Taking a deep breath after the Trump impeachment

"When philosophy paints its gray on gray, then has a form of life grown old, and with gray on gray it cannot be rejuvenated, but only known; the Owl of Minerva first takes flight with twilight closing in."
- G. W. F. Hegel, "Preface," Philosophy of Right

I have to find an excuse to roll out my favorite Hegel quote every now and then. I wanted to include it here with a quote I couldn't find online but that I heard from the late great Molly Ivins the one time I heard her speak live. So I'll quote it from my admittedly imperfect memory from circa 1995: "You should always remember that no matter how bad you think things are now, there's always a good chance you'll look back on now as the good old days."

What brought this to mind was my own feelings of something like letdown after Congress impeached Trump. Because it's a big validation for those of us who have been there with Congresswoman Rashid Tlaib who wanted to impeach the em-eff-er.

But as much as we would like to see Trump get the removal from office he so richly deserves, that does look unlikely at the moment. And, like everything else in the future, we don't actually know how it will play out, though I'm intellectually confident that it will help the Democrats politically.

So times like this make me want to roll out the famous Owl of Minerva, who we can all envy for not having to fret about the future, because she's going to get to deliver the authoritative verdict when she decides it's time.

Minerva, who gets to deliver the official verdict on the meaning of historical events

But I'm not feeling entirely negative. Because WE IMPEACHED THE EM-EFF-ER!!! That's a good thing. Minerva will at least have to take notice of that.

Since I was around during the Nixon Administration and took tremendous pleasure, not to mention political validation, when he resigned, a "mere" impeachment just doesn't provide the same rush.

I started thinking, well, maybe I'm disturbed because in the Nixon and Clinton impeachment processes, both parties in Congress at least pretended to treat it as a solemn occasion. But then I remembered that all I would have to do is browse through Joe Conason's and Gene Lyons' The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton (2000) to remember how grotesquely shameless the Republicans were during the Clinton impeachment.

But the Democratic leadership was pushed into undertaking the Trump impeachment against their will and against their own bad, lazy, cynical inclinations. And that's a good thing. A very good thing. And I'm willing to take "yes" for an answer. In the new year, we'll have plenty of time for rending of clothing and gnashing of teeth over the chronic fecklessness of the Democrats and the astonishing shamelessness and villainy of the Republican Party.

Which reminds me, the brilliant Roy Edroso has captured the trajectory of the Republican Party, writing that in Trump, the Republicans have "found their dreamboat -- more senile than Reagan, more crooked than Nixon, and even more outrageously fake-Christian than George W. Bush." (Never Their Own Fault Alicublog 12/18/2019)

Biden has a big challenge to beat Trump, and no amount of chanting that it's all Bernie's fault will meet it

Digby Parton, as she so often does, succinctly expresses a central point for the 2020 election: "I have no illusion that Biden will be the second coming of FDR. But he won’t be Trump." (Compare and contrast Hullabaloo 04/07/2020.

I'm assuming at this point, like presumably most people do, that Joe Biden will be the Democratic nominee. Bernie Sanders is still in the race but in a more low-key mode. The Bidenistas seem to be replaying 2016, repeating Bernie should drop out, Bernie should drop out, Bernie should drop out. And we're already hearing a preliminary version of "Biden lost to Trump and it's all Bernie Sanders' fault."

Sad as the Democratic establishment is, I don't recall in previous Presidential elections that they were promoting an excuse for losing long before the actual election.

Segregationist voter suppression against blacks and Latinos as well as complications created by the COVID-19 crisis are both likely to be serious problems for the Democrats in November. There is an economic slump happening now, especially with the closures required to limit the spread of COVID-19. And it's not easy to predict its severity or length. Nor is it immediately obvious that it will work more against the Republicans than the Democrats. (Bryce Baschuk, The Evidence Mounts That the Global Recession Is Already Here Bloomberg News 04/08/2020) By 8. April 2020, 06:00)

When it comes to predicting historical turning points, I lean toward Hegel's Owl of Minerva theory that we only begin to really understand the meaning of a historical era when it's coming to an end. ("When philosophy paints its gray on gray, then has a form of life grown old, and with gray on gray it cannot be rejuvenated, but only known; the Owl of Minerva first takes flight with twilight closing in." - From the Preface the Philosophy of Right)

Dani Rodrik indulges in a version of this kind of Hegelian restraint in Will COVID-19 Remake the World? Project Syndicate 04/06/2020:

COVID-19 may well not alter – much less reverse – tendencies evident before the crisis. Neoliberalism will continue its slow death. Populist autocrats will become even more authoritarian. Hyper-globalization will remain on the defensive as nation-states reclaim policy space. China and the US will continue on their collision course. And the battle within nation-states among oligarchs, authoritarian populists, and liberal internationalists will intensify, while the left struggles to devise a program that appeals to a majority of voters.

In American politics, the fact that the Republican Party is now headed by a remarkably corrupt, evidently sociopathic character like Donald Trump is, for me, a sign that the center-right project that began with the Reagan-Thatcher era that the Owl of Minerva now views as the beginning of the neoliberal period in the US and Europe has effectively run it course. Rightwing economics with Reaganesque charm, strong-daddy John McCain vibes, or Romney-like oligarchic slickness and smarm just doesn't work for the Republican Party anymore. Trump provides Mussolini authoritarian vibes, astonishing levels of corruption combined with the staggering inefficiency in managing essential government business that normally comes along with it, and a creepy mixture of Christian Right fanaticism and Russ Limbaugh general contempt for decency and facts.

The Republican Party has now decayed into a straight-up Reverend Bittery party. The Reverend Ezekiel Bittery was a minor character in Sinclair Lewis' novel Gideon Planish (1943), a representative of the crackpot rightwing fanaticism that is now conventional practice in the Trumpist Republican Party:

Brother Bittery is a flannel-mouthed rabble-rouser who used to be charged not only with stealing the contents of the church poor-box, but of taking the box itself home to keep radishes in, and who at present if he isn't on the pay-roll of all the Fascists, is a bad collector.

Once Brother Bittery gains some national notoriety, reporters marvel at the crassness of his views:

And during all this time, the Reverend Ezekiel himself will, as publicly as possible, to as many persons as he can persuade to attend his meetings, have admitted, insisted, bellowed, that he has always been a Ku Kluxer and a Fascist, that he has always hated Jews, colleges and good manners, and that the only thing he has ever disliked about Hitler is that he once tried to paint barns instead of leaving the barns the way God made them.

In 2020, the Reverend Bittery would be giving daily press conferences on the COVID-19 epidemic.

The qualitative degeneration of the Republican Party is one aspect of what Rodrik calls "the slow death" of Reagan-Thatcher neoliberalism. That's not to say that an undead version can't continue to stagger along and wreak further damage.

Unfortunately, the Democratic Party seems to have exhausted its own version of center-left neoliberalism. Let's face, whether or not Bernie Sanders is in the picture, Joe Biden is a conservative. Even a Democratic conservative with traditional commitment to actually make government function, even if it primarily functions for the wealthy and the most affluent of the middle class, would be far better than Ezekiel Bittery Trump.

Jeet Heer looks at Biden as a candidate in Biden Is a Problem for Democrats in Pennsylvania The Nation

Biden is an unusual front-runner. He doesn’t draw the biggest crowds or have the largest base of donors. At a time when the Democratic Party is shifting to the left, he often seems annoyed by progressive demands, taking swipes at protesters calling for action on climate change or immigration. He reassured rich donors that “nothing would fundamentally change” if he’s elected. This seems the opposite not just of Sanders’s political revolution but also Obama’s promise of “hope and change.”

In Pennsylvania, Biden has the clear support of the state Democratic Party, winning endorsements even from politicians who had initially supported other candidates. Former Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter backed Bloomberg but has now joined the crowded Biden camp, which also includes Rendell, Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro, state Treasurer Joe Torsella, and most of Pennsylvania’s congressional delegation. Representative Conor Lamb and Senator Bob Casey have been notable endorsements because they illustrate Biden’s popularity among centrists. This long list speaks to his strength in positioning himself as the candidate who unites tried-and-true Democrats.https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/democrat-pa-biden-problem/ Sanders has a much less impressive array of supporters here. But whoever becomes the party’s nominee will have to win over not just committed Democrats but also more marginal voters. This remains Biden’s weak spot.

Biden has an enthusiasm problem, as Heer notes in this tweet:

1. As the presumptive nominee, Biden is in pretty good shape for the general. He's consolidating support in the party and has a robust lead in national polls. The one weak area is enthusiasm, where he's weakest Democratic candidate in 2 decade. pic.twitter.com/UMG4QEzSWU

— Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) April 7, 2020

And the in-two-decades part refers to the fact that the data the chart uses only goes back 20 years.

Biden and his campaign have to fix this. Bitching and moaning at this point about how the Bernie Bros are mean to them won't do it. Getting better technical performance on Biden's home studio operation will help, but it won't solve the problem. Oh, and for God's sake, don't use your bookshelves as the background for his home studio appearances! The one time the dorky conservative Democratic marketing strategy might be useful is here. Hang a huntin' rifle on the wall an film him in front of that! Or a deer's head! Or some patriotic World War II poster!

Democratic operatives and activists who at this point are still chanting the "It will be Sanders' fault if Biden loses" mantra are effectively saying, "we know Biden will lose to Trump."

There is a Joe Biden YouTube channel. Check out a couple of videos there and see how well he stresses clear popular themes, or not.

He does have a short ad - from March 22 - comparing Trump and Biden on the COVID-19 response, Joe Biden vs. Donald Trump on the Corona Virus Response:

Biden's first comment shown: "This is bigger than any one of us. This is - calls for a national rallying to everybody move together." The first four clips of Trump show him bullying reporters. The last two show Trump promoting his favorite untested medical miracle cures for the virus, but they don’t include the virus part.

Who is the target audience here? And why only clips about Trump bashing the press and saying how narcissistically confident he is? Those are all clips that voters open to Trump will like. The clips show Biden talking calmly but vaguely about things he thinks should be done. But it includes none of Trump saying something obviously stupid or irresponsible about the crisis response. The message seems to be that Trump is crude while Biden is the proverbial adult-in-the-room which so impresses Democratic "Make America Boring Again" voters. But no one will come aware from that particular ad thinking, "Wow, Trump really screwed up the roll-out of testing" or anything else about Trump's actual response.

Meanwhile the press is also repeating its 2016 practice by running Trump's daily COVID-19 briefings where Trump does his I'm-the-strong-guy-in-command act and throws in some professional-wrestling digs at people his voters consider bad, e.g., The Press, "Deep State" bureaucrats, doctors, military commanders who don't show personal fealty to Trump.

The Trump campaign will not focus on winning over 2016 or 2018 Democratic voters this year. They will focus on turning out their basis. And they will try to demobilize Democratic voters and potential swing voters for Biden. Bot of which means they will make their usual rabid attacks against Biden and the Democrats. The Senate Republicans are already prepping an investigation of Hunter Biden pseudoscandals. And Biden does have a sexual assault allegation against him by a former staffer that just went public that the Republicans will use no end. Trump's sexual abuses and escapades mean nothing to Republican voters. If anything, they signal to authoritarian voters that Trump is a Strong Man and Great Leader. But those two scandals alone have a lot of potential to convince less-engaged Democratic voters not to vote for Biden. This is a turnout election. So generating some real enthusiasm for the Democratic ticket is critical.

And Democratic operatives and activists chanting "It's all Bernie's fault!" will not win the election. In fact, anyone at this point saying, "It's all Bernie's fault!" is effectively admitting that they assume Biden will lose.

Andrew Bacevich’s "The Age of Illusions" (Review, Part 2 of 4)

Bacevich implicitly uses 1991 as the end of the Cold War, a more clearly defined dividing point than the Owl of Minerva can usually identify. He takes the war that year to push Iraq out of Kuwait as the historical demarcation line, a conflict called at the time the Gulf War. (The beginning of the Cold War is conventionally dated somewhere between 1945 to 1948.)

The Emerald City Presidencies

The press and public perception of that war would prove to be a crucial element of the often miserable US experiences with wars the next three decades:

The conclusion of the Cold War showed that the U.S. military could win without fighting. The Persian Gulf War showed not only that America's armed forces could still fight, but that they were seemingly invincible.

So the nation's military narrative added a chapter: After Vietnam there now came Desert Storm. The latter did not expunge the former. Yet the military failure in Southeast Asia now lost much of its relevance. By putting a ragtag Iraqi army to flight, the United States had emphatically "kicked the Vietnam syndrome," as President George H. W. Bush put it at the time. With that, reticence about using force evaporated, especially in elite circles. In a post-Cold War world that awaited shaping, America's manifest superiority in all things military positioned it to do whatever needed to be done.

This is key to understanding Bacevich’s understanding of what the book’s subtitle describes as the US squandering its Cold War victory and the destructive hubris that was integral to it. Freed from the balance-of-power considerations of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact and the policy limits imposed by the negative public view of the Vietnam War, the US could now indulge in war after war without the prospect of a major domestic political backlash.

Bacevich quotes a prime example of the American Exceptionalist rhetoric characteristic of the Emerald City era, this one from Colin Powell in 1992:

No other nation on earth has the power we possess. More important, no other nation on earth has the trusted power that we possess. We are obligated to lead. If the free world is to harvest the hope and fulfill the promise that our great victory in the Cold War has offered us, America must shoulder the responsibility of its power. The last best hope of earth has no other choice. We must lead.

In reality, the enormous popularity that President G.W. Bush enjoyed in 1991 after the successful conclusion of the war with Iraq did not prove sufficient to get him re-elected against Bill Clinton in 1992.

As the Owl of Minerva can now clearly see, the “successful” conclusion of the First Gulf War actually meant continuing low-level air war of the US against Iraq, punctuated by the big escalation of the very unfortunately named Operation Desert Fox in 1998. (See: Andrew Corseman, The Military Effectiveness Of Desert Fox: A Warning About the Limits of the Revolution in Military Affairs and Joint Vision 2010 Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) 02/16/1999)

It led further – by the conscious decision of the Cheney-Bush Administration with the explicit support of leading Democratic Senators including Joe Biden, Hillary Clinton, and John Kerry – to the disastrous 2003 invasion of Iraq, whose very deadly consequences are still playing out in 2020. The Iraq War also dramatically increased the regional power of Iran by removing the balancing power of Saddam Hussein’s Sunni-led Iraq. And, of course, at the time Bacevich’s book appeared in January 2020, the US was on the verge of war with Iran.

Bacevich traces the broad path of US wars and assertions of military dominance through the Clinton Administration and its interventions in the Balkan Wars:

In the ceaselessly updated chronicle of the American military experience, the Bosnia and Kosovo campaigns - Operation Deliberate Force, lasting just three weeks in the late summer of 1995, and Operation Allied Force, spread across seventy-eight days in the spring of 1999-have long since been crowded out. Both featured what military theorists were then calling "precision bombing." In both cases, American air forces operated at high altitudes and faced negligible resistance, with U.S. losses all but nonexistent.

... during Clinton's eight-year tenure as commander in chief, these were the only victories the U.S. military was able to claim. As such, at least for a time, they shaped American expectations regarding the use of force. Here, it seemed, was evidence that the United States had solved the riddle of making armed might politically purposeful. [The military idea of] Full-Spectrum Dominance was no longer a theory. Bosnia and Kosovo made it fact.

While stressing this feature of the Clinton Administration that continued the hubristic direction of Emerald City, he makes it clear that the Bush-Cheney Administration took a qualitative (and bad) next step:

The central theme of Bill Clinton's tenure in office had been globalization. The central theme of George W. Bush's tenure became war, which some in his administration conceived as a sort of complement to globalization - another approach to bringing the world into conformity with American preferences. While Clinton had dabbled in war, the events of September 11 prompted Bush to embrace it wholeheartedly. Wars that still today follow their meandering course ultimately consumed his presidency.

The name devised to justify those conflicts-the Global War on Terrorism - amounted to an exercise in misdirection. … As an explanation for U.S. policy after 9/11, terrorism comes nowhere near to being adequate. Indeed, much like the shelling of Fort Sumter in 1861 or the sinking of the USS Maine in 1898, the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon served less as a proximate cause for war than as a catalyst. [my emphasis]

And he describes the various arrogant assumptions that flourished in the Bush-Cheney foreign policy that “went altogether off the rails”, a task which Bacevich was diligently performing in real time during that Presidency in his published work and public appearances:

The Bush Eschatology struck me even then as vainglorious, if not altogether blasphemous. Yet by no means did it signify a fundamental change in the trajectory of post-Cold War American statecraft. On the contrary, it reaffirmed in the strongest possible terms the premises underlying those policies. [my emphasis]

Noting that he himself voted twice for Obama as President, he carefully points out what he sees as Obama’s positive accomplishment. But Obama did not break from the four elements that Bacevich identifies as characterizing the Emerald City era, despite the symbolically transformative nature of the election of the first African-American President.

Obama “saved globalized neoliberalism”, he writes, but did not substantively transform it. “Sadly, the mendacity and malfeasance that had paved the way for the Great Recession went essentially unpunished.” Through policies like his escalation in the Afghanistan War, the failure to fully extricate American troops from Iraq, his extensive use of drone attacks, and the 2011 intervention in Libya, Obama modified but did not fundamentally alter the kind of militarized global dominance approach of the post-1989 era.

He has a particular criticism of this moment in the Libya intervention when Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was asked about the torture-murder of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi by rebels:

On March 19, Western air attacks on the Gaddafi regime commenced. By October, the regime had collapsed and Gaddafi himself was dead. On national TV, a laughing Clinton bragged, "We came, we saw, he died."

Yet liquidating Gaddafi no more settled the matter than the fall of Baghdad ended the Iraq War. His ouster merely paved the way for a years-long civil war. As Libya descended into anarchy, the United States largely washed its hands of further responsibility. Years later, Clinton was still insisting that the intervention she had done so much to promote exemplified "smart power at its best," the apparent measure of merit being not the results achieved but the dearth of U.S. combat casualties.

... I also found her premature and unseemly victory dance regarding Libya indicative of someone possessed of a dangerously deficient understanding of war. [my emphasis]

Part 1: From Boone City to the Emerald City

Part 2: The Emerald City Presidencies

Part 3: Bacevich’s political perspective

Part 4: The way forward – and what to do about the “deplorables”

Ukrainian interests and American interests

Somehow it always seems timely to recall one of Hegel's most famous passages: "When philosophy paints its gray on gray, then has a form of life grown old, and with gray on gray it cannot be rejuvenated, but only known; the Owl of Minerva first takes flight with twilight closing in." ("Preface" to Philosophy of Right)

Of course, the quote implies that we can only really understand historical trends as they are coming to an end. So it's hard to know what to make of the pandemic followed by the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February in terms of historical trends. But some big things are changing fast.

Jamie Galbraith recently observed, "The world crisis that erupted on February 24, 2022, with the outbreak of open warfare between Russia and Ukraine has already radically reorganized trade and financial relations."

I don't know if he has a back channel to Minerva's Owl. But he's always worth paying attention to. I will likely have more to say about this article in a later post.

Here I want to call attention to this interview with Anatol Lieven and the article that is its main topic. Anatol Lieven: U.S. Lawmakers' Framing of Ukraine as Proxy War Is Wonderful for Putin's Propaganda 05/09/2022:

In Giving Ukraine intel on Russian generals is a risky gamble Responsible Statecraft 05/05/2022, he writes about the risks of (massively) fatal escalation:

Any of these actions would create a fierce reaction in the United States, and no-doubt renewed calls for a no-fly zone, enforced by fighters flown out of NATO bases in Poland. These bases would then be subject to missile attack by Russia, even as U.S. planes over Ukraine were being shot down by missiles based in Russia itself. Russia would also very likely declare its own no-fly zone over much of the Baltic Sea. Two things would then probably happen: the United States and the West would lurch towards mutual nuclear annihilation; and seeing this, France, Germany, and other NATO members would break ranks with Washington and seek a peace agreement.

To ward off this threat, the Biden administration must move immediately to assure Russia that U.S. strategy is to help defend Ukraine, but not to impose a complete defeat on Russia and use this to weaken or destroy the Russian state.

Lieven here addresses a critical point: The perceived US interests in the Ukraine war are not identical to those of Ukraine's own government. Given how Vladimir Putin has described the aims of the war, Ukraine and its leaders have to assume that they are fighting for their national existence.

The US existence as a nation is not at stake in this war. Unless, of course, it should escalate into a nuclear war. In which case it's not just the existence of the US as a national entity at stake, but the physical existence of Americans, and Russians, and pretty much the whole species of homo sapiens.

But Russia taking over Ukraine in itself is not an immediate threat to the US. Nor even immediately to other NATO allies. Adding a war-ravaged Ukraine to Russia itself, which Putin has said the goal is, would actually be a huge, expensive burden on Russia's economy.

But thanks to the NATO enlargement, there are several member nations that border on Ukraine: Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Rumania. And the Baltic nations of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, all formerly part of the Soviet Union, border on Russia. In the most practical sense, the NATO alliance has to reinforce its defenses against a further Russian attack.

The New Cold Warriors are trying to make it completely unrespectable to even talk about how US and NATO policies may have influenced Russian behavior in previous years. Which on the face of it is fairly bizarre. But politics is politics, and war propaganda is war propaganda.

Lieven in the interview explains that he supports NATO countries arming Ukraine. At the same time, he has a suggestion on how the alliance can push for meaningful negotiations.

And this is why it's important to distinguish between Ukrainian and American interests as understood by those setting foreign and military policy. It seems to be the general assumption that meaningful negotiations won't take place until both the Ukraine and Russia are more-or-less tired of the fighting. Or, more precisely, that both sides decide that continued fighting has more downside risks than likely gains.

Since Ukraine is apparently doing well militarily for the moment, NATO weapons can conceivably bring that time closer without Ukraine being fully conquered and occupied. That would open the opportunity for a ceasefire and possible negotiation of a political settlement. At this point, I would presume the most likely form would be a practical recognition of Russian control in Crimea and in some or all parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the Donbass area in Ukraine's east. But without Ukraine formally surrendering any of those territories to Russia permanently.

Assuming that the agreement was reasonably stable, that would represent some form of "frozen conflict," comparable to situations like the division of Germany from 1945-1990 and the still-persisting post-Soviet Russian control of Transdnistria (Moldova, Ukraine's neighbor, vs. Russia), Nagorno-Karabakh (Armenia vs. Azerbaijan) which un-froze for a while in 2020, and the two separatist republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia claimed by Georgia but officially recognized by Russia.

But if the US sees its interest as primarily weakening Russia, then a long, continuing war could well be judged as serving that interest better than a "frozen conflict", even one acceptable to Ukraine's government. On this issue see:

• Julian Borger, Pentagon chief’s Russia remarks show shift in US’s declared aims in Ukraine Guardian 04/25/2022
• Is Weakening Russia a Bad Idea? (A discussion between Emma Ashford and Matthew Krownigh, both of the Atlantic Council) Foreign Policy 04/29/2022
• Noah Robertson, On Russia, is US policy edging from defense to offense? Christian Science Monitor 05/03/2022
•  John R. Deni, Yes, the United States Should Weaken Russia Foreign Policy 05/04/2022

It's important to remember that advocating overly-aggressive foreign policy positions, even when they turn out to be disastrous in practice, virtually never diminishes the standing of members of the US foreign policy establishment. The rule that it's better to be conventionally wrong than to be unconventionally right very much applies there.

And a considerable part of respectable US foreign policy opinion assumes that the USSR's war in Afghanistan resulted in its downfall, making it "Russia's Vietnam." In the real world, it certainly contributed to the fall of the Soviet Union. But so did other major factors, like eastern European nationalism and - very notably - the USSR's vulnerability as a petrostate to swings in the oil market. Not unlike Russia now, it was heavily dependent on oil exports.

There's a well-publicized controversy now in Germany over a petition against German arms shipments to Ukraine sponsored by the German feminist Alice Schwarzer. Without doing into detail on that controversy, I'll quote here what Schwarzer told the Austrian news magazine Profil (05/08/2022). Responding to the criticism that she and the other petitioners are advocating Ukrainian surrender, she says:

[C]apitulation [is] something different than a compromise. Negotiations are not capitulation. We have a localized war so far. It is terrible and must be ended as soon as possible. I already know that Ukraine's aim is to improve the basis for negotiations. But Russia is the strongest nuclear power in the world. And Ukraine also has a responsibility for its people. With the first day of the war, all men between the ages of 18 and 60 were forcibly mobilized. Many of these men have never had a rifle in their hands before - they may already be dead. We talk openly, we sit on the balcony and watch. But we have an obligation to spare people as much suffering as possible, including Ukrainians. And for the world, a world war! Should we have crossed the red line, we will not know until it has happened.

(The general mobilization in Ukraine restricted men between 18 and 60 from leaving the country with some specified exceptions. It did not induct them all into active service.)

One doesn't have to agree with her position on German arms shipments to recognize that she is addressing very real, practical issues here. Like every other government at war, Ukraine's must make judgments on and regularly revisit the question of whether the expected gains from continuing the war would be better for the people of Ukraine than ending it with some kind of compromise or even surrender. People are getting killed. And millions of Ukrainians are leaving the country, currently nearly six million of them as of the UN's May 9 estimates.

And, of course, all parties have to take account of the fact that Russia has a large stockpile of nuclear weapons. That doesn't mean for any government that they are going to just completely fold the moment Russia threatens to use nukes. That's a silly New Cold War talking point. The entire strategy of nuclear deterrence is based on the notion that our nukes threaten you, and we know your nuclear weapons threaten us.

Yes, Putin's public hints at threatening to use nuclear weapons are diplomatic signals whose meanings constantly have to be evaluated in a hard-headed way. But all governments have to be aware of the military capabilities of their current or potential opponents, very obviously including their nuclear capabilities. The US still has draconian sanctions in place against Iran because of the possibility that they might build nuclear weapons.

That is not a "pacifist" position, although any pacifist in their right mind, just like any hawk, neocon, liberal interventionist, or realist in their right minds, would certainly consider paying attention to opponents' nuclear weapons an obvious necessity.

Über-Realist John Mearsheimer und Welt-„Systeme“, Welt-„Ordnungen" und NATO

Ein Unterscheidungsmerkmal der „realistischen" außenpolitischen Perspektive im Allgemeinen ist, dass Länder nach nationalen Interessen handeln, die als Beteiligung an einem Prozess des Ausgleichs und der Neuausrichtung von Machtblöcken verstanden werden. Dieses Konzept leitet in erster Linie von der Ordnung der modernen europäischen Nationalstaaten her, die 1648 mit dem Westfälischen Frieden formell gegründet wurden. Ein klassischer Fall für das System des Gleichgewichts und der Neuausrichtung der Macht zwischen den Nationen war der Pariser Frieden nach 1815, ein Orden, der sich besonders mit Fürst Klemens von Metternich, dem österreichischen Außenminister 1809–1848 und Kanzler 1821-1848, identifiziert ist.

Metternich

Eine der Einschränkungen dieser theoretischen Perspektive ist auch mit dem Jahr 1848 verbunden, als demokratische Revolutionen Europa heimsuchten und die Machtverhältnisse innerhalb und zwischen den Ländern entscheidend beeinflussten. Nationale Erwägungen waren bei diesen Umwälzungen äußerst wichtig. Aber sie waren nicht in erster Linie das Ergebnis von Überlegungen zur Machtausgleichen in den europäischen Außenministerien. Sie wurden von einer „Ideologie" angetrieben, die weitgehend auf dem Wunsch nach repräsentativeren Vertretungen sowie nationalen Identifikationsüberlegungen beruhte. Politische Ideologie ist eine Herausforderung für den Realist Standpunkt, weil der auf der allgemeinen Annahme beruht, dass objektive nationale Interessen ideologische Erwägungen in der Außenpolitik überwiegen.

Die vernünftigeren Versionen dieser Sichtweise, z.B. Stephen Walts, erkennen das an, weil der tatsächliche Mensch Außenpolitik macht, persönliche und kollektive politische/ideologische Ansichten die Ziele und Optionen umrahmen, um die sich diese Entscheidungen herum richten. Etwas dogmatischere Versionen widerwillig akzeptieren, dass einige Leute von Ideologie motiviert sein können und Außenpolitiker müssen dies in ihren eigenen Überlegungen berücksichtigen, in denen sie jede Ideologie zugunsten kalter Berechnungen objektiver nationaler Interessen ausschließen.

Stephen Walt und John Mearsheimer sind die bekanntesten amerikanischen akademischen Verfechter der Realist-Position. Beide sind herausragende und einflussreiche Gelehrte. Ihr gemeinsam geschriebenes Buch The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (2007) - Deutsch: Die Israel-Lobby: Wie die amerikanische Außenpolitik beeinflusst wird - umrahmte die politischen und wissenschaftlichen Diskussionen über den praktischen Einfluss der Nation Israel auf die amerikanische Außenpolitik. Es ist auch ein großartiges Beispiel dafür, wie allgemeine ideologische und politische Annahmen weitgehend mit den kaltpragmatischeren Berechnungen der Länder über ihre kurz- und langfristigen Machtvorteile interagieren.

Mearsheimer sieht den Niedergang der liberalen internationalen Ordnung im Jahr 2005 begonnen und erklärt die Erkenntnisse der Eule von Minerva, die dieses Datum begründete. (Hegel: „Wenn die Philosophie ihr Grau in Grau mahlt, dann ist eine Gestalt des Lebens alt geworden, und mit Grau in Grau läßt sie sich nicht verjüngen, sondern nur erkennen; die Eule der Minerva beginnt erst mit der einbrechenden Dämmerung ihren Flug.") Nach seinem theoretischen Schema ist der weitere Verfall der internationalen Ordnung seit dem Ende des unipolaren Moments für die USA spätestens 2016 unausweichlich: "Der unipolare Moment ist vorbei, was bedeutet, dass es keine Chance gibt, auf absehbare Zeit irgendeine liberale internationale Ordnung aufrechtzuerhalten." (meine kursive Hervorhebung)

(Alle Übersetzungen aus dem Englischen in diesem Beitrag sind meine.)

Mearsheimer hat kürzlich einen großen Artikel veröffentlicht, Bound to Fail: The Rise and Fall of the Liberal International Order (International Security 43:4; Spring 2019) in dem er dramatisch behauptet, dass die von den USA geführte liberale internationale Ordnung nach 1989 in der Tat zutiefst fehlerhaft ist. Und es bietet einen interessanten Blick auf einige der ideologischen-politischen Annahmen, die er auf eine pragmatische „Realist“- Sicht der gegenwärtigen internationalen Ordnung anwendet.

Ein Großteil von Mearsheimers Artikel ist eine Erklärung seines Rahmens für das Verständnis von "Ordnungen" (orders) im Weltstaatssystem. Er unterscheidet zwischen "begrenzten Ordnungen" und "internationalen Ordnungen", wobei erstere auf bestimmte Gruppen von Staaten beschränkt sind, letztere universell. Er erklärt auch Die Unterscheidungen zwischen realistischen, agnostischen und ideologischen Ordnungen, und zwischen bipolaren, multipolaren und unipolaren Systeme. Die Unterscheidung zwischen (weltweite) internationalen Systeme und internationalen Ordnungen (weltweit oder kleiner) ist von zentraler Bedeutung für die theoretische und historische Darstellung, die er in diesem Artikel vorstellt.

Besonders faszinierend ist seine Diskussion über "realistische" Ordnungen unter den Nationen. Weil er argumentiert, dass der außenpolitische Standpunkt der Realismus uns auf der Grundlage der Erfahrung sagt, dass eine bestimmte Vielfalt des Weltsystems mit einer "realistischen" Ordnung unvereinbar ist. "Wenn die Welt unipolar ist, kann die internationale Ordnung nicht realistisch sein."

Mearsheimer weist (zu Recht) Francis Fukayamas "Ende der Geschichte" zurück. Aber sein Artikel zeigt einige hegelianische Ähnlichkeiten, wie dieses Zitat.

Ideologische Annahmen

Die Hintergrundannahmen von Mearsheimers Analyse sind wichtig und informativ über die Stärken und Schwächen des Realismus.

Besonders merkwürdig ist, dass Mearsheimer ausdrücklich davon ausgeht, dass sich Nationalismus immer gegen liberale Prinzipien durchsetzt. Er formuliert diese Position drastisch: "Weil der Nationalismus die mächtigste politische Ideologie auf dem Planeten ist, übertrumpft er ohne Ausnahme den Liberalismus, wenn die beiden aufeinanderprallen, und untergräbt damit die [Post-1989-]Ordnung im Kern." (meine kursive Hervorhebung)

Diese Erklärung unterstreicht ein Problem dieser zweideutigen realistischen Ideologie. Wenn "Nationalismus die mächtigste politische Ideologie auf dem Planeten ist", dann ist es offensichtlich, dass Ideologie das Kalkül eines Landes antreibt, seine nationalen Interessen auch im engsten Sinne zu verfolgen. Bis zu einem gewissen Grad versucht der Realismus, mit einer, wie wir es nennen könnten, anti-ideologischen Ideologie zu operieren.

Auch in dem aktuellen politischen Moment, in dem autoritäre Tendenzen international wachsen - eine Schlüsselentwicklung, die Mearsheimers Artikel zu erklären versucht - fällt mir die Aussage auf, dass Nationalismus ausnahmslos "den Liberalismus übertrumpft, wenn die beiden aufeinandertreffen" als zu drastisch und, nun ja, unrealistisch. Und übermäßig pessimistisch.

Festgestellte Probleme, einschließlich der Art und Weise, wie die NATO-Erweiterung durchgeführt wurde

Mearsheimer spricht über was, seiner Meinung nach, die größten Probleme der Weltordnung nach 1989 sind. Die USA waren das überwiegend stärkste Land der Welt, den unipolaren Moment, wie er manchmal genannt wird. Eine Schlüsselrolle spielte die interventionistische Praxis der USA und der NATO, wobei sowohl neokonservativer Militarismus als auch humanitärer Interventionismus sie rechtfertigen. "Die Verbreitung einer liberalen Demokratie auf der ganzen Welt, die für den Aufbau einer solchen Ordnung von größter Bedeutung ist, ist nicht nur extrem schwierig, sondern vergiftet oft die Beziehungen zu anderen Ländern und führt manchmal zu katastrophalen Kriegen", schreibt er. Selbst wenn sie mit extremem Zynismus angewendet wurde, wie es die Cheney-Bush-Administration mit dem Irakkrieg tat, war die Idee der Verbreitung der Demokratie eine zentrale politische Rechtfertigung, die verwendet wurde, um die Unterstützung für Kriege und Interventionen voranzutreiben.

Die interessanteste Kritik hier ist seine Ansicht, wie die USA und ihre westeuropäischen Verbündeten beschlossen haben, sich nach 1989 an die NATO zuwenden:

Die NATO-Erweiterung nach Osteuropa ist ein gutes Beispiel dafür, wie die Vereinigten Staaten und ihre Verbündeten daran arbeiten, die begrenzte westliche Ordnung in eine liberale internationale Ordnung umzuwandeln. Man könnte meinen, dass die Verlegung der NATO nach Osten Teil einer klassischen Abschreckungsstrategie war, die darauf abzielte, ein potenziell aggressives Russland einzudämmen. Aber das war es nicht, da die Strategie des Westens auf liberale Ziele ausgerichtet war. Ziel war es, die Länder Osteuropas – und vielleicht auch eines Tages auch Russland – in die "Sicherheitsgemeinschaft" zu integrieren, die sich während des Kalten Krieges in Westeuropa entwickelt hatte. Es gibt keine Beweise dafür, dass seine Chefarchitekten – die Präsidenten Clinton, Bush und Obama – dachten, dass Russland in seine Nachbarn eindringen könnte und daher eingedämmt werden müsste, oder dass sie glaubten, dass die russische Führung legitime Gründe für die Angst vor der NATO-Erweiterung habe. [meine Hervorhebung].

Dies ist ein wichtiger Grund, warum ich trotz meiner Vorbehalte gegen einen Großteil des realistischen theoretischen Rahmens auf realistische Analysen Aufmerksamkeit gebe. Das ist Mearsheimers Art zu sagen: vielleicht hätten wir uns viel sorgfältiger und ernsthafter überlegen müssen, was wir mit dem NATO-Bündnis nach dem Fall des Warschauer Pakts machen sollten.

Sein Über-Realist-Kollege Stephen Walt kritisierte die NATO-Erweiterung im vergangenen Jahr ausdrücklich (NATO Isn’t What You Think It Is Foreign Policy 07/26/2018):

Wenn Trump in Bezug auf die NATO meist verwirrt ist, bleiben seine glühendsten Verteidiger einer Reihe von Binsenweisheiten und Dogmen verpflichtet, die fragwürdig waren, als sie zuerst vorankamen und mit der Zeit immer weniger vertretbar geworden sind. Zu diesen Mythen gehört vor allem die Idee, dass die NATO-Erweiterung eine riesige Zone des Friedens in Europa schaffen und dem Bündnis nach dem Kalten Krieg einen neuen und erhabenen Zweck geben würde.

So hat es nicht ganz geklappt. Zunächst einmal vergiftete die NATO-Erweiterung die Beziehungen zu Russland und spielte eine zentrale Rolle bei der Schaffung von Konflikten zwischen Russland und Georgien und Russland und der Ukraine.. Das ist natürlich nicht der einzige Grund, und ich sage nicht, dass Moskaus Antworten legal, richtig, gerechtfertigt oder auf einer genauen Wahrnehmung der Absicht der NATO beruhten. Ich schlage nur vor, dass Russlands Antwort nicht überraschend war, insbesondere angesichts der Geschichte Russlands und der früheren Zusagen der Regierung George H.W. Bush, die NATO nach der deutschen Wiedervereinigung nicht "einen Zentimeter nach Osten" zu bewegen. Die Architekten der Expansion mögen wirklich geglaubt haben, dass die Verlegung der NATO nach Osten keine Bedrohung für Russland darstellt; leider hat die russische Führung das Memo nie erhalten (und hätte es nicht geglaubt, wenn sie es gehabt hätte).

Darüber hinaus erhöhte die NATO-Erweiterung die Anzahl der Plätze, die das Bündnis formell verteidigen musste (vor allem die baltischen Staaten), ohne jedoch die für die Erfüllung dieser Aufgabe zur Verfügung stehenden Ressourcen erheblich zu erhöhen.. Wieder einmal gingen die Befürworter der Expansion davon aus, dass diese Verpflichtungen niemals eingehalten werden müssten, nur um aufzuwachen und zu entdecken, dass sie einen Blankoscheck geschrieben hatten, der schwer zu decken sein könnte. Und wir wissen jetzt, dass die Erweiterung einige neue Mitglieder hinzugezogen hat, deren Engagement für eine liberale Demokratie sich als ziemlich flach erwiesen hat. Diese Situation kann kein fataler Fehler sein, da die NATO nichtdemokratische Mitglieder (z. B. die Türkei) in der Vergangenheit, aber sie untergräbt die Behauptung der Befürworter, die NATO sei eine Sicherheitsgemeinschaft, die auf gemeinsamen demokratischen Werten und einem wesentlichen Element einer liberalen Weltordnung basiert. [meine Hervorhebung]

Mit anderen Worten, zu optimistische Annahmen über die NATO-Erweiterung schuften Probleme, die wahrscheinlich durch einen pragmatischeren und weniger kurzsichtigen Ansatz hätten verringert oder vermieden werden können.

Mearsheimer macht einen verwandten, aber deutlichen Punkt zur NATO-Erweiterung. Er argumentiert, indem er die unipolare Strategie der Schaffung einer "liberalen" Ordnung im Unterschied zum "agnostischen" Ansatz wählt, die US-Führer haben sich für anfällig gemacht, um die Art von Komplikationen zu schaffen, die Walt beschreibt. Eine agnostische Ordnung in einem unipolaren Weltsystem oder eine "realistische" Ordnung in einem bipolaren oder multipolaren System wäre wahrscheinlich nicht so schnell gewesen, um die Art von Fehlern zu machen, die Walt mit der NATO-Erweiterung beschreibt.

Er sagt auch, dass er erwartet, dass das NATO-Bündnis in die Zukunft anhält:

... die Vereinigten Staaten werden die europäischen Länder davon abhalten wollen, Dual-Use-Technologien an China zu verkaufen, und dazu beitragen, Peking bei Bedarf wirtschaftlich unter Druck zu setzen. Im Gegenzug werden die US-Streitkräfte in Europa bleiben, die NATO am Leben erhalten und weiterhin als Friedensstifter in dieser Region dienen. Angesichts der Tatsache, dass praktisch jeder europäische Staats- und Regierungschefs dies gerne sehen würde, sollte die Drohung mit dem Austritt den Vereinigten Staaten einen erheblichen Einfluss geben, um die Europäer zur Zusammenarbeit an der wirtschaftlichen Front gegen China zu bewegen.

Fragen zu der Realist-Perspecktive

Die Vorstellung, dass eine unipolare Weltsystem keine "realistische" Ordnung hervorbringen oder zulassen kann, erinnert an einen Widerspruch auf der Grundlage der außenpolitischen Realist-Perspektive. In diesem Fall scheint Mearsheimer zu argumentieren, dass ein Realist-Weltverständnis zeigt, dass endlich eine Art internationale Vereinbarung nicht eine Weltordnung aufrechterhalten kann, die unter „realistischen“ Annahmen arbeitet.

Eine andere Möglichkeit, diese Ansicht zu beschreiben, wäre, dass sie davon ausgeht, dass Realismus als Ansatz in der Außenpolitik eigentlich nur nützlich ist, um eine Metternichsche Welt zu beschreiben, nicht eine, in der eine einzige Macht die Dominanz hatte, die die USA zwischen 1989 und 2015 hatten.

Mearshimer selbst definiert diesen Zeitrahmen für den sogenannten unipolaren Moment. "Dieser Artikel geht davon aus, dass die Welt im Jahr 2016 multipolar geworden ist und dass die Abkehr von der Unipolarität ein Todesurteil für die liberale internationale Ordnung ist, die im Prozess des Zusammenbruchs ist und durch realistische Ordnungen ersetzt wird." Aber er beschreibt die liberale internationalistische Ordnung als bis 2019 fortbestehend. Er schlägt also nicht vor, dass dieser Prozess nach einem starren Zeitplan arbeitet.

Mearsheimers Artikel wirft auch die Frage auf, inwieweit diese realistische Sicht nicht nur die konsequente Verfolgung nationaler Interessen voraussetzt, sondern auch Rationalität in dieser Verfolgung.

In der Ansicht, die er hier ausführt, sind "agnostische" und "liberale" Ordnungen Optionen nur für ein unipolares Weltsystem. Eine liberale Ordnung fördert die berale Demokratie als Regierungsform. In einer agnostische Ordnung wäre die unipolare Macht gleichgültig gegenüber den internen Regierungsformen. Aber ich bin geneigt zu denken und hoffe, dass die Aussichten für die Ausweitung demokratischer Regierungsformen nicht so düster sind, wie seine Analyse zu vermuten scheint.

Ukraine, Gaza, starvation as warfare, and the “rules-based international order”

International diplomacy runs to a considerable extent on hypocrisy.

But Patrick Wintour warns that even the usual diplomatic hypocrisy has its limits:

... Joe Biden’s decision to defend Israel’s methods in Gaza so soon after, in a different context, condemning Russia’s in Ukraine, is not just an occasion for hand wringing from liberals and lawyers.

It is already having a real-world impact on relations between the global north and south, and west and east, creating consequences that could reverberate for decades.

The Biden administration, reluctant to change course, may say the parallels between Gaza and Ukraine are far from exact, but it also seems to know it is gradually losing diplomatic support. (1) [my emphasis]

Daniel Larison stresses how critical the situation in Gaza has become, thanks to policies of Bibi Netanyahu’s authoritarian government which are backed with no meaningful criticism or restraint. He cites a New York Times article with the hair-raising title, “Children eat rotten food, adults hunt cats: famine is coming for Gaza: Bombing has displaced more than a million in Gaza — but none of them are safe from hunger.”

According to the report, food is so scarce that people are reduced to eating whatever they can find, even if it has spoiled. What little food that does exist is prohibitively expensive for the vast majority of people. Nursing mothers cannot produce milk for their babies. In just under three months, a population of more than two million people has been driven to the brink by the deliberate Israeli use of starvation as a weapon. The people of Gaza have been subjected to one of the most monstrous policies of collective punishment in recent memory. There is good reason to fear that a large percentage of the population will perish if conditions remain like this or worsen. (2)

The UN was warning about this starvation crisis before Christmas of 2023, citing a report by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC):

At least one in four households (more than half a million people) in the Gaza Strip are facing catastrophic acute food insecurity conditions (IPC Phase 5 – Catastrophe), characterized by extreme food gaps and collapse of their livelihood. About 80% of the population in Gaza Strip are in Emergency (IPC Phase 4) or Catastrophe (IPC Phase 5). The entire population can be considered classified in IPC Phase 3 and above (Crisis or worse) during the projection period starting in the second week of December. Furthermore, the situation is deteriorating rapidly. ...

Conditions are likely to continue to sharply deteriorate for as long as hostilities continue, and humanitarian access is significantly restricted. Of the 150-180 food trucks typically entering daily pre-escalation, only about 30 food trucks have entered the Gaza Strip on a daily basis since the end of the humanitarian pause on 30 November 2023. Even optimistic estimates of the potential kilocalories delivered in these shipments indicate that this level of food supply is far below the nutritional requirements of the whole population. We also note that there is an unequal distribution of trucks across the Gaza Strip, and almost no shipments have reached the northern governorates since 28 November 2023. (3)

International law is obviously far from being as effective as it should be. But it does set universal standards of conduct, however much those are also influenced by Western and great-power interests.

Yet as Telford Taylor, one of the American prosecutors at the Nuremberg war crimes trials wrote in 1970, the laws of war have real and very important value:

The first is strictly pragmatic: They work. Violated or ignored as they often are, enough of the rules are observed enough of the time so that mankind is very much better off with them than without them. The rules for the treatment of civilian populations in occupied countries are not as susceptible to technological change as rules regarding the use of weapons in combat. If it were not regarded as wrong to bomb military hospitals, they would be bombed all of the time instead of some of the time. (4) [my emphasis]

As anyone following the news from Israel’s war in Gaza here at the beginning of 2024 is very aware, it is not only military hospitals that are sometimes bombed in violation of the laws of war.

Taylor continues:

Another and, to my mind, even more important basis of the laws of war is that they are necessary to diminish the corrosive effect of mortal combat on the participants. War does not confer a license to kill for personal reasons-to gratify perverse impulses, or to put out of the way anyone who appears obnoxious, or to whose welfare the soldier is indifferent. War is not a license at all, but an obligation to kill for reasons of state; it does not countenance the infliction of suffering for its own sake or for revenge.

Unless troops are trained and required to draw the distinction between military and nonmilitary killings, and to retain such respect for the value of life that unnecessary death and destruction will continue to repel them, they may lose the sense for that distinction for the rest of their lives. The consequence would be that many returning soldiers would be potential murderers. [my emphasis]

Yes, those laws of war apply to the United States. And to Russia. And to Israel.

This is also why the Biden Administration’s continual evoking of the “rules-based international order” instead of international law is very problematic. As Wintour writes:

In a context in which many rising nations anyway viewed the “international rules based order” with scepticism, the script for Sergei Lavrov, the veteran Russian foreign minister, writes itself. Speaking at the Doha Forum in December, Lavrov complained: “The rules were never published, were never even announced by anyone to anyone, and they are being applied depending on what exactly the west needs at a particular moment of modern history.”

It’s very important that the US government and the American press give careful attention to the expressed intentions of senior Israeli officials (5):

The horrific war Israel is waging against civilians in Gaza with effectively full support from the US, the Biden Administration, and essentially the entire Republican Party has broader consequences for US diplomacy. Wintour:

If the US defence of Israel continues to go wrong, one or two outcomes are likely. The trend to shifting transactional non-ideological alliances will grow. Forum shopping by countries or strategic hedging, requiring active portfolio management like financial hedging, will become even more the norm. Alternatively, America could find itself confronting larger and more assertive alternative blocs, whether it is an expanded BRICS, led this year by Putin, or other Chinese-led alliances.

Six short months ago it looked so different. After a period of so-called westlessness – code for the division and malaise fed by a Trump presidency – the west in 2022 rediscovered itself and was proud it responded to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine with unprecedented solidarity. Not afraid of war, or of losing Russian energy sources.

... The liberal order, tattered by Iraq and defeated in Afghanistan, had revived itself.

Full post also available at: https://brucemillerca.substack.com/p/ukraine-gaza-starvation-as-warfare

Those shifting possibilities Wintour describes there are not mainly caused by Bibi Netanyahu’s conduct in the Gaza war. They are a normal result of the evolution of a world that is no longer the “unipolar” one with the US as a sole superpower as it was in the decades after 1991. Near the end, Wintour mentions “the pre-existing trends towards a … more multi-polar, yet less multilateral world.”

But the relationship the US has with Israel - often a very dysfunctional one from the standpoint of US national interests - is providing one of the most dramatic catalysts for such changes at the current moment. Even major trends are made up of individual events. Foreign policy wonks are already arguing over the point at which the “unipolar moment” ended: 2014? (Russia seizing Crimea) 2016? (Trump’s election on a nationalistic MAGA pitch) 2022? (Russia’s larger invasion of Ukraine in February) 2023? (The Israel-Gaza War)

It may sound a bit pompous in this context. But it’s worth recalling Hegel’s invoction of the Owl of Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, on major transition points in history: "When philosophy paints its gray on gray, then a form of life has grown old, and with gray on gray it cannot be rejuvenated, but only known; the Owl of Minerva first takes flight with twilight closing in." (6) Full postalso avaiable at: https://brucemillerca.substack.com/p/ukraine-gaza-starvation-as-warfare

(1) Wintour, Patrick (2023): Why US double standards on Israel and Russia play into a dangerous game. The Guardian 12/26/2023. (Accessed: 2023-30-12).

(2) Larison, Daniel (2024): Famine Is Devouring the People of Gaza. Eunomia 01/02/224. (Accessed: 2024-03-01).

(3) IPC-Integrated Food Security Phase Classification-Conclusions and Recommendations 12/212023), 1-2. (Accessed: 2024-03-01.

(4) Taylor, Telford (1970): Nuremberg and Vietnam: An American Tragedy, 39-40. New York: Bantam Books.

(5) '100-200,000, Not Two Million': Israel's Finance Minister Envisions Depopulated Gaza. Haaretz 12/31/2023. (Accessed: 2024-03-01).

(6) Hegel, G.W.F. Gesammelte Werke, Bd. 14, 16. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag. ("Preface" to Philosophy of Right) My translation from German.

Three phases of Vladimir Putin's own form of "Putinism"

Die Zeit's Moscow correspondent Michael Thumann gives his description of three stages Vladimir Putin's rule over Russia in "»Habe ich Angst?«" (Diktatoren ZEITGeschichte 04-2022).

He designates the three distinct periods as: a "hybrid"phase, 2000-2011; an "authoritarian" phase, 2012-2021; and, "the destruction of civil society," 2021-on.

I don't try to engage here with how precise Thumann's definitions of the varying states of Putin's rule may be. But in light of the sometimes cartoonish polemics we're currently seeing around the Ukraine war, it's useful to keep in mind that Putin's more than two decades of being the de facto chief leader of the Russian government has been marked by varying approaches on his part. Thanks to the decades-long use - mostly misuse, actually - of the Munich Analogy, the US always winds up making its opponent of the moment into "Hitler." It's a habit that generally produces more fog than clarity. How many times have we been in a conflict with the latest "Hitler" since 1945?

Putin was brought into Boris Yeltsin's government in 1997 as a Deputy Chief of the Presidential Administration. Putin became Director of the Federal Security Service (FSB) in 1998 and then Prime Minister in August 1999, as the early clashes of what became the Second Chechen War (1999-2000) were already underway. Though the regular military phase of that war ended in 2000, Chechen insurgent activity continued for years. Western concern over human rights violations and war crimes committed by the Russian government in Chechnya was mixed with a certain amount of sympathy for Moscow's fight against "Muslim terrorists," especially after the 9/11 attack in 2001.

Konstantin Eggert describes Putin's role in that war as follows (Russia still lives in the shadow of the Chechen war Deutsche Welle 09/30/2019):

Young and energetic, he immediately started talking tough on Chechnya, especially after a series of mysterious apartment block explosions hit Moscow and the towns of Volgodonsk and Buynaksk in September. Security at any cost and "eradicating terrorism" became top priorities for the Russians. When Russian armor started moving on the Chechen capital Grozny, people knew it was not so much the ailing Yeltsin who was behind this offensive but Putin. A year later he became president.

Officially the war was called a "counter-terrorist operation." It was supposed to be brief and victorious, not least because the main leader of the Chechen forces and the republic's grand mufti, Akhmat Kadyrov, changed sides and agreed on a deal with the Kremlin. [my emphasis]

The post-Soviet Russian government under Yeltsin was structured conceptually along the lines of European and American democratic governance. But the "shock therapy" economic program Yeltsin's government undertook to transition from widespread state ownership of industry to a privatized system was not only traumatic in its reductions of the standard of living for most Russians. It also facilitated massive corruption, which went a long way toward undermining the functions of the new governmental institutions and legal system. The system was also notoriously open to fairly blatant intervention by foreign powers, as illustrated by this Time cover of its 06/15/1998 edition celebrating US assistance to Yeltsin's Presidential re-election campaign.

Yeltsin's health problems, i.e., alcoholism, didn't help to engender confidence in his leadership, either.

Neither did this incident in 1993 during his first term: Yeltsin Shelled Russian Parliament 25 Years Ago, U.S. Praised “Superb Handling” National Security Archive 10/04/2018.

And the Russian debt default of 1998 was also a major financial event for Russia and the world.

Hybrid Phase (2000-2011)

Thumann sees the "hybrid phase" of Putin's governance beginning with Putin's Presidency in 2000. After serving two four-year terms, Putin again became Prime Minister in 2008-2012 under President Dmitry Medvedev. But even during that time, Putin was already generally considered the real leader of the country.

Without repeating Yeltsin's directing of cannon fire at the Parliament (Duma) building, Thumann argues that Putin successfully undermined the Duma's power, in particular by putting his United Russia party in control together with "free-rider" parties that were nominally oppositional. "From then on, the Duma practiced faithfulness and loyalty [to Putin], and occasional heckling from the actual opposition could no longer disturb Putin in governing." (The translations here from Thumann's German article are mine.)

In other words, Putin established de facto single-party rule in the form of a so-called illiberal democracy.

Thumann sees a second key part of this "hybrid" phase in a steady undermining of the authority of "the governors and republic presidents, who ruled like little kings in the federal system of the nineties" and who "had formed a real counterweight to the center.

The third part of this "hybrid" phase was concentration of control over television stations, which Thumann considers the most important aspect. Putin's government, he writes, took control of media properties of oligarchs by "making them an offer they couldn't refuse." And political surveillance was considerably stepped up during this time.

Thumann writes, "The political technocrats loyal to the president built a hollow façade democracy in the still unoccupied space between European values and Eurasian traditions. At that time, Putin still managed without camps and police terror. He worked in the penumbra of a hybrid system in which much was under control, while a residual pluralism flourished." He argues that Moscow in particular enjoyed a more open system, including critical media, than other parts of Russia. And, not least because of rising oil prices on which the petrostate Russia is so dependent were rising, the population also experienced a genuine improvement in living standards after the devastating "shock therapy" hyper-free-market experience of the 1990s.

(I attended a panel at the 2014 Netroots Nation convention that featured a panel of Russian journalists whose presence in the US was sponsored by the State Department. It was suggested there that media in smaller media markets was at that time allowed greater leeway than in larger cities.)

Authoritarian phase (2012-2021)

German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder once infamously described Putin at the start of his first Presidential term as a "flawless democrat." Putin apparently appreciated Schröder's attitude, because Schröder did a long and profitable post-Chancellorship stint as chairman of the board of the Russian oil company Rosneft.

But Putin himself turned out to be no more of a fan of competitive democracy, free and fair elections, or an independent justice system than Donald Trump or Viktor Orbán. When half a year of public protests broke out over justified public suspicions of a manipulated Duma election at the end of 2011, Putin began to worry. He had always been leery of the so-called "color" revolutions in places like Georgia and Ukraine and also those of the Arab Spring. As much of the recent commentary on the Ukraine war has mentioned, Puting saw such pro-democracy, anti-corruption movements in nearby countries as a potential threat that could spread to Russia. And he viewed the 2011-12 protests against his government as not only a threat but one instigated if not directed by Washington. (How much of that suspicion was political paranoia and/or cynical propaganda is not something that Thumann's article addresses.)

Thumann describes this phase:

With Putin's return to the Kremlin [i.e., as President] in 2012, the second, the authoritarian phase began, in which the regime systematically cracked down on Russian pluralism and expanded the repression of individual oligarchs to indiscriminate mass repression. An important instrument for this were the "agent laws", an extension of the regulations for non-governmental organizations: associations that were even remotely socially or politically active and received money from non-Russian sources had to call themselves "foreign agents". A stigma. This was accompanied by monitoring of these associations and harsh penalties for violations of bureaucratic requirements. [my emphasis]

He sees this as a period where political rights were continually restricted but which also provided decent incomes compared to the recent past with various consumerist benefits. "In Moscow and the other major cities of the country, restaurants, private clinics, summer cafes and amusement parks flourished. Animal welfare associations and dance clubs emerged. People had jobs, some got good salaries and went on holiday to Turkey."

Putin also shifted his politics to a more nationalist position. To what extent that focus was driven by ideological conviction, internal political opportunism, pressure from NATO expansion, or general Russian evilness has of course become an endless part of the polemics around the current Ukraine war. The actual foreign policy shifts Putin executed during this period don't overlay seamlessly with Thumann's three-phase scheme of his internal governance methods.

But the Russian government has been saying since the 1990s, and even more explicitly since the 2007 Munich Security Conference, is that they have viewed the enlargement of NATO as a security threat. Yeltsin's government had reluctantly made an agreement with the Clinton Administration and NATO to accept the expansion of NATO to Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic that included ongoing consultation procedures. The Cheney-Bush Administration with its charge-ahead unilateralist foreign policy and its sneering contempt for diplomacy just blew off Russian concerns about further NATO expansion. And Putin's government made a distinct shift in its public posture in 2007 over discussions of adding Georgia and Ukraine to NATO.

It's worth noting here that even during the current Ukraine war, Putin himself officially took the entry of Sweden and Finland into NATO in stride with the explanation that the two countries were de facto NATO members anyway. Those countries were already bound by the mutual defense clause of the European Union Treaty, a factor that seemed to be little discussed in political commentary until this year. Sergei Markov, a former official spokesperson for Putin and currently head of the very Putin-friendly Institute for Political Studies in Moscow, repeated this position just this past week. (What does Russia's naval strategy mean? Aljazeera Inside Story 08/01/2022) Which is not to say that Russia will make no foreign or military policy adjustments in response.

The Cheney-Bush Administration wanted to begin the formal accession process for Georgia and Ukraine to join NATO. Germany and France - which Bush's government treated with more-or-less open contempt - refused to go along. But at Washington's insistence, NATO make a formal statement in 2008 with its Bucharest declaration that Georgia and Ukraine would eventually become NATO members. It was a worst-of-both-worlds approach: they didn't start the formal process for accession but declared unequivocally that the two countries would eventually join.

New Cold Warriors like former US Ambassador to Moscow Michael McFaul take it is an article of faith that Russian policy towards Ukraine had nothing to do with NATO expansion and everything to do with some combination of Russian religious-political messianic expansion and Putin's dictatorial tendencies.

But if you are a Russian leader looking to use nationalism to boost your political position, this sequence of events worked out nicely for that scenario.

In the 2010s, world oil prices seriously crashed. For a petrostate like Russia, heavily dependent on oil and gas exports, this is always an important factor. Just as healthy oil and gas income had facilitated the "hybrid phase," falling oil prices presented new challenges for Putin's ruling model in the "authoritarian phase."

Destruction of civil society phase (2021-on)

Thumann may be anticipating the Owl of Minerva's ruling on the current Putinist period, the "destruction of civil society." He points to the poisoning of Alexei Navalny, a genuinely dodgy Duma election in September 2021, and the banning of the human rights group Memorial. Then in 2022 came the attack on Ukraine:

With the invasion of Ukraine, the authorities set in motion their plans to destroy civil society. The last free media, Radio Echo Moscow, the TV channel Dozhd, and the newspaper Novaya Gazeta headed by Nobel Peace Prize winner Dmitry Muratov, had to cease their work. People who protested against the war were arrested. In Russia, since the introduction of military censorship in early March, there has been no public voice other than Putin's.

Thumann's own characterization of Putin's regime is as follows:

What should the Putin system be called today? Putinism is a kind of USSR without socialism, a pseudo-clerical-conservative moral dictatorship, a poisonous police state, repressive internally, aggressive on the outside. But this is not a new system in itself. Putin, divorced and in a relationship with an athlete, paints a picture of the conservative family as the ideal of society. The state propagandists strive for control over minds. They are creating a hermetic "Russian information space." They are deveöpüomg the ideal of the conservative strongman, who defends his weak wife and children, who cultivates his field in front of the city, and fights for the fatherland. They are mobilizing the masses for the isolation of the country and for attacking its neighbors. Hundreds of thousands are allowed to cheer the course of the leader in stadiums with flags. Society is atomized and has hardly any forms of organization beyond the vertical state. The Russian political scientist Andrei Kolesnikov calls it "hybrid totalitarianism". [my emphasis]

A construction like "hybrid totalitarianism" could easily be a euphemism for, "Who knows where this will go?" It's likely to be a while before the Owl of Minerva will be ready to make a pronouncement on this.

Andrew Bacevich’s "The Age of Illusions" (Review, Part 1 of 4)

"When philosophy paints its gray on gray, then has a form of life grown old, and with gray on gray it cannot be rejuvenated, but only known; the Owl of Minerva first takes flight with twilight closing in." - G.W.F. Hegel, "Preface," Philosophy of Right

Andrew Bacevich can safely be called a fundamental critic of American politics and foreign policy. He’s also a historian and currently the head of the Quincy Institute, which promotes a realist and peace-oriented US foreign policy. His latest book, The Age of Illusions: How America Squandered Its Cold War Victory (2020) continues the tradition of sharp and critical analysis he is known for providing.

The Age of Illusions is an attempt to articulate a coherent metanarrative for US politics and foreign policy since 1989. Such metanarratives are very difficult to construct in a meaningful and substantive way. But Bacevich succeeds in articulating one that provides a useful point of reference to think about how well major events like wars and Presidential elections may or may not conform to it. In brief, he argues that the kind of free-market economic neoliberalism combined with a very interventionist foreign policy and a sometimes dubious vulgar-materialist/libertarian cultural ethos have worked out badly for most Americans and that current American politics is a symptomatic manifestation of that failure.

Bacevich is very impressed with Reinhold Niebuhr’s brand of Christian foreign policy realism. He even brought out a new edition of Niebuhr’s 1952 The Irony of American History. Bacevich does not appear to be particularly fond of Hegelian thought. He criticizes Francis Fukuyama’s (in)famous End of History notion, which was at least a Hegel-tinted concept. But for a Niebuhrian like Bacevich, indulging in the kind of Enlightenment faith in progress in which Hegel shared would always something to be regarded with caution. Fukuyama in his famous essay took the (approaching) end of the Cold War as the “triumph of the West, of the Western idea” and “an unabashed victory of economic and political liberalism.” (The End of History? The National Interest Summer 1989)

For someone with an Augustinian regard for fallen human nature, Fukuyama’s vision sounds like a serious case of hubris, which another major strand of Western thought regards as inevitably producing future falls. Heraclitus is quoted as saying that hubris needs putting out even more than a house on fire. (The sourcing of Heraclitus quotes is always a bit dicey, but it’s a notion credited to him.) Bacevich finds the value of Fukuyama’s essay in that it “belongs in the category of writings that capture something essential about the moment in which they appear, while simultaneously shaping expectations about what lies ahead.”

Bacevich’s narrative of the post-1989 world and particularly the US role in it is a story of hubris yielding its tragic and fiery results. And while he may be wary of Hegelianism, he has a strong appreciation for contradictions as a normal part of history and politics.

From Boone City to the Emerald City

He employs two literary/cinematic cities as major metaphors for two American eras: Boone City from the film The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) for the Cold War, which in his narrative basically refers to 1945-89 ; and, the Emerald City of The Wizard of Oz for the 1989-2016 period.

“In the Middle America represented by Boone City, freedom isn't gaudy. It does not put on airs or bridle against received norms. Freedom imparts direction and confers purpose,” he writes. It was a vision that emphasized a classic form of negative liberty. “’Freedom from’ takes precedence over ‘freedom to.’ Almost of necessity, access to this unpretentious Eden is therefore limited, with women allowed only auxiliary membership and people of color all but excluded.” An optimistic version of freedom for white men, in other words, with extreme inequality for women and especially for African-Americans, the largest minority in the world of “Boone City”.

Bacevich is mostly focused on the foreign policy of the two eras. He reviews the establishment of the Cold War foreign policy that largely remained focused on the idea of “containment” of the Soviet Union, although a more militarized and ideological version of it than envisioned by its originator, George Kennan. As Bacevich observes, “Kennan himself, appalled by the nuclear arms race and U.S. interventionism in places like Vietnam, was to disavow his own handiwork.” We might add that before his passing in 2005, Kennan was also calling attention to the enormity of the environmental problems the world was (and still is!) facing.

The bulk of the book is devoted to the rise, flourishing, and failure of the subsequent post-Cold War paradigm, the “Emerald City”. The new concept that emerged from “1989” he frames this way, “The United States was exiting a very dark and dangerous forest. The way ahead glittered and gleamed. And the road leading to a global Emerald City appeared smooth, well paved, and clearly marked.”

He identifies four key markers for the Emerald City era as: globalization, more particularly the neoliberal, free-market, Washington Consensus, corporate-deregulation-“trade”-treaty version celebrated in caricatured fashion by Thomas Friedman; the global dominance of the US in which America would defend its position of the overwhelmingly dominant hyperpower of the world against the rise of any possible “peer competitor”, as the foreign policy jargon described it, a condition Bacevich also describes as militarized global leadership by the US; a significant expansion of personal, private freedom in which “freedom, empowerment, and choice became all but interchangeable terms”; and, a continuing expansion and exaltation of Presidential power in which If anything, “the presidency became yet bigger and grander, overshadowing every other aspect of American politics.”

Part 1: From Boone City to the Emerald City

Part 2: The Emerald City Presidencies

Part 3: Bacevich’s political perspective

Part 4: The way forward – and what to do about the “deplorables”

End of an era? Start of a new one? Or just more of the messy present?

I found myself thinking today that 2024 feels like the end of the “1989” period, aka, the end of the End of History. But I’m reluctant to declare “eras” to be ended. One reason is that I’m not sure it means much in most cases. Another is that I don’t have any particular insight into such things. After all, the much-discussed End of History didn’t actually, uh, turn out to the Golden Era of global liberal democracy it was hoped to be.

Also, the philosopher Hegel, who is credited with establishing the concept of the “end of history,” had this to say about recognizing eras: “When philosophy paints its gray on gray, then has a form of life grown old, and with gray on gray it cannot be rejuvenated, but only known; the Owl of Minerva first takes flight with twilight closing in." ("Preface" to Philosophy of Right)

But in 2022, the Russian invasion of Ukraine seems to have put an end to the previous period of at least some hope that the NATO countries and Russia might be able to establish a “common security” arrangement in Europe that would have meant a protracted détente (to revive a once-popular term) between the West and Russia. From today’s perspective, it would have meant many fewer Ukrainians and Russia dying on the battlefield. And it would have meant that in the global power-balancing game, Russia and China wouldn’t be so closely aligned at this moment in opposition to the United States as they actually are. Admittedly, that hope was a long shot. But not at all an impossible one. And it’s still a necessary one.

It's too early to assume that the newly announced Kamala Harris/Tim Walz ticket will mean a turn by the US Democratic Party to actually-progressive politics in the New Deal tradition. But, hey, Walz is even willing to talk about fighting the “robber barons,” so that has to give a flash of optimism to anyone in the US to left of the Democrats’ long-time coal baron Senator Joe Manchin. Walz even says, "One person's socialism is another person's neighborliness."

So, I’m willing to entertain that feeling at least through the Democratic Convention week after next. Democratic candidates who start from the assumption that Dems should fight for their own side are always a welcome sight! (I mean, unless he starts spouting off in non-fighting-Dem language about the need for “bipartisanship” and to “work across the aisle”!)

And the ongoing war in the Middle East, which most observers expect to get much wider and much worse quickly, is a huge reminder that the peaceful End of History really isn’t on the horizon at the moment.

Netanyahu and the rest of the radical right in Israel are actually promoting End Times fantasies to justify Netanyahu’s expanding war, as former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert warned back in February:

Olmert:

The supreme aim of the far-right duo National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich is not the occupation of the Gaza Strip.

Even settlement throughout the devastated Strip is not the final goal of the bunch of messianic hallucinators that has seized power in the state of Israel. Gaza is just the introductory chapter, the platform this gang wants to build as the foundation upon which the real fight they are eyeing will be conducted: the battle for the West Bank and the Temple Mount.

The ultimate aim of this gang is "purging" the West Bank of its Palestinian inhabitants, cleansing the Temple Mount of its Muslim worshippers and annexing the territories to the state of Israel. The way to achieve this goal is blood-soaked. Israeli blood, in the state and in the territories it has been controlling for 57 years now, as well as Jewish blood in places elsewhere in the world. As well as a lot of Palestinian blood, of course, in the territories, in Jerusalem and if there is no alternative – also among Arab citizens of Israel.

This aim will not be achieved without extensive violent conflict. Armageddon. All-out war. In the south, in Jerusalem, in the territories of the West Bank and to the extent necessary also on the northern border. Such a war will bolster the impression that we are fighting for our lives, for our very existence. In a war for survival, it is permissible to do insufferable things, and the hilltop youth are proving daily that among them are many who are capable of precisely that. (1)

Unfortunately, things have gotten much worse since that article in February. Gaza really was only a first step.And it would be very good to shift away from the moment's current state of affairs.

Notes:

(1) Olmert, Ehud (2024): Netanyahu's Messianic Coalition Partners Want an All-out Regional War. Gaza Is Just a First Step. Haaretz 02/22/2024. <https://www.haaretz.com/opinion/2024-02-22/ty-article-opinion/.premium/netanyahus-messianic-coalition-partners-want-an-all-out-regional-war/0000018d-d237-d06c-abbd-daf733870000> (Accessed: 2024-06-08).

Big Picture on Ukraine while waiting for Trump 2.0

Since all of us in Political Junkie World are waiting to see how the Trump II government will unfold, taking a Big Picture look is not a total waste of time. The two immediate crisis points of Ukraine and Israel-Palestine give Americans and Europeans a distinct sense of the world being in major flux or even chaos.

On the other hand, I’m already tired of hearing US mainstream pundits engage in their usual practice trying to define the outcome of the November elections in terms of some kind of general National Mood. Because that always winds up in unhelpful broad guesses like “alienation” or “distrust of authority.”

For the US elections, I’ll go with: Democrats voted for the Democratic brand; Republicans voted for the GOP brand adopted to the MAGA image; and some portion of the voters decided to go with the orange cult-leader. That at least points us in the direction of policy preferences, goals, the most salient interest, the influence of rivers of billionaire dark money in the campaign, and sloppy and not especially democratic habit of treating elections as spectator sports events.

When it comes to large global trends, the temptation to drift off into vague platitudes is even greater, with readily-available images like the Big Enemy Out to Conquer the World. But when it comes to setting a framework to understand major trends in international conflict, nobody is better at describing one than Stephen Walt. (His vague resemblance to Santa lauss surely helps!)

What direction Trump takes on the Ukraine war will tell us a lot about how he will approach foreign policy in the New Year. But we can start from the premise that on foreign policy Trump is, in Walt’s words, “fundamentally incompetent.” (1)

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy just offered this solution to end “the hot stage of the war,” as reported by the AP:

Zelenskyy’s remarks on Friday signaled a possible way forward to the difficult path Ukraine faces to future NATO membership. At their summit in Washington in July, the 32 members declared Ukraine on an “irreversible” path to membership. However, one obstacle to moving forward has been the view that Ukraine’s borders would need to be clearly demarcated before it could join so that there can be no mistaking where the alliance’s pact of mutual defense would come into effect.

“You can’t give an invitation to just one part of a country," the Ukrainian president said in an excerpt of the interview with Sky News, dubbed by the UK broadcaster. "Why? Because thus you would- recognize that Ukraine is only that territory of Ukraine and the other one is Russia.” (2)

The Zelenskyy proposal is essentially to retroactively declare Ukraine a NATO member since just before Russia sent regular troops into two eastern provinces in 2014 and annexed the Crimean Peninsula, which is crucial to Russia’s long-standing position in the Black Sea. And then NATO would be obligated to go to war with its own member nations’ armies to drive out the Russians. In other words, the first direct war of the United States with Russia since the Allied intervention of 1918-20 when Woodrow Wilson sent American troops as part of an Allied intervention in Siberia to against the Bolsheviks in the civil war then going on. (3)

AP further reports, “The plan is seen as a way for Ukraine to strengthen its hand in any negotiations with Moscow.” Of course, the US going to war with Russia would also have other effects. Like, inducing the Russians to vastly escalate their military actions in the war. And pushing to become more closely attached to China. Much more apocalyptic possibilities would also be strong possibilities. Making the Russia’s instantly willing to give Ukraine and the US everything they want in new peace negotiations is, uh, unlikely to be the immediate result of such a step.

Cold War to unipolar US dominance to … something new

Walt is working from a time map that includes major basic world power structures. Their exact dating will vary with taste. But basically the world went from the Cold War (1945-1989) to the “unipolar moment” in which the US was the world’s only superpower (1990-2017 or so), to today’s world in which Russia and China are power major powers alongside the US, with the latter still the single most powerful. The fluidity of the massive changes which make the exact transition moments in that periodization a bit fuzzy gives me a good chance to repeat on of my favorite Hegel quotes: “When philosophy paints its gray on gray, then a form of life has grown old, and it cannot be revived with gray on gray, but only recognized; the Owl of Minerva does not take flight until dusk.” (4)

Shifts in international politics that look clear in hindsight. But the events themselves are being made by leaders and their publics in real time.

One of the major sets of decisions Europe is facing right now is how much they should increase military spending in light of Russia’s aggression in Ukraine and Trump’s uncertain commitment to NATO’s mutual defense obligations. As a group and even with the level of political unity provided by the European Union, it cannot exert the same kind of power-balancing that the US, China, and Russia can. And Europe’s capability for joint military action is currently largely connected to the NATO structure, which the US dominates.

We’re seeing the downside of the risk of the NATO expansion program over the decades since 1989. Up until 2008, the US and NATO collectively assumed that the mutual defense obligation incurred by adding countries bordering on Russia. Including the Baltic republics of Estonia (1.4 mil population), Latvia (1.9 mil), and Lithuania (2.9 mil). It's not that Washington was ignoring the reality that they were making the credibility of the NATO defense commitment part of the European reality when they added those nations. But the foreign policy establishment of both parties effectively assumed that this was an expansion of NATO and US influence that would carry very little risk of having to go to war with Russia.

We should always be careful not to underestimate the incredible arrogance which is an integral part of underlying US foreign policy assumptions.

The Baltic region is an obvious place where Russia could force NATO to show how serious it is about its defense of its actual current members. There is a vital transportation corridor that runs through Lithuania to Kaliningrad, a piece of Russia that it not contiguous with the rest of the country.

Former Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves said he came up with the name “Suwałki Gap” minutes before a meeting with then-German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen in 2015 in an effort to raise alarm about the hole in Western defenses.

The worry is that in a conflict with the West, Russia could sweep into the corridor simultaneously from the east and the west, severing the European Union’s Baltic countries from their allies to the south. “It’s a huge vulnerability because an invasion would cut off Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia from the rest of NATO,” said Ilves.

Such a move would also result in an immediate faceoff between Moscow and NATO’s nuclear-armed members, pushing the world to the brink of world-ending confrontation.

Ilves’ warning to von der Leyen, now president of the European Commission, was a reaction to Russia’s annexation of Crimea the year before, but his doomsday scenario has gained new credence in the wake of Putin’s latest invasion of Ukraine. (5)

Trump’s current team is sending mixed public signals on its Ukraine approach. I suppose there is some possibility that it could be a carefully orchestrated negotiating ploy. “Some” in this case meaning between small and infinitesimal. Trump is much more focused on tossing out clickbait talking points than he is about practicing careful public diplomacy. (6)

Notes:

(1) STEPHEN WALT: Can We Create a Better World Order? IWMVienna YouTube channel 11/29/2024. <https://youtu.be/pxMazMZKj3U?si=BXuLQsDDjOZgiEml> (Accessed: 2024-30-11).

(2) Blann, Susie (2024): Zelenskyy says NATO offer for Ukraine-controlled territory could end 'hot stage'. AP News 11/30/2024. <https://www.aol.com/zelenskyy-says-nato-offer-ukraine-115004346.html> (Accessed: 2024-30-11).

(3) Trickey, Erick (2019): The Forgotten Story of the American Troops Who Got Caught Up in the Russian Civil War. Smithsonian Magazine 02/12/2019. <https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/forgotten-doughboys-who-died-fighting-russian-civil-war-180971470/> (Accessed: 2024-30-11).

(4) Hegel, G.W.F. (1821): Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts. In Gesammelte Werke 14:1 (2009), 16. Dusseldorf: Nordrhein-Westfälische Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Künste. My translation from the German.

(5) Karnitschnig, Matthew (2022): The Most Dangerous Place on Earth. Politico EU 06/22/2024. <https://www.politico.eu/article/suwalki-gap-russia-war-nato-lithuania-poland-border/> (Accessed: 2024-30-11).

(6) Zelenskyy’s diplomatic play for Trump. Politico EU 11/30/2024. <https://www.politico.eu/article/ukraine-president-volodymyr-zelenskyy-diplomatic-play-donald-trump/> (Accessed: 2024-01-12).

Iyer, Kaanita (2024): Trump threatens 100% tariff on BRICS countries if they pursue creating new currency. CNN 11/20/2024. <https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/30/politics/trump-brics-currency-tariff/index.html> (Accessed: 2024-01-12).