Archive | Uncategorized RSS feed for this section

Should Iran Be Concerned About the U.S. Elections?

30 Sep

[Prefatory Note: The following interview was published by Mehr New Agency on 27 Sept 2020 in Tehran. It addresses questions that arise for foreign societies when seeking to comprehend the spectacle of the 2020 national elections in the United States. The outcome of the Trump/Biden struggle for presidential leadership is, of course, of particular concern to Iran.]

Should Iran Be Concerned About the U.S. Elections?

 

Q1: Can the US election be considered a fully democratic election?

 

No, the American elections as currently administered on  national level are not fully democratic for three principal reasons: (1) most obviously, due to various forms of voter suppression and distortion encroaching especially on the rights of persons of color and the impoverished to cast their votes either as a result of difficult registration rules or by making polling sites feel hostile or requiring especially long waits in neighborhoods where minorities and the poor live; (2) by presidential opposition to voting by mail and by alleging fraud and rigging without any evidence imperiling his willing to transfer political power if he loses, undermining confidence in the integrity of elections and causing the public great anxiety; (3) by not acknowledging and challenging ‘systemic racism’ inherent in American society that produces discrimination against African-Americans, Muslims, and other victimized minorities.

 

Q2: How do money, power and media affect the presidential election?

 

The electoral process in the United States is dominated by money, power, and mainstream media boundaries on ‘responsible’ discourse. This domination is expressed in different ways. The influence of large donors is felt in shaping party platforms and the positions of candidates, perhaps most obviously in securing pledges from candidates of unconditional support for Israel, and by refraining from any fundamental criticism of the military budget or the workings of contemporary neoliberal capitalism. Both political parties are subject to the priorities, interests, and beliefs of political and economic elites that often ignore the wishes of the citizenry as expressed through public opinion polls. Mainstream media, and its editorial pages and TV anchors, generally reflect and respect this bipartisan consensus that has set boundaries on political discourse that are rarely violated, and create a media bias supportive of things as they are, especially with respect to fundamental issues.

 

These tendencies are most pronounced and evident in relation to foreign policy where progressive critics are rarely access so as to participate in public debates. Media and Congressional views are shaped by a consensus that is managed by ‘deep state’ forces inhabiting the U.S. bureaucracies in the intelligence, defense, and diplomatic sectors, and reflect deference to money, power, and media. The working of this anti-democratic, choiceless political process is evident in recent treatments of Iran and China, and to a lesser extent, Venezuela and Turkey. There is no consideration of policy alternatives that would lead to greater peace, justice, and respect for different governing styles and development approaches. This foreclosure of alternative ways of relating to the world are recently most evident in the U.S. approach to Iran and China. Relations with Iran are unnecessarily provocative, and might moderate somewhat if Biden defeats Trump, but not fundamentally. With China, a slide toward geopolitical confrontation is favored by both political parties as reflected in the presidential campaigns, and might be more aggressively pursued if Biden wins, assuming that Trump does not effectively obstruct the transfer of political power. A second cold war would be costly for humanity and disastrous for the United States, at a time when national policies, resources, and diplomatic efforts should be seeking global cooperation, global solutions to global problems, and attend to serious deficiencies in domestic infrastructure. The COVID crisis highlighted the shortcomings of national antagonisms in the face of a global health challenge that could have been greatly mitigated by a more cooperative international approach based on the recognition that ‘we are all in this together.’

 

Q3: Why do minor political parties have such little success competing in US elections?

 

Given the 50 separate federalist units that constitute the United States, there was an understandable concern during its entire history about political fragmentation, which led to making it burdensome procedurally and economically to organize political parties. The two-party framework is further reinforced by the media tendency to exclude third party voices and positions such as the Green Party from national debates. Also, even legislative participation is almost impossible as the minority party candidate must win by a majority in any electoral district unlike other countries where a 5% or 10% of the vote qualifies the party for representation, and greater diversity in the annals of government, but in some circumstances great confusion. Perhaps, most important of all, is the widely felt sense that a vote for a third party candidate is a wasted vote as the only meaningful candidacy is that of one of the two dominant parties.

 

In recent decades, the bipartisan consensus is served well by keeping minor parties at the outer margins of policy debate. It makes the consensus appear to be the only reasonable political option. This is misleading and discourages citizen participation by those who dissent. In reality, there is more questioning of American priorities with respect both to global militarism and predatory capitalism than is apparent, but such questioning only gets broader attention at some progressive online publications and websites. It will take a movement rather than electoral outcomes to challenge these structural characteristics of the American political system, which must culminate in the revamping of both political parties and the shattering of the bipartisan consensus, whose origins are rooted in the World II struggle against fascism and the Cold War confrontation with the Soviet Union. The consensus lingers in the 21st century after the Soviet collapse, taking the form of launching ‘the war on terror,’ responding to ‘the clash of civilizations,’ and now supporting the prospect of a new cold war or a regime-changing approach to Iran.

 

Q4: Why is turnout so low in US elections?

 

Electoral turnout has been low in recent years because the perceptions of living in a ‘choiceless’ democracy give many U.S. citizens the impression that it does not matter who wins as either way the problems of their lives will not be solved. Perhaps, more than choiceless, a better existential explanation of this disvaluing of the right to vote is the sense of what I would call irrelevant democracy. This means that political outcomes of elections are felt to be irrelevant to conditions of poverty or discrimination, or economic unfairness, an interpretation that gains credibility that it is ‘the losers’ in American society that make up the bulk of those who fail to vote, sometimes out of principled rejection of both candidates being put forward. It reflects deep alienation in middle class and underclass America, which has been somewhat lessened at this time due to a fear that Trump’s reelection could produce a fascist America. This fear will undoubtedly increase voter turnout in November, but not necessarily in a post-Trump future.

 

Although it is the disadvantaged who disproportionately refrain from voting (and partly also for reasons connected with voter suppression discussed in response to Q1), there are sophisticated citizens who refuse to vote on principle or vote under the banner of ‘the lesser of evils.’ Progressive anti-Trumpists are faced with this dilemma in the forthcoming elections. Biden’s record, especially on international issues and the Middle East, is of a consistently war-mongering character that includes strong support for the disastrous 2003 war and subsequent occupation of Iraq and mindless indifference to Israel’s criminal disregard of Palestinian rights. Besides, as suggested, Biden seems as readier for a new cold war than Trump. His version of the foreign policy bipartisan consensus is more coherent and deferential to the considered views of the political elite and militarized American bureaucracy while Trump is an impulsive leader that thinks he can by himself engineer a revival of American preeminence by bullying, bluster, and bluff.

 

My own reluctant support of Biden is rooted in my greater apprehensions about Trump, which also explains why I equally reluctantly supported Hillary Clinton in 2016 when she opposed Trump. I regard his demagogic style, racist affinities, ultra-nationalism, ecological denialism as a vehicle for a fascist future for the United States, which would mean the total abandonment of democratic procedures of governance, accompanied by repressive policies and practicess. Such an abandonment would almost certainly produce harsh exclusionary hostility to immigration except from majority white countries, punishment of dissent and protest activity, and an economic and political order even more slanted in favor of the most wealthy. My reluctance about the electoral choice posed by Biden or Trump is also colored by uncertainty in the form of an obscure future. I fear a belligerent future in which Biden’s approach leads to interventions and even war, whereas I grant the possibility that a reelected Trump could opt for isolationism, which resulted in more moderation in the Middle East and elsewhere.

 

Q5: What role does AIPAC play in US elections?

 

AIPAC is a strong lobbying group that is perceived by the political parties to exert great influence on large Jewish donors and Jewish voters generally. The leadership of both parties compete for AIPAC approval, although as an organization it refrains from political endorsements at national levels. It does have a record of opposing Congressional candidates deemed critical of Israel, making inflammatory accusations that candidates critical of Israel are by that fact alone anti-Semitic. Such a campaign has been launched with at least implicit AIPAC support to defeat the candidacy of Ilhan Omer who is running for reelection in urban Minneapolis.

 

Part of the effectiveness of AIPAC is due to money and tight organizational discipline, and part of its influence is due to the absence of countervailing Jewish organizations that speak for liberal Zionism and progressive Jews. J-Street has attempted to provide a voice for liberal Zionism in Washington, and has limited success at legislative levels, but not in relation to party platforms or the selection of national candidates. Jewish Voice for Peace is an admirably balanced NGO, but its influence is mainly felt in civil society, where it has created growing support for a just outcome of this struggle that has gone on for a century, which includes supported the realization of the Palestinian right of self-determination whether in the form of a viable separate sovereign state or a single state whose foundational principle is ethnic equality.

 

Throughout its existence AIPAC has been and remains subservient to the priorities of Israeli leadership and consistently supportive of maximal Zionist goals, and hence an adherent of antagonistic attitudes on international law, the UN, and international morality. In my judgment, AIPAC has harmed the role of the U.S. in the Middle East and at the UN by pushing American foreign policy in belligerent and regime-changing directions, focusing on heightening the confrontation with Iran, and secondarily, with Turkey, which has intensified regional tensions and dangers of war. The recent sanctions debate in the UN Security Council manifested both U.S. belligerence and its defiance of the views of even its normally close European allies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Q: Why do minor political parties have such little success competing in US elections?

 

Q: Why is turnout so low in US elections?

 

Q: What role does AIPAC play in US elections?

 

Tags: , , , ,

Iconic Deaths and What They Mean: George Floyd and Ruth Bader Ginsberg

26 Sep

Iconic Deaths and What They Mean: George Floyd and Ruth Bader Ginsberg

2020 is a year that will be remembered for its many distinctive features—the global reach and lethality of the COVID pandemic, worldwide protests against racism, and likely, to come, the outcome and aftermath of an American presidential election with likely severe worldwide reverberations. Yet one of the least conceptualized aspects up until now is the occurrence of two very different iconic deaths.’ By according an iconic status to an individual’s death is to acknowledge its historic impact. In one case, that of George Floyd, victim of police murder on May 25th, the impacts of his shocking death were immediate and astonishing for their scope and potentially transformative effects on how human people treat one another. Floyd’s death was iconic while hiss life had no broad historic significance.

 

 

With Ruth Bader Ginsberg her death brought to an the experience of an iconic life, a legendary figure who made creative use of law to overcome gender discrimination. Her death was also an iconic event for multiple reasons, perhaps most salient as a result of its occurrence at a moment where it could profoundly affect the orientation of the U.S. Supreme Court for decades. Had RBG died six months earlier or later her death would not have caused such a stir, and her historic significance would focused on celebrating her lifetime achievements, memorialized by making her the first woman to lie in state on the steps of the U.S. Capitol. By dying when she did. RBG produced a constitutional and consequential crisis over the appropriateness of rushing to confirm a successor prior to the presidential election scheduled for November 3rd. Actually, even if she had been a rather undistinguished justice of the Supreme Court her death at this time would be hugely significant if not iconic. Unlike Floyd, whose death was a result of a heinous police crime, Ginsberg died of natural causes, and so her death becomes iconic not because of its character but because of its potentially momentous impact on the role of the U.S. Supreme Court in presiding over the judicial responses to controversial social and economic policies for coming decades. The fact that she was the first woman to lie in state on the steps of her the Capitol is a recognition of her iconic life, and was not occasioned by the timing or unrelated importance of her death.

 

In the annals of American experience, we have to go back to Martin Luther King, Jr. assassination to find a somewhat comparable case of an iconic life followed by an iconic death. In King’s case the assassination of this non-violent charismatic figure sparked riots and led to a new surge of support for the civil rights movement that had been his life’s work. King, like Floyd, was the victim of a criminal act, which in both cases sparked to explosive political responses that tested the resilience, flexibility, and core values of the governing political framework in the United States.

 

The only recent comparable case to that of Floyd is the self-immolation of Mohamed Bouazizi in the remote interior Tunisian town of Sidi Bouzid on December 17, 2010, and 28 days later after an escalating series of protest events throughout the country, the dictator of 23 years, Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, fell from power and fled the country. The death of this heretofore anonymous street vendor not only sparked a successful revolution surge against the Tunisian dictatorial regime but led directly to various types of massive protest activity that rocked the established order throughout the Arab World. These uprising in turn gave rise to a variety of violent reactions, principally leading in some national instances to a counterrevolutionary return to oppressive patterns of governance and in others to prolonged civil strife. Without belittling the anguish of family grieving after such death, the life of Floyd, as with Bouazizi became publicly notable only due to the manner of his death, and the aftermath that occurred; had either man died naturally or in a barroom brawl their lives would have been known only to his family and circle of acquaintances. which was also the case for both men.

The manner of Floyd’s death was iconic, and not only because of its tumultuous aftermath, but because it also exposed the underlying reality of the victimization of people of color due to police brutality. In this sense if Floyd’s death did not have this metaphorical resonance it might have been briefly newsworthy as in earlier comparable instances, but soon faded from view, depriving his life and particularly his death of such lasting value. Floyd’s death became iconic because it was not an isolated event, but came after a series of police killings of blacks under incriminating circumstances and leading to coverups and evasions rather than indictments and convictions. Floyd’s death, in the context that occurred, given added veracity as his dying was seen by millions as a result of a video, which helped create a tipping point from which outrage over police abuse mutated from a series of incidents to a plausible diagnosis of ‘systemic racism,’ which called for remedial justice that went beyond police reform to the entire socio-economic structure that denies equality to racial minorities.

 

Why should we accord attention to iconic deaths? By considering the cases of Floyd, King, Bouazizi we come to understand that certain modes of dying can under certain circumstances provide the spark that produces revolutionary upsurges. Such upsurges are expressive of simmering or dormant underlying condition of injustice or dissatisfaction that had invisibly reached the outer limit of collective patience. This invisibility accounts for the magnitude of the reaction being regarded as unexpected, a surprise, and even a mystery.

 

 

In RBG’s case her death only becomes iconic because of the unusually ruthless and reckless opportunism of the leader and his political party that seeks to take partisan advantage of an opportunity to promote to the Supreme Court a reliable ideological ally while still holding the reins of power, which risk being lost in the weeks ahead through either the defeat of Trump or the loss of Republican control of the Senate. There would still remain the lame duck gap between the election of a new president and the inauguration of the next president on January 20, 2021 where it would still be possible to thwart the normally legitimate practice of allowing the electoral choice of the people make such a judicial appointment. Here it is particularly vital as the Court is so evenly balanced, and the undisguised Republican intention is to fill the now vacant seat with a judge whose legal philosophy on wedge issues is almost diametrically opposed to the views held by Ginsberg. She may be receiving national honors by flying flags at half-mast or by having her body lie in state but her judicial legacy is in the process of being dishonored, perhaps solely because of the untimeliness of her death.

 

Iconic deaths are rare, and much rarer than iconic lives. There are other notable violent and unnatural deaths of Americans who had led iconic lives. Such deaths give the social order a temporary shock effect and have been the occasion of mass grieving, commentary, and retrospective assessments, including those of John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy, and Malcolm X. Yet none of these deaths were iconic in the sense meant here–producing such an immediate and significant post-mortem historic impact. We remember these men for their lives and untimely and disturbing deaths that do sometimes create a sense of long-term societal loss, but do not spark an immediate societal tremor. For instance, some have suggested that assassination of the Kennedy brothers did have a lingering depressive effect on American political life, possible culminating in the cynical demagoguery of Donald Trump.

 

Sometimes, events rather than persons, can have an iconic impact as was the case with the Rex Cinema in relation to the 1978 Iran Revolution or the reaction to the Gaza collision of an IDF truck with a car in Jabalia Refugee Camp killing four Palestinian passenger, and sparking the First Intifada in 1987. Whether persons or incidents, the iconic dimension arises because of underlying circumstances rather than by design. The 1960s public self-immolations of Buddhist monks in Saigon tried deliberately to give death a sense of iconic urgency in reaction to the growing American military presence in country. Some close observers felt that the fate of the Saigon regime and the Vietnam War was decided by these ultimate acts of individual self-sacrifice, modes of protest with an iconic resonance in a Buddhist cultural setting that would not be experienced by comparable religious expressions of resistance in the West.

 

This interest in iconic deaths, and recourse to this terminology, is to achieve a better understanding of non-incremental change in underlying political circumstances where normal channels of change have failed to address perceived injustices. Such circumstances can simmer for decades, and even longer, until a raging fire breaks out unexpectedly, and an iconic death becomes the animating cause. Of a different nature is the iconic death of RBG that has an almost coincidental historic significance because of peculiar existing conditions of the constitutional system that create a strong temporary incentive to change the course of national history, an opportunity that might be lost if not acted upon with a ruthless sense of immediacy. Such a death gives insight into the character of the American political and governmental system more than to the dynamics of change.

Tags: , , ,

UAE/Bahrain Normalization: Peace or Geopolitics?

23 Sep

[Prefatory Note: responses to Murat Sofuoglu’s of TRT questions (IX/21/2020) on UAE/Bahrain normalization. It will be important to distinguish the immediate gains for Netanyahu and Trump from middle-term impacts that will not likely be evident for several months. Some speculation suggest that normalization in the form of the so-called Abrahamic Agreements goes beyond an acknowledgement of an Israel’s existence, but moves toward affirming Israel’s right to establish a Jewish state in an Arab society.]

 

  1. Do you think UAE-Bahrain normalisations with Israel are further dividi.ng the Arab world and the Middle East?

 

Yes, I think the willingness to endorse these normalization agreements in the White House setting was a dramatic expression of identification with Trump’s regional diplomacy in the Middle East and a formalized repudiation of Palestinian aspirations for a sustainable peace based on their inalienable right of self-determination. It also confirmed an acceptance of relations with Israel on the part of these Gulf monarchies on the basis of their self-interests, including arms acquisitions and U.S. diplomatic support, while abandoning the earlier Arab consensus on withholding normalization until the Palestinian have their own state with its capital in Jerusalem.

 

  1. Will Saudi Arabia eventually normalise relations with Israel?

 

My assumption is that Saudi Arabia is waiting to see whether there are any adverse reaction to the moves made by UAE and Bahrain. Of special concern to Riyadh is whether there is any serious anti-regime activism in Saudi Arabia or the countries that took the normalization steps. It may also be the case that the MBS will await the death of the king, and his own succession, before making such a move. The outcome of the U.S. election in November could be a factor working in either direction: early normalization to help Trump; deferred normalization to avoid alienating Biden or if it seemed as though Trump would lose the election.

 

  1. What kind of the Middle East would you envision after the UAE-Bahrain deal with Israel?

 

It should be kept in mind that the normalization agreements were preceded by a decade of extensive cooperative arrangements between Israel and these two Arab states. However, the agreements might also be intended to send a message to Iran that such an alliance is now robust enough to counter any further Iranian regional expansion, and as a warning to reduce profile in Syria, Yemen, Iraq, Gaza, and Lebanon or face the consequences. There is also a Turkish dimension, which seems intended to express the priority accorded by these governments to reconciling with Israel even if it means greater distancing from Turkey.

 

The Turkish dimension requires further analysis, but becoming so explicit about normalization  send a signal that these Arab monarchies are prepared to side formally with Israel despite their opposition to Turkish diplomacy–normalization with Iran, support for Palestinian rights, and low profile relations with Israel (while Israel pursues back channel anti-Turkish, anti-Erdogan initiatives with the objective of marginalizing Turkey in ME, Europe, and the United States.

 

 

Tags: , , , , ,

In Time of Pandemic Praise for the UN

3 Apr

 

IN TIIME OF PANDEMIC PRAISE FOR THE UN:

The UN Secretary General Promotes Global and Human interests

(Diirector General of WHO Guides Us)

 

Points of Departure

In recent years, the UN has seemed weak, almost irrelevant to many of the most disturbing global developments. It failed to stop genocide in Rwanda (1994) and Myanmar (2017-19), it has failed over several decades to end Israeli apartheid that is victimizing the Palestinian people and find peace for Israelis and Palestinians, it authorized a limited humanitarian protective use of force in Libya that immediately turned into an unauthorized and unlawful regime-changing intervention by NATO in Libya that brought ongoing chaos to the country, it has unacceptably stayed on the sidelines throughout Syrian and Yemeni ordeals as strife, massive civilian displacement, intervention, along with repeated crimes against humanity, were making a mockery of international humanitarian law, and it watched while disastrous fires burned out of control in the Amazon rainforest and Australia.

 

The UN is not an autonomous organization, and cannot be faulted for its failures, but its members can. The UN is essentially a political club run for the almost exclusive benefit of its member sovereign states, themselves largely controlled by its most powerful members. This control is exercised by way of funding, voting procedures, and informal modes of exerting influence within the Organization. The UN Charter provides a constitutional framework, which if it could engender compliance, would produce major, desirable, and fundamental global reforms, but the Charter says one thing, while international relations continue to operate according to the logic of militarism and geopolitics.  As well, there are some internal tensions written into the Charter, which contains unworkable procedures for taking account of changes in international life, including amending the text. This has given the UN a partially frozen image responsive to the realities of 1945, but increasing out of sync with the world of today.

 

During the Cold War the inability of the UN to fulfill its promises with respect to peace and security were largely explained by reference to paralyzing encounters between ‘the free world’ and ‘the Soviet bloc.’ Yet, after the collapse of the Soviet Union when a new consensus emerged among Permanent Members of the Security (P-5) not much changed. Many governments showed that they wanted to uphold sovereignty rights rather than be held internationally accountable according to standards set by human rights treaties or by reference to international law. The United States, in particular, insisted on freedom of geopolitical maneuver for itself and its allies, while pushing hard for accountability when dealing with adversaries. It became clear that a weak UN was consistent with the political priorities of almost all of its members, some sovereignty-oriented, a few geopolitically-oriented. At the same multilateralism, based on mutual benefit and global bargains gave the UN a useful role in facilitating global cooperation for the first fifty or so years of it existence, yet surprisingly not in the last 25 years up to the present.

 

These structural explanations of UN weakness were reinforced by cyclical political changes in the governing style of many important states. The rise of ultra-nationalist reactions to the failures of neoliberal globalization as post-Cold War and post-industrial capitalism revealed its predatory characteristics if not somewhat tamed by countervailing forces accentuated the state-centric framework of international relations that was implicitly hostile to any sources of authority external to the national political order. The kind of political leaders that were elected in dominant countries (U.S., UK, Brazil, India, Japan) exemplified this inward autocratic turn that was particularly opposed to global governance that accorded prominence to the United Nations. It reinforced autocratic trends in middle power democracies (Philippines, Turkey), as well as the embrace of ultra-nationalism by important non-democratic autocracies (Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Egypt).

 

 

The UN Speaks for the Peoples of the World

 

Against such a background, it might come as a surprise that the UN has played an important role since a crisis awareness unfolded as the COVID-19 challenge became global in scope and severe in depth. The first sign of UN significance was the extent to which governments, the media, and the public looked to and depended upon the World Health Organization (WHO) for information and guidance. Although the WHO was not one of the political organs whose work is generally regarded as indicative of the success or failure of the UN as a world organization, it was ‘a specialized agency’ within the UN System that long had gathered and disseminated information about health issues, and performing vital roles for countries that lacked sophisticated national health services of their own.

 

What the COVID-19 experience made clear was the importance of information to virtually every person and governmental body on the planet, and the degree to which the WHO and its Director General were quickly established as a valued source of reliable and trustworthy information. The geopolitical rivalry between the U.S. and China, as well as a variety of conspiracy theories explaining the outbreak of the disease cloud our understanding of origins and nature of threat, and what to do about it. This sense of confusion is heightened by lots of huckstering claims being made on behalf of exotic products that purport to strengthen immune systems and resistance to the disease, as well as calls to adopt untested preventive tactics and unconventional treatments. Given such considerations, establishing public trust and informational reliability become paramount goals, and WHO and Tedros Adhanan Grebreyerus, its Director General, have risen to the occasion, gaining media credibility and worldwide respect.

 

The dramatic highpoint of WHO came on March 11th when this expert UN body officially declared that the Coronavirus disease causing a worldwide health crisis was a pandemic. Such a declaration was quickly adopted by governments, media, and publics around the world, escalating preventive efforts in the form of lockdowns, travel restrictions, self-isolation, and social distancing overnight. It was a tribute to the quasi-authoritative status on such matters that WHO achieved along with the recognition that no other comparable source of guidance or pronouncement existed in the world. What is more, the WHO determination came after a persuasive show of reluctance to alarm the world prematurely by invoking the incendiary word ‘pandemic.’ In retrospect, it is obvious that pandemic is to health what genocide is to human rights. Where the language of pandemic is appropriate, it is crucial to have such conditions authoritatively identified, and where conditions do not warrant arousing global alarm it is as important to refrain from inflammatory language. Also, relevant is that despite the diversity of perspectives in the world, no serious effort has been made to challenge the WHO’s pronouncement. This is an impressive defiance of the ultra-nationalist mood that has previously dominated policymaking in the last five or so years, and exhibited distrust and disrespect for the UN and its pronouncements.

 

A second reason that the UN has achieved an enhanced reputation during this period is that the voice of António Guterres, the UN Secretary General, has seemed to articulate proposals that transcend statist and geopolitical orientations, and take their cue from ideas about the wellbeing of humanity, as well as in support of global interests, rather than put manifest nationalistic approaches involving exclusions, walls, and militarized boundaries. So far national and geopolitical leaders have responded to the Guterres call for the suspension of economic sanctions or even more radically, for ‘a global ceasefire’ with silence. Geopolitical actors, especially the U.S. are unwlling to acknowledge the inappropriateness of maintaining sanctions and coercive diplomacy during the pandemic, but neither are such governments likely to criticize the Secretary General openly for speaking out, although arguably his reselection for a second term may have been placed in doubt. In this sense, Guterres has given renewed credibility to the idea that the head of the UN is the world’s leading moral authority figure, a position previously probably most widely accorded to Pope Francis, but with less global outreach as speaking on behalf of the Catholic Church.

 

What this pandemic has already made clear to many persons is the need for a normative global discourse when it comes to health, which as suggested here, means trust, reliability, and comprehensive and useful information, as well as moral leadership that is not being provided by either states or geopolitical actors. The UN stepped forward to fill this discursive gap in a manner that has already had an impact. Of course, whether a health crisis of pandemic proportions is a stepping stone to normative globalism on other issues can be hoped for, but is far from assured. In fact, there are reasons to be skeptical. Despite the magnitude of the pandemic crisis, the most geopolitical tinged organ of the UN, the Security Council, has not even spoken out to date, much less responsibly performed its cardinal role as guardian of the peace and security of the peoples of the world. If global governance reflected rationality and humane values, rather than hegemonic and nationalistic values, this Coronavirus authoritative discourse at the UN should be directly transferable to climate change, the overall ecological agenda, and fashioning a humane response to migrations flows. Such UN learning and adaptations outside the health domain seems doubtful at this point as doing so would amount to mounting successful challenges to the geopolitical discourse that has controlled the UN since its inception.

 

 If for Health, Why Not Climate Cnage, Biodiversity, Migration?

It had been previously evident that global cooperation was needed to address climate change and related ecological issues, and the UN did provide auspices for the Paris Climate Change Agreement in 2015, which has lagged subsequently, being a casualty of ultra-nationalist dismissal of global policy priorities and Trump’s withdrawal of the United States from further participation in the agreement, the leading per capita source of carbon emissions. There is no doubt that the pandemic has demonstrated the pragmatic benefits of a cooperative approach, as opposed to reliance on competitive national interest approaches to addressing problems causing serious harm and threats of truly global scope. The same benefits of cooperation evident in relation to a pandemic exist with respect to climate change and biodiversity, and to some extent more dramatically, as the dangers of such scientifically established trends are more knowable and menacing, while becoming less reversible than are singular events such as an outbreak of the COVID-19 disease.

 

Despite this, health is more amenable to a global approach than climate change or biodiversity even though the latter concerns possess a global reach that is beyond reasonable doubt. Perhaps the most salient difference relates to time/space characteristics. The pandemic is here and now, with people dying the world over on a daily basis digitally portrayed in real time, while the impacts of climate change and biodiversity, although certainly having present impacts, are perceived as being largely situated in the future or in mostly geographically remote and limited locales, thus remaining abstract and without mobilizing capability to aarouse the general public, and for this reason tend to become controversial, scorned and rejected by those whose material interests or religious outlook might suffer from timely adjustment. Perhaps, even more explanatory than reference to the interests at stake, is the related issue of the psychological relevance of concreteness. A Coronavirus infection threatens with lethal immediacy the body of every individual inhabiting the planet, and by now most persons know someone who has suffered from the disease. COVID-19 is not a matter of a dispersed threat such as arises from global warming or the seemingly remote threat that arises from the destruction of rainforests or a lessening of biodiversity. Finally, the authority of the UN with respect to health does not encroach upon traditional spheres of territorial sovereignty as is the case with peace and security and with the regulation of private and public sector activity that does harm to the environment. Even the Paris Agreement did not attempt to regulate military causes of carbon dissemination or impose remedies for non-compliance with national pledges to reduce carbon emissions.

 

Concluding Observations

In conclusion, there is much to learn from the pandemic even at this early stage, and possibly, as time passes a more impressive learning curve will become evident in reaction to the spread and prolonged character of this health crisis. There is little doubt that many governments will learn the lessons of the last war, and be better prepared with respect to the availability of adequate medical facilities to address future large-scale epidemics, including pandemics. And maybe, if civil society activism is alert to the opportunity, some spillover effects will occur leading to a renewed readiness of governments to cooperate for the sake of promoting global interests and protecting global public goods, and in the process reinvigorating the UN as a necessary site of authority, information, cooperation, and institutional legitimacy. It is also quite possible that the UN will be quickly remarginalized as private sector and governmental energies are focused on economy recovery in forms that benefit big constellations of capital and finance.

 

One additional cautionary observation seems appropriate. What the WHO and the SG of the UN have so far done during the health crisis, while worthy of headlines, posed no direct challenge to sovereignty or geopolitics. It is discursive with no behavioral or direct policy claims, although investing the crisis with the stature of a pandemic did have distinct, and perhaps profound effects, on national responses and public awareness. The grounds for low expectations is strengthened by the failure of the Security Council to step forward with initiatives or even commentary. The Security Council’s discursive silence is rather startling under the circumstances, failing even to encourage recourse to global mechanisms fostering regional and global cooperative responses. The fact that this most statist dimension of the UN had nothing to offer in the face of a global emergency of unprecedented globality and severity offer a guide to what the UN can and cannot do. Such a failure is less that of the UN as an institutional matrix than it is of the nature of geopolitically managed global governance, which has used the Security Council as a subsidiary instrument of control. Furthermore, health has an apolitical essence that is associated with the widespread belief in the sacredness of life, and thus offers resistance to the kind of cost/benefit thinking that is much weaker when the concerns are about economic activity or the sovereignty and security priorities of militarized states.     

Tags: , , , , , , ,

Temporary Removal of Post on German Past/Present

18 Sep

I will re-post this blog on Friday after it has appeared online in Germany to

accommodate my distinguished co-author. Please forgive any inconvenience.

 

RF

The Loss of Two Unsung Heroes of International Relations

21 Oct

The Loss of Two Unsung Heroes of International Relations: A Tales of Two ‘Bobs’

 

In the recent past two giants of International Relations (IR) scholarship died,

leaving behind a corpus of work and a legacy of influence, especially among their talented and devoted followers in the academic world. I was fortunate to have enjoyed the friendship of both Robert Gilpin and Robert W. Cox, learning from both of these masters of the field despite their seemingly divergent worldviews. My connection with the two Bobs’ was quite different, Bob G. being my departmental colleague at Princeton for almost 40 years, while Bob C. more am intellectual and political comrade with whom I only rarely interacted with personally. This greater intimacy with scholarship than the person mainly reflects living and working so distantly from one another.

 

Why I pair these two academic figures is because for me their similarities, additional to their births and deaths being so close together, outweigh their differences, making the comparison intriguing for me. For many their stark differences in intellectual style, ideological stance, and political lineage would strike the inquiring eye first, and the similarities would be unnoticed.

 

Gilpin was a self-proclaimed conservative, holding an endowed chair honoring Dwight Eisenhower, and somewhat expressive of his moderate Republican, rural Vermont outlook that valued individual integrity and family closeness above all else. When it came to his scholarly approach Bob self-identified with ‘classical realism’ viewing hard power and economic capabilities as the forces dominating the annals of world history. His mission was to understand how the world order works in relation to its two key dimensions—war and political economy. His books War and Change in World Politics (1981) and The Political Economy of International Relations (1987), along with Global Political Economy  (2001) will deservedly be long remembered and actively studied. Their conceptual clarity, lucid prose, and soft erudition make these scholarly contributions enjoyable to read, itself a rarity for such subject-matter. Gilpin was in many ways an American analogue to Hedley Bull, and not surprisingly they were friends and shared a common frame of reference that went against the pretensions of social scientific approaches to IR. To validate the claim of being ‘classical’ realists Gilpin and Bull both regarded history and philosophy as more instructive than social science when it came to understanding international relations. Later in his career Gilpin became conversant with the work of economists, and even applied rational choice theory to his effort to grasp the essence of war and change in international society.

 

Gilpin’s central linkage between war-proneness and hegemonic decline could be published today to acclaim as it casts a bright light on the seemingly irrational belligerent behavior of the United States. This hegemonic actor seems to be inviting the outbreak of war with an almost mindless disregard of its catastrophic dangers in the nuclear age. In War and ChangeGilpin develops an illuminating set of explanations for why hegemonic powers almost always decline, and resort to war in a vain effort to halt their slide. Gilpin’s political economy writing delineated a new sub-field for mainstream IR, drawing on contemporary economic thought and an Enlightenment confidence in the rationality of human behavior, while at the same time being informed by the Marxist line of critique of capitalism. It was illuminating without in any way challenging the established world economic order, which he praised as having produced unprecedented prosperity and stability since established after the Second World War.

 

Cox’s concerns and experience were was different. Working with the International Labor Organization (ILO) as a senior civil servant for 25 years, living in the vicinity of Geneva, and developing a feeling for the formative historical agency of people mobilized for change and behaving in ways that reflect their material conditions. His books, Production Power and World Order: Social Forces in the Making of History (1989)and Approaches to World Order (with Timothy J. Sinclair, 1996)contain the essential pillars of his critical theory of international relations and his assessment of the current global situation. While Gilpin devoted his energies to understandingthe way the world of sovereign states and geopolitics works, Cox wanted to devote his understanding to the challenge of transformingthe world.  In a rather profound sense, were the legitimate children of revolution: Cox being a child of the French Revolution while Gilpin of the American Revolution. These contrasting influences continue to work their way into practice and expectations of the West two centuries later.

 

Drawing heavily on the thought of Antonio Gramsci, it was Cox’s mission to demonstrate that the state system was presently entrapped, which presaged regression, and even collapse, unless popular energies could be mobilized around an appropriate transformative vision. While Gilpin observed change, Cox was intent on identifying the social forces that might achieve emancipatory change. Neither was hopeful about the future, Gilpin because of hegemonic decline, Cox because of the absence of a clear alternative to disastrous patterns of hegemonic governance.

 

Once Cox left the ILO late in life he embarked upon an academic career yet attained almost instant prominence.  He became a professor at York University in Toronto, which provided a supportive progressive setting. His work there on international political economy, was definitely in the critical tradition associated with neo-Marxist thought, and was often associated with Susan Strange’s contributions. They were viewed often as co-founders of the British School of Political Economy.

 

Both Cox and Gilpin deserve our admiration as among the most significant thinkers that international relations has produced in the period since the end of World War II. While many insiders are attuned to the value of their contributions, the wider world has given greater attention to the intellectually flashy, and policy relevant, of such academic writers as Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski. These ambitious individuals gave the impression of marking time while waiting for a call to Washington.  They were well vetted by the Council of Foreign Relation, the informal headhunting undertaking that was effective until recently in staffing the higher echelons of the State Department. Perhaps, making the point too strongly, whereas Cox and Gilpin lasting contributions are located in the sphere of knowledge, Kissinger and Brzezinski will be remembered primarily as controversial academic superstars in the sphere of power.

 

 

Bolton’s Red Sky Worldview: ICC, International Law, and Iran

26 Sep

Bolton’s Game: Not Sovereignty, Not International Law—Clearing the Path for U.S., Geopolitical Primacy

 

To be sure, on September 10thJohn Bolton, Trump’s National Security Advisor, pushed all the thematic buttons that might beexpected of a luncheon speaker invitedto address the Federalist Society, long known asthe ideological home of rabid advocates of the so-called ‘new sovereignty.’ The hallmark of this pre-Trump neocon law bastion of Scalia worshippers was their role in the career nurturing of such jurisprudential embarrassments as John Yoo and Jack Goldsmith. Yoo the notorious author of the torture memos and Goldsmith the public servant usually give credit forcrafting an expert approval text validating ‘extreme rendition’ of CIA suspects to notorious ‘black sites,’ known around the world as safe havens for torture, surely acrude instance ofex parte criminal legalism. It should be noted that both of these individuals are senior faculty members at two of America’s finest law schools, UC Berkeley and Harvard, both of which exhibit institutional pride in the fact of treating legal ethics as integral part of professional education.

 

John Bolton was the safest of choices as a featured speaker, having earned his Federalist Society credentials many times over.  He seems perversely proud of leading the unprecedented effort on behalf of George W. Bush in 2002 to ‘unsign’ the Rome Statute, the treaty that brought the International Criminal Court (ICC) into force in 2002, and now has 123 sovereignstates as parties, including all NATO members except the U.S. and Turkey. At the talk, Bolton paused to boast of orchestrating this unusual move to highlight and underscore this repudiation of the ICC by the Bush presidency, and in the process, of the crusading success of a transnational civil society movement and a coalition of moderate governments around the world to institutionalize individual accountability of political leaders and military commanders for war crimes and crimes against humanity.  It should be humiliating that such a global undertaking to strengthen international criminal law enforcement is regarded as posing a direct threat to Americans and governmental policy. It puts a preemptivetwist on the previous reliance on ‘victors’ justice’ to ensure that none of the Allied crimes during World War II would be subjected to legal scrutiny while the crimes of German and Japanese political leaders and military commanders were being prosecuted.

 

Actually, even if Bush had not bothered to have the Clinton signature removed, the U.S. would never in this dark period of anti-internationalism have joined the ICC. To become a party to the treaty would have needed the additional step of ratification of the Rome Statute, and that would require an affirmative vote of 2/3rds of the U.S. Senate. A favorable outcome would have been even more unlikely than for Donald Trump to nominate Anita Hill or Robert Mueller as his next choices for the U.S. Supreme Court. In this sense, only the up tempo language of Bolton is notable for its willingness to denigrate and even smear the ICC.

 

Slick Willy Clinton had his own reservations about the treaty and never took the normal step following an official signature of a negotiated inter-governmental agreement of submitting it for ratification. Indeed, it is a technical violation of customary international law that imposes a good faith obligation on governments to seek formal adherence of signed treaties in accordance with constitutional procedures of the particular state. In other words, even the supposedly liberal side of American political life has opted out of its earlier tradition of supporting the institutional development of the Rule of Law on a global level as an aspect of its commitment to the role of law and institutions as essential ingredients of a peaceful and just world order.

 

Congress removed any doubt as to its hostility toward the ICC when in 2002 it passed the American Service-Members’ Protection Act, authorizing the President to use all necessary means, even force, to prevent prosecution at The Hague of Americans accused of war crimes or crimes against humanity. What is especially disturbing about such a slap at criminal accountability is the absence of slightest show of concern as to whether the allegations in a particular case were well grounded in evidence or not.  When Bolton alluded to this bit of ultra-nationalism he appropriately noted that the legislation enjoyed bipartisan support, which suggests that the American posture of claiming ‘lawless geopolitics’ for itself is a fixed feature of world order for the seeable future no matter who occupies the Oval Office. It is ironic that while criminality is ensured of impunity, the practice of impunity, a dubious encroachment on the logic of legality, is not only claimed but offered that most unusual feature of international enforcement.

 

Bolton implied that the problems of criminality in world affairs are associated with the leaders of the foreign adversaries of the United States, identifying such individuals as Saddam Hussein, Hitler, Stalin, and Qaddafi. His assertion implied that the good behavior of the United States and its allies was such as to be inherently benevolent and the bad behavior of its adversaries would require more than law to deter: “The hard men of history are not deterred by fantasies of international law such as the International Criminal Court.” We can only meekly ask, “Are the supposedly soft men  of history, such as Trump or G.W. Bush, any less undeterred?” “And why should we ever expect these hard men to be deterred if the ICC and international law are but ‘fantasies.’

 

Getting back to Bolton’s luncheon remarks, his own summary of his feverish assault on the audacity of the ICC to consider investigating Israel’s international crimes, and the alleged crimes of the Taliban and the United States in Afghanistan reads as follows:“This administration will fight back to protect American constitutionalism, our sovereignty, and our citizens. No committee of foreign nations will tell us how to govern ourselves and defend our freedom. We will stand up for the US constitution abroad, just as we do at home. And, as always, in every decision we make, we will put the interests of the American people first.”

 

These are predictable sentiments, given the occasion and taking into account Bolton’s long advocacy of a militarist foreign policy that disregards the restraints of law, morality, and political prudence. It isthe ethics and politics of this disregard that is Bolton’s realmessage. We should be attentive to this real message hidden within the fiery ‘sovereignty, first’ verbiage, which is that the geopolitical practices of the United States will not be subject to legal accountability no matter how flagrant the violation of fundamental norms might be in the future. Bolton may overstep the bounds of the liberal order when he attacks the ICC as an institution, which had not been previously treated as a threat to American foreign policy. Only recently did it dawn on Washington policymakers that the ICC might at some point actually challenge what the U.S. and its allies, most notably Israel, are doing in the world.

 

Previously, the U.S. was a supporter of criminal accountability of foreign leaders, especially if they were adversaries of the U.S.. It should be remembered that even during the Bush presidency, the government sent dozens of government lawyers to Iraq to help prepare a war crimes prosecution of Saddam Hussein and his entourage after their capture. This capture occurred in the course of a war of aggression initiated against Iraq in 2003 without any prior provocation. The U.S. attack, regime change, and long intrusive occupation took place, it should be recalled, despite the failure of the U.S. Government to secure the support of the UN Security Council despite a feverish attempt to gain authorization.

 

In other words, so far as even the Boltons of this world are concerned, there is nothing wrong with criminal accountability of leaders and military personnel so long as the indictments, prosecutions, and punishments are confined to enemies of the United States. Such a self-serving geopolitical appropriation of international criminal law should not be confused with legitimate law, which presupposes that the rules, norms, and procedures apply to all relevant actors, the strong as well as the weak, the victors as well as the defeated, geopolitical wrongdoers as well their adversaries.

 

What is sad about the Bolton worldview, and indeed the new sovereignty ideologues that shape the public image of the Federalist Society, aside from its influence in the Trump Era, is that it completely misunderstands the relevance of international law in this period of global interdependence and planetary challenge. State-centric world order as beset by geopolitical rivalries is a blueprint for civilizational collapse in the 21stcentury, and probably represents the worst possible way to uphold core sovereign rights and national interests over time.

 

What is still sadder is that the Bolton/Trump worldview, which seems so outlandish and anachronistic is not that extremist, compared to Democratic establishment approaches, when it comes to behavior. It represents a surreal rhetorical extension of the bipartisan consensus that is complacent about the failures of the neoliberal international order, including especially the destructive impacts of predatory globalization on democratic forms of governance, on safeguarding of social and economic rights, and on ecological sustainability.

 

As many have noted Hilary Clinton’s push toward a confrontation with Russia was more in keeping with Bolton’s preferred foreign policy than the more accommodationist proposals of Trump during his presidential campaign. It is against such a background that I reach the lamentable conclusion that when it comes world peace and global justice the Democratic Party establishment has little to offer when it comes to foreign policy, and may be more inclined to initiate wars and raise geopolitical tensions than even their reactionary and militarist Republican rivals. Bernie Sanders, although international affairs is not his strong suit, at least gestured toward a less militarist and dysfunctional  foreign policy. For the Democratic Party to generate enthusiasm upon American youth and the deeply discontented in the country it must reinvent itself by embracing progressive and forthcoming policies than in the recent past and positions that are more constructive and programmatic than even the Sanders foreign policy. Without such bold moves there will be a loud sigh of relief when Trump loses control of Congress in November, and even louder one when Trump leaves the White House, but the American ship of state will still resemble the maiden voyage of the Titantic.

 

As if to confirm the analysis above we should take account of Bolton past warmongering toward North Korea including advocating a preemptive strike, and recently articulating grossly unlawful threats of force directed at Iran. It should be appreciated that contemporary international law, as embodied in Article 2(4) of the UN Charter forbids threatsas well as uses of aggressive force.

Such a prohibition underlines the criminality of Bolton’s recent formulations of military threats directed at Iran: “I might imagine they [“the mullahs of Tehran”] would take me seriously when I assure them today: If you cross us, our allies, or our partners; if you harm our citizens; if you continue to lie, cheat and deceive, yes, there will indeed be hell to pay.” Such chilling words must be understood in the context of Bolton’s past advocacy of bombing Iran and of the Trump approach to the region that can be summarized in a few words: ‘do what Netanyahu wants.’

 

Even if war and aggression do not actually occur, and we must pray that they do not, this kind of geopolitical bullying by a leading official of a country that has up to one thousand military bases spread around the world should be criminalized, and not just criticized as intemperate.

 

 

Tags: , , , , , ,

The Future of NATO: An Interview

11 Aug

The Future of NATO: An Interview with Daniel Falcone

 

[Prefatory Note: An interview with Daniel Falcone on the future of NATO that considers Trump’s brazen challenges and the tepid responses of European political leaders, and what this interplay signifies for the future of world order. At least, Trump’s approach has so far avoided the drift toward Cold War 2 that might have happened had Hillary Clinton become president, but Trump’s trade war mentality may hasten the advent of a different kind of second Cold War, with China and Europe at its epicenter, that is, if the Trump presidency is not undermined in the November elections or otherwise. We should be puzzled by the seeming passivity of the deep state in the U.S. Does it not exist after all?]

 

 

 

 

Q1. What are the reasons for Trump’s insistence that NATO is just another extension of corruption and an institutional burden for the United States?

 

It is difficult to evaluate Trump’s particular moves from coherent rational perspectives. He seems driven by narcissistic motivations of various sorts that have little to do with any overall grand strategy, and a diplomatic style that he has managed to impose on the conduct of American foreign policy that consists of provocative bluster and insults of respected foreign leaders, a continuation of the sort of vulgar irreverence that brought him unexpected success on the presidential campaign trail in 2016 and earlier celebrity in the deal-making world of real estate, gambling casinos, beauty pageants, professional boxing, and reality TV (“The Apprentice”). Explaining Trump’s recent confrontational focus on financial contributions by NATO members seems as simple as this at first glance, but of course, such assessments based on personality never tell the whole story in the complex unfolding political narrative. Undoubtedly, another part of the story can be associated with the insistence during a Trump’s interview that Europe is a trade rival of the United States. A further conjecture may be a geopolitical ‘peace’ framework based on Russia, China, and the U.S..

 

With regard to NATO, Trump has a clear target related to two things he seems to love, and admittedly such affections were not alien to the foreign policy he inherited from his predecessors: money and weapons. By showing that he can gain what Obama failed to achieve with respect to meeting the agreed 2% of GDP goal set for NATO members, he can, and certainly will, boast of his greater effectiveness in protecting America’s material interests than prior presidents. As suggested he measures foreign policy success by reference to monetary returns and America, First (and Me, First) criteria, and tends to put to one side the solidarities of friendship among countries sharing a common cultural identity and mutual respect that have been at the core of the alliance ethos over the decades, especially in relations with Western Europe since World War II. For Trump it appears that alliances, including even NATO, are to be treated as nothing more than business arrangements that are only worthwhile so long as their profit margins hold up. This means that financial contributions become the clearest test of whether cooperative frameworks makes sense in present settings. Interests and values are put to one side while the bundles of cash are counted. In such a process, the circumstances that brought the alliance into being, or justify its continuation, are ignored. Actually, Trump could make a credible case for withdrawing from or greatly downsizing the alliance, given present world conditions, which would help reduce the U.S. fiscal deficit, as well as easing the burdens of security that fall to Washington.

 

In the end, Trump could credibly claim a narrow victory for himself at this recent NATO summit in the transactional sense of gaining assurances from the European governments that they will be increasing their defense budgets.In return Trump reaffirmed continuing U.S. support for the NATO alliance. Like a Mafioso family gathering when the cash flow is restored, friendship between European governments and Trump’s America becomes again possible, providing foreign leaders are prepared to continue absorbing the insults Trump delivers along the way, and then when they create awkward moments, as with Teresa May in Helsinki, are curtly dismissed as his own ‘fake news.’ When ‘fake’ is used to discredit the truth, trust vanishes, and one of the pillars of a healthy democracy is destroyed. We gradually lose our understanding of what is truth, and worse, no longer care or hold leaders accountable by reference to reality.

 

There is no indication of any attention given by Trump to the crucial question: whether NATO serves sufficient useful purposes in the post-Cold War world to be worth the economic costs, let alone the political costs associated with spending on weapons rather than the wellbeing of people and their natural surroundings. Would not the long overdue transition to a real peacetime security posture have many positive advantages for the U.S. and Europe, including exploring prospects for a mutually beneficial cooperative relationships with Russia and China? We have reached a stage in world history where we should be asking whether NATO might be abandoned altogether or drastically redesigned in light of the current agenda of actual global policy challenges. If NATO were converted into a vehicle for the realization of humansecurity, setting its new agenda by reference to the wellbeing of people, it would be a genuine triumph for Trump and the global public interest, but such an orientations seems well outside the boundaries of his political imagination. In fairness, no American leader has dared to adopt the discourse of human security, or questioned the continued viability of Cold War alliances and accompanying strategic doctrine, and it would be pure wishful thinking to expect such demilitarizing words to issue from the lips or mind  of Donald Trump. At least those of us who watch the Trump spectacle in bemused fear should more than ever put forward our own hopes and beliefs in broad gauged cooperation between North America and Europe based on a commitment to  peace, justice, and security, and demand that discussion of the future of the relationship between Europe and North America not be reduced to a demeaning debate about how to raise the level of military spending or keep obsolete alliances in being by the artifice of worrying only about whether particular governments are meeting the 2% goal, which seems like an arbitrary number that is unrelated to the actuality of security challenges..

Q2. How do you forecast the European reaction to the Trump commentary on NATO and could you explain how this might impact key portions of US foreign affairs?

 

Europe’s governmental response to the Trump onslaught so far has been very disappointing, while recent civil society responses in Europe has been generally encouraging. On the one side, NATO leaders seem to pout like aggrieved children, angered and humiliated, but too frightened of the uncertainties associated with confronting Trump to raise their objections above the level of a whisper. On the other side, their acquiescence to the Trump insistence that NATO viability is to be measured in dollars or maybe Euros, unaccompanied by even a pretense of putting forward a relevant substantive rationale for Cold War levesl of spending. Such passive aggressive behavior by European leaders is likely best understood as a sullen endorsement of Trumpism. In effect, the Europeans are muttering “yes, we in Europe should be allocating more of our resources to the defense budget and begin to live up to our 2% commitment” so as to keep a renewed watchful eye on Russia and go along with the slouch toward a Second Cold War. There is no justification given for supposing that Europe will be safer if more heavily invested in military equipment, and my view is that Europe would be far safer, more secure, and more serene if it instead invested these additional funds in helping alleviate the refugee challenge at both the asylum end and at its various sources where combat and climate change have made some national habitats virtually unlivable. It might be emphasized that these habitants from which people are escaping to Europe most commonly at great risk to themselves, have been rendered uninhabitable partly by industrialization in the West and by the bloody aftermath of European colonialism that left behind arbitrary borders that did not correspond to natural communities.

 

Responding to the root causes of refugee and migration pressures should be seen as a matter of long deferred collective responsibility, and not as charity or as exercises of discretion. Furthermore, if NATO were responsive to real threats to the security of Europe, including to its democratic way of life, it would focus its attention with a sense of urgency on these issues instead of implicitly preparing the continent for a new Cold War that an anti-Russian weaponized foreign policy will, ironically, help bring about, initially no doubt in the form of a destablizing arms race, and calls for raising defense spending to even higher levels.

 

Here Trump seems to have his priorities confused. At times, for instance in supporting Brexit, and now endorsing a hard Brexit and the Boris Johnson approach, Trump seems to be furthering Moscow’s prime aim of weakening the unity of Europe, while at the same time by rallying NATO members to increase military spending Trump seems to be lending credibility to Russian worries of a new Cold War.

 

Whether for personal reasons associated with his shady financial dealings and his vulnerability to blackmail or a sense that the way to bring stability to the world is to have strong leaders work together, and establish a grand alliance of autocrats, Trump’s soft spot for Putin may be preferable to what a hard-edged, NATO enthusiast like Hilary Clinton would have brought to the White House had she won the election. A Clinton presidency would almost certainly have gone easy on NATO when it comes to the economics and politics of burden-sharing while insisting on the adoption of a hardline on such geopolitical issues as Crimea and eastern Ukraine. Given the recent show of timidity by NATO leaders scared to cut the umbilical cord that has tied their security policies to the diktats of Washington ever since 1945 (with the notable exception of DeGaulle’s ‘France, First’/. leadership). We sometimes forget that aspiring to the role of global leader has always come with a high price tag, but the expense involved is more than offset by the benefits of status, heightened influence in global arenas, and a favorable positioning in the world economy, or so it seemed to the political elites of both parties until Trump through handfuls of sand into the intricate machinery of the national security state..

Q3. In the past US led and authorized NATO bombings are criticized rather easily and justifiably from the left, but what is the danger of the Trump mentality to foster a disregard for global order from the reactionary right wing? And does resistance to Trump cynicism put NATO skeptics on the left in a difficult position in your view?

 

I think that the ideological discourse has definitely been altered by Trump’s  alt-right approach to NATO. The left, such as it is, has refocused its energies on resisting what it believes to be a slide toward fascism at home arising from its correct perceptions of the Trump presidency as racist, ultra-nationalist, chauvinist, Islamophobic, subverting constitutionalism, and haunted by demagogic leadership. Those most upset with the attacks on the alliance underpinnings of NATO are not the left, but rather the more centrist liberalconstituencies encompassing moderate Republicans as well as mainstream Democrats. These are persons likely as upset by the challenge mounted by the mildly insurgent left-leaning politics of Bernie Sanders as by Trump, perhaps more so. Trump is ardently pro-business, pushed through Congress tax reform that mainly benefits those, like himself, who are part of a tiny billionaire class. What remains of the liberal establishment, whether on Wall Street or situated in the dark inner and hidden recesses of the deep state, is on the verge of tears in the aftermath of Trump’s assault on the NATO anchoring of the Atlanticist approach to American foreign policy that became so iconic for the political classes comprising the bipartisan American establishment ever since 1945.

Q4. Trump was elected partly because of what amounts to his “Me First” Doctrine as well as his “Make America Great Again” slogan. Does he in your estimation fully intend to utilize NATO in the background while appeasing his rabid anti institution base?

 

Trump and his fanatical base in the U.S. never seem far apart. Even in pursuing trade wars around the world, especially with China, that harm many of those who voted for him, his rationalizations, invoking the ‘America, First’ language and jobs rhetoric whether or not the evidence supports such claims. Apparently, so far, a relentless demagogue can fool many of the people all the time, especially by the rants of a populist politic that takes delight in scapegoating outsiders and arousing rage against the insiders who are portrayed as reaping the benefits of the international liberalism that gave us both the Cold War world economy and produced a neoliberal predatory aftermath identified in the 1990s as ‘globalization’, a view of political legitimacy that combines a private sector economy with some minimal form of democracy.

,;

 

 

’

 

How NATO will eventuallu fit within this Trump scheme is not yet clear, and may never be so. It seems a blustery sideshow at this point as NATO does not seem to have clear missions in post-Cold War Europe except to be a rallying center for counterterrorist tactics, which operationally depend on national policing and paramilitary capabilities. It seems that Europe is willing to pay up to sustain the NATO status quo, allowing Trump to laugh his way to the bank. NATO’s leading members are most worried these days about keeping the EU together in the face of various stresses associated with Brexit, refugees, a far right anti-immigration resurgence, and some loss of confidence in the EURO and austerity fiscal discipline. Handling Trump is an unpleasant additional chore for European leaders, but it is so far treated more in the spirit of the London protesters’ giant baby balloon, a matter of parenting, lacking real substantive weight, or so it seems. Aside from Turkey no European government seems to be considering alternative alignments now.

On the broader posture of anti-institutionalism and anti-multilateralism, Trump has kept faith with his pre-Fascist base by bullying tactics at the UN, repudiating the Nuclear Agreement with Iran, and withdrawing from the Paris Climate Change Agreement. These are big ticket items that represent extremely serious setbacks for responsible efforts to address challenges of regional and global scale that pose severe threats to peace and ecological stability.

Q5. Trump likes to portray himself as a populist alternative to the Bushes and Clintons and their reckless foreign policy while questioning our “exceptionalism.” In reality however we have broadened and expanded our presence around the world under Trump. Can you talk about the Trump foreign policy and how’d you categorize it?

 

Trump foreign policy, such as it is, seeks to diminish engagement with international institutions, including treaty regimes, and retain greater freedom of maneuver for the U.S. Government in international relations. It seems also to deny the reality of such global challenges as climate change, global migrations, genocidal behavior, and extreme poverty. It is definitely statist in outlook, both because of a belief in nationalism as the best guide to policymaking and problem solving, and because the United States as the richest and most powerful of states can supposedly gain greater advantages for itself by reliance on its superior bargaining leverage in any bilateral bargaining process. Borrowing from his deal-making past, Trump seems convinced that the U.S. will get more of what it wants when it deals bilaterally than in hemmed in my multilateral frameworks as in trade relations or environmental protection.

 

Beyond this kind of transactional search for material advantages, oblivious to substantive realities that make cooperative approaches more likely to achieve beneficial results, Trump has been consistent in promoting reactionary issues at home and abroad whenever given the chance, whether by tweeting or issuing executive orders. While in Europe he gave public voice via TV to an anti-immigration screed, telling Europeans that immigrants were ruining Europe, bringing to the continent crime and terrorism, a malicious argument similar to the slander of undocumented Hispanic immigrants present in the United States, some long in the country, and making laudable contributions.

 

Trump’s silences are also important. He seems determined to ignore crimes against humanity if committed by states against people subject to its authority, whether the Rohingya in Myanmar or Palestinians in Gaza. American support for human rights, always subject to geopolitical manipulation, is now a thing of the past so long as Trump hangs around, although such considerations may be cynically invoked when helpful to strengthen arguments for sanctions and uses of force against adversery states.

 

Whether wittingly or not, Trump seems determined to shatter the legacy of the Bushes and Clinton built around an American led liberal international order, but without any real alternative conception of global governance to put in its place. So far this has produced an ad hoc approach, beset by contradiction, which one day can veer in the direction of confrontation as with Iran or North Korea, or on another day seem to seek some sort of long-term accommodation with Russia and North Korea, and sometimes even China. Also evident is the extent to which Trump’s foreign policy initiatives are designed to please Israel, as with the move of the American Embassy to Jerusalem announced last December, or the heightened tensions with Iran, or have no justification other than to uphold the expectations of billionaire domestic donors of his presidential campaign. And finally, there is the search for the grandiose, ‘the deal of the century,’ a breakthrough that will make Trump great for once and for many, but when more closely considered the deal, as the one in the offing to end the Israel/Palestine struggle turns out to be a house of cards, so one-sided that it effectively collapses before its absurdly pro-Israeli contents have been officially disclosed.

 

Whether by his blunt actions sowing discord or his silent acquiescence in the face of atrocities, we have reason to fear the trajectory of the Trump presidency. In this sense, the NATO performance was just a tip of a dangerous iceberg imperiling world order, but also the future of responsible and responsive governance in a period of grave danger and intense turmoil. As with the weak response of European governments to Trumpism, there is reason for disappointment about the resilience of republican institutions within the United States, including such stalwarts as separation of powers and the constitutional integrity of political parties. Alarm bells should be ringing through the night at maximum volume, but so far the silences outweigh the noise as the world slouches toward catastrophe, chaos, and cruelty.

 

Tags: , , , ,

The U.S. Withdraws (Again) from the UN Human Rights Council

24 Jun

[Prefatory Note:This post is a slightly edited and corrected text of what was published on this blog site a few days. I owe particular thanks to my distinguished collaborator, Virginia Tilley, for pointing out several shortcomings and misleading formulations in the earlier version. Of course, the essence of the indictment of the U.S. rationale for withdrawal stands as before.]

 

The U.S. Withdraws (Again) from the UN Human Rights Council

 

Explicitly focusing on alleged anti-Israel bias the U.S. withdrew from further participation in the UN Human Rights Council until it reforms itself in accord with the liking of the Trump Administration. The only internationally credible basis for criticizing the HRC is its regrettable tendency to put some countries with the worst human rights records in leading roles, creating genuine issues of credibility and hypocrisy. Of course, I would have expected Ambassador Nikki Haley to refrain from such a criticism as it could only embarrass Washington to admit that many of its closest allies in the Middle East, and elsewhere have lamentable human rights records, and, if fairly judged, the U.S. has itself reversed roles since the year 2000, having itself slipping into the category of the most serious human rights offenders.

 

In this regard, the U.S. ‘withdrawal’ could be most constructively viewed as a self-imposed ‘suspension’ for falling short when it comes to the promotion and protection of human rights, absenting itself until it can protect human rights in its own society at a high enough standard as to make it less laughable than when it lectures the world about the human rights failures of others, naturally America’s current list of adversaries. But Haley is not someone intimidated by reality. In her fiery withdrawal speech she has the audacity to say that the first objective of the U.S. is “Improving the quality of Council membership.” She adds, “(w)hen a so-called Human Rights cannot bring itself to address the massive of abuses of Venezuela and Iran..the Council ceases ceaces to be worthy of its name.” Making such an argument, politically charged at best, raises eyebrows of scorn if one takes note of the deafening silence of Washington with respect to Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Egypt to mention just three Middle Eastern allies.

 

Undoubtedly, the U.S. was frustrated by its efforts to ‘reform’ the HRC according to its views  of the UN agency should function, and blamed its traditional adversaries, Russia, China, Venezuela, Cuba, along with Egypt, with blocking its initiative. It also must not have welcomed the HRC High Commissioner, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, for describing the ‘zero tolerance policy’ of separating children from their immigrant parents at the Mexican border as an ‘unconsciounable’ policy.

 

In evaluating this latest sign of American retreat from its prior role as global leader, there are several considerations that help us understand such a move that situates the United States in the same strange rejectionist corner it now shares with North Korea and Eritrea:

 

            –the fact that the U.S. withdrawal from the HRC occurred immediately after the Israeli border massacre, insulated from Security Council censure and investigation by a U.S. veto, is certainly part of political foreground. This consideration was undoubtedly reinforced by the HRC approval of a fact-finding investigation of Israel’s behavior over prior weeks in responding to the Great Return March border demonstrations met with widespread lethal sniper violence;

 

            –in evaluating the UN connection to Palestine it needs to be recalled that the organized international community has a distinctive responsibility for Palestine that can be traced all the way back to the peace diplomacy after World War I when Britain was given the role of Mandatory, which according to the League of Nations Covenant should be carried out as a ‘sacred trust of civilization.’ This special relationship was extended and deepened when Britain gave up this role after World War II, transferring responsibility for the future of Palestine to the UN. This newly established world organization was given the task of finding a sustainable solution in the face of sharply contested claims between the majority Palestinian population and the Jewish, mainly settler population.

 

This UN role was started beneath and deeply influenced by the long shadow of grief and guilt cast by the Holocaust. The UN, borrowing from the British colonial playbook, proposed a division of Palestine between Jewish and Palestinian political communities, which eventuated in the UN partition plan contained in the 1947 General Assembly Resolution 181. This plan was developed and adopted without the participation of the majority resident population, 70% non-Jewish at the time, and was opposed by the then independent countries in the Arab world. Such a plan seemed oblivious to the evolving anti-colonial mood of the time, failing to take any account of the guiding normative principle of self-determination. The Partition War that followed in 1947 did produce a de facto partition of Palestine more territorially favorable to the Zionist Project than what was proposed, and rejected, in 181. One feature of the original plan was to internationalize the governance of the city of Jerusalem with both peoples given an equal status.

 

This proposed treatment of Jerusalem was never endorsed by Israel, and was formally, if indirectly, repudiated by Tel Aviv after the 1967 War when Israel declared (in violation of international law) that Jerusalem was the eternal capital of the Jewish people never to be divided or internationalized, and Israel has so administered Jerusalem with this intent operationalized in defiance of the UN. What this sketch of the UN connection with Palestine clearly shows is that from the very beginning of Israeli state-building, the role of the international community was direct and the discharge of its responsibilities was not satisfactory in that it proved incapable of protecting Palestinian moral, legal, and political rights. As a result, the majority of Palestinian people have been effectively excluded from their own country and as a people exist in a fragmented ethnic reality that is sustained by Israel’s apartheid regime of control. This series of events constitutes one of the worst geopolitical crimes of the past century. Rather than do too much by way of criticizing the behavior of Israel, the UN has done far too little, not mainly because of a failure of will, but as an expression of the behavioral primacy of geopolitics and naked militarism;

 

            –the revealing stress of Ambassador Haley’s explanation of the U.S. withdrawal from the HRC gives almost total attention to quantitative factors such as the ‘disproportionate’ number of resolutions compared with those given to other human rights offenders, making no attempt whatsoever to refute the substantiveallegations of Israeli wrongdoing. This is not surprising as any attempt to justify Israeli policies and practices toward the Palestinian people would only expose the severity of Israel’s criminality and the acuteness of Palestinian victimization. The U.S. has also long struggled to be rid of so-called Item 7 of the Human Rights Council devoted to human rights violations of Israel associated with the occupation of Palestinian territories, which overlooks the prior main point that the UN is derelict in its failure to produce a just peace for the peoples inhabiting Mandate Palestine, and the least that it can do is maintain a watchful eye.

 

            –withdrawing from international institutional arrangements, especially those positively associated with peace, human rights, and environmental protection has become the hallmark of what be identified as the negative internationalismof the Trump presidency. The most egregious instances, prior to this move with regard to the HRC, involved the repudiation of the Nuclear Program Agreement with Iran (also known as the JCPOA or P5 +1 Agreement) and the Paris Climate Change Agreement. As with these other instances of negative internationalism this departure from the HRC is likely to hurt the U.S. more than the HRC, reinforcing its myopic willingness to do whatever it takes to please Netanyahu and the lead American Zionist donor to the Trump campaign, Sheldon Adelson. Only the provocative announcement of the planned unilateral move of the American Embassy to Jerusalem last December was as explicitly responsive to Israel’s policy agenda as is this rejection of the HRC, both initiatives stand out as being contrary to a fair rendering of American national interests, and hence a show of deference to Israel’s preferences. Despite this unabashed one-sidedness the Trump presidency still puts itself forward as a peacemaker, and promised to produce ‘the deal of the century’ at the proper moment, even enjoying the cynical backing of the notorious Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, who seems to be telling the Palestinians to take what the Trump team offers or forever shut up. Knowing the weakness and shallow ambitions of the Palestinian Authority, there is no telling what further catastrophe, this one of a diplomatic character, may further darken the Palestinian future. A diplomatic nakbamight be the worst disaster of all for the Palestinian people and their century-long struggle for elemental rights.

 

 It should also be emphasized that the U.S. human rights record has been in steady decline, whether the focus is placed on the morally disastrous present policies of separating families at the Mexican border or on the failure to achieve acceptable progress at home in the area of economic and social rights despite American affluence (as documented in the recent report of Philip Alston, UNHRC Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty) or in the various flagrant violations of human rights committed in the course of the War on Terror, including operation of black sites in foreign countries to carry on torture of terror suspects, or denials of the most fundamental tenet of international humanitarian law (Geneva Conventions) in the administration of Guantanamo and other prison facilities;

 

            –it is also worth noting that Israel’s defiance of internatonal law and international institutions is pervasive, severe, and directly related to maintaining an oppressive regime of occupation that is complemented by apartheid structures victimizing the Palestinian people as a whole, including refugees, residents of Jerusalem, the Palestinian minority in Israel, and the imprisoned population of Gaza. Israel repudiated the authority of the International Court of Justice with respect to the ‘separation wall’ that back in 2004 declared by a near unanimous vote of 14-1 (U.S. as the lone dissent) that building the wall on occupied Palestinian territory was unlawful, that the wall should be dismantled, and Palestinians compensated for harm endured. There are many other instances concerning such issues as settlements, collective punishment, excessive force, prison conditions, and a variety of abuses of children.

 

In conclusion, by purporting to punish the Human Rights Council, the Trump presidency, representing the U.S. Government, is much more punishing itself, as well as the peoples of the world. We all benefit from a robust and legitimated institutional framework for the promotion and protection of vital human rights. The claim of an anti-Israeli bias in the HRC, or UN, is bogus diversionary politics. The truer focus would be upon the daily violation of the most basis rights of the Palestinian people. This is the tragic reality that the UN has been unable to overcome. This is all we need to know.

 

The Private and the Public in Trump’s America on New Year’s Day 2018

1 Jan

The Private and the Public in Trump’s America on New Year’s Day 2018

 

I realize how insensitive I have been in sending messages to a few friends in which I suggested that we should look forward in the year ahead to private satisfactions, while being wary of public hopes given the looming storm clouds of Trumpism. The assumption I glibly made was that the private and public were distinct domains, which is true to some extent for those of use who are not Hispanic, Muslim, African-American, poor, homeless, or somehow vulnerable.

 

Of course, the slogan ‘the personal is political’ is in some profound sense true for all of us, however privileged and shielded from public abuse we happen to be. How we choose to treat others is always a political act for better or worse, and radiates beyond our personal actions, thoughts, and feelings. Yet there is a blandness about such a perception if it does acknowledge the more impinging effects of the political for all those who are forced to live, in some way, at the edge. What Trump has done is to push millions more, who were already experiencing the pains of vulnerability, marginality, and inequality, closer to falling from the precipice. Trump’s Muslim bans, hostility to immigrants, anachronistic nativism, white supremacist and alt-right sympathies create air to toxic to breathe, especially for those already living with daily fears and uncertainties.

 

A related clarifying thought: Trump and Trumpism are only viable because of the opportunistic cowardice of the Republican Party, which has struck the most lamentable of Faustian Bargains—selling their conservative souls for a reactionary social and economic agenda that accentuates the existing distortions evident in American society: nurturing the greed of the wealthy and turning a blind eye to the poor and vulnerable.

 

Additionally, Trumpism gives us ample occasion to weep on behalf of an abused nature, a threatened habitat, even ecological collapse.

 

This leads me to this conclusion on New Year’s Day 2018: the most worthy political resolution of this new year is to resist Trumpism in every way we can, and do so in compassionate solidarity with those whose private spaces have been so darkly encroached upon by the punitive policies and practices of the current political leadership in this country.

← Older Entries
Newer Entries →