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      American Carnage From a Pandemic President

      by

      The year was 1991 and the United States was suddenly the globe’s lone superpower, its ultimate hyperpower, the last and greatest of its kind, the soon-to-be-indispensable nation. The only one left — alone, utterly alone and triumphant atop the world.

      Who could have asked for more? Or better? It had been a Cold War fantasy of the first order — until that other superpower, the Soviet Union, imploded. In fact, even that doesn’t catch the true shock of the moment, since Washington’s leaders simply hadn’t imagined a world in which the Cold War could ever truly end.

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      Now, go ahead, blame me. In this pandemic moment that should perhaps be considered a sign of a burning, sickening future to come, I’m stoking your nostalgia for better times. Admittedly, even that past was, in truth, a fantasy of the first (or perhaps last) order. After all, in retrospect, that mighty, resplendent, lone superpower, victorious beyond the wildest dreams of its political elite, was already about to embark on its own path of decline. Enwreathed in triumph, it too would be heading for the exits, even if so much more slowly than the Soviet Union.

      It’s clear enough now that, in 1991, with Ronald Reagan’s former vice president, George H.W. Bush, in the White House and his son, George W. Bush, waiting in the wings of history — while Iraqi autocrat and former US ally Saddam Hussein was still perched in his palace in Baghdad — the US was already launching itself on the path to Donald Trump’s America.

      No, Trump didn’t know it. How could he? Who could have possibly imagined him as the president of the United States? He was still a tabloid phenomenon then (masquerading that year as his own publicist, “John Miller,” in phone interviews with reporters to laud the attractions and sexual conquests of one “Donald Trump”). He was also on the road to bankruptcy court since his five Atlantic City casinos would soon go down in flames. Him as a future candidate to head an America where life for so many would be in decline and its very greatness in need of being “made” great again… well, who could have dreamt it? Not me, that’s for sure.

      Welcome to American Carnage

      Let me apologize one more time. Yes, I was playing on your sense of nostalgia in this besieged American moment of ours. Mission accomplished, I assume.

      So much, I’m afraid, for such “Auld Lang Syne” moments, since that one took place in a previous century, even if, remarkably enough, that wasn’t actually so long ago. Only 29 years passed from that singular moment of triumph in Washington (a period that would then be fancied as the “end of history”) to Trump’s America-not-first-but-last world — to, that is, genuine “American carnage” (and I’m not just thinking about the 200,000 Americans who have already died from COVID-19 with no end in sight). Less than a quarter of a century took us from the president who asked God to continue to “bless the United States of America” in the wake of a historic victory to the man who campaigned for president on the declinist slogan of making America great again.

      And don’t think Trump was wrong in that 2017 inaugural address of his. A certain level of American carnage — particularly in the form of staggering economic inequality, not to speak of the “forever wars” still being fought so brainlessly by a military on which this country was spending its money rather than on health, education, and infrastructure — had helped bring him to power and he knew it. He even promised to solve just such problems, including ending those forever wars, as he essentially did again in his recent White House acceptance speech, even as he promised to keep “rebuilding” that very military.

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      Here was the key passage from that long-gone inaugural address of his: “Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation; an education system, flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of knowledge; and the crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential. This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.”

      Of course, more than three and a half years later, in that seemingly eternal “now” of his, the carnage seemed eternal — whether in the form of those wars he swore he would get us out of; the spending on the military and the rest of what’s still known as the national security state, which only increased; the economic inequality, which just grew, thanks in part to a humongous 2017 tax cut, a bonanza for the wealthiest Americans (and no one else), leaving the government and so the rest of us owing far more money than previously imaginable; and above all, the urge of his administration, from top to bottom, not just to deny that climate change exists but to burn this planet down by “unleashing” a program of “American energy dominance” and taking every imaginable restraint off the exploitation of fossil-fuels and opening up yet more areas for those industries to exploit.

      In other words, Donald J. Trump has given American carnage new meaning and, in his singular way, lent a remarkable hand to the transformation of this country.

      A Simple Math Problem

      When The Donald descended that Trump Tower escalator in June 2015 to declare himself a candidate for president, he made a promise to the disgruntled citizens of the American heartland. He would build what he hailed as a “great wall” (that the Mexican government would pay for) to seal us off from the lesser breeds on this planet (Mexican “rapists”). Until that moment, of course, there had been just one “great” wall on planet Earth, and it had been constructed by various Chinese dynasties over untold centuries to keep out nomadic invaders, the armed “caravans” of that moment.

      As Americans would soon learn, however, being second best to or only as good as just about anything wasn’t, to put it mildly, Donald Trump’s signature style. So, in that first speech of his, he instantly doubled the “greats” in his wall. He would create nothing less than a “great, great” one.

      In the years that followed, it’s also become clear that neither spelling, nor pronouncing words is among his special skills or, put another way, that he’s a great, great misspeller and mispronouncer. Given that he managed to produce only 300 miles of wall on the US-Mexico border in almost four years in office, almost all of it replacing already existing barriers (at the expense of the American taxpayer and a set of private donors-cum-suckers), we have to assume that the candidate on that first day either misspelled or mispronounced one word in that phrase of his.

      Given what’s happened to this country since, it’s hard not to imagine that what he meant was not a great, great wall, but a great, great fall. And in this pandemic hell of a country, with its economy in the kind of tatters that no one has yet faintly come to grips with, its health (and mental health) in crisis mode, parts of it burnt to a crisp and others flooded and clobbered by intensifying storms, if that’s what he meant to say, his leadership of what remains the world’s lone superpower (despite a rising China) has indeed been a great, great success. For such a triumph, however, this country needs some new term, something to replace that old “indispensable nation” (and, for my money, “dispensable nation” doesn’t quite do the trick).

      And I have a suggestion. Once upon a time when I was much, much younger, we spoke of three worlds on planet Earth. There was the First World (also known as “the free world”), which included the developed countries of North America, Europe, and Japan (and you could throw in South Korea and Australia, if you wanted); there was the Second World, also known as the communist bloc, the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China; and, of course, there was the Third World, which included all the other poor and underdeveloped countries, many former European colonies, scattered around the globe’s south and often in terrible shape.

      So many years later, with the first billionaire in the Oval Office presiding over an era of American carnage at home rather than in distant lands like Vietnam, I suspect we need a new “world” to capture the nature and state of this country at this moment. So, how about a “Fourth World”? After all, the US remains the richest, most powerful nation on the planet (First World), but it is also afloat in a sea of autocratic, climate-changing, economic, military and police carnage that should qualify it as distinctly third world as well.

      So, it’s really just a simple math problem: What’s one plus three? Four, of course, making this country once again a leader on this ever less equal planet of ours; the United States, that is, is the first official Fourth-World country in history. USA! USA! USA!

      Or if you prefer, you could simply think of us as potentially the most powerful, wealthiest failed state on the planet.

      A Hell on Earth?

      Humanity has so far — and I use that phrase advisedly — managed to create just two ways of destroying human life on this planet. In doing so, it has, of course, taken over tasks that it once left to the gods (Armageddon! Apocalypse!). On both counts, Trump is proving himself a master of destruction.

      The first way, of course, would be by nuclear weapons, so far, despite close calls, used only twice, 75 years ago. However, the president and his crew have focused with striking intensity on tearing up nuclear arms pacts signed with the Soviet Union in the final years of the Cold War, backing out of the Iranian nuclear deal, pumping up the “modernization” of the US nuclear arsenal, and threatening other countries with the actual use of such weaponry. (Who could forget, for instance, The Donald’s threat to release “fire and fury like the world has never seen” on North Korea?)

      In the process, the Trump administration has loosed what increasingly looks like a new global nuclear arms race, even as tensions grow, especially between China and the United States. In other words, while promising to end America’s “forever wars” (he didn’t), President Trump has actually pumped up the relatively dim possibility since the Cold War ended of using nuclear weapons, which obviously threatens a flash-bang end to human life as we know it.

      And keep in mind that, when it comes to world-ending possibilities, that’s the lesser of his two apocalyptic efforts in these years.

      While we’re still on the first of those ways of destroying this planet, however, let’s not forget to include not just the increased funding devoted to “modernizing” those nukes, but more generally the ever-greater funding of the Pentagon and what’s still called “the national security state.” It hardly matters how little of that money goes to true national security in a twenty-first-century moment when we’re experiencing a pandemic that could be but the beginning of a new Black Plague-style era and the heating up of the atmosphere, oceans, and seas of this world in ways that are already making life increasingly unbearable via ever fiercer storms, ever more frequent wildfires, the ever-greater melting of ice sheets, ever more violent flooding, ever greater drought — I mean, you name it, and if it’s somewhere between deeply unpleasant and life (and property) endangering, it’s getting worse in the Trumpian moment.

      In that second category, when it comes to destroying human life as we’ve known it via the release of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, the president and his men (and they are basically men) have shown a particular flair. I’m still alone in doing so, but I continue to refer to the whole lot of them as pyromaniacs, because their simple denial of the reality of global warming is the least of it. Trump and crew are clearly determined to burn, burn, burn.

      And lest you think any of this will ever bother the president or his top officials, think again.

      After all, having had an essentially mask-less, cheek-by-jowl election rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, which spread the coronavirus and may have killed one of the president’s well-known supporters, he then doubled down in his acceptance speech for the presidential nomination. He gave it in front of the White House before the kind of crowd he glories in: 1,500 enthusiastic followers, almost all mask-less, untested for COVID-19 and jammed together cheering him for an hour. That should tell you all you need to know about his concern for the lives of others (even those who adore him) or anyone’s future other than his own.

      Perhaps we need a new chant for this election season, something like: Four more years and this planet will be a hell on earth!

      It was the worst of times, it was… no, wait, in Trumpian terms, it was the worstest of times since no one should ever be able to outdo him. And as CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite would have said in my youth, you (and I and the rest of humanity) were there. We truly were and are. For shame.

      *[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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      As Europe Weakens, Turkey Is on the Rise

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      The horrific experience of World War II compelled European leaders to establish a supranational organization that is now the European Union, which, if successful, would create among its members, especially between Germany and France, an unbreakable bond, preventing the otherwise “savage continent” from destroying itself once again as it did many times before 1945. While the adoption of the common currency, the euro, after 1999 is cited as the epitome of European financial unity, when it comes to foreign policy, the EU itself is far from united.

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      The spat between EU candidate Turkey and EU member Greece over the boundaries of their exclusive economic zones (EEZ) in the eastern Mediterranean has exposed this intra-EU discord. Greece’s repeated calls to Brussels for solidarity have mostly been ignored, and France’s relentless efforts to create a solid anti-Turkish bloc have yielded nothing but some rhetorical support for Greece. France sees the growing Turkish influence in Libya as a grave threat to its economic interests in West Africa and the Sahel. Due to this perceived Turkish threat, Paris has been doing everything in its power to sabotage it, including throwing unconditional support behind Greece.

      Europe’s Locomotive

      The Greek frustration with the EU peaked at an all-time high at the Foreign Affairs Council on August 14, when member states Germany, Italy, Spain, Hungary, Bulgaria and Malta vetoed the request by Athens to sanction Ankara. In retaliation, the Greek Cypriots blocked an EU joint statement on sanctions against Belarus following the violent suppression of anti-government protests by the regime of Alexander Lukashenko. On September 10, French President Emmanuel Macron hosted the MED7 countries — Cyprus, France, Greece, Italy, Malta, Portugal and Spain — on the island of Corsica, the birthplace of Napoleon, hoping to mount pressure on Turkey, only to be disappointed that the leaders of Spain, Italy, Malta and Portugal avoided inflammatory remarks and emphasized the importance of a dialogue with Ankara.

      In fact, the day after the summit, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to express Spain’s willingness to enhance bilateral relations. On the same day, Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs Luigi Di Maio and Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs Mevlut Cavusoglu discussed on the phone “the matters related to Libya and the Eastern Mediterranean.” Two days after the Corsica summit, the Maltese Minister of EU Foreign Affairs Evarist Bartolo met with Cavusoglu in Turkey’s Mediterranean resort town of Antalya.

      Macron’s European partners have disappointed him before. France claimed that on June 10, Turkish warships locked their weapons systems on to a French frigate, the Courbet, which was part of NATO’s Sea Guardian monitoring mission. As a knee-jerk reaction to this incident, France suspended its naval operations in the Mediterranean. France took the issue to NATO, which Macron has inconveniently called “braindead” in the past, and whose majority of members are also part of the EU. To Macron’s dismay, only eight of the 30 NATO members backed France’s claims against Turkey, which French Defense Minister Florence Parly described as “serious and unacceptable.” Later, NATO announced that the probe into the incident was “inconclusive.”  

      So why is Europe so divided when it comes to Turkey? Why have France and Greece failed to create European unanimity against Turkey? The answer lies in the fact that the changing regional political and economic realities are forcing the European states to pursue their own individual agendas just like they did in the early 20th century, heralding the demise of the ideal to create the United States of Europe. Simply put, because of their vested interest in Ankara’s handling of the refugee crisis as well as their uneasiness about an ascendant France in the Mediterranean, some EU member states choose to align with Turkey rather than defend Greece’s maritime claims, severely undermining Paris’ effort to curb Ankara’s ambitions.  

      Germany, the locomotive of the European Union, is very concerned about the continuous influx of refugees into Europe, which has already begun to disrupt the financial, social and political make-up of the continent. For Berlin, Turkey’s ability to accommodate more than 4 million refugees it currently shelters is paramount to saving the contracting EU economies further stricken by COVID-19. Also, not angering Erdogan in this gloomy atmosphere is much more important for German Chancellor Angela Merkel than to mount a battle for Greece’s declared maritime borders in the far eastern stretches of the Mediterranean.

      Merkel’s motivation to get along with Erdogan upsets Macron, who feels the need to contain Turkey in Libya, West Africa and the eastern Mediterranean. Macron sees Brexit and the receding US influence as a historical opportunity to assert France’s role as the leader on the European continent, which in turn may herald Franco-German frictions. He repeatedly degraded the importance of NATO as a common defense mechanism at a time when Merkel is alarmed by US President Donald Trump’s decision to considerably cut the number of American troops in Germany. Macron has frequently criticized Merkel for allowing Germany’s much-needed Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline into Europe as he believes it will increase the European reliance on Russia.

      This Gaullist approach has not only irked Germany, but also raised concern with France’s Mediterranean neighbors, Italy, and Spain, who have historically viewed an ascendant France with suspicion. Hence their tacit support for Turkey, France’s current geopolitical perceived arch-rival. 

      Italy vs. France

      The Italian resentment toward France goes back to the 2011 French and NATO-led military intervention in Libya, which toppled Muammar Gaddafi. Italy sees the subsequent growing instability in Libya as a threat to national security as migrants, not only from Libya but also from sub-Saharan Africa, began to pour onto Italian shores. The Italians believed that Gaddafi’s iron-fist rule over Libya acted as a barrier between Italy and the more unstable and deprived parts of Africa.  

      The current migrant issue has severely hurt the Franco-Italian relations. Both sides have repeatedly summoned each other’s ambassadors, a serious sign of friction, criticizing the measures each refused to take. In June 2018, the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned France’s ambassador to Rome after Macron harshly criticized Italy’s refusal to accept the migrant ship Aquarius carrying more than 600 people.

      In June 2019, the current Italian foreign minister and then-deputy prime minister, Luigi Di Maio, lambasted the French immigration policy by saying that “If today people are leaving, it’s because certain European countries, chief among them France, never stopped colonizing dozens of African countries. France prints the currency, the colonial franc, in dozens of African countries, and with this currency, they finance the French debt . . . If France did not have the African colonies, she would be the world’s 15th economic power, but she’s among the first because of what she’s doing in Africa.” Di Maio even called for EU sanctions against France. The row escalated to a point where France recalled its ambassador to Italy in February 2019, a move unprecedented since the Second World War. The acrimony with France has prompted Rome to side with Ankara in this latest diplomatic spat.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Italy’s support for Turkey in Libya seems to have paid off. After Turkey’s successful military campaign against the French-backed General Khalifa Haftar earlier this year, a senior European diplomat told the Financial Times: “Let’s be honest, Turkey stopped the fall of Tripoli. Without their intervention, it would have been a humanitarian disaster.” The influx of those running fleeing Haftar’s retribution would have severely crippled Italy.  

      An ascendant France in the Mediterranean basin also threatens Italy’s economic interests. Italy had considerable business stakes in Libya under Gaddafi, whose removal from power severely jeopardized them. The Italian energy giant ENI first entered the oil-rich country in 1959 and had a continuous presence throughout the 1980s, even when the West snubbed the Gaddafi regime for its links to terrorism. Before the French-led military intervention, Operation Harmattan, in 2011, Libya accounted for 15% of ENI’s total global hydrocarbons output, with oil production at 108,000 barrels per day and natural gas production at 9.4 billion cubic meters.

      Today, a number of lucrative oil projects are at stake for ENI, including the Bouri oil field, the largest offshore field in the Mediterranean Sea, located immediately off the coast of Libya. This area is controlled by the Turkish-backed Government of National Accord. Considering that ENI’s biggest challenger for the Libyan oil and gas is the French oil giant Total, Rome has naturally supported Fayez al-Sarraj’s Turkey-led coalition against Khalifa Haftar’s French-backed Libyan National Army. This too explains why Rome is reluctant to join France and Greece in imposing sanctions on Turkey.  

      British Considerations

      Historically speaking, France’s growing ambitions in the Mediterranean have triggered British suspicion. For instance, it was British support for the Ottoman Empire in the late 18th century that facilitated the defeat of Napoleon Bonaparte by the Turks in Egypt and Syria, which also safeguarded British regional interests. Just as it was then, today Turkey has become an important part of the UK’s geopolitical considerations, particularly in the post-Brexit era. London has manifested its support for Ankara on various occasions. For example, the UK, which has strategic Akrotiri and Dhekelia military bases on the island of Cyprus, openly rejected the Greek Cypriots’ request for cooperation against Turkey. Angered by this refusal, the Greek Cypriots turned to France.

      With regard to the Turkey-France naval incident, UK Prime minister Boris Johnson clearly sided with Turkey by publicly stating, “I do not give much credence to France’s view.” As a display of solidarity, the British frigate HMS Argyll and Turkish TCG Giresun held an exclusive naval training exercise in the disputed waters of the eastern Mediterranean the day after the French-led MED7 summit in Corsica. 

      The UK’s desire to cooperate with Turkey in the Mediterranean is also reflected on the smallest EU member, Malta, which shares a maritime border with Libya. Although it declared its independence from the UK in 1964, Malta’s foreign policy still is heavily influenced by London. In Libya, the Maltese government has openly declared its support for the Turkey-backed al-Sarraj administration. Moreover, as a blow to France’s efforts to prevent Turkey from sending weapons to Libya, Malta vetoed EU funding for Operation Irini meant to enforce an arms embargo.

      Malta’s support for Turkey in the Mediterranean partially stems from the anti-French sentiment that prevails in society. Prominent Maltese broadcaster Charles Xuereb, the author of “France in the Maltese Collective Memory: Perceptions, Perspectives, Identities After Bonaparte in British Malta,” states that “Napoleon’s slaughter of thousands of Maltese and the heavy pillaging of the island created a Maltese collective memory which blocks anything French but sees the British as their saviors.” It is only natural for Malta to throw its support behind Turkey, which has confronted France throughout the region. 

      Romantic Ideas

      Where do we go from here? The romantic idea of a united Europe where prosperity, democracy and solidarity reign supreme is becoming increasingly obsolete. The aging population, the influx of refugees and the rising populist far right, the COVID-19 pandemic and the abysmal state of eurozone economies, which is increasing the north-south divide, have all but weakened the idea of a shared future for the Europeans.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The weakening of Europe is happening at a time when Turkey seems to be on the rise. EU Foreign Minister Josep Borrell stated earlier this month: “Europe is facing a situation in which we can say that the old Empires are coming back, at least three of them: Russia, China, and Turkey; big empires of the past who are coming back with an approach on their immediate neighborhood, globally, which represent for us a new environment. And Turkey is one of these elements that change our environment.” 

      What is happening in the Mediterranean is not only a conflict between Greece and Turkey — it is also a European problem. Turkey’s ascendancy in the region should be expected to accelerate the fracturing of Europe, where each state is increasingly preoccupied with its own problems, forming competing alliances against one another.

      The latest addition to this chessboard is the renewed fighting between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh. Each side is accusing the other of causing the flare-up, but according to UN Security Council resolutions, Armenia is illegally occupying 20% of Azeri territory. In this conflict too, as in Libya, Syria and Iraq, Turkey holds the key. Turkey’s support for Azerbaijan has already led to heavy Armenian casualties. The Azeri-Armenian conflict will only strengthen Turkey’s position vis-à-vis Europe even more, disincentivizing Brussels to take measures against Ankara.  

      The dream of a united Europe is becoming more of an unattainable each day. The question now arises whether President Erdogan will be the one to deal the final blow to that idea.

      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

      When God Hates America

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      Anyone familiar with the ritual called the State of the Union is also familiar with the fact it invariably ends with the exhortation “God bless America.” Few are probably aware of the fact that the first president to utter it was none other than Richard Nixon, who “dropped the phrase during an attempt at damage control for the burgeoning Watergate scandal on April 30, 1973.” God did bless America at the time, if only by ridding the country of “Tricky Dick.”

      Yet it is probably fitting that it was Nixon who first came up with this phrase. Nixon represents something that is fundamental to the human condition, at least in its American form: the drive to succeed, no matter what, the force of self-delusion (“I’m not a crook”) and the fundamental hypocrisy that is central to the American experience.

      Nixon marks the origins of much of what is wrong today in the United States. It was his so-called Southern strategy — the appeal to the worst racist animus of white voters in the South — that not only won him the election, twice, but which marked the Republican Party for decades to come. Donald Trump owes his victory in the presidential election of 2016 to a large extent to Richard Nixon — a victory that has poisoned the country beyond repair.

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      Trump’s callous response to some of the worst calamities in recent history, from the disastrous impact of COVID-19 to the hellish wildfire inferno engulfing the western states, suggests that God has been looking less than kindly on his “city upon a hill” envisioned to represent a model of Christian charity, as John Winthrop put it in 1630. In fact, one might even suspect that God has come to hate it — that he hates it so much, in fact, that he allowed for the election of Donald Trump, the worthy heir to Richard Nixon.

      Nixon, of course, was a crook. But compared to Trump, he was one of Woody Allen’s “smalltime crooks,” little more than a minor league player. At the same time, however, he prepared the ground and paved the way for the current president who has made the appeal to white anxiety and resentment central to his administration. Trump, of course, has gone out of his way to invoke God’s blessing, waving the Bible (albeit upside down) in front of a church “he rarely attends and whose leaders and congregation work against the policies he trumpets,” in a craven attempt to play to his base: the dwindling number of fundamentalist Christians who consider him their last bulwark against an increasingly discombobulating, if not threatening, reality.

      Walking With Dinosaurs

      Donald Trump is the epitome of the stereotypical American, boisterous and narrowminded (“still the greatest country in the world”), hypocritical to the max (waving a Bible while boasting that he can grab any woman by her private parts and get away with it), and completely oblivious to how the rest of the world regards the US these days (“we should have more people from Norway” at a time when no Norwegian in his or her right mind would want to move to a “shithole country” like the US). At the same time, he is reminiscent of the playground bully who runs away crying, like Scut Farkus’ toadie, Grover Dill, in “A Christmas Story” (“I’m gonna tell my dad”) — when somebody dares to stand up to him, particularly if it is a woman.

      The United States is still the most (practicing) Christian nation among advanced Western democracies. In the most recent Pew survey on religion in America, around two-thirds identified as Christians. To be sure, this was substantially lower than just a decade ago. Yet compared to Western Europe, it is a remarkably high level. This, however, is only part of the story. What is considerably more important is the fact that a substantial number of Americans insist on taking the Bible literally, as the absolute Truth, even if that truth runs against not only science but even common sense (who in their right mind would believe that Jesus walked with dinosaurs?).

      Now, one would expect that those who profess to be genuinely dedicated Christians would follow what the good book teaches. Basic exhortations such as don’t lie, don’t cheat, be kind, compassionate and merciful toward your fellow sister and brother, independent of their ethnic background, economic circumstances or sexual orientation. And, above all, be humble and don’t take the moral high ground with that smug self-righteousness, which is particularly irritating in the eyes of the Lord, whom America’s dedicated Christians claim as their ultimate authority.

      As is written in Isaiah 64:6, “all our righteousnesses are like filthy rags.” Or as Jesus once put it, “Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven” (Luke 6:37). For the self-righteous, such sentiments are alien. The self-righteous are hypocrites who condemn others in order to show that they are morally superior. The Pharisees are a prime example of this kind of smug self-righteousness, which Jesus condemns in the most scathing terms.

      In the United States, the equivalent are TV “evangelists” such as Pat Robertson, the host of the “700 Club,” a Christian news and TV program with an audience going into the millions. Or there are Christian “leaders” such as Jerry Falwell Jr., the disgraced former president of Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, whose sexual shenanigans were too much even for evangelicals who have no qualms supporting a president who has boasted of getting away with … see above.

      And there are TV and radio commentators such as Tucker Carson at Fox News, who is still trying to figure out how to find his way out of Trump’s backside, and Rush Limbaugh, famous for dismissing COVID-19 as nothing more than the common flu and, later on, after tens of thousands of Americans had died from the respiratory disease, charging that following medical experts and wearing masks was “un-American” and nothing “compared to the way we have overcome enemies and obstacles in our past.”

      It would be easy to dismiss the likes of Robertson, Falwell Jr. and Limbaugh as somewhat picturesque if unhinged cranks were it not for the fact that their impact on ordinary people has been, and continues to be, far more pernicious than COVID-19 could ever achieve. There are good reasons to suspect that the Trump administration’s position on COVID-19, global warming and climate change, and white-on-black racism derives from a common root: the belief that the end is near. I am not referring to the end of COVID-19, or the end of the American empire, but of the end of humanity — the end of the world as we know it.

      Fulfillment of Prophecy

      In my former life, I had the opportunity to spend a year as an exchange student with a “fundamentalist” Christian family in Texas. They were some of the most generous people I have ever had the opportunity to encounter. They lived their faith, and it showed. The also introduced me, a Bavarian Catholic who had spent the past eight years of his life in a Catholic boarding school, to a world largely informed by the scripture’s teachings.

      For the first time, I was confronted not only with some of the major Old Testament prophets such as Daniel, but also with the Book of Revelations and its exegesis. Here, the most important book at the time, at least among true believers, was Hal Lindsey’s “The Late Great Planet Earth,” which sold millions of copies. The book was very much informed by the Cold War. In Lindsey’s exegesis of the Revelations, Gog and Magog, the “forces” from the north threatening Israel, is the Soviet Union attacking Israel with Mi-24 helicopters (John’s giant locusts). After Gog and Magog’s annihilation, there will be a war “between the Western powers and the Chinese, which will culminate in the end of the world in a thermonuclear blast.” So much for Hal Lindsey.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Nevertheless, the book was turned into a film, with Orson Welles, of all people, serving as the narrator. Both book and movie are based on John’s Apocalypse, which tells of the tribulations visited upon humanity heralding in the end of the world, the last judgment. True believers, of course, most of them Americans, were spared the pain. They were snatched from the earth in a process of divine kidnapping that swept them up into heaven from where they could gloat — the rapture. Evangelical writers, always eager to make a buck from the gullibility of true believers, turned the narrative into a series of books, “Left Behind,” which scared the daylights out of lukewarm believers and turned the authors into millionaires. This might sound funny, ludicrous, kooky, off the deep end were it not for the fact that it appears to inform major figures in Trump’s inner circle.

      One of the central dogmas among those who believe in the truth as revealed by John in the Apocalypse is that the end of history — and the return of Christ — is contingent on the Jews rebuilding the temple in Jerusalem. For a long time, this was inconceivable, given the fact that the site of the temple is occupied by two of Islam’s holiest shrines, the Dome of the Rock and the al-Aqsa Mosque.

      Until Trump, American presidents have shied away from sanctioning Israel’s claim to all of Jerusalem. Diehard evangelicals have lobbied for decades that the American government do whatever possible to hasten the process. Presumably, this would allow the Jews to rebuild the temple. This, presumably, would entail destroying the Muslim shrines, which, in all probability, would trigger an all-out confrontation with the Muslim world.

      But in the self-contained world of American “dispensationalism,” Trump’s 2017 decision to move the US Embassy to Jerusalem was therefore widely seen as a fulfillment of biblical prophecy. Trump himself acknowledged that the move was largely “for evangelicals” rather than Jews who appeared to be rather unenthusiastic about it. But then why would they, given the fate that according to evangelicals awaits many of them during the time of tribulations? Hint: a large number will be “purged out and removed” — a euphemism, I guess, for saying they will go straight to hell.

      Apocalyptic Tales

      With Donald Trump, staunch believers in this kind of apocalyptic tales have assumed influential positions in the administration, above all Vice President Mike Pence, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former Housing Secretary Ben Carson, who is a Seventh-day Adventist, a Christian sect that holds that “almost all evangelical Christians will soon join with Satan to oppose Jesus Christ.” It stands to reason that their views on history and reality have had some influence on policy. Take, for instance, the environment. According to “rapture theologists,” the earth was given to humanity for its use. Therefore, environmentalism is nothing but “blasphemy.”

      According to one of the most influential “theological” voices in the White House, humans will not destroy the planet because God will “continually renew the face of the earth until He forms a new heaven and a new earth in the end times.” In any case, given the imminent approach of the end of the world, the destruction of the natural environment is hardly of vital concern.

      Embed from Getty Images

      In a similar vein, Trump’s lackluster response to the coronavirus pandemic might have something to do with the fact that among evangelicals, COVID-19 has been seen as a boon. As a leading contributor to the Trump campaign has put it, “The kingdom of God advances through a series of glorious victories, cleverly disguised as disasters.” In response to the pandemic, “millions of Americans” were turning to Jesus Christ, in the process augmenting the pool of likely Trump voters.

      In less than two months, the American electorate is going to vote for the country’s leader. Evangelicals will be a major force; so will be other Christians, including Latino Catholics. As it stands now, there is a chance that Trump will get reelected as a result. Evangelicals will be voting for Trump, but not because they believe that he is model Christian. Quite the opposite. They will vote for him because they believe that he is “God’s tool.” In the aftermath of the 2016 election, polls revealed substantial numbers of white Protestants believing that Trump was “anointed by God.” They also revealed that only a very small minority thought he was elected because God approved of his policies.

      Given what the Gospels have to say about Christ’s positions, it is fairly unlikely that God would approve of Trump’s “big, beautiful wall” or his more or less tacit support of racists and conspiracy theorists. This leaves only one alternative: God chose Trump to punish America for its blatant hybris, hypocrisy and self-righteousness. The Gospel tells us that God “so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Today, it seems that God hates America so much that he brought Donald Trump down upon it so that it understands the full extent of his wrath. Forget about God blessing America. He has better things to do.

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

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      The US Must Support Sudan’s Path to Democracy

      by

      In the aftermath of the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain formalizing diplomatic relations with Israel on August 13 and September 11, respectively, many experts predict that Sudan will be the next Arab state to follow suit. The main reason for this pertains to the fact that the Trump administration has been putting pressure on Khartoum to abandon the Arab Peace Initiative (API) and open up full-fledged ties with Tel Aviv. Undoubtedly the White House would desperately like to see Sudan take this step prior to America’s presidential election in November.

      In a characteristically transnational manner, President Donald Trump and those around him, such as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and adviser Jared Kushner, are reportedly making a quid pro quo deal with Khartoum. The US State Department will remove Sudan from the State Sponsors of Terrorism (SST) list in exchange for Khartoum normalizing relations with the Jewish state. Nonetheless, this is a cynical and misguided way for the Trump administration to approach Sudan as it disregards the significant ways in which Sudan has changed its policies, both domestically and internationally. Ultimately, it would serve US national interests to immediately remove Sudan from this list regardless of Khartoum’s stances on Israel and the API.

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      Since Sudan’s former president Omar Hassan al-Bashir fell from power in the spring of 2019, the country’s democratic experiment has faced myriad challenges. From COVID-19 to human rights abuses committed by the Sudanese military and major economic problems, Sudan has been dealing with many difficult issues amid the post-Bashir period. Today, there is no denying that the popular and non-violent revolution which ended Sudan’s three-decades-long dictatorship is fragile. International support for Khartoum is necessary for Sudan’s democratic struggle to succeed.

      Yet this is not forthcoming, due to a lack of focus in US foreign policy that has resulted in insufficient attention being paid to the specific policy drivers that must be implemented if Washington can hope to engage constructively with Sudan’s democratic process. It would behoove officials in Washington to adopt policies that result in the US helping, rather than hindering, Sudan’s difficult transition to democracy and civilian rule.

      Struggle for Democracy

      After Bashir’s ouster in a palace coup in April 2019, Sudan’s revolutionaries, millions of whom spent months on the streets pressuring the dictator to step down, continued protesting in favor of civilian leadership. In contrast to the many Egyptians who supported the military-backed coup in Egypt that toppled their country’s president, Mohammed Morsi, in July 2013, Sudan’s wider public knew not to blindly trust the country’s military to defend a democratic revolution. By June 3, 2019, hardline elements tied to the Bashir regime, including militants from the notorious Janjaweed militia, massacred Sudanese protesters in the capital, resulting in roughly 120 deaths and hundreds of injuries.

      Yet about two months after that atrocity, Sudan’s military and civilian revolutionaries agreed to a political compromise that came up with a government that is led by civilians but also maintains significant military representation.

      Since August 2019, a sovereign council consisting of six civilian and five military officials has been governing Sudan. Additionally, Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok heads a technocratic cabinet comprised of civilians. Sudan plans to run free and democratic elections in 2022, with the interim period of time supposed to give Sudanese civil society an opportunity to regrow after being harshly oppressed under Bashir’s rule. During the present period, there has been a restoration of the freedoms of assembly, press and speech. But the democratic transition was agreed upon in the pre-COVID-19 era and at a time when impacts of the pandemic on public health, the economy and society could not possibly have been foreseen.

      For Sudan’s government, the gravest risk is that it will lose its legitimacy among more Sudanese citizens if the country’s economic situation remains bleak. Youth unemployment stands around 40% and could widen societal divisions if left unaddressed or if tackled in ways that exacerbate and widen existing fault-lines and inequalities. Long lines for petrol as well as staple foods are common in Sudan, where the country’s annual inflation rate reached 167% in September. The global coronavirus pandemic and the lockdown have only exacerbated the country’s economic problems and made it more urgent that actions be taken as soon as possible to support the political transition underway in Sudan rather than wait until 2022, by which time the impact of economic and social dislocation generated by the current crisis might be too late to effect a positive democratic outcome.

      Harm of US Sanctions

      “The single biggest obstacle to Sudan’s economic recovery is the continued U.S. economic sanctions, which … not only impacts trade with and investment from the United States, but from other countries and multilateral entities as well,” explained renowned American Middle East scholar, Dr. Stephen Zunes. Other experts such as the Atlantic Council’s Cameron Hudson agree that Sudan’s long-term economic progress depends on Washington removing its sanctions on Khartoum. Imposed by the US in 1993 when Washington labeled Sudan a state sponsor of terrorism, these sanctions were aimed at punishing Bashir’s government for its links to Osama bin Laden and other global terrorists, plus the regime’s sponsorship of armed Palestinian and Arab groups like Hamas, the Abu Nidal Organization, the Fatah-Revolutionary Council, Hezbollah, Jamaat al-Islamiyya and Egyptian Islamic Jihad.

      Yet today, Sudan’s post-Bashir government is not sponsoring any Salafi-jihadi terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda or the Islamic State (IS). In fact, even Bashir’s government was not doing so during its final years in power. In its 2015 country report on terrorism, the US State Department stated that Washington and Khartoum “worked cooperatively in countering the threat posed by al-Qa’ida and ISIL.”

      Thus, Washington’s current policy vis-à-vis Sudan suffers from being stuck in a previous era in which leaders, institutions and both regional and global circumstances were fundamentally different and in no way reflect the considerable changes in Sudanese politics over the past year and more. Hudson described the continued designation of Sudan as a state sponsor terrorism as representing to many “an anachronism and a symbol of Washington’s own lethargy in updating its policy toward Khartoum.” In sum, problems which the US had with Bashir’s regime decades ago should not be “effectively punishing [the Sudanese] further for having overthrown [the Bashir] dictatorship,” as Zunes argues.

      Last year, Prime Minister Hamdok spoke before the UN General Assembly and addressed Washington’s outdated policies in relation to Sudan: “The Sudanese people have never sponsored, nor were supportive of terrorism. On the contrary, those were the acts of the former regime which has been continuously resisted by the Sudanese people until its final ouster. These sanctions have played havoc on our people, causing them untold misery of all types and forms.” There is a risk that the longer these sanctions remain in place, the more the US becomes vulnerable to narratives that portray bureaucratic inertia in responding to changing circumstances as something more sinister, ascribing to Washington malign policy motivations that damage America’s standing and public diplomacy interests.

      A major concern is that Sudan’s economic situation and COVID-19 crisis could jeopardize the country’s transition to democracy. If the period of time between now and the planned 2022 elections is defined by economic crises and resultant social and political unrest, other actors including the military or conservative Islamists tied to the Muslim Brotherhood may find themselves best positioned to take power. The Sudanese public, so energized by the revolutionary success of 2019, may quickly become disillusioned if it perceives its struggle to have been in vain or to have been betrayed. The experience of disillusioned activists in Tunisia and Egypt has shown how some may be drawn toward radicalization if they feel there is no realistic alternative to an authoritarian status quo.

      Policy Recommendations

      In order to best secure the hopes for a future Sudan led by inclusive, secular, moderate and democratic civilians, the US government should end all its sanctions on Khartoum and establish fully normalized diplomatic relations with Sudan. Thus, given the urgency of helping Sudan preserve its hard-fought-for democratic gains since 2019 and US interests in seeing a smooth transition occur in the country, below are four key policy recommendations.

      Embed from Getty Images

      First, Washington should remove Sudan’s designation on the US State Sponsors of Terrorism list. Sudan’s inclusion on the SST list not only bars the US from economically assisting Sudan but mandates that Washington prevent the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and other global financial institutions from giving Sudan loans or other forms of assistance. As coronavirus spreads across Sudan, the authorities have had a more difficult time coping with the pandemic because the World Bank came under US pressure in April 2020 to exclude Sudan from a list of developing countries that received help from a $1.9-million emergency fund. Furthermore, the designation requires US citizens to obtain the Treasury Department’s approval prior to engaging in any financial transaction with these Sudanese government. So long as Sudan is on the SST list, it will be difficult to imagine the impoverished country receiving sufficient levels of investment and trade in order to develop and prosper in the future.

      Second, the US should lift all other remaining sanctions on Khartoum and encourage multinational institutions to help Sudan, especially amid the global COVID-19 crisis. Because Omar al-Bashir ascended to power in an Islamist-driven military coup in 1989, and the military that took power in the 2019 palace coup did not come to power as a result of a democratic election, there remain prohibitions under Section 7008 of the State Department Foreign Operations funding. In practice, this prevents the US from providing much assistance to any country where the “military has overthrown, or played a decisive role in overthrowing, the government.”

      Yet the US should not wait to pull these prohibitions until after the 2022 elections, which is what Washington currently plans to do. Darfur-related sanctions are also still enforced, which as Hudson argues “will continue to have a dampening effect on outside investment until durable peace and credible accountability mechanisms have been implemented.” These sanctions deter banks and other financial institutions around the world from taking the risks that currently come with Sudan-related opportunities. Thus, lifting these sanctions could help boost Sudan’s foreign investment climate.

      Third, Washington should reverse its decision, made in February 2020, to end migrant visas from Sudan. This move basically brings all immigration from Sudan to a complete halt, and it will continue to do so even in the post-COVID-19 period if not addressed. As experts such as the Chatham House’s Matthew T. Page have explained, Trump’s domestic political agenda of taking hard stances on immigration issues amid his reelection campaign was largely behind this policy decision, which targeted Sudan and three other African countries. In the process, however, the US loses influence in these developing nations that see the American door slamming on them as only further reason to invest in even deeper ties with China and Russia.

      Finally, the US should stand with Sudan’s government in solidarity against COVID-19. While the US should first end sanctions on Sudan, which would help combat the spread of coronavirus in the country and among its neighbors, Washington should also give Khartoum aid to help the Sudanese authorities deal with the pandemic within their own borders. As other states worldwide have practiced “coronavirus diplomacy” to boost their humanitarian credentials, this demonstration of American soft power could secure some goodwill from the Sudanese public following decades of negative relations between Washington and Khartoum.

      Key Interests

      Ultimately, there is no good reason for the US to be working to undermine Sudan’s democratic experiment, even if that is not the intent but rather the unfortunate byproduct of a bureaucracy that is slow to respond, giving the impression of stasis. Perceptions often play a key role in shaping emerging realities, and for the Sudanese, who feel that their actions in ousting a dictator are deserving of American support, there may not be an open-ended window before expectation turns to disillusionment.

      Moreover, there are key American interests that can be advanced through a US-Sudan rapprochement that follows an unwinding of Washington’s sanctions on Khartoum. In terms of competition among global powers, Washington has long-term foreign policy interests in establishing a positive relationship with post-Bashir Sudan. Washington’s sanctions on Sudan, as well as outright American hostility against the country — most exemplified by the Clinton administration’s decision to bomb a factory in Khartoum in 1998 — have only pushed the country closer to China, Russia, and at previous junctures Iran too.

      Although Sudan is not a high-ranking issue of interest to the diplomatic establishment in Washington nor to the US public, the American and Sudanese people alike could stand to gain in many ways if their governments reconcile and work toward a more cooperative relationship following a rapprochement. As a farmland-rich country situated along the Red Sea at the intersection of the Arab and African worlds, Sudan represents an important part of the conflict-prone Horn of Africa. In this volatile part of Africa, many powers — China, Israel, Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Russia, United Arab Emirates, etc. — are scrambling to consolidate their clout, and the US certainly has its own interests in the immediate and broader neighborhood.

      Embed from Getty Images

      While the focus on countering terrorism and violent extremism has, to an extent, taken center stage in the US, measures taken now that support the political transition to democracy and strengthen Sudan’s economy can have a significant impact in bolstering Sudanese resilience to potential shocks such as COVID-19 that, if mishandled, could undermine much of the progress made on the security and stability fronts.

      Yet beyond such strategic interests shaped by Sudan’s geopolitical position in the wider African, Arab and Islamic regions, the US would in an ideational sense be living up to its professed values if Washington adopted new policies that are aimed at supporting the Sudanese people in their struggle for democracy following 30 years of brutal dictatorial rule. Ultimately, the US is sending the wrong message when it emphasizes the importance of human rights but turns its back on Sudan’s non-violent, democratic revolutionaries while engaging openly with highly authoritarian states around Sudan such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

      From a soft power and public diplomacy perspective, too, greater support for Sudan would be a significant tool for the US to project as the world retreats into a great power rivalry synonymous with the Cold War in the 20th century, not least because the African continent has emerged as one of the frontlines for such perceived geopolitical competition with China.

      *[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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      America’s War on Abortion

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      Despite the World Health Organization (WHO) releasing a statement earlier this year articulating that, “services related to reproductive health are considered to be part of essential services during the COVID-19 outbreak,” legislators in some US states have been making relentless efforts to declare abortion services as non-essential during the pandemic. Lawmakers in Oklahoma, Alabama, Arkansas, West Virginia, Louisiana, Ohio, Tennessee and Iowa are having to contest extensive lawsuits in connection with the issue.

      On March 23, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton asked all licensed health care professionals and facilities, including abortion providers, to comply with the executive order issued by Governor Greg Abbott that stated that all surgeries and procedures that are not medically necessary to correct a serious condition or preserve life will be postponed. Thus, all procedural abortions in the state of Texas were banned amid the COVID-19 outbreak to conserve medical resources. After a union of abortion-rights groups, including Planned Parenthood, sued the state of Texas over this temporary yet extremely restrictive measure, the bans were partially lifted, with abortions resuming again at the end of April.

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      According to Marie Stopes International, the suspension of services could lead to anywhere between 1.2 million and 2.7 million unsafe abortions during the pandemic across the 37 countries where the charity operates. A large part of these will occur in the United States, owing to a lack of safe abortion facilities. Thus, the uproar caused by the US restrictions has breathed new life into the standoff between pro-life and pro-choice advocates, an argument the relevance of which has not diminished with time.

      May 15, 2019,was a decisive and divisive date for women in the United States, particularly in the state of Alabama, which saw the passing of the Alabama Human Life Protection Act. Under this law, women who undergo an abortion after six weeks of pregnancy can be held criminally culpable or civilly liable for homicide. The act bears only two exceptions: if the fetus has a lethal anomaly or if the pregnancy poses a threat to the mother’s life. Since the landmark decision of Roe v. Wade in 1973, this is the first time abortion is being criminalized in the US. The passing of the act has triggered a domino effect, opening the availability of abortion up for debate in several states. In Georgia, Ohio, Louisiana and Missouri, blanket bans on abortion have been passed.

      Of the 27 Republicans in the Alabama Senate, 25 of those who voted the act through were white men. As Nahanni Fontaine, a member of the Legislative Assembly of Manitoba, Canada, tweeted, “These 25 men, who will never be pregnant, just legislated more rights to rapists than to women, girls & victims of rape/incest.”

      Hundreds of pro-choice demonstrators marched to the Alabama Capitol to protest the bill, with slogans like “My Body, My Choice!” and “Vote Them Out!” Then-Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg vocalized their opposition to the passage of the act. Celebrities like Jameela Jamil, Ashley Judd, Amber Tamblyn and Busy Philipps talked about their own abortion stories as an act of protest. Rihanna, Lady Gaga, Billie Eilish, Sophie Turner and Emma Watson have also spoken out against the bans. Even Tomi Lahren, a conservative commentator, has voiced her opinion against the ban, calling it “too restrictive.” The postulate that “Men shouldn’t be making laws about women’s bodies” flooded the internet.

      Pro-Life?

      On the other side of the argument, pro-life supporters think that the 6-week-old embryo is a living being and that aborting it is murder — even in the cases of incest and rape. Often, religion is used to justify such ideology. The main argument that pro-lifers bring to the table is that because at six weeks of gestation the fetus inside its mother’s womb has a heartbeat, it must be recognized as a human being.

      In 2015, 89% of all abortions in the United States happened during the first trimester, prior to week 13 of gestation. During this period of time, the fertilized zygote is generally attached to the wall of the mother’s uterus through the placenta. At this stage, the embryo is incapable of surviving independently from its mother. Hence, the embryo — which becomes a fetus at seven weeks gestation — cannot be considered an entity in itself.

      Pro-life advocates go on to say that adoption is an alternative to abortion and also highlight the fact that abortions may result in medical complications later in life. However, more than 60% of children in foster care spend two to five years, and 20% spend five or more years, in the system before being adopted. Some never do. This can lead to issues like a greater vulnerability to depression, obesity and anxiety. Furthermore, new research shows that only about 6% of children passing out of foster care have actually finished college and less than half are employed at the age of 23.

      When it comes to the safety of abortions, a study by the Bixby Center for Global Reproductive Health shows that major complications in abortion procedures are rare, occurring in less than a quarter of 1% of procedures, which is safer than having a wisdom tooth removed. Abortions performed in a clinical environment are safe. However, that is precisely what these acts are denying women.

      In the case of incest or rape, pro-life advocates are vocal about punishing the perpetrator. However, Republican Congressman Steve King has defended the blanket bans by saying, “What if we went back through all the family trees and just pulled out anyone who was a product of rape or incest?” He went on to ask: “Would there be any population of the world left if we did that? Considering all the wars and all the rapes and pillages that happened throughout all these different nations, I know that I can’t say that I was not a part of a product of that.” The fact that the birth of a child is a physical burden carried out by women, not men, is glaringly absent from this line of thought.

      Embed from Getty Images

      What legislators seem to be impervious to is that rapists continue to walk free while women are made to carry their children. Nearly 3 million, or 2.4% of American women, experience rape-related pregnancy in their lifetime. However, for every 1,000 sexual assaults that take place in America, 995 perpetrators walk free. According to a CNN investigation, 25 law enforcement agencies in 14 states were found to be destroying rape kits in cases that could still go to trial.

      The American justice system is currently incapable of delivering justice to women. No minor — like the 11-year-old rape victim from Ohio — must be forced to carry her rapist’s child to term. Moreover, in cases of incest-related rape, the child born out of the union can suffer various mental and physical deficiencies. Children born to close relatives often suffer from being more prone to recessive genetic diseases, reduced fertility, heart defects, cleft palates, fluctuating asymmetry and loss of immune system function.

      Conservatives insist that women must be responsible enough to use contraception and not use abortion as an alternative. A Gallup poll shows that at least 78% of all American adults who are opposed to abortion are also pro-birth control. However, between 2011 and 2013, 43% of adolescent females and 57% of adolescent males in the US did not receive information about birth control before they had sex for the first time.

      There is a lack of sex education at the primary and high school levels, and women are expected to be aware of contraceptives in a system that doesn’t teach preventive measures in the first place. Moreover, in 2014, 51% of abortion patients were using a contraceptive method in the month they became pregnant, and this goes to prove that contraception does not always stop conception, especially in cases where people are ill-informed about its use.

      A Nightmare for Women

      The deeper one looks into the issue, the clearer it becomes that pro-life advocates are not really saving lives. They are more simply anti-women. The Alabama Human Life Protection Act states that if a woman does undergo an abortion, the doctor carrying out the procedure could go to jail for up to 99 years — a class-A felony charge.

      The ban will disproportionately affect racial minorities. For example, some 36% of abortions are performed on African American women, who make up just 13% of the population. In Georgia, while African Americans constitute 32.2% of the population, they account for 62.4% of all abortions. Policymakers are conscious of this.

      The bill also fails to address the crucial question of who will provide the basic necessities that a child needs to survive. In the US, the average cost of raising a child up to the age of 18, excluding college education, is $233,610. However, 49% of all abortion patients in the United States of America live below the poverty line, with an annual income of less than $11,770. Childbirth costs for many uninsured Americans can easily extend to over $30,000.

      Furthermore, in 2017, a total of 194,377 children were born to women aged between 15 and 19 — a rate of 18.8 per 1,000 women in this age group, a record low. The states of Mississippi and Louisiana, where attempts have been made to criminalize abortion, rank among the first six states with the highest teenage pregnancy rates. The expenses of having an unplanned child become insurmountable for many of these women.

      But making abortions illegal will not stop them from taking place. In 2017, over 6,000 abortions were provided in Alabama. This is despite the fact that the number of abortion clinics had been reduced to just five and that some people had to drive hundreds of miles to get to one. In the state of Georgia, 27,453 abortions were carried out in  2017, 8,706 in Louisiana, 20,893 in Ohio, 3,903 in Missouri and 2,594 in Mississippi. It is unrealistic to suggest that all these women will decide to keep the baby just because of the change in the law.

      Baby Lives Matter

      The only change Alabama’s new law will bring about is in the methods women will use to secure an abortion. In countries where abortion is already criminalized, non-clinical and illegal abortions still cause about 8 to 11% of all maternal deaths. America may soon be no different. Women may be forced to seek help online, where they receive suggestions such as injecting themselves with unknown drugs, falling down the stairs and other horrific solutions.

      Embed from Getty Images

      As the Alabama abortion laws remain blocked by a federal judge, Americans are shadowed by uncertainty with respect to their right to abortion. With the passing of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg earlier this week, the right to abortion enshrined in Roe v. Wade comes under threat of a possible conservative majority on the court.

      Following  President Donald Trump’s termination of America’s relationship with the WHO, the US is under no obligation to adhere to the prospects of abortion being an essential service. Despite retaliation from several reproductive rights groups and national medical associations including the American Medical Association, the Trump campaign is selling baby onesies with the slogan “Baby Lives Matter.”

      These bans, though legally restricted to the US, affect women all over the world as they affect any progress toward gender equality and create general disagreement on the issue. According to Marie Stopes International, unless efforts are made to acknowledge the essential nature of reproductive health, 9.5 million women across the world could lose access to contraception, causing up to 3 million unwanted pregnancies and, in turn, between 1.2 million and 2.7 million unsafe abortions and 11,000 pregnancy-related deaths. Considering the current state of affairs around abortion in the US, it is safe to say that a large portion of these figures will be attributed to America.

      Amid deepening economic, social and health care crises spurred on by the global pandemic, the debate over reproductive rights will affect women the world over. When it comes to abortion, laws around it must be written by women, for women. America must listen to its women, who must retain their right to choose, especially during these trying times.

      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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      QAnon: A Conspiracy for Our Time

      by

      Those of us who, in the late 1980s and 1990s, frequently traveled in the United States might recall being approached by young men, dressed for business in suits and ties, at major airports. They distributed tracts and asked for contributions. No, they were not Mormons but followers of Lyndon LaRouche, one of the most eccentric figures on the American radical right. A perennial candidate for the American presidency, LaRouche was the head of a political cult that subscribed to the notion that current events were orchestrated and manipulated by dark forces, most notably by the queen of England (charged with presiding over the international drug trade) and the “Zionist British aristocratic oligarchy.” Among other things, he was a great proponent of fusion power, a legacy that continues to inspire his admirers.

      Lyndon LaRouche might be dismissed as a nutjob. He was, and at the same time he was far from it. LaRouche was not only the only presidential candidate to campaign for the presidency “with a platform that included his own version of quantum theory.” He was also the only candidate to evoke Plato. In the words of a leading expert on conspiracy theories, LaRouche was convinced that “history is a war between the Platonists (the good guys) and the evil Aristotelians. Anyone who has taken Philosophy 101 can follow the drift: Platonists believe in standards, an absolute truth that can be divined by philosopher kings like Mr. LaRouche. To the Aristotelians everything is relative.”  

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      While Platonists seek to use technology and classical music to the benefit of humanity, Aristotelians are out to thwart them. “With their bag of brainwashing techniques” — such as sex, rock music and environmentalism — “they hope to trick civilization into destroying itself, bringing on a ‘’new dark ages’’ in which the world’s riches will be firmly in the hands of the oligarchy.”

      Brilliant or Unhinged?

      A few years ago, such ruminations might have been dismissed as the delusional musings of a brilliant yet unhinged mind, gone off the deep end. Today, it appears that LaRouche was way ahead of his time. LaRouche, who passed away in 2019 at the ripe age of 96, presumably would have a field day were he still alive today, delighting in the fact that in the first years of the Trump presidency, the “Platonists” have finally come into their own, having made significant gains in the struggle for gaining the upper hand in the quest for cultural hegemony.

      The terms originated with the Italian Marxist theorist Antonio Gramsci as a heuristic construct to explain why Italian workers acted against their objective interests. For Gramsci, cultural hegemony is strongest when subordinate classes “come to believe that the economic and social conditions of their society are natural and inevitable, rather than created by people with a vested interest in particular social, economic, and political orders.”  

      The struggle over cultural hegemony is a war of position, a slow process of creating and diffusing alternative narratives capable of subverting the hegemonic ones. Success in the struggle over cultural memory means being able to define concepts and fill them with meaning, seductive enough to appeal to a significant portion of the population. This is what has happened in the United States over the past several decades, reflected in what has come to be known as the culture war. In 2016, Donald Trump promoted himself as an “aggressive culture warrior” ready to take on the establishment.

      Central to this strategy was coming to the defense of the white Christian (both Protestant and Catholic) communities, who increasingly saw themselves as strangers in their own land, their values and beliefs ridiculed and disparaged, their voice marginalized and ignored, more often than not drowned out by minorities, such as gays, lesbians and transgender people, whom they consider immoral.

      Central to any religion is the notion that there is an absolute truth, which can only be grasped by faith. You either believe that human beings were created some 10,000 years ago — as a third of the American population seem to believe — or you don’t. You either believe that today’s natural catastrophes are part of a grand divine scheme, heralding the beginning of “the end times” ushering in the return of Christ, or you don’t. You either believe that you are among the few lucky ones who will be spared, via rapture, from having to live through the times of great tribulations, or you don’t. Surveys suggest that a growing number of Americans don’t. As a result, true believers feel even more beleaguered, victimized by a society increasingly not only slowly but inexorably “de-Christianizing” but more and more hostile to their beliefs and way of life.

      In 2016, Barna, a leading Christian pollster, revealed that a large majority of Americans viewed Christianity as “extremist.” For instance, more than 80% of respondents considered it extreme if a service provider refused to serve a customer (as has happened to gay customers ordering a wedding cake for their wedding) because “the customer’s lifestyle conflicts with their beliefs.”

      These results are only one indication that America’s Platonists, to stay with the LaRouchian frame, are on the verge of losing some of the major gains they made in the initial phase of the Trump presidency. In fact, in recent months, a number of Trump’s “culture war allies” have defected; his advisers have warned that with COVID-19 and the uproar over police brutality, the world is fundamentally different from 2016. This does not mean, however, that the conflict identified by LaRouche has abated. It has only moved to a different plane — the realm of conspiracy theory, the most famous one these days being QAnon.

      Just Ask Q

      A recent poll revealed that around 55% of Republicans believe that QAnon is mostly or partly true. Against that, more than 70% of Democrats agreed with the statement that QAnon is not true at all. For those not familiar with QAnon, it is a conspiracy theory that holds that Donald Trump is fighting a globally operating secret cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles, consisting of liberal politicians, “deep-state” government officials and their fellow travelers in finance, the media, higher education and the entertainment industry — i.e., the liberal elite. QAnon might sound absurd and abstruse, yet it has, over the past several months, found a rapidly growing number of adherents and supporters, not only in the United States, but also on the other side of the Atlantic, from Italy to Switzerland, from France to the far corners of central Europe.

      In recent demonstrations against the measures put forward by Angela Merkel’s government in Germany designed to slow down the spread of COVID-19, most notably the obligation to wear a mask, a number of demonstrators identified themselves as QAnon adherents, wearing T-shirts displaying the slogan “Save the Children.”

      Save the children is the relatively more benign side of QAnon — as far as conspiracy theories go. It explains, for instance, why in the United States women have been particularly attracted to it. As Annie Kelly recently wrote in The New York Times, it is motherly love that draws women to the “theory,” with “concerned mothers taking a stand for child sex abuse victims.” Saving children, however, only one facet of Q, and arguably of lesser importance. The reality is that QAnon serves to a large extent as an empty signifier, a term devoid of meaning in and of itself, and as such in a position to accommodate each and every conspiracy theory, folding them “into its own master narrative.”  

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      A prominent example are anti-vaccination activists, the anti-vaxxers, one of the groups participating in the anti-mask demonstrations that have been held in Germany and elsewhere in Europe. Their argument is not only that vaccinations pose dangers, but that vaccinations are part of an insidious, evil plot hatched at the headquarters of the global satanic elite. Its supreme villain is Bill Gates, the Ernst Stavro Blofeld of Q’s imagination.

      A German video posted on YouTube and produced by a relatively unknown former radio show host quickly went viral. The author’s claim: COVID-19 is part of a conspiracy conceived by Bill and Melinda Gates, aimed at drastically reducing humanity via mass vaccinations laced with sterilization molecules. So far, the video has been seen by more than 3 million viewers, and its author has been the subject of discussion in Germany’s leading media.

      In Italy, a former deputy of the Five Star Movement managed to expound the “theory” in parliament. In justification of her opposition to proposed anti-COVID-19 emergency measures, she charged Bill Gates with having, for ages, devised plans to reduce the world population and establish a “dictatorial hold on global politics” designed to gain “control over agriculture, technology and energy.” For years now, the deputy charged, Bill Gates had argued that vaccinations and reproductive health would reduce the world population by 10% to 15% and, more importantly, “only genocide could save the world.”

      Particular Resonance

      QAnon started out as an obscure internet-based conspiracy theory. In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, it has morphed into a cult, an ersatz religion, a great narrative that gives sense and meaning to an increasingly disconcerting, if not frightening reality. In LaRouchian terms, it is the ultimate Platonists’ dream. QAnon is true because common sense says it is true. It is true because a substantial number of ordinary people believe it is true. It is true because some celebrities of newly acquired internet fame, who got their degree from the “University of Google,” say so. It is true because it can be found on social media.

      In a world where truth claims are subjected to rigorous scientific scrutiny, QAnon would easily be debunked as utter nonsense. In today’s chaotic world, however, any attempt to unmask Q not only appears to strengthen the resolve of the theory’s adherents but also attracts new converts. In the process, it has turned into a movement “united in mass rejection of reason, objectivity, and other Enlightenment values,” as Adrienne LaFrance has put it in The Atlantic.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The example of the Moldovan Orthodox Church provides an illustration of the far reach of the movement. In May, the church released a statement charging that the “global anti-Christian system wants to introduce microchips into people’s bodies with whose help they can control them, through 5G technology.” Vaccination, developed and promoted by Bill Gates the church stated, “introduces nanoparticles into the body that react to the waves transmitted by 5G technology and allow the system to control humans remotely.”

      Given widespread public skepticism toward scientific knowledge, if not outright rejection of it, it seems QAnon is the perfect narrative for all those who live in an alternative reality where Donald Trump is the white knight In shining armor indefatigably laboring to thwart the diabolical plots of satanic avatars and their deep-state allies — Gates, George Soros, Warren Buffett, Tom Hanks and Jane Fonda. The list is long, and anybody can add to it.

      Under the circumstances, it is hardly surprising that QAnon has had a particular resonance among white evangelicals, who generally “exhibit the strongest correlation, among any faith group, between religiosity and either climate science denial or a general anti-science bias.” At the same time, white evangelicals are the voting bloc most committed to Donald Trump, a constituency he cannot afford to lose. This might explain why Trump has refused to reject QAnon out of hand, instead expressing his appreciation of the fact that its adherents “like me very much” and “love our country.”

      Evangelicals are LaRouche’s ideal Platonists. When belief clashes with scientific knowledge — as it does on evolution — they invariably side with faith as the ultimate source of truth. Unfortunately, these days, in the face of a devastating pandemic, a seemingly never-ending series of environmental catastrophes and mounting global tensions, evangelicals are hardly alone in seeking refuge in an all-encompassing “theory” that provides answers, comfort in the knowledge not to be alone and, most frighteningly, a rationale for violent action. These are chilling prospects, given the upcoming US presidential election. Whatever happens, tensions are bound to rise, with potentially devastating consequences.

      *[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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      America’s Parallel Realities: Are We All in the Wrong Movie?

      by

      In the early 1960s, one of the most popular series on American television was “The Twilight Zone.” This was a time when television, even in the United States, was still in black and white. Most of the show’s episodes were riveting, poignant and, in a number of cases, scary as hell — starting with the haunting tune at the beginning of each episode.

      “The Twilight Zone” reflected the anxieties and fears of a generation faced with the horrifying potential of technology capable of obliterating humanity. At the same time, it was informed by the equally terrifying capability of humans, if given the chance, to commit the most horrendous atrocities against other humans as long as there was a political regime that both sanctioned and encouraged them in the name of some kind of narrative, based on religion, race, class or superior insight.

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      It might not come as a surprise that in recent years, there has been an upsurge in references to “The Twilight Zone.” As the author of a 2018 article put it, the “anti-fascist, anti-racist themes of ‘The Twilight Zone’ are more relevant today than ever.” So are the themes referring to environmental catastrophes which also featured prominently in the series.

      For me, however, the reason “The Twilight Zone” has increasingly popped up in my mind lies elsewhere, in the way many of the episodes were constructed. A person wakes up in the morning in his or her familiar setting. A few hours later, he or she enters a fundamentally different reality, finds him or herself “in the wrong movie.” This is how I feel when I read American newspapers today and expose myself to the latest news. What is most striking in today’s America is the fundamental disjointedness, for lack of a better word, between realities.

      Episode 1: The Case of the Racist USC Professor

      A couple of days ago, the idyllic world of American academia was rudely awoken by an egregious case of blatant racism in the classroom or, rather, in the virtual space of Zoom-enhanced higher learning. A widely-known and celebrated business communications professor at the University of Southern California, which is generally better known for its prowess in college football than its academic achievements, repeatedly used the N-word — or at least what appeared to be the N-word — during a lecture.

      Commenting on the importance of filler words in communications, he used as an example the expression “nei ge.” The use of the expression caused much distress among African American students, resulting in the demand that the professor be immediately sanctioned. The university complied, putting him on administrative leave.

      As it happens, my wife is Chinese. When she speaks to her relatives and friends, every other sentence is interrupted by “nei ge.” It appears to be one of the most common expressions in Chinese, much like an English “um” or “uh,” allowing the speaker to take a pause to find the appropriate words to finish the sentence. In today’s victim culture, however, an innocent expression is turned into a signifier of racism, given the phonetic similarity between it and the N-word, much to the bewilderment of those like my wife who come from the culture that has used the expression for centuries (apparently a similar expression exists in Korean).

      In the end, there is no easy way to resolve the issue. It would be easy to demand that Chinese speakers in the United States show a modicum of sensitivity when using words that might cause offense. At the same time, however, Chinese speakers have a just cause to demand that others show a modicum of sensitivity to them, give them the benefit of the doubt and abstain from assuming evil intentions.

      The controversy reminds of the brouhaha over the word “niggardly,” which is the synonym of “stingy,” and has nothing to do with the N-word. Yet on several occasions, it has provoked accusations of racism, grounded more in the accuser’s unfamiliarity with the intricacies of the English language than the evil intentions of the person who dared to use it. To be sure, there are good reasons to avoid using the word. It is largely outdated, and “stingy” is a perfectly appropriate equivalent. At the same time, it is preposterous to sanction a person for the single reason that he or she uses a word that might evoke phonetic associations but which has absolutely nothing to do with the offensive term.

      Episode 2: The Case of the Racist Romance Novelist

      Romance novels are big sellers. In fact, they outsell most other literary genres. Its readers number in the millions, not only in the United States but worldwide. Most of the authors are women — as are the readers — and most of the women authors happen to be white. As a result, most of the stories revolve around white women getting involved with white men of either the affluent or the dangerous variety. Romance novels are replete with millionaires and billionaires just waiting to fall in love with single moms and members of motorcycle gangs with a soft core falling for the “sassy girl” next door.

      There are relatively few women of color who have made it in and into the genre. One of them is Alexandria House. Her novels center around some of the strongest women the genre has produced. In fact, Alexandria House’s stories are every feminist’s dream, and for good reason. Her heroines refuse to take shit from anyone, and particularly from good-looking, cocky African American men. Her heroines are strong, ballsy women who know what they want, and they have no problem asking for it and pursuing their goals with determination and verve.

      And then there is this: One of House’s best novels is “Let Me Love You,” with a Goodreads score of 4.6 out of 5. The setting is the hip-hop scene, and the main protagonists are top performers making millions with their songs. The novel has all the drama and heartache one would expect from an outstanding romance, and it delivers in a big way. This, however, is not the point. What is particularly striking to a reader sensitized to the intricacies of racist language is the fact that the novel’s author has absolutely no qualms using the N-word throughout the story. In fact, thanks to Kindle, the precise number of the N-words is easy to ascertain — 39 times, to be exact.

      To be sure, things are never as clear-cut as today’s hypersensitized purists would like us to believe. The debate about the N-word, in its two versions, has been going on for decades, and it has hardly been conducted in as straightforward a fashion as one might expect. To be sure, it does make a difference who uses the N-word. In fact, as has been pointed out, used on the part of an African American author, the word has a different connotation — including expressing a sense of endearment, which, I presume, is House’s intention — than used by a white author. 

      Embed from Getty Images

      In a recent essay in The Atlantic, John McWhorter from Columbia University has discussed the question at great depth. One of his conclusions: “Even when discussing rather than wielding the word, people —including black ones — might avoid barking out the word any more than necessary. (Or avoid writing it more than necessary, as in this very essay.) Surely, its history means that it provokes negative associations; it doesn’t sound good.”

      McWhorter starts his essay with controversy at Columbia following a white professor’s evoking the N-word in reference to James Baldwin’s 1963 public statement that he was “not a nigger.” One of her (white) students objected to her uttering the word, the administration agreed and put her under investigation. Ultimately, she was cleared of suspicion that she had violated the university’s anti-discrimination rules.

      For McWhorter, the very fact that a professor would be sanctioned for exploring the question of why James Baldwin would have chosen to say what he did is a clear indication of what he calls mission creep, “under which whites are not only not supposed to level the word as a slur, but are also not supposed to even refer to it. That idea has been entrenched for long enough now that it is coming to feel normal, but then normal is not always normal. It borders … on taboo.”

      This brings me back to the main topic of Episode 1. Here is a case that goes even further than the “mission creep” McWhorter alludes to. It surely is a case of that “hypersensitive to injury so abstract,” so inane, it should never have become an issue of controversy. To make the point quite clear: This is not about the use of Alexandra House’s use of the word. It is about the controversy generated by the use of “nei ga.” As said before, Alexandria House is one of the very best authors of romance novels. Her rather frequent evocation of the word is largely owed, I presume, to her attempt to reflect the realities of the setting of the novel, the hip-hop scene. 

      At the same time, however, in light of the controversy over the use of “nei ga,” it opens up legitimate questions that are not easy to resolve. In any case, it is probably a blessing that most college students don’t read romance novels. They might find themselves in the wrong movie.

      Episode 3: The Case of the Conspiracy Theory to End All Conspiracy Theories

      On August 31, during a mass protest against the German government’s draconian measures (i.e. wearing a mask) to combat the spread of COVID-19, dozens of Germany’s new freedom fighters managed to break through police lines to storm the Reichstagsbebäude in Berlin, the seat of the German parliament. For many of the demonstrators, having to wear a mask, according to one sign, was “inhuman,” almost a crime against humanity.

      As it turns out, many of the freedom stormtroopers were inspired by QAnon, which has taken the white global biosphere, from the US to Germany, from Australia to France, by storm. QAnon is the new all-encompassing master narrative for all those eager minds who want to know, but for whom Marxism is far too sophisticated, Nostradamus too obscure, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion too parochial (a Jewish cabal? So 19th century!), and Scientology far too expensive. To be a QAnonista, all you need is a sign with a big “Q” and you too can sow terror and fear among the elite.

      From what I understand, QAnon is a “theory,” albeit a conspiratorial one, postulating that whatever happens today is the result of the evil designs of obscure forces, from the World Economic Forum to powerful individuals such as George Soros, Bill Gates and, why not, Elon Musk. As Mike Wendling describes it for the BBC, “At its heart, QAnon is a wide-ranging, unfounded conspiracy theory that says that President Trump is waging a secret war against elite Satan-worshipping paedophiles in government, business and the media.”

      In the world some of us inhabit, theory is a bunch of ideas that only gain value if subjected to an empirical test. A famous example is the Ptolemaic system, which postulated that the Earth was the center of the universe. It sounded good at the time but turned out to be completely false. The theory was debunked to be replaced by a new theory that made sense. Today, apparently, the word “theory” has a different connotation — at least among the growing number of those who believe there are dark forces at work seeking to manipulate and, ultimately, control humanity. Today we know because we know, because it makes common sense or because we’ve read it somewhere.

      Embed from Getty Images

      This is why creationism — the notion that the Earth was created some 10,000 years ago — is a viable theory, on a par with Darwin’s theory of evolution. (Creationism is absolutely true. I saw pictures of Jesus riding and petting dinosaurs. Or the theory that the world is flat, and if you are not careful, you’ll fall off the edges. Absolutely true, too. I read it in Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series, the ultimate source of scientific knowledge for sophisticated endeavoring teenage minds.)

      In today’s populist world, where science is scorned (it’s just so last century) and scientists loathed, something is true if enough people believe it is true. QAnon is the perfect example. According to a recent poll — unfortunately based on scientific method and therefore prone to fake news-ism — one in three Republicans believes that the “theory” is mostly true. A further quarter thinks that some parts of it are true. That leaves only a bit more than a tenth who think that it is not true at all. Against that, among Democrats, a three-quarter majority hold it not true at all — the definitive proof of the pernicious influence of living in the real world.

      The “success” of QAnon “theory” is symptomatic of the utter bizarreness of the schizophrenic state of reality in today’s world. For many of us, the fact that Donald Trump was elected president already evoked a strong sense that we had somehow passed into the twilight zone. Over the years of his presidency, this sense has gotten stronger and stronger. Like COVID-19, the Trump virus — that mixture of fear-mongering, appealing to raw emotions and a dose of paranoia — has slowly been infecting growing parts of our world, as recently demonstrated during the siege on the German parliament, inspired by claims that Russian and American troops were on their way to deliver the German people from its tyrannical government which forced them to wear masks.

      At the same time, the fact that a professor’s reference to one of the most common expressions in the Chinese language would provoke charges of racism suggests that bizarreness is hardly confined to the right. Add COVID-19 to the mix, which has created a new dimension of parallel realities, and the scenario for a brand new “Twilight Zone” series practically writes itself.

      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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      No Credible Alternative to the US Grand Strategy in Europe

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      Never in the last 75 years has the US-led liberal order in Europe been intellectually more contested. Some in the United States, especially among realist and neorealist scholars, disapprove of what is commonly referred to as the West-centric institutional and rules-based order. They generally raise three interrelated, skeptical and somewhat pessimistic assumptions for growing isolationist sentiments in the US.

      First, there is are good reasons to think that the unipolar moment is coming to an end. As America’s primacy gradually declines with the rise of China, its grand strategy of liberal hegemony should also dissipate, including its institutional leg of collective security in Europe to which the US has given too much and received too little in return. Second, the Euro-Atlantic liberal order has generated more problems than solutions in the post-Cold War period. NATO expansion beyond the Iron Curtain poisoned relations with Russia and provoked unnecessary tensions in Georgia and Ukraine. The United States, so the argument goes, should gradually reduce its military presence in Europe and turn “NATO over to the Europeans.”

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      Third, Russia, in reality, is not as big a peril to European security as it is generally portrayed and perceived in the US and across Europe, for that matter. Moscow is driven more by defensive aims (or so it claims), so balancing between Russia and the European states on one hand and a restrained US foreign policy on the other is a better way forward for everyone. If we are to assume this logic is correct, then those who still prefer the liberal Euro-Atlantic unipolarity are wrong. Are they? 

      No Competitors Yet

      On first assumption, the United States is still by all major accounts the top dog on the world stage. It is wealthier, more powerful and more influential relative to any potential competitor in the international system despite an ongoing debate, additionally fueled by global disruptive events such as COVID-19. Its geography, an often-cited structural advantage, will persist despite the pandemic. While the US is flanked by two enormous oceans and surrounded by much weaker and friendly states, Russia and China, on the other hand, face balancing behavior from powerful regional rivals coupled with having ongoing territorial disputes.

      Second, Washington’s annual defense spending is at least twice as much as Moscow’s and Beijing’s — combined. America’s preponderance of power and strategic advance is far more superior considering increased military spending of its formal allies in the European and Indo-Pacific theaters. Out of 15 countries with the largest military spending, 11 are security partners of the United States. Russia and China neither have formal allies among the top 15, nor do any of their allies believe that an attack on one is an attack against all.

      Third, the US still boasts the world’s largest economy that can afford to fund the most powerful military in the world despite a disproportionately hard economic downturn triggered by the pandemic. Its global GDP share is still larger than the global GDP share of China and Russia combined, even by factoring in GDP reductions in the US this July. Moreover, the share of the global economic output by NATO members reaches more than 40% in world proportions and roughly 50% if other democratic allies in the Pacific theater are incorporated as well.

      America’s geopolitical leverage is even greater considering three additional factors. The primacy of the US dollar has not waned in 2020 just as it had not waned during 2008 financial crisis. The US also rests on soft-power capabilities. The top spots in global rankings, such as the Soft Power 30, are held by democracies — the United States was in fifth position in 2019. Russia and China are ranked far lower. And third, its population growth rate has also been relatively high.

      On the other hand, the Russian and Chinese workforce is aging, judging by all available measures. Given all these factors, it seems, as Gregory Mitrovich suggests, “wholly premature, short of a devastating major event, to claim that we are witnessing the end of America’s global dominance.” Equally premature is any call for American withdrawal from Europe, where the US is not only unchallenged but is largely accepted as benevolent.

      Whole and Free

      On second assumption, from a realist or neorealist perspective, a more powerful country does not necessarily mean a more attractive choice. What makes great powers more appealing, especially in the European theater, rests on an enduring combination of other capabilities grounded in less tangible resources. In other words, dominant powers are to be feared, but no liberal European state in the post-World War II era has ever felt a military threat from American hegemony — as Gilford John Ikenberry put it, “reluctant, open and highly institutionalized — or, in a word, liberal.” Some may correctly argue this was an act of deterrence against the common threat of the Soviet bloc in the bipolar system.

      However, when the unipolar era began, America’s liberal primacy has continued to offer system-wide benefits both within Europe’s old and new democracies with lasting and far-reaching consequences for their peace and stability. Its benevolent leadership, for example, stood shoulder to shoulder with the Germans seeking freedom and reunification despite some opposition from Paris and London. Washington also laid out its vision for Europe’s new security order and sought to keep a reunited Germany in NATO. Without such leadership, France and the United Kingdom would have been more fearful of Germany’s unilateral plans, let alone weaker neighbors that would find new realities difficult to balance against. As one senior European diplomat put it, “We can agree on U.S. leadership, but not on one of our own.”

      American leadership also persuaded Ukraine — also to a great benefit of Russia’s vital interests — to relinquish possession of nuclear arms it had inherited after the dissolution of the USSR. Without such leadership, Ukraine would probably have had second thoughts. As Ukraine’s then-Defense Minister Konstantin Morozov put it, plainly, “Ukraine would have posed no threat to anyone if, hypothetically speaking, it had possessed tactical nuclear weapons.” Had American leadership missed this opportunity, other states in the region would have also regarded their respective security distinctly from each other. Germany, for example, would have also been more tempted to contemplate nuclear deterrence at some point.

      To zoom out a little wider, American liberal hegemony in general, and the NATO alliance with its institutional and rules-based order in particular, attracted central, eastern and southeastern European countries — former illiberal states — to choose a common prescription for perennial peace and prosperity in the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s. New democracies from beyond the Iron Curtain have managed to transform themselves: Their economies have largely prospered, and their political systems liberalized despite recent authoritarian tendencies in Hungary and Poland. While some variation does exist, almost all new NATO members remain “free” according to the 2020 Freedom House scores. The only exceptions are Hungary, Montenegro and North Macedonia, which are marked as “partially free.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      NATO enlargement has been a net positive on security grounds as well. Europe has largely enjoyed peace and stability for the past 30 years. New allies offered themselves as foundational military partners and have willingly chosen to share the security burden to fight alongside the US. This mutual attraction within the Euro-Atlantic alliance has been so overwhelming in historical proportions that structural realists struggle to explain its extended lifespan and recent vitality. This includes the two latest enlargement rounds in southeastern Europe that happened on President Donald Trump’s watch, not sufficient but certainly greater share of collective defense burdens by European member states, regular military deployments and common military exercises all over the continent, as well as effective multilateral aid using NATO capacities during the COVID-19 crisis. This suggests, contrary to many pessimistic views, that American liberal hegemony in Europe is far from being in decline.  

      One can only imagine the different scenarios had the US decided to pursue a more restrained foreign policy in the region. Not only supporters but also critics of NATO enlargement also offered the possibility that Euro-Atlantic adversaries, namely Russia, would have been emboldened to expand the Kremlin’s sphere of influence beyond the current lines had any geopolitical vacuum existed in central and eastern Europe. J. J. Mearsheimer, for example, argues in his book that great powers “are always searching for opportunities to gain power over their rivals, with hegemony as their final goal.” Stephen M. Walt also conceded that relations with Moscow, provided Russia regained some of its former strength, “might still have worsened.”

      Counterfactuals such as these can hardly be verified. However, Russia’s brutal treatment of Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine made it very clear what actually happens with states in geopolitical gray areas. Belarus, which falls in Russia’s sphere of influence, is not happy either.

      Net Positive

      American liberal hegemony has also been a net positive when it comes to security in the Balkans — if measured by the progress on where Balkan states started from and not their distance from a liberal Western world. US leadership, for example, contained an outbreak of nationalism in the region after the EU demonstrated neither effectiveness nor capacity of preemption in the early 1990s. The Clinton administration successfully brokered the Dayton Peace Agreement in a positive-sum game whereby Republika Srpska received formal recognition as a political entity within the sovereign state of Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the post-Dayton phase, the liberal-led European order, primarily NATO and the EU, patiently put in place new structures and policies so the country can move forward with the peace process.

      Notwithstanding NATO’s intervention in Serbia in 1999 and CIA interference in 2000, the US and its allies also used an array of softer policy instruments to promote successful democratic change in Serbia. The International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute and former activists from new NATO members advised and supported independent civil organizations and opposition parties in Serbia to replace the “Butcher of the Balkans” Slobodan Milosevic in a democratic election. In recent years, Washington and Brussels also played an instrumental role in brokering the Prespa Agreement between Northern Macedonia and Greece. A bilateral deal between two bordering countries in 2018 put an end to the long-standing name dispute on the one hand and unlocked the Euro-Atlantic membership perspective for Northern Macedonia on the other.

      Some of these hard-won historical achievements could have not been possible had the US decided to pursue a more restrained foreign policy. In all likelihood, weaker American leadership in Europe in the post-Cold War era would have created more problems, making European states less liberal and more domestically nationalist, rendering the European periphery full of prolonged proxy wars and skirmishes.

      Russia would have also had more space to moderate such conflicts with its power-projection capabilities in the region. Likewise, absent integration into Western institutions, Europe’s soft underbelly would have exposed itself to sudden geopolitical stress bringing different local and regional powers into direct collision.

      In Russia’s Image

      On third assumption, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in his speech at the Munich security conference in 2007 that “the unipolar model is not only unacceptable but also impossible in today’s world.” Thirteen years later, speaking at the Raisina Dialogue in New Delhi, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov endorsed a multipolar concert with new centers of influence at the international level and common geopolitical space from Lisbon to Jakarta at the wider regional level. Lavrov also stated that “Our common European home needs serious reconstruction if we want all of its residents to live in prosperity.”

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      On a mission to correct “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century” — the collapse of the Soviet Union — the Kremlin is practically interested in replacing an existing liberal order, primarily the one extended beyond the Iron Curtain, with favorable and less democratic European regimes that fit Russia’s image. Second, it is also interested in replacing the hierarchic order in Europe with some unknown and certainly more anarchic multipolar structure. However, it is not surprising that the Kremlin’s foreign policy attracted limited support from the former Soviet republics and other central and eastern European countries. Most of them continue to fear Russia. Unlike their attraction to the US, their anxiety toward Moscow can be explained from their shared national memory of what can happen under the rule of an illiberal hegemon — or a potential hegemon that is, by the logic of Walt’s balance of threat theory, too close, too powerful and too offensive.

      So far, all attempts from the Kremlin to impose its own illiberal and structural order in Europe, largely constrained by its limits of hard and soft power, have only made young democracies and vulnerable countries scattered around the European periphery more divided and, eventually, more anarchic. In August 2008, Russia’s military intervention in Georgia restored the Kremlin’s geopolitical relevance in the European neighborhood. However, Georgia was divided between Russian-backed self-proclaimed republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia on one hand and the rest of Georgia on the other.

      This small triumph encouraged Russia to bully again by lopping off Crimea from neighboring Ukraine in 2014. Ukraine was then equally forcefully divided along similar geostrategic and domestic lines between Kyiv’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations and secessionist tendencies by a pro-Russian minority in the east. Some have argued that Moscow’s incursions into Georgia and Ukraine were conducted preemptively and in reaction to perceived NATO enlargement and were therefore defensive in nature. Mearsheimer famously rejected prevailing wisdom in the West that this problem is largely the result of Russian aggression.

      Stephen F. Cohen also justified Russia’s interest in restoring traditional zones of national security on its borders, including Ukraine. However, Russia marched into Syria, dropping bunker-buster bombs on Aleppo, supported mercenaries in Libya and became increasingly offensive in the Balkans — not Russia’s “near abroad” but deep inside NATO and the EU’s eastern borders. The Kremlin has reportedly fanned the flames of internal crisis in Montenegro in 2015-16 and Northern Macedonia in 2017-18. Milorad Dodik, a pro-Russian Serb leader in Bosnia and Herzegovina called his own country “an impossible state.” In February this year, he bluntly declared: “Goodbye B&H, welcome RSexit.”

      Serbia and Russia carried out a joint Slavic Shield military exercise in 2019, including Russia’s first use of its advanced S-400 missile defense system abroad. In the meantime, Serbia also received Russian donations of MIG-29 fighter jets, T-72 tanks, BRDM-2MS armored vehicles and purchased, at Putin’s suggestion, the Pantsir S-1 air defense system in 2020. Russia’s appetite, therefore, goes well beyond its immediate neighborhood. It openly challenges the established liberal order in Europe by taking advantage of tensions between Serbia and Kosovo, Serbia and Montenegro, and different ethnicities within North Macedonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and so on.

      This revisionist path doesn’t lead to security in Europe but rather to new skirmishes and security dilemmas in the Balkans, a region divided between rival power dyads, which is at worst all too reminiscent of the 1900s, when unintended consequences of nationalist fervor led to the murder of millions.

      Bottom Line

      Contrary to claims that the US strategy of liberal hegemony is generally a source of endless trouble, supported by real failures and terrible misadventures of social engineering in Afghanistan, Iraq or Libya, its mission in Europe was historically successful and mutually beneficial both before and after the Cold War. American leadership in Europe has been a net-positive force, essentially without US military casualties, mutually acceptable and institutional — all missing in other troubled areas. It has secured undisrupted peace dividends among major European powers, provided various public goods to newcomers from beyond the Iron Curtain, and eventually brought peace to the Balkans after the international community failed to prevent genocide in Srebrenica.

      The United States, which is still the preeminent global power, does not need to reassess this grand strategy in Europe or quit NATO, an alliance encompassing nearly a billion people and half the world’s military and economic might. Down that road lie many other long-lasting win-win outcomes as well as serious challenges that are better faced collectively.

      An alternative order that is promoted by some American realist and neorealist pundits on one side and revisionist challengers in the Kremlin on the other might have different motivations, means and ends. However, their common preference for dissolving NATO or having different poles in the European theater brings, by logic of structural realism, crosscutting relationships among different axes of conflict. That gloomy trajectory, if it ever happens, would make a perfect setting for a 21st-century Gavrilo Princip to fire his bullet again and trigger a chain of regrettable events here, there and everywhere.

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