thebulwark--2020-06-11--The Generals and the Historian

The Generals and the Historian

A few days after former defense secretary and retired Marine general James Mattis released his blockbuster public statement critical of President Trump , historian Victor Davis Hanson , writing at National Review in an article titled “ Not-So-Retiring Retired Military Leaders , ” tells readers how the Uniform Code of Military Justice ( UCMJ ) treats active-duty generals who get involved in politics .
That ’ s all well and good , but active-duty generals aren ’ t getting involved in politics .
A nice history lesson from Professor Hanson .
( He also says that “ debate continues over @ @ @ @ @ @ @ retired generals drawing military pensions , which is true only in an academic , theoretical sense—no retired general has ever been court-martialed for anything under the UCMJ , let alone for political activity . )
But this is not the point Hanson is making .
It ’ s just the opening for an invalid and hypocritical criticism wrapped in a history lesson , like a water chestnut is wrapped in bacon .
In the early days of the Trump administration , the president brought three retired generals—Mattis , John Kelly , and Michael @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a special waiver , since federal law prohibits a general who has retired within the last seven years , as Mattis had , from serving as defense secretary—a policy put in place to protect the important principle of civilian control of the military .
Congress , with both chambers then under Republican control , granted the waiver that the Trump administration sought .
So much for keeping the military out of politics .
Hanson is an ardent defender of President Trump , and he spent much of the last four years attempting to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
No retired general , Hanson says , should violate the four rules that Hanson has just made up regarding “ general decorum and common courtesy when our top retired military leaders go on the attack against a sitting president.
” Here are Hanson ’ s four rules : One , a retired general need not under any circumstances stoop to invoke Nazi Germany , Hitler , or Fascism to criticize the current commander in chief .
Two , any disparagement should not hint at any active resistance to , much less the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ than through constitutionally mandated elections .
Three , the condemnation should rest on clear factual evidence , not emotive anger or partisan disagreement .
Four , there should be no semblance of coordination among retired military officers .
They should avoid even the inadvertent appearance of a sudden chorus of like-minded retired military officers acting in concert to attack the policies of their current president with whom they disagree , and whom they disparage in personal terms .
Hanson describes his four rules as a set of “ modest ethical expectations ” that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wore stars on their shoulders aren ’ t living up to .
Of course , Hanson himself has spent the last few years pretending that ethics don ’ t matter when it comes to this president , so that ’ s neither here nor there .
It ’ s worth taking a moment to look at each of these four rules in turn , in the context of what Mattis wrote .
( Again , here is a link to Mattis ’ s statement . )
First , Hanson believes it ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ invoke Nazi Germany , Hitler , or Fascism ” when criticizing a president .
But here ’ s what Mattis wrote : Instructions given by the military departments to our troops before the Normandy invasion reminded soldiers that “ The Nazi slogan for destroying us .
.
.
was ‘ Divide and Conquer.
’ Our American answer is ‘ In Union there is Strength.
’ ” We must summon that unity to surmount this crisis—confident that we are better than our politics .
Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people—does not even pretend to try .
Instead he tries to divide us .
But technically , Mattis didn ’ t explicitly employ any simile at all , as Hanson , who is a careful reader , well knows .
Mattis , quoting a sometimes-silly 1944 set of instructions to U.S. troops and sailors stationed in France , alludes to the Nazis only in quoting this passage , and then only to make the case for unity and against Trump ’ s divisiveness .
And Hanson—who , again , is a careful reader—is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has been “ emulating ” the Nazis .
Mattis says no such thing .
As for Hanson ’ s second rule , that a retired general shouldn ’ t “ hint at any active resistance ” or unconstitutional means of removing a president , Mattis hints at no such thing .
Hanson ’ s third rule—that a retired general ’ s critique of a sitting president “ should rest on clear factual evidence , not emotive anger or partisan disagreement , ” isn ’ t really applicable in Mattis ’ s case .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t assemble a fact-laden lawyerly brief against the president .
But that ’ s because the facts of the proximate cause for his critique of Trump were already widely known : last week ’ s incident at Lafayette Square , which just about every national news outlet covered .
And no fair reader of Mattis ’ s statement would detect in it either “ anger ” or “ partisan disagreement.
” Which brings us , finally , to Hanson ’ s fourth rule , which holds that even an “ inadvertent appearance @ @ @ @ @ @ @ officers should be avoided when criticizing the president .
It ’ s not hard to understand Hanson ’ s rationale for suggesting this rule .
But how is it supposed to work in practice ?
Must a retired officer with serious concerns about a sitting president send an email to every other retired officer in his address book to make sure nobody else is thinking of going public with concerns around the same time ?
Maybe Hanson wants retired generals to fire up Zoom for a group chat to prevent a glut of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ listserv ?
In fact , the only way in practice to ensure no appearance of coordination—to really ensure it—is to have the reality of coordination behind the scenes .
That is the perverse unintended consequence of Hanson ’ s fourth suggested rule .
To Hanson ’ s credit , his remarks are not the dumbest or most odious thing that has been said about James Mattis ’ s recent public statement .
That trophy belongs to Hanson ’ s fellow American Greatness contributor Dr. Sebastian Gorka , Ph.D , who argues “ Jim @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s hard to take Hanson ’ s concerns seriously when you recall some of his silences over the last few years .
When retired Army general Michael Flynn—before he twice pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI—was one of President Trump ’ s most ardent defenders , where was Victor Davis Hanson ?
When Gen. Flynn spoke at the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland , and led a chant of “ LOCK HER UP !
” —where was Victor Davis Hanson ?
What did he have to say about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and ultimately ignominiously involved in politics ?
Where was Hanson ’ s policing of the borders of politics and the military then ?
In my neighborhood—I live in the shadow of Quantico , the Marine base— my neighbors like the old saying “ there ’ s no such thing as an ex-Marine.
” I get it .
Some say Marines never retire , but that ’ s not quite true .
In the case of historians , though , maybe Hanson should consider it .

A few days after former defense secretary and retired Marine general James Mattis released his blockbuster public statement critical of President Trump, historian Victor Davis Hanson, writing at National Review in an article titled “Not-So-Retiring Retired Military Leaders,” tells readers how the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) treats active-duty generals who get involved in politics.
That’s all well and good, but active-duty generals aren’t getting involved in politics. A nice history lesson from Professor Hanson. (He also says that “debate continues over” whether the UCMJ limitations apply to retired generals drawing military pensions, which is true only in an academic, theoretical sense—no retired general has ever been court-martialed for anything under the UCMJ, let alone for political activity.)
But this is not the point Hanson is making. It’s just the opening for an invalid and hypocritical criticism wrapped in a history lesson, like a water chestnut is wrapped in bacon.
In the early days of the Trump administration, the president brought three retired generals—Mattis, John Kelly, and Michael Flynn—into his cabinet. Hiring Mattis required a special waiver, since federal law prohibits a general who has retired within the last seven years, as Mattis had, from serving as defense secretary—a policy put in place to protect the important principle of civilian control of the military. Congress, with both chambers then under Republican control, granted the waiver that the Trump administration sought.
So much for keeping the military out of politics.
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
Hanson is an ardent defender of President Trump, and he spent much of the last four years attempting to give a patina of erudition to Trumpism. No retired general, Hanson says, should violate the four rules that Hanson has just made up regarding “general decorum and common courtesy when our top retired military leaders go on the attack against a sitting president.”
Here are Hanson’s four rules:
One, a retired general need not under any circumstances stoop to invoke Nazi Germany, Hitler, or Fascism to criticize the current commander in chief. Two, any disparagement should not hint at any active resistance to, much less the removal of, an elected president other than through constitutionally mandated elections. Three, the condemnation should rest on clear factual evidence, not emotive anger or partisan disagreement. Four, there should be no semblance of coordination among retired military officers. They should avoid even the inadvertent appearance of a sudden chorus of like-minded retired military officers acting in concert to attack the policies of their current president with whom they disagree, and whom they disparage in personal terms.
Hanson describes his four rules as a set of “modest ethical expectations” that he says Trump’s critics who wore stars on their shoulders aren’t living up to. Of course, Hanson himself has spent the last few years pretending that ethics don’t matter when it comes to this president, so that’s neither here nor there.
It’s worth taking a moment to look at each of these four rules in turn, in the context of what Mattis wrote. (Again, here is a link to Mattis’s statement.)
First, Hanson believes it’s inappropriate for a retired general to “invoke Nazi Germany, Hitler, or Fascism” when criticizing a president. But here’s what Mattis wrote:
Instructions given by the military departments to our troops before the Normandy invasion reminded soldiers that “The Nazi slogan for destroying us . . . was ‘Divide and Conquer.’ Our American answer is ‘In Union there is Strength.’” We must summon that unity to surmount this crisis—confident that we are better than our politics. Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us.
And here’s Hanson’s response:
Could not Mattis, at a time of national tensions, have been more careful to choose another, less polarizing simile to reflect his charge that Trump was eroding U.S. unity in the fashion of the genocidal dictatorship of Adolf Hitler that threatened our troops at D-Day? And how exactly is an elected president emulating the divisiveness of the Nazis?
But technically, Mattis didn’t explicitly employ any simile at all, as Hanson, who is a careful reader, well knows. Mattis, quoting a sometimes-silly 1944 set of instructions to U.S. troops and sailors stationed in France, alludes to the Nazis only in quoting this passage, and then only to make the case for unity and against Trump’s divisiveness. And Hanson—who, again, is a careful reader—is disingenuous in accusing Mattis of saying Trump has been “emulating” the Nazis. Mattis says no such thing.
As for Hanson’s second rule, that a retired general shouldn’t “hint at any active resistance” or unconstitutional means of removing a president, Mattis hints at no such thing.
Hanson’s third rule—that a retired general’s critique of a sitting president “should rest on clear factual evidence, not emotive anger or partisan disagreement,” isn’t really applicable in Mattis’s case. It’s true that Mattis didn’t assemble a fact-laden lawyerly brief against the president. But that’s because the facts of the proximate cause for his critique of Trump were already widely known: last week’s incident at Lafayette Square, which just about every national news outlet covered. And no fair reader of Mattis’s statement would detect in it either “anger” or “partisan disagreement.”
Which brings us, finally, to Hanson’s fourth rule, which holds that even an “inadvertent appearance” of “coordination” among retired officers should be avoided when criticizing the president. It’s not hard to understand Hanson’s rationale for suggesting this rule. But how is it supposed to work in practice? Must a retired officer with serious concerns about a sitting president send an email to every other retired officer in his address book to make sure nobody else is thinking of going public with concerns around the same time? Maybe Hanson wants retired generals to fire up Zoom for a group chat to prevent a glut of complaints? Or maybe Slack or a listserv? In fact, the only way in practice to ensure no appearance of coordination—to really ensure it—is to have the reality of coordination behind the scenes. That is the perverse unintended consequence of Hanson’s fourth suggested rule.
To Hanson’s credit, his remarks are not the dumbest or most odious thing that has been said about James Mattis’s recent public statement. That trophy belongs to Hanson’s fellow American Greatness contributor Dr. Sebastian Gorka, Ph.D, who argues “Jim Mattis is no Marine.”
But it’s hard to take Hanson’s concerns seriously when you recall some of his silences over the last few years.
When retired Army general Michael Flynn—before he twice pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI—was one of President Trump’s most ardent defenders, where was Victor Davis Hanson?
When Gen. Flynn spoke at the 2016 Republican National Convention in Cleveland, and led a chant of “LOCK HER UP!”—where was Victor Davis Hanson?
What did he have to say about this retired general getting deeply, crassly, and ultimately ignominiously involved in politics? Where was Hanson’s policing of the borders of politics and the military then?
In my neighborhood—I live in the shadow of Quantico, the Marine base— my neighbors like the old saying “there’s no such thing as an ex-Marine.” I get it. Some say Marines never retire, but that’s not quite true. In the case of historians, though, maybe Hanson should consider it.


Quitting the WHO

On Monday , news outlets around the world reported that a World Health Organization ( WHO ) official described transmission of the coronavirus by “ asymptomatic ” individuals as “ very rare.
” This was shocking news , since risk of transmission by infected people who haven ’ t yet developed symptoms had previously been considered very high .
More than a third of infections , it had been understood , could be traced to interactions with someone who was infected but not yet experiencing symptoms .
Indeed , this was the rationale for so much of the regime of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ we ’ ve been living under .
Or , at any rate , it would have been shocking news if it were true .
Scientists around the world expressed surprise .
Reporters and policymakers scratched their heads .
And over the next few days , WHO scientists and spokesmen sought desperately to clarify and correct .
It seems that the WHO official had spoken imprecisely : The data suggests that transmission is very rare from people who are infected but who never develop symptoms .
But transmission is not at all rare among @ @ @ @ @ @ @ don ’ t yet have but will develop symptoms .
The days of confusion and doubt could entirely have been avoided .
It was a huge , high-stakes failure of scientific communication .
It was yet another blemish on the record of the WHO .
And it was a reason not to regret President Trump ’ s decision to suspend U.S. funding of the U.N. agency .
Explaining that decision in April , the president said that the WHO is badly managed , has become an arm of the Chinese Communist Party , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the pandemic .
Trump spent weeks praising the Chinese government for its handling of the coronavirus outbreak before belatedly awakening to the reality that both China and the WHO had made matters worse : The WHO helped the Chinese Communist Party cover up the facts of the pandemic in the early days .
One of its senior officials awkwardly refused to acknowledge Taiwan as a sovereign country or even talk about it .
The WHO ’ s director-general , Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus , is a Sinophile who has talked positively about the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ intention to engage China ’ s “ Belt and Road Initiative ” ( a geopolitical challenge to the Westerners who want to contain China ’ s growth ) .
Within days of his election , Tedros met with the Chinese health minister and reaffirmed his support for One China Policy ( which is relevant to the WHO only by the means of refusal to admit Taiwan ) .
A few months later , he released a statement on the WHO ’ s website about his new vision for a strengthened partnership between the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the WHO become a wholly owned subsidiary of the CCP ?
Trump might have known the answer to this question had he been paying attention earlier in his administration .
In 2017 , the World Health Assembly met to elect a new director-general for the WHO .
The assembly ’ s membership of 194 states is more or less the same as that of the United Nations .
Meaning that a large bulk of these members are third-world countries—most of which have corrupt governments and rely on foreign aid of one sort or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ years , the Chinese have been spreading money around and buying influence without the United States bothering to push back .
William & Mary College ’ s AidData project is the most comprehensive database of Chinese foreign aid doled out between 2000 and 2014 .
From 2000 to 2008 , the United States was the largest granter of foreign aid .
But from 2008 on , China surpassed America in grants to other countries .
And when you look at where the aid goes , the skewing looks larger than it at first @ @ @ @ @ @ @ foreign aid goes to five countries : Iraq , Afghanistan , Israel , Egypt , and Jordan .
China , on the other hand , spreads the wealth around .
Between 2000 and 2014 , Africa—the continent with the lowest income per capita and per nation and the greatest number of countries—received $ 354.3 billion in aid and investment from China , compared to the United States ’ s $ 394.6 billion .
But China ’ s investment rate , following the Belt and Road Initiative , has increased , while the United @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been either stagnant or declining since the Great Recession .
This means that since 2014 , China has been the greatest investor in Africa .
And that ’ s just Africa ; China is pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into Asia and Latin America , too .
In 2017 , when the votes were being cast for the new director-general , America ’ s secretary of state was busy firing seasoned diplomats and fighting with Congress to cut foreign aid ( a fight he ultimately lost ) .
At the same time @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 60 billion in Africa .
The president of the United States was insulting our Latin American friends , while China was settling on a five-year plan of $ 500 billion trade ( plus another $ 250 billion investment ) in Latin America .
China ’ s then-ambassador to the United Nations , Liu Jieyi , was a career diplomat .
The United States ’ s ambassador to the United Nations was a political show horse who had no foreign policy or diplomatic experience whatsoever .
The United States did not make any official @ @ @ @ @ @ @ head for the WHO , but there were rumors that the Trump administration favored the British candidate , Dr. David Nabarro .
In October 2017 , the Times of London reported that “ Chinese diplomats had campaigned hard for [ Tedros ] , using Beijing ’ s financial clout and opaque aid budget to build support for him among developing countries.
” Around the same time , a Washington Post reported noted the same thing , adding that China was trying hard to defeat Nabarro .
Should America have understood that Tedros was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Umm , yes ?
Shortly after taking over the WHO , he lavished praise on Zimbabwe ’ s monstrous dictator , Robert Mugabe—a longtime Chinese ally—before then appointing Mugabe a WHO “ goodwill ambassador.
” People who take governing and diplomacy seriously have long understood that personnel is policy .
Donald Trump does neither of those things .
There ’ s a common theme to the last three years : American politics and foreign policy have been in disarray .
Trump ’ s supporters seem to believe that this disarray is actually a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ put “ America First.
” But this year has made obvious the high cost of that disruption .
Because while America has spent the Trump years picking fights with its old allies , China has been making new ones .
And it turns out that allies are valuable after all .
For instance , America might have been saved a great deal of pain had it bothered to cultivate the necessary players to ensure that the WHO was a responsible organization .
Ideas have consequences , and one of the consequences of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that , in practice , it translates into “ America Alone.
” You can make do with that sort of posture when the world is calm .
But when a crisis hits , isolation is little more than an illusion .
American leadership has always been a hard bargain .
We pay a real price—in both blood and treasure—so that we can win allies , be seen as indispensable , and thus exercise some control over events .
To renounce our leadership , as Trump has done—quite on purpose—means relinquishing the measure of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Americans have purchased .
And , as President Trump has recently discovered , this , too , carries a price .
Withholding funds from the WHO is the right thing to do—but Trump picked a maximally bad time to do it : at the height of a global pandemic , when the world ’ s scientists are relying on the WHO ’ s data and expertise .
Done wisely , suspending funding could be part of a plan to regain some measure of control over—and encourage responsibility from—the organization .
At the end @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has only one vote in electing the organization ’ s lead ; we need the assistance of other nations in picking a competent director-general .
The way Trump has chosen to execute his move is merely a further U.S. retreat—creating a vacuum that China will fill .

On Monday, news outlets around the world reported that a World Health Organization (WHO) official described transmission of the coronavirus by “asymptomatic” individuals as “very rare.”
This was shocking news, since risk of transmission by infected people who haven’t yet developed symptoms had previously been considered very high. More than a third of infections, it had been understood, could be traced to interactions with someone who was infected but not yet experiencing symptoms. Indeed, this was the rationale for so much of the regime of the mask-wearing, physical-distancing, business-closing rules we’ve been living under.
Or, at any rate, it would have been shocking news if it were true. Scientists around the world expressed surprise. Reporters and policymakers scratched their heads. And over the next few days, WHO scientists and spokesmen sought desperately to clarify and correct. It seems that the WHO official had spoken imprecisely: The data suggests that transmission is very rare from people who are infected but who never develop symptoms. But transmission is not at all rare among people who are “pre-symptomatic”—who don’t yet have but will develop symptoms. The days of confusion and doubt could entirely have been avoided.
It was a huge, high-stakes failure of scientific communication. It was yet another blemish on the record of the WHO. And it was a reason not to regret President Trump’s decision to suspend U.S. funding of the U.N. agency.
Explaining that decision in April, the president said that the WHO is badly managed, has become an arm of the Chinese Communist Party, and bears some responsibility for the scope of the pandemic.
He’s correct on all counts.
Trump spent weeks praising the Chinese government for its handling of the coronavirus outbreak before belatedly awakening to the reality that both China and the WHO had made matters worse:
The W.H.O. really blew it. For some reason, funded largely by the United States, yet very China centric. We will be giving that a good look. Fortunately I rejected their advice on keeping our borders open to China early on. Why did they give us such a faulty recommendation? — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 7, 2020
The WHO helped the Chinese Communist Party cover up the facts of the pandemic in the early days. One of its senior officials awkwardly refused to acknowledge Taiwan as a sovereign country or even talk about it. The WHO’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, is a Sinophile who has talked positively about the rise of China and has expressed his intention to engage China’s “Belt and Road Initiative” (a geopolitical challenge to the Westerners who want to contain China’s growth). Within days of his election, Tedros met with the Chinese health minister and reaffirmed his support for One China Policy (which is relevant to the WHO only by the means of refusal to admit Taiwan). A few months later, he released a statement on the WHO’s website about his new vision for a strengthened partnership between the WHO and China.
So how did the WHO become a wholly owned subsidiary of the CCP?
Trump might have known the answer to this question had he been paying attention earlier in his administration.
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
In 2017, the World Health Assembly met to elect a new director-general for the WHO. The assembly’s membership of 194 states is more or less the same as that of the United Nations. Meaning that a large bulk of these members are third-world countries—most of which have corrupt governments and rely on foreign aid of one sort or another.
And for the last dozen years, the Chinese have been spreading money around and buying influence without the United States bothering to push back.
William & Mary College’s AidData project is the most comprehensive database of Chinese foreign aid doled out between 2000 and 2014. From 2000 to 2008, the United States was the largest granter of foreign aid. But from 2008 on, China surpassed America in grants to other countries.
And when you look at where the aid goes, the skewing looks larger than it at first appears: Roughly one-third of all U.S. foreign aid goes to five countries: Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel, Egypt, and Jordan. China, on the other hand, spreads the wealth around. Between 2000 and 2014, Africa—the continent with the lowest income per capita and per nation and the greatest number of countries—received $354.3 billion in aid and investment from China, compared to the United States’s $394.6 billion. But China’s investment rate, following the Belt and Road Initiative, has increased, while the United States’s investment and aid has been either stagnant or declining since the Great Recession. This means that since 2014, China has been the greatest investor in Africa. And that’s just Africa; China is pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into Asia and Latin America, too.
In 2017, when the votes were being cast for the new director-general, America’s secretary of state was busy firing seasoned diplomats and fighting with Congress to cut foreign aid (a fight he ultimately lost). At the same time, China was spending a pledged $60 billion in Africa.
The president of the United States was insulting our Latin American friends, while China was settling on a five-year plan of $500 billion trade (plus another $250 billion investment) in Latin America.
China’s then-ambassador to the United Nations, Liu Jieyi, was a career diplomat. The United States’s ambassador to the United Nations was a political show horse who had no foreign policy or diplomatic experience whatsoever.
The United States did not make any official endorsement in the decision for a new head for the WHO, but there were rumors that the Trump administration favored the British candidate, Dr. David Nabarro. In October 2017, the Times of London reported that “Chinese diplomats had campaigned hard for [Tedros], using Beijing’s financial clout and opaque aid budget to build support for him among developing countries.” Around the same time, a Washington Post noted the same thing, adding that China was trying hard to defeat Nabarro.
Should America have understood that Tedros was a bad actor from the start? Umm, yes? Shortly after taking over the WHO, he lavished praise on Zimbabwe’s monstrous dictator, Robert Mugabe—a longtime Chinese ally—before then appointing Mugabe a WHO “goodwill ambassador.”
People who take governing and diplomacy seriously have long understood that personnel is policy.
Donald Trump does neither of those things.
There’s a common theme to the last three years: American politics and foreign policy have been in disarray. Trump’s supporters seem to believe that this disarray is actually a good thing—“disruption” that has put “America First.” But this year has made obvious the high cost of that disruption. Because while America has spent the Trump years picking fights with its old allies, China has been making new ones.
And it turns out that allies are valuable after all. For instance, America might have been saved a great deal of pain had it bothered to cultivate the necessary players to ensure that the WHO was a responsible organization.
Ideas have consequences, and one of the consequences of the idea of “America First” is that, in practice, it translates into “America Alone.” You can make do with that sort of posture when the world is calm. But when a crisis hits, isolation is little more than an illusion.
American leadership has always been a hard bargain. We pay a real price—in both blood and treasure—so that we can win allies, be seen as indispensable, and thus exercise some control over events.
To renounce our leadership, as Trump has done—quite on purpose—means relinquishing the measure of control over events that a century of Americans have purchased.
And, as President Trump has recently discovered, this, too, carries a price.
Withholding funds from the WHO is the right thing to do—but Trump picked a maximally bad time to do it: at the height of a global pandemic, when the world’s scientists are relying on the WHO’s data and expertise. Done wisely, suspending funding could be part of a plan to regain some measure of control over—and encourage responsibility from—the organization. At the end of the day, however, America has only one vote in electing the organization’s lead; we need the assistance of other nations in picking a competent director-general. The way Trump has chosen to execute his move is merely a further U.S. retreat—creating a vacuum that China will fill.


thebulwark--2020-06-11--LOL Some Things Matter

LOL Some Things Matter

We thought it was a fixed feature of our new era .
We thought that objective reality didn ’ t matter anymore , if it even existed at all .
We thought we were so entrapped by our information silos that it was impossible for anything to penetrate .
“ LOL .
Nothing matters , ” ran the Twitter meme .
What we ’ ve learned in the past two weeks is that we were wrong .
Reality reasserts itself .
Minds can change .
Just weeks ago , Black Lives Matter was regarded as a fringe movement , a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but a vastly exaggerated one .
Today , the slogan emblazons 16th Street in front of the White House .
As Politico ’ s Tim Alberta reports , in 2014 , after Eric Garner was choked by police , only 33 percent of Americans—and only 26 percent of whites—believed that black people were more likely to be mistreated by police than others .
Today , 57 percent of Americans , including 49 percent of whites , believe police are more likely to use force against African Americans .
This week , the 2012 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with Black Lives Matter in Washington , D.C. A week before that , the last two-term Republican president released a statement using the term “ systemic racism , ” which curled the toes of some right-wing commentators but comports with the views of more than 80 percent of Americans .
An eyebrow-raising 29 percent of Republicans say President Trump has “ mostly increased ” racial tensions , along with 92 percent of Democrats and 73 percent of independents .
The Drudge Report , once a redoubt of Trump enthusiasm , hawked “ Justice @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the president tweeted “ When the looting starts , the shooting starts ” his approval rating among independents dropped 10 points , from 40 to 30 percent .
His handling of the Floyd murder aftermath has cost him even among Republicans , 83 percent of whom rated him favorably in May , compared with 90 percent in April .
White evangelical Christians , the constituency that inspired Trump ’ s Bible semaphore in front of St. John ’ s Church , have also soured a bit on the “ law and order ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ rated him favorably , down from 77 percent in April .
The country is executing a dramatic turn on questions of racial justice .
That vile video of depraved police suffocating a handcuffed man has penetrated our armor-plated opinion silos .
Coming after other high-profile outrages , it has ignited a movement .
And while some have allowed the moment to overwhelm their judgment , calling not just to reform the police but to “ abolish ” the police ( which will .
not .
happen . )
, it will be interesting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ party , because step by step , the party of Lincoln has permitted itself to become not racist but , let ’ s say , in denial about racism in its ranks .
Have a look at this email I received from Amanda Chase , the first announced Republican candidate for Virginia governor in 2021 .
“ Help me save the Robert E. Lee statue !
” she pleads .
That ’ s what the Republican Party of Virginia now stands for ?
Defending statues of Lee ?
Governor Ralph Northam ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from its perch in Richmond , she cries , is a “ surrender to looters and antifa.
” One extremist does not a party define .
But the Republican Party of Virginia previously nominated Corey Stewart for a U.S. Senate seat .
He defended the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville , and had previously made a name for himself by defending Confederate monuments , or “ taking back our heritage ” as he put it , which is odd , because Stewart grew up in Minnesota , the first state to send @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The Republican Party of Alabama nominated Roy Moore for the U.S. Senate in 2017 .
Aside from his alleged predation on young teenage girls , Moore was an enthusiastic “ birther.
” The Republican Party of Oregon has nominated Jo Rae Perkins , a promoter of the QAnon conspiracy , for the Senate .
The list goes on and on .
The alt-right and the nutty right have made inroads into the GOP with only occasional pushback , as when the Republican caucus denied committee assignments to defeated Iowa Rep. Steve “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” King .
The party of Lincoln has assented to the pardon of Joe Arpaio .
It found nothing much to say about the smearing of Mexicans as drug dealers and rapists .
When the president said an Indiana-born judge could not be fair because his parents were from Mexico , one prominent Republican , Paul Ryan , called that “ classic racism.
” He ’ s gone now .
When the president told four darker-skinned members of Congress to “ go back where you came from ” ( three were born here @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The Republican party has been led , by stages , out on a very thin ledge .
Most are not extremists or conspiracists or racists , but they look at their shoes and kick the dirt when those elements succeed in their party .
They ’ ve allowed their conscience muscles to atrophy .
Now the country is reevaluating questions of policing and race , finding previously elusive agreement on the need for reform , and exposing just how lost the Republican party has become .

We thought it was a fixed feature of our new era. We thought that objective reality didn’t matter anymore, if it even existed at all. We thought we were so entrapped by our information silos that it was impossible for anything to penetrate. “LOL. Nothing matters,” ran the Twitter meme.
What we’ve learned in the past two weeks is that we were wrong. Reality reasserts itself. Minds can change. Just weeks ago, Black Lives Matter was regarded as a fringe movement, a response to a real problem perhaps, but a vastly exaggerated one. Today, the slogan emblazons 16th Street in front of the White House. As Politico’s Tim Alberta reports, in 2014, after Eric Garner was choked by police, only 33 percent of Americans—and only 26 percent of whites—believed that black people were more likely to be mistreated by police than others. Today, 57 percent of Americans, including 49 percent of whites, believe police are more likely to use force against African Americans.
This week, the 2012 Republican nominee for president marched in solidarity with Black Lives Matter in Washington, D.C. A week before that, the last two-term Republican president released a statement using the term “systemic racism,” which curled the toes of some right-wing commentators but comports with the views of more than 80 percent of Americans. An eyebrow-raising 29 percent of Republicans say President Trump has “mostly increased” racial tensions, along with 92 percent of Democrats and 73 percent of independents. The Drudge Report, once a redoubt of Trump enthusiasm, hawked “Justice for George Floyd” t-shirts.
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
After the president tweeted “When the looting starts, the shooting starts” his approval rating among independents dropped 10 points, from 40 to 30 percent. His handling of the Floyd murder aftermath has cost him even among Republicans, 83 percent of whom rated him favorably in May, compared with 90 percent in April. White evangelical Christians, the constituency that inspired Trump’s Bible semaphore in front of St. John’s Church, have also soured a bit on the “law and order” president. In May, 62 percent rated him favorably, down from 77 percent in April.
The country is executing a dramatic turn on questions of racial justice. That vile video of depraved police suffocating a handcuffed man has penetrated our armor-plated opinion silos. Coming after other high-profile outrages, it has ignited a movement. And while some have allowed the moment to overwhelm their judgment, calling not just to reform the police but to “abolish” the police (which will. not. happen.), it will be interesting to see where this leaves the Republican party, because step by step, the party of Lincoln has permitted itself to become not racist but, let’s say, in denial about racism in its ranks.
Have a look at this email I received from Amanda Chase, the first announced Republican candidate for Virginia governor in 2021. “Help me save the Robert E. Lee statue!” she pleads. That’s what the Republican Party of Virginia now stands for? Defending statues of Lee? Governor Ralph Northam’s decision to remove Lee’s statue from its perch in Richmond, she cries, is a “surrender to looters and antifa.”
One extremist does not a party define. But the Republican Party of Virginia previously nominated Corey Stewart for a U.S. Senate seat. He defended the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, and had previously made a name for himself by defending Confederate monuments, or “taking back our heritage” as he put it, which is odd, because Stewart grew up in Minnesota, the first state to send volunteers to quell the rebellion in 1861.
The Republican Party of Alabama nominated Roy Moore for the U.S. Senate in 2017. Aside from his alleged predation on young teenage girls, Moore was an enthusiastic “birther.” The Republican Party of Oregon has nominated Jo Rae Perkins, a promoter of the QAnon conspiracy, for the Senate.
The list goes on and on. The alt-right and the nutty right have made inroads into the GOP with only occasional pushback, as when the Republican caucus denied committee assignments to defeated Iowa Rep. Steve “When Did White Supremacy Become Offensive?” King.
The party of Lincoln has assented to the pardon of Joe Arpaio. It found nothing much to say about the smearing of Mexicans as drug dealers and rapists. When the president said an Indiana-born judge could not be fair because his parents were from Mexico, one prominent Republican, Paul Ryan, called that “classic racism.” He’s gone now. When the president told four darker-skinned members of Congress to “go back where you came from” (three were born here), the Republican party was mum.
The Republican party has been led, by stages, out on a very thin ledge. Most are not extremists or conspiracists or racists, but they look at their shoes and kick the dirt when those elements succeed in their party. They’ve allowed their conscience muscles to atrophy. Now the country is reevaluating questions of policing and race, finding previously elusive agreement on the need for reform, and exposing just how lost the Republican party has become.


thebulwark--2020-06-12--Where is the DOJ Civil Rights Division?

Where is the DOJ Civil Rights Division?

For once , Attorney General Bill Barr said the right thing .
In a press conference on June 4 , he addressed the brutal killing of George Floyd : As we typically do in cases such as this , the Department of Justice is conducting a parallel and independent investigation into possible violations of federal civil rights laws .
.
.
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I am meeting later this month with the Commission [ on Law Enforcement ] and have been talking with law enforcement leaders around the country .
In the weeks and months ahead , we will be working with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that Mr. Floyd ’ s death will not have been in vain .
We will work hard to help bring good out of bad .
Unfortunately , the rest of Barr ’ s speech focused on combating the violence that has accompanied protests over Floyd ’ s death—not the violence of law enforcement , but the outbreaks of looting and vandalism .
These acts of destruction shouldn ’ t be defended , but in the context of what ’ s actually going on in the country , Barr ’ s speech amounts to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and a nightstick .
Barr is focused on the wrong offenses and the wrong offenders , and , as is his pattern , he ’ s acting much more like a political operative than like a responsible leader of the Justice Department .
Looting , vandalism , and even assault are all state crimes , not the responsibility of the Justice Department or the attorney general .
( Rioting can , in certain instances , be a federal crime , but even senior Justice Department officials are quick to grant that the statute @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and must be interpreted and applied carefully . )
Even if it ’ s salutary for the nation ’ s chief law-enforcement officer to use his stature and authority to decry violence , Barr went several steps further , pledging that “ federal law enforcement efforts are focused on the violent instigators.
” Reinforcing the Defense Department ’ s push to “ dominate the battlespace ” is exactly the wrong tack for the Justice Department to be on as police-initiated violence around the country gets more visible and intense .
Unlike other Cabinet @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the DOJ is well equipped to take on systemic police violence .
Moreover , policing the police is a core reason the DOJ exists in the first place .
While the office of the attorney general dates from the Judiciary Act of 1789 , the Department of Justice wasn ’ t created until 1870 .
Formed amid Reconstruction , its first tasks were to enforce the 13th , 14th , and 15th Amendments .
The key provision of the 14th Amendment , then and now , is its mandate that In other @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with defending the civil rights of newly freed African Americans from infractions committed by the states .
The Civil Rights Act of 1957 recommitted the Justice Department to oversight of state and local law enforcement by creating the Civil Rights Division , which “ works to uphold the civil and constitutional rights of all Americans , particularly some of the most vulnerable members of our society.
” Now would seem like a particularly busy time for the Civil Rights Division , considering how frequently images of Americans being bullied , beaten , tear-gassed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ First Amendment rights have become in the past few weeks .
Barr ’ s promise of an “ independent investigation into possible violations of federal civil rights laws ” would , therefore , seem entirely appropriate .
Except that pledge wasn ’ t all that it seemed .
In an interview on Sunday , Barr clarified that he meant that his department would investigate the ( alleged ) murder of George Floyd as a discrete event , which may have had some ramifications for federal civil rights laws .
Barr categorically ruled out @ @ @ @ @ @ @ corruption or abuses in the entire Minneapolis Police Department—which , as Jonathan V. Last has noted in The Bulwark , systematically covered for the accused officers .
It certainly seems like the police department in Buffalo could use some examination as well .
All 57 members of the department ’ s Emergency Response Unit allegedly resigned from that unit in solidarity with two officers who violently shoved a 75-year-old man to the ground .
Some of Buffalo ’ s “ finest ” have disputed the motivation for the mass resignation .
When the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a crowd of over 100 police officers and firefighters protested outside the Buffalo courthouse .
If that doesn ’ t call for a “ pattern-or-practice ” investigation , it should .
But this would be a slippery slope for Barr , who continues to defend the actions of federal law enforcement officers under his command using tear gas and rubber grenades without proper warning against peaceful protesters in Lafayette Square .
The trail of police violence leads right back to him .
( In his own defense , Barr denies that he gave @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but merely helped form the plan .
He also maintains that “ They were not peaceful protesters.
” They must have hurt him with their words . )
It would seem that a man who takes such clear pleasure in overseeing , investigating , second-guessing , and replacing law enforcement personnel and offices within the Department of Justice would leap at the opportunity to do the same to states and municipalities .
Especially since doing so is a core responsibility of his department .

For once, Attorney General Bill Barr said the right thing. In a press conference on June 4, he addressed the brutal killing of George Floyd:
As we typically do in cases such as this, the Department of Justice is conducting a parallel and independent investigation into possible violations of federal civil rights laws. . . . I am meeting later this month with the Commission [on Law Enforcement] and have been talking with law enforcement leaders around the country. In the weeks and months ahead, we will be working with community leaders to find constructive solutions so that Mr. Floyd’s death will not have been in vain. We will work hard to help bring good out of bad.
Unfortunately, the rest of Barr’s speech focused on combating the violence that has accompanied protests over Floyd’s death—not the violence of law enforcement, but the outbreaks of looting and vandalism.
These acts of destruction shouldn’t be defended, but in the context of what’s actually going on in the country, Barr’s speech amounts to little more than whataboutism with a badge and a nightstick. Barr is focused on the wrong offenses and the wrong offenders, and, as is his pattern, he’s acting much more like a political operative than like a responsible leader of the Justice Department.
Looting, vandalism, and even assault are all state crimes, not the responsibility of the Justice Department or the attorney general. (Rioting can, in certain instances, be a federal crime, but even senior Justice Department officials are quick to grant that the statute has some friction with the First Amendment and must be interpreted and applied carefully.) Even if it’s salutary for the nation’s chief law-enforcement officer to use his stature and authority to decry violence, Barr went several steps further, pledging that “federal law enforcement efforts are focused on the violent instigators.”
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
Reinforcing the Defense Department’s push to “dominate the battlespace” is exactly the wrong tack for the Justice Department to be on as police-initiated violence around the country gets more visible and intense. Unlike other Cabinet departments tasked with enforcement of state laws, the DOJ is well equipped to take on systemic police violence. Moreover, policing the police is a core reason the DOJ exists in the first place.
While the office of the attorney general dates from the Judiciary Act of 1789, the Department of Justice wasn’t created until 1870. Formed amid Reconstruction, its first tasks were to enforce the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. The key provision of the 14th Amendment, then and now, is its mandate that
No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.
In other words, the Justice Department was tasked with defending the civil rights of newly freed African Americans from infractions committed by the states.
The Civil Rights Act of 1957 recommitted the Justice Department to oversight of state and local law enforcement by creating the Civil Rights Division, which “works to uphold the civil and constitutional rights of all Americans, particularly some of the most vulnerable members of our society.”
Now would seem like a particularly busy time for the Civil Rights Division, considering how frequently images of Americans being bullied, beaten, tear-gassed, and even arrested for exercising their First Amendment rights have become in the past few weeks. Barr’s promise of an “independent investigation into possible violations of federal civil rights laws” would, therefore, seem entirely appropriate.
Except that pledge wasn’t all that it seemed.
In an interview on Sunday, Barr clarified that he meant that his department would investigate the (alleged) murder of George Floyd as a discrete event, which may have had some ramifications for federal civil rights laws. Barr categorically ruled out a “pattern-or-practice” review of systemic corruption or abuses in the entire Minneapolis Police Department—which, as Jonathan V. Last has noted in The Bulwark, systematically covered for the accused officers.
It certainly seems like the police department in Buffalo could use some examination as well. All 57 members of the department’s Emergency Response Unit allegedly resigned from that unit in solidarity with two officers who violently shoved a 75-year-old man to the ground. Some of Buffalo’s “finest” have disputed the motivation for the mass resignation. When the officers were charged with felony assault, a crowd of over 100 police officers and firefighters protested outside the Buffalo courthouse. If that doesn’t call for a “pattern-or-practice” investigation, it should.
But this would be a slippery slope for Barr, who continues to defend the actions of federal law enforcement officers under his command using tear gas and rubber grenades without proper warning against peaceful protesters in Lafayette Square. The trail of police violence leads right back to him. (In his own defense, Barr denies that he gave the order to clear Lafayette Square, but merely helped form the plan. He also maintains that “They were not peaceful protesters.” They must have hurt him with their words.)
It would seem that a man who takes such clear pleasure in overseeing, investigating, second-guessing, and replacing law enforcement personnel and offices within the Department of Justice would leap at the opportunity to do the same to states and municipalities. Especially since doing so is a core responsibility of his department.


This Means War!

Is the United States about to descend into a new Cold War with China ?
Many think so , judging by now-common language usage .
Flash conclusion : When Hegel ( not my favorite dead white male ) said that the only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history , he was not just whistling Dixie .
The actual answer to the question depends on what you think the phrase “ Cold War ” means .
Sufficiently dumbed down , any great power relationship can become a “ Cold War ” if it means merely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ But if “ Cold War ” still means what it meant as a standard description of U.S.-Soviet rivalry between roughly 1947 and 1989 , then the answer to the question is “ no.
” We have a perfectly serviceable word to describe competitive great power relationships : rivalry .
So why reject a simple , accurate term in favor of more ornate but inaccurate language ?
And what does the ubiquity of so doing tell us about the sort of reality the American and wider Western political chatterati now inhabit ?
The Cold @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the term “ Cold War ” was one Bernard Baruch , a legendary figure of 20th-century American politics .
He did it on April 16 , 1947 , in a speech to the South Carolina House of Delegates , where a portrait of the great man had just been unveiled .
About five months later another legendary figure of the times , Walter Lippmann , used Baruch ’ s locution in his New York Herald Tribune column and the rest , as they say , is history .
Before long , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were to accompany its use for the next forty-some years .
Three such characteristics , beyond the obvious fact that nuclear weapons made a major “ hot ” U.S.-Soviet war unlikely , were key .
The first was that the Soviet Union was for practical purposes a peer-competitor of the United States .
China may soon become a peer-competitor , especially if the quality and the coherence of the American state continue to decay .
But it ’ s not there yet , despite having capabilities in certain circumscribed technological and military domains @ @ @ @ @ @ @ United States .
Second , the Cold War featured an unmistakable ideological dimension .
Key leaders really believed that the stakes of the competition were philosophical , if not theological , at the highest level .
The Cold War was never just ideological , and the ideological aspects were sometimes exaggerated to sell the costs and sacrifices of the struggle to dubious populations , especially in the West .
But the ideological dimension was real enough , on both sides .
Notwithstanding many recent claims to the contrary , no such dimension to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is a deep , culture-based difference between preferences for liberal democratic as opposed to autocratic styles of leadership .
But Chinese political elites evince no ambition to “ convert ” the world at large to their form of socioeconomic organization .
Chinese exceptionalism is the inverse of American exceptionalism .
Ours says we ’ re special but others can be and ought to be like us .
Chinese exceptionalism says we ’ re special and no one can be like us .
The projected outcome of the rivalry thus lacks any pretense of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ when Mike Pompeo mutters about a supposed Chinese quest for “ international domination ” one doesn ’ t know whether to grab a wet mop or call a psychiatrist .
Third and most important , the geopolitics of Cold War competition involved blocs , not just two superpower states .
This mattered for several reasons .
One power could advance in the competition by adding to its own bloc or by peeling off a member of the opposing bloc .
Bloc maintenance therefore became a core policy concern of both sides .
Different @ @ @ @ @ @ @ blocs , as well as different third-party political motives for joining one or staying shy of both , gave the Cold War a dimensional fluidity on a scale that made it possible to conceptualize it as a global system .
Peripheral strategies , too , were both possible and “ safer ” than direct ones , enabling Moscow and Washington to “ play ” the competition without betting the entire pot on every hand .
Peripheral strategies sometimes turned “ hot , ” as in Korea and Vietnam , but tacitly understood firebreaks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ obviated hegemonic war .
These conditions of peripheral zone competition do not characterize the current state of U.S.-Chinese relations except to a pale degree , and the main reason is that there is not and never has been a Chinese bloc .
Nor is there a Russian one anymore , even though the phrase “ new Cold War ” occasionally gets trotted out to ( mis ) characterize that rivalry , too .
Russia lost all the Warsaw Pact countries as bloc members , as well as the USSR ’ s former fake @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Near Abroad .
Its only state allies today are Syria and , to lesser and mixed degrees , countries like Cuba , Venezuela , Iran , and North Korea .
China ’ s bloc ?
Cambodia ?
Some bloc .
The U.S. bloc has also changed dramatically .
Thanks largely to the disappearance of the Soviet Cold War-era bloc , U.S. allied relationships in Europe have attenuated on every level .
The hub-and-spokes nature of the U.S. alliance system in Asia has never been as tightly integrated as NATO nor as culturally aligned @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ t wage a “ new Cold War ” against China until they get themselves a bloc and we put ours properly together .
Neither condition is likely to be fulfilled anytime soon .
Finally in this regard , the two Cold War protagonists and their respective blocs were economically isolated from one another for the most part .
That is not remotely true today , and even a significant post-COVID reconfiguration of the global economy will not produce the kind of stereo autarky between democratic and authoritarian states that characterized the Cold @ @ @ @ @ @ @ like your father ’ s Cold War ; not remotely close enough to merit the label .
Far more likely than a “ new Cold War , ” unfortunately , is a new hot war , a real war between the United States and China , accidentally triggered by misunderstanding and hubris between two unstable leaderships .
Is Dealing with COVID-19 Like Fighting a War ?
If the phrase “ new Cold War ” doesn ’ t fit the U.S.-Chinese rivalry , neither does likening the challenge of COVID-19 to fighting a war @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of course , is ubiquitous .
The head of the World Health Organization , Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus , has used the “ war ” metaphor .
So have Presidents Trump and Xi .
So have Emmanuel Macron and Boris Johnson .
One could go on .
Sometimes the war metaphor can be helpful if authors , for example , are trying to bestir people out of an ideologically self-induced torpor .
Or if they are trying to raise morale and induce a greater degree of social unity and trust .
Presumably , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to do something of that kind in the “ war on poverty , ” the “ war on drugs , ” the “ war on terror , ” and all the other wayward efforts to finally fulfill William James ’ s 1910 charge to find the moral equivalent of war .
But most uses are as manifestly thoughtless and misleading as are casual uses of “ new Cold War , ” and it is easy to see why .
You win wars by wielding violence .
You beat pandemics by wielding medical science @ @ @ @ @ @ @ leadership .
You win wars by dominating adversaries .
You beat pandemics , often enough , by cooperating selectively with those who may otherwise be adversaries .
Sometimes wars do not end in complete victory but as negotiated compromises ; and even battlefield victories require diplomats to render them into peace anew .
There is no negotiating with a virus .
The problem with war is as much and usually more the aggressive or mad intentions of the attacker as it is the implements of violence used on a battlefield .
A pandemic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ those of a sentient adversary ; a virus doesn ’ t really “ attack ” anyone , so it can not be fought as if it had a conscious strategy .
Above all , you can win a war by defeating discrete enemies .
You can ’ t really beat a global pandemic until everyone beats it .
It is exactly as former President George W. Bush put it recently : “ We are not partisan combatants .
We are human beings , equally vulnerable and equally wonderful in the sight of God @ @ @ @ @ @ @ There may be a special reason for the misuse of language in a crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic : emotional derangement .
In the heat of a novel threat to life and limb many people lose their bearings .
A sign of the condition is the warping of the subjective perception of time .
Those who have been enduring lockdowns of varying degrees , those experiencing the kind of waiting that Carlos Ruiz Zafón has called “ the rust of the soul , ” often complain that time is impossibly passing slower and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ collision of language and time out-of-shape testify to the case .
Thus David Wroblewski , in The Story of Edgar Sawtelle : Even better is David Mitchell ’ s description of language vacuums in Cloud Atlas : We get a pandemic described as a war , most likely , because the language of war is ready at hand while anything more thoughtful eludes capture in the discombobulated moment .
All this , whether concerning the misuse of the “ Cold War ” metaphor or the inappropriate cramming of war language into the COVID-19 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to think about it .
So should we conclude , then , that those throwing around war language as if there were no tomorrow have in fact never alit upon any of the simple points just laid out ?
Could that be ?
Well it is .
Just recently Wisconsin Congressman Mike Gallagher , a former Marine intelligence officer , affirmed the Cold War language and claimed it to be a good thing .
He did acknowledge that some “ public intellectuals ” like Richard Haass and Robert Zoellick have averred that it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ That level of conversation , for or against speaking of Sino-U.S. rivalry as a Cold War , simply assumes the fit of the language .
It never questions whether doing so , one way or another , is accurate or useful .
Does Gallagher parse the differing ideological element ?
No .
Does he mention the bloc-like character of the Cold War , and the stark contrast with Sino-U.S. rivalry ?
Not a single word .
Does he mention the difference in the economic relationship ?
Just barely .
It ’ s good @ @ @ @ @ @ @ works as an intelligence officer .
The lazy use of language is the smoke that invariably indicates an underlying fire of lazy thinking .
It warns of conflation , the stepchild of ignorance , over distinction , the scion of discernment .
I ’ m no fan of Herbert Spencer , whose bicentennial was this past April 27 .
It ’ s not easy to think of another intellectual celebrity who lived so long that he was able to be harmfully wrong about so many things .
Withal , when Spencer wrote , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thoughts , ” he was dead right .
We needn ’ t rely only on Spencer for this insight .
Ralph Waldo Emerson taught a variation on the theme : “ The corruption of man is followed by the corruption of language.
” In this formulation , dishonest speech invariably points to dishonest antecedent deeds , whether literal or merely intellectual .
So too when Chinese historians refer to “ the rectification of names ” when one dynasty passes away and another takes its place , they indicate that accrued language corruption from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to be set straight if the future is to redeem a regretted past .
Join these warnings together and we have a dialectic that defines the problem in its fullness : Corrupt , dishonest people invariably use corrupt , dishonest language , and dishonest or merely lazy language misleads those who innocently hear it .
Left to spin downward for long enough , the spiral of communicative incoherence will make clarity of thought and hence constructive collective effort of any kind impossible .
Every major episode of deranged language fronting for deranged thought @ @ @ @ @ @ @ suited to the occasion : Confusion and destruction ultimately follow in train .
Let me suggest an explanation for the headlong language laziness we see burgeoning around us .
If you are reading this far into this essay , it means you are deep literate .
You know how to engage with a text that is more than a list , a rant , or , God forbid , a legal document .
You are bringing to bear on this text your own learning and experience .
You are engaged in an unnatural @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Socratic dialectic with a decontextualized author , me .
Decontextualized ?
Yes : Your engagement with this essay can be occurring a week , a year , or a century after I wrote it , and it can be occurring anywhere you happen to be and I am not .
You are thus left with the abstraction of language , and the experience of dealing with it has at least three indirect effects on you in rough proportion to the energy and time you devote : It sharpens your capacity for inferential reasoning @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and hence deepens your reservoir of empathy ; and it stimulates your imagination and thus aids your ability to plan and predict .
From all that your sense of interiority deepens ; your narrator , the silent you in your head , matures .
Your mind gains texture , enabling you to see angles of and about relationships you would otherwise miss for lack of practiced facility with conceptual thought .
What of those who don ’ t deep read , or who used to but have now gotten sucked into the new @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Z patterns ?
They are the contemporary incarnation of Nietzsche ’ s bad readers , those who “ proceed like plundering soldiers : they pick up a few things they use , soil and confuse the rest , and blaspheme the whole.
” What of those people—whether without college educations or , increasingly , with them—who really don ’ t read at all beyond clipped email and Twitter texts , photo captions , and lists , but instead watch television or incessantly surf the shallower pools of the internet ?
Their vocabularies either @ @ @ @ @ @ @ decays , and their capacity to slow down long enough to really understand a problem or truly feel an emotion is trivialized .
They become , often enough , addicted to distraction , and when that happens it is not a stretch to conclude that , strictly speaking , they can no longer actually think , straight or otherwise .
Those unable to think often become anxious when confronted with a problem they can not understand well enough to solve or manage .
Anxiety can lead to depression , cynicism , and passivity @ @ @ @ @ @ @ anger , disorientation to reality , and even to violence .
For some it can lead , too , to a longing for the proverbial man on the white horse to come along and make it all right again .
For others it can lead to different forms of desperation and illusion , often expressed in apocalyptical religious terms .
Under such conditions , even for those who manipulate symbols for a living , concern for precision with language becomes more than many can handle .
New Cold War , old Cold War @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a war , an opportunity to improve a broken world—who cares ?
Today ’ s commercial electronic media certainly pose no barrier to the decline of expression and hence thinking .
Obviously , the term “ Cold War ” is more resonant , glitzier , and attention-arresting than the words “ rivalry ” or “ competition.
” It conjures whole boatloads of images and backlisted feelings .
The fact that it is misleading does not diminish the temptation to wave it about in dumbed-down form , even if the would-be waver dimly @ @ @ @ @ @ @ right .
Attracting attention in our clickbait-driven media environment always trumps—pardon the expression—precision and intellectual probity .
It would be churlish to scold emotionally afflicted people ; they have enough trouble to deal with as it is .
But is it really too much to ask those who have had the privilege of good educations to take better care with how they use language ?
It ’ s much too late to stop the “ new Cold War ” foolishness ; that jackass is long since out of the barn and roams freely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ come .
So yes , of course—to quote from a certain 1933 film , “ This means war—war , I tell you !
” As was not the case in the film , it will be a protracted war we must fight with patience , kindness , empathy , and tact .
But fight it we must , for it we fail to achieve the rectification of names , there ’ ll be little hope of achieving the rectification of brains .
Then regrettable pasts will not be redeemed ; they will be @ @ @ @ @ @ @ attractive aspects repeated .

Is the United States about to descend into a new Cold War with China? Many think so, judging by now-common language usage. Flash conclusion: When Hegel (not my favorite dead white male) said that the only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history, he was not just whistling Dixie.
The actual answer to the question depends on what you think the phrase “Cold War” means. Sufficiently dumbed down, any great power relationship can become a “Cold War” if it means merely a competition short of outright bloodletting. But if “Cold War” still means what it meant as a standard description of U.S.-Soviet rivalry between roughly 1947 and 1989, then the answer to the question is “no.”
We have a perfectly serviceable word to describe competitive great power relationships: rivalry. So why reject a simple, accurate term in favor of more ornate but inaccurate language? And what does the ubiquity of so doing tell us about the sort of reality the American and wider Western political chatterati now inhabit?
The Cold War As It Actually Was
The coiner of the term “Cold War” was one Bernard Baruch, a legendary figure of 20th-century American politics. He did it on April 16, 1947, in a speech to the South Carolina House of Delegates, where a portrait of the great man had just been unveiled. About five months later another legendary figure of the times, Walter Lippmann, used Baruch’s locution in his New York Herald Tribune column and the rest, as they say, is history. Before long, the phrase took on the specific characteristics that were to accompany its use for the next forty-some years. Three such characteristics, beyond the obvious fact that nuclear weapons made a major “hot” U.S.-Soviet war unlikely, were key.
The first was that the Soviet Union was for practical purposes a peer-competitor of the United States. China may soon become a peer-competitor, especially if the quality and the coherence of the American state continue to decay. But it’s not there yet, despite having capabilities in certain circumscribed technological and military domains that match or exceed those of the United States.
Second, the Cold War featured an unmistakable ideological dimension. Key leaders really believed that the stakes of the competition were philosophical, if not theological, at the highest level. The Cold War was never just ideological, and the ideological aspects were sometimes exaggerated to sell the costs and sacrifices of the struggle to dubious populations, especially in the West. But the ideological dimension was real enough, on both sides.
Notwithstanding many recent claims to the contrary, no such dimension to the present U.S.-Chinese rivalry exists. There is a deep, culture-based difference between preferences for liberal democratic as opposed to autocratic styles of leadership. But Chinese political elites evince no ambition to “convert” the world at large to their form of socioeconomic organization. Chinese exceptionalism is the inverse of American exceptionalism. Ours says we’re special but others can be and ought to be like us. Chinese exceptionalism says we’re special and no one can be like us. The projected outcome of the rivalry thus lacks any pretense of cosmic creedal overtones, which is why when Mike Pompeo mutters about a supposed Chinese quest for “international domination” one doesn’t know whether to grab a wet mop or call a psychiatrist.
Third and most important, the geopolitics of Cold War competition involved blocs, not just two superpower states. This mattered for several reasons.
One power could advance in the competition by adding to its own bloc or by peeling off a member of the opposing bloc. Bloc maintenance therefore became a core policy concern of both sides. Different levels of military integration within the two blocs, as well as different third-party political motives for joining one or staying shy of both, gave the Cold War a dimensional fluidity on a scale that made it possible to conceptualize it as a global system.
Peripheral strategies, too, were both possible and “safer” than direct ones, enabling Moscow and Washington to “play” the competition without betting the entire pot on every hand. Peripheral strategies sometimes turned “hot,” as in Korea and Vietnam, but tacitly understood firebreaks between proxy wars and direct strategic engagement obviated hegemonic war.
These conditions of peripheral zone competition do not characterize the current state of U.S.-Chinese relations except to a pale degree, and the main reason is that there is not and never has been a Chinese bloc. Nor is there a Russian one anymore, even though the phrase “new Cold War” occasionally gets trotted out to (mis)characterize that rivalry, too. Russia lost all the Warsaw Pact countries as bloc members, as well as the USSR’s former fake constituent republics that now constitute its so-called Near Abroad. Its only state allies today are Syria and, to lesser and mixed degrees, countries like Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, and North Korea. China’s bloc? Cambodia? Some bloc.
The U.S. bloc has also changed dramatically. Thanks largely to the disappearance of the Soviet Cold War-era bloc, U.S. allied relationships in Europe have attenuated on every level. The hub-and-spokes nature of the U.S. alliance system in Asia has never been as tightly integrated as NATO nor as culturally aligned with the American metropole. We can’t wage a “new Cold War” against China until they get themselves a bloc and we put ours properly together. Neither condition is likely to be fulfilled anytime soon.
Finally in this regard, the two Cold War protagonists and their respective blocs were economically isolated from one another for the most part. That is not remotely true today, and even a significant post-COVID reconfiguration of the global economy will not produce the kind of stereo autarky between democratic and authoritarian states that characterized the Cold War.
New Cold War? Not like your father’s Cold War; not remotely close enough to merit the label. Far more likely than a “new Cold War,” unfortunately, is a new hot war, a real war between the United States and China, accidentally triggered by misunderstanding and hubris between two unstable leaderships.
Is Dealing with COVID-19 Like Fighting a War?
If the phrase “new Cold War” doesn’t fit the U.S.-Chinese rivalry, neither does likening the challenge of COVID-19 to fighting a war make sense either.
The meme, of course, is ubiquitous. The head of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, has used the “war” metaphor. So have Presidents Trump and Xi. So have Emmanuel Macron and Boris Johnson. One could go on.
Sometimes the war metaphor can be helpful if authors, for example, are trying to bestir people out of an ideologically self-induced torpor. Or if they are trying to raise morale and induce a greater degree of social unity and trust. Presumably, the misuse of the war metaphor was designed to do something of that kind in the “war on poverty,” the “war on drugs,” the “war on terror,” and all the other wayward efforts to finally fulfill William James’s 1910 charge to find the moral equivalent of war.
But most uses are as manifestly thoughtless and misleading as are casual uses of “new Cold War,” and it is easy to see why.
You win wars by wielding violence. You beat pandemics by wielding medical science, social trust, and calm reassuring leadership.
You win wars by dominating adversaries. You beat pandemics, often enough, by cooperating selectively with those who may otherwise be adversaries.
Sometimes wars do not end in complete victory but as negotiated compromises; and even battlefield victories require diplomats to render them into peace anew. There is no negotiating with a virus.
The problem with war is as much and usually more the aggressive or mad intentions of the attacker as it is the implements of violence used on a battlefield. A pandemic has no agency or intentions comparable to those of a sentient adversary; a virus doesn’t really “attack” anyone, so it cannot be fought as if it had a conscious strategy.
Above all, you can win a war by defeating discrete enemies. You can’t really beat a global pandemic until everyone beats it. It is exactly as former President George W. Bush put it recently: “We are not partisan combatants. We are human beings, equally vulnerable and equally wonderful in the sight of God. We rise or fall together.”
There may be a special reason for the misuse of language in a crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic: emotional derangement. In the heat of a novel threat to life and limb many people lose their bearings. A sign of the condition is the warping of the subjective perception of time.
Those who have been enduring lockdowns of varying degrees, those experiencing the kind of waiting that Carlos Ruiz Zafón has called “the rust of the soul,” often complain that time is impossibly passing slower and faster simultaneously. Literary observations about the collision of language and time out-of-shape testify to the case. Thus David Wroblewski, in The Story of Edgar Sawtelle:
He felt he could do nothing until he had the right words, but the ones that came to mind only captured what he had been thinking, trailing his real thoughts like the tail of a meteor.
Even better is David Mitchell’s description of language vacuums in Cloud Atlas:
Sometimes the fluffy bunny of incredulity zooms round the bend so rapidly that the greyhound of language is left, agog, in the starting cage.
We get a pandemic described as a war, most likely, because the language of war is ready at hand while anything more thoughtful eludes capture in the discombobulated moment.
All this, whether concerning the misuse of the “Cold War” metaphor or the inappropriate cramming of war language into the COVID-19 portfolio, is obvious once one stops to think about it. So should we conclude, then, that those throwing around war language as if there were no tomorrow have in fact never alit upon any of the simple points just laid out? Could that be?
Well it is. Just recently Wisconsin Congressman Mike Gallagher, a former Marine intelligence officer, affirmed the Cold War language and claimed it to be a good thing. He did acknowledge that some “public intellectuals” like Richard Haass and Robert Zoellick have averred that it’s not a good thing. That level of conversation, for or against speaking of Sino-U.S. rivalry as a Cold War, simply assumes the fit of the language. It never questions whether doing so, one way or another, is accurate or useful. Does Gallagher parse the differing ideological element? No. Does he mention the bloc-like character of the Cold War, and the stark contrast with Sino-U.S. rivalry? Not a single word. Does he mention the difference in the economic relationship? Just barely. It’s good, perhaps, that Gallagher no longer works as an intelligence officer.
Language, Literacy, and Thought
The lazy use of language is the smoke that invariably indicates an underlying fire of lazy thinking. It warns of conflation, the stepchild of ignorance, over distinction, the scion of discernment. I’m no fan of Herbert Spencer, whose bicentennial was this past April 27. It’s not easy to think of another intellectual celebrity who lived so long that he was able to be harmfully wrong about so many things. Withal, when Spencer wrote, “How often misused words generate misleading thoughts,” he was dead right.
We needn’t rely only on Spencer for this insight. Ralph Waldo Emerson taught a variation on the theme: “The corruption of man is followed by the corruption of language.” In this formulation, dishonest speech invariably points to dishonest antecedent deeds, whether literal or merely intellectual. So too when Chinese historians refer to “the rectification of names” when one dynasty passes away and another takes its place, they indicate that accrued language corruption from vanity and the convenience of self-justification needs to be set straight if the future is to redeem a regretted past.
Join these warnings together and we have a dialectic that defines the problem in its fullness: Corrupt, dishonest people invariably use corrupt, dishonest language, and dishonest or merely lazy language misleads those who innocently hear it. Left to spin downward for long enough, the spiral of communicative incoherence will make clarity of thought and hence constructive collective effort of any kind impossible. Every major episode of deranged language fronting for deranged thought creates its own designer Tower of Babel suited to the occasion: Confusion and destruction ultimately follow in train.
Let me suggest an explanation for the headlong language laziness we see burgeoning around us. If you are reading this far into this essay, it means you are deep literate. You know how to engage with a text that is more than a list, a rant, or, God forbid, a legal document. You are bringing to bear on this text your own learning and experience. You are engaged in an unnatural act: a silent but intellectually active Socratic dialectic with a decontextualized author, me.
Decontextualized? Yes: Your engagement with this essay can be occurring a week, a year, or a century after I wrote it, and it can be occurring anywhere you happen to be and I am not. You are thus left with the abstraction of language, and the experience of dealing with it has at least three indirect effects on you in rough proportion to the energy and time you devote: It sharpens your capacity for inferential reasoning; it widens your theory of mind and hence deepens your reservoir of empathy; and it stimulates your imagination and thus aids your ability to plan and predict. From all that your sense of interiority deepens; your narrator, the silent you in your head, matures. Your mind gains texture, enabling you to see angles of and about relationships you would otherwise miss for lack of practiced facility with conceptual thought.
What of those who don’t deep read, or who used to but have now gotten sucked into the new screen-conditioned norm of skimming in F or Z patterns? They are the contemporary incarnation of Nietzsche’s bad readers, those who “proceed like plundering soldiers: they pick up a few things they use, soil and confuse the rest, and blaspheme the whole.”
What of those people—whether without college educations or, increasingly, with them—who really don’t read at all beyond clipped email and Twitter texts, photo captions, and lists, but instead watch television or incessantly surf the shallower pools of the internet? Their vocabularies either attenuate or never develop, their patience decays, and their capacity to slow down long enough to really understand a problem or truly feel an emotion is trivialized. They become, often enough, addicted to distraction, and when that happens it is not a stretch to conclude that, strictly speaking, they can no longer actually think, straight or otherwise.
Those unable to think often become anxious when confronted with a problem they cannot understand well enough to solve or manage. Anxiety can lead to depression, cynicism, and passivity, but it can also lead to anger, disorientation to reality, and even to violence. For some it can lead, too, to a longing for the proverbial man on the white horse to come along and make it all right again. For others it can lead to different forms of desperation and illusion, often expressed in apocalyptical religious terms.
Under such conditions, even for those who manipulate symbols for a living, concern for precision with language becomes more than many can handle. New Cold War, old Cold War, rivalry—who cares? COVID-19 a hoax, a war, an opportunity to improve a broken world—who cares?
Today’s commercial electronic media certainly pose no barrier to the decline of expression and hence thinking. Obviously, the term “Cold War” is more resonant, glitzier, and attention-arresting than the words “rivalry” or “competition.” It conjures whole boatloads of images and backlisted feelings. The fact that it is misleading does not diminish the temptation to wave it about in dumbed-down form, even if the would-be waver dimly suspects that the language is not quite right. Attracting attention in our clickbait-driven media environment always trumps—pardon the expression—precision and intellectual probity.
It would be churlish to scold emotionally afflicted people; they have enough trouble to deal with as it is. But is it really too much to ask those who have had the privilege of good educations to take better care with how they use language? It’s much too late to stop the “new Cold War” foolishness; that jackass is long since out of the barn and roams freely. But surely worse is yet to come.
So yes, of course—to quote from a certain 1933 film, “This means war—war, I tell you!” As was not the case in the film, it will be a protracted war we must fight with patience, kindness, empathy, and tact. But fight it we must, for it we fail to achieve the rectification of names, there’ll be little hope of achieving the rectification of brains. Then regrettable pasts will not be redeemed; they will be warped and, worse, their less attractive aspects repeated.