This Side Of The Blue: 9 November 2022
The U.S Midterms' reduced sense of doom, our current polycrisis, and why Elon Musk is becoming a security threat. Plus this week's essential reading and listening
Moderate Midterm Doom
It may be an unfortunate sign of the times that we can feel relief that the Midterm elections in the United States only produced a moderate level of doom. The prospect of large majorities in both the House of Representatives and the Senate for the Republican Party had created a sense of impending crisis. But the results have been slight relief. Even if Republican Party controls the House there should hopefully be an overall majority to maintain support for the defence of Ukraine, which is the current most pressing foreign policy concern that was under threat.
Usually in such a strict binary political system like the U.S voters think that the solution to current problems – like high inflation – is to simply vote for the party not currently in power. This calculation now seems to be diminished. The small margin of victory in the House is an indication that even with highly favourable conditions it may now be difficult for the Republican Party to achieve strong victories. It seems plenty of voters do consider the threat to democracy a “kitchen table” issue.
This is positive for the defence of democracy globally. Of course, to anyone who lives in a country with strong democratic institutions the idea of the U.S as a “beacon of democracy” is laughable. However, as long as the U.S has democratic institutions – as flawed as they may be – the country plays an outsized role in the defence of democracy due to its overwhelming power and influence.
There is obviously still the threat of extremists choosing violence if they cannot find a path to power democratically. However, as unlikely as it may seem due to the fervour (and fever) of Republican politics, these results may set the party back on the path towards normalisation. This may not come as quickly as those of us who worry about the global consequences of continued U.S instability would like, but it’s a cautious optimism that we should maintain.
Are We In A Polycrisis?
However, this cautious optimism shouldn’t overlook the fact that the world is currently facing a number of interwoven and overlapping critical problems. What we are currently experiencing is being referred to as a “polycrisis,” which requires us to not simply understand each separate problem - from economic uncertainty and inequality, to political instability and war, and the threat of climate change – in isolation, but to understand their relationship to each other, and how collectively they produce greater harm than their immediate components.
Problems become crises when they challenge our ability to respond to them effectively. Despite war in Europe, our current environmental crisis should be considered the primary pillar of our polycrisis because unlike economic or political problems we’ve now placed some solutions out of our reach. Even if we limit global warming to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels - the best case scenario – this will still include persistent extreme weather events.
These various shocks may not be global in scale, but they will occur with enough frequency and in enough locations that their effects will compound. This year alone we have seen serious flooding this year in Pakistan, Australia, South Africa, Venezuela, and Nigeria - while much of Europe was in serious drought during the summer. Travelling around through eastern Europe in the past few months it was obvious to the naked eye that water levels in major rivers in Poland and Lithuania were severely low.
Environmental shocks clearly come with major economic costs and other forms of insecurity like housing and food, but they are also closely related to political instability. When thinking about how climate change has been politicised we should understand that denial of its reality was not simply a rejection of science. It was denialism in the psychological sense – an inability to cope emotionally with a problem, often leading to aggravated behaviour driven by these unstable emotions. It is these “animal spirits” that are the driving forces of our polycrisis. How we get a handle on ourselves will be the first step to addressing this challenge.
Elon’s Musk
It may seem like the fuss over Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter – and his on-going attempts to destroy it (while disingenuously claiming to do the opposite) – is a concern only for the chattering classes who love to use the platform. Yet there are a number of incredibly important issues that surround Musk and why his behaviour would be considered a serious problem for the United States.
Despite being someone who doesn’t seem particularly sharp (or at least lacks any self-awareness), Musk has become the proprietor of a number of critical technologies – from electric vehicles, to satellites, rockets and now communications – that places him at the heart of a many national security concerns, and especially at the centre of the new US strategy to limit technological transfer to adversaries.
Tesla’s two biggest selling models are constructed in China, making Musk beholden to the Chinese Communist Party who are not only keen to obtain Tesla's technology, but to also leverage Musk’s for their own purposes. Alongside this, the Starlink satellite communication system has been a vital tool for Ukraine in its defence against Russia’s invasion, but Musk has threatened to cut off Kyiv’s access to it due a naïve belief the war can be ended through appeasement of Vladimir Putin. Because Musk is unable to be trusted, there is the potential that the Pentagon may nationalise the technology as a key strategic asset.
Musk’s acquisition of Twitter compounds these problems because it puts him in charge of a media tool that has an outsized influence on how information is disseminated, and in turn how societies maintain stability. Due to his personal resentments, Musk is not content to simply be wealthy and take pride in his technological achievements, he feels the need to control “the discourse” as well. Yet since purchasing Twitter his thin skin has revealed how personally unsuited he is to owning such a platform.
There are two theories to understand Musk’s behaviour, although they can both work in unison. The first is that Musk is a “chaos climber” - someone who sees personal opportunity in creating social havoc. The second is that of Musk is a “counter-elite” – people who are clearly of an elite class but who nonetheless use their wealth, power and status to attack existing norms and institutions. The theory is that societies face serious structural damage and potential collapse when an overpopulation of elites creates too many counter-elites who resent the status of their peers. That the world’s richest man and the chaotic former president of the U.S are both obvious counter-elites is a clear indication that the U.S is strangely being attacked by some of its most successful citizens.
This Week’s Essential Reading and Listening
Ben Rhodes - The Atlantic
“I walked out into Taipei streets filled with people and a pulsing array of advertising. Commuters who’d worked late streamed onto the elevated metro. Packs of teenagers laughed on street corners. All totally ordinary. And yet, to preserve this, Taiwan has to find some mix of the approaches that I’d heard about: preparing for a war while avoiding it; talking to China without being coerced by it; drawing closer to the U.S. without being reduced to a chess piece on the board of a great game; tending to a young democracy without letting divisions weaken it; asserting a unique identity without becoming an independent country.”
Ramachandra Guha - Foreign Policy
“Democratic institutions are far weaker in India than in the U.K. or the United States. And as an individual, too, Modi represents a far greater threat to his country’s democratic future than Johnson or Trump ever could. For one, he has been a full-time politician for far longer than they have been, with much greater experience in how to manipulate public institutions to serve his own purposes. Second, he is far more committed to his political beliefs than Johnson and Trump are to theirs. While Johnson and Trump are consumed almost wholly by vanity and personal glory, Modi is part narcissist but also part ideologue. He lives and embodies Hindu majoritarianism in a much thoroughgoing manner than Trump lives white supremacy or Johnson embodies xenophobic Little Englandism. Third, in the enactment and fulfilment of his ideological dream, Modi has as his instrument the RSS, whose organisational strength and capacity for resource mobilisation far exceed any right-wing organisation in the U.K. or the United States.”
The Indian Diaspora Has Arrived
Shashi Tharoor - Project Syndicate
“Ironically, some of the traits that Indians celebrate when applauding the success of their diaspora are rooted in values and traditions that India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party is seeking to suppress. In BJP-ruled India, chauvinist Hindutva hyper-nationalism threatens diversity, and uniformity and obedience to the new national narrative have come to trump individual initiative and freedom of thought. It is sobering that the virtues being hailed in Indians around the world might soon be more apparent in the diaspora than they are at home.”
Walter Webson: For Us, Climate Change Is Life And Death
Elizabeth Meager - The New Statesman
“For small island states, this is not just about survival, however. “We’re also talking about the ability of our islands to thrive as nations, recognising the historic and contemporary struggles we face – including colonialism, slavery and the degradation of our cultures and resources,” says Webson.
“This is a climate disaster that we have inherited as a result of other countries’ actions, yet we are the ones paying the price, and it is putting our whole humanity at risk. So we are going to Sharm el-Sheikh with the issue of loss and damage as a major agenda item, but what we are really talking about is surviving – and thriving.”
How To Move A Country: Fiji’s Radical Plan To Escape Rising Sea Levels
Kate Lyons - The Guardian
“What Fiji is attempting to do is unprecedented. For years, politicians and scientists have been talking about the prospect of climate migration. In Fiji, and in much of the Pacific, this migration has already begun. Here, the question is no longer if communities will be forced to move, but how exactly to do it. At present, 42 Fijian villages have been earmarked for potential relocation in the next five to 10 years, owing to the impacts of climate crisis. Six have already been moved. Every new cyclone or disaster brings with it the risk of yet more villages being added to the list.
Moving a village across Fiji’s lush, mountainous terrain is an astonishingly complex task. “We keep on trying to explain this,” Satyendra Prasad, Fiji’s ambassador to the UN, told the Guardian last year. “It is not just pulling out 30 or 40 houses in a village and moving them further upfield. I wish it were that simple.”
Fear Of Nuclear War Has Warped The West’s Ukraine Strategy
Anne Applebaum - The Atlantic
“Fear also causes us to treat nonnuclear acts of mass violence and terror as if they are less important, less frightening, less deserving of a response. Right now, Russia is targeting Ukrainian utilities, openly seeking to deprive millions of Ukrainians of electricity and water. This policy could lead to mass evacuations, even mass death, maybe even on the same scale as a tactical nuclear weapon. The Ukrainians have accused the Russians of preparing to dynamite a dam that, if burst, would flood Kherson and other settlements. If a small terrorist or extremist group were even hinting at a similarly devastating blow, people in the West would already be arguing about how to force them to stop. But because this is Russia, and because these are just conventional weapons, we don’t think in terms of retaliation or response. We feel relieved, somehow, that people will die because they have frozen in unheated apartments or drowned in an artificial flood, and not from nuclear fallout.”
Why Dictators Are Afraid Of Girls: Rethinking Gender And National Security
Kathleen J. McInnis, Benjamin Jensen & Jaron Wharton - War On The Rocks
“Gender plays a powerful role in the construction and promulgation of power and identity that is particularly meaningful in authoritarian regimes. As history shows, when those gender-based power structures are challenged by everyday citizens, profound societal change becomes possible. Gender therefore appears to be a key, if under-appreciated, fault line in the authoritarian societies with which the United States and its allies are strategically competing. While considerable scholarship is dedicated to understanding the role of gender in social relations and social sciences, what has not been sufficiently developed is an application of gender as an analytic tool to better understand hard national security problems, such as strategic competition, grey zone operations, and how best to challenge the rising tide of authoritarian states in the international system.”
G. John Ikenberry - Foreign Affairs
“A multicultural immigrant society is more complex and potentially unstable than more homogeneous societies such as China. But China is home to a number of ethnic and religious minorities, and despite the country’s putative communist commitment to egalitarianism and equality, such minorities suffer intense discrimination and repression. Even though the United States must work harder than China to be a stable and integrated society, the upside of its diversity is enormous in terms of creativity, collaboration, knowledge creation, and the attraction of the world’s talent. It is hard to imagine China, with a shrunken civil society that is closed to the world, as a future centre of global order.”
Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell
The Rest Is Politics is one of the most enthralling podcasts on the minutiae of British politics, but recently Stewart and Campbell have be begun expanding their reach. A couple of weeks ago they invited former French president François Holland onto the show, and last week former Australian prime minister Julia Gillard was their guest (or only Campbell this episode). Compared to other former PM’s like Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull, Gillard keeps herself out of the fray of daily politics, but this doesn’t mean she doesn’t have keen insights and important things to say. This episode reveals that she continues to think seriously about challenges in both Australia and the world.
The Decision To Defect: A Conversation With Boris Bondarev (Audio)
Kate Brannen - Foreign Affairs
“Boris Bondarev worked as a Russian diplomat for 20 years. On the morning of February 24, when the Russian military started bombing Ukraine, he decided to step down from his post at Russia's permanent mission at the UN in Geneva. After getting his family to safety, he publicly resigned in May, making it clear he was leaving his job in protest of the war.
Deputy Editor Kate Brannen talks to Bondarev about the Russian military’s vulnerabilities, how his family reacted to his decision to leave, and what happens to Russia after Putin.”
Author Max Fisher On The Social Media Chaos Machine (Audio)
The Paul Wells Show - Toronto Star
“New York Times writer Max Fisher talks about his new book, The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds And Our World. Relying on international reporting, leaked corporate documents and social science, he lays out the case that the problem with social media is not just about amplifying the wrong messages; it’s that social networks are designed to bring out the worst in everyone.”
There Is No ‘War On Men’ – We Now Know Feminism Is Good For Boys
Laura Bates - The Guardian
“The State of UK Boys report released today by the Global Boyhood Initiative shows that, instead of being victimised by feminism, boys are facing an entirely different crisis. Violence and being “tough” is normalised as a natural part of being a man, which encourages boys to see violence (particularly male-on-male violence) as an inevitable part of growing up. The study, which comprised a literature review alongside interviews with experts, also found that these kinds of stereotypes are present from birth, with families, schools and peer groups all playing their part.”
The Weird Way Language Affects Our Senses Of Time And Space
Miriam Frankel and Matt Warren - BBC Future
“Cognitive scientist Lera Boroditsky, one of the pioneers of research into how language manipulates our thoughts, has shown that English speakers typically view time as a horizontal line. They might move meetings forward or push deadlines back. They also tend to view time as travelling from left to right, most likely in line with how you are reading the text on this page or the way the English language is written.
This relationship to the direction text is written and time appears to apply in other languages too. Hebrew speakers, for example, who read and write from right to left, picture time as following the same path as their text. If you asked a Hebrew speaker to place photos on a timeline, they would most likely start from the right with the oldest images and then locate more recent ones to the left.
Mandarin speakers, meanwhile, often envision time as a vertical line, where up represents the past and down the future. For example, they use the word xia ("down") when talking about future events, so that "next week" literally becomes "down week". As with English and Hebrew, this is also in line with how Mandarin traditionally was written and read – with lines running vertically, from the top of the page to the bottom.”