With NATO's 75th anniversary summit drawing near, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told the Munich Security Conference in February that Germany would this year meet NATO's 2% of GDP target for defense spending and would sustain this level "through the 2020s and 2030s."But Bastian Giegerich, the head of the London-based International Institute for Security Studies, has said that reversing the effects across Europe of more than 20 years of underfunding of defense capabilities will take at least a decade of substantially increased defense spending. He's not alone in thinking this way, and for good reason. Germany's 2024 budget allocates 51.8 billion euros for defense, by itself short of the 2% of GDP NATO benchmark. Germany seems on course, however, to meet the target by drawing down the 100 billion euro emergency fund announced by Scholz in his famous Zeitenwende (epochal change) speech to the Bundestag in February 2022. Disbursements from this fund are projected to keep Germany's defense spending at or above the 2% of GDP mark through 2028, after which Germany plans to fund defense through the regular budget process. Achieving this will require an increase of approximately 30 billion euros over the 2024 defense outlay. An increase of this magnitude to defense spending from the regular budget process will require overcoming very serious obstacles. Germany has well established limits on the fiscal deficit, which will create politically destabilizing distributional conflict when other spending priorities are forced to adjust to make room for a bigger defense budget.. This constraint will be even more binding if the economy, expected to grow at only 0.2% this year, remains weak. Fiscal probity is baked into German political culture and shored up by formal legal constraints. The "debt brake" written into the constitution in 2009 holds the federal budget deficit to 0.35% in any budget year. The opposition Christian Democratic (CDU/CSU) party, which, according to current polling trends, seems likely to return to power in the 2025 elections, is wary of any attempt to circumvent or reform the debt brake, which legally can be suspended only by invoking "emergency" conditions, as was done to fund pandemic spending, and to unlock 100 billion euros for defense spending in 2022. Last November, Germany's Constitutional Court ruled against the government's plan to repurpose 60 billion euros of unspent COVID funding to pay for green energy transition programs. The ruling coalition had to scramble to fill the hole in its budget, exposing the vulnerability of Germany's fiscal policy to distributional constraints. Farmers took protests onto the streets of Berlin to demand restoration of their diesel fuel subsidy. This kind of social tension is likely to follow any attempt to shift massive resources to the defense sector by cutting other programs. The green energy transition remains a priority for the coalition's two main parties — the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Greens — even though both are fully convinced of the need to boost defense spending. The fiscally conservative Free Democrats (FDP) and their leader, Finance Minister Christian Lindner, adamantly oppose reforming the debt brake or raising taxes. The only obvious way to square this circle would be to consider the continuing war in Ukraine an emergency and thereby unlock another 100 billion euros. This is obviously not an ideal way to finance a program of rearmament that might take decades, and such a maneuver might not survive scrutiny by the Constitutional Court in any case. It is becoming evident that, even with the provision of emergency funding, the defense industrial base can expand only gradually, and weapons procurement processes are limited by the time needed to manufacture new weapons and equipment, whether from Germany, elsewhere in Europe or the United States. For example, the 18 Leopard 2 battle tanks ordered to replace those supplied to Ukraine will arrive two years from now at the earliest. Meanwhile, Ukrainian president Zelensky recently assailed Germany for not delivering the Taurus missiles; he claimed Berlin decided the missiles were necessary for defending Germany instead.Social Constraints: Leadership and Public AttitudesThe German military was underfunded for years before February 2022, because the political leadership absorbed the liberal triumphalism of the 1989 democratic revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe and believed history pointed to global convergence on the liberal democratic model.Efforts to expand military recruitment began after the 2014 Russian takeover of Crimea, but has failed to attract new recruits in sufficient numbers. The number of troops remains stuck at 180,000. Some are now calling for reinstituting mandatory military service.The most effective and vocal advocate for Germany's rearmament is Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, an SDP politician widely touted as a possible successor to Scholz. Pistorius has said that the Bundeswehr must be made "kriegstüchtig" (war ready) and warned that Russia might attack a NATO member within the coming 8-10 years.These statements, very much against the grain of Germany's antecedent anti-militarist political culture, have not dented Pistorius' popularity. German elites and, to a lesser extent, the broader society seem to be moving toward greater acceptance of the need for national rearmament.The European Vision: Too Many Cooks?The European Commission has advanced its own plans to coordinate the financing of rearmament across Europe, favoring and fostering synergies among European defense-industrial firms. In principle, this initiative should pose no problem for Germany since Scholz, a committed European, has repeatedly stated that the EU is the framework for Germany foreign and security policy.Nevertheless, the Commission risks competing with member nations for available resources for equipment and weapons acquisition. Most member countries, including Germany and France, conceive of defense cooperation in a multilateral pan-European context, but would insist that member nations remain in the driver's seat.Emmanuel Macron's exhaustive vision for Europe— the "Sorbonne II" speech of April 26 — dealt extensively with the European imperative to develop a more capable conventional deterrent, albeit within NATO.His framing of the issue was the stark warning that "Our Europe can die," but he did not endorse any pooling of national sovereignty on defense policy. On the contrary, he pledged personally to convene "all partners" to develop a "new defense paradigm" for the "credible defense of the European continent."This is an intergovernmental framework rather than one featuring a leading role for the European Commission.Why the Path Ahead is DifficultBastian Giegerich of IISS says that for Germany "the mental shift, the societal resilience" needed to underpin rearmament "has not happened." This is true, but it is not only a matter of changing hearts and minds. Germany's limitations are embodied in its institutional framework and very resistant to change, given the perceived challenges from the populist right, the climate policy imperative, its generous social safety net, the fragmented party system, the self-imposed but broadly popular fiscal constraints, and complex coordination problems with key partners (above all France) and the European Commission. This transformation, even if embraced without reservation by Scholz or his successors, is a vastly complex and fraught agenda.
Last year's Hamas-led incursion into southern Israel and the subsequent Israeli war on Gaza, which has killed roughly 35,000 Palestinians, have impacted relationships within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) — members appear to be moving closer together. As the Gaza war expands into Lebanon, Yemen, the Red Sea, and elsewhere, and while Iran and Israel's hostilities brought the region into uncharted waters earlier this month, the monarchies on the Arabian Peninsula are strengthening ties within the larger Gulf Arab family.In a historical context, this makes complete sense. To understand why, it is useful to first go back to the chaotic period of the late 1970s and early 1980s.For the Persian Gulf's Arab monarchies, 1979 was a terrifying year. To varying degrees, the Western-backed Gulf Arab leaders saw both Iran's Islamic revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan as dangerous developments. By 1981, the six conservative Gulf Arab states — Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) — came together to bolster their collective security by establishing the GCC.Over the decades, the GCC states have put their ideological and geopolitical differences aside in the interest of growing Gulf Arab unity, particularly during periods of increased instability. Cases include the 1990/91 Kuwaiti crisis, the 2010/11 Arab Spring uprisings, the meteoric rise of Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in mid-2014, and the Taliban's return to power in 2021. By the same token, at times of greater stability in the region and fewer threats to the Gulf Arab monarchies, internal divisions and differences between the GCC members have tended to elevate to the surface.It was no coincidence that the first GCC crisis broke out in March 2014. At that time, the revolutionary tide of the Arab Spring had largely dissipated and the counter-revolutionary Gulf Arab states — Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain — felt the need to pressure Qatar into abandoning the pro-revolutionary and Islamist-friendly policies that shaped Doha's approach to many of the 2010/11 uprisings which shook the Arab world. Yet, that GCC spat ended later that year after ISIL had usurped large portions of Iraq and Syria. Then, the second GCC crisis, which was an outcome of basically the exact same issues that led to the first GCC crisis, erupted in mid-2017 when ISIL was significantly less powerful.Although the Gulf Arab states — unlike Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria — do not share land borders with Israel-Palestine, all six GCC members are extremely worried about the situation in Gaza and its ramifications for the wider region, including the Persian Gulf. Among the Gulf Arab monarchies, there is much common cause and shared concerns about further regionalization of the Gaza war. These concerns have led to Gulf Arab officials becoming increasingly frustrated with U.S. leadership in the region and the Biden administration's refusal to pressure Israel into agreeing to a ceasefire."[The] war in Gaza has unified GCC [states] in terms of moral, political, and diplomatic solidarity with Gaza and the Palestinians," said Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a Dubai-based Emirati political scientist, in an interview with RS. "Israel has become a killer machine in Gaza for the past 200 days and this is to nobody's liking in the Arab Gulf states," he added.There are important domestic ramifications to consider too. Officials in the Gulf Arab monarchies fear the potential for the Palestinian cause to mobilize and/or radicalize their own citizens in ways that could upset the status quo in GCC states and the wider region. Palestine-related protests in Egypt and Jordan have potential to fuel significant unrest in those two countries, whose stability is vitally important to the Gulf Arabs.Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) recently spoke by phone with the president of the UAE Mohammed bin Zayed (MbZ) and the emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim. In these two conversations, the Gulf Arab leaders discussed the heightening of regional tensions and threats to stability and security in the Middle East. MbS, MbZ, and Emir Tamim all agreed on the need to mitigate security risks and take measures to prevent the region's crises from spiraling out of control.On April 22, Oman's Sultan Haitham paid his first visit to the UAE since he became his country's head of state in January 2020. While in Abu Dhabi, Sultan Haitham and MbZ discussed a host of issues at the bilateral, regional, and global levels. During Sultan Haitham's visit, companies from Oman and the UAE signed $35.12 billion worth of deals in various sectors such as transport and energy. The Omanis and Emiratis are focused on advancing their countries' economic integration through various projects and initiatives, most notably the Etihad Rail which links Oman's Sohar port to Abu Dhabi.The GCC states have come a long way in terms of mending fences since the historic al-Ula summit of January 2021 officially ended the Emirati- and Saudi-led blockade of Qatar. Indeed, it was not long ago when a phone call between MbS and Emir Tamim, or between MbZ and the Qatari emir, would have created many headlines given the extent to which Saudi-Qatari and Emirati-Qatari relations had deteriorated. "The Gaza war has brought Qatar and the UAE closer," Abdulla told RS.These past rifts within the GCC were not only about Qatar. The UAE and Oman were having their share of problems in bilateral affairs throughout Sultan Qaboos's final decade on the throne. Yet, Sultan Haitham's recent visit to the UAE underscored how the leadership in both Muscat and Abu Dhabi are focused on both playing their diplomatic cards to try to bring regional crises under control while also pushing ahead with their economic transformations at home through ambitious visions aimed at eliminating their economic dependence on hydrocarbons.In all GCC states, there is an understanding that more discussions between their leaders and growing levels of inter-GCC cooperation across a host of domains is necessary to achieve progress on both fronts. The Gulf Arab monarchies realize that this is not a time for internal divisions and friction between the different royal families to prevent the six GCC members from reaching their potential through greater Gulf Arab unity.GCC states have strengthened their relationships with each other since October 7 because "there needed to be coordination given that Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE are playing leadership roles in this conflict," said Aziz Alghashian, a fellow with the Sectarianism, Proxies & De-sectarianisation project at Lancaster University.Nonetheless, while the GCC members are bolstering their cooperation as Israel's war on Gaza rages, some experts believe that competition between the Gulf Arab states vis-à-vis Gaza might emerge after the dust settles and the post-war phase begins in the Palestinian enclave."There is potential that it could be turbulent in the future once there is a real process of addressing the day after in Gaza and that could [relate to] aspects of burden sharing [and] aspects of competition," Alghashian said. "So, there is that to look out for in the future. Maybe it's speculative for now, but I don't think we should count it out."
The other day, out of a combination of nostalgia, insomnia, and tribute to Carl Weathers I decide to watch Rocky III. I am not sure why I picked this one. Perhaps because it is one of Weathers' best as he goes from rival to partner, it is also where Rocky goes from scrappy seventies film to full on eighties excess, a process that would be completed in Rocky IV. It also got me thinking of training montages.In Rocky films the training montage is not something before the big fight. They are the real fight, the real battle, the battle with oneself, one's doubts, and one's body; what happens in the ring is just the conclusion of this battle. We know how Rocky's first fight with Clubber Lang is going to go because we have already seen it play out in the montage: we see Clubber angrily sweating it out in the dirtiest gym and Rocky turning his workout into an extended publicity tour. We also know how the second fight will go when we see Rocky find an even dirtier gym to train in and more, importantly, find a new mentor in his old nemesis, Apollo Creed. In the Rocky films the darker, dirtier, and more desperate the gym, the better the training. This starts in the first films where Rocky's training used the immediate situation of his working class life, pounding on sides of beef and chasing chickens. In subsequent films he will need recreate his own hardscrabble roots in a Machiavellian return to first principle, remake himself as the underdog by stripping away luxury and technology. This trajectory reaches its apotheosis in Rocky IV in which Rocky eschews a gym altogether for training via agricultural labor. Rocky's workout of sawing wood and hauling rocks is intercut with Drago's scientifically monitored and artificially enhanced workout. It has been said before that the dream of American movies of the eighties was to be the Vietcong, to defeat a technologically superior enemy by fighting harder and, to some extent dirtier; Rocky IV does this one better by making Rocky the true heir of the Russian Revolution, the peasantry storming the Winter Palace of Soviet Technology. As someone who teaches Gilles Deleuze's film books I am often caught between what montage meant at the beginning of the history of cinema. Deleuze's theory of montage was developed in relation to efforts by pioneers of early cinema, such as D.W. Griffith and Sergei Eisenstein, to transform our very perceptions of action and time. That is not what my students think of when I say the word montage though. The montage lives on in Hollywood in a mostly bastardized form in which it is generally used to compress time, to suggest by a series of images a longer transformation, such as the training montage in boxing and martial arts films. (In the general shift in which much of the movies has moved to television, Breaking Bad and Better Call Saul are one place in which the montage still takes prominence). Gilles Deleuze argues that montage is an indirect image of time, as the different images and sequences present an overall temporal transformation.The images and sequences of individual acts add up to a larger transformation of the whole situation that exceeds them. Montage is a visualization of the process by which quantitative change becomes qualitative change. Montage is often an image of work. In the case of the training montage this work is necessarily collective. It takes a gym to make a boxer, a dojo to make a fighter. It is from this perspective that we can chart the decline of the training montage in contemporary film. This chart takes two paths. One is through the superhero film. While some of the early entries in the genre such as Raimi's Spider-Man and Nolan's Batman Begins had their montages, and it even returned in The Marvels, for the most part the collective labor of training is not need when powers and abilities come bottled in a serum or via a mechanical suit. I realize that Iron Man had its montage of construction and testing, but this was very much a solo effort of a self-made man.The second path is mapped out by The Matrix in which training is replaced by downloading. The Matrix can be considered in some sense a montage about the end of the montage, as disks replace dojos, downloading replaces training. I think that The Matrix has to be understood as an anti-work film in the broad sense, with all the sort of contradictions that it implies: it is both about escaping the confines of the cubicle, of a life free from the particular matrix of an office layout, and about escaping the constraints of work altogether, a dream of radical transformation that comes at the push of a button. ]All of which brings me to my final point, John Wick and before him Jason Bourne, are two figures in the action film who come to us fully formed, the product of a training that we never see. It is clear that Keanu Reeves has put in the work, in the dojo and shooting range, to become John Wick but that is only seen in the behind the scenes videos. Keanu Reeves commitment to the work is perhaps why he has the unique status in contemporary film of being the only actor to portray to different action heroes with very different martial arts backgrounds, various styles of kung fu in The Matrix and Jiu Jitsu, judo, and aikido in John Wick. In the films we only see the result, not the work. Moreover given that John Wick's skills come from styles in which training comes with a partner, in aikido we say you get good by working with people who are better, John Wick's legendary status as a kind of Baba Yaga of the Russian underworld comes from effacing the very conditions that have made him possible. If the training montage was a representation of work, and of collectivity, in the Reagan era that tried so hard to deny it, what then do we make of its effacement in current action films? Have our action heroes become the self made men (and women) that we are told to consider ourselves to be, or am I reading too much into it? Updated 4/12/24This might just be a matter of confirmation bias, but I was delighted to see that Monkey Man not only returned the training montage to centrality, it is the training montage that makes all of the difference between the first failed attempt at revenge, and its badass repetition in the final act. Moreover, it is through the montage that the collective nature of Kid (Dev Patel's) plan is made clear. In this case the community includes street kids, stray dogs, and most importantly members of India's Hijra community. I must admit that I feel unqualified to say much about the politics of Monkey Man, especially as they seem to be use Hindu myths and stories in their critique of Hindu nationalism. However, I was glad to see it restore the training montage to centrality, and in doing so, provide an image of collectivity its individual journey of revenge.
Kommt der Ein-Fach-Lehrer? Die Berliner Universitäten wollen das schon bald anbieten – und auch sonst das Lehramtsstudium verändern, um es attraktiver zu machen.
Foto: Katerina Holmes, Pexels, CCO.
ES FEHLEN bundesweit 68.000 Lehrkräfte in den kommenden zehn Jahren: Davon geht die Kultusministerkonferenz (KMK) aus. In Berlin reichen inzwischen selbst tausende Quer- und Seiteneinsteiger nicht mehr aus. Helfen soll eine Reform des Lehramtsstudiums, hofft die KMK – um den Mangel an Fachkräften zu mindern und gleichzeitig die Qualität der Ausbildung zu erhöhen. In Berlin macht jetzt Wissenschaftssenatorin Ina Czyborra (SPD) Tempo. Sie will zusammen mit den Hochschulen in den ersten sechs Monaten des neuen Jahres Eckpunkte fertigstellen, die das Studium erneuern sollen.
Schon vor einem Jahr hatten die Kultusminister ein Gremium von Wissenschaftlern, die Ständige Wissenschaftliche Kommission (SWK), beauftragt, ein Gutachten mit Reform-Empfehlungen auszuarbeiten. Anfang Dezember hat die SWK geliefert – zwei Tage, nachdem die jüngste Pisastudie den deutschen Neuntklässlern die schlechtesten Leistungen seit zwei Jahrzehnten bescheinigt hatte.
Wie gut sind die vier Berliner Universitäten, die künftige Lehrer ausbilden, nun auf tiefgreifende Veränderungen vorbereitet? Und wie finden sie, was die SWK-Experten vorschlagen? Die Rückmeldungen fallen überraschend einheitlich und selbstbewusst aus. "Das Gutachten zeigt, dass wir auf dem richtigen Weg sind", sagt der für die Lehrerbildung zuständige Vizepräsident der Technischen Universität (TU), Christian Schröder. Sein Kollege von der Freien Universität (FU), Sven Chojnacki, findet, die meisten SWK-Vorschläge stünden "im Einklang, was wir als Hochschulleitung seit langem verfolgen, nämlich ein qualitativ hochwertiges System wissenschaftlicher, forschungsbasierter Qualifizierung der Lehrerbildung zu schaffen". Der Direktor der Professional School of Education an der Humboldt-Universität (HU), Stephan Breidbach, kommentiert, die Kommission lege den Finger "an den richtigen Stellen in die Wunde". Rebekka Hüttmann, Vizepräsidentin der Universität der Künste, sieht viele Reformforderungen an der UdK bereits erfüllt.
Berliner Universitäten als Positiv-Beispiele
Verschiedene Reformen, die auch die SWK vorschlägt, stehen dabei aktuell im Mittelpunkt, vor allem diese: die Einführung eines Studiums für sogenannte Ein-Fach-Lehrer.
Die Idee: Nach einem Fach-Bachelor oder Fach-Master wechseln Studierende in einen Master of Education und bekommen dort das pädagogische und fachdidaktische Rüstzeug für den Lehrerberuf. Das geht auch mit einem älteren Diplom oder Magister. Anschließend gehen sie voll ausgebildet ins Referendariat und an die Schulen – aber eben mit einem Fach. Die Lehrerbildung würde so flexibler, offener auch für Spätentschlossene und bliebe trotzdem komplett wissenschaftsbasiert.
Lehrkräftemangel
Die Kultusministerkonferenz (KMK) erwartet laut ihrer jüngsten Prognose 68.000 fehlende Lehrkräfte bundesweit bis 2035, Bildungsforscher wie der Erziehungswissenschaftler Klaus Klemm
taxieren die Lücke gar auf 85.000 Pädagogen. Schon in den kommenden Jahren fehlen Zehntausende. Allein in Berliner Schulen waren im Herbst über 700 Vollzeit-Stellen unbesetzt.
"Vor allem für Quereinsteiger kann das ein spannendes Modell sein", sagt Stephan Breidbach von der HU. Dort gibt es schon einen – ähnlich gestrickten – Quereinstiegs-Master (Q-Master) für Grundschulen, die FU hat das Pendant für die weiterführenden Schulen, die TU für die beruflichen Schulen. Allerdings laufen sie alle noch auf zwei, in der Grundschule auf drei Fächer hinaus. Anders an der UdK: Da haben sie schon einen Ein-Fach-Master in den Fächern Kunst und Musik. "Bislang nur für den Quereinstieg", sagt Vizepräsidentin Hüttmann. "Aber das könnte man auch grundständig denken" – also für Studienanfänger, die von Anfang nur Lehrer für ein Fach werden wollen.
"Der Ein-Fach-Lehrer wäre für uns in Berlin die große Revolution", sagt Ina Czyborra. Und während die SWK solche Modelle vor allem für Mangelfächer wie Mathematik oder Informatik empfiehlt und auch an den Berliner Universitäten die Präferenz besteht, zumindest mit denen anzufangen, hält die Wissenschaftssenatorin derartige Studiengänge für alle Schulfächer denkbar. "Wenn jemand nur für Geografie oder Geschichte brennt, warum denn nicht?" Etwas zurückhaltender klingt es aus der Senatsverwaltung für Bildung. Es heißt dort zwar, dass auch Bildungssenatorin Katharina Günther-Wünsch (CDU) den Ein-Fach-Lehrer "möglichst bald" einführen wolle. Allerdings beschränkt auf Mangelfächer.
Warnungen, dass Schulen nur mit Zwei-Fach-Lehrern ihre komplexen Stundenpläne organisiert bekämen oder Ein-Fach-Lehrer schneller ausbrennen könnten, kontern einige Lehrerbildungs-Reformer mit dem Hinweis, dass die Lehrerbildung in großen Teilen der Welt immer schon nur auf ein Fach abhebe. Weshalb Christian Schröder von der TU gerade auch für internationale Bewerber, die mit nur einem Fach kämen, nach Einführung größere Chancen sieht. "Wenn wir grünes Licht bekommen, wollen wir schon zum Wintersemester 2025/26 loslegen."
Weitgehend Einigkeit mit der SWK herrscht auch bei der Ablehnung eines dualen Studiums vom ersten Semester an. Dabei würden Studierende von Anfang an unterrichten und parallel zur Uni gehen. "Für die HU kann ich sagen, dass so etwas indiskutabel wäre", sagt Stephan Breidbach. Allerdings, fügt er hinzu, sei man sich mit der SWK ebenfalls einig, dass Praxis und Theorie im Studium durch Beratung und Reflexionsangebote noch besser verzahnt werden müssten.
Auch der "Flex-Master" soll kommen
Das Zauberwort, das sie deshalb zwischen den Berliner Universitäten und der Politik diskutieren, lautet "Flex-Master". Die Initiative dafür, sagt Sven Chojnacki, sei von der FU ausgegangen. Alle Universitäten hätten sich bereits dazu bereit erklärt, "wir entwickeln das jetzt in einer gemeinsamen Arbeitsgruppe weiter".
Der Flex-Master soll ermöglichen, dass Studierende im Master of Education selbst über ihr Studienmodell entscheiden. Sie könnten dann entweder wie bisher ein volles Praxissemester an einer Schule verbringen, mit vier Tagen Unterrichtspraxis und einem Tag an der Uni zur Begleitung. Oder sie könnten mehrere Semester hindurch unterrichten, inklusive universitärer Betreuung, und dabei parallel studieren.
Das wäre zugleich eine Anerkennung der Realität, wie sie ist, sagt Senatorin Czyborra: "die Realität der sogenannten PKB-Kräfte", wobei die Abkürzung für "Personalkostenbudget" steht. "Wir wissen, dass sehr viele Studierende bereits vertretungsweise an Schulen unterrichten. Damit müssen wir umgehen." Ohne Praxisanleitung sei das aber nicht mehr als Lückenstopfen auf Kosten der Studierenden, "und das geht auf Dauer gar nicht".
Die Unis wollen genauer wissen, wer das Studium abbricht
Ein weiterer Vorteil laut TU-Vize Schröder: Statt erstmal für wenige Studierende einen aufwändigen Modellversuch zu starten, könnte man hier gleich alle Studierende einbeziehen, ohne große Verwerfungen und aufbauend auf dem, was schon da sei. "Das wäre sicher sinnvoller als ein duales Studium komplett neu parallel aufzubauen."
Und sonst? Wollen die Berliner Universitäten wie von der SWK gefordert ihre Datenlage verbessern. Genauer wissen, wer wo und warum den Studiengang wechselt oder abbricht. Alle klappern sie längst mit Werbevideos, Flyern und Social-Media-Kampagnen, um zusätzliche Studienbewerber anzulocken. Die UdK zum Beispiel schickt Scouts in die Schulen, die FU will ihr Einführungsstudium EinS@FU fürs Lehramt öffnen, die Senatsverwaltung für Bildung lobt unterdessen Extra-Stipendien aus.
Alles in allem mit bislang mäßigem Erfolg. Derzeit schafften alle Universitäten zusammen etwa die Hälfte der laut neuen Hochschulverträgen geforderten 2500 Absolventen pro Jahr, sagt Christian Schröder, "in den MINT-Fächern bisher leider sogar noch ein paar weniger" – weshalb die TU jetzt den direkten Zugang für Techniker und Meister für ihren Q-Master erlaubt bekommen möchte. Sven Chojnacki sagt, es werde schwierig, eine solche Kopfzahl zu erreichen. "Alle lehrerbildenden Hochschulen haben schon viel getan, um die Lehrerbildung in den Mittelpunkt zu stellen, aber wir wissen auch, es gibt weiteren Nachholbedarf."
Die SWK fordert deshalb, die Schools of Education "wirkmächtiger" zu machen – aber wie? Sollten sie am Ende, was die SWK so nicht ausbuchstabiert, wie die medizinischen Fakultäten ihre Studiengänge überwiegend selbst bespielen? Mit weitreichenden Folgen für die Mittelverteilung in den Universitäten? Eine Frage, bei der die sonst so gesprächigen Vertreter der Berliner Universitäten wortkarg werden. Dieses Brett wäre wohl sogar ihnen noch zu dick.
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Can an opera about drone warfare sponsored by a weapons maker ever really be considered "antiwar"? The head of New York's Metropolitan Opera certainly thinks so.Peter Gelb, the Met's general manager, said earlier this year that he feared a growing "misperception" that the new opera "Grounded" fails to provide a nuanced take on the costs of war. If that view took hold, Gelb lamented, "the work would be somehow tainted before anybody ever got a chance to see it."When I first saw Gelb's comment, I admit that I took it to heart. I had helped spin up an online controversy with a piece that slammed "Grounded" as militarist propaganda. My (brief) argument relied on two facts: The show's main sponsor was weapons contractor General Dynamics, and its primary advertisement was teeming with blithe comments about its "hot shot" pilot lead who, after having a baby and being relegated to the role of a drone operator, "tracks terrorists by day and rocks her daughter to sleep by night."The Washington National Opera, which is putting on the show's first production on the Met's behalf, responded by toning down the ad and highlighting that General Dynamics — the maker of main character Jess's beloved F-16 fighter jet — was the sponsor of the season, not just the show, and had no direct input on the production.I couldn't help but wonder if I had unfairly skewered a well-meaning attempt at conveying the horrors of war, so I took Gelb's warning as a challenge and secured a media ticket, promising myself and my editors that I would give the show a fair shake. (If you plan to see the opera, beware of spoilers ahead.)I'll start with the good. The show, which was composed by Jeanine Tesori and written by George Brant, featured massive, high definition LED screens that streamed captivating visuals of the view from a drone's camera and the desert road that Jess drove home from her base near Las Vegas. The vocal performances, to my ear at least, were excellent, led by an outstanding Emily D'Angelo in the role of Jess."Grounded" is at its best when it details the very real and very under-recognized trauma that drone operators experience through their work. When Jess kills a group of militants who were planting an improvised explosive device (IED), her confidence wavers when she sees their charred remains and slowly watches their heat signature disappear from her camera's view — something she never had to do in her fighter pilot days.Jess's worlds gradually collapse upon each other as she tracks a sedan that looks eerily like her own, and the line blurs between her world and the war, with any visible camera liable to set off a bout of paranoia that she is next on the kill list. The performance destroys the myth that drone warfare is more of a video game than real combat, and in so doing gives voice to the pain that drone operators often experience as a result of their service. As the program notes, drone operators are diagnosed with PTSD as frequently as their fighter pilot colleagues.But, in focusing narrowly on the personal struggles of a drone operator, "Grounded" dodges more profound questions about America's endless wars, which continue today in Niger, Somalia, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, and whichever other countries the Pentagon would rather not say it's operating in. (For those keeping score at home, this is the start of the "bad" section.)Like much supposedly "antiwar" work, "Grounded" falls short by restricting its critique to the conduct of war rather than its very nature. As Samuel Moyn has written in these pages, each side of the debate over U.S. military interventions "bicker[s] over how far to go in making ongoing war more humane, against the background of ongoing American militarism — even as questions about whether, where, and how long war is fought are relegated to the margins."In fact, "Grounded" goes further at times by suggesting that Jess's work as a fighter pilot was in some way more moral — or at least less psychologically tortuous — than her days as a drone operator. This suggestion will come as a surprise to the many American pilots who have returned from the frontlines of the Global War on Terror with PTSD, as well as the innocents who were all too often killed in the crossfire.Much like the film "American Sniper," the show urges us to sympathize first and foremost with the person whose finger rests on the trigger. "Grounded" reaches its climax when, after tracking a high-value target for days, Jess is ready to fire on him until his daughter suddenly emerges and runs toward him. Our "hot-shot" friend panics when she sees the girl's face — in implausible HD — and crashes the Reaper instead of taking the shot. The child in the crosshairs only becomes human when compared to Jess's own daughter, who earned a life free from fear of random immolation the old fashioned way: being born in America.These shortcomings are in part explained by the fact that the opera is an adaptation of a one-woman show, which by its nature would focus closely on the emotions of its protagonist. But the operatic version of "Grounded," which is twice as long as its predecessor, still struggles to find a place for the inherent humanity of civilians caught up in far-off killing fields.Even Jess's tragic ending — a court martial that will no doubt lead to a long sentence for destroying an expensive drone — fails to strike a resounding antiwar note. In the end, the show devotes far more energy to showing the eeriness of war than any of its deeper flaws and causes.Some shots of sleek Reaper drones verge on war porn. "Grounded" is peppered with long, fawning descriptions of the drone's cameras and missiles, which seem designed to make the audience salivate over the cutting edge tech that will finally — finally! — make war a moral endeavor.And while the special effects are remarkable, they felt tailored toward another great myth of American militarism: the so-called "revolution in military affairs," which allegedly made it possible to conduct war with made-for-TV precision. We're asked to believe that Jess knows exactly what she is firing at and chooses not to — far less disquieting than the reality, in which drone operators often shoot at vaguely understood targets that all too often contain civilians.In other words, "Grounded" musters an interesting critique of the hagiography of American warfare, but, by spending most of its time describing that idealized view, the show never bothers to imagine an alternative to endless war.Prior to the performance, an ad above the stage thanked General Dynamics for its generous sponsorship of the opera season. As I walked out, I couldn't help but wonder if General Dynamics was thanking them back.
News media manufactures consent, and one way that happens is by manufacturing amnesia — burying a government's past misdeeds makes it easier to sell future ones. The catastrophic floods that Storm Daniel unleashed on Libya, which have killed as many as 10,000 people, are both a natural disaster and a human-made one. In the week following Storm Daniel, a large portion of the media coverage described "war" as a reason the country was ill-equipped to handle the catastrophe. However, media discussion of NATO's contribution to what has become Libya's forever war has been almost non-existent. NATO's intimate involvement — albeit by proxy — in the current war in Ukraine makes the omission all the more remarkable.War in contemporary Libya is traceable to February 2011, when protests against Muammar Gadhafi's government evolved into an armed conflict. In the initial days of the fighting, the U.S. media amplified claims that the Libyan air force was bombing demonstrators despite statements by top Pentagon officials that there was "no confirmation whatsoever" that such bombing was happening. Western media outlets and politicians accused Gadhafi of carrying out a systematic mass slaughter of civilians, and of intending to do more of the same, particularly as government forces advanced on rebel-held Benghazi. In this climate, the UN Security Council passed Resolution 1973 in March 2011, which authorized "all necessary measures" to protect civilians.NATO dubiously interpreted the resolution as granting it the right to overthrow the Libyan government. NATO forces — primarily Britain, France and the U.S. — subsequently conducted roughly 9,700 strike sorties and dropped over 7,700 precision-guided bombs during their seven-month campaign. The bombing not only assured eventual victory for the rebels — a mostly ragtag, disparate collection of local and tribal militias, Islamist fighters, and disaffected soldiers united only by their opposition to Gaddafi (whose death was facilitated by a NATO airstrike). It also killed scores of the civilians it claimed to be protecting and left Libya without a functioning government (in addition, it enabled the proliferation of tens of thousands of arms stockpiled by Gaddafi's government to insurgents throughout Libya, the Sahel, and beyond, notably in Syria).For most of the period since Gadhafi's overthrow, Libya has been afflicted by a civil war that has seen the country split between two heavily armed rival factions claiming to be the government: Khalifa Haftar's Libyan National Army (LNA) in the east and the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord in the west.There is no evidence that NATO bombing directly contributed to the collapse of the dams that caused the catastrophic flooding in Derna (although the war reportedly interrupted rehabilitation work by a Turkish construction company). However, it is beyond question that NATO's intervention contributed to the destruction of the Libyan state and social fabric, helping bring about years of warfare, one consequence of which has been the inability to maintain critical infrastructure. Yet this context has been all but invisible in U.S. mainstream media coverage of the recent floods, even in those reports that identified "war" as a factor that helps explain the scale of the cataclysm.I used the news database Factiva to search material published in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post — arguably the three most influential national newspapers — between Sunday September 10, the day that Derna was flooded, and Saturday September 16. I searched the words "Libya" and variations on "flood," such as "flooding" and "floods," and got 67 results, the great majority of them supposedly "objective" news reports rather than op-eds., Forty of the 60 included the word "war." But only three of these also used the term "NATO," or just 7.5 percent of the content. Two additional articles contained the words "NATO," "Libya," and "flood," but not "war," instead using the word "intervention" to describe NATO's role. Thus, only five articles — or 7.4 percent — of the week's total coverage of the floods referenced NATO.Typical of the coverage in those articles when "war" was mentioned as a contributing cause of the disaster was a Post report noting that Libya was "battered by more than a decade of war and chaos, and split between rival governments, with no central authority to shore up infrastructure or draw up plans to save residents." Later, the article stated that "Oil-rich Libya has been ravaged by conflict since the fall of its longtime dictator, Moammar Gadhafi, in 2011," again with no mention of NATO's contribution.Similarly, the Times ran a piece calling Libya "a North African nation splintered by a war, [which] was ill-prepared for the storm….[D]espite its vast oil resources, its infrastructure had been poorly maintained after more than a decade of political chaos." Regarding the events of 2011, the articles goes to note that "Libya endured 42 years of autocratic rule under Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi before he was overthrown in a revolt in 2011." This account suggests that Gaddafi's ouster was strictly an internal affair and completely obscures the decisive role played by NATO's campaign on the side of the anti-government forces, creating the conditions for further instability and warfare.According to the Journal, "The natural disaster [in Libya] was decades in the making — a result of years of official neglect of two nearby dams during the authoritarian regime of Moammar Gadhafi and the political crisis and war since his ouster in a 2011 revolution." The authors highlight the role that war played in setting the stage for the floods but gloss over how the NATO intervention against the Gadhafi government helped generate societal and governmental collapse, and post- Gadhafi warfare.Of course, simply mentioning NATO doesn't necessarily mean that a news article has given readers an accurate picture of what the alliance did in Libya. For example, a Post story says Gadhafi ruled Libya until "he was killed by rebel forces during a NATO-backed Arab Spring uprising." This phrasing is ambiguous at best: it gives readers no sense of what form NATO's "back[ing]" of Libya's "Arab Spring uprising" took. An analysis by the Post's Ishaan Tharoor, which was not published in the paper's print edition, was much closer to the mark when it says that "Libya's unstable status quo" is both the result of domestic political forces in Libya and of "the intervention of outside actors. That began with the NATO-led intervention in 2011."The Times, Journal, and Post repeatedly noted the link between the flooding in Libya and armed conflict in the country. However, with very few exceptions, the publications declined to acknowledge that, in 2011, NATO opted to bomb Libya until its government was overthrown. In this regard, the papers have failed to remind their readers that NATO's intervention was part of the chain of events that led to this month's calamity. Such a reminder would seem especially pertinent today in light of NATO's much-touted reinvigoration and northern expansion owing to its growing role in supporting Ukraine against the Russian invasion.
A year and a half ago I published an Op-Ed article and Blog post on the great popular revolt in Cuba motivated by economic hardship and the lack of future prospects, aggravated by the pandemic. I speculated that since the Army was the country's most powerful and best-organized institution, some generals might try to maintain their advantageous economic positions by avoiding participating in the repression and seeking a reformist accommodation. This was not the case. The week after the revolt, five high-ranking generals died without the causes being clarified and a few months later General Luis-Alberto Rodríguez López-Calleja, head of the business and financial conglomerate of the Revolutionary Armed Forces that controls the main landmarks of the Cuban economy, including the tourism sector, and one of the most important men in the command structure in Cuba, also died suddenly.
Cuba had experienced in July 2021 the largest anti-government protests since the Revolution. The previous crisis, the Maleconazo of 1994 (the subject of the documentary Balseros, co-produced by TV de Catalunya and nominated for an Oscar) ended with 300 people arrested. The 2021 revolt generated 1,400 detainees, 790 prosecuted and 128 sentenced to prison terms of up to thirty years.
Between the two crises, the Cuban opposition lost its historic leaders. Oswaldo Payá was the victim of a probable assassination attempt; Gustavo Arcos, whom I visited in Havana, died; Elizardo Sánchez, whom I also met, was held captive by spies and infiltrators. Cardinal Jaime Ortega must be in Heaven.
In parallel, the exile voice in Miami has almost been extinguished after the death of its veteran leaders and the adaptation of the next generation born in the United States. Neither the conservative Mas Canosa nor the social democrat Jesús Díaz, in whose magazine I collaborated, are among us anymore, while my friend the liberal Carlos Alberto Montaner has already written his memoirs. The last time I went to the Café Versailles on 8th Street, it looked like an abandoned place.
According to economist Albert Hirschman, there are three alternatives to a political regime: voice, loyalty, and exit. As I have described, voice has been harshly repressed in Cuba for the last year and a half. But at the same time, the economic situation has worsened, and loyalty to the regime has diminished.
Last September there was a referendum on gay marriage and other family issues, which could have been viewed positively given the Revolution's homophobic record. But it turned into a plebiscite on the regime and more than half of the census did not vote or voted against, null or blank. In November there were municipal elections in which 40% of the census did not participate or rejected the candidates selected by the single party. This disaffection is unprecedented in Cuba, where in Fidel Castro's time 95% voted. In the regime's typical response mobilization, they had to get Raul Castro out of bed, at 91 years of age and without any official position, to see if this would revive the revolutionary spirit.
Hirschman explains that when the voice is eliminated and loyalty is lowered, the only alternative is the exit, i.e., emigration. Thus, since the July 2021 revolt, some 250,000 Cubans have left the island, a figure far higher than the sum of all previous emigration crises.
Leaving Cuba by sea is illegal without a visa. Donald Trump dismantled the U.S. consulate in Havana and suspended the issuance of visas. But according to the Cuban Adjustment Act, anyone who sets foot on land, even without a visa, is considered a refugee. Faced with the massive flight, the U.S. Coast Guard has captured at sea and returned to the island more than two thousand Cubans trying to reach Florida this past year. At least 100 died in the crossing.
The other way out requires traveling by plane to the Bahamas, Panama, Nicaragua, or Mexico and attempting to cross the Mexican border with the United States on foot. For a Cuban with an average salary equivalent to thirty-three dollars a month, this type of journey involves a cost of eight to ten thousand dollars, including ransoms to coyotes and polleros and bribes to corrupt officials. Despite all this, the number of Cubans who manage to cross the southern border of the United States has steadily increased to 35,000 in a month.
During the year 2022, with the presidency of Joe Biden, the US issued some 20,000 immigrant visas. A few days ago, on January 4, the Consulate in Havana resumed its services. Long lines and hundreds of thousands of petitions to leave the island legally are expected, the vast majority of young people without vital expectations.
Fidel Castro repeated several times his curse that "first the island will sink into the sea before abandoning communism". Posthumously, he may end up succeeding.In Catalan and Spanish in daily ARA:https://www.arabalears.cat/opinio/cuba-enfonsa-mar-josep-colomer_129_4596330.htmlCOMMENTSResumen certero, conciso y por desgracia triste, de la actualidad de Cuba. Lo he circulado en mi chat hispano-latinoamericano (aún hay irredentos que creen en la revolución cubana).Saludos cordiales.RamónRamón Puig de la Bellacasa AlberolaEmbajador…Impresiona lo que cuentas sobre Cuba, en lo que te veo te has involucrado a fondo. Yo recuerdo mis amigos nicaragüenses, y ahora veo con lo que tienen que vivir, si es que no han salido del país…Víctor Pérez DiazSociólogoMuchísimas gracias por el último articulo que me has enviado sobre cuba.Un fuerte abrazoJose Manuel BandrésTribunal SupremoTerrific article. Gracias.Alfred CuzanWest Florida UniversityTriste realidad!Pedro FreyreAkerman's International PracticeMuy difícil el panorama cubano; no hay mejor metáfora que la referida maldición de Castro que citas. Acabo de regresar una semana, entre la inflación y la depauperación generalizada…Carlos-Manuel Rodríguez-ArechavaletaUniversidad Iberoamericana, MéxicoBellísima y elocuentes palabras. Gracias por abordar este tema. No había pensado lo del vacío de liderazgo miamense que mencionas.Javier CorralesAmherst College, MassachusettsGracias, Josep, por un elocuente y triste artículo.Leandro Prados de la EscosuraUniversidad Carlos IIIAgraït . Desconeixia les actuals tensions a Cuba.Josep M.BricallBarcelonaArtículo muy interesante, como todos los tuyos, que leo con devoción. Merece amplia difusión. En los tiempos que corren, visto lo que sucede en Brasil, USA y Europa, provoca gran curiosidad lo que pueda suceder en Cuba en relación con la democracia.Oscar Rodriguez BuznegoUniversidad de OviedoEnhorabuena por lo atinado de tu texto, aunque sea un escenario lamentableManuel AlcantaraUniversidad de SalamancaMolt bé Josep! El curs passat vaig ser uns mesos a RDom i ho vaig veure d'aprop. El 10 de Febrer me'n hi torno.Joan Maria ThomàsUniversitat Rovira i VirgiliMolt bon article. Important trencar el silenci.Andreu Claret SerraEl PeriodicoMuchas gracias! Un recordatorio necesarioManuel Villoria MendietaUniversidad Rey Juan CarlosExcel·lent. Com sempre.Carlos Castro SanzLa Vanguardia
On March 8, a Manhattan federal court found Juan Orlando Hernández, president of Honduras from 2014 to 2022, guilty of conspiracy to import large amounts of cocaine into the United States over nearly two decades. Mainstream U.S. media generally framed the ex-president's trial and conviction as a triumph of justice, a service rendered by the impartial U.S. justice system to the people of Honduras.The great majority of such accounts, however, ignored and obscured context crucial for understanding Hernández's rise and rule; in particular, how Washington contributed to both. Though the mainstream narrative around the ex-president rightly connects his tenure in office with massive emigration from Honduras, it has elided the degree to which U.S. influence enabled Hernández's career and thus partially drove the migration that arose in response. For roughly two centuries, Honduras, the original "banana republic," has suffered a deeply unequal relationship with the far more powerful United States. One of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere, Honduras and its people have endured frequent American military interventions, U.S.-backed coups, and a corrupt, rapacious local oligarchy closely tied to U.S. corporate interests.Despite Hernández's ultimate conviction on U.S. soil, he served Washington for many years as a loyal client. The single most important event in the ex-president's political career was a 2009 coup, which overthrew center-left president Manuel Zelaya (whose wife, Xiomara Castro, won election in 2021 and currently occupies the presidency). Zelaya raised the minimum wage, subsidized small farmers, and authorized the morning-after pill, infuriating the country's business elite and, in the last case, ultra-conservative religious leaders. Moreover, to Washington's consternation, he made overtures toward Hugo Chavez's socialist Venezuela and sought to convert a crucial U.S. airbase entirely to civilian use.Joint action by Honduras' military and judiciary — in a manner the U.S. ambassador called "clearly illegal" and "totally illegitimate" at the time — forced Zelaya to pay for these sins in late June 2009. While the White House's reaction to the coup initially appeared confused, Washington soon recovered its footing. Even as huge protests raged, the Obama administration played a key role in ultimately compelling Honduras' people and the region's governments to acquiesce to the regime change as a fait accompli. Despite widespread repression by the post-coup de facto government, accounts of fraud, and the condemnation of many countries and international organizations (including the normally deferential Organization of American States), U.S.-endorsed elections in November 2009 received Washington's imprimatur. In her memoirs (the passage excised from the book's paperback edition with no explanation), then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton explained that the U.S. sought to "render the question of Zelaya moot and give the Honduran people a chance to choose their own future."It was in this context that Hernández catapulted into power. After Porfirio Lobo won the 2009 presidential race, Hernández became President of the National Congress as a member of Lobo's National Party — an institution historically closely linked to U.S. agribusiness. Lobo was Hernández's mentor and groomed his protege to succeed him. But while Hernández enjoyed success, the coup's consequences constituted disaster for ordinary Hondurans.Political violence and repression became routine. The murder rate, much of it due to cartel-related gang violence, soared — it was the world's highest for three years running. As the economic situation also deteriorated, and Lobo and his son allied with major narcotics syndicates, a huge surge of emigration swelled out of Honduras, with desperate citizens flooding northward. The total number of Hondurans apprehended at the U.S. border exploded — from less than 25,000 in 2009 to nearly 100,000 in 2014 — reaching 250,000 by 2020. In Washington's eyes, however, such concerns took a back seat to longstanding strategic needs: above all, Honduras' openness to foreign investment and its role as a base for American military power. And, as head of the National Congress, Hernandez was seen as particularly amenable to U.S. desires. "The State Department loved Hernandez," according to Dana Frank, an expert on Honduras at UC Santa Cruz. As Lobo's heir apparent, "he was young and could stay in power for a long time." Frank cites a 2010 cable from the U.S. embassy in Tegucigalpa asserting that "He has consistently supported U.S. interests."The depth of American support for Hernández became clear after his 2013 election to the presidency. Despite credible reports of fraud, his National Party's control over the counting process, and a wave of threats and sometimes lethal violence against opposition candidates and activists during the campaign, the State Department commended the election as "transparent, free, and fair." In 2015, a major corruption scandal centered on the misappropriation of funds from Honduras' Social Security Institute exploded, prompting unprecedented popular demonstrations against Hernandez and calling for his resignation, "There was a real sense that Hernández could fall," according to Alexander Main, a Latin America expert at the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research. Fortunately for Hernández, however, the U.S. swooped in, helping to defuse the unrest by prodding the OAS to organize a local anti-corruption body known as MACCIH. In that same year, according to Frank, Washington gave an "official green light" to a "completely criminal" power grab by Hernández whereby his hand-picked Supreme Court ruled that he was eligible to run for a second term in clear violation of Honduras' constitution. Washington's complacent reaction — "It is up to the Honduran people to determine their political future" — stood in remarkable contrast to 2009, when Zelaya's mere suggestion that the constitution might be amended to permit a second term served as the pretext for the coup that the U.S. subsequently legitimized. In Hernández's 2017 reelection bid, the fraud was so blatant and widespread that even the generally conservative OAS declared the incumbent's victory an example of "extreme statistical improbability" and called for new elections. The State Department, however, stood by Hernández, prodding Mexico and other OAS members to recognize the results, even as security forces suppressed massive and prolonged protests with live ammunition.Indeed, U.S. training and funding also proved crucial in the creation of the brutal special operations units Hernández's government used to terrorize opposition and environmental activists. Particularly significant in the military sphere was the role of U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM), the American combatant command responsible for Latin America. Hernández was a particular favorite of John Kelly, SOUTHCOM's head during Obama's second term (and then White House chief of staff for Donald Trump), who, as Dana Frank noted, once referred to the convicted drug trafficker as a "great guy" and "good friend."Considering the U.S. relationship with Hernández, it is perhaps unsurprising that U.S. officials seemingly turned a blind eye to his deep involvement in narcotics trafficking. As both Hernández's recent trial — during which a witness claimed Hernandez had privately vowed to "stuff drugs up the noses of the gringos" — and that of his brother in 2019 showed, the drug trade's reach into the Honduran government was unmistakable, with numerous high-ranking security officials repeatedly implicated. CEPR's Main argues that it was "highly unlikely American officials were unaware" of Hernández's criminality. Indeed, as a document from his brother's trial revealed, the DEA began investigating the ex-president as early as 2013. As noted in Hernández's trial, just weeks after his inauguration in 2014, the agency reportedly obtained video evidence indicating his involvement with major drug traffickers. Even after his brother's 2019 conviction, when it became apparent that millions of dollars in drug money helped underwrite Hernández's political career, President Donald Trump publicly praised him for "working with the United States very closely" and for his help in "stopping drugs at a level that has never happened."Given all this, the U.S. media's failure to probe the influence of American policy on Hernández's career begins to look less like an anomalous oversight and more like a manifestation of structural dynamics that tend to reinforce the notion of American innocence. We can see the same logic apply to the frenzied media accounts detailing "caravans" of Central American migrants headed to the U.S. While mainstream news outlets rightly note the relationship between Hernández's presidency and increased migration from Honduras, they nevertheless fail to connect the two to the impact of U.S. policymaking. Without Washington's complicity and assistance, Hernandez might have spent 2014 to 2022 in prison, rather than the presidency. Unfortunately, it was the Honduran people who paid the price.
The geopolitical repercussions from the war in Ukraine continue to reverberate across Eurasia.With global attention preoccupied by Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, Azerbaijan has been depriving the estimated 120,000 ethnic Armenian population in the disputed enclave of Nagorno-Karabakh access to humanitarian aid in a blockade that has lasted over eight months and has recently intensified. Much to Armenia's consternation, the 2,000 Russian peacekeeping forces stationed in the enclave since the most recent round of fighting in 2020 have appeared ineffective in the face of increasing Azerbaijani pressure against the besieged Armenian population.As a result, Armenia is openly seeking to diversify its security relationship away from Russia, its longstanding ally, including conducting joint military drills with the United States in Armenia that began Monday and is set to end on September 20.Yerevan, Armenia's capital, has increasingly expressed a sense of betrayal at Moscow's inability, or unwillingness, to lend support to its treaty ally since last September when Azerbaijani armed forces attacked Armenia's internationally recognized territory and where they still occupy 10 square kilometers, according to Armenian officials.The Backdrop of Current TensionsThe two former Soviet Republics fought the First Nagorno-Karabakh War during the early 1990s after the indigenous Armenian majority in the autonomous oblast proclaimed their independence from the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic. Following the disintegration of the Soviet Union, a full-scale war broke out between the two newly independent countries, eventually leaving tens of thousands casualties dead and hundreds of thousands displaced between 1992 and 1994. The war ended with a victory by Armenia.A Russian-brokered ceasefire resulted in Armenian control of Nagorno-Karabakh and adjacent regions of Azerbaijan proper. The United Nations and international community, however, continued to recognize Nagorno-Karabakh as part of Azerbaijan.After over 25 years of unsuccessful negotiations under the auspices of the OSCE Minsk Group co-chaired by the U.S., France, and Russia, Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev, bolstered by the "brotherly" military support from NATO member Turkey and years of stockpiling Israel-supplied weapons, launched an all-out assault to recapture the disputed territory in September 2020. The 44-day war saw Azerbaijan secure a military victory with further territorial gains guaranteed under a Moscow-brokered ceasefire, leaving a rump self-governing Nagorno-Karabakh Republic alongside a Russian peacekeeping contingent as stipulated by the November 2020 ceasefire agreement. That agreement also guaranteed that a link between the Nagorno-Karabakh enclave and Armenia, the Lachin Corridor, would be sustained and controlled by the Russian peacekeeping contingent. The status of Nagorno-Karabakh and its inhabitants remained unresolved. Last December, however, Baku effectively blockaded the Lachin Corridor and, five months later, it established a checkpoint on the road, formalizing the blockade. While the European Union, Russia, the U.S., and even the International Court of Justice have increasingly called for lifting the blockade, Azerbaijan remains defiant. The Azerbaijan foreign ministry insists that claims of a blockade are "completely baseless" and has accused Armenians of transporting arms into the territory, a claim Yerevan denies. Nevertheless, even the International Committee of the Red Cross struggles to continue its vital deliveries into the territory, resulting in what several United Nations Special Rapporteurs describe as a "dire humanitarian crisis." There were hopes the dispute over Nagorno-Karabakh, which has been at the heart of the conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan, would be resolved by negotiations facilitated by a complementary EU and U.S. approach (although a separate track by Moscow also persists). However, the ongoing blockade has dimmed hopes for a viable negotiated settlement. Current TensionsThe war in Ukraine has drained the Kremlin's military resources and room for maneuver, especially in a region like the South Caucasus where Russia vies with Turkey for regional hegemony. Moscow's increased reliance on Ankara over the last 18 months to balance against the West diplomatically has resulted in its inability to fulfill its own obligations in the ceasefire agreement following the 2020 war. Given this new reality, Armenia has started to hedge against Moscow by actively searching for new military partners and security guarantors. The publicity surrounding Eagle Partner 2023, the Armenian-hosted joint military exercise with the U.S., clearly worries the Kremlin, which has said it would "deeply analyze" the latest events. However, these exercises are "narrowly focused on peacekeeping operations" and do not represent a "breakthrough in U.S.-Armenia defense cooperation," according to Benyamin Poghosyan, senior fellow at APRI, a Yerevan-based think tank. Nevertheless, the exercises follow Armenia's refusal in January to host Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization exercises on its territory, citing the organization's unwillingness to support Yerevan during last September's escalation by Azerbaijan. Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, has recently made a distinctly public effort to distance itself from Russian actions in Ukraine and even from Moscow itself. In just the last weeks Yerevan has moved to ratify the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and recalled its ambassador to the CSTO. Pashinyan said depending solely on Russia for security was a "strategic mistake." Pashinyan's spouse, Anna Hakobyan, traveled to Kyiv last week and delivered the first package of Armenian humanitarian aid to Ukraine. However, the fact remains that only Russia has sent peacekeepers to Nagorno-Karabakh, and that these peacekeepers are all that stands between the local Armenian population and Azerbaijani conquest, almost certainly leading to massacre and expulsion. As Poghosyan sees it, the driving cause behind a potential new attack is "Azerbaijan's desire to establish control over Nagorno Karabakh without providing any status or special rights to Armenians." This aligns with the view of Shujat Ahmadzada, a Baku-based researcher on foreign and security policies of the South Caucasus countries, who believes Azerbaijan is pursuing a "3D policy" with regard to Nagorno-Karabakh. The three D's stand for "De-internationalization, De-territorialization, and De-institutionalization." Such a process is intended to transform the status of the ethnic Armenians living there into a "purely 'internal matter' of Azerbaijan'' while "incorporating the self-governing institutions into the Azerbaijani political system in such a way that there is no single territorially defined unit for the ethnic Armenian community." While the deployment of over 80 U.S. troops on Armenian soil will hopefully guarantee against imminently anticipated Azerbaijani attacks on Nagorno-Karabakh or Armenia itself, Washington's move in a region Moscow has long viewed as a vital interest does not come without risk. Moscow views Washington's increased involvement as the Biden administration taking advantage of Russia's war in Ukraine in order to weaken or challenge its influence in the South Caucasus region, where Russia has a history of over 200 years of regional military domination. The latest American proposal for unblocking the Lachin Corridor plans to simultaneously open an alternative route to Nagorno-Karabakh through the Azerbaijani town of Aghdam. However, Armenians have regarded this proposal as a clear threat. Tigran Grigoryan, a Karabakh-born analyst and head of the Regional Center for Democracy and Security, a Yerevan-based think tank, assessed that, even if both the Lachin Corridor and the Aghdam route were to be opened, the potential remained for Baku to again close the corridor and create a "new status quo on the ground." Recent reports show that the first delivery of aid by the Russian Red Cross has entered Nagorno-Karabakh from Azerbaijan. However, the acute crisis in food, energy, and humanitarian supplies continues as the Lachin Corridor remains shut and Azerbaijan continues its buildup along the border regions.The Biden administration would do better to use its leverage over Azerbaijan to ensure an end to the Lachin Corridor blockade while simultaneously working to achieve a solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict that would both recognize Azerbaijani sovereignty and provide enforceable guarantees for the future rights and security of the Armenian population there. For such an approach to work would likely require coordination with Russia. While such a scenario might be hard to imagine, Washington and Moscow have worked together in the past over Nagorno-Karabakh, even when relations were severely strained elsewhere. Such coordination is particularly compelling given the tens of thousands in the enclave who currently face famine. Rather than taking steps that Moscow views as threatening to its military presence in the South Caucasus (a process which led to disastrous consequences for neighboring Georgia 15 years ago), Washington, and the region itself, would be better off if American involvement instead demonstrated its commitment to ensuring human rights.
From WSJ "Many Americans who want to move are trapped in their homes—locked in by low interest rates they can't afford to give up. These "golden handcuffs" are keeping the supply of homes for sale unusually low and making the market more competitive and pricey than some forecasters expected. The reluctance of homeowners to sell differentiates the current housing market from past downturns and could keep home prices from falling significantly on a national basis, economists say."What's going on? US 15 or 30 year fixed-rate mortgages have a catch -- you can't take it with you. If interest rates go up, and you want to move, you can't take the old mortgage with you. You have to refinance at the higher interest rate. It's curiously asymmetric, as if interest rates go down you have the right to refinance at a lower rate. As a result, yes, people stay in houses they would rather sell in order to keep the low interest rate on their fixed rate mortgage. They then don't free up houses that someone else would really rather buy. (In California, the right to keep paying low property taxes, which reset if you buy a new house also keeps some people where they are. And everywhere, transfer taxes add a small disincentive to move.) This is a curious contract structure. Why can't you take a mortgage with you, and use it to pay for a new house? Sure, mortgages with that right would cost more; the rate would be a bit higher initially. But fixed rate mortgages already cost more than variable rate mortgages, and people seem willing to pay for insurance against rising rates. I can imagine that plenty of people might want to buy that insurance to make sure they can live in a house of given cost, though not necessarily this house. Conversely, fixed-rate mortgages that did not give the right to refinance, where you have to pay a penalty to get out of the contract if rates go down, would also be cheaper up front, yet people aren't screaming for those. Even the right to refinance at a lower rate is weird. A straightforward mortgage would have a 30 year fixed rate, but automatically lower that rate as other interest rates go down. Instead, you have to go through the formalities of refinancing, which adds a lot of fixed costs to the decision. I know a lot of very sophisticated finance people. Not one has ever reported that they've really solved the complex option pricing problem, when is it optimal to refinance a conventional mortgage?The 15 and 30 year fixed rate mortgage, with right to refinance, is peculiar to the US. You can't make a psychological argument for it. Most of Europe has variable rate mortgages. And a lot less interest rate risk on bank balance sheets! So why are we here, and given that we are here why does this strange contract seem so resistant to innovation. I think the answer is simple: 15 and 30 year fixed rate mortgages were a creation of the federal government during the Great Depression. And today the vast majority of mortgages are securitized via Fannie Mae, Freddy Mac, VA etc, along with a generous government guarantee. Those have to conform to specific contract structures. You can't innovate better contracts and then pass the loan on via government agencies. (Commenters, correct me if I'm wrong. My recollection of the history is foggy here.) This all points to an interesting and usually unsung problem with extensive government intervention in the mortgage market: It freezes contract terms. Contracts that might be very popular -- such as the right to transfer the mortgage to a new house, or the right to settle up in both directions, marking the mortgage to market so you can pay a new higher rate -- don't get innovated. Updates:The is not, of course, a particularly original thought. Alexei Alexandrov, Laurie Goodman, and Ted Tozer at Urban Institute have a nice article advocating streamlined refinancing. They also point out the Fed should care, as it wants interest rates faced by borrowers to adjust more quickly. Ted Tozer points out that you can leave it behind -- a new buyer can assume an existing mortgage. However this feature doesn't often get used. I once was at the Swedish central bank talking about monetary policy. They were worried about raising interest rates. I presumed they were worried that too big to fail banks would have trouble. No, they said. In Sweden practically all mortgages are floating rate. And you can't just mail in the keys and default on mortgages. If you default, they take all your assets and garnish your wages. (So much for soft hearted socialist Scandinavia. They are actually quite attuned to incentives.) The banks were going to be fine. They were worried that if they raised interest rates, people would do anything to pay their higher mortgage rates, and this would tank consumption. Talk about effective monetary policy! At the time however they were worried about house prices, and didn't want effective monetary policy. Long story short, mortgage contracts matter. (Martin Flodén, Matilda Kilström, Jósef Sigurdsson and Roine Vestman document this "cashflow channel" in the Economic Journal. It's on the back of my mind also in the search for better mechanisms to understand whether and how higher interest rates lower inflation.) Roger Baris writes: I thought you might want to know a bit about the Danish mortgage market, which basically has the features both you and the Urban Institute mention.1. A very old securitization market. Created in the early 19th century to help rebuild Copenhagen after the Brits shelled it when Denmark complied with Napoleon's "Continental System" which blockaded trade with England. I guess the Brits really hated being cut off from all that fine Danish butter and bacon.2. At the initiation of the mortage, the borrower basically swaps his commitment to pay a 30-yr, fixed rate mortgage for bonds in a large, largely homogeneous (with respect to maturity and interest rate) bond issuance. The bonds are then sold at the prevailing market price, with the proceeds providing the financing for the house buyer.3. The loan is prepayable at any time. Like the UI proposal, the originating bank (which continues to service the loan) actually prompts borrowers with high interest rates to prepay (since the bank earns some fees in the process and therefore has an economic motivation). There is no re-underwriting of the loan at this point so long as the amount of the loan does not increase. This is a very quick and very cheap process. This is used if interest rates fall (in which case, the borrower's new loan is instantly securitized into a new bond issuance with uniform characteristics, with an equivalent amount of the old bond being prepaid) or if the borrower wants to prepay the loan for a house move. (If I remember correctly, the loan may be also be "portable" to a new house but in this case, the value of the new house has to be re-underwritten.)4. Note that the servicer in a US mortage is contractually forbidden to prompt prepayments in this manner, although enforcement of this provision is sometimes difficult, as you can imagine.5. If interest rates rise, conversely, the borrower has the option (if he/she wants to prepay the loan for any reason, especially a house move) of going into the bond market (which is highly liquid with large, uniform pools) and buying an equivalent face amount of bonds (at a discount because rates have risen) and then delivering these bonds to extinguish his/her mortgage liability.6. In practice, all the bond market activity (both at issuance and extinguishing) is handled for the borrower by a mortgage bank. The net effect of all of this - the loan prepayment right, the "portability" and the option to deliver bonds to extinguish a loan - is to make the embedded interest rate option in a Danish fixed-rate mortgage more optimal than the same option in a US mortgage. This means that, as you would expect, the borrower pays a higher "spread" on the loan from the beginning in return for the greater optionality.PS. The Danish mortgage system also has some interesting characteristics in terms of mutualizing risk; these characteristics also interact with the interest rate option.
Plekhanov/Labriola As a bit of an experiment, coupling my interest in André Tosel and my work on translation, I have decided to try my hand at a few translations of the former when I get the time. These are totally unauthorized, and rough drafts posted for edification and entertainment purposes only. I started on this piece because it is short, and because it works on an area that I need to learn more about, the history of Marxist-Spinozism before Matheron or Althusser. However, the more I worked on this piece, the more I thought that this split between Plekhanov and Labriola, still exists, in the divide between neo-enlightenment Spinozists and what some might call post-modern, but I prefer to call Marxist Spinozists. The Marxist Uses of Spinoza: Lessons of Method The history of the role of Spinoza's thought in the formation and the development of the work of Marx remains to be written, as is that of the history of the diverse Marxist usage (from different Marxisms) of Spinozist philosophical elements. This double history would reveal the work of Marx, and its contradictions, as much it would open up the work of Spinoza himself. Marxisms have reflected their aporias and their hopes onto Spinoza without necessarily truly thinking them through. In other words this is a domain of misunderstandings and equivocations. In order to undertake this history it would be useful to draw some lessons from the encounter of Marx and Marxist thought with Spinoza. First remark. The encounters of Spinoza by Marxists are discontinuous and contradictory. This discontinuity is initially characterized by the lack of a definitive encounter between Marx himself and Spinoza. Marx is formed through the reading of Spinoza, of the Tractatus Theologico-Politicus, and the correspondence. Not to learn the lessons of materialism, but an ethico-political lesson. Spinoza is considered as philosopher of freedom and autonomy, modern incarnation of Prometheus and continuation of Epicurus, all at once. Marx, in is progression from Kantian-Fichtean idealism to the speculative communism of the 1844 Manuscripts, develops three theses which are the practical theses of philosophical materialism, without the epistemological and ontological theses of this materialist tradition. Thesis One: Philosophy has a fundamental interest in the liberty of humanity, understood as autonomy and as the end of all heteronomies. Thesis Two: Philosophy is critical of all transcendental authorities of all principle of domination which justify and represent their domination through this principle. Thesis Three: Philosophy is eminently a science, knowledge, but knowledge of life, of the simple life of spirit of bodies rendered by their power. All particular sciences and knowledge must be thought from the point of view of science of life and its forms, as forms of life. When Marx elaborates the materialist conception of history he revolutionizes materialism but he does this without ever connecting it to the spinozist theory of nature, of the relations of extension and thought, of bodies and mind. He integrates and modifies the strong ontological and epistemological thesis of materialism, but these theses are taken more from Hobbes and other materialists of the eighteenth century than from Spinoza. Let us state these theses which are capable of a Spinozist formulation, without however assuming such a formulation. Thesis Four: Nature is the original reality and it is organized as matter at different objective levels. Thought cannot be separated from matter. Thesis Five: Nature in its diverse senses is intelligible. It emerges only from itself, excluding all creation. The human order is not a kingdom within a kingdom and susceptible of being understood. Thesis Six: All knowledge presupposes the reality of its object outside of thought. The appropriation by the knowledge of its own object of knowledge presupposes the reference to a real object. It is necessary to pay attention to the debates in Marxism of the Second International in order to see how the question of "Spinoza precursor of Marxist materialism appears." Emerging in the years of the crisis of revisionism the debate engages above all the German and Russian theorists of social democracy: Bernstein, Kautsky, and Plekhanov. It is in part based on the Anti-Dühring of Friedrich Engels and puts into play the complex questions of the relationship between the materialist theory of history with the sciences of nature with the political problem of the alliance of the intellectual groups in the perspective of socialist transition. This debate between 1896-1900 is inscribed in a theoretical problematic, such of Marxist orthodoxy that will find a new actualization with the problems proper to Soviet philosophy between 1917 and 1931, when it is a matter of specifying what would be called "Marxism-Leninism." If the question of materialism assumes the continuity between the Spinoza of the Second International and that of the Third, nothing would be more erroneous than to let oneself be taken in by the apparent continuity of an imaginary history of philosophy. These occurrences are in effect specific, they constitute theoretical and political conjunctures which must be grasped in a way that takes into account the strategic dimensions of the class struggle whether or not it is led by Marxist parties, the problem of alliances, that of the intellectual division of labor. Marxist philosophy, as it is officially constituted, is part of the practice of parties, and the reference to Spinoza is overdetermined by the political and theoretical stakes that have to be elucidated in each specific situation. Here we touch on the second lesson of method: it is necessary to historically specify the conjunctures where Spinoza intervenes and where and how there is a specific usage of this prestigious and troubling reference. This method makes it possible to determine what falls under ideological legitimation, and what is inserted at the level of the practical politics of the party, of the state, of the level of specialized intellectuals. Spinoza does not only appear only in the emergence of Marxist orthodoxy. He intervenes, in a subterranean manner, in the elaboration of theorists where the considerable theoretical importance has never been associated with an actual political importance. This can be found in the crisis over revisionism in the last century, such that Antonio Labriola in his Essays on the Materialist Conception of History (1895-1898) attests to the presence of a different Spinoza than that of his contemporary Plekhanov and a fortiori than that which was celebrated in Soviet Philosophy in 1927 and 1932. Spinoza intervenes as a critic of the same orthodoxy which returns as elements of an older materialism in another theoretical configuration that has solicited different aspects of his philosophy: no longer the parallelism between extension and thought, not a determinist ontology but the mode considered to be at once conceptual and experimental, the same geometrico-genetic method, in that it now excludes the guarantees of teleological philosophies of history. A contradictory intervention which is not without analogies to another occurrence, the most recent, that of Spinoza in the work of Louis Althusser which can be considered as a systematic deconstruction of the Marxist orthodoxy of the Second and Third International. Between Labriola (1898) and Althusser (1965), if we except the Soviet Spinoza, there is little except Ernst Bloch's remarks that no one has yet taken into account for a history of materialism oriented in the direction of a utopian ontology. This appearance of a Spinoza critical of stated and intended Marxist orthodoxies gives a third lesson of method: the diverse contradictory Marxist uses of Spinoza are situated between two poles, the first is that of an orthodoxy elaborated by the intellectuals of the social democratic and communist parties at the end of an a party/state conception of a finalist world and at the other is from thinkers situated in a problematic relation to the party, who look in Spinoza for other ways to make sense of the world and other practices then the becoming state of the worker parties. This opposition can appear to be schematic. It can be developed into provisional and schematic path of investigation. Such an investigation takes one central question: What is it in the philosophy of Spinoza that authorizes these discontinuous usages, determined by their conjunctures, and perhaps violently opposed? Confronting therefore these different usages of Spinoza that can be considered historically significant in the course of history, that is to say in terms of their specific conjunctures. This can be seen with the orthodox use of Spinoza by Plekhanov and the critical usage of Spinoza by Labriola at the heart of the second international. Plekhanov gave himself the task of elaborating the originality of Marx's philosophy and defending it in the face of revisionists who, with Bernstein, contest the self-sufficiency of Marx's philosophy, dividing into an evolutionary sociology and a Kantian inspired ethics. For Plekhanov there is very much a Marxist philosophy. It is inscribed in the materialist current which it revitalizes by giving it a historical dialectical dimension. Spinoza is the direct ancestor of Marx in that it is through the monism of the former that one can unify the science of nature and the science of history of the latter. Marx has revitalized substance as historical-social matter, metabolism of humanity with nature, and has inherited his realist theory of knowledge, thought is nothing other than a moment or function of matter. There is a Spinozism of Marx that is the realization of historical Spinozism as a the affirmation of the materialist conception of the world, one predicated on the knowability of matter in terms of its organization at diverse levels. Only this conception of the world can give the workers' movement its organization and which would permit it to avoid the disorganization that revisionism introduces, neo-Kantian idealism cannot organize the class struggle without harmful compromises. Spinoza is one part of orthodox Marxism returned to during this period. This Spinoza can authorize the theses of Friedrich Engels, in some sense simplifying the complexity of the Anti-Dühring. Concerned to think together the development of the sciences of nature, the materialist conception of history, and developing a philosophy capable of correct reflection and the movement of the specialization of sciences and the political struggle of classes (alliance with the intellectual stratum), Engles had proposed the idea of a materialist dialectic that oscillates between an ontological conception and a methodological conception of this dialectic. These two conceptions are apparently unified in the idea of "the science of the general laws of motion, both of the external world and of human thought — two sets of laws which are identical in substance, but differ in their expression in so far as the human mind can apply them consciously, while in nature and human history (at least up to now), these laws assert themselves unconsciously, in the form of external necessity, in the midst of an endless series of seeming accidents." This parallelism between (laws of) movement of the external world and (the laws of) thought has a Spinozist connotation which reinforces the idea of liberty as the comprehension of necessary laws. However, it remains above all intended to make possible a representation of the dialectic under materialism, without examining its own difficulties. Plekhanov is not interested in these difficulties in elaborating a general materialist conception that Marx completes and fulfills through the mediation of Hegel. Antonio Labriola, who wrote "Origin and Nature of the Passions According to Spinoza's Ethics" at a young age (1866), refuses this ontologization or methodolization of the dialectic in order to develop the idea of a philosophy of praxis as a philosophy immanent to a new conception of history, reflecting the constitution of history as a complex unifying ground and surface. In this sense, the Plekhanov project, apparently Spinozist, of thinking the continuity of nature and society at the heart of a substantial and homogenous causality loses its sense. The process of social life must be desubstantialized at with it the philosophy that is presented as a hyperphilosophy or super science organized as "theosophic or metaphysic of the totality of the world, as if by an act of a transcendent knowledge we can arrive at a vision of substance and all of the phenomena and processes under it." Antonino Labriola as much as he refuses to make man an 'kingdom in a kingdom' refuses the naturalization of history and the transformation of Marxism into a naturalist ontology where social practice becomes a species of being in general. Labriola denounces a matter found on things as a form of metaphysical superstition. Spinoza is evoked as a hero in the struggle against the imagination and ignorance that resurfaces in Marxist orthodoxy under the form of universal materialism. It is necessary above all to think of the diverse levels of the "animation" of matter, and therefore the specificity of the "artificial terrain" which constitutes practice. What Spinoza knew how to do for the theory of passions must be done for praxis: each one, the relations of affects and and those that constitute praxis, are not ruled by a subject and for this reason must be studied through a genetic method. Labriola speaks of a genetic method that also defines the method of Marx in Capital. The genetic method takes its distance from the dialectic and its teleological philosophy of history and established guarantees. For Labriola the turn to Spinoza is less about the strengthening of a materialist monism than it is about the possibility of reinterpreting Marx's Capital as a geometry of capitalist social being. The geometrical method is an instrument of internal purification destined to eliminate the finalism of productive causes and biological predetermination from Marxist orthodoxy. The philosophy of praxis manifests the basic critical and formal tendency of monism: everything is conceivable as a the causal genesis of a complex totality. The materialist dialectic is neither a universal method nor a logic of being, but constitutes the critical movement internal to knowledge which acts on the practice of philosophy and makes it a "conceptual form of explication" parallel to contemporary science. The reference to Spinoza intervenes in the critique of a Marxist orthodoxy which is supposed to include in a dogmatic manner Spinoza's own materialism. Marx and Spinoza are considered as two practitioners of philosophy who refuse the closure of knowledge in favor of the immanent self-reflection of knowledge. The lesson of Spinoza is not to find the unity of knowledge under a principle but to demystify the fetishes which substitute imaginary principles for the movement of practice. One could develop a similar analysis of the confrontation of the Soviet Spinoza of the Third International to the Spinoza of Louis Althusser. The Soviet Spinoza is an impoverished and petrified version of the Spinoza of Plekhanov. With respect to Althusser, Spinoza's critique is referenced constantly and augmented, infinitely better elaborated than in Labriola, since it acts this time not as a critique of metaphysical fetishism, even materialist, but of the metaphysics of the juridical subject characteristic of occidental rationalism. The contributions of R. Zapata and J.-P. Cottent have clarified these points, but it seems opportune to underly the paradox of this history: it is possible to tie together the diverse uses of Spinoza, one against the other. If Spinoza is enrolled in the constitution of a "conception of the world" which intends to complete a current of philosophy and which cannot at any time criticize its presuppositions, it is also possible, as with Althusser, to think the structure of ideological interpellation that constitutes the ideological subject and invalidates philosophy considered as a theory of knowledge. If Spinoza makes possible a conception of the world in which the State Party is supposed to be the subject of history accomplishing its ultimate ends, it also makes it possible for Althusser to try to reconstruct Marxist theory on the ruins of the triple myth of origin, subject, and the end. The Labriolian critique of imaginatio and ignorantia is radically interiorized in the destruction of Marxisms of the Second and Third International. The recourse to structural causality supposed to have been developed in the theory of modes and substance serves as an incomplete program to develop the theoretical revolution of Marx. However, it goes further still: there are two Spinoza's in Althusser himself. The Spinoza critical of any theory of knowledge ultimately occludes the Spinoza of structural causality: the denunciation of the triple myth of origin, subject, and end is lead to the liquidation of the rational modernism present in Marx. However the pars destruens always prevails over the pars construens. The idea of structural causality (such that of substance as the absent cause over the modes and affects) is accompanied with the affirmation of an unknown radicality of Marxist science, but the critique of the metaphysics of subjectivity in the teleology of Marxism that accompanies it announces the crises of Marxist liberation in the last interventions of Althusser. Everything comes to pass as if Althusser deconstructs a dogmatic Spinoza in the name of another Spinoza, more secret and more enigmatic. Spinoza is always divided from Spinozism which claims to define himOriginally published in Bloch, Olivier, Editor, Spinoza au XXe siècle, Paris, PUF, 1993.
In late April, former President Donald Trump gave a wide-ranging interview to TIME magazine, which had a significant focus on foreign policy issues, particularly the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. The resulting transcript revealed that a second-Trump term would be just as murky foreign policy-wise, as the former president used much of his time contradicting himself, criticizing his successor, and offering few details about how he would approach international issues if elected again. On Tuesday, it was President Joe Biden's turn to get the same treatment. The outcome was not all that different. Biden gave a long interview to TIME 's Washington bureau chief Massimo Calabresi and editor-in-chief Sam Jacobs, which centered almost exclusively on the president's foreign policy agenda, looking both back at his first term in office and forward at a possible second. Biden aggressively defended his record, particularly when it came to his leadership in responding to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Like Trump, Biden was sure to emphasize differences with his opponent, especially in terms of maintaining American global leadership and supporting allies. "We are the world power," he said in response to the first question about whether the U.S. could still play the same global role it did during World War II and the Cold War.Israel and GazaThe president was coy about how he would react to Israel's invasion of Rafah, suggesting that revealing his assessment of whether Israel had crossed his "red line" would imperil ongoing discussions with Tel Aviv. "I'm not going to speak to that now, (...) I'm in the process of talking with the Israelis right now." he said. "If I tell you, you'll write it. It's not time for you to write it." Biden did offer some mild criticism of Israel and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He said that Israel's war strategy risked repeating American mistakes following 9/11, and could lead to an "endless war;" and that there was "every reason for people to draw" the conclusion that Netanyahu was determined to keep the war going for domestic political purposes. The president also said that his "biggest disagreement" with his Israeli counterpart is that Netanyahu does not share his belief that "there needs to be a two-state solution." Biden did not offer any ideas of how he plans to square that circle, given his acknowledgement that the Israeli government is not interested in Palestinian statehood. The "roadmap to an enduring ceasefire" that the White House released last week notably had no mention of a path to Palestinian statehood. Ultimately, however, Biden laid blame for both the start of the war and the inability to end it at the feet of Hamas. When asked whether Israel had violated international law, the president pivoted to discussing atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7. And when asked whether the hold-up to reaching a ceasefire deal was due to Hamas, Israel or both, Biden was quick to blame the former, though his reasoning was unclear. "Hamas could end this tomorrow," he said, emphasizing that Netanyahu was "prepared to do about anything to get the hostages back." In fact, the Israeli government has said that the war will not end until "the destruction of Hamas military and governing capabilities" was complete, and Israeli officials have disputed Biden's description of the ceasefire proposal. Biden was also inconclusive about whether Israel had been violating international law, saying that the evidence of whether the IDF had committed war crimes was "uncertain," and that, although they had taken actions that were "inappropriate" he did not believe that Israel was using starvation as a weapon of war. Prominent NGOs like Human Rights Watch and Oxfam have determined that Israeli assurances that they had not violated international law were "not credible" and had committed a series of violations of customary international humanitarian law. Members of Congress called on Biden to suspend arms transfers to Israel because of its blocking of humanitarian aid to Gaza. One State Department official recently resigned because she said the department's report saying that Israel had not broken the law was "patently false." If the U.S. did deem that Israel was violating international laws — as some administration officials have hinted — Washington would be required by law to cut off arms supplies, a step that Biden and his team have been wholly unwilling to take.Ukraine, NATO, and RussiaBiden was steadfast in arguing that his administration's approach to the war in Ukraine had been a success, and did not seem interested in facing any criticism about the current state of the war or a strategy to conclude it. He rejected the premise of a question about the dire battlefield situation and whether, at this point, reaching a peace agreement with Russia was the best way out of the war."I don't know why you skip over all that's happened in the meantime [between Russia's invasion and today]," Biden said. "The Russian military has been decimated. You don't write about that. It's been freaking decimated."He similarly dismissed questions about escalation and the possibility of a future NATO-Russia war, saying "we're on a slippery slope for war if we don't do something about Ukraine."Biden did not offer any specifics on what an end to the war would look like or what Washington's plan to get there is, saying only his conception of peace is "making sure Russia never, never, never, never occupies Ukraine. That's what peace looks like."However, he added that an end to the war "doesn't mean NATO, they are part of NATO. It means we have a relationship with them like we do with other countries." "I am not prepared to support the NATOization of Ukraine," Biden elaborated. "I spent a month in Ukraine when I was a Senator and Vice President. There was significant corruption."The president's views on the war seem to be informed by a belief that Russian President Vladimir Putin is motivated by a desire to make Ukraine a part of Russia and to expand Moscow's influence over the continent "He says this is part of reestablishing the Soviet Union," Biden said, referring to a speech Putin gave in 2022. "That's what this is all about. It wasn't just about taking part of—He wanted, he wanted to go back to the, to the days when there was NATO and there was that other outfit that Poland, everybody belonged to. So that's what it was about."Biden also talked up his success in strengthening NATO, emphasizing that two new countries had joined the alliance since his presidency started, and that Europe collectively had spent more money to aid Ukraine than had the U.S. As the TIME fact check showed, while Europe has committed to provide more money to Ukraine in the long-term, the continent has so far spent only $107 billion to Kyiv, compared to $175 billion from the U.S.China and TaiwanBiden said he is "not ruling out using military force" in the case of a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, but added that "[he's] made clear to Xi Jinping that we agree with—we signed on to previous presidents going way back—to the policy of, that, it is we are not seeking independence for Taiwan." Biden's apparent endorsement of strategic ambiguity , was a slight divergence from an earlier series of claims that Washington would come to Taiwan's defense if Beijing ever invaded. Elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific, the president celebrated Japan's defense spending increase, the formation of the Quad, and other U.S. military investments in the region. "We are much stronger in the Pacific than we ever were before. China, by the way, China is very concerned about it," he said. "[Xi Jinping] wanted to know why I was doing all these things. I said the simple reason I'm doing those things: to make sure that you don't, that you aren't able to change the status quo any." In his interview, Biden offered a straightforward defense of American primacy and global leadership, and painted it as the primary difference between himself and Trump. While he was light on the details, it ultimately appeared as if there would be little difference between a first and second Biden term when it comes to U.S. foreign policy.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky chided NATO states this week for their unwillingness to directly join the fight against Russia."What's the issue with involving NATO countries in the war? There is no such issue," Zelensky told the New York Times in a fiery interview. Western planes could simply "shoot down what's in the sky over Ukraine" without leaving NATO territory, he argued, thus mitigating escalation risks.Zelensky added that he would welcome any plans to send NATO soldiers to support Ukraine's war effort on the ground. The Ukrainian leader also asked Western states to allow Ukraine to use their weapons to target military sites within Russian territory.Zelensky's increasingly desperate pleas come at a difficult time for Ukraine. It has now been over a year and a half since Kyiv made any substantial gains on the battlefield. As political scientist Graham Allison recently pointed out, Russia took more territory in the past two months than Ukraine liberated in its entire 2023 counteroffensive.Ukraine has attempted to regain an advantage through a campaign of attacks on Russian infrastructure, including fuel depots and power plants. The tactical shift is in part a response to Moscow's long-standing campaign of strikes on Ukrainian energy infrastructure, which forced Kyiv to impose rolling blackouts this week for the first time since Russia's 2022 invasion.In this moment of crisis, the U.S. has chosen a Goldilocks approach. American officials have long opposed Ukrainian strikes on Russian territory, in part due to fears of escalation and in part due to the potential impact on global oil prices. But Secretary of State Antony Blinken appeared to soften that stance in comments last week."We have not encouraged or enabled strikes outside of Ukraine, but ultimately Ukraine needs to make decisions for itself on how it conducts this war," Blinken said. "We will continue to back Ukraine with the equipment it needs to win."From Ukraine's perspective, such comments are far too ambiguous. But American actions have been somewhat more direct. Just a few weeks ago, Washington revealed that it had secretly given long-range missiles to Kyiv that are capable of striking deep within Russian territory.The U.S. has been firmer in its opposition to sending troops to Ukraine or directly helping to shoot down Russian missiles. While some NATO states have warmed to the idea of deploying soldiers to the country, Gen. C.Q. Brown, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Monday that "right now, there are no plans to bring U.S. trainers into Ukraine.""Once this conflict is over and we're in a better place, then I would suspect we would be able to bring trainers back in," Brown said.As Zelensky plays down fears of nuclear escalation, the Kremlin is taking a different tack. Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered drills this week in which his troops practiced using tactical nukes. While these battlefield weapons are smaller than strategic warheads, certain variants can pack a bigger punch than the bombs that flattened Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.Russia said the drills, which took place near the border with Ukraine, were a response to "provocative statements and threats of certain Western officials regarding the Russian Federation."The escalatory move highlights a diplomatic tension that the Biden administration has yet to address. While Ukraine and the U.S. have a strong shared interest in making Russia pay for its invasion, Washington's superseding goal is to prevent nuclear escalation by avoiding a direct conflict with Moscow. Ukraine, for its part, has every reason to drag the U.S. into a war that Kyiv views as existential.European states are stuck in the squishy middle. Europe has stronger incentives to back Ukraine to the hilt, hence why countries like France and Britain have floated plans for more direct involvement in the war. But any sudden move would naturally implicate their most powerful ally, the United States, which has strongly discouraged any efforts to drag NATO into the conflict.The West has largely papered over these divisions by insisting that it will continue to back Ukraine "as long as it takes." But, as Kyiv's battlefield position worsens, that approach could have an expiration date.In other diplomatic news related to the war in Ukraine:— Ukraine could enter formal talks to join the European Union by the end of June, according to Politico. The main obstacle to this step is Hungary, which has long been skeptical of bringing Ukraine into the bloc, in part due to controversies surrounding Hungarian minorities in the country. But, with Budapest taking over the rotating presidency of the European Council in July, some diplomats speculate that Hungarian officials would rather get the issue out of the way as soon as possible, especially given that there will be plenty of future opportunities to derail Kyiv's accession in the coming years.Ukraine's larger and longer-term impediment will be bringing its political system in line with the standards for EU membership, which will require efforts to root out corruption and strengthen democratic systems in the country.— Last Friday, the EU moved to ban four Russian media outlets that the bloc described as "essential and instrumental in bringing forward and supporting Russia's war of aggression against Ukraine," according to Reuters. The decision to block the Russian-language outlets followed a previous move to ban Russia Today and Sputnik, both of which have broadcasts in English. The Kremlin pledged to "respond with lightning speed and extremely painfully for the Westerners" without revealing exactly what that means.— In this week's edition of "who's mad at France," American and European officials fumed over French President Emmanuel Macron's decision to invite a Russian representative to D-Day commemorations next month, according to Politico. "Perhaps this will remind the Russians that they actually fought real Nazis once, not imaginary ones in Ukraine," an anonymous U.S. official told Politico. The event will provide a rare scene: Biden, Macron, and even Zelensky will stand side-by-side with a Russian official for one of the first times since Russia's 2022 invasion.— In part deux of "who's mad at France," Zelensky chided Macron for suggesting a worldwide truce during the Paris Olympics this summer, according to Agence France Presse. "Let's be honest... Emmanuel, I don't believe it," the Ukrainian leader said. "We are against any truce that plays into the hands of the enemy." Chinese leader Xi Jinping threw his support behind the idea, but Putin has yet to say if he would endorse a truce.— Ukraine is now offering parole to prisoners who sign up to fight Russia, with the exception of those convicted for particularly serious offenses, according to Reuters. Ukrainian officials say the decision could allow as many as 20,000 prisoners to join the war effort, providing a much-needed boost in manpower as the war drags on. Russia has faced harsh international criticism for its own policy of granting clemency to inmates who join the war on Moscow's side, a policy that has given the Kremlin more than 50,000 extra soldiers.U.S. State Department news:In a Monday press conference, State Department spokesperson denied that the U.S. is using a double standard for International Criminal Court cases against Russian and Israeli officials. "There is a fundamental difference here and it's that Israel said they were going to cooperate with the investigation. Russia did not," Miller said. "Israel said they were going to cooperate with the investigation, talk to them about the charges that they were preparing to bring. And the ICC short-circuited that cooperation by bringing these charges."
A recent essay from Israeli writer Gadi Taub in Tablet makes clear that Israel's war in Gaza is not its last. Israel is going "to shed its defensive strategy and go on the offensive." That means taking out Hezbollah and then taking on "a multifaceted struggle against Iran over its drive for regional hegemony and its nuclear weapons program."Taub, whose hawkish views in many ways reflect the vital center of Israel opinion, sees the Biden administration as following a longstanding Democratic policy of appeasing Iran. In sharp contrast to Henry Kissinger, whose 1970s diplomacy he lauds, Taub finds Secretary of State Antony Blinken's policy to be a disaster. "By empowering the Iranians, Blinken's policy will inevitably also further the penetration of the region by Iran's patrons, the Russians and the Chinese, at America's expense. Kissinger's policy was focused on pushing America's great power rivals out. American policy today is inviting them in."The Dream Palace of the IsraelisThe most extraordinary feature of Taub's essay is its unreal portrait of the regional forces arrayed for and against Israel. Iran, Taub writes, "is at war with the old American regional alliance system — which includes Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. But Secretary Blinken and President Biden are appeasing the new radicals, not containing them."In this imaginary tableau, shared by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel is in an unspoken but deep alliance with the Sunni Arab states, who want to see Hamas crushed and Iran and its proxies relentlessly attacked. What these rulers say in public, so the story goes, is miles apart from what they say in private. In public, of course, Arab leaders are breathing fire about Israel's mad amplification of the Dahiya Doctrine in Gaza. In private, these Arab leaders are reportedly telling U.S. and Israeli insiders (but seemingly no one else) that they heartily approve Israeli's operations. This Israeli view of Arab leaders is delusional. Yes, Arab leaders have big issues with Hamas. But they also think, as do their people, that Israel's extreme violence in Gaza may open the gates of hell, as the 2003 Iraq War once did. They don't think it's possible to pulverize Hamas into oblivion, because new defiant leaders will inevitably emerge. Israel, in their view, is not solving anything, but rather magnifying insecurity in the region. The (feeble) attempt by Blinken to put restraints on Israel's conduct of the war in Gaza is said by Taub to invite Russia and China into the region, but in fact it is Israel's policy that does so. That policy pushes Iran and America's traditional Arab coalition into one another's arms, making them realize that they have congruent interests in opposing Israeli plans. These interests, in turn, are likewise simpatico with those of Russia and China right now. Taub believes that Israel's coming offensives would break the new relations between the Saudis and the Sino-Russian bloc. No, these relations would be strengthened. This Islamic consensus — which joins Arabs, Iranians, and Turks and is supported by Russia and China — would be given further impetus if Israeli ambitions in the West Bank are fully realized. Another Nakba in Gaza and in the West Bank is anathema to America's Arab friends. Yet Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks of the Palestinian Authority just as harshly as Hamas or Hezbollah. He has rejected U.S. proposals to bring the PA into Gaza after the war. Netanyahu maintains within his coalition powerful ministers (National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich) who have big plans for the West Bank and Temple Mount. In this regard there appears to be a fourth security front in the West Bank and Jerusalem, distinct from Gaza, Lebanon, and Iran. Washington as Enabler and RestrainerTaub hangs his essay on a comparison between Henry Kissinger's Middle East diplomacy in the 1970s and Antony Blinken's policy today. Kissinger, Taub relates, taught a masterclass in diplomacy. Arab leaders, Kissinger saw, "would understand that only the U.S. could deliver Israeli concessions, and that the price–peace with Israel and breaking with the Soviet orbit–would be worth it. It worked."Fast forward to today. If the United States cannot or will not deliver Israeli concessions, surely its leverage with the Arab states is sharply diminished. Israel is totally dependent on U.S. arms for the conduct of its current and projected operations. "The Israelis are playing with house money," as one U.S. official puts it. As of December 1, transfers loaded on to U.S. cargo planes included 15,000 bombs and 57,000 artillery shells. More is on the way. The Biden administration has lots of leverage over Israel. They are just unwilling to use it. The Biden administration has rightly warned Israel against a big offensive operation in Lebanon. Hezbollah is in a use-it-or-lose-it situation with respect to its offensive systems, with Hezbollah reportedly having 100,000 to 150,000 missiles and rockets, far superior to Hamas's force. The evacuation after October 7 of some 80,000 Israelis from communities bordering Lebanon is undoubtedly an unacceptable outcome for Israel, but Israel cannot seek to eliminate Hezbollah without incurring grave risks to its own population. It would be far better for Israelis to reoccupy the northern towns under the auspices of the mutual deterrence that prevailed before October 7, rather than to launch a big war against Hezbollah. However, the Israelis clearly think otherwise. Defense Minister Yoav Gallant has promised a military campaign to drive Hezbollah beyond the Litani River unless Hezbollah heeds Israel's ultimatum to evacuate the border region. The horrifying risk from such an escalation is that Israel would turn Beirut and southern Lebanon into Gaza. If Taub's views are a reliable guide, the Israelis have totally given up on Biden and the Democrats. The putative "appeasement" of Iran is not "an offhand mistake of the Democratic Party" but "a premeditated strategy designed to strengthen Iran at the expense of America's traditional allies." At a time when Arab Americans and their allies are livid with Biden and Blinken, it is curious to find Taub and the Israelis joining in the execration. The former group hates B&B for giving Israel the greenest of green lights, the other for the bright red lights (stop with the civilian killing, don't invade Lebanon) that Taub discerns. The administration's position is unenviable. On one side is the geopolitical disaster that follows from a blank check to Israel, on the other the domestic perils of having a gigantic fight with Netanyahu and the whole Israeli nation. In this acute battle between the national interest and personal political survival, will President Biden do a John Adams and choose country over party? I do not have an answer to this question. One thing is crystal clear. Supporting Israel means supporting a grand design that calls for a war on all fronts, financed and enabled by the United States. The Israelis seem to have no consciousness of the fact that previous uses of force in Lebanon and Palestine didn't solve their security problem. Instead, they believe that more destruction, on a Dresden-like scale, will do this time around what it has not done in the past. Given Israel's lonely existence in a sea of Muslims, this belief seems irrational to me. Israel cannot get rid of its security problem or its enemies by the massive use of force. Escalation imperils Israelis as much as it imperils their neighbors. But the Israelis hold to their belief in force with theological conviction, and the belief should be taken with the utmost seriousness. Thus far, this irresistible force has not encountered an immovable object.
As conflicts ignite around the world, dragging on in Ukraine while sparking off in the Middle East, venture capital is banking on defense.Indeed, United States-based venture capital investment in defense start-ups has doubled in four years. Only investing about $16 billion in 2019, U.S.-based VCs went on to seal over 200 defense and aerospace deals worth nearly $17 billion in the first five months of 2023 alone. Meanwhile, VC giant Sequoia invested in its first defense group, Mach Industries, earlier this year.Who are the defense VCs?Through their collective efforts, prominent venture capital firms including billionaire Peter Thiel's Founders Fund, Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), and Lux Capital are upstarts among today's rising stars in the defense sector, including Anduril, Hadrian, and Rebellion Defense. And in the process, VCs accrue not only high investment returns, but also growing influence over U.S. foreign policy.Moreover, VC-backed groups in the defense space are giving established defense contractors like Lockheed Martin and RTX (formerly Raytheon) a run for their money. As Jamie Martin noted on BookForum four years ago, Founders Fund-backed Palantir had beaten out RTX to secure an $800 million army contract, and Elon Musk's VC-powered SpaceX had been gobbling up satellite sector funds, forcing Boeing and Lockheed Martin to develop their own venture capital operations, Horizon X and Lockheed Martin Ventures respectively, to compete.Fast forward to 2023 and VC's domination of the defense space has crystallized in a conflict-mired era. Newcomer machine-parts startup Hadrian was founded only in 2020, but has already soared to the defense industry's forefront, raising almost $100 million in funding as of late 2023,Likewise, venture capital has buoyed defense newcomer Rebellion Defense's rapid rise to prominence, with Rebellion raising $63 million in 2019 through the likes of former Google CEO Eric Schmidt's new venture capital firm Innovation Endeavors, Founders Fund, and angel investor James Murdoch, son of FOX News Founder Rupert Murdoch. Schmidt, Murdoch, and In-Q-Tel (the CIA's venture capital firm) Trustee Ted Schlein sit on Rebellion's Board. "It doesn't seem to be that working for the Pentagon is a dirty word anymore," explains William Hartung, a Senior Research Fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. "It seems like a lot of these startups are very much seeking that, and then the VC companies are facilitating it."Defense VCs thrive on conflictAt its heart, venture capital is a risky form of private equity financing. Despite the hundreds of billions of dollars U.S.-based VCs invest each year, about 75% of venture capitalist backed start-ups fail.Success in venture capital, therefore, depends on heavy-handed risk-taking in the hopes of big returns from a few investments. In the defense sector, however, high returns comparable to other VC-frequented industries, like tech, are uncommon, rendering VC investing choices complex. Ultimately, these coveted, yet elusive returns become more plausible in periods of tension and conflict, when governments — which VC-backed defense groups "depend" on for business-sustaining contracts — have a greater appetite for weaponry and adjacent tech.Mastering the influence game In any case, defense-focused VCs are gaming this primary client in their favor: like the U.S. government-defense contractor revolving door's advocacy for perpetual conflict, VCs are now becoming major Washington influencers while simultaneously jumpstarting defense's newest and biggest names.In this respect, billionaire VCs like Peter Thiel and Eric Schmidt are conspicuous for involvement in both sides of government-defense sector relations. While Thiel says he won't fund candidates in the 2024 race, he's previously supported a slew of successful Republican congressional campaigns. And after stints as Chief Financial Officer for Thiel's now-defunct Clarium Capital Management and Chief of Staff at Thiel Capital, Michael Kratsios took White House and Defense Department positions in the Trump administration, giving Thiel closer proximity to power.Furthermore Rebellion investor Schmidt is a member of the Defense Innovation Board, which advises lawmakers and the Pentagon on tech policies and, as the American Prospect former managing editor Jonathan Guyer writes, is "allocating resources toward the exact technology Rebellion [is] selling." Rebellion Defense obtained U.S. Air Force contracts worth up to $950 million in 2020. According to Guyer, the arrangement suggests "no firewall between Schmidt's work for the government and the private sector." Two Rebellion Defense employees also served on the Biden Administration's Presidential transition team.Indeed, VCs' lack of transparency and visibility in the public eye shields their activities in the defense space from critical scrutiny."If the head of the Joint Chiefs goes on the board of Lockheed Martin, everybody knows about it," says Hartung. "If a general goes on the board of some small tech company or as an advisor, that's not as visible. But their activities may actually be more dangerous because they're helping launch a whole new generation of technologies where we don't really know what the consequences will be as they apply to military issues."Meanwhile, talk from defense-focused VCs and their beneficiaries' suggests an urge to stir global tensions, or otherwise convince the Pentagon to prepare for the worst. For starters, VC-powered defense organizations are making their allegiance with Israel clear as it continues to pummel Gaza, with Palantir and Anduril making public pro-Israel statements and Israel employing VC-backed Shield AI's Nova 2 drone in besieged Gaza.Moreover, VC groups are poking the stick at China, now a nemesis in what Palantir senior policy adviser Jacob Helberg deems a brewing "tech war." (Helberg is also a member of the U.S.-China Economic Security and Review Commission, putting him in a prime position to focus lawmakers' national security-related policy concerns). Meanwhile, Lux Capital's website plainly states that China is "a serious threat to U.S. global hegemony." And a16z Cofounder Marc Andreesen has observed he has more success in policy conversations with lawmakers when he mentions China: "[A]ll of a sudden it's like, 'Oh well we need American A.I. to succeed, and we need American technology companies to succeed, and we need to beat the Chinese.'"Teaming up earlier this year, further, a group of 13 prominent tech companies and adjacent VC groups signed an open letter requesting defense procurement reforms to better open the U.S. defense budget to start-ups. The letter warns that if no changes are made, U.S. "competitors will continue to gain ground on the technological battlefield" leaving American warfighters at a disadvantage on the physical one.Anduril's Palmer Luckey even characterized VCs as "hawkish" for the sake of protecting existing investments in a recent interview, observing that "[e]veryone who cares about Ukraine is also watching Taiwan, because…Taiwan going south is an actual existential threat to many of their investments [based there]. And so I think you're seeing a lot of hawkishness on the part of venture capitalists" as a result. More bluntly, VC America's Frontier Fund (AFF) representative gloated that "if there is a kinetic event in the Pacific," referencing Taiwan,"some of our investments will [go up] 10x, like overnight."Meanwhile, cash flows suggest VCs' efforts are paying off: Anduril has earned an estimated $342 million in revenue in 2023, telling investors it's slated to score $625 million in new government contracts this year. Rebellion Defense's contracts doubled in 2023 alone. And, despite years of unprofitability, Palantir's stocks jumped 20% after impressive third-quarter results, in which the company made $72 million in net income. As Palantir's Alex Karp previously put it, "[b]ad times are very good for Palantir." Ultimately, VCs' success in this sector relies on conflict. In other words, they're looking for a fight.Dear RS readers: It has been an extraordinary year and our editing team has been working overtime to make sure that we are covering the current conflicts with quality, fresh analysis that doesn't cleave to the mainstream orthodoxy or take official Washington and the commentariat at face value. Our staff reporters, experts, and outside writers offer top-notch, independent work, daily. Please consider making a tax-exempt, year-end contribution to Responsible Statecraft so that we can continue this quality coverage — which you will find nowhere else — into 2024. Happy Holidays!
