Quote of the Month
“Open thine eyes externe, and sphere them round Upon all space: space starr’d, and lorn of light; Space region’d with life-air; and barren void; Spaces of fire, and all the yawn of hell. —” - John Keats, Hyperion: A Fragment, I.117-120
My Recent Writing:
“Into the Maelstrom: A review of Ernst Jünger’s ‘Storm of Steel’"
“‘My name is Prince and I've come to play with you’: A review of ‘Prince and the Revolution: Live’”
“Lots of Thunder, Not Quite Enough Love: A quick review of ‘Thor: Love and Thunder’”
“Hello There: ‘Obi-Wan Kenobi’ - the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly”
What I’m Reading:
1. How the war in Ukraine exposed Russia as an ersatz great power
Why you should read it: Military historian Phillips Payson O’Brien argues in The Atlantic that Russia’s poor showing in its war against Ukraine should force foreign policy analysts and military strategist to reconsider their notions of what constitutes a great power.
“In times of peace, much of what anyone says about national power is guesswork. Different claims can be based on hopes, prejudices, or even simple self-interest. Analysts and experts can speak confidently about how some states are undoubtedly great powers while others are weak, that some countries are led by strategic geniuses and others by corrupt incompetents. The statements can sound eminently plausible as facts, even be downright persuasive, because there is no way of knowing the truth… The Russia-Ukraine war is now cutting through much of the nonsense that dominated the discussion of international power politics, posing particular challenges to blasé assumptions about what makes a state powerful, and what makes a country’s leadership effective. This reassessment doesn’t just concern the question of debatable prewar military analysis of Russia and Ukraine, or theories of international relations. Instead, it is aimed at the whole way we think about how countries interact with one another, about national power, and about leadership.”
“The best place to start is the widespread notion going into the war that we were witnessing a clash between a great power controlled by an experienced, savvy—some even said brilliant—leader and a small state weakened by national division and led by a second-rate former comedian. This great power–small power dynamic was accepted practically universally among a group of scholars and analysts who have proclaimed themselves ‘realists…’ This all sounded eminently reasonable, but then Russia invaded Ukraine and the great power–small power dichotomy was revealed to be the opposite of realism. The fundamental problem was that Russia was exposed at the start as not a ‘great' power at all. Having sent in almost all of its frontline military units, the Russian army has seized only 20 percent of Ukraine—a far cry from its initial efforts to take Kyiv and subjugate the entire country—and is suffering horrific losses in casualties and equipment. It’s already desperately trying to regenerate its forces by finding soldiers wherever it can, even allowing citizens as old as 49 to enlist, while throwing more and more older, second-rate equipment into the fight.”
Why it matters: “Russian strength has shown itself to be so overrated that it gives us an opportunity to rethink what makes a power ‘great.’ Going into the war, Russia’s military capabilities—including a large nuclear stockpile and what was thought to be one of the biggest and most-advanced armed forces in the world—were pointed to as the reason for its strength. What this war might be showing us, however, is that a military is only as strong as the society, economy, and political structure that assembled it. In this case, Russia was nowhere near a great power, but in fact a deeply flawed, in many ways weakening, state… We need to reconsider—in many ways, entirely reconstruct—how we judge what makes a great power, or what is the most important part of national power. Militaries, perhaps, should be seen more as creations of the underlying economic, technological, and political characteristics of a country. Military power still matters hugely, but in this view reflects its creators, rather than superseding them. A weak, relatively backward, and uninventive economy will struggle to operate a modern military, even if that military has what are considered advanced weapons.”
2. How to revive a dying global human rights movement
Why you should read it: In Foreign Affairs, international relations scholar Jack Snyder notes that the modern human rights movement focuses too much on hectoring governments and too little on building political power to agitate for change - leaving it weak and unprepared for an era of populist dictators.
“The problem is that advocates for human rights have misunderstood the sources of their own historical success. Democracy based on individual rights has been by far the most successful form of modern social organization not because of its selfless moralism but because it has usually been far better than the alternatives at serving people’s interests. Human rights activists do better when they work to strengthen people’s capacity to fight for their own rights, rather than browbeating oppressive leaders in ways that help them mobilize nationalist backlash.”
“Advances in human rights since the Reformation and the Enlightenment have depended not on foreign criticism of oppressive regimes but on the rising social power of those regimes’ own subjects, who directly benefited from an expansion of rights… Although today’s human rights activists have learned some pragmatic techniques from their decades of grassroots work, they still prefer idealistic denunciations to expedient deal-making and shy away from building possibly unruly mass movements… But [outgoing Human Rights Watch executive director Kenneth Roth’s] prescription relies too heavily on what he calls the ‘denunciation’ of autocracy. Moralistic shaming provides no shortcut to rights-based democracy when states lack the conditions for its creation. The Arab Spring failed to bring either democracy or human rights not because activists lacked high-minded rhetoric but because the social conditions for both were weak or absent in every state. Until at least some of the facilitating conditions are in place, the primary task of rights promoters is to find a pragmatic path to implementing them.”
Why it matters: “Avoiding the hard sell will require that liberal states and activists tone down their legalism, moralism, and universalism. Instead, they should appeal to the self-interest of powerful national majorities by emphasizing popular issues such as anticorruption and broad economic prosperity. The former is particularly important. One-third of recent mass protests worldwide have been organized by local groups to denounce corruption. But major transnational rights organizations have joined these efforts only after the state has cracked down on the protests, and then only to oppose the suppression—not the corruption. More directly mobilizing against corruption would give the human rights movement a marquee issue, one that’s key to strengthening the rule of law… Human rights, despite recent setbacks, are still the most powerful weapons in the arsenal of democracy. Wielding these weapons effectively requires understanding that the power of these rights lies in their appeal to self-interest and that they must be backed by a solidly constructed political coalition that delivers reliable results. Power leads; rights follow.”
3. Why Biden’s “Indo-Pacific Economic Framework” marks a sea change in global political economics
Why you should read it: Robert Atkinson contends in Foreign Policy that the Biden administration’s Indo-Pacific Economic Framework constitutes a significant change in America’s approach to trade and global politics, one that relies less on granting access to American markets and more on reciprocity.
“The United States can no longer afford to trade U.S. market access for geopolitical alignment, and other nations can no longer afford to stay on the sidelines as the United States does the hard work of limiting China’s economic, technological, and foreign-policy aggression alone. The sooner the U.S. trade policy establishment and [Indo-Pacific Economic Framework] nations realize this, the better off we all will be. IPEF nations may not want to look too far ahead in considering the double-edged sword that is burgeoning Chinese trade and investment. But having China—a country whose trading practices are hegemonic, thin-skinned, and punitive—as one’s main trading partner is sure to eventually end in tears.”
“In most cases, U.S. markets are already more open to exports from IPEF nations than their markets are to U.S. exports. Indian tariffs on imports from the United States are almost three times higher than U.S. tariffs on imports from India. Malaysian and Philippine tariffs on U.S. goods are also higher than the inverse. Overall, the effective IPEF nation tariff rate on U.S. imports is 47 percent higher than the U.S. tariff rate on their exports. So why should the United States be the one expected to open its markets?… Rather than offering to lower tariffs further, perhaps the Biden administration should suggest that unless these nations join IPEF, it will urge Congress to raise U.S. tariff rates to be reciprocal. This gets to a key point: Fifty or even 25 years ago, the U.S. economy may have been strong enough to afford to buy states’ political cooperation by granting them access to U.S. markets. But the United States’ advanced economy has since weakened so significantly that such a strategy is no longer possible if the country has any hope of avoiding irreversible deindustrialization. That would mean fewer good jobs, a weakened defense industrial base, reduced global economic power, and increased foreign dependency.”
Why it matters: “It is wishful thinking to believe we can return to the halcyon days when the United States was happy to allow foreign economies access to U.S. markets so they took its geopolitical side. Trump’s so-called America First policy didn’t change that; it simply caught up to the reality that the U.S. economy is no longer globally dominant and thus cannot afford such one-sided policies… The days are gone—or at least should be gone—when the United States must make concessions to get other nations to do the right thing, in this case cooperating to beat China. IPEF needs to be a coalition of the willing, with Washington at the helm. But the United States should not have to buy acquiescence with market access to get there.”
4. Why regionalization trumps globalization
Why you should read it: Writing in Foreign Affairs, Council on Foreign Relations Latin America expert Shannon K. O’Neil observes that economic integration within regions is more important than globalization as commonly understood.
“A constant and largely unquestioned refrain in foreign policy is that the world has globalized. Closets are full of clothes stitched in other countries; electronics and cars are often assembled far from where consumers live. U.S. investment flows into Asian markets, and Indians decamp to the United States for graduate school. The numbers show the magnitude of international exchange. Trade among all countries hovers around $20 trillion, a nearly tenfold increase from 1980. International capital flows also grew exponentially during that period, from $500 billion a year to well over $4 trillion. And nearly five times as many people are traveling across borders compared with four decades ago… Globalization, as commonly understood, is mostly a myth; the reality is far closer to regionalization. When companies, supply chains, and individuals go abroad, they don’t go just anywhere. More often than not, they stay fairly close to home.”
“The major reason networks skew regional is simple: geography matters. Even with massive container ships, moving things across oceans still costs time and money. A transatlantic voyage adds a week to delivery, and a trip across the Pacific Ocean adds a month before parts or goods show up in U.S. warehouses and factories. That means producers and stores need to maintain larger inventories of goods that come from far away… Even with virtually free calls, video, and file sharing, the inherent difficulty of communicating and coordinating across space and time can add to the costs of doing business. Language and cultural cues vary by country, and these differences often grow with distance. (This is one reason that a quarter of trade happens among countries that share a language.) Legal codes and administrative norms also tend to be more similar the closer countries are, eliminating the need for duplicate teams of lawyers, accountants, and human resources specialists. And the intangible but vital task of finding things in common and building trust and understanding for teamwork can get harder as the distance between people grows.”
Why it matters: “Geopolitical tensions threaten to fragment international commerce even further. Economic competition has become a pillar of great-power rivalry. With industrial policy back in vogue, many countries, including the United States, are throwing up protectionist barriers. The U.S. government has identified semiconductors, large-capacity batteries, pharmaceuticals, and dozens of critical minerals as vital to national security and is now implementing policies and spending tens of billions of dollars to expand stockpiles, beef up manufacturing capacity at home and in friendly nations, and redraw global supply chains in these designated sectors. Countries everywhere are drawing up their own lists, some of them adding information and data flows, fragmenting cross-border flows of services. As governments work to reshape the business environment across more industries, they are also implicitly or explicitly asking other countries to choose sides through export controls and other mechanisms.”
5. Thinking through the unthinkable in Ukraine
Why you should read it: Also in Foreign Affairs, eminent international relations scholar Richard Betts thinks through potential U.S. and NATO responses in the event that Putin uses nuclear weapons in an attempt to get his way in Ukraine.
“There are three general options within which U.S. policymakers would find a variation to respond to a Russian nuclear attack against Ukraine. The United States could opt to rhetorically decry a nuclear detonation but do nothing militarily. It could unleash nuclear weapons of its own. Or it could refrain from a nuclear counterattack but enter the war directly with large-scale conventional airstrikes and the mobilization of ground forces. All those alternatives are bad because no low-risk options exist for coping with the end of the nuclear taboo. A conventional war response is the least bad of the three because it avoids the higher risks of either the weaker or the stronger options.”
“As NATO confronts the possibility of Russia using nuclear weapons, the first question it needs to answer is whether that eventuality should constitute a real redline for the West. In other words, would a Russian nuclear attack trigger NATO’s shift from merely supplying Ukraine to engaging directly in combat itself? A Russian rationale for tactical nuclear weapons use would be as much to frighten NATO away from crossing that line as to coerce Ukraine into surrender. If a few Russian nuclear weapons do not provoke the United States into direct combat, Moscow will have a green light to use even more such weapons and crush Ukraine quickly… A less dangerous option would be to respond to a nuclear attack by launching an air campaign with conventional munitions alone against Russian military targets and mobilizing ground forces for potential deployment into the battle in Ukraine. This would be coupled with two strong public declarations. First, to dampen views of this low-level option as weak, NATO policymakers would emphasize that modern precision technology makes tactical nuclear weapons unnecessary for effectively striking targets that used to be considered vulnerable only to undiscriminating weapons of mass destruction. That would frame Russia’s resort to nuclear strikes as further evidence not only of its barbarism but of its military backwardness. Direct entry into the war at the conventional level would not neutralize panic in the West. But it would mean that Russia would be faced with the prospect of combat against a NATO that was substantially superior in nonnuclear forces, backed by a nuclear retaliatory capability, and less likely to remain restrained if Russia turned its nuclear strikes against U.S. rather than Ukrainian forces. The second important message to emphasize would be that any subsequent Russian nuclear use would trigger American nuclear retaliation.”
Why it matters: “In the event of a Russian nuclear detonation, NATO will have two conflicting aims. On the one hand, the alliance will want to negate any strategic benefit Moscow could gain from the detonation; on the other, it will want to avoid further escalation. This dilemma underlines the obvious imperative of maximizing Moscow’s disincentives to go nuclear in the first place… Washington will always keep declared threats and strategy vague enough to provide flexibility and escape hatches. Still, any further nuclear saber rattling by Putin should prompt simple but forceful reminders from Washington of what Putin knows but might otherwise convince himself the West has forgotten: Russia is utterly vulnerable to nuclear retaliation, and as generations of thinkers and practitioners on both sides have reiterated, a nuclear war has no winner.”
6. Why Germany has only itself to blame for its current strategic and energy predicaments
Why you should read it: Writer Jamie Kirchick makes the case in the Washington Post that Germany is now reaping the consequences of its reckless cozying up to Vladimir Putin’s Russia - especially Berlin’s deliberate cultivation of an addiction to Russian gas.
“For years, German politicians routinely deflected criticism of Nord Stream by stating that their hands were tied. The pipeline was a ‘commercial project,’ they insisted, over which the German government exercised no control. But increasing European dependence on Russian gas at the expense of other sources has always entailed a political dimension, especially in Germany. No one forced Berlin to shutter its nuclear energy sector in a fit of characteristically German panic in the aftermath of the 2011 Fukushima disaster. Unlike the island nation of Japan, Germany sits in the middle of a continent, safe from the earthquake-induced tsunamis of the sort that destroyed the Fukushima plant. Thanks to then-Chancellor Angela Merkel’s hasty decision to phase out nuclear energy by the end of 2022 by the time Putin decided to wage energy war against Europe, Germany was even more addicted to Russian gas.”
“Belying their excuse that Nord Stream 2 exists beyond the reach of politics, the German political establishment fell under the spell of another illusion, which was that the project represented the apotheosis of Russia’s integration with the West. A mere week after Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, the chief executive of German industrial giant Siemens visited Moscow, where he spoke of the first armed seizure of territory on European soil since World War II as mere ‘short-term turbulence’ in an otherwise constructive relationship. A few months later, then-foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier traveled to Yekaterinburg, Russia, to endorse an ‘economic-political’ partnership between Moscow and the European Union.”
Why it matters: “Europe would not be facing an energy crisis today had more of its leaders seen through the third and final illusion, that of a continent blessed with perpetual peace. Putin’s belief that he could subjugate Ukraine — the precipitating cause of the imminent energy crisis — owes a great deal to Western Europe’s lackluster military support for its embattled neighbor as well as its own anemic defense outlays. NATO’s refusal , at the behest of France and Germany, to provide Georgia and Ukraine with pathways to membership in 2008 sent Putin a greenlight to invade both countries. The decrepit state of European militaries, Germany’s in particular, similarly signaled a lack of seriousness about defending the continent from Russian predation… If Germans find themselves shivering more than usual this winter, they have no one to blame but themselves.”
7. Why social media really does undermine democracy
Why you should read it: Jonathan Haidt reviews the latest research in The Atlantic and finds, contra the statements of Facebook and other companies, social media is playing a significant role in eroding the foundations of democracy.
“Within the past 15 years, social media has insinuated itself into American life more deeply than food-delivery apps into our diets and microplastics into our bloodstreams. Look at stories about conflict, and it’s often lurking in the background. Recent articles on the rising dysfunction within progressive organizations point to the role of Twitter, Slack, and other platforms in prompting ‘endless and sprawling internal microbattles,’ as The Intercept’s Ryan Grim put it, referring to the ACLU. At a far higher level of conflict, the congressional hearings about the January 6 insurrection show us how Donald Trump’s tweets summoned the mob to Washington and aimed it at the vice president. Far-right groups then used a variety of platforms to coordinate and carry out the attack… [E]ven if social media really did begin to undermine democracy (and institutional trust and teen mental health) in the early 2010s, we should not expect social science to ‘settle’ the matter until the 2030s. By then, the effects of social media will be radically different, and the harms done in earlier decades may be irreversible.”
“The loss of a common enemy and those other trends with roots in the 20th century can help explain America’s ever nastier cross-party relationships, but they can’t explain why so many college students and professors suddenly began to express more fear, and engage in more self-censorship, around 2015. These mostly left-leaning people weren’t worried about the ‘other side’ they were afraid of a small number of students who were further to the left, and who enthusiastically hunted for verbal transgressions and used social media to publicly shame offenders… The culture war had been running for two or three decades by then, but it changed in the mid-2010s when ordinary people with little to no public profile suddenly became the targets of social-media mobs. Consider the famous 2013 case of Justine Sacco, who tweeted an insensitive joke about her trip to South Africa just before boarding her flight in London and became an international villain by the time she landed in Cape Town. She was fired the next day. Or consider the the far right’s penchant for using social media to publicize the names and photographs of largely unknown local election officials, health officials, and school-board members who refuse to bow to political pressure, and who are then subjected to waves of vitriol, including threats of violence to themselves and their children, simply for doing their jobs. These phenomena, now common to the culture, could not have happened before the advent of hyper-viral social media in 2009.”
Why it matters: “Fortunately, social media does not usually reflect real life, something that more people are beginning to understand… Seeing that social-media outrage is transient and performative should make it easier to withstand, whether you are the president of a university or a parent speaking at a school-board meeting. We can all do more to offer honest dissent and support the dissenters within institutions that have become structurally stupid. We can all get better at listening with an open mind and speaking in order to engage another human being rather than impress an audience. Teaching these skills to our children and our students is crucial, because they are the generation who will have to reinvent deliberative democracy and Tocqueville’s ‘art of association’ for the digital age.”
8. How advanced electric vehicle batteries are moving from the lab to assembly lines
Why you should read it: New York Times reporter Jack Ewing details how the next generation of electric vehicle batteries are moving from R&D to mass production.
“For years, scientists in laboratories from Silicon Valley to Boston have been searching for an elusive potion of chemicals, minerals and metals that would allow electric vehicles to recharge in minutes and travel hundreds of miles between charges… Now a few of those scientists and the companies they founded are approaching a milestone. They are building factories to produce next-generation battery cells, allowing carmakers to begin road testing the technologies and determine whether they are safe and reliable."
“The factory operations are mostly limited in scale, designed to perfect manufacturing techniques. It will be several years before cars with the high-performance batteries appear in showrooms, and even longer before the batteries are available in moderately priced cars. But the beginning of assembly-line production offers the tantalizing prospect of a revolution in electric mobility… The automakers will also want to know if the batteries can be recharged hundreds of times without losing their ability to store electricity, whether they can survive a crash without bursting into flames and whether they can be manufactured cheaply… Demand for batteries is so strong that there is plenty of room for multiple companies to succeed. But with dozens if not hundreds of other companies pursuing a piece of a market that will be worth $1 trillion once all new cars are electric, there will surely be failures.”
Why it matters: “If the technologies can be mass-produced, electric vehicles could compete with fossil-fuel-powered vehicles for convenience and undercut them on price. Harmful emissions from automobile traffic could be substantially reduced. The inventors of the technologies could easily become billionaires — if they aren’t already… All three [start-up battery companies] have found ways to use silicon to store electricity inside batteries, rather than the graphite that is prevalent in existing designs. Silicon can hold much more energy per pound than graphite, allowing batteries to be lighter and cheaper and charge faster. Silicon would also ease the U.S. dependence on graphite refined in China.”
9. Why global warming can’t (yet) compete with the Dust Bowl
Why you should read it: Matthew Cappucci of the Washington Post’s Capital Weather Gang explains why the Dust Bowl of the 1930s was so much hotter than our current national heat wave - even taking global warming into account.
“…while cities like Dallas, Fort Worth, Oklahoma City, Tulsa and Wichita are anticipated to have triple-digit highs essentially until further notice — with heat advisories blanketing the nation’s heartland — there’s a standout difference in the U.S. event: In the Plains, where much of the heat was concentrated, no state records have been broken so far, while the European heat waves set all-time records. In fact, even the hottest U.S. locations stayed 5 degrees shy of state record temperatures largely set during a multiyear drought more than eight decades ago.”
"The recent events, mostly unrelated, are tied together by one thing: Neither heat wave was caused by climate change, but both were pushed into extreme, record territory by the effects of human influence on the atmosphere… So what was going on in the 1930s? The Dust Bowl, a years-long drought punctuated by sprawling dust storms, transformed parts of the Plains into a wasteland… Years of land mismanagement and unsustainable farming techniques degraded topsoil, which killed native species of grass that trapped soil moisture. The result? Unshakable drought and rolling dust storms that could travel hundreds of miles and turn day into night.”
Why it matters: “Modern farming and irrigation techniques, combined with oversight from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, have limited the odds of another Dust Bowl… The United Kingdom Met[eorological] Office noted that the recently-concluded historic heat wave in Europe may have been made 10 times more likely thanks to the effects of climate change. The intensity, duration and impact of heat waves is growing due to the effects of human-induced climate change — and a spate of hot, dry weather that occurred back in the 1930s doesn’t change that.”
Odds and Ends
How NASA manager Greg Robinson took charge of the James Webb Space Telescope and got it into orbit…
How singer-songwriter Sarah McLachlan’s Lilith Fair female music festival changed the music business…
A New York Times photographer’s new perspectives on the Egyptian pyramids…
How the twenty-three-year-old guitarist Christone “Kingfish” Graham is carrying the blues forward…
Why an 1,200 year-old underground reservoir serves as a unique respite from Arab-Israeli tensions in the town of Ramla…
What I’m Listening To
Three songs from female-fronted heavy metal band Halestorm’s most recent album Back From The Dead:
The title track from the record, “Back From The Dead.”
“The Steeple,” rousing anthem dedicated to metalheads everywhere.
“Psycho Crazy,” the penultimate track from the record.
Image of the Month
