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      in US Politics

      Johnson says he will not comment on Trump's call to stop counting US election votes – video

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      The prime minister sidestepped Keir Starmer’s attempt at PMQs to get him to comment on Donald Trump’s call to stop the counting of votes in the US election. Challenged by the Labour leader to agree that it was not the place of either candidate to decide which votes should count, Johnson said: ‘We don’t comment as the UK government on the democratic processes of our friends and allies’
      Boris Johnson refuses to comment on Trump’s call to stop vote-counting More

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      in World Politics

      How Do You Fix the Soul of the Nation?

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      Nearly every commentator knew that the one certain thing about this presidential election was that everything that followed the date of voting would be uncertain. Inspired by polls that had consistently given Joe Biden a significant lead over the past two or three months, some predicted a Democratic landslide. But in that eventuality, the same commentators felt uncertain about how the transition would play out and, more seriously, how the nation might be governed. Some pundits even wondered whether it could be governed.

      On Monday, The New York Times published an article with the title “Undeterred by Pandemic, Americans Prepare to Deliver Verdict on Trump.” The author, Shane Goldmacher, summed up the atmosphere of the final phase of the campaign in these terms: “As Mr. Trump and Joseph R. Biden Jr. raced across the most important battleground states in a frenzied final push for votes, the 2020 election was unfolding in a country with urgent problems: an uncontrolled public health crisis, a battered economy, deep ideological divisions, a national reckoning on race and uncertainty about whether the outcome of the vote will be disputed.”

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      The Times’ columnist Lisa Lerer, who had consistently manifested her preference for Biden throughout the campaign, published an article on election eve with the title: “Win or Lose, Trump and Biden’s Parties Will Plunge Into Uncertainty.”

      Here is today’s 3D definition:

      Uncertainty:

      The permanent state of democracy in the United States since the beginning of the 21st century, likely to continue for decades to come.

      Contextual Note

      On Wednesday morning, President Donald Trump predictably claimed victory, well before all the votes had been counted. More realistically, Business Insider summed up the continuing uncertainty. Publishing their live results, Grace Panetta and Madison Hall concluded — with what Democrats will see as a ray of hope — that “it remains unclear how the race will go, and there are more scenarios in which Biden ultimately wins than Trump.” 

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      The one thing most Americans were not hoping for in this age of ever-deepening uncertainty was “more scenarios.” In a nation that has become accustomed over the past four years to living through a screenplay scripted by a former reality TV host, polls leading up to the election appeared to reflect a desire for some sort of stability. Citing pre-election polling, Emily Badger in another Times article noted that “voters on the left and right say they’re concerned about the stability of American democracy.” She quotes a Biden supporter in Ohio, a state Trump appears now to have won, who expressed her fears in these terms: “We’re just teetering, and it’s scary as all get-out.”

      During a bitter and confused primary campaign, the Democratic Party claimed to have identified the personality who best represented stability and electability: Joe Biden. Whether the former vice president eventually makes it past the Electoral College by the December deadline remains to be seen. If he wins, the Democrats will tout his victory as a triumph for stability, but the nation may not agree. As the Democrats congratulate themselves on their good judgment, the rest of the country, and especially its youth, may instead see the future as “scary as all get-out.”

      Goldmacher’s article in The Times paints a grim picture of the immediate future. “Much of the country felt on edge,” he writes, before quoting a construction worker in Los Angeles whom he describes as busily boarding up a storefront in anticipation of serious civil unrest: “Everyone is starting to panic,” the worker explains.

      Even after we know the initial result sometime in the coming days, there is no way we can anticipate the aftermath. Will there be lawsuits, protests, recounts, further manipulations, proposals for constitutional amendments or outright civil war? Will the millions of lethal weapons people have been stocking in preparation for conflict be put to use?

      In contrast, David Dayan makes the astonishing claim that “Donald Trump Has Been Good for Democracy.” The basis of his claim is that millions of Americans formerly indifferent have become politically engaged, and not just in voting, though on that score the statistics do tell the story of record voter turnout. Most commentators thought high turnout would be an advantage for Biden. It appears not to have been the case.

      Historical Note

      On the eve of the election, in an article on the fragility of the American nation, Fair Observer’s founder Atul Singh riffed on a pair of metaphors for the current state not just of US politics, but of the country as a whole. The first was the idea of a nation held together with string. The second was the slogan Joe Biden repeatedly used as a drumbeat since the beginning of his campaign, his oft-repeated claim that the election was a “fight for the soul of the nation.” Upon close examination, these two metaphors appear to be antinomic to the point of tragic contradiction. Their antinomy sums up the existential quandary that this election has revealed.

      In the Platonic and Aristotelian tradition of philosophy, the idea of the soul was synonymous with essence. It designated the metaphysical principle that accounted for the identity of any entity, animate or inanimate. The essence or soul defined and united all of an entity’s diverse constituents. An essence thus signifies the presence of an active force — the soul — that ensures the integrity of a thing or a person.

      Even a chair or a shoe, or any other human artifact, can have a soul or essence, though in contrast with living things, their integrity is imposed and ensured from the outside — from the mind of the designer or manufacturer — rather than materialized by the action of dynamic organic principles within the object itself. The DNA of a chair, or a nation for that matter, lies in the mind of those who gave its identity and who are committed to maintaining it.

      Embed from Getty Images

      If we describe something that needs to be held together with string — a chair for example — it indicates that its essence is no longer present, at least as a sufficient active force to maintain its integrity and fulfill its purpose. At some point, we can decide to dismantle the chair and use it as firewood. At best the string may prolong its useful life span, but that in itself is an admission of the absence of its “soul.”

      Joe Biden clearly would not agree with Atul Singh’s description of a nation being held together with string. Were he interested in framing his opposition in philosophical terms, he might appeal to a form of Cartesian dualism and claim that an essence that has fled may return or perhaps may be reinjected because the soul and the body are distinct and autonomous. But the source of Biden’s rhetoric is more likely the popular moral dualism children learn in Catechism of angels and devils fighting for the control of everyman’s (or every child’s) soul.

      As a politician, Biden quite logically sees every issue as one of deciding who is in control. If he is effectively declared president by the Electoral College — and if that election is not overturned by Donald Trump’s Supreme Court — the problem he will face when he takes office will be how to control an omnipresent entity that politicians like Biden prefer to deny: uncertainty. Emily Badger concluded her article with a quote from Yale historian Beverly Gage: “If people have actually lost faith in the idea that you can fix things and make them better, then that’s not a great political moment to be in.” Especially when the thing you most want to fix is “the soul of the nation.”

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

      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

      Israel Will Continue Disregarding International Law

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      The Israeli–Palestinian conflict is now in its 72nd year. Israel has been given renewed impetus after agreeing to the Abraham Accords with the United Arab Emirates on August 13, when the two states announced the normalization of diplomatic relations. Bahrain soon followed in Abu Dhabi’s footsteps.

      Now, along with Sudan, there are five Arab countries that recognize Israel, and there are rumors that others like Oman will join the bandwagon. This recent development could have implications for the Palestinians, including the bitter realization that Arab and Muslim countries are betraying them. A 2019 poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research found that nearly 80% of Palestinians feel they are abandoned by Arab states.

      The task of bringing Israel into compliance with its obligations as the occupying power vis-à-vis the Palestinians has become ever more convoluted. UN Security Council resolutions addressing the Israeli–Palestinian conflict are routinely disregarded by the Israelis. A case in point is the Security Council Resolution 2334, adopted in 2016, which terms Israel’s settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territories as “a flagrant violation under international law.”

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      Richard Seaford is a professor emeritus of classics and ancient history at the University of Exeter, United Kingdom. A distinguished scholar, he has been a fellow of the National Humanities Center in North Carolina and a member of the British Committee for the Universities of Palestine.

      In this edition of The Interview, Fair Observer talks to Seaford about the Israeli public’s perception of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Donald Trump’s “deal of the century,” and the global reception of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.

      The transcript has been edited for clarity. This interview took place in summer 2020.

      Kourosh Ziabari: How do Israel’s political, intelligence and military elites, particularly those on the right, perceive the status quo in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? The Israeli author Micah Goodman believes the dominant narrative is no longer about the “sanctity of the settlements, the fulfillment of biblical prophecies, and imminent redemption.” Rather, for him, the main concern is guaranteed security. Do you agree with this assumption? Can it be inferred that Israeli leaders are prepared for a compromise with the Palestinians, and possibly making territorial concessions, provided that their security concerns are addressed?

      Richard Seaford: The answer to both questions is no. The Israeli elite is no doubt concerned about security, and I recognize the problems that they face. But if security was their main motive, they would have established, and could still establish, an impregnable state on their own in pre-1967 borders, if necessary with a massive wall and all the sophisticated technology available to them.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Instead, they have illegally filled with settlements conquered land that belongs not to Israel but to more than 2 million Palestinian Arabs. In doing so, they have made a two-state solution impossible and created a further massive security problem that is used to justify unbearable suffering for the Palestinians and the further expansion of settlements. No doubt some of the elite are aware of the present and future nightmare created by this expansionism, but there is no sign of any political will to do anything substantial about it.

      The basic problem is that Israel is a military superpower up against a defenseless people — the Palestinians — with no genuine international pressure to prevent Israel from stealing as much land as it wants.

      Ziabari: In late June, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres told a meeting of the Security Council that Israel’s plans to annex swaths of the West Bank would threaten the vision of a two-state solution and represent a most serious violation of international law. Since the Trump administration has reversed the US position on the settlements and no longer considers them a breach of international law, do you expect the Security Council to take action to block further annexations? Is there any legal barrier dissuading Israel from annexing more West Bank lands?

      Seaford: No! Firstly, the past record of the Security Council does not encourage the belief that it will take action to require Israel to conform to international law and UN resolutions.

      Secondly, there is no reason to believe that Israel will reverse its decades-long disregard of international law, especially given the encouragement now given to its lawbreaking by Trump. A Biden government may not continue the policy of encouraging illegality, but it will probably do nothing substantial to prevent it.

      Western countries adopted sanctions against the Russian Federation after rightly regarding its annexation of Crimea in 2014 — after a referendum there — as a violation of international law. But when Israel illegally annexed East Jerusalem in 1980 and the Golan Heights in 1981, where were the sanctions? The double standards are so obvious as to be embarrassing, and they encourage Israel to further acts of illegal annexation.

      According to Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, “the occupying power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own population into the territories it occupies.” The United Nations Security Council, the United Nations General Assembly, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the International Court of Justice and the High Contracting Parties to the Convention, among others, have, unsurprisingly, all affirmed that the Fourth Geneva Convention applies to the territories occupied by Israel. Trump has, in order to please his base, de facto withdrawn from the Geneva conventions.  

      Ziabari: In August 2018, the Trump administration suspended all US funding for UNRWA, the UN program supporting Palestinian refugees. UNRWA is now believed to face a major financial challenge, hindering its ability to provide education for 520,000 students, health care for 3 million patients and food assistance for 1.7 million refugees. On other occasions, the Netherlands, Australia, Switzerland and other countries have also cut or reduced their contributions. In what ways will these cuts affect the prosperity and wellbeing of the Palestinian people?

      Seaford: To cut off funding for those who live in some of the worst conditions in the world, while maintaining much more funding for the state that has dispossessed them, speaks for itself. A [recent] letter appeared in The Guardian signed by numerous European senior politicians stating that UNRWA needs funding desperately, not least to use its proven expertise in preventing the coronavirus from spreading through densely populated Palestinian refugee camps in the region.

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      Apart from the further intensification of the misery of the Palestinians, there are two less obvious consequences of the defunding. One is the potential for an increase in regional instability caused by the despair. The other is to diminish yet further the standing of the US in the region and in the world generally. One effect that the defunding will not have is the one desired by Trump: to force the Palestinians to give up their claim to their homeland.

      Ziabari: The United States has long worked to position itself as an intermediary in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. President Trump has renewed efforts to play this role by tabling his long-awaited “deal of the century.” Does this deal make any positive contribution to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Given the Palestinians’ lukewarm and uninterested response, does it have any chance of being successfully implemented?

      Seaford: No. The idea that the US is a neutral intermediary in the conflict is now absurd. The discussions that produced the “deal of the century” entirely excluded the Palestinians. It gives Israel virtually everything that it wants, and the Palestinians virtually nothing of what they want. It confirms the illegal expansionism of Israel, gives the Palestinians limited control of the fragments of a very small part of their historic homeland, and leaves by far the largest part of it to a state formed and controlled by 20th-century Jewish emigrants to Palestine and their descendants.

      I could go on and on detailing the one-sidedness of the plan. But people may be thinking: Why propose a plan that is so absurdly one-sided that it has no chance of being agreed by both sides?

      One answer might be the sheer ignorance of the people responsible for it — for example, Jared Kushner. But the more substantial reason is a kind of propaganda that has been used in the past. The plan helps to instill in the millions who do not bother to ascertain the details of the idea that Trump is trying to create peace, and that the Palestinians are being unreasonable in rejecting it.

      Ziabari: The UAE recently announced normalized relations with Israel. Negotiations are also underway between Israel and Oman. Why do you think a growing number of Muslim, Arab states are leaning toward forging closer relations with Israel? What are the implications for the Palestinian Authority and the Palestinian people?

      Seaford: The causes of the Gulf states’ rapprochement with Israel include their fear of Iran, the various consequences of the Arab Spring, and perhaps also the steep decline in the price of oil over the last few years, which will endanger states that are almost entirely dependent on it.

      However, the rapprochement should not be exaggerated on the basis of a few highly publicized statements or events. For the elites of the Gulf states, whose only concern is to remain in power, it retains its dangers. Surveys show that concern for the Palestinians amongst Arabs has generally risen, rather than fallen, over the past few years.

      The UAE has long had commercial and security links with Israel, and its claim to have averted annexation of parts of the West Bank in exchange for normalizing relations is bogus. The annexation was postponed earlier, for other reasons. Anyway, the fact is that the Arab states over the last decades have not succeeded in improving the political position of the Palestinians. What they have provided is financial support, which continues.

      Ziabari: Efforts are underway by independent scholars, public figures, artists and athletes as well as some businesses in Europe to boycott the Israeli government, institutions and universities in the framework of the BDS movement. What are the costs for Israel? Will it be induced into changing its policies?

      Seaford: The costs to Israel are so far not great in material terms, but there are some cultural and academic consequences. The reason why Israel and its apologists do so much to combat BDS by the anti-Semitism slur is what it calls its delegitimating effect. BDS does not, of course, seek to destroy the state of Israel. What it seeks to delegitimate is its defiance of international law and of UN resolutions.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Citizens, when their governments have abdicated all concern with international law, feel that they must act to enforce it. And the most immediate way of acting is to adopt the boycott personally, as well as urging companies to divest and governments to apply sanctions. Anybody can do it.

      Moreover, the call for BDS becomes a way of creating publicity and raising consciousness of the crimes of Israel. It is this change of opinion, especially among US students, that Israel fears, because it may eventually, though not any time soon, limit their expansionism. Israel will be induced to change its policies only by external pressure, a combination of the reduction in the massive amount of US aid, with diplomatic pressure, sanctions, boycott and divestment — the kind of combination that helped to end apartheid in South Africa.

      One imagined objection to BDS says: But what about the horrible things going on elsewhere? What is unique about Israel is the combination of illegal colonization, the inaction of governments and that the victims by a large majority are asking us to boycott. When someone who is being beaten up and robbed asks me to do something simple, safe and legal to help, I do it. Wouldn’t you? I boycotted apartheid South Africa, and so consistency requires me to boycott Israel, or anywhere else with the same combination of circumstances.

      Ziabari: Have international organizations and blocs, including the United Nations and European Union, lost their competence in resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Israel is the subject of several dozen Security Council and UN General Assembly resolutions, but it continues to defy them. How is it possible to be brought into compliance?

      Seaford: The answer to the first question is yes, and the answer to the second is that Israel will be brought into compliance only by external pressure. There are many good and brave Israelis who deserve our support, but any idea that the Israelis may elect a government that wants to dismantle the settlements, comply with international law and so on has been shown by the last few decades, especially recently, to be fantasy. A just peace will come only from citizens in other states, especially the US, raising consciousness and electing governments that will exercise the required pressure on Israel. It is our historic responsibility.

      In the UK, in the 1980s, there were only a few thousand of us in the anti-apartheid movement. But Western politicians who had done nothing to help the imprisoned Nelson Mandela or isolate apartheid attended his funeral [in 2013]. When we succeed in dissolving Israeli apartheid, there will be numerous Western politicians who will falsely take the credit. But it feels better to have changed history than to pretend to have done so. 

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

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      The American Empire: Maintaining Hegemony Through Wars

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      In January, the US assassinated Qassem Soleimani, the head of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds force, in an airstrike on Iraqi soil. General Soleimani was seen as the main pillar of the regional resistance bulwark in Iran. He was revered by many Iranians as a brave defender of the nation and a mastermind of asymmetrical warfare — the cornerstone of Iran’s security doctrine.

      His death sparked frenzy and unrest in the Middle Eastern country, further straining the US and Iran’s delicate relationship. The assassination of Soleimani revealed that the US was willing to go to any extent to prove its military might over its self-declared enemies.

      Under President Donald Trump, the US has used several measures for the last few years to demonstrate American power over the world. From Soleimani’s killing to the imposing of tariffs on China to pulling out of the Paris climate agreement, the US has disrupted the world order and threatens to continue doing so.

      Will Donald Trump’s Bad Deals Cost Him the Election?

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      In this edition of The Interview, Fair Observer talks to Peter Kuznick, director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University in Washington, DC. Kuznick speaks about the most important foreign policy areas for a US president, America’s raging desire to wage war, why the US has a fraught relationship with Iran, and how the US can mend its relationship with North Korea.

      The transcript has been edited for clarity. This interview took place in early 2020.

      Ankita Mukhopadhyay: With the US elections looming on the horizon, what should be the key areas of focus in foreign policy for the US president?

      Peter Kuznick: The danger is that the new president of the US will be the old president. Trump will get reelected. However, Trump has not been as catastrophic when it comes to foreign policy as we feared he might be. He started off with a good idea, that the US and Russia should be friends. No one understands why he took that position, given that he is mostly wrong on everything else. Most of my Russian colleagues and friends were supporting Donald Trump during the 2016 election. I asked one member of the Russian Senate why did he and everyone else support Trump. He said because Trump wants to be friends with Russia.

      I told him he was being naive as what Trump says and does usually has no connection. Hillary Clinton was terrible too in her own way. She was very hostile to Russia and too hawkish for my taste. But I believe she’s a reasonable, rational actor. Donald Trump is potentially quite reckless. If we see what he’s done — with the recent confrontation with Iran, be it the tearing up of the Iran nuclear deal (the JCPOA), which Obama negotiated with the help of several other countries like Russia and China.

      Trump wasted little time in tearing that up. He’s been pushing for a confrontation with Iran ever since. The danger is: Trump’s advisers didn’t agree on a lot of things, but what they agreed on is that they hate Iran. It was striking to me that Jim Mattis, who had been demoted by Obama because he was such a hawk when it came to Iran, was actually a restraining influence in the Trump administration. Rex Tillerson, the former secretary of state, said when he was fired that he was sick and tired of trying to be stopped on what [he] wanted to do against Iran. Tillerson referred to Trump as a fucking moron because of his hawkish policies.

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      Let’s be optimistic that Trump is winning again. Whether he will lose depends on who the Democratic candidate is. My priorities are number one, the New START [Strategic Arms Reduction] treaty. The New START treaty is set to expire in February 2021. That would be a disaster. It will dismantle the world’s nuclear arms control architecture. It began with the US leaving the ABM [Anti-Ballistic Missile] treaty in 2002, it accelerated with the US pulling out of the INF [Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces] treaty last year. The only thing in place is the New START treaty that puts limits on the number of nuclear warheads and delivery systems that both sides are allowed to maintain.

      Trump intends to end this treaty. This is evident from his phone conversation with Putin. The Russian leader said to Trump, we should renew the New START treaty. Trump said hold on, he put down the phone and asked people in the room, what’s the New START treaty? He didn’t even know what it was. He got on the phone and said: It’s not a good treaty, we don’t want to renew it. Putin has been pushing ever since for the renewal. The US and Russia have about 93% of the world’s nuclear weapons between them. In March 2018, Putin revealed [Russia’s five most powerful] nuclear weapons, all of which can circumvent US missile defense. China has only 290 nuclear weapons, and China has a no-first-use policy. China is not a threat to the world order like the US and Russia. Now Trump says, we should rip the START treaty up.

      In February 2018, the US released its nuclear posture review to expand the role of nuclear weapons. The problem of using nuclear weaponry goes back to the era of Barack Obama. Obama had implemented a trillion-dollar modernization program to make nuclear weapons more deadly. Trump inherited this, but he’s added more insanity.

      Another area where Trump has been criminally reckless is global warming and climate change. The second thing the new US president should do is convene a new international conference on climate change. We have to do this as we can’t go along with the Paris Climate Accord — it’s far too minimal. We got to have a crash program to deal with this crisis.

      If the new president doesn’t want to keynote the conference, let’s get Greta Thunberg to do it, but we need to take it as seriously as she takes it. There’s a lot more we can do beyond that. We have to deal with the militarization of the planet. We have to deal with the fact that the richest eight [people] of the world have more money than 3.8 billion people. There’s a crisis of epic proportions.

      As a US president, I want to see the US military footprint drastically cut back. The US has 800 military bases in the world. Other countries have maybe 29 overseas military bases combined, while China has one. Right now, we have Trump saying make America great again, Putin saying make Russia great again, Xi Jinping saying make China great again, Narendra Modi saying make India great again. We have got nobody who thinks and speaks for the planet.

      Mukhopadhyay: The US has been particularly stern with Iran’s nuclear policy, despite building its own nuclear arsenal. Trump has already torn up the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). What will happen if Iran doesn’t rein in its nuclear program?

      Kuznick: It was absolute insanity on Trump’s behalf to tear up the JCPOA deal. It was a good deal and it would have constrained Iran’s nuclear program for 15 years. During that time, we could have done many things to bring Iran back into the international community. They were supposed to get economic benefits as a result of the JCPOA, but Trump imposed more sanctions. The Europeans were furious because not only did Trump impose sanctions on Iran, but Trump threatened very harsh penalties on any country — including India — that continued to trade with Iran, especially for oil. The Europeans eventually tried to set up an alternative international banking system to trade with Iran outside of the US orbit.

      The US goes around sanctioning everybody. It’s out of control. The sanctions against Russia, Europe, Iran, China — it’s crazy. People need to be sanctioning the US. When the US acts like a rogue power, the rest of the world needs to stop being cowards and hypocrites and employ the same standard the US applies on other countries.

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      Countries need to be standing up to the US. The US can’t be a pariah as much as it wants because it’s so powerful. I don’t like this cowardly behavior. In the US, TV commentators say Russian interference in the 2016 election was an act of war. It’s such hypocritical behavior. I don’t approve of Russia’s interference in US politics, but the US interferes in everybody’s elections. They have been doing so since 1947 when the CIA was founded. The commentators condemn what’s happening to the US, but they don’t see what the US is doing on a global scale.

      On the Iran deal, we don’t get as much criticism as necessary for tearing this up and creating havoc. The US in the early 2000s, under George W. Bush, was itching for a war with Iran and wanted to take down Iran’s nuclear facilities using nuclear weapons. When that got exposed, the joint chief of staff threatened to resign and they took that proposal off the table.

      Let’s back up a little bit to understand Iran. I will go back to 1990. In 1990, Charles Krauthammer, a leading neoconservative thinker, in the Henry Jackson address, called it America’s unipolar moment. He said that after the collapse of the Soviet empire, nobody can challenge the US — economically, geopolitically. The US must recognize that and assert itself everywhere.

      Krauthammer said this unipolar moment could last 30-40 years. In 1993, neoconservative thinkers came up with a defense planning guidance so that no country should be allowed to emerge in any region to challenge the US globally. They walked back when this was released in The New York Times.

      The neoconservatives cheered the American invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. Krauthammer revisited his article and said that he underestimated the strength of the US. It’s the unipolar era. It’s going to last indefinitely. The neoconservatives were ecstatic. Even before the invasion of Iraq, on January 5, 2003, the NYT headline was, “American empire, get used to it.” Then we invade Iraq. Now they are saying, well we have got to have regime change in a lot of places. Start with Syria, Libya, Somalia and Lebanon.

      Iran was always on everyone’s hitlist. Iran did abandon its nuclear weapons program in 2003. But US never abandoned its dream of overthrowing Iran.

      Mukhopadhyay: Is the dissatisfaction with Iran and the JCPOA to do with overthrowing the government?

      Kuznick: For that, we need to understand the American mentality. The Americans accuse Russia of interfering in the 2016 election. In fact, the Israelis interfered more than Russia in the 2016 election. Benjamin Netanyahu openly campaigned for Trump, opposed the JCPOA and addressed a joint session of Congress. Obama knew that he couldn’t even get the JCPOA passed through Congress as a treaty, with a two-third majority, so he had to say that it was a deal to get it through with a simple majority.

      Once the Republicans got in there, one of the first things we wanted was to tear it up. Trump knew nothing about the deal, and he is an idiot. It’s a crisis of America’s own making. Trump said he will negotiate a better deal. He’s a disaster when it comes to negotiating, as we see with North Korea.

      Then Iran responded, we got a couple of incidents in the Gulf there, shooting down an American drone — things were heating up already. The reason the US wanted to take the Korea issue of the table is to focus on Iran. The killing of Soleimani on January 3, 2020, was very dangerous and very reckless.

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      I am glad that some people acted with diplomatic aplomb and eased the crisis there because many of us feared that we would go to war [with Iran]. It was a disaster for US policy and a disaster for the world.

      What kind of principle do you establish that you can go around killing anyone with our drones (shame on Obama for legitimizing that) and even killing American citizens without due process. But to take out a leader of another country — the second most powerful and respected person in Iran, a top general — was to force Iran to take military action. Fortunately, Iran didn’t take Trump’s bait. Iran had a measured, limited response when they hit two American bases in retaliation.

      At that time, had Iran retaliated in any other way, the US was set to strike. Iran has capabilities throughout the region — they can hit Israel, they can hit American bases, they can use Hezbollah, they have proxy bases in Syria. Fortunately, they didn’t do that. However, like India and Pakistan, this can erupt at any point.

      Iran is going to retaliate at some time. Iranians were out on the street asking for military action against the US after the death of Soleimani. Americans need to understand that Iran is not Iraq. We underestimate what a war with Iran would mean. A war with Iran will be 10 times costlier than the war in Iraq was militarily and in terms of human lives. Iran is a bigger country, with 80 million people, much bigger capabilities and a much more competent military. If someone thinks that Iran is going to be like the “cakewalk” in Iraq (which we are still not out of, 17 years later), they are terribly mistaken.

      Iran has increasingly abrogated its own part of the nuclear deal. It was a great deal. They shipped 97% of their nuclear material outside of Iran. They mothballed most of their centrifuges. They shut down the Iraq plutonium facility. Now, they are increasingly bringing more centrifuges, raising the level to which they can enrich, and this is a crisis of Trump’s making. It’s off the headlines in the US recently — that’s not going to last forever. There are people in this cabinet, in this administration, who believe that a war would be good for Trump’s reelection.

      They might miscalculate that this may help them. This is why people were suspicious when Soleimani was assassinated. Why did Trump do this? Why did he do it now? Bush and Obama had looked into knocking off Soleimani and decided to not do it because the repercussions would be horrendous. The speculation around Trump is that he is trying to distract the people from the other crisis.

      Mukhopadhyay: Why is waging war so important in American foreign policy? How does this war-centric mentality affect the US’ relationship with other countries?

      Kuznick: The American empire is based on military presence everywhere. India would not define something that happens in Central America as part of its national security concerns. The US does. In January 2018, the US changed its national security strategy. Before that, the US said that global terrorism was the main threat to American national security. In January 2018, the US announced that Russia and China posed the greatest threat to national security.

      The US under Trump sees the world as a zero-sum game. Anything that Russia or China gains anywhere is a loss to the US, in terms of trade, geopolitics or military. The US wants to maintain this global empire through Boeing, BAE, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin and the American defense contractors.

      For example, they make billions of dollars in weapon sales to India. India is a country that should not be spending billions of dollars in weapon sales when they have so many social needs. This is what [Dwight] Eisenhower warned about the military-industrial complex in 1961, that it has a disproportionate influence on American policymaking. Every drone shot is money in someone’s pocket.

      One of the things we were hearing in the US Senate in the 1930s was to nationalize the defense sector. Why should people make money off killing? It makes no sense to me. The second level is American hegemony and American global domination. Look at America’s wars. The US wants to control the economy all over the world. Why are we involved in Central America and Afghanistan? It is estimated that Afghanistan has mineral resources worth a trillion dollars. Look at the rare earths, the pipelines that go through that region. On one hand, it’s just naked economics and that’s always a factor.

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      Trump wants Iran’s oil, Syria’s oil and Iraq’s oil. He said that we should maintain our control over Syria’s oil. Which is why he shifted the American troops from the western part of Syria to the eastern part of Syria — to the oil-rich zone. That’s the way he feels. A lot of American policymakers feel the same way.

      During the Iraq War, one of the most popular signs was, “what is our oil doing under their sand?” We wanted the Iraqi oil, we thought we deserved it. And this goes back to [Franklin D.] Roosevelt. In 1944, he said to Lord Halifax, the British ambassador, that Saudi oil will belong to the US, Iranian oil will belong to the British and we will share Kuwaiti and Iraqi oil. So, when Mohammad Mosaddegh nationalizes the oil industry in Iran, the British freak out and Americans freak out.

      The problems with Iran run back to 1953, when the Central Intelligence Agency ran a coup to overthrow Mosaddegh. Why? Because the Anglo-Iranian oil company, which had 100% of Iranian oil, was giving the Iranians 16 cents on the dollar. The British were keeping 84 cents on the dollar. The Iranians were very impoverished as a result. Saudi Aramco in Saudi Arabia negotiated a new deal and they got 50 cents on the dollar. That infuriated the Iranians even further. They did what the British had done a few years earlier — they nationalized the oil industry. The British were outraged and decided they had to overthrow Mosaddegh.

      Mosaddegh was immensely popular. He featured as Time magazine’s man of the year in 1951. The US ambassador in Tehran wrote back to Washington that Mosaddegh had the support of 95 to 98% of the Iranian people. He was a hero throughout the Middle East for standing up to the imperialists. [Harry] Truman hesitated, but in 1953, when Eisenhower took office, he ran Operation Ajax and overthrew Mosaddegh. They had terrorist gangs, the CIA bought out the military leaders — it was outrageous — and then they brought the shah.

      The shah ruled for another 25 years through a brutal dictatorship. He used SAVAK, the Iranian intelligence agency, in order to impose domination in Iran, and then in 1979, the Iranians finally overthrew the shah and imposed their religious-nationalist regime under [Ruhollah] Khomeini. The people of Iran will obviously retaliate against the CIA. Especially after the US allowed the shah into the US for medical treatment.

      [Jimmy] Carter had proposed that the Iranians should develop their own nuclear power industry. The US was giving them nuclear fuel and wanted to build 12 nuclear reactors in Iran. And then we say it’s outrageous, why do they need nuclear power when they have all this oil? We pushed them to do that.

      The history of US-Iranian relations goes back further than 1979. If you look at the American media, when all this was happening, some people who were sensible traced it back to 1979. Any Iranian would trace it back to 1953. How would the Americans feel if Iran came here to depose a popular American president and replace him with a brutal dictator? The Iranians have got legitimate grievances against the US, not the other way around, obviously.

      Americans don’t know history. Which is why we have a low attention span. Talk about America and the endless wars. Start with the two big ones. Americans don’t know anything about the Korean War. It’s called the forgotten war in the US. Americans don’t know that millions of people died in that war. The Americans bombed the crap out of both Koreas. In 1951, the British annual military yearbook said that because of America’s bombing, South Korea doesn’t exist as a country anymore.

      We burned down almost all cities in South Korea and North Korea — and people were living in caves. It was horrific what the US did there. It was four times the number of bombs dropped in Japan and the Pacific in World War II.

      That was a nightmare for the Koreans and they remember it. The Koreans have a very different historical memory. The North Koreans have drilled the war into their heads. There are billboards, museums about what the US did during the Korean War. It is a very different historical memory as compared to the Americans. The Americans have no historical memory.

      Let me give you another example. The American and Russian understanding of World War II is completely different. For the US, World War II starts with Pearl Harbor. Then there’s a hiatus and we get involved a little in North Africa.

      But the real war for the Americans begins on June 6, 1944, with D-Day and the invasion of Normandy. The Americans bravely take the beaches, which we did. The Americans march to Berlin, defeat the Germans, win the war in Europe and the Americans are the heroes of World War II.

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      The Russian narrative is quite different. The war there begins with the German invasion [of the Soviet Union] on June 22, 1941, when they looked at the US for economic support for war material, which the US promised but couldn’t deliver. The US couldn’t deliver it because we thought that Europe is built on military industries and partly because of sabotage.

      We promised them the second front in late May 1942, but we didn’t open it up till 1944. The Russians know who won the war in Europe.

      The Germans lost 1 million on the western front, 6 million on the eastern front. I once did an anonymous survey with college students and I asked them: How many Americans died in World War II? The median answer I got was 90,000. OK, so they were just 300,000 off. I asked them: How many Soviets died in WW2? The median answer was 100,000. Which means they were only 27 million off.

      Which means these kids know nothing about World War II, they can’t understand what the Cold War was about, they can’t understand Ukraine now. That’s what Americans suffer from — a complete lack of understanding of history. In 2007, the national report card found that American high school seniors performed the worst in US history. Only 12% of high school seniors were found to be proficient in US history. Not outstanding, just proficient.

      What we found out from that survey is that even that number is bogus because only 2% could identify what the Brown vs. Board of Education Supreme Court case was about, even though it was obvious from the way the question was worded. It’s obvious that Americans are historically ignoramuses. That’s why Oliver Stone and I did the “Untold History” project to educate people about their own history.

      Americans know nothing about the Korean War, they don’t even remember Vietnam anymore. When Robert McNamara, the former US secretary of defense, came into my class, he told the students that he now accepts the fact that 3.8 million Vietnamese died in the war. But common Americans have no understanding of that.

      Mukhopadhyay: Not just Vietnam, even Laos and Cambodia saw a heavy death toll in the Vietnam war, right?

      Kuznick: Laos, Cambodia — the whole region was a disaster. The Vietnam War memorial in Washington has got the names of 58,280 Americans who died in the Vietnam War. The tragedy of Vietnam is that 58,280 Americans died. What they should have on that memorial is the name of 3.8 million Vietnamese, along with millions of Cambodians and Laotians, British, Australians, South Koreans — everyone who died. Right now, the wall is 492-feet long. If they include the names of everyone who died, the wall would be eight-miles long.

      The scary thing is that in a poll, 15-20% of students said that the Vietnam War was necessary to fight. These are 18 to 29-year-old people who love Bernie Sanders. These are the ones who are opposed to war generally, but they don’t know history.

      Mukhopadhyay: Why do people have such contradictory views about war in the US?

      Kuznick: Part of the reason you have these wars is: one, they are profitable; two, they allow the US to maintain hegemony; three, Americans are historically ignorant; four, they happen over there. Lindsey Graham had once said that if there’s war, they are dying over there, not here. Americans don’t get touched by these wars.

      The wars are fought by a very small tiny fraction of the population of professional soldiers, who are not from the middle classes. They come from mostly poor, rural backgrounds. They are mostly young people who don’t have good prospects in life. They are not my college students, they are not people I know — that’s the case for most of the middle class in the US.

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      It’s always another war, in another place, with very few American casualties. A lot of Afghans die, a lot of Iraqis die. These wars allow the US to maintain its hegemony and there’s a lot of profit. We have got 800 bases around the world. In 2009, Chalmers Johnson called it the empire of bases. We justify that in part by finding enemies. Alexei Arbatov, the Russian-Soviet strategist, once said the Soviet Union did the worst possible thing to the US by collapsing because they left them with no enemy.

      Once the Soviet Union collapsed, what did we do? We immediately intervened in Panama, overthrew the government there, we militarily intervened in Kuwait and Iraq. There is no enemy. We defined new enemies and we created them after the Soviet Union collapsed. There was a call to overthrow the government of Saddam Hussein in the 1990s, that was the goal. There was nothing to do with the nonsense about weapons of mass destruction which many people later exposed as a lie before the US invaded. This was just part of the US’ global agenda. The US doesn’t win these wars.

      The US has not won a war since 1983 when the US invaded Grenada, which was Operation Urgent Fury. We were able to defeat a couple of Cuban construction workers, after which [Ronald] Reagan said, America is proud and standing on its feet again. We can destroy things, we blow them up, but we didn’t win. We have been fighting, not winning, in Afghanistan for almost 20 years. Iraq is finally wanting to throw the US out. We have a military meant for destroying things, for killing people, for blowing things up, but not for creating what is really needed.

      Mukhopadhyay: A parallel I can draw is that both the US and India have not learned from history.

      Kuznick: India has such a rich history. How Gandhi and [Jawaharlal] Nehru led the global fight against the Cold War. They led the fight against the nuclear arms race. It was Nehru who said that American leaders are self-centered lunatics who will blow anybody up who gets in their way. Do we see Modi standing up or welcoming world peace in any way? War can happen anytime.

      Especially with these extreme nationalists in India and with the Pakistani military and intelligence community. Fortunately, both sides decided to hit each other in a way that wasn’t going to hurt last year, but the issue in Kashmir isn’t getting any better. The Indian army is twice as big and powerful as the Pakistani army. Indians would overrun the Pakistani army in the event of a war. Will Pakistan sit back and say, OK, you’re stronger and we surrender? No, they can use nuclear weapons. India will retaliate. We don’t know. There’s a real risk that it can escalate.

      Latest studies show that a limited nuclear war between India and Pakistan in which 100 Hiroshima-size nuclear weapons were used would create a nuclear winter, cities would burn, it would send 5 million tons of carbon and soot into the stratosphere.

      Within two weeks, it would encircle the globe, destroy global agriculture, temperatures on Earth would plummet to freezing; this would last for 10 years and that alone could cause up to 2 billion deaths. We [the US] have 4,000 nuclear weapons in the world, 80 times as powerful as the Hiroshima bomb. We are risking the future of our planet. We are dealing with that and the insanity of global warming. We have an existential crisis which requires real leadership right now. It’s too dangerous a world.

      Mukhopadhyay: You criticized Trump’s policy on North Korea. What should the president have done instead, and what can be done to diffuse the tension in the Korean Peninsula?

      Kuznick: North Korea is a difficult problem that requires diplomacy, not military action. I take it back to the 1994 deal that [Bill] Clinton had negotiated with North Korea. In 1994 and 2002, North Korea produced no plutonium and they abided by the nuclear deal. There was some suspicion about their nuclear program, but it wasn’t proven or confirmed. They deny it. That deal was very effective.

      The George W. Bush administration blew that up. Bush announced the “axis of evil” — Iran, Iraq and North Korea. Rather than deal with North Korea diplomatically, he put it in crosshairs. North Korea was very nervous about the US overthrow of their government.

      John Bolton, who is hated by North Koreans, said that the accusations against North Korea’s nuclear arsenal gave him the leverage to destroy the nuclear deal in 2002. He was happy that it happened. The North Koreans call Bolton human scum and a bloodsucker — and rightly so.

      Then, in 2006, North Korea tested their first nuclear weapon. They have had six since then. Last year, they tested their nuclear bomb, which was 17 times more destructive than the bomb thrown on Hiroshima. The North Koreans said it wasn’t a fusion bomb but a fission bomb, a hydrogen bomb — it just blew up an entire mountain. Then they tested an inter-continental ballistic missile that seemed like it could hit the US. That gave Trump the excuse to give the threat to start fire and fury.

      In 2017, it did seem like we were going to nuclear war and we seemed desperate to want to stop that. I was considering going to go to North Korea to interview Kim Jong Un and walk this back a little bit. We didn’t have to, as Trump decided to take a different tack. But I approved that Trump wanted to talk. I was glad that they met in Singapore. However, Trump has no diplomatic skills. That’s another powder cake ready to blow.

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      North Korea has enormous military capabilities and missiles poised to strike Seoul, a city of 25 million people, 35 miles from their border. The US is running these war games with decapitation drills to overthrow the government in North Korea — which is insane. The US has 28,500 troops stationed in South Korea. I was upset with Trump for creating a crisis when it didn’t have to exist.

      North Korea isn’t going to give up its nuclear arsenal. The North Koreans know that the only thing standing between them and being overthrown by the US is their nuclear weapons. When the US invaded Iraq, North Korea’s main newspaper said that Saddam made one big mistake: not having weapons of mass destruction. It was clear that North Koreans understood that and didn’t want to give up their weapons.

      From the very beginning, when Trump is talking about denuclearization, it’s absurd and the wrong thing to demand from North Korea. The first thing we should do is foster an atmosphere of trust. How do we do that?

      The Korean War has never ended. Instead of having a peace treaty at the end of the war, they signed an armistice. That war is still going on. One thing the North Koreans desperately want is a peace treaty to end that war. The second thing they want is for the US to stop their military exercises with South Korea.

      The US is overmilitarized. We don’t need 28,500 troops on the Korean Peninsula — we don’t need all the military exercises that we do. The third thing they need is sanctions relief. The US is heavily sanctioning North Korea. Even the UN.

      After the North Korea tests, China and Russia also supported the sanctions against North Korea. Everybody thinks that North Korea’s nuclear program is dangerous and that we should have a denuclearized Korean Peninsula. I obviously support that. But the North Koreans are not going to do that — until they are integrated in the global system and they have a measure of trust that they are not under attack.

      Would I like to see a different government in North Korea? Yes, I would. Do I want to see more freedom in North Korea? Yes, absolutely. The Korean people will have to do that. My friends in the South Korean embassy tell me the gross national standard of living, per capita gross domestic product in South Korea is 42 times as high as it is in North Korea. Vladimir Putin once said the North Koreans would rather eat grass than give up their nuclear program. Putin is right.

      It’s still a dangerous situation. We have to ease the sanctions. Nothing else has worked. The US program of maximum pressure has not worked. When something doesn’t work, you don’t double down on it, you try a different direction.

      You lift the sanctions on North Korea, say for six months, and see how they respond. Stephen Biegun, who is the US negotiator, was getting nowhere with the negotiations. The North Koreans don’t trust him and they don’t trust the US. Trump says absurd things like Kim Jong Un writes me love letters, we are in love. Trump doesn’t know what the term love means, he isn’t capable of love or empathy. But he wants to be flattered.

      The meeting in Hanoi is pointless. To get North Koreans to reciprocate, you do need the pressure from Russia and they do need assurances that the US won’t do a regime change there. At least UN sanctions need to be lifted so that North Korea’s economy responds. There isn’t mass starvation there, but they are under economic hardship and duress.

      It doesn’t make sense to me that a country where people barely spend time eating spend[s] so much money on weapons of mass destruction. It’s the insanity of our planet. Someone coming from another planet, looking at the Earth would say it’s insane to have a world where the richest eight [people] have more money than the poorest 3.8 billion. It’s insane to have a world that spends such vast amount of resources on perfecting the means of killing.

      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

      Can Zelensky Win Ukraine’s War on Corruption?

      by

      While the Ukrainian military continues to fight Russian-backed separatists in the east, it was the country’s bitter war on corruption that has exploded back into the spotlight last week. The decision by Ukraine’s constitutional court to strike down elements of anti-corruption legislation has brought protesters to the streets of Kyiv, with President Volodymyr Zelensky calling for an immediate legal response to nullify the court’s decision. Members of the court have framed their initial ruling and continued resistance as an attempt to maintain judicial independence and protect individuals, but the president and other public figures accuse the court of protecting the judges’ personal wealth and that of their political backers.

      Can Volodymyr Zelensky Bring Peace to Eastern Ukraine?

      READ MORE

      This particular challenge is yet another inflection point in a long-running battle between potential reformers and the entrenched networks of privilege and wealth that have dominated Ukraine’s political and economic apparatus since independence in 1991. Setbacks are common, and progress is slow for any country when it comes to combating corruption, but the magnitude of the current scandal means that Ukraine is at a new crisis point. A weak or ineffective response could potentially bury the already-faltering reformist agenda of Zelensky’s cabinet. Alternatively, this could be the moment when a corrupt institution overplays its hand in a way that serves to reinvigorate and rearm the Ukrainian anti-corruption project.

      Corruption in Context

      Scholars of corruption are quick to point out the lack of any final answers or even definitions of terms when it comes to diagnosing corruption. Corruption is present in all countries to some extent, but it manifests in Ukraine as a systemic rather than episodic issue. To take one of many definitions, systemic corruption means “interdependence on deviate behavior in public and/or private sector institutions.” Individual action is informed by the so-called sucker mentality — the knowledge that you would lose out personally if you do not engage in corrupt acts like everyone else.

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      Additionally, the opportunity costs of engaging in corrupt actions make devious behavior acceptable and highly profitable. We are not talking about one or two “bad eggs,” but a ready-made template for those who want to take advantage of others. The case involving Ukraine’s constitutional court stems from the interplay of the country’s legislative, executive and judiciary branches that, despite their relatively recent creation, all exist within a specific post-Soviet context.

      Volodymyr Zelensky’s presidential campaign was successful because it ran essentially on a one-issue platform — addressing corruption. This aim was rendered more plausible by Zelensky’s outsider status. The electorate was suffering from a lack of forward movement after the 2014 Revolution of Dignity, with progress stalled by the political and economic immediacy of the anti-terrorist operations against Russian-backed separatists. Zelensky came to power on the promise to end the conflict in the east and wage a war on corruption.

      As an executive, Zelensky is still more or less understood to be “personally incorruptible,” and his position allows him a large measure of power to highlight corruption and work with MPs on financial crime legislation. His Servant of the People party initially dominated the poles, winning the country’s first-ever single-party majority in the Ukrainian parliament. As a result, the president was able to pass legislation aimed at clearing up a number of high-risk sectors like banking and security services.

      The creation of the high anti-corruption court and the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU) were viewed as significant steps, while the upcoming land reform process represents another big step in upgrading the country’s rich agriculture system. That being said, MPs are by necessity often connected to the country’s oligarchs who want to ensure that their interests are not harmed. The constitutional court’s surprise ruling was made on the basis of a complaint by MPs associated with the millionaire personal friend of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Viktor Medvechuk; the same group of MPs is also working with those loyal to the infamous oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky to challenge the land reform package.

      On October 27, the constitutional court ruled that the National Agency on Corruption Prevention (NACP) no longer had the authority to require officials to submit electronic asset declarations. It also struck down the law that makes false declarations a criminal offense, calling it “excessive punishment.” In the words of Oleksandr Novikov, the head of the NACP, “The court has canceled all anti-corruption tools developed since Ukraine became independent.”

      Several of the judges themselves are currently under investigation for making false declarations, which could mean jail time if the ruling is declared null and void. This is in keeping with the traditional alliance between the judiciary and the legislative branch, with judges able to protect the rights of oligarchs and MPs from legal challenges.

      Betrayed Promise

      Both the war on corruption and with the separatists can be understood within a geopolitical context, meaning that both wars overlap and intersect. Much like the conflict in Donbas, the anti-corruption drive symbolizes turning away from Soviet and Russian influence in Ukraine in hope of enjoying the benefits of membership within the Euro-Atlantic community. The Revolution of Dignity was sparked by what many viewed as a move by then-president Viktor Yanukovych to take part in a corrupt transaction offered by Russia that would keep Ukraine from moving closer to the EU.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Corruption is articulated publicly as a Russian practice that has no place in Ukraine’s transition toward Western practices, and it appears that pro-Russian legislators and oligarch-backers have put up the most opposition to Zelensky’s reforms. But while it is dangerous to assume that oligarchs are necessarily in cahoots with Russian interests, the Ukrainian public has an understandably long and difficult relationship with anti-corruption rhetoric.

      The average Ukrainian is extremely skeptical of the authorities, and many of the people the author knows personally who initially voted for Zelensky always qualified their choice with, “But I doubt anything will change.” Approval ratings have plummeted for the Zelensky administration despite his personal appeal, and his Servant of the People party was hammered in local elections last week. The pressure to deliver has never been higher.

      Coverage of President Zelensky’s effectiveness as a reformer tends to revolve around the narrative of an actor discovering that the business of governance is actually quite difficult. While it is an evocative hook that references his rise to fame, all of Ukraine’s elected leaders have displayed a marked inability to move beyond rhetoric to achieve measurable gains. What makes Zelensky’s presidency so interesting is that his first year in office has shown noticeable improvements in terms of concrete legislation.

      The space for corrupt activity has been shrunk, but the reshuffling of the cabinet and mixed messaging about going after high-profile individuals means that the administration is perceived as sliding back on its aims. According to Chatham House’s Orysia Lutsevych, “This is a Rubicon for Zelensky.”

      Zelensky’s Rubicon

      In the immediate aftermath of the court’s decision, Zelensky introduced a draft law to reverse the ruling and remove the mandate from its current members. The legislation is aimed at restoring the public’s faith in the court as a legitimate organ of government, but the court’s judges and opposition parties have been quick to brand the legislation as an attempt by the executive office to gain control of the independent judiciary. The head of the constitutional court, Oleksandr Tupytsky, labeled the move a “constitutional coup.”

      It is true that the president has no technical power to disband the court, and opposition parties like Holos have been content to merely call for the resignation of the judges, a move that Tupytsky has ruled out. But with four of its 15 judges already under investigation for breach of the declaration law, the optics are not in the court’s favor.

      This particular crisis serves as the perfect example for the question of anti-corruption initiatives, namely: Can or should a country fight corruption from the top down? Given the power of MPs within the legislature covering for corrupt judges or prosecutors, a Chatham House report from 2018 states that “The process of cleaning up institutions must start at the top.” Reform efforts such as the creation of the NABU or the push to mandate the disclosure of property and financial assets for public servants have increased the pressure on those with something to hide.

      However, the consolidation of anti-corruption rhetoric under Zelensky has made his administration vulnerable both to opportunistic opposition parties and their oligarch backers, as well as jeopardizing the democratizing push that catapulted Zelensky into office. A strong showing from a single party can only take the movement so far, and, as the Atlantic Council’s Adrian Karatnycky points out, the “remedy is not unilateral action by the president and his majority in the Rada. What is needed is a national consensus with the support of the pro-Western opposition.” This struggle takes place amidst increasing pressure from Kolomoisky to stop land reform as well as reclaim his PrivatBank that was nationalized in 2016 under President Petro Poroshenko.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Ukraine’s former economy minister, Tymofiy Mylovanov, is more sanguine about Zelensky’s options for weathering the storm. “If the law goes through, Zelensky comes out a victor, recaptures control of the parliament, and demonstrates in the public eye that he is trying to fulfill his promises of getting rid of the corrupt elites and making Ukraine prosperous,” he said. But “if the law gets stuck, it is parliament that is to blame.”

      The question remains about how effectively Zelensky can cooperate with a parliament that would presumably continue to hemorrhage allies, meaning that his party can only hope that the constitutional crisis is resolved in a way that allows the president to achieve a public victory. Whether understood as a self-perpetuating environment or simply as actions of malicious or greedy individuals, corruption flourishes when allowed to become the status quo. The battle for the constitutional court and, by extension, the legitimacy of much of Zelensky’s anti-corruption legacy will be fought with all sides utilizing the public rhetoric of upholding the laws of Ukraine.

      For Volodymyr Zelensky, the judges know that “only a weak president and a weak state are a guarantee of preserving their corrupt lifestyle.” The fear now is that executive attempts to strengthen the state will simply erode support from other stakeholders while failing to disincentivize corrupt behavior.

      Progress is understandably relative, and the power of corrupt networks has had over three decades to grow and evolve. The rhetoric of war, whether on corruption or separatism, would seem to promise glory and immediacy of a result that can only lead to disappointment for a weary public. Ukraine has yet to win its war on corruption, and it seems to be put in an untenable geopolitical position by a hostile government in Moscow. That being said, Russia lost its battle with corruption a long time ago. Ukraine has taken a different path, and it remains to be seen whether it will succeed.

      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

      Glenn Greenwald: The Borderline Between Editing and Censorship

      by

      Glenn Greenwald’s image as a journalist grew over the past two decades from that of an outspoken blogger to reach the status of being both respected and feared as an authoritative voice in the world of investigative journalism. In 2014, he spearheaded the creation of The Intercept after securing generous funding from billionaire Pierre Omidyar, the founder of eBay.

      As a columnist for Salon from 2007 to 2012, Greenwald had developed a reputation for fearlessly challenging the Bush and Obama administrations. Then, after a move to The Guardian, he became the key player in a scoop that called into question the entire US security state and the military-industrial complex. His active role in the drama surrounding whistleblower Edward Snowden secured his reputation as a leading investigative journalist.

      Accompanied by filmmaker Laura Poitras, over the course of several days, Greenwald conducted an in-depth interview with Snowden in Hong Kong before the whistleblower’s departure to Moscow, where he still remains in exile. Shortly after that cloak-and-dagger event that dominated the news cycle for several weeks, Omidyar announced the creation of the news organization First Look Media and the launch of its first media outlet, The Intercept. It was led by a trio consisting of Greenwald, Poitras and Jeremy Scahill.

      Emmanuel Macron Defends His Crusade

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      Thanks largely to Greenwald’s reputation, The Intercept stood as the model of successful, professional independent journalism, free of corporate or governmental influence and ready to challenge the dominant power structures in the US and elsewhere. Most people considered Greenwald’s name and his dominant role to be the chief asset of The Intercept’s brand. That explains why the announcement last week of his resignation on the grounds of alleged censorship could not fail to produce a shockwave in the news industry.

      The first reaction came from The Intercept’s editor-in-chief, Betsy Reed, whom Greenwald accused of censoring his article dedicated to the Hunter Biden affair. Some may feel that “the lady doth protest too much” when, to defend her insistence on reducing the scope of his piece, she characterizes Greenwald as a spoiled, petulant child. Here is how she framed it: “The narrative he presents about his departure is teeming with distortions and inaccuracies — all of them designed to make him appear a victim, rather than a grown person throwing a tantrum.”

      Here is today’s 3D definition:

      Grown person:

      Someone who is old enough to realize that there is a power structure looming over them that will never accept to be reformed or even swayed by those who have unveiled its vices.

      Contextual Note

      Reed’s outburst turned out not to be the most tactful way to parry Greenwald’s accusation of censorship. Reporting on the conflict, Mediaite posted this headline: “‘A Grown Person Throwing a Tantrum’: Intercept Issues Blistering Statement Responding to Glenn Greenwald ‘Smear.’” Greenwald clearly appeared more civil and respectful in his complaint against The Intercept than Reed’s sour-grapes dismissal. One statement of Reed’s appears to contain unintentional comic effect. It’s a classic case of damning with faint praise: “We have the greatest respect for the journalist Glenn Greenwald used to be, and we remain proud of much of the work we did with him over the past six years.” May he rest in peace.

      Apart from the condescension that reads like a family member regretting a grandparent’s descent into the incoherence of Alzheimer’s, what this also ironically reveals is the recognition that The Intercept’s reputation still depends on its historical association with Greenwald. Even if Greenwald launches a rival outlet, his name will forever be linked with The Intercept. It will remain a major asset and a prop for the website’s future credibility. Even Reed cannot afford to keep antagonizing the petulant child or the doddering uncle.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Reed’s quandary is real. She must defend herself and cannot do otherwise than attack Greenwald. But calling him an over-the-hill has-been is fraught with danger. Her dilemma can be compared to the one faced by admirers of Muhammad Ali when the black radical anti-war hero of the 1960s turned into an ally of George W. Bush, the white Texan president famous for fomenting unjustified wars on foreign soil.

      The difference is nevertheless striking. The kinds of punches Ali received during his boxing career did far more physical damage than the multiple symbolic punches Greenwald has received throughout his career from the American, British and Brazilian establishments. (Greenwald did once receive real punches the hands of a Brazilian journalist and delivered one of his own.) After retiring from boxing, Ali suffered from dementia pugilistic that completely effaced his historical activism and many of his most active thought processes. In contrast, Greenwald seems to be suffering only from the political punches delivered by two parties in the US, the Democrats and the Republicans, who rival, in election after election, at presenting only the lesser of two evils as viable choices for voters. 

      The case can be made that Reed was acting as a responsible professional doing the job she was hired for and doing it well. The Intercept’s co-founder, Jeremy Scahill, has stepped up in her defense, heaping praise on Reed with this appreciation: “I have never questioned her professional or personal integrity, her immense skill as an editor, or her commitment to following the truth wherever it leads.” A close reading of a statement that begins by a negative affirmation “never” could reveal a slight faintness in the praise, but Scahill, unlike Reed, carefully avoids even a hint of damning.

      Interviewed by Krystal Ball, Scahill expressed on November 2 what is probably The Intercept’s consensus on the US presidential election, indicating a general sense of agreement with Greenwald: “Joe Biden represents the kind of official, legalized form of corruption that produces presidential candidates and Donald Trump is a garden variety crook.” Greenwald believes in denouncing corruption. Reed believes in arresting crooks. Matt Taibbi, a former colleague at The Intercept, made the point about media complicity more succinctly than Greenwald when he wrote this about Biden on Monday: “The same press that killed him for this behavior in the past let it all slide this time.”

      There are two ways of interpreting this quarrel depending on one’s priorities. The question is how important is it for the public to be aware of Biden’s “legalized form of corruption”? Greenwald thinks that awareness is essential to establish before the election because it will have an impact on future policy. Reed just wants to be free of President Donald Trump. The Intercept can deal with Biden after he’s elected.

      Historical Note

      Glenn Greenwald’s case against The Intercept is worth listening to, not in the interest of determining who may be right or wrong in his quarrel about censorship, but in terms of the substance of his article. His Substack post focuses on two related issues, both of which represent long-standing historical trends: the degradation of politics that explains a diminishing quality of US presidential candidates and the historical evolution of the media in its treatment of the facts at play during elections.

      Greenwald’s uncompromising treatment of the Democratic nominee, Joe Biden, obviously rubbed The Intercept’s editors the wrong way. They appeared to view his complaints merely from an electoral perspective. They read it essentially as a trivial attack on the former vice president. Though focused on Biden as a flawed candidate, Greenwald’s point was much more general. Biden’s casual nepotism is an indicator of systemic failure. The candidate’s flaws reflect and reveal a cancer at the core of democracy, a phenomenon aggravated by the media that too willingly let serious issues pass while aligning behind the lesser of two evils.

      Betsy Reed was closer to the pulse of her enterprise than Greenwald. She may even have felt more American than Greenwald, as someone who lives under the shadow of Donald Trump’s presidency, in the belly of the beast, in contrast to Greenwald, who long ago preferred exile in Brazil, which eventually put him under the shadow of President Jair Bolsonaro. The Intercept team understandably was committed to dumping Trump, if only to be free to focus on the real issues of government rather than the permanent reality TV show Trump has been running for the past four years.

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

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

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      in World Politics

      America in the Mid-70s and 2020

      by

      It was summer almost half a century ago when I got into that Volkswagen van and began my trip across America with Peter, a photographer friend. I was officially doing so as a reporter for a small San Francisco news service, having been sent out to tap the mood of the nation in a politically fraught moment. The Vietnam War, with all its domestic protests and disturbances, was just ending. North Vietnamese troops would soon enough enter Saigon, the South Vietnamese capital; the president of the United States, Richard Nixon, was then trapped in an escalating scandal called “Watergate.”

      And here was the odd thing. I felt trapped, too. In some way, I felt lost. As I put it then — and this should have a familiar ring to it, even if, in 1973, I was only referring to the TV version of the news — “That screen haunted my life. Somehow I wanted to shatter it and discover new, more human reference points, a true center of gravity.” I had the urge to break out of that world of mine and do the all-American thing, the Jack Kerouac thing: go “on the road.”

      Held Together With String, Can America Hold?

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      So, Peter and I set out on that famed American road, traveling from campgrounds to fast-food restaurants, carnival midways to Old Faithful, only to find ourselves trapped in what I called “the increasing corporate control not just of people on the job, but on their vacations, in their leisure hours.” I found myself interviewing, and him photographing, what I came to think of as a “population of disoriented nomads” — mostly lower-middle-class and working-class Americans, confused and angry, “pushed aside,” as I wrote then, by “forces they feel are beyond their control.” We were, it turned out, on someone else’s road entirely.

      In Milwaukee, we would be joined by Nancy, who later became my wife, and then would spend weeks following those all-too-unromantic highways (without a Jack Kerouac in sight), interviewing anyone who would talk to us. In the end, that attempt of a 29-year-old to break free from his own life, to figure out “where (or whether) I fit into American society” became my first book, “Beyond Our Control: America in the Mid Seventies.” In retrospect, that book about our strange journey into a country being reorganized for eternal consumption and the wellbeing of giant corporations became my own — as I would then call it — “dream-document excavated from our recent past.”

      Embed from Getty Images

      And yes, even so long ago, it was already a troubled moment in a troubled land. I must admit, though, that I hadn’t looked at “Beyond Our Control” in years, not until a friend recently found a copy, read it and emailed, quoting my own ancient text back to me to point out how eerily relevant it still was, how — in a sense — Trumpian parts of that 1973 America already were.

      He highlighted, in particular, an interview near the end of that book with “Frank Nelson” — I changed all the names, so who knows now what his real one was — about which more in a moment. That missive startled me. I had forgotten all those Frank Nelsons and perhaps as well the Tom Engelhardt who interviewed them so long ago.

      So, curious about that long-lost self of mine and the world I then inhabited, I picked up that old book and reread it in order to meet the young Tom Engelhardt on the road in another American universe. And how strange that journey back into my own — and our — past proved to be.

      The Right Wind Sweeping In Off the Plain

      So, if you have the patience for a little time travel, return with me to July 1973 and let me tell you about Frank Nelson, whom I met at a trailhead in Yellowstone National Park with his wife and three children. He was “a responsible, likeable family man” with — regardless of how hard I pressed him — “no vision of a better future.” A plumber and union shop steward from Cleveland, as well as the chairman of the union bargaining committee in his factory, he proudly told me, “I have really dedicated myself to the labor movement all my life and I believe in it.”

      Yet he was already talking back then about the growing “conservative approach” of the trade union movement and the possibility that it would be destroyed, he believed, by “the race issue.” He was clearly both anti-Semitic and racist. (“Being white, I would prefer the continued supremacy of the white race instead of this homogenization that’s coming.”) And while discussing what he felt was a growing American crisis with me, he also told me that “your liberals believe in one world government … and your conservatives” — which he clearly believed himself to be — “believe in America first, American domination.” And remember, this was July 1973, not July 2019. It was Nixon’s America, not Trump’s.

      Frank and his wife Helen were open, chatty and so pleased with the interview experience that she gave me their address and asked me to send them a copy of anything I wrote. In other words, he said nothing he felt was out of the range of propriety. My reaction, on leaving him, was: “For me, this interview seemed like the crescendo towards which the bits and pieces of our trip have been building.”

      As I had discovered in those weeks of interviewing, Nelson, like so many others on that vacation loop, was filled to the brim with half-spoken and unspoken fears about a future in which, as I put it then, “the [corporate] pushers will survive, maybe even profit. It’s these people we’ve talked with, the vast mass of middle people who have barely eked out a toehold in the system, who will be cut off at the knees. And, being hooked [on that system], they don’t know what to do.”

      Then, thinking about Nelson (and others like him we had met), I added:

      “The next step for Frank Nelson, however, may be out of this passivity and into the streets … The motivation, the frustration, the anger is there. Even a new ideology, the ideology of race and nationalism is emerging. All that’s missing is the right wind sweeping in off the plain, a combination of forces at the top of the society willing to mobilize Frank Nelson.

      … Sinking people don’t usually have a trenchant analysis of reality. All they require is the promise that their hard-won sense of status will not go down the drain; and an explanation, any explanation, on which to hang their hopes. American society leaves people so confused and reality so disjointed that almost any formula which pretends to put the pieces together and appeals to what people think of as their self-interest may prove acceptable.”
      In those pages, I had already brought up Weimar-era Germany — the moment, that is, before Adolf Hitler rose to power — and then I added:

      “In Germany in the thirties, the formula that worked was anti-Semitism, anti-communism, and a rabid nationalism combined with full employment and a return to domestic stability. If Frank Nelson’s any criterion, the formula may not be that much different here … Nationalism could well be the banner under which the struggle and the inevitable sacrifices will come, and race the bogeyman just as Jews were in Germany. The identifiable (Black) poor are the symbol for Frank Nelson of what he has to lose, what could be ripped out of his hands. And he’ll defend himself against that even if he has to ally himself with ‘the Jews and rich Gentiles’ to do it.

      Frank Nelson and millions of other Americans are set up for the picking, if a group at the top sees profit in the crop.”
      Welcome to a More Extreme World

      In the age of Donald Trump, the Proud Boys, and the Wolverine Watchmen, much of this should feel strangely familiar. If, however, my reporting was in any way prophetic, I have to admit that I didn’t realize it all these years — not until my friend wrote me. Still, it should be obvious, in retrospect, that, bizarre as the present moment may seem, it didn’t come out of the blue, not faintly. How could it have?

      For that matter, Trump didn’t exactly arrive out of the blue either. As a start, just a couple of months after I got back to San Francisco from that cross-country jaunt of ours, he made his first appearance on the front page of The New York Times. He was 27, two years younger than me, and already the president of the Trump Management Corporation. The headline, shades of the future Donald and the white nationalism that’s accompanied him, was: “Major Landlord Accused of Antiblack Bias in City.”

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      The Justice Department was then charging Trump’s father Fred and him with refusing “to rent or negotiate rentals ‘because of race and color’” in the buildings they then owned and managed. And his first words quoted in that paper about those charges were, appropriately enough: “They are absolutely ridiculous … We never have discriminated and we never would.” Of course not! And what hasn’t been increasingly, ridiculously Trumpian about our all-American world ever since?

      When you think about it, with that moment in 1973 in mind, Trump himself might be reimagined as some extreme combination of Richard Nixon (a man with his own revealing tapes just like The Donald) and George Wallace. The racist governor of Alabama and a third party candidate the year Nixon slipped by Democrat Hubert Humphrey to first win the White House, Wallace was a man best known for the formulation “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”

      Nixon took the presidency in 1968 and again in 1972 with his own form of racism, the “southern strategy,” first pioneered by Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater in 1964 (and then called, far more redolently, “Operation Dixie”). In a racially coded and distinctly nationalist fashion, Nixon brought southern whites in the formerly Democratic bastions of the South definitively into the Republican fold.

      By 1980, Ronald Reagan wouldn’t think twice about launching his own presidential election campaign with a “states’ rights” speech (then still a code phrase for segregation) near Philadelphia, Mississippi, just miles from the earthen dam where three murdered civil rights workers had been found buried in 1964. And in the intervening years, the Republican Party, too, has gone south (so to speak) big time and into a form of illiberality that was, even in the Nixon era, striking enough. By 2016, of course, that southern strategy had become something more like a national strategy in the (pussy-grabbing) hands of Donald Trump.

      Meanwhile, the corporatization — I might, then, have thought of it as the fast-foodization — of the country that Peter, Nancy and I were traveling across was already well underway. At the same time, a new kind of all-American inequality was, in those years, just beginning to make itself felt. Today, with the first billionaire in the White House and other billionaires, even in the midst of a pandemic, continuing to make an absolute mint while so many Americans suffer, the inequality that left Frank Nelson and his peers so desperately uneasy has never stopped rising to truly staggering levels. 

      Believe me, even if Trump has to leave the Oval Office on January 20, 2021, we’ll still be in his America. And 47 years after my long, strange trip, I think I can guarantee you one thing: If it weren’t for the pandemic that has this country in its grasp and has swept so many of us off any path whatsoever, some young reporter, stir crazy and unhappy, would still be able to head out onto a 21st-century “road” and find updated versions of Frank Nelson galore (a surprising number of whom might be well-armed and angry).

      Welcome to America! There’s no question that, so long after Peter, Nancy and I traveled that not-so-open road, our lives and this country are way beyond our control.

      Writing about the people I had interviewed then (about whom, with the single inspirational exception of a museum director I met in Twin Falls, Idaho, I knew nothing more), I said: “I don’t doubt that they, like me, are still heading reluctantly toward a future that will make the summer of 1973 seem truly unreal and leave us all wondering: Could life ever have really been that way?”

      In COVID-19 America, with the West Coast still burning, Colorado in historic flames, a record 11 storms hitting the Gulf Coast and elsewhere this hurricane season, and heat of every sort rising everywhere, don’t for a second believe that the phrase “beyond our control” couldn’t gain new meaning in the decades to come.

      Welcome to a more extreme version of the world Frank Nelson and I already inhabited in 1973.

      *[This article was originally published by TomDispatch.]

      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

      Held Together With String, Can America Hold?

      by

      In December 2007, Mwai Kibaki beat Raila Odinga in the Kenyan general election and all hell broke loose. Odinga’s supporters took to the streets, alleging Kibaki had “stolen” the election. Police fired on demonstrators and some died. In retaliation, the targeted ethnic cleansing of Kikuyus, Kibaki’s community, began. 

      The Kikuyus themselves responded by targeting other communities. A bloodbath ensued. The New York Times observed that “ethnic violence, fueled by political passions” was threatening to ruin the reputation of a country regarded as one of the most promising in Africa. It turns out that this promise was illusory. Rival ethnic groups within arbitrary colonial borders were held loosely together by self-interest and little national identity. The country was held together with string.

      360° Context: The 2020 US Election Explained

      READ MORE

      About 20 years ago, Stephen Heiniger, then a British policeman, visited a dear friend in New York. Like my view of Kenya, he observed that New York was held together with string. The Guatemalan who worked in a restaurant’s kitchen had little in common with the owner. He did not really identify with New York or even the US. The immigrant was slaving away to make money to send back to his family, socializing largely with people from his part of the world.

      What Heiniger observed about New York 20 years ago is increasingly true for America today. The country is full of such loose groups held together by self-interest. This is largely defined in terms of success, which in turn is mainly measured by money. A strong social, regional or national identity and common purpose in a large, diverse and unequal land is increasingly lacking.

      In the 2020 presidential election, America might be about to emulate Kenya. Political passions run so strong that the threat of violence looms high. Not since the Civil War ended in 1865 has America been so divided. The reputation of a country long considered the most promising in the world faces damage, if not ruin.

      The Mother of All Elections

      Michael Hirsh, the deputy news editor of Foreign Policy, thinks this is the most important election ever. It is more important than the seminal elections of 1800, 1860 and 1932. These led to the triumphs of Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt respectively, changing the course of history. In each of these elections, America was divided but managed to hold together and move forward.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Hirsh argues that the 2020 election is the most significant because President Donald Trump has damaged institutions of American democracy to such a degree that the future of “the 244-year-old American experiment of a republic of laws” is at stake.” He blames Trump for openly encouraging racial violence, stoking division and failing to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.

      Hirsh reflects the unease of many members of the American elite. For a long time, they have self-consciously thought of themselves as a modern-day Rome. Now, they fear that America could end up “as just another abject discard on the ash heap of failed republics going back to ancient Rome and Greece.”

      As during the times of the Cold War, Americans fear an enemy. This time it is another communist country, a former ally named the People’s Republic of China. Hirsh believes the US is stumbling precisely at “a moment when [it] has lost its material preponderance” to China. Its “central place in stabilizing the global system” is on the ballot.

      The Economist shares Hirsh’s view. It makes a case for Democratic nominee Joe Biden in a breezy editorial that seems to have been penned in the Oxford Union. It declares Biden not to be the miracle cure for what is ailing America but a good man needed to “restore steadiness and civility to the White House.”

      Media organizations from The New York Times to The Times of India agree upon the importance of the 2020 election. They have published millions of words on the subject and sought out pollsters to predict the election outcome. As the day of reckoning draws nigh, campaigning has reached fever pitch. Candidates for the House of Representatives, the Senate and the White House are all summing up their final arguments to Americans who have not voted yet. Even as citizens go to the polls on November 3, the Senate has confirmed Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, giving conservatives a 6-3 majority over liberals. Everything is on the ballot in 2020, including and especially the courts.

      To understand the presidential election, it might be useful to cast our eyes to an event 30 years ago. In August 1990, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein “invaded and annexed Kuwait.” The US swung into action to liberate an oil-rich country that its cash-poor neighbor had gobbled. Hussein threatened “the mother of all battles” but suffered abject defeat. This was a heady time for the US. The Berlin Wall had fallen. George H.W. Bush had come to the White House promising “a kinder and gentler nation” and “no new taxes.” Ronald Reagan’s revolution of getting the government off people’s backs and bringing the Soviet Union to its knees seemed to have succeeded. By the end of 1991, the Soviet Union had collapsed.

      President Bush had presided over the ultimate triumph of America. The dreaded Cold War with its specter of nuclear destruction was finally over. America’s liberal democracy and free market economy were deemed the only way forward. Francis Fukuyama waxed lyrical about the end of history and humanity was supposed to enter the gates of paradise, with all earthlings securing unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

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      After a spectacular victory in the Gulf and the glorious subjugation of the Soviet Union, Bush should have romped to victory in the 1992 election. Instead, he lost. The economy had been slowing and deficits had been growing, forcing Bush to raise taxes. Many Americans went apoplectic. They could not forgive the president for breaking his promise. There was unease even then with the new era of globalization that Bush kicked off.

      In that election, Texan billionaire Ross Perot made a dash for the White House campaigning against this brave new world. He warned against “shipping millions of jobs overseas” because of “one-way trade agreements.” Perot argued that countries with lower wages, lesser health care or retirement benefits and laxer environmental laws would attract factories away from American shores. With the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) on the cards, Perot famously predicted “there will be a giant sucking sound going south.” Perot did not win, but he took enough votes away from Bush to pave Bill Clinton’s primrose path to the White House.

      In 2020, Trump is running for a second term as Perot’s angry child. He has jettisoned “bad” trade deals like NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Biden is the successor to Bush and Clinton. He was vice president when the US negotiated the TPP. The die is cast for a clash between two radically different visions for the future.

      Who Will Win?

      In 2016, I had an uncanny feeling that both Brexit and Trump’s triumph were not only possible but probable. In February that year, I examined the UK’s troubled marriage with Europe and argued that British Prime Minister David Cameron had promised more than he delivered, which would cause him problems later. In July, I posited that we could soon be living in the age of Trump because of increasing inequality and rising rage against entrenched elites.

      I followed the two articles with a talk at Google in August on the global rise of the far right. Aggrieved by the superciliousness of journalists based in New York and Washington, I resonated deeply with the “left-behind” voters. They believed that American elites had turned rapaciously parasitic and sanctimoniously hypocritical. It seemed inevitable that some Pied Piper would lead a populist reaction.

      In 2020, I do not have my finger on the pulse in the same way as in 2016. Social distancing and limited travel in the era of COVID-19 has made it difficult to estimate what really is going on. Besides, Americans say radically different things depending on which candidate they support. Often, they are very guarded or say little, making it hard to judge what is truly happening.

      Democrats seem convinced that the nation is horrified by four years of a Trump presidency. They see him as crass, racist, misogynist, dishonest and deeply dangerous. Democrats believe that Americans will punish Trump for damaging institutions, spreading hatred and lowering the dignity of his office. Opinion polls give the Democratic Party a handsome lead even in some key battleground swing states. Pollsters were wrong in 2016, but they might have improved their methods since. Therefore, Democrats believe that they could retain their majority in the House of Representatives, flip the Senate and win back the White House.

      Republicans do not seem to have much faith in these polls. Many are confident of another close victory. They predict losing the popular vote but winning the Electoral College. Republican strategists are banking on the silent white vote to turn out in their favor. Many voters are uncomfortable with the Black Lives Matter movement, calls to “defund the police” and prospects of higher taxes. They fear Biden to be a Trojan horse for the culture warriors of the far left led by Kamala Harris, his running mate. They worry about identity politics and the strains it places on the social fabric. Republicans also hope to pick up minority support from Hispanics who oppose abortion, Indians who back Trump’s good friend Narendra Modi, Taiwanese who hate China and others.

      Making Sense of Donald Trump

      When I speak to Americans, one thing is clear. This election is a referendum on President Trump. His manifest flaws have been chronicled by numerous publications and innumerable late-night comedy shows. Yet Trump still retains the trust of many Americans. Why?

      The best answer came from some militia members I spoke to in West Virginia. They conceded that Trump lies but gave him credit for telling one big truth: Things had turned much too ugly for far too many people like them. 

      Some of these militia members were veterans who had served in Iraq and Afghanistan. They were filled with a burning sense of injustice. These gentlemen had withering contempt for the likes of Paul Bremer, Paul Wolfowitz and John Bolton who served President George W. Bush. They viewed wars abroad as a criminal waste of American blood and treasure. These war veterans pointed out that Bremer, Wolfowitz and Bolton had been courtiers who climbed up the Washington greasy pole without ever serving in uniform. They remarked that Bush himself was a draft dodger who wriggled out of serving in Vietnam because of his father but sent others to die on foreign shores.

      Embed from Getty Images

      These West Virginians went on to say that their children had few prospects. Since 1991, working-class jobs have left for China. So, their children need a good education to compete for the few decent jobs in the services sector. However, they study in schools with few resources and overstretched teachers.

      The militia members’ argument is simple but powerful. Only children who study in private schools or state schools in districts where houses cost a million dollars or more get into top universities, which cost a mere $300,000 or so for an undergraduate degree. Affluent foreign students also make a beeline for America after high school. Such is the competition that most parents hire expensive admissions consultants for their children. So, those who come from hardworking ordinary American families are simply outgunned.

      The celebrated entrepreneurs of the US might be dropouts, but top corporates hire largely, if not exclusively, from top universities. The West Virginians pointed out that, before Barrett’s nomination, “all nine justices of the nation’s highest court would have attended law school at either Yale or Harvard universities.” Those who go to posh schools and top universities effortlessly enter the cushy salaried class. They can walk in and buy a million-dollar home with a tiny down payment. All they need apart from their job is a good credit score. In contrast, ordinary Americans live paycheck to paycheck.

      One militia member went on to discuss the bailout in some detail. He told me he had voted for change twice but got more of the same instead. This gentleman blamed President Barack Obama for caving in to Wall Street. He said veterans struggled to get by while bankers got big bonuses from taxpayer money. For him, this showed that Democrats had sold out to Wall Street. He declared that fortunes of the new feudal superclass have been made through the serfdom of an ever-increasing underclass. In his memorable words, the system has “f**ked us over. Now, we will f**k it up.”

      The West Virginians brought to life many arguments I have made over the last decade. In July 2013, I argued that increasing inequality, lack of access to quality education and an erosion of liberty were chipping away at the very basis of the American dream. Over the years, I have cited many studies that chronicled how America was becoming more unequal. In fact, inequality of both income and wealth has worsened even more during the COVID-19 pandemic. Note the economy has tanked but stock markets have stayed high. Social mobility continues to plummet. Poverty is shooting up dramatically. So is hunger. Surviving the terrible American nightmare has become more of a reality than achieving the great American dream.

      Such developments have led to much anger. In an eloquent interview, Trump supporter-turned-opponent Anthony Scaramucci explained why the president won the support of the white working class in places like West Virginia, Wisconsin and Michigan in 2016. For this class, the television celebrity was “an avatar to express their anger.” In rural and suburban areas, blighted factory towns and rundown neighborhoods, Trump was the “orange wrecking ball” to “disrupt and change the system.”

      Another interview by Trump’s former strategist, Steve Bannon, is equally instructive. He rightly says that the American economy is no longer based on capitalism but on neo-feudalism. This former Goldman Sachs highflier argues that the underclass and the superclass don’t pay for anything. The working and middle class are left taking the tab. Quantitative easing (QE) might have saved the economy from collapse but has largely benefited the wealthy. In a clever turn of phrase, Bannon calls QE the bailing out of the guilty who had crashed the system itself. Trump is a “very imperfect instrument” for this populist revolt.

      Likable Uncle Joe and Dancing Kamala

      Many Republicans tell me that they like Biden. They think he is a good and likable man. These folks have reservations about his son Hunter but admire his late son Beau who served in the US Army. However, Republicans fear Biden could be turning senile and Harris would be the real power behind the throne. They reserve their special ire for Harris who they damn for practicing identity politics. Even many Democrats are uncomfortable about her cozy relationships with the Silicon Valley mafia who Americans feel care more about India than Indiana. 

      For many Republicans, Harris is a disingenuous elitist who plays the race card to win votes and sympathy. She had no compunctions putting young black men into jail for minor crimes as a prosecutor to further her political career. They detest the fact that Harris played the race card against Biden during the Democratic presidential primaries. She made a big deal about his opposition to mandatory busing of colored children to largely white schools. Now, Harris is merrily dancing her way to the White House on a presidential ticket with the same man she excoriated not too long ago. Politics is a bloodsport, but some find Harris a bit too canny and bloodthirsty.

      Biden’s supporters take a different view. They think he is still in good health and has good judgment. As per The Economist, the former vice president is “a centrist, an institutionalist, a consensus-builder.” He is exactly what the doctor ordered for a deeply-traumatized nation. Biden will not only steer the Democratic Party forward but also get rid of the scourge of Trump for the Republicans. Decency and civility will return to public life and the White House. Many point to Biden’s impassioned 1986 speech against the Reagan administration’s support for the South African apartheid regime as evidence of his deep commitment to equality and justice.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Democrats see reservations against Harris as evidence of America’s deep-seated sexism and racism. With Indian and Jamaican parents, Harris is multiracial like Obama. For many, she is the future of America. She could be the first woman vice president, breaking the key glass ceiling. Immigrants like her parents provide America the talent to stay top dog. As long as Sundar Pichai, Elon Musk and John Oliver make a beeline for America, Uncle Sam will triumph over the Middle Kingdom.

      Democrats make good arguments for the Biden-Harris ticket, but they lack the passion Trump supporters displayed. The fervor of the 2008 Barack Obama or the 2016 Bernie Sanders campaigns is distinctly missing. Democrats are not offering a clear vision or a program for the future. They are running on kicking out Trump and restoring American democracy. It remains to be seen if this will enthuse working-class voters to switch their support to the party of Roosevelt.

      Another Battle in a Long War

      Both Biden and Trump have declared they are fighting for America’s soul. It is the mother of all battles in what could prove to be a protracted war. The country is now economically, educationally, socially, culturally and virtually divided. The division that cable news networks exacerbated a few decades ago is now on steroids thanks to social media. Algorithms have created filter bubbles and echo chambers. People see more and more of the same. In the post-truth world of fake news, people cannot even agree upon basic facts.

      In this unequal and polarized world, institutions are falling short. Congressmen who face reelection every two years are constantly fundraising. They have little time to write laws or hold the executive accountable. Senators often stick around forever, some until they die. Partisanship is so intense that little gets done. Judges are increasingly appointed on partisan grounds and this is damaging their legitimacy.

      At the heart of the matter is a simple question: What holds America together? Bannon has a point when he says that immigration and trade benefit the affluent by lowering costs and raising profits. If hedge funds in Greenwich, Connecticut and internet oligopolies in Silicon Valley, California invest globally and move money through complex legal structures in different countries, what do they have in common with a plumber in Hattiesburg, Mississippi or a carpenter in Great Falls, Montana?

      After the ethnic cleansing in 2007-08, Kenyan leaders signed a power-sharing agreement and the country drifted back to normalcy. As Kenya gears up for elections in 2022, fear and loathing are in the air again. The dormant divisions in this former colony threaten to erupt. The same is true for America. Young black men suffer violent policing and mass incarceration in America’s unjust criminal justice system. The white working class feels betrayed. The woke generation wants to upend the old social order. Feminists want to burn down the patriarchy. Catholics and evangelicals aim to outlaw abortion. With America’s different tribes pulling in different directions, things are truly held together with string.

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