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      Three Years On, Still No Accountability for Our Son’s Death

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      Three years ago today, we suffered the most painful experience a family can endure. Our son Christopher Allen was murdered on the other side of the world, reporting on the civil conflict in South Sudan. A freelance journalist and dual US-UK citizen, Chris was only 26 years old and had a bright future ahead of him — a future that was taken from him, from us and from those whose stories he was so intent on telling the world.

      On August 26, 2017, our lives changed irrevocably. Now, the pursuit of justice for Chris would become a central part of our existence. Our hearts were broken and, in addition to experiencing insurmountable grief, we found our family facing an uphill battle not only with the South Sudanese but also with Chris’ own governments in Washington and London, as well as with the United Nations.

      No Justice

      These are the very democratic institutions that are meant to protect journalists and press freedom, that are meant to fight injustice and ensure accountability for unspeakable crimes. Yet they have failed to act meaningfully to support us or help secure justice for Chris’ killing. Everything that is meant to be set into motion when a tragedy like this occurs simply did not happen — at least not without a fight from our side. Now, three years on, there has still been no investigation and no justice. We still lack even basic answers about what happened to Chris.

      Chris developed his craft as a journalist in Ukraine, where he lived and worked from April 2014 and from there embarked on a new challenge. In August 2017, he traveled to South Sudan to cover the country’s under-reported civil war, embedding with the SPLA-IO, a rebel faction attempting to overthrow the established government in Juba.

      Chris had embedded with the soldiers for more than three weeks, listening to the stories of their lives, their losses, motivations and fears before being targeted by government forces during a battle in Kaya, near South Sudan’s border with Uganda. We spoke with Chris the night before he was killed. The company was moving out that evening to walk through miles of bush to capture munition supplies.

      We urged Chris not to go, to write a piece that covered the embed to date, to share with his readers the pain the families of these men suffered at the hand of those in power. But he insisted that the story of preparing for battle was incomplete. Chris’ dedication to his journalism was absolute — he felt he must bear witness to the battle. He said to us that he “had to see it through.” Our son looked for the truth at all costs.

      As his parents, it is daunting and painful to recount this. Just as Chris sought the truth of the tragedies and difficulties of others, we have been working to establish the truth of the circumstances of his killing every day for three full years. Yet the very governments and institutions whose duty it is to help us find the truth have failed to support us at every key juncture over the past three years.

      Based on evidence uncovered through journalistic investigations in the absence of any official inquiry, we know that Chris was killed by a member of the South Sudanese armed forces and that his killing and the treatment of his body post-mortem are likely to constitute war crimes. With support from a legal team as well as campaigners at Reporters Without Borders, we have tenaciously sought an independent criminal investigation from the South Sudanese and US authorities.

      We Must See This Through

      In our deep desire to secure justice and accountability for the wrongful killing of our son, a civilian and journalist armed only with a camera, and to remind states that they cannot suppress press freedom by killing journalists with impunity, we will continue to demand a meaningful investigation and justice. Like Chris, we must see this through.  

      Despite our intense efforts, the US and UK governments and the United Nations have still failed to act meaningfully to help us find answers or justice, and in some cases have not responded at all. This is in sharp contrast to their publicly stated commitments to freedom of expression. The lesson we have learned over these past three painful years is that too often, these bodies cannot be taken at their word, and must very actively be held to account.

      We persevere in our fight for justice not only for our son, but for all journalists taking tremendous risks to get out the truth from dangerous places around the world. Every case of impunity leaves the door open for further attacks on journalists and emboldens those who wish to use violence to silence public interest reporting. In contrast, every case in which justice is achieved sends a powerful signal that violence against journalists will not be tolerated anywhere and that those who commit such atrocious acts will pay the price. This, in turn, serves to deter violence and protect journalists everywhere.

      We ask that a bright light be shed on the circumstance of Christopher’s killing. We call on governments and institutions to hold the South Sudanese military accountable for the wrongful death of our son. A transparent investigation is the first step. Accountability and justice for Chris must follow. By demanding accountability for our son’s killing, we hope to create a safer world for journalists and bolster press freedom everywhere.

      We must see this through. 

      *[Joyce Krajian and John Allen are the parents of Christopher Allen.]

      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

      Donald Trump and the “Kung Flu”

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      Over the course of his 2016 campaign and his subsequent presidential term, Donald Trump has sought to exploit popular fears of foreigners and certain American ethnicities to his political advantage. His verbal attacks have been selective. Irish, Italian and Polish Americans, for example, have proved immune to his insults (at least in his public utterances). Trump’s favorite targets for public abuse have been Hispanics, especially individuals seeking to enter the country clandestinely along the border with Mexico. He has also complained bitterly and profanely, in a semi-public setting, about immigrants from Haiti and sub-Saharan African countries.

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      This is hardly the end of things. Early on in his administration, Trump imposed a ban, which was overturned by courts, on all Muslims seeking to enter the United States based on popular fears of terrorism. Very much unlike his two predecessors, George W. Bush and Barack Obama, who were careful to distinguish between terrorists and the followers of Islam, Trump sought to equate Muslims in general with terrorism, thereby inflaming existing popular fears.

      Classic Demagoguery

      Then came COVID-19, a disease that has taken the lives of nearly 168,000 of Americans to date. After some initial hesitation, Trump labeled it “kung flu.” To cheers and wild laughter at mass rallies and other public events, the president has sought to deflect widespread criticism of his handling of the pandemic by blaming the Chinese — not merely the government but the people in general — conflating the Chinese martial art of kung fu with influenza to the delight of his followers.

      All this, of course, is classic demagoguery intended to mobilize Trump’s base of whites with less than a college education and win him their renewed support at the polls in November. The fact that he actually appears to believe what he is saying adds to the appeal of his message. 

      Trump’s demagogic appeals have consequences for those targeted by his abuse. Using data from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report and the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ National Crime Victimization Survey, researchers have reported a substantial decline in hate crimes committed against Asian Americans over the periods 2003-07 and 2014-18.  Asian Americans appeared to be well on their way to acceptance by their fellow citizens. The arrival of COVID-19 arrested this development and turned it around. So that, for example, in the three months ending on July 1, another source reported over 800 discrimination and harassment incidents, including 81 assaults, aimed at Asian Americans in California alone. 

      The situation of American Muslims is somewhat different. For members of this religious minority, there was no reversal of the trend toward greater acceptance, simply a continuation of widespread animus. Illustratively, as reported in The Daily Beast, in the two months following the murder of 51 Muslim worshippers at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, on March 15, 2019, by Brenton Tarrant, a young Australian man who reported being a “fan” of Trump, mosques in San Diego, California, New Haven, Connecticut, and Queens, New York, became the targets of arson attacks.

      These crimes were simply the most menacing of some hundreds of anti-Muslim hate crimes in the United States that followed upon the Christchurch killings. Abbas Barzegar, the director of a national watchdog organization that tracks anti-Muslim bias incidents, told The Daily Beast in 2019, “We’ve already reported over 500 incidences of anti-Muslim bias or harassment just this year so far.” Barzegar went on to say that the uptick in anti-Muslim events began in 2015 and continued unabated thereafter.

      Poisonous Atmosphere

      For how much of this is Trump responsible? The answer is not easily quantifiable, but at a minimum, we can say Trump has done little to qualm the poisonous atmosphere in the country. At a maximum, we can claim he has sought to promote a politics of inter-group hatred to advance his career and improve his chances of reelection.

      There is a striking contradiction in this situation. As Trump and his base insult or, in some cases, physically assault Chinese Americans and Muslims, holding the Chinese responsible for COVID-19, individual members of such now stigmatized groups have been busy trying to save Americans from the disease. A long list of Chinese American epidemiologists, emergency room physicians and virologists, led perhaps by Dr. David Ho (director of the Aaron Diamond Research Center at Columbia University) and Dr. Thomas Tsai (Brigham and Women’s Hospital), have been playing vital roles in fighting the disease, often at the risk of their own lives.

      About the same applies to America Muslims from both the Middle East and South Asia. The list here would have to include Dr. Ashish Jha (director of Harvard Global Health Institute), Mahrokh Irani (Harvard Global Health Institute), Dr. Najy Masai and Dr. Imran Siddiqui. Of course, the list could be extended.

      Will these performances by Chinese American and American Muslim physicians and scientists have any impact on Trump’s campaign rhetoric and the bigoted perceptions of his base? Probably not. To do so would require Trump voters to link the physicians’ backgrounds to the groups to which they belong and modify their attitudes accordingly — not an easy feat. Further, the president and his campaign operatives have too much invested in his crowd-pleasing rhetoric to change at this late date.

      *[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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      Turkey Takes on the UAE in Palestine

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      The news that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is considering suspending ties with the UAE over its deal to recognize Israel reinforces the battle lines of the Middle East. The announcement nevertheless comes as little surprise. The Palestinian cause seems destined to be eternally used by others as an instrument in their own battles. In this case, it has become the pawn in the battle between competing and assertive visions of the region.

      First, let’s consider the defense for President Erdogan’s position. The Turkish Foreign Ministry has suggested that history will not forget or forgive the UAE’s action. Inasmuch as the UAE has sold out the Palestinian cause for its own interests, the Turks have a point.

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      On the face of it, the Palestinians get little from the deal. All the UAE has wrung out of Israel is a promise to suspend its attempt to annex large swathes of the West Bank where illegal settlements exist. This merely prevents an inroad rather than offering any real concessions.

      But then the UAE was negotiating for its own ends, not for the Palestinians. In the regional battle against Qatar and Turkey — and more broadly against political Islam — the UAE merely wished to cement its position as the West’s true friend and ally in the region. It should also be noted that the UAE has done so as something of a shock troop to the real power of the counterrevolutionary alliance in the region, Saudi Arabia. The kingdom that is the custodian of the holy cities of Mecca and Medina has been silent on the deal with Israel.

      Turkey Stays on Script

      The Turkish response is one calculated entirely within the framework of the regional battle with the UAE-Saudi-Egypt axis. In this context, Turkey has a clear opportunity to position itself as a vital ally of the Palestinian cause: not as extremist as Iran, yet not as silent as Saudi Arabia. This is vital to Turkey, since the UAE has been a big investor in the West Bank and Gaza in recent years. At the same time, the UAE has become Turkey’s key adversary in the region. The new deal gives Ankara an opportunity to fully usurp the UAE as the Palestinians’ most important ally.

      Turkey, being a Sunni Muslim power, also has a natural lead on Iran in the Palestinian cause. Although Iran has supported Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon in their conflicts with Israel, as a Shia power it has always been one step removed from the Palestinian cause.

      Which brings us to Israel, the other key element in the equation. It is easy to see Erdogan’s latest move as simply an Islamist attack on Israel propelled by a revisionist instinct that wants to harm Israel in whatever way possible. But unlike Iran, Turkey’s relationship with Israel is complex. Turkey and Israel have long and deep ties that are rooted in their shared experience as non-Arab and democratic states in a region where both characteristics are unusual. Diplomatic links are strong, if strained, under the Justice and Development Party (AKP).

      Turkey’s position has little to do with harming Israel and everything to do with Ankara’s position in respect to the Arab world. President Erdogan wishes to be a key regional player in the Middle East and in the Sunni Muslim world. Turkey is also the major Islamist force in the region.

      The UAE-Israel deal and the Turkish response have occurred in a context in which Ankara is at loggerheads with both countries in the eastern Mediterranean. The UAE is supporting renegade General Khalifa Haftar in Libya, while Turkey supports the more Islamist Government of National Accord in Tripoli. At the same time, Israel and the UAE’s ally Egypt have signed a maritime agreement with Greece and Cyprus aimed at freezing Turkey out of gas exploration in the eastern Mediterranean. In these circumstances, both can expect to be snubbed. Their decision to shift the diplomatic landscape of the Palestinian issue was equally expected to be used by Turkey as an opportunity to gain leverage in this conflict.

      The Power of Belief

      Alongside all the geopolitical considerations, there is one that is rather more obvious. It is that President Erdogan might actually believe in the cause he is backing. The current political climate is often assumed to be one of purely Machiavellian intrigue and design, but Erdogan has built a career as a conviction politician. Behind the soundbites and the posturing, much about the long reign of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, first as prime minister and then president leading the AKP, has been about long-term historical issues and the restitution of perceived past wrongs.

      This is as much an internal Turkish legacy as an external one, but given the nature of Turkey as the chief successor state of the disintegrated Ottoman Empire, many of the issues close to the president’s heart have a wider regional implication. This can be seen in antagonisms everywhere from Greece and Cyprus to the Gulf states and North Africa.

      The centrality of Islamic faith is as important to President Erdogan as it was to the rulers of the Ottoman Empire throughout much of its history. It informs his ties to countries across the Islamic world. It is evidenced in Turkish engagement in Somalia, Sudan and Libya, where Turkey is supporting the more Islamist faction in the civil war.

      All this means that Palestine, the central Islamic cause in the Middle East since the First World War, is of central and very personal importance to him. At this moment of conflict with other powerful nations of the Sunni Muslim world, when Palestine’s chief allies appear to be Shia powers such as Iran and Lebanon’s Hezbollah militia, President Erdogan and his party may feel it beholden on Turkey to seize the mantle as the predominant Sunni ally of the cause.

      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

      Negotiating the End of Brexit

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      It is increasingly likely that, unless things change, on January 1, 2021, we will have a no-deal Brexit. That would mean the only deal between the European Union and the United Kingdom would be the already ratified EU withdrawal agreement of 2019.

      There are only around 50 working days left in which to make a broader agreement for a post-Brexit trade deal between the UK and the EU. The consequences of failing to do so for Ireland will be as profound — and perhaps even as long-lasting — as those caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

      A failure to reach a UK-EU agreement would mean a deep rift between the UK and Ireland. It would also mean heightened tensions within Northern Ireland, disruptions to century-old business relations and a succession of high-profile court cases between the EU and the UK dragging on for years.

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      Issues on which a deal could have easily been reached in amicable give-and-take negotiations will be used as hostages or leverage on other matters. The economic and political damage would be incalculable. And we must do everything we can to avoid this.

      Changing the EU trade commissioner, Phil Hogan, under such circumstances would be dangerous. Trying to change horses in midstream is always difficult. But attempting to do so at the height of a flood — in high winds — would be even more so.

      The EU would lose an exceptionally competent trade commissioner when he was never more needed. An Irishman would no longer hold the trade portfolio. The independence of the European Commission, a vital ingredient in the EU’s success, would have been compromised — a huge loss for all smaller EU states.

      According to the EU’s chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, talks between the European Union and the UK, which ended last week, seemed at times to be going “backwards rather than forwards.” The impasse has been reached for three reasons.

      The Meaning of Sovereignty

      First, the two sides have set themselves incompatible objectives. The European Union wants a wide-ranging “economic partnership” between the UK and the EU, with a “level playing field” for “open and fair” competition. The UK agreed to this objective in the joint political declaration made with the EU at the time of the withdrawal agreement, which was reached in October 2019.

      Since then, the UK has held a general election with the ruling Conservative Party winning an overall majority in Parliament, and it has changed its mind. It is now insisting, in the uncompromising words of it chief negotiator, David Frost, on “sovereign control of our own laws, borders, and waters.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      This formula fails to take account of the fact that any agreement the UK might make with the EU (or with anyone else) on standards for goods, services or food items necessarily involves a diminution of sovereign control. Even being in the World Trade Organization (WTO) involves accepting its rulings, which are a diminution of “sovereign control.” This is why US President Donald Trump does not like the WTO and is trying to undermine it.

      The 2019 withdrawal agreement from the EU also involves a diminution of sovereign control by Westminster over the laws that will apply in Northern Ireland and thus within the UK. That agreement obliges the UK to apply EU laws on tariffs and standards to goods entering Northern Ireland from Britain — i.e., going from one part of the UK to another.

      This obligation is one of the reasons given by a group of UK parliamentarians — including Iain Duncan Smith, David Trimble, Bill Cash, Owen Paterson and Sammy Wilson — for wanting the UK to pull out from the withdrawal agreement, even though most of them voted for it last year.

      Sovereignty is a metaphysical concept, not a practical policy. Attempting to apply it literally would make structured and predictable international cooperation between states impossible. That is not understood by many in the Conservative Party.

      The Method of Negotiation

      Second, the negotiating method has proved challenging. The legal and political timetables do not gel. The UK wants to discuss the legal texts of a possible free trade agreement first and leave the controversial issues — like competition and fisheries — until the endgame in October. But the EU wants serious engagement to start on these sticking points straight away.

      Any resolution of these matters will require complex legal drafting, which cannot be left to the last minute. After all, these texts will have to be approved by the European and British Parliaments before the end of 2020. There can be no ambiguities or late-night sloppy drafting.

      The problem is that the UK negotiator cannot yet get instructions on the compromises he can make from Boris Johnson, the British prime minister. Johnson is instead preoccupied with combating the spread of the COVID-19 disease, as well as keeping the likes of Duncan Smith and Co. onside. The prime minister is a last-minute type of guy.

      Trade Relations With Other Blocs

      Third, there is the matter of making provisions for the trade agreements the UK wants to make in the future with other countries, such as the US, Japan and New Zealand. Freedom to make such deals was presented to UK voters as one of the benefits of Brexit.

      The underlying problem here is that the UK government has yet to make up its mind on whether it will continue with the European Union’s strict precautionary policy on food safety or adopt the more permissive approach favored by the US. Similar policy choices will have to be made by the UK on chemicals, energy efficiency displays and geographical indicators.

      The more the UK diverges from existing EU standards on these issues, the more intrusive the controls on goods coming into Northern Ireland from Britain will have to be, and the more acute the distress will be for Unionist circles in Northern Ireland. Issues that are uncontroversial in themselves will assume vast symbolic significance and threaten peace on the island of Ireland

      The UK is likely to be forced to make side deals with the US on issues like hormone-treated beef, genetically modified organisms and chlorinated chicken. The US questions the scientific basis for the existing EU restrictions and has won a WTO case on beef over this. It would probably win on chlorinated chicken, too.

      If Britain conceded to the US on hormones and chlorination, this would create control problems at the border between the UK and the EU, wherever that border is in Ireland. Either UK officials would enforce EU rules on hormones and chlorination on the entry of beef or chicken to this island, or there would be a huge international court case.

      All this shows that, in the absence of some sort of partnership agreement between the EU and the UK, relations could spiral out of control. Ireland, as well as the European Union, needs its best team on the pitch to ensure that this does not happen.

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

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      Joe Biden and the Fragile Realm of Possibilities

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      Almost every commentator in the media commended Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden on his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention.

      At the core of his speech, Biden offered this thought, as if he was composing a humorless Devil’s Dictionary: “I have always believed you can define America in one word: Possibilities. That in America, everyone, and I mean everyone, should be given the opportunity to go as far as their dreams and God-given ability will take them.”

      Here is today’s 3D definition:

      Possibilities:

      1) In a non-deterministic world, the element of chance that keeps hopes alive even when all the evidence points to a fundamentally hopeless situation
      2) The opposite of probabilities, meaning there is a low likelihood of success

      Contextual Note

      The New York Times accurately describes the feeling the Democrats had at the end of their week of a virtual convention as a sense of relief more than accomplishment: “Democrats breathed a collective sigh of relief this week after the party pulled off an all-virtual convention, half political music video and half Joe Biden infomercial, largely without a hitch.” Neither hitch nor major glitch. This sums up the performance of the Democratic Party’s team of practicing high jumpers. They have honed their ability to sail over low bars.

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      The media identified the real reason for deeming Biden’s acceptance speech successful: low expectations. This may be emblematic not only of this entire election cycle, but also of how Americans have come to conceive of their democracy itself. The phenomenon was already visible in the 2016 presidential contest. The two dominant parties appear to have settled on a strategy designed principally to allow them to propose candidates with little appeal, possibly because neither party really wants to govern. In 2016, the parties opposed the two least popular candidates in history. And 2020 doesn’t look that different.

      The Hill reports, with a tone of mild surprise, the assessment of Fox News host Chris Wallace, who “said that the former vice president’s speech ‘blew a hole’ in President [Donald] Trump’s characterization of him as mentally unsound for the presidency.” Astead W. Herndon and Annie Karni, the authors of The Times article, interpret this as the result of a strategic error on the part of Trump. “The Joe Biden many Americans saw this week,” they wrote, “was cleareyed and capable of commanding an audience, albeit reading from a teleprompter in a room that was largely empty.” 

      On the other hand, they have no illusions about what this means. “If that is a low bar, it is because Mr. Trump and some of his most prominent allies have helped to lower it,” the authors add. It sounds something like Muhammad Ali’s famous “rope-a-dope” strategy to win back the heavyweight championship.

      When Biden insisted that America could be defined by a single word, “possibilities,” he set the bar as low as it might go. Throughout most of the 20th century, the phenomenon he is referring to as “possibilities” was called the “American dream.” It was the idea that anyone could become rich and anyone could become president. It was just a question of self-motivation. If you didn’t attain it, it was because you didn’t want it enough.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Even before the coronavirus pandemic, most Americans had lost confidence in the American dream. Biden either hasn’t kept up with the trend or sees nostalgia as a last-ditch marketing tool. With tens of millions of newly-unemployed Americans wondering whether they may not need to become an Uber driver just to ensure their short-term future, the American dream has achieved the status of an opiate-induced hallucination. 

      In its heyday, the American dream posited that the improbable is always possible. But now, given the failure of all systems — starting with government — to guarantee any form of economic and social stability, it requires accepting the idea that what everyone now is resigned to seeing as utterly impossible may somehow still be possible. The strain may be too great to justify holding that belief.

      But Biden may not be wrong. After all, Trump is a real president and Biden is still a possible president. If, in the midst of all the current crises, the real is now perceived as the source and explanation of the impossibility of survival, the remote hope that a change could happen has unquestionable appeal. That may be true even if Biden — unlike Trump in 2016 — represents not something new and different, but all that is only too familiar as a pillar of the traditional political establishment.

      In the runup to the 2016 election, Barack Obama, understanding that voters preferred his image to that of Hillary Clinton, invented the trope of his values being “on the ballot.” He famously intoned, “I am not on the ballot, but I tell you what. Fairness is on the ballot. Decency is on the ballot. Justice is on the ballot. Progress is on the ballot. Our democracy is on the ballot.”

      Recycling the trope, undoubtedly with Obama’s blessing, Biden offered a new variant: “Character is on the ballot. Compassion is on the ballot. Decency, science, democracy. They are all on the ballot. Who we are as a nation. What we stand for. And, most importantly, who we want to be. That’s all on the ballot.”

      In other words, he is saying: You all remember Obama. Let’s take two steps back and try to relive that experience characterized by the promise of hope and change. But the Democrats should be asking themselves this question: Are US voters motivated enough by Biden’s campaign to take two steps back? More fundamentally, is retreating into the past really what they want?

      Historical Note

      During the Democratic primary campaign, especially during the debates, Joe Biden repeated the same message over and over again. His latest formulation, in his acceptance speech, took the form of this truism every young American is taught at school: “[T]here’s never been anything we’ve been unable to accomplish when we’ve done it together.”

      Some may question the historical verity of such a statement. Since 1945, for example, the US has tried to win multiple wars (most of which it started) and, although doing it not only “together” but also equipped with the most sophisticated expensive technology, the nation has consistently proved literally unable to accomplish that feat. It is nevertheless true that sending men to the moon (but no women) was an example of accomplishing something extraordinary and doing it together. But the next time it happens, it will more likely be a private venture than a collective effort.

      The moon landings may have been the last authentic symbol of the shared American dream. One of the reasons people no longer evoke the American dream stems from their realization that it does exist, but only applies for a tiny group of people. And even their cases are fraught with ambiguity. What America accomplished when Neil Armstrong took “one giant leap for mankind” was a collective triumph. The next time it is more likely not to be in the name of the United States or mankind but of Elon Musk.

      Yes, Warren Buffett, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Musk — but also the more diverse examples of Kanye West, Michael Jordan and any number of Hollywood celebrities — have demonstrated the possibility of mobilizing their talent and other people’s money or fandom to realize the American dream.

      But many of the most recent achievements turn out to be flawed. Donald Trump himself is a prime example. He represents more a parody of the American dream than a realization of it. And he still has possibly 35% to 40% of Americans who continue to accept him as a role model. But there are too many Bernie Madoffs, Jeffrey Epsteins and Harvey Weinsteins alongside Trump and other fabulously successful but fundamentally unscrupulous characters not to call into question the morality of the quest for riches.

      By definition, the future is always a world of “possibilities.” But so is a poker game. Poker is — historically and symbolically — one way of realizing the American dream. But for each big winner, there are thousands if not millions of losers.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

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

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      The Trump Tsunami: An End of American Conservatism?

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      American conservatism is not dead. It just smells funny. Actually, it exudes a putrid, nauseating odor. The bon mot, slightly altered, is not mine. The credit goes to Frank Zappa (which he made with respect to jazz), the iconic iconoclast, musical genius and self-proclaimed conservative (I’m not making this up) whose life was tragically cut short by cancer. Undoubtedly, Zappa would have been delighted these days with the likes of Tucker Carlson, Jerry Falwell Jr. and Lindsey Graham. Those who have never heard of Frank Zappa might listen to his “Jesus Thinks You’re A Jerk” while watching the video of Trump in front of St. John’s Church in Washington, DC, holding a Bible.

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      America’s pussy-grabber-in-chief hanging on to a Bible is a patent mise-en-scène designed to kowtow to his evangelical base, one of the two vote banks left intact amidst the debris of what by now is generally seen as the most disastrous presidency in recent memory. The other, of course, is the white supremacist constituency. Both groups are driven by the same moral panic that propelled them to vote for the probably “most perfect person” alive in America today.

      The Bully on Your Side

      Elizabeth Dias’s recent article in The New York Times provides an astute explanation for why evangelicals would vote for someone who represents the opposite of everything they claim to hold dear, starting with “family values.” As Dias quite rightly points out, evangelicals supported Trump in 2016 — and are likely to support him later on this year — not despite what he stands for (aka holding their noses), but “because of who he is, and because of who they are. He is their protector, the bully who is on their side, the one who offered safety amid their fears that their country as they know it, and their place in it, is changing, and changing quickly.”   

      Dias’s analysis reminded me of a point Raghuram Rajan, the University of Chicago economist, one of the few to anticipate the financial crisis of 2008, makes in his recent book “The Third Pillar.” Rajan seeks to explain why lower-class voters would support Republicans, the seeming paradox made famous by Thomas Frank’s “What’s the Matter with Kansas?” The answer is culture. The disadvantaged, Rajan argues, “had reason to hold on to religion and cultural traditions in the hope that these would help reverse their deteriorating present. Conversely, they rejected the modern values of the upper middle-class elite transmitted through mainstream media, not because their own social life was exemplary, but because they believed that religion and traditions were perhaps their last protection against total social breakdown.”

      What is true for American evangelicals is even more true for American white supremacists, that large number of Americans of European descent who have seen their centuries-old privileged position slowly but inexorably being eroded and slipping away, leaving them panicked. Ever since the foundation of the republic, Americans considered their country a “Protestant nation,” its values grounded in its Anglo-Saxon heritage. Newcomers to the republic, such as the Irish in the 1830s and 1840s, were met with intense suspicion. After all, they were Catholics, which for most American Protestants represented an essential threat to the liberties of the United States. It took decades until the Irish would be accepted as “white” after being depicted for decades as riotous drunkards and potential terrorists with ape-like features.

      American-style conservatism has been many things, not least an intellectual enterprise aimed at preserving a system that promotes and defends the rights of the privileged, white and propertied males while advancing ever-new justifications for social and economic inequality, social and cultural subordination, and outright exclusion. At the same time, as George Will recently noted, American conservativism has consistently embraced “the restless individualism, perpetual churning and creative destruction of a market society” and its myth that everyone gets what they deserve. This is the tradition leading exponents of American conservatism have stood for, together with a profound skepticism with regard to America’s role in the world — “a skepticism about the ability to project power abroad in order to impose benevolent designs on the recalcitrant realities of different cultures.”

      The Stupid Party

      One of its most cogent expressions was the 1999 book “A Republic, Not an Empire: Reclaiming America’s Destiny,” by the doyen of US paleoconservatism, the by now largely sidelined Pat Buchanan. At the height of his influence, Buchanan famously referred to the Republicans as the “stupid party.” Today, stupidity is far outdistanced by the party’s blatant cravenness, ridiculous and risible. With Trump, intellectual conservatives have been put in a pickle and they have found it difficult (sorry for the mixed metaphor) to paint themselves out of the corner.

      In fact, as George Will has charged, many an intellectual conservative has been “struggling to infuse intellectual content into the simmering stew of economic nationalism, resentment of globalization’s disruptions and nostalgia for the economy and communities of the 1950s.” Others, including Will, finally had enough and bolted from a political party they regarded as their political home for decades, not without expressing their disenchantment in a very loud and public way before slamming the door.

      A recent example is David Brooks, who for ages made a good living as a pundit berating anything that smacked of “liberalism.” In a recent op-ed in The New York Times, Brooks outs himself as a “conservative revolutionary,” an intellectual movement in Weimar Germany which paved the way for the Nazis. As he writes, “Today, we’re in the middle of another historic transition when dramatic change is necessary if we are to preserve what we love about America.” Among the things that constitute “what we love about America” are “the liberal fundamentals of our democracy — the belief that democracy is a search for truth from a wide variety of perspectives; the belief that America is a noble experiment worth defending.”

      I am not particularly sure what he means by “we.” After all, the liberal foundations of American democracy have been less than kind to Native Americans and enslaved Africans. The notion that democracy is “a search for truth from a variety of perspectives” flies in the face of the notion, held among a significant number of Trump’s American evangelicals, that the Earth was created some 10,000 years ago, that human-induced climate change is a hoax and that COVID-19 is an invention of the media and the Democrats. But given the fact that Brooks is an affluent white male with a column in The New York Times, I have my suspicions.

      This, however, is hardly the point. What is far more interesting is Brooks’ coming out in favor of radical change — within certain limits. This might have something to do with the fact that in today’s crazy world, it is not only left-wing protesters in Portland and elsewhere advancing radical demands such as defunding the police. Take, for instance, a recent intervention by Andrew Bacevich (disclosure: he was a colleague of mine at John’s Hopkins SAIS), a military officer-turned-professor of impeccable conservative credentials. He advocates defunding not only the police, but also the military.  

      Spirit of Conservatism

      Confronted with Trump and his Republican coterie, intellectual conservatives cannot but promote an agenda that is diametrically opposed to the spirit of conservatism. In the age of Trump, everything is up for grabs, from economic, social and racial equality to women’s rights and the question of gender. In the case of Brooks, by the way, rethinking does not go very far. As he put it, “I find I have moved ‘left’ on race, left on economics and a bit ‘right’ on community, family and social issues.” In other words, when online media no longer allow conservatives to ignore the brutal reality of racism, when social inequality stares them in their face, they turn radical, at least a bit.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Decades ago, the adage was that neoconservatives are liberals mugged by reality. In today’s world, anything-but-Trump conservatives such as George Will, Elliot Cohen (dean at SAIS and another former colleague of mine), and Andrew Bacevich are conservatives terrified by what the United States — and the Republican Party — have become over the past four years. Aware of the fact that there is a world outside the US they are terrified by the horrendous disaster Trump and the Republican Party have visited and continue to visit upon the American people.

      This is a disaster that to a considerable part is the responsibility of America’s intellectual conservatives. For decades, they have provided the intellectual fodder that infused the GOP’s destructive agenda — an agenda that has proven instrumental in undermining the very foundations of a system American conservatives have claimed to uphold and defend. The likes of David Brooks and George Will have to accept responsibility for paving the way for the likes of Donald Trump. In the process, they have shown that conservatism is a spent force, wiped out by the Trump tsunami.

      In the face of a horrifying daily reality, conservatism is nothing but a cop-out, a nostalgic yearning for Eisenhower’s 1950s when the world was “still in order,” when women submitted to men, and nuclear power was the bright hope for the future. In this world, the Pat Buchanans, George Wills and David Brookses are nothing but the dinosaurs of a bygone era, wiped out by cataclysmic events, fossilized traces in the desert. In this brave new world of global warming, global pandemics and global financial disasters, conservativism is dead if only (as Frank Zappa put it albeit in a quite different context) because it has turned out to be “an ill-conceived piece of nonsense.”

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

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      Is the US Ready to Back Real Change in Riyadh?

      by

      Less than two weeks after his hit team murdered and dismembered Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul, as the world was still trying to make sense of that heinous crime, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) was busy sending another, almost identical hit team to assassinate Saad al-Jabri, once foremost court adviser, longtime intelligence kingpin and secret keeper to the Saudi despots.

      Does MBS think he can get away with murder? His Western allies’ answer has so far been yes — until now, when al-Jabri, fearing for his life, threatened to expose everything and everyone in a way that could bring down palaces on both sides of the Atlantic, sending Riyadh, and Trump’s White House in particular, running for cover. The man holds Pandora’s Box and has made clear he is ready to open it. But for now, he is willing to heckle. Clearly, al-Jabri is not driven by conscience but by predicament. As far as his ethics go, he had plenty of time to expose the crimes in high places. He didn’t.

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      Instead, he served successive despots, then stole their secrets and is now using these as a bargaining chip to save himself and get the best deal. Once he gets his deal, al-Jabri will be very happy to keep the lid closed and let the ruthlessness he served for so long continue under a different despot. That’s not a man driven by conscience but by cynicism.

      Father of the Bullet

      Al-Jabri and others before him are not really the cause of our sorrow. Rather, we celebrate that the brutal Saudi mafia is coming apart at the seams for all to see and that many of us will be vindicated in the process. Al-Jabri and others among all the regime’s men were part of the system and knew the rules of the game. Like any mafia, the Saudi omertà is a sacred code of conduct at the price of death: You break it, you die. Al-Jabri also knew how to protect himself. Jamal Khashoggi didn’t — and paid the price. This is not a court case between a ruthless despot and a frustrated human rights advocate. It is a lawsuit against a current despot by a former subordinate trying to position himself favorably under a future despot in a palace power struggle, racing against time.

      And therein lies the opportunity. The summons for MBS and 12 others by a Washington court has put more pressure on that time frame and created a dangerous urgency in Riyadh for the crown prince, who must hurry to ascend to the throne and guarantee himself immunity as king, and also in Washington, where the Trump administration seeks to replace MBS with an acceptable alternative. Suddenly, Mohammed bin Salman and the White House are at once allies trying to keep closed al-Jabri’s Pandora’s Box but also opponents in the race for the Saudi throne. You couldn’t dream up this saga if you had the world’s best imagination.

      Embed from Getty Images

      At the time of writing, I am told there’s already a highly-placed Washington “team” in Riyadh trying to figure out an acceptable solution, one that will clearly result in a change on the throne. And that is what we must fear most. Changing the face, not the substance, then carrying on with business as usual. The most dangerous thing — and this is what Washington is currently trying to do — is substituting the liability that is MBS with a new smiling face it can present to the world as the vanguard of reform.

      This is something akin to how MBS was originally presented, despite strong indications to the contrary. The crown prince’s nickname among Saudis is, after all, “Abu Rasasa” — father of the bullet. But Mohammed bin Salman is not the only culprit for the crimes committed against so many for so long — not even close. That reality should be the guiding principle for Washington as it looks for a replacement. Failing to change a system is not only a disservice to the region, but also to the United States and to the rest of the world. It is time the US took a long-term view of its relations with our region. Despite our repeated past disappointments, if Washington demonstrated a serious willingness to engage with the forces of change, there is enough wisdom in this part of the world to promote a revised view of the United States.

      Imperialist Opportunism

      So far, Washington’s political dogma espoused by successive administrations has inherently conflicted with our regional interests, in the short as well as the long term. Essentially, the US and its Western allies have been unwilling to level the playing field. Consequently, they opted for a relationship with the ruling despots instead of supporting democratic forces. Blindsided by short-term opportunism, the US and the West chose to identify themselves with the worst forms of despotism across the Middle East. We have become relegated to bystanders as we watched destructive policies being carried out in our region, including the protection and arming of the most ruthless, tyrannical and corrupt regimes that serve to legitimize extremism — views that are intrinsically abhorrent to everything we stand for.

      This imperialist view has not served the US well in the past, and it will certainly not do so in the future. When it comes to the Saudi regime, Washington has an almost unique opportunity not only to cause positive change but to be seen doing it. For far too long it has done the opposite. At the beginning of the Arab Spring, when the US appeared to take a positive position toward the changes demanded by the Arab peoples, we were willing to move on from our past bitter experiences. Tragically, Washington did not allow that honeymoon to last. Instead, it chose short-term benefits derived from its relations with the regimes leading the counterrevolution.

      With the events currently unfolding within the Saudi regime, an opportunity is opening up for the US and the rest of us to mend ourselves. Will the United States be led by prudence and long-term, albeit lesser gains of a stable relationship with the forces of change or revert to its shortsightedness? If the US lets this opportunity slip, the future will be unforgiving. In Arabic we say, A little that is stable and consistent is better than a lot that is short and inconsistent.

      If all that happens is a US drive to change the face of Saudi tyranny and not its substance, then we will be better served by keeping MBS at the helm of a regime that the world is too embarrassed to do business with. Going forward, boycotted as an outcast, the Saudi regime under Mohammed bin Salman will be less destructive than a new smiling face presented as yet another “reformer” but who will only maintain the same ruthless policies of all his predecessors. You don’t just cut the branches off a decaying tree — you dig it up with its roots.

      This is something our American friends must consider come November: Will they uproot the system in Washington or just change the style and approach? What applies to the Saudis and MBS also applies to Americans and Donald Trump. Those who first blundered by putting both men on the thrones they don’t deserve must either remove them and all they represent or otherwise suffer the consequences of isolation.

      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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      How Global Britain Confronts the Asian Century

      by

      On February 3, Prime Minister Boris Johnson laid bare his long-awaited vision of a “global Britain” in a world after Brexit. Speaking amidst the imperial grandeur of Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich, Johnson’s message was that the United Kingdom, liberated from the straitjacket of EU membership, would be free to carve out a confident, dynamic and outward-looking role on the world stage in a post-Brexit era — even as the first handful of COVID-19 infections took root on British soil.

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      Six months and a global pandemic later, Britain faces the unique and unprecedented challenge of redefining its place in a world that is in the midst of a historic watershed moment. The COVID-19 pandemic has served as a catalyst for deep-rooted trends that have long been evident to politicians, policymakers and analysts alike — none more so than the tectonic shift in the globe’s geopolitical center of gravity from West to East.

      Whether it be China’s much-publicized “wolf-warrior” diplomacy against states criticizing its initial response to the outbreak, or the initial success of East Asian states in confronting the pandemic using artificial intelligence and digital surveillance, COVID-19 has shown that the much-hyped “Asian century” is not merely a future prognosis but a present-day reality.

      Brexit Britain on the World Stage

      If the pandemic has served to boost Asia’s image on the world stage, the opposite is true for Brexit Britain. The UK’s bumbling response to the COVID-19 crisis has confirmed many of the suspicions of ill-placed grandeur held in foreign capitals since the referendum to leave the European Union in 2016.

      Despite Johnson’s boastful confidence in Britain’s “world-beating” response to the novel coronavirus (which causes the COVID-19 disease), fatal early errors by the government — notably the initial refusal to enforce a lockdown in a forlorn effort to preserve the economy — have resulted in Britain suffering the worst of both worlds. Not only is the UK facing one of the highest per-capita death rates and the worst economic fallout as a result of COVID-19 in the developed world, but the situation has been exacerbated by the looming threat of no post-Brexit trade deal being agreed with the EU by the end of 2020.

      In this context, a global Britain’s success in navigating the increasingly volatile “new normal” of the post-pandemic geopolitical order will hinge more than ever on the government’s ability to leverage ties with partners old and new across the Asian continent.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Johnson’s vision of a buccaneering global Britain on the world stage is fundamentally predicated upon two core pillars: trade and security. Whitehall is acutely aware that Britain’s ability to harness the ascendance of Asia’s emerging powerhouses hinges upon striking a fragile balance between these two, often inconsistent, objectives.

      On one hand, Britain’s strategic planners look hungrily toward contemporary geopolitical hotspots like the South China Sea as testing grounds for a new forceful security footprint in the Indo-Pacific region. Britain’s armed forces already possess a string of strategic outposts, from the Brunei-based Gurkha garrison to Royal Naval logistical hubs in Singapore and Diego Garcia. The recently formed UK Defence Staff (Asia Pacific) has outlined plans for a further base in Southeast Asia in a bid to affirm Britain’s commitment to upholding the regional security architecture.

      In a symbolic gesture, the scheduled deployment of the Royal Navy’s brand new state-of-the-art aircraft carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth, to conduct “freedom of navigation” patrols in the disputed South China Sea during 2021 is indicative of a wholesale rejection of the strategic retrenchment from east of Suez that has typified British security policy in the Indo-Pacific since the 1960s.

      Beijing’s Sphere of Influence

      Nevertheless, such grandiose ambitions of a more assertive military and diplomatic footprint in Asia do not come without their costs. Given China’s increasingly assertive posture on the international stage since the outbreak of COVID-19, it is not unreasonable to expect the diplomatic blowback from Britain’s perceived meddling within Beijing’s sphere of influence to grow stronger in the post-COVID era.

      In July, after the UK offered citizenship to almost 3 million Hong Kong residents following Beijing’s implementation of a controversial new security law in Britain’s ex-colony, China issued a strongly-worded yet ambiguous threat of “retaliation.” China’s response is illustrative of the fact that Brexit Britain’s ability to fully harness the Asian century is dependent upon London playing second fiddle to the preferences of Tokyo, Beijing and New Delhi.  

      Despite Johnson’s lofty rhetoric hailing Britain’s post-Brexit transformation into a “great, global trading nation,” such a vision is not exactly conducive to geopolitical maneuvers that can all too readily be perceived as antagonistic by prospective partners. For instance, Whitehall’s backpedaling over the contracting of Huawei, a Chinese technology company, to construct large tracts of Britain’s 5G infrastructure over national security concerns does not bode well for a future UK–China free trade deal. Similarly, efforts to introduce restrictions on immigration via the adoption of an Australia-style points-based system have proved to be a sticking point in post-Brexit trade negotiations with India, the former “jewel of the empire” with whom Britain shares extensive historical, cultural and linguistic ties.

      As a global Britain seeks to navigate a post-pandemic order characterized by increased great power antagonism, retreating globalization and resurgent authoritarianism, Whitehall’s strategic planners must be prepared to make hard-headed compromises between geopolitical and economic objectives in Asia in a manner that has been sorely lacking from Brexit negotiations with Britain’s European partners. Cut adrift from Europe at a time when the global order is becoming increasingly fragmented into competing regional blocs, a rudderless Britain lacking a coherent, sustainable vision of how it seeks to engage with Asia’s emerging superpowers risks becoming caught in the middle of an escalating cold war between the US and China.

      Reason for Optimism

      Despite the gloomy prognosis for a global Britain standing at the dawn of the Asian century, there remains reason for optimism once the short-term shockwaves of the pandemic have receded. Britain’s elite universities retain a mystical allure for ambitious young Asians seeking a world-class education. China, India, Hong Kong and Malaysia account for four of the top five countries of origin for international students in the UK. In addition, with two leading vaccine candidates in development at Oxford and Imperial, a British breakthrough in the fight against COVID-19 would further bolster Britain’s reputation as a global hub of research and innovation.

      Such cutting-edge academic expertise — combined with London’s enduring status as a global financial center, post-2021 visa and immigration reforms targeting highly-skilled professionals, and the cultural imprint of large Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Chinese diasporas — ensures that even post-Brexit Britain possesses the latent potential not only to attract top-class Asian talent, but also to emerge as one of the Asian century’s biggest winners outside of the Indo-Pacific. Whilst Brexit has undercut the Blairite vision of Britain as a “pivotal power” bridging the gap between the US and Europe, the United Kingdom’s deep-rooted historical, cultural, linguistic and economic ties with Asia’s rising powers provide ample scope for recasting Britain as a pivot on a grander scale: as a global hub bridging East and West.

      However, such aspirations remain little more than wishful thinking unless British policymakers can formulate a coherent approach toward the Asian century, which has so far been absent. Nevertheless, tentative steps have been taken in such a direction over recent months. Whitehall’s merging of the Department for International Development with the Foreign Office is likely to deal a blow to British influence in less-developed corners of Asia, at least in the short term. Yet Johnson’s renewed commitment to spend 0.7% of GDP on foreign aid enables a more cohesive, long-term approach with developmental issues, allowing funding to be streamlined toward teams of world-class specialists, such as the UK Climate Change Unit in Indonesia or the Stabilisation Unit supporting post-conflict reconstruction in fragile states like Pakistan and Myanmar.

      Similarly, the Foreign Office’s recent adoption of an “All of Asia” strategy is indicative of a more comprehensive approach to forging partnerships across the continent, balancing conflicting security, diplomatic, trade, developmental priorities, as illustrated through the establishment of the UK’s first permanent mission to Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) bloc in January 2020.

      Before It Sets Sail

      As the nature of post-pandemic global order emerges over the coming months and years, a global Britain will find itself navigating a turbulent geopolitical environment made infinitely more challenging by the aftershocks of the coronavirus. This includes a worldwide economic crisis, decreased globalization, declining faith in multilateral institutions and rising great power tension, all of which threaten to derail Johnson’s post-Brexit voyage into the unknown before it has even set sail.

      Whilst Britain and its Western allies have bungled their response to the public health crisis, Asia’s dynamic rising powers are already bouncing back from the pandemic and laying the building blocks to ensure that the 21st century truly is Asian. From Beijing’s “Belt and Road Initiative” to New Delhi’s “Make in India” to ambitious future vision projects such as Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, Vision of Indonesia 2045 or Kazakhstan 2050, Asia’s emerging powerhouses all champion integrated strategic frameworks to harness the unprecedented shift in global wealth and power eastward, which the COVID-19 pandemic has catalyzed.

      A global Britain’s greatest mistake would be to supplement such a long-term calculated strategy with the half-baked geopolitical gambits that have so far typified Brexit Britain’s approach to the world’s largest continent. Indeed, for the UK to truly unleash its full potential in the dawning Asian century, it must look to Asia itself for inspiration.

      *[Will Marshall is an intern at Gulf State Analytics, which is a media partner of Fair Observer.]

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