What would a President Kamala Harris’ foreign policy look like? She’s already signaled that Israel policy will remain unchanged. How about Russia?
For more insight there we can take a look at Philip Gordon, currently serving as Harris’s national security adviser. He’s been around for decades. He’s a regular at the Munich Security Conference. And he is widely expected to succeed Jake Sullivan as national security adviser should Harris win the presidency.
While it’s highly doubtful that the Kamala team is sitting around a table hashing out foreign policy that they think is in the best interests of all the American people (they likely do precious little in the way of big-picture decisions), their ideological makeup is likely a representation of what US oligarchs want. And judging by Gordon’s track record, it appears the American oligarchy has no intention of using Biden’s exit as an opportunity to change course or give up on Project Ukraine. So who is Philip Gordon?
He started out serving on the staff of the National Security Council under Bill Clinton. He then moved to a senior fellow position at the Brookings Institution from 1999 to 2009 where he founded the Center on the United States and Europe. Gordon was Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs under Secretary of State Hillary Clinton from 2009 to 2013. He then went on to serve as special assistant to then-President Barack Obama and White House coordinator for the Middle East, North Africa, and the Gulf Region until 2015.
Author James Mann writes in “The Obamians” that Gordon and others like him “represented the generation of Democrats who learned how to run foreign policy during the 1990s. They were eager to show that the Democrats were not a bunch of pacifists, that they understood national security issues and were willing to use American force where necessary.”
They just think they’re smarter about it. For example, there was a time when the Obama White House touted NATO’s role in toppling Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi as a vindication of the decision to “lead from behind.”
Gordon joined the Council on Foreign Relations in 2015 as a senior fellow focused on U.S. foreign and national security policy and stayed there until hitching himself to Harris in 2020 — first as foreign policy advisor to her disastrous campaign and then as National Security Advisor to the Vice President.
In a vice president’s office that has churned through staff, Gordon has been a mainstay and is among the select group of national security officials, which includes national security adviser Jake Sullivan and deputy national security adviser Jon Finer, to take part in the president’s daily intelligence briefing.
As a longtime survivor in Washington, it’s unsurprising that Gordon is an embodiment of all the violent orthodoxy that oozes out of the Blob, such as unwavering support for Israel and the indisputable belief that China is not only a threat to the US, but the biggest one.
On the issue of Ukraine where there isn’t quite consensus (the diehard Russophobes want to keep escalating while the China hawks want to hand the bag to the Europeans so they can focus on China), Gordon believes the US can do both.
A recent Politico piece describes how European Atlanticists, nervous that they’ll be forgotten if the US focuses too much on China and Asia, love themselves some Philip Gordon. He “speaks four European languages, wrote his thesis on Charles de Gaulle and even translated a book by the notoriously irascible former French President Nicolas Sarkozy.”
Best of all, Gordon loves soccer, writes Politico:
In June 2012, Gordon even took then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to see a UEFA Euro championship semi-finals in a bar filled with Germans, after a dinner in St. Petersburg with Sullivan and then-U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul.
Quite the entourage. If you dig through all the fluff, though, here’s the real money section of the whole Politico profile piece:
To this day, he’s in regular contact with the European Commission. Norbert Röttgen, a Christian Democrat member of the German Bundestag, trusts that Harris’ adviser still thinks “European security is the cornerstone of U.S. global power” and welcomes that he shares his “criticism” of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz for not sending long-range Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine.
The fact that Gordon is among those pressuring Berlin to send Taurus missiles to Ukraine places him among more hawkish, wreckless war cheerleaders.
Let’s not forget that the Taurus missiles have a range of roughly 500 kilometers, which means that they can hit Moscow. At the same time, they’re reportedly difficult to operate, the Ukrainians wouldn’t be able to do it, so Bundeswehr personnel would be called on to do so. That would mean Germany is openly firing missiles into Russia, and one can imagine all the consequences that would entail. Here’s German opposition politician Sahra Wagenknecht lambasting the warmongers in Germany back in March when it looked like those advocating for using the Taurus might carry the day:
“Have you all lost your minds?”.
Amazing and terrifying speech by @SWagenknecht on the folly of Germany’s warmongering approach to Russia. pic.twitter.com/wfOV1ebzoO
— Thomas Fazi (@battleforeurope) March 17, 2024
So has Gordon lost his mind? You wouldn’t know from the Politico puff piece, which casually mentions his criticism of the German government for not going to war with Russia and moves right along to friendly quotes from former US ambassador to Russia and big advocate for WWIII Michael McFaul. He concludes that if Gordon becomes Harris’ national security adviser in a Harris administration, “Europe will have an ally.”
Here’s probably a better spot than any to insert the old Kissinger quote that is almost obligatory when dealing with US foreign policy these days: “It may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”
If we pair Gordon’s time in the Obama White House and its “lead from behind” mantra with regards to Libya with his current insistence that Germany should be launching Taurus missiles into Russia, well, that should be awfully concerning for Germans and Europeans in general. And how ironic is it that this is the person who European diplomats would greet as a major friend in a Harris administration?
While Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken aren’t expected to keep their jobs in a Harris administration, Gordon would be expected to seamlessly take the place of the former. From Politico:
We reported on initial skepticism about Harris earlier this summer, mostly due to Europeans’ unfamiliarity with the current vice president. But her choice of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as a running mate and the likelihood that Phil Gordon, a confirmed Europhile, would become her national security adviser, appear to have quelled some jitters.
Back in 2018, Gordon co-authored a Council on Foreign Relations report with the Russia hardliner Republican Robert Blackwill. They called for the kitchen sink to be thrown at Russia, including sanctions, weapons, an undying commitment to Ukraine and Europe — basically what the US has done since. The reason Gordon was calling for such approach wasn’t just the situation in Ukraine, but because “of Russia’s interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.”
So Gordon is also a purveyor of the misinformation that Russia was behind Clinton’s 2016 presidential election loss. [1] He and Blackwill proudly announced that, “If this package of measures sounds like a prescription for a new Cold War with Russia, it is.”
Gordon’s position has not changed. Here he is driving that point home more recently:
As @VP has said, US support for the Ukrainian people is enduring. This latest security assistance package will provide much-needed support as Ukraine bravely defends itself against Russia’s senseless aggression and works toward a just and lasting peace. https://t.co/IKyPtNbrST
— Phil Gordon (@PhilGordon46) July 29, 2024
Of course, “enduring” could mean a few months in DC, but for now the Harris team — or its benefactors — are sticking to that line.
What about “America’s dad,” vice presidential candidate Tim Walz, the other figure Europeans are breathing a sigh of relief over? Maybe he could be a voice of sanity? Keep looking.
Ukraine’s Ambassador to the United States Oksana Markarova says that among American governors, “Walz is definitely one of the leaders of such support and a reliable friend of our country.”
Walz was one of the first US governors to condemn Russia in 2022 and issue an order requiring that state agencies terminate existing contracts with Russian entities and refrain from entering into any such future contracts. He’s been on board ever since.
Minnesota will continue to support Ukraine as they defend freedom and democracy.
I visited the Ukrainian Embassy to establish a formal partnership between the public, private, and academic sectors of Minnesota and Chernihiv Oblast, strengthening our state’s ties to Ukraine. pic.twitter.com/hm3kidti6Z
— Governor Tim Walz (@GovTimWalz) February 22, 2024
In conclusion, all signs are that a Harris administration’s Ukraine policy would be a continuation of Biden (as would its Israel policy). In at least one way, it’s even worse because it’s throwing away another opportunity to take an off ramp. We’ve heard a lot about how the Biden team just wanted to drag the whole sorry affair across the election finish line. Now, the money behind Harris is announcing that even with new faces the losing and dangerous strategy will remain unchanged.
Notes
[1] Gordon is also a big believer in dubious chemical weapon allegations against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Not only that, but he is critical of one of Obama’s few successful foreign policy decisions — the one where he chose not to bomb Syria over the cooked intelligence that Assad crossed the chemical weapons red line in 2013. Gordon told The Atlantic in 2016 that “we should have bombed Assad.”
Oh joy. Not only will nothing fundamentally change, it might get worse. The German Greens have definitely lost their minds, but in the DC Bubble and Echo Chamber I am increasingly certain there was never a mind to lose from the get go. I would not have believed that self-delusion could be this persistent were it not on offer every day.
One possible bright spot is that Gordon is skeptical about regime change. He wrote a book titled “Losing the Long Game: the false promise of regime change in the Middle East.” Unlike Blinken, he has brains, however in context of current U.S. foreign policy this isn’t necessarily a good thing.
Brains? This guy sounds like what Kennan had in mind when he mischaracterized Soviet foreign policy as akin to a wind-up toy that would more forward relentlessly until it is stopped. Using the downfall of the Soviet Union as an occasion to play to domestic political concerns by showing Dem toughness was the ultimate in narrow-minded, parochial foolishness.
Foreign Policy article cites that book and a book by another Harris advisor Rebecca Lissner, to argue Harris may pursue humbler foreign policy. I’ll believe it when I see it. https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/08/20/kamala-harris-foreign-policy-advisers-philip-gordon-rebecca-lissner/
Yes. Vikas also cites that FP article below. It’s interesting for several reasons. But to me, it mainly signals a shift in rhetoric by the Democrat/Atlanticist faction of the Blob. Remember “humanitarian intervention”? That was the ideological cover liberals used to justify our expansionist foreign policy for their constituents (Republicans could just assert our right to preemptively kick ass and let Lee Greenwood or Toby Keith do the rest). Well, that phrase has run its course as the subtitle of Gordon’s book indicates, so time for a new framing. But just as the Democrats pushed the NATO march under Clinton and continued Bush’s “seven countries in five years” neocon project under Obama, I see no reason whatsoever to think anything will change. As Conor points out, Gordon supported our earlier regime change actions while serving Democrats, and he is a “passionate trans-Atlanticist” who seems to be all-in on Ukraine. (Q: I haven’t read his book. Does he talk about the 2014 coup or earlier NATO expansion?) And as the article makes clear, Gordon’s number one emphasis is an open global economy with free trade and financial flows. The word “open” is used several times. How will this be accomplished?
So this is a long-winded way of agreeing with you Dwight – I’ll believe it when I see it. I remember Obama’s early foreign policy statements about things like “arrogance” and “hubris.” They even gave him a Nobel Peace Prize before he did anything based on such hopey-changey rhetoric. We all know what happened then.
indi.ca calls these people the “nice nazis”:
https://indi.ca/the-nice-nazis/
Isn’t this actually worse?
If Gordon doesn’t believe in regime change but is annoyed with Germany’s attitude, it would signal that he might actually think that Russia can be outright defeated.
I’m sorry, but this actually makes me think Harris would be okay with starting WWIII.
And Samantha Power’s wrote a book about our R2P and then used that reputation to relentlessly and mercilessly expand (ruin) American Imperial power.
You are what you do not what you write. He is a career politician err foreign policy expert that was part of the brain trust that expanded NATO in the first place. He will finish the job he started in the 90s except he will destroy the American Empire not cement it’s power.
“Samantha Power’s wrote a book about our R2P and then used that reputation to relentlessly and mercilessly expand (ruin) American Imperial power…”
Really astonishing how relentlessly, brutally aggressive Samantha Power became after first losing influence to the hawkish Hillary Clinton, then becoming an adviser to Barack Obama and becoming completely hawkish in turn.
Samantha Power pushed R2P so that it could be used as an excuse for the US to sanction, bomb and even go to war with other countries. She knew that which is why she pushed it. But guess what? Russia going into the Ukraine? That was based on R2P as well. Surprise.
When I use “hawk” to describe Hillary Clinton, that is precisely the word the New York Times used to describe Clinton:
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/06/opinion/sunday/are-neocons-getting-ready-to-ally-with-hillary-clinton.html
July 5, 2014
The Next Act of the Neocons
Are Neocons Getting Ready to Ally With Hillary Clinton?
By JACOB HEILBRUNN
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/magazine/how-hillary-clinton-became-a-hawk.html
April 23, 2016
How Hillary Clinton Became a Hawk
Throughout her career she has displayed instincts on foreign policy that are more aggressive than those of President Obama — and most Democrats.
By MARK LANDLER
Well, if he can destroy the American Empire without destroying Lesser America itself or destroying other parts of the world, perhaps that is an accidental good thing. It is a very risky dangerous chance to take, though.
“Best of all, Gordon loves soccer, writes Politico”
As, of course, did Kissinger.
There’s one thing that is missing regardless of what Gordon and his fellow neocons in any hypothetical Kamala Harris administration may want. That is that the military and economic realities will dictate the situation.
After 2021, there were plenty of neocons who wanted the US to keep fighting in Afghanistan. There was a lot of negative press on Biden around that time. Yet despite their angry editorials and ideology, the military reality ultimately dictated the outcome. The Taliban won and defeated the US military, winning the support of the Afghan people as the lesser evil, no matter how desperately the neocons want to pretend otherwise. Some people have argued that the US withdrew in 2021 to focus on Russia, but again, it means that the US does not have the resources to sustain wars in Ukraine and Afghanistan at the same time, while provoking China.
Ukraine is in a state of collapse right now. The military of Ukraine is taking unsustainable losses. They’ve been outmatched the whole time from Russia. They’ve also been forced to conduct military operations that make no military sense, simply to win a propaganda war.
Neocons like Gordon may want war, but that doesn’t mean that the US can continue the war. There’s also the matter that the US industrial base can’t match Russia’s – the sanctions have failed and the Russian military production has outproduced the Collective West. Note that the Europeans, now that the US has destroyed their good relationships with Russia and the Nordstream 2 pipeline, are facing a loss of industry.
To make war, nations need industry. Industry needs energy, natural resources, and lots of young people. Europe has none of the 3. Although the US is richer in natural resources, even the US is running low on those 3 too (which is partly the reason for all of these regime change attempts against nations with lots of natural resources).
Another issue is that young people aren’t willing to fight in the West. Thanks to the neoliberal economic policies, not only has the Western industrial base been outsourced to make rich people richer, young people are essentially being asked to fight for a war that will defend an economic system that is screwing them over. The plight of young people in the West has been documented on NC and elsewhere.
Then there’s the ongoing issue – I’ve noted in the past that under one quarter of US citizens of military age are fit to serve:
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2022/09/28/new-pentagon-study-shows-77-of-young-americans-are-ineligible-military-service.html
Those in the quarter fit to serve are probably mostly in the upper middle class / PMC / liberal elite. They won’t be conscripted without a huge political controversy and unlike less well off Americans, they have the political resources to fight back. The US elite may want the poor to fight their wars, voluntarily or not, but their declining health and other issues, which were caused by the greed of the rich, just like the loss of manufacturing in the West, will dictate the reality.
Globally, the US is losing support. Outside of the West, few nations did much to sanction Russia, despite enormous pressure and threats of secondary sanctions. In fact, the threat is annoying the Global South. The West may have wanted to isolate Russia, but it has isolated itself. That has been worsened by its support on Israel. If anything, the world is tired of the West and the foreign policy of people like Gordon.
The Gordons of Washington are delusional. The economic and military reality will drive the situation. What will be noteworthy is that the neocons, in their desire to hold US hegemony, have accelerated the US decline. The US could have chosen to be a nation among equals. The ruling class in the US insisted on hegemony and have “gone for broke”.
Great comment. As a parent of two college-age children in the US, I am most proud of their ability to think critically about deep corruption, structural imbalances and the unsustainable policies of the West.
Similar to many of my younger colleagues, my children are not necessarily looking to have kids of their own. Can’t say I blame them, although selfishly we would love to have grandkids some day.
As always, change will have to come from the new generations. I just hope the corruption of political structures, oppression of public dissent, poor general health and general mindlessness of social media has not made the needed change impossible. Depressingly, actual collapse and its inevitable gruesome toll may be our only long term hope.
The military situation is troubling. Misrepresented and and ignored.
US has built a lot of exquisitely specified “stuff” that cannot pass operational tests, and cannot be prepared for war (readiness fails annual noted by GAO) in any budget we can afford.
While the US wants to employ that stuff at the end of 7000 mile supply lines when we let our transports rust to dust!
The spring $60 billion gifts for Ukraine included $20 billion for US Europe command operations. It costs a lot to keep US special operators and weapons technicians for our wunderwaffe working in Ukraine.
Will there be any money left to keep al Nusra running Idlib?
The Atlanticists are secure.
Altandmain: Noting your mention of conscription and who will avoid it, I must insist that U.S. women be conscripted as well as put into combat.
You want to break through the glass ceiling? Into the horror of war? Be my guest. People like Hillary Clinton, Victoria Nuland, and even Kamala Harris wouldn’t shoot off their mouths about war the way they do if they had been forced to register for the draft.
It concentrates one’s mind.
I don’t know about that. I think conscription that automatically puts any elected official and their spouses and children of military age at the top of the list to go – no exceptions might. But for my lifetime our elected officials have been made up of sociopaths who did go or avoided military dishonestly orweretoo young but certain in the knowledge that they and their loved ones were immune from draft horrors. It wasn’t just the women. It has most certainly been that the people deciding were sending others’ children for the past four decades.
On the other hand, maybe those who identify as women will be exempt from combat.
Yes, you state the situation very well. Ukraine cannot with a war with Russia and never could. But that is not the point of this war. The whole point is to constantly harass and attack Russia to weaken it (hadn’t worked quite the way they wanted it to), to exclude it from the “world” permanently to make it a permanent enemy of the West (the Empire) so that the various vassal states will all unify even more than they are now with Washington’s “rules” (really “rule”). The last one is the most important. A permanent enemy affords all the ruling elites to point to an intractable enemy in order to keep their power in their localities. Speech can be more easily repressed, the surveillance state can be enhanced and perfected to include biometrics (“bad” thoughts can be identified and dealt with quickly), that permanent enemy can be endlessly attacked but never defeated because of their well-maintained nuclear arsenal as we march without hesitation (brick by brick) to Orwell’s distopia. For all this conflict with Russia is essential and China can also be part of this movement towards demonization of the “enemy.” This last part of my argument is the part that deserves our focus.
You make some important points that are all too often neglected. However devastating the Ukraine conflict proves to be for the US empire, NATO, or the world, it is crucial to emphasize the *primary* policy goal of this war and all the preceding provocation. That goal was to *sever the ties between Russia and Europe*. By that criteria this project has been an unqualified success. Further, as you also emphasize, it is not “peace” or “stability” that serves our purpose, but *instability* and *war*, which (it is hoped) drains Russian resources while sheep-herding our allies together and fattening up our arms industry.
This is not to say such policies will not undermine our long-term interests, destroy our credibility, and possibly lead to WWIII. But I get so tired of people citing all of our “failures” in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya, etc., etc. as if the chaos and destruction we left behind were unintended consequences due to our stupidity and incompetence. We are stupid, and incompetent. But chaos and destruction is often the *goal* of our endeavors. That certainly applies to Ukraine.
Exactly. I think it was coined by someone that we (the US/EU) are the “empire of chaos” and I believe that is true. US wars from Vietnam onward were fought for the benefit of the arms and “defense” industry and their consultants and was supported by the officer corps because war brough instant promotion when in country.
From my point of view we have only one enemy in the US and Europe and that is the Washington regime (ruled by the uniparty) that illegally seized power and slowly took shape after the coup of ’63.
The first person I recall using the term Empire of Chaos was journalist Pepe Escobar.
Bingo!
Friendly reminder that you can’t run an empire with neoliberalism as your operating system
After the second Democratic Convention night dedicated to “fighting antisemitism”, particularly addressed by Schumer and the second gentleman Doug H. to those protesting the Palestinian genocide, it isn’t surprising that Harris will continue with Biden’s kill ’em with this new shipment of weapons plan.
And domestically, consider just one example: “In July 2016, the federal government indicted Philip Esformes, owner and operator of the Esformes Network, including nursing facilities in Florida.” He was criminally charged for defrauding one-billion-dollar from Medicare.” Esformes, an orthodox Jew, thanks to Jared Kushner, was pardoned by Trump. Yet, these same people are calling for the jailing of protesters outside the Convention center. These same people eliminated Affirmative Action, but guess who insist on calling themselves “victims”.
Unless, and until, “Citizens United” is eliminated, the fraudster oligarchs will continue interfering in economic, domestic policy and and foreign policy. We can’t allow AIPAC to govern us.
How would we not allow AIPAC and other toxic organizations to govern us? I see no way to change that in the short or medium term and that leaves the long-term for which Americans are unable to think about for cultural reasons. Anyway, all this requires some kind of spiritual transformation of the body politic away from radical materialism and hedonism.
Philip Gordon may want to fully back the Ukraine against Russia but by January of next year, there may not be much of the Ukraine left. Thing is, there are a large number of powerful people in Washington that want to go after China next year and they are already moving the pieces on the board to make this happen. The Republicans seem to be all on board with going after China so if they win in November, they will probably write the Ukraine off and send those resources to the Indo-Pacific instead. Even if the Democrats take the win in November, this anti-China block will not be denied and if there are no good results in the Ukraine, will push people like Gordon to get with the program. He may want to stick with the Ukraine but he may not get the support next year to do so, even if he does become the NSA advisor.
Its going to get worse, alot of people forgot Hillary support Kamala, in Obama first term Hillary was pushing war every where. I believe Kamala relationship with Hillary will be like what Bush had with Cheney.
Thanks Connor.
So much for hope and change.
When I try to talk to my dem friends they don’t see they have all turned into war mongers.
I asked an ex Iranian acquaintance who’s always bashing the current Iranian regime where he gets his news from. He said he can’t get news from his relatives in Iran because they fear that they’ll be jailed if they say anything about the regime there. He listens to and watches Democracy Now, MSNBC and news channels here for the news, He hates Trump (“Trump is $hit”). I asked him who he supports. Of course it’s Kamala because “she’d do good for the people”. I asked him to name one thing good she’d do and all I heard was crickets!
The Bernays sauce is being used liberally. I don’t want to discuss these topics any more with these Kool Aid drinking captives.
Interesting. I just finished reading this: , which puts a more positive spin on Gordon.
Clearly one of his postures is a head fake, but which one? Another way in which the USA is more and more like the USSR — we need Kremlinology level of hermeneutics…
FP?
Vikas: I wouldn’t put too much stock in the Foreign Policy (= Foggy Bottom Pravda) article.
Especially this: “There is a growing mismatch between the complexity of this world system and the level of knowledge in the U.S. populace because of laggard education and dysfunctional political systems. Americans may simply no longer understand the system—how global free trade works, how military alliances keep them safe—well enough to maintain it. At the very least, Americans now have very little sympathy for that system.”
Translation: The people of the U.S. of A. are too beaten down and stupid to decide their destiny.
Oh.
Same old, same old.
Yep, that is the chief problem–same can be said of Europeans.
Vikas: And then there’s this. ‘Biden has also attempted to find a workable compromise between the old consensus on globalization and the emerging cross-party consensus in favor of protectionism and industrial policy. As foreign-policy expert Jessica T. Mathews argued in Foreign Affairs, Biden has “unambiguously left behind the hubris of the ‘unipolar moment’ that followed the Cold War, proving that the United States can be deeply engaged in the world without military action or the taint of hegemony.”’
Such delusion. My eyes have crossed. I will stop reading this piece of propaganda now.
the year was 1993, the name that should be pasted on just about everything that has gone wrong in america and the world, can be trace back to a few psychopaths like Bill Clinton.
his type hates china, china embaressed the living hell out of the clinton types who oozed racism out of every pore of their bodies.
the clintons and his cabinet, and their ridiculous factories of the future, blubbered on about white supremacy of we design it, then the little yellow, brown and black people would be the grunts building the stuff, was classic plantation/wilson idiotology of white supremacy.
to bad it went the other way around, and the clintonites are furious.
i am old enough to have seen blacks in cages from wilsons policies working for government, when i asked why, i was told they were not smart enough to operate sophisticated machinery or knowledge based work.
the russians have been a thorn in the sides of the free traders since the american civil war aginst free trade, when they sent fleets into american harbors to protect against the free traders in europe, supporting their breatherin free traders in the confederacy.
the russians are white people with slanted eyes, sitting on many many trillions of dollars of commodities, that the white supremacists free traders covet, and as such the russians do not deserve to have such wealth, after all, they are sub humans.
“In June 2012, Gordon even took then-U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to see a UEFA Euro championship semi-finals in a bar filled with Germans, after a dinner in St. Petersburg with Sullivan and then-U.S. ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul.”
Good Lord. If I had to sit there with that crew, I’d need a gun with three bullets. I would plant all three of them in my own skull just to end the evening.
Conor Gallagher: As always, thanks for the well-written article with much insight into our moral dilemmas, if the U.S. elites are somehow still capable of having moral dilemmas.
For several days, Links in late morning, and especially Water Cooler in the evenings, have had me focused on the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. I no longer live in Chicago, although if I were still there, I would be at the demonstrations, which, in Chicago, are surprisingly amusing. (Blot out the cops and crazies from your visual field.)
At a personal level, Kamala Harris’s (and president-in-waiting-for-coronation Hillary) references to defeating Hamas are the same old policy of U.S. proxy war in Israel. Of course, according to Hillary, everyone is a fifth columnist or deplorable or terrorist, except for her entourage.
The terrorist badge doesn’t stick, in light of the refutation of official sources and their propaganda efforts about 7 October. Yet Kamala cannot acknowledge this ambiguity. She can only vaguely lament seventy years of illegal settlements, tearing up olive trees, incarcerations, bombing of civilians, rape of civilians subjected to mass arrest, and children targeted by the brave IDF snipers. So my vote was teetering — for a nanosecond.
Now, this long post confirms what we know. In a weird way, Israel is an unfortunate distraction from the main event: Dismantling of the Russian Federation. Hamas, those darn terrorists, knew exactly the moment to attack and found great weaknesses.
Why do I mention all of this? Because I think that much of the maundering about the wonders of Kamala Harris is of the same order of those Southern moderates mentioned by Martin Luther King in his Letter from a Birmingham Jail. (Widely available on-line. Take a few moments with it.)
I have also turned to his Nobel Acceptance Speech and his Nobel Lecture.
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1964/king/acceptance-speech/
https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1964/king/lecture/
These aren’t from that “nice Martin” who liberals draw on for clichés. Not when he places such a premium on peace as peace, as the prerequisite. So we have alternatives to the Eichmannian Gordon, who is very good, I’m sure, at partaking of vegetarian puupuu platters and referring to AOC as BIPOC and claiming competence in matters that are clearly beyond his shriveled moral compass.
Thanks very much for this. Since Kamala appears to be a largely empty vessel then personnel will be even more of policy under her than Biden–who at least has a few of his own (mistaken) opinions. I think this article illustrates why Putin was wrong to say that there is no difference who wins. While Trump also toed the line for his contributors, it’s was all transactional with no real ideological commitment. Whereas for the current crop of Dems it’s domestic policy that is openly negotiable and “running the world” their obsession.
The results we see in Ukraine, Gaza, Syria and Libya and even Obama eventually said Libya was a mistake (Hillary by contrast clapped her hands with glee).
It’s a worldwide phenomenon of course with internationalists in Europe showing greater interest in pleasing the US than their own public. On the opposing side are fierce nationalists in Russia and China and a third world that is tired of being exploited. Empire is a deluxe deal for those who are running it. Like the rich Buchanans in Gatsby they break things but don’t have to worry too much about the consequences. It’s not like they even fight in these wars so often advocate. They just float, full of “joy.”
Even when Trump was the president, the swamp creatures ran the foreign policy: Bolton, Pompeo, Haley, and so on. Putin is right that the US president does not affect foreign policy meaningfully. The only difference is that Trump-Vance at least offers a small hope that they might be a small spanner tossed into the gears while Kamala, even more than H Clinton, will be actually quite eager to exterminate all humans just to prove that women are more manly than men.
The only way American foreign policy will change is if the left gets its act together and actually organizes workers. A Democratic NLRB, and judges that uphold NLRB decisions, helps us do that. I recommend the works of Jane McAlevey if folks are interested in learning more about organizing.
I sort of agree, but I also remember unions being very pro-Vietnam War back in the day. I think that might change now but who knows?
IIRC, building trades and executives of AFL-CIO were very much pro-war. The UAW turned against the war.
Why would anyone expect Harris to make any meaningful change? She wouldn’t be where she is if she wasn’t in line with the current insanity. McFaul, Sullivan, Blinken … Gordon will be no better if not worse because U.S. polices are getting even more demented and dangerous.
Good article, appreciated. UKR war is a collision between US/UK and Russia and the war wasn’t avoidable. Therefore it is a bit misleading to blame only Biden for the war. The war was supposed to happen already in late 2010s under Hillary (remember many articles from 2016 about what her foreign policy would like like?) but she lost elections in 2016. I would credit Biden’s team with one thing – it is apparent that some red lines were agreed between USA and Russia in 2022 and Team Biden more or less adhered to those red lines and US escalation was step by step without major surprises and dirty tricks. Unlike the UK which has no limits and probably made White House angry many times. Gordon learned foreign politics in easy going 1990s and 2009-2016 when the US was still master of the universe. Late 2020s may show that what he has learnt doesn’t work well anymore.
Many thanks. The UK aspires to be ‘more catholic than the pope’. It does so in order to ingratiate itself with US policymakers. Increasingly, as policymakers within the US government become mere ciphers for lobbies, the UK feels it has to ingratiate itself with the lobbies (and one particular lobby…which is also influential within the UK itself) even more than with the prevailing administration.
The UK does this not only because (in de Gaulle’s words) it has been ‘colonised by its former colony’, but because it has persistently imported more than it exports and it has been a net energy importer for 20 years. Profits from the City, which has functioned as an adjunct to Wall Street since at least the 1980s, are a crucial part of the British government’s revenue base and have prevented the UK’s current account deficit from becoming drastically worse since deindustrialisation was largely completed in 1985-95. The City/Wall Street nexus permits the UK to finance its current account deficit far more cheaply than might otherwise be the case because the UK free rides upon the ‘exorbitant privilege’ of the dollar (the City being a large pool of dollars). If the UK deviated at all from US policy, then this nexus would disintegrate almost immediately, government revenues would collapse, interest rates on public and private debt would spike, the hugely important housing market would implode and the UK would be plunged into permanent depression.
So not only does the UK now have almost no foreign policy discretion, it must pre-empt even some of the most radical and extreme elements within US policymaking, and push the envelope for US policymakers in order to evidence the UK’s loyalty so as to conserve the precious nexus on which the remains of British prosperity are based, and so delay the dreaded day of financial reckoning. Until the recent past, British diplomats could occasionally encourage the US in the direction of restraint, but as the British economy has weakened and Britain’s room for manoeuvre has narrowed, a considered and sophisticated restraint has gradually metamorphosed into a crude and cartoonish version of the more extreme elements of neocon thinking. The British people, and most especially their governing class, have been indoctrinated so completely in this tendency that the evolving and increasingly servile nature of the relationship is never described save in the most facile and general terms, presumably because it is assumed to be so obvious or else too inconvenient and/or embarrassing.
The ‘role’ which Acheson devised for a post-imperial Britain was as an auxiliary to the US which could help mitigate some of the costs the US might otherwise have to incur overseas. Unfortunately, US foreign policy is now all accelerator and no brake. More recently, the UK is increasingly functioning as a permanent dead weight upon the accelerator pedal. In this sense, it has to be asked whether – like another purported ‘ally’ of the US – Britain is still really a strategic asset to the US.
“The UK does this not only because (in de Gaulle’s words) it has been ‘colonised by its former colony’, but because it has persistently imported more than it exports and it has been a net energy importer for 20 years…”
Really interesting analysis.
Its almost like there is a foreign-policy Blob in the US that periodically belches out these ideologically blind non-entities with different names but the same foolish views on foreign policy.
I am reminded why I am so grateful for the quality of reporting at NC. Just this morning I listened briefly to the ignorant stenographer at NPR interview avid neo-con ideologue former Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary Evelyn Farkas, now of the McCain Institute, who quoted Zelinsky in her glib dismissal of the importance of so-called Russian red lines. The interview was just a celebration of “our” (the blob’s) views, not a single journalistic question asked, no sign of seriousness or actual understanding of Russia or the military situation in Ukraine visible on either side of the interview. These jackasses deserve to burn. But of course, if they do, the rest of us will burn with them.
Gordon sounds like yet another warmongering American hegemonist. It would seem that there is an endless supply of these creatures in the DC swamp. The smelliest turds rise to the top. Why do we repeatedly place great power in the hands of such horrid human beings?
Why would anyone expect anything to change under a Harris regime?
She wouldn’t be making the real decisions, and she wouldn’t be in charge.