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Germany’s ‘Invisible’ Chancellor Heads to Washington Amid Fierce Criticism
Olaf Scholz will try to repair Germany’s credibility in the Ukraine crisis when he meets President Biden on Monday. Next on his agenda: Kyiv and Moscow.BERLIN — One headline asked, “Where is Olaf Scholz?” A popular magazine mocked the German chancellor’s “art of disappearance.” And his ambassador in Washington wrote home that Germany was increasingly seen as an unreliable ally in a leaked memo that was all the buzz this past week and began with the words: “Berlin, we have a problem.”With the threat of war hanging over Europe and rising tensions in the standoff with Russia over Ukraine, Mr. Scholz is headed to Washington on Monday for his first meeting with President Biden since taking over as chancellor in December. Foremost on his agenda: Show the world that Berlin is committed to the Western alliance — and, well, show his face.Less than two months after taking over from Angela Merkel, his towering and long-serving predecessor, Mr. Scholz is drawing sharp criticism at home and abroad for his lack of leadership in one of the most serious security crises in Europe since the end of the Cold War.His Social Democrat-led government, an untested three-way coalition with the Greens and Free Democrats, has refused to send arms to Ukraine, most recently offering 5,000 helmets instead. And it has been cagey about the type of sanctions that could be imposed in the event of a Russian invasion.As for the chancellor, he has made himself conspicuously scarce in recent weeks — so scarce that the newsmagazine Der Spiegel described him as “nearly invisible, inaudible.”While President Emmanuel Macron of France and Prime Minister Mario Draghi of Italy have been busy calling President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Mr. Scholz has so far neither picked up the phone to Moscow nor visited. He has not gone to Kyiv, Ukraine, yet, either, and his visit to Washington, some note, took almost two months to organize.Ukrainian soldiers on Saturday on the front line in eastern Ukraine. While the United States and other NATO countries rushed military aid to Ukraine, Germany offered 5,000 helmets.Tyler Hicks/The New York TimesLast week, Emily Haber, Germany’s ambassador to the United States, sent a memo to Berlin, warning of “immense” damage to Germany’s reputation. It was not just the news media but many in the U.S. Congress who questioned Germany’s reliability, she reported. In the view of many Republicans, she wrote, Berlin is “in bed with Putin” in order to keep the gas flowing.It has not helped that since then, Gerhard Schröder, a former German chancellor from Mr. Scholz’s Social Democrats, accused Ukraine of “saber rattling” and just on Friday announced that he would join the board of Gazprom, Russia’s most prominent energy company.“Scholz’s central mission for his Washington visit has to be restoring German credibility,” said Thorsten Benner, a founder and the director of the Global Public Policy Institute in Berlin.“It’s not how Mr. Scholz envisaged his first U.S. trip as chancellor,” Mr. Benner added. “But international security was never near the top of his agenda.”Mr. Scholz, 63, has been a familiar figure in German politics for more than two decades. He was general secretary of his party and mayor of the northern port city of Hamburg before serving in two governments led by Ms. Merkel’s conservatives, most recently as her finance minister.A labor lawyer and lifelong Social Democrat, Mr. Scholz narrowly won the election last fall on a platform promising workers “respect” and a higher minimum wage, while nudging Germany on a path to a carbon-neutral future.Foreign policy barely featured in his election campaign, but it has come to dominate the first weeks of the new administration. Rarely has a German leader come into office with so many burning crises. As soon as Mr. Scholz took over from Ms. Merkel in early December, he had to deal not just with a resurgent pandemic but with a Russian president mobilizing troops on Ukraine’s borders.Russian infantry vehicles during drills in January in the Rostov region of Russia. The standoff with Russia over Ukraine has proved particularly vexing for Mr. Scholz.Sergey Pivovarov/Reuters“It wasn’t the plan,” said Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff, the vice president of the Berlin office of the German Marshall Fund. “This is a government that has huddled around an ambitious plan of industrial transformation, but the reality of a crisis-ridden world has interfered with their plans.”Of all of the crises, the standoff with Russia has proved particularly uncomfortable for Mr. Scholz. His Social Democrats have traditionally favored a policy of working with Moscow. During the Cold War, Chancellor Willy Brandt engineered “Ostpolitik,” a policy of rapprochement with Russia.The last Social Democratic chancellor, Mr. Schröder, is not just a close friend of Mr. Putin’s, he has also been on the payroll of various Russian energy companies since 2005, notably Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2, the two gas pipelines connecting Russia directly with Germany under the Baltic Sea.It was not until last week, after Mr. Schröder’s comments about Ukraine, that Mr. Scholz felt compelled to publicly distance himself from the former chancellor.“There is only one chancellor, and that is me,” he told the public broadcaster ZDF.His party’s divisions over Russia are one way to explain why Mr. Scholz has shrunk away from taking a bolder lead in the standoff with Russia, prompting some to lament the loss of leadership of his conservative predecessor.Mr. Scholz won the election last year primarily by convincing voters that he would be very much like Ms. Merkel. Terse, well briefed and abstaining from any gesture of triumph, he not only learned to sound like the former chancellor, he even emulated her body language, holding his hands together in her signature diamond shape.But now that he is running the country, that is no longer enough. German voters are hungry for Mr. Scholz to reveal himself and increasingly impatient to learn who he is and what he actually stands for.The receiving station for the $10 billion Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, which connects Russia directly with Germany. If Russia invades Ukraine, Mr. Scholz will be under enormous pressure to close it down. Sean Gallup/Getty ImagesAs the current crisis unfolds, Mr. Scholz’s imitation of Ms. Merkel is also less and less convincing. She was understated and studious, and often kept her work behind the scenes, but she was not invisible.In the spring of 2014, after Mr. Putin invaded Crimea, Ms. Merkel was on the phone to him almost every day. It was Berlin that united reluctant European neighbors behind costly sanctions and persuaded President Barack Obama, distracted by domestic affairs, to focus on a faraway conflict.At that point, of course, Ms. Merkel had already been chancellor for nine years and knew all of the protagonists well.“The crisis came very soon for Scholz,” said Christoph Heusgen, a veteran diplomat and Ms. Merkel’s foreign policy adviser during the last Ukraine crisis.Mr. Scholz’s advisers have been taken aback by the level of criticism, arguing that Mr. Scholz was merely doing what Ms. Merkel had so often done: Make yourself scarce and keep people guessing while engaging in quiet diplomacy until you have a result.When Mr. Scholz has spoken up on the current crisis — referring to the Russia-owned gas pipeline Nord Stream 2 as a “private-sector project” before pivoting to saying that “everything” was on the table — he has conspicuously recycled language that Ms. Merkel used before.President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia with Chancellor Angela Merkel in Deauville, France, in June 2014. In the spring of 2014, after Mr. Putin first invaded Ukraine, Ms. Merkel was on the phone to him almost every day.Sasha Mordovets/Getty ImagesBut given the escalation in the current crisis, that language is long outdated, analysts say.“He’s overlearned the Merkel style,” Mr. Kleine-Brockhoff of the German Marshall Fund said. “He’s Merkel-plus, and that doesn’t work in a crisis.”After facing mounting criticism from Kyiv and other Eastern European capitals, Mr. Scholz’s leadership is increasingly being questioned at home, too.In a recent Infratest Dimap poll, Mr. Scholz’s personal approval rating plummeted by 17 percentage points, to 43 percent from 60 percent in early January, the sharpest decline for a chancellor in postwar history, the firm says. Support for his Social Democrats fell to 22 percent, lagging the conservatives for the first time since last year’s surprise election victory.Mr. Scholz’s team announced that after returning from Washington, the chancellor will pivot to a full schedule that he hopes will shift German diplomacy into high gear. Following his meeting with Mr. Biden, he will meet with Mr. Macron; the Polish prime minister, Andrzej Duda; and the three leaders of the Baltic States. The week after, he will travel to Kyiv and Moscow, in that order.Senior diplomats say it is high time for such a pivot, starting with Monday’s visit to the White House.Mr. Scholz has a seeming center-left ally in Mr. Biden, who has so far refrained from publicly criticizing Berlin. Not since President Bill Clinton’s second term have both the White House and the German chancellery been in the hands of center-left leaders, and for all of the wavering on the German side, the two administrations have been in close contact throughout.Mr Scholz, right, listening to President Biden, left, at the start of the virtual Summit for Democracy in December. Mr. Biden has so far held off on publicly criticizing Berlin.Michele TantussiBut patience is running thin, and Mr. Scholz will have to bring something to the table.“There has to be a visible sign of commitment to the alliance,” Mr. Kleine-Brockhoff said. “That’s what other allies are doing: The Spanish, the Baltic countries, the Poles, the Brits — everyone has offered something to strengthen deterrence on the eastern flank.”German lawmakers have started preliminary conversations about beefing up their troop presence in Lithuania, officials say. Other options include more naval patrols in the Baltic Sea and more air patrols in Bulgaria and Romania.As important as any material commitment may be the words Mr. Scholz uses — or does not use — to publicly communicate that commitment.“Maybe for the first time he could mention Nord Stream 2 by name when talking about possible sanctions,” Mr. Kleine-Brockhoff said. “He needs to make a clear statement that Germany gets the situation and will stand with its allies in a language that appeals to people in the U.S. and ideally not in his usual flat language,” he added. More
What Would Helsinki 2.0 Look Like Today?
The European security order has broken down. You might think that’s an overstatement. NATO is alive and well. The Organization for Security and Cooperation (OSCE) in Europe is still functioning at a high level.
Of course, there’s the possibility of a major war breaking out between Russia and Ukraine. But would Russian President Vladimir Putin really take such an enormous risk? Moreover, periodic conflicts in that part of the world — in Ukraine since 2014, in Georgia in 2008, in Transnistria between 1990 and 1992 — have not escalated into Europe-wide wars. Even the horrific bloodletting of Yugoslavia in the 1990s was largely contained within the borders of that benighted former country, and many of the Yugoslav successor states have joined both the European Union and NATO.
In Ukraine, More Than European Peace Is at Stake
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So, you might argue, the European security order is in fine shape, and it’s only Putin who’s the problem. The United States and Europe will show their resolve in the face of the Russian troops that have massed at the border with Ukraine, Putin will accept some face-saving diplomatic compromise and the status quo will be restored.
Even if that were to happen and war is averted this time, Europe is still in a fundamental state of insecurity. The Ukraine conflict is a symptom of this much deeper problem.
The current European security order is an overlay of three different institutional arrangements. NATO is the surprisingly healthy dinosaur of the Cold War era with 30 members, a budget of $3 billion and collective military spending of over a trillion dollars.
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Russia has pulled together a post-Cold War military alliance of former Soviet states, the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), that is anemic by comparison with a membership that includes only Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Instead of expanding, the CSTO is shrinking, having lost Azerbaijan, Georgia and Uzbekistan over the course of its existence.
And then there’s the Helsinki framework that holds East and West together in the tenuous OSCE. Neither Russia nor its military alliance was able to prevent the march of NATO eastward to include former Soviet republics. Neither NATO nor the OSCE was able to stop Russia from seizing Crimea, supporting a separatist movement in eastern Ukraine or orchestrating “frozen conflicts” in Georgia and Moldova.
Presently, there are no arms control negotiations between East and West. China became Russia’s leading trade partner about a decade ago, and the United States and European countries have only fallen further behind since. Human rights and civil liberties are under threat in both the former Soviet Union and parts of the European Union.
So, now do you understand what I mean by the breakdown of the European security order? The Cold War is back, and it threatens once again to go hot, if not tomorrow then perhaps sometime soon.
So, yes, Ukrainian sovereignty must be defended in the face of potential Russian aggression. But the problem is much bigger. If we don’t address this bigger problem, then we’ll never really safeguard Ukraine, deal with Russia’s underlying concerns of encirclement or tackle the worrying militarization of Europe. What we need is Helsinki 2.0.
The Origins of Helsinki 1.0
In the summer of 1985, I was in Helsinki after a stint in Moscow studying Russian. I was walking down one of the streets in the Finnish capital when I came across a number of protesters holding signs.
“Betrayal!” said one of them. “Appeasement!” said another. Other signs depicted a Russian bear pressing its claws into the then-Baltic republics of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia.
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I’d happened on this band of mostly elderly protesters outside a building where dignitaries from around the world had gathered to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the Helsinki Accords. At the time, I had only a vague understanding of the agreement, knowing only that it was a foundational text for East-West détente, an attempt to bridge the Iron Curtain.
As I found out that day, not everyone was enthusiastic about the Helsinki Accords. The pact, signed in 1975 by the United States, Canada, the Soviet Union and all European countries except Albania, finally confirmed the post-war borders of Europe and the Soviet Union, which meant acknowledging that the Baltic states were not independent but instead under the Kremlin’s control. To legitimize its control over the Baltics in particular, a concession it had been trying to win for years, the Soviet Union was even willing to enter into an agreement mandating that it “respect human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief, for all without distinction as to race, sex, language or religion.”
At the time, many human rights advocates were skeptical that the Soviet Union or its Eastern European satellites would do anything of the sort. After 1975, “Helsinki” groups popped up throughout the region — the Moscow Helsinki Group, Charter 77 in Czechoslovakia — and promptly discovered that the Communist governments had no intention of honoring their Helsinki commitments, at least as they pertained to human rights.
Most analysts back then saw the recognition of borders as cold realpolitik and the human rights language as impossibly idealistic. History has proved otherwise. The borders of the Soviet Union had an expiration date of 15 years. And, ultimately, it would be human rights — rather than war or economic sanctions — that spelled the end of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. Change came in the late 1980s from ordinary people who exercised the freedom of thought enshrined in the Helsinki Accords to protest in the streets of Vilnius, Warsaw, Prague and Tirana. The decisions made in 1975 ensured that the transitions of 1989-91 would be largely peaceful.
After the end of the Cold War, the Helsinki Accords became institutionalized in the OSCE, and briefly, that promised to be the future of European security. After all, the collapse of the Soviet Union meant that NATO no longer had a reason for existence.
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But institutions do not die easily. NATO devised new missions for itself, becoming involved in out-of-area operations in the Middle East, intervening in the Yugoslav wars and beginning in 1999 expanding eastward. The first Eastern European countries to join were the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland, which technically brought the alliance to Russia’s very doorstep (since Poland borders the Russian territory of Kaliningrad). NATO expansion was precisely the wrong answer to the question of European security — my first contribution to Foreign Policy in Focus back in 1996 was a critique of expansion — but logic took a backseat to appetite.
The OSCE, meanwhile, labored in the shadows. With its emphasis on non-military conflict resolution, it was ideally suited to the necessities of post-Cold War Europe. But it was an unwieldy organization, and the United States preferred the hegemonic power it wielded through NATO.
This brings us to the current impasse. The OSCE has been at the forefront of negotiating an end to the war in eastern Ukraine and maintains a special monitoring mission to assess the ceasefire there. But NATO is mobilizing for war with Russia over Ukraine, while Moscow and Washington remain as far apart today as they were during the Cold War.
The Helsinki Accords were the way to bridge the unbridgeable in 1975. What would Helsinki 2.0 look like today?
Toward Helsinki 2.0
The Helsinki Accords were built around a difficult compromise involving a trade-off on borders and human rights. A new Helsinki agreement needs a similar compromise. That compromise must be around the most important existential security threat facing Europe and indeed the world: climate change.
As I argue in a new article in Newsweek, “In exchange for the West acknowledging Russian security concerns around its borders, Moscow could agree to engage with its OSCE partners on a new program to reduce carbon emissions and transition from fossil fuels. Helsinki 2.0 must be about cooperation, not just managing disagreements.”
The Russian position on climate change is “evolving,” as politicians like to say. After years of ignoring the climate crisis — or simply seeing it as a good opportunity to access resources in the melting Arctic — the Putin administration change its tune last year, pledging to achieve carbon neutrality by 2060.
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There’s obviously room for improvement in Russia’s climate policy — as there is in the United States and Europe. But that’s where Helsinki 2.0 can make a major contribution. The members of a newly energized OSCE can engage in technical cooperation on decarbonization, monitor country commitments to cut emissions, and apply new and stringent targets on a sector that has largely gotten a pass: the military. It can even push for the most effective decarbonization strategy around: demilitarization.
What does Russia get out of the bargain? A version of what it got in 1975: reassurances around borders.
Right now, everyone is focused on the question of NATO expansion as either an unnecessary irritant or a necessary provocation in American-Russian relations. That puts too much emphasis on NATO’s importance. In the long term, it’s necessary to reduce the centrality of NATO in European security calculations and to do so without bulking up all the militaries of European states and the EU. By all means, NATO should be going slow on admitting new members. More important, however, are negotiations as part of Helsinki 2.0 that reduce military exercises on both sides of Russia’s border, address both nuclear and conventional buildups, and accelerate efforts to resolve the “frozen conflicts” in Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova. Neither NATO nor the CSTO is suited to these tasks.
As in 1975, not everyone will be satisfied with Helsinki 2.0. But that’s what makes a good agreement: a balanced mix of mutual satisfaction and dissatisfaction. More importantly, like its predecessor, Helsinki 2.0 offers civil society an opportunity to engage — through human rights groups, arms control advocates, and scientific and educational organizations. This might be the hardest pill for the Kremlin to swallow, given its hostile attitude toward civil society. But the prospect of securing its borders and marginalizing NATO might prove simply too irresistible for Vladimir Putin.
The current European security order is broken. It can be fixed by war. Or it can be fixed by a new institutional commitment by all sides to negotiations within an updated framework. That’s the stark choice when the status quo cannot hold.
*[This article was originally published by FPIF.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
Boris Johnson’s Convenient Bravado
In the prelude to World War I, Western nation-states, from North America to the Urals, found themselves involved in a strange game nobody really understood. It turned around their perception of each nation’s individual image on the world stage. Each nation imagined itself as wielding a form of geopolitical power whose hierarchy was impossible to define.
Even the borders of nations, the ultimate criterion for defining a nation-state, had become hard to understand. The idea of each nation was built on a mix of geographical, cultural, linguistic, ethnic, religious and ideological considerations. These became infinitely complicated by shifting relationships of dependency spawned by the dominant colonial model they all accepted as normal. And not just normal. Colonialism appeared to both Europeans and Americans as an ideal to aspire to.
Coming to Terms With the Game Being Played on the Russia-Ukraine Border
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Two world wars in the first half of the 20th century had the effect of seriously calming the obsession of Western nations with their individual images. For most of the nation-states emerging from the Second World War, an air of humility became the dominant mood. Two hegemons emerged: the United States and the Soviet Union. But even those powerhouses accepted to work within the framework of an idealized system, the United Nations. That forced them to respect, at least superficially, a veneer of outward humility. The Cold War’s focus on ideologies — capitalism vs. communism — served to hide the fact that the new hegemons were the last two political entities authorized to assert the geopolitical power associated with the previous century’s colonial nation-states.
The current showdown between the US and Russia over events at the Ukrainian border shows signs of a return to the ambience that preceded the First World War. The Soviet Union disappeared 30 years ago, leaving a weak Russian state in its stead. The US has been on a steep decline for two decades since the confusion created on 9/11.
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That should signify the existence of an opportunity for non-hegemonic nation-states to reemerge and potentially vie for influence on the world stage, as they did before World War I. After a century of adaptation to the consumer society on a global scale, however, the similarities may only be an illusion.
Still, some people appear to believe in an idea definitively discarded by history. The New York Times’ take on the latest posturing of Great Britain proves that the illusion is still alive in some people’s heads. In recent days, Prime Minister Boris Johnson has been diligently seeking to drag his isolated, Brexited nation into the fray of Eastern European border disputes, conjuring up reminiscences of pre-1914 Europe.
Over the weekend, British intelligence spread the “intelligence” that President Vladimir Putin is seeking to install a pro-Russian leader in Kyiv. Times reporter Mark Lander cites unnamed “British officials” who “cast it as part of a concerted strategy to be a muscular player in Europe’s showdown with Russia — a role it has played since Winston Churchill warned of an ‘Iron Curtain’ after World War II.”
Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:
Muscular player:
An actor or performer whose wardrobe and makeup teams have the ability to turn the player into an image of Atlas or Hercules during a performance on a stage
Contextual Note
In the games that precede a major military conflagration, nations feel compelled to adopt attitudes that go well beyond their ability to perform. Lander quotes Malcolm Chalmers, the deputy director-general of a think tank in London, who explains that Johnson’s Britain “is differentiating itself from Germany and France, and to some extent, even the U.S.” He adds this pertinent observation: “That comes out of Brexit, and the sense that we have to define ourselves as an independent middle power.”
There’s much that is pathetic in this observation. In a totally globalized economy, it is reasonable to doubt the idea of a “middle power” has any meaning, at least not the meaning it once had. Outside of the US and China, Russia may be the only remaining middle power, because of two things. First, its geography, its sheer landmass and its future capacity to dominate the Arctic. Second, its military capacity carried over from the Soviet era. The rest of the world’s nations, whether middle or small, should not even be called powers, but “powerlessnesses,” nations with no hope of exercising power beyond their borders. Alongside the middle and small, there may also be two or three “major” powerless nations: India, Brazil and Australia.
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But, of course, the most pathetic aspect of the description of Britain’s ambition is the fact that Johnson’s days as prime minister appear to be numbered. He is already being hauled over the coals by his own party for his impertinent habit of partying during a pandemic.
In a press conference in Kyiv on February 1, Johnson deployed his most muscular rhetoric. For once finding himself not just on the world stage but in the eye of the hurricane, he felt empowered to rise to the occasion. “This is a clear and present danger,” he solemnly affirmed. “We see large numbers of troops massing, we see preparations for all kinds of operations that are consistent with an imminent military campaign,”
The hollowness of Johnson’s discourse becomes apparent with his use of the expression, “clear and present danger,” a locution that derives from a US Supreme Court case concerning the limits on free speech guaranteed by the First Amendment. Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes used the phrase in his draft of the majority decision in 1919. It became a cliché in American culture, even reaching the distinction of providing the title of a Hollywood action movie based on a Tom Clancy novel.
As for his analysis of the clear and present danger, Johnson, who studied the classics at Oxford but maybe missed Aristotle, seems to ignore the logical inconsistency of assuming that if A (military buildup) is consistent with B (a military campaign), it does not make B predictable and even less “imminent.” That, however, is the line the Biden administration has been pushing for weeks. Johnson’s abject adherence to it may be a sign of the fact that Johnson is incapable of doing what Chalmers claimed he was trying to do: differentiate Britain — even “to some extent” — from the US.
Historical Note
The Times’ Mark Lander is well aware of the hyperreal bravado that explains Johnson’s move. “The theatrical timing and cloak-and-dagger nature of the intelligence disclosure,” Lander writes, “which came in the midst of a roiling political scandal at home, raised a more cynical question: whether some in the British government were simply eager to deflect attention from the problems that threaten to topple Prime Minister Boris Johnson.”
Lander goes on to cite Karen Pierce, the British ambassador to the United States, eager to remind people of the historical logic of Johnson’s move. She refers to a British tradition rife with cloaks and daggers. “Where the Russians are concerned, you’ll always find the U.K. at the forward end of the spectrum.” She wants us to think back to Britain’s active participation in the Cold War, punctuated by an occasionally embarrassing episode such as the 1961 Profumo affair, starring model and escort Christine Keeler. But she knows that what best illustrates that glorious period for Britain in its holy struggle against the Soviet Union is James Bond, who has long been “at the forward end” of the Hollywood spectrum. In our hyperreal world, Pierce knows that fiction will always dominate and replace our understanding of reality.
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We need to ask another question in a world conditioned by the image of Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dwayne “the Rock” Johnson. Does the world really need muscular players today? The ancient Greeks imagined Heracles as a naturally muscular hero, who built up his bulk through his deeds, not through his workouts in the gym or to prepare for body-building competitions. Heracles was about killing lions with his bare hands, slaying Hydras, capturing bulls, and even cleaning stables — that is, getting things done. For the Greeks, Heracles was a muscular being, not a muscular player.
When Greek playwrights actually put Heracles on the stage, he could be tragic (Euripides, “The Tragedy of Herakles”) or comic (Aristophanes, “The Frogs”). In that sense, Arnold Schwarzenegger, from “Conan the Barbarian” to “Twins,” fits the role. The difference is that Heracles was a deity (the son of Zeus with the mortal Alcmene) and, thanks to the completion of his seven labors, became a god on Mount Olympus. When Schwarzenegger completed his labors as a muscular player in more than seven films, he became a Republican politician in California.
*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Fair Observer Devil’s Dictionary.]
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
Dissecting the Ukraine Crisis (Language and the News – Updated Daily)
As we announced in January, by highlighting the everyday abuses of the language of public personalities and the media, Fair Observer’s new running feature prolongs the four-year-old tradition of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary (now reduced to a weekly format). We will frequently add new items to the month’s entries. Each item will cite an occurrence in the news and add a short reflection focusing on its intended and unintended meaning.
We invite readers to join us and submit their suggestions of words and expressions that deserve exploring, with or without original commentary. To submit a citation from the news and/or provide your own short commentary, send us an email.
February 1: Multiple Audiences
CNN reports that Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is feeling some discomfort in the face of US President Joe Biden’s eagerness to create panic around the idea of a Russian threat. Zelensky himself describes Russia’s actions as “dangerous but ambiguous.”
“Earlier in the day, another source from the US side said there is a recognition in the White House that Zelensky has ‘multiple audiences’ and is trying to balance them. ‘On the one hand, he wants assistance, but he has to assure his people he has the situation under control. That’s a tricky balance.’”
Though the source cited only two of the audiences, there are certainly a few others that were not mentioned. It could be said that nearly every relatively powerless country has at least two audiences: its people and whatever hegemonic power has decided to support it. The United States is by far the most prolific hegemonic “audience” of countries across the globe, though some fear China may surreptitiously catch up. The idea of being an audience, of course, implies an attitude of listening attentively, usually through the hegemon’s diplomats but just as significantly, through its spies.
Why Monitoring Language Is Important
Language allows people to express thoughts, theories, ideas, experiences and opinions. But even while doing so, it also serves to obscure what is essential for understanding the complex nature of reality. When people use language to hide essential meaning, it is not only because they cynically seek to prevaricate or spread misinformation. It is because they strive to tell the part or the angle of the story that correlates with their needs and interests.
In the age of social media, many of our institutions and pundits proclaim their intent to root out “misinformation.” But often, in so doing, they are literally seeking to miss information.
Is there a solution? It will never be perfect, but critical thinking begins by being attentive to two things: the full context of any issue we are trying to understand and the operation of language itself. In our schools, we are taught to read and write, but, unless we bring rhetoric back into the standard curriculum, we are never taught how the power of language to both convey and distort the truth functions. There is a largely unconscious but observable historical reason for that negligence. Teaching establishments and cultural authorities fear the power of linguistic critique may be used against their authority.
Fair Observer’s Language and the News feature seeks to sensitize our readers to the importance of digging deeper when assimilating the wisdom of our authorities, pundits and the media that transmit their knowledge and wisdom.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More
- in US Politics
US Senate panel close to approving ‘mother of all sanctions’ against Russia
US Senate panel close to approving ‘mother of all sanctions’ against RussiaNegotiations for package of sanctions against Putin ‘on the one-yard line’, says Bob Menendez of foreign relations committee
Opinion: Russia’s phony war is playing out as surreal theatre
The leaders of the Senate foreign relations committee said on Sunday they were on the verge of approving “the mother of all sanctions” against Vladimir Putin, warning there would be no appeasement as the Russian president contemplates an invasion of Ukraine.UK to bring in measures to allow for tougher sanctions on Russia, says TrussRead more“We cannot have a Munich moment again,” the panel’s Democratic chair, Bob Menendez of New Jersey, told CNN’s State of the Union, referring to the 1938 agreement by which allies ceded parts of Czechoslovakia to Hitler, believing it would stave off war.“Putin will not stop if he believes the west will not respond,” Menendez said. “We saw what he did in 2008 in Georgia, we saw what he did in 2014 in pursuit of Crimea. He will not stop.”Menendez said he believed bipartisan negotiations for severe sanctions were “on the one-yard line”, despite disagreements with Republicans over whether measures should be imposed before or after any Russian invasion. The UK government promised to ramp up sanctions against Putin and his associates.Tensions on the Ukraine border continued to escalate with Reuters reporting the Russian military build-up included supplies of blood in anticipation of casualties. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, told Fox News Sunday: “Putin has a lot of options available to him if he wants to further invade Ukraine, and he can execute some of those options imminently. It could happen really, honestly, at any time.”Seeking to show bipartisan resolve, Menendez gave CNN a joint interview with his committee’s ranking Republican, James Risch of Wisconsin.Menendez said: “There is an incredible bipartisan resolve for support of Ukraine, and an incredibly strong bipartisan resolve to have severe consequences for Russia if it invades, and in some cases for what it has already done.“We are building on the legislation that both Senator Risch wrote independently, and I wrote, which I called the mother of all sanctions. It’s to include a variety of elements, massive sanctions against the most significant Russian banks, crippling to their economy, Russia sovereign debt. These are sanctions beyond any that we have ever levied before.”Risch said talks had been a “24 hour-a-day effort for the last several days” in an attempt to reach agreement over sanctions timing and content, and that he was optimistic.“That’s a work in progress,” Risch said, when pressed over discussions about pre-emptive sanctions or measures to be taken in the event of an invasion. “[But] I’m more than cautiously optimistic that when we get back to DC tomorrow that we’re going to be moving forward.”Menendez said he believed western allies did not have to wait to start penalising Putin.“There are some sanctions that could take place up front because of what Russia has already done, cyber attacks on Ukraine, false flag operations, the efforts to undermine the Ukrainian government internally,” he said.“But then the devastating sanctions that ultimately would crush Russia’s economy, and the continuing lethal aid that we are going to send, means Putin has to decide how many body bags of Russian sons are going to return to Russia.“The sanctions we’re talking about would come later on if he invades, some sanctions would come up front for what has been done already, but the lethal aid will travel no matter what.”Risch criticized the stance of several far-right figures, including the Fox News host Tucker Carlson and the Kentucky congressman Thomas Massie, who have questioned why the US is backing Ukraine and opposing Russia. Carlson said “it makes sense” that Putin “just wants to keep his western border secure” by opposing moves by Ukraine to join Nato.“We side always with countries that are democracies, and certainly there isn’t going to be a truce committed in that regard,” Risch said.“But the people who were saying that we shouldn’t be engaged in this at all are going to be singing a very different tune when they go to fill up their car with gas, if indeed there is an invasion. There are going to be sanctions that are going to be crippling to Russia, it is going to cripple their oil production. And as we all know, Russia is simply a gas station that is thinly disguised masquerading as a country. It is going to have a devastating effect on the economy around the world.”UK ready to commit extra forces to Nato allies as Russia tension mountsRead moreOn NBC’s Meet the Press, Dick Durbin, co-chair of the Senate Ukraine caucus, addressed concerns aired by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday that growing rhetoric over the crisis was causing panic and destabilising his country’s economy.His comments followed a call with Joe Biden that Ukraine officials said “did not go well”.“Any decision about the future of Ukraine will be made by Ukraine,” said Durbin, an Illinois Democrat. “It won’t be made in Moscow or in Washington, in the European Union or in Belarus. It’s their future and their fate and their decision as far as that is concerned.”The caucus co-chair, Republican Rob Portman of Ohio, who is also on the foreign relations committee, told NBC he believed Putin had underestimated the unity of Nato and others.“One thing Vladimir Putin has done successfully is he has strengthened the transatlantic alliance and countries around the world who are looking at this and saying, ‘We cannot let this stand, we cannot let this happen’,” Portman said.“For the first time in nearly 80 years we could have a major and very bloody conflict in Europe unless we stand up together and push back, and so far so good.”TopicsUkraineRussiaUS foreign policyUS national securityUS militaryBiden administrationUS politicsnewsReuse this content More - in Elections
How Independent Voters Feel About Biden
More from our inbox:Grading Biden on the EconomyIf Only Republicans Were as Bold as the BritsSanctions Against Russia if It Invades UkraineYes, They Deserve a Lawyer Illustration by Cristiana Couceiro, photographs by Chris Jackson/Getty Images and Pool photo by Steve ParsonsTo the Editor:“14 Independent Voters Share Their Fears” (Sunday Review, Jan. 23) reflects attitudes that may cause the downfall of the Biden presidency and result in even greater negative consequences.In response to a request for “a word or phrase that describes President Biden,” the answers were weakly moderate (e.g., “reasonable”) to completely negative (e.g., “incoherent,” “pathetic,” “clueless,” “complete disaster,” “spaced out”).Consider the issues and opposition that Mr. Biden faces: Vladimir Putin and Ukraine, Chinese economic and territorial expansionism, Covid, a divided Congress, Iran negotiations, Build Back Better, inflation, Supreme Court rulings, voting rights, economic and social justice, and last, but definitely not least, climate change. Consider also that the Afghanistan pullout and infrastructure bill are done.I do not believe that any president since World War II has confronted and tried to address so many major, even existential, issues at one time. I was not initially a Biden supporter. I do not necessarily agree with him on everything. My solutions may differ on the issues. But if I were to be asked for a word to describe President Biden, it would be “courageous.”Dean R. EdstromEden Prairie, Minn.To the Editor:As I read through the transcript of the focus group with “independent” voters, I couldn’t help but think: I voted for Mitt Romney in 2012 and worked on Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016. Where’s my focus group?The media’s obsession with using Obama-Trump voters as a representation of independent voters has never made sense to me. While these voters may represent a segment of independent voters, they seem more drawn to strong personalities than good policies. Many in the group seemed susceptible to misinformation, a trait that I imagine led them to Donald Trump.There are other independents in this country who can provide much more interesting (and dare I say nuanced) takes on how the administration is doing. Those voters can have just as much of an impact on the elections in 2022 and 2024, if not more. I hope The Times will consider highlighting those voices as well in the future.Eric HinkleArlington, Va.Grading Biden on the Economy Illustration by Rebecca Chew/The New York Times; photographs by Doug Mills/The New York Times, and Lauri Patterson, via Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “President Biden’s Economy Is Failing the Big Mac Test” (editorial, Jan. 23):Your editorial succinctly summarizes the economic policies of the Biden administration, the current state of the economy and its likely future trajectory. With all that in mind, it concludes that President Biden made the right choice in firing up the economy to avoid a sluggish recovery that would have caused considerable pain for many, even though this approach has caused near-term pain for a segment of the population.Were one, however, to read the headline, or even its first few paragraphs, one would come away with the incorrect notion that Mr. Biden — who the editors acknowledge has less ability to affect the economy than popularly conceived — has engaged in failed policies that have left people worse off than they ought to be.The Times can and should do better.Seth GinsbergEnglewood, N.J.To the Editor:The Times’s failing grade for President Biden’s economic performance needs to be re-examined. The editorial tells us your main measure is real weekly wages — the average worker’s wages adjusted for inflation. The editorial determined that Mr. Biden has failed, since the average real weekly wage fell by 2.3 percent over the last year.There are two major problems with this measure. The first is a composition effect. In 2020, many low-paid workers were laid off. This raises the average, in the same way the average height in a room rises when the shortest person leaves. The composition effect went the opposite way in 2021, as low-paid workers were rehired.The other is a pandemic price effect. Many prices, most notably gasoline, were depressed when the world economy shut down because of the pandemic. Predictably, these price declines were reversed when the economy reopened.If we want a more honest measure, we would look at real wage growth over the last two years, which is a very respectable 2.9 percent.Dean BakerKanab, UtahThe writer is senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research.To the Editor:The problem is, nobody really understands the economy.Different economists will give different reasons for why the economy is doing what it’s doing. Some will get it right, many won’t. Some might be only partly right.When it comes down to it, there are often multiple reasons why the economy does what it does. And, no matter what the president does, the economy will go its own way because of multiple factors. So is President Biden at fault? A little bit yes and a little bit no.We have an economy being manipulated by Covid, oil-producing nations, supply chains, businesses inflating prices, etc. The president is the most prominent individual to aim at, but he’s only a small part of the problem. Do you know anyone who’d be more effective?Marshall CossmanGrand Blanc, Mich.To the Editor:Rather than blaming “Democrats, unable to agree on the terms of a permanent expansion” for the expiration of the child tax credit, the blame should be placed on one Democrat, Senator Joe Manchin, and the 50 Republicans who are united in opposition.Michael CaplowSeattleIf Only Republicans Were as Bold as the BritsPrime Minister Boris Johnson in Parliament on Tuesday.Jessica Taylor/Uk Parliament, via Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “How Partying Could Be Boris Johnson’s Undoing” (The Daily podcast, Jan. 25):As I watch the British prime minister, Boris Johnson, tumble into a conflagration of his own lies and hubris as he flagrantly flouted Covid restrictions while the rest of Britain abided by the rules, I am struck by the members of his own Tory Party who are openly stating their disgust at his behavior.Certainly they are motivated by self-interest and the preservation of the Tory majority, but one can only wonder where we would be in this country if Mitch McConnell and other Republicans had confronted Donald Trump and openly declared their actual personal opinions about his mendacity and malignancy as David Davies, a senior member of the Conservative Party, did in Parliament. He quoted the words spoken to Neville Chamberlain: “You have sat there too long for all the good you have done. In the name of God, go!”The Republican leadership simply did not have the morality and courage of David Davies. We are all paying the price for their lack of character.Robert GrossmarkNew YorkTo the Editor:I have been struck throughout the pandemic by the resonances with Edgar Allan Poe’s story “The Masque of the Red Death,” in which a prince, attempting to escape a deadly plague, holes himself inside a palace and throws a masquerade ball. Spoiler alert: The plague gets in, disguised as a flamboyantly dressed guest.It does not surprise me that Boris Johnson’s demise may be thanks to a party of his own.Alice WalkerBrooklynSanctions Against Russia if It Invades Ukraine Mikhail Metzel/SputnikTo the Editor:If Vladimir Putin invades Ukraine, then the United States, Britain and the European Union should close their borders to Russian citizens and deny them visas.Let the oligarchs find new places to buy their mansions and launder their money. The West should not be a refuge for Russian money and rich Russians.Michael R. SlaterSan Luis Obispo, Calif.Yes, They Deserve a LawyerThe Rev. John Udo-Okon, pastor of the Word of Life International Church in the South Bronx, hopes to be trained to help his congregants defend themselves against debt-collection suits.Thalia Juarez for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Do Debtors Really Need a Lawyer When Sued?” (news article, Jan. 26):Yes, they do! Hundreds of thousands of overwhelmingly Black and brown low-income people face debt collection in New York State — from pending cases and cases in which creditors secured court judgments against them. Why should they have to settle for nonprofessional counsel in legal proceedings that can determine if they have food on the table and a roof over their heads for themselves and their families?If you have the means, you would never settle for a nonprofessional, and they should not have to either. New York State should expand civil legal services in this grossly underfunded area, particularly at this critical time.Dora GalacatosNew YorkThe writer is executive director of the Feerick Center for Social Justice, Fordham University School of Law. More
