This Side of the Blue: 19 October 2022
This Side of the Blue: 19 October 2022
China signals its decline with Xi's next term, the Gandhi Family presides over the Congress Party's decline in India, and Liz Truss accelerates Britain's decline.
This week’s newsletter is focused on three forms of power and leadership in three major powers. Each distinct from the other, but calamitous in their own way.
Chairman For Life
This week it will be announced at the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party that Xi Jinping will break the previous two-term limit for Chinese presidents and be installed in the role for a third term. It is likely that this will also make him president for life, making him the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao, but also the most dangerous – to Chinese people, to ethnic minorities like Uyghurs and Tibetans, to Taiwan, and potentially to the stability of the Indo-Pacific region.
The recent success of China has been tied to its ability to institutionalise authoritarianism. This provided a check on the abuses of power common within dictatorships, but also allowed the party-state to govern with quality information, and not to have decision-makers mired in flattery, obsequiousness, and be shielded from reality. China had avoided the structural failings of dictatorships that cannot hear truth and instead function on personal whims.
Xi’s self-appointment is therefore a sign of Chinese decline. As China weakens it may become more belligerent, for fear of losing power within the international system. For authoritarian states power is everything, and for a leader-for-life – as Xi will probably make himself – any sign of weakness is a threat to not just his role, but also his life.
One of the many paradoxes of collectivist ideologies is that they not only concentrate power in a single individual, but they also make power for this individual more dangerous. Conformity and submission exist in a permanent tension with discord and resistance. The more a leader tries to instil a program of the former, the more he creates its counter-effect. For a state as large and economically connected as China these counter-effects may ripple out in a number of highly destabilising ways.
Gandhi Family Matters
In Asia’s other behemoth, India, there was another highly consequential internal party election. After heading the once-dominant Congress Party for two and a half decades, Sonia Gandhi and her son, Rahul have – at least formally – decided to stand aside from the party’s presidency.
The contest was between the erudite and effete, Shashi Tharoor – a man of another Indian era, Anglophile in his mannerisms, but of the Nehruvian tradition of being highly critical of Britain's colonial behaviour in India. A former high-ranking official at the United Nations and at ease within Europe and America’s elite circles, he is the fantasy Indian prime minister of every Western capital. His opponent was Mallikarjun Kharge, a former cabinet minister of little note and the Gandhi Family’s surrogate.
In the end it was no contest. With the support of the Gandhis, Kharge secured 7,897 out of the party’s 9,385 delegates. Kapil Komireddi has written an article utterly contemptuous of the process that is worth a read.
For all his pretensions, Tharoor remains the only genuine figure within the Congress Party capable of challenging the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) both intellectually and electorally. India’s first-past-the-post voting system disguises the true level of support for the BJP. The party currently holds 60 per cent of the seats in the Lok Sabha (lower house) with just 36 per cent of the vote at the 2019 election. The party’s grip on the country is not ironclad, but defeating it requires a credible and well-organised opposition – including cross-party cooperation. As the only other party with a national reach, the Congress should lead such an opposition. But credibility and good organisation won’t come from the Gandhi Family, either directly or via a puppet.
The Congress Party had an opportunity to act with responsibility towards India, and due to India’s importance, to the wider Indo-Pacific region as well. But it failed. Unwilling to return the party to its original ideals, and allowing India to move further away from these ideals, the Gandhi Family would rather see the party rot – and India with it – than relinquish control.
Truss’s Turbulence
If Xi and the Gandhis are long term self-defeating projects, British prime minister, Liz Truss, has ruined both her reputation – and what’s left of Britain's – in record time. Her chaotic first few weeks in the position have not only done severe economic damage, but stripped her of whatever authority she may have any upon winning the Conservative Party leadership contest in early September. She may still hold the title of prime minister, but she is in no way leading the country.
The turbulence of Truss’s tenure is emblematic of the state of a number of conservative parties throughout the West at present. The pace of change – driven by the freer markets that these parties themselves, and prominently Truss herself, have advocated for – has created a great unease and even a psychological dissociation from the modern world. This has transformed them from parties that professed to value sobriety and durability into agents of instability, flailing uncontrollably in multiple directions in search of some kind of emotional security.
What is ironic is that, despite her predecessor’s chaotic personality and shameless self-serving support for the disaster of Brexit, Boris Johnson had a better understanding of the psychology of conservatism - the conservative disposition in Michael Oakeshott’s framing – and the economic ideas that were better placed to placate it. The fantasy held by Truss and her now former Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng that the incessant churn – both economic and social – of freer markets could provide the country security is a special form of lunacy. Man does not live by growth alone.
Yet there remains a strong rhetorical allegiance to a pure form of economic liberalism within conservative parties, despite how difficult these parties find it to deal with its outcomes. It’s a masochism that requires professional help, not electoral rewards.
This Week’s Essential Articles and Podcasts:
Michael Schuman, The Atlantic
“In practice, Xi governs much like the old emperors. Under Xi, the government is taking on characteristics of the imperial courts. Xi has concentrated so much power in his person that he reigns not unlike an emperor. His statements instantaneously become policy, and state officials, the latter-day version of royal courtiers, jump to fulfill his wishes.”
Eero Epner, Eesti Express
This is an extraordinary article featuring interviews with the counterintelligence directors from Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania. They are blunt in their assessments of Russia, and how it will only ever see negotiation as an exploitable weakness. I travelled through these three states in mid to late-August and was in Riga when a Soviet-era erected obelisk was brought down. Speaking to people in these countries there was a clarity about Russia that the West seems to lack. But they held no fear, knowing that Russia cannot be shown any. For such small states their defiance is admirable. Their knowledge should be given far greater prominence.
The Sources of Russian Misconduct
Boris Bondarev, Foreign Affairs
“Resigning meant throwing away a twenty-year career as a Russian diplomat and, with it, many of my friendships. But the decision was a long time coming. When I joined the ministry in 2002, it was during a period of relative openness, when we diplomats could work cordially with our counterparts from other countries. Still, it was apparent from my earliest days that Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs was deeply flawed. Even then, it discouraged critical thinking, and over the course of my tenure, it became increasingly belligerent. I stayed on anyway, managing the cognitive dissonance by hoping that I could use whatever power I had to moderate my country’s international behaviour. But certain events can make a person accept things they didn’t dare to before.”
Fiona Hill: ‘Elon Musk is Transmitting a Message for Putin’
Maura Reynolds, Politico
“Elon Musk has enormous leverage as well as incredible prominence. Putin plays the egos of big men, gives them a sense that they can play a role. But in reality, they’re just direct transmitters of messages from Vladimir Putin…He is basically short-circuiting the diplomatic process. He wants to lay out his terms and see how many people are going to pick them up. All of this is an effort to get Americans to take themselves out of the war and hand over Ukraine and Ukrainian territory to Russia.”
More Proof That This Really is The End of History
Francis Fukuyama, The Atlantic
This is a terribly titled article, one that is designed to agitate people who have neither read nor understood Fukuyama’s original essay and book, but love getting upset about it. This article from Aeon is a good overview of his arguments.
“Russia and China both have argued that liberal democracy is in long-term decline, and that their brand of muscular authoritarian government is able to act decisively and get things done while their democratic rivals debate, dither, and fail to deliver on their promises…Over the past year, though, it has become evident that there are key weaknesses at the core of these strong states. The weaknesses are of two sorts. First, the concentration of power in the hands of a single leader at the top all but guarantees low-quality decision making, and over time will produce truly catastrophic consequences. Second, the absence of public discussion and debate in “strong” states, and of any mechanism of accountability, means that the leader’s support is shallow, and can erode at a moment’s notice.”
The Uncomfortable Truths That Could Yet Defeat Fascism
Anand Giridharadas, New York Times
“What the country is trying to do is hard. Alloying a country from all of humankind, with freedom and dignity and equality for every kind of person, is a goal as complicated and elusive as it is noble. And the road to get there is bumpy, because it has yet to be paved. Embracing a bigger “we” is hard.”
Biden Declares War on Chinese Semiconductor Industry
Noah Smith, Noahpinion, Substack
“For the past two or three years, China has been embarked on an all-out effort to build a domestic chip industry that can rival that of the U.S. and its East Asian allies (Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan)...China analysts have expressed confidence that the country would eventually be able to achieve its goal of self-sufficiency, probably more quickly than scoffing Americans expected…This was probably why Biden took action now. If he had withheld the threat of semiconductor export controls as insurance against a possible future invasion of Taiwan, there’s a good chance that by the time China was ready to attack, it would have largely immunised itself against this economic weapon.”
The Beginning of the End of the Islamic Republic
Masih Alinejad, Foreign Affairs
“The compulsory wearing of the hijab is to the Islamic Republic what the Berlin Wall was to communism, a symbol not just of power and endurance but of vulnerability. The Berlin Wall was also an admission of the fragility of the communist system, which depended on exercising great control over people. Similarly, compulsory hijab laws reflect the Islamic Republic’s fear of allowing its citizens personal freedoms and its intent to control society by treating women as if they are pieces of property to be corralled and protected. Once the Berlin Wall fell, communism was doomed. The same fate awaits the Islamic Republic once women can throw off their veils and participate in social life as men do.”
How India’s Ruling Party Erodes Democracy
Ashutosh Varshney, Journal of Democracy
“India's democratic backsliding began with the rise to power of Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the 2014 elections. Five years later, the party won an even bigger parliamentary majority. The BJP now runs not only the central government, but also all but ten of the 28 states, whether on its own or allied with other parties. Though India has not regressed democratically by the criteria of electoral contestation and participation, it has failed to ensure that the rights of Muslims and other minorities are respected. It has also impaired freedom of expression and freedom of association. Electoral democracy is thus coming into conflict with the broader notion of democracy, electoral as well as non-electoral, that India's 1950 Constitution enshrines.”
Subject to Power Podcast, Elle Kamihira
“Despite great social diversity across the planet, it is an observable fact that males subordinate females across almost all human cultures. Elle speaks with securities scholar Dr. Valerie Hudson about how this ancient sexual order came to be, the role male violence has played and continue to play, and how the persistent and systematic subordination of women by men shape the wider political order and what implications it has for global security and development.”
Hudson’s book The First Political Order is essential for understanding the connection between individual and state-based violence. I highly recommend it.
As Ukraine Goes, So Goes the World (audio)
Timothy Synder, Thinking About…, Substack
A lecture delivered by Timothy Synder at the University of Connecticut on the perspective Russians have of Ukraine (and the Ukrainian people) and how the Ukrainian resistance is a model. That even those of us who live in societies where democracy isn’t under threat there is a perpetual struggle to keep it this way.
Sweden’s Incoming Prime Minister Shifts Right
Charlie Duxbury, Politico.eu
“In essence, Sweden’s days of aspiring to be a “humanitarian superpower” are over”
I’ve been in Sweden since July, and have watched the election campaign and the negotiations to form a government unfold. While the three-party coalition of the Moderates, Christian Democrats and Liberals have formed a minority government, they require parliamentary support from the far-right Sweden Democrats. The price the SD have asked for this is high, and the three parties have submitted themselves to it (not without significant internal resistance from the Liberals). Moderate prime minister Ulf Kristersson is effectively running an SD platform, with SD “liaisons” within each ministry to oversee decision-making.
There was no discussion of a grand coalition being formed with the Social Democrats (who remain the largest party). The three parties of the government wanted power more than they were concerned about the country’s liberal democracy, its decency and its reputation. As is often the case, conservative parties have bent over backwards for the far-right believing this will placate them or even enable them to control them. But instead they’ve shown their weakness and the SD will see this as an opportunity to press for more radical concessions.
Danielle Smith’s Populist Playbook: Make the Dominant Feel Marginalised
Jared Wesley, CBC
Liz Truss wasn’t the only new leader to be having a difficult start to her new role. In Alberta, Danielle Smith’s premiership began chaotically, and this is before she has even introduced the “Sovereignty Act” – a piece of unconstitutional lunacy that will attempt to exclude Alberta from having to follow any federal laws Smith may not like. Passing this bill was the centrepiece of Smith’s successful campaign to win the leadership of the United Conservative Party, and take over as the province’s premier. This piece provides a good overview of the radicalism of Smith’s politics and the political terrain in Canada’s new problem child province.
Kwasi Kwarteng Was the Wrong Kind of Clever
Dominic Sandbrook, Unherd
“You might assume from all this that Kwarteng is a fool. But he really isn’t a fool. Giving school talks, I’ve twice come across people who taught him, and both told me he was the cleverest boy they’d ever known. Were they wrong? Obviously not, for when you look at his biography, it’s a proud parent’s dream…
For much of his gilded life, then, Kwarteng knew only success. And when he looked forward, he could reasonably expect more in the future. When he daydreamed, he surely imagined himself as a titanic reforming Chancellor to rank alongside William Gladstone or Sir Geoffrey Howe — and perhaps even as Prime Minister. And now? He’s the answer to a quiz question, the 38-day Chancellor whose tax bombshell exploded in his own face.”