The Dive - 8/1/21
Your monthly compilation of what's what on global politics, American society, and an assortment of odds and ends
Quote of the Month
“It’s absurd not to try to escape from one’s own iniquity, which is possible, and just as absurd to try to escape from the iniquity of others, which is impossible.”
- Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, 7.71
My recent scribblings:
1. How Australia showed the limits of Chinese power
Why you should read it: In The Atlantic, Michael Schuman observes that Australia’s successful defiance of China’s attempt at coercion illustrates the limits of Beijing’s power on the global stage.
“The ongoing dispute between Australia and China may seem merely a bilateral affair, fought out in a remote corner of the planet. But it matters around the world… The most important lesson is also the most unexpected. On paper, the outcome of a China-Australia showdown looks like a foregone conclusion. China, a rising power with 1.4 billion people and a $14.7 trillion economy, should trample a country of 26 million with an economy less than one-tenth the size. But in a world wrapped in interdependent supply chains and complex political connections, smaller countries can wield a surprising armory of weapons. The U.S.-led global order, still held together by common interests, long-standing relationships, cold strategic calculation, and deeply felt ideals, isn’t ready to crumble before the march of Chinese authoritarianism either. The story instead offers a more intriguing twist: a China that badly wants to change the world but can’t even change an uppity neighbor.”
“Beijing’s pressure campaign has succeeded in one important respect, though: souring Australians on China. In a recent Lowy Institute survey, 63 percent of respondents said that they see China more as a security threat than an economic partner to Australia—a 22-percentage-point surge in a year—while a mere 4 percent find their own government more to blame than Beijing for the breakdown in relations.”
Why it matters: “Much clearer, however, is what the stalemate tells us about China’s position in the world. Ultimately, Beijing’s attempt to use Australia to warn other countries of the costs of taking on Chinese power has ended up instead highlighting Chinese weakness… Rather than scaring other governments into sullen silence, the unsuccessful campaign against Australia could embolden them to stand up to China on issues they consider of core importance.”
2. Why we may have hit peak populism
Why you should read it: Also in The Atlantic, Yascha Mounk contends that the fortunes of right-wing populist parties appear to be on the wane around the world following the President Trump’s 2020 defeat at the polls.
“Recent developments in Europe and Latin America suggest that some of the populists and antidemocratic leaders who have dominated the political landscape for the past decade might finally be encountering serious trouble. If the picture looked almost unremittingly bleak a few years ago, now distinct patches of hope are on the horizon… long-established democracies in Western and Northern Europe have also seen populists lose momentum. Sizable populist movements won parliamentary seats in Denmark, Sweden, Greece, and the Netherlands. In all of these countries, these movements will likely remain part of politics for the foreseeable future. But in all of them, they have also, for now, ceased to grow.”
“At the beginning of the populist rise, a new crop of political leaders made huge promises to voters and lacked a record on which they could be judged. But after winning power, they have largely failed to live up to their promises and bungled the handling of a once-in-a-century pandemic. Voters in many countries have thus started to grow disenchanted. Though populists usually retain a fervent following, their ability to build support from a broad cross section of voters seems to be rapidly fading in many countries… In many places, traditional parties had failed to realize how angry their own voters had become, and to what extent their policies were out of keeping with the preferences of the majority. Some have since corrected course, showing that they can beat populists at the ballot box if they steadfastly oppose extremism and take the grievances of ordinary voters seriously.”
Why it matters: “In many countries around the world, the past few years have been a crash course in the importance of the water we’re swimming in. And though the future remains highly uncertain, we have good reason to hope that people are more willing to fight for its preservation. Authoritarian populists remain a serious threat to the future of liberal democracy around the world. But the democratic fight back has begun in earnest.”
3. How the “hearts-and-minds” counterinsurgency narrative fails
Why you should read it: U.S. Naval War College Professor Jacqueline Hazelton argues in Foreign Affairs that counterinsurgency strategies that aim to win the hearts and minds of local populations invariably fail because external powers like the United States don’t have enough influence to press for real reforms.
“…the [counterinsurgency] campaigns most often cited as examples of good-governance reforms did not in fact include such reforms. Rather, elites won these campaigns by paying off rival political and military leaders and imposing tight military control on civilian communities. In the process, they abused civilians and ignored human and civil rights. In the decades since, none of these five states—El Salvador, Greece, Malaysia, Oman, and the Philippines—have become full democracies. But in one important respect, the campaigns in these countries were indeed success stories: in the short run, the threatened governments survived, and in the long run, all have remained relatively politically stable and at least marginally aligned with the West. If those are the goals, then liberal free-market democracy is not necessary to achieve them.”
“What is necessary is something else: a costly and violent effort. The local government must accommodate the interests of powerful rivals in order to gain important information about other actors, including members of the insurgency. Information on elites’ personal, political, and financial interests and political alignments helps the government target rivals to win them over or otherwise manipulate them. The government also needs rival elites’ military power to augment its own ability to control civilians and attack insurgents. Militias are a way to strengthen the government’s efforts at a relatively low cost. It must control its population to prevent crucial resources such as food from flowing to the insurgency. And it must mount a war of attrition against the insurgents. In short, the threatened government stays in power by controlling civilians through brute force, cutting deals with strongmen and other self-interested elites, and showing insurgents that they cannot win.”
Why it matters: “Any external power, even a great power, and even a superpower such as the United States, has limited influence over the domestic political choices of other governments. When a great power declares that a threatened government’s survival is an important security interest of its own, the great power considerably reduces its leverage; the smaller state knows it has the clout to resist the intervening country’s demands. Even after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, when the United States was the ruling power, it had limited freedom to act as it wished. Instead, it had to consider the interests of some influential Iraqi military and political actors because of the power, influence, and sometimes even military strength they wielded.”
4. How the climate left shoots itself in the foot
Why you should read it: Slow Boring chief Matthew Yglesias explains why the political strategy of the climate left appears so untethered from political reality in the Democratic Party and the broader country.
“Climate groups seem to be operating in a reality where there is massive public support for much more dramatic action on climate change and the only thing standing in their way is a need to sweep aside the power of corrupt and timid moderate Democrats… The good news on climate is that there is a lot of elite buy-in on the importance of climate action, and climate topics actually get a lot of prioritization in Democratic Party politics up to and including things like a former Secretary of State taking a White House job running point on climate diplomacy. But there are hard technical issues here and hard political issues here, and publicly trashing your allies in search of ‘leverage’ doesn’t help anyone. Especially because the climate groups themselves often seem to struggle to actually prioritize reducing emissions in their own policy agenda”
“…the actual situation with regard to climate is roughly the opposite of the view that’s promoted within the climate pseudo-movement. Rather than mass pressure dragging a reluctant and cowardly political system into climate action, an elite consensus inside the Democratic Party keeps pushing climate onto the agenda even though the mass public is not that engaged with it.”
Why it matters: “…it would really behoove the climate left to acknowledge the reality of what’s happening here, which is that they are one of the blessed children of the Democratic Party coalition — political capital is spent down on advancing their priorities. They ought to act like that’s true and try to be politically helpful rather than turning every act of incremental progress into a feel-bad betrayal, acting so all-powerful that they can afford to deride disfavored sources of zero-carbon energy and go out of their way to associate climate with other, even politically riskier ideas.”
5. Why Democrats need a political reality check
Why you should read it: For Politico, political analyst Jeff Greenfield warns Democrats that they’re on thinner electoral and political ice than they seem to think.
“If there’s anything more unnerving and disheartening than the Republican Party’s shredding of core democratic and republican principles over the past several years, it’s how so many of the Democrats’ attempts to fight back are grounded in delusion or futility… The wishful thinking that seems to have captured the party begins with a profound mismeasurement of what happened last November, which in turn feeds a profound misunderstanding of how major political change happens—and in turn triggers the embrace of ‘solutions’ that are similarly grounded in delusion. What remains to be seen is whether there is a politically potent answer to this dilemma.”
“Whether the public sees Democratic demands for these structural changes [in America’s political system] as overdue or overreaching, the key point is that they are currently exercises in futility. The only plausible road to winning their major policy goals is… to win by winning. This means politics, not re-engineering. They need to find ways to take down their opponents, and then be smarter about using that power while they have it.”
Why it matters: “…if Democrats believe that a parade of ambitious, intellectually intriguing bills doomed by a GOP Senate minority will resonate back home, they are under a serious misconception about how intently regular voters follow the legislative process. The disconnect between most voters and the daily play of politics is more like a canyon. It will take a focused, repeated message to bridge that gap.”
6. Why progressives shoulder a good deal of responsibility for the culture wars
Why you should read it: The Week columnist Damon Linker notes that while progressives like to cast themselves as victims in the culture wars, in reality the commit their fair share of aggression - and that has negative political consequences for the wider center-left.
“…American polarization is happening much less asymmetrically than many Democrats would like to believe — and that on certain issues wrapped up with the culture war, Democrats have moved further and faster to the left than Republicans have moved to the right. This has been obscured by a greater embrace of brinksmanship on the right, from willingness a decade ago to shut down the government and risk default on the debt to Trump's thoroughly reckless mendacity surrounding the 2020 election… Why would progressives deny this reality? Aren't they committed to constantly pushing the moral envelope and furthering justice in our national life? One might think this would lead them to own these ideological shifts and speak of them with pride.”
“The truth is more complicated. Conservatives genuinely believe themselves to be confronting an ever-changing, ever-expanding list of progressive demands backed up by the left's considerable cultural and political power… This doesn't at all mean the left should surrender in the culture war in the hope that it will deprive the right of fuel for its own crusades. But it does mean that the left's actions in the culture war actually have an effect on what the right does, and vice versa. Too often progressives treat their own cultural commitments as following from self-evident and nonnegotiable moral imperatives rather than strategic political calculations.”
Why it matters: “Making progressive politics a little bit less about public displays of righteousness might help to encourage Democrats to choose their battles more wisely — and so also somewhat less inclined to pick fights with the right on immigration and abortion and guns and religious issues all at once.Maybe waging one or two culture-war battles while displaying intentional moderation on a few others would do much greater good — by giving Democrats a modest electoral boost in a sharply divided country — than taking bold moral stands on all of them and confirming the right's most paranoid claims about progressives ambitions.”
7. Why progressives should take crime seriously, too
Why you should read it: Washington Post columnist Helaine Olen blasts progressive denial of the “covid-era crime wave,” noting a 20 percent surge in the annual murder rate in 2020 and widespread concern about crime across party lines.
“The denial needs to stop. The failure to engage and take on the issue of growing violence and lawbreaking now — no matter how unpleasant, distasteful or uncomfortable — will only harm the progressive agenda and potentially cause swing voters to pull the lever for Republican candidates… “Telling voters to chill because crime was much worse in the 1990s isn’t going to cut it anywhere outside of Twitter’s activist bubble. Behavioral experts say our basis of comparison is the recent past, not far off events. Our societal standards for what’s an acceptable level of crime and violence is lower now than it was decades ago. And as someone who lived in New York City, D.C. and Los Angeles in those years, I will tell you that’s a very good thing.”
“Playing down rising crime rates also raises questions of whether the activist base is in touch with the reality of those it often claims to represent. In many of the cities with surging rates of violence, many of the shootings are concentrated in a few, predominantly minority neighborhoods. Black and Latino residents are more likely to be victims of police brutality than their White counterparts. Black people are more likely to say police funding should also cover social services, too. But they are also more worried about the violence.”
Why it matters: “The knee-jerk, defensive attitude toward the 2020-2021 crime wave doesn’t stop violence. Instead, it simply gives the right wing a chance to define and dominate the debate while leaving the left looking like feckless limousine liberals. If it doesn’t stop, Democrats are risking getting mugged by reality next year at the ballot box.”
8. Why artificial intelligence isn’t all that intelligent
Why you should read it: Wall Street Journal technology correspondent Christopher Mims writes about how and why a number of artificial intelligence researchers think that AI can’t hold a candle to the real thing.
“A funny thing happens among engineers and researchers who build artificial intelligence once they attain a deep level of expertise in their field. Some of them—especially those who understand what actual, biological intelligences are capable of—conclude that there’s nothing ‘intelligent’ about AI at all… And yet, across the fields it is disrupting or supposed to disrupt, AI has fallen short of many of the promises made by some of its most vocal advocates—from the disappointment of IBM’s Watson to the forever-moving target date for the arrival of fully self-driving vehicles.”
“When AI researchers say that their algorithms are good at ‘narrow’ tasks, what they mean is that, with enough data, it’s possible to ‘train’ their algorithms to, say, identify a cat. But unlike a human toddler, these algorithms tend not to be very adaptable. For example, if they haven’t seen cats in unusual circumstances—say, swimming—they might not be able to identify them in that context. And training an algorithm to identify cats generally doesn’t also increase its ability to identify any other kind of animal or object. Identifying dogs means more or less starting from scratch.”
Why it matters: “For consumers, practical applications of AI include everything from recognizing your voice and face to targeting ads and filtering hate speech from social media. For engineers and scientists, the applications are, arguably, even broader—from drug discovery and treating rare diseases to creating new mathematical tools that are broadly useful in much of science and engineering. Anyplace that advanced mathematics is applied to the real world, machine learning is having an impact… Once we liberate ourselves from the mental cage of thinking of AI as akin to ourselves, we can recognize that it’s just another pile of math that can transform one kind of input into another—that is, software.”
9. How the politics of memory fabricates the false impression of forgetful societies
Why you should read it: In Tablet, Blake Smith examines the politics of memory and finds dishonest claims about alleged societal “silence” about historical atrocities at its heart.
“We rarely consider the strange set of implicit metaphors and assumptions that underwrite our thriving politics of memory, or the shifting, often strident imperatives that direct us to remember, right now, some specific injustice, necessarily to the exclusion of all other injustices that one might remember that week. Although we ask much of memory, we scarcely ‘remember’ how this form of collective memorializing became so central to our politics, in which remembrance is a heroic act through which maleficent forces are defeated by our mere acknowledgment of them. We tell ourselves, moreover, that the triumph of memory will have tangible and desirable political effects, raising the status of victims and their descendants and preventing such tragedies from recurring in the future—as if the Nazi Party or the Confederacy were transcendent forces capable at any moment of breaking the bonds of historical place and time and incarnating themselves anew if not for our rituals. Connected to this assumption are a set of vague but potent analogies that conflate individual psychological processes—such as trauma, mourning, etc.—with the patterns of our common life as fellow citizens of a polity, which has no psyche of its own.”
“In reality, the identification and criticism of such evils have been a primary, and indeed a defining, feature of Western political discourse. Those who speak of a ‘silence’ surrounding such injustices are not so much exposing, in a neutral gesture of historical inquiry, a forgotten or occluded truth about the past, as they are engaging in a partisan struggle over how to interpret that past in order to justify specific, debatable, and highly polemical policies in the present. Far from undoing a silence to ‘start a conversation,’ they are attempting to use state institutions to impose their own points of view on people they would like to silence.”
Why it matters: “To question those ends and foundations [of the politics of memory], to critique them as self-contradictory and counterproductive, is neither to defend the historical evils that we are ostensibly just starting to ‘remember.’ Nor is it to challenge the value of inclusion, tolerance, and diversity. It is, however, to recall what is perhaps the essence of political liberalism: the consciousness of an insuperable gap between private and public life… Memory, recognition, trauma, and other such intimate dynamics belong to the unpublic realm I share with my community, family, and, at times in my most obstinate perversity, no one but myself. Gesturing tentatively from this realm towards the public, I can in moments of lucid risk-taking acknowledge that the memory of past harms, inseparable from resentment, can never be in alignment with progressive values. In my capacity as a citizen, however, my duty is not a ‘duty of memory,’ but a duty of forgetfulness, suspending, at least in appearance, my anti-social perversity and resentments of others in order to deal with my fellow citizens on a basis of common justice and universal norms. We have a duty to remember, more than anything, the difference between private and public, between the individual and society, between therapy and politics.”
Odds and Ends
How NASA put a car on the Moon fifty years ago with Apollo 15…
Why ancient wines are making a comeback in modern Italy…
How Peyo the therapy horse comforts cancer patients at a French hospital…
Why submerged Roman roads indicate Venice may have been inhabited longer than previously thought…
What did Stonehenge sound like? One intrepid engineers discovered it acts as giant amplifier…
Music of the Month
“Bluebird,” off Buffalo Springfield’s 1967 second album Again.
A cover of “Never My Love” by Jakob Dylan and Norah Jones from the soundtrack to the 2019 documentary Echo in the Canyon.
“Nothing Else Matters,” a cover of the Metallica classic by Miley Cyrus to be released on the forthcoming The Metallica Blacklist.
Image of the Month
