The real lesson any serious analyst would draw from this is that democracy should not be about whether policies are loved or unloved, but about whether they are useful and needed. Newman, like everyone in the popular media, prefers to view both politicians and policies as objects of a popularity contest.

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    Newman does make one very pertinent point, asserting that an “obvious problem with the BBB bill is Americans don’t know what it will do.” He’s right, but the same could be said about all legislation for which there is serious disagreement and debate before it can be passed. The real problem, which he doesn’t mention, concerns the reasons why everyone, including Congress itself, is in the dark. There are three major ones.

    The first is Biden’s lack of leadership, even of plain old presidential bullying. Effective presidents spend their time leading vociferous campaigns for legislation they consider important. In the wings, they use whatever combination of tools — including essentially charisma and intimidation — to get the votes they need for measures they consider crucial.

    The second is more complex. It relates to a situation in which there is no clear majority for the president’s party and in which certain individuals within the party discover with narcissistic pleasure that they have the power to be a spoiler. The obvious candidates here are Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. In such a situation, havoc is predictable. The issues will take a back seat to the highly visible tug-of-war inside the supposedly dominant party. Even a truly charismatic president with the energy to forcefully take the debate to members of Congress might be doomed to fail.

    The third may well be the most important, but also the one Newman clearly has no interest in talking about: the role of the media. Always eager to present every political issue as either a horse race or a personality contest, the media spend their time speculating on who might be winning while avoiding reporting to the public the significant details of the game. The media’s treatment of BBB has turned the legislative drama into something resembling an ultimate combat championship, one day between Republicans and Democrats, another between Joe Manchin and Joe Biden, and occasionally between progressive and moderate Democrats. The public sits in front of their TV hoping to see a knockout and probably expecting an infuriating split decision.

    Historical Note

    For most of the article, Rick Newman focuses on the curious idea that Build Back Better isn’t about infrastructure or essential services in a humanly managed society, but rather about the government giving out “free money” or “generous entitlements.” For at least the last century, the Republican Party appears to see the immiseration of a substantial part of the population as a necessary feature of capitalism. Any measure that has the effect of transferring even small amounts of excess wealth toward social goals is termed a “handout.”

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    The free-enterprise, free-market ideology preached by politicians, taught in schools and relayed by the media has created a culture in which it is considered normal that everyone should be devoting their lives not just to working for pay but, when necessary, lying, conning and stealing (preferably within the limits of the law) to accumulate money as quickly as possible, while at the same time condemning as immoral the idea that wealth should be shared with society as a whole. When individualism is pushed to such a pitch, does even the idea of a “popular mandate” still make any sense?

    *[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 Response to Russia’s Brinkmanship Over Ukraine

    The Russian military buildup along Ukrainian borders conducted over the last few months — similar to an escalation by Russia in April — has led to new direct talks between US President Joe Biden and his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. The biggest fear in the West is whether Russia intends to invade Ukraine. The Russian leadership has claimed that its more than 100,000 troops deployed along Ukrainian borders are on Russian territory, are conducting routine training and should not worry anyone. 

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    In stark contrast, Russia perceives the potential deployment of NATO troops close to its borders as a major security threat. This reveals that Russia understands very well the signals it is sending by amassing an unprecedented-in-size military strike group to Ukraine’s frontiers. There is solid evidence that Russia is engaging in a bold brinkmanship game over Ukraine, using the logic of threat to create strategic ambiguity about a potential military invasion. Its goal is to force Western concessions on Ukraine, in particular, and to obtain a strategic carte blanche in the post-Soviet area more generally.   

    The Logic of Threats

    Following a videoconference on December 7 between Biden and Putin, the Russian leadership sent a number of signals that created more clarity about the Kremlin’s intentions. Their form was accurately reflected in a few analyzes published by the Russia-based Carnegie Moscow Center. One Russian analyst argued that, unless Putin’s demand for guarantees that Ukraine will never join NATO is accepted, the United States would see a military defeat of Ukraine, which would be “an especially humiliating re-run of recent events in Afghanistan.” Another Russian expert hinted that, unless the US ensures that Ukraine implements the Russian version of the Minsk agreements, it may risk a war in Ukraine.

    The Russian foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, confirmed that the West should accept these two conditions if it wants to avoid Europe returning to “the nightmare scenario of a military confrontation.” Following the teleconference, the deputy foreign minister, Sergey Ryabkov, reiterated the idea, stating that if NATO refuses Russia’s right to veto the alliance’s further expansion to the East, it will risk “serious consequences” and would lead to “its own weakened security.”

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    These are the most direct and bold threats that the Kremlin has issued against the West since the collapse of the Soviet Union. There are strong signals that this brinkmanship over Ukraine is a strategic calculation, triggered by the Kremlin’s perception that both the European Union and the United States are irresolute. 

    For instance, in his November 18 address to foreign policy officials, Putin observed that Russia has managed to create a feeling of tension in the West. He went on to recommend that this state of tension “should be maintained for as long as possible” and exploited to demand “serious, long-term guarantees” to prevent NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia. 

    Following Putin’s videoconference with Biden, the Russian foreign ministry published its concrete demands for talks on a new European security order. Among these demands, Russia requested that NATO withdraw its 2008 Bucharest summit “open doors” pledge for Ukraine and Georgia.

    Assessing the Risk of War

    Why is Russia so bold to directly threaten war and confront the West with an ultimatum: either accept a war in Europe or give up the post-Soviet area? The Kremlin has concluded that there is little appetite in the West to confront Russia on Ukraine, beyond economic sanctions. 

    Russia’s leadership has also come to believe that the West is extremely risk-averse and not ready to call the Kremlin’s bluff. The brazenness of the threats, the reference to NATO’s “humiliation” in Afghanistan and interviews with Russian and foreign experts confirming the strategic timidity of the West — all of this speak to that. For instance, in an interview with Harvard’s Timothy Colton in the Russian newspaper Izvestia during the recent “Valday Club” conference, the reporters emphasized the idea that Ukraine is not important to the US. In an interview with the former US ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, the journalists of the Echo Moskvy radio station pointed out that “we sell the Americans their own fears.”

    Under the current conditions, the risk of a massive conventional Russian invasion of Ukraine is very small. Russia is not yet ready for a total break up with the West, similar to the one the USSR had, which would be very likely if it attacked Ukraine. Therefore, the question of whether Russia is going to attack Ukraine is not helpful for strategic planning. Instead, for a more effective engagement of Russia, the EU and the US should ask: What actions, short of giving up Ukraine’s sovereignty, should be taken to decrease the risk of war?

    Responding to Russia’s Threats

    There are three strategic objectives that the European Union and the United States should pursue and strengthen. They all stem from an effective crisis diplomacy rationale. First, it is necessary to signal a strong resolve to impose high costs on Russia where it is vulnerable. Second, it is necessary to make these signals credible. Third, it has to engage in intensive diplomacy to show that Russia’s demands are not linked to its actual security concerns. 

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    The biggest vulnerability of Russia is the high military costs of an invasion. Providing defense equipment to Ukraine, deploying instructors and even small military units for joint exercises with Ukrainian troops in the vicinity of the line of contact in Donbas and near Crimea — on a rotational basis — would serve as a passive obstruction to potential Russian attacks. These are the most effective deterrence tools, which would greatly strengthen the credibility of the resolve of the EU and the US from Russia’s outlook. 

    Finally, the EU and the US should confront Russia’s manipulation of the “indivisible security” concept, which is a major element of its international propaganda campaign. To counter Russia’s legalistic approach and hidden agenda, they should suggest and discuss alternative proposals, such as the pact of non-aggression or parity of forces in the border areas. The West should not ignore that its response to Russia’s threat of war is likely to affect how other international actors — China, for example — view its resolve in responding to comparable challenges in other regions.

    *[This article was originally published by the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP), which advises the German government and Bundestag on all questions related to foreign and security policy.]

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

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    US Politics: The Anger Games

    Maggie Astor at The New York Times devotes an article to the egregious lies US politicians share with their constituents, not through social media, but through massive email campaigns. They escape notice in the public debate about fake news because they are private communications. But they achieve levels of fakeness never seen in social media.

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    In her article titled, “Now in Your Inbox: Political Misinformation,” Astor delves into the electoral logic behind such abuse. She cites celebrated Republican pollster Frank Lutz: “The more that it elicits red-hot anger, the more likely people donate. And it just contributes to the perversion of our democratic process. It contributes to the incivility and indecency of political behavior.”

    Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

    Red-hot anger:

    The scientifically studied emotion that effectively replaces uselessly time-consuming reflection on actual issues and proves particularly effective for a candidate’s fund-raising with enthusiastic individual voters, considered a useful complement to the massive injections of corporate cash habitually funneled through PACs and Super PACs.

    Contextual Note

    Fake news has been a featured topic in every news cycle since Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 US presidential election. Articles have proliferated concerning what might be done to counter the phenomenon. But fake news has always been a staple of US political culture. Technology and the success of social media have simply magnified the effect and the visibility of fake news to the point that traditional media have been pulling the alarm in the hope that they will be seen as bastions of truth and objectivity.

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    Astor highlights the difficulty that “fact checkers and other watchdogs” face in trying to deal with a particular form of fake news that is conveyed through the privacy of email. She quotes Jennifer Stromer-Galley, a professor in the School of Information Studies at Syracuse University, who worries that “it’s hard to know what it is that politicians are saying directly to individual supporters in their inboxes.” This assumes that the central problem of democracy can be reduced to the need for some authority to exist that can “know” everything being said during an election campaign. It assumes that filling the environment with watchdogs focused on fact-checking will cure all the ills.

    Stromer-Galley adds the reflection that political professionals, including the handsomely remunerated consulting firms that manage politicians’ campaigns, “know that this kind of messaging is not monitored to the same extent, so they can be more carefree with what they’re saying.” Clearly, Astor and Stromer-Galley believe that effective and presumably pervasive monitoring will be the solution. Some might call this the temptation to put in place the equivalent of an electoral inquisition. Just as President Joe Biden sees policing as the response to pervasive corruption, The Times sees police state measures as the response to political lies.

    Astor identifies two sides to the problem: “the private nature of the medium” and the fact that “its targets are predisposed to believe it.” But those are only the superficial effects of something that goes beyond politics and exists at the core of US culture. It has two components: the belief in free enterprise and the reality of consumerist individualism. Exaggerating the merits of a product or service and creating an emotional connection with it define the basis of all economic activity. Does this involve lying? Of course. The key is finding a credible borderline between exaggeration (good) and lying (evil).

    The acceptance of consumerist individualism as the model that determines how an entire society interacts turns out to be the more serious culprit. Politicians in the US are entrepreneurs selling a product to consumers who want to have positive feelings about their purchase. The product is the politicians’ largely unmonitored future work in government, which will be conducted essentially in consultation with donors and lobbyists. Every political professional understands that. And they know what has to be done to make it work. Telling the truth will never be the consideration uppermost in their minds.

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    Political discourse long ago stopped being what a lot of idealists would like it to be: about the issues. US culture is simply not designed to encourage a rational presentation of ideas, plans and projects serving to improve the environment and lives of its citizens. Like everything else in US culture, politics is about buying and selling, not about debating and governing. And buying and selling are about optimizing the circulation of money, not for society as a whole, but for those who can secure control over money and the resources that produce it.

    Anger itself is a product, and one that consumers are hankering for.

    Historical Note

    The art of spreading misinformation is hardly a modern phenomenon. Some people imagine it could not have existed before the advent of social media. In reality, it has existed for as long as modern electoral democracy itself. Ancient Athenian democracy was direct. Every (male) citizen was called upon to participate at some point in government.

    Modern electoral democracy was built on a very different founding principle: the notion that a small number of people with the ambition of exercising political power need to persuade as many people as possible who do not seek political power to vote for them.

    Astor’s findings confirm what has long been the fundamental reality that guides every citizen’s behavior in the US. The First Amendment allows everyone to engage in persuasion in preference to reflection. The competitive system encourages them to do what’s required to sell their wares. No amount of monitoring or fact-checking will change that basic fact. 

    Maggie Astor’s article, consistent with The New York Times ideology, seeks to achieve two goals. The first is to comfort the idea that rationality and facts, the earmarks of The Times’ style, are the ideal everyone should aspire to in a democracy. They develop this message even while refusing to analyze the systemic reasons why that will never become the basis of actual politics. The second is to skewer Republicans and leave the impression that Democrats are more honest.

    It’s true that Republicans have traditionally excelled at cultivating the art of using emotion — and especially anger — to achieve electoral success. They have consistently deployed more talent and fewer scruples than Democrats in accomplishing the task. That may even be the principal reason voters see Republicans as better capable of managing the economy. A vibrant capitalist economy thrives through the ability of clever and ambitious people to pull the wool over consumers’ eyes. Within those strands of that wool are the emotions associated with anger and hatred.

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    Even Richard Nixon (“Tricky Dick”), the champion of disingenuity before he was dethroned by Donald Trump, couldn’t do it alone. He needed the help of a true political professional, Murray Chotiner, who stated simply: “The purpose of an election is not to defeat your opponent, but to destroy him.” In the 1950 Senate race against the Democrat and former Hollywood actress Helen Gahagan Douglas, Nixon brought out a raft of dirty tricks that included innuendos of anti-Semitism (Douglas’ husband was Jewish) but also more specific acts such as calling people in the middle of the night and announcing to the groggy voter: “This is the communist party. We urge you to vote for Helen Gahagan Douglas on election day.” Douglas recounted that her worst memory of that campaign “was when children picked up rocks and threw them at my car, at me.”

    Nixon, the future senator, vice-president and president, established the ground rules many Republicans and quite a few Democrats have not forgotten. Whatever the tactics — whether dirty and directly mendacious or sophisticated and infused with the nuance of innuendo — they aim at triggering the strong emotion that drives voters to the polls. 

    Today, that emotion spills over into social media. After decades of anti-democratic practices, the visibility of hatred and lies on social media has finally made people aware of what has been there all this time. But instead of addressing the real issue — the toxic culture of electoral logic most often bankrolled by unseen corporate interests — the brave politicians and the legacy media attack social media itself and the citizens whose anger they have provoked. They want more monitoring, policing and fact-checking. As so often when things become dysfunctional, whether in the economy or politics, the media doctors focus on the symptoms rather than the disease.

    *[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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    Biden’s Cosmetic Battle Against Corruption

    Yakov Feygin’s professional title as the associate director of the future of capitalism program at the Berggruen Institute reveals with uncanny precision what his mission consists of. The Berggruen Institute seeks to “better understand how a global capitalism can be reshaped and regulated at all levels of governance: regional, national, and international.”

    In other words, it acknowledges serious problems in a system it believes can be reformed. The question that even its thinkers cannot begin to answer is whether those who profit from the system, and thus control its resources, will ever be willing to reform it. In the background lies another question few in governments, industry or think tanks want to entertain: What happens if they don’t agree to reform it?

    Washington’s Tawdry Victory Over Julian Assange

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    In a detailed analysis of one of the major features of the global financialized economy that appeared in The American Interest with the title, “The Financial Infrastructure of Corruption,” Feygin offers a pertinent observation. “The parallels between ‘tax optimization’ and ‘corruption,’” he writes, “are so strong that the illegality of the latter is only present because in the United States, we have made tax optimization legal and acceptable de jure.”

    Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

    Tax optimization:

    Corruption

    Contextual Note

    This succinct definition is, at least implicitly, Feygin’s own, though he has signaled the tenuous distinction in the law that prevents Americans — and especially American politicians — from acknowledging the identical nature of the two. Tax optimization is, by definition, an activity conducted by people who know the law and are skilled at working within it. So why complain? After all, our entire civilization since the Second World War derives its legitimacy from its alignment around the “rule of law.” If the law is respected by those who know it best, all must be well.

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    At his virtual Summit for Democracy last week, US President Joe Biden appeared, at least at one point, to be pushing in the same direction as Feygin. He said it was all about the effort to “strengthen our own democracies and push back on authoritarianism, fight corruption, promote and protect human rights of people everywhere,” before ending his litany with this motivational coda: “To act. To act.”

    A week earlier, the White House published the “fact sheet” of its Strategy for Countering Corruption. It declared Biden’s intention to “better hold corrupt actors accountable, and strengthen the capacity of activists, investigative journalists, and others on the front lines of exposing corrupt acts.” Some may have suspected a hint of hypocrisy at the very moment the US was continuing its aggressive pursuit of investigative journalist Julian Assange. 

    There is an explanation. Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, targeted the sacrosanct institution known as the defense establishment, not the private purveyors of corruption in the world of commerce. This distinction becomes clearer later in the document expressing the intent “to support, defend, and protect civil society and media actors, including investigative journalists who expose corruption.” War crimes don’t merit the same scrutiny.

    What, after all, does Biden’s anti-corruption initiative concretely propose? Is any of it consistent with Feygin’s critique? The first bullet point in the fact sheet reads: “Better understanding and responding to the transnational dimensions of corruption.” So far, so good. But it immediately tells us this will be done “by prioritizing intelligence collection and analysis on corrupt actors and their networks.”

    “Intelligence collection” quickly trumps the goal of “better understanding.” Understanding is dangerous because it can lead to reform. Intelligence collection typically leads to judicial processes and rarely produces understanding. Moreover, the long track record of intelligence agencies, including the CIA and FBI, has demonstrated that collecting, storing and using information — primarily against others for purposes of control and intimidation — has consistently impeded not only the will, but more significantly the ability to understand complex problems. 

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    The second bullet point focuses on expected bureaucratic efficiency through the coordination of “anti-corruption work” across “departments and agencies.” The third seeks to increase “law enforcement resources and bolstering information sharing between the intelligence community and law enforcement.” The emphasis is clear. It is more about policing than understanding. Reforming or restructuring can only be an afterthought.

    The document then goes on to list four objectives concerned with regulations that will permit identifying culprits. Perhaps the most worrying promise is this one: “Working with the private sector to improve the international business climate by encouraging the adoption and enforcement of anti-corruption compliance programs.” As Feygin’s analysis shows, the private sector employs and depends on the experts specialized in tax optimization. Talk about letting the fox rule the henhouse.

    Compare Biden’s description with what the Berggruen Institute envisions as the features of a solution: “sovereign wealth funds, publicly supported individual savings institutions, public retirement institutions, and cooperative enterprise ownership.” The institute seeks to convince governments to “envision ways that publics can retain stakes in common goods that are now being commercialized by private actors.” At this point, Noam Chomsky, Yanis Varoufakis and the late David Graeber might loudly applaud.

    If Biden is really interested in understanding how to counter corruption, he might begin by reading Feygin’s article and then consulting political economists such as Varoufakis and Thomas Piketty. But, reflecting recent traditions, the president appears focused on reinforcing intelligence networks and law enforcement. Reasonable observers might ask: Isn’t that precisely what the authoritarian regimes are tempted to do, the very regimes Biden contrasts with democracy? Those who do ask the question are rarely cited in the legacy media.

    Historical Note

    The problem of abiding by the rule of law imposed in the name of liberal democracy ends up looking eerily similar to the problem of establishing a moral order within the structural lawlessness of the feudal system capitalism replaced nearly three centuries ago. Feudalism allowed might to conquer right. The hierarchical system allowed evil despotic rulers, but also benevolent ones, to govern within their territories. 

    In today’s age of nation-states, the law itself can be an agent of hierarchy, a system that structures power relationships and tends toward increasing inequality. In some cases, it may be designed to protect the public welfare and the general good, but in others, it serves to defend evil-doers who use the facility of corruption specifically permitted by the laws to reinforce and abuse their power.

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    The obvious advantage a true liberal democracy possesses lies in the fact that laws can be reformed — and indeed, if required, entirely reformulated — with the consent of the people. But thanks to the unequal distribution of influence, some laws, including the laws that govern the procedures of democracy itself, may be specifically designed to escape even the notice of the people and even the scrutiny of the experts. When that happens, it is no longer the rule of law, but the law of rule, meaning whoever has power over the law can ensure that the law itself protects their own potentially despotic rule.

    Democratically elected governments are not immune to the law of rule for the simple reason that the principle of rule is the power of money. That is why a government in which money plays a major role in elections is bound to be corrupt. It will also be empowered to seek ways of consolidating its preferred forms of corruption, even while calling into question its less preferred forms of corruption. This allows it to maintain the image of combating corruption, but even more significantly, to protect its preferred version.

    The Berggruen Institute manifestly seeks to identify and eliminate the true roots of corruption in order to save the capitalist system that has spontaneously produced a variety of forms of corruption that have contributed to the economy’s impending divorce from democracy. Its noble effort may resemble an attempt at squaring the circle, although it would be more appropriate to call it the rounding of the dangerously sharp corners of the square.

    The Biden administration prefers to put warning signs on the ever-sharper corners of the square before pursuing those who try to make the corners even sharper. The Berggruen Institute believes the system can be given new life. The Biden administration hopes simply that it will survive a little longer.

    *[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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    Bosnia and Herzegovina’s Complicated Puzzle

    On Friday, December 10, the parliament of the Republic of Srpska, one of the constitutive entities of Bosnia and Herzegovina, adopted a Declaration on Constitutional Principles that states that the legislation imposed by the high representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina should be considered unconstitutional since the required procedure was not followed. The parliament also adopted conclusions by which it withdraws the formerly given consent to delegate some of Republic of Srpska’s authority to the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

    Is Dissolution a Solution for Bosnia and Herzegovina?

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    The same conclusions also require the government to propose adequate legislation within six months, which would enable normal functioning in view of the transfer of authority and competencies, formerly given to the federal level, back to the Republic of Srpska. The opposition parties criticized this move as a risky one, which can potentially bring more harm than good.

    Postwar Design

    This news provoked outrage in the centers of Western political power as well as in many mainstream Western media. The European Union and the governments of the US, UK, Germany and France have condemned these conclusions, calling for the respect of the Bosnian state institutions and the Dayton Peace Agreement that ended the war in the former Yugoslav Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and established the state in its postwar design.

    This may seem a somewhat paradoxical situation given that the Western governments that criticize the leadership of the Republic of Srpska affirm the Dayton Accords, while the leadership in Banja Luka and especially Milorad Dodik — the Serb member of the collective presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina, by far the strongest political figure in the Republic of Srpska — likewise express their unreserved support Dayton. Dodik has repeatedly claimed that the only way for Bosnia and Herzegovina to continue to exist as a state is the return to the Dayton Agreement and stick to all its articles.

    The problem, however, is not simply a formal one. It is deeply political. The current crisis was triggered by the former high representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Valentin Inzko, who outlawed the denial of the Srebrenica massacre as well as any questioning of the qualification of this crime as genocide.

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    This was the last straw that broke the camel’s back, as it were, leading the leaders of the Bosnian Serbs immediately to declare that if this legislation — perceived as anti-Serb — is not annulled, they would take steps toward protecting Bosnian Serbs and their entity from illegitimate and oppressive measures coming from the Office of the High Representative. The high representative is best described as the foreign governor of Bosnia and Herzegovina — acting, in reality, as an exponent of the most influential Western governments — with enormous powers and no democratic legitimacy. 

    The Dayton Agreement may have put an end to the war back in 1995, but it created a state which, in one sense, was stillborn. The Bosnian–Herzegovinian Serbs obtained the Republic of Srpska, with which they have primarily identified ever since. Bosnian–Herzegovinian Croats, as the third major ethnic/national community in Bosnia and Herzegovina — although much smaller than the Muslim/Bosniak and Serb ethnic/national groups — ended up without their own entity within the newly established Bosnia and Herzegovina.

    Instead, they were included into the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina as the other constitutive part of the state of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in addition to the Republic of Srpska. This is what is still provoking dissatisfaction among many Bosnian Croats and the reason why many, if not the majority of them, perceive Croatia, not Bosnia and Herzegovina, as their “home” country.

    Small Yugoslavia

    This means that only among Bosnian Muslims/Bosniaks one can find an overwhelming commitment to Bosnia and Herzegovina. In this political dynamic lies the reason why many Bosnian Muslim/Bosniak politicians advocate for a unitary state — and the eventual dissolution of the Republic of Srpska by taking away its key competencies — and for the abandoning of any ethnic/national principles in the election of political representatives under the pretext that this is in accordance with liberal-democratic principles.

    However, this is precisely what is perceived as a threat among many Bosnian Serbs and Croats, since the Muslim/Bosniak ethnic group is the largest one, which means that in practice it would be able to impose its will unto the other two major ethnicities and the institutions that were initially designed to prevent such discrimination.

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    This means that the “small Yugoslavia,” as Bosnia and Herzegovina used to be called because of its diverse religious and ethnic landscape reminiscent of Yugoslavia as a whole, is facing similar problems that former (big) Yugoslavia failed to resolve. The position of Muslims/Bosniaks (and their leadership) in Bosnia and Herzegovina can be seen in parallel to the position of Serbs in Yugoslavia.

    As the Serbs were the biggest ethnic group present in significant numbers in most Yugoslav republics, the overwhelming majority of Serbs were in support of Yugoslavia as a state. This, however, was perceived by many other ethnic communities as potential oppressiveness. The Serbs thus ended up being the only ones trying to save Yugoslavia from dissolution.

    Similarly, Muslims/Bosniaks in Bosnia and Herzegovina, being the biggest ethnic/national community, perceive Bosnia and Herzegovina as their country and are trying to centralize and preserve it at all costs, even though this is perceived as oppression by the members of other ethnicities. For many Bosnian Serbs, the survival of Bosnia and Herzegovina is also a question of principle. They often posit the question that if former Yugoslavia could collapse and new states be established from its constitutive parts, why can’t the same happen in Bosnia and Herzegovina?

    Here we come to another major piece of the complicated Bosnian puzzle: the international factor. It was the Western governments — and primarily the US — under whose auspices postwar Bosnia and Herzegovina was created, with its highly inefficient structures and with the Office of the High Representative who, over time, obtained pharaonic powers. Naturally, the governments of the countries that have sponsored this arrangement are unwilling to admit that the whole experiment was a tremendous failure and that their interventions have actively prevented the development of democracy in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

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    In addition, Bosnia and Herzegovina, just as the Balkans as a whole, is also the terrain for bigger games and powerplay between the US-led alliance (which, in reality, is much less coherent than it is claimed), Russia and Turkey. Western politicians and the media are trying to explain the situation to the Western audience by blaming the local politicians, especially the Bosnian Serb leadership, as pro-Russian. What they are selling to their citizens is the story that everything will be fine as soon as the old politicians go and new ones, loyal to the West, take over.

    However, blaming everything on corrupt and irresponsible political elites will not resolve the structural problems that are, to a large extent, created by generous Western support. Yes, political elites — and not only in the Balkans — tend to be corrupt, irresponsible and ready to exploit people’s misery and nationalistic sentiments to their own advantage. This is, however, only one dimension to the complex story that tends to be grossly oversimplified in the mainstream Western media. The real problems are deeper, and the policies of influential Western governments are still only adding fuel to the fire.

    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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    in World Politics

    Washington’s Tawdry Victory Over Julian Assange

    Last week witnessed the 80th anniversary of a moment in history qualified by Franklin D. Roosevelt as “a date which will live in infamy.” On December 8, 1941, the president announced that the United States was declaring war after Japan’s unprovoked attack on Pearl Harbor a day earlier. A nation that had spent two decades wallowing in isolationism instantly became one of the principal and most powerful actors in a new world war. Victory on two fronts, against Germany and Japan, would be achieved successively in 1944 and 1945.

    Last week ended with its own day of infamy when a British court overturned an earlier judgment banning the extradition to the US of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Following in the footsteps of the Trump administration, President Joe Biden’s Justice Department successfully appealed the ban in its relentless effort to judge Assange for violating the 1917 Espionage Act, itself a relic of the history of the First World War.

    Guns and the Wrong Side of Rights

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    Back then, President Woodrow Wilson’s government pulled no jingoistic punches when promoting America’s participation in Europe’s war. It actively incited the population to indulge in xenophobia. Public paranoia targeting Germany, the nation’s enemy, reached such a pitch that Beethoven was banned from the concert stage, sauerkraut was officially renamed “liberty cabbage” and hamburger “liberty steak.”

    The manifestly paranoid Espionage Act sought to punish anyone who “communicates, delivers, or transmits, or attempts to communicate, deliver or transmit to any foreign government … any document, writing, code book, signal book, sketch, photograph, etc.” The law, specifically for a state of war, was so extreme it was rarely used until Barack Obama unearthed it as the elegant solution for suppressing the whistleblowers he had vowed to defend in his first presidential campaign.

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    Despite overindulging his taste for punishing whistleblowers, Obama refrained from seeking to extradite Assange. He feared it might appear as an assault on freedom of the press and might even incriminate The New York Times, which had published the WikiLeaks documents in 2010. In the meantime, Democrats found a stronger reason to blame Assange. He had leaked the Democratic National Committee’s emails during the 2016 presidential primary campaign. Democrats blamed the Australian for electing Donald Trump.

    During his 2016 campaign, Trump repeatedly praised WikiLeaks for its willingness to expose the undemocratic practices of the Clinton campaign. But once in power, Trump’s administration vindictively demanded Assange’s extradition from the UK for having revealed war crimes that deserved being hidden for eternity from the prying eyes of journalists and historians. 

    Many observers expected Biden to return to the prudent wisdom of Obama and break with Trump’s vindictive initiative. He could have quietly accepted the British judge’s decision pronounced in January. Instead, his Justice Department appealed. Unlike Trump, who sought to undermine everything Obama had achieved, Biden has surprisingly revealed a deep, largely passive respect for his predecessor’s most dangerous innovations — not challenging corporate tax cuts, the withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and Trump’s aggressive support for Israel’s most oppressive policies with regard to Palestinians.

    Biden’s eagerness to follow Trump’s gambit aimed at subjecting Assange to the US brand of military-style justice allowed New York Times journalists Megan Specia and Charlie Savage to describe Friday’s decision by the British court as a success for the administration. “The ruling was a victory,” they wrote, “at least for now, for the Biden administration, which has pursued an effort to prosecute Mr. Assange begun under the Trump administration.”

    Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

    Victory:

    Triumph in combat, including, at two extremes, cases marked by heroic action and others prompted by malicious self-serving motives and driven by the perpetrator’s confusion of the idea of justice with sadistic, vindictive pleasure

    Contextual Note

    The Times journalists quote Wyn Hornbuckle, a Justice Department spokesman, who “said the government was ‘pleased by the ruling’ and would have no further comment.” At no point in the article do the authors evoke the hypothesis that Biden might have sought to overturn Trump’s policy. Nor do they analyze the reasons that could undermine the government’s case. They do quote several of Assange’s supporters, including one who called “on the Biden administration again to withdraw” the charge. Serious observers of the media might expect that a pillar of the press in a liberal democracy might be tempted to express its own concern with laws and policies that risk threatening its own freedom. Not The New York Times. This story didn’t even make its front page. None of its columnists deemed it deserving of comment.

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    Journalist Kalinga Seneviratne, writing for The Manila Times, offered a radical contrast. “If this year’s Nobel Peace Prize is about promoting ‘press freedom,’” he speculates, “the Norwegian Nobel Committee missed a golden opportunity to make a powerful statement at a time when such freedom is under threat in the very countries that have traditionally claimed a patent on it.” He quotes the UN’s special rapporteur on torture, Nils Melzer, who claims that “what has been done to Julian Assange is not to punish or coerce him, but to silence him and to do so in broad daylight, making visible to the entire world that those who expose the misconduct of the powerful no longer enjoy the protection of the law.” 

    Deutsche Welle’s Matthias von Hein noted the interesting coincidence that three converging events took place on the same day. “In a bitter twist of irony,” he writes, “a court in London has essentially paved the way for Assange’s prosecution on Human Rights Day — of all days. And how ironic that it happened on the day two journalists were honored with the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo. Last, but not least, it coincided with the second day of the Summit on Democracy organized by US President Joe Biden.”

    Von Hein added this observation: “We’re constantly hearing how Western democracies are in competition with autocratic systems. If Biden is serious about that, he should strive to be better than the world’s dictators.” But, as the saying goes, you can’t teach a 79-year old dog new tricks.

    Historical Note

    The coincidences do not end there. On the same day the news of Julian Assange’s fate emerged, Yahoo’s investigative reporter Michael Isikoff recounted the story of another man “brought to justice” by US authorities: Mohamedou Ould Slahi. The Mauritanian citizen had the privilege of spending 14 years in the Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba without ever being charged with a crime, even after confessing to the crimes imagined by his torturers.

    It turns out to be a touching moral tale. Even after years of imprisonment and gruesome torture, Slahi “holds no personal animus against his interrogators.” According to Isikoff, “he has even met and bonded with some of those interrogators,” years after the event. “I took it upon myself,” Slahi explained, “to be a nice person and took a vow of kindness no matter what. And you cannot have a vow of kindness without forgiving people.”

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    It wasn’t the Prophet Muhammad who said, “turn the other cheek” or “Forgive, and you will be forgiven.” Those words were spoken by the man George W. Bush and Donald Rumsfeld claimed to revere and whom Bush considered his “favorite philosopher.” The Quran did continue the original Christian insight, pronouncing that “retribution for an evil act is an evil one like it,” and that reconciliation and forgiveness will be rewarded by Allah.

    There has clearly been no forgiveness in Washington for the “evil” committed by Assange: exposing war crimes conducted in secret with American taxpayers’ money. Slahi’s torture was conducted by the declared proponents of “Judeo-Christian” culture. Shahi’s forgiveness stands as an example of what that culture claims as a virtue but fails to embrace in its own actions.

    Shahi is reconciled with his interrogators. But does he also feel reconciled with those who gave them their orders? In 2019, he said, “I accept that the United States should follow and put to trial all the people who are harming their citizens. I agree with that. But I disagree with them that if they suspect you, they kidnap you, they torture you, and let you rot in prison for 15 or 16 years. And then they dump you in your country and they say you cannot have your passport because you have already seen so many things that we don’t want you to travel around the world to talk about.”

    Despite appearances, Mohamedou Ould Shahi’s case is not all that different from Julian Assange’s.

    *[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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    in World Politics

    Can Self-Help Diplomacy Lower Political Heat in the Middle East?

    Since the end of the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, the United States has been the unchallenged dominant power in the Middle East and North Africa. As such, it often saw its role, for better or worse, as fixing the region’s many problems. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Iraq and Saddam Hussein, Iran, high oil prices, Gulf security, Western Sahara, menacing non-state organizations, counterterrorism, human rights, democracy, autocratic leaders, failed states — whatever the concern or challenge, the Americans came to view them as priority issues and their responsibility. Moreover, many regional states and even their citizens often saw America’s involvement as a necessity, sometimes even an obligation to tamp down the region’s frenzied political climate.

    Will Saudi-Iran Talks Lead to Anything?

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    But times have changed. Three recent presidents — Barack Obama, Donald Trump and now Joe Biden — have made efforts to distance the US from its endless, exasperating entanglements in the Middle East. Those efforts had distracted the United States from its principal challenges in the world — China and Russia — and sapped it of its military, economic and political might and influence. America received very little in return on its investment. Furthermore, years of US involvement in the region had also fractured the American public’s support for the more critically important role it must play in anchoring the international order.

    Enter the Others

    Downgrading America’s involvement in the Middle East isn’t necessarily a bad thing. For decades, many in the Middle East and in the US had argued that the region’s problems must be tackled by the governments and people of the region. Outsiders can play a supporting role, but the tough decisions can only be made by the governments themselves. That may now be happening.

    But handing off the task of addressing the region’s manifold challenges got off to a poor start. Neither the US, nor the international community, nor the states of the Middle East seemed able to solve the conundrum of the region’s three failed states.

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    Then, starting around 2015, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman started ordering others around — imposing a blockade on Qatar, detaining the Lebanese prime minister, jailing courageous dissidents and largely harmless millionaires, ordering a hit job on journalist Jamal Khashoggi and jumping into the Yemeni Civil War. And it all went bad, very bad in fact. Additionally, it provoked other would-be movers and shakers to get in the act, including the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, Iran, China, Russia and even Israel. And not always with good intent or positive results.

    After years of misdirection, however, governments now seem to be taking a more sober and responsible approach that could prove genuinely beneficial for the region. For starters, they have embarked on a simple approach: dialog. They are talking about their problems, especially those between and among one another. Dialog leads to understanding, which can lead to shared interests. Ultimately, to be effective, dialog must lead to compromise. That involves the inevitable give-and-take that allows nations, especially those close to one another, to live and thrive in peace and prosperity.

    It’s a Start

    One of the most encouraging initiatives may be the most unexpected: dialog between the Middle East’s two major powers, Iran and Saudi Arabia, and hosted by perhaps the most unlikely state, Iraq, unquestionably the region’s most conflict-ridden for decades. The issues are many between these two historic rivals, separated by a narrow gulf on whose name neither seems able to agree. But the larger gulf lies in their differing views of the other, their competing religious sects — the Saudi uber-conservative Wahhabi Sunni Islam vs. Iran’s clerically-led, conservative Shia Islam — perceptions of the other’s role and intentions in the region, their wealth, and relations with and ties to the broader international community, almost non-existent in the case of Iran.

    One especially neuralgic issue for both is their respective roles in the Yemen War. It is now abundantly clear that the Saudis’ overwhelming military power, bolstered by the US and some European nations, cannot defeat the Houthi rebels. Nor can it end either the war or even its costly intervention in it. The Saudis need help. Enter the Iranians, who have been supporting the Shia-affiliated Zaydi Houthis in this war since 2013. With ideology and much-needed weapons and funding, though much less than what Saudi Arabia has expended, the Iranians have empowered the rebels to the point where they are now an established power in a future Yemen, whether unified or bifurcated.

    So, the two regional powers are talking it out. The Saudis want out of the war, but they also want reliable security along their southwestern border. The Iranians want a Shia power on the Arabian Peninsula, but preferably one at peace.

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    Yemen may be the most immediate challenge for the two states. But there are others. More broadly, Saudi Arabia and Iran need to reach a modus vivendi in the region. On-again, off-again formal relations, menacing behavior toward each other’s oil and shipping interests, and verbal assaults do little more than increase the temperature in a region plagued by heat, literally and figuratively.

    Brothers Reconcile?

    Saudi Arabia has also launched a campaign to repair the frayed relations among its Arab neighbors. Last week, Mohammed bin Salman week began a PR campaign to demonstrate a new and improved political environment. In a swing through the neighboring Gulf states of Oman, the UAE, Bahrain and, most importantly, Qatar, he seems to be trying to rebuild what once had been the region’s preeminent multilateral organization, the Gulf Cooperation Council.

    Mohammed bin Salman single-handedly fractured the Gulf alliance when he imposed his 2017 blockade on Qatar, joined by the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt. It backfired. Qatar remained in the good graces of the US, drew the political and military support of peripheral power Turkey and earned the support of Iran. Consider it the young prince’s on-the-job training in global as well as regional politics. He is now devoting particular attention to Doha in the hope of what yet we aren’t quite certain. But this repair work and goodwill tour cannot help but create progress.

    And not to be outdone, the Gulf’s other power, the UAE, has embarked on its own diplomatic repair mission. Like the Saudis, the Emiratis want to lower the temperature in the Gulf, and their position as the region’s prime economic entrepôt gives them special heft. The UAE’s ties to the US, still the unquestioned but now quiescent power in the Gulf, also lend special weight.

    Could It All Be for Naught?

    Looming over all of these laudable efforts, however, is Iranian behavior in the region. All eyes are now on the recently restarted talks over the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in Vienna, Austria. Following a near-six-month hiatus at Iran’s request, the P5+1 group and Iran renewed negotiations to reinstate the JCPOA — aka the Iran nuclear deal.

    But it is the critical non-dialog between the US and Iran — the two countries are still not meeting face-to-face but rather communicating through the intermediation of the other P5+1 countries — that bears the most serious watching. Unless they can agree on a way forward that puts Iran’s nuclear weapons potential well into the very distant future while also lifting America’s onerous and inescapably crippling sanctions on the Islamic Republic, the heat in the Middle East will become white hot.

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    Judging from the US State Department’s uncharacteristically downcast semi-official readout of the first round of the negotiation restart, there is cause for concern. Iran’s counterproductive, albeit predictable, maximalist opening gambit soured the P5+1, even China and Russia. Negotiators met again last week. Unless there is a greater attitude toward compromise, however, pessimism will win out. Positions will harden. And more extreme (and dangerous) measures will become viable.

    President Biden has reiterated the US pledge that Iran will not get nuclear weapons. But neither he nor his secretary of state, Antony Blinken, will state what the consequences of failed talks might be.

    Israel, however, is not so coy. Recent Israeli statements confirm that the military option is very much in play. As if to put an even finer point on the matter, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin visited Jerusalem late last week for meetings with his Israeli counterpart, Defense Minister Benny Gantz. Both men are retired top generals of their respective armed forces and will have discussed military and other options.

    Military action would be an unspeakable disaster for the Middle East. But so would a nuclear-armed or even nuclear-capable Iran. Even an approach that stops short of armed conflict will impose extraordinary hardship on the region, certainly prompting other states to consider acquiring nuclear weapons and further isolate Iran.

    It would be unfair to place the entirety of the burden for the success of these talks on Tehran. However, unless Iran understands the futility of its mindless pursuit of nuclear weapons, no effort at fostering understanding elsewhere can temper the region’s mercury-popping political heat.

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