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      Is the Long War Finally Ending?

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      In October 1944, with the end of World War II in sight, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin passed a note back and forth to each other at a conference in Moscow. On the piece of paper, Churchill had assigned percentages to several Eastern European countries. Stalin amended the numbers and Churchill agreed. The deal remained secret for nearly a decade.

      The percentages on the piece of paper referred to the amount of influence that the Soviet Union and the West would wield in Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia and Greece, with the first three countries falling in the Soviet sphere, control divided evenly in Yugoslavia, and Greece staying in the Western camp. It was the first major articulation of the geopolitical “spheres of influence” that would characterize the Cold War era.

      What an Afghan Peace Deal Could Look Like

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      During the first post-war elections in Eastern Europe, communist and non-communist parties vied for power, eventually cobbling together different versions of coalition governments. Ultimately, however, the communist parties seized control, except in Greece, where the West intervened in a civil war to help defeat leftist insurgents. By 1948, the region looked very much like the agreement that Churchill and Stalin had drawn up.

      The Long War

      Today, the end of a much longer war appears to be approaching. The fighting in Afghanistan has lasted nearly two decades, the most protracted conflict the United States has ever endured. This war is, in turn, part of a much larger battle that has been variously described as “America’s endless wars,” the “war on terror” or simply the “long war” that began in the wake of the attacks of September 11, 2001, though earlier skirmishes took place during the 1990s.

      The Biden administration is currently trying to negotiate a spheres-of-influence arrangement in Afghanistan that resembles what Churchill laid out in 1944. The American-backed government in Kabul, according to this proposal, would share power with the insurgent Taliban forces as an interim step until elections can be held under a new constitution.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Such a deal would make it easier for the United States to withdraw all of its 3,500 soldiers from Afghanistan by May 1, as laid out in a peace deal signed in 2020. Even if that withdrawal goes through, however, the institutional apparatus of the larger “long war” will still be operational. US forces remain in Iraq and Syria, and the Pentagon eyes the civil war in Libya with concern.

      In all, after drawdowns in Afghanistan and Iraq, about 50,000 US troops are stationed in the greater Middle East, with 7,000 mostly naval personnel in Bahrain, 13,000 soldiers in Kuwait and a roughly equal number in Qatar, 5,000 in the United Arab Emirates and several thousand in Saudi Arabia. US Special Forces are also scattered across Africa, while the United States is still conducting air operations throughout the region.

      But, as in 1944, the preliminary discussion of a power-sharing arrangement in Afghanistan suggests that the active phase of the “long war” is coming to an end. The specific US adversaries — al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and various smaller global actors — have more or less been defeated. Local groups that have battled US forces, like the Taliban, remain powerful, as do adversarial governments like Bashar al-Assad’s in Syria, but they don’t pose a threat to the US homeland. Larger geopolitical rivalries, with Russia and Iran in particular, continue to shape the conflicts in the region, but the US has already established an uneven pattern of engagement and containment with these actors.

      If history is to be replayed, the United States will wind down direct combat in favor of a tense cold war and intermittent “out-of-area” operations. The end of this “long war” against the architects of the 9/11 attacks and their supporters is long overdue. The Biden administration is eager to focus on “building back better” at home, enjoy a post-war economic expansion and beef up the US capacity to challenge China and, to a lesser extent, Russia. The administration is reassessing its military capabilities to reflect these priorities.

      All of this begs the question: Will it be possible to avoid repeating the 1945 scenario by ending the “long war” and not replacing it with a cold war?

      After promising to end the forever wars during the 2020 election campaign, President Joe Biden is eager to enjoy his own “mission accomplished” moment in Afghanistan. But that pledge comes with a couple asterisks.

      For one, Biden would like to maintain a “counterterrorism” force in Afghanistan with the permission of the Taliban. Such an agreement would parallel the arrangement in Iraq, where the government allows around 2,500 US troops to focus on suppressing any remnants of the Islamic State (as well as reining in Iran-backed paramilitaries). Second, Biden has in the past broached the possibility of moving US military bases from Afghanistan to Pakistan, where they would continue to serve their counterterrorism function. It’s not at all clear whether the Taliban or Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan would be enthusiastic about these options.

      At the moment, the United States is paying a relatively low price for its continued presence in Afghanistan. After last year’s peace deal, there haven’t been any US combat deaths in the country, which means that Afghanistan is basically absent from the hearts and minds of Americans. The US foreign policy community would like to preserve that status quo as long as possible, particularly given the post-withdrawal prospects of “ethnic cleansing, mass slaughter and the ultimate dismemberment of the country,” as Madiha Afzal and Michael O’Hanlon of Brookings have written. Similar arguments were made around the proposed withdrawal of the bulk of US troops from Iraq, and yet those worst-case scenarios haven’t come to pass.

      In recent days, the warnings about Afghanistan have increased. According to The New York Times:

      “American intelligence agencies have told the Biden administration that if U.S. troops leave before a power-sharing settlement is reached between the Taliban and the Afghan government, the country could fall largely under the control of the Taliban within two or three years after the withdrawal of international forces. That could potentially open the door for Al Qaeda to rebuild its strength within the country, according to American officials.”

      It doesn’t take an intelligence agency to predict that the Taliban will play a major role in any future Afghanistan, with or without a power-sharing settlement. The Taliban control about 20% of the country with as much as 85,000 full-time soldiers (though the areas under Taliban control are relatively underpopulated). At the same time, the insurgents are active over a much larger stretch — as much as 70% of the country — and are putting pressure on a number of key cities, including Kunduz in the north and Kandahar in the south.

      Embed from Getty Images

      In other words, there’s a good possibility that regardless of power-sharing arrangements, the Taliban will simply take over the country, much as the communists did throughout Eastern Europe in the late 1940s. Given the record of the Taliban’s last sojourn in power, the prospect of a reestablishment of their rule is very sobering.

      But the US has failed in two decades to defeat the Taliban with the full force of its military. Keeping a few thousand soldiers in the country is not going to change the balance of power on the ground. “The hawks argue that to leave Afghanistan is simply unthinkable until someday when they have finished winning the war,” writes Scott Horton in his new book, “Enough Already: Time to End the War on Terrorism.” “But they lost the war more than a decade ago, and no one who protested against Trump’s drawdown had a single coherent thing to say about how staying there is supposed to somehow change the reality of Taliban power in that country.”

      Won’t Afghanistan again become a safe haven for international terrorists once the US troops withdraw along with their NATO partners? For all their immersion in Islamic religion and culture, the Taliban are Pashtun nationalists interested above all in kicking out the foreigners. They’re not big fans of the Islamic State group, but they do maintain a close relationship at the moment with the 200-250 al-Qaeda militants in the country. Take NATO out of the equation, however, and that relationship will likely fray at the seams, particularly if international recognition, access to the global economy and the support of powerful neighbors like Russia and Iran depend on a verifiable divorce.

      When he proposed the two spheres of influence, Churchill was not relying on the goodwill of the Soviet state. The British leader hated Stalin and communism. He was taking a clear-eyed look at the balance of power at the time and striking what he thought was the best deal he could, even if that meant “losing” most of Eastern Europe. A power-sharing arrangement with the Taliban that “loses” Afghanistan is comparably pragmatic. But will it be accompanied by other, equally pragmatic policies to bring the long war to an end?

      The Rest of the War

      The “endless wars” are obviously not just being fought by the 3,500 troops in Afghanistan and 2,500 soldiers in Iraq. As the Bush administration transitioned to the Obama era and war fatigue began to set in, the United States shifted its focus from ground operations to an air war. In Afghanistan for instance, as the number of troops declined from a high of 100,000 in 2011, the number of airstrikes steadily increased, with a peak in terms of bombs dropped in 2018 and 2019 and a consequent rise in casualties. “The number of civilians killed by international airstrikes increased about 330 percent from 2016, the last full year of the Obama Administration, to 2019, the most recent year for which there is complete data from the United Nations,” reports Neta Crawford of the Costs of War project. Throughout the greater Middle East, the United States has launched in excess of 14,000 drone strikes, which have killed as many as 16,000 people, including several hundred children.

      Since taking office, as I note in my recent study of Biden’s take on multilateralism, the new administration has launched two airstrikes, one against Iranian targets in Syria on February 25 and the other in Iraq on February 9 against the Islamic State. The Syrian attack, in particular, has prompted a bipartisan effort in Congress to repeal the Authorizations for the Use of Military Force (passed in 1991 and 2002) in order to narrow the presidential ability to launch future airstrikes.

      Meanwhile, the administration has yet to report any drone strikes. This is in marked contrast to the strikes that Barack Obama and Donald Trump ordered almost immediately upon taking office as well as the escalation in attacks that took place in Trump’s final months. In one of its first orders, the Biden administration issued a temporary halt to any drone strikes outside of combat areas such as Afghanistan and Syria. As Charli Carpenter, an expert in the laws of war, points out:

      “Essentially what Biden is doing is he’s moving the barometer back to where it was before Trump devolved authority for drone strikes away from the executive branch and into the hands of commanders. What that means is that anytime a drone strike is envisioned, it needs to be approved by the White House. There’s going to be a much higher level of oversight and much more concern over the legal nuances of each strike. It will just make drones harder to use, and you can imagine the weaponized drones will only be used in the most extreme cases.”

      In addition to initiating a review of drone strikes, the administration has launched a probe into Special Forces operations to ascertain whether they have adhered to the Pentagon’s “law of war” requirements. In effect, the Biden administration is applying greater oversight across the range of military operations to bring them into closer compliance with international rules and regulations. Such oversight, however, does not imply the end of the endless wars.

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      For that to happen, the United States would have to dramatically shrink its global military footprint, the constellation of US bases around the world that serve as the launching pad for myriad operations. About 220,000 military and civilian personnel operate in more than 150 countries and over 800 overseas military bases. A significant chunk of the Pentagon’s $700 billion-plus budget goes toward maintaining this immense archipelago of force.

      In early February, the Biden administration also announced a Global Posture Review to assess the US. footprint. Such a review is much needed. After all, did this massive apparatus save a single one of the more than half a million Americans who have died from COVID-19? Is the Pentagon protecting the United States from climate change (or merely contributing to the problem with its own carbon emissions and its protection of overseas fossil fuel production and distribution)? And all that “forward-based defense” has done absolutely nothing to safeguard US infrastructure from cyberattacks like the SolarWinds hack (that, by the way, gained access to the emails of Trump’s cybersecurity team at the Department of Homeland Security).

      For the time being, the architects of the Global Posture Review are thinking primarily of refocusing “strategic capabilities” against China in the Far East and Russia in the Arctic. But that just replaces one set of threats with another, which will adjust the footprint without actually reducing it.

      So, let’s remember that the 3,500 American troops in Afghanistan are just the tip of the iceberg. For the United States to avoid the fate of the Titanic — also famous at one time for being immense and impregnable — it had better address the rest of the icy hazard of war.

      *[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

      How Joe Biden Looks at the World

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      In his first foreign policy speech as president, delivered at the State Department on February 4, 2021, Joe Biden laid out his vision of America’s engagement with the world. In its conventional combination of the stick of military power and the carrot of diplomacy, Biden’s address heralded a return to the foreign policy status quo of the “a la carte multilateralism” that has characterized the US global approach since the end of the Cold War.

      As Biden explained, US engagement is based, first and foremost, on US global power, “our inexhaustible source of strength” and “abiding advantage.” That power has historically consisted of military force, economic pressure and diplomatic engagement. Rhetorically at least, Biden has favored a recalibration away from a reliance on the military, insisting that force will be a “tool of last resort.”

      Biden’s America Is the New “Middle Kingdom”

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      In practice, however, Biden has adopted a more ambiguous position toward military power. Reflecting both budgetary concerns and public skepticism of America’s recent record of military interventions, the new president has promised a global posture review of the US military footprint overseas, which would likely lead to a redeployment rather than a radical reduction of American military power.

      Biden’s early actions have reflected this cautious approach, ending US support for offensive military operations in the Saudi-led war in Yemen but freezing some of the troop withdrawals his predecessor had instituted at the end of his term. Looking to the future, the president has promised to phase out America’s “forever wars” but has also pledged to focus more on pushing back against other great powers, namely Russia and China.

      Because the February 4 speech took place in front of an audience of diplomats, Biden unsurprisingly focused most of his remarks not on the hard power wielded by the Pentagon, but the “smart power” of diplomacy. The president pledged to renew alliance relationships that “atrophied over the past few years of neglect and, I would argue, abuse.” At the same time, he stressed the importance of diplomacy even when “engaging our adversaries and our competitors.”

      MAGA Lite?

      In what marked perhaps the most significant break with the foreign policy of his immediate predecessor, Biden promised to restore the United States as a full participant, if not a leader, in working multilaterally to solve global problems. He identified those problems as global warming, the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, cybersecurity, the refugee crisis, attacks on vulnerable minorities, racial inequality and the persistence of authoritarianism. Although the president mentioned a few global institutions and agreements, notably the World Health Organization (WHO) and the 2015 Paris climate agreement, the emphasis was clearly on the US reclaiming global leadership rather than leading “from behind,” as the Obama administration famously said about its involvement in efforts against former Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi in 2011.

      Embed from Getty Images

      In establishing the tone of his administration’s foreign policy, Biden didn’t enunciate a new doctrine. Rather, in what might be called an approach of “multilateral restoration,” he sought to repudiate the inconsistent, unilateral and anti-global positions of former President Donald Trump, while placing his own administration in the comfortable, pre-Trump foreign policy mainstream that European and Asian allies have come to expect and that is embodied, for instance, in the Franco-German-led Alliance for Multilateralism.

      Given Biden’s role as vice-president in the Obama administration and his appointment to high-level positions of many policymakers from that period — Secretary of State Antony Blinken, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, climate czar John Kerry, UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, Indo-Pacific Coordinator Kurt Campbell — many observers believe that his presidency will represent Obama 2.0, a resumption of the globally aware, generally predictable, but periodically unorthodox foreign policy of the earlier administration.

      The world of 2021, however, is very different from the one that Barack Obama and Joe Biden navigated across their two terms in office. New global problems have emerged such as COVID-19, while others have become more urgent, such as the climate crisis. The four years of Trump’s presidency weakened certain traditional elements of statecraft, such as arms control.

      Given the persistence of American exceptionalism under Biden, it’s difficult not to view his foreign policy approach as MAGA Lite: making America great again with the assistance of foreign partners rather than over their objections. As Steven Blockmans of the Centre for European Policy Studies in Brussels puts it, “In all but name, the rallying cry of America First is here to stay,” reflected in the Biden administration’s prioritization of domestic investments over new trade deals and his expansion of Buy American provisions in federal procurement. Whether represented as America First, MAGA Lite or even liberal internationalism, the conventional US approach to multilateralism has been instrumental, as a means to the end of preserving US global power.

      Executive Orders

      At the same time, the inconsistency of US foreign policy over the years — seesawing back and forth from Bill Clinton’s modified multilateralism to George W. Bush’s aggressive unilateralism to Obama’s cautious multilateralism to Trump’s anti-globalist posturing — has led both allies and adversaries alike to hedge their bets by investing their political capital either in other alliances or in more self-reliant economic and security strategies. The most dramatic examples of this hedging have been China’s establishment of rival multilateral economic institutions and the European Union’s investment into autonomous military structures.

      The Biden administration’s rapid use of executive orders to reverse Trump’s positions — for instance, bringing the United States back into the WHO and the Paris climate agreement — has been welcomed in many of the world’s capitals. But it also confirms what many in the international policymaking community have long viewed as America’s overly volatile foreign policy. The new administration’s reversals of Trump policies extend to immigration, as Biden has canceled the “Muslim travel ban” and ended funding for the largely unbuilt wall on the border with Mexico. He quickly hit rewind on the environmental deregulations of the Trump administration and the previous president’s approval of the Keystone XL pipeline. In addition, the Biden team has taken steps to reenter the 2016 Iran nuclear deal, has revived arms control negotiations with Russia and plans at least to mitigate the impact of the trade sanctions against China.

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      But if Trump could reverse Obama’s positions on all these matters, and Biden with a stroke of the pen could do the same to Trump’s reversals, who’s to say that the next president in 2024 will not perform the same U-turns?

      Indeed, as it looks to engage more deeply on these issues, the Biden administration faces a number of obstacles to realizing even its modest multilateral restoration: congressional opposition, corporate lobbying, public indifference or hostility, the mistrust of allies and bureaucratic inertia. It also must deal with a set of interlocking crises on the home front, from the pandemic and the resulting contraction of the US economy to crumbling infrastructure, endemic racial inequality, political polarization and rising poverty rates.

      Finally, the administration must reckon with challenges within the multilateral project itself, including a democratic deficit and the problem of non-compliance. But on certain key issues, such as global health and environmentalism, progressives will have an opportunity to push US policy in the direction of greater equitable international engagement during the Biden years. On a case-by-case basis rather than through a transformative agenda, then, the Biden administration might alter — or be pushed to alter — the way the United States engages the world.

      *[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

      China and the Perils of Bipartisanship

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      Not a single congressional Republican voted for the recent $1.9 trillion stimulus package. Not even the so-called moderate Republicans, the handful who backed the second impeachment of former US President Donald Trump, deigned to support an economic package that helps Americans hardest hit by the COVID-19 pandemic. The entire Republican caucus didn’t just snub the Democrats. They ignored the Republican mayors, as well as 41% of Republican voters, who approved of the legislation.

      Naturally, the unified Republican caucus complained that President Joe Biden was not displaying his promised bipartisanship. It didn’t seem to occur to them that bipartisanship is a two-way street. How soon they’ve forgotten that nearly every Democrat in both houses voted for the Trump administration’s initial bailout package in March 2020.

      A Deeper Look into Hong Kong’s Evolution

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      Nevertheless, the Biden administration remains eager to find common ground with Republican legislators. The president has high hopes that he can attract Republican support for an infrastructure bill this summer, given that rebuilding American bridges, highways and the like was a priority for the previous administration.

      But here’s a truly troubling scenario. Casting around for another unifying topic, the Biden team has seized upon China. Democrats and Republicans alike are concerned about what China is doing these days. There is bipartisan disgust over what’s happening in Hong Kong and Xinjiang. Hawks in both parties have long warned about Beijing’s actions in the South China Sea. Despite wildly different economic ideologies, Democrats and Republicans have joined hands in their opposition to Chinese trade and currency policies, cavalier approach to intellectual property rights and efforts to dominate markets in the Global South.

      On the face of it, however, the bill that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer is starting to pull together is just another infrastructure initiative. It is meant “to shore up U.S. supply chains, expand American production of semiconductors, create 5G networks nationwide and pour billions into investments into U.S. manufacturing companies and hubs, among other proposals,” according to The Washington Post.

      Embed from Getty Images

      But it’s not just infrastructure. The measure is specifically designed to bolster the full-spectrum US fight against China. “Hating China is a big bipartisan thing, and Schumer has the opportunity to take ownership of being against China,” points out Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the right-wing American Action Forum.

      According to the most benign reading of this bipartisanship, the Biden administration will be manufacturing an anti-Chinese version of the Sputnik moment when, in 1957, the Soviet launch of the first artificial satellite prompted a frenzy of US government spending on science and technology to catch up to the Russians. “The danger China poses could fundamentally reorder U.S. attitudes toward government’s role in domestic economic growth, research and development in ways that leave the United States stronger,” writes liberal columnist E.J. Dionne.

      A robust industrial policy is indeed preferable to, say, the tariffs that the Trump administration levied against Chinese products. If fear of China overcomes the conservative distaste for government interventions in the economy, should progressives really be looking this particular gift horse in the mouth?

      Full Court Press

      The Quad is the latest multilateral mechanism through which the United States is putting pressure on China. The four countries — the United States, India, Japan and Australia — all have their separate beefs with Beijing. But last week was the first time that the heads of these four states met as part of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, which was set up in 2007.

      The statement the four leaders recently published in The Washington Post makes no mention of China. It’s all about cooperating on climate, the pandemic and strengthening democracy. But that’s just being diplomatic. As Alex Ward writes in Vox, China has “gotten into a deadly fight over a disputed border with India, started a trade war with Australia, hacked the US government, and for years used its might to push Japan around on economic and military matters.” Trump tried to rally the four countries behind his own anti-China agenda. But his efforts were compromised by a suspicion in many quarters that he’d just as soon negotiate a deal with China behind the Quad’s back as coordinate a united front.

      The current president, by contrast, has moved steadily away from a preference to engage China. “Biden had to be reprogrammed on China” during the presidential campaign, one of his advisers said. This reprogramming explains Biden’s harsher tone during the election, such as calling Chinese leader Xi Jinping “a thug.”

      As president, Biden has been careful to sound notes of both amicability and threat. Cooperation to deal with the climate crisis is certainly a possibility. But promoting deals with China is not going to win the new president support in Congress or, for that matter, with the American public. China’s unfavorability rating rose to 79% in a recent Gallup poll, its worst showing in more than four decades. A shift has taken place in just the last couple of years. According to a Pew Research Center poll, 67% of Americans now have “cold” feelings toward China, compared to only 46% in 2018.

      The appointment of Kurt Campbell as the Indo-Pacific coordinator at the National Security Council (NSC) indicates the direction of the administration’s new take on Asia. Campbell was a key architect of the “Pacific pivot” under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the Obama administration. He’s not going to play quite the anti-China role that Matt Pottinger did on Trump’s NSC, but he’s a firm believer in strengthening bilateral alliances and multilateral coordination to contain China.

      In a January 2021 piece in Foreign Affairs, Campbell channeled Henry Kissinger in asserting the need for the US to restore a “balance of power” in the region. What that really means is that the US, with the help of its friends, must push back against China to reassert its own Pacific authority, both militarily and economically. Practically, Campbell explains, this means that:

      “Although Washington should maintain its forward presence, it also needs to work with other states to disperse U.S. forces across Southeast Asia and the Indian Ocean. This would reduce American reliance on a small number of vulnerable facilities in East Asia. Finally, the United States should encourage new military and intelligence partnerships between regional states, while still deepening those relationships in which the United States plays a major role—placing a ‘tire’ on the familiar regional alliance system with a U.S. hub and allied spokes.”

      Over the years, China has steadily eroded US power not only in Asia but internationally. It used the anti-globalism of the Trump years to expand its influence in international institutions such as the United Nations and its associated bodies like the World Health Organization. Where It has encountered difficulties in expanding its influence, such as with international financial institutions, it has simply created its own. Shortly after Biden’s election, China joined the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which includes the countries of Southeast Asia, plus Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Japan). This move, plus Beijing’s recent investment agreement with the European Union and President Xi’s announcement that China would also consider joining a modified Trans-Pacific Partnership, suggests an economic counteroffensive to the US ramping up of multilateral security arrangements.

      These moves have not gone unnoticed. On the eve of their first visit to Asia this week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin III wrote in The Washington Post, “If we don’t act decisively and lead, Beijing will.”

      The Biden administration’s decision to focus on beefing up US economic competitiveness, particularly in the tech sector, is in some ways an admission of defeat. China has outmaneuvered the United States in the global economy. The only way Washington can compete at the moment is by throwing its weight around militarily and trying to play catch-up on the home front.

      Is China a Useful Threat?

      It’s hard to argue with the importance of investing in critical US industries. Republicans and laissez-faire economists generally oppose such a policy of picking winners and losers in the marketplace, except when it comes to the military-industrial complex. Only a large external threat can move such ideologues to accept the obvious: governments can and should shape markets.

      But here are some problems with hitching this industrial policy to the “China threat.” The global economy needs an overhaul to address the climate crisis, rampant economic inequality, automation and other developments. This is no time for the US to turn its economic relationship with China into a Cold War competition. Sure, let the two countries compete over who makes the best laptop computer, but cooperation is essential for developing new rules for the global economy. A robust industrial policy doesn’t preclude cooperation, unless it feeds into a rancor and a parochialism that makes cooperation near to impossible.

      The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the fragility of global supply chains, with the collapse of international trade and countries initially competing for scarce medical equipment. This is not a new problem, however. Shelley Rigger writes in her 2013 book on Taiwan about a moment “in 1999 when a power transmission tower on a remote mountain in central Taiwan toppled, blacking out the island’s high-tech industry for a day. The interruption nearly doubled the world price of memory chips and the supply of TFT-LCD flat screens took six months to return to normal.” Natural (and unnatural) disasters can wreak havoc on the supply of essential components.

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      Ensuring an indigenous supply of computer chips may well protect the US in the short term, but it does little to address the underlying problem of supply chains. A return to a time when every country produced all of its essentials or went without is not really an option, considering the importance of global trade routes going back to the Silk Road and even before. Reshoring and relocalization are both essential in this age of climate crisis. But a reordering of the global economy that accommodates such changes should be a matter for coordination, not Cold War competition.

      In addition, an industrial policy that prioritizes gaining a competitive edge over China could overshadow the other major focus of the Biden administration, namely reducing the national and global carbon footprints. High-tech products often rely on key outputs of the extraction industry, like cobalt and lithium. An industrial policy built on minimizing carbon emissions and the use of rare minerals, rather than besting China, would pick very different economic winners and losers.

      When it comes to foreign policy, bipartisanship is not necessarily a virtue. The two major US parties came together around waging the Vietnam War, confronting the Soviet Union during the Cold War and fighting “terrorism” in the wake of September 11. The first failed, the second was outrageously expensive and nearly ended in nuclear apocalypse, and the third led the country into the infamous “forever wars.”

      Selectively challenging China over its human rights record, its overreach in the South China Sea or the conduct of its businesses around the world (like this fish meal operation in Gambia) is appropriate. Going all out in a military, economic and cultural competition with the Asian superpower — and forging a wafer-thin bipartisan consensus to do so — is the height of folly.

      *[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

      The Quest to Paint the World Green

      by

      Once upon a time, a rich hypochondriac was complaining about pains in his head and stomach. He consulted a wise man who pointed out that the root of the problem lay somewhere else: in the man’s eyes. To resolve the persistent headache and stomachache, the sage suggested focusing on just one color in the surrounding environment — green — and ignoring all others.

      The rich man promptly hired workers to cover everything in sight in green paint so that he could easily follow the peculiar prescription. Ten days later, when the wise man returned in his saffron robe, a worker hurried over to douse him in green paint as well.

      The Nation-State vs. The Climate

      READ MORE

      “You have wasted so much money through your monumental stupidity,” the paint-splattered sage upbraided the rich man. “If only you had purchased a pair of green spectacles, worth perhaps four rupees, you could have saved these walls and trees and pots and pans and chairs and sofas and also a pretty large share of your fortune.” The sage drew himself up to his full height to deliver his final message: “You cannot paint the world green!”

      The moral of this Hindi tale is simple. You cannot change the world. You can only change the way you look at the world. Perception is everything.

      This cautionary tale is particularly ill-suited for these modern times. With the climate crisis pressing down upon the planet, humanity must change the world or face extinction. Figuratively speaking, we must indeed paint the world green — and ignore the so-called wise men who tell us just to put on green-colored glasses.

      In the real world, this choice boils down to either shrinking the global carbon footprint or succumbing to a form of “greenwashing” that offers only an illusory environmental protection. The Biden administration faces this same choice. Will it spend a lot of money to help paint the world green or just hand out tinted lenses, whether green or rose, to make us all think that the planet has been saved?

      How Green Is His Policy?

      The first task for the Biden administration has been to clean up the toxic waste dump of the previous presidency. That has meant rejoining the 2015 Paris climate deal, canceling the Keystone XL pipeline and restoring the many environmental regulations that former US President Donald Trump gutted. The new administration has put a pause on new oil and gas drilling on federal lands. It has reversed Trump’s effort to weaken the Clean Air Act. It has supported an international agreement to end the use of hydrofluorocarbons. In all, the administration is looking to roll back around 100 of Trump’s attempts to favor business over the environment.

      Embed from Getty Images

      These moves will bring the United States back to the status quo ante. The administration, however, has more ambitious plans. In his January 27 executive order on “tackling the climate crisis at home and abroad,” President Joe Biden laid out a detailed list of initiatives that runs over 7,500 words. The very fact that the order addresses the “climate crisis” and not just “climate change” is an important signal of the seriousness with which the administration takes this issue.

      The order begins with these words: “We have a narrow moment to pursue action at home and abroad in order to avoid the most catastrophic impacts of that crisis and to seize the opportunity that tackling climate change presents. Domestic action must go hand in hand with United States international leadership, aimed at significantly enhancing global action. Together, we must listen to science and meet the moment.”

      To this end, the administration has declared that the United States will become carbon-neutral by 2050, which will require steep cuts in emissions. “We need to increase tree cover five times faster than we are,” says John Kerry, Biden’s special envoy for climate. “We need to ramp up renewable energy six times faster. And the transition to electric vehicles needs to take place at a rate 22 times faster.”

      But like its initial promise to vaccinate 100 million people in 100 days against COVID-19, the administration is already being pushed to do better. Other countries are competing to become carbon-neutral faster: Sweden has pledged to be carbon neutral by 2045, Austria and Iceland have more informally set 2040 as their goal, Finland is looking at 2035, and both Norway and Uruguay expect to achieve the mark by 2030. Apple, Microsoft and General Electric have all committed to becoming carbon neutral by 2030 as well. General Motors announced at the end of January that it would sell only zero-emission vehicles by 2035.

      A key component of the US race to carbon neutrality is the Biden administration’s version of a Green New Deal. This “clean energy revolution” calls for investing $400 billion over 10 years into transforming the US economy along sustainable lines, creating 10 million good-paying jobs in the clean energy sector and putting environmental justice at the center of these efforts.

      But the administration can do just so much with executive orders and through federal agencies like the Department of Energy. At some point, Congress must decide whether the next four years will be world-transforming or just greenwashing.

      But Congress — especially the Senate — is a problem. It’s going to be difficult to persuade Republicans as well as Democrats like Joe Manchin, who represents the coal-mining state of West Virginia, to sign on to anything truly transformative. But tax credits for wind power and solar energy were included in the December 2020 stimulus package, which Republicans backed. And Manchin is already co-sponsoring the American Jobs in Energy Manufacturing Act, which provides tax incentives to businesses that switch over to clean energy products. Also in the works is a Civilian Climate Corps, modeled on a similar New Deal-era initiative, that would enlist the unemployed and underemployed to help with such tasks as reforestation and protecting biodiversity.

      It will be hard to move Congress on this domestic agenda. The international component may be an even tougher sell.

      Going Green Internationally

      At least on paper, the Biden administration intends to make the climate crisis a way of reshaping much of US foreign policy. The January 27 order reads: “It will be a United States priority to press for enhanced climate ambition and integration of climate considerations across a wide range of international fora, including the Group of Seven (G7), the Group of Twenty (G20), and fora that address clean energy, aviation, shipping, the Arctic, the ocean, sustainable development, migration, and other relevant topics.”

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      The first challenge for the new administration will be to put its money where its mouth is, and one example of that is its contributions to the Green Climate Fund. Established in 2010 to assist poorer countries transition away from fossil fuels, the fund raised about $7 billion out of the $10 billion initially pledged. A major reason for the shortfall was the US, which promised $3 billion but delivered only $1 billion. At the end of 2019, the fund put out another call to replenish its coffers and received pledges of another $9.8 billion.

      Kerry has already announced that the United States will make good on its previous commitment by sending $2 billion to the fund. But he has made no mention of US support for the additional replenishment. Climate campaigners have called on the administration to double its original commitment, as a number of European countries plus South Korea and New Zealand have done, and top up its contributions to $9 billion total. Such a firm action by the US might not only persuade other countries to achieve this higher standard but also pressure outliers like Russia and Australia to join the effort in the first place.

      The more immediate problem, however, will be the rising levels of debt, particularly in the Global South, that the COVID-19 pandemic has turned into an acute crisis. A number of countries — Zambia, Costa Rica, Sri Lanka, Brazil — have either defaulted on their loans or are close to it. Meanwhile, the fiscal crisis of poorer countries has pushed several to consider abandoning climate and environment-friendly restrictions on such harmful sectors as industrial mining in order to make financial ends meet. International financial institutions have suspended debt repayments for the world’s poorest nations and are considering various remedies, including the provision of more Special Drawing Rights (SDR) to the worst-off countries through the International Monetary Fund.

      It’s unclear where Biden stands on debt relief or cancellation. But the January 27 executive order on the climate crisis includes the following provision: “[D]evelop a strategy for how the voice and vote of the United States can be used in international financial institutions, including the World Bank Group and the International Monetary Fund, to promote financing programs, economic stimulus packages, and debt relief initiatives that are aligned with and support the goals of the Paris Agreement.” It’s possible that the administration will, instead of debt cancellation, promote some form of debt-for-nature or debt-for-climate swaps, preferably in versions that include a greater range of stakeholders including indigenous groups, or perhaps back the issuance of bonds linked to performance on green indicators.

      The climate crisis will also affect how the United States negotiates trade agreements. Biden’s appointments to key trade positions suggest that he will be putting labor and environmental concerns at the center of US policy. As a presidential candidate, Biden urged making future trade deals contingent on countries meeting their commitments under the Paris agreement, and members of Congress are already pushing the new president to change the US-Canada-Mexico trade deal to reflect this condition. Another potential option is a fossil fuel export ban, for which Biden has expressed some support.

      The new president is planning to hold a Global Climate Summit on Earth Day next month, though it’s unclear how such a meeting would differ from the one held in December 2020 to mark the fifth anniversary of the Paris agreement. Climate campaigners are urging the administration to use this opportunity to focus on “super pollutants” such as methane, black carbon, and HFCs, which contribute disproportionately to global warming.

      In the meantime, preparations for COP26 — the UN climate change conference — are beginning for November in Glasgow, UK. The hostility of the Trump administration and the divided attention span of the Biden team — not to mention the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic — may compromise the efficacy of the UN meeting. The Paris agreement came together because of 18 months of intensive preliminary negotiations. A similar effort to forge a pre-meeting consensus for COP26 has been slow to emerge.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The Biden administration has made commitments on other environmental issues. It has endorsed a “30 by 30” initiative: protecting 30% of US lands and coastal areas by 2030. This effort would require setting aside 440 million more acres of land for conservation. This pledge, part of a global campaign to preserve biodiversity, would require a significant scaling back of extraction activities on federal lands.

      Cooperation between the US and China is critical for any global environmental effort to move forward. China is currently the leading emitter of carbon in the world, with nearly twice the annual rate of the United States at number two (though the US still leads in terms of cumulative output over time and per-capita carbon footprint). During the Barack Obama years, the two countries created the Clean Energy Research Consortium (CERC), a public-private initiative that spurs research and development in several energy-related sectors. Renewing CERC would be a first step in boosting U.S.-China cooperation.

      Greening national security can and should go well beyond superpower cooperation. The US currently spends $81 billion a year to protect global oil supplies, according to one estimate. The bulk of that money should instead go toward ending reliance on fossil fuels. If access to oil becomes less dependable, that would be an even greater incentive for US allies to accelerate their own transitions to renewable energy.

      An Administration in Search of a Doctrine

      Presidential doctrines have always presented different ways of preserving US global power. The Nixon doctrine was about protecting allies. Jimmy Carter vowed to defend US national interests in the Persian Gulf. Ronald Reagan promised to push back against the Soviet Union worldwide. George W. Bush emphasized unilateral US military action. Donald Trump went on and on about “making America great again.”

      Joe Biden has an opportunity to adopt an entirely different kind of doctrine. He should make explicit what is now implicit in his executive orders, that environmental sustainability will hereafter be the major litmus test for American foreign policy. If this happens, it will be the first time that a presidential doctrine focuses on the good of the planet and not just the good of the United States.

      I’m sure that plenty of foot-draggers in Congress, industry and the media are just waiting for Biden to have his “sweater moment,” an updated version of the televised address when President Carter famously tried to elevate the energy crisis of the late 1970s into a larger discussion of morality and malaise. They will want to paint Biden as a green opponent of the working stiff, a clueless globalist, an America-laster. So, perhaps it’s best for Biden to avoid grand statements of doctrine for the moment and focus instead on painting US foreign policy green, issue by issue.

      The fate of the United States has never been more linked — virally, environmentally, economically and existentially — to the fate of the rest of the world. As such, there hasn’t been a better moment for an American president not just to look at the planet differently, but to join hands with other countries to make it greener.

      *[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

      The Talented Mr. Bin Salman

      by

      Mohammed bin Salman is a charming fellow. The tall, dark and handsome Saudi prince known as MBS has seduced world leaders and eager pundits left and right. To his supporters, MBS became first in line to the Saudi throne by championing reform in a deeply conservative Gulf kingdom, taking on corruption, confronting religious extremists and promising to modernize the economy. “Someone had to do this job — wrench Saudi Arabia into the 21st century — and MBS stepped up,” wrote Thomas Friedman in an oft-cited column from November 2017. “I, for one, am rooting for him to succeed in his reform efforts.”

      Not only impressionable opinion-makers have fallen for the prince’s charm. In 2017, MBS won the reader poll for Time’s person of the year with an astonishing 24% of the vote. Second place, at 6%, went to the magazine’s eventual pick for its cover, the #MeToo movement, while Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau garnered a mere 4%, Pope Francis 3% and then-US President Donald Trump 2%.

      Serious Politics Is Not About Recalibration

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      Of course, not everyone has been enthusiastic about the talented Mr. bin Salman. In 2015, three months into his new position as defense minister, MBS launched an air war in neighboring Yemen. Tens of thousands of Yemeni civilians have died, and the country has been plunged into a humanitarian nightmare. The war, which has become a quagmire for the Saudi-led coalition, has not exactly made a lot of friends for MBS.

      Two years later, shortly before he mesmerized Friedman in Riyadh, Mohammed bin Salman detained a number of his wealthiest rivals in a set of rooms at the Ritz-Carlton in the Saudi capital. There he subjected the sheikhs and businessmen to interrogations and torture that resulted in one death and the hospitalization of 17 others. The Saudi leadership called the extortion of billions of dollars from the rich prisoners an anti-corruption campaign, but it was really a way for MBS to consolidate his power through brute force.

      Embed from Getty Images

      “He is a psycho,” a relative of one of the detainees said of MBS. “He has spite. He wants to break people. He doesn’t want anyone to have an honorable name but him. He is a devil, and the devil is learning from him.”

      Shortly before the Ritz-Carlton “sheikhdown,” Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi fled the country for the United States. As a Washington Post columnist, he then took aim at the policies of the Saudi government and those of MBS in particular. While the Saudi prince “is right to free Saudi Arabia from ultra-conservative religious forces, he is wrong to advance a new radicalism that, while seemingly more liberal and appealing to the West, is just as intolerant of dissent,” Khashoggi wrote in a column from April 2018.

      That intolerance for dissent was on full and tragic display a few months later when Khashoggi walked into the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul to get papers to marry his Turkish fiancée and never came out. A government-dispatched death squad strangled the journalist and dismembered his body.

      The Saudi government initially denied that Khashoggi had been killed. Then it claimed that the killers were rogue elements. The kingdom eventually put 11 unnamed individuals on trial for the crime, charged eight of them and handed down five death sentences that it subsequently commuted to 20 years in prison.

      After Khashoggi’s murder, the Trump administration imposed sanctions on 17 Saudi officials. But even though a UN report implicated MBS in the assassination, he didn’t face any consequences. Indeed, Trump continued to praise the Saudi prince as if nothing had happened.

      “It’s an honor to be with the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, a friend of mine, a man who has really done things in the last five years in terms of opening up Saudi Arabia,” Trump said at a June 2019 breakfast with MBS at the G20 meeting in Tokyo. “I want to just thank you on behalf of a lot of people, and I want to congratulate you. You’ve done, really, a spectacular job.”

      This week, the Biden administration released an earlier US intelligence report on the assassination of Khashoggi that concluded that Mohammed bin Salman approved the killing. The administration added some new sanctions against certain Saudi officials and instituted a “Khashoggi ban” against 76 unnamed individuals associated with the killing. That ban can also be applied to any foreign officials who harass or harm journalists or activists.

      Still, the Biden administration has declined to sanction MBS himself. Like Tom Ripley in the novels of Patricia Highsmith, Mohammed bin Salman is a confidence man, a possible serial killer and an all-around psychopath with a taste for the high life. Highsmith described the protagonist of “The Talented Mr. Ripley” and four other novels as “suave, agreeable, and utterly amoral.” Although he often comes close to getting caught, in the end, Tom Ripley gets away with murder every time. Will that be the fate of the talented Mr. bin Salman as well?

      The US-Saudi Relationship

      The alliance between the United States and Saudi Arabia initially made sense, at least at a basic economic level. In February 1945, when Franklin D. Roosevelt met secretly with King Abdul Aziz ibn Saud on a Navy destroyer in the Suez Canal, the US president wanted to secure a homeland for Jewish refugees in Palestine. Although the Saudi king was not enthusiastic, he was willing to forge a partnership around oil. Saudi Arabia had recently discovered what promised to be very lucrative fields, and the US needed a reliable oil supply to finish off World War II and begin a post-war recovery.

      Saudi Arabia still has a lot of oil, but the US doesn’t need it anymore. From a high of two million barrels of crude a day in May 2003, US imports dropped to a mere 100,000 last December. For a period of time in January, for the first time in 35 years, the United States didn’t import any Saudi oil at all. Because of its own fossil fuel production, increased imports from countries like Canada, and greater reliance on renewables, the US is simply no longer dependent on the Saudis.

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      Take oil out of the equation and the alliance becomes untenable. Saudi Arabia is a dictatorship with fewer political and religious freedoms than, say, Iran, which the US routinely castigates for its human rights violations. The kingdom has been a destabilizing influence in the region, for instance through its war in Yemen and its earlier embargo of Qatar. Moreover, Saudi Arabia promotes a conservative version of Islam, Wahhabism, that has squeezed out more liberal variants of the religion all around the world. The country has also generated even more extremist ideologies, like the jihadism of Osama bin Laden and his followers.

      In an investigation of the links between the Saudi government and the 9/11 hijackers, the FBI found some evidence of collaboration, through the Saudi Embassy in Washington, but the agency has been divided on whether that evidence is conclusive. The name of the relevant embassy contact, Mussaed Ahmed al-Jarrah, was even inadvertently revealed last May, but it’s not likely that the Saudi government will allow him to be deposed as part of the lawsuit mounted by families of the 9/11 victims.

      It’s not the only case in which the Saudi government has been implicated. A lawsuit in Florida alleges that the kingdom could have prevented an attack by a Saudi air force officer in 2019 at a naval air station in Pensacola that left three US sailors dead.

      The US government has generally looked the other way when it comes to these obvious disqualifications for a strategic partnership. It’s not just oil. The Saudis have proved to be useful partners in various causes over the years. They provided financial support for the anti-Soviet mujahideen in Afghanistan. They’ve been a bulwark behind conservative regimes in the Middle East, such as Egypt, which the United States has misinterpreted as a stabilizing influence.

      And then there’s Iran, with which Saudi Arabia has long battled for influence in the greater Middle East. Part of the rivalry is confessional — Iran is predominantly Shia, while Saudi Arabia is predominantly Sunni. The tensions are also political since the Saudis tend to prefer conservative, pro-Western regimes, while Iran favors governments and movements that are at least skeptical of the West if not outright hostile. But the competition often boils down to geopolitics, with the two countries trying to influence countries and leaders regardless of their religion or political leanings.

      Because the United States decided 40 years ago, with a big assist from Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, to do everything it could to constrain the new Islamic Republic of Iran, Saudi Arabia became an essential partner. In 2015, the Obama administration challenged the cornerstone of this partnership with the Iran nuclear deal. Trump swung in the opposite direction to make the kingdom the fulcrum of a region-wide peace plan.

      President Joe Biden is now trying to “recalibrate” the relationship. It has ended “all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arms sales,” but that leaves open the possibility of supporting defensive operations, whatever those might be. It has put a hold on half a billion dollars in military assistance but is now evaluating which deals can go through under the category of “defensive” weapons, like missile defense systems.

      In his initial discussions with the kingdom, Biden also raised issues of human rights and the assassination of Khashoggi. At the same time, however, the administration has tried to preserve the overall relationship by effectively pardoning MBS. King Salman is 85 years old, and he’s not in good health. With MBS set to take over, the United States doesn’t want to alienate a powerful future monarch. Mohammed bin Salman is aware of his leverage. He will act accordingly.

      Dealing with Ruling Assassins

      The Biden administration this week announced sanctions against senior Russian officials over the poisoning of dissident Alexei Navalny. In 2019, the European Union imposed sanctions on Iran for its involvement in the assassination of two Iranians in the Netherlands. After the 2017 assassination at the Kuala Lumpur airport of Kim Jong Nam, who was North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s half-brother, Malaysia closed its embassy in Pyongyang and imposed a travel ban on the country.

      Embed from Getty Images

      None of these moves has doomed bilateral relations. The US still engages with the Kremlin, most recently by extending New START. The EU is pushing hard for a resumption of the Iran nuclear deal. Malaysia reopened its embassy in Pyongyang last year.

      Part of the reason why such extrajudicial murders generate sanctions but not a full quarantine of the perpetrating countries is the widespread nature of these offenses. Among its many “targeted killings” by drones, the United States assassinated the head of Iran’s Quds Force, Qasem Soleimani, outside the Baghdad airport at the beginning of 2020. Israel has routinely killed its opponents all over the world, including a Libyan embassy employee in Rome, an Egyptian nuclear scientist in Paris, a Brazilian colonel in Sao Paolo and a Canadian engineer in Brussels. Syria might or might not have been behind several assassinations in Lebanon, including leftist leader Kamal Jumblatt and former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. None of these countries has suffered geopolitically for these acts.

      The talented Mr. bin Salman, in other words, killed his most prominent critic because he knew he would get away with it. Even if the Biden administration decides for entirely pragmatic reasons not to sanction the Saudi prince, it should definitively stop all military support to Riyadh, even weapons considered “defensive.” After all, if Saudi Arabia feels more secure behind a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system, it will be more likely to direct aerial attacks against its opponents.

      It’s the nature of geopolitics that a few psychopaths are going to become the leaders of their countries. But that’s no reason for the United States to give these “talented” men the weapons to consolidate their power.

      *[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

      Is the US Back Under Biden?

      by

      Caligula was by all accounts a nasty piece of work. During the nearly four years that he ruled over the Roman Empire in the first century CE, Caligula was notorious for sexual predation and extravagant spending. Never one to sell himself short, he proclaimed early on that he was a god. He held the Senate in such contempt that he forced its high-ranking members to run alongside his chariot for miles dressed in their togas. He dismissed Virgil as a hack writer and Livy as a dispenser of fake history, and he dreamed of making his favorite horse a consul.

      He was also inordinately fond of killing people, sometimes only to seize their assets. Or because he was bored, like the time at a gladiatorial contest when there were no criminals to execute during the intermission. Thinking fast, the despot ordered his guards to throw an entire section of the audience into the arena to be devoured by wild animals.

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      The world’s most powerful empire suffered four years of unbounded narcissism from a man with a reputation for sexual assaults and a fondness for cruelty who disparaged everyone in sight. Sound familiar?

      The one member of his close circle whose life Caligula spared was his uncle Claudius, primarily to make fun of the older man, who was lame and stammered. But “Sleepy Claudius,” particularly as depicted in the two historical novels of Robert Graves and portrayed by Derek Jacobi in the hit BBC series, was a crafty fellow who knew how to survive the deadly game of Roman imperial politics. When the Praetorian Guard finally had enough of Caligula and assassinated him — with the support of the political elite — Claudius was found hiding behind the curtains in the palace and proclaimed the new emperor.

      Claudius went on to rule for 13 years. Despite being absent-minded and scatter-brained, he proved to be far more capable than most Romans anticipated. The new emperor restored the rule of law throughout the empire. He stabilized the economy, embarked on an ambitious plan to improve the infrastructure of the realm, and even expanded its reach in the Balkans, North Africa and far-off Britain.

      Joe Biden, similarly underestimated because of his stammer and meandering speeches, has channeled Claudius in his first month in office. With a flurry of executive orders, the new US president has quickly reversed some of the most damaging policies of his deranged predecessor. Facing both a pandemic and an economic crisis, he is restoring confidence in government with a rapid vaccination rollout and a large-scale stimulus package. He has plans for big policy initiatives around infrastructure, energy and immigration.

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      But, of course, not everyone was thrilled with Emperor Claudius, particularly those on the Roman periphery. The British, for instance, chafed under imperial rule. Their escalating anger culminated in the bloody but ultimately unsuccessful revolt of Queen Boudica in 60 CE. Not surprisingly, Biden too has faced his share of criticism, particularly among those on the receiving end of American power or those who’ve bristled at the fickleness of American leadership.

      America’s Caligula is still around, perhaps even harboring hopes of a return to power in 2024. In the meantime, what are we to make of America’s Claudius and his effort to bring stability to the American empire?

      Biden Makes Nice with the World

      The Biden administration has gone into overdrive in its efforts to rejoin the international community as a member in good standing. On February 19, the United States officially reentered the 2015 Paris climate agreement, while Special Envoy John Kerry has pledged to restore the $2 billion for the Green Climate Fund that the US promised under Barack Obama but never delivered. The administration has rejoined the World Health Organization, signed up for the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) program and promised to disburse the $4 billion that Congress appropriated for COVAX at the end of 2020. Biden reversed some of former President Donald Trump’s most noxious immigration policies, shutting down construction of the wall on the southern border, ending the “Muslim travel ban” and beginning to bring the country back into compliance with international norms around refugees and asylum-seekers.

      The Biden administration has also pledged more cooperative relations with NATO allies, Pacific partners and democratic countries more generally. It rejoined the UN Human Rights Council as an observer and restored funding for the UN Population Fund. It began the process of reviving the Iran nuclear deal, restarted relations with Palestinian organizations, embarked tentatively on restoring better relations with Cuba, extended New START with Russia and stopped funding the Saudi-led war in Yemen. Not bad for one month’s work.

      President Biden’s moves have encountered inevitable challenges, both domestic and foreign. The Senate, as I explained in my last column, has been perhaps the major check in American politics on an authentic internationalism. Not surprisingly, some Republicans in the Senate are already trying to undermine US involvement in the Paris climate agreement, and they’re sharpening their knives to attack renewed engagement with Iran and with Cuba.

      Some allies, too, are not fully on board with Biden’s great reset. France would prefer to invest more in an independent European security system and rely less on NATO. Germany is not interested in a full-court press on Russia and hopes to strike a compromise with the Biden administration that would allow it to stay on schedule with its Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline deal with the Kremlin. Japan and South Korea are squeamish about the trilateral coordination that the United States is (again) promoting, relations with Turkey are tense and Israel is unhappy with Biden’s restoring US ties with Palestine.

      But the real problem with the president’s new approach to the world lies not in the resistance it has engendered at home or the ambivalence it has fostered abroad. It lies with the very nature of Biden’s foreign policy.

      The Stick

      The amount of damage that Trump did to the world was limited to a certain extent by his incompetence. He could have blundered into another war if his advisers had let the presidential id run wild. If he’d had a Stephen Miller to do to foreign policy what this savvy operator did to immigration, Trump might well have permanently damaged the global system.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Biden, meanwhile, has assembled a thoroughly competent team of professionals — from Secretary of State Antony Blinken and UN Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield to climate czar John Kerry and Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman. That competence is a godsend when it comes to navigating the intricacies of the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate negotiations.

      But when it comes to the less pleasant aspects of US foreign policy, that competence might prove deadly. Claudius, it turned out, was not a feeble dotard. He knew exactly how to deploy Rome’s imperial might to finish the job Caligula had started in conquering Mauritania and to extend the empire’s dominion to the westernmost reaches of Europe. If the Biden administration decides to ramp up confrontation with China in the South China Sea, for instance, his team might very competently — and disastrously — marshal US allies in the region to implement the plan.

      Pax Romana was largely an enforced peace rather than a negotiated one, and Pax Americana has always relied on the overwhelming predominance of US military power. Already, the Biden team has stated its desire to focus on great power rivalry with China and Russia rather than losing propositions like the war in Afghanistan. That preference will translate into a continuation of bloated military budgets, large arms deals with allies and sort-of allies on the periphery of China and Russia, and the deployment of various economic strategies like sanctions to influence the behavior of these perennial competitors.

      In his early days in office, Biden has been quick to emphasize the role of diplomacy, promising that force will be the “tool of last resort.” A dramatic example of that approach has been the absence of any drone strikes during the first month of the administration. This is in marked contrast to the strikes that Obama and Trump ordered almost immediately upon taking office as well as the escalation in attacks that took place in Trump’s final months. Only one airstrike has been reported, in Iraq on February 9 against the Islamic State. (Editor’s note: This article was written prior to the US airstrike in eastern Syria on February 25.) In addition to initiating a review of drone strikes, the administration has launched a probe into Special Forces operations to ascertain whether they have adhered to the Pentagon’s “law of war” requirements. This is all very promising. But will it last?

      Claudius was content to be successful within the Roman imperial framework. Guilty of his own excesses of violence, he never tried to turn the empire back into a republic or negotiate a new set of relations with Rome’s far-flung possessions. He knew only to expand. Biden, too, operates within the existing system of American dominance. It remains to be seen whether he will dramatically reduce the US military footprint and work with other major powers to redefine international relations at a time of multiple global crises.

      If he doesn’t, America will risk the same fate that befell Rome after the death of Claudius. In 54 CE, a new emperor took power who made Caligula look like a cub scout. This latest Caesar made sure that the good that Claudius did during his 13-year reign was indeed interred with his bones. “Nero practiced every kind of obscenity,” writes the gossipy chronicler Suetonius, adding that the new emperor “annulled many of Claudius’ decrees and edicts, on the grounds that he’d been a doddering old idiot.”

      The trick, then, is not just to reverse the evils of one’s predecessor but to make those reversals stick. That, in turn, will require not just quick fixes but turning the United States into a truly cooperative world power.

      *[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

    • 88 Shares189 Views

      in World Politics

      The US Senate Is a Global Problem

      by

      Watching the Senate conduct the second impeachment trial of former US President Donald Trump brought back a flood of memories from high school. I distinctly remember an earlier incarnation of those Trump-friendly Republican senators taking up their positions at the back of class to snicker, yawn ostentatiously and otherwise disrupt the serious, well-researched presentations of their fellow students. Then, when it was their turn to present, the back-row rowdies were so embarrassingly unprepared that it was hard not to laugh in return.

      The slavish devotion of the Senate miscreants to their imperiled leader and their casual dismissal of the January 6 violence, meanwhile, was like a modern-day replay of that grade-school classic “The Lord of the Flies.” In the Senate version, Trump played the part of the pig’s head, Josh Hawley was the pathological Jack, and Mitt Romney was the hopelessly conflicted Ralph who escaped the violence of the mob only thanks to the timely intervention of Officer Eugene Goodman, who stepped in at the last moment just like the British naval officer at the novel’s conclusion.

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      Finally, the acquittal of the former president was like the slap on the hand administered to one of my school’s handsome star athletes for one of his many transgressions. Boys will be boys, Trump will be Trump and, alas, Mitch McConnell will be perpetually “a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack.”

      The display of juvenile behavior during the Senate trial was nauseating, and the verdict was an embarrassment. But the Senate poses a much more serious problem than even this impeachment circus suggests.

      When it comes to global issues, the Senate has been an enormous impediment to achieving peace, justice and environmental sustainability. More so even than the US president, the Senate has been the chief engine of American exceptionalism. It’s grimly fitting, then, that it has struck out twice in its duty to convict the supreme avatar of exceptionalism in modern American politics, a president who believed himself above democracy, above morality and above the law.

      Senate Power

      Senators love to call their chamber the “world’s greatest deliberative body.” It’s where the most seasoned politicians, partially protected from the insane election cycle that their House counterparts must face, can mull over the most important issues of the days.

      It’s also a glaring example of the inequities of US democracy, with the two senators from Wyoming (population: 578,000) wielding the same power as the two senators from California (population: 39 million). Senate elections have tilted US politics in favor of rural, predominantly white and increasingly conservative voters by a factor of two or three over urban voters. Like the Electoral College, the Senate makes a mockery of the “one-person, one-vote” principle by effectively giving some voters much greater power than others.

      Embed from Getty Images

      But the Senate is a far bigger problem because of its oversized role in shaping U.S. foreign policy. Presidents have considerable leeway in conducting foreign policy, as the rollout of executive orders over the last years has made plain. Presidents can pull the country in and out of international bodies and multilateral agreements. They can slap tariffs on countries and sanctions on foreign individuals. Despite the limitations of the War Powers Act, they can still wage war for a full two months without any congressional interference.

      But the Constitution gives the Senate the sole power to approve, by a two-thirds majority, any treaties that the United States might be considering. As with the filibuster, however, this treaty power has as much influence in its threatened use as in its actual deployment.

      Consider the example of the 2015 Paris climate accord. The reason why all the national commitments to reduce carbon emissions are voluntary rather than mandatory is the US Senate. Secretary of State John Kerry, the US negotiator in Paris at the time, insisted on voluntary commitments because he knew that any mandatory requirements would need Senate approval. And the climate deniers in the Senate were sure to nix any such agreement.

      The Iran nuclear deal is, similarly, an agreement, not a treaty. This distinction allowed the Obama administration to secure congressional support short of the two-thirds majority required for a treaty. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) — also known as the Iran deal — relies on various verification protocols to ensure compliance, not the signatures of the participating parties.

      These workarounds are more the rule than the exception. According to one academic study, US presidents negotiated nearly 4,000 executive agreements between 1977 and 1996 but only 300 treaties. Whether you consider these maneuvers to be an unacceptable short-circuiting of checks and balances or a reasonable method of overcoming the American exceptionalism of the Senate has largely depended on which side of the aisle you sit.

      The Graveyard of International Cooperation

      The Senate is where international treaties go to die. Currently awaiting the “advice and consent” of the body are 37 treaties, beginning with an International Labor Organization convention protecting the right to organize trade unions, which has been hanging out in the Senate for more than 70 years.

      Or consider the UN Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS), which has been ratified by 162 countries. The United States participated in the international conferences in the 1970s that produced this critical document that covers all aspects of maritime borders, navigation and commerce. US negotiators under three successive administrations — Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter — were instrumental in crafting the language of the working text. After Ronald Reagan’s administration balked at some of the provisions, negotiators even amended the final version to reflect some of the US concerns. But the Reagan administration still wouldn’t sign the agreement.

      It would take the collapse of the Soviet Union, certain changes on the ground (actually, on the seabed) and a new administration (Bill Clinton) to bring UNCLOS to the Senate. The late and decidedly not great Jessie Helms said no for he held fast to his position that no foreign entity should impinge on US sovereignty. Lest you think this was a partisan issue, the George W. Bush administration subsequently pushed hard for the Senate to ratify the convention with the support of all living former legal advisers of the State Department. This time, despite the efforts of then-Senator Joe Biden, a different minority of hard-line Republicans, including Jeff Sessions, thwarted the bipartisan campaign.

      The United States generally abides by this important convention, so what’s the big deal? As a non-signatory, however, the US cannot participate in key commissions, such as the one on the limits of the continental shelf, where it could otherwise advance its interests or push a conservation agenda. If that irritates you, don’t send your letters of complaint to the United Nations. Send them to the Senate.

      The Senate has been a crowded graveyard for arms control initiatives. There you can find gravestones for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), various nuclear-weapon-free zones and the Arms Trade Treaty (which Trump dramatically unsigned in 2019). The CTBT has been signed by 185 countries, but it won’t go into effect until eight specific nations ratify it (including the United States). The Arms Trade Treaty has entered into force, so it is only dead to the US, which is problematic since America is the leading arms exporter in the world by a large margin. The resurrection of these treaties is, of course, possible, but only if the composition of the Senate were to change dramatically.

      The Senate also stands in the way of the United States participating in the strengthening of international law and the prosecuting of war criminals — by blocking ratification of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. The Senate stands in the way of preserving what remains of the world’s precious biodiversity — by blocking ratification of the Convention on Biological Diversity. The Senate stands in the way of upholding the human rights of large swathes of the global population — by blocking treaties on disability rights, on the elimination of all forms of discrimination against women and on a variety of labor rights.

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      The Senate is also not above exercising its power on seemingly trivial matters. It has refused, for instance, to support a treaty that protects albatrosses and petrels. Jeez, hasn’t anyone in the Senate read “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner”?

      Of course, the Senate has displayed its remarkable intransigence in ways that go well beyond its advice-and-consent function on treaties. During the previous administration, among the 250 bills that the House passed and that McConnell blocked in the Senate were several immigration bills (the Dream Act, a measure to protect Venezuelans from deportation), several environmental bills (blocking drilling in the Arctic National Refuge, banning offshore drilling in the Eastern Gulf of Mexico), and a measure to provide visas to Kurds who supported US forces in Syria.

      Reform the Senate?

      Those who hope to reform the Senate have focused on changes to the rules. With the exception of certain bills, the threat of filibuster has made the Senate even less reflective of popular will by turning a simple majority into a 60-vote wall into which the Democrats are likely to crash into repeatedly over the next two to four years.

      “Dear centrist Democrats, you couldn’t even get 10 GOP votes to convict the guy who sent a mob to kill you all. You think you can get them to vote on issues like immigration/climate? Come on,” immigrant rights activist Erika Andiola has tweeted. “You have to end the filibuster and use every tool at your disposal to get things done.”

      It’s a good point, but why not think big? What about eliminating the Senate altogether? Roughly half of the world’s sovereign nations have only one legislative body. Plenty of these unicameral systems are democratic, including Costa Rica, Denmark, Greece, South Korea, New Zealand and Norway.

      Yes, I know, the smaller US states would put up even more resistance to the elimination of the Senate than they have to the proposed elimination of the Electoral College. Such an upending of the finely balanced compromises of the Founding Fathers would generate yowls of protest from constitutional literalists. Who could ever contemplate such a radical amendment?

      Victor Berger, that’s who. In 1911, the Wisconsin congressman introduced a resolution in the House to abolish the Senate. Berger was also the first socialist elected to Congress, so he was accustomed to taking contrarian positions. His proposed amendment to the Constitution began thus:

      “Whereas the Senate in particular has become an obstructive and useless body, a menace to the liberties of the people, and an obstacle to social growth; a body, many of the Members of which are representatives neither of a State nor of its people, but solely of certain predatory combinations, and a body which, by reason of the corruption often attending the election of its Members, has furnished the gravest public scandals in the history of the nation…”

      Those public scandals have continued all the way up to last weekend’s acquittal of a rogue president. Oh, Victor Berger, who will take up your mantle today?

      *[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

      Beating Back the Far Right

      by

      After four years of shock, confusion and paralysis, the United States is finally taking action against the far right. Perhaps most dramatic has been the de-platforming of Donald Trump: the suspension of his Twitter and Facebook accounts and the targeting of his prominent followers across social media platforms. Even a few months ago, such a radically sensible action would have been inconceivable. Kick a president off of social media?

      But such are the indignities visited upon sore losers. Not surprisingly, these moves have significantly decreased the amount of misinformation in the public sphere and made it that much more difficult for white nationalists to organize actions.

      How QAnon Followers Saw the US Inauguration

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      The events of January 6 also led to Trump’s second impeachment. The Senate trial, which took place last week, may not have resulted in a conviction, but it forced the Republican Party to choose between upholding the Constitution and supporting a president who tried to overthrow democracy.

      The penalties for remaining the party of Trump are slowly beginning to mount. The corporate world has moved against the ex-president by canceling events at his resorts and hotels and suspending financial services with his company. Several high-profile donors have abandoned the most vocal congressional adherents of the phony election fraud narrative, like Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz. Not only has Simon & Schuster canceled Senator Hawley’s book contract, but the chief promoter of MAGA texts at Hachette — who published screeds by Donald Trump, Jr., Corey Lewandowski and Jeanine Pirro — was recently fired.

      Some politicians have faced steeper penalties. For their participation in the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol, West Virginia State Delegate Derrick Evans was pushed to resign and Jorge Riley was forced out of his position in the California Republican Assembly. At the federal level, House Democrats and 11 of their Republican colleagues recently voted to strip Georgia Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee assignments. That seems like a mere slap on the wrist for someone who has promoted the assassination of her political opponents. But it’s something.

      A defamation lawsuit by Dominion Voting Systems against Fox News, Sidney Powell and Rudy Giuliani, all of whom spread conspiracy theories about the company’s voting machines used in the 2020 election, has already claimed one success. Fox canceled Lou Dobbs, one of its many factually compromised show hosts. Dominion is readying another round of suits against as many as 150 targets including Newsmax, One America News Network and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell.

      Embed from Getty Images

      The Justice Department has opened up “domestic terrorism” cases against a number of the participants in the January 6 insurrection. Congress is beginning to consider new legislation on federal penalties for domestic terrorism.

      The campaign against the far right isn’t exactly a full-court press. Greene continues to push Trump-like pronouncements on Twitter, and all the attention she’s gotten in recent weeks has only enlarged her platform. Corporate boycotts are not affecting the bottom lines of politicians like Hawley, who depends more on individual donors (he actually saw a big increase in donations after January 6). Trump retains his hold over much of the Republican Party, especially at the state level as the censures of Liz Cheney in Wyoming and Doug Ducey in Arizona indicate.

      In other words, the far right is down but not out. The much-feared round of violence at the state level in the wake of January 6 did not happen. Rallies and marches in support of MAGA or Trump or QAnon have not materialized. When Twitter suspended Trump’s account, a demonstration outside the company’s San Francisco office brought out dozens of police officers and exactly one protester. But neither the Proud Boys nor the white activist militias have disbanded. And according to a poll at the end of January, 64% of Republicans would join any party that Trump sets up.

      Even as the US establishment begins its tentative detox of the public sphere, the handwringing has also begun. The de-platforming of Trump has raised concerns over the tyranny of unregulated social media giants. The campaigns to limit the platforms of Hawley and Greene have generated a fear that the silencing of minority opinions will be applied to radical voices on the left as well. Critics worry that the labeling of the January 6 insurrectionists as “domestic terrorists” will inevitably be used against communities of color and others protesting racial inequities.

      The threat of white nationalist movements is not hypothetical. Four years of Trump have provided ample evidence of what can happen when these movements gain mainstream legitimation. But the anxieties over how “cancel culture” can be applied to the left and communities of color are also legitimate, as erstwhile football star Colin Kaepernick can readily confirm.

      The Biden administration has already begun its de-Trumpification of the US government by reversing the previous administration’s policies, removing Trump appointees and cutting off high-level access for right-wing crazies like Giuliani, Steve Bannon and members of the MAGA media.

      But the banishing of the far right back to the fringes of American society is going to require a different set of strategies. And here, the United States could learn a few lessons from other countries.

      Quarantining Politicians and Parties

      Although several European countries ban Nazi or neo-Nazi parties, a more effective tactic to reduce the political influence of extremist parties that fall just short of fascist has been to quarantine them. In Belgium, for instance, the major parties have an informal agreement not to partner with Vlaams Belang, a far-right Flemish nationalist party. This agreement became increasingly difficult when Vlaams Belang received the second most votes in the last parliamentary election in 2019. Austria abided by a similar “cordon sanitaire” until 2000, when the conservative People’s Party invited the far-right Freedom Party into government. The European Parliament has nevertheless borrowed the cordon sanitaire strategy to prevent members of the far-right Identity and Democracy bloc from holding any key posts such as the presidency of committees.

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      In Germany, the major parties have similarly avoided any coalition arrangements with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). But the German government, presided over by the conservative Christian Democrats, has deployed another interesting tactic against the AfD. Last spring, the country’s domestic intelligence agency declared one wing of the AfD “extremist” and placed its leaders under surveillance. “But many saw in Thursday’s announcement a step toward broader measures targeting the entire Alternative for Germany party, setting the stage for a battle between the state and a party whose influence has steadily grown even as it has radicalized,” writes Katrin Bennhold in The New York Times.

      In Greece, the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn grew to become the third-largest party in the parliament. The government successfully pursued a legal strategy to criminalize the organization, charging it with murder, racketeering, illegal possession of firearms and attacks on migrants. In the end, 37 members of the party, including 17 MPs, were convicted of crimes and imprisoned. By the 2019 election, the party couldn’t get enough votes to have even one representative in parliament.

      If Trump ends up creating a new political party, a public pressure campaign could be mounted on the Democrats and Republicans to follow a strict policy of no talks, no committee assignments and no joint actions with any entity that Trump touches. Whether the disgraced ex-president follows through on his threat, a similar approach should be applied to all Republicans who continue to embrace a “stop the steal” agenda. Biden should make clear that his efforts at bipartisanship should exclude those who believe his administration to be illegitimate.

      Purging the Far Right from Security Forces

      When the National Guard was called in to secure the Capitol for Inauguration Day, two members were removed from duty because of possible ties to right-wing extremist movements. This additional vetting was deemed necessary because nearly one in five participants in the January 6 insurrection had links to the military. As a first step in addressing the longstanding problem of far-right proselytizing, the new head of the Pentagon, Lloyd Austin, has already notified the armed forces to conduct a one-day stand down to address extremism in the ranks.

      The United States could learn from the example of Germany where the country’s special forces, Kommando Spezialkräfte (KSK), had become a veritable haven of far-right sympathizers. The working group investigating the KSK discovered “soldiers who expounded unconstitutional views, a ‘toxic leadership culture’ among superiors, and the unexplained disappearance of 62 kilograms of explosives and large quantities of ordnance from KSK depots.” As a result of the investigation, the German government disbanded one entire company of the KSK and reorganized the remaining units. It has also tightened its screening process.

      In the US, only thanks to the Black Lives Matter movement and other efforts to bring accountability to policing did the FBI begin collecting data in 2018 on the use of force in law enforcement. The next step is to purge police ranks of racist extremists, jurisdiction by jurisdiction.

      Hate Speech and Digital Controls

      Because of First Amendment protections, the United States does not have any hate speech laws. However, such provisions can be found in the private sector, such as universities.

      Other countries, however, have sought to penalize hate speech in a number of different ways. Germany has outlawed “incitement to hate” or Volksverhetzung, which applies to verbal attacks on national, racial, religious or ethnic groups but also, according to a 2020 ruling, the denigration of women. Denmark, too, has recently expanded its hate speech law to include extremist language directed at gender identity and gender expression. Since the 1970s, New Zealand has had a law on the books criminalizing the incitement of “racial disharmony,” and the government has been considering additional measures following the Christchurch killings in 2019.

      Embed from Getty Images

      But legislating against hate is notoriously tricky. Canada repealed a hate speech law that tried to balance a commitment to free expression with equally strong commitments to multiculturalism and equality (but has more recently explored reviving it). France passed an online hate speech law last spring only for the country’s constitutional court to strike down large portions of it.

      Dealing with hate speech became even more urgent when the far right discovered how to use social media to recruit, organize and inject its messages into the conservative mainstream. In the US, the home of the largest social media platforms, there has been no move to legislate against extremist content online as long as it isn’t criminal (like libel, threats to kill or child pornography).

      Rather, in typically American fashion, policing has been left to the private sector, which determines who to “de-platform” and what posts to take down. Initially, the mainstream social media platforms only suspended the accounts of those on the lunatic fringe, like Alex Jones of InfoWars infamy or Milo Yiannopoulos formerly of Breitbart News. Facebook and Twitter were reluctant to take a more proactive approach to white nationalists not only for fear of being labeled “censors” but because it would also have meant banning Republican politicians who voiced similar sentiments.

      By 2020, however, Facebook and Twitter reversed themselves because politicians like Trump were openly challenging American democracy. Well, actually, Trump and his cohort had been doing so from day one, thanks to an indirect assist from the social media giants. But after the November election, Twitter and Facebook could rationalize their moves because Trump had become a lame-duck president.

      De-platforming demonstrably works, whether measured by the bankrupting of Milo Yiannopoulos, the reduction of an audience for groups like the Islamic State and QAnon, or the virtual disappearance of Donald Trump from public discourse. It doesn’t qualify as censorship, since Twitter and Facebook are not public spaces. They are corporate spaces, and the corporation decides who speaks there, just like The New York Times decides who to publish.

      But this raises two problems: To whom are Twitter and Facebook accountable? And why aren’t there rules governing the internet more generally, since the web is certainly a public commons?

      Facebook instituted an oversight board last year that looks at decisions with an eye toward possibly overturning them. Three of the first six cases have involved hate speech. Here’s one of them: “A user posted two screenshots of tweets by former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, which said ‘Muslims have a right to be angry and kill millions of French people for the massacres of the past.’ Facebook removed the post for hate speech violations, but the user’s appeal indicates they wanted to spread awareness of the prime minister’s ‘horrible words.’” Perhaps more consequentially, the oversight board will soon make the call on whether to restore Trump’s Facebook account.

      As for generating rules for the web more generally, that’s a tougher challenge, given the anarchic, libertarian spirit that has presided over the enterprise since its inception. But here’s one interesting “fix” that New Zealand has instituted: Any Kiwi who views extremist content online is now automatically directed to websites that help people leave hate groups.

      Going After Terrorists

      For two decades, the US has conducted a “war on terror” largely against “radical Islam” in countries like Afghanistan and Syria. It has ignored state supporters of such groups, like Saudi Arabia, when they’re allies, while going after governments like Saddam Hussein’s that were mistakenly identified as al-Qaeda boosters.

      Meanwhile, the US government largely ignored home-grown, right-wing extremists who organized with near-impunity particularly during the Trump era. So, why are some people unhappy about calling the right-wing extremists who overran the Capitol on January 6 “terrorists”?

      “The use of these words only elevates a harmful counterterrorism framework that has historically been used to target Arab, Muslim, and Black communities,” writes Rania Batrice in The Boston Globe. “Call them white supremacists. Call them a violent, murderous mob. Call them insurrectionists. Call them fascists. Call them traitors or treasonous. But please remember that the words used have an impact on broader, already oppressed communities.”

      I am sympathetic to this argument. But is it not problematic that the Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTO) list does not include any far-right extremist groups? A number of these outfits — the Proud Boys, the Atomwaffen Division, the Base — have an international presence. Canada just labeled all of them terrorist outfits. An FTO designation would permit greater international cooperation to disrupt the global networking of the far right.

      Yes, I’d like to see the United States criminalize white supremacy and fascism. But the terrorism designation, for all its problematic history, focuses not so much on words but on actions. And in the US, it has historically been easier to go after the far right for what it does, not for what it says.

      Whatever language we use, however, it’s critically important to keep up the pressure to delegitimize the far right. Extremists are trying to maintain a toehold in power via Hawley, Greene and others in the hopes that Trump will run again or some equally malign candidate will emerge in 2024. It’s time to resurrect a global anti-fascist consensus to name, shame and throw these guys out of the game.

      *[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