“The result is a catastrophe for the world”

That was David Smith’s brief summary of the outcome of the US Presidential election. (1)

And he’s blunt about the failure of democratic responsibility:

Sometimes fear triumphs over hope.

Donald Trump’s shocking victory in the 2016 US presidential election was described as a leap into the political unknown. This time there is no excuse. America knew that he was a convicted criminal, serial liar and racist demagogue who four years ago attempted to overthrow the government. It voted for him anyway.

The AP summary as of this writing (5:00 am EST) shows Trump as having won not only the Electoral College (277-224) but – for the first time – the popular vote, as well: (2)

Politics between “Enemies” and “Cowards” – and the value of losing a good fight

Hamilton Nolan wrote a piece in September that provides what I would call a left-populist spin on picking priorities in what political issues to emphasize:

Untangling this ethical knot is, I think, a matter of perspective. It comes down to the way that you think of what politics is. For the most part, it is wrong to think of elections as contests between “good” and “bad” candidates. With few exceptions, it is more accurate to divide most politicians into two broad categories: Enemies, and Cowards. The enemies are those politicians who are legitimately opposed to your policy goals. The cowards are those politicians who may agree with your policy goals, but will sell you out if they must in order to protect their own interests. Embrace the idea that we are simply pushing to elect the cowards, rather than the enemies. Why? Because the true work of political action is not to identify idealized superheroes to run for office. It is, instead, to create the conditions in the world that make it safe for the cowards to vote the right way. (3)

Political choices are always about priorities. Nolan’s take makes sense as a way to help voters who are less engaged with politics see the value in voting and in political participation more broadly. And give the examples he uses of issues on which political decisions favor bad policy over better, more practical, more humane alternatives indicate that he’s probably appealing to younger, more Democratic-leaning voters in the American context.

And he also makes his version of the argument that in democratic politics, to accomplish things that actually benefit the majority or that are needed for protecting democratic rights, you need popular movements to fight for them.

But as interesting as his framing is, he omits a critical and central variable: money and wealth. In a class society, the wealthier find it easier to get access to politicians, to contribute large sums to campaigns, and to offer tangible material benefits to them both legally and illegally. The average Starbucks barista doesn’t have that same kind of individual clout, access, and wealth. So to push for policies that are not primarily or exclusively for the benefit of antisocial billionaires, ordinary citizens need mass organizations like labor unions to make provide the collective democratic clout to offset the advantages the One Percent will have even under the most stringent campaign-financing laws. And the system the US currently has is far from that.

There will be endless critiques of the Harris campaign. But democratic campaigns do have winners and losers. And to defeat the newly-invigorated Trumpism, democrats (small- and large-D’s) will have to fight for voting rights, for labor rights, and against wars and militarism. Democracy didn’t win in Italy in 1922 (Mussolini’s March on Rome), or in Italy in 1925 (Mussolini’s coup), or in Germany in 1933, or in Chile in 1973. But it was worth fighting for.

But that doesn’t mean the Democrats should try to squeak by in future elections by trying to be Trump-lite. (And some real post-election evaluation of how beneficial or not the strategy of Democrats campaigning with Republicans like Liz Cheney actually was.) The new Trump-Vance Administration is facing a far messier foreign-policy environment than Trump’s first administration had when he took office in 2017. The reactionary policy plans in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 are radical. And they not only have real support in the Republican Establishment generally. There is every reason to believe that the new Trump government will lean heavily on those plans in their approach to government.

Trump’s drill-baby-drill approach to energy policy will accelerate global climate change rather than mitigate it. An economic approach that relies or further freeing the wealthiest from what obligations to pay taxes they still have, on deregulation and privatization, on rolling back public services including basic public education, along with Trump’s favorite fetish of draconian tariffs, will reduce opportunities and cause real deprivation among the majority.

Add that to looney-tunes schemes that TechBro billionaire Trump backers like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel will come up with to scam the public to pay off the US debt with deflated cryptocurrency or Lord-knows-what-other goofy ideas and the US economy as a whole could be dealing with some spectacular messes.

And we saw in the COVID crisis Trump’s crackpot attitude toward science and medical professionalism. Whether or not he makes RFK, Jr. a major figure in managing the federal health functions, this is going to be bad:

Asked [On Nov. 3] whether banning certain vaccines would be an option during a second term, Trump didn’t rule it out.

“Well, I’m going to talk to [Kennedy] and talk to other people, and I’ll make a decision, but he’s a very talented guy and has strong views,” Trump said.

Trump declined to talk about specific roles Kennedy might play in a second administration, but in recent public appearances, he has made it clear that envisions a prominent role for him.

“He can do anything he wants,” Trump said at an event Thursday in Arizona. (4)

British commentator Owen Jones talked to Jeremy Cohen at the New York Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) making the case that the Democrats need an effective left-populist message to attract voters that may be able to attract disaffected voters who see Trump as a protest vote. (I’m all far left-populist approaches by the Democrats. But that argument is sometimes made to say that Democrats should back off all this “identity” stuff, e.g., women’s rights, opposition to racism and xenophobia, etc. That doesn’t compute. To have a “left-populist” approach it has to be, you know, left.) (5)

Cohen makes an important point about foreign policy issues in arguing that the Democratic Party should have articulated a more pro-peace policy. Given that Biden was President and that he locked himself in on autopilot with the Russia-Ukraine War and Netanyahu’s genocide in Gaza, Harris was not in a good position to break with him dramatically. She should have, but she didn’t.

It's not picked up very well in opinion polls. But there is a background factor at work here, which is that normal voters really are not very enthusiastic about wars. Of course, the anthropological effect of rallying around the flag at the beginning of the war generates short-term support for new wars. Weapons lobbyists are always enthusiastic about wars and rumors of wars. Most everyone else doesn’t really like them. So even though direct American involvement in Ukraine and Israel has been limited, messy wars don’t make most voters feel good.

In yet another sign of the slide of TYT (The Young Turks) from having been for years a leading progressive online forum into an “I’ve-left-the-left” rebranding, Cenk Uygur brings on Tennessee Congressman Steve Cohen, who does have a popular style, to say that the problem in this election is that the Democrats keep putting up Black people and wimmin as candidates and the Real Amurcans just wanna see white guys in those offices. (6) And also the Dems needed to be bashing the (nonexistent) “trans” menace just like the Republicans. This is sad stuff.

At one point, Cohen says that the current situation with the incoming Trump II Administration is like Mel Brooks’ “Springtime for Hitler,” and Cenk immediately interjects, “No, don’t say Hitler.” The decline of TYT content is really a sad development.

The next four years are going to be long.

Notes:

(1) Fear triumphs over hope as Trump wins the presidency – how did it happen? The Guardian 11/06/2024. <https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/nov/06/how-trump-won-us-election-president> (Accessed: 2024-06-11).

(2) AP/Google (2024): 2024 US elections. <https://www.google.at/search?q=presidential+election+popular+vote+2024> (Accessed: 2024-06-11). (Accessed: 2024-06-11).

(3) Nolan, Hamilton (2024): How to Think About Politics Without Wanting to Kill Yourself. How Things Work 09/16/2024. <https://www.hamiltonnolan.com/p/how-to-think-about-politics-without> (Accessed: 2024-06-11).

(4) Burns, Dasha & Marquez, Alexandra (2024): Trump doesn't rule out banning vaccines if he becomes president: 'I'll make a decision'. NBC News 11/03/2024. <https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/trump-banning-vaccines-president-rfk-fluoride-rcna178570> (Accessed: 2024-06-11).

(5) Democrats To Blame For Trump’s Triumph: Owen Jones In New York - w/. Jeremy Cohan. Owen Jones YouTube channel 11/06/2024. <https://youtu.be/zLiPtR-r76s?si=rp-ZOsVEXNRhshYc> (Accessed: 2024-06-11).

(6) Cenk Uygur: Democrats Have FAILED Us. The Young Turks YouTube channel 11/06/2024. <https://youtu.be/EPhbQrBPS2c?si=bh_DQsQi36tAWKYr> (Accessed: 2024-06-11).

Sidney Blumenthal on Trump’s 2024 campaign

Back in the mists of the past, in 1986, Ronald Reagan was in the White House looking like a mature statesman in comparison to the current Republican Presidential nominee. Americans were still cheering the Muslim jihadists, then known as the Brave Mujahadeen Freedom Fighters, who was battling the Soviet troops supporting the Soviet-allied government of Afghanistan. The Iran-Contra scandal broke into public knowledge late in the year. Reagan was getting along with the head of what he had called the Evil Empire, Mikhail Gorbachev, and they were making major progress on nuclear arms control.

Ronald Reagan: A Major Station on the Republicans’ Road to Donald Trump

And Sidney Blumenthal published a book on the neoconservative trend then ascending in influence in the Republican Party, The Rise of the Counter-Establishment (1986). It was an important analysis of some of the most influential neocon trends and institutions that provided a much more insightful and critical look at their movement than they were receiving from mainstream reporting or even from the liberal left. His son Max Blumenthal followed in his journalistic steps for a while, notably with an excellent report on the Christian Right, Republican Gomorrah: Inside the Movement that Shattered the Party (2009).

Max drifted into a left environment whose take on international events became more shrill and less rigorous than his early approach. But Sidney remained more within the confines of the Democratic Party, serving as a senior advisor to Bill Clinton during his second Presidential term. He also wrote a decent account of Clinton’s battles with what Hillary famously described as the VRWC (vast right-wing conspiracy), i.e., Kenneth Starr, Newt Gingrich, and various other more-than-dubious characters on the steadily-radicalizing Republican side, The Clinton Wars (2003).

As I recall, that was one of the very first e-books I ever bought and read on my Microsoft Pocket PC. (Yes, I was there in the Dark Ages already.) Once Microsoft gave up on the e-book market, I was permanently locked out of the Microsoft e-books I had bought. Which made me a major fan ever since of PDF books, because the format is so very widely used that when something eventually succeeds it, the PDFs are very likely to be convertible to whatever the Next Big Thing is.

Timothy Noah also recalls one of Blumenthal’s less inspiring projects, the “Third Way” alliance in which Bill Clinton and Tony Blair joined in an informal Neoliberal International in the effort to bury progressive economics. As Timothy Noah wrote:

Blumenthal was Clinton’s big-ideas man, the guy who got whisked into the Oval Office whenever the president wanted to consider his place in the cosmos. Blumenthal’s principal task was to organize a series of conferences on the “Third Way,” wherein marquee intellectuals and leaders from various countries gathered at swell places like Harold Acton’s Tuscan Villa La Pietra to steer the course of history, as the cliché goes, past the Scylla of collectivism and the Charybdis of market fundamentalism. Perhaps the only sincere compliment I can pay Clinton’s successor, George W. Bush, is that he doesn’t go in for this sort of gum-beating. [my emphasis] (1)

Who would have guessed that it would be the staunch corporate Democrat Joe Biden who would make the major break away from delusional neoliberal economic policies back to something like a pragmatic Keynesianism – with impressive results at the four-year mark – and even be active in serious antitrust regulation and promoting the growth of unions?

All this is a roundabout way of saying that, for all his Third Way sins, Sidney Blumenthal still is remarkable good at describing what rightwing goons dominate the Republican Right. In a memorably titled essay, “Donald Trump’s freakshow continues unabated,” in which he demonstrates that he has lost his talent for describing how melodramatically disastrous the Republican Party really is:

Trump is hellbent to break through any “sane-washing” of the media smoothing over his viciousness and vulgarity. His call for an elaborate execution of a pre-eminent political opponent, a conservative Republican of the most partisan pedigree, is his definitive and final answer to those who quibble about his intentions and his unmooring from all traditional politics.

His fascist-themed freakshow in Madison Square Garden followed by his firing squad fantasy [against Liz Cheney] are an augury of a second administration. His closing act has overwhelmed any media reflex for euphemism and both-siderism. He contemptuously stomps on every effort at normalization.

Time and again, day after day, event after event, Trump insists on posing as the salient question of the election, certainly about the candidate himself: are you crazier today than you were four years ago? [my emphasis] (2)

Notes:

(1) Noah, Timothy (2003): The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. Slate 05/20/2024. (Accessed: 2024-02-11).

(2) Blumenthal, Sidney (2024): Donald Trump’s freakshow continues unabated. The Guardian 11/02/2024. (Accessed: 2024-02-11).

A sad appearance by Bill Clinton

Owen Jones’ criticism of Bill Clinton giving a poison-pill speech in Michigan, allegedly to help Kamala Harris get elected, is understandable and accurate. (1)

Still, on this one, my reaction is more of a sad feeling. One, because Clinton comes off as frail in this one and doesn’t seem to clearly understand what he’s talking about and why. His sentences aren’t garbled. But he unfortunately looks like he came out to deliver a speech from the teleprompter and doesn’t quite understand how he’s bound to come across. And his babbling about King David and “Judea and Samaria” is pretty pitiful.

The one time I saw Bill Clinton give a speech live and in person was at the 2009 Netroots Nation convention in Pittsburgh. When he started his speech, I was struck by how flat he sounded, because he was obviously known for inspiring speeches. Aaron Banks reported at the time what happened next:

The drama kicked off when progressive and GLBT activist Lane Hudson shouted out “Mr. President, will you call for a repeal of DOMA [the Defense of Marriage Act] and Don't Ask, Don't Tell? Right now?”

President Clinton’s calm demeanor quickly turned stormy and the crowd witnessed a flash of the legendary Clinton temper as he shot back at Hudson in defense of his record:

[“]You want to talk about Don't Ask Don't Tell, I'll tell you exactly what happened. You couldn't deliver me any support in the Congress, and they voted by a veto-proof majority in both houses against my attempt to let gays serve in the military, and the media supported them. They raised all kinds of devilment. And all most of you did was to attack me instead of getting me some support in the Congress. Now that's the truth. [“]

It was Clinton at his best, showing passion and just enough restraint, and it won the crowd to his side. The speech ended in a standing ovation and seemed only to be missing the traditional playing of “Don’t Stop Thinking About Tomorrow” as he waved to the crowd and excited the stage. Participants later gave a spirited rendition around 2:00am at a local karaoke bar. [my emphasis] (2)

I assumed from that speech that he started off not quite sure what kind of crowd he was addressing. Was it standard liberals, aspiring Democratic Party functionaries, or grouchy leftie activist? When Banks interrupted him, Clinton started emotionally engaging with the crowd. That gave him a sense of the audience and then started talking like he was addressing left-leaning Democratic activists who actually wanted to accomplish things. And the crowd responded positively. This was 2009 before the realization had set in that Obama really was leaning toward a conservative approach rather than the hope-and-change attitude he projected in his 2008 campaign.

Ryan Grim in his book We’ve Got People (2019) gives a good account of how the activist base pushed back on Obama’s conservative tilt. Including how Nancy Pelosi as the Speaker of the House pushed Obama’s team to actually get the “Obamacare” health insurance plan passed, which wound up being one of Obama’s most popular, effective, and enduring programs.

Anyone slightly to the left of center has found plenty of reasons to be frustrated with her on various issues since. But she came through on that one, and seriously tried to get the “public option” feature enacted, which failed to pass the Senate thanks to the vote against it by ConservaDem Joe Lieberman in one of his most consequential “f*** you” gestures to the Democratic Party and especially its base voters.

Here, Clinton just repeats the inaccurate trope that it was all the Palestinians’ fault that the Oslo Peace Process broke down and shamelessly regurgitates the Israeli propaganda justification for deliberately targeting civilians because all them were being used as “human shields” by Hamas fighters. It’s disgusting and immoral. Jones’ phrase is “disgusting and insane.”

Jones’ criticism is right. And I don’t want to detract from it.

But it’s also sad to see Clinton coming off like this as a hull of his former self. If the words he’s saying weren’t so horrible and indefensible, it would just be kind of sad and nostalgic to see this.

And it’s hard to believe it’s giving any boost to turnout for the Harris-Walz ticket in Michigan, where Arab-Americans are a key constituency the ticket needs to win. This is as tone-deaf as it gets.

Notes:

(1) Bill Clinton's VILE Anti-Palestinian Racist Speech. Owen Jones YouTube channel 11/01/2024. <https://youtu.be/As3HEZc5vCw?si=73i9TWzFnm_C5qCD> (Accessed: 01-11-2024).

(2) Banks, Aaron (2009): Netroots Nation Part II: Bill Clinton takes on the hecklers. Prospect 08/17/2009. <https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/world/53161/netroots-nation-part-ii-bill-clinton-takes-on-the-hecklers> (Accessed: 01-11-2024).

A rule-of-law wish list for an incoming Harris Administration

The original text of the Constitution gives Congress the power to regulate the appellate jurisdiction of the federal courts, including the Supreme Court. On the optimistic assumption that Kamala win Tuesday’s election and Trump’s next coup attempt fails, it’s time that Congress start using that power, which when it excludes court jurisdiction over some area of law is known by the somewhat pejorative term, “jurisdiction stripping.”

[I]n the 1810 case Durousseau v. United States, Chief Justice John Marshall accepted the validity of legislation limiting the Court’s jurisdiction but suggested that, in the absence of such congressional action, the Court’s appellate jurisdiction would have been measured by the constitutional grant. However, later cases have generally taken the view that the Supreme Court possesses no appellate power in any case, unless conferred upon it by act of Congress. [my emphasis] (1)

Why is this obtuse legalese relevant to today’s politics? Because to protect basic rights, including voting rights and the right to abortion, Congress has to remove the power of judicial review from today’s rogue Supreme Court over federal legislation protecting those rights.

Congress has used their power to regulate Court jurisdiction, for instance in this Reconstruction case:

Congress has on occasion used its power to regulate Supreme Court jurisdiction to forestall a possible adverse decision from the Court. In Ex parte McCardle, the Court granted certiorari to review the denial of a petition for a writ of habeas corpus from a civilian convicted of acts obstructing Reconstruction. Anticipating that the Court might void, or at least undermine, congressional reconstruction of the Confederate States, Congress overrode the President’s veto to enact a provision repealing the statute that authorized the appeal. Although the Court had already heard argument in the case, it dismissed the action for want of jurisdiction. The Court stated, We are not at liberty to inquire into the motives of the legislature. We can only examine into its power under the Constitution; and the power to make exceptions to the appellate jurisdiction of this court is given by express words. Since its decision in McCardle, the Supreme Court has upheld numerous legislative limits on its jurisdiction.

For liberals who just want to elect a Democratic President so “we can go back to brunch” and not worry about challenges to democracy and the rule of law or similarly bothersome issues, the very thought that Congress should restrict Supreme Court jurisdiction will be horrifying. Goodness me! If the Democrats do that to protect basic rights, then the Republicans might do it, too, to protect some bad legislation they want!!

But really, anyone who has paid attention to American politics for the last 20 years or so, even the last 10 years, should not need to wonder whether the Republicans will wait for a Democratic precedent to do something they want to do to protect their billionaire owners or their most rabid rightwing voters. They don’t. They don’t care and wouldn’t hesitate to use that power if they thought they needed to. From the Gingrich Revolution to the 2021 Capitol insurrection to the New Bund rally at Madison Square Garden this week, they care about what they can get away with. They’ll blame the Democrats for whatever they do. But they don’t need permission or precedents from Democrats to do it.

So here’s my wish list for immediate legislative action if the Democrats have majorities in both Houses. Five of which relate directly to defending liberal democracy, including the rule of law. And Harris should attempt them even if they don’t control the two Houses. All of them will require the Senate to either abolish the filibuster rule altogether (which can be done with 51 votes) or exempt these individual measures from the filibuster rule.

1. Federal law establishing the right to abortion care in all of the United States. Including a provision stripping jurisdiction from the federal courts from ruling on its Constitutionality.

2. Federal law restoring the provision of the Voting Rights Act overturned by the rogue Roberts Supreme Court, with legal requirements that legislatures in states who hold popular elections for President must respect the result in their selection of Presidential Electors., Including a provision stripping jurisdiction from the federal courts from ruling on its Constitutionality.

3. Federal law stating clearly that the President has no immunity to violate the law. Including a provision stripping jurisdiction from the federal courts from ruling on its Constitutionality.

4. Federal law declaring that for the purposes of regulations on campaign contributions, corporations cannot be considered persons, and establishing campaign contribution limits and strict reporting requirements. Including a provision stripping jurisdiction from the federal courts from ruling on its Constitutionality.

5. Strict, legally binding ethics regulations for the Supreme Court with substantial criminal penalties for violations. Including a provision stripping jurisdiction from the federal courts from ruling on its Constitutionality.

6. “Card check” legislation facilitating union organization. Including a provision stripping jurisdiction from the federal courts from ruling on its Constitutionality.

Codifying the abortion rights included in the now-defunct Roe v. Wade decision and card check legislation were campaign pledges of Barack Obama in 2008. His Administration never made a serious attempt to do either.

A renegade Supreme Court in the Dred Scott decision of 1857 effectively ended the possibility of ending or even containing slavery without a bloody civil war. The Supreme Court in the 1930s was blocking FDR’s New Deal legislation on frivolous grounds until Roosevelt made a serious effort to expand the Court. And entrenched reactionary judiciary that doesn’t respect legitimate laws or normal judicial procedures includes taking full account of relevant precedents can undermine the rule of law, just as a bad legislature or lawless Executive Branch can.

A Harris Administration will need to take seriously reigning in the rogue judiciary, especially including the Supreme Court.

And, yes, that will require back-to-brunch Democrats to get out of their previous comfort zone on the subject.

Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse has been trying to raise attention to the drastic threat to the rule of law represented by the current rightwing takeover of the federal judiciary. Here he addresses the Supreme Court’s appalling ruling on Presidential immunity from the law. (2)

Notes:

(1) ArtIII.S2.C2.6 Exceptions Clause and Congressional Control over Appellate Jurisdiction. US Congress website. <https://constitution.congress.gov/browse/essay/artIII-S2-C2-6/ALDE_00013618/> (Accessed: 2024-310-10).

(2) Sen. Whitehouse Lambasts Supreme Court Presidential Immunity Decision in Judiciary Hearing. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse YouTube channel 09/24/2024. <https://youtu.be/zXwCdWcxslo?si=Vjpix-u9boBmxVGE> (Accessed: 2024-31-10).

The “f”-word (the Mussolini one, not the other one) in the last week of the US Presidential campaign

“I’m not a Nazi,” declared Donald Trump on Monday. (1) Thus entering at the top of the list of famous Presidential denials along with Richard Nixon’s, “I’m not a crook.”

Such nominal denials are actually more like confessions. Even proud confessions.

“I’m the opposite of a Nazi,” Trump said immediately following. Whether Trump can define what a Nazi or a fascist is, would be another question. Much less what their opposite would be. Some of his advisers like Stephen Miller would be happy to explain it to him, I’m sure. Steve Bannon just got out of prison, so he’d probably be glad to fill Donald in on what those things mean.

Kamala Harris has said she agrees with the Trump-as-fascist characterization. And since he just staged a big rally in Madison Square Garden that echoed the vibes of the infamous 1939 German America Bund (Nazi) rally there, Trump’s campaign was certainly encouraging the Nazi comparison, as well:

But, to be fair, the Trumpistas haven’t adopted standard uniforms like the Bundists of those days. Unless you count the red MAGA baseball caps.

In case you’re wondering, the George Washington image was meant to stand for the “true Americanism” of the Bundists. They didn’t actually spend much time studying up on the Founders and what they stood for, though. All that late-17th-century “liberal democracy” stuff was way too Commie for them to bother with.

Defining the thing – the easy definition

Even for political scientists and historians, coming up with a clean definition of fascism has been a challenge. Political movements based on thuggish displays of enthusiasm for a Master Race and a Holy Nation don’t lend themselves to being easily reduced to precise academic models. As one example of why it’s tricky, the famous German Weimar Constitution was never abolished during the Hitler regime. It was officially in force until the day in 1945 when Germany surrendered unconditionally to the Allies. Hitler’s government just ruled without paying any attention to it. But if we looked only at the constitution, Germany was just as democratic in 1944 as it had been in 1932.

If Trump wins next week, we’ll probably hear Bannonites making a similar argument to excuse any un-Constitutional thing Trump does. They will claim to be defending the True Constitution, just as Trump claims to be defending true democracy when he declares, "We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country." (2) (Hey, he didn’t say there that he was tearing up the Constitution and the rule of law, now did he?)

Benito Mussolini’s movement that came to power in 1922, followed by Mussolini’s coup in 1925, called itself the Fascist Party. It would be hard to argue that Mussolini’s Fascist Party was not really fascist. His political themes were anti-socialism, anti-democracy, and a pompous hyper-nationalism of the ethnonationalist brand. Mussolini and his supporters engaged in “populist” rhetoric in which the Fascists posed as the representative of The People (the true people, ethnic Italians) against an oppressive Elite, which they defined to include liberals, socialists, pro-democracy media, and labor unions. Big capital as such was not taken to be such an urgent threat to the True People.

Militarism, including paramilitary displays by the Party itself, was central, as was colonialism. The nationalist ideology also indulged in an aggressive foreign policy, including the seemingly (for ultranationalists) contradictory effort to promote fascism in other countries, notably Austria, France, and Germany. It also included actual expansionist and colonial wars against Ethiopia (then called Abyssinia) and Albania. Mussolini’s Fascism included promoting Catholicism and getting along with the Vatican, which demanded only a limited version of Christian behavior by the Fascist government for their support. Italian Fascist ideology did not have the anti-Semitic emphasis of the German Nazis. But as Mussolini became more and more dependent on German support, the Italian Fascists cooperated more actively in the Holocaust.

The Austrian dictatorship that began in 1933 and lasted until the Germany takeover in 1938 was and is known as “Austrofascism” and was closely modeled on Mussolini’s politics. Mussolini directly supported the Austrofascist government of Engelbert Dollfuss and then Kurt Schuschnigg. When Hitler Germany attempted a coup against Dollfuss in 1934, Mussolini backed Austria against Germany and threatened to intervene directly on its behalf should Germany invade Austria militarily. But Mussolini would soon become more dependent on Germany, so that by 1938 there was no Italian threat of intervention to prevent Germany from annexing Austria.

Hitler explicitly modeled his National Socialist movement on Mussolini’s fascism. The hatred of democracy and socialism and (especially) Communism, the militarism and violence in politics and foreign policy, the imperial expansionism, the use of paramilitary partisan formations, the hyper-nationalism, the bombastic ethnonationalist rhetoric and legislation, and cooptation of the Catholic Church, were all elements German Nazism shared with Mussolini’s fascism. The centrality of murderous anti-Semitism was a particular feature of Germany Nazi/fascist ideology.

We could add other features of historical fascism, like the banning of independent media outlets once in power. But politics and history are not hard sciences like chemistry or physics, where there are objective physical measures to determine what a particular substance or process is. But historical and social-science definitions are not completely arbitrary either.

The more complicated approach

The Soviet-era Communist Parties gave often Jesuitical definitions of fascism when it came to dealing with particular regimes. When Communist Yugoslavia established an independent foreign policy from that of the USSR, the Soviets denounced Yugoslavia’s government as “fascist.” When they improved relations later, Yugoslavia didn’t officially look so “fascist” anymore.

The definitions of regime type used today by institutions like Freedom House and V-Dem tend to use a spectrum running from liberal democracy to autocracy to describe the nature of contemporary regimes. The Mussolini-Dollfuss-Hitler type of regimes arose in capitalist countries, and historical left definitions of fascism usually included capitalism as part the definition of fascism. But even countries that have established economic systems based on massive state ownership and control have also been known to have what we politely refer to as “democratic deficits.”

As long as we’re talking geeky political theory here, I’ll throw in a mention of the question of whether Communist and Fascist regimes are somehow mirror images of each other. Liberals have sometimes used “red fascism” to describe Communism and Communist regimes. But however much “objective conditions” may determine the forms of political regimes, ideologies also do matter. Because however cynical their applications may be, they can and do influence how decision-makers understand the world and the actions of other countries and political players.

Aurel Kolnai was a Hungarian Jew who converted to Catholicism, moved to Austria, and became a philosopher. He was also a convinced democrat and a perceptive critic of fascism. He wrote a book called The War Against the West that was first published in 1938 in English, though he wrote it in Austria before the German annexation (Anschluss). It is a book of continuing interest, because he makes an extensive analysis of the Nazi ideology based on Nazi publications and propaganda. And his suggestions about how the Nazi policies might develop internally and externally held up remarkably well to what happened in future years. He was writing after the passage of the Nuremburg Race Laws, the attempted German putsch in Austria in 1934, and during the early part of the Spanish Civil War but before Munich Agreement.

He correctly identified the roots of Nazi ideology in the reactionary, anti-democracy, anti-French Revolution tradition of 18th and 19th century thinkers who had rejected the entire concepts of political liberalism and democracy.

The following three theses gives a good idea of Kolnai’s perspective:

1. The outstanding [i.e., most prominent] form of Fascism known as National Socialism, and the Germany known as the Third Reich, controlled by, and imbued with National Socialist thought in its more or less official varieties, constitute a reality, spiritual and historical, of supreme individuality and importance.

2. Absolute and conscious antagonism to Western Liberal civilization is the central impulse of that intellectual and political reality.

3. The National Socialist and affiliated doctrines are fundamentally opposed to Liberal democracy, as well as to its Christian foundations and to its Socialistic trends and implications. [my emphasis] (3)

The Nazis’ hostility attitude to Communism regarded it as yet another toxic form of democracy. Kolnai writes in relation to the philosophy of Ernst Jünger, who after the Second World War managed to rebrand himself as a responsible conservative:

Some readers will probably be reminded of Communism, and Jünger, who is one of the so-called National Bolshevists, is likely to accept this kinship. But, in fact, the simile is completely misleading. For Communism the object of socio-economic equality is essential above a ll; its hard and inhuman methods of procedure, its militaristic organization, its use of proletarian class-privileges are throughout imbued with the dialectics of revolutionary transformation ; it destroys the former master classes instead of adapting them into fit managers of a more formidable mastery. Whether or not the sufferings and humiliations entailed by its methods are justified by its aims and achievements, Communism is bent on creating a rational society of free workers ; whereas Junger’s “ Worker-Type ”, the bearer of new Herrschaft, is in fact a new edition of the old masters, a compound of Prussian officers’ caste and officialdom, factory owners and higher engineers, placed above the workers as a personified Daemon of Work. (pp. 879-880)

(To be fair to Jünger, he was dismissed from the German Army in 1944 because of his association with officer implicated in the famous 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler.)

Historically speaking, both liberal democracy and Communism were products of democratic thought and practice. Or, to complicate it a bit more, the early “communism” that manifested itself in late-medieval and early-modern Christian heresies and peasant revolts actually was an important phase in the development of liberal democracy in Europe.

Karl Marx and Frederick Engels wrote their legendary pamphlet The Communist Manifesto in what became known as the “pre-March” days of 1848, i.e., just before the breakout of massive pro-democracy revolts in Europe, a critical moment in the development of liberal democracy, including its social-democratic variants. It was written as the programmatic statement of a tiny group called the Communist League.

Neither the group nor the pamphlet had any detectable effect on the outbreak of the 1848 revolutions. But it wound up being influential for quite a while. Ideology does matter.

When it comes to Trump, he seems to have no actual ideology other than seeking more money and power for Donald Trump. And he thinks tariffs are somehow magically wonderful. But he understands that the far-right and xenophobic ideology he is promoting can bring him votes if he convinces enough people to put their hatreds and fears above their responsibility as citizens. He has his armed partisan militia that went into action on January 6, 2021 at the US Capitol. And, to repeat his declaration of last November in New Hampshire, “We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists, and he radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country."

I’m sorry, but anyone who doesn’t recognize that as Hitler talk needs to read a history book or two.

Reading, of course, does require more effort than listening to one of Trump disjointed rants.

Notes:

(1) ‘I’m not a Nazi. I’m the opposite of a Nazi,’ Trump declares amid fascism claims. Times of Israel 10/29/2024. <https://www.timesofisrael.com/im-not-a-nazi-im-the-opposite-of-a-nazi-trump-declares-amid-fascism-claims/> (Accessed: 2024-20-10).

(2) Kurtzleben, Danielle (2023): Why Trump's authoritarian language about 'vermin' matters. NPR 11/17/2023. <https://www.npr.org/2023/11/17/1213746885/trump-vermin-hitler-immigration-authoritarian-republican-primary> (Accessed: 2024-20-10).

(3) Kollnai, Aurel (1988 [1938]): The War Against the West, 17-18. New York: Viking Press.

Did Netanyahu have an extremely rare moment of restraint this weekend?

Daniel Levy, Israel’s longtime Cassandra who for years has insisted on what a disaster Israeli policies toward Palestinians have been and how grimly destructive Israel’s military actions against them have been, cautiously gives Netanyahu and Biden credit for producing a rare moment of restraint in Israel's weekend retaliatory attack on Iran.

As an experienced Cassandra, he is quick to point out, “It's possible that by the time these words are published, the situation will be upended.” During his probably short moment of optimism and relief, Levy writes:

If Israel doesn't wreck things and if Iran displays similar restraint, we were saved from another disaster on Saturday, possibly harsher than all the preceding ones. No war broke out between Iran and Israel. The incompetent U.S. administration managed, for the first time since the war erupted, to affect its course. Following a year in which the U.S. fulfilled all Israel's desires and needs, without any strings attached, a year in which Israel did not adhere to any advice, warnings or pleas by the Americans, Israel acceded to the superpower's request.

Contrary to all expectations and precedents, Netanyahu listened to President Joe Biden, who would have preferred it if Israel had not attacked at all, certainly not on the eve of the U.S. elections, but the administration can live with a limited attack. Perhaps it is thanks to the administration that a calamity was avoided. [my emphasis] (1)

For anyone following the US Presidential elections – Netanyahu himself is following it closely and obviously attempting to affect the outcome – the next nine days will be a cliff-hanger. The only certainty at this point is that Trump will contest the results, even if he clearly wins. That was the case in 2016, in which he won the Electoral College vote but Hillary Clinton received more actual votes in total. To this day, the Orange Felon claims that he won the popular vote in 2016, as well.

Having followed Levy’s critiques closely for the last year, I would assume that when he calls Biden’s government “the incompetent U.S. administration,” he is referring to Biden's unwillingness to impose any meaningful military restraint on Israel since October 2023. Which he should have done throughout. Most importantly, Biden has been unwilling to cut US military aid even after Netanyahu’s government time and time again has flipped him off when the US was (officially) calling for restraint and an end to genocidal actions by Israel – though of course the Biden Administration never ever called them genocidal.

Levy concludes:

Nothing was resolved on Saturday [by Israel's attack on Iran]. The wars in Gaza and Lebanon are continuing full tilt, with no sign of abating. Iran is still a bitter enemy and so are its proxies. The solution for this will never be a military one. Blood continues to be shed on all sides, pointlessly, and with it the suffering and unimaginable terror of the hostages, their families, the evacuees in Israel as well as the three million evacuees in Gaza and Lebanon, moving back and forth with no present or future. The end to Gaza's suffering is not even on the horizon. There isn't a day there without dozens of fatalities, without war crimes committed by Israel, without dead or crippled children, terrified and orphaned.

But in the midst of all this despair, a faint glimmer of hope appeared on Saturday. Israel acted with reason and restraint. It's true, one can rely on it to return to its old ways, but in these black days, even a faint glimmer of hope is almost a formative event.

Biden, for all his astonishing deference to Israel’s war policies, may at least still be focused enough to realize that Democratic voters in key states like Pennsylvania and Michigan need to go to the polls next week thinking that maybe, just maybe, Kamala Harris convinced Biden to actually compel some military restraint on Israel this weekend. But this is going to be a long week.

The Guardian reports:

There were global calls for restraint, including one from the United Nations head António Guterres, who said he was “deeply alarmed” and called on all sides to step back from further military action. The European Union, Russia, Arab Gulf nations and G7 finance ministers and central Bank governors also warned against further escalation. But months of such demands have had little impact on the ground. Hawks in both Israel and Iran are pushing for a more aggressive approach and the risks of costly miscalculations are immeasurably higher than even a few months ago.

Some Israeli political and security figures describe this moment as a once in a generation chance to strike Iran when its allies are in disarray and its defences have been pounded by waves of airstrikes. National security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said Saturday’s attack was “an opening blow” and strikes on the country’s strategic assets “must be the next step”, Haaretz reported. “We have a historic duty to remove the Iranian threat to destroy Israel,” he said in a statement. (2)

The leading “realist” foreign policy scholars John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, who co-authored the groundbreaking 2007 book, The Israel Lobby, both provided their current analyses during the past week. Both of them are also longtime Cassandras like Gideon Levy on Israel’s situation and the US relationship to Israel.

Ironically, they recognize that Israel’s relationship to the US is a prime example in which their “realist” assumption that nations have national interests which they tend to pursue in a more-or-less rational (and therefore predictable) way doesn’t actually describe the situation. They see the longtime American support for Israel as actually damaging to US national interests. And therefore the persistent political support for Israel’s policies actually provides an example in which foreign-policy decisions taken for sentimental or financial reasons (or by misjudgment and miscalculation) can actually work against the national interest.

After all, even rational decision-making is done by human beings, who don’t always operate on a purely rational basis.

Walt (3):

It's hard to see how the United States is more secure, more prosperous, or more respected around the world when it is actively supporting the actions that Israel is taking in Gaza and Lebanon and elsewhere. It's hard to- And it's interesting to note that the Biden Administration almost never tries to justify what we're doing on those grounds. You don't hear [Secretary of State Anthony] Blinken go in front of the cameras and explain why this is good for America. Right? He doesn't bother to make that argument because it's almost impossible to make. (13:46 ff.)

Mearsheimer (4):

[T]he [Israel] lobby insists that the United States give Israel unconditional support. And this is certainly the case when you're dealing with the Palestinians. That means the Israelis are pretty much free to do anything they want, including commit genocide in Gaza, and we'll back them anyway. And this is what you see at play today. So when people talk about Israel's wars in the Middle East, you know, the war in Gaza against the Palestinians, the war in Lebanon against Hezbollah, and the war between Israel and Iran, you're really talking about a war that involves the United States and Israel joined together at the hip.

We're deeply involved in these conflicts. Fortunately, we don’t have soldiers on the ground who are dying. Of course. We now have some soldiers on the ground in Israel but not many. But the fact is that we are supplying the Israelis with all sorts of arms, all sorts of diplomatic support. and we allow them to do pretty much anything they want. And this has huge consequences for the region, certainly has huge consequences for the Palestinians, and has huge consequences for the United States. (1:58ff) [my emphasis]

For what it’s worth, I tend to find Walt’s “defensive realism” more attractive than Mearsheimer’s “offensive realism.” But both are very often accurate in their foreign policy analyses. Which is also very often depressing, because they concentrate on analysis of real events and relationships in foreign affairs. I think both of them would concur with Hegel’s famously gloomy comment: “The history of the world is not the ground of happiness, because the periods of happiness are blank pages in it.” He followed it with the observation, “the object of history is, at the least, change.” (5) For better or worse …

Notes:

(1) Levy, Gideon (2024): Israel's Retaliation on Iran Was a Rare Moment of Reason and Restraint. Haaretz 10/27/2024 <https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2024-10-27/ty-article/.premium/israels-retaliation-on-iran-was-a-rare-moment-of-reason-and-restraint/00000192-ca55-d20d-a9da-fed584a80000> (Accessed: 2024-27-10).

(2) Graham-Harrison, Emma (2024): Joe Biden says he hopes latest Israeli strike on Iran will end escalation. The Guardian 10/26/2024. <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/26/joe-biden-says-he-hopes-latest-israeli-strike-on-iran-will-end-escalation> (Accessed: 2024-27-10).

(3) Iran, Gaza, & Lebanon: How the pro-Israel lobby influences US policy | Stephen Walt (Accessed: 2024-27-10). Middle East Eye YouTube channel 10/26/2024. <https://youtu.be/nr1VG9o1Tks?si=mxemG8NC7QhHXIIW> (Accessed: 2024-27-10).

(4) The Future of Israel’s Conflicts in the Middle East: What Lies Ahead, John J. Mearsheimer & Chris H. John J. Mearsheimer YouTube channel 10/26/2024. <https://youtu.be/BzCnaVnGFLM?si=iVLJ-ty9YpKt9LRU> (Accessed: 2024-27-10).

(5) Hegel, G.W.F. (2015): Gesammelte Werke 27:1, 54 (Nachschrift Hotho, 1822-23). Düsseldorf: Nordrhein-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Künste. My translation from the German.

Foreign policy during and after the US election

With the US Presidential election coming in a week and a couple of days from now, I wish I had something particularly insightful to say about it.

But at this point, it’s basically all about get-out-the-vote efforts. The reporting on the polls has been confusing. Some polls are better than others and some polling methodologies are more to be recommended than others. This is one of many things the mainstream media could do a better job parsing for a general audience.

But the race looks to be close. The only thing that I find surprising about that is that Trump’s obvious cognitive decline and his increasingly fanatical and, yes, weird statements haven’t turned off more habitual Republican voters. Which is one thing that tells me that their really is a “cult” aspect to Trump’s support.

But most voters are not hardcore political junkies. (And those of us who might fall into that category can’t help but envy them sometimes!) And there typically is not a lot of party-switching in Presidential votes, so the actual number of “swing voters” who switch their Presidential party preference from one election to another is relatively small. But approval or not of one’s habitual party’s Presidential candidate can affect turnout in decisive ways.

The filmmaker and political activist has been reminding people for the last eight years that in swing-state Michigan, whose 2016 Electoral votes went to Trump when if they had gone to Clinton would have made Hillary Clinton President, there were tens of thousands of ballots in Michigan that selected Democrats in the “down-ballot” races but simply left the Presidential choice blank. Had they voted for Clinton, the last eight years would certainly have been different.

One feature of the commentary in these last weeks is that the American electorate is “moving right.” But since one of the most important issues in the Presidential race is abortion, and the Democrats’ position in favor of abortion rights is highly popular and has benefitted Democrats in elections since the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision of June 2022 overturned the abortion rights secured 50 years earlier in the Roe v. Wade decision.

That issue certainly doesn’t look consistent with the momentarily popular theme of “the electorate is moving right.”

But one obvious possibility could be a shockwave for the election, even his close to Election Day: the outbreak of a full-scale war between Israel and Iran, to which Joe Biden would surely respond by declaring his unlimited support for Israel.

Biden’s foreign policy failure

The essentially uncritical support Biden has given to Israel’s and Benjamin Netanyahu’s war in Gaza and now in Lebanon and his targeted-assassination strikes on Iran, which Iran could have legitimately claimed as acts of war, is a real weakness for Kamala Harris’ campaign. Traditionally Democratic leaning Arab-American constituencies in the critical swing states of Michigan and Pennsylvania could decline to vote for her based on Biden’s horrible policy on the current Israeli wars.

If she wins, the abortion issue will probably prove to have been decisive, to the extent that the effect of one discrete issue can be measured. If she loses because of defections or non-participation by Arab-American voters and others in the Democratic base who are disgusted at Biden’s war policy in the Middle East, Biden’s foreign policy will have put Trump back in the White House.

Polls don’t seem to be showing Jewish voters, who typically lean distinctly Democratic, deserting from the Harris-Walz ticket over Netanyahu’s war. Jewish voters are not a one-issue bloc, though Donald Trump has invoked the anti-Semitic trope that identifies all Jews with Israel to threaten Jewish voters:

Former President Donald Trump said at an event in Washington aimed at fighting antisemitism on Thursday that if he loses in November, “the Jewish people would have a lot to do with the loss.”

“It doesn’t make sense,” Trump said of Jews who vote for Vice President Kamala Harris. “Any Jewish person who votes for her should have their head examined. I find it hard to believe, part of it is a habit, I think.”

Trump said he should be polling at “100” percent with Jewish voters. “It’s going to happen. It’s only because of the Democrats’ hold or curse on you.” (1)

Trump’s comment that “the Jewish people would have a lot to do with the loss” was widely regarded as a threat, an anti-Semitic threat. There doesn’t seem to have been much attention to his suggestion that Democrats have put a “curse” on Jewish voters that makes them favor Democrats.

It’s America. An important Christian nationalist leader, Lance Walnau has also invoked magic as a tool of the Democrats:

Senator [and Republican Vice Presidential candidate] JD Vance of Ohio campaigned Saturday in Pennsylvania at an event organized by Lance Wallnau, a self-described prophet who has said that former President Donald J. Trump was chosen by God, defended the Jan. 6 attack and described Vice President Kamala Harris’s debate performance as “witchcraft.” …

Mr. Wallnau, an evangelical influencer from Dallas, has become a big name in the charismatic movement of Christianity. A corporate marketer who became a celebrity prophet, he applies his marketing skills to push prosperity gospel teachings and products .He is especially well known for the belief that Christians should influence or even rule society, from politics to media to culture to the economy.

In a recent online conversation about Ms. Harris’s performance at the debate earlier this month, Mr. Wallnau said that she could “look presidential.”

“That’s the seduction of what I would say is witchcraft,” he said. “That’s the manipulation of imagery that creates an impression contrary to the truth, but it seduces you into seeing it. So that spirit, that occult spirit, I believe is operating on her and through her, similar to with Obama.” [my emphasis] (2)

Yes, we have self-described religious “prophets” in the US who accuse the Democrats in also serious of using “witchcraft” against Republicans.

And, yes, it’s something of a (forgive the phrase) miracle that the US has survived as a nation as long as it has!

But its foreign policy is pretty battered at the moment:

President Joe Biden has called America “the world power,” and has referred to his “leadership in the world.” If Biden does indeed see himself as a, or the, world leader, then he has been disappointing in his job and has mismanaged it.

The world today stands on the brink of larger wars, even potentially world wars, on two fronts simultaneously. That is, perhaps, a more precarious position than the world has found itself in in over half a century, since the Cuban Missile Crisis, and perhaps longer. Then, the danger came from a single front: today, there is danger on two or even three.

The Biden administration seemingly subscribes to a foreign policy doctrine of nurturing wars while attempting to manage them so that they remain confined to America’s foreign policy interests and do not spill over into wider wars. But such fine calibrations are not easily done. War is sloppy and unpredictable. Though a nation’s plans may be well understood by its planners, calibration of what might push the enemy too far and cause a wider war depends equally on your enemy’s plans, calibrations, passions and red lines: all of which are harder to profile or understand.

What is more, the contemporary culture of the U.S. foreign policy establishment seems dedicated precisely to excluding the kind of knowledge and empathy that allows one to understand an adversary’s mind, and instead to fostering ill-informed and hate-filled prejudice. [my emphasis] (3)

Trump is reckless and corrupt, and has no real concept of foreign policy beyond cutting deals for his personal benefits with autocrats he admires. But, despite surprises that his quirkiness may bring, he can be expected to essentially continue Biden’s unlimited backing of Netanyahu’s war – just as Biden continued sticking to Trump’s Middle East party which effectively gave up on any actual solution to the Palestinians’ chronic dilemma:

Trump ended his first year in office with a landmark foreign policy move to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The decision broke from a decades-long bipartisan policy for US presidents to abstain from making the assertion, and the move was met with outrage from segments of the international community, including the Arab and Muslim world.

The businessman-turned-president then capitalised on this move months later by moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

In March 2019, he signed an executive order recognising Israeli sovereignty over the occupied Syrian Golan Heights.

His policy shifts on Israel didn't just focus on Israel's claims on occupied land either, as the Trump administration also withdrew from the United Nations Human Rights Council, citing that the international body showed negative bias when it came to Israel.

One of his last moves in favour of Israel was to declare that products from illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank had to be labelled "Made in Israel".

Trump also moved to further weaken the position of Palestinian leadership. …

After leaving office in 2021, reporters released snippets of Trump's conversations within the White House, which painted a picture that made it seem Trump had more scorn for Israel's Benjamin Netanyahu than Palestininian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas.

Yet the policies pursued by Trump broke away from decades of American precedent, in order to aid Israel, as it continued to breach international law with the expansion of illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories. [my emphasis] (4)

Trump’s foreign policy, to the extent it has any coherence at all beyond enriching himself, is basically a fairly primitive unilateralism and militarism.

And to the extent he has any strategic perspective on nuclear proliferation at all, none of it involves improving the arrangements nuclear proliferation:

While in office, Trump threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea and then tried (and failed) to get a nuclear deal with its leader, Kim Jong Un. Trump walked away from a successful deal with Iran, only to see Tehran then accelerate its nuclear program. He withdrew from one arms control treaty with Russia and then refused to extend another. He considered resuming US nuclear testing, which would have violated yet another global pact. In short, Trump did on nuclear policy what he did on so much else: create chaos and undermine the rule of law. [my emphasis] (5)

Kamala Harris has given no clear indication that she will depart from the Biden Administration’s foreign policy on Ukraine or the Middle East. Although in both cases it’s urgent that the US adopt a more constructive and peace-orientated position. And in both those cases, it would make good, hard-headed practical sense to do so.

As Tom Engelhardt recently observed:

[I]f you want a measurement of just how far the Lone Superpower [the US] has fallen, keep in mind that, once upon a time not so terribly long ago, an Israeli leader like Benjamin Netanyahu would never have dared to pay so little attention to the desires of Washington when it came to his actions in the Middle East. Once upon a time, a figure like Netanyahu couldn’t have ignored the wishes of the top officials of the very country still arming his own in a staggering fashion, while doing whatever he damn well pleased to tear his region to shreds. (6)

And it’s hard to argue with this conclusion of his:

Trump’s very victory in 2016 should … have instantly been seen as the functional definition of American imperial decline — a crucial sign of the weakening and potential collapse of this country’s position in the world translated into domestic politics. And an election victory this November could, in the end, mean both the figurative and literal bankruptcy of the American system, while his defeat, in a nation now armed to the teeth, could give chaos a new name in the imperial homeland.

Notes:

(1) McCraw, Meridith (2024): Trump warns Jewish voters they’ll be partly to blame if he loses Político 09/19/2024. <https://www.politico.com/news/2024/09/19/trump-jewish-voters-blame-00180177> (Accessed: 2024-25-10).

(2) Dias, Elizabeth & Cameron, Chris (2024): Vance Appears at Event of Evangelical Leader Who Spoke of Harris’s ‘Witchcraft’. New York Times 09/28/2024. <https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/28/us/politics/vance-lance-wallnau-witchcraft.html> (Accessed: 2024-25-10).

(3) Lieven, Anatol & Snider, Ted (2024): Biden's 'leadership' is blowing the lid off two wars. Responsible Statecraft 10/23/2024. <https://responsiblestatecraft.org/joe-biden/> (Accessed: 2024-25-10).

(4) Farooq, Umar A. (2024): Donald Trump: His diplomatic legacy in Israel, Palestine and the Middle East. Middle East Eye 10/25/2024. <https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/donald-trump-middle-east-foreign-policy> (Accessed: 2024-25-10).

(5) Collina, Tom Z. (2024): What Would Donald Trump Do on Nuclear Weapons? The National Interest 08/01/2024. <https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/what-would-donald-trump-do-nuclear-weapons-212136> (Accessed: 2024-25-10).

(6) Engelhardt, Tom (2024): The Empire Is Going Down: But What Isn't? TomDispatch 10/20/2024. <https://tomdispatch.com/the-empire-is-going-down/> (Accessed: 2024-25-10).

Is Ukraine winning their war?

William Arkin, who is one foreign policy analyst I always take seriously (and who currently edits Ken Klippenstein’s Substack column) had a surprising take a week ago on the state of the Russia-Ukraine War.

Now, after almost three years of fighting, Ukraine is actually on the cusp of military victory. Not through pushing Russia out or killing every last soldier. It is victory through forcing a stop to the fighting that restores lands to Kyiv and gets Russia to leave. Don’t think about World War II. The smaller nation more resembles Vietnam against America, or the Afghan Mujahideen against the Soviets than some acrobatic modern war of the future. Ukrainians are ferociously defending their homes and fighting in ways that no one predicted, beating Russia’s lumbering force and stumping Putin. That has also surprised Washington.

Just to give you a sense, last week a senior Pentagon official said that more than 600,000 Russian troops have been killed or wounded since Russia’s invasion in February 2022. That’s near double what the Pentagon thought just a year ago. September was the deadliest month for Russia, western intelligence says, meaning that the situation is getting worse for Moscow, not better.

“Russian losses, again, both killed and wounded in action in just the first year of the war exceeded the total of all Russian losses, or Soviet losses in any conflict since World War II combined,” the Pentagon official said on background to the press corps last Wednesday.

Ukraine has suffered staggering losses as well, with somewhere close to 300,000 overall casualties, 55,000 killed to Russia’s 115,000 (the remainder of Russia’s 600,000 are wounded on the battlefield). [my emphasis] (1)

This is a surprising take. Because it remains a war of attrition in which Russia has superior personnel reserves and a strong defense industry. Arkin even argues that the small amount of territory that Ukraine holds inside Russia in the Kursk region means that Ukraine “now has land to trade.” It seems more likely that Russia sees that incursion as a move by Ukraine that can easily be reversed when Russia decides to do so, but that currently deprives Ukrainian troops from the battle inside Ukraine, which works to Russian advantage.

Über-Realist John Mearsheimer on The Duran podcast (Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen) is sticking to his longtime evaluation that Ukraine is stuck in a war of attrition with Russia in which Russia has the advantage. (2)

He mentions here that he thinks the Biden Administration seems to be expecting the European allies to pick up the financial support for Ukraine in the war with the idea that it is to the US advantage to keep the war in Ukraine going indefinitely to weaken the Russians. That’s the “Afghanistan” idea, the notion that US support of the “brave mujahedeen freedom fighters” (as we called them then, now known as Islamist jihadists) during the Russian occupation was a major factor in the fall of the USSR and the end of the Soviet Union. Arkin makes the comparison explicitly inn the quote above.

Mearsheimer also speculates that the European allies are so intent on keeping the US as a protective force in Europe that they have been willing to go along with US policies on Ukraine that Mearsheimer holds – not without reason – to have been foolishly provocative to the point of recklessness toward Russia. Whether enhanced defense cooperation in Europe would be well-served by perpetuating a far more protracted war in Ukraine is another matter. Mearsheimer clearly thinks they are not but European countries could decide differently.

Ukraine, meanwhile, has lost a significant portion of its population to emigration/refugees. And many of those emigrants are unlikely to return in the foreseeable future.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is over two years old, and Kyiv is facing a population crisis. According to Florence Bauer, the U.N. Population Fund’s head in Eastern Europe, Ukraine’s population has declined by around 10 million people, or about 25 percent, since the start of the conflict in 2014, with 8 million of those occurring after Russia began its full-scale invasion in 2022. This report comes a week after Ukrainian presidential adviser Serhiy Leshchenko revealed that American politicians were pushing Zelenskyy to mobilize men as young as 18.

“Population challenges” were already evident before the conflict started, as it matched trends existing in Eastern Europe, but the war has exacerbated the problem. The 6.7 million refugees represent the largest share of this population shift. Bauer also cited a decline in fertility. “The birth rate plummeted to one child per woman – the lowest fertility rate in Europe and one of the lowest in the world,” she told reporters on Tuesday. (3)

The UN Refugee Agency’s (UNHCR) reports on Ukrainian refugees can be a bit of a challenge to read. But these are the figures it provides as of September 24: (4)

UNHRC’s Operational Data Portal as of October 23 shows 2.0 million refugees recorded in the “Refugee Response Plan” European countries, 1.3 million in Russia and Belarus, and 2.9 million in other European countries. (5) Which adds up to something like the 6.2 million shown above for September. Which means something close to five million of them are in the EU (with 250 thousand in non-EU Britain), where they are legally classified as “displaced persons” rather than refugees. (These figures are lower than the 10 million population decline Seboczak cites to the UN’s Florence Bauer, which doesn’t necessarily mean either number is wrong but that they come from different types of counts.)

Notes:

(1) Arkin, William (2024): Ukraine Is Winning. Ken Klippenstein Substack 10/16/2024. <https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/ukraine-is-winning> (Accessed: 2024-23-10).

(2) Ukraine & Israel On the Path to Defeat - John Mearsheimer, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen. The Duran YouTube channel 10/23/2024. <https://youtu.be/mtfTyHU611I?si=Pmf8PMeW2Quq649w> (Accessed: 2024-23-10).

(3) Sobczak, Aaron (2024): Expert: Ukraine loses 25% of its population. Responsible Statecraft 10/22/2024. <https://responsiblestatecraft.org/ukraine-loses-25-of-its-population/> (Accessed: 2024-23-10).

(4) UNHRC (2024): Ukraine Situation Flash Update #73 09/25/2024. <https://data.unhcr.org/en/documents/details/111432> (Accessed: 2024-23-10).

(5) UNHRC Operational Data Portal-Ukraine Refugee Situation. <https://data.unhcr.org/en/situations/ukraine> (Accessed: 2024-23-10).

Ana Kasparian and the left-to-right transition exercise

Politics is not theology. Whether that’s the good news or the bad news, or for which side, is hard to know.

Theology has to do with eternal divine truths. It has the advantage and disadvantage of not being verifiable in the material world.

The 11th-century philosopher and theologian Anselm of Canterbury (1033–1109) famously described theology as “faith seeking understanding.” And faith, as St. Paul defined it (or whoever it was that wrote the New Testament book of Hebrews) is “the evidence of things not seen.”

Politics is also intensely concerned with ideas, principles, and ideology. But it at least takes place in the material world. Which is not to say that it’s always more reality-based than theology. Or even that it invokes more passion than religious beliefs do. But at least political theories and practical politics have to do with interests, values, and desires of real people living in actual material conditions.

Which means that politics deals with goals and interests in the context of particular political events like elections, wars, economic cycles. And it always involves concrete events situated in complicated and ever-changing contexts. So even people who agree on political ideologies and programs still have to wrestle with tactics, programmatic appeals, prioritization of issues, advertising strategies, fundraising.

All this is by way of contextualizing the ever-intriguing story of the political converts who used to be leftists who pivot to become rightwingers. Right-to-left pivots also happen, of course. But there’s generally more money to be made and attention to be grabbed in the left-to-right version.

The Never Trumpers are perhaps an exception to that trend. But the NTers like David Frum and Liz Cheney for the most part don’t claim to be ideological converts. They are reacting to the practical reality that Trump wants to destroy the democratic, Constitutional system and they aren’t ready to do that. At least not with a sociopathic freak leading the charge. But they haven’t suddenly converted to Keynesianism or become supporters of labor unions, much less adopters of the Marxism and Communism of which the unhinged Trumpistas accused Kamala Harris and the Democrats of being. NTers like Cheney and Butcher’s Bill Kristol make effective campaigners for Harris because they are Republicans, and Republicans believe in fighting for their own side – which in their case in 2024 is the Harris campaign. In contrast to Democrats, who so often are chronically reluctant to fight for their own side.

All of this also applies to the conversion narrative that Ana Kasparian, longtime co-anchor to Cenk Uygur on The Young Turks (TYT) network. I’ve been following them ever since they were on Al Gore’s Current TV network. Gore himself sometimes appeared with Cenk on the network. Former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm – one of my own favorite US politicians – also had a program on Current TV and would sometimes appear with Cenk, as I recall.

This is a report from over a year ago from The Hill on the early stages of Ana’s conversion process: (1)

Ana is currently attracting attention as the latest very visible figure among the ideological left in the US who is making a distinct pivot to the right. Joe Mayall recently analyzed her particular conversion process in a Substack column. As he explains, Ana’s melodramatic justification for “leaving the left” (as it’s called) isn’t terribly convincing, i.e., that some online critics were mean to her:

Here’s the thing: people are mean and stupid online, regardless of their political beliefs. … [But] As a professional political commentator, you shouldn’t be changing your views on immigration, affirmative action, or housing because StalinLover420 told you to fuck off. Your politics should be based on critical analysis of the material world around you, not the digital insults of an account that can be blocked with the click of a button. Anyone who shares their political opinions, whether on a radio show, podcast, YouTube channel, or Substack article, will get criticism and blowback. It will come from all sides of the political arena, even those they’re most closely aligned with. It’s happened to me many times. That’s part of the job. It always has been and always will be. Criticism, even when mean and overwhelming, is not a valid excuse to cast your political beliefs into the wind, just as a baseball player who strikes out and is booed by hometown fans isn’t justified in throwing the game to his opponents. [my emphasis] (2)

More importantly, Mayall explains that the quality of Ana’s reporting has visibly slipped to conform to the not-entirely-fact-based claims that are unfortunately so often standard fare for the rightwing “influencers.” One thing I’ve always appreciated about TYT’s main coverage is that while generally taking a progressive viewpoint consistent with the Bernie Sanders Democrats, they have been careful about factual reporting.

But Ana has now adopted a conservative law-and-order perspective on the homeless and on crime issues more generally. And she no longer parses the factual information as carefully as had been the TYT standard for years. Mayall provides an example of how Ana gave a standard rightwing spin on a story about a Culver City, CA high school making changes to its honors program, apparently being sloppy about the facts of the program while giving it a typical Republicans spin as an example of political correctness gone awry. She has also boosted Trump’s widely exaggerated spin on Venezuelan gangs in Aurora, Colorado. (3)

To experience Ana’s present approach to reporting, you can check it out on TYT or on her new Substack column, Unaligned. It’s a standard approach for the left-to-right rebranding to start “just asking questions” about some aspects of left positions. Of course, anyone familiar with left political environments knows that fretting over the nuances of particular left positions is part what the left is about. And that’s not distinct to the left, however narrowly or broadly you want to define it. That happens across the political spectrum in all kinds of politics-related groups and organizations. Because “factions,” as Jimmy Madison referred to them long ago, are a characteristic of the human enterprise known as politics. (4)

Facts matter in politics, at least in the sense that actual policies matter in the real world. And any constructive brand of politics at the very least benefits by operating with facts. When it comes to faith, “the evidence of things not seen,” facts may not be so relevant. Although in actual ecclesiastical institutions run for actual mortals, they matter at lot even there.

One of the most (in)famous left-to-right political conversions in US political history was that of Whittaker Chambers, a former Communist and Soviet spy who later switched sides and became the accuser of Alger Hiss in a celebrated scandal in the early post-World War II era. Chambers got a lot of attention in what became known as the “Pumpkin Papers” affair, which had the effect of making a young California Congressman named Richard Nixon a popular figure in the Republican Party.

Chambers became a conservative icon, including for movie start Ronald Reagan. Reagan also did his own version of a left-to-right conversion. One of Reagan’s favorite lines was, "I didn't leave the Democratic Party. The party left me."

More recent left-to-right transitioners like Ana Kasparian are also known to use such lines. As her critics have noted, she has made a big deal about what the right calls Political Correctness, expressing outrage that someone might refer to her as a “birthing person,” a term sometimes used as a gender-inclusive term for trans men.

This is one corner of a larger and longer conversation over “identity politics,” which some on the left and center-left argue can be a distraction from class politics and therefore an unnecessary hindrance to rallying support from working-class people. I won’t try to summarize the long and complicated history of that dispute here except to say that, well, it’s long and complicated. And that people who make a “left” case that progressive politics should avoid confronting racism, discrimination against women, or xenophobia – often end up doing the rightwing’s work for them. Which also provide a route for left-to-right conversion narratives.

Notes:

(1) TYT's Ana Kasparian Leaving The Left? Host Admits 'I DON'T KNOW What To Label Myself Anymore'. The Hill 07/05/2023. <https://youtu.be/s1aPAoCTNrk?si=K7L2_KRYmFBt_6yv> (Accessed: 2024-23-10).

(2) Mayall, Joe (2024): After Years of Criticizing “Why I Left the Left,” Ana Kasparian Leaves the Left. JoeWrote 10/10/2024. <https://www.joewrote.com/p/after-years-of-criticizing-why-i> (Accessed: 2024-23-10).

(3) Kasparian, Ana (2024): Martha Raddatz Downplays Gangs Taking Over Just a 'Handful of Apartment Complexes' in Aurora. Unaligned 10/17/2024. <https://kasparian.substack.com/p/martha-raddatz-downplays-gangs-taking> (Accessed: 2024-23-10).

(4) Madison, James (1787): Federalist 10: The Union as a Safeguard Against Domestic Faction and Insurrection. <https://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/fed10.asp> (Accessed: 2024-23-10).

How far will Netanyahu’s war spread?

Sobering headlines from Spain’s El País on the first anniversary of the October 7 attack: (1)

(Translation:) Year of War in the Near East: How an almost forgotten local conflict tunred into a regional conflict with global consequences.

The front-page headline on the print edition was even more dramatic: The War In The Near East Is Projecting Itself Onto the Whole World.

The article by Andrea Rizzi declares:

“The attack by Hamas that sought to reverse the marginalization of the Palestinian question has led to a spiral that, in addition to immense human suffering, is causing spillovers in the price of oil, elections in the United States, and the war in Ukraine.” (quoted in the sub-head above)

It has led to a spiral that, besides adding to immense human suffering, is causing spillovers in the price of oil, elections in the United States, and the war in Ukraine.

When what we still call the world community neglects what everyone knows is a conflict that could produce far-reaching implications – which is largely what happened for the American government from 2017 (Trump) to 2024 (Biden), it can actually wind up producing, uh, far-reaching implications.

Gideon Levy, the Israeli journalist who has been very critical of Israel’s occupation and war policies, wearily warns about the policy of an endless spiral of violence, which is what Benjamin Netanyahu’s government is doing: (2)

There are a few axioms in Israel that cannot be challenged a few axioms in Israel that cannot be challenged. One of the worst has now come to the fore: We must respond to the Iranian missile attack. Why "must" we?

Because we must, that's all. Because they started it. Because now it's our turn. Because if we don't respond, they'll attack again. Because deterrence. Because national honor. Because security. Because any country would retaliate. Because what do you want us to do? Should we do nothing? All of this is true, but how about a slightly more rational consideration, such as cost versus benefit?

It's irrelevant. They hit us, and we must – we absolutely must – hit them back. And what if this could drag us into a war more terrible than its predecessors? It doesn't matter, we must respond. These are the playground rules that govern the state and jeopardize its future. ...

As Levy sees it, the Biden Administration has somehow embedded its uncritical support for Netanyahu’s wars in their approach to balancing against China, however unrealistic their assumptions about the Middle East may be: Once, and only once, Israel violated this axiom, against its will. And it benefited as a result. It was orchestrated by the toughest prime minister it has ever known, Yitzhak Shamir, who acceded to the American request not to respond to the Scud missile attacks from Iraq that inflicted destruction, terror and death on Israel [in 1991 at the start of the First Gulf War (2)]. The rest is history. That was the last time Israel restrained itself in this manner. It lost nothing and saved many lives, first and foremost in Iraq but also among its own soldiers and civilians. [my emphasis]

Anatol Lieven puts Joe Biden’s Israel policy into a larger picture:

In the case of U.S. administrations, and the elites that advise them, moral and political courage is a particular requirement because choosing between different foreign policy goals inevitably means infuriating one or more powerful domestic lobbies. [I think here he may mean should be a particular requirement.]

The failure of the Biden administration — and all the U.S. establishments of the past 30 years — to pass this test means that the U.S. has found itself committed to a whole set of mutually contradictory goals: To maintain peaceful relations with Russia and destroy Russian influence among its immediate neighbors; to support complete Ukrainian victory and to avoid the risk of nuclear war with Russia; to combat ISIS and al-Qaida Sunni Islamist extremism and to overthrow the Libyan and Syrian states with the help of those same extremists; to advocate (however feebly) a two state solution for Palestine and give unconditional support to Israel; to base America’s moral claim to global primacy on the defense of democracy and human rights, and to support Israel’s mass murder of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians; to address climate change as an existential threat and to pursue policies that require spending sums on the military vastly greater than those devoted to alternative energy or climate mitigation; to cooperate with China on climate change and to cripple China’s economic growth. [my emphasis in bold] (4)

The pragmatism that Biden showed by sticking to the pullout of US troops from Afghanistan looks now like an outlier in Biden’s foreign policy record. The conflict between Russia and Ukraine that entered a new phase with Russia’s new offense land territorial seizures in February 2022 has continued at great cost to Ukraine with no end or formal peace negotiations in sight. Biden’s policy there has basically been: escalate, escalate, escalate.

While the official US security doctrine since 2011 has framed China as the main strategic challenge to the US – understandable from the geopolitical viewpoint – the Biden Administration has seen cooperation between Russia and China increase to levels arguably not seen since the first years after the Communist victory in the Civil War. (5) This trend is the opposite goes the opposite direction of what would be needed for the US to balance geopolitically against China’s power and influence. That would seemingly require creating conditions in which Russia would find it in their interest to cooperate with Europe and the US to hedge against Chinese power. Xi Jinping’s strategic policies over the last four years have been considerably more advantageous to his country in that regard than the New Cold War posture of the Biden Administration has been for the US an Europe.

And we just learned that China’s close ally North Korea is deploying troops in the Russian war against Ukraine. (6) Any Administration’s policy of seeking to balance other countries against China doesn’t seem to be going entirely smoothly at this point…

Meanwhile, the Biden Administration was essentially continuing the Trump Administration’s policy of promoting Israeli cooperation with Arab countries at the expense of any kind of hope for a peaceful settlement of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Biden’s policy looks like a combination of the chronic US deference to Israeli foreign-policy and military priorities, even when that visibly damages US interests. “Never before have there been so many voice and so many distinct ones, in the whole world, questioning the policy of Israel.” (7)

The Biden Administration, obviously, is not one of those.

And Biden took his support to such an extreme that Israel’s rogue Prime Minister Netanyahu is frantically pushing two weeks before the US Presidential election to involve the US military on its side in its regional wars, in line with Netanyahu’s longtime goal of having the US go directly to war with Iran. Because he sees that Biden will support him in any war in which he engages, whether it makes sense or not. For people like Netanyahu, any notion of a just cause for war or considerations of international law are objects of contempt.

In both those cases, it’s hard not to imagine that bad habits, stale ideology, and inertia have driven the Biden policy there rather than a realistic - much less moral - position toward Israel’s war against civilian populations in Gaza and Lebanon. And all the while, Netanyahu has been blatantly favoring Trump as the Presidential candidate in this year’s election. Whether that policy has been good for Israel in the short or long term is questionable at best. It’s been a terrible thing for the United States. But Biden’s collusion with Netanyahu’s wars – effectively unconditional approval from what we can see – has definitely been bad for US interests in general and for the Democratic Party in the US.

Former diplomat Daniel Levy also observes:

In the past year, Israel has conducted an unprecedented campaign—one that numerous experts tell us is a genocide—in Gaza, in violation of urgent provisions of the International Court of Justice. Along the way, Israel has learned that there are no immediate tangible consequences for its relentless violations of international law. Gentle US discouragement of Israel’s more extreme waves of destruction, and media leaks about Biden’s frustration with Netanyahu, were completely overshadowed by the diplomatic political cover and the conveyor belt of weapons supplies the US offered to Israel, as well as its messaging alignment. These were combined with the US moving more military assets and troops to the region to mitigate any fallout for Israel, all of which tells Israel’s leaders that they could take additional risks and criminal measures. So after testing these limits in Gaza, and knowing that it had the support of the Biden administration (and other Western allies) to act without consequence, Israel was confident that expanding this destruction into Lebanon would be met with impunity. [my emphasis] (8)

As Levy sees it, the Biden Administration has somehow embedded its uncritical support for Netanyahu’s wars in their approach to balancing against China, however unrealistic their assumptions about the Middle East may be:

The Biden administration leadership sees a geostrategic advantage in working with Israel to substantially degrade Axis groups [i.e., the Iran-backed “axis of resistance”], and perhaps attempt to put in place friendly regimes in Lebanon, Syria, and even Iran. If that happens, America can finally achieve the shared Trump-Biden vision of a new Pax Americana between Israel and Arab states to marginalize the Palestinians, manage the region, and prevent any hostile hegemon arising, while also serving to block Chinese and Russian interests. That would also help the US shift its attention and assets towards the Asia-Pacific and Indo-Pacific regions. [my emphasis]

Levy’s interview closes with this warning about Washington’s self-inflicted “escalatory trap”:

The US has the leverage to bring this to a close, and perhaps part of the US military is inclined to do so. But the Biden White House has been busy building an escalatory trap for itself and burning the off-ramps. At this point, it would buck decades of precedent, as well as the explicit commitments made by the two candidates—Trump and Harris—to still expect a deus ex machina from Washington, DC to save the situation. Yet the truth remains that letting the escalation continue is a political decision, not a decree from heaven.

Notes:

(1) https://elpais.com/internacional/2024-10-07/un-ano-de-guerra-en-oriente-proximo-como-un-conflicto-local-casi-olvidado-devino-en-contienda-regional-con-consecuencias-globales.html (Accessed: 2024-07-10). My translation from Spanish.

(2) Levy, Daniel (2024): Why Is It That We 'Must' Respond to the Iranian Attack? Haaretz 10/07/2024. >https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2024-10-10/ty-article/.premium/why-is-it-that-we-must-respond-to-the-iranian-attack/00000192-7214-daea-a5bb-7677726f0000 2024-11-10).

(3) Walker, Martin Fairhall, David (2024): Iraqi missiles strike Israel. The Guardian 01/18/ 1991. <https://www.theguardian.com/world/1991/jan/18/iraq.davidfairhall> (Accessed: 2024-11-10).

(4) Lieven, Anatol (2024): Blinken's sad attempt to whitewash Biden's record Responsible Statecraft 10/10/2024. <https://responsiblestatecraft.org/blinken-defends-biden/> (Accessed: 2024-11-10).

(5) What is Putin and Xi's 'new era' strategic partnership? Reuters 05/16/2024. <https://www.reuters.com/world/what-is-putin-xis-new-era-strategic-partnership-2024-05-16/> (Accessed: 2024-19-10).

(6) Peseckyte, Giedre (2024): North Korean troops in Ukraine war called ‘huge’ escalation risk. Politico EU 10/19/2024. <https://www.politico.eu/article/north-korea-russia-ukraine-war-called-huge-escalation-risk/> (Accessed: 2024-19-10).

(7) Gómez, Luz (2024): Palestina: el mal crónico de la esperanza. El País 07.10.2024, 13. My translation from Spanish.

(8) Levy, Daniel (2024): Interviewed by Alex Kane in “Burning the Off-Ramps”. Jewish Currents 10/10/2024. <https://jewishcurrents.org/burning-the-off-ramps> (Accessed: 2024-19-10).