Nothing is more dangerous than a fanatic in firm possession of a half-truth.
People like that corrupt religions and destroy republics.
They can make peace seem like war and war seem like peace.
They present themselves as the only solution to all your grievances.
This is a neat trick, because to fulfill their own desires they need a personal following.
They crave, above all, blindly faithful followers, unquestioning masses who feel they’ve nowhere else to turn — and, once that following reaches a politically critical mass, impunity, a stage above the law and beyond its reach.
There is nothing new under the sun.
Such charming monsters crop up in any time of great disruptions and dislocations. Confusion, self-doubt, fear and division fuel their power, as it grows up to and then breaches constitutional limits.
Put your faith in this sort of pied piper, and you yourself have begun the slow slide to corruption.
Left-Wing or Right-Wing, Extremists Play the Same Game
The game is both ends against the middle.
In the dying days of the Weimar Republic:
the Communists said a vote for the Centrist was the same as a vote for the Nazis
the Nazis said a vote for the Centrist was the same as a vote for the Commies
The two extremes ate out the center.
You all know where that led.
We have plenty of time yet to correct our course, but not forever.
When does a drift toward disaster become urgent?
When does urgent become urgent?
Positive Signs among the Negative
Everyone’s de-risking China:
The Philippines, has flipped back towards the US as Duterte gave way to Marcos Jr., with other states bordering the South China Sea watching intently.
Japan and South Korea are making nice with one another.
Australia is deepening alliances and military ties with the US, Britain, Japan, India (AUKUS, The Quad) and others.
India (pop. 1.4 Billion) and Indonesia (pop. 0.28 Billion) are signaling that they will stand aloof, following their own interests, sufficient for the day. Their own interests should lead them to offset China, should China grow too aggressive.
While that may not be much solace to Taiwan, the likely formation of a region-wide blocking alliance should deter China (unless someone with weak self-restraint pushes China into a corner).
Other major players in the Pacific Rim, from France to Thailand, have no interest in encouraging a belligerent and domineering China.
Europe and its allies are de-risking the ongoing Putin regime and a possible second Trump administration:
Europe has paid a huge price to wean itself from Russian energy, Germany most of all.
The G7 have declared a $50 billion fund over 10 years, signaling they’re in it for the long haul, to support Ukraine, both its military and its industrial reconstruction, with paths open to eventual membership in both the EU and NATO.
This matters because Putin’s only realistic exit strategy is to outlast the straying attention of NATO democracies plagued by polarization and domestic cultural navel-gazing.
Jointly with the G7 declaration, Biden and Zelensky have concluded a 10-year security agreement to help Ukraine with military self-defense and later reconstruction.
This matters , even though a possible — even, at this time according to the Economist, likely — second Trump administration could terminate the agreement.
Trump says he supports Ukrainian independence, he just wants to make loans rather than gifts. It’s pay-as-you-go diplomacy, the non-Marshall Plan (because that 1948 plan was such a failure).
If I were Ukraine, I’d want an ironclad prenup, with or without an nda.
On the bright side, Trump might not want to be so openly selling Ukraine down the river. What with his love of liberty and all. Bad optics, if you know what I mean. And he’d never sell a friend out. Not if it cost him more to do it than not to do it.
I’ve just finished watching Apple TV’s Franklin, with Michael Douglas an inspired choice to play old Benjamin. I mention it because it revolves around how crucial was support from a great power to the success of our own revolution.
The politely veiled Machiavellian back-and-forth between Ambassador Franklin and the French foreign minister Vergennes is subtle and brilliant. John Adams and John Jay, sent to relieve Franklin of command of the negotiations, are foils to Franklin’s canniness.
(The factual details check out. I’m going to have to read a good history of the negotiations to know if the depiction of diplomatic gamesmanship is also accurate. Realistically — just as cats (according to Deng T’sao P’eng) and women (according to Franklin) are alike in the dark — diplomatic negotiations are never as straightforward and above-board as they are made to seem.)
I will trust the American
Downstream
In case you’ve forgotten, outwaiting the US is how the Taliban retook Afghanistan.
Western democracies are easy: either wait them out with your buddies next door or give them something to divert their attention so they lose their focus.
The first strategy is called we live here, you don’t, and was played to perfection by the Taliban.
Sooner or later, the Americans will go home, so those who live there get whatever’s left behind, after the fires sputter out and the smoke settles.
The moral of that story, for the Free World, should be not to try to spread democracy where it has never taken root, but to defend it where it sprouts on its own.
No to Afghanistan and Iraq, yes to Ukraine and Taiwan. Wish for it where it is not, but rush to its defense where it is.
Yet always keep one eye on the realist appraisal of risks and prospects. As in your own life: choose your battles!
The second strategy is calleddisinformation for fun and profit. Both Putin and Xi are taking online courses on the subject as we speak.
This is really just divide and conquer, but targeting not an alliance but a nation, weakening its capacity for resolute and concerted action.
When All Is Said and Dunn 