The Dive - 7/1/21
Your monthly compilation of what's what on global politics, American society, and an assortment of odds and ends
Quote of the Month
“You will earn the respect of all men if you begin by earning the respect of yourself.”
- Musonius Rufus, Fragments, 30
My recent scribblings:
1. Why a “majority-minority” America is a myth
Why you should read it: Demographers Richard Alba, Morris Levy, and Dowell Myers note in The Atlantic that confident projections of a “majority-minority” America rely on inherently divisive and highly dubious assumptions that are likely empirically wrong.
“The majority-minority narrative contributes to our national polarization. Its depiction of a society fractured in two, with one side rising while the other subsides, is inherently divisive because it implies winners and losers. It has bolstered white anxiety and resentment of supposedly ascendant minority groups, and has turned people against democratic institutions that many conservative white Americans and politicians consider complicit in illegitimate minority empowerment… The narrative is also false. By rigidly splitting Americans into two groups, white versus nonwhite, it reinvents the discredited 19th-century ‘one-drop rule’ and applies it to a 21st-century society in which the color line is more fluid than it has ever been.”
“In reality, racial diversity is increasing not only at a nationwide level but also within American families—indeed within individual Americans. Nearly three in 10 Asian, one in four Latino, and one in five Black newlyweds are married to a member of a different ethnic or racial group. More than three-quarters of these unions are with a white partner. For more and more Americans, racial integration is embedded in their closest relationships… These trends expose the flaw lurking behind the headline-grabbing claim that America will soon be a majority-minority society. That narrative depends on the misleading practice of classifying individuals of mixed backgrounds as exclusively nonwhite. The Census Bureau population projections that relied on this practice first predicted the majority-minority future in 2008. The idea quickly took on a life of its own. Some Americans now instinctively think of rising diversity as a catalyst of white decline and nonwhite numerical dominance. But as more recent news releases from the bureau have begun to acknowledge, what the data in fact show is that Americans with mixed racial backgrounds are the most rapidly growing racial group in the country. “
Why it matters: “The public deserves to hear an accurate narrative about rising racial diversity that highlights the likelihood that society’s mainstream will continue to expand to include people of varied backgrounds. Our recent research demonstrates that most white people are not only receptive to such an inclusive narrative but can be powerfully influenced by it. In multiple survey experiments, we asked white Americans to read a news story describing the rise of mixed-race marriages and the growth of a multiracial population. They expressed less anxiety and anger, anticipated less discrimination against white people, and evinced more willingness to invest in public goods, such as education, than others who read a news story predicated on the false narrative of white decline in a majority-minority society by the mid-2040s… Moreover, Latino, Black, and Asian participants in these studies expressed overwhelmingly positive reactions to the story of racial blending. Anticipation of equal treatment in the future was as high among minority respondents who read the blending story as among those who read the majority-minority account. Minority Americans were most optimistic and least fearful after reading about the rise of multiracial families. Eighty-five percent of Black, Asian, and Latino respondents expressed hopefulness or enthusiasm after reading this account—more than the approximately two-thirds of minority respondents who expressed these positive emotions in response to the majority-minority story… While the rising number of multiracial Americans today does not exactly mirror the dynamics of the ’50s and ’60s, the dangers of ignoring ethno-racial blending are the same. The myth of an imminent majority-minority society revives the misconception that American ethnic and racial groups are fixed, bounded, and separate. It breathes new life into old fears that rising diversity must entail white decline. Our ailing democracy needs a narrative now that recognizes how changing demography can unite us rather than divide us. Or, as the slogan goes, ‘E pluribus unum.’”
2. What America’s center-left can learn from the European left’s failures
Why you should read it: In Foreign Policy, Barnard College political science professor Sheri Berman argues that the Democratic Party should take heed of the travails of its European counterparts and focus more on economic issues.
“What seems to explain right-wing populist success [in Europe] is not increasing racism or xenophobia but rather that citizens concerned about immigration, and national identity have increasingly voted on the basis of these concerns. With regard to non-college-educated, working-class voters in particular, it is important to stress that in Europe, as in the United States, these voters have always had moderate-to-conservative views on such social and cultural issues. The significant change that has occurred over time is not in these views but rather in the importance or salience of them to their voting choices… Recognizing that they do well when the salience of immigration and related issues is high, right-wing populists in Europe have worked hard to keep voters’ attention focused on them, demonizing immigrants, blaming them for rising crime, the erosion of national values, and so on. But it isn’t only right-wing populists who have increased the salience of these issues; mainstream left-wing parties have played a role as well.”
“During the postwar decades, political competition in Europe pivoted primarily around economic issues, with labor and social democratic parties championing the welfare state, government regulation of the market, full-employment policies, and so on. But during the late 20th century, this changed as these parties shifted to the center economically and the differences between them and their center-right competitors diminished accordingly…As they abandoned much of their distinctive economic appeal during the late 20th century, European labor and social democratic parties began paying increasing attention to noneconomic issues such as immigration and national identity and particularly during the last decade or so shifted their positions to the left on them. (Some, such as Denmark’s Social Democrats, have recently shifted back to the center, seeking to win their old voters back.)”
Why it matters: “There are many causes of the dramatic voting realignment that has occurred across the West over the past few decades, but ignoring the role played by the mainstream parties of the left would surely be a mistake. Shifting to the center on economic issues and to the left on social and cultural ones contributed to increasing the salience of the latter while also moving left-wing parties away from the preferences of non-college-educated, working-class voters and the electorate at large…Winning elections requires either persuading voters of the desirability of your positions or reconsidering them. Concretely, this means convincing activists who generally have views far to the left of other voters on noneconomic issues that unless they are able to shift public opinion, they will have to accept some compromises on them.”
3. Why the U.S. military isn’t ready for a potential war with China
Why you should read it: Tufts University professor Michael Beckley contends in Foreign Affairs that the U.S. military can effectively counter an expanding Chinese military, but its current strategy isn’t up to the task.
“It has become conventional wisdom that this gathering storm represents the inevitable result of Beijing’s rise and Washington’s decline. In fact, it is nothing of the sort. The United States has vast resources and a viable strategy to counter China’s military expansion. Yet the U.S. defense establishment has been slow to adopt this strategy and instead wastes resources on obsolete forces and nonvital missions. Washington’s current defense posture doesn’t make military sense, but it does make political sense—and it could very well endure… To change course, the Biden administration must explicitly and repeatedly order the military to focus on deterring China and downsize its other missions. These orders need to be fleshed out and codified in the administration’s defense budget requests and in its National Defense Strategy. In addition, the administration should support the Pacific Deterrence Initiative, a program that would plug holes in the U.S. defense perimeter in Asia. If the United States does not seize this chance to secure its military advantage over China, it may not get another.”
“Since the end of the Cold War, U.S. presidents have allowed (and often encouraged) the Department of Defense to morph into the Department of Everything. The U.S. military now performs dozens of missions besides preparing for great-power war, including development assistance, disaster relief, counternarcotics operations, diplomatic outreach, environmental conservation, and election security. American military personnel operate in nearly every country on earth and perform almost every conceivable job… Instead of advocating the relatively cheap and easy deployment of cruise missiles that would be crucial in a war with China, [regional combatant commanders[ instead push for big military units and massive military platforms (such as aircraft carriers and destroyers) that can handle a variety of peacetime missions.”
Why it matters: “Reforming the country’s biggest bureaucracy will be hard, but not impossible. The military is a hierarchical organization with clear lines of formal authority. The president and the secretary of defense can issue orders to combatant commanders and enforce them through their control over the budget and personnel… There now exists bipartisan political support in Washington for a true rebalance to Asia and a strategic consensus among defense planners about how to proceed. The main ingredient that is lacking is concerted top-level leadership to harness that support and put those strategies into action.”
4. How the Biden administration is fighting an indirect trade war with China
Why you should read it: Tufts University professor Chris Miller observes that the Biden administration’s objection to the sale of a minor South Korean semiconductor manufacturer to a Chinese private equity firm marks a new, more subtle approach to countering China’s attempt to corner vital markets and industries.
“Magnachip, based in South Korea, produces a type of semiconductor needed in the most advanced screens, such as those for the newest smartphones. It’s a small company, with revenues of around $500 million last year, a tiny fraction of chip industry behemoths like Intel or Taiwan’s TSMC. But the Biden administration is now blocking its purchase by a Chinese private equity fund…The display technology that Magnachip specializes in is a small slice of the semiconductor market. These display drivers are important but are far less pervasive than the logic or memory chips found in nearly every device or data center. Magnachip’s technology is advanced, but it isn’t particularly unique. If you were to draw up a priority list of companies that you didn’t want to fall into China’s hands, Magnachip wouldn’t be at the top of the list.”
“Magnachip, however, is different from all these [earlier] deals. It is a small company. It focuses on technology that is not a U.S. core competency. Moreover, it has little if any U.S. presence…Yet CFIUS has struck again. On June 15, the committee ordered Magnachip to halt its sale until CFIUS has finished investigating. The next day, South Korea’s regulators issued their own set of demands regarding the proposed transaction. Now the sale of Magnachip is on ice until regulators approve. They may be hoping that the deal dies without them having formally to kill it.”
Why it matters: “What does this tell us about the Biden administration’s strategy toward economic relations with China? It says nothing at all about supply chains because Magnachip supplies little if any of its technology to U.S. firms. A small player, Magnachip has little to do with the semiconductor shortage that has been making headlines. There’s no direct military ramification of its technology either… The only plausible interpretation is that, apparently in conjunction with the South Korean government, the Biden administration has de facto decided that all chip firms—even if small, seemingly innocuous, and barely linked to the United States—are off limits to Chinese buyers. If Magnachip isn’t allowed to couple up with a Chinese private equity fund, it is hard to imagine anyone else will be allowed to, either. This is bad news for China’s efforts to acquire chip expertise by buying foreign companies. Just don’t expect anyone in the White House to call it decoupling.”
5. Why the travails of China’s fighter aircraft industry reflect the broader failures of Chinese diplomacy
Why you should read it: Though China should be able to sell its fighter aircraft to a number of foreign militaries, aerospace analyst Richard Aboulafia maintains in Foreign Policy, Beijing’s overall diplomatic approach and geopolitical strategy alienates potential customers.
“As China’s global stature has grown, many expected that its weapons exports would reflect its place on the world stage. Yet after decades of trying, that simply hasn’t happened. Last month’s confrontation with the Philippines, where Chinese naval vessels entered Philippine waters without authorization, may indicate the crux of the problem—and this failure may well illustrate a key weakness for China. Essentially, few want to partner up with Beijing.”
“The best explanation of this failure is China’s foreign policy. The Philippines is a perfect illustration of why China’s fighter export ambitions have stalled… It isn’t just the Philippines. China’s other neighbors don’t like China, with predictable ramifications for the fighter sales business. India, a longtime Russian fighter customer with a strong interest in sourcing from multiple countries, should also be a potential J-10 customer but is instead facing another nasty border confrontation with China in the Himalayas. India is increasingly looking to Western countries for military equipment and won’t even consider China, whose status as a possible adversary rules it out as a weapons provider. Ditto for Vietnam, with its worsening maritime dispute with China. Malaysia and Indonesia are also too wary of Beijing’s ambitions to ever consider acquiring a Chinese fighter.”
Why it matters: “… fighter exports are more than just a popularity contest. They also reflect the strength of a supplier country’s alliances and help strengthen strategic relationships. Military export sales improve program production, and increased output can make production less costly (a phenomenon known as economies of scale)… Beijing lacks appeal as a strategic partner in the region. It has little interest in preserving the status quo in Asia, few qualms about territorial expansion, and next to no record of supporting allies in times of crisis. The region’s other powers see little to gain from a strategic relationship with China, which would be inextricable from purchasing its fighter jets… The most important conclusion from all of this is that building good aircraft and other weapons won’t help your defense industry—or enhance your strategic power—if you don’t have friends."
6. How Russia’s vaccine diplomacy failed in Africa
Why you should read it: Oxford University international relations scholar Samuel Ramani details how Russia’s attempt to use its Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine to win friends and influence people in Africa foundered amidst high prices and widespread snafus.
“On the surface, Russia has two advantages over its competitors. First, the Kremlin has centralized its vaccine deliveries under the umbrella of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF). Centralization helps boost Russia’s image as an aid donor and allows the Kremlin to take full credit for innovations, which in the United States would be achieved by universities or private companies. Second, Russia has a long history of successful medical diplomacy in Africa, which originated with its dispatch of doctors after the First Italo-Ethiopian War in the 1890s.”
"Yet beneath the surface, Russia’s COVID-19 vaccine diplomacy is unlikely to emulate those past successes and could even harm Russia’s standing on the continent. Its vaccine deliveries have been consistently smaller than its lofty targets, and the unit and local production costs of Sputnik V vaccines are excessively high. This makes competitor vaccines more attractive. Moreover, it is unlikely that Russia’s vaccine distributions will overcome entrenched negative perceptions of its role in Africa. And South Africa’s delays in authorizing Sputnik V on efficacy grounds is a significant blow to Moscow’s vision of vaccine cooperation.”
Why it matters: “Due to these operational challenges, Russia has failed to capitalize on its early distribution advantage in Africa, and other foreign competition has crowded out its vaccines. On March 29, the African Union struck a deal with Johnson & Johnson that would result in the supply of 400 million doses beginning in the third quarter of 2021. The G-7’s pledge to distribute 870 million vaccines to the global south will further marginalize Sputnik V, while Sinopharm has already gained traction in key potential Russian markets, such as Egypt. Even in countries where Russia has an established geopolitical presence, Sputnik V now trails the competition… Despite the publicity surrounding Russia’s vaccine diplomacy in Africa, Moscow’s response to the COVD-19 pandemic is unlikely to help it expand its influence on the continent. The impending proliferation of Western vaccines across the global south will likely prevent Sputnik V from capitalizing on concerns about the inefficacy of China’s Sinovac vaccine and ensure that Russia plays a peripheral role in ending the COVID-19 pandemic in Africa.”
7. How the contemporary zeal for political conformity put the last nail in the coffin of corporate claims to value independent thinkers
Why you should read it: Writer Kat Rosenfield makes the case in Tablet against companies like Apple that purport to want non-conformist workers but in reality punish non-conformity harshly.
“Corporations are caught between two competing sets of values in a trap of their own making: paying the customary lip service to a love of creative, rebellious boundary-pushers, yet also assuring their increasingly political employees that they’ll never have to work with one. Hiring managers may wax poetic about their desire for the sort of provocative freethinker who can bring innovation to products and processes, but there is no room for this sort of person in a workforce that balks at the slightest threat of ideological discomfort—and particularly not in an environment where every hiring announcement prompts a rash of frenzied digging for evidence that the honored party is guilty of bad acts, or bad thoughts, and ought not to be allowed through the door. This messaging was disingenuous before, but now it’s downright removed from our cultural and political reality.”
"Who does this paradox affect? Sure, corporations will lose out on some genuinely interesting voices, but these voices are already few and far between in boardrooms. Their multi-billion-dollar valuations and high-rolling corporate executives will survive. Instead, as is frequently the case with today’s high-minded cultural crusades, the people who will be most affected are the people who have the most to lose. Creative people, even very successful ones, have always had day jobs to pay the bills: the talented author who drives a subway train, the award-winning composer who moonlights as a plumber. But for the vast majority who have never had any hopes of making a living from their art, remaining palatable to normal employers, the kind who offer a regular salary, benefits, and health insurance, is very much a concern. Everyone is aware that, these days, few companies want to deal with the near-certain public fallout of hiring someone accused of dancing too intimately with one form of bigotry or another—and few job searchers want to risk being the artist whose provocative creation flies a little too close to the sun, given that even an acclaimed and successful piece of work might eventually render you unemployable. Sure, that provocative piece of writing might be a bestseller next year. But if it might also cost you your livelihood five years down the road, who can afford to find out?”
Why it matters: “As long as the present culture persists, artists will understand that it is simply impossible to bring their whole selves to work, or even allow employers to know about them. Some will find solace in pseudonymity, laboring by day under their own identities, creating by night under another, setting aside a walled (and firewalled) garden for their work where bosses and coworkers can’t enter. The only ones who will produce edgy work under their own names will be those who can quite literally afford it. Get excited for the next wave of ‘countercultural art’ made exclusively by the 1 percent: a rich kid’s fantasy of creative rebellion, drawn and composed and written and performed by the same people who will happily demonstrate their brave nonconformist credentials by shelling out a few thousand bucks for a limited-edition pair of AirPods.”
8. Why the Pentagon Papers leak hurt democracy
Why you should read it: In the New York Times, Niskanen Center senior fellow Gabriel Schoenfeld writes that Daniel Ellsberg’s leak of the Pentagon Papers - a secret history of U.S. decision making on Vietnam - in the early 1970s amounted to “nothing less than an assault on democracy itself.”
“The way in which we control critical national security secrets has been established by Congress and the executive branch, two bodies that are both accountable to the public and checked and balanced by the courts. Disregarding his secrecy oaths and violating the law, Mr. Ellsberg, accountable to no one, took it upon himself to attempt to steer the ship of state… In short, far from operating within the norms of our democracy, Mr. Ellsberg was illegally exploiting his privileged access to secret information to advance the views of a small but highly vocal minority.”
“Far from shaking public opinion, and disappointingly to Mr. Ellsberg, the revelations were met with a collective yawn… despite the wealth of material, the overall thrust of the Pentagon Papers was already familiar to the public. The American people already knew from the press that the war was going badly under Kennedy and Johnson even as both administrations, as they led the nation deeper into the conflict, had depicted it as going well. The public soon distrusted Nixon, too. The Ellsberg revelations merely filled in more details in a picture that was already well established.”
Why it matters: “Given that the leaking of national-security secrets is a venture fraught with moral uncertainty, Mr. Ellsberg’s legacy is at best mixed. One can admire the single-minded tenacity with which he pursued his aim of ending the Vietnam War…But he was still a rogue actor, who if the fundamental ground rules of our constitutional democracy are to be respected, deserves a measure of condemnation along with the celebration that he has already earned.”
9. How the left became morbidly obsessed with history
Why you should read it: In Harper’s, Princeton history professor Matthew Karp charges America’s contemporary left - and the New York Times’s 1619 Project in particular - with an impotent obsession with history that cannot explain much of anything.
“Whatever birthday it chooses to commemorate, origins-obsessed history faces a debilitating intellectual problem: it cannot explain historical change. A triumphant celebration of 1776 as the basis of American freedom stumbles right out of the gate—it cannot describe how this splendid new republic quickly became the largest slave society in the Western Hemisphere. A history that draws a straight line forward from 1619, meanwhile, cannot explain how that same American slave society was shattered at the peak of its wealth and power—a process of emancipation whose rapidity, violence, and radicalism have been rivaled only by the Haitian Revolution. This approach to the past, as the scholar Steven Hahn has written, risks becoming a ‘history without history’ deaf to shifts in power both loud and quiet. Thus it offers no way to understand either the fall of Richmond in 1865 or its symbolic echo in 2020, when an antiracist coalition emerged whose cultural and institutional strength reflects undeniable changes in American society. The 1619 Project may help explain the ‘forces that led to the election of Donald Trump,’ as the Times executive editor Dean Baquet described its mission, but it cannot fathom the forces that led to Trump’s defeat—let alone its own Pulitzer Prize.”
“Today’s historicism is a fulfillment of that discourse, having migrated from the margins of academia to the heart of the liberal establishment. Progress is dead; the future cannot be believed; all we have left is the past, which must therefore be held responsible for the atrocities of the present. ‘In order to understand the brutality of American capitalism,’ one essay in the 1619 Project avers, ‘you have to start on the plantation.’ Not with Goldman Sachs or Shell Oil, the behemoths of the contemporary order, but with the slaveholders of the seventeenth century. Such a critique of capitalism quickly becomes a prisoner of its own heredity. A more creative historical politics would move in the opposite direction, recognizing that the power of American capitalism does not reside in a genetic code written four hundred years ago. What would it mean, when we look at U.S. history, to follow William James in seeking the fruits, not the roots?”
Why it matters: “An older tradition of left-wing American politics had much less trouble with this kind of historical thinking. Frederick Douglass plays little part in the 1619 Project, but he knew better than most that historical narratives matter in political struggles: they shape our sense of the terrain under our feet and the horizon in front of us; they frame our vision of what is possible… Moreover, Douglass questioned the wisdom of any historical politics that undermined the prospects for present-day change. This did not imply a purely instrumental contempt for the past, in the manner of the Trumpian right, but rather reflected a clear-eyed determination to treat history not as scripture or DNA, but as a site of struggle. ‘We have to do with the past only as we can make it useful to the present and to the future,’ Douglass declared. ‘To all inspiring motives, to noble deeds which can be gained from the past, we are welcome. But now is the time, the important time.’ For some scholars, this must read like rank presentism—yet unlike the neo-originalist framing of the 1619 Project, it gets the order of operations right.”
Odds and Ends
The totally true story of how one container ship got stuck in the Suez Canal for the better part of a week and backed up global commerce…
Why and how widely-viewed TV hits died with the rise of streaming services…
Why coffee is good for you, according to science…
Paleontologists reveal Australia’s largest known dinosaur…
Why NASA will send two robotic missions to Venus later this decade…
Music of the Month
“Blue,” the title track from Joni Mitchell’s seminal 1971 album.
A live 2016 rendition of “Going to California” by Robert Plant and his band the Sensational Space Shifters.
“Walking in Your Footsteps,” a pensive number from the Police’s 1983 album Synchronicity.
Image of the Month
