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      Alternative for Germany Is Failing to Keep Up

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      If not for the familiar awkwardness of social distancing rules, the scene at the digital party conference of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU) would have been fit for a daytime game show. With the theme from “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” playing in the background and the CDU‘s secretary-general, Paul Ziemiak, reading the results from online balloting to determine who would become the party chairman… and drive off in a brand new Volkswagen. Armin Laschet, the premier of North Rhine-Westphalia, and Friedrich Merz, a former CDU parliamentary leader, stood at one end of the TV studio. If not for coronavirus guidelines, they would have probably been holding hands, saying: I hope it’s me who wins, but I’m honored just to stand here with you.

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      With 521 of the 991 votes, Laschet was named the new CDU leader on January 16. Although the exaggerated melodrama may invite some mockery and agonized groans from readers, the designation of the new CDU leader is the first key party event before the federal elections in September, which will be pivotal for Germany’s far right.

      Angela Merkel‘s long tenure as German chancellor will draw to a close this year. After leading the country through the 2008 financial crash and the 2015 refugee crisis, Merkel will likely leave office just as Germany vaccinates most of its adult population. Germany’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic has elevated the popularity of Merkel. Similarly, polling suggests the CDU has benefited from the government’s efforts. Whereas the party polled as low as 19% (25% with its Bavarian sister party, the Christian Social Union) in 2019, it now has upward of 30% (and as much as 37% with the CSU) of support.

      Germany’s Far Right

      At the same time, the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) is failing to keep up. Unlike countries such as the United States where COVID-19 skeptics and conspiracy theorists have coalesced on one side of the political spectrum, in Germany, these critics have merged into broad and unexpected coalitions over the course of the crisis. Yet crucially, these coalitions have not resulted in a dealignment or realignment of party loyalties. Rather, they are short term and held together only by grievances about coronavirus restrictions. Consequently, the AfD has not gained sufficient support from these mobilizations and has slipped a couple of percentage points — from its 2017 result of 12.6% to support hovering at around 11%.

      Given developments within the AfD over the last two years, its political stagnation is not surprising. In late 2019, a court in the eastern state of Thuringia ruled that it is not defamatory to call the AfD politician Bjorn Hocke a “fascist” as that — as was argued before the court — seems an accurate description of his politics. Further self-inflicted damage followed when the party’s leader in Brandenburg, Andreas Kalbitz, was expelled in May 2020 for previous membership in an extremist youth organization called the Heimattreue Deutsche Jugend. The party’s somewhat formalized far-right wing (Der Flugel) was classified as extremist by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV). The BfV recently moved to expand its investigation, categorizing the entire AfD as a “suspected case” of anti-constitutional activity. This designation permits close observation and monitoring of party members’ activities.

      AfD Would Lose Seats

      All these developments, combined with an attempt by far-right extremists to invade the Bundestag, the lower house of parliament, have stunted the AfD‘s growth. The party entered the Bundestag in 2017 as the third-largest faction. Subsequent polling even reported its support surged to 18% in 2018. Yet if the election were held today, the party would likely lose at least a dozen seats.

      The question of Angela Merkel‘s successor as chancellor is not yet decided. Laschet is in poll position, but the CDU must perform well in regional elections in Baden-Wurttemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate in order to repel an internal challenge from Markus Soder, the minister-president of Bavaria and leader of the CSU.

      Yet regardless of that outcome, the 2021 elections look set to knock the AfD and Germany’s far right back on its heels. There is no chance of banishing it from the Bundestag, but the federal election in September could deprive the AfD of its position as the largest party of the opposition, from where its representatives’ language has been intentionally provocative and their behavior notoriously disruptive.

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

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

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      in World Politics

      The US Senate Is a Global Problem

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      Watching the Senate conduct the second impeachment trial of former US President Donald Trump brought back a flood of memories from high school. I distinctly remember an earlier incarnation of those Trump-friendly Republican senators taking up their positions at the back of class to snicker, yawn ostentatiously and otherwise disrupt the serious, well-researched presentations of their fellow students. Then, when it was their turn to present, the back-row rowdies were so embarrassingly unprepared that it was hard not to laugh in return.

      The slavish devotion of the Senate miscreants to their imperiled leader and their casual dismissal of the January 6 violence, meanwhile, was like a modern-day replay of that grade-school classic “The Lord of the Flies.” In the Senate version, Trump played the part of the pig’s head, Josh Hawley was the pathological Jack, and Mitt Romney was the hopelessly conflicted Ralph who escaped the violence of the mob only thanks to the timely intervention of Officer Eugene Goodman, who stepped in at the last moment just like the British naval officer at the novel’s conclusion.

      The Texas Crisis: Tilting at Windmills

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      Finally, the acquittal of the former president was like the slap on the hand administered to one of my school’s handsome star athletes for one of his many transgressions. Boys will be boys, Trump will be Trump and, alas, Mitch McConnell will be perpetually “a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack.”

      The display of juvenile behavior during the Senate trial was nauseating, and the verdict was an embarrassment. But the Senate poses a much more serious problem than even this impeachment circus suggests.

      When it comes to global issues, the Senate has been an enormous impediment to achieving peace, justice and environmental sustainability. More so even than the US president, the Senate has been the chief engine of American exceptionalism. It’s grimly fitting, then, that it has struck out twice in its duty to convict the supreme avatar of exceptionalism in modern American politics, a president who believed himself above democracy, above morality and above the law.

      Senate Power

      Senators love to call their chamber the “world’s greatest deliberative body.” It’s where the most seasoned politicians, partially protected from the insane election cycle that their House counterparts must face, can mull over the most important issues of the days.

      It’s also a glaring example of the inequities of US democracy, with the two senators from Wyoming (population: 578,000) wielding the same power as the two senators from California (population: 39 million). Senate elections have tilted US politics in favor of rural, predominantly white and increasingly conservative voters by a factor of two or three over urban voters. Like the Electoral College, the Senate makes a mockery of the “one-person, one-vote” principle by effectively giving some voters much greater power than others.

      Embed from Getty Images

      But the Senate is a far bigger problem because of its oversized role in shaping U.S. foreign policy. Presidents have considerable leeway in conducting foreign policy, as the rollout of executive orders over the last years has made plain. Presidents can pull the country in and out of international bodies and multilateral agreements. They can slap tariffs on countries and sanctions on foreign individuals. Despite the limitations of the War Powers Act, they can still wage war for a full two months without any congressional interference.

      But the Constitution gives the Senate the sole power to approve, by a two-thirds majority, any treaties that the United States might be considering. As with the filibuster, however, this treaty power has as much influence in its threatened use as in its actual deployment.

      Consider the example of the 2015 Paris climate accord. The reason why all the national commitments to reduce carbon emissions are voluntary rather than mandatory is the US Senate. Secretary of State John Kerry, the US negotiator in Paris at the time, insisted on voluntary commitments because he knew that any mandatory requirements would need Senate approval. And the climate deniers in the Senate were sure to nix any such agreement.

      The Iran nuclear deal is, similarly, an agreement, not a treaty. This distinction allowed the Obama administration to secure congressional support short of the two-thirds majority required for a treaty. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — also known as the Iran deal — relies on various verification protocols to ensure compliance, not the signatures of the participating parties.

      These workarounds are more the rule than the exception. According to one academic study, US presidents negotiated nearly 4,000 executive agreements between 1977 and 1996 but only 300 treaties. Whether you consider these maneuvers to be an unacceptable short-circuiting of checks and balances or a reasonable method of overcoming the American exceptionalism of the Senate has largely depended on which side of the aisle you sit.

      The Graveyard of International Cooperation

      The Senate is where international treaties go to die. Currently awaiting the “advice and consent” of the body are 37 treaties, beginning with an International Labor Organization convention protecting the right to organize trade unions, which has been hanging out in the Senate for more than 70 years.

      Or consider the UN Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS), which has been ratified by 162 countries. The United States participated in the international conferences in the 1970s that produced this critical document that covers all aspects of maritime borders, navigation and commerce. US negotiators under three successive administrations — Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter — were instrumental in crafting the language of the working text. After Ronald Reagan’s administration balked at some of the provisions, negotiators even amended the final version to reflect some of the US concerns. But the Reagan administration still wouldn’t sign the agreement.

      It would take the collapse of the Soviet Union, certain changes on the ground (actually, on the seabed) and a new administration (Bill Clinton) to bring UNCLOS to the Senate. The late and decidedly not great Jessie Helms said no for he held fast to his position that no foreign entity should impinge on US sovereignty. Lest you think this was a partisan issue, the George W. Bush administration subsequently pushed hard for the Senate to ratify the convention with the support of all living former legal advisers of the State Department. This time, despite the efforts of then-Senator Joe Biden, a different minority of hard-line Republicans, including Jeff Sessions, thwarted the bipartisan campaign.

      The United States generally abides by this important convention, so what’s the big deal? As a non-signatory, however, the US cannot participate in key commissions, such as the one on the limits of the continental shelf, where it could otherwise advance its interests or push a conservation agenda. If that irritates you, don’t send your letters of complaint to the United Nations. Send them to the Senate.

      The Senate has been a crowded graveyard for arms control initiatives. There you can find gravestones for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), various nuclear-weapon-free zones and the Arms Trade Treaty (which Trump dramatically unsigned in 2019). The CTBT has been signed by 185 countries, but it won’t go into effect until eight specific nations ratify it (including the United States). The Arms Trade Treaty has entered into force, so it is only dead to the US, which is problematic since America is the leading arms exporter in the world by a large margin. The resurrection of these treaties is, of course, possible, but only if the composition of the Senate were to change dramatically.

      The Senate also stands in the way of the United States participating in the strengthening of international law and the prosecuting of war criminals — by blocking ratification of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. The Senate stands in the way of preserving what remains of the world’s precious biodiversity — by blocking ratification of the Convention on Biological Diversity. The Senate stands in the way of upholding the human rights of large swathes of the global population — by blocking treaties on disability rights, on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women and on a variety of labor rights.

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      The Senate is also not above exercising its power on seemingly trivial matters. It has refused, for instance, to support a treaty that protects albatrosses and petrels. Jeez, hasn’t anyone in the Senate read “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”?

      Of course, the Senate has displayed its remarkable intransigence in ways that go well beyond its advice-and-consent function on treaties. During the previous administration, among the 250 bills that the House passed and that McConnell blocked in the Senate were several immigration bills (the Dream Act, a measure to protect Venezuelans from deportation), several environmental bills (blocking drilling in the Arctic National Refuge, banning offshore drilling in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico), and a measure to provide visas to Kurds who supported US forces in Syria.

      Reform the Senate?

      Those who hope to reform the Senate have focused on changes to the rules. With the exception of certain bills, the threat of filibuster has made the Senate even less reflective of popular will by turning a simple majority into a 60-vote wall into which the Democrats are likely to crash into repeatedly over the next two to four years.

      “Dear centrist Democrats, you couldn’t even get 10 GOP votes to convict the guy who sent a mob to kill you all. You think you can get them to vote on issues like immigration/climate? Come on,” immigrant rights activist Erika Andiola has tweeted. “You have to end the filibuster and use every tool at your disposal to get things done.”

      It’s a good point, but why not think big? What about eliminating the Senate altogether? Roughly half of the world’s sovereign nations have only one legislative body. Plenty of these unicameral systems are democratic, including Costa Rica, Denmark, Greece, South Korea, New Zealand and Norway.

      Yes, I know, the smaller US states would put up even more resistance to the elimination of the Senate than they have to the proposed elimination of the Electoral College. Such an upending of the finely balanced compromises of the Founding Fathers would generate yowls of protest from constitutional literalists. Who could ever contemplate such a radical amendment?

      Victor Berger, that’s who. In 1911, the Wisconsin congressman introduced a resolution in the House to abolish the Senate. Berger was also the first socialist elected to Congress, so he was accustomed to taking contrarian positions. His proposed amendment to the Constitution began thus:

      “Whereas the Senate in particular has become an obstructive and useless body, a menace to the liberties of the people, and an obstacle to social growth; a body, many of the Members of which are representatives neither of a State nor of its people, but solely of certain predatory combinations, and a body which, by reason of the corruption often attending the election of its Members, has furnished the gravest public scandals in the history of the nation…”

      Those public scandals have continued all the way up to last weekend’s acquittal of a rogue president. Oh, Victor Berger, who will take up your mantle today?

      *[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

      Can Chinawood Win Soft Power for Beijing?

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      With movie theaters closed all over the world due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Hollywood studios had little reason for celebration over the past year. In business for over a century, Universal Pictures (founded in 1912), Paramount (1912), Warner Bros. (1923), Walt Disney (1923) and Columbia Pictures (1924) now have an extra reason to be concerned. In 2020, China took over Hollywood’s crown as the world’s biggest movie market, with a revenue of $3.2 billion, 84% of which came from domestic sales.

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      Is this new status enough for China? Probably not. New blockbusters will soon rebalance these numbers, but soft power — the ability to seduce people from all over the world through culture — takes time to build up. Soft power also brings lasting income to its country of origin in terms of products and services, like tourism for example. When in 1934, Walt Disney began work on “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs,” other film studio chiefs derided the project as “Disney’s Folly,” since adults, not children, were considered to be primary consumers. These executives forgot that children watch films over and over again and want all the related merchandise. “Snow White” went on to become the first film in history to gross $100 million, selling 400 million tickets from 1937 to 1948.

      Welcome to Chinawood

      These are just numbers. Disney’s greatest achievement was making his creations into lucrative vehicles of US culture for decades to come. That is what China wants to achieve. It has been taking similar steps ever since farmer-turned-entrepreneur Xu Wenrong began building Hengdian World Studios in the 1990s. Known as Chinawood, it became the largest outdoor film studio in the world and one of China’s biggest domestic tourist attractions, offering historic film sets, a resort hotel and live performances. Marketing itself “China’s tourism and performing arts capital,” Chinawood attracts thousands of TV shows and film productions every year.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Also, since fewer than 40 foreign films are allowed to take a bite of this massive market due to a strict quota system, Chinawood also houses foreign productions like “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor,” a Hollywood-Chinawood co-production (these escape quota restrictions), starring the likes of Brendan Fraser and Jet Li, grossed over $400 million worldwide in the first 21 weeks of its release.

      Is this enough to make Chinawood a new soft power? The answer is, probably not. Because Chinawood productions face a similar challenge as all the other blockbusters shot in the country, these films often lack creativity, self-criticism, audacity and freedom. Take the recent historical war drama, Guan Hu’s “The Eight Hundred,” for example. The film — at $470 million, 2020’s top-grossing production — pushed China to the number one spot in global box office revenues. However, most of this profit comes from China itself and not international markets. While European and US theaters still struggle to open because of COVID-19, even without the pandemic, it’s hard to say that such productions could help the Chinese film industry overseas.

      “The Eight Hundred” was abruptly pulled from a scheduled premiere at the Shanghai Film Festival in 2019 without an explanation. A version shorter by 11 minutes later opened in theaters, with much fewer scenes involving Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang forces. Besides likely censorship, what may explain the little impact the film had internationally, as the film critic Tony Rayns suggests, is that while avoiding the “rabid China-is-top-dog quality of the Wolf Warrior movies,” its “spirit is resolutely neo-nationalist,” with “all the bombast and jingoism of the current moment.”

      Hollywood became an effective soft powerhouse not only because of million-dollar budgets and top-quality products, but also thanks to creative freedom. For instance, Oliver Stone’s “Born on the Fourth of July” (1989) and Francis Ford Coppola’s “Apocalypse Now” (1979), both masterpieces, were expressly critical of US military intervention in Vietnam. The films are also on the patriotic side, with American values overemphasized. However, by criticizing America’s own culture and politics, the films are far from being hard-power propaganda.

      Hard Power Interference

      The Communist Party of China (CPP), on the other hand, interferes directly in cultural productions. According to a report by James Tager, PEN America’s deputy director of Free Expression Research and Policy, since 2011, the CCP’s Central Committee issued a statement declaring the “urgency for China to strengthen its cultural soft power and global cultural influence.” As Louisa Lim and Julia Bergin write in The Guardian, the party is trying to “reshape the global information environment with massive infusions of money” with the aim being to “influence public opinion overseas in order to nudge foreign governments into making policies favorable toward China’s Communist Party.”

      The official People’s Daily once declared, “we cannot be soft on soft power,” calling for culture must be exported in order to strengthen China’s international stance. Chinawood is part of this effort, which includes $10 billion spent annually on public diplomacy, in contrast with $2 billion allocated by the US Department of State in 2018. Soft power works well when China opens hundreds of Confucius Institutes to spread its language and culture around the world. What doesn’t work is when the same party severely punishes Chinese ethnical minorities, like the Muslim Uighurs facing persecution in Xinjiang.

      China already has an important cultural soft power: its art, poetry, painting, sculpture and pottery, from the early imperial dynasties to the 20th century, coveted by museums and collectors around the world. It succeeds because the state hard power doesn’t interfere significantly with it. But when it comes to contemporary culture — films, games, TV shows and apps like Tik Tok — Chinese hard power seems to impose harmful control. That’s not how soft power works. It needs freedom and self-criticism to produce genuine and seductive art.

      George Orwell once said that “Journalism is printing what someone does not want printed; everything else is public relations.” The phrase also pertains to the arts and the entertainment industry. When President Xi Jinping says that “the stories of China should be well told, voices of China well spread and characteristics of China well explained,” by “well” he probably means “positive.” That is definitely not how one wins soft power for the long term.

      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 Texas Crisis: Tilting at Windmills

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      Sometime last week, cold air escaped from the polar vortex, which usually stays high above the north pole. That icy air then traveled down to wreak havoc across Texas, a state geographically larger than France, bordering Mexico. Its nearly 30 million inhabitants are just starting to realize the scope of the epic infrastructural failure that has led to the entire state being declared a disaster area.

      The freezing temperatures have affected power plants, offices, hospitals and homes, killing at least 30 people so far. Major metropolitan cities such as Houston, San Antonio, Dallas/Fort Worth and Austin are literally frozen. Personally, it was indeed unusual to message colleagues in Europe and Britain to cancel meetings, reporting that three inches of snow had caused power outages in a state known for its energy production. Having spent most of my adult life in New York City and Cambridge, Massachusetts, never would I have imagined my home state of Texas crumbling before my eyes from such a minuscule amount of snow.

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      On the ground, people, including myself, have collected and melted snow to flush toilets. Some are resorting to more desperate measures. Those who do have water are being told by local officials to boil before usage. Almost everyone fears their pipes bursting and flooding their homes with freezing water, as has happened to many friends and colleagues. Like others, I have scavenged for wood to burn in our seldom-used fireplace. Fueling stations and grocery shelves have been left empty much like during the initial outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, and people are sheltering in place for the second time in a year.

      While some pundits have tried to frame this as a “once in a century event,” such claims begin to ring hollow after they become so frequently used. Scientists like Judah Cohen argue this is just the latest disaster from the on-going climate crisis.

      The Latest Disaster

      While snow is indeed rare in central and south Texas, in the northern, rural panhandle, snow is quite normal. Those small northern cities that are closer to Colorado than Mexico have been operating on one of the two national power grids and thus have largely been unaffected by the crisis. In the rest of energy-rich Texas, public utilities have been privatized over the decades, as state Republicans opted for the rest of Texas to operate its own power grid to avoid federal regulation.

      Former Texas governor and US secretary of energy, Rick Perry, claimed on Wednesday that “Texans would be without electricity for longer than three days to keep the federal government out of their business.” One friend of mine, who coincidently works in the oil and gas industry, had to escape his cold, waterless house at midnight with his wife, toddler, and 13-day-old baby. He would certainly disagree with that callous statement.

      Embed from Getty Images

      On Sunday night, as temperatures dropped to a 30-year record low of -18˚C (0˚F), demand for energy rose, the power grid collapsed because of a lack of weather preparedness, causing widespread outages. These outages caused local water systems to freeze not just because of the cold weather, but due to a lack of electricity to pump the water, leaving nearly half the state without supply. The state then mandated rolling outages to regulate energy — with no clear idea of which communities are being prioritized, how energy is being triaged and when this will end.

      Texas Governor Greg Abbott has gone on Fox News to blame renewable energy sources — and to attack the proposed Green New Deal favored by progressives — for a crisis caused primarily by the failure of the state to follow national standards to prepare equipment for dangerous weather events. Falsely, Abbott has claimed: “Our wind and our solar got shut down, and they were collectively more than 10 percent of our power grid, and that thrust Texas into a situation where it was lacking power on a state-wide basis … It just shows that fossil fuel is necessary.”

      This was echoed by right-wing representatives like Dan Crenshaw. In truth, the crisis was mostly caused by a lack of regulations mandating equipment be prepared for extreme weather as federal guidelines suggest. It was further exacerbated by the fact that Republican lawmakers, in power for the past two decades, refused to participate in the national grid, which could have eased the strain on the state’s system — all to pad the profit margins of private energy companies.

      Of course, much colder places in the northern United States and Canada rely on renewable solar and wind energy that has been equipped for cold weather. After blowback showing that most of the failures originated with fossil fuel, gas and nuclear power plants that were not equipped for the weather, Abbott blamed the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which is led by Republicans he appointed. Meanwhile, right-wing Texas state Senator Ted Cruz left his constituents to fend for themselves as he headed toward Cancun, in Mexico, using Houston police resources to help him get to the airport.

      Tim Boyd, mayor of Colorado City, has resigned after posting on Facebook that “No one owes you [or] your family anything; nor is it the local government’s responsibility to support you during trying times like this! Sink or swim it’s your choice! The City and County, along with power providers or any other service owes you NOTHING! I’m sick and tired of people looking for a damn handout.” Boyd’s argument relies on the prominent Texas myth of pulling yourself up by the bootstraps. This individualist myth assumed that white settler colonialists did precisely that and survived the wilderness alone at the edge of the American frontier, so you should too. In fact, these settlers often relied upon not just each other but also generations of communal knowledge shared with them by Native Americans.

      Ensuring Survival

      Ensuring survival during disasters requires a collective approach. This is one of the reasons we humans live in societies — we can do more together than alone. This is something that the current COVID-19 crisis should have taught us. The solution is simple, yet enormous: we must modernize all our systems —health, education and infrastructure. We need to make all utility companies — gas, electric, water, internet, cable, and phones — public. We must not prioritize customers but, rather, people.

      Texas is having a rude awakening because of decades of conservative policies that have prioritized private companies and rejected federal regulations that would have made the current crisis more manageable, if not altogether avoidable. Texas, the epitome of right-wing experimentation, has become a failed experiment overnight. Resolving this issue will be complicated because of continued climate change denial and the rejection of facts by right-wing politicians and their cult.

      In Miguel de Cervantes’ classic novel, “Don Quixote,” the fictional errant knight attacks what he perceives to be giants, despite being warned by his squire, Sancho Panza, that they are simply windmills. After Quixote’s failed attack on the windmills, Cervantes writes that “the knight was unable to move, so great was the shock with which he and [his horse] had hit the ground.” With their own attack on wind turbines, Texas Republicans have begun charging at windmills, blaming a small renewable energy sector instead of the destructive policies that created this deadly disaster.

      Hopefully, like Don Quixote, who eventually recognizes his madness, the Republican Party will acknowledge its own delusions. Imagining these windmills as socialist giants coming for individual rights will leave us “very much battered indeed,” as Cervantes describes his delusional character who, too, tilted at windmills.

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

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

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      The Italian Job: Can Mario Draghi Master It?

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      A political crisis was the last thing Italy needed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Yet a personal conflict between the leader of Italia Viva, Matteo Renzi, and the previous prime minister, Giuseppe Conte, led to the collapse of the coalition in mid-January. President Sergio Mattarella then commissioned 73-year-old Mario Draghi, the former head of the European Central Bank (ECB), to form a technocratic government, which he will preside over as prime minister.

      According to Mattarella, it would have been risky to organize early elections during the pandemic. Indeed, new elections would have delayed the fight against the pandemic. In addition, the prospect of a right-wing populist government would also probably have had a negative impact on the financial markets — a risk that had to be avoided in an already challenging situation.

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      Draghi is inheriting a difficult situation. In Italy, the health, economic and social crises triggered by the pandemic have exacerbated the country’s enormous structural problems. Italy’s “seven deadly sins” — as Italian economist Carlo Cottarelli called them — are tax evasion, corruption, excessive bureaucracy, an inefficient judicial system, demographic problems, the north-south divide and difficulty in functioning within the eurozone. As a result of the pandemic, gross domestic product (GDP) fell by almost 9% in 2020, public debt rose to around 160% of GDP and more than 400,000 jobs were lost. The inability of the traditional parties to find solutions for the economic problems keeps support for the right-wing populist coalition (Lega, Fratelli d’Italia, Forza Italia) at almost 50%.

      Even though almost all major political forces have declared their intent to cooperate with the Draghi government, the framework of a technocratic government offers the right-wing populists a target. It is quite conceivable that they will accuse Draghi of lacking democratic legitimacy. It will also be a challenge for the new head of government to govern without his own parliamentary majority.

      Managing the Health Crisis Without Austerity

      The top priority of the new leadership will be to manage the health crisis. This includes speeding up vaccinations and supporting schools and the labor market. This means applying for — and successfully using — funds from the financial assistance plan of the European Union to mitigate the economic and social consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic. The expected €200 billion ($243 billion) or so from this fund could benefit the economic recovery as well as the planned structural reforms in public administration, taxation and the judiciary, which will give the new government more room for maneuver in economic policy.

      Unlike the last technocratic government under Mario Monti between 2011 and 2013, the fact that Draghi will not have to enact politically-costly fiscal consolidation with possible negative effects on GDP growth can also be seen as an opportunity. This is mainly due to broad market confidence in Draghi and the fact that his government is operating from the outset under the protective umbrella of the ECB, which will not allow the cost for servicing public debt to rise excessively. The eurozone’s fiscal rules have also been temporarily suspended; this makes it possible to support the economy through fiscal policy measures.

      Finally, it should not be forgotten that, despite the structural problems, the Italian economy has many strengths: Italy is one of the most industrialized countries in Europe and the second-largest exporter after Germany. If some obstacles to growth are removed and, for example, credit is released by the Italian banking sector, the pace of recovery could pick up significantly. Draghi’s experience from the finance ministry and in central banking could help him set a decisive course.

      Who Will Succeed Mario Draghi?

      Nevertheless, given the major challenges facing Draghi’s technocratic government, one should be cautious about expectations. The next general election is less than two and a half years away, and it cannot be ruled out that it will be brought forward. That is very little time to address structural problems that have existed for decades.

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      To avert a victory for the right-wing populists, the new head of government will do everything he can to prevent early parliamentary elections until the current moderate majority in parliament has elected President Mattarella’s successor. The latter’s term ends in February 2022, and it cannot be ruled out that Draghi himself will succeed Mattarella. He could use his authority and power as president to stabilize politics, as is the traditional role of the Italian president.

      In 2012, Draghi saved the eurozone as head of Europe’s most important financial institution. In the current crisis, even if supported by figures from across a broad political spectrum, he will act as head of one of Europe’s most politically-fragile governments — an incomparably less favorable starting position.

      Draghi will make the best possible use of his time as head of government. That much is certain. However, given the massive level of support for the populists, the most important question is: After Draghi, will someone take the helm who will continue his reforms or reverse them? Not only Italy’s future but also that of the entire eurozone depends on it.

      *[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 relating to foreign and security policy.]

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

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      Germany’s Greens Are Within Earshot of Power

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      In 1983, long-haired MPs wearing knitted sweaters and carrying flowers entered Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag. These obscure and humble beginnings of the Greens as an anti-establishment party are long gone from the German political scene. From 1998 to 2005, the party formed a governing coalition with Gerhard Schröder’s Social Democrats (SPD) on a national level. Since then, the Greens have also carried responsibility in numerous state governments.

      The Green Party hasn’t been part of a national government for 16 years now, but it is eager to pick up the reins again. Increased public approval is fueling its craving for power. For about two years now, the Greens’ poll numbers have been hovering around the 20% mark. Compared to the party’s best federal election result yet, 10,7% in 2009, approval has almost doubled. At the pinnacle, in June 2019, some polling agencies projected 27% support for the Greens, pushing the party to the top spot, 3% ahead of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ruling Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU).

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      With the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, these approval ratings dipped temporarily as the ruling parties attracted most public attention while applying rigorous measures to combat the virus. Nonetheless, during the last couple of months, the Greens have recovered. The party is a force to be reckoned with during the upcoming September general election. What has prompted these skyrocketing poll numbers?

      Rising Stars

      In January 2018, two fresh faces entered the national political arena. Annalena Baerbock and Robert Habeck became joint party leaders for the Greens and have since become rising stars.

      Robert Habeck holds a doctorate in philosophy and is the former deputy head of state and environment minister for the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein. With his trademark hairdo, three-day stubble and casual clothing, Habeck knows how to stage a good photo opportunity. One of the images that has gone viral on social media is of him ironing his shirt on the wooden floor shortly before attending a party conference. Despite facing ridicule by many, Habeck is apt at setting himself apart from politicians regarded as old school and out of step with young voters.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Annalena Baerbock, who is a member of the Bundestag, is also no stranger to self-promotion. Her lively personality and vigor contribute to the Greens’ modern public image. However, she distinguishes herself from Habeck by more in-depth policy knowledge. While the more charismatic Habeck tends to indulge in outlining the philosophical and ideological framework of Green politics, Baerbock likes to delve into the policy nitty-gritty, like Germany’s coal phase-out. This makes her a more popular figure within the party, while Habeck enjoys higher approval ratings among voters.

      It would be superficial to reduce the Greens’ soaring approval ratings to their party leaders’ public image. Both Baerbock and Habeck have pressed ahead with establishing the party as a socioecological alternative for centrist voters, veering away from a common perception that it could not reach beyond its traditional following. This mainly included educated, middle-aged voters with high incomes living in metropolitan environments.

      In an interview, Robert Habeck stated the party’s intent to detach itself from this misconception: “Our goal is not only to be a milieu party. We are now starting a new phase.” The Greens have benefited from climate protection, gradually receiving more public attention due to external events and activism by various groups, like the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster and the Fridays for Future climate movement. With awareness of the issue of global warming increasing, the Greens are succeeding in reaching out to the “middle of society.”

      A Green Chancellor?

      As their traditional coalition partner, the SPD, is losing popularity, the Greens have been bustling to find new, more conservative political allies. After the 2017 general election, the Greens negotiated with the center-right CDU/CSU and the Liberal Democrats (FDP) to form a government. That was the continuation of the party’s strategic opening to all ends of the political spectrum, as the Greens had already formed coalitions with both parties in several state governments. In 2011, the party had already reached a significant milestone: Winfried Kretschmann won the state election of Baden-Wuerttemberg by appealing to conservative voters and became the first Green minister president, with the mighty CDU/CSU as their junior coalition partner.

      But the strategy of electability and reaching out to centrist voters does not come without its repercussions. Luisa Neubauer, the spokeswoman for Fridays for Future, a movement popularized by Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg, has criticized the Greens for abandoning their ecological core values and for delaying the steps required to combat climate change. Going head to head with the Greens, she asked: “If even the Greens can’t come up with a policy that has the capacity to take on the climate crisis — where else can you start?” The movement has also reprimanded the Greens for supporting the construction of a highway through a forest in the federal state of Hesse.

      Another accusation the party leadership faces is its failure to commit to the ambitious target of limiting global warming to 1.5˚C. Many leading party figures believe Fridays for Future’s radical demands are a hindrance to communicating the cause of climate protection to large parts of the population. Conversely, the movement, which regards itself to be “greener than the Greens,” disdains the party’s soft approach. Nevertheless, the Greens remain imperturbable in their quest to appeal to a broad majority of Germans. Due to consistently high polling numbers, the party intends to select its first-ever candidate for the chancellorship. Thus far, Baerbock and Habeck have resisted media pressure to decide who will challenge the CDU/CSU’s candidate.

      To the public eye, this delayed decision makes the Green leadership appear tentative and insecure. Indeed, the party seems unsettled by the consequences of its electoral strategy. Barring the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), all parties in the German Bundestag are courting the Greens. After the election of Armin Laschet as the CDU/CSU’s party leader, an alliance between the Christian Democrats and the Greens as the junior coalition partner remains the most likely path to power. This constellation would facilitate the Greens taking up the federal Ministry of Finance and delivering a budget that sets the course for ecological modernization.

      Within Earshot

      Preferred coalitions with the SPD and Die Linke (The Left) appear unlikely. Yet as voting behavior becomes increasingly volatile, the Greens must take all possible outcomes into account. That includes coalitions with the SPD and The Left, and the responsibility of holding the chancellorship as the larger party.

      The Greens are within earshot of historic electoral success. As Svenja Flaßpöhler, the editor-in-chief chief Philosophie Magazin, says: “Actually I would like to see the Greens enter government participation with courage … There is nothing to lose. The worst that can happen is that we are voted out of office again after four years. I miss this attitude a bit at the moment.”

      As shown, the odds are pointing toward success. Climate change has entered mainstream politics and is at the tip of most people’s tongues. Poll numbers are soaring, and the party leaders’ personalities reflect the current zeitgeist. The Greens should not shy away from the challenge of government responsibility. Part of this challenge will undoubtedly be the juggling act of maintaining their credibility as an environmental party while serving the electorate as a whole.

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

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      What Happened to the Emerging Democratic Majority?

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      In November of last year, Donald Trump lost the presidential election with the highest number of votes for a Republican candidate ever and the second-highest for a presidential candidate. Only Joe Biden did better. Trump also managed to garner the second-highest share of the non-white vote, 26%. Only George W. Bush outdid him, winning 28% in 2004, as a number of commentaries, seeking to diminish Trump’s feat, have pointed out. What they fail to acknowledge, however, is the fact that the two candidates were very different. Bush had many flaws, but race-baiting was not among them.

      Against that, by the time of the 2020 election, there was a wealth of evidence that “racial revanchism” was central to President Trump’s political agenda. This, however, did not prevent a significant number of minority voters from casting their ballots for him. Whether or not this made a difference is an interesting question. In some cases, it might have, most notably in Texas.

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      To be sure, Biden won the vast majority of the Hispanic vote in the big cities like Dallas, San Antonio and Austin. Trump, however, did surprisingly well in the heavily Latino counties in southern Texas along the Rio Grande border with Mexico. In Starr county, for instance, which is almost completely Hispanic, Trump gained more than 55% of the vote compared to 2016. These results, as neutral observers have charged, “ended up helping to dash any hopes Democrats had of taking Texas.”

      High Hopes

      Ahead of the election, Democrats had high hopes that this time, the emerging Democratic majority was finally going to materialize. The notion goes back to the title of a book from 2002, written by John Judis and Ruy Teixeira. In it, the authors argued that the future belonged to the Democrats, for a number of reasons. There was the transformation of America’s demography, there were secular ideological changes going in a progressive direction, and there was, last but not least, the growing socioeconomic and sociocultural dominance of large metropolitan areas, rooted in the growth of a postindustrial economy — what Teixeira called “ideopolises,” organized around ideas and services.  

      The idea was that the Democrats were in a better position than the Republicans to appeal to the diverse constituencies emerging from these developments: on the one hand, the growing ranks of professionals in the high-tech, finance, education, law and medical sectors, a growing number of them women; on the other, ancillary services, such as sales clerks, waiters, janitors, security personnel and teachers’ aides, a large number of them Hispanics and African Americans. Together, Teixeira suggested, they “formed powerful coalitions that now dominate the politics of many ideopolises united in their support of a politics of “tolerance and openness.”

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      In the meantime, much ink has been spilled over the crucial socioeconomic and sociocultural importance of metropolitan areas, largely confirming Teixeira’s assessment. Today’s “global cities” such as New York, London, Paris and Tokyo generate a significant part of their respective nation’s wealth. At the same time, however, they also represent quasi self-contained entities increasingly disconnected from the rest of the country.

      This is a problem, for in the process, the hinterland, which at one time played a crucial role as a supplier of myriads of inputs from small and medium-sized companies, has largely become structurally irrelevant to the metropolitan economy. With it went the middle-class labor force that was the backbone of what once was known as America’s heartland but is today disparaged as flyover country, its inhabitants dismissed as deplorable and repellent racist, sexist, homophobic ignoramuses. Proof: Why else would they have voted for somebody like Trump?

      After roughly two decades since the book was published, the emerging Democratic majority has still not fully materialized. Instead, what we have got are two antagonistic political tribes whose seemingly irreconcilable differences have polarized American politics along a wide range of fault lines: views on immigration, reproductive choice, gender, Black Lives Matter, gun control, affordable health care, social security — the list goes on. This divide’s grand signifier in today’s politics is Donald Trump. As unbelievable as it might sound — given he lost the election, given he was impeached twice, given he left the office scorned and disgraced — his legacy continues to haunt post-Trump politics and is likely to do so for the foreseeable future.

      Not Fade Away

      According to a recent representative survey, around 80% of Republicans continue to have a favorable view of Donald Trump; more than 70% believe that the charge that the former president incited the assault on the US Capitol on January 6 is untrue; and almost two-thirds believe there was widespread fraud in the 2020 election. It fits that according to the most recent Quinnipiac poll, conducted after Trump’s acquittal in the Senate, three-quarters of Republican respondents said they wished Trump would continue to play a “big role” in the GOP. So much for those who think Trump will somehow fade away into oblivion.

      Trump won in 2016 because he quite skillfully managed to articulate, appeal and respond to a range of diffuse popular grievances, accorded them legitimacy and, in the process, gave the impression that he listened and not only understood, but empathized with them — reminiscent of Bill Clinton’s well-known “I feel your pain” from 1992.  Even if Trump should miraculously disappear from the American political scene, Trumpism, as The Washington Post’s conservative commentator Gary Abernathy has recently maintained, “Trumpism is the GOP’s future.” If this indeed should be the case, it means that the chances for the emergence of a Democratic majority are likely to be as bleak as they have been over the past two decades.

      The notion of an emerging Democratic majority is premised on the idea that certain groups in society, most notably the highly educated, visible minorities, women and sexual minorities, qua their subordinate socioeconomic and sociocultural position have a “natural” affinity for a certain type of politics. Any deviation is either seen as a result of “false consciousness,” a failure “to get with the program” or, worse, simple betrayal of the cause, as the singer Madonna charged in 2016. A case in point was Barak Obama’s attack on Hispanics who voted for the incumbent in 2020, accusing them of ignoring Trump’s track record of race-baiting.  

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      The same applies to all the white women who voted for Trump, despite his record of routinely disparaging and denigrating women. As Sarah Jaffe has put it in an article for the New Labor Forum, no single fact about the 2016 election was “more confounding than the fact that Trump’s margin of victory included a slim majority of white women voters.” Things were even worse in 2020. While Trump lost some support among white men, his support among white women remained virtually unchanged.

      Political parties, particularly in two-party systems such as the United States, have to assemble a coalition of disparate groups. A case in point was the Democratic Party, which for a long time managed to hold together two factions, one from the South and the other from the Northeast, that were fundamentally at loggerheads over major issues such as civil rights. Behind the idea of the emerging Democratic majority is the expectation that it is possible to put together a coalition on the basis of shared values and shared aspirations, derived from shared experiences of a lack of recognition, if not outright discrimination.

      Radical Nostalgia

      Twenty years ago, this was a reasonable expectation, given the direction of social, and particularly demographic, change. The populist surge that has swept over the United States during the past decade or so, however, has fundamentally altered the logic of electoral choice. Populist mobilization derives its logic not from shared values and aspirations, but from disparate grievances and the perceived unresponsiveness of the political establishment to these grievances.

      Successful populist protagonists are not successful because they come up with elaborate blueprints for profound socioeconomic change, but because they absorb and reflect myriads of disparate grievances and give them a voice. More often than not, populist politics are not about the future but a glorified past, reflecting the surge of nostalgia that has become a hallmark of the current age, further enhanced and intensified by COVID-19.

      There is nothing wrong with nostalgia. In fact, new studies show that nostalgia can be a beneficial mechanism helpful to coping with a difficult situation. It becomes dangerous, however, when it provokes an aggressive response. This, it seems, is what has happened in recent years among parts of the American public — or, at least, that is what the recent survey mentioned earlier suggests. In response to the statement that “the traditional American way of life is disappearing so fast that we may have to use force to save it,” more than a third of respondents agreed either completely (11%) or somewhat (25%).

      Embed from Getty Images

      In light of the events of January 6, this is quite alarming. But it jibes with the findings of a recent study of MAGA supporters, who to a significant extent consist of white Christian males beyond retirement age. Full of resentment toward assertive women no longer willing to take shit from men, African Americans seen as not trying hard enough and immigrants accused of changing American culture for the worse, they epitomize this kind of radical political nostalgia.

      Nostalgia in terms of a yearning for the status quo ante might to a certain extent explain why a majority of white women voted for Trump. More often than not, grievances stem from changes that individuals perceive as having been imposed on them. A classic case is the construction of nuclear power plants, which in the past gave rise to massive popular resistance and contributed to the rise of Green parties. In the current situation in the United States, grievances stem to a significant extent from both demographic change and the increased visibility of minorities who refuse to remain silent.

      When white women voted for Donald Trump, it was because what has been happening over the past years is a fundamental challenge to the existing racial hierarchy that had been taken for granted. A vote for Trump was a vote for maintaining a tenuous status quo, where white women might be second-class with respect to gender but first-class with respect to race. The same logic certainly does not apply to black voters supporting Trump, a majority of whom were black men. It also does not apply to Hispanics, whose diverse background (Mexican, Cuban, Central American, etc.) makes it even more difficult to come up with a common denominator. Religious considerations, particularly with respect to reproductive choice and gender issues, certainly played a significant role, as did the perception that neither party cares about their concerns.

      What has been emerging over the past decades is a new constellation of political contest, pitting substance-based politics grounded in reasoned deliberation and values, however flawed, against grievance-based politics fueled by anger and resentment. This is hardly confined to the United States. Western Europe has been struggling with this phenomenon and its fallout for decades. Yet given its peculiar system, the United States is in a unique position to serve as a laboratory to see how these dynamics play themselves out. One might wish that the vision behind the notion of the emerging Democratic majority will ultimately carry the day.

      Nietzschean skepticism informed by the notion of “human, all too human” calls for caution. Trump might be finished politically. His spirit, however, is alive and well, capable of causing mischief to no end. Trump’s recent full-front attack on Mitch McConnell is a foretaste of things to come. It portends an attempt to completely transform the GOP into a radical right-wing populist party, devoid of any kind of real substance — in other words, a replica writ large of the Great Leader.

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

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

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      Fault Lines in Biden’s Approach to China

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      So far, the White House has undertaken a flurry of activity designated to back up President Joe Biden’s pledge to be tough-minded on China. He has warned that Beijing will face “extreme competition” from the United States. Taiwan’s top representative was invited to the presidential inauguration on January 20 and the Biden team has promised to continue US arms sales to Taipei.

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      Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said he agrees, conceptually at least, that former President Donald Trump “was right in taking a tougher approach to China” and that he supports the prior administration’s finding that Beijing’s treatment of Uighur minorities in Xinjiang constitutes “genocide.” In early February, the new administration conducted naval maneuvers to contest Chinese dominance in the South China Sea and reaffirmed the US security commitment to defending the Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea, which are controlled by Tokyo but claimed by Beijing.

      Veterans of the Obama Administration

      Yet all of this cannot conceal the two major fault lines threatening to undermine President Biden’s promise. The first centers on the heavy presence of Obama-era veterans on his national security team, particularly those associated with that administration’s “strategic pivot” toward the region. Two of President Biden’s top staffers were key architects of the much-touted initiative: Kurt M. Campbell, who was in charge of East Asian affairs in the State Department under President Barack Obama and is now the White House’s Asia policy czar, and Jake Sullivan, who was deputy chief of staff to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and is now Biden’s national security adviser.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The rhetoric of Obama’s pivot to Asia simultaneously antagonized Beijing while its actual track record largely failed to impress other Asian governments. According to one assessment, the pivot’s hype caused a marked increase in Chinese military spending at the same time that sharp cuts in the Pentagon budget were hampering US military operations in Asia. During a visit to Japan in 2013, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff admitted that “We are going to have to think about how to remain a global power with fewer resources. I think we are going to have to find ways to accomplish almost the same things but with smaller force structures.” In early 2014, the Pentagon’s acquisitions chief publicly stated that budget constraints were forcing a reconsideration of the initiative.

      As Obama’s coordinator for North Korea policy has acknowledged, the effort “was ill conceived and bungled in its implementation.” In late 2013, the Asahi Shimbun, one of Japan’s largest newspapers, noted an “increasingly widely shared view in Japan and the region that the Obama administration may not have enough political capital or the financial assets to implement” the pivot. It added that some have even come to see it as no more than a “bumper sticker.” Similarly, a leading Australian analyst observed, “There is a growing perception in Asia that the Obama administration’s much-ballyhooed ‘pivot to Asia’ has run out of puff.” By late 2014, a foreign affairs columnist for The New York Times argued that most of Asia had concluded the pivot was nothing more than hot air.

      Memories of this track record persist. A commentator focused on Asian affairs observed last year that “Officials in Tokyo, Taipei, New Delhi, Singapore and other capitals have grown relatively comfortable with Trump and his tough approach on China. The prospect of a Biden presidency, by contrast, brings back uncomfortable memories of an Obama era that many Asian movers and shakers recall as unfocused and soft toward Beijing.”

      Just before the 2020 election, The Washington Post noted that current and former officials of the Taiwanese government and ruling party had “privately expressed concern that a return of Obama-era foreign policy advisers in a potential Biden administration could mean a U.S. approach that is more conciliatory toward China compared with the Trump administration’s — and less supportive of Taiwan.” The Financial Times also reported along similar lines.

      The personnel problem extends to Biden himself, as he is a late convert to the tough-on-China crowd. Prior to his becoming the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, he had regularly dismissed the notion that China mounted much of a geopolitical challenge. His campaign staffers were reportedly troubled by his naivete, and one adviser later admitted that for the rest of the campaign, Biden had to be “deprogrammed” on China. While this was going on, Robert M. Gates, Obama’s first defense secretary, reaffirmed to CBS News his earlier judgment that Biden has “been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.” 

      Standing Strong vs. Climate Change

      The second fault line running through Biden’s approach to China is the irreconcilability between maintaining a hard line and his administration’s insistence on the pressing urgency of securing Beijing’s cooperation on climate change. Biden officials claim they can somehow manage this tension and will not have to make significant concessions in other policy areas in order to fulfill its global climate ambitions.

      John Kerry, President Obama’s secretary of state when the 2015 Paris climate agreement was signed, is now Biden’s special climate envoy with a spot on the National Security Council. He insists, for example, that climate is a critical stand-alone issue that can be compartmentalized on the US–China bilateral agenda. Administration officials believe that collaboration is so self-evidently in Beijing’s interest that it will naturally sign on to Washington’s new push for significant climate action.

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      The Chinese government so far is not much impressed with this logic, with its foreign ministry stating that climate could not be separated from other issues “unlike flowers that can bloom in a greenhouse despite winter chill.” A Chinese government Twitter account also declared that “China is willing to work with the US on climate change. But such cooperation cannot stand unaffected by the overall China–US relations. It is impossible to ask for China’s support in global affairs while interfering in its domestic affairs and undermining its interests.” 

      Given the White House’s fervor on the issue, one suspects the Biden administration will be making the concessions in the end. During the presidential campaign, Biden asserted that climate change is an “existential threat” and the “number one issue facing humanity.” Now that he is in the Oval Office, Biden believes “we can’t wait any longer.” He signed a directive making the issue the “center of our national security and foreign policy” and ordered government agencies to factor “climate considerations” into their assessment of international priorities. Kerry uses similar language, declaring that “the stakes on climate change just simply couldn’t be any higher than they are right now. It is existential.” He added that Biden “is deeply committed — totally seized by this issue.”

      In shutting down construction of the Keystone XL oil pipeline, as well as freezing new oil and natural gas leases on federal lands and waters, the administration has also shown it is willing to subordinate important domestic goals, such as energy security and employment stability in the middle of a job-killing pandemic, to climate priorities. It has written off large job losses as inevitable and is accepting of a backlash from important labor unions that aided its electoral victory just a few months ago.

      Susan Rice Returns

      It is also telling that Susan Rice, the national security adviser during Obama’s second term, has returned to the White House as President Biden’s top domestic affairs coordinator. Bilahari Kausikan, the former senior Singaporean diplomat widely regarded in East Asia, recently exclaimed that Rice “was among those who thought that the US should deemphasise competition to get China’s cooperation on climate change, which is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of international relations.” Another observer has made the same point, noting that “Obama and Rice wanted to work with China on issues such as climate change, but they did so at the cost of treating Beijing with kid gloves.” 

      Influential members of the Democratic foreign policy establishment have advocated the same thing. Anne-Marie Slaughter, the head of an influential think tank in Washington and a former director of policy planning in the Obama-era State Department, recently argued that “Biden should prioritize global issues over geopolitical competition” and that the president’s focus on climate “should guide his foreign policy as well.”

      Rank-and-file party members also share this view. In a recent public opinion survey, Democrats by a wide margin believe climate change to be a more critical threat than the rise of China as a peer competitor to the US. Indeed, according to Democratic respondents, China did not even rank among the top seven challenges facing the country.

      Something will have to give in the new administration’s approach toward China. There is already an early indication of how things will play out. Notwithstanding the protestations about Beijing’s egregious human rights abuses, the Biden team continues to support holding the 2022 Winter Olympics in that city.

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