Category: cultural difference

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The threshold of consent.

Long-time readers will recognise that consent (specifically, mass contingent consent) is something that I have written about regularly, here at KP as well in my academic life. In light of what is happening in Europe and elsewhere with regards to popular unrest in democracies, the concept is worth reviewing. There is a phrase in comparative politics and political theory known as the “threshold of consent.” That is the point at which people have had enough, reached the limits of their toleration and decide to push back one way or the other at the government and, in the case of revolutions, the State itself (remembering that revolutions involve but are not reducible to revolts, uprisings, riots etc.). What is happening in many contemporary democracies may in fact be that moment, the moment where mass contingent consent is withdrawn and people cast their gaze over the “valley of transition” between the extant order and whatever comes next. Elections are supposed to channel such discontent, as are policy reforms, well before the valley of transition is even a distant consideration, but as France and other countries (including Italy, India and Argentina) have recently demonstrated, that may not be enough to stave off mass insurrectionist urges. When the valley appears to be transitable and something better appears to lie on the other side, the moment of substantive social change has arrived.


The threshold of consent varies from society to society. In some societies material things like standards of living matter most. In others respect for cultural traditions or religious beliefs are of primary importance. In others freedoms of association, speech, thought and representation are treasured above all. In many places the threshold of mass contingent consent (contingent in that it is not given once, forever, but is dependent on expectations being met and regularly reaffirmed or renegotiated) is like a dew point in that it is a combination of expectations from those governing on the part of those being governed at any given moment in time. What people will tolerate and consent to in the US or NZ is different than what people will consent to in Bangladesh or Albania (I will refrain from mentioning whether this applies in Cuba or Singapore, which if to be treated properly because of the complexities involved needs a dedicated essay of its own). What people consented to five decades ago may well be different than now. When mass contingent consent is withdrawn, it is from country-specific political, economic and social configurations even if the sources of discontent (e.g., material deprivation, lack of opportunity, systemic exclusion) are more widely propagated around the world.

Add to that the fact that for the threshold of consent to be reached an alternative has to be realistically feasible. Withdrawal of mass consent does not necessarily entail the fall of a regime. People may just hunker down, grin and bear it, and go about their daily routines as best they can without making waves or calling negative attention to themselves from authorities. They do not need the stress created by political involvement or social activism, so they retreat into what I have termed elsewhere “survivalist atomisation:” they keep to themselves and focus on their own personal circumstances rather than those of the society at large. In my youth Argentines had a saying for living under the various dictatorships that I experienced: “De la casa al trabajo y del trabajo al hogar” (“from house to work and work to home’). This “heads down” behaviour is what dictatorships cultivate via repression, threatened or actual (because just the threat of official State violence against people for dissent is a very effective weapon of mass control). Since no peaceful or legitimate institutional channels exist for public feedback and redress under most dictatorships, the only alternative is collective violence–organized if it is to be successful in fostering real social change, but spontaneous and disorganised by default.

People throw rocks, burn cars, break storefront windows and loot. They vent their rage, and then go home if they have not been hurt or detained. They may come back and repeat their rage-venting for a period of time, but without leadership, organization and concrete objectives they are no more than an angry mob that will, even if slowly, be forced to heel by the organised violence meted out by the State. Revolutionaries spend much time trying to turn mob spontaneity into organised collective violence with the goal of social or regime change, even going so far as to advocate so-called “leaderless resistance” tactics so as to force authorities to over-extend the repressive apparatus in pursuit of the hydra heads behind the insurgent masses. Depending on what the threshold of mass consent is in a given context (including a tolerance for collective pain) , they may or may not succeed. But modern history is not in their favour, especially in the developed liberal democratic world. Simply put, social revolutionaries do not overthrow democracies. Only authoritarian coup plotters do, and they most often do so from within the State rather than from without it (even in the case of so-called “constitutional coups”).

Liberal democracies cannot resort to repression as a normal part of governance–it must be selective and used as the exception against “outlaws” in a usually peaceful society ruled by law. As Gramsci noted, repression is the iron fist within the velvet glove. The glove is ideological and usually suffices in order to maintain consent. But when ideological consensus frays and State authorities are forced or choose to remove the glove, then what is left is the moment of force. Trouble is, using repression as the basis for rule is a short term solution at best. The State cannot coerce the same number of the people in the same measure indefinitely. It has to replace repression with something else and try to re-establish the basis for mass contingent consent, because at some point the ongoing resort to repression may well make the valley of transition begin to appear transitable by those on the sharp end of the stick, water cannon, tear gas or gunfire. The necessity is to reestablish the bases of mass consent, not confirm the fact of its withdrawal.

All of which is to say that places like France need to move beyond the moment of force and onto the type of reform-mongering that addresses the root causes of popular unrest. Prime Minister Macron did that several years ago in the face of soaring petrol prices that occasioned trucker and commuter strikes, but in doing so via tax breaks and subsidies he only increased French sovereign debt, which has now come due and which contributed the politics of austerity that protestors are currently demonstrating against. As his example shows, all too often, by the time leaders undertake reforms, it is too little, too late and temporary at best. Effective reform has to be anticipatory and proactive, not reflexive and reactive. In European democracies today, that does not appear to be the case.

Elsewhere, things could get worse. If Trump tries to overturn the midterm electoral results, the US may well reach the triggering moment, even if only in some states or in a federal government versus state rights type of conflict.

Whatever happens, it is clear that the bases of the mass contingent consent that was given to liberal democracies in the post WW2 era has now crumbled under the weight of political sclerosis, government non-responsiveness and official corruption accelerated by increasing oligarchical control and manipulation of the State, economic deprivation for many and enrichment for a few, increased social alienation, stratification, material deprivation and intra-group enmity, and a breakdown of the liberal rules based International order (such as it existed, at least on paper). It is a turn to a feral politics, of might makes right, of “to the rich go the spoils” social order where mass contingent consent is no longer seen as a core requirement of democratic (capitalist) stability. In fact, even democracy as a political construct and form of rule is now being openly questioned by “techbro” oligarchs and alienated masses alike. For them, the withdrawal of consent to liberal democracy has already occurred.

A simple analogy may help drive home the point. At what moment does an abused spouse or child say enough is enough and walk out, retaliate against, or seek help with regard to their abuser? The specifics of individual circumstances may differ but the commonality is that a threshold of consent has been reached, then breached. In whatever manifestation, the individual withdraws their consent to the family arrangement, the exit option becomes necessary and, if there is shelter and support available away from the oppressive context, then becomes a feasible, if not desired alternative. At that point, the valley of transition for that individual has been reached and the moment to move is at hand..

As collections of individuals marshalled into groups, democratic societies follow this basic pattern of human behaviour. They consent to a given form of rule in exchange for expectations being met (even if these expectations are ideologically framed and manipulated by dominant groups). When those expectations are not met and are not reform-mongered by way of redress, then the threshold limit of consent will be reached, mass consent is withdrawn and the valley of transition becomes a possibility.

It remains to be seen what will happen with the democracies in Europe and elsewhere, especially given the authoritarian resurgence world-wide and the global rise of rightwing politics that seek to narrow rather than confirm or extend notions of rights and responsibilities in the social order. Whatever happens, it is clear that as a political construct liberal democracy has reached its limits when it comes to mass contingent consent to the established project. What lies next is unknown and uncertain, but what is clear is that for many, the threshold of consent was crossed some time ago.

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Adobe Canyon Men

This is a bit of a departure from my usual blogging, but a long-time friend sent me something that made me reminisce. With some license taken, please allow me to indulge the moment and write of other times and places.

In the northeastern Sonoran Desert Basin, where the high chaparral grasslands meet the oak, sycamore and cottonwood-heavy foothills of the Sky Island mountain ranges that straddle the Arizona-Mexico border at 5,000 feet, there have lived very different types of people who are different in different ways. People like Geronimo and Cochise, bandidos, pony express riders, train and stagecoach robbers, cowboys and cattle rustlers, US calvary, hunters, gatherers, ranchers and farmers, vigilantes and fugitives, later hippies, cultists, off-road meatheads and the occasional writer, painter or poet. Although there are no saguaro cactus at this altitude, here the Sonoran landscapes are lush and varied, with skies, especially at dawn and dusk, that are shades of pink, orange, yellow and white set against hues of blue as broad as the eye can see, and nightscapes that are a psychadelic kaldeoscope of stars, planets, meteors and nebula. Wildlife abounds, from the elusive jaguar to the playful coatamundi, with bear, puma, bobcats, fox, wolves, badgers, antelope, deer and other mammals sharing space with hundreds of bird, snake, insect and anthropod species, some only to be found in this part of Earth. It is truly Nature’s Paradise.

Among the people who have passed through this space, in the 1990s there was a trio of wayward travelers, “ruffians” at best, “trouble makers” to some and “riff-raff” as they were affectionately known by their kin. Before they arrived in the Sonoita-Patagonia area on the southeast end of the Santa Rita Mountains, they had traveled far and wide abroad in pursuit of knowledge and adventure, cultural enrichment and earthly pleasures. They accumulated wisdom beyond their years, dodged a few (figurative and literal) bullets, consumed way too much mind-altering substances and worked to re-define themselves in light of their individual and shared experiences. They earned advanced degrees but did not flaunt them. Two studied traditional cultures and one studied comparative politics. All wrote about social organizations. They spoke other languages and listened to jazz, Norteno and borderland blues on KXCI FM. Two drove old American pick-up trucks and all rode fast bikes. They were not feminine and supported feminists. They understood risk but were not always averse to it. They played with sharp objects. They were comfortable with weapons. They could cook for others. They liked dogs.

They were men being boys and boys thinking that they were men. It rewarded and cost them in equal measure.

That was before “woke” meant anything other than rising from slumber. They were Keto before 30-30-40 diets were a thing. They lived macro lives by focusing on micro details. The had situational awareness. They did not need testosterone boosters. The liked their wine dry and their beer cold, sometimes with a shot on the side. They were cool, calm and cordial on first impression but warm and affectionate when the occasion warranted. They shared their opinions and could spin a yarn but listened as much as they spoke. They behaved in a mannerly fashion around women and kids, and confronted ne’er do wells when other options were exhausted. They did not start fights but knew what causes were worth fighting for and what not to back away from. They looked out for each other.

I like to call them “Adobe Canyon Men” because of a certain location near the 32nd North/111th West parallels where they congregated from time to time to discuss the finer things of life as well as the state of current affairs. Alas, those days could not last and the centrifugal pull of other adventures carried them away to other climes, different meridians and a new millenium. But one record of their passage in that special space remains, and it is this:

Adobe Canyon, circa 1993.

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Regime transition sequencing.

I was reading a recent article in which the author wrote that the US has actually made the transition to democracy in Venezuela more difficult than it could have been by removing Nicolas Maduro and his wife from the country but leaving the rest of his regime intact. In the author’s words, “they took the dictator but left the dictatorship.” He went on to write that the usual order of things is to embark on a political regime transition (presumably to democracy if the starting point is authoritarian) followed by an economic regime transition (say, in simplistic terms, from communism to capitalism) or at least significant economic reform. In Venezuela’s case, the US has pushed for US-investor friendly economic reforms in the extractive industrial sector but left the Bolivarian regime otherwise intact and has not bothered with broader economic reforms that promote market diversification, income redistribution, decreased dependence on primary good exports (including but moving beyond petroleum), and more value-added domestic commodity and service production.

That got me to thinking about one major theme of the first generation regime transition literature of the (late) 1970s-1980s, which focused on the transition from democracy to authoritarianism in Europe, East Asia and Latin America in the 1960s and early 1970s and then the transitions form authoritarianism to democracy in the rest of the 1970s and 1980s. One theme that emerged was the sequence by which regime transitions occurred. We might call it a type of “chicken or egg” question.

Some argued that what was needed first for democracy to obtain was an economic transition from state-centric (e.g., Keynesian welfare or socialist) to free market models, which was believed would promote the civic freedoms needed for democracy to emerge as the corresponding political form (this was grounded in what was known as “modernisation theory,” which was a 1950s-era prescription for overcoming underdevelopment in the “Third World”). That was the “egg” answer, which was used as one justification for the US support for China’s admission into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001. As with original modernization theory, the underpinning syllogism proved incorrect.

Instead, both in the PRC and in the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV) as of the 1990s, communist party leaders engineered the move from a state-controlled command economy marshalled along what might be described as Stalinist or Maoist lines to a state capitalist economy in which investment and production was incrementally opened to private (including foreign) investment while the State controlled overall economic management decision-making and kept a stake in specific productive assets (e.g., telecommunications in both instances).

In effect, capitalism came but democracy did not. In both the PRC and SRV change occurred within the political regime, not of it, regardless of economic change. Communist Parties still control both countries and staff the leadership of the State. Their respective leadership architectures and other partial regimes within the larger whole have been subjected to reforms of various magnitudes, including those deemed required to accommodate the economic changes undertaken by the national political leaderships in question. The same is true, in another variation on the theme, in Singapore under the PAP regime: the overall regime remains and reforms (in Singapore’s case by “liberalising” when it comes to political and civil rights without giving up ultimate authority) while the economy changes (from post-colonial trading to techno-finance capitalism). In other words, rather than a transitional sequence, in some instances economic change can occur under the aegis of a stable political regime (at least if it is authoritarian).

Others have disagreed with the economic–>political change thesis, noting that political regime change was required before economic regime change could happen because economic policy is ultimately a political choice made by regime leaders. This is the “chicken” answer. The 1948 Chinese, 1959 Cuban and 1979 Nicaraguan revolutions are considered emblematic in this regard.

In both types of sequence, the key issue is one of parametric change: the boundaries of political and economic life are fundamentally altered as a result of the major institutional changes that define regime transition as a social phenomenon no matter which way the chain of causality proceeds.

Among other subtopics, one part of the debate about regime transitions in the 1980s centred on the preferred “regime change sequence” leading to democratisation. It was a simple, perhaps crude measure, but it had the virtue of forcing scholars and policy practitioners to address the linkage between political change and economic development and reform rather than just one or the other. It also broadened the “chicken or egg” question with regard to the linkage between economic development and political regimes, Was there a correlation or causal relationship between specific regime types and certain levels of development? If so, in which direction and of what specific type in both categories? Capitalist to socialist, socialist to capitalist or somewhere in between? Authoritarian to democratic or democratic to authoritarian and if the latter, what type of authoritarian? The possibilities of political-economic regime change are not as straight forward as might seem at first glance.

There is a third type of regime change that is also theoretically possible> It is simultaneous rather than sequential in nature. This is a situation where economic and political regime change occurred simultaneously, as part and parcel of the same transitional dynamic. This alternative was particularly of interest to students of the fall of the USSR and Eastern bloc regimes grouped in the Warsaw Pact as well as of the revolutionary transitions such as that of Nicaragua and Iran in 1979. In the former the hope was they would transition to both democracy and capitalism in short periods of time. In the latter the expectation was that with revolutionary overthrow of the Somoza dictatorship, socialism as an economic model could be rapidly imposed. The 1979 Iranian revolution represented a variant on that model, with many hoping that the post-Reza Pahlavi regime would be a theocratic democracy wedded to an Islamic market economy rooted in traditional Bazaari social relations of production.

Sadly, in both instances the 1979 revolutions eventually brought economic changes, but under a different type of authoritarianism than what existed before rather than the democracy that was promised. This may have been partially a product of the hostile reaction and pressure placed on the revolutionary regimes by the US and other Western states, but the fact is that be they simultaneous or sequential, the 1979 revolutionary regimes delivered something different than what was hoped (and fought) for.

The simultaneous transition possibility was also considered in the rise of Hugo Chavez and Bolivarianism in Venezuela in 1979 via electoral means, which presumably would have paved the way for a peaceful revolutionary change towards popular democracy and socialism, much in the way hope was previously raised along the same lines by the 1970 election of Salvador Allende in Chile. Alas, neither expectation was met: Allende was overthrown and killed in 1973 by a US-backed military coup d’état supported by rightwing forces while Chavez and his successor Maduro descended into authoritarian-kleptocratic rule culminating in the US military kidnapping of the Venezuelan leader in January of this year. As the author mentioned at the beginning of this post noted, the Venezuelan political leader has been forcibly removed but the regime has not.

As for former Soviet states, the record is very mixed. Russia has reverted to authoritarianism with a state capitalist/oligarchical hybrid economic model grounded in fossil fuel extraction and modernised Soviet-era industrial production.. Some former Warsaw Pact states have gone both democratic and (mostly) market capitalist. Others have gone autocratic and state capitalist/kleptocratic. Some have gravitated towards the European Union and even NATO. Others have remained within the Russian orbit on both political and economic grounds. This is especially true for Central Asian former Soviet republics (the so-called “Stans”), which have not undergone appreciable political regime change except to use elections as legitimation devices while economic control of extraction-based primary good production remains in the hands of nepotistic political elites and politically-connected interests.

It can be argued that simultaneous regime transitions cannot happen simply because of the turmoil and complexities involved in attempting to manage profound political and economic changes all at once. The cases cited above support that view regardless of what eventuated after the old political regime was displaced or the economic model substantially altered. But the issue of transitional sequencing remains an important one, not just conceptually but also as a matter of policy practice, especially if the goal is to restore or revive democratic governance.

As an example, my stay in the Pentagon in the early 1990s was based on a successful fellowship application that was centred on a proposal on how to democratise civil-military relations in post-authoritarian Latin America. I had noticed the difficulty with which new civilian elected governments were coping with entrenched authoritarian traditions in the (sometimes Prussian) military cultures of several Latin American nations, and so outlined in the fellowship proposal ways in which US non-lethal military aid, weapons sales and peer-to-peer training programs, coupled with legal and normative changes to the institutional relationships between the armed forces and civilian government, might help “democratise” the relations between political leaders and the military hierarchies of the time.

This was just one part of the political regime transition from dictatorship to democracy in that region–what was called “partial regime change,” where the sum of a number of reforms in the constituent parts of an electoral democracy (civil rights, election procedures, interest group intermediation systems, inter-agency accountability, policing authority, budget-setting agendas, federal-state relations, and even the relationship between civilian and military authorities)–were reformed, reconstituted or revitalised with the purpose being to provide institutional underpinnings that would support, then sustain and eventually reproduce democratic governance structures.

Again, the results were mixed but for the most part I am pleased to see that in places like Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Uruguay, the changes that my colleagues and I proposed seem to have stuck.

Getting back to the subject of Venezuela and now the attempt at forced regime change by the US in Iran, the folly of the move becomes clearer (as if it was not already). Not only were the “decapitation” strikes simply instances of state-sanctioned murder (by proxy, since the Israelis did the actual bombing of targeted leaders like the Ayatollah Khamenei), the Islamic regime and its constituent partial regimes remain intact, albeit with a stronger military influence replacing a weakened clerical caste headed by Khamenei’s badly injured son Mojtaba (something that is more the result of Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) dissatisfaction with the cleric’s enforcement of theocratic social policy prior to the US/Israeli attacks rather than the US/Israeli strikes themselves). If anything, what political regime change might be underway is, by several accounts, one from a theocratic to a military-dominated regime, conveniently reinforced by the foreign aggression waged upon Iranian society.

Lines of succession, promotion, policy and operational authority remain in place. So do the underlying civic structures, including the Bazaari social networks that even if now in opposition to most of the hard-line elements in the regime, remain fiercely anti-Western and Persian nationalist in orientation. In other words, the partial regime mosaic that when taken together constitutes the institutional edifice of the Islamic regime continues in place and functioning. Like in Venezuela, some former leaders are gone (dead) but the regime remains even as it evolves from within. Nor has the economy changed–although porous sanctions and the Revolutionary Guard toll booth blockade of the Hormuz Straits has strengthened the Islamic Republic regime’s control over it.

In effect, we have seen leadership change without regime change, little significant economic change other than a shift in beneficiaries in the Venezuelan case, and no real transitional sequence at all. This demonstrates the shallowness of what passes in the US for strategic thinking, comparative political analysis and foreign country expertise, to say nothing of the ahistorical ignorance of the MAGA elites in and outside of government who enable and support US foreign adventurism under Trump.

In fact, it might do well for scholars, politicians and economic interests alike to return to that literature on authoritarian regime demise to develop a US-focused idiosyncratic conceptual and practical framework for studying the late stage dynamics of the second MAGA administration. Because it is quite feasible that its demise will more resemble that of dictatorial collapse rather than that of democratic decline even if certain electoral trappings and procedural niceties cloak the entire process. The question for the US then is: if the transitional sequence begins with political change away from MAGA, will it a) result in its elimination from political society? and b) what if any economic and other partial regime reforms will come from the anti-MAGA political change if it occurs?

Without both, regime (or at least government) change in the US away from what exists today will not happen. Depending on one’s perspective, that may or may not be a good thing.

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Rumble in a strategic jumble.

In boxing terms, Iran is doing an Ali rope-a-dope defense against the US. Strategically, the US, like Foreman, sought the fight in order to burnish its fearsome (some might say brutish or thuggish) reputation. In return, Iran had to take the fight because it came to it as a matter of reputation, honor and physical defense. For one. the fight was an (ill-advised and ill-conceived) opportunity; for the other, it is existential.

Theoretically a mismatch between a much more powerful state and a far weaker adversary, at a tactical level the conflict has turned into an asymmetrical war of attrition. Asymmetrical because it is not just about weapons capabilities but also about political and social will and comparative timetables. The US has midterm elections, domestic economic factors and the global system of trade to consider and operates on chronological calendar-defined notions of political, military and economic time. The Iranians have their existence to consider and operate on cloud time, not because they are dreamy but because like the movement of clouds, they operate with a different, far slower and longer conceptions of temporal movement. The US initially said that it would win in 6 or so weeks, and because that time frame has now been reached without a win, it has rushed to seek a means of saving face and going home–or even to the status quo ante. It will not achieve the latter but will have to do the former sooner or later. This is an own-goal that makes W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq look like strategic genius.

Saving face will be hard to do, so the MAGA administration may decide to double down and as Trump suggested a few days ago, turn the conflict into a religious civilisational war of annihilation with apocalyptic objectives. That may be delusional, but given what else has happened with the Trump 2.0 administration it is no longer in the realm of the impossible save for the intervention of the global community. Meanwhile, the Iranians have expected and prepared for as much.

For the moment the Iranians are doing the rope-a-dope, Middle Eastern style. Absorbing blows, shifting its centre of gravity, counter-punching just enough to stay in the fight–nimble, agile and patient. Under Trump and Hegseth the US is a lumbering Foreman looking for a knockout but, because it has no strategic rationale, instead is exhausting itself politically/diplomatically while doing so. Meanwhile, after the initial US/Israeli onslaught, Iran is recovering, conserving its resources, digging (further) in and keeping its powder dry for the next rounds.

The difference with the original Ali-Foreman bout is that Iran will not eventually counter-punch a knockout blow, but will force the US to retreat, reduce its barrages, stumble about seeking a different type of military opening, hope for a draw and/or quit. The apocalypse scenario will only delay and raise the costs of the eventual stalemate, even if Israel or the US decide to abandon all rationality and exercise their nuclear options against what still remains a non-nuclear weapons state. Then yes, armageddon may come.

Short of that, the post-fight scenarios will be negative for both aggressors as well. Neither the US or Israel will have the eyes and ears inside of Iran that they once had, Iran will still have its maritime toll system in the straits of Hormuz (basically a pay to play scheme in order to guarantee safe passage), will still have weapons and U235 stockpiles hidden away, and former US and Israeli allies and clients will re-calibrate their relationships with both while the world trade systems adjusts away from Western-centric financing, insuring and perhaps fossil fuel dependency itself (to include derivatives such as plastics and fertiliser as well as non-renewable energy supplies). As others have written, the ultimate irony is that Iran may well come out of this strengthened and the global of system of trade less US-dependent than they were before the preventative US/Israel wars of preventative aggression were launched against the Persian nation-State.

Think of it this way: the Arab oligarchies that thought that they sat safely under the US security umbrella now are being bombed by Iran because they allow the US to attack Iran from bases on their soil. Yet they are too afraid to counter-attack Iran because they fear the implications of a wider regional war on their material fortunes. NATO has now seen what the US security guarantee looks like in practice, and with Trump ranting about quitting the alliance and taking Greenland (while appeasing Putin with regard to Ukraine), they see what the future holds if they persist in trying to accomodate the bully. As for Taiwan and its US security guarantee–may the goddess protect them. Meanwhile, other Great Powers or Great Power wanna-be’s bide their time…

Getting back to the original boxing analogy, this juror’s score is TKO or win by points for the Iranians. Someone needs to tell the self-proclaimed champ that it is time to retire.

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An analogy and an axiom.

Some words to the wise.

Analogy: Trump’s war against Iran might be the geopolitical equivalent of Custer’s last stand at Little Big Horn. Built on arrogance born of easy bullying in lesser conflicts, he has overestimated his capabilities and grossly underestimated his opponent. Iran may be Trump’s Sitting Bull, but the analogy holds only if Custer had a malevolent manipulator like Netanyahu leading him to his ignominious comeuppance.

Axiom: History shows that the side that prevails in war is not always the one that can deliver greater punishment to the adversary but the one that can absorb the most punishment and keep on fighting. Superior weapons do not always overcome determination and will.

Remember that “asymmetrical warfare” does not only refer to differences in weapons capabilities, kinetic mass and quality of forces brought into battle. It also refers to the motives and commitment that adversaries bring to the fight.

The US is an instant gratification, short attention span culture with a low social pain threshold and technology fetish, especially when it comes to gadgets, weapons and war-fighting (which feeds into the other cultural traits). Iran is the birthplace and seat of a 6000 year old Persian culture that invented chess and carpet weaving. Both of these endeavors require consummate patience, perseverance, imagination, complex multidimensional thought and extended foresight that sees the “play” several moves ahead of the current moment. At the behest of an international pariah client-state partner unable to “go it alone,” the US has launched an opportunistic expeditionary war of aggression against Iran during a midterm election year. Iran is fighting an existential defensive war of attrition in and from its ancestral homeland against the US and its regional (including Arab) allies, including the pariah state.

Given these differences, the axiom could well explain the analogy.

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A Fool’s Pied Piper.

For a while I have mentioned that too much of NZ political “thought” is re-hashed and often washed up ideas brought in from abroad. Both neo-liberalism and “Third Way” Labour positions were imported rather than organically generated from inside the NZ body politic and/or academia. With importation of foreign political ideas all too often comes stripping of the original ideas of any intellectual depth and nuance, particularly in the fields of public policy and political debate.

The latest example of this is ACT’s pimply-faced Ann Rand adolescent devotee’s use of libertarian thought as the basis for its policy approach. In recent years its leader, an Alfred E. Newman look-alike with serious racist and misogynist inclinations, has taken to exalting the virtues of the incestuous gnome that is currently president of Argentina, a Trump-loving mutton-chopped heavy metal grunting, formerly cross-dressing evil munchkin who takes advice from his cloned dogs, thinks orphaned children should be sold on open markets, denies that the Argentine dictatorship engaged in a “dirty war” that resulted in 30,000 deaths and countless tortured and disappeared people, believes blue-eyed people are more aesthetically and intellectually superior to brown eyed people, and who is now embroiled in a crypto currency meme fraud and a narco-trafficking scandal, all while his “chainsaw” approach to public sector reform has resulted in increased poverty, lower health and education standards, increased basic good prices like those of groceries and electricity, a hollowing out of the nation’s productive base and resultant wide-spread public unrest that is answered with indiscriminate police repression. Yep, that guy.

Which is why I say again, we are currently being governed by a crazy clown posse pushing a dumpster fire of anti-social, foreign inspired ideological garbage disguised as public management best practice. Stuff that.

But do not take this just from me. Have a look at this:

https://www.currentaffairs.org/news/this-is-why-you-dont-let-libertarians-run-your-country?fbclid=IwY2xjawNaSotleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHrKnIv4av64qdH339gFOGvGkGitLcQD-i6TN5dvgzWwXKTzCETs-JBy8FVUw_aem_6RfYz1vosbUC6-WP9FIxxg

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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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The Chaotic Reaction.

I recently gave a public lecture that addressed the question of how to make sense of the current state of international disorder. The sponsors of the talk know some of my writing and media comments about various aspects of international relations and foreign affairs, so they asked me to try and frame the picture for a group of smart non-experts. I decided to do so by noting the sources of the disorder and the three general responses to what, as I noted in the earlier post about A Return to Nature, is a moment of global chaos.

The current moment of chaos has its origins in the 2008 financial crisis, COVID, Donald Trump’s ascendence and Putin’s invasion. The 2008 financial crisis demonstrated the inherent fragility and biases of Western institutions that underpinned the so-called liberal international order. The more international entities were tied into Western financial circles, the more they lost when the artificially heated (via things like sub-prime lending) markets crashed. On the other hand, entities that were lesser tied into Western financial circles, including Asian banks, suffered less from the crisis. A lesson was learned there, one that rippled across increasingly skeptical views of the full range of institutions that underpinned the liberal international system.

COVID accelerated public skepticism about the role of science, international and national government responses to public health crises, and the balance between individual rights and collective responsibilities in modern societies. Although some countries like NZ managed to mitigate the negative impact of COVID in largely successful ways, even then the trade-offs involved in terms of freedom of movement, economic security and bodily autonomy have been widely debated and, sadly, largely detrimental to public faith in democracy. In other countries (such as the UK and US), gross government incompetence only served to confuse and sour the public on government, full stop. For their part authoritarian states simply clamped down on public discussion of whatever measures they undertook, so the public in many places is none the wiser for having experienced the pandemic.

Donald Trump’s appearance on the political scene was the both the culmination of and a catalyst for a trend towards rightwing authoritarian populism in erstwhile liberal democracies, and has had a major ripple effect the world over. In fact, it is safe to say that Trump will be the seminal figure of the 21st century, for better or worse (I vote worse) unless some other sociopathic bullying narcissist learns from him and doubles down on his governing approach in the latter half of this century.

Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine followed a pattern of increasing unilateral military “diplomacy” that violated international norms and disregarded legal strictures. The PRC’s actions in the South China Sea, Israel’s behaviour in Gaza and the West Bank, the Syrian civil war, Russia’s previous incursions in Georgia and Crimea all paved the way for the invasion of Ukraine.The bottom line to all of these actions is two-fold: no one had the capability to enforce the liberal international rules as given regarding conflict initiation, and therefore actors who had the capabilities to do so engaged in rules violations with relative impunity. International sanctions and condemnations, it turns out, are not enough.

In light of that and the moment of chaos that is now the post-liberal global state of affairs, three responses have emerged.

Going it alone: America First Disruptors.

The core idea comes from Chaos Theory, which sees opportunity in disorder. Those who are prepared for the moment can seize it. It champions agency (of actors) and events (COVID, revolutions, coups) in the way Machievelli wrote about virtu (agency as a virtue) and fortuna (fortune or luck in the form of external events). Only the US and PRC have the ability to “go it alone” in today’s global system based other respective resource bases, but China has chosen a different path (see below). So the US has opted to go it alone with Trump playing the role of great disruptor. It suits his management style as described in biographies and interviews, so fits comfortably as an approach to governance.

As it turns out, the father of neoliberalism, Milton Friedman, was an adherent of Chaos Theory. He believed that a big crisis, such as the Chilean coup d’état of September 11, 1973, created a vacuum into which disruptors can pour new ideas and policies. Trump is now the theory’s foremost exponent, but to varying degrees Xi, Putin, Modi, Milei, Bukele and Netanyahu also see themselves as great disruptors willing to use the moment of international disorder to their advantage. Trump and his advisors saw the liberal international order as strait jacket on US power, and in its demise see opportunity for the imposition of US hegemony on a global scale. For them, the old adages about might makes right, law of the jungle and dog eat dog can now apply. But in order to do so on the world stage dominated by strong-willed and often authoritarian competitors, domestic authoritarianism must be employed to impose the Disruptor’s will and demonstrate resolve to foreign interlocutors. This helps explain why the Trump administration is engaging a militarised response to immigration and urban crime fighting at home. For him the issue is simple: hurting democratic norms at home proves his willingness to impose US dominance abroad in unilateral pursuit of its interests.

The potential problem for this approach is one of incompetent over-reach: at some point the effort to impose unilateral authoritarian solutions may backfire and produce a blowback from negatively affected parties and their allies.

In term of employing chaos theory, US can be seen as the as sun, with Israel, Argentina and El Salvador in its orbit. In each case national leaders are pushing the boundaries of acceptable government behaviour because of their association with and backing by the Trump administration. Whether this will hold over the long-term is a risky bet.

Liberal reformism.

In this approach the goal is to redeem liberal internationalism by emphasising democratic values and regulated market capitalism. The idea is to broaden and reform the liberal institutional structure in order to accomodate non-Anglo-Saxon European representation in global institutions like the World Bank and IMF. In other words, the approach is trying to maintain an updated liberal order by becoming fairer. The move is European-led with non-European and post-colonial actors now on board such as Japan, Canada, ROK South Korea,, NZ and Australia. The trouble with this approach is its hypocrisy, lack of enforcement powers and domestic polarization undermining consensus on its basic premises (about the preferability of democracy and regulated markets). Security of this system is still tied to the US-centric order but weakening as countries peel off from US on the question of Israel/Palestine. A fundamental premise of the liberal order, that of tying trade and security between market democracies, is now under siege and will continue to be so as long as the US persists with its go it alone strategy.

Global South Constructivism/Institutionalism.

Here the response to the moment of crisis is to develop parallel institutional networks led by the BRICS bloc of nations that are based on interests (prosperity), not values. These interests increasingly focus on developing and maintaining technology hubs where none existed before (say, Qatar and the UAE), and tcreating parallel institutional networks developed to replace the Western-dominated post-World War Two liberal institutional order. The idea behind this approach is that economic integration will be followed by South-South security linkages (but are not there yet). Since demographic change points to the world’s population increasingly concentrated in and technologies migrating to previously under-developed regions of the Global South, the belief is that the trends favour the post-colonial world, not the Western colonisers.

The PRC-led Belt and Road Initiative largely financed by the Chinese Development Bank (now lending more money than the World Bank) and recent Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meetings are the biggest manifestation of this approach, with the incorporation of Arab oligarchies, Iran and Indonesia into the BRICS signalling a major broadening of the South network. In this the US go-it-alone approach acts as a trigger or catalyst for action, with Trump’s approach to the Ruso-Ukrainian conflict also serving as a get out of jail card for Putin as the South shifts from neutrality to support for Russia in the midst of a growing tariff war on the part of the US and most everyone else (except places like Russia, oddly enough). For many, the economic war led by the US is far more existential than the physical war waged by Russia in Ukraine and many have chosen sides, however discretely, accordingly.

This is just a short outline of the responses to the moment of international crisis, drafted as notes for a public lecture rather than a full analysis of the phenomenon. I shall leave it for readers to ponder whether the classifications are correct or whether they need to be replaced, modified or additions made. The basic idea is that we have moved from a unipolar international system to an emerging multi-polar order comprised of actors and constellations of actors with increasingly high technology orientations (“technophiles” creating “technopoles”) that transcend and in fact challenge traditional Western dominance of international institutional norms and agencies.

The time is ripe to seize the moment.

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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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Scholarly Link: The Comparative Notebook.

I am pleased that the under-recognized scholar (and previous co-author of mine) Kate Nicholl has decided to join Substack and publish her thoughts on comparative politics. By using Substack she wants to bridge the gap between scholarly articles and opinion editorials (op eds). Her gift as a writer is to make the complicated seem simple.

Her stack is free so please check it out. Knowing her work as well as I do, I can confidently say that she deserves to be read by wider audiences. In her first Substack essay she briefly explains why comparisons between NZ and Ireland or Singapore are largely spurious from both a methodological as well as a policy standpoint.

Check her out here

Also, coincidentally, she has a piece in The Conversation on a related yet different topic.