Month: June 2018

Political Realism vs. Political Realism

Trump must be a puzzle to our political realists. He certainly shares their scorn for seeing politics in moral terms. Unlike George W. Bush, he doesn’t speak of an axis of evil in the world; and unlike Obama and the Democrats, he is little concerned with the issue of human rights. As an amoral capitalist he believes in self-interest and the exercise of power, in the use and pursuit of money in politics.

But he is also not much interested in the actual political realities. He sticks to a simple picture of what the world is like, despises experts, and ignores advice. In his factual claims he is often quite unrealistic.

Trump makes us understand that the term “political realism” is ambiguous. In one sense it is a general belief about how human beings act and a set of policies derived from this. In another sense it refers to the recognition of the concrete facts on the political ground. Trump shows us that the two don’t necessarily go together. Political realism can, in other words, go hand in hand with a lack of realism.

Donald Trump’s Biggest Mistake

Donald Trump has already made some serious political mistakes. He gave the Israelis their much desired American embassy in Jerusalem without asking for any concessions from them on the thorny Palestinian issue. Not a very good case of deal-making.  And in a similar fashion he gave the North Korean leader his sought-after recognition as an international statesman without getting from him any firm commitments on the nuclear issue. There are other such failures but, significant as they may be, none of them is really Trump’s most egregious mistake.

Some people might, of course, argue that Trump’s biggest mistake was to enter politics at all and to run for the presidency. It has certainly become clear by now that he was not and is not qualified for the position. So, he wants to shake things up and be a disruptor. But what is to be put in place when the old order has been destroyed? Trump’s vision is woefully inadequate in this respect. It comes to a recreation of the United States of the 1950’s: predominantly white, equipped with heavy industries, economically and military unchallenged, and conservative in attitudes and tastes. But history doesn’t repeat itself and a quite different constellation of issues face the country now in the 21st millennium.

Trump’s biggest mistake has been and is, rather, his unrelenting aggressiveness. There was, in particular, no reason for him to turn on Barack Obama and make himself the central figure in the so-called “birther” campaign. The whole thing was a fake, in any case. Does it matter whether Obama was born in Hawaii or abroad? He was certainly born as the son of a US citizen and therefore held citizenship rights from the moment of birth. That is all the Constitution demands from an American president. And the claim that Obama was not born where his birth certificate says he was, was an absurdity from the beginning. Given Obama’s popularity then and now Trump’s actions unnecessarily alienated all those for whom Obama was the symbol of a new post-racist America. They have found his anti-Obama agitation utterly unforgivable. The same unnecessary aggressiveness Trump manifested in his campaign against Hillary Clinton with nicknaming her “Crooked Hillary” and leading choruses of “Lock her up.”

We can be sure that the ongoing Russia investigation would not have become such a heated partisan matter without Trump’s animus against Obama and Clinton. He could, of course, have changed his tone once he was elected; but he proved unable for such a gesture. He has injected in this way a new nastiness into American politics and that may well be his biggest mistake and failure in politics.

“The weakening of our democratic norms is rooted in extreme partisan polarization – one that extends beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over race and culture… And if one thing is clear from studying breakdowns throughout history, it’s that extreme polarization can kill democracies.” (Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, How Democracies Die)

Robotic Doves Circling over Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon

Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish from 1975 was the first book to raise the question of the surveillance state. The book was about changes in the practice of punishment and how these illustrate the emergence of a modern disciplinary society. But disciplinary society was for Foucault also and above all a society of surveillance. Hence the French title of the book: Surveiller et Punir. Foucault brilliantly illustrated his point by recalling Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon – an architectural design of a prison, conceived by the utilitarian philosopher, that allowed for the continuous surveillance of the prisoners and for their disciplining. In his presentation of this conception Bentham had already suggested its wider uses in schools, hospitals, factories, and workhouses.

Our society has developed much further into a surveillance society since Foucault published his book and certainly since Bentham wrote his treatise on the panopticon in the late 18th century. This has not escaped the attention of social scientists and there exists now an extensive literature on the topic of surveillance. For all that, we still need to reflect much more on this theme.
A useful stimulus to this end comes from a new report on a further step in the development of surveillance drones in the form of robotic birds. In the US, Europe, and China this development is well advanced. The Chinese are, in fact, already using robotic doves extensively in their rebellious Xinyang province. It’s worth looking at this article and the enclosed video from the South China Morning Post:

Click here

And where is Europe? What to do about a receding continent

Donald Trump has exposed the extraordinary weakness of the Europeans. The French president, the German chancellor, and the British foreign secretary all came to Washington at the beginning of May of 2018 to plead for the Iranian nuclear agreement. In order to butter him up, Boris Johnson, the British Foreign Secretary, even proposed Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. Nothing made a difference. On May 8, Trump went ahead and abandoned the Iran Deal as he had long said he would. He was obviously more interested in his militant supporters than in the arguments of the Europeans. And to top-off the humiliation he announced immediately afterwards the most severe sanctions on Iran, knowing full well that they would hit European companies more than the American ones. In the face of this affront, the European leaders have met on May 15 to decide on their next move. They duly issued a statement deploring the American action– but did little more. The truth is that they are too weak for anything else.

How different from the beginning of the twentieth century when the Europeans ruled the globe. Their empires and colonies made them rich and important. They still led the world in technology and science. But then they took viciously against each other in the war of 1914-1918, the conflict that the British still like to call the “Great War” as if it was something to brag about. In reality, the British came out as losers just as much as the other European nations. The real winner was the US which, for the first time in history, intervened decisively in European affairs. Twenty years of economic and political turmoil followed. Dictatorships sprang up all over Europe like poisonous mushrooms after the rain. Then came the second round of the European civil war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. By its end, the global power of Europe had dwindled to nothing; its colonial empires were in tatters, the continent was divided between America and Russia and in the West the Americans set themselves up, politically and economically triumphant. Fearful of Soviet expansion, the Europeans agreed to become American vassals and this is essentially where they find themselves still today with the American sphere of influence expanded now to the doorstep of Russia.

The only European leader who ever stood up to the Americans was General Charles de Gaulle who told the American troops in 1966 that it was time to leave France. De Gaulle also withdrew from NATO, to the chagrin of the Americans. Since then, a weaker generation of French politicians have meekly returned to the American-led alliance. Dependence on American military power is one the elements that keeps the Europeans in check. Stoking again and again first the fear of Communism and since then the fear of Russia, the Americans have made themselves indispensable on the European continent. In addition, they have done their utmost to prevent the development of an independent European military force. Not that the Europeans were ever determined enough to regain their military independence. But there was, at least, one moment when they could have done so. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European Warsaw Pact, NATO had, in fact, outlived its mission and should have come to an end at this point. But through American guile and European timidity it never happened and now it seems impossible to envisage. NATO has, in the meantime, been given the veneer of an alliance of equals even though the American military commanders still have the last word in it. If it was really an alliance of equals, why are there no European military headquarters in the US?

European submission to American rule is due not only to military weakness. The Europeans remain divided, mutually antagonistic, and unable to overcome their self-mutilating belligerent history. The British still dream of their empire and are willing to forgo real power as an equal in the European Union for the imagined power of a resurrected Commonwealth or as junior partners of the US. The European Union itself proves unable to settle its economic, financial, and political differences. Its leaders are timid and having been brought up in the shadow of America prove unable to think in other categories. The French president Macron may be the only one with sufficient freedom of mind. But one man cannot turn the political wheel around. It will require a new, more independence-minded generation to do so.

Trump’s recent threats of tariffs on European goods have exposed how vulnerable a merchant power can be. If he goes ahead with those threats, Europe will face a dramatic economic downturn with the possibility of deep political troubles. Trump has certainly made it clear that he has no liking for the European Union and is trying to drive its members apart. In this he is following Vladimir Putin’s example. Both aim at weakening the Europeans for what they consider their own advantage. Newly emerging nationalist parties in Europe

Here are some of the things that the Europeans need to do, if they are to maintain themselves in the global environment of the 21st century:

1. They will need new and younger leaders not in the thrall of America. This holds, in particular for the Germans. I have never been an admirer of Angela Merkel but she has definitely now had her day. Her rash action in the migration crisis should really have led to her downfall. It is a sign of Germany’s political stagnation that she is still in office. Needed now are leaders – perhaps like Emmanuel Marcon – who can act with a view to the future. Merkel’s talent has been in a different direction, that of maintaining the status quo with all its costs and benefits. But this is no longer enough. Merkel must go and the sooner, the better.

2. The Europeans will have to bring about greater military and economic independence (and self-sufficiency). They can’t just play at being global merchants and leave their security in the hands of others. NATO must eventually be replaced by a new European military order, but this will take both time and money and determination.

3. The Europeans need also to develop a stronger sense of commonality which will require at the same time a shared re-assessment of their past quarrels. Every existing European nation has been formed through the unification of smaller, regional kingdoms. In this process, many age-old hostilities had to be overcome. The same must be possible on a European scale.

4. The Europeans will need to recalibrate their relation to Russia. They may have reasons to be wary of Russia’s ambitions, but the same is true for America. European interests in Russia are different from America’s. A cool, rational, and clear-sighted policy is necessary with respect to this important neighbor. Some modus vivendi has to be found not least as a counterbalance to America.

5. The Europeans will have to work on minimizing the effects of Brexit in order to keep the UK close to the continental system. They need to convince the British – or, rather, the English – that their best hope in the new global constellation is to maintain close association with their historical neighbors. The English have been less successful so far than their continental neighbors, the Dutch, the French, the Portuguese, in overcoming the loss of their empire. They are caught in a time-warp in which they see themselves at the head of a new global commonwealth when, in fact, no one pines after them. The need to work though their historical loss and come to see that they are, after all, only a midsize European nation whose influence will be greatly diminished once they seek to walk on their own. Perhaps there will be a day when some formal system of co-existence can be re-established.

6. The Europeans also need to combat the emerging nationalist forces among them. They are, in effect, handmaidens of American power. That’s why Donald Trump and the advocates of “America First!” are so keen on supporting these parties. For the sake of an imagined national sovereignty these parties are willing to forego the power of joint action. Absurdly they maintain: Divided we stand, united we fall. These so-called “populists” need to be exposed for what they ultimately are: traitors to their own interest.

But there is, of course, a gap between what needs to be done and what will or what can be done. The 20th century was, in fact, a period of political decline for Europe even though the Europeans came out, at the end, as economically prosperous. It’s not obvious what will become of them in the new millennium.

And where is Europe? What to do about a receding continent

Donald Trump has exposed the extraordinary weakness of the Europeans. The French president, the German chancellor, and the British foreign secretary all came to Washington at the beginning of May of 2018 to plead for the Iranian nuclear agreement. In order to butter him up, Boris Johnson, the British Foreign Secretary, even proposed Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. Nothing made a difference. On May 8, Trump went ahead and abandoned the Iran Deal as he had long said he would. He was obviously more interested in his militant supporters than in the arguments of the Europeans. And to top-off the humiliation he announced immediately afterwards the most severe sanctions on Iran, knowing full well that they would hit European companies more than the American ones. In the face of this affront, the European leaders have met on May 15 to decide on their next move. They duly issued a statement deploring the American action– but did little more. The truth is that they are too weak for anything else.

How different from the beginning of the twentieth century when the Europeans ruled the globe. Their empires and colonies made them rich and important. They still led the world in technology and science. But then they took viciously against each other in the war of 1914-1918, the conflict that the British still like to call the “Great War” as if it was something to brag about. In reality, the British came out as losers just as much as the other European nations. The real winner was the US which, for the first time in history, intervened decisively in European affairs. Twenty years of economic and political turmoil followed. Dictatorships sprang up all over Europe like poisonous mushrooms after the rain. Then came the second round of the European civil war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. By its end, the global power of Europe had dwindled to nothing; its colonial empires were in tatters, the continent was divided between America and Russia and in the West the Americans set themselves up, politically and economically triumphant. Fearful of Soviet expansion, the Europeans agreed to become American vassals and this is essentially where they find themselves still today with the American sphere of influence expanded now to the doorstep of Russia.

The only European leader who ever stood up to the Americans was General Charles de Gaulle who told the American troops in 1966 that it was time to leave France. De Gaulle also withdrew from NATO, to the chagrin of the Americans. Since then, a weaker generation of French politicians have meekly returned to the American-led alliance. Dependence on American military power is one the elements that keeps the Europeans in check. Stoking again and again first the fear of Communism and since then the fear of Russia, the Americans have made themselves indispensable on the European continent. In addition, they have done their utmost to prevent the development of an independent European military force. Not that the Europeans were ever determined enough to regain their military independence. But there was, at least, one moment when they could have done so. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern European Warsaw Pact, NATO had, in fact, outlived its mission and should have come to an end at this point. But through American guile and European timidity it never happened and now it seems impossible to envisage. NATO has, in the meantime, been given the veneer of an alliance of equals even though the American military commanders still have the last word in it. If it was really an alliance of equals, why are there no European military headquarters in the US?

European submission to American rule is due not only to military weakness. The Europeans remain divided, mutually antagonistic, and unable to overcome their self-mutilating belligerent history. The British still dream of their empire and are willing to forgo real power as an equal in the European Union for the imagined power of a resurrected Commonwealth or as junior partners of the US. The European Union itself proves unable to settle its economic, financial, and political differences. Its leaders are timid and having been brought up in the shadow of America prove unable to think in other categories. The French president Macron may be the only one with sufficient freedom of mind. But one man cannot turn the political wheel around. It will require a new, more independence-minded generation to do so.

Trump’s recent threats of tariffs on European goods have exposed how vulnerable a merchant power can be. If he goes ahead with those threats, Europe will face a dramatic economic downturn with the possibility of deep political troubles. Trump has certainly made it clear that he has no liking for the European Union and is trying to drive its members apart. In this he is following Vladimir Putin’s example. Both aim at weakening the Europeans for what they consider their own advantage. Newly emerging nationalist parties in Europe

Here are some of the things that the Europeans need to do, if they are to maintain themselves in the global environment of the 21st century:

1. They will need new and younger leaders not in the thrall of America. This holds, in particular for the Germans. I have never been an admirer of Angela Merkel but she has definitely now had her day. Her rash action in the migration crisis should really have led to her downfall. It is a sign of Germany’s political stagnation that she is still in office. Needed now are leaders – perhaps like Emmanuel Marcon – who can act with a view to the future. Merkel’s talent has been in a different direction, that of maintaining the status quo with all its costs and benefits. But this is no longer enough. Merkel must go and the sooner, the better.

2. The Europeans will have to bring about greater military and economic independence (and self-sufficiency). They can’t just play at being global merchants and leave their security in the hands of others. NATO must eventually be replaced by a new European military order, but this will take both time and money and determination.

3. The Europeans need also to develop a stronger sense of commonality which will require at the same time a shared re-assessment of their past quarrels. Every existing European nation has been formed through the unification of smaller, regional kingdoms. In this process, many age-old hostilities had to be overcome. The same must be possible on a European scale.

4. The Europeans will need to recalibrate their relation to Russia. They may have reasons to be wary of Russia’s ambitions, but the same is true for America. European interests in Russia are different from America’s. A cool, rational, and clear-sighted policy is necessary with respect to this important neighbor. Some modus vivendi has to be found not least as a counterbalance to America.

5. The Europeans will have to work on minimizing the effects of Brexit in order to keep the UK close to the continental system. They need to convince the British – or, rather, the English – that their best hope in the new global constellation is to maintain close association with their historical neighbors. The English have been less successful so far than their continental neighbors, the Dutch, the French, the Portuguese, in overcoming the loss of their empire. They are caught in a time-warp in which they see themselves at the head of a new global commonwealth when, in fact, no one pines after them. The need to work though their historical loss and come to see that they are, after all, only a midsize European nation whose influence will be greatly diminished once they seek to walk on their own. Perhaps there will be a day when some formal system of co-existence can be re-established.

6. The Europeans also need to combat the emerging nationalist forces among them. They are, in effect, handmaidens of American power. That’s why Donald Trump and the advocates of “America First!” are so keen on supporting these parties. For the sake of an imagined national sovereignty these parties are willing to forego the power of joint action. Absurdly they maintain: Divided we stand, united we fall. These so-called “populists” need to be exposed for what they ultimately are: traitors to their own interest.

But there is, of course, a gap between what needs to be done and what will or what can be done. The 20th century was, in fact, a period of political decline for Europe even though the Europeans came out, at the end, as economically prosperous. It’s not obvious what will become of them in the new millennium.

Politics in an age of advanced technology

Technology has transformed and deformed our long-evolved political order and it is likely to do more of that. A technologically enabled economic and financial system has certainly diminished the regulatory power of the state. Goods, services, and people can now move easily across continents, not always under the control of governments. Pictures, words, ideas, and information are massively channeled within and between political systems, often defying the power of states but also often abetting it. At the same time, the state’s tools of surveillance and repression have become definitely more effective. Its military strength has vastly increased and can be projected over wider distances. We notice, thus, a diminution of state power in some respects, but also an increase in others.

It’s worth returning at this point to an almost forgotten classic: Jacques Ellul’s masterwork The Technological Society (La technique) of 1954 which anticipated much of this development. With respect to the technological transformation of both economics and the state, Ellul wrote at the time: “The fact that the economy and the state are reciprocally joined is technically founded in such a way that the two tend to become aspects of the same phenomenon, a phenomenon which, moreover, is not the result of a simple accretion of previous phenomena. It seems to me particularly important to emphasize this new character. Because of the existence of techniques we are beyond the problems of ordinary étatism or of socialism. It is not the simple phenomenon of the growth of power or the struggle against capitalism which is decisive here. We are witnessing the birth of a new organism, the technical state.” (Quoted from the English translation of 1964, pp. 196-197)

In describing this development, Ellul emphasizes the distinction between the technological machinery (implements, tools, and instruments) and the techniques we have developed to produce, use, and interact with this machinery. For Ellul our society is, first and foremost, a society of techniques, rather than strictly speaking a technological society. (The title of the English version of Ellul’s book is thus potentially misleading.) He anticipates in this way by twenty years Michel Foucault’s famous examination of disciplinary society in Discipline and Punish. Ellul’s “technique” and Foucault’s “disciplines” are, indeed, closely allied notions. Where they differ is that Ellul pays more attention to the way techniques interact with technology.

The two agree, however, in the way they see human beings embedded in the resulting social order and determined by it rather than as independent, autonomous agents. Ellul writes: “Let no one say that man is the agent of technical progress … and that it is he who chooses among possible techniques … He is a device for recording effects and results obtained by various techniques … He decides only in favor of the technique that gives the maximum efficiency.” (p. 80) Ellul commits himself thus to a technological determinism that certainly needs scrutiny. Is he right, for instance, when he adds later on: “It was not the public which demanded air travel and television. Technical progress created these things, and they were technically diffused and imposed on the public.” (pp. 212-213) It is true that the public did not demand air travel or television before their invention. But this does not mean that they were “imposed” on it. We are dealing rather with the creation of new desires based on others that are more fundamental and that are certainly not the product of technical manipulation. First, there was the desire motivating the inventors of these devices. Then came the new possibilities created by their inventions and these, in turn, stirred previously dormant desires in the public. Without our more basic drive to move and our basic desire for visual stimulation, these inventions might not have taken off. But Ellul is right when he concludes that all that is natural and that is natural in us gets transformed in the technological society. “Economic technique tends less to eliminate the natural than to integrate it … But when the natural is integrated, it ceases to be natural. It is an element of the mechanism, an element which must play its role.” (p. 217)

Ellul’s is, however, not only a technological determinism but also an economic one. He believes that in the technological society “maximum efficiency” and “utility” are the determining factors. He writes accordingly: “The development of techniques is responsible for the staggering phenomenon of absorption by economics of all social activities.” (p. 158) And he adds: “Economic life, not in its content, but in its direction will henceforth entirely elude popular control. No democracy is possible in the face of a perfect economic technique. The decisions of the voters, and even of the elected, are oversimplified, incoherent, technically inadmissible. It is a grave illusion to believe, that democratic control or decision-making can be reconciled with economic technique.” (p. 162) And it follows for Ellul that: “Popular will can only express itself within the limits that technical necessities have fixed in advance.” (p. 209) But then the question is what we understand by efficiency and utility. For a medieval Christian, the erection of a cathedral would have been useful in a way in which it is no longer for us and constructing it with the help of craftsmen and prayer would have been the most efficient way to do so. Usefulness is, after all, a transitive notion. Things are never useful in themselves but always for something else. So, the question becomes what our technology is meant to be useful for and that may not be determined by technology itself.

Ellul has few illusions as to where technological development will take us. “History shows that every technical application from its beginnings presents certain unforeseeable secondary effects which are much more disastrous than the lack of technique would have been. These effects must exist alongside those effects which were foreseen and expected and which represent something valuable and positive.” (p. 105) Among the secondary effects of technological development are extensive new means of social control. “The techniques of the police,” he writes, have as their necessary end the transformation of the entire nation into a concentration camp. This is no perverse decision on the part of some party or government.” He is using this provocative language in order to indicate the coming of what we would now call the surveillance state. “To be sure of apprehending criminals, it is necessary that everyone be supervised. It is necessary to know exactly what every citizen is up to, to know his relations, his amusements, etc. And the state is increasingly in a position to know these things.” (p. 100)

Ellul is convinced that technological development will go on to shape and reshape our political order. Differences in the theories of government will not make much difference to this. Capitalism and communism, democratic and non-democratic systems of government will all be affected in the same way. “The structure of the modern state and its organs of government are subordinate to the techniques on not dependent on the state. If we were to consider in turn each of the indispensable services of the modern state, we would find that they are becoming more and more alike, regardless of the theories of government under which they operate.” (p. 271)

Critical questions are certainly appropriate concerning Ellul’s claims. For one thing, he ignores non-technological factors that direct and inhibit technological development. Among these are the environment, the availability or poverty of resources, financial constraints, as well as the beliefs of those creating and using technological means. Ellul, moreover, does not see that there might be alternative technologies available and that, hence, choices exist in what kind of technology to develop. (See Andrew Feenberg, Alternative Modernities). He also fails to take into account that concentrations of power may lead to a new dispersion of power and that dispersed power has always within it a disruptive potential. (See Sluga, Politics and the Search for the Common Good, chapter 8)