Vox: Why Democrats have no foreign policy ideas

This isn’t because Democrats don’t have any policy ideas in general. In fact, the party is teeming with them: Various Democrats in Congress, including some 2020 presidential prospects, have advanced new ideas on issues ranging from tweaking Obamacare by allowing all Americans to buy-in to Medicaid, to addressing structural racism in the criminal justice system by paying states to reduce their prison populations, to stopping the rise of monopolies in the tech field by requiring the Federal Trade Commission and Federal Communications Commission to protect small tech companies from anti-competitive practices. On many of these issues, the party has moved substantially to the left of where it has been in the past. [...]

When Trump announced his decision to keep fighting in Afghanistan in late August, for example, the party had no unified alternative plan for the country. Leading 2020 hopefuls like Sens. Cory Booker and Kamala Harris didn’t even issue a statement on America’s longest-running war. The most recent Democratic Party standard bearer, Hillary Clinton, sounded very similar to Republicans on foreign policy. On Syria, for example, her plan — imposing a no fly zone over a swath of the country and increasing US support for rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad — is strikingly similar to ideas you hear today from congressional Republicans like Sens. John McCain and Lindsey Graham. [...]

Congressional staffs and party officials often have their hands full just doing their day-to-day jobs, and true academic scholarship typically doesn’t focus on developing actionable policy ideas. Think tanks bridge the gap, translating academic knowledge into concrete proposals policymakers can use. They’re also a place to produce talent, to groom officials who can take new positions when there is a transfer of power. [...]

A major part of the problem is the money: Rich liberal donors were interested in funding national security policy work after the 2003 Iraq invasion turned into a fiasco, but their interest has petered out in recent years. Another part of the problem appears to be liberalism itself: The liberal base is highly divided over the use of American military power and Washington’s place in the world. [...]

The tools of foreign policy also sit uneasily with the liberal conscience. Diplomacy and foreign aid are fine, but economic sanctions and the use of military force will always be controversial among people on the left. Think about the fraught debates in 2011 over humanitarian intervention in Libya, for example — in which some liberals argued that the US had a duty to stop Muammar Qaddafi from killing while others warned of the consequences of another war for regime change.

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Vox: Why Trump keeps doing unpopular things to please his base

With his controversial comments on the white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, his pardon of former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and now potentially his sunsetting of a popular program that gave young unauthorized immigrants work permits, the president seems increasingly focused on pleasing the 37 percent or so of the public that approves of him, rather than reaching out to any of the 57 percent who disapprove. [...]

Furthermore, Trump’s base already loves him — the vast majority of Republican voters continue to say they approve of the job he’s doing. If he already has his base, why, then, does he need to keep doing new things that please them but repel the majority of the public? [...]

Over the past few years, Trump has deliberately constructed a political brand for himself that he wants to protect. So with moves like the sheriff Joe Arpaio pardon, he could be partly trying to signal to his core supporters that the swamp hasn’t changed him, and that he’s still willing to defy political elites with controversial moves. [...]

Just before his firing from the White House, Steve Bannon made a case to this effect in an interview with the American Prospect. “The Democrats — the longer they talk about identity politics, I got ’em. I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats,” he said.

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The New York Review of Books: Beijing’s Bold New Censorship

Authoritarians, in China and elsewhere, normally have preferred to dress their authoritarianism up in pretty clothes. Lenin called the version of dictatorship he invented in 1921 “democratic centralism,” but it became clear, especially after Stalin and Mao inherited the system, that centralism, not democracy, was the point. More recent examples of prettifying include “The Republic of Zimbabwe,” “The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” and several others. What would be wrong with plainer labels? The Authoritarian State of Zimbabwe? The Shining Dictatorship of Korea? That dictators avoid candidly describing their regimes shows that, at least in their use of words, they acknowledge the superiority of freedom and democracy. [...]

The art of controlling speech while avoiding the appearance of doing so has lasted through the ensuing decades. In the 2000s, explicit instructions went out to provincial officials that they avoid putting any censorship or blacklisting into writing. To kill an article, officials should get on the telephone and instruct editors orally.

Similarly, serious speech-crime offenders—people being sent to prison for years—were charged under face-saving euphemisms: tax evasion, fraud, even “blocking traffic,” or simply “picking quarrels.” The most fearful charge, “inciting subversion of the state,” which is reserved for extreme cases, is the only one that comes close to saying what is actually happening. [...]

In 2013, his government’s “Document Nine” warned Party members about the dangers of “universal values,” “Western-style journalism,” “civil society,” and other such ideas. Document Nine was technically classified, but it was distributed within the Party to millions of people and eventually was leaked outside the Party. In July 2015, a nationwide crackdown on human rights lawyers was similarly bald. Face-saving references to the lawyers as “thugs” or “swindlers” hardly mattered; the real message, which everyone understood, was: Here comes the Party’s power. 

Social Europe: Brexit Follies

The economic case for Brexit is based on false, damagingly nationalistic presumptions and premises. Contrary to what Brexiteers suggest, there is no best way to maximise the economic benefits of leaving. Brexit is a ‘lose-lose’ proposition for Britain and the EU, when seen from any perspective, other than the rose-tinted one of reviving the UK’s much-vaunted (but illusory) genius for independent economic success through freer trade. [...]

Look below at the contrast between: (a) Britain’s record of economic performance from the 1950s up to 1973, when it was outside the EU; and (b) its record from 1974-2015 after it became a member. It failed miserably in the first period (apart from the blip of immediate post-war reconstruction) but performed remarkably well in the second. The difference is chalk and cheese.

In round figures, the British contribution to the EU budget is a net £10 billion out of total public expenditure of around £750 billion. That is less than 1.4% — or in the realm of errors and omissions. The UK government wastes more than that through mismanagement in several key departments every year. [...]

Brexiters claim that the UK is constrained by the EU’s ‘protectionism’. But the UK benefits from it by having privileged access to a market of over 460 million consumers, which is over US$18 trillion in size – larger than the US or China. Through the EU, the UK has workable and profitable trade arrangements with at least 60 other non-EU countries. They account for over 90% of world trade excluding the EU.

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Social Europe: Four Lessons For Europe From Italy’s Experience With Populism

Over the past two decades, Italy has been one of the strongest and most enduring markets for populist parties in Western Europe. While in other European countries the rise or the emergence of populism is a recent development or has occurred only occasionally, it is a persistent feature of Italian politics. In the sixteen years since 2001, Italy has had populist governments for roughly half of this period (eight and a half years) if one counts the three governments led by Silvio Berlusconi that were in power from 2001 until 2005, 2005 to 2006, and 2008 to 2011. Furthermore, in the last Italian general election in 2013, populist parties (People of Freedom/Forza Italia, Lega Nord, and the Five Star Movement) gained over 50% of the vote. [...]

First, there have been implications for the checks and balances that exist within the Italian political system. Populist parties have repeatedly attacked the work of judges, notably in the case of Silvio Berlusconi. They have also had a sizeable impact on the role of the media in Italian politics. This is true both of Berlusconi’s Forza Italia and the Five Star Movement, who have both posed a threat to the freedom and autonomy of media organisations.

Second, there has been a general oversimplification of political discourse in Italy. The debate about the cost of politics is a good example. Initially introduced by the Northern League and Forza Italia in the 1990s, complaints over the cost of politics have also become one of the most successful topics for Beppe Grillo to mobilise support around. Yet despite the presence of this debate for two decades in Italian politics, the political attention it has received has failed to produce significant savings (as shown, for instance, by several expensive and incomplete attempts to abolish provincial councils). There is cross-party consensus among the main political parties on the need to reduce the number of MPs. This implies a certain reduction of political representation, while the reduction in terms of the cost of politics is rather uncertain.

Third, Italy has experienced the spread of populist themes and frames even among non-populist parties. In the last few years, the success of populist campaigning among citizens has pushed even mainstream parties to react using populist rhetoric, styles and sometimes also populist content of their own. An example would be a much-shared Facebook post produced by Matteo Renzi on migration, which stated that ‘we need to free ourselves from a sense of guilt. We do not have the moral duty to welcome into Italy people who are worse off than ourselves’.

The Atlantic: The Merkel Effect

2017 was expected to be Merkel’s toughest campaign yet: to start, it’s the year when Europe’s far-right populist parties, including the anti-immigration Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), have sought to showcase their electoral strength amid a growing backlash against globalization and Europe’s refugee crisis. When Merkel announced her reelection bid last December, she did so battered by more than a year of tough criticism over her open-door policy toward refugees, and facing a certain degree of voter fatigue after hitting her 12th year in office.

And then came Merkel’s main challenger, Martin Schulz, a political “newcomer” from the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD) initially lauded as a charismatic and effective contrast to Merkel. After Schulz entered the race in January, support for her party dropped into the low 30s, putting her dead even with the SPD for the first time in more than five years. The German political world was abuzz over the “Schulz effect”: the new candidate’s widespread appeal and ability to take on Merkel to give the country new blood in the chancellery. “We were getting a little bit afraid and uneasy at the beginning of the year when Martin Schulz was introduced as a candidate,” Peter Beyer, a member of the Bundestag from Merkel’s CDU, told me. “The polls were completely different … he was a star.” [...]

What’s more, since the SPD is currently serving in a “grand coalition” with the CDU in Germany’s parliament, Schulz has struggled to explain just how his party differs from Merkel’s and why voters should change the status quo for something that appears on its face relatively similar. “Because the Social Democrats are part of that coalition government, that is always a very difficult situation,” Alexander Mauss, a Berlin-based political pollster, told me. “You can’t really oppose the politics or the policy of the governing coalition because you are part of it.”

That challenge for Schulz was apparent in three state elections across Germany in the spring, all of which were seen as potential bellwethers for September, and all of which delivered victories for the CDU (and by extension for Merkel). In Saarland, a tiny western state along the French border that voted in March, Merkel’s party expected to face a tough challenge, but instead gained 5 points over its previous performance there. And in May, the CDU ousted SPD governments in both Schleswig-Holstein and North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state and an SPD stronghold. “For us it was extremely good to learn that we are able to actually win again, elections on the Länder [state] level,” Beyer, who hails from North Rhine-Westphalia, said.

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The Atlantic: When Will Voyager Stop Calling Home?

Far from it. After the Voyagers completed their tours of the outer planets in the 1980s, giving humanity its first real look at Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, they continued on to the outer reaches of the solar system. In August 2012, Voyager 1 left the system entirely, emerging from inside the protective bubble formed by the sun’s wind and exiting into interstellar space. Voyager 2 is on its way out; the spacecraft is currently coasting through the heliosheath, the outermost layer of the sun’s bubble. Voyagers 1 and 2 are currently about 13 billion and 10 billion miles from Earth, unfathomable distances that mean little more to us terrestrials than giant numbers on a page. [...]

The Voyagers transmit data to Earth every day. The spacecraft collect information about their surrounding environment in real time and then send it back through radio signals. Voyager 1 data takes about 19 hours to reach Earth, and signals from Voyager 2 about 16 hours. (For comparison, it takes the rovers on Mars 20 minutes on average to call home.) The signals get picked up by NASA’s Deep Space Network, a collection of powerful antennae around the world that communicate with dozens of missions. [....]

The DSN spends between four and seven hours per day listening for the faint pings of the spacecraft. The power of the transmitter aboard the spacecraft is similar in wattage to that of a refrigerator light bulb. But the DSN is sensitive enough to hear its messages, and, if necessary, can become even more sensitive. If Earth needs a bigger ear for Voyager in the future, the DSN can make its facilities work as a single array, with more collecting power.  

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Slate: Kate Middleton and Japan’s Princess Mako Showcase Two Different Gendered Models of Royal Succession

But of the 19 people in the Japanese royal family, just five are men, including 83-year-old Emperor Akihito, who plans to abdicate his position next year. He’ll pass the throne to his eldest son, Crown Prince Naruhito. Naruhito has no sons, so he’ll pass it to his younger brother Akishino. Akishino’s only son and Akihito’s only male grandchild, 10-year-old Hisahito, is next in line. If he doesn’t have any sons, there will be no one left to take his place.

The fast-approaching end of Akihito’s reign isn’t the only cause for concern among those invested in the future of Japanese monarchy. On Sunday morning, Princess Mako, Akihito’s oldest grandchild and Akishino’s oldest child, announced her engagement to a commoner. Japanese law dictates that male royals can marry outside the imperial family and retain their status, but women cannot. When 25-year-old Mako marries legal assistant Kei Komuro, her college boyfriend, she’ll finally get the right to vote but forfeit her allowance from the government, her title, and her last name.

A large majority of Japanese residents—86 percent, according to a May 2017 poll—believe that women should be eligible for the throne, and 59 percent think the children of female family members should also count in the line of succession. Sixty-one percent want princesses to be able to stay in the imperial family after their marriages to commoners, helping to expand the family tree as those couples grew their own branches of descendants. Now, Japanese legislators must decide which is more important: the continued existence of a dwindling imperial bloodline or its strict patrilineal heritage. [...]

By some accounts, even Emperor Akihito supports such a change. Empresses are not unheard of in Japan: Though emperors used to have concubines to increase the likelihood of producing male heirs, eight women in the family have sat on the throne in the 125 recorded generations of the imperial family. They were largely considered stand-ins until patrilineal successors could take over. There are few good arguments beside tradition for the endurance of government-supported monarchs, and even fewer for the restriction of the throne to men. Mako could just as easily perform the duties of an empress, minimal as they are, as her grandfather, and imperial genes will persist in her future children as much as they will in her brother’s. There’s another word for a tradition that would rather reintegrate families who have been commoners for generations into the imperial line than treat women as equally valued members: sexism.

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Quartz: Playing board games can make you a nicer person with better relationships

It’s easy to see why this would have widespread appeal in the toxic, deeply divided political climate of the US—under a president obsessed with the concept of winning, who champions the view that inequalities are the result of individual moral failing. Indeed, board games have a history of engaging directly with the question of how social structures influence outcomes. The original version of Monopoly was designed as a liberal critique of capitalism.

Another significant feature of board games is that they require several people to sit down in the same room together and concentrate on a shared experience in real time. That is becoming increasingly rare in a world in which we often see our friends and loved ones more on social media than in real life. A recent Atlantic story outlined the sharp rise in teen isolation as an entire generation sits in their rooms, glued to their smartphones, interacting via app. They report higher levels of depression and anxiety than earlier generations, too. [...]

Beyond Gen Con, adults around the world seem to be increasingly interested in making board games a standard leisure activity for grownups. Sales of board games are booming in the US and around the world, and board games were the single most-funded item on Kickstarter as of 2016. So-called German or “euro games”—like Settlers of Catan or Carcassonne—are leading the board game renaissance. Such games involve a high degree of analytical strategy and operate on a learning curve, which makes them more satisfying each time you play. The games move along quickly because each turn requires interaction with multiple players; you don’t just sit around and wait for your turn to roll the dice.

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