Category Archives: Socio-economic Collapse

As an Italian, the earliest branding I can remember is the mascot insignia for Italy's 1990 World Cup. Ciao was the name of the figure who was used on some versions of the red-white-and green logo, an anthropomorphic player with a football-head that fascinated my curious young mind.

The classic version of the 1990 logo features in L'Italia il Paese che Amo (Italy is the Country I Love), a new personal project by Giacomo Felace. One of our favourite Italian designers, Giacomo digitally explores the conflicting visual landscape of signs, logos and posters that surrounds his fellow citizens. It's a work designed to be 'anti-design' with its lively colour palette, messy messaging, and liberal use of the Helvetica typeface.

Sampled by Giacomo for the piece, one will find Chinese restaurant signs and McDonald's work ads. Somewhat provocatively, there's also the logo for Forza Nuova (FN), an Italian neo-fascist and nationalist far-right political party.

"Their original logo and banners are very recognisable by their colours (red and black) and bold typography," Giacomo explains. "Particular controversy in the recent past has sparked strongly homophobic and racist ideology and statements in Italy, so I played with their colour palette to give a green accent to the two main letters and a more 'candy' look to the surrounding area."

"I also used part of the 1990 World Cup logo to represent the one true love of Italians: football. Football is perhaps the only reason these days Italians would take to the streets to protest."

The Helvetica typeface was employed as a unifying motif to make this spaghetti of influences more homogeneous to the eye. It was also a small tribute by Giacomo to Massimo Vignelli, the Italian master of design who employed the font often.

"Massimo Vignelli is one of the most important protagonists in the history of design, and graphic design in particular," Giacomo gushes. "He's the polar star of every young designer. Through both his deep cultural commitment and his real comprehension of the design discipline, Vignelli crucially contributed to the design profession by keeping alive and also promoting the evolution of the fundamental principles of design."

Giacomo's own cultural commitment is in what L'Italia il Paese che Amo symbolises, the "shady" area of his country, as he puts it. "For me, as an Italian, this work represents our glittering past, tax evasion, corruption, social sleepiness, the demographic collapse, low labour wages and the gap between the North and the South."

"Graphic design is not always created by good graphic designers, and the messages are often broken," Giacomo tells his fellow Giacomo. "Sometimes, this non-professional approach can create beautiful pieces of ugly design, and the mix with iconic pieces is the right contrast I was looking for."

The title of L'Italia il Paese che Amo comes lifted from the words of Mr Bunga Bunga himself. As Giacomo explains, in 1994, Silvio Berlusconi appeared on Italian television screens announcing his entrance into the political field with the now-famous opening line, "Italy is the country I love." This moment marked a cultural and socio-economic turning point for the country that lasts to this day.

"I'm simply trying to ghostwrite Italian culture's stream of consciousness through pragmatic, amplified, stereotyped and conflicting messages," Giacomo says. "It is curious how there is an attitude of growing distrust of the foreigner who comes to Italy to seek his fortune, and at the same time, young Italians leave Italy to seek their fortune abroad. Isn't this just a circular movement?"

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Fascism, football and Helvetica feature on a journey through Italy's visual landscape - Creative Boom

DATE: Monday 22 Feb. 2021 | TIME: 4:00 - 6:30 (Beirut Time)

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Tripoli, the capital of northern Lebanon, is in the news once again. Over the past few weeks, the city has been the site of protests and clashes amidst the countrys deteriorating economic situation. Discourse on Tripoli is often a dichotomy, portraying the city as a hub of extremists as well as nicknaming it the Bride of the Revolution in 2019 after the outbreak of widespread national protests against the countrys corrupt political leadership. Politicians and pundits are warning that the most recent violent protests in Tripoli will spread elsewhere throughout the country.

The Arab Reform Initiative and the Malcolm H. Kerr Carnegie Middle East Center are hosting two joint public panel discussions that aim to offer a deeper understanding of the current events in Tripoli. They will examine the city at the intersection of the crisis of the political system and political leadership, the deteriorating socio-economic situation, and potential regional influences.

The panels will take place on Monday, February 22 from 4:00 p.m. Beirut (GMT+2). The discussions will be held on Zoom in Arabic and broadcast live on Facebook with simultaneous interpretation to English available on Zoom only. Viewers may submit their questions for the panelists during the live event.

You can register to attend by clicking on the button above. You will receive a Zoom confirmation email should your registration be successful. Alternatively, you can watch the event live on our Facebook page.

4:00-5:00 p.m. Beirut (EET) with Alia Ibrahim, Nawaf Kabbara, Khaled Ziadeh, and Jamil Mouawad.

Panelists will explore the key political and socioeconomic dynamics in Tripoli by linking them to the history of the city and developments in Lebanon. This will include the citys historic socioeconomic marginalization and its place at one time as a hub for Islamists and leftists and a gateway to Syria, as well as a city over which the Syrian regime maintained tight control starting in the late 1980s until their withdrawal from Lebanon in 2005. The city is also host to the wealthiest politicians in the country. Consequently, speakers will explore the interplay between regional intervention, identity politics, local political competition, and local developments in the panel.

5:30-6:30 p.m. Beirut (EET) with Mustafa Aweek, Jana Dhaiby, Samer Hajjar, and Darine Helwe.

The speakers will discuss Tripolis protest movements and analyze their prospects and political impact on both the local and national levels. This panel will pay particular attention to the initiatives and projects that were planned for Tripoli but never implemented and which need to be undertaken to revive the struggling city. It will examine the protest movements ability to change the narrative around Tripoli, as well as the projects that can be adopted given the countrys collapse.

The webinar will be in Arabic with simultaneous interpretation to English available on Zoom only.

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Is there a Tripoli Exception? Arab Reform Initiative -

In our history, certain eventsinflection pointscarry such a weight of significance that well always remember where we were when they occurred.

For my parents, they could tell me exactly where they were when they learned Pearl Harbor had been bombed. My first inflection point was the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and later, in horribly quick succession, the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy. For my daughters, it was the attack on America on September 11, 2001. These incidents are not just historically memorable; they are watershed moments as well. Everything that followed was different. Thus it was on January 6, 2021, our most recent national inflection point. A reckless call to action from the president of the United States, Donald J. Trump, resulted in the invasion of the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to prevent the Congress from declaring the results of the 2020 presidential election. In the immediate aftermath, the president was impeached; the capital of the United States became a fortified, armed camp; and the inauguration of the 46th president occurred amidst the greatest domestic security threat in modern American history.

While others will record and analyze the minute details of this dark moment in our history, suffice to say that every aspect of it pointed to a condition of national division suspected by many, leveraged by some, and weaponized by a few; not the least being the president of the United States. For the briefest of moments, the executive branch of the U.S. government forcibly and violently unseated the legislative branch, engaged in fulfilling its constitutional duty to certify the winner of the recent presidential election. Members of the U.S. Congress fled or feared for their lives as groups of Trumps supporters, many sporting the trappings of the Ku Klux Klan, neo Nazis, the Confederacy, and other white supremacists, forcibly breached our center of government. For hours they rampaged through the U.S. Capitol building, epicenter of American democracy, searching for the vice president and certain members of Congress to do them harmor worseand seeking to prevent certification of the election of Joseph R. Biden in support of Trumps lie that the election had been stolen from him.

How could we have come to this moment? What possible convergence of deep-seated grievance, frustration, and anger could produce this moment of blinding fury? Questions with complex answers, to be sure, but what remains clear is that this was indeed an inflection point in American history. We will all remember where we were on January 6, 2021, for everything that follows will be different.

In truth, the events of the last year or so have accelerated the frustrations of enormous segments of the electorate, long suffering from the effects of economic disenfranchisement and political irrelevance. Years in the making, these frustrations have intensely polarized discussions around race, ethnicity, religion, immigration, gender, and many other sources of difference in a massively diverse society. As time progressed, the mainstream mediathe usual source of unbiased reportingwas demonized and declared the enemy of the people. Meanwhile, social media enabled sometimes bizarre conspiracy theories; and sensational, breathless cable news cycles fanned the flames of dissatisfaction into red-hot conflagrations. The sides became radicalized; a little at first, but becoming dangerously polarized over time. Mutual respect was quickly replaced by mutual suspicion, and with the loss of respect there quickly followed the loss of civility and an alarming growth of a genuine sense of enmity; one side for the other.

Facts, too, became unmoored from truth, and the basis for constructive dialogue was lost. Political parties further ossified the differences as fewer and fewer politicians were elected based on a willingness to participate in bipartisan legislation than they were elected to defend the identity politics of their particular side seemingly at all costs. Partisan politics produced extremists and they, in turn, birthed violent extremists. And while violent white supremacists in particular had been a threat to the American population, especially to Black Americans, from the post-Civil War period onward, during the Trump administration their numbers exploded, for they had the capacity to organize, the motivation to do so, and an outspoken president whom they believed was sympathetic to their cause.

The year 2020 was thus the year the match was thrown on the fuel. This most recent breakdown began first with the COVID-19 pandemic, which in turn fostered the near collapse of the U.S. and global economies. These twin disasters accelerated and exacerbated the misery of many Americans, already badly beset by their socio-economic conditions. The president who failed to deal with the pandemic sought then to deflect blame by politicizing the response, and in so doing politically polarized the American pandemic response. What followed was the alienation of a major segment of Americans from actively participating in relief efforts and from trusting whatsoever in their government. This resulted in an ongoing yet truly unimaginable outcome: hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions infected, and an economy on the edge and more unequal and unfair than ever, especially for frontline workers, many of whom are persons of color, women, or lower-wage individuals. And yet the stark reality is that tens of millions of Americans have a very different perspective on these seemingly shared events and challenges when compared to their counterparts on the other side of the political spectrum.

Those years of pent-up differences finally played out during the campaign and in the 2020 presidential election conducted during the darkness of a lethal global pandemic. The election saw more Americans vote than ever before, and bothncandidates surpassed the previous record for the most votes ever received in the history of American elections. But in the end, President Trump lost, and immediately began the lie of a rigged, fraudulent, and stolen election that culminated directly, and at his behest, with the assault on the U.S. Capitol on January 6. On that day, Americans stared into the abyss of a failed state. And while no one will forget where he or she might have been at the moment of the near failure of the American experiment, most Americans are concerned with how we as a people, and the United States as a nation, can step back from the edge of the abyss and begin the national reconciliation vital to the future of America.

NATIONAL RECONCILIATIONNOW

Vitally, we, as fellow Americans, must begin to chart a path toward national reconciliation and reunificationand we must do so now. We have to arrest the downward spiral of the loss of respect and civility, and the immobilizing polarization of American politics. Efforts will have to begin first with the intentional public embrace of true healing and reconciliation by the new president and the U.S. Congress, to include announcement of a national summit on reconciliation and an open and honest discussion about what reconciliation objectives can actually entail and achieve. Words like respect and civility need to again become a part of the daily lexicon, just as bipartisanship must again become a political objective, not a sign of appeasement or shame. Theres no hope for the American experiment otherwise. And, while it may well be the most patriotic thing one can do to call out your national government when it is going astray, thats a very different argument than actively undermining its success by confusing nationalism with patriotism. The immense responsibility placed upon our elected officials to take up the mantle of responsible leadership to hold to our higher principles, not our worst impulsescannot be overstated. At the same time, we must also be clear-eyed about the multifaceted and diverse nature of American society and culture, and thus the intricacies and nuance that will be required for true reconciliation. And we need to be honest about our past failures as well.

Historically, it should come as no surprise that American narratives of reconciliation and national unity are often tied back to the American Civil War and the post-war period of Reconstruction. Never were we so dividedliterally or figurativelyand many efforts were made in the post-conflict era to mend the profound divisions and the great damage that was done to the country. Yet even then, those efforts focused almost exclusively on healing the white segments of the American society. Black Americans were, yet again, left nearly entirely out of the equation. Indeed, as one poignant example illustrates, on the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Gettysburg in 1913, a festival of national reconciliation, was held where Union and Confederate soldiers met and embraced; while Black Union veterans were not invited or held separate events. And, indeed, Black Americans across the South remained in bondage, bound by the figurative chains of Jim Crow laws. Given the tragic death of George Floyd and others in the summer of 2020, and the renewed national reckoning that followed, reconciliation going forward is necessarily and inextricably linked to the interests and the critical voices of Black, Brown, and Native communities. Its worth repeating: these communities must be central to any viable and enduring notion of national reconciliation. No true healing can proceed without embracing this reality.

Here, we see the vast complexity of this issue, and the deep historical context of an America that has perhaps never been as united, or even as democratic, as we hoped to believe. And in this way, there will be those in society who will have no interest in reconciliation at all. Their wounds are too fresh or their hatreds and their toxic doctrines run too deep for a process of healing to truly begin. Yet for so many more, reconciliation is an entirely logical and essential sequel to the summation of their personal American experience. With that in mind, we must do what many nations and peoples around the world have already done before: listen. Listen first to the pains and struggles of those on the other side, and identify pathways for shared understanding and national reconciliation with those who are willing. There are, potentially, lessons from abroad that may hold some meaningful hints toward an eventual solution for American society, though the evolution of social media and a lightning-fast 24-hour news cycle certainly compound the difficulties in building trust and good faith.

Indeed, some invested in reconciliation have pointed toward the need for an official truth and reconciliation commission, as has been created in other countries around the world. This is a complex issue and far from a cure-all. As well, the intensity of political polarization in America makes bipartisan support for this kind of commission nearly impossible at the moment, at least one chartered by the legislature. Alternatively, commissions based outside the writ of government have sometimes worked well because theyre not as bound up in the partisan politics that often strangle bipartisanship in elected bodies. But regardless, even if a commission of some form is not established, those abroad, seeking to heal intense and painful divisions in their own countries, still have lessons from which we can learn. This is not the moment for foolish pride, for the crisis is too great and the time is too short.

Our national pain was long in the building, and soit cannot be remedied in a short time. Just being openly and publicly committed to reconciliation, and intentionally beginning the effort, is itself a tonic, but it will be a hard, emotional journey.

This will require the combined efforts of national, state, municipal, and local leadership, committed first and foremost to the goodwill to see the imperative of national reconciliation, and able to lead their respective segments of society in a genuine effort. Second, it will require patience, persistence, endurance, and the vision to see that even with the seemingly insurmountable differences at work in American society there still remains far more that unites us than divides us, and that capitalizing on these common interests and values is the best way to find a means of addressing those painful and divisive matters. And third, there must be a clear-eyed will for justice. As evidenced from the 2019 House Judiciary Committee hearings for instance, when hundreds of Black Americans gathered in the halls of the Capitol to hear of slavery reparations, there is am keen necessity to address and answer historic wrongs. More, while the term social justice has become politicized, its intentions offer critical pathways for accountability by dismantling structural inequities and systemic racism. We must not forget the importance of accountability on the road toward reconciliation.

In closing, on matters of reconciliation, President Abraham Lincoln is quoted frequently these days, and well he should be. A thread runs throughout his writings and his speeches that clearly pointed to his intent to engage in an effort of national reconciliation after the Civil War that would both recover our fractured Union, but also would once and for all enfranchise Black Americans, enslaved in horrendous servile labor for hundreds of years. Tragically, while shot and shell took the lives of hundreds of thousands in the Americans Civil War, the cruelest single bullet fired in the entire conflict took the life of President Lincoln, and in that moment the nation, and its people, were robbed of what might have been a new era of true national reconciliation. In his all too brief second inaugural address, we not only gain a glimpse into the mind of this great healer, but we can also find the basis to live the resolute dedication reflected in his words, even as we embark on our own journey of national healing and reconciliation:

Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsmans two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said that the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nations wound, to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and orphans; to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

For the sake of those who have come before, and for those fellow Americans searching for a better future today, national reconciliation is the only way we can safeguard this nationboth as an idea and as a countryfor all of us to enjoy as one people dedicated to the sacred proposition that all individuals are created equal.

Continued here:

Reconciling and healing America brookings.edu - Brookings Institution

Infectious diseases, livelihood crises and extreme weather events are the top clear and present dangers facing the world today. A new World Economic Forum report in collaboration with Marsh McLennan, SK Group and Zurich International explores the worlds risk profile.

The analysis is based on a survey of more than 800 people across the globe, who were asked to pinpoint factors that could become a critical threat now and in the future. The backdrop is Covid-19, and the goal is to take a closer look on how it has rocked the world.

The 2021 report reflects the depth and disparity of the pandemics impact, explores how critical global challenges have been exacerbated and reshaped, and highlights the need to address these risks in a more collaborative way, explained Carolina Flint, Managing Director & Risk Management Leader at Marsh.

For a nuanced overview, the researchers broke the global risk profile down into three distinct timelines. Clear & present dangers refer to threats that could hit home within the next two years. Knock-on effects will ensue in the medium term between three and five years from now. Then there are existential threats fundamental issues that could manifest in the next five to ten years.

The clear & present dangers very much reflect the key events of 2020. For instance, the threat frominfectious disease was font and centre cited by nearly 60% of survey respondents. With job losses abound, livelihood crises were labeled a current threat by 55%, while extreme weather events were the third biggest threat presumably relating to bushfires and floods.

With business IT infrastructure stretched across personal and home networks, cyber security has also made its way up the immediate threat profile. Of note in the top five immediate risks is digital inequality where socio-economic disparities are worsened as expensive technology becomes the key to business and personal survival.

A widening digital gap can worsen societal fractures and undermine prospects for an inclusive recovery, explained Daniel Glaser, President & CEO at Marsh McLennan. Indeed, a bigger socio-economic gap could be a severe threat to social cohesion in the future a top concern for 40% of respondents.

In similar vein, many brows are furrowed by the prospect of youth disillusionment stemming from a lost young generation that has now faced two economic crises and icy job markets as a result. These youth stand to lose out on economic opportunities for one, while also facing mental health challenges. Economic stagnation is also a chief risk, while perennial threats from terrorism and environmental damage persist in the backdrop.

These are near term concerns. In the medium term, the threat profile takes on a more economic and financial avatar. Many are worried about asset bubble bursts, price instability, commodity shocks and debt crises all of which are both products and harbingers of a protracted economic crisis.

Technology is also a medium term worry. Digital adoptionleapfrogged several years in a matter of months during the pandemic, and many are worried that the IT infrastructure is simply not equipped for such a boom in volumes. A breakdown of this infrastructure is a top concern, as is a breakdown of its security.

Outside of these factors, the medium term is rife with concerns about international relations. Inter state conflicts, fractured trade relations and resource geopolitisation all of which were key themes unfolding even before the pandemic are prone to return again amid a weak and internalised global economy.

Geopolitical worries persist through the long term as well. Weapons of mass destruction are the top concern in the next five to ten years, while the collapse of states and multilateralism are also dreaded prospects. Half of the survey respondents also expressed concern around the rapid advancement of technology and its implications over a long term horizon on jobs and security.

Then there are a host of environmental risks, which most expect to manifest over the five to ten year horizon. These include loss of biodiversity, natural resource crises, and the failure of concerted climate action. Some fear that the current trends of health and environmental crises might even spur a backlash against science in the future a pattern that is already emerging in some sections of society.

Climate changeto which no one is immunecontinues to be a catastrophic risk. Although lockdowns worldwide caused global emissions to fall in the first half of 2020, evidence from the 20082009 Financial Crisis warns that emissions could bounce back. A shift towards greener economiescannot be delayed until the shocks of the pandemic subside, noted Glaser.

Indeed, action is the need of the hour to navigate this growing risk landscape, each part of which is real and devastating in its own right. Glaser highlights that collaborative efforts could take the world in the right direction, and mitigate some of these challenges.

With governments still deliberating how to pivot away from emergency to recovery, and with companies anticipating a changed business landscape, there are opportunities to invest in smart, clean and inclusive growth that will improve productivity and delivery of sustainable agendas.

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The top global risks facing the world in 2021 and beyond - Consultancy.uk

They fear-monger about immigrants, push conspiracy theories, and want to build a wall. Spain's VOX party is using Trump-like tactics.

Dr. Carmen Aguilera-Carnerero is a lecturer at the department of English and German Philology at the University of Granada (Spain) as well as a senior research fellow at the Centre for the Analysis of the Radical Right (CARR).

Like the majority of far-right populist parties, Spains VOX has built a great part of their discourse upon the rhetoric of fear. AsRuth Wodak points out, the extreme rights concept of fear is frequently constructed upon the discursive strategies of victim-perpetrator reversal, scapegoating, and the construction of conspiracy theories.

Anybody can be potentially addressed as a dangerous other a fact that, along the alarm-inciting policy assimilated by the great part of the citizens, start to be a natural constituent of the social landscape. The creation of in-and-out groups, asEngel and Wodak state, necessarily implies the use of strategies of positive self-representation and the negative portrayal of others.

In the case of Spain, that socio-economic anxiety is constructed against an enemy who can be internal, or anybody who threatens the unity of the nation either ideologically attacking their pillars and customs, like the current socio-communist government, as they call it or, in practical terms, those who challenge literally the unity of the country such as the Catalan independentists. The figure of the external enemy who menaces to break the harmony of Spain is mainly embodied by the immigrants. Once the other has been clearly delineated, VOX can design different strategies to defeat them.

In relation to the external enemy, the far-right partys policies against illegal immigration have always been inflexible. In the 100-point electoral program they presented to run for the National Elections in 2019, the political force dedicated a whole block of proposals to address their policy on immigration together with another set on defense, security, and frontiers. Both groups are interconnected and represent 20% of their measures suggested to build a better country.

Although there is already a spiked barbed wire in the cities of Ceuta and Melilla the two Spanish cities remaining on African soil VOX suggested the building of an impassable wall -la-Trump to prevent illegal immigrants from entering the country. The admission of immigrants would then depend on two criteria, the economic demand and the capacity of adaptation of immigrants to Spain, that is, the compatibility (meaning similar religion and linguistic skills). In practical terms, they were stating their preference for South American (traditionally Christian and Spanish speakers) rather than African immigrants, as Abascal contended in 2018.

As we have stated, the regulation of illegal immigration has been one of the main issues for VOX but interestingly, the construction of that other has undergone semantic scalation in which the immigrants have been qualified in multifarious ways to create anxiety in the population depending on the specific problems the country was going through in different stages.

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Back in the summer of 2018, when VOX was far from being the powerful political force it is today, they expressed their rejection of the measures adopted by the government concerning the Aquarius, the migrant rescue ship chartered by NGOs SOS Mediterranean and Doctors without Borders to save refugees and migrants in trouble at sea. As the government allowed the hosting of 629 immigrants wandering at sea, VOX saw in that decision an act of propaganda and accused them of performing fake humanitarian policy as well as being accomplices of human trafficking mafias. This was linked to what the political force has defined as a calling effect, foreseeing a massive incoming of immigrants on the Spanish coasts and urging the mobilization of the army to defend the borders.

From then onwards, VOX focused on MENAS (menores extranjeros no acompaados) or non-accompanied foreign minors. The MENAS whom they call the kids of the socio-communist government- are framed by the far-right party as delinquents who escape from the minor centers and attack decent Spanish citizens. In that very same line, multiculturalism is frontally rejected by VOX and one of their representatives in the congress, Roco de Meer, described the neighborhoods full of immigrants as multicultural dumps in which the decent working-class were condemned to live.

The most frequent hashtags used by the far-right party to talk about this topic online are #paremos la invasion (lets stop the invasion), #fronterasseguras (safe frontiers) or #fueramenas (MENAS out). Illegal immigration is presented in online discourse through the typical metaphors of invasion and waves. The first one has the connotation of attack, involving the idea of destruction, force, and hostility as well as entailing the need for self-defending from the enemy. The wave metaphor implies the idea of intimidation by a wild force and the effect of an unruly situation.

During the year 2020, VOX focused onCOVID-19 and the way the government has dealt with the pandemic but just after the peak of the crisis was reached, they went back to the immigration issue. Due to the collapse of the free Spanish Health System that was overwhelmed by the massive amount of cases of coronavirus, the far-right party proposed in March that illegal immigrants should pay to be medically assisted echoing the Spaniards First populist philosophy of their campaigns.

Especially profuse was the discourse of the party during the summer since they qualified the immigrants as undercover jihadists coming to Spain, delinquents, good-for-nothing infected illegals or positive for COVID-19. In September, immigrants were associated with the second wave of coronavirus in Spain as well as with the urban protests against the constraints imposed by the government in relation to the pandemic.

VOXs fear-inducing strategy regarding immigration has been semantically constructed in a way that escalated progressively to create alarm and fear in the Spanish population. The framing of immigrants mutated progressively from performing a massive arrival to being delinquents, good-for-nothing jihadists, and infected invaders. So, migrants incoming was semantically presented as an actual risk for the safety of the land and public health. Indeed, in November they urged the Spanish Navy to block the arrival of immigrants to the Canary Islands. The narrative of migrants as infected invaders in the middle of a pandemic stigmatizes a community that already lives under constant suspicion and fosters their collective discrimination with a serious issue that goes beyond mere politics and becomes a matter of public health.

This article is brought to you by the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right(CARR).Through their research, CARRintends to lead discussions on the development of radical right extremism around the world.

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Spaniards First: Spain's Far-Right Vox Party Is Co-Opting Trumpism - Rantt Media

Another wave of COVID-19, complete with new and more contagious variant strands, has once again pushed many countries into lockdowns aimed at containing the spread of the virus and reducing the load on the healthcare system. Though necessary for public health, these measures come with great costs and consequences; as in the first great lockdown, they are stress-testing the socio-economic structure, especially small businesses in retails and services and indigent households.

This time around, however, the support for these measures is less generalized. While during the first wave, political approval rates closely mirrored governments capacity to contain the diffusion of contagion, the protraction of economic difficulties and a growing intolerance towards prevention measures, or pandemic fatigue, are now fueling a lively debate on a possible trade-off between public health and the economy.

In the UK, Boris Johnson recently suffered the biggest Commons revolt since his election as a total of fifty-five Tory Members of Parliament voted against the government decision to introduce a tougher lockdown tiered system. The Swiss Finance Minister Ueli Maurer claimed that a new lockdown would risk sacrificing the economy and public finances on the altar of health. And in the United States, general support for masking and social distancing measures are frequently undermined by politicians and leaders who rail against them, leading to protests and further viral spread. Unemployment continues to surge.

An alleged trade-off

But does such a trade-off really exist? Have countries with lower death rates experienced also larger economic downturns?

To answer these questions, we can look at how the health and economic impact of COVID-19 compare in different countries. Figure 1 below plots Real Gross Domestic Product (percentage change) projection for 25 advanced economies, as given by the latest IMF growth projections, against their respective excess mortality rates.

In epidemiology, excess mortality refers to the number of deaths during a crisis above and beyond what we would have expected to see under normal conditions (i.e. above the annual average of those who die of old age or from normal pathologies). It is a more comprehensive measure of the total impact of the pandemic than the confirmed COVID-19 death count alone. In addition to confirmed deaths, in fact, excess mortality captures COVID-19 deaths that were not correctly diagnosed as well as deaths from other causes that are attributable to the overall crisis conditions (e.g. the lower availability of medical-health personnel for diseases other than COVID-19).

Winners and losers

The data show how the trade-off hypothesis is simply not borne out by the facts. Indeed, the figures suggest quite the opposite: countries that have managed to protect their populations health in the pandemic, such as Austria, Denmark, or Norway, have generally managed to protect their economies too. And the reverse is also true: UK and Italy, the countries that have experienced the largest increases in mortality, were also the ones likely to suffer the most severe downturns by the end of the year.

Figure 1 also uncovers an interesting regularity. All the Southern European economies are placed below the regression line, the one that minimizes the distance, on the vertical axis, from all points of the diagram. This means that countries on the Mediterranean shores pay a relatively higher economic price for containing mortality (i.e. any given level of excess mortality is associated with a more severe economic downturn as compared to countries above the line).

Several reasons can help explain this phenomenon. One has to do with the economic structure: in Southern European countries, economies more dependent on service sector jobs may have been more harshly impacted by repeated lockdowns. This is true especially for travel and tourism that accounts for 10 to 20 percent of the GDP in Southern Europe (while to just 5 to 10 percent in Northern Europe).

Specific cultural traits can partly explain why similar containment measures might have dissimilar effects. In more individual-minded countries, where public interventions by government are rarer and far less tolerated, for example, it is reasonable to expect that the population will be more reluctant to comply with measures that entail serious limitations on personal freedoms.

Finally, to tackle the consequences of the pandemic, all countries have adopted exceptional fiscal measures. These generally rely on debt issuance to finance health expenses and programs to support workers and firms (e.g. temporary unemployment benefits and bank loan guarantees). The magnitude of these programs, however, differs notably across countries, with less financially stable economies enjoying significantly less room for relief.

The size of the economic rescue package goes a long way also explaining the comparative stability in the United States. Despite an excess mortality rate among the highest in the world, the country managed to contain the economic costs associated with the recession (it is in fact located above the regression line Figure 1). The massive $2 trillion stimulus package deployed right after the outbreak to ease the economic impact of the pandemic along with the almost unlimited quantitative easing granted by the Federal Reserve to avoid a collapse of asset prices in domestic currency, limited the economic fallouts of the dramatic public health failure.

Piergiuseppe Fortunato is an economist at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) where he leads projects on global value chains and economic integration. Neha Deopa is a final year PhD candidate at The Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva.

Excerpt from:

Did Saving Lives With COVID Shutdowns Destroy Economies? The Data Is Telling. - Observer

As the international system experiences a multifaceted rearrangement of power distribution and modes of governance, challenges emanating from state actors like China and Russia are not the only issues to watch. Nonstate armed actors militants, militias, and criminal groups are acquiring increasing power at the expense of the state. This dynamic precedes the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, but has been exacerbated by it: More people around the world depend on illicit economies for basic livelihoods, and criminal and militant actors are empowered while governments are weakened. Unable to effectively confront nonstate armed actors, many governments will feel tempted or required to accommodate them, or attempt to coopt them. Governance by nonstate actors will deepen and expand.

As my Brookings colleagues and I address in more depth in a new series, these are key issues for the incoming Biden administration to watch.

The pandemic is weakening the governing capacity of governments in multifaceted ways, amplifying deep-seated trends in progress for the past two decades. It wiped out 20 years of poverty reduction efforts, with as many as 150 million people pushed into extreme poverty. These numbers may significantly underestimate the calamity, as COVID-19 persists longer and more intensely than many thought, and vaccine distribution is proving more difficult than hoped, even in economically and institutionally-advanced countries.

Around the world, those affected by the illness, lockdowns, and economic collapse are forced to drastically limit their access to healthcare, food, schooling. Many have to liquidate their means of human capital development. In one study conducted in Kenya, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), over 75% of women reported at least a partial loss of household income and food insecurity, with 62% of the surveyed households in the Kinhasa province of DRC reporting a total loss of income! Latin America has likewise seen devastating economic effects, with GDP losses already at some 10%. Economies in Africa have been hit equally hard, as have many economies in Asia, and particularly the conditions of the vulnerable.

This severely constrains budgets for public expenditures, including public safety budgets. A rise in crime and conflict, along with governments inability to sufficiently offset the economic devastation and destruction of peoples livelihoods, profoundly weakens the legitimacy of governments and political systems. Political instability and social strife, including violent protests and extremist mobilization, are likely to increase in many parts of the world, even as the extent of government weakness will vary.

So are authoritarian power grabs not necessarily through outright coup detats, but under the guise of anti-crime measures. See, for instance, the Philippines, or the incremental weakening of accountability mechanisms and institutional capacity and delay of elections in Malaysia and Ethiopia. Authoritarian governments, for example in Hungary, have used the pandemic as an excuse to expand executive authority and squash opposition.

Concurrently, criminal and militant groups, as well as other nonstate armed actors, have become relatively stronger. More people now depend on illicit economies for basic livelihoods, and on criminal or militant groups for basic services. The political capital of nonstate armed actors, particularly those sponsoring labor-intensive illicit economies or access to jobs in legal or informal economies, has grown. Larger territorial spaces, functional domains, and populations will be governed by nonstate actors, something that will outlast the pandemic.

Assuring access to vaccines for the most marginalized populations will necessitate negotiating with nonstate armed actors, some of which may ask for political or material payoffs. But however problematic such negotiations are, laws against material support to nonstate armed actors should not hold back vaccinations and humanitarian relief for reasons of global public health, economic recovery, and basic justice. Care needs to be taken to minimize the resulting political power of nonstate armed actors that accrues through such negotiations.

Militant groups around the world including al-Shabab, the Taliban, and the Islamic State in West Africa Province, various nonstate armed actors in Colombia, and the Houthis in Yemen have sought to exploit COVID-19. So have various criminal groups mafia groups in Italy; Mexican drug trafficking organizations; gangs in Central America; and the slums of India, Kenya, or Brazil. The ways they have exploited COVID-19 varies: Some have reshaped anti-government and anti-Western propaganda, increased recruitments, intensified violence, provided socio-economic handouts and other public goods, or taken over bankrupt businesses and penetrated the legal economy. Not all nonstate armed actors are equally adroit in exploiting the pandemic, but they have used it to tighten control over local populations in a variety of ways.

The developed world has not escaped these pernicious dynamics, with new economic hardships and lockdowns boosting preexisting trends in right-wing violent mobilization. In the United States and Western Europe, right-wing armed groups the Boogaloo Bois, neo-Nazi groups, and anti-federal government groups that espouse so-called County Supremacy have exploited the pandemic to build political capital with disgruntled business owners, increased recruitment, targeted and intimidated law enforcement, and sought to both discredit and coopt political representatives. They have intensified networking and sharing of tactics with counterparts elsewhere in the world. They represent severe threats to rule of law and safety in the West, as was demonstrated in the attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The pandemics fallout will last years, as will the dependence of many in the world on illicit economies. So too will the increased power of nonstate armed actors. Even in the West, the mobilization, recruitment, and political capital of armed groups and societal polarization will not rapidly disappear.

Yet many policies that governments may be tempted to adopt including increasing repressive tools against protesters and nonstate armed actors exacerbate the problems. In some localities, governments are simply relegating or yielding control to criminal groups and other nonstate armed actors long the case in Brazil, Jamaica, Central America, Bangladesh, and India, but now more prevalent. Elsewhere, they negotiate with and coopt nonstate armed groups to extort or coopt votes, obtain funding, settle scores with political or business rivals, or take on other nonstate armed actors.

Moreover, dangerous and counterproductive natural resource extraction logging, mining, and wildlife trade and trafficking is likely to intensify, and can be illegal or legal. Wildlife poaching has exploded worldwide, including in previously well-protected areas, as incomes for rangers and local populations dry up and some people migrate from cities to rural areas. Wildlife-based Traditional Chinese Medicine continues to be, without proof, promoted as COVID-19 cures. Deforestation in Brazil and Indonesia, meanwhile, broke records in 2020. In Asia, Latin America, and Africa, economies in natural resources will be the most available source of revenues for governments, and livelihoods for many.

But their extraction, and the resulting degradation and increased trade in wildlife, may speed up the arrival of another zoonotic pandemic. China, in particular, remains a problematic actor: Its imports of beef, soy, and timber are significant sources of deforestation. The modus operandi of China, Russia, and also India in resource extraction in Africa, Asia, and Latin America has fueled corruption, and weakened rule-of-law and good governance. COVID-19 has diminished governments capacities to resist such deleterious practices and avoid debt traps. Conditioned, monitored, and sequenced debt relief for habitat and biodiversity preservation is an important countermeasure.

Some states for instance Iran, Ethiopia, the United Arab Emirates, and Qatar will seek to exploit this instability via proxy proxy actors. In the Middle East and Africa, Russia has already inserted proxy actors (such as the Wagner Group) and security advisers into various unstable or conflict-ridden countries; Russia may also seek to exacerbate instability even without cultivating a particular local political proxy, as it did during the 2019 social protests in Latin America. But with its readiness to embrace and deploy nonstate armed actors for hybrid warfare and asymmetric purposes, Russia may also cultivate criminal groups and other nonstate armed actors to undermine U.S. partners, like in Ukraine.

China, so far, has mostly made accommodations with nonstate armed actors in Myanmar and Afghanistan. In Myanmar, it has cultivated strong relations with a set of ethnic militias and sometimes even their rivals, while maintaining strong influence over the government even under Aung San Suu Kyi. Chinese actors, including state ones, participate in illicit economies in Myanmar and around the world, particularly in wildlife and timber, but sometimes also drugs. In Afghanistan, China prefers a coalition government to emerge and constrain the Taliban, but it has worked out a dtente with the group. China does not as yet have a known record of cultivating criminal groups and proxy militias for geopolitical purposes far away from its borders, but that time may come.

China is far more likely to seek to cultivate governments such as by selling them anti-crime software (like Smart and Safe Cities), which China extensively promotes in Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America. To governments with tight budgets and ineffective law enforcement, that face violent crime and powerful criminal groups, such technologies may seem like silver bullets. But they can serve as backdoors for China to engage in spying and industrial espionage. Governments can also exploit them for authoritarian purposes.

In a perpetual cat-and-mouse game with states, nonstate armed actors too have long embraced advanced technologies for nefarious purposes including, lately, drones for reconnaissance, smuggling, and armed warfare; semi-submersibles for long-distance maritime smuggling; closed-circuit TVs for population control; cryptocurrencies for money laundering; synthetic drugs for enrichment; and a variety of cybercrime and cyber tools to create mayhem, inflict pain, steal money, and extort. In some cases, the COVID-19 disruptions to legal trade have forced criminal groups to accelerate their expansion into these high-tech and cutting-edge domains, such as the use of drones for drug trafficking and retail, and other innovations.

The return to geopolitical competition does not negate the growing influence of nonstate armed actors. Nor should geopolitical competition obscure the focus of U.S. national security and foreign policy on nonstate armed actors. COVID-19 has significantly amplified the power and impact of such actors around the world. Geopolitics has added complicated layers to their role and power, in some ways entrenching them further.

This new power landscape also raises important questions about the tools the United States has deployed to counter nonstate armed actors. The post-9/11 reliance on direct U.S. military intervention may be over, even if the U.S. proclivity to stand up proxy militias persists.

This new shape of the power and reach of nonstate armed actors reinforces the imperative for the United States to review its response, including vis--vis rival powers. Key issues the Biden administration will need to address include:

The rest is here:

The key trends to watch this year on nonstate armed actors - Brookings Institution

The economies of Central and Eastern Europe have shown no signs of any development miracle or a regional category jump to high-income countries. Instead, there is the passive acceptance of low-end manufacturing, state-capture by oligarchs and regions emptying out of young people.

The author of this present piece firmly believes that the objective of economic growth should be shunned if we are to achieve the CO2 emissions goals of the Paris Treaty and reverse the environmental devastation we have caused on this planet.

The decoupling of environmental devastation from economic growth is a myth. Balkans citizens now live around the global average, Visegrad and Baltic societies above it.

We should not aim for higher GDP, in fact, Western Europe should engage in degrowth. The social problems of our region should be handled through more equitable social redistribution, not growth.

With the above caveat, let us address the question in the title on its own terms. Can we consider the region a socio-economic success story? The default go-to indicator in our growth-obsessed world would be the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita. The first comparison we can make is a long term historical one, using Angus Maddisons famous database.

Chart 1 GDP/capita in the Visegrad countries in comparison to Western Europe, the World Average and China (Source: The Maddison Database)

What we see on this chart is that at the end of reconstruction after the Second World War, the Visegrad region was somewhat above the world average, and at around 50 to 75 per cent of Western Europe (defined by Maddison as Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom).

Western Europe is chosen as a benchmark because it has been the age-old point of comparison in Central and Eastern Europe. As we can see, China was way below the world average at this point, at less than a quarter.

Under a Soviet-style economic system, the Visegrad countries basically preserved their advantage compared to the global average. Poland collapsed by the 1980s and even proceeded to dip below the global average. Hungary and Czechoslovakia peaked in the eighties. They have both preserved their positions compared to the global average by the end of the Soviet-style economy.

Hungary also managed to preserve its position vis--vis the West, but Czechoslovakia slipped in this comparison. No country in the region has achieved convergence with the West during this period. A purchasing power parity comparison (not available from Maddison) would be favourable to the Visegrad states, but would still reveal at best their maintained positions vis--vis the West for the group as a whole.

The rise of China begins at around this time, in the eighties, with Deng Xiaopings famous reform and opening. (As well shall soon see, other Asian Tigers that China was learning from, such as Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea, had by this time demonstrated even more astounding growth rates.)

The devastating consequences of economic transition are clear to see in the case of the former Eastern Bloc. Hungary dips to the world average, Poland below it.

By the time of the Visegrad Group countries accession to the European Union, they had, by and large, managed to regain their previous long term global position somewhat above the global average. This position is similar to the one after the Second World War, or the one in the eighties.

What is striking from this graph is that China was already approximating the global average by this time.

In sharp contrast to Visegrad, there was simply no transition depression to speak of in the case of China, even though in spite of official rhetoric Beijing was in fact transitioning from a fully nationalised, planned economy to a partially privatised, partially planned capitalist development state, similar to the Far Eastern Development model characteristic of its wider region. This comparison of Visegrad transition with China is striking.

A comparison with Western Europe is also revealing. At the eve of EU accession, the Visegrad Group was further away than ever from Western Europe during the entire period under discussion.

As we have seen so far, the Central Eastern European region seems to be stuck in the category just above the global average.

The Visegrad group is part of an upper-middle-income group, while the Balkans are part of a lower-middle-income group, however, their global positions hardly change. There is definitely no category jump.

This contrasts sharply with the economic history of the East Asian region after the Second World War. The so-called Asian Tiger economies were examples of exactly the kind of category leap that has been missing from Central and Eastern Europe.

Let us take a look at their achievements:

Chart 2 The Asian Tiger economies made several category jumps in short decades, sometimes from lower-income to high-income (Source: Maddison Database)

As we can see, these tiger economies have made several category jumps, and in very brief periods of time. Perhaps the most successful country has been Singapore. It started off at levels comparable to the global average, but with gigantic hindrances: it had to be created as a brand-new state from a mostly illiterate, massively conflictual multi-ethnic and multireligious mix.

Clearly, this was a far worse starting point than in the case of any of the Visegrad states. Yet Singapore made it from the middle-income category into the high income one roughly from 1970 to around 1990, that is, in about two decades. Since then, it has become significantly richer than the Western European average.

Two other examples are Taiwan and South Korea, both of which started off in the low-income category, significantly below the world average, and even further below the Visegrad economies. Yet, they achieved a category jump from low income to middle income in the sixties, and then from middle income to high income by around the nineties.

The Peoples Republic of China is the latest arrival, from extremely low income as late as the eighties, to middle income by today.

What accounts for the disparity that Visegrad has not been able to carry out a quantitative leap, whereas the Asian Tigers have achieved several? The so-called Varieties of Capitalism literature provides us with a clear answer. Visegrad has attempted to compete with a so-called Foreign Direct Investment Dependent Competition State.

What this complicated name entails is the fact that these states have competed against each other with low wages, weak trade unions and low taxes to attract as much foreign direct investment as possible, in the process essentially becoming the economic hinterland of the German economy. They are stuck in what is called the middle-income trap.

By contrast, the developmental state model of East Asia has relied on domestically owned multinationals, state-led banks and technology policy, industrial policy, massive state investments into infrastructure and human capital.

East Asia was the only region of the world that has been able to resist Western neoliberal pressure and has achieved great success by doing so.

Let us now examine the period since European Union accession. In terms of their economic weight in the world, the Visegrad Group has pretty much managed to hold on to its position:

Chart 3 The world share of GDP of the Visegrad Group has stayed stable since EU accession in 2004

In the same period, Chinas share of global GDP increased almost four times over:

Chart 4 From 2004 to 2018, Chinas share of global GDP increased almost four times over

Where does this leave the Visegrad Group globally? This time we use GDP per capita data from the World Bank. It must be clear that this series is not comparable with Maddisons previous ones.

Chart 5 GDP per capita, Visegrad economies compared to Western Europe and World Average, as well as China, 2004-2019 (Source: World Bank)

What is clear from this graph is that the Visegrad group is still holding on to its permanent position in the upper-middle-income group: just above the global average, but far below Western Europe (defined as the same group of countries that Maddison uses).

This in spite of the fact that Western Europe now entails a number of rather damaged economies, such as Italy, France and the United Kingdom. Once again, the trends are clear to see: there has been no category jump for Visegrad since EU accession in 2004.

These are, admittedly, rather crude calculations. Many refinements can be made. One could use purchasing power adjustments for local price levels. However, these are not available for the Maddison data and, in the case of the World Bank data, they open up a pandoras box of troublesome methodological issues.

One could also take into account the fact that different countries have different wages shares of gross domestic product, and those in Visegrad economies, unfortunately, tend to be significantly lower:

Chart 6 The wage share in the Visegrad countries (red) and selected Western European (blue) countries (Source: ILO)

Not only is the wage share significantly higher in Western Europe than in the Visegrad Group countries, but the social welfare state is also dramatically more generous.

In fact, in several Visegrad states welfare provisions have all but disappeared. Several leading Visegrad politicians have openly declared themselves enemies of the welfare state.

There are additional complications: how do you factor in developments such as the 27,000 kilometres of clean, cheap and superfast high-speed trains that have been built in China in the matter of about a decade? By contrast, most of Central and Eastern Europe is still cut off from the Western European high-speed train network, with the exception of some lines in Poland.

Map 1 One decade of improvement in the Chinese high-speed train network

Similar improvements have been made in the Chinese highway system, hospitals, metro systems in major urban centres, airports, etc. Public infrastructure even in Western Europe has not been able to match these.

Similar public goods abound in the East Asia region: from the famed urban infrastructure and showcase airport in Singapore, through the global trailblazer internet speed of South Korea to human capital formation and innovation in Taiwan.

The above methodological additions are important, but they do not change the overall picture significantly. The Visegrad Group countries have not achieved a category jump in the last decade and a half since EU accession, or indeed since transition three decades ago. Almost everyone acknowledges this, though some still beg for patience.

As far as ordinary people are concerned, however, politicians have been asking for patience in this part of the world for far too long. The promise of a better future has been on the horizon for long generations, and it never arrived. It did in East Asia.

The same thirty years that was available for Visegrad to make a change was enough for China to rise from one of the poorest counties in the world to a middle-income one. Three decades had been enough for Singapore, South Korea and Taiwan to rise from misery to high-income status, rivalling or even exceeding Western Europe.

Elites in Visegrad still try to claim a success story, but ordinary people have had enough. They do not see a future for themselves in this region and are increasingly voting with their feet. It has beenwidely reported that all ten of the fastest declining countries in the world are in Eastern Europe.

At least 11 countries in Eastern Europe have shrunk by more than ten per cent since the political and economic transition in 1989, including Ukraine, Bulgaria and Romania. Latvia has lost 27 per cent of its population, Lithuania 23 per cent, Bulgaria and Bosnia 21 per cent. But Poland and Hungary are also amongst the major losers.

Map 2 Maps published by Eurostat show the region emptying out

Maps published by the European Commission show the entire region emptying out, except for metropolitan centres. The major gainers from this migration flood have been Germany and Austria, and before Brexit, the UK.

By contrast, it is well known that the coastal developmental regions of China are experiencing enormous migration inflow from the mainland, equivalent in scale to the entire population of the European Union. Dynamic regions can be easily recognised by peoples desire to move there, and not away.

The population of Singapore has increased sixfold since its founding. That of Taiwan tripled in the same time period, that of South Korea increase more than two and a half times.

As it was stressed at the beginning, this author believes in degrowth. However, astonishing their development miracles have been, most people in Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea are now living beyond the planetary ecological boundary.

China has managed to lift some 800 million people roughly to the level of the global average.

The situation in Central and Eastern Europe, however, is not better. Stagnation is not the same as degrowth. Degrowth is an orderly transition to no population growth and a stable state economy. There is nothing planned for the economies of Central and Eastern Europe.

These economies have come about through the passive acceptance of low-end manufacturing, primary by German firms. We are not seeing a transition here to a sustainable society, but a slow-motion collapse, where fear-mongering and hate-filled political climates hide the fact that states are captured by corrupt oligarchs, with young people slowly but surely preferring to start their lives in Western Europe.

No, the Visegrad countries have not been a success story.

The article is part of the New Europe 100 project supported by the International Visegrad Fund.

Find out more about the New Europe 100 network here. For updates, follow us on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Democratic security comes at a price. What is yours?By subscribing or donating now gain access to analysis, forecasts and scenarios by leading analysts and reporters who monitor democratic risks and develop policy debate from Central Europe on Central Europe.

Contrary to popular belief, Lorem Ipsum is not simply random text. It has roots in a piece of classical Latin literature from 45 BC, making it over 2000 years

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Are the Visegrad Group Countries a Success Story? - Visegrad Insight

THIRTY YEARS ago, the quintessential neoconservative Jeane J. Kirkpatrick argued in The National Interest that the United States should now become a normal country in a normal time. The Cold War had been a special, aberrant case in the American experience, justifying an extraordinary level of global commitment and activity. However, in the entirely changed circumstances of the post-Cold War era, it was time for America to return to an earlier pattern of behavior based on a much more restricted view of the nations interests and commitments.

Most of the international military obligations that we assumed were once important are now outdated. Our alliances should be alliances of equals, with equal risks, burdens and responsibilities, argued Kirkpatrick, a former Democrat who had served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations in the Reagan administration. It is time to give up the dubious benefits of superpower status and become again an unusually, successful, open republic. The American people were tired of the burdens of foreign policy and wanted a reordering of priorities in favor of discrimination abroad while attending to pressing domestic affairs.

Her position never enjoyed much popularity. There was not an immediate demobilization and no drastic scaling down of Americas military commitments across the globe. The strategic and mental habits formed during the four decades of the Cold War were very powerful. Indeed, other contributors to these pages and elsewhere argued that, having just won a great victory and become the worlds only genuine superpower, the United States should exploit what the prominent columnist Charles Krauthammer called the unipolar moment. The dangerous bipolar world of the Cold War had been replaced by a unipolar world in which the United States had no serious rivals. American global leadership, a New American Century, indispensable nation, benign hegemonythese became the new credos of the U.S. foreign policy establishment.

Fast forward to 2020, and it is clear America has run aground. But it is in a crisis caused by forces that preceded Donald Trump. Wage stagnation, rising inequality, socio-economic dislocation caused by technological change and exacerbated by the 200809 financial crisisall this had sharpened divisions between ordinary Americans and economic elites well before Trump arrived on the political scene. So did the polarization that grips Washington. In 2013, Robert Gates, former defense secretary to presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, warned that the greatest national security threat to the United States was the two square miles that encompass the Capitol Building and the White House.

Most of these woes are self-inflicted. Under presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama, Washington led efforts to expand the NATO eastwards, which upset Russias strategic sensibilities and helped create a new cold war with Moscow. After the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, the United States spent blood and treasure on fighting misbegotten wars in the Middle East where it had no vital interests. Meanwhile, Americas belief that democracy is an export commodity is no longer credible, if it ever was.

What now? How should the incoming President-elect Joe Biden approach the world, and Americas place in it? One impediment to clear thinking about U.S. foreign policy, as Kirkpatrick recognized thirty years ago, has been habitseeing the world as it was, rather than as it is. Indeed, habit is one of the most powerful forces in human life, because it is such a labor-saving device, making it possible to dispense with thought. Lord Salisbury, prime minister and foreign minister of Great Britain when that nation was the most powerful on earth, once remarked: The commonest error in politics is sticking to the carcass of dead policies.

Today, we can see that error being committed in American foreign policy. The clearest example is the extent to which Russiathe heart of the old evil empire during the Cold Waris treated as a threat and dangerous enemy. Or, again, take the Persian Gulf where an energy-independent United States maintains a significant strategic presence.

Circumstances alter cases, and America should pull out of at least one outdated alliance that Kirkpatrick identified in 1990. In Europe, three decades since the collapse of Soviet Communism, the Biden administration should significantly reduce the U.S. military presence on the continent and turn NATO over to the Europeans. In the Persian Gulf, three decades since the liberation of Kuwait, America should stop taking sides in a broader Sunni-Shia security competition. Instead, it should play the Saudis and the Iranians off each other while significantly limiting its military engagements.

Asia, however, is different: the most consequential geopolitical development of the post-Cold War era has been the relentless rise of China, which has turned the unipolar world into a more complicated one that does not conform to American expectations. U.S. military force will be justified to contain Chinas expansion in the region, especially given that U.S. allies are unable or unwilling to balance Beijings hegemonic ambitions on their own. In other words, Biden should do what Obama sought to do earlier last decade: pivot away from Europe and the Middle East and towards Asia.

Many Americans from both political persuasions continue to believe in the notion of global leadership and that a sense of modesty, restraint, limits, and discriminationor realpolitikis at odds with the American tradition and temperament. But as Kirkpatrick once observed: We should reject utterly any claim that foreign policy is the special providence of special people beyond the control of those who must pay its costs and bear its consequences. That advice is as relevant today as it was three decades ago.

Tom Switzer is Executive Director of the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney and a presenter at the Australian Broadcasting Corporations Radio National.

Image: Reuters.

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Why Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Had It Right - The National Interest

President Donald J. Trump, joined by acting Secretary of Defense Christopher C. Miller and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark A. Milley, walks out on to the football field Saturday, Dec. 12, 2020, to participate in the coin toss prior to the start of the 121st Army-Navy football game at Michie Stadium at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y.Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead

If youd told me on Jan. 1, 2020, that Donald Trump would lose, Id have been relieved.

If youd told me it took 300,000 deaths and more than 20 million lost jobs to get that resultand that Trump would come within 50,000 votes of winning the Electoral College anywayId have been unnerved.

If youd told me that Trump would invent an election conspiracy and half the Republican Party would sign on to his coup, I might have moved to Canada.

But here we are.

As we depart the hellscape of 2020, there are four important (if sobering) lessons I think wed do well to rememberwarning signs that, while we dodged a bullet, our democracy and institutions are weaker today than they were 12 months ago. The scourge of illiberalism hasnt been vanquished. Until it is, our centurys defining challengesclimate change, socio-economic inequality, systemic racismwill likely go unmet.

Authoritarianism is more attractive than we admit

Despite a crushing economic collapse and a criminally mismanaged pandemicand before that, the administrations cruelty, lies, corruption, and ineptitude74 million people wanted four more years of Donald Trump.

You can chalk that up to polarization and incumbency. But theres another explanation we mustn't ignore: Authoritarianism sells.

For those who lost faith in institutions and felt left behind by rapid social and economic changes, Trumps order-versus-chaos, us-versus-them bombast offered morally unambiguous answers to complex problems. He convinced his baseoften working-class whitesthat his enemies were their enemies, that he and they were the victims of scornful cultural elites. On Election Day, they turned out in droves.

Trump improved his standing in immigrant neighborhoods and among people of color, tooLatino and Black voters arent immune to authoritarian appealsbut he got swamped in diverse, educated cities and suburbs, where his atavistic populism proved to be Joe Bidens best friend.

Still, Trump won 47% of the vote with the world falling apart. Imagine what a more competent demagogue could do.

The Republican Party isnt conservative

After Trumps defeat, 126 GOP House members co-signed a tinfoil-hat legal argument asking the Supreme Court to toss the election results. Meanwhile, a devolving Trump is entertaining calls to institute martial law, and some members of Congress say theyll challenge electors certification on Jan. 6.

Whether Republicans believe the fever dream or fear mean tweets is irrelevant. The point is that, over the last four years, the GOP has morphed into an authoritarian cult of personality. The post-election sedition was just the cherry on top.

But the partys descent began before Trump, and it will continue after him. Its not Burkean. Its Hannitized: radical and oppositional, angry and conspiratorial, dismissive of opponents legitimacy, and unmoored to any ideology beyond owning the libs, accumulating power, and cutting taxes. It rages at the enemy du jourthe deep state, antifa, China, Hunter Biden, whateverbut has become so intellectually bereft that it no longer competes in the marketplace of ideas. Instead, it invented its own reality.

Theres no price for shamelessness

In 2013, as the U.S. clawed back from the Great Recession, House Republicans brought the world economy to the brink by manufacturing a debt crisis. Four years later, with the GDP growing and Trump in the Oval, they voted to give the wealthy a trillion-dollar tax cut. Now, with Joe Biden taking the reins, deficits are a problem again, though the country is facing a dark winter of COVID-19 deaths, evictions, business closures, and layoffs.

So we cant have $1,200 stimulus payments and $600-a-week unemployment supplements and aid to state and local governments. We get piddly-ass $600 checks, a few weeks of $300 unemployment assistance, dark money loopholes for special interests, and a tax break for three-martini lunches that Democrats traded for expanding a tax credit for poor families. Tough luck, cities!

Republicans realized something about politics in a polarized era in which conservatives get their information from an echo chamber: Theres no price for shamelessness. Hypocrisy, eitherwhich the Amy Coney Barrett confirmation neatly illustrated. Norms mean nothing. Power is the only currency. If you have it, use it.

The system is broken

Anti-Trump Republican exiles comprised a key part of Bidens coalitionwhich doesnt bode well for progressives, particularly after Democrats fell short of their congressional expectations. Party leaders see their path to power by accommodating white moderates, which means marginalizing their left flank.

Whatever logic there is behind this strategy exists only because of the undemocratic nature of our democracy. Biden won by more than 7 million votes4.5 percentage points. Senate Dems will represent between 20 million and 41 million more Americans next year than Senate Republicans, depending on the outcomes in Georgia. And House Democrats earned 5 million more votes than House Republicans.

Yet Biden squeaked by in Arizona, Wisconsin, and Georgia, which together had enough electoral votes to hand Trump the White House. Senate Democrats will either be in the minority or clinging to a 50-50 split. House Democrats barely kept their majority.

The country isnt conservative. But by bestowing outsize power on white rural voters, our anachronistic system has deceived us into thinking it is. In turn, thats fomented an almost Jacobin cycle of Republican radicalization while constraining policy options. We dont do what needs to be done. We do what those in the empowered and entitled minority deem acceptable, then praise them for giving us crumbs.

The wider the gap between the necessary and the possible, between what the people want and the government provides, the more imperiled the American experiment will become.

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Authoritarianism sells plus three other lessons from a year we'd rather forget - Creative Loafing Tampa