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    DC Deconstructed: The View from the Carriage House

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      in World Politics

      How 9/11 and the War on Terror Shaped the World

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      On September 11, 2001, 19 militants associated with the Islamist terrorist group al-Qaeda hijacked four planes and launched suicide attacks on iconic symbols of America, first striking the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York and then the Pentagon. It would be the deadliest act of terrorism on American soil, claiming nearly 3,000 lives.

      Scroll down to read more in this 360° series

      The attacks not only shocked the world, but the images of planes crashing into the World Trade Center came to define a generation. In a speech on October 11, 2001, then-President George W. Bush spoke of “an attack on the heart and soul of the civilized world” and declared “war against all those who seek to export terror, and a war against those governments that support or shelter them.” This was the start of the global war on terror.

      The Story of the 9/11 Attacks and Retaliation

      Osama bin Laden, the Saudi leader of al-Qaeda, inspired the 9/11 attacks. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, a Pakistani Islamist terrorist and the nephew of the truck driver convicted for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, masterminded the operation. The 9/11 Commission Report described al-Qaeda as “sophisticated, patient, disciplined and lethal.” It held that the enemy rallied “broad support in the Arab and Muslim world.” The report concluded that al-Qaeda’s hostility to the US and its values was limitless.

      The report went on to say that the enemy aimed “to rid the world of religious and political pluralism, the plebiscite, and equal rights for women,” and observed that it made no distinction between military and civilian targets. The goal going forward was “to attack terrorists and prevent their ranks from swelling while at the same time protecting [the US] against future attacks.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      To prosecute the war on terror, the US built a worldwide coalition: 136 countries offered military assistance, and 46 multilateral organizations declared support. Washington began by launching a financial war on terror, freezing assets and disrupting fundraising pipelines. In the first 100 days, the Bush administration set aside $20 billion for homeland security.

      On October 7, 2001, the US inaugurated the war on terror with Operation Enduring Freedom. An international coalition that included Australia, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Japan, the UK and other countries, with the help of the Northern Alliance comprising various mujahedeen militias, overthrew the Taliban, which was sheltering al-Qaeda fighters, and took over Afghanistan.

      The war on terror that began in Afghanistan soon took on a global focus. In 2003, the Bush administration invaded Iraq despite the lack of a UN mandate. Washington made the argument that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction, represented a threat to world peace, and harbored and succored al-Qaeda and other Islamic jihadists. None of this proved to be true. Hussein’s regime fell as speedily as Mullah Omar’s Taliban.

      Victory, however, was short-lived. Soon, insurgency returned. In Afghanistan, suicide attacks quintupled from 27 in 2005 to 139 in 2006. Globally, the war on terror saw a “stunning” rise in jihadist activity, with just over 32,000 fighters split among 13 Islamist groups in 2001 burgeoning to 100,000 across 44 outfits in 2015. Terrorist attacks went up from an estimated 1,880 in 2001 to 14,806 in 2015, claiming 38,422 lives that year alone — a 397% increase on 2001.

      Unique Insights from 2,500+ Contributors in 90+ Countries

      Boosted by the US invasion of Iraq, al-Qaeda spawned affiliates across Asia, Africa and the Middle East, a decentralized structure that remained intact even after the US assassination of Osama bin Laden in 2011 dealt al-Qaeda a severe blow. One of its Iraqi offshoots morphed into what became the Islamic State (IS) group following the withdrawal of most US from Iraq under President Barack Obama in 2011.

      After declaring a caliphate in 2014, IS launched a global terrorist campaign that, within a year, conducted and inspired over 140 attacks in 29 countries beyond Syria and Iraq, according to one estimate. Islamic State acolytes went on to claim nearly 30,000 lives across the Middle East, Europe, the United States, Asia and Africa, controlling vast amounts of territory in Iraq and Syria, before suffering defeat by internationally-backed local forces in 2019.

      In Afghanistan, despite the war’s estimated trillion-dollar price tag, on August 15 the Taliban have taken control of the capital Kabul amid a chaotic US withdrawal, raising fears of al-Qaeda’s comeback. Last year, the Global Terrorism Index concluded that deaths from terrorism were still double the number recorded in 2001, with Afghanistan claiming a disproportionately large share of over 40% in 2019.

      Why Do 9/11 and the War on Terror Matter?

      While the failures and successes of the war on terror will remain subject to heated debate for years to come, what remains uncontested is the fact that the 9/11 attacks and the ensuing war on terror have forged the world we live in today.

      First, they have caused tremendous loss of blood and treasure. Brown University’s Costs of War project places an $8-trillion price tag on the US war on terror. It estimates that about 900,000 people “were killed as a direct result of war, whether by bombs, bullets or fire,” a number that does not include indirect deaths “caused by way of disease, displacement and loss of access to food or clean drinking water.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      Second, numerous countries, including liberal democracies such as the US and the UK, have eroded their own civil liberties and democratic institutions with the avowed goal of improving security. Boarding airplanes or entering public buildings now invariably involves elaborate security checks. Mass surveillance has become par for the course. The US continues to keep alleged terror suspects in indefinite detention without trial in Guantanamo Bay.

      Third, many analysts argue that the attacks and the response have coarsened the US. After World War II, Americans drew a line in the sand against torture. They put Germans and Japanese on trial for war crimes that included waterboarding. In the post-9/11 world, torture became part of the American toolkit. Airstrikes and drone strikes have caused high collateral casualties, killing a disputed number of innocents and losing the battle for the hearts and minds of local populations.

      These strikes raise significant issues of legality and the changing nature of warfare. There is a question as to the standing of “counterterrorism” operations in international and national law. However, such issues have garnered relatively little public attention. 

      Fourth, the 9/11 attacks and the ensuing war on terror have coincided with the spectacular rise of China. On December 11, 2001, the Middle Kingdom joined the World Trade Organization, which enabled the Chinese economy to grow at a speed and scale unprecedented in history. Analysts believe that distraction with the war on terror hindered the US response to the revolution occurring in global international relations and power dynamics. 

      Embed from Getty Images

      Under Barack Obama, the US initiated an explicit pivot to Asia policy that sought to shift focus from the war on terror and manage the rise of China. Under Donald Trump, Washington unleashed a trade war on Beijing and concluded a peace deal with the Taliban. Joe Biden has believed that, since the early days of the war on terror, US priorities have been too skewed toward terrorism and that Afghanistan is a secondary strategic issue, leading to a decision to withdraw troops to mark the 20th anniversary of 9/11.

      Biden has argued that the US has degraded al-Qaeda in Afghanistan and eliminated bin Laden. Despite worrying echoes of George W. Bush declaring the “mission accomplished” in Iraq in 2003, from now on, Biden wants the US to remain “narrowly focused on counterterrorism — not counterinsurgency or nation building.”

      While the terrorist threat still consumes US resources, Washington is now shifting its strategic attention and resources to China, Russia and Iran. The Biden administration has deemed these three authoritarian powers to be the biggest challenge for the postwar liberal and democratic order. The 20-year war on terror seems to be over — at least for now.

      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

      Joe Biden Faces a Dilemma Over Iran

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      Everything old is new again, at least when it comes to US President Joe Biden’s deterrence credibility problem with Iran. This must seem like déjà vu to him, since he witnessed similar dynamics play out during an earlier stint at the White House.

      Several weeks ago came news that the FBI had foiled a brazen scheme by an Iranian intelligence network to kidnap an Iranian-born US citizen who is a prominent critic of the Islamic Republic.  The apparent plan was to abduct her from the streets of Brooklyn, spirit her to Venezuela via “maritime evacuation” using “military-style speedboats” and from there deliver her to Iran.  The plan was part of a broader scheme entailing the seizure of other individuals in Canada and the United Kingdom.

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      The elaborate operation, which the head of the FBI’s New York field office described as “not some far-fetched movie plot,” is a flagrant gesture on Iran’s part at a time when the Biden administration is seeking to diplomatically engage Tehran on nuclear proliferation issues. What stands out from this episode is how much Tehran is willing to extend US–Iranian hostility onto the American homeland and how little it seems to fear the prospect of retaliation.

      The Saudi Ambassador

      The thwarted abduction is reminiscent of an even more audacious scheme on US territory by Iranian agents a decade ago. In the fall of 2011, the FBI broke up an operation to assassinate the Saudi ambassador in Washington. The plan was directed by the Quds Force, an elite branch of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps that conducts clandestine operations beyond the country’s borders. The plot involved blowing up the Saudi diplomat at an upscale restaurant popular among Washington’s political elite, followed by the bombing of the Saudi and Israeli embassies in Washington and in Argentina. The high likelihood of mass casualties at the restaurant was dismissed by the operation’s US-based organizer as “no big deal.”

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      The plot organizer sought to outsource the bombings to the Los Zetas drug cartel in Mexico, which the FBI later described as having “access to military-grade weaponry and explosives, and has engaged in numerous acts of violence, including assassinations and murders.” As part of the deal with the cartel, the organizer promised to funnel tons of opium from the Middle East to Mexico. The plan unraveled when the organizer reached out to an individual he believed was a cartel member but who was actually an informant for the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). 

      Reporting on the foiled plot, the Washington Post commented that it resembled “an international cloak-and-dagger operation that reads like the plot of a Bond novel.” Robert Mueller, the FBI director at the time, noted that “Though it reads like the pages of a Hollywood script, the impact would have been very real and many lives would have been lost.” James R. Clapper, the US director of national intelligence, cautioned that “some Iranian officials — probably including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei — have changed their calculus and are now more willing to conduct an attack in the United States in response to real or perceived US actions that threaten the regime.”

      At the time, the Obama administration was looking to wind down the military conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as find a way to halt Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Although then-Vice-President Biden described the botched assassination plot as “an outrage that violates one of the fundamental premises upon which nations deal with one another”, the White House did little beyond prosecuting the hapless Iranian organizer and imposing sanctions on several Quds Force officials.

      James Mattis on Obama’s Response

      The tepid response was particularly criticized by General James Mattis, the head of the US Central Command (CENTCOM), which directs military operations in the greater Middle East. He was dismayed that President Barack Obama kept the details of “the enormous savagery of the intended attack” from the American public and failed to respond forcefully to the provocation.

      Obama would eventually fire Mattis from his CENTCOM post, in part due to the latter’s frequent criticism of the president’s approach toward Iran. Once in civilian life, Mattis publicly lambasted Obama’s response to the attempted assassination. Speaking at a conference in 2013, he claimed the plot was the result of a decision “taken at the very highest levels in Tehran.” He further asserted that “We caught them in the act and yet we let them walk free,” and “They have been basically not held to account. … I don’t know why the attempt on [the Saudi ambassador] wasn’t dealt with more strongly.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      In his 2019 memoir, Mattis blamed the lax US reply on Obama’s keenness to strike a nuclear deal with Iran. He also elaborated on his earlier criticism, lamenting that “We treated an act of war as a law enforcement violation.” He added:

      “Had the bomb gone off, those in the restaurant and on the street would have been ripped apart, blood rushing down sewer drains. It would have been the worst attack on us since 9/11. I sensed that only Iran’s impression of America’s impotence could have led them to risk such an act within a couple of miles of the White House, Absent one fundamental mistake — the terrorists had engaged an undercover DEA agent in an attempt to smuggle the bomb — the Iranians would have pulled off this devastating attack. Had that bomb exploded, it would have changed history.”

      In the end, it was Obama’s successor who delivered the kind of reprisal Mattis thought necessary. In early January 2020, the Trump administration launched a drone strike that killed Major General Qassem Soleimani, the long-time Quds Force commander, while he was on a secret visit to Baghdad. Hundreds of miles away on the very same night, a drone strike in Yemen targeted but missed Abdul Reza Shahlai, a senior leader in the Quds Force. Washington had long accused Soleimani and Shahlai of being the key Iranian officials in putting the bomb plot into motion.

      Biden’s Conundrum

      Like Obama, President Biden now confronts a conundrum: how to shore up eroding US deterrence resolve vis-à-vis an increasing risk-acceptant Tehran while also keeping it in good enough humor to extract significant nuclear concessions. So far, he has eschewed Mattis’ advice about how to dissuade Iran from mounting further attacks on American soil.

      In contrast to his outrage a decade ago, Biden has opted to keep personally silent about the Brooklyn abduction plot while his administration treats it as a matter for law enforcement. It seems unlikely that the incoming Iranian president, Ebrahim Raisi, will find this response a cause for restraint.

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

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      in World Politics

      Biden’s Myth of Bipartisanship Takes a Hit

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      In January, Joe Biden assumed the leadership of a nation in disarray. On Donald Trump’s watch, the US had struggled for nearly a year to come to terms with a pandemic that disrupted not just the economy, but people’s lives and relationships. Last summer, an unprecedented protest movement against the brutal treatment of black Americans rivaled the COVID-19 pandemic for headlines. These parallel events underlined deep contradictions that have long existed in the social fabric. As a parting gesture, Trump chose to put on display the apparently irreparable division of the body politic by encouraging a mob to assault Congress as it prepared to validate his election loss.

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      Those particular events were dramatic enough. But in the background lay other pressing issues. First among them was the rapid decline of the health of the planet due to anthropogenic climate change. At the same time, the effects of wealth and income disparity became ever more visible inside the US and across the globe. In the background was the persistence of wars, terrorism and global instability accompanied by a very real nuclear threat, aggravated by powerful nations’ obsession with producing increasingly sophisticated weaponry. Arms sales had become essential for the economies of Western nations, exacerbating instability in entire regions of the world. Not only the American people but also the global population were becoming increasingly aware of the stakes implied by these converging issues. In this context, expectations grew for Biden’s FDR-style change in American politics. Not that he would challenge the existing order, but that he would for once address the real issues.

      President Biden thus entered the White House with an implicit mission to restore a semblance of order, whatever that meant. Observers quickly discovered that today’s version of US democracy entertains two possible approaches to restoring order. The first, which to many people appears logical, requires assessing the nature of the crises and promoting policies designed specifically to address the perceived causes. The second is clearly less logical but represents a long-standing tradition a seasoned politician such as Joe Biden fully understood. It consists of weighing the opinions and interests of the two parties that share power and devising solutions that do not threaten their specific interests. It also implies relegating the needs and desires of the nation’s population to a secondary position.

      Biden quickly put his well-honed skills to work. The New York Times describes the dramatic scene in which he “strode to the cameras on the White House driveway on [June 24], flanked by an equal number of Democratic and Republican lawmakers, to proudly announce an overall infrastructure agreement totaling $1.2 trillion over eight years that could cement his legacy as a bipartisan deal maker.” 

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Bipartisan:

      A descriptive term for any agreement between the two dominant parties designed to buttress the status quo, bipartisanship becoming a necessary ingredient when the status quo itself has become exceptionally dysfunctional, built on policies that are unpopular with the majority of the electorate but considered vital to the preservation of donor support by the political class

      Contextual Note

      Progressive Democrats wasted no time expressing their displeasure with a bill that fails to address even the most tepid of Biden’s campaign promises concerning the real problems the nation was facing. Emboldened by his belief in his own bipartisan superpowers and wishing to appease progressives, Biden explained, in response to a question from the press, his commitment to pushing through another bill that would deal with those issues. He even promised to reject the bipartisan version he had just negotiated if it was not accompanied by the partisan version. The Times commented: “It may not seem like much, but it was enough to upend Mr. Biden’s proud bipartisan moment.” Pride certainly appears to be a more powerful motivator for the president than problem-solving.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Revealing the strategy that would have had a chance of working only if left unmentioned, Biden announced, “if this is the only thing that comes to me, I’m not signing it.” This set off a firestorm among his bipartisan partners, who judged they had been taken for a ride. Over the next 24 hours, Biden had to find a way of walking back his imprudent remarks. He dutifully promised to back the original bill with no conditions, and peace was restored. Republicans now have a clear path to devise ways of canceling the threat of action being taken on the issues that matter.

      There is still a small chance Biden could succeed by mobilizing every member of the Democratic Party to pass the “real” infrastructure bill through reconciliation. But the odds seem rather long. This leaves some observers wondering whether the gaffe was inadvertent. Perhaps Biden’s real bipartisan aim was to provide his opponents with a pretext for ensuring that the second bill never gets passed.

      “The drama does not appear to have sunk the deal,” The Times writes reassuringly, “but Mr. Biden admitted that his comments on Thursday left ‘the impression that I was issuing a veto threat on the very plan I had just agreed to.’” That was ‘certainly not my intent,’ he added.” This glib explanation of the confusion may sum up the public’s perception of the first months of the Biden presidency. There is a thick fog around his intent.

      Politico reports that Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell criticized accused Biden of “‘completely caving’ to the party’s left wing and has repeatedly emphasized his commitment to derailing Biden‘s progressive agenda.” What this means is that the nation must prepare for a direct confrontation between the ideologies of the two parties, the very opposite of bipartisan government. The logic has come full circle, as often happens these days in Washington.

      Historical Note

      The myth of bipartisanship in US politics is relatively new. It is linked to the emergence a century ago of a binary political system in which only two dominant parties could legitimately claim the right to govern. It took new meaning in recent decades once the parties had settled into their stable ideological identities. For the first two-thirds of the 20th century, the Democratic Party drew its capacity to govern from its force as a coalition of Northern liberals and Southern segregationist Dixiecrats. The Republicans had their own two factions: Northeastern liberals and heartland conservatives. In such circumstances, bipartisanship was both an inevitable ingredient of almost all legislation and a meaningless concept. Once the Democrats became “the liberals” and the Republicans “the conservatives,” bipartisanship would become a real challenge.

      Joe Biden entered Congress at a time when the old bipartisanship was fading but not yet deceased. At one point, progressives excoriated Biden for expressing his nostalgia for the days when he collaborated respectfully with white supremacists. The progressives were right in their reproach, but not for the moral reasons they cited. Rather for what it indicates about Biden’s inability to dissociate himself from an irrelevant past. He still hasn’t adapted to today’s very different reality.

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      The idea of bipartisanship may be the central myth of the Biden presidency. Conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans have fallen in love with it and revere Biden for his commitment to it. Senator Mark Warner, a conservative Democrat, lauded Biden’s successful negotiation in these terms: “The message it sends to the American people, and also to our friends and adversaries around the world, is so important. In a post-Jan. 6 world, it shows that people who come from different political views can still come together on national priorities.” The fiasco that followed Biden’s threat to veto his own bill demonstrates the absurdity of this maudlin sentiment.

      Despite persistent public quarrels about budgets and taxation required to maintain the conservative or liberal label of the two parties, bipartisanship has actually been the norm in recent decades. And it is a destructive norm. Critiquing Biden’s brazenly illegal bombing this weekend of Iraq and Syria, Glenn Greenwald makes this historical point: “This has continued for close to two full decades now because the establishment wings of both parties support it. Neither of them believes in the Constitution or the rule of law, nor do they care in the slightest about the interests of anyone other than the large corporate sectors that fund the establishment wings of both parties.”

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

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

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      in World Politics

      The Sad Reality of US Dealmaking

      by

      The fallout from US President Joe Biden’s week in Europe has just begun. There was no dramatic moment that sums it up, though the media vaguely hoped the one-on-one with Russian President Vladimir Putin might produce something akin to the jabs, uppercuts and right crosses of Rocky Balboa vs. Ivan Drago in their opening round. But there was nothing to see. The fight wasn’t televised and Biden carefully avoided the risk of seeing both on stage in a joint press conference.

      Though no spectacular shift in US–Russia relations will likely appear in the months ahead as a result of the encounter, some aspects of Biden’s performance concerning the posture and attitude of the US on the world stage may prove pivotal. Biden’s actions and rhetoric in Europe have contributed in significant ways both to defining his presidential legacy and clarifying the shifting vocation of the US in a world that has become far more complex than the one previous presidents had to deal with.

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      Biden seems to realize it as he frequently refers to this moment of history as an “inflection point.” He’s right, though he seems to have seriously misjudged the nature of the tectonic shift the world is undergoing. Biden defines such inflection points as “moments in time when we’ve made hard decisions about who we are.” But the era in which presidential decisions in themselves constituted historical inflection points probably ended in March 2003, when the US, under George W. Bush, invaded Iraq. Forces were then unleashed that no longer await presidential decisions. Powerful undercurrents of history, the economy and of nature itself — all beyond any politician’s control — have been fueling the largely unmanageable force behind today’s inflection.

      Jonathan Lemire and Aamer Madhani are the authors of an AP article that focuses on Biden as America’s pitchman to the rest of the world. The title of the article is: “Biden Abroad: Pitching America to Welcoming If Wary Allies.” Reduced to its essence, Biden’s pitch consisted of reassuring his allies that he can be trusted simply because he is not Donald Trump, even though his policies have shown little indication of breaking with the former president’s innovations.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The world remembers Biden’s previous boss, Barack Obama, who before his election in 2008 claimed to represent a radical shift away from everything that Bush stood for. He even convinced the Nobel committee he was a prince of peace. Once in office, Obama prolonged most of Bush’s policies, including foreign wars, reinforcing the surveillance state and maintaining tax cuts for the wealthy, all of which imperiled the economy itself, leading to the 2008 financial crisis that he was tasked with solving.

      Lemire and Madhani note that whilst the allies in the G7 appeared relieved by the feeling that there was now “a steady hand at the wheel,” they were far from convinced that the US was permanently back on an even keel. They did end up agreeing to the general drift of Biden’s campaign to highlight the opposition between democracy (the West) and autocracy (China and Russia). 

      At the same time, the authors remarked that “Germany, Italy and the representatives for the European Union [were] reluctant to call out China, a valuable trading partner, too harshly.” More significantly, they noted that there was “a wariness in some European capitals that it was Biden, rather than Trump, who was the aberration to American foreign policy and that the United States could soon fall back into a transactional, largely inward-looking approach.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Transactional:

      An adjective that describes not only the willingness to make deals with others, but also the refusal to recognize the existence of anything other than calculation of individual interest in the conduct of one’s affairs and relationships even with permanent partners and allies.

      Contextual Note

      After his meeting with Putin, Biden declared: “This is not about trust. This is about self-interest and verification of self-interest.” He needed to reassure the American electorate that, unlike Trump, he had nothing but mistrust for Putin. But he may have been signaling what most Americans always want to hear: that nobody should be trusted, because all relationships begin — and most end — with the assertion of self-interest. America’s European allies have understood that, despite protestations of solid alliances, special relationships and undying friendship, Trump’s approach of reducing everything to a transactional deal was a true description of the reality of US policy under every recent president.

      The language used by the media demonstrates this reality with some clarity. The AP journalists already described Biden’s action as “pitching America.” In an article with the title, “Biden Struggles to Sell Democracy Abroad When It Faces Challenges at Home,” The Washington Post described Biden’s behavior in Europe to that of a street barker. “But then, like any good pitchman, Biden quickly regained his footing,” the Post reports. Diplomacy always involves self-interest and always contains an agenda, but when it consistently appears as a pitch, potential customers begin to doubt the sincerity. The authors of the AP article make it clear that, however persuasive the pitch, Biden has not yet closed any deal. They even seem to doubt one is likely.

      Historical Note

      Writing for Spectator World, historian Andrew Bacevich commented that Joe Biden’s premise concerning US leadership of democratically-inclined allies sounds like a desire to return to an imagined status quo that, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, appeared to be heralding what George H.W. Bush called “a new world order.” But in this century, history has moved on in ways Biden and most American politicians appear either not to have noticed or persist in willingly ignoring. “The idea that a US-led bloc of Western nations will determine the future of the planet will become increasingly implausible,” Bacevich explains.

      The historian puts in perspective Biden’s insistence on managing an inflection point: “While repeatedly insisting that history had reached ‘an inflection point’, he simultaneously reiterated the claim made by every US president since Harry Truman (Trump excepted) that ‘the partnership between Europe and the United States’ will determine the fate of humankind.”

      The G7 is that partnership, which now includes Japan. But the fate of humankind will rely on the interplay of forces that no single nation or group of nations controls. If there were a way of getting humankind itself into the picture through, say, a global democratic revolution that respects the classic democratic dictum of one man, one vote, the combat to promote democracy over autocracy might make some sense. But that is on no one’s agenda. The degree of inequality between nations and within nations may now have reached a point of no return.

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      Trump’s presidency taught the Europeans about the dangers of getting on board with grand US-led projects. They are beyond risky. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), even more than the Paris climate accord, provides a perfect example. At a truly interesting historical moment marked by the election this weekend of a new president in Iran, the US actually has an opportunity to push toward a solution that would involve reconciling a number of competing interests stretching across a wide expanse of the globe.

      The New York Times believes that the election of Ebrahim Raisi as Iran’s new president may be the perfect opportunity for Biden. Its reasoning makes sense. If Raisi makes the concessions necessary to remove US sanctions, Iranians will have the hope of returning to a prosperous economy. Still, the heritage of Donald Trump has seriously weakened US credibility. “The Iranians have demanded a written commitment that no future American government could scrap the deal as Mr. Trump did,” the Times reports. “They want something permanent — ‘a reasonable-sounding demand,’ in the words of one senior American official, ‘that no real democracy can make.’”

      What the official means is that a real democracy could make that “reasonable-sounding demand,” but not the US version of democracy. The Times explains: “Mr. Biden, like President Barack Obama before him, could never have gotten the consent of two-thirds of the U.S. Senate. So it is termed an ‘executive agreement’ that any future president could reverse, just as Mr. Trump did.”

      Bacevich is right. The US, even with Europe, cannot “determine the future of the planet.” It can’t even define a line of policy that will hold for more than four years. The most powerful nation in the world is also the most powerless.

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

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

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      in World Politics

      Biden’s Optimism vs. the Media’s Pessimism

      by

      Media commentators initially gave good ratings to US President Joe Biden after his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. They expressed a sense of relief, in large part due to the contrast in tone with Donald Trump’s performance in similar situations, guaranteed to produce a sense of unexpected drama. Biden confirmed his image of a seasoned diplomat capable of engaging in civil dialogue, setting the stage for eventual problem-solving.

      But the event left US media with mixed emotions. Calm problem-solving may be good in the abstract, but isn’t Russia the evil empire? Isn’t a president’s mission the humiliation of the enemy? The New York Times, for example, has recently been praising Biden as a transformative president. But the Gray Lady has also been locked in a pattern of blaming Russia for every bit of unwelcome news affecting the US, from cybercrime and UFOs to directed energy attacks and more.

      Biden’s Binary Battle Against Putin

      READ MORE

      Prior to the summit, the Times and other outlets prepared their public to expect Biden to charge Putin with a litany of accusations he could not deny. Though no serious journalist expected the script of the meeting to result in a first-round knockout, followed by Putin’s emotional confession of all the crimes he has shamelessly committed against American democracy, they clearly were interested in counting the punches Biden might land to make the Russian leader wince.

      That clearly didn’t happen. Less obsessed by the Russian bugbear, Axios coolly analyzed what it called “Biden’s two-step negotiating process,“ highlighting the fact that his “approach with Putin followed his approach to Congress: try to take the most optimistic path, give it some time and be prepared to march ahead with consequences.”

      CNN and The New York Times showed the kind of impatience outlets obsessed with prosecuting Russia for its endless crimes feel obliged to display. Kaitlin Collins, a reporter at CNN, accused Biden to his face of being “confident” Putin would “change his behavior,” clearly unnerving the president. Michael D. Shea, the White House correspondent at the Times, made a point of expressing that impatience when he wrote: “Mr. Biden’s response to his Russian adversary underscored a persistent feature of his presidency: a stubborn optimism that critics say borders on worrisome naïveté and that allies insist is an essential ingredient to making progress.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Stubborn optimism:

      The only kind of optimism pessimists recognize

      Contextual Note

      Some attribute to P.T. Barnum the phrase, “Never give a sucker an even break.” Barnum did say, “There’s a sucker born every minute.” The idea that they never deserve an even break has become the equivalent of a wise saying for many Americans in the world of business.

      The US owes its position as the world’s dominant economy to its ruthlessly competitive business culture. But this harsh reality sits alongside a deep-seated belief in popular democracy and the rosy fantasy of the power of the people. This contrast has spawned an interesting divide within society itself. The capitalists — the makers and doers — in the business world tend to be pessimists. Believers in democracy are optimists. Successful capitalists with a true competitive spirit see most other people — competitors and customers alike — as suckers who deserve to be taken advantage of. This pessimistic disdain for other people is sometimes highlighted as the virtue of assertiveness.

      Embed from Getty Images

      In contrast, the conviction that democracy is the true model of social relations correlates with optimism and trust. For many, this sums up the distinction between the culture associated with Republicans and Democrats. Individualistic Republicans celebrate the assertive winners, whose winning takes place at the expense of the losers, the suckers. Democrats pity the losers, believing they should be encouraged to succeed. Success is most satisfying when it is shared.

      Biden will always play the role of optimist. But that doesn’t imply that he always thinks like an optimist. To be successful during a long career usually requires applying the lessons of pessimism. The “liberal media” in the US — which includes The New York Times, The Washington Post, MSNBC, CNN and others — must pay lip service to optimism. But to achieve the success they have achieved, they must also be ready to criticize the optimists and even accuse them of naivety. And when it comes to Russia, everyone has been taught to be a pessimist.

      Explaining his diplomatic approach, Biden seems to be saying: I start as an optimist and then shift to pessimism when things start to become serious. It is a well-worn strategy in the American tradition. The problem for media like the Times or CNN is that they have designated Russia as the arch-villain in the story. True heroes must never be indulgent with the dragons they are on a mission to kill.

      Historical Note

      During Joe Biden’s jaunt to Europe, the media focused on deciphering his attitude not only toward the enemy, Vladimir Putin, but also to his allies at the G7 summit. None showed an interest in the clues Biden provided of his thinking about the rest of the world. At his June 13 press conference in Cornwall, Biden’s improvised remarks tell a subtle but sad story about his vision of the world. It is fundamentally that of the leader of an increasingly rudderless empire posing as an enlightened democracy.

      Biden began by defining the role of the US and the G7 in these most condescending terms: “Everyone at the table understood and understands both the seriousness and the challenges that we’re up against, and the responsibility of our proud democracies to step up and deliver for the rest of the world.” Perhaps Biden thinks of himself as the equivalent of Jeff Bezos, whose mission is to deliver goods to the rest of the world at a profit.

      The president follows that with this syntactically broken train of thought: “The fact is that we — the U.S. contribution is the foundation — the foundation to work out how we’re going to deal with the 100 nations that are poor and having trouble finding vaccines and having trouble dealing with reviving their economies if they were, in the first place, in good shape.” On one side, there is “the foundation,” the US. On the other, there are 100 helpless, nameless struggling nations. This is Biden’s polite version of Donald Trump’s standard motif: We are the winner and everyone else is a loser.

      He then embarrassingly explains the importance of what he repeatedly calls the “COVID project,” having apparently confused the disease with COVAX, the international program to distribute vaccines to low and middle-income countries. In its transcript, the White House discreetly added COVAX after each mention of “COVID.”

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      Perhaps the most rational and realistic — but at the same time troubling — thing Biden had to say in his speech was what sounds like his promise that “there will be future pandemics.” In other words, he looks forward to new occasions where the US will “step up and deliver for the rest of the world.” He even repeats the promise a few lines later: “And there will be others.”

      After applauding his own effort to impose a 15% tax on corporate profits — which may even lead to more inequality among nations — Biden lauds his Build Back Better World Partnership (B3W) designed to counter China’s Belt and Road Initiative. To anyone familiar with the history of US marketing, it sounds a lot like Pepsi seeking to dethrone Coca-Cola. At least Biden has his acronym and maybe will soon have a logo.

      In the most embarrassingly stupid moment, which should make professional marketers cringe, Biden describes the B3W strategy: “By harassing the full potential of those who are harassing, we’re going to have to try and change things.” Apart from the difficulty of harassing someone else’s “full potential,” we are left wondering how he could think he is doing a service to needy countries by proposing a policy of harassment. It may be better than a military invasion and decades of drone warfare, but if that’s the best the US has to offer the developing world, it might be better just to stay at home and focus on America’s own infrastructure needs.

      From that point on, his speech, Biden’s syntax and train of thought become even more incoherent, but there is too much to highlight in this short article. More to come next week.

      *[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

    • 125 Shares159 Views

      in World Politics

      How the G7 Intends to Build the World Back Better

      by

      The US Senate recently demonstrated that the only adhesive capable of uniting the two parties is a good, old-fashioned enemy. Although the Democrats and Republicans continue to bicker over the Biden administration’s infrastructure legislation, they achieved rare accord in passing a major technology bill that directs investment into key sectors of the economy.

      Why the sudden bipartisanship? China. The $250 billion investment into semiconductor production, scientific research, space exploration and the like is intended to decrease dependency on inputs from China and maintain a US lead in critical technologies.

      Does the World Need to Contain China?

      READ MORE

      The Biden administration is now eager to replicate that experience on the global level. At last week’s G7 summit in the UK, the United States again used China as a threat to forge transnational solidarity around a global infrastructure deal. Despite some misgivings from Germany and Italy, President Joe Biden managed to steer the group toward something called the Build Back Better World (B3W) initiative, which incidentally sounds a lot like Biden’s 2020 campaign slogan. But that slogan itself echoed a catchphrase adopted by the UN in 2015 to characterize its response to humanitarian disasters. So, B3W can sound both authentically multilateral and distinctively Bidenesque at the same time.

      In the face of the global tragedies of the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change — not to mention the sustained attacks by Donald Trump and other right-wing populists on the global order — it was entirely appropriate for the G7 to come up with a bold approach to addressing global economic inequities in a sustainable manner. Alas, B3W raises as many questions as it addresses.

      For instance, is B3W more than just a fancy name attached to already committed financing and existing institutions like the Blue Dot Network? Isn’t the World Bank supposed to be closing the infrastructure gap between the have-lots and the have-littles? And shouldn’t China be a collaborator in this effort rather than its chief antagonist?

      Improving Upon Belt and Road?

      China launched its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) in 2013. Its aim has been thoroughly Keynesian: to pump money into the economies on China’s borders — as well as some further away — in order to sustain China’s own economic growth. The more these economies are dependent on Chinese financing, Chinese inputs and Chinese know-how, the more they will ultimately contribute to China’s global economic dominance.

      Is China creating some kind of global alternative to capitalism like the Soviet Union’s old Comecon? No, Beijing is thoroughly capitalist in its orientation, though it pushes a version that rubs many laissez-faire purists the wrong way.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Is China determined to use BRI to consolidate an anti-democratic bloc of nations? Although Beijing may well prefer to deal with more predictable partners — and democracies can elect some pretty outrageous wildcards — it is ultimately agnostic about the political governance of its BRI collaborators. There are 140 nations participating in the BRI, including 18 countries in the European Union. For every Belarus and Cuba, there’s an Estonia and a Chile.

      Well, then, isn’t China using BRI to build a kind of covert military bloc? Critics, for instance, have pointed to the deal China negotiated with Sri Lanka around the port it helped to finance in Hambantota. Struggling with loan repayments in 2017, Sri Lanka signed a 99-year lease arrangement with a Chinese firm. Couldn’t Beijing now turn this port into a military base?

      In fact, Sri Lanka continues to own the facility, though the Chinese commercial firm operates much of the port and thus gets much of the profit. Despite US government claims, China is not and doesn’t seem to have any intention of conducting military business at Hambantota. Two Chinese subs entered the port before the 2017 deal, and Sri Lanka has barred such visits ever since.

      The Sri Lankan example has often been used as exhibit A in the case of China’s use of the “debt trap” to advance its global objectives. According to this scenario, Beijing extends loans through BRI, the target country defaults, and China grabs the assets. It sounds plausible. Except that there’s no evidence that China actually operates that way, including in the Sri Lankan case.

      The Belt and Road Initiative has many flaws, to be sure. It has facilitated large-scale corruption, for instance, in Malaysia. It has promoted dirty energy, including 240 coal projects and billions of dollars in oil and gas investments.

      But it’s not as if China is the only country with dirty hands. Corruption is endemic in infrastructure projects, accounting for as much as 45% of construction costs. And when it comes to fossil fuels, the US was the largest oil exporter in the world last year as well as the fourth-largest exporter of coal.

      So, why did the G7 think it was so important to come up with an alternative to China’s Belt and Road rather than work with Beijing to build back better together?

      Beat ‘em Rather than Join ‘em?

      The United States likes being number one. The success of Trump’s political campaign and his various hyperbolic slogans testify to the endurance of American exceptionalism. The stridency of these exceptionalist claims, however, introduces a measure of doubt. Front-runners who are anxious about their status generally compensate by raising their voices and thumping their chests harder. In this way, we betray our simian origins.

      China has challenged the US status by growing what is now, measured by purchasing power parity, the world’s largest economy. Thanks to its performance in 2020 during the pandemic, China will likely become the world’s undisputed number one economy sometime around 2026.

      But China is also challenging the global economy by establishing its own institutions parallel to the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), like the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. The BRI, by encompassing so much of the world, is just the kind of grand initiative that number-one economies set up to maintain their dominance.

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      The United States is not so enthusiastic about relinquishing its top status. Ditto all the countries that have hitched themselves to the US economic locomotive. With Trump out of the White House, Washington has eschewed machismo in favor of multilateral and moral arguments against the Belt and Road Initiative: China is throwing developing countries into debt dependency; China is bolstering the power of authoritarian leaders; China is fostering unacceptable work environments including forced labor.

      Those criticisms ring hollow. The developing world is already in debt dependency to the G7 and its financial institutions. The World Bank and IMF worked closely with dictators for decades. Western corporations long turned a blind eye to horrifying working conditions in the countries where they set up operations.

      And the $40 trillion infrastructure gap between have-lots and have-littles that B3W is supposed to bridge? It’s because of this gap that China was so successful in reaching out to the Global South in the first place. In charge of the global economy since 1945, the richest countries failed miserably to achieve a modicum of global economic equity — because that was never really their goal.

      But Can It Help?

      For the sake of argument, let’s put all this history aside. Regardless of the mixed intentions of its backers, can B3W actually help countries that want to catch up to the rest of the world in a way that doesn’t further accelerate the climate crisis?

      The experience of the Blue Dot Network is not encouraging. Established by Japan, Australia and the US in 2019 — after a series of failed infrastructure initiatives like the Asia-Africa Growth Corridor and the Trilateral Partnership — the Blue Dot Network essentially establishes a Good Housekeeping seal of approval for infrastructure deals that meet more stringent requirements around governance, finance, labor conditions and the like. But here’s the problem: The Blue Dot Network doesn’t actually provide credit-hungry countries with access to any new pots of money.

      B3W looks like it might be a similar example of grand rhetoric and few resources. It is articulating the same kind of criteria for investments as the Blue Dot Network. As for the financing, the G7 has promised to mobilize private sector funding — in other words, they aren’t ponying up any money of their own. This is no surprise. The Biden administration is hard-pressed to pass its own domestic infrastructure bill. Fat chance it can get Republicans on board to send similarly earmarked funds abroad, even under the rubric of challenging China.

      Nevertheless, the White House is talking big: “B3W will collectively catalyze hundreds of billions of dollars of infrastructure investment for low- and middle-income countries in the coming years.” The word “catalyze” sounds very dynamic, but frankly, it’s just a fancy way of saying: We will beg and wheedle and maybe twist an arm or two, but frankly we can’t promise much of anything. As Reuters wryly concluded in its article on the initiative, “It was not immediately clear how exactly the plan would work or how much capital it would ultimately allocate.”

      The bottom line is that the world desperately needs a green B3W. It needs to find a way to close the infrastructure gap by providing the funds and financing for the developing world to leapfrog into a clean energy future. At the moment, the Belt and Road Initiative does not do that. And neither does B3W.

      So, how about it, Washington and Beijing? Why not get together to see if you can turn two wrongs into a right and collaborate on a global Green New Deal?

      *[This article was originally published by FPIF.]

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

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      in World Politics

      NATO’s New Challenge in East Asia

      by

      US President Joe Biden used the occasion of his trip to Europe for the G7 summit to attend his first NATO meeting. His influence on the meeting appeared unambiguously when a communiqué by the NATO alliance designated China’s influence on the world stage as a military challenge. 

      NATO was born in the aftermath of the Second World War as the West’s response to the ambitions of the Soviet Union, which controlled large portions of Eastern Europe and represented an ideology considered inimical to Western political and economic culture. This gave rise to the Cold War, framed as the rivalry between two systems of social and economic organization: capitalism (supported by democracy) and communism (the dictatorship of the proletariat).

      Does the World Need to Contain China?

      READ MORE

      Because humanity had entered the nuclear age, the Cold War cultivated a permanent and universal feeling of potential terror, unlike tensions and wars of the historical past. Its name, “Cold War,” has been attributed to George Orwell, who didn’t live long enough to see how it would develop. The author of “1984” imagined “two or three monstrous super-states, each possessed of a weapon by which millions of people can be wiped out in a few seconds.” In the end, there were only two major players. The laws of hyperreality, just like the laws of conventional information technology, require reducing the governing logic to a binary opposition. The age of quantum logic, which humanity is only just now discovering, had not yet begun.

      The Cold War was cold in relative terms, simply because the heat that a real nuclear war might produce would have dwarfed anything humanity had ever experienced. As soon as a nuclear war started it would be over, as no one would be left standing. This too reflected the binary logic of the time. There were exactly two choices: hot war or cold war. There could be no warm war between the two proud rivals. A cold war was clearly preferable in the eyes of anyone who wielded power. The leaders in the US understood how to profit from that preference. It justified the creation and rapid growth of a powerful military-industrial complex at the core of the American empire.

      The Cold War marked a moment of history in which military technology was undergoing its most radical paradigm change, thanks to the invention of nuclear weapons in the US and their capacity for devastation demonstrated by their operational deployment in Japan that put an exclamation point on the end of the World War. The entire world became gripped in a state of permanent fear, attenuated only by the sense that because no leader would likely be suicidal enough to engage in open conflict, the actors of the economy were free to realize their boldest ambitions.

      Embed from Getty Images

      In the West, the Cold War produced an odd cultural effect of “carpe diem,” the feeling that it was necessary to “seize the day” and have fun, because there may be no tomorrow. This feeling drove both the rapid growth of the consumer society and the cultural liberation movements we associate with beatniks and hippies. It also proved fatal for the Soviet Union’s false utopia of worker solidarity that depended on accepting austerity for the good of the collectivity.

      NATO should have become obsolete after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989. But the camp built around the clout of the US military-industrial complex could not simply be dismantled and put to pasture. Two presidents, George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, had little choice but to maintain NATO because the entire US economy now revolved around the logic of the military-industrial complex.

      That militarized economy had become the key to installing a global, neocolonial system capable of replacing Europe’s colonial system that was in the decades following World War II. Because it was industrial as well as military, it spawned the technologies that began to dominate the global economy. These new technologies conveniently straddled the pragmatic (civil applications) and the political (military applications), providing a new motor for the late 20th economy that we all live under today.

      Though NATO had lost its initial geopolitical justification, it continued to operate as a pillar of the new military-economic system. It influenced the evolution of the formerly isolated regime of communist China, destined to become a major actor in the global economy. There was only one model for any large nation that wished to participate effectively in the global economy. It had to encourage capitalism and have its own military-industrial logic. China has succeeded, thanks to the global consumer market spearheaded by the US. For various reasons, India, which might have moved in that direction, failed.

      NATO now finds itself in an odd position. Contested by the mercurial Donald Trump, its members greeted with a sigh of relief the electoral victory of a conventional Cold War establishment politician, Joe Biden. For the past five years, Biden’s Democratic Party has sought to revive the ambience and ethos of the Cold War, focusing on Russia. But Russia simply isn’t a serious rival of the US. Both major US parties have designated China as the bugbear to focus on. But China falls way outside NATO’s “North Atlantic” purview.

      Nevertheless, Biden appears to have persuaded NATO to include China in its official discourse. The communiqué from this week’s meeting makes the case: “China’s stated ambitions and assertive behaviour present systemic challenges to the rules-based international order and to areas relevant to Alliance security.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Systemic challenge:

      A politically correct euphemism for “serious threat,” applied to anything that calls into question the weaknesses and vices of an existing system, especially when that system’s weaknesses and vices have become dramatically visible

      Contextual Note

      The unresolved pandemic that has been raging for nearly a year and a half and the growing crisis of climate change have created a situation in which the system now being challenged has been found seriously wanting. Defending the status quo has become an ungratifying task. All lucid observers agree that the political and economic system inherited from the 20th century needs either to evolve radically or be replaced by something new. 

      It is equally clear that Beijing has no alternative system to propose. This is partly because China’s success is due largely to its adaptation to and integration within the system being challenged, but equally because the Chinese system of autocratic communism is a failed model itself and the Chinese themselves know it.

      NATO worries about China’s “stated ambitions and assertive behaviour.” But in reality, its ambitions appear modest and the behavior, while certainly assertive, cannot compare with the historically aggressive behavior of the US, so clearly demonstrated in Korea, Vietnam and the Middle East.

      Historical Note

      As for the “systemic challenges to the rules-based international order,” the rules that existed at the time of the creation of the United Nations and the establishment of the Bretton Woods system have long been challenged by the Western powers, to the point of being distorted beyond recognition.

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      Even the reference to “areas relevant to Alliance security” needs to be put in historical perspective. NATO is nominally focused on one area in the world: the North Atlantic. But for the past two decades, it has ventured further and further, not only into Eastern Europe, but also Afghanistan, presumably turning Central Asia into an area of “Alliance security.” With the political turmoil that emerged in 2016 in both the US (Donald Trump) and Europe (Brexit), there should be enough to feel insecure about within NATO’s traditional sector of the North Atlantic. Reaching out to China’s area of influence would be a real stretch.

      It’s true that China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) seeks to extend its influence across both Asia and Europe. This could be interpreted as potentially encroaching on the North Atlantic military fiefdom. But the BRI’s character is economic and clearly not military. It is soft power rather than hard power.

      Most lucid observers in the West, conscious of the current system’s growing incapacity to deal with any global problem — whether it’s a pandemic, war, migration, domestic tranquility or climate change — find themselves looking for something that could be called a “systemic challenge” to the current unproductive and often unjust system of doing things. At the end of the day, the systemic challenge at home will likely have more impact than China’s.

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

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

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      in World Politics

      Biden Invests His Capital in Israel

      by

      Though the stale expression “political capital” has become a handy item in every pundit’s vocabulary, there was a time when the financial metaphor would have seemed jarring and paradoxical in the context of democracy. Its popularity today reflects a disturbing trend in the reasoning that governs democratic decision-making. The traditional focus on ensuring the general welfare and responding to the will of the people has been replaced by a process of cold calculation we associate with the world of finance and investment. Politics is no longer about governing. It is exclusively about winning elections, accumulating capital and living off the spoils of victory.

      The New Police State

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      Living metaphors play on comparison between two disparate orders of reality. Dead metaphors fester in their own world as meaningless rhetorical artifacts. Attempting to analyze US President Joe Biden’s strategy of refusing to comment on Israel’s disproportionately violent campaign of “self-defense,” New York Times journalists Annie Karni and David E. Sanger propose this explanation: “Mr. Biden’s tactic was to avoid public condemnation of Israel’s bombing of Gaza — or even a public call for a cease-fire — in order to build up capital with Mr. Netanyahu and then exert pressure in private when the time came.” In this case, the metaphor is so definitively dead the authors don’t bother with the epithet “political” and simply call it “capital.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Political capital:

      According to the New York Times, the advantage one hopes to obtain from offering a gift to someone known to be selfish, greedy and disrespectful

      Contextual Note

      US media have made a major effort in recent days to make sense of the strategic logic behind Biden’s behavior at the height of the crisis that some now believe has been resolved by a ceasefire. Of course, nothing at all has been resolved, even if the fireworks have come to a provisional halt. The media, as usual, focus on identifying winners and losers. They present a scorecard and retrospectively imagine the strategy that governed the play of the actors. 

      Embed from Getty Images

      Western media continue to view what is clearly a deep, complex and enduring historical crisis not for what it is, but as a game being played by leaders on both sides seeking to reinforce their image and consolidate political capital with their base. In this reading, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s aim was to cling to power after losing an election. The adversary, Hamas, reacted with the sole motivation of reaffirming its position as the most resolute defender of the Palestinian cause, all for the sake of obtaining electoral advantage both in Gaza and the West Bank. The analysis contains a grain of truth but appeared more as a random factor in a much bigger geopolitical drama than as the basis of a serious account of the events.

      What journalists call political capital today was once expressed by the notion of “goodwill,” a term borrowed from business vocabulary that includes the idea of customer satisfaction, trust and loyalty. Like so much else in the English language, goodwill itself has been transformed by the trend to financialize our thinking about everything under the sun.

      The authoritative Shorter Oxford Dictionary (SOD) gives this primary definition of goodwill: “Virtuous, pious, upright position or intention.” Investopedia begins with this definition: “Goodwill is an intangible asset that is associated with the purchase of one company by another.” The SOD does include another definition of goodwill in use as early as 1571: “the possession of a ready-formed connexion of customers” used to evaluate “the saleable value of a business.” Investopedia sees goodwill as an asset before citing its virtuous status in the eyes of customers. The SOD puts virtue first, customers second and “saleable value” (= asset) last. Goodwill began its history as a virtue and ended up as a proprietary asset.

      Historical Note

      Political capital has definitely replaced political goodwill as an operational concept in modern political thinking. Kenya may be the last English-speaking country to continue to use the metaphor of political goodwill in preference to capital. In an editorial dated May 15, 2020, the Times of San Diego referred to goodwill as something real but now associated with the historical past. “It was not so long ago that we experienced a time of goodwill in our national political life, with Jimmy Carter promising never to lie… Now all that has changed,” adding, “we have lost what had been an open window to the fresh air that characterized the late 1970s.”

      There are two related semantic principles underlying this historical shift that reveal a lot about how society itself has changed, precisely in the decade that followed Carter’s presidency. The first concerns the shift in social culture itself from an ability to focus on collective interest that has been replaced by a narcissistic obsession with individual competitive advantage. The second concerns the trend toward the financialization of all human activities and attributes.

      The 1980s witnessed the triumph of the transformative Thatcher-Reagan ideological coalition. The ideas associated with government “of the people, by the people and for the people” found themselves suddenly radically subordinated to theoretical principles purportedly derived from the logic of free market capitalism. The idea of goodwill has always had a collective connotation. It was never about an asset or property, but a state of mind shared by the public. In 2007, Robert Kuttner in The New York Times complained that George W. Bush’s warmongering “squandered the global goodwill that has long been the necessary complement to America’s military might.” Goodwill was an asset shared by the nation and its people.

      Kuttner correctly noted that Bush’s Middle East adventures both broke the solidarity of goodwill and squandered its value as a collective asset. In 2004, Chris Sullentrop, writing for Slate, noticed how, at the same time goodwill was disappearing from the media’s vocabulary, Bush himself relentlessly insisted on the idea of political capital. “Now the most common usage of ‘political capital,’” according to Sullentrop, “means the power that popularity confers on a politician, or something like that. ‘Political capital’ is shaping up to be the first buzzword of the second Bush administration.”

      Sullentrop cites multiple examples in Bush’s discourse. In 2001, the president, newly elected (by the Supreme Court), explained: “I earned capital in the campaign, political capital, and now I intend to spend it. It is my style.” Really? Is spending one’s public reputation — to say nothing of blood and treasure in the Middle East — a feature of presidential style? When Time magazine asked Bush, “What did you learn about being president from watching your father?” he answered, “I learned how to earn political capital and how to spend it.” There are many other examples. If for Americans “time is money,” for post-Reagan Americans, goodwill (earned or unearned) is also money.

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      In 2008, Barack Obama insisted that he was on a mission to restore America’s goodwill. But after eight years of Bush, the very idea of goodwill had lost all its ancient connotations of being “virtuous” and “upright.” It was now reduced to the simplistic idea of marketing the nation’s image to the rest of the world. By continuing most of Bush’s policies, from maintaining his tax breaks for the rich to prosecuting Bush’s wars and even expanding them to new regions, Obama’s efforts at creating goodwill could only remain superficial and cosmetic. That bothered no one in Washington, since the reigning ideology, formerly focused on seeking politically coherent solutions to complex problems, had converted to an ideology based on the newly adored laws of branding and marketing.

      Some saw Donald Trump’s triumph in 2016, built around his guiding principle, “America First,” as a shift away from even the need to spread goodwill. In reality, his hyper-narcissistic ideology was an extension of the same trend that had replaced the notion of virtuous action by that of accumulated assets.

      And what about Joe Biden’s plan to order to “build up capital with Mr. Netanyahu and then exert pressure in private when the time came”? It sounds like a joke. Playing the accomplice to someone else’s criminal actions cannot produce political capital. Al Jazeera quotes Nader Hashemi, a Middle East expert at the University of Denver: “[T]he more Israel is coddled, supported, sustained, the more belligerent and intransigent Israel becomes to making any concessions.” Bibi Netanyahu is not done with managing America’s foreign policy.

      *[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