Politics

Book Review: Bremmer, Ian (2015), Superpower: Three Choices for America’s Role in the World

August 15, 2016 by Strife Staff

Reviewed by: Alexandria Reid

Bremmer, I. Superpower: Three Choices for America’s Role in the World, ( London: Portfolio Penguin), 2015. ISBN:978 0 24121 677 4

In his latest book, written with America’s 2016 election in mind, policy pundit and LinkedIn favourite Ian Bremmer laid out three competing visions of America’s future role in the world. Deliberately written in layman’s terms, he asked Americans to consider foreign policy when casting their vote. To aid this process, he included what one reviewer dubbed the kind of multiple choice quiz that belongs in an issue of Cosmo at the start of the book. [1] It is the kind of quiz that might be used to assess your personality and tell you which moisturiser to buy accordingly, except instead of your star sign, he wants to know your views on China’s threat to America, the concept of American leadership and ‘America’s biggest problem in the Middle East’. [2]

Offering an unforgiving portrait of Obama’s foreign policy strategy – or lack thereof – Bremmer argues that today’s ‘Question Mark America’ is causing allies and enemies alike to take unnecessary and destabilising geopolitical risks. America is not yet fully in decline, he diagnoses, but Obama’s foreign policy improvisation threatened to change that. Published before anyone had seriously toyed with the previously unfathomable rise of Donald Trump, Bremmer wanted the electorate to put an end to the indecision of America’s post-Cold War presidents by demanding a clear foreign policy strategy from the 2016 candidates. With Trump’s populist foreign policy revealed, perhaps now he regrets ever asking?

Bremmer’s diagnosis of a declining America is deceptively simple, instinctively appealing and therefore utterly convincing at first glance. Whether addressing an elusive threshold for intervention in Syria in 2013, or a once-sovereign border in Crimea and Ukraine, the ambiguous nature of U.S. intentions leaves other players unsure where to locate America’s increasingly retrenched line in the sand. Simultaneously, he projects an America that is overstretched, burdened with leadership and receiving none of the benefits that justify taking the risk. Bremmer’s overarching message is that American foreign policy today jeopardises both domestic and international security. Worse still, it’s leading to America’s preventable decline. The prognosis almost goads people to demand not just an outline of a foreign policy strategy, but one which will Make America Great Again.

The remedy for American decline is an informed choice on foreign policy. Once you’ve completed your quiz, Bremmer handily lays out three options to choose from: ‘Indispensable America’, ‘Moneyball America’ and ‘Independent America’.

Indispensable, the most familiar of the three, is in essence a proposal for the reclamation of the post-1945 American leadership role that has been half-abandoned in America’s recent incertitude. Embodying Neoconservative ideals, but deliberately avoiding the pejorative connotations that come with the use of the label, Indispensable America continues to police world order whilst exporting its liberal values. Why should America bear the burden of making the world safe for democracy? Here, Bremmer could have easily answered in the words of Franklin D. Roosevelt; isolationism would lead America to become ‘a lone island in a world dominated by the philosophy of force.’ [3]

Moneyball, by contrast, sees this approach to world affairs as prohibitively expensive in both blood and treasure, and instead advocates ‘a cold-blooded, interest-driven’ strategy akin to that of the Oakland A’s manager Billy Beane after whom Michael Lewis wrote the book ‘Moneyball’. Moneyball America’s interests are defined narrowly, epitomised by the key phrase ‘America’s value, not its values’. Accordingly, its finite resources must be efficiently invested in strategic partnerships, predominantly with China, even at the expense of failing to support democracy abroad or relationship commitments in regions including Europe and the Middle East.

Independent America’s world outlook differs from both alternatives. In one of the more memorable lines of the book Bremmer suggests that ‘[i]t’s time for a new declaration of independence—a proclamation of emancipation from the responsibility to solve everyone else’s problems.’ [4] Much effort is expended to assure the reader that this is not a return to the disastrous isolationism of the 1930s, rather, it is about adopting an unambiguous stance of non-interventionism and leading by example. By making others take responsibility for their own security at last, America can focus on its own values by ‘perfecting democracy at home’, rebuilding American infrastructure and keeping more money in the taxpayers’ pockets. America cannot afford the exceptional role of policing the world, nor should it, because it forces the nation to compromise the liberal constitutional values that made it exceptional in the first place.

Only at the very end does Bremmer reveal that he prefers a foreign policy strategy that delivers an Independent America. Employing the Goldilocks method of decision-making, Bremmer infers that if Indispensable is too expensive and can no longer attract domestic support, and if Moneyball is too secular for a society which still believes in their own exceptionalism, then, in his eyes, Independent America is just right. Picking the option that most resembles a dangerous isolationism might come as a surprise to those who know Bremmer as the founder and President of the Eurasia Group, the world’s leading political risk consultancy.

Bremmer’s personal choice aside, it is the way in which he approaches the debate that should concern anyone reading Superpower. The debate the book hopes to incite is an important one, and candidate and voter alike would benefit from a meaningful and accessible discussion about foreign policy in America today. Yet, this is not what Bremmer offers. Instead, he provides a deeply flawed book which infantilises the reader under the guise of accessibility. This does the reader a disservice because it fails to provide them with the tools of analysis to judge whether Trump or Clinton are capable of actually delivering an Independent or Indispensable America with their outlined policies.

Bremmer’s book might help you decide what you want if you were not sure in the first place, but it will not help you make a reasonable choice about how to get it. By offering three mutually exclusive and easily recognisable categories, Bremmer seeks to eliminate the essence of the grand strategic conundrum that has seen America oscillate between policy characteristic of both Indispensable and Independent America since the end of the Cold War. It is the same conundrum that has left many people to wonder if there has been an ‘Obama Doctrine’, or merely a series of post-hoc rationalisations for a reactionary foreign policy. [5] Yet to an unrealistic degree, Bremmer’s discussion mutes the importance of feasible policy in American grand strategy. This is where Trump’s politics triumph. They promise the unattainable in the pursuit of ‘America first’, exercising flagrant disregard for the constraints of domestic and international politics. [6] Both Trump and Bremmer’s vision of the American domestic project is built on the foundations of a liberal international order that demands American proactivity in ways that contradict their foreign policy analysis. Bremmer’s book encourages the reader to demand what they rightly consider to be their national interests, but offers no roadmap for how to reasonably achieve them in a dynamic and multipolar context.

Alexandria Reid is a recent graduate of War Studies at King’s College London and recipient of the Sir Michael Howard Award for Best Graduate in BA War Studies. Alex currently works for Strife as a Social Media Coordinator, and as a research assistant for Dr. John Bew. In September she will begin her Master’s education as a Conflict, Security and Development student at KCL. Twitter: @AlexHREID.

Notes:

[1] Boyes, Roger (27 June 2015), ‘Superpower Three Choices for America’s Role in the World by Ian Bremmer’, The Times, Accessed 5/08/2016, http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/arts/books/non-fiction/article4479814.ece

[2] Bremmer, Ian (2015), Superpower: Three Choices for America’s Role in the World (Penguin), pp.1-4

[3] Franklin D. Roosevelt (10 June 1940), ‘Address at the University of Virginia’, Accessed 5/08/2016: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=15965

[4] Bremmer (2015), p.50

[5] See, McCoy, Alfred (15 September 2015), ‘The Quiet Grand Strategy of Barack Obama’, The American Conservative, available at: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-quiet-grand-strategy-of-barack-obama/ and Drezner, Daniel (2011), ‘Does Obama Have a Grand Strategy’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 90, No. 4, pp.57-68, available at: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2011-06-17/does-obama-have-grand-strategy

[6] McCurry, Justin (21 July 2016), ‘Trump says US may not automatically defend Nato allies under attack’, The Guardian, Accessed 5/08/2016, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jul/21/donald-trump-america-automatically-nato-allies-under-attack

Image Credit: http://www.wsj.com/video/ian-bremmer-geopolitics-in-an-unstable-world/6FA80445-CFF1-4437-B7BC-E6AE2A9A028D.html

Find the money-pot: Interagency budgetpolitik and American foreign policy

August 10, 2016 by Strife Staff

By Jackson Webster

Gee, I wonder how much partner capacity we can build with the gold at the end of that rainbow!

In policymaking, as in politics, it’s usually wisest to ‘follow the money.’ This famous tagline of All the President’s Men was of course referring to corruption within the Nixon administration, but the key role played by money-matters in policymaking nonetheless finds its way into the conduct of American foreign policy.

The White House has three main tools at its disposal when dealing with the outside world: The Department of State (DoS), USAID, and the Department of Defense (DoD). Traditionally, State deals in diplomacy, USAID deals in development, and Defense deals in war, however these roles are becoming increasingly intertwined in today’s dynamic environment abroad.

Since the authorization of military assistance to Greece and Turkey in 1948, a process which has come to be known generally as ‘security cooperation’ has, through both accident and design become a mainstay of America’s presence abroad. This ‘security cooperation’ has been authorized by Congress on a piecemeal basis over the decades, and it currently consists of over 80 separate legal ‘authorities’ for delivering assistance to various parts of foreign countries’ security services. Each of these authorities has a separate pot of money from which it receives funding, and the amount of congressional control over each operation varies greatly. Over the past two administrations, this set of programmes has been included in a broader diplomatic initiative which has become a cornerstone of American foreign policy: ‘building partner capacity,’ or BPC. This process is intended to allow “like-minded regional partners” to share the burden of international security in an era of fiscal tightening in the United States.

What these trends amount to is a marked difference in the character of American foreign policy, particularly in terms of the agencies involved in its execution. Immediately following the Second World War, and well into the 1950s, the focus of American foreign policy outside of Korea was the reconstruction of Europe and the extension of Washington’s trade influence through strong Bretton Woods institutions (IMF, World Bank, etc.). Much of this was a ways-and-means issue. The Department of State had a great deal of money in its pockets due to the implementation of the Marshall Plan, as well as the burden of postwar diplomatic initiatives, and had a great degree of federal —especially congressional— attention paid to it as a result.

Since 9/11, the counterterrorism initiatives of the Bush and Obama administrations have caused funding to flow into the Department of Defense. State, on the other hand, has not received an authorization for its operations in 14 years, and thus its budget and responsibilities have remained relatively stagnant. The last time the purse strings for State were examined there was no Facebook, Saddam Hussein was still in power in Iraq, and Donald Trump was only a mediocre businessman without a reality TV show. Broadly speaking, this trend has caused significant mission creep away from the Pentagon’s traditional role and into what the armed forces call “military operations other than war.” The idea of the American arms industry being leveraged as a tool of diplomacy is nothing novel, however what has been a revolutionary change in our foreign policy is the centralization of a major part of our interaction with our allies overseas under the DOD rather than under the diplomatic bureaucracy at Foggy Bottom. While State was once America’s primary instrument abroad, this role has moved across the Potomac into the Pentagon, and DOD has now assumed much of the day-to-day work of maintaining our global network of alliances, in part due to its significantly larger piece of America’s budgetary pie.

The US Senate is currently entertaining a defense authorization bill, sponsored by Senator John McCain (R-AZ), to reform security cooperation and assistance programmes. The reforms contain a near-ludicrous 92 pages of legal jargon which, among other things, diverts a significant amount of money to the direct control of the Secretary of Defense for the purpose of ‘security cooperation’ with our allies. The current estimate is $10 billion for 2017, but during future appropriations and authorizations processes, that number will probably increase.

What this means in terms of US foreign policy is, as noted, an issue of ways-and-means. Should an administration wish to strengthen relations with a given country, solve a diplomatic problem, or confront an adversary, it will use the tool with the most resources at its disposal. In today’s budgetary climate, that’s the DOD, which means the military will continue to be America’s leading method of interaction with the outside world, not State and its civilian foreign service. This disconnect between what the military and its bureaucracy are designed to do and what they’ve recently been asked to accomplish both reinforces and is symptomatic of the funding prioritization of Defense over State. This effects all levels of Defense’s activities, from the Marine asked to “shoot with one hand and pass out aid with the other” to the 4-star combatant commanders asked to accomplish what were once considered diplomatic or development goals with the often blunt instrument of the military. Congress is giving the DOD a lot of money to execute a set of responsibilities of questionable effectiveness for which the military was not designed and which the military itself doesn’t necessarily want to do.

While debate continues inside the Beltway over the strengths and weaknesses of the Senate’s proposed reforms, the most important takeaway from describing this process is the key role played by the congressional appropriations and authorizations process in the conduct of foreign policy. After all, a programme or policy without a large pot of money attached, for all intents and purposes, does not exist. Regardless of whether President Obama chooses to veto this year’s authorization bill or not, the fierce nature of the debate and its eventual consequences for policy are telling of the impact of budgets and bureaucracy on America’s foreign relations. Every programme needs a pot of money, and the politics behind agencies getting their hands on these funds are worthy of study for those wishing to understand why and how the United States does what it does overseas.

Jackson Webster is a graduate of the Department of War Studies and is currently based in Paris where he is reading for a master’s degree in international security policy from SciencesPo.

Notes:

1) All the Preseident’s Men, Alan J Pakula,1976. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kq_4Zlhoj4k

2) Aftergood, Steven. “Assessing “Security Cooperation”, 2015. https://fas.org/blogs/secrecy/2016/04/security-cooperation/

3) “What is ‘Building Partner Capacity'”, 2015. https://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R44313.pdf

4) De Long, Bradford, and Barry Eichengreen. “The Marshall Plan: History’s Most Successful Structural Adjustment Program,” National Bureau of Economic Research, 1991. http://www.nber.org/papers/w3899

5) Vinik, Danny. “The State Department Hasn’t Been Authorized in 13 Years.” Politico, Sept. 2015.

6) Graham, David. “The Many Scandals of Donald Trump: A Cheat Sheet.” The Atlantic, Jun. 2016.

7) The bill can be accessed here: https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/2943

8) Schubert, Frank. Other Than War. NSC Joint History Office, Washington, DC, 2013.

Image Credit: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/2a/Washington_Monument_Rainbow.JPG

The Politics of Authenticity

September 14, 2015 by Strife Staff

By: Claire Yorke

Are we ready for our politicians to really be themselves?

Authenticity is a rare commodity in politics but one that is in high demand. The Labour leadership election last week provided a telling case in point. Jeremy Corbyn, a veteran backbencher and political outsider of the party, rose in the polls from the underdog who wanted to just shake up the debate, to the new leader of the party with an unprecedented majority of 59.5%. Though his politics have divided opinion even in his own party, few dispute that it is his sincerity and authenticity that contribute to his appeal. Over a thirty-two year political career he has been unwavering in his vision of a fairer and more equal society. He is a long-term socialist who has campaigned consistently for peace, including supporting the ban of nuclear weapons and end to the arms trade. His refusal to conform to the slick mainstream images of many politicians, and his ability to speak his mind is endearing and attractive in an age of familiar sound bites and 140 character statements crafted by a team of communications experts.

A further case this week came from the United States and a heart-wrenching interview between Stephen Colbert and Vice President Joe Biden. Many will have been struck by the candour and sincerity of Biden as he shared his grief over the loss of his son Beau to brain cancer in May of this year. Colbert praised him for his authenticity, and his ability to avoid the falseness of politics. When people see Biden, he said, they feel they are seeing the real man rather than someone with a façade designed to manipulate them. For Vice President Biden it seemed so natural that that was how he was: “why in the world would you want the job if you couldn’t say what you believe?” Seeing a politician clearly struggling with emotion and opening up about their personal life and the roots of their conviction is uncommon, and arguably would not work for everyone, yet genuine expressions of character makes them appear more human and begs the question: what does it take for a politician to be authentic? Or at least to appear to be so?

It is hard to tell if someone is being sincere when you have little to no personal knowledge of them, so it becomes a judgement mediated through the media and their campaign messages. Authenticity is an ineffable quality of being oneself, of not compromising with what other’s expect of you, and of playing the game to one’s own rules according to one’s own convictions. Rather than being something quantifiable, it might fit best with the definition that you know it when you see it.

Authenticity is, of course, subjective. Part of the appeal of former UKIP leader Nigel Farage lay in his perceived authenticity. During the electoral campaign earlier this year some people welcomed his manner. He was willing to say what he thought, even if he was perceived as not politically correct. His image is one of the average man you might meet share a pint with at the pub. Yet he was equally a product of the establishment he criticised: a wealthy, former city trader, who had benefitted from the system of European politics (and its expenses) that he challenged.

Republican Presidential hopeful Donald Trump could also be considered, in his own way, as authentic. He is unapologetic in his depiction of himself and his strident convictions and is frank about playing the game his way, regardless of what one thinks of him. Despite being a divisive character who has prompted much criticism for his views and bombast, he still holds the lead in the Republican race.

There is a power in authenticity, not least because it enables politicians to connect with people. It is an asset in a more empathetic form of politics. People in politics and the public relations industry have recognised this power, and its role in reaching out to the electorate. Contrast Jeremy Corbyn and Joe Biden with Hillary Clinton, whose campaign team last week announced the new plan for her to be more spontaneous and authentic. Yet when orchestrated as part of the machinations of politics in this fashion it is quickly transparent and will no doubt miss its desired effect: as when prominent figures cite their love of popular bands or TV shows that are discordant with both their demographic or how they are perceived of by the population. Few imagine a Prime Minister genuinely listens to electro-funk.

However, whilst we crave authenticity, are we, the electorate, ready for natural performances from all our political leaders and not just the rare few? Authenticity is not synonymous with charisma – that inalienable ability commands a room and lights up televisions – and not all who are genuine are necessarily charming, nor should they be. Are we prepared to see unpolished but sincere debates without the rehearsed pacing of the stage and the hand gestures and inflections of speech that have become part of political training? Or is it the public’s and media’s need for high gloss and entertainment that has pushed our politicians to conform to type?

Authenticity is special because it is so rare. Yet, if it is the secret to connecting to the public, then it will require much greater tolerance on our part for political leaders who are flawed and who cannot always have all the answers or say the right thing. Cultivating authenticity will require a more forgiving political system while not sacrificing the need for accountability and transparency in politics. Indeed, it might make for more honest debates that are less concerned with toeing the line of what politicians think and what they feel is expected of them. For a better, more inclusive, and more engaging politics it should be encouraged.

Claire Yorke is a PhD Candidate in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London where her research looks at the role empathy in diplomacy. She is a Non-Resident Senior Fellow at the Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security at the Atlantic Council, Washington D.C. Before joining King’s, Claire was the Programme Manager of the International Security Research Department at Chatham House. She began her career as a Researcher to a frontbench Member of Parliament in the British House of Commons. You can follow her on Twitter @ClaireYorke

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‘Yes we can’: some considerations about Podemos

October 3, 2014 by Strife Staff

By Sophie Bustos:

A new political force emerged in the May 2014 European elections. Being the third Spanish political force in the European Parliament, the far-left party Podemos proved that a new political struggle had just begun in Spain. Or, to put it more accurately, the political and social struggles annihilated by Franco’s dictatorship and marginalised by the transition strongly resurface today.[1]

Since the European elections, various polls show were released which demonstrate the increasing popularity of Podemos and the decadence of the two major Spanish parties, The People’s Party (PP) and Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), conservatives and social democrats respectively. In June 2014, for instance, a poll indicated that in a general elections context the PP would still be in first place, but that Podemos would follow as the second political force of the country leaving behind the PSOE and others far-left parties, like the communist United Left (IU). Results of this sort seem to indicate several things. On the one hand, they point to the brutal and persistent loss of credibility of the parties of the Spanish left, like PSOE, as well as the inability of IU to gather people around its political message thus making it seems as if it was as antiquated and as inefficient as the others. On the other hand, what is being witnessed is the construction of a social protest. Many people voted for Podemos in May because they were disenchanted with the unchanging routine administration of the country and, in their opinion, Podemos represented a suitable political alternative. It cannot be said for certain how Podemos managed to appear so convincing, though likely a large dose of populism played a part; however, the fact remains that it managed to restore some confidence in the relationship between citizens and politics.

If one considers the Spanish political panorama on a national scale, it could be said that Podemos is like an outsider. This is not only because it is a party which qualifies the ‘austerity policies’ as criminal and rejects the impositions of the troika (the representatives of the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the European Commission), but especially because Spain is not used to seeing a party which uses transparency and citizen’s control as a leitmotiv. Also, Spain is forced to recognise the party’s efforts to be open: Podemos gather people with various political outlooks (some of the past voters of PP are now proud members of Podemos); it celebrates open assemblies in which citizens can ask about its political program and make their own proposals; it even has a mobile ‘app’ through which people can anonymously debate with some of its leaders. Setting aside the fact that the accounts of the party are made public in their entirety on its website, several members of Podemos in the European Parliament also show unusual signs of political decency by declaring publicly that they will only accept their deputies’ salaries and reject other remunerations. This sets them apart from the overwhelming number of politicians in Spain who hold concurrently several well-paid jobs, like the late Isabel Carrasco, murdered in May, who had accumulated thirteen jobs with annual earnings of approximately 150,000 Euros.

However, and that’s why a ‘large dosis of populism’ was earlier suggested, the main political propositions of Podemos are not quite clear, and what can be perceived as its most famous theme, the struggle against what they call ‘the cast’, leaves Spain’s citizens peculiarly dubious. It is difficult to determine whom Podemos attaches to ‘the cast’, as the party spokesmen carefully avoid naming persons, companies or organizations, and this expression could refer to virtually anything an anyone: established politicians, banks, multinational corporations, Francoist supporters, major energy conglomerates, and so on.

The most public figure of Podemos is Pablo Iglesias. A detailed description of his career is outside the scope of the present discussion. Suffice it to say that he’s young and successful, a faculty professor of Political Science at 35, with an impressive CV and a facility with public speaking which matches the impressive media coverage he is getting. Iglesias has become one of the most famous Spanish politicians, and a controversial personality at the same time, being a frequent reference of the Spanish media and the target of a smear-campaign orchestrated by political rivals, mostly from the PP and in a lesser way from PSOE. The attitude of the PP towards Iglesias is a telling example. On the one hand he is treated with absolute indifference, with some of PP’s politicians were swift to declare publicly that they are giving no credit to Pablo Iglesias whose political program was just trendy and ludicrous. Their prognostications about the swift political demise of Iglesias and the disappearance of Podemos, it is now known, were erroneous. Simultaneously, however, day after day, newspapers disseminate among their readership the message of people like Esperanza Aguirre, the President of PP for the Madrid district and major party player, who persistently describes Pablo Iglesias as a public threat, a Chavista supporter, ETA friendly, as one craving of bring back the guillotine for cleansing purposes.

Such cheap-shot attacks are a frequent element in Spanish political debate. They are a common way to discredit and marginalise opponents, but also to scare the public by employing classical images of ‘ghosts from the past’ – dictatorship, terrorism, class-extermination, etc. Even so, the intensity and violence of attacks against Pablo Iglesias is both surprising and perplexing. It seems to be an indication that many influential politicians in Spain feel really threatened by Podemos. It is also, however, a reflection of their inability to compromise, modernise or recognise change, preferring to blindly preserve the society they inherited with the transition system, a society which excludes citizen engagement and participation. This denial is well illustrated by the remarks of Antonio Pradas, PSOE’s Secretary of Federal Politics, who claims that he doesn’t understand this new party’s ideology, and that the recent success of Podemos in the European elections is just a ‘punishment vote’. Such declarations reflect, in the opinion of many Spanish, some of the reasons why parties like PSOE are free-falling in the polls and losing elections. By calling it a ‘punishment vote’, it further appears a conscious attempt to depreciate the wishes and political will of thousands of people to put an end to the corruption and the brutality of the austerity policies. The many attacks launched against Podemos and its leader, Pablo Iglesias, reflect to some extent a crystallisation of all sorts of political issues, and demonstrate the numerous taboos of Spanish history and society which are mercilessly resurfacing, taboos associated with the legacy of Franco’s dictatorship, the place and influence of the Catholic Church, or political clientelism. Who will have the final say? Let’s hope that the voice of democracy prevails.

_______________

Sophie Bustos is a PhD researcher at the Department of Contemporary History, Autonomous University of Madrid. She focuses her research on the diffusion of political liberalism in Spain in the early nineteenth century, and more particularly on the conflict between progressive and conservative in the constitutional regime known as the Liberal Triennium (1820 – 1823). You can follow her on Twitter @Landaburu9.

NOTES

[1] Transition’ refers to the monarchical regime initiated on Franco’s death, in 1975, and confirmed by the 1978’s Constitution. Some of its most important political struggles are the advent of the Third Republic, the fight against the pro-Franco legacy and the acknowledgment of war crimes committed during the Civil War and Franco’s dictatorship.

Why is everyone Hitler?

October 1, 2014 by Strife Staff

By Thomas Colley:

Why do so many political leaders seem incapable of analogising undesirable behaviour to anyone other than Hitler and the Nazis? Conflict in Ukraine has seen the protagonists base their propaganda on demonising the other side as ‘Nazis’ and ‘fascists’. David Cameron recently compared the dilemmas of dealing with Putin with those of Neville Chamberlain dealing with Hitler.[i] Tony Abbott recently claimed that The Islamic State (IS/ISIS/ISIL) were akin to Nazis and Communists. It is almost surprising that the Ebola virus hasn’t been compared to Hitler.

The extensive use of the Hitler analogy has fuelled debate over the extent to which such analogies are accurate.[ii] Arguably however, a more important issue is how useful such analogies are, and what they say about political leaders that they continue to use them.

An analogy is a comparison between two things based on some sort of shared characteristic. In politics, this tends to involve a comparison between current events or actors and those of the past, in order to make current events more easily intelligible, or even prescribe future action. Similarity cannot and need not be absolute, since focusing on the similarities in analogies tends to obscure differences. In this way, Al Qaeda may be immeasurably different to Imperial Japan, but focusing on the idea of ‘surprise attack on America’ makes 9/11 akin to Pearl Harbour, the differences obscured. In the same way, Putin’s annexation of Crimea is akin to Hitler’s annexation of the Sudetenland, while obscuring the obvious strategic differences between their aims.

The first way such analogies are used might be to prescribe strategy. If one likens Putin to Hitler, collective memories of the Second World War support the idea that Putin should be challenged, as appeasement will only fuel Russian aggression. Multiple European leaders have used rhetoric to this effect, arguing that Europe faces an existential threat if Putin is not stopped. Admittedly, the analogy is not wholly unfounded. Putin’s conduct in Ukraine has some similarities to the Nazi leader. Both his actions and rhetoric used in annexing the Crimea did resemble Hitler’s annexation of the Sudetenland. But Putin is not Hitler, and it is disturbing to think that such a crude comparison might be used for strategy-making.

Thankfully, based on the West’s response, it is relatively obvious that they know Putin is not Hitler, and are not acting as if he is even if they are saying so. After all, if Putin were Hitler, and to use another analogy, the West’s economic sanctions might be the equivalent of freezing the accounts of Himmler, Heydrich and Goering. Would this deter Hitler, once Goebbels, Bormann and Speer were added to the list, and are the West even thinking this way? Clearly not. There is little that indicates that Putin’s grand designs are in any way equivalent to Hitler. Bismarck would be a better comparison for his grasp of realpolitik; Stalin is a far more apt comparison in terms of his desire to maintain influence in states bordering Russia. However, this search for the least distorting analogy is of limited strategic use; the situation with Ukraine is unique and must be understood on its own terms.

If the Hitler analogy is not being used to prescribe strategy, it is being used to legitimise strategy. This is achieved through the most elementary level of playground logic: that Hitler was a bully; Putin is a bully, and as every child learns in primary school, if no one stands up to bullies they keep on bullying. This legitimises Western foreign policy towards Russia since states can at least claim they are acting against the bully. Whether their actions are sufficient to deter the bully is doubtful; only time will tell. Certainly the West’s rhetoric about what should be done has been extensive. But when faced with the West’s rhetoric, Putin can draw again from a primary school lesson recounted in Britain, that ‘sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me.’

Aside from Putin, the Hitler analogy continues to be invoked based on another metaphor, that of Hitler as ‘evil’. This appears by far the most common use of the Hitler analogy in political discourse; that through instigating the Second World War and perpetrating the Holocaust, Hitler epitomises human evil. Analogising to Hitler is therefore a common use of hyperbole to undermine an opponent, be it in the debating hall or in international politics. In fact, so popular is the ‘Hitler as evil’ metaphor that using it to demonise one’s opponent seems to be one of the first acts of many leaders’ propaganda playbooks. Putin repeatedly compared Poroshenko’s government to the Nazis; the Ukrainians responded in turn. Accusation and counter-accusation flowed, and the West joined in in what increasingly resembled the sort of name-calling found on exactly the same primary school playground from which the bullying analogy is understood.

The analogy was even more crudely exemplified by Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s claim that ISIS were comparable to the Nazis and the Communists based on the evil inherent in their provocatively public beheadings. Leaving aside the heterogeneity of global communism, the analogy seems only to function through the basic idea that ‘these people are evil, really, really bad, so we should stop them’. The ostensibly sagacious can then reinforce this with Burke’s dictum that ‘all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing’, and action against the evil threat is justified. Faced with Burke’s eloquence, no one apparently notices that evil will presumably also flourish if ‘men do the wrong thing, or don’t do enough for long enough’. Still, this makes the Hitler analogy a simple tactic to secure public support – we must act, or evil (Hitlers) will win.

However, this basic tactic illuminates several troubling issues with our political leaders’ grasp of communication and their faith in their publics. First, if every state repeats the same analogy, then its persuasive effects are limited. If the aim of using Hitler is to evoke fear and stir collective memory, if both sides are constantly doing so, then what effect is it likely to have? Second, once strategy is shown to contradict the analogy, then the analogy is inevitably revealed as propaganda – as just another person playing the Hitler card, as if they can’t think of anything better to say.

So why does the Hitler analogy remain such a compelling rhetorical device for political leaders? The answer seems to be that those using it assume that such analogies will stir an emotional response from an irrational, volatile public that has limited knowledge of international affairs, but at least understands that ‘Hitler was an evil and a bully, and so evil bullies like Hitler should be stopped.’ This logic reflects the same assumption that it is enough to shout ‘terrorist threat’ to engender mass fear and secure extensive public support. There is some irony here. David Cameron’s statement that ISIS are ‘a greater and deeper threat to our security than we have known before’ appears currently to be a securitising move of immense hyperbole.[iii] Yet it is precisely the understanding of the existential threat posed by Hitler that highlights how unnecessarily hyperbolic Cameron’s claim appears.

This suggests that many political leaders continue to base their communication assumptions on those of almost a century ago, assuming like Lippman, Almond and Bernays that publics are emotional, volatile and ignorant masses.[iv] This ignores a vast body of research that has shown the public to be, if not highly knowledgeable, at least reasoning on matters of foreign policy.[v] Why, for example, did Abbott feel that it was necessary to compare ISIS with Hitler? Did he or his speechwriters assume that it was beyond the public to grasp the evil of blunt-knifed public beheadings without the need for lazy hyperbole and overused analogy?

In this way, the use of the Hitler analogy betrays the lack of faith political elites have in their publics. Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond’s comparison between the Scottish referendum and the post-apartheid elections in South Africa demonstrated a similar viewpoint. The analogy did support the otherwise persuasive narrative of oppressive Westminster rule over Scotland, but the comparison is tenuous at best, crass at worst.[vi] The only rational explanation for the choice of analogy is the assumption that the publics Salmond was trying to persuade are too ill-informed, or overwhelmed by nationalist fervour, that they would notice the difference between democratic Scotland and post-apartheid South Africa. The irony is that in using such crude analogies, politicians make themselves look as ill-informed as they assume their publics to be. This is probably not the case, but it contributes to the pervasive distrust between political elites and their publics.

I am of the view that if political leaders decide to use historical analogies, their choices should be carefully considered, grounded in a more optimistic perspective of the publics they are trying to persuade. Some might argue this is naïve, and that publics are largely ignorant of foreign policy matters and susceptible to crude analogies. However if one adopts this viewpoint, the tactic is still questionable, since governments would be better off trying to influence the active citizenry that are engaged in the political process. Surely these are the exact people that would expect more from their politicians than ‘everyone is Hitler’?

Perhaps the most telling indictment comes from one of the ‘rules of the internet’. Godwin’s law states that as online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison with Hitler or the Nazis increases.[vii] Interestingly, the person who first analogises to Hitler automatically loses the debate, for recourse to the Hitler analogy is to lack the ability to construct a more meaningful argument. Applied to political leaders, this would mean that the first person to be reduced to using a Hitler analogy loses the debate; the person who compares a peacetime democratic referendum to a people emerging from decades of racial oppression loses the debate; the leader who just lists ‘evil people we don’t like’ loses the debate.

As Hoggart wrote sceptically of the working classes, people may appear to have views on political matters, but they usually consist of

‘a bundle of largely unexamined and orally-transmitted tags, enshrining generalisations, prejudices
and half-truths, and elevated by epigrammatic phrasing into the status of maxims…. These are often contradictory of each other; but they are not thought about, not intellectually considered.’[viii]

In their use of analogies, many political leaders don’t seem to be doing much better.

______________________

Thomas Colley is a PhD student in War Studies at King’s College London. His research interests include propaganda, strategic communication and public attitudes to the use of military force. You can follow Thomas on Twitter @ThomasColley.

NOTES

[i] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/02/tony-abbott-says-extreme-force-needed-to-counter-isis-death-cult, 2 September 2014.

[ii] For reasons of brevity, ‘the Hitler analogy’ refers to analogies relating to Hitler and Nazism in general.

[iii] https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/threat-level-from-international-terrorism-raised-pm-press-conference, 29 August 2014.

[iv] Almond, Gabriel A. The American People and Foreign Policy. New York: Praeger, 1950; Bernays, Edward L. Propaganda. Ig Publishing, 1928; Lippmann, Walter. Public Opinion. Transaction Publishers, 1946.

[v] Aldrich, John, Christopher Gelpi, Peter Feaver, Jason Reifler, and Kristin Thompson Sharp. “Foreign Policy and the Electoral Connection.” Annual Review of Political Science, 9 (2006): 477–502; Popkin, Samuel L. The Reasoning Voter: Communication and Persuasion in Presidential Campaigns. University of Chicago Press, 1994.

Page, Benjamin, and Robert Shapiro. The Rational Public: Fifty Years of Trends in Americans’ Policy Preferences. University of Chicago Press, 2010.

[vi] It is possibly that Salmond’s analogy may have been more thoughtless than calculating. However, he probably knew that he had been described as the ‘paler Mandela’ months before on social media, which suggests the analogy was deliberate. See http://www.scotsman.com/news/drumlanrig-gordon-brown-nelson-mandela-geoff-hurst-1-3224520, 29 September 2014.

[vii] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/news/6408927/Internet-rules-and-laws-the-top-10-from-Godwin-to-Poe.html, 23 October 2009.

[viii] Hoggart, Richard. The Uses of Literacy: Aspects of Working-Class Life. London: Penguin Classics, 2009, 86.

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