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Scramble on to replace Neera Tanden after nomination met perfect storm
Sign up for the Guardian’s First Thing newsletterNeera Tanden’s decision to withdraw from consideration to serve as Joe Biden’s budget director marks the first major loss for the still young Biden administration, and sets off a scramble between various political factions to push through a new nominee.Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress thinktank, decided to withdraw her candidacy on Tuesday, in the face of a lack of support among senators needed to advance her through the confirmation process.“Unfortunately, it now seems clear that there is no path forward to gain confirmation, and I do not want continued consideration of my nomination to be a distraction from your other priorities,” Tanden wrote in a letter to Biden released by the White House. Tanden added that she appreciated “how hard you and your team at the White House has worked to win my confirmation”.Tanden was the first of Biden’s cabinet nominees to fail to make it through the confirmation process. New presidents don’t usually see all of their cabinet picks confirmed.But Tanden’s path was always more precarious than the rest. She is well known throughout the Democratic party as a combative figure who often engaged in Twitter fights and criticized both Republicans and Democrats. After her nomination she deleted over 1,000 tweets and in her hearings she said she regretted those criticisms, which included calling Senator Susan Collins of Maine “the worst” and tweeting that “vampires have more heart than Ted Cruz”, the Republican senator from Texas.But Tanden, a staunch Hillary Clinton ally, had also warred with prominent members of the progressive wing of the Democratic party and once allegedly punched Faiz Shakir, who would eventually become Senator Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign manager. Tanden has said she “pushed” him.Sanders, the chairman of one of the committees charged with handling Tanden’s nomination, also questioned large corporate and foreign donations to the Center for American Progress.But the lion’s share of critical questioning by senators was about Tanden’s various attacks.“Of course, your attacks were not just made against Republicans. There were vicious attacks against progressives, people who I have worked with, me personally,” Sanders said during the hearings.Tanden did have her fair share of support. Biden’s chief of staff, Ron Klain, said the White House was “fighting our guts out” to get Tanden confirmed and the US Chamber of Commerce backed her as well. Behind the scenes, Democratic officials continued to lobby senators to support her, even after Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a Democrat, announced his opposition to Tanden, citing her tweets and past conduct.Manchin has emerged during the Biden administration as, at times, the deciding figure on matters before the Senate. Other conservative Democrats, like Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, held back from announcing how she would vote. That decision did not inspire confidence in Tanden’s chances and illustrated the influence any senator – especially a conservative one – has in a Senate split 50-50 with Vice-President Kamala Harris as the tie-breaker.Republicans at moments seemed to revel in highlighting Tanden’s past tweets. Tanden’s allies argued that they were motivated by a mix of extreme hypocritical partisanship (where were they, Tanden’s allies grumbled, when Trump was tweeting?) and racism. Tanden was born to immigrant parents from India.But those senators also expressed eagerness to support one of the potential replacements – Shalanda Young, a veteran Hill staffer who is Black.“You know I’m going to vote for you,” Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the ranking Republican on the Senate budget committee, said on Tuesday during Young’s hearing to serve as deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget. “You’re highly qualified and I’m going to support you,” Graham added before pressing her on immigration policy.Similarly John Kennedy of Louisiana, one of the Senate’s more bombastic members, said at one point “you may be more than deputy. You may be the sheriff. I don’t expect you to comment on that.”Democratic senators stuck to their support of Tanden during Young’s hearing but after her nomination was pulled lawmakers began lobbying for Young.“We have worked closely with her for several years and highly recommend her for her intellect, her deep expertise on the federal budget and her determination to ensure that our budget reflects our values as a nation,” the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, majority whip, Jim Clyburn, and majority leader, Steny Hoyer, said in a statement on Wednesday. “Her leadership at the OMB would be historic and would send a strong message that this administration is eager to work in close coordination with members of Congress to craft budgets that meet the challenges of our time and can secure broad, bipartisan support.”Other names have been floated as possible OMB nominees and the Senate budget committee is now waiting for the White House to pick someone else. The names floated include Sarah Bianchi, a former director of policy for Biden; Gene Sperling, a former director of the council of economic advisers; Ann O’Leary, the former chief of staff to Governor Gavin Newsom of California.Whoever the White House nominates is poised to have an easier confirmation process than Tanden. More
Is the US Back Under Biden?
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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.custom-post-from .error{ display: block; color: #ff6461; order: 3 !important;}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.
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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
What an Afghan Peace Deal Could Look Like
In a recent interview with the BBC, President Ashraf Ghani insisted that the condition for peace in Afghanistan depends on the condition of the war. First, according to him, Afghan security forces need international support due to intensifying violence by armed groups, including the Taliban. Second, without addressing Taliban sanctuaries in Pakistan, the situation with the conflict will not change. “My message is those who provide sanctuaries to the Taliban should be talked very straight,” he said. “There’s so many fears of collapse into civil war.”
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His message is for the Biden administration to have serious talks with officials in Pakistan, the Taliban’s main supporter. Ghani added that the only way he would leave the office to compromise for peace is via an election, while the Taliban does not yet recognize elections as a legitimate political mechanism. The Taliban want Ghani to resign and for Afghanistan’s political system to change back to their Islamic emirate of the 1990s or something similar to it.
The Doha Deal
Since the first round of the intra-Afghan peace talks in September 2020, violence in Afghanistan has intensified, while the negotiations resumed just last week after a six-month delay. The Doha deal, signed by the Taliban and the Trump administration early last year in Qatar, has failed to stop the violence in the country. Shortly after his inauguration in January 2021, US President Joe Biden launched a review of the Doha deal to determine whether the Taliban have upheld their commitments to cut ties with other militant groups and engage in meaningful peace talks with the Afghan government.
Pakistan has urged the Biden administration to “persevere” with the Doha agreement and not attempt to amend it. The deal gave the Taliban the upper hand and undermined the Afghan government. The agreement excluded the Afghan government and allowed the Taliban to gain legitimacy, while also mandating that US and NATO troops leave the country within 14 months if militants uphold their end of the bargain. For Pakistan, while this is a step in the “right direction” for peace talks, as per Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, it also enhanced the Taliban’s position and made regime change in Kabul a real possibility.
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Although the war has a complicated domestic dimension, it is effectively a proxy conflict that Pakistan has waged against the Afghan government amidst perceived Indian influence in Afghanistan. From Pakistan’s point of view, Afghanistan has changed into an Indian playground and the Taliban are the only force that can secure Pakistani interests. As a result, the Afghan peace process also has a complicated regional dimension.
At the same time, the Taliban’s ideological system has proved to be inflexible for a democratic process that upholds citizens’ rights, leading to concerns about the Taliban seeking to build a new regime based on discrimination. Considering the strategic nature of proxy war, the history of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and the Taliban’s ideology, the following four scenarios are conceivable if the Biden administration underestimates the situation.
Scenario 1: A Civil War Without the Government
The Taliban insurgency has reduced the government’s territorial control, limiting it to urban cities and district centers. This has increased the likelihood of Taliban attacks on large cities.
In the first scenario, the Taliban would seek to conquer and control through violence, leading to the collapse of the government and a descent into all-out civil war. In such a situation, the ground is prepared for mass atrocities due to ethnic tension, poverty and the presence of other militias, such as the Islamic State-Khorasan, an affiliate of ISIS. Just imagine the war affecting cities like the capital Kabul with millions of people. Political crises are rife in Afghanistan, which would be exacerbated by the early withdrawal of NATO forces. Therefore, the pullout of foreign troops according to the Doha agreement’s timetable is a cause for alarm. Under the deal, all US and NATO troops are scheduled to leave the country by May 1.
This scenario is more likely to happen if the government is dismantled in the absence of a comprehensive peace agreement between the Afghan officials and the Taliban. There are growing calls for Ghani to step down to pave the way for an interim government that includes the Taliban. However, an interim administration without the presence of a peace deal — one that includes mechanisms to ensure it is upheld — is risky. Such a scenario makes it hard to keep the Afghan security forces united if another round of violence erupts under an interim administration. This would be especially the case if the international community does not have a strategy for securing such a fragile peace arrangement.
Scenario 2: A Civil War Despite the Government
Another danger is that the withdrawal of US and NATO forces will take place without a peace agreement between the Afghan government and the Taliban. In this scenario, the government would not completely collapse if it mobilizes anti-Taliban forces and receives foreign support, but violence would spread from rural areas to populated cities.
As a result, government officials would retreat to an area outside Kabul and continue their fight against militants as long as they have international recognition and receive support from foreign powers — possibly India, Russia and Iran. This situation is similar to what President Burhanuddin Rabbani’s government faced in the 1990s amidst an insurgency by Taliban militants. That administration withdrew from Kabul but continued its role in the conflict and retained international backing.
In the second scenario, the war takes on a local context, with violence in pockets around the country. In order to survive, the government would ally with local forces. The government would not have the ability to mount a viable challenge against the Taliban and other armed groups, and its role would largely be reduced to a symbolic one. At the same time, it would be extremely hard for the Taliban to conquer the whole country. Anti-Taliban forces — from the constituency of the old Northern Alliance — would still fight them.
Scenario 3: Parallel Balance With the Government
In the third scenario, the Taliban challenge the government through greater territorial control and contestation, but the government would not completely collapse. Instead, it would retain control of large cities and many other areas.
An example of a parallel balance is Hezbollah in Lebanon, where the Shia organization has both political and military wings. In practice, however, the Taliban have already achieved this by controlling 75 of 405 districts in Afghanistan and contested another 189. As soon as a ceasefire is reached, as per this scenario, the political landscape of some districts under Taliban control and others under government authority would be officially recognized.
Interestingly, both the government and the Taliban are not in favor of such a situation. The Taliban want complete control of Afghanistan, while the government wants the Taliban to be integrated into the current political system. Under this scenario, international assistance to the Afghan government could continue, but without Pakistan’s cooperation, nothing would change and the Taliban would push on with their insurgency. This scenario is likely if the US and other NATO members continue their support for the government.
Scenario 4: Maximum Balance From Within, But Without the Government
In the final scenario, military and political pressure is exerted on the government to accept a fragile peace agreement that meets the Taliban’s demands. The Taliban impose their type of political system, which gives them religious legitimacy and allows them to influence other political and social forces. A peace deal under the Taliban’s terms would enable them to eventually take over — or have the upper hand in — the legislature and the judiciary system. Besides, the Taliban are estimated to have tens of thousands of fighters and, under such a peace deal, they would either join the security forces or remain armed as parallel forces ready to take action, if necessary.
This scenario may seem like a soft conquest, but it could easily turn violent. The international community’s departure from Afghanistan and the unrealistic optimism about the Taliban’s ideological position and proxy relations may contribute to such a situation. Pakistan supports this version of a peace agreement to place the Taliban in Afghanistan’s polity to have a dominating position. This scenario is not acceptable for many people in Afghanistan and could create a fragile situation that would likely lead to violence at some point.
Moving Forward for a Durable Peace
A durable peace arrangement is only likely when both sides consider several key factors. These include what a possible peace agreement would look like, its implementation, what the future political system would involve and how citizens’ rights are ensured.
First, there is a need to put pressure on Pakistan to take action against Taliban sanctuaries inside that country. At the very least, Pakistan must ensure there is a reduction in violence and that the Taliban are flexible when it negotiates with the Afghan government. Otherwise, it is hard to imagine a sustainable peace in the context of a proxy war. At the same time, Afghanistan should be neutral when it comes to regional politics, and its future should not depend on the rivalry between India and Pakistan.
Second, a power-sharing process with the Taliban should be based on transparency. A peace agreement must be mutually agreed and include multiple stages of implementation and international monitoring. However, a power-sharing arrangement should be part of the peace agreement, not the other way around. The implementation of power-sharing before a peace agreement is highly risky and could lead to the collapse of the political order.
Third, citizens’ and women’s rights and democratic legitimacy should be the basis of the future political system. Otherwise, in a country as diverse as Afghanistan, sustainable peace is not possible.
Fourth, a political system that focuses on the separation of powers is necessary. Ensuring that political power is not concentrated in one party’s hands, such as the Taliban’s, would protect Afghanistan from the misuse of power.
Therefore, to ensure peace in Afghanistan and the responsible withdrawal of foreign troops, it is crucial for the Biden administration to consider the implication of the war’s proxy dynamics on peacemaking efforts. When it comes to the domestic context, without considering the country’s sociopolitical diversity and citizens’ rights, it would be extremely hard to think about lasting peace.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
Serious Politics Is Not About Recalibration
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.
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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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.custom-post-from .error{ display: block; color: #ff6461; order: 3 !important;}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
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Joe Biden says his hands are tied on a $15 minimum wage. That's not true | David Sirota
When a Republican is president, Democratic politicians, pundits and activists will tell you that the presidency is an all-powerful office that can do anything it wants. When a Democrat is president, these same politicians, pundits and activists will tell you that the presidency has no power to do anything. In fact, they will tell you a Democratic president cannot even use the bully pulpit and other forms of pressure to try to shift the votes of senators in his own party.A tale from history proves this latter myth is complete garbage – and that tale is newly relevant in today’s supercharged debate over a $15 minimum wage.In that debate so far, we have seen Democratic senators prepare to surrender the $15 minimum wage their party promised by insisting they are powerless in the face of a non-binding advisory opinion of a parliamentarian they can ignore or fire.That explanation is patently ridiculous and factually false, so Democratic apologists are starting to further justify the surrender by suggesting that even if the party kept a $15 minimum wage in the Covid relief bill, conservative Democrats such as Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema would block it anyway.The White House itself is now falling back on the idea that it doesn’t have the votes to do much of anything, insinuating that Joe Biden – who occupies the world’s most powerful office – somehow has no power to try to change the legislative dynamic. And this spin is being predictably amplified across social media.To be sure, there is no guarantee that Manchin or Sinema could be moved. Maybe they couldn’t, but maybe they could, considering they have both previously supported bills to increase the minimum wage. And we know they may be sensitive to pressure. After all, Manchin recently freaked out and whined that “no one called me” when Vice-President Kamala Harris dared to do one straightforward interview with a West Virginia television station.Whether such pressure ultimately works, the point is indisputable: it is laughable and preposterous to argue that a newly elected president has zero power to even try to shift the dynamic.And yet, whether you call this all deliberate deception or learned helplessness, this fantastical myth of the Powerless President will inevitably be used to shield Biden from criticism for abandoning his pledge to fight for a $15 minimum wage.The apologism is particularly absurd because unlike his predecessor Barack Obama, who was a relative newcomer to politics, Biden’s major selling point was that he knows “how to make government work”. The guy explicitly pitched himself as the best Democratic presidential candidate by suggesting that in an era of gridlock, he knows how to make the Democratic agenda a reality and Get Things Done™, like master of the Senate Lyndon Baines Johnson.That’s where LBJ himself comes in to destroy the narrative that Democratic presidents in general – and Biden specifically – are inherently helpless.‘Lyndon told me to’In 1964, Johnson was trying to pass Medicare, but two conservative Democratic senators threatened to take down the entire legislation over a tax issue. In a story flagged by economist Stephanie Kelton, the New York Times noted that months before that legislation passed: “Opponents proposed a large and popular increase in Social Security benefits (and taxes) which would have made passage of new Medicare taxes almost impossible. At the last minute, Senators George Smathers of Florida and Russell Long of Louisiana, both Democrats but Medicare opponents, switched and voted to save Medicare. ‘Lyndon told me to,’ Senator Smathers explained.”The pivotal story was recounted in more detail in The Heart Of Power by Harvard University’s David Blumenthal (a former Obama administration official) and Brown University’s James Morone. They noted that presidents can play a particularly unique role in these situations, and they warn against presidents who refuse to leverage their offices to push their agendas:
Johnson knew there was an indispensable role that only he could play: he could best publicize the idea, build support, jawbone interest groups into line, and organize (and lobby) the congressional coalition. When reporters asked Senator George Smathers (D-FL) why he had switched his vote and salvaged the administration’s Medicare proposal in 1964, he responded, simply, “Lyndon told me to.” Presidents win complicated reforms by doing what the office of the presidency is uniquely designed for – publicizing and persuading …
There is, of course, a danger at the other extreme – that of the disengaged executive. The president chooses his analysts, gives them directions, and decides when the debate is over. The staff always knows when the boss has lost interest – and the issue, no matter how well staffed, is probably doomed.
There has been a lot of dishonesty and deception floating around Democratic Washington these days. There was the lie two months ago that $2,000 checks would be coming “immediately” to a desperate nation struggling through a pandemic. There is the lie about the parliamentarian supposedly being the reason the $15 minimum wage is stalled. There is once again the lie of a forthcoming “public option”, which Democrats promised but which is barely being discussed at all, and is not part of the Covid relief legislation.But the LBJ story shows that the mendacious narrative of a helpless Democratic president is the most pernicious lie of all.‘Fighting our guts out’ v pre-emptive surrenderIf this lie about a Powerless President seems familiar, that’s because it was trotted out during the last Democratic presidency, when Barack Obama refused to lift a finger to pressure similarly conservative Democratic senators to support a wildly popular public insurance option or a union card check initiative that he explicitly promised. He had enormous congressional majorities and a huge election mandate, but didn’t bother to go to Democratic states to build Democratic voter pressure against recalcitrant Democratic senators.On the contrary, Obama’s chief of staff berated progressives trying to pressure conservative Democrats over health care reform and Obama simply surrendered. Meanwhile, obsequious liberal pundits scoffed at a so-called “Green Lantern Theory”, mocking those who suggested that the most powerful man on Earth has any power to influence elected officials in his own party. Obama is still pretending he couldn’t do anything.Now we see this same Powerless President narrative in the minimum wage fight – and if you look closely, the Biden administration is all but admitting it’s a lie.After all, the White House continues to say it is “fighting our guts out” for Neera Tanden’s nomination, even though it might not have enough Senate votes for her confirmation. And yet, the same White House is simultaneously retreating on the minimum wage, seemingly unwilling to force a floor vote on the issue, even though presidential pressure, legislative brinkmanship, and negotiation could change the outcome.In the Tanden situation, in fact, the Biden team is acting like a White House’s power of persuasion and legislative arm twisting can potentially move votes for something a president cares about – in this case, the nomination of a Washington insider to a fancy White House job.The real story, then, is that Biden seems unwilling to use the same influence to push as hard as possible for a minimum wage increase that would boost the pay of millions of Americans during an economic emergency.He has the power to at least try – he just seems unwilling to.David Sirota is a Guardian US columnist and an award-winning investigative journalist. He is an editor at large at Jacobin, and the founder of the Daily Poster. He served as Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign speechwriter More
