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      in World Politics

      Influence Has Become Democracy’s Influenza

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      Two months after the departure of Donald Trump, the world is seeking to understand the contours of the new administration’s still hesitating foreign policy. US President Joe Biden made a bold step forward this week when he vowed to pursue the fantasy of Russiagate, the Democratic equivalent of QAnon. He may fear that without the Russian bugbear, MSNBC, the news channel that contributed so effectively to his election, will see its audience plummet even further than in the weeks since the inauguration. Russiagate alone kept MSNBC’s audience hooked through four years of Donald Trump.

      CNBC delves into the private thoughts of a president who now apparently feels empowered to judge the moral status of other leaders: “President Joe Biden says he believes Russian leader Vladimir Putin is a killer with no soul.” Biden intends to make the Russian president “pay a price” for interfering in the 2020 US election.

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      Biden’s remarks followed a report issued by US intelligence that included the following observation: “A key element of Moscow’s strategy this election cycle was its use of people linked to Russian intelligence to launder influence narratives including — misleading or unsubstantiated allegations against President Biden — through US media organizations, US officials, and prominent US individuals, some of whom were close to former President Trump and his administration.”

      One may forgive the incoherence of the author’s punctuation, but no reasonable reader can fail to deplore the confusion of the charges, highlighted by the use of phrases such as “people linked to” and “some of whom.” And then there is the semantic enormity of the phrase, “launder influence narratives.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Influence narrative:

      Anything any politician or diplomat of any nation happens to utter in speech or writing. The basis of all political discourse.

      Contextual Note

      In his book, “The Ultimate Goal,” former Indian spy chief Vikram Sood explores the way governments and their intelligence arms build and promote their self-interested narratives. Like a modern Machiavelli, Sood offers today’s princes the basic recipe: “Manage narratives to manage your destiny … tell your story first, any other story thereafter will only be a reaction.” That sums up the business of the CIA. The fact that US intelligence operatives want people to feel shocked that Russia might be using “influence narratives” reveals more about the CIA and its belief in the naivety of the US public than it does about Russia. The report itself is a perfect example of an “influence narrative.”

      Covering the same topic for The Washington Post, Ellen Nakashima confusingly repeats the CIA’s metaphor of laundering when she cites the report’s claim that Russians used “Ukrainians linked to Russian intelligence to ‘launder’ unsubstantiated allegations against Biden through U.S. media, lawmakers and prominent individuals.” “Launder,” in this context, is clearly a metaphor in spy language borrowed from the idea of “money laundering,” the act of pushing dirty money through indirect channels to return to the economy with a clean appearance. 

      Embed from Getty Images

      It may seem odd to apply a metaphor borrowed from the banking world and apply it to the hyperreal field of political narrative. But given the intelligence community’s well-documented predilection for dirty information — otherwise known as lies — it should hardly surprise us that the masters of plots and subplots see the public narrative as something that needs to be laundered. Sood, after all, tells us that the political language in any official narrative “is designed to make lies sound truthful and to give an appearance of solidity to the pure wind.”

      Since the idea of “laundered narrative” belongs specifically to spy vocabulary, it may seem disconcerting that Washington Post journalists have uncritically adopted the term and feel no need to explain what it means. Could it be that they are corrupted by their incestuous relations with the spymasters in Langley, Virginia, who feed them much of their most valuable content and which they reprint uncritically? In contrast with The Post, Al Jazeera took the liberty of substituting a different verb, writing: “Moscow sought to ‘push influence narratives’ that included misleading or unsubstantiated claims.” 

      “Launder” has become part of The Post’s standard vocabulary. In September 2020, during the presidential election campaign, Post columnist Josh Rogin had used the term concerning the same claims about Moscow’s interference. According to Rogin, Democratic leaders demanded “a briefing based on concerns that members of Congress were being used to launder information as part of a foreign interference operation.”

      This pushes the accusation a little further by supposing that the members of Congress referred to were actively involved in making the dirty information look clean. But that’s exactly how the fabricated Russiagate narrative is designed to play out: Putin’s accomplices and useful idiots can be found under every table. Just like in the good ol’ days of Joe McCarthy. After all, if the narrative tells us there’s a threat, we really do need to feel threatened. That’s the CIA and the media doing their job. Who doesn’t remember all the al-Qaeda sleeper cells that populated every American city following 9/11?

      Historical Note

      The website Strategic Culture offers a succinct explanation of the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird that permitted it to infiltrate domestic media in the US. The journalist, Wayne Madsen, writes: “A major focus of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency from its very inception was the penetration of the news media, including the assignment of CIA agents to the newsrooms and editorial offices of America’s largest media operations, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, Hearst Newspaper, NBC News, ABC News, CBS News, and other major newspapers and broadcast networks.” That has been ever since one of the harder components of US soft power.

      This week, Matt Taibbi interviewed the famous whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, who, in 1971, leaked the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times, exposing the embarrassing truth about the war in Vietnam that had been carefully hidden from the media. Taibbi recounts how “Ellsberg described a vicious cycle, in which leaders lie pervasively, then learn to have so much contempt for the public that swallows those lies, that they feel justified in lying more.”

      In its own dissemination of the content of the intel report released this week, The New York Times admits that the “report did not explain how the intelligence community had reached its conclusions about Russian operations during the 2020 election.” The report itself explains: “The Intelligence Community rarely can publicly reveal the full extent of its knowledge or the specific information on which it bases its analytic conclusions, as doing so could endanger sensitive sources and methods.” In other words, don’t ask for evidence, you won’t get it. Glenn Greenwald reminds his readers that when, last October, the story broke concerning Hunter Biden’s laptop that intel attributed to Moscow’s meddling, the FBI had already “acknowledged that it had not found any Russian disinformation on the laptop.”

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      When the same discredited story reappeared months later with no significant changes and still with zero evidence, instead of casting doubt on the entire story, the obedient media interpreted it as confirmation of the original narrative. What better illustration of Vikram Sood’s principle, “tell your story first, any other story thereafter will only be a reaction”?

      Perhaps the most neglected dimension of this debate concerns the official role of intelligence. A month after John F. Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, former President Harry Truman complained in an op-ed for The Washington Post that the CIA — an agency he had created — had betrayed its straightforward mission of gathering information to clarify the president in his decision-making. Truman insisted that “the most important thing was to guard against the chance of intelligence being used to influence or to lead the President into unwise decisions.” When Operation Mockingbird under the direction of Cord Meyer was launched during Dwight Eisenhower’s presidency, the CIA had not only begun focusing on influencing the president, it realized that the best way of influencing executive decisions was to control the narrative that the media would share with the public.

      The result is visible today, though no public figure will admit it. Democracy itself is engulfed within an elaborate system coordinated between the intelligence community, vested interests and the commercial media that generates and disseminates an endless stream of influence narratives.

      *[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

      China and the Perils of Bipartisanship

      by

      Not a single congressional Republican voted for the recent $1.9 trillion stimulus package. Not even the so-called moderate Republicans, the handful who backed the second impeachment of former US President Donald Trump, deigned to support an economic package that helps Americans hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. The entire Republican caucus didn’t just snub the Democrats. They ignored the Republican mayors, as well as 41% of Republican voters, who approved of the legislation.

      Naturally, the unified Republican caucus complained that President Joe Biden was not displaying his promised bipartisanship. It didn’t seem to occur to them that bipartisanship is a two-way street. How soon they’ve forgotten that nearly every Democrat in both houses voted for the Trump administration’s initial bailout package in March 2020.

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      Nevertheless, the Biden administration remains eager to find common ground with Republican legislators. The president has high hopes that he can attract Republican support for an infrastructure bill this summer, given that rebuilding American bridges, highways and the like was a priority for the previous administration.

      But here’s a truly troubling scenario. Casting around for another unifying topic, the Biden team has seized upon China. Democrats and Republicans alike are concerned about what China is doing these days. There is bipartisan disgust over what’s happening in Hong Kong and Xinjiang. Hawks in both parties have long warned about Beijing’s actions in the South China Sea. Despite wildly different economic ideologies, Democrats and Republicans have joined hands in their opposition to Chinese trade and currency policies, cavalier approach to intellectual property rights and efforts to dominate markets in the Global South.

      On the face of it, however, the bill that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is starting to pull together is just another infrastructure initiative. It is meant “to shore up U.S. supply chains, expand American production of semiconductors, create 5G networks nationwide and pour billions into investments into U.S. manufacturing companies and hubs, among other proposals,” according to The Washington Post.

      Embed from Getty Images

      But it’s not just infrastructure. The measure is specifically designed to bolster the full-spectrum US fight against China. “Hating China is a big bipartisan thing, and Schumer has the opportunity to take ownership of being against China,” points out Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the right-wing American Action Forum.

      According to the most benign reading of this bipartisanship, the Biden administration will be manufacturing an anti-Chinese version of the Sputnik moment when, in 1957, the Soviet launch of the first artificial satellite prompted a frenzy of US government spending on science and technology to catch up to the Russians. “The danger China poses could fundamentally reorder U.S. attitudes toward government’s role in domestic economic growth, research and development in ways that leave the United States stronger,” writes liberal columnist E.J. Dionne.

      A robust industrial policy is indeed preferable to, say, the tariffs that the Trump administration levied against Chinese products. If fear of China overcomes the conservative distaste for government interventions in the economy, should progressives really be looking this particular gift horse in the mouth?

      Full Court Press

      The Quad is the latest multilateral mechanism through which the United States is putting pressure on China. The four countries — the United States, India, Japan and Australia — all have their separate beefs with Beijing. But last week was the first time that the heads of these four states met as part of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, which was set up in 2007.

      The statement the four leaders recently published in The Washington Post makes no mention of China. It’s all about cooperating on climate, the pandemic and strengthening democracy. But that’s just being diplomatic. As Alex Ward writes in Vox, China has “gotten into a deadly fight over a disputed border with India, started a trade war with Australia, hacked the US government, and for years used its might to push Japan around on economic and military matters.” Trump tried to rally the four countries behind his own anti-China agenda. But his efforts were compromised by a suspicion in many quarters that he’d just as soon negotiate a deal with China behind the Quad’s back as coordinate a united front.

      The current president, by contrast, has moved steadily away from a preference to engage China. “Biden had to be reprogrammed on China” during the presidential campaign, one of his advisers said. This reprogramming explains Biden’s harsher tone during the election, such as calling Chinese leader Xi Jinping “a thug.”

      As president, Biden has been careful to sound notes of both amicability and threat. Cooperation to deal with the climate crisis is certainly a possibility. But promoting deals with China is not going to win the new president support in Congress or, for that matter, with the American public. China’s unfavorability rating rose to 79% in a recent Gallup poll, its worst showing in more than four decades. A shift has taken place in just the last couple of years. According to a Pew Research Center poll, 67% of Americans now have “cold” feelings toward China, compared to only 46% in 2018.

      The appointment of Kurt Campbell as the Indo-Pacific coordinator at the National Security Council (NSC) indicates the direction of the administration’s new take on Asia. Campbell was a key architect of the “Pacific pivot” under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the Obama administration. He’s not going to play quite the anti-China role that Matt Pottinger did on Trump’s NSC, but he’s a firm believer in strengthening bilateral alliances and multilateral coordination to contain China.

      In a January 2021 piece in Foreign Affairs, Campbell channeled Henry Kissinger in asserting the need for the US to restore a “balance of power” in the region. What that really means is that the US, with the help of its friends, must push back against China to reassert its own Pacific authority, both militarily and economically. Practically, Campbell explains, this means that:

      “Although Washington should maintain its forward presence, it also needs to work with other states to disperse U.S. forces across Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean. This would reduce American reliance on a small number of vulnerable facilities in East Asia. Finally, the United States should encourage new military and intelligence partnerships between regional states, while still deepening those relationships in which the United States plays a major role—placing a ‘tire’ on the familiar regional alliance system with a U.S. hub and allied spokes.”

      Over the years, China has steadily eroded US power not only in Asia but internationally. It used the anti-globalism of the Trump years to expand its influence in international institutions such as the United Nations and its associated bodies like the World Health Organization. Where It has encountered difficulties in expanding its influence, such as with international financial institutions, it has simply created its own. Shortly after Biden’s election, China joined the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which includes the countries of Southeast Asia, plus Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Japan). This move, plus Beijing’s recent investment agreement with the European Union and President Xi’s announcement that China would also consider joining a modified Trans-Pacific Partnership, suggests an economic counteroffensive to the US ramping up of multilateral security arrangements.

      These moves have not gone unnoticed. On the eve of their first visit to Asia this week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin III wrote in The Washington Post, “If we don’t act decisively and lead, Beijing will.”

      The Biden administration’s decision to focus on beefing up US economic competitiveness, particularly in the tech sector, is in some ways an admission of defeat. China has outmaneuvered the United States in the global economy. The only way Washington can compete at the moment is by throwing its weight around militarily and trying to play catch-up on the home front.

      Is China a Useful Threat?

      It’s hard to argue with the importance of investing in critical US industries. Republicans and laissez-faire economists generally oppose such a policy of picking winners and losers in the marketplace, except when it comes to the military-industrial complex. Only a large external threat can move such ideologues to accept the obvious: governments can and should shape markets.

      But here are some problems with hitching this industrial policy to the “China threat.” The global economy needs an overhaul to address the climate crisis, rampant economic inequality, automation and other developments. This is no time for the US to turn its economic relationship with China into a Cold War competition. Sure, let the two countries compete over who makes the best laptop computer, but cooperation is essential for developing new rules for the global economy. A robust industrial policy doesn’t preclude cooperation, unless it feeds into a rancor and a parochialism that makes cooperation near to impossible.

      The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the fragility of global supply chains, with the collapse of international trade and countries initially competing for scarce medical equipment. This is not a new problem, however. Shelley Rigger writes in her 2013 book on Taiwan about a moment “in 1999 when a power transmission tower on a remote mountain in central Taiwan toppled, blacking out the island’s high-tech industry for a day. The interruption nearly doubled the world price of memory chips and the supply of TFT-LCD flat screens took six months to return to normal.” Natural (and unnatural) disasters can wreak havoc on the supply of essential components.

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      Ensuring an indigenous supply of computer chips may well protect the US in the short term, but it does little to address the underlying problem of supply chains. A return to a time when every country produced all of its essentials or went without is not really an option, considering the importance of global trade routes going back to the Silk Road and even before. Reshoring and relocalization are both essential in this age of climate crisis. But a reordering of the global economy that accommodates such changes should be a matter for coordination, not Cold War competition.

      In addition, an industrial policy that prioritizes gaining a competitive edge over China could overshadow the other major focus of the Biden administration, namely reducing the national and global carbon footprints. High-tech products often rely on key outputs of the extraction industry, like cobalt and lithium. An industrial policy built on minimizing carbon emissions and the use of rare minerals, rather than besting China, would pick very different economic winners and losers.

      When it comes to foreign policy, bipartisanship is not necessarily a virtue. The two major US parties came together around waging the Vietnam War, confronting the Soviet Union during the Cold War and fighting “terrorism” in the wake of September 11. The first failed, the second was outrageously expensive and nearly ended in nuclear apocalypse, and the third led the country into the infamous “forever wars.”

      Selectively challenging China over its human rights record, its overreach in the South China Sea or the conduct of its businesses around the world (like this fish meal operation in Gambia) is appropriate. Going all out in a military, economic and cultural competition with the Asian superpower — and forging a wafer-thin bipartisan consensus to do so — is the height of folly.

      *[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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      White Trash, White Privilege

      by

      I grew up in southern Bavaria in the 1960s. I started formal education at the age of six at the local Volksschule — the people’s school. Quite frankly, I don’t remember much about this time. Among the few things I do remember is the warning my parents gave me on my way to school to keep away from the Rs. The Rs were a couple of kids from the same family, one of whom happened to be in my class. They came from the “bad” side of town, the Glasscherbenviertel. In my hometown, this was an area located behind a horse and motorcycle race track, a place where respectable citizens wouldn’t want to be caught dead. Those who lived there were dismissed as Grattler — uncouth, unsavory characters better avoided. And avoid them we did, if only not to run the danger of getting beaten up.

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      In our little town, the Rs were the epitome of what across the Atlantic is referred to as “white trash.” At the time in Germany, there was hardly anyone who looked “different,” so “white trash” would have made no sense whatsoever. They were German trash, and everybody knew it. In my immediate neighborhood, there was a woman who had three “illegitimate” children, all of them girls, all of them with a reputation of being tomboys. My parents, of course, told me I better keep my distance. I did, if only to avoid being bombarded with stones — the weapon, at the time, of the weaker sex — and, of course, out of fear of being associated with German trash.

      America’s Outcasts

      These are some of the reminiscences, images and thoughts that recently crossed my mind while reading parts of Nancy Isenberg’s “White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America.” Released in 2016, a few months before the presidential election, the book is as pertinent — if not more so — today as it was at the time it was published. This is the story of the outcasts of American society, the vagrants and “crackers,” the rednecks and the “deplorables” who “have remained vilified, shunned, targeted and kept apart, both physically — in poorhouses and trailer parks, through eugenic science and discriminatory public policy — and in the nation’s cultural imagination, where they have inspired mockery, kitsch and unceasing grimaces.”  

      For anyone who has ever watched an episode of “The Jerry Springer Show” knows what I’m talking about. With 28 seasons and around 4,000 episodes, it was not only one of America’s most successful TV series but also an export hit that exposed the rest of the world to the other side of America in the crudest way. The show was so successful because it systematically brought out some of the worst in human nature while at the same time fulfilling the “audience’s need to feel superior.” It reinforced age-old stereotypes that dismissed a part of America’s white population as “incestuous and sexually promiscuous, violent, alcoholic, lazy and stupid” — stereotypes, as Isenberg put it, that “remain with us until today.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      A case in point is the methamphetamine epidemic that the American Drug Enforcement Administration in 2003 characterized as “the most dangerous drug problem of small-town America.” In fact, what distinguished meth was that the drug was most prevalent in rural areas in the country’s heartland, where it was “burning a hole,” as Rolling Stone magazine put it, “through rural America.” What also distinguished it was that, unlike, for instance, crack cocaine, which is predominantly associated with inner cities and people of color, meth was largely characterized as a white-trash addiction. As Frank Keating, the former governor of Oklahoma, put it in 1999, meth was “a white trash drug — methamphetamines largely are consumed by the lower socio-economic element of white people. And I think we need to shame it, just like crack cocaine was a black-trash drug and is a black trash drug.”

      The same applies to a certain extent to what Joshua Wilkey, in his blog This Appalachia Life, has called the “white-trashification of the opioid crisis.” Wilkey’s charges the political establishment in Washington with not giving “two shits” about the crisis, at least as long as it affects primarily the rural poor in depressed areas such as the Appalachians. At least two reasons account for this: first, the notion that addiction “is simply the result of stupid people making poor choices” and, second, that since the crisis “largely targets poor and rural areas, there’s less urgency on the part of urban elites to advocate for solutions.” To put it more brutally, white trash just doesn’t matter, if only because it does not conform to the dominant narrative — in which whiteness represents the “default racial norm” — that serves as the justification for white socioeconomic dominance.

      White Privilege

      At the same time, the trope poses a challenge to the notion of white privilege, for white trash is a term that racializes whiteness by denigrating those dismissed as such “in race specific terms.” One way to get out of this quandary is to relabel a clearly derogatory racialized epithet as “pseudo-racialization.” For the guardians of this type of wokeness — largely derived from critical race theory prevalent today in American academia and the chattering classes — this might sound reassuring. It shouldn’t, at least if wokeness is taken seriously. It should not be forgotten that wokeness is defined as “a state of being aware, especially of social problems such as racism and inequality.”

      The derogation, denigration and disparagement of, if not outright contempt for, America’s white underclass, mocked and dismissed as white trash, certainly counts for an egregious example of inequality alongside a range of dimensions — economic, social and cultural. White trash is the Lumpenproletariat of our globalized world, structurally irrelevant and, therefore, largely ignored — at least as long as it doesn’t become a threat to society as it did during the meth epidemic.

      Worse still, as the notion of pseudo-racialization implies, the distress and despair of the white underclass are easily dismissed since its problems fall through the dominant grievances grid that today is almost exclusively informed by and defined in racial terms. What Ernesto Laclau has once called the “internal antagonistic frontier” that informs today’s hegemonic wokeness discourse runs between whites and everybody else. In this discourse, whiteness is automatically associated with privilege and entitlement. The white maligned underclass might be underprivileged or worse, but, being white, it is automatically subsumed under notions of privilege and entitlement for no other reason than that one so happens to be white.

      The case of Oumou Kanoute, a black student at Smith College, which was recently featured in The New York Times, illustrates the point. Here even Michelle Goldberg, in her recent defense of critical race theory, had to acknowledge that something went horribly wrong, that this was a case of “woke overreach.” Smith College is one of the most prestigious — and expensive — liberal arts colleges in the US. Students attending the college are the epitome of entitlement, given the prohibitive cost of tuition and board that easily amounts to nearly $80,000 a year. An article in The Guardian from 2016 hit the nail on the head when it pointed out that “at the best colleges there are very few low-income students, except for a few lucky enough to grow up in New York City, Los Angeles or Boston.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      As The New York Times account rightly put it, the Smith College incident is a story of the clash between race and class. Once again, class came out at the short end of the stick, resulting in the destruction of the reputations of a number of employees, all of them white, all of them part of today’s easily dispensable service class — janitors, security guards — who were labeled as racists and as carriers of white privilege. Yet, as a subsequent commentary piece in The New York Times put it, “the narrative of racist harassment of a minority student at an elitist white institution turned out to be comprehensively false.” Does it matter? Apparently not, for as the initial report by The Times put it, the whole story “highlights the tensions between a student’s deeply felt sense of personal truth and facts that are at odds with it.” In short, something must be true because you think it is true. This might explain why even after an investigation exonerated the employees of racial bias, they received, unlike the student, no apology from the administration. The white underclass apparently is not worthy of recognition.

      Dispensable Service Class

      The incident happened in 2018. In the meantime, Oumou Kanoute has moved on to Columbia University, another elite university. The fate of the targets of her accusations is largely unknown. But then, who cares about janitors and security guards? This is hardly a rhetorical question. According to data from the Kaiser Family Foundation, in 2019, the white poverty rate was 9%. This amounts to more than 17 million Americans. Poverty rates were disproportionately high (around 15%) in West Virginia and Kentucky, two Appalachian states, which were also among the top states when it comes to opioid prescription rates.

      The impact was devastating. In 2017, the opioid-related death rate in Appalachian counties was more than 70% higher than in the rest of the country: 24 versus 14 deaths per 100,000 residents. At the same time, the rate of Kentucky’s neonatal abstinence syndrome was more than three times higher than the national rate, West Virginia’s more than eight times.

      The testimony, recently published in a medical journal, of a physician who grew up in eastern Kentucky provides a first-hand account of the misery and despair the epidemic has wrought. Eastern Kentucky, a coal-mining area at the foot of the Appalachian hills, is among the poorest in the United States. Isolated and on the margins “both geographically and culturally,” the region and its opioid crisis were long ignored by the national media.

      It was not until “it had spread to more affluent and valued parts of the country, almost 15 years later” that it would gain national attention. This is despite the fact that the region is overwhelmingly white. Magoffin County, for instance, which is the focus of the physician’s account, in 2000 was roughly 99% white. But then, who gives two shits about poor white trash — except, perhaps, to make money. Otherwise, why would Amazon sell a “Funny Kentucky White Trash Tee Shirt”?

      In late 2016, an expose in The Atlantic on America’s poor white underclass noted the “barely suppressed contempt” that “has characterized much of the commentary about white woe, on both the left and the right.” In support of their observation, the authors cite a philippic that appeared in the National Review, the flagship of the traditional conservative right, heaping scorn on low-income white voters for supporting Donald Trump in the primaries. Among other things, the author sneered:

      “If you spend time in hardscrabble, white upstate New York, or eastern Kentucky, or my own native West Texas, and you take an honest look at the welfare dependency, the drug and alcohol addiction, the family anarchy — which is to say, the whelping of human children with all the respect and wisdom of a stray dog — you will come to an awful realization. … The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. … The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles.”

      In 2016, Trump won an overwhelming majority in eastern Kentucky. In Magoffin County, for instance, he won roughly 75% of the vote. Four years later, Trump once again carried Kentucky by a wide margin; the same was true for Magoffin County. And yet, in his four years in office, he had done little to nothing to improve the lives of America’s poor white underclass. To be sure, at one point, Trump had claimed he would revive the coal industry so dear to states like West Virginia and Kentucky. He didn’t, and, like any good populist, once in power, he largely ignored the plight of those whose pain he had earlier purported to hear. As studies have shown, America’s poor, independent of race, by and large don’t vote and, therefore, can be dismissed. They don’t count, in more than one sense of the word.

      Farewell to the Proletariat

      Unfortunately, the left on both sides of the Atlantic has, to a large extent, bought into this trope. Instead of fighting for every vote, the left has written off significant segments of a potential electorate which, at one point, was part of its natural constituency. Yet in the late 1970s, at least in Western Europe, the left abandoned the concerns of blue-collar workers in favor of new “postmaterialist” priorities, promoted by the “new middle classes.” A paradigmatic text was André Gorz’s manifesto from 1980, “Adieux au proletariat” (“Farewell to the Proletariat”). In the decades that followed, the left increasingly adopted what has come to be known as identity politics, centering upon questions of gender, ethnicity and race.

      There is nothing wrong with identity politics — as long as it is inclusive. Following Chantal Mouffe, the potential of progressive politics crucially depends on the establishment of an alternative “powerbloc” that not only unifies different claims and struggles, such as the #MeToo, Black Lives Matter and Fridays for Future movements, but is also able to effectively challenge the dominant power structure and the hegemonic narratives, such as neoliberalism and the Washington Consensus. Identity politics on the left these days focuses on minorities, such as LGBTQ and particularly race, in the process sidelining, excluding, if not outright dismissing questions of class. As one reader who identified himself as a “white man living paycheck to paycheck” put it in The Atlantic, “I think that most of us would acknowledge that minorities have it rough, but at least someone seems to care about them.”

      In the end, a strategy that focuses almost exclusively on an anything-but-white identity politics — if it is at all a strategy — is only going to weaken any genuine hope for a more equitable politics. At the same time, it is likely to provide fertile ground for the exploitation of resentment and anger by cynical populists such as Donald Trump well versed in the deceptive appeal of symbolic politics, like feeding into delusions of white superiority, while doing nothing concrete, like raising marginal tax rates on the rich to pay for universal health care, for the “ordinary people” they purport to represent.  

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

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

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      in World Politics

      The 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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      in World Politics

      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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      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.

      Will Biden Overturn Sanctions on the ICC?

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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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      Will Biden Overturn Sanctions on the ICC?

      by

      From the get-go, US President Joe Biden’s administration has focused on reversing the worst of Donald Trump’s policy decisions. One of the very worst was the imposition of sanctions on individual officials of the International Criminal Court (ICC). The Trump administration was so enamored of sanctions as a weapon of mass intimidation that it extended the policy beyond the traditional response to hostile governments to target individuals who failed to show the US sufficient respect.

      This was a logical consequence of Trump’s vaunted “America First” policy. This translates as national interest first, international law last. In September 2020, Trump’s secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, singled out ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda for sanctions. He “announced a freeze on assets held in the US or subject to US law by Bensouda and the court’s head of jurisdiction, Phakiso Mochochoko.” Even Rodrigo Duterte, the thuggish Filipino president who unilaterally withdrew the Philippines from membership in the Rome Treaty after the ICC received a complaint of crimes against humanity resulting from his brutal and chaotic war on drugs, never imagined imposing sanctions on the chief prosecutor.

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      In other words, Trump’s initiative can only be considered extreme. Bensouda, whose job consists of carrying out investigations related to procedures of justice, complained of “unprecedented and wholly unacceptable threats, attacks and sanctions.” Appearing to sympathize, the Biden administration issued this statement: “Much as we disagree with the ICC’s actions relating to the Afghanistan and Israeli/Palestinian situations, the sanctions will be thoroughly reviewed as we determine our next steps.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Thoroughly review:

      Examine an abusive practice with the hope of finding a devious way to justify its continuation

      Contextual Note

      The word “review” literally means “to look at again.” When politicians use the term, they imply that they will take a more critical look at the issue under consideration with a view to engaging remedial action. This is especially significant at moments in history where one party or political personality has been replaced by another with a highly contrasted worldview. Biden has already taken steps to return to the essential international treaties Trump so casually abandoned, as well as undo the former president’s complicity with the murderous Saudi crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman. The Biden administration needs to show that it is free not just to review but to thoroughly overturn dangerous and sometimes criminal policies.

      Embed from Getty Images

      In reality, the promise to “thoroughly review” often serves a more devious purpose. It creates an expectation that whatever policy emerges — even if it is identical with that of the past — will be legitimized. Rather than remedy a mistake, it may stand as a ploy to seek a better argument in favor of perpetuating the effects of the mistake. Former President Barack Obama campaigned on the theme of ending the war in Iraq. After thoroughly reviewing it with the help of the Pentagon, he continued it.

      The question of the ICC is no ordinary political issue. It contains within it the very idea of justice and fairness that Americans like to see as the core of their “exceptional” ideology, a system of values that never tires of proclaiming its allegiance to the idea of “liberty and justice for all.” On that basis, it should be easy for the Biden administration to cancel Trump’s sanctions and apologize for his arrogance. In terms of PR, it provides a perfect pretext for a new president to demonstrate a willingness to correct the injustices of the past.

      But as with so many issues Biden has inherited from Trump, there is a hidden risk and potentially a serious embarrassment. By provoking the ICC, Trump shouted from the rooftops what previous presidents accomplished by whispering in private amongst themselves. The US has never demonstrated the intention of respecting the principles it so assiduously promoted when the victorious Allies launched the Nuremberg trials. The message those trials sent was that every nation on earth must answer the accusation of crimes against humanity and war crimes. The refusal to be judged by the legal criteria it uses to judge others may provide the best definition of the meaning of “American exceptionalism.”

      Because the nation that invented democracy “believes” with all its soul in everything that is good and just, it can never be held to account for being bad and unjust. At best, American individuals are sometimes guilty of a lapse of judgment, but the American nation as a whole is, as the song says, “a soul whose intentions are good.” Since “no one alive can always be an angel,” the nation feels justified pleading to the heavens, “Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood.” 

      If Biden follows through and repeals Trump’s sanctions, the consequences could be serious. It would implicitly allow the ICC to pursue the complaints against both the US in Afghanistan and Israel with regard to Palestinians within its borders. Those were the two causes that prompted Pompeo to impose sanctions, citing the principle of national sovereignty. 

      That the US should defend Israel’s putative sovereignty — especially if it means shielding that nation from being prosecuted for war crimes — makes no serious legal sense. But it does reveal a basic truth about US foreign policy. If anything, the immunity the US claims for Israel can be compared with the principle in US law of someone who pleads the fifth amendment in a courtroom to avoid incriminating their spouse (“the spousal testimonial privilege”). Do both Trump and Biden consider the US and Israel a married couple?

      How far is Biden willing to go to undo Trump’s devilry? How much can he backtrack without exposing the US to the principle of universal justice? This is a serious quandary for a president who repeats in nearly every one of his speeches that the US must “not lead by the example of its power, but by the power of its example.”

      Historical Note

      Another issue has just emerged in the news cycle that also requires a thorough review. It concerns the production of semiconductors. The Verge offers this headline: “Biden signs executive order calling for semiconductor supply chain review.” American industry is facing a penury of chips, the essential component of nearly everything Americans buy these days (apart from fast food). From PCs and smartphones to cars, watches and refrigerators, chips rule the consumer economy. Will this be as “thoroughly reviewed” as the reconsideration of the ICC sanctions? It should be because it concerns a problem that affects the entire economy.

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      Not so long ago in recent history, the US was the world’s major manufacturer of semi-conductors. But because it became cheaper to outsource production to Asian nations, US manufacturers preferred to move their supply chain across the Pacific Ocean. Asia has since achieved a quasi-monopoly on semiconductor production.

      The Associated Press recently reported on the “widening global shortage of semiconductors for auto parts” that has forced “major auto companies to halt or slow vehicle production just as they were recovering from pandemic-related factory shutdowns.” The penury of semi-conductors could send an economy already battered by the pandemic into a tailspin. 

      This would be especially true if the Asian countries that produce more than 80% of the world’s and America’s supply were unable or unwilling to deliver. The entire question has evolved into something even more dire. Business Insider summarizes the dilemma in a headline: “The global chip shortage is hurting businesses and could be a national security issue.”

      It is not hard to imagine a war, even a limited war, breaking out between the US and China over navigation in the contested South China Sea or Chinese threats against Taiwan. In such an event, the US could potentially be starved of the supply of essential components required both for its military capacity and its consumer economy. The Biden administration must be aware of this and ready to review it. But once the review is completed, what can they do to remedy it? Not much, at least in the time frame that would be required to lead a military campaign.

      Rather than challenge China and risk alienating nearly all of Asia, the Biden administration can only hope to solve the problem of penury through cooperation and the recognition of interdependence, in contrast with the attitude of confrontation nurtured by Donald Trump. The Biden administration may be forced to engage a particularly “thorough review” on this issue.

      *[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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      What Happened to the Emerging Democratic Majority?

      by

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

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

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

      High Hopes

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

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

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

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

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

      Not Fade Away

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

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

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

      America Is No Longer One Nation

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

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

      Radical Nostalgia

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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