The Guardian: The end of Atlanticism: has Trump killed the ideology that won the cold war?

Why, then, has the idea of the transatlantic relationship as the axis of world stability stayed around? Since the mid-60s, many of the structures that formed the basis of the original “post-world order” have eroded or disappeared. The US no longer heaps billions of dollars in aid upon Europe, as it did before 1951; international currencies are no longer tied to an external monetary policy designed in New Hampshire, as they were before 1971; countries that were once part of the Soviet Union are themselves Nato members. Even as the alliance between the US and Europe has waned, the concept of a free world built on transatlantic pillars has lived on as a powerful political idea. This is not because of the partnership itself, poorly defined and shifting, as much an ideological construction as an institution. Is it possible that the panic about the collapse of Atlanticism is really a panic about who is in charge? Lurking underneath the turbulent Atlantic waters lies nostalgia for American power and the idea that a few well-educated men could ensure world security. [...]

I hope I will not sound too much like a blinkered American when I say that the emphasis on the “relationship” with the US came as something of a surprise. It was hard to imagine walking into a party in Washington and listening to everyone discussing the finer points of German foreign policy. The relationship seemed poignantly asymmetrical. “You initiate most communication”, “he or she never returns the favour”, “you constantly feel stressed out” are three of eight painful signs that could mean you are in a one-sided relationship, according to a blogpost I read that year, which seemed to describe the feelings in Berlin as much as any doomed romance. [...]

Advertisement If transatlanticism continues to have a powerful hold on the foreign policy imagination, it is not because of presidents shaking hands with prime ministers. The relationship thrives in the many networks rallying for its existence in the face of possible decline. “By 1965 it was possible to list 10 major private groupings which had worked or were still working to promote the Atlantic idea,” historian David Ellwood has written, including the Atlantic Treaty Association, the Bilderberg Group and the Atlantic Institute in Paris. Some of these organisations have long shut their doors, but many still publish papers and sponsor research. As Harvard history professor Charles Maier has argued, Atlanticism brought with it a “new Atlantic elite”. “Transatlantic trips, common foreign policy forums, a network of clubby associations for talk and mutual self-regard created in effect a transnational ruling group … The most prominent members of the Atlantic elite achieved semi-sacral status: Marshall, McCloy, Lovett, Spaak, Monnet, and other ‘wise men’ who exhorted to common effort and cooperation.”

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Aeon: There is no middle ground for deep disagreements about facts

Deep disagreements are, in a sense, irresolvable. It is not that Amy is incapable of following Ben’s arguments or is generally insensitive to evidence. Rather, Amy has a set of beliefs that insulates her from the very sort of evidence that would be crucial for showing her to be mistaken. No line of argument or reasoning that Ben could sincerely present to Amy would rationally convince her. What should their response be? Should they approach the disagreement with the same intellectual humility of Frank and Gita, who rationally take the fact that they disagree as good evidence that someone’s made a mistake? [...]

It is because we use our cognition to support factual beliefs or value commitments that are central to our identity, particularly in situations where we feel that our identity is threatened. This makes us seek out evidence in ways that support our worldview, we remember supportive evidence better, and we are much less critical of it. Counter-evidence, meanwhile, is subjected to fierce critical scrutiny, or ignored altogether. Factual beliefs can therefore become markers for cultural identities: by asserting your belief that climate change is a myth, you signal your allegiance to a particular moral, cultural and ideological community. This might in part be the psychological dynamic that drives the polarisation over climate, and similar mechanisms might have a role in other politicised social disagreements. [...]

As the political philosopher John Rawls noted in Political Liberalism (1993), a liberal society largely rescinds from attempting to control the flow of information and the minds of its citizens. Therefore disagreements are bound to be pervasive (though Rawls had religious, moral and metaphysical disagreements in mind, not factual disagreements). What is particularly troubling about some societal disagreements is that they concern factual matters that tend to be almost impossible to resolve since there is no agreed-upon method to do so, all while relating to important policy decisions. Generally, theorising about liberal democracy has focused largely on moral and political disagreements, while tacitly assuming that there would be no important factual disagreements to consider. It has been taken for granted that we would eventually agree about the facts, and the democratic processes would concern how we should adjudicate our differences in values and preferences. But this assumption is no longer adequate, if it ever was.

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The Atlantic: How One 'Political Wunderkind' Is Outmaneuvering the Far Right

One year later, that assessment still looks valid: Kurz remains popular among the Austrian electorate and, were another election to be held today, polls indicate that his ÖVP may even fare better than it did last October. What’s more, the coalition Kurz built with the far-right FPÖ last December is remarkably stable despite a string of scandals implicating top FPÖ ministers and politicians. Somewhat paradoxically, Kurz seems to have figured out how to simultaneously keep the peace with his far-right partners and make it clear that he and his party are completely separate from the more unsavory elements of their rhetoric. [...]

It helps that, on what is perhaps the dominant political issue in Austria these days—migration—the ÖVP and FPÖ are essentially in lockstep. Over the course of the year, they’ve proposed initiatives and discussed the issue on the European level in a way that makes it clear they are in agreement, far more than the ÖVP was with the SPÖ in the last government. In fact, apart from a debate over a proposed ban on smoking in bars and restaurants, which did briefly cause some tensions between the two earlier this year, there aren’t many issues that divide the coalition partners, policy-wise. “There should be, but there aren’t any,” said Christian Rainer, the editor in chief of the Austrian news magazine Profil. “We don’t really get the feeling that there are any fights between those two parties, not even behind the scenes.”

The idea that the government speaks with a single voice, however, only goes so far. When a new scandal involving an FPÖ minister or politician has come up—and there have been several this year—Kurz and his ÖVP have made it clear that this was the FPÖ’s problem alone. In January, when the FPÖ’s top candidate in Lower Austria was found to have ties to a Nazi-era songbook that featured lyrics about murdering Jews, Kurz said on Twitter that the government would have “zero tolerance” for anti-Semitism and racism, but otherwise didn’t comment much. This summer, Interior Minister Herbert Kickl accepted a gift of two police horses from Hungary’s Viktor Orbán, a controversial move given criticism of Orbán’s illiberal reforms back home. Then, in August, Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl (also nominated by the FPÖ) caused controversy when she gave a warm welcome to Russian President Vladimir Putin at her wedding, hitting the dance floor with the Russian leader. (Kurz, too, attended the wedding; he even caught a ride back to the airport with Putin.) [...]

The Kickl situation highlighted the inherent contradictions in Kurz’s strategy: For the first time, it seemed like he had no choice but to speak out against an FPÖ minister within his own government. At the same time, though, political observers I spoke with in Vienna seemed to believe this was hardly a sign of the government’s imminent demise. In large part that’s because there’s arguably no truly viable alternative for voters who want to oppose Kurz’s government. The center-left SPÖ has spent the past year more involved in an internal identity crisis than focused on mounting a real opposition to Kurz; the Peter Pilz List, headed in the elections by the ex-Greens MP Peter Pilz, was rocked with sexual-harassment scandals that forced Pilz himself to resign; the Greens fell out of parliament last fall, giving them little platform nationally to oppose the government. “There is no opposition within the parliament,” Rainer said. “There’s no one anyone could turn to, so people are still very much in favor of both [the ÖVP and FPÖ].”

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The Atlantic: Why the U.S. Can’t Quit Saudi Arabia

The U.S.-Saudi relationship was already attracting fierce criticism in some quarters because of the carnage of the war in Yemen; now the gruesome suspicions surrounding the fate of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who lived in the United States and wrote for The Washington Post, have brought a bipartisan chorus demanding answers and threatening sanctions. Meanwhile, both the kingdom and, it seems, President Donald Trump are scrambling for a way out of the crisis. Trump declared Monday that King Salman had told him he knew nothing about the incident, and the president speculated that it could have been the work of “rogue” actors.[...]

Yet the shared interests remain powerful, and have sustained the relationship through numerous crises in the past—including a 1973 oil embargo during the Arab-Israeli war and the revelation in the wake of the September 11 attacks that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi. Since then, the Saudis have positioned themselves as a key ally in the fight against al-Qaeda and then isis (albeit too slowly for many officials and analysts), in particular when terrorists targeted the kingdom itself. The 9/11 Commission Report noted in 2004 that “cooperation had already become significant, but after the bombings in Riyadh in 2003”—in which more than 30 people died when Islamic militants attacked residential compounds in the city—“it improved much more. The Kingdom openly discussed the problem of radicalism, criticized the terrorists as religiously deviant, reduced official support for religious activity overseas, and publicized arrests.” The report added that in 2004, the Saudi ambassador to the United States called for a “jihad” against terrorists.

The period highlighted what the counterterrorism expert Daniel Byman has called in congressional testimony the “paradox” of U.S.-Saudi counterterrorism cooperation: “On the one hand, the Saudi government is a close partner of the United States on counterterrorism. On the other hand, Saudi support for an array of preachers and nongovernment organizations contributes to an overall climate of radicalization, making it far harder to counter violent extremism.”

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Jacobin Magazine: The Resentful and the Damned

In towns where only five years ago Salvini’s party defined the locals as terroni, a racialized term of abuse against Southerners considered akin to “Albanians” or “Moroccans,” it is now combining a new reactionary common sense with an older conservative base. Having risen from zero to high single figures in Southern regions at the general election seven months ago, the Lega is now polling 22 percent in the bottom half of Italy that stretches from Abruzzo to Sicily. Yet this is no uniform picture: the Lega vote remains wealthier and older than the general population; in the South, it is winning more support off other right-wing parties than from the Five Star Movement, an eclectic force which enjoys particularly strong backing among white-collar workers and the unemployed.[...]

Such rhetoric is today echoed by the hard-right Interior Minister’s coalition partner; after Lucano’s arrest, and the announcement that funding for migrant reception would be cut off, Salvini’s undersecretary Carlo Sibilia (Five Star) wrote a blog entitled “Riace was no model: time’s up for the immigration business.” If a handful of Five Star figures not in government (such as parliamentary speaker Roberto Fico) do defend immigrants, this direct combination of anti-corruption and anti-immigration politics has always been a potent ingredient in the movement’s brew.[...]

Despite occasional accusations of vote-buying made during the election campaign, notably in Naples’s Scampia district, it would be a vast exaggeration to suggest that the Lega’s base in the far south is dependent on organized crime. It has, instead, succeeded in cohering behind itself more legitimate networks of power, as well as parts of the activist base of right-wing and far-right parties of older vintage. [...]

Anti-racist voices are beleaguered, as are all those that seek to unite workers on the basis of their economic interests rather than promote the war between the poor. The glue of the Lega’s support, across class divides, is weaponized resentment; those whose social status is in decline, or challenged, are mobilized behind a nakedly reactionary agenda in order to blame those who stand even lower. Rather like the Northern, and then Southern Italian immigrants who gradually became an accepted part of US society, the latest-comers in the Lega’s own ranks can be among the most aggressive in policing the boundaries of race, identity, and “who belongs.”

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Quartzy: IKEA investigates why so many of us don't feel at home in our own homes

After interviewing nearly 23,000 respondents in 22 countries, IKEA’s ethnographers say that five components need to be present for one to feel “at home” in any space: privacy, security, comfort, ownership, and belonging. For many, these five emotional needs are no longer fulfilled by a single place. “Our physical homes are getting smaller, smarter, busier and noisier,” the report states. “All of this impacts on how successfully a single space can deliver what we need from it—functionally and emotionally. When we can’t get what we need at home, we head outside.”[...]

But ambitions have changed since, explains Jackson. “A decade ago, a dream home was designed to wow your friends and neighbors,” she says. “Today, it’s designed to house your relatives. Or your Airbnb guests. And also be your workplace. Homebuilders say one of the biggest selling points in 2018 isn’t a three-car garage or a grand entryway—it’s a home with flexibility.”

Feeling untethered to a particular address doesn’t necessarily have to be dour. Creating a sense of home in multiple places—real, virtual or imagined—can arguably even foster a sense of freedom. “We discovered a new behavior, where people use a network of spaces and places, both within and beyond the four walls [of their homes], as part of their homemaking experience,” says IKEA researcher Maria Jonsson. “We believe that this expanded notion of life at home gives people more opportunities to create the feeling of home, no matter where or how they live.”

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Quartz: Sexism isn’t just bad for women—it’s bad for democracy

The findings were based on in-depth interviews of 123 women in European parliaments (81 of them MPs) from 45 European countries. More than 85% of the female members of parliament interviewed in the report said that they had suffered “psychological violence” during their time in office. Almost 47% had been threatened with rape, physical violence, or death either at work or online. Over 58% had been targeted for sexist abuse online.[...]

This problem is not specific to Europe. A 2016 report from the same organization covering the five regions of the world found that daily sexism and gender-based violence were “universal and systemic problems in the world of parliaments.”

It also showed that “sexism, harassment and violence against female MPs had the short- and long- term consequences of hindering women’s access to leadership positions and their full contribution to political processes,” they wrote. “In this respect, the systemic occurrence of these problems in parliaments is prejudicial to democratic institutions and to democracy itself.”

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Politico: How to break the Brexit impasse: Reunite Ireland

Add this all up, and it’s getting hard to avoid the conclusion that Brexit would be a lot easier for the British if Northern Ireland were to vote to break away from the U.K. and rejoin the rest of the island — an eventuality made possible by the Good Friday Agreement, which allows for a so-called border poll, “if at any time it appears likely” that a majority of Northern Ireland would support reunification.[...]

The DUP’s fundamentalist Christian viewpoint also doesn’t sit well with many in the north of Ireland who look to the south and see a modern, pluralist, inclusive society that has passed referendums on marriage equality and reproductive rights; rights opposed by the DUP.[...]

That doesn’t even take into consideration higher economic activity rates, better wages and an industrial output in the Republic that is 10 times that of Northern Ireland. A united Ireland in which the average annual wage is €45,000 rather than €30,000 isn’t looking too shabby to many unionists.[...]

For the first time in 21 years since the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, there is neither an Assembly sitting in Stormont, nor are there any talks or political initiatives being pushed by Secretary of State Karen Bradley in order to get the institutions up and running again.

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Haaretz: Will the Khashoggi 'Murder' Bring Down Saudi’s Crown Prince?

The 33-year-old Mohammed bin Salman has gotten away with quite a lot since his elevation just 16 months ago to the role of heir-apparent to the throne. While praised as the reformist behind measures like allowing women to drive, he detained dozens of members of the royal family and top business leaders at the Ritz Carlton until they agreed to pay financial settlements for unspecified “violations;” has arrested and imprisoned scores of human rights and women’s rights activists; pursued a war in neighboring Yemen where routine flouting of human rights and international battlefield rules have led to the death of at least 10,000 civilians and displaced an estimated 2 million; blockaded and isolated the neighboring sultanate of Qatar, and is yet to complete contracts binding him to a commitment to $110 billion in defense purchasesfrom the United States. [...]

Riyadh certainly has never been known for its respect for human rights. But even Saudi Arabia hasn’t typically operated in such an unrestrained way. What’s changed? Part of it is a new generation of leaders trying to muscle their way into power. Still, it may be too early to predict with certainty whether this new-look leadership will revert to the royals’ more trusted old style of slow, evolutionary progress toward goals designed to preserve rather than shatter the status quo. MbS, it would seem, may simply be unready to assume the reins of power. [...]

Already, MbS has lost some key allies or supporters who should be central to his aims. His vaunted Davos in the Desert conference this month was supposed to play a key role in launching his Vision 2030 development plan. But in the days since the disappearance of Khashoggi and continued Saudi foot-dragging in uncovering the source and methods of the attack, the withdrawal of major sponsors and leading executives have left the entire enterprise in limbo.

Whether MbS is actually the individual able to take up the challenge of reforming Saudi Arabia and leading it is becoming increasingly questionable. The fact is, he rules neither alone nor unchallenged. There is a process and there are certain red lines that MbS may have crossed in the Khashoggi affair if he is to win the support of leading royals. Perhaps the most important is not to call too much unfortunate attention to yourself or the kingdom. Saudi Arabia has spent quite literally a king’s ransom donations to leading institutions in major Western nations, especially the United States, to make sure that this image is never irreparably tarnished.

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