Musings Of An Internationalist

IR graduate who's not done writing. Constructivist. Europhile. Moonlighting Economist.

[irgraduate]

'They Really Want to Blow This Place Up': Scenes From Trump's State Department

Anxiety and listless days as a foreign-policy bureaucracy confronts the possibility of radical change

Julia Ioffe:

Right now, those I’ve spoken to in the department seem to know very little about what’s going on. The staffer told me that she finds out what’s going on at State from the news—which she spends all day reading because, after years of having her day scheduled down to 15 minute blocks, she has nothing else to do. And even the news itself isn’t coming from official sources. There hasn’t been a State Department press briefing, once a daily ritual, since the new administration took over five weeks ago—though they’re scheduled to resume March 6. These briefings weren’t just for journalists. They also served as a crucial set of cues for U.S. diplomats all over the world about policy priorities, and how to talk about them. With no daily messaging, and almost no guidance from Washington, people in far-flung posts are flying blind even as the pace of their diplomacy hasn’t abated.

Confusion and general uncertainty is how I would decribe the State Department right now. The lack of a fleshed out leadership circle is far more troubling, but the Department is top-to-bottom a mess right now. Maybe that’s intentional, maybe it’s just Trump & Co.’s pure incompetence.

Kushner cannot and will not be able to single handedly direct FP. The White House is delusional if they think it’s possible.

[maneatingbadger]

This was before Mark Toner admitted State was unaware Mexcian Foreign Minister Luis Videgaray was in DC to meet with White House officials. 

[irgraduate]

Again: Either the Admin is actively sabotaging State or the entire Admin (including State) is completely incompetent.

I tend to air on the side that the Admin has ZERO clue what they're doing with some small truth to their willingness to undo the admin state (paraphrasing Bannon here).

Another hot take: maybe Bannon is using the "Deconstructing the Admin State" line to shelter their incompetences.

[irgraduate]

'They Really Want to Blow This Place Up': Scenes From Trump's State Department

Anxiety and listless days as a foreign-policy bureaucracy confronts the possibility of radical change

Julia Ioffe:

Right now, those I’ve spoken to in the department seem to know very little about what’s going on. The staffer told me that she finds out what’s going on at State from the news—which she spends all day reading because, after years of having her day scheduled down to 15 minute blocks, she has nothing else to do. And even the news itself isn’t coming from official sources. There hasn’t been a State Department press briefing, once a daily ritual, since the new administration took over five weeks ago—though they’re scheduled to resume March 6. These briefings weren’t just for journalists. They also served as a crucial set of cues for U.S. diplomats all over the world about policy priorities, and how to talk about them. With no daily messaging, and almost no guidance from Washington, people in far-flung posts are flying blind even as the pace of their diplomacy hasn’t abated.

Confusion and general uncertainty is how I would decribe the State Department right now. The lack of a fleshed out leadership circle is far more troubling, but the Department is top-to-bottom a mess right now. Maybe that's intentional, maybe it's just Trump & Co.'s pure incompetence.

Kushner cannot and will not be able to single handedly direct FP. The White House is delusional if they think it's possible.

[micdotcom]

Henry Kissinger may endorse Hillary Clinton

As Hillary Clinton continues to court prominent Republican endorsements, Politico reports that she could be on the verge of landing two of her biggest yet: Former Secretaries of State Henry Kissinger and George Shultz. But Kissinger’s stamp of approval could test Clinton’s relationship with her party’s base and serve up a repeat of February.

[irgraduate]

Bruh

[irgraduate]

“The days of Pinochet are over. But the culture of Latin-American victimization has to stop. The left has to grow up and take responsibility for its own actions. There are people blaming the U.S. for being behind the ‘coup’ against Dilma. But it’s just not true, and to say so is insulting to Brazil. It’s a big nation, and it must still find its way, but it’s making its own choices, and making its own mistakes.”

Dilma Rousseff and Brazil’s Horrible Year - The New Yorker

[irgraduate]

Michel Temer, Brazil’s Interim President, May Herald Shift to the Right

Mr. Temer’s first pick for science minister was a creationist, and he is the first Brazilian leader in decades to have no women in his cabinet.

There's no mistaking the legitimacy gap leftist governments in the region face, and Rouseff's is no exception. After years of economic prosperity and little stability to show for it in the post-boom era, right-wing governments are relatively preferable in most countries. I say most because even a moderate like Macri has managed to shift governance right-ward in Argentina without much fuss from Argentina elites.

That said, Temer is no bell-weather for any right-ward shift in Brazil.

For one, Brazil's institutions are still impressively dysfunctional. A long-term Temer administration (assuming he survives his own trials) will have very little influence over the other messes in Brasilia. Rouseff's impeachment trial will be just one example, and certainly the most high-profile, of the governance disorder that is chronic in Brazil.

Second, Temer's doesn't come into the Palácio on an electoral mandate or any popular measure. I would hate to reduce his circumstances as 'right-place, right-time' but let's not conflate Temer as the savior and right-knight of Brazilian democracy.

[irgraduate]

Jeet Heer:

So, yes, Trump can’t answer specific questions about foreign policy with any degree of informed knowledge or consistency. But this shouldn’t blind us to the fact that he has a bold and consistent global vision. He may be weak on the details, but he is strikingly audacious in championing a shadow tradition that stands in opposition to the bi-partisan internationalism that has dominated American foreign policy since the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt. 

When I first read Heer's take on Trump I was tempted to call Trump a Realist simply because of his marked defiance to and rejection of the liberal and neoliberal internationalist regime US foreign policy has implemented. I stopped short of calling Trump a realist because of personal bias but the always insightful Drezner seems to have thought the same.

[irgraduate]

We’ll only halt the far right in Europe if we get tough on terror and migration

Lofty idealism will not defeat the intolerance of anti-migrant populism. Without decisive steps, more people across the continent will move to the extremes

European citizens will migrate to political extremes in even higher numbers if EU institutions and governments don’t manage to build trust in the system. Right now, that can be done only if decisive steps are taken both against terrorism and uncontrolled migration. It may sound cynical, but lofty idealism simply won’t do the trick.

Tolerance was once described by Merkel as “the heart and soul of Europe”. The painful paradox today is that halting the advance of parties that promote intolerance, want to bury the EU, and feel empowered by recent tragic events, may require some maximalist moral postures to be abandoned.

Solutions to many of these problems are structural in the EU, something Nougayrède barely alludes too, but the result of inaction is the same. Will it take another continental disaster to alter the course of European politics for the next half century? I hope it doesn't come to that, and I hope that rational minds in Brussels, Strasbourg, and across the EU prevail.

It's been said so many times, but populism's history is not marked with outcomes we can be proud of.

[irgraduate]

Colombia: Preparing for the “post-agreement,” not the “post-conflict”

Further complicating matters, it is not yet clear how the accord eventually to be signed between the Colombian government and the FARC will be legitimized, whether through a national referendum (as President Manuel Santos has insisted), or by a constituent assembly in which the FARC is represented. If the question is not clearly resolved to the satisfaction of both sides, the fragile societal support for the agreement may break down as the agreement stalls and, in the interim, criminality, violence and suffering increase.

The Colombian state will face multiple constraints in facing these challenges. On one hand, Colombian government resources will be limited by the likely persistent weakness of the Colombian peso against the dollar, as well as low prices for petroleum, which is an important source of export revenue for the Colombian government.

[alpinwanderer-deactivated201606]

“Terrorism has no religion”. Yes, how silly of me. Buddhists could have equally carried out the attacks in Brussels. 

[priceofliberty]

Buddhist extremists in Myanmar have committed violence against innocents.

[sanuber]

The EU Turkey Refugee Deal is a Cop Out

Today, Turkey’s Capital is suffering its fourth bomb attack since June last year. With this news, it is important for Turkish and EU diplomats to deeply consider the consequences of an ambiti…

The Turkey EU deal took effect Sunday, all with little to no consideration and fueled by desperation. Turkey is not a “safe state” and the EU cannot decide to change its status when it is convenient.

[irgraduate]

Well put.

[revolutionaryeye]

Radical economics, Marxist economics and Marx’s economics

by Jane Hardy

The major global crises of the mid-1970s and 2008-9 provoked debates among the ruling class about the best economic policies to manage capitalism. For socialists and activists the question was different, and debates about whether and to what extent capitalism could be reformed to avert crisis and instil a more humane and fair system became even sharper. By the mid-1970s the end of the (not so) long boom of the 1950s and 1960s seemed to sound the death knell of Keynesian economics; in 2008 the shock of the near meltdown of global capitalism led commentators from a broad political spectrum to question the efficacy of neoliberal policies, particularly in relation to deregulated finance.

Since 2008 it is hardly surprising that there has been a revival of radical economics and a proliferation of books and articles criticising neoliberal capitalism reflected, for example, in the popularity of the huge tome Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty.

Debates in economics have sharpened further as a group of mainstream, radical and Marxist economists have coalesced around the idea that the Great Recession of 2008-9 has morphed into a long depression.The “new normal” is reflected in the global capitalist economy crawling along at well below the post-war trend with little sign of improvement.This is despite low or zero interest rates and governments “printing money” on a massive scale through quantitative easing.Criticism of neoclassical market-driven economics is also expressed in an increasing dissatisfaction with the way that the subject is taught in universities.

This discontent was born in the world economics association, (formally known as the “post-autistic economics movement”), started by students in Paris in 2000, which quickly spread to other countries. In 2014 students at the University of Manchester formed the “post-crash economics society” to demand the hiring of lecturers with a broader outlook and the teaching of a wider range of ideas. The main complaints of these movements are that economics has become another branch of mathematics, has no links with other social sciences and is disconnected from reality. The nature of economics “research” in universities is that only publications in a narrow range of journals count, and these are dominated by ever more sophisticated mathematical models that are completely detached from the “real world” and exclude and are dismissive of any other perspective…..

Read on:- http://isj.org.uk/radical-economics-marxist-economics-and-marxs-economics/

Revolutionary Eye:See too,if you can access it,Wolfgang Streeck’s article in New Left Review 95 for a history of how Economics was divorced from Sociology for political reasons that remain pertinent today.

[irgraduate]

A floating exchange rate for non-essential imports was announced this past week, but at this point what is non-essential anymore in Venezuela?

[irgraduate]

The religious dimension offers them a framework of personal re-structuration: the truth, the good, a clear set of norms, brothers in arms, a clear objective, and salvation, although the latter is not necessarily understood in terms of the paradise as described in the Koran. In fact few of them speak explicitly about paradise. The nihilist dimension (revenge, suicide) seems to supersede the utopian one (to build a new and just society). Radicals are neither happy nor funny people.

Olivier Roy in a speech at the BKA Autumn Conferece - What is the driving force behind jihadist terrorism? – A scientific perspective on the causes/circumstances of joining the scene

[bemusedbibliophile]

This seems to me the central insight of Subaltern Studies in the 1980s: the subaltern is a site of discursive manoeuvre for the production of elite subjectivity, whether the production of the colonial rulers, of an all-India national elite - or of left academics struggling to retain a ground for political engagement in the academies of the global North. The subaltern is available to signify elite agency precisely because the subaltern subject herself is subjected to the epistemic violence of a radical designification. If the elite subject is split (between the signifier and a being that is never exhausted in language), the subaltern is split between the signifiers of subaltern life (that do not travel) and the language of colonial power in which she reduces to so much inert material (outside of history and prospects for becoming) - split, in other words, between the registers of family and community, on the one hand, and the ‘fullness’ of what I would call, borrowing from Hortense Spillers, a ‘monumental’ identity, on the other.

Eva Cherniavsky, “The Canny Subaltern,” Theory After ‘Theory,’ ed. Jane Elliot and Derek Attridge, pg.156 (x)

[irgraduate]

After the grand restoration of diplomatic relations, the administration's recent modification of financial and investment regulations have seemed like small, incremental adjustments- leaving the impression that the president's ability to maneuver on Cuba is coming to a close. It isn't. Allowing Cuba access to the IDB may be the last big, irreversible move the administration can take to empower the Cuban people and enhance prosperity on the island.

The United States continues to be constrained by the Helms-Burton legislation, which makes it impossible to vote for Cuba's membership to the IDB. But given that the United States does not hold veto power over the matter, a U.S. vote is not needed to approve membership.

...

The idea of allowing Cuba to join the Inter-American Development Bank will unleash groans of discomfort from Washington insiders. The Treasury Department may resist, saying that Cubans should not be allowed membership in the IDB without also meeting the minimum requirements to enter the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Congressional hardliners will protest that the administration is again giving away too much. The State Department may argue that Cuba needs to do more on human rights before receiving further international privileges.

Groans of discomfort won't just be coming from Washington. Not that the benefits of IaDB membership aren't valid, but I don't think the bulk of the Communist Party necessarily sees membership as a priority at the moment.

Even if the elite of the elite see access to capital as necessary to maintaining the party's position (i.e. similar to Beijing's pivot decades ago), how much sway do party hardliners hold in Havana? The island's incremental opening of reforms have been incremental for a reason and I wouldn't doubt Washington is taking cues from Havana in terms of the reforms they push for.

[irgraduate]

Hi! For a job in IR what would be the best languages to know? I currently speak fluent English and Bosnian and I am open to learning other languages but I don't know which would be the best focus on.

Hey Anon! Sorry for the delay. That’s a tough question to answer. I consulted with a colleague/twitter friend that is way more of a polyglot than I am and our sense was that language choice for working in IR depends on a couple of things. For her it was what industry/line of work you plan on going into, “some industries (mining) may be more multi-lingual than others (working at a particular think tank/legal field, etc.)”.  I would add that the region of the world that industry focuses on or is physically present in will help guide you in terms of language choice.

Hope that helped! Let me know if I should clarify that. 

[tumblingcatsd]

To work in IOs French is a big asset, particularly as since it’s reasonably common, you will often be competing for jobs against others who speak it. Arabic is currently under high demand too, particularly around governments and NGOs.

[irgraduate]

Hi! For a job in IR what would be the best languages to know? I currently speak fluent English and Bosnian and I am open to learning other languages but I don't know which would be the best focus on.

Hey Anon! Sorry for the delay. That’s a tough question to answer. I consulted with a colleague/twitter friend that is way more of a polyglot than I am and our sense was that language choice for working in IR depends on a couple of things. For her it was what industry/line of work you plan on going into, “some industries (mining) may be more multi-lingual than others (working at a particular think tank/legal field, etc.)”.  I would add that the region of the world that industry focuses on or is physically present in will help guide you in terms of language choice.

Hope that helped! Let me know if I should clarify that.