The Dive - 2/1/22
Your monthly compilation of what's what on global politics, American society, and an assortment of odds and ends
Quote of the Month
“No human being can possess all blessings, just as no single country can produce all that it needs; it will possess one thing and lack another. Similarly, no man is entirely self-sufficient; he will surely lack something… In every matter you should look to the ending. To many men the god grants but a glimpse of blessedness, only to bring them to utter ruin.”
- Herodotus, Histories, 1.32.3
My Recent Writing:
What I’m Reading:
1. How Putin uses “phony grievances and ancient myths” to justify Russian aggression
Why you should read it: In the Washington Post, historian Timothy Snyder picks apart the self-serving myths and fraudulent grievances deployed by President Vladimir Putin to rationalize Moscow’s military aggression against its neighbors.
“Russian propaganda depends upon myths and counterfactuals, all spun in the direction of Russian greatness and innocence. Putin writes that when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the principle for deciding the borders of its constituent republics should have been: ‘Take what you brought with you.’ In history as it actually happened, however, it was the Russian republic of the U.S.S.R. that brought about the end of the Soviet Union. The whole point was to liberate Russia from what was then understood to be the burden of supporting the periphery. Boris Yeltsin, the man who achieved this, accepted the borders of the Soviet Russian republic as Russia’s… The Bolsheviks were cosmopolitans aiming for the whole world. The wars that followed taught them the importance of the national question. The U.S.S.R. they founded in 1922 was a communist party-state, but it took the form of a federation with a Ukrainian republic, a Russian republic, a Belarusian republic and Caucasian republics. This reflected a general understanding that Ukraine was a country that had to be acknowledged. As an indirect result of the need to recognize other national questions, Russia was created as a republic of the U.S.S.R. It was this unit that Yeltsin extracted from the Soviet Union 30 years ago.”
“In the Kremlin’s thinking, Russia is a victim because Ukraine exists, and a victim again because Ukraine has a foreign policy. The aggressive assertion of innocence goes still further. Putin also claims that Russia is a victim of today’s Ukraine because of the diminishing influence of Russian culture in the country. Putin also claims that Russia is a victim of today’s Ukraine because of the diminishing influence of Russian culture in the country. In his article from last summer, he equates the reduced sway of Russian culture and language in Ukraine to an attack on Russia by a weapon of mass destruction. In the real world, the Russian language is in no danger: The globalized Internet favors Russian over Ukrainian in Ukraine, and most television is in Russian. What has changed with time, especially since the invasion of 2014, is the popular attitude toward language: The percentage of Ukrainian citizens who identify as speakers of Russian has declined. Younger people are now more likely to identify themselves as native speakers of Ukrainian. No Ukrainian policy ever led to as much Ukrainization as Russia’s war on Ukraine… So all this Russian propaganda is untrue, but even if any of it were true, it would not justify invasions and threatened invasions. Is it meant to serve ideology or strategy? What we know for sure is that Russia’s leaders, whatever the ideology or strategy might be, believe in psychology. The one consistent element of Russian propaganda is that Russia has suffered and that it is the West’s fault — your fault. When Russia does something inexcusable, you are meant to be shocked, blame yourself and make concessions.”
Why it matters: “A politics that begins with myths of innocence is a politics that ends in violent resentment. The propaganda of loss is meant to set up the permanent presumption that Russia is a victim. That Russians suffered in the 20th century is, of course, beyond all doubt. People living in the Russian republic of the U.S.S.R. died in terrible numbers under Stalinism and during the German occupation. Those are incontrovertible facts. But they are exploited by the Kremlin to create a sense that only Russians suffered, and therefore only Russian leaders may judge others. ‘Genocide’ and ‘fascism’ become magic words which, when pronounced, liberate Russians to do whatever they want, including invade their neighbors… Shock and guilt will not lead to peace. Security cannot be gained by chasing myths into a netherworld where Russians are always innocent, Ukrainians do not exist and Americans should take the blame for it all. If Russia gets what it wants by behaving badly and programming others to take the blame, expect more of the same in years to come.”
2. What does Putin want?
Why you should read it: Russian policy analyst Lilia Shevtsova contends in the New York Times that Putin wants nothing less than to force the United States and its European allies to underwrite his regime’s security.
“So what is Mr. Putin’s endgame? The immediate aim, to be sure, is to return Ukraine to Russia’s orbit. But that’s only a brush stroke on a much bigger canvas. Mr. Putin’s design is grand: to refashion the post-Cold War settlement, in the process guaranteeing the survival of Russia’s personalized power system. And judging from the West’s awkward, anguished response so far, he might be close to getting what he wants… No longer content with upsetting the West, Mr. Putin is now trying to force it to agree to a new global dispensation, with Russia restored to eminence. It doesn’t stop there, though. Crucially, the geopolitical advance would serve to safeguard Mr. Putin’s rule. So the West, by accepting Russia’s geopolitical position, would effectively underwrite its domestic agenda, too. The United States would become, at home and abroad, Russia’s security provider. It’s quite the gambit.”
“Right now, it’s hard to know what comes next. Mr. Putin can’t force his Western opponents to surrender; neither is he ready to retreat. But he could use both concessions and refusals to pursue his agenda. Concessions, such as NATO explicitly pledging not to expand any further east, would be presented as victories, and refusals as the pretext for further escalation. One success is already clear: The West has been forced to reward Russia — through outreach, diplomacy and, above all, attention — for the charitable act of not invading Ukraine.”
Why it matters: “Russia’s rebellion threatens to turn geopolitics into a battle of threats — force on one side, sanctions on the other. Mr. Putin’s method is tried and tested: He ratchets up the tensions and then demands ‘binding agreements,’ which he does not take seriously. The aim, really, is a Hobbesian world order, built on disruption and readiness for surprise breakthroughs… The Kremlin is suggesting something very different: the irrelevance of rules. The norms by which the world has been governed for the past three decades would be thrown out, in favor of creative interpretation of the possible. In this free-for-all, Mr. Putin — mercurial master of suspense and the sudden move — can pursue his fusion of geopolitical power and personal rule.”
3. How a forgotten 19th century French invasion of Spain explains the logic behind Putin’s moves on Ukraine
Why you should read it: In the Washington Post, University of Virginia professor John Owen sees an analogy for Russia’s potential invasion of Ukraine in the French monarchy’s paranoia over the possible success of a liberal regime in Spain during the early 1820s.
“In January 1823, not unlike today, a more powerful country ruled by an authoritarian leader deployed 100,000 troops to its border with a weaker neighbor governed by a liberal constitutional regime. But on that occasion, the countries were France and Spain. French King Louis XVIII worried that Spain’s liberal constitutional regime could bleed over into his country, putting his reign at risk… Russia has demanded that NATO commit to never admitting Ukraine as a member, but the 1823 French invasion of Spain suggests that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s worries may be far deeper. He, too, may view a democratic neighbor as a threat to his regime and its international position.”
“This [1820 liberal revolution in Spain] concerned Louis XVIII in two ways. Both had to do with the tendency of liberals across borders to sympathize with and help one another. The French king’s most pressing fear was that the liberals’ triumph over Ferdinand in Spain would strengthen liberalism in France. The French Revolution and Napoleon were gone, but liberal networks still threaded across Europe, working for more uprisings and sharing information and moral support. The 1820 revolution that laid Ferdinand low had already spread to Portugal, Piedmont, Naples, Greece and even to Latin America. Louis’ fellow absolute monarchs across Europe were likewise terrified that revolution abroad could produce revolution at home… If Spanish liberals stayed in power, they could align with the relatively liberal Britain. Even though the great powers were at peace in the ‘Concert of Europe,’ France still worried about holding onto its traditional sphere of influence. Spain also remained a strategically important country.”
Why it matters: “The Bourbons, then, could not fend off liberalism forever. But recent social science implies that Louis may have read the geopolitical situation correctly and extended his rule in France. Rebellion can, indeed, travel across international borders, as dissidents draw encouragement from one another’s successes… Louis also was correct that countries’ foreign alignments are often linked to their ideologies or domestic regime types. It’s the reason that France and the other great powers of the 19th century — and, later, superpowers like the United States in the 20th century — often promoted their regime type in smaller states to put their friends into power and gain allies. International institutions such as NATO can reinforce this tendency, buttressing democracy in member states by normalizing it as a form of government. A country’s form of government and its foreign alignments, it turns out, are entangled; each can reinforce the other… In the abstract, neither democracy in Ukraine nor the eastward advance of NATO threatens Russia. But Putin is reading the situation as Louis did in 1823.”
4. How a Russian invasion of Ukraine could threaten global food supplies
Why you should read it: The Breakthrough Institute’s Alex Smith argues in Foreign Policy that a war between Russia and Ukraine would have dire consequences for the world’s supply of food since many countries remain heavily dependent on Ukrainian agricultural exports for sustenance.
“Ukraine is a top exporter of corn, barley, and rye, but it’s the country’s wheat that has the biggest impact on food security around the world. In 2020, Ukraine exported roughly 18 million metric tons of wheat out of a total harvest of 24 million metric tons, making it the world’s fifth-largest exporter. Customers include China and the European Union, but the developing world is where Ukrainian wheat has become an essential import. For example, about half of all wheat consumed in Lebanon in 2020 came from Ukraine, according to data from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)… Of the 14 countries that rely on Ukrainian imports for more than 10 percent of their wheat consumption, a significant number already face food insecurity from ongoing political instability or outright violence. For example, Yemen and Libya import 22 percent and 43 percent, respectively, of their total wheat consumption from Ukraine. Egypt, the largest consumer of Ukrainian wheat, imported more than 3 million metric tons in 2020—about 14 percent of its total wheat. Ukraine also supplied 28 percent of Malaysian, 28 percent of Indonesian, and 21 percent of Bangladeshi wheat consumption in 2020, according to FAO data.”
“Unfortunately, a large part of the country’s wheat production comes from the historical breadbasket of eastern Ukraine—Kharkiv, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhia, and Kherson oblasts, just west of Donetsk and Luhansk, which are already partially occupied by Russian and Russian-supported forces… Should a possible attack on Ukraine turn into a Russian land grab from where Russian-supported separatists have already established their so-called republics, it could mean sharp declines in wheat production and a precipitous fall in wheat exports as farmers flee the fighting, infrastructure and equipment are destroyed, and the region’s economy is paralyzed. Whoever controls the land will ultimately extract its riches, but if conditions in the Russian-controlled eastern parts of Ukraine are any guide, instability and paralysis may lie over the region and seriously impact production far beyond the initial invasion.”
Why it matters: “Global food prices are already rising along with those of other commodities, and any disruption risks further price shocks as importing countries scramble for supplies in a tightening market. Food insecurity would be exacerbated in the many developing countries that depend on Ukraine for their sustenance. In politically unstable countries such as Libya, Yemen, and Lebanon, additional food price shocks and hunger could easily turn an already bad situation worse. In many other countries, too, price spikes and food insecurity could inflame conflict, heighten ethnic tensions, destabilize governments, and cause violence to spill over borders.”
5. Why China’s “zero-COVID” policy is a disaster waiting to happen
Why you should read it: In the New York Times, public health experts Ezekiel Emanuel and Michael Osterholm explain why Beijing’s attempts to stamp out every outbreak of COVID in China won’t work - and could spell disaster not just for China but a global economy that remains dependent on Chinese exports.
“President Xi Jinping and his government seem to believe that the country can be sealed off until the virus is eradicated around the world… But that goal is unattainable with the highly transmissible Omicron variant and has set the nation up for disaster. The coronavirus is not going to disappear — the world will have to live with it. Making matters worse, China’s vaccines are much less effective against Omicron. And the Chinese health care system simply is not equipped to care for millions of people sickened by the virus.”
“Over the next few years, most people in the world, including China, are likely to be exposed to the coronavirus. With an incubation time potentially as short as three days, and many infected people being asymptomatic, the virus will spread rapidly. By the time an outbreak is identified, it will have moved to another city… But a zero-Covid policy means the Chinese will always be chasing an ever moving target. And they will never win. Inevitably this will have serious economic impacts for China — and for all of us, given the country’s position in the world economy. While China remains the production capital of the world, this is unlikely to be sustainable should lockdowns ensue. Businesses outside of China are likely to become increasingly hesitant to partner with Chinese ventures when they are unable to enter the country to meet partners and inspect factories that face unpredictable closings. Declines in Chinese production would upend supply chains and the availability of goods everywhere, including in the United States.”
Why it matters: “Other countries can provide a road map that China can put into action. Denmark, Germany and some other European countries, as well as Australia, have achieved strong immunity without suffering the U.S. death rate. They used effective vaccines, made smarter decisions about when and where to impose lockdowns and protected the most vulnerable — older people and those with compromised immune systems. Community spread resulted, but it would have been inevitable, even with longer or more severe lockdowns, and it allowed those countries to build up immunity… But a zero-Covid policy is a losing long-term strategy.”
6. Why the so-called “Thucydides Trap” is a poor guide to the U.S.-China rivalry
Why you should read it: British strategy scholar Lawrence Freedman rebuts the idea that the “Thucydides Trap” proposed by American scholar Graham Allison provides much insight into the future of relations between the United States and China.
"The alarming possibility of a major conflict between the US and China has been framed as a likely consequence of a pattern of great power behaviour first identified by the fifth-century BCE historian Thucydides. In his study of the Peloponnesian War, the Greek wrote: ‘It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.’ This argument is now most associated with the Harvard academic Graham Allison, who claims to have identified 16 instances in which a dominant power has sought to suppress an emerging rival before they became too strong. He notes, disconcertingly, that 12 of these ended in war… But Allison’s notion of the Thucydides Trap – the tendency towards war when a rising power threatens to displace an existing one – fails to address the risks involved in conflict and the reasons why wars occur. The story told by Thucydides is much more complicated than the ‘Trap’ suggests. The notion of inevitable conflict between Athens and Sparta elides the fact that the Athenian leader Pericles made poor strategic calls. Different decisions would have avoided war.”
“These choices were largely about the cohesion of the respective Athenian and Spartan alliances, and the possibility of a smaller state defecting because it did not feel protected. A major difference now is that there are asymmetrical alliances: China is far more isolated geopolitically than the US… As China has become more powerful it has grown more assertive, which is why its neighbours have become anxious about its intentions. But contrary to the logic of the Thucydides Trap, in the past China went to war –with Korea in 1950, India in 1962, and Vietnam in 1979 – when it was in a position of weakness, not strength. Its military and economic power is now second only to the US, but that also means China has much more to lose in any kind of protracted, multi-front conflict.”
Why it matters: “The risk of war in the Indo-Pacific region cannot usefully be understood as the result of an upstart power challenging the established global hegemon for supremacy. Issues of interest and alliances are as important as power balances, and all need to be watched carefully if conflict between the world’s preponderant forces are to be addressed and, hopefully, avoided.”
7. “How the Biden administration failed the Omicron test”
Why you should read it: Financial Times Washington correspondent Kiran Stacey describes how the Biden administration’s approach to the COVID-19 pandemic failed the major test of the Omicron variant.
“In the first year of Biden’s presidency, much has changed about the US response to Covid-19. Most adults have now been vaccinated and new, more effective treatments have been approved. There’s no more talk of miracle cures in the White House briefing room, or self-medication with bleach… Yet the past few months have also been plagued by some of the missteps and administrative dysfunction which occurred during the Trump era. The Biden administration’s policies on boosters, at-home testing, masking and quarantine have been halting and inconsistent, which critics say have made the country’s Omicron wave far worse than it should have been… At the root of these problems, say public health experts and government officials, is a malaise afflicting the US government’s major public health institutions. Feted for years as global leaders in scientific research and public health policy, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food and Drug Administration and the National Institutes of Health have been slow to respond to the fast-changing nature of the pandemic and unable to co-ordinate effectively among themselves."
“Nowhere has the failure of America’s public health response to the pandemic been clearer than at the CDC… Beyond poor communication, the CDC often faltered in part because its normal bureaucratic processes were too slow. In early 2020, for example, the agency insisted it should be the only organisation to produce a Covid-19 test for public health labs to use, stymying any efforts by private companies to do so. But when it shipped its test, it used contaminated ingredients by mistake, rendering almost all of them completely unusable… Slow decision-making and a lack of co-ordination have also plagued the Food and Drug Administration, the organisation responsible for approving new drugs in the US… The cause of this lack of supply [of COVID tests] is in part due to the slow pace at which the FDA has approved new tests. For months, only two companies were allowed to sell at-home tests: Quidel and Abbott. Smaller companies say they found it impossible to navigate the regulator’s complex and stringent approvals process… The US process by contrast has focused on particular treatments deemed likely successes, limiting its scope. One therapy the NIH has focused on heavily is monoclonal antibodies… This type of treatment proved successful at first. But at least two of them — one produced by Regeneron and another by Eli Lilly — have proved to be largely useless against Omicron, and the NIH is no longer recommending their use for people who have mild to moderate Covid symptoms.”
Why it matters: “Even if there is broad consensus that structural reforms are overdue, the timing is challenging, say those who advised Biden as he prepared to take over the White House. It is really hard to reform these agencies in the middle of a pandemic,’ says Céline Gounder, an epidemiologist who served on Biden’s transition team… But many now think reform should be a priority for the second half of Biden’s term as president, or whenever Covid-19 does not have the country in its grip. ‘Maybe we don’t want to take apart agencies in the midst of a pandemic,’ says [Ezekiel] Emanuel. ‘But coming out we need to reimagine them completely.’”
8. How “enlightened nationalism” can help build a better immigration policy
Why you should read it: Utah State University professor Alexander Kustov makes the case that “enlightened nationalism” - not America First-style nationalism or open borders cosmopolitanism - provides the best foundation for a sane, sustainable, and humane immigration policy.
“The political conflict over international migration has many sides, including disagreements over whom to admit, how best to integrate new arrivals, or how to deal with unauthorized migrants and asylum seekers. Despite this complexity, however, a lot of these disagreements have increasingly come down to the clash of two major political values: nationalism and cosmopolitanism… Economic research has repeatedly demonstrated that most forms of immigration are positive for the receiving countries in the long run. A smarter form of nationalism would recognize this and require governments to embrace select immigration policies that can clearly benefit their own citizens. I call this enlightened nationalism… [an] enlighten nationalism which seeks to advance national interest over the long term… is a more effective and humane guiding principle of immigration policy than its alternatives. Enlightened nationalism implies that governments don’t need to reconcile the differences between nationalist and cosmopolitan outlooks to move forward on immigration.”
“Immigration stakeholders would stop pairing symbolic patriotic-sounding or immigrant-friendly rhetoric with predefined policy conclusions. Instead, they would focus on what regulations are materially advancing national interest in the long run. Cosmopolitan-minded supporters of immigration would acknowledge that democratic governments have special obligations to their citizens and thus some selection of immigrants is unavoidable. Patriotism-driven immigration skeptics would recognize that prioritizing citizens does not imply that foreign livelihoods have no value or that the related opportunity costs of restrictions can be ignored… Understood this way, it is possible that a more open immigration system may in fact be more nationalist relative to other values currently guiding immigration policy (tradition, partisanship, empathy, or antipathy for select groups). In line with this idea, my research shows that, despite their apparent staunch skepticism of immigration, most voters are willing to support alternative policies increasing immigration when these policies straightforwardly benefit their country."
Why it matters: “Instead of debating whether immigration is inherently good or bad or whether it should be increased or decreased in the abstract, policymakers should identify concrete ways to improve immigration for their countries and citizens. My research suggests this would not just be good policy. It would also be good politics. Surprisingly few voters—even those who are more conservative or less educated—dislike immigration for its own sake… So how do policymakers gain support for increasing immigration? Change the policy environment. If my research on altruistic nationalists is correct and the current widespread opposition to immigration is not just rooted in prejudice, voters should be willing to compromise their anti-immigration sentiments and support alternative pro-immigration policies when they are confident those policies have favorable national consequences. This is not just a matter of framing or rhetoric—the presumed national benefits of certain immigration policies have to be demonstrated by policymakers and be straightforward enough to be understood by voters… Enlightened nationalism works. Governments must look after their own citizens first, and research has demonstrated that immigration is a useful tool for policymakers to improve conditions for both natives and immigrants.”
9. Why the Middle East remains so patriarchal
Why you should read it: For the Brookings Institution website, development scholar Alice Evans examines why sex inequality remains so stubbornly large in the Middle East and North Africa.
“The Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is the most patriarchal region in the world. Although there is great variety in the region—Beirut and Istanbul are more liberal than Cairo and Qom—every single country in MENA has lower female employment and political leadership than the global average… After the Arab-Islamic conquests, female seclusion became increasingly normative across the entire MENA region. This is due to three institutional innovations carried by Islam, originating in pre-Islamic Arabian and Mesopotamian influences: patrilineal tribalism, religious authoritarianism, and gender segregation as expressions of piety… As a result of both Islamization and Arabization, male honor became contingent on the propriety of female kin. The economic advantages of female wage labor were outweighed by the inevitable suspicion, stigma, and social ostracism. Muslim patrilineal clans thus preferred to maintain prestige and purity through female seclusion. Even when factories were established in Ottoman towns, MENA women remained in home-based production, weaving carpets under the eyes of male kin. Few families wanted to stick their neck out and be the first to send their daughter away, because she might be perceived as promiscuous. The unwillingness of families to deviate from this norm unilaterally created a negative feedback loop in which wage labor remained exceptional for women. I call this ‘The Patrilineal Trap.’"
“Political elites who might otherwise be open to reform are intimidated by potential backlash from clerics. MENA states seek legitimacy by appealing to Islam. Restrictions on Islamist parties were loosened; and there was more funding for mosque construction, religious media, and religious schools. Male guardianship laws remain in place… MENA families remain caught in the Patrilineal Trap. Female wages are still too low to compensate for the loss of male honor. So women remain at home, with little autonomy or social networking. Men, however, are free to forge new connections, run family firms, gain knowledge of the wider world, and become trusted authorities. Unlike every other world region, young men in North Africa are no more egalitarian than their grandfathers. Nearly all see men as superior political leaders. Although pious women have been integral to Islamists’ outreach, leadership remains male dominated and patriarchal.”
Why it matters: “Female employment does rise if economic returns to women working outweigh the loss of family honor. Examples are abundant from Turkey which has grown most rapidly in MENA, to thriving labor-intensive industries in the Maghreb and the consequences of Kuwait’s labor nationalization. Public sector employment is popular with MENA women because it is safe and respectable… But MENA feminists face an uphill battle as they continue to be restricted by patrilineal kin, molested in male-dominated streets, condemned by Islamists, and repressed by authoritarians. When Abdel Fattah el-Sisi cracked down on civil society, Egyptian women curtailed their campaign against sexual harassment. As Moroccan feminist Bouchra Abdou shared, ‘I feel like we are in the bottom of a well. We keep screaming but no one hears us…’ In sum, a once heterogeneous region (sometimes ruled by women) became and has remained extremely patriarchal thanks to the Arab-Islamic conquests and Shariah law, which have cemented patrilineal kinship and religious authoritarianism.”
Odds and Ends
“How Thich Nhat Hanh taught the West about mindfulness…”
Be very afraid: scientists confirm that pods of orcas can take down blue whales…
“Is Old Music Killing New Music?…”
What the James Webb Space Telescope means for humanity…
An interview with Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder ahead of the release of his new solo album…
What I’m Listening To
A number of sleaze metal songs from the soundtrack of James Gunn’s irreverent new HBO Max superhero series Peacemaker, including:
Wig Wam’s “Do Ya Wanna to Taste It?” from the show’s delirious opening title credits.
“Welcome to the Church of Rock and Roll” by Foxy Shazam.
A glam metal cover of Foster the People’s “Pumped Up Kicks” by series composer John Murphy and vocalist Ralph Saenz.
Image of the Month
