Peter L. Berger's Blog, page 3

COVID-19’s Threat to Energy Security

For the past decade, the United States has enjoyed a remarkable boom in the production of oil and natural gas. Mainly due to technological advances in fracking, America has become the world’s largest producer of oil as well as a major player with respect to natural gas. Given the role that energy supply plays in international politics, the benefits that accrue to the U.S. from this fact are obvious.

With respect to oil, the United States is a relatively high cost producer; shale oil (produced by fracking) is much more expensive to produce than the oil that gushes forth from the mammoth fields of Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. On the other hand, U.S. shale oil production is much more nimble. Compared to the years and billions required to open new fields, especially off-shore, shale oil wells can be brought into production relatively quickly; at the same time, they degrade relatively quickly as well. Thus, whereas most oil production involves long-term planning and commitments, shale oil can be thought of more like a manufacturing process: When one stops drilling, production falls off quickly, and when one resumes, it can rise relatively quickly as well.

What this has meant, in effect, is that U.S. production has effectively capped the price of oil. When it rises above the level at which shale oil production is profitable (approximately $45-55 per barrel), U.S. production can ramp up relatively quickly and stop or reverse the price rise.

But the obverse of this is that when oil falls below $45, U.S. shale oil production is unprofitable and can be expected to shrink rapidly, endangering the financial health of many U.S. oil companies and posing the threat of widespread bankruptcies in the oil patch. This is what has been happening recently, thanks to both the drop off in demand due to the COVID-19 global slowdown and the “price war” between Saudi Arabia and Russia. Whatever their other motives may have been, both countries had reason to resent the rapid expansion of U.S. oil production and, to put it as mildly as possible, would not be sad to see the U.S. industry decimated.

The presidential strategy thus appears to be one of raising world oil prices in order to avoid the decimation of the U.S. oil industry. This is a completely understandable strategy, but it suffers from some serious drawbacks.

President Trump has recently engaged with both President Putin of Russia and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Sultan of Saudi Arabia, in an attempt to get them to agree to production cuts to support the price of oil. On April 2, the President tweeted that he “expect[s] & hope[s] that they [Saudi Arabia and Russia] will be cutting back approximately 10 Million Barrels [a day], and maybe substantially more.” Today, Opec and Russia reached a deal to cut production by just this number. But even if such extensive cuts can be achieved in practice (and past experience shows it is far from a foregone conclusion that they can), it does not seem like this will be sufficient to save U.S. producers.

In the short term, it appears unlikely that the world oil price can rise to the $45-55 level until the current pandemic is safely behind us. Oil prices did rise in reaction to the President’s tweet and in response to some indications of a Saudi-Russian deal, but not to levels that would ensure the financial solvency of the oil patch. In a situation of vastly reduced demand, it is hard to see how U.S. shale can be profitable.

In the long term, a strategy of propping up prices seems even less attractive. It would mean, in effect, that the U.S. industry could exist only on the sufferance of Russia and Saudi Arabia. It would cause a continuing diplomatic weakness; at any point, either country could raise production and create a crisis in the U.S. shale oil industry.

An alternative strategy would start from the recognition that, by effectively capping oil prices, the shale oil industry serves a vital national interest by protecting the country from price or supply shocks. As such, we should be willing to spend money to make sure that it can continue to serve that function. This does not mean that we should be producing oil unprofitably at current levels when world prices are low; it does mean that we should maintain the capability to ramp up production quickly when prices rise. What “quickly” means in this context depends on the size of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR): Our policy should be to have a big enough reserve to augment supplies such as to keep prices below, say, $60 per barrel until increased U.S. production kicks in.

Thus, like the SPR itself, we should see a “dormant” shale oil industry capable of rapid mobilization as an insurance policy. Keeping the shale oil industry alive albeit dormant would have to include at least such steps as a training program for workers (perhaps on the model of military reserves), continued exploration for promising sites, the further development of fracking technologies, and a financial facility to insure that capital would flow back to the shale oil industry when needed.

Maintaining the SPR costs money, but it is generally understood that it is well worth it. (If managed correctly, the SPR could even be a money-maker; it is unfortunate that the recent coronavirus bailout, despite its $2 trillion price tag, didn’t include $3 billion for the Department of Energy to purchase oil at rock-bottom prices to top it off.) How much it would cost to keep the shale oil industry in a position from which it could quickly ramp up production would have to be calculated; but it is hard to imagine that it wouldn’t be a worthwhile investment.

As we are now learning the hard way, maintaining strategic stockpiles of items like masks and ventilators in not sufficient. Going forward, we should also be looking for steps we could take in normal times to enable us to ramp up the production of these and similar vital supplies rapidly. The same reasoning would apply to oil; we should have not only an available stockpile, but also a means of increasing production quickly.

The oil industry is clearly in such bad political odor among a sizeable part of the population that even such a common sense step as buying oil when it is cheap and when the government can borrow at very low interest rates was a bridge too far.  One can imagine that a program to maintain a skeletal shale oil industry would also face strong political headwinds. Indeed, one can even imagine that we might, depending on election results, give Russia and Saudi Arabia for free the very thing for which they are now willing to sacrifice billions of dollars of current revenue: the abandonment of fracking.

For several years, Americans have become comfortable with the idea that energy security is no longer a problem. Strong political leadership will be necessary to remind them of how seriously we used to view the issue, and of what steps we should now take to make sure that our current protection from price and supply shocks can continue. For believers in the free market (including this author), the recommendations discussed above go against the grain. But do we have an alternative?

The post COVID-19’s Threat to Energy Security appeared first on The American Interest.

The Taiwan Factor During COVID-19

It sounds like something out of a military thriller: As a global pandemic rips across the world, the body count rises faster than stocks can plummet, while the President and Congress frantically try to stave off an economic collapse. Meanwhile, the infection stealthily works its way through the U.S. military—as the saga of Captain Crozier reminds us—jeopardizing its ability to fend off a belligerent adversary who has weathered the first round and is regaining its strength.

While the media has focused on the drama in Washington, the larger national security story has been lost. Even as the Administration copes with the outbreak at home, it also needs to head off Chinese aggression in Taiwan and the South China Sea. It can do so while blunting China’s propaganda claims about leading the world response to coronavirus.

Although the spring’s warmer weather might mitigate the virus’s effects in the northern hemisphere, it will make the Indo-Pacific considerably more dangerous. China watchers often worry about a “bolt from the blue” surprise, perhaps a sneak attack on democratic Taiwan, over which China claims sovereignty. Yet the Formosa Strait separating them is legendarily turbulent, and there are only two months out of the year when the weather would consistently favor such an attack. April is one of them.

So far, there is little evidence of the kind of full-scale military mobilization required for China to invade Taiwan. But China is at least likely to ramp up its ongoing, aggressive schedule of patrols and exercises to threaten Taiwan and other countries bordering the South China Sea. In late February, the Chinese navy tried to blind the crew of an American plane with a laser. Since then, the Chinese navy and air force have rehearsed shooting down foreign aircraft in the South China Sea; Chinese fishing vessels, which are often used by the Chinese government as a paramilitary militia, rammed a Taiwanese coast guard vessel and punched a hole in the side of a Japanese destroyer; and Taiwanese fighter jets had to scramble to intercept a nighttime Chinese aerial exercise. Even the Philippines, which under President Rodrigo Duterte has flirted heavily with China, expressed sympathy for Vietnam after the Chinese Coast Guard reportedly sank a Vietnamese fishing boat in disputed waters.

Even as it copes with the ongoing pandemic, the U.S. government can counteract China’s intimidation campaign by:

Increasing naval and aerial patrols near Taiwan and the South China Sea. The first priority should be to ensure there are enough U.S. forces visibly present in and around the region to dissuade China from attempting any military adventurism during this crisis. To the extent that the U.S. Navy can provide security and also deliver much-needed supplies to the countries fighting the virus from China, it should. Coronavirus has infiltrated the Pacific Fleet on a massive scale, which will inevitably complicate these missions. The Navy is currently taking stricken sailors to bases in Guam, but there is a friendly democracy with a good medical system nearby that would surely leap at the chance to help: Taiwan.

To take advantage of this assistance, the U.S. government will have to override its self-imposed restrictions on contacts with Taiwan. At a minimum, the State and Defense Departments should immediately revise all guidelines regarding defense and other cooperation with Taiwan to allow port calls, logistical exchanges, medical coordination, and anything else needed to protect the health and well-being of U.S. personnel.

Including Taiwan in all multilateral coronavirus-fighting measures. This step will protect Americans as much as it will help Taiwan. China has blocked Taiwan from joining the World Health Organization and other international bodies, and their diplomatic offensive has likely killed thousands of people already. Taiwan alerted WHO officials about the spread of coronavirus in December. If those bureaucrats had heeded Taiwan’s warnings instead of disseminating Chinese disinformation, other countries would have had months of precious time to prepare for the pandemic, and the global death toll would likely be lower. Instead, WHO has consistently bowed to the demands of the communist leadership in Beijing, while outright ignoring Taiwan’s good-faith efforts to join the organization and enhance cooperation.

Taiwan can do more than provide accurate medical information; it has also contained the disease without shutting down its economy, and its experience would surely be of great interest to leaders worldwide. The State Department has already done good work promoting the “Taiwan Model” and encouraging other countries to advocate Taiwan’s reentry as a World Health Assembly observer, but China is likely to continue blocking any meaningful WHO reforms. Unless China drops its objections and allows Taiwan to return to WHO, the Administration should invite Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen to dialogue with senior American and allied officials to discuss responses to coronavirus. As President-elect, Trump took a call from President Tsai. Perhaps now is the time for a follow-up.

Using the Air Force to transport Taiwanese medical supplies to the United States. Taiwan has succeeded so brilliantly against the pandemic that it has spare capacity and is donating 100,000 masks a week to the United States and has pledged to donate ten million to countries in need. The Air Force has already flown test kits from Europe back to the United States and should do the same for Taiwan’s aid. This will speed delivery to Americans and also subtly warn China that American planes can carry cargo the other way too.

These steps will not only support U.S. interests and save American lives, they will also undermine Beijing’s self-serving propaganda. China’s leaders are desperately trying to turn this pandemic to their advantage; even though CCP malfeasance turned the outbreak in Wuhan into a global catastrophe, China’s mouthpieces are claiming that its later, repressive response shows that the China model of authoritarianism is better suited to responding to crises than the free world is. President Xi Jinping is busy exporting this model, telling Italy’s Prime Minister that he hopes to establish a “health silk road” that can combat coronavirus.

The problem is that China’s leadership is as harmful to other countries as the faulty medical equipment it is sending them. By sharing Taiwan’s experiences, bolstering medical cooperation, and protecting China’s neighbors, the United States can show the world how free Chinese men and women look out for each other better than Beijing can—and that the U.S. government does, too.

The post The Taiwan Factor During COVID-19 appeared first on The American Interest.

The Long Hard Road to Decoupling from China

The era of globalization may finally be coming to an end. The Wuhan Virus and the attendant misery that the Chinese communist state has unleashed upon the world (very much including its own people) has laid bare a core structural flaw in the assumptions underpinning globalization. It turns out that the radical interweaving of markets—which was supposed to lead to the “complex interdependence” that IR theorists have been predicting for the better part of the century would lead to an increase in global stability as countries’ fates are proven to be dependent on each other’s fortunes—has instead created an inherently fragile and teetering structure that is exacerbating uncertainty in a time of crisis.

That this has turned out to be so should not be surprising. The logic that has driven globalized supply chains has all but eliminated redundancies across the world in the pursuit of efficiency. That efficiency has been found by locating links of the supply chain in places where labor costs have been low. In theory, anyway, this should not have been problematic: as one country grew its economy and ascended out of poverty, its low-wage sector would get outcompeted by other poor countries, by which it could be replaced in the supply chain. Similarly, by this logic, if robots become permanently competitive with low-skilled workers, so be it. A more efficient way of producing something is always favorable in this way of thinking.

Such thinking largely ignores geopolitics. By striving to “flatten” the world (in Thomas Friedman’s memorable phrase) into a single, borderless entity in pursuit of nothing but profit and prosperity, this worldview has created huge blind spots. For example, it was powerless to predict that China would build on its early advantage in sheer numbers of low-skilled workers to lock in a dominant and increasingly powerful position for itself in global supply chains. Economies of scale played their part, as did the complementarity of the various manufacturing sectors the country strategically developed, not to mention China’s bullying and corrupting practices. The end result was that the costs of shifting to poorer countries would be unappetizing to corporate supply chain managers. Worse still, such thinking could not account for the fact that behind the scores of successful companies lay a monolithic, totalitarian, nationalist entity with a vision for restoring China’s role in the world: the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

When bereft of redundancies, networks devolve to hierarchies, which in turn create winners and losers. Hierarchies do not diminish the key importance of state power in international relations. On the contrary, they enable it. As China has grown to become the seemingly irreplaceable core of a globalized economy, the CCP has pursued predatory mercantilism in its commercial relations with the West, in the process tilting the hard power balance in its favor. In an economic system that allows for the flow of technology and capital across national borders, redundancies in the supply chain are essential to the preservation of state sovereignty and government capacity to act in a crisis. The Wuhan Virus pandemic is proving so devastating because the radical centralization of market networks has allowed for failure at a single point in our supply chain to leave the system with no capacity to off-load demand onto redundant networks. 

In short, globalization, as preached and practiced over the past four decades, has been shown for what it has always been: profiteering off of a vast pool of centrally controlled labor. While many vast fortunes have been made in the West as a result, and as American consumers binged on low-cost goods, the biggest winner has naturally been the Chinese Communist Party elite. And though even before the 2016 U.S. election there was a growing realization among Western captains of industry that something was not quite right with China’s role in the system, few were willing to ask big enough questions about the system as a whole.

The fundamental question is one of values: Is this kind of globalization compatible with liberty and democratic governance? My simple answer is no. By ignoring the role of nations in the international system—or, if not ignoring, indeed prophesying the nation’s demise—globalization’s boosters have implicitly, if perhaps unwittingly, lessened the accountability of elites and downgraded the voice of voters in these matters. No citizenry, if asked, would vote for the status quo—their working-class communities gutted, their security endangered, and their country made dependent on an adversarial foreign power.

We need to start re-shoring our manufacturing and investing in the regional diffusion of supply chains. The imperative of hard decoupling from China is as strong as it’s ever been. Getting there, however, will not be easy. “Re-shoring” is itself a tidy phrase for a complicated process that will take years to bear fruit. Change will require incentives, both positive and negative, including changes to our corporate tax code, subsidies, penalties, and perhaps even concerted efforts to shame American companies into different behavior. And beyond policy, leadership will be required. All this will have to be explained and communicated to the American people. We will simply have to absorb the costs of this, even if it means prices going up for various goods that we have become accustomed to consuming cheaply.

Especially in areas critical to national security and defense, the United States must preserve a degree of autarky that will allow us, should the extreme happen, the sovereign freedom to act.  Re-shoring our manufacturing will have the added benefit of eliminating the “technological bleed” that has accompanied globalization over the past 30 years. Although innovative design is vital to cutting-edge technologies, much of what has undergirded America’s technological superiority thus far is contained in processes, materials, alloys, and skillsets—what can be broadly described as our technological culture. As we look at the qualitative improvements in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) and Navy (PLAN) weapons systems over the past three decades, it’s impossible to miss where these have come from. I am not advocating that we stop selling products to China outright, but we need to separate sales from the attendant technology transfers. For example, Boeing can sell their airliners to the People’s Republic of China (PRC), but should have never allowed for its aircraft to be manufactured there. Western intellectual property has been forcibly transferred or simply stolen by the PRC, and has in turn been used for military applications. Companies have been waking up to this reality. According to a recent survey of the Global CFO Council, last year one in five American companies doing business in the People’s Republic of China had their intellectual property stolen, with Western IP extorted by the Chinese for market access in a large number of cases.

Of course, the decision to bring our production back to the United States assumes that the PRC would stand by and watch as American corporations depart. If U.S. companies start pulling out of China, we will learn soon enough to what extent the CCP actually respects property rights. That said, should Beijing try to seize Western property—and given how many Western companies have unwisely entered into joint ventures with the Chinese state through the years, it may even do much of it legally—such behavior ought to further inflame Western sentiments. Machines and equipment can be re-purchased, but the era of “designed in California, made in China” will have taken a perhaps fatal body blow.

The re-shoring of U.S. manufacturing should prompt us to rehabilitate our rotting infrastructure.  Today is precisely the time for the U.S. government to invest in rebuilding our roads, our rail networks, and above all our energy grid. A 21st-century energy policy that would reduce pollution and ensure we eventually move off petrochemicals lies in nuclear power. Today’s small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) used by the U.S. military point to the future—the U.S. Navy has been operating and perfecting SMRs for 75 years. We are also uniquely positioned by virtue of our size and low population density overall to deal with nuclear waste storage more effectively than our competitors.

It is worth noting that China is already moving fast on its third-generation SMRs developed by the state-owned China National Nuclear Corporation; in 2019 it announced that the first application of its ACP100 reactor will be to replace coal-fired boilers to generate heat for a residential district in Hainan province. Likewise, in December 2019, Russia turned on its first floating nuclear power plant to generate electricity from a boat off the coast of Russia’s Far East; the reactor is set to replace coal, with enough capacity to power a city of 100,000. Moscow and Beijing seem determined to make nuclear power an integral part of their energy policy going forward.

Next, Congress needs to move to restrict access by Chinese students and researchers to our premier educational and research institutions and our engineering and science labs.  The idea that we continue to educate scientists and engineers who will then work for companies owned by the Chinese communist regime defies common sense. In 2019 the PRC sent some 370,000 students to U.S. universities, compared to 98,000 ten years earlier—close to a four-fold increase in just one decade. Worse yet, there has been a massive corrupting influence of Chinese direct funding of U.S. advanced research.  The CCP has been pushing money for research at U.S. universities and labs, directly or indirectly paying American scientists to do contract work for Chinese state companies. Last fall, a report by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations showed that Beijing’s  so-called “talent plans” included contracts for American researchers requiring that they transfer intellectual property rights to their Chinese partners, avoid commenting on the PRC’s internal affairs, and keep such contracts confidential. Or witness the recent arrest of the chair of Harvard’s chemistry department on charges of concealing funding he received from China.

In effect, what was once considered espionage has become mainstream in our educational and research institutions. All this has to stop. It is borderline absurd that we would continue to train future weapons designers for the Chinese People’s Liberation Army and Navy, giving them a window into our best and most sophisticated research into defense-related technologies.

The imperative to end China’s theft of our intellectual property by way of our universities and research labs must be accompanied by a thorough reform of our system of higher education, which for the past three decades has managed to saddle American college graduates with unsustainable levels of debt, in many cases permanently handicapping their career prospects, while delivering often worthless and unmarketable degrees. We need a massive reinvestment in STEM curricula in our high schools and in science and engineering programs at our colleges and universities, so as to expand the available labor and management pools for our re-shored companies.  Again, it will take a concerted effort by Congress, the U.S. Department of Education, and especially parents and alumni donors to restore colleges to their proper place of teaching and learning, which at one time decades ago produced the best professional and managerial classes in the world.

Finally, a strategy for American renewal requires a foreign and security policy that puts a premium on alliances and partnerships with those countries that share our values and/or interests, even if at times only the latter applies. Our historical European allies and partners will remain among our closest allies, and a revitalized NATO is key. Still, we need straight talk with our allies and partners in Europe about shared interests, rather than wasting time by endlessly wringing our hands over the supposed demise of multilateralism. Furthermore, we should not hesitate to leverage our relationships with countries that can significantly improve our overall global position with respect to China and Russia.

In other words, we need to return the sovereign nation-state back to the center of the international system. And while we continue to seek international cooperation on a range of issues that concern us all, we should treat with requisite humility the expectations of what experiments in supranational governance can achieve. They can never replace self-constituting nations, and if forcibly imposed will routinely morph into rigid and ineffective top-down bureaucratized structures. Most of all, we need allies and partners across the globe who share our interest in preserving freedom in the world, and who understand that what the CCP is proffering as an alternative is a Beijing-controlled global supply chain, where state-owned markets and de facto serfs would replace free market societies and autonomous citizenry.

If there is any good to come from the devastating impact on our nation of this pandemic brought about by the Chinese communist regime through its malice and incompetence, it will be the likely demise of enthusiasm for globalization as we know it across the West. After three decades of intellectual gymnastics aimed at convincing Americans that the off-shoring of manufacturing and the attendant deindustrialization of the country are good for us, the time has come for a reckoning.

Since the end of the Cold War, Western elites seem to have been in thrall to the idea that various “natural forces” in the economy and politics were propelling us forward to a digitally interconnected brave new world, one in which traditional considerations of national interest, national economic policy, national security, and national culture would soon be eclipsed by an emergent peaceful global reality. This virus crisis is a wake-up call, and while some argue we are waking up too late to effectively counter current trends, my money is on the ability of the American people to rally in a crisis and on the resilience of Western democratic institutions.

Today, while battling the Wuhan Virus consumes the attention of our government agencies and health care systems, we should not lose sight of the foundational strategic challenge confronting the West in the emerging post-globalization era: We are in a long twilight competition with the Chinese communist regime, a struggle we cannot escape, whether we like it or not. Now is the time to wake up, develop a new strategy for victory, and to move forward.

The post The Long Hard Road to Decoupling from China appeared first on The American Interest.

Don’t Call It the Wuhan Virus

The Group of Seven countries, that is, the United States and several of its closest friends, reportedly could not agree on a customary joint statement at their last meeting, held via video conference, because of Secretary of State Michael Pompeo’s insistence that COVID-19 be referred to as the “Wuhan virus.”

What’s wrong with that? the President smugly deadpans, that’s where it comes from! But even aside from the whiff of xenophobia and its consequences for Americans of Chinese descent, the move was a stumble. Secretary Pompeo may have been trying to focus attention on the mistakes and lies of the Chinese Communist Party. But the term “Wuhan virus” is at odds with Pompeo’s own plan to overhaul America’s China policy which depends, as he himself has said, on recognizing that “the Party and the Chinese people are not the same thing.”

The Communist Party has been remarkably successful at conflating the two. As Party leaders saw their legitimacy decline after the catastrophes of Maoist rule and the use of the military on the people in 1989, they turned to nationalism, relentlessly pushing the message through education and the media that the Party and China were essentially the same thing. As Perry Link and Xiao Xiang write,  “people are still trained to believe, for example, that dang (党, Party) and guo (国 nation) are inseparable or at least close enough that aiguo (爱国, patriotism) and ai dang (爱党, “love of the Party”) need not be distinguished.”

If the Party = China, then critics of the Party must be “anti-China.” Inside China, this has meant imprisonment, torture, and misery for Chinese lawyers, activists, labor organizers, and intellectuals accused of subversion for seeking freedoms of association, press, and speech under a democratic China. In response to the virus, the Party detained journalists, upbraided a doctor who sounded an early warning, and is investigating a property tycoon who criticized Xi Jinping directly, asking, “Since when did the people’s government become the party’s government?”

The “anti-China” label serves the Party’s interests abroad as well. For decades, the Party’s conflation of itself with China was extraordinarily effective in the United States. China policy discussions were conducted using terms and arguments that stigmatized those who did not conform to an establishment view of U.S.-China relations. As James Mann wrote in his book The China Fantasy, “anyone who believes strongly in a democratic China, anyone who bluntly criticizes the PRC for its repression of dissent, anyone who suggests that the political situation in China is not destined to change or that trade with China will not lead to democracy—any of these critics is likely to confront a barrage of epithets, catchwords, phrases, and concepts that attempt to isolate the speaker before his or her ideas can be examined.” When Mann published the book in 2007, he was attacked by experts many of whom have made an about face.

Undoubtedly, there has been a sea change in perceptions of the PRC and its communist leadership. Whereas it was once considered gauche in certain circles to mention the Marxist-Leninist character of the regime, now one can discuss it without being accused of seeking a new Cold War. Last year, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission announced that it would no longer refer to Xi Jinping as President but as General Secretary of the Communist Party. “China is not a democracy, and its citizens have no right to vote, assemble, or speak freely. Giving General Secretary Xi the unearned title of ‘President’ lends a veneer of democratic legitimacy to the CCP and Xi’s authoritarian rule.”

Since the G-7 stumble, Administration officials are using “Wuhan virus” less—possibly because Chinese leaders are dispatching materiel to American communities that need it. In any case, the term is a kind of sly bigotry that no American official should be associated with. Just as important, it plays into the Party’s long-term objective of portraying the West as hostile to Chinese people rather than the communist system that represses them.

Eric Sayers, a scholar at the Center for a New American Security, rejects the use of “Wuhan virus” as “bad policy.” He suggests instead that America’s friends and allies use the  scientific name for the disease while collaborating to investigate its origins. Washington should go further.  Beijing’s botched response provides the strongest reason ever to break Taiwan out of its isolation and admit it immediately to the World Health Organization. At the same time, in light of the WHO’s penetration by Beijing, the Administration’s should redouble efforts to reduce the PRC’s outsized influence at the UN. That is a worthy effort which Secretary Pompeo can bring up to his counterparts at the G-7.

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A Tale of Two Parties

The 2020 presidential election, like almost everything else, hangs in suspended animation as Americans ride out the coronavirus pandemic. When it resumes, we will learn more about whether another kind of contagion—illiberal populism—is advancing or retreating here.

Over the past decade, populism has been rewriting the rules of party competition across the West. Sparked by a working-class revolt against entrenched political establishments, the populist surge highlights new political divides based on culture, identity, and geography, as well as the waning relevance of the old left-right debate. Yet the picture is distinct in the United States, where populist currents are reshaping the internal dynamics of the two major parties rather than creating new parties. It’s owing to our enduring duopoly that populism came to power here with Donald Trump’s 2016 election.

Had Trump formed his own party, few would have taken his presidential bid seriously. Instead, he had the good fortune to run as a Republican in a crowded field of GOP heavyweights, who divided the vote and enabled Trump to get a foothold with a series of plurality wins in early primaries. As his rivals dropped out, he consolidated his hold on white working-class voters and took control of the party.

Democrats also have faced a populist challenge, principally from Senator Bernie Sanders and young left-wing activists. The Democratic Party, however, has proved a tougher nut to crack. Although many millennials thrill to Sanders’s call for “revolution,” the Vermont independent has failed to convert a majority of rank-and-file Democrats to his vision of a democratic socialist America.

Therein lies a story—a tale of two parties. Republicans have allowed themselves to become an instrument of Trump’s reactionary populism. Democrats, though they have moved to the left since 2000, remain a broad, center-left coalition that is pragmatically progressive rather than populist. Whatever impact coronavirus may have on our polarized politics, the November elections should tell us something important about the staying power of populism, American-style.

Trump’s nostalgic populism has trampled on many of the tenets that have defined the modern Republican Party: fiscal probity, the primacy of individual liberty, untrammeled free markets, and limited government. At the same time, he has resurrected the worst Republican ideas of the 1920s and 1930s: nativism, protectionism, and “America First” nationalism.

The Grand Old Party has feebly resisted the Trump takeover. A weakened party establishment proved no match against Trump’s unshakable grip on his base—white working class, socially conservative, and rural voters, who see in him a champion against smug liberal elites. Many voters, too, were attracted to his strongman persona (though this is mostly a pose). The result is that one of our major parties has turned into a personality cult—a transformation completed in the Senate’s cowardly failure to do its Constitutional duty in the impeachment trial.

Trump, however, is the culmination, not the cause, of the Republicans’ turn to a polarizing populism reared on white grievance, nativism, and hyper-nationalism. They’ve been fighting delaying actions against powerful social changes for decades: the civil and women’s rights movements; the legalization of abortion and gay marriage; the rise of secularism and retreat of religion from the public square; and, the shift in immigration patterns from Europe to Latin America and Asia, which is eroding America’s white majority and sowing fears of cultural displacement.

Layered on top of such “cultural Luddism,” to borrow Fritz Stern’s phrase, is a neo-nationalist backlash against globalization, free trade, and U.S. international leadership. For Trump (a con artist himself) these are emblematic of how cunning foreigners have played us for suckers. They have “stolen American jobs;” attenuated U.S. sovereignty by ensnaring us in a web of international institutions and treaties; and, embroiled us in conflicts overseas while free-riding on our military strength. Under Trump, Republicans have become a party of cultural despair.

All populists, notes Brookings Institution scholar William A. Galston, claim to be the authentic voice of “the people” against deracinated, self-dealing elites. Their aim is to knock those elites off their privileged perch and restore genuinely popular democracy.

But that’s the rub. For all their conspiratorial blather about the “deep state,” the Trump Party’s real beef is with the fruits of majoritarian democracy itself. The polyglot society that is America in 2020 may seem alien to them, but it actually represents the fuller realization of the liberal and egalitarian ideals enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. The Founders may have been white, male Protestants from northern Europe, but their design for a government based on individual liberty, civic equality, and democratic self-rule was capacious enough to be progressively expanded over time to encompass women, former slaves, and immigrants from everywhere.

The Trump Party, however, understands American identity as more rooted in ethnicity and religion than civic ideals of liberty and democracy. Trump bonded with white working-class voters with harsh anti-immigration rhetoric and a promise to wall off America from Mexico. This links him to European national populists—Viktor Orbán, Marine Le Pen, Matteo Salvini— who also pledge to protect “native” workers against cultural and economic disruption from the world outside.

A demographic specter haunts the Trump Party. Its leaders know the day is fast approaching when they can no longer squeeze electoral victories out of a shrinking base of white voters. Trump and his GOP enablers are willing to bend and even break time-honored rules and mores of U.S. democracy because it’s getting harder to realize their aims the old-fashioned way—by convincing a majority of U.S. voters to support them. That “tribe over country” nihilism is what makes Trump’s populism dangerous.

Populism has affected Democrats too in this century, though not as dramatically as Republicans. A concatenation of events—the bitter aftermath of the 2000 presidential election, the 2001 dotcom market swoon, the 2003 Iraq War and the polarizing tactics mastered by President George W. Bush’s political consigliere Karl Rove—hardened partisan lines and nudged Democrats leftwards.

But the really hard shove came from the 2008-09 recession, compounded by the housing crisis and Wall Street’s near meltdown. This economic perfect storm hit just as millennials were coming of age, graduating from college (often with heavy debts), and looking for their first jobs. As they struggled to get a foothold in a stricken economy, they watched as the Federal government bailed out big banks and financial institutions, while millions of ordinary Americans lost their homes.

It was a radicalizing experience that soured many on capitalism and convinced them that Washington caters to the interests of the rich and powerful regardless of which party is in power. Some drifted to the Occupy Movement until it proved too anarchic and fizzled; others formed activist networks that eventually became the nucleus of Sanders’s 2016 insurgency against Hillary Clinton. Their voices, amplified on social media, were mistaken for the vox populi by credulous reporters. But when Democrats won back the House of Representatives in the 2018 midterm elections, it was with pragmatic candidates who didn’t sound anything like AOC.

In outlook, Democrats are a balanced party. Consider some figures.

“The liberal wing of the Democratic Party has about doubled in size over the past quarter-century, rising from 25 percent in 1994 to 51 percent in 2018,” the Gallup organization reports. “The slip to 49 percent in 2019 suggests that trend may be slowing or leveling off, at least temporarily.” Thirty-six percent of Democrats identify as moderates and 14 percent as conservatives.

A New Center study also finds that Democrats split down the middle, with 42 percent identifying with the center and 42 percent leaning left. Democrats, unlike Republicans, are a heterogenous party ideologically as well as demographically.

In the 2020 battle for the Democratic nomination, Senator Bernie Sanders again has offered Democrats a radical left option—and they appear to have declined again. Since his February 29 breakthrough in South Carolina, former Vice President Joe Biden has racked up an impressive string of big victories and built an insurmountable delegate lead.

The virus-induced delay of the remaining primaries may give Sanders a temporary reprieve. But he has been unable to expand his support beyond a narrow base of young and “very liberal” voters. Rank-and-file Democrats prefer Biden, who wins among nearly every category: men and especially women; African Americans and Latinos; college-educated and blue-collar voters; and married as well as single voters.

Like many a losing candidate, Sanders insists he’s won the intellectual argument within the party, if not its nomination. And it’s true that he and his backers have pushed some aggressively left-wing ideas into the nomination debate.

Barring a big change in the race’s dynamics, however, it looks as though Democrats will choose a nominee who isn’t for “Medicare for All;” a Federal job guarantee for all Americans; decriminalization of illegal immigration and open borders; “free” college and debt relief for all students; an immediate ban on shale energy production; an end to free trade; or other staples of the left-wing wish list.

Many of these ideas are unpopular among Democrats, never mind independents and moderate GOP suburbanites appalled by Trump’s churlish behavior. That’s especially true in the key battleground states—Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Ohio—where Democrats must improve on their 2016 performance to keep Trump from snatching another victory in the Electoral College.

Having forestalled Sanders’s bid to take control of their party, Democrats stand a much better chance of defeating Trump in November. In fact, the party’s breadth and cohesion make it one of the stronger center-left parties in the world.

In Europe, the rise of national populism has coincided with a steep decline in public support for center-left parties. “Progressive politics is on the defensive,” former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair said at recent Progressive Policy Institute forum. Excepting some small countries, “Not one traditional left-of-center party is in majority power.”

Some progressive parties—including Blair’s own Labour Party—have tacked hard left in recent years in the belief that only a strong dose of economic populism would win back working-class voters enthralled by the right’s cultural populism.

In 2015, Labour elevated as its leader Jeremy Corbyn, a throwback to the doctrinaire socialism of the early 1980s. Like Sanders, Corbyn attracted a fervent following of young activists new to politics. Both leaders argued that only uncompromising radicalism could galvanize new progressive majorities and, as Sanders’ acolytes put it, move the “Overton Window”—the range of policies deemed acceptable by voters—to the left.

But that conceit crashed and burned when put to the test in Britain’s national elections last December. Conservative British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, running on a platform of “get Brexit done,” won a huge majority. Labour lost 60 seats, largely in traditional working-class bastions in the Midlands, the industrial north, and Wales.

Corbyn blamed Brexit for his defeat, and it certainly didn’t help that Labour conveyed terminal ambivalence on the question that has dominated UK politics since 2016. But post-election polls showed that Corbyn himself was the key factor in Labour’s rout. Voters, including many in his own party, simply didn’t like or trust him.

Embracing Brexit enabled the Tories to co-opt right-wing nationalist parties while also peeling working-class voters away from Labour. Those voters, like their counterparts elsewhere in Europe, see the EU’s migration policies as threats to jobs and national identity and chafe at the surrender of national sovereignty to Brussels. They also are deeply worried about crime and Islamist terrorism.

Johnson took a page from Trump’s 2016 playbook by disowning his Tory predecessors’ policy of “austerity” and promising to spend generously on welfare and public services. The Tories, observes political analyst Mathew Goodwin, “have adapted to a new, unwritten law in politics: that it is easier for the right to move left on the economy than it is for the left to move right on identity.”

For Democrats, Labour’s strange dalliance with old-style socialism yields several instructive lessons. One is that economic populism alone doesn’t pack the emotional charge of cultural populism and conservative nationalism. Focusing narrowly on inequality doesn’t engage voters’ cultural anxieties, nor does it speak to middle-class aspirations for the kind of economic dynamism that creates better jobs and opportunities to get ahead.

Second, silence on questions of national and cultural identity is political death. “If you fail to engage an issue, you lose the issue,” says Democratic strategist and pollster Pete Brodnitz. For example, it’s not enough for Democrats to blast the manifest cruelty of Trump’s immigration policies. To win public backing for a more humane policy, they also need to show they can control our borders and modernize outdated laws governing who can come to the United States, and on what terms.

If socialism and economic populism are the wrong answers for Democrats and other center-left parties, what are the right answers?

Addressing voters’ cultural insecurities is essential. The left leaps too quickly to accusations of bigotry, which shuts off all conversation. Social media creates powerful incentives for progressives to talk only to themselves. It may be a cliché, but they really do need to meet voters where they live. They should engage voters on immigration, regional inequality, the urban-rural divide, and working-class fears of downward mobility and declining social status.

Progressives also should get back on the side of economic progress. Economic populism serves up an unrelievedly negative account of an America besieged by rampant inequality, plutocratic control of government, corporate cupidity, “rigged” capitalism and the supposed depredations of free trade. More than scapegoats, people need a horizon of hope. Progressives need to offer them an optimistic vision for a more dynamic, innovative, and inclusive economy arising from the wreckage of the coronavirus freeze.

Finally, progressives need to build, and sustain, broad “big church” political coalitions. That requires center and left to commit to mutual respect and tolerance. The left has a valid insight into the nature of our times: People want big change, not minor adjustments to the status quo. The center recognizes that progressive parties cannot indulge in ideological fantasies and purity tests if they really want to win elections and govern. If progressives can combine these insights into radically pragmatic visions for governing, they can start to turn back the populist tide.

For now, Democrats have an election to win in November. If they do, it will send a message rippling across a world still recovering from the ravages of the coronavirus: The populist threat to liberal democracy can be contained, too.

The post A Tale of Two Parties appeared first on The American Interest.

What Comes Next

The COVID-19 pandemic has something for everyone. Where conspiracy theorists identified a hoax or a biological weapon, nativists saw yet another reason why borders ought to be hermetically shut to prevent the spread of “foreign” diseases. President Trump’s critics have focused—not without reason—on the lack of preparedness of the federal government, Euroskeptics are pointing out that the EU has taken a back seat to national governments, and there was an obvious lesson for those who demand universal healthcare coverage in the United States as well.

Nobody is immune to the Rorschach test—and certainly not big-picture thinkers who seem convinced that the pandemic is a turning point. “This is not a temporary rupture in an otherwise stable equilibrium,” writes John Gray in an intriguing piece in the the New Statesman. “Yes, the storm will pass, humankind will survive, most of us will still be alive—but we will inhabit a different world,” Yuval Noah Harari writes in a widely quoted article in the Financial Times, in which he outlines the stark choices facing humankind after the crisis: between the surveillance state and citizen empowerment, political parochialism and global cooperation.

With the pandemic at a relatively early stage, issuing confident forecasts of its lasting effects is a bit like opining about the postwar international order in the spring of 1940. Yet if anything is clear, it is that SARS-CoV-2 is indifferent to all ideological agendas, motives, or loyalties. It infects, without favor or prejudice, authoritarians and democrats, free marketeers and statists, Christians and Muslims, Americans and Chinese. The disease itself does not prove anything, does not illustrate any broader point about economic and social organization, nor predicts any specific shift in human history. If such shifts occur, they will be driven by the decisions of our policymakers, by their leadership and ideas—and by perceived popular demand.

The expectation of radical changes sits oddly with the sentiment prevailing all around the world: a desire for normalcy. We want workplaces, shops, and restaurants to reopen, and social life, travel, and business to resume. The political ramifications are, of course, uncertain—the short-term bump in support for all incumbent leaders, regardless of ideology, might not outlive the crisis as voters may desire to turn the page once the drama and the self-isolation are over. But it is far from obvious where the constituency for radical political, social, and economic dislocation will come from as the world starts to recover from the fallout of the pandemic.

Before we even get to that point, it is necessary to address the underlying epidemiological problem. In an era of stark ideological and partisan divisions, it is comforting to see that what needs to be done, by and large, is not a subject of great controversy. A hard stop is needed to stop the exponential growth of cases requiring hospitalization, followed, as my AEI colleague Scott Gottlieb and his co-authors suggest, by a soft, cautious restart of national (and state) economies at an appropriate time, after capacities for testing and tracing have been ramped up, alongside improved hygiene, restrictions on some forms of social interaction, and mask-wearing—all to remain in place until a vaccine comes along.

While COVID-19 has caught much of the world, including Western democracies, off guard, it is not anything that should spell doom for our system of government. If anything, there are strong reasons to expect that, because of the free flow of information and political accountability, democracies will be able to avoid the spectacular Chernobyl-like mismanagement seen in Wuhan.

The potential for bungling things up is large, and not all democratic governments will come out of this covered in glory. Those without competent, data- and tech-savvy bureaucracies will end up with much higher death tolls or will have to have recourse to far more heavy-handed and economically damaging policies in order contain the spread of the virus than, say, the Nordic countries, Taiwan, or Singapore. The early signs from the United States are not encouraging—not a surprise for a “great, unwieldy body,” as John Adams famously put it. “It is like a large Fleet sailing under Convoy. The fleetest sailors must wait for the dullest and slowest.” However, those keen to extrapolate a few weeks’ worth of data and write America off might end up surprised by its world-class medical and pharmaceutical research.

Today, national governments are firmly in the driver’s seat of organizing a response to the pandemic, mostly because they are the only organizations that can mobilize the necessary resources. Indeed, borders and international travel have been shut down—and they will inevitably be scrutinized as vectors of disease spread in the years to come. Complex international supply chains in certain sectors will also be seen as sources of vulnerability, as the discussion over the current ventilator shortage suggests.

At the same time, the pandemic is no more a consequence of globalized commerce than the Black Death was God’s punishment for the exuberance of the Silk Road. Instead of predicting the end of globalization, now is the time to stand up for it—and to make sure that humankind’s long-term prosperity does not become collateral damage. Of course, there is a legitimate debate to be had about the resilience of supply chains that are critical for security or public health reasons, including in defense industries, pharmaceuticals, telecommunications, and others. And given China’s role in the origin and spread of the pandemic, its influence over the World Health Organization, and its ongoing propagandistic efforts, it is time to revisit the naive form of multilateralism, which treats autocracies as responsible stakeholders in the international economic order.

Yet that debate does not entail binary choices. When the pandemic is over, most of us will want to go back to the 21st-century world with all its amenities—not to remain trapped in the present dystopia, where one’s ability to travel or do business across borders is dramatically restricted. The recovery from the extraordinary economic shock that we are living through will be dramatically slower if crude protectionism makes a comeback into the repertoire of policy tools used by policymakers—just like Europe’s recovery after 1945 would have been much slower had it not been for the trade liberalization that ensued.

The crisis is exerting an extraordinary degree of pressure on already overstretched public finances on both sides of the Atlantic. In the United States, this will bring forward some hard choices about the sustainability of existing entitlement programs and leave very little space for ambitious policy ideas advocated by the progressive left. At the same time, without sizable outside assistance, Eurozone countries on the Mediterranean periphery will be left literally bankrupt once the pandemic is over—much like the 13 American colonies after the War of Independence. But whether that can provide an impetus for the EU’s Hamiltonian moment, for its demise, or for some form of muddling through remains to be seen, though both the federalization and disintegration scenarios now appear less likely by the day.

On the upside, one can expect potentially exciting developments in biomedicine, remote work, improved hygiene, and more investment into preparedness for future pandemics. The most important economic question is whether our economies can rebound quickly after current lockdowns, or whether, if the hiatus is long, too much organizational capital will be destroyed and labor markets reshaped in ways that will leave lots of Americans and Western Europeans behind—with unknown political and social consequences. That uncertainty should serve as impetus for bold leadership, pro-growth reforms, and investment into state capacity—not for efforts to revive stale ideas that we know from history are dead ends.

The effects on the human psyche and our shared culture are even harder to pin down than the economic effects. This may be yet another step in the direction of the loneliness crisis, with corrosive political effects. Counterintuitively, though, the ongoing collective “mobilization” in the form of individuals staying at home can provide a shared experience that will cut through ideological and partisan lines and reinvigorate our civic interactions once the era of self-isolation ends. Already, many of the key conflicts animating our political life in the recent past—from President Trump’s impeachment, through Brexit, to identity politics—seem insignificant in comparison to a disease that can kill millions of people worldwide. Most importantly—and this is as much a wish as a prediction—the horrors of the pandemic might lead to the reverse of the scenario described by Francis Fukuyama in The End of History, where the “prospect of centuries of boredom at the end of history will serve to get history started once again.” After months of seclusion, ubiquitous death, draconian restrictions, and the heroic efforts of health workers around the world, the boredom of normal life might become a rather attractive proposition.

The post What Comes Next appeared first on The American Interest.

There’s No Going Back

As an invisible enemy begins to overwhelm the town of Oran in Albert Camus’s novel The Plague, a mid-level government bureaucrat named Castel insists that he seek orders from the central government before implementing a course of action to combat the worsening viral epidemic. The book’s hero, the doctor Rieux, responds to this indignantly. “Orders!” he laments. “When what’s needed is imagination.”

As Americans look for direction from our federal, state, and local governments, many can relate to the character of Castel: We are now awaiting orders in the midst of events most imagined could only be found in a novel like Camus’s. And despite the twenty-something spring breakers partying in Miami Beach as if they will live forever, most Americans have displayed a steely willingness to follow whatever orders come their way. Yet for us, and for citizens of every nation whose lives are set to be upended by the coronavirus pandemic, what is needed most in these unprecedented times is imagination.

It is only normal that most of us feel we are playing catch up with the spiraling events of each day’s news cycle. The imagination is often dormant until it is confronted with facts once considered unimaginable. Since the first known coronavirus case emerged in China, possibly on November 17, 2019, the diagnostic numbers around the globe have skyrocketed. Those figures now challenge even the most expansive imaginations: as of this writing, over 1.2 million cases worldwide, with 15,000 deaths in Italy, 13,000 in Spain, and 9,000 in the United States. It is difficult to imagine a world like this, let alone accept that we are living in it.

Yet the numbers hint at our new normal; it is not for nothing that the Surgeon General warns this week will be “our Pearl Harbor moment.” Although we are only beginning to envision what the new world will look like, many of us are beginning to grasp that our national life is going to change in ways we can hardly fathom. The most important societal distinction that is emerging will be between people who come to recognize this now, and people who come to recognize it later.

Unsurprisingly, many of our leaders in government are still promising a return to the old world. Governor J.B. Pritzker of Illinois told his state’s residents that “there’s absolutely no need to change your normal purchasing habits” in the very speech in which he announced a statewide stay-at-home order. As late as the middle of March, Congressman Don Young advised Americans to “go forth with everyday activities.” New York Governor Andrew Cuomo promised a “return to normalcy” on a day New York City lost 349 people in the span of eight hours. That day was April 5th.

That our leaders are making these comments even as they dutifully dole out the latest guidance of our public health authorities illuminates the cognitive dissonance of our pandemic-inflected era: We are seeking to navigate radically uncertain times using the certainties of the past as guideposts. This thinking is all too human. It also inhibits us from taking the actions necessary to chart the best possible course through the crisis.

This is because what is needed now is the ability to imagine, and be motivated by, the worst-case scenario—an outcome that is likelier than not if we keep our old habits, yet an outcome that resembles nothing most of us have seen.

The message that we can all just return to the way things were after we outlast a brief bout of inconvenience, however well-intentioned that message may be, plays into the human tendency to fall back on the familiar. This process is well-documented by renowned psychologists Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky as the “familiarity heuristic”: the instinct, especially prominent in times of cognitive stress, to operate from a state of mind from which one has comfortably operated before.

In our current situation, we employ this habit of mind when we seek clever ways to do the same things we would have done a month ago, rather than postponing those things altogether. We do it when we ignore social distancing guidelines, convincing ourselves that one person alone transmitting the virus is not going to make a difference. Our politicians do it when they slow down emergency legislation to advance their pet projects, as if the health of the nation wasn’t at stake.

These old ways of thinking, relatively harmless in the age of the flu, could prove fatal in the era of coronavirus. The paradox of our present predicament, and especially our economy, is that large-scale activity today is sure to lead to utter ruin tomorrow. Without drastically altering our patterns of thought and action, the coming weeks could bring deaths on a magnitude that strain belief. Averting this possible reality is not going to be accomplished by sticking to our normal habits and striving for the life we used to live. Nor will it be accomplished solely by adhering to government orders. For the sake of our fellow citizens, we all must take actions that push the bounds of what once was imaginable. To do otherwise would only deepen and prolong our social and economic woes.

Thankfully, many Americans are treating this like the wartime call to arms it is. Doctors and health care professionals file reports from the front lines in an effort to advance our understanding and convince us of the severity of our challenge. The White House issues new regulations, like allowing doctors to practice across state lines, that would be sensible in peacetime and may prove essential now. Public-private partnerships strive to inspire unconventional thinking that can meet the roadblocks before us. While some of these proposals are novel, many are simple. The most imaginative ideas often are.

Together, they point us toward a central tenet of our new reality: The best solutions to our common challenge begin with acceptance of the facts that are right before our eyes.

This requires imagining a new kind of hero. The globalized flaneur of the pre-epidemic era, jet-setting to exotic locales and equally at home everywhere, may not find an environment in which to set foot anytime soon. As borders close and individuals isolate, perhaps, paradoxically, our imaginations may find the freedom to turn outward, not to far-flung destinations in search of fleeting connections, but in service of our neighbors, our communities, and the most vulnerable among us.

We must also confront the geopolitical reality this crisis has laid bare: that the United States and China are engaged in a systemic competition altogether different from that of the last century’s Cold War. China has for decades been taking advantage of the West’s openness to undermine it sotto voce from within. The spread of this latest coronavirus is merely a logical consequence of the West’s unwitting facilitation of China’s successful insinuation into market capitalist systems; Iran and Italy, two countries that have prioritized economic links with China, have been hit especially hard.

Yet despite the material advances the China model has produced, the pandemic has starkly illumined that it remains more authoritarian than capitalist. The West is likely to act on that knowledge by repatriating supply chains essential to national security while refashioning its trade relationships for less critical items on more favorable terms. Whether the idea of accelerated competition with China is something we can easily imagine, the reality of it is now upon us all.

The post There’s No Going Back appeared first on The American Interest.

A Wartime Footing

Shortages of critical medical supplies and hoarding of toilet paper, small businesses forced to close their doors, and unemployment skyrocketing. We are in a time of profound uncertainty and collectively feeling deep anxiety about our ability to meet the challenges we face.

In the midst of this, we are witnessing a highly mixed reaction from governments around the world. Some leaders seem to have lived up to the moment—issuing sober calls for calm, informing their citizens about the nature of the threat, and laying out a clear path. Others seem to be passive observers, merely reacting to unfolding events—garbled in their public statements, hesitant to take decisive actions, and unclear of what to do. And another set of leaders have performed abysmally—refusing to take responsibility, blaming others, and failing to calm an anxious public.

But for all the variety in national responses, one constant has been the call for a wartime footing. The French President Emmanuel Macron last week announced that “nous sommes en guerre”—we are at war. Virtually every country in the world has now issued a version of that declaration. Such calls historically have been meant to mobilize society and empower governments to do things that in ordinary times would be inconceivable. They are also meant to remind citizens that no matter how grave today’s challenges seem, there is a precedent for how democratic societies have weathered storms in the past.

Controlling the spread of the coronavirus is not the same as fighting a world war or contending with an economic depression. Nevertheless, there are lessons from America’s past that can frame how we think about this seemingly unprecedented challenge. The analogy is of course imperfect. We are not facing the outbreak of foreign hostilities and our economic fundamentals are sound. But as our national conversation turns toward mobilizing the full resources of the state, our shared history can help guide what we ask of ourselves, and what we demand of our governments.

The first example comes from mid-century, when America was confronted with the Great Depression and the second World War. To spur the manufacture of necessary wartime goods, Franklin Roosevelt established the War Production Board, which was charged with converting industries from peacetime manufacturing to war production, prioritizing the distribution of materials and services, halting nonessential production, and allocating materials. American businesses rapidly converted their factories and retrained their workers to produce necessary life-saving materials. Realizing that the war had exposed dangerous shortcomings in the integrity of its supply chain, Roosevelt asked William Knudsen, an automotive executive, to oversee war production and appointed him Chairman of the Office of Production Management. Knudsen became Roosevelt’s mobilization czar, tasked with getting American business to reorganize itself for a completely new set of circumstances. “We must build them at once! You’ve got to help!” Knudsen told automotive executives. He was talking about converting automobile assembly lines to produce bombers, but today we should be talking about converting factories into production centers for ventilators, masks, PPE, and hand sanitizers. Especially as the demands of dealing with coronavirus overwhelm available supply, this is the type of effort that could serve as a reliable guide to reorienting production toward today’s needs.

Wartime efforts only rarely involved the outright government seizure of factories, but they did require carefully managing labor relations to avoid disruptions to vital industries. Roosevelt had laid the groundwork during the Great Depression by creating the National Labor Relations Board to ensure laws governing collective bargaining and unfair labor practices were enforced. During the war, this work was taken up by the National War Labor Board, which Roosevelt established to arbitrate labor-management disputes. The Board administered wage controls in industries deemed essential, prevented business from cutting salaries, and ensured there were no work stoppages that might harm the war effort. Again, this type of arrangement could not only support the production of critical supplies today, but also add some stability to the markets.

If panic buying and food hoarding continue to be a significant issue, another historical precedent could provide useful lessons. To help regulate scarce consumer goods, prevent food shortages, and ensure that critical materials were stockpiled, the federal government introduced rationing during World War II. While Americans had been asked to voluntarily conserve their food consumption during the first World War, such voluntary efforts were deemed insufficient during World War II, when Americans undertook enormous efforts to help feed and arm war-ravaged European and Asian allies.

The government introduced a system for rationing key consumer goods, local ration boards were set up nationwide to issue ration books, and newly formed government agencies, such as the Office of Price Administration (OPA), were empowered to regulate and ration sugar, coffee, meats, and processed foods as well as tires, gasoline, and fuel oil.

Price controls were also introduced. As Roosevelt put it in his Fireside Address of April 1942, “You do not have to be a professor of mathematics or economics to see that if people with plenty of cash start bidding against each other for scarce goods, the price of those goods goes up.” He called on Congress to undertake an economic program that would include wage stabilization, rent and price controls, and comprehensive rationing that ensured “an equality of sacrifice” across the country. At its peak, nearly 90 percent of food prices and nearly 80 percent of rental housing stocks were frozen. Moreover, when it detected a critical shortage, the OPA was authorized to subsidize production of certain commodities.

Another key lesson can be found in the communication strategy of President Roosevelt. Roosevelt was a masterful communicator and ensured that the public was kept up to date on the war’s progress, informed of setbacks, and readied for the enormity of the sacrifices and efforts to come. He initiated weekly radio addresses, known as fireside chats, at the beginning of his presidency in 1933 and used them throughout the war to reassure an agitated public, combat disinformation campaigns, and explain government policies.

Roosevelt also used his public speeches to reinforce the global nature of the challenge Americans were facing, consistently making the case that only globally-coordinated solutions could defeat threats that crossed borders. “Let no one imagine that America will escape, that America may expect mercy, this this Western Hemisphere will not be attacked and that it will continue tranquilly and peacefully,” he warned in October 1937. In words that are too close for comfort today, Roosevelt referred to conflict in Asia and Europe as an “epidemic of physical disease,” which necessitated concentrated and coordinated international efforts to “quarantine . . . the patients in order to protect the health of the community against the spread of the disease.”

Finally, the historical experience of wartime measures offers the point that existential threats often necessitate extraordinary political coalitions. Nowhere is this more true than for democratic governments, where political division is hardwired into the system. The smooth functioning of a government moving to enact sweeping new policies requires legitimacy if it is to succeed. In parliamentary systems, a national unity government was often formed to bring the political opposition into the governing coalition. This is harder to accomplish in a presidential system, but by no means impossible. During the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln intentionally formed his cabinet to include various wings of the Republican Party and invited non-secessionist Democrats into the cabinet. This was the impetus behind the creation of his famed “team of rivals.” That, and deft politics, is also the reason Franklin Roosevelt appointed two prominent Republicans, Frank Knox and Henry Stimpson, to run the Navy and War Departments. Roosevelt declared that these appointments were intended to inspire “national solidarity in a time of world crisis and on behalf of national defense.”

But for all of the lessons which can be drawn from the effective use of wartime footing in our recent history, the most important difference today is that the crisis is simultaneously both a pandemic and an impending threat to the global economy. Moreover, many of the actions undertaken to put the United States on a war footing in the 1940s were natural outgrowths of Franklin Roosevelt’s decade-long attempt to equip the federal government with new capabilities and grant it the necessary authorities to overcome the Great Depression. The creation of new agencies and organizations was second nature to that generation, as was a willingness to experiment boldly, persistently, and swiftly on what might provide immediate relief for millions of affected Americans. Those habits have long since been forgotten.

But as the severity and duration of the coronavirus pandemic deepens, we will all be called on to mobilize our societies. Drawing from past lessons, this will include determining whether—and how—to manufacture more life-saving equipment, ration goods, control prices, and navigate likely labor shortages and disruptions as workers fall ill. And Franklin Roosevelt’s political efforts point to one useful model for keeping the public up to date on wartime efforts, informing them of setbacks, combatting domestic and foreign disinformation campaigns, urging them to coordinate global actions, and readying them for the enormity of the sacrifices and efforts to come.

In this regard, it might not have been Franklin but Eleanor Roosevelt who provided the most enduring wisdom. “We do not have to become heroes overnight,” she once wrote. “Just a step at a time, meeting each thing that comes up, seeing it is not as dreadful as it appears, discovering that we have the strength to stare it down.”

The post A Wartime Footing appeared first on The American Interest.

All About Eve and the Rules of the Hollywood Game

All About Eve

Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz

1950, Criterion Collection, Blu-ray (2020), 138 minutes

If there’s one thing that most moviegoers can agree on, it’s that Hollywood today just ain’t what it used to be. The TV renaissance and streaming services have lured viewers away by the millions, iPhones allow anyone to film whatever they want, and most of the movies that people actually go to see are built on comic book franchises. In the public eye, meanwhile, Hollywood has become associated with Harvey Weinstein’s despicable record of serial harassment, intimidation, and rape—punished, at last, with a conviction. The fact that Weinstein finally got his comeuppance is definitely a good thing, and a testament to the bravery of those who spoke out, though we can only imagine what it might have looked like if Hollywood producers of old had ever been called out on their behavior. It’s widely understood that power-drunk egomania is endemic in Tinseltown; in that respect, at least, today’s Hollywood is just the way it used to be.

Indeed, there’s a whole subgenre of classics like Sunset Boulevard, the original A Star Is Born, In a Lonely Place, and Ace in the Hole that unsparingly demonstrates how the celluloid sausage gets made. One of the most eloquently damning is the 1950 film All About Eve, written and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, which has recently been given an extensive re-release by The Criterion Collection. Brilliantly written and impeccably acted, All About Eve works its cynical spell because it understands both what Hollywood pretends to be and what it actually is, a contrast that couldn’t be timelier.

All About Eve features three main characters, all of whom not only know what they want but what it takes to get it, and who don’t question the rules of the game. The titular Eve Harrington enters the story as an adoring (and slightly stalkerish) superfan of the grandly named Margo Channing, played with snarky sophistication by Bette Davis. Channing has lived her whole life in the theatre and has long been the toast of Broadway (a clear stand-in for Hollywood) but she also knows perfectly well that her days in the spotlight are numbered. The then 42-year-old Davis knew it, too. That a female star’s bankability is often reliant on her youthful good looks and implicit sex appeal is more openly discussed these days, but in the 1950s it took a veteran screenwriter like Mankiewicz to cop to it. Margot is amusingly blunt about the fact that her career has peaked as she knocks back martinis in her kitchen. “I am not twenty-ish. I am not thirty-ish. Three months ago, I was forty years old. Forty. Four oh—that slipped out. I hadn’t quite made up my mind to admit it. Now I suddenly feel as if I’ve taken all my clothes off.”

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Bette Davis and Gary Merrill in All About Eve (Wikimedia Commons)

Davis gives wisecracking Margot a dignity and a ferocity that bypasses victimhood and makes her a worthy adversary for all the (mostly male) hustlers and opportunists all around her. She gives as good as she gets in the perpetual battle of wits, which is an extension of the battle of the sexes, and helped make the film a camp classic. Having learned long ago what the industry is like from the inside, Margot doesn’t expect showbiz to be anything other than a ruthless competition that is always chasing after the next big thing and the payday it promises. When Ann Baxter’s adoring Eve inveigles her way into Margot’s dressing room, her starstruck awe wins the diva over. But there’s something a little unnerving about Eve’s obsession with Margot and her own sketchy personal history, where she attended plays over and over again until “the unreal seemed more real to me.” It isn’t just Margot’s glamor or talent that intrigues Eve but the applause she compels: “like waves of love pouring over the footlights and wrapping you up.”

Today, Eve could easily be addicted to social media and captivated by the idealized image of a celebrity culture that she wants so desperately to enter. Adrift in a sea of images, craving her chance to claim the admiration of an audience to validate her humdrum life, she sees Margot as her way into the world of finally being someone. Eve doesn’t just want to hang out with Margot, she wants to be Margot. As we see how far Eve will go to satisfy that craving, the film subtly suggests that it’s precisely this need for audience identification and validation that keeps the gears of the Hollywood dream machine running.

The third in this trio is the perpetually tuxedoed Addison De Witt, a sardonic theatre critic who relishes the power of what a sharply phrased review can do to a play’s chances. George Sanders, a notorious playboy in real life, effortlessly captures De Witt’s unctuous charm. De Witt is no high-minded aesthete; his influence provides him a way of being simultaneously within and above the hustle. Hollywood—and media in general—always needs someone to help stir up some buzz and De Witt is more than happy to oblige, as long as it’s done on his terms. He knows that Margot is on her way out, and that Eve is slowly working her way up, and he doesn’t hesitate to use these facts to his advantage. Why should he be caught up with scruples? As far as De Wit or Channing or Harrington are concerned, scruples just get in the way of how the world really works.

The then little-known Marilyn Monroe appears at a party scene at Margot’s house, which subtly juxtaposes the changing of the cultural guard. Margot is in a dark dress, tossing back martinis, and making wisecracks like “fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night.” Marilyn is in a glittering white gown, brimming with enthusiasm, and getting coached on which bigwig to go flirt with. She nods and listens in that famously faux naïve pose. Once she locates her mark she straightens up, squares her magnificent shoulders, and goes sashaying into history.

It’s an oddly prophetic moment given the subsequent trajectory of Monroe’s career. Part of the reason why she became so iconic is precisely because she knew how to play the game. That “dumb blonde” gave the public what they wanted, which is what made the producers money, and became incredibly rich and famous because of it until that very wealth and fame ate her alive. Marilyn offers another example of how America kills the things it loves. Margot is ultimately too streetwise to self-destruct like that, though the much younger Eve is more than happy to do whatever it takes to get her crown, even if she has to snatch it off of Margot’s head. We know by the end that it’s only a matter of time before the next adoring young fan will do the very same thing.

And this is what makes All About Eve so contemporary. Its witty distrust of what it really takes to make it big in Hollywood drifts through every frame like the smoke from the cigarettes the characters hold like stage props. This suavely unsentimental attitude to the City of Dreams was a revelation at the time, making the film a surprise hit and winning an armful of Oscars. (It’s the only time a movie has received four female acting nominations.) The film resonates even more now that the long overdue conversation about Hollywood’s self-satisfied complacency and the exploitative internal structures that reinforce it have been given a signal boost. As All About Eve demonstrates, so wryly but precisely, the rules of the Tinseltown game have been rigged for a long time.

The post All About Eve and the Rules of the Hollywood Game appeared first on The American Interest.

Shaping the Post-Pandemic Safety Net

In a recent New York Times op-ed considering the impact of coronavirus on the future of work, journalist Miriam Pawel cites the unparalleled prosperity that World War II brought to California and wonders if the outbreak “may create an inflection point of comparable significance.” Benefits such as paid sick days and housing for the homeless, which the current pandemic has brought to her state, Pawel predicts, could remain permanent once the disease has subsided. Similarly, journalists like Jada Yuan of the Washington Post and  Adam Harris of The Atlantic suggest that the $1,200 direct cash payments to individuals included in the pandemic relief bill vindicate Andrew Yang’s idea for a universal basic income and could presage its implementation on a larger scale.

As a strong believer in robust social safety nets, I wish I could share their optimism—but the history and ultimate fate of crisis-produced policies suggest otherwise.

Consider World War II as an example. The war, as Pawel suggests, did provide great impetus for social and economic progress not only in California but in many places across the country, but not everyone benefited equally or permanently. Particularly when it came to women, wartime breakthroughs proved to be transitory. For just a few years, women had access to well-paid industrial jobs and were heartily celebrated for stepping up—think of Rosie the Riveter. (It should be noted, however, that African-American women were largely excluded from the best paid, most highly skilled jobs, while Japanese-American women faced property expropriation and massive discrimination.) And to ensure that enough women would be available to take these jobs, the Federal government provided funding for more than 3,000 child care centers (including a model facility at the Kaiser Shipyards in Richmond, California), eventually serving 600,000 children nationwide.

Such job opportunities and public benefits were not only unprecedented but also challenged prevailing gender norms; women’s place was, after all, in the home. The American public accepted these innovations, however on the premise that they were critical to the war effort and would last “for the duration only.” And indeed, both disappeared soon after victory was declared. Federal funding for the children’s centers dried up, causing most to close their doors, even though hundreds of thousands of mothers continued to work outside the home. But they no longer held lucrative industrial jobs; these positions reverted to men as soon as they were demobilized. Further discouraging female employment, the GI Bill sparked the construction of thousands of housing developments in suburbs across the country. While affording millions of Americans the chance to become homeowners for the first time, these provisions also settled millions of women into roles as unpaid housewives. While some women welcomed this role, many were afflicted with the syndrome Betty Friedan would later call “the problem that has no name.”

As a feminist, I have often wondered why all those Rosies did not rise up to demand that they keep their good jobs and that the Federal government continue to support child care. Instead, it was their daughters who formed the massive women’s movement of the 1960s and ’70s and began to struggle for equality in the workplace and benefits such as child care to enable them to pursue education and careers and support their families. That struggle continues, of course—there is still a glaring shortage of child care in the United States, and American women have managed to push their earnings to only an estimated 82 percent of men’s.

As a historian, I have concluded that much of the postwar backsliding was due to a pervasive yearning for the status quo ante bellum. American men had fought bravely and risked their lives, many survivors bearing the scars of war to show for it, and they deserved all the rewards a grateful nation could bestow upon them. Confirming the slogan that women’s presence in industrial work and government-supported child care were intended to last “for the duration only,” opinion makers and political leaders supported restoring men to their positions as chief family breadwinners—particularly since women were busy replenishing the population with a passel of Baby Boomers. Perfunctorily thanking women for their service, trade unions ensured that men would replace women on the assembly line as factories returned to peacetime production.

Economic considerations and gender assumptions were both at play here; American political culture, too, stymied progress toward lasting social change. Congress had yet to legislate against any form of discrimination (Jim Crow was still firmly entrenched in the South), and there was a general reluctance to extend the welfare state to offer benefits like universal health care, much less child care. The GI Bill and expansion of the Veterans Administration were notable exceptions, but they could be explained by the unique moment in which they were passed, when patriotism ran so high that it could trump political reticence.

It is interesting to compare American welfare state development in the late 1940s with that in postwar Western Europe. With physical and economic recovery aided massively through the Marshall Plan, by the 1950s almost every nation in the region had instituted some form of universal health care, unemployment, and retirement insurance, and free public education (including universities). The greatest progress occurred in the Nordic countries, where social democracy had already gained a foothold during the interwar period. But even there, it must be said, women-friendly benefits did not abound. Nordic women had enjoyed paid maternity leave since the 1930s—a benefit granted more for pronatalist than for egalitarian reasons—but other policies lagged. Sweden, now much lauded for its excellent child care system, did not begin to offer the service until the mid-1970s, when the women’s caucus of the Social Democratic Party, building on a favorable 1968 report by a government commission, demanded it. The patterns and timing of child care policy in the other Nordic countries were similar, but none of them actively addressed discrimination against women in employment, with the result that their levels of gendered labor-force segmentation are still among the highest of OECD countries.

So what does this history suggest for the post-pandemic United States? For one thing, it is clear that no “new” rights and benefits, implemented under emergency conditions, are likely to be accepted automatically in the longer term. In both of the examples just discussed, social movements were key to putting specific policies on the agenda and mobilizing the political support needed to push them through. With regard to retaining paid sick leave, sufficient housing for the homeless, and a universal basic income, much will depend on the political climate that emerges (and that climate will, in turn, be shaped partially by how the pandemic unfolds and which measures, in retrospect, are seen to have been helpful).

Nostalgia for the pre-pandemic status quo could be diminished by awareness of how weaknesses in our safety net left the wealthiest country in the world unprepared for a public health crisis of this scope. But will this lead to an acceptance of the need for Federal coordination and intervention to repair and reinforce the safety net?

We have seen a preview of likely post-pandemic political alignments in the debate over the CARES bill in Congress. While Republicans have largely pushed for sending billions of dollars to big businesses with few conditions and little oversight, Democrats have fought for measures to protect individual workers, help states and cities meet local needs, enable businesses (small as well as large) to stay afloat, and strengthen the health care system. To be sure, some Republicans have also supported measures to help individuals; it was Mitt Romney who first proposed widely cutting $1,000 checks, and Senators Marco Rubio and Josh Hawley have also called for paid leave. But tellingly, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell insists, “This is not even a stimulus package. It is emergency relief.” By framing it this way, he seems to be emphasizing that the bill’s remedies—enormous as they are—will be temporary, meant to last “for the duration only.”

If the CARES Act—and whatever Federal legislation may follow—does prove to be successful, not only by enabling the country to get a better handle on the pandemic but also by preventing the complete collapse of the economy, Democrats should be ready to recast its meaning and build on its underlying principles to make permanent gains. Trump will no doubt seek to claim credit for its success and assert that the outcome somehow vindicates his chaotic approach to governance, but Democrats must ensure that the public understands the importance of having a strong welfare state—one nimble enough to respond quickly to dire emergencies and enabled by public institutions that enjoy robust, long-term political and monetary support, and the best scientific expertise. Paid sick days and housing for the homeless would be but two of the benefits such a state would offer.

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