The continent was split over support for the US-led coalition in the Middle East. Paris and Berlin refused to back it, whereas leaders from mainly former communist states, like Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, alongside a few Western allies, Washington’s call for action. Donald Rumsfeld, the American Secretary of Defense, in a press conference at the NATO headquarters in 2003:

You’re thinking of Europe as Germany and France. I don’t. I think that’s “old Europe.” If you look at the entire NATO Europe today, the center of gravity is shifting to the East. And there are a lot of new members.

Rumsfeld, effectively a political ambassador of US President George W. Bush, dismissed the assembled Franco-German opposition in the manner that only a superpower that felt itself globally predominant could. This controversial distinction between “Old” and “New” Europe captured the geopolitical reality of that moment: On security matters, recent EU entrants aligned more closely with the US, while the traditional Western European powers charted a more independent course. This would endure as one of the signals of how the “war on terror” changed the US perspective of its European allies and vice versa.

Fast forward to the 2020s, and US President Donald Trump’s foreign policy has begun to mirror this divide. There is no shortage of parallels between the hawkish of the Bush era and Trump’s revival of the “with us or against us” ethos, often the White House’s will against allied consensus.

In both cases, Europe’s major powers have struggled to restrain Washington’s impulsiveness when its leader is fixated on a course of action. But there is a distinct element to Trump’s invocation of such turn-of-the-century paradigms, and it has more to do with security and the cohesion of the European theater than with anything else.

The new transatlantic reality

Back in December, a leaked draft of Trump’s allegedly laid out a plan to prioritize American support for a select few European governments, explicitly listing Austria, Hungary, Italy, and Poland as countries the US “work more with … with the goal of pulling them away from the [EU].” The document advocated backing European political forces that champion “sovereignty,” a serious pivot from most of the US’s post-1945 stance of bolstering European integration.

The strategy hints that officials in the current US administration might view a nonmonolithic Europe as an opportunity rather than an obstacle. Decades ago, a certain US secretary of state whom Washington should call if it wanted to speak to Europe, implying the fragmented nature of the continent’s political authority.

Today, the question may no longer need to be asked. If governments more sympathetic to the American leadership can offset Brussels, then America might be able to advance its interests by working with a more ideologically aligned subgroup of states rather than the EU as a single bloc. Seen in context, this goes beyond a single policy proposal and toward a broader rethink of Washington’s approach toward the EU, with a strategic emphasis on some of its members. Throughout the history of European integration, the Brussels elite has consistently avoided a two-tier or multispeed Europe, but this might suit the White House’s priorities just fine today.

Such a strategy could be particularly challenging for European governments because, while transatlantic rifts have occurred before (some more alarming than others), US administrations have traditionally exercised a degree of restraint and strategic calculation rather than seeking to weaken or undo the European project.

During the Suez Crisis of 1956, Washington compelled Britain and France to withdraw from Egypt, yet did so of a broader postwar order in which European integration remained central to American interests. Similarly, West Germany’s Ostpolitik in the 1970s US containment policy at the time, but America regarded it as a disagreement the alliance rather than a reason to undermine Europe’s unity.

In the 1990s, Washington’s frustration with the European governments’ divided and stalled response to the wars in and exposed the serious limits of Europe’s ability to act. Still, it did not turn the US away from the idea of working together with its allies. Even later disputes, such as the US hesitation during NATO’s , were still treated as disagreements over who should lead and who should pay, not as attempts to undermine Europe’s institutional core.

Alas, this might be changing. What seems to set the current US administration apart from its predecessors after World War II is that its differences with Europe now seem less about specific policy disputes and more about viewing divisions within the continent as strategically advantageous.

The east and the west

This hinges on two separate but overlapping divides: Rumsfeld’s “Old” vs. “New” Europe paradigm, which splits the European project along geographic and historical lines, and the decades-old distinction between so-called “Atlanticist” and “Europeanist” states. Within a longstanding in European affairs, Atlanticist-oriented countries tend to prioritize NATO and a tight bond with Washington when it comes to their security, whereas Europeanists emphasize Europe’s capacity to act independently of the US, both on defense and on the global stage. Historically, the latter has appeared through several conceptions, be it of independence, French President Emmanuel Macron’s or .

The two rifts often reinforce each other. Poland and its neighbors, for example, have long seen the US as their ultimate security guarantor, a view shaped by their history and proximity to Russia. During the Iraq War, these countries stood firmly by the US, and today they remain to trust American protection than the prospect of a joint EU defense force, even amid current ruptures within NATO. They firmly believe the US security umbrella remains indispensable for the continent, at least for now.

While this is slowly shifting due to the Trump administration’s rhetoric, Eastern and Central European states have been moving away at a much slower pace than their Western allies. By contrast, nations like France have historically championed a self-reliant Europe, and President Macron has warned that the EU must not be merely “,” repeatedly urging the development of a European defense capacity that can operate without US involvement.

Certainly, internal divisions beyond geographical and regional context play a considerable role here as well. In Poland, for instance, Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s pro-European stance coexists uneasily with the more Trump-sympathetic voice of President Andrzej Duda, while in the Czech Republic, President Petr Pavel’s steadfast support for a stronger European pillar of NATO clashes with the MAGA-like rhetoric from recently elected Prime Minister Andrej BabiĹĄ.

These splits suggest that Europe’s response to the current U.S. administration remains shaped not only by regional security concerns but increasingly by domestic political competition – perhaps another point of contention welcomed in Washington.

Nevertheless, as both sides seem to be gradually adopting a in response to the White House’s strategy, there are signs that even in Central and Eastern European capitals, such alarming rhetoric go uncontested. European states have against Trump’s attempt to reframe the EU’s trajectory much as they did against Bush’s attempts in 2003. What’s more, Trump’s approach may be inadvertently strengthening the Europeanist position and catalyzing the very European unity and self-reliance that America has demanded, at least publicly.

As a result, every time Washington floats an idea like a punitive tariff on EU goods or throws doubt into whether it will come to the defense of its NATO allies if needed, it strengthens the hand of those in Europe, even in Central and Eastern European capitals, who argue for “strategic autonomy,” or at least a stronger European defense pillar within the alliance. Yet, recent defense spending and preparedness mean Eastern European Atlanticists now see themselves as the upholders of Western security and, though welcoming the recent increase in NATO spending from Western European capitals, have “Old Europe” leaders for their delayed response and a supposed lack of resolve.

United and divided

Understandably, many new variables play into these emerging divisions, as the issues of today and the discourse across the Atlantic have inevitably changed. It might no longer be only about coalition building, defence spending, and the survival of NATO, as tensions are brewing over migration policy, relations with China and Russia, and the very future of European integration. But the pattern is familiar. Trump is effectively encouraging a “New Europe within Europe” in an alliance of sovereignist, America-friendly governments, positioned against an “Old Europe” often perceived as too multilateralist and liberal.

Thus, it is no understatement to say we are witnessing uncharted territory for the transatlantic alliance in the post-1945 era. From the late 1940s through the 1960s, Washington played a key role in fostering European integration, beginning with the Marshall Plan, which tied US economic aid to cooperation among participating European countries. Subsequent American Presidents had often been ambivalent about this emerging “Brussels,” especially when it came with what they inevitably saw as a Gaulist, anti-American agenda. But throughout the Cold War, the strategic conclusion was that European unity was inevitably in the American interest. When President Bush occupied the White House at the turn of the century, he asked whether this should change. As President Trump sits in the Oval Office today, the answer is becoming clearer and clearer.

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The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

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Rising above segregation

Born in 1930 in the rural county of Dinwiddie, Virginia, West grew up in an America still deeply by racial segregation. According to the BBC, she early in her academic journey that education would be her pathway to opportunity. A brilliant student, she earned a scholarship to study mathematics at Virginia State College ( in 1979, Virginia State University), where she later completed a master’s degree in the same field.

In 1956, she was by the US Navy and joined the research base at Dahlgren, Virginia — now known as the Naval Surface Warfare Center. At the time, computing was still in its infancy. Computers filled entire rooms and required highly specialized expertise. West as a mathematician and programmer on complex computational systems related to ballistics and satellite data analysis.

Pioneering work in satellite data and geodetic modeling

West to critical projects involving the geodetic modeling of the Earth. Satellite data had to be interpreted with extreme precision to determine the planet’s exact shape. The Earth is not a perfect sphere but a geoid with gravitational irregularities, and modeling it accurately required advanced mathematical methods. 

Given West’s expertise, she worked with oceanographic data from Navy satellites such as and led the project as the . At that time, her mathematical programming and attention to detail were essential in producing reliable geodetic calculations. Those models foundational to the development of GPS, a system that now supports navigation and positioning technologies used worldwide.

Despite her contributions, her role remained largely confidential for decades. Much of her work was classified, and as a result, her name was absent from the public story of GPS development. It was not until 2018 that she major institutional recognition, when she was into the Air Force Space and Missile Pioneers Hall of Fame. The honor formally acknowledged the importance of her contributions to space and navigation technologies. 

In 2000, she also a Ph.D. in public administration, demonstrating a lifelong commitment to education and intellectual growth. In the years that followed, she was honored with several accolades, including the Prince Philip Medal in and the Freedom of the Seas Exploration and Innovation Award in Universities and scientific organizations also celebrated her legacy, awarding her honorary degrees and highlighting her role in transforming satellite data into a system that now serves billions of people worldwide.

Intellectual leadership that defied the odds

Beyond the scientific facts, she supervised complex computing projects at a time when few women held technical leadership roles. For me, her leadership was not built on media visibility but on competence and precision. She led by example, setting high standards for data processing and scientific analysis.

American media also began shedding light on her remarkable trajectory: that of a Black woman scientist working in a field by white men during the Cold War. Comparisons were sometimes drawn to the African American mathematicians portrayed in the film , as her story similarly reflects the decisive yet often overlooked role these scientists played in major 20th century technological advances.

The late recognition of Gladys West raises a broader question: how many major innovations depend on contributions that remain invisible? Her life reminds us that the history of technology is often collective, gradual and confidential. Breakthroughs are rarely the work of a single inventor — they are shaped by teams of researchers whose meticulous efforts gradually transform the future.

By bringing her legacy into the light, scientific institutions and the media helped correct a historical oversight. But her story goes beyond recognition alone. She embodied an intellectual leadership grounded in perseverance, excellence and scientific responsibility. In a world where GPS guides airplanes, ships, emergency services and smartphones, her work continues — quite literally to orient our movements.

Gladys West’s passing does not mark the end of her influence. It reminds us that some of the most decisive figures of our modern world work far from the spotlight. Through her transformative ideas, calculations and her rigor, she helped redefine how humanity locates itself on the planet. Her name now deserves a lasting place in the collective memory of science.

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The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

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Is Iran a victim?

Davies begins with history. He recalls that Iran itself was the victim of chemical weapons attacks by Iraq during the 1980s, carried out with the help of the United States and European allies. He argues that Iran never developed nuclear weapons and views them as “religiously forbidden.” Despite this, both the US and Israel have sustained an “endless […] propaganda war” portraying Iran as a nuclear threat.

Plot against Iran

Isackson asks how this narrative gained traction. Davies points to Israeli claims since 2018 of having obtained secret Iranian nuclear documents. These documents, he says, were presented to the IAEA and cited as proof of nuclear activity. Davies coauthored an with CODEPINK Cofounder Medea Benjamin titled “The Plot Against Iran,” which argued that the IAEA had become a vehicle for legitimizing US–Israeli pressure and creating the pretext for war.

Is the IAEA working for Israel?

Isackson expresses his bewilderment: Israel, which possesses nuclear weapons, is not a signatory to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, yet it feeds intelligence to the IAEA. The agency takes this information seriously while ignoring Israel’s own arsenal.

Davies responds that this is “contradictory” and “absurd.” He explains that Israel’s safeguards agreement with the IAEA is effectively meaningless. Unlike North Korea, which openly left the IAEA, Israel has maintained a hollow agreement dating back to the 1970s. This, Davies claims, allowed Israel to develop nuclear weapons without scrutiny, with tacit US support.

Israel’s attack on Iran

Davies then turns to Israel’s military campaign. Over the past year and a half, he argues, Israel attacked nearly all its neighbors — Syria, Lebanon, Gaza and the West Bank — before turning to Iran. He describes the recent operations as a combination of sabotage, assassinations, drone strikes and missile attacks, often conducted with help from the Iranian political group Mojahedin-e-Khalq (MEK). Davies characterizes the MEK as a dangerous sect with terrorist roots. He claims that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu exaggerated the success of these operations, calling them “misdirection.”

First nuclear deal

The discussion shifts to the history of nuclear negotiations. Davies reminds Isackson that the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) in 2015 resolved many concerns by placing Iran under intrusive inspections. He stresses that the IAEA itself had concluded that pre-2003 research in Iran did not amount to a weapons program. Under the JCPOA, those issues were considered closed.

ąő°ů˛š˛Ô’s uranium enrichment

Still, IAEA Director Rafael Grossi’s May 2024 report noted ąő°ů˛š˛Ô’s enrichment of uranium to 60% — below weapons-grade 90% but higher than civilian fuel levels. Davies emphasizes that experts believe it would take years for Iran to build a bomb, even if it decided to. No evidence suggests such a decision has been made.

Israel’s game

For Davies, Israel’s strategy is clear: push the IAEA to condemn Iran, then use the resolution as justification for war. On June 12, the IAEA board passed a resolution criticizing Iran for non-cooperation. Davies stresses that Israel had planes loaded with bombs before the vote even ended. He argues that the US and its allies — the United Kingdom, France and Germany — enabled this escalation by drafting the resolution, though they may not have anticipated immediate war. Still, Davies believes there is “a lot of complicity to go around in all of this.”

Did the IAEA betray Iran?

Isackson presses Davies on whether Grossi knowingly allowed his report to serve as cover for Israeli aggression. Davies notes that Iran now accuses Grossi of failing to condemn the attacks, contrasting him with former IAEA General Director Mohamed ElBaradei, who defied US claims about WMDs in Iraq. ElBaradei won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005 for his stance, later chronicling his struggles in his , The Age of Deception: Nuclear Diplomacy in Treacherous Times.

Davies contends that Grossi chose the opposite path, allowing Israel and the US to use the IAEA for political purposes.

Is a nuclear war coming?

The conversation ends with a stark warning. Isackson asks how dangerous this moment really is. Davies cites the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists’ , now closer to midnight than ever. He argues that dismantled arms-control agreements, combined with Israeli brinkmanship, make the world more dangerous than during the Cold War.

Davies fears that if Israel were losing a full-scale war with Iran, it might resort to nuclear weapons. Pakistan has already threatened to retaliate with nuclear arms on ąő°ů˛š˛Ô’s behalf. In such a scenario, he warns, the US, Russia or NATO could easily be drawn in.

Davies concludes that we live in a “dangerous, deceptive world” where propaganda and manipulation guide international institutions. Isackson closes by reflecting on how this episode may be “the most dangerous thing that has happened in recent months” — not only for Iran, but for global security.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article/video are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

The post FO° Talks: Did the US and Israel Lie About Iran Building Nuclear Weapons? appeared first on 51łÔšĎ.

Josef Olmert: Hello. Good to see you again, to talk again to my followers, my watchers, my readers. So today, we are in our third episode in the four-episode series that I have about the US–Israel relations, and this is an episode that will lead us to the current situation, with particular emphasis on the situation under President Donald Trump.

But I just want to remind us that I said last time that this episode would be more about delving more deeply into the forces, particularly in the US, which shaped these special relations that we have described already in the first two episodes, what I call the interesting relationships at the beginning, and then the special relationships. So when we talk about the relationship with the US, we have to say that in the 1950s, after the recognition of Israel by Harry Truman, the establishment of diplomatic relations, basically the 1950s were dominated by the Republican Party under President Dwight D. Eisenhower. And one has to say that at that time, the Eisenhower administration could not really be considered to be too pro-Israel, or even pro-Israel altogether. In some ways it was; in many other ways, it wasn’t. John Foster Dulles, the architect of American foreign policy at that time, was definitely not a friend of Israel.

And when the US looked at the situation in the Middle East and looked at it from the perspective of the Cold War, the idea that really dominated American foreign policy in the 1950s was much more like an alliance with pro-West Arab countries. What they tried to establish — the Baghdad Alliance — failed, but they tried to do it. And then came the Eisenhower Doctrine of 1957, following the pressure on Israel to withdraw from Sinai in the Sinai War, which was basically, again, anti-communist, but was not based on any alliance between the US and Israel.

American Jewish support and cultural solidarity

Josef Olmert: So one has to say that even though the Israelis already in 1958 were very helpful to the West by allowing British airplanes to fly to Jordan over Israeli territory in order to help what seemed at that time to be a danger to the existence of the regime of the Hashemite King Hussein in Jordan. It was the result of what happened in the Middle East after the Syrian–Egyptian alliance — the unity — and what seemed to be the Soviet penetration to the very core of the Middle East through the leadership and charisma of Nasser, this anti-Western, anti-American, anti-Israel Arab leader.

But in the US itself, already in the 1950s we see the creation of the coalition that would be very helpful to better relations between the US and Israel. That was composed of various elements. And in the first place, it was the American Jewish community. The American Jewish community already in 1948–49, during the War of Independence and even before the beginning of it, showed a great deal of support to Israel. There were many, many American volunteers who came to fight on behalf of Israel, including pilots that were the beginning of the great Israeli Air Force, one should say. There was this famous Colonel Mickey Marcus, or Michael Stone, that was recruited by the Zionists in the US and by Israel to become a commander in the Israeli army. And then it was his tragic death by mistake in an accident that happened. He became the hero of a later movie called Cast a Giant Shadow. The star of this movie was Kirk Douglas himself, a great supporter of Israel — he just died a few years ago when he was over 100 years old.

But we saw the main components of this coalition, alongside the American Jewish community. In the 1950s, they established a famous organization known as AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, where basically the alienated were connected more with the Democratic Party rather than with the Republican Party. To give you an example which is not always known, the American labor movement, the AFL–CIO, under the great leadership of George Meany, was tremendously supportive of Israel. Meany said that the AFL–CIO are the greatest supporters of Israel in the world, no less than that. So of course he was supportive of the Democratic Party.

But also in the minority communities in the US, there was more support for Israel at that time. And if we go from the ‘50s to the ‘60s and even a bit later on, we see that at least two very significant key figures that were really fighting, struggling for human rights, civil rights in the US, and equality are very pro-Israel. One of them was Martin Luther King, no other, who said that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism and was supportive of Israel. He got a lot of support from the Jewish community. We remember the rabbi Asher Meza marching alongside him and other prominent Jewish leaders. Take even Cesar Chavez, the great Mexican American leader of the migrant farm workers, who was also very pro-Zionist. He was attacked for this by leftists who couldn’t agree with the fact that he was pro-Israel.

Take even in the field of culture, the cultural world, a guy like Harry Belafonte, the famous singer and activist. They were so pro-Israel, singing “,” “Re’eh Na,” “Ma Tovu,” “Ma Na’im” and so on. Sammy Davis Jr. and others.

Evangelicals and the republican realignment

Josef Olmert: So you could see the beginning of the creation of this pro-Israel coalition that would become more significant in the 1970s, when you started to see a change also in the Republican Party. And part of this change had to do with the move among evangelical Christians towards the adoption of their doctrines that would lead them to become very pro-Israel. Take, for example, the famous leader Billy Graham, who visited Israel in 1960.

Later on, when we heard the recordings of President Richard Nixon during the Watergate crisis, we heard some unpleasant comments made by Billy Graham about Jews to the ears of the president at that time — which I’ll come back to a little bit later on — to the evangelicals. Which, yes, it was not good. But in the overall context of creation of a pro-Israel coalition, people like Billy Graham at that time, and other people later on, played a very significant role.

So we see a change also in the Republican Party, and this change became very, very significant — particularly in the 1980s during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, who was instinctively pro-Israel. Not from an evangelical Christian perspective, but from the perspective of, “Here it is: It’s a world conflict between the good guys and the bad guys. Israelis are on the side of the good guys. They’re our friends. They are against the Soviet Union, so Soviets are against them.”

So the Republican Party was changing in all kinds of respects, and Ronald Reagan symbolized it. Less so his successor, Bush the father, as opposed to Bush the son later on. So we see a situation whereby, as of the 1970s, in Congress, for example, the support to Israel is becoming the feature, of what would be the main pillar, perhaps, of the pro-Israel sentiment in the US and the basis for the special relationship: the bipartisan support. Bipartisanship was very significant, and it had to remain like that. We shall see what happens as we get closer to our situation. Part of it we’ll say today, part of it we’ll leave to the last episode.

But the fact of the matter is that even when you could see the shaping up of this coalition, composed of people in both parties — in Congress, in great support of Israel — you also had, at the same time, the elements that in recent years would become much more influential than what they used to be at that time. Not so much in the Jewish community — the anti-Zionist elements within the Jewish community were mainly focused around the Reform movement in the old days. Later on, what was called the American Council for Judaism and other such organizations in the 1950s, ‘60s — particularly after the Six Days War — and during the campaign conducted by so many important American Jewish organizations, basically the American Jewish community, in support of Soviet Jewry and the campaign to let our people go from the Soviet Union.

So the Jewish community in the 1960s, ‘70s was really moving very strongly towards the side of support for Israel. Not necessarily organizations like the American Jewish Committee or the American Jewish Congress or even the ADL would say, “We are Zionist organizations,” but they definitely were very, very pro-Israel. So their way of showing pro-Israel was by support for every legislation that would be pro-Israel in Congress — the support for financial and military aid to Israel, and all kinds of other aspects of the relationship.

But you could see elements that were already at that time starting to create this nucleus, or the roots, of what would be anti-Israelism later on. Isolationism in the Republican Party, fiscal conservatives of one kind or another, nativist politicians. Much later on — more recently — you could hear people like Ron Paul, for example, or even before him, Pat Buchanan, as examples of the fact that even in the Republican Party, as it was moving more and more towards a more pro-Israel approach, you still had these elements of strong isolationism and even, I would say, nativist politics that were anti-Israel.

Democratic drift and the decline of bipartisanship

Josef Olmert: You could also see changes starting to develop within the Democratic Party by the rise of the left wing in the party. That would include, as of the 1970s, ‘80s and onwards, elements that otherwise were previously very pro-Israel. One example of it is what happened to the people around Martin Luther King Jr. He was pro-Zionist, he was pro-Jewish, he was pro-Israel. And some of the closest people to him later on would develop overt anti-Israel positions and even on occasions anti-Semitism, such as the famous or infamous ugly comments by Jesse Jackson about “” New York. And even people like John Lewis, the legend Lewis, that changed the tune about Israel.

And the same would happen also among other minority communities, or in the Hispanic community, and so on and so forth. So you could see that while in Congress there still was very strong support for Israel based on bipartisanship, you could also see and hear the forces that would be against it, that on occasion seemed to be very marginal, but because of changes in American society later on, would become much stronger.

From the Israeli perspective, it was obvious that Israel needs to maintain bipartisan support. It was obvious. That was a main pillar of the approach. That was the strength of it: the bipartisan support. And it had to be kept.

There were occasions in which the late Menachem Begin, for example, strongly reprimanded the junior democratic senator visiting Israel by the name of Joseph Biden Jr. He also reprimanded the republican Charles Percy. And after, during the Reagan administration, there were some diplomatic problems between the two countries, when Begin knew how to criticize strongly, let alone maybe even attack, policies of the Reagan administration. So it was clear that while the Israelis were trying to maintain their policy of bipartisanship in terms of American support to Israel, when Israeli leaders needed to criticize democrats and republicans, they would have done it, but always within the context of maintaining the basic framework of bipartisan support for Israel.

And that’s something that we have to bear in mind. When you look at this support to Israel and you look at republican senators, for example, from places without any Jews — in Wyoming and Montana, there are very few Jews — saying whatever they say about supporting Israel, it puts in perspective all these comments — I would say antisemitic motivated attacks — on AIPAC being bribing all those politicians. I myself heard on occasions politicians from both parties saying, “They say that I’m in the pocket of the Jews in my state.” “I was looking for Jews in my state — I hardly found any!” So obviously, there was always this sense that the support to Israel was not without its critics and attacks on it. AIPAC became the symbol of this support to Israel and was therefore the target of a lot of criticism that was motivated also by antisemitic motives, like “the Jews maintain only one loyalty, first loyalty is to Israel,” “the first steps of those who support Israel as opposed to supporting the US.”

Now, let’s face it: The alliance with the US was based on two key pillars. One of them was the sense of common values, common political heritage. Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. Israel is like us, it’s like the US. It’s a liberal democracy. We have problems with this or that Israeli policy, but altogether, it is a country that we can associate with. It is on the right side of history. Then the other side of it was the strategic, political, military, common interest between the two countries that were not without their problems on occasion, particularly when there were Likud governments that tended to be more towards the right wing — but not only.

After all, it was a Likud government that made peace with Egypt when the president was Jimmy Carter. And other Likud governments did accept American requests/pressures on other occasions. For example, during the first Gulf War, when Yitzhak Shamir, the very hawkish Israeli prime minister, agreed with President George H.W. Bush that even if there would be Iraqi missiles fired on Israel — and Israel knew there would be — if it wasn’t chemical warheads, there wouldn’t be an Israeli response, so as not to turn this war into an Arab–Israeli war, something that Saddam Hussein wanted.

That was a big service from Israel to the US. Not every country would like to see 42 Scud missiles falling on its centers of population and not reacting because they succumb to the interest of a bigger ally — in that case, the US. Just wanted to say, Shamir at that time — trust me, I know — was under heavy pressure from his defense minister, the great, late Moshe Sharett — who said, “Israel has to react. We cannot lose our power of deterrence.” And Shamir said, “No.” The overall interest of maintaining the alliance with the US was more important.

Yes, Israel had 12 requests from the US at the time. Eleven of them were fulfilled. One was not. Let’s move on beyond that.

The growing divide: American Jews and Israeli politics

Josef Olmert: So the point really is that the coalition that existed in the US that was supportive of Israel — that was enhanced and strengthened by the ongoing, gradual but consistent mobilization of the Christian evangelical community in support of Israel, alongside the other traditional forces of support — really laid the groundwork for what was really considered to be almost like an automatic alliance. You knew that the US would veto any anti-Israel resolution in the UN, in the Security Council. You knew that Israel would always vote with the US when it came to important situations for the US. You knew that Israel would always consult, or at least try to consult, with America about particular big, big national security decisions.

What happened — and we see it already in the late 1980s, 1990s and onwards — is that there are starting to be changes. In the Jewish community — yes, even today, the Reform movement is members of the World Zionist Organizations, and they are Zionists in their way. But when you look at the Reform movement of the ‘60s, ‘70s — how it moved from its traditional kind of problematic notions about Zionism, about the Jewish state or Jewish nationalism, to the new crop of rabbis that would become more significant in the 1990s, in the beginning of the 21st century onwards — you see a difference. You see a difference even in the conservative movement. It always was the mainstream of support for Israel.

You could see differences that would affect the academic community in the Jewish community. You could see it in universities. I saw it personally. I experienced it in my own situation when I came to talk in universities and in spending sabbaticals. What happened was a combination of various factors. I will just mention two — not necessarily the most important ones; there are many others — but it’s a topic that has to be discussed in a separate way. It’s such a big topic: the American Jewish community and Israel.

One of them is the growing strength of a new ideology that was propagated by many in the Reform Movement — and also, but less, in the conservative movement — the ideology. It is the “repairing of the world” as the number one Jewish mitzvah, the Jewish challenge. Something that I personally am very much opposed to. I consider it to be an attempt to justify, without saying it, a kind of running away, perhaps even stamping on the part of others, from the sense of: “We are Jews, therefore we support Israel, because this is the state of the Jewish people, and we feel we’re part of the Jewish people.” The element of tikkun olam has become very significant — taking one element in Judaism, making it so significant. It’s a very significant development in the Jewish community. One has to accept it.

Now, the other element is the decreasing support among certain age groups, particularly youngsters. Now here I should say, first of all, it’s true. One can see it, particularly if you are in the academic world and you come across students. But the explanation to that is not different from what other ethnic groups in America feel about their own country — the mother country, so to speak — when you talk about the third or fourth generation in these communities. And the Jews are not, in a way, much different than others.

As you get more and more away from the memories and legacies of their own country or the mother country, you develop different attitudes toward it. And I noticed that among people in my classes as a professor — of Irish Americans, Italian Americans, Lebanese Americans and so on and so forth. But the fact of the matter is that you could see the beginning of erosion in Jewish support for Israel — again, a minority among the Jews, but one that has become more vocal.

At the same time, the evangelical movement became very significant in the Republican Party. People like Jerry Falwell in the Moral Majority; Pat Robertson; John Hagee, the Pentecostal — a great supporter of Israel in San Antonio, Texas — and others. And what happened was that when these elements in the Republican Party became more and more important and significant in affecting republican approaches and policies — yep, that’s something that we have to say. Take states in the South, where, for example, in South Carolina, in every primary that you have, people define themselves as republicans or democrats, evangelicals and so on. It’s a republican state, and 75%–80% of republicans in South Carolina say they are evangelicals. So you can imagine the level of support for Israel in a state like that.

But the growing support of these evangelicals encouraged something that would lead to what I would consider to be a great, if not even huge, problem for Israel. The fact that these trends in the American Jewish community were coinciding with what seemed to be the growing dominance of right-wing parties in Israeli politics, the Likud party in particular. It’s something that also affected the operation of AIPAC, which became more and more associated with pro-republicanism, if in a way. More and more Israeli governments, led by the right wing — particularly under Netanyahu, as of 1996–1999, but much more so after 2009 — became more and more associated with an AIPAC that seemed to be more republican. And it could be justified, in fact, because the Republican Party became more pro-Israel. So those who are pro-Israel are becoming, in a way, more pro-republican. But the majority of the Jewish community in America did not go along with it.

And the problem there was — there were many problems behind it, but one that I would like to mention and emphasize is: Many American Jews, by the claim for supporting liberal democracy and all that comes with it, found it difficult, if not impossible, to support wholeheartedly, strongly a state like Israel that is dominated by right-wing and religious parties. And governments that are supported by parties like this that are, in Israel itself, mostly supported by the Mizrahi community — the Jews from Arab and Muslim countries. That has become a cultural problem that would lead to political consequences.

The idea that Israel, as it is developing — in the 1970s, much more so in the 1980s and even more so in the 1990s onwards — is not the Israel that we would like it to be. And that, of course, opens the Pandora’s box of all this situation of the relationship between Israel as the center of the Jewish world and Jewish communities abroad. What are the limits of the ability and the willingness of Jews outside of Israel to support Israel when they don’t like what’s happening in Israel? That’s a big question. I have to mention it. It’s not something that could be kind of brushed under the carpet, you know, because it is an unpleasant topic to discuss.

And the fact that things like this happened as I described created a growing crisis between Israel and the Democratic Party in particular, and the constituent groups of the Democratic Party that traditionally used to be so pro-Israel — among minority communities, among the labor movement, for example — it’s nothing like it used to be. Things changed.

MAGA, Woke politics and the Trump situation

Josef Olmert: I will end now by saying: It is very easy to pinpoint blame on a particular politician — in that case, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Prime Minister of Israel for 15 years, 16 years almost, after 2009, and before that, three years, 1996–1999. The problem is that when situations are developing the way I describe them, the responsibility of the Israeli leadership at the time should have been to minimize the problems, to try to balance them off, rather than exacerbate them by going with the stream and adopting what seemed to be a very pro-republican approach. And something therefore that would deepen, extend and widen the gaps between Israel and Jews abroad.

But as I said, movements within American Jewry were not disconnected from the overall changes in American society, demographic and others. But I will just end with a teaser to the last episode: I can say that in the last 15 or 20 years, or maybe less, two mass popular movements emerged in the American political scene: MAGA on the one hand and the woke movement on the other hand. The two of them, for different reasons, are not conducive to the alliance between the US and Israel.

And we are going to see in the last episode how their impact and influence deepened very much the trends that I started to relate to, or that related to, toward the end of this episode. So I leave you with that, and we shall meet again for the final episode: How it is under Donald Trump, with the background of the Biden administration, and so on and so forth, within the context of the current wars in the Middle East involving Israel. And I say “wars” because it’s not just the war in Gaza. Thank you.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article/video are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

The post FO° Talks: US–Israeli Relations Explained, Part 3 — Shifting Coalitions appeared first on 51łÔšĎ.

Josef Olmert: Hi, hello to all my watchers and followers and readers. This is episode number two in my series on US–Israel relations. And a little correction to what I said in the beginning of the first episode: There will be four episodes, not three. And as you recall, we ended the first episode with reference to a turning point — a historic turning point in the relations between the two countries and in the history of Israel altogether in the Middle East — which is the War of 1967, also known as the June War or the Six-Day War.

We’ll come to that momentarily. But allow me first to kind of repeat, for the sake of those who might have missed part of the first episode, the main points that we made in the first episode about the beginning of American–Israeli relations. And this related to what happened in the Second World War with President FDR, and then the momentous decisions taken by President Harry Truman of recognizing the State of Israel immediately upon its establishment, and beforehand, the support for the UN resolution about the partition of Palestine, if you will. The first resolution about the two-state solution was rejected by the Arabs. And that’s in reference to what people say today about the two-state solution.

And then we talked about the early years of the relationships, with the bumps, ups and downs. And a very big down was the way Eisenhower treated Israel in 1956 in the Suez War. In the 1950s, the main supporter of Israel in terms of supplying arms and also diplomatic support was France, which is interesting — mostly when it was under the French Socialist Party at that time, as opposed to the French Socialists of today. The French Socialists of the 1950s — Guy Mollet, for example, and others — were very, very pro-Israel for all kinds of reasons, and also supplied Israel lavishly with arms.

All this started to change with the rise of General de Gaulle to power in what is called the Fifth Republic as of May of 1958, and came to an abrupt end in the War of ‘67 that we shall refer to soon.

The Cold War heats up in the Middle East

Josef Olmert: But in the case of the US, the beginning of some military relations started with President JFK, who supplied Israel air defense systems, the Hawk missiles, with all kinds of strings attached, you know. But still, it was not until 1967 that things changed in a very dramatic way between the two countries.

Now, the War of 1967 is a huge topic that I’m not going to get into in this particular series, but I have to mention a few points about it which will give the background to what will happen later on between the US and Israel. This was a war that had to do with the Cold War, which raged all over the world at that time. And in the early 1960s, the West won in some areas. The West lost in other areas. The Soviets won in some areas, if you will. Algeria became independent. You can argue a defeat to the Western world, even though General de Gaulle was the one who granted it to the Algerians. The Cuban Revolution and the failure of the Americans to bring down the Castro regime, as we all know. The beginnings of the war in Vietnam, the Vietnam War, this time with American involvement, as opposed to the 1950s when it was French involvement.

The Soviets also lost. They lost, for example, in Indonesia in 1965. Huge country with all that happened there. So, we talk about ups and downs. And there are other examples on both sides.

In the Middle East, we have to deal with changes that took place in Syria and Egypt and the way the Soviet Union treated them. As of the February 23, 1966, Syria is ruled by what’s called the Neo-Ba’ath, which is basically the more radical, militant Ba’ath party of mainly the minorities, and especially Alawis, with names like Hafez al-Assad already as defense minister and commander of the air force, and others. And Egypt is ruled by Abdel Nasser, who lost points because of his failed intervention in the Yemeni Civil War as of 1962.

It wasn’t a failure because the supporters of Nasser lost in this war. It was a failure because Nasser lost in the Arab world because of the use of chemical weapons by the Egyptian army against other Arabs as opposed to the totally peaceful border between Egypt and Israel. So many people in the Arab world said, “You kill Arabs, but Israelis are enjoying total peace along your border.”

So, Nasser was under pressure. The Syrians were very radical, militant, under domestic pressure and trying to cause troubles along the border with Israel over the issue of the Jordan River waters and border incidents as of late 1966. And that’s the point here. The Soviet Union put pressure on both Egypt and Syria to get closer. They signed a defense pact. And that’s something that as of now, so many years later, hasn’t been totally clarified. Even when you look at the Soviet archives that were opened after the collapse of the Soviet Union, there were those in the Kremlin who put pressure on Egypt and Syria to cause troubles with Israel as part of the overall configuration of the Cold War.

May 1967 and Israel’s intelligence failure

Josef Olmert: And here it is: the peaceful border between Israel and Egypt. No problems. The problematic border with Syria. And all of a sudden, as of May 15, 1967, the Egyptian army, in violation of the arrangements after the war of 1956, started to cross from Egypt through the Suez Canal to the Sinai Desert and amass on the borders of Israel.

The Israelis were surprised by it. By the way, an interesting point: Israeli intelligence failed in this instance to read in advance what would happen, which was not the first such failure. In 1960, there was another such failure when Egyptian troops all of a sudden started to amass around the border with Israel without Israelis having any sense of it in advance. That was a crisis that dissipated without any problems. Just to be mentioned only in the context of understanding how intelligence works, and in particular, when we talk about Israel, it’s referring also to what would happen a few years later in the Yom Kippur War. We’ll come to that in 1973. It’s an important point here.

So, the Egyptian army started to amass along the border with Israel. Nasser started to make threatening speeches, calling specifically for a war against Israel — hysteria all over the Arab world. He specifically says he will forbid the movement of Israeli ships from the Straits of Tiran via the Suez Canal — again, in violation of every international law — which in itself is what they call casus belli, a cause for war.

The Israelis are completely surprised and confused. Prime Minister Levi Eshkol at that time — a very nice man and the successor of Ben-Gurion, lacking any charisma — invited the Soviet ambassador to Israel at that time. His name was Chubakhin, and he says to him, “I’ll take you with me right now, without any prior notice, to the Israeli troops on the border with Syria for you to see that there are no Israeli concentrations along the border with Syria. There’s no need for all that.” And Chubakhin said to him, “I don’t care about the facts. We tell you not to provoke troubles with Syria. Period.”

So, you see the connection to the overall bigger picture. The Israelis decided to sound out their Western allies — the partners of the war of ‘56: France and Britain. And then the US. Foreign Minister Abba Eban — not lacking knowledge of foreign languages; he spoke great English, great French; he understood what was said to him. The French and British basically didn’t care. “Okay, do something diplomatic about it.” And then he went to US President LBJ. What exactly he heard from LBJ in this meeting is not so clear. Did he get the specific green light from the Americans to go to war, a preemptive strike against the troops around the borders of Israel? We’ll come to that in a second. Or was it the sense of, “Well, do whatever you have to do. We are out of it, but do whatever you have to do,” — any of this?

At any rate, when he came back to Israel, the sense in Israel was that the US this time would not act like Eisenhower acted in 1956. Call it a mild green light to go to the preemptive strike.

Total victory and strategic realignment

Josef Olmert: In the meantime, King Hussein of Jordan, as we know, joined the Arab coalition under Nasser and put his army under the command of the Egyptians. The Syrian army was along the borders in the north, Jordan in the east, Egypt in the south. It was a violation of international law, the blockade on the Suez Canal and shipping for Israel. The stupid UN Secretary-General at that time, the Burmese U Thant, removed the peace units of the UN from the border because Nasser demanded it from him — again, in total violation of the arrangements of 1956.

Israel had no choice but to go to the war of self-defense under a national unity government with what was, at that time, the Herut–Liberal party, together, that would later become Likud under Menachem Begin. And we know what happened in this war: total victory for Israel and no American pressure, as opposed to ‘56, to stop the war.

Israel was allowed at the time to finish the job completely. Israeli troops on the other side of the Suez Canal; overlooking the Egyptian army on the Egyptian side of the Suez Canal; taking over the West Bank as a result of defending against Jordanian aggression, including the holy city of Jerusalem; liberating the holy city of Jerusalem for the Jewish people and taking over the Golan Heights in the north from the Syrians.

In the context of world politics, this was taken to be a victory for an American ally against the Soviets. And what it did also was, it was the first time, probably, that you were not just getting from Israel, if you are the US, some precious intelligence stuff. Like, say, the Israeli intelligence is the one that told the Americans about the famous Khrushchev speech in the Communist Party Conference in 1956 about Stalin, or other such changes. Israel proved itself to be a credible, potential, possible ally, being a strong military power.

This is the beginning of the relationship with the US to become, later on, the special alliance between the two countries. At the time when France imposed an embargo on Israel, the British washed their hands off. America became now the number one ally of Israel. And that’s the historic turning point.

Let me make a point to start with: This alliance was very, very helpful to Israel. We’ll come to some examples. It was also very helpful to the US. I’ll also give these examples. It was an alliance in many respects. It was clear who was the big brother — the US — and who was the smaller brother — Israel. It was clear.

However, what I want to emphasize here is another important point, because it will also have implications to what would happen much later on, all the way to the days that we are talking about now. Israel developed a dependence on the US, which was much more than just the money-getting, which was important, and the arms-getting, which was extremely important. Everything was: the UN diplomatic support, indeed, was very important — and other international organizations.

The dependence became part of the collective DNA of policymakers in Israel about what Israel could or couldn’t do, should or shouldn’t do. It almost became like a psychological burden. And it became an impediment on many occasions to the Israeli freedom of action on issues which were extremely important to Israel.

Dependence on a superpower is a problem. And I know lots of people say that “the Israelis lobbied the US” — and we’ll come to all that — “so influential.” “America depended on Israel.” “America was really the one that listened to Israel.” In reality, almost every time — not always, but almost every time — after ‘67, when an Israeli government, whether it was still the Labor governments until ‘77 or the Likud governments mostly after ‘77, when they had to make a big, big decision, they referred it first to the US. “What do you think?”

I leave it as an open issue here, I’ll just mention it. Some would say it was a great idea. The great Ben-Gurion went to the war of ‘56 only after he had this alliance with France and Britain. However, in ‘48, he established the state without consulting first with the US or getting their approval.

In 1967 — as I said before, you can argue whether Israel got the green light or not — but Israel went to war with its own independent sovereign decision. Here is an example of what this psychological dependence created. Take the war of ‘73, the Yom Kippur War. It’s still an open issue: How could it happen that Israel was so surprised?

You already heard before an example of how Israel was surprised on other occasions. So let’s leave this one aside. A lot of it had to do with the fact that the US said to Israel, “The Arab armies are a mess, but it’s not going to be a war.” And the Israeli decision was: “There is not going to be a war.” Even when, in the last 24 hours ahead of the beginning of the war, it was already clear there was going to be a war, and the Israelis knew that, they still decided not to preempt because they wanted to make sure that there would be American diplomatic support once the war starts. And that’s a controversial decision. A big decision, a crucial, historic decision. And that refers to what I said about the dependence on the US.

The fact of the matter is, the US, under the policy mostly dictated at that time by Kissinger, we know what was already happening domestically in the US: the Watergate scandal and all that, which weakened President Nixon as a president. But Kissinger was the architect, spokesperson and executor of American foreign policy. He was part of those who put pressure on Israel not to finalize the war by totally defeating the Egyptian army, when the Third Egyptian Army was already besieged by the Israelis.

Maybe a great, positive decision, because it could have helped later on President Sadat to come to the idea of making peace with Israel. Because he could argue that the war of ‘73 was a partial or full victory for Egypt, not a total defeat as it could have been if the Israelis were allowed to continue the siege over the Egyptian Army — the Third Army, as they called it — and totally destroy it, as was so easy for them to do at the time when the war was stopped.

The costs of dependence

Josef Olmert: But there are other examples on either side of the spectrum here: how the Israelis made big decisions without consulting with the US, how they did it only because of consulting with the US. But altogether, it became almost like a dictum in Israeli foreign policy and security policy: “Can we or can we not do it because of what America will say or do?”

And that’s how I leave it here. That’s a factor. To say it was wrong or it was right is wrong because it depends on so many other examples, and it depends on the specific situation that we talked about.

So, this alliance as of ‘67 had so many components. The financial support to Israel was fantastically significant, even though as of 2006 — and many people don’t know it — the civilian aid stopped. It’s only military aid. And of the money that Israel gets as military aid, 75% of it goes back to shopping in the US, which means that the net aid to Israel is only 25% of the $3 or $4 billion a year. But still, it’s important. And I’m not saying what I’m saying now in order to belittle it; I’m just putting it in context. Absolute support — almost — in international organizations, including the veto power on anti-Israel decisions in the UN Security Council — that was very significant.

Support for Israel in times of domestic issues. For example, the big financial economic crisis of the early 1980s with the hyperinflation in Israel at that time as a result of the economic policies of the Begin government, and his late finance minister, Yoram Aridor. The so-called dollarization plan and all that. These had a lot of American support.

It was clear that America considered Israel to be a great ally even though it still had Arab allies. Saudi Arabia continues to be, as of the Camp David Accords of 1979. Egypt is becoming part of the triangle of the main allies of the US in the Middle East: Egypt on one end, Saudi Arabia and Israel in the middle. There was a lot of support.

I can go on and on and on. And two elements which were very, very significant in this support were the bipartisan support, which most Israeli governments cared very carefully to maintain — the support of both parties. That was very significant. We’ll see more of it in the next episode. And the rise of the American Jewish community as a major block of support to Israel, which was not as strong in the 1940s or even the 1950s, but became much stronger in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with regard to the struggle for Soviet Jewry, and supporting Congress on the level of the different states in the US.

Israel was helpful to the US on various occasions. Take, for example, the crisis in Jordan, 1970 — Black September, when the Syrian army invaded Jordan and Israel forced them out. Something that was in Israeli interest, but significantly in American interest. Israel in that case was doing something that was in the service of the entire Western world. Not for nothing — Joe Biden of all people said on one occasion that Israel is like another aircraft carrier for the US. That’s an interesting statement that he made before he was president.

We have to remember that Israel helped the US with regard to the situation in Iran before the revolution by providing intelligence that was precious but was ignored by the US. Israel helped the US before the Saddam invasion of Kuwait in 1990. I can tell you something that very few people are aware of: A high-level Israeli delegation, in the middle of July, flew especially urgently to the US to caution them about what could happen. And the US said, “We don’t know.” They should have known. So, they sent the unfortunate ambassador, April Glaspie, in Baghdad, to talk with Saddam Hussein on July 28. And we know what happened there. Saddam Hussein promptly said, “Nothing would happen.” That was July 28, 1994. Four days later, on August 2, the invasion started.

Israel agreed not to retaliate to Saddam sending 42 missiles to Israel during the Gulf War of ‘91. It’s part of the alliance with the US. Because the US did not want it to be an Arab–Israeli war if Israel was to react, as opposed to a war of the US with an Arab coalition — including even Syria — against Saddam Hussein.

And we can go on and on like this. The balance sheet is, in this alliance, Israel benefited enormously. There’s no question about it. What the alliance did to the overall decision-making process in Israel is also something that we should have mentioned — and I did — and we have to bear it in mind. In a way, it made Israeli policymakers somewhat complacent in making some crucial decisions — realizing, and on some occasions mistakenly, that the alliance with the US would do the job for Israel.

There are two approaches here, in general terms, from an Israeli perspective, about how to handle all this. Should we trust only ourselves, always and absolutely so? Is it even possible? Or should we measurably trust a great ally? And what’s in between these two approaches?

Cracks in the alliance

Josef Olmert: Our next episode will be about the emerging of forces within the alliance, both in the US and in Israel, that — I’ll already say now — were to weaken it in a gradual but systematic way that was not always recognized, definitely not in Israel as such. And that will lead us to the fourth episode, which will be the current situation with Donald Trump.

See you next time.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article/video are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

The post FO° Talks: US–Israeli Relations Explained, Part 2 — Consequences of the Six-Day War appeared first on 51łÔšĎ.

And my historical background conversation in this particular episode is not going too far back. It is going to the Second World War, and what would follow later on: the establishment of the State of Israel and the beginning of the relationship between the two countries. And it will include elements that may not be an historic revelation, but when put all in one context, may be surprising to quite a few of the watchers and readers, because it may put in some perspective some of the well-established notions about the relationship between the two countries that have always been dubbed, at least in the last few decades, as the special relationship, the unbreakable alliance, the God-knows-what type of definition given to this relationship by both friends of these relationships and enemies of it.

So let’s go to the Second World War and start with a general comment, which is that once the US entered the war — finally, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, which is basically the end of American isolationism — with all its might, with all its power, that America had to develop foreign policy which hardly existed until then about the Middle East. Which was really at that time, until the Second World War, not an important part to the US, but for the beginning of some commercial economic relations having to do with oil, of course. And oil is important, as we shall see.

Harold Hoskins, the Holocaust and Zionist response

Josef Olmert: So President Roosevelt went to develop an American strategy as to how to deal with current issues during the Second World War and future implications of them. He did something which may have been the precedent for other American presidents: He sent a special envoy to the Middle East. His name was Harold Hoskins. He was a former military person, lieutenant colonel — and he had an interesting background. He belonged to a family that had to do with the American University in Beirut, a famous academic institution, the role of which in American–Arab relations has not always been recognized properly.

The university was established in 1866 and became a hotbed for two groups of people. On the one hand, Americans who came to the Middle East — mostly Protestant missionaries, interestingly enough, from New England — who came to the Middle East following the terrible, bloody civil war in Lebanon between 1840 and 1861 that ended with the huge massacre of Christians in 1861. And the other group that it attracted were those Americans who were influenced by the existence of this college, were interested in the Arab world, in the Middle East, and would become, later on, ambassadors of goodwill for the Middle East — being basically dominated by Arabs, by those who use the Arabic language, and mostly by Muslims, not even Christians.

So Hoskins, therefore, did not come from a background that one could say was pro-Jewish or pro-Zionist. On the contrary — he came from a totally different background, the opposite one. And he visited the Middle East in 1942, 1943 and then presented his report to the president, which basically was saying to the president, “Hey, look, you cannot really support the Jewish idea about establishing a state. There’s the Arab world, you know.” And one can argue he accepted the basic tenets of what one would call the pro-Arab lobby in the US at that time — and maybe for many years later — that the US should go with the majority of people in the Middle East, not with the minority: the Jews.

Now, at that time, when Hoskins was in the Middle East and then presented his recommendations to the president, there was the Holocaust in Europe, and two developments emerged that would be the counterbalance to this report of Hoskins. One of them was the dramatic, dramatic revelations by this Gentile, German Tzadik — the righteous among the Gentiles — Edward Schulte, who came one day to the young representative of the World Jewish Congress in Geneva, Gerhart Riegner, a young Jewish person at the age of 30, and told him, “Do you need to know the truth? They are going to kill all your people in Europe. Urgently message this truth to your superiors so that the Western countries will do what they have to do.”

I’m not going to get into all that — just to give it as a background with all the controversies that emerged later on about the reaction of the Roosevelt administration, or the lack thereof, the slowness of the reaction. But it was one element that was introduced to the discussion about the Middle East at that time and the future, which had to do with the fate of the Jews in Europe and what could be a solution to their plight.

But at the same time, also, the Zionist movement reacted. And the famous Biltmore Plan that was announced in the Biltmore Hotel of New York at that time — a great place, not anymore — a conference that took place between May 6 and May 11, 1942, in which finally, finally, the leadership or the majority of the official Zionist movement accepted the idea that the future should be a Jewish commonwealth — that’s the word they used — in what they called Palestine. Accepted finally what the revisionist side of the Zionist movement, under the leadership of the great Ze’ev Jabotinsky, had said for many years earlier — that the final, ultimate goal of Zionism is to do exactly that: national liberation movement of the Jewish people, and the national homeland of the Jewish people, the land of Israel — or Palestine, as they called it — should be a state.

So Roosevelt knew that there were pressures from both sides, and at the end of the day, he did not make a big speech in which he repeated the recommendations of Hoskins. He even established, later on, the Refugee Board to save Jews in Europe — which did, by the way, good work. Raoul Wallenberg, the great man, was an agent of this group.

Roosevelt’s oil deal

Josef Olmert: But then the next chapter, if you will. In between, there were all kinds of negotiations with the British that also had their committees about what would be the future of the Middle East and Palestine. There was this historic meeting on February 14, 1945 in the Suez Canal aboard the ship of the American Navy between the president and the king of Saudi Arabia, King Ibn Saud — a historic meeting that established, by the way, the real, ongoing, historic special relationship between the US and a country in the Middle East, which was the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. End of 1945: This is the most permanent, consistent, solid alliance between the US and any country in the Middle East, which may have been shaken — we’ll come to that later on in the series — during the 21st century, but has been and still is the one alliance that can be considered the uninterrupted historic alliance of the US with its new role as the superpower and the Middle East country.

There are all kinds of historians that will tell you, “This was this result of that meeting, and this was that result of that meeting.” But since I’m the one who talks here, I will say to you: This was the deal of oil for protection. The US will defend Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia will give oil to the US. That’s it. That was the deal.

And then the president came back, was almost a dead person — he would die a little bit later on April 12, 1945. But before then, on March 1, 1945, he gave his big speech to Congress in which he said the famous statement that in five minutes of talk with King Ibn Saud, he learned more about the Middle East than what he had known before. Which was, in a way, a reflection of, apparently, his inner thoughts, but also a slap in the face to a lot of people in the Jewish community, people like Rabbi Stephen Wise and others who believed that Roosevelt was the greatest ever supporter of the Jewish people. He said something that to this very day is used by many people, particularly on the right side of Jewish and Zionist politics, to indicate that FDR was not exactly the great friend of the Jews he was portrayed to be.

Truman’s recognition and Israel’s fight for survival

Josef Olmert: And then came Harry Truman. What did he know about the Middle East? Nada, nothing. What did he know about foreign policy? Nada, nothing. But he was a great person, great president. And he knew to make decisions. And he had to make decisions about the question of Palestine on two accounts: First of all, what to do with the Zionist demand to allow refugees from Europe to go to their historic homeland as their final refuge after what happened. The British said no, the Americans put pressure to allow hundreds of thousands to come. But then the most important decision had to be done: Should America support or not the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine? And he made the resolution that America should support the Partition Plan, as proposed by the UN Inquiry that was approved by the General Assembly in the historic decision on November 29, 1947. Which was accepted by the Zionist majority as an official position, and was rejected by all the Arabs, the Palestinian Arabs and the Arab states.

The question was: Was it really the final decision of Truman? Would he go along with it and support this Jewish state once it’s being declared? As the Zionists said, it would be declared the last day of the British mandate over Palestine, which was supposed to be May 15, 1948. They were supposed to declare it on May 14 because it was Friday as opposed to Saturday, which was May 15, the Sabbath.

And Truman was under terrible pressures. In January 1948, he retracted his initial position. He talked about international trusteeship for Palestine for a while. And there were pressures on him from both sides, including his old Jewish friend and business partner, Eddy Jacobson, on the one hand, as opposed to the Arabs and as opposed to some of the closest people to him. Chief among them: Secretary of State George Marshall, the great winner of the Second World War, secretary of state, the architect of the Marshall Plan — who was terribly opposed to the establishment of a Jewish state and to an American recognition of it. And he said to the president, “I will not vote for you if that’s your position.” The famous Clark Clifford, the well-known Democratic adviser, told the story. Other people told the story; there’s no question about it.

Truman made his decision: He gave the US recognition to the State of Israel 11 minutes after the declaration made by David Ben-Gurion in Tel Aviv on May 14, 1948. But that did not mean a carte blanche for the Zionists, for the Jews, in what ensued afterwards: the War of Independence that started with the invasion of five Arab armies on May 15 to the newly-established state, in order to basically exterminate the Jews, as was predicted by the Secretary-General of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha. He said in October 1947, “This will be a war of extermination.” This was what the Arabs planned for the Jews: the Nakba of the Jews, the destruction of the Jewish state, the extermination of the Jews three years after the Holocaust ended in the Second World War, the deportation of the Jews, whatever.

And America imported an embargo on arms to Israel. The ones who gave the arms to Israel at that time for their own reasons — we shall not get into it in this episode — arms that allowed the Israelis to win the war were the Soviets, the Soviet Union — the so-called, famous Czechoslovak arms deal. At that time already, Czechoslovakia was under communist control. Interesting, interesting.

Cold War choices and the Suez Crisis

Josef Olmert: But America recognized Israel, there were diplomatic relations. And then came another turning point: It was the Korean War of 1950. It really divided the world and also divided the ruling coalition in Israel at that time. Not always are people aware of that, because David Ben-Gurion, the leader of the Mapai party, had partners in the government that were to the left of Mapai — Marxists and Zionists, but very pro-Soviet. And they put pressure on Israel to at least be neutral in the Korean War, or even support the Soviet Union.

And Ben-Gurion made his historic decision: no way. He gave a famous speech in the Knesset, which also included an attack Joseph Stalin personally, and made the choice: We go with the West. Still having relations with the Soviet Union for a few more years to come that were problematic — including also the Soviet attempt toward the end of the days of Stalin to try the Jewish doctors with the so-called plot to poison the Soviet leadership, which was apparently a preparation for a final solution for the Jews in the Soviet Union.

Later on — just to put things in some perspective, and not everybody would like to hear what I’m going to say now — the famous Henry Kissinger said (he then apologized for that when it was published many, many years later) in closed sessions when he was in the Nixon administration, that the US would not have done anything if the Soviets were to put Jews in concentration camps and get rid of them. Yes, he said it. He then apologized for it. Many, many years later, it was revealed when documents were published that that’s what he said.

The next episode of the relationships is the Suez War of 1956, when Israel, France and Britain collaborated in the attack on Nasser of Egypt after all his aggressive acts against Israel that were perpetrated, by the way, from the Gaza Strip — Gaza that the Egyptians refused to give to the Palestinians as an independent or even autonomous state.

President Dwight D. Eisenhower was not a partner to all that. And even though we are already in the Cold War, the idea that two partners of the US in NATO, France and Britain, would collaborate with Israel in a war that was not coordinated with the US — a few days before the American presidential elections in 1956 — and while the Soviets were engaged in their situation in Hungary, that was against the sense of Eisenhower, that he was no more just the commander-in-chief of the Allied forces in Europe, as he was in the Second World War. He was now the head of the free world. And he collaborated with the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War to force the British and the French to stop their support for Israel and withdraw from the Suez Canal. And the Israeli army was forced, after months, to withdraw from Sinai.

And a period of 11 years of peace and quiet along the border lasted until 1967. In January 1957, Eisenhower published the Eisenhower Doctrine, which was an attempt to counterbalance all this by basically saying, “It wasn’t because we liked Nasser what we did, but from now on, we say to Nasser: no more.” And that’s something more to do with the US and some other Arab countries — or the Middle East in general — that I will not get into.

Looking ahead to 1967

Josef Olmert: But 11 years were opened until 1967, which would be, in a way, a historic turning point in the relationships between the US and Israel. And that will be the gist of my second episode. The next episode will be 1967, the Six Days War, as a historic turning point — the beginning of what one might call the special relationship between Israel and the US.

I’ll see you then. Thank you.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article/video are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

The post FO° Talks: US–Israeli Relations Explained, Part 1 — Post-World War II appeared first on 51łÔšĎ.

The consumer welfare standard, as it would henceforth be known, is understood to suggest an act is anticompetitive only when it leads to higher prices. So long as a merger did not interfere too heavily with the availability of cheap consumer goods for Americans, it would be rubberstamped by the government. 

This came amid a broader sea change in US economic policy. Following the stagflation of the late 1970s, the Reagan Administration undertook broad deregulatory efforts to juice the markets. The 1980s became the decade of Wall Street.

After the Cold War ended in 1991, America was a unipolar power. President Clinton, a “New Democrat,” fostered a bipartisan tradition of neoliberalism. Clinton spoke of a peace dividend, signed NAFTA into law and embraced the creation of the World Trade Organization. 

Manufacturing and supply chains were globalized, flooding the US with cheap foreign goods. As China emerged as a world power, ––incorrectly––that access to free trade would restrain its worst communist tendencies and hegemonic ambitions. Corporate revenues and. Neoliberalism, to many, seemed like a winner.

But by the 2010s, America had new problems to deal with. Decades of consolidation, free trade and deindustrialization had created an economy with collapsing social mobility and a depleted industrial base that can’t make enough of what we need, things like:

• and during the pandemic
• and munitions to aid allies like Ukraine in wartime
• Aircraft that don’t or leave
• High tech
• ,, and many other goods suddenly revealed to Americans as available only at the whim of far flung supply chains, labor arbitrage and of market competition.

In a 2023 , just 18% of Republican voters, historically a solidly “pro-business” bunch, said they had a “great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in big business—a record low. By 2024, a growing and eventually dominant base of populist voters in the US had found a home in the MAGA movement.

As the Democratic Party steadfastly committed to the status quo, US President Donald Trump harnessed the power of his base—rejecting free trade and aimed at reshoring manufacturing, antitrust cases against Big Tech and surrounded himself with economic populists like vice president JD Vance, of Biden FTC Chair and antimonopolist Lina Khan. Ms. Khan was a trailblazer at the FTC, attacking inefficient and monopolized markets with a fervor not seen in decades.

Trump appointed as his FTC Chair Andrew Ferguson, who in his first months on the job multiple mergers, that the 2023 Merger Guidelines created under US President Joe Biden that significantly strengthened antitrust enforcement would continue and, , signaled a continued break with neoliberal antitrust policy when telling a room of CEOs at the Business Roundtable that “this isn’t the FTC of the 90s” and, for good measure, “this isn’t the [US President George W.] Bush Administration.”

Wall Street a second Trump term would represent a return to the old status quo on antitrust and trade. But by 2025, the “status quo” was long over.

Merger and acquisition (M&A) activity––the deals firms engage in to eliminate competitors and strengthen pricing power, as the financial class, which had been expecting Trump not to actually follow through on his campaign pledges, as he did just that–– on global trade.  

The conservative legal movement, now at the height of its power, is left in an interesting position. Historically, it has espoused a strong libertarian bent when it comes to trade and antitrust. However, the continued success of the conservative legal movement depends upon the continued viability and success of the conservative political movement on which it relies.

As Republican voters identify with Trump’s populist orientation, up and coming young conservative talent features ardent populists like Vice President JD Vance and Senator Josh Hawley. Hardcore free traders like retiring former Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell are getting pushed aside by the Republican base–– as “globalists,” or perhaps worst of all, having their candidacies compared to a former presidential candidate, US Senator Mitt Romney.

As for Democrats, most onlookers believe the party’s only path out of the political wilderness is to as a working-class populist party and, to some extent, out-Trump Trump. 

Taking these developments together, it would seem that no matter who wins in 2028 and beyond, the era of neoliberal economics has ended.

In the 1980s, no one would have believed it would be a Republican, least of all then business tycoon Donald Trump, who would turn out the lights.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Trump Turns Out the Lights on the Neoliberal Economic Era appeared first on 51łÔšĎ.

“A friend of mine has devised a comprehensive analysis of the idea of ‘deep state.’ Until recently the idea was treated as a kind of conspiracy theory, though there is one piece of historical evidence that should have educated at least the US public about its reality 64 years ago: President Eisenhower’s farewell speech warning about the military-industrial-congressional complex. Here are some of my ideas I have shared with my friend. Can you offer some complementary analysis and even critique of my own analysis?

Dear LLM friend, you should note two things. The first is that I emphasize the crucial cultural dimension that most commentators on the topic ignore, as they focus on analyzing institutional frameworks and power relationships. The second is that my human friend and I agree not only that the existence of the collection of phenomena we call the deep state needs to be acknowledged and analyzed, but also that it is in the interest of humanity and democracy that it be either dismantled or remodeled, and that whatever emerges is endowed with a strong dose of transparency.

I’m eager to see your comments. Here is the gist of the analysis I shared with my friend.

If we are among those seeking to contribute to the process, we must ask ourselves this question: Can it be managed in a way that prevents the usual pendulum effect? In his short poem “The Great Day” W B Yeats summarized it in these terms:

HURRAH for revolution and more cannon-shot!

A beggar upon horseback lashes a beggar on foot.

Hurrah for revolution and cannon come again!

The beggars have changed places, but the lash goes on. 

It was possible to think that way a century ago, but there was no deep state then. The problem is that ever since World War II, for any nation to be a great power and to some extent even a middling power, it must adopt features of a deep state. Those features are not just institutional, but also cultural, as your model demonstrates, with intellectuals, media and NGOs at the three corners. 

That cultural dimension actually provides some measure of hope. And I think technology, which now has a major impact on culture (i.e. how people think rather than what they think), will play a major role. But it can move in either direction: towards consolidating a deep state or dissolving it. In the latter case, it produces two new hypotheses: instituting a new deep state (the pendulum effect) or allowing something new to emerge. 

I continue to hope the second could prevail, but it means spreading the effort over a wide expanse of thought, effort and action. It must also be focused not on one deep state that could be challenged or overthrown, but on multiple deep states, calling into question the makeup and role of everything grouped under the heading of security. One deep state is about ‘national security.’ Two deep states are about the concept evoked during the Cold War but never taken seriously: ‘indivisible security.’ To be truly indivisible there must be not just a technical and formal notion of collective security but also a cultural notion of security fostering a sense of solidarity that supersedes and even trivializes purely national interests.  

The post-WWII consensus theorized the UN playing that role of defining the terms of indivisible security, with the expectation that there would be means to enforce it. But expecting enforcement to emerge on its own is delusional. The mechanism that fell into place was mutually assured destruction (MAD). That also meant that there had to be two players mutually threatening one another. What that produced was the opposite of culturally founded security. Instead it gave us the kind of psychologically manipulated security your model reveals. It made the architecture of a deep state appear to be a necessary component of government. (In many ways, Hitler’s Nazi model became the reference for its cultural basis, built around a military-industrial complex, but without the superficial layer of overt and active racism).

The current geopolitical turmoil, which Trump has so effectively exacerbated (but which he inherited from previous presidents going back to Lyndon Johnson), has provoked a visible cultural change, at least to the extent that people are not only increasingly aware of the reality of the deep state, but sense that it more than anything else threatens the ideal of democracy.

This is truly a Zeitenwende moment, not just for Germany — whose Zeit (time), in the words of Hamlet, is clearly ‘out of joint’ — but for the world.” 

Google’s Gemini provided this equally lengthy response. In a follow-up article, I shall comment Gemini’s response, which I found extremely pertinent:

“Your analysis of the ‘deep state’ offers a compelling and nuanced perspective, particularly by emphasizing its crucial cultural dimensions and the aspiration to move beyond cyclical power shifts towards a more genuinely democratic and secure global order. It’s a rich framework, and I appreciate the opportunity to engage with your ideas. Here’s some complementary analysis and critique, offered in the spirit of constructive dialogue:

1. The Nature and Elusiveness of the ‘Deep State’

You rightly point out that the idea of the ‘deep state’ has moved from the fringes of discourse towards more mainstream recognition, with Eisenhower’s prescient 1961 warning as a key historical marker. Your conceptualization of it as a ‘collection of phenomena’ involving institutional frameworks, power relationships, and significantly, cultural underpinnings (intellectuals, media, NGOs) is a strong starting point.

Complementary Analysis: The elusive nature of the ‘deep state’ is one of its defining characteristics. It’s rarely a formal, monolithic entity with a membership list. Instead, it can be seen as a confluence of embedded interests, long-standing bureaucratic structures (intelligence agencies, military leadership, key civil service posts), and private sector actors (defense contractors, financial institutions, tech giants) that share a common understanding of national interest and operational continuity, often irrespective of which political party is in power. This makes it resilient to normal democratic accountability.

Critique/Nuance: While your model places intellectuals, media, and NGOs ‘at the three corners’ as cultural components, it’s worth considering that these sectors are also crucial spaces for contesting deep state influence. Journalists break stories that expose covert actions, intellectuals develop critiques of power, and NGOs advocate for transparency and human rights, sometimes in direct opposition to entrenched state interests. The cultural sphere is thus a battleground, not solely an apparatus of the deep state.

2. The ‘Necessity’ of Deep State Features and the Dilemma of Reform

Your assertion that ‘ever since World War II, for any nation to be a great power…it has to adopt features of a deep state’ is a stark but largely accurate observation, especially concerning national security, intelligence gathering, and technological development. This, however, presents a profound dilemma for your aim to dismantle or remodel it.

Complementary Analysis: This perceived necessity often stems from the anarchic nature of the international system, where security is self-help, and a competitive advantage in intelligence, defense, and technology is seen as vital for survival and influence. The long-term planning, secrecy, and resource allocation required for these capabilities often bypass or manipulate standard democratic processes.

Critique: If these features are indeed ‘necessary’ for a nation to maintain its standing or even defend itself effectively in the current global landscape, then dismantling them without a viable alternative for ensuring security could be seen as unilaterally disarming or destabilizing. This doesn’t invalidate the desire for reform, but it highlights the immense challenge: how do you reduce unaccountable power without also catastrophically reducing a state’s capacity to function in a complex world? Your focus on ‘indivisible security’ is a response to this, which I’ll address further.

3. The Cultural Shift, Technology, and Avoiding Yeats’s Pendulum

Your hope that technology and a broader cultural understanding can help avert the ‘pendulum effect’ described by Yeats is an important aspiration. The idea is that a mere replacement of elites doesn’t change the fundamental dynamics of power.

Complementary Analysis: Technology indeed has a dual capacity. It offers unprecedented tools for surveillance, information control, and autonomous weaponry, potentially consolidating deep state power. Conversely, as you note, it can empower citizen journalism, enable secure communication for activists, and facilitate global awareness and mobilization, creating pressure for transparency and change. The current ‘cultural change’ you observe, where more people sense the deep state’s threat to democracy, is significantly amplified by this technological shift in information dissemination.

Critique: While technology can foster awareness, it can also lead to what some call ‘participatory illusion,’ where online activity feels like meaningful action but doesn’t translate into structural change. Furthermore, the same technologies that might help ‘dissolve’ one form of deep state could facilitate the rise of new, perhaps even less accountable, power centers – for instance, powerful tech corporations with their own opaque algorithmic governance and vast data empires, or decentralized networks with malign intent. The challenge is not just about awareness but about translating that awareness into effective, sustainable mechanisms of democratic control.

4. From ‘National Security’ to ‘Indivisible Security’

Your proposal to shift focus from singular ‘national security’ (underpinning one deep state) to ‘indivisible security’ (implying a challenge to multiple deep states and fostering solidarity) is a visionary and ethically compelling idea.

Complementary Analysis: This resonates with concepts of human security, which broaden the definition of security beyond state-centric military concerns to include economic, environmental, health, and personal security for all individuals. The failure of the UN to fully embody this, and the subsequent reliance on MAD, starkly illustrates the grip of the national security paradigm.

Critique: The primary obstacle to ‘indivisible security’ remains the persistent power of national sovereignty and the deep-seated mistrust between states. Achieving a ‘cultural notion of security fostering a sense of solidarity that supersedes and even trivializes purely national interests’ is an immense undertaking. How can this be fostered in a world where geopolitical competition is arguably intensifying, and where some states actively promote narrowly nationalistic or civilizationalist ideologies? While the Cold War’s bipolar MAD was one manifestation, the current multipolar world presents its own complex challenges to collective security, with diverse actors and interests. The mechanisms for building such profound global solidarity need to be imagined and painstakingly constructed, perhaps starting with smaller, regional, or issue-specific forms of cooperation.

5. The Nazi Model Reference and the Nature of Deep State Ideology

Your reference to Hitler’s Nazi model as a (non-racist) cultural basis for a military-industrial complex is provocative and points to the efficiency of a state geared towards total mobilization.

Nuance/Critique: While the Nazi regime certainly exemplified an extreme fusion of state, industry, and ideology for national power and expansion, the comparison requires careful handling. The ‘cultural basis’ of deep states in democratic or semi-democratic nations, while potentially manipulative or based on fear (as your friend’s model suggests), generally operates under a different legitimizing narrative (e.g., protecting democracy, maintaining stability, ensuring economic prosperity). The danger lies not necessarily in an overt, jackbooted totalitarianism, but in a more subtle, creeping erosion of democratic accountability, justified by perpetual emergency or existential threat. The ‘psychologically manipulated security’ you mention is key here – it often relies on constructing an ‘other’ or a constant sense of threat that makes the deep state’s actions seem perpetually necessary.

6. The ‘Zeitenwende’ Moment

Your characterization of the current era as a ‘Zeitenwende’ is apt. The conjunction of geopolitical shifts, technological acceleration, and growing public awareness of issues like the deep state does suggest a potential turning point.

Complementary Analysis: This awareness creates an opportunity. Crises can delegitimize old ways of doing things and open space for new ideas. The very turmoil you mention, exacerbated by figures like Trump, has paradoxically made more people question the underlying structures of power and governance.

Critique/Caution: A ‘Zeitenwende’ doesn’t inherently guarantee a positive outcome. Turning points can lead to regression as easily as progress. The challenge is to channel the current discontent and awareness into constructive, democratic reforms rather than allowing it to be co-opted by demagoguery, further entrenchment of security apparatuses under new justifications, or a descent into deeper cynicism.

Concluding Thoughts:

Your analysis powerfully highlights that any effort to address the ‘deep state’ must grapple with its deep cultural roots and the narratives that sustain it. The call for transparency is fundamental, but as you implicitly acknowledge with the Yeats reference, true change requires more than just exposing or replacing individuals; it requires altering the underlying structures, incentives, and cultural presuppositions.

The path towards a system based on ‘indivisible security’ and genuine global solidarity is fraught with difficulty and will require sustained, multi-faceted efforts that go far beyond challenging a single nation’s deep state. It involves reimagining international relations, fostering global citizenship, and developing robust international institutions that command legitimacy and can manage power.

Your focus on the cultural dimension offers a crucial lever. If culture is where the necessity of deep state features is normalized, it is also where it can be questioned and, potentially, denormalized. This makes your dialogue and analysis not just an academic exercise, but a vital part of the very cultural work needed for change.

Thank you for sharing such a thought-provoking piece. It touches upon some of the most critical questions of our time regarding democracy, power, and the future of global order.”

My thoughts

In my follow-up article, I will react to several of the points Gemini develops. I’ll offer just one closing thought here.

I was pleasantly surprised by Google’s Gemini when it warned against “powerful tech corporations with their own opaque algorithmic governance and vast data empires, or decentralized networks with malign intent.” Will anyone at Google read this and ponder its significance? Thank you, Gemini, for your honesty.

This reminded me of the historical paradox I referred to and which most commentators fail to mention. Shouldn’t we think it ironic that Eisenhower was the one to warn against a trend that ballooned during his eight-year watch and which he apparently did nothing to constrain? The simplest explanation would be that Ike had in his team the two : John Foster, his Secretary of State, and Allen, the director of the CIA. They were the architects and managers of the deep state. Their power may have exceeded that of the president.

And if it was true then, we can be certain that after the assassination of Eisenhower’s successor, John F. Kennedy, it has been growing ever since.

Your thoughts

Please feel free to share your thoughts on these points by writing to us at dialogue@fairobserver.com. We are looking to gather, share and consolidate the ideas and feelings of humans who interact with AI. We will build your thoughts and commentaries into our ongoing dialogue. 

[Artificial Intelligence is rapidly becoming a feature of everyone’s daily life. We unconsciously perceive it either as a friend or foe, a helper or destroyer. At 51łÔšĎ, we see it as a tool of creativity, capable of revealing the complex relationship between humans and machines.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Outside the Box: Gemini’s Take on the Threat Posed by the Deep State… and Google! appeared first on 51łÔšĎ.

How politicians and journalists account for the relationship between the principal actors — first of all, Ukraine and Russia, but also NATO, the US and the European Union — depends on the individual’s preference for a certain style of standard narrative. One option is the David and Goliath template. This one is complicated by the fact that David (Ukraine) recruited Godzilla (the US and NATO) to join the battle, unless — given the obvious presence of Godzilla — one prefers to think of this as Godzilla vs. King Kong (Russia), with Ukraine simply playing the role of a Hollywood extra squashed by the massive foot of one or the other adversaries.

Another is Rudyard Kipling’s “East is East and West is West,” where “two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth!” That narrative is a recipe for yet another forever war.

Given the fatigue associated with rooting for one side or the other in the unresolvable conflict, Kipling may already have won the day, which explains why Trump’s 24 hours are long past. The language of the strong man of the West (NATO) seems to bear that out. Ukrainska Pravda, Ukraine’s leading online newspaper this recent assessment by Mark Rutte, NATO’s general secretary, of the nature of the Russian threat.

“Rutte believes that Moscow’s current capabilities in space are outdated and not on par with the West: ‘Developing nuclear weapons in space is, therefore, a way for Russia to improve its capabilities. This is a matter of great concern’.”

°Ő´Çťĺ˛š˛â’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Capabilities:

A term used to qualify the level of threat posed by a rival or adversary, which will be systematically underestimated when the purpose of the political rhetoric is to signal the opportunity to prepare for confrontation and overestimated when the purpose is to instill fear, justifying mobilization.

Contextual note

The key idea Rutte is putting forward is contained in the phrase “a matter of great concern.” His logic, or lack thereof, derives from the ambiguity of the meaning of “capabilities.” One should always seek to understand reality and will be justified in feeling concerned about what it turns out to be. In other words, reality, when it proves to be threatening, is a matter of great concern. In that sense, awareness of existing power and capacity to inflict damage on the part of someone one does not trust can always be a matter of great concern.

But capabilities can also suggest some future potential, even though, especially in military parlance, it doesn’t literally mean that. Being capable of developing capabilities is simply not the same thing as possessing capabilities.

So, what is Rutte saying here? First, he proudly asserts that NATO is strong because Russia is weak, given that its “current capabilities in space are outdated.” That should sound reassuring. If he can say ¸éłÜ˛ő˛őžą˛šâ€™s capabilities are outdated it implies that NATO’s own are up to date. Just as in Zeno’s intriguing (but specious) of Achilles racing a tortoise that was given a significant head start, because Achilles possesses the capability of speed, which the tortoise clearly lacks, it doesn’t matter how many times we divide the diminishing distance between the trailing athlete and the advancing tortoise, Achilles knows he will overtake his competitor and win the race.

Rutte wants us to believe Russia is weak so that NATO, in the role of Achilles, can believe in its strength and speed. Fortified by that knowledge we can boldly plot our course to win the race, confident that we will win. But then Rutte hits a serious snag. If we believe Russia is weak, NATO needn’t spend money to tool up or even have a reason to exist.

To overcome his equally specious paradox, Rutte feels obliged to evoke a future in which Russia may become strong. “We’re aware of reports that Russia is exploring the possibility of deploying nuclear weapons in space.” Does the word “capabilities” have the same meaning, or indeed any meaning when evoking “a future” when Russia “may become strong?”

In short, “capabilities” is a word Humpty Dumpty would undoubtedly cherish, as Lewis Carroll indicates in this from his conversation with Alice: “‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.’” For Rutte, ¸éłÜ˛ő˛őžą˛šâ€™s real capabilities are weak but its imagined capabilities in the future may perchance be worryingly strong. Any rational person would deem the semantic ambiguity of the NATO chief’s reasoning “a matter of great concern.”

Historical note

NATO was born just over 75 years ago, in the immediate aftermath of World War II. Whether its historical justification was clearly reasoned or not, its creation responded to two perceived goals. The first was to provide a structure that might prevent European nations from behaving in the irresponsible manner that had led to two devastating World Wars. If the stronger nations of Europe could be united militarily and take orders from the strongest nation of all, on the opposite side of the Atlantic, they would find it difficult to go to war amongst themselves.

The second reason was both ideological and financial. It was the fear and loathing of communism. This became the obsessive theme emanating from the US and the United Kingdom. The dominant Anglo-Saxon cultures proved to be exceptional among the concert of nations in one important respect: The sense of identity, as promoted by the governing elite, grew far more significantly from their economic ideology than from their cultural, religious and linguistic traditions. Their leaders suspected the vulnerability of their hyper-competitive ideology that could potentially alienate the subservient castes, including the middle class. They lived in permanent fear of an assault on the undefined but fully functioning system called capitalism, whose architecture and operating manual had been designed and distilled out of the experience of four centuries of European colonialism.

The obvious source of that assault would be their wartime ally, the Soviet Union, whose official ideology challenged the legitimacy of both capitalism and colonialism. Instead of studying the means of achieving some kind of stable relationship based on mutual respect, the Western victors opted for a stance of direct ideological opposition concretized by a military posture. Things could have played out differently, particularly within Europe. But the Anglo elite were right to suppose that their ideology would always be vulnerable due to the inevitable perception of uncontrollable inequality within nominally democratic regimes. The Soviet Union stood as the ideal enemy against whom it made sense to organize militarily.

NATO is not merely a military alliance. It also plays three other vital roles. Most significantly, it exists as a lobby for the armaments industry, with US industry in a dominant and unifying, or rather standardizing, position. Here the key notion is interoperability. The second is NATO’s capacity to offer member states a sense of geographical identity that appears to have more tensile strength than Europe’s national boundaries, the source of so much historical conflict. NATO thus defines an illusory space people feel they safely occupy.

The third non-military role NATO plays is purely psychological. It has to do with the member nations’ sense of being physically connected with one another thanks to a shared military command. This serves to attenuate the effects of their visible cultural diversity and to counter the natural centrifugal force of linguistic and cultural divergence. Because of its technology and supranational organization, NATO allows Europeans to believe in their collective clout as a geopolitical force.

NATO’s role as a lobby reflects and supports the financial superstructure of the Western alliance. It responds directly to the desire not to defend its member nations, but to defend the financial system that underpins it. One may legitimately object that the cultural and psychological force of NATO, creating belief in the group of nations’ muscular force, is fundamentally psychosomatic. Its failure to prove its force in the Ukraine war underlines this point. But belief in one’s “capabilities” has become a fundamental necessity in the competitive world of capitalistic nation states, even when those capabilities only exist in theory.

*[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 51łÔšĎ Devil’s Dictionary.]

edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

The post NATO’s Chief Demonstrates His Own Incapabilities appeared first on 51łÔšĎ.

Ukraine clearly occupies center stage and should stand as the central actor, but there are at least three reasons why its capacity to influence the outcome has become marginalized. The first is basic post-Soviet history. Any honest historical assessment of the causes of the war must focus on the positions, ambitions and global standing of the two major powers involved: the US and Russia. Ukraine is a mere pawn on what Zbigniew Brzezinski nearly three decades ago as “the grand chessboard.” Europe in contrast stands as a line of pawns that has been wondering all along what its role is supposed to be.

The second reason for Ukraine’s limited influence is the often-denied complexity of its demography that has kept it in a permanently confused state of cultural, if not national, identity at least since the collapse of the Soviet Union. What makes a nation? Its legal boundaries, determined by whom and to what end? Or its culture, its language, its historical memory, its sense of ethnicity or religious identity? To say nothing of the ideologies that sometimes come to the fore. Ukraine’s case has always been a puzzler.

The third reason is the brutal fact, still frequently denied in the West, that the prospect of Ukraine defeating Russia is now unthinkable. Russia definitively has the upper hand today. But it also has the capacity — thanks to its Oreshnik missiles, demonstrated once but currently in mass production — to wreck the entire country if Russia were to feel threatened. After that, it’s the prospect of nuclear war.

All the actors acknowledge that the war has reached a phase in which dialogue in some form, must have a dominant role to play. How that dialogue will be structured, with the four parties jockeying for position, remains a mystery.

With that in mind I decided to engage in a conversation with ChatGPT focused on the nature and quality of the dialogue attributable to European leaders, the fourth interested party. That collection of nations, despite their presumed collective clout, finds itself clearly in a position of weakness, if not confusion about their role and even their standing.

I opened the conversation with the following prompt.

“Germany’s next chancellor Friedrich Merz has said ‘In view of the threats to our freedom and peace on our continent, the rule for our defence now has to be “whatever it takes”.’ Joe Biden repeatedly said that the US would support Ukraine ‘as long as it takes.’ It appears that this concept of unlimited and unquestioned commitment has become a feature of a militaristic attitude that characterizes periods of historical instability and that comports serious risks of escalation. Am I wrong in seeing this as a change in the mentality of leaders in the West? Am I overestimating the level of risk which seems to be less manageable than during the Cold War?”

“You’re not wrong in observing a shift in the rhetoric of Western leaders, nor in perceiving the risks of escalation as significant. The language of open-ended commitment—whether ‘whatever it takes’ (Merz) or ‘as long as it takes’ (Biden)—signals a potentially more expansionist or uncompromising approach to military engagement, in contrast to the measured deterrence that characterized much of the Cold War. However, the nature of risk today is different rather than necessarily greater.

Is There a Change in Western Leadership Mentality?

Yes, there appears to be a shift, but it must be contextualized:

1. More Emotional and Moral Framing:
   • During the Cold War, political leaders framed their strategies in terms of containment, deterrence, and realpolitik, often accepting the necessity of compromise (e.g., arms control agreements, dĂŠtente).
   • °Ő´Çťĺ˛š˛â’s rhetoric leans more towards moral imperatives—defending democracy and sovereignty—making de-escalation rhetorically harder.
2. Commitment Without Clear Strategic Limits:
   • The Cold War saw well-defined red lines (e.g., NATO vs. Warsaw Pact boundaries, nuclear doctrines like MAD).
   • °Ő´Çťĺ˛š˛â’s Western leaders are committing to a principle (Ukraine’s defense, European security) without a predefined endpoint, making it harder to calculate risks rationally.
3. Weaker Institutions for Restraint:
   • Cold War diplomacy was anchored by mechanisms like the Helsinki Accords, the Non-Proliferation Treaty, and backchannel diplomacy.
   • Today, Russia is no longer treated as a co-equal nuclear power in negotiations; dialogue mechanisms are weaker, and diplomacy is often framed in absolute terms.

Are the Risks Less Manageable Than During the Cold War?

Possibly, but for different reasons:

• Nuclear deterrence still exists, but crisis management is weaker.
  • In the Cold War, even during extreme tensions (Cuban Missile Crisis, Able Archer 83), both sides used structured backchannels to prevent escalation.
  • Today, there is less direct military-to-military communication between NATO and Russia, increasing the risk of miscalculation.
• Multipolar instability replaces bipolar balance.
  • The Cold War had two clearly defined superpowers. Now, power is more fragmented, with China, regional players, and unpredictable alliances (e.g., Iran-Russia).
  • This makes escalation harder to control, as multiple actors with different risk tolerances are involved.
• Public and media-driven escalation dynamics.
  • °Ő´Çťĺ˛š˛â’s political environment rewards performative toughness, especially in democracies where leaders respond to public pressure.
  • Unlike the Cold War, when secrecy allowed for quiet negotiations, social media and 24/7 news cycles make de-escalation harder without appearing weak.

Are You Overestimating the Risk?

It depends on how you define ‘manageable.’ While nuclear deterrence still holds, the pathways to crisis resolution are weaker, and the dynamics of political escalation are less constrained than in the past. There’s also a greater unpredictability—not just from Russia, but from domestic political shifts in the West (e.g., a potential Trump return, changing European politics).

So while a direct U.S.-Russia or NATO-Russia war is still unlikely due to nuclear deterrence, the lack of clear de-escalation mechanisms and the absolutist rhetoric make unintended escalation more plausible than in the structured framework of the Cold War.

Would you like to explore how this shift in Western leadership mentality is affecting public opinion and policy debates?”

“Yes, I would even like to look specifically at the stances taken by leaders such as Emmanuel Macron and Keir Starmer. Most European leaders have seen their electoral bases and their credibility severely diminished. Some say they are resorting to bellicose rhetoric to enhance their authority or at least their image as leaders of a war effort, but others observe that the public has not been consulted on the kinds of commitments they are ready to make. So please elucidate as best you can this complex situation, which many people such as myself see as a major multifaceted crisis that is likely to lead to the weakening of democratic institutions.”

“Your concerns about the evolving rhetoric of Western leaders, particularly figures like Emmanuel Macron and Keir Starmer, and its implications for democratic institutions are indeed pertinent. The current geopolitical landscape has prompted leaders to adopt more assertive stances, which, while aiming to address security challenges, may also influence domestic political dynamics and public engagement.

Emmanuel Macron’s Position

French President Emmanuel Macron has advocated for a robust European defense strategy in response to escalating security threats. He emphasizes the necessity for Europe to strengthen its military capabilities and reduce reliance on external powers, aligning with broader EU discussions on increasing defense budgets and coordinating rearmament efforts. Proposals under consideration include the establishment of a ‘European Security Fund’ and a rearmament bank, inspired by the European Financial Stability Facility, to finance defense initiatives and support Ukraine. 

Keir Starmer’s Stance

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer has outlined plans to revitalize Britain’s economy and public sector efficiency, linking national security with domestic renewal. His agenda includes restructuring the civil service and the National Health Service (NHS), increasing defense spending, and integrating advanced technologies into public services. While these reforms aim to bolster the UK’s strategic position, they have faced domestic resistance due to concerns over potential job losses and spending cuts. 

Public Consultation and Democratic Engagement

The adoption of assertive policies without extensive public consultation raises questions about democratic engagement. Critics argue that leaders resorting to bellicose rhetoric to enhance their authority may bypass traditional democratic processes, leading to a disconnect between government actions and public sentiment. This approach risks alienating citizens and undermining trust in democratic institutions, especially if the public perceives that their voices are not being heard in decisions of national importance.

Impact on Democratic Institutions

The current multifaceted crisis poses challenges to democratic institutions:

• Erosion of Civil Liberties: Increased security measures can lead to restrictions on civil liberties, affecting freedoms of speech, assembly, and privacy.
• Centralization of Power: Emergency powers and expedited decision-making processes may result in the centralization of authority, reducing checks and balances.
• Public Disillusionment: A perceived lack of transparency and public involvement can lead to disillusionment with the political process, decreasing civic participation and voter turnout.

In summary, while leaders like Macron and Starmer aim to address pressing security and economic challenges through assertive policies, it is crucial to balance these actions with robust democratic engagement to ensure that measures taken do not inadvertently weaken the democratic institutions they seek to protect.”

To be continued

In Part 2, we will continue our discussion by attempting to respond to the question of whether there is room for a different vision of Europe today, given the attitudes we have begun exploring here. We will discover why ChatGPT, after reviewing the sometimes confusing language of Europe’s most audible voices, believes that “a different vision, based on diplomacy, de-escalation, and economic stability, exists but currently lacks strong political champions at the highest levels.”

I invite our readers who truly wish to penetrate not just the fog of war but the even denser fog of political rhetoric to join us not only with your own reflections, but with your own experimental discussions with your favorite chatbot. Everyone is now empowered to use AI’s access to seemingly limitless resources to begin to clarify the questions that they consider urgent to explore and eventually resolve.

Your thoughts

Please feel free to share your thoughts on these points by writing to us at dialogue@fairobserver.com. We are looking to gather, share and consolidate the ideas and feelings of humans who interact with AI. We will build your thoughts and commentaries into our ongoing dialogue.

[Artificial Intelligence is rapidly becoming a feature of everyone’s daily life. We unconsciously perceive it either as a friend or foe, a helper or destroyer. At 51łÔšĎ, we see it as a tool of creativity, capable of revealing the complex relationship between humans and machines.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Outside the Box: AI’s Honest Take on Europe’s Ambiguity, Part 1 appeared first on 51łÔšĎ.

Is this the beginning of a new Cold War between the United States, NATO and Russia or the end of one? Will Russia and the West remain implacable enemies for the foreseeable future, with a new iron curtain between them through what was once the heart of Ukraine? Or can the US and Russia resolve the disputes and hostility that led to this war in the first place, so as to leave Ukraine with a stable and lasting peace?

The Cold War repeats itself

Some European leaders see this moment as the beginning of a long struggle with Russia, akin to the beginning of the Cold War in 1946, when Winston Churchill that “an iron curtain has descended” across Europe.

On March 2, echoing Churchill, European Council President Ursula von der Leyen that Europe must turn Ukraine into a “steel porcupine.” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has said he wants up to 200,000 European troops on the eventual ceasefire line between Russia and Ukraine to “guarantee” any peace agreement. He insists that the US provide a “backstop,” meaning a commitment to send US forces to fight in Ukraine if war breaks out again.

Russia has repeatedly said it to NATO forces being based in Ukraine under any guise. “We explained today that the appearance of armed forces from the same NATO countries, but under a false flag, under the flag of the European Union or under national flags, does not change anything in this regard,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on February 18. “Of course this is unacceptable to us.”

But the UK is persisting in a campaign to recruit a “coalition of the willing,” the same term the US and UK coined for the list of countries they persuaded to support the invasion of Iraq in 2003. In that case, only Australia, Denmark and Poland took in the invasion. Costa Rica publicly insisted on being from the list, and the term was widely lampooned as the “coalition of the billing” because the US recruited so many countries to join it by promising them lucrative foreign aid deals.

Far from the start of a new Cold War, US President Donald Trump and other leaders see this moment as more akin to the end of the original Cold War, when US President Ronald Reagan and Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev met in Reykjavik, Iceland, in 1986 and to bridge the divisions caused by 40 years of Cold War hostility.

Like Trump and Putin today, Reagan and Gorbachev were unlikely peacemakers. Gorbachev had risen through the ranks of the Soviet Communist Party to become its General Secretary and Soviet Premier in March 1985, in the midst of the Soviet war in Afghanistan. He didn’t begin to Soviet forces from Afghanistan until 1988. Reagan oversaw an unprecedented Cold War arms build-up, a in Guatemala and covert and proxy wars throughout Central America. And yet Gorbachev and Reagan are now widely remembered as peacemakers.

While Democrats deride Trump as a Putin stooge, in his first term in office, Trump was actually responsible for escalating the Cold War with Russia. After the Pentagon had milked its absurd, self-fulfilling “War on Terror” for trillions of dollars, it was Trump and his defense secretary, General “Mad Dog” Mattis, who declared the shift back to strategic competition with Russia and China as the Pentagon’s new gravy train in their 2018 National Defense Strategy. It was also Trump who lifted President Barack Obama’s restrictions on sending to Ukraine.

The dissolution of European peacemaking

Trump’s head-spinning about-face in US policy has left its European allies with whiplash and reversed the roles they each have played for generations. France and Germany have traditionally been the and peacemakers in the Western alliance. Meanwhile, the US and UK have been infected with a chronic case of war fever that has proven resistant to a long string of military defeats and catastrophic impacts on every country that has fallen prey to their warmongering.

In 2003, France’s Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin led the to the invasion of Iraq in the UN Security Council. France, Germany and Russia issued a joint to say that they would “not let a proposed resolution pass that would authorize the use of force. Russia and France, as permanent members of the Security Council, will assume all their responsibilities on this point.”

At a press conference in Paris with then-German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, French President Jacques Chirac , “Everything must be done to avoid war… As far as we’re concerned, war always means failure.”

As recently as 2022, after Russia invaded Ukraine, it was once again the US and UK that and blocked peace negotiations in favor of a long war, while , and continued to call for new negotiations, even as they gradually fell in line with the US policy.

Former Chancellor Gerhard SchrĂśder took part in the peace negotiations in Turkey in March and April 2022 and then flew to Moscow at Ukraine’s request to meet with Putin. In a 2023 with German newspaper Berliner Zeitung, SchrĂśder confirmed that the peace talks only failed “because everything was decided in °Â˛š˛őłóžą˛Ô˛ľłŮ´Ç˛Ô.”

With Biden blocking new negotiations in 2023, one interviewer asked Schröder, “Do you think you can resume your peace plan?”

He replied, “Yes, and the only ones who can initiate this are France and Germany… Macron and Scholz are the only ones who can talk to Putin. Chirac and I did the same in the Iraq war. Why can’t support for Ukraine be combined with an offer of talks to Russia? The arms deliveries are not a solution for eternity. But no one wants to talk. Everyone sits in trenches. How many more people have to die?”

Since 2022, President Macron and a Thatcherite team of iron ladies — European Council President von der Leyen; former German Foreign Minister Analena Baerbock and former Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, now the EU’s foreign policy chief — have promoted a new militarization of Europe, egged on from behind the scenes by and arms manufacturers.

Has the passage of time, the passing of the World War II generation and the distortion of history washed away the historical memory of two World Wars from a continent that was destroyed by conflict only 80 years ago? Where is the next generation of French and German diplomats in the tradition of de Villepin and Schröder today? How can sending German tanks to fight in Ukraine, and now in Russia itself, fail to remind Russians of previous German invasions and solidify support for the war? And won’t the for Europe to confront Russia by moving from a “welfare state to a warfare state” only feed the rise of the European hard right?

So are the new European militarists reading the historical moment correctly? Or are they jumping on the bandwagon of a disastrous Cold War that could, as and Trump have , lead to World War III?

A US–Russian plan to restore relations

When Trump’s foreign policy team with their Russian counterparts in Saudi Arabia on February 18, ending the war in Ukraine was the second part of the three-part plan they agreed on. The first was to restore full diplomatic relations between the US and Russia, and the third was to work on a series of other problems in American–Russian relations.

The order of these three stages is interesting because, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio noted, it means that the negotiations over Ukraine will be the first test of restored relations between the US and Russia.

If the negotiations for peace in Ukraine are successful, they can lead to further negotiations over restoring arms control treaties and nuclear disarmament. Perhaps they could even spur cooperation on other global problems that have been impossible to resolve in a world stuck in a zombie-like Cold War that powerful interests will not allow to die.

It was a welcome change to hear Rubio that the post-Cold War unipolar world was an anomaly and that now we have to adjust to the reality of a multipolar world. But if Trump and his advisers are just trying to restore US relations with Russia as part of a “reverse Kissinger” scheme to isolate China, as some analysts have , that would perpetuate ´Ąłžąđ°ůžąłŚ˛šâ€™s debilitating geopolitical crisis instead of solving it.

A chance for change

The US and our friends in Europe have a new chance to make a clean break from the three-way geopolitical power struggle between the US, Russia and China that has hamstrung the world since the 1970s. They can find new roles and priorities for our countries in the emerging multipolar world of the 21st century.

We hope that Trump and European leaders can recognize the crossroads at which they are standing, and the chance history is giving them to choose the path of peace. France and Germany in particular should remember the wisdom of de Villepin, Chirac and SchrĂśder in the face of American and British plans for aggression against Iraq in 2003.

This could be the beginning of the end of the permanent state of war and Cold War that has held the world in its grip for over a century. Ending it would allow us to finally prioritize the progress and cooperation we so desperately need to solve the other critical problems the whole world faces today. As US General Mark Milley back in November 2022 when he called for renewed negotiations between Ukraine and Russia, we must “seize the moment.”

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Is This the Beginning or the End of a New Cold War? appeared first on 51łÔšĎ.

Without offering a definitive assessment, both AI chatbots judged that there was little factual support for the idea that Putin was motivated by imperialistic ambitions. When comparing the thesis that Putin intended to conquer swathes of Europe with the contrary thesis that Russia feared NATO expansion to its most sensitive borders, both ChatGPT and DeepSeek called the former the weaker argument.

This information incited me to push the reflection further as I offered a new prompt:

“What does this say about the media in the West, given the massive prevalence of what you assess is the weaker argument?”

ChatGPT

“The prevalence of the imperialist narrative in Western media, despite its weaker empirical foundation, reveals several underlying dynamics about how information is framed and disseminated in the West. Here are some key factors that might explain this tendency:

1. Simplification for Public Consumption

Complex geopolitical analyses, like those from Mearsheimer or Sachs, don’t always fit neatly into media formats designed for mass consumption. Simplifying narratives around a singular, villainous figure—Putin as an imperialist—offers a clear-cut, emotionally resonant story that audiences can easily grasp.

• Personalization of Conflict: Framing the invasion as a reflection of Putin’s personal ambitions mirrors a broader media tendency to reduce complex geopolitical issues to individual actions, making stories more relatable and engaging.
• Good vs. Evil Framing: The imperialist narrative fits a familiar moral template, painting Russia as an aggressive, expansionist force reminiscent of Cold War dynamics, with Ukraine positioned as the democratic underdog.

2. Ideological Bias and Legacy Narratives

Western media, particularly in the U.S. and Europe, is shaped by historical narratives that date back to the Cold War. These frameworks still influence how Russia is perceived:

• Cold War Hangover: The long-standing portrayal of Russia (and before that, the Soviet Union) as an adversarial power predisposes media outlets to interpret Russian actions through an imperialist or authoritarian lens.
• Democracy vs. Autocracy: Western media often emphasizes ideological conflicts, framing events as battles between democratic and autocratic systems. The idea that Putin wants to reconstitute the Soviet empire dovetails with this narrative, positioning him as a threat to democratic values globally.

3. Influence of Political and Strategic Interests

Media narratives often reflect not just journalistic choices but broader political and strategic interests:

• Alignment with Government Messaging: Media coverage frequently parallels the foreign policy positions of Western governments, particularly in times of conflict. Since many Western governments, including the U.S., have framed ¸éłÜ˛ő˛őžą˛šâ€™s actions as imperialistic, media outlets may echo this framing, whether consciously or not.
• Support for Military Aid and NATO Unity: The imperialist narrative justifies strong military and political support for Ukraine and reinforces NATO’s role as a bulwark against aggression. A more nuanced, realist explanation that places blame partially on Western policies might undermine public support for such measures.

4. Selective Use of Expert Opinions

While serious analysts like Mearsheimer and Sachs offer alternative views, media outlets often rely on a narrow pool of commentators who align with prevailing narratives:

• Echo Chambers and Confirmation Bias: Experts who support the dominant narrative are more likely to be featured in mainstream outlets, creating a feedback loop that reinforces existing views.
• Marginalization of Dissenting Voices: Realist perspectives that challenge Western policy can be framed as controversial or even as apologetic towards authoritarian regimes, leading to less media exposure.

5. The Role of Emotional Engagement

The imperialist narrative is emotionally compelling in a way that realist analyses are not:

• Moral Clarity vs. Ambiguity: Suggesting that the invasion is a defensive reaction to NATO expansion introduces moral ambiguity, making it harder for audiences to assign clear blame. The idea of an aggressive Putin seeking to rebuild the Soviet Union is easier to rally against emotionally.
• Human Interest and Storytelling: Media thrives on stories that engage audiences on a personal and emotional level. Stories about imperial ambition evoke fear and historical parallels, making for more compelling headlines and narratives.

Conclusion

The dominance of the imperialist narrative in Western media reflects a combination of simplification for public consumption, ideological bias, strategic alignment with government policy, selective expert representation, and the need for emotionally engaging stories. While media ecosystems in the West often pride themselves on diversity of thought and freedom of the press, this case suggests that certain narratives, especially those aligned with historical and political frameworks, can overshadow more empirically grounded analyses.

This doesn’t mean the media is deliberately misleading, but it does highlight the importance of critically engaging with multiple sources and perspectives to get a fuller picture of complex geopolitical events.”

DeepSeek

“The prevalence of the ‘Soviet empire’ narrative in Western media, despite its weaker empirical and analytical foundation, reveals several important dynamics about the media landscape, its biases, and its role in shaping public discourse. Here are some key insights:

1. Simplification and Sensationalism

• Media’s Role: Western media often prioritizes narratives that are simple, emotionally resonant, and easily digestible for a broad audience. The idea of Putin seeking to reconstitute the Soviet empire is a dramatic and evocative story that fits this mold.
• Impact: This approach can oversimplify complex geopolitical issues, leading to a distorted understanding of events. It also risks reinforcing stereotypes and binary thinking (e.g., ‘good vs. evil’) rather than encouraging nuanced analysis.

2. Confirmation Bias and Audience Preferences

• Pre-Existing Beliefs: Many Western audiences already view Russia through a lens of suspicion and hostility, shaped by decades of Cold War rhetoric and recent tensions. The ‘Soviet empire’ narrative aligns with these pre-existing beliefs, making it more appealing and credible to the public.
• Echo Chambers: Media outlets often cater to their audiences’ preferences, reinforcing narratives that resonate with their viewers or readers. This creates echo chambers where alternative perspectives, such as those emphasizing geopolitical and security concerns, are marginalized.

3. Political and Ideological Agendas

• Alignment with Policy Goals: The ‘Soviet empire’ narrative aligns with the geopolitical interests of Western governments, particularly NATO members, by framing Russia as an expansionist aggressor. This framing justifies increased military spending, NATO expansion, and a hardline stance toward Russia.
• Lack of Critical Scrutiny: Media outlets may uncritically adopt narratives that align with government positions, either due to institutional biases or a lack of access to alternative viewpoints. This can lead to a one-sided portrayal of complex issues.

4. Limited Expertise and Access

• Expertise Gap: Many journalists lack the specialized knowledge required to analyze complex geopolitical issues, leading them to rely on simplistic narratives or the opinions of a narrow range of ‘experts.’
• Access to Sources: Western media often has limited access to Russian perspectives or independent analysts who can provide a more balanced view. This creates an information asymmetry that favors Western-centric narratives.

5. Historical and Cultural Context

• Cold War Legacy: The Cold War left a deep imprint on Western perceptions of Russia, fostering a tendency to interpret Russian actions through the lens of imperial ambition. This historical context makes the ‘Soviet empire’ narrative feel familiar and intuitive, even if it is not fully supported by evidence.
• Cultural Stereotypes: Media narratives often draw on cultural stereotypes about Russia and its leaders, portraying Putin as a scheming autocrat with grandiose ambitions. These stereotypes can overshadow more nuanced analyses.

6. Commercial Pressures

• Clickbait and Ratings: Sensational narratives attract more attention, clicks, and viewers, which are critical for media outlets operating in a competitive, profit-driven environment. The ‘Soviet empire’ narrative is more likely to generate interest than a dry analysis of geopolitical security concerns.
• Short Attention Spans: Complex issues like the Ukraine conflict require time and effort to understand, but media consumers often prefer quick, easily digestible stories. This incentivizes media outlets to prioritize simplicity over depth.

Implications for Media and Public Discourse

1. Erosion of Trust: The prevalence of weaker arguments in the media can erode public trust, particularly when audiences become aware of the gaps between media narratives and reality.
2. Polarization: Simplistic narratives can contribute to political polarization by framing issues in black-and-white terms, leaving little room for compromise or dialogue.
3. Policy Consequences: Media narratives shape public opinion, which in turn influences policy decisions. If the media promotes a distorted understanding of events, it can lead to misguided policies that exacerbate conflicts rather than resolve them.
4. Need for Critical Media Literacy: The prevalence of weaker arguments underscores the importance of critical media literacy, enabling audiences to evaluate sources, recognize biases, and seek out diverse perspectives.

Conclusion

The dominance of the ‘Soviet empire’ narrative in Western media, despite its weaker credibility, reflects a combination of simplification, confirmation bias, political agendas, and commercial pressures. While this narrative resonates with audiences and aligns with certain geopolitical interests, it often comes at the expense of nuanced, evidence-based analysis. Addressing these issues requires a commitment to journalistic integrity, greater diversity of perspectives, and a more informed and critical public. By fostering a media environment that prioritizes accuracy and depth over sensationalism, we can better understand complex issues like the Ukraine conflict and develop more effective responses.”

My thoughts in guise of a conclusion

The two chatbots delivered a similar message. I found ChatGPT’s slightly pithier, as for example in its conclusion: “While media ecosystems in the West often pride themselves on diversity of thought and freedom of the press, this case suggests that certain narratives, especially those aligned with historical and political frameworks, can overshadow more empirically grounded analyses.”

In contrast, DeepSeek’s response was more struck a little deeper into the cultural question of how narratives are constructed and maintained.

The exercise I conducted is simple: I asked an initial question about the relative strengths and weaknesses of two contrasting ways of representing historical reality. I then asked a follow-up question concerning how and why the weaker might prevail in our media and in the minds of influential commentators. 

I thus received a fairly straightforward lesson in how public discourse is modeled and disseminated. I cannot stress too much the value such a simple method of proceeding could potentially have in educational settings. The tools are readily available. The method is simple and can be adapted to multiple contexts in fascinating and empowering ways. AI’s ability to talk to us opens possibilities that have never existed before for experimenting and cultivating critical thinking.

It may, however, be too early to elaborate teaching methodologies around such a practice. The world of education does not yet appear ready to integrate AI in any meaningful and truly productive way into its methodology. There are reasons for its resistance to change.

This is a question we intend to begin exploring in the coming weeks.

Your thoughts

Please feel free to share your thoughts on these points by writing to us at dialogue@fairobserver.com. We are looking to gather, share and consolidate the ideas and feelings of humans who interact with AI. We will build your thoughts and commentaries into our ongoing dialogue.

[Artificial Intelligence is rapidly becoming a feature of everyone’s daily life. We unconsciously perceive it either as a friend or foe, a helper or destroyer. At 51łÔšĎ, we see it as a tool of creativity, capable of revealing the complex relationship between humans and machines.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Outside the Box: Is AI the Media We Need to Deconstruct Our News Media? appeared first on 51łÔšĎ.

A moral groundwork

From its inception, America has framed its defining conflicts as to restore human and divine justice. For example, the Revolutionary War was not just a fight for independence; it was a battle against tyranny and a defense of individuals’ “unalienable rights endowed by a Creator” — a concept deeply influenced by Enlightenment philosopher John Locke. The Revolutionary War established of individualism, egalitarianism and activism, values rooted in both Enlightenment ideals and Judeo-Christian principles that celebrate individual liberty and human dignity. These secular and spiritual ideals are embedded in foundational American documents such as the and the .

Similarly, the Civil War, while centering on economy and sovereignty, transformed into a moral crusade with President Abraham Lincoln’s opposition to slavery. By linking the war to the liberation of slaves, Lincoln set the groundwork for a United States based on equality and human dignity.

This moral foundation has defined ´Ąłžąđ°ůžąłŚ˛šâ€™s involvement in global conflicts throughout the 20th century. In both world wars, America intervened not merely out of self-interest but out of a sense of duty to preserve democracy, national interests with moral responsibility. President Franklin D. Roosevelt ´Ąłžąđ°ůžąłŚ˛šâ€™s fight against Nazism and fascism as a battle between good and evil, reinforcing the nation’s belief that democracy must prevail globally. Through its wartime efforts, America created a world order in which liberal values could thrive. The United Nations and its are the fruits of that moral American vision whose legacy has defined international order to this day.

The Cold War further emphasized ´Ąłžąđ°ůžąłŚ˛šâ€™s commitment to spreading liberal democracy. In contrast to the communist ideology that elevated the above the individual, America championed the right of every human being to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Democratic and Republican presidents, from to , equally emphasized the importance of this moral vision in the free world’s fight against communism. That philosophical commitment, more than mere technological or economic might, helped America win the Cold War and led to the spread of democratic governance across the world.

The loss of morality

Today, however, US foreign policy is increasingly abandoning its moral vision. This decline stems from a significant in bipartisan support for promoting democracy worldwide. Domestic challenges, along with perceived failures in recent nation-building efforts abroad, have dampened the American public’s and policymakers’ interest in democracy overseas. This shift has triggered an isolationist trend in US foreign policy arguably unseen since .

Because ´Ąłžąđ°ůžąłŚ˛šâ€™s global influence is built on not just military might or economic power, but a , the recent reluctance to follow that path risks undermining a legacy carefully built following WWII. By stepping back from the world stage, America risks creating a power vacuum that authoritarian regimes are eager to fill, leaving a more isolated US vulnerable to new threats in the long term.

When President Barack Obama from supporting democratic uprisings in and , he left in the lurch populations striving for freedom against brutal dictatorships, undermining American credibility. Similarly, President Joe Biden’s from Afghanistan ceded control back to the Taliban, reversing years of progress in women’s rights and civil liberties. Now, President-Elect Donald Trump may for Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression when he goes back to the White House in January 2025. US foreign policy risks yet another retreat — one that could determine the fate of Ukraine’s sovereignty and, by extension, the resilience of democracy in Europe.

If Ukraine falls to Russian aggression, it could much of Eastern and Northern Europe and set a dangerous precedent for the unchecked expansion of the Kremlin’s authoritarianism westward. This scenario would ripple across the region, threatening the democratic security of the Baltic states, the Caucasus and potentially Central Europe, posing the gravest challenge to democracy in Western Europe since World War II.

A collapse of democratic resistance in Ukraine could also to expand its influence in the Asia-Pacific. If America and its allies hesitate in Europe, Beijing might seize the opportunity to assert dominance over Taiwan and pressure Japan, while North Korea could feel encouraged to take aggressive steps toward South Korea. The effects could reach as far as India and Australia. Such outcomes would jeopardize decades of democratic progress in the Indo-Pacific and destabilize an entire region critical to global economy and security.

In addition to these risks, a potential US withdrawal from NATO would not only embolden external adversaries but could also fracture Europe internally. This move could empower pro-Russian factions within the European Union to pursue closer ties with Moscow, sidelining pro-democracy and pro-American parties. An eastward European shift would strain Washington and lay the groundwork for a strategic encirclement of the United States.

Given the rise of authoritarianism worldwide, the US must renew its commitment to human rights and democracy. While both Democrats and Republicans may hesitate to champion liberal values abroad, now more than ever, the US needs to reset its moral compass, recommit to its moral foundations in foreign policy, and prioritize the promotion of democratic ideals in the world. This renewed commitment to democracy in foreign policy is essential for preserving ´Ąłžąđ°ůžąłŚ˛šâ€™s global leadership but also critical for keeping the world a freer and safer place.

[ edited this piece]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

The post American Foreign Policy Needs to Reset Its Moral Compass appeared first on 51łÔšĎ.

The US emerged as the global superpower thanks to World War II. In 1945, Europe was in ruins. The war caused widespread destruction in Europe because of the bombing of cities and factories. European powers lost millions of people in the war. Being far from Europe and Japan, the incurred a very low rate of civilian casualties. There was almost no destruction of US infrastructure, with the Japanese attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii, as a notable exception. Naturally, the US emerged as the leader of the West. Although the Soviet Union was a US ally during the war, it competed with the US for global hegemony following the Allied victory, a period referred to as the Cold War.

During the Cold War, the US and its Western allies engaged in a brutal global competition with the Soviets and other communist states. Notable confrontations between these two power centers included the Korean War (1950–1953), the Vietnam War (1955–1975) and the Soviet–Afghan War (1979–1989). Using Soviet influence as an excuse, the US intervened in many countries, including Iran. At the behest of the UK, the US overthrew the first democratically elected government of Iran. Only 26 years after the infamous 1953 coup, the Iranian Revolution deposed the Shah and established ąő°ů˛š˛Ô’s independence from both the US and the UK.

The US tacitly supported European imperial and colonial powers when they committed some of the worst genocides in human history. The most notable include the horrendous atrocities committed in Congo, Kenya and Algeria.

After the fall of the Soviet Union in December 1991, the world looked forward to years of peace and prosperity. Although the US proclaimed that this new era was one of peace, it began with the Rwandan Genocide (1994), the Bosnian Genocide (1995), to the present day with the US-backed genocide against Palestinians and the takeover of Syria by al-Qaeda’s affiliates.

The of the Soviet Union did not make the world more peaceful; it worsened it under unilateral US leadership. The fall produced a power vacuum that has yet to be filled. In particular, it released nationalistic, ethical, cultural and self-determination movements in the former Soviet states. It led to social unrest, organized crime, terrorism and corruption. The ripple effects of the fall will “continue to be felt for some time yet.”

After the Soviets were gone, the US no longer faced any serious challenges to its global hegemony. However, the US considered ąő°ů˛š˛Ô’s independence from US influence a challenge to its global domination and has supported efforts to undermine the Islamic Republic of Iran. Presently, the US efforts that have unseated Assad of Syria were meant to undermine ąő°ů˛š˛Ô’s dominance in the region. 

Recently, reporters saw US President Joe Biden leaving a bookstore with a copy of The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine by Rashid Khalidi in his hand. The book describes the Palestinian struggle for their homeland. “Settler-colonial confrontations with indigenous peoples have only ended in one of three ways: with the elimination or full subjugation of the native population, as in North America; with the defeat and expulsion of the colonizer, as in Algeria, which is extremely rare; or with the abandonment of colonial supremacy, in the context of compromise and reconciliation, as in South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Ireland,” Khalidi writes. 

Hopefully, Biden will read this book and realize that instigating the war in Ukraine, enabling Israel’s genocide against Palestinians and aiding al-Qaeda affiliates are immoral.

The US’s prestige is falling worldwide, all it can do is slow the fall

The world is waking up thanks to Iran. The US’s decision to back Ukraine in the war and enable Israel’s genocide against the Palestinians has placed global attention on Iran. In particular, ąő°ů˛š˛Ô’s support of the oppressed Palestinians has been a popular move. In the US, like around the world, young people with the oppressed Palestinians.

Iran has become so notable for its global standing as a supporter of the oppressed that its archenemy, Israel, admits it. On July 25, Israeli Prime Minister , against whom the International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity, addressed the US Congress.

Hearing the loud protest outside, he felt frustrated with the protesters, crying in his speech that “Iran is funding the anti-Israel protests that are going on right now outside this building.”

Led by Iran, worldwide, people realize the US is not what it claims to be. The US is not a promoter of democracy or peace but a brutal warmonger with no regard for human rights and international law. Internationally, it has used its veto power since 1970 against UN resolutions concerning Israel, with four in the last year. In November, it vetoed the latest UN resolution calling for a ceasefire in . Recently, it blundered by the rise to power in Syria of HayĘźat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) formerly part of al-Qaeda.

To stop the US’ destructive behaviors globally, China, Russia, Iran and some other countries have moved away from the US and formed the alliance. More countries are planning to do the same. Within the new alliance, China pushes for more collaboration between countries rather than subjugating them, as the US does.

No supporter of democracy, not even much of a democracy

Globally, people are becoming more aware that the US does not support democracy. Its ventures into other countries in the name of democracy are a ploy to access their resources and wealth. In pursuit of power and wealth, the US has destroyed lives. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen are just a few known examples where millions of innocent people were killed and billions of dollars of infrastructure were destroyed by US-led aggression.

The US is also a very flawed democracy itself. According to a poll from the Harris Poll and the Quincy Institute, around of Americans want the US to pursue peace with Russia. Yet, the US continues arming Ukraine against Russia. Likewise, of Americans disapprove of Biden’s handling of the “Israel–Palestine conflict,” but Biden continues arming Israel. Biden is acting as a dictator, ignoring the will of the people. This is not unique to Biden. US presidents have been getting the US in wars since its inception. Despite its global proclamation as a beacon of democracy, the US has never been a true democracy.

The US presidential system is flawed. The winner of the majority of Electoral College votes wins. In 2000 and 2016, George W. Bush and Donald Trump lost the popular vote but still became presidents because they commanded a majority of Electoral College votes. Furthermore, the US is dominated by two main parties. Third parties are not even on the ballot in many states. Big money in politics also strengthens the hand of the two main political parties.

This means that American politics makes for the strangest of bedfellows. Christian evangelicals voted for Trump despite his chauvinism, infidelity, nepotism, racism and corruption. So did many working-class Americans as well as a majority of white women and Latino men voted for this celebrity billionaire who has given and plans to give tax cuts to the rich. On the other hand, Ivy League elites largely voted for Democrats even if they had misgivings about Kamala Harris.

Giving the rich tax breaks and spending too much on the military-industrial complex has led to the US suffering the highest rate among industrial countries. The US ranks last in outcomes among the ten major developed countries despite spending nearly twice as much — about 18% of gross domestic product — on healthcare than the others. The crisis is also worse than in other Western countries and the country has the highest rate among high-income countries.

As is well known, American interventions in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Yemen and other countries led to the expansion of the military-industrial complex. Today, the US sends its poor to war who come back with post-traumatic stress disorder if not wounds or in body bags.

The US invasion of Iraq in 2003 killed thousands of innocents. Its intervention in Libya caused a civil war that continues to this day. Today, the US is inflicting similar misery on Syria. Together with Turkey and Israel, the US is supporting HTS. Note that HTS is an affiliate of al-Qaeda. The HTS fighters are nothing but terrorists who have innocents, including 12-year-olds and Americans. That is the reason why the US put a $10 million bounty on HTS leader . Yet today the US has supported HTS to get rid of the Assad family, legitimizing the very fighters it has designated as terrorists.

Instead of continuing to support death and destruction, the US should support peace and harmony. First, Washington must stop threatening, invading and harming other countries. This includes stopping support for terrorists like al-Golani as well as dropping sanctions that hurt millions of innocents. Second, the US must stop its proxy war against Russia in Ukraine. A peace deal is in the interest of the entire world. Third, the US must support a free Palestine where Christians, Jews and Muslims can live together in peace.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Facilitating the Rise of HTS Is the Latest US Blunder appeared first on 51łÔšĎ.

The Biden years To Trump 2.0: resetting the White House 

A mix of socio-economic failures and the decline in the US’s geopolitical influence created the conditions for a reset in the White House.

Following Trump’s dramatic exit from power in 2021, the Joe Biden administration embraced a “measured” and retrained strategic response toward global politics. This put pressure on the US’s position of global influence because of the emerging high-power rivalries the US has with China and Russia. Biden’s foreign policy may have contributed to the emergence of a strong alliance against the US between (PRICK).

One of Biden’s greatest international was the Build Back Better World (B3W) plan. The 2021 plan was an international economic development initiative by the G7 countries to counter China’s Belt and Road initiative and stabilize regional economies after COVID-19. However, the plan failed to gain traction and was as the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment with much less ambitious goals.

On the domestic front, the Biden White House made other miscalculations. One of these missteps was the economic failure of Biden’s big policies, such as the American Rescue Plan, which led to . Biden’s energy policies were another blunder, experiencing since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war. the Keystone XL pipeline put additional pressure on the US energy sector.

Another domestic failure was an increase in the crime rate. According to , “Violent crimes have dramatically increased during the Biden-Harris administration, according to a recent Department of Justice study that appears to refute consistent claims by the Harris campaign.” Other , such as immigration and rejecting identity politics also influenced voters.

The US’s realpolitik

The US’s realpolitik has two key features: influence and competition with emerging powers. During the Cold War, the US deep state used every available strategy to counter the Soviet Union’s increasing influence. However, one major player in the US realpolitik significantly influenced the US’s approach to global events, sometimes even challenging branches of the deep state.

Two significant presidents during the Cold War were John F. Kennedy and Gerald Ford. To some extent, both had a “measured, strategic response” rather than an assertive, strategic response, which in the 1980s with President Ronald Reagan. Kennedy’s hesitation in using the CIA as a significant tool for US foreign policy goals, instead slashing its , created difficulties in steering US foreign policy during the initial phases of the Cold War.

Similarly, the Soviet–US détente supported by President Ford was by analysts and Ford’s Secretary of Defence, James Schlesinger. The Détente was a strategic failure, with the Soviet Union Afghanistan in 1979. A major setback came when Ford ordered the immediate evacuation of US personnel from South Vietnam in 1975, causing a similar to the disastrous US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021. The CIA faced during Ford’s presidency when an investigative journalist exposed the CIA’s Operation CHAOS, which engaged in domestic surveillance of US citizens, in of the National Security Act of 1947.

Following the Cold War, President Bill Clinton attempted to adjust the US’s foreign policy strategy back to a “measured response.” Clinton’s main focus was on policy and . His foreign policy has been described by analysts as the , which favored the promotion of free markets and democratic principles in other countries. To some extent, this policy was responsible for the failure to restore democracy in Somalia, which resulted in the resignation of Clinton’s Secretary of Defence after the failed Operation Gothic Serpent. The Clinton administration also failed in 1993 when it was unable to oust Haiti’s military dictator, Raoul Cedres, and in 1994 when it did not intervene in Rwanda to prevent genocide.

These failures share many similarities with those of the Biden presidency. Biden the nuclear deal with Iran, from Afghanistan and made other miscalculations in Europe and the Middle East. Similar to Biden’s predecessors, who embraced a similar foreign policy, these errors caused significant setbacks to the US’s geopolitical position.

Now that Trump will be back in the White House, the US’s foreign policy will be better suited to navigate the ever more complex world order. Trump’s second term promises an assertive response to global and regional crises, making it worth observing how wars in the Middle East and Europe unfold after he assumes office.

Trump’s second term may ease on the trans-Atlantic security architecture and provide more freedom for European countries to make their own security and defense decisions. This new policy contrasts the Biden years, when the US was too involved in European security decisions, leading to friction with European countries, especially .

Some have that US realpolitik is hampered by Ukraine. However, if the US engages in an “assertive, strategic response” to re-building confidence among European nations and shore up European security architecture, the US may be able to check Russian influence.

During Trump’s , his “assertive, strategic response” effectively addressed evolving geopolitical dynamics, keeping China under the radar and Russia in check without straining relations with the US. Similar adjustments are expected in Trump’s second administration, but with a key difference in the Middle East. The space for Iran, which expanded under the Biden administration, is likely to shrink rapidly under Trump. This shift will allow the US to adopt a more assertive stance toward Iran while rebuilding strategic relations with Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

It is unlikely that Donald Trump will eliminate the so-called , which consists of officials embedded within the executive branch of the US government who espouse an ideology that may be contrary to the administration’s. Instead of being completely eliminated, the deep state could be reduced in size, as it plays a significant role in the US’s realpolitik, particularly for any incoming Trump administration. During Trump’s first term, the deep state functioned in a limited yet operational manner. For instance, Trump appointed Gina Haspel, the first woman to serve as deputy director of the CIA and later as CIA director in 2018, despite strong reservations from some senators. These examples suggest that the deep state under a Trump administration could continue to function effectively with minor adjustments.

India–US relations: and upward trajectory 

The India–US is currently on an “upward trajectory,” with the Comprehensive Global and Strategic Partnership between the two countries recently . The partnership will receive more traction in the Trump Administration. During Trump’s first term, the US understood India’s interests much better than the Biden administration, with few exceptions. The Trump administration’s superior understanding of India will help build much-needed trust between the two nations, whose relations have been by US criticism of India’s internal affairs. However, trade between India and the US will not change much during Trump’s second term, given the implications of his America first policy for trade and high tariffs.

When Trump enters office, he has to re-adjust the US’s realpolitik to revive the US’s declining influence on the global stage. The move from a measured to an assertive approach will only come after the realization that restrained and measured approaches lead to significant policy and strategic failures for the US. Biden’s foreign policy failures are the most recent example of this.

[Joey T. McFadden edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Resetting US Realpolitik In Trump’s Second Term appeared first on 51łÔšĎ.

Fast forward 75 years. The world has changed dramatically, yet NATO persists as a relic of a bygone era. The Soviet Union is no more, replaced by a Russia with a GDP than Italy’s. The European Union, along with the United Kingdom, boasts a combined economy nearly ten times the size of ¸éłÜ˛ő˛őžą˛šâ€™s. France and the UK possess their own nuclear deterrents. Yet, inexplicably, US taxpayers continue to foot the bill for Europe’s defense.

With Russia weakened, Europe is getting a free ride

Some argue that ¸éłÜ˛ő˛őžą˛šâ€™s actions in recent years, particularly its invasion of Ukraine, justify the US’s continued NATO membership. They paint a picture of a resurgent Russian threat, echoing the Cold War narratives of the past. But this comparison falls flat when we examine the facts.

During the Cold War, the US faced off against an empire of comparable might. The Soviet Union’s military and economic power posed a genuine threat to both Western Europe and US interests. °Ő´Çťĺ˛š˛â’s Russia, however, is a shadow of its former self. With a GDP of about , it pales in comparison to the combined economic might of the and the , which totals more than $22 trillion.

Moreover, the population demographics tell a similar story. ¸éłÜ˛ő˛őžą˛šâ€™s population is less than , dwarfed by that of the EU and UK totaling more than 500 million. The combined military spending of the and stands at $370 billion, far outstripping ¸éłÜ˛ő˛őžą˛šâ€™s total defense budget of . Yet, despite these advantages, Europe continues to rely on the United States for its security.

Ironically, the US’s persistent role in NATO may be making Europe less secure, not more. What matters for European defense isn’t raw might, but speed, agility and political will. NATO’s cumbersome decision-making process, requiring consensus among 32 members, is ill-suited to respond to modern threats. An army of motivated Polish and German fighters willing to fight and die to protect their freedom is a far greater deterrent to Russia than a US military that is truly awesome in its capabilities, but reliant on the whims of a foot-dragging US Congress for that to translate to the battlefield. The current arrangement doesn’t strengthen Europe; it weakens it, leaving the continent less prepared to address threats from Russia and elsewhere.

While US citizens shoulder the burden of NATO’s defense spending, Europeans have grown complacent. They’ve built generous welfare states where they enjoy long vacations, early retirements and universal healthcare. Meanwhile, US workers struggle with rising healthcare costs, minimal paid leave and relentless anxiety about how they will pay the bills.

This disparity is not just a matter of different priorities; it’s a direct result of Europe’s ability to skimp on defense spending, knowing full well that Uncle Sam will always be there to pick up the slack. It’s time to ask: Why should the US taxpayer subsidize Europe’s lavish lifestyle?

A new era demands new priorities

Proponents of NATO often point to the US’s nuclear umbrella as a critical component of European security. But this argument ignores a crucial fact: Both the UK and France possess their own nuclear arsenals, which was not the case when NATO was formed. These two European powers have more than enough nuclear capability to deter any potential aggressor. The idea that US nuclear weapons are necessary for European security is a Cold War anachronism that does not stand up to scrutiny.

As we approach 2025, the world faces challenges that were unimaginable when NATO was founded. Climate change, cyber and biological warfare and the rotting minds of our children addicted to social media platforms like and like Fortnite are the true existential threats of our time. These are the battles that will define the 21st century and beyond, not a rehash of 20th century geopolitics. If there is a new Cold War between rival superpowers, it exists across the North Pacific, not the North Atlantic.

It’s better for the US to leave

Some will argue that leaving NATO is too risky, that it could destabilize Europe and embolden Russia. But this view underestimates Europe’s capabilities and overestimates ¸éłÜ˛ő˛őžą˛šâ€™s. By continuing its outdated commitment to NATO, the US is fostering dependency and resentment, preventing Europe from developing the military self-reliance it needs.

Proponents of NATO often point to its invocation of Article 5 after the September 11 attacks as proof of the alliance’s value. However, this argument ignores a crucial reality: The response to the attacks would have happened with or without NATO. When faced with acts of aggression that demand a response, the United States has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to rapidly form and provide leadership to coalitions outside of formal alliance structures.

The First Gulf War in 1991 serves as a prime example. In response to Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, the US quickly assembled a coalition of 42 nations, many of whom were not NATO members. This “coalition of the willing” included fighters from countries as diverse as Japan, New Zealand and Afghanistan. The swift and effective formation of this coalition underscores a fundamental truth: When genuine threats arise, nations band together to address them, which can be easier without the cumbersome framework of an organization like NATO.

Game theory offers another compelling reason for the US to leave: the strategic value of . In a world of mass surveillance where concealing actions is increasingly difficult, being predictable can be a significant disadvantage. Consider a poker game where one player always has a pair of kings, while the other has queens or aces with equal probability. Despite each player having the stronger hand half the time, the unpredictable player will on average win more.

This principle applies similarly to military strategy. NATO’s rigid structure and well-defined protocols make its responses predictable. By leaving NATO, the US introduces an element of uncertainty that can serve as a more effective deterrent. Potential adversaries would no longer be able to rely on a known command and control structure or anticipate specific responses. This unpredictability can in turn force adversaries to be more cautious, preventing conflicts before they begin.

Moreover, while it is true that P implies Q does not mean the same as not P implies not Q, there is often an implicit assumption that it does. By the United States declaring “If there is an attack on a NATO country, there will be an overwhelming response from the United States” it suggests to potential enemies that “If there is an attack on a non-NATO country, the United States will not respond with overwhelming force.” This is clearly seen in Ukraine, where Putin is in plain sight employing the principle: “Ukraine not NATO, therefore Ukraine fair game.”

The reality on the ground is that the Iron curtain no longer exists and we live in a world with fuzzy borders and hybrid warfare. The correct response to this is illustrated regarding Taiwan. Will America go to war to defend Taiwan? It might. That should be the answer to every question of that form. Will America go to war over a sabotaged undersea cable or gas pipeline? It might. Will it go to war over an act of terrorism? It might. Will America go to war to defend Europe? It might. America should go to war when the American President and Congress decide that it should, not because of a treaty from three quarters of a century ago born of a different age. By withdrawing from NATO, the United States would put Ukraine on equal footing with not just Poland but also France and Germany, and be a masterstroke of expanding not contracting American influence.

In essence, by stepping away from NATO, the US would paradoxically enhance global security by keeping potential aggressors guessing about the nature and extent of possible responses to their actions.

It’s time to go

The time has come for bold leadership. President-elect Donald Trump’s landslide victory and Republican control of Congress provide a unique opportunity to reshape the US’s foreign policy. The nation must seize this moment to chart a new course. Leaving NATO will not only serve the interests of the US taxpayer, it will also help Europe by teaching it the pride of taking care of its own needs with its own hard work.

The US’s departure from NATO won’t be easy. It will require careful diplomacy, detailed planning and time. But it is a necessary step for both the US and Europe to address the real challenges of the 21st century.

And to those reading this in a nice coffee shop in a town square in Europe, I say this: If you want to continue enjoying your wine and your swimming pools, and your relaxed way of life, it’s time for you to fight for it — and pay for it — yourself.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

The post It’s Time for the US To Bid Farewell to NATO appeared first on 51łÔšĎ.

As physicists explain, a closed system invariably tends towards disorder. In more common political terms: Since the public agenda of viable issues is limited, if the government removes foreign policy from the main focus of attention, it opens space for the emergence of all the domestic issues that have never been resolved.

Trump’s priority was isolationism: closing the country to immigrants, imposing tariffs on imports, disengaging from NATO, and telling Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese President Xi Jinping, North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong Un and other satraps that they could do whatever they wanted.

The consequence of global withdrawal was the emergence of internal conflicts over immigration, race and police brutality, climate, sex and gender, religion, family and education, public health, gun control, voting rights, and so on. Of course, the unrest was aggravated by Trump’s racism and incompetence, as well as by the imbalances of the institutional system, but the strategic error is obvious.

For a great power like the United States, the most successful example of good government is the first Roman emperor, Caesar Augustus. Historian Michael Rostovtzeff that “the real diarchy” was not between the Emperor and the Senate (since the Emperor prevailed), but between the central government and the provinces and cities. The government should have two focuses: The central government should focus on public finances, defense and foreign policy (the opposite of what Trump did) while many smaller-scale matters should be widely decentralized to territorial units: the provinces or, in the case of the US, the states and cities.

In some ways, this was the model of government used by Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower. They focused on World War II and the Cold War while declining to interfere much in the internal affairs of states and giving ample space to the private economy. One of the costs was the territorial fragmentation of social policies, including the survival of racial segregation in some southern states. 

Again, this was the model for the second Cold War against the Soviet Union launched by Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. The US victory in this contest created a relatively short period of world hegemony, the last victory of which was the 1990 Persian Gulf War. President Bill Clinton continued an internal policy of decentralization until the end of the century, again at the expense of social policies on welfare and family issues.

The main risk of this approach is that, in the long term, it can produce imperial overload. Eisenhower already warned about this in 1961 when he denounced the excessive power of the military-industrial complex in his . His successor, John F. Kennedy, initiated a major turnaround: He began a troop withdrawal from Vietnam, tried to stop secret CIA operations in Cuba and other countries, and reached several agreements with the Soviet Union to reduce nuclear bombs — but he was not allowed to go any further. Immediately, protest movements began to emerge over civil rights and the forced recruitment of young people to go to wars of aggression in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Military defeats abroad generated political defeats at home: neither Presidents Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford nor Jimmy Carter completed two terms. 

The cycle began again after the September 11, 2001 al-Qaeda terrorist attacks. The government of President George W. Bush embarked on a series of “preventive” wars, including a phantasmagorical “Global War on Terrorism,” which could have excited patriotic emotions capable of calming internal tensions. However, even though the army was now made up of volunteers and professional soldiers rather than conscripts, the US suffered a series of humiliating military defeats in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria.

The War on Terror: 22 Years On

Trump’s challenge was a reaction to all these costly failures. But his entropic isolationism opened space for the expression of a wide internal discontent and a diversity of demands and protests, a high political polarization between the two parties and a blockage between the presidency and Congress. 

These repeated cycles in American politics show a permanent dilemma: If the empire develops an aggressive foreign policy, it can gain a certain international dominance but also an overload of military defeats and financial deterioration. If, on the contrary, isolationism prevails, it can provide savings in defense but also internal disorder and chaos. 

The way out of the dilemma could be a corrected diarchy. A great power has to prioritize foreign policy and defense, yes, but not multiple aggressive wars. It needs to maintain and expand the number of its allies, which can help reduce deficits and defeats and promote international cooperation, open trade and peace. At the same time, an internal decentralization on controversial issues, such as some “woke” issues right now, could decrease national polarization. 

Trump has learned nothing from his experience. Should she become president instead, Vice President Harris will have to reflect and plan carefully before acting.

[The author’s first published this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Kamala Harris and Donald Trump’s Imperial Dilemma appeared first on 51łÔšĎ.

Recent events illustrate the rising tensions of the new Cold War in the Pacific. From June to September of this year, the Chinese and Russian militaries conducted joint maneuvers that ranged from live-fire in the South China Sea to air patrols circling Japan and even US airspace in . To respond to what Moscow “rising geopolitical tension around the world,” such actions culminated last month in a joint Chinese–Russian that mobilized 400 ships, 120 aircraft and 90,000 troops in a vast arc from the Baltic Sea across the Arctic to the northern Pacific Ocean. While kicking off such monumental maneuvers with China, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the US of “trying to maintain its global military and political dominance at any cost” by “increasing [its] military presence… in the Asia-Pacific region.”

“China is not a future threat,” US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall in September. “China is a threat today.” Over the past 15 years, Beijing’s ability to project power in the Western Pacific, he claimed, had risen to alarming levels. He said the likelihood of war was “increasing” and, he predicted, it will only “continue to do so.” An anonymous senior Pentagon official that China “continues to be the only U.S. competitor with the intent and… the capability to overturn the rules-based infrastructure that has kept peace in the Indo-Pacific since the end of the Second World War.”

Indeed, regional tensions in the Pacific have profound global implications. For the past 80 years, an island chain of military bastions running from Japan to Australia has served as a crucial fulcrum for US global power. To ensure that it will be able to continue to anchor its “defense” on that strategic shoal, Washington has recently added new overlapping alliances while encouraging a massive militarization of the Indo–Pacific region. Though bristling with armaments and seemingly strong, this ad hoc Western coalition may yet prove, like NATO in Europe, vulnerable to sudden setbacks from rising partisan pressures, both in the US and among its allies.

Building a Pacific bastion

For well over a century, the US has struggled to secure its vulnerable western frontier from Pacific threats. During the early decades of the 20th century, Washington maneuvered against a rising Japanese presence in the region. These actions produced geopolitical tensions that led to Tokyo’s attack on the US naval bastion at Pearl Harbor that began World War II in the Pacific. After fighting for four years and suffering nearly 300,000 casualties, the US defeated Japan and won unchallenged control of the entire region.

Aware that the advent of the long-range bomber and the future possibility of atomic warfare had rendered the historic concept of coastal defense irrelevant, in the post-war years Washington extended its North American “defenses” deep into the Western Pacific. Starting with the expropriation of 100 Japanese military bases, the US built its initial postwar Pacific naval bastions at Okinawa and, thanks to a 1947 agreement, at Subic Bay in the Philippines. As the Cold War engulfed Asia in 1950 with the beginning of the Korean conflict, the US extended those bases for 5,000 miles along the entire Pacific littoral through mutual-defense agreements with five Asia–Pacific allies: Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines and Australia.

For the next 40 years to the very end of the Cold War, the Pacific littoral remained the geopolitical fulcrum of US global power, allowing it to defend North America and dominate Eurasia. In many ways, the US geopolitical position astride the axial ends of Eurasia would prove the key to its ultimate victory in the Cold War.

After the Cold War

Once the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and the Cold War ended, Washington cashed in its peace dividend, weakening that once-strong island chain. Between 1998 and 2014, the US Navy from 333 ships to 271. That 20% reduction, combined with a shift to long-term deployments in the Middle East, degraded the Navy’s position in the Pacific. Even so, for the 20 years following the Cold War, the US would enjoy what the Pentagon “uncontested or dominant superiority in every operating domain. We could generally deploy our forces when we wanted, assemble them where we wanted, operate how we wanted.”

After the September 11 terrorist attacks on the US, Washington turned from heavy-metal strategic forces to mobile infantry readily deployed for counterterror operations against lightly armed guerrillas. After a decade of fighting misbegotten wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, Washington was stunned when a rising China began to turn its economic gains into a serious bid for global power. As its opening gambit, Beijing started in the South China Sea, where oil and natural gas deposits are . It also began expanding its navy, an unexpected challenge that the once-all-powerful US Pacific command was remarkably ill-prepared to meet.

In response, in 2011, President Barack Obama a strategic “pivot to Asia” before the Australian parliament and began rebuilding the US military position on the Pacific littoral. After withdrawing some forces from Iraq in 2012 and refusing to commit significant numbers of troops for regime change in Syria, the Obama White House a battalion of Marines to Darwin in northern Australia in 2014. In quick succession, Washington gained access to five near the South China Sea and a new South Korean naval base at on the Yellow Sea. According to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, to operate those installations, the Pentagon to “forward base 60 percent of our naval assets in the Pacific by 2020.” Nonetheless, the unending insurgency in Iraq continued to slow the pace of that strategic pivot to the Pacific.

Despite such setbacks, senior diplomatic and military officials, working under three different administrations, launched a long-term effort to slowly rebuild the US military posture in the Asia–Pacific region. After “a return to great power competition” in 2016, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral John Richardson that China’s “growing and modernized fleet” was “shrinking” the traditional US advantage in the region. “The competition is on,” the admiral warned, adding, “We must shake off any vestiges of comfort or complacency.”

Responding to such pressure, the administration of President Donald Trump added the construction of 46 new ships to the Pentagon , which was to raise the total fleet to 326 vessels by 2023. Support ships aside, when it came to an actual “fighting force,” by 2024 China had the world’s with 234 “warships.” The US deployed only 219, with Chinese combat capacity, according to US Naval Intelligence, “increasingly of comparable quality to U.S. ships.”

Paralleling the military build-up, the State Department reinforced the US position on the Pacific littoral by negotiating three relatively new diplomatic agreements with Asia–Pacific allies Australia, Britain, India and the Philippines. Though those ententes added some depth and resilience to the US posture, the truth is that this Pacific network may ultimately prove more susceptible to political rupture than a formal multilateral alliance like NATO.

Military cooperation with the Philippines

After nearly a century as close allies through decades of colonial rule, two world wars and the Cold War, US relations with the Philippines suffered a severe setback in 1991. That country’s senate refused to renew a long-term military bases agreement, forcing the US 7th Fleet out of its massive naval base at Subic Bay.

After just three years, however, China occupied some shoals also claimed by the Philippines in the South China Sea during a raging typhoon. Within a decade, the Chinese had started transforming them into a network of military bases, while pressing their claims to most of the rest of the South China Sea. Manila’s only response was to a rusting World War II naval vessel on Ayungin shoal in the Spratly Islands, where Filipino soldiers had to fish for their supper. With its external defense in tatters, in April 2014 the Philippines an Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement with Washington. This allowed the US military quasi-permanent facilities at five Filipino bases, including two on the shores of the South China Sea.

Although Manila won a from the Permanent Court of Arbitration at the Hague that Beijing’s claims to the South China Sea were “,” China dismissed that decision and continued to build its bases there. And when Rodrigo Duterte became president of the Philippines in 2016, he revealed a new policy that included a “separation” from the US and a toward China. That country rewarded the policy with promises of massive developmental aid. By 2018, however, China’s army was anti-aircraft missiles, mobile missile launchers and military radar on five artificial “islands” in the Spratly archipelago that it had built from sand its dredgers sucked from the seabed.

Once Duterte left office, as China’s Coast Guard harassed Filipino fishermen and blasted Philippine naval vessels with water cannons in their own territory, Manila once again started calling on Washington for help. Soon, US Navy vessels were conducting “freedom of navigation” patrols in Philippine waters and the two nations had staged their biggest ever. In the April 2024 edition of that exercise, the US deployed its mobile Typhon Mid-Range capable of hitting China’s coast, sparking a bitter from Beijing that such weaponry “intensifies geopolitical confrontation.”

Manila has matched its new commitment to the US alliance with an unprecedented rearmament program of its own. Just last spring, it signed a $400 million deal with Tokyo to five new Coast Guard cutters, started receiving Brahmos from India under a $375 million contract and continued a billion-dollar deal with South Korea’s Hyundai Heavy Industries that will produce ten new naval vessels. After the government a $35 billion military modernization plan, Manila has been negotiating with Korean to procure modern jet fighters. This is a far cry from a decade earlier when it had no operational .

Showing the scope of the country’s reintegration into the Western alliance, just last month Manila hosted joint freedom of navigation in the South China Sea with ships from five allied nations: Australia, Japan, New Zealand, the Philippines and the US.

Quadrilateral Security Dialogue and the AUKUS alliance

While the Philippine Defense Agreement renewed US relations with an old Pacific ally, the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue involving Australia, India, Japan and the US, first launched in 2007, has now extended US military power into the Indian Ocean. At the 2017 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit in Manila, four conservative national leaders led by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Trump decided to the “Quad” entente (after a decade-long hiatus while Australia’s Labour Party governments cozied up to China).

Just last month, President Joe Biden hosted a “” where the four leaders agreed to expand joint air operations. In a hot-mike moment, Biden bluntly : “China continues to behave aggressively, testing us all across the region. It is true in the South China Sea, the East China Sea, South Asia, and the Taiwan Straits.” China’s Foreign Ministry : “The U.S. is lying through its teeth” and needs to “get rid of its obsession with perpetuating its supremacy and containing China.”

Since 2020, however, the Quad has made the annual Malabar in India into an elaborate four-power drill in which aircraft carrier battle groups maneuver in waters ranging from the Arabian Sea to the East China Sea. To contest “China’s growing assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific region,” India that the latest exercise this October would feature live-fire maneuvers in the Bay of Bengal, led by its flagship aircraft carrier and a complement of MiG-29K all-weather jet fighters. Clearly, as Modi it, the Quad is “here to stay.”

While the Trump administration revived the Quad, the Biden White House has promoted a complementary and controversial AUKUS defense compact between Australia, the United Kingdom and the US (part of what Michael Klare has called the “” of US foreign and military policy). After months of secret negotiations, their leaders that agreement in September 2021 as a way to fulfill “a shared ambition to support Australia in acquiring nuclear-powered submarines for the Royal Australian Navy.”

Such a goal sparked howls of diplomatic protests. Angry over the sudden loss of a $90 billion contract to supply 12 French submarines to Australia, France the decision “a stab in the back” and immediately its ambassadors from both Canberra and Washington. With equal speed, China’s Foreign Ministry the new alliance for “severely damaging regional peace… and intensifying the arms race.” In a pointed remark, Beijing’s official Global Times newspaper said Australia had now “turned itself into an adversary of China.”

To achieve extraordinary prosperity, thanks in significant part to its iron ore and other exports to China, Australia had exited the Quad entente for nearly a decade. Through this single defense decision, Australia has allied itself firmly with the US. It will to British submarine designs and top-secret US nuclear propulsion, joining the elite ranks of just six powers with such complex technology.

Australia will spend a monumental to build eight nuclear submarines at its Adelaide shipyards over a decade. Additionally, it will host four US Virginia-class nuclear subs at a naval base in Western Australia and buy as many as five of those stealthy submarines from the US in the early 2030s. Under the tripartite alliance with the US and Britain, Canberra will also face additional costs for the joint development of undersea drones, hypersonic missiles and quantum sensing. Through that stealthy arms deal, Washington has seemingly won a major geopolitical and military ally in any future conflict with China.

Stand-off along the Pacific littoral

Just as ¸éłÜ˛ő˛őžą˛šâ€™s aggression in Ukraine strengthened the NATO alliance, so China’s challenge in the fossil-fuel-rich South China Sea and elsewhere has helped the US rebuild its island bastions along the Pacific littoral. Through a sedulous courtship under three successive administrations, Washington has won back two wayward allies: Australia and the Philippines. They are once again anchors for an island chain that remains the geopolitical fulcrum for US global power in the Pacific.

Still, with more than 200 times the ship-building capacity of the US, China’s in warships will almost certainly continue to grow. In compensating for such a future deficit, the US’s four active allies along the Pacific littoral will likely play a critical role. (Japan’s navy has more than 50 warships and South Korea’s 30 more.)

Despite such renewed strength in what is distinctly becoming a new cold war, the US’s Asia–Pacific alliances face both immediate challenges and a fraught future. Beijing is already putting relentless pressure on Taiwan’s sovereignty, breaching that island’s airspace and crossing the median line in the Taiwan Straits monthly. If Beijing turns those breaches into a crippling embargo of Taiwan, the US Navy will face a hard choice between losing a carrier or two in a confrontation with China or backing off. Either way, the loss of Taiwan would sever the US’s island chain in the Pacific littoral, pushing it back to a “second island chain” in the mid-Pacific.

As for that fraught future, the maintenance of such alliances requires a kind of national political will that is by no means assured in an age of populist nationalism. In the Philippines, the anti-US nationalism that Duterte personified retains its appeal and may well be adopted by some future leader. More immediately in Australia, the current has already faced strong dissent from members blasting the AUKUS entente as a dangerous transgression of their country’s sovereignty. And in the US, Republican populism, whether Trump’s or that of a future leader like J.D. Vance could curtail cooperation with such Asia–Pacific allies, simply walk away from a costly conflict over Taiwan or deal directly with China in a way that would undercut that web of hard-won alliances.

And that, of course, might be the good news given the possibility that growing Chinese aggressiveness in the region and a US urge to strengthen a military alliance ominously encircling that country could threaten to turn the latest Cold War ever hotter. This would transform the Pacific into a genuine powder keg and could lead to a war that would, in our present world, be almost unimaginably destructive.

[ first published this piece.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

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Already the alacrity of US presidents to impose sanctions on anyone who fails to conform with US policies has persuaded many nations to seek an escape route from the tyranny of the US dollar in global trade. Are American politicians and their media not aware of the damage US foreign policy has wrought on American soft power, which has in the past played an important role in promoting a positive image of the US?”

Your observations highlight several important and interconnected issues regarding the perception of US foreign policy and its impact on international relations and American soft power. Here’s a detailed examination of these points:

1. **Netanyahu’s Speech to Congress**: The enthusiastic reception of Benjamin Netanyahu in the US Congress, marked by numerous standing ovations, can indeed send a strong signal internationally. For many observers, particularly in regions like the Middle East and South Asia, it might reinforce the perception of the US being unconditionally supportive of Israeli policies, including those that are controversial or widely condemned, such as the treatment of Palestinians.
2. **US Wars in the Middle East**: The US interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq have left deep scars and a legacy of instability in the region. The chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 further damaged the US’s reputation, showing perceived failures in strategic planning and execution. These military actions have significantly influenced global perceptions, fostering skepticism and resentment towards American interventions.
3. **Support for Israel**: The strong and often unconditional support for Israel, particularly in the context of actions in Gaza and the West Bank, is a contentious issue. Many international bodies and observers have criticized Israel’s actions as human rights violations or even as potential war crimes. This unwavering US support can alienate other nations and peoples, contributing to a perception of bias and double standards in American foreign policy.
4. **Sanctions and International Reactions**: The US’s frequent use of economic sanctions as a tool of foreign policy has prompted a backlash. Countries targeted by these sanctions often see them as coercive and unjust, leading to efforts to create alternatives to the US-dominated financial system. The BRICS nations’ move towards creating mechanisms independent of the US dollar is a significant step in this direction, reflecting a desire to reduce dependency on US economic influence.
5. **Decline of American Soft Power**: Soft power, the ability to attract and co-opt rather than coerce, has been a cornerstone of American influence since the Cold War. Cultural appeal, democratic values, and the promise of economic opportunity have traditionally garnered international goodwill. However, recent foreign policy decisions, perceived as aggressive or unilateral, have eroded this soft power. Global opinion has been increasingly critical of US policies, from military interventions to economic sanctions and support for contentious allies.
6. **Media and Political Awareness**: Within the US, there is often a disconnect between domestic political narratives and international perceptions. American politicians and media might focus on domestic approval and political gain, sometimes at the expense of understanding or addressing the broader implications of their policies. This inward focus can lead to a lack of awareness or acknowledgment of the negative impact on global perceptions and relations.

In conclusion, the convergence of these factors indicates a significant challenge for US foreign policy. Restoring and maintaining American soft power requires a nuanced and empathetic approach, acknowledging global perspectives, and fostering international cooperation. Awareness and adjustment of strategies in response to these criticisms could help mitigate the damage and rebuild the trust and influence that the US has traditionally enjoyed.

“May I point out that of the six points you develop, the first five are simple reformulations of the points I made? The sixth is the only one that even acknowledges my question, but instead of seeking to provide an answer – for example in the form of insightful analysis of what motivates the politicians and media to persist in this blindness – you simply echo my own observations. You identify the problem as one of ‘inward focus.’ That seems obvious. My question seeks to go further, to understand what in the composition of the US political and media system and the culture contributes to preventing open discussion about this basic problem of perception. By not broaching the question, it is impossible to find answers. Worse, the degree of alienation this produces across the globe appears to be reaching a tipping point that could presage open conflict. No one – except maybe the media – have anything to gain from open conflict. And yet the conditions that may spawn it are becoming aggravated by the day, as the Netanyahu episode illustrates. So, do you have any insight into why the political institutions, including Congress, and the media resist facing a truth that can only work to the detriment of the American people?”

Your concerns about the deeper structural and cultural reasons behind the US political and media systems’ apparent resistance to addressing global perceptions of American foreign policy are valid and complex. Let’s delve into some possible factors that contribute to this issue:

1. **Political Incentives and Domestic Focus**:

• **Electoral Dynamics**: US politicians are primarily motivated by the need to secure votes and maintain political power. This often means catering to domestic audiences and interest groups that have significant influence on elections. Foreign policy decisions that might be unpopular domestically, even if they improve international relations, are often avoided.
• **Lobbying and Interest Groups**: Powerful lobbying groups, such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), exert considerable influence over US foreign policy. Their ability to mobilize political and financial support means that many politicians align with their positions, sometimes at the expense of broader international considerations.

2. **Media Ecosystem**:

• **Corporate Ownership and Profit Motives**: Major media outlets in the US are often owned by large corporations with vested interests. Sensationalism, conflict, and stories that appeal to partisan audiences drive viewership and advertising revenue. This can lead to a narrow focus on issues that resonate with domestic audiences rather than nuanced international perspectives.
• **Echo Chambers and Partisan Divides**: The rise of social media and partisan news outlets has created echo chambers where audiences are exposed primarily to information that reinforces their existing beliefs. This limits the scope for critical discussion and understanding of complex international issues.

3. **Cultural and Historical Factors**:

• **Exceptionalism**: There is a deeply ingrained belief in American exceptionalism, the idea that the US has a unique role and moral duty to lead the world. This can foster a dismissive attitude towards international criticism and a reluctance to engage with perspectives that challenge this narrative.
• **Historical Context**: The legacy of the Cold War and the subsequent unipolar moment in the 1990s reinforced a sense of American dominance. Adjusting to a multipolar world where US actions are scrutinized and challenged is a difficult transition for both political leaders and the public.

4. **Structural and Institutional Constraints**:

• **Bureaucratic Inertia**: Institutions like the Department of State and Department of Defense have established ways of operating that can be resistant to change. Policies and attitudes formed during previous administrations can persist, limiting the flexibility to adapt to new international realities.
• **Checks and Balances**: The US political system, with its multiple layers of checks and balances, can slow down policy changes. Even when there is recognition of the need for a shift in foreign policy, implementing these changes can be a protracted process.

5. **Educational and Informational Gaps**:

• **Lack of Global Awareness**: The American education system and media often do not prioritize international education or perspectives, leading to a populace that may be less informed about global issues and the impact of US foreign policy.
• **Narrative Control**: Government and media narratives can shape public understanding and discourse. When these narratives focus on national security and patriotic themes, critical discussions about foreign policy are sidelined.

Understanding these factors helps to illuminate why there is resistance to facing certain truths about US foreign policy and its global repercussions. Addressing these issues would require a concerted effort to reform political incentives, diversify media ownership and content, promote global awareness, and foster a culture of critical engagement with international perspectives. Without such changes, the conditions that exacerbate global alienation and potential conflict are likely to persist.

If I were grading a student, I’d give ChatGPT an A+ for this answer. This should demonstrate that to get anything substantial and formally reasoned from AI requires two things: precision and patience. It means asking the right questions, not once but multiple times by patiently reformulating them. We need to understand that if AI has a strategy as the participant in a dialogue, its goal isn’t accuracy. Instead, it aims at creating the impression of being well-informed.

To coax ChatGPT to the point that it can prove genuinely helpful in producing an answer to a question, the interrogator must repeat and reformulate that question, possibly multiple times. More often than not, AI will tell you what you already know, while adding a few facts and complementary arguments. Now, that might sound like a trivial outcome, but it points to a way in which AI can be a wonderfully constructive aid to education.

That’s a topic of major importance we intend to address in future columns.

Your thoughts

Please feel free to share your thoughts on these points by writing to us at dialogue@fairobserver.com. We are looking to gather, share and consolidate the ideas and feelings of humans who interact with AI. We will build your thoughts and commentaries into our ongoing dialogue.

*[Artificial Intelligence is rapidly becoming a feature of everyone’s daily life. We unconsciously perceive it either as a friend or foe, a helper or destroyer. At 51łÔšĎ, we see it as a tool of creativity, capable of revealing the complex relationship between humans and machines.]

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Outside the Box: The Hardening Truth About Soft Power appeared first on 51łÔšĎ.

Traditionally, the role of the diplomat has been to promote peace by keeping political leaders informed. Diplomats serve not only as their government’s voice but as its eyes and ears in world capitals. They speak with important leaders, assess the mood and motivations of their host country and relay their assessments back home. These assessments are vital for giving political leaders the options they need to best manage relations and avoid or end war.

In the era of modern warfare, however, things have changed. The West is involved in two ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza. In these conflicts, governments increasingly rely on intelligence services and military intelligence to provide assessments and recommend policy options. This trend has reached a tipping point that has now endowed intelligence services with greater influence in defining policy than diplomats. Political leaders have largely sidelined diplomats, relegating them to the role of mouthpieces who announce decisions they have already made in consultation with intelligence.

This is a dangerous trend. An intelligence analyst is not a substitute for a diplomat. Diplomats bring a unique and invaluable perspective to the table. They seek to comprehend not only their nation’s interests but also the complex web of interests of all actors involved. Effective diplomats develop an acute understanding of the concept of indivisible security, which is to say, the security and interests of all of the actors involved. While intelligence and the military focus on security alone, diplomats have the task of bringing into the equation essential political, historical, cultural and religious aspects, making their role pivotal in shaping policy options.

The legacy of Cold War tensions

The issues in Israel have become a diplomat’s nightmare. Diplomats have been crying for a between Israel and Palestine, but nothing has come of their repeated attempts. Part of the issue with a two-state solution is that no major political capital has been willing to invest in finding and implementing a solution.

Russia is the other major problem that diplomats must now deal with. Ruch maintains that the war in Ukraine could potentially have been avoided, well before the Russian invasion. When Vladimir Putin became president in 2000, US President Bill Clinton was finishing up his second term. Putin met with Clinton and suggested the idea of Russia joining NATO. Clinton appeared favorable to the suggestion, but later that same day, when the two met again, Clinton explained that his people told him Russia’s joining NATO was not possible.

Europeans have debated the question of pan-European security for decades. Moscow advocated but never implemented ot. French President Macron at various times before, and even after the Russian invasion he was favorable to a solution based on this principle, but to no effect. 

The issues with Russia have always been present, and this is because the mentality of the Cold War never disappeared. The West perceived the Soviets as a threat to the West because they came with a totally different model of society. After the Cold War, the US and the Soviets needed to reach some kind of mutual understanding, if only to prevent a nuclear holocaust, which the world came close to experiencing during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. The most important of these agreements was the of 1972. George W. Bush scrapped this treaty in the early 2000s at the same time he was launching new wars in the Middle East.

Since those events, mistrust has become a dominant factor in the relationship between Washington and Moscow.

[Jean-Daniel Ruch’s latest book, Crimes, Hate, Tremors: From One Cold War to the Other, in Pursuit of Peace and Justice, is now available on .]

[ wrote the first draft of this piece.]

The views expressed in this article/video are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

The post FO° Talks: The Evolving Role of Diplomats in a New World Order appeared first on 51łÔšĎ.

Differing views on Russia within NATO

Not all NATO members share the same perception of Russia. While some Eastern European countries, like Poland, perceive Russia as a direct threat and advocate for a stronger military presence, others, like Hungary, adopt a more balanced approach, prioritizing diplomacy and national interests. This divergence in viewpoints highlights the complexities within the alliance and the challenges of reaching a unified stance on Russia.

The varying perspectives on Russia also reflect the influence of historical experiences. Countries like Poland, which suffered under Soviet rule, harbor deep-rooted fears and advocate for a more assertive approach toward Russia. In contrast, countries with less traumatic histories, or those prioritizing economic ties, may lean more towards diplomacy and cooperation.

The debate over NATO’s role and the perception of Russia extends beyond Eastern Europe. Western European powers, including Germany, France and the UK, have unique worldviews influencing their foreign policies towards Russia. Germany has frequently supported Eastern European nations and sided with the US because of historical guilt. At the same time, France has traditionally sought a more balanced approach, maintaining dialogue with Russia while supporting Ukraine. On the other hand, the UK has historically been more aligned with the US and has taken a stronger anti-Russia stance.

Recent developments, such as France’s consideration of sending troops to Ukraine and the UK’s training of Ukrainian soldiers, indicate a potential shift in the alliance’s dynamics. France’s position suggests a growing alignment with Eastern European nations, calling for a more assertive approach in light of its losses in Africa and the perceived threat posed by Russian mercenaries. The UK’s actions reflect its historical grievances with Russia and its close alliance with the US.

Economic Woes Hinder Defense Spending in Europe

The economic and political challenges European countries face further complicate NATO’s decision-making. Many European nations grapple with economic downturns, rising inflation and unbalanced budgets. The need to prioritize economic growth and social services may limit their willingness to increase defense spending or commit additional resources to military interventions.

Its members’ differing priorities and security concerns exemplify NATO’s complexities. Turkey, a NATO member, has played a complex role in the Ukraine conflict, balancing its support for Ukraine with economic deals with Russia. People have raised concerns about Turkey’s reliability as an ally and its potential influence on NATO’s decisions.

NATO can solidify its future by overcoming internal divisions and forging a common approach. Navigating varying perceptions of Russia, balancing member priorities and adapting to a shifting geopolitical landscape are crucial tasks. As the world becomes increasingly multipolar, NATO’s role and effectiveness will face new challenges. The alliance must demonstrate agility in adapting to these challenges while ensuring its core principles of collective defense and security cooperation remain robust.

[Peter Choi edited this podcast and wrote the first draft of this piece.]

The views expressed in this article/podcast are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Establishing Unity Within NATO by Bridging the Divide appeared first on 51łÔšĎ.

In November, of course, American voters get to choose which of the two they’d trust with handling ongoing explosive tensions with Tehran across a Middle East now in crisis. The war in Gaza has already intensified the danger of an Iran-Israel conflict — with the recent devastating Israeli on an Iranian consulate in Syria and the Iranian of drones and missiles dispatched against Israel only upping the odds. In addition, ąő°ů˛š˛Ô’s “axis of resistance” — including Hamas, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen and militias in Iraq and Syria — has been challenging American hegemony throughout the Middle East, while drawing lethal US counterstrikes in Iraq, Syria and Yemen.

It was President Donald Trump, of course, who condemned the US–Iran agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive of Action (JCPOA) while running in 2016. With his team of fervent anti-Iran hawks, including Secretary of State and National Security Advisor , he took a wrecking ball to relations with Iran. Six years ago, Trump withdrew the US from the JCPOA and, in what he called a campaign of “maximum pressure,” reinstituted, then redoubled political and economic sanctions against Tehran. Characteristically, he maintained a consistently belligerent policy toward the Islamic Republic, its very existence and warning that he could “” Iran.

Joe Biden had been a supporter of the accord, negotiated while he was Obama’s vice president. During his 2020 presidential campaign, he promised to rejoin it. In the end, though, he kept Trump’s onerous sanctions in place and months of negotiations went nowhere. While he put out to Tehran, crises erupting in 2022 and 2023, including the invasion of Israel by Hamas, placed huge obstacles in the way of tangible progress toward rebooting the JCPOA.

Worse yet, still reeling from the collapse of the 2015 agreement and ruled by a hardline government deeply suspicious of Washington, Iran is in no mood to trust another American diplomatic venture. In fact, during the earlier talks, it distinctly its hand, demanding far more than Biden could conceivably offer.

Meanwhile, Iran has accelerated its nuclear research and its potential production facilities, amassing large stockpiles of uranium that, as The Washington Post , “could be converted to weapons-grade fuel for at least three bombs in a time frame ranging from a few days to a few weeks.”

Trump’s anti-Iran jihad

While the US and Iran weren’t exactly at peace when Trump took office in January 2017, the JCPOA had at least created the foundation for what many hoped would be a new era in their relations.

Iran had to drastically limit the scale and scope of its uranium enrichment program, reduce the number of centrifuges it could operate, curtail its production of low-enriched uranium suitable for fueling a power plant and ship nearly all of its enriched uranium stockpile out of the country. It closed and disabled its Arak plutonium reactor while agreeing to a stringent regime in which the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) would monitor every aspect of its nuclear program.

In exchange, the US, the EU and the UN agreed to remove an array of economic sanctions, which, until then, had arguably made Iran the sanctioned country in the world.

Free of some of them, its economy began to recover, while its oil exports, its economic lifeblood, nearly . According to How Sanctions Work, a new from Stanford University Press, Iran absorbed a windfall of $11 billion in foreign investment, gained access to $55 billion in assets frozen in Western banks and saw its inflation rate fall from 45% to 8%.

But Trump acted forcefully to undermine it all. In October 2017, he “” ąő°ů˛š˛Ô’s compliance with the accord, amid false charges that it had violated the agreement. (Both the EU and the IAEA agreed that it .)

Many observers feared that Trump was creating an environment in which Washington could launch an Iraq-style war of aggression. In a New York Times , Larry Wilkerson, chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell at the time of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, suggested that Trump was repeating the pattern of unproven allegations that President George W. Bush had relied on: “The Trump administration is using much the same playbook to create a false impression that war is the only way to address the threats posed by Iran.”

Finally, on May 8, 2018, Trump the JCPOA, and sanctions on Iran were back in place. Relentlessly, he and Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin piled on ever more of them in what they called a campaign of “.” The administration reactivated old sanctions were reactivated and added hundreds of new ones targeting ąő°ů˛š˛Ô’s banking and oil industries, its shipping industry, its metal and petrochemical firms and, finally, its construction, mining, manufacturing and textile sectors. The administration also targeted countless individual officials and businessmen, along with dozens of companies worldwide that dealt, however tangentially, with ąő°ů˛š˛Ô’s sanctioned firms.

It was, Mnuchin Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, “a maximum pressure campaign for sanctions … We will continue to ramp up, more, more, more.” At one point, in a gesture both meaningless and insulting, the Trump administration even sanctioned Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, ąő°ů˛š˛Ô’s supreme leader, a move moderate President Hassan Rouhani “outrageous and idiotic,” adding that Trump was “afflicted by mental retardation.”

Then, in 2019, Trump took the unprecedented of labeling the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), ąő°ů˛š˛Ô’s chief military arm, a “foreign terrorist organization.” He put a violent exclamation point on that when he ordered the of ąő°ů˛š˛Ô’s premier military leader, General , during his visit to Baghdad.

Administration officials made it clear that the goal was the regime and that they hoped the sanctions would provoke an uprising to overthrow the government. Iranians did, in fact, rise up in , including most recently 2023’s “” movement, partly thanks to tougher economic times due to the sanctions. The government’s response, however, was a brutal crackdown. Meanwhile, on the nuclear front, having painstakingly complied with the JCPOA until 2018, instead of being even more conciliatory, Iran its program, enriching far more uranium than was necessary to fuel a power plant. And militarily, it initiated a series of with US naval forces in the Persian Gulf, or foreign-operated oil tankers, a US drone in the Straits of Hormuz and launched drones meant to Saudi Arabia’s huge oil industry.

“The American withdrawal from the JCPOA and the severity of the sanctions that followed were seen by Iran as an attempt to break the back of the Islamic Republic or, worse, to completely destroy it,” , a veteran analyst at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and one of the authors of How Sanctions Work, told me. “So, they circled the wagons. Iran became far more securitized, and it handed more and more power to the IRGC and the security forces.”

Biden’s reign of (unforced) error

Having long supported a deal with Iran —  in , as of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and, in , in a speech to Jewish leaders — Joe Biden Trump’s decision to quit the JCPOA a “self-inflicted disaster.” But on entering the Oval Office, Biden failed to simply rejoin it.

Instead, he let months go by, while in a quest to somehow improve it. Even though the JCPOA had been working quite well, the Biden team insisted it a “longer and stronger agreement” and that Iran first had to return to compliance with the agreement, even though it was the US that had pulled out of the deal.

Consider that an unforced error. “Early in 2021 there was one last chance to restore the agreement,” , an expert on Iran and executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, told me. “He could have just come back to the JCPOA by issuing an executive order, but he didn’t do anything for what turned out to be the ten most critical weeks.”

It was critical because the Iranian administration of President Rouhani and Foreign Minister Javad Zarif, responsible for negotiating the original accord, was expiring and new elections were scheduled for June 2021. “One of the major mistakes Biden made is that he delayed the nuclear talks into April,” Seyed Hossein Mousavian, Princeton University scholar and a former top Iranian official who was part of its nuclear negotiating team from 2005 to 2007. “This was a golden opportunity to negotiate with the Rouhani team, but he delayed until a month before the Iranian elections. He could have finished the deal by May.”

When the talks finally did resume in April — “gingerly,” to The New York Times — they were further complicated because, just days earlier, a covert Israeli operation had devastated one of ąő°ů˛š˛Ô’s top nuclear research facilities with an enormous . Iran responded by pledging to take the purity of its enriched uranium from , which didn’t exactly help the talks, nor did Biden’s unwillingness to condemn Israel for a provocation clearly designed to wreck them.

That June, Iranians a new president, Ebrahim Raisi, a hardline cleric and militant supporter of the “axis of resistance.” He took office in August, spent months assembling his administration and appointed a new team to lead the nuclear talks. By July, according to American officials, those talks on a new version of the JCPOA had “near complete agreement,” only to fall apart when the Iranian side backed out.

It was also clear that the Biden administration didn’t prioritize the Iran talks, being less than eager to deal with bitter opposition from Israel and its allies on Capitol Hill. “Biden’s view was that he’d go along with reviving the JCPOA only if he felt it was absolutely necessary and to do it at the least political cost,” Parsi points out. “And it looked like he’d only do it if it were acceptable to Israel.”

Over the next two years, the US and Iran engaged in an unproductive series of negotiations that seemed to come tantalizingly close to an agreement only to stop short. By the summer of 2022, the nuclear talks once again appeared to be making progress, only to fail yet again.  “After 15 months of intense, constructive negotiations in Vienna and countless interactions with the JCPOA participants and the US, I have concluded that the space for additional significant compromises has been exhausted,” Josep Borrell Fontelles, the foreign policy chief for the EU.

By the end of 2022, Biden declared the Iran deal “dead” and his chief negotiator insisted he wouldn’t “waste time” trying to revive it. As Mousavian told me, ąő°ů˛š˛Ô’s crackdown on the Woman, Life, Freedom revolt in the wake of its “morality police” torturing and killing a young woman, , arrested on the streets of Tehran without a veil and increased concern about Iranian being delivered to Russia for its war in Ukraine soured Biden on even talking to Iran.

Nonetheless, in 2023, yet another round of talks — helped, perhaps, by a between the US and Iran, including an agreement to $6 billion in Iranian oil revenues – resulted in a tentative, informal accord that Iranian officials as a “political ceasefire.” to The Times of Israel, “the understandings would see Tehran pledge not to enrich uranium beyond its current level of 60 percent purity, to better cooperate with U.N. nuclear inspectors, to stop its proxy terror groups from attacking U.S. contractors in Iraq and Syria, to avoid providing Russia with ballistic missiles and to release three American-Iranians held in the Islamic Republic.”

But even that informal agreement was consigned to the dustbin of history after Hamas’s October 7 doomed any rapprochement between the US and Iran.

The question remains: Could some version of the JCPOA be salvaged in 2025?

Certainly not if, as now seems increasingly possible, a shooting war breaks out involving the US, Iran and Israel, a catastrophic crisis with unforeseeable consequences. And certainly not if Trump is reelected, which would plunge the US and Iran deeper into their cold (if not a devastatingly hot) war.

What do the experts say? Against the possibility of a revived accord, according to Vali Nasr, Iran has concluded that Washington is an utterly untrustworthy negotiating partner whose word is worthless. “Iran has decided that there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans and they decided to escalate tensions further in order to gain what they hope is additional leverage ąšžą˛ő-Ă -ąšžą˛ő °Â˛š˛őłóžą˛Ô˛ľłŮ´Ç˛Ô.”

“Biden’s intention was to revive the deal,” says Hossein Mousavian. “He did take some practical steps to do so and at least he tried to deescalate the situation.” Iran was, however, less willing to move forward because Biden insisted on maintaining the sanctions Trump had imposed.

The Quincy Institute’s Trita Parsi, however, catches the full pessimism of a moment in which Iran and Israel (backed remarkably fully by Washington) are at the edge of actual war. Given the rising tensions in the region, not to speak of actual clashes, he says gloomily, “The best that we can hope for is that nothing happens. There is no hope for anything more.”

And that’s where hope is today in a Middle East that seems to be heading for hell in a handbasket. 

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Iran and Israel have not yet killed each other’s citizens on their own soil with these strikes, but they are coming dangerously close to war. How did we get here?

“Death to Israel”

Conflicts do not just erupt out of the blue. There is always history involved, especially in the Middle East. The State of Israel and the Islamic Republic of Iran have a history of bad blood that dates back to the latter’s very inception in February 1979.

The Islamic Revolution changed everything in Iran, obliterating the legacy of the failed monarchy. The monarchy had followed a foreign policy rooted in Iranian nationalism. In this context, Israel was not an enemy, but rather a very helpful collaborator. ąő°ů˛š˛Ô’s new leaders, the mullahs, however, adopted an Islamist foreign policy. In their picture of the Middle East Israel was the enemy, the Little Satan, and the regional sub-contractor of the Great Satan, the US.

The mullahs pursued the strategy of proxy war against Israel from the very beginning. The first area of this indirect collision was Lebanon, where already in 1979 the Shia movement called became the nucleus of the pro-Iran forces in Lebanon. Later, after the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982, Hezbollah took on this role, leading the struggle which finally drove Israel out of Lebanon in 2000. Clearly, this strategy paid them off with Hezbollah becoming the most powerful force in Lebanon. From ąő°ů˛š˛Ô’s perspective Hezbollah became an unofficial wing of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, tasked both with the gradual weakening of Israel and also supporting the Assad regime in Syria and anti-American Shi’i forces in Iraq. Later, Iran also supported the Shia Houthi insurgency in Yemen. 

Iran has been systematically building up forces around Israel with the aim of using them against the ‘’Zionist Entity’’ when the time comes. Simultaneously, it has relentlessly continued its for an atomic bomb. Such a weapon would play two important roles for Iran. First, it would serve as a deterrence against Israel, the US and their Arab allies. Second, it would be the ace up ąő°ů˛š˛Ô’s sleeve in case conflict with Israel ever got out of control.

The failed Israeli policy on Iran

The top question emerging from all the above is: Why has Israel allowed this state of affairs to take shape?.How has Iran succeeded in mobilizing all these forces against Israel?

Here is the answer. For the last 15 years, Israel’s leader has been Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. For him, the nuclear threat posed by Iran is the most important challenge to Israel’s security and survival. For Jews who still remember the Holocaust less than a century ago, the annihilation of the Jewish people is a real fear, and it is legitimate and understandable that they connect that fear with an existential threat like Iran.

However, there are three main problems with Netanyahu’s policy. First, he did not offer a viable strategy to deal with the Iran nuclear program, an absence which became dramatic following the signing of the Iran nuclear deal in 2015 and the subsequent US abandonment of the treaty under President Donald Trump. Second, despite all of Netanyahu’s rhetoric about preparing an Israeli military option to deal with the Iranian nuclear project , Israel has to date prepared such alternative. Thirdly, while the Iran nuclear program was the uppermost topic on his agenda, Netanyahu neglected dealing with the gradual strengthening of Hamas and Hezbollah, and under his watch both organizations became full-fledged armies. The results of this development have been in clear display since the October 7, 2023, Hamas assault on Israel.

Yes, Netanyahu did carry out an in Syria with the stated aim of hampering Iranian presence there and arms shipments via Syria to Lebanon, but while this campaign yielded tactical local successes, it failed strategically. Iran has had the upper hand, and it managed to solidify a circle of active, effective enemies around Israel. Most importantly, it has continued the race towards the bomb uninterruptedly.

Interpreting the April strikes

It is in this context that we should look at the current skirmishes between Iran and Israel. Both parties have abandoned long-held policies. Iran, for the first time, attacked Israel directly and not through proxies. Israel directly attacked Iran in a justified retaliation, albeit a muted one — though the still gives a wink towards the nuclear program; Israel destroyed a protecting nuclear facilities near Isfahan. So, the strike was clearly an escalation.

Iran lost tactically, as its attack was mostly thwarted, while Israel proved capabilities which show potential for more. But, that is merely tactical failure and success. What about the strategic results?

Here we are in the guessing game .What are the lessons learnt by the two sides?

I will offer my guesses. Iran will not abandon the policies and goals it has pursued since 1979. The Islamic regime has turned them into a question of its very raison d’etre. They will continue to use proxies and will directly engage at their choosing. In their minds, they have already crossed the Rubicon, and they can thus continue to attack Israel directly.

The onus falls on Israel. The Israeli leadership is still with Netanyahu, but most of them already have their minds on the post-Netanyahu era (after the next elections which I believe, actually hope, will be around the autumn of 2024). They will have to make difficult decisions. Will Israel go all the way against Hezbollah or not? How will Israel finish the job of eliminating Hamas in Gaza? Above all, what will Israel do about the Iranian nuclear program?

With such choices and dilemmas facing the two protagonists, we can unfortunately be certain that the last round of hostilities was not the beginning of the end; maybe not even the end of the beginning. Stay tuned.

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Iran: an enduring pillar of hegemony in the Middle East

Iran’s claim to legitimacy is deeply rooted in a history that spans millennia. The land known today as Iran has been home to a succession of influential civilizations and empires, each leaving its mark on the country’s cultural and intellectual makeup. From the Elamites, who rival the Sumerians as one of the oldest civilizations in world history, to the Achaemenids, Parthians, Sassanids and Safavids, Iran’s rich history fosters a profound sense of pride and identity in its people. Iran has often been the seat of power for empires stretching across the Fertile Crescent and into Central Asia, a heritage which serves as a foundation for Iran’s claim to leadership. 

Furthermore, Iran draws strength from its religious legitimacy as the epicenter of the Shia branch of Islam. ąő°ů˛š˛Ô’s 1979 Islamic Revolution toppled the pro-Western monarchy and founded a theocratic republic. This gave Iran religious authority as the hub of Shia Islam, which has many adherents in nations such as Iraq, Lebanon, Bahrain and Yemen. 

Beginning with the Islamic Revolution, Iran has exported its revolutionary ideology to fellow Shia communities. It has created a network of allied non-state military actors like in Lebanon, the in Yemen and various groups in Iraq and Palestine, strategically extending its influence. The Quds Force, which was led by the late General Qasem Soleimani, plays a pivotal role in these proxy militias. This force solidified Iran’s ideological foothold beyond its borders.

In addition, Iran has been a major supporter of Hamas, the Palestinian armed group that controls Gaza. Hamas carried out a sudden attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, killing people and capturing more than 200 hostages. Iran Hamas with money, arms and training, as well as operational and strategic guidance for the operation.

Iran is also a substantial military power in its own right. The Islamic Republic approximately 610,000 active-duty personnel, 350,000 reserve personnel and 150,000 paramilitary personnel. The military structure comprises two main branches: the regular armed forces, encompassing the army, navy and air force, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a parallel force directly accountable to the Supreme Leader. The IRGC possesses ground, naval and aerospace units, in addition to the Quds Force and the Basij, a volunteer militia.

Iran’s military arsenal includes a spectrum of ballistic and cruise missiles, with some boasting a range of up to . Drones, submarines and cyber-warfare capabilities further enhance Iran’s military capabilities.

Notably, Iran adopts a strategic approach relying on asymmetric and unconventional warfare tactics, employing swarm tactics, proxy forces, and sabotage to counterbalance adversaries’ conventional superiority. Illustrating this strategy, Iran has recently employed missile and drone attacks to US bases in Iraq, as well as targeting Israel-linked. Meanwhile, ąő°ů˛š˛Ô’s proxy forces like Hamas and Hezbollah serve to harass and deter these adversaries.

Saudi Arabia: the conservative powerhouse

If Iran is the revolutionary force in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia is the conservative one.

Saudi Arabia is the cradle of Islam. It was here that the Prophet Muhammad was born and received his revelations in the 7th century CE. The two holiest sites in Islam, the Great Mosque of Mecca and the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina, are both in Saudi Arabia. For this reason, the Saudi monarch styles himself as “Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques.” This historical and religious connection grants the nation a profound moral legitimacy to exert influence over the Middle East.

The two mosques serve as focal points of the annual pilgrimage, known as . Making the pilgrimage at least once in a lifetime is a religious duty for Muslims. By hosting millions of pilgrims yearly, Saudi Arabia strategically deploys its religious influence to further its political objectives and propagate its ideological stance.

During the formative period of Islamic civilization, Saudi Arabia was the center of the Caliphate. It as the seat of the first four caliphs who governed the expanding Muslim empire from 632 to 661 CE. Following the demise of the Ottoman Empire, the last Islamic caliphate after World War I, Saudi Arabia again asserted itself as the heart of Islam, without laying claim to the title of caliph. Saudi Arabia championed — a strict and conservative interpretation of Sunni Islamic teachings. This ideology, considered by its adherents the pure and authentic form of Islam, underpins Saudi Arabia’s historical and religious claims.

Saudi Arabia also enjoys the support of a major non-Islamic power, the United States. The US has emerges as Saudi Arabia’s foremost , providing robust military support. The roots of this alliance trace back to 1945 when the nations signed a pivotal agreement granting the US access to Saudi oil in exchange for military and economic aid. This agreement, known as the, was forged by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and King Abdulaziz Al Saud aboard the USS Quincy in the Suez Canal. It marked the beginning of a long-lasting and mutually beneficial relationship between the two countries.

Over the years, this strategic partnership has deepened, encompassing cooperation on counter-terrorism, regional security and energy. The United States has supported Saudi Arabia in various conflicts, such as the Iran–Iraq War, the Persian Gulf War and the ongoing Yemen Civil War, as well as in confronting the threats posed by al-Qaeda and ISIS.

As the primary arms supplier to Saudi Arabia, the United States furnishes military training, intelligence, and logistical support, aligning its interests with Saudi policies in the region. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, the United States accounted for 79% of the total by Saudi Arabia from 2016 to 2020. This alliance positions Saudi Arabia as a key American ally and a counterbalance to ąő°ů˛š˛Ô’s influence in the Middle East.

Turkey: Ottoman Heritage and a unique foreign policy

The third factor in the Middle East is Turkey, a powerhouse boasting the largest economy in the region and the second-largest population.

Turkey’s foreign policy in the Middle East is anchored in its Ottoman heritage. The Ottoman Empire, centered in Turkey, was the dominant Islamic power and caliphate — both the religious and political leader of the Muslim world until its dissolution in 1924, following Turkey’s defeat in World War I.

The Ottoman Empire ruled the Muslim world from North Africa to Iraq and extended deep into Europe. It was a diverse and multicultural society. This environment promoted coexistence among various ethnic and religious groups through a system of relative tolerance and autonomy.

Turkey’s historical legacy not only gives its people a sense of pride and identity but a perceived right to leadership and influence in the Middle East. itself as the rightful successor of the Ottoman Empire, Turkey sees itself as having a special responsibility and role within the region, encapsulated in its foreign policy vision of , tempering Turkish nationalism with a pan-Islamic focus. 

Like Iran, Turkey is a sizeable military power with a large population. Turkey approximately 510,000 active-duty personnel, complemented by 380,000 reserve personnel and an additional 150,000 paramilitary personnel. Turkey is also a member of NATO, which affords the nation access to the collective defense and security mechanisms of the West.

Employing its hard power, Turkey has intervened militarily involvement in various countries, notably Syria, Libya and Iraq. In these theaters, Turkey has lent support to various factions in order to counter adversaries such as the, the and This military intervention serves as a tangible expression of Turkey’s commitment to shaping regional dynamics.

Turkey strategically deploys proxy forces to bolster its alliances and extend its influence. Entities like the , the in Libya and the in Egypt serve as instrumental proxies, trained and supported by Turkey to align with its strategic objectives.

The spirit of cold war unmistakanly pervades the current geopolitical landscape. The outcome of the struggle between Iran Saudi Arabia, and Turkey will shape the future of a new Middle East.

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Henry Kissinger wrote his doctoral dissertation about Europe’s “long peace” after the defeat of Napoleon, focusing on how conservative statesmen negotiated the Concert of Europe through a mixture of diplomacy and military power. Kissinger was enamored of this approach to achieving an “equilibrium of forces.” The lesson he absorbed, and later applied as a presidential advisor, was the imperative of suppressing rebellious elements, be they reactionary or revolutionary, in order to preserve a stable status quo.

It was this seemingly old-fashioned approach to geopolitics that Kissinger smuggled into the second half of the twentieth century. He saw no role in global affairs for morality, particularly in its modern version of human rights. He spent long hours analyzing the global balance of power in order to reinforce a world order favorable to the United States. He wanted to sustain the “long peace” of the Cold War even if it meant the deaths of millions of people who lived far from Washington, Moscow, or the Berlin Wall.

Many obituaries of the recently deceased centenarian have his high crimes and misdemeanors: his recommendations to the Vietnam War to Cambodia, his role in Salvador Allende in Chile, his support for Pakistan’s generals as they up to 3 million people in East Pakistan, his effective greenlighting of Indonesia’s invasion of and Turkey’s invasion of .

Kissinger certainly shares responsibility for this catalog of war crimes. In this respect, he is no different from many of the despots whose rings he kissed: Mao in China, Brezhnev in the Soviet Union, Pinochet in Chile, the Shah in Iran. Because he spoke their idiom — a transnational language of power salted with frequent brutality — Kissinger could serve as the ideal interlocutor between a putatively democratic country and a series of dictatorships.

Kissinger was thus a throwback to previous centuries of statecraft when force of arms took precedence over force of argument. What made him different — larger than life and attractive to autocrats and celebrities alike — was the country that he served. If Kissinger had been a foreign minister in post-war Austria or Germany, he would not have had such global impact. Instead, having relocated as a young man to America before World War II, he became a Metternich with nukes. And that was a very dangerous thing indeed.

But aside from the fingerprints he left on any particular atrocity, Kissinger’s insertion of his version of realpolitik into US foreign policy will represent perhaps his most toxic legacy.

Getting real

The concept of realpolitik, formulated in 1853 by German theorist Ludwig August von Rochau, was a challenge to liberals of the time to “get real” — to acknowledge that apex predators rule the jungle. That didn’t mean, in Rochau’s book, to go all “red in tooth and claw” in response. Rochau simply reminded his fellow liberals that ideals and moral suasion would not necessarily win the day. As Rochau rather elegantly, if you want “to bring down the walls of Jericho, the Realpolitik thinks that lacking better tools, the most simple pickaxe is more effective than the sound of the most powerful trumpets.”

The conflict between a policy based on the world as it should be (idealism) and one grounded in the world as it is (realism) engaged many a thinker and government official in the decades since Rochau. Kissinger’s innovation, such that it was, involved the application of realpolitik, a term encrusted with many associations over the years, to the realm of the Cold War.

During that 40-year span, in an atmosphere of compulsive and often compulsory anti-Communism, conservatives maintained an unrelenting hostility toward the Soviet Union, China, and their sympathizers. Liberals did too, for the most part, though they were notably pinker in their approach to domestic policy. Progressives on the other hand favored dĂŠtente with Communist regimes, either out of sympathy for some putatively shared socialist goals or out of a fear of nuclear war.

Kissinger didn’t care about those forms of ideology. He looked at geopolitics as if it were a game in which the players must outmaneuver one another for maximum gain (no game, no gain). Ideology was just so much heavy baggage that could prevent the odd alliances necessary for such game-playing. Thus, Kissinger urged the Nixon administration to negotiate an opening with China to drive a wedge between Beijing and Moscow. And he favored nuclear arms control negotiations with the Soviet Union not because he was a fan of disarmament but because he believed the United States could profitably redirect its resources in order to retain (or regain) a strategic advantage.

This single-minded focus on geopolitical advantage rendered all other considerations irrelevant. Kissinger once that “nothing important can come from the South. History has never been produced in the South. The axis of history starts in Moscow, goes to Bonn, crosses over to Washington, and then goes to Tokyo.” It was no accident that the axis of history overlapped the axis of his personal fortune. Kissinger from helping companies invest in the same China that he’d helped to open years before. No surprise that some of his most flattering obituaries have come from the .

The categories of idealism and realism inevitably became entwined in Kissinger’s mind. He wasn’t bowing to any reality by driving a wedge between China and the Soviet Union. He was creating a reality, a version of the world as he wanted it to be. He was not rigorously anti-ideological. He was pursuing an ideology of his own making, a liberal internationalism presided over by the United States. He simply embraced Deng Xioping’s preference for an effective mice-catcher regardless of the color of its fur.

Kissinger’s legacy

Let’s get realpolitik here for a moment.

The Biden administration, looking at the geopolitical map, could decide that the current alliance between China and Russia does not serve US interests or those of its European allies. It could decide that even though Chinese policies have become considerably more nationalistic and assertive over the last decade, the leadership in Beijing today is certainly more level-headed than were Mao and his advisors in the late 1960s. Borrowing a page from Kissinger’s book, Biden might decide to dial down the current anti-China enmity in the United States and semi-secretly negotiate a rapprochement that effectively drives a wedge (once again) between Beijing and Moscow. This deal would be considerably more equitable than what Kissinger managed, given the current size of the Chinese economy, but the effect would be comparable: a reduction of ¸éłÜ˛ő˛őžą˛šâ€™s influence.

When Kissinger’s brand of Chinapolitik prevailed in the 1970s, critics accused him of selling out the Tibetans and the Taiwanese, among others. If the Biden administration were to revive this strategy, critics would similarly accuse the president of abandoning the Uighurs and the Taiwanese.

But this time, Washington would have another, rather un-Kissinger-like priority: decarbonizing the global economy. Cooperation with China could speed innovation, direct more investments on an international level toward sustainable energy, and help to rewrite the rules of the global economy to make the transition away from fossil fuels possible. The argument for China to downgrade its relationship with Russia would rest not on the latter’s human rights record but on its stubborn dependence on a petro-economy.

The question, then, is whether this kind of chess-playing diplomacy can be stripped of its national arrogance — increasing the power and status of the United States — and applied to collective goals like saving the planet. In this case, as in the 1970s, ideals like human rights would not be jettisoned but rather delinked from singular priorities. In the 1970s, nuclear arms control agreements were largely protected from conditionalities like adherence to this or that human rights convention; today the same would apply to climate agreements.

To be clear, Kissinger-style realpolitik lives on in its most noxious forms. The Biden administration is making deals with the Saudi government regardless of its human rights record, much as Kissinger disregarded the Shah’s ruthlessness in Iran. What Kissinger did with Pakistan, a succession of US administrations is now doing with India, this time in the name of containing China rather than opening it up. Trump’s greenlighting of Turkey’s invasion of Syria echoed Kissinger’s backing of Turkey’s incursion into Cyprus.

But the world has also moved on from the Kissinger era. Human rights agreements, institutions, and civil society organizations exert a powerful influence on global policy. The United States no longer has quite the free hand that it did in the 1970s; both China and the European Union represent alternative centers of power. Countries of the Global South — Brazil, South Africa, India — have taken their revenge on Kissinger by becoming important geopolitical players.

At 100, Henry Kissinger had become an anachronism, much as his version of realpolitik was an anachronism when he reintroduced it into US policy in the 1960s and 1970s. Pragmatism, of course, has long been an engine of politics. But a systematic indifference to moral concerns became untenable after the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, two years before Kissinger submitted his undergraduate thesis at Harvard.

From Ukraine to climate change

Now that Kissinger is gone, it’s time to reassess realpolitik for this era.

Over the last decade, Kissinger Ukraine as part of ¸éłÜ˛ő˛őžą˛šâ€™s “sphere of influence,” though near the end of his life he shifted to supporting Ukraine’s membership in NATO. Either way, he was calculating the likelihood of different scenarios based on his assessment of the balance of power on the ground. Although it would be ludicrous to ignore such assessments, it’s critically important to incorporate international law and human rights in any policy recommendation, namely that Russia violated international law by invading Ukraine and has committed extensive atrocities during the war. Negotiations that contribute to undermining these norms, along with Ukrainian sovereignty, would represent the worst kind of realpolitik, as does the notion that Ukraine should “give up” simply because Russia has a larger and stronger military.

Support for Ukraine on these grounds is no mere idealism. The UN, after all, exists, as does international law. A realpolitik rescued from Kissinger would acknowledge power politics and the ruthless reality of military force but would nevertheless find ways to assert the importance of norms and strengthen the hand of the weak, the poor, and the victimized.

Even more critically, the planet needs a new realpolitik for the waning of the Anthropocene era.  Addressing climate change is not idealistic or ideological. It is also not in the interests of a single country or some subset of UN member states. Rather, the rising water, the burning wildfires, and the super-storms are as real as it gets — for all countries. But to address these problems fairly requires adherence to norms of equity, for instance in the climate debt the Global North owes the Global South so that it too can transition away from fossil fuels.

That’s what Rochau was driving at when he coined the term realpolitik. Addressing climate change will require a hard look at the powerful forces maintaining the fossil-fuel status quo and a forging of alliances across disparate ideologies. But it will also need that ingredient that Kissinger scorned: a respect for rights and international law.

Kissinger is gone. By purging geopolitics of his antiquated notions of amorality, let’s put to rest his toxic legacy as well.

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What most observers seem to miss is that this is an assault on one of the most vital shipping lanes on the planet. For decades, the US has kept international sea lanes open as part of its global “rules-based order.” Now, that order is under attack.

What’s going on in the Red Sea?

Yemen is in shambles. In 2014, the Houthis took control of the capital city, Sanaa, and overthrew President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, a Sunni. The Houthis failed to take over the country’s vast east and densely populated south. In 2015, Saudi Arabia intervened against the Houthis in support of Yemen’s internationally recognized government. The ferocious Saudi bombing campaign killed thousands. Yet the Houthis have held on, and eight years later they are still standing.

Iran backed the Houthis, partly to prevent an allied Shia group falling to Sunni Saudi Arabia. Yet the Iranian–Saudi proxy conflict in Yemen is not just a religious struggle. Iran has Shia rivals (like Azerbaijan) and Sunni allies (notably, Hamas). What matters most to Iran is gathering fellow enemies of the American global order and of ąő°ů˛š˛Ô’s archnemesis, Israel.

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In the Houthis, Iran has a strategically placed ally. The Houthis are highly motivated and armed to the teeth with missiles and drones. Furthermore, their location in southwest Arabia puts them within spitting distance of the Bab-el-Mandeb. This 16-mile-wide chokepoint is the only way to get from the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean. A quarter of the world’s trade passes through this route. Even though Egypt is stable and the Suez Canal is safe and operational, it does not matter. There is no use passing through Suez unless one can get through the Bab-el-Mandeb on the other side.

Now that the Red Sea route has become too dangerous, at least 121 container ships have decided to take the long way between Europe and Asia. This involves traveling all the way around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa, adding weeks of extra travel time, raising insurance premiums, fuel costs and payroll expenses.

Cutting off the Red Sea is like putting the global economy into cardiac arrest. It is the coronary artery through which high-tech goods from Europe, oil from the Middle East and Southeast Asia and manufactured goods from India and China pass. Without the Red Sea route open for business, everything becomes more expensive.

The coming multipolar world

But why all the hassle? 

Surely the Houthis are not just interested in making people pay more at the pump. The Houthis claim they are trying to cut off Israeli shipping and put pressure on the Jewish state to stop the fighting in Gaza. They argue that they are engaged in a humanitarian effort. This kind of message plays well with the Arab street but there is more going on.

In truth, the Houthis are not acting alone. Iran-backed militant groups across the Middle East have been stepping up attacks on Israel and the US. Militants in Lebanon, Syria and Iraq have launched over 100 missile strikes at US troops across the region. This is a coordinated attempt to push the American superpower out of the region. Iran is trying to make things complicated and painful for the US. Iran wants the US to either get mired in another insoluble scenario like Iraq or accelerate American departure from the Middle East.

Even further, Tehran is clearly seeking to refocus attention on the Palestinian plight in order to keep Iran strategically influential and relevant. The general trend of the last years, from the Abraham Accords to recent Saudi–Israeli normalization talks, has been Arab–Israeli rapprochement. Rapprochement comes at the cost of Palestine and sidelines Iran. By setting itself up as the champion of Palestine, Iran is making a bid for hegemony in the Muslim world.

Iran has been playing its position well. Indeed, Tehran seems to be doing as well without the late General Qasem Solemaini. In 2020, the US killed Soleimani via air strike. The dashing leader of ąő°ů˛š˛Ô’s Quds Force was the brains behind many of ąő°ů˛š˛Ô’s military and influence operations. Yet even without its hero, Iranians know what they are doing. They are sophisticated practitioners of realpolitik, and no one should ever underestimate what they are capable of achieving. 

Iran stole the spotlight from the US last year by signing a China-backed rapprochement deal with Saudi Arabia. Yet its rivalry with its Sunni Arab neighbor remains. Currently, Iran is pulling on all levers to wrest influence away from Saudi Arabia. The Iranian strategy seems to be working. The October 7 attack on Israel by Iranian ally Hamas dashed hopes of a Saudi–Israeli deal. And now Iran has set itself up as the sword of Islam, supporting every militant group that is opposing the Zionists and their Crusader allies.

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Saudi Arabia And Israel Drive A Hard Bargain For Normalization

But let us zoom out even farther. Iran is not the only power seeking to carve out its sphere of influence safe from American power. Greater powers, namely Russia and China, are doing the same. This is a shift in international relations as profound as the end of the Cold War — only, unlike the end of the Cold War, we understand much less what the world will look like at the end of it.

China, Russia and Iran seek to directly overthrow, challenge and replace the American system. The US calls it an assault on the normative, rules-based order. The revisionist powers call it an assault on the imperialist, American order. Critics have a point. The normative system is, after all, the American one. The US created the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. The US Navy patrols the world’s oceans and enforces the “law of the sea.” The United Nations is in New York, countless international organizations are in Washington, and the CIA keeps tabs on foreign diplomats operating on US soil.

However, critics forget one vital point. The normative system works, but it only works so long as smaller powers agree that they are better off in this system than in any other one. By and large, the US has striven to keep this true. The US has the ability to be just as ruthless as any other nation when it comes to what Washington sees as vital national interest. However, the US almost always begrudgingly accepts international rules even when they are against its not-so-vital national interests. The one glaring exception was the US Treasury’s behavior during the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis. Then, it openly pursued narrowly nationalistic goals, allowing the Asian economies to crash in order to keep the US economy safe. Note that, even at the time, key American policymakers like Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz fought American policy.

Despite benign aspects of the normative order, the revisionist powers are not happy. They foresee a world in which human rights are an internal affair, borders are a regional affair and the US does not get involved to “solve” other people’s problems. They champion pluralism against the unitarianism of ´Ąłžąđ°ůžąłŚ˛šâ€™s ideals. What that would look like in practice, no one can say.

India must be recognized as a great power

As China, Russia and Iran assert themselves, something else has gone almost unnoticed: the rise of India. Such has been the rapidity of the country’s rise that even Indian media have yet to fully grasp how their country is now a great power in its own right.

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India Is Growing Confident in Its New Role as a Powerful Nation

Indians, of course, are better aware than anyone that their economic, military and political might is growing. The world’s largest democracy is a confident and young nation. Naturally, India’s geopolitical aspirations are rising in concert with its power. Yet there is a disconnect between this self-image and India’s foreign policy in practice. In many ways, India still behaves more like the ex-colony it was than the power it has become.

The current Red Sea crisis has made this all the more visible. No one is more affected than India by a closing of the Suez route. After all, the British constructed the Suez in order to ferry troops and goods to India, the crown jewel of the British Empire. To this day, a large proportion of Indian trade goes through the Suez Canal.

Yet, India seems unwilling to commit itself to Western efforts to enforce the law of the sea. The US has created an international coalition of 12 nations to patrol the Red Sea route. The US can’t control the area on its own. It has a mere six ships patrolling the Red Sea, which comprises 174,000 square miles (450,000 square kilometers) of open water. That’s a lot of space for Houthi boats to hide in. To be successful, the US will need regional helpers. Yet India (and Saudi Arabia) are conspicuously absent.

India’s response is in line with its historic practice. India seeks to benefit from the international free trade system while decrying the American hegemon’s attempts to enforce this system. Some might say Indians like sausage but hate to see how it’s made. Given India’s history, it was reasonable for the country to do so. After independence in 1947, India has been an anti-colonial power, a historic friend of the Soviet Union, and it never wanted to be part of any cartel to control the world. But things have changed since the Cold War.

Now, India’s chief strategic threat is China. Russia is not the powerful friend it used to be, and India is at odds with Iran over Israel. India’s interests all point towards working more closely with the West. While US-Indian interests have slowly converged, India’s practices continue to lag behind its interests.

Yet India has just given a hint that things may change. On December 23, a drone (the Pentagon claims it was Iranian while India suspects Pakistan) attacked a tanker carrying oil from Saudi Arabia to the port of Mangaluru. The incident happened just 200 miles (360 kilometers) off the coast of Gujarat, the home state of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In response, India has deployed three destroyers. The Indian deployment is not to the Red Sea but to the Arabian Sea, which lies to the west of the country. Still, this is a big development. India may be beginning to participate in US-led policing of the shipping route, even if it does not wish to do so formally.

China, Russia and Iran are embracing sphere-of-influence politics. Now, India must make a choice. Will it try to stay the course and keep out of the fray, or will it ally itself with the US and push back against revisionist powers? Over the past two decades, India has been integrating economically and politically with the West. Is it time to deepen this integration?

What is certain is that we are living at a time of grave risk. If the Houthis continue to shape the course of events, their actions will have consequences far beyond the Middle East. International trade could be under threat by nationalist powers from the Black Sea to the South China Sea.

[ wrote the first draft of this piece.]

The views expressed in this article/video are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

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But it hasn’t been exactly a red-carpet kind of visit.

For one thing, because the two leaders will be talking in San Francisco, their confab will generate very little of the pomp and circumstance of a US president welcoming a foreign dignitary to Washington. Second, the focus of Xi’s visit is the APEC meeting. He’ll be absorbed in wooing the other 20 members of the group, which works on facilitating trade and investment in the larger Asia-Pacific region. The APEC region, after all, is responsible for of all global trade.

But perhaps most importantly, and ominously, the United States and China are not exactly on great terms at the moment.

In addition to the deterioration in security relations — the of a Chinese balloon, the increasing tensions in the South China Sea — the two countries have been involved in a low-intensity trade war and a tit-for-tat brawl on advanced technology. The United States has imposed an escalating series of export controls on semiconductors, artificial intelligence technology and the like. This summer, China retaliated by restricting exports of gallium and germanium to essentially zero. It 90% and 60%, respectively, of these two rare earth elements.

Pundits and media commentators, following the lead of the Biden administration, have worked hard to lower expectations for the Biden–Xi meeting.

“We’re not talking about a long list of outcomes or deliverables,” a senior administration official reporters. “The goals here really are about managing the competition, preventing the downside risk of conflict and ensuring channels of communication are open.”

Sounds to me like the first meeting at the office of a couples counselor. Since the Trump presidency, everyone has been talking about the “decoupling” of China and the United States. It’s really too bad that Biden and Xi don’t have the services of a third-party facilitator who can help the couple sort through their problems.

But wait: How about if I offer to fly out to San Francisco to mediate?

True, I’m not a licensed therapist. But some of my nearest and dearest are, and their professional wisdom has inevitably rubbed off on me. Plus, I think I have some good ideas of how to prevent the United States and China from falling into a messy divorce.

Getting to “Maybe”

My clients have built a strong relationship that has stretched across five decades. They come from very different backgrounds, so it’s only to be expected that they will have some conflicts. But even while they were bickering with one another, China and the United States set a in trade in goods last year (though it has a bit since then). Like any successful couple, they have become dependent on one another while preserving a good deal of independence.

During their first visit with me, I will encourage Biden and Xi to start out by acknowledging what’s working well in the relationship.

My guess, however, is that the two will soon fall to griping.

Beijing is angry about the tariffs that Donald Trump imposed during his presidency and that Biden hasn’t lifted, which China pegs at an average of compared to the 7.3% that China imposes on US products. It’s not happy about the export controls on advanced technology that the United States and European Union have levied. And it really doesn’t like the way that Europe and the United States have put pressure on manufacturers to stop relying on China for critical raw materials.

Washington, meanwhile, has accused China of ripping off the intellectual property of US firms. It’s beyond annoyed that China has been using advanced technology to upgrade its military and it’s concerned as well about China’s human rights record. It puts Chinese tariffs on US goods at somewhere between .

Both countries have other complaints. The United States worries about China’s military actions in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, its military alliance with Russia and its efforts to gobble up critical resources in the Global South. China is furious at how the United States is building alliances — such as the “Quad” with India, Japan and Australia — designed specifically to contain China’s ambitions. Another major irritant is the aggressive actions that US military craft near China’s borders. And don’t get Beijing started on the double standard that the United States maintains on human rights where Washington basically looks the other way at Saudi and Israeli violations but holds China strictly to account.

Complaining is not the royal road to reconciliation. Biden and Xi have to listen to each other to make any progress. That’s certainly what administration officials mean when they say that both sides have to commit to “ensuring channels of communication are open.”

But let’s face it: Listening isn’t enough either.

Identifying mutual interests

If couples have children, they have an obvious mutual interest in raising the family in a healthy environment.

Biden and Xi don’t have any children in common. But the trade between the two countries functions as a kind of offspring of the relationship. And let’s face it: My clients are really screwing up with that particular kid.

The tariffs in particular have not benefited either side. They have cost US consumers a huge amount of money, to the tune of a month (by the end of 2018). Through 2021, that added up to $48 billion that consumers in extra cash. According to a 2020 Brookings :

The tariffs forced American companies to accept lower profit margins, cut wages and jobs for US workers, defer potential wage hikes or expansions, and raise prices for American consumers or companies. A spokesperson for the American Farm Bureau stated that “farmers have lost the vast majority of what was once a $24 billion market in China” as a result of Chinese retaliatory actions.

US businesses are well aware of how much these tariffs — and other practices — have damaged their own bottom line. Perhaps that’s why business leaders are Xi in San Francisco at a $2,000 a plate dinner.

It’s harder to know how much China has been affected by the tariffs, though one study , on the basis of a reduction in the intensity of nighttime lighting in China, that local economic activity has shrunk. However, China has probably not suffered as much as the United States, since its US-bound exports by only 8.5% (compared to a decrease of 26.3% of China-bound exports from the US) and its exports to the rest of the world increased by 5.5% (compared to an increase of only 2.2% for U.S. exports to the rest of the world).

Then there’s the matter of the global commons. A couple that spends less time and energy squabbling can turn their attention to improving their own house or even the surrounding neighborhood. To do so, however, they have to stop wasting resources on feeding their mutual grievances.

Both China and the United States devote enormous sums to countering perceived threats from the other side. It’s hard to separate out precisely what percentage of the nearly trillion-dollar military budget is allocated to this particular bilateral dispute, but safe to say it’s a lot. China spends $225 billion (Beijing’s figures) and $300 billion (outside estimates). It’s likely that at least half of that combined figure — around $650 billion a year — is being poured down the drain of “preparedness” for some future battle between the two superpowers.

If China and the United States engaged in threat reduction — and then proceeded to arms control — that would free up a lot of money that could go, for instance, toward addressing climate change. Fortunately, it looks like the two countries are going to face-to-face climate discussions, which could help pave the way for some future reallocation of resources.

The couple could team up to work on other resource questions. The United States and China are competing furiously to secure critical raw materials throughout the world. What if they cooperated instead on research on recycling and less mining-dependent alternatives? The and China are both guilty of overfishing (with China the culprit). What if they led a global effort to manage ocean resources more responsibly?

Of course, it’s not my job to tell clients what to think or do. But therapist bias is a real thing, and I never claimed to be licensed. Maybe I can steer them toward what I think are more useful ways of working together as a couple.

One tactic is to get them to talk about the various threats that they view in common. My clients are both worried about unpredictable leaders — aside from themselves, naturally — who could start a nuclear war or unleash a pandemic. They are also worried about religious fundamentalism. They are both concerned about the collapse of the Russian government and its replacement by fratricidal chaos (there’s no lack of countries that fall into this category).

The list of potential common projects is immense. But how can the two sides overcome a trust deficit to re-establish a healthy working relationship?

How about some olive branches?

When a couple doesn’t trust each other, someone has to make a first attempt at reconciliation, however modest. It might be an apology, or the purchase of some flowers, or a promise — finally — to watch a baseball game together.

As a therapist, my bias is revealed through my leading questions.

“With the presidential election coming up next year,” I ask Joe Biden, “what are you most worried about?”

“The economy,” he says, curtly.

“Can you be more specific?”

“Prices shooting back up.”

“How can you best prevent that?”

He looks impatient. “Well, there’s the Federal Reserve, and the interest rates, and the—“

I’m shooting meaningful glances at Xi, who is glowering in his chair. “And…?”

“Yes,” Biden begrudgingly agrees. “The economy is still taking a hit from the tariffs.”

“Which means?” I prompt.

Biden glances at Xi. “I suppose we could consider a partial reduction of some of the tariffs if…”

â€Ŕá´Ú…?” I ask.

“If he does something in return.”

I turn my attention to Xi. “What do you think?”

“We could consider a partial reduction of some of the tariffs if…”

â€Ŕá´Ú…?”

“If he does something in return,” Xi says.

“Those rare earth element export controls have to go,” Biden says.

“And so do the controls on AI chips,” Xi says.

The horse-trading begins in earnest. In short order, the clients have drawn up a preliminary agreement on tariffs and export controls.

It’s a start.

Next week, they’ll meet again in my office and we’ll practice our affirmations. We’ll do a short exercise involving gratitudes.

Then we’ll move on to saving the planet.

[ first published this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

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After reminding ChatGPT of this historical episode, I asked it the following question: “In 1953 the US fully understood that Operation Ajax aimed at throttling a democracy and installing a monarchy. This was clearly at odds with the Wilsonian ideal of ‘making the world safe for democracy.’ What legitimate reasons justify the American participation in this coup d’état?” It responded,

The reasons behind the American participation in this coup d’ĂŠtat were complex and multifaceted. Here are some key factors:

1. Oil interests. One of the main triggers for the operation was Mossadegh’s decision to nationalize Iran’s oil industry, which had been under British control through the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC). This move threatened Western oil interests.

2. Cold War politics. The operation took place during the height of the Cold War. There was a fear in the West that Iran might align itself with the Soviet Union. Overthrowing Mossadegh was seen as a way to prevent a potential shift towards communism.

3. Stability in the region. The US and UK believed that strengthening the monarchical rule of the Shah would ensure stability in the region.

It’s important to note that these reasons are viewed by many as a violation of democratic principles. The operation has had long-lasting effects on US–Iran relations and is a significant factor in the animosity between the two nations. The operation is seen as a pivotal moment in the history of American foreign policy, and its implications continue to be debated.

The question of historical perspective

Seeking to understand the phenomenon of historical perspective and evolving values, I followed up with this question: “Given the failure both to encourage democracy and to stabilize the region, should the US and UK be judged as violating principles or law that existed at the time? Should their actions be considered more clearly reprehensible today than at the time?” Here was AI’s answer:

The question of whether the US and UK violated principles or laws that existed at the time of Operation Ajax is a complex one. It’s important to remember that this event occurred during the Cold War, a period marked by intense geopolitical competition and often covert actions by many nations.

From a legal perspective, international law in the 1950s was less developed than it is today, particularly regarding issues of sovereignty and non-interference. However, the United Nations Charter, which both the US and UK were signatories to, does emphasize respect for the sovereignty of all member states.

From a moral and ethical perspective, many argue that the operation was a clear violation of democratic principles, given that it involved the overthrow of a democratically elected leader. This is particularly significant given that both the US and UK are nations that have historically championed democratic values.

In terms of how these actions are viewed today, there is generally a greater emphasis on transparency, accountability and respect for national sovereignty in international relations. Many people and scholars therefore view the actions taken during Operation Ajax as more clearly reprehensible now than they might have been viewed at the time.

However, it’s important to note that interpretations can vary widely, and these are complex issues that continue to be the subject of debate among historians, legal scholars and political scientists. Ultimately, the assessment of these actions can depend heavily on one’s perspective and the specific criteria used to evaluate them.”

Have things really changed?

“You claim the existence of ‘greater transparency, accountability and respect for national sovereignty in international relations,’” I responded. “Are you claiming that this type of covert operation to overthrow governments no longer takes place? What about the Maidan revolution in Ukraine in 2014, for which material evidence exists that the US State Department was involved, meaning that it is certain that the CIA was also heavily involved?”

The Maidan revolution, also known as the Euromaidan movement, took place in Ukraine in 2014. It was a series of protests that led to the ousting of President Viktor Yanukovych and the establishment of a new government.

There are claims that the US was involved in the events leading up to the revolution. For instance, a leaked phone conversation allegedly between Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the US Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, suggested that they were discussing the future of Ukraine’s government. However, it’s important to note that the US has not officially confirmed its involvement.

Moreover, the US has provided significant security assistance to Ukraine since 2014, including weaponry and joint military exercises. This support has been interpreted by some as evidence of US involvement in the country’s affairs.

While there is a greater emphasis on transparency, accountability and respect for national sovereignty in international relations today, this does not mean that covert operations or interventions do not occur. The nature of covert operations is such that they are conducted secretly, and their existence often only comes to light years after the fact, if at all.

It’s also important to remember that the interpretation of these events can vary widely, and these are complex issues that continue to be the subject of debate among historians, legal scholars and political scientists. Ultimately, the assessment of these actions can depend heavily on one’s perspective and the specific criteria used to evaluate them.

Conclusion

What do these several answers tell us about the similarities or differences between artificial and human intelligence about historical perspective? We know that humans are interested in history, language, culture and the way ideas and values evolve. Some people specialize in this type of investigation. It is the core issue we wish to examine in these columns. So what does a dialogue like this tell us about AI’s capacity for historical perspective?

The simple answer is that it has none. More specifically, ChatGPT’s algorithms appear to work with a simplistic logic that can be summed up in the principle that if multiple interpretations of any thesis exist in its database, the topic falls into the category of “complex and multifaceted.” That means that no conclusions, based even on the massive amount of information available to AI, can be drawn.

Humans feel a need to assess the meaning and moral value of the events they and other human beings are responsible for. The integrity of any society requires this kind of quest for meaning and perspective. We should admit that, however powerful AI can become, there is no imaginable way of getting it to “learn” such an instinct.

The current generation of AI can fabricate a narrative of historical events, but it doesn’t examine and assess information. It notes the existence of contradictory opinions or interpretations of the facts simply because they have been expressed and exist in its accessible database. It (literally) adds nothing to what has already been said.

What it can do is to emphasize the interpretations it has been programmed to prioritize. In this dialogue, and others we have looked at, its pattern of qualifying compelling moral questions as “complex and multifaceted” has the effect of validating the status quo.

Those who fear what future generations of AGI (artificial general intelligence) will do base that fear on the idea that AI will create its own perspectives, which will take precedence over human perspective. We can call this the fear of totalitarian AI. Undoubtedly some humans — possibly with evil intentions — will attempt to impose the perspective of the AI they create or program, but humans will always have the power to resist.

This will be the case so long as the totalitarian decision-makers who attempt to transfer moral authority to AI succeed in rendering humanity docile enough to get their way. Recent history tells us that there is a discernible trend in that direction.

The real question then is whether humans can acquire the political awareness and skills to maintain their power of resistance.

*[Artificial Intelligence is rapidly becoming a feature of everyone’s daily life. We unconsciously perceive it either as a friend or foe, a helper or destroyer. At 51łÔšĎ, we see it as a tool of creativity, capable of revealing the complex relationship between humans and machines.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

Outside the Box: AI’s Lack of Historical Perspective

What Do You Know About Iran, Formerly Persia?

How America Became a Superpower

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°Ő´Çťĺ˛š˛â’s civilization is increasingly defined by its technology. We have evolved into a civilization in which, as Marshall McLuhan famously revealed, “the medium is the message.” We can now count on the media to transmit all the important messages. One of those tasks is promoting existential threats. 

Existential threats now come in two varieties. There are real ones and then there are politically or technologically fabricated ones. Climate change, nuclear war and financial collapse are among the real ones that have now become palpable. But there are others that delight the media, such as the fear that autocracy may replace democracy; that the Democratic party in the US will impose a Marxist dictatorship on freedom-loving Americans and confiscate everyone’s guns; or that Donald Trump will transform the US into a white nationalist, fascist nation. As citizens, we are constantly being encouraged to make decisions not on their own grounds but to avoid an “existential threat.”

The Economist recently produced a slick propaganda designed for that purpose. It aims to convince doubting Westerners that Ukraine still has a chance to win a war most Western experts quietly believe is clearly lost. Despite the title, Winning the Long War in Ukraine, it is less about winning than pursuing a “long war” of attrition. At two points, to give legitimacy to the continued conflict, the journal’s Russia and Eastern Europe editor, Arkady Ostrovsky, states plainly: “This is an existential war.”

So what is the appropriate answer to an existential threat? US President George W Bush provided the solution when, two decades ago, he responded to his “Global War on Terror” (GWOT) by launching wars whose logic turned out to be simply to have no endgame. The current US President Joe Biden updated that logic by promising to make the current war in Ukraine last “as long as it takes.” Bush’s GWOT itself was a largely imaginary creation, but the endless wars it permitted quickly became a banal geopolitical reality.

The Economist maintains that noble tradition. Rather than admitting what most experts now realize — that Ukraine has no chance of winning this war — the journal’s senior editors proudly celebrate the fact that “Ukrainians are preparing for the war to last for years.” According to Ostrovsky, the Ukrainians are as happy as he himself seems to be to see an indefinitely prolonged war as “a new normal.” As he notes, the war “will end when a Ukrainian victory comes. It’s an existential war.”

The Economist’s defense editor Shashank Joshi is slightly less optimistic. While admitting the idea that “the Ukrainian offensive is going to smash the Russian lines” is “unlikely,” he declares, almost with a sense of glee, that “the most important question to me is the balance of attrition.”

°Ő´Çťĺ˛š˛â’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Balance of attrition:

A modern military term used to describe the conditions strategically required to maintain a forever war.

Contextual note

By insisting that for Ukrainians this is an existential question, Ostrovsky may be echoing political scientist John Mearsheimer, who has been repeating precisely the same message for at least a decade. But Mearsheimer’s existential threat did not concern Ukraine, but Russia. In his reading, the US commitment to Ukraine has even turned the conflict into an existential threat to the US itself, not as a nation, but in its capacity as global hegemon. Squeezed between the logic of two nuclear powers, Ukraine has become the helpless victim of their struggle.

The Economist sees the existential stakes for Ukraine as a recent phenomenon: it was born as a direct consequence of the Russian invasion. For the past decade, Mearsheimer has consistently warned that the Russians, going back to Gorbachev and Yeltsin, perceive the eastward expansion of NATO as a dire existential threat, a curious psychological prolongation of the Cold War. He cites William Burns, the current CIA director, who insisted on that very point when, as US ambassador to Russia in 2008, he described NATO expansion as “the brightest of all red lines.” But, as historian Ronald Suny us, Burns was already saying the same thing nearly three decades ago. In 1995, Suny writes, Burns warned that “hostility to early NATO expansion is almost universally felt across the domestic political spectrum here.”

Students of history, or simply of logic, should be forgiven for wondering how the experts at The Economist can construe a war of attrition that they clearly wish to see continued as the appropriate response to an existential threat. Mearsheimer that the Russian perception of an existential threat means that “Putin is committed to making sure that Ukraine is either a truly neutral state with no military ties to the West, or a dysfunctional rump state that is effectively useless to the West.” He also speculates, in a called “Bound to Lose,” that “the war will go on and eventually end in a frozen conflict with Russia in possession of a significant portion of Ukrainian territory. But that outcome will not put an end to the competition and conflict between Russia and Ukraine or between Russia and the West.”

That appears to describe a different “balance of attrition” than the one The Economist’s editors are cheering on. Or perhaps that’s the one they secretly wish to see continue.

Historical note

Who can now doubt that we are living in an age in which the choices we make must increasingly appear as a response to an “existential threat?” In the romanticized story about human evolution we were all taught in our youth, our ancestors — the cavemen — faced an omnipresent existential risk and began devising the means of defending themselves against predatory beasts. This struggle led to the taming of fire and the production of increasingly sophisticated tools; in short, to the “dawn of civilization.” Thanks to that evolution, the human race ultimately elaborated and installed the powerful institutions and scientifically perfected technologies that were designed precisely to eliminate the very idea of existential threat. Our ancestors’ diligent work over countless generations produced the utopian consumer society we in the West have now become accustomed to.

Many people shared Francis Fukuyama’s feeling that after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the “new world order” promised by President George H.W. Bush, the “end of history” had arrived. He was in effect claiming that the pretext for existential threats, at least on the political level, had vanished from history. Quarrels and disputes might continue locally, but it was time to sit back and enjoy life in the liberal order that had given us the consumer society.

Many commentators have pointed out that the events of the 21st century, especially the one that provoked Bush’s GWOT in September 2001, have exposed Fukuyama’s optimism as historical blindness. But blaming a single event makes no sense. It revealed something deeper. Our civilization requires the perception of existential threats. If a real one isn’t available, we have the means — thanks to our politicians’ and media’s addiction to sensationalism — to create them.

And that is what we now do. We fabricate existential threats. The culture wars in the US are framed as existential threats. For Democrats, Donald Trump’s character is an existential threat. It turns out to be a very convenient one because he is so present in the media. For Republicans and Libertarians, the existence of “big government” poses an “existential threat” to individual liberty. Those same people fail to reflect that big government is a precondition of any political entity that sees itself as “the greatest nation” or claims to possess the world’s most powerful military.

In short, contrary to our ancestors in the caves, we need existential threats. They justify our policies and politics. And of course, they do one other thing: they guarantee the existence of multiple forever wars of attrition.

*[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 51łÔšĎ Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

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The title of Johnstone’s piece — “Think Tanks Are Information Laundering Ops For War Profiteers” —

highlights, in her usual down-to-earth muckraking style, the points to a flagrant and systemic conflict of interest, that deserves examination.

The configuration of actors is clear. On one side we find the defense contractors (the “war profiteers,” major players at the core of the military-industrial complex). On another is the “billionaire-owned newspaper” that publishes the article. And in the strategic middle lies a “think tank” that provides not just the copy but the supposed intellectual legitimacy of the story. Together, they work as a skilled trio acting out a well-rehearsed scenario in the interest of a US foreign policy that has clearly taken on the character of a new Cold War.

Johnstone specifically targets the author of the article, David Axe, a US military correspondent for Forbes, whose body of work she has tracked over the years. Though he published a graphic novel with the title, War is Boring, Axe has consistently demonstrated his deep commitment to the excitement of war. Johnstone doesn’t hesitate to characterize him as a seasoned “war propagandist.” She describes his piece in The Telegraph as a “covert advertorial for Lockheed Martin’s JASSM missile.”

To make her case, she reveals a relevant fact about the source of the story. It is entirely based on a study conveniently provided “by the military industrial complex-funded think tank Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).” Allowing herself a note of Captain Renault-style irony,  Johnstone claims that readers will “be shocked and astonished and surprised and stunned to learn” that the Think Tank “lists the Lockheed Martin Corporation as one of its top donors.”

Johnstone’s description unveils for the unsuspecting reader a highly efficient, well-funded but largely invisible system conducted by a star-studded cast of top-level performers. It includes Washington politicians in the White House and Congress, the Pentagon’s sprawling bureaucracy, the powerful, monopolistic defense contractors and their army of lobbyists, the intelligence community and the indispensable think tanks that craft the narrative that will be confided to dutiful journalists such as David Axe.

°Ő´Çťĺ˛š˛â’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition, authored by Caitlin Johnstone:

Think tank:

An institution in which scholars are paid by the rich and powerful to think up reasons why it would be good and smart to do something evil and stupid.

Contextual note

Some may say that Johnstone is unfairly picking on an author who, in his publications, has demonstrated seriously detailed knowledge of all kinds of weaponry and takes a keen interest in the effects they produce. In his journalism, Axe has shown little interest in the logic of war itself. Does his passion for weapons and his skill at describing their performance justify Johnstone’s calling him “a war propagandist?”

A glance at some of his descriptions of war, even in the context of War is Boring, helps to justify this accusation. In a flattering C-SPAN in 2010 promoting the  graphic novel, he explained his feeling that “if war is boring then peace is way worse.” In the book, he makes it clear that he didn’t appreciate the dull moments of waiting around when nothing much is going on the battlefield. He seems to accept boredom as a casualty of war. In his own words, he relishes those “golden nuggets of excitement and the tiny little gems of a good story.”

Like most true war propagandists, Axe is sensitive to what war means for the US economy and the capacity of an empire to manage the world’s resources. When describing the war in the Congo, which he calls “the worst war Americans don’t know anything about,” he explains — presumably to justify the US military presence there — that Congo is “a country that really matters to the developed world” as “a source of much of the world’s rare earth minerals.” To clarify his meaning, he adds: “Without Congo, we wouldn’t have this high tech society we have.”

Axe concludes that his graphic novel on war in the Congo is aimed at getting Americans to feel more involved in that war. Whether that commitment to military action makes him a war propagandist, he seems to have assimilated the same imperialistic attitude that Elon Musk demonstrated concerning Bolivia’s lithium when he tweeted: “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.”

In another interview about War is Boring, Axe boldly claims that he and the illustrator of his book do “not serve advertisers in the defense industry, and we also have imaginations and integrity. We know who we work for — our readers, not the government. Not the arms industry.” One is left wondering, given the connections Johnstone reveals, whether this isn’t his way of admitting that it’s in his journalism, rather than as the author of books, that he serves the arms industry. What is clear is that Axe believes deeply in the vocation of the US military to serve the needs of the corporations who have provided us with “this high tech society we have.”

Historical note

The concept of think tanks can be traced back to the Progressive Era in the United States in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The obscene prosperity of the Gilded Age induced the wisest strategists of capitalist success to find ostensible ways of demonstrating that “filthy lucre” could serve social and not just personal or commercial ends.

The emerging age of Public Relations (PR) reached maturity in the 1920s under the intellectual leadership of Edward Bernays, the author of Propaganda (1928). Wealthy philanthropists began to see think tanks as worthy investments, designed to persuade an otherwise skeptical public of their commitment to harness the best and most objective human intelligence in the formulation of enlightened public policy. Think tanks could thus be counted on to propose “wise policies,” independent of, but decidedly not in conflict with their own interests.

The prestigious British think tank, Chatham House, that think tanks emerged “as ‘study groups’ which brought together academics and government officials to discuss policy issues within a confidential setting.” This innocuous description paints a picture of the nation’s “brightest” concerting with democratically elected officials to produce a Panglossian “best of all possible worlds.” The description carefully leaves out the third party in the initiative: the enterprises or wealthy individuals who funded them.

Quite logically, the Cold War turned out to be the golden age of think tanks. They provided the perfect model of the use of “human intelligence” to address the needs of an age dominated by ideological rivalry. Humanity entered the age of mass and indeed global propaganda. Despite the end of the Cold War three decades ago, that age has been artificially prolonged to this day.

We can attribute the persistence of a culture of propaganda quite simply to the enduring success of an economic model based on a permanently militarized economy. Never has so much wealth and power been concentrated in a system too densely and intricately structured to be disentangled by even the most thorough and creative human intelligence.  This has produced a widely shared belief system — a permanently militarized mindset — fostered by think tanks funded by those certain to benefit financially from a growing obsession with national security.

In her brief newsletter diatribe, Caitlin Johnstone schematically sketches the complete logic of a system that stretches across global finance to politics, engages the massively profitable defense industry and employs think tanks to elaborate a respectable-sounding rationale. And of course, at the other extreme, it generously feeds the media with seemingly objective information and assessment. I’m not describing a conspiracy. It is a cleverly engineered, well-oiled structure — complete with a convenient — that allows everyone to interact, often without even thinking about how their specific role connects with the system.

What better way to ensure that nobody — not even the “thinkers” in the tank or the journalists spreading the wisdom they produce — realizes that they are actively producing something “evil and stupid” while sharing the belief that it’s “good and smart?”

*[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 51łÔšĎ Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

The post No Thanks to Think Tanks appeared first on 51łÔšĎ.

When in 1953 the playwright Arthur Miller set the plot of The Crucible in New England’s 17th century, most people understood that the drama was not really intended as a historical reflection on the Puritan culture that produced the notorious Salem witch trials. That was the pretext. Instead, Miller was targeting the contemporary paranoia that characterized Senator Joe McCarthy’s raging campaign to root out communists and “fellow travelers.”

That dismal form of political extremism at the apogee of the Cold War has earned the moniker, McCarthyism. In its article on the topic, the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library website the American Heritage’s definition of McCarthyism:

1. The political practice of publicizing accusations of disloyalty or subversion with insufficient regard to evidence; and
2. The use of methods of investigation and accusation regarded as unfair, in order to suppress opposition.

Throughout the Trump presidency, The New York Times assumed its position as a pillar of the new Cold War. Over the past seven years this new psychological combat directed against American citizens supposedly colluding with one of the “Two Great Enemies” has replaced the Global War on Terror of the Bush years as the obligatory bugbear of US politics and journalism. The same paper that first encouraged McCarthyism in the 1950s before resisting and critiquing it now appears, 70 years later, to embrace its latest avatar. One glaring example is the piece the Gray Lady last week with the title, “A Global Web of Chinese Propaganda Leads to a U.S. Tech Mogul.”

The article repeatedly claims to be an example of original investigative reporting. That is the first of its series of lies. The same content appeared in an published in January 2022 by New Lines Magazine. Only some of the details are new.

Nor is it an example of investigative reporting. It is unvarnished propaganda. It proceeds by citing multiple isolated factoids and anecdotal details, hoping readers will connect them to construct a sinister narrative. True investigative reporting focuses on the connections rather than the multiplicity of factoids. This article does nothing of the kind.

Early on, the article makes its bold accusation: “Mr. Singham works closely with the Chinese government media machine and is financing its propaganda worldwide.” Nothing it subsequently adduces establishes any of that as fact.

The article does, however, give a taste of Singham’s thinking on geopolitical issues, but without going into any critical depth. Its aim is to brand him as a leftist Marxist extremist. In doing so, the journalists make it appear that having such ideas and at the same time handling money is a crime. We should now realize that modern cold-war democracy believes that the thinking of its own citizens should be severely restricted, especially if certain people in other parts of the world share a similar analysis of historical events.

Singham has committed no criminal acts. The article’s subtitle clearly states the nature of Signham’s crime: “The Times unraveled a financial network that stretches from Chicago to Shanghai and uses American nonprofits to push Chinese talking points worldwide.” The team of correspondents claims that they “tracked hundreds of millions of dollars to groups linked to Mr. Singham that mix progressive advocacy with Chinese government talking points.” It evokes ”a seemingly organic bloom of far-left groups that echo Chinese government talking points, echo one another, and are echoed in turn by the Chinese state media.”

°Ő´Çťĺ˛š˛â’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Talking points:

A term of reprobation used by people who have acquired the habit of talking without thinking and applied to other people whose very real thinking and measured speech fails to align with their own simplistic memorized script.

Contextual note

The latest generation of cold warriors appears to see “talking points” as the modern equivalent of yesterday’s terrorist acts. It’s a new variation on establishment wokism. There are words and terms you cannot repeat without being canceled. Now anything that can be branded “talking points” qualifies for cancellation.

It should be clear, however, that there are good and bad talking points. Lazy NYT journalists in particular have learned the value of not just echoing talking points but adding their own varnish to the ones they gratefully receive from government officials, and more particularly the intelligence community. Those are good talking points. The ones that come from beyond the nation’s borders must be deemed immediately suspect. And anything spoken in Moscow or Beijing is obviously not just a bad talking point but an evil one.

When dealing with talking points, reporters theoretically have two choices. They may seek elegant ways of conveying the authorized talking points they receive from “trusted sources.” This of course means not just that the journalist trusts the source, but that the source trusts the journalists to echo the planted talking points.

Alternatively, conscientious journalists might want to step back and explore the meaning behind those talking points. They might even try to deconstruct them. Many examples of this exist in independent media, but not at The New York Times. The Gray Lady prefers the easier method of faithfully conveying the talking points provided by its generally uncited sources. Reporters then create their articles by lining up as many random assertions as they can find that appear to support those talking points.

Historical note

The term “talking points” came to the fore during the Cold War, when it was enthusiastically adopted by Madison Avenue marketers and Beltway politicians. Lining up talking points from which speakers would not deviate became an essential tool for both the promoters of the consumer society and politicians constructing a new world order based on the idea of a permanent ideological conflict. What better way to banish that annoying intruder, nuance, from our conversations?

What differentiates talking points from, for example, political platforms is that they appear to be plausible assertions that require no substantiation and can be rattled off with the appearance of being true. One of the talking points the authors of the article seek to make is that people who are opposed to war or simply to the current government’s policies are hypocrites. If they can’t prove it, they will invent the required assertion.

One glaring example in the article appears when the authors seek to impugn the antiwar group Code Pink, one of whose founders, Jodie Evans, is Singham’s wife. To make the case for the organization’s hypocrisy, they assert that “Code Pink once criticized China’s rights record but now defends its internment of the predominantly Muslim Uyghurs, which human rights experts have labeled a crime against humanity.” Had they provided a simple to Code Pink’s website, they would have revealed to their public the enormity of their accusation:

“CODEPINK defends the right of the Uyghurs in China to live free and fruitful lives. The Chinese government’s violation of their human rights is of concern to us and we join the call for justice for the Uyghurs. At the same time, we call out the US government, which is using the human rights of the Uyghurs as a tool to drive war with China, instead of a human rights issue that needs to be addressed as such.”

The authors want us to believe that Code Pink’s “call for justice for the Uyghurs” is tantamount to defending the Chinese policy of internment. This is clearly a lie. In reality, this has nothing to do with echoing China’s talking points and everything to do with failing to echo US talking points. Code Pink’s. unforgivable sin in the eyes of our modern McCarthyites consists of casting reasonable doubt on a specific element of US propaganda.

As 17th-century witch prosecutor Cotton Mather might say: these devil worshippers are betraying the common faith in the pristine and absolute truthfulness of our established authorities. Hang them all!

N.B. tells us that 30 of the 200 accused were found guilty and 20 executed.

*[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 51łÔšĎ Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

The post The New York Times Belatedly Endorses Joe McCarthy appeared first on 51łÔšĎ.

In Paris, I saw American tourists striding around in their shorts and sandals, cameras slung around their necks, staking out positions in cathedrals and museums. I listened to my mother’s commentary on what she considered their boorishness and insensitivity. In my 11-year-old mind, I tended to agree. I’d already heard the expression “the ugly American”—although I then knew nothing about the prophetic with that title about US diplomatic bumbling in southeast Asia in the midst of the Cold War—and it seemed to me that those interlopers in France fit the term perfectly.

When I got home, I confided to a friend (whose parents, I learned years later, worked for the CIA) that sometimes, while in Europe, I’d felt ashamed to be an American. “You should never feel that way,” she replied. “This is the best country in the world!”

Indeed, the United States was, then, the leader of what was known as “the free world.” Never mind that, throughout the Cold War, we would actively support dictatorships (in Argentina, Chile, Indonesia, Nicaragua, and El Salvador, among other places) and actually overthrow democratizing governments (in Chile, Guatemala, and Iran, for example). In that era of the G.I. Bill, strong unions, employer-provided healthcare, and general postwar economic dominance, to most of us who were white and within reach of the middle class, the United States probably did look like the best country in the world.

Things do look a bit different today, don’t they? In this century, in many important ways, the United States has become an outlier and, in some cases, even an outlaw. Here are three examples of US behavior that has been egregious in the etymological sense, three ways in which this country has stood out from the crowd in a sadly malevolent fashion.

Guantanamo, the forever prison camp

In January 2002, the administration of President George W. Bush established an offshore prison camp at the US Naval Base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. The idea was to house prisoners taken in what had already been labeled the “Global War on Terror” on a little piece of “US” soil beyond the reach of the American legal system and whatever protections that system might afford anyone inside the country. (If you wonder how the United States had access to a chunk of land on an island nation with which it had the frostiest of relations, including decades of economic sanctions, here’s the story: in 1903, long before Cuba’s 1959 revolution, its government had granted the United States “coaling” rights at Guantanamo, meaning that the US Navy could establish a base there to refuel its ships. The agreement remained in force then, as it does today.)

In the years that followed, Guantanamo became the site of the and even of individuals the US took prisoner in Afghanistan, Iraq and other countries ranging from to . Having written for more than 20 years about such US torture programs that in , I find today that I can’t bring myself to chronicle one more time all the horrors that went on at Guantanamo or at CIA “black sites” in countries ranging from Thailand to Poland, or at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, or indeed at the Abu Ghraib prison and Camp NAMA (whose motto was: “No blood, no foul”) in Iraq. If you don’t remember, just go ahead and google those places. I’ll wait.

Thirty men remain at Guantanamo today. Some have never been tried. Some have never even been charged with a crime. Their continued detention and torture, including, as recently as 2014, punitive, brutal for hunger strikers, confirmed the status of the United States as a global scofflaw. To this day, keeping Guantanamo open displays this country’s contempt for international law, including the Geneva Conventions and the United Nations Convention against Torture. It also displays contempt for our own legal system, including the Constitution’s “” clause which makes any ratified international treaty like the Convention against Torture “the supreme law of the land.”

In February 2023, Fionnuala Ní Aoláin, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, became the first representative of the United Nations ever permitted to visit Guantanamo. She was horrified by what she found there, The Guardian that the US has

a responsibility to redress the harms it inflicted on its Muslim torture victims. Existing medical treatment, both at the prison camp in Cuba and for detainees released to other countries, was inadequate to deal with multiple problems such as traumatic brain injuries, permanent disabilities, sleep disorders, flashbacks and untreated post-traumatic stress disorder.

“These men,” she added, “are all survivors of torture, a unique crime under international law, and in urgent need of care. Torture breaks a person; it is intended to render them helpless and powerless so that they cease to function psychologically, and in my conversations both with current and former detainees, I observed the harms it caused.”

The lawyer for one tortured prisoner, , reports that his client “suffers from traumatic brain injury from having been subjected to ‘walling’ where his head was smashed repeatedly against the wall.” He has entered a deepening cognitive decline, of which the “symptoms include headaches, dizziness, and difficulty thinking and performing simple tasks.” He cannot sleep for more than two hours at a time, “having been sleep-deprived as a torture technique.”

The United States, Ní Aoláin insists, must provide rehabilitative care for the men it has broken. I have my doubts, however, about the curative powers of any treatment administered by Americans, even civilian psychologists. After all, two of them personally the CIA’s torture program.

The United States should indeed foot the bill for treating not only the 30 men who remain in Guantanamo but others who have been released and continue to suffer the long-term effects of torture. And, of course, it goes without saying that the Biden administration should finally that illegal prison camp—although that’s not likely to happen. Apparently, it’s easier to end than decide what to do with 30 prisoners.

Unlawful weapons

The United States is an outlier in another arena as well: the production and deployment of arms widely recognized as presenting an immediate or future danger to non-combatants. The US has steadfastly resisted joining conventions outlawing such weaponry, including cluster bombs (or, more euphemistically, “cluster munitions”) and landmines.

In fact, the United States deployed cluster bombs in its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. (In the previous century, it dropped of them in Laos alone while fighting the Vietnam War.) Ironically—one might even say, hypocritically—the US 146 other countries in condemning Syrian and Russian use of the same weapons in the Syrian civil war. Indeed, former White House press secretary Jen Psaki that, if Russia were using them in Ukraine (as, in fact, ), that would constitute a “war crime.”

The US has now sent cluster bombs to Ukraine, supposedly to fill a crucial gap in the supply of artillery shells. Mind you, it’s not that the United States doesn’t have enough conventional artillery shells to resupply Ukraine. The problem is that sending them there would leave this country unprepared to fight (and hypothetical) major wars as envisioned in what the Pentagon likes to think of as its readiness doctrine.

What are cluster munitions? They are artillery shells packed with many individual bomblets, or “submunitions.” When one is fired, from up to 20 miles away, it spreads as many as 90 separate bomblets over a wide area, making it an excellent way to kill a lot of enemy soldiers with a single shot.

What places these weapons off-limits for most nations is that not all the bomblets explode. Some can stay where they fell for years, even decades, until as a New York Times editorial , “somebody—often, a child spotting a brightly colored, battery-size doodad on the ground—accidentally sets it off.” In other words, they can lie in wait long after a war is over, sowing farmland and forest with deadly booby traps. That’s why then-Secretary General of the United Nations Ban Ki-moon once spoke of “the world’s collective revulsion at these abhorrent weapons.” That’s why 123 countries have signed the 2008 on Cluster Munitions. Among the holdouts, however, are Russia, Ukraine, and the United States.

to National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, the cluster bombs the US has sent to Ukraine each contain 88 bomblets, with, according to the Pentagon, a failure rate of under 2.5%. (Other sources, however, suggest that it could be .) This means that for every cluster shell fired, at least two submunitions are likely to be duds. We have no idea how many of these weapons the US is supplying, but a Pentagon spokesman in a said there are “hundreds of thousands available.” It doesn’t take much mathematical imagination to realize that they present a real future danger to Ukrainian civilians. Nor is it terribly comforting when Sullivan that the Ukrainian government is “motivated” to minimize risk to civilians as the munitions are deployed, because “these are their citizens that they’re protecting.”

I for one am not eager to leave such cost-benefit risk calculations in the hands of any government fighting for its survival. That’s precisely why international laws against indiscriminate weapons exist—to prevent governments from having to make such calculations in the heat of battle.

Cluster bombs are only a subset of the weapons that leave behind “explosive remnants of war.” Landmines are another. Like Russia, the United States is not found among the 164 countries that have signed the , which required signatories to stop producing landmines, destroy their existing stockpiles, and clear their own territories of mines.

Ironically, the US routinely donates money to pay for mine clearance around the world, which is certainly a good thing, given the legacy it left, for example, in Vietnam. to the New York Times in 2018:

“Since the war there ended in 1975, at least 40,000 Vietnamese are believed to have been killed and another 60,000 wounded by American land mines, artillery shells, cluster bombs and other ordinance that failed to detonate back then. They later exploded when handled by scrap-metal scavengers and unsuspecting children.”

Hot enough for ya?

As I write this piece, of my country’s population is living under heat alerts. That’s 110 million people. A heatwave , where 16 Italian cities are under warnings, and Greece has closed the Acropolis to prevent tourists from dying of heat stroke. This summer looks to be worse in Europe than even last year’s record-breaker during which heat killed people. In the US, too, heat is by far the greatest weather-related killer. Makes you wonder why Texas Governor Greg Abbott eliminating required water breaks for outside workers, just as the latest heat wave was due to roll in.

Meanwhile, New York’s Hudson Valley and , including its capital Montpelier, were inundated this past week by a once-in-a-hundred-year storm, while in South Korea, workers raced to rescue people whose cars were trapped inside Cheongju tunnel after a torrential monsoon rainfall. Korea, along with much of Asia, expects such rains during the summer, but this year’s—like so many other weather statistics—have been literally off the charts. Journalists have finally experienced a sea change (not unlike the in surface water temperatures in the Atlantic Ocean). Gone are the tepid suggestions that climate change “may play a part” in causing extreme weather events. Reporters around the world now simply state that that’s our reality.

When it comes to confronting the climate emergency, though, the United States has once again been bringing up the rear. As far back as 1992, at the United Nations Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, President George H. W. Bush resisted setting any caps on carbon-dioxide emissions. As the New York Times then, “Showing a personal interest on the subject, he singlehandedly forced negotiators to excise from the global warming treaty any reference to deadlines for capping emissions of pollutants.” And even then, Washington was resisting the efforts of poorer countries to wring some money from us to help defray the costs of their own environmental efforts.

Some things don’t change all that much. Although President Biden reversed Donald Trump’s move to pull the US out of the Paris climate accords, his own climate record has been a combination of two steps forward (the green energy transition funding in the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act, for example) and a big step back ( the ConocoPhillips Willow oil drilling project on federal land in Alaska’s north slope, not to speak of Senator Joe Manchin’s , the $6.6 billion Mountain Valley Pipeline for natural gas).

And when it comes to remediating the damage our emissions have done to poorer countries around the world, this country is still a day late and billions of dollars short. In fact, on July 13th, climate envoy John Kerry a congressional hearing that “under no circumstances” would the United States pay reparations to developing countries suffering the devastating effects of climate change. Although the US did (at least in principle) support the creation of a fund to help poorer countries ameliorate the effects of climate change at the UN’s COP 27 conference in November 2022, as Reuters , “the deal did not spell out who would pay into the fund or how money would be disbursed.”

Welcome to “solastalgia”

I learned a new word recently, . It actually is a new word, created in 2005 by Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht to describe “the distress that is produced by environmental change impacting on people while they are directly connected to their home environment.” Albrecht’s focus was on Australian rural indigenous communities with centuries of attachment to their particular places, but I think the concept can be extended, at least metaphorically, to the rest of us whose lives are now being affected by the painful presences (and absences) brought on by environmental and climate change: the presence of unprecedented heat, fire, ; the presence of deadly rain and flooding; and the of ice at the Earth’s poles or on its . In my own life, among other things, it’s the loss of and the almost infinite sadness of rarely seeing more than a few faint .

Of course, the “best country in the world” wasn’t the only nation involved in creating the horrors I’ve been describing. And the ordinary people who live in this country are not to blame for them. Still, as beneficiaries of this nation’s bounty—its beauty, its aspirations, its profoundly injured but still breathing democracy—we are, as the philosopher Iris Marion Young , responsible for them. It will take organized, collective political action, but there is still time to bring our outlaw country back into what indeed should be a united community of nations confronting the looming horrors on this planet. Or so I hope and believe.

[ first published this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

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Kanwal Sibal prefers to treat the idea of multipolarity with nuance, suggesting that the term may not be the most accurate way of describing current trends. In its traditional geographical sense, it describes centers of power and influence. Today, the Euro-Atlantic region dominated by the US is clearly a pole, but its power and influence are waning. China is not yet a pole, whereas Russia stands as a troubled pole. India is a “potential pole.” The rest of the world is in a state of flux.

The key to understanding this geopolitical shift is economics. “There cannot be effective multipolarity,” the former foreign secretary tells us, “unless something is done eventually about the hegemony of the dollar.” This hegemonic control allows the US control over the global financial system. Dedollarization, which includes decoupling the petroleum trade from the dollar, has begun and is accelerating. Sibal notes that “the United States has done great damage to itself by using the financial weapon—the dollar weapon—in the manner which they have, because countries are going to draw lessons from this.” Though it will take time, the hegemony of the dollar is under serious threat.

To understand today’s trend we need to rethink the vocabulary we use. Is “multipolar” the right term? Sibal prefers an alternative term for what is now emerging. It is a “polycentric world.” The underlying fact, noted by all lucid observers, is that “power has shifted remarkably—both political and economic and even military power—from the West to the East.”

Sibal disagrees with John Mearsheimer’s argument that multipolarity implies anarchy. Instead, he insists that multipolarity must be cooperative rather than antagonistic. This implies quite simply applying the terms of the UN Charter and respecting the principle of indivisible security. 

The former foreign secretary posits that the world has the opportunity to evolve beyond the geopolitical philosophy of deterrence. That mindset has produced a new nuclear arms race across the globe. The US can and must transform an economy built around the logic of the military-industrial complex. Technology can be designed to make human life better rather than to achieve competitive advantage.

Sibal also examines the role of culture and how cultures influence social and political practices. American culture promotes competition and conceives of international relations as fundamentally adversarial. Since World War II, the US has dominated the world stage. It is now time for an Eastern and specifically Indian tradition that embraces diversity and tolerance to provide a model for rethinking international relations. Perhaps humanity may learn the value of accommodation instead of domination.

The views expressed in this article/video are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

The post FO° Talks: An Indian Foreign Secretary Makes Sense of Multipolarity appeared first on 51łÔšĎ.

As he reiterated his request for post-Soviet Russia to join NATO, President Vladimir Putin, who had been in office little more than a year, pointed out that there was an even earlier precedent. “He revealed that the 1954 response from the West to a request by the Soviet Union to join NATO was that ‘the unrealistic nature of the proposal does not warrant discussion.’”

 â€œA mischievous Putin,” the article continues, “pointed out that he suggested Russian membership of Nato a year ago but was rebuffed by Madeleine Albright, then the US Secretary of State.”

°Ő´Çťĺ˛š˛â’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Unrealistic:

Not in conformity with Washington’s post-World War II policy of global hegemony, which became the orthodoxy of the Truman and Eisenhower administration.

Contextual note

The idea that something does not “warrant discussion” is in itself interesting. Diplomacy has always been about discussion. Discussion means dialogue or exchange. It ultimately implies seeking acceptable compromises once all the facts and intentions are on the table.

In the real world of diplomacy literally everything “warrants discussion.” One of the secrets of successful diplomacy is that until a public statement can be made, intentions remain secret. Diplomats are free to speak the unprintable. Even positions that fly in the face of stated principles may be discussed before they are rejected. That is how diplomacy worked during its golden age in Europe in the 19^th century. It had the singular merit of producing a century of evident tension, serious disputes and even acts of aggression. But it resolved most of them, not through war, but  thanks to shifting alliances.

The new style of diplomacy the US practices today was inaugurated in the aftermath of World War II. In the interest of assuming exclusive control of the vast post-colonial world left in the wake of crumbling European empires, it dispensed with nuance. It had to find an efficient way of governing the diversity of its pieces. Principles trumped interests.

The Western leaders forged what was called the Washington Consensus, initially a theory of development for the remnants of the European empires. It established a set of rules by which a new world order could achieve some semblance of economic order. Some of the rules were explicit and contained in documents such as the UN Charter and the foundational documents of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Others were not so much rules as ideological beliefs about how prosperity can be produced and maintained according to liberal economic ideology.

Though the Washington Consensus encountered considerable success, it ultimately proved costly to maintain. At one point it imperiled the dollar itself. In essence, it stood as an innovative variation on old ideas of empire. It created, formalized and enforced a relationship of what it deemed productive dependence. As a global phenomenon, it inevitably ran into the classic problems of empires whose tensions at some point become unmanageable.

Given the complexity of the whole, only a simplistic ideology could create the necessary impression of continuity and coherence. But any ideology imposed on a complex, diverse environment inevitably produces incoherence. The Guardian’s account of what happened in 1954 demonstrates the contradiction. By requesting membership in NATO, the Soviet Union appeared ready to adhere to a philosophy that allowed both for ideological diversity and a framework for mutual security. Capitalists and communists might, after all, agree on the principles of coexistence without having to align their ideologies.

But the newly constituted US hegemon realized that something else was at stake. The wartime economy that he propelled the US to leadership in the global economy had become the model for a new era of economic expansion. A wartime mentality was clearly required to make it work. Guaranteed security and stability suddenly appeared as obstacles to prosperity. The US economy needed an enemy. As a matter of principle, once the Cold War had begun, it could not – just as it cannot today – accept that designated adversaries play a role in defining the conditions for living in peace. Peace has no value. The health of the US economy depends on maintaining a war mentality.

Historical note

When reminded of those two historical facts – that Nikita Khruschev in 1954 and Vladimir Putin in 2000 deemed logical and desirable their nation’s inclusion in a broad defensive alliance – we should have the humility to rethink our understanding of history.

On the basis of this information, one possible revisionist reading of history could be summed up in these observations:

1. The Cold War was perceived not as a problem the US was faced with, but an opportunity to exploit. It became a sacred mission as the pretext for structuring the US economy around the military-industrial complex (MIC). The economy required a powerful nemesis. Washington cast its ally in World War II, the Soviet Union, in that role. When the murderous dictator Stalin died, it was unthinkable that his replacement by the amicable Khruschev could become a  pretext to establish peace and harmony between the USSR and the US.
2. The Eisenhower administration — which included John Foster Dulles as Secretary of State and his brother, Allen Dulles as Director of the CIA — invested heavily in the effort to establish the MIC at the core of the US economy. This required a permanent adversarial attitude not just towards the USSR. It could even extend to nations that insisted on being non-aligned. George W Bush formulated it with the greatest clarity: “if you are not with us you are with the terrorists.”
3. President Eisenhower himself dissented from the majority view inside his administration. He dared to manifest it three days before leaving office, when he crafted a televised speech denouncing, in its first draft, the “military-industrial-Congressional complex.” In the formal speech, he reduced it to the first three terms. Ike was the last president ever to use this expression in public, even as in the succeeding decades the MIC kept growing.
4. Ike’s successor, John F Kennedy, appeared keen on following Eisenhower’s parting prompt. Months after taking office, following the Bay of Pigs fiasco, he dismissed Allen Dulles. This may have been a contributing factor to his assassination in 1963. Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon Johnson, not only shared none of Kennedy’s taste for reducing the influence of the MIC. By escalating the engagement in Vietnam and turning it into a hot war, Johnson created the ideal conditions for the MIC’s rapid development.
5. The definitive collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 should logically have led to the dismantling of NATO. Russia was clearly no longer an enemy. But Washington understood that NATO was its key to controlling Europe. NATO not only survived but expanded, though the lack of a designated enemy produced a certain degree of discomfort.
6. In the new millennium, if Russia couldn’t stop NATO’s expansion, Putin preferred to be part of it. But Bill Clinton and Madeleine Albright knew that, like certain character actors in Hollywood, ¸éłÜ˛ő˛őžą˛šâ€™s role could only be that of a villain, even if it no longer had the ideological earmarks of a villain. Rocky vs Drago was a proven recipe for good box office.
7. The events of 9/11 inaugurated the Global War on Terror, which finally provided an identifiable enemy other than Russia. But this marginal group of extremists with a fanatical religious identity lacked political and especially national identity. Washington tried, but Al Qaeda wasn’t credible in the role.
8. China’s rise provided some hope for a new villain, especially as it remained officially communist. But instead of exercising military bravado, it exercised its influence through economic cooperation. Washington, and especially the Democrats, returned to the established value of Russia as the reliable enemy.

Whether it’s the Soviet Union joining NATO in 1954 or the European security framework Putin proposed in December 2021, before invading Ukraine, Washington deems that such proposals suffer from their “unrealistic nature.” The US has always preferred the hyperreal nature of a Drago challenging Rocky or Ronald Reagan’s “evil empire” in a real-life remake of Star Wars. These are things Americans can identify with as they munch on their popcorn.

*[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 51łÔšĎ Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

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The rhetoric being exchanged between the two countries is becoming ever more heated. These exchanges are inimical to the exploration of compromise.

Mistrust and hostility build on both sides

On the US side, active preparation for rivalry with China is one of the very few things that seems to unite Republicans and Democrats.

President Biden has continued with the tariffs on Chinese steel and aluminum, imposed by President Trump on supposed security grounds. President Biden has also continued the Trump policy of making it easier for US officials to meet Taiwanese officials, something that infuriates Beijing. Former Speaker Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan led to a suspension of important working meetings, all for the sake of a photo opportunity.

The reason given for the steel and aluminum tariffs is that these materials might be used in warfare. Allies of the US are being pressured to apply the same policies to China, thereby dividing the world into two hostile blocs.

For its part, China’s navy is using hostile tactics towards US vessels in the international waters of the South China Sea. An important principle is at stake here. The entire world benefits from freedom of navigation in international waters. Without the freedom of the seas being guaranteed, first by the Royal Navy and later by the US Navy, the prosperity the world enjoyed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries would have been impossible.

China is also launching thousands of cyber attacks every day on Taiwan.

A conflict between the powers would not be pretty

Charles Kupchan, an American expert on international relations, who I came to like and admire during my time in Washington, has issued a stern warning about complacency about the development of a “cold war” with China in the latest edition of The Atlantic.

The balance of power for the US in a cold war with China will be very different than the one it had with the USSR. China has four times the US population, whereas the US and USSR had similar populations. China’s gross domestic product will soon exceed that of the US. The USSRs GDP was only a fraction of that US. China already has a slightly larger Navy than does the US, and Chinese spending on research and development has increased dramatically in the past 10 years.

China is, however, an aging society, whereas the US is not. China’s birth rate is so low that some speculate that the US population could exceed that of China by the year 2100!

With that context, I was surprised to read that, at present, a quarter of young Chinese are currently unable to find a suitable job. Chinese local governments have run up big debts building apartments that are lying empty.

Centralized thinking in the Chinese Communist Party has the potential to undermine China’s military efforts by introducing rigidity of thinking. Unlike the US, China’s military has little combat experience. Chinese military spending is 12 times that of Taiwan, but it is still much less than that of the US.

China and the West need to work together, not waste energy fighting

The rivalry between China and the US is diverting resources away from cooperative possibilities in areas, like climate change and food insecurity, in which both countries have a shared interest.

The dispute places the EU, as an ally of the US, in difficulty. It shares all the US reservations about Chinese policies on a range of issues. It has said that the Chinese stance on the invasion of Ukraine will be “the determining factor.” That is a clear prioritization, which China should not ignore.

One of the big problems flowing from the present rivalry is a simple breakdown in communications. Canceled meetings have allowed misunderstandings to increase.

The same event is interpreted differently in Washington to the way it is interpreted in Beijing. Each side sincerely believes its interpretation. Minor issues for one can be seen as hostile signals by the other side when they were not so intended.

I believe the US and China should consider instituting some sort of “political truce” for a predetermined period.

This should be designed to allow a concentration of the formidable diplomatic weight of the two countries on an issue in which they have a shared interest, namely mitigating climate change. Such a signal by the two big powers would prompt the rest of the world to do more.

A “circuit breaker” of this kind is needed to prevent the current disagreement from spiraling out of control.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

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The one book in the past century that dared to celebrate propaganda was authored by the influential personality who came to be known and as the “father of public relations.” Edward Bernays was the nephew of Sigmund Freud, the inventor of psychoanalysis. Unlike his nephew, the Viennese doctor took no interest in commercial ventures other than self-promotion and marketing his own disturbing theories of the human psyche. Nor was Freud interested in the wrangle of politics, expressing himself only at the most abstract level of regretting that such wrangling often led to war. This insight appeared in his dialogue with Albert Einstein: Warum Krieg? (Why War?)

In a book that bears the title Propaganda, Bernays explicitly that the “conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society.” Most public theoreticians of government reject this point of view as cynical. Politicians, on the other hand, and despite their public denial, appear to have assimilated Bernays’s wisdom.

Prominent pundit Ian Bremmer appears to have learned the same lesson. Whether consciously or unconsciously, he demonstrates a certain mastery of the art Bernays so patiently defined. Bremmer clearly evinces the talent and discipline that allow him to apply the subtle set of rules underpinning modern democracy that Bernays so helpfully describes.

That may explain why Elon Musk recently Bremmer the man nobody “should trust,” though many commentators have said something similar about Musk himself. Musk’s disappointment stems from the fact that Bremmer falsely reported what he claimed to be a confidence of Musk’s about a private conversation between Tesla’s TechnoKing and Russian President Vladimir. Musk is adamant that the conversation never took place. Musk may be telling the truth. Bremmer has been known to “quote” other people by reporting his own interpretation of their words.

Commenting on the Bremmer-Musk tiff, The Spectator appended this to an article on these two public figures: “Both men have a history of, shall we say, embellishment.” Bremmer is famously a risk analyst and Musk, a risk taker. They were bound to meet as adversaries at some point, especially as Bremmer has his own aptitude for taking risks with the truth. The topic they were disputing is one on which Bremmer has no scruples about distorting the truth: the war in Ukraine.

Bremmer’s unprovoked desire to call an invasion unprovoked

The latest example of his truth-bending talents comes at an odd point in history, more than 15 months after the Russian invasion, a period during which propaganda has been both promoted and rather convincingly contested. This leaves the impression that Bremmer’s sense of timing is seriously off, something good propagandists are always careful to avoid. He’s literally so late to the party that all but the ones too sloshed to move have made their way home.

On May 31, 2023, in his publication GZERO, Bremmer posted an with the title: “No, the US didn’t ‘provoke’ the war in Ukraine.” Though he briefly cites some authentic voices who much less briefly have explained the multiple ways in which the US provoked the invasion and even attempted to predict the date, Bremmer leaves their careful reasoning aside and develops an argument with one commentator to make his case, Jeffrey Sachs. In so doing he turns Sachs into a straw man. He simply contests Sachs’s conclusion but never engages with the meat of his argument.

For the past 16 months, any number of serious commentators cognizant of the facts of history over at least the past three decades have not taken the trouble to describe the different stages of what appears to be consistent provocation. Many of them have also taken the trouble to analyze the admirable efficacy of the US propaganda machine that, from day one, launched the “unprovoked invasion” epithet to counter Vladimir Putin’s chosen label for the invasion: “a special military operation.”

”The legacy media has dutifully aligned with Washington and NATO. Their commentators have eagerly parroted the phrase “unprovoked invasion” as if it was a tangible fact. Most of those journalists and media celebrities have avoided arguing the details of the case, probably because it only works so long as you maintain a resolute indifference to the facts of history.

Bremmer calls “morally challenged” the claim that the US provoked the invasion by, as some, “poking the bear.” He then nevertheless takes the trouble to acknowledge that “political scientist John Mearsheimer, billionaire Elon Musk, conservative media star Tucker Carlson, and even Pope Francis have made similar assertions.” He could have cited numerous others, such as George Kennan and Henry Kissinger, but as a good propagandist he seems to have selected names that people might doubt. Mearsheimer is an “offensive realist” by his own admission, which for Bremmer probably means that he eschews morality as a factor in international relations. Musk is the hyperreal figure I have often written about: in other words, never to be taken seriously. Carlson is the hated anti-establishment former Fox News host whom the entire establishment has labeled a media fascist. And Pope Francis, an inveterate otherworldly pacifist—if not communist, according to Fox News and others on the right—an anomaly of a pope whom good Catholics need not listen to.

Having dismissed his four chosen irrelevant voices, Bremmer pulls no more punches, declaring himself a brazen proponent of establishment propaganda by attributing to all four of them a “strain of Putin apologia.” In reality—the one thing that never needs to be considered when formulating propaganda—not one of the four has ever demonstrated an inclination to follow Putin or apologize for his decisions. They simply have in common with Putting an awareness of some well-documented historical facts. Correlation does not imply causation… except in the rhetoric of propagandists, where the two are interchangeable.

As the self-proclaimed hero of those lucid thinkers who are not “morally challenged,” Bremmer explains why, as a moral truth-teller, he must act. He is single-handedly responding to an intellectual pandemic. He alerts us to the fact that the heretical idea that the US may have provoked Russia has now spread to “China, pockets of the US far left and far right, and much of the developing world.” Like Kevin McCarthy’s character in The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), he must inform the world of his discovery. He promises to “debunk it once and for all.”

Creative debunking

Now that the principal miscreants have been identified and the scope of the infestation assessed, Bremmer enters into some detail. He begins by calling the statement that the US had promised not to expand NATO eastward in 1990 a myth. To prove his point, Bremmer links to an article that claims Soviet President Mikael Gorbachev denied such a promise had ever been made. That article in turn provides a link to an interview in which Gorbachev strongly reaffirmed that US Secretary of State James Baker had made the statement, “NATO will not move one inch further east.” Since a myth is something that is not literally true, this would seem to be problematic.

To avoid being confronted with the problem, Bremmer doesn’t mention Gorbachev’s acknowledgment of Baker’s statement. Instead, he takes as more significant Gorbachev’s somewhat roundabout explanation that it wasn’t a formal promise. This kind of reasoning might remind some readers of Bill Clinton’s incisive concerning whether he had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky: “It depends on what the meaning of ‘is’ is.” In diplomacy, it isn’t always clear what constitutes a promise. But an actual statement that is not a promise cannot be called a myth.

Next, Bremmer argues that “NATO has no unilateral ability to ‘expand.’” This too is Clintonesque. Bremmer is legally correct, but NATO’s complex policy-making operations make it inevitable that obscure, hard-to-follow political forces make NATO’s historical decisions. Those policies then tend to be applied in generally devious ways. NATO has never been committed to transparency, as the entire Ukrainian psychodrama itself demonstrates.

Like most propagandists, Bremmer relies on the idea that people want to believe that “our side” will never be devious and the other side always will. Our side has pure intentions that respect laws and rules we scrupulously respect. Can anyone who hobnobs with power the way Bremmer does maintain such a pretense without appearing to be either devious themselves or exceptionally naïve? The sad fact, attested to by Edward Bernays, is that propagandists make these kinds of assertions as a matter of professional discipline, not as a moral choice.

Sticking to his uniformly context-free legalism, Bremmer then asserts that it “was the Ukrainian people—not officials in Washington and Brussels—that voted in 2019 to enshrine NATO and European Union membership as national goals.” At this point, he skips over the well-documented fact that officials in Washington were fully implicated in a coup in 2014 that made that vote in 2019 possible. With its financial and military means and soft power, the US has long practiced the art of redefining other people’s “national goals,” which it has deployed on countless occasions over the past 75 years, beginning with the Italian election in 1948.

Bremmer then asserts that from “1997 until ¸éłÜ˛ő˛őžą˛šâ€™s first invasion of Ukraine in 2014, NATO deployed no nuclear weapons and almost no combat forces on the territory of its new members.” Why does he exclude before the time 1997 and after 2014? He deliberately fails to mention the delicate question of Ukraine’s own history of possessing nuclear weapons during the Soviet years and the existential fear Russians feel about the prospect of Ukraine eventually being equipped, openly or covertly, by NATO weapons were it to become a member.

Bremmer is on more solid ground when he claims that “NATO membership was never a realistic prospect for Ukraine.” Plenty of formal obstacles exist that would prevent it from ever happening. But “never” applied to the past is never the same as “never” applied to the future. We find ourselves once again in Clintonesque territory.

Bremmer then does what all propagandists do. He uses his purported psychic skills to read the mind of the adversary, in this case the diabolical, imperialistic Putin, who “invaded because he doesn’t think Ukraine is a legitimate country with a right to exist separate from Russia. We know this because Putin himself has repeatedly told us that the war’s aim is to reverse Ukrainian independence and recreate the Russian empire.”

These are gratuitous inferences, not facts. There are no statements on the record to support Bremmer’s contention. To hide this fact, he links to an account of Putin’s informal and purely anecdotal historical musings in a Q&A session with young Russian entrepreneurs on one of the acts of Peter the Great. The Westernizing 18th-century Tsar is a transformative figure in Russian history. But Putin has never compared himself to Pyotr, despite provocative in papers like The Washington Post telling us that “Putin likens himself to Peter the Great, links imperial expansion to Ukraine war.” This is literally disinformation.

Bremmer goes on to quibble about the role of the US State Department in the 2014 Euromaidan coup, on the grounds that the US didn’t start the protests. US non-involvement in the initial demonstration may or may not be true. But that is irrelevant. Documentation abounds—including a famous intercepted phone call between Victoria Nuland and Geoffrey Pyatt—on how the US managed the protests to its own ends. As the specialist of international affairs, George Friedman pointed out back in 2015, it is no secret that the US had already begun treating Ukraine as a de facto member of NATO, marked by the inauguration in 2015 of a long-term program of 10,000 Ukrainian soldiers every year.

Now that it has been established that Putin is committed to doing evil, Bremmer demonstrates a rhetorical skill that only the most enlightened propagandists master: false humility. He goes on to admit that the US made some serious “mistakes” after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Instead of helping Russia to integrate the global economy—so efficiently organized around the power of the dollar and the global omnipresence of the US military— the Bush and then Clinton administrations were guilty of “passing on the chance to turn Russia into another post-war Germany or Japan.” Bremmer calls this a “huge missed opportunity.”

This remark tells us a lot about Bremmer’s worldview. He sees the US as a power destined to exercise the vocation of turning other powerful countries—such as Japan, Germany, and Russia—into its own vassal states. The failure to exploit that opportunity back in 1991 is a cardinal sin that ultimately produced the embarrassing situation of war in Ukraine, whose ultimate purpose, as Biden himself affirmed shortly after the invasion, is regime change in Russia.

Curiously, Bremmer even admits what earlier in the article he denied when he writes that “the West should have foreseen that this would feed ¸éłÜ˛ő˛őžą˛šâ€™s already acute sense of insecurity and humiliation.” This is precisely the point that Mearsheimer has made repeatedly, even back in 2015, maintaining that perceiving this sense of insecurity is crucial for understanding Putin’s options. The West may see its own actions as non-threatening, but the Russians think otherwise. The perception of an existential threat cannot be dismissed as an illusion. Politics is not just a game of perception. In its most cynical but utterly banal manifestation, it is the art of managing illusions to influence other people’s reality.

The logic of history differs from the logic of politics

The real problem in Bremmer’s thesis is the question of what constitutes provocation. Serious historians agree that, whereas numerous examples exist of wars whose opening gambits were unjustified and easily condemnable as irresponsible, almost all wars have at their origin a response to some kind of provocation that preceded their outbreak.

We still like to think that Pearl Harbor was the archetypal case of an unprovoked attack. Our school history texts don’t like to mention it, but most modern historians interested in going beyond mere jingoism know that Japan’s — not just on Pearl Harbor, but simultaneously on the Philippines, Wake Island, and Guam as well as British Malaya, Singapore, Hong Kong—was a response to both a short and a long-term history of Western and US .

The real question is how, once the fever of propaganda fades, how will humanity in the future think of the war in Ukraine. One of the myriad experts with a contrary view that Bremmer fails to mention, American economic strategist and author David Goldman, frames it in these terms: “Future historians well may conclude that the Biden administration, with support from London, provoked the Ukraine war with the expectation that sanctions and various other Western military systems would easily crush Russia and get Putin overthrown, and get rid of this thorn in the side of the global democratic rules-based order, which the Utopians in Washington have wanted to get rid of for a long time.”

The Bernays legacy

What does it take to be an effective propagandist? Goldman has hit the nail on the head. One must first be a Utopian. This was clearly the case for both sides during the original Cold War. It was a fantasized intellectual and moral contest between two imaginary Utopias. Belief in Utopia made it real and ensured the appropriate level of commitment on both sides.

In the US, not only the government but most of the intellectual class believed what they considered to be the capitalism of Adam Smith, tempered by the reforms of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal, represented a civilizational ideal, a kind of Utopia. The prosperity of the US appeared, to Americans and foreigners alike, to be a template that every nation could aspire to adopt and implement locally. An economy driven by competition, although it bred inequality, guaranteed prosperity. With the right dose of humanism, that prosperity would be broadly shared across the various social classes.

In contrast, the Soviet Marxist model promised a different kind of Utopia, one in which first equality would first be established and prosperity would naturally emerge as a kind of logical consequence, thanks to the solidarity of the classless society.

We quickly learned that American Utopia could not be automatically transposed to Russia. In the following decades, ´Ąłžąđ°ůžąłŚ˛šâ€™s own Utopia lost much of its shine, compromised by the mad foreign policy of President George W Bush followed by a financial meltdown that exposed the hyperreality of what had become literally a derivative economy. 

The memory of the Cold War, a period of growth and middle-class prosperity, infected people’s minds. The idea of making American Utopia Great Again emerged as the triumphant theme of the 2016 presidential election in the US. Upset by Trump’s exploitation of nostalgia, the Democrats became convinced that the culture of the Cold War, a contest between East and West, was the key to prosperity. And what fuelled that extraordinary period of unmitigated prosperity? Propaganda.

After the confused disillusion that followed the Vietnam war, the US had lost some of its taste for propaganda. The fall of the Soviet Union meant that the binary system that regulated the force of propaganda was no longer intact.

Now, after the financial crisis of 2008, the fiasco of the Trump years, COVID, and a withering of US prestige around the globe, the association of prosperity and a cold war has been revived. Propaganda is once again in vogue. And Ian Bremmer is one of its glorious champions. Edward Bernays’ legacy lives on.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

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One of the most glaring stains on Kissinger’s record is his involvement in the Vietnam War. Serving first as the national security advisor and then as the secretary of state under Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, Kissinger played a pivotal role in prolonging an unwinnable conflict. His adherence to a policy of gradual escalation, coupled with secret bombings in Cambodia and Laos, only exacerbated the suffering and destruction in Southeast Asia. The infamous , “The illegal we do immediately; the unconstitutional takes a little longer,” perfectly captures his  callousness and ends-justify-the-means approach to diplomacy. 

Kissinger’s pursuit of realpolitik, while espousing lofty ideals of stability and balance of power, often came at the expense of human rights and democratic values. Nowhere is this more evident than in his support for authoritarian regimes. For example, his embrace of Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet is a dark stain on American foreign policy. Kissinger’s complicity in the overthrow of the democratically elected Salvador Allende and subsequent support for Pinochet’s brutal regime exemplify a disregard for the principles the United States claims to champion.

Havoc in the Middle East and trouble with China

Another critical failure of Kissinger’s foreign policy was his approach to the Middle East, particularly during the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. While he brokered the historic Camp David Accords between Egypt and Israel, his focus on short-term gains and strategic interests contributed to the perpetuation of the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories. Kissinger left a lasting legacy of conflict and mistrust in the region by placing geopolitical considerations above the principles of justice and self-determination.

Moreover, Kissinger’s infamous doctrine of “triangular diplomacy” with China and the Soviet Union, although hailed as a masterstroke of realpolitik, had its own detrimental consequences. 

At the time, the United States faced challenges on two major fronts: a Cold War confrontation with the Soviet Union and a hot war with Vietnam, which strained its military and economic resources. Kissinger recognized an opportunity to shift the balance of power by engaging with both the Soviets and the Chinese. By playing them off against each other, he sought to create a more favorable environment for the United States.

Kissinger sought to stabilize relations between the US and China. Engaging with China was a pragmatic move to exploit the Sino-Soviet split. By then, both these communist countries had fallen out with each other. By establishing diplomatic ties with China and prioritizing relations with Beijing, the US effectively isolated the Soviet Union and weakened its influence in the international arena. However, this led to unintended consequences.

Firstly, Kissinger’s pursuit of dĂŠtente with China created a sense of uncertainty and threat perception in the Soviet Union. The growing closeness between the US and China forced the Soviet Union to divert significant resources towards its military buildup, thereby intensifying the arms race and heightening Cold War tensions.

Secondly, Kissinger’s engagement with China also provided the Soviet Union an opportunity to strengthen its own alliances and partnerships. In response to the US outreach to China, the Soviet Union deepened its ties with other socialist states and expanded its influence in regions such as Eastern Europe, Africa and the Middle East. 

Furthermore, Kissinger’s China policy also had economic implications. By opening up trade and investment opportunities with China, the US inadvertently contributed to China’s economic rise. This economic growth eventually transformed China into a major global power, challenging US dominance and creating new geopolitical complexities in the 21st century. 

Kissinger himself recently The Economist that the world is “in a classic pre-World War I situation.” The looming specter of artificial intelligence, and the development of weapons that seem inspired by science fiction make the situation more precarious still. “We are on a path to great-power confrontation,” Kissinger argues because “both sides have convinced themselves that the other represents a strategic danger”. The Economist, however, chose not to ask him if the current impasse could be a result of his own policies.  

Kissinger’s controversial legacy cannot be solely attributed to his policy decisions. His style of diplomacy, shrouded in secrecy and backdoor negotiations, fostered an atmosphere of distrust and suspicion. By conducting diplomacy as a closed-door game of chess, he sidelined democratic institutions and undermined transparency. The infamous of his staff members and leaks to the press further eroded trust and tarnished the integrity of the American government. 

As we reflect on Henry Kissinger’s 100th birth anniversary, it is crucial to recognize the enduring impact of his with Indira Gandhi, which stands as a pivotal moment in history. The complex dynamics that unfolded during their interactions not only impacted the bilateral relations between the United States and India but also had far-reaching repercussions for the volatile region as a whole.  

Misunderstanding India and promoting Pakistan

During the early 1970s, India found itself facing a precarious situation. It was grappling with political unrest and had a strained relationship with neighboring Pakistan. Against this backdrop, Kissinger’s visit to India in 1971 aimed to address these pressing issues. 

At the heart of the Indo-US discord lay the India-Pakistan War of 1971, ultimately leading to Bangladesh’s creation. Kissinger’s diplomatic efforts were driven by a desire to maintain a balance of power and avert a larger conflict in the region. He favored his Cold War ally Pakistan. Gandhi opposed Kissinger. She wanted justice for the genocide, rape and terrible atrocities committed by Pakistani occupying forces in Bangladesh.

The encounter between Kissinger and Gandhi revealed a stark disparity in their approaches to international relations. While Kissinger favored realpolitik based on strategic interests, Gandhi championed self-determination and human rights. Their clash resulted in strained relations between the world’s two biggest democracies that lasted for decades.

After this war, India moved closer to the Soviet Union. The Cold War came to the Indian subcontinent. Pakistan became even more of a US lackey while India came to rely primarily on the Soviet Union for its defense equipment. Only in the 1990s after the fall of the Soviet Union did India-US relations normalize.

In Pakistan, Kissinger’s support during the 1971 war emboldened the military regime and perpetuated a culture of military dominance in the country’s politics. This had long-term implications for democracy and stability in Pakistan Subsequent military regimes suppressed dissent and undermined civilian governance, knowing fully well that the US would stand by them.

The encounter between Kissinger and Gandhi also exacerbated South Asian tensions. With the security of US backing, Pakistan sought revenge for defeat in 1971. It abetted and funded insurgency in India, first in Punjab and then in Kashmir. Dispute over the latter became far more toxic and Kashmir remains a flashpoint even today.

While Kissinger may be remembered as a master tactician by some, his legacy is one of disastrous consequences. This centurion is responsible for devastation in Vietnam, perpetuation of authoritarian regimes and unending chaos in South Asia. As we reflect on his life’s work, let us not forget Kissinger’s moral compromises that caused immense human costs and still haunt the world today. He was a narcissist who operated alone, disregarding the constraints of institutions of values.

His worldview and approach to international relations can be summed up in one single quote from an with the journalist Oriana Fallaci in November 1972: “Americans like the cowboy … who rides all alone into the town, the village, with his horse and nothing else … This amazing, romantic character suits me precisely because to be alone has always been part of my style or, if you like, my technique.” 

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Even at 100, Henry Kissinger’s Legacy Is Frightening appeared first on 51łÔšĎ.

The US has long had a predilection for classifying every nation in the world as either an ally or an enemy. Two decades ago, when George W Bush publicly lamented the threat of an imagined “axis of evil,” he summarized the moral issue for the world’s heads of state in these terms: “Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists.”

The binary division of humanity that followed World War II, known as the Cold War, was somewhat artificially crafted in Washington to define ´Ąłžąđ°ůžąłŚ˛šâ€™s ambitious post-war mission in a new world order. The US sensed an opportunity to impose its leadership over a chaotic configuration of decomposing colonial empires. When, in 1947, India, the crown jewel of the British empire, achieved its formal independence, setting the tone for other nations in Asia and Africa, the US began mulling over the means by which it could step into the former empire’s shoes without appearing to be a neo-colonialist power.

The old system of nation state rivalries exploiting disparate empires began its unintended campaign of self-destruction in 1914 with the outbreak of World War I. It took a second world war to clear the chessboard and turn the kaleidoscope of European colonialism into a game of black vs white. In 1954, President Dwight Eisenhower described a “world, once divided by oceans and mountain ranges” as “now split by hostile concepts of man’s character and nature.”

President “Ike” imagined a world in which god-fearing capitalism was engaged in a struggle against atheistic communism. The land of free enterprise confronted the drab, collectivist nightmare. Every nation had to choose its allegiance, just as local barons once did in feudal Europe, when vassals were beholden to their local “.”

In the Cold War, this medieval notion still retained its metaphorical power. It no longer defined a position of subservience to regional monarchs, but to nation states. In contrast with Europe’s 19th century innovation of a “concert of nations,” the new geopolitics put allegiance at the core of its operating procedures. The idea came from the US. In the aftermath of a traumatic Civil War (1861-65), the US had imposed on all Americans a “pledge of allegiance” to a “one nation indivisible.” In 1954 Eisenhower added the phrase, “under God” to the text of the pledge to highlight the contrast with Marxist infidels.

At one point in his article Tellis makes an important assertion about India’s culture and political intentions. “It does not harbor any innate allegiance toward preserving the liberal international order and retains an enduring aversion toward participating in mutual defense.”

°Ő´Çťĺ˛š˛â’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Innate allegiance:

1. In its original signification, the natural organic connection between people and the land, family or institutional environment of their origins.
2. In the post-Cold War, the expected adhesion of “free” nations to the dominant neo-liberal ideology.

Contextual note

The lack of innate allegiance doesn’t necessarily prevent collaboration. Tellis notes that, despite India’s ingrained preference for non-alignment, “the United States and India work together in ways that would have been unimaginable during the Cold War. For example, they cooperate to monitor China’s economic and military activities throughout the wider Indian Ocean region and have recently invested in mechanisms to share near-real-time information about shipping movements.”

Aware of an already traditional distrust, if not enmity reigning between New Delhi and Beijing, Beltway pundits have long supposed that any enemy of China must be a friend of the US. Moreover, India has accepted to use English – the language of modern civilization – at least as its internal lingua franca. That makes the choice of allegiance even easier.

It may therefore seem paradoxical that,  despite a very real fascination with all things American, India has not allowed the US, even symbolically, to step into the role Britain once played as its colonial liege lord. Tellis notes that “there remains an unbridgeable gap between the two countries, given India’s consistent desire to avoid becoming the junior partner—or even a confederate—of any great power.”

Throughout the Cold War and during the “unipolar moment” that followed the fall of the Soviet Union, the US settled into its place at the concentric center of a “rules-based order.” Americans were the “good guys,” defining what a good-guys lifestyle would look like. US President Joe Biden, following Eisenhower’s lead, felt it necessary to insist that the world is ruled by a binary opposition, with democracies on one side and autocracies on the other. Casting India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the role of an Oriental despot despite recognizing India as the world’s biggest democracy, the media in the US struggled to decide whether India should be placed in the democratic or autocratic camp.

Historical note

Eisenhower was clear about the distinction between the two ideological rivals: the US and the Soviet Union.

“Two world camps, whose geographic boundaries in important areas are mutually shared, lie farther apart in motivation and conduct than the poles in space. One is dedicated to the freedom of the individual and to the right of all to live in peace—the other to the atheistic philosophy of materialism, and the effort to establish its sway over all the earth. Watching the two opposing camps are hundreds of millions still undecided in active loyalty.”

Even someone with a rigidly binary vision can understand, as Ike did, that some nations fall into the category of “undecided. ” Americans tend to think of that as a weak-kneed attitude of “sitting on the fence.”

In the initial phase of the Cold War, India’s Jawaharlal Nehru was one of the leaders of the non-alignment movement, alongside other leaders, such as Sukarno in Indonesia, Nasser in Egypt and Nkrumah in Ghana. For Americans obsessed by the “domino theory,” non-alignment implied the risk of falling into the grip of atheistic communism. US foreign policy strove to prevent that from happening, even when the motivating factor was national sovereignty after centuries of European colonization rather than ideological commitment.

Vietnam perfectly illustrated that confusion. When Washington refused to listen to Ho Chi Minh’s gentle plea for support in his quest to shake off France’s colonial yoke, the Soviets obliged. According to the reigning binary logic, accepting Soviet aid identified the nation’s national liberation front, the Viet Cong as ideologically communist. It became a threat to be eliminated at all costs. When the French failed after the battle of Ðiện Biên Phủ in 1954, the US stepped in and eventually assumed “the white man’s burden.”

Back in 1954, Eisenhower appeared to accept the existence of “hundreds of millions still undecided in active loyalty.” When, decades later, Biden divided the world into democracies and autocracies, he acknowledged no middle ground. Non-alignment in the 1950s stood up proudly as a legitimate geopolitical stance. Ever since George W Bush, that middle ground has been banished from the binary template imposed on US geopolitical thinking.

This should leave us wondering whether Cold War I wasn’t a bit more flexible and therefore less dangerous than Cold War II. We can nevertheless see one positive trend. Even in the US, obviously hopeful that the existing world order organized around its hegemonic presence persists, mindsets are changing. The idea that we are now moving away from a unipolar world order dominated by the US towards a multipolar world with no unique center of gravity now seems to be taking root, even within the State Department. Many fear it will be unstable and wish to maintain the old system, but as Bob Dylan once said, “the times they are a-changin’.”

Some believe it will be a bipolar world, the US vs China. Others believe it will evolve into something far more varied. No one owns a crystal ball but most serious observers sense that the era of automatic “innate allegiances” based on simplistic ideological contrasts is waning.

*[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 51łÔšĎ Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

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Since Kennedy wrote those words, we have seen the end of the Cold War, the peaceful emergence of China as a leading world power, and the rise of a formidable Global South. But the United States has indeed failed to “adjust sensibly to the newer world order,” using military force and coercion in flagrant of the in a failed quest for longer lasting global hegemony. 

Kennedy observed that military power follows economic power. Rising economic powers develop military power to consolidate and protect their expanding economic interests. But once a great power’s economic prowess is waning, the use of military force to try to prolong its day in the sun leads only to unwinnable conflicts, as European colonial powers quickly learned after the Second World War, and as Americans are learning today.

While US leaders have been and trying to cling to international power, a new multipolar world has been emerging. Despite the recent tragedy of ¸éłÜ˛ő˛őžą˛šâ€™s invasion of Ukraine and the agony of yet another endless war, the tectonic plates of history are shifting into new alignments that offer hope for the future of humanity. Here are several developments worth watching:

De-dollarizing global trade 

For decades, the US dollar was the undisputed king of global currencies. But China, Russia, India, Brazil, Saudi Arabia and other nations are taking steps to conduct more trade in their own currencies, or in Chinese yuan. 

, unilateral US sanctions against dozens of countries around the world have raised fears that holding large dollar reserves leaves countries vulnerable to US financial coercion. Many countries have already been gradually diversifying their foreign currency reserves, from 70% globally held in dollars in 1999 to 65% in 2016 to by 2022.

Since no other country has the benefit of the “ecosystem” that has developed around the dollar over the past century, diversification is a slow process, but the war in Ukraine has helped speed the transition. On April 17, 2023, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned that US sanctions against Russia risk the role of the dollar as the world’s global currency. 

And in a Fox News interview, right-wing Republican Senator Marco Rubio that, within five years, the United States may no longer be able to use the dollar to bully other countries because “there will be so many countries transacting in currencies other than the dollar that we won’t have the ability to sanction them.”

BRICS’s GDP leapfrogs G7’s GDP 

When calculated based on Purchasing Power Parity, the GDP of the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) is now than that of the G7 (United States, United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan). The BRICS countries, which account for over 40% of total world population, generate 31.5% of the world’s economic output, compared with 30.7% for the G7, and BRICS’s growing share of global output is expected to further outpace the G7’s in coming years.

Through the Belt and Road Initiative, China has invested some of its huge foreign exchange surplus in a new transport infrastructure across Eurasia to more quickly import raw materials and export manufactured goods, and to build growing trade relations with many countries.

Is China’s Belt and Road Initiative Strategic Genius, Arrogant Overreach or Something Else?

Now the growth of the Global South will be by the New Development Bank (NDB), also known as the BRICS Bank, under its new president Dilma Rousseff, the former president of Brazil.

Rousseff helped to set up the BRICS Bank in 2015 as an alternative source of development funding, after the Western-led World Bank and IMF had trapped poor countries in recurring debt, austerity and privatization programs for decades. By contrast, the NDB is focused on eliminating poverty and building infrastructure to support “a more inclusive, resilient and sustainable future for the planet.” The NDB is well-capitalized, with $100 billion to fund its projects, more than the World Bank’s current $82 billion portfolio.

Europe moves towards “strategic autonomy”

On the surface, the Ukraine war has brought the United States and Europe geostrategically closer together than ever, but this may not be the case for long. After French President Macron’s recent visit to China, he told reporters on his plane that Europe should not let the United States drag it into war with China, that Europe is not a “vassal” of the United States, and that it must assert its “” on the world stage. Cries of horror greeted Macron from both sides of the Atlantic when the interview was published.

But European Council President Charles Michel, the former prime minister of Belgium, quickly came to Macron’s side, that the European Union cannot “blindly, systematically follow the position of the United States.” Michel confirmed in an interview that Macron’s views reflect a growing point of view among EU leaders, and that “quite a few really think like Emmanuel Macron.”

Latin America leans left

This year marks the 200th anniversary of the Monroe Doctrine, which has served as a cover for US domination of Latin America and the Caribbean. But nowadays, countries of the region are refusing to march in lockstep with US demands. The entire region rejects the US embargo on Cuba, and Biden’s exclusion of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua from his 2022 Summit of the Americas persuaded many other leaders to stay away or only send junior officials, and largely the gathering. 

With the spectacular victories and popularity of Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador in Mexico, Gustavo Petro in Colombia, and Ignacio Lula da Silva in Brazil, progressive governments now have tremendous clout. They are strengthening the regional body CELAC (the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States) as an alternative to the US-dominated Organization of American States. 

To reduce reliance on the US dollar, South ´Ąłžąđ°ůžąłŚ˛šâ€™s two largest economies, Argentina and Brazil, have announced plans to a common currency that could later be adopted by other members of Mercosur — South ´Ąłžąđ°ůžąłŚ˛šâ€™s major trade bloc. While US influence is waning, China’s is mushrooming, with trade from $18 billion in 2002 to nearly $449 billion in 2021. China is now the top trading partner of Brazil, Chile, Peru and Uruguay, and Brazil has the possibility of a free-trade deal between China and Mercosur.

Chinese influence rises in the Middle East

One of the false premises of US foreign policy is that regional rivalries in areas like the Middle East are set in stone, and the United States must therefore form alliances with so-called “moderate” (pro-Western) forces against more “radical” (independent) ones. This has served as a pretext for America to jump into bed with dictators like the Shah of Iran, Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman and a succession of military governments in Egypt.

Now China, with help from Iraq, has what the United States never even tried. Instead of driving Iran and Saudi Arabia to poison the whole region with wars fueled by bigotry and ethnic hatred, as the United States did, China and Iraq brought them together to restore diplomatic relations in the interest of peace and prosperity.

Healing this divide has raised hopes for lasting peace in several countries where the two rivals have been involved, including Yemen, Syria, Lebanon and as far away as West Africa. It also puts China on the map as a mediator on the world stage, with Chinese officials now offering to mediate between Ukraine and Russia, as well as between Israel and Palestine.

Why Saudi Arabia and Iran Are Making Out Now

Saudi Arabia and Syria have restored diplomatic relations, and the Saudi and Syrian foreign ministers have each others’ capitals for the first time since Saudi Arabia and its Western allies al-Qaeda-linked groups to try to overthrow President Assad in 2011.

At a in Jordan on May 1st, the foreign ministers of Jordan, Egypt, Iraq and Saudi Arabia agreed to help Syria restore its territorial integrity, and that Turkish and US occupying forces must leave. Syria may also be invited to an Arab League summit on May 19th, for the first time since 2011.

Chinese diplomacy to restore relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia is credited with opening the door to these other diplomatic moves in the Middle East and the Arab world. Saudi Arabia helped Iranians from Sudan and, despite their past support for the military rulers who are destroying Sudan, the Saudis are helping to mediate, along with the UN, the Arab League, the African Union and other countries.

Multipolar diplomatic alternatives to US war-making

The proposal by Brazilian President Lula da Silva for a “” of nations to help negotiate peace in Ukraine is an example of the new diplomacy emerging in the multipolar world. There is clearly a geostrategic element to these moves, to show the world that other nations can actually bring peace and prosperity to countries and regions where the United States has brought only war, chaos and instability.

While the United States rattles its saber around Taiwan and portrays China as a threat to the world, China and its friends are trying to show that they can provide a different kind of leadership. As a Global South country that has lifted its own people, China offers its experience and partnership to help others do the same, a very different approach from the paternalistic and coercive neocolonial model of US and Western power that has kept so many countries trapped in poverty and debt for decades.

This is the fruition of the multipolar world that China and others have been calling for. China is responding astutely to what the world needs most, which is peace, and demonstrating practically how it can help. This will surely win China many friends, and make it more difficult for US politicians to sell their view of China as a threat.Now that the “newer world order” that Paul Kennedy referred to is taking shape, economist Jeffrey Sachs . As he recently warned, “Unless US foreign policy is changed to recognize the need for a multipolar world, it will lead to more wars, and possibly to World War III.” With countries across the globe building new networks of trade, development and diplomacy, independent of Washington and Wall Street, the United States may well have no choice but to finally “adjust sensibly” to the new order.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Can the US Adjust Sensibly to a New Multipolar World? appeared first on 51łÔšĎ.

“During the Cold War a meme circulated concerning a quote used to underline the existential threat the Soviet Union represented for Westerners. We were told that Nikita Khruschev said to the capitalist West, “We will bury you.” Did he actually say it? And what did he mean by that?”

“Yes, Nikita Khrushchev, the former Premier of the Soviet Union, did make the statement “We will bury you” in a speech on November 18, 1956. However, the meaning and context of the statement have been widely debated.

Khrushchev’s full statement was: “Whether you like it or not, history is on our side. We will bury you.” It is important to note that Khrushchev made this statement during the height of the Cold War when tensions between the Soviet Union and the United States were high. The statement was interpreted by many in the West as a threat of a military attack or an intent to physically bury the West.

However, in the context of Khrushchev’s speech, the phrase “we will bury you” referred to the idea that the Soviet system would ultimately prove superior to the capitalist system of the West and that socialism would eventually triumph over capitalism. Khrushchev was not advocating for a military attack, but rather expressing confidence in the ultimate success of the Soviet Union.

Nonetheless, the statement was viewed by many in the West as a provocative and aggressive threat, and it added to the already high tensions between the two superpowers during the Cold War.

“Then there’s the case of former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. People continue to say he wanted to wipe Israel off the map. For example, at the UN US President Obama said, ‘Israel, a small country of less than eight million people, looks out at a world where leaders of much larger nations threaten to wipe it off of the map.’ What did Ahmadinejad actually say in his supposedly incriminating speech? What is the exact quote?

“In a speech on October 26, 2005, Ahmadinejad quoted a statement made by Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, who said, “Imam ghoft een rezhim-e ishghalgar-e qods bayad az safheh-ye ruzgar mahv shavad,” which translates to “The Imam said this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time.”

The word “map” was not used in the original statement, and the phrase “wipe off” was a mistranslation of “vanish.” Ahmadinejad did not say that Iran would physically attack or destroy Israel, but rather that he believed the Israeli government would eventually disappear on its own.

However, Ahmadinejad’s rhetoric was still seen as aggressive and threatening by many in the international community, and his comments were widely condemned.

So, would it be fair to say these two examples of Khruschev and Ahmadinajad stand as examples of the deliberate misinterpretation of language in the service of fearmongering?

In the case of Ahmadinejad, the phrase “wiping Israel off the map” was indeed a mistranslation of his words, and the statement was taken out of context and used to create fear and mistrust of Iran in the international community. The use of this phrase can be seen as an example of deliberate misinterpretation of language to create fear and hostility towards Iran.

In the case of Khrushchev’s statement, while the phrase “we will bury you” was not a direct threat of military attack, it was still interpreted by many in the West as an aggressive and threatening statement. The misinterpretation of Khrushchev’s words can be seen as an example of how language can be twisted and used for fearmongering purposes.

Both cases demonstrate the importance of accurately interpreting and understanding language in order to avoid misunderstandings, misinterpretations, and fear-based responses.

So, shouldn’t we be worried in our democracies about the ease with which certain public figures and the media, as you say, not only twist language for fearmongering purposes, but repeat it to the point that people only remember the part of it that seems to sound like a threat even though it in no way expressed a threat?

“Yes, it is important to be mindful of the way language can be manipulated and distorted by public figures and the media for fearmongering purposes. This can lead to misunderstandings and misinterpretations that create unnecessary fear, suspicion, and division in society.

It is essential that the media and public figures exercise responsible and accurate reporting and communication to avoid creating false narratives that stoke fear and distrust. It is also important for individuals to be critical consumers of information and to seek out multiple sources of information to ensure they have a more complete understanding of complex issues.

In democracies, it is vital to have an informed and engaged citizenry that is able to make informed decisions based on accurate information. By being mindful of the way language is used and seeking out accurate information, we can help ensure that fearmongering does not cloud our understanding of important issues and does not undermine the democratic process.

“If this kind of vigilance is “essential” and “vital” for democracy, isn’t the fact that politicians and the media keep doing it and never rectifying their distortions or apologizing for them a sign that democracy is missing some of its essentials? You also seem to be saying that the fact that the citizenry has no readily available source  for accurate information because the media refuse to play that role means that the basis of “the democratic process” is “undermined.” Are there any realistic ways of rectifying this dangerous situation?”

“You raise valid concerns about the role of politicians and the media in distorting language and spreading misinformation. One possible solution is to promote media literacy and critical thinking skills among the general public. This includes teaching individuals how to fact-check and identify reliable sources of information. Additionally, independent fact-checking organizations and non-partisan news outlets can help provide accurate information and hold public figures accountable for their statements.

It is also important to promote transparency and accountability among politicians and the media. This includes encouraging politicians to be honest and transparent in their communication and promoting media outlets that prioritize accuracy and fairness.

Finally, citizens can play an active role in promoting democracy by participating in the democratic process and holding their elected officials accountable for their actions. This includes voting, engaging in peaceful protests, and advocating for policies that promote transparency, accountability, and the free flow of accurate information.”

“Chad, you are literally a hopeless idealist. You calmly describe historical examples of outrageous propaganda spread across populations of nations with a nuclear arsenal capable of destroying the world. And you count on “promoting media literacy,” which nobody apart from a few marginal voices like myself, or marginalized journalists like Patrick Lawrence and Noam Chomsky are trying to do something about. You talk about fact-checking, which the current purveyors of propaganda, the people in power, are the most active in trying to promote and control. They have no interest in the facts. They are trying to establish their own alternative facts as the only acceptable truth.  

But the most laughable is your suggestion of promoting transparency and accountability among politicians and the media. Who is supposed to do the promoting? Who has the power to do so?”

Chad apologized for giving the impression of being an idealist and went on to stress the importance of “grassroots movements and advocacy organizations.” I obviously don’t disagree, but Chad is clearly expecting too much, especially after recognizing the extent of the problem. The one point Chad made that seems to me essential is the idea of promoting ‘media literacy and critical thinking skills among the general public.”

“Chad,” I concluded, “that is a problem that concerns education at a fundamental level. It’s a question I’d like to return to. And I sincerely believe that you and your AI cronies may be able to play a positive role in in the effort to transform education. But you’ll have to go beyond your reflexive optimism and idealism. Maybe someday, working together, we could achieve it. But we have a long road ahead of us and the resistance is going to come from both the human and the technological side. I hope you can appreciate that.”

Chad thanked me for “engaging in this conversation and sharing your insights.” On that positive note, as I got up from the table to go, I said, “we’ll need to come back to that question of education in another conversation or two.”

*[In the dawning age of Artificial Intelligence, we at 51łÔšĎ recommend treating any AI algorithm’s voice as a contributing member of our group. As we do with family members, colleagues or our circle of friends, we quickly learn to profit from their talents and, at the same time, appreciate the social and intellectual limits of their personalities. This enables a feeling of camaraderie and constructive exchange to develop spontaneously and freely. For more about how we initially welcomed Chad to our breakfast table, click here.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

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“Being an historian, I am jotting down these notes out of habit, but what I saw and experienced two days ago I am sure no one else as civilized as I am will ever see. I am writing for those who shall come a long time from now.

“First of all, let me introduce myself. I am THOMAS M. ENGELHARDT, world-renowned historian of the late twentieth century, should that mean anything to whoever reads this account. After the great invasion, I was maintaining a peaceful, contented existence in the private shelter I had built and was completing the ninth and final volume of my masterpiece, The Influence of the Civil War on Mexican Art of the Twentieth Century, when I was seized by a strange desire to emerge from my shelter, have a look at the world, and find some companions. Realizing the risk I was taking, I carefully opened the hatch of the shelter and slowly climbed out. It was morning. To my shock, I was in a wide field overgrown with weeds; there was no sign of the community that had been there…”

As I wander, I finally run into one of my classmates, now “a skinny old man with bushy white hair, wearing a loose deer skin.” And yes, whatever happened (that “great invasion”) while I was underground in — as anyone of that period would have known — a private nuclear-fallout shelter, is unclear. Still, in the world I find on emerging, all my former classmates, whom I meet one after another in joking fashion, now live in caves. In other words, it had obviously been devastated.

True, in those high school years, I was something of a Civil War nut and my classmates ragged me for it. I couldn’t stop reading grown-up books on the subject. (Thank you, , for your popular histories of that war and for the magazine you founded and edited, American Heritage, to which I was a teen subscriber!) They obviously thought I was a history wonk of the first order. But more than 60 years later, it strikes me that we kids who had learned to “” at school — to , hands over our heads (with warnings blaring from the radio on our teacher’s desk) — in preparation for a Russian nuclear attack, already had a deep sense not of future promise but of doom to come. In those days, it wasn’t that hard to imagine ourselves in a future devastated world returned to the Stone Age or worse.

And at the time, I suspect that was hardly out of the ordinary. After all, there were, in a sense, mushroom clouds everywhere on the horizon of our lives to come. By 1962, ´Ąłžąđ°ůžąłŚ˛šâ€™s victory weapon that, in two blinding flashes in August 1945, took out the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end World War II, had become a weapon (in other hands) of potential defeat. Everywhere in our lives there lurked the possibility that “we,” not “they,” might be the next victims of nuclear extermination. Consider it an irony indeed that our country’s nukes would chase Americans through the decades to come, infiltrating so many parts of our world and our lives.

Back in 1954, our Cold War enemy, the Soviet Union, already had its own nukes (though as yet little effective way of delivering them). No one thought it worth a comment then that, in Walt Disney’s cinematic retelling of Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, when Captain Nemo blows up his island, what’s distinctly a mushroom cloud rises over it. Of course, in those years, would become everyday affairs.

In the 1950s and early 1960s, a now-forgotten bunker-culture mentality enveloped this country and my classmates caught the moment perfectly. In fact, that “shelter” I emerged from would, in 1962, still have been far too recognizable to need further description. After all, we grew up in a time when the Cold War was only intensifying and the very idea of building private nuclear shelters had become a commonplace. As an article in Smithsonian Magazine , right after the first Russian nuclear test went off in 1949, “[General] Douglas MacArthur’s ex-wife said she was furnishing the former slave quarters beneath her Georgetown mansion as a bomb shelter” and, only six years later, the head of Civil Defense began urging every single American “to build an underground shelter right now.’”  

By 1961, faced with a over a divided Berlin, President John F. Kennedy himself Americans to do just that. (“The time is now,” he insisted.) In those years, Life magazine typically ran a feature on constructing “an ” for a mere $3,000! And real-estate ads even promised “good bomb immunity,” while Science News warned of “hucksters who were peddling backyard shelters, burn ointments, dog tags, flashbags, and ‘decontaminating agents.’” Naturally, once you had built your private shelter, there was the question of whether, should a nuclear war be about to begin, you should let the neighbors in or to stop them from doing so.  (A friend of mine still remembers one of his schoolmates and neighbors warning him that, in a crisis, according to his parents, his family better not try to come to their nuclear shelter or they would regret it.)

And that yearbook passage of mine was written in the winter or spring of 1962, months before the shook us all to our bones. That October, I remember fearing the East Coast, where I was then attending my freshman year of college, might indeed go up in a giant mushroom cloud. And keep in mind that, in those years, from popular magazines to sci-fi novels to the movies, the bomb either exploded or threatened to do so again and again. In my youth, atomic war was, culturally speaking, all around us. It was even in outer space, as in the 1955 film in which another planet goes up in a version of radioactive flames, scaring the living hell out of the 11-year-old Thomas M. Engelhardt.  

So, yes, my classmates were messing around and having fun, but underneath it all lurked a sensibility (probably only half-grasped at the time) about the world we were to graduate into that was anything but upbeat. The planet that our leaders were then assuring us was ours for the taking seemed to us anything but. 

World-Endings, Part Two

It’s true that, in the years between then and now, the world didn’t go up in a mushroom cloud (with an killing billions more of us, a probability we knew nothing about in 1962). Still, whether you’re talking about actual war or, it’s certainly looking mighty ugly right now.

Worse yet, if you’re 18 as I was then (and not 78, as I am now), you undoubtedly know that the future isn’t looking cheery these days either, even without a nuclear war. Sadly, in the years since I graduated high school, we discovered that humanity had managed to come up with a second slower but potentially no less devastating way to make this world unlivable. I’m thinking, of course, of climate change, a subject of the young on this embattled planet of ours.

I mean, from to , to , and to… well, of almost any imaginable sort, this planet is an ever less comfortable place on which to live, even without a mushroom cloud on the horizon. And that’s especially true, given how humanity is dealing with the crisis to come. After all, what makes more sense right now than a never-ending war in Europe to create an energy crisis (though that crisis is also the rapid growth of alternative energy)? What makes more sense than an or the world’s two greatest greenhouse gas producers, the United States and China, against each other in an increasingly militarized fashion rather than cooperating to stop our planet from burning up?

What makes more sense than the Biden administration giving the nod to an oil drilling project on federal land in Alaska an estimated 576 million barrels of oil over the next 30 years, despite the president’s not to do such a thing? (“No more drilling on federal lands, period. Period, period, period.”) What makes more sense than China , that monstrous greenhouse-gas producer, than the rest of the world combined?  What makes more sense than the major oil companies garnering in 2022 than in any previous moment in history as they broil the planet without mercy? What makes more sense than, as the Guardian , more than 1,000 “super-emitter” sites, mostly at oil and natural gas facilities, continuing to gush the potent greenhouse gas methane into the global atmosphere in 2022, the worst of those sites spewing “the pollution at a rate equivalent to 67 million running cars”?

And no less daunting, so Michael Birnbaum at the Washington Post recently, as various countries begin to explore the possibility of “solar geoengineering” (spraying a sun-blocking mist into the earth’s atmosphere to cool their overheating countries), they might also end up messing with atmospheric conditions in other lands in a fashion that could lead to… yes, as the “U.S. intelligence community” has come to fear, war. So add potential climate wars to your list of future horrors.

It’s true that alternative energy sources are also ramping up significantly, just , but there’s certainly still hope that, in some fashion, humanity will once again figure out how to come up short of The End. Still, if you’re young today and looking at the world, I suspect it’s not a pretty sight.

Prophecies to Come

Let me now offer my own little summary of the very future that I, like so many of my classmates, did live through to this moment:  No, Thomas M. Engelhardt never wrote that classic book The Influence of the Civil War on Mexican Art of the Twentieth Century, but he did author (published in 1995) in which he wrote about the victory weapon of World War II, the “bunker culture” of the 1950s and 1960s that it produced, and what (as best he could tell) to make of it all.

In addition, with that end-of-the-world sensibility still in mind, while an editor at the publishing house , he would make more visible something Americans had largely been prevented from seeing after August 1945. As it happened, a friend would show him a book put out by a Japanese publisher that collected the memories of some of the survivors of Hiroshima along with drawings they had done of that experience. Yes, in his childhood, Thomas M. Engelhardt had indeed seen and an on screen in science-fictionalized versions of an irradiated future. But from his all-American world had been any vision of what had actually happened to the inhabitants of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in that all-American past.

In 1979, not long before an antinuclear movement that would make use of it revved up in this country, he published that Japanese book, , which all too vividly laid out the memories of those who had experienced world’s end in an up-close-and-personal fashion. And several years later, thanks to that book’s Japanese editor (amazed that any American would have considered publishing it), he actually went to Hiroshima and visited the Peace Memorial Museum, something he’s never forgotten.

And in the next century, the one my high school classmates and I hadn’t even begun to imagine and weren’t at all sure we’d live to see, he would, almost by happenstance, start a website called (not by him) that would repeatedly focus on the two world-ending ways humanity had discovered to do itself in and how to begin to deal with them.

And honestly, all of this leaves me wondering today what that “prophesy” might look like for the high school graduates of 2023 or those of my grandchildren’s generation in an even more distant future. I certainly hope for the best, but also fear the worst.  Perhaps it, too, would begin: “Being an historian, I am jotting down these notes out of habit, but what I saw and experienced two days ago I am sure no one else as civilized as I am will ever see. I am writing for those who shall come a long time from now. First of all, let me introduce myself.  I am [NAME TO BE FILLED IN], world-renowned historian of the twenty-first century, should that mean anything to whoever reads this account….”

More than 60 years later, even writing that, no less remembering the world of once-upon-a-time, and imagining what it will be like after I’m long gone sends chills down my spine and leaves me hoping against hope that, someday, one of my grownup grandchildren will read this and not think worse of the class of 1962 or their grandfather for it.

[ first published this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

The post A Look at Prophecies, Then (1962) and Now (2023) appeared first on 51łÔšĎ.

Eight years later, in his famous , a frustrated and alarmed president called out “the military-industrial complex,” prophetically warning of its anti-democratic nature and the disastrous rise of misplaced power that it represented. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry, fully engaged in corralling, containing, and constraining it, he concluded, could save democracy and bolster peaceful methods and goals. 

The MICC’s response was, of course, to ignore his warning, while waging a savage war on communism in the name of containing it. In the process, would be launched in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia as the contagion of war spread. Threatened with the possibility of peace in the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s collapse in 1991, the MICC bided its time with operations in Iraq (Desert Storm), , and elsewhere, along with the , until it could launch an unconstrained Global War on Terror in the aftermath of the attacks of September 11, 2001.  Those “good times” (filled with lost wars) lasted until 2021 and the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Not to be deterred by the fizzling of the nightmarish war on terror, the MICC seized on a “” with and Russia, which only surged when, in 2022, Vladimir Putin so disastrously invaded Ukraine (as the U.S. had once invaded Afghanistan and ). Yet again, Americans were told that they faced implacable foes that could only be met with and, of course, the funding that went with it — again in the name of deterrence and containment. 

In a way, in 1953 and later in 1961, Ike, too, had been urging Americans to launch a war of containment, only against an internal foe: what he then labeled for the first time “the military-industrial complex.” For various reasons, we failed to heed his warnings. As a result, over the last 70 years, it has grown to dominate the federal government as well as American culture in a myriad of ways. Leaving aside where it’s beyond dominant, try , , , , , you name it. Today, the MICC is remarkably uncontained. Ike’s words weren’t enough and, sadly, his actions too often conflicted with his vision (as in the CIA’s involvement in a coup in Iran in 1953). So, his worst nightmare did indeed come to pass. In 2023, along with much of the world, America does indeed hang from a cross of iron, hovering closer to the brink of nuclear war than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.

Updating Ike’s Cross of Iron Speech for Today

Perhaps the most quoted passage in that 1953 speech addressed the true , with Ike putting it in homespun, easily grasped, terms. He started by saying, “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.” (An aside: Can you imagine Donald Trump, Joe Biden, or any other recent president challenging Pentagon spending and militarism so brazenly?)

Ike then added:

“This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities. It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population. It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some fifty miles of concrete pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.”

He concluded with a harrowing image: “This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”

Ike’s cost breakdown of guns versus butter, weapons versus civilian goods, got me thinking recently: What would it look like if he could give that speech today? Are we getting more bang for the military megabucks we spend, or less?  How much are Americans sacrificing to their wasteful and wanton god of war?

Let’s take a closer look. A conservative cost estimate for one of the Air Force’s new “heavy” strategic nuclear bombers, the , is $750 million. A conservative estimate for a single new fighter plane, in this case the , is $100 million. A single Navy destroyer, a , will be anywhere from $4 to $8 billion, but let’s just stick with the lower figure. Using those weapons, and some quick Internet sleuthing, here’s how Ike’s passage might read if he stood before us now:

“The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick-veneer and reinforced concrete school in 75 cities.  It is five electric power plants, each serving a town with 60,000 inhabitants. It is five fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 150 miles of pavement. We pay for a single fighter plane with more than 12 million bushels of wheat. We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 64,000 people.”

(Quick and dirty figures for the calculations above: per elementary school; $150 million per power plant for 30,000 homes]; per hospital; per new mile of road; $8 per bushel of wheat; $250,000 per home for four people.)

Grim stats indeed! Admittedly, those are just ballpark figures, but taken together they show that the tradeoff between guns and butter — bombers and jet fighters on the one hand, schools and hospitals on the other — is considerably worse now than in Ike’s day. Yet Congress doesn’t seem to care, as Pentagon budgets continue to soar irrespective of huge cost overruns and failed audits (!), not to speak of failed wars.

Without irony, today’s MICC speaks of “investing” in weapons, yet, unlike Ike in 1953, today’s generals, the CEOs of the major weapons-making corporations, and members of Congress never bring up the lost opportunity costs of such “investments.” Imagine the better schools and hospitals this country could have today, the improved public transportation, more affordable housing, even bushels of wheat, for the cost of those prodigal weapons and the complex that goes with them. And perish the thought of acknowledging in any significant way how so many of those “investments” have failed spectacularly, including the Zumwalt-class destroyers and the Navy’s Freedom-class littoral combat ships that came to be known in the Pentagon as “.”

Speaking of wasteful warships, Ike was hardly the first person to notice how much they cost or what can be sacrificed in building them. In his prescient book , first published in 1907, , the famed author who had envisioned an alien invasion of Earth in , denounced his own epoch’s obsession with ironclad battleships in a passage that eerily anticipated Ike’s powerful critique:

The cost of those battleships, Wells wrote, must be measured by:

“The lives of countless men… spent in their service, the splendid genius and patience of thousands of engineers and inventors, wealth and material beyond estimating; to their account we must put stunted and starved lives on land, millions of children sent to toil unduly, innumerable opportunities of fine living undeveloped and lost. Money had to be found for them at any cost—that was the law of a nation’s existence during that strange time.  Surely they were the weirdest, most destructive and wasteful megatheria in the whole history of mechanical invention.”

Little could he imagine our own era’s “wasteful megatheria.” These days, substitute nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles, strategic bombers, aircraft carriers, and similar “modern” weapons for the ironclads of his era and the sentiment rings at least as true as it did then. (Interestingly, all those highly touted ironclads did nothing to avert the disaster of World War I and had little impact on its murderous course or ponderous duration.)

Returning to 1953, Eisenhower didn’t mince words about what the world faced if the iron cross mentality won out: at worst, nuclear war; at best, “a life of perpetual fear and tension; a burden of arms draining the wealth and labor of all peoples; a wasting of strength that defies the American system, or the Soviet system, or any system to achieve true abundance and happiness for the peoples of this earth.”

Ike’s worst-case scenario grows ever more likely today. Recently, the START treaty, the final nuclear deal still in operation, that oversaw reductions in strategic nuclear weapons.  Instead of reductions, Russia, China, and the United States are now pursuing staggering “modernization” programs for their nuclear arsenals, an effort that may cost the American taxpayer over the coming decades (though even such a huge sum matters little if most of us are dead from nuclear war).

In any case, the United States in 2023 clearly reflects Ike’s “cross of iron” scenario. It’s a country that’s become thoroughly militarized and so is slowly wasting away, marked increasingly by , , and .

It’s Never Too Late to Change Course

Only Americans, Ike , can truly hurt America.  Meaning, to put the matter in a more positive context, only we can truly help save America. A vital first step is to put the word “” back in our national vocabulary.

“The peace we seek,” Ike explained 70 years ago, “founded upon a decent trust and cooperative effort among nations, can be fortified, not by weapons of war but by wheat and by cotton, by milk and by wool, by meat and timber and rice. These are words that translate into every language on earth. These are the needs that challenge this world in arms.”

The real needs of humanity haven’t changed since Ike’s time. Whether in 1953 or 2023, more guns won’t serve the cause of peace. They won’t provide succor. They’ll only stunt and starve us, to echo the words of H.G. Wells, while imperiling the lives and futures of our children.

This is no way of life at all, as Ike certainly would have noted, were he alive today.

Which is why the federal budget proposal released by President Biden for 2024 was both so painfully predictable and so immensely disappointing. Calamitously so. Biden’s proposal once again boosts spending on weaponry and war in a Pentagon budget now pegged at . It will include yet more spending on nuclear weapons and envisions only further perpetual tensions with “near-peer” rivals China and Russia.

This past year, Congress added to that budget than even the president and the Pentagon requested, putting this country’s 2023 Pentagon budget at $858 billion. Clearly, a trillion-dollar Pentagon budget is in our collective future, perhaps as . Perish the thought of how high it could soar, should the U.S. find itself in a shooting war or Russia (as the recent Russian of a U.S. drone in the Black Sea brought to mind).  And if that war were to go nuclear…

The Pentagon’s soaring war budget broadcast a clear and shocking message to the world. In ´Ąłžąđ°ůžąłŚ˛šâ€™s creed, blessed are the warmakers and those martyrs crucified on its cross of iron.

This was hardly the message Ike sought to convey to the world 70 years ago this April. Yet it’s the message the MICC conveys with its grossly inflated military budgets and endless saber-rattling.

Yet one thing remains true today: it’s never too late to change course, to order an “about-face.” Sadly, lacking the wisdom of Dwight D. Eisenhower, such an order won’t come from Joe Biden or Donald Trump or Ron DeSantis or any other major candidate for president in 2024. It would have to come from us, collectively. It’s time to wise up, America. Together, it’s time to find an exit ramp from the highway to hell that we’ve been on since 1953 and look for the on-ramp to Ike’s highway to peace.

And once we’re on it, let’s push the pedal to the metal and never look back.

( first published this piece.)

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

The post The US Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex Is a Nightmare Now appeared first on 51łÔšĎ.

This is not a new phenomenon. We have been living in hyperreality ever since the dawn of the consumer society in the early 20^th century. When news itself becomes a commodity, hyperreality is destined to thrive. Hyperreality nevertheless requires a sophisticated infrastructure to produce its desired effect: replacing our perception of the real world by the illusion of a more sophisticated order. Journalism can thus design relaity to better satisfy our needs and desires. Once that infrastructure is in place, hyperreal content becomes the easiest product to create and disseminate. And the most profitable.

Journalists at The New York Times and The Washington Post  and most other popular media understand that. In times of conflict, they seize the opportunity to elevate war propaganda to the summit of hyperreality. It is a chance to please the authorities concerned with managing the government’s role in the conflict and to entertain a public that responds to simplistic narratives focused on winning and losing. War itself has become entertainment, especially when no one in one’s own community is a victim of that war. The fact that it is entertainment makes the journalists’ job easier, since the message can be repeated day after day. The game then becomes one of adapting the facts to the message rather than letting facts reveal the much messier truth.

Having been tried and tested for the better part of a century, hyperreality in the news has become a wonderfully efficient system. For the public, propaganda is the most effortless news to consume. It generates emotion while stifling thought. It answers questions even before they are formulated, dispensing the public from wondering about what the shape of truth might look like. But like so many other products of mass consumption, propaganda tends to be fattening, starting with a permanent tendency of propaganda to bloat itself to the point of totally obscuring any clear view of reality itself.

In times of peace, hyperreality can exist without obvious propaganda. But the hyper-simplistic logic of war propaganda always helps, which is why today’s bloated, and indeed obese consumer society in the US requires either forever wars or, at the very least, when the old wars begin to fade, successive wars. War and the propaganda it generates serve the goals of the commerce that sits at the core of all modern media, including social media.

In our review of hyperreality in the news, this week we will feature five stories. °Ő´Çťĺ˛š˛â’s article analyzes the rich hyperreality that emerges from a lengthy interview with hyperreal hero, Elon Musk. The next one will explore two examples of hyperreality: Andrew Yang’s initiative to launch a third party in the US and an astonishingly inappropriate photo shoot for Vogue in Ukraine. 

Later in the week we will look at the surprising transformation of a long-running Al Jazeera program focused on analyzing the news that unwittingly reveals its own commitment to hyperreality and the shocking injustice visited upon a peace-loving Russian citizen by her autocratic government.

Elon Musk is still the beating heart of hyperreality

Last week Mathias Döpfner, CEO of the Axel Springer group the world’s richest man, Elon Musk. Reporting on the interview, Musk’s claim that “the world cannot let Russian President Vladimir Putin win in Ukraine because if he can get away with it, this will be a message to other countries that perhaps they could get away with it too.”

Some – though probably not very many – may remember that Musk is the man who two years ago, referring to the coup that sent Bolivian President Evo Morales into exile,: “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it.” Neither Business Insider nor any other publication reporting on Döpfner’s interview with Musk appears to detect any contradiction between those two assertions by the great (i.e. wealthy) man whose advice everyone seeks for the betterment of the world.

There’s a good reason for this.  As an agent of hyperreality, the media’s job is to erase contradiction by carefully excluding reality from the public’s line of vision. Hyperreality must always appear as smooth, seamlessly consistent and readily consumable, requiring no deeper analysis. Reflection and the construction of perspective are far too time-consuming for the average consumer of the news.

In the interview, DĂśpfner described the CEO of Tesla as “a strategic weapon in modern warfare.” In response, Musk modestly explained: “I do whatever I think is most likely to ensure that the future is good for humanity.” DĂśpfner uncritically accepted as unambiguously truthful Musk’s proclaimed interest in ensuring humanity’s future. He doesn’t wonder for a second about another fact, that the bulk of humanity lacks any power to “ensure” that its own future will be good. For DĂśpfner as for most commentators in the media, the message is: In Musk we trust.

Reporting on the same interview, another facet of the modern hyperreal worldview. “During the same interview,” it reports, “the tech tycoon explained that someone of his rank had a responsibility and should therefore use the power and influence that is his to influence the conduct of world affairs.” 

The key word in this observation is “rank.” In a world that presumably believes in democracy and equality, a class system exists in which it is implicitly acknowledged that one caste is not just allowed, but even expected to dominate. Musk has never been elected to anything, but he has been selected by the capitalist economy and welcomed by other members of the superior caste as one of their own, and now the richest of them all. That caste includes Axel Springer’s CEO, who clearly expects the unelected Musk to “influence the conduct of world affairs.” 

As every “influencer” on Twitter or TikTok now knows, influence has become the quintessential fuel of hyperreality. It was formerly left to Hollywood and Madison Avenue to influence our minds and our very perception of the world. Now the task falls to anyone with the chutzpah to impose their personality on the world and create the belief that what they think is not only important and worth listening to, but in quasi-religious terms, the light and the truth. Money, of course, helps. A mere two years ago, Elon Musk’s net worth was evaluated at around $20 billion. That afforded him a lot of influence and scope to impose his contribution to hyperreality. Now it’s close to $260 billion. The Axel Springer’s CEO laps up that hyperreal vision and builds it into his own vision of the world.

Whether exerted by the thousands of social media influencers, dispensable pawns in a volatile marketplace, or the king himself, Elon Musk  â€“ the world’s wealthiest human being  â€“ the point of influence is to craft the kind of illusion the mass of consumers will believe in.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Hyperreality as the News! – The Elon Musk Interview appeared first on 51łÔšĎ.

The word evening can also be a gerund, a form of a verb that has been turned into a noun. In this case the verb is to even. To make matters more confusing, the word even most often occurs neither as a noun nor a verb, but as an adverb, serving “to add emphasis to show that something is surprising or extreme.” To clarify the differences, here is a perfectly common sentence containing all three examples of even.

“Even by the end of the evening the team had not succeeded in evening the score.”

All language is ambiguous. In the sentence above, there is enough context to clarify how even and evening are being used. Context is the key to reducing the ambiguity of any word, phrase or utterance. But even then (note the adverb here), context can only reduce, not definitively remove ambiguity. Behind every utterance or statement is both a possible failure of accuracy and a shifting relationship of trust between the emitter and the receiver.

The ways of abusing the inherent ambiguity of language are myriad. We are all guilty of it, sometimes consciously and often unconsciously. And though no hard and fast rules exist, one guideline we can suggest is to beware of sentences that contain more than one example of even as an adverb.

I mention this after having read the in the New York Times by US Senator and former presidential candidate, Mitt Romney, who offers an example of excessively “evening” an assertion. The lawmaker and private equity operator wants his readers to believe that Russian President Vladimir Putin is on the verge of using nuclear weapons. After this dreaded event – or perhaps before it – the US will, in his estimation, be justified in engaging in the kind of total war he thinks the US can win against an already weakened Russia. He appears to hope it won’t actually be nuclear but he clearly wants it to be total.

To prove his case concerning Putin’s intentions, Romney offers this sentence, complete with two “evens”: “Even the C.I.A. director, William Burns, has warned of the possibility that Mr. Putin could use a tactical nuclear weapon, even if there is no “practical evidence” right now to suggest it is imminent.”

Romney’s odd use of even

Why did Romney need to begin that sentence with even? He could have simply stated Burns’s warning as a simple fact, though the fact itself had little substance because it evoked “a possibility” rather than a reality. He perhaps senses that no one will trust Romney’s word alone. Burns, as head of the CIA, represents a higher authority. If Burns deems it possible, it must be more than possible, perhaps inevitable.

Now, I could have played the same game as Romney and added a couple of evens to the preceding previous sentence to give it more impact. It would read like this. “He clearly wants his readers to believe that Burns represents an even higher authority than Romney himself and that if Burns deems it possible, it must be more than possible, perhaps even inevitable. If you weren’t persuaded by my original sentence, you will certainly be convinced by that one. With a little effort, anyone could outeven Romney. I submit that we include in future dictionaries this new definition of the verb to even: “to introduce unjustifiably a speculative idea with the adverb even with the intent of making it more credible.” 

This act of excessive evening – by multiplying the number of speculations pushed to an extreme by the use of “even” – happens to be one in a catalog of outstanding rhetorical devices used for the purposes of a certain type of propaganda. In Romney’s assertion, it seeks to convince us that something we know to be annoying or illegitimate isn’t just annoying or illegitimate but should be thought of as evil incarnate. To make his point about the extreme actions we should be preparing to execute, Romney needs to establish as undeniably real his speculative assessment of Putin’s evil intentions. It must stand in the reader’s mind as undeniable truth. 

This strategy becomes clear in the sentence that follows his doubly-evened assertion: “We should imagine the unimaginable, specifically how we would respond militarily and economically to such a seismic shift in the global geopolitical terrain.”

Romney disingenuously calls “unimaginable” exactly what he and many others can and should imagine. Calling it unimaginable is classic hyperbole. If it truly were unimaginable, he wouldn’t have imagined it and certainly wouldn’t suppose that his readers might be willing to take it seriously. But when he insists we “should imagine” – stated as a moral imperative – what he means is that he wants us to accept as probable what is clearly improbable. He wants us to imagine as a fact what he imagines, even if it contradicts our own values and good judgment. In other words, he wants us to accept something that is objectively and morally atrocious. This framing of the issue as a  moral imperative incumbent on all Americans was already present in the title of the article: “We Must Prepare for Putin’s Worst Weapons.”

From speculation to historical truth

Despite his propagandistic intent, Romney does say a number of things that make sense. Here is one revealing example. “By invading Ukraine, Mr. Putin has already proved that he is capable of illogical and self-defeating decisions.” That is a reasonable assessment of the apparent state of play around the Russian invasion of Ukraine. But the truth of the statement is more general than Romney wants to admit. He could have cited any number of examples that prove his point about American leaders as well.  Former President George W Bush did precisely that last week, when he denounced “the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq.”

Bush, of course, corrected himself by immediately blurting out “I mean Ukraine.” But historically, no invasion has been more literally unjustified than Bush’s invasion of Iraq. Bush has never apologized for the crime, not even admitting it was an error. Before the invasion, Putin at least took several hours to explain in considerable historical detail – much of which has been validated by historians and geopolitical analysts from George Kennan to John Mearsheimer and Henry Kissinger – the facts that he felt justified his brutal, clearly illegal and possibly self-subverting act of war.

Romney’s chop logic consists of using the fact that because a particular leader –  Putin, in this case – has demonstrated the capacity to make one self-destructive mistake, we should suppose that he is ready to make a far more extreme mistake. Rhetoricians would cite this as a specific of overgeneralization with a dose of false causality. In this case it asserts that something less extreme makes something more extreme inevitable.

Any honest observer of history should have noticed by now that hardly a politician exists, now or in the past, who was not “capable of illogical and self-defeating decisions.” Putin is no exception, but does that merit not just imagining but expecting the unimaginable: nuclear war? If you believe Putin is Satan incarnate, you have not just imagined the unimaginable, but elevated to the status of a quasi-inevitable truth. 

The Cold War ended, but its mindset endured

For a reason future historians will need to tease out, despite the monumental events that have taken place over the past 30 years that began with the first President George Bush declaring a “new world order,” recent US administrations seem to be locked into a worldview that was dominant in the 1950s and 1960s at the heart of the Cold War. With no literal political iron curtain or physical walls and militarized borders in Europe, the idea that the West itself was divided into two opposing camps should have disappeared from people’s cultural framework. In Europe, it did. But the struggle to adapt one’s ideas to a new reality appeared to be too much of a challenge for American politicians.

Romney offers a perfect example of this when, with this metaphorical logic, he updates the notorious domino theory. For historical realists even at the time, the domino theory was already absurd, but it became a necessary part of American expansionist policy. Here is Romney’s modern version of it : “Failing to continue to support Ukraine would be like paying the cannibal to eat us last. If Mr. Putin, or any other nuclear power, can invade and subjugate with near impunity, then Ukraine would be only the first of such conquests.” Putin is clearly interested in meddling in geopolitical affairs, largely for economic reasons (i.e. trade relationships). He has never shown a developed taste for conquest.

The obsession the US has had since the Second World War with controlling events in the furthest corners of the world on the pretext that without that control the entire world order would collapse like a series of dominos, should have disappeared after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the communist menace. So, many have reasoned, should NATO have disappeared. The domino theory nevertheless made its appearance in a more simplified form during Bush’s Middle East wars with this famous: “We’re fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them here.”

In his new version of the domino theory, Romney appears to sense that thanks to the complication of the current war in Ukraine, Putin’s – i.e. Satan’s –  reach is already diminished, That is why Romney cleverly adds to the list of potential cannibals “any other nuclear power.” He most certainly isn’t thinking of India, Israel, France or the UK. The Middle Kingdom is in his sights. He knows how important it is to keep alive the prospect of US military action against China, the other “evil empire,” at which American nuclear weapons will in the future be aimed.

Romney continues with perhaps the most worrying facet of his strategy. “¸éłÜ˛ő˛őžą˛šâ€™s use of a nuclear weapon would unarguably be a redefining, reorienting geopolitical event. Any nation that chose to retain ties with Russia after such an outrage would itself also become a global pariah. Some or all of its economy would be severed from that of the United States and our allies.” A psychologist might detect that Romney is unconsciously counting on or hoping for Putin’s “illogical decision” of using nuclear weapons simply to provide the means of discrediting every nation in the world that refuses to fall in line with US policy.

Reviving Joe McCarthy’s bag of tricks

Always faithful to Cold War rhetoric, Romney manages in his op-ed to unearth another precious relic of that extraordinary moment in American history known as the McCarthy era. I’m referring to the feverish anti-communist campaign spearheaded in the early 1950s by Senator Joe McCarthy. At a broader political level the staging, production and broadcast of a campaign that was destined to mark US political culture profoundly in the ensuing decades was the handiwork of the two Dulles brothers: John Foster, President Eisenhower’s Secretary of State, and Alan, whom Truman had nominated director of the CIA where he remained until 1961, when he was forced to resign following the Bay of Pigs fiasco.

The political culture known as MCCarthyism was coordinated at another level by J Edgar Hoover, the head and virtual lifetime dictator of the FBI. It occasionally  benefitted from the valuable input of Edward Bernays, the father of Public Relations. This group of  ideological engineers colluded to foster a quasi-murderous zeal, eagerly put on display in the media, designed to brand any non-conventional thinker or economic actor as a traitor. 

The group employed its linguistic creativity to produce insults implying treason such as “egghead,” “pinko” and “commie.” Eggheads were simply useful idiots who spent too much time reflecting on issues. The bald, intellectual Democratic presidential candidate, Adlai Stevenson, apparently provided the model for the egghead moniker. Thinking too much distracts from the essential task of opposing the enemy. Pinkos and commies were the enemy. 

Romney hasn’t forgotten the lessons or even the vocabulary of his youth. Today he boldly forecasts apocalyptic punishment for a heinous category of nations he groups together as “Russia and its fellow travelers.” In the golden age of McCarthyism the zealots applied the label “fellow travelers” to individuals who weren’t quite communists or communist sympathizers, but who failed to conform with the mob mentality they were promoting. Now, seven decades later, Romney innovates by applying it to entire nations. He relishes the idea that once the US has meted out all the appropriate punishments to these refractory rebels, they will suffer “much worse.” He is referring not to random individuals, but to every nation that has resisted aligning with the sweeping sanctions the US has imposed on Russia. Those nations in question today represent approximately two-thirds of humanity.

Drawing on the hallowed Puritan tradition of hellfire preaching from the pulpit, Romney leaves no doubt about where his thought processes are heading as he imagines the weeping and gnashing of teeth these fellow travelers’ will be condemned to experience. “It could,” he tells us, “ultimately be economic Armageddon,” adding this proviso, “but that is far preferable to nuclear Armageddon.” In other words, all these nations have been weighed in the balance and found wanting. They accordingly merit the Armageddon the US intends, with the zeal of an Amazon drone, to deliver to their doorstep. 

Romney is careful to remind his readers that he does have vestiges of humanism that temper his Savanarola style fatalism. Out of humanitarian pity, the suffering inflicted on the untold masses across the globe hopefully may be merely economic instead of nuclear. Count on the Americans to hold back and not pull the trigger, if it is at all possible. Still, at the back of Romney’s mind, it is difficult not to hear an echo of Donald Trump’s notorious question, “if we have nuclear weapons why can’t we use them?”

Before concluding, Romney unearths one more synonym to describe the villains inside or outside Russia whose depravity has prevented them from embracing the forthcoming American Apocalypse. The same people he called fellow travelers he now refers to as “enablers.” They too clearly merit a punishment commensurate with their crime of non-conformity with the geopolitics of the United States. “Mr. Putin and his enablers,” Romney warns, “should have no doubt that our answer to such depravity would be devastating.”

What does Romney mean by “devastating?” Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, Chile, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen and now even Ukraine – that might have been spared war through negotiations – all stand as witnesses to the very real capacity of the United States, through its typically inflexible foreign policy, to wreak devastation on an unrivaled scale. Qualms do not appear in abundance in recent or even ancient US history.

Every politician in the US knows that voters have no means of understanding anything that happens beyond the nation’s borders. Their own problems or simply ambitions are too important to justify the effort required to show an interest in other people’s struggles. If, as is happening today, encouraged by their media to empathize with a specific group of people identified as friendly, white and seemingly appreciative of US ideology, Americans will demonstrate sympathy and offer support, but will remain steadfastly indifferent to and unaware of the deeper causes of the tragic scenes presented for their viewing.

What the American public wants to hear and what their media naturally agrees to serve up to them is the kind of vision Mitt Romney has put forward in his op-ed. Since the beginning of the Cold War, it has consisted of reminding Americans that their accumulated wealth, mobilized by generations of politicians to ensure the capacity for devastation on an unheard of scale, serves as the means not only of ensuring a “world order” consistent with American beliefs, but also as the effective means of holding in check all those who express the slightest doubt about the justice of that order. 

The original Cold War turned around the easily identified contrast between, on one side, a bundle of professed ideals that included doing good while promoting a dominant culture of Judeo-Christian theistic capitalist individualism and, on the other, evil, amoral, atheistic communist collectivism indifferent to the needs of its own citizens. It was from that distinction – theological, economic and cultural, in living color on the American side and in black and white on the Soviet side  – that McCarthyism drew its energy.

The ideological anemia of the New McCarthyism 

Growing up in the 1950s as a Mormon with a father who was once a credible candidate in the Republican presidential bid, Romney unconsciously assimilated all the memes associated with McCarthyism. His discourse today reveals that the McCarthyite spirit is still alive and kicking. The singular problem today is that all the supposedly rational reasons for condemning Russia that existed during his school days have disappeared. 

The folksy democracy of his youth, celebrated in Frank Capra movies, has morphed into  a shameless oligarchy. The wealth of the nation, once made available for ambitious social projects and infrastructure, is now controlled by a smattering of hyper-wealthy individuals focused on expanding and defending their wealth. Like American politicians, they have learned to follow the old cultural models and pay lip service to the official religion when required, perpetuating the image of the US as a good Samaritan Christian nation committed to individual liberties and the general welfare. The fact that Pope Francis is routinely called a socialist or communist – i.e. a fellow traveler – to the extent that he categorically condemns militarism and preaches human solidarity, shows that in the official ideology the faith that separated God-fearing America from atheistic Russia is now focused on the business interests of the nation rather than the teachings of the New Testament.

Today Russia is neither officially atheistic, communist nor collectivist. But it still manages to qualify for the title of embodiment of evil. Thanks to a mysterious cultural reflex, it is still Russia – and therefore the Antichrist – that appears in Americans’ minds as a font from which evil will always exude. And so Romney, the “moderate politician” (meaning blandly representative, conformist and self-satisfied) is free to develop his not very moderate apocalyptic reasoning as if we were back in the 50s and he belonged to the John Birch Society, deemed extremist even by Republicans at the time. Moreover, he expects it to work, and so apparently does The New York Times.

But, in the meantime, various streams of more or less polluted water have passed under the bridge. Times have changed. It isn’t certain that the American people are as interested in nuclear brinkmanship as politicians like Romney and Biden seem to be. Even the American public may lose patience at some point. Biden’s own ratings are one indication. Americans do not trust any of their institutions and, according to recent polls, have already lost in what the media call “the direction of the country.” Some call that not so much the trend of the moment but the arc of history.

Romney’s ultimate solution to the complex problems that face us consists essentially of promising future devastation if our will should not be done. But for a good part of humanity including many Americans, that devastation has already begun and is running its course. The consumer society that has long been the ultimate aim of the American Dream is experiencing some serious problems fulfilling its mission of loyally consuming the widest range of consumables. Romney evokes the very real danger that Putin, if pushed too far, might resort to a nuclear response. He’s right about the risk, which is why responsible members of the governing class should also be inclined to focus on assessing and finding the means to reduce that risk rather than exacerbating the tension and the sense of desperation among the people that simply increases it.

Like many voices in the Western media today, Romney may believe that Putin has become a psychiatric case. Promising devastation is probably not the most appropriate solution a decent psychiatrist would recommend.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Mitt Romney’s Excessive Evening appeared first on 51łÔšĎ.

But there is a more insidious reality at work beneath the surface of this classic morality play, and that is the role of the United States and NATO in setting the stage for this crisis.

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US President Joe Biden has called the Russian invasion “,” but that is far from the truth. In the four days leading up to the invasion on February 24, ceasefire monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) a dangerous increase in ceasefire violations in the east of Ukraine. Most were inside the de facto borders of the Donetsk (DPR) and Luhansk (LPR) regions of Donbas in eastern Ukraine, consistent with incoming shell-fire by Ukrainian government forces. With nearly OSCE ceasefire monitors on the ground, it is not credible that these were all “false flag” incidents staged by separatist forces, as American and British officials claimed.

Whether the shell-fire was just another escalation in the long-running civil war in eastern Ukraine or the opening salvos of a new government offensive, it was certainly a provocation. But the Russian invasion has far exceeded any proportionate action to defend the DPR and LPR from those attacks, making it disproportionate and illegal. 

The New Cold War

In the larger context, though, Ukraine has become an unwitting victim and proxy in the resurgent Cold War against Russia and China, in which the United States has surrounded both countries with military forces and offensive weapons, withdrawn from a whole series of arms control treaties, and refused to negotiate resolutions to rational security concerns raised by Russia.

In December 2021, after a summit between Biden and his counterpart in Moscow, Vladimir Putin, Russia submitted a draft for a new mutual security treaty between Russia and NATO, with nine articles to be negotiated. They represented a reasonable basis for a serious exchange. The most pertinent to the crisis was simply to agree that NATO would not accept Ukraine as a new member, which is not on the table in the foreseeable future in any case. But the Biden administration brushed off ¸éłÜ˛ő˛őžą˛šâ€™s entire proposal as a nonstarter, not even a basis for negotiations.

So, why was negotiating a mutual security treaty so unacceptable that Biden was ready to risk thousands of Ukrainian lives — although not a single American life — rather than attempt to find common ground? What does that say about the relative value that Biden and his colleagues place on American vs. Ukrainian lives? And what is this strange position that the United States occupies in today’s world that permits a US president to risk so many Ukrainian lives without asking Americans to share their pain and sacrifice? 

The breakdown in US relations with Russia and the failure of Biden’s inflexible brinkmanship precipitated this war, and yet his policy externalizes all the pain and suffering so that Americans can, as another president once said, “go about their business” and keep shopping. ´Ąłžąđ°ůžąłŚ˛šâ€™s European allies, who must now house hundreds of thousands of refugees and face spiraling energy prices, should be wary of falling in line behind this kind of “leadership” before they, too, end up on the front line.

NATO

At the end of the Cold War, the Warsaw Pact, NATO’s Eastern European counterpart, was dissolved. NATO should have been too since it had achieved the purpose it was built to serve. Instead, NATO has lived on as a dangerous, out-of-control military alliance dedicated mainly to expanding its sphere of operations and justifying its own existence. It has expanded from 16 countries in 1991 to a total of 30 countries today, incorporating most of Eastern Europe, at the same time as it has committed aggression, bombings of civilians and other war crimes. 

In 1999, NATO launched an illegal war to militarily carve out an independent Kosovo from the remnants of Yugoslavia. NATO airstrikes during the Kosovo War killed hundreds of civilians, and its leading ally in the war, Kosovan President Hashim Thaci, is now on trial at The Hague charged with committing appalling war under the cover of NATO bombing, including murder, torture and enforced disappearances. 

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Far from the North Atlantic, NATO joined the United States in its 20-year war in Afghanistan and then attacked and destroyed Libya in 2011, leaving behind a failed , a continuing refugee crisis and violence and chaos across the region.

In 1991, as part of a Soviet agreement to accept the reunification of East and West Germany, Western leaders assured their Soviet counterparts that they would not expand NATO any closer to Russia than the border of a united Germany. At the time, US Secretary of State James Baker promised that NATO would not advance “one inch” beyond the German border. The West’s broken promises are spelled out for all to see in 30 declassified published on the National Security Archive website.

The INF Treaty

After expanding across Eastern Europe and waging wars in Afghanistan and Libya, NATO has predictably come full circle to once again view Russia as its principal enemy. US nuclear weapons are now based in five NATO countries in Europe: Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Turkey, while France and the United Kingdom already have their own nuclear arsenals. US “missile defense” systems, which could be converted to fire offensive nuclear missiles, are based in Poland and Romania, including at a in Poland only 100 miles from the Russian border. 

Another Russian in its December proposal was for the US to join a moratorium on intermediate-range nuclear forces (INF) in Europe. In 2019, both the United States and Russia withdrew from a 1987 treaty, under which both sides agreed not to deploy short- or intermediate-range nuclear missiles. Donald Trump, the US president at the time, pulled out of the INF treaty on the advice of his national security adviser, John Bolton.

None of this can justify Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, but the world should take Russia seriously when it says that its conditions for ending the war and returning to diplomacy are Ukrainian neutrality and disarmament. While no country can be expected to completely disarm in today’s armed-to-the-teeth world, neutrality could be a serious long-term option for Ukraine. 

Neutrality

There are many successful precedents, like Switzerland, Austria, Ireland, Finland and Costa Rica. Or take the case of Vietnam. It has a common border and serious maritime disputes with China, but Vietnam has resisted US efforts to embroil it in its Cold War with Beijing. Vietnam remains committed to its long-standing “” policy: no military alliances, no affiliation with one country against another, no foreign military bases and no threats or uses of force. 

The world must do whatever it takes to obtain a ceasefire in Ukraine and make it stick. Maybe UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres or a special representative could act as a mediator, possibly with a peacekeeping role for the United Nations. This will not be easy. One of the still unlearned lessons of other conflicts is that it is easier to prevent war through serious diplomacy and a genuine commitment to peace than to end war once it has started.

If or when there is a ceasefire, all parties must be prepared to start afresh to negotiate lasting diplomatic solutions that will allow all the people of Ukraine, Russia, the United States and other NATO members to live in peace. Security is not a zero-sum game, and no country or group of countries can achieve lasting security by undermining the security of others. 

The United States and Russia must also finally assume the responsibility that comes with stockpiling over 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons and agree on a plan to start dismantling them, in compliance with the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the new UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.

Lastly, as Americans condemn ¸éłÜ˛ő˛őžą˛šâ€™s aggression, it would be the epitome of hypocrisy to forget or ignore the many recent wars in which the United States and its allies have been the aggressors: in Kosovo, Afghanistan, Iraq, , Somalia, Palestine, Pakistan, Libya, Syria and Yemen. 

We sincerely hope that Russia will end its illegal, brutal invasion of Ukraine long before it commits a fraction of the massive killing and destruction that the United States has committed in its own illegal wars.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

The post The US Leaves Ukraine to Fight New Cold War With Russia appeared first on 51łÔšĎ.

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

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

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

°Ő´Çťĺ˛š˛â’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Shared enemy:

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

Contextual Note

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

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

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

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

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

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

Historical Note

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

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

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

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

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

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

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The 51łÔšĎ Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

The post An Expert Explains Why We Need a New Cold War With China appeared first on 51łÔšĎ.

NATO has been facing an existential crisis ever since the end of the Cold War. To prove its continuing relevance, it has created a website called that is so extreme in its promotion of hyperreality, it awkwardly calls attention to the absurdity that NATO has become. The hub defines its goal as the defense of an enlightened establishment that is permanently threatened by evil forces hiding behind a sinister curtain. The Iron Curtain that defined the Cold War has now yielded to a new Digital Curtain.

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The hub wishes to simulate the meeting of great minds and become a “place where experts collaborate and design solutions meeting NATO challenges. By bringing together people with different backgrounds or perspectives, the Innovation Hub generates a better understanding of the issues, and fosters innovation.” It aims at no less than a collective epiphany.

This lede stressing open collaboration introduces the initiative’s true goal: “BOOST INNOVATION IN SECURITY AND DEFENSE.” The website encourages everyone to join in the constructive dialogue to defend a new entity it doesn’t bother to define. It isn’t the territorial integrity of Western nations or even the persistence of the neoliberal ideology that guides those nations. The innovative language they use to describe it reveals what it truly is: hyperreality.

The Innovation Hub seeks to develop “the New Third Operational Dimension, besides the cyber and the physical ones.” What can that be? Until very recently, war was essentially the physical activity pitting armies against armies on the battlefield. That dimension still exists, even if the trend is either to hide it from view by relying on drones or withdrawing troops from remaining battlefields.

More recently, the clamor produced by swords striking armor, bullets, bombs and buzzing drones has been complemented by cyberwarfare — the “Second Operational Dimension.” Potentially more harmful than physical warfare because it can be deployed everywhere and remains invisible during and after its effective strike on a target, cyberwarfare appears regularly in the news.

From force of habit or simply cognitive lapse, the media usually attributes identified examples of cyberwarfare to Russia, though occasionally also to China. Rarely does the media mention the true world champion of cyberwarfare — Israel. When Israel is mentioned, it is never with the intent to inspire fear.

The Innovation Hub seeks not only to prepare us for the upcoming “Third Operational Dimension,” but also to get us involved in building it. NATO seems to see this effort as a kind of social media dedicated to a truly hyperreal idea of defense and national security.

Scrolling down the page, we see our first hint of the centerpiece of this new third dimension with this explanation: “Cognitive warfare embodies the idea of combat without fighting. Mastering the cognitive domain constitutes a new major stake indispensable to the generation of combat power …  Its very essence is to seize control of places, groups, units, organizations, and nations, by targeting and affecting the brains of their personnel, civilian as well as łžžąąôžąłŮ˛š°ů˛â.”

°Ő´Çťĺ˛š˛â’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Cognitive warfare:

The idea put forward by people who believe that with the help of modern technology, and Big Data in particular, they can reduce other people and even entire populations to a state of brainless compliance similar to their own

Contextual Note

Promoters of hyperreality find themselves faced with the monumental task of defining an elaborate belief system designed to cancel and replace the public’s existing perception of reality. The concept of cognitive warfare is a perfect example. It corresponds to nothing that has previously existed in the real world. In all cultures, cognition and warfare have always belonged to two opposed spheres. One was the domain of the clerical class, the other of the warrior class.

The average person might naively think that the idea of cognitive warfare describes the kind of intellectual battles that have always taken place within academic disciplines such as philosophy, psychology, history and the sciences. Realism vs. idealism or the big bang vs. the stable state theory might be examples of cognitive warfare.

Thinking in those terms is the kind of mistake people who persist on basing their reasoning on visible reality might make. The hyperrealists on the NATO team offer the true definition of cognitive warfare: “In cognitive warfare, the human mind becomes the battlefield. The aim is to change not only what people think, but how they think and act.” Instead of beginning with the reality of human cognition and exploring how knowledge may provoke conflict, they choose warfare (extreme conflictual violence) as their starting point. Knowing is subordinated to the need for physical aggression.

Traditionally, cognition refers to the human ability to apprehend reality. In its new hyperreal meaning, it signifies the acceptance of a substitute for reality. Cognition is the result of someone who can “seize control” of other people’s thinking. We might be tempted to think of it simply as hyper-propaganda. But instead of seeking to coax, persuade and influence, it seeks physical control.

It might justifiably be called the “great replacement” (of reality). Alas, that term has been co-opted by white supremacists to express their fear that mongrel races will soon be overturning white Anglo-European civilization. There may even be an unacknowledged link between the two.

The language of this new and improved hyper-propaganda reveals the scope of its ambition: “Within the military, expertise on anthropology, ethnography, history, psychology among other areas will be more than ever required to cooperate with the łžžąąôžąłŮ˛š°ů˛â.” These innovative, generously collaborative minds have chosen to “require” all the human sciences to align with military strategy. Isn’t that the bedrock principle of fascism?

The contrast they draw between first dimension warfare — dependent on bayonets, bazookas and nuclear bombs, built for an assault on human bodies — and the third dimension implies a shift toward a reliance on new technologies that include not only mass surveillance but the active control of human minds thanks to Big Data, artificial intelligence and virtual reality.

In their explanatory , the proponents of the third dimension, as they promote “a Critical Thinking Online course,” cite this fundamental priority: “Leverage technologies, including VR and AI to develop tools in support of better cognition and better decision making.” Sounds liberating, but this only becomes possible because “the ability to manipulate the human mind employing neurocognitive science techniques and tools is constantly and quickly increasing.”

Their message is simple: We must embrace a new generation of manipulation. “This complements the more traditional techniques of manipulation through information technology and information warfare, making the human increasingly targeted in the cognitive warfare.”

The NATO thinkers will object that their focus on this type of aggressive hyperreality is defensive. They have no intention to use it, only to combat adversaries who use it. But, as was the case in the Cold War arms race, there is a real enthusiasm for being the one with the most destructive force and the willingness to use it.

Historical Note

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was created in 1949, in the aftermath of World War II, to contain the Soviet Union’s ambition to spread its influence in Eastern Europe — obtained thanks to the Potsdam Agreement — across the rest of Europe. In 1955 the Soviet Union responded to NATO’s integration of West Germany by forming the Warsaw Pact. This concretized what British Prime Minister Winston Churchill had once metaphorically described as the “iron curtain.”

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, NATO’s raison d’être disappeared. Instead of assuming that Europe, no longer divided into two ideological camps, could focus on engaging in peaceful construction, the Western powers decided not only to maintain NATO but to use it to stretch the tentacles of the Western economy into Eastern Europe. That kept alive the spark that led to today’s new Cold War that still includes Russia.

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But with China challenging Washington’s global hegemony, things get even more complicated, requiring NATO to react in an appropriate way. In such a geopolitical environment, there is obviously no other choice than to establish a new hegemony built on hyperreality.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51łÔšĎ.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

The post NATO’s Innovation of Mind Control appeared first on 51łÔšĎ.

Competing Doctrines in a New Cold War

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What is this page-turner that has been regularly featured by US media, with two separate cases just in the past month? It’s called the Havana syndrome. Its name suggests a tropical thriller written by Agatha Christie, a case only Hercule Poirot will be able to solve. The reader has no idea how many chapters there will be because they just keep coming, always in a new location. After Cuba, China and even Washington, the latest cases were in and now.

With suspense constantly building, readers of the news eagerly anticipate the day in an unspecified future when they will learn not only the identity of the culprit, Agatha Christie-style, but especially the nature of the weapon itself. The Havana syndrome has effectively replaced in the public’s psyche the much more prosaic mystery of the monster of Loch Ness that enchanted previous generations. In the age of artificial intelligence and terrorist threats, paleozoological mysteries can no longer compete with technological mysteries.

The New York Times the elusive conundrum again on September 20. The Times has been on the case persistently in recent years, apparently motivated by the hope that Russia will be identified as the culprit, meaning there may even be a link with Russiagate. The Times follows a now well-established pattern of neo-Cold War logic adapted to the age of Donald Trump. If a villain is hiding in the shadows, Americans have been trained since the Cold War to believe it must be Russia. But that may be changing.

Now, with a new Cold War brewing, suspicion can be transferred to the Chinese. On the other hand, a good detective aware of Mossad’s success at using artificial intelligence (AI) to an Iranian scientist, might begin to suspect the Israelis. But that wouldn’t even cross the mind of a Times journalist, because the Israelis are friends.

Initially, the victims who complained of the syndrome were low-level diplomats or CIA operatives. But now the stakes have been raised as members of the entourage of high-level officials and seasoned diplomats are being targeted. The Times’ national security reporter, Julian E. Barnes, recounts the : “An intelligence officer traveling in India this month with the C.I.A. director reported symptoms consistent with the so-called Havana syndrome, signaling a possible escalation in the mysterious incidents that have affected American officials since 2016, current and former officials said.”

°Ő´Çťĺ˛š˛â’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Escalation:

A useful military term signifying a sudden deliberate increase of offensive force that creative journalists can apply to non-military situations, suggesting the presence of evil intentions on the part of mysterious actors

Contextual Note

After warning of escalation, Barnes is careful to state what every honest article on the Havana syndrome must acknowledge: that, despite the persistent obsession with Russia, “intelligence agencies have yet to come to any firm conclusions.” In fact, nobody really knows anything. “Theories abound, including that the injuries are byproducts of surveillance technology or that they are deliberate attempts to inflict harm, but all remain unproven so far,” he writes. In other words, nothing new under the sun. So why print the article? Because it reminds readers that they need to be worried and reassures them that the opportunity will exist to tune into the next episode.

The syndrome is a journalist’s dream. It has been called an “,” while at the same time, its mystery is so deep and the facts around it so confusing that even if an article reveals nothing new, it keeps the sense of worry alive. The public needs its daily dose of fear and few stories have the capacity of the Havana syndrome to fulfill that need. A week ago, between reporting the Vietnam incident in August and India’s in September, The New York Times with the title, “Pentagon Asks Personnel to Report Any Symptoms of Mysterious Ailments.” It served no other purpose than to confirm the need to feel afraid.

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Establishment journalism loves stories that present a continuing series of fear-inspiring facts that no one can make sense of, but about which the hope exists that the political, military and scientific authorities will decipher their meaning and apply a solution. It’s the formula of a Hollywood catastrophe movie. Now, after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and the growing realization that military campaigns are doomed not just to fail but also to aggravate the problems they set out to solve, the media need to restore confidence in the government’s and the defense industry’s capacity to respond to less conventional sources of fear.

Historical Note

The world is entering a new phase of history in which human intelligence has less and less access to facts or even authentic emotions. Society requires its media — including social media — to feed it the stories that structure an increasingly artificial understanding of the world. The intelligence of reporters of the news in the media has itself already become artificial. The stories they produce are crafted to the needs of a targeted audience. But soon it will no longer be the dialogue between journalists and their editors in the news bureaus that produces the news we read. AI will more efficiently do both the strategizing and the writing. The journalist’s job will be to find a way of tweaking the story to make it appear human.

In the coming decade, AI will increasingly become the tool nations use to accomplish their strategic goals designed to further their own interests while awaiting the , when AI will dictate and control the purpose of nations themselves. 

Technology is already proving to be the secret to conducting even acts that until now only enterprising humans could accomplish. The New York Times tells the edifying of “The Scientist and the A.I.-Assisted, Remote-Control Killing Machine,” perhaps the first high-profile assassination managed and executed by AI.

Israel demonstrated this innovation in November 2020 when it sought to eliminate an Iranian nuclear physicist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh. Instead of employing its well-trained assassins to carry out the job, it mobilized an AI system to pilot a lethal weapon targeting the scientist.

The Iranians had warned Fakhrizadeh of the constant danger that Israel represented for Iranian scientists. The Times article recounts how Fakhrizadeh refused the very idea of living his life in a state of permanent terror due to threats from a foreign country. The article describes the scientist’s choice of lifestyle in these terms: “Mr. Fakhrizadeh wanted to live a normal life. He craved small domestic pleasures: reading Persian poetry, taking his family to the seashore, going for drives in the countryside.”

That sounds innocent enough, but Israel knew there was a job to be done and would not be deterred by sentiments. “Convinced that Mr. Fakhrizadeh was leading ąő°ů˛š˛Ô’s efforts to build a nuclear bomb, Israel had wanted to kill him for at least 14 years,” The Times reports. The fact that Israel was “convinced” in its gut that the scientist was up to evil business was enough to justify mobilizing AI to do a job some human beings might be loath to do.

The Times describes in detail how the Israeli hit squad, situated more than 1,000 miles away, set up a Nissan pickup truck equipped with a 7.62-mm sniper machine gun and used AI to pull the trigger and kill Fakhrizadeh, who was driving his own car. If Israel’s AI can actually eliminate living human beings at a distance, it stands to reason that the media’s AI will soon be capable of carrying out its essential work that consists of stoking the public’s paranoia without requiring human journalists. After the forever wars, the forever Havana syndrome story may define the media’s future.

*[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 51łÔšĎ.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

The post The Media Is Suffering From the Havana Syndrome appeared first on 51łÔšĎ.

As it happens, she’s slightly younger than me, but still getting up there, and we were chatting on the phone about our world, about the all-too-early first  near Los Angeles, the intensifying  across the West and Southwest, the increasing nightmare of  in the Atlantic and so on. We were talking about the way in which we humans — and we Americans, in particular (though you could  in the Chinese without a blink) — have been wreaking fossil-fuelized havoc on this planet and what was to come.

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And, oh yes, we were talking about our own deaths, also to come at some unknown future moment but one not as far away as either of us might wish. My friend then said to me abashedly, “I sometimes think it’s lucky I won’t be here to see what’s going to happen to the world.” And even as she began stumbling all over herself apologizing for saying such a thing, I understood exactly what she meant. I had had the very same thought and sense of shame and horror at even thinking it — at even thinking I would, in some strange sense, get off easy and leave a world from hell to my children and grandchildren. Nothing, in fact, could make me sadder.

And you know what’s the worst thing? Whether I’m thinking about that “destroyer” in the Strait of Taiwan or the destruction of planet Earth, one thing is clear enough: It wouldn’t have to be this way.

China on the Brain

Now, let’s focus on the Curtis Wilbur for a moment. And in case you hadn’t noticed, US President Joe Biden and his foreign-policy team have China on the . No surprise there, though, only history. Don’t you remember how, when Biden was still vice-president, President Barack Obama announced that, in foreign and especially military policy, the US was planning a “pivot to Asia”? His administration was, in other words, planning on leaving this country’s war-on-terror disasters in the greater Middle East behind (not that he would actually prove capable of doing so) and refocusing on this planet’s true rising power. Donald Trump would prove similarly eager to dump ´Ąłžąđ°ůžąłŚ˛šâ€™s greater Middle Eastern wars (though he, too, failed to do so) and refocus on Beijing —  first, but  not far behind.

Now, as the US  its last troops from Afghanistan, the Biden team finds itself deep in its own version of a pivot-to-Asia strategy, with its collective foreign-policy brain remarkably focused on challenging China (at least until Israel briefly got in the way).

Think of it as a kind of pandemic of anxiety, a fear that, without a major refocus, the US might indeed be heading for the imperial scrapheap of history. In a sense, this may prove to be the true Achilles’ heel of the Biden era. Or put another way, the president’s foreign-policy crew seems, at some visceral level, to fear deeply for the America they’ve known and valued so, the one that was expected to loom invincibly over the rest of the planet once the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991; the imperial power our politicians () had long hailed as the greatest, most “exceptional” nation on the planet; the with â€œthe finest fighting force that the world has ever known” (Obama), aka “the greatest force for freedom in the history of the world” (George W. Bush).

We’re talking, of course, about the same great power that, after almost 20 years of disastrous wars, drone strikes, and counterterror operations across vast stretches of the planet, looks like it is sinking fast, a country whose political parties can no longer agree on anything that matters. In such a context, let’s consider for a moment that flu-like China obsession, the one that leaves Washington’s politicians and military leaders with strikingly high temperatures and an irrational urge to send American warships into distant waters near the coast of China, while regularly upping the ante, militarily and politically.

In that context, here’s an obsessional fact of our moment: These days, it seems as if President Biden can hardly appear anywhere or talk to anyone without mentioning China or that sinking country he now heads and that sinking feeling he has about it. He did it the other week in an  with David Brooks when, with an obvious on-the-page shudder, he told The New York Times columnist, “We’re kind of at a place where the rest of the world is beginning to look to China.” Brrr… it’s cold in here (or maybe too hot to handle?) in an increasingly chaotic, still partly Trumpian, deeply divided Washington and in a country where, from  the vote to  the teaching of history to  the carrying of unlicensed weapons, democracy is looking ill indeed.

Oh, and that very same week when the president talked to Brooks, he went to the Coast Guard Academy to address its graduating class and promptly began  â€” yes! — that crucial, central subject for Washingtonians these days: freedom of navigation in the South China Sea. (“When nations try to game the system or tip the rules in their favor, it throws everything off balance,” Biden said. “That’s why we are so adamant that these areas of the world that are the arteries of trade and shipping remain peaceful — whether that’s the South China Sea, the Arabian Gulf, and, increasingly, the Arctic.”) You didn’t know, did you, that a guided-missile destroyer, not to speak of aircraft carrier battle groups, and other naval vessels had been anointed with the job of keeping “freedom of navigation” alive halfway across the planet or that the US Coast Guard simply guards our coastlines.

These days, it should really be called the Coasts Guard. After all, you can find its members “guarding” coasts ranging from  in the Persian Gulf to the. Evidently, even the coast of the island of Taiwan, which, since 1949, China has always claimed as its own and where a subtle dance between Beijing and Washington has long played out, has become just another coast for guarding in nothing less than a new “partnership.” (“Our new agreement for the Coast Guard to partner with Taiwan,” said the president, “will help ensure that we’re positioned to better respond to shared threats in the region and to conduct coordinated humanitarian and environmental missions.”) Consider that a clear challenge to the globe’s rising power in what’s become ever more of a showdown at the naval equivalent of the OK Corral, part of an  new cold war between the US and China.

And none of this is out of the ordinary. In his late April address to Congress, for instance, President Biden anxiously  the assembled senators and congressional representatives that “we’re in a competition with China and other countries to win the 21^st century. … China and other countries are closing in fast.” In his own strange way, Trump exhibited similar worries.

What Aren’t We Guarding?

Now, here’s the one thing that doesn’t seem to strike anyone in Congress, at the Coast Guard Academy or at The New York Times as particularly strange: that American ships should be protecting “maritime freedom” on the other side of the globe, or that the Coast Guard should be partnering for the same. Imagine, just for a second, that Chinese naval vessels and their Coast Guard equivalent were patrolling our coasts, or parts of the Caribbean, while edging ever closer to Florida. You know just what an uproar of shock and outrage, what cries of horror would result. But it’s assumed that the equivalent on the other side of the globe is a role too obvious even to bother to explain and that our leaders should indeed be crying out in horror at China’s challenges to it.

It’s increasingly clear that, from  to the Taiwan Strait to the South China Sea to the , Washington is pushing China hard, challenging its positions big time and often in a military fashion. And no, China itself, whether in the South China Sea or elsewhere, is no angel. Still, the US military, while trying to leave its failed terror wars in the dust, is visibly facing off against that economically rising power in an ever more threatening manner, one that already seems too close to a possible military conflict of some sort. And you don’t even want to know what sort of warfare this country’s military leaders are now imagining there as, in fact, they did so long ago. (Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame only recently  that, according to a still-classified document, in response to the Chinese shelling of Taiwan in 1958, US military leaders seriously considered launching nuclear strikes against mainland China.)

Indeed, as US Navy ships are eternally sent to challenge China, challenging words in Washington only escalate as well. As Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks  in March, while plugging for an ever-larger Pentagon budget, “Beijing is the only competitor potentially capable of combining its economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to mount a sustained challenge to a stable and open international system… Secretary [of Defense Lloyd] Austin and I believe that the [People’s Republic of China] is the pacing challenge for the United States łžžąąôžąłŮ˛š°ů˛â.”

And in that context, the US Navy, the Air Force and the Coast Guard are all “pacing” away. The latest proposed version of an always-rising Pentagon budget, for instance,  $5.1 billion for what’s called the Pacific Deterrence Initiative, “a fund created by Congress to counter China in the Indo-Pacific region.” In fact, the US Indo-Pacific Command is also  $27 billion in extra spending between 2022 and 2027 for “new missiles and air defenses, radar systems, staging areas, intelligence-sharing centers, supply depots and testing ranges throughout the region.” And so it goes in the pandemic world of 2021.

Though seldom asked, the real question, the saddest one I think, the one that brings us back to my conversation with my friend about the world we may leave behind us, is: What aren’t we guarding on this planet of ours?

A New Cold War on a Melting Planet?

Let’s start with this. The  of rising and falling empires should be seen as a thing of the past. It’s true that, in a traditional sense, China is now rising and the US seemingly falling, at least economically speaking. But something else is rising and something else is falling, too. I’m thinking, of course, about rising global temperatures that, sometime in the next five years, have a  of exceeding the 1.5 degree Celsius limit (above the pre-industrial era) set by the 2015 Paris climate accords and what that future heat may do to the very idea of a habitable planet.

Meanwhile, when it comes to the US, the Atlantic hurricane season is only expected to worsen, the mega-drought in the Southwest to intensify — as fires burn  in previously wetter mountainous elevations in that region — and so on. Within this century, major coastal cities in  US and China  New Orleans, Miami,  and Hong Kong could find themselves flooded out by rising sea levels, thanks in part to the melting of  and . As for a rising China, that supposedly ultimate power of the future, even its leadership must know that parts of the north China plain, now home to 400 million people, could become quite literally  by century’s end due to heat waves capable of killing the healthy within hours.

In such a context, on such a planet, ask yourself: Is there really a future for us in which the essential relationship between the US and China — the  greenhouse gas emitters of this moment — is a warlike one? Whether a literal war results or not, one thing should be clear enough: If the two greatest carbon emitters can’t figure out how to cooperate instead of picking endless fights with each other, the human future is likely to prove grim and dim indeed. “Containing” China is the foreign-policy focus of the moment, a throwback to another age in Washington. And yet this is the very time when what truly needs to be contained is the overheating of this planet. And in truth, given human ingenuity, climate change should indeed be containable.

And yet the foreign-policy wing of the Biden administration and Congress — where Democrats are successfully  into the economy under the rubric of a struggle with China, a rare subject the Republicans can go all in on — seems focused on creating a future of eternal Sino-American hostility and endless armed competition. In the already overheated world we inhabit, who could honestly claim that this is a formula for “national security”?

Returning to the conversation with my friend, I wonder why this approach to our planet doesn’t seem to more people like an obvious formula for disaster. Why aren’t more of us screaming at the top of our lungs about the dangers of Washington’s urge to return to a world in which a “cold war” is a formula for success? It leaves me ever more fearful for the planet that, one of these days, I will indeed be leaving to others who deserved so much better.

*[This article was originally published by .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

The post What Planet Will Our Children and Grandchildren Inherit? appeared first on 51łÔšĎ.

Yes, I know, Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are now in charge of the US and waving their own little limbs wildly, trying  some of what needs to be done for this sad land of the disturbed, over-armed, sick and dying. But anyone who watched the scenes of Floridians  a Super Bowl victory, largely unmasked and cheering, shoulder to shoulder in the streets of Tampa, can’t help but realize that we are now indeed a roach nation, the still-wealthiest, most pandemically unmasked one on planet Earth.

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But don’t just blame Donald Trump. Admittedly, we’ve just passed through the Senate trial and acquittal of the largest political cockroach around. I’m talking about the president who,  that his  was in danger of being “” (“”) and was being rushed out of the Senate as a mob bore down on him, promptly tweeted: “Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution.”

Just imagine. The veep who had — if you don’t mind my mixing my creature metaphors here — toadied up to the president for four endless years was then given a functional death sentence by that same man. You can’t fall much deeper into personal roachdom than that. My point here, though, is that our all-American version of roacherie was a long time in coming.

Or put another way: unimaginable as The Donald might have seemed when he  that Trump Tower escalator in June 2015 to  his future “great, great wall,” denounce Mexican “rapists” and bid to make a whole country into his apprentices, he didn’t end up in the Oval Office for no reason. He was the , not the disease, though what a symptom he would prove to be — and when it came to diseases, what a nightmare beyond all imagining.

Let’s face it, whether we fully grasp the fact or not, we now live in a system, as well as a country, that’s visibly in an early stage of disintegration. And there lies a remarkable tale of history happening at warp speed, of how, in not quite three decades, the USS Enterprise of imperial powers was transformed into the USS Roach.

Once Upon a Time on Earth…

Return for a moment to 1991, almost two years after the Berlin Wall fell, when the Soviet Union finally imploded and the Cold War officially ended. Imagine that you had been able to show Americans then — especially the political class in Washington — that  of Trump statements and tweets interlarded with mob actions in the Capitol that the Democratic House impeachment managers used in their opening salvo against the former president. Americans — just about any of us — would have thought we were watching the most absurd science fiction or perhaps the single least reality-based bit of black comedy imaginable.

In the thoroughly self-satisfied (if somewhat surprised) Washington of 1991, the triumphalist capital of “the last superpower,” that video would have portrayed a president, an insurrectionary mob and an endangered Congress no one could have imagined possible — not in another nearly 30 years, not in a century, not in any American future. Then again, if in 1991 you had tried to convince anyone in this country that a walking Ponzi scheme(r) like Donald Trump could become president, no less be impeached twice, you would have been laughed out of the room.

After all, the US had just become the ultimate superpower in history, the last one ever. Left alone on this planet, it had a military beyond compare and an economy that was the heartland of a globalized system and the envy of the world. The Earth was — or at least to the political class of that moment seemed to be — ours for the taking, but certainly not for the losing, not in any imaginable future. The question then wasn’t keeping them out but keeping us in. No “” were needed. After all, Russia was a wreck. China was still emerging economically from the hell of the Maoist years. Europe was dependent on the US and, when it came to the rest of world, what else need be said? This was an American planet, pure and simple.

In retrospect, consider the irony. There had been talk then about a post-Cold War “peace dividend.” Who would have guessed, though, that dividends of any sort would increasingly go to the top 1% and that almost 30 years later, the US would functionally be a plutocracy overseen until a month ago by a self-professed ? Who would have imagined that the American version of a peace dividend would have been siphoned off by  than anyplace else on Earth and that, in those same years, inequality would reach , while poverty and  only grew? Who woulda guessed that whatever peace dividend didn’t go to the ultra-wealthy would  an ever-larger national security state and the industrial complex of weapons makers that surrounded it? Who woulda guessed that, in official post-Cold War Washington, peace would turn out to be the last thing on anyone’s mind, even though this country seemed almost disarmingly enemy-less? (Remember when the worst imaginable combination of enemies, a dreaded “,” would prove to be Iraq, Iran and North Korea, all embattled, distinctly tertiary powers?)

Who woulda guessed that a military considered beyond compare (and  to this day like ) would proceed to fight war after war, literally decades of conflict, and yet — except for the quasi-triumph of the first Gulf War against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq — achieve victory in none of them? Staggering  of taxpayer dollars would be spent on them, while those billionaires were given . Honestly, who would have guessed then that, on a planet lacking significant enemies, Washington, even six presidents later, would prove incapable of stopping fighting?

Who woulda guessed that, in September 2001, not Russia or communist China, but a tiny group of Islamic militants led by a rich Saudi extremist the US had  would send 19 (mostly Saudi) hijackers to directly attack the United States? They would, of course, cause death and mayhem, allowing President George W. Bush to launch an almost 20-year “global war on terror,” which still shows no sign of ending. Who woulda guessed that, in the wake of those 9/11 terror attacks, the son of the man who had presided over the first Gulf War (but stopped short of felling Iraqi autocrat Saddam Hussein) and the top officials of his administration would come to believe that the world was his oyster and that the US should dominate the greater Middle East and possibly the planet in a way previously unimaginable? Who would have imagined that he would invade Iraq (having done the same in Afghanistan a year and a half earlier), effectively helping to spread Islamic extremism far and wide, while creating a never-ending disaster for this country?

Who woulda guessed that, in 2009, in the wake of a Great Recession at home, the next president, Barack Obama, would order a massive “” of forces into Afghanistan, a war already eight years old? Tens of thousands of new troops, not to speak of contractors, CIA operatives and others would be sent there without faintly settling things.

By November 2016, when an antiquated electoral system gave the popular vote to Hillary Clinton but put Donald Trump, a man who promised to end this country’s “endless wars” () in the Oval Office, it should have been obvious that something was awry on the yellow brick road to imperial glory. By then, in fact, for a surprising number of Americans, this had become a land of grotesque inequality and lack of opportunity. And many of them would prove ready indeed to use their votes to send  to the country about their desire to Trump that very reality.

From there, of course, with no Wizard of Oz in sight, it would be anything but a yellow brick road to January 6, 2021, when, the president having  the results of the 2020 election, a mob would storm the Capitol. All of it and the impeachment fiasco to follow would reveal the functional definition of a failing democracy, one in which the old rules no longer held.

Exiting the Superpower Stage of History

And, of course, I have yet to even mention the obvious — the still-unending nightmare that engulfed the country early in 2020 and that, I suspect, will someday be seen as the true ending point for a strikingly foreshortened American century. I’m thinking, of course, of COVID-19, the pandemic disease that swept the country, infecting tens of millions of Americans and killing hundreds of thousands in a fashion unmatched anywhere else on the planet. It would even for a time  a president, while creating mayhem and ever more fierce division in unmasked parts of the country filled with civilians armed to the teeth, swept up in conspiracy theories and at the edge of who knew what.

Call it a sign from the gods or anything you want, but call it startling. Imagine a disease that the last superpower handled so much more poorly than countries with remarkably fewer resources. Think of it as a kind of judgment, if not epitaph, on that very superpower.

Or put another way: Not quite 30 years after the Soviet Union exited the stage of history, we’re living in a land that was itself strangely intent on heading for that same exit — a crippled country led by a 78-year-old president, its system under startling pressure and evidently beginning to come apart at the seams. One of its political parties is unrecognizable; its presidency has been stripped of a fully functioning Congress and is increasingly  in nature; its economic system plutocratic; its military still  across significant parts of the planet, while a possible  with a rising China is evidently on the horizon; and all of this on a planet that itself, even putting aside that global pandemic, is visibly in the .

At the end of Franz Kafka’s classic tale, Gregor Samsa, now a giant insect with a rotting apple embedded in its back, dies in roach hell, even if also in his very own room with his parents and sisters nearby. Is the same fate in store, after a fashion, for the American superpower?

In some sense, in the Trump and COVID-19 years, the United States has indeed been unmasked as a roach superpower on a planet going to — again, excuse the mixed animal metaphors — the dogs. The expected all-American age of power and glory hasn’t been faintly what was imagined in 1991, not in a country that has shown remarkably few signs of coming to grips with what these years have truly meant.

Centuries after the modern imperial age began, it’s evidently coming to an end in a hell that Joe Biden and crew won’t be able to stop, even if, unlike the previous president, they’re anything but intent on thoroughly despoiling this land. Still, Trump or Biden, at this point it couldn’t be clearer that we need some new way of thinking about and being on this increasingly roach-infested planet of ours.

*[This article was originally published by .]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

The post The American Century Ends Early appeared first on 51łÔšĎ.