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      in US Politics

      The first episode of Politics Weekly America: Biden sanctions Russia

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      To continue listening to Jonathan Freedland’s analysis of what’s happening in Washington and beyond, be sure to like and subscribe to Politics Weekly America wherever you get your podcasts.
      This week, as Russia invades Ukraine, Jonathan speaks to the former US ambassador to Nato, Ivo Daalder. The pair discuss why sanctions imposed on Putin by the west are probably too late for Ukraine

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know

      Subscribe to Politics Weekly America on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts Let us know what you think of the episode: podcasts@theguardian.com More

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      in US Politics

      Biden and the west respond to Putin’s invasion: Politics Weekly America

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      In a historic week for Ukraine, Europe and the world, Jonathan Freedland speaks to Ivo Daalder, the former US ambassador to Nato, about how Biden is responding, and why – for the Ukrainians – it’s too late

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know

      Archive: BBC, Sky News, ITV, CSPAN Listen to Politics Weekly UK with John Harris Send your questions and feedback to podcasts@theguardian.com. Help support the Guardian by going to gu.com/supportpodcasts. More

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      in US Politics

      ‘Putin chose this war,’ Biden says as he announces new sanctions against Russia – US politics live

      by

      Key events

      Show

      4.18pm EST

      16:18

      Obama condemns Russia’s ‘brutal onslaught’ against Ukraine

      1.50pm EST

      13:50

      ‘Putin chose this war,’ Biden says as he announces new sanctions against Russia

      1.45pm EST

      13:45

      Biden delivers national address on Russian invasion of Ukraine

      12.45pm EST

      12:45

      McConnell: withdrawal from Afghanistan was an invitation to autocrats to make a move

      12.30pm EST

      12:30

      Today so far

      12.05pm EST

      12:05

      House intelligence chairman calls for tougher sanctions against Russia

      10.07am EST

      10:07

      Biden to address nation as Russia invades Ukraine

      Live feed

      Show

      Show key events only

      4.50pm EST

      16:50

      Dmytro Kuleba, the Ukrainian foreign minister, spoke to US Secretary of State Antony Blinken today to discuss the latest round of US sanctions against Russia in response to the invasion.
      “Call with @SecBlinken on ways to stop Russia’s brutal war of aggression against Ukraine,” Kuleba said on Twitter.
      “Secretary informed me on the new U.S. sanctions on Russia, as well as plans to deliver new defensive weapons to help Ukraine defend itself. Ukraine holds ground. We need the world to help us.”

      Dmytro Kuleba
      (@DmytroKuleba)
      Call with @SecBlinken on ways to stop Russia’s brutal war of aggression against Ukraine. Secretary informed me on the new U.S. sanctions on Russia, as well as plans to deliver new defensive weapons to help Ukraine defend itself. Ukraine holds ground. We need the world to help us.

      February 24, 2022

      4.33pm EST

      16:33

      Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican of South Carolina, sharply criticized Joe Biden for not issuing direct sanctions on Vladimir Putin in response to his invasion of Ukraine.
      “We should not be seeking permission from allies to go after Putin and his cronies. We should move ahead forcefully against Putin, a war criminal, and demand our allies join us,” Graham said.
      “When it comes to sanctions against Putin: If we are not doing everything possible, we are not doing enough. Time is not on our side.”
      Biden said today that his administration is not eliminating the possibility of issuing direct sanctions against Putin, but he ignored questions about why he was not taking that step now.
      Graham also reiterated that he would work with his congressional colleagues in both parties to quickly pass a bill providing emergency supplemental aid to Ukraine in response to the invasion.
      “How we deal with Putin determines what happens in other regions like Asia and the Middle East,” Graham said. “We need to get this done in the Senate next week.”

      4.18pm EST

      16:18

      Obama condemns Russia’s ‘brutal onslaught’ against Ukraine

      Barack Obama has released a new statement condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine, arguing that Vladimir Putin’s military actions represent a threat to democracies around the world.
      “Last night, Russia launched a brazen attack on the people of Ukraine, in violation of international law and basic principles of human decency,” the former president said.
      “For exercising rights that should be available to all people and nations, Ukrainians now face a brutal onslaught that is killing innocents and displacing untold numbers of men, women and children.”

      Barack Obama
      (@BarackObama)
      Last night, Russia launched a brazen attack on the people of Ukraine, in violation of international law and basic principles of human decency. Here’s my statement on what it means, and what should happen next. pic.twitter.com/Wa0C8XGwvK

      February 24, 2022

      Obama warned that the invasion of Ukraine “threatens the foundation of the international order and security,” underscoring how the “forces of division and authoritarianism” are mounting an assault on global democratic values.
      “Russia’s invasion of Ukraine shows where these dangerous trends can lead — and why they cannot be left unchallenged,” Obama said. “People of conscience around the world need to loudly and clearly condemn Russia’s actions and offer support for the Ukrainian people.”
      Obama called on “every American, regardless of party” to support Joe Biden’s latest sanctions against Russia, which target some of the country’s largest banks and more elite Russian families.
      “There may be some economic consequences to such sanctions, given Russia’s significant role in world energy markets,” Obama acknowledged. “But that’s a price we should be willing to pay to take a stand on the side of freedom.”

      3.56pm EST

      15:56

      House speaker Nancy Pelosi applauded Joe Biden’s latest round of sanctions against Russia in response to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, expressing support for the Ukrainian people.
      “The leadership of President Biden and our allies to demonstrate overwhelming resolve is crucial in this moment of heartbreak and suffering for the Ukrainian people,” Pelosi said in a statement.
      “We are united with unprecedented strength and coordination in our commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
      Pelosi noted that House members received a briefing from the Biden administration on the Ukraine crisis today and will receive a classified, in-person briefing next week.
      “President Biden has made clear throughout Russia’s escalation that we will continue to impose costs on Russia that will leave it weakened in every way,” Pelosi said. “The United States Congress joins President Biden and all Americans in praying for the Ukrainian people.”

      3.38pm EST

      15:38

      Adam Schiff, the House intelligence committee chairman, said the US sanctions against Russia need to go even further than those announced by Joe Biden today.
      “I think the package of sanctions that the president announced is the most severe we’ve ever levied against Russia and many times more devastating than anything that was implemented after their last invasion in 2014,” Schiff told MSNBC.
      “Nevertheless, I favor going further. I favor expelling them from Swift. I favor imposing sanctions directly on Vladimir Putin. This is an unprecedent situation, and even though we don’t generally sanction heads of state, on occasion we do, and I think it’s merited here.”
      Biden said during his event this afternoon that direct sanctions on Putin were one possibility the US may explore, but he ignored a question about why he is not authorizing those sanctions now.

      Updated
      at 3.39pm EST

      3.17pm EST

      15:17

      After his speech on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Joe Biden was asked by a reporter why the US and its allies are not moving to block Russia out of Swift (the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication).
      “The sanctions that we have proposed on all of their banks are of equal consequence, maybe more consequence, than Swift,” Biden said.
      He added, “It is always an option, but right now that’s not the position that the rest of Europe wishes to take.”
      The West’s refusal to crack down on Russia’s use of Swift has outraged the Ukrainian government. The Guardian’s Daniel Boffey and Jessica Elgot report:

      Ukraine’s foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, voiced his anger as EU heads of state and government appeared likely to decide against blocking Russia from an international payments system through which it receives foreign currency.
      With casualties mounting, Kuleba warned that European and US politicians would have ‘blood on their hands’ if they failed to impose the heaviest toll on Moscow by cutting Russia from the so-called Swift payments system.
      ‘I will not be diplomatic on this,’ he tweeted. ‘Everyone who now doubts whether Russia should be banned from Swift has to understand that the blood of innocent Ukrainian men, women and children will be on their hands too. BAN RUSSIA FROM SWIFT.’

      2.57pm EST

      14:57

      The US Treasury noted that the latest sanctions against Russia will impact nearly 80% of all banking assets in the country, fundamentally threatening the Russian economy and weakening the Kremlin’s geopolitical posture.
      “Treasury is taking serious and unprecedented action to deliver swift and severe consequences to the Kremlin and significantly impair their ability to use the Russian economy and financial system to further their malign activity,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said.
      “Our actions, taken in coordination with partners and allies, will degrade Russia’s ability to project power and threaten the peace and stability of Europe.”
      Yellen said the US is also “prepared to impose further costs on Russia in response to its egregious actions” if Vladimir Putin pursues further aggression against Ukraine.
      “We are united in our efforts to hold Russia accountable for its further invasion of Ukraine while mitigating impacts to Americans and our partners,” Yellen said.

      2.43pm EST

      14:43

      The White House has released a fact sheet on the latest round of sanctions against Russia in response to Vladimir Putin launching a fuller-scale invasion of Ukraine.
      The sanctions call for Sberbank, Russia’s largest bank, to be severed from the US financial system, restricting the bank’s access to transactions made in the American dollar.
      Meanwhile, full sanctions will be imposed on four other financial institutions, including Russia’s second-largest bank of VTB. That measure will freeze any of the banks’ assets touching the US financial system and prohibit Americans from dealing with them.

      The White House
      (@WhiteHouse)
      In response to President Putin’s unprovoked aggression against Ukraine, the United States, along with Allies and partners, is imposing severe and immediate economic costs on Russia.Read more: https://t.co/L83Q2uFwKx pic.twitter.com/kpxfNmQvxM

      February 24, 2022

      2.29pm EST

      14:29

      Joe Biden was asked whether Vladimir Putin’s latest military actions in Ukraine and the resulting sanctions on Russia represent a complete rupture in US-Russian relations.
      “There is a complete rupture right now in US-Russian relations if they continue on this path that they’re on,” Biden said.

      CSPAN
      (@cspan)
      President Biden: “There is a complete rupture right now in U.S.-Russian relations…It’s going to be a cold day for Russia.” pic.twitter.com/GbVF9jW81f

      February 24, 2022

      Addressing the possibility of another Cold War starting, Biden said the vast majority of the world does not support Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.
      “So it’s going to be a cold day for Russia,” Biden said. “You don’t see a whole lot of people coming to his defense.”
      After taking several questions from reporters, Biden concluded the event and walked away from his podium in the East Room.

      2.23pm EST

      14:23

      Another reporter pressed Joe Biden on the fact that Vladimir Putin has so far been undeterred by the threat of sanctions, asking what might be effective at stopping the Russian leader.
      “No one expected the sanctions to prevent anything from happening. This could take time, and we have to show resolve so he knows what’s coming, and so the people of Russia know what he’s brought on them. That’s what this is all about,” Biden said.
      “He’s going to test the resolve of the West to see if we stay together, and we will. We will, and it will impose significant costs on him.”

      2.15pm EST

      14:15

      Joe Biden warned that Vladimir Putin is likely looking far beyond Ukraine as Russia launches a full-scale invasion of its neighboring country.
      “He has much larger ambitions than Ukraine. He wants to, in fact, re-establish the former Soviet Union. That’s what this is about,” Biden said.
      “And I think that his ambitions are completely contrary to the place where the rest of the world has arrived.”

      2.13pm EST

      14:13

      Joe Biden took several questions from reporters after finishing his prepared remarks on the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which included an announcement of additional sanctions on Russia.
      Asked whether he intends to speak to Vladimir Putin in the near future, Biden said, “I have no plans to talk with Putin.”

      CSPAN
      (@cspan)
      President Biden: “I have no plans to talk with Putin.” pic.twitter.com/ZicZMrsRyS

      February 24, 2022

      Another reporter asked Biden whether the US is urging China, which has traditionally aligned itself with Russia, to help the West isolate Putin.
      “I’m not prepared to comment on that at the moment,” Biden said.

      2.08pm EST

      14:08

      Joe Biden pledged that Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine would cost Russia “dearly, economically and strategically,” as the US and its allies announce new sanctions against the country.
      “Putin will be a pariah on the international stage,” Biden said, warning that any countries affiliating themselves with Russia would be “stained by association”.
      “When the history of this era is written, Putin’s choice to make a totally unjustifiable war on Ukraine will have left Russia weaker and the rest of the world stronger,” Biden said.

      2.04pm EST

      14:04

      Joe Biden emphasized the importance of the US and its allies standing up to Russian aggression, arguing that Vladimir Putin’s military maneuvers in Ukraine threaten freedom everywhere.
      “This aggression cannot go unanswered. If it did, the consequences for America would be much worse,” Biden said. “America stands up to bullies. We stand up for freedom. This is who we are.”

      CSPAN
      (@cspan)
      President Biden: “This aggression cannot go unanswered. If it did, the consequences for America would be much worse. America stands up to bullies. We stand up for freedom. This is who we are.” pic.twitter.com/cXTN5Xltah

      February 24, 2022 More

    • 138 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Biden imposes new sanctions on Russia: ‘America stands up to bullies’

      by

      Biden imposes new sanctions on Russia: ‘America stands up to bullies’President takes aim at Russia’s largest banks and companies but is emphatic US troops will not engage in conflict in Ukraine Joe Biden on Thursday announced a fresh round of what he said would be crippling sanctions on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine, declaring that Vladimir Putin “chose this war” and that he and his country will bear the consequences.The sanctions target Russia’s largest banks and companies, cutting them off from western financial markets, while imposing export controls and sanctioning Russian oligarchs and their families.Sanctions against Russia – at a glanceRead more“Putin is the aggressor. Putin chose this war,” the US president said. “And now he and his country will bear the consequences.”Taken together, Biden said the measures taken by the US and allied nations around the world were meant to “maximize a long-term impact” on Russia, extracting severe costs on Moscow immediately and over time for what Biden called its “brutal assault” on a sovereign nation.Biden warned that Putin’s “quest for empire” extended beyond Ukraine, saying the Russian leader sought to re-create the former Soviet Union.But the president was emphatic in his vow that US troops would not engage Russia in Ukraine, but he again affirmed the US would defend “every inch of Nato territory”. The commitment was underscored by an announcement that Biden had authorized the deployment of additional US troops to Germany.As Biden addressed the nation from the East Room of the White House, the Ukrainian government reported mounting casualties as Russian troops unleashed a punishing offensive on the nation, advancing on the nation’s capital, Kyiv.01:21Biden’s remarks came hours after he held a virtual meeting with the leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Italy and Japan. European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, European Council president Charles Michel, and Nato secretary general Jens Stoltenberg were also in attendance. Earlier on Thursday, he convened a meeting of the US national security council.The penalties come a day after the White House unveiled an initial “tranche” of sanctions in response to Putin’s recognition of two breakaway republics in east Ukraine. The sanctions announced on Thursday aim to further destabalize Russia’s financial system while starving the county of technology critical to its economy and military.The US Treasury said the latest round of sanctions against Russia would impact nearly 80% of all banking assets in the country, fundamentally threatening the Russian economy and weakening the Kremlin’s geopolitical posture.“Treasury is taking serious and unprecedented action to deliver swift and severe consequences to the Kremlin and significantly impair their ability to use the Russian economy and financial system to further their malign activity,” said Janet Yellen, the Treasury secretary.Biden said the purpose of the sanctions was to limit “Russia’s ability to do business in dollars, euros, pounds and yen to be part of the global economy”.But they are not as forceful as some elected officials in the US and Ukraine have called for, steps that would include removing Russia from the Swift international banking system and targeting Russia’s energy sector or leveling sanctions against Putin personally.“We demand the disconnection of Russia from Swift, the introduction of a no-fly zone over Ukraine and other effective steps to stop the aggressor,” the Ukraine president Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a tweet.What is Swift and what would shutting Russia out of it achieve?Read moreOn Thursday, congressman Adam Schiff, the chairman of the House intelligence committee, called on the US to “dramatically escalate” its response to Moscow and endorsed calls to remove Russia from the international banking system and its ability to access western capital.Biden argued that time was needed to the current round of sanctions to take their desired effect, and said the US was “prepared” to impose more severe penalties on Russia.The president defended his administration’s response. For several weeks, the US has declassified and made public Putin’s secret plans, while moving quickly to blame Russia for a series of cyber-attacks against Ukrainian banks and agencies. The purpose of the approach was to expose the Kremlin’s justification for war as baseless, he said.“Now, it’s unfolding largely as we predicted,” the president said.Asked by reporters whether he was consulting China to isolate Russia, Biden would not comment. He also said he was working to persuade India to join the western-led push against Russia.Biden said he had no plans to talk to Putin.The US president also urged resolve among the American people, who he said would likely face economic consequences as a result of what Biden called Putin’s “naked aggression”. The US has also warned government agencies and operators of critical infrastructure to take pre-emptive actions to safeguard against a potential Russian cyber-attack.In a stark contrast to Donald Trump, who has repeatedly assailed Biden while badly mangling the facts surrounding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Barack Obama called on “every American, regardless of party” to support the president’s efforts to punish the Kremlin.Echoing Biden, Obama acknowledged that there would likely be economic consequences for Americans, but that it was a “price we should be willing to pay to take a stand on the side of freedom.”As Biden has warned throughout his presidency, he said democracies around the world were being tested and threatened by Putin’s “sinister vision for the future of our world”. He said there was never a question that the US would respond to Russia’s assault on Ukraine.“This aggression cannot go unanswered,” Biden said. “America stands up to bullies. We stand up for freedom. This is who we are.”TopicsJoe BidenUS politicsVladimir PutinRussiaUkraineForeign policynewsReuse this content More

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      in World Politics

      From Repeated Mistakes to an Unmistakable Message

      by

      Our regularly updated feature Language and the News will continue in the form of separate articles rather than as a single newsfeed. Click here to read yesterday’s edition.

      We invite readers to join us by submitting their suggestions of words and expressions that deserve exploring, with or without original commentary. To submit a citation from the news and/or provide your own short commentary, send us an email.

      February 24: Unmistakable

      Our regular examination of language in the news cycle has been bringing us back to the major international story thus far of 2022. The Russia–Ukraine crisis keeps generating examples of the deliberately twisted and sometimes directly inverted semantics, a trend that will probably continue and perhaps become amplified in the coming weeks and months.

      As a general rule, when politicians claim to be “clear,” the observer can be certain that what they are clear about is at best half the story. Clarity imperceptibly fades into obscurity. It gets worse when the speaker claims that the message is “unmistakable.” Quoted by the New York Times, US President Joe Biden offered a wonderful example of such rhetoric while explaining the measures he is taking to counter Russia’s incursion into Ukraine.

      Ukraine’s Tug of War and the Implications for Europe

      READ MORE

      “Let me be clear: These are totally defensive moves on our part,” Biden proclaimed. “We have no intention of fighting Russia. We want to send an unmistakable message, though, that the United States, together with our allies, will defend every inch of NATO territory and abide by the commitments we made to NATO.”

      This is the standard mantra in Washington. Economic sanctions are always intended to punish civilian populations in the hope that they will revolt against their government. They should never be thought of as aggressive or offensive, not even partially. Perish the thought. Biden makes that “clear” when he claims they are “totally” defensive, like a soldier in the field raising a shield before his face to deflect an enemy’s arrow. 

      Embed from Getty Images

      As for the “unmistakable message,” it may simply mean that the White House has made so many mistaken guesses in recent weeks about the date of a Russian invasion, it is now necessary to inform people that the latest message, for a change, is not just one more in an endless series of mistakes.

      Biden also called Vladimir Putin’s move “the beginning of a Russian invasion of Ukraine.” For the moment, it is an aggressive incursion into contested Ukrainian territory, but it isn’t an invasion. It can only be deemed the beginning of an invasion if there actually is an invasion that follows from it. There is no question that President Putin’s initiative violates international law, but that alone doesn’t make it a military invasion.

      Biden should know something about what invasions look like. He was, after all, the key Democrat, as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, to champion US President George W. Bush’s tragically planned and utterly unjustified invasion of Iraq in 2003, a well-documented episode Biden persistently denied during his election campaign.

      Putin’s move may be a prelude to an invasion, but preludes only become real when the event they are preparing becomes real. The real reason Biden calls it “the beginning of an invasion” is to save face in an attempt to maintain a modicum of credibility regarding his administration’s warnings in recent weeks. He may well be hoping it turns into a Russian invasion just to prove his repeated predictions were somewhat correct.

      Then there’s Biden’s promise to defend “every inch of NATO territory.” Everyone knows Ukraine is not NATO territory. So why offer such a justification? Perhaps Biden’s reason for saying this on record is that, when Republicans and the more bellicose Democrats begin castigating him for failing to support Ukraine militarily, he will be able to use Ukraine’s non-NATO status to defend his policy. At the same time, he is getting the best of both worlds. He may thus safely stand back and watch a bloody proxy war proceed, much as Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Biden have done for the past seven years with Yemen.

      Finally, Biden made the important decision to call off the proposed summit meeting with Putin. At the same time, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken canceled a planned meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov that should have taken place on February 24. “Now that we see the invasion is beginning,” Blinken explained, “and Russia has made clear its wholesale rejection of diplomacy, it does not make sense to go forward with that meeting at this time.” 

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

      That statement on Blinken’s part is literally a “wholesale rejection.” He even used the expression “pretense of diplomacy,” disparaging the very idea of trying to solve the problem rather than let it get worse. Lavrov had made no attempt to scotch the meeting. In its coverage, Reuters added that “Blinken said he was still committed to diplomacy.” Except, apparently, when he’s committed to preventing it from happening. In former times, diplomacy consisted of getting a conversation going whenever a serious problem arose. It certainly did not consist of explaining why there was no need for a dialogue.

      In the light of this new style of diplomacy, historians may now find it an interesting counterfactual exercise to wonder what might have happened during the Cuban missile crisis had either John F. Kennedy or Nikita Khrushchev objected that diplomacy was a waste of time. 

      Why Monitoring Language Is Important

      Language allows people to express thoughts, theories, ideas, experiences and opinions. But even while doing so, it also serves to obscure what is essential for understanding the complex nature of reality. When people use language to hide essential meaning, it is not only because they cynically seek to prevaricate or spread misinformation. It is because they strive to tell the part or the angle of the story that correlates with their needs and interests.

      In the age of social media, many of our institutions and pundits proclaim their intent to root out “misinformation.” But often, in so doing, they are literally seeking to miss information.

      Is there a solution? It will never be perfect, but critical thinking begins by being attentive to two things: the full context of any issue we are trying to understand and the operation of language itself. In our schools, we are taught to read and write, but, unless we bring rhetoric back into the standard curriculum, we are never taught how the power of language to both convey and distort the truth functions. There is a largely unconscious but observable historical reason for that negligence. Teaching establishments and cultural authorities fear the power of linguistic critique may be used against their authority.

      Remember, Fair Observer’s Language and the News seeks to sensitize our readers to the importance of digging deeper when assimilating the wisdom of our authorities, pundits and the media that transmit their knowledge and wisdom.

      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

      An Expert Explains Why We Need a New Cold War With China

      by

      Michael Beckley is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and the author of “Unrivaled: Why America Will Remain the World’s Sole Superpower.” He has no time for the commonly held thesis that America’s hegemonic power is in decline. He even claims that “it is now wealthier, more innovative, and more militarily powerful compared to China than it was in 1991.” If the regular expansion of the US defense budget is any indication, he may be right. President Joe Biden has just promised to increase it yet again, this time to $770 billion.

      In a new article for Foreign Affairs bearing the title, “Enemies of My Enemy: How Fear of China Is Forging a New World Order,” Beckley makes the case that having and sharing an easily identified enemy is the key to effective world government. The Cold War taught him that “the liberal order” has nothing to do with good intentions and being a force for good. Instead, it thrives on a strong dose of irrational fear that can be spread among friends.

      Ukraine’s Tug of War and the Implications for Europe (Language and the News)

      READ MORE

      As the Republican presidential candidate in 2000, George W. Bush produced these immortal words: “When I was coming up, it was a dangerous world, and you knew exactly who they were. It was us vs. them, and it was clear who them was. Today, we are not so sure who the they are, but we know they’re there.” Probably unwittingly, Beckley echoes Bush’s wisdom. “Today, the liberal order is fraying for many reasons,” Beckley writes, “but the underlying cause is that the threat it was originally designed to defeat—Soviet communism—disappeared three decades ago.”  Unlike the clueless Bush, Beckley now knows who the “they” is. It’s China.

      Embed from Getty Images

      History has moved on. China can now replace the Soviet Union as the star performer. Bush proposed Islamist terrorism as his coveted “them,” but that ultimately failed. The terrorists are still lurking in numerous shadows, but when President Biden withdrew the last American troops from Afghanistan in August 2021, he definitively delegitimized it as a threat worthy of spawning a new Cold War. And now, even while Russia is being touted as the best supporting actor, the stage is finally clear to push China into the limelight.

      Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Shared enemy:

      A powerful nation whose negative image can be modeled by another powerful nation in such a way that its name alone inspires fear, to the point that it may be generously offered to governments of weaker nations on the pretext of forming a profitable alliance

      Contextual Note

      For Beckley, US hegemony needs China’s help. Now that the Middle Kingdom has now achieved the status of a high-profile enemy to be generously shared with obedient allies, the liberal order may thrive again, as it did during the Cold War. For Beckley, it is China, not Donald Trump, that will “make America great again.”

      Some may find Beckley’s historical logic slightly skewed. He explains that the modern liberal order was “designed to defeat … Soviet communism.” If it was “designed,” what does he have to say about the designer? Who indeed could that have been, and what were their real motives? Could it have been the Dulles brothers, whose combined clout in the Dwight Eisenhower years allowed them to dictate US foreign policy? More alarmingly, Beckley seems to be suggesting that without a pretext for paranoia, the liberal order would not or could not exist.  

      Beckley is probably right but for reasons he might not appreciate. The idea of needing an identifiable enemy stands as a purely negative justification of the liberal order. But Beckley has already dismissed the idea that it is all about bettering the world. He seems to underestimate the need ordinary Americans have to think of their country as a shining city on a hill, endowed with the most powerful military in the history of the world whose mission is not to maraud, destroy, displace populations and kill, but to intervene as a “force for good.”

      It’s not as if social harmony was the norm in the United States. The one thing that prevents the country from descending into a chaos of consumer individualism, or from becoming a nation populated by angry Hobbesian egos intolerant of the behavior of other egos, is the ideology that Beckley denigrates but which politicians continue to celebrate: the “enlightened call to make the world a better place.” Americans would fall into a state of despair if they no longer believed that their exceptional and indispensable nation exists as an ideal for humanity.

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

      But recent events have begun to shake their faith in what now appears to be a manifestly not very egalitarian democracy. Increasingly oligarchic, if not plutocratic, American society remains “liberal” (i.e., free) for those who control the growing mountains of cash that visibly circulate among the elite but rarely trickle down to meet any real human needs.

      As the defender of an idealized liberal order, Beckley is right to assume that, with so many factors undermining the American consensus, the cultivation of a shared enemy may be the necessary key to maintaining that order. Fear has always had the unique virtue of diverting attention from serious and worsening problems. Between income inequality, climate change and an enduring pandemic punctuated by contestable government mandates, people’s attention definitely needs to be diverted.

      Historical Note

      Michael Beckley is certainly very knowledgeable about China. He admires Chinese civilization and many of its accomplishments. He also believes a war between the United States and China is far from inevitable. Moreover, he is a realist. He admits that, as many people across the globe affirm, the US represents the biggest threat to world peace. At the same time, he believes “that the United States has the most potential to be the biggest contributor to peace.” He lucidly notes that “when the United States puts its weight behind something the world gets remade, for better or for worse.” But, having said this, he eludes the implicit moral question. If both the better and worse are possible, the rest of the world should be the ones to decide every time its reality is “remade” whether that remaking was for the better or the worse.

      As Pew studies show, most people outside the US appear to believe that American initiatives across the globe over at least the past half-century have been predominantly for the worse. Beckley himself cites Iraq and Vietnam as egregious examples. But, ever the optimist, he sees in what he calls the ability of the “system of US alliances” to create “zones of peace” the proof that the worse isn’t as bad as some might think.

      Beckley recognizes that alliances are not created out of generosity and goodwill alone. In his influential book, “Super-Imperialism,” the economist Michael Hudson describes the workings of what is known as the “Washington Consensus,” a system of economic and military control that, in the decades after World War II, managed, somewhat perversely, to miraculously transfer the immense burden of its own debt, generated by its military adventurism, to the rest of the world. The “Treasury-bill Standard,” an innovation President Richard Nixon called into being to replace the gold standard in 1971, played a major role. With the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, Hudson notes that “foreign governments were obliged to invest their surplus dollars in U.S. Treasury securities.” It was part of a complex financial, diplomatic and military system that forced US allies to finance American debt.

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      Beckley’s  “zones of peace” are zones of dependence. Every country that participated in the system found itself forced to hold US Treasury bonds, including China. They thus had an interest in maintaining the stability of a system that dictated the flow of money across the globe. To a large extent, that is still the case. It explains why attempts to dethrone the dollar are systemically countered, sometimes violently through military action (as in Libya, to scotch Muammar Gaddafi’s plans for a pan-African currency).

      None of that worries the eternal optimist Beckley, clearly a disciple of Voltaire’s Pangloss. He believes that — even while admitting the US has “wrecked the world in various ways” — its “potential” for peace trumps the reality of persistent war and that its “capability to make the world much more peaceful and prosperous” absolves it from the wreckage it has already produced. 

      From a cultural point of view, Beckley is right. Americans always believe that what is “potential” trumps what is real and that “capability” effaces past examples of incapable behavior. That describes a central feature of American hyperreality.

      *[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 Fair Observer Devil’s Dictionary.]

      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 Republican party is abandoning democracy. There can be no ‘politics as usual’ | Thomas Zimmer

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      The Republican party is abandoning democracy. There can be no ‘politics as usual’Thomas ZimmerRepublicans could not be clearer about their cynicism, yet some establishment Democrats act as if politics as usual is still an option Over the past few weeks, President Joe Biden has repeatedly emphasized his friendship with Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell. At the National Prayer Breakfast in early February, for instance, he praised McConnell as “a man of your word. And you’re a man of honor. Thank you for being my friend.”Biden’s publicly professed affinity is weirdly at odds with the political situation. Going back to the Obama era, McConnell has led the Republican Party in a strategy of near-total obstruction which he has pursued with ruthless cynicism. It is true that he has, at times, signaled distance to Donald Trump and condemned the January 6 insurrection. But McConnell is also sabotaging any effort to counter the Republican party’s ongoing authoritarian assault on the political system.The distinct asymmetry in the way the two sides treat each other extends well beyond Biden and McConnell. Republicans immediately derided Biden’s pledge to nominate a Black woman to the Supreme Court – while Democratic leaders are hoping for bipartisan support; House Speaker Nancy Pelosi insists the nation needs a strong Republican party – meanwhile radicals like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar, who fantasize about committing acts of violence against Democrats, are embraced by fellow Republicans, proving they are not just a extremist fringe that has “hijacked” the Party, as Pelosi suggested. And when Texas senator Ted Cruz recently intimated that Republicans would impeach Biden if they were to retake the House “whether it’s justified or not,” the White House responded by calling on Cruz to “work with us on getting something done.” Republicans could not be clearer about the fact that they consider Democratic governance fundamentally illegitimate, yet some establishment Democrats act as if politics as usual is still an option and a return to “normalcy” imminent.There is certainly an element of political strategy in all of this. Democrats are eager to present themselves as a force of moderation and unity. But Biden’s longing for understanding across party lines seems sincere. He has been reluctant to make the fight against the Republican party’s assault on democracy the center piece of his agenda; Democratic leadership has proved mostly unwilling to focus the public’s attention on the Republican party’s authoritarian turn.One important explanatory factor is that many Democratic leaders are old. They came up in a very different political environment, when there was indeed a great deal of bipartisan cooperation in Congress. There is no reason to be nostalgic about this – the politics of bipartisan consensus more often than not stifled racial and social progress. But there was certainly an established norm of intra-party cooperation until quite recently. When California senator Dianne Feinstein hugged South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham at the end of the Amy Coney Barrett hearings in 2020, it was a bizarre throwback to those days of amity across party lines in the midst of a naked Republican power grab.Beyond institutional tradition and personal familiarity, this inability to grapple in earnest with the post-Obama reality in which Democratic politicians are almost universally considered members of an “Un-American” faction by most Republicans has deeper ideological roots. The way some establishment Democrats have acted suggests they feel a kinship with their Republican opponents grounded in a worldview of white elite centrism. Their perspective on the prospect of a white reactionary regime is influenced by the fact that, consciously or not, they understand that their elite status wouldn’t necessarily be affected all that much. The Republican dogma – that the world works best if it’s run by prosperous white folks – has a certain appeal to wealthy white elites, regardless of party.From that vantage point, it is rational to believe that the bigger immediate threat is coming from the “Left”: an agenda seeking to transform America from a restricted, white men’s democracy that largely preserved existing hierarchies to a functioning multiracial, pluralistic, social democracy is indeed a losing proposition for people who have traditionally been at the top. When Biden insists that “I’m not Bernie Sanders. I’m not a socialist”, and instead emphasizes his friendship with Mitch McConnell, he offers more than strategic rhetoric. Many establishment Democrats seem to believe that it is high time to push back against the “radical” forces of leftism and “wokeism.”The constant attempts to normalize a radicalizing Republican Party also have a lot to do with two foundational myths that shape the collective imaginary: the myth of American exceptionalism and the myth of white innocence. We may be decades removed from the heyday of the so-called “liberal consensus” of the postwar era, but much of the country’s Democratic elite still subscribes to an exceptionalist understanding that America is fundamentally good and the US inexorably on its way to overcoming whatever vestigial problems there might still be. This often goes hand in hand with a mythical tale of America’s past, describing democracy as being exceptionally stable. Never mind that genuine multiracial democracy has actually existed for less than 60 years in this country. What could possibly threaten America’s supposedly “old, consolidated” democracy? Acknowledging what the Republican party has become goes against the pillars of that worldview.Finally, the American political discourse is still significantly shaped by the paradigm of white innocence. Economic anxiety, anti-elite backlash, or just liberals being mean – whatever animates white people’s extremism, it must not be racism, and they cannot be blamed for their actions. The dogma of white innocence leads to elite opinion instinctively sanitizing the reasons behind the rise of rightwing demagogues, a common tendency in the commentary surrounding the success of George Wallace in the late 1960s, David Duke in early 1990s, or Donald Trump in 2016. The idea of white innocence also clouds Democratic elites’ perspective on Republican elites: Since they cannot possibly be animated by reactionary white nationalism, they must be motivated by more benign forces, fear of the Trumpian base perhaps, or maybe they are being seduced by the dangerous demagogue.“I actually like Mitch McConnell,” Biden said during a press conference a few weeks ago, providing a window into what he sees in Republicans: No matter what they do, underneath they’re good guys, they’ll snap out of it. Promise. It’s the manifestation of a specific worldview that makes it nearly impossible to acknowledge the depths of Republican radicalization – a perspective that severely hampers the fight for the survival of American democracy.
      Thomas Zimmer is a visiting professor at Georgetown University, focused on the history of democracy and its discontents in the United States, and a Guardian US contributing opinion writer
      TopicsUS politicsOpinionDemocratsRepublicansJoe BidenUS SenateUS CongressHouse of RepresentativescommentReuse this content More