Category: Democracy

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Media Link: “A View from Afar” returns.

For those who may be interested, my buddy Selwyn Manning and I have decided to revive the “A View from Afar” podcast next week.

There is so much going on in the world the days, most of it bad sad to say, but our geopolitical angle perched down in the deep South Pacific may be different than some other perspectives for those who live in other parts of the world (and perhaps surprising to some who live in this neck of the woods)..

The show airs Monday February 23 at 12:30PM NZ time and Sunday February 22 6:30PM US East Coast time. It streams live on YouTube and various streaming platforms and then will be on demand. Just look for the title of the show wherever you listen/watch podcasts.

The first show highlights the death knell of the liberal international order and the US role in ringing that bell. Here is a summary tease of what is in store:

“The sad fact, though, is that the US is the center of our earthly geopolitical universe, serving as the first rock to drop in the global pond whose ripple effects are extensive, negative, and washing up in unexpected and unforeseen ways. That rock, in fact, is a black hole sucking the remnants of the rules-based order into oblivion, or if not oblivion, irrelevance in a new age of power politics (might makes right, etc.). It is a dark force from which things as they exist cannot return.”

See you then!

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Acquiescence is not consent, or a basis for rule.

As a follow up to my previous post (and harkening to a regular theme in my writing), consider this:

Used as the basis for authority, repression obeys a form of Newtonian Law: it wanes over time. You cannot repress the same amount of people with the same amount of force forever. Their numbers will grow and your ability to repress will drop unless you further increase the use of force. That only aggravates the situation. If the only response to dissent is more and wider repression, then less people have something to lose, even if it is their fear.

Repression must be justified ideologically and accepted by the majority for it to work as an instrument of social control. In other words, using mass repression without commensurate public consent is a brittle club. Despots try to shape narratives via lies, disinformation and propaganda in order to alter that inescapable fact, but the truth is that partisan spin or silence may obscure reality–what our eyes have seen and our ears have heard–but they can never replace it. It forms a memory that cannot be erased even if suppressed or delayed in its activation. It is the memory of what is and was real that forms the conscious basis of mass contingent consent (contingent because we do not give consent once, forever, to any given leader, government or administration).

That is why public acquiescence does not equal popular consent. That former is a short-term solution, born of silence and submission to superior physical force. The latter is the basis for political legitimacy and stable democratic rule. One is temporary, designed to break resistance to or reinforce a particular political project. The other is long-term in orientation even if contingent on material and social expectations being met.

Trump and co. appear to not understand this basic axiom and in fact seem blind to it given their slanderous and false accounts of the ICE murders in MN. This augers poorly for their longer-term prospects.

That gives me a basis for hope.

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Some observations about state violence leading to state terrorism.

A long time ago I wrote a scholarly article about the use of state terror during the Argentine “Proceso” (https://www.jstor.org/stable/2111080).

Seeing what is happening in the US, I thought I would reference a few things from that article. First: state terror thrives in cultures of impunity. That is, where government authorities believe that they are immune from prosecution for criminal acts that they order or undertake, especially when they occupy the justice system and control the courts. The good news is that such a sense of impunity often leads them to eventually over-reach and make mistakes that cause their downfall.

Second, as with all forms of terrorism state terror follows a target–subject–object logic. Individuals and groups are targeted with state violence. The subject is the larger audience that witness state violence either directly or indirectly (via the media, word of mouth, etc.). The object is to intimidate the subject audience into submitting to the State’s authority, however illegally it is exercised.

Specifically, the object is to atomise and infantilize the body politic and society at large. “Atomization” means the forced breakup of collective identities and solidarity bonds, where people retreat into their own personal lives rather than risk being targeted by the State because of their collective ties to other social groups. They mind their own business, look away, do not make waves and certainly do not publicly confront the agents of repression even by peaceful non-violent means.

“Infantilization” refers to the forced loss of personal agency, where people are psychologically reduced to the level of a child’s nightmare because of what they are living, where monsters are real and have impunity when committing monstrous acts.

It may seem a stretch to say so right now, but the state violence being meted out by ICE and other US federal agencies against both citizen and non-citizen members of the public seems to lie on a continuum that inevitably culminates in state terrorism. The MAGA administration’s double-down response to ICE killings suggests that is where they are prepared to go.

The only answer to this is mass collective resistance, using the legal avenues and social networks available to people in spite of official judicial and extra-judicial retribution. There must be a groundswell of authentic grassroots push-back in spite of the inevitable dangers this poses to people’s lives and livelihoods.

I do not think that the US has reached the level of the state terror experiment of the “Proceso.” No yet. But the mindset of those in power–the demonisation of opponents as “communists” and un-American/anti-American “wokesters,” the gaslight of the public by officials saying that what people have seen with their own eyes is not true, that victims of state violence brought it on themselves and perpetrators of state violence are justified in their acts because it is making the country safe from criminal “aliens” and their treasonous native-born supporters–is very much the same (and in the cases of Stephen Miller, Greg Bovino and Kristi Noem, might as well be right out of central casting for a movie about the 3rd Reich). To reiterate, the US is on a continuum of violence when it comes to its increasingly authoritarian trajectory, and state terrorism is the culmination of that continuum.

I hope that my US whanau think about this as they go about their lives far from the front lines of Minneapolis, Chicago and other blue front-line states (because ICE is focusing its repression on Democrat-supportive states and cities, not Red GOP-supportive electorates). Just because one is not targeted now does not mean that one will never be.

And as the saying goes, if you wait until they come for you, it will be too late.

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The Mad King.

Two things stand out in that crazy note that Trump sent the Norwegian Prime Minister. And no, it is not the reference to “the boat landing” and claim that there is a lack of formal documentation of any agreement about jurisdictional  control of Greenland (it turns out that there is, including a 1917 convention swapping recognition of Danish control over Greenland in exchange for US possession of what were then known as the Danish West Indies–now the US Virgin Islands–and a 1951 “Defense of Greenland” pact granting the US exclusive military basing rights on the island).

Nope.

It is the fact that 1) Trump believes that the Norwegian government controls awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize. Besides the unhinged obsession with winning the Nobel Peace Prize and the lies about ending eight (?) wars (?), Trump seems to think that because the Nobel Awards Committee is located in Oslo and committee members are selected by parliament, the Norwegian government somehow “controls” it. This is like saying that the US government controls the Academy Awards because the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) is located in Los Angeles and receives (well, used to receive) federal funding. Then he goes onto say that because the Norwegian government did not give him the prize, he is no longer interested in peace. WTF?

2) He seems to think that Norway either controls Greenland or has influence over Denmark’s policies regarding Greenland. Greenland is an autonomous (self-governing) territory of Denmark, like the Cook Islands are for NZ or New Caledonia is for France. Norway is not Denmark and has no control over Greenland or its relationship with Denmark.

That suggests that Trump is an ignorant buffoon of the highest order–maybe there is Legion of Honor equivalent prize for that, akin to a First Class Darwin Award–or he operates in a sardonic alternate reality-turned–parallel universe where he can make threats and issue ultimatums devoid of practical, diplomatic, legal or moral grounding. This has moved from being a case of unbridled narcissism into an instance of madness, be it a product of old age, medications, unchecked ego or a combination thereof, all enabled and encouraged by a coterie of cynical and sociopathic advisors, political allies and partisan media hacks.

Time to put him out to pasture, because any way you look at it, he ain’t all there. He has become a destabilizing danger to both the world system as well as to the US itself (I will refrain from commenting on his domestic policies here but they are also malevolently and destabilizingly nuts). Although JD Vance may step into the role of POTUS, he will not have the cult-like hold on the MAGA base that the madman has and will be challenged in any event by rivals who are already lining up to take a run at the presidency in 2028. Meanwhile, the current MAGA entourage will turn on each other and/or disperse like rats.

It could get bad, but it cannot get worse than what we have now.

Time for Article 25 and if not, impeachment yet again.

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Media Link: Pablo on ICE.

In light of the shooting in Minneapolis this past week of an unarmed woman by an ICE agent, I put on my formal “security analyst” hat for an on-line interview with Radio New Zealand on what the US security agency ICE is and does. I think that the RNZ explainer does a good job of outlining the basics regarding its scope of authority and powers. Let’s just say that they are broad.

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Addressing some mistruths.

The Bondi Beach mass murder attack is yet another inevitable sequel to the Israel-Palestine conflict. The precise nature of the sequels are seldom known, much less prevented in advance of their occurrence, but the fact that they will occur should. be obvious to anyone who has studied or experienced the dialectic of sectarian violence whatever its specific origins. In this case we saw a small-cell (not lone wolf) attack where operational secrecy in preparing, planning and execution was apparently well maintained.

While digesting the stock pap that passes for NZ local “expert” commentary on the Hanukkah attacks I found myself thinking about the broader tone of Western media coverage and the implicit biases reflected in it. Let me start with a few small points of order and then speak to what is left largely unsaid in mass media coverage.

The father and son attacks on the celebrating Jewish crowd at Bondi may or may not be a terrorist attack or simply a hate crime. I have written about this many times before, here and professionally, but the core of the definition is worth repeating. Terrorism is a violent tactic that has been used by States (during and outside of war), non-state ideological actors, criminal organisations and psychopathic individuals. It has a subject (audiences), object (to influence the will or psychological health of subjects by installing fear and dread among them) and target (victims). Seemingly random and unwarranted violence is the instrument and being terrorised is the effect. For unconventional warfare analysts and practitioners, the motivation of the terrorists is less important than the epistemological sequencing or chain of causality involved. Terrorism must have all three components in order to be correctly labeled as such.

Terrorism can be (and often is) a product of hatred but is not synonymous with hate crimes. Hate crimes lack the subject-object-target sequencing that distinguishes terrorism from other forms of unconventional violence. Hate crimes are often born of passion and fury. They may be done for revenge, retribution or sadistic pleasure. In some cases these pathologies enter into the terrorist’s equation. But what distinguishes hate crimes from terrorism is in the latter’s choice of subjects and objects, which gives an element of cold dispassioned rationality to the calculation. The subjects are more than the victims and their immediate circles. They include governments, communities, specific entities or organisations,, supporters, opponents and peer competitors. The object is to do more than inflict pain, suffering and punishment on victims and subjects. It is to bend the will of subjects in a specific direction pursuant to the perpetrator’s interests.

More simply, terrorism is a reflective exercise of violence. Hate crimes are a visceral violent response.

It remains to be seen whether the Bondi attacks were reflective or visceral in nature. Reporting has suggested a variety of motives but nothing concrete has been produced other than reports that one of the gunmen traveled to the Philippines in recent months, which may or may not be linked to the presence of ISIS cells in that country. What is clear is that the Australian government and global media have jumped to describe the event as an antisemitic terrorist attack. The antisemitic part of that label is undoubtably true (more on this below) but the terrorism label appears to be more one of unreflective convenience, political opportunism and/or agenda-serving rather than serious analysis (as is the case with what passes for local “expertise” in NZ).

Mind you, not all instances of hidden agenda grammatical opportunism and mistruth are necessarily bad. Authorities may misuse terms like terrorism to shake society out of complacency and/or expand their legitimate deterrent or preventive reach via expanded powers of surveillance and arrest with cause. The emotive weight of terms like terrorism may allow legislative and institutional reforms that provide legal and operational latitude that previously did not exist but which are needed inn the face of fluid and evolving threat scenarios. On the other hand, the risks of official misuse of terms like terrorism are obvious, to which can be added media misuse for reasons other than objective reporting of the facts and political and interest group misuse of terms in pursuit of partisan and sectorial advantage.

War criminal and corrupt fraudster Benjamin Netanyahu’s attempt to blame the attacks on Australia’s recognition of the right to Palestinian Statehood is the most patently crude of recent attempts to take advantage of the situation for self-serving purposes. He is far from alone, as pro- and anti-gun lobbies have jumped into action over the issue and then, of course, pro-Israel and pro-Palestine lobbies blanket the media with their respective takes on who/what/when/why/how. The objective truth does not matter here. What matters is the public weight of the sectorial spin.

We can assume that counter-terrorism authorities in Australia (now under the microscope because one of the gunmen was monitored for some time as a possible ISIS sympathiser and was known to. hold a legal firearms license and six hunting weapons), are acutely aware of what the attack really was but prefer in any event to fall into line when it comes to brandishing the terrorism accusation. As for other Western governments and media, the uncritical use of that label suits their specific interests quite well.

By way of another aside, please note that “ISIS influenced” is not equivalent to “ISIS” or “ISIS directed.” The killers showed little fire control in using their weapons (such as one providing covering fire for the other) and demonstrated little tactical acumen like effectively using cover and efficient angles of fire to their front and rear, instead scurrying around while firing indiscriminately into the crowd and at arriving police. Theirs was not the work of proficient and disciplined assassins trained by and serving in a militia, but instead appears be that of weekend warriors with limited time at the shooting range. They were still deadly, but they may not be actual members of ISIS. In fact, no claims of intellectual or material authorship of the attack have been made ISIS or any affiliate group.

Another unacknowledged mistruth is the constant reference to the “Israel-Hamas” conflict and the events of October 7, 2023. No serious person disputes that Hamas committed unspeakable atrocities on that day, including crimes against humanity. They deserved what came to them. However, had Israel limited itself to pursuing, locating and killing every single person involved in the attacks with some “collateral” damage thrown in because of the “fog of war,” relatively few people other than rabid Islamicists would have objected. October 7 was too barbaric for the global community to tolerate and for a very brief moment, much like the US after 9/11, the world majority stood in sympathy for and solidarity with the Israeli people (as distinct from the Israeli government)..

Like the US after 9/11, Israel squandered that goodwill. We will not dwell on the backdrop to October 7 here (the intelligence failures, the clandestine Israeli support for Hamas prior to the attacks, the unspoken agenda of conquest shared by radical Jewish ethno-nationalist elements in the Knesset and wider Israeli community, including by foreign-born illegal settlers on Palestinian land in the West Bank). What we will address is a simple fact that is crucial to understanding the inevitability of sequels such as that at Bondi Beach.

That fact is that the conflict in Gaza is not between Hamas and Israel. It may have started that way, but Israel’s response, an act of collective punishment of an entire population that quickly became a prolonged process of ethnic cleansing that has now become a UN-recognized genocide, and which has moved into the West Bank, makes the conflict an Israel-Palestinian war. It has also spilled into Lebanon, home to many Palestinians, under the pretext of eliminating Hezbollah (and by connection, Iranian interference in the Levant). The war is grossly one-sided and is being waged against an entire people, not just armed insurgents and their immediate political leaders and supporters. Truth be really told, it is civilizational in nature and seen by the (willing and unwilling) participants exactly as that.

It is this war–an Israeli war of annihilation designed to pave the way for permanent occupation and annexation of Palestinian lands–that has ripped off the scab of global antisemitism. Primordial antisemitic prejudices now combine with modern grievances and anti-Jewish tropes in the face of global indifference to the suffering of the Palestinian people. Western liberal democracies do nothing or side with Israel. Authoritarians of the Left and Right steer clear of the fight or cut secret deals with Israel in order to keep commercial, diplomatic and security ties flowing. Regardless of thousands of protests and millions of marchers, the situation has not appreciably changed and instead we hear open commentary about US-backed development of Gaza as a tourist destination. Needless to say, anger, frustration, hopelessness and feelings of powerlessness begin to mount. In that mix, hatred rises and eventually–inevitably given human nature–violence happens.

That is why semantic precision is necessary. The conflict in Gaza is not between Hamas and Israel but waged by Israel against the Palestinian people, That started the sequel-chain involving antisemitism (which gathered “old school” hatred of Jews such as that of neo-Nazis and Groypers with modern anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist hatred), and pushed its eventual descent into, at a minimum, hate crimes (such as the Australian arson and graffiti attacks on Jewish centres leading up to the Bondi attacks), and now perhaps a mass murder event that may be an act of (even if unlikely if we are honest in our use of the term) terrorism.

The sad and often unspoken fact is that signal events like the Gaza conflict bring out suppressed hatred and prejudices as well as opportunistic corporate, social, political and ideological agendas that seek to frame the narrative about the event and its sequels in specific self-serving fashion. Unfortunately, the media and political commentariat in NZ is not immune from that syndrome.

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A return to darkness.

In 1994 I was the lead author of the US National Security Strategy for the Western Hemisphere (in reality, the region below the US-Mexico border and adjacent waters). In that section of the Annual US National Security Strategy Report (which covers the entire globe), my colleagues and I focused on regional democracy promotion and cooperative security arrangements after years of authoritarianism and internal conflicts in Latin America, focusing on civil-military relations, conflict resolution and non-traditional security concerns like environmental degradation, drug production and so-called “human security” issues (e.g. poverty alleviation) that could be mitigated via international military assistance and cooperation programs. That section, as with other regions around the globe, was written with input from various other foreign policy agencies, including the intelligence community, State Department, NSC, Treasury, Customs and Immigration and various service branches, although the Office of the Secretary of Defense compiled and published the report under the Department of Defense banner.

An underlying premise of our work at that time was to try to end the history of US military and grey are/covert (and obsessive anti-communist) interventionism in the region, in particular by deliberately ignoring the 1823 Monroe Doctrine and 1904 Roosevelt Corollary that saw Latin America as the US “backyard” where it played the role of regional policeman via Gunboat Diplomacy and other Big Stick means.

It is therefore with profound alarm that I read that the 2025 US National Security Strategy for the Western Hemisphere explicitly bases itself on the Monroe Doctrine (which is neither a Treaty or sanctioned by international law), and adds a “Trump Corollary” to the Roosevelt Corollary. The Trump Corollary states that the US is the determinant of Latin American fortunes rather than these stemming from the sovereign exercise of a Latin American country’s free will.

Implicit in this strategy is the notion that the US will and can intervene I the internal affairs of Latin American states. It’s interventionism is not guided by support for democracy and/or opposition to autocracy. That is irrelevant to the new US strategic calculus. What matters is the age-old geopolitical concern with having “friendly” and pro-US regimes installed in and foreign competitions pushed out so that the US (or better said, Trump-connected interests) can maximise regional opportunities of an economic and political sort.

The 2025 National Security Strategy for the Western Hemisphere is an outright claim to unilateral US imperialist interventionism. Seen in that light, it  frames recent US actions in the region in sharper (and darker) relief and explains its recent meddling in the internal affairs of places like Argentina, Brazil, Honduras, Mexico, El Salvador and Venezuela as component parts of this new (neo) imperialist strategy.

That augers poorly for regional peace and security. The PRC is now the leading trade and investment partner of several LATAM countries and is unwilling to surrender its interests to the US (or better said, Trump-aligned economic interests). It has a satellite tracking facility in Argentine Patagonia and is heavily involved in port management in several countries (including a newly opened container processing port facility and transportation hub in Peru, the largest of its kind in Latin America). It is deeply involved in resource extraction and infrastructure development throughout the region. This is the type of soft power influence that the US used to wield, but which is now being replaced by crony capitalism, election meddling and Gunboat Diplomacy. Although there is much to dislike about its approach, the PRC “does business” with Latin Americans as partners and sovereign equals. The US rattles sabres and extra-judicially kills Latin American civilians under pretexts, regarding its Southern neighbours as nothing more than assorted lawn furniture that can be arranged at will or whimsey.

At some point push may come to shove. The US currently has the strategic advantage over the PRC and other extra-regional competitors, but they may only be temporary as the MAGA administration hollows out the federal government and sows partisan political and social division within US society. In a weird sense, the US could wind up like the USSR at the end of the Cold War: a bloated military machine standing on a fractured society and skewed oligarchical economy where the interests of a connected  few prevail over the needs of the many.

Whatever happens, born of ignorance and hubris, this year’s US National Security Strategy is a retrograde turn in its relations with its Latin American neighbours.

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Rats fleeing a moral slum.

Apropos the Washington Post/CNN stories regarding Pete Hegseth verbally instructing the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) Commanding Officer (Admiral Frank Bradley) and SEAL Team 6 to “kill them all” when survivors of a missile strike were seen clinging to the wreckage.

Well, the inevitable happened once the story got out. After weeks bragging about ordering attacks on supposed drug-running boats that have killed 81 people so far (no tangible evidence of drug-smuggling has been provided and even if they were involved in such activities, the penalty for drug-smuggling is imprisonment, not summary extrajudicial execution at sea), Trump and Hegseth are  trying to distance themselves from the order to kill shipwrecked survivors of a US military strike on a unarmed civilian boat by throwing Admiral. Bradley under the bus. 

Trump says that Hegseth told him that he did not order the strike and that he (Trump) would not have ordered it if he knew about it. Hegseth says that he did not give the “kill them all” order and did not watch the live feed coverage of the second strike (aka “double tap”) that killed the survivors even though he watched the rest of the operation up until that moment. They both pointed the finger for giving the “pull the second trigger” order at Admiral Bradley, who according to the original story passed it down the chain of command to SEAL Team 6, who then fired the Hellfire missile that killed the two people treading water. In total, 11 people died in the two strikes. No drugs were located.

This sequence of blame-shifting was predictable because Trump and Hegseth have no sense of honour or ethical compass guiding their actions in what conservative writer George Will calls a “sickening moral slum of an administration.” We can only hope that Admiral Bradley, whose career is finished regardless of who ultimately gave the double-tap kill order, has receipts or a document trail that will provide evidence of where the illegal order came from and who, precisely, gave it. Because killing shipwrecked survivors, during times of war and certainly doing times of peace, is a war crime, a crime under US and International law, and a violation of the Geneva Conventions and US code of military justice. That the people in question were defenceless civilians not engaged in a real conflict with the US makes things worse and opens up the possibility of criminal liability for those involved in giving and executing the order.

Interestingly, Admiral Alvin Holsey, the previous commander of the Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), which is the lead command involved in the military pressure campaign against Venezuela and its supposed drug-running activities, tendered his resignation 45 days after the Sept. 2 double tap strikes. He was not involved in the chain of command that conducted the strikes so likely was ignorant of operational details (SEAL Team Six was answering to JSOC, not SOUTHCOM). He had not yet completed the first year of his three year term and may have to forfeit the fourth star promotion to Admiral that came with his appointment to be the Southern Command boss (that is significant in terms of his retirement benefits). It could well be that Admiral Holsey resigned in protest against the illegal extrajudicial kills of mariners at sea. Should he be called before Congress to testify under oath about what he knew and when he knew about the double-tap and other kinetic operations carried out in the SOUTHCOM Area of Responsibility (AOR), things could get interesting.

Likewise, the Post story claims to be quoting two people in the room when Hegseth gave the “kill them all” order, with corroborating statements by five other people with direct knowledge of the operation. Given the high level decision-making involved, these are likely to be senior military officers and/or civilian Defense Department personnel. Should they be requested to appear before Congressional investigations committees and be questioned under oath, things could well get dicey for Hegseth in particular, but potentially for Trump as well if he knew about the “kill them all” policy in advance of the strikes.

As things stand, while Admiral Holsey will retire honorably, Admiral Bradley could well wind up court-martialed, sentenced and imprisoned, dishonorably discharged and all retirement benefits forfeited. For a 35 year service naval office and former SEAl, this is a tremendous fall from grace. The same could well happen to others in the chain of command that fateful night.

Which is why I hope that they carry receipts in the form of documentary evidence about the mission.

Even so, the Supreme Court has ruled the Trmp is immune from prosecution for actions taken in his official capacity as President (including murder). Trump can use his pardon powers to shield Hegseth, Bradley and others in the chain of command who participated in the operation. Trump has already demonstrated his willingness to exercise his pardon power as he deems fit, including pardoning war criminal Eddie Gallagher, a former SEAL.

Whatever happens, one can only hope that this is the beginning of the end for the corrupt and incompetent (yet dangerous) deck of cards known as the MAGA White House. Because just like the garish gold decor now festooning its walls like it was a Liberace showcase in Vegas, the term “gilded” in its original sense seems most appropriate. 

Shiny on the outside, rotten on the inside.

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No surprises versus plausible deniability.

The sordid saga of Jevon McSkimming reminds us of the inherent tension between two largely unspoken axioms of democratic politics. These are the “no surprises” and “plausible deniability” rules. Infrequently formalised in written instructions and more commonly shared as unwritten understandings between government officials, these axioms require delicate juxtaposition in order to strike the right balance between institutional accountability, individual responsibility and partisan fortunes. Balancing the oft-counterpoised understandings speaks to the vertical and horizontal dimensions of institutional and individual accountability as well as issues of institutional self-preservation, bureaucratic “capture,” individual and partisan interests. It is a tough mix to get right and yet if democracy is to be served, that is exactly what must happen.

What will not be addressed here are the specifics of the McSkimming case or whether this balancing act occurs in authoritarian regimes. The former has been covered extensively by political commentators detailing the chronology of and participants in events leading to recent revelations. The latter usually do not concern themselves with addressing matters of public accountability so do not place as much emphasis on the axioms in question. They may not like surprises and tend to deny responsibility when called out on failures or misbehaviour, but authoritarians mostly discount the governance implications of their actions because mass contingent consent is not the basis of their rule.

In contrast, mass contingent consent and attendant faith in institutions, leaders and policies constitute the foundation of the social license that is given to political leaders and government institutions to perform their duties and responsibilities in democracies. That is the foundation of the vertical accountability that lies at the core of democratic governance–both leaders and institutions are accountable to the people that they ostensibly serve. Several mechanisms ensure vertical accountability–elections being the ultimate adjudicator of government performance–including entities like inspectors general of agencies, comptrollers, auditors, boards of inquiry, independent commissions, parliamentary committees and in-house regulation enforcement of institutional and personal standards of conduct. Electorates vote for governments to carry out a given policy agenda, and the institutional apparatus is responsible to the electorate via independent means as well as through the mediation of that government for implementation of that agenda within the framework of the law.

Unfortunately in practice many oversight agencies like the Independent Police Complaints Authority (IPCA), the Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security prior to the Zaoui case and various parliamentary committees developed reputations for having been the subjects of “bureaucratic capture” whereby the entities that they are supposed to monitor wind up controlling what they can see and do when it comes to their oversight and investigation functions. In some instances they and Royal Commissions of Inquiry have been suspected of being “whitewashing” devices at the service of the government of the day or the agencies they oversee or investigate. This erodes public trust and promotes insularity, unethical behaviour and organisational defensiveness within public bureaucracies, especially those in the security and intelligence arenas.

Whether they are subject to bureaucratic capture or not, where institutional traditions in NZ government agencies and amongst some parts of the political class reward unaccountable practices, there may exist the sense that there will be limited to no consequences for untoward behaviour because the agencies in which they serve or depend on close ranks and shield them when things “hit the fan.” If vertical accountability mechanisms are weak or rigged against honest and transparent scrutiny and responsible exercise of duty, then the institutional culture in government agencies may develop forms of self-preservation that usurp legitimate public accountability.

This organizational pathology is known as a culture of impunity. Officials and agencies get away with misbehaviour because they are protected by their peers and political superiors, and the more that happens and the longer a tradition of doing so exists within any given agency, the more likely that, absent major institutional reform, that will be the default response when individual and organisational problems arise.

It is in this context that the tension between the “no surprises” and “plausible deniability” axioms come into play. The “no surprises” policy is simple: subordinates inform superiors in advance of problems or trouble (personal, political, institutional) that may be coming their way. This provides government leaders the opportunity to prepare contingency plans for what they know is coming. That involves more than crisis management and PR spin campaigns that “get out in front” of the emerging story. It may or may not involve diversion tactics and “flooding the zone with s**t.” It also offers leaders the chance to engage in proactive reforms that are already underway when the issue in question reaches the public domain.

“No surprises” is a discrete foundation of vertical accountability in democracies that is critical to informed decision-making and government stability. It prevents smaller problems from metastasizing into institutional or political crises and reassures and reaffirms public faith and trust. It has a horizontal accountability dimension in that warnings embedded in the “no surprises” (or “head’s up) policy can be shared with other agencies not specifically involved in the matter at hand. For example, the Police could have shared information about the Christchurch terrorist that was derived from investigations into criminal matters with their intelligence counterparts had they not been governed by a “siloed” inter-agency information-sharing policy. In other words, there was an institutional antipathy towards horizontal accountability between the NZ Police and other security agencies that prevented proactive action that might have prevented the March 15 mosque attacks.

Conversely, the intelligence community warns the Police about potential foreign government involvement in criminal enterprises targeting NZ. In may instances this is part and parcel of inter-agency information sharing, but it also is clear that does not always happen and that in NZ accountability between agencies (again, the horizontal dimension of public accountability) is not a commonly observed standard in practice.

Tension in governance occurs because there is another side of the coin when it comes to institutional and political accountability: “plausible deniability.” Modern democratic leaders have learned that often the best way to deal with crises is to deny any knowledge or involvement in them and to that end ensure that no evidence can come to light tying them to any specific event, order or action. Instead, the problem is blamed on people or entities further down in government organisational charts. Reagan and George H.W. Bush denied any involvement in the Iran-Contra affair even thought the plotting and scheming was done down the hall from the Oval Office in the West Wing. Donald Trump denies knowing who the people are that he pardons or consorts with (consensually or not) before they become controversial, and instead uses diversions and personal character assassination to shift attention onto others. Helen Clark knew nothing about the Urewera raids before they happened and John Key knew nothing in advance about the Kim Dotcom raids or assorted acts of cabinet misbehaviour. They were then “surprised” when these events hit the public eye but could plausibly deny that they were involved in them, thereby escaping responsibility for the excesses committed in each case (in which the NZ Police were heavily involved). Although McSkimming rose to senior rank in the NZ Police during the Ardern/Hipkins government, Mr. Hipkins apparently knew nothing about his problematic proclivities, as is the case with the current government leadership, including the Minister of Police.

I have experience with this axiom. During my stay in the US Department of Defense I was advised to make sure that the paper trail ended at the desk of someone above me in the Pentagon pecking order. Otherwise I would be made the scapegoat should controversial actions that I was involved with became a matter of public interest. It did not matter that these actions “came from the top,” that is, were ordered by people much higher up in the US security policy-making food chain and way above my pay rate. Instead, senior officials made sure that should things hit the fan, so to speak, on some policy issue in my field of responsibility, that the lowest ranking subordinate would take the blame/be blamed and those giving the orders would get a free pass on the accountability scales because there was no evidence specifically connecting their orders to subsequent actions taken further down the chain of command.

Those were the days of physical paper trails. Today they are email trails or even text trails, but their evidentiary worth is the same. The buck stops not with the higher-ups but with some schmuck further down the bureaucratic line. As it turns out, I was lucky. My immediate superior, a military man, told me that so long as he was kept informed about my “grey zone” activities, he would take responsibility for them should things go awry. In other words, he was combining “no surprises” with “plausible deniability” on my account. He was an honourable man dealing with difficult and complex situations involving security policy, bureaucratic practice, partisan politics and national interests.

Closer to recent events in NZ, revelations that emails directed by McSkimming investigators were re-directed to the Police Commissioner’s office on the latter’s orders raises the question as to wether plausible deniability outweighed the no surprises axiom in the handling of the investigation. It opens the question of retrospective accountability with regard to the Ardern government (what it knew and when it knew about McSkimming’s behaviour while it was in power). It raises questions about the possibility of outside influences and pressures on the investigators and their work, and if there were any, in what form and by who. In other words, both vertical and horizontal accountability appears at cursory glance to have been compromised in the handling of the matter.

To its credit, the IPCA pulled no punches in its assessment of the handing of the McSkimming case. It remains to be seen what consequences derive from its report, or whether a line will be drawn on the affair in the interests of–you guessed it–organizational reputation. Much will be made of the need to “move on” from this unfortunate episode, and already the civilian and uniformed leadership speak of a “few bad eggs” spoiling the otherwise good reputation of the NZ Police. You can insert your Tui ad here.

Again, it is very worth detailing the specifics of the IPCA report findings and the details of other potential acts of institutional coverups by the NZ Police (for example, handling of the investigation into the Roastbusters rapist gang that included the son of a police officer). But those are incidents that of themselves do not address patterns of institutional behaviour and the implications that they have for democratic governance. For that, dots must be joined and trends analysed in order for broader syndromes to be. identified and addressed.

In the end it appears that deeper reflection on accountability mechanisms, institutional culture, organizational practice and individual responsibility within official settings needs to be undertaken. Getting rid of a few “bad apples” from public institutions does not stop organizational pathologies from reproducing and infecting public agencies as a whole, especially when they are the product of long-standing traditions of institutional impunity in which the balance between “no surprises” and “plausible deniability” is tilted in favour of those who dishonour the public trust contingent consent given to them.

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Mamdani’s monster move.

The shouting about communist/socialist/Marxist/Islamist by the US Right when it comes to Zohran Mamdani suggests they live in a 1950s McCarthyite time warp and/or an ideological ignorance bubble. Besides a social democratic being none of the above, the operative term in the phrase is “democratic.” He was elected in a landslide on a working class focused platform that was well known and well received across the electoral demographic (age, gender, religion race, etc.)”. Although the Right did its dishonest best to smear him with the usual culture wars and “Reds under the beds” fear-mongering, it may be the case that after years of corrupt NYC machine politics-as-usual that catered to the interests of the corporate and oligarchical classes, voters are willing to try something new. 

“New” means a move to the center-Left. Mamdani is no radical extremist no matter what the rabid Right mouth-frothers say about him. NYC has never had a social democratic mayor and given what has come before, especially recently, perhaps voters decided to not listen to the troglodytes and try something different when it comes to a governance approach.

Mamdani still has to deal with a city council, borough governments, state government and people within his own party who will force him to compromise in order to be effective. But shifting the starting point to the policy Left after years of the city government maintaining a corporate-Right bias could just break the hold of embedded vested interests when it comes to how the public purse is distributed. That can only be a good thing, especially if working and middle class socio-economic wellbeing is a major focus.

Best of all, even if NYC is not representative of the entire nation (far from it), Mamdani is an absolute nightmare for the MAGA morons in and out of government at all levels. That is because should he be successful and cast his eyes an even higher federal office, there is bound to be a lot of bed-wetting in Red States and in red parts of DC as a result.

That should be fun to watch.

On a personal note, the rightwing hysteria about Mamdani’s “Marxism” brought back memories of when I underwent my first Top Secret US security clearance interview and polygraph test (in the early 1990s). I was asked if I had ever been a member of a Communist Party or advocated for the overthrow of the US government. Although I had affiliations with left-wing groups in Argentina and then elsewhere as a teenager and young adult, I could honestly say that I was never a member of any Communist Party (basically because most CPs of that era were pro-soviet Stalinists and I was and am not into Stalinists). I could also honestly say that I did not advocate the overthrow of the US government, although I certainly advocated for the overthrow of US client dictatorships in Latin America and elsewhere.

So I said “no” to both questions and passed that part of the exam. In the long form interview I explained to my interviewers from the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA) that I was a Peronist symnpathizer-turned-neo-Gramscian analytic Marxist whose political sympathies tended towards what was then called the “Eurocommunist” line. I tried to be helpful and told them that they should try to be more specific in their questioning, since there were significant differences between Maoists, Leninists, Trotskyites and other Marxist derivatives. In response (and I kid you not, dear readers), the interviewers literally rolled their eyes, looked at each other, shook their heads and mouthed the letters “W-T-F?” After a long pause, the lead guy said to me “we do not care whatever you were and are so long as you are not a commie.” That was the state of play when it came to official Defence Department understanding of Marxism in the year Bill Clinton came to office.

They then moved on to ask me if I “liked” men. What ensued was an interesting discussion about the meaning of “liking men” and in what context. Their basic line was that they did not care whether I “liked men” or not, but that they simply had to know in the event that I was blackmailed given my new job. My then Navy Officer girlfriend was highly amused by this when I told her about the interview and offered to vouch for my, er, “proclivities.”

Anyway, I passed the test and headed off to the Pentagon with my clearance secured. I met a fair amount of closet commies and man-likers once there.

Mamdani was not among them.