Philippa Kaur

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    Guns and the Wrong Side of Rights

    The land that continues to pray for the well-being and continued prosperity of its Second Amendment has, according to Education Week, seen “30 school shootings this year, 22 since August 1.” The most spectacular multiple shooting occurred on November 30, when 15-year-old Ethan Crumbley used the “Christmas present” his parents had purchased four days earlier to randomly kill four students and wound seven others at his high school in Oxford, Michigan.

    With the possible exception of his own parents, even before the shooting everyone agreed with Judge Jeanine Pirro of Fox News that Crumbley was a “troubled kid.” Pirro is one of those judges who doesn’t need to hear the evidence before identifying the true culprit: “liberals.” In that, she stands in the noble company of other purveyors of accusatory news, such as The New York Times, when it consistently suspects Russia of the imaginary Havana syndrome attacks.

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    Though the horror of the massacre was enough to make it eminently newsworthy, this story offered a new dimension when Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald made the decision to charge the suspect’s parents for involuntary manslaughter. Considering them accomplices in a crime, she explained her reasoning in the following terms: “Gun ownership is a right, and with that right comes great responsibility.”

    Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

    Right:

    A fundamental concept built into the culture of consumerist individualism that confuses the acknowledgment of the tolerance by the state of different types of behavior with the idea of individuals’ possessing the absolute and unencumbered power to harness that tolerance for consciously antisocial purposes

    Contextual note

    In US culture, the notion of “rights” is less a philosophical or legal concept than it is an object of a certain secular faith tantamount to a religious dogma. The first 10 amendments of the US Constitution are called the “Bill of Rights.” Because many Americans view the Constitution as something similar to divine scripture, the fundamental rights it defines, instead of being treated as principles that help define the inevitably flexible relationship that obtains between established authority, society as a collective entity and citizens as individuals, the rights thus defined have been elevated to the status of divine commands.

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    The First Amendment guaranteeing free speech stands out in most people’s minds as the most sacred of the lot. It defines the very nature of American democracy. Freedom of speech ensures that everyone is empowered to “speak up” and cannot be reduced to silence. But as the current debates about what should be allowed or suppressed on social media demonstrate, only dogmatic libertarians are prepared to define that right as absolute.

    The Third Amendment has been relegated to the status of a museum piece. It reads: “No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.” The “right” still stands, but with military practice having evolved in the meantime, the situation it describes no longer exists.

    Several of the first 10 amendments deal with defining due process and expectations with regard to the functioning of the judicial system. The Eighth Amendment, barring “cruel and unusual punishment,” may be the least absolute of the 10, since the US criminal justice system has found multiple innovative ways to apply punishment that only escapes being unusual by the fact that it has become usual.

    The Ninth Amendment provides for the possibility that other rights than those listed in the Bill of Rights may also emerge and be acknowledged. The 10th Amendment states that the federal government has only those powers specifically designated in the Constitution. All other powers belong either to the states or the people. From a historical rather than a legal point of view, it could be argued that the sacred status of the 10th Amendment disappeared after the Civil War. Once it was affirmed that the United States was “one nation, indivisible” rather than a federation of independent states, federal laws not derived from the Constitution have consistently trumped the original powers assumed to belong to the state.

    As a private citizen, McDonald may or may not appreciate how variable the meaning of the rights specified in the first 10 amendments may be. As a public official, she must accept the received majority opinion that “gun ownership” according to the Second Amendment is an absolute right. To attenuate the risk this has created for the lives of ordinary citizens and increasingly for school children, she employs the generally accepted moral notion that rights entail responsibilities. But from a strictly legal point of view, this makes little sense. Unless the nature of those responsibilities is clearly delineated, Americans assume that a right is so fundamental that only a generally accepted rule can qualify it, such as the suggestion that freedom of speech does not include shouting “fire” in a theater. It does, however, include crying wolf, even if it is fake news.

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    Within the hyper-individualistic culture of the country, Americans have been taught that rights, just like guns, are something the individual can literally own. Indeed, the debate concerning the interpretation of the Second Amendment focuses exclusively on the question of ownership. In many other cultures, rights are perceived not as something the individual possesses, but as areas of tolerance that describe the nature of relationships within the society.

    Historical note

    The understanding and practice of the rights in the Bill of Rights have undergone a lot of serious evolution in the way laws, customs and everyday activities reflect the reality — sacred or secular — of those ordained “rights.” No one appears obsessed about defending the rights outlined in the Third or even the Eighth Amendment. As for speech and even the freedom of religion, there has been room for considerable ambiguity in public debate.

    Curiously, the Second Amendment is the one deemed most worthy of solemn respect by those who insist on the sacred character of the Bill of Rights. Logically, we should consider it with the same critical regard we apply to the Third Amendment. The situation that gave it meaning simply no longer exists. Attentive (and honest) readers easily understand that lacking the historical persistence of the militias it mentions, the thinking behind it cannot be transposed to modern conditions.

    Because many Americans have been conditioned to think of the very notion of rights as something transcendent, they readily accept the notion that stating something as a right means it must be interpreted literally rather than understood historically. There is a sense in which many Americans believe it would be sacrilegious to call into question a text in the Constitution.

    In the case of the Second Amendment, the right in question concerns ownership rather than the actual use of the weapons in question. Owning a gun does not imply using the gun for any purpose, but it has become increasingly apparent that the use of guns is now a specific social problem linked to the ownership of guns. If one is looking for meaning in the Second Amendment, the key word would be “well-regulated.” Today, the entire issue appears beyond the possibility of regulation.

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    Karen McDonald uses the only weapon at her disposal: the moral idea of responsibility. But as a prosecutor, she is certainly aware that the notion of responsibility has no weight in the law. That is why Kyle Rittenhouse earned his acquittal for shooting two men dead and wounding a third on the streets of Kenosha, Wisconsin in 2020. His actions were irresponsible but not illegal.

    The real problem lies in the fact that there is no reasonable answer or antidote to the fundamental reality of the elevated symbolic status of firearms within US gun culture. A broad consensus attributes strong cultural value to guns as objects, to the belief that guns are legitimate instruments of justice, to the idea that every individual has the “right” to live in their own moral world, and that in a world of threats, an attitude of active self-defense is natural, not exceptional.

    Cultures are partially shaped in schools, but also in families, the marketplace, the neighborhood streets and religious institutions. Schools have increasingly become environments in which gun culture always risks making its presence known. Individuals can learn to be responsible. But how does a society learn it?

    *[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 Assad Family Has Been Shaping Syria for 50 Years

    It has been over a decade since a civil uprising began in Syria during the height of the Arab Spring. What started in March 2011 soon developed into a civil war between the government of Bashar al-Assad and the Syrian opposition, made up of various factions with different ideologies. Throughout the ongoing conflict, the opposition have been supported by international actors with interests not only in Syria, but in the wider region too.

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    After years of conflict that have caused one of the biggest migration crises since World War II, it is clear that the Assad government, with the support of Russia and Iran, will maintain its grip on power. The question now is what a post-war Syria will look like with President Assad and his regime still in office.

    In order to understand what may lie ahead, it is necessary to understand the origins of the Assad family, their Alawite background and their influence on Syrian identity over the past 50 years.

    The Alawite Community

    The two largest sects in Islam are Sunni and Shia. Both sects overlap in most fundamental beliefs and practices, but their main difference centers on the dispute over who should have succeeded the Prophet Muhammad as leader after his death in 632. Today, between 85% to 90% of Muslims are Sunni and around 10% are Shia. Sunnis live in countries like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco, Indonesia and Pakistan. Shias are largely located in Iran, Iraq, Bahrain and Azerbaijan, with significant minorities in Lebanon, Syria and Yemen.

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    Alawites, although not doctrinally Shia, especially venerate Ali ibn Abi Talib, one of the earliest Muslims and the cousin and son-in-law of the prophet. Shias consider Ali to be the first imam and rightful successor to Prophet Muhammad, while Sunnis see him as the fourth rightly-guided caliph who made up the Rashidun Caliphate. Before the French took control of Syria in 1920, members of the Alawite community considered themselves to be Nusayris. The French “imposed the name ‘Alawite,’ meaning the followers of Ali,” to emphasize the sect’s similarities with Shia Islam.

    Syria is ruled by Alawites, but the community itself is a minority making up around 12% to 15% of the pre-war Syrian population. Sunnis account for the majority of the country.

    The Rise of the Alawites

    After Syria attained independence in 1946, the Alawite community began to play an active role in two key areas: political parties and the armed forces. On the one hand, the Baath party, founded in 1947 by Arab politicians and intellectuals to integrate Arab nationalism, socialism, secularism and anti-imperialism, was “more attractive to Alawites than the Muslim Brotherhood, a Sunni religious organization” founded in Egypt with a large base in Syria.

    Furthermore, Alawites and other minorities continued to be overrepresented in the military due to two main factors. First, middle-class Sunni families tended to despise the military as a profession. Alawites, on the other hand, saw the army as an opportunity for a better life. Second, many Alawites, due to their difficult economic situation, could not afford to pay the fee to exempt their children from military service.

    The Alawite presence in the army culminated in a series of coups in the 1960s. Supporters of the rising Baath party were a minority in Syria at the time. As scholar Rahaf Aldoughli explains, the regime embarked on a course of “rigorous state-nationalist indoctrination to consolidate Baathist rule and establish” its popular legitimacy. Among other efforts, “the Baathists sought to manipulate tribal and sectarian identities, seeking patronage by” upgrading the status of previously marginalized groups. This included the Alawite community.

    The last coup d’état in Syria was carried out by General Hafez al-Assad, who had been serving as defense minister and was an Alawite. His actions brought the minority to power in November 1970. Three months later, Assad became the first Alawite president of Syria.

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    Once in office, “his project centered on homogenizing these diverse [marginalized] Syrians into a single imagined Ba’athist identity.” More broadly, Aldoughli adds, the overall aim of “nationalist construction was to subsume local identities into a broader concept of the ‘Syrian people,’ defined according to the state’s territorial” boundaries.

    The Sectarianism of the Syrian Civil War

    Shortly before the outset of the US-led war on terror, Hafez al-Assad died in 2000. His son, Bashar, took over the reins and continued in his father’s footsteps. This included policies of coopting the religious space and portraying a moderate Islam under the guise of a secular state that sought to curb Islamism and blur religious differences. Despite these efforts, the confessional fragmentation of Syrian society provided a factor of tension and instability for a state that ultimately never succeeded in addressing these differences in the political arena.

    The Arab Spring consequently arrived in Syria at a time marked by a crisis of legitimacy of secular ruling parties such as the Baath. The crisis of governability meant the secular balance imposed by the regime in society began to crack, exposing anger around the Alawite minority’s overrepresentation in the state apparatus and the Sunni majority’s underrepresentation. The result was anti-government protests that began in March 2011.

    Ultimately, the ensuing sectarianism of the Syrian conflict only makes sense if we also incorporate the geopolitical rivalries affecting the region. On the one hand, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Iran are the Assad government’s main supporters and are interested in propping it up. On the other hand, Sunni actors such as the Islamic State group, the al-Nusra Front and Saudi Arabia want the government to fall.

    That has failed. After 10 years of war, military forces loyal to Bashar al-Assad have retaken the vast majority of Syrian territory with the support of Iran and Hezbollah. As a result, both repression of the Sunni-dominated opposition and the strengthening of the Alawite community in the state apparatus are likely to remain part of a post-war Syria. How the Sunni majority reacts to the fact that Assad and the Alawites remain at the center of Syrian politics is unknown.

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

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    Will Saudi-Iran Talks Lead to Anything?

    Saudi Arabia and Iran have engaged in four rounds of talks over the last six months, the most recent of which with the hardliner Ebrahim Raisi already inaugurated as president. A fifth meeting is expected to take place before the end of 2021. The success of the negotiations will depend, to an important extent, on both countries being realistic about Iran’s role in the Yemen conflict.

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    Until now, the negotiations have reportedly revolved around two main issues. The first is the restoration of diplomatic relations between both countries. Bilateral ties were cut off in 2016 when Saudi Arabia executed Nimr Baqir al-Nimr, a Saudi dissident who was a Shia cleric, and protesters in Tehran stormed the Saudi Embassy in retaliation. The second topic of discussion is the Yemen War, which entered a new phase with the 2015 Saudi-led intervention against Houthi rebels who had taken over the Yemeni capital, Sanaa.

    For more than one year, the Saudis have been looking for a way out of Yemen. The enormous economic costs of the conflict became more problematic when oil prices fell as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing lockdowns.

    Even after the recovery of the hydrocarbon market, the fact remains that six years of war have not brought Saudi Arabia any closer to its two major goals in Yemen: reestablishing Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi as president and constraining the Houthis’ influence. Furthermore, US President Joe Biden, while not as tough on the kingdom as promised in his election campaign, has been less conciliatory with Saudi Arabia than his predecessor, Donald Trump.

    Who Are the Houthis?

    The Saudis often present the Houthis as little more than Iranian puppets. Iran’s official position is that the Houthi movement only receives ideological support from Tehran. Both narratives are inaccurate, to say the least.

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    The Houthis are a homegrown movement that successfully resisted the Yemeni government’s military offensives from 2004 to 2010 without any external assistance. Hussein al-Houthi, the movement’s early leader and from whom its name is derived, was an admirer of the 1979 Iranian Revolution and was influenced by its symbolism and ideology. His brother and current leader of the movement, Abdel-Malek al-Houthi, has also expressed his admiration for the Islamic Republic.

    The first credible reports of Iranian military support for the Houthis date back to 2013. Until 2016, weapons transfers were largely restricted to light arsenal. In the following years, Tehran started to supply the Houthis with increasingly sophisticated missile and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) components. Furthermore, a contingent of Iranian Revolutionary Guards on the ground has been training Houthi fighters. The Yemeni movement’s capacity to target key strategical interests within Saudi Arabia, such as oil extraction facilities, pipelines and airports, cannot be understood without accounting for Iran’s role in the conflict.

    At the same time, and contrary to Saudi claims, the Houthis are largely independent from Iran. Their territorial expansion in 2014 was politically built on its Faustian bargain with the former Yemeni president and arch-rival, Ali Abdullah Saleh, and the unpopularity of the Hadi government, which was backed by Saudi Arabia.

    Moreover, most of the Houthis’ current arsenal has not been sourced from Iran. It has rather been acquired in the local black market — which is well-connected to the Horn of Africa’s smuggling routes — captured in battle or as a result of the defection of governmental military units to the Houthis. Before the war began, Yemen was already a country awash with small weaponry, coming only second to the US in terms of weapons per capita.

    According to the official Saudi narrative, the Houthis necessitate Iranian help to maintain their military effort. While this is most likely the case when it comes to the group’s capability to strike targets within Saudi territory, an abrupt end of Iranian military assistance to the Houthis would make little difference in Yemen’s internal balance of power.

    What Saudi Arabia and Iran Need to Do

    Saudi Arabia needs to come to terms with the fact that its attempt to impose a military solution in Yemen has failed. It has done so because of counterproductive airstrikes, support for unpopular local actors and a misunderstanding of internal dynamics. If Yemen has become Saudi Arabia’s quagmire, this has little to do with Iran’s limited support for the Houthis.

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    Iran, for its part, should understand that its claims of non-interference in the Yemen War have gained a farcical nature over the years, as growing evidence has piled up on Iranian–Houthi ties. Iranian leaders cannot impose on the Houthis an end to attacks against Saudi territory. However, they can decisively constrain them by stopping the flow of UAV and missile technology to the Houthis, as well as ending their military training on the ground. In conjunction with this, Iran can support the direct Houthi–Saudi talks that began in late 2019.

    For Saudi–Iranian negotiations to bear fruits in relation to the Yemen conflict, both sides need to show a realistic appraisal of Iran’s role in the war. It comes down to acknowledging two key facts. On the one hand, Iran has leverage over the Houthis because of its military support for the group. On the other hand, this leverage is inherently limited and cannot be used to grant Saudi Arabia a military victory in Yemen.

    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 New Culture of Brinkmanship

    Taiwan is a problem. Historically separate from but linked to China, Taiwan was colonized by the Dutch and partially by the Spanish in the 17th century. Through a series of conflicts between aboriginal forces allied with the Ming dynasty and European colonial forces who also fought amongst themselves, by 1683, Taiwan became integrated into the Qing Empire. For two centuries, it evolved to become increasingly an integral part of China. In 1895, due to its strategic position on the eastern coast of China at the entry of the South China Sea, it became one of the spoils of the Sino-Japanese war and for half a century was ruled by the Japanese.

    Japan used Taiwan during the Second World War as the launching pad for its aggressive operations in Southeast Asia. At the end of the war, with the Japanese defeated and Mao Zedong’s communists in control of mainland China, Mao’s rival, Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of the Kuomintang, fled to Taiwan. This put the dissident government out of Mao’s reach. Chiang declared his government the Republic of China (ROC) in opposition to Mao’s People’s Republic of China (PRC). For forty years a single-party regime ruled Taiwan following Chiang Kai-shek’s initial declaration of martial law in 1949.

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    Because the United States had defined its post-war identity as anti-communist, Taiwan held the status of the preferred national government in what was then referred to as “the free world.” The fate of Taiwan — still referred to by its Portuguese name, Formosa — figured as a major foreign policy issue in the 1960 US presidential campaign that pitted John F. Kennedy against Richard Nixon. The debate turned around whether the US should commit to defending against the People’s Republic two smaller islands situated between continental China and Taiwan.

    In short, Taiwan’s history and geopolitical status over the past 150 years have become extremely complex. There are political, economic and geographical considerations as well as ideological and geopolitical factors that make it even more complex. These have been aggravated by a visible decline in the supposed capacity of the United States to impose and enforce solutions in different parts of the globe and the rise of China’s influence in the global economy.

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    Complexity, when applied to politics, generally signifies ambiguity. In the aftermath of the Korean War, the Eisenhower administration established a policy based on the idea of backing Taiwan while seriously hedging their bets. Writing for The Diplomat, Dennis Hickey explains that in 1954, the US “deliberately sought to ‘fuzz up’ the security pact [with Taiwan] in such a way that the territories covered by the document were unclear.”

    Following President Nixon’s historic overture in 1971, the US established diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China. This led to the transfer of China’s seat at the United Nations from the ROC to Mao’s PRC. The status of Taiwan was now inextricably ambiguous. US administrations, already accustomed to “fuzzy” thinking, described their policy approach as “strategic ambiguity.” It allowed them to treat Taiwan as an ally without recognizing it as an independent state. The point of such an attitude is what R. Nicolas Burns — President Joe Biden’s still unconfirmed pick for the post of US ambassador to China — calls “the smartest and most effective way” to avoid war.

    Recent events indicate that we may be observing a calculated shift in that policy. In other words, the ambiguity is becoming more ambiguous. Or, depending on one’s point of view, less ambiguous. There is a discernible trend toward the old Cold War principle of brinkmanship. A not quite prepared President Biden recently embarrassed himself in a CNN Town Hall for stating that the US had a “commitment” to defend Taiwan. The White House quickly walked back that commitment, reaffirming the position of strategic ambiguity.

    This week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken appeared to be pushing back in the other direction, threatening the Chinese with “terrible consequences” if they make any move to invade Taiwan. Blinken added, the Taipei Times reports, that the US has “been very clear and consistently clear” in its commitment to Taiwan. 

    Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

    Consistently clear:

    In normal use, unambiguous. In diplomatic use, obviously muddied and murky, but capable of being transformed by an act of assertive rhetoric into the expression of a bold-sounding intention that eliminates nuance, even when nuance remains necessary for balance and survival.

    Contextual note

    If Donald Trump’s administration projected a foreign policy based on fundamentally theatrical melodrama that consisted of calling the leader of a nuclear state “rocket man” and dismissing most of the countries of the Global South as “shitholes,” while accusing allies of taking advantage of the US, the defining characteristic of the now ten-months-old Biden administration’s foreign policy appears to be the commitment to the old 1950s Cold War stance known as brinkmanship.

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    In November, the CIA director, William Burns, comically threatened Russia with “consequences” if it turned out — despite a total lack of evidence — that Vladimir Putin’s people were the perpetrators of a series of imaginary attacks popularly called the Havana syndrome. This week, backing up Biden’s warning “of a ‘strong’ Western economic response” to a Russian invasion of Ukraine, Security Adviser Jake Sullivan was more specific. “One target,” France 24 reports, “could be Russia’s mammoth Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline to Germany. Sullivan said the pipeline’s future was at ‘risk’ if Russia does invade Ukraine.” This may have been meant more to cow the Europeans, whose economy depends on Russian gas, than the Russians themselves.

    These various examples have made observers wonder what is going on, what the dreaded “consequences” repeatedly evoked may look like and what other further consequences they may provoke. The US administration seems to be recycling the nostalgia of members of Biden’s own generation, hankering after what their memory fuzzily associates with the prosperous years of the original Cold War.

    Historical Note

    Britannica defines brinkmanship as the “foreign policy practice in which one or both parties force the interaction between them to the threshold of confrontation in order to gain an advantageous negotiation position over the other. The technique is characterized by aggressive risk-taking policy choices that court potential disaster.”

    The term brinkmanship was coined by Dwight Eisenhower’s Democratic opponent in both of his elections, Adlai Stevenson, who dared to mock Secretary of State John Foster Dulles when he celebrated the principle of pushing things to the brink. “The ability to get to the verge,” Dulles explained, “without getting into the war is the necessary art…if you are scared to go to the brink, you are lost.” Eisenhower’s successor, John F. Kennedy, inherited the consequences of Dulles’ brinkmanship over Cuba, the nation that John Foster’s brother, CIA Director Alan Dulles, insisted on invading only months after Kennedy’s inauguration. This fiasco was a prelude to the truly frightening Cuban missile crisis in October 1962, when Kennedy’s generals, led by Curtis Lemay, sought to bring the world to the absolute brink.

    When, two years later, Lyndon Johnson set a hot war going in Vietnam, or when, decades later, George W. Bush triggered a long period of American military aggression targeting multiple countries in the Muslim world, the policy of brinkmanship was no longer in play. These proxy wars were calculated as bets that fell far short of the brink. The risk was limited to what, unfortunately, it historically turned out to be: a slow deterioration of the capacities and the image of a nation that was ready to abuse its power in the name of abstract principles — democracy, liberation, stifling terrorism, promoting women’s rights — that none of the perpetrators took seriously. Threats and sanctions were features of the daily rhetoric, but the idea at the core of brinkmanship — that some major, uncontrollable conflagration might occur — was never part of the equation.

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    The Biden administration may have serious reasons for returning to the policy of brinkmanship. The position of the United States on the world stage has manifestly suffered. Some hope it can be restored and believe it would require strong medicine. But there are also more trivial reasons: notably the fear of the administration being mocked by Republicans for being weak in the face of powerful enemies. 

    Both motivations signal danger. We may once again be returning to the devastating brinkman’s game logic illustrated in Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove.”

    *[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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    Joe Biden: why the US president's approval ratings have fallen so far

    Ten months into his presidency, Joe Biden’s poll numbers are, by any measure, lukewarm. According to the latest figures, taken on November 24, only 43% of Americans approve of his performance in office, while a majority think he is not doing a good job. In a week when he announced that he is planning to run for the presidency again in 2024, these are surely not the numbers he is hoping for.

    There are a number of explanations for Biden’s low approval rating, but some context is useful. While he is recently polling lower than his three Democrat predecessors at this point in their presidency, Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter were not faced with a pandemic in an era of dangerously toxic partisanship.

    Also, the storming of the Capitol in January 2021 by violent supporters of the outgoing president, Donald Trump, ensured that Biden’s ascension to power later that month took place at a time when American democracy appeared to be in peril.

    Connecting with the 47% of the public who had voted for his opponent was always going to be difficult – not least as the election outcome was – and still is – contested by many influential officeholders.

    Bearing this tumultuous start in mind, there are some factors in particular that may help to explain where Biden has found himself politically. The point at which his poll numbers crossed from positive to negative was just before the final withdrawal date for US troops from Afghanistan in late August 2021.

    Afghan evacuees at the US airbase in Ramstein, Germany. Many Americans think the withdrawal from Afghanistan was badly botched.
    EPA-EFE/Ronald Wittek

    While the president’s position on America’s presence in the region was no secret – and most of the public were in favour of bringing the troops home – the bloody and chaotic reality of how this played caused shock both at home and abroad.

    Pandemic partisanship

    In the ensuing weeks, Biden’s poll numbers continued to slide. But Afghanistan was not the only source of voter dismay. Despite campaign-trail promises and concerted presidential efforts to get COVID under control, the pandemic has raged on. The public health and economic toll have remained substantial as a hefty 40% of the population (aged 12 and over) have not yet been vaccinated.

    Some Americans may never get on board with the science. One route to surmount this obstacle was to introduce vaccine mandates for federal workers, associated contractors and employees of large companies. Such a solution brought its own set of problems, as government mandates do not sit well with Americans.

    Most unfortunately for the president, and arguably through no fault of his, COVID is a polarising issue. It has become possible to find out a person’s political leanings based on their adherence – or lack thereof – to wearing a mask.

    Pandemic partisanship has allowed Biden’s opponents to make political hay with the situation. After 22 months of disruption, it is easy for voters to forget that COVID began and rapidly spiralled out of control during the Trump presidency. His was an administration that showed zero interest in planning for distant risk. As a result, his successor inherited a monumentally challenging public health crisis.

    The US government’s mandates requiring certain workers to get vaccinated has been deeply divisive.
    EPA-EFE/Justin Lane

    This has been continually exacerbated by pushback from various opponents keen to score political points with their conservative base. Governors in some Republican states, for example, have rejected Biden’s vaccine policies, refusing to implement mandatory vaccinations or testing.

    The result is a continuing pandemic, fearful citizens, and the ongoing politicisation of a public health emergency. Additionally, the disappointing economic recovery is damaging to the president as the anticipated bounce-back has to date not materialised sufficiently to turn the tide of unemployment and rising inflation.

    Family squabbles

    Added to the president’s political headaches are problems in his own party. Democrat family squabbles are nothing new, but Biden has to spend precious political capital on reining in frisky progressives while dealing with the disproportionate influence of specific conservative individuals. West Virginia Senate representative Joe Manchin showed his power in the 50/50 deadlocked Senate by challenging the central tenet of Biden’s climate agenda, on the eve of the COP26 summit in Glasgow. The result was a US president heading to a crucial climate conference with an agenda undermined by a recalcitrant member of his own party.

    Presenting as a moderate Democrat was always going to bring challenges for Biden. On one level, it is a sensible strategy as traditionally, voters tend to veer to the centre at general election time. Clearly many did, as the centrist Democrat won with 51% of the vote. However, the flipside of such an approach is that the middle-of-the-road position may satisfy nobody.

    Hence, in his early days in office, Biden tacked to the left of his traditional position on certain issues including climate, immigration and committing to trillions in expenditure, which pleased progressives and showed, however fleeting, party unity.

    The political challenges facing Biden remain daunting. He leads a deeply divided country that has been unable to unite in a crisis. Fake news abounds and undermines civil discourse. It is difficult to imagine how any president might fare well in the polls under such circumstances. A less centrist leader that Biden could make the situation worse. His 51% disapproval rating still equates with 43% approval. Under the circumstances, this constitutes a political glass that is (almost) half full. But it will need to be fuller if he really does plan to run in 2024. More

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    Steve Bannon indicted over Jan. 6 panel snub, pushing key question over presidential power to the courts

    Former Trump ally Steve Bannon faces possible fines and time behind bars after being indicted on two counts of contempt of Congress.

    The criminal charges, announced on Nov. 12, 2021, by the Department of Justice, follow a vote by the House of Representatives in October to hold Bannon in contempt when he defied a subpoena issued by a congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. Bannon’s lawyers have said their client refused to testify in accordance with the instructions of former President Donald Trump.

    The indictment is the first in history to involve a contempt prosecution of someone claiming executive privilege.

    But Trump and his advisers aren’t the first to try to keep some details of a president’s time in office from wider view. Every president in history has refused to disclose information to Congress. These refusals are so commonplace that there is not even a comprehensive listing of how often they occur.

    The indictment of Bannon captures a near-constant power struggle between presidents and Congress.

    It also raises questions about the constitutional authority of Congress and how lawmakers acquire the information needed to hold the executive branch accountable in the U.S. system of separation of powers.

    Steve Bannon, former White House senior counselor to President Donald Trump.
    Alex Wong/Getty Images

    Power to investigate

    No constitutional provision explicitly states that Congress has the authority to investigate problems or defects in the nation’s social, economic or political systems. But the legislature’s power to acquire information through investigation is an established part of representative democracy.

    This is true regardless of the investigation’s end result or even whether critics accuse Congress of being partisan. As the Supreme Court put it in 1975, democratic governance means that some investigations may be nonproductive. In “times of political passion,” the court said, “dishonest or vindictive motives are readily attributed to legislative conduct and as readily believed.”

    More than 200 years of Supreme Court precedent also recognizes that the fundamental right of Congress to investigate includes the power of subpoena, which compels testimony by an individual or requires production of evidence.

    But the power of subpoena is of little value without the ability to enforce it. That mechanism is called contempt.

    How contempt works

    If a target of a congressional investigation refuses to comply with a subpoena, Congress can hold the individual in contempt. There are three forms of contempt – inherent, civil and criminal – each of which relies on a different branch of government for enforcement.

    Congress has its own power to enforce a subpoena. However, to use that power, Congress has to conduct a trial and then find the individual in contempt. Because this process is lengthy and cumbersome, Congress has not used it since the 1930s.

    Congress can also ask the courts to declare an individual in contempt. Known as civil contempt, this method requires a resolution authorizing a congressional committee or the House general counsel’s office to file a civil lawsuit. The courts then determine whether Congress has the right to the information it has demanded.

    Congress used this power in the past three presidential administrations – Bush, Obama and Trump – to acquire information.

    However, civil contempt is also slow moving. For example, Congress held Attorney General Eric Holder in civil contempt in 2012 for withholding information relating to Operation Fast and Furious, a Department of Justice policy that allowed certain illegal gun sales in order to track Mexican drug cartels. Congress eventually obtained some records, but it took seven years for courts to reach a settlement.

    The last form of contempt relies on the executive branch – specifically the Department of Justice and U.S. attorneys – for enforcement. If someone refuses to testify or produce documents, a congressional committee can first cite the individual in criminal contempt and then ask its chamber of Congress to adopt a resolution affirming the committee’s decision. After that resolution, the Department of Justice and U.S. attorneys decide whether to pursue the matter in court.

    Criminal contempt is what the House used in the Bannon case.

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    Bannon’s defiance

    In June 2021, the House of Representatives established a select committee to investigate the facts and circumstances surrounding the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. As part of the select committee’s investigation, committee Chairman Bennie Thompson signed a subpoena requiring Bannon to produce documents by Oct. 7 and to appear for a deposition on Oct. 14.

    In response to the subpoena, former President Trump instructed Bannon not to comply.

    Bannon refused to provide a single document or to appear for his deposition, citing Trump’s directive.

    The select committee then issued a report recommending that the House hold Bannon in criminal contempt. On Oct. 21, the House agreed with the committee’s recommendation and adopted a resolution finding Bannon in contempt.

    After House Speaker Nancy Speaker Pelosi officially referred the case to the Department of Justice, Attorney General Merrick Garland said the department would “apply the facts and the law when making the decision to prosecute.”

    On Nov. 12, Garland announced the charges, noting: “The subpoena required him to appear and produce documents to the Select Committee, and to appear for a deposition before the Select Committee. According to the indictment, Mr. Bannon refused to appear to give testimony as required by subpoena and refused to produce documents in compliance with a subpoena.”

    Each count of contempt carries a maximum sentence of one year in jail, along with fines of up to US$1,000.

    The committee that issued the subpoena to Bannon is investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot by Trump supporters.
    Win McNamee/Getty Images

    The catch

    While Bannon’s failure to comply with the congressional subpoena is striking, he needed to do so to challenge the subpoena.

    To legally contest a congressional request for information, an individual first must refuse to comply and then, if held in criminal contempt, can provide a defense.

    Bannon’s defense – and Trump’s instruction not to provide information to Congress – centers on the concept of executive privilege. Since President George Washington, executive officials have claimed the ability to withhold certain information that is fundamental to the operation of government. These claims relate to the idea that confidentiality encourages candor among presidents and their advisers when making important governmental decisions and policies.

    In a letter to Bannon and three others under congressional investigation, Trump’s lawyer said they are protected from compelled disclosure “by the executive and other privileges, including among others the presidential communications, deliberative process, and attorney-client privileges.”

    Presidents and their advisers have always interpreted executive privilege broadly. However, President Trump and his advisers have taken an even more expansive view than previous administrations.

    My own research suggests that Trump and his advisers have asserted this privilege in at least 84 different federal cases. In contrast, in President Obama’s first term, only 37 federal cases involved executive privilege claims. The claims in both administrations were made in a range of cases, from Freedom of Information Act lawsuits to lawsuits over agency actions.

    Courts have recognized that cases over congressional access to information inevitably force the judiciary to side with one branch over the other. Yet courts acknowledge the need to arbitrate disputes resulting from congressional investigations, particularly when those investigations could implicate presidential misconduct or criminal activity.

    At least 14 presidential administrations have been the subject of investigations that required sitting or former presidents and their advisers to produce evidence. Legal disputes over these investigations have rarely made it to court.

    But Bannon has made it clear that he will not cooperate with Congress until the judiciary steps in.

    How the courts handle the matter will have implications for how Congress holds current and future presidential administrations accountable.

    This article is an updated version of a story that was originally published on Oct. 29, 2021. More

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    In Biden's visit with the pope, a page from Reagan's playbook?

    President Joe Biden, who will meet Pope Francis at the Vatican on Oct. 29, is Catholic. The country’s’ first Catholic president, John F. Kennedy, visited the Vatican too. But meetings between U.S. presidents and popes have been a staple of politics since the Kennedy era, whether the president was Catholic or not.

    Woodrow Wilson was the first sitting president to meet a pope, visiting Pope Benedict XV amid peace negotiations after World War I. Dwight Eisenhower met John XXIII as part of an international goodwill tour. Lyndon Johnson first met with Paul VI when the pontiff came to New York for a historic address at the United Nations in 1965. Richard Nixon twice met with Paul VI, despite the Pope’s clear opposition to the war in Vietnam. Gerald Ford met with Paul VI in 1975, and Jimmy Carter greeted the new pope, John Paul II, in 1979.

    Those meetings all preceded the establishment of formal diplomatic relations between the United States and the Holy See, as the Vatican city-state is known in formal diplomacy. The two states finally exchanged ambassadors in 1984, under Ronald Reagan and John Paul II. Both were committed anti-communists, and their move to establish official ties marked an important geopolitical alliance.

    In my research on the relationship between Catholicism and U.S. politics, their partnership stands out as a turning point – and a boon for Reagan. At the time, he needed a Catholic ally, and found one in John Paul II.

    And today, Biden faces a somewhat similar situation.

    President Joe Biden’s Oct. 2021 audience with Pope Francis will not be the pair’s first meeting. Here, the two shake hands before the pope’s 2015 address to Congress.
    AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, File

    Common cause

    The Holy See has been an independent city-state since 1929, but in reality, the pope has been a head of state at least since the eighth century.

    It is a unique situation: a religious leader functioning fully as a head of state. Yet the Roman Catholic Church occupies a unique place in world history. As the first global power, the church has shaped world politics for centuries. Today the church is not only home to more than a billion believers, but it directly and indirectly supports a tremendous amount of nonprofit work around the world.

    When Reagan formalized the long-standing U.S. diplomatic relationship with the Holy See in 1984, the church’s wide influence provided a good reason. But not the only one.

    The previous year, shortly ahead of his reelection campaign, Reagan had reason to worry that Catholic voters might not support him. U.S. bishops had published a pastoral letter, “The Challenge of Peace,” which said that “good ends (defending one’s country, protecting freedom, etc.) cannot justify immoral ends (the use of weapons which kill indiscriminately and threaten whole societies).” It was a direct challenge to the Reagan administration’s arms buildup, which had heated up the Cold War.

    The administration went to lengths to discredit the bishops, suggesting they were out of step with the pope. American public opinion was turning against the arms race, and Reagan needed a powerful ally who could help him hold on to Catholic voters.

    Reagan found that ally in John Paul II, who shared his wariness toward the Soviet Union. While the bishops’ pastoral was being drafted – a process journalist Jim Castelli has traced in depth – John Paul warned that the church must not call for the U.S. to disarm unilaterally. The Polish pope had experienced Soviet domination and hoped to liberate the world from communist influence.

    Given the president and the pope’s common cause, Rome likely would be more sympathetic to Reagan’s perspective than the U.S. bishops. The U.S. established diplomatic relations with the Holy See eight months after publication of “The Challenge of Peace” and 10 months before the 1984 election.

    Abortion politics heated up in the run-up to the election, as pro-choice Catholic Mario Cuomo, the Democratic governor of New York, considered running for president. The Democrats eventually nominated Walter Mondale, with another pro-choice Catholic, Geraldine Ferraro, as his running mate. Reagan, who positioned himself as pro-life, focused attention on the issue in another effort to win back Catholic voters, one assured to carry approval from the pope.

    Reagan won the 1984 election in a historic landslide. He carried 49 states and took the greatest share of the Catholic vote that any Republican had won to that point in history.

    Another timely trip?

    Today, 37 years later, the Biden presidency faces its own Catholic dilemma – the latest chapter in a long struggle about Catholics in American public life, highlighting a deeper rift between U.S. bishops and the Vatican.

    Many U.S. bishops want to bar public figures from receiving the sacrament of Communion – the focus of every Catholic Mass – if they support the right to an abortion, which the church considers a grave sin. In 2019, a South Carolina priest refused to offer Communion to Biden because of the politician’s pro-choice stance.

    In November, U.S. bishops will gather to debate a document on “Eucharistic coherence,” which may contain instructions about who is eligible for Communion.

    But the Vatican has all but urged the bishops not to go ahead with the document.

    “I have never refused the Eucharist to anyone,” Pope Francis told reporters in September 2021, urging priests to think about the issue “as pastors” rather than from a political viewpoint.

    As Biden prepares for his papal visit, the administration may have Reagan’s instructive history in mind. The president – like Reagan – may find a more receptive ear in Rome than at home. More

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    The Good Fight: exhilarating entertainment and a grim warning of what the US could become

    Our writers nominate the TV series keeping them entertained during a time of COVID.

    Ever since The West Wing premiered in 1999, American television has loved series based on presidential politics. One could now spend months working through programs like Veep or Graves on streaming services. Rather like doctors and lawyers, politicians have become the basis for white collar TV series.

    During the daily dramas of last year’s Trump campaign, television needed to do more than offer realism; the earnest liberalism of The West Wing felt oddly outdated amidst the realities of COVID, Black Lives Matter and the 2020 elections. What was needed was a television version of magic realism, able to speak to the events of the day but in ways that went beyond the documentary.

    During the time of Trump, a different kind of political TV drama was required.
    David Maxwell/EPA

    There are few politicians in The Good Fight, but it remains the most interesting American political series of the past few years. A spin off from The Good Wife —which did have a politician as a central figure, it’s a legal drama set in an African-American law firm in Chicago headed by Liz (Audra McDonald) and Diane (Christine Baranski). That Diane is white, and married to a gun-loving Republican, becomes an on-going issue for the firm.

    The fifth series of The Good Fight begins with a survey of 2020, in which COVID — “that thing from China” — the murder of George Floyd and the elections take centre stage.

    Viewers of earlier episodes will recognise some of the main characters, although each series introduces new players. This one gives a starring role to Mandy Patinkin as the fake Judge Wackner.

    Increasingly, the drama plays out in his parallel court, which dispenses the sort of immediate and sensible justice that the corrupt and choked systems of Cook County, including Chicago, fail to do.

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    The idea of an unofficial court is already a television staple — Judge Judy Scheindlin’s move into reality television comes to mind — but here high mindedness develops into disillusion and ultimately disaster: watch the last episode to see how the series blends reality and fiction.

    I watched the most recent episodes of The Good Fight during the latest Melbourne lockdowns, curious whether the sense of outrage at Trump that fuelled so many of the previous series would diminish. But the divisions in the United States that became so marked in the past four years have not gone away, and the series reminds us that despite his rhetoric, Biden has failed to bring the country together.

    Solidifying faultlines

    If anything, the show suggests that the political and cultural faultlines are solidifying. Over the past two years the show has become oddly bizarre, rather as if the writers of The X Files have wandered into the studios of Robert and Michelle King, the writers and producers of both The Good Wife and The Good Fight.

    Their scripts take off from the news headlines and wander into fantasy, but fantasy that seems an acute harbinger of actual events.

    The Good Fight stands out for sheer inventiveness, a willingness to take chances that rarely exists in American television dramas. Diane seeks advice from the ghost of Ruth Bader Ginsberg; the firm’s investigator, Jay (Nyambi Nyambi) hears the voices of Frederick Douglas, Karl Marx and Christ.

    Jay (Nyambi Nyambi) hears the voices of Frederick Douglas, Karl Marx and Christ.

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    The show espouses unapologetically progressive politics, but it does so without becoming didactic and at times with remarkable humour (you will need to go back to earlier series to see its skewering of Trump).

    It is most challenging in the inclusion of sympathetic characters from the right, such as Diane’s husband (Gary Cole), who may or may not have been implicated in the riots at the Capitol, and the black Republican lawyer, Julius Cain (Michael Boatman), who is imprisoned after a false accusation of bribery, and then pardoned by Trump.

    The personal is political

    That the personal is the political is evident in Diane’s struggles, both with her right-wing husband and with her colleagues who increasingly question how an African-American law firm can have a white woman as one of their named partners.

    If I have an unease with the way the series has developed it is that too much of it revolves around Diane, possibly because Baranski along with Marissa Gold (Sarah Steele) is the only major character to have survived the transition from The Good Wife.

    I’ve now spent eight years of my life in the US, having first gone there as a callow graduate student when Lyndon Johnson was president. Like so many other Australians, I fell in love with the country, and my career has been largely shaped by it.

    Yet the more I’ve visited, the more foreign it becomes. The Good Fight is exhilarating entertainment and a grim warning of what the US could become. More