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A return to Nature.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Drawing Parallels.

The April 22 attacks by Kashmir Resistance (KR), a (at least tacitly) Pakistani-backed irredentist group in Indian-controlled Kashmir, in which 26 people were murdered, has some unfortunate parallels with the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel. Although many more Israelis died in the latter (nearly 2000) and the costs to Palestinians living in Gaza (and to a lesser extent the West Bank) from the subsequent Israel war campaign against them have been astronomical (53,000 dead in Gaza alone while the India-Pakistan conflict is just now beginning and its outcome is as of yet undetermined), there are enough similarities between them to offer some observations about them, as well as their differences.

Hamas and Kashmir Resistance are both ethno-religious-nationalist irregular warfare movements that violently resist occupation and apartheid-like segregation. Both are animated by pre-modern if not primordial hatreds. Both are Muslim, opposed to Indian Hindu nationalism in the latter case and Israeli Zionism in the former instance. Both are proxies for other States, those being Iran in the case of Hamas and Pakistan in the case of KR. For their part, in their present political guises both Israel and India (who quietly support each other in their respective conflicts) prefer that their rule lead to consolidation of ethno-States dominated by their respective Jewish and Hindu majorities, including in the disputed territories over which their respective conflicts have periodically erupted.

The October 7 and April 22 attacks were provocations designed to prompt an over-reaction from the stronger State adversary which in turn was supposed to spark a broader conflict that would draw in other actors and create international pressure on, if not popular protests against the respective State adversaries. For a short moment, Hamas appeared to have succeeded, as the Israeli ethnic cleansing campaign in Gaza is by any definition disproportionate and indiscriminate in effect, involving the commission of war crimes and crimes against humanity in doing so. Hamas’s tactical objective was to spread the IDF thin as it encountered armed resistance in Gaza, the West Bank and coming out of Lebanon, and have Iran, Hezbollah and the Houthis eventually join in a multi-front struggle against the “Zionist entity.” This would in turn draw in more actors from the region and elsewhere as public pressure mounted for an end to the Israeli campaign (including in Israel), thereby forcing a diplomatic compromise that recognised Hamas’s status as the main Palestinian interlocutor (rather than the Palestinian Authority). The mounting toll of victims (including hostages taken on both sides) was a pawn in this larger game.

Protests erupted world-wide against the Israelis, causing civil unrest in many Western democracies as well as throughout the Muslim diaspora. Iran and its regional proxies, Yemeni Houthis and Hezbollah in Lebanon, attempted to widen the conflict into a regional war while fomenting pro-Hamas unrest in Arab States. For the first year of the conflict it looked like the Hamas strategy was working, especially after a coalition of US-led nations broadened the fight by sending a naval flotilla the Red Sea to thwart Houthi attacks on commercial shipping in the maritime choke point in support of Hamas. This was seen by Hamas and its supporters as confirmation that the West was on Israel’s side regardless of its behaviour and therefore not just anti-Palestinian but anti-Islamic as a whole (because the Houthis, Hezbollah and Iran are Shiites while Hamas is mostly Sunni Muslim).

For its part, KR hoped and may still be hoping that an Indian overreaction in the form of attacks on Pakistan and/or ethnographic-religious purges in Kashmir that will lead to Muslim uprisings throughout India and anti-Indian violence in surrounding countries with significant Muslim populations such as Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. That may be wishful thinking.

Whatever initial propaganda gains may have been made in the first six months after October 7, Israel’s response against Hamas and the Palestinian people has been multi-faceted, overwhelming, relentless, devastating and successful. It has ramped up its repression in the West Back while now moving to permanently occupy Gaza. It has intimidated Iran by killing some of its leaders on Iranian soil while launching missile attacks on military facilities, all while threatening Iran’s nuclear sites. It has conducted strikes against the Houthis and Hezbollah in their territories (including in foreign capitals like Beirut, Damascus and Sanaa) and killed scores of their leaders using conventional and unconventional means (such as the pager bombs used against Hezbollah, missile attacks on Iranian diplomatic facilities in Syria and the murder of a Hamas leader in an Iranian Revolutionary Guard guest house). It has occupied swathes of northern Lebanon and western Syria for good measure and shows no signs of withdrawal from anywhere anytime soon.

In other words, the Hamas “sucker ploy” (getting a stronger adversary to over-react to a provocation so world attention is focused on the response, not the initial atrocity) may have worked over the short-term but has now backfired spectacularly because, among other things, no other country or the community of nations appears able or willing to persuade or force the Israelis to stop their scorched earth campaign. In fact, Israel appears to see October 7 as an excuse and window of opportunity for its territorial expansion and direct control of Gaza and territorial strips from neighbouring countries like Lebanon and Syria. Much of that is also due to the US blanket backing of Israel with weapons and aid, something that as of yet is not a factor in the India-Pakistan conflict. But for Hamas, it means that its provocation may well result in its annihilation.

An obvious difference is that unlike the David versus Goliath nature of the Palestinian-Israeli war, the KR provocation has resulted in a peer conflict between two nuclear-armed States, again, with neither receiving the unequivocal backing on any Great Power (in fact, US president Trump initially said that the US should just “let them go to it and sort it out” or words to that effect). More subtly, the India-Pakistan conflict has become a bigger proxy clash between arms weapons suppliers, with Pakistan mostly fielding PRC-made weapons while India has diversified amongst Russian, French and Israeli platforms. That arms supplier competition is an ominous incentive to broaden the conflict into a conventional war.

Israel can engage in a scorched earth campaign against Hamas and other irregular warfare actors because it is a nuclear power with the strongest and most experienced conventional military in the region, one that has no significant challenger to its supremacy. It has cowed Iran and its proxies into acquiescence to its logic of force, if not submission to the new status quo. All with the backing of the US and other Western nations.

The situation is different in South Asia. India and Pakistan are nuclear armed peer competitors (although the Indian military is much larger). Notwithstanding some of the alarmist rhetoric of armchair pundits (including in NZ), neither is interested in using nuclear weapons for non-existential reasons, so this puts a cap on the escalatory potential of the conflict. Whereas Israel is free to mete out collective punishment on Palestinian civilians as it pleases, arguing that they harbour terrorists and disguise the terrorist’s infrastructure (and it is likely that due to their life histories and upbringing many Palestinians do indeed hate Israel and Jews, which still does not justify committing atrocities and war crimes against them), India and Pakistan have to tread more lightly. So far India has targeted “terrorist infrastructure” and air defence systems in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir and Pakistan itself, with Pakistan retaliating with limited air strikes across the border aimed at as of yet indeterminate (presumably military) targets. So long as the Indian targeting remains focused on military sites and irregular warfare proxies’ staging and hiding places, and the Pakistanis limit their response to military targets, then the escalatory potential for the conflict is low. It will be a limited conventional military tit-for-tat rather than a rush towards a conventional or nuclear Big Bang.

This demonstrates the deterrent effect of nuclear weapons, at least when in the hands of rational actors like the Indian and Pakistani military leaderships. Civilian groups, politicians and ethno-religious partisan media may agitate for all out war but unless there is a hot-head or two in the high commands of both countries, the chances of either ordering a nuclear strike–a first use one at that–is remote. Not impossible if things do not go as foreseen above, but pretty unlikely in any event.

Truth be told, the Indo-Pakistani conflict is about saving military face and national honour rather than conquest or retribution no matter how much historical baggage is layered onto it by war-mongering actors on both sides.

Perversely, the fact that Israel is (yet) the only nuclear power in the Middle East deters all would-be adversaries from openly posing real existential threats against it. For all of the talk by Iran and its proxies about erasing the “Zionist entity” from the face of the Earth, in practice they steer clear of actually attempting to do so. They know what that will bring, and this was the case before they were militarily and diplomatically neutered by the current Israeli war effort. In a strange way, all of this suggests that in both instances nuclear deterrence works and can be used to a nuclear-capable country’s advantage as a conflict limitation device under given circumstances. That is of no solace to Palestinians of course, but it may spare Indian and Pakistani civilians similar levels of devastation given the different nuclear context in which the conflict has begun.

This is where KR may have erred in emulating the Hamas provocation strategy. Rather than induce a sucker ploy scenario that garners global sympathy for the plight of Muslims in Indian-controlled Kashmir (and elsewhere in India), it has led to a peer clash between adjacent nuclear armed States that have previously fought conventional wars against each other. This very different context suggests that the conflict will not only be a two-sided rather than a one-sided affair, but that interests of State will prevail over ethnographic-religious hatred and ambitions for territorial expansion by either of them. For KR, much like for Hamas but in a different way, April 22 may well have sown the seeds of their own demise, at least as an armed irregular warfare group. Their ideology will remain and give hope to future resistance fighters, but for the moment current exigencies mitigate against widening their war and in fact suggest that they may be sacrificed in the pursuit of larger interests.

Other parallels may well be drawn as the Indo-Pakistani conflict evolves, but for the moment let us leave on this note: Sometimes the lessons learned from the experience of others are not the ones that were hoped for or intended to be.

That is the ultimate parallel of all.

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A culture of cruelty.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Uncertainty, Hierarchy and the Dilemma of Democracy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

As can now be seen in the US.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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The Comparative Notebook on Trump’s Tariffs.

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

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

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The Green’s Identity Bubble Problem.

The scurrilous attacks on Benjamin Doyle, a list Green MP, over his supposed inappropriate behaviour towards children has dominated headlines and social media this past week, led by frothing Rightwing agitators clutching their pearls and fanning the flames of moral panic over pedophiles and and perverts. Winston Peter decided that it would be good to amplify the defamatory claims from his perch as Deputy Prime Minister and Party Leader, relying on rhetorical questions (where is the media?) and innuendo to megaphone the venomous narrative while avoiding legal liability for defamation. The pile-on is despicable.

Besides the obvious partisan basis for the attacks on Doyle and the Green Party co-leaders for defending (in somewhat pedantic and condescending terms) their colleague, the Rightwinger’s alarm about what I will call “the kiss”–a chaste lip-to-lip “smooch” between father and very young son–betrays deep-seated heterosexual repression that is Barry Crump-ish in nature. It avoids the fact that in many cultures men kiss their children on the lips well into pubescence and that men and boys hug and kiss each other and even hold hands in public. I grew up in Argentina, and if one looks at how the World Cup champions celebrate their victories you will see a lot of male kissing and father-child lip-kissing going on and no-one thinks to impute untoward sexual intent to any of it. Not all countries are populated by repressed, insecure, heterosexual misogynistic transphobes.

The attacks on Doyle also could well be linked to the ongoing smears levelled against Golriz Ghahraman, the former Green MP who was convicted for shoplifting after an intense months-long public vilification campaign carried out in and echoed by the media and led by notorious Dirty Politics-adjacent actors. It turns out that Ghahraman’s brief detention in a supermarket earlier this year in what was initially described as another shop-lifing attempt was in fact an orchestrated set-up by malicious security guards with dubious connections to the police and social media personalities. The whole thing was a beat up, as are the Doyle accusations, done in part by the same crowd of Rightwing “usual suspects.” Truth be told, the guys–always guys–who disparage her the most seem to be the type of guys that she is not interested in, especially middle aged to elderly Pakeha male public figures. In summary: they hate her because she will never have them (and who knows how many have tried? Someone should ask Sean Plunkett or David Seymour about that because they carry on about her like spurned suitors).

That having been said, the Greens do have a big problem, and it is not just the non-conformist (some would say “weird” or “odd”) lifestyles of some of their members. It is not about their Morris dancing or their lifestyles per se, but about who they select and the way in which they get into parliament. As my former colleague here at KP Lew and other have written on social media in the past few days, the Greens problem is one of candidate vetting, not candidate lifestyles. In fact, I mentioned this concern previously ( a decade or so ago!) when Haley Holt of television fame was placed on the candidate list in a top ten spot. She did not get elected or make list selection due to the Green Party vote that year, but in retrospect she looks positively middle-of-the-road when compared to some of her recent successors!

As I see it, the Greens spend too much time living in an alternative identity bubble, trying to tick as many rainbow and alternative lifestyle boxes as is possible (Doyle claims to be a “pansexual,” something that can lead to many interpretations and in the case of the Right-wingers, the worst possible ones. He confirmed their worst thoughts by using language with sexual undertones in his private social media posts that included the photos of his son). I have heard that they wanted to add polyamory to their electoral platforms, which even Barry Crump may have found a bit rich if he was not in charge of the action. These are not the types of candidate and policy that appeal to the voting majority, and even under MMP that matters for coalition-building purposes.

To be clear: being “odd,” “weird” or “alternative” is not a crime and should not be treated as such (as happened with Doyle). But having those traits can prove detrimental to the Party’s overall fortunes, especially when opponents seize on them to hype their “deviancy” and other supposed criminal behaviour. In the words of the late French sociologist Robert Michels (in a book titled Political Parties), the first duty of an organization is to protect itself.

After all, being transgressive is not always a virtue in politics, especially in an era where culture wars about alternative lifestyles and non-conformity to “traditional” social norms is a cornerstone of Rightwing political agendas. In such an ideological climate, perhaps it is better to put other (non-identity based) policy concerns before identity (and here I respect the Greens stance on the Israel-Palestine conflict, which from a social justice standpoint is well within their purview even it opens them to charges of anti-Semitism either directly or via association while other parties equivocate and quibble about NZ’s position).

The Greens seem to have moved from being an environmental party with a social-democratic policy agenda under Jeanette Fitzsimmons, Sue Bradford, Keith Locke and Ron Donald to keffiyeh-wearing alternative social justice urbanite identitarians who, from an outside-the-beltway perspective such as mine, occasionally hug a tree, stop a logging truck or swim around like dolphins in sheltered coves before re-assembling at the nearest barista shop for mocha latte soy milk cappuccino-fueled social policy strategy sessions with other black-clad or tie-dyed and multi-pierced plural pronoun individuals who think very highly of themselves and stay up way too late at night, to the point that their countenances are as parlous as their personalities.

I am joking of course, and one hopes that the woke can take a joke on this one. Because this piss-take is not equivalent to the hate-speech supporting sociopaths in the Free Speech Union. The joke is not about letting harm be done to the multiple varieties of identitarians; it is about goofing on their self-absorbed lack of serious purpose and self-awareness, and why this does not make for good candidate and policy selection.

I do so in order to make a point. The Greens were episodically effective when they were watermelons–red on the inside and green on the outside. They were fairly effective as “teals”–blue on the inside and green on the outside. But other than people like Chloe Swarbrick, who is in fact a smart and effective politician, and perhaps Steve Abel as an environmental purist, the Green Party has become a hodgepodge of virtue signalling identitarian grievance and defence. It is increasingly not relatable to anything other than those in their identity bubbles and while individuals like Swarbrick may be able to carry the party on her election coattails, they appear to be enmeshed in a self-inflicted political death spiral due to the character of their caucus. Think of the MPs that the Greens have lost in recent years outside of the electoral cycle and who they have been replaced with. Think of the dramas associated with these departures and the behaviour of some of those still sitting on their benches. With some exceptions, they come across as unserious people pursuing unpopular agendas. No wonder they are seen as easy pickings for bullying political hyenas like Peters and Shane Jones.

Contrast that with Te Pati Maori (TPM). Whatever you want to say about them, TPM clearly know how to vet and select people who conform to their unified policy agenda. Their agenda may seem like a lot of symbolic politics without substance and with some buffoonery thrown in, and there may be some dodgy connections between them and people like John Tamihere and his Waipareira Trust (sort of along the lines of ACT and the tobacco lobby or NZ1st and the fishing and mining lobbies) but two things stand out in contrast to the Greens: 1) the TPM “bubble” is activist and united at its ethnic and ideological core (including a class line), not an disparate assortment of identitarians representing different socially marginalised groups; 2) party discipline is strong. The feet follow the head and the head knows what the feet are doing in the long march ahead.

It will be interesting to see how the Greens do in the next elections. I have a feeling that the gains that they have made in recent years will be reversed even if a Labour-led coalition is elected. I am also curious to see how TPM does, because it seems to be targeting Labour’s left and Maori flanks with its more militant and confrontational appeals. For the moment, however, and again repudiating the reprehensible attacks on Doyle, Ghahraman, Tamatha Paul and Ricardo Mendez-March (the latter for for being foreign-born), the main problem for the Green Party is that it is self-inflicted because of a lack of proper candidate selection criteria and process as well as candidate education as to what is expected of them (including their use of social media and other aspects of their personal behaviour) and how they will be treated by their opponents and media.

Benjamin Doyle haș gone to ground under an apparent barrage of death threats and has suspended the social media account that led to them. But such after-the-fact actions do not remedy what was an avoidable controversy in the first place. All that was needed was some good sense, a modicum of decorum, and a candidate selection process that is based not so much on ticking off identity boxes as it is about electing and/or listing serious people with a common policy agenda that transcends post-modern identity politics while retaining a common social justice focus that is centred in and on environmental politics with a (waged) class orientation.

After all, as the saying goes, politics is the art of the possible. What the Greens have been doing as of late is quite the opposite.

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Signalling Deliberate Reckless Disregard (updated with a NZ angle).

Some thoughts on the Signal Houthi Principal’s Committee chat group conversation reported by Jeff Goldberg at The Atlantic.

It is obviously a major security breach. But there are several dimensions to it worth examining.

1) Signal is an unsecured open source platform that although encrypted can easily be hacked by signals intelligences agencies as well as criminal entities (it is a major part of what they do). The Pentagon issued warnings about using Signal to discuss sensitive information a week before this chat group was set up and yet National Security Advisor Waltz (who set up the group chat) went ahead and used it anyway, then inadvertently included Goldberg in the conversation;

2) Who was there and who was not. The 18 member group (including Goldberg) did not included any military officer, either from the Joint Chiefs of Staff or Central Command (which organised and conducted the strikes on Houthi targets). It did include people who had no reason to know classified details of the war plans, including the Treasury Secretary and his Chief of Staff, Secretary of State and his Chief Counsel and several lower-ranking staffers from the White House and other agencies. All could have received general unclassified briefs rather than highly classified advance notification of the details of the strikes. Most tellingly, the US Special Envoy to Ukraine and Russia, a member of the group chat with no need to know specifics of the strikes, was in Moscow at the time, where he was very likely to be under close electronic and personal surveillance;

3) All participants in the group had easy access to dedicated secure communications, including in some cases at their homes as well as part of their travel parties. They did not use them and instead opted for the unsecured commercial platform;

4) This matters because if reports are correct, weapons, targets, sequencing of attacks and location of platforms (air, sea, land) were specifically mentioned, as well as the name of a CIA agent, two hours before the attacks began. If hostile actors were monitoring any of the group’s Signal accounts, then the Houthis could have been warned in advance. One wonders what else these accounts may have offered adversaries if the use of Signal was commonplace amongst them;

5) There are reports that Signal was used to avoid Freedom of Information ACT (FOI) and Official Records Act (ORA) scrutiny. This was recommended by Project 2025 to eliminate information data that might be considered prejudicial or controversial if made public under the FOI or as part of ORA obligations (since apps like Signal permanently delete conversations once they are closed, so no records of them are kept. In this case Waltz set the closure date at one week after the chat ended). Deliberately trying to circumvent the ORA is illegal. Think of the historical precedent: Nixon’s Watergate tapes;

6) The chat involved diplomatic as well as operational security. Operational details of such strikes are obviously classified in advance of them and often after the fact because lives as well as US interests can be put at risk. Diplomatic security refers to frank discussions between government peers that they consider to be private/in-house because foreign interlocutors may not be happy with them (think of it as a buffer hiding a lack of discretion among officials). In this Signal chat group European allies were disparaged by SecDef and the VP, and Deputy Chief of Staff Miller spoke of extracting economic concessions from the likes of the Egyptians for providing the muscle in breaking the Houthi blockade (Egypt imposes levies on shipping in the Suez Canal as they transit to/from the Mediterranean and Red Sea, so lesser vessels in the Suez Canal due to the Houthi blockade means less revenue for Cairo. Breaking the blockade is therefore to the economic benefit of the Egyptians and Miller advised the group to demand compensation for doing so). There were differences in the group regarding the timing of the strikes because of differing perceptions of who would benefit the most–Europe or the US. The group also spoke of pre-empting the Israelis when it came to attacking the Houthis in order to get the political credit for doing so. All of this is sensitive insofar as it reveals the mindsets of the group participants with regard to allies. That mindset, in a word, is undiplomatic to say the least;

7) Given who was in the group and what was discussed, it appears that the Signals Houthi Principal’s Committee was basically a PR task force of sorts that was designed to get behind a specific narrative about the strikes. That is even openly mentioned in the conversation–staying on script, being united in the messaging, etc. That in and of itself would be fine if the conversation did not include any classified information. But if it did…

8) The administration states that no classified information was discussed and has resorted to smearing Goldberg as a deflection. That is a short-term solution. If the chat did not involve any classified information then Goldberg is free to release it to the public, or at least to investigative committees and agencies (he has very ethically chosen not to publish what he calls the classified details that he was privy to because of the risks involved). If there was classified material discussed in the chat, then DNI Gabbard and CIA Director Ratcliffe came perilously close to perjuring themselves before a Congressional Committee today, and Waltz and Hegseth have now lied to POTUS (assuming that Trump was unaware of the chat until after the fact) as well as the public.

All of this will undoubtably be a source of concern for US intelligence partners and allies in general. Although military and intelligence professionals in the security decision-making chain are continuing to do their jobs professionally, the cavalier if not reckless approach to information security exhibited by these partisan loyalists at the top of the Trump security apparatus is bound to cause alarm. After all, if loose lips sink ships, then the loose lips are on the Trump boat’s bridge.

NZ RELEVANT UPDATE: The New Zealand Navy is currently in command of JTF-150, the joint maritime patrol force leading the response to the Houthi attempted blockade in the Red Sea. NZDF also has targeting teams and other intelligence assets in the JTF-150 AOR (Area of Responsibility), which obviously includes Yemen and other Red Sea littoral States. Given that a CIA agent’s name was mentioned in this Signal chat group session, it raises the question as to whether other Signal chats were used by Trump administration officials to discuss classified information that may have included details of the activities of JTF-15 partners, including the NZDF. If so, that would be very problematic in terms of ongoing operational security for the NZDF personnel currently deployed in that theater. https://combinedmaritimeforces.com/ctf-150-maritime-security/#:~:text=CTF%20150%20is%20a%20multinational,on%20a%20four%2Dmonth%20basis.

To reiterate. If Signal was used to circumvent the ORA and potential FOI obligations whether classified information was mentioned or not, then criminal liability is now on the table for those who organised and participated in the group chat.

Except for Jeff Goldberg.

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A Return to a US Gilded Age?

I have been trying to figure out the logic of Trump’s tariff policies and apparent desire for a global trade war. Although he does not appear to comprehend that tariffs are a tax on consumers in the country doing the tariffing, I can (sort of) understand that he may think that this is a good way to protect US manufacturing and employment. But because the evidence that tariffs wind up hurting domestic consumers and do not necessarily bring back manufacturing, farming or employment in those or other sectors, I found myself somewhat mystified as to why Trump is determined to push them through.

I realise that he is using them as a form of leverage to obtain concessions in non-trade areas like illicit drug interdiction and immigration. But he seems to want to go further than forcing neighbouring countries to tighten their border controls in exchange of a lifting of tariffs or reduction in the amount of them (both in terms of reducing tariff costs–say from 25 percent to 10 percent–as well as the range of goods subject to tariffs). He truly does appear think that tariffs are good for the US, all evidence to the contrary.

Because of his intellectual limitations (remember my empty vessel argument of a couple of weeks ago), I then thought about his economic advisors and how they may see the issue. Here is where I think I have found the answer to Trump’s obsession with tariffs. It has to do with the so-called Gilded Age.

Readers may recall Trump speaking of president William McKinley and the “Gilded Age” when the US was prosperous, expanding and turning into the global superpower that it eventually became. He even restored the name “Mount McKinley” to the mountain in Alaska known as Denali by indigenous people and has otherwise extolled the virtues of the 25th US president even though McKinley was assassinated while in office in 1901 (Vice President Teddy Roosevelt succeeded him). As it turns out at least one person (an anarchist) was not happy with his policies. Yet it seems that Trump seeks to return to a new US Gilded Age in light of what he and his advisors see as the failure of capitalist globalisation.

Needless to say, there have been global trade systems since ancient times. Notions of Riccardian and competitive advantage were eventually developed around them to explain and justify the commonweal benefits of global trade. This accelerated with the technology-driven globalisation of production, consumption and exchange that emerged as of the 1990s and grew exponentially in the following two and a half decades. While all economic boats would be lifted by this rising tide, the argument went, the expansion in trade was expected to benefit the US the most because it was the core of the global capitalist system, including finance, advanced manufacturing, information and high-tech services, logistics and even value-added primary good extraction.

For its adherents, the post-Bretton Woods moment was the US’s oyster and free trade under standardised monetary exchange conditions was considered to be so universally positive that theories (known as “neo-modernization” theories after the original 1950s variants) were advanced that posited that joining global systems of trade would lead to rising middle classes and eventually democracies in poorer authoritarian countries that adopted the export-import logic and other development models such as the so-called “Washington Consensus.” The Consensus (by industrialised nation’s finance ministers of the time) married neoliberal domestic economic theories based on the primacy of finance capital in determining a country’s investment opportunities in a macroeconomic environment characterised by the reduction of the State’s role as both manager and direct producer of national goods and services, on the one hand, with an abject faith in the invisible hand dynamics at play when national markets were opened up to unfettered foreign competition.

As it turns out, things did not go as planned. Rather than benefit the most as the core of the globalised system of trade, the US saw significant declines in domestic manufacturing, mining and other extractive enterprises as well as a number of value-added business sectors (textiles, shoes, ship-building) when US firms migrated abroad in pursuit of cheaper labour and supply chain inputs. Even service sectors saw business move abroad–think of off-shore call and computer service centres–something that in the aggregate saw the economic decline of the so-called Industrial Age-originated “Rust Belt,” growth of increasingly precarious labor markets and the rise of a host of social pathologies associated with that decline (the book Hillbilly Elegy by JD Vance sums them up pretty well even if it is a fictionalised account of his own life story pre-politics).

Put bluntly, instead of being at the top of the globalized pile, when it came to many US domestic businesses, profits were prioritised over patriotism, they moved their businesses abroad and the benefits of globalisation went to them (in terms of re-patriated profits), not their former employees and the communities that depended on their livelihoods. When it comes to free trade and open markets, businesses acted as capitalists first, and that made them globalists rather than nationalists.

The bottom line is that while the US remains the core of the global economy, the location of where globalisation impacted negatively the most within the US and the perception of its general decline as a result is a strong component of the economic nationalist discourse that propels the modern US Right. From Pat Buchanan to Rand Paul to Steve Bannon, US economic nationalists see US decline as rooted in two main things: 1) the migration of industries away from the Heartland to foreign countries which do not adhere to the overly restrictive environmental, labor, welfare and taxation standards of the US; and 2) the “woke” cultural transitions associated with granting equal rights to everyone regardless of merit while opening admission to immigrants from foreign cultures that are inherently anti-Western in orientation and yet upon which the US was increasingly dependent for both skilled and unskilled labor.

This is where economic nationalists on Trump’s staff like Peter Navarro come in. It is he and his colleagues that put the thought of the McKinley Gilded Age into Trump’s otherwise adderal-addled head. For them, a global trade war suits the US because as the biggest economic bully on the block, others will fold their cards before it has to. The belief is that although there will be short-term pain in the US domestic economy, eventually foreign countries and businesses will, for their own political as well as economic reasons, bend a knee and comply with US demands on trade and non-trade issues. Some manufacturing and other businesses may return to the US but even if they just adjust their bilateral export pricing and other trade measures in line with US demands, the view is that the US will eventually win and ultimately prosper because the advantages it has when it comes to complex economies of scale.

We need to underscore that many trade globalisation supporters did not see the US as necessarily benefitting more than others under the modern trade framework. Instead, they saw all nations receiving some benefit in excess of what they would accrue if they did not join the network, and within that “limited gains” perspective the US would still do well even if it lost uncompetitive businesses to foreign markets that held comparative and competitive advantages like lower wages and costs and proximity of raw materials, rising educational standards etc. They believed that the US would simply specialise in higher-end production and services that used advanced technologies and value-added capital goods while continuing to domestically supply most consumer non-durables like food staples and the like.

This is different than what the economic nationalists envisioned, and whereas the globalist economic vision is an integral part of the liberal internationalist perspective and institutional order codified in the likes of the IMF, WTO and World Bank, economic nationalists see the entire combine as inimical to US economic supremacy and hence an existential macroeconomic threat that increased US economic dependency on the whims of others such as the PRC and EU. Where globalists see trade interdependence and mutual benefit, economic nationalists see trade dependency and economic vulnerability The latter is the dominant rationale in the White House at the moment.

With Navarro and other economic nationalists back in the West Wing and the liberal international order in disarray for more than just economic reasons, the in-house consensus is that the time is ripe to push for another Gilded Age on the back of a tariff-based national economic restructuring. Coupled with a new version of gunboat diplomacy and carrying a foreign policy Big Stick, Trump is offered as the champion of and vehicle for that metamorphosis.

The trouble is that US capitalism today is not the capitalism of a century ago, nor is the nature of its connections to a globalized capitalist world with multiple centres of economic gravity. Think of the Middle East, the Arab oil oligarchies and their sovereign hedge funds. Think of the reach of the PRC’s Belt and Road initiative. Think of the rise of the Global South and emergence of the BRICS as an economic bloc. All of this suggests that while Trump may see himself as McKinley bringing in a new US Gilded Age, he is just a real-time protagonist in his economic advisor’s pipe dreams. What may have worked at the turn of the 20th century in terms of tariffs benefiting the US is unlikely to work in the early 21st century, at least not in the measure envisioned. So even if some countries cave to US demands on a host of issues, the chances of the US “winning” a truly global trade war seem long at best, and even if the US “wins” the economic contest, the political costs of subjecting the US electorate to consumer price hikes and supply chain disruption through the 2026 Congressional midterm elections and 2028 presidential vote may spell serious trouble for Trump, MAGA and the GOP regardless of who may or may not succeed him. The political fallout of the tariff moves, in other words, may yield negative dividends even if it is “successful” because the short-term economic pain that Musk and Trump talk about as necessary may not be tolerable for many voters, including those in Red States.

If that is the case, all the tariff-led economic gilding project may just turn into political rust.

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Personal Link: The Cool One has Gone.

Most KP readers will not know that I was a jazz DJ in Chicago and Washington DC while in grad school in the early and mid 1980s. I started at WHPK in Hyde Park, the U. Chicago student radio station. In DC I joined WPFW as a grave shift host, then a morning drive show host (a show called Sui Generis, both for its meaning and as a hat tip to the Argentine rock group of that name). I also had a carrell at the Library of Congress (LoC), first up under the dome of the main building with its extraordinary views of the Mall looking west towards the Lincoln Memorial, and then in the building behind the dome when refurbishments were made on it.

At some point I met one of the few other white DJs at WPFW (part of the Pacifica network that had stations in LA and NYC), which was a community sponsored black majority-staffed public radio station that still operates and features jazz, blues, world music and plenty of progressive news shows, including one hosted by the Nation of Islam (a guy called Askia Muhammed was the host). It was a cool place in which to to do music and after a short bumpy start with some of the old-timers I was well received and had good listenership numbers.

It turns out the other white guy, whose show was named Sounds of Surprise, worked in the Library of Congress in its Recorded Sound division. That division was located on the lower floors of the Law Library across Independence Ave from the main building. I used to go over there because I had a stacks pass for the foreign law archives given to me by the LoC’s Hispanic Division, something that I needed for my Ph.D. thesis research on the Argentine State because it was the only place where the complete records of Argentina’s Boletin Oficial were located (since various Argentine military regimes were prone to destroying all records of previous governments, especially those of the 1946-55 Peronist regime that was the starting point of my research). Since the LoC records were the most complete in the world, better than what could be obtained in Buenos Aires, I was very fortunate to have applied for and received that carrell as a LoC Visiting Scholar.

I mentioned this to the white DJ guy at WPFW and we started doing lunches at the Law School penthouse cafeteria (nice views to the south) and, during the warmer months, at his apartment in a brownstone down the street SE of the Library in Capitol Hill. He played incredibly rare old records (even 78s!) for me from his personal and the library collections that he was working on, and because he knew that I was especially a fan of Thelonious Monk, he always had some Monk on tap as well as a cold bottle of beer with which to enjoy the music. Those were some special days.

We stayed good friends during that time (1982-85) even though I travelled to Argentina regularly for field research and eventually gave up my WPFW show to write up the thesis in residence back at the University of Chicago. Whenever I was in DC we would catch up for more music (sometimes live gigs) and liquid lunch sessions where he opened my eyes and ears to a range of music and technologies (such as CDs) that I would not have understood had he not guided me through the intricacies of them. During that time he introduced me to his long-standing Eastern European partner (a journalist) and his newer apartment off of Dupont Circle in a building that they shared with Christopher Hitchens, among others of political bent.

Most notably, he came down to Rio for Carnaval when my first wife and family and I were living there in early 1987 during a Fulbright Scholarship research trip to Argentina and Brazil. Let’s just say that it was an eye-opening experience for him on a number of fronts, but he did get to enjoy some baile das panteiras (dance of the panthers–think of it as a lot of women and guys wrapped in very tiny lepoard skin outfits) close up and personal. He did not drink much but learned the joys of cacacha and the constant drumbeat of the street batucadas that echoed throughout the 10 days of Lent. That trip left an indelible impression on him and he even got some sun (unusual, for such an indoors kind of guy).

Sadly, after I moved to California, then Arizona, then Florida and then to NZ over the ensuing decade, we slowly lost touch, although we did communicate through a music blog that he ran in parallel to all of his other endeavours. We talked about his coming to NZ but it never came about because his health began to fail and I got wrapped up in triathlons and security related things that compounded the tyranny of distance that prevented us from maintaining closer ties. I regret that very much. In any case, you can find his extraordinary blog Lets Cool One here (its name comes from a Monk song): https://larryappelbaum.wordpress.com/

His name was Larry Appelbaum, and he was an extraordinary person.

May there always be a rhythm and musical surprise wherever you are, querido Larry!

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/11/arts/music/larry-appelbaum-dead.html?fbclid=IwY2xjawI-08xleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHYL9tRk_UaMZqN5KSQxY64SKrnhOzG6wNoMvgq0BHffWVQyqkwCShhOZAg_aem__jD224k3NskcWJtwXzq7cQ

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Thinking about life in a nuclear armed crowd.

The title of this post comes from Albert Wohlstetter’s 1976 seminal essay Moving Towards Life in a Nuclear Armed Crowd. In that essay he contemplated a world in which several nations had nuclear weapons, and also the strategic logics governing their proliferation, deployment and use (mainly as a deterrent). For years after his essay was published, the number of nuclear-armed states remained low. Today they include the US, UK, France, PRC, Russia, India and Pakistan, with Israel as an unacknowledged member of the club and Iran and North Korea as rogue aspirants. At one time late in the Cold War, Argentina, Brazil and South Africa had nuclear weapons programs but abandoned them as part of the their transitions to democracy. By and large the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) has kept the acquisition of nuclear weapons in check, something that along with various arms control agreements between the US and USSR/Russia (SALT I and II, START, the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF)), helped stabilise a low number nuclear weapons state status quo for five decades.

But that may be about to change. Not only have nuclear powers like the PRC, India and Pakistan opted to not be bound by international arms control agreements and others like Israel, Iran, India, Pakistan and DPRK have ignored the NPT. All of the major bilateral treaties between the US and Russia governing strategic and tactical nuclear weapons have been allowed to lapse. The non-proliferation regime now mostly exists on paper and is self-enforcing in any event. There are no genuine compliance mechanisms outside of voluntary compliance by States themselves, and in the current moment nuclear armed states do not wish to comply

The situation has been made considerably worse by the re-election of Donald Trump to the US presidency. Although he speaks of securing some sort of “deal” with Iran that freezes its nuclear weapons development programs, his threats of withdrawing from NATO, including withdrawal of security guarantees under the collective security provisions of Article 5 of the NATO Charter, coupled with his pivot towards Russia in its conflict with Ukraine, has forced some countries to reconsider their approach towards nuclear weapons. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told his parliament this week that Poland “must reach for the most modern possibilities, also related to nuclear weapons and modern unconventional weapons” because of the threat of Russian aggression and unreliability of the US as a security partner under such circumstances. Similarly, French President Emmanuel Macron has floated the idea of extending a French “nuclear umbrella” over Europe (read: NATO and the EU) should the US renege on its Article 5 obligations.

The perception that the US is no longer a reliable security partner, at least under the Trump administration, must be considered by front-line states such as South Korea and Taiwan, perhaps even Japan and Germany, that are threatened by nuclear armed rivals and which until now were heavily dependent on the US nuclear deterrent for defending against aggression from those rivals. The situation is made worse because Trump is now using extortion (he calls it “leverage”) as part of his approach to security partners. His demands that Ukraine sign over strategic mineral rights to the US and that Panama return control of the Panama Canal to the US under threat of re-occupation are part of a pattern in which US security guarantees are contingent on what the US can materially get in exchange for them. Even then, Trump is notoriously unethical and prone to lying and changing his mind, so what US guarantees may be offered may be rescinded down the road.

Trump wants US security partners to spend 2 to 5 percent of GDP on defence and threatens to not honour US agreements with them if they do not. Although this may well force some NATO members and others to up their spending on defence (as Australia, Poland and South Korea already do), the one-size-fits-all percentage of GDP demand fails to recognise the circumstances of small and medium democracies such as NZ, Portugal and Holland, among others. Trump may call it driving a hard bargain, others may say that his approach is “transactional,” but in truth he is extorting US allies on the security front in order to gain concessions in other areas. And for “whatever” reason, he admires Putin and deeply dislikes Ukrainian president Zelensky as well as Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau, something reflected in his approach to bilateral issues and the way he talks about them. The personal is very much political with Trump, and he is an impulsive bully when he believes that it suits him to be.

The US pivot towards Russia under Trump has been much discussed in terms of its implications for the world order, strategic balancing among Great Powers and the future of the US-centric alliance systems in Europe and Asia. It truly is a major transitional moment of friction in world affairs. But the issue of nuclear proliferation as a response to the changed US stance has gone relatively unnoticed. Remember, these are not the moves of rogue states that are hostile to the old liberal international order. These are and may well continue to be the responses of democratic and/or Western aligned states that were integral members of that old order, who now feel abandoned and vulnerable to the aggression of authoritarian Great Powers like Russia and the PRC.

In the absence of the US nuclear guarantee and in the security vacuum created by its strategic pivot, indigenous development and deployment of nuclear weapons becomes a distinct possibility for a number of states that used to have the US nuclear guarantee but now are unsure if that is still true, and have the technological capabilities to do so. The global spread of high technologies makes the pursuit of nuclear weapons easier than in previous eras, and if time, money and willpower are devoted to doing so, nuclear proliferation will inevitably happen. Remember that nuclear weapons are primarily deterrent weapons. They are designed to deter attacks or retaliate once attacked, but not to strike first (unless destruction of the targeted society is the objective and retaliation in kind is discounted). They are the ultimate hedge against aggression, and now some non-nuclear states are reconsidering their options in that regard because the US cannot be trusted to come to their defence.

Russia has repeatedly raised the spectre of using tactical nuclear weapons in Europe should it feel cornered, but even the Kremlin understands that this is more an intimidation bluff aimed at comfortable Western populations rather than a serious strategic gambit. But that only obtains if the US still honors its nuclear defense commitments under NATO Article 5, and if it no longer does, then the Europeans and other US allies need to reassess their nuclear options because Russian threats must, in that light, be considered sincere.

Even so, first use of nuclear weapons, specially against a non-nuclear state, remains as the ultimate red line. But that line has been blurred by Trump’s equivocation. Nuclear hedging has now become a realistic option not just for front-line democratic states facing authoritarian aggression, but with regards to the US itself because it is a no longer a reliable democratic ally but is instead a country dominated by an increasingly authoritarian policy mindset at home and in its relations further abroad. Ironically, the “madman with a nuke” thesis that served as the core of deterrence theory in the past and which continues to serve as the basis for resistance to Iran and North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs can now be applied to the US itself.

There are two ways to look at the situation. On the one hand the chances of nuclear proliferation have increased thanks to Trump’s foreign policy, especially with regards to US international commitments and alliance obligations. On the other hand, deterrence theory is in for an overhaul in light of the push to proliferate. This might re-invigorate notions of flexible response and moves to provide stop gaps in the escalatory chain from battlefield to strategic war. Notions of nuclear deterrence that were crafted in the Cold War and which did not change with the move from a bi-polar to a unipolar to a multi-polar international system must now be adapted to the realities of a looser configuration–some call them metroplexes or constellations–in which the spread of advanced technologies makes the possibility of indigenous development of nuclear deterrence capabilities more feasible than in the old security umbrella arrangements of previous decades.

The irony is that it is the US pivot towards Russia that has popped the cork on the nuclear proliferation bottle. States like Iran and the DPRK have been subject to sanctions regimes that have slowed the development of their nuclear arsenals. But that happened against the backdrop of the US providing binding security guarantees to its allies, offering a credible nuclear deterrent to those who would seek to do harm against them and giving material support to the NPT. That is not longer true. It is the US that now must be viewed with suspicion, if not fear. The briefcase with nuclear codes is within a few arm’s lengths wherever Trump goes and he is now staffing the highest ranks of the US military-security complex with personal loyalists and sycophants rather than seasoned, politically neutral, level headed professionals with experience in the practice of strategic gamesmanship, including nuclear deterrence and war planning. Under those circumstances it would be derelict for military and political leaders in erstwhile US allied states to not hedge their bets by considering acquiring nuclear weapons of their own.

This was not what Wohlstetter envisioned when he wrote his essay. But after a period where that nuclear armed crowd appeared to stabilise and even shrink, some of his insights have become relevant again. It may no longer be about MAD (mutual assured destruction), but it sure is SAD.