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      The Issue of Abortion Is a Litmus Test for the American Catholic Church

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      Ignoring warnings from Pope Francis and the Vatican, US Catholic bishops earlier this month overwhelmingly approved drafting guidance that would deny the rite of communion to public officials who do not support the church’s opposition to abortion. The decision was seen as the church’s most public rebuke yet of US President Joe Biden, only the second Catholic to occupy the White House. A drafting committee will convene to write the guidance and present a draft to the bishops for a formal vote in November.

      The sacrament of communion, or Holy Eucharist, lies at the core of the Catholic faith. The communion host, bread, is viewed as the actual body of Jesus upon consecration by the priest during Mass. Receiving it is considered a sign of a believer’s state of grace. Receipt of communion is de rigueur and almost automatic for any Catholic attending Mass. Typically, only non-Catholics and excommunicated Catholics would be formally denied communion, though those who consider themselves not in a state of grace, i.e., guilty of a serious sin, are not supposed to receive it. Abortion, among others, is considered a grievous sin.

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      Joe Biden is an observant Roman Catholic, having grown up and been educated in the church. He regularly attends Sunday Mass and even periodic daily services, and receives communion, which has never been denied him previously. He often quotes from the Bible and church hymns in his political remarks and is known to frequently recite the rosary, which he carries with him in his pocket.

      Biden has been clear on his position on abortion. While accepting the teachings of the church, he has said that he will not impose his personal view on others and, therefore, supports a woman’s right to choose. It is precisely that position that has riled American bishops, all of whom have begun to view the issue as a litmus test for Catholicism.

      Losing Their Hold

      In America, the Catholic Church has seen a steady erosion of adherents to its teachings on a host of moral issues, most involving the treatment and role of sex and gender in everyday life, and abortion. American Catholics, like their non-Catholic counterparts, are all over the moral map. While practicing or observant Catholics are more likely to follow church teachings on these matters, even they have shown an independent streak by making decisions in their lives at odds with traditional Catholic dogma.

      For example, the church officially opposes the use of artificial contraception, yet 99% of US Catholic women use some form of artificial birth control, according to a recent Guttmacher Institute poll. This compares with 99.6% of women with no religious affiliation, 99.4% of mainline Protestant women, 99.3% of evangelical Protestants and 95.7% with other religious connections. While this is universally known among Catholics, the church leadership nowadays usually — and wisely — avoids the subject. Moreover, there is no movement to deny communion to either these women or those who support their right to choose contraception.

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      The church sees its authority eroding elsewhere as well. Surveys suggest that Catholics favor allowing to divorce and remarry, and divorced Catholics who remarry to receive communion. Since 2011, a majority of Catholics have supported gay marriage, up to 69% today. Sixty percent support the ordination of women, and 62% think that priests should be able to marry.

      On the controversial subject of abortion, a clear majority (56%) of Catholics support its legalization. The figure may be deceptive, however. Among Catholics who attend Mass regularly, opposition to abortion is significantly higher. Nevertheless, two-thirds of Catholics oppose overturning Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 case in which the US Supreme Court ruled that the Constitution protects a woman’s right to choose an abortion.

      On the specific issue before the American bishops, 67% of Catholics oppose denying communion to Biden for his views on abortion. Worth noting, however, is that among Catholics who identify as Democrat or Democrat-leaning, 87% oppose such a ruling, while only 44% who identify as Republican or Republican-leaning do so.

      Immutable Catholicism

      All of this lends weight to the call among a growing majority of American Catholics for changes in their church’s policies and teachings. Yet the Catholic Church is anything but a democracy. So, Catholics are voting not only with their feet but also their dollars, either leaving the church or simply refusing to support it with their contributions. Those who strongly identify as Catholic have declined from 46% in 1974 to just 27% in 2017. Regular Sunday Mass attendance among Catholics has also fallen, from nearly 50% in 1974 to about 25% in 2012.

      These numbers tell some but not all of the story behind the church’s decline in the US. From 1970 to 2020, the number of priests in the US fell by 40%, not surprising given that vocations draw heavily from the church’s school system, which has also suffered declining numbers. Catholic schools are closing across the country, with almost 50% fewer elementary schools and 40% fewer secondary schools in 2020 than in 1970. Catholic parishes, which typically support Catholic schools, have fallen by 15% since 1990.

      With declining membership and Mass attendance have come decreasing church collections. Also, Catholics see withholding contributions as the only way to voice their opposition to church policies. The child sex abuse scandal that has wracked the church for the last 20 years has also provoked considerable outrage among Catholics of all political persuasions, especially as diocese after diocese pays tens of millions in legal settlements of child abuse cases nationwide, dating back to the 1950s. Many believe the church has yet to provide a full accounting of the priests’ behavior and of the senior clerics who tolerated it.

      It is this independent thought and attendant behavior that has conservative Catholic bishops worried. They fear the steady decline of Catholicism in America into the same fate as Protestantism, a cafeteria-style buffet of moral and theological offerings and teachings from which members may pick and choose. For an organization accustomed to obedience and acceptance, it is tantamount to a revolution. They have chosen to confront that revolution on the abortion battlefront.

      Train Wreck or Track Change?

      Though he may not have sought the position, Joe Biden represents the growing numbers of American Catholics — and most definitely Americans in general — who wish to define a defensible middle ground on abortion, a chronically neuralgically contentious issue in the US. The conservative Catholic bishops will have none of it, rather drawing a clear line brooking no viable middle ground.

      In doing so, they’ve formally submitted the church to America’s culture wars that infect so many segments of polity and society. Even more importantly for the church, these bishops threaten to divide the US institution. On one track, there is the conservative movement, a compliant core that is faithful to all the church’s teachings and dogma, intolerant of any deviation, whether on abortion, married priests, contraception, gay marriage, etc. On another track, there is a more liberal version of the church, focusing on its historic mission of social justice, immigration, climate change and poverty elimination but also more tolerant of diverse views on sex and morality.

      Pope Francis unquestionably knows this and is trying to avoid what may be inevitable, especially as his American bishops appear so eager for the confrontation and consequent division. Following the bishops’ vote, he issued no comment. The Vatican asserted that he had already spoken on his opposition to the action. Clearly, however, their decision flouted his position and amounts to no less than a direct challenge to the pope and his authority, a rarity in recent church history.

      Francis and the Vatican appear to be relying on the ultimate failure of the bishops’ initiative. It would require unanimous approval by the Conference of Bishops or at least two-thirds approval followed by the pope’s consent. The likelihood of either is microscopically slim.

      The bishops’ action is more than one of merely trying to force dogmatic adherence to church teachings. It is a barely veiled challenge to this pope whom they’ve viewed as out of step with tradition and steering the church down a dangerous path of diluting the faith. Even if their measure fails, they will have established themselves as an alternative voice of the Catholic faith, thereby condemning Catholics across the country to a church divided between two versions of Jesus’ “one, holy, catholic and apostolic church.”

      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 Reassuring Presence of Multiple Threats

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      In April, the US director of national intelligence, Avril Haines, presented an important document produced by the nation’s intelligence community, the 2021 Annual Threat Assessment. It was designed to demonstrate that the newly inaugurated president, Joe Biden, is ready to respond to any or all of the manifold threats, fear of which has been the key to unifying the nation.

      China and Iran figure prominently, as do the Islamic State (IS) and al-Qaida. Beltway politicians will find the continuity with the fears of previous administrations reassuring. Even though the last three — the Islamic Republic of Iran, IS and al-Qaida — would not even exist today had the United States not actively provoked them into existence through its obsessive meddling in Middle Eastern affairs, many will be pleased to note that their confirmed presence on the list continues to justify the intelligence community’s ever-expanding scope. China, of course, is a special case because it has never threatened the US militarily or economically. Yet the headline of a New York Times article on the report reads, “China Poses Biggest Threat to U.S., Intelligence Report Says.”

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      How indeed should we understand the Chinese threat, announced as the biggest of them all? Haines explains that China is guilty of “employing a comprehensive approach to demonstrate its growing strength.” The Chinese leadership has apparently failed to understand that only one nation in the world is authorized to “demonstrate its growing strength.” They should accept that it is madness to think there may be a need for China’s strength to increase. If the Chinese simply allow the US to govern the world’s affairs, they can be assured that they will always be in safe, democratic hands.

      Russia predictably appears in the full list of threats, although Haines admits that it “does not want a conflict with the United States.” That may be so, but everyone who has paid the slightest attention to the verities associated with Russiagate should now realize that Vladimir Putin’s cronies or lackies have developed a quasi-nuclear capacity to publish misinformation on Facebook, a reprehensible act that no other nation, party or person would ever think of doing. It appears that such practice can be fatal for democracy, even leading to the corrupting of an American election, the pristine model of transparent democratic procedure. 

      Haines focuses on Russia’s use of “malign influence campaigns.” This apparently means cherry-picking only negative things to say about the United States, whether factual or invented. Haines recycles the favorite trope of Russiagate enthusiasts over the past five years when she speaks of Russia’s intent to “sow discord.” Whenever Americans don’t agree on some fundamental things about their own country, the Russians must have had something to do with it.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Haines gets to the end of her list without mention one nation some people find profoundly disturbing: Saudi Arabia, known for its extremely repressive social practices, its summary justice against anyone suspected of “sowing discord” (which may even include Washington Post journalists) and its brutal military campaigns designed to produce the world’s worst humanitarian disasters. But for the fact of its special relationship with the US based on oil and money, there might be some merit in considering Saudi as a possible threat, especially after the 2019 shooting of three Americans by a Saudi officer in Pensacola, Florida and the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018.

      New evidence emerged this week concerning the training in the US of Khashoggi’s murderers. It revealed a suspicious level of complicity between the Saudi regime, which has funded terrorism for decades, and the US State Department, which authorized the educational collaboration. When asked for comment, State Department spokesman Ned Price explained: “This administration insists on responsible use of U.S. origin defense equipment and training by our allies and partners, and considers appropriate responses if violations occur. Saudi Arabia faces significant threats to its territory, and we are committed to working together to help Riyadh strengthen its defenses.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Significant threats:

      For the US government, any person, group, nation or even abstract idea that in any way challenges the global network of bulwarks and bastions, weapons and sanctions that constitute a body of resources dedicated to national defense, equally including the regimes of sanguinary dictators, predatory businesses and the actions of irresponsible mercenaries, all of whom are guided by the democratic ideals that drive such policies and actions

      Contextual Note

      The twin concepts of threat (the action of others) and defense (our actions) sum up the logic of the security state. So long as a threat exists — and the more that can be listed the merrier — the system of defense can thrive and grow. Haines calls the money spent on defense and surveillance an investment, which most experts on Wall Street and any true economist might find slightly abusive. Here is how she describes the value of the intelligence assessment of threats: “In short, at no point has it been more important to invest in our norms and institutions, our workforce, and the integration of our work. Doing so, provides us with the opportunity to meet the challenges we face, to pull together as a society, and to promote resilience and innovation.” Investment, in this sense, simply means more money that the US can spend, basically on creating or entertaining fear.

      Fomenting fear is easy, especially if you have the means (unlimited budget) of making it appear serious, detailed and scientific. Interestingly, in her quest for thoroughness, Haines correctly designates climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic as major threats. Everyone already knows the threat is real. Rather than using her platform to trumpet what everyone knows, it might be more productive to look at mobilizing resources to confront such threats. She could, for example, have signaled the urgency of finding ways to allow the developing world to produce its own vaccines rather than beg for Western handouts. But that would raise the delicate question of pharmaceutical patents, which must be protected even at the cost of the world’s health. Instead, the threat she chooses to highlight is the “vaccine diplomacy” of Russia and China.

      As for climate change, Haines highlights the grim perspective for the globe itself and especially for “vulnerable populations.” But there is nary a word about the contributing causes or the prospect for possible solutions, such as calling into question the economic system that feeds the crisis. This in spite of Haines’ insistence that the intelligence agencies are not simply Cassandras, put in place to strike fear into brave citizens’ hearts, but have a positive role to play. “The American people should know as much as possible about the threats facing our nation and what their intelligence agencies are doing to protect them,” she says. It would be nice to learn more about the “doing” part of it.

      Historical Note

      Since the Second World War, the entire pattern for economic success and industrial growth has been structured around the notion of fear. The Cold War officialized fear as the major motivating factor serving to keep capitalism intact, essentially by transforming free market capitalism into monopolistically structured state capitalism (privatized socialism), in which the needs of defense drive innovation. In the first half of the 20th century, free market capitalism had begun to reveal all the contradictions Karl Marx predicted for it. After the Wall Street crash in 1929, capitalism was on the brink of collapse in the US, which also happened to be the nation that controlled the debt of the European nations who had spent all their capitalistic resources in a catastrophic world war.

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      During the 1930s, Nazism and Soviet communism, two brands of militaristic totalitarianism, became the principal objects of fear for Americans. The business class feared the communists and the working class, decimated by capitalism’s failure, feared the fascists. The Nazis emerged as the threat that justified the war effort. Once that was successful, Washington’s elite elected the Russian communists to play the role.

      After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, Islamist terrorism eventually slid into the role of existential threat number one. But the policies mobilized to defeat it had the effect of seriously weakening the American system of state capitalism. With things becoming desperate, new threats were needed. Avril Haines and the Biden administration have produced the updated catalog.

      *[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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      Iran’s Hardliners Are Back

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      To some critics, US elections are managed affairs. According to this cynical view, the “powers that be” narrow the field of candidates, the two parties don’t represent the real range of public opinion in the country, and periodic elections are just shadow plays staged by powerbrokers behind the scenes. In this way, US democracy is a sham.

      Although certainly distorted by the powerful, US democracy is not entirely scripted. If nothing else, the victory of Donald Trump in 2016 should have dispelled this particular misconception since the array of forces within the Republican Party, the intelligentsia and Wall Street were initially unified against him. By the same token. the come-from-behind victory of Black Lives Matter activist Cori Bush in her House race in Missouri in 2020 also demonstrates, on a smaller scale, that US elections cannot be predicted in advance.

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      Iranian elections, on the other hand, are generally considered semi-democratic at best. Here, a true deep state of clerics and security organs really does stage-manage the elections in often quite transparent ways. This year, for instance, the Guardian Council of clerics and lawyers qualified only seven presidential candidates out of the 592 that registered. Forty women threw their hats into the ring, but the council rejected all of them. It also made sure that no viable reformist candidates would compete in the race.

      As a result, hardliner Ebrahim Raisi handily won the election last week. Just as US President Joe Biden was declaring in his first European trip that “America is back” — by which he meant that an internationally engaged America is back — the recent Iranian election has been an opportunity for the Iranian conservatives known as principlists to declare their return to power. Raisi will take over from the reformist President Hassan Rouhani, who had staked his political career on a nuclear deal with the United States and a reduction of US economic sanctions, which was initially a winning bet. Thanks to Trump’s rejection of that nuclear deal and his ratcheting up of sanctions, however, the reformist agenda lost credibility, if not among the population then at least among Iran’s ruling elite.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Many Iranian voters were so disgusted by what was on offer in the recent election that they refused to vote. The turnout, under 50%, was the lowest since the revolution of 1979. Perhaps most telling was the candidate who came in second place. Actually, it wasn’t a person at all: it was “void.” More than 4 million votes were declared invalid.

      Combined with the number of voters who stayed home, those who voided their ballots sent a signal that they, at least, know a sham when they see one. If one wants to be optimistic, the low-turnout election reveals just how strong the pro-democratic constituency is in the country. And ironically, this poor showing demonstrates that elections do matter in Iran since the Guardian Council had to go to great lengths to guarantee its preferred outcome.

      When Trump won in 2016, he set about transforming US foreign and domestic policy. The swing in Iranian governance from reformist to conservative might be expected to produce a similar sea change in how Iran deals with the economy, its nuclear program and the outside world. But Raisi may end up selling the reformist agenda better than the reformists themselves.

      The Nuclear Deal

      The United States and Iran have just concluded a sixth round of negotiations on reviving the Iran nuclear deal, formally known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). It’s just possible that the two sides, in negotiations facilitated by the European Union, will come to an agreement before Raisi assumes the presidency in August. Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, for instance, is upbeat about a quick and positive conclusion to the talks.

      But even if such an early agreement is not forthcoming, there’s no reason to expect that Iran will suddenly pull out of the negotiations. True, the JCPOA was integral to the reformist program, and the reformists were just voted out of office. But Ayatollah Ali Khamenei backed the agreement in 2015 and continues to do so. Raisi himself has expressed support for the deal, with the caveats that it was America’s fault for jeopardizing the agreement and that he’s no fan of negotiations for the sake of negotiating.

      Raisi is looking to tread a fine line. His election campaign was based largely on improving the Iranian economy, and that will require the reduction and eventual elimination of nuclear-related sanctions. At the same time, he has made clear that he’s not interested in following the reformist agenda of using the nuclear deal as a cornerstone of rapprochement with the West. He stated this week that Iran’s missile program is not up for discussion — something that might have figured in post-JCPOA negotiations — and he is not looking to meet with President Biden.

      “The Americans trampled on the JCPOA and the Europeans failed to live up to their commitment,” Raisi pointed out. “I reiterate to the US that you were committed to lifting the sanctions — come back and live up to your commitments.”

      That’s a fair assessment of what happened under Trump (the trampling part) and what has so far failed to happen under Biden (the lifting of sanctions part). Still, if both sides return to the JCPOA even without future agreements, it would be an improvement over the dangerous impasse of the last few years.

      So, the message is acceptable. The messenger, however, is problematic. Accused of gross human rights violations from his time as a prosecutor in the 1980s and a judge after that, Raisi was included in a 2019 Treasury Department sanctions list. So, Iran’s new president is going to face some difficulties traveling to the West and will not likely give a speech at the UN General Assembly meetings in New York as his predecessors routinely did. Given his reception in the West, it’s not surprising that Raisi is unenthusiastic about a detente with his detractors.

      Yet because Raisi will now be presiding over a state that hews closer to the conservative views of the clerical establishment, there will be less political infighting at the top and Raisi may very well be able to sell an agreement at home more effectively than the reformists.

      The Economy

      The Iranian economy is a mess. Before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, the country experienced significant contractions in GDP of 6% in 2018 and nearly 7% in 2019. With Trump applying maximum pressure on Iran, Europe was supposed to pick up the slack. In fact, trade with Europe dropped by an astonishing 85% after 2017 as European countries buckled under the threat of secondary sanctions from the Trump administration.

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      The rise in prices for consumer goods, particularly gas, prompted widespread protests throughout Iran at the end of 2019, to which the government responded with force. US-imposed sanctions, the disruptions of COVID-19 and chronic budget deficits have all contributed to the inflation that generates a good deal of public discontent in the country.

      In the late 1990s and the 2000s, Iran experienced a huge expansion of its middle class from below 30% of the population to nearly 60%. This middle class generally supported the modern, outward-looking agenda of reformists like Rouhani, who served two presidential terms beginning in 2013.

      Instead of cultivating that constituency, however, the Trump administration undercut the reformists by withdrawing from the JCPOA in 2018 and applying punitive measures that hurt the middle class. This was not a case of unintended consequences. As Ryan Costello explains at Responsible Statecraft, elements of the US far right quite consciously supported hardliners in Iran as the political figures most likely to unwittingly precipitate an uprising and, ultimately, the collapse of the regime. The maximum pressure campaign of the Trump years was designed with the same ends in mind.

      Instead of mobilizing another Green Movement, which protested the last hardliner to preside over Iran’s political system, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the return of the conservatives to power will more likely provoke apathy or even eventually support for anti-Western policies. “A decade of economic stagnation caused by sanctions and broken international promises has brought Iran’s middle class to a point that it may reconsider its future as a force for political moderation and globalization,” economist Djavad Salehi-Isfahani concludes.

      Raisi, meanwhile, has promised to fight corruption and economic mismanagement in the Iranian economy. He has his work cut out for him. The country ranks 149 out of 180 countries on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index. Bribery and favoritism are widespread, while a number of officials have been prosecuted for embezzlement and influence-peddling. It’s going to be difficult to root out corruption since the system basically runs on clientelism. The new patrons who take over the government apparatus expect to siphon off a portion of the state’s wealth for distribution through their patronage system.

      As a result, Raisi might find it easier to improve Iran’s economy by negotiating a reduction of external sanctions than a reduction of internal corruption.

      Regional Relations

      One of the side benefits of the Biden administration’s rethink of relations with Saudi Arabia is that it has forced Riyadh to hedge its bets in the region. Trump lavished praise on the Saudis, even as they were killing Yemenis, assassinating a Washington Post columnist and jailing human rights activists. Under Trump, the United States and Saudi Arabia bonded on their anti-Iran agenda.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Now, with the Biden administration pulling back from its support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen and criticizing the Saudi record on human rights, Riyadh has begun secret negotiations with Iran to mend their relationship. Those discussions, which began last month in Baghdad, cover a number of flashpoints, but particularly the places where the two countries are competing for influence such as Yemen and Iraq.

      Shortly after his electoral victory, Raisi announced that he wanted to improve relations with the Gulf Arab states. He singled out Saudi Arabia, which severed diplomatic ties with Iran in 2016. “There are no obstacles from Iran’s side to re-opening embassies,” Raisi said. “There are no obstacles to ties with Saudi Arabia.”

      A rapprochement between these two regional hegemons, however superficial, could significantly improve the prospects for reducing tensions in the region. And that, in turn, could be good news for a Biden administration that so desperately wants to shift its attention away from Middle East conflicts.

      In contrast to hawks like Elliott Abrams, I certainly do not root for the hardliners to win in Iranian elections. I believe that the Iranian system, led by the reformists, can evolve in a more democratic, more peaceful and more equitable direction.

      But in the short term, the victory of Ebrahim Raisi might just be good news. After all, he supports the nuclear deal, needs the reduction of US sanctions to fulfill his economic promises and is open to better relations with his neighbors. Imagine if Ahmadinejad, Iran’s version of Trump, had returned to power. Fortunately, the Guardian Council disqualified him as well. That’s not a bad lesson for Congress, as it confronts the possibility of Trump’s return to public office.

      *[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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      in World Politics

      Joe Biden Meets Afghanistan’s Leaders as the Country Faces Collapse

      by

      The security situation in Afghanistan is deteriorating dramatically. The Taliban have captured the country’s border crossing to Tajikistan. Prospects of civil war have risen.

      Even as the US withdrawal gains momentum, Afghan leaders are visiting Washington to meet President Joe Biden on June 25. This includes President Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah, the chairperson of the High Peace Council for Reconciliation.

      The Hazara Minority’s Precarious Existence in Afghanistan

      READ MORE

      The Taliban are filling the vacuum that Americans are leaving behind. Violence has surged across Afghanistan and the government is losing territory by the day. As September 11, the deadline for the departure of American troops, draws nigh, the Taliban are becoming increasingly emboldened.

      The government in Kabul has a reputation for corruption and is proving to be ineffective. People are dying every day in cities, towns and villages from terror, crime and hunger. The US is leaving behind a royal mess. If its presence in Afghanistan was problematic, its withdrawal promises to be doubly so.

      Ghani Is Running Out of Time

      Stakes are high in Biden’s first meeting with the Afghan leaders even if expectations are low. Ghani is not an ideal interlocutor. He has presided over a notoriously corrupt administration of a failing state. Kabul’s writ does not even run in the city. Even if Biden and Ghani do a dream deal, the latter is highly unlikely to be able to uphold his part of the bargain.

      Biden wants to bring back American troops and minimize the instability that will inevitably follow in Afghanistan. He needs a good partner to work with. Once, Ghani was the blue-eyed boy of Washington. His academic credentials and bureaucratic experience gave him a halo that few Afghans possessed. Ghani has squandered all the resources that the US provided him. He has few, if any, opportunities left. Ghani’s government is on the verge of total collapse.

      Embed from Getty Images

      According to a new assessment of the US intelligence community, Ghani’s government could collapse within six months of the American military withdrawal from Afghanistan. The government has lost credibility because it has failed to provide basic public services to the people. Consequently, the people have lost hope. Yet again, Afghans are voting with their feet and leaving the country in droves.

      Like many African strongmen, Ghani has surrounded himself with sycophantic cronies. He sees himself as the savior and messiah of Afghanistan. The president has no idea that he has lost all credibility in his second term. His lofty rhetoric fails to reflect Afghanistan’s grim realities.

      Ghani is not entirely delusional, though. He realized fully well that he occupies his fancy palace in Kabul thanks to the barrels of American guns. Once the Americans leave, he is toast. Therefore, he has opposed Biden’s peace plan that calls for a political settlement between warring parties, including the Taliban. Unsurprisingly, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan has lauded Biden’s plan. 

      What Joe Biden Must Do

      Afghans fear that the US might be leaving their country to the mercy of the Pakistani generals. After the last Soviet troops departed from Afghanistan in 1989, the Pakistan-trained Taliban took over. This provided Pakistan with strategic depth, jihadis to send to India and a bargaining chip vis-à-vis Washington. History might be about to repeat itself and Afghans are terrified of another tragedy.

      Biden is meeting Ghani to reassure Afghans that he is not leaving them to the Taliban wolves. The official American line is that the US will continue to support the legitimately elected government in Kabul. Yet the Americans are infamous for short attention spans and Afghans fear they will be forgotten again. After all, Charlie Wilson could raise a ton of money to fight the Soviets but very little for schools or hospitals afterward. As the iconic American movie on the late congressman records, no one cared.

      There is another historical parallel. When US troops left Saigon in 1975, the Viet Cong overran Vietnam. As the last American planes fly back from Bagram, the Taliban could do the same in Afghanistan. Washington must act differently this time around. The US has to back Afghan security forces, put its weight behind a people-centered peace process and uphold Biden’s much-touted democracy agenda.

      If the US fails, the Taliban will be in charge. Pakistan will make Afghanistan a puppet state. Bagram, the closest American airbase to China’s western borders, might well fall to Beijing. China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) might expand into Afghanistan too. The risks for Afghanistan, the region and the US are only too real.

      In an article for The Washington Post, David Ignatius argues that “a summer of pain awaits” Afghanistan. Over the years, American leaders have found themselves in a Catch-22 regarding Afghanistan. They cannot tell the public that Afghanistan deserves American blood and treasure forever. Nearly 20 years have passed since the tragic 9/11 attacks in the United States. American troops have patrolled Afghanistan’s dusty roads, fighter jets have flown endless sorties and drones have liquidated fearsome foes. Yet peace is nowhere in sight. At the same time, packing up and leaving only fuels the raging violence further, leaves behind a geopolitical vacuum and allows rival powers leverage against American interests.

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      Donald Trump promised American troops would come home when he was president. Biden has set a date for the final withdrawal. By doing so, he has tied his hands. The Taliban now know that American troops are preparing to leave and will soon be gone. In their worldview, the Taliban have made history. After humbling the Soviets, they have defeated the evil Uncle Sam. They see themselves as superiors of super powers in their own backyard. With morale sky high, they have launched bold military operations to take over Afghanistan. It seems the US can do little to prevent the Taliban from taking over.

      Yet things are never as dire or as rosy as they seem. Many Afghans have fought the Taliban and are willing to fight them again. The Ghani government may be incorrigibly corrupt, but its officials want to avoid the fate of the Soviet-backed leader Mohammad Najibullah whose corpse was strung for public display. Crises tend to focus minds and this might be the best time to deal with Afghanistan’s manifestly flawed leaders.

      Even as American troops are leaving, Biden must support Afghan leaders against the Taliban. He must make that support conditional on Ghani and his cronies leaving office by a certain date. They must put in place a more credible Afghan leadership to take on the Taliban. After all, the British replaced Neville Chamberlain with Winston Churchill during World War II. For Afghanistan, this is a time of national crisis.

      The Taliban could take over much of the country but will struggle to hold it together. A civil war might break out. The disintegration of Afghanistan might move from the realm of possibility to reality. Ambitious powers in the near neighborhood will take advantage of the ensuing chaos. Unlike Vietnam, Afghanistan will not become a nation of high literacy, low infant mortality and better nutrition. It will yet again become an impoverished land where fanatics and terrorists will find refuge and a base for their global jihadist operations.

      President Biden has long declared that “America is back.” Afghanistan could smash that assertion to smithereens and demonstrate that America is just going back home. If he is serious about American leadership and holding aloft the torch for democracy, Biden cannot throw Afghanistan to the dogs of war. He has to build an international coalition that pushes through a peace process, backs credible leaders in Afghanistan and provides aerial, if not ground assistance to those putting their lives on the line against the Taliban.

      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

      The Death of Meaningful Live Coverage in US Media

      by

      In an important article in Foreign Affairs cited yesterday in this column, Charles King mentions a particular initiative of media manipulation that an increasingly panicked President Lyndon Johnson undertook to defuse criticism of the war he had engaged in Vietnam. King describes a game of political chess that took place between William Fulbright, head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee from 1959 to 1974, intent on exposing the bad faith of the government, and Johnson, who was desperately seeking to manufacture consent for his war.

      Fulbright, Vietnam and the Problem of Purity in US Politics

      READ MORE

      The chessboard was the media and specifically, television. “If there was a moment when the White House began to lose middle America,” King writes, “the Fulbright hearings marked it. From the outset, Johnson was so worried about their impact that he pressed one television network to air I Love Lucy reruns instead of live coverage.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Live coverage:

      The last increasingly feeble attempt by the media to acknowledge the abiding importance of reality in a culture that expresses a clear preference for hyperreality

      Contextual Note 

      Live coverage has always been a risky endeavor for the media, except in sports, where people understand the rules of engagement. Live coverage of a popular sporting event happens to be the most profitable form of entertainment. “Broadcasters pay heavily for sport because it is the best live, unscripted drama they can get,” according to one media commentator.

      War in some ways resembles sports because it pits two very serious adversaries against each other. US television networks in the 1960s sensed that live coverage of an emerging war could be profitable. But, in contrast with a sporting event, it entailed four serious problems beyond the physical risk to journalists themselves.

      Embed from Getty Images

      First, broadcasting unadulterated violence might violate the reigning standards of “decency.” But that could be solved with good editing.

      A second drawback lay in the fact that programming and planning became far more complex to manage since there was no official pre-announced schedule.

      The third was even thornier. It concerned the question of truthful reporting. Being too honest about what is happening on the ground risked alienating indispensable sources inside a government that desperately wants people to applaud “our side” and perceive the noble and even glorious side of combat.

      That consideration of honesty defines the fourth problem related to live coverage: Viewers keep expecting more reality at the very moment when the people promoting war decide they should see less of it. That leaves two options for news services: either scale back their reporting or begin misrepresenting or airbrushing the truth. But in the consumer society, the problem with scaling back (for example, offering sitcom reruns instead of Senate hearings) is that consumers always want more. In the end, misrepresentation — fake news — becomes the only viable solution. The key to manufacturing consent, as Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman made clear in their book with that title, is giving consumers not only what they want to hear, but what you (the media and the government) want them to want to hear.

      The Vietnam War brought home to both the government and the media the difficulty of managing live reality. The Nixon administration that followed both intensified the war and worked on molding the public’s mindset rather than either debating critics or seeking to hide from public scrutiny. Richard Nixon introduced the notion of “the silent majority” to neutralize the voices of protest and shame the refractory media by accusing them of failing to respond to the will of the people, “real Americans.” Nixon’s war on the media eventually backfired with the Watergate scandal, leading to his resignation in 1974. But it effectively drew attention away from his policies and onto his person, something Johnson was never able to do.

      From that point on, and thanks in part to the Watergate scandal itself, the media acquired the habit of focusing on the personality of presidents and neglecting critical discussion of their policies. Suddenly, there was plenty of live coverage of the Watergate affair itself and less and less of Vietnam, Indonesia and Chile, where the kind of foreign policy Fulbright denounced was being carried out with greater and greater impunity.

      Perhaps CBS and other audio-visual media had learned that live broadcasting of the reality produced by a president’s policies was too problematic to manage safely. In contrast, live broadcasting the dramas of the president himself excited their audiences. The public lapped up the scandals the media featured about Richard Nixon, the crook, Bill Clinton, the seducer, and George W. Bush, the bumbler and gaffer who, while launching disastrous wars, so charmingly failed even to put a coherent sentence together. Ronald Reagan, the incarnation of the wisdom attributed to Nixon’s silent majority, stood as an icon of Hollywood hyperreality, where scripted fiction distracted attention from the spontaneous and often duplicitous truth hiding behind it. Barack Obama, as the first black president, was protected by his own iconic status while, at the same time, silently polarizing the fears of the silent white majority. For them, his very presence in the White House was a scandal.

      As a living and breathing fountain of permanent scandal, Donald Trump was the godsend enabling all news outlets — for and against him — to thrive during a golden age of media. For four years, the kind of rational, critical discourse aiming at achieving some perspective on reality that Fulbright was known to promote disappeared from the airwave. The very idea of letting it be heard became anathema to media producers. This was as true of Fox (Republican, conservative) as of MSNBC (Democrat, liberal). The media relished every speech and tweet that emerged from Donald Trump’s creative impulses.

      Historical Note

      One problem with the American war in Vietnam was that, despite its superficial resemblance to a contest between “our team” and “their team,” it fundamentally failed to conform to the binary model. Americans never quite understood why the South Vietnamese government should be called our team. Lyndon Johnson’s massive deployment of troops was designed partly to convince Americans that it was a war not between two Vietnamese rival organizations with a claim to governing, but between American democracy and an illegitimate enemy that had no clear defining characteristics other than an apparent belief in Marxist theory. Those who delved into the people’s history understood that the North Vietnamese were nationalists whose goal was to finally break free of French colonial rule.

      The next serious problem with the conflict was the fact that once an American war starts, unless it is quickly won, it will go on forever. No excuse ever exists for stopping it. When, in his Senate hearings, William Fulbright called to the witness stand George Kennan — a highly respected presidential foreign policy adviser, considered by many to have written the ground rules of the Cold War — Johnson reacted. Knowing that Kennan judged the intervention in Vietnam to be a mistake, Johnson put pressure on CBS to replace its programmed live coverage of the hearings by stale reruns of popular sitcoms. This immediately provoked the resignation of Fred Friendly, the head of CBS’ news division. 

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      Friendly’s reaction tells us something about how the standards for truth that once existed even in corporate news media have evolved over time. Those who take the job now are only too aware of what’s expected of them. Like an Amazon or Uber driver, they obligingly deliver. They would never consider resigning simply because of orders from the White House. In any case, presidents no longer bother to put pressure on news editors to kill a story or live coverage. They prefer to send their message straight to the corporate executives who hire the news editors.

      Fulbright lived in a world that hadn’t yet fully realized that news could be entertainment and that politics and corporate interest could be seamlessly merged into a politico-media complex. In the 1960s, the idea persisted that political decisions could and should derive from rational analysis of historical context. But as President Dwight Eisenhower warned at the beginning of the decade, the military-industrial complex now occupied the government’s existential core. Its decision-making was based on cynical, irrational, profit-driven and power-hungry reasoning. William Fulbright, Walter Cronkite and Fred Friendly confronted that emerging world. They themselves belonged to a universe that no longer exists today.

      *[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

      How Biden Helped Hardliner Raisi Win in Iran

      by

      It was common knowledge that a US failure to rejoin the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) before the Iranian presidential election would help conservative hard-liners to win. Indeed, on June 18, the conservative Ebrahim Raisi was elected as the new president of Iran.

      Raisi has a record of brutally cracking down on government opponents, and his election is a severe blow to Iranians struggling for a more liberal, open society. He also has a history of anti-Western sentiment and says he would refuse to meet with US President Joe Biden. While incumbent President Hassan Rouhani, considered a moderate, held out the possibility of broader talks after the US returned to the JCPOA, Raisi will almost certainly reject broader negotiations with Washington.

      Joe Biden Faces Many Challenges in Latin America

      READ MORE

      Could Raisi’s victory have been averted if Biden had rejoined the Iran nuclear deal right after coming into the White House and enabled Rouhani and the moderates in Iran to take credit for the removal of US sanctions before the election? Now we will never know. 

      The US withdrawal from the agreement under Donald Trump in 2018 drew near-universal condemnation from Democrats and arguably violated international law. But Biden’s failure to quickly rejoin the deal has left Trump’s policy in place, including the cruel “maximum pressure” sanctions that are destroying Iran’s middle class, throwing millions of people into poverty, and preventing imports of medicine and other essentials, even during a pandemic. 

      US sanctions have provoked retaliatory measures from Iran, including suspending limits on its uranium enrichment and reducing cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Trump’s, and now Biden’s, policy has simply reconstructed the problems that preceded the JCPOA in 2015, displaying the widely recognized madness of repeating something that didn’t work and expecting a different result.

      If actions speak louder than words, the US seizure of 27 Iranian and Yemeni international news websites on June 22, based on the illegal, unilateral US sanctions that are among the most contentious topics of the Vienna negotiations, suggests that the same madness still holds sway over US policy.

      Biden Takes His Time

      Since Biden took office on January 20, the critical underlying question is whether he and his administration are really committed to the JCPOA or not. As a presidential primary candidate, Senator Bernie Sanders promised to simply rejoin the nuclear deal on his first day as president. Iran has always said it was ready to comply with the agreement as soon as the United States rejoined it. 

      Embed from Getty Images

      Biden has been in office for five months, but the negotiations in Vienna, Austria, did not begin until April 6. His failure to rejoin the agreement on taking office reflected a desire to appease hawkish advisers and politicians who claimed he could use Trump’s withdrawal and the threat of continued sanctions as “leverage” to extract more concessions from Iran over its ballistic missiles, regional activities and other questions. 

      Far from extracting more concessions, Biden’s foot-dragging only provoked further retaliatory action by Iran, especially after the assassination of an Iranian scientist and sabotage at Iran’s Natanz nuclear facility, both probably committed by Israel. 

      Without a great deal of help, and some pressure, from America’s European allies, it is unclear how long it would have taken Biden to get around to opening negotiations with Iran. The shuttle diplomacy taking place in Vienna is the result of painstaking negotiations with both sides by former European Parliament President Josep Borrell, who is now the European Union’s foreign policy chief.

      The sixth round of shuttle diplomacy has now concluded in Vienna without an agreement. President-elect Raisi says he supports the negotiations, but would not allow the US to drag them out for a long time. 

      An unnamed US official raised hopes for an agreement before Raisi takes office on August 3, noting that it would be more difficult to reach an agreement after that. But a State Department spokesman said talks would continue when the new government takes office, implying that an agreement was unlikely before then. 

      Will They or Won’t They?

      Even if Biden had rejoined the nuclear deal, Iran’s moderates might still have lost this tightly managed election. But a restored JCPOA and the end of US sanctions would have left the moderates in a stronger position. It would have also set Iran’s relations with the United States and its allies on a path of normalization that would have helped to weather more difficult relations with Raisi and his government in the coming years.

      If Biden fails to rejoin the JCPOA, and if the US or Israel ends up at war with Iran, this lost opportunity to quickly rejoin the deal during his first months in office will loom large over future events and his legacy as president.

      If the United States does not rejoin the JCPOA before Raisi takes office, Iran’s hard-liners will point to Rouhani’s diplomacy with the West as a failed pipe-dream, and their own policies as pragmatic and realistic by contrast. In the US and Israel, the hawks who have lured Biden into this slow-motion train-wreck will be popping champagne corks to celebrate Raisi’s inauguration, as they move in to kill the JCPOA for good, smearing it as a deal with a mass murderer.

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      If Biden rejoins the JCPOA after Raisi’s inauguration, Iran’s hard-liners will claim that they succeeded where Rouhani and the moderates failed and take credit for the economic recovery that will follow the removal of US sanctions. 

      On the other hand, if Biden follows hawkish advice and tries to play it tough, and Raisi then pulls the plug on the negotiations, both leaders will score points with their own hard-liners at the expense of majorities of their people who want peace. In doing so, the United States will be back on a path of confrontation with Iran. While that would be the worst outcome of all, it would allow Biden to have it both ways domestically, appeasing the hawks and telling liberals that he was committed to the nuclear deal until Iran rejected it. Such a cynical path of least resistance would very likely be a path to war.

      Move Faster

      On all these counts, it is vital that Biden and the Democrats conclude an agreement with the Rouhani government and rejoin the JCPOA. Rejoining it after Raisi takes office would be better than letting the negotiations fail altogether, but this entire slow-motion train-wreck has been characterized by diminishing returns with every delay, from the day Biden took office. 

      Neither the people of Iran nor the people of the United States have been well served by Biden’s willingness to accept Trump’s Iran policy as an acceptable alternative to Barack Obama’s, even as a temporary political expedient. To allow Trump’s abandonment of Obama’s agreement to stand as a long-term US policy would be an even greater betrayal of the goodwill and good faith of people on all sides — Americans, allies and enemies alike.

      Biden and his advisers must now confront the consequences of the position their wishful thinking and dithering has landed them in. They must make a genuine and serious political decision to rejoin the JCPOA within days or weeks.

      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

      Fulbright, Vietnam and the Problem of Purity in US Politics

      by

      Though few millennials recognize his name other than as the title of a scholarship fund, Senator J. William Fulbright (1905-1995) stands as one of the most important and influential US politicians of his time. For the generation of young Americans appalled by the knee-jerk militarism coupled with an incomprehensible domino theory that culminated in the nation’s catastrophic engagement in Vietnam in the 1960s, the senator from Arkansas emerged as their champion of tolerance, rectitude and moral probity. Fulbright had demonstrated it initially in his courageous opposition to the paranoid anti-communism of Senator Joe McCarthy in the 1950s. But the message really came home with his sedulous opposition to the aggressive foreign policy of a fellow Democrat, President Lyndon Johnson, in the 1960s in Southeast Asia.

      Foreign Affairs has published an enlightening article by Charles King, a Georgetown professor of international affairs and government, bearing the title, “The Fulbright Paradox, Race and the Road to American Internationalism.” The article serves as a reminder of how different congressional politics is today in the age of Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer from what it was 60 years ago. It also reminds us how the two major issues that still preoccupy Americans — the role of the US as a global policeman and racial inequality — remain in the headlines as the source of serious division, despite a deep historical shift in political culture.

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      The paradox King points to seems obvious today but was hardly shocking at the time. Fulbright “was a figure who committed his life to global understanding yet found it impossible to apply the same ideals to his homeland,” King writes. In short, the anti-militarist was a racist. For a generation ready to demonstrate in the streets and occasionally to join radical groups or even terrorist cells, Fulbright became the one politician within the halls of power to champion moral opposition to Johnson’s war. He valiantly organized Senate hearings on the origins and the conduct of a war Johnson was continually escalating. This was nearly two years before two senators, Eugene McCarthy and then Robert Kennedy, emerged as challengers to the incumbent president in the coming 1968 presidential election.

      Most people today remember the 1960s as the era of Martin Luther King’s powerful civil rights movement. But the two parallel dramas provoking massive protest against a neocolonial war abroad and endemic racial injustice at home shared the stage. King’s article highlights the fact that the enlightened, forward-looking liberal, William Fulbright, could at the same time think and act as a traditional Southern racist. He both opposed Johnson’s war and voted against the Texan president’s history-shifting civil rights act that abolished Jim Crow.

      It strains belief today to imagine that anyone at that time could have been both morally opposed to the Vietnam War and convinced that, as Fulbright’s biographer Randall Woods claims, “the blacks he knew were not equal to whites nor could they be made so by legislative decree.” 

      By the end of the 1960s, Fulbright began to adapt to the changing culture, embracing the lessons of the civil rights movement. “Later in life,” King writes, “he would claim his stance was tactical. Electoral viability in his home state of Arkansas depended on defending states’ rights and a gradualist approach to equality for Black Americans, he said.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Electoral viability:

      The strategic principle according to which all principles may be abandoned or silenced in the interest of achieving the ultimate goal: the obtention of political power that will permit the achievement of other goals not necessarily mentioned during the election campaign

      Contextual Note

      Fulbright’s influence on US culture in the 1960s was monumental. He defined a moral position that continues to inspire opponents of American overreach in its often doubtful claim to enforce the “rule of law” by aggressive measures against foreign populations, whether in the form of invasion and military occupation, debilitating sanctions or simply by propping up sanguinary dictators. His analysis of the folly of the Vietnam War holds today: “The cause of our difficulties in southeast Asia is not a deficiency of power but an excess of the wrong kind of power which results in a feeling of impotence when it fails to achieve its desired ends.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      Fulbright spent nearly 30 years in the Senate. To be reelected so many times required reassuring his electorate that he represented their interests and deepest beliefs. Arkansans clung to the old order. The majority opposed integration. In 1956, following the Supreme Court’s decision to end segregation in schools (Brown v. Board of Education), Fulbright helped to author and signed the “Southern Manifesto” that contested the constitutionality of the court’s decision. He clearly shared the majority’s basic racist view of the order of society. His political opposition to integration and not his anti-militarism made him electable.

      His position on race was more a result of lazy conformity than deep-seated racism. It evolved quickly during Richard Nixon’s presidency, to the point that The New York Times, covering the Arkansas primary contest between Fulbright and Dale Bumpers in 1974, wrote that “both are considered friendly to blacks.” In other words, like many politicians, Fulbright could follow the ineluctable trends. His intelligence permitted him to understand that Jim Crow was dead.

      Fulbright’s case illustrates a problem that has reemerged in contemporary US political culture. It takes the form of McCarthyist obsession with purity or political correctness. Politicians are judged on the basis of their absolute adhesion to a set of predefined positions by those who see themselves as guardians of the order. No deviation is tolerated. An individual who fails on any count will be rejected, shamed, exiled or excommunicated. Had this been true in the 1960s, the protesters who felt empowered by Fulbright’s resistance would have scorned him as a hypocrite.

      One example is the drama currently taking place in the Catholic hierarchy in the US. The Conference of Catholic Bishops has voted by a large majority to allow denying communion to anyone who publicly endorses a pro-choice position on abortion. Their specific target is President Joe Biden. The bishops appear more interested in taking a stance in the “more general culture war against ‘liberals,’ against Democrats, or even against Pope Francis” than they are with theological coherence. This ridiculous skirmish indicates one obvious truth: that partisan politics has overtaken religion as the dominant system of belief in the US.

      Another example is the left-wing comedian, Jimmy Dore, who in his popular podcast routinely vilifies politicians on the left who show compromise on any negotiation with the establishment. He has notably disparaged and insulted two public heroes of the progressives — Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — for refusing to revolt against the party’s mainstream leadership. Dore’s disappointment with their apparent pusillanimity is real. His own tactical position has its merits. But his refusal to acknowledge what may be called “electoral viability” could prevent the emergence of a politician capable of having the impact of a William Fulbright.

      Historical Note

      Charles King accurately describes William Fulbright as “the most broadly influential American internationalist of the twentieth century.” He credits him with the capacity to “stage-manage some of the most deeply civic moments of the era,” moments that helped define a moral stance regarding war and imperial reach that have left deep traces in US culture. Fulbright’s contribution was immense.

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      King reminds readers of a quote by the young John Kerry, at home just after serving in Vietnam: “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?” Some 40 years later, Kerry became President Barack Obama’s secretary of state. His role was to defend military operations that were initiated under George W. Bush and continued and even amplified under Obama. Soldiers are still dying for that particular foreign policy mistake. Once fully ensconced in the establishment, Kerry managed to forget Fulbright’s lessons.

      Fulbright once said: “We have the power to do any damn fool thing we want to do, and we seem to do it about every 10 minutes.” That includes everything that is being done today, especially by Republicans, to restrict voting rights, clearly seeking a return to Jim Crow. Were Fulbright alive today, his principles would probably guide him to oppose such initiatives with the same vehemence he demonstrated against Joe McCarthy.

      *[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

      To Embrace Biden’s Democracy Agenda, Start With Turkey

      by

      European Union leaders are getting ready to discuss Turkey once again. The timing of the European Council meeting on June 24-25 is crucial, taking place just after the G7, NATO and EU-US summits. Following four years of discontent between Brussels and Washington, this has been an exercise in reassurance, looking to reinvent multilateralism for the 21st century.

      At the summits, the allies discussed rules for various policy areas, including economy, trade, climate, security and defense, while seeking a common stance against autocracies, particularly Russia and China. If US President Joe Biden and his European allies are serious about standing up to undemocratic regimes, the place to start is Turkey, which the European Council should shift its focus to right away.

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      Turkey’s relations with its Western allies have been deteriorating for years. European decision-makers blame this on Ankara’s democratic backsliding and its unilateral foreign policy, which increasingly runs counter to European interests. Developments in Syria, Libya, the Eastern Mediterranean and Nagorno-Karabakh, however, have shifted almost the entire focus to foreign policy.

      The EU’s desire to reduce tensions in its neighborhood has eclipsed questions of democracy and rule of law. That is what is behind its proposal for a “positive agenda” with Turkey that is “progressive, proportional and reversible.” It is thus conditional on Turkey’s external actions — good regional relations in line with international law — but not clearly linked to the state of democracy. While the European Parliament flagged this in its recent report, a firm stance by the European Council is missing.

      Commitment to Democracy, Everywhere

      In March, concerns mounted in the EU when President Recep Tayyip Erdogan withdrew Turkey from the Council of Europe’s Istanbul Convention on preventing violence against women. This was clearly the continuation of a long-term trend limiting basic rights and freedoms. The new presidential system in Turkey has eliminated most of the checks and balances. Civil society is under immense pressure. Democratically elected representatives have been removed and prosecuted. Last but not least, the state prosecutor has applied to the constitutional court to ban the opposition Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP). According to Freedom House, Turkey is “not free,” just like Russia and China.

      This situation threatens the credibility of the transatlantic allies’ commitment to democracy, rule of law, and basic rights and freedoms. According to the summit’s communiqué, the G7 is committed to upholding a rules-based international system and defending values. That is also the promise of NATO and the transatlantic allies.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Selective application would undermine that commitment: The rules apply to a rising China challenging Western economies, but not if you can get a bargain with Turkey in the Eastern Mediterranean. Those who prioritize geopolitics over principles might argue that Turkey receives less criticism as a NATO ally and strategically important accession candidate on the EU’s doorstep. Yet even if the European Union dropped the entire democratic conditionality framework, it would still risk being affected negatively by democratic backsliding and erosion of rule of law. Recent examples include Turkey’s unlawful detention of EU and US citizens and arbitrary decisions to move refugees to its borders with Greece in 2020. Not to speak of the future risks to European investments.

      European leaders may think that criticizing domestic repression in Turkey would put positive foreign policy developments at risk. There are no guarantees, however, that advances in the Eastern Mediterranean or relations with Greece, Cyprus or other member states will not be suddenly reversed, for example, to rally nationalists behind the current government.

      EU leaders must know that there can be no guarantees for the union as long as instability prevails in Turkey. The situation in the country has been exacerbated by deficits in democracy and rule of law. If European leaders choose to settle for a fragile status quo rather than promoting core values, they may still end up at odds with Turkey, while undermining the values they keep vowing to defend.

      Serious About Democracy? Time to Speak Up

      European leaders will try to buy time again, as they did at the European Council meetings in October and December 2020 and March 2021. But there is a window of opportunity. Ankara is on a charm offensive with its Western allies, needing an economic boost and trying to avoid European and American sanctions. While the government is determined to stay in charge, power struggles are emerging within the state apparatus. This is definitely the right time to set the tone, one that focuses on democracy.

      Action on Turkey is also needed to show the broader world that the G7, European Union and NATO mean what they said at the recent summits. Democracy will be an important component of external action. If the European Union cannot apply this principle to such a close neighbor, ally and EU accession candidate, what does that say about the democracy agenda?

      *[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