media

‘Russiagate’ Will be Terrible for Everyone (Except Geotrickster and Independents)

/ geotrickster / 2 Comments

mccarthy

So far in the unfolding saga of The Election That Never Ends two members of the Trump Administration have been found pretty much dead to rights on being guilty of collusion with a foreign power. One, with Israel. One with both Israel and Turkey. Their names are Jared Kushner and Michael Flynn. Meanwhile, so far, Russia has only been found to have spent a few hundred thousand dollars on facebook ads almost no one clicked on and smugly giggling as America’s political system melts down in a way that gives the Kremlin inordinate credit.

Is it possible that that Russia had sketchy contacts with Trump campaign, for sure. It is more then justified to have an investigation into this issue given its potential importance. It is not, however, something to A. assume is true with what little we know now, and B. assume is a unique event. The way the partisan ‘return to the status quo at all costs’ types of the Democrats and disaffected rump Republicans act about this issue, one would assume Pearl Harbor and 9/11 just happened at once but no one can see it except people who get Verrit verification codes and write tired and scolding op-eds.

So far, we have been given far more evidence of collusion with foreign governments for Israel and Turkey than Russia, yet this elicits next to no reaction in the mainstream press. The reason is, well, the main topic of this blog: Geopolitics, baby. Turkey and Israel are allies of the United States, if awkward ones. As such, they have numerous think tanks and lobbyists, along with the far more odious Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, to shape a narrative and be part of the networked in-crowd. I even remember (though sadly cannot find right now) a commercial from around the time of W’s re-election campaign that ran which was just a really blatant and gross ‘your friends in the KSA are your strong allies in the War on Terror piece of propaganda.

It would cost too much to go after these countries, as they have friends in both major parties. Russia, however, has few friends in America outside the diseased corners of the alt right and edgy conspiracy theorists. It is an easy to target to go after, and it is certainly not an ally in any capacity. It is a deeply unsympathetic nation to most people, and, after the invasion of eastern Ukraine, rightly so. Russia further likes to bolster its cred as the anti-west on the world stage by serving as a kind of reactionary foil to the America’s liberal overreach, a set of policies yet to reach the ghastly conclusion I suspect (though we see dark ruminations in Chechnya). There are many points that the U.S. is right to rival Russia on, and other points it should not (such as Syria and combating Daesh). But it should not conduct its foreign policy merely on a popularity contest which as of yet still resides on assertions and not proof.

And then the question is: What if RussiaGate is true? It is still possible, after all. Well then, the problem is that while such proof will obviously necesitate an upgrade in national cybersecurity, it will also count as a well played payback for the late 90s.

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Whoops.

Turns out, in geopolitics there may be friends and foes, but no one is exceptional unless everyone is. And if everyone is exceptional than really no one is.

For context, as recently as 2012 the Obama Administration (who began as quite naive about the dangers Putin posed to them it must be admitted) was still, rightly, criticizing Mitt Romney and his campaign’s ‘Russia is the real enemy’ line of attack on foreign policy. See below:

At the time this was an example of rote-wisdom hawkishness from the Beltway war lobby (which Obama famously referred to as ‘The Blob’) and the Republican Party. But only a year later decidedly unqualified pundits affiliated with the Democratic Party began to take over the exact same opinions they had once mocked of the McCain-Romney wing. I remember the first time I noticed this fixation with Russia was when this clip was brought to attention of a clueless pundit trying to lecture a journalist with on the ground experience in Russia and reporting on Russia based off of bland moralism inheirited from the Cold War:

This has been building for a long time. The neoliberals need a scary and large foreign entity with which to rally support behind them. With the failure of Huntington style ‘Clash of Civilizations’ rhetoric to galvanize the right about anything but the Middle East, the center and center-left have taken that tired old thesis and re-purposed it away from culture and into a new cold war narrative about political ideologies.

Considering the low priority this issue carries with most American voters, whose situation only continues to get more dire due to entirely to domestic factors, its already a bit of a trap. If the best it could get us even was a resignation do we then get President Pence? This seems the absolute worst-case scenario to me. Pence, despite being a theocratic dingus and probably a harvester of torsos (male only, I imagine), would then be acclaimed as ‘respectable’ for not being abrasive, which would only allow him more ability to enact his twisted ideologies. This seems a bad move for Democrats.

Even if they got both Pence and Trump, then foreign connections become a major thing looked for as a viable political weapon on all sides. This would benefit me as Saudi Arabia and even possibly Israel would start to become toxic sledgehammers to wield against all sides, but that sure as hell will backfire on the Democrats who are just as in bed, on average, with those countries as the GOP is. So in a sense, even Russiagate skeptics like myself should hope it opens up a big nasty can of worms. The problem though, and its a problem for everyone, is the rank McCarthyism of all of this. I lived over 4 years in a foreign country. I have been to 20 others-including one which (when I was there) the US did not have full relations with yet. I have friends and contacts from all over the world. None of them, Im afraid, are Russian. Sorry Neera Tanden. But still, where does this end? Much of the rhetoric coming out in Democratic circles today is simply blatantly xenophobic ignorance, fearmongering, and redirecting away from obvious explanations for problems closer to home so that vested interests can blame someone else. It really ends up just looking like their side’s version of the infamous Freedom Fries.

If you wish to go further into this topic I recommend some of the episodes of the largely excellent ‘Moderate Rebels’ podcast:

The fact that RussiaGate is most popular with centrist neoliberals also begs one very salient question: If you believe in the free flow of information and capital across borders, then you have to own up that you will have difficulties with fully sovereign elections. And if you want fully sovereign elections you might have to re-think your support of an international system that prioritizes open borders for international finance at all costs.

Beware the Humanitarians

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save_darfur_poster

I can’t help but think that the massive increase of popularity of Syrian refugee issues in media coverage is indicative of some kind of growing future drive for a NATO operation.

If not yet, it now will be unless it interferes with the Iran deal. There is one obvious section of society that is always is pro-war because they are hooting and brittle cro-magnons who think its important to ‘show strength’ through constant macho posturing, but there is another which can always be made pro-war by going ‘ermagerd look at the suffering babiez!’ Neither is remotely interested in dealing with the consequences of the policies they unthinkingly support through their id-derived catharsis politics.

Hopefully the complicated alliance networks that the United States is increasingly learning to navigate with some degree of nuance will derail any further attempts to topple what unfortunately is Syria’s only real hope: the Assad regime. Or as it should be referred to-the internationally recognized Government of Syria. This is a very real possibility of course, but the explosion of media coverage regarding refugees should remind us of past examples were wars of choice were fought for dubious reasons.

While humanitarianism is most often deployed indirectly and often even unintentionally as the propaganda wing of other self-serving interests (Kuwaiti babies being murdered by Iraqi troops in ’91-a fiction invented for the wind up to Desert Storm, Germans raping through Belgium in WWI British propaganda, Kony 2012 stirring up tacit hipster support for the rapid and ongoing expansion of AFRICOM, etc. These are clearly P.R. campaigns that serve a valid, if often debatable, strategic interest for someone, somewhere. Thus, they are understandable whether or not you agree with the objectives behind them.

But there are indeed, as Robert Merry and others have pointed out, wars fought entirely for feel-good purposes. Somalia and Bosnia in the 90s *might* have been these depending on how you view them, and Kosovo in 99 certainly was. Victorian wars of prideful redress such as the British Expedition to Ethiopia or the US retaliatory action in 19th Century Korea also fall under a same ‘conflict as catharsis’ framework.  People (usually Democrats) who called for action in Darfur in the middle of the first decade of the 21st Century were also of this ilk.

The problem is two-fold with these knee-jerk reactions. The first one is that there is rarely a situation where such direct involvement can improve a situation, and when that is so it is often in the context of a greater framework. For example, the ending of Axis war crimes was contingent on the Allies winning the Second World War anyway-just as the removal of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge by the Vietnamese was tied to the greater geopolitical re-alignment of the Sino-Soviet Split. These were great and beneficial outcomes to be sure, but they did not exist in isolate.

The second is that when enacted by a superpower, these types of interventions can be divorced by more grounding influences which often mean their strategies are half-baked and lead to interventions with a big showy entrance and no exit plan. In effect, advocating such humanitarian interventions has the potential to lead to the same kind of quagmires that neoconservative hawks often inflict on the state and its people.

This is one of the great flaws in societies that often shunt the decidedly old-school field of military history aside. People will jump through any number of increasingly preposterous hoops in order to avoid coming to the stark conclusion that military conflict is dangerous for any power no matter how powerful they are so selectivity is key. But even more tellingly on this theme, many will assume something ‘can be done’ lightly, from the air, and in such a way as to minimize conflict exposure to the actors on the ground as some kind of god-like neutral arbiter of justice.

But that is impossible. An actor in conflict is either in it or not. That means pick your battles. And the only way to do that is to combine national interest with your desire to off a particular force. You want to end the Syria crisis? Extend an olive branch to Damascus and focus on the elimination of Daesh as priority. Winning over the worst faction-not helping everyone suffering-should be the first goal. But already NATO has integrated itself into the wrong dog in this fight. Let us hope this mistaken policy is not given popular support by a media and populace who base their views on their emotional reaction to news stories. Or else who knows what horrible scenario might happen.

Further reading from a somewhat different but still interesting perspective at the Stanford News site.