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[mostlybolshie]

Iran Hawks Weird Me Out

I’ve never been able to understand these people. Even assuming you were a grown adult in 1979, watching a country overturn an unpopularly-installed monarch, was it somehow a personal affront to you?

Obviously, a reactionary theocracy is not a Good Neighbor and no ally of the United States, but divergent values need not equal lasting enmity. We've been able to find common ground with Vietnam and Egypt and other countries with attitudes ranging from "mild tiff" to "grossly opposed," and yet somehow Iran remains the exception.

Max Fisher offers one potential explanation for this, the idea among a subset of American hardliners that Iran's opposition to the United States is itself an affront, an aberration that cannot be in a world defined by the pax Americana:

The continued existence of Iran forces Americans to consider whether it's okay to have corners of the world beyond our control and influence, or if this is an affront and inherent threat to the United States.

— Max Fisher (@Max_Fisher) December 31, 2017

The continued existence of Iran forces Americans to consider whether it's okay to have corners of the world beyond our control and influence, or if this is an affront and inherent threat to the United States.

This rings true to me, and is all the more damning for it. As in so many other areas, however, both "sides" of the foreign policy establishment are in agreement, or or less.

The fact is that Iran is a autocratic regional power with national interests that frequently run counter to our own. The same, of course, could be said of Venezuela or Pakistan or Saudi Arabia (or Turkey, these days). This isn't a particularly unusual position to be in. But only Iran - because of the means by which the Islamic Republic was conceived - receives the level of opprobrium and scaremongering that it does.

The old guard of the Revolution and the veteran class of the Iran-Iraq War are fading from power, as a new generation assumes the reins of power. While the fresh faces in the IRGC's upper echelons are perhaps more vehemently anti-American than their predecessors, elsewhere leaders are taking power with an eye towards relaxing or normalizing relations with the United States. We'll always remain a nominal boogeyman, but the snarling, frothing hostility with which the US foreign policy establishment still treats Iran is outdated and counterproductive.

Our own election in 2016 proved that even if demographics are destiny, destiny can be a long ways off. Nevertheless, as younger Iranians begin to find their own voices and assert themselves, it is both natural and probable that Iran and the United States might grow closer together. Iran enjoys a millennia-old history, a young and educated population, and relative secular freedom within the country (certainly more so than, say, Saudi Arabia). Shia has its own quirks and weirdness, as with all religious denominations, but for all its faults it is not wahhabism.

If we can avoid war, within a generation we'll have the beginnings of a cooperative partnership with Iran. Why risk that just to satisfy some atavistic sense of honor?

[mostlybolshie]

The G20 is Dumb, But Populism Isn’t Why

Tom Wright accurately sums up the G20 as a waste of time, but falters when he tries to characterize what the international arena has become, splitting nations into “Restorationists,” “Revisionists,” and “Populists.” In the former camp are the usual warmed-over centrists: Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron, presumably Barack Obama, who want free trade and a United States with the mantle of world leadership. The Revisionists include Russia and China, with the designs on a return to Great Power “spheres of influence,” but also “the far right and far left who want to bring globalization to an end.” Wright’s “populists” consist of a decidedly mixed bag: “Trump, Britain’s pro-Brexit politicians, an increasingly authoritarian Turkey, as well many others within western societies from Bernie Sanders on the left to Ted Cruz on the right” (in other words, horseshoe theory strikes again!). 

Now, when your taxonomy of geopolitical "camps" places Sanders and "the far left" on equal footing with Ted Cruz and Russian/Chinese spheres of influence, the rest might not be worth reading. It’s instructive, though, to look at how Wright frames Leftist grievances with the current international order. “The populists,” he writes, “ want to have their cake and eat it to—doing less, but without suffering the consequences—but life does not work like that. If Trump succeeds in imposing his America First worldview on U.S. foreign policy, he will be confronted with one horrible choice after another as the international order fractures on his watch. The easier path may be to listen to his secretary of defense, national security adviser, and chief economic adviser, and hold the line. They also have to decide to recognize Russia for what it is—a geopolitical competitor to the United States—or to continue to follow the siren song of partnership. At some point, Trump will also be confronted with a harsh reality on the economic front—in the 21st century, it is impossible to have a healthy national economy without a healthy global economy. Beggar thy neighbor policies will not work, especially in an economic crisis.”

Leaving aside the “wisdom” of ruling out all fronts for cooperation with Russia (such as arms control), Wright never manages to acknowledge that perhaps there are legitimate issues that led us to the current hellmouth of a world we live in. The most he suggests is that his Restorationists “reflect on what they could have done differently over the past decade, how a future president could reverse the unraveling of the international order, and how internationalism benefit—and be seen to benefit—all, not just the elite. “ In other words, the problems are bad, but the solutions - the solutions might be just optics.

The G20 was always a useless institution, with the sole accomplishments of signing off on a nebulous project of economic globalization and free trade arrangements, with a grinning elite ready to declare themselves prosperous, modern states.

But conflating Bannonist white supremacy and Erdogan strongman authoritarianism with Sanders’s mild social democracy elides the real problem with the G20: its embodiment of the neoliberal consensus, one that has persisted for decades despite the real harm done to working people from the developed and developing world alike.

Angela Merkel thinks things are relatively okay. Xi Jinping wants a portion of the world reserved for China. Michael Gove and the Brexiteers would would like to tear the whole thing down. Bernie Sanders would like to build a better one. The real choice facing the G20 (and indeed, the world) isn’t one between restoring the past consensus and stability and between destroying it; it’s a choice between isolation, ignorance, and optimism. Creating an alternate to the existing international trade and economic regime doesn’t require sacrificing anyone at the altar of creative destruction, but does require recognition of the myriad shortcomings that have brought us to the present crisis.

A brighter future is possible, but only if we acknowledge that.

[mostlybolshie]

I had a post planned about how the enthusiasm gap/low turnout was going to pose the biggest risk to the Clinton campaign.

Welp

[mostlybolshie]

Putin, Trump, and Shooting the Messenger: Even Autocrats Are Right Once a Day

A single article in the New York Times really serves as a window to our age and the geopolitical struggles in which the West currently finds itself. In short, where Russia is the topic, Russian disinformation can be found a-plenty.

With a vigorous national debate underway on whether Sweden should enter a military partnership with NATO, officials in Stockholm suddenly encountered an unsettling problem: a flood of distorted and outright false information on social media, confusing public perceptions of the issue.

The claims were alarming: If Sweden, a non-NATO member, signed the deal, the alliance would stockpile secret nuclear weapons on Swedish soil; NATO could attack Russia from Sweden without government approval; NATO soldiers, immune from prosecution, could rape Swedish women without fear of criminal charges.

They were all false, but the disinformation had begun spilling into the traditional news media, and as the defense minister, Peter Hultqvist, traveled the country to promote the pact in speeches and town hall meetings, he was repeatedly grilled about the bogus stories.

Every Russia-related topic now has an extreme set of outlandish conspiracy theories associated with it, but as MacFarquhar points out, this disinformation is seen as an additional military tactic, presumably intended to compensate for a relative conventional disadvantage. Indeed, maskirovska – the art of military deception – has always played a large part in Russian doctrine; fittingly for the information age, facts instead of tanks are now camouflaged, untruths and half-lies masquerading as something else.

But the problem with seeing Russian propaganda in every policy debate that arises – and indeed, “fostering a kind of policy paralysis” through denial of “a true version of events” – is that even the ‘correct’ narratives are discredited. That might well be the aim of the Russian campaign: as one Swedish journalist is quoted, “The underlying narrative is, ‘Don’t trust anyone.’” Another journalist ascribes similar motives:

“The Russians are very good at courting everyone who has a grudge with liberal democracy, and that goes from extreme right to extreme left,” said Patrik Oksanen, an editorial writer for the Swedish newspaper group MittMedia. The central idea, he said, is that “liberal democracy is corrupt, inefficient, chaotic and, ultimately, not democratic.”

Reflexive polarization seems to be the watchword of the day, then, and unintentionally reinforces the point that Putin’s propaganda seeks to make. The Western reaction seems to be generally “well, by God, if the Russians say there are problems with neoliberal capitalism, I say to them: it’s the greatest system on earth!” There’s little room for nuance in such a debate, as the idea of an enmity with Russia is so deeply ingrained in the west as to cause that sort of a reaction.

But the real problem with the Putin boogeyman – and that of Donald Trump, as well – is that there are genuine debates to be had, but that by association with one of these figures, an entire side of the debate is discredited. Is NATO expansion wise, or necessary? Is a major US political party perhaps less than entirely truthful when it comes to impartiality? Can the Alliance hold if its fate hinges on Tallinn? Are large numbers of people throughout the developed world suffering economically and bodily under liberal capitalism? Is it possible to intervene fruitfully in a conflict as ruthlessly complex as the Syrian Civil War?

But the whole affair also shows how ideologically bankrupt the entire struggle is. “At the time, before the Soviet Union’s 1991 collapse, the Kremlin was selling communism as an ideological alternative. Now, experts said, the ideological component has evaporated, but the goal of weakening adversaries remains.” The Overton Window has dwindled, and so Russia seeks to discredit official Western narratives in favor of some indistinct national advantage. To what end? It would be difficult to ascribe some sort of benevolent message to Russian actions, but at the same time, a problem’s a problem, regardless of who brings it to our attention.

There are serious debates to be had about serious issues: the future of NATO, tremendous economic inequality, how the United States (and the West) engage with the rest of the world, whether there are global standards and norms that can be enforced, and many, many others. Just because a Putin or a Trump might cast aspersions on the way things are doesn’t mean that we’ve reached utopia. Ironically, the best way to hold off a challenge to the liberal order is to admit that it has shortcomings of its own and then seek to address them. Retrenchment only solidifies the frontlines.

[mostlybolshie]

Brexit a Victory for US Consumers?

Or in other words, how much do we subsidize European consumers?

Reading this Financial Times piece, I am reminded of the generous protections and rights enjoyed by Europeans, particularly in consumer goods and services:

An agreement to force telecoms groups to abolish the cost of mobile roaming was a key victory for Brussels regulators overseeing the communications market. By June 2017 consumers across the EU will pay the same price to use their mobile devices in other member states as they do at home.

... British consumers may also miss out on new portability rules making sure that Europeans can travel with their films, music, sports broadcasts and TV services such as Netflix if they are out of the country. These new rules are being worked on in Brussels.

... The EU’s single aviation area gives airlines freedom to fly across Europe without charge, and has enabled budget airlines such as easyJet to flourish. Yet this could be put into jeopardy unless the UK can renegotiate its access to the free aviation market.

The European Health Insurance Card (EHIC), which grants UK citizens free or reduced-cost treatment in other EU states, also faces an uncertain future. After Brexit, if the UK cannot renegotiate a new policy, it is possible that Brits abroad will face higher travel insurance premiums to pick up costs currently covered by EHIC.

The question here, in a heavily regulated marketplace, is whether these lower profits then get translated into higher ones on this side of the Atlantic, at least for those companies operating in both spaces. With many fewer protections in the United States, are we soaking up the cost differential? 

You see this phenomenon, for instance, with unregulated prescription drugs. Without caps on their pricing here, what profits they must lose to single-payer or socialized health care elsewhere can be recouped by our travesty of a medical system.

And so, I wonder, with the protections of the European Union to be stripped away, at least in part, will global corporations be able to extract more from UK consumers, possibly alleviating the burden on US ones a little?

The answer, even if that’s the trajectory of prices, is of course “nah, capital will never voluntarily surrender profit for any reason.” And so, United Kingdom, best of luck to you.