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One fact stands out in the recent Supreme Court Decision 303 Creative LLC vs. Elenis and that is that the web hosting company in question has yet to sell wedding websites (see the passage from the dissenting opinion below). There is also news that the plaintiff, Lorie Smith may have fabricated a gay couple who supposedly enquired about web hosting. I believe that this little bit of legal trivia reveals something fundamental about our current era, it is one in which the fears and fantasies of the powerful are taken more seriously than the realities of the dispossessed. I know that they are besides the point, but I have some empirical questions about the number of people who actually hire website designers for their weddings. A quick google search suggests that there are a half dozen companies and websites that offer templates for such designs. I imagine that a personal web designer could probably do a better job at a higher price, but I do not think that we can discount the possibility that no gay couples would have ever hired her services. A fact that is relevant since her business seems to be more of religious mission than an actual company. It is possible, hypothetically, that if she started designing wedding websites she could be asked by a gay couple to design their site. What is less hypothetical, however, is what this ruling will do in terms of establishing a precedent that will allow other, more essential businesses to cite their personal religious beliefs in order to exclude and discriminate against gay and lesbian couples and individuals. Equality only works if it is applied consistently across the board, to every and all situations. Smith's imagined gay couple joins an entire rogues gallery of imagined persons, the person who pretends to be trans only to compete in women's sports, or to gain access to a women's bathroom, the conspiracy to undertake massive voter fraud, the paid protestor, etc., all the way back to the original myth of the Reagan era, the welfare queen. All of these imaginary threats have a corresponding reality that is ignored: the violence and oppression that trans kids and adults face in our society, the disenfranchisement of poor and minorities, the homeless and hungry. It is a bizarro world in which imagined, possible wrongs take precedence over actual harms. As Kimberlé Crenshaw says about another such inversion, protecting white kids from learning about racism, "So, white kids' feelings are more important than black kids' reality." I realize that this last example does not exactly fit the pattern above, they may indeed be real kids who are upset to learn about slavery, the holocaust, etc., (to which I reply, "good."), but it often seems that the anecdotes that make the news, the stories told in school board meetings, about the horrors of being told about kids being subject to Critical Race Theory are about as real as the litter boxes that are put out in school classrooms. These imagined fears about the harm that teaching about racism could do to white kids are weighed more heavily than the harm that racism does to black kids in our society. Harm that is well documented with such names as Trayvon Martin, Tamir Rice, Ralph Yarl, etc. and that is just counting the kids that have been killed. There are numerous studies that show that black kids are harmed by being seen as older, more dangerous, more disruptive, etc., than their white counterparts, all of which fuels a school to prison pipeline. It is possible to think of all of this a variation of that often repeated definition of conservatism regarding in groups and out groups, in which social space is fundamentally asymmetrical and hierachical, some our unbinded but protected and others are bound but not protected, only now the unbinding extends not only to actions and freedoms, but fantasy and the imagination as well. Politics, the realpolitik of elected officials, courts, and elections seems to be increasingly oriented to protect particular fantasies more than anything else--fantasies of american exceptionalism, of the nature of gender, race, and sexuality. Which is to say that we need to update our theories of the social imagination to encompass the real divisions and hierarchies that define it. Some get to have their imaginations made into reality, and others can only imagine that their reality will be recognized and acknowledged by the established powers.
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The Best Joke in Barbie Years ago I remember encountering Félix Guattari's little essay, "Everybody Wants to be a Fascist." At the time its title seemed more clever than prescient. (Although it is worth remembering how much fascism, and the encounter with fascism was integral to Deleuze and Guattari's theorizing, well beyond the reference to Reich). Now that we are living in a different relation to fascism the problem posed by Guattari (and Deleuze) of desire seems all the more pertinent and pressing. One of the problems of using the word fascism today, especially in the US, is that it is hard to reconcile our image as a politics, a politics of state control of everything, and the current politics of outrage aimed at M&Ms, Barbie, and Taylor Swift. How can fascism be so trivial and so petty? This could be understood as the Trump problem, although it is ultimately not limited to Trump. There are a whole bunch of pundits and people getting incredibly angry about the casting of movies and how many times football games cut away to Taylor Swift celebrating in the expensive seats. The Fox News Expanded Universe is all about finding villains everywhere in every library or diverse band of superheroes. It is difficult to reconcile the petty concerns of the pundit class with the formation of an authoritarian state. I have argued before that understanding Trump, or Trumpism, means rethinking the relationship between the particular and universal, imaginary and real. Or, as Angela Mitropoulis argues, the question of fascism now should be what does it look like in contemporary captitalism, one oriented less around the post-fordist assembly line than the franchise. Or as she puts it, "What would the combination of nationalist myth and the affective labour processes of the entertainment industry mean for the politics and techniques of fascism?"It is for this reason (among others) that Alberto Toscano's Late Fascism is such an important book. As he argues in that book fascism (as well as in an interview on Hotel Bar Sessions) fascism has to be understood as kind of license, a justification of violence and anger, and a pleasure in that justification. We have to give up the cartoon image of fascism as centralized and universal domination and see it as not only incomplete persecution, unevenly applied, but persecution of some coupled with the license to persecute for others. Fascism is liberation for the racist, sexist, and homophobe, who finally gets to say and act on their desires. As Toscano argues, "...what we need to dwell on to discern the fascist potentials in the anti-state state are those subjective investments in the naturalizations of violent mastery that go together with the promotion of possessive and racialized conceptions of freedom. Here we need to reflect not just on the fact neoliberalism operates through a racial state, or that, as commentators have begun to recognize and detail, it is shaped by a racist and civilizational imaginary that delimits who is capable of market freedoms (Toscano is not referring to Tosel, but that is an important part of Tosel's work) We must also attend to the fact that the anti-state state could become an object of popular attachment or better, populist investment, only through the mediation of race." Toscano's emphasis is on race in this passage, but it could be argued to apply to sexism, homophobia, etc., to the enforcement and maintenance of any of the old hierarchies. As Toscano cites Maria Antonietta Macciochhi later in the book, "You can't talk abut fascism unless you are also prepared to discuss patriarchy." Possessive includes the family as the first and most vital possession. At this point fascism does not sound too different from classical conservatism, especially if you take the definition of the latter to be the following: "Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect." However, what Toscano emphasizes is the libidinal pleasure that comes with this, it is not just a matter of who is in and who is not, who is protected and who is not, but in the pleasure that one gets from such exclusion, a pleasure that is extended and almost deputized to the masses. While conservative hierarchies and asymmetries passed through the hallowed institutions of the state and the courts, the fascist deputies take to the streets and the virtual street fights of social media. As Toscano argues, pitting Foucault's remarks about the sexual politics of fascism in the seventies against Guattari's analysis,"For Foucault, to the extent that there is an eroticization of power under Nazism, it is conditioned by a logic of delegation, deputizing and decentralization of what remains in form and content a vertical, exclusionary, and murderous kind of power. Fascism is not just the apotheosis of the leader above the sheeplike masses of his followers; it is also, in a less spectacular but perhaps more consequential manner the reinvention of the settle logic of petty sovereignty, a highly conditional but very real 'liberalising' and 'privatising' of the monopoly of violence...Foucault's insight into the 'erotic' of a power based on the deputizing of violence is a more fecund frame, I would argue, for the analysis of both classical and late fascisms than Guattari's hyperbolic claim that "the masses invested a fantastic collective death instinct in...the fascist machine' --which misses out on the materiality of that 'transfer of power' to a 'specific fringe of the masses' that Foucault diagnosed as critical to fascism's desirability."I think that Toscano's analysis picks up an important thread that runs from discussions of fascism from Benjamin to Foucault (and beyond). As Benjamin writes in the Work of Art essay "The growing proletarianization of modern man and the increasing formation of masses are two aspects of the same process. Fascism attempts to organize the newly created proletarian masses without affecting the property structure which the masses strive to eliminate. Fascism sees its salvation in giving these masses not their right, but instead a chance to express themselves. The masses have a right to change property relations; Fascism seeks to give them an expression while preserving property. The logical result of Fascism is the introduction of aesthetics into political life."Today we could say that the right of expression includes a deputization of power and the pleasure in exercising it. In a capitalist society, in which the material conditions of existence must belong to the capitalist class, the only thing that can be extended to the masses is the power and pleasure to dominate others. Real wages keep on declining, but fascism offers the wages of whiteness, maleness, cisness, and so on, extending not the material control over one's existence but libidinal investment in the perks of one's identity.All of which brings me to Taylor Swift. I have watched with amusement and some horror as the fringes of the Fox News Expanded Universe have freaked out about Taylor Swift attending football games and, occasionally, being seen on television watching and enjoying the games. It is hard to spend even a moment thinking about something which has all of the subtlety of the "He-Man Woman Hater's Club," but I think that it is an interesting example of the kind of micro-fascism that sustains and makes possible the tendency towards macro-fascism. Three things are worth noting about this, first most of the conspiracy theories about Swift are not predicated on things that she has actually done, but what she might do, endorse Biden, campaign for Biden, etc., I think that this has to be seen as a mutation of conspiracy thinking from the actual effects of an action or event, Covid undermining Trump's presidency, to an imagined possible effect. One of the asymmetries of contemporary power is treating the fantasies or paranoid fears of one group as more valid than the actual conditions and dominations of another group. Second, and to be a little more dialectical, the fear of Swift on the right recognizes to what extent politics have been entirely subsumed by the spectacle fan form. (Hotel Bar Sessions did a show about this too) Trump's real opponent for hearts and minds, not to mention huge rallies, is not Biden but Swift. Lastly, and this really deserves its own post, some of the anger about Swift being at the game brings to mind Kate Manne's theory of misogyny, which at its core is about keeping women in their place. I would imagine that many of the men who object to seeing Swift at their games do not object to the cutaway shots of cheerleaders during the same game. It is not seeing women during the game that draws ire, but seeing one out of her place--someone who is enjoying being there and not there for their enjoyment.I used to be follow a fairly vulgar materialist line when it came to fascism. Give people, which is to say workers, actual control over their work, their lives, and their conditions and the appeal of the spectacle of fascist power would dissipate. It was a simple matter of real power versus its appearance. It increasingly seems that such an opposition overlooks the pleasures that today's mass media fascism make possible and extend to so many. It is hard to imagine a politics that could counter this that would not be a politics of affect, of the imagination, and of desires. Libidinal economy and micro-politics of desire seem less like some relic from the days of high theory and more and more like necessary conditions for thinking through the intertwining webs of desire and resentment that make up the intersection of culture, media, and politics. I think one of the pressing issues of the moment is the recognizing that all of these junk politics of grievances of popular culture should be taken seriously as the affective antechamber of fascism while at the same time not accepting them on their terms; there is nothing really to be gained by rallying to defend corporations and billionaires.
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It's going to take more than just a big election cycle win for conservative voters to steer Louisiana government from its liberal populist pathology, a recent struggle over welfare spending shows.
It always starts the same way. Something unusual, such as the Wuhan coronavirus pandemic, occurs that leftist interests seize upon to leverage into government action and new expenditures. Then after a point it's declared the new benefit needs to be made permanent, and conservative policy-makers too often capitulate.
Liberals understand fully that a substantial proportion of the public suffers from addiction to government largesse, that once the benefits start flowing many want hit after hit without end. One of the Leninist foundations on which today's political left is built is the principle that what is its is its forever, while whatever policy space its opponents occupy is always up for grabs.
In this instance, as part of the pandemic response the federal government began paying an extra $40 per month per child per family per month for three months in the summer as an extension of school meal programs, which has come to be called called Summer EBT. Unwisely, Washington Democrats as well as enough Republicans decided to make it a permanent feature to which states could apply starting this year.
Never mind that multiple programs already exist that perform this function for decades. Never mind as well that these alternatives do it better at lower cost. Never mind also that doling out straight cash benefits this way is the method most prone to fraud, error, and inducing the least healthy eating habits.
Never mind that qualifying families already receive several hundred dollars per month in food subsidization. Never mind that if there really were some hunger crisis, despite these expensive existing gifts, that the extra money could be channeled through one of the existing superior programs for delivery. Never mind that especially this delivery method only discourages self-sufficiency, specifically in regarding food provision programs in Louisiana, that disproportionately produces overconsumption and waste within the target population.
Republican Gov. Jeff Landry and his Secretary of Children and Family Services David Matlock initially wisely resisted calls to join in, which would require an estimated $3.6 million or so state annual match – plus several millions of more millions of dollars in software upgrades – to catch an estimated $71 million in federal money, out of billions to be spent nationally in every state. They understood that a program that would address inefficiently and poorly an object of public policy that would have considerable detrimental side effects would end up costing Louisiana taxpayers tens of millions of dollars a year, for as even if only a small portion came directly out of their pockets in state taxes, from them the federal government would fleece the remainder, directly or through piling on additional national debt now standing at $34 trillion or over 121 percent of gross domestic product.
But, apparently, not anyone, including usually staunch conservatives, understood this in the Louisiana Senate. Recently, senators voted unanimously (with five absent) to ask Landry to commit to Summer EBT. The measure now lies in the House for consideration, whose members also don't seem to get it as they voted unanimously for a budget to which they added Summer EBT administrative costs, and in a form where Landry cannot deploy a line-item veto to strip that funding. The budget's sponsor GOP state Rep. Jack McFarland – chairman of the apparently-dormant Louisiana Conservative Caucus that claims a mantle of fiscal conservatism, no less – has been the most outspoken supporter of the program in the chamber.
All because, it seems, even die-hard Louisiana conservative legislators just can't get off the smack, especially when it's close to "free." Ironically, a House bill wending its way through the legislative process would prohibit state and local governments and their employees from referring to government benefits as "free," yet legislators, even the most conservative, appear to have no problem in accepting federal largesse for doling out as long as they have to put little down on it, regardless of how poorly and perversely it addresses a public policy goal.
So, Landry has thrown in towel over this obstinacy and now intends to apply for the funds. It's no surprise that liberal Democrats in the Legislature would want to expand this way the size and power of government – and strengthen the bonds of beneficiary dependency upon them that aids them in their quests for power and privilege – but for conservative Republicans, to this point without any dissent, to go along with this is a betrayal of principles they claim to follow.
There may be more layers to this. It may have been a tradeoff with Landry for their support on other aspects of his agenda, but that begs the question why it's something conservative legislators would value in the first place. Do they really believe a few-strings cash benefit addition will help? Do they really think this is the best use of a few million bucks compared so many other far more legitimate needs? Do they really think that if they didn't go along with this appeal to baser instincts within their constituencies – the more "free" stuff showered on voters, the more voters like them and the better their reelection chances – that this is an issue that effectively could be used against them in future elections?
Maybe it all comes down to the liberal populist political culture ingrained into state politics just so pervasively shaping every facet of public policy (especially when it involves "the children"), even for self-proclaimed conservatives. If so, it will be a long, extended haul for conservatives in the public to flush away that destructive worldview.
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The Associated Press reported Wednesday that Mitch McConnell would be stepping down in November as Republican Senate Minority leader.Two points in the reports were highly irritating as they peddle common misrepresentations in mainstream journalism of Ronald Reagan and his legacy, particularly on foreign policy. AP's Michael Tackett wrote, "(McConnell's) decision punctuates a powerful ideological transition underway in the Republican Party, from Ronald Reagan's brand of traditional conservatism and strong international alliances, to the fiery, often isolationist populism of former President Donald Trump." He's establishing that there are two sides on the Right regarding foreign policy: The "strong international alliances" of Reagan and McConnell, and the "isolationist populism" of Trump. No space in between. The AP re-upped this view again later in the report: "McConnell endorsed Reagan's view of America's role in the world and the senator has persisted in face of opposition, including from Trump, that Congress should include a foreign assistance package that includes $60 billion for Ukraine." How simple. Let's talk about "Reagan's view of America's role in the world." Since at least the 1990s, neoconservatives have tried to claim Reagan's legacy as being indistinctive from their own world view when it simply is not true, however much mainstream outlets simply accept their narrative. There's more than mere nuance or even contrast. There are areas — big ones — where Reagan and the neocons are exactly opposite.Bill Kristol and Robert Kagan's 1996 essay, "Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy," targeted the "neoisolationism of Patrick Buchanan" and even "some version of the conservative 'realism' of Henry Kissinger and his disciples." For Kristol and Kagan, even realism wasn't realistic. The neocon duo wrote of the 40th president: "Reagan called for an end to complacency in the face of the Soviet threat, large increases in defense spending, resistance to communist advances in the Third World, and greater moral clarity and purpose in U.S. foreign policy." They are correct to imply that how Reagan handled the Soviets is a great and admirable legacy.But how Reagan went about it, on the most significant part anyway, made him a pariah to the neoconservatives and Republican hawks of his day. How Reagan handled it was not like McConnell likely would have either, based on the senator's Ukraine positions alone.Let's review. Newt Gingrich called Reagan's 1985 meeting with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev "the most dangerous summit for the West since Adolf Hitler met with Neville Chamberlain in 1938 in Munich." Obviously hawks haven't developed any new material since. In 1985, a conservative lobbying group ran a full page ad in U.S. newspapers comparing Reagan with Neville Chamberlain and Gorbachev with Adolph Hitler. The Munich gimmick was as tired then as it is today — and in retrospect, so laughably wrong.Gingrich would also go on to say, "Measured against the scale and momentum of the Soviet empire's challenge, the Reagan administration has failed, is failing, and without a dramatic change in strategy will continue to fail. . . . President Reagan is clearly failing." Today, most Americans — and especially most conservatives — see Reagan's negotiations with the Soviets as an historic success that also avoided war. Long before Reagan's negotiations with Gorbachev, in 1982 Norman Podhoretz was complaining about "The Neo-Conservative Anguish Over Reagan's Foreign Policy." As Jim Antle noted at The National Interest, four years later Podhoretz "would accuse Reagan of having 'shamed himself and the country' with his 'craven eagerness' to give away America's nuclear advantage." Shameful, that Reagan. Luckily, America survived. As seen with Ukraine today, hawks are often resistant to talks or negotiations because they might lead to peace, which is seemingly not their goal, something they are increasingly saying out loud. McConnell wants to give Ukraine billions more of U.S. dollars that will inevitably prolong their conflict with Russia. He's not pushing for Ukraine's president to sit down with Russia's no matter how dismal conditions there become. McConnell has been critical of Donald Trump's occasional warmness to Putin, presumably a precursor to him possibly talking with Russia's president, something Trump openly says he will do.Besides Reagan's willingness to talk to America's enemies, he didn't want U.S. soldiers to be sitting ducks abroad needlessly. As American troops continue to be targeted today in places like Jordan, Iraq, and Syria, many Americans wonder why they were even there to begin with. When a Marines barrack was attacked in Lebanon in 1982, taking 241 lives, Reagan immediately withdrew troops — what hawks today or at any other time might call "cut and run." Former American Conservative Union President head David Keene once said, "Reagan resorted to military force far less often than many of those who came before him or who have since occupied the Oval Office… After the [1983] assault on the Marine barracks in Lebanon, it was questioning the wisdom of U.S. involvement that led Reagan to withdraw our troops rather than dig in. He found no good strategic reason to give our regional enemies inviting U.S. targets." "Can one imagine one of today's neoconservative absolutists backing away from any fight anywhere?" Keene asked. No. I can't. Not a single one. Certainly not McConnell. And yet neoconservatives continue to claim Reagan wholesale and the mainstream press regurgitates this myth each chance they get. Antle wrote in 2014, "Many conservatives today reduce Reagan to comments like 'evil empire', 'tear down this wall', or 'we win they, lose' as well as policies like the defense buildup, Star Wars and Pershing missiles." "While all of those things, in addition to Reagan's moral clarity about communism, were important, they are not the whole story — as contemporary criticism of Reagan makes clear at the time," he added.
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[Past annual reviews: 2020, 2019 & '18, 2017, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2005, and 2004.]Off the blog:The biggest development for me was joining utilitarianism.net as lead editor. I then completed their chapters on population ethics and theories of well-being, and wrote a new chapter outlining some basic arguments for utilitarianism. More to come soon!For more traditional academic publications:* Parfit's Ethics appeared in print with Cambridge University Press. (Summary here.)* 'Pandemic Ethics and Status Quo Risk' (summarized here) was accepted by Public Health Ethics.* 'Negative Utility Monsters' was published in Utilitas.I'm also pretty excited about various works-in-progress that are currently under review, especially my new paradox of deontology...Blog posts:Normative Ethics* The Cost of Contraints -- sets out the core of my "new paradox of deontology". Further developed in Preferring to Act Wrongly, Why Constraints are Agent Neutral, and Discounting Illicit Benefits.* The Most Important Thing in the World -- is plausibly the trajectory of the long-term future.* The Paralysis of Deontology* Three Dogmas of Utilitarianism -- (i) Confusing value with what's valuable; (ii) Neglecting fittingness; and (iii) Treating all interests as innocent.* Agency as a Force for Good -- and the appeal of consequentialism.* Learning from Lucifer -- If Satan would be a consequentialist, should the good guys be likewise (just, you know, with better goals)? Or is there a deeper asymmetry between right and wrong?* Tendentious Terminology in Ethics -- against common uses of "mere means" and "separateness of persons" talk.* Is Effective Altruism Inherent Utilitarian? I suggest not. There's a weaker normative principle in the vicinity, potentially shareable by any other sensible view, which should be difficult to deny. In a later post, I call this: Beneficentrism: The view that promoting the general welfare is deeply important.* Consequentialism's Central Concept may be importance rather than rightness.* What's at Stake in the Objective/Subjective Wrongness Debate? Seems terminological. Appeal to "what a morally conscientious agent would be concerned about" doesn't help, because (my Moral Stunting Objection shows) a morally conscientious agent wouldn't be concerned about right or wrong per se.Welfare and Population Ethics* Is Conscientious Sadism still bad?* Is Objective List Theory "Spooky"?* Parsimony in Theories of Welfare -- is it really a relevant consideration at all?* The Limits of Defective Character Solutions -- and why they don't help with the non-identity problem.* Stable Actualism and Asymmetries of Regret -- actualist partiality is defensible once you subtract the possibility of elusive permissions.Pandemic Ethics* Lessons from the Pandemic: blocking innovation is bad.* The Risk of Excessive Conservatism. See also Pandemic Paralysis and JCVI endorses Status Quo Bias.* Epistemic Calibration Bias and Blame Aversion -- we're often too scared of being wrong, and not sufficiently attuned to the risks of failing to be right (e.g. by instead remaining non-committal) when it matters.* There's No Such Thing as "Following the Science" -- normative principles are needed to bridge the is/ought gap. Better slogan: Follow Decision Theory!* Appeasing Anti-Vaxxers -- and why it's wrong.* The Ethics of Off-Label Vaccinations for Kids* Imagining an Alternative Pandemic Response -- with vaccine challenge trials, targeted immunity via variolation, and immunity passports to spare many (e.g. healthy young people) from lockdowns.* The Indefensibility of Post-Vaccine LockdownsApplied Ethics* Companies, Cities, and Carbon -- blaming large corporations for proportionately large carbon emissions makes no more sense than blaming large cities. * Five Fallacies of Collective Harm -- Critiquing the five main reasons why people falsely believe that collective difference-making doesn't require individual difference-making.* The Absurdity of "Undue Inducement" argues that there's no in-principle basis for objecting to monetary incentives to (e.g.) research participants. If concerned that an offer might be exploitative, the solution is to pay more, not less.* Against Anti-Beneficent Paternalism - as a general rule, we shouldn't prevent people from doing good (even if we aren't entirely certain of the quality of their understanding or consent).* Puzzling Conditional Obligations -- if positively good to comply with, then you ought to have unconditional reason to get yourself into position to meet the putative obligation.Metaethics* The Parochialism of Metaethical Naturalism - the basic moral facts should not differ depending on our location in modal space (i.e. which world is actual). But synthetic metaethical naturalism, with its 2-D semantic asymmetry, violates this principle.* Ruling out Helium-Maximizing -- without giving up robust realism. * Why Belief is No Game - pragmatists (like Maguire & Woods) are wrong about what people are rationally criticizable for, and hence wrong about what reasons there are.Other* Philosophical Pluralism and Modest Dogmatism - On why we should welcome philosophical dissensus.* Querying vs Dismissive Objections - are you aiming to create a dialectical opening (to which you'd like to hear a response), or simply shutting things down? When is the latter appropriate?* Commonsense Epiphenomenalism - could the view be less weird than everyone tends to assume?* Helen interviewed on Idealism -- including why Idealism might warrant up to 30% credence.* New Blogs of Note -- three recommendations.* Zach Barnett's guest post on 'Meeting Taurek's Challenge'.* Philosophy Spotlight posts from Eden Lin, Jess Flanigan, and Hrishikesh Joshi. I'm still waiting for other blogs to join in!Happy New Year!
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The ideological left and political consultants were the biggest losers in Louisiana's 2023 general election, as the state went back to the future with new heights attained in the political career of Republican Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry, who fewer than a dozen years ago looked to have little future in politics but now becomes the lodestar for genuine, far-reaching conservative policy change.
Landry assumed an additional title this past weekend: governor-elect, when he bested a field of a 15 with 52 percent of the vote, avoiding a runoff. Nobody else came close – Democrat former cabinet member Shawn Wilson (26 percent) barely got half of Landry's total and the combination of Republican former gubernatorial official Stephen Waguespack (5.9 percent), Republican Treas. John Schroder (5.3 percent), independent trial lawyer Hunter Lundy (4.9 percent), Republican state Sen. Sharon Hewitt (1.7 percent), and Republican state Rep. Richard Nelson (0.3 percent, comprised of voters who didn't get the memo that he had withdrawn about a month ago) that drew barely more than a third of Landry's haul even as collectively they spent in 2023 $9.2 million through nearly the end of September, only $400,000 fewer than did Landry.
This result reverberates on different levels. Perhaps the outright general election win, only the second by a newcomer to the Governor's Mansion after Republican Bobby Jindal's second try in 2007, was predictable. Landry's first campaign in 2007 saw him fall fewer than 600 votes short from defeating a sitting Democrat state representative for a state senate seat, and in his next in 2010 he knocked off a former speaker of the House on the way to winning a congressional seat.
His only sharp defeat came in 2012, when reapportionment put him in a district that didn't favor him geographically. He passed on a Senate run in 2014 as sitting GOP then-Rep. Bill Cassidy consolidated support while GOP then-Treas. John Kennedy deferred while patiently waiting on GOP Sen. David Vitter to run for governor the next year that, whether Vitter won, would create an open seat.
With Kennedy still serving as treasurer in 2015, which if open could have served as an easy landing spot for Landry and with his political shelf life deteriorating, he planned a bold move to keep his hoped-for career going. He took on Republican, formerly Democrat, Atty. Gen. Buddy Caldwell in that year's elections, and, again displaying prodigious campaign skills, took him down.
Fates aligned for him with this win. With Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards' surprise win over Vitter that year and the subsequent policy-making pressure he applied to expand government sometimes through unlawful, if not unconstitutional, means, Landry was presented with many chances to use the powers of his office to thwart these, giving him a natural policy megaphone and ability to demonstrate fidelity to conservatism in action. That slew of opportunities only increased when Democrat Pres. Joe Biden took office and began doing much the same.
The free publicity and ensuing consistent deliverables by his winning many legal battles against leftist overreach (one that played out the day before the election) – and even his losses confirmed his willingness to tackle without reservation the rot of leftism – combined with his formidable campaign skills made his general election win possible. Although this will disappoint political consultants, who looked to suck a few more million bucks from a gubernatorial runoff. Instead, Landry now has a considerable war chest for 2027.
That thought only will add to the heartburn suffered by the left that now must endure at least four years of policy misery, as without Edwards the trickle of conservative policy gains over the past several years will intensify into a dam burst over the next few with Landry leading on likely legislative and certainly Board of Education and Secondary supermajorities along with his appointments. And it harkens back to 2007, when Jindal came to office with similar enthusiasm behind his ascension.
Yet things back then were somewhat different that, in retrospect, should have tempered enthusiasm. While reformist sentiments were well present in that election, another major part of Jindal's win came as a buyer's remorse reaction to his narrow loss in 2003 and subsequent bungling in office by Democrat Gov. Kathleen Blanco. This shallowness of conservative policy-making soil translated into his not having a Republican majority in the Legislature until almost the end of his first term and on BESE only by the grace of his appointments to it.
However, insufficient conservative numbers wasn't the only problem that limited how much of a conservative agenda Jindal could achieve. After a year into his second term, Jindal began to orient his policy-making more towards a national audience that subverted progress in favor of potential electability. For example, this interference ended up sabotaging tax reform and stopping progress in educational reform.
That premature curtailment of conservative gains seems set to end in 2024 with Landry at the helm. He is every bit as ideologically committed as was Jindal but without the distraction of desiring a career past state boundaries. To the political left, that makes him even more dangerous and likelier to succeed in finally turning the ship of state away from foundering waters into smoother seas.
Jindal was the precursor needed to start an extensive demolition of the liberal populism that has held Louisiana back for so long (some minor efforts and short-lived achievement of this having occurred under Republican Gov. Buddy Roemer). The legacy Landry promises to leave, especially if having eight years to do so, would be to build a far different and much improved edifice on the rubble of Louisiana's dysfunction that the left has foisted onto it for so many decades. Maturation leading to post 20th-century politics finally may have arrived in Louisiana.
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It's confirmed: Republican Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry is pulling away from the Louisiana gubernatorial field, rendering moot the mythology about how little-known or also-ran politicians score surprising victories for the state's top office.
Another media consortium has put out a poll on the race, pegging Landry's support at 36 percent. As in the other survey released earlier this week, former Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards cabinet member Democrat Shawn Wilson pulls in 26 percent, and everybody else is in single digits with 14 percent undecided, say the likely voters. These numbers were slightly worse for Landry and slightly better for Wilson than the previous poll, but nevertheless reaffirm a Landry-Wilson runoff looms on the horizon where Landry will win decisively.
This provides another blow to the hopes of the anybody-but-Landry coterie of political activists, who keep hoping somehow another non-Democrat challenger will emerge to slip past Wilson into the runoff. The thinking is that a large portion of Democrats, some Republicans, and about half of all others don't like Landry enough so that he would lose in a runoff to such a candidate.
Other data from the poll didn't exactly provide much aid and comfort for that line of reasoning. Over three quarters of the sample formed an opinion about Landry, with half of it approving of him and just 28 percent disapproving, suggesting he could win a runoff against any opponent, if narrowly. Driving part of that, he grabbed 14 percent of the vote intention of black respondents, a little below that of the previous poll but at a level typically higher significantly than statewide GOP gubernatorial or Senate candidates.
Again, these are dynamics difficult to change with the amount of money the Landry campaign has at its disposal. For any single non-Democrat to make a charge, they have to pick off non-Democrat voters, and Landry has three-fifths of Republicans and almost a third of other voters in his column. But with a war chest around the eight-figure range, Landry has plenty of resources to minimize erosion of his support, while other don't have nearly enough to chip away at him and grab from other candidates.
And they can't depend upon Democrats to help them out. Wilson and the party brass know that, absent a live boy/dead girl scenario, he's dead in the water, but they have to keep going because they have to field a quality candidate to keep the party refreshed and able to provide down ballot assistance. The debacle of 2011 they surely haven't forgotten, when the party ended up backing an obscure schoolteacher rookie against Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal, who decimated the field. When the dust cleared, the GOP picked up seven House and nine Senate seats from 2007, although party-switching and special elections throughout the first three years of Jindal's term meant in practical terms a pickup of five House and one Senate as a direct result of the 2011 elections. Wilson has to stay in and actively campaigning if Democrats have any chance of maintaining their Legislature numbers and to maximize their chances in some local contests.
As Landry began to run up huge fundraising numbers and anecdotal evidence that he was the guy to beat, background whispering among the chattering classes emerged not to speak too quickly of his coronation. Rather, they alleged that recent Louisiana electoral history supposedly showed front running gubernatorial candidates often were caught by surprise opponents who started out quite modestly.
That's never been the case. The narrative seems to have its origins from the 1987 contest where Democrat Rep. Buddy Roemer had bumped along in single digits until breaking out close to election day, pushing Prisoner #03128-095, known outside the big house as Democrat Gov. Edwin Edwards, into second place and out of a runoff when Edwards withdrew. But it wasn't that big of a surprise because Roemer made great pains to distinguish himself from the other main contestants – two other congressmen, one a Republican, and the secretary of state – with a campaign of fiscal conservatism and a record to match, unrelenting criticism of Edwards, and a base outside of south Louisiana while the others divided that area.
It seemed reinforced in 1995 race when Democrat state Sen. Mike Foster, up against a former governor, lieutenant governor, treasurer, and congressman, came from relative obscurity to win. Actually, that was in the cards long before election day as polling early on showed him with good favorable/unfavorable numbers, as long as he could become well-known to the electorate. He did, because of the record amount of money he threw into the campaign (a good chunk of his own), and because he strategically switched to the GOP label upon qualifying, just as that had become a meaningful asset in campaigning (keep in mind when Foster first won his Senate seat in 1987, Republicans had all of 5 seats in that chamber and 17 on the House side). The official GOP apparatus welcomed him, abandoning not only Roemer trying for another term, but also their official endorsee who didn't even bother to qualify.
Sometimes the scenario is attempted to be applied to the 2003 election of Democrat Lt. Gov. Kathleen Blanco. But Blanco was the front runner who didn't fade against Jindal and a Democrat attorney general, state senator, and party head,, who always placed in the top two in polls and who in the last four months of the year raised and spent nearly $4 million, not much less than Jindal, to consolidate a field that gave 60 percent of its vote to Democrats in the general election.
And the same applies to the 2015 election of Democrat state Rep. John Bel Edwards, who, facing no significant intraparty challenge, led almost every poll against a fragmented GOP field and spent over $7 million (about a million of his own) to build out name recognition. The only difference between him and Blanco was he led substantially going into the runoff but he had to pick off some Republican general election support rather than try to prevent erosion of second-choice votes.
There are clear lessons here. If you are a polling front runner, have relatively lots of resources, and have decent comparative approval numbers, you won't get caught. For those who aren't, you can catch him the front runner only if he has soft approval numbers, you don't, and you have money close to that of him.
None of this applies to 2023. At 50 or so days out, Landry has led every poll with good numbers and money to burn. His opponents have no better, if not worse, approval figures with nowhere close the bucks to alter the dynamics. Simply, it's his race to lose.
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Let's break out the handkerchiefs and violins for poor old Republican state Rep. Tanner Magee, who says too many people are holding him accountable for him doing his job for him to do his job.
After the veto session concluded, Magee revealed he would not seek reelection. Magee at present serves as speaker pro tempore, the second-ranked position in the House of Representatives. Last year he ran for an appellate judgeship and lost convincingly. This resounding defeat plus that a new governor, almost certainly a Republican and likely GOP Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry who has clashed with House leaders on some issues, where governors typically have influence in legislative chamber leadership selection when of the same party, also loom as factors that may have played into Magee's decision.
His publicly articulated reason for letting go is that, he says, "[State legislative politics is] moving more in a direction of a D.C. style and I don't want to spend the next four years missing my kids and being away from family and not really enjoying the process." This very much echoes a recurring theme from Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards, who in his two terms typified dissent to his agenda as a divisive "Washington" politics while agreement with it denoted a desire to "unify" and make progress.
Magee also said that "Much of my class, people I came in with [beginning with the 2015 election cycle], really are not there anymore, it's dwindling down, I miss them and I am going to miss them in the future, but it's really changed." Finally, he asserted as a negative that "[Special interest groups] are more interested in recording how you vote, than they are passing meaningful legislation that will help people in Louisiana, because for them politics is just a game."
These statements rival those issued by Edwards from time to time in the sheer breadth and depth of sanctimony and hypocrisy, beginning with the fact that Magee participated in an authoritarian leadership team more interested in stamping out opposition when criticized, whether internal to the chamber party or externally from the public, than in trying to build a unifying consensus. As one example, when Republican state Rep. Danny McCormick last year resisted a bill favored by Magee and his boss GOP Speaker Clay Schexnayder and he rallied grassroots public resistance to it, Magee on the floor disparaged the citizen input as manufactured, as if opposition to the measure inherently was illegitimate and possible only as fakery of some kind.
And the wistful longing to hang with the class of 2016 legislators elected with him? Tell that to Republican state Reps. Raymond Crews and Dodie Horton, also elected then, who Schexnayder and Magee punished with removal of their capital outlay projects because they had backed a move to spend fewer dollars than leadership wished this fiscal year. Magee publicly noted that if they weren't going to want to spend more collectively on capital outlay, then their constituents could stand losing projects.
It's all right if you're in leadership to crack the whip to encourage discipline. But then don't go around saying you don't endorse "D.C. style" politics because in exerting power this way you're being as confrontational as what happens in Washington, or in any other state capitol for that matter.
But his most offensive remarks concern publicizing his voting record, which he sees as antithetical to "meaningful" legislation, as if the two can't coexist. Publicizing records is essential to democratic functioning as a vital accountability linkage, facilitating the ability of voters to judge whether their representatives satisfactorily express their interests. When a particular viewpoint wins an argument, it does so through convincing majorities of its wisdom who then pass that along to their representatives, according to democratic theory. Unless that preferred policy seems manifestly unwise, whereupon the legislator uses his judgment potentially to act contrary to it, representatives act accordingly in line with the public to produce "meaningful legislation." This can't happen without information about representatives' actions being publicized.
Except that to him Magee indicates exposure of records is a bad thing, This implies he views the task of publicizing, engaged in by an interested public, as a hindrance to good policy-making, as if he and his ilk are the only ones who truly understand what's best for the people and if they could operate without their votes disseminated to a wider audience that might disagree, which apparently threatens their ability to produce good policy if not their very legislative tenures, then things would be better.
The breath-taking arrogance and elitism of this claim stands out. Such a statement shows Magee very much believes in old-style Louisiana politics, where you act like a good old boy around your constituents, have them vote for you because they think you're a good guy and that you "care" (regular church attendance and social conservatism are plusses), and then once elected you have license to engage in all sorts of wasteful spending and unneeded government control over their lives. Just as long as the people don't know what you're doing, you can do what you think is best, and you think you know what is best for them even if they disagree on these accounts.
In other words, beleaguered Magee simply doesn't like it when he gets criticism for stupid votes. By the Louisiana Legislature Log voting scorecard, he hasn't done badly in the three years previous to this, averaging over 83, or a bit below the House GOP average (higher scores mean more conservative/reform voting, which is what the second-ranked leader of House Republicans ought to aspire to). But he made stupid vote choices from time to time, most recently preventing successful veto overrides of HB 81 and HB 466, both of which could have used his affirmative vote (which almost every member of his party gave) s these failed by close margins – important bills for supporting parental rights as previously explained.
And in doing that to Magee, forcing him to wield power with people looking over his shoulder and telling him and the world when he made what they explain are mistakes – where to him those actions of his promoted "meaningful" policy and prevented the opposite because of the monopoly of wisdom he dreams that he has – is no fun anymore, the inability to do whatever he wants without consequences of criticism or electoral survival. It's most decidedly not a game to them, because they have to live with the consequences of his mistakes, magnified by his leadership position.
Maybe whiny Magee is a great guy, but by his statements he simply isn't suitable to serve in any elective office. You don't like the heat, get out of the kitchen; nobody is forcing you to wield power. Magee is doing so, to which people who found his abilities and commitment insufficient to improve the dismal governance those like him have foisted on the state decade after decade advise: not to let the door hit him on the way out.
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Image from Fiend Without A Face I am not sure when I first heard the phrase "broke their brain" but I know that I have heard it multiple times. I have heard it used to explain the obsession with cancel culture on the part of the pundit class. That once they were subject to criticism and mockery online it effectively broke their brain, making it impossible for them to distinguish between criticism and actual threats to free speech. I have also heard it used to refer to the 2020 election and its aftermath.The idea underlying the phrase, at least as I understand it, as that something can happen that is so difficult for particular individuals to process or make sense of, that it effectively hinders their ability to make sense of everything after. It marks a traumatic before and after in which nothing ever makes sense again.I am not sure when the term first came into existence. Urban dictionary ties it to the Trump presidency and Covid, but others would point to the fact that Trump himself is a product of another event that broke many Americans and that is the Obama Presidency. From there it is possible to go further back to 9/11 and so on. As a theory it can at best be described as a descriptive theory. It describes without necessarily explaining what is happening. As Althusser argued descriptive theories can function as both the condition of theorizing and the limit to theorizing: condition in that they start to name something that can then be conceptualized, limit in that sometimes the description is taken as a theory in itself. Althusser said that about Marx's edifice of base and superstructure which poses a problem, that of determination, effectivity, and causality of the different social relations and practices, from production to ideology, but is often taken as a solution to the very problem it poses: the base determines the superstructure--end of story. A similar thing happens with broken brains which, as the very term suggests, presents the entire phenomena is if it is matter of individual psychology. A claim that is itself contradicted by the way that the term is used to describe not an individual crisis, but a social one--broken brains usually refers to a mass phenomena even if the language it uses is individualistic. How is it possible to move from this description to some understanding of what such a term is trying to explain? It seems to me that the events that break brains refer as much to the symbolic significance of such events as their reality. Brains break when something disrupts our sense of how things ought to be, and what should happen, or not happen. All the events listed above disrupted some ruling myth, or what Yves Citton calls mythocracy, of the world, from the invulnerability of America from foreign attacks to the sense of invulnerability to criticism that seems to be part of being part of the pundit class. What breaks a brain is not so much a real event, a terrorist attack, who wins or loses an election, but the role that real event plays in ones sense and meaning of the world. Beyond the events listed above I think one event that broke some people was the Covid pandemic. I had that thought when reading this piece in the Washington Post about local politics in Michigan. As the article states the mask mandates, shutdowns of schools, and churches, seemed to bring into reality the kind of government control that people had only talked about as a paranoid possibility. I remember reading someone, I can't remember who, writing in the New York Times that the summer of 2020 with Covid shutdowns and the global Black Lives Matter protests after George Floyd were a particular nightmare for conservatives. I am not sure who said that (and honestly who can tell the pundits apart sometimes), but I think that I can make sense of that nightmare by citing another pithy phrase, and descriptive theory, which is that "Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect." In this particular case the in-group in question are precisely those people, primarily middle class, comfortable, and white, who are used to being able to do what they want without constraint, or being bound. The binds imposed by closures, mask mandates, and other precautions seemed like a massive affront to a kind of license that many take for granted. Case in point, the uptick in abuse and hostility shown to servers at restaurants and bars, who, for a brief and awkward moment, had to go from performing the emotional labor of a friendly smile to enforcing safety rules. Being told what to do by a waiter was more than some people could stand. The out group in question was, to put it bluntly, black and brown people, who were out in the streets protesting. That these protests, disruptions, were happening at the same time that "normal life" was being disrupted seem to make the fears of many conservatives a reality. Of course this was awhile ago, but the one thing that the summer of 2020 illustrates is that what is often presented as "broken" is actually functioning, just according to a different set of rules, more symbolic and affective than immediately rational. Broken brain as a criticism, like hypocrisy as a criticism, runs up against the limitation that it presupposes a consistency that only exists in the mind of the critic. As broken as it seems some people truly seem to think that a columnist being criticized online is the same, or at least comparable to the state outlaw particular subjects of study. What appears to be broken is a functioning symbolic and affective order that unevenly attributes priority to the feelings and existence of some over others. As Kimberlé Crenshaw put it succinctly in an interview in the Guardian, laws predicated on the belief that lessons about slavery are harmful to white students, amount to the statement that "white kids' feelings are more important than black kids' reality." This seems like something that would only stem from a broken brain, but it might be more worthwhile to ask the question, what is such a brain is functioning on or for.
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The latest addition to PBS's American Masters series — "The Incomparable William F. Buckley, Jr." — makes for engrossing viewing, which isn't surprising since Buckley himself was compulsively watchable (and readable).The story of Buckley's life and career has been well and often told, not least by the protagonist himself. A much anticipated biography two decades in the making by Sam Tanenhaus is expected early next year. A globe-trotting journalist, editor, author, television personality, friend of Ronald and Nancy Reagan (among many others), and founder of the conservative magazine National Review, Buckley was, in the estimation of the late Dartmouth professor and longtime National Review senior editor Jeffrey Hart, "the most important journalist since Walter Lippmann." "In fact," continued Hart, "Buckley's career was more impressive."Maybe so — after all, what started in 1955 as a niche magazine with 16,000 subscribers, transformed over the ensuing decades into a big business, which came to be known colloquially as Conservative Inc., replete with multi-million dollar think tanks, obscenely well compensated radio and TV personalities, and presidential candidates seeking its imprimatur. There is of course no question that Lippmann and Buckley's respective audiences were immense. But the comparison to Lippmann has its limits. Of the two, Lippmann had an embarrassingly better track record on U.S. foreign policy, for example, particularly when it came to the Vietnam War and the Cold War.National Review's coverage of the Cold War was colored, and not for the better, by a roster of ex-Communists and intellectuals with ties and sympathies that extended beyond the Iron Curtain, to what became known as the Captive Nations. The philosopher Hannah Arendt observed that the postwar brand of anti-Communism "was originally the brainchild of former Communists who needed a new ideology by which to explain and reliably foretell the course of history."One of the things the documentary does well is demonstrate why the Vietnam War was the principal reason the now-infamous televised "debate" between Buckley and the novelist and critic Gore Vidal turned so ugly so quickly. After all, as the documentary notes, "Buckley was absolutely convinced that Vietnam was a crucial battle in the Cold War against Communism."And within Conservative Inc., no myth has been as unassailable as the idea that the Cold War was not only "won" by the United States but that it was "won" by Buckley's hearty band of conservatives. The columnist (and former Washington editor of NR) George Will summed up the prevailing view this way:"…Without Bill Buckley, no National Review. Without National Review, no Goldwater nomination. Without the Goldwater nomination, no conservative takeover of the Republican Party. Without that, no Reagan. Without Reagan, no victory in the Cold War. Therefore, Bill Buckley won the Cold War."But Will's reasoning suffers, as Buckley himself might have put it, from the post hoc, ergo propter hoc fallacy.The triumphant reaction by NR to the end of the Cold War was noted with distaste by the great Hungarian-American historian John Lukacs in a letter to the man generally recognized as the "father" of containment, George F. Kennan, in September 1991,"Buckley gloats in the last number of his magazine: 'We won!" "We won!' He repeats that all over again, etc. etc."The idea that "We won, we won," was no doubt sincerely believed by Buckley and his followers, but it is, alas, an idea that is both ahistorical and dangerous — as we have come to see in the more than three decades since the end of the Cold War.***Once the Cold War ended, Buckley and his movement might have done well to reconsider the utility of continuing their alliance with the neoconservatives — after all, the rationale for so doing pretty much evaporated with the Soviet menace. By 1992, it was clear that a conservative alternative to the Cold War policy of global hegemony was emerging thanks to the insurgent candidacy of Patrick Buchanan. From the vantage point of 2024, it seems clear that for many conservatives, Buchanan's was the path not taken — tragically so. Instead of tending to our own garden after 1989, Washington, with the enthusiastic support of Conservative Inc., embarked on a frenetic campaign of ruinous overseas misadventures from which we have yet to disengage. For the conservative movement, the first post-Cold War decade saw fusionists continue their stranglehold on domestic policy, while the neocons grabbed the initiative on foreign policy. All the while, Buchanan became a prophet without honor in his own country.The American Conservative magazine co-founder Scott McConnell noted in a talk given in 2014 that as the Cold War was reaching its denouement, Buckley decided, thanks to the influence of the neocon power couple Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter, "To allow neoconservatives to regulate the terms of Mideast discussion in his own magazine, National Review." The consequences for the magazine and the movement were profound. Thereafter, noted McConnell, "…The neoconservatives essentially won the right to supervise Israel-related discussions in National Review…Thereafter, any young Conservative knew the rules - you'd best be sufficiently pro-Israel to satisfy Midge and Norman if you wanted to advance."PBS ignores this history, making it seem as though the most interesting thing about Buckley in his final decade was his admission, made on the Charlie Rose Show, that he wanted to die. Whatever the (questionable) novelty of such sentiments by someone who had a) just lost his wife of 57 years and b) an advanced case of emphysema, Buckley's politics toward the end of his life became far more interesting than one might come to understand if they relied solely on PBS.Writing shortly after his death in 2008, Buckley biographer John Judis observed that, "Buckley chided conservatives or neoconservatives who refused to recognize that circumstances had changed — who invoked the old bogeymen or invented new ones." After visiting Cuba in 1998, Buckley even praised that great hero of foreign policy restrainers, John Quincy Adams, who, according to Buckley, "[r]eminded us that though we are friends of liberty everywhere, we are custodians only of our own."Indeed, thanks to the Iraq War and the mendacity of his old allies, the neocons who promoted it so ardently, the scales appeared to have fallen from Buckley's eyes. As Jeffrey Hart wrote in the American Conservative, "Buckley had expressed doubts about the Iraq War from the beginning ... During the last two years of his life, Bill Buckley understood the facts about Iraq and their implications." An exchange with with George Will on ABC in 2005 offered a sense of Buckley's thinking post-Iraq:Will: Today, we have a very different kind of foreign policy. It's called Wilsonian. And the premise of the Bush doctrine is that America must spread democracy, because our national security depends upon it. And America can spread democracy. It knows how. It can engage in national building. This is conservative or not?Buckley: It's not at all conservative. It's anything but conservative. It's not conservative at all, inasmuch as conservatism doesn't invite unnecessary challenges. It insists on coming to terms with the world as it is…The story of Buckley's tenacious engagement with the war and his break with the neocons is a fascinating one, though one that PBS either missed or left on the cutting room floor.As Tanenhaus recounted in The New Republic in 2007:"Buckley has faulted Bush for trying to go it alone in Iraq and chided neoconservatives who"simply overrate the reach of U.S. power and influence."….When I asked him recently if Iraq is the Republicans' Vietnam, he said, 'Absolutely.'"It is arguable that on matters of war and peace Buckley ended up holding positions closer to those held by his nemesis Gore Vidal than the Republican standard bearers in 2008 and 2012. Which is to say that by the end of his life, with regard to U.S. foreign policy, Buckley was getting it right.
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Louisiana was at this same spot 16 years ago. We don't need to return to it a third time.
There was much optimism then as Republican Rep. Bobby Jindal prepared to take the oath of office as governor. He had said a lot of great things in his campaign and swamped the field, with the promise that he could make a definitive break from the state's dying corpse of a liberal populist political culture, unlike the outcome of the only previous semi-serious attempt, the governorship of Republican Buddy Roemer.
In retrospect, it was too much to expect. Jindal had won as much for his agenda as he had as a reaction to botched administration, as well as inferior policy-making, by Democrat Kathleen Blanco. And he did do as he said, making government smarter, as well as deliver on ethics and education (and to a lesser degree civil service) reform and on income tax cuts.
Yet Jindal didn't do much to restrain the growth of government, and as GOP former state Sen. Conrad Appel (and who this week will join the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education) who was an insider to Capitol machinations in this era hinted recently, likely because he couldn't. Keep in mind that the GOP finally acquired legislative chamber majorities just before he won a second term, and even in his second term with some breathing space enough Republicans-In-Name-Only made efforts to trim government in any permanent way difficult.
Of course, Jindal didn't help himself before his term was half up by switching into a more populist conservative direction which didn't match the previous worldview underpinning his agenda that didn't suit his style, and he then started to play safe on policy in the hopes of electoral advancement. If you're shooting for national electoral prominence at the highest level, it's distracting to try to continue laying the groundwork to change the culture back home.
As a result, the foundation laid was unstable and unable to resist a determined counterattack by liberal populism and its special interest remora. Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards did his best to bring back every bad policy that has caused Louisiana to blow opportunity after opportunity to fall even further behind the rest of the country than when Jindal had faced taking office, leaving a legacy of failure specializing in depopulation, economic malaise, and a declining quality of life – and then some, for Edwards went where no other governor had gone before in stumping for faddish intellectually and morally bankrupt social and environmental policies.
Now, Republican Jeff Landry stands at the same juncture as did Roemer and Jindal, but with distinct advantages. Perhaps the best way to analogize this moment is to consider the state's preparedness, within government and among the electorate which can be called the level of maturity of its political culture, and potential to embrace a change in course akin to trying to grow productive viticulture.
Understand that significant political change, unless violently from below, generally operates in an indirect fashion where the mass public first articulates this desire at the top of the system, and with sustained desire it cascades down the system until the sufficient amount of change is achieved. One could argue that Republican Dave Treen narrowly winning the governorship in 1979 may have been a first sign of this, although more likely the stagnant American economy and particularly energy crisis and its impact that harmed Louisiana more than it helped until deregulation of oil and gas came around the time of Treen's election, had much to do with damaging the Democrat brand, as well as other idiosyncratic factors (i.e., outgoing Democrat Gov. Edwin Edwards playing cards to maximize his chances of a successful challenge in 1983 rather than to elect a Democrat in 1979), that eclipsed any real desire among the majority of the Louisiana public to change the liberal populist course of the state's political culture.
Yet if that desire had not been the driving factor in the 1979 contest, it had become so in 1987 where a battered energy sector and animus against Edwards mobilized at least a plurality of voters to support Roemer, who explicitly ran against Edwards specifically but more generally liberal populism. The problem for Roemer was he was like a vine transplanted into entirely unsuitable rocky, if not desert, soil. With few friends in the Legislature or elsewhere, he couldn't accomplish much, and he blundered by reversing himself on some fiscal issues.
Outflanked by two populists for reelection in a contest that brought Edwards back, change stagnated while liberal populism retrenched. Still, the desire in the electorate for change continued to grow and even if it hadn't reached critical mass enough to force its will in legislative elections, it did force out Edwards. But his successor Republican Mike Foster (like Roemer a converted Democrat) did little to challenge the orthodoxy, with an exception being education policy.
Backsliding resumed with the ascension of Democrat Kathleen Blanco to succeed Foster, but the electorate nearly prevented that when Jindal almost defeated her. The critical mass further grew closer as Republicans (although some being RINOs) began to make headway in legislative elections as the cascading effect grew in strength.
When Jindal took over, his transplanted vine found much better soil – not excellent, as liberal populist Democrats still had legislative majorities and dominated most of local government – that with care and effort could have become very productive. And he largely pursued that course in his first term, but after the first 18 months of his second term he mostly neglected that, and, as a result, to easily the vine was pulled by John Bel Edwards with the momentum lost and revanchist forces regrouped.
The liberal populism extension perpetrated by Edwards only fueled the public's desire to condemn it to the ash heap. In the final analysis, the failures of liberal populism – which became more visible once Democrat Pres. Joe Biden replaced Republican former Pres. Donald Trump – simply became too apparent to enough Louisianans not only to sweep Landry into office but also to reinvigorate the Legislature into its first truly conservative majority, full spectrum in scope that rejects the idea that government is there to redistribute and to cater to special interests that create winners and losers. It had taken decades, but sufficient majorities for change had built in the public to complete the cascade down from the state's chief executive to legislative offices, as well as to other elected executive branch officials.
Which means now the soil is extremely fertile for the kinds of policy changes Landry promises to pursue, and very likely to stick if the effort is put in. The death rattle of liberal populism in state government is at hand with a little fidelity and determination by its opponents, unlike in 1988 and 2008 when the fleeting promise was there but conditions not right that demanded more that could be brought to bear. Now the time is right, and four to eight years of inspired leadership hewing to genuine conservatism will complete a historic transformation of Louisiana's political culture that cements into state government complementary conservative policy.
But it won't happen without commitment, perhaps inspired by the fact that at this third inflection point Louisiana simply can't afford to allow resurrection of liberal populism and re-empowerment of its special interest hangers-on that have held back the state for a century.
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Debates over foreign policy have played an unusually significant role in the intra-Republican party debate over the last year. Disagreements over aid for Ukraine were a driving force behind former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy's ouster from his leadership position last October. When Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) endorsed Donald Trump's 2024 presidential campaign, he cited his foreign policy record as the primary reason, and Nikki Haley has made her aggressive brand of foreign policy central to her challenge to Trump.Now, the Republican Party will undergo another meaningful transition. Mitch McConnell, who has led the Senate Republican conference since 2007, announced last week that he will step down from his long-held perch following November's elections and retire from the Senate at the end of his current term. While McConnell's decision is not explicitly about foreign policy, it is a signal that the party's views on a number of major issues, including America's role in the world, are changing."It's a body blow for the establishment, interventionist wing of the GOP," Jacob Heilbrunn, editor of The National Interest and author of two books on Republican foreign policy, tells Responsible Statecraft.To be sure, there are other elements at play. McConnell is 82. He's had a number of health events in public in recent months. A Trump return to the White House looks like a distinct possibility, and, given McConnell's apparent distaste for the former president, the Kentucky Republican may not want to contend with the pressure of working with him for another four years. Nevertheless, there are reports that McConnell is considering endorsing Trump for a second term.The majority leader, however, has said that he will serve out the rest of his term, which expires in January 2027, so the decision was not entirely informed by his personal life. "It suggests to me that some of this does have to do with the changing composition of the Senate Republican Conference," Jim Antle, executive editor of the Washington Examiner magazine, tells RS.The dynamics of that changing composition are clear: During a vote in the Senate last month on legislation that would provide foreign aid to Ukraine and Israel, 18 of the 30 Senators who were first elected before 2016 supported the bill; only four of the 19 who came to office since voted in favor.McConnell's Foreign Policy LegacyThe post-Trump years have been atypical for McConnell. During his nearly 40 years in the Senate and his 16 years as party leader — the longest such tenure in history — McConnell has rarely made foreign affairs a policy priority and has, despite criticism from conservative activists, laboriously tried to avoid inserting himself into intra-party disputes.But after his relations soured with the former president, McConnell became a symbol of the Republican old guard in Washington that was working to reverse Trump's effects on the party — with a focus on one issue in particular."Of all the ways Trump has reshaped the Republican Party, it's clear that McConnell sees the drift toward isolationism as the most pernicious — particularly at a moment when the fate of Ukraine and perhaps even NATO countries could be determined by the resolve of the Republican Party," Politico's Jonathan Martin reported last summer."I didn't really think he was that important on foreign policy until the Republican consensus on foreign policy started being challenged. And he was a leader in pushing back against those challenges," says Antle."McConnell's legacy is often considered domestic. It certainly was his area of interest," adds Curt Mills, executive director of the American Conservative. "But I think, time and again, McConnell showed himself to be essentially a kind of unreconstructed George W. Bush-style Republican on foreign policy, and really did sort of stick his neck out there as the years went on."However, McConnell's brand of conservatism, particularly on the foreign policy front, has been going out of style. It is reviled by more right-wing members of the party, and old Republican purveyors of it are aging out and retiring.The conservative House Freedom Caucus mocked the departing Senate leader after his announcement, focusing on his recent rhetoric on foreign policy. "Our thoughts are with our Democrat colleagues in the Senate on the retirement of their Co-Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (D-Ukraine)," the group posted from their account on the social media platform X.What's Next?The Senate can be a slow place to transform. Six-year terms mean that Senators are not as subject to the whims of the voter base as their counterparts in the House. The most oft-mentioned replacements for McConnell are the so-called "Three Johns" — Thune of South Dakota, Cornyn of Texas, (the third, Barrasso of Wyoming, has announced on Tuesday that he was forgoing the opportunity to replace McConnell to run for the second leadership spot instead). They are more in the mold of the current majority leader in that they have a more temperamentally conservative approach to politics, unlike some newer GOP politicians who are willing to overthrow institutional norms in Washington.Even though the Senate was a place for more establishment Republicans to have some level of power during the Trump years, Mills argues that the more "America First" wing of the party is more aware of and prepared to push for control of these levers of power. "I do think we're getting to the point now, where the Senate Leader is high profile enough that they can't be this major outlier on the policy," he tells RS. In addition, he says, anybody in the party who has national aspirations will have to advocate for some degree of foreign policy restraint.In terms of policy, the most crucial question confronting Congress is the future of aid to Ukraine. McConnell has been a strong advocate for continuing aid and, for the time being, the spending package is stuck in the House of Representatives. If the House blocks passage of the bill or passes a different version of it, the Senate GOP's position on the issue will once again be tested. The Republican conference had largely been supportive of aiding Ukraine, but the most recent bill passed with support from fewer than half of the members.Despite facing criticism from conservative activists, McConnell has rarely been on the losing side of any debates within the Republican Party during his time as leader, says Antle. Ukraine aid could prove to be a significant exception. And perhaps, given his stance on the issue, McConnell may feel that his voice is better placed elsewhere in the caucus."Maybe now he wants to play more of a Mitt Romney role. Where he's seen as this elder statesman within the party, but he has the freedom to criticize Trump," Antle tells RS. "This is me speculating. But I think it's informed speculation. He may feel that he's reached a point where herding cats in private is less important than speaking out against some of these things in public."The Trump FactorWhere the next Senate GOP leader falls on this and other related issues will depend largely on the outcome of the 2024 presidential election. Trump has reportedly already been involved in the jockeying over McConnell's successor behind-the-scenes, urging Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.), the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, to run. Regardless of who the leader ends up being, they will likely need to be loyal to Trump personally, but the former president may be more flexible when it comes to his policy agenda."If Trump really wanted to push somebody who was different from McConnell on foreign policy, I think he could have an impact, but I don't think that those are the kinds of considerations that he's going to make," says Antle. "But it does suggest, I think, that that wing of the Senate Republican Conference is only going to get bigger and the kinds of pressures McConnell was resisting, are going to become more difficult to resist."Heilbrunn, on the other hand, contends that if Trump is elected, the battle for Republican foreign policy will effectively be over. "The one thing he actually cares about is foreign policy," he tells RS, adding that Trump will not settle for a Senate advocating for a different approach, and will be "pushing for someone who will be subservient to him."If Trump loses, however, there will be a more contested battle over how the Republican Party may understand the country's role in the world. While Cold War-era hawks have definitely lost the power they once had within the party, they could make the case that Trump represented a short-term outlier if he loses another election.Even if Trump loses, Mills says, "I'm still pretty bullish on the restraint end of the Republican Party," because the momentum in the party's base is aligned with that movement. Foreign policy, he says, is only growing more salient for GOP primary voters.In addition, younger and more recently elected Republicans' views on foreign policy can harken back to the GOP from before the Cold War, which often opposed foreign intervention. In this telling, Cold Warriors like McConnell and the neoconservatives that populated the George W. Bush administration are actually the outliers in the party's history."I think that what Trump represents is an older and probably more durable tradition," says Heilbrunn.
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Bertrand Badie on the Trump Moment, the Science of Suffering, and IR between Power and Weakness
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IR retains a traditional focus on the game of power between states as its defining characteristic. But what, so asks Bertrand Badie, if this means that our discipline is based on a negation of our humanity? A giant in Francophone IR, Badie has labored to instead place human suffering at the center of analysis of the international, by letting loose sociological insights on a truly global empirical reality. In this Talk, Badie—amongst others—challenges the centrality of the idea of state power, which makes little sense in a world where most of the IR agenda is defined by issues emanating from state weakness; argues for the centrality of suffering to a more apt IR; and uses this to contextualize the Trump Moment.
Print version (pdf) of this Talk
What is (or should be), according to you, the biggest challenge / principal debate in current International Relations? What is your position or answer to this challenge / in this debate?
Unquestionably, it would be the matter of change. It is time to conceptualize, and further than that, to theorize the change that is happening in the field of International Relations (IR). Humans have always had the feeling that they are living in a period of upheaval, but contemporary IR is really characterized by several landmarks that illustrate the drastic extent of change. I see at least three of them.
The first one concerns the inclusive nature of the international system. For the first time in the history of mankind, the international system covers nearly the whole humanity, while the Westphalian system was an exclusively European dynamic in which the United States of America entered to turn it into a system, that I would call, Euro-North-American.
The second element, around which publications abound (see notably Mary Kaldor's work, Theory Talk #30), is the deep mutation of the nature of conflict. War used to be, in the Westphalian model, a matter of competition between powers. Today we have the feeling that weakness is replacing power, in that power cannot any longer function as central explanatory term of conflictual situations, which are rather manifestations of state weakness. Think of 'failing' or 'collapsing' states, which refers to the coming apart of nations that have been built badly as well as the deliquescence of social ties. This new form of conflictuality completely turns the international environment upside down and constitutes a second indicator of transformation.
The third aspect concerns mobility. Our international system used to be fully based on the idea of territory and boundaries, on the idea that fixity establishes the competences of States in a very precise way. In this perspective, the state refers to territory—as the definition given by Max Weber states very clearly—but today this territorial notion of politics is challenged by a full range of mobilities, composed of international flows that can be either material, informational, or human.
These are three indicators illustrating a deep transformation of the inner nature of IR that encourage me to speak about 'intersocial relations' rather than 'interstate relations'. The notion of interstate relations no longer captures the entirety of the global game. Our whole theory of IR was based on the Westphalian model as it came out of the peace of Westphalia, as it was confirmed by the accomplishment of the nation-state construction process and as it dominated the historical flow of international events until the fall of the Berlin wall.
Until the fall of the wall, all that was not related to Europe or to the United States of America, or more precisely North-America, was simply called 'periphery', which says enough. Today, by contrast, the periphery is central at least regarding conflictuality. We should therefore drop our Westphalian prism and build up new analytical tools for IR that would take these mutations as their point of departure. Doing away with our Westphalian approach to IR would mean questioning both our classical IR theories and questioning the practical models of action in international politics, which means the uses of diplomacy and warfare.
How did you arrive at where you currently are in your thinking about International Relations?
You know when we write, when we work, we are first of all influenced by our dissatisfaction. The classical Westphalian approach to IR, as I said earlier, did not satisfy me as I had the feeling that it was focusing on events that no longer had the importance that we kept giving them—for instance the arms race, great power politics, or the traditional diplomatic negotiations—while I was seeing, maybe this was the trigger, that the greatest part of suffering in the world was coming from places that IR theory was not really covering.
I have always told my students that IR is the science of human suffering. This suffering exists of course where we are—in Europe, in North America, they exist everywhere in the world—but the greatest part is outside of the Westphalian area, so the classical approach to IR gives a marginal and distorted image. Africa and the Middle East seen through the Westphalian prism are a dull image, strongly different from the extraordinary wealth, both for good and bad, that these areas of the world have. I've also always held that in a world where 6 to 9 million people starve to death each year, the main foci of traditional IR were derisory. Even terrorism, to which we collectively attribute so much importance, hardly comes near how important a challenge food security is.
My three latest books take a stand against traditional IR theories. In Diplomacy of Connivance (2012) I tried to show that the great power game is really a game way that is much more integrated than we usually say and that this game plays out in all multilateral fora. There is indeed a club, and that is precisely what I wanted to describe, a club of powers—one which results to the detriment of less powerful members in the international system.
In Le Temps des humiliés ('the era of the humiliated', 2014), I tried to crystallize what the classical theory could not express, which is domination seen through the lens of the dominated, humiliation as felt by the humiliated, violence as experienced by the desperate. For instance, even if we look at powers as accomplished as China today—sharing the first place with the USA in terms of GDP—we have to admit that their historical experience of humiliation constitutes a huge source of inspiration when it comes to the elaboration of its foreign policy.
And then, in my last book Nous ne sommes plus seuls au monde ('we are no longer alone in the world', 2016), this critique was even more explicit. We are writing an IR that encompasses only about one billion of human beings, while forgetting all the others. Today it is simply no longer true that these old powers are setting the international agenda. Global politics today is written by the little, the weak, the dominated; often with recourse to extreme forms of violence, but this needs to be analyzed and understood, which would mean to totally change the IR theory.
We should not forget that in large part, IR theory was a given as the USA triumphed in 1945. The well-known 'great power politics' that dominates traditional IR theory, inaugurated by Morgenthau and supported by so many others, described what was true at that time: the ability of American power to set us free from the Nazi monster. Today the challenge is strongly different, and it is by the way meaningful that two of the greatest American internationalist political scientists, Robert Keohane (TheoryTalk #9) and Ned Lebow (Theory Talk #53), have both written books that elude to the end of this global order (respectively After Hegemony and Goodbye Hegemony). Well what interests me is exactly to dig into what comes after hegemony.
What would a student need to become a specialist in International Relations or understand the world in a global way?
First of all, I would advise them to rename their science, as I said earlier, and to call it intersocial relations. The future of what we call IR comes down to the ability to understand the extremely rich, multiple and diversified interactions that are happening among and across the world's societies. It does not mean that we have to completely abandon the state-centric perspective, but rather dethrone states from the middle of this multiplicity of actors in order to realize how very often these states are powerless when faced with these different actors. That would be my first advice.
My second advice would be to look ahead and not back. Do not let yourself be dominated by the Westphalian model, and to try to build up what we need—since almost nothing has been done yet today to construct this post-Westphalian, meta-Westphalian model. Beyond power, there are things that we still misidentify or overlook while they are the driving forces of today's and tomorrow's IR. From this point of view, sociology could prove particularly useful. I consider, for instance, that Émile Durkheim is a very important inspiration to understand the world today. Here is an author to study and to apply to IR.
The third advice that I would give them would be to not forget that IR or intersocial relations are indeed the sciences of human suffering. We should be able to place suffering at the core of the thinking. We've lost far too much time staring at power, now it is time to move on to place human suffering at the center. Why? First of all because it is ethically better; maybe will we be able to learn from it? But also because in today's actual international politics suffering is more proactive than power, which is not necessarily optimistic but if recognized, would allow us a better questioning of new forms of conflictuality. Perhaps unfortunately, the international agenda is no longer fixed with canons, but with tears. Maybe this is the key point on which we should concentrate our reflection.
Your insistence on placing suffering at the center of IR scholarship seems to place you firmly alongside those who recognize "grievance" ratherthan "greed" as a central logic of international politics. What do you make of this parallel?
You are right: the idea of grievance, of recrimination, is a structuring logic of the international game today. We did not see it coming for two reasons. First of all because our traditional analysis of international politics presupposed a unity of time, as if the African time, the Chinese time, the Indian time and the European time where all identical. Yet this is completely wrong because we, in our European culture, have not understood that before Westphalia there were political models, political histories, that profoundly marked the people that would then shape contemporary politics. Remember that China is 4000 years of empire, remember that precolonial Africa was composed of kingdoms, empires, civilizations, philosophies, arts... Remember that India also is multi-millenary. The Westphalian time came to totally deny and crush this temporality, this historicity, almost in a negationist way, which means that, in the spirit of those who were defending the Westphalian model, only this model was associated to the Renaissance; and that the age of enlightenment and reason with a big R had a calling to reformat the world as if it were a hard drive. This was a senseless bet, a bet for which our European ancestors who led it had excuses because at that time we did not know all these histories, at that time we did not have all the knowledge we today have of the other and thus we simply resolved it, through the negation of alterity. Yet, IR ought on the contrary aspire to the accomplishment of alterity. Inevitably, all those who saw themselves denied their historicity, over several centuries and even several millenaries, accumulated a feeling of recrimination, of particularly deep grievances.
The second element is that all of this happened in a context of disequilibrium of power resources, linked to different factors that reflected indeed the fact that at a given moment of time western powers were both literally and figuratively better armed than other societies. Abovementioned negation of alterity was mapped onto, and amplified, by the forceful imposition of a multilateral system that turned into the worst situation, into a proclaimed hierarchy of cultures; as a result and there were, as Jules Ferry put it in the France of the 19th century, 'races'; as in, 'We have the obligation to educate inferior races'. It is not the beginning of history, but it is the beginning of a history of humiliation. And through subsequent waves of globalization, this humiliation has turned into a central nerve running through international life. A nerve that has been used by both the powerful, who made a tool out of humiliating the others to better dominate them (think here of the opium wars, colonization) and simultaneously a nerve that fed the reaction of mobilization in the extra-Westphalian world by those that had to stand up against those who were humiliating them. So you see how it truly lies at the basis of IR. In my mind, it became a forceful paradigm, it explains everything, even though others factors continue to weigh in on actual dynamics.
In order to appreciate all this, we need a sociological approach, which has for me two aspects. Both these aspects must be considered together for the approach to be well understood. The first one is a timeless aspect, which is to consider that everywhere and in all eras politics is a social product. Politics cannot be understood as somehow outside society. This I would say contradicts the majority of IR scholars, who believe excessively in the autonomy of politics and of the state—even if only for analytical purposes. The second element of this sociological approach is the historical or temporal component. That is what I was talking about earlier: with globalization the social fabric strongly progressed compared to the political fabric, and considering that intersocial relations grew, we need a sociological approach to understand them.
Do you think that the Trump period constitutes a fundamental break with the conduct of IR?
Trump himself maybe not, but what he represents certainly. If we look at the USA today we see, since the new millennium, three models succeeding each other. After 11-09 there was a time of neo-conservatism where globalization was considered by American leaders as a means or maybe a chance to universalize the American model, willingly or not. By force, as was the case in Iraq in 2003. This model failed.
This lead to a second model which I would describe as a liberal model, neo-liberal, incarnated by Obama who learnt from the lessons of the failure of neo-conservatism, and had the courage to question the hypothesis hitherto considered as indisputable of American leadership in the world, and who considered that the USA could win only through soft power or smart power or free-trade. That is the reason why Obama was just a little bit interventionist and was counting a lot on the TTIP and on all these transregional agreements.
With Trump we arrive at a third model, one that I would call neo-nationalist, that looks at globalization in a different way. In his perspective, globalization constitutes a chance to satisfy the national American interests. The idea of the national comes back after a long interlude of a globalizing vision. It does not mean that we are not interventionist anymore. What happened in Syria proves it. It means that we will intervene not according to the needs of globalization but rather to American interests. It is about sharing a strong and powerful image of the USA on the one hand and on the other serving the concrete interests of the American people and nation.
This neo-nationalist model is not defended only by Trump, that is the reason why I was saying that we should not consider Trump individually. We find it exactly the same way with Putin. We find it by many other world leaders, such as Erdogan or Duterte or Victor Orbán—really different figures—or Marshal Sissi in Egypt.
We find it as well in attitudes, for instance Brexit in Great Britain, in right-wing neo-populism in Europe: Ms. Le Pen, Mr. Wilders... or in a certain left-wing neo-populism as Mélenchon in France. It is in the air, seeming almost a passing fad. But it constitutes perhaps a double rupture within IR. First of all because since the emergence of globalization, let's say around the 70's, the national interest as a thought category was bit by bit replaced with approaches in terms of collective goods. Today by contrast we witness the abandonment of this image of collective goods for a return to the national interest. This is very clear in Trump's renouncing of the COP21 of Paris. At the same time, second, this constitutes some form of the rehabilitation of the idea of power, which again seeps into the language of IR.
You know the IR scholar is not a neutral person, we have to use our science towards positive action and for the definition of sound public policies. Going against the idea of collective goods, casting doubt on the ideas of human security, environmental security, food security, and sanitary security is extremely dangerous because the composition of national interests and egoism will never converge to a globally coherent policy. It is the weak that will suffer first.
And the same time that power is reinstated as a driving principle of IR praxis, the paradox is that great powers are becoming more and more powerless. If we look only since 1989, and ask, when did state power ever triumph in IR? Where did the strongest ever find a battleship enabling him to resolve a problem to his benefit and according to his goals? Never. Not in Somalia, not in Afghanistan, not in Iraq, not in Syria, not in Palestine. Nowhere. Not in Sahel, not in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Nowhere. So I am a little worried, indeed, about this naive and old-fashioned rehabilitation of state power.
Can we say that globalization, or rather the ambition of integration at either the European or global scale, has failed? Can today be considered a good moment to bury of the idea of integration?
I do not like burials, it is not an expression that I would use, but your question is very pertinent. For around twenty years I have been saying and teaching that regional integration constituted an intermediary and realistic level of adaptation between the era of the nation state and that of globalization, which means that I believed for a long time that regional integration was the final step towards a global governance of the world.
I thought for a long time that what was not possible at the global scale, a global government, was possible at the regional level and this would already strongly simplify the world map and thus go in the way of this adhesion to the collective dimension required by globalization. Nevertheless, not only Europe suffers a setback, but all the regional constructions in the world are in a similar situation. Mr. Trump openly shoves the NAFTA agreement, MERCOSUR is down as every State that is composing it has recriminations against it, and we could extend the list… All the forms of integration that have been set by Chavez around his Bolivian ideal have ceased to exist; Africa progresses very slowly in terms of regional integration; the Arab Maghreb Union, which is an essential device, totally failed. Thus indeed the situation does not look good.
In the case of Europe there is a double phenomenon: on the one hand, there is this really grave failure due to the secession of Great Britain from Europe, and then there is a general malaise of the European model. Brexit is really rare, if you look at the contemporary history of IR it is simply unprecedented that a state shuts the door on a regional or global organization. As far as I remember, it only happened a few times before, with Indonesia in the UN in 1964, which lasted only 19 months. It happened with Morocco with the African Union and Morocco is currently reintegrating in it. This British situation came as a thunderbolt, worsened by the fact that paradoxically it is not so much because of regional integration that the British voted against the European Union. It was more from an anti-migration, xenophobic and nationalist (in reference to that nationalism trend that I was earlier talking about) perspective and what is dramatic is that we can clearly see that the nationalist sentiment is really attacking the inner principles of regional integration.
I was saying that in the European case there are internal problems which run even deeper than the British defection, and I will underline at least two of them. First of all there is a democratic deficit of Europe, meaning that Europe was not able to match electoral spaces with the ones where decisions get made; people still vote at the national level while the decisions are taken in Brussels. In consequence, democratic control over these decisions is extremely weak. How to resolve this equation? And here the breakdown is total since very few people are coming up with suggestions. The other factor of this crisis is, according to me, the fact that Europe has been built with success after World War II in a progressive way around association and indeed, Durkheim proved it, the integrative logic makes sense. Unity makes strength and it did make strength once in Europe to prevent war, a third World War, and secondly to encourage the reconstruction of European countries where economy was totally collapsed. This time is now over and it is the fault of Europe to not have known how to recontextualize itself, to react to the new contexts.
Paying one more time tribute to Durkheim who guessed it right, Durkheim said that there are two ways of constructing social ties: around association and around solidarity. I think that the time of association is now over, we should enter in the time of solidarity, which does not consist in saying 'We Germans are associated with Greece', but rather 'We Germans are joined together with Greece because we know that if Greece collapses, in a long term perspective, we will suffer the consequences'. Thus this idea of fundamental unity is an idea that has been a little bit overlooked, abandoned by the Europeans and now they find themselves in a complete paralysis.
Is the decolonization period still having an impact on contemporary IR?
Oh totally, totally. I would first say because it is a major event in the field of IR, which made the World switch from 51 sovereign States of the UN in 1945 to 193 today but above all, a very aggravating circumstance, is that this decolonization has been a complete failure and this failure weighs enormously on international politics.
It has been a failure because decolonization assumed the format of copying the western state model in countries that were accessing independence, while this model was not necessarily adapted, which provoked a proliferation of failed states, and these collapsed states had a terrible effect on IR.
Secondly because decolonization should have led to the enrichment and to the substantial modification of multilateralism, by creating new institutions able to take charge of new challenges resulting from decolonization. Yet, except the creation of UNCTAD in 1964 and of UNDP in 1965, there have been very little innovations in terms of global governance. Thus global governance remains dominated by what I earlier called 'the club', which means the great powers from the north, and this is very dysfunctional for the management of contemporary crises. Then also because the ancient colonial powers happen to find new forms of domination that did somehow complicate the international game. Thus in fact decolonization is a daily aspect of the crisis that the international system faces today.
In conclusion, which question should we have asked? In other terms, which question have we forgot?
I found your questions very pertinent as it allowed the discussion of themes that I consider essentials. Now, the big problem that makes me worry is the great gap between the analysts and the actors in IR. I am not saying that the analysts understood everything, far from it, but I think that IR theorists are very conscious of some of these transformations I have mentioned. If you look at some great authors such as James Rosenau, Ned Lebow or Robert Keohane, to name just a few—there are way more—they all contributed to the reconstruction of IR.
What truly strikes me is the autism of political actors, they think that they are still at the time of the Congress of Vienna and that is an extraordinary source of tension. Thus as long as this spirit of change does not reach political actors, maybe Barack Obama was the first one to enter this game and then the parenthesis was closed, as long as there will not be this move towards the discovery of a new world, maybe as well through the inclusion in our reflection about the international fabric such partners as China, it is not normal that this very powerful China does not have any choice but to share the paradigm and the model of action proper to occidental diplomacy, as long as we would not have done this precise effort, well, we will remain in the negation of the human, and that is the essential problem today, we are unable to understand that at the end there is just one unity, which is the human being.
I had the chance to visit 105 countries and everywhere I met the same men and the same women, with their pain, with their happiness, their hardship, their joy, their sorrow, their needs that were everywhere identical. As long as we will not understand that, well, we will be living in a world that is in total contradiction with what it is truly and essentially. We will live in a world of artifice and thus a world of violence.
Related links
Read Badie's The Arab Spring: A starting point (SER Études 2011) here (pdf)
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Cass Sunstein has a lovely New York Times essay that tries to give us back the word "Liberal." I hope it works. "Liberal" from "Libertas" means, at bottom, freedom. In the 19th century, "liberals" were devoted to personal, economic, and increasing social freedom from government restraint. "Conservatives" wanted to maintain aristocratic privileges, and government interventions in the traditional way of doing things. The debate was not so obvious. Conservatives defended their view of aristocratic power in a noblesse-oblige concern for little people that the unfettered free market might leave behind, in a way quite reminiscent of today's elites who think they should run the government in the name of the downtrodden (or "nudge" them, if I can poke a little fun at Sunstein's earlier work). But by the 1970s, the labels had flipped. "Liberals" were advocates of big-state interventionism, in a big tent that included communists and marxists. It became a synonym of "left." "Conservatives" became a strange alliance of free market economics and social conservatism. The word "classical liberal" or "libertarian" started to be used to refer to heirs of the enlightenment "liberal" tradition, broadly emphasizing individual liberty and limited rule of law government in both economic and social spheres. But broadly, "liberal" came to mean more government intervention and Democrat, while "conservative" came to mean less state intervention and Republican, at least in rhetoric. But a new force has come to the fore. The heirs of the far-left marxists and communists are now, .. what shall we call them.. perhaps "censorious totalitarian progressives." Sunstein calls them "post liberals." The old alliance between center-left and far left is tearing apart, and Oct 7 was a wake up call for many who had skated over the division. Largely, then, I read Sunstein's article as a declaration of divorce. They are not us, they are not "liberals." And many of you who call yourselves "conservatives," "free marketers" or even "libertarians" should join us to fight the forces of illiberalism left and right, even if by now you probably completely gave up on the New York Times and read the Free Press instead. Rhetoric: Sunstein is brilliantly misleading. He writes what liberalism "is" or what liberals "believe," as if the word were already defined his way. It is not, and the second part of this post quotes another NYT essay with a quite different conception of "liberal." This is an essay about what liberal should mean. I salute that. It's interesting that Sunstein wants to rescue the traditional meaning of "liberal," rather than shade words in current use. "Classical liberal," is mostly the same thing, but currently shades a bit more free market than he'd like. "Neoliberal" is an insult but really describes most of his views. People have turned insults around to proud self-identifiers before. "Libertarian," probably has less room for the state and conservativism than Sunstein, and most people confuse "libertarian" with "anarchist." It's interesting he never mentions the word. Well, let's rescue "liberal." Here are some excerpts of Sunstein's 37 theses. I reorganized into topics. What is "liberalism"? 1. Liberals believe in six things: freedom, human rights, pluralism, security, the rule of law and democracy....6. The rule of law is central to liberalism. ...It calls for law that is prospective, allowing people to plan, rather than retroactive, defeating people's expectations. It requires conformity between law on the books and law in the world. It calls for rights to a hearing (due process of law)....Liberalism requires law evenly applied, not "show me the man, and I'll find the crime." It requires a legal system in which each of us is not guilty of "Three Felonies a Day," unprotected unless we are trouble to those in power. 10. Liberals believe that freedom of speech is essential to self-government....11. Liberals connect their opposition to censorship to their commitment to free and fair elections, which cannot exist if people are unable to speak as they wish. ...They agree with ... "the principle of free thought — not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate." It's freedom, individual dignity, equality before the law and the state. Economics On economic matters, "liberalism" starts with the basic values of the laissez-faire tradition, because the right to transact freely is one of the most basic freedoms there is:15. Liberals prize free markets, insisting that they provide an important means by which people exercise their agency. Liberals abhor monopolies, public or private, on the ground that they are highly likely to compromise freedom and reduce economic growth. At the same time, liberals know that unregulated markets can fail, such as when workers or consumers lack information or when consumption of energy produces environmental harm.On the latter point, Sunstein later acknowledges room for a variety of opinion on just how effective government remedies are for such "failures" of "unregulated markets." I'm a free marketer not because markets are perfect but because governments are usually worse. A point we can respectfully debate with fact and logic.16. Liberals believe in the right to private property. But nothing in liberalism forbids a progressive income tax or is inconsistent with large-scale redistribution from rich to poor. Liberals can and do disagree about the progressive income tax and on whether and when redistribution is a good idea. Many liberals admire Lyndon Johnson's Great Society; many liberals do not.I endorse this as well, which you may find surprising. Economics really has nothing to say about non-distorting transfers. Economists can only point out incentives, and disincentives. Redistribution tends to come with bad incentives. "Liberals" can and do argue about how bad the disincentives are, and if the purported benefits of redistribution are worth it. Cass allows liberals (formerly "conservatives") who "do not" admire extensive federal government social programs, because of their disincentives. Me.17. Many liberals are enthusiastic about the contemporary administrative state; many liberals reject itI also agree. I'm one of those who largely rejects it, but it's a matter of degree on disincentives, government competence, and the severity of the problems being addressed. "Liberals" can productively debate this matter of degree. Liberalism is a framework for debate, not an answer to these economic questions. Integrating ConservativismIntegrating "conservative" into "liberal" is one of Sunstein's charms, and I agree. He is also trying to find a common ground in the "center," that tussles gently on the size of government while respecting America's founding enlightenment values, and unites many across the current partisan divide. 2...Those who consider themselves to be leftists may or may not qualify as liberals. You can be, at once, a liberal, as understood here, and a conservative; you can be a leftist and illiberal. 22. A liberal might think that Ronald Reagan was a great president and that Franklin Delano Roosevelt was an abomination; a liberal might think that Roosevelt was a great president and that Reagan was an abomination. "Conserativism" properly means conserving many of the traditions of our society, rather than burning it down once a generation striving for utopia, and having it dissolve into tyranny. Sunstein's "liberalism" is conservative 24. Liberals favor and recognize the need for a robust civil society, including a wide range of private associations that may include people who do not embrace liberalism. They believe in the importance of social norms, including norms of civility, considerateness, charity and self-restraint. They do not want to censor any antiliberals or postliberals, even though some antiliberals or postliberals would not return the favor. On this count, they turn the other cheek. Liberals have antiliberal and postliberal friends.26. .. if people want the government to act in illiberal ways — by, for example, censoring speech, violating the rights of religious believers, preventing certain people from voting, entrenching racial inequality, taking private property without just compensation, mandating a particular kind of prayer in schools or endorsing a particular set of religious convictions — liberals will stand in opposition.The latter includes, finally, a bit of trends on the right that "liberals" do not approve of, and they don't. 28. Some people (mostly on the right) think that liberals oppose traditions or treat traditions cavalierly and that liberalism should be rejected for that reason. In their view, liberals are disrespectful of traditions and want to destroy them. Nothing could be further from the truth. Consider just a few inherited ideals, norms and concepts that liberals have defended, often successfully, in the face of focused attack for decades: republican self-government; checks and balances; freedom of speech; freedom of religion; freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures; due process of law; equal protection; private property.29. Liberals do not think it adequate to say that an ideal has been in place for a long time. As Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. put it: "It is revolting to have no better reason for a rule of law than that so it was laid down in the time of Henry IV. It is still more revolting if the grounds upon which it was laid down have vanished long since and the rule simply persists from blind imitation of the past." Still, liberals agree that if an ideal has been with us for a long time, there might be a lot to say in its favor.A lover of freedom can also admire rule of law, tradition, and custom. Why do we have private property? A illiberal, like many college students fresh to the world, might start from basic philosophical principles, and state that all of the earth's bounty should be shared equally, and head out to the ramparts to seize power. As a philosophical principle, it can sound reasonable. But our society and its laws, traditions, and customs, has thousands of years of experience built up. A village had common fields. People over-grazed them. Putting up fences and allocating rights led to a more prosperous village. The tradition of property rights, and their quite detailed specification and limitation that evolved in our common law, responding to this experience, along with well-educated citizens' conception of right and virtue, the moral sense of property right that they learn from their forebears, can summarize thousands of years of history, without us needing to remember each case. This thought is what led me in the past to characterize myself as an empirical, conservative, rule-of-law, constitutional and pax-Americana (save that one for later) libertarian, back when the word "liberal" meant something else. But, as Holmes points out, a vibrant society must see that some of this laws and traditions are wrong, or ineffective, and thoughtfully reform them. Property rights once extended to people, after all. Most of all, the 1970s "liberal" but now "illiberal" view has been that government defines the purpose and meaning of life and society, be it religious purity, socialist utopia, or now the vanguard of the elite ruling on behalf of the pyramid of intersectional victimization. The role of the government is to mold society to that quest. "Conservatives" have thought that the purpose of life and society is defined by individuals, families, churches, communities, scholars, arts, culture, private institutions of civil society, via lively reasoned debate; society can accommodate great variety in these views, and the government's purpose is just to enforce simple rules, and keep the debate peaceful, not to define and lead us to the promised land. I read Sunstein, correctly, to restore the word "liberal" to this later view, though it had largely drifted to the former. Who isn't liberal? The progressive leftWho isn't a "liberal," to Sunstein? If you've been around university campuses lately, you know how much today's "progressives" ("post-liberals") have turned politics into a tribal, warlike affair. This is who Sunstein is really unhappy with, and to whom this essay is a declaration of divorce: 5. ...liberals ... do not like tribalism. ... They are uncomfortable with discussions that start, "I am an X, and you are a Y,"... Skeptical of identity politics, liberals insist that each of us has many different identities and that it is usually best to focus on the merits of issues, not on one or another identity.I would add, liberals evaluate arguments by logic and evidence, not who makes the argument. Liberals accept an enlightenment idea that anything true can be discovered and understood by anyone. Truth is not just listening to "lived experience." 18. Liberals abhor the idea that life or politics is a conflict between friends and enemies.23. Liberals think that those on the left are illiberal if they are not (for example) committed to freedom of speech and viewpoint diversity. They do not like the idea of orthodoxy, including on university campuses or social media platforms. Ad of course, 30. Liberals like laughter. They are anti-anti-laughter.Old joke from my graduate school days: "How many Berkeley marxist progressives does it take to screw in a light bulb?" Answer: "I don't think that kind of humor is appropriate." ****In case you think everyone agrees on this new definition of "liberal," the essay has a link below it to another one by Pamela Paul, "Progressives aren't liberal." Paul's essay also covers some of the history of how the word was used, but in the end uses it in a quite different way from Sunstein. In the 1960s and 70s, the left proudly used the word in self-description. In the 1980s, Ronald Reagan, who often prefaced [liberal] with a damning "tax and spend," may have been the most effective of bashers. ...Newt Gingrich's political organization GOPAC sent out a memo, "Language: A Key Mechanism of Control," urging fellow Republicans to use the word as a slur.It worked. Even Democrats began avoiding the dread label. In a presidential primary debate in 2007, Hillary Clinton called herself instead a "modern progressive." She avoided the term "liberal" again in 2016.I think Clinton was trying to position herself to the right of what "liberal" had become by 2016. "Progressive" has come to mean something else. But I may be wrong. Never Trump conservatives tout their bona fides as liberals in the classical, 19th century sense of the word, in part to distinguish themselves from hard-right Trumpists. Others use "liberal" and "progressive" interchangeably, even as what progressivism means in practice today is often anything but liberal — or even progressive, for that matter.In the last sentence she is right. Sunstein is not, as he appears, describing a word as it is widely used today, but a word as it is slowly becoming used, and as he would like it to be used. liberal values, many of them products of the Enlightenment, include individual liberty, freedom of speech, scientific inquiry, separation of church and state, due process, racial equality, women's rights, human rights and democracy.Here you start to think she's got the same basic big tent as Sunstein. But not so -- this essay is testament to the enduring sense of the "liberal" word as describing the big-government left, just please not quite so insane as the campus progressives: Unlike "classical liberals" (i.e., usually conservatives), liberals do not see government as the problem, but rather as a means to help the people it serves. Liberals fiercely defend Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, the Voting Rights Act and the National Labor Relations Act. They believe government has a duty to regulate commerce for the benefit of its citizens. They tend to be suspicious of large corporations and their tendency to thwart the interests of workers and consumers.Sunstein had room for disagreement on these "fierce" defenses, or at least room for reasoned argument rather than profession of essential belief before you can enter the debate. "Tout their bona fides" above also does not have quite the reach-across-the aisle non partisan flair of Sunstein's essay. I don't think Paul welcomes never-Trump classical liberals in her tent. For Paul, the divorce between "liberal" and "progressive" is real, as for many other "liberals" since the October 7 wake up: Whereas liberals hold to a vision of racial integration, progressives have increasingly supported forms of racial distinction and separation, and demanded equity in outcome rather than equality of opportunity. Whereas most liberals want to advance equality between the sexes, many progressives seem fixated on reframing gender stereotypes as "gender identity" and denying sex differences wherever they confer rights or protections expressly for women. And whereas liberals tend to aspire toward a universalist ideal, in which diverse people come together across shared interests, progressives seem increasingly wedded to an identitarian approach that emphasizes tribalism over the attainment of common ground.It is progressives — not liberals — who argue that "speech is violence" and that words cause harm. These values are the driving force behind progressive efforts to shut down public discourse, disrupt speeches, tear down posters, censor students and deplatform those with whom they disagree.Divisions became sharper after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, when many progressives did not just express support for the Palestinian cause but, in some cases, even defended the attacks as a response to colonialism, and opposed retaliation as a form of genocide. This brings us to the most troubling characteristic of contemporary progressivism. Whereas liberals tend to pride themselves on acceptance, many progressives have applied various purity tests to others on the left, and according to one recent study on the schism between progressives and liberals, are more likely than liberals to apply public censure to divergent views. This intolerance manifests as a professed preference for avoiding others with different values, a stance entirely antithetical to liberal values.Yes. But no Republicans, please. Unlike Sunstein, Paul's "Liberalism" remains unabashedly partisan. I hope Sunstein's version of the word prevails. In any case, it is nice to see the division between the Woodstock Liberals, previously fellow travelers, from the extreme progressive left, and it is nice to see this word drift back to where it belongs. This is an optimistic post for the future of our country. Happy Thanksgiving. Update: I just ran across Tyler Cowen's Classical Liberals vs. The New Right. Excellent. And I forgot to plug my own "Understanding the Left," which I still think is a great essay though nobody seems to have read it.
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Bertrand Badie sur le moment Trump, la science de la souffrance, et les RI entre puissance et faiblesse
read in English
La discipline de RI se focalise traditionnellement sur l'enjeu de pouvoir entre états. Mais, s'interroge Bertrand Badie, est-ce que cela veut dire que notre discipline est basée sur la négation de notre humanité ? Un géant dans les RI françaises, Badie a œuvré pour remplacer le pouvoir et pour mettre la souffrance au cœur de l'analyse de l'international, en appliquant des idées sociologiques sur une réalité véritablement globale. Dans ce Talk, Badie, entre autres, défie la centralité de l'idée de pouvoir, qui a peu de sens dans un monde où la plupart de l'agenda international est défini par des défis qu'émanent de la faiblesse ; défend la centralité de la souffrance pour une discipline de RI plus adaptée ; et utilise ces idées de base pour contextualiser le Moment Trump.
Quel est selon vous actuellement le plus grand défi ou débat dans le domaine des Relations Internationales ? Quelle est votre position vis-à-vis de cet ou ces enjeu(x) ?
Incontestablement, c'est la question du changement. C'est à dire que le moment est venu de conceptualiser, et au-delà même, de théoriser le changement qui s'effectue dans les Relations Internationales (RI). On a toujours le sentiment qu'on vit une période de changement, mais concernant les RI nous avons plusieurs repères qui montrent l'effectivité du changement. J'en vois au moins trois.
Le premier, c'est la nature inclusive du système international. Pour la première fois dans l'Histoire de l'humanité le système international couvre la quasi-totalité de l'humanité, alors que le système Westphalien était un système Européen dans lequel les Etats-Unis sont entrés pour en faire un système, je dirais, euro-nord-américain.
Deuxième élément, et plusieurs ouvrages déjà ont permis de le montrer, il y a une mutation profonde de la nature du conflit. La guerre était autrefois, dans le modèle Westphalien, une affaire de compétition de puissance. Aujourd'hui on a le sentiment que la faiblesse remplace la puissance, c'est à dire la puissance n'est plus explicative des situations belligènes, que l'on doit trouver davantage dans les manifestations de faiblesse : que ce soit les « collapsing states », c'est à dire le déchirement des Nations souvent mal ou hâtivement construites ou encore la déliquescence des liens sociaux. Cette nouvelle conflictualité vient complètement bouleverser la donne internationale et constitue un deuxième marqueur de transformation.
Le troisième axe, c'est ce que j'appellerais la mobilité. Tout notre système international reposait sur l'idée de territoire et de frontière, sur l'idée de fixité marquant de manière très précise les compétences des Etats. L'Etat renvoie au territoire, comme la définition donnée par Max Weber l'indique très clairement, alors qu'aujourd'hui le territoire est défié par toute une série de mobilités, c'est à dire de flux transnationaux : qu'il s'agisse de flux commerciaux, de flux d'informations ou de flux humains à travers notamment toutes les diverses formes de migrations.
Donc voilà au moins trois indicateurs objectifs d'une transformation profonde de la nature même des RI qui m'incitent d'abord à parler plus volontiers désormais de « relations intersociales » plus que de « relations interétatiques ». Les relations entre Etats ne saturent plus le jeu mondial et ça amène à considérer que toute notre théorie des RI reposait sur le modèle Westphalien tel qu'il est issu de la paix de Westphalie, tel qu'il a été confirmé par l'accomplissement du travail de construction des Etats-Nations et tel qu'il a dominé l'actualité internationale jusqu'à la chute du Mur. Jusqu'à la chute du Mur, ce qui ne relevait pas de l'Europe et des Etats-Unis, et de l'Amérique du Nord disons plus exactement, était nommé périphérique, ce qui en dit long. Aujourd'hui la périphérie est centrale au moins du point de vue de la conflictualité, donc il faut abandonner notre grammaire Westphalienne et construire un nouveau guide d'analyse des RI qui tienne compte de ces mutations. Supprimer notre grammaire Westphalienne des RI, c'est remettre en cause notre théorie classique des RI et c'est remettre en cause aussi les modèles pratiques d'action en politique internationale, c'est à dire l'ordinaire de la diplomatie.
Comment est-ce que vous êtes arrivé dans votre pensée autour les Relations Internationales ?
Vous savez souvent quand on écrit, quand on travaille, on est d'abord influencé par son insatisfaction. C'est à dire que la théorie classique Westphalienne des RI, comme je l'ai dit tout à l'heure, ne me satisfaisait pas parce que j'avais l'impression qu'elle focalisait sur des évènements qui n'avaient plus l'importance qu'on continuait à leur prêter, par exemple la course aux armement, les relations entre puissances ou les négociations diplomatiques traditionnelles alors que je voyais, peut-être est-ce là l'élément déclenchant, que l'essentiel des souffrances dans le monde venait d'espaces que ne couvrait pas réellement la théorie des RI.
J'ai toujours dit à mes étudiants que les RI c'était la science des souffrances humaines. Ces souffrances bien sûr elles existent chez nous, elles existent en Europe, elles existent en Amérique du Nord, elles existent partout dans le monde mais l'essentiel des souffrances se situe hors champ westphalien et du coup l'analyse classique des RI en donnait une image tout d'abord marginale et déformée. L'Afrique ou le Moyen Orient vus au prisme du système Westphalien avaient une allure aplatie qui ne correspondait en rien à l'extraordinaire richesse, en bien et en mal, de ces régions du monde. Je considérais aussi que dans un monde où 6 à 9 millions d'individus meurent de faim chaque année, les grands agendas des RI classiques étaient dérisoires. Même le terrorisme, auquel on donne tant d'importance, a des scores dérisoires par rapport à ceux de l'insécurité alimentaire.
Mes trois derniers livres sont trois cris de révolte contre la théorie classique des RI. La diplomatie de connivence est un livre dans lequel j'ai essayé de montrer qu'en réalité le jeu des puissances était un jeu beaucoup plus intégré qu'on ne le dit et renvoyant souvent à de fausses conflictualités. Il y a bien un club, et c'est ça que j'essayais de décrire, un club de puissants.
Le Temps des humiliés était là pour mettre en scène justement ce que la théorie classique ne savait pas exprimer, c'est à dire la domination vue du côté des dominés, l'humiliation vue du côté des humiliés, la violence vue du côté des désespérés. Même si on regarde des puissances aussi accomplies que la Chine aujourd'hui, première ex aequo avec les Etats-Unis en PIB, il faut bien admettre que la mémoire de l'humiliation constitue pour la Chine une source énorme d'inspiration et d'élaboration de son actuelle politique étrangère.
Et puis, dans mon dernier livre Nous ne sommes plus seuls au monde, là le cri était encore plus direct, c'est à dire nous sommes en train d'écrire les RI qui concernent un gros milliard d'êtres humains en oubliant tous les autres et aujourd'hui ce ne sont pas ces vieilles puissances qui font l'agenda international. Il est écrit à l'initiative du petit, du faible, du dominé, avec bien entendu des recours à des formes de violences extrêmes, mais qu'il faut essayer d'analyser et de comprendre, donc totalement renverser la théorie des RI.
Il ne faut pas oublier que l'essentiel de la théorie des RI nous a été livré par les Etats-Unis triomphants en 1945. Le fameux « power politics » qui domine la théorie classique des RI, inaugurée par Morgenthau et porté par tellement d'autres, mettait en scène ce qui était vrai à l'époque, c'est à dire la capacité de la puissance américaine de nous délivrer du monstre nazi. Aujourd'hui l'enjeu il est tout autre, et c'est d'ailleurs significatif que deux des plus grands politistes internationalistes américains, Robert Keohane (Theory Talk #9) et Ned Lebow (TheoryTalk #53), aient écrit le premier un livre qui s'appelle After hegemony et le second Goodbye hegemony. Et bien justement, moi ce qui m'intéresse c'est de voir ce qu'il y a après l'hégémonie.
Une question maintenant pour les étudiants qui aspireraient à se spécialiser dans le domaine des RI : quels conseils ?
D'abord je leur conseillerais de débaptiser leur science, comme je le disais tout à l'heure, et de l'appeler relations intersociales, c'est à dire que l'avenir de ce que nous nous appelons les Relations Internationales se trouve dans la capacité de comprendre les interactions extrêmement riches, multiples et diversifiées qui s'opèrent entre les sociétés du monde. Ce qui ne veut pas dire de complètement abandonner la piste des Etats, mais replacer les Etats au milieu de cette multiplicité d'acteurs pour constater souvent l'impuissance de ces États face à ces acteurs nouveaux. Ce serait mon premier conseil.
Mon deuxième conseil c'est regarder devant eux et non derrière eux, c'est à dire ne pas se laisser dominer par le modèle westphalien et essayer de bâtir ce dont nous avons besoin parce que presque rien n'a été fait encore aujourd'hui pour bâtir ce modèle post-westphalien, méta-westphalien. Au-delà de la puissance il y a des choses que l'on identifie encore mal et qui sont le moteur des RI. De ce point de vue-là, l'aide de la sociologie est particulièrement précieuse car si nous sommes dans des relations intersociales, évidemment, la sociologie a un rôle très important à jouer. J'ai considéré, dans ma contribution au The return of the theorists que Durkheim est une source très importante d'inspiration pour comprendre le monde aujourd'hui. Voilà un auteur à étudier et à appliquer aux RI.
Le troisième conseil que je leur donnerais c'est de ne pas oublier qu'effectivement les « RI » ou les relations intersociales sont les sciences de la souffrance humaine. Il faut savoir remettre la souffrance au centre de la réflexion. On a trop perdu de temps à analyser la puissance, il est temps maintenant de se mettre du côté de la souffrance. Pourquoi ? D'abord parce que éthiquement c'est meilleur, peut-être pourra-t-on en tirer alors des enseignements pratiques ? Mais aussi pour une deuxième raison, c'est que dans les nouvelles RI la souffrance est plus proactive que la puissance, ce qui n'est pas forcément optimiste mais qui permet notamment de mieux s'interroger sur les formes nouvelles de conflictualité. Hélas ce n'est plus avec des canons que l'on écrit l'agenda international, mais c'est avec des larmes. C'est peut-être là qu'il y a un effort important à consentir sur le plan de la réflexion.
Dans Le temps des humiliés, vous proposez une lecture durkheimienne des RI dont l'accent est surtout mis sur le « grievance » qui s'oppose à une autre logique : celle du « greed ». Que pensez-vous de ce parallèle ?
« Greed » on peut le traduire par accaparement, captation. En réalité vous avez raison, l'idée de grievance, de récrimination, le mot est parfait aussi en français, est une idée très structurante du jeu international. On ne l'a pas vu venir pour deux raisons. D'abord parce que notre analyse classique des RI supposait une unité de temps, comme si le temps africain, le temps chinois, le temps indien et le temps européen étaient identiques. Or ceci est complètement faux parce que nous dans notre culture européenne nous n'avons pas compris qu'avant Westphalie il y avait des modèles politiques, des histoires qui avaient profondément marqué les peuples qui les avaient alors façonnés. Pensez que la Chine c'est 4000 ans d'empire, pensez que l'Afrique avant la colonisation c'était des royaumes, des empires, des civilisations, un art, des productions artistiques. Pensez que l'Inde aussi est multimillénaire. Le temps Westphalien est venu totalement nier et écraser cette temporalité, cette historicité, presque sur un mode négationniste, c'est à dire que dans l'esprit de ceux qui étaient porteurs du modèle Westphalien seul ce modèle associé à la Renaissance et au Siècle des Lumières et à la Raison avec un grand R avait vocation à formater le monde. Or, c'était un pari insensé, un pari pour lequel nos ancêtres Européens qui l'ont mené avaient des excuses parce qu'à l'époque on connaissait mal ces Histoires, à l'époque on n'avait pas cette connaissance de l'autre et de l'altérité donc on a réglé ça au plus simple, c'est à dire à partir de la négation de l'altérité. Or les RI c'est au contraire l'accomplissement de l'altérité. Donc, inévitablement tous ceux qui se sont vus nier dans leur historicité sur plusieurs siècles et même plusieurs millénaires ont accumulé un ressentiment de récrimination, de grievance particulièrement fort.
Le deuxième élément c'est que tout ceci s'est opéré dans un contexte de déséquilibre des ressources de puissance, lié à différents facteurs qui faisaient qu'effectivement à un moment donné du temps les puissances occidentales étaient mieux armées au sens propre, au sens figuré, que les autres sociétés. Donc cette négation de l'altérité a été aggravée par l'imposition d'un système multilatéral de force qui s'est traduit de la pire des façons, c'est à dire à partir d'une hiérarchie proclamée des cultures, donc voilà il y avait comme disait Jules Ferry, en France au XIXe siècle, les « races », « Nous avons l'obligation d'éduquer les races inférieures ». C'est le début d'une Histoire, c'est le début de l'Histoire de l'humiliation et comme au même moment la mondialisation venait à se faire, cette humiliation est devenue le nerf de la vie international. Un nerf qui a été utilisé autant par les puissants, qui en ont fait un instrument, c'est à dire où on va humilier les autres pour mieux les dominer (guerres de l'Opium, la colonisation) et en même temps un nerf qui a irrigué la réaction mobilisatrice de ce monde extra-westphalien qui pour exister a eu besoin de s'affirmer contre ceux qui les humiliaient. Donc vous voyez c'est vraiment la trame des nouvelles RI. Dans mon esprit c'est devenu un paradigme, ça explique tout même si d'autres facteurs continuent à expliquer parallèlement.
Et pour apprécier cela on a besoin d'une approche sociologique, ce que pour moi a deux fonctions. Ces deux fonctions il faut les avoir en tête toutes les deux pour bien comprendre ce qu'elle veut dire. La première c'est une fonction intemporelle, c'est à dire considérer que partout et de tout temps le politique est un produit social, donc ne peut pas être compris hors de la société, ce qui n'était pas forcément la posture de certains et même de, je dirais, la majorité des analystes qui croyaient de manière excessive à une autonomie du politique et de l'Etat. La deuxième composante de cette approche sociologique est une composante temporelle historique. Ce que je vous disais tout à l'heure : avec la mondialisation le social a beaucoup progressé en propre par rapport au politique et les relations intersociales, ayant grandi, on a besoin d'une approche sociologique pour les comprendre.
Est-ce que vous pensez que « le moment Trump » constitue une rupture fondamentale avec la conduite des RI ?
Trump en soi peut-être pas, ce qu'il représente certainement. C'est à dire si on regarde les Etats-Unis on voit, depuis le changement de millénaire, trois modèles se succéder. Vous avez eu au lendemain du 11 Septembre un temps néo-conservateur où la mondialisation était considérée par les dirigeants Américains comme un moyen ou peut-être une chance d'universaliser le modèle américain de gré ou de force. De force comme ce fut le cas par exemple en Irak en 2003. Ce modèle a échoué.
Cela a amené un deuxième modèle qui est, je dirais, un modèle libéral, néo-libéral, incarné par Obama qui tirant les leçons de l'échec du néo-conservatisme, a eu le courage de remettre en cause l'hypothèse jugée jusque-là indiscutable d'un leadership américain et considéré que les Etats-Unis ne pouvaient gagner aujourd'hui qu'à travers le soft power ou le smart power ou le libre échangisme. C'est la raison pour laquelle Obama se faisait très peu interventionniste et misait beaucoup sur le TTIP, sur tous ces accords transrégionaux.
Avec Trump est arrivé un troisième modèle, que j'appellerais néo-nationaliste, qui considère la mondialisation mais de façon différente. La mondialisation est ramenée dans son esprit à une chance donnée de satisfaire les intérêts nationaux américains, l'idée de « national interest » rejaillit après ce long temps de vision globalisante. Ca ne veut pas dire qu'on n'est pas interventionniste. Ce qui s'est passé en Syrie le démontre. Ça veut dire qu'on interviendra non pas en fonction des besoins de la mondialisation mais en fonction des intérêts des Etats-Unis. Il s'agit de montrer l'image des Etats-Unis forts, puissants et d'autre part de servir les intérêts concrets du peuple américain et de la nation américaine.
Ce modèle néo-nationaliste n'est pas porté par Trump tout seul, c'est la raison pour laquelle je disais qu'il ne faut pas prendre Trump isolément. On le retrouve exactement de la même manière chez Poutine. On le retrouve chez quantité d'autres dirigeants du monde, comme par exemple Erdogan ou Duterte ou Victor Orbán, donc des personnages aussi différents, ou le Maréchal Sissi en Egypte.
On le retrouve dans des postures : le Brexit en Grande-Bretagne, ce néo-populisme de droite en Europe : Mme Le Pen, Mr Wilders, voire un certain néo-populisme de gauche comme Mélenchon en France. Bref il est dans l'air du temps, c'est presque un effet de mode et il constitue peut-être une double rupture dans les RI.
D'abord parce que depuis l'avènement de la mondialisation, les années 70 disons en gros même si la mondialisation n'est pas née à un jour précis, on avait un peu laissé de côté l'idée d'intérêt national pour raisonner en termes de biens collectifs. Là c'est un abandon des biens collectifs et un retour vers l'intérêt national. On le voit bien, l'un des actes de Trump a été de dire que la COP21 de Paris doit être reconsidérée. Et puis c'est une certaine forme aussi de réhabilitation de la force, qui redevient le langage des RI.
Voilà deux bonnes raisons d'abord de compléter notre science positive pour comprendre cette nouvelle tentation mais aussi pour s'en inquiéter. Vous savez l'internationaliste ce n'est pas quelqu'un de neutre, c'est aussi quelqu'un qui doit mettre sa science au service de l'action et de la définition des politiques publiques. Aller à l'encontre de l'idée de biens communs, c'est à dire à nouveau jeter un doute sur l'idée de sécurité humaine, de sécurité environnementale, de sécurité alimentaire, de sécurité sanitaire c'est extrêmement dangereux car ce n'est jamais la composition des intérêts et des égoïsmes nationaux qui fera une politique globalement cohérente. C'est le faible qui en pâtira le premier.
La deuxième raison c'est ce paradoxe à un moment où l'on voit que la puissance est de plus en plus impuissante, j'ai fait tout un livre là-dessus, de réhabiliter la force. Or regardez, ne serait-ce que depuis 1989, où la force a-t-elle triomphé sur le plan des RI ? Où donc le plus fort a gagné la bataille qui lui a permis de résoudre le problème à son avantage ou conformément à ses objectifs ? Jamais. Ni en Somalie, ni en Afghanistan, ni en Irak, ni en Syrie, ni en Palestine. Nulle part. Ni au Sahel, ni en République Démocratique du Congo. Nulle part. Donc je suis un peu inquiet, effectivement, de cette réhabilitation naïve et ringarde de la force.
Peut-on considérer que l'idée de la mondialisation, ou plutôt de l'ambition intégratrice, aurait échoué ? Devrait-on enterrer l'idée d'intégration régionale ou mondiale ?
Je n'aime pas les enterrements, ce n'est pas un terme que j'emploierai, mais votre question est très pertinente. Pendant près de vingt ans j'ai enseigné que l'intégration régionale c'était l'échelon intermédiaire et réaliste entre le temps des nations et le temps de la globalisation, c'est à dire j'ai longtemps cru que l'intégration régionale était l'antichambre d'une gouvernance globale du monde.
J'ai longtemps cru que ce qui n'était pas possible à l'échelle mondiale, à un gouvernement mondial, pouvait l'être au niveau régional et déjà simplifier de beaucoup la carte du monde et donc de progresser vers cette adhésion au collectif que commande la mondialisation. Or non seulement l'Europe est en échec, vous avez raison de le dire, mais toutes les constructions régionales dans le monde sont en échec. Alors Mr. Trump bouscule ouvertement le NAFTA ALENA, le MERCOSUR est en panne chaque Etat qui le compose a des récriminations à son encontre, on pourrait continuer l'énumération… Toutes les formes d'intégration que Chavez avait mis en place autour de son idéal bolivarien n'existent plus, l'Afrique ne progresse que très très très lentement en matière d'intégration régionale : l'Union du Maghreb Arabe, qui est quand même un dispositif essentiel, a totalement échoué. Donc effectivement la conjoncture n'est pas bonne.
Pour l'Europe le phénomène est double : d'une part il y a cet échec très grave du départ de la Grande Bretagne de l'Europe et puis il y a un malaise général du modèle européen. Alors, le départ de la Grande Bretagne c'est très grave parce que c'est très rare si vous regardez l'Histoire contemporaine des RI qu'un Etat claque la porte d'une organisation régionale ou mondiale. C'est arrivé avec l'Indonésie aux Nations Unies en 1964, ça n'a duré que 19 mois. C'est arrivé pour le Maroc au sein de l'Union Africaine et le Maroc est actuellement en voie de réintégration. Donc ce fait Britannique claque comme un coup de tonnerre, aggravé par le fait que paradoxalement ce n'est pas tant sur l'idée d'intégration régionale que les Britanniques ont voté contre l'UE. C'est beaucoup plus dans un réflexe anti-migratoire, xénophobe, nationaliste (correspondant à cet élan de nationalisme que je décrivais tout à l'heure) et donc ce qui est dramatique c'est que l'on voit bien que cet ère du temps nationaliste vient réellement attaquer les principes même de l'intégration régionale.
Alors je disais que pour l'Europe il y a des problèmes internes encore plus profonds que la défection Britannique, j'en vois au moins deux.
D'abord il y a un échec démocratique de l'Europe, c'est à dire l'Europe n'a pas su faire coïncider les espaces d'élection et les espaces de décisions, le peuple vote au niveau national et les décisions se prennent à Bruxelles. Du coup, le contrôle démocratique sur les décisions est extrêmement faible. Comment résoudre cette équation ? Et là la panne est complète car personne ne propose de solutions.
L'autre élément à mon avis composant de cette crise, c'est que l'Europe a été construite avec succès au lendemain de la Seconde Guerre Mondiale de manière progressive sur le maître mot d'association et effectivement, Durkheim l'a montré, la logique d'intégration associative fait sens. C'est à dire l'union fait la force et l'union a fait la force en son temps en Europe pour empêcher la guerre premièrement, c'est à dire une troisième guerre européenne au XXe siècle, et deuxièmement pour favoriser la reconstruction de pays européens dont l'économie s'était totalement effondrée. Ce temps-là est terminé et la faute de l'Europe c'est de ne pas avoir su se contextualiser, c'est à dire réagir aux contextes nouveaux.
Rendant à nouveau hommage à Durkheim qui avait vu juste, Durkheim avait dit il y a deux façons de construire le lien social : autour de l'association et autour de la solidarité. Je pense que le temps de l'association est terminé, on doit entrer dans le temps de la solidarité, c'est à dire la solidarité consiste à dire non pas « Nous Allemands nous nous associons à la Grèce » mais « Nous Allemands sommes solidaires de la Grèce car nous savons que si la Grèce s'effondre, à terme, nous en subirons les conséquences ». Donc cette idée d'unité fondamentale est une idée qui a été un peu snobée, abandonnée par les Européens et maintenant ils se trouvent dans une situation de paralysie complète.
Est-ce que la période de décolonisation laisse encore des traces au niveau des RI contemporaines ?
Ah totalement, totalement. Je dirais d'abord parce que c'est un événement majeur des RI, qui a quand même fait passer le monde de 51 Etats Souverains membres des Nations Unies en 1945 à 193 aujourd'hui mais surtout, circonstance très aggravante, c'est que cette décolonisation a été complètement ratée et que l'échec de la décolonisation pèse énormément sur les RI.
Elle a été ratée parce que la décolonisation a conduit à copier le modèle étatique occidental dans les pays qui accédaient à l'indépendance, alors que ce modèle n'était pas forcément adapté, ce qui a provoqué une prolifération de failed States, et ces collapsed States ont eu un effet effroyable sur les RI.
Deuxièmement parce que la décolonisation aurait dû conduire à un enrichissement et en tous les cas à une modification substantielle du multilatéralisme en créant de nouvelles institutions capables de prendre en charge les défis nouveaux issus de la décolonisation. Or, à part la création de la CNUCED en 1964 et du PNUD en 1965, il y a eu très peu d'innovations sur le plan de la gouvernance mondiale. Donc la gouvernance mondiale reste dominée par ce que j'appelais tout à l'heure le club, c'est à dire les puissances du Nord et ceci est très dysfonctionnel dans la gestion des crises contemporaines. Puis enfin parce que les anciennes puissances coloniales sont amenées à trouver des formes nouvelles de domination qui ont en quelques sorte compliqué le jeu international. Donc effectivement la décolonisation c'est l'ordinaire des crises que rencontre le système international aujourd'hui.
Question finale : quel autre souci vous inquiète dans les RI contemporaines ?
J'ai trouvé que votre questionnement était très pertinent parce qu'il permettait de toucher aux thèmes que je tiens pour essentiels. Maintenant, si vous voulez, le grand problème qui moi m'inquiète c'est le formidable décalage qu'il y a entre les analystes et les acteurs. Je ne dis pas que les analystes ont tout compris, loin de là, mais je crois que les analystes sont très conscients de ces transformations. Si vous prenez les grands auteurs comme James Rosenau, Ned Lebow, comme Robert Keohane, juste quelques-uns il y en aurait beaucoup d'autres, ils ont tous apporté une pierre à la reconstruction de l'édifice des RI.
Moi ce qui me frappe, c'est l'autisme des acteurs politiques, c'est à dire ils se croient encore à l'époque du Congrès de Vienne et ça c'est source de tension absolument extraordinaire. Donc tant que ce parfum de changement n'aura pas touché les acteurs politiques, peut-être que Barack Obama était le premier à commencer à entrer dans ce jeu et puis la parenthèse s'est refermée, tant donc qu'il n'y aura pas ce mouvement vers la découverte d'un nouveau monde, peut-être aussi en intégrant dans notre réflexion sur l'international des partenaires comme la Chine, ce n'est quand même pas normal que cette Chine si puissante n'ait d'autre choix finalement que de se rallier au paradigme et au modèle d'action propre à la diplomatie occidentale, tant qu'on n'aura pas fait cet effort là et bien on sera encore dans la négation de l'humain, et c'est ça le problème essentiel aujourd'hui, c'est que nous n'arrivons pas à comprendre qu'au bout de tout ça il y a une seule unité qui est l'être humain.
J'ai eu la chance de visiter 105 pays et partout j'ai rencontré les mêmes hommes et les mêmes femmes, avec leurs souffrances, avec leurs bonheurs, leurs malheurs, leurs joies, leurs peines, leurs besoins qui étaient partout absolument identiques. Tant qu'on n'aura pas compris cela, et bien je crois que l'on vivra dans un monde qui est en contradiction totale avec ce qu'il est vraiment et essentiellement. On vivra dans un monde d'artifice et donc dans un monde de violence.
Lire plus
· Lire Badie's Printemps Arabe : un commencement (SER Études 2011) ici (pdf)
· Lire Badie's Pour une sociologie historique de la négotiation (préface de Négociations internationales) ici (pdf)
