Category: Authoritarianism

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The real enemy within.

Rather than a measured analysis delving into complex and intricate political issues, this post winds up being a bit of a rant. That is because the subject is simple and deserves our disdain. I shall start out gently, then get to the heart of the matter. Here goes.

One unfortunate human trait is to not learn the correct lessons from history or from personal experience and past mistakes, and to instead draw different conclusions that end up compounding the original problem or creating new ones. In politics one of the more loathsome traits is for politicians to observe what works in a different political context and then try to transpose that behaviour onto their own approaches regardless of whether the local political history and culture remotely resemble that of the different context . Another is to think that an original sin (say, genocide) can be improved upon or go unpunished with better preparation, determination and technologies, and so rather than avoid committing a similar transgression, the actor in question seeks to improve upon it. These are particularly noxious forms of conceptual stretching because they have real-life consequences rather than just be a methodologically improper substitute for legitimate conceptual transfer.

One tried and true example of this unfortunate syndrome is the “enemy within” attack on domestic political “opponents” (although in truth these “enemies” most often tend to be scapegoats and marginalised social groups). Most people are aware of the Nazi use of the term to justify their approach to Jews, Roma, Communists and homosexuals. South American dictatorships referred to dissidents and political opponents in such terms as well, labelling them a “cancer” that had to be “forcibly extirpated” in order for the body politic to survive. This led to torture, “disappearances” and mass murder as tools that enforced social compliance with regime edicts.

In NZ we now have a Kiwi version of the “enemy within” trope. It is part of a broader borrowing of US and other foreign rightwing concepts. For example, ACT emulates the Elon Musk/DOGE and Argentine president Javier Milei approaches to public sector dismantlement in the name of cost-cutting. NZ First leaders Winston Peters and Shane Jones have opted for importing US culture wars while disregarding basic environmental science, discovering that “woke” is bad and that scapegoating immigrants and non-binary people is good cover when helping pad the bottom lines of their industry benefactors (fisheries and mining, specifically). National opts for US-style corporate welfare and voter suppression ploys, trying to outlaw prisoner voting and reduce or eliminate Maori wards.

The structure of parliament helps in this regard because minor parties only need to focus on gaining five percent of the popular vote in order to achieve representation and, should the National Party win a plurality of seats and reach agreement with its minor ideological counterparts, be part of a coalition government such as the one that governs now. In short: appealing to base retrograde prejudices and ignorance works well as a MMP threshold target strategy for rightwing parties. Leftwing parties? Not so much (although te Pati Maori is doing its level best to emulate their rightwing antagonists when it comes to performative politics for their target electoral demographic)

Although the why in “why do they do it?” is pretty clear (hint: because it works), the use of US political culture imports in Aotearoa is problematic because it is underwritten by violence and the threat thereof. There is nothing debatable about this. The US has a long sordid history and culture of political violence, something that has been exacerbated in recent times by Trump’s malevolent personality and MAGA’s mean mendacity, traits that are echoed by a legion of rightwing enablers in and out of public office, cheered on by “influencers’ and commentators in the corporate and social media landscape/ecosystem.

This sewer is awash in conspiracies, disinformation, misinformation and outright lies seeking to foment social division and partisan advantage. It revels in dog-whistling, stochastic violence and projecting evil character and intent to ideological rivals when in fact, it is the Right that commits the majority of political violence in the US (and arguably NZ as of late. Think of our local neo-Nazis). And as the Charlie Kirk murder and repeated attacks on liberal-progressive “enemies” of Trump have shown (including elected officials) , it can be deadly (interestingly, after denouncing Kirk’s murder, the attack on a Mormon temple in Michigan and the staged attack on Trump in Butler, PA as the work of leftists, the US rightwing–including the White House–has gone very quiet once it was revealed that in all three instances the perpetrators were MAGA adherents and/or held extreme rightwing views).

The influence of US non-state ideological actors like Steve Bannon, Curtis Yarvin, Jordan Peterson (although Canadian born), the Atlas Institute and Koch brothers front agencies first came to light in NZ during the pandemic and run-up to the 2022 parliamentary protests. Although Australian, the Christchurch terrorist had a sympathetic circle of Anders Breivik-worshipping fellow travelers who, although unmentioned in the whitewash that was the Royal Commission Report on the attacks, were well-known to security authorities (even if he was considered a minor player before he made his move). These various ideological strands came together to meld anti-vaccination, anti-Semitic, male supremacist, QAnon and Deep State conspiracies into a broad anti-government message tailored to the NZ context.

With a mixture of foreign and domestic funding and massive coverage from local news outlets, rightwing extremist views were then mainstreamed in parliament and in corporate media megaphones. People like Winston Peters rubbed shoulders with conspiracists who brandished signs calling for Jacinda Ardern and Ashley Bloomfield’s executions. Racist agitators like David Seymour spoke of Stalinist “gulags” and loss of individual freedoms due to Covid lockdowns and vaccination mandates while seeking to upend the nation’s foundational documents enshrining Treaty rights for Maori. Lesser bozos (e.g. Peter Williams, Sean Plunket, Michael Laws and various bloggers) were given platforms in the media landscape regardless of the truth behind their arguments (social media was and is the worst in this regard). For media bosses, (themselves rightwing-adjacent in spite of accusations of “leftist bias”), clicks and eyeballs mattered more than the content of the conversations themselves.

More broadly, if we consider the term “demos” (people) as the root concept in our understanding of democracy (as rule of the people), NACTFirst policies are anti-demos at their core. Denying pay equality to women, refusing to negotiate in good faith with nurses and teachers on matters of wage and working conditions, cutting health leave for non-permanent (annual contract) workers, removing nicotine and fossil fuel taxes while ending electric vehicle subsidies, raising speed limits, opening conservation land to invasive mining, loosening fishery regulations, re-opening off-shore gas and oil exploration, trying to make English the only official language of NZ and removing te Reo from official documents and public spaces, and of course the assault on Treaty rights and attempts to enshrine the primacy of private property rights rather than the collective good in law, these and other usurpations of the demos commonweal in favor of the narrow-minded desires of special interests–most of them pushed under urgency without proper consultation and deliberation—demonstrate a callous indifference, even disdain, for the people of NZ at large, especially non-dominant and marginalized groups.

Lately the ogres have turned their dark attention to non-binary people, “wokesters” of various stripes, feminists, environmentalists, immigrants (not just Muslim) and assorted “communists,” “Marxists” and “socialists” that they see as NZ’s subversive “enemy within.” And when the targets of their malevolent attention push back, the Right go all snowflake and complain about harassment, cancel culture and intimidation. We must say it again: projection much?

The move from calling people “woke” and hippy-dippy luddites who do not share NZ “values” to calling them perverts and domestic extremists is a dangerous slope towards incitement of violence against them. It is also hypocritical. Let us be clear. The NZ Right are not directing their venom at seditious outfits like Voices for Freedom or Counterspin media or astroturf disinformation organisations like Groundswell, the Taxpayers “Union” and Free Speech Coalition. To the contrary, these entities constitute part of the rightwing hate network that includes media like The Platform and Reality Check Radio, to say nothing of the more subtle reactionary messaging on mainstream outlets like Newstalk ZB and Stuff.

The NZ Left need to stop being defensive, get their shambolic houses in order, grow some spine and call out the rightwing hate-mongers for what they are. National may be more incompetent than intolerant, but ACT and NZ First are more intolerant than incompetent. Their use of US culture war language provides excellent recruitment material for narrow-minded, prejudiced and ignorant people on their side of the ideological street, but also works insidiously to incite violence against the supposedly extremist progressive enemy on the other side of that street. This gives the NZ Left a window of opportunity in the form of speaking the truth about Peters, Seymour, Luxon and their lesser associates. They are petty tyrants whose interest in democracy is instrumental, not intrinsic, and who are quick to drop democratic niceties if they feel that their social and political status is challenged by “woke” progressives.

Put another way. When a militant or agitated Left protester wants to send an ideological message, they put a crowbar or an axe through a politician’s window or pour syrup on a foreign agitator. When a Right protester wants to send a message, they seek to hurt someone by words and deeds. They say as much, and as the Christchurch massacres, attack on James Shaw and recent arrest of a murderous punk demonstrates, they are prepared to assault and kill for their “cause.” The parliamentary protests were a good example of that simmering hate and violence eventually spilling out into the open.

When it comes to political violence and rightwing claims of victimhood, the proven truth is contrary to their claims. The real snowflakes are those who specialise in race baiting, xenophobia and misogynistic insults who now cry crocodile tears about opponents “inciting” violence against them. Their hypocrisy is real and the double standard is evident.

In the end, under the cover of their vacuous rhetoric and mean-spirited actions, it is actors like ACT and NZ First who are the worst enemy of NZ democracy. They corrode it from the inside, playing by the rules as given where they are exploitable, but at heart are an anti-democratic, foreign-inspired and -supported enemy inside the walls of NZ political society that try every means possible to rig and play the political system (say, by exchanging political donations for narrowly focused political favours and by trying to alter basic constitutional principles) in order to thwart the fair and equitable distribution of scarce societal resources for the benefit of the common good.

They can shout US derived slogans and point their fingers at opposition parliamentarians as an invitation to intimidation, but the hard truth of NZ politics is palpable and cold. The enemy within NZ politics does not come from the Left. It comes from an increasingly anti-democratic Right influenced from abroad and corrupted at its core. It has a visible name in ACT and NZ First, and a willing accomplice in an enfeebled National leadership.

Shame on the lot of them. They need to be electorally booted to the curb. It remains to be seen if the parliamentary Left, such as it is, has the starch to do so.

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Careful what you wish for.

One gets the sense that Netanyahu has used his post-October 7 military successes (including ethnic cleansing and IDF war crimes in Gaza) to prepare for this moment of friction vis a vis Iran while manoeuvring Trump into a corner on joining the war in pursuit of regime change as much or more than nuclear non-proliferation (as I have pointed out in previous posts, Trump is an empty intellectual vessel devoid of firm policy positions other than those that he thinks serve himself. He is therefore highly susceptible to suggestions that appeal to his vanity and self-interest, such as being “the saviour of Iran” if he joins Israel in the military campaign against the theocratic regime).

Already, the son of the deposed Shah, Reza Pahlavi, has broadcast statements claiming that he and his supporters will return to Iran soon after the collapse of the current theocratic regime. Pahlavi is close to Netanyahu and Trump’s inner circle and US-based heirs of the Shah’s exiled supporters (many concentrated in and around LA) are willing to assume control of a post-theocratic government under Reza Pahlavi’s leadership. The stage appears to being set for a regime take-over following military defeat of the ayatollahs.

The trouble is that while many Iranians abhor the mullahs and Revolutionary Guard, they also remember very well what the Shah’s rule was all about (SAVAK, anyone?). They remember well that Israel was the Shah’s best ally, and that Mossad helped train and shared intelligence with SAVAK. So it is not clear that his heirs will be universally welcomed, something that sets the stage for prolonged internal conflict within the Persian power. In addition, with the old leadership gone a new generation of militant leaders may emerge in their place, hardened by their experiences with Israel and its Western backers. They may not prove easily removable or amenable to a negotiated compromise on governing alongside Western-backed groups.

Even if the West gets its way and the ayatollahs are deposed, there is the issue whether a new generation of Iranian expats, many coming from monied backgrounds in places like Southern California, have the skillsets with which to govern a country, and culture, that mixes pre-modern beliefs with post-modern technologies and a ponderous bureaucracy that straddles a stark urban/rural demographic divide. Will the US pour in aid to help them with the task of reconstruction at a time when DOGE is cutting back on all types of US foreign aid? Will Iranians welcome such assistance and the US/Western personnel that deliver it? Or will they resist what could be seen as an affront to their nationalistic and cultural pride?

This is a noteworthy point. Persian nationalism is rooted in millennia, not the last half century. Persians come in many faiths and ethnicities, and what unites them isa rejection of foreign interference in their affairs, especially by Sunni Arabs and Western colonisers (and their descendants). In the US and other interested parties there appears to be a failure to understand how deep Persian nationalism runs as an ideological glue in Iranian society. This could prove costly for the adherents of forcible regime change in that country.

The US and Israel appear to believe that after they bomb Iranian nuclear development and storage sites, military infrastructure and command and control facilities and kill leaders of the revolutionary regime, the people will rise up, the regime will fall, a new government will be installed and everyone will go home happy. The truth is otherwise. Iran will have to undergo a long term military occupation if a new order is to be imposed. Who is going to do that? Iran is a huge country and as mentioned, not all of its inhabitants welcome foreign interference in their affairs. The US and Israel do not have the capability to impose an occupation regime, not does any other State in part because of their realistic unwillingness to do so. So the operative assumption in Washington and Tel Aviv about regime change in Iran seems to be based on a pipe dream conjured up in the war-fevered minds of Trump and Netanyahu’s strategic advisors. And a reality check is also worth noting: the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan this century by Western-led coalitions have not ended well for them or with the stated objectives of their missions being achieved.

Then there is the reaction of the global Shiite diaspora to seeing their most venerated leaders killed, incapacitated or imprisoned by Western powers or those backed by the West. Iran may not be able to defend itself against Israel and the US by conventional and nuclear military means, but it has many unconventional assets at its disposal, and they have global reach. The current tit-for-tat exchanges may be a prelude to a widening regional and perhaps global conflict fought by unconventional means. The end to the current (fairly short) conventional military war may be just the beginning of a protracted unconventional, asymmetrical conflict that could spill into other States in the region and beyond.

And here is another background thought: The modern Western-led international community has always reacted poorly to revolutionary regimes, e.g.: USSR, PRC, Cuba, Nicaragua, Iran, Angola, Algeria, Granada, DPRK, etc.. The specific evolutionary ideology matters less than the usurpation of power by force because it upsets the international status quo because it upsets an international status based on acceptance of shared rules and norms (if not values). That is, states agree to get along within established rules of conduct and revolutionaries do not respect that basic rule of the game and seek parametric change in their societies as well as in their relations with the external world..

In response, revolutionary regimes tend to support each other against former colonial and imperialist Western powers, creating a vicious circle of hostile action/reaction. It may be 46 years after the Iranian revolution, but perhaps this is somehow at play here?

Whatever the case, I have a bad feeling that this is not going to end well, except perhaps for Netanyahu (who will receive a boost in domestic support after the Iranian regime is ousted as well as perhaps further delay his court trial on corruption charges and the collapse of his coalition government). Trump is being slow-walked by Netanyahu into joining a war of convenience rather than necessity that may spiral into a deeper regional confrontation that will consume US blood and treasure for some time to come (in exact contravention of Trump’s promises to end US foreign “entanglements”). With the US mid-term elections scheduled for next year, prolonged involvement in Iran may prove damaging to Trump’s allies in Congress and hinder pursuit of the GOP/MAGA policy agenda if they lose one or both majorities in the Deliberative Chambers. Meanwhile, Iran’s allies Russia and China sit quietly on the sidelines, either out of impotence or because they are hedging their bets. One gets the feeling that, especially with regard to the PRC, they are not impotent.

The slanted (often triumphant) Western media coverage of the conflict disguises the fact this may not be entirely over soon, and that whatever its battlefield successes Israel may pay a heavy reputational and diplomatic price for its actions, as the rise of global anti-semitism suggests is in fact now the case.

Dark and sad times ahead, I’m afraid.

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Sending in the Marines.

One of the basic foundations of democratic civil-military relations is that the active duty military is organised and trained to fight and defeat foreign enemies in combat–that is, by using organised lethal force until the enemy is defeated. Domestic security is a matter of national/federal, state and local law enforcement. Their training and organization is in ensuring via non-combat means civilian adherence to the rule of law. Although use of lethal force is one component of domestic law enforcement, it is constrained by legal and social frameworks in a way that military combat lethality is not (and even then the military is supposed to adhere to the Laws of War, both in terms of jus ad bellum (reasons for going to war) and jus in bello (conduct in war)). Domestic security is about keeping the peace and maintaining control of civilian populations; external security is about prevailing over armed adversaries of the State.

Domestic and external security represent the Janus faces of what Althusser and others labeled the repressive state apparatuses (RSAs). Both internal and externally-focused repressive apparatuses are wrapped around an inner core of ideology, usually framed as patriotism, nationalism and selfless sacrifice (for external agencies) and community service, protection and duty of care (for internal agencies). There are elements and agencies other than the military and uniformed constabulary services in the RSAs, including such things as paramilitary units and criminal courts, that involve several shades of grey when it comes to repressive focus. The US is an exemplar in this regard, what with its proliferation of security agencies and militarization of local police forces, but the principle of separation between domestic and external repression has long been considered sacrosanct in US civil-military relations. So much so that the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act (18 U.S.C. 1385) specifically prohibits the use of active duty troops for domestic security purposes unless authorized by Congress.

In the US reserve military units such as the National Guard are called upon during periods of serious security crisis as a backup to local law enforcement. This usually happens at the orders of the State government but can happen by order of the president in extenuating circumstances. In the majority of cases they do not carry combat weaponry, instead deploying non-lethal tools appropriate for their law enforcement support roles (say, tear gas for crowd control).

Both reserve and active duty military can and are used for natural disaster and humanitarian relief, but they do not carry live weapons when doing so. Their assistance is focused on provision of critical goods and services to affected communities, not enforcing security.

While Trump appears to be within his authority to order the California National Guard into Los Angeles for law enforcement purposes, “federalising” what should normally be the Governor’s decision, and may even have authority to order other state’s National Guard units to join the forces gathered in LA (there is debate on this), his ordering of a US Marine infantry brigade into LA is an egregious assault on the separation of internal and external security functions under democratic conditions and a major erosion of a core tenet of US civil-military relations. The Marines are trained and organised to seek out and destroy the enemy, not practice crowd control. Their entire orientation is towards prevailing in lethal combat, not convincing rowdy crowds engaging in protest and dissidence to go home.

Perhaps the deployment of Marines is an intimidation tactic and they will not be carrying combat weapons or live ammunition. But if they are, we are now facing the real prospect of US soldiers killing US citizens and residents on home soil.

Years ago I shared space with the Haiti Task Force in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. I heard them discussing sending in Marines to quell anti-American violence in Port-au-Prince (there is a history of US Marines in Haiti). I chimed in from the sidelines that I thought it was a bad idea to use combat troops to engage in what was supposed to be civilian peace enforcement operations. The US has military police and paramilitary units like the US Marshalls and Border Patrol (and now ICE!) who train in those sort of things. I was ignored by my colleagues and a brigade of Marines were ordered and deployed to enforce the peace. When confronted by a rock-throwing mob they opened fire, killing over 100 people. The streets did in fact go quiet.

I asked the head of the Haiti Task Force why they chose that option when there were others available. He simply said that the people to be confronted where foreigners on foreign soil, so it was permissible to use combat troops for crowd control under those circumstances. In fact, today US private military contractors have been engaged to do exactly the same thing in Haiti given the breakdown in law and order there. It seems like in Haiti history repeats, but in different garb.

More importantly, deployment of Marines to LA is not a case of lethally confronting foreigners on foreign soil. For all the talk of “illegal aliens” and “invasion,” the protesters are on US soil exercising their right to peacefully protest and dissent. Those who act violently certainly can be handled by local law enforcement without the resort to combat-oriented troops whose missions primarily involved killing people abroad.

This is more than authoritarian-minded over-reach by a fear-mongering president. It is what a democracy’s slide into dictatorship looks like.

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The 2nd amendment spectre.

Given that the US 2nd Amendment was drafted in part to resist “oppressive”government armed overreach, it may be only a matter of time before 2nd amendment supporters decide to invoke the clause to forcibly resist kidnappings by masked and warrantless ICE agents. Things could get ugly.

What may be stopping things from getting to that point up until now is 1) most 2nd amendment supporters lean Right on the political spectrum and support Trump’s deportations policies; and 2) most of those detained so far have been foreigners of varying immigration status, although that is changing with significant arrests of US citizens for whatever reason (mistaken identity, faulty paperwork, etc.).

While it is true that the Founders envisioned “well regulated militias” to be the armed-bearing citizen’s ultimate defense against “oppressive” (presumably foreign) government, things have changed a bit since its promulgation and the federal authorities are now the focus of 2nd amendment supporter’s concerns. Although the possibility exists, 2nd amendment resistance is less likely to come in the form of civil war or lesser armed confrontations than in the form of social and political problems for law enforcement and the Trump administration. That does not bode well, especially if the gun lobby and conservative media and politicians side with 2nd amendment resistors, civil rights advocates and even police unions (because of the warrantless nature and lack of specific charges filed in many cases) in what will inevitably become constitutional challenges to ICE’s policies. That could well spell trouble for Trump’s immigration agenda and GOP election prospects in the upcoming midterm and general elections.

The Reagan Presidential Library has an interesting summary of the legal evolution of the clause: https://www.reaganlibrary.gov/constitutional-amendments…”-,Constitutional%20Amendments%20–%20Amendment%202%20–%20“The%20Right,to%20Keep%20and%20Bear%20Arms”&text=Amendment%20Two%20to%20the%20Constitution,their%20rights%2C%20and%20their%20property.

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Trump’s theatre of the absurd.

I know that it is undiplomatic to say so, but I sure wish that some foreign leader would interrupt one of Trump’s Oval Office public humiliation stunts to tell him to his face in front of the media that he is an adolescent bullying imbecile who seems to think that such stunts make him look strong. And then up and leave.

King Hussein of Jordan, President Zelensky of Ukraine and now President Ramaphosa of South Africa have been subject to the ambush/humiliation stunt, so all future foreign dignitaries are on notice that they too can become props in an act of staged political onanism inside Trump’s Oval Office (except Putin, who if he ever makes it to DC while Trump is POTUS will likely see Trump greeting him by bending over and grabbing his ankles).

Of course, foreign leaders could just refuse to do the staged photo op knowing that they will be ambushed and keep any one-on-one discussions private, or they could simply refuse to do any White House one-on-one visits while Trump is in residence. Whatever they do, someone has to start standing up to Trump in public. The bullying, the photoshopped handouts and edited videos, the endless false claims and lies, the fawning array of nodding sycophants surrounding the main characters in the staged farce–at what point do foreign leaders decide that prostrating themselves in this theatre of the absurd is a bridge too far? Do they really think that if they grin and bear it that they will get something from the Trump administration? Seriously?

It seems that people acquiesce to his boorishness because they want to curry his personal favour, believing that will translate into individual, diplomatic, economic, military or some other (national) benefit to them given the personalist authoritarian nature of Trump’s rule. Or they are just scared. They fail to understand that his “transactional” approach to foreign relations is mostly one-way, from them to him, and that he does not repay their favours or ass-kissing by responding in kind. To the contrary. We have now moved into emperor-has-no-clothes, clown show territory with he and his crowd (as seen in recent congressional testimony by his cabinet members), so the house of cards is starting to look increasingly flimsy. Clearly fake props like the MS 13 knuckle photoshop or the edited South African video and doctored handouts are signs of incompetence among his PR people. For a guy who is all about tough image, THAT is a major Achilles heel.

As an aside–it is pretty obvious that Trump’s interest in the plight of Afrikaner farmers in South Africa is due to the racist influence of Elon Musk and Peter Theil. Musk and others on Twitter/X post dozens of memes, mostly containing false and often crude narratives that include references to black intellect and culture, about the white “genocide” occurring in South Africa. This is not a coincidence and may be due in part to Musk and Theil’s South African heritage, their distaste for black majority rule (as Curtis Yarvin- influenced oligarchy-supporting “techbros”) and their intense dislike of South Africa’s role in trying to bring war crimes charges in the International Criminal Court (ICC) against the Israeli leadership for its actions in Gaza and the West Bank. That dovetails with Trump’s racist dog-whistling (if not outright beliefs) and slips into the “s**thole country” storyline that he used in his first term. In taking up the Afrikaner “refugee” trope Trump reveals himself to be a puppet of the South African billionaires as well as the ringleader of the MAGA clown show.

The good news is that even if foreign dignitaries suffer further indignities from Trump, the damage to the US reputation (and national pride!) will be such that foreign States will work to avoid dealing with Trump altogether while he is still in office. As I have written elsewhere, among all the other things that Trump is and is not, he and his minions are not serious people and should be treated as such. Avoiding Oval Office photo ops is just a start. Best leave that to Kid Rock and other useful MAGA fools and tools.

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A return to Nature.

Thomas Hobbes wrote his seminal work Leviathan in 1651. In it he describes the world system as it was then as being in “a state of nature,” something that some have interpreted as anarchy. However, anarchy has order and purpose. It is not chaos. In fact, if we think of Adam Smith’s “invisible hand of the market” we get something similar to what anarchy is in practice: the aggregate of individual acts of self-interest can lead to the optimisation of value and outcomes at the collective level. Anarchy clears; chaos does not.

For Hobbes, the state of nature was chaos. Absent a “Sovereign” (i.e. a government) that could impose order on global and domestic societies, humans were destined to lead lives the were “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.“ This has translated into notions of “might makes right,” “survival of the fittest,” “to the victor goes the spoils” and other axioms of so-called power politics. The most elaborate of these, international relations realism, is a school of thought that is based on the belief that because the international system has no superseding Sovereign in the form of world government with comprehensive enforcement powers, and because there are no universally shared values and mores throughout the globe community that ideologically bind cultures, groups and individuals, global society exists as a state of nature where, even if there are attempts to manage the relationships between States (and other actors) via rules, norms, institutions and the like, the bottom line is that States (and other actors) have interests, not friends.

Interests are pursued in a context of power differentials. Alliances are temporary and based on the convergence of mutual interests. Values are not universal and so are inconsequential. International exchange is transactional, not altruistic. Actors with greater resources at their disposal (human, natural, intellectual) prevail over those that have less. In case of resource parity between States or other actors, balances of power become systems regulators, but these are fluid and contingent, not permanent. Geography matters in that regard, which is why geopolitics (the relationship of power to geography) is the core of international relations.

It is worth remembering this when evaluating contemporary international relations. It has been well established by now that the liberal international order of the post WW2 era has largely been dismantled in the context of increasing multipolarity in inter-State relations and the rise of the Global South within the emerging order. As I have written before, the long transition and systemic realignment in international affairs has led to norm erosion, rules violations, multinational institutional and international organizational decay or irrelevance and the rise of conflict (be it in trade, diplomacy or armed force) as the new systems regulator.

These developments have accentuated over the last decade and now have a catalyst for a full move into a new global moment–but not into a multipolar or multiplex constellation arrangement in which rising and established powers move between multilateral blocs depending on the issues involved. Instead, the move appears to be one towards a modern Hobbesian state of nature, with the precipitant being the MAGA administration of Donald Trump and its foreign policy approach.

We must be clear that it is not Trump who is the architect of this move. As mentioned in pervious posts, he is an empty vessel consumed by his own self-worth. That makes him a useful tool of far smarter people than he, people who work in the shadow of relative anonymity and who cut their teeth in rightwing think tanks and policy centres. In their view the liberal internationalist order placed too many constraints on the exercise of US power while at the same time requiring the US to over-extend itself as the “world’s policeman” and international aid donor . Bound by international conventions on the one hand and besieged by foreign rent-seekers and adversaries on the other, the US was increasingly bent under the weight of overlapped demands in which existential national interests were subsumed to a plethora of frivolous diversions (such as human rights and democracy promotion).

For these strategists, the solution to the dilemma was not to be found in any new multipolar (or even technopolar) constellation but in a dismantling of the entire edifice of international order, something that was based on an architecture of rules, institutions and norms nearly 500 years in the making. Many have mentioned Trump’s apparent mercantilist inclinations and his admiration for former US president William McKinley’s tariff policies in the late 1890s. Although that may be true, the Trump/MAGA agenda is far broader in scope than trade. In fact, the US had its greatest period of (neo-imperial) expansion during McKinley’s tenure as president (1897-1901), winning the Spanish-American War and annexing Hawai’i, Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa and the Philippines, so Trump’s admiration for him may well be based on notions of territorial expansionism as well.

Whatever Trump’s views of McKinley, the basic idea under-riding his foreign policy team’s approach is that in a world where the exercise of power is the ultimate arbiter of a State’s international status, the US remains the greatest Power of them all. It does not matter if the PRC or Russia challenge the US or if other emerging powers join the competition. Without the hobbling effect of its liberal obligations the US can and will dominate them all. This involves trade but also the exercise of raw (neo) imperialist ambitions in places like Greenland, the Panama Canal and even Canada. It involves sidelining the UN, NATO, EU and other international organisations where the US had to share equal votes with lesser powers who flaunted the respect and tribute that should naturally be given in recognition of the US’s superior power base.

There appears to be a belief in this approach that the US can be a new hegemon–but not Sovereign–in a unipolar world, even more so than during the post-USSR-pre 9/11 interregnum. In a new state of nature it can sit at the core of the international system, orbited by constellations of lesser Great Powers like the PRC, Russia, the EU, perhaps India, who in turn would be circled by lesser powers of various stripes. The US will not seek to police the world or waste time and resources on well-meaning but ultimately futile soft power exercises like those involving foreign aid and humanitarian assistance. Its power projection will be sharp on all dimensions, be it trade, diplomacy or in military-security affairs. It will use leverage, intimidation and varying degrees of coercion as well as persuasion (and perhaps even bribery) as diplomatic tools. It will engage the world primarily in bilateral fashion, eschewing multilateralism for others to pursue according to their own interests and power capabilities. That may suit them, but for the US multilateralism is just another obsolescent vestige of the liberal internationalist past.

A possible (and partial) explanation for the change in the US foreign policy approach may be the learning effect in the US of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Israel’s scorched earth campaign in Gaza. Trump and his advisors may have learned that impunity has its own rewards, that no country or group of countries other than the US (if it has the will) can effectively confront a state determined to pursue its interests regardless of international law, the laws of war or institutional censorship (say, by the UN or International Criminal Court), or any other type of countervailing power. The Russians and Israelis have gotten away with their behaviour because, all rhetoric and hand-wringing aside, there is no actor or group of actors who have the will or capability to stop them. For Trump strategists, these lesser powers are pursuing their interests regardless of diplomatic niceties and international conventions, and they are prevailing precisely because of that. Other than providing military assistance to Ukraine, no one has lifted a serious finger against the Russians other than the Ukrainians themselves, and even fewer have seriously moved to confront Israel’s now evident ethnic cleansing campaign in part because the US has backed Israel unequivocally. The exercise of power in each case occurred in a norm enforcement vacuum in spite of the plethora of agencies and institutions designed to prevent such egregious violations of international standards.

Put another way: if Israel and Russia can get away with their disproportionate and indiscriminate aggression, imagine what the US can do.

If we go on to include the PRC’s successful aggressive military “diplomacy” in East/SE Asia, the use of targeted assassinations, hacking, disinformation and covert direct influence campaigns overseas by various States and assorted other unpunished violations of international conventions, then it is entirely plausible that Trump’s foreign policy brain trust sees the moment as ripe for finally breaking the shackles of liberal internationalism. Also recall that many in Trump’s inner circle subscribe to chaos or disruption theory, in which a norms-breaking “disruptor” like Trump seizes the opportunities presented by the breakdown of the status quo ante.

Before the US could hollow out liberal internationalism abroad and replace it with a modern international state of nature it had to crush liberalism at home. Using Executive Orders as a bludgeon and with a complaint Republican-dominated Congress and Republican-adjacent federal courts. the Trump administration has openly exercised increasingly authoritarian control powers with the intention of subjugating US civil society to its will. Be it in its deportation policies, rollbacks of civil rights protections, attacks on higher education, diminishing of federal government capacity and services (except in the security field), venomous scapegoating of opponents and vulnerable groups, the Trump/MAGA domestic agenda not only seeks to turn the US into a illiberal or “hard” democracy (what Spanish language scholars call a “democradura” as a play on words mixing the terms democracia and dura (hard)). It also serves notice that the US under Trump/MAGA is willing to do whatever is necessary to re-impose its supremacy in world affairs, even if it means hurting its own in order to prove the point. By its actions at home Trump’s administration demonstrates capability, intent and steadfast resolve as it establishes a reputation for ruthless pursuit of its policy agenda. Foreign interlocutors will have to take note of this and adjust accordingly. Hence, for Trump’s advisors, authoritarianism at home is the first step towards undisputed supremacy abroad.

The Trump embrace of international state of nature differs from Hobbes because it does not see the need for a superseding global governance network but instead believes that the US can dominate the world without the encumbrances of power-sharing with lesser players. In this view hegemony means domination, no more or less. It implies no attempt at playing the role of a Sovereign imposing order on a disorderly and recalcitrant community of Nation-States and non-State actors that do not share common values, much less interests.

This is the core of the current US foreign policy approach. It is not about reorganising the international order within the extant frameworks as given. It is about removing those frameworks entirely and replacing them with an America First, go it alone agenda where the US, by virtue of its unrivalled power differential relative to all other States and global actors, can maximise its self-interest in largely unconstrained fashion. Some vestiges of the old international order may remain, but they will be marginalised and crippled the longer the US project is in force.

What does not seem to be happening in Trump’s foreign policy circle are three things. First, recognition that other States and international actors may band together against the US move to unipolarity in a new state of nature and that for all its talk the US may not be able to impose unipolar dominance over them. Second, understanding that States like the PRC, Russia and other Great Powers and communities (like the EU) may resist the US move and challenge it before it can consolidate the new international status quo. Third, foreseeing that the technology titans who today are influential in the Trump administration may decide to transfer there loyalties elsewhere, especially if Trump’s ego starts becoming a hindrance to their (economic and digital) power bases. The fusion of private technology control and US State power may not be as compatible over time as presently appears to be the case, something that may not occur with States such as the PRC, India or Japan that have different corporate cultures and political structures. As the current investment in the Middle Eastern oligarchies shows, the fusion of State and private techno power may be easier to accomplish in those contexts rather than the US.

In any event, whether it be a short-term interlude or a longue durée feature of international life, a modern state of nature is now our new global reality.

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The video sums things up.

Let me make this short and sweet (taken from my other social media):

Seeing some of the world’s richest men shaking the blood-stained hand of Saudi Crown Prince Muhammed bin-Salman while being warmly introduced by US president Donald Trump pretty much sums up the era we live in. It was a Petrotechthugocracy meeting in real time. Shameful.

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A culture of cruelty.

In February I wrote a post about “the politics of cruelty” in which I highlighted the mean-spirited commonalities of recently elected rightwing governments in the US, NZ, Italy and other democracies. In this post I shall expand on them with reference to some of the authoritarian features that I researched and wrote about when I was a young academic.

In the 1980s and early 1990s when I wrote about Argentine and South American authoritarianism, I borrowed the phrase “cultura del miedo” (culture of fear) from Juan Corradi, Guillermo O’Donnell, Norberto Lechner and others to characterise the social anomaly that exists in a country ruled by a state terror regime like the “Proceso de Reorganizacion Nacional” in Argentina from 1976 to 1983. In those circumstances individual psycho-pathologies are often rooted in the pervasive feelings of dread, vulnerability and hopelessness brought about by the regime’s use of death squads, disappearances and other violent authoritarian measures to enforce public compliance with their edicts. That pervasive sense of fear extends to collective life, something that was and is a deliberate objective of authoritarians because it produces a sense of survivalist alienation and social atomisation in the body politic, thereby disrupting basic horizontal bonds between and within groups in civil society (you can see one of my essays that uses this concept here: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2111080).

In recent years and especially since Trump’s re-election in the US, Javier Milei’s election in Argentina and the election of the right wing “chaos coalition” in NZ, I see an extension of this concept in what I will call the culture of cruelty. A culture of cruelty is one in which social groups and organisations, including governments, engage in particularly cruel behaviour in order to punish, humiliate and revel in the plight of others, particularly political opponents and scapegoated social out-groups. We only need to think of Trump’s deportation policies and the behaviour of his immigration Gestapo, ICE, to see the culture of cruelty at work. We can see it is the DOGE chainsaw approach to public sector employment and federal regulations. We can see it at MAGA rallies. It is personalised in the behaviour of Trump advisors like Stephen Miller, Karoline Leavitt and Tom Homan, who show utter contempt for the suffering their policies have caused and in fact appear to relish being able to rub in the fact that they can act with apparent impunity due to the weakness of the courts and congressional or partisan complicity. 

In fact, the “culture of impunity” is another characteristic of authoritarianism that I and others wrote about three decades go, and it goes hand-in-hand with the culture of fear because it is the feeling of impunity that leads dictatorships to use wanton repression as an instrument of subjugation of the popular will. In other words, the culture of regime impunity leads to the imposition of a culture of fear in society. That is what is at work, to various degrees, under Trump, Milei, the evil clown circus currently ruling NZ (especially in the ACT and NZ First parties) and in other former liberal democracies today.

This culture is mean-spirited and malicious. In many instances it is fuelled by hatred of “others,” be they immigrants, indigenous people, people of colour or different faiths, those who are sexually “deviant” from “traditional” norms (i.e. non-binary) and others who do not conform to a given set of social mores or expectations or are simply easy scapegoats given public attitudes. It is facilitated by the increased vulgarisation of social discourse and erosion of societal norms regarding behaviour and civic exchange, now megaphoned and accentuated by social media. It is cruelty for cruelty’s sake, and uses cruelty as a punishment, as an intimidation tactic and as a dark reminder of what is possible when one is targeted for any number of perceived transgressions

Cruelty can be physical, mental, emotional, social or any combination of them because its impact is not confined to just one dimension or aspect of human existence. It is “unusual” in that its objective is to cause disproportionate anxiety, anguish, stress and suffering to targeted people and groups beyond whatever duress might (or might not) be warranted under the circumstances. The term “scarred for life” is an accurate depiction of the broader long-term effects that cruelty can have on the human subject. And when it comes to public policy or social exchange among groups, that is exactly what perpetrators hope to achieve via its use: it psychologically traumatises people and groups in the moment as well as their individual and collective memories, something that renders asunder the social fabric into which they were previously woven.

As is the case with torture (which is inherently cruel), social and political cruelty works. Not so much as an instrument to induce cooperation from those otherwise disposed not to give it, but as a disincentive, revenge or retribution tool against them.

I could write more about the subject but this is not the place to do so. However, I hope that the notion is clear. We are now in an era where the culture and politics of cruelty have become integral features of democratic politics in at least some Western societies (I will leave aside for the moment the fear that exists in countries ruled by authoritarian regimes like those in Russia, China or Nicaragua). And if the cultures of impunity that have led to the imposition of these growing cultures of cruelty and fear in Western societies continues unchecked, then another social pathology will follow–the reaping or harvesting of fear (“cosecha del miedo,” in O’Donnell’s words) in the form of a legacy of damaged people and institutions resultant from the practice.

Should that happen, then democracy as a social construct and a method of governance will never be the same.

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Uncertainty, Hierarchy and the Dilemma of Democracy.

If nothing else, we have learned that the economic and geopolitical turmoil caused by the Trump tariff see-saw raises a fundamental issue of the human condition that extends beyond trade wars and “the markets.” That issue is uncertainty and its centrality to individual and collective life. It extends further into how human societies are organised, which in turn raises the question as to how political life is constructed. There are some interesting dilemmas involved as are their methods of resolution.

What we fear most in life is uncertainty. Thinks of it along the lines of that old Donald Rumsfeld syllogism. There are the “known knowns:” What we know about we can adjust to and even take advantage of, either via coping or avoidance strategies. There are the “known unknowns:” What we know that we do not know (say, we know that an earthquake or flood will occur but not when it will occur) allows us to develop avoidance or ameliorative strategies via insurance or hedging schemes. Then there are the “unknown unknowns:” things that are real but about which we do not know to the point that we have no coping mechanism for them because they cannot be foreseen or anticipated. This makes us uncertain about how to proceed.

In short, what we know we can prepare for, what we do not know we can prepare for, but what we are uncertain about leaves us in decision-making limbo. In Gramcian terms, certainty allows us agency, or what he called virtu. Uncertainty leaves our destinies to fate, or in his words, fortuna. A basic human objective is to control fate through agency, and that requires some measure of certainty in our lives.

A personal anecdote illustrates my point. At one time in my life I was an avid open-water swimmer and managed to pass on some of that interest to my then teenaged daughter, a versatile athlete in her own right. We swam together in lakes, rivers and oceans whose waters were known to us. We knew currents, water temperatures, the fauna in each, and when and when not go into them. If we knew that there were alligators or sharks about, or large ships or drunken wastrels riding jet skis, we avoided swimming. If we knew that there were no hostile critters or dangerous currents, boaters and other hazards, we swam. But one time, when she got a bit older and was visiting me, I invited her to swim in a bay near my house, one that she had not swum in before. When we got to the beach she hesitated and demurred. That was not like her as she had always been keen to swim. I asked her what the problem was and she said that she did not know what was in the water but knew that sharks were common to that area. She could not be certain, in spite of my assurances, that there were no sharks where we were going to swim, and was therefore reluctant to go in.

I tried to reassure that at that time of day (midday), what sharks might have been there retreated to deeper waters further off-shore, and we could stay within 20 meters of the sand at all times. That did not assuage her. She kept on saying that if she could be certain about what was and was not in the water at that time, she could make a better decision. But since I could not guarantee 100 percent that there would be no sharks at that time, she preferred not to go in. Since she had already demonstrated courage in various ways at younger age, I accepted her reluctance and we found a pool instead. (Truth be told, a few years later a young woman was bitten by a bull shark at that exact beach while swimming at night).

The point is that it was not what she knew or did not know that bothered her. It was the uncertainty that filled the gap between what she knew and did not know that made her pause.

That is exactly why uncertainty is what the markets fear most. Businesses develop strategies based upon what they know and what they attempt to know. But something like Trump throws all forecasts and plans into disarray. The same goes for political risk and diplomacy. In fact, intelligence collection and analysis is, like polling and other predictive instruments, designed to reduce uncertainties and impose a degree of predictability–certainty, by another measure–to the subject in question. Humans spend a major part of their lives, both personally and collectively, trying to overcome uncertainties of a macro- and micro- sort.

Human social organisations reflect this fear of uncertainty in their composition. Almost all social organisations are organised hierarchically. Businesses, sports teams, churches, schools, social clubs, volunteer agencies, interest groups, armed services and law enforcement, other public services, and most of all, the traditional family, are organised vertically rather than horizontally. Some may be more authoritarian than egalitarian in their hierarchies and leadership selection criteria, but all are organised in ways that place decision-making authority at the top, from which directives are passed down. A major reason for that is to promote efficiency in decision-making in order to reduce uncertainties, if not impose some degree of certainty, in the organisational decision-making process as well as its outcomes.

Although many reforms, challenges and modifications of organisational hierarchies in human society have been made, the core of collective life is a hierarchical one. It is hierarchical because that has traditionally been seen as the most effective way of coping with uncertainty in and around social organisations.

That is where a major contradiction emerges. Although most social organisations are hierarchical in organization in an attempt to reduce uncertainty, democracy is not. In fact, authoritarianism–dictatorship by another word–would seem to be the most “natural” or “organic” type of human political society because it aligns neatly with most all other forms of social organization. In fact, not all types of authoritarianism are personalist and some even have methods of collective leadership selection contained within them (think of the CCP in China or the House of Saud). Even non-human primates, while dominated by so-called Alpha Males, rely on the support of females and younger males to ward off challengers to their rule. However, in every instance the politics of the group are hierarchical and authoritarian even if some subordinate input into leadership decision-making is allowed.

In contrast, in democracies uncertainty has been placed at the centre of the leadership selection process. That what we fear most is the linchpin of the electoral process. No matter how much polling, gerry-pandering, vote-rigging, candidate-blocking or other frameworks are introduced in an effort to lend certainty to voting outcomes, at its core elections are about institutionalised uncertainty. But they also have institutional constraints. At pre-set intervals, elections are held and leaderships are openly contested under a veil of voter secrecy. At the moment one votes the outcome is not known. That happens after the voting deadline passes. So elections, while uncertain in any specific instance, are also temporally delimited by institutional frameworks and processes. They may happen at 2, 3, 4 or 6 year intervals or even as special events under certain conditions, but the bottom line is that they occur at regular intervals regardless of the outcomes of previous contests.

There are plenty of caveats and modifications to this general principle, but the principle stands. Democracy is a political system based on institutionalised uncertainty when it comes to leadership selection. The motives for this contradiction of basic human social organization is to keep candidates and parties honest and accountable. Democracy is a system where losers agree to lose in exchange for being allowed to compete again in the future at pre-determined intervals and winners accept that their rule will be challenged at those intervals. This electoral “bargain” (election winners and losers accept outcomes in exchange for being allowed to challenge or defend at given time intervals) lends some certainty to the system itself (rather than the fortunes of those competing within it). Thus the dilemma of democracy as a system based on institutionalised uncertainty is resolved by imposing chronological certainty on the timing of elections.

Obviously enough, this core feature of democracy–the uncertainty inherent in free and open competitive elections–has been seriously undermined by authoritarian-minded politicians like Donald Trump, Viktor Urban and Recap Erdogan,. But their usurpations do not dissolve the fundamental truth that true democracy is founded on electoral uncertainty.

There is another feature of democracy that helps support the idiosyncrasy that is electoral uncertainty. Elections can be considered to be the “procedural” level of democracy because they involve the procedures and processes of leadership selection, but they are underpinned by “substantive” democracy in the form of institutional guarantees of civil rights, due process under the law, government accountability (both horizontal and vertical) and transparency, equality of voice and collective action, provision of minimum health and welfare standards, etc. With regard to civil society, norms and values are promoted that encourage horizontal solidarity, that is, the notion that people are equal as persons and should be treated the way any individual would want to be. Notions of fairness and access to opportunity apply here.

These are the institutional, societal and economic dimensions in which certainty is promoted under the procedural umbrella. Differences in how institutional, societal and economic democracy are pursued are what make the difference between liberal, social, Christian, illiberal and socialist democracies. Uncertainty may rule leadership selection, but limited ranges of institutional certainty when it comes to individual and collective behaviour and rights are offered to the body politic in general.

Because of the guarantees and processes available to the public at the substantive democratic level, people offer what is known as “contingent mass consent” to the democratic form of rule. In exchange for delegating the authority to make public policy decision-making positions to election winners, voters expect that certain material, social and cultural conditions are met. For example, voters expect economic and physical security, affordable access to health care, education and social services, equal rights under the law, and more. In addition, consent is not given once, forever, but is contingent on the delivery of substantive guarantees and expectations being met. Again, the reality is all too often different, but that is how democratic decline or backsliding is measured.

As can now be seen in the US.

In the US the root cause of democratic backsliding may lie at the level of contingent mass consent, not just the authoritarian behaviour of the current president and his minions. In recent decades many people have seen their prospects diminish while the material fortunes of politicians and “one percenters” flourish. Advances in technology, if not the ultimate cause of many of the major social dislocations of the contemporary moment, are certainly compounding them. Alienation and hopelessness have risen in several socio-economic and ethnographic demographics that are further confounded by increases in international mass migration and a the perceived restructuring of traditional value systems in ways that they do not understand. Their sense of uncertainty has grown along with all of the other pathologies now present in modern democratic life, and none of the substantive guarantees offered below the electoral mantle appear to be ameliorating that uncertainty. If fact, for some elections just seem to make things worse. This is not exclusive to the US, although it acts as a weathervane indicator of the syndrome.

Withdrawal of mass contingent consent is also where the move towards authoritarianism may be coming from. Authoritarians guarantee certainty. The certainty of repression, of elite bias, of blaming some “others” for the national malaise. They assure the public that they know what they are doing, that it is in the collective interests that they rule, that they will brook no opposition to their national projects (like “Make America Great Again”), and that they will restore traditional values and lead the people to their rightful and “proper” places in society. They assure the electorate that they are certain of that.

In democratic polities where material and social uncertainty abound in at least some sectors of society, mass contingent consent is withdrawn and the authoritarian option is explored because, for those doing the withdrawing, democracy does not seem to work. The 77 million people who voted for Trump in 2024 may have done so for many reasons, but a main one appears to be profound unhappiness with the political and economic status quo bequeathed by the Biden administration. It is ironic that the US economy was, by most macroeconomic indicators, doing very well on Election Day last November, but that was not enough for those 77 million people. For them voting for Trump represented a way to withdraw mass contingent consent from the US democratic regime as it stood (i.e. The “Swamp” or Beltway “politics as usual”) until such a time as their prospects improved and expectations are met.

Instead, their purported saviour has turned out to be chaos agent who has orchestrated not just a global market meltdown but also has propagated mass uncertainty to levels unseen since the Financial Crisis of the late 2000s and perhaps even the Great Depression. The insidious aspect of this is not confined to the chaos itself and the uncertainty that comes with it, but extends to Trump’s solution set, which is to increasingly use authoritarian devices as a means to combat the uncertainties he himself is magnifying.

This is an important distinction. It is not Trump’s authoritarianism per se that has caused the decline of US democracy, at least at the institutional level. Instead, it is the withdrawal of mass contingent consent to the US democratic system by the voting majority that made it possible for him to steer the country in an increasingly authoritarian direction. But he has two conditions that he must meet if his rule (as outlined in the infamous Project 2025 policy paper) is to succeed. He must diminish uncertainty with his authoritarian practices; and he must satisfy material and social expectations in order to secure and reproduce mass contingent consent to his project.

As things stand neither of those two conditions appear close to being met, so the next round of institutionalised uncertainty in the form of the 2026 midterm Congressional (and state and local) elections will be a true test of the dilemmas confronting US democracy.

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The Comparative Notebook on Trump’s Tariffs.

The ever brilliant Kate Nicholls has kindly agreed to allow me to re-publish her substack offering some under-examined backdrop to Trump’s tariff madness. The essay is not meant to be a full scholarly article but instead an insight into the thinking (if that is the correct word) behind the current moment of trade madness. However unpleasant, there is a method to it, and there is a twist to how it may be applied today.

The link is here. It is well worth the read.