Saturday Commentary and Review #162

El Salvador's Attack on the God of Democracy, Transatlantic Rifts?, Russia's Nuclear Reminder, France's War on Woke, The Grateful Dead's Afterlife

Every weekend (almost) I share five articles/essays/reports with you. I select these over the course of the week because they are either insightful, informative, interesting, important, or a combination of the above.

“The Balkans produces more history than it can consume” is a line incorrectly attributed to Winston Churchill. In actuality, he was referring to Crete, but this misappropriation has taken on a life of its own ever since.

I recall watching a documentary on the 60s in the USA a long time ago, and a similar line was mentioned in it: “the USA swallowed too much history in 1968”. It was the year of the assassinations of both MLK and RFK, and of the riots during the Democratic Convention in Chicago. Race riots continued to engulf cities across the country, all while the US participation in the war in Vietnam was at its peak. The lawlessness that seemed to have gripped large parts of the country fueled Richard Nixon’s electoral victory, one which was based on the platform of “restoring law and order”.

In the western social contract, we the people consent to be governed. One of the things that we demand in return as non-negotiable is our collective physical security. If this agreement is violated, the regime loses the authority to govern on our behalf. A lawless country is not a safe country, nor is it an attractive country to do business in either. Without stability, security, and predictability, investment in the future is rendered impossible.

We are bombarded daily with news of mass/random shootings, subway stabbings, and so on. Many of the perpetrators of these violent acts are repeat offenders who for some reason or another (politics) are allowed to roam the streets and attack innocent bystanders. The effect of these lax policies on law and order is the condition known as ‘anarcho-tyranny’ i.e. where the state permits random acts of violence while offering/permitting no solution/resolution…..until it has no option but to try and do so.

In NYC, the National Guard is now patrolling the subway. This is a band-aid solution for a problem that was largely fixed already via the policy known as “stop and frisk”. This policy was deemed “racist”, so it had to end. The price of ending this successful policy was a bit of the ol’ anarcho-tyranny. The conflict between rights and law and order continues unabated for the foreseeable future, at least in the USA.

El Salvador has taken a different approach. Since taking office, President Bukele has arrested some 77,000 gang members, locking them up in prisons throughout the country. In one fell swoop, its notoriously high homicide rate has collapsed. Bukele’s law and order policy has resolved El Salvador’s internal security issue……but at what cost? Western media and human rights NGOs insist that the cost has been El Salvador’s democracy:

Under President Nayib Bukele, El Salvador has experienced one of the most spectacular declines in violent crime in recent memory, anywhere in the world. Despite ranking among the most dangerous countries on the planet a mere decade ago, the Central American state today boasts a homicide rate of only 2.4 per 100,000 people—the lowest of any country in the Western Hemisphere other than Canada.

El Salvador owes much of its dramatic drop in crime to Bukele’s crackdown on street gangs and criminal organizations, including MS-13 and Barrio 18. Although homicide rates were trending downward before Bukele took office in 2019, violent crime declined sharply after March 2022, when his government declared a state of emergency following a spike in murders, allowing the government to suspend basic civil liberties and mobilize the armed forces to carry out mass arrests. This state of exception granted Bukele’s administration a blank check to fight gangs and detain suspects without consideration for transparency, due process, or human rights.

Bukele is wildly popular at home, and his policy is now gaining currency elsewhere in Latin America:

Bukele’s iron-fist measures and their apparent results have not only made him wildly popular in his country—earning him a landslide reelection in February 2024—but also captured the imagination of politicians elsewhere grappling with rapidly deteriorating public safety. Members of the political elite in other states are now toying with the so-called Bukele model. In Ecuador, for instance, President Daniel Noboa has unabashedly followed in Bukele’s footsteps in response to prison riots and a major surge in homicides, declaring a state of emergency in January that gave the armed forces free rein to detain suspects and to take over control of the country’s prisons. The Bukele-style security measures appear to be succeeding there, as well: a little over a month into the crackdown, the government reported that the daily average of homicides had fallen from 28 to six. The fact that militarized public safety campaigns are proving effective outside El Salvador has only enhanced the model’s growing appeal across Latin America, which has long suffered the highest rate of violence of any region in the world.

Here’s the part where the author lodges his protest, and suggests alternative models:

But as appealing as a Bukele-style crackdown might seem, these punitive campaigns against organized crime come at a serious cost to democracy and human rights. These measures concentrate power in the hands of the executive, chipping away at other democratic institutions, such as Congress and the judiciary, that are critical bulwarks against governmental abuse. They also fail to solve the underlying problems, such as corruption and impunity, that generate such violence and instability in the first place.

There are alternatives to the Bukele model for reducing crime. In cities in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, politicians have managed to decrease homicides without eroding civil and human rights by making sustained investments in democratic policing, which emphasizes transparency, accountability, and civil liberties. These measures may not work as quickly, and they may not be as conspicuous. But they do not sacrifice democracy on the altar of public safety. Militarized states of emergency are no silver bullet: for any public safety measures to permanently succeed, they must not come at the expense of the democratic institutions that protect civilians from abuse at the hands of the government.

El Salvador has traded off some civil liberties for public safety, but to suggest examples from Brazil, Colombia, and especially Mexico as workable alternatives boggles the mind. This isn’t the first essay written about El Salvador that laments its “loss of democracy”….The Economist keeps pumping out this same argument over and over again. What these articles do tell us is that for many, democracy is indeed a god, and being a god, it is infallible. Not only can the openness of liberal democratic societies not be at fault for some of the crime that has plagued these countries, but Bukele’s heavy-handed approach is doomed to failure in the long run because it is not based on democratic principles. These democratic critics of Bukele are engaging faith-based reasoning, because their god cannot fail.

Details of the crackdown:

Bukele’s suspension of civil liberties has streamlined his crackdown on gangs, allowing the military to detain suspects without hindrance, circumvent the corruption that pervades the judicial process, and sever the links between imprisoned gang leaders and their acolytes in the outside world. The emergency decree’s suspension of rights, including due process, has made it much easier to arrest suspected gang members, given that probable cause or arrest warrants are not needed and excessive use of force is not a concern. Bukele also used emergency powers to introduce indefinite pretrial detention, which means that the state does not need to present convincing evidence in court before locking a suspect up for extended periods and preempts the possibility that a corrupt judge would release the suspect. The emergency mandate also bars inmates from establishing any contact with individuals outside the prison, including lawyers, relatives, or associates, thereby preventing kingpins from continuing to run their groups from behind bars. The outcome, according to Amnesty International, has been the imprisonment of some 77,000 people, many of whom have also been subjected to systematic torture and other mistreatment.

Yes, this is heavy-handed. Bukele and his supporters will argue that this heavy-hand was necessary, as the alternatives could not be as effective.

Check out this concession:

Public safety has improved dramatically as a result. Although human rights organizations have pointed to significant underreporting of homicides and questioned the reliability of government statistics, the testimonies of Salvadoran citizens make clear that there has been a significant reduction of extortions among business owners and a newfound freedom to enjoy public spaces. Tellingly, the number of encounters that U.S. authorities had with Salvadoran migrants dropped from 97,000 in 2022 to 61,515 in 2023, signaling that violent crime as a push factor for migration may be receding.

This is called a ‘win-win’. Okay, gang members end up getting the short stick here, but that is the trade off that has been made.

And now comes the most important concession:

Despite these high costs, public safety has become such an overriding concern for so many Salvadorans that civil liberties and human rights have been sidelined. As Bukele’s enduring popularity demonstrates, if violent crime is severe enough people are willing to relinquish protections against government abuse in exchange for improved public safety.

The result is a paradox of punitive populism, in which democratically elected leaders with broad anticrime mandates undermine liberal democracy by adopting iron-fist policies that are not only popular but can also be effective. Iron-fist policies are widely appealing to publics accustomed to living in fear for their safety; such is the case for generations of Latin Americans, many of whom have not known a reality other than widespread extortions, kidnappings, and murders.

For the critics of Bukele’s crackdown, his policy cannot work in the long run because it violates democratic norms.

Let that sink in for a bit.

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Prior to the outbreak of war in Ukraine, the French were pushing for their concept of “strategic autonomy” for Europe i.e. a state of affairs where Europe acts in concert, but not at the beck and call of the USA.

The French have always had an independent streak when it comes to post-war Europe, going so far as to pull out of NATO’s integrated command structure in 1966 (only to return to it later on). It only makes sense; every state seeks to maximize their own autonomy. Despite its efforts to pursue strategic autonomy, the French had a tough time selling many European states on the idea. A French ex-diplomat once told me that many European countries prefer the US umbrella because they view it as more reliable than any other alternative, and especially because the Americans bear the brunt of the costs for it. Europe wasn’t buying what the French were selling.

I held out some small hope that the French would be able to cobble something together to use as a starting point for a long process in which the continent would finally be able to stand up on its own two feet. My hopes were dashed when Russia invaded Ukraine, and European leaders fell over themselves to do everything that they possibly could to placate US regional ambitions, going so far as to trash their own economies like Germany has done these past two years. This isn’t news to any of you reading this, but Europe has relegated itself to the status of a collection of American satrapies since February 24, 2022. As Kurt Vonnegut liked to say: “so it goes”.

At present, the White House is trying to do two things regarding Ukraine:

1. prevent a collapse of the UAF

2. pass the responsibility for the war onto the Europeans so that it can focus on China

The Americans have disciplined the Europeans to the point where the French and British in particular are becoming worryingly belligerent towards Russia. It seems that transatlantic unity has never been stronger than it is right now. Despite this present state of affairs, Dominick Sansone does notice some cracks appearing in this unity:

The first major schism can be found in the relationship between the United States and its European allies. It is possible to make the argument—albeit in a rather cynical manner—that forcing Ukraine to keep fighting instead of agreeing to limited concessions at the beginning of the war served to achieve advantageous returns for Washington.

The cut-off of Russian oil and gas to Europe has directly benefited the US energy industry through the subsequent demand for US LNG, helping it to become the world’s largest LNG exporter in 2023, with Europe as the primary destination.

This past year also set new records for US crude oil exports; Europe once again led the way as the top export destination (1.8 million barrels/day, compared to 1.7 million to Asia and Oceania). This was all undergirded by one of the most major inter-alliance developments in the post-Cold War period: the sabotage and destruction of both Nord Stream pipelines.

At the same time, the increased price of energy alongside supply chain challenges in Europe has increased the relative competitiveness of the US economy as production costs soared on the continent. Germany – Europe’s industrial powerhouse with an economy that is heavily reliant on the export of manufactured products – has precipitously fallen to become the worst-performing major developed economy in the world.

This will sound very familiar to long-time readers of this Substack :)

Political repercussions:

There have been political repercussions as well. The Alternative for Germany (AfD) party continues to grow in both popularity and parliamentary power, forcing the Eurocentric political establishment in Berlin to tie itself in a Liberal pretzel: officials continue to discuss the possibility of banning AfD outright, thus stamping out any genuine dissent to the status quo all (somewhat ironically) in the name of openness and inclusivity.

And while the displacement of the Law and Order Party (PiS) in Poland was undoubtedly a cause for celebration among the champions of European consolidation, there is still evidence of lingering public discontent with the general direction of things.

…….

Budapest had also pushed back against the rubber stamp for Ukraine’s ascension to the EU over issues with the large Hungarian minority that is currently located within the borders of Ukraine.

The collective attempt to totally ostracize Russia has also led to sharp divergences between Czechia and Slovakia; the former went so far as to refuse a standard joint cabinet meeting with the latter after the Slovak foreign minister met with Russia’s top diplomat, Sergei Lavrov.

Further to the southeast, the Bulgarian government has been generally supportive of the EU’s stance in Ukraine. And yet, in every round of parliamentary elections that have taken place since the start of the war (there have been five), the two most pro-Russian opposition parties have by far made the greatest gains.

Yanking the leash on the belligerent yapping poodles:

However, the bellicosity of a nation such as Estonia (population of about 2 million, 104^th ranked economy in the world) or Latvia (whose officials have hinted at the need to outright destroy Russia) raises serious questions about whether the US (or any other country) will be able to muster the public support necessary to send its own citizens to fight and die for foreign borders – unless one distills the complex world of geopolitics down to political talking points and moral grandstanding.

But fewer and fewer people appear willing to do exactly that, especially in the US. Despite official proclamations to the contrary, Western officials are undoubtedly aware that the possibility of seriously altering the territorial outcome of the conflict in Ukraine’s favor is, at this point, essentially zero. It therefore makes sense for the US specifically to begin seeking peace in Ukraine.

Again, in the most cynical sense, the war has reached a point of diminishing returns with the risk of escalation currently outweighing any potential benefit: the longer the bloodshed goes on, the worse the outcome will be for Kiev.

The major issue:

The most consequential rift that is therefore likely to continue opening up in the transatlantic order upon the Ukraine war’s eventual conclusion is the one that currently separates its two fundamental political groups: those who are currently ruling and those who are ruled.

A restructured security architecture in Europe that allows for increased regional leadership by countries such as France and Germany, with the potential for even smaller sub-coalitions, would enable a greater unity of interests – and thus effectiveness – in working toward shared goals.

This would subsequently lead to greater stability both in Europe and the world. However, such a state of affairs would also inherently be viewed as a threat to the first principles of international politics upon which the current order was erected: the multilateral over the national; the ideal over the concrete.

Nonetheless, evidence of a growing opposition to that order has been on display both in the US and Europe. The war in Ukraine has in many ways been a flashpoint for that opposition. As the smoke clears, a period of nationalist renaissance – or nationalist regression, depending on whom one is asking – may be waiting in the breach on both sides of the Atlantic.

Sansone’s argument is that the war has papered over the divisions between the USA and Europe, but that these rifts will quickly return to the fore once the conflict in Ukraine is frozen. Even though the law of diminishing returns has set in for the USA in Ukraine, would an overall resolution be in its best interest? Or would a simmering flame be a better option?

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Diplomacy is the traditional method for communication between states. When traditional diplomacy breaks down, alternatives are sought to transmit messages that are deemed significant. Think of Dennis Rodman going to North Korea, for example. He was a private citizen who somehow became a subject of intense interest for North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong Un, with this fascination becoming the vehicle through which to re-establish a direct line of communication with the DPRK.

Since February of 2022, there has been a significant breakdown in communications between the USA and Russia, and not just on the diplomatic front. There are no doubt secret channels of communication that are active, as they are in any conflict. But the diplomatic breakdown is very public, and very dangerous, as neither of the two can gauge to a high enough standard how their counterpart is thinking at the moment.

This is where media comes into play. Opinion pieces can serve to signal to others what the leadership of a state is thinking, with the signalling being entirely intentional. “This is what our position is right now, and you need to understand this so that there is no confusion from our end”. I think that the following opinion piece from Dmitry Trenin of the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) falls within this orbit:

However, the first quarter of the 21st century is ending in conditions very different from the relative international political stability of the 1970s. The US-centric world order established after the end of the Cold War is being seriously challenged and its foundations are visibly shaken. The global hegemony of Washington and the position of the collective West as a whole is weakening, while the economic, military, scientific and technological might and political importance of non-Western countries –first and foremost China, but also India– are growing. This is leading to a deterioration in relations between the US and other power centers.

The two largest nuclear powers, Russia and the US, are in a state of semi-direct armed conflict. This confrontation is officially regarded in Russia as an existential threat. This situation has become possible as a result of the failure of strategic deterrence (in its geopolitical dimension) in an area where Russia’s vital interests are present. It should be noted that the main cause of the conflict is Washington’s conscious disregard –for three decades now– of Moscow’s clearly and explicitly expressed security interests. 

Moreover, in the Ukrainian conflict, the US military and political leadership has not only articulated, but has publicly expressed, the mission of using its proxy to inflict a strategic military defeat on Russia, despite its nuclear status.

“We understand that you want to destroy us, and we will not allow you to do so…btw, don’t forget that we have nukes.”

This is a complex undertaking in which the collective economic, political, military, military-technical, intelligence and informational capacity of the West is integrated with the actions of the Ukrainian armed forces in direct combat against the Russian army. In other words, the US is trying to defeat Russia not only without using nuclear weapons, but even without formally engaging in hostilities. 

In this context, the declaration by the five nuclear powers on January 3, 2022, that “nuclear war should not be waged” and that “there can be no winners,” seems like a relic of the past. A proxy war between the nuclear powers is already underway; moreover, in the course of this conflict, more and more restrictions are being removed, both in terms of the weapon systems used and the participation of Western troops, as well as the geographical limits of the theater of war. It is possible to pretend that a certain ‘strategic stability’ is being maintained, but only if, like the US, a player sets the task of inflicting a strategic defeat on the enemy at the hands of its client state and expects that the enemy will not dare to use nuclear weapons.

Thus, the concept of strategic stability in its original form – the creation and maintenance of military-technical conditions to prevent a sudden massive nuclear strike – only partially retains its meaning under current conditions.

“We are willing to use nukes if we see the need to use them, as we are at war with one another, even if not formally.”

Strengthening nuclear deterrence could be the solution to the real problem of restoring strategic stability, which has been seriously disrupted by the ongoing and escalating conflict. To begin with, it is worth rethinking the concept of deterrence and, in the process, changing its name.

For example, instead of a passive, we should talk about an active form. The adversary should not remain in a state of comfort, believing that the war he is waging with the help of another country will not affect him in any way. In other words, it is necessary to put fear back into the minds and hearts of the enemy’s leaders. The beneficial sort of fear, it’s worth stressing.

“We WILL use nukes if need be.”

The escalation ladder does not end here. Military-technical steps can be followed by real acts, warnings of which have already been given: for example, attacks on air bases and supply centers on the territory of NATO countries, and so on. There is no need to go further. We simply need to understand, and help the enemy to understand, that strategic stability in the real, not narrow, technical sense of the word is not compatible with armed conflict between nuclear powers, even if (for the time being) it is being waged indirectly.

It is unlikely that the enemy will accept this state of affairs easily and immediately. At the very least, they will need to realize that this is our position and draw the appropriate conclusions.

“We are not fucking around.”

The question is: do the Americans believe them?

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In the Anglosphere, the “war against woke” has been led by centrists of the classic liberal sort in tandem (or at odds) with those on the political right.

The French being French, have always liked to do things their own way, and their “war on woke” is not limited to the centre and the right, but spans the entire political spectrum, and by design:

Roughly once a month, the crème of a very specific part of French society gathers at Le Laboratoire de la République, a think tank in central Paris, to warn against what it sees as a dangerous and divisive import.

The events hosted by the Laboratoire don’t just focus on so-called wokeness, but it’s a recurring theme. Speakers have included the French-Algerian novelist Kamel Daoud who has dismissed wokeism as “dangerous” and “boring,” the influential academic and Islam specialist Gilles Kepel who has denounced cancel culture in universities and Nathalie Heinich, a sociologist who described wokeism as a “new totalitarianism.” 

“We didn’t wait for [the woke generations] to tackle racism and sexism,” Heinich said in an interview with POLITICO. “Do they think they’ve invented these fights? We don’t need to ban speeches that don’t suit us to advance the fight against discrimination.”

Set up in 2021 by Jean-Michel Blanquer, a former education minister under President Emmanuel Macron, the think tank was set up to defend a “republican ideal” that transcends race and religion. Woke ideology, Blanquer recently argued in an interview in an elegant restaurant in central Paris, is “pessimistic” because it reduces people to representatives of groups with fixed identities that eclipse the individual: woman, Black, Muslim, gay. “This hodgepodge just creates more conflict in our societies,” he said.

It is in France where official state colour-blindness will be put to the test via this American import.

French egalitarianism at risk:

The term is mostly used pejoratively by critics to describe what they see as a U.S.-driven shift in progressive values leading to the repression of plurality of opinions on gender and race and the promotion of minority identities at the expense of French unity.

“Our defenses against wokeness should be strong,” said Brice Couturier, the host of the Laboratoire’s monthly debates and a self-described leftist who has been critical of “Islamo-leftism” and “transgender ideology.”

“The Republican ideal is egalitarian,” he said. “It doesn’t sit well with the idea that identity, even racial identity, should become an important cultural marker.”

Wokeness is antithetical to post-revolutionary France:

French hostility to so-called woke ideas arguably dates to the upheaval of the 18th century, when the revolutionaries didn’t just decapitate the king but set out to remake society from the ground up. In the place of the Ancien Régime dominated by clerics and noblemen, the Republic erected ideals of secularism and equality, in which ethnic, regional and religious identities were subsumed into universalized Frenchness.

Even today, the French government declines to keep statistics on the country’s ethnic and religious makeup, arguing that doing so would be divisive and reminiscent of the data collection during World War II that was used to round up Jews. And much of the debate about immigration, particularly from predominantly Muslim countries, has centered around objections to overt religiosity in the public sphere.

In recent years, concern about wokeness has reached the highest echelons of French politics. In 2022, Macron declared himself “against woke culture,” announcing his opposition to the removal of controversial historic statues. “We need to face our history,” he added. His wife Brigitte has expressed her opposition to gender-neutral pronouns. And the recently appointed conservative Culture Minister Rachida Dati pledged to fight wokeism, “a policy of censorship.”

The appeal of the fight against it on the left side of the aisle:

What’s distinctive about French anti-wokeness is that it’s by no means confined to the center or the right. It also has adherents on the left, with traditionalists facing off against new generations influenced by the conversation in the U.S.

The topic is so toxic that most politicians try to avoid it altogether, but there are many on the left who see identity politics as a renunciation of the battle for the working classes or a fore rider of American prudishness.

“Big business is playing with [wokeism], giving symbolic advantages to minorities, installing unisex toilets so trans people don’t feel discriminated against,” said Couturier, the leftist anti-woker. But “behind identity politics, the reality is that salaries aren’t going up.”

French culture as resistant to wokeness:

French culture is “resistant to wokeism”, said Mathieu Bock-Côté, a conservative essayist and political commentator. “There’s a culture of irreverence here. If you tell a Frenchman that a man can be pregnant, he’ll burst out laughing.”

Sensitivities about race and religion, argue some on the left, are an American phenomenon, born out of a history of race relations that France — despite its history of colonialism — doesn’t share. “French culture resists wokeism because of an instinctive distrust of the U.S., either because they see it as U.S. imperialism or because they don’t think it’s part of their culture,” said Bock-Côté.

Let us not forget the French role in creation of wokeness:

The irony for France’s anti-woke warriors is that the ideas behind it are, well, very French. It emerged from the writings and teachings of a group of colorful French intellectuals — including Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, René Girard and Jean Baudrillard — who argued that truth is subjective and often determined by power relations.

Known as post-structuralism, or French Theory, their ideas gained popularity in the U.S. in the 1960s and 1970s through a series of writings and lectures, eventually giving rise to gender and decolonial studies. Later, Girard joked that he and his fellow French academics had brought “the plague” to America. 

Boomerang:

“Our problem is that French Theory, which has become crazy on U.S. campuses, is heading back to us like a boomerang in the form of postcolonial studies, gender studies, intersectionality,” Couturier wrote in his book “Ok Millennials!”

Despite its French roots, it really is an American product, one that has been readily exported globally for some time now.

Can the French fend it off?

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I hate The Grateful Dead. Hate them, hate their fans. But I am positive that many of you reading this do like them, so we end this weekend’s SCR with a look at the popular band’s incredible longevity:

All things must pass, and with the coming senescence of the Boomers, we may finally be able to lay the legacy of the 1960s to rest. And yet, by all appearances, one part of that legacy is still going strong – one might even say truckin’ – in the popular imagination. I’m speaking of course of the Grateful Dead, the cult band from San Francisco who have retained an elusive cultural cachet up to the present day. Whence the popularity? 

These are really two questions: first what accounts for the cultlike devotion the Dead inspired during their touring days, and second why does intense fandom persist years after the party ended and the music stopped? I myself did not become a Dead fan until after Jerry Garcia’s passing and the end of the band as a formal entity. Which is to say that my own appreciation is untainted by the Dancing Bear iconography; or the ersatz mysticism of the spinners, those mainstays of every show, who mistook rotating aimlessly for dancing; or the use of grilled-cheese sandwiches as a staple diet. 

Click here to read the rest and check out the site as well as it’s a new project launched by someone from our community here at FbF.

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