VIDEO February 11, 2022
No Knock | Gil Scott-Heron
In the wake of the "no knock" police killing of Amir Locke, we remember Gil Scott-Heron's telling of the story of the use no-knock by Richard Nixon and John Mitchell 50 years ago.
Friday, February 18, 2022
Chomsky: US Push to “Reign Supreme” Stokes the Ukraine Conflict
BYC.J. Polychroniou, Truthout
Soldiers with the 101st Airborne Division prepare to depart Fort Campbell, Kentucky, en route for Poland on February 15, 2022. U.S. troops are being deployed to aid NATO allies
BYC.J. Polychroniou, Truthout
PUBLISHED February 16, 2022
Irrational political panic is as American a phenomenon as apple pie. It often arises as a result of a potential inability on the part of the powers-that-be to control the outcome of developments that may pose challenges to the interests of the existing socioeconomic order or to the status quo of the geostrategic environment. The era of the Cold War speaks volumes about this phenomenon, but it’s also evident in earlier periods — for example, the first Red Scare in the wake of World War I — and we can see clear parallels in the present-day situation with reactions to Ukraine and the rise of China as a global power.
In the interview that follows, world-renowned public intellectual Noam Chomsky delves into the phenomenon of irrational political panics in the U.S., with an emphasis on current developments on the foreign policy front — and the dangers of seeking to maintain global hegemony in a multipolar world.
C.J. Polychroniou: The political culture in the United States seems to have a propensity toward alarmism when it comes to political developments that are not in tune with the economic interests, ideological mindset and strategic interests of the powers-that-be. Indeed, from the anti-Spanish panic of the late 1890s to today’s rage about Russia’s security concerns over Ukraine, and China’s growing role in world affairs and everything in between, the political establishment and the media of this country tend to respond with full-blown alarm to developments that are not in alignment with U.S. interests, values and goals. Can you comment about this peculiar state of affairs, with particular emphasis on what’s happening today in connection with Ukraine and China?
Noam Chomsky: Quite true. Sometimes it’s hard to believe. One of the most significant and revealing examples is the rhetorical framework of the major internal planning document of the early Cold War years, NSC-68 of 1950, shortly after “the loss of China,” which set off a frenzy in the U.S. The document set the stage for huge expansion of the military budget. It’s worth recalling today when strains of this madness are reverberating — not for the first time; it’s perennial.
The policy recommendations of NSC-68 have been widely discussed in scholarship, though avoiding the hysterical rhetoric. It reads like a fairytale: ultimate evil confronted by absolute purity and noble idealism. On one side is the “slave state” with its “fundamental design” and inherent “compulsion” to gain “absolute authority over the rest of the world,” destroying all governments and the “structure of society” everywhere. Its ultimate evil contrasts with our sheer perfection. The “fundamental purpose” of the United States is to assure “the dignity and worth of the individual” everywhere. Its leaders are animated by “generous and constructive impulses, and the absence of covetousness in our international relations,” which is particularly evident in the traditional domains of U.S. influence, the Western hemisphere, long the beneficiary of Washington’s tender solicitude as its inhabitants can testify.
Anyone familiar with history and the actual balance of global power at the time would have reacted to this performance with utter bewilderment. Its State Department authors couldn’t have believed what they were writing. Some later gave an indication of what they were up to. Secretary of State Dean Acheson explained in his memoirs that in order to ram through the huge planned military expansion, it was necessary to “bludgeon the mass mind of ‘top government’” in ways that were “clearer than truth.” The highly influential Sen. Arthur Vandenberg surely understood this as well when advising [in 1947] that the government must “scare the hell out of the American people” to rouse them from their pacifist backwardness.
There are many precedents, and the drums are beating right now with warnings about American complacency and naivete about the intentions of the “mad dog” Putin to destroy democracy everywhere and subdue the world to his will, now in alliance with the other “Great Satan,” Xi Jinping.
The February 4 Putin-Xi summit, timed with the opening of the Olympic games, was recognized to be a major event in world affairs. Its review in a major article in The New York Times is headlined “A New Axis,” the allusion unconcealed. The review reported the intentions of the reincarnation of the Axis powers: “The message that China and Russia have sent to other countries is clear,” David Leonhardt writes. “They will not pressure other governments to respect human rights or hold elections.” And to Washington’s dismay, the Axis is attracting two countries from “the American camp,” Egypt and Saudi Arabia, stellar examples of how the U.S. respects human rights and elections in its camp — by providing a massive flow of weapons to these brutal dictatorships and directly participating in their crimes. The New Axis also maintains that “a powerful country should be able to impose its will within its declared sphere of influence. The country should even be able to topple a weaker nearby government without the world interfering” — an idea that the U.S. has always abhorred, as the historical record reveals.
Twenty-five hundred years ago, the Delphi Oracle issued a maxim: “Know Thyself.” Worth remembering, perhaps.
As in the case of NSC-68, there is method in the madness. China and Russia do pose real threats. The global hegemon does not take them lightly. There are some striking common features in how U.S. opinion and policy are reacting to the threats. They merit some thought.
The Atlantic Council describes the formation of the New Axis as a “tectonic shift in global relations” with plans that are truly “head spinning”: “The sides agreed to more closely link their economies through cooperation between China’s Belt and Road Initiative and Putin’s Eurasian Economic Union. They will work together to develop the Arctic. They’ll deepen coordination in multilateral institutions and to battle climate change.”
We should not underestimate the grand significance of the Ukraine crisis, adds Damon Wilson, president of the National Endowment for Democracy. “The stakes of today’s crisis are not about Ukraine alone, but about the future of freedom,” no less.
Strong measures have to be taken right away, says Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell: “President Biden should use every tool in his tool box and impose tough sanctions ahead of any invasion and not after it happens.” There is no time to dilly-dally with Macron-style appeals to the raging bear to temper his violence.
Received doctrine is that we must confront the formidable threat of China and stand firm on Ukraine, while Europe wavers and Ukraine asks us to tone down the rhetoric and pursue diplomatic measures. Luckily for the world, Washington is unflinching in its dedication to what is right and just, even if it is almost alone, as when it righteously invades Iraq and strangles Cuba in defiance of virtually uniform international protest, to take just two from a plethora of examples.
To be fair, adherence to the doctrine is not uniform. There’s deviation, most forcefully on the far right: Tucker Carlson, probably the most influential TV voice. He’s said we shouldn’t be involved in defending Ukraine against Russia — because we should be devoting all our resources to confronting the far more awesome China threat. Have to get our priorities straight in combating the Axis.
Warnings about Russia’s mobilization to invade Ukraine have been an annual media event since the crises of 2014, with regular reports of tens or hundreds of thousands of Russian troops preparing to attack. Today, however, the warnings are far more shrill, with a mixture of fear and ridicule for so-called Mad Vlad, whom the New York Times’s Thomas Friedman describes as a “one-man psychodrama, with a giant inferiority complex toward America that leaves him always stalking the world with a chip on his shoulder so big it’s amazing he can fit through any door,” or from another perspective, the Russian leader seeking in vain for some response to his repeated requests for some attention to Russia’s expressed concerns. An analysis by MintPress found that 90 percent of the opinion pieces in the three major national newspapers have adopted a hawkish militant stance, with a bare scattering of questioning — a familiar phenomenon, as in the days before the Iraq invasion and, in fact, routinely when the state has delivered the word.
As in the case of the Sino-Soviet conspiracy to gain “absolute authority over the rest of the world” in 1950, the word now is that the U.S. must act decisively to counter the threat of the New Axis to the “rule-based global order” that is hailed by U.S. commentators, an interesting concept to which I’ll return briefly.
The “tectonic shift” is not a myth, and it does pose a threat to the U.S. It threatens U.S. primacy in shaping world order. That’s true of both of the crisis areas, on the borders of Russia and of China. In both cases, negotiated settlements are within reach: regional settlements. If they are achieved, the U.S. will only have an ancillary role, which it may not be willing to accept even at the cost of inflaming extremely hazardous confrontations.
In Ukraine, the basic outlines of a settlement are well-known on all sides; we’ve discussed them before. To repeat, the optimal outcome for security of Ukraine (and the world) is the kind of Austrian/Nordic neutrality that prevailed through the Cold War years, offering the opportunity to be part of Western Europe to whatever extent they chose, in every respect apart from providing the U.S. with military bases, which would have been a threat to them as well as to Russia. For internal Ukrainian conflicts, Minsk II provides a general framework.
As many analysts observe, Ukraine is not going to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in the foreseeable future. George W. Bush rashly issued an invitation to join, but it was immediately vetoed by France and Germany. Though it remains on the table under U.S. pressure, it is not an option. All sides recognize this. The astute and knowledgeable Central Asia scholar Anatol Lieven comments that “the whole issue of Ukraine’s NATO membership is in fact purely theoretical, so that, in some respects, this whole argument is an argument about nothing — on both sides, it must be said, Russian as well as the West.”
His comment brings to mind [Argentinian writer Jorge Luis] Borges’s description of the Falkland/Malvinas war: two bald men fighting over a comb.
Russia pleads security concerns. For the U.S., it is a matter of high principle: We cannot infringe on the sacred right of sovereignty of nations, hence the right to join NATO, which Washington knows is not going to happen.
On the Russian side, a formal pledge of non-alignment hardly increases Russian security, any more than Russian security was enhanced when Washington guaranteed to Gorbachev that “not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction,” soon abrogated by Clinton, then more radically by W. Bush. Nothing would have changed if the promise had risen from a gentlemen’s agreement to a signed document.
The U.S. plea hardly rises to the level of comedy. The U.S. has utter disdain for the principle it proudly proclaims, as recent history once again dramatically confirms.
For Washington, there is a deeper issue: A regional settlement would be a serious threat to the U.S. global role. That concern has been simmering right through the Cold War years. Will Europe assume an independent role in world affairs, as it surely can, perhaps along Gaullist lines: Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals, revived in Gorbachev’s 1989 advocacy of a “common European home,” a “vast economic space from the Atlantic to the Urals”? Even more unthinkable would be Gorbachev’s broader vision of a Eurasian security system from Lisbon to Vladivostok with no military blocs, shot down without discussion in the negotiations 30 years ago over a post-Cold War settlement.
The commitment to maintain the Atlanticist order in Europe, in which the U.S. reigns supreme, has had policy implications that reach beyond Europe itself. One crucial example was Chile in 1973, when the U.S. was working hard to overthrow the parliamentary government, finally succeeding with the installation of the murderous Pinochet dictatorship. A prime reason for destroying democracy in Chile was explained by its prime architect, Henry Kissinger. He warned that parliamentary social reforms in Chile might provide a model for similar efforts in Italy and Spain that might lead Europe on an independent path, away from subordination to U.S. control and the U.S. model of harsher capitalism. The domino theory, often derided, never abandoned, because it is an important instrument of statecraft. The issue arises again with regard to a regional settlement of the Ukraine conflict.
Much the same is true in the confrontation with China. As we’ve discussed earlier, there are serious issues concerning China’s violation of international law in the neighboring seas — though as the one maritime country that refuses even to ratify the UN Law of the Sea, the U.S. is hardly in a strong position to object. Nor does the U.S. alleviate these problems by sending a naval armada through these waters or providing Australia with a fleet of nuclear submarines to enhance the already overwhelming military superiority of the U.S. off the coasts of China. The issues can and should be addressed by the regional powers.
As in the case of Ukraine, however, there is a downside: The U.S. will not be in charge.
Also as in the case of Ukraine, the U.S. professes its commitment to high principle in taking the lead to confront the threat of China: its horror at China’s human rights abuses, which are doubtless severe. Again, it is easy enough to assess the sincerity of this stand. One revealing index is U.S. military aid. At the top, in a category by themselves, are Israel and Egypt. On the Israeli record on human rights, we can now refer to the detailed reports of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, reviewing the crimes of what they describe as the world’s second apartheid state. Egypt is suffering under the harshest dictatorship of its tortured history. More generally, for many years, there has been a striking correlation between U.S. military aid and torture, massacre, and other severe human rights abuses.
There is no more need to tarry on Washington’s concern for human rights than on its dedication to the sacred principle of sovereignty. The fact that these absurdities can even be discussed illustrates how deeply the rhetorical flights of NSC-68 permeate the intellectual culture.
Hebrew University lecturer Guy Laron usefully reminds us of another facet of the Ukraine crisis: the long struggle between the U.S. and Russia over control of Europe’s energy, again in the headlines today. Even before Russia was a player, the U.S. sought to shift Europe (and Japan) to an oil-based economy, where the U.S. would have the hand on the spigot. Much of Marshall Plan aid was directed to this end. From George Kennan to Zbigniew Brzezinski commenting on the invasion of Iraq (which he opposed, but felt might confer advantages to the U.S. with the anticipated control over major oil resources), planners have recognized that control over energy resources could provide “critical leverage” over allies. Later years saw many struggles in the Cold War framework Laron describes, now very prominent. Ukraine has had a large part in these confrontations.
Throughout, the shape of world order has of course been a driving concern of policy makers. For post-World War II Washington, there is only one acceptable form: under its leadership. And it must be a particular form of world order: the “rule-based international order,” which has displaced an earlier commitment to the “UN-based international order” established under U.S. lead after World War II. It’s not hard to discern the reasons for the transition in policy and accompanying commentary. In the rule-based order, the U.S. sets the rules.
The same was true in the UN-based order in the early years after World War II. U.S. global dominance was so overwhelming that the UN served virtually as a tool of U.S. foreign policy and a weapon against its enemies. Not surprisingly, the UN was highly regarded in U.S. popular and intellectual culture, along with the UN-based international order, guided by Washington.
That turned out to be a passing phase. The UN began to fall out of favor in U.S. elite opinion as it lurched out of control with the recovery of other industrial societies but particularly with decolonization, which brought discordant voices into the UN and also in independent structures such as the Non-Aligned Movement and many others — all very vocal and active, though effectively barred from the international information order dominated by the traditional imperial societies.
Within the UN there were calls for a “New International Economic Order” that would offer the Global South something better than a continuation of the large-scale robbery, violent intervention and subversion that the colonized world had enjoyed during the long reign of Western imperialism. There were other threats, such as a call for a New International Information Order that would provide some opportunity for voices of the former colonies to enter the international information system, a near monopoly of the imperial powers.
The masters of the world undertook vigorous campaigns to beat back these efforts, a major though largely ignored chapter of modern history — though not completely; there is some fine work of exposure and analysis.
One effect of the Global South’s disruptive efforts was to turn U.S. practice and elite opinion against the UN, no longer a reliable agency of U.S. power as it had been in the early Cold War years. Furthermore, the foundations of modern international law in the few UN treaties that the U.S. ratified became completely unacceptable as the years passed, particularly the banning of “the threat or use of force” in international affairs, a practice in which the U.S. is far in the lead. It is conventional to say that the U.S. and Russia engaged in proxy wars during the Cold War years — omitting the fact that with rare exceptions, these were conflicts in which Russia provided some support to victims of U.S. attack. All topics that should have far more prominence.
In this context, the “rule-based international order” became the favored pillar of world order, and there is much annoyance when China calls instead for the UN-based international order as it did at the rancorous March 2021 China-U.S. summit in Alaska (putting aside the sincerity of these pronouncements).
It’s intriguing to see how the conflict with China plays out in U.S. policy and discourse in other domains. A front-page story in The New York Times is headlined: “House Passes Bill Adding Billions to Research to Compete With China; The vote sets up a fight with the Senate, which has different recommendations for how the United States should bolster its technology industry to take on China.” The official name of the bill is “The America Competes Act of 2022” — meaning “compete” with China.
The passage of the bill was hailed in the left-liberal press: “The House gave President Joe Biden another reason to celebrate on Friday with the passage of a bill aimed at boosting competitiveness with China.”
Could Congress support research and development because it would help American society, as this bill surely would? Apparently not; only because it would “take on China.” Republicans reflexively opposed the bill as usual, in this case because it “concedes too much to China.” Republicans also opposed what they called “far left” initiatives such as addressing climate change. The bill was derided by House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy as the “coral reefs bill.” How does saving humanity from self-destruction help to compete with China?
A side comment: An amendment to the bill was introduced by Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Progressive Caucus, a call to release the near-$10 billion of the Afghan government held in New York banks, so as to help relieve the horrendous humanitarian crisis facing the population. It was voted down. Forty-four Democrats joined Republican brutality. It appears that the China-based Shanghai Cooperation Organization might be planning aid, more of the China threat.
There is no denying that China is a rising superpower confronting the U.S. Reporting a study of Harvard’s Belfer Center of International Affairs, Graham Allison argued further that the so-called Thucydides Trap is likely to lead to a U.S.-China war.
That cannot happen. U.S.-China war means simply: game over. There are critical global issues on which the U.S. and China must cooperate. They will either work together, or collapse together, bringing the world down with them.
One of the most striking developments in the international arena today is that while the U.S. is pulling back from the Mideast, and elsewhere, China is moving in but with a different strategic approach and overall agenda. Instead of bombs, missiles and coercive diplomacy, China is expanding its influence with the use of “soft power.” Indeed, U.S. overseas expansion was always overwhelmingly dependent on the use of hard power, and, as result, it would only leave black holes behind after its withdrawal. To what extent, as some might argue, is this the result of a young nation ignorant of history and with lack of experience in global affairs (although it would be hard to find any examples of benign imperialism)?
I don’t think the U.S. has forged new paths in Western imperial brutality. Simply consider its immediate predecessors in world control. British wealth and global power derived from piracy (such heroic figures as Sir Francis Drake), despoiling India by guile and violence, hideous slavery, the world’s greatest narcotrafficking enterprise, and other such gracious acts. France was no different. Belgium broke records in hideous crimes. Today’s China is hardly benign within its much more limited reach. Exceptions would be hard to find.
The two cases you mention have highly instructive features, brought out clearly, if unintentionally, by how they are depicted. Take an article in The New York Times about the growing China threat. The headline reads: “As the U.S. Pulls Back from the Mideast, China Leans in; expanding its ties to Middle Eastern states with vast infrastructure investments and cooperation on technology and security.”
That’s accurate; it’s one example of what’s happening all over the world. The U.S. is withdrawing military forces that have battered the Mideast region for decades in traditional imperial style. The evil Chinese are exploiting the retreat by expanding China’s influence with investment, loans, technology, development programs. What’s called “soft power.”
Not just in the Mideast. The most extensive Chinese project is the huge Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) that is taking shape within the framework of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which incorporates the Central Asia states, India, Pakistan, Russia, now Iran, reaching to Turkey and with its eye on Central Europe. It may well include Afghanistan if it can survive its current catastrophe. Chinese aid and development might manage to shift the Afghan economy from heroin production for Europe, the core of the economy during the U.S. occupation, to exploitation of its rich mineral resources.
The BRI has offshoots in the Middle East, including Israel. There are accompanying programs in Africa, and now even Latin America, over strenuous U.S. objections. Recently, China announced that it’s taking over the manufacturing facilities in São Paulo that Ford abandoned, and will initiate large-scale electric vehicles production, an area in which China is far ahead.
The U.S. has no way to counter these efforts. Bombs, missiles, special forces raids in rural communities just don’t work.
It’s an old dilemma. Sixty years ago in Vietnam, U.S. counterinsurgency efforts were stymied by a problem that was despairingly recognized by U.S. intelligence and by Province Advisers: the Vietnamese resistance — the Viet Cong (VC), in U.S. discourse — were fighting a political war, a domain in which the U.S. was weak. The U.S. was responding with a military war, the arena in which it is strong. But that couldn’t overcome the appeal of VC programs to the peasant population.
The only way the Kennedy administration could react to the VC political war was by U.S. Air Force bombing of rural areas, authorizing napalm, large-scale crop and livestock destruction and other programs to drive the peasants to virtual concentration camps where they could be “protected” from the guerillas who the U.S. knew they were supporting. The consequences we know.
Earlier, the dilemma had been explained by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, addressing the National Security Council about U.S. problems with Brazil, where elites, he said, are “like children, with no capacity for self-government.” Worse still, in his words, the U.S. is “hopelessly far behind the Soviets in developing controls over the minds and emotions of unsophisticated peoples” of the Global South, even educated elites. Dulles lamented to the president about the Communist “ability to get control of mass movements, … something we have no capacity to duplicate. The poor people are the ones they appeal to and they have always wanted to plunder the rich.”
Dulles left unsaid the obvious: The poor people somehow don’t respond well to our appeal of the rich to plunder the poor, so with great reluctance we have to turn to the arena of violence, where we dominate.
That’s not unlike the dilemma posed when China “leans in” to the Global South by “expanding its ties with vast infrastructure investments and cooperation on technology and security.” That is one central element of the China threat that is eliciting such fears and anguish.
The U.S. is reacting to this growing China threat in the arena where it is strong. The U.S. of course has overwhelming military dominance worldwide, even right off the coast of China. But it’s being enhanced. Last December, military analyst Michael Klare reports, President Biden signed the National Defense Authorization Act. It calls for “an unbroken chain of U.S.-armed sentinel states — stretching from Japan and South Korea in the northern Pacific to Australia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Singapore in the south and India on China’s eastern flank” — meant to encircle China.
Klare adds that, “Ominously enough Taiwan too is included in the chain of armed sentinel states.” The word “ominously” is well chosen. China of course regards Taiwan as part of China. So does the U.S., formally. The official U.S. one-China policy recognizes Taiwan as part of China, with a tacit agreement that no steps will be taken to forcefully change its status. Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo chipped away at this formula. It’s now being driven to the brink. China has the choice of either succumbing or resisting. It is not going to succumb.
This is only one component of the program to defend the U.S. from the China threat. A complementary element is to undermine China’s economy by means too well-known to review. In particular [in the U.S.’s eyes], China must be prevented from advancing in the technology of the future — actually extending its lead in some areas, such as electrification and renewable energy, the technologies that might save us from our race to destroy the environment that sustains life.
One aspect of these efforts to undermine China’s progress is to pressure other countries to reject superior Chinese technology. China has found a way to get around these efforts. They are planning to establish technical schools in countries of the Global South to teach advanced technology — Chinese technology, which graduates will then use. Again, the kind of aggression that is hard to confront.
U.S. influence is clearly declining across the international system, but one would not easily reach this conclusion by looking at the current U.S. National Security Strategy, which is still designed around the principle of the “two-war” doctrine even without expressly saying so. In this context, could it be argued that the U.S. empire is weakening in the 21st century, and that the end of the U.S. empire might not be a peaceful event?
It has been widely predicted in foreign policy circles for many years that China is poised to surpass the U.S. and to dominate world affairs, a dubious prospect, in my opinion, unless the U.S. continues on its current course of self-destruction, probably to be accelerated with the predicted congressional victory of the denialist party in November.
As we have discussed before, for some years the former Republican Party has been more accurately described as a “radical insurgency” that has abandoned normal parliamentary politics, to borrow the terms of political analysts Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute a decade ago — when Trump’s takeover of the insurgency was not yet a nightmare.
The Trump administration established a two-war doctrine in all but name. A war between two nuclear powers can quickly get out of control, meaning the end.
A step towards utter irrationality was taken last December 27, perhaps in celebration of Christmas, when President Biden signed the National Defense Authorization Act, discussed earlier, enhancing the policy of “encirclement” of China, “containment” being out of date. That includes formation of the Quad: U.S.-India-Japan-Australia, supplementing the AUKUS alliance (Australia, U.K., U.S.) and the Anglosphere’s Five Eyes, all of them strategic-military alliances confronting China. China has only a troubled hinterland. As discussed earlier, the radical military imbalance in favor of the U.S. is being enhanced by other provocative acts, carrying great risk. Apparently we cannot let down our guard with the Axis powers on the march once again.
It’s all too easy to sketch a likely trajectory that is far from a pleasant prospect. But we should never forget the usual proviso. We do not have to be passive spectators, thereby contributing to potential disaster.
Something you should know
Truthout is one of the last remaining truly independent, nonprofit, reader-funded news platforms. Small donations from readers like you keep us running — believe it or not, the most common gift we receive is just 10 bucks!
We’ve launched a fundraising campaign to raise the $40,000 we need to meet our publishing costs this month, and it’d mean the world to us if you’d make a monthly or one-time donation to help.
If you value what we publish, and agree that the world sorely needs alternatives to the dominant media, please give what you can today.
DONATE NOWCopyright © Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.
C.J. Polychroniou
C.J. Polychroniou is a political scientist/political economist, author, and journalist who has taught and worked in numerous universities and research centers in Europe and the United States. Currently, his main research interests are in U.S. politics and the political economy of the United States, European economic integration, globalization, climate change and environmental economics, and the deconstruction of neoliberalism’s politico-economic project. He is a regular contributor to Truthout as well as a member of Truthout’s Public Intellectual Project. He has published scores of books and over 1,000 articles which have appeared in a variety of journals, magazines, newspapers and popular news websites. Many of his publications have been translated into a multitude of different languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Croatian, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Turkish. His latest books are Optimism Over Despair: Noam Chomsky On Capitalism, Empire, and Social Change (2017); Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet (with Noam Chomsky and Robert Pollin as primary authors, 2020); The Precipice: Neoliberalism, the Pandemic, and the Urgent Need for Radical Change (an anthology of interviews with Noam Chomsky, 2021); and Economics and the Left: Interviews with Progressive Economists (2021).
MORE BY THIS AUTHOR…
Irrational political panic is as American a phenomenon as apple pie. It often arises as a result of a potential inability on the part of the powers-that-be to control the outcome of developments that may pose challenges to the interests of the existing socioeconomic order or to the status quo of the geostrategic environment. The era of the Cold War speaks volumes about this phenomenon, but it’s also evident in earlier periods — for example, the first Red Scare in the wake of World War I — and we can see clear parallels in the present-day situation with reactions to Ukraine and the rise of China as a global power.
In the interview that follows, world-renowned public intellectual Noam Chomsky delves into the phenomenon of irrational political panics in the U.S., with an emphasis on current developments on the foreign policy front — and the dangers of seeking to maintain global hegemony in a multipolar world.
C.J. Polychroniou: The political culture in the United States seems to have a propensity toward alarmism when it comes to political developments that are not in tune with the economic interests, ideological mindset and strategic interests of the powers-that-be. Indeed, from the anti-Spanish panic of the late 1890s to today’s rage about Russia’s security concerns over Ukraine, and China’s growing role in world affairs and everything in between, the political establishment and the media of this country tend to respond with full-blown alarm to developments that are not in alignment with U.S. interests, values and goals. Can you comment about this peculiar state of affairs, with particular emphasis on what’s happening today in connection with Ukraine and China?
Noam Chomsky: Quite true. Sometimes it’s hard to believe. One of the most significant and revealing examples is the rhetorical framework of the major internal planning document of the early Cold War years, NSC-68 of 1950, shortly after “the loss of China,” which set off a frenzy in the U.S. The document set the stage for huge expansion of the military budget. It’s worth recalling today when strains of this madness are reverberating — not for the first time; it’s perennial.
The policy recommendations of NSC-68 have been widely discussed in scholarship, though avoiding the hysterical rhetoric. It reads like a fairytale: ultimate evil confronted by absolute purity and noble idealism. On one side is the “slave state” with its “fundamental design” and inherent “compulsion” to gain “absolute authority over the rest of the world,” destroying all governments and the “structure of society” everywhere. Its ultimate evil contrasts with our sheer perfection. The “fundamental purpose” of the United States is to assure “the dignity and worth of the individual” everywhere. Its leaders are animated by “generous and constructive impulses, and the absence of covetousness in our international relations,” which is particularly evident in the traditional domains of U.S. influence, the Western hemisphere, long the beneficiary of Washington’s tender solicitude as its inhabitants can testify.
Anyone familiar with history and the actual balance of global power at the time would have reacted to this performance with utter bewilderment. Its State Department authors couldn’t have believed what they were writing. Some later gave an indication of what they were up to. Secretary of State Dean Acheson explained in his memoirs that in order to ram through the huge planned military expansion, it was necessary to “bludgeon the mass mind of ‘top government’” in ways that were “clearer than truth.” The highly influential Sen. Arthur Vandenberg surely understood this as well when advising [in 1947] that the government must “scare the hell out of the American people” to rouse them from their pacifist backwardness.
There are many precedents, and the drums are beating right now with warnings about American complacency and naivete about the intentions of the “mad dog” Putin to destroy democracy everywhere and subdue the world to his will, now in alliance with the other “Great Satan,” Xi Jinping.
The February 4 Putin-Xi summit, timed with the opening of the Olympic games, was recognized to be a major event in world affairs. Its review in a major article in The New York Times is headlined “A New Axis,” the allusion unconcealed. The review reported the intentions of the reincarnation of the Axis powers: “The message that China and Russia have sent to other countries is clear,” David Leonhardt writes. “They will not pressure other governments to respect human rights or hold elections.” And to Washington’s dismay, the Axis is attracting two countries from “the American camp,” Egypt and Saudi Arabia, stellar examples of how the U.S. respects human rights and elections in its camp — by providing a massive flow of weapons to these brutal dictatorships and directly participating in their crimes. The New Axis also maintains that “a powerful country should be able to impose its will within its declared sphere of influence. The country should even be able to topple a weaker nearby government without the world interfering” — an idea that the U.S. has always abhorred, as the historical record reveals.
Twenty-five hundred years ago, the Delphi Oracle issued a maxim: “Know Thyself.” Worth remembering, perhaps.
As in the case of NSC-68, there is method in the madness. China and Russia do pose real threats. The global hegemon does not take them lightly. There are some striking common features in how U.S. opinion and policy are reacting to the threats. They merit some thought.
The Atlantic Council describes the formation of the New Axis as a “tectonic shift in global relations” with plans that are truly “head spinning”: “The sides agreed to more closely link their economies through cooperation between China’s Belt and Road Initiative and Putin’s Eurasian Economic Union. They will work together to develop the Arctic. They’ll deepen coordination in multilateral institutions and to battle climate change.”
We should not underestimate the grand significance of the Ukraine crisis, adds Damon Wilson, president of the National Endowment for Democracy. “The stakes of today’s crisis are not about Ukraine alone, but about the future of freedom,” no less.
Strong measures have to be taken right away, says Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell: “President Biden should use every tool in his tool box and impose tough sanctions ahead of any invasion and not after it happens.” There is no time to dilly-dally with Macron-style appeals to the raging bear to temper his violence.
Received doctrine is that we must confront the formidable threat of China and stand firm on Ukraine, while Europe wavers and Ukraine asks us to tone down the rhetoric and pursue diplomatic measures. Luckily for the world, Washington is unflinching in its dedication to what is right and just, even if it is almost alone, as when it righteously invades Iraq and strangles Cuba in defiance of virtually uniform international protest, to take just two from a plethora of examples.
To be fair, adherence to the doctrine is not uniform. There’s deviation, most forcefully on the far right: Tucker Carlson, probably the most influential TV voice. He’s said we shouldn’t be involved in defending Ukraine against Russia — because we should be devoting all our resources to confronting the far more awesome China threat. Have to get our priorities straight in combating the Axis.
Warnings about Russia’s mobilization to invade Ukraine have been an annual media event since the crises of 2014, with regular reports of tens or hundreds of thousands of Russian troops preparing to attack. Today, however, the warnings are far more shrill, with a mixture of fear and ridicule for so-called Mad Vlad, whom the New York Times’s Thomas Friedman describes as a “one-man psychodrama, with a giant inferiority complex toward America that leaves him always stalking the world with a chip on his shoulder so big it’s amazing he can fit through any door,” or from another perspective, the Russian leader seeking in vain for some response to his repeated requests for some attention to Russia’s expressed concerns. An analysis by MintPress found that 90 percent of the opinion pieces in the three major national newspapers have adopted a hawkish militant stance, with a bare scattering of questioning — a familiar phenomenon, as in the days before the Iraq invasion and, in fact, routinely when the state has delivered the word.
As in the case of the Sino-Soviet conspiracy to gain “absolute authority over the rest of the world” in 1950, the word now is that the U.S. must act decisively to counter the threat of the New Axis to the “rule-based global order” that is hailed by U.S. commentators, an interesting concept to which I’ll return briefly.
The “tectonic shift” is not a myth, and it does pose a threat to the U.S. It threatens U.S. primacy in shaping world order. That’s true of both of the crisis areas, on the borders of Russia and of China. In both cases, negotiated settlements are within reach: regional settlements. If they are achieved, the U.S. will only have an ancillary role, which it may not be willing to accept even at the cost of inflaming extremely hazardous confrontations.
In Ukraine, the basic outlines of a settlement are well-known on all sides; we’ve discussed them before. To repeat, the optimal outcome for security of Ukraine (and the world) is the kind of Austrian/Nordic neutrality that prevailed through the Cold War years, offering the opportunity to be part of Western Europe to whatever extent they chose, in every respect apart from providing the U.S. with military bases, which would have been a threat to them as well as to Russia. For internal Ukrainian conflicts, Minsk II provides a general framework.
As many analysts observe, Ukraine is not going to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in the foreseeable future. George W. Bush rashly issued an invitation to join, but it was immediately vetoed by France and Germany. Though it remains on the table under U.S. pressure, it is not an option. All sides recognize this. The astute and knowledgeable Central Asia scholar Anatol Lieven comments that “the whole issue of Ukraine’s NATO membership is in fact purely theoretical, so that, in some respects, this whole argument is an argument about nothing — on both sides, it must be said, Russian as well as the West.”
His comment brings to mind [Argentinian writer Jorge Luis] Borges’s description of the Falkland/Malvinas war: two bald men fighting over a comb.
Russia pleads security concerns. For the U.S., it is a matter of high principle: We cannot infringe on the sacred right of sovereignty of nations, hence the right to join NATO, which Washington knows is not going to happen.
On the Russian side, a formal pledge of non-alignment hardly increases Russian security, any more than Russian security was enhanced when Washington guaranteed to Gorbachev that “not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction,” soon abrogated by Clinton, then more radically by W. Bush. Nothing would have changed if the promise had risen from a gentlemen’s agreement to a signed document.
The U.S. plea hardly rises to the level of comedy. The U.S. has utter disdain for the principle it proudly proclaims, as recent history once again dramatically confirms.
For Washington, there is a deeper issue: A regional settlement would be a serious threat to the U.S. global role. That concern has been simmering right through the Cold War years. Will Europe assume an independent role in world affairs, as it surely can, perhaps along Gaullist lines: Europe from the Atlantic to the Urals, revived in Gorbachev’s 1989 advocacy of a “common European home,” a “vast economic space from the Atlantic to the Urals”? Even more unthinkable would be Gorbachev’s broader vision of a Eurasian security system from Lisbon to Vladivostok with no military blocs, shot down without discussion in the negotiations 30 years ago over a post-Cold War settlement.
The commitment to maintain the Atlanticist order in Europe, in which the U.S. reigns supreme, has had policy implications that reach beyond Europe itself. One crucial example was Chile in 1973, when the U.S. was working hard to overthrow the parliamentary government, finally succeeding with the installation of the murderous Pinochet dictatorship. A prime reason for destroying democracy in Chile was explained by its prime architect, Henry Kissinger. He warned that parliamentary social reforms in Chile might provide a model for similar efforts in Italy and Spain that might lead Europe on an independent path, away from subordination to U.S. control and the U.S. model of harsher capitalism. The domino theory, often derided, never abandoned, because it is an important instrument of statecraft. The issue arises again with regard to a regional settlement of the Ukraine conflict.
Much the same is true in the confrontation with China. As we’ve discussed earlier, there are serious issues concerning China’s violation of international law in the neighboring seas — though as the one maritime country that refuses even to ratify the UN Law of the Sea, the U.S. is hardly in a strong position to object. Nor does the U.S. alleviate these problems by sending a naval armada through these waters or providing Australia with a fleet of nuclear submarines to enhance the already overwhelming military superiority of the U.S. off the coasts of China. The issues can and should be addressed by the regional powers.
As in the case of Ukraine, however, there is a downside: The U.S. will not be in charge.
Also as in the case of Ukraine, the U.S. professes its commitment to high principle in taking the lead to confront the threat of China: its horror at China’s human rights abuses, which are doubtless severe. Again, it is easy enough to assess the sincerity of this stand. One revealing index is U.S. military aid. At the top, in a category by themselves, are Israel and Egypt. On the Israeli record on human rights, we can now refer to the detailed reports of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, reviewing the crimes of what they describe as the world’s second apartheid state. Egypt is suffering under the harshest dictatorship of its tortured history. More generally, for many years, there has been a striking correlation between U.S. military aid and torture, massacre, and other severe human rights abuses.
There is no more need to tarry on Washington’s concern for human rights than on its dedication to the sacred principle of sovereignty. The fact that these absurdities can even be discussed illustrates how deeply the rhetorical flights of NSC-68 permeate the intellectual culture.
Hebrew University lecturer Guy Laron usefully reminds us of another facet of the Ukraine crisis: the long struggle between the U.S. and Russia over control of Europe’s energy, again in the headlines today. Even before Russia was a player, the U.S. sought to shift Europe (and Japan) to an oil-based economy, where the U.S. would have the hand on the spigot. Much of Marshall Plan aid was directed to this end. From George Kennan to Zbigniew Brzezinski commenting on the invasion of Iraq (which he opposed, but felt might confer advantages to the U.S. with the anticipated control over major oil resources), planners have recognized that control over energy resources could provide “critical leverage” over allies. Later years saw many struggles in the Cold War framework Laron describes, now very prominent. Ukraine has had a large part in these confrontations.
Throughout, the shape of world order has of course been a driving concern of policy makers. For post-World War II Washington, there is only one acceptable form: under its leadership. And it must be a particular form of world order: the “rule-based international order,” which has displaced an earlier commitment to the “UN-based international order” established under U.S. lead after World War II. It’s not hard to discern the reasons for the transition in policy and accompanying commentary. In the rule-based order, the U.S. sets the rules.
The same was true in the UN-based order in the early years after World War II. U.S. global dominance was so overwhelming that the UN served virtually as a tool of U.S. foreign policy and a weapon against its enemies. Not surprisingly, the UN was highly regarded in U.S. popular and intellectual culture, along with the UN-based international order, guided by Washington.
That turned out to be a passing phase. The UN began to fall out of favor in U.S. elite opinion as it lurched out of control with the recovery of other industrial societies but particularly with decolonization, which brought discordant voices into the UN and also in independent structures such as the Non-Aligned Movement and many others — all very vocal and active, though effectively barred from the international information order dominated by the traditional imperial societies.
Within the UN there were calls for a “New International Economic Order” that would offer the Global South something better than a continuation of the large-scale robbery, violent intervention and subversion that the colonized world had enjoyed during the long reign of Western imperialism. There were other threats, such as a call for a New International Information Order that would provide some opportunity for voices of the former colonies to enter the international information system, a near monopoly of the imperial powers.
The masters of the world undertook vigorous campaigns to beat back these efforts, a major though largely ignored chapter of modern history — though not completely; there is some fine work of exposure and analysis.
One effect of the Global South’s disruptive efforts was to turn U.S. practice and elite opinion against the UN, no longer a reliable agency of U.S. power as it had been in the early Cold War years. Furthermore, the foundations of modern international law in the few UN treaties that the U.S. ratified became completely unacceptable as the years passed, particularly the banning of “the threat or use of force” in international affairs, a practice in which the U.S. is far in the lead. It is conventional to say that the U.S. and Russia engaged in proxy wars during the Cold War years — omitting the fact that with rare exceptions, these were conflicts in which Russia provided some support to victims of U.S. attack. All topics that should have far more prominence.
In this context, the “rule-based international order” became the favored pillar of world order, and there is much annoyance when China calls instead for the UN-based international order as it did at the rancorous March 2021 China-U.S. summit in Alaska (putting aside the sincerity of these pronouncements).
It’s intriguing to see how the conflict with China plays out in U.S. policy and discourse in other domains. A front-page story in The New York Times is headlined: “House Passes Bill Adding Billions to Research to Compete With China; The vote sets up a fight with the Senate, which has different recommendations for how the United States should bolster its technology industry to take on China.” The official name of the bill is “The America Competes Act of 2022” — meaning “compete” with China.
The passage of the bill was hailed in the left-liberal press: “The House gave President Joe Biden another reason to celebrate on Friday with the passage of a bill aimed at boosting competitiveness with China.”
Could Congress support research and development because it would help American society, as this bill surely would? Apparently not; only because it would “take on China.” Republicans reflexively opposed the bill as usual, in this case because it “concedes too much to China.” Republicans also opposed what they called “far left” initiatives such as addressing climate change. The bill was derided by House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy as the “coral reefs bill.” How does saving humanity from self-destruction help to compete with China?
A side comment: An amendment to the bill was introduced by Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Progressive Caucus, a call to release the near-$10 billion of the Afghan government held in New York banks, so as to help relieve the horrendous humanitarian crisis facing the population. It was voted down. Forty-four Democrats joined Republican brutality. It appears that the China-based Shanghai Cooperation Organization might be planning aid, more of the China threat.
There is no denying that China is a rising superpower confronting the U.S. Reporting a study of Harvard’s Belfer Center of International Affairs, Graham Allison argued further that the so-called Thucydides Trap is likely to lead to a U.S.-China war.
That cannot happen. U.S.-China war means simply: game over. There are critical global issues on which the U.S. and China must cooperate. They will either work together, or collapse together, bringing the world down with them.
One of the most striking developments in the international arena today is that while the U.S. is pulling back from the Mideast, and elsewhere, China is moving in but with a different strategic approach and overall agenda. Instead of bombs, missiles and coercive diplomacy, China is expanding its influence with the use of “soft power.” Indeed, U.S. overseas expansion was always overwhelmingly dependent on the use of hard power, and, as result, it would only leave black holes behind after its withdrawal. To what extent, as some might argue, is this the result of a young nation ignorant of history and with lack of experience in global affairs (although it would be hard to find any examples of benign imperialism)?
I don’t think the U.S. has forged new paths in Western imperial brutality. Simply consider its immediate predecessors in world control. British wealth and global power derived from piracy (such heroic figures as Sir Francis Drake), despoiling India by guile and violence, hideous slavery, the world’s greatest narcotrafficking enterprise, and other such gracious acts. France was no different. Belgium broke records in hideous crimes. Today’s China is hardly benign within its much more limited reach. Exceptions would be hard to find.
The two cases you mention have highly instructive features, brought out clearly, if unintentionally, by how they are depicted. Take an article in The New York Times about the growing China threat. The headline reads: “As the U.S. Pulls Back from the Mideast, China Leans in; expanding its ties to Middle Eastern states with vast infrastructure investments and cooperation on technology and security.”
That’s accurate; it’s one example of what’s happening all over the world. The U.S. is withdrawing military forces that have battered the Mideast region for decades in traditional imperial style. The evil Chinese are exploiting the retreat by expanding China’s influence with investment, loans, technology, development programs. What’s called “soft power.”
Not just in the Mideast. The most extensive Chinese project is the huge Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) that is taking shape within the framework of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which incorporates the Central Asia states, India, Pakistan, Russia, now Iran, reaching to Turkey and with its eye on Central Europe. It may well include Afghanistan if it can survive its current catastrophe. Chinese aid and development might manage to shift the Afghan economy from heroin production for Europe, the core of the economy during the U.S. occupation, to exploitation of its rich mineral resources.
The BRI has offshoots in the Middle East, including Israel. There are accompanying programs in Africa, and now even Latin America, over strenuous U.S. objections. Recently, China announced that it’s taking over the manufacturing facilities in São Paulo that Ford abandoned, and will initiate large-scale electric vehicles production, an area in which China is far ahead.
The U.S. has no way to counter these efforts. Bombs, missiles, special forces raids in rural communities just don’t work.
It’s an old dilemma. Sixty years ago in Vietnam, U.S. counterinsurgency efforts were stymied by a problem that was despairingly recognized by U.S. intelligence and by Province Advisers: the Vietnamese resistance — the Viet Cong (VC), in U.S. discourse — were fighting a political war, a domain in which the U.S. was weak. The U.S. was responding with a military war, the arena in which it is strong. But that couldn’t overcome the appeal of VC programs to the peasant population.
The only way the Kennedy administration could react to the VC political war was by U.S. Air Force bombing of rural areas, authorizing napalm, large-scale crop and livestock destruction and other programs to drive the peasants to virtual concentration camps where they could be “protected” from the guerillas who the U.S. knew they were supporting. The consequences we know.
Earlier, the dilemma had been explained by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, addressing the National Security Council about U.S. problems with Brazil, where elites, he said, are “like children, with no capacity for self-government.” Worse still, in his words, the U.S. is “hopelessly far behind the Soviets in developing controls over the minds and emotions of unsophisticated peoples” of the Global South, even educated elites. Dulles lamented to the president about the Communist “ability to get control of mass movements, … something we have no capacity to duplicate. The poor people are the ones they appeal to and they have always wanted to plunder the rich.”
Dulles left unsaid the obvious: The poor people somehow don’t respond well to our appeal of the rich to plunder the poor, so with great reluctance we have to turn to the arena of violence, where we dominate.
That’s not unlike the dilemma posed when China “leans in” to the Global South by “expanding its ties with vast infrastructure investments and cooperation on technology and security.” That is one central element of the China threat that is eliciting such fears and anguish.
The U.S. is reacting to this growing China threat in the arena where it is strong. The U.S. of course has overwhelming military dominance worldwide, even right off the coast of China. But it’s being enhanced. Last December, military analyst Michael Klare reports, President Biden signed the National Defense Authorization Act. It calls for “an unbroken chain of U.S.-armed sentinel states — stretching from Japan and South Korea in the northern Pacific to Australia, the Philippines, Thailand, and Singapore in the south and India on China’s eastern flank” — meant to encircle China.
Klare adds that, “Ominously enough Taiwan too is included in the chain of armed sentinel states.” The word “ominously” is well chosen. China of course regards Taiwan as part of China. So does the U.S., formally. The official U.S. one-China policy recognizes Taiwan as part of China, with a tacit agreement that no steps will be taken to forcefully change its status. Donald Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo chipped away at this formula. It’s now being driven to the brink. China has the choice of either succumbing or resisting. It is not going to succumb.
This is only one component of the program to defend the U.S. from the China threat. A complementary element is to undermine China’s economy by means too well-known to review. In particular [in the U.S.’s eyes], China must be prevented from advancing in the technology of the future — actually extending its lead in some areas, such as electrification and renewable energy, the technologies that might save us from our race to destroy the environment that sustains life.
One aspect of these efforts to undermine China’s progress is to pressure other countries to reject superior Chinese technology. China has found a way to get around these efforts. They are planning to establish technical schools in countries of the Global South to teach advanced technology — Chinese technology, which graduates will then use. Again, the kind of aggression that is hard to confront.
U.S. influence is clearly declining across the international system, but one would not easily reach this conclusion by looking at the current U.S. National Security Strategy, which is still designed around the principle of the “two-war” doctrine even without expressly saying so. In this context, could it be argued that the U.S. empire is weakening in the 21st century, and that the end of the U.S. empire might not be a peaceful event?
It has been widely predicted in foreign policy circles for many years that China is poised to surpass the U.S. and to dominate world affairs, a dubious prospect, in my opinion, unless the U.S. continues on its current course of self-destruction, probably to be accelerated with the predicted congressional victory of the denialist party in November.
As we have discussed before, for some years the former Republican Party has been more accurately described as a “radical insurgency” that has abandoned normal parliamentary politics, to borrow the terms of political analysts Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute a decade ago — when Trump’s takeover of the insurgency was not yet a nightmare.
The Trump administration established a two-war doctrine in all but name. A war between two nuclear powers can quickly get out of control, meaning the end.
A step towards utter irrationality was taken last December 27, perhaps in celebration of Christmas, when President Biden signed the National Defense Authorization Act, discussed earlier, enhancing the policy of “encirclement” of China, “containment” being out of date. That includes formation of the Quad: U.S.-India-Japan-Australia, supplementing the AUKUS alliance (Australia, U.K., U.S.) and the Anglosphere’s Five Eyes, all of them strategic-military alliances confronting China. China has only a troubled hinterland. As discussed earlier, the radical military imbalance in favor of the U.S. is being enhanced by other provocative acts, carrying great risk. Apparently we cannot let down our guard with the Axis powers on the march once again.
It’s all too easy to sketch a likely trajectory that is far from a pleasant prospect. But we should never forget the usual proviso. We do not have to be passive spectators, thereby contributing to potential disaster.
Something you should know
Truthout is one of the last remaining truly independent, nonprofit, reader-funded news platforms. Small donations from readers like you keep us running — believe it or not, the most common gift we receive is just 10 bucks!
We’ve launched a fundraising campaign to raise the $40,000 we need to meet our publishing costs this month, and it’d mean the world to us if you’d make a monthly or one-time donation to help.
If you value what we publish, and agree that the world sorely needs alternatives to the dominant media, please give what you can today.
DONATE NOWCopyright © Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.
C.J. Polychroniou
C.J. Polychroniou is a political scientist/political economist, author, and journalist who has taught and worked in numerous universities and research centers in Europe and the United States. Currently, his main research interests are in U.S. politics and the political economy of the United States, European economic integration, globalization, climate change and environmental economics, and the deconstruction of neoliberalism’s politico-economic project. He is a regular contributor to Truthout as well as a member of Truthout’s Public Intellectual Project. He has published scores of books and over 1,000 articles which have appeared in a variety of journals, magazines, newspapers and popular news websites. Many of his publications have been translated into a multitude of different languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Croatian, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Turkish. His latest books are Optimism Over Despair: Noam Chomsky On Capitalism, Empire, and Social Change (2017); Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet (with Noam Chomsky and Robert Pollin as primary authors, 2020); The Precipice: Neoliberalism, the Pandemic, and the Urgent Need for Radical Change (an anthology of interviews with Noam Chomsky, 2021); and Economics and the Left: Interviews with Progressive Economists (2021).
MORE BY THIS AUTHOR…
In Face of US Claims, Moscow Says "There Is No 'Russian Invasion' of Ukraine"
As the Biden administration continues to warn of a "looming" attack, anti-war advocates urge diplomacy and dedication to playing "a cooperative and constructive role in this new multipolar world."
A member of the U.S. Army speaks with Stefan Zemanovic, the spokesperson for the Slovakian armed forces, on February 17, 2022 in Kuchyna, Slovakia. (Photo: Zuzana Gogova/Getty Images)
JESSICA CORBETT
So let me make this simple. The Russian government can announce today—with no qualification, equivocation, or deflection—that Russia will not invade Ukraine. State it clearly. State it plainly to the world. And then demonstrate it by sending your troops, your tanks, your planes back to their barracks and hangars and sending your diplomats to the negotiating table.
The U.S. diplomat also cast doubt on whether Russia is drawing down troops near its border with Ukraine, telling the international body that "we do not see that happening on the ground."
Various Western officials have made similar remarks since Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that "it's a partial withdrawal of troops from the areas of our exercises."
As The New York Times reports:
The Russian Defense Ministry said on Thursday that troops had redeployed hundreds of miles away from the Ukrainian border areas after conducting military exercises.
The ministry's spokesman, Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, said that logistics units of the western military district had traveled more than 400 miles from the Kursk region, bordering Ukraine, and returned to their base in the town of Dzerzhinsk in central Russia.
Several other military groups traveled more than 900 miles by railway with their equipment and were redeployed to Chechnya and Dagestan, he said. The troops currently engaged in military exercises in Belarus, to Ukraine's north, will also return to their home bases once the drills are over, Gen. Konashenkov said in a statement.
Meanwhile, anti-war advocates around the world are imploring all parties to focus on de-escalating the conflict, particularly given the U.S. and Russia's nuclear capabilities.
The Nation's editor and publisher, Katrina vanden Heuvel, argued Tuesday in her weekly column for The Washington Post that "rather than invoking a global order that no longer exists, the Biden administration should consider an agreement that offers a path out of this mess."
Vanden Heuvel, also president of the American Committee for U.S.-Russia Accord, laid to waste Blinken's defense of NATO's "open door" admission policy, pointing out that "Ukraine is in no position" to "contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area," as the alliance's founding treaty requires.
Further countering Blinken's recent statements, she wrote that "the post-Cold War international order—with the United States as a unipolar power—is already over," noting that earlier this month, "Russian and Chinese leaders declared in a joint communique that they seek a 'new era' and will no longer accede to the American-led order."
"Finally, those principles that Blinken invokes apparently were meant to apply only to others," she added. "After its disastrous offensive war of choice in Iraq, the United States is not exactly the exemplar of a rules-based order. The Monroe Doctrine, the sanctions on Iran and Venezuela, the Cuba embargo, and even NATO itself all mock Blinken's strictures against spheres of influence and dictating other countries' policies."
Writing Thursday for Common Dreams, Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies of the anti-war group CodePink noted that while the crisis could fizzle out or Russia could invade, the Ukrainian government could also escalate "its civil war against the self-declared People's Republics of Donetsk (DPR) and Luhansk (LPR), provoking various possible reactions from other countries."
Their warning that "a Ukrainian government attack on the DPR or LPR could be passed off in the West as a 'false flag' provocation by Russia" came as pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian authorities on Thursday accused each other of violating a cease-fire in Ukraine's Donbas region, which has been embroiled in conflict since 2014.
Like vanden Heuvel, Benjamin and Davies also suggested that "however it ends, this crisis should be a wake-up call for Americans of all classes and political persuasions to reevaluate our country's position in the world."
Along with specifically urging a wind-down of NATO, they wrote that "we must start thinking about how a post-imperial America can play a cooperative and constructive role in this new multipolar world, working with all our neighbors to solve the very serious problems facing humanity in the 21st century."
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
As the Biden administration continues to warn of a "looming" attack, anti-war advocates urge diplomacy and dedication to playing "a cooperative and constructive role in this new multipolar world."
A member of the U.S. Army speaks with Stefan Zemanovic, the spokesperson for the Slovakian armed forces, on February 17, 2022 in Kuchyna, Slovakia. (Photo: Zuzana Gogova/Getty Images)
JESSICA CORBETT
TRUTH OUT
February 17, 2022
Amid global demands for urgent diplomacy to de-escalate the Ukraine crisis, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday rebuffed allegations by the Biden administration—along with other Western governments and corporate media—that Russia intends to imminently invade its neighbor.
"Rather than invoking a global order that no longer exists, the Biden administration should consider an agreement that offers a path out of this mess."
"There is no 'Russian invasion' of Ukraine, which the U.S. and its allies have been announcing officially since last fall, and it is not planned, therefore, statements about 'Russia's responsibility for escalation' can be regarded as an attempt to exert pressure and devalue Russia's proposals for security guarantees," said the ministry in its official response to a U.S. statement issued last month on Moscow's security demands, including Ukraine's exclusion from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
"We are calling on the U.S. and NATO to return to compliance with international commitments in the area of upholding peace and security," the ministry's document explains, according to the Russian news agency TASS. "We expect concrete proposals from the alliance's members about the form and substance of the legal confirmation that further eastward expansion by NATO will be abandoned."
The Russian statement, which centralizes "practical measures on de-escalation," accuses the United States of failing to provide a constructive response to Moscow's demands, adding that "this approach and the accompanying narrative by U.S. officials are reinforcing substantiated doubts that Washington is really committed to rectifying the European security situation."
"In the absence of readiness of the U.S. side to negotiate solid, legally binding guarantees of our security by the US and its allies," the document states, "Russia will have to react, including via implementation of measures of military-technical nature."
The ministry's comments came the same day U.S. President Joe Biden told reporters that although "there's a clear diplomatic path" out of the crisis, he believes Russia will invade Ukraine "in the next several days."
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday warned—though he provided no evidence—of "Russia's looming aggression against Ukraine" in remarks to the United Nations Security Council.
Along with repeating claims about a potential false flag operation by Russia as "a pretext for its attack," Blinken urged Moscow to make clear that it is not planning an invasion while also suggesting that such a statement would not be taken seriously by the U.S. administration.
As Blinken put it:
I have no doubt that the response to my remarks here today will be more dismissals from the Russian government about the United States stoking hysteria or that it has "no plans" to invade Ukraine.
Amid global demands for urgent diplomacy to de-escalate the Ukraine crisis, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on Thursday rebuffed allegations by the Biden administration—along with other Western governments and corporate media—that Russia intends to imminently invade its neighbor.
"Rather than invoking a global order that no longer exists, the Biden administration should consider an agreement that offers a path out of this mess."
"There is no 'Russian invasion' of Ukraine, which the U.S. and its allies have been announcing officially since last fall, and it is not planned, therefore, statements about 'Russia's responsibility for escalation' can be regarded as an attempt to exert pressure and devalue Russia's proposals for security guarantees," said the ministry in its official response to a U.S. statement issued last month on Moscow's security demands, including Ukraine's exclusion from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
"We are calling on the U.S. and NATO to return to compliance with international commitments in the area of upholding peace and security," the ministry's document explains, according to the Russian news agency TASS. "We expect concrete proposals from the alliance's members about the form and substance of the legal confirmation that further eastward expansion by NATO will be abandoned."
The Russian statement, which centralizes "practical measures on de-escalation," accuses the United States of failing to provide a constructive response to Moscow's demands, adding that "this approach and the accompanying narrative by U.S. officials are reinforcing substantiated doubts that Washington is really committed to rectifying the European security situation."
"In the absence of readiness of the U.S. side to negotiate solid, legally binding guarantees of our security by the US and its allies," the document states, "Russia will have to react, including via implementation of measures of military-technical nature."
The ministry's comments came the same day U.S. President Joe Biden told reporters that although "there's a clear diplomatic path" out of the crisis, he believes Russia will invade Ukraine "in the next several days."
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday warned—though he provided no evidence—of "Russia's looming aggression against Ukraine" in remarks to the United Nations Security Council.
Along with repeating claims about a potential false flag operation by Russia as "a pretext for its attack," Blinken urged Moscow to make clear that it is not planning an invasion while also suggesting that such a statement would not be taken seriously by the U.S. administration.
As Blinken put it:
I have no doubt that the response to my remarks here today will be more dismissals from the Russian government about the United States stoking hysteria or that it has "no plans" to invade Ukraine.
So let me make this simple. The Russian government can announce today—with no qualification, equivocation, or deflection—that Russia will not invade Ukraine. State it clearly. State it plainly to the world. And then demonstrate it by sending your troops, your tanks, your planes back to their barracks and hangars and sending your diplomats to the negotiating table.
The U.S. diplomat also cast doubt on whether Russia is drawing down troops near its border with Ukraine, telling the international body that "we do not see that happening on the ground."
Various Western officials have made similar remarks since Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that "it's a partial withdrawal of troops from the areas of our exercises."
As The New York Times reports:
The Russian Defense Ministry said on Thursday that troops had redeployed hundreds of miles away from the Ukrainian border areas after conducting military exercises.
The ministry's spokesman, Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, said that logistics units of the western military district had traveled more than 400 miles from the Kursk region, bordering Ukraine, and returned to their base in the town of Dzerzhinsk in central Russia.
Several other military groups traveled more than 900 miles by railway with their equipment and were redeployed to Chechnya and Dagestan, he said. The troops currently engaged in military exercises in Belarus, to Ukraine's north, will also return to their home bases once the drills are over, Gen. Konashenkov said in a statement.
Meanwhile, anti-war advocates around the world are imploring all parties to focus on de-escalating the conflict, particularly given the U.S. and Russia's nuclear capabilities.
The Nation's editor and publisher, Katrina vanden Heuvel, argued Tuesday in her weekly column for The Washington Post that "rather than invoking a global order that no longer exists, the Biden administration should consider an agreement that offers a path out of this mess."
Vanden Heuvel, also president of the American Committee for U.S.-Russia Accord, laid to waste Blinken's defense of NATO's "open door" admission policy, pointing out that "Ukraine is in no position" to "contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area," as the alliance's founding treaty requires.
Further countering Blinken's recent statements, she wrote that "the post-Cold War international order—with the United States as a unipolar power—is already over," noting that earlier this month, "Russian and Chinese leaders declared in a joint communique that they seek a 'new era' and will no longer accede to the American-led order."
"Finally, those principles that Blinken invokes apparently were meant to apply only to others," she added. "After its disastrous offensive war of choice in Iraq, the United States is not exactly the exemplar of a rules-based order. The Monroe Doctrine, the sanctions on Iran and Venezuela, the Cuba embargo, and even NATO itself all mock Blinken's strictures against spheres of influence and dictating other countries' policies."
Writing Thursday for Common Dreams, Medea Benjamin and Nicolas J.S. Davies of the anti-war group CodePink noted that while the crisis could fizzle out or Russia could invade, the Ukrainian government could also escalate "its civil war against the self-declared People's Republics of Donetsk (DPR) and Luhansk (LPR), provoking various possible reactions from other countries."
Their warning that "a Ukrainian government attack on the DPR or LPR could be passed off in the West as a 'false flag' provocation by Russia" came as pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian authorities on Thursday accused each other of violating a cease-fire in Ukraine's Donbas region, which has been embroiled in conflict since 2014.
Like vanden Heuvel, Benjamin and Davies also suggested that "however it ends, this crisis should be a wake-up call for Americans of all classes and political persuasions to reevaluate our country's position in the world."
Along with specifically urging a wind-down of NATO, they wrote that "we must start thinking about how a post-imperial America can play a cooperative and constructive role in this new multipolar world, working with all our neighbors to solve the very serious problems facing humanity in the 21st century."
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
CPGB
Is the crisis in Ukraine the beginning of a new world order?The Putin-Xi summit on the eve of the Winter Olympics was only casually mentioned in the mainstream media, but has potentially far-reaching consequences, writes MARC VANDEPITTE
JUST before the start of the Winter Olympics in Beijing, Presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping issued a joint statement on international relations and on co-operation between China and Russia.
It is a document of about 10 pages that comes at a time of great tensions with Nato over Ukraine and of a diplomatic boycott of the Winter Games.
The text can be read as a plea for a new world order in which the US and its allies are no longer in charge, but in which the aim is to create a multipolar world, with respect for the sovereignty of countries.
“The sides oppose further enlargement of Nato and call on the North Atlantic Alliance to abandon its ideologised cold war approaches, to respect the sovereignty, security and interests of other countries, the diversity of their civilisational, cultural and historical backgrounds and to exercise a fair and objective attitude towards the peaceful development of other states,” it reads.
Similar signals have been sent out in the past, such as a joint statement in 1997, but it is the first time that both presidents have spoken out so clearly and have strengthened ties so closely. It is also the first time that China has explicitly spoken out against Nato enlargement.
To understand the scope of this document, it is useful to look back at recent history.
Hegemony
On the one hand, the first half of the 20th century saw the emergence of two new superpowers: the US and the USSR. On the other hand, there was the relative decline of the old colonial powers.
The US emerged victorious from World War II. Both the old superpowers and the USSR were completely broke. Washington dreamed of a new world order and exclusive control.
“To seek less than preponderant power would be to opt for defeat,” said Paul Nitze, top adviser to the US government. Alas, those plans were thwarted by the rapid reconstruction of the USSR and the breaking of the US nuclear monopoly.
After the cold war, the US finally became the undisputed leader of world politics and wanted to keep it that way. Half a century later, that dream came true with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the dismantling of the USSR two years later. Henceforth there were no more obstacles to hegemony.
In 1992 the Pentagon left no doubt: “Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival … We must maintain the mechanisms for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.”
At that time, the US saw no reason to keep a close eye on China yet. The Chinese economy was fairly underdeveloped and its GDP was only a third of the US.
Militarily, the country was also very weak. During that period, Washington mainly thought of Europe as a potential rival and worried about the possible resurrection of Russia.
Unbridled
After the fall of the USSR, the US opted for unbridled might. The invasion of Panama at the end of 1989 was a first exercise for what was to follow. Shortly afterwards war came to Iraq, Yugoslavia and Somalia — Afghanistan, Yemen, Libya and Syria would follow soon after.
In addition to overt military interventions, the US has also increasingly waged hybrid wars or colour revolutions to implement regime changes, which have failed everywhere.
They did so in Brazil, Bolivia, Venezuela, Cuba, Honduras, Nicaragua, Georgia, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon and Belarus. In addition, more than 20 countries have been subjected to economic sanctions.
Nato, created in order to militarily enshrine US supremacy, was also steadily expanded after the dismantling of the USSR.
Since the 1990s, 14 states on the European continent have joined the treaty organisation. Other countries such as Colombia became Nato “partners.”
Containing China
So the US seemed to have the world to itself after the cold war, but then China came on the scene. For the first time in recent history, a poor, underdeveloped country rose in no time to become an economic superpower.
Over the past 30 years, China has experienced a remarkable economic expansion. Since joining the World Trade Organisation in 2001, the Chinese economy has grown more than fourfold. The leap forward was not only economic but also technological.
Until recently, the West, led by the US, had an absolute monopoly on technology, weapons of mass destruction, monetary and financial systems, access to natural resources and mass communications.
With that monopoly it could control or subjugate countries, especially those in the global South. The West and the US, its global policeman, are in danger of losing that monopoly now.
That is why the US has now identified China as its main enemy. In the context of the 2019 budget talks, Congress declared that “long-term strategic competition with China is a top priority for the US.”
It is a total strategy that has to be pursued on several fronts. The US is trying to thwart China’s economic and technological ascent, or, as they say, “blunt it.”
If necessary, this will be done with extra-economic resources. The military strategy towards China follows two tracks: an arms race and an encirclement of the country.
The US has more than 30 military bases, support or training centres around the country. Sixty per cent of the entire fleet is stationed in the region. This military containment has been going on for years.
In April 2020, the Pentagon released a new report advocating further militarisation of the region. The plan is to install ranged ballistic missiles at its own military bases or those of its allies.
If you also install cruise missiles on submarines, you can hit mainland China within 15 minutes. These are particularly dangerous developments.
As part of that entrapment strategy, the Pentagon is also strengthening military ties with countries in the region. In 2021, the US signed a security pact with Australia and Britain for the containment of China.
Enough is enough
Putin and Xi have had enough of all this. The eastward advance of Nato, the increasing military and hybrid warfare worldwide, the many economic sanctions and the encirclement of China, all this must stop.
Gone are the days that Nato, the G7 and the Western-dominated International Monetary Fund kept holding the reins. The unipolar world must make way for a multipolar world.
Rising aggression against both countries is driving China and Russia into each other’s arms.
China is home to almost a fifth of the world’s population, is a global economic power and is the most important trading partner of a majority of countries. Russia is the largest country in the world and is a nuclear superpower.
An alliance between these two countries is a serious counterweight to US supremacy. According to the Guardian: “The birth of this Sino-Russian axis, conceived in opposition to the US-led Western democracies, is the most globally significant strategic development since the USSR collapsed 30 years ago. It will define the coming age.”
It’s not just about these two countries, though. Russia is a member of several regional and multinational alliances. One of these, a military alliance, is the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO), which is currently involved in “peacekeeping operations” in Kazakhstan.
Another is the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO), which is a Eurasian political, economic and security alliance. In addition to Russia and China, India and Pakistan are also members.
China recently joined the largest economic partnership in the world, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). This partnership in south-east Asia represents 30 per cent of the world’s population.
The new Silk Road is worth $900 billion in investments, loans, trade agreements and dozens of special economic zones. They are spread over 72 countries, representing a population of about five billion people or 65 per cent of the world’s population.
New world order?
With his essay the End of History and the Last Man, shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Francis Fukuyama announced a new era based on Western hegemony.
The debacles in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya and Yemen, among others, show that this was a boast that reflected a lot of hubris.
An alliance between China and Russia is an important counterweight to US supremacy.
If the newly formed alliance consolidates and other countries join it, this time we may well be at the dawn of a new era.
Not the end of history, but the beginning of a new stage, in which power in the world is more decentralised — a new world order.
We live in times promising to be exciting, but also dangerous. More than ever, we need a strong peace movement.
MORNING STAR
US Is Effectively Stealing Billions From a Nation Ravaged by a US-Initiated War
People protest against recent remarks by President Joe Biden to freeze Afghanistan's assets, in Kabul, Afghanistan, on February 15, 2022.
SAHEL ARMAN / AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
February 18, 2022
President Joe Biden recently declared a national emergency in the name of addressing the dual threats of the massive humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Afghanistan, as well as “the potential for a deepening economic collapse in Afghanistan.” He was right to do so.
In sharp contrast, his decision to unilaterally assert the U.S.’s authority to redistribute $7.1 billion of Afghanistan’s frozen funds as it sees fit was dead wrong. In declaring the national emergency, the president laid out his administration’s vision for Afghanistan’s funds should U.S. courts voice their approval: that half be made available, pending litigation, to the families of 9/11 victims who have claims against the Taliban for its role in harboring al-Qaeda. The remaining $3.5 billion would go towards humanitarian efforts.
Setting aside the moral and political problems inherent in the U.S. effectively stealing billions of dollars from a nation ravaged by a U.S.-initiated war and the resulting humanitarian and economic devastation, the president’s failure to make any of these funds immediately available to the people of Afghanistan in their hour of need is unforgivable. In abdicating responsibility to the courts, which may take months to decide how these frozen funds can be redistributed, the Biden administration is threatening the well-being of millions of Afghans, while also undermining the ability of civil society organizations to respond to the crisis. This is in direct opposition to the “beacon of human rights” the U.S. claims to be.
To say that Afghanistan is in urgent need is to understate the severity of the situation. Over 24 million Afghans, nearly 60 percent of the population, need humanitarian aid. Some 23 million face acute food insecurity, meaning their lives are in immediate danger, and over 1 million children are at risk of death due to severe acute malnutrition. While Afghanistan has faced humanitarian challenges for years as a result of conflict, U.S. occupation and natural disasters, the current situation is markedly worse, in no small part due to U.S. policies towards Afghanistan in the wake of the Taliban takeover.
When the Taliban took control of the country last August, the Biden administration froze $7.1 billion in Afghanistan’s foreign reserves held in the U.S. — money that belongs to the Afghan people — and that prior to the takeover, the Central Bank of Afghanistan (Da Afghanistan Bank) had been using to maintain economic stability.
The resulting liquidity crisis has led to massive inflation, alongside depreciation of the Afghani, whose value the Central Bank can no longer stabilize by selling off its foreign reserves. Many banks in Afghanistan have dramatically limited the amount of money account holders can withdraw, while others have closed entirely. Businesses, no longer able to pay their employees, have shuttered, leading to rampant unemployment. The price of food has risen, while the value of the Afghani has plummeted, leading to mass starvation.
As a further result of freezing these funds and of U.S. sanctions that have led risk-averse banks to severely limit access to financial services in Afghanistan, local and international aid groups and other civil society organizations in Afghanistan are struggling to pay their staff and provide services to the millions of Afghans in need.
Kate Phillips-Barrasso, director of humanitarian policy at InterAction, a network of humanitarian aid organizations, recently explained that financial service providers “just don’t want to get involved. There’s a lot of risk aversion. Financial institutions say that even with explicit permission, it still reeks of effort and risk, and it’s better to just not provide the service.” As a result, aid organizations are turning to informal cash transfer networks, which entail greater risk and higher fees. Some have also turned to cryptocurrency as another means of getting funds into the country, despite challenges arising from limited use of cryptocurrency among much of the population. While these workarounds have offered some relief, limited access to cash and financial services is still plaguing the humanitarian aid sector as a direct result of U.S. policy.
The Biden administration must urgently reconsider and correct its policies towards Afghanistan, and towards Afghanistan’s foreign reserves in particular. Shah Mehrabi, a member of the Supreme Council of Afghanistan’s Central Bank and a professor of economics at Montgomery College, has called on the administration to “allow the Central Bank of Afghanistan limited, monitored, and conditional access to $150m per month from Afghanistan’s foreign reserves,” citing the Central Bank’s “independen[ce] from the Afghan government,” and the U.S.’s ability to monitor how the funds are dispersed. Some form of a phased release of the frozen funds has widespread support, including from members of the U.S. Congress, the United Nations, and prominent international aid groups, human rights groups, and women’s human rights and peace groups.
Beyond releasing the frozen funds, the Biden administration must also lift sanctions on Afghanistan, which have done almost nothing to incentivize the Taliban to change its policies. Instead, sanctions have unleashed a chilling effect on national and international banking in Afghanistan by shutting down access to financial services, causing dire repercussions to Afghan lives and preventing civil society groups from addressing the crisis. While the U.S. Treasury Department has issued piecemeal general licenses aimed at enabling civil society organizations to continue their work in Afghanistan, these necessary but insufficient steps have failed to address the financial access issues caused by sanctions, let alone the liquidity crisis caused by freezing Afghanistan’s foreign reserves.
There is room for honest debate about precisely how, not if, these frozen funds should be returned to the people of Afghanistan, and which, if any, sanctions should remain in place — however, there is no room, or time, to cling to a status quo that is starving Afghanistan’s people and its economy.
President Joe Biden recently declared a national emergency in the name of addressing the dual threats of the massive humanitarian catastrophe unfolding in Afghanistan, as well as “the potential for a deepening economic collapse in Afghanistan.” He was right to do so.
In sharp contrast, his decision to unilaterally assert the U.S.’s authority to redistribute $7.1 billion of Afghanistan’s frozen funds as it sees fit was dead wrong. In declaring the national emergency, the president laid out his administration’s vision for Afghanistan’s funds should U.S. courts voice their approval: that half be made available, pending litigation, to the families of 9/11 victims who have claims against the Taliban for its role in harboring al-Qaeda. The remaining $3.5 billion would go towards humanitarian efforts.
Setting aside the moral and political problems inherent in the U.S. effectively stealing billions of dollars from a nation ravaged by a U.S.-initiated war and the resulting humanitarian and economic devastation, the president’s failure to make any of these funds immediately available to the people of Afghanistan in their hour of need is unforgivable. In abdicating responsibility to the courts, which may take months to decide how these frozen funds can be redistributed, the Biden administration is threatening the well-being of millions of Afghans, while also undermining the ability of civil society organizations to respond to the crisis. This is in direct opposition to the “beacon of human rights” the U.S. claims to be.
To say that Afghanistan is in urgent need is to understate the severity of the situation. Over 24 million Afghans, nearly 60 percent of the population, need humanitarian aid. Some 23 million face acute food insecurity, meaning their lives are in immediate danger, and over 1 million children are at risk of death due to severe acute malnutrition. While Afghanistan has faced humanitarian challenges for years as a result of conflict, U.S. occupation and natural disasters, the current situation is markedly worse, in no small part due to U.S. policies towards Afghanistan in the wake of the Taliban takeover.
When the Taliban took control of the country last August, the Biden administration froze $7.1 billion in Afghanistan’s foreign reserves held in the U.S. — money that belongs to the Afghan people — and that prior to the takeover, the Central Bank of Afghanistan (Da Afghanistan Bank) had been using to maintain economic stability.
The resulting liquidity crisis has led to massive inflation, alongside depreciation of the Afghani, whose value the Central Bank can no longer stabilize by selling off its foreign reserves. Many banks in Afghanistan have dramatically limited the amount of money account holders can withdraw, while others have closed entirely. Businesses, no longer able to pay their employees, have shuttered, leading to rampant unemployment. The price of food has risen, while the value of the Afghani has plummeted, leading to mass starvation.
As a further result of freezing these funds and of U.S. sanctions that have led risk-averse banks to severely limit access to financial services in Afghanistan, local and international aid groups and other civil society organizations in Afghanistan are struggling to pay their staff and provide services to the millions of Afghans in need.
Kate Phillips-Barrasso, director of humanitarian policy at InterAction, a network of humanitarian aid organizations, recently explained that financial service providers “just don’t want to get involved. There’s a lot of risk aversion. Financial institutions say that even with explicit permission, it still reeks of effort and risk, and it’s better to just not provide the service.” As a result, aid organizations are turning to informal cash transfer networks, which entail greater risk and higher fees. Some have also turned to cryptocurrency as another means of getting funds into the country, despite challenges arising from limited use of cryptocurrency among much of the population. While these workarounds have offered some relief, limited access to cash and financial services is still plaguing the humanitarian aid sector as a direct result of U.S. policy.
The Biden administration must urgently reconsider and correct its policies towards Afghanistan, and towards Afghanistan’s foreign reserves in particular. Shah Mehrabi, a member of the Supreme Council of Afghanistan’s Central Bank and a professor of economics at Montgomery College, has called on the administration to “allow the Central Bank of Afghanistan limited, monitored, and conditional access to $150m per month from Afghanistan’s foreign reserves,” citing the Central Bank’s “independen[ce] from the Afghan government,” and the U.S.’s ability to monitor how the funds are dispersed. Some form of a phased release of the frozen funds has widespread support, including from members of the U.S. Congress, the United Nations, and prominent international aid groups, human rights groups, and women’s human rights and peace groups.
Beyond releasing the frozen funds, the Biden administration must also lift sanctions on Afghanistan, which have done almost nothing to incentivize the Taliban to change its policies. Instead, sanctions have unleashed a chilling effect on national and international banking in Afghanistan by shutting down access to financial services, causing dire repercussions to Afghan lives and preventing civil society groups from addressing the crisis. While the U.S. Treasury Department has issued piecemeal general licenses aimed at enabling civil society organizations to continue their work in Afghanistan, these necessary but insufficient steps have failed to address the financial access issues caused by sanctions, let alone the liquidity crisis caused by freezing Afghanistan’s foreign reserves.
There is room for honest debate about precisely how, not if, these frozen funds should be returned to the people of Afghanistan, and which, if any, sanctions should remain in place — however, there is no room, or time, to cling to a status quo that is starving Afghanistan’s people and its economy.
Great Power War in Europe, An Insane Idea. Stop It!
The graphic at the left is useful in several ways.
First, it shows the redivison of Europe following the collapse of the USSR. NATO has expanded, Russia is reconstituted but weaker.
Second, the current crisis tells us NATO wants to continue expanding, planning to take the largest and most resource-rich country in Europe, under its wing. Russia is likely to resist, and not just with words.
Third, NATO's Article Five says if one is attacked, all are attacked. That means local war immediately becomes Europe-wide war, with both sides with nuclear arms.
Fourth, the last Europe-wide war, while destroying fascism, had a very high price--tens of millions dead, economies destroyed. No one wanted a repeat, so the United Nations and its Charter were set up to avoid armed conflict and negotiate solutions, no matter how long it took. It was a wise idea against insanity. It still is. Put it on top of today's agendas.
Lies About Ukraine Conflict Are Standing in the Way of a Peaceful Resolution
U.S. soldiers disembark from a C-17 Globemaster cargo plane on the tarmac of Poland's Rzeszów–Jasionka Airport on February 16, 2022. The soldiers are part of a deployment of several thousand sent to bolster NATO's eastern flank in response to tensions with Russia.
WOJTEK RADWANSKI/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
PUBLISHED February 16, 2022
The Ukraine-Russia conflict has escalated to a very dangerous point The possibility that it can turn into an armed conflict, or even a war, has increased significantly and is real. But the Russian invasion, which was basically announced by the U.S. and British governments and media for February 16, has not happened, and Russia declared the partial withdrawal of its forces. Such war is hardly inevitable and can be avoided. However, the peaceful resolution of the Ukraine-Russia conflict and the war in Donbas in Eastern Ukraine is greatly complicated by the dominant narratives of the Ukraine conflict.
The narratives that are propagated by the Western governments and the mainstream media concerning the origin and the nature of the Ukraine conflict are truly Orwellian. They state that the pro-Russian government in Ukraine was ousted as result of peaceful mass Euromaidan protests in February 2014 and that President Viktor Yanukovych fled Ukraine because he ordered the massacre of the peaceful Maidan protesters by government forces. These protests took place on the main square in Kyiv, which is called Maidan, and they were directed against the Yanukovych government and his decision to suspend signing the EU association and free trade agreement. According to these narratives, Russia then annexed Crimea by using pure military force and launched a war with Ukraine in Donbas. These narratives assert that Ukraine is a sovereign democratic state which has a right to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in the future and that Russia plans to invade Ukraine within days or weeks.
Various evidence presented in studies by Western scholars who have researched the Ukraine conflict shows that these narratives are false. This mass killing of the Maidan movement’s own supporters — perpetrated by the oligarchic and far right elements of the Maidan alliance — made it possible for Maidan leaders to falsely blame the pro-Russian Yanukovych government and its police and security forces for the killing and then seize power in Ukraine. Western governments backed this undemocratic overthrow of the democratically elected Ukrainian government.
The absolute majority of wounded Maidan protesters testified at the Maidan massacre trial and investigation in Ukraine that they and other protesters were massacred by snipers from the Hotel Ukraina and other buildings, which were seized by the Maidan opposition alliance, or that they witnessed such snipers there. Synchronized videos show that specific times and directions of the shooting of the majority of specific protesters did not coincide with specific times and directions of shooting by Berkut anti-riot police officers who were charged in Ukraine with their massacre. The investigation and the media revealed no evidence of any order by Yanukovych or his ministers and commanders to massacre the Maidan protesters. In contrast, 14 self-admitted members of the Maidan sniper units confessed that they themselves or other Maidan snipers massacred the police or protesters, and that this mass killing was done under the orders of Maidan leaders and former leaders of the pro-Western government of Mikheil Saakashvili in Georgia. Several Maidan leaders and activists testified about specific involvement of Maidan leaders in this mass killing.
Moreover, two leaders of Ukraine’s far right Svoboda party stated that a representative of an unnamed Western government told them and other Maidan leaders a few weeks before the massacre that Western governments would turn on the Yanukovych government after casualties among protesters reached 100. The killed Maidan protesters were immediately called the “Heavenly Hundred” and Western governments blamed Yanukovych and his forces, and recognized the new Maidan government.
In return, Russia escalated the conflict by annexing Crimea, where the majority of the population is ethnically Russian. Russia used a covert military intervention in this region. But public opinion polls showed that the absolute majority of Crimeans before and after the annexation supported joining Russia.
A poll conducted shortly before the start of the war in Donbas showed that most of its residents supported separatism, ranging from autonomy within Ukraine to independence or joining Russia. The majority of scholars who researched this conflict classify the war in Donbas as a civil war with direct Russian military interventions in support of pro-Russian separatists in August 2014 and January-February 2015. It is revealing that satellite photos and videos of deployment of Russian troops, and Western intelligence reports about such deployment currently near Ukraine, in Belarus and Transnistria now confirm that there are no Russian military units in Donbas, whereas there are currently many Russian military units stationed in Crimea.Resolution of the Ukraine-Russia conflict and the war in Donbas in Eastern Ukraine is greatly complicated by the dominant narratives of the Ukraine conflict.
An actual Russian-Ukrainian war would be devastating for Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin might use the current large military buildup near Ukraine either to try to force a peace deal on his preferred terms or to resort to some kind of military option. Such options might sooner or later include recognition of independence of separatist republics in Donbas and deployment of Russian military forces there, a limited armed conflict or even a full-scale war.
But there is still a possibility for a peaceful resolution of the Ukraine conflict. Recent visits by French and German leaders to Russia and Ukraine represent such efforts. A peaceful conflict resolution can be done via an international agreement that offers Ukraine European Union membership prospects provided that it fulfills accession criteria (such as democracy) in exchange for neutral status and resolving the conflict in Donbas based on the Minsk agreements. The Minsk agreements, which were signed in the Belarus capital, specify a ceasefire and granting a special status within Ukraine and self-government to the separatist-controlled part of Donbas after the elections there. But such peaceful resolution of the Ukraine conflict requires recognizing that its dominant narratives and its origins are false.
The Ukraine-Russia conflict has escalated to a very dangerous point The possibility that it can turn into an armed conflict, or even a war, has increased significantly and is real. But the Russian invasion, which was basically announced by the U.S. and British governments and media for February 16, has not happened, and Russia declared the partial withdrawal of its forces. Such war is hardly inevitable and can be avoided. However, the peaceful resolution of the Ukraine-Russia conflict and the war in Donbas in Eastern Ukraine is greatly complicated by the dominant narratives of the Ukraine conflict.
The narratives that are propagated by the Western governments and the mainstream media concerning the origin and the nature of the Ukraine conflict are truly Orwellian. They state that the pro-Russian government in Ukraine was ousted as result of peaceful mass Euromaidan protests in February 2014 and that President Viktor Yanukovych fled Ukraine because he ordered the massacre of the peaceful Maidan protesters by government forces. These protests took place on the main square in Kyiv, which is called Maidan, and they were directed against the Yanukovych government and his decision to suspend signing the EU association and free trade agreement. According to these narratives, Russia then annexed Crimea by using pure military force and launched a war with Ukraine in Donbas. These narratives assert that Ukraine is a sovereign democratic state which has a right to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in the future and that Russia plans to invade Ukraine within days or weeks.
Various evidence presented in studies by Western scholars who have researched the Ukraine conflict shows that these narratives are false. This mass killing of the Maidan movement’s own supporters — perpetrated by the oligarchic and far right elements of the Maidan alliance — made it possible for Maidan leaders to falsely blame the pro-Russian Yanukovych government and its police and security forces for the killing and then seize power in Ukraine. Western governments backed this undemocratic overthrow of the democratically elected Ukrainian government.
The absolute majority of wounded Maidan protesters testified at the Maidan massacre trial and investigation in Ukraine that they and other protesters were massacred by snipers from the Hotel Ukraina and other buildings, which were seized by the Maidan opposition alliance, or that they witnessed such snipers there. Synchronized videos show that specific times and directions of the shooting of the majority of specific protesters did not coincide with specific times and directions of shooting by Berkut anti-riot police officers who were charged in Ukraine with their massacre. The investigation and the media revealed no evidence of any order by Yanukovych or his ministers and commanders to massacre the Maidan protesters. In contrast, 14 self-admitted members of the Maidan sniper units confessed that they themselves or other Maidan snipers massacred the police or protesters, and that this mass killing was done under the orders of Maidan leaders and former leaders of the pro-Western government of Mikheil Saakashvili in Georgia. Several Maidan leaders and activists testified about specific involvement of Maidan leaders in this mass killing.
Moreover, two leaders of Ukraine’s far right Svoboda party stated that a representative of an unnamed Western government told them and other Maidan leaders a few weeks before the massacre that Western governments would turn on the Yanukovych government after casualties among protesters reached 100. The killed Maidan protesters were immediately called the “Heavenly Hundred” and Western governments blamed Yanukovych and his forces, and recognized the new Maidan government.
In return, Russia escalated the conflict by annexing Crimea, where the majority of the population is ethnically Russian. Russia used a covert military intervention in this region. But public opinion polls showed that the absolute majority of Crimeans before and after the annexation supported joining Russia.
A poll conducted shortly before the start of the war in Donbas showed that most of its residents supported separatism, ranging from autonomy within Ukraine to independence or joining Russia. The majority of scholars who researched this conflict classify the war in Donbas as a civil war with direct Russian military interventions in support of pro-Russian separatists in August 2014 and January-February 2015. It is revealing that satellite photos and videos of deployment of Russian troops, and Western intelligence reports about such deployment currently near Ukraine, in Belarus and Transnistria now confirm that there are no Russian military units in Donbas, whereas there are currently many Russian military units stationed in Crimea.Resolution of the Ukraine-Russia conflict and the war in Donbas in Eastern Ukraine is greatly complicated by the dominant narratives of the Ukraine conflict.
An actual Russian-Ukrainian war would be devastating for Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin might use the current large military buildup near Ukraine either to try to force a peace deal on his preferred terms or to resort to some kind of military option. Such options might sooner or later include recognition of independence of separatist republics in Donbas and deployment of Russian military forces there, a limited armed conflict or even a full-scale war.
But there is still a possibility for a peaceful resolution of the Ukraine conflict. Recent visits by French and German leaders to Russia and Ukraine represent such efforts. A peaceful conflict resolution can be done via an international agreement that offers Ukraine European Union membership prospects provided that it fulfills accession criteria (such as democracy) in exchange for neutral status and resolving the conflict in Donbas based on the Minsk agreements. The Minsk agreements, which were signed in the Belarus capital, specify a ceasefire and granting a special status within Ukraine and self-government to the separatist-controlled part of Donbas after the elections there. But such peaceful resolution of the Ukraine conflict requires recognizing that its dominant narratives and its origins are false.
THIRD WORLD USA
Rashida Tlaib Introduced a Landmark Bill to Dramatically Slash Child Poverty
An annual $600 fully refundable credit for adult dependents. This replaces the current nonrefundable $500 credit for adult dependents.
An annual $600/$1,200 fully refundable credit for single/married tax filers that phases out at $20,000/$40,000 of income. This replaces the non-child aspects of the current EITC and ensures that no family is cut back from their current level of tax credit benefits.
This policy would dramatically reduce child poverty in the United States. Relative to the current baseline, I estimate that child poverty would decline by two-thirds.
More importantly, the child allowance contained in this bill fully eliminates what we might call the child component of poverty, meaning that, after its enactment, no family would ever find themselves below the official poverty line solely because they have children. They may be in poverty for some other reason, such as unemployment, which should be addressed through other policymaking. But they will never be in poverty because of their children.
The universal design of the child allowance would make the program dramatically easier to administer. Because the SSA would not have to apply an income test, it would not need to gather any information from families other than what is necessary to send money to the relevant parent or guardian. It would not need to know the parent’s marital status, their income for the year, what tax filing status they will use, or other similar bits of information used in other programs.
Once enrolled at birth, the child benefit would go out every month until a child’s nineteenth birthday. Families would only ever need to interact with the SSA to update their banking information or the custody status of their child. This is contrasted with means-tested tax credit programs that require families to file paperwork every year.
This kind of program would bring the US child benefit system up to the level seen in countries like Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland, which have the lowest child poverty rates in the world. This is a proven design with a proven track record of success, and the United States would be wise to bring the program to its residents.
Rashida Tlaib Introduced a Landmark Bill to Dramatically Slash Child Poverty
JACOBIN
Last week, Rashida Tlaib and Mondaire Jones introduced the End Child Poverty Act in Congress. It's a watershed bill that would bring the US in line with social democratic countries that boast the world's lowest child poverty rates.
Representative Rashida Tlaib speaks during a House Financial Services Committee hearing in Washington, DC, on December 1, 2021. (Al Drago / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
On Thursday, Rashida Tlaib and Mondaire Jones introduced the End Child Poverty Act. The ECPA is by far the best child allowance proposal introduced in Congress and should serve as a blueprint for future Democratic efforts in this area of policy.
Current law delivers basic cash benefits to American families through three main tax credits: the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Child Tax Credit, and the Credit for Other Dependents. These credits are extremely complicated, duplicative of one another, and not available to the poorest families in the country.
The ECPA replaces this current tax credit mess with the following new programs:
A universal monthly child allowance set equal to the difference between the one-person poverty line and the two-person poverty line, which is currently $393 per month. This benefit would be paid out by the Social Security Administration (SSA) using the same rules that the SSA currently uses to pay out Supplement Security Income (SSI) and Survivors benefits to children. Children would be enrolled in the program at birth at the same time that they apply for their Social Security number.
Last week, Rashida Tlaib and Mondaire Jones introduced the End Child Poverty Act in Congress. It's a watershed bill that would bring the US in line with social democratic countries that boast the world's lowest child poverty rates.
Representative Rashida Tlaib speaks during a House Financial Services Committee hearing in Washington, DC, on December 1, 2021. (Al Drago / Bloomberg via Getty Images)
On Thursday, Rashida Tlaib and Mondaire Jones introduced the End Child Poverty Act. The ECPA is by far the best child allowance proposal introduced in Congress and should serve as a blueprint for future Democratic efforts in this area of policy.
Current law delivers basic cash benefits to American families through three main tax credits: the Earned Income Tax Credit, the Child Tax Credit, and the Credit for Other Dependents. These credits are extremely complicated, duplicative of one another, and not available to the poorest families in the country.
The ECPA replaces this current tax credit mess with the following new programs:
A universal monthly child allowance set equal to the difference between the one-person poverty line and the two-person poverty line, which is currently $393 per month. This benefit would be paid out by the Social Security Administration (SSA) using the same rules that the SSA currently uses to pay out Supplement Security Income (SSI) and Survivors benefits to children. Children would be enrolled in the program at birth at the same time that they apply for their Social Security number.
An annual $600 fully refundable credit for adult dependents. This replaces the current nonrefundable $500 credit for adult dependents.
An annual $600/$1,200 fully refundable credit for single/married tax filers that phases out at $20,000/$40,000 of income. This replaces the non-child aspects of the current EITC and ensures that no family is cut back from their current level of tax credit benefits.
This policy would dramatically reduce child poverty in the United States. Relative to the current baseline, I estimate that child poverty would decline by two-thirds.
More importantly, the child allowance contained in this bill fully eliminates what we might call the child component of poverty, meaning that, after its enactment, no family would ever find themselves below the official poverty line solely because they have children. They may be in poverty for some other reason, such as unemployment, which should be addressed through other policymaking. But they will never be in poverty because of their children.
The universal design of the child allowance would make the program dramatically easier to administer. Because the SSA would not have to apply an income test, it would not need to gather any information from families other than what is necessary to send money to the relevant parent or guardian. It would not need to know the parent’s marital status, their income for the year, what tax filing status they will use, or other similar bits of information used in other programs.
Once enrolled at birth, the child benefit would go out every month until a child’s nineteenth birthday. Families would only ever need to interact with the SSA to update their banking information or the custody status of their child. This is contrasted with means-tested tax credit programs that require families to file paperwork every year.
This kind of program would bring the US child benefit system up to the level seen in countries like Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and Finland, which have the lowest child poverty rates in the world. This is a proven design with a proven track record of success, and the United States would be wise to bring the program to its residents.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Matt Bruenig is the founder of People's Policy Project.
Matt Bruenig is the founder of People's Policy Project.
Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard Acquisition Won’t Save the Games Industry
On January 18, 2022, Microsoft announced it will be acquiring Activision Blizzard. This deal — struck for a record-setting $68.7 billion — will give Microsoft control of some of the most popular gaming franchises in the world. (Sean Do / Unsplash)
In 1995, Microsoft produced a truly bizarre pitch video for the press and the gaming public. Opening with footage from Doom, id Software’s iconic first-person shooter, the camera pulls back from the violence to reveal that it’s not Doom’s lone space marine gunning down possessed soldiers, but instead Microsoft’s chairman Bill Gates, who has been digitally inserted into Doom through the magic of blue screen. Wearing an ill-fitting black trench coat and wielding a shotgun, Gates speaks in a halting, flat monotone: “These games are getting really realistic. Next year I might even play in the big Doom tournament.” The video ends with a peal of ominous laughter and the question, “Who do you want to execute today?”
The video was made to promote Windows 95 as a gaming platform, but the real message from Gates seems to be, “I can take control of the games you play.” It took on new resonance when Microsoft announced in 2020 that it was acquiring id Software and several other game studios belonging to ZeniMax Media. Microsoft now owns Doom.
Microsoft has always been a highly defensive player in the games industry, making moves to avoid being dislodged from its monopoly position in the tech economy by upstart rivals. When Bill Gates inserted himself into Doom, he was doing it at a time when Doom was installed on more personal computers than Windows 95. The original Xbox video game console was developed over concerns that Sony’s PlayStation would conquer the living room and turn people away from Windows PCs. In both instances, Microsoft was able to secure a crucial circuit of capital for itself. Through Windows 95’s DirectX technology, Microsoft was able to create and enforce a set of convenient technical standards for graphics and sound cards, consolidating its hold on the majority of the computer gaming market. With the Xbox, Microsoft gave itself a foothold in the “console wars” and the future of online play through its Xbox Live subscription service.
Over the decades, Microsoft’s bid to consolidate more of the games industry for itself has only intensified. On January 18, 2022, Microsoft announced it will be acquiring Activision Blizzard. This deal — struck for a record-setting $68.7 billion — will give Microsoft control of some of the most popular gaming franchises in the world: StarCraft, Warcraft, Diablo, Call of Duty, and Candy Crush.
This acquisition is good for Microsoft, which will now be the third-largest firm in games behind Sony and Tencent. But it’s bad for game workers at Activision Blizzard, who are fighting for their rights at a company that is synonymous with workplace abuse in the games industry.
In its press release, Microsoft touts that it will “bring the joy and community of gaming to everyone, across every device.” Microsoft is framing the deal as ushering in a new era of community and convenience, when it actually represents control — control of technology, of audiences, of market share, and most importantly, control over workers.
Undermining Worker Power
The acquisition comes at a time of significant turmoil for the games industry’s second-largest publisher. Activision Blizzard is currently facing a lawsuit from the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) and a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigation, for presiding over a systemic culture of sexual harassment, abuse, discrimination, and retaliation against female employees. The range of abuses is truly monstrous in its scope. The DFEH lawsuit describes a disturbing “frat boy” culture where female employees at Activision Blizzard and its subsidiaries were regularly subjected to groping and unwanted sexual advances at work and professional events by their male coworkers, often with the encouragement of work supervisors. Complaints to HR were ignored or led to significant retaliation against the complainants.
Despite Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick professing ignorance about these events, a Wall Street Journal report in November confirmed that Kotick knew about the widespread misconduct at Activision Blizzard and did nothing. In fact, Kotick himself once issued a death threat against a female assistant in 2006. These events have led to walkouts, strikes, and the formation of collective workers’ group the ABK Workers Alliance, and has also seen the attempted unionization of quality assurance (QA) workers at subsidiary Raven Software.
While current Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella praises Kotick for his “commitment to real culture change,” Activision Blizzard continues to do everything it can to put a stop to growing worker power within the company. Activision Blizzard refuses to recognize Raven Software’s QA union, Game Workers Alliance, and has also demanded that all 300 employees at Raven should have a say in whether or not the studio should be unionized, a clear union-busting tactic. Game workers at Activision Blizzard have already filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) due to threats, intimidation, and discipline employees have received for publicly discussing and organizing against the company’s abusive practices.
Recently, Activision Blizzard’s VP of quality assurance posted a message in the company’s Slack channel criticizing ongoing unionization efforts, stating that “a union doesn’t do anything to produce world-class games, and the bargaining process is not typically quick, often reduces flexibility, and can be adversarial and lead to negative publicity.” Shockingly, Bobby Kotick has been allowed to remain CEO of Activision Blizzard until the acquisition closes in 2023 despite being at the center of Activision Blizzard’s abusive work culture.
Microsoft’s own history of poor labor practices should indicate that the tech giant will not be receptive to organizing efforts at Activision Blizzard. In December, Microsoft launched Halo Infinite, the latest installment in its flagship first-person-shooter franchise, but the development and launch of the game was anything but smooth. A report from Bloomberg on the game’s troubled development details the problems created by an overreliance on contract labor and a Microsoft policy that prevents contractors from working for more than eighteen months. Bug testers on contract to Microsoft saw their jobs terminated after they successfully unionized in 2014.
When asked about ongoing unionization efforts at Activision, Microsoft’s CEO of gaming, Phil Spencer, declined to give any specific comment, saying he wasn’t an expert on unions. It is galling but unsurprising that amid some of the worst abuses in a famously abusive industry, efforts by workers to establish real accountability and protection for themselves continue to be undermined.
Enter the Micro-verse
In an interview with the Washington Post’s Gene Park, Spencer outlines the real priorities of Microsoft’s acquisition: “I was looking at the IP list, I mean let’s go!” He struck a very different tone last November, when he criticized the “horrific events and actions” at Activision Blizzard and stated that Microsoft would be reevaluating its relationship with the company. Most people probably did not suspect that reevaluating its relationship meant fully absorbing the troubled publisher. But as Activision Blizzard’s share price plummeted amid multiple scandals, it appears that Microsoft saw its most significant opportunity to stake a claim in the tech world’s latest fad — “the metaverse” — ahead of its competitors.
The metaverse has become the tech industry’s go-to buzzword for the next “iteration” of the internet, a nebulously defined conceptual space of avatars, virtual worlds, and virtual reality in which to work, play, and shop. Although sold as a utopian vision of freedom and social connection, what it really means is doubling down on the creation of proprietary platforms with “value-added” services. One of the big promises of the metaverse is “interoperability” — the idea being that if you buy a cool, customizable costume in one proprietary virtual space, your avatar be able to wear it in another. Microsoft’s recent run of acquisitions from Mojang Studios (creators of Minecraft) to ZeniMax to Activision Blizzard reveal what this will look like in practice. There may very well be some kind of “interoperability” of purchased game items but only within the walled garden of your chosen video game monopoly.
The metaverse being built by Facebook, Microsoft, and other big tech firms should be seen as an intensification of what Nick Srnicek calls “platform capitalism,” a term highlighting how digital platforms and the users (and data) they aggregate have become central actors, and resources, in many high- and middle-income capitalist economies. Under platform capitalism, creating and maintaining audiences that can be mined for data and future profit is of the utmost importance. Microsoft’s Game Pass, a “Netflix for games” subscription service that allows players to download and play hundreds of games for a monthly fee, already boasts 25 million users, and Microsoft is looking to bolster these numbers before competitors like Sony begin to roll out their own versions. The 400 million monthly users that Activision Blizzard attracts to its most popular games are just as important to Microsoft as their intellectual property rights.
The focus on keeping audiences engaged so that they may be tempted to purchase cosmetics and other micro-commodities exerts further pressure on workers. Games are no longer discrete experiences, but now “live services” that must be continually updated. Issues like “crunch,” which sees game workers forced into punishing amounts of unpaid overtime, are exacerbated by the need to maintain the recursive consumption of free-to-play online games. This means 60-plus hour workweeks, no sleep, and burnout.
To win the game, the workers must defeat the bosses. The ABK Workers Alliance continues to organize and fight on. The Communications Workers of America (CWA) helped organize Raven Software’s QA union and have called for a further investigation of Activision Blizzard for misleading investors after it claimed to the SEC recently that it did not know of any labor issues. Raven Software’s QA union is also filing for an election with the NLRB, even as Activision Blizzard tries to stifle it by assigning members of the QA team to other studios. Only when game workers can fully exercise collective power will the bosses of Microsoft and Activision Blizzard be truly doomed.
JACOBIN
Microsoft’s $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard will make things worse for game workers — and entrench some of the most dystopian trends in video games.
Microsoft’s $68.7 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard will make things worse for game workers — and entrench some of the most dystopian trends in video games.
On January 18, 2022, Microsoft announced it will be acquiring Activision Blizzard. This deal — struck for a record-setting $68.7 billion — will give Microsoft control of some of the most popular gaming franchises in the world. (Sean Do / Unsplash)
In 1995, Microsoft produced a truly bizarre pitch video for the press and the gaming public. Opening with footage from Doom, id Software’s iconic first-person shooter, the camera pulls back from the violence to reveal that it’s not Doom’s lone space marine gunning down possessed soldiers, but instead Microsoft’s chairman Bill Gates, who has been digitally inserted into Doom through the magic of blue screen. Wearing an ill-fitting black trench coat and wielding a shotgun, Gates speaks in a halting, flat monotone: “These games are getting really realistic. Next year I might even play in the big Doom tournament.” The video ends with a peal of ominous laughter and the question, “Who do you want to execute today?”
The video was made to promote Windows 95 as a gaming platform, but the real message from Gates seems to be, “I can take control of the games you play.” It took on new resonance when Microsoft announced in 2020 that it was acquiring id Software and several other game studios belonging to ZeniMax Media. Microsoft now owns Doom.
Microsoft has always been a highly defensive player in the games industry, making moves to avoid being dislodged from its monopoly position in the tech economy by upstart rivals. When Bill Gates inserted himself into Doom, he was doing it at a time when Doom was installed on more personal computers than Windows 95. The original Xbox video game console was developed over concerns that Sony’s PlayStation would conquer the living room and turn people away from Windows PCs. In both instances, Microsoft was able to secure a crucial circuit of capital for itself. Through Windows 95’s DirectX technology, Microsoft was able to create and enforce a set of convenient technical standards for graphics and sound cards, consolidating its hold on the majority of the computer gaming market. With the Xbox, Microsoft gave itself a foothold in the “console wars” and the future of online play through its Xbox Live subscription service.
Over the decades, Microsoft’s bid to consolidate more of the games industry for itself has only intensified. On January 18, 2022, Microsoft announced it will be acquiring Activision Blizzard. This deal — struck for a record-setting $68.7 billion — will give Microsoft control of some of the most popular gaming franchises in the world: StarCraft, Warcraft, Diablo, Call of Duty, and Candy Crush.
This acquisition is good for Microsoft, which will now be the third-largest firm in games behind Sony and Tencent. But it’s bad for game workers at Activision Blizzard, who are fighting for their rights at a company that is synonymous with workplace abuse in the games industry.
In its press release, Microsoft touts that it will “bring the joy and community of gaming to everyone, across every device.” Microsoft is framing the deal as ushering in a new era of community and convenience, when it actually represents control — control of technology, of audiences, of market share, and most importantly, control over workers.
Undermining Worker Power
The acquisition comes at a time of significant turmoil for the games industry’s second-largest publisher. Activision Blizzard is currently facing a lawsuit from the California Department of Fair Employment and Housing (DFEH) and a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) investigation, for presiding over a systemic culture of sexual harassment, abuse, discrimination, and retaliation against female employees. The range of abuses is truly monstrous in its scope. The DFEH lawsuit describes a disturbing “frat boy” culture where female employees at Activision Blizzard and its subsidiaries were regularly subjected to groping and unwanted sexual advances at work and professional events by their male coworkers, often with the encouragement of work supervisors. Complaints to HR were ignored or led to significant retaliation against the complainants.
Despite Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick professing ignorance about these events, a Wall Street Journal report in November confirmed that Kotick knew about the widespread misconduct at Activision Blizzard and did nothing. In fact, Kotick himself once issued a death threat against a female assistant in 2006. These events have led to walkouts, strikes, and the formation of collective workers’ group the ABK Workers Alliance, and has also seen the attempted unionization of quality assurance (QA) workers at subsidiary Raven Software.
While current Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella praises Kotick for his “commitment to real culture change,” Activision Blizzard continues to do everything it can to put a stop to growing worker power within the company. Activision Blizzard refuses to recognize Raven Software’s QA union, Game Workers Alliance, and has also demanded that all 300 employees at Raven should have a say in whether or not the studio should be unionized, a clear union-busting tactic. Game workers at Activision Blizzard have already filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) due to threats, intimidation, and discipline employees have received for publicly discussing and organizing against the company’s abusive practices.
Recently, Activision Blizzard’s VP of quality assurance posted a message in the company’s Slack channel criticizing ongoing unionization efforts, stating that “a union doesn’t do anything to produce world-class games, and the bargaining process is not typically quick, often reduces flexibility, and can be adversarial and lead to negative publicity.” Shockingly, Bobby Kotick has been allowed to remain CEO of Activision Blizzard until the acquisition closes in 2023 despite being at the center of Activision Blizzard’s abusive work culture.
Microsoft’s own history of poor labor practices should indicate that the tech giant will not be receptive to organizing efforts at Activision Blizzard. In December, Microsoft launched Halo Infinite, the latest installment in its flagship first-person-shooter franchise, but the development and launch of the game was anything but smooth. A report from Bloomberg on the game’s troubled development details the problems created by an overreliance on contract labor and a Microsoft policy that prevents contractors from working for more than eighteen months. Bug testers on contract to Microsoft saw their jobs terminated after they successfully unionized in 2014.
When asked about ongoing unionization efforts at Activision, Microsoft’s CEO of gaming, Phil Spencer, declined to give any specific comment, saying he wasn’t an expert on unions. It is galling but unsurprising that amid some of the worst abuses in a famously abusive industry, efforts by workers to establish real accountability and protection for themselves continue to be undermined.
Enter the Micro-verse
In an interview with the Washington Post’s Gene Park, Spencer outlines the real priorities of Microsoft’s acquisition: “I was looking at the IP list, I mean let’s go!” He struck a very different tone last November, when he criticized the “horrific events and actions” at Activision Blizzard and stated that Microsoft would be reevaluating its relationship with the company. Most people probably did not suspect that reevaluating its relationship meant fully absorbing the troubled publisher. But as Activision Blizzard’s share price plummeted amid multiple scandals, it appears that Microsoft saw its most significant opportunity to stake a claim in the tech world’s latest fad — “the metaverse” — ahead of its competitors.
The metaverse has become the tech industry’s go-to buzzword for the next “iteration” of the internet, a nebulously defined conceptual space of avatars, virtual worlds, and virtual reality in which to work, play, and shop. Although sold as a utopian vision of freedom and social connection, what it really means is doubling down on the creation of proprietary platforms with “value-added” services. One of the big promises of the metaverse is “interoperability” — the idea being that if you buy a cool, customizable costume in one proprietary virtual space, your avatar be able to wear it in another. Microsoft’s recent run of acquisitions from Mojang Studios (creators of Minecraft) to ZeniMax to Activision Blizzard reveal what this will look like in practice. There may very well be some kind of “interoperability” of purchased game items but only within the walled garden of your chosen video game monopoly.
The metaverse being built by Facebook, Microsoft, and other big tech firms should be seen as an intensification of what Nick Srnicek calls “platform capitalism,” a term highlighting how digital platforms and the users (and data) they aggregate have become central actors, and resources, in many high- and middle-income capitalist economies. Under platform capitalism, creating and maintaining audiences that can be mined for data and future profit is of the utmost importance. Microsoft’s Game Pass, a “Netflix for games” subscription service that allows players to download and play hundreds of games for a monthly fee, already boasts 25 million users, and Microsoft is looking to bolster these numbers before competitors like Sony begin to roll out their own versions. The 400 million monthly users that Activision Blizzard attracts to its most popular games are just as important to Microsoft as their intellectual property rights.
The focus on keeping audiences engaged so that they may be tempted to purchase cosmetics and other micro-commodities exerts further pressure on workers. Games are no longer discrete experiences, but now “live services” that must be continually updated. Issues like “crunch,” which sees game workers forced into punishing amounts of unpaid overtime, are exacerbated by the need to maintain the recursive consumption of free-to-play online games. This means 60-plus hour workweeks, no sleep, and burnout.
To win the game, the workers must defeat the bosses. The ABK Workers Alliance continues to organize and fight on. The Communications Workers of America (CWA) helped organize Raven Software’s QA union and have called for a further investigation of Activision Blizzard for misleading investors after it claimed to the SEC recently that it did not know of any labor issues. Raven Software’s QA union is also filing for an election with the NLRB, even as Activision Blizzard tries to stifle it by assigning members of the QA team to other studios. Only when game workers can fully exercise collective power will the bosses of Microsoft and Activision Blizzard be truly doomed.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Alexander Ross is a writer and PhD candidate based at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information. He specializes in studying the influence of digital platforms on the games industry.
Alexander Ross is a writer and PhD candidate based at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Information. He specializes in studying the influence of digital platforms on the games industry.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)