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      The Contradictory Musings of Biden’s Speculator of State

      by

      In the world of both journalism and diplomacy, words often take on a meaning that turns out to be close to the opposite of their official definition in the dictionary.

      In an article published on the day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, CBS News summed up journalist Norah O’Donnell’s conversation with the top foreign policy official in the US in these words: “Secretary of State Antony Blinken said it is obvious Russian President Vladimir Putin has goals beyond Ukraine and may have other countries in his sights.”

      Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Obvious:

      Possibly true, maybe even unlikely, but what the speaker hopes people will believe is true

      Contextual note

      With everyone in government and the media speculating about — rather than thinking through — the real reasons behind the Russian assault on Ukraine, CBS News, like most of US legacy media, wants its readers to focus on the most extreme hypothesis. That is the gift any war offers to the media: the possibility of not just imagining but supposing the worst.

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      It works because the idea that Vladimir Putin has designs that go beyond Ukraine is certainly credible. But it has no basis in fact. In wartime, the media, even more than politicians, will always do their damnedest to damn beyond redemption the party designated as the enemy. One crime is never enough. The public must be encouraged to believe that other, more serious crimes are in the offing. That will incite the audience to return for more.

      The article is about Antony Blinken’s understanding of the conflict, but he never used the word “obvious.” Instead, he speculated out loud about what an evil dictator might be thinking. “He’s made clear,” Blinken asserted without citing evidence, “that he’d like to reconstitute the Soviet empire.” He then shifts to a less extreme interpretation. “Short of that,” Blinken continues, “he’d like to reassert a sphere of influence around neighboring countries that were once part of the Soviet bloc.” And he ends with what is a perfectly reasonable assumption: “And short of that, he’d like to make sure that all of these countries are somehow neutral.”      

      Embed from Getty Images

      Blinken’s contention that Putin’s “made clear” his intention to restore the Soviet empire undoubtedly prompted CBS’ choice of the word “obvious,” which is a bold exaggeration. But Blinken is exaggerating when he claims it’s “clear.” Something is clear if it is visible, with no obstacle that prevents us from seeing it. In this case, clarity would exist if Putin had ever expressed that intention. But that has never happened. So, what Blinken claims to be clear is mere suspicion.

      Blinken cleverly evokes “the Soviet empire” that he is convinced Putin wants to restore. The Soviet Union was a communist dictatorship, the ideological enemy of the United States. But Putin is an oligarchic capitalist who inherited a Russia whose economy was transformed by American consultants after the fall of the Soviet Union. Blinken knows that Americans are horrified by any association with communism and quasi-religiously “believe in” capitalism, even oligarchic capitalism, since the US has produced its own version of that. Blinken’s statement can therefore be read as clever State Department propaganda. He designed it to evoke emotions that are inappropriate to the actual context.

      Things become linguistically more interesting when Blinken goes on to offer a softer reading of Putin’s intention, introduced by “short of that.” He descends the ladder of horror by moving from “empire” to “sphere of influence.” It is far less fear-inspiring, but he continues to evoke the communist threat by alluding to “countries that were once part of the Soviet bloc.” 

      The next step down the ladder, again introduced by “short of that,” reads like a puzzling anti-climax. “And short of that,” Blinken says, “he’d like to make sure that all of these countries are somehow neutral.” Is he suggesting that the neutrality of surrounding nations is the equivalent of reconstituting the Soviet Union? If they are truly neutral, like Switzerland or Finland, they belong to no bloc. Blinken apparently wants the undiscerning listener to assume that being neutral is just a lighter, perhaps less constraining version of being part of a new Soviet empire.

      This kind of speculation based on mental reflexes acquired during the Cold War may seem odd for another reason. Blinken was speaking at the very moment when actual hostilities were breaking out. In the previous weeks, discussions between the two sides had taken place, which meant they could continue. Things changed, of course, at the beginning of last week when Putin declared, “I deem it necessary to make a decision that should have been made a long time ago — to immediately recognize the independence and sovereignty of the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic.”

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

      That statement on February 21 should have created a new sense of urgency in Washington to prevent the worst from happening by precipitating new negotiations. The opposite happened. Russia’s overtures calling for a summit were refused and Blinken’s planned meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov was canceled.

      The West and indeed the world were legitimately shocked by Putin’s move. It violated a basic principle of international law and contradicted the terms of the Minsk agreement that looked forward to defining the future autonomy of Donetsk and Luhansk. On that score, Putin was not wrong when he noted that the definition and application of that autonomy should have taken place much earlier, indeed, “a long time ago.”

      What Blinken described corresponds to an imaginary negotiation with Putin, who may have adopted a strategy of beginning with an extreme position by demanding a return to a post-Yalta order in Eastern Europe. Negotiators typically exaggerate at the beginning, proposing what they never expect to achieve, to arrive at something that will be deemed acceptable. It’s called giving ground. Blinken’s first “short of that” anticipates what Putin might do once the extreme position is rejected. His second “short of that” tells us what Blinken imagines Putin’s next concession might be. That takes him to the neutrality hypothesis, which in fact, as everyone knows, was Putin’s red line. 

      If Blinken can imagine that kind of negotiating process, why didn’t he choose to engage in it? The answer lies in his implicit assessment of the idea of neutrality. Neutrality is not an option. It confirms what many suspect: the US adheres to a confrontational model of international relations. It is the George W. Bush doctrine: if you are not with us, you are against us. That applies even to neutral countries.

      The CBS article contains some other interesting curiosities. After explaining exactly what Putin is secretly thinking, at one point, Blinken objects: “I can’t begin to get into his head.” When queried about what the intelligence community has provided to Blinken to justify what he says he thinks is in Putin’s head, he replies, “You don’t need intelligence to tell you that that’s exactly what President Putin wants.” Blinken wants us to believe that he understands everything but knows nothing.

      Historical Note

      Could it be that in this age of social media, where everyone lives comfortably in their silo, we have heard the death knell of even the idea of negotiation, a practice that has been respected in international relations throughout human history? Or is it an effect of historically informed cynicism due to the fact that, in many cases, negotiations have failed to prevent the unthinkable? Everyone remembers Neville Chamberlain’s negotiation with Adolf Hitler in 1938 that seemed to succeed until it became clear that it had failed.

      Or is it just a US phenomenon? Emmanuel Macron of France and Olaf Scholz of Germany made last-minute attempts to negotiate with Vladimir Putin, but they lacked the authority of the US. 

      Embed from Getty Images

      In recent decades, US culture appears to have created a kind of reflex that consists of refusing to enter into dialogue whenever one has the feeling that the other party doesn’t share the same ideas or opinions. This aversion to sitting down and sorting out major problems may be an indirect consequence of the wokeness wars, which inevitably lead to the conclusion that the other side will always be unenlightened and incorrigible. Discussion serves no purpose, especially since those committed to a fixed position live in fear of hearing something that might modulate their enthusiasm.

      Today’s confrontational culture in the US reveals that Americans are now more interested in making a display of their moral indignation at people who look, think or act differently than they are in trying to understand, let alone iron out their differences. In the past, John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev solved major problems through dialogue. Ronald Reagan and Leonid Brezhnev talked constructively, as did Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. And then there was the extraordinary case of Richard Nixon and Mao Zedong.

      We are now in the age of Karens. Even our political leaders have identified with that culture.

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

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

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      in World Politics

      Sanctions as America’s Universal Response to Evil (and Anything Else)

      by

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

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

      February 25: Appetite

      Is it justified to think that nations have personalities, along with tastes, fears and desires? People do. But can we assume there is an equivalence between the demonstrable inclinations of a national government and the needs, ambitions and predilections of the people in a democracy? It appears ever more obvious that the political class — increasingly perceived as an isolated elite in modern societies — is less representative of and responsive to the people who elect its leaders and officials than to the economic and cultural elite those politicians tend to associate and identify with.

      Beware of Dying Empires, an African Warns

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      In a Los Angeles Times article on the Kremlin’s view of international sanctions, David Pierson and Sam Dean seek to explain how the West has been elaborating an effective strategy designed to counter Russia’s militarily assault on Ukraine. “With no appetite for military confrontation,” they write, “the U.S. and its allies are relying on sweeping economic sanctions to persuade Russian President Vladimir Putin to pull out of Ukraine.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      Most people would find this sentence a reasonable description of the American reaction to events in Eastern Europe. The comforting message is that the West has no interest in war. The damage and suffering caused by this war can be blamed on one government and indeed one man, Vladimir Putin. 

      But does it make any sense to talk of an “appetite” when speaking of the foreign policy of a nation? If the metaphor of a nation’s appetite has any factual foundation in the realm of foreign policy, the history of the United States over at least the past three-quarters of a century reveals an aptitude of American leaders for war in all its forms, which may or may not reflect an appetite or even a craving of its leaders.

      Recent decades have revealed a proclivity of the American political class to toggle between physical warfare itself — which traditionally pitted trained and equipped armies against each other — and economic warfare directed against entire civilian populations. The latter has recently been deemed by political leaders to be more humane, even though it spreads suffering wider and disproportionately affects uncounted masses of people not remotely involved in wartime aggression or any of the practices cited to justify going to war.

      In 1996, when Madeleine Albright, the US ambassador to the UN at the time, was asked about the death of 500,000 Iraqi children due to US sanctions, she said “the price is worth it.” This reflects the kind of political calculus that counts half a million lives not as a tragedy, but as a “price,” something to be evaluated in purely monetary terms. In moral terms, Albright was counting on a form of specious reasoning that says if we haven’t directly sought to kill those children, we bear no responsibility. Their sacrifice is thus of no concern.

      A similar form of reasoning led to the policy privileged at least since Barack Obama’s presidency of seeing drone warfare as humane because it is “clean,” to the extent that it precludes any risk to the “good guys” (ourselves) doing the killing. If only bad people are being killed, war appears to be humane and possibly as fun as playing a video game.

      Embed from Getty Images

      So now The Los Angeles Times wants us to accept the idea that American leaders have “no appetite for military confrontation” in the current Ukraine drama. Apart from the irrelevance of the question of appetite, that idea is contestable for another reason. In this case, it isn’t a question of desire, aptitude, proclivity or even ingrained habit. The unwillingness to mount a military operation is due to the simple fact that the United States has no legal justification for engaging in physical war with Russia, which has not threatened US security or the security of any NATO nation. 

      Invoking the idea of appetite is disingenuous. Had Ukraine achieved its goal of joining NATO, no one doubts that there would have been plenty of appetite, even a devouring hunger, at least on the part of the military-industrial complex in the US, who are nevertheless actively supplying weapons. Any war is good for business, even a war the US is not allowed to engage in directly. This one, which holds the promise of reinforcing NATO thanks to the magnified fear of Russia, already makes good economic sense for the defense industry at home. That stimulates a lot of appetites. And for the past five years, mainstream Democrats have plenty to munch on after doing everything in their power to enforce the belief that Vladimir Putin is Satan incarnate.

      The complementary question The Times authors raise of “relying on sweeping economic sanctions” to wage war is more ambiguous. Sanctions can be, and in this case are very likely to be, a two-edged sword, even if it’s the only sword left in the armory due to the rules surrounding NATO defense. Disturbing the flow of global commerce entails a raft of unintended and often unanalyzed consequences for all parties concerned. 

      What is clear, however, is that US administrations have in recent decades developed not so much an appetite as a craving for applying sanctions in every direction whenever anything displeases them in the behavior of any country in the world. Sanctions have become the essential pheromone of the world’s unique hegemon, intent on leaving its odor in every nook, cranny, crevice or just bare wall of the global economy.

      Why Monitoring Language Is Important

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

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

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

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

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

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

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      in World Politics

      It’s Time to Give OSINT Its Own Agency

      by

      The recent rise of social media sites, the instant spread of news via the internet and the availability of satellite imagery to the public created a plethora of open source information that is not guarded by governments or the military. This type of information is increasingly used to generate intelligence reports by states as well as non-state actors. In order for the US intelligence community to maintain a strategic edge on competitors and hostile non-state actors, it needs to create an open source intelligence (OSINT) agency. 

      An OSINT agency would create a uniform system to procure, develop, build and operate the systems utilized to exploit, analyze and disseminate intelligence. This solution would give OSINT the credence it deserves and create an effective method of acquiring and procuring equipment while improving the quality and quantity of OSINT products.

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      OSINT uses open-source tools to collect information from publicly available sources and analyze it for decision-making. The sources it uses to create intelligence products range from academia to traditional news outlets such as television and radio, social media and even graffiti. As a result, OSINT provides actionable intelligence and includes support and contextual evidence. Despite the presence of OSINT in the US security apparatus for the last 80 years, it is currently the only intelligence discipline that does not have a dedicated agency.

      No Standard

      There is no singular standard or platform for OSINT to be processed and no standard acquisition or purchasing process for OSINT equipment. This lack of standardization is especially troubling, as the technological edge in the United States shifted from defense and security structures during the Cold War to the academic and business sectors today. Moreover, as new technical fields such as Big Data, artificial intelligence, robot process automation and blockchain technologies, among others, become utilized by the intelligence community, it makes sense that one agency is responsible for their acquisition and procurement.

      The National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) can serve as an example of what a new OSINT agency can accomplish. According to its website, “The NRO is the U.S. Government agency in charge of designing, building, launching, and maintaining America’s intelligence satellites.” Created in 1961, the NRO developed US reconnaissance satellite programs but was never in charge of exploiting the images it produced. 

      Instead, the NRO handles the maintenance and steering of the satellites so that they can meet all of the collection requests given to the NRO by other intelligence agencies. Since the NRO is the only agency handling geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) collection, it can insist on high standards for every satellite’s design and procurement.

      Embed from Getty Images

      OSINT’s current challenges mirror those faced by GEOINT from the 1960s. Today, there is too much open source information to process effectively much like there was too much satellite imagery to be processed effectively after the creation of the NRO. Decades later, the Journal of Defense Resources stated, “At this point, the challenges posed by OSINT consisted in the ability to convert into actionable intelligence the large volumes of data, which in most cases were unorganized, came from multiple sources, were available in different forms and collected through several categories of channels and to subsequently convert them into validated intelligence.” 

      To resolve the gap, the Committee on Imagery Requirements and Exploitation (COMIREX) was created as a central point to manage “imagery collection, analysis, exploitation, production, and dissemination.” An independent OSINT agency could effectively collect, analyze, exploit, produce and disseminate open source information to the various intelligence agencies in a similar manner.

      Technological Shifts

      Technological shifts are another area in which OSINT today mirrors GEOINT from decades ago. Satellite technology improved rapidly throughout the 1960s and 1970s, reflecting the rapid pace at which OSINT sources are changing due to the widespread use of the internet and social media. By creating the NRO, the US government set the standards and expectations of the satellite equipment it was procuring. 

      A report by the Center for Strategic & International Studies states that “the U.S. I.C. cannot compete in the global intelligence arena and fulfill its vital missions without a reinvention of how it procures, adopts, and assimilates emerging technologies and delivers them to mission users — at speed and at scale.” The NRO’s model would be a perfect role for an OSINT agency to take the lead on procuring all OSINT technology rather than relying on different agencies.

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

      Using the NRO as a model for an OSINT agency will help the intelligence community in several ways. First, it will not take away from any agency’s existing mission set. That will avoid any large-scale reshuffling of the intelligence structure as a whole and prevent any mission overlap between existing agencies and the new one. 

      Second, it will stop the stove-piping of OSINT within the intelligence community and permit a greater flow of finished intelligence products to senior officials and political leaders. Finally, an OSINT agency will guide and direct new research for other intelligence offices with similar missions. That office will allow the intelligence community to access the latest technological breakthroughs and decrease the costs of procuring and maintaining equipment.

      With more people gaining access to the internet, smartphones and social media every day, open source intelligence will only become more relevant to shaping the future of the intelligence community. By creating a dedicated OSINT agency, the US intelligence community can maintain a strategic advantage over both adversarial state and non-state actors.

      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

      Beware of Dying Empires, an African Warns

      by

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

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

      February 25: Dead Empires

      Perhaps the most lucid commentary on the Ukraine crisis came from the Kenyan ambassador to the United Nations, Martin Kimani. Addressing the UN Security Council earlier this week, Kenya joined the chorus of nations categorically condemning Russia’s violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity as a prelude to a military assault. But unlike other nations, which have been framing their judgment only in terms of international law, Kimani proposed a measured reflection drawing on a much wider historical perspective than that of disputed territories in Eastern Europe. The experience of African nation-states, “birthed” as he reminds us in the past century, helps to clarify the crisis in Eastern Europe as just one more symptom of a pathology spawned by the Western colonial tradition.

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      The New York Times didn’t bother to mention Kimani’s speech. After all, who cares about Kenya or the historical insight of Africans? The Washington Post offered two minutes of video excerpted from the ambassador’s six-minute speech. It was accompanied by a single sentence of commentary that gives no hint of the substance of his remarks: “Kenyan Ambassador to the U.N. Martin Kimani evoked Kenyan‘s colonial history while rebuking Russia’s move into eastern Ukraine at the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 21.”

      Carlos Mureithi at Quartz Africa penned a fuller commentary that doesn’t quite get Kimani’s real point. He begins by describing the speech as “a scathing condemnation of the Russia–Ukraine crisis, comparing it to colonialism in Africa.” But it was much more than that.

      [embedded content]

      Kimani invited the Security Council to consider how the nation-states we have today were crafted by European colonial masters focused on perpetuating their own interests and indifferent to the needs and even identities of the peoples who lived in those lands and who woke up one morning to find themselves contained within newly drawn national borders. Kimani makes the surprising case for respecting those borders. However arbitrary in their design, they may serve to reign in the ethnic rivalries and tribal tendencies that exist in all regions of the globe, inevitably spawning local conflicts. But even while arguing in favor of the integrity of modern nation-states, he showed little respect for those who drew the borders and even less for the self-interested logic that guided them.

      “We must complete our recovery from the embers of dead empires,” Kimani urges, “in a way that does not plunge us back into new forms of domination and oppression.” The populations on the receiving end of colonial logic know that even dead empires, chopped down to size, can be sources of contamination. They have left a lot of dead wood on the path of their colonial conquests. Not only does dead wood tend to rot, but, if the vestiges of the past are not cleared away, those who must continue to tread on the path frequently risk tripping over it.

      Kimani evokes the specter of “nations that looked ever backward into history with a dangerous nostalgia.” He sees a bright side in the fact that an incoherently drawn map may have helped Africa avoid the worst effects of nostalgia. The real paradox, however, is that his description of dead empires applies to the two still breathing opponents who are facing off in the current struggle: Russia and the United States.

      In an article on the Russia–Ukraine crisis published on Fair Observer in December, Atul Singh and Glenn Carle highlighted Vladimir Putin’s obsession with a form of nostalgic traditionalism. They described it as “a reaction to and rejection of the cosmopolitan, international, modernizing forces of Western liberalism and capitalism.” Though Putin’s wealth is as legendary as it is secret and the Russian president appears to be as greedy as a Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk, he seems possessed by a pathological nostalgia for the enforced order of the Soviet Union and perhaps even for the Tsarist Russia the Bolsheviks overturned a century ago. At the same time, Donald Trump’s campaign to “Make America Great Again” reveals a similar pathology affecting the population of the US. It’s equally a part of President Joe Biden’s political culture. The “back” that appears in Biden’s slogan “America is back” and even in “Build Back Better” confirms that orientation.

      In declining empires, the mindset of a former conqueror remains present even when conquest is no longer possible. Kimani alludes to this when he affirms that Kenya “strongly condemn[s] the trend in the last decades of powerful states, including members of this Security Council, breaching international law with little regard.” He accuses those states of betraying the ideals of the United Nations. “Multilateralism lies on its deathbed tonight,” Kimani intones. “It has been assaulted today as it has been by other powerful states in the recent past.” In other words, Putin is not an isolated case.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Kimani politely names no names. But the message is clear: There is blame to go all around and it is endemic. That is perhaps the saddest aspect of the current crisis. Sad because in wartime situations, the participating actors will always claim to act virtuously and build their propaganda around the idea of pursuing a noble cause. Putin has provocatively — and almost comically — dared to call his military operations a campaign of “demilitarization,” which most people would agree to be a virtuous act. We have already seen Biden call the various severe measures intended to cripple Russia’s economy “totally defensive.”

      Empires assumed to be dead are often still able to breathe and, even with reduced liberty of movement, follow their worst habitual instincts. The two empires that squared off against each other during the Cold War to different degrees are shadows of what they once were. But their embers are still capable of producing a lot of destructive heat.

      Why Monitoring Language Is Important

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

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

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

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

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

    • 88 Shares159 Views

      in World Politics

      From Repeated Mistakes to an Unmistakable Message

      by

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

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

      February 24: Unmistakable

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

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

      Ukraine’s Tug of War and the Implications for Europe

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

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

      Embed from Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      Why Monitoring Language Is Important

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      Embed from Getty Images

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

      Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Shared enemy:

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

      Contextual Note

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

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

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

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

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

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

      Historical Note

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

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

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

      Embed from Getty Images

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

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

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

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

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

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      Elimination of IS Leader Is a Positive, But Not a Final, Step

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      On January 3, the United States announced the elimination of Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, the leader of the so-called Islamic State (IS) during a counterterrorism raid in Atmeh, a town in Syria’s Idlib province close to the Turkish border. In an address to the nation, US President Joe Biden said that the operation had taken “a major terrorist leader off the battlefield,” adding that special forces were used in the operation in an attempt to reduce civilian casualties.

      Why Now?

      The raid comes after IS conducted an attack on al-Sinaa prison in the northeastern city of Hasakah in January in an attempt to break free its fighters. In the assault, several Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) fighters were killed. According to SDF officials, IS was planning the attack for six months. Nevertheless, the US-backed SDF recaptured the prison about a week later. 

      Lieutenant Colonel Rick Francona suspects that the attack on the prison “was the catalyst that led to the decision to act on what was obviously already known location intelligence on … al-Qurayshi.” Francona, who served as the US military attaché in Syria from 1992 to 1995, notes that “Over the past few months, there has been an increase in ISIS activity — more widespread and bolder in nature. This also comes at a time when Iranian-backed militias have also stepped up attacks on US forces in Syria and Iraq.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      Both Qurayshi and his predecessor, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, were eliminated in Idlib province, in areas under the control of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS). Previously, HTS was known as Jabhat al-Nusra, affiliated with al-Qaeda and initially aligned with IS. In 2013, however, it split from IS and has been at war with the group since 2014. In 2016, it also broke relations with al-Qaeda and rebranded itself as Jabhat Fatah al-Sham (JFS). The following year, JFS assumed its current iteration as it merged with other groups. 

      During much of the past decade, Idlib served as a hideout for extremists. In 2017, then-US envoy to the coalition fighting the Islamic State, Brett McGurk, stated that “Idlib Province is the largest Al Qaeda safe haven since 9/11.” Following Baghdadi’s elimination in 2019, former US President Donald Trump suggested Baghdadi was in Idlib as part of a plan to rebuild IS. Indeed, it was surprising to see Qurayshi hiding in Idlib as well. 

      According to David Lesch, professor of Middle East History at Trinity University in Texas and author of “Syria: A Modern History,” “it seems strange that al-Baghdadi and al-Qurayshi were killed in [a] province largely controlled by its rival HTS and overseen by Turkey, but on the other hand it is the only area not under the control of the Syrian government and its allies or the US-supported SDF, all of whom are opposed to ISIS.”

      “Idlib is now home to thousands of IDPs, therefore it was easier for the two to blend in, live secretively, and not be identified as outsiders since most everyone in certain areas of the province are outsiders,” Lesch explains. “Yet they were still found because despite all this they lived in an area still teaming with enemies who were obviously directly or indirectly assets to US intelligence.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      The recent US operation in Idlib, which was reportedly planned over several months, has been the largest of its kind in the country since the 2019 raid that eliminated Baghdadi. Although Qurayshi was less charismatic than Baghdadi, the fact that he was targeted in the US raid confirms his importance.

      It is worth noting that Qurayshi was named as the leader of IS in 2019, following the death of Baghdadi. While IS called on all Muslims to pledge allegiance to Qurayshi as the new “caliph,” it did not provide much information about his bona fides. The use of the name “Qurayshi” seemed to be an attempt to trace his lineage to the Prophet Muhammad. This is a tactic that was also used vis-à-vis Baghdadi with the aim of legitimizing his leadership role. Qurayshi’s real name is Amir Muhammad Said Abdal-Rahman al-Mawla but he is also known as Hajji Abdullah and Abdullah Qaradash.  

      As the US continues to create an impression that it is minimizing its presence in the region, especially following its withdrawal from Afghanistan last year, the raid seems to have been used to demonstrate US reliability to reassure Washington’s partners. It also comes as a needed win for Biden at a time when the Ukraine crisis remains unsolved. 

      However, while Qurayshi’s elimination is a positive development, it may simply be a “symbolic victory,” as Sean Carberry suggests in The Hill. While the operation against Qurayshi may create internal chaos within IS, ultimately, the terror group is likely to name a new leader and move on, which is what took place following Baghdadi’s assassination. Although IS was militarily defeated, the group has not been eliminated and remains a threat. In fact, there have been increased indications, such as the attack on al-Sinaa prison, suggesting that the group is in a state of resurgence. The militants might also seek to use the recent US raid to encourage revenge attacks. 

      US Policy in Syria

      The Biden administration’s policy vis-à-vis Syria seems to indicate that the official approach will be “markedly timid,” as Abdulrahman al-Masri and Reem Salahi suggest. It should not be surprising to learn that Syria does not constitute a top diplomatic priority for President Biden. Yet while the US does not want to remain engaged in endless regional wars, it seems to believe that a political settlement in war-torn Syria would only empower President Bashar al-Assad, whom Washington would never back. 

      Moreover, the US and the Kurds are partners, and Washington would not want to portray an image that it has abandoned those who have shouldered the fight against the Islamic State. This was the overall perception when Trump announced the withdrawal of US forces from Syria in 2019, and Biden seems keen to remedy that controversial decision. 

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      It is worth noting that during President Barack Obama’s tenure, Vice President Biden was one of the skeptics when it came to what the US could achieve in Syria. Nevertheless, it should not be taken as a given that as president, Biden may be in favor of removing all US forces from the country. For instance, he criticized Trump’s decision to withdraw forces from Syria, saying it granted IS “a new lease on life.” In the same year, Biden also said he supports keeping some forces in eastern Syria for the foreseeable future. 

      Middle East expert and former US State Department analyst, Gregory Aftandilian doesn’t see the US leaving Syria anytime soon. Aftandilian, who is also a non-resident fellow at Arab Center Washington DC, thinks “It is doubtful [Biden] will do more than the anti-ISIS campaign and humanitarian aid. In light of the attempted prison break in northeastern Syria he may put pressure on some countries to take back ISIS prisoners.”

      For the US to play a role in stabilizing Syria, there needs to be a clear strategy. Unfortunately, at the moment, that strategy is largely lacking. While the elimination of Qurayshi is a positive step, much more work needs to be done to stabilize the country.

      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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      Getting the Public Behind the Fight on Misinformation

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      Misinformation is false or inaccurate information communicated regardless of intention to deceive. The spread of misinformation undermines trust in politics and the media, exacerbated by social media that encourages emotional responses, with users often only reading the headlines and engaging with false posts while sharing credible sources less. Once hesitant to respond, social media companies are increasingly enacting steps to stop the spread of misinformation. But why have these efforts failed to gain greater public support? 

      A 2021 poll from the Pearson Institute found that 95% of Americans believed that the spread of misinformation was concerning, with over 70% blaming, among others, social media companies. Though Americans overwhelmingly agree that misinformation must be addressed, why is there little public consensus on the appropriate solution? 

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      To address this, we ran a national web survey with 1,050 respondents via Qualtrics, using gender, age and regional quota sampling. Our research suggests several challenges to combating misinformation. 

      First, there are often misconceptions about what social media companies can do. As private entities, they have the legal right to moderate content on their platform, whereas the First Amendment applies only to government restriction of speech. When asked to evaluate the statement “social media companies have a right to remove posts on their platform,” a clear majority of 58.7% agreed. Yet a divide emerges between Democrats, where 74.3% agreed with the statement compared to only 43.5% of Republicans.  

      Ignorance of the scope of the First Amendment may partially explain these findings, as well as respondents believing that, even if companies have the legal right, they should not engage in removal. Yet a history of tech companies initially couching policies as consistent with free speech principles only to later backtrack only adds to the confusion. For example, Twitter once maintained “a devotion to a fundamental free speech standard” of content neutrality, but by 2017 had shifted to a policy where not only posts could be removed but even accounts without offensive tweets. 

      Embed from Getty Images

      Second, while most acknowledge that social media companies should do something, there is little agreement on what that something should be. Overall, 70% of respondents, including a majority of both Democrats (84%) and Republicans (57.6%), agreed with the statement that “social media companies should take steps to restrict false information online, even if it limits freedom of information.”

      We then asked respondents if they would support five different means to combat misinformation. Here, none of the five proposed means mentioned in the survey found majority support, with the most popular option — providing factual information directly under posts labeled as misinformation — supported only by 46.6% of respondents. This was also the only option that a majority of Democrats supported (56.4%).

      Moreover, over a fifth of respondents (20.6%) did not support any of the options. Even focusing just on respondents that stated that social media companies should take steps failed to find broad support for most options. 

      So what might increase public buy-in to these efforts? Transparent policies are necessary so that responses do not appear ad hoc or inconsistent. While many users may not pay attention to terms of services, consistent policies may serve to counter perceptions that efforts selectively enforce or only target certain ideological viewpoints.

      Recent research finds that while almost half of Americans have seen posts labeled as potentially being misinformation on social media, they are wary of trusting fact-checks because they are unsure how information is identified as inaccurate. Greater explanation of the fact-checking process, including using multiple third-party services, may also help address this concern.

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      Social media companies, rather than relying solely on moderating content, may also wish to include subtle efforts that encourage users to evaluate posting behavior. Twitter and Facebook have already nodded in this direction with prompts to suggest users should read articles before sharing them. 

      Various crowdsourcing efforts may also serve to signal the accuracy of posts or the frequency with which they are being fact-checked. These efforts attempt to address the underlying hesitancy to combat misinformation while providing an alternative to content moderation that users may not see as transparent. While Americans overwhelmingly agree that misinformation is a problem, designing an effective solution requires a multi-faceted approach. 

      *[Funding for this survey was provided by the Institute for Humane Studies.]

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