Friday 29th of March 2024

the democratic thinking of the future from the past...

the thinker!   This cover by The American Conservative magazine is funny... The Thinker by Rodin has been used in many ways to illustrate various comical situations but this one seems to be seriously thought out.

I will leave you to ponder about it...

To many serious policy-makers, great thinkers of national/international importance, we — the insignificant cartoonish fly on the butt of the democratic Trojan horse, at YD — must appear as a naive microscopic operation. Your democracy? You must be kidding. And yes, we are suspiciously naive… We don’t tend to fall for the advertising campaigns that some fizzy drinks with no sugar are better than the competition. In the end “it’s a matter of taste”. But taste is a matter of habit and tradition — and sometimes accepted illusions. We fall for some traps of deception...

In relation to democratic values, taste and traditions are cultivated to maintain a certain level of freedom. We can see that these levels of freedom are not available is some countries, like in Belarus, where people can protest in the streets in broad daylight against a President elected in a “fraudulent” election because he won by 80 per cent. Meanwhile in the most democratic country on the planet, the Black Lives Matter movement gets hit on the head especially at night, offering more dramatic pictures of cars on fire, looting of shops and police reactionary beat-up of journalists with recording devices. This is democracy in action, in which Trump is blamed for more than two centuries of racism, because of his own views, which are not racist, but whitey as well.

And we are not sure about a system of voting, which works by electioneering (engineered elections) colleges of super-voters who are not allowed to vote with their conscience but with the majority of the state delegation. This US undemocratic system leads to the elections of less “popular” presidents than the other candidates. Thus was the case of Trump versus Hillary and could be the fate of the Biden/Harris ticket versus the Donald. But by a strange twist of polls, presently looking shocking for el Trumpo, Trump might win the popular vote as well. It’s on the card. Why?

Democracies live by their belief in freedom. And also rely on a “majority” of people, a majority which is actually a small minority — the swinging unallied voters who often prefer a status quo than a huge ideological shift. Thus we can discuss till the cows come home to be milked — versus the academies of neoliberalism and such luminaries — the point in all of this is the structure of deception in “what to believe” is best and who is lying less. 

When Trump was elected, all the liberal and progressive media were supporting Hillary, meanwhile the CONservative media of Breitbart and Murdoch aligned to support the least palatable GOP candidate, "l’enfant terrible", Trump… What did this mean? Trump, in an apparent folly, recognised that the system was “rigged” by the administrative cogs which he called the swamp. He promised to clean up the swamp — a secret system of “Deep State” which may or may not exist, that is designed to prevent the captain taking the good USS ship onto the rocks of decrepitude…

Straight away, the second level of bullshit came into play. Trump got elected with the help of the Russians and we’ve got the proofs to show this. What is extraordinary is that the gathering of these proofs started way before the 2016 elections, by spying on the Trump camp, until Comey, the then director of the FBI, had to acknowledge evidence that the DNC had cooked the books in favour of Hillary versus Bernie the socialist. This was not a hanging offence though it could have been. It left a bad smell and Comey was caught in between a couple of farts. Since then, it has been revealed that the FBI had itself "fabricated some evidence”  in regard to the Russians in order to get the warrant to spy on the Trump camp before the elections. Not that Trump would win, because the first woman president was on the card everywhere. Trump was trailing the votes by more than 7 points… Meanwhile, a former spy called Steele was paid by the DNC to prove (fabricate more evidence) that Trump was a puppet of the Putin bear. One can never be sure.

This led to a longish Mueller investigation which could not prove either way whether Trump was a Putin lover or not. On the other hand, what could be proven is that Biden corruptly interfered with the political system in Ukraine. HE EVEN ADMITTED TO IT. This may or may not come back to bite him because “this was done to create democracy in Ukraine” which when analysed by the best of the deceitful neoliberalists or by a deluded Leonisky, was a change of the source of corruption, from Russian corruption to US aid which is a corrupt enticement of ideals with cash… The present “revolution in Belarus smells like being manipulated by the US secret services with the help of media Barons, including Soros and a tad of Murdoch… But I did not say this, did I?

Now the Biden/Harris ticket is promising to remedy the Trump malady by shifting the US system towards an ersatz-socialist democracy. This is likely going to spook a few of the swinging voters, who may see their freedom to be poor or rich in the best country in the world, eroded by equitable socialism. In order to hide this possibility, the Biden/Harris has enlisted the Obamas as spruikers for “freedom” when the Biden/Harris is about to reduce this freedom via its socialistic platform — to bash Trump-the-out-of-place idiotic president. Who is going to be swayed by the new deal? The liberal media, now in favour of anti-democratic US style of long established freedomola — the major drink of political scientists — will play the role in advertising the purity of the Biden/Harris presidency versus Trump-the-muck…

Meanwhile, the Murdoch outfit will play the devil’s advocate in one of the most discreet manner of reverse psychology ever… In Australia, when Tony Abbott got booted out by Turnbull-the-debonaire, the CONservatives were about to loose the next election massively. Most of the media in Australia, lauded the change. We did not. Turnbull was not going to be able to change the direction of the stupid Abbott government but gave the illusion he would be better. Turnbull scraped in, to be eventually booted out by Scomo, a possibly worse image of Tony Abbott… We get what we deserve? Crap (I mean sports rorts...).

Perception and manipulation of power are different in democracy and in autocracy. We in the West are the heirs of autocratic "Lion Kings" but we have had our revolutions against these, to create a system of the people for the people… And yet the system which seems to be alternating between a conservative and a liberal progressive government, is also dependent of a complex web of the rich/poor aspirations, mediatic manipulations and delusions, including religious beliefs and the right to bear arms. In the USA, this is the crux of the final choice, not whether Trump is an idiot or not, or that the Biden/Harris combo is bringing in socialism, but whether one is for or against abortion.

It’s the evangelicals (and possibly many catholics — secretly) versus the fake libertarian secularists… 

AND if one is allowed to buy/use a gun… On this one, another mad mass shooting in the US might change the dynamic of this incoming election.

Gus Leonisky
Libertarian on a good day…

ps: And by the way, the Stephen Colbert will interview (yesterday) a brilliant Susan Rice about the way Trump dismissed the effective “pandemic task-force” in the US, but not mention a skerrick about the seven countries bombed or destroyed by the Obama administration… But this is “international relations” where the voting waters are unclear, in which the social media — we are told by the liberal Colbert — is “pushing” for Trump reelection because several countries, including Russia (!), favour Trump's return — while not mentioning that others like China (!) hope for a Biden presidency for a come-back to normal acceptance...
This might improve our chance to sell more Grange Hermitage to the Chinese, which at the moment has gone down the sink.

the views from the experts...


The Return of Great Power Rivalry: Democracy versus Autocracy from the Ancient World to the U.S. and China

The United States of America has been the most powerful country in the world for over seventy years, but recently the U.S. National Security Strategy declared that the return of great power competition with Russia and China is the greatest threat to U.S. national security. Further, many analysts predict that America's autocratic rivals will have at least some success in disrupting-and, in the longer term, possibly even displacing-U.S. global leadership. 

Brilliant and engagingly written, The Return of Great Power Rivalry argues that this conventional wisdom is wrong. Drawing on an extraordinary range of historical evidence and the works of figures like Herodotus, Machiavelli, and Montesquieu and combining it with cutting-edge social science research, Matthew Kroenig advances the riveting argument that democracies tend to excel in great power rivalries. He contends that democracies actually have unique economic, diplomatic, and military advantages in long-run geopolitical competitions. He considers autocratic advantages as well, but shows that these are more than outweighed by their vulnerabilities.Kroenig then shows these arguments through the seven most important cases of democratic-versus-autocratic rivalries throughout history, from the ancient world to the Cold War. Finally, he analyzes the new era of great power rivalry among the United States, Russia, and China through the lens of the democratic advantage argument. By advancing a "hard-power" argument for democracy, Kroenig demonstrates that despite its many problems, the U.S. is better positioned to maintain a global leadership role than either Russia or China. 

A vitally important book for anyone concerned about the future of global geopolitics, The Return of Great Power Rivalry provides both an innovative way of thinking about power in international politics and an optimistic assessment of the future of American global leadership.


https://www.amazon.com/Return-Great-Power-Rivalry-Democracy/dp/0190080248
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Kroenig skillfully marshals the literature on “democratic advantage” to mount a macro-historical case against American defeatism. In an increasingly bitter, multipolar world, “Great Power Competition” (GPC) has become the new master-concept, even before policymakers could wrestle with its implications, budgets, and dangers. Kroenig poses vital questions: how do we measure comparative strengths and weaknesses? How should deadly rivalries be navigated? Can a depleted America take on all comers?  

This is not a tale of triumphalism. A protégé of the late Brent Scowcroft, Kroenig is more subtle and conflicted. America’s political decline, he warns, could precipitate international failure. After all, if democracies intrinsically have an edge, why must they be told? Most intriguing are the caveats and historical contingencies he acknowledges. These anomalous details yap at the heels of his core argument, suggesting a picture of finer margins. They add up to an alternative warning: If Washington believes its democracy makes it destined to dominate, it may overreach, squander its power, pick fights unwisely, corrupt itself, and unravel, like some historical powers Kroenig cites. 

Before offering case studies, Kroenig surveys patterns and offers suggestive correlations. These are open to debate, resting on controversial codings of “democracies” and “non-democracies.” Britain from 1816, before the Great Reform Act of 1832, is allegedly a democracy, while Germany’s Kaiserreich is a semi-authoritarian foil to constitutional free Britain, despite its wider franchise and reliance on its elected legislature for war credits. The numbers in his dataset suggest favourable odds—for instance, since 1816, 16 percent of all democracies rank as major powers, compared to 7 percent of autocracies—but given the smallness of this club, you wouldn’t bet your house on it. There is also a problem of chickens and eggs. Democracy might be more a proxy for other advantageous factors, making it hard to separate the democratic system of an early modern Holland or a nineteenth century Britain from its wealth, geographic setting, and access to water. 

Still, the notion that more consensual, open societies are generally better at generating capital and material and mobilizing people—with the fall of the Berlin Wall in mind—will strike many as intuitively true, all else being equal. 

The trouble is that in real life, things are rarely equal. The closer we look, the more contingent and near-run the whole business seems. A gap emerges between being “fearsome,” increasing one’s relative power, and actually succeeding. For Kroenig, Athens ascended to power with its free, egalitarian constitution, its seafaring and trading ways, its intellectual creativity and its alliances. But shouldn’t it, therefore, have fared better in the Peloponnesian War, a long and testing competition against a garrison state backed by autocratic Persia, which it lost in humiliating circumstances, for Kroenig’s thesis to hold? Once, when Henry Kissinger spoke of the Soviets as “Sparta to our Athens,” a journalist famously asked, “Does that mean we’re bound to lose?”

Kroenig acknowledges this fall from dominance, but lowers the bar a little, noting that Athens had a good run for a century. If you were an Athenian watching the demolition of the city walls at the hands of pitiless victors, that difference between being fearsome and winning would be more than academic. 

The story then becomes more complex, a warning against the loosening of restraint. Things went wrong when Athens failed to arrest its populist impulses, as its assembly voted for the calamitous Syracuse expedition. Kroenig warns Americans against referenda. This suggests an important caveat—it is not democracy, but republican government as a set of restraints on government and the popular will that represents the optimal system. Democracy is excellent—in mild doses. 

Which takes us to Venice, another murky case. A wealthy city-empire and republic, Venice predominated in northern Italy and enjoyed a large maritime sphere. But as Kroenig rightly notes, as its power grew, the serene city imposed a new closure on its system, restricting seats on its Great Council to noble families. Success abroad coincided not with openness but closure and political “lockout.” For Kroenig, this regression was an error…in 1296, Venice still rose, so if this did damage, it was very slow. Is the causal linkage between “open” regime type and strategic performance so clear? Relatively democratic states might dominate for a time, but not necessarily by behaving democratically. The case of modern Israel (or Cold War-era United States) is a reminder that free states might wage campaigns by suspending democratic norms, separating some national security decision-making from public audit. In the words of Israel’s soldier-statesman Moshe Dayan, “in security matters, there is no democracy.” 

….

Lastly, where does the Middle East fit? Proponents of “GPC” often regard embroilments in the lands from Libya to Pakistan as wasteful distractions. Kroenig speaks of America in recent decades “squandering strategic attention and resources, fighting in the desert in Iraq and Afghanistan.” As it happens, in Iraq, much of the warfare was in cities. While the superpower preferred the convenience of desert warfare, its “less free” adversaries chose the terrain, drawing the leviathan into attritional urban combat. As in the unforgiving world of great power politics, it was the details that in the end proved fatal.

Patrick Porter is chair in International Security and Strategy at the University of Birmingham. All views expressed are his alone.
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/democracy-always-prevails-in-great-power-competition-well-almost-always/

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Matthew Kroenig is a professor of government and foreign service at Georgetown University and the Deputy Director of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security at the Atlantic Council. He previously served in several positions in the US government, including in the Office of the Secretary of Defense and in the intelligence community, and he regularly consults with a wide range of US government entities. He is the author or editor of seven books, including The Return of Great Power Rivalry (Oxford University Press, 2020) and The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy (Oxford University Press, 2018). His articles and opinion pieces have appeared in American Political Science Review, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, International Organization, Politico, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and many other outlets. He has been a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, Harvard University, and Stanford University. Dr. Kroenig provides regular commentary for major media outlets, including PBS Newshour, NPR All Things Considered, Fareed Zakaria GPS on CNN, and the BBC Newshour. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Stanton Foundation, the Hertog Foundation, and the Smith Richardson Foundation. He is a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations and holds an MA and PhD in political science from the University of California at Berkeley. He lives with his wife and daughter in Georgetown.
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Brent Scowcroft (/ˈskoʊkrɒft/; March 19, 1925 – August 6, 2020) was a United States Air Force officer who was a two-time United States National Security Advisor, first under U.S. President Gerald Ford and then under George H. W. Bush. He served as Military Assistant to President Richard Nixon and as Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs in the Nixon and Ford administrations. He served as Chairman of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2005, and advised President Barack Obama on choosing his national security team.

President George H. W. Bush presented him with the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1991. In 1993, he was created an Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace. In 2005, Scowcroft was awarded the William Oliver Baker Award by the Intelligence and National Security Alliance.[22]In 1998, he co-wrote A World Transformed with George H. W. Bush. This book described what it was like to be in the White House during the end of the Cold War, as the Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s. Notably, both figures explained why they didn't go on to Baghdad in 1991: "Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land."[23]His discussions of foreign policy with Zbigniew Brzezinski, led by journalist David Ignatius, were published in a 2008 book titled America and the World: Conversations on the Future of American Foreign Policy.[24]Scowcroft was a member of the Honorary Council of Advisors for U.S.-Azerbaijan Chamber of Commerce (USACC).[25]Critics have suggested that Scowcroft was unethical in his lobbying for the Turkish and Azeri governments because of his ties to Lockheed Martin and other defense contractors that do significant business with Turkey.[26] He was also a member of the board of directors of the International Republican Institute,[27] and served on the Advisory Board for Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs[28] and for America Abroad Media.[29]Scowcroft endorsed Hillary Clinton in the run-up for the 2016 U.S. presidential election.[30]
Scholarly evaluations of Scowcroft's performance have been generally favorable. For example Ivo Daalder and I. M. Destler quoting other scholars, conclude: "Brent Scowcroft was in many ways the ideal national security adviser—indeed, he offers a model for how the job should be done." His "winning formula" consisted of gaining the trust of the key principals of U.S. foreign policymaking, establishing "a cooperative policy process at all levels," one both transparent and collegial, and keeping an "unbreakable relationship with the president," thanks to their close friendship and mutual respect. The result was that Scowcroft "proved to be an extraordinarily effective national security adviser" in comparison with others who have held the office, particularly in light of the difficult and transformative period in which he held office.[31]Scowcroft award[edit]Scowcroft was the inspiration and namesake for a special presidential award begun under the George H. W. Bush administration. According to Robert Gates, the award is given to the official "who most ostentatiously falls asleep in a meeting with the president." According to Gates, the president "evaluated candidates on three criteria. First, duration—how long did they sleep? Second, the depth of the sleep. Snoring always got you extra points. And third, the quality of recovery. Did one just quietly open one's eyes and return to the meeting, or did you jolt awake and maybe spill something hot in the process?"[32] According to Bush himself, the award "gives extra points for he/she who totally craters, eyes tightly closed, in the midst of meetings, but in fairness a lot of credit is given for sleeping soundly while all about you are doing their thing."[33] Scowcroft had gained a reputation for doing such things to the extent that it became a running gag.[34]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brent_Scowcroft

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Joseph Samuel Nye Jr. (born January 19, 1937) is an American political scientist. He is the co-founder, along with Robert Keohane, of the international relations theory of neoliberalism, developed in their 1977 book Power and Interdependence. Together with Keohane, he developed the concepts of asymmetrical and complex interdependence. They also explored transnational relations and world politics in an edited volume in the 1970s. More recently, he explained the distinction between hard power and soft power, and pioneered the theory of soft power. His notion of "smart power" ("the ability to combine hard and soft power into a successful strategy") became popular with the use of this phrase by members of the Clinton Administration, and more recently the Obama Administration.[1] He is the former Dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, where he currently holds the position of University Distinguished Service Professor, Emeritus.[2] In October 2014, Secretary of State John Kerry appointed Nye to the Foreign Affairs Policy Board.[3] He is also a member of the Defense Policy Board.[4]He has been a member of the Harvard faculty since 1964. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and a foreign fellow of The British Academy. Nye is also a member of the American Academy of Diplomacy.[5] The 2011 TRIP survey of over 1700 international relations scholars ranks Joe Nye as the sixth most influential scholar in the field of international relations in the past twenty years.[6] He was also ranked as most influential in American foreign policy. In 2011, Foreign Policy magazine named him to its list of top global thinkers.[7] In September 2014, Foreign Policy reported that the international relations scholars and policymakers both ranked Nye as one of the most influential scholars.[8]
The Aspen Strategy Group (ASG) is a policy program of the Aspen Institute, based in Washington D.C.[1] The ASG is a membership-based forum composed of current and former policymakers, academics, journalists, and business leaders[2] whose aim is to explore the preeminent foreign policy and national security challenges facing the United States.The main activities include its annual Summer Workshop meeting in Aspen,[3] several Track II dialogues such as the U.S.-India Strategic Dialogue[4] and the U.S.-China Strategic Dialogue,[5] and the Aspen Ministers Forum, led by Madeleine K. Albright,[6] which convenes former foreign ministers from around the world to focus on international security.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aspen_Strategy_Group
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nye