Showing posts with label foreign policy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label foreign policy. Show all posts

Saturday, January 6, 2024

Damned if You do, Damned if You Don't

The Cherokee trail of tears, and the Palestinian conundrum.

History is a long and sad tale of conflict, interspersed with better times when people can put their animosities aside. Just as economics deals in scarcity and its various solutions, history likewise turns on our inevitable drive towards overpopulation, with resulting scarcity and conflict. Occasionally, special technological, spiritual, organizational achievements- or catastrophes- may allow periods of free population growth with its attendant bouyant mood of generosity. But more commonly, groups of people covet each other's resources and plot ways to get them. This was one of the lessons of Malthus and Darwin, who addressed the deeper causes of what we see as historical events.

The "New World" provided Europeans with an unprecedented release for their excess populations, especially the malcontented, the desperate, and the ambitious. They rhapsodized about the "virgin" lands that lay open, generally dismissing the numerous and well-organized natives present all over these lands, as "savages", occupying a lower technological and theological level of existence. There were plenty of rationalizations put forth, like Christianizing the natives, or "civilizing" them. But the hypocrisy of these formulations becomes clear when you consider the fate of the Cherokees, one of the "five civilized tribes". 

By the early 1800's, a couple of centuries of contact had already gone under the bridge, (as narrated by Pekka Hämäläinen in "Indigenous continent"), and native Americans were all integrated to various degrees in trading networks that brought them European goods like guns, pots, knives, and novel practices like horse riding. The Cherokees, occupying the lower Appalachians and piedmont between what is now Georgia and Alabama, were more integrated than most, adopting European farming, living, schooling, and governing practices. They even owned African American slaves, and wrote themselves a US-modeled constitution in 1827, in the script devised the scholar Sequoya.

Did this "progress" toward assimilation with the European culture help them? Far from! Their excellence in farming, literacy, and government raised fears of competition in the white colonists, and the Georgia state government lobbied relentlessly for their removal. Andrew Jackson finally obliged. He pressured the Cherokees to re-open their status as a settled nation, devised a removal treaty with a minority party, and then sent all the Cherokees in the region (about 16,000) off on the Trail of Tears, to the barren lands of Oklahoma. These Cherokees lost roughly a quarter of their population along the way, in a brutal winter. Compare this with the partition of India, where about twelve percent of the refugees are thought to have perished, out of roughly 16 million total.

A small part of the annals of ethnic cleansing, US edition. Needless to say, the "Indian territory" ended up a lot smaller than originally promised.
 

Georgia was thus ethnically cleansed, and does not seem to experience a great deal of regret about it. The logic of power is quite simple- the winner gets the land and spoils. The loser is lucky to not be killed. That the Europeans were significantly more powerful than their native antagonists doesn't change the logic, though it might appeal to our empathy and nostalgia in retrospect. The Cherokees and other Native Americans might have been accepted into US society. They might have been given one or two states for their sovereign governments, as the Mormons managed. There were a lot of possibilities that might have made us a more interesting and diverse nation. But at the same time, most Native Americans participated fully in the politics of power, terrorizing each other, making slaves of each other, and killing each other. They were not innocents. So the fact that they came up against a stronger power was hardly a novelty, though in this case that power was blundering and cruel, shared very few of their cultural coordinates, and was highly hypocritical about its own.

All this comes to mind when viewing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel won the major Middle East wars that so dramatically emasculated the Palestinians, first in the civil war that left Jordan and Egypt in charge of the Palestinian areas, then in the 1967 war that left all these areas in Israeli hands. But what to do with them? On founding, Israel was a liberal, New Testament kind of country, with humanist values and lefty kibbutzim. The then-recent Holocaust also caused a bit of hesitance when it came to either killing or exiling the losing Palestinians. Indeed, given that its neighbors Jordan and Egypt lost these wars, it would have made some sense at that time to deport all the Palestinians, of which there were about one to two million. But rather than do that, or make a firm border, Israel immediately started encroaching into Palestinian territory with security areas and "settlements", and has set up an ever more elaborate, though selectively porous and self-serving, security and boundary system.

Both sides have a schizophrenic reaction to the other. On the Palestinian side, the psychology of losing has meant quietism and acquiescence by some, but resentment and militantcy by others. Both lead to a spiral of worse treatment, the weakness of the former inviting abuse, and the desperate depredations of the latter inciting revenge, "security" measures, and tighter occupation. The provocations by each side are unendurable, and thus the situation deteriorates. Yet, in the end, Israel has all the power and the responsibility to come up with a long term solution. Over the decades, Israel has morphed from its founding ethos into something much more conservative and Old Testament, less beholden to the humanisitic ideals of the post-WW2 period. The wanton killing, starvation, and collective punishment of Gaza makes visible this moral breakdown.

The Palestinians can't win either way, either through Hamas's implacable hatred and impotent attacks, nor through the acquiescence of the Palestinian National Authority, which, in thanks for its good behavior, has received the creeping expansion of Israeli "settlements" on its land. These now take up, according to a detailed map, about 1/3 to 1/2 of the land of the West Bank. Overall, the options are: 1) to expel the Palestinians outright, which appears to be, for Gaza at least, where Israeli policy is heading, (made more ironic by the realization by historians that the Biblical Exodus never actually took place), or 2) to continue to muddle along in a torturous occupation with creeping dispossession, or 3) to grant Palestine some kind of autonomy and statehood. Assimilation, (4), long dreamt of by some, seems impossible for a state that is fundamentally an ethnic (or theological) state, and whose whole raison d'etre is ethnic separation, not to even mention the preferences of the Palestinians. Though perhaps assimiliation without voting rights, in sort of semi-slavery or apartheid, is something the Israelies would be attracted to? Perhaps insignia will need to be worn by all Palestinians, sewn to their clothing?

Map of the West Bank of the Jordan, color coded by Palestinian marginal control in brown, and settler/Israeli control in red.

What should happen? Indigenous Americans were infected, decimated, hunted down, translocated, re-educated, and confined to a small and very remote system of reservations. Hopefully we have have progressed a little since then, as a largely European civilization, which is putatively shared by Israel. Thus the only way forward, as is recognized by everyone outside Israel, is the two-state solution, including a re-organization of the Palestinian territories into a final, clearly demarked, and contiguous state. Israel's current political system will never get there. But we can help the process along in a few ways.

First, it is disappointing to see our current administration shipping arms to Israel at a furious pace, only to see them used to kill thousands of innocent, if highly resentful, civilians. Israel has plenty of its own money to buy whatever it needs elsewhere. We need to put some limitations on our military and other aid relationships, to motivate change. (Though that raises the question of Israel's increasingly cozy relationship with Russia). Second, we should recognize Palestine as a state, and bring forward its integration into the international system. This will not resolve its borders or myriad security and territory issues viz Israel, but it would helpfully motivate things in that direction. Israel has constantly cried wolf about the lack of a credible partner to negotiate with, but that is irrelevant. Israel is perfectly capable of building the walls it needs to keep Palestinians at bay. But then it wants pliant workers as well, and a peaceful neighbor, security viz Jordan and Egypt, territorial encroachments, and many other things that are either destructive, or need to be negotiated. 

By far the most constructive thing that could be done is to freeze and re-organize the Jewish settlements and other periphernalia that have metastasized all over the West Bank. There is no future without a decent and fair solution in territory, which is the third big thing we need to press- our own detailed territorial plan for Palestine. For one thing, Israel could easily vacate the whole corridor / valley facing Jordan. That would give a consolidated Palestine a working border with a country that is now peaceful, quite well run, and friendly to both sides. There are countless possible maps. We just need to decide on one that is reasonably fair and force it on both sides, which are each, still after all these years, apparently unwilling to imagine a true peace. This means principally forcing it on Israel, which has been the dominant and recalcitrant party the entire time.

The Cherokees are now one of the largest indigenous populations in the US, at roughly a quarter million, with their own territory of about seven thousand square miles in Oklahoma. They have internal and partial sovereignty, which means that they deal with their own affairs on a somewhat independent basis, but otherwise are largely subject to most laws of the enclosing governments. The Cherokees could easily have been assimilated into the US. Only racism stood in the way, in a mindset that had long descended into a blind and adversarial disregard of all native Americans as "others", (the irony!), competitive with and less than, the newly arrived immigrants. We could have done much better, and one would like to think that, a hundred or a hundred and fifty years on, we would have.

In the end, the West (read as European civilization, as developed out of the ashes of World War 2) is either for or against wars of aggression, ethnic cleansing, apartheid, and human rights. Israel has won its wars, but never faced up to its responsibilities to the conquered Palestinians, and has tried to have it both ways, to be viewed by the world as a modern, enlightened state, even as it occupies and slowly strangles the people it defeated decades ago. 


  • Slovenly strategic thinking. But really, visionless long-term politics.
  • One Gazan speaks.
  • Settler colonialism.
  • Who's the victim?
  • Shades of Scientology ... the murky networks of the deep evangelical state.
  • In California, solar still makes sense.

Saturday, October 14, 2023

America as Hegemon

The imperial track record is not good, but the hegemonic track record isn't all that bad.

I was recently visiting the USS Hornet, a WW2-era aircraft carrier now turned into a museum on San Francisco bay. Soon after, it was Fleet Week, when the US navy pays a visit to the Bay Area in force, capped by a Blue Angels air show. An appalling display of naked militarism, granted. But also an occasion to reflect on our world-wide empire, the nature of American power, the competence of our military, and the state of things internationally.

It was a little weird, seeing decades-old technology swooping up and down the bay, which has been, beneath this benevolent protection, so restlessly advancing the technological frontier in totally different directions- computers, phones, applications, streaming, social media. Which trends are more important for America's place in the world? Which technologies rule? What are we doing with all this military hardware? I tend to have pretty conservative views on all this, that the US is right to stick with the post-WW2 consensus that our military should be as strong as possible, and partner with like-minded countries around the world to advance the vision of that era, of human rights and democracy for all. 

When we have tried to do this task directly, in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, however, it has generally turned out very badly. The Iraq war was misconceived from the start, and went downhill from there. Despite the laudible aim of sparing the Iraqi people from the continued depredations of Saddam Hussein, the lying and the incompetence at all levels made the cure far worse than the disease, with anarchy and hundreds of thousands dead. But let's write that one off as a George Bush-as-decider blunder.

The Afghanistan debacle is more painful to contemplate, in some ways, in what it says about our fundamental incompetence as an imperial power. Its rationale was straightforward, international support wide-spread, and our power there absolute in the opening acts of the takeover. Yet with all those advantages, we ended up, twenty years later, turning tail and watching our hand-built Afghan military melt away even before we left the country. The Russians had, frankly, a better record in their Imperial Afghan turn. 

It is an appalling track record, really. We evidently and thankfully do not have the advantage of ruthlessness that ancient Rome enjoyed, or modern day spoilers like Russia and Iran. But nor, apparently, do we have the advantage of friendly relations, favorable hearts & minds, and good intelligence. We were constantly led astray by "friends" with all kinds of personal vendettas and agendas. We pride ourselves in our independence from the rest of the world, and thus know little about it, which means that we go into these settings woefully unprepared, besotted by whatever ideological issue du jure is fashionable in the US. Our priorities in Afghanistan seemed to be to hold elections and educate women. But were those the right aims? And even if so, were they carried out with any kind of wisdom and sense of priorities and proper preparation?

Most concretely, our military relationship was a disaster. The US military tried to make the new Afghan military into its own image and graft onto it its own systems and capablities, creating a dependence that caused immediate failure when Afghans caught wind that we were really, actually, going to leave. This was an incredible result, especially after the US military had been responsible for "training" countless militaries all over the world for decades. 

What on earth were we doing? Similarly to the intelligence failures, the military failures came from some fundamental inability to understand the problem at hand, and work with the society as it existed. Instead of creating a sustainable, right-sized, and politically viable force, we just assumed we were the good guys and anything we did was good. There was an intrinsic tension between leaving the society as it was, thereby just funding a reboot of a Taliban-like (or northern alliance-like) force to keep the country pacified, and forcing some change, on social, political, economic, and technological levels, by changing the form of government and associated institutions. The US clearly did not invade Afghanistan to keep everything the same. But by overreaching, we essentially achieved nothing, allowing precisely the group we dethroned to come back into power, and casting the country back into its pre-invasion economic and social abyss. At least, thanks to other technological bequests of the US and the West, the Afghans now have cell phones.

So our military and other institutions do not come off well in any of their recent engagements. It is a case of losing every battle, while winning the war. For we still enjoy a hegemonic position, not thanks to our incompetent and technology-bedazzled military, but thanks to our friends, with whom we still lead the world. The core groups of the anglophone countries, NATO, and the East Asian alliances with Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan remain the core of the developed world, enjoying peaceful relations, democracy, and prosperous economies. China is advancing mightily to displace that grouping, but can not do so alone, and has little hope of doing so with streadfast friends like Russia and North Korea by its side.


Tiers of development. Blue is the developed world, yellow the middle-tier (developing), and red, the lower tiers of development (desperately developing, one might say).

The advantages of joining this developed core are so evident, that one wonders why it is under threat, both from the spoiler countries like Russia, and from endogenous authoritarians in the US, Poland, Hungary, India, and elsewhere. Two decades ago, we were looking at the end of history, when a futuristic society of peace and contentment would inherit the post-cold war earth, Russia would join NATO, and we would live happily ever after. But democracy is a cultural pattern that not everyone can easily understand, especially people who run (or want to run) undemocratic countries. As our framers understood so well, sovereign power is dangerous, and needs to be diluted among publicly competing branches, candidates, officers, and voters for it to be durably controlled, a bit like an atomic chain reaction. It takes wisdom and humility to figure that out and abide by such fundamental (constitutional) rules. 

It is tempting to take that power directly in hand, to satisfy a burning desire to "do something". In the US, a Republican minority has progressively lost its commitment to popular rule and the viability of contemporary governmental institutions. This is, incidentally, only possible because of their special relationship with sources of money and of media influence, without which they would have little popular purchase. In China, the communist party figured that, despite its own history of ravaging its country, it had developed a stable enough system of governance, and had obtained implicit popular support ... reflecting either brainwashing or acquiescence ... that it did not need actual elections or Western-style divided government. And in Russia, the bitterness of its descent into kleptocracy, under the poisoned banner of "capitalism", combined with various snubs from the West and general historical and cultural distance, rendered the idea of becoming a Western country too much to bear.

Each authoritarian system has, like an unhappy family, its own reasons, while the happy families of the West seem to, think along similar lines almost involuntarily, at least until some authoritarian mountebank comes along to solve all our problems by doing away with our safeguards. We are in a grand race to find out which systems are more stable. Those that rely on one person, such as the aging Vladimir Putin, for their decisions, or those that rely on popular will and a controlling set of institutions. The lessons of history could not be more stark, telling us that the former is the bigger crapshoot. Sometimes it turns out well, but more often not. That is why liberalism and deliberative democracy developed in the first place.

There remains a great deal of middle ground around the world. The muslim countries, for example, form a middle tier of populous and developing countries comprising, between Pakistan, Egypt, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Turkey, Iran, the Gulf states and others, well over a billion people. Our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan didn't help our relations there, but on the other hand, China is hardly making itself loved either, with its extermination campaign in Xinjiang. The cultural patterns of the Islamic world make it a particularly hard sell for Western democracy vs authoritariansim. Thus the brief Arab Spring came to a painful and inglorious end, mostly in whimpers, sometimes in horror. The liberatlization process took a long time in the West as well, measured perhaps from the French revolution, through the revolutions of 1848, culminating the aftermath of World War 2, with developmental delays in the Eastern European deep freeze. Ideas and new social patterns take a long time to take root, even when the templates (Switzerland, the US, ancient Greece) are at hand.

The American hegemony is little more than an agreement among like-minded and friendly nations to maintain their democratic systems, their prosperous (if environmentally rapacious and unsustainable) economies, and to largely offload their military responsibilities on the US. Whether those responsibilities have been well-stewarded is certainly doubtful. But up to this point, the agreement has been highly successful, mostly because the US has been a willing, stable, and vigorous anchor. Can the EU take our place? It is conceivable, but the EU is structurally less decisive. Bodies like the UN or the G20 are even less capable, in any executive sense. So, until we come up with something better, with a hot war against Russia and a cold one developing against China, and while other cultures are slowly chewing over their various problems with authoritarianism, it is critical that the US remain that anchor for the democratic developed world.


Saturday, July 15, 2023

Profiles in Pusillanimity

China, its communist party, and our free speech. Review of America 2nd, by Isaac Stone Fish.

Why are there always spoilers on the international scene? Some country is always unhappy with the way things are, and does its best to shake up the system. That shaking can be as detrimental to itself as to any other nation, but greed and ambition are always with us. After the Cold War, Russia descended into criminal chaos, with little real help from the West, and, once it had finally pulled itself together, turned around with veangence on its mind to refashion its imperial / security sphere. Russia could have been a nice country, tied into the European cultural and defense system. But no, the nostalgia for satellites and empire were just too strong. Putin spent a decade and more pulling Ukraine into the Russian orbit, only to be finally rebuffed in a people-powered revolution. Now he is trying to do it the hard way, and will take and keep whatever he can grab, little though that may be.

All that is peanuts compared with the game brewing between us and China. While Russia is playing for its neighborhood, the stakes in this next game are the whole world. That is, who runs the "international system", such as it is, and who plays the dominant role over the next century. The US has spent the last couple of decades trying to pull China into the existing trade and security system, in hopes that it would change into a "nice" country, aligning with the US, Europe and our developed allies all over the world in a quest for peace and lawful security. That has not happened. Even less so than with Russia, which at least has a long strand of pro-European sentiment, China learned its lessons from the Russian debacle, and its own Tienanmen square brush with democracy, and resolutely stayed in the Leninist camp- of absolute and unapologetic party power. It was hardly even tempted by European values.

In his book "America 2nd", Isaac Fish is eloquent about how deep China's resentments vs the West go. China suffered a century or more of humiliating vassalage over the 19th century, mired in poverty, opium, and weakness vs colonial powers. Then it suffered again at the hands of imperial Japan, and then several decades on its own account under Mao enduring the Western ideology of Marxism-Leninism. Maybe the last part is projected on the West as well, I am not sure. But China has plenty of ground to make up, and the last few decades of managed capitalism have been, as all can see, completely transformative.

China has already attained number one status in pollution, in population, (though later overtaken by India), and will soon attain that status in GDP. China is busy projecting its power and values via foreign aid, "Wolf Warrior" diplomacy, their takeover of the South China sea, propaganda, intelligence, and hard-ball economic warfare. The question Fish asks is- why are we supporting this policy and the propaganda of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)?

Recall the quaint old days of "linkage", when the US considered using some points of leverage with Russia to influence Soviet policies we didn't like? China has no such qualms. Everything is linked, and particularly, China's great economic engine is linked with CCP propaganda. US companies that say anything the CCP does not like lose business and IP. The NBA went through a humiliating episode when Darryl Morey of the Houston Rockets criticized CCP repression in Hong Kong. The CCP promptly cancelled NBA air time and business in China, until the NBA comprehensively groveled back into its good graces, and has ever since kept its mouth shut. Black lives may matter, but Tibetan lives, Uyghur lives, Hong Kong lives... not so much, when a totalitarian power waves its big stick.

China can make its own jingoistic media as well. This is Wolf Warrior 2, whose tag line runs: "Anyone who offends China, no matter how remote, must be exterminated."

Far more damaging is the capitulation of Hollywood. After dabbling with tailoring films for the Chinese market, it turned out that it was easier, and not at all influenced by CCP pressure to project a positive world wide image, for Hollywood studios to get fully on board with CCP censorship for all releases, not portraying China or Chinese in a negative way. So, after a brief and now thoroughly repressed few years of agitation on behalf of Tibet a couple of decades ago, the film industry, one of the premiere arms of American soft power, has been turned and cowed, into a lapdog of the CCP. Not a peep about Tibet any more, indeed DreamWorks brought out a thoroughly whitewashed Tibet-adjacent feature in 2019 that suggests everything there is perfectly fine, thanks to Han characters who protect the region.

Capitulation has been the rule across the business world, as each business faces the brutal choice of playing with the CCP, or being barred from Chinese markets, and even hobbled in other ways as China gains power abroad. But this has not been enough. China has been busily corrupting the US government itself, masterfully using former officials to press its case for Western acquiescence. Henry Kissinger is the pioneer in this effort, but former presidents and many other officials have spared no effort in setting up post-career "consultancies" that assiduously advise any and all comers that resistance is futile- China will rule the world and we must accommodate ourselves to that fact. 

"There are plenty of antagonists in this story, some Chinese, some not. For those upset with Beijing's influence in America, understand this: by helping normalize corruption among our former diplomats and warping American perception of China over the last four decades, Henry Kissinger has done more harm to American interests than every ethnically Chinese businessman, hacker, spy, whether they hold American or Chinese citizenship."

It is ironic, with all the current complaints about cancel culture, free speech for fascists, woke restrictions, etc. that we are actually being policed in our speech by our geopolitical opponent, China, and do not seem to think anything amiss about that.

The ancient Art of War recommends winning by shaping the battlefield and the minds of the opponents- whereby not a shot needs to be fired. Fish emphasises the United Front operations of the CCP and its propaganda arms, which seek influence in many ways, not just media. The seduction of foreign officials and fixers comes under this area of government work, for instance, as does the pressuring of speech and behavior by foreign corporations. Everything is linked, as is proper under a totalitarian system, and every oar pulls in the same direction of keeping the CCP in power and gaining influence across the world.

The CCP has a great deal to answer for, both historically, and in its brutal approach to its current rule, even given its huge successes in economic growth and allowing the modernization of China. A democratic and free China would look very different, and could flourish just as well. We should not be taken in by the propaganda of identity between the CCP and China, or the permanence of CCP rule. We need to be able to think and speak freely, and facilitate the freedom of others. And this should start with Taiwan, whose freedom is in the crosshairs of the CCP. We should not acquiesce to the narrative that Taiwan must/will be assimilated into China, or that it is not, in fact, an independent nation with every right to self-determination. The CCP's track record of cultural genocide in Tibet, actual concentration camps and genocide in Xinjiang, and the decapitation of Hong Kong shows clearly enough what would be in store for Taiwan, and for the rest of us, were China to gain even more leverage.


  • More of the same, and Maurice Greenberg is always at hand to support China.
  • India is only marginally better.
  • Should we end the drug war?
  • Maybe we should just leave nature alone.
  • Fascism is coming.
  • But Scientology is ... aready here.

Saturday, June 17, 2023

Haiti is Desperate

Let's help Haiti, and try to do nation building right this time.

We have a desperate situation on our doorstep, in Haiti. Governance has broken down, and anarchy is rampant, with the usual sad story of gangs, kidnapping, killing, looting, and mayhem. While the US has no formal obligation to help, and we have a long history of trying to help (as well as harm) Haiti, it is hard to stand idly by. The US has a frought history with "nation-building". We started in the nation-destroying business, laying waste to one Native American nation after another. Then we had a turn at destroying our own nation in the Civil War. After that came the quasi-imperial ambitions in the Philippines, the United Fruit Empire of Central America, including Panama and the Canal. The high point was our reconstruction of both German and Japanese societies after the second world war, though these societies were definitely not reduced to anarchy, only to temporary leaderless-ness and penury after the defeats of their somewhat abberrant fascist governments. Our more recent attempts to run countries like Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan have been thoroughgoing disasters, ending in various degrees of embarrassment. Why ask for more?

Notable US activities in Haiti:

  • Sided with Whites in Haiti's war for independence (i.e. the slave revolt) ~ 1800
  • Waited ~60 years to recognize the resulting Haitian government.
  • Occupied Haiti 1915-34.
  • Colonial-style trade with France and the US continued to immiserate Haiti, ongoing.
  • Occupied Haiti 1994-97 to prop up elected president Jean-Bertrand Aristide
  • Aristide was later ousted in a coup by the Haitian military, which had been extensively supported by the US.

One reason for all this failure is that our nation-building work has never been very conscious. We were faced with weak allies or vanquished enemies, and wanted little more than to have military access for our jihad du jur, and to get out as soon as possible. The social and the long-term was, perhaps with the exception of the post-WW2 reconstructions, always secondary to military objectives. But as we learn, the military is always ultimately political and social as well. As a super-power, we have a naturally narcissistic mind-set, caring little about the dynamics of other countries and having little patience with their deep histories and un-American ways. This has been particularly evident in our building of other nation's militaries, those in Vietnam and Afghanistan being made in our image and promptly failing in our absence.

But another thing that has been evident through all these adventures is that nation-building is very, very important. Our own revolutionary experiment fed us a civic myth of tremendous power and durability. Our many failures, bottoming out with Donald Rumsfeld's scorn of nation-building in Iraq as it melted down in flaming anarchy, should have taught us by now that attending to nation-building is a top priority in any military relationship, and in most international relationships generally. There is no military effectiveness without a national moral and civic ethos behind it. 

That leads to the question of whether any nation can "nation-build" for others. Like teenage development, nations develop typically in opposition to others, via revolutions, wars, conquest. "Help" is rarely relevant, and mostly harmful. But hope springs eternal, and sometimes desperate situations call out for a special effort.

What is the situation in Haiti? I am far from an expert, but it is mostly one of collapse of institutions (never competent to start with), amid repeated natural disasters, (indeed, eco-cide on a large scale), huge inequality and corruption, extreme poverty- even starvation, and a custom of right-wing military coups and meddling. We can not expect democracy to be the immediate solution, given the depth and long history of the dysfunction. Some kind of stabilization and gradual re-introduction of governance and civic society needs to be envisioned.

Gang-based governance is not working well in Haiti.

So, contrary to our last few nation-building projects, the one in Haiti needs to be a partnership between a minimal military or police presence and extensive social, civic, economic, and especially governmental / political support. The current administration has announced a very low-key plan of aid and consultation, but no prospect of fixing the underlying dysfunctions. Indeed, food aid and similar kinds of aid are notorious for degrading indigenous agriculture and other non-dependent economic activities. Current development aid is necessarily channeled through the existing structures of the target society, and this tends to increase the divisions and inequality of those societies, introduce corruption, and foist foreign ideas that are sometimes quite harmful. The US project in Afghanistan was certainly well-meaning in its focus on the rights and position of women in the society. But harping on this theme was immensely destructive with respect to any influence we were seeking in conservative areas. In the end, cosmopolitan Kabul collapsed pathetically in the face of traditional values. Engaging Haitians and people with knowledge of Haiti, and willingness to keep an open mind and an ear to the ground, would be essential as we navigate this process. 

I would envision a high level commission, of mixed composisiton, with people like Barack Obama, leading Haitians from various sectors, and knowledgeable Biden administration officials, dedicated to going to Haiti and spending a half year or year doing a bottom to top assessment of needs and prospects for reform, principally in government and the economy. It might be a bit reminiscent of the peace process in Northern Ireland that we participated in. The group would issue a recommendation / plan, covering constitutional changes, civic development, security, educational development, and economic development. They also might recommend some sort of conservatorship over higher levels of the government, run through the UN, or the US itself, including peace-keepers, hopefully not carrying cholera, or other temporary security help. At this point, some pressure might have to be brought to bear to force some of the changes and personnel into implementation. 

Democracy can't be the first order of business, as conditions and civic culture are so dire. So perhaps a program of progressive democratic development, from local institutions at the start, to progressively higher level elections and political development, could be envisioned, as security and civic conditions improve. A "foster" system might be a bit like the Chinese communist system, where democracy is not front and center(!), but competence is, and the higher levels spend a lot of time figuring out who is effective at lower levels of governance, including aspects such as managerial competence, lack of corruption, people skills, ability to work in an established legal system, economic vision, among much else. 

In Haiti, economic reconstruction would not be based on huge influxes of outside aid, but a be concerted effort, as part of the more general governance project, to determine and build the infrastructure for a sustainable indiginous economic basis, perhaps in light industry and agriculture- something like the relationship the US has with Mexico, minus the drugs and immigration. Subsistence agriculture is very popular in Haiti, and presents a fundamental choice for the nation. While the independence and simplicity it represents are understandably attractive, (indeed, consonant with a lot of red state rhetoric from the US), subsistence agriculture can not support an advanced economy. It can not support imports that are obviously desired, and may not even support Haiti's current population with the best security and governance. But whatever the economic choices Haiti makes, better governance would improve its people's conditions and happiness.

One long-term focus would be education. Education in Haiti is run almost entirely on a private basis, at best, via international NGOs. That would not change very soon, but clearly universal, compulsory, and free education is important for improving Haiti's future. General literacy is hardly above 50%. Education stands at the root of Haiti's problems- its lack of economic development as much as its tragic governance. There are many other issues, such as the proliferation of NGOs with private agendas and lack of cooperation with the government, and the way food aid from the US has destroyed native agriculture. Governance is not the only issue, in this extremely poor, ill-educated, and traumatized country, but it is a function that must be fixed if any other aspect of the society is to progress.

Lastly, there is the perennial problem of whom to trust. Foreigners coming into a country, however good-willed, do more harm than good if they do not have good information. Our occupation of Afghanistan was notorious for repeatedly killing the wrong people, because we got information from those who had private grudges or competing interests. Without adopting a state of surveillance and/or terror, how are we to sift wheat from chaff? This is where expertise comes into play, and why sending the military in to run things tends to go haywire, with illusions of power. So we need people who know the language, and something about Haiti. There are a lot of emigre Haitians in the US who could be helpful in that regard.

If we took such a project seriously as a long-term and cooperative venture, we could do a great deal of good in Haiti, which would be positive not only for Haiti, but for the US and our wider interests. Our relations throughout the hemisphere have been strained for decades, ridden with excessive militarism, condescention, colonialism, and the US-sponsored spread of drugs, gangs, and guns. We have a lot to answer for, and should make a greater effort to bring positive change to our friends in this hemisphere.


  • Jamaica is another country with slow development.
  • In the coming cold war, we need all the friends and skills we can get.
  • Fake science is coming for the children.
  • Santa does get some people worked up.
  • Is big tech going to do us all in?

Saturday, November 12, 2022

The Politics of Resentment

Ann Applebaum has seen where all this Trumpism is going ... in Eastern Europe.

Liberals in America are baffled. How could anyone vote for Republican candidates at this point? How could anyone, let alone half the electorate, vote for Trump? We are befuddled and anxious for the future of America, which, far from becoming great again, is turning into a banana republic before our eyes, if, hopefully, not worse. We in California are particularly dissociated, as Democrats run the whole state, and Republican voter registration continues to decline year after year and is now under one quarter of the electorate. What does the rest of the country see that we do not? Or vice versa?

Ann Applebaum has written a trenchant book on the matter, "Twilight of Democracy". She lives in Poland, so has had a front-row seat to the illiberalization of a political system, both in Poland and in nearby Hungary, which seems farther advanced. Eastern Europe has more reason than most, perhaps to be disillusioned with the capitalist orthodoxy, after their rather rough transition from Communism. But this is a world-wide phenomenon, sweeping fringe rightists into power from Brazil to Sweden. What is going on? Applebaum posits that the whole structure of meritocratic representative democracy, with its open competition for (good) public policy, and use of educated expertise over vast areas of state interests from foreign affairs to monetary regulation and education policy, have come under fundamental critique. And this critique comes partly from those who have been shut out of that system: the not-well-educated, not-bicoastal, not-rich, not-acronymed-minority, not-hopeful about the American future. It is, in short, a politics of resentment.

How have the elites done over the post-world war 2 period? They won the cold war, but lost virtually every battle in it, from Vietnam to Afghanistan. They let the lower classes of the US sink into relative poverty and powerlessness vs business and the well-educated classes, in a rather brutal system of collegiate competition, de-unionization, off-shoring and worker suppression. They have let the economy fester through several crushing recessions, particularly the malaise of the 70's and the real estate meltdown of 2008. While the US has done pretty well overall, the lower middle and poor classes have not done well, and live increasingly precarious lives that stare homelessness in the face daily. In the heartland, parents at best saw their children fly off to coastal schools and cultures, becoming different people who would not dream of coming home again to live.

America is heavily red, geographically.

And the elite-run state has become increasingly sclerotic, continually self-criticizing and regulating its way to inaction. A thousand well-meaning regulations have paved the way to a bloated government that can not build a high-speed rail line in California, or solve the homelessness crisis. Everyone is a critic, including yours truly- it is always easier to raise objections, cover one's ass, and not get anything done. So one can sympathize with evident, if inchoate, desires for strength- for someone to break the barriers, bring the system to heel, and build that wall. Or get Brexit done. Or whatever the baying right wing media want at the moment.

The elite party in this sense is the Democratic party - capturing the coastal and well-educated, plus public employee unions. The Republican party, the party of money and the rich, (not the elite at all!), has conversely become the party of the downtrodden, feeding them anti-immigrant, anti-elite, anti-state red meat. It was a remarkably easy transformation, that required only shamelessness and lying to make hay out of the vast reserves of resentment seething in middle America. 

But Applebaum's point is not that the elites have messed things up and it may be time to do things differently. No, she suggests that the new protofascists have reframed the situation fundamentally. The elites in power have, through the hard work of meritocratic institutions, set up pipelines and cultures that reproduce their position in power almost as hermetically as the ancien régime of France and its nobility. That anyone can (theoretically) enter this elite and that it is at least somewhat vetted for competence and rationality is disregarded, or actively spat upon as "old" thinking- definitely not team thinking. The path to power now is to stoke resentment, overturn the old patterns of respect for competence and empathy, discard this meritocratic system in favor of one based on loyalty and fealty, and so bring about a new authoritarianism that brooks no "softness", exercises no self-criticism, has no respect for the enemy or for compromise, and has no room for intellectuals. 

But Hungary is way ahead of us, in the one-party rule department.

A second angle on all this is that conservatives feel resentful for another good reason- that they have lost the culture war. Despite all their formal power, winning the presidency easily half the time, and regularly running legislative branches and judicial branches in the US, their larger cultural project to keep progress at bay, fight moral "decadence" and all the other hobby horses, have gone nowhere. The US is increasingly woke, diverse, and cosmopolitan, and the "blood and soil" types (including especially conservative Catholics and Evangelicals), are despondent about it. Or apoplectic, or rabid, etc., depending on temperament. Their triumph in overturning Roe may allow some backwater states to turn back the clock, but on the whole, it looks like a rearguard action.

This is what feeds disgust with the system, and with democracy itself. Republicans who used to sing the praises of the US government, the flag, and democracy now seem to feel the opposite, that the US is a degenerate wasteland, no better than other countries, not exceptional, not dedicated to serious ideals that others should also aspire to. Democracy has failed, for them. And Applebaum points out how this feeling licenses the loss of civility, the lying, the anything-goes demagoguery which characterizes our new right-wing politics. Naturally the internet and its extremism-feeding algorithms have a lot to do with it as well. Applebaum is conservative herself. She spent a career working in the Tory media in Britain, but is outraged at what Tory-ism, and conservatism internationally, has become. She sees a dramatic split in conservatism, between those that still buy into the democratic, liberal system, and those who have become its opponents, in their revolutionary, Trumpy fervor. In the US, the fever may possibly have broken, after a very close brush with losing our institutions during the last administration, as election after election has made losers of the far right.

Over the long haul, Applebaum sees this as a cyclical process, with ample precedent from ancient Egyptian times through today, with a particularly interesting stop in the viciously polarized Drefussard period in France. But I see one extra element, which is our planetary and population crisis. We had very good times over the last few centuries building the human population and its comforts on the back of colonization, fossil fuels, and new technologies. The US of the mid to late-20th century exemplified the good times of such growth. Now the ecological bells are ringing, and the party is coming to an end. Denial has obviously been the first resort of the change-averse, and conservatives have distinguished themselves in their capabilities in that department. But as reality gradually sets in, something more sinister and competitive may be in the offing, as exemplified by the slogan "America First". Not first as in a leader of international institutions, liberal democracies and enlightenment values, but first as in looking out for number one, and devil take the rest. 

Combined with a rejuvinated blood and soil nationalism, which we see flourishing in so many places, these attitudes threaten to send us back into a world resembling that before world war 1 or 2, (and, frankly, all the rest of history), when nationalism was the coin of international relations, and national competition knew no boundaries- mercantile or military. We are getting a small foretaste of this in Russia's war on Ukraine, which is a product of precisely this Russia-first, make Russia great again mind-set. Thankfully, it is accompanied by large helpings of stupidity and mismanagement, which may save us yet. 


Saturday, October 22, 2022

Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era

China girds for defense against infiltration by Western ideas. And Wang Huning leads the way.

The current Chinese Communist Party congress prompts us to take stock of where we are in our relations with China and where China is going. The major theme is of course conservativism. Xi Jinping remains at the helm, and may stay there for several cycles to come. The party remains uniquely in control, using all elements of new and old technologies to "guide" Chinese culture and maintain power. And increasingly is trying to shape the international environment to abet its internal controls and maybe spread its system abroad.

It is worth recounting the fourteen points of Xi Jinping thought in detail, as stated on the Wiki page:

  • Ensuring Communist Party of China leadership over all forms of work in China.
  • The Communist Party of China should take a people-centric approach for the public interest.
  • The continuation of "comprehensive deepening of reforms".
  • Adopting new science-based ideas for "innovative, coordinated, green, open and shared development".
  • Following "socialism with Chinese characteristics" with "people as the masters of the country".
  • Governing China with the Rule of Law.
  • "Practice socialist core values", including Marxism-Leninism and socialism with Chinese characteristics.
  • "Improving people's livelihood and well-being is the primary goal of development".
  • Coexist well with nature with "energy conservation and environmental protection" policies and "contribute to global ecological safety".
  • Strengthen the national security of China.
  • The Communist Party of China should have "absolute leadership over" China's People's Liberation Army.
  • Promoting the one country, two systems system for Hong Kong and Macau with a future of "complete national reunification" and to follow the One-China principle and 1992 Consensus for Taiwan.
  • Establish a common destiny between the Chinese people and other peoples around the world with a "peaceful international environment".
  • Improve party discipline in the Communist Party of China.


The casual reader will note that Communist party dominance and retention of control is the subject of roughly four or five of these points, depending on interpretation. One can sense that control is absolutely the central obsession and fear of party. And no wonder- there are plenty of structural and historical reasons.

China has had a tumultuous history from earliest recorded times, cycling between centralization and dissolution and civil war. The golden periods were always ones of stability, while the worst were times of anarchy, banditry, decline. Then there were the colonial humiliations, from the opium wars to Japanese occupation. Whether one adds in the disastrous legacy of Marxism- which also came from the West- into the mix, is a matter of taste. As noted above, the current CCP still gives lip service to Marxism-Leninism (though pointedly not to Maoism!).

In the more current era, the West promotes free trade, human rights, and democracy as a way to contest the power and ideology of the CCP. Each have their ulterior aspects, certainly in relation to China. Human rights and democracy are obviously direct attacks on the very core values of the CCP. Free trade might seem like a no-brainer and objectively desirable. But in reality, it cements the advantages of highly developed countries, since less developed countries can never gain an advantage in high technology if their only advantage is low labor cost and poor education & other infrastructure. Therefore, China has had to protect itself from the onslaught of the West, economically, politically, and socially.

This is the basic theme of the CCP ideology, driven particularly by Wang Huning, a social scientist. academic, and now politbureau member and close advisor of Xi Jinping. Huning has been a close advisor to the last three leaders of China, and evidently a major architect of their signature mottos, "The Three Represents", "The Chinese Dream", and now "Xi Jinping thought ...". He is a close student of the US, and appears generally to be the "vision guy" for the Chinese leadership. (Maybe even the brains behind the operation, if one wants to be hyperbolic.) While Huning in his earliest writings advocated for the democratic development of China, in line with general development of a modern, mature state, and with models such as Japan, that has all been deferred and subsumed under the more immediate needs of the party. His public writing ceased after he joined the central government. 

The biggest and most traumatic historical shock guiding the CCP today was undoubtedly the collapse of the Soviet Union. (As it guides Putin as well.) Before everyone's eyes, the siren song of the West, of capitalism, and of "freedom" (particularly the freedom to be nationalist) captured the populace, and destroyed the Soviet state from within, resulting in a gangster Russia that has only painfully re-established its strength and order, turning back into an authoritarian (and nationalist) state and a colleague of China on the anti-Western world stage. 

The Chinese Communist Party avoided all that through its merciless grip on power. It never let its eye stray from the ball, or softened it heart towards its dissidents and malcontents. It patiently experimented with a mixed capitalist / one party rule system, which has turned out (so far) to be highly successful. It availed itself of all available technology and capitalist methods from the West to develop its economy at a pell-mell rate, learning especially from its fellow-tigers, Singapore, Taiwan, Japan, Hong Kong, and South Korea. However, it continues to (rightly) fear the siren songs of freedom, democracy, etc. as core threats. It conveniently uses psychological projection to blame the West for all these attractive ideas, which in truth are not exclusively Western at all, but are dreams that Chinese people have as well. (See Hong Kong, see Singapore, see Taiwan) So the ideology and the propaganda follows the age-old script of justifying a bloated, intrusive, and often very cruel state by casting the blame for dissent on outsiders.

That's a big TV screen.

The CCP has also been highly effective in many areas. It obviously keeps tabs on everyone with not just surveillance, but with social surveys and party members at the grass roots, and even allows limited local protests, so that it has a feeling for what the people want, despite a lack of formal democracy. It has engineered a miracle of infrastructure, trains, and housing. Indeed, there is an overhang of construction that it is slowly winding down, in the current real estate crunch. It has protected its population comprehensively from Covid, surely saving millions of lives, even as it imposes stark, and likely not sustainable, costs. It has recognized the dangers of bitcoin and shut down the cryptocurrencies in comprehensive fashion- something we might learn from. And it is leading the way in solar manufacturing and installation, even while its use of coal remains catastrophic. It continually identifies and fights corruption in its own ranks, recognizing that a one-party state is an invitation to rot and sclerosis.

But the fundamental conundrum remains- how to justify and strengthen a one-party state in the midst of the rising well-being, education and sophistication of its own population. The other tigers, including even Singapore, all began with strongly authoritarian systems that each evolved, in parallel with their economic development, into more or less free democracies today. While one can sympathize with the CCP's desire to avoid the chaos of the Soviet Union's demise, the now more cogent and relevant models of political evolution in the local region are far more positive stories, which the CCP seems to pointedly, and lamentably, ignore. 

Indeed, China appears to be heading in a different direction, a bit more like that of North Korea. Their wolf warrior diplomacy is given to vitriolic statements and bullying, now showcased over Taiwan. Their internal propaganda is increasingly nationalistic and strident, following the Xi Jinping thought's guidelines of shaping the cultural values of China to be more cohesive and disciplined. (Covid hasn't helped, either.) It is increasingly intolerant of diversity, as shown against minority ethnic groups, which are being wiped out in systematic terms. For example, the government offers generous subsidies to minority members who marry Han ethnic partners, and drives the same policy by locking up large numbers of Uyghur men for re-education. China's ideological leaders are groping for CCP-friendly "values" that can effectively block what they view as foreign viruses, but which are, in point of fact, endogenous and natural to the human condition.

Under Xi and Wang Hunting, the party is still searching for those elusive "socialist core values" that are uniquely Chinese, not Western, not from the backward (and somewhat feudal) countryside, and supportive of the Communist party. But all they have come up with are greed/capitalism, nationalism, an obsession with stability, and a new personality cult. 

While I can not foretell the future, this does not seem like a good way to go. In foreign policy, one can measure success by how friendly the neighboring countries are- in this case to China, and to the US. There are areas of the world where very peaceful relations exist, such as across the EU, and between the US and its neighbors. That does not seem to be the case in the South China Sea. The constant drumbeat of threats and bullying by China, against Taiwan in particular, but others as well, various territorial disputes, and a enormous military building spree have put everyone very much on edge, and not on friendly terms. This is a fundamental problem for China, and for the rest of us if they bull their way into a world war.

Domestically, it is quite possible for the repressive system to continue indefinitely, given its continuing determination and often very intelligent management, always on guard against the heresies of freedom and goodwill. But that would be giving up an important future path. The Chinese culture would have greater growth prospects, and greater beneficial consequences at home and abroad, if it opened up and tolerated greater pluralism. Its economic dynamism is up till now built on foreign technology, and its ability to innovate and operate truly in the vanguard of world development depends on some significant degree of political and social dynamism as well, not on Big-Brotherism

So I see a future where inevitably, the CCP will have to experiment with grass-roots democracy in order to resolve its fundamental value and motivation conflicts as growth slows and China becomes a wealthier country. These will be frought and dangerous experiments. But in time, there is a chance that they will lead to the same kinds of opening that other Asian countries have experienced so successfully, with the gradual development of another party, and a more humane and less paranoid culture. Conversely, insistence on repression tends to spiral into a need for additional repression, with corresponding chances for a dramatic crackup that might produce another one of the grand cycles of Chinese history.


Saturday, April 23, 2022

Join Ukraine

It is time to make Ukraine part of NATO and dispense with the charade of arms-length relations.

The war in Ukraine has been a pure crime from the start, founded on lies and imperialism of the most old-fashioned sort. The West has long shied from directly allying itself with Ukraine, because Ukraine is so physically and culturally close to Russia. So in deference to old ideas of neighborhoods, spheres of influence, and defensive buffers, and the like, we have respected that we might create a large mess by taking NATO so close up to Russia's borders and self-interest. 

Well, the mess has happened, and not by our doing. Ukraine has on its own progressively rejected the Russian sphere over the last decade, and for a variety of very good reasons taken steps to become an independent, functional Western-aligned democracy. (Unlike, say, Belarus.) Russia has in response taken the most brutal approach to bullying- killing and maiming what they can not take by corruption, threats, and diplomacy. Ukraine has fought back valiantly, but will be trapped in an endless frozen / slogging conflict unless it gets definitive help from the West.

There are two endgames in sight. One is that Russia keeps up its attack, in an effort to destroy or at least hobble Ukraine, physically and politically, perhaps even genocidally. Russia at this point has taken the worst the West has to offer, and the best defense the Ukrainians have to offer. It has been beaten off partially, but far from completely. From what we have seen, Putin can, and probably intends to, keep up the pressure on Ukraine indefinitely. Ukraine would become another Chechnia or Syria. This is not a good end-game, either for Ukraine or for the future of international relations among civilized countries- a wolf stealing back an empire, sheep by sheep.

Current state of the war in Ukraine.

Another endgame is that the US and allies intervene, make Ukraine peremptorily a member of NATO, join the fight, and definitively eject Russia from Ukrainian territory, including the Donbas and Crimea. Given what we have seen so far, this is for NATO a militarily achievable objective. These allies would naturally make it clear that attacking Russia proper is not our aim, though may be necessary if Russia attacks other NATO countries or persists in raining missiles / aircraft from across the border. 

The major question is how Russia might choose to escalate / retaliate. It has threatened nuclear war, in not so many words. I think such a course is highly unlikely, since Russia is trying to build a historical legacy here, not destroy one, or destroy itself. Deterence still holds, on both sides. Not to mention the fact that Western bombs are much more likely to be actually operational, given what we have seen of the Russian military. Additionally, adding Ukraine to the NATO umbrella with its various explicit guarantees will provide that much more deterrence against a nuclear attack on Ukraine, arguably forestalling such a worst-case outcome, even given the madness at hand.

Far more likely would be an assortment of alternative spoiler activities, like increased cybercrime and perhaps attacks in space on our satellites, maybe a few potshots into Europe, at the Baltics, etc. Projection to other areas of the world is highly unlikely, given that Russia would have its hands full on its neighboring front, and will lose a great deal of military capability over time. All these are acceptable costs, I think, for the durable lesson a repulse of wanton criminality would teach both Russia and China.

On the other hand, we should never demonize Russia per se or bar its future entry into Europe, given a change of government and heart. Their main problem is Putin and his imperial / delusional / autocratic system, not the people at large. Just as Ukraine (barely) beat off Putin-style corruption in their political system, Russia could as well, some day, and durable peace in Europe depends entirely on this happening as soon as possible. Which will in turn be brought closer, the sooner Russia is definitively evicted from Ukraine.

Remember the first Iraq war? Iraq had invaded Kuwait to take over its oil fields, and generally to express its contempt and superiority, including a historical claim that it was not, actually, a separate country. The US argued that this was in intolerable violation of sovereign borders and international norms. But the motivation was really just about the oil, not to preserve the democratic government of Kuwait, of which there was none. Nor was there a pre-existing alliance, but rather we conjured one on the spot out of convenience, cobbled together out of our various friends and petro-clients. The current case for alliance with and defense of Ukraine is far more compelling.


As this post was going to press, an opinion piece appeared by Jeffrey Sachs, promoting negotiation. He sees the same destructive stalemate developing as outlined above, (as do many others), and his solution is for the West to offer one thing- a guarantee to Russia that Ukraine will not join NATO. In return, Russia would vacate Ukraine to pre-war boundaries. Some may recall Sachs as a key advisor of the post-Soviet transition, and exponent of rapid transitions to capitalism, i.e. shock therapy. While the approach produced a transition, it is commonly looked at, retrospectively, as excessively shocking, and conducive to the uncontrolled and corrupt disposition of assets that led directly to the wild west of the post-Soviet transition, rise of the oligarchs, and the ensuing kleptocracies, the worst of which is Russia itself. So the track record is not great. In the current case, it is hard to make out an actual negotiating position from what Sachs proposes. Russia is in Ukraine, certainly by this point, for far more than a promise -cross our hearts- that Ukraine stays out of NATO. It is clear that Putin's aim is to quash Ukrainian democracy and freedom, so that Russia will not have a peskly neighbor better off and better governed than itself. It wants another Belarus, either by decapitation or by decimation.

My proposal above would form, on the other hand, an actual negotiating position vis-a-vis Russia. The West would offer two options. The first is that Russia vacate Ukraine to the 2021 lines and stay out, and that Ukraine remains independent and outside NATO, at least for the time being, but without future assurances. The other is that we immediately ally NATO with Ukraine, join in force with air and land power, and push Russia out of the Donbas and also out of Crimea, forceably and permanently. Again, we would make it clear that while attacks into Russia might be necessary to gain airspace control and repel artillary, etc., the ultimate lines would be set in advance, and not go into Russian proper, pre-2013. This would be a productive negotiating position, capable of inducing Putin to think carefully about his options. Losing Crimea would be the fulcrum, as well as the prospect of rapid integration of Ukraine into NATO as its front-line state.


Saturday, March 19, 2022

(No) Sympathy for the Devil

Blaming ourselves for Russia's attack on Ukraine.

Here we are, in a time warp back almost a century. A European country has elected an authoritarian leader, on the support of a doddering president. That leader went on to resolve the economic and politicial crisis of the country, mostly by taking complete control himself and forming an increasingly repressive fascist state. Nationalist propaganda and lies were ceaselessly conveyed through the state media, paving the way for attacks on other countries, generally portrayed as critical to protect fellow countrymen being oppressed there. The aggression and the lying escalated until here we are, in a full scale international war, with distinct chances of becoming a world war. 

In the US, there are strange convergences of support for the Russian side of this conflict. Those on the fringe left can not tear themselves away from respect for the Russia that was the Soviet union and vanguard of world communism. Nor can they resist bashing the US. The far right is infatuated with the new Russia, with its super-Trump leadership, free-wheeling criminality, and clever propaganda, as many Americans were of Hitler back in the day. But a third stream comes from the foreign policy establishment- the realists, who think spheres of influence are the most normal, god-given organizing principles of international affairs. Thus China should be given its suzerainty over South East Asia, including Taiwan, and Russia over its near abroad, whatever the people actually living there may think. We are to blame for pushing NATO to Russia's borders, we are to blame for injuring Russia's sensitivities and pride, and we have caused their invasion of Ukraine, by luring Ukraine to the West with our sweet blandishments.

Well, each of those views is out of touch in its own way, but the last is especially curious. For what was the post-World War 2 order about, if not about civilized behavior among nations, letting each seek prosperity and freedom, in peace? The realist view would plunge us back into medieval power relations, or perhaps the three-sphere world of George Orwell's 1984. It consigns small countries to the depredations of bullies like Russia, who can not make friends in a civilized manner, but, in Ukraine, has strained every nerve to corrupt its political system, destroy its internet, and obliterate its sovereignty and economy.

It is obvious to all, including Russia, that NATO was and remains a defensive alliance, of countries intent above all else to rebuild after World War 2 without further aggressive encroachment by Russia. And once the Soviet Union fell apart, the Eastern Bloc countries fled as fast as they could to the West, not because they wanted to attack Russia in a new World War 3, but quite the opposite- they wanted to pursue the promise of freedom and prosperity in peace, without bullying from Russia. Russia's much vaunted "sensitivities" are nothing more than toxic, domineering nostalgia for their former oppressive empires, of both Czarist and Soviet times. As the largest country in the world, one would think they have enough room, but no, their sense of greatness, unmatched by commensurate cultural, economic, or moral accomplishment, demands bullying of its neighbors. More to the point, their current system of government- autocracy / fascism by ceaseless lying and propaganda, would be impaired by having their close neighbors have more open, civilized systems. 

All this has a religious aspect that is interesting to note as well. Ukraine recently extricated itself from domination by the Moscow orthodox church, becoming autocephalic, in the term of art. The process shows that even in this supposedly supernatural sphere of pure timeless principle, tribalism and politics are the order of the day. Not to mention propaganda, and fanciful philosophy and history. The narratives that Russia as spun about Ukraine and its invasion are particularly virulent, unhinged, and insulting, insuring that Ukraine would never, in any sane world, want to have anything to do with their neighbor. It is one more aspect of the Russian aggression that spares us from needing to sympathize overly with its "sensitivities".


So, what to do? It is not clear that Ukraine can withstand Russian attacks forever. They have stopped Russia in its tracks, thanks to a lot of Western assistance. They have millions of men under arms, compared to a much smaller invasion force. They have motivation and they have the land. But they need heavier weapons and they need to preserve their air power. With those two things, they could turn the tide and drive Russia out. Without them, they will probably only manage a stalemate. Western sanctions have imposed highly justifiable pain on Russia itself, but historically, such sanctions tend to have as much countervailing effect, consolidating pro-government attitudes, as the opposite. So barring a dramatic turn of events at the top of the Russian system, which is highly unpredictable and rather unlikely, we are facing a very drawn out and destructive war in Ukraine.

In a larger sense, we are facing something far more momentous- the rise and assertion of autocracy (not to say fascism 2.0) as a competing world order. Russia's pattern has been clear enough (and historically eerie)- escalate their aggression and ambition as far as they can get away with. And China is watching carefully. The ability of the West to punish Russia for its completely immoral and cruel attack on Ukraine, and deter future repetitions, will shape the next century. Russia has decisively broken the borders and tranquility of the post-World War 2 order, and that has caused many, especially in Europe, to wake up and realize that coasting along on US coat tails is not enough- they have to actively participate in sanctioning Russia, in resolving their dependence on Russian fossil fuels (as if that had not been patently obvious before), and strengthening the collective defence, as expressed in NATO. Western leaders should make it clear that Putin and his key lieutenants will never be allowed to personally enter the West without being shipped off the Hague for trial. And we should give Ukraine what it needs to defend itself.

Finally, what of our own culpability? Not so much in mistreating Russia, which we have done only to a slight degree, but in committing war crimes of our own, in attacks of our own, based on lies of our own, on innocent countries far distant. I am speaking of Iraq (which ranks first among several other cases). While our justification for that war was far better than Russia's in Ukraine, it was still poor, still caused hundreds of thousands of deaths, was grievously misconceived and mismanaged, and has left a political ruin, not to mention a geopolitical mess. This alone should make George W Bush rank among the worst of US presidents- significantly lower than Trump, who for all his destructiveness, did not destroy whole countries. We should be willing to put Bush and others who made those decisions to an historical and international account for their actions, in a spirit of historical rectitude.


  • In praise of Washington's teaming minions.
  • New thoughts on an old book.
  • A song for Ukraine.

Saturday, March 5, 2022

Toxic Nostalgia

Making Russia great again.

What is it about the past? Even though we are condemned to live in the future, we can't stop fantasizing and fetishizing the past, and wanting to go back. On the gentle side, Proust wrote nothing but loving remembrances of his (sometimes mortifying) past, trying to evoke its moods, textures, smells, and feelings. But why does nostalgia so often curdle into bloodlust and terror? For that is where the Russian autocrat is going with his nostalgia for the Soviet era when Stalin ruled even more autocratically over a well-cowed populace extending from Hungary to the Pacific. Ah, those were the days!

It isn't just our current crisis- far from. The Trumpists want to make America great... again. The Muslim jihadists are bent on reproducing the pre-eminent dominance of Islam of 1300 years ago. The Serbs hearken back to their own grand empire of 700 years ago. Shia muslims fetishize their losses and in a theology of repair and redemption. Jews have both bemoaned their losses of their great kingdoms two millennia ago, and militantly sought their promised land back. And fundamentalists of all stripes yearn to get back to the basic tenets of their faith- the pure origins of incendiary belief and miracles.

It all seems a little over-determined, as though the operative emotion isn't nostalgia exactly, but powerlust, seizing on whatever materials come to hand to say that we as some tribe or culture are better and deserve better than we've got. While the future remains ever shrouded, the past is at least accessible, if also rather protean in the hands of dedicated propagandists. In Russia's case, not only did Stalin help start World War 2 by co-invading Poland, but the prior holocaust/famine in Ukraine, followed by the transplacement of millions of Russians into Ukraine.. well, that all makes this current bout of nostalgia far from sympathetic, however well-twisted it has been for internal consumption. Of course the propaganda and the emotion is mostly instrumental, in a desperate bid to fend off the appearance of happy, secure, and prosperous democracies on Russia's borders, which is the real danger at hand, to Putin and his system.

In remembrance of Russia's great patriotic war, which it helped start.

Yet, such nostalgia is strongly culturally binding, for better or worse. Rising states may have short histories and short memories, resented as the nouveau-rich on the world stage. They are not "as good" in some essential way as those whose greatness has passed into the realm of nostalgia. Worth is thus not in the doing but in some ineffible essentialist (read nationalist/tribal) way that is incredibly resistant to both reason and empathy. It is analogous to "nobility" in the class structure within most societies. In the US, we seem on the cusp (or past it) of our time atop the world stage. Do we then face hundreds of years of regret, comforting ourselves with tales of greatness and seething resentment?

With echos of a deeper past.

  • Could the West have been smarter; more generous?
  • Apparently, we are all going to die.
  • Tires are bad.