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      in World Politics

      Can Joe Biden Rewrite the Rules of the Road?

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      During his presidency, Donald Trump found a new way to keep the American public and its media alert. It was a kind of educational game called “Spot the Lie.” If the media had understood how the game worked, the nation and the world would have benefited. Instead, it tended to degenerate into a shouting match in which each side would shriek with increasing volume to express its indignation.

      What was special about his prevarication? It was systematic and provocative, attention-getting. Traditionally, US presidents lied quietly, covering their reprehensible acts in expressions of virtuous intentions. Even the most obvious lie of the 21st century — George W. Bush’s claim that Saddam Hussein was hiding a massive store of weapons of mass destruction — was presented as a concern for ensuring peace by preventing an imminent act of war by a mad Iraqi dictator. It turned out that both the madness and the capacity for war were on the American side. But nobody noticed because, well, the American military is by definition “a force for good.”

      The Post-Election Art of Drawing Hasty Conclusions

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      With the incoming Biden administration, there will be fewer obvious lies. Given President-elect Joe Biden’s limited rhetorical skills, there may even be moments when Americans have access to the true intentions of a government that ordinarily seeks to hide them.

      After the signature by 15 Asian nations of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) last week, Biden explained what would be behind US strategy after he becomes president on January 20, 2021. “We make up 25% of the world’s trading capacity, of the economy of the world,” he said. “We need to be aligned with the other democracies, another 25% or more, so that we can set the rules of the road instead of having China and others dictate outcomes because they are the only game in town.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Rules of the road:

      The prescription of behavior for a group of supposed equals that clearly favors the interests of one member of the group whose dominant status allows it to impose its values and preferred behaviors on other members of a group without having to consult an external authority or waste too much time negotiating among equals

      Contextual Note

      Leaders of hegemons rarely explicitly lay out their hegemonic agenda. No one could doubt the bold claim Biden has made about the “rules of the road.” The United States always seeks to set the rules rather than play by them. But his statement deviates from the truth when he compares the US attitude with China’s. When it’s about the US defining the rules, Biden uses the verb “set.” But when it’s China, he uses the verb “dictate.” After all, China is a communist dictatorship, so logically anything it does can be called dictating.

      That’s how clever diplomatic language works, at least in the hands of Democrats. They prefer to select the effective verb to instill the idea of good versus evil. Republicans prefer to use the language of moral judgment or downright insult. President Trump likes to call them purveyors of evil, “illegitimate” or even “shitholes.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      But the major difference between the rhetoric of the two parties is that the Republicans shy away from admitting the hard reality that results from the muscular use of power relationships. They prefer to present it as the logic of history, divine will or predestination that have put the US in the role of unique decision-maker for the rest of the world. The shining city on the hill spreads its light across the globe by virtue of being the shining city, not through its complex interplay with other nations. It has an existential quality that can no one can ever doubt.

      That is what Trump means by “America First.” He presented the slogan as if it turned around the idea that the US should decide to tend only to its own needs and not worry about what happens elsewhere in the world. But it also contained the idea that because America was “first” by virtue of its might, it produced the light that illuminated the rest of the world. It didn’t actually have to be good and fair to stand as a model for everything that was good and fair.

      The primary difference between these two interpretations of American exceptionalism lies in the respective rhetorical strategies rather than policy. That is why Biden’s foreign policy may not be very different from Trump’s in its overall effect on the rest of the world. It will be a variation on hegemonic rhetoric, but the military and financial base will be nearly identical. 

      Democrats believe that American exceptionalism, the success story of the nation, endows it with the authority to write the rules of the road for the rest of humanity. The Republicans see it as the result of writing the rules for themselves which they expect the rest of the world will naturally follow.

      Historical Note

      When, alluding to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the RCEP, Joe Biden compared the attitude of the US quite naturally seeking to “set the rules of the road” and the Chinese who “dictate outcomes.” The case can be made that he inverted the truth concerning the history of these two trade arrangements.

      When the TPP was still awaiting signature at the end of Barack Obama’s presidency, the BBC noted that the deal designed to put the US in the position to set the rules of the road was contested inside the US. The BBC reports: “US opponents have characterised the TPP as a secretive deal that favoured big business and other countries at the expense of American jobs and national sovereignty.” That highlights the problem Biden will be facing in many of his future decisions: how to define the US and its interests. In other words, who defines the rules? Is it big business or the American people?

      Commenting on the historical background of the “secretive deal,” Vox reported: “Negotiations over the TPP’s terms were conducted in secret, with well-connected interest groups having access to more information — and more opportunities to influence the process — than members of the general public.” Even Congress was refused full access to the terms of the draft.

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      In other words, when Biden refers to setting the rules of the road, it is anything but an openly negotiated procedure. In contrast, the RCEP was drafted conjointly and largely democratically by all the interested parties, which include some of the strongest allies of the US: Australia, Japan and South Korea. It is a lie of Trumpian proportions to suggest that the RCEP was dictated by the Chinese.

      Statements of that kind by the president-elect do not bode well for the future foreign policy we can expect from the Biden administration. Biden’s future secretary of state, Anthony Blinken, sounds refreshing when he more realistically characterizes the state of the world at a forum at the Hudson Institute in July: “Simply put, the big problems that we face as a country and as a planet, whether it’s climate change, whether it’s a pandemic, whether it’s the spread of bad weapons — to state the obvious, none of these have unilateral solutions. Even a country as powerful as the United States can’t handle them alone.” 

      Blinken’s approach to foreign policy is likely to be similar to Obama’s, which does indeed appear refreshing in comparison to Donald Trump’s. But it is likely to be a return to a certain form of wishing to write the rules alone, if not handling the problems alone. In an interview in July, Blinken regretted that, under Trump, the US had lost the ability to dictate the rules. “If we’re not doing a lot of that organizing in terms of shaping the rules and the norms and the institutions through which countries relate to one another,” he said, “then one of two things, either someone else is doing it and probably not in a way that advances our own interests and values or maybe just as bad, no one is and then you tend to have chaos and a vacuum that may be filled by bad things.”

      The problem Biden will face is that the world has changed. Unlike a few decades ago, few now believe the US has a divine right to “shape the rules” or the ability to stave off chaos.

      *[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 US Politics

      Why is Joe Biden considering this man to help fight the climate crisis?

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      It was a deceptively low-key occasion on Capitol Hill: an older man in a dark suit, talking into a TV camera about an energy report.According to his firm’s 362-page analysis, the fastest path to California’s climate goals included continuing to rely on fossil fuels. The analysis was funded by gas companies and groups related to them, but he wasn’t a lobbyist or industry consultant. Quite the opposite, he was the Obama administration’s well-respected energy secretary, Ernest Moniz.“We certainly have to get beyond … the climate deniers,” he said in the April 2019 interview with C-SPAN. “But we also have to get beyond what we think are often completely unrealistic proposals for the pace at which we can decarbonize.” Fighting climate change at the pace needed would require a “broad coalition,” he said – one that included the oil and gas industry.Moniz was wading into a dispute that will define how the new Biden administration tackles the crisis: can oil and gas companies be part of the solution? Or have they proven, with years of disinformation campaigns and efforts to slow climate action, that they will always stand in the way?As the Biden transition team wrestles with this question, it is already facing pressure from activists not to hire more people with fossil fuel ties, like Louisiana congressman Cedric Richmond, who will join Biden’s White House as a top adviser.In Moniz’s case:Moniz is on the board of one of the most polluting power companies in America, the Georgia-based Southern Company.
      His firm Energy Futures Initiative (EFI) conducted research paid for by Southern California Gas (SoCalGas), which a state consumer advocate has since argued should be fined for using customer money to oppose climate progress.
      Moniz presented the results at an event sponsored by Stanford University’s Natural Gas Initiative, which SoCalGas and other fossil fuel companies help fund as affiliate members. The initiative offers corporate members access to research “from inception to outcome”.
      EFI also partnered with Stanford researchers on a report that explored opportunities to capture climate emissions from fossil fuel operations. One of the funders was the industry group the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative.
      EFI’s advisory board is chaired by the former chief executive of British oil company BP, although it also includes distinguished climate experts and environmentalists.
      EFI’s California analysis neatly aligned with what SoCalGas had been arguing as the state tightened its climate goals. It found that gas power plants with technologies to capture their emissions would reduce climate pollution more than any other option, including renewable power. It suggested an all-of-the-above approach.While gas has helped the US cut its planet-heating emissions by replacing dirtier coal, it remains a major climate polluter that is linked with significant health problems.Collin Rees, a senior campaigner for Oil Change International said Moniz’s links to fossil fuels aren’t “a blip on his resume”.“It is his entire professional career for the last couple decades, which is deeply concerning,” Rees said. More

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      in US Politics

      Antony Blinken: Biden's secretary of state nominee is sharp break with Trump era

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      After reports first emerged on Sunday night that Antony Blinken would be US secretary of state in the Biden administration, one particular interview from his past began circulating on social media.It was a September 2016 conversation with Grover, a character from Sesame Street, on the subject of refugees, directed at American children who might have new classmates from faraway countries.“We all have something to learn and gain from one another even when it doesn’t seem at first like we have much in common,” Blinken told the fuzzy blue puppet.After four years of an administration that has separated migrant children from their parents and kept them in cages, Blinken’s arrival at the state department will mark a dramatic change, to say the least.While Mike Pompeo has remained a domestic politician throughout his tenure as secretary of state, giving the lion’s share of his interviews to conservative radio stations in the midwest, for example, Blinken is very much a born internationalist.He went to school in Paris, where he learned to play the guitar and play football (soccer), and harboured dreams of becoming a film-maker. Before entering the White House under Barack Obama, he used to play in a weekly soccer game with US officials, foreign diplomats and journalists, and he has two singles, love songs titled Lip Service and Patience, uploaded on Spotify.All those contacts and the urbane bilingual charm will be targeted at soothing the frayed nerves of western allies, reassuring them that the US is back as a conventional team player. The foreign policy priorities in the first days of a Biden administration will be rejoining treaties and agreements that Donald Trump left.There is little doubt that Blinken will be on the same page as Joe Biden. He has been at the president-elect’s side for nearly two decades. After working in Bill Clinton’s national security council, he became Biden’s chief foreign policy adviser in the Senate in 2002, as staff director on the foreign relations committee, and worked on Biden’s failed presidential bid in 2008.After Obama picked Biden as vice-president, Blinken returned to the White House as his national security adviser. His face can be seen at the back of the room in the famous photograph of Obama officials monitoring the raid that killed Bin Laden. More

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      in Elections

      President-elect Joe Biden will announce cabinet picks Tuesday

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      US president-elect Joe Biden will announce the first names chosen for his cabinet on Tuesday, the incoming White House chief of staff said – and is expecting a scaled-down inauguration celebration because of the risks of spreading coronavirus.In a sign that his transition team is pressing ahead swiftly – despite Donald Trump’s failure to concede the election and ongoing attempts to thwart the transition process – Ron Klain said on Sunday that the appointments were moving at a faster pace than the previous two administrations.“You’re going to see the first cabinet picks this Tuesday. But if you want to know what cabinet agencies they are, who’s going to be in those cabinet agencies, you’ll have to wait for the president-elect to say that himself on Tuesday,” he told ABC.Antony Blinken, a career diplomat who served as No 2 at the state department and as deputy national security adviser in the Obama administration, was Biden’s most likely pick to be secretary of state, according to reports on Sunday night by the New York Times and Reuters.It comes after Biden said on Thursday that he had already chosen his treasury secretary, hinting only that it is somebody who will be “accepted by all elements of the Democratic party”.Klain said that while parts of the transition are moving at “record setting pace”, there are limits to what the Biden team can do while the current administration continues to attempt to block the transition, the impacts of which “escalate every day”.He said Biden and vice-president-elect Kamala Harris are not getting access to intelligence briefings, coronavirus data or background checks for cabinet nominees and criticised US general services administration (GSA) administrator Emily Murphy, who has delayed ascertaining Biden’s win.“The law only requires her to find who is the apparent victor of the election and I can’t imagine there’s any dispute that Joe Biden is the apparent winner of the presidential election.”Klain said the president “has definitely set back the democratic norm here in the United States. He’s been doing that for four years and that’s ramped up since the election.”Asked about how the incoming administration plans to balance moving forward with holding the previous one accountable, he said the president-elect “is not going to tell the justice department who to investigate or who not to investigate.” On inauguration day, 20 January, the incoming president normally enjoys being received by the outgoing president at the White House, followed by the swearing-in in front of the Capitol, watched by the public on the National Mall and millions on television. There’s a special launch, a procession down Pennsylvania Avenue and the inaugural balls.Everything about Joe Biden’s celebrations are expected to be different in January, because of the ongoing pandemic.“We know people want to celebrate … we just want to try to find a way to do it as safely as possible,” Klain said.There is speculation that Trump will not participate at all.And that some events could be cancelled or will involve social distancing and mask-wearing with many obliged to watch an online stream instead of attend in person. More

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      in Elections

      Biden vows diverse administration – but first appointments are from his political circle

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      Joe Biden has vowed to make his administration the most diverse in American history with an array of people and political viewpoints in a party that has deep divisions. But so far the president-elect has made clear that prioritizes his own viewpoint.The former vice-president and incoming president is yet to announce his picks for various major cabinet agencies, but he has unveiled a big portion of his senior staff so far, and that batch of incoming top staffers are largely the gang of advisers Biden has kept close to him for years.That’s important because Biden’s picks for his administration are one of his most powerful tools for healing some of the fractures between the Democrats’ leftist and centrist wings and for guiding the party’s path forwards at a time of national crisis in the wake of the Trump era and the coronavirus pandemic.During a press conference on Thursday afternoon Biden offered a few hints of who he will nominate for treasury secretary – one of the most important offices he will fill. “It’s someone who will be accepted by all elements of the Democratic party, from progressive to moderate,” Biden said.That comment in itself narrowed the list of high-profile possibilities. It is unlikely to be a rock-the-boat selection like leftwing Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren, who would probably spark anxiety among the business community, or someone like JP Morgan Chase’s CEO, Jamie Dimon, a hypothetical candidate who would infuriate progressives.In other words Biden is showing that while he wants to have an inclusive administration, he’s also eager to take a somewhat middle-of-the-road approach as he navigates the party’s bickering factions.Similarly, Biden has decided so far to fill his White House senior staff with longtime advisers who are largely inoffensive to disparate wings of the Democratic party. He has appointed Ron Klain, his chief of staff while vice-president, to the same role as president. Jenn O’Malley Dillon, Biden’s general election campaign manager, will be deputy chief of staff. Mike Donilon, who served as counselor to Biden as vice-president, will reprise the same title at the White House. Steve Ricchetti, another former chief of staff to Biden, will be a counselor as well. Biden also picked the Louisiana congressman Cedric Richmond, his former campaign co-chairman, as a senior adviser. More

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      in US Politics

      'Dr B': the low-profile college educator set to break barriers as first lady

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      [embedded content]
      Jill Biden has gone to great lengths to keep her status as a political spouse under the radar from her students, to whom she is known simply as “Dr B”.
      During her eight years in the Obama administration as second lady (she preferred the title “captain of the vice squad”), Dr Biden continued to teach English composition at Northern Virginia Community College (Nova). She even requested that the Secret Service agents who accompanied her to work come in disguise as students.
      And when the 69-year-old becomes America’s next first lady, she will be the first to continue her professional career while in the role. But this time, when she returns to her day job in January, she may struggle to keep a low profile.
      Student Karolina Straznikiewicz, 27, was taught by Dr Biden before she went on leave at the beginning of the year to join her husband, President-elect Joe Biden, on the campaign trail. Straznikiewicz spent her first lesson trying to work out why her teacher seemed so familiar.
      “My brain was telling me that it’s so impossible that a second lady of the United States would teach in a community college around here … I am pretty sure that a lot of the students in the classroom had no idea who she was until the end of the semester.” More

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      in US Politics

      Biden's first staff appointments include five women and four people of color

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      Joe Biden, the US president-elect, made another sharp break from Donald Trump on Tuesday by naming a White House senior staff that “looks like America”, including several women and people of colour.Trump has been criticised for running the most white and male administration since Ronald Reagan. There are currently four women and 19 men in cabinet or cabinet-level positions. Picks for the federal judiciary are also dominated by white men.But Biden and Kamala Harris, who will be the first female and first Black vice-president, have promised to build a team to reflect shifting demographics. Tuesday’s first wave of appointments included five women and four people of colour.Jen O’Malley Dillon will be White House deputy chief of staff. The 44-year-old, who as campaign manager was the first woman to lead a winning Democratic presidential bid, will work under Ron Klain, anointed chief of staff last week.Cedric Richmond, a national co-chair of Biden’s campaign and former chair of the Congressional Black Caucus, will quit the House of Representatives to join as a senior adviser and director of the White House Office of Public Engagement.Dana Remus, the campaign’s top lawyer, will be senior counsel to the president. Longtime advisers Mike Donilon and Steve Ricchetti will be senior adviser and counsellor to the president respectively.Julie Chavez Rodriguez, one of Biden’s deputy campaign managers and the granddaughter of the farmworker union leader César Chávez, will be director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs. Annie Tomasini, currently Biden’s traveling chief of staff, will be director of Oval Office operations.In a statement, Biden’s transition team said: “These diverse, experienced, and talented individuals demonstrate President-elect Biden’s commitment to building an administration that looks like America.”It also quoted Biden as saying: “America faces great challenges, and they bring diverse perspectives and a shared commitment to tackling these challenges and emerging on the other side a stronger, more united nation.”The appointments reward many of the advisers who helped Biden beat Trump in the 3 November election. Biden won the national popular vote by at least 5.6m votes, or 3.6 points, and in the state-by-state electoral college secured 306 votes to 232.The announcement also reflected Biden’s determination to press ahead with a transition despite Trump’s increasingly tenuous effort to reverse the election.The former vice-president was due to discuss national security threats on Tuesday with his own advisers, rather than government officials, as the Trump administration has blocked him from receiving the classified briefings normally accorded to a president-elect.Emily Murphy, the general services administrator, has not yet recognised Biden as the “apparent winner”, which is needed to release funding and office space.Seeking to project calm, Biden told reporters on Monday: “I find this more embarrassing for the country, than debilitating for my ability to get started.”But he expressed frustration over the impact on his attempt to fight the coronavirus pandemic: “More people may die if we don’t coordinate … If we have to wait to 20 January to start that planning, it puts us behind over a month and a half. So it’s important that it be done, that there be coordination now or as rapidly as we can get it done.”Trump has not conceded and has repeatedly claimed without evidence he is the victim of widespread voter fraud. His campaign has filed multiple lawsuits in battleground states – without success. The president has remained defiant even as a minority of Republicans have said Biden should be considered president-elect.Election officials in both parties have said they see no evidence of serious irregularities.Trump campaign spokeswoman Erin Perrine was asked on Tuesday what evidence the campaign had for its claims. She told Fox News: “That’s part of what our pursuit is at this point … There’s no silver bullet here. It’s going to take a little bit of time.”One of Trump’s legal challenges was due a hearing on Tuesday in a Pennsylvania federal court, where another setback would probably kill off his already slim chances. US district judge Matthew Brann will hear arguments in a Trump lawsuit that seeks to block the state’s top election official from certifying Biden the winner.Pennsylvania officials have said the dispute only affects a small number of ballots in a state where Biden is projected to win by more than 70,000.Georgia is undertaking a manual recount. Its top elections official, secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, said in TV interviews the audit was almost complete and the results would be largely unchanged.Raffensperger also repeated his assertion that fellow Republicans, including Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, have pressured him to find ways to throw out legally cast votes.“I’ve always been a conservative Republican and I want to make sure we have a lawful process because I think integrity still matters,” he told CBS. “That’s what this audit is going to do.”Graham, a diehard Trump loyalist, denied the allegation. “No, that’s ridiculous,” he told reporters on Capitol Hill. “I talked to him about how you verify signatures.”Asked why a senator from South Carolina was involving himself in Georgia, Graham replied: “Because the future of the country hangs in the balance.”The Rev William Barber, co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival, tweeted: “Lindsey Graham trying to get [the Georgia secretary of state] to not count legal votes is not a surprise. Graham has supported voter suppression tactics for years.“Election rigging is real, but it doesn’t suppress the Republican vote. It’s of Black, brown, Native American, & poor voters.” More