The historical question of whether the Allies could have done more during the war to limit the Holocaust

Le Monde has a good, nine-minute documentary on one of the most-discussed questions about the Holocaust, which is why did the Allies not do more to directly hinder the mass killing of Jews, e.g., by bombing the gas chambers at Auschwitz: (1)

Israeli historian Tom Segev has an excellent discussion of how the “rescue” theme emerged in the postwar period in his book, The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust (2000).

William Rubinstein also analyzed the various arguments on the topic in The Myth of Rescue: Why the Democracies Could Not Have Saved More Jews from the Nazis (1997). As the title suggests, Rubinstein is skeptical that the Allies could have done substantially more to stop the Holocaust going on behind enemy lines.

Ken Burns did a three-part documentary on The U.S. and the Holocaust that dealt with the larger question of how the US responded to the Nazi persecution of Jews before and during the war. (2)

Deborah Lipstadt wrote about “America and the Holocaust” in 1990. (3) Lipstadt is an important Holocaust scholar. But as an ambassador-level “antisemitism envoy” for the Biden Administration, she also supported that administration’s policy on Benjamin Netanyahu’s brutal war against Gaza civilians.

William vanden Heuvel has also written about the US and British knowledge of and reaction to the Holocaust during the war. (4)

Notes:

(1) Auschwitz, 80 years after discovery: Why didn't the Allies try to stop the Holocaust sooner? Le Monde in English YouTube channel 01/26/2025. <https://youtu.be/ZYN4tEUEp14?si=00U919ZyzVou7syt> (Accessed: 2025-01-04).

(2) The U.S. and the Holocaust. PBS 09/18/2025. <https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/us-and-the-holocaust#watch> (Accessed: 2025-01-04).

(3) Modern Judaism 10:3 (Oct. 1990), 283-296. <https://www.jstor.org/stable/1396281>

(4) Vanden Heuvel, William J. (1999): America and the Holocaust. American Heritage 50:4 (July/Aug 1999). Text appears online under the title “FDR Was Hardly Indifferent to the Shoah”. <https://www.americanheritage.com/fdr-was-hardly-indifferent-shoah> (Accessed: 2025-01-04).

A dose of antiwar left economics and politics

I was in the mood for an undiluted leftist take on the new project of military buildup in Europe. Yanis Varoufakis’ political project DiEM25 is always a good place to find such a thing.

This is a presentation by economist Grace Blakely speaking last month at a DiEM25 event in Brussels charmingly titled, “WTF Happened To Europe?” She’s the author of Vulture Capitalism: Corporate Crimes, Backdoor Bailouts, and the Death of Freedom (2024). (1)

What she discusses in her 20-minute presentation is the implications of “military Keynesianism” in the new European push to develop military defenses as independent as possible from the rogue state that Trump 2.0 is trying to make of the US. Military Keynesianism is not at all a new term. But it’s acquired new significance, especially in the European context.

Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Western governments are committed to increased defense expenditure. But their armaments industries, under conditions of peace-time economic efficiency, do not have the spare capacity to ramp up production. Many are already operating shifts around the clock to satisfy orders comings in. To increase production they need to invest in new capacity. However, this is only worthwhile if armaments companies can be assured of contracts into the future expected lifetime of any new productive equipment. Industrialists with interests in arms supplies are now complaining about the time it takes to get contracts signed. An additional worry for them is the prospect of peace breaking out, which may leave armaments manufacturers with costly, but unused productive capacity that may have to be scrapped with the next technological innovation. (Much the same dilemma is faced by oil and natural gas producers who are being urged to expand production to replace sanctioned Russian supplies).

In short, weapons producers want governments to underwrite the profitability of their investments. This is precisely the alliance between industry and the state that formed the basis of the military Keynesianism that Michal Kalecki criticized during the 1950s. He showed how, at the height of the Cold War, Western governments subsidized private capital with arms contracts paid for by taxpayers. This arrangement lay at the heart of what has come to be described, somewhat misleadingly, as a ‘golden age’ by heterodox economists, who lament its replacement by “neoliberalism.” The real danger is not neo-liberalism but the takeover of the state by industrial interests which cannot be denied because of the external and internal threats to democracy. (2)

Classical Marxist theory looked forward to the day when “private property in the means of production” would be abolished by nationalization. Marx himself in one of his most famous phrases called it the moment when: “The expropriators are expropriated.” (3)

Of course, expropriating expropriators doesn’t require anything so dramatic as the Bolshevik Revolution. In fact, the US does this with banks on a regular basis when they fail. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) puts them into receivership, reorganizes their operations and recapitalizes them, then privatizes them again. It’s a process that’s much less destructive than good ole financial panics and bank runs. And it works well, so I hope nobody tells Elon Musk and his incel programmers about it yet. They would probably try to shut down such an un-“libertarian” practice immediately.

I’m fond of the idea of the US expropriating its own private health insurance industry in favor of government-managed insurance. A system we could call “Medicare for All,” or something like that.

In theory, nationalizing the defense industry would also make practical sense because it would theoretically remove the private-property incentives that drive the current military-industrial complexes. Less drastically, the US during the Second World War pursuing active investigations into corruption in military contracting, including the Senate Special Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program headed by Missouri Sen. Harry Truman, more commonly called the Truman Committee.

In reality, of course, a nationalized company can also generate corruption and practice lobbying. Auditing and oversights are at least as important for public agencies and public-owned companies as they are for private ones. (4)

It’s notable that Trump’s Muskovites are putting more energy into concocting fake claims of “waste, fraud, and abuse” in Social Security and Medicaid than they are focusing on the difficulties of the Pentagon in passing audits. The “Department of Defense (DOD) is the only federal agency that has never passed a financial statement audit.” (5)

Military Keynesianism and economic stimulus

Military spending can be stimulative to a national economy. In fact, it’s tacitly assumed in US politics that military spending is always good for the economy in general. The Pentagon has been careful to put spreads such benefits to all Congressional districts in the country, making military spending a very visible benefit at home for every Member of Congress. The Congressional Research Service last year put out a current description of such benefits:

Every congressional district has some military-connected constituents, such as active-duty servicemembers, reservists, retirees, DOD employees, contractors, and/or military families. During the legislative cycle, Members may weigh decisions about compensation, benefits (e.g., health care, leave time), and other policies that affect these populations. The basic MILPERS spending questions facing Congress on an annual basis typically include “How many people?” and “How much to pay them?” (6)

Grace Blakely in her presentation points out something that has been the case for decades: the war economy, by the way, is also a very inefficient way of doing Keynesianism. It's going to eat up a lot of resources that ultimately get destroyed or worn out doesn't create as many jobs.

The multiplier effect

Economists use the term “multiplier effect” to describe how government spending generates more economic activity. The federal government spends money on an infrastructure project like a new bridge. Buying the materials and paying the workers to build the bridge mean that suppliers have more money to spend or invest and so do the works. The faster that increased spending occurs, the quicker the multiplier effect functions. John Maynard Keynes himself explained the concept with this example:

If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coalmines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again (the right to do so being obtained, of course, by tendering for leases of the note-bearing territory), there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of the repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth also, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is. It would, indeed, be more sensible to build houses and the like; but if there are political and practical difficulties in the way of this, the above would be better than nothing. (7)

Military expenditures tend to be more capital-intensive because many weapons have high-tech components and also because, certainly in the US, defense contractors can extract large profits, which don’t immediately translate into spending money that generates immediate economic activity to the extent that civilian investment would. As Keynes’ buried-bottle example suggests, the kind of government financial activity that most immediately stimulates the economy by translating into spending by consumers includes things like unemployment insurance payments, which mostly translate directly into spending.

Like many issues, how much multiplier effect military spending has is complicated to measure. It’s not like checking the weather app to see what the local temperature is. But most people do understand at some level that government expenditures from highway construction to schoolteachers do help the economy. (8)

Blakely:

Europe remains incredibly reliant on American military technology. A lot of it gets sucked abroad. You know, what would be a really good alternative. How is Putin funding this war? By selling Europe and the rest of the world fossil fuels. Europe has actually sent more money to Russia in the form of fuel payments than it has given to Ukraine in aid since the beginning of this war.

Why doesn't Europe consider decarbonization that would reduce our reliance on autocrats all over the world who depend on fossil fuels, that would deal with one of the biggest and most significant threats - probably the … biggest and [most] significant threat to us, which is climate breakdown - and would create three times as many jobs than any other form of stimulus program.

Why not? Well, because doing so would not be in the interests of the European ruling elite and its friends within the arms industry. You know, when [British Prime Minister] Keir Starmer says we're going to cut aid and boost defense spending, who's going to benefit?

BAE Systems also has a very close relationship with the British state. It was at the center of what was called one of the largest and most corrupt arms deals in history, between the UK and another massive fossil fuel producer, Saudi Arabia. This corruption is endemic to this industry and it's part of why these calls for the war economy are happening so loudly now. I think it's jobs or their wages.

That's not [the only reason] we're hearing calls for the war economy today. They want their defense companies to be strong and powerful so they can beat other defense companies.

Maybe it’s old-fashioned. But I would say nuclear weapons proliferation is our biggest and more significant threat. A full-on nuclear war would create catastrophic and immediate climate chaos. That would also be a climate problem, but one orders of magnitude larger than what relentless fossil-fuel pollution is already causing.

Why not military and civilian stimulus?

Be on the lookout for headlines like this: (9)

The EU as a whole can afford both “guns and butter” if they are willing to impose a reasonably progressive tax on there wealthiest citizens who get far and away more material benefits from their societies than the majority of their people. But billionaires are generally chronically allergic to taxes on themselves.

Still, the fact that the changed defense picture is forcing them into adopting more expansive spending policies without arbitrary limitations like the “debt brakes” that have no actual economic justification is a good thing in itself. It opens the way for their publics to make additional demands on civilian spending, as well.

To hark back to Dwight Eisenhower, in a major speech early in his Presidency, he declared:

A nation's hope of lasting peace cannot be firmly based upon any race in armaments but rather upon just relations and honest understanding with all other nations. …

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone.

It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

The cost of one modern heavy bomber is this: a modern brick school in more than 30 cities.

It is two electric power plants, each serving a town of 60,000 population.

It is two fine, fully equipped hospitals. It is some 50 miles of concrete highway.

We pay for a single fighter plane with a half million bushels of wheat.

We pay for a single destroyer with new homes that could have housed more than 8,000 people.

This, I repeat, is the best way of life to be found on the road. the world has been taking.

This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. (10)

And arms races can contribute mightily to making war more likely. And in one important sense, weapons are neutral. If they can be used for just and necessary purposes, they can also be used for bad and unnecessary goals. So paying attention to serious warnings about excessive military spending is always important.

Heidi Reichinnek, the head of the Left Party (Die Linke) caucus in the German Bundestag (lower House of Parliament), recently addressed this issue in an interview:

Our criticism of this [budget] package is that the debt brake is suspended only for arms spending of 1 percent of GDP or more, and that these special funds [i.e., military spending over the “debt brake” limit] exist at all – and not a clean solution for all areas. There is a blank check for armaments and in the same breath it is already being announced that savings must be made in the social sector. Not only the exploratory paper points to this, Friedrich Merz [expected to be the next German Chancellor] has also said it explicitly. The pressure to consolidate [the budget, i.e., to make non-military cuts] is increasing.

He [Merz] also mentioned the social sector in his speech during the vote, and that there is an urgent need to come to grips with it. Yet this is where we urgently need more: We need a higher parental allowance, especially for lower income groups and single parents. We would need a higher child benefit, better still a real basic child-related income. We would need more money for youth work, for the protection of senior citizens from loneliness, for the protection of women from violence. And we are stand now, very likely to face cuts. (11)

This is the kind of comparison that is very important for progressive politicians to make: If we can toss out the debt brake for armaments, we can toss it out for civilian spending, as well. Germany is chronically conservative in its fiscal policy due to a widespread commitment to neoliberal economic thinking and, of course, to business and billionaire lobbies that think the most important thing about government is that the wealthy should never have to pay taxes to support it.

But my understanding is also that the exemption from the debt ceiling is also inclusive of essential infrastructure spending. For Germany’s ailing railway system, for instance. The most famous job-creating public works project of Hitler’s regime, the building of the Autobahn, was primarily for the purpose of facilitating the rapid movement of military vehicles and supplies during the wars that Hitler intended from the start to wage. A reminder that military-related projects can be broadly defined.

Notes:

(1) The War Economy Is Not the End of Neoliberalism, It’s the Next Phase—Grace Blakeley. DiEM25 YouTube channel 04/01/2025. <https://youtu.be/NZQrd3hNz3M?si=ZZTZc9_ZJ5Msdkkv> (Accessed: 2025-04-04).

(2) Taporowski, Jan (2023): The War in Ukraine and the Revival of Military Keynesianism. Institute for New Economic Thinking 01/09/2023. <https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspectives/blog/the-war-in-ukraine-and-the-revival-of-military-keynesianism> (Accessed: 2024-02-04).

(3) See: Balibar, Etienne (2020): “The Expropriators Are Expropriated.” Abolition & Democracy 11/27/2020. <https://blogs.law.columbia.edu/abolition1313/etienne-balibar-the-expropriators-are-expropriated/?cn-reloaded=1> (Accessed: 2024-02-04).

(4) Clark, Bryan (2024): Testimony before the Oversight and Accountability Subcommittee on National Security, the Border, and Foreign Affairs 07/24/2027. Hudson Institute. <https://s3.amazonaws.com/media.hudson.org/Bryan+Clark+House+Oversight+Hearing+Statement+July+24+2024+Final.pdf> (Accessed: 2024-02-04).

(5) Jones, Kristyn E. (2025): Fixing the DOD’s Audit Problem. Center for Strategic and International Studies 01/23/2025. <https://www.csis.org/analysis/fixing-dods-audit-problem> (Accessed: 2024-02-04).

(6) Congressional Research Service (2024): Defense Spending and Your District 12/16/2024. <https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF12274> (Accessed: 2024-02-04).

(7) Keynes, John Maynard (1936) from: The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money. In: The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes. Vol 7 (2013), 129. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

(8) For an example of how complicated the actual measurements can be, see: Cutcu, Ibrahim et al. (2024): What is the long-run relationship between military expenditures, foreign trade and ecological footprint? Evidence from method of Maki cointegration test. Environment, Development and Sustainability 03/30/2024. <https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10668-024-04647-w> (Accessed: 2024-04-04).

(9) <https://www.politico.eu/article/europe-sacrifices-citizens-ukraine-far-right-russia-populist/>

(10) Eisenhower, Dwight (1953): Address "The Chance for Peace" Delivered Before the American Society of Newspaper Editors. 04/16/1953. The American Presidency Project. <https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-the-chance-for-peace-delivered-before-the-american-society-newspaper-editors> (Accessed: 2024-04-04).

(11) „Wir sehen den Beginn einer Aufrüstungs­spirale“. Jacobin (Deutsch) 27.03.2025. <https://jacobin.de/artikel/heidi-reichinnek-die-linke-linkspartei-schuldenbremse> (Accessed: 2024-04-04). My translation from German.

The war on Gaza continues

The Israeli government’s genocide and attempted ethnic cleansing in Gaza continue in full swing. Along with continuing aggressive measures against Palestinians in the West Bank. (1)

Genocide is the most serious kind of crime. Ethnic cleansing, if it in itself doesn’t necessarily constitute genocide, is also an extreme serious crime. Israel should not be doing this. The United States should certainly not be funding and supporting. Neither should any other democratic government in the world.

CNN reports this week:

It has become a familiar refrain: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says that he is “changing the face of the Middle East.”

It is, he says, “a war of rebirth.”

It is, in a sense, undoubtedly true.

Israel has troops in Lebanon, Syria and Gaza. It’s vowed to demilitarize huge swaths of all three – backed by an unquestioning ally in the White House. The war in Gaza, which Israel restarted earlier this month, looks increasingly like it will lead to occupation for months or even years to come. [my emphasis] (2)

This is not brand new. Netanyahu was praising Trump over a month ago for his ethnic-cleansing proposal, as the Times of Israel reported:

At the start of a cabinet meeting hours after his return from Washington, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declares that his meetings with US President Donald Trump, and his other US meetings, resulted in “tremendous achievements that can ensure Israel’s security for generations.” …

While he does not give specific details of the possibilities, Trump has spoken about his vision of the US taking over Gaza after the war, clearing it of its residents and turning it into the “Riviera of the Middle East.” Israeli and US officials have insisted that the displacement would be both voluntary and temporary, despite Trump initially saying that it would be a permanent measure. …

Referring to Trump’s plan for post-war Gaza, Netanyahu says that the president came up with a “revolutionary, creative vision” that will “open up many possibilities” for Israel.

While Israel had been constantly told that the PA is needed in post-war Gaza, Trump’s vision is “completely different, and much better for the State of Israel.” It is “revolutionary, creative and we are discussing it. He is very determined to carry it out. And it also opens up many possibilities for us.” (3)

Dahlia Scheindlin, author of the book The Crooked Timber of Democracy in Israel: Promise Unfulfilled (2023) about the country’s democratic institution, has been reporting on Netanyahu’s ongoing efforts to undermine the independent justice system in Israel in order to stay in power and out of jail:

Much has been made of Benjamin Netanyahu's capacity to lie. His precisely curated external image – his speeches, video statements and posts, plus his Knesset, government and court appearances – show something more complex.

What his outward image shows is a man who has constructed a parallel universe, rich with his values and convictions, adoring audiences, thunderous applause, his umbrage and victimization, triumph about fictional, fabricated successes. In his world, there is a great void where awful real-world events are happening which are his fault or responsibility or both. But before his eyes lie only open roads.

One could go back years or decades, but take a slice of the last week. At the start of a cabinet meeting on Sunday, Netanyahu declared somberly just how much he cares about the families of the hostages Hamas is holding in Gaza, in contrast to the "lies" that he does not care. [The families have very good reason to think he does not care.] …

In his universe, the [anti-Netanyahu Israeli] protestors are a subset of shadowy bureaucrats, the "deep state" hidden within the large majority of innocent civil servants. Yes – all those tens or hundreds of thousands of people are lawless, violent scofflaws in his mind, and members of the tiny clique of the nefarious deep state. (4)

Notes:

(1) Bibi CONFIRMS Trump Gaza Plan. Breaking Points YouTube channel 04/01/2025. <https://youtu.be/JMl9MwU2txs?si=noY8zTqASwcqXP5a> (Accessed: 2025-01-04).

(2) Kevor, Mick (2025): Israel again expands Gaza war as Netanyahu vows he’s changing the Middle East. The endgame is unclear as ever. CNN World 03/31/2025. <https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/31/middleeast/israel-netanyahu-strategy-gaza-future-intl/index.html> (Accessed: 2025-01-04).

(3) Times of Israel (2025): Netanyahu: Trump’s post-war Gaza vision ‘much better for Israel’; vows to use fire as needed to protect Gaza border. 02/09/2025. <https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/netanyahu-outcome-of-meeting-with-trump-will-ensure-israels-security-for-generations/> (Accessed: 2025-01-04).

(4) Scheindlin, Dahlia (2025): The Escape Artist: How Netanyahu Lies and Why People Still Believe Him. Haaretz 04/01/2025. <https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-04-01/ty-article/.premium/the-escape-artist-how-netanyahu-lies-and-why-people-still-believe-him/00000195-f187-d470-addd-f5efd2050000?gift=7f86b4a423fd4b41aa5be967b8d01de6> (Accessed: 2025-01-04).

John Mearsheimer debates a Putin advisor on Russia-Ukraine

I can’t kick the habit of listening to John Mearsheimer on the Russia-Ukraine War. In this new one, he discusses the issue with a Putin adviser, Sergey Karaganov. It should go without saying that we should assume that Karaganov is reflecting the official Russian perspective. But it’s interesting to hear the nuances he uses in presenting the official position of the moment. And I’m also fascinated by how Mearsheimer approaches the discussion, knowing as he does details of the official Russian positions as well as describing his own perspective. (1)

As always with Mearsheimer, if listening to him doesn’t irritate you in some way, you’re probably not paying attention. But his perspective is really not as depressing as it may sound if you’re not used to hearing him talk at some length in this way.

I only wish we could hope that Donald Trump’s ham-and-cheese-sandwich buddy and Special Envoy to Everywhere Steve Witkoff is talking to Mearsheimer and other actual experts. But it takes consider imagination even to picture it.

Instead, the American negotiating team in general sounds like contestants on Amateur Hour: (2)

Vlad Mykhnenko of the University of Oxford refers to the rebalancing theory that Mearsheimer mentions of drawing the Russians into more of alignment with the US against the Chinese. The idea itself seems fairly obvious. But the comedy actors on Saturday Night Live would have a better chance of negotiating such a thing that Steve Witkoff and his current team do. Mykhnenko (beginning at 17:50 in the video):

We've learned from a couple of international relation theories which are connected to [the] MAGA movement, the Make America Great movement, is that they're trying to pretend they’re orchestrating some three-dimensional geopolitical chess of peeling Russia away from the People's Republic of China, and in that way weakening their Pacific enemy and strengthening the ties with Russia some way …

So, the official line is, this [is] kind of a clever reverse Nixon maneuver, when Richard Nixon allegedly peeled away the Chinese from the Russians back in 1972. And that they believe that was the death knell of the Communist regime [in the Soviet Union]. They think they if they orchestrate the reverse maneuver, that that will get the same results.

I do think that the theory is delusional and is based on misreading of the history. But also I believe that even [if] the theory is not delusional it will not be possible to create such a maneuver. Because the Russian economy is entirely dependent on its largest neighbor and the largest economy that [has] effectively been propping up Russia for the last three years.

In light of that, do you think there could be some play here - again, potentially giving a lot of credit to Trump - of attempting to turn one of China's allies, Russia, against them, in bringing them into the into the fold of the West?

What we're learning from the Signalgate - this [is] the scandal of American high officials using mobile phones to plan bombing campaigns overseas - is that the level of competence isn't that great. And the level of understanding of the situation on the ground isn't that great.

And, hence, I'm afraid Donald Trump isn't Richard Nixon. And Marco Rubio and Mike Waltz isn't exactly Henry Kissinger. [If that were so,] then I'm going to write massive books of history of diplomacy, right? So as much as we can be critical of Nixon’s and Kissinger’s mental acumen, it was, I'm afraid, much higher than the current Administration possesses.

This is something to always keep in mind when John Mearsheimer talks about a strategy of power-balancing among the US, China, and Russia, he’s speaking from a “realist” model of international relations, which assumes power-balancing factors exert great objective pressure on national decisionmakers. But he’s also aware that actual foreign policy is made by human beings with various levels of competence, integrity, morality, and good sense. He regularly cites the US relationship with Israel as one in which the US for decades has supported Israel despite what the demands of normal international power politics would demonstrate.

And actual competence in diplomacy does matter.

Notes:

(1) 'Ukraine Will Be Eliminated' John Mearsheimer and Putin Advisor Discuss US-Russia Relations. Al Arabiya English 04/01/2025. <https://youtu.be/I4n7JCmQfbc?si=OXWLPzArO42P42e3> (Accessed: 2025-01-04).

(2) Black Sea Ceasefire: Team Trump has no idea what it’s doing | Prof Vlad Mykhnenko. Times Radio YouTube channel 03/27/2025. <https://youtu.be/x_ft7ouZIs0?si=rUx-ng7pME9G5pK4> (Accessed: 2025-02-04).

No Confederate “Heritage” Month Series This Year

I first started in 2004 making daily posts in April of each year focused on debunking the racist and reactionary Lost Cause ideology associated with “Confederate Heritage” groups and celebrations.

This year I’m not planning to do daily posts on the topic. It’s not because rightwing ideology around American history and the Civil War in particular has become less aggressive. On the contrary. The project has actually become much bigger with Trump 2.0 by being absorbed into the larger anti-democracy MAGA ideology: which is first and foremost the worship of the Orange Anomaly, Donald Trump.

And it’s certainly not as though ethnonationalist Republicans have given up on idolizing the Confederacy. USA Today just reported:

• President Trump signed an executive order calling for the reinstatement of monuments and memorials removed for ideological reasons.
• The debate over Confederate memorials centers on whether they represent heritage or  glorification of slavery and intimidation.
• Numerous Confederate statues, monuments, school names, and park names have been changed or removed in Florida since 2015. (1)

Kevin Levin, who covers Civil War memory issues regularly, comments on this story:

This offers a nice summary of the Confederate monuments/statues that have recently been removed in Florida, but none of them were located on federal property. It's hard to imagine why they should be concerned with Trump's recent executive order. The other thing to keep in mind is that there is no reference to the Confederacy in the executive order. (2)

Kevin has actually made a career out of Civil War Memory, which is also the name of his Substack newsletter. He also does live video chats on his Substack page. As he writes in a recent post, the Trumpista era of historical revisionism is looking to become far more intense that anything we’ve seen before. Trump lieutenants like Steve Bannon and Steve Miller see themselves as leaders in a culture war against “woke,” by which they mean, well, any kind of democratic notion of equality before the law.

Kevin notes in one of his recent newsletters:

As a historian of the Civil War era and historical memory, I often find myself asking groups to think about some of the toughest and most divisive questions about our collective past.

In doing this important work, I have always felt as if I was pushing back against a certain amount of resistance. For example, there are some people who refuse to see any acknowledgement of the history and legacy of slavery as anything other than an attempt to dismiss the entire experiment that is the United States of America or as a threat to some narrow idea of ‘American Exceptionalism.’

Such people have always been with us and always will, but that element in our society has been emboldened in recent months and in ways that I never could have anticipated just a few months ago. The war on history and history education that we are currently witnessing has never before been so openly conducted by the President of the United States. [my emphasis] (3)

So, I expect to be doing posts this month on issues relating to the politics of history. But not exclusively or daily on the Confederate “Heritage” scam as such.

The quote from William Faulkner that I see cited more than any other is actually a line from one of Faulkner’s characters in Requiem for a Nun, Gavin Stevens: “The past is never dead. It’s not even past.” (4)

The past does impose a heavy mortgage on the present. But for post-truth zealots like today’s Trumpistas, history doesn’t exist in its own right, only as ideology to serve the Leader’s goals of the moment.

With Trump 2.0 already entangled in conflicts with the courts, whose judicial independence has been seriously compromised by the corrupt, rogue Supreme Court of the present moment. But judicial and legal issues are also a processing of the past and its adaptation to the present. The democratic concept of “rule of law” has a very specific history. Modern democratic theory assumes that for laws to be legitimate, they have to be made by representatives of the people, not just by a sovereign or a dictator or an oligarchic clique.

As Maximilian Pichl puts it, the “rule of law in not merely a negligible add-on to democracy, but its foundation." (5)

Jürgen Habermas formulated it as a dictum: “No autonomous law without a realized democracy.” (6)

There is such a thing as a democratic view of history. Which among other things, people have to argue about what exactly that means. And, as Kevin mentions in his description of Trump’s 2025 Executive Order for the Gleichschaltung of the Smithsonian Museum: “It’s incredibly sloppy and does little more than highlight the typical fascist-minded talking points about how our understanding of history must be forced to align with ideas of past greatness.” (7)

And “useful history” is not just what is explicitly included in constitutions, laws, and judicial precedents. Nationalism is a real phenomenon: it often has its dark side, but it is real. One recent example we see as a response to the military threats that Trump 2.0 is making against Canada, repeatedly threatening to annex it as American territory, i.e., a 51st state. Faced with these challenges people draw not only on their current positions but also on history for both understanding and inspiration.

Laurence Mussio of the Canadian Globe and Mail recently reached back to the 1840s, when American military belligerence was at one of its most toxic moments: the Mexican-American War, aka, la guerra de Estados Unidos contra México, took place in 1846-48.This was during the Presidency of James K. Polk, whose signature slogan, “Fifty-four Forty or Fight” was a threat to militarily seize the then-British territory of Oregon.

In January, 1846, Lewis Cass of Michigan spoke on the floor of the U.S. Senate, giving a full-throated defence of American expansionism. “Oregon belongs to the United States by the right of destiny and the spirit of our institutions,” the senator thundered, his words carefully noted in Toronto’s newly established Globe newspaper. …

As the crisis unfolded, another veteran of 1812 – Colonel Étienne-Paschal Taché, a warrior, physician, statesman and future premier of Canada – rose to address the Legislative Assembly of the United Province in April, 1846. The galleries were filled to capacity as members debated a new militia bill. In that charged atmosphere, Taché delivered words that would resonate down the decades: “Be satisfied we will never forget our allegiance till the last cannon which is shot on this continent in defence of Great Britain is fired by the hand of a French Canadian.”

The assembly erupted in cheers at this extraordinary declaration. A mere nine years earlier, French Canadians had taken up arms against the Crown in the Rebellions of 1837-38. Now, confronted with American aggression, former rebels had transformed into steadfast defenders of British sovereignty. External threat had achieved what decades of internal politics could not: a fundamental realignment of loyalties. (8)

The point is not whether such analogies are perfect. They never are. The point is that the past, including the past that no person currently alive experienced themselves, is part of how we understand and form emotional response to events in the present.

Mussio doesn’t completely resist the common impulse to get a bit maudlin about such things, concluding with this:

The question persists: Are we prepared, like earlier generations of Canadians, to choose principle over prosperity? History suggests that when truly pressed, Canadians find reserves of resolve. It’s likely that senator Lewis Cass, with his firsthand experience fighting Anglo-Canadian forces, would grudgingly acknowledge that when threatened, the Canadian spirit proves more resilient than anticipated.

But maudlin can also be emotionally evocative for many people.

I’ll conclude by noting that the US expansionism of the 1840s against Mexico was very much driven by the desire of the planter class in the South to expand the number of slave states in the Union. Including Texas, which had broken away from Mexico before the Mexican-America War and become a half-assed “nation” when Mexico abolished slavery in its territory in 1829. Thirty-six years before the United States did so with the 13th Amendment of 1865.

Notes:

(1) Bridges, C.A. (2025): Are Florida’s Confederate statues coming back? Trump orders restoration of monuments. <https://eu.jacksonville.com/story/news/politics/2025/03/28/confederate-monuments-florida-will-trumpexecutive-order/82702263007/> USA Today Network 03/28/2025. (Accessed: 2025-29-03).

(2) Levin, Kevin (2025): Substack Note 03/28/2025. <https://substack.com/@kevinmlevin/note/c-104090007> (Accessed: 2025-29-03).

(3) Levin, Kevin (2025): Only Through History Can We Move Forward Together. Civil War Memory 03/23/2025. <https://kevinmlevin.substack.com/p/only-through-history-can-we-move> (Accessed: 2025-29-03).

(4) Requiem for a Nun (1951), Act 1, Scene 3.

(5) Pichl, M. (2024): Law statt Order.Der Kampf um den Rechtsstaat, 226. Berlin: Suhrkamp. My translation from German.

(6) Habermas, Jürgen (1997 [5.Auflage]): Faktizität und Geltung. Beiträge zur Diskurstheorie des Rechts und des demokratischen Rechtsstaats, 599. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. My translation from German.

(7) Levin, Kevin (2025): Trump Targets Smithsonian Institution. Civil War Memory 03/28/2025. <https://kevinmlevin.substack.com/p/trump-targets-smithsonian-institution> (Accessed: 2025-29-03).

(8) Mussio, Laurence (2025): A new nationalism is emerging in Canada. Globe and Mail 03/29/2025. <https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-a-new-nationalism-is-emerging-in-canada/> (Accessed: 2025-30-03).

The European center parties’ stumbling and bumbling on countering xenophobic politics

The far-right parties in the EU countries, like the Republican Party in the United States, have made ethnonationalism and outspoken hostility to immigrants and especially refugees a key part of their political project.

Political experience in the last two decades in Britain, France, Italy and other countries has shown that center-right parties trying to win anti-immigrant votes away from the far-right parties by adopting their xenophobic appeals have wound up weakening themselves and strengthening the far right. (1) Since the xenophobic appeals are fundamentally anti-democratic and anti-rule-of-law, center parties validating the far right’s key anti-immigrant rhetoric increases the far right’s credibility on those issues.

Pushing back on the anti-democracy politics of the far right also requires demystifying the demagogic anti-immigrant rhetoric. It means bringing forward facts and practical considerations. But it also has to involve refuting false claims over immigration but also defanging the emotional edge of the right’s rhetoric and their anecdotes, which are often dishonest and highly misleading. Xenophobia lives on anecdotes.

This panel discussion from the Europe Calling European webinar group does into these questions in some detail. The comments by immigration expert Judith Kohlenberger of the Vienna University of Economics and Business are particularly good.

Video Europe Calling (English Version): (2)

Video Europe Calling (German Version): (3)

Notes:

(1) Biebricher, Thomas (2023): Mitte/Rechts. Die Internationale Krise des Konservatismus. Berlin: Suhrkamp.

(2) Europe Calling #206 "Migration - What does a restrictive immigration policy do to a society?" (EN). Europe Calling YouTube channel 11/05/2025. <https://youtu.be/QeEuFqHasDY?si=wWdU0YUHyF5tn5xR> (Accessed: 2025-26-03).

(3) Europe Calling #206 “Was macht eine restriktive Einwanderungspolitik mit der Gesellschaft?” (DE). Europe Calling YouTube channel 11/05/2025. <https://youtu.be/E9sRW_ah7VQ?si=Z5hmbb0RAhaL1pCk> (Accessed: 2025-26-03).

Realism, morality and Trump 2.0 diplomatic incompetence

This recent interview with Über-Realist John Mearsheimer is a great example of why I find his analysis simultaneously informative and frustrating. The realist foreign policy theories give particular emphasis to economic and political power factors and tend to minimize the practical effect of ideological and moral considerations when it comes to the actual behaviors of great powers, in particular.

But here we have Mearsheimer sounding like a rightwinger’s stereotype of moralistic leftwingers. Speaking of the ongoing Gaza genocide, he says (after 11:50 in the video), “This is what’s happened to American values! The United States is supporting an apartheid state that’s engaged in genocide. Do you need to know any more?” (1)

And his affect suggests that he’s earnestly outraged by this development. He seems to think that his interviewer Andrew Napolitano, who has been highly critical of Israel’s policies since October 7, 2023, is insufficiently agitated by the facts they’re discussing.

They also talk about the Signal Chat incident.

On the Russia-Ukraine War and the possibility of war with Iran, Mearsheimer does not see a lot of grounds for optimism. On the latter, he thinks Trump himself would prefer not to go to war with Iran at this point. But he also notes that Trump’s senior advisors tend to be pro-Israel hawks. And that Trump himself has a record of being very accommodating to the demands of Israel and of his pro-Israel donors like Marian Adelson.

Europe and the new diplomatic vocabulary

Mearsheimer stresses the peacekeeping or “security” force that Ukraine and the main European allies are discussing as an essential element of a settlement of the war is effectively a dead letter. The forces that Britain and France could commit to such an arrangement are limited. And he notes that both Germany and Poland have said they would not contribute soldiers to such a force.

The Russians have said they will not accept such a force in Ukraine. And there is every reason to believe at this point that they are serious about that and will not accept any agreement that involves stationing forces from NATO countries in Ukraine.

Robert Fox, defense editor of the conservative London Evening Standard argues that the European allies are determined to draw the line against Russian aggression in Ukraine. (2)

But what does that mean? As Fox indicates, that could be a 4-5 years’ commitment to actively supporting Ukraine in a war with Russia. This is a policy that could and probably will function as a double-edged sword. On the one hand, Europe will defend Ukrainian sovereignty, which is also defending the current system of international law. Which is more-or-less equivalent (but not exactly) to what the US at least through the Biden Administration calls “the rules-based international order.”

On the other hand, as Europe reconfigures its defense posture to be able to operate without its current US-dominated NATO configurations, they will being doing so with the knowledge that they have a selfish interest in keeping the Russian fighting in Ukraine for as long as possible. It was pretty clearly the Biden Administration’s assumption that a longer war in Ukraine rather than a shorter one would weaken Russia. The practical benefits to the European allies of a longer rather than shorter Russia-Ukraine War would be that it would buy time for Europe to de-NATO-ize its defense posture without having to face a potential new military crisis against European countries that are currently NATO alliance members. Especially with the Trump Administration actually threatening (with God-only-knows what level of seriousness) NATO allies Denmark and Canada with military attacks.

Fox also comments on the lack of diplomatic competence in the Trump 2.0 regime. And how that is very much a part of the current urgency for the European allies to distance themselves sooner rather than later from their current dependency on NATO structure.

And he mentions that the only realistic possibility of a security or peacekeeping force for any peace or armistice agreement that might be reached would have to be a UN force. He doesn’t specify it, but this would almost certainly have to exclude any NATO member forces.

Notes:

(1) Prof. John Mearsheimer : Killing Without Purpose. Judge Napolitano-Judging Freedom YouTube channel 03/27/2025. <https://www.youtube.com/live/n69N9h4A8N4?si=Cul6Qn75BcuIo6im> (Accessed: 2025--28-2025).

(2) Putin’s war will be over in a few months. Times Radio YouTube channel 05/28/2025. <https://youtu.be/uB9JrjoXH6c?si=HmE0Bmx0rHVPEP4w> (Accessed: 2025--28-2025).

Trump 2.0 Incompetence and Authoritarianism

Laura Rozen has a good brief analysis of the cinematic emphasis of the Trump 2.0 regime. She says that the recent national security Signal Chat Group Scandal “it is the most important journalism about the Trump administration second term that has appeared to date.”

As a journalist covering US foreign policy, I spend hours trying to figure out who is making decisions and where and how decisions are getting made, under the presumption that there are deliberations taking place and it is a matter of trying to find out about them.

The “Houthi PC Small Group” Signals messages that the Atlantic published showed that those deliberations are, to a stunning degree, barely taking place in the Trump administration, even in matters of war, except the way you might debate a news article or TV show with a group of friends, while paying attention to six other things, and making dinner, over the course of a few hours. [my emphasis] (1)

Malicious and shockingly amateurish; Experts on authoritarianism will presumably not be surprised at this observation because authoritarian governments are very often not efficient because the lack of effective restraints on their actions is conducive to incompetence and corruption.

I’m embarrassed at having learned only a couple of years ago that the familiar trope that at least Mussolini made the trains run on time isn’t even true: It is a myth that, whatever his faults, Benito Mussolini, dictator of Italy in the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, made the trains run on time. He didn’t.” (2)

It’s not that this is something that recently came to light. I just had never read into this particular claim before a couple of years ago. Brian Cathcart wrote in 1994:

But did Mussolini really do it? Did Il Duce, in his 20 years of absolute power, really manage to make the railway service meet its timetable? The answer is no.

Like almost all the supposed achievements of Fascism, the timely trains are a myth, nurtured and propagated by a leader with a journalist's flair for symbolism, verbal trickery and illusion. (3)

It was selected tourist trains that ran on time. And even they didn’t always:

The notion that the trains were running on time was none the less vigorously put about by the Fascist propaganda machine. 'Official press agents and official philosophers . . . explained to the world that the running of trains was the symbol of the restoration of law and order,' wrote [American journalist George] Seldes. It helped that foreign correspondents in Rome were very carefully controlled and that the reporting of all railway accidents or delays was banned. [my emphasis]

Jeffrey Goldberg, Anne Applebaum, and other journalist with The Atlantic just discussed at the New Orleans Book Festival the authoritarian transformation the Trump 2.0 Reality TV Show is implementing. (4)

A notable theme in their discussion is that the Trump 2.0 crew isn’t trying to hide the radicalism of their program.

Notes:

(1) Rozen, Laura (2025): The Hollowness of the Always-on-TV Trump administration. Diplomatic 03/27/2025. <https://diplomatic.substack.com/p/the-hollowness-of-the-always-on-tv> (Accessed: 2025-28-03).

(2) Making trains run on time. The Economist 11/03/2018. <https://www.economist.com/science-and-technology/2018/11/03/making-trains-run-on-time> (Accessed: 2025-28-03).

(3) Making Italy work: Did Mussolini really get the trains running on time? The Independent 04/03/1994. <https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/rear-window-making-italy-work-did-mussolini-really-get-the-trains-running-on-time-1367688.html> (Accessed: 2025-28-03).

(4) Atlantic journalists discuss politics and media after the Signal breach. The Atlantic YouTube channel 03/28/2025. <https://youtu.be/gwCjUE-NUW4?si=p0027hbsZMQ0kko2> (Accessed: 2025-28-03).

How bright is the Trump 2.0 foreign policy?

The foreign policy scholar Dan Drezner publishes in thorough respectable foreign policy journals. He is also negatively impressed by the incompetent diplomacy of the Trump 2.0 Administration, which, as he notes, is even worse than the Trump 1.0 version, which was also pathetic.

The title he chose for his latest Substack column is, “American Foreign Policy Is Being Run by the Dumbest Motherfuckers Alive.” (1) His main point in the column is that even though Trump came into his second Presidency with a more coherent team of MAGAists and the whole Project 2025 blueprint for vandalizing democratic government, his approach to diplomacy is still remarkably incompetent.

On the one hand, that incompetence could have the side benefit of limiting the damage Trump 2.0 can do in some ways. But the idea of having democratic governance that works well means that the everyday functioning of public institutions needs to be competent and effective. Including foreign policy, which is a field whose implementation does require a great deal of professionalism to be done right. But as Drezner puts it:

In two short months, the second Trump administration’s abject incompetence has managed to make his bumbling first-term crew look like a paragon of professionalism. Trump’s needless, groundless hostility towards Canada — egged on by advisor Peter Navarro and Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick — has managed to turn one of the friendliest neighbors in international relations history into a prickly porcupine of a neighbor, complete with consumer boycotts and everything.

Drezner points out that in the international arena, China is potentially the biggest beneficiary from even the DOGE cuts Co-President Elon Musk is making. Foreign policy wonks tend to think in terms of various kinds of power-balancing, and China is the current “rising hegemon” in the world in foreign-policy-wonk terms. So “China will benefit” is kind of a default argument that can be used against any policy you don’t like on Trump’s part.

But Trump operates in a world in which being able to claim the publicity of having made a good “deal” is the primary goal in international negotiations. And not the substantive practical and strategic benefit for the country that it will produce. Drezner quotes from a column he did back in early June 2017, after only a few months of Trump 1.0:

It’s hard to overstate just how badly Trump has navigated the global stage. The Chinese and Saudis have figured out how to buy him off with a couple billion dollars and some flattery. There is zero evidence of any appreciable policy gains. U.S. leadership is being constantly questioned. Whatever soft power resided in the United States has dissipated. Outside of the Persian Gulf, Trump’s approach has done nothing but alienate allies and bolster potential rivals. [my emphasis]

Drezner stresses the particular idiocy in purely practical terms of Trump’s lunatic threats to annex Canada:

In two short months, the second Trump administration’s abject incompetence has managed to make his bumbling first-term crew look like a paragon of professionalism. Trump’s needless, groundless hostility towards Canada — egged on by advisor Peter Navarro and Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick — has managed to turn one of the friendliest neighbors in international relations history into a prickly porcupine of a neighbor, complete with consumer boycotts and everything. [my emphasis]

It's always important to keep in mind that there are economic and geopolitical trends that shape the international environment in which countries operate. But it’s also worth keeping in mind this observation of John Kenneth Galbraith’s from 1977 with reference to the beginning of the First World War – which also was driven by larger trends – on what he called the Stupidity Problem:

There was a final consideration, one that it is always thought a trifle pretentious to stress. Rulers in Germany and Eastern Europe, generals in all countries, held their jobs by right of family and tradition. If inheritance qualifies one for office, intelligence cannot be a requirement. Nor is its absence likely to be a disqualification. On the contrary, intelligence is a threat to those who do not possess it, and there is a strong case, therefore, for excluding those who do possess it. This was the tendency in 1914. In consequence, both the rulers and the generals in World War I were singularly brainless men.

None was capable of thought on what war would mean for his class - for the social order that was so greatly in his favor. There had always been wars. Rulers had been obliterated. The ruling classes had always survived. To the extent that there was thought on the social consequences of war, this was what was believed. (2)

The book was based on a documentary series, and this is the episode that corresponds to the cited portion: (3)

Notes:

(1) American Foreign Policy Is Being Run by the Dumbest Motherfuckers Alive. Drezner’s World 03/24/2025. (Accessed: 2025-27-03).

(2) Galbraith, John Kenneth (1977): The Age of Uncertainty, 137-8. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

(3) The Age of Uncertainty Episode 5 (16:45ff in the video). sveinbjornt YouTube channel 10/17/2011. <https://youtu.be/sxAoymq_SEA?si=kj8j9mAhLbfh1iZD> (Accessed: 2023-22-12).

High Diplomacy with Trump 2.0

Laura Rozen makes a valid point that should be clear to people who have been following the Trump 2.0 government’s amateurish negotiations over the Russia-Ukraine War with particular reference to the recent “proximity” talks in Saudi Arabia.

She reported on June 211 “that the U.S. side aspires to make enough rapid progress to be able to announce a ceasefire deal in short order. It also hoped to hold some sort of trilateral meeting with all three parties as early as Tuesday [March 25].” (1)

Even if I thought the Russia position was correct and represented the best option for the world, I would still say this is shockingly dumb diplomacy on the Trump team’s part:

The American side is far less experienced than its Russian counterparts. And some of its members show a disturbing predilection to be spun and deceived by the Russians.

Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, who has become the administration’s chief counterpart with the Russians, this week gushed about the Trump/Putin phone call on Tuesday, and expressed the conviction that Putin was acting in good faith.

While Ukraine reported hundreds of Russian drones and missiles continued to attack Ukrainian cities following the Trump/Putin phone call, Witkoff said that he believed what the Russians were evidently falsely telling him, that Russia had shot down its own drones based on an order by Putin.

“Pres. Putin issued an order within ten minutes of his call with the president directing Russian forces not to be attacking any Ukrainian energy infrastructure,” Witkoff said in a video interview on Wednesday posted to Twitter.

“The Russians tell me this morning that seven of their drones were on their way when President Putin issued his order and they were shot down by Russian forces,” Witkoff said. [my emphasis] (1)

This screenshot from The Independent today would give you the impression that Paul McCarney is now conducting the ceasefire talks on the Russia-Ukraine War.

Maybe we should wish for that instead of having Trump’s real-estate crony and now US Special Envoy to Everywhere Steve Witkoff handling it.

I mean, McCartney would at least have the wit to say, “Now, I haven’t done this kind of thing before. But I can see that this bloke Putin is lying to me.”

Notes:

(1) Rozen, Laura (2025): As it rushes to finalize Ukraine ceasefire, signs US team vulnerable to Russia manipulation. Diplomatic 05/21/2025. <https://diplomatic.substack.com/p/as-trump-rushes-to-finalize-ukraine> (Accessed: 26-03-2025). The March 25 meeting to which she refers is apparently the one that did take place this week, which produced an alleged ceasefire in the Black Sea for purposes of grain exports, though at this writing it’s not clear (to put it “dilopmatically”!) whether Russia has actually accepted that ceasefire arrangement.

The Trumpistas and Romania

Romanian politics is currently giving us an example of how the Russian and the American governments are meddling in the upcoming Presidential election. Under the newly-realigned perspective of the US under Trump 2.0, the Putin and Trump governments would have like to see the hard-right candidate Călin Georgescu elected President. But this whole rule-of-law thing made complications for the plan.

Aside from maybe associating it with Transylvania and Dracula, most Americans know that Romania is somewhere in eastern Europe and not much else. One of the events of the already-cluttered record of the Trump 2.0 regime was Vice President J.D. Vance’s speech to the Munich Conference in February, thanks to which we now have a whole new round of uses of the Munich Analogy, which lives on as a sort of inextricable ankle bracelet around Western foreign policy discussions. The tacit endorsement by Vance of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party in this year’s German parliamentary election appears to have drawn more attention in the reporting I’ve seen than the Romanian part.

Our Opus Dei-adherent Vice President told the conference:

[T]he threat that I worry the most about vis-à-vis Europe is not Russia, it’s not China, it’s not any other external actor. And what I worry about is the threat from within, the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values—values shared with the United States of America.

Now, I was struck that a former European commissioner went on television recently and sounded delighted that the Romanian government had just annulled an entire election. He warned that if things don’t go to plan, the very same thing could happen in Germany, too. [my emphasis] (1)

Le Monde gives this background to Vance’s cheap propaganda claim, which (surprise! surprise!) has an Elon Musk connection:

The American vice president was referring to a comment by French former European Commissioner Thierry Breton. Breton, speaking on the radio station RMC was reacting to a discussion between Alice Weider, the head of Germany's far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AFD) party, and Elon Musk, held on X, on January 9. Breton pointed out that the platform's owner had "the right to say what he wants," but not on social media platforms. Indeed, these platforms, as long as they are made available in Europe, are subject to the European Digital Services Act (DSA) regulation, which requires digital platforms to monitor speech and content on them, notably to prevent misinformation or illegal content.

Urging the EU and its member states to enforce their laws on online content, Breton then said the following sentence: "Let's apply our laws, in Europe, when they risk being circumvented and can, if not applied, lead to interference. We've done it in Romania, we'll obviously have to do it, if necessary, in Germany." At the time, the sentence was taken out of context and widely shared on social media. Some saw it as an admission that Europe had annulled the elections in Romania, and that it might do the same in Germany. As reported by Libération, this claim was echoed by Musk himself, who portrayed Breton as the "tyrant of Europe." The former commissioner's response to the billionaire was that the EU has no power to cancel any election in its member states. [my emphasis]

Călin Georgescu was the far-rightist, Putinist-oriented ultranationalist candidate which Vance and Musk were defending there. He did win the first round of Presidential elections last November. But because he had been found to have violated electoral laws, the second round of the election was cancelled, and a new election scheduled for this May. The Romanian Constitutional Court has excluded Georgescu from the May election but also ruled that this would not restrict him from participating in a future Presidential election. (2)

Musk is angry at the EU for making regulations requiring content moderation on social media platforms:

Romania has become ground zero in a global struggle over how speech is regulated online. Its top constitutional court in December canceled the win of ultranationalist Călin Georgescu in the first round of the presidential election after security services warned Russia was mounting “aggressive” hybrid attacks on social media. Georgescu has been barred from running in the do-over election scheduled for May.

ANCOM oversees the Digital Services Act in Romania, the European Union's social media rulebook that governs how platforms like TikTok and X moderate online speech.

"We’ve never seen something like” what happened in the November 2024 presidential election, Popescu said. (3)

Edmond Jäger in an analysis of the election-annulment situation notes that the Romanian Constitutional Court’s authority to annul the election in those circumstances was not entirely clear. But he also describes the pattern of online promotional activity to boost Georgescu’s candidacy and argues that those did constitute illegal campaign donations. (4)

The EU’s anti-disinformation platform EU vs. Disinformation can be frustratingly vague in its reporting. But this general description on the Romanian election situation seems plausible:

The Kremlin’s disinformation machine has also set its sights on Romania, fabricating an upside down world where the EU supposedly controls Romania’s judicial system like puppet masters.

Pro-Kremlin outlets have frantically spread baseless claims that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen personally orchestrated the prosecution of the former presidential candidate Calin Georgescu and even threatened to restrict Romania’s EU funding unless he was removed from the electoral process.

These feverish conspiracy theories, fuelled by Russia’s notoriously unreliable Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), lack any connection to reality. The real situation is far more mundane: the Romanian authorities charged Georgescu with multiple criminal counts(opens in a new tab) including promoting fascist organisations and election finance violations, following their own legal procedures and finally putting a full stop on Georgescu’s presidential bid(opens in a new tab).

Unsurprisingly, pro-Kremlin disinformation has framed this straightforward legal process as ‘EU tyranny‘, portraying Romania as a helpless victim of ‘Brussels despotism’. This manufactured narrative serves Moscow’s broader strategy of undermining trust in democratic institutions while positioning pro-Kremlin candidates as ‘popular victims’ of Western persecution. (5)

Edmund Jäger would presumably not consider the decision to have been so obviously “straightforward.”

Euronews summarized the situation this way:

Dubbed the "TikTok Messiah," Georgescu came out on top in the first round of Romania's presidential elections in December.

However, the country's constitutional court annulled the vote following the declassification of intelligence reports showing Russian involvement in influencing voters through social media to support the then-relatively unknown candidate.

Georgescu is also facing criminal proceedings including anticonstitutional acts and misreporting his campaign finances.

The charges also revolve around his support for sympathisers of the Iron Guard, a pre-World War II fascist and antisemitic movement and political party, which is illegal under Romanian law. [my emphasis] (6)

Georgescu is not a nice guy. But his was good enough for the far-right propaganda outlets supporting him and another rightwing candidate:

Along with TikTok, actors also coordinated on Facebook to support Georgescu and AUR candidate George Simion. The Finnish cyber research firm Check First has detailed in a report how a large network supported the two right-wing radical candidates. A few accounts also acted as clients as well as suppliers of commercials. In addition, a lot of content was copied one-to-one from the same accounts across different media. In doing so, they did not leave out any relevant medium: In addition to TikTok, the same content can be found on Telegram and Facebook, on websites and on television. Unlike Tik-Tok and Facebook, the websites and the TV station in question can be associated with Russia. The station, for example, is owned by the Moldovan oligarch Ilan Sor, who repeatedly organizes political campaigns in the Republic of Moldova on behalf of Russia. The websites, in turn, belong to a network that disseminates Russian government propaganda in various languages under the name "Pravda". [Jäger; my emphasis]

The media environment continues to evolve, and so do the challenges in detecting such efforts by foreign governments to illegally and illegitimately interfere with elections.

Vladimir Bortun observed in December that the election ironically also reflected the general deference to the US in Romanian politics, noting that after the Court’s decision:

Surprisingly, both Georgescu and the pro-Western candidate who had made it into the second round, Elena Lasconi from the neoliberal Save Romania Union (USR), criticized the decision. So did Donald Trump Jr, who deplored this “[George] Soros/Marxist attempt at rigging the outcome and denying the will of the people.” This compelled both candidates to write to his dad and argue their case, like schoolchildren in front of the headmaster. Lasconi — ostensibly the candidate defending democracy, the rule of law, and all the rest — started by praising Trump “for the great things you have done, and will continue to do, to put America first and for your continuous fight for the American people.” Georgescu went as far as suggesting that this is in fact a plot to drag NATO into the war in Ukraine and thereby block Trump’s investiture in January. His characterization of Trump echoed the old Wallachian delegations kowtowing to the sultan: “They want to stop the Peace-Maker Donald Trump from keeping world peace.” [my emphasis] (7)

To get back to Dracula, Romanian authorities earlier this month arrested six people for treason:

Investigators say the group established contacts with foreign agents in Romania and Russia and “took steps to negotiate with external political-military actors regarding Romania’s withdrawal from NATO”.

They also allegedly sought to overthrow the constitutional order, dissolve political parties, install a new government, adopt a new constitution and change the country’s name, flag, and national anthem.

Some of the suspects allegedly made repeated contact with foreign agents, both within Romania and Russia. ...

Among those detained was 101-year-old Radu Theodoru, a retired general, who has a long history of promoting anti-Semitic rhetoric and Holocaust denial.

According to prosecutors, Theodoru was the honorary leader of an organisation known as the Vlad Tepes Command Centre, which describes itself as a structured military entity. Vlad Tepes (Vlad the Impaler, in English) was a medieval ruler notorious for his brutality and served as an inspiration for the Dracula legend. Some in Romania regard him as a symbol of strong leadership and radical justice. [my emphasis] (8)

How long before JD Vance starts telling us what a noble guy Vlad the Impaler was?

Vlad Ţepeş (1456-1462)

Notes:

(1) Bernard, Philippe, et al (2025): Behind the words of JD Vance's historic Munich speech. Le Monde 02/21/2025. <https://www.lemonde.fr/en/opinion/article/2025/02/21/behind-the-words-of-jd-vance-s-historic-munich-speech_6738424_23.html> (Accessed: 2025-25-03).

(2) Parzkava, Dato (2025): Georgescu free to try his luck in other presidential elections, Romanian court says. Politico 03/14/2025. <https://www.politico.eu/article/calin-georgescu-romania-elections-romanian-constitutional-court/> (Accessed: 2025-25-03).

(3) Garito, Eliza (2025): Romanian media watchdog defies Musk over censorship claims. Politico 03/24/2025. <https://www.politico.eu/article/romanian-social-media-watchdog-defies-elon-musk-censorship-speech-claims/> (Accessed: 2025-25-03).

(4) Jäger, Edmond (2025): Mit TikTok zur Wahlmanipulation. Blätter für deutsche und internationale Politik 3/2025, 29-32. Translations from the German are mine.

(5) EU vs. Disinformation. The old deceiver 03/20/2025. <https://euvsdisinfo.eu/the-old-deceiver/> (Accessed: 2025-25-03).

(6) Brazar, Aleksander (2025): Romanian constitutional court unanimously rejects Calin Georgescu's candidacy, sparking protests. Euronews 03/11/2025. <https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2025/03/11/romanian-constitutional-court-unanimously-rejects-calin-georgescus-candidacy-sparking-prot> (Accessed: 2025-25-03).

(7) Bortun, Vladimir (2025): Romania’s Election Isn’t Just About Geopolitics. Jacobin 12/12/2024. <https://jacobin.com/2024/12/romania-election-nationalism-neoliberalism-georgescu> (Accessed: 2025-25-03).

(8) Chiriac, Marian (2025): Romania Detains Six for Alleged Treason, Ties to Russia. Balkan Insight 03/06/2025. <https://balkaninsight.com/2025/03/06/romania-detains-six-for-alleged-treason-ties-to-russia/> (Accessed: 2025-25-03).

Trying to separate the signal from the noise on the Russia-Ukraine War negotiations

A situation like the current stage of the Russia-Ukraine War presents the frustrating challenge of trying to understand what really happening, as opposed to what various interested parties are asserting. And also to understand negotiating strategies of the various parties, which obviously overlaps with the first problem.

Times Radio (as in Times of London) has been featuring an interesting set of perspectives on the situation that often confront the viewers and listeners with both those problems. One of their guests has been Bill Browder (1), who is a founder and former CEO of of the Hermitage Capital hedge fund and whose grandfather was Earl Browder, Chairman of the US Communist Party from 1935 to 1945. A fact that journalists understandably consider an interesting factoid. A 2017 CNN report describes Bill as being “a Red Diaper baby turned capitalist,” the red diaper label being a longtime phrase to describe people whose parents were Communists. It goes on to describes Bill B’s business dealings in Russia led to his become “becoming, like his grandfather, a victim of the very dictatorship he once defended.” (2)

It’s as though “Russia” is some timeless entity that has been fundamentally the same since Ivan the Terrible took over as the first tsar in 1547. But for a lot of pundits, that kind of assumption passes as deep historical knowledge. In the case of the Browders, during Earl’s time as Communist Party Chairman for the US, Russia was part of the Soviet Union, which was a Communist country whose chief leader during Earl’s chairmanship in the US was Joseph Stalin. The Russia headed by Vladimir Putin who became the nemesis of Bill Browder was a country that had gone through a major and bitter transition after 1992 from a centralized Communist economy and government to being a capitalist oligarchy with an authoritarian government whose democratic roots were never more than paper-thin, and which was no longer part of a Soviet Union.

Otherwise, Russia in Ivan’s time was pretty much the same as in was in Earl and Bill’s and Vlad Putin’s time.

(Would Earl have been happy that his grandson became a prominent critic of a very capitalist post-Soviet Russia? Who knows?)

I mention this because evaluating negotiations is not the same as understanding how particular problems arose in the first place. Bill Browder has his own issues with Putin’s regime and is definitely hostile to it. But he also has had a lot of experience with it and has examined Putin’s governance and negotiating style closely.

This Times Radio segment is a good example of how we can parse negotiating approaches differently than how we evaluate the underlying macro issues. It looks at the dubious qualifications and questionable performance of Trump’s current favorite ham-and-cheese- sandwich real estate crony and current star international negotiator Steve Witkoff in dealing with Russia over the Ukraine war.

It’s titled “Steve Witkoff is a *Kremlin lover’, which probably gives him too much individual credit for his positions. It’s painfully obvious that Witkoff is there to make a deal on terms very favorable to Russia because that’s what the Orange Anomaly wants. But Russia is also known for its hardheaded negotiating style – that approach does have a longer continuity than Putin’s position heading it up. So having someone on the American side as chief negotiator who is interested in giving in to Russia’s position is suboptimal to put it mildly if we’ re interested in seeing any kind of reasonably stable end to the current war that doesn’t create even worse problems. (3)

In this podcase, Andrew Neil observes, of a segment in which the sad silver-spoon baby Tucker Carlson (an heir to the Swanson fortune) interviews Witkoff:

You know, it's what happens when you have two idiots beside a microphone and neither of them knows what they're talking about.
I mean, one is just a busted flush mad American broadcaster. But the other is the president's Special Envoy and he knows nothing about what he's talking about: I mean, this guy's a property billionaire. He's never been involved in this level of geopolitics. He doesn’t know anything about it.

By chance, Tucker and Witkoff manage to turn an accurate observation of the moment - when they scoff at the notion that Russia might have territorial designs beyond Ukraine – into stereotypical sophomoric nonsense. It has been a weakness of the Ukraine-hawks’ common talking points to blandly state as fact that Putin’s immediately goal in the war was to take control of Ukraine. But the actual approach that Russia took in the first year of the current war (2022) looked as though it was based on a goal of potentially occupying and controlling the four eastern provinces of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson – along with Crimea, which they annexed in 2014 – and installing a compliant government in Kiev.

Those were illegitimate and illegal aims. But they were also not the same as aiming at a near-term annexation of all Ukraine.

And in the real world, if Russia were to be successful in that more limited goal of a puppet regime in Ukraine, that doesn’t mean they would move immediately to start absorbing Poland, Finland, and the Baltic states. As a practical matter, the European NATO members do have to prepared to deter and defend against any such attempts by Russia. But those risks don’t emerge overnight, any more than the Russia-NATO disputes over Ukraine emerged from the blue in January of 2022.

But the segment of Carlson and Witkoff in the video has Tucker cackling like a stoned kid after Witkoff sneers at the idea that “the Russians are gonna march across Europe,” which I don’t hear even the most enthusiastic hawks saying. Cackling Carlson comments, “Why would they want that? I wouldn’t want those countries. Like, why would they?”

As they say in the American South, “Somethin’ about that boy just ain’t right.”

As much as I’ve been complaining about the ill effects of the use of the Munich Analogy in trying to explain any and all foreign policy challenges, hearing Trump’s chief negotiator on Russia-Ukraine and the Middle East making a stoned-airhead version of the argument with Tucker Carlson is pretty grim.

Notes:

(1) Trump team casting Putin as a ‘good guy’ has made my ‘blood boil’ | Sir Bill Browder. Times Radio YouTube channel 03/24/2025. <https://youtu.be/bkkRUTzQVbo?si=lvf7Jc2K5EAZ3U9x> (Accessed: 2025-24-03).

(2) Weiss, Michael (2017): Bill Browder, from red diaper baby to Putin’s nemesis. CNN 07/28/2017. <https://edition.cnn.com/2017/07/28/opinions/bill-browder-opinion-weiss/index.html> (Accessed: 2025-24-03).

(3) Steve Witkoff is a ‘Kremlin lover’ | Andrew Neil. Times Radio YouTube channel 03/24/2025. <https://youtu.be/65bwJmKcBzE?si=j_uHyROJr2AjRzw3> (Accessed: 2025-24-03).

A really strange political alliance: Netanyahu’s Likud Party and European anti-Semites

The radical right in Europe has come up with an alibi for themselves: We can’t be anti-Semitic because we support Israel when they make war on Muslims.

Now the Israeli Likud Party of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has joined the Patriots for Europe, a grouping of European far right parties, as ab “observer member.” As David Issacharoff explains:

The move comes amid a broader shift by the Israeli government toward establishing ties with far-right European parties that have long been boycotted by Israel due to their history of antisemitism and neo-Nazi affiliations. ...

It raises questions about Israel's evolving stance toward groups like Austria's Freedom Party, a member of the Patriots bloc, founded by a former SS general, and Germany's Alternative for Germany party, the AfD, which emerged as the country's second-largest party in last month's federal elections, surpassing the incumbent Social Democrats.

The AfD is deeply rooted in neo-Nazi culture, and Germany's Jewish community describes it having a "blatantly antisemitic ideology." The Freedom Party, in whose ranks antisemitic and neo-Nazi incidents occur with great regularity, has been described as "antisemitic to its core."

This is a sad but not surprising development. This is a feature of the same Likud/Netanyahu position that tries to identify anti-Semitism as primarily criticism of the State of Israel.

The US Christian nationalists justify their support of Israel largely by a bizarre and crassly anti-Semitic reading of Biblical prophecy in which a gigantic war in Israel will kill off most of the Jews in the world and then Jesus can make his Second Coming.

European far-right groups celebrate Israel’s hostility to Muslim because it fits with the Islamophobia that they use as a key argument in their hatred of immigrants.

The Foreign Ministry declined to respond to Haaretz's inquiries about whether it still officially boycotts Austria's Freedom Party or to comment on its stance toward the AfD, which won 20 percent of the vote in Germany's recent election. Ahead of Austrian elections last fall, Haaretz reported that the Israeli embassy in Vienna's boycott of the Freedom Party "has not changed."

A spokesperson for Foreign Minister Sa'ar did not respond when asked whether Netanyahu adviser Bulshtein's open discussions with the Freedom Party violate Israel's long-standing policy of boycotting the party. Likud has also refused to comment on its stance regarding formal ties with the Freedom Party and the AfD, or whether Netanyahu approved his party's decision to join the Patriots.

The whole concept of a Nationalist International is bizarre. But it’s not new. Fascist parties and regimes in the 1920s and 1930s lent political support to similar groups in other countries. Very dramatically with Germany’s and Italy’s support for Francisco Franco’s rebellion against the Spanish Republic during the Spanish civil war.

This is Part 1 of a six-part 1983 BBC documentary on that conflict: (2) 

Notes:

(1) Israel's Lost Taboo: How Netanyahu's Party Is Officially Embracing Europe's Far-right Extremists. Haaretz 03/17/2025. https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/2025-03-17/ty-article-magazine/.premium/israels-lost-taboo-how-netanyahus-party-is-embracing-europes-far-right-extremists/00000195-9e70-d865-ad95-9f7df0170000?gift=36a5b5fd0faa4bdbae9f962ca19f3f81 (Accessed: 2025-18-03),

(2) https://youtu.be/Lu5f9hp0IP4?si=uUDewRp2YRdpcig1">THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR - Episode 1: Prelude To Tragedy. Military Man YouTube channel 07/24/2025.