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      Oh see how the Tories now run from Donald Trump | Stewart Lee

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      In 2019, Jeremy Hunt, who once hid behind a tree to avoid the press on the way to a party, said politicians boycotting Donald Trump’s state visit were exhibiting “virtue signalling of the worst kind”. Was Hunt also virtue signalling last week, then, when he conceded that Trump “shames American democracy”? Or have the goalposts, already too narrow for even the slender Hunt to hide behind convincingly, moved?Trump himself once called our prime minister, Boris Turds Johnson, “Britain Trump”, with characteristically unpunctuated precision. In the light of Trump’s inevitable immolation of American democracy, Turds’s handlers now seek to distance our prime minister from his admirer, every white supremacist’s favourite reality TV host. Last week, the Times ran an article, headlined “Johnson is not Trump’s transatlantic twin”, by the Spectator’s James Forsyth, whose wife, Allegra Stratton, is Downing Street’s press secretary and whose principles are above question. Once the journal of record, it seems the Times is now the journal of whatever Downing Street’s press secretary wants the record to say. And there are efforts afoot to rewrite that record.Celebrities’ photo albums have long been cleansed of pictures of lighthearted moments shared at charity fun runs with Jimmy Savile. And I have destroyed both the Super-8 films and the doodles of the woeful 36 hours I and the Australian standup comedian Greg Fleet spent in the Flinders mountains, north of Adelaide, in 1997, feasting with regret on the flesh of the tragic victims of a light aircraft crash that we alone had survived.But our politicians’ historic fondness for President Exploding Tangerine Hitler will be harder to forget. There’s no need to deploy the deep fake technology or distorting social media of the Tories’ last election campaign to find a photo of America’s self-styled Mr Brexit posing in his Liberace’s lavatory lift with a clearly engorged Nigel Farage and his Ukip, Breitbart and Leave.EU colleagues. It’s there as plain as the nostrils on Michael Gove’s nose. But Farage’s friends weren’t alone in bending Trump’s brain farts to their own agendas and appeasing his own special brand of home-fried fascism.Farage’s friends weren’t alone in bending Trump’s brain farts to their own agendasIn January 2017, a delighted Michael Gove became the first British journalist to visit the “warm and charismatic” new American president. Gove was even accompanied by Rupert Murdoch, a fact he chose to hide in his subsequent BBC interview and newspaper article, where he propagated Trump’s Nato lies unchecked. Gove described ascending the phallocratic Trump Tower in a golden lift, “operated by an immensely dignified African American attendant kitted out in frock coat and white gloves. It was as though the Great Glass Elevator from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory had been restyled by Donatella Versace, then staffed by the casting director for Gone With the Wind.” Charlie and the smooth glass surfaces, working as a team!Two-faced Gove’s frivolous tone, suffused nonetheless with a strange strain of snobbery, attempts to socially distance himself from Trump’s lowbrow idea of luxury, while simultaneously revelling in the proximity of such immense wealth, however garish its elevator, however dignified its African American. But Gove emerged from the summit holding in his hand a piece of paper promising Trump would facilitate Brexit by doing “a trade deal with the UK absolutely, very quickly”. Gove is the Neville Chamberlain of nowhere. Where is your chlorinated chicken now, Brexiter? For I have in my hand Joe Biden’s souvenir Irish shillelagh, a confiscated lorry driver’s ham and cheese sandwich and a space where some M&S Percy Pigs should have been.I wonder if Gove recalled the enjoyable afternoon he spent squatting on top of Trump’s enormous golden shaft of power when watching another immensely dignified African American, this time a government security guard, being chased up the stairwell of the Senate by a mob of Confederate-flag-waving Trump supporters wearing T-shirts celebrating the Holocaust with the Nazi death camp motto “Work brings freedom”. As Gove might have written, it was as though the Singin’ in the Rain scene from A Clockwork Orange had been restyled by Charles Manson then staffed by the casting director of The Hills Have Eyes. Oh! The charisma!!!Turds got off to a better start than Gove in his approach to Trump, declaring in 2015 that the pussy-grabbing humanity-tumour was “clearly out of his mind” and a man of “quite stupefying ignorance that makes him, frankly, unfit to hold the office of president of the United States”. Back then, Turds, who has no actual discernible values beyond steamy ambition and refrigerated cowardice, was mayor of London. And Mayor Turds was playing to the focaccia gallery of the Trump-loathing London liberal elite, who fell one by one for his cheeky Have I Got News For You persona like a succession of statues of slavers in a Bristol dock. Once Trump was president, Turds simply tried on a new opinion, discarding the conviction-filled prophylactic of his spaffed beliefs like the condoms he obviously never wears.By January 2017, Turds, who himself compared the EU trading block to the Nazis innumerable times in print, condemned critics of his new “friend and partner” for “trivialising the Holocaust” by comparing Trump to Hitler, subsequently saying that the president deserved the Nobel peace prize. But the trajectory of Trump’s rise to date mirrors that of Hitler’s, albeit a bright-orange Hitler with an undying fondness for disco hits. And Johnson himself has not been above weaponising fabricated culture wars, from the Proms to slavers’ statues while ridiculing “Romanian vampires” and “tank-topped bumboys”, to court the support of the worst people in Britain. Turds’s apparent ignorance of Hitler’s rise is inexcusable, especially as most cable channels are devoted entirely to endless loops of documentaries about him. Maybe Turds needs to brush up on how a populist leader could dehumanise minorities and liberals to gain power. But, worryingly, I suspect Turds already did that a few years ago.King Rocker, a film about the Birmingham post-punk band the Nightingales, by Stewart Lee and Michael Cumming, premiers on free to air Sky Arts on Saturday 6 February at 9pm. Watch the trailer here More

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      Joe Biden will face an inbox of complex foreign policy problems from the start

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      Joe Biden’s foreign policy in-tray is only looking more difficult as he approaches inauguration day – even as the US still confronts the pressing issue of record coronavirus deaths and infections.The massive and ongoing hack of US federal agencies – blamed on Russia – has so far elicited no response from Donald Trump, who has a long history of denying or downplaying Russian interventions.Iran, say reports, has restarted work on its nuclear site at Fordo.Then there is the knotty issue of what direction relations with China will follow after four years of mounting friction with Trump’s Washington.On top of all that add North Korea, which – despite Trump’s flip-flopping between threats and craven courting – now has both longrange missile capabilities on top of being a nuclear power, a huge failure in terms of US longterm policy.Some hangovers of the Trump era will be easier to fix – not least rapidly rejoining the World Health Organization and the Paris Climate Accord. But the thorniest issues are likely to be circumscribed by the overwhelming pressure of domestic considerations – especially if Republicans retain control of the Senate and continue in a spirit of obstructionism.Most pressing right now, however, is how to respond to Russia if its agencies are confirmed as being behind the latest hack.In the aftermath of the SolarWinds hack, Biden has signaled that he is considering a far more proactive response to state-sponsored hacking.“We need to disrupt and deter our adversaries from undertaking significant cyber attacks in the first place,” Biden said in a statement.“Our adversaries should know that, as president, I will not stand idly by in the face of cyber assaults on our nation.”What is less clear is what that means in practical terms. One first step would be for the incoming administration to explicitly point the finger of blame.“I would imagine that the incoming administration wants a menu of what the options are and then is going to choose,” said Sarah Mendelson, a Carnegie Mellon University public policy professor and former US ambassador to the UN’s Economic and Social Council.“Is there a graduated assault? Is there an all-out assault? How much out of the gate do you want to do?”In some respects, the hack – if formally laid at the feet of the Kremlin – may offer an opportunity for Biden not only to draw a clear line with Trump’s dealings with Putin but also to carve out a more muscular response than Barack Obama managed after Russian interference in the 2016 election.Iran is more complex.While Tehran has indicated that it was keen quickly to reopen talks with the US about the nuclear deal, it has also used Washington’s withdrawal from nuclear deal to build up its bargaining chips again in terms of stockpiles of nuclear material and allegedly undertaking new work.Biden will also be confronted by the same lobbying from Israel and Republicans in Congress who set themselves against the original Iran nuclear agreement – and who will remain determined to undermine any new version of the deal.All of which poses the question of how Biden will run his foreign policy confronted with so many challenges.Biden’s instincts for a well-managed technocratic foreign policy are heavily oriented toward longstanding democratic institutions and alliances. But as Thomas Wright, a senior fellow in the Project on International Order and Strategy at the Brookings Institution, wrote in a paper in November, the current moment may call for a more aggressive approach not least on China.Biden has indicated that he sometimes chafed against Obama’s more cautious approach.Perhaps the biggest question relates to this.The isolationism and withdrawal from the world of the Trump years built on trends already apparent under his predecessor – not least Obama’s reluctance to get further entangled in the Middle East in Syria. In that respect, the domestic foreign policy consensus that Biden grew up with may no longer actually exist.“[Biden] obviously trusts many of Obama’s senior officials and is proud of the administration’s record. At the same time, he chafed against Obama’s caution and incrementalism – for example, Biden wanted to send lethal assistance to Ukraine, when Obama did not,” wrote Wright.“Biden has spoken more explicitly than Obama about competition with China and Russia, and he favours a foreign policy that works for the [US] middle class.”Again, Wright sees an opportunity in the policy on China if Biden chooses a tougher approach than Obama, who he served under.“Biden should use competition with China as a bridge to Senate Republicans. Their instinct may be obstructionist, particularly because Trump is pressuring them not to recognize Biden’s win as legitimate, but many of them also know that the US cannot afford four years of legislative gridlock if it is to compete with China.” More

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      Does the world need the US any more? Politics Weekly Extra

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      After we were sent an interesting question by a listener, Jonathan Freedland asked Samantha Power, a former US ambassador to the UN, whether the world could become less dependent on US leadership – and thus more resilient?As Joe Biden prepares to take over on 20 January, he has a lot to keep in mind. The US death toll from coronavirus passed 300,000 this week. Donald Trump is still falsely claiming the election was fraudulent, and Biden also needs to find a way to clean up the mess Trump made on the world stage.One of our listeners sent us this question: “Has the world become less dependent on the US leadership going forward and thus more resilient, or will we snap back as an alcoholic after a week of abstinence?” Continue reading… More

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      With Donald Trump gone, Brexit Britain will be very lonely on the world stage | Afua Hirsch

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      After the election of Donald Trump in 2016, an American friend compared the nativist populism of the United States with the state of Brexit Britain. “You think it’s bad that Britain voted to leave the EU,” he told me. “America has voted to leave itself.”
      Four years later, things look a little different. Having indeed taken leave of its senses, America has now been rescued – not for the first time – by its citizens of colour. Polling data shows that without minority-ethnic voters, many of whom had to overcome deliberate and systemic attempts to suppress their participation – the nation’s constitutional and political integrity would have endured a further four years of Trump’s wrecking ball.
      Under cover of the past four years of regression, the British government has been running riot. However badly our leaders behaved, though, they knew there was a larger, more powerful democracy behaving even worse. Conservative attacks on the independence of the judiciary, for example, may represent an unprecedented assault on our constitution. But for Trump, lashing out personally at individual judges on Twitter became routine.
      The British government’s relaxed attitude about violating international law has prompted the condemnation of nearly all living former prime ministers. But Trump led the way in tearing up international agreements and withdrawing from multilateral organisations.
      And then there is race. In Britain we have had to endure an equalities minister who suggests anti-racism reading materials are illegal in school, a foreign minister who derided Black Lives Matter as a Game of Thrones spoof, and Boris Johnson himself, as ready to insult black children in Africa as he was the black president in the White House. Vice-president-elect Kamala Harris is said to “hate” Johnson for claiming Obama held a grudge against Britain because of his “part-Kenyan” heritage. The prime minister’s comments have not aged well.
      The Kenya reference was not accidental. Much of Johnson’s political strategy rests on foundations of imperial pride and colonial nostalgia. That was compatible with the “special relationship” when the American president was, like him, similarly smitten by an imagined great white past. Lamenting the decline of this relationship has become a national pastime in Britain – traditionally at just such moments as this, when a change of guard in the White House threatens the status quo. What is clear is that, insofar as the special relationship does exist, it’s rooted in “shared cultural values”. This phrase, whenever deployed by Britain, is almost always code for: “We colonised you once, and how well you’ve done from it.”

      But empires, inconveniently, have a habit of striking back. And so the victims of British colonial abuse in Ireland have, through a twist of fate, lent their ancestral memory to the new US president. When Joe Biden visited County Mayo in 2016, he heard how his home town experienced the worst of the potato famine – even by the catastrophic standards of the nation as a whole – the entire population “gone to workhouse, to England, to the grave”.
      Kamala Harris’s heritage gives her more in common with many British people than it does with most Americans. Her grandfather worked for the British colonial government in India, where he strived for independence from the white supremacist ideology of the British empire. The power behind this empire earlier pioneered the enslavement of Africans that led Harris’s father, Donald Harris, to be born in Jamaica.
      Tories pumped with pride from this same history – gloriously bragging in song that “Britons never shall be slaves” – are unlikely to find its seductive power holds much sway within the incoming US administration. The government ignored British ethnic minorities when we offered the truth of our own lineages to counter this propaganda. Ignoring the president and vice-president of America is slightly harder to pull off.
      That leaves Johnson looking particularly fragile and exposed. This week one of his predecessors, John Major – no stranger to strained relations with America when he was in office – warned that “complacency and nostalgia are the route to national decline”. Britain needed a reality check, Major cautioned. “We are no longer an irreplaceable bridge between Europe and America. We are now less relevant to them both.”
      Much of Britain’s decline is structural, set in motion long before Johnson took office. But if you wanted to exacerbate it, you’d struggle to find a more effective path than the one we are currently on. We have never in modern times endured anything quite as extreme as the toxic assault on America’s political culture left behind by Donald Trump. As usual, ours is a poor imitation. And like all cheap fakes, it’s not built to last.
      • Afua Hirsch is a Guardian columnist More

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      A toxic UK-US deal is just as likely under President Biden | Nick Dearden

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      “I think there’s a good chance we’ll do something,” Boris Johnson said on Monday, notably less bullish than usual on the subject of a US trade deal with the president-elect, Joe Biden. Johnson grinned awkwardly, like a schoolboy who knows he’s done something incredibly foolish, as he talked down the prospects of an agreement that was once considered the jewel in his Brexit crown.But while Johnson’s embarrassment might be enjoyable, let’s not pretend this is the last we will hear of the US trade deal. Even if Britain has slipped back in the queue, we could still be lining up for the chlorine chicken slaughterhouse under the likely terms of a deal with the US.It’s true that Johnson may struggle to form a good relationship with Biden. This goes beyond the fact that Biden sees Johnson as a mini Trump, with backbenches replete with hardliners who sounded like Trumpists last week. But far more important is that Trump had a clear rationale for negotiating a US trade deal. Trump sees everything as a zero-sum game. He believed the US gained only when its “opponents” – China and the EU – lost. For Trump, a US trade deal was a means of weakening EU standards and protections, and of pulling a major economy into the US orbit.Biden sees things differently. He has no truck with Brexit, and wants to mend fences with Brussels. And he quite rightly thinks his priority should be dealing with the worst pandemic in a century and the serious economic fallout heading his way. Chatting to Johnson about matters of more marginal interest is unlikely to reach the top of Biden’s to-do list. What’s more, his economic strategy for recovery – boosting “buy American” in government procurement, for instance – runs directly counter to Britain’s interests in this deal. The pitifully small gains for Britain’s economy are likely to fall still further.But all is not lost for Johnson’s attempt at a deregulatory trade deal. Last week the trade secretary, Liz Truss, said that “almost all chapter areas are now in the advanced stages of talks”. Truss will now race to complete the deal, building as much Democrat support as possible before April, when there is a deadline on the president’s power to hurry a trade deal through Congress. After that point, ratification gets much more difficult.In fact, if Biden’s victory dampens the criticism towards a trade deal here, including on Labour’s frontbench, it could potentially make a toxic US trade deal easier to finalise. After all, who wouldn’t prefer to do a deal with Biden than Trump? But sadly we can’t assume that a Biden deal would be much different. Trade deals are driven by big business interests. The demand that we import chlorinated chicken comes from US agribusiness. The demand that the NHS pay higher charges for medicines comes from the pharmaceutical industry. The demand to drop our digital services tax comes from Silicon Valley’s big tech corporations.That’s why it was the Obama-Biden administration that pushed the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, the US-EU trade deal that caused controversy across Europe, and that looked very similar to the US deal currently under discussion. If that deal is really so close to being completed, and should Johnson find a way of preserving the Good Friday agreement, it will be enticing for Biden to just push it over the finish line and satisfy the corporate demands.The arguments against a US trade deal are not about our overall relationship with the US, or how many goods we trade per se. They’re about exporting a fundamentally different, more market-driven regulatory model into Britain, replacing the standards and protections we’ve developed over many years and entrenching corporate power. That’s what Johnson, Truss and the rest always wanted.In that sense, the main negotiation over a US deal is still between Johnson and the British public. It is us, not Biden, who need to stop him. Johnson’s failure to put our food standards into law in the agriculture bill means keeping chlorinated chicken out of future trade deals remains a matter of trust, not law. And with Johnson still willing to break international law over a trade deal with the EU, there is no reason to trust mere manifesto pledges.But there is a big challenge for Biden here, too. Whatever the reality of Trump’s trade policy, he attracted support in the “rust belt” by promising to unwind the free market trade deals negotiated by his Democratic predecessors. It was a popular message. That’s because people have seen the damage done by modern trade deals. Handing over massive new powers to big business while constraining the power of governments to deal with the fallout has created anger, frustration and desperation across former industrial heartlands, in rural areas, and for low-paid workers. While it doesn’t explain all of Trump’s appeal, it’s a factor the left needs to reflect on to keep a future Trump out of office.Trade is neither good nor bad in and of itself. What matters is the rules under which we trade. The capitulation of the centre-left in the 1990s to a set of trade rules under which the market makes major decisions that govern how our society is run, is largely responsible for the political crisis we find ourselves in. Both Biden in the US and Keir Starmer here need to fundamentally rethink what trade is for and how we should do it. Both will come under significant pressure from big business, so we cannot put our placards away yet.We need to keep fighting against the threat of a toxic US deal, but as part of a bigger push that demands the transformation of a trade system that currently treats the whole world as a gigantic marketplace, and in which everything we care about – be it food, healthcare, our rights online – are seen as irritating impediments to be stripped away in the interests of global capital.• Nick Dearden is director of Global Justice Now (formerly World Development Movement) More

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      The Guardian view on Johnson's Biden problem: not going away | Editorial

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      The Irish question has played havoc with the best-laid plans of hardline Brexiters. Since 2016, successive Conservative governments have struggled to square the circle of keeping the United Kingdom intact, while avoiding the reimposition of a hard border on the island of Ireland. The border issue has been the achilles heel of Brexit, the thorn in the side of true believers in a “clean break” with the EU. So the prospect of an Irish-American politician on his way to the White House, just as Boris Johnson attempts to finagle his way round the problem, is an 11th-hour plot twist to savour.
      Joe Biden’s views on Brexit are well known. The president-elect judges it to be a damaging act of self-isolation; strategically unwise for Britain and unhelpful to American interests in Europe. But it is the impact of the UK’s departure from the EU on Ireland that concerns Mr Biden most. This autumn, he was forthright on the subject of the government’s controversial internal market bill, which was again debated on Monday in the House of Lords. The proposed legislation effectively reneges on a legally binding protocol signed with the EU, which would impose customs checks on goods travelling between Britain and Northern Ireland. In doing so, it summons up the spectre of a hard border on the island of Ireland, undermining the Good Friday agreement. Mr Biden is adamant that the GFA must not “become a casualty of Brexit”. He is expected to convey that message, in forceful terms, when his first telephone conversation with Mr Johnson eventually takes place.
      This is somewhat awkward for the prime minister. Mr Johnson badly needs to establish good relations with the new regime in Washington, ahead of crucial trade negotiations. In light of that, Mr Johnson may choose not to insist on the clauses relating to Northern Ireland when the bill goes back to the Commons. That would certainly be the wise move, although the noises coming from the government remain defiant. But the prime minister’s challenges in dealing with the coming regime change in Washington go well beyond Brexit.
      The personal dynamics between Mr Johnson and Mr Biden and his team are, to put it mildly, unpromising. The prime minister’s insulting remarks four years ago, about Barack Obama’s Kenyan ancestry, have not been forgotten. Mr Johnson seems to be viewed by many senior Democrats as a kind of pound-shop Donald Trump. There is also little regard for the consistency or sincerity with which Mr Johnson holds his views. At the weekend, when the prime minister instagrammed his congratulations to Mr Biden on his victory, a Biden ally witheringly referred to Mr Johnson as “this shape-shifting creep”.
      So in the race to make friends and influence people in the new Washington, Britain has the very opposite of a head start. The smart money is on Paris becoming the first European capital to receive President Biden. That reflects both good relations with Emmanuel Macron and a concern to rebuild diplomatic bridges, after four years in which Mr Trump rarely ceased to disparage and seek to undermine the EU. Mr Biden means to bring back a sense of diplomatic propriety and integrity to America’s relations with European friends and allies.
      Britain, having left the EU, cannot be a central player in this restoration project. But it can avoid making unforced errors. The government should urgently start to read the runes of new, more internationalist times. The politics of disruptive confrontation, as exemplified by the internal market bill, suddenly looks dangerously dated. When the Northern Ireland minister, Brandon Lewis, confirmed in September that the bill would break international law, senior Conservatives such as Sir Michael Howard and Theresa May expressed their dismay at the damage to Britain’s reputation that would result. They were ignored.
      But faced with an Irish-American president who is determined to rehabilitate relations with the EU, and is deeply suspicious of Mr Johnson’s Trumpian tendencies, to continue with the bill as it stands would be folly. With Mr Trump on his way out, Mr Johnson needs to sober up and start shifting some shapes on this and other matters. More

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      Johnson says he will not comment on Trump's call to stop counting US election votes – video

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      The prime minister sidestepped Keir Starmer’s attempt at PMQs to get him to comment on Donald Trump’s call to stop the counting of votes in the US election. Challenged by the Labour leader to agree that it was not the place of either candidate to decide which votes should count, Johnson said: ‘We don’t comment as the UK government on the democratic processes of our friends and allies’
      Boris Johnson refuses to comment on Trump’s call to stop vote-counting More

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      in World Politics

      Is Realism in Foreign Policy Realistic?

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      The year 2020 has understandably been a time of deep confusion in the world of diplomacy, marked by the parallel phenomena of a Donald Trump presidency that may come to an end in January 2021 and the ongoing global curse of COVID-19. Those factors and other more local ones — such as yet another countdown for Brexit — have brought to a virtual standstill serious consideration of how the most powerful nations of the world will be conducting their foreign policy in the years to come. 

      With the increasing likelihood of a Joe Biden presidency and a hoped-for fadeout of COVID-19, it may be time to begin looking at the prospects some influential thinkers in the realm of international relations have been putting forward.

      The New York Times Under the Influence

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      Last year, in those halcyon days when COVID-19 was still hiding in the recesses of a bat cave on the outskirts of human society and President Trump — who was headed for another four years in the White House — was gloating over unemployment levels in the US that had reached a record low, celebrated political scientist John Mearsheimer took a trip “down under” to teach Australians his doctrine of “offensive realism.”

      The University of Chicago professor informed them that the rise of China would lead to a military standoff with the reigning hegemon, the US. Though Australia may appear in geographic terms to be an appendage of Asia, with strong economic ties, Mearsheimer insisted that Australians should see their role as an outpost of the American continent, which he occasionally referred to as Godzilla.

      In a 2019 debate with Australian strategic thinker Hugh White, Mearsheimer reduced his lesson to the Aussies to its simplest terms: “If you go with China, you want to understand you are our enemy. You are then deciding to become an enemy of the United States. Because again, we’re talking about an intense security competition. You’re either with us or against us.”

      Does this sound like the language of war? Mearsheimer wants us to believe it’s something else. Not even a cold war. Even less, a global chess game. Those obsolete metaphors should be put to pasture. It has a new name: “intense security competition.”

      Here is today’s 3D definition:

      Security competition:

      A contest concerning political reputation and global power that requires little more than demonstrating the capacity and readiness to launch a nuclear war, now seen as the principal attribute of any nation claiming to assume the responsibility for writing a rulebook that the rest of humanity will be obliged to follow

      Contextual Note

      This definition sums up Mearsheimer’s ideology. Breaking with the idealistic tradition in US diplomacy that justifies aggression and imperial conquest by citing its commitment to establishing or defending liberal democratic values in other parts of the world, Mearsheimer prefers to recognize reality for what it is (or what he thinks it is). Some may be tempted to call this political Darwinism, inspired by Herbert Spencer’s 19th-century social Darwinism.

      Lecturing the Australians, Mearsheimer makes no bones about the brutally expansionist history of the growth of the US empire that began in 1783. He sees it as a consistent, continuous development. Referring to the culture of his childhood neighborhood in New York, he calls it the political equivalent of becoming “the biggest and baddest dude on the block.” As a social scientist, he gives it another more technical name: regional hegemon.

      Mearsheimer insists that Australia must ally with the US instead of China, not because it is less authoritarian, but mainly because the US is bigger and badder. China is too far behind to catch up in the near future. And for a realist, the name of the game is simply “follow the leader.” And though Australia’s economy is closely tied to China’s, Mearsheimer warns the Aussies that if they don’t ally with the US, they will likely receive the same treatment as Fidel Castro’s Cuba (embargos, blockades, sanctions and perhaps even assassination attempts on a future leader).

      Appearing to address the question of the choices Australians must make on their own, Mearsheimer nevertheless claims to know what Australia’s future will inevitably look like. “Security is more important than prosperity because if you don’t survive, you’re not going to prosper,” he says. “That’s why you’ll be with us.”

      His Aussie audience at the conference may or may not see a resemblance between this and the mafioso telling a local shopkeeper, who resists paying protection, to be careful because “things break.” But at least one Australian commentator, Caitlin Johnstone, has understood his message. She provocatively offered what may be the best and most logical translation of Mearsheimer’s point by turning it on its head. “Australia is not aligned with the U.S. to protect itself from China. Australia is aligned with the U.S. to protect itself from the U.S.,” she writes.

      Mearsheimer was even more blunt in his lecture on the same tour: “You understand that the United States is the ruthless great power.”

      Historical Note

      In a lengthy academic article, “Bound to Fail, The Rise and Fall of the Liberal International Order,” John Mearsheimer situates his theory within the perspective of post-World War II history. Contradicting the standard account of the Cold War, he offers this correction: “The Cold War order, which is sometimes mistakenly referred to as a ‘liberal international order,’ was neither liberal nor international.” He claims that its idealism was a sham. It was realistic. It was about hegemonic power.

      Instead, he asserts that what followed the collapse of the Soviet Union should be called the rise of the liberal international order. And he explains that “the post–Cold War liberal international order was doomed to collapse, because the key policies on which it rested are deeply flawed. Spreading liberal democracy around the globe … is extremely difficult” and it “often poisons relations with other countries and sometimes leads to disastrous wars.”

      Having given precise instruction to the Australians, Mearsheimer now addresses his compatriots with the question: “How should the United States act as it leaves behind the liberal international order that it worked so assiduously to build?” His answer is that the US must abandon the goal of forcefully spreading democracy and “engaging in social engineering abroad.” 

      He wants the US to consolidate its power through a conjoined focus on economic control and military might. He acknowledges that China is positioned to become a regional hegemon in Asia. But he reminds us that “the United States does not tolerate peer competitors. The idea that China is going to become a regional hegemon is unacceptable to the United States.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      Some may find this contradictory. Mearsheimer explains to the Australians that the only legitimate hegemony is regional and not global and then claims that the US — the dominant regional hegemon in the Americas — should not allow another regional hegemon to exist. That surely means that by default the US becomes the global hegemon. 

      Mearsheimer confirms this impression when he describes the merits of a “rules-based order,” which so many commentators believe Donald Trump has compromised. This is what Mearsheimer told the Australians: “The United States writes the rules. We obey them when it suits us and we disobey them when it doesn’t suit us.” 

      He then adds this remark: “Those rules are written to benefit the great powers so that they can wage security competition … and if they don’t like the rules they just disobey them.” His choice of the verb “wage” clearly demonstrates that his idea of “security competition” is nothing more than a euphemism for war. That apparently is how realists have been thinking ever since Thomas Hobbes.

      So, what about the coming US presidential election? Stephen Walt, who famously collaborated with Mearsheimer to expose the influence of the Israel lobby on US politics, has titled his recent article in Foreign Policy: “Biden Needs to Play the Nationalism Card Right Now.” Walt cites Mearsheimer’s insistence that “nationalism remains the most powerful political ideology on the planet and a critical source of identity for most human beings, including the vast majority of Americans.”

      In an interview, Mearsheimer recently articulated his expectations of a new Democratic administration: “I think that will all be for the good.” In other words, he sees Trump’s “America First” nationalism (which he appreciates) being replaced by Biden’s more realistic brand of hegemonic nationalism, which he also appreciates. Australians will simply have to learn to live with it.

      *[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