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      in World Politics

      Ron Johnson’s Binary Thinking

      by

      Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson is a voice the media counts on to faithfully echo the positions and culture of the former US president, Donald Trump. For the liberal media, Johnson represents everything reasonable citizens should reject in the name of democratic values. He is also a multimillionaire, who, like the billionaire Trump, “promised to place his assets in a blind trust to ensure that he would legislate in the public interest. That did not happen.” To make sure his current and future millions would be safe, like many other wealthy people, Johnson found a way of profiting from the movements of the market provoked by the coronavirus pandemic. Such people will always be respected for their prescience and their success.

      In the absence of Trump himself — no longer in the White House and banned from Twitter — the media remain attentive to any public statements Johnson is willing to make. Since the events of January 6, when a mob stormed Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, and threatened the lives of legislators, a debate has raged about who, if anyone, was responsible. Many claim that members of the mob were ready to physically attack any lawmaker favorable to certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election, consecrating Trump’s defeat. Johnson himself publicly refused to certify the results, contributing to the mob’s ire against a “stolen election.” That explains why he felt at the time that he had nothing to fear from the crowd.

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      Now, Johnson is criticizing Democrats who say they feared for their lives, implying that they are either cowards, liars or both. Johnson has qualified members of the mob as “people that love this country, that truly respect law enforcement, would never do anything to break a law.” Clearly they were white patriots. How could anyone doubt their peaceful intentions toward America’s white republic?

      Johnson added a remark that his opponents see as a direct admission of racism: “Had the tables been turned and President Donald Trump won the election and those were thousands of Black Lives Matter and antifa protestors I would have been concerned.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Tables turned:

      An expression dear to those who see every problem as a simple binary opposition, enabling them to suppose that on one side are those who represent the good and on the other, evil

      Contextual Note

      Johnson’s racism is patent. But far more interesting and far more sinister is his assumption — shared even by Americans who claim to oppose everything he stands for — that all problems can be reduced to a binary opposition.

      The senator makes a purely rhetorical point by evoking an imaginary situation that in all probability could never have occurred. It allows him to establish a theoretical equivalence between very real criminal actions — with far-reaching political consequences — conducted by those he considers his allies and the fantasized actions of those he identifies as his enemies. Johnson evokes the counterfactual idea of a Trump victory and imagines everything would play out symmetrically thanks to turned tables.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The notion of turning the tables reflects a widespread contemporary belief that opposing sides within a competitive system will always indulge in destructive behavior, inconsistent with their stated democratic ideals. It even suggests that in an oppositional two-party system, destructive behavior becomes the norm.

      The idea that public action can be reduced to the symmetry of turning the tables has its source within a deeper trend in US culture: the growing tyranny of binary logic. Silicon Valley’s success derives from the triumph of binary code. It contains the idea that every thought or creative impulse can be represented by a 0 or a 1 and subsequently built into an algorithm. With the era of fossil fuel as the dominant force in the economy presumably drawing to an end, the reign of information technology and its binary culture appears to be taking over.

      Analog thinking, as opposed to binary thought, supposes a range of values across a continuous spectrum. Binary thought cancels the spectrum and replaces it by what are taken to be fundamental units that combine to simulate the spectrum. That process underlies not only the logic of computers, but also the construction of political and cultural hyperreality. Reality has an analog structure. Hyperreality uses binary logic to simulate reality. It forces every identity into a 0/1 opposition: liberal vs. conservative, Democrat vs. Republican, white vs. black, woke vs. unwoke. The points of division may vary according to different algorithms, but the underlying principle remains the same. 

      Within such systems, the idea of opposition rules. Politicians promote an ideology based on simplistic algorithmic thinking because voters find it easy to accept. This in turn tends toward defining an attitude that tends toward excluding “the other.” It buttresses the notion of exclusion that justifies racism. To counter this impression and create the illusion of equality and fair play, it introduces the pseudo-logic of tables being turned. If both sides are expected to play foul, then all will be fair. Human society in a competitive culture takes on the zero-sum logic of professional sports. For one side to win, the other must lose, at least until the next rematch.

      Historical Note

      It may simply be a coincidence that the oppositional fragmentation of society has grown in intensity at the same historical moment in which information technology has come to represent the ultimate manifestation of progress, economic success and, for some, human virtue. 

      In his book, “Les mots et les choses” (literally, “words and things”), whose title was rendered in English, “The Order of Things,” Michel Foucault pointed to a major paradigm change that took place in European culture starting in the 17th century. The modes of thought of the intellectual class began shifting from an analog model — premised on a mode of reasoning that produced meaning through the observation of multiple and often random similarities — to a binary model that permitted the growth of scientific thought. Science thrives on the analysis of individual components rather than associations based on appearance. Foucault points to the role played by the Académie Française when it reduced the idea of language to the binary pair of signifiant and signifié, signifier and signified. It implicitly excluded other associations that human language conveys through nuance.

      In European popular culture, the two systems of accounting for the world — ternary and binary — continued to coexist for at least two centuries, with the binary logic of science playing an increasingly dominant role. The ultimate triumph of science in the 20th century had the effect of banishing from the regime of legitimate thought the ternary thinking that still existed in traditions associated with the idea of “folklore.” It also remained uncomfortably present in the arts and, in particular, poetry and song.

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      Thanks to its efficacy and omnipresence in people’s lives today, information technology has sealed the triumph of binary thought. But the latest evolution of science, the quantum revolution, may be upsetting the paradigm by introducing a troubling third state. The smallest of Foucault’s “things” exist in the alternative states of a particle and a wave. This means that, in some sense, they are also neither one nor the other. And they may be much more, as quantum computing is beginning to reveal.

      Were he to think about such things, Ron Johnson would probably assume that when an electron shifts from particle to wave, it is simply “turning the tables.” But it is doing much more. Part of it concerns its entanglement with other particles which, whatever their distance, synchronize their behavior thanks to principles that no known physical force determines.

      In his explanation of quantum entanglement, Frank Wilczek explains this fundamental truth: “In practice, unentangled (independent) states are rare exceptions, for whenever systems interact, the interaction creates correlations between them.” Despite the tragic implications of Schrodinger’s metaphor of a cat that is both alive and dead, this is not a zero-sum game in which the tables are turned and the winners smile as the losers weep. It is about “correlations,” which implies solidarity. The traditional model expects competition or at least independent (indifferent) action.

      Some dare to speculate that the quantum paradigm may eventually push our society toward overcoming the tyranny of binary thinking. How long will it take for the politicians to catch up?

      *[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

      We Need an International Convention on Drones

      by

      In the aftermath of the recent war between Armenia and Azerbaijan over the Nagorno-Karabakh region, drone warfare is being touted as the latest breakthrough in military technology, a “magic bullet” that makes armored vehicles obsolete, defeats sophisticated anti-aircraft systems, and routs entrenched infantry.

      While there is some truth in the hype, one needs to be especially wary of military “game changers,” since there is always a seller at the end of the pitch. In his examination of the two major books on drones — Christian Brose’s “The Kill Chain: Defending America in the Future of High-Tech Warfare” and Michael Boyle’s “The Drone Age” — analyst Andrew Cockburn points out that the victims of drones are mostly civilians, not soldiers.

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      While drones can take out military targets, they are more commonly used to assassinate people one doesn’t approve of. A case in point was former US President Donald Trump’s drone strike in 2020 that killed Qasem Solemani, Iran’s top general, a country we are not at war with. In just the first year of his administration, Trump killed more people — including 250 children — with drones in Yemen and Pakistan than former President Barack Obama did in eight years. And Obama was no slouch in this department, increasing the use of drone attacks by a factor of 10 over the administration of George W. Bush.

      Getting a handle on drones — their pluses and minuses and the moral issues such weapons of war raise — is essential if the world wants to hold off yet another round of massive military spending and the tensions and instabilities such a course will create.

      There Are No Bloodless Wars

      That drones have the power to alter a battlefield is a given, but they may not be all they are advertised. Azerbaijan’s drones — mostly Turkish Bayraktar TB2s and Israeli Harpys, Orbiter-1Ks and Harops — did indeed make hash of Armenian tanks and armored vehicles and largely silenced anti-aircraft systems. They also helped Azeri artillery target Armenian positions. But the Azerbaijanis won the recent war by slugging it out on the ground, with heavy casualties on both sides.

      As the military historian and editor of the Small Wars Journal, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Bateman, points out, drones were effective because of the Armenians’ stunning incompetence in their use of armor, making no effort to spread their tanks out or camouflage them. Instead, they bunched them up in the open, making them sitting ducks for Turkish missile-firing drones and Israeli “suicide” drones. “While drones will be hailed as the straw that broke the camel’s back in this war,” says analyst Samuel Bendett, “Azerbaijani success is also attributed to good ol’ fashioned mechanized infantry operations that took territory, one square kilometer at a time.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      Turkey has made widespread use of drones in Syria, Iraq and Libya, and they again have played a role on the battlefield. But Turkish drones have mainly been used to assassinate Kurdish leaders in Iraq and Syria. In April 2020, a Turkish drone killed two Iraqi generals in the Kurdish autonomous zone of northern Iraq. In July 2020, Turkey deployed drones in Syria to block an offense by the Syrian government against Turkey’s allies in Idlib Province, but they failed to stop President Bashar al-Assad’s forces from reclaiming large chunks of territory. In short, they are not always “game changers.”

      The selling point for drones is that they are precise, cheap — or relatively so — and you don’t have a stream of body bags returning home. But drones are not all-seeing, unless they are flying at low altitudes, thus making it easier to shoot them down. The weather also needs to be clear and the area smokeless. Otherwise, what drones see are vague images. In 2010, a US drone took out what its operators thought was a caravan of Taliban trucks carrying weapons in Afghanistan. But the trucks were filled with local peasants and the “weapons” were turkeys. The drones incinerated 23 civilians.

      Nor do they always live up to their reputation for accuracy. In a 2012 test, the US Air Force compared a photo of a base taken by the highly-touted Gorgon Stare cameras mounted on a Predator drone and the one on Google Earth. The images were essentially identical, except Gorgon Stare cost half a trillion dollars and Google Earth was free. “In neither,” says Cockburn, “were humans distinguishable from bushes.”

      Drones have killed insurgent leaders in Syria, Somalia, Iraq and Afghanistan — with virtually no effect on wars in those countries. Indeed, in the case of Afghanistan, the assassination of first-tier Taliban leaders led to their replacement by far more radical elements. The widespread use of drones in the US war on drugs has also been largely a failure. Drug cartels are bigger and more dangerous than ever, and there has been no reduction in the flow of drugs into the United States.

      They do keep the body bag count down, but that raises an uncomfortable moral dilemma: If wars don’t produce casualties, except among the targeted, isn’t it more tempting to fight them?

      Drone pilots in their air-conditioned trailers in southern Nevada will never go down with their aircraft, but the people on the receiving end will eventually figure out some way to strike back. As the attack on the World Trade towers in 2001 and recent terrorist attacks in France demonstrate, that is not all that hard to do — and it is almost inevitable that the targets will be civilians. Bloodless war is a dangerous illusion.

      The Global Drones Arms Race

      Drones certainly present problems for any military. For one thing, they are damn hard to spot. Most are composed of non-metallic substances, like Kevlar, and they have low heat signatures because their small motors run on batteries. Radar doesn’t pick them up and neither do infrared detectors. The Yemen-based Houthis’ drones that hit Saudi Arabian oil facilities at Abqaiq and Khurais in 2019 slipped right through the radar systems of three anti-aircraft networks: the US Patriot system, the French-supplied Shashine surface-to-air-missile system and the Swiss Oerlikon 35mm radar directed cannons. Those drones were produced on a 3D printer supplied to the Houthis by Iran.

      Drones also raised havoc with Armenia’s far more capable Russian-made S-300 air defense system, plus several other short and medium-range systems. Apparently, the drones were not detected until they struck, essentially obliterating Armenia’s anti-aircraft system.

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      The Russians claim they beat off drone attacks on their two bases in Syria — Khmeimim Air Base and the naval base at Tartus — with their Pantsir air defense system. But those drones were rather primitive. Some were even made of plywood. Pantsir systems were destroyed in Nagorno Karabakh and Turkish drones apparently destroyed Pantsirs in Libya.

      The problem is that even if you do detect them, a large number of drones — a so-called “swarming attack” similar to the one that struck the Saudis — will eventually exhaust your ammunition supply, leaving you vulnerable while reloading. The US is working on a way to counter drones with directed energy weapons, including the High Energy Laser Weapons System 2, and a microwave system. At a cost of $30 million, Raytheon is building prototypes of both. President Joe Biden’s defense secretary, General Lloyd Austin, formerly served on the company’s board of directors.

      If drones rely on GPS systems to navigate, they can be jammed or hacked, as the Iranians successfully did to a large US surveillance drone in 2010. Some drones rely on internal maps, like the one used in the US Tomahawk cruise missile. It appears that the drones and cruises that hit Saudi Arabia were running on a guidance system similar to the Tomahawk.

      Of course, that makes your drone or cruise missile autonomous, something that raises its own moral dilemmas. The US is currently working on weapons that use artificial intelligence and will essentially be able to “decide” on their own what to attack. Maybe not “Terminator,” but headed in that direction.

      We Need an International Convention

      Drones are enormously useful for a range of tasks, from monitoring forest fires to finding lost hikers. They are cheap to run and commercial prices are coming down. Turning them into weapons, however, is not only destabilizing. It also puts civilians at risk, raises serious moral issues about who bears the cost of war and in the long run will be very expensive. Drones may be cheap, but anti-aircraft systems are not.

      India and Pakistan are in the middle of a drone race. Germany is debating whether it should arm its drones. Mexican drug cartels are waging war against one another using drones. An international convention on drone use should be on any future arms control agenda.

      *[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

      The Quest to Paint the World Green

      by

      Once upon a time, a rich hypochondriac was complaining about pains in his head and stomach. He consulted a wise man who pointed out that the root of the problem lay somewhere else: in the man’s eyes. To resolve the persistent headache and stomachache, the sage suggested focusing on just one color in the surrounding environment — green — and ignoring all others.

      The rich man promptly hired workers to cover everything in sight in green paint so that he could easily follow the peculiar prescription. Ten days later, when the wise man returned in his saffron robe, a worker hurried over to douse him in green paint as well.

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      “You have wasted so much money through your monumental stupidity,” the paint-splattered sage upbraided the rich man. “If only you had purchased a pair of green spectacles, worth perhaps four rupees, you could have saved these walls and trees and pots and pans and chairs and sofas and also a pretty large share of your fortune.” The sage drew himself up to his full height to deliver his final message: “You cannot paint the world green!”

      The moral of this Hindi tale is simple. You cannot change the world. You can only change the way you look at the world. Perception is everything.

      This cautionary tale is particularly ill-suited for these modern times. With the climate crisis pressing down upon the planet, humanity must change the world or face extinction. Figuratively speaking, we must indeed paint the world green — and ignore the so-called wise men who tell us just to put on green-colored glasses.

      In the real world, this choice boils down to either shrinking the global carbon footprint or succumbing to a form of “greenwashing” that offers only an illusory environmental protection. The Biden administration faces this same choice. Will it spend a lot of money to help paint the world green or just hand out tinted lenses, whether green or rose, to make us all think that the planet has been saved?

      How Green Is His Policy?

      The first task for the Biden administration has been to clean up the toxic waste dump of the previous presidency. That has meant rejoining the 2015 Paris climate deal, canceling the Keystone XL pipeline and restoring the many environmental regulations that former US President Donald Trump gutted. The new administration has put a pause on new oil and gas drilling on federal lands. It has reversed Trump’s effort to weaken the Clean Air Act. It has supported an international agreement to end the use of hydrofluorocarbons. In all, the administration is looking to roll back around 100 of Trump’s attempts to favor business over the environment.

      Embed from Getty Images

      These moves will bring the United States back to the status quo ante. The administration, however, has more ambitious plans. In his January 27 executive order on “tackling the climate crisis at home and abroad,” President Joe Biden laid out a detailed list of initiatives that runs over 7,500 words. The very fact that the order addresses the “climate crisis” and not just “climate change” is an important signal of the seriousness with which the administration takes this issue.

      The order begins with these words: “We have a narrow moment to pursue action at home and abroad in order to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of that crisis and to seize the opportunity that tackling climate change presents. Domestic action must go hand in hand with United States international leadership, aimed at significantly enhancing global action. Together, we must listen to science and meet the moment.”

      To this end, the administration has declared that the United States will become carbon-neutral by 2050, which will require steep cuts in emissions. “We need to increase tree cover five times faster than we are,” says John Kerry, Biden’s special envoy for climate. “We need to ramp up renewable energy six times faster. And the transition to electric vehicles needs to take place at a rate 22 times faster.”

      But like its initial promise to vaccinate 100 million people in 100 days against COVID-19, the administration is already being pushed to do better. Other countries are competing to become carbon-neutral faster: Sweden has pledged to be carbon neutral by 2045, Austria and Iceland have more informally set 2040 as their goal, Finland is looking at 2035, and both Norway and Uruguay expect to achieve the mark by 2030. Apple, Microsoft and General Electric have all committed to becoming carbon neutral by 2030 as well. General Motors announced at the end of January that it would sell only zero-emission vehicles by 2035.

      A key component of the US race to carbon neutrality is the Biden administration’s version of a Green New Deal. This “clean energy revolution” calls for investing $400 billion over 10 years into transforming the US economy along sustainable lines, creating 10 million good-paying jobs in the clean energy sector and putting environmental justice at the center of these efforts.

      But the administration can do just so much with executive orders and through federal agencies like the Department of Energy. At some point, Congress must decide whether the next four years will be world-transforming or just greenwashing.

      But Congress — especially the Senate — is a problem. It’s going to be difficult to persuade Republicans as well as Democrats like Joe Manchin, who represents the coal-mining state of West Virginia, to sign on to anything truly transformative. But tax credits for wind power and solar energy were included in the December 2020 stimulus package, which Republicans backed. And Manchin is already co-sponsoring the American Jobs in Energy Manufacturing Act, which provides tax incentives to businesses that switch over to clean energy products. Also in the works is a Civilian Climate Corps, modeled on a similar New Deal-era initiative, that would enlist the unemployed and underemployed to help with such tasks as reforestation and protecting biodiversity.

      It will be hard to move Congress on this domestic agenda. The international component may be an even tougher sell.

      Going Green Internationally

      At least on paper, the Biden administration intends to make the climate crisis a way of reshaping much of US foreign policy. The January 27 order reads: “It will be a United States priority to press for enhanced climate ambition and integration of climate considerations across a wide range of international fora, including the Group of Seven (G7), the Group of Twenty (G20), and fora that address clean energy, aviation, shipping, the Arctic, the ocean, sustainable development, migration, and other relevant topics.”

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      The first challenge for the new administration will be to put its money where its mouth is, and one example of that is its contributions to the Green Climate Fund. Established in 2010 to assist poorer countries transition away from fossil fuels, the fund raised about $7 billion out of the $10 billion initially pledged. A major reason for the shortfall was the US, which promised $3 billion but delivered only $1 billion. At the end of 2019, the fund put out another call to replenish its coffers and received pledges of another $9.8 billion.

      Kerry has already announced that the United States will make good on its previous commitment by sending $2 billion to the fund. But he has made no mention of US support for the additional replenishment. Climate campaigners have called on the administration to double its original commitment, as a number of European countries plus South Korea and New Zealand have done, and top up its contributions to $9 billion total. Such a firm action by the US might not only persuade other countries to achieve this higher standard but also pressure outliers like Russia and Australia to join the effort in the first place.

      The more immediate problem, however, will be the rising levels of debt, particularly in the Global South, that the COVID-19 pandemic has turned into an acute crisis. A number of countries — Zambia, Costa Rica, Sri Lanka, Brazil — have either defaulted on their loans or are close to it. Meanwhile, the fiscal crisis of poorer countries has pushed several to consider abandoning climate and environment-friendly restrictions on such harmful sectors as industrial mining in order to make financial ends meet. International financial institutions have suspended debt repayments for the world’s poorest nations and are considering various remedies, including the provision of more Special Drawing Rights (SDR) to the worst-off countries through the International Monetary Fund.

      It’s unclear where Biden stands on debt relief or cancellation. But the January 27 executive order on the climate crisis includes the following provision: “[D]evelop a strategy for how the voice and vote of the United States can be used in international financial institutions, including the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund, to promote financing programs, economic stimulus packages, and debt relief initiatives that are aligned with and support the goals of the Paris Agreement.” It’s possible that the administration will, instead of debt cancellation, promote some form of debt-for-nature or debt-for-climate swaps, preferably in versions that include a greater range of stakeholders including indigenous groups, or perhaps back the issuance of bonds linked to performance on green indicators.

      The climate crisis will also affect how the United States negotiates trade agreements. Biden’s appointments to key trade positions suggest that he will be putting labor and environmental concerns at the center of US policy. As a presidential candidate, Biden urged making future trade deals contingent on countries meeting their commitments under the Paris agreement, and members of Congress are already pushing the new president to change the US-Canada-Mexico trade deal to reflect this condition. Another potential option is a fossil fuel export ban, for which Biden has expressed some support.

      The new president is planning to hold a Global Climate Summit on Earth Day next month, though it’s unclear how such a meeting would differ from the one held in December 2020 to mark the fifth anniversary of the Paris agreement. Climate campaigners are urging the administration to use this opportunity to focus on “super pollutants” such as methane, black carbon, and HFCs, which contribute disproportionately to global warming.

      In the meantime, preparations for COP26 — the UN climate change conference — are beginning for November in Glasgow, UK. The hostility of the Trump administration and the divided attention span of the Biden team — not to mention the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic — may compromise the efficacy of the UN meeting. The Paris agreement came together because of 18 months of intensive preliminary negotiations. A similar effort to forge a pre-meeting consensus for COP26 has been slow to emerge.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The Biden administration has made commitments on other environmental issues. It has endorsed a “30 by 30” initiative: protecting 30% of US lands and coastal areas by 2030. This effort would require setting aside 440 million more acres of land for conservation. This pledge, part of a global campaign to preserve biodiversity, would require a significant scaling back of extraction activities on federal lands.

      Cooperation between the US and China is critical for any global environmental effort to move forward. China is currently the leading emitter of carbon in the world, with nearly twice the annual rate of the United States at number two (though the US still leads in terms of cumulative output over time and per-capita carbon footprint). During the Barack Obama years, the two countries created the Clean Energy Research Consortium (CERC), a public-private initiative that spurs research and development in several energy-related sectors. Renewing CERC would be a first step in boosting U.S.-China cooperation.

      Greening national security can and should go well beyond superpower cooperation. The US currently spends $81 billion a year to protect global oil supplies, according to one estimate. The bulk of that money should instead go toward ending reliance on fossil fuels. If access to oil becomes less dependable, that would be an even greater incentive for US allies to accelerate their own transitions to renewable energy.

      An Administration in Search of a Doctrine

      Presidential doctrines have always presented different ways of preserving US global power. The Nixon doctrine was about protecting allies. Jimmy Carter vowed to defend US national interests in the Persian Gulf. Ronald Reagan promised to push back against the Soviet Union worldwide. George W. Bush emphasized unilateral US military action. Donald Trump went on and on about “making America great again.”

      Joe Biden has an opportunity to adopt an entirely different kind of doctrine. He should make explicit what is now implicit in his executive orders, that environmental sustainability will hereafter be the major litmus test for American foreign policy. If this happens, it will be the first time that a presidential doctrine focuses on the good of the planet and not just the good of the United States.

      I’m sure that plenty of foot-draggers in Congress, industry and the media are just waiting for Biden to have his “sweater moment,” an updated version of the televised address when President Carter famously tried to elevate the energy crisis of the late 1970s into a larger discussion of morality and malaise. They will want to paint Biden as a green opponent of the working stiff, a clueless globalist, an America-laster. So, perhaps it’s best for Biden to avoid grand statements of doctrine for the moment and focus instead on painting US foreign policy green, issue by issue.

      The fate of the United States has never been more linked — virally, environmentally, economically and existentially — to the fate of the rest of the world. As such, there hasn’t been a better moment for an American president not just to look at the planet differently, but to join hands with other countries to make it greener.

      *[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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      The Western Sahara Conflict and Great Power Competition

      by

      On December 10, 2020, then-US President Donald Trump recognized Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, circumventing a decades-long UN-sponsored peace process for the territory. In return, Morocco agreed to normalize relations with Israel.

      The US-brokered agreement goes beyond a simple quid pro quo for Trump’s Arab peace deals. It represents a US investment in a North African security partner that is key to Washington’s conception of great power competition. Trump’s decision pulls Morocco closer to the US and the European Union. It also brings Rabat closer to the United Arab Emirates’ spheres of geopolitical influence in Africa and the wider Arab world. At the same time, the decision gives the EU cover to further align with Morocco.

      Yet Trump’s gift to Morocco could have unintended consequences. Algeria might deepen its relationship with Russia and China, increasing their presence in the Maghreb region. The Biden administration is scrutinizing past deals signed by the previous president, and the decision pertaining to Morocco might come up for reconsideration. 

      Not All Quiet on the Western Sahara Front

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      The Moroccan kingdom conceives of its neighborhood’s stability in terms of a strong grip on Western Sahara, the continued development of the southern territory’s resources, and limited terrorist threats in and around its porous Saharan borders. In late November 2020, the US committed to investing $3 billion in Morocco — through the Development Finance Corporation — and designated the country as a regional hub for its Prosper Africa trade and investment program. A month later, the US committed to selling four sky guardian drones to Morocco, which expands its intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capacity. By acknowledging Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara, allotting Morocco more development funding and providing increased ISR, the US bolsters neighborhood stability as seen by King Mohammed VI.

      In turn, increased stability for Morocco may reverberate across its littoral Sahara — a vacuum for terrorists and a potential target of Russian intrigue. New US development initiatives could amplify previous Moroccan actions in the region, such as the delivery of COVID-19 aid packages to Mauritania and Burkina Faso in June 2020. New ISR capacity will also see the increased interdiction of traffickers and terrorists, whose roles progressively overlap. These actions will not decisively change the nature of conflict plaguing the Sahel region, located just south of the Sahara Desert. But even marginal gains for Moroccan stability would decrease power vacuums for Russia to exploit with the Wagner Group, a private military company Moscow uses to surreptitiously advance its foreign policy.

      Europe and the Gulf

      Trump’s decision also provides political cover for the EU to overcome obstacles in its relationship with Morocco, which retains advanced status under the union’s European Neighborhood Policy. The Brussels-Rabat relationship is fraught with disputes over whether goods from Western Sahara should come under the jurisdiction of the EU-Morocco free trade agreement. Rulings in 2016 and 2018 by the European Court of Justice decreed that EU-Morocco trade and fishing agreements would only remain valid if they excluded goods originating from Western Sahara, contradicting the Moroccan autonomy plan for the territory.

      Washington’s recognition of Moroccan sovereignty gives political cover to European states, including France, that lean toward the autonomy plan. European judicial decisions do not derive from US decrees, but if key EU member states were to change their stance on Western Sahara, the legal basis of the earlier court rulings could also differ. If so, like the US, the European Union would find itself pulled closer to Morocco, portending new initiatives that align with the European interest of Morocco as a stability exporter.

      Embed from Getty Images

      In the Gulf, Washington’s recognition of Moroccan sovereignty pushes Rabat and Abu Dhabi closer into alignment. This would continue their rapprochement after previous tensions, which stemmed from Morocco’s refusal to back the Saudi-Emirati-led blockade of Qatar between 2017 and 2021. To punish Morocco for its neutrality, in 2018, the UAE and Saudi Arabia voted against Morocco’s bid to host the 2026 FIFA World Cup. The states also recalled each other’s ambassadors.

      In October 2020, however, the UAE opened a consulate in Western Sahara’s Laayoune, which at that time was not recognized as Moroccan territory by the US. This was an important symbolic gesture, given that the UAE was the first Arab state to do so. UAE actions that favor Morocco come amidst deteriorating Emirati-Algerian relations, as Abu Dhabi is unhappy with Algeria’s alleged support of Turkey or, according to the UAE, “anti-Emirati lobbies in the region.” That the UAE is strengthening ties with Morocco while Saudi Arabia makes no such overtures could foreshadow Emirati attempts at constructing a new, intra-Sunni coalition.

      Russia and China

      US rivals have adopted less amenable stances. Russia has already condemned Washington’s recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara. The US decision, consequently, gives Russia and China an excuse to increase security and economic cooperation with the Algerians. As the most strident supporter of the Polisario Front — an armed group demanding independence for Western Sahara — Algeria is upset about the diplomatic win Morocco secured in the US recognition of Moroccan sovereignty.

      To balance Rabat’s victory, Algiers could invite in Russian troops under the guise of counterterrorism operations to the Sahel. Algeria is one of Russia’s largest arms clients and China has already committed billions to phosphates in the east of the country. In light of the US move, both of these relationships could further develop.

      Increased Russian and Chinese activity in Algeria would also diminish advances made in terms of Moroccan stability in the Sahel. Russia expanding its North African power projection and China increasing its investments in natural resources would balance Moroccan actions that close power vacuums to the Wagner Group. Unforeseen by Trump, Russia can also cite the US recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara as justification for its annexation in 2014 of Crimea, which is officially part of Ukraine. The US may have improved ties with Morocco but, in doing so, pushed Algeria, another North African behemoth, firmly into a sphere of Russian and Chinese influence and provided Russia justification for its illegal invasions.

      The New US Administration

      The Biden administration has already stated its support of the Abraham Accords, a term used for the peace deals Israel signed with the UAE and Bahrain in 2020. In response to a question concerning US recognition of Western Sahara, however, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, “We’re also trying to make sure that we have a full understanding of any commitments that may have been made in securing those agreements.”

      On January 27, 2021, US President Joe Biden froze the Trump-era F-35 sale to the UAE, pending review. Many considered the F-35 sale as a carrot Trump offered to the UAE. The freeze does not necessitate the reversal of the sale, but it indicates Biden’s resolve to scrutinize the quid pro quos that accompany the Abraham Accords. Once the US reaches “a full understanding of any commitments,” it will either continue or withdraw recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara.

      If the Biden administration continues recognition of Western Sahara, Blinken would most likely work through an international framework at the United Nations to achieve increased support for Washington’s unilateral decision, as the US is the only state to recognize full Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara. If EU states lean toward the Moroccan autonomy plan, the Biden administration will find some find needed political cover.

      Embed from Getty Images

      At the same time, Russia and China would continue their support for Algeria, and Morocco would export its version of stability across North Africa. Rabat would also continue its recognition of Israel. Malignant non-state actors, however, could use the endurance of the US decision to galvanize violent actions from some Polisario fighters, creating another opening for terrorist groups. Maintenance of the decision also comes at the expense of true self-determination for the Saharawi people in Western Sahara.

      The US can also withdraw recognition of Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara. This action would see the White House realign with the UN-sponsored peace process and international law. Potentially, a US return to non-recognition would invigorate efforts toward a true autonomy plan. In this case, Morocco would withdraw its recognition of Israel and US relations with Morocco would cool. Although the US and Morocco would remain important partners, the Moroccans would feel betrayed by this decision and potentially align closer with Russia and China to castigate the Americans. The Polisario, moreover, would also find a renewed chance at some form of self-determination.

      Regardless of the Biden administration’s actions, Trump blatantly circumvented a UN-sponsored peace process and gave Morocco a carte blanche to implement its autonomy plan. New US-Moroccan collaboration could see Morocco push Sahelian stability that benefits the US position in great power competition by closing power vacuums to Russian interests. Trump’s thirst for diplomatic wins, however, caused his administration to view Western Sahara through a transactional lens, obfuscating a legitimate international solution and potentially inviting new Russian and Chinese activity in North Africa.

      *[Fair Observer is a media partner of Gulf State Analytics.]

      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 American Century Ends Early

      by

      Like Gregor Samsa, the never-to-be-forgotten character in Franz Kafka’s story “The Metamorphosis,” we awoke on January 7 to discover that we, too, were “a giant insect” with “a domelike brown belly divided into stiff arched segments” and numerous “pitifully thin” legs that “waved helplessly” before our eyes. If you prefer, though, you can just say it: We opened our eyes and found that, somehow, we had become a giant roach of a country.

      Yes, I know, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are now in charge of the US and waving their own little limbs wildly, trying to do some of what needs to be done for this sad land of the disturbed, over-armed, sick and dying. But anyone who watched the scenes of Floridians celebrating a Super Bowl victory, largely unmasked and cheering, shoulder to shoulder in the streets of Tampa, can’t help but realize that we are now indeed a roach nation, the still-wealthiest, most pandemically unmasked one on planet Earth.

      What an Afghan Peace Deal Could Look Like

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      But don’t just blame Donald Trump. Admittedly, we’ve just passed through the Senate trial and acquittal of the largest political cockroach around. I’m talking about the president who, upon discovering that his vice president was in danger of being “executed” (“Hang Mike Pence!”) and was being rushed out of the Senate as a mob bore down on him, promptly tweeted: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.”

      Just imagine. The veep who had — if you don’t mind my mixing my creature metaphors here — toadied up to the president for four endless years was then given a functional death sentence by that same man. You can’t fall much deeper into personal roachdom than that. My point here, though, is that our all-American version of roacherie was a long time in coming.

      Or put another way: unimaginable as The Donald might have seemed when he descended that Trump Tower escalator in June 2015 to hail his future “great, great wall,” denounce Mexican “rapists” and bid to make a whole country into his apprentices, he didn’t end up in the Oval Office for no reason. He was the symptom, not the disease, though what a symptom he would prove to be — and when it came to diseases, what a nightmare beyond all imagining.

      Let’s face it, whether we fully grasp the fact or not, we now live in a system, as well as a country, that’s visibly in an early stage of disintegration. And there lies a remarkable tale of history happening at warp speed, of how, in not quite three decades, the USS Enterprise of imperial powers was transformed into the USS Roach.

      Once Upon a Time on Earth…

      Return for a moment to 1991, almost two years after the Berlin Wall fell, when the Soviet Union finally imploded and the Cold War officially ended. Imagine that you had been able to show Americans then — especially the political class in Washington — that 13-minute video of Trump statements and tweets interlarded with mob actions in the Capitol that the Democratic House impeachment managers used in their opening salvo against the former president. Americans — just about any of us — would have thought we were watching the most absurd science fiction or perhaps the single least reality-based bit of black comedy imaginable.

      In the thoroughly self-satisfied (if somewhat surprised) Washington of 1991, the triumphalist capital of “the last superpower,” that video would have portrayed a president, an insurrectionary mob and an endangered Congress no one could have imagined possible — not in another nearly 30 years, not in a century, not in any American future. Then again, if in 1991 you had tried to convince anyone in this country that a walking Ponzi scheme(r) like Donald Trump could become president, no less be impeached twice, you would have been laughed out of the room.

      Embed from Getty Images

      After all, the US had just become the ultimate superpower in history, the last one ever. Left alone on this planet, it had a military beyond compare and an economy that was the heartland of a globalized system and the envy of the world. The Earth was — or at least to the political class of that moment seemed to be — ours for the taking, but certainly not for the losing, not in any imaginable future. The question then wasn’t keeping them out but keeping us in. No “big, fat, beautiful walls” were needed. After all, Russia was a wreck. China was still emerging economically from the hell of the Maoist years. Europe was dependent on the US and, when it came to the rest of world, what else need be said? This was an American planet, pure and simple.

      In retrospect, consider the irony. There had been talk then about a post-Cold War “peace dividend.” Who would have guessed, though, that dividends of any sort would increasingly go to the top 1% and that almost 30 years later, the US would functionally be a plutocracy overseen until a month ago by a self-professed multibillionaire? Who would have imagined that the American version of a peace dividend would have been siphoned off by more billionaires than anyplace else on Earth and that, in those same years, inequality would reach historic heights, while poverty and hunger only grew? Who woulda guessed that whatever peace dividend didn’t go to the ultra-wealthy would go to an ever-larger national security state and the industrial complex of weapons makers that surrounded it? Who woulda guessed that, in official post-Cold War Washington, peace would turn out to be the last thing on anyone’s mind, even though this country seemed almost disarmingly enemy-less? (Remember when the worst imaginable combination of enemies, a dreaded “axis of evil,” would prove to be Iraq, Iran and North Korea, all embattled, distinctly tertiary powers?)

      Who woulda guessed that a military considered beyond compare (and funded to this day like no other) would proceed to fight war after war, literally decades of conflict, and yet — except for the quasi-triumph of the first Gulf War against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq — achieve victory in none of them? Staggering trillions of taxpayer dollars would be spent on them, while those billionaires were given untold tax breaks. Honestly, who would have guessed then that, on a planet lacking significant enemies, Washington, even six presidents later, would prove incapable of stopping fighting?

      Who woulda guessed that, in September 2001, not Russia or communist China, but a tiny group of Islamic militants led by a rich Saudi extremist the US had once backed would send 19 (mostly Saudi) hijackers to directly attack the United States? They would, of course, cause death and mayhem, allowing President George W. Bush to launch an almost 20-year “global war on terror,” which still shows no sign of ending. Who woulda guessed that, in the wake of those 9/11 terror attacks, the son of the man who had presided over the first Gulf War (but stopped short of felling Iraqi autocrat Saddam Hussein) and the top officials of his administration would come to believe that the world was his oyster and that the US should dominate the greater Middle East and possibly the planet in a way previously unimaginable? Who would have imagined that he would invade Iraq (having done the same in Afghanistan a year and a half earlier), effectively helping to spread Islamic extremism far and wide, while creating a never-ending disaster for this country?

      Who woulda guessed that, in 2009, in the wake of a Great Recession at home, the next president, Barack Obama, would order a massive “surge” of forces into Afghanistan, a war already eight years old? Tens of thousands of new troops, not to speak of contractors, CIA operatives and others would be sent there without faintly settling things.

      By November 2016, when an antiquated electoral system gave the popular vote to Hillary Clinton but put Donald Trump, a man who promised to end this country’s “endless wars” (he didn’t) in the Oval Office, it should have been obvious that something was awry on the yellow brick road to imperial glory. By then, in fact, for a surprising number of Americans, this had become a land of grotesque inequality and lack of opportunity. And many of them would prove ready indeed to use their votes to send a message to the country about their desire to Trump that very reality.

      From there, of course, with no Wizard of Oz in sight, it would be anything but a yellow brick road to January 6, 2021, when, the president having rejected the results of the 2020 election, a mob would storm the Capitol. All of it and the impeachment fiasco to follow would reveal the functional definition of a failing democracy, one in which the old rules no longer held.

      Exiting the Superpower Stage of History

      And, of course, I have yet to even mention the obvious — the still-unending nightmare that engulfed the country early in 2020 and that, I suspect, will someday be seen as the true ending point for a strikingly foreshortened American century. I’m thinking, of course, of COVID-19, the pandemic disease that swept the country, infecting tens of millions of Americans and killing hundreds of thousands in a fashion unmatched anywhere else on the planet. It would even for a time fell a president, while creating mayhem and ever more fierce division in unmasked parts of the country filled with civilians armed to the teeth, swept up in conspiracy theories and at the edge of who knew what.

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      Call it a sign from the gods or anything you want, but call it startling. Imagine a disease that the last superpower handled so much more poorly than countries with remarkably fewer resources. Think of it as a kind of judgment, if not epitaph, on that very superpower.

      Or put another way: Not quite 30 years after the Soviet Union exited the stage of history, we’re living in a land that was itself strangely intent on heading for that same exit — a crippled country led by a 78-year-old president, its system under startling pressure and evidently beginning to come apart at the seams. One of its political parties is unrecognizable; its presidency has been stripped of a fully functioning Congress and is increasingly imperial in nature; its economic system plutocratic; its military still struggling across significant parts of the planet, while a possible new cold war with a rising China is evidently on the horizon; and all of this on a planet that itself, even putting aside that global pandemic, is visibly in the deepest of trouble.

      At the end of Franz Kafka’s classic tale, Gregor Samsa, now a giant insect with a rotting apple embedded in its back, dies in roach hell, even if also in his very own room with his parents and sisters nearby. Is the same fate in store, after a fashion, for the American superpower?

      In some sense, in the Trump and COVID-19 years, the United States has indeed been unmasked as a roach superpower on a planet going to — again, excuse the mixed animal metaphors — the dogs. The expected all-American age of power and glory hasn’t been faintly what was imagined in 1991, not in a country that has shown remarkably few signs of coming to grips with what these years have truly meant.

      Centuries after the modern imperial age began, it’s evidently coming to an end in a hell that Joe Biden and crew won’t be able to stop, even if, unlike the previous president, they’re anything but intent on thoroughly despoiling this land. Still, Trump or Biden, at this point it couldn’t be clearer that we need some new way of thinking about and being on this increasingly roach-infested planet of ours.

      *[This article was originally published by TomDispatch.]

      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 Talented Mr. Bin Salman

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      Mohammed bin Salman is a charming fellow. The tall, dark and handsome Saudi prince known as MBS has seduced world leaders and eager pundits left and right. To his supporters, MBS became first in line to the Saudi throne by championing reform in a deeply conservative Gulf kingdom, taking on corruption, confronting religious extremists and promising to modernize the economy. “Someone had to do this job — wrench Saudi Arabia into the 21st century — and MBS stepped up,” wrote Thomas Friedman in an oft-cited column from November 2017. “I, for one, am rooting for him to succeed in his reform efforts.”

      Not only impressionable opinion-makers have fallen for the prince’s charm. In 2017, MBS won the reader poll for Time’s person of the year with an astonishing 24% of the vote. Second place, at 6%, went to the magazine’s eventual pick for its cover, the #MeToo movement, while Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau garnered a mere 4%, Pope Francis 3% and then-US President Donald Trump 2%.

      Serious Politics Is Not About Recalibration

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      Of course, not everyone has been enthusiastic about the talented Mr. bin Salman. In 2015, three months into his new position as defense minister, MBS launched an air war in neighboring Yemen. Tens of thousands of Yemeni civilians have died, and the country has been plunged into a humanitarian nightmare. The war, which has become a quagmire for the Saudi-led coalition, has not exactly made a lot of friends for MBS.

      Two years later, shortly before he mesmerized Friedman in Riyadh, Mohammed bin Salman detained a number of his wealthiest rivals in a set of rooms at the Ritz-Carlton in the Saudi capital. There he subjected the sheikhs and businessmen to interrogations and torture that resulted in one death and the hospitalization of 17 others. The Saudi leadership called the extortion of billions of dollars from the rich prisoners an anti-corruption campaign, but it was really a way for MBS to consolidate his power through brute force.

      Embed from Getty Images

      “He is a psycho,” a relative of one of the detainees said of MBS. “He has spite. He wants to break people. He doesn’t want anyone to have an honorable name but him. He is a devil, and the devil is learning from him.”

      Shortly before the Ritz-Carlton “sheikhdown,” Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi fled the country for the United States. As a Washington Post columnist, he then took aim at the policies of the Saudi government and those of MBS in particular. While the Saudi prince “is right to free Saudi Arabia from ultra-conservative religious forces, he is wrong to advance a new radicalism that, while seemingly more liberal and appealing to the West, is just as intolerant of dissent,” Khashoggi wrote in a column from April 2018.

      That intolerance for dissent was on full and tragic display a few months later when Khashoggi walked into the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul to get papers to marry his Turkish fiancée and never came out. A government-dispatched death squad strangled the journalist and dismembered his body.

      The Saudi government initially denied that Khashoggi had been killed. Then it claimed that the killers were rogue elements. The kingdom eventually put 11 unnamed individuals on trial for the crime, charged eight of them and handed down five death sentences that it subsequently commuted to 20 years in prison.

      After Khashoggi’s murder, the Trump administration imposed sanctions on 17 Saudi officials. But even though a UN report implicated MBS in the assassination, he didn’t face any consequences. Indeed, Trump continued to praise the Saudi prince as if nothing had happened.

      “It’s an honor to be with the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, a friend of mine, a man who has really done things in the last five years in terms of opening up Saudi Arabia,” Trump said at a June 2019 breakfast with MBS at the G20 meeting in Tokyo. “I want to just thank you on behalf of a lot of people, and I want to congratulate you. You’ve done, really, a spectacular job.”

      This week, the Biden administration released an earlier US intelligence report on the assassination of Khashoggi that concluded that Mohammed bin Salman approved the killing. The administration added some new sanctions against certain Saudi officials and instituted a “Khashoggi ban” against 76 unnamed individuals associated with the killing. That ban can also be applied to any foreign officials who harass or harm journalists or activists.

      Still, the Biden administration has declined to sanction MBS himself. Like Tom Ripley in the novels of Patricia Highsmith, Mohammed bin Salman is a confidence man, a possible serial killer and an all-around psychopath with a taste for the high life. Highsmith described the protagonist of “The Talented Mr. Ripley” and four other novels as “suave, agreeable, and utterly amoral.” Although he often comes close to getting caught, in the end, Tom Ripley gets away with murder every time. Will that be the fate of the talented Mr. bin Salman as well?

      The US-Saudi Relationship

      The alliance between the United States and Saudi Arabia initially made sense, at least at a basic economic level. In February 1945, when Franklin D. Roosevelt met secretly with King Abdul Aziz ibn Saud on a Navy destroyer in the Suez Canal, the US president wanted to secure a homeland for Jewish refugees in Palestine. Although the Saudi king was not enthusiastic, he was willing to forge a partnership around oil. Saudi Arabia had recently discovered what promised to be very lucrative fields, and the US needed a reliable oil supply to finish off World War II and begin a post-war recovery.

      Saudi Arabia still has a lot of oil, but the US doesn’t need it anymore. From a high of two million barrels of crude a day in May 2003, US imports dropped to a mere 100,000 last December. For a period of time in January, for the first time in 35 years, the United States didn’t import any Saudi oil at all. Because of its own fossil fuel production, increased imports from countries like Canada, and greater reliance on renewables, the US is simply no longer dependent on the Saudis.

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      Take oil out of the equation and the alliance becomes untenable. Saudi Arabia is a dictatorship with fewer political and religious freedoms than, say, Iran, which the US routinely castigates for its human rights violations. The kingdom has been a destabilizing influence in the region, for instance through its war in Yemen and its earlier embargo of Qatar. Moreover, Saudi Arabia promotes a conservative version of Islam, Wahhabism, that has squeezed out more liberal variants of the religion all around the world. The country has also generated even more extremist ideologies, like the jihadism of Osama bin Laden and his followers.

      In an investigation of the links between the Saudi government and the 9/11 hijackers, the FBI found some evidence of collaboration, through the Saudi Embassy in Washington, but the agency has been divided on whether that evidence is conclusive. The name of the relevant embassy contact, Mussaed Ahmed al-Jarrah, was even inadvertently revealed last May, but it’s not likely that the Saudi government will allow him to be deposed as part of the lawsuit mounted by families of the 9/11 victims.

      It’s not the only case in which the Saudi government has been implicated. A lawsuit in Florida alleges that the kingdom could have prevented an attack by a Saudi air force officer in 2019 at a naval air station in Pensacola that left three US sailors dead.

      The US government has generally looked the other way when it comes to these obvious disqualifications for a strategic partnership. It’s not just oil. The Saudis have proved to be useful partners in various causes over the years. They provided financial support for the anti-Soviet mujahideen in Afghanistan. They’ve been a bulwark behind conservative regimes in the Middle East, such as Egypt, which the United States has misinterpreted as a stabilizing influence.

      And then there’s Iran, with which Saudi Arabia has long battled for influence in the greater Middle East. Part of the rivalry is confessional — Iran is predominantly Shia, while Saudi Arabia is predominantly Sunni. The tensions are also political since the Saudis tend to prefer conservative, pro-Western regimes, while Iran favors governments and movements that are at least skeptical of the West if not outright hostile. But the competition often boils down to geopolitics, with the two countries trying to influence countries and leaders regardless of their religion or political leanings.

      Because the United States decided 40 years ago, with a big assist from Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, to do everything it could to constrain the new Islamic Republic of Iran, Saudi Arabia became an essential partner. In 2015, the Obama administration challenged the cornerstone of this partnership with the Iran nuclear deal. Trump swung in the opposite direction to make the kingdom the fulcrum of a region-wide peace plan.

      President Joe Biden is now trying to “recalibrate” the relationship. It has ended “all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arms sales,” but that leaves open the possibility of supporting defensive operations, whatever those might be. It has put a hold on half a billion dollars in military assistance but is now evaluating which deals can go through under the category of “defensive” weapons, like missile defense systems.

      In his initial discussions with the kingdom, Biden also raised issues of human rights and the assassination of Khashoggi. At the same time, however, the administration has tried to preserve the overall relationship by effectively pardoning MBS. King Salman is 85 years old, and he’s not in good health. With MBS set to take over, the United States doesn’t want to alienate a powerful future monarch. Mohammed bin Salman is aware of his leverage. He will act accordingly.

      Dealing with Ruling Assassins

      The Biden administration this week announced sanctions against senior Russian officials over the poisoning of dissident Alexei Navalny. In 2019, the European Union imposed sanctions on Iran for its involvement in the assassination of two Iranians in the Netherlands. After the 2017 assassination at the Kuala Lumpur airport of Kim Jong Nam, who was North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s half-brother, Malaysia closed its embassy in Pyongyang and imposed a travel ban on the country.

      Embed from Getty Images

      None of these moves has doomed bilateral relations. The US still engages with the Kremlin, most recently by extending New START. The EU is pushing hard for a resumption of the Iran nuclear deal. Malaysia reopened its embassy in Pyongyang last year.

      Part of the reason why such extrajudicial murders generate sanctions but not a full quarantine of the perpetrating countries is the widespread nature of these offenses. Among its many “targeted killings” by drones, the United States assassinated the head of Iran’s Quds Force, Qasem Soleimani, outside the Baghdad airport at the beginning of 2020. Israel has routinely killed its opponents all over the world, including a Libyan embassy employee in Rome, an Egyptian nuclear scientist in Paris, a Brazilian colonel in Sao Paolo and a Canadian engineer in Brussels. Syria might or might not have been behind several assassinations in Lebanon, including leftist leader Kamal Jumblatt and former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. None of these countries has suffered geopolitically for these acts.

      The talented Mr. bin Salman, in other words, killed his most prominent critic because he knew he would get away with it. Even if the Biden administration decides for entirely pragmatic reasons not to sanction the Saudi prince, it should definitively stop all military support to Riyadh, even weapons considered “defensive.” After all, if Saudi Arabia feels more secure behind a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, it will be more likely to direct aerial attacks against its opponents.

      It’s the nature of geopolitics that a few psychopaths are going to become the leaders of their countries. But that’s no reason for the United States to give these “talented” men the weapons to consolidate their power.

      *[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

      Is the US Back Under Biden?

      by

      Caligula was by all accounts a nasty piece of work. During the nearly four years that he ruled over the Roman Empire in the first century CE, Caligula was notorious for sexual predation and extravagant spending. Never one to sell himself short, he proclaimed early on that he was a god. He held the Senate in such contempt that he forced its high-ranking members to run alongside his chariot for miles dressed in their togas. He dismissed Virgil as a hack writer and Livy as a dispenser of fake history, and he dreamed of making his favorite horse a consul.

      He was also inordinately fond of killing people, sometimes only to seize their assets. Or because he was bored, like the time at a gladiatorial contest when there were no criminals to execute during the intermission. Thinking fast, the despot ordered his guards to throw an entire section of the audience into the arena to be devoured by wild animals.

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      The world’s most powerful empire suffered four years of unbounded narcissism from a man with a reputation for sexual assaults and a fondness for cruelty who disparaged everyone in sight. Sound familiar?

      The one member of his close circle whose life Caligula spared was his uncle Claudius, primarily to make fun of the older man, who was lame and stammered. But “Sleepy Claudius,” particularly as depicted in the two historical novels of Robert Graves and portrayed by Derek Jacobi in the hit BBC series, was a crafty fellow who knew how to survive the deadly game of Roman imperial politics. When the Praetorian Guard finally had enough of Caligula and assassinated him — with the support of the political elite — Claudius was found hiding behind the curtains in the palace and proclaimed the new emperor.

      Claudius went on to rule for 13 years. Despite being absent-minded and scatter-brained, he proved to be far more capable than most Romans anticipated. The new emperor restored the rule of law throughout the empire. He stabilized the economy, embarked on an ambitious plan to improve the infrastructure of the realm, and even expanded its reach in the Balkans, North Africa and far-off Britain.

      Joe Biden, similarly underestimated because of his stammer and meandering speeches, has channeled Claudius in his first month in office. With a flurry of executive orders, the new US president has quickly reversed some of the most damaging policies of his deranged predecessor. Facing both a pandemic and an economic crisis, he is restoring confidence in government with a rapid vaccination rollout and a large-scale stimulus package. He has plans for big policy initiatives around infrastructure, energy and immigration.

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      But, of course, not everyone was thrilled with Emperor Claudius, particularly those on the Roman periphery. The British, for instance, chafed under imperial rule. Their escalating anger culminated in the bloody but ultimately unsuccessful revolt of Queen Boudica in 60 CE. Not surprisingly, Biden too has faced his share of criticism, particularly among those on the receiving end of American power or those who’ve bristled at the fickleness of American leadership.

      America’s Caligula is still around, perhaps even harboring hopes of a return to power in 2024. In the meantime, what are we to make of America’s Claudius and his effort to bring stability to the American empire?

      Biden Makes Nice with the World

      The Biden administration has gone into overdrive in its efforts to rejoin the international community as a member in good standing. On February 19, the United States officially reentered the 2015 Paris climate agreement, while Special Envoy John Kerry has pledged to restore the $2 billion for the Green Climate Fund that the US promised under Barack Obama but never delivered. The administration has rejoined the World Health Organization, signed up for the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) program and promised to disburse the $4 billion that Congress appropriated for COVAX at the end of 2020. Biden reversed some of former President Donald Trump’s most noxious immigration policies, shutting down construction of the wall on the southern border, ending the “Muslim travel ban” and beginning to bring the country back into compliance with international norms around refugees and asylum-seekers.

      The Biden administration has also pledged more cooperative relations with NATO allies, Pacific partners and democratic countries more generally. It rejoined the UN Human Rights Council as an observer and restored funding for the UN Population Fund. It began the process of reviving the Iran nuclear deal, restarted relations with Palestinian organizations, embarked tentatively on restoring better relations with Cuba, extended New START with Russia and stopped funding the Saudi-led war in Yemen. Not bad for one month’s work.

      President Biden’s moves have encountered inevitable challenges, both domestic and foreign. The Senate, as I explained in my last column, has been perhaps the major check in American politics on an authentic internationalism. Not surprisingly, some Republicans in the Senate are already trying to undermine US involvement in the Paris climate agreement, and they’re sharpening their knives to attack renewed engagement with Iran and with Cuba.

      Some allies, too, are not fully on board with Biden’s great reset. France would prefer to invest more in an independent European security system and rely less on NATO. Germany is not interested in a full-court press on Russia and hopes to strike a compromise with the Biden administration that would allow it to stay on schedule with its Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline deal with the Kremlin. Japan and South Korea are squeamish about the trilateral coordination that the United States is (again) promoting, relations with Turkey are tense and Israel is unhappy with Biden’s restoring US ties with Palestine.

      But the real problem with the president’s new approach to the world lies not in the resistance it has engendered at home or the ambivalence it has fostered abroad. It lies with the very nature of Biden’s foreign policy.

      The Stick

      The amount of damage that Trump did to the world was limited to a certain extent by his incompetence. He could have blundered into another war if his advisers had let the presidential id run wild. If he’d had a Stephen Miller to do to foreign policy what this savvy operator did to immigration, Trump might well have permanently damaged the global system.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Biden, meanwhile, has assembled a thoroughly competent team of professionals — from Secretary of State Antony Blinken and UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield to climate czar John Kerry and Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman. That competence is a godsend when it comes to navigating the intricacies of the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate negotiations.

      But when it comes to the less pleasant aspects of US foreign policy, that competence might prove deadly. Claudius, it turned out, was not a feeble dotard. He knew exactly how to deploy Rome’s imperial might to finish the job Caligula had started in conquering Mauritania and to extend the empire’s dominion to the westernmost reaches of Europe. If the Biden administration decides to ramp up confrontation with China in the South China Sea, for instance, his team might very competently — and disastrously — marshal US allies in the region to implement the plan.

      Pax Romana was largely an enforced peace rather than a negotiated one, and Pax Americana has always relied on the overwhelming predominance of US military power. Already, the Biden team has stated its desire to focus on great power rivalry with China and Russia rather than losing propositions like the war in Afghanistan. That preference will translate into a continuation of bloated military budgets, large arms deals with allies and sort-of allies on the periphery of China and Russia, and the deployment of various economic strategies like sanctions to influence the behavior of these perennial competitors.

      In his early days in office, Biden has been quick to emphasize the role of diplomacy, promising that force will be the “tool of last resort.” A dramatic example of that approach has been the absence of any drone strikes during the first month of the administration. This is in marked contrast to the strikes that Obama and Trump ordered almost immediately upon taking office as well as the escalation in attacks that took place in Trump’s final months. Only one airstrike has been reported, in Iraq on February 9 against the Islamic State. (Editor’s note: This article was written prior to the US airstrike in eastern Syria on February 25.) In addition to initiating a review of drone strikes, the administration has launched a probe into Special Forces operations to ascertain whether they have adhered to the Pentagon’s “law of war” requirements. This is all very promising. But will it last?

      Claudius was content to be successful within the Roman imperial framework. Guilty of his own excesses of violence, he never tried to turn the empire back into a republic or negotiate a new set of relations with Rome’s far-flung possessions. He knew only to expand. Biden, too, operates within the existing system of American dominance. It remains to be seen whether he will dramatically reduce the US military footprint and work with other major powers to redefine international relations at a time of multiple global crises.

      If he doesn’t, America will risk the same fate that befell Rome after the death of Claudius. In 54 CE, a new emperor took power who made Caligula look like a cub scout. This latest Caesar made sure that the good that Claudius did during his 13-year reign was indeed interred with his bones. “Nero practiced every kind of obscenity,” writes the gossipy chronicler Suetonius, adding that the new emperor “annulled many of Claudius’ decrees and edicts, on the grounds that he’d been a doddering old idiot.”

      The trick, then, is not just to reverse the evils of one’s predecessor but to make those reversals stick. That, in turn, will require not just quick fixes but turning the United States into a truly cooperative world power.

      *[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

      Serious Politics Is Not About Recalibration

      by

      Donald Trump’s brand of hyperreality over the past four years relied heavily on melodramatic plotting to keep the audience invested in the performance. To reestablish the more sober style of hyperreality the Democratic Party as an ideological force has come to represent, US President Joe Biden has cultivated the Democrats’ artificial style of neo-realism in its approach to political conflict. The Biden administration’s rhetorical creativity offers some insight into how this hyperreality is intended to play out.

      Trump, the former US president, typically chose an easy media strategy. He would disregard all existing standards, preferring to bully and shock. He relied on the public’s acceptance of the notion that — as he once said about himself — he could get away with murder in the middle of Fifth Avenue. (This paralleled his boast about women, whom he would grab in their private parts when he tired of shooting men in broad daylight.)

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      Biden has inherited a different, more “presidential” role. Independently of the policies he adopts, he finds himself having to exaggerate the contrast with Trump by at least seeming to reflect on complex issues, weighing the pros and cons and engaging in thoughtful deliberation on the same topics that Trump typically bulldozed his way through. After all that deliberation, the result tends to differ more in style than in substance.

      The Daily Devil’s Dictionary recently considered the case of Trump’s sanctions against Fatou Bensouda and the International Criminal Court (ICC). Biden has found himself in the awkward position of having to reaffirm the nation’s traditional refusal to be judged for war crimes while, at the same time, recognizing the legitimacy of the actions of the ICC so impudently denied by Trump. Now, Biden has a similar juggling act to carry out with Saudi Arabia after his director of national intelligence, Avril Haines, followed the prescribed democratic logic of obeying a command made by Congress that Trump had simply refused to acknowledge. It concerned the release of the CIA’s assessment of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s (MBS) role in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist working for The Washington Post.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Trump chose to shield the perpetrators from any form of judgment. After all, Saudi Arabia spends hundreds of millions on American weapons. After showing such virtue, what crime could they possibly be accused of? Biden had to find a way of countering Trump while reaffirming America’s commitment to the ideal of even-handed justice. It is all in the name of preserving “American interests” (which everyone by now should know means simply money and geopolitical influence).

      The Washington Post explains how Biden has accomplished that mission: “The Biden administration will impose no direct punishment on Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for the 2018 murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, despite the conclusion of a long-awaited intelligence report released Friday that he ‘approved’ the operation, administration officials said.”

      When the press corps confronted Biden’s press secretary, Jen Psaki, questioning her over whether MBS could be “sanctioned personally,” she responded that something would be done, though without any indication of what that might be. She nevertheless offered this explanation, while insisting twice on the word “clear.” She said, “the president has been clear, and we’ve been clear by our actions that we’re going to recalibrate the relationship.” What could be clearer than the totally objective, scientific notion of recalibration?

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Recalibrate:

      Redefine a policy or relationship in such a way as to make the undermining of any existing moral principles appear justified in the pursuit of selfish interests

      Contextual Note

      Most Americans consider cold-blooded murder a moral fault as well as a criminal act. The idea of dealing with it by recalibrating a relationship might sound to some like a sick joke. How many people on death row in the US wouldn’t welcome the idea of recalibrating their relationship with the justice system? Considering that most of them — a majority of blacks, some of them later proven innocent — have not have benefited from the kind of rigorous investigation the Turkish government and the CIA carried out concerning the Khashoggi murder, the leniency of recalibration would certainly interest them.   

      The Guardian notes a slight contradiction with the moral stance Biden took concerning the Khashoggi murder during the campaign: “The decision to release the report and expected move to issue further actions represents the first major foreign policy decision of Joe Biden’s presidency, months after he vowed on the presidential campaign trail to make a ‘pariah’ out of the kingdom.” 

      This recalibration of attitude illustrates an interesting phenomenon in politics: the freedom opposition politicians have to invoke what resembles the truth followed by their tendency to equivocate as soon as they have their hands on the reins of power. “Recalibrate” deserves to be voted the Orwellian Newspeak word of the year.

      Historical Note

      To put things in perspective, Secretary of State Antony Blinken explained: “The relationship with Saudi Arabia is bigger than any one individual.” A lot of Americans, from Henry Ford to Joseph Kennedy and some of the most prominent US companies — IBM, Coca-Cola, Chase Manhattan, General Electric, Kodak, Standard Oil and Random House among others — felt exactly the same way about Nazi Germany. Why compromise a productive relationship simply because one man spouts heterodox ideas and has a tendency to kill people in the name of those ideas?

      The Washington Post quotes Blinken invoking Jen Psaki’s “recalibration” trope. In his press conference, he praised Joe Biden for moving “toward a promised ‘recalibration’ of the U.S.-Saudi relationship.” Oddly, the secretary of state seems to have forgotten that it wasn’t “one individual” who carried out the assassination, but a team of 15 who flew in and out of Istanbul for this specific effort.

      The Guardian realistically described how Mohammed bin Salman’s team culture works: “Prince Mohammed had ‘probably’ fostered an environment in which aides were afraid that they might be fired or arrested if they failed to complete assigned tasks, suggesting they were ‘unlikely to question’ the prince’s orders or undertake sensitive tasks without his approval.” As Hamlet once said of Denmark, “something is rotten in the state.” Like Biden and Blinken, Hamlet was reacting to a high-profile murder. Part of his quandary was that it wasn’t just about “one individual,” even though the Danish prince was focused on the man — his uncle — who had killed his father. 

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      As a political metaphor, the idea of recalibration may appear reassuring to some people thanks to its scientific ring, expressing an engineer’s objectivity in seeking to work with the most accurate measurements. But does it make any sense when what is at stake is a moral question, in this case literally of life and death? Or should we conclude that, for those who practice it, there are no moral questions in politics, only pragmatic ones, only questions that can be decided according to the unique criterion of “national interest?”

      The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the limits of purely “national” reasoning. The awareness of those limits will inevitably be challenged again over the next decade by the impending drama of climate change, possibly other pandemics and another global economic crash. The question of supply chains that the US encountered at the outbreak of the pandemic in 2020 and now concerning semiconductors demonstrates the absurdity of a world that has made sacrosanct the status of the nation-state. 

      Some kind of global system of cooperation — not just between nations and regions but between all manner of human groupings as well — must emerge if an economy now defined by the unique principle of technological exploitation of the earth’s resources is to persist. The ideal of growth that guides every national government is little more than a strategy of accelerated depletion of the world’s common patrimony. The very idea of national interest in a world of competitive nation-states has become a weapon of mass obliteration.

      The more technologically developed the world becomes, the more it needs to adopt some form of moral compass capable of constraining the decision-making of nations. Growth and job creation have become the only public values today’s nations are capable of putting forward. Their political imagination withers and dies as soon as they attempt to reason beyond these goals. These “public” goals are nothing more than the veneer on the surface of a powerful system dedicated to private gain.

      Such a system needs something more than simple recalibration if it is to survive.

      *[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