I know 2020 is bad, but 27 was TRASH
#TC86
Welcome to Third Cultured – a foreign policy and LGBTQIA+ politics newsletter – published by yours truly, Kyle Borland. My goal is to highlight the unique role Queer people play in the politics of the United States and the world-at-large.
Third Cultured is available to all but, as Austin Kleon says, "This newsletter is free, but not cheap.” If you’re able, support my writing by becoming a paid subscriber!
This edition:
Personal Update
Global Commentary
Hot Spots
Personal Update
I apologize for the haphazard schedule! My partner and I are now both unemployed after he got laid off in early November and it’s been a rough couple of weeks. We’re both trying to find jobs here in San Francisco at the moment but it’s looking like we’ll have to pack up in a month to head back to Alabama. There were parts of both of us that knew we’d always head back to the Deep South, but we wanted it to be on our terms, not a global disaster’s.
It’s a lot of pills to swallow at once and forcing me to take stock of what my successes and failures were over the past five years. Meaning, it’s hard to leave San Francisco without having made any money or made any relationships that I’ll miss. Makes you feel worthless, like you wasted your time. Everyone I’ve come to love has already left for one reason or another, so maybe this is the Universe forcing me to let go.
It’d all be easier to figure out if the COVID aches, carpal tunnel, and other physical (and mental) detoriations weren’t starting to pile on top of one another. Not having health insurance finally caught up with me. I scheduled a doctor’s appointment and then canceled it over sticker shock. That was a new experience for me.
Given everything, I’ve been asking if I should continue this newsletter at all or if I need to pivot it (again). With every journalist and their mother joining Substack, it’s clear I wasn’t using the platform in the right way the past year and a half, and I’m not entirely sure if it’s meant for folks like me anymore (or ever was in the first place).
I want to write about foreign policy and Queers, but I also want to write about cannabis, and mobility, and social equity, and spirituality, about Alabama vs California, and so much more. Third Cultured up to this point has tried to provide a specific kind of news, but maybe I need to throw caution to the wind and just write whatever my heart wants on that day.
What would I write if my perspective was enough for me?
Do I know how to give myself that kind of freedom?
I don’t know.
I turn 28 today. Let’s hope it’s nothing like 27.
Global Commentary
2020 started with an American assassination of Iran’s top general and – after a successful ambush of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh – it will end with an Israeli assassination of Iran’s top nuclear scientist. Tehran promised in response, “We will land on the killers of this innocent martyr like a thunderbolt and make them regret what they've done.”
It is unclear what Iran’s retaliation will look like but they’ve communicated they’re aware Jerusalem and Donald Trump are trying to drag them into starting a larger, prolonged conflict before the Biden administration takes over in January. It’s rather damning for Israel and the US that Netanyahu and Secretary of State Pompeo held a “secret” meeting the Sunday before in Saudi Arabia with Saudi Crown Prince MBS.
If they can’t provoke a military conflict, then they clearly hoping Tehran will lose its patience and strategic restraint in order to sink any chance of Biden reviving the JCPOA. Truth be told, Biden’s hawkish foreign policy team probably won’t mind even though Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley is calling for a major downsizing of all US troops permanently stationed abroad in allied countries, aka Germany, Gulf States, Japan, South Korea. (Graphic: Statista)
However, Tehran isn’t the religious regime I’m most worried about.
In a 5-4 decision, SCOTUS sided with religious groups over New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in a dispute over limiting the number of people attending religious services, overturning a decision from earlier this year. This is the first in what is sure to be a tsunami of “religious liberty” cases from this 6-3 conservative court. With Amy Covid Barrett on the Court, even when Chief Justice Roberts sides with the liberal justices, it’s not enough to overcome the five far-right justices’ majority.
What happens to Loving, Roe, Lawrence, Obergefell, and Bostock under a hostile theocratic Supreme Court?
What happens when Democrats utilize a gay honeypot smear campaign to tank the political career of a popular four-term mayor to protect a 15-term corporate incumbent? (Alex Morse announced this week he wasn’t seeking another term. Local sources confirm it’s because the Mass Dems smear attempt was successful. #Merica)
What happens when member states of our most important ally, the European Union, are leading the global charge against LGBTQIA+ people? (Meanwhile – as is always the case – the architect of the anti-Queer laws in Hungary is a big ole fag himself.)
Even with Mayor Pete apparently landing Ambassador to China – which I think is a blatant ploy of Joe/Kamala’s to make sure he’s not at home the next four years building a domestic base to run against her in 2024 – we can’t let Obama 3.0 put rose-colored glasses over our eyes. The LGBTQIA+ progress won over the past 20 years may come to a screeching halt in 2021, no matter who’s in the White House, and if the US stalls, then the rest of the world will be ready to pull us under again.
Get ready to fight like hell.
Stay safe and healthy, beautiful people. And, thanks for reading.
xoxo,
Kyle (@kgborland)
PS – Here are some great reads worth your time.
32 LGBTQ Books That Will Change the Literary Landscape in 2021 (Oprah)
Biden Wants America to Lead the World. It Shouldn’t. (NYTimes)
Bro Culture, Fitness, Chivalry, and American Identity (Patrick Wyman)
Building Back Better: A Potential Left-Wing Foreign Policy (Foreign Exchanges)
German army to compensate LGBTQ soliders for years of discrimination (WION)
Had LGBT voters stayed home, Trump might have won the 2020 presidential election (WaPo)
How to Find LGBTQIA+ New Releases (Book Riot)
In 2020, Disinformation Broke the US. (Buzzfeed News)
Not just roommates: China's LGBTQ couples come out of shadows in national census (WION)
Putin stepping back, not down? (China-Russia Report)
Rep Ilhan Omar: ‘I Hope President Biden Seizes This Opportunity.’ (The Nation)
Restoring American Power: We Have Met the Enemy, and It Is Us (Defense One)
Russian Activists Just Won an Important Battle Over LGBTQ Rights. But the War Is Far From Over (TIME)
Six Principles to Guide China’s Policy Toward the US (Carnegie-Tsinghua Center)
But as powerful as historical laws are in setting the parameters of China-U.S. strategic competition, they do not dictate inevitable conflict. There must be room left for considering the impact of the subjective will of national leaders amid the pressures of these historical forces. Historical laws are invisible, and the China-U.S. relationship is shaped by decisions made by political leaders on both sides, mutually beneficial commercial transactions conducted by Chinese and American companies, the millions of travelers who cross the Pacific between the two countries annually (before the pandemic), and much more. Collectively, these ties determine whether and how human agency rises to challenge the trajectory of historical laws. Indeed, the China-U.S. relationship is where it is now due to the policies adopted by both Beijing and Washington.
In addition to the two aforementioned Marxist principles, traditional Chinese culture can offer certain insights into how Chinese strategists think about competition. Ancient Chinese strategist Sun Tzu’s most famous saying is probably that “if you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.” This is perhaps an obvious point, but being oblivious to the most obvious of notions often can bring about disastrous consequences. China and the United States are, of course, competitors or rivals rather than outright enemies, but the axiom still applies. The vast differences that separate the two countries in terms of cultural traditions, value systems, and political processes are not complete unknowns, but they continue to make an objective assessment of the other side’s strategic objectives, interests, strengths, and weaknesses a daunting task.
Suspected Chinese spy targeted California politicians (Axios)
The history behind the latest LGBTQ rights case at the Supreme Court (WaPo)
The OUT100 (Out Magazine)
The pandemic is forcing men to realize they need deeper friendships. (WaPo)
In 2017, China officially extended the war by six years, starting it in 1931, when Japan invaded Manchuria, a change that emphasized outside aggression and fanned patriotism. In Russia, constitutional changes this year that allow Putin to stand again for the presidency in 2024, also inserted a reference to the protection of historical truth, and the duty not to diminish “the significance of the people’s heroism in defending the Fatherland”.
Both countries feel their role hasn’t been fully recognized. The Battle of Stalingrad turned the tide in the war, at the cost of half a million Soviet lives; at the height of the fighting, China held down some 800,000 Japanese soldiers. And the tale of suffering, redemption and pride has become louder as Xi and Putin tighten their grips, even if both struggle with problematic details. For Communist China, there’s the fact that the Nationalists under Chiang Kai-shek did much of the fighting, while Russia has the small matter of the 1939 Nazi-Soviet pact, which Russian officials have repeatedly tried to explain away. Last month, Putin backed a ban on comparing the actions of the Soviet Union to Hitler’s Germany.
The conflict also helps both countries claim their spot among the powers that emerged victorious in 1945, and built a new order in the years that followed. Mitter cites the example of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, at pains to remind audiences in February that his was the first country to sign the United Nations Charter, glossing over the detail of who exactly represented China at that time. Last month, Xi used the anniversary of the subsequent Korean conflict to warn Washington to respect China’s “red lines.”
Putin has similarly sought to assert Russia’s clout. His June essay pointed to appeasement by the U.K., France and Italy at Munich in 1938 as the trigger for World War II; whitewashed Moscow’s pact with Berlin by hinting at other potential “secret protocols”; and called for a 21st century version of the Allied conferences that redrew the postwar map. It said less about the war than about Putin’s aspirations.
“Hundreds of these airships escaped to Hawaii, and not only did they bring the plague with them but they found the plague already there before them. This we learned by the dispatches, until all order in San Francisco vanished, and there were no operators left at their posts to receive or send. It was amazing, astounding, this loss of communication with the world. It was exactly as if the world had ceased, been blotted out. For sixty years that world has no longer existed for me. I know there must be such places as New York, Europe, Asia, and Africa; but not one word has been heard of them—not in sixty years. With the coming of the Scarlet Death, the world fell apart, absolutely, irretrievably. Ten thousand years of culture and civilization passed in the twinkling of an eye, ‘lapsed like foam.’”
Hot Spots
$2 billion – The US International Development Finance Corp (DFC) invested $2 billion in Indonesia’s announced sovereign wealth fund, which is aiming to raise $15 billion total from countries like Japan, Singapore and the UAE.
Australia vs China: Things are heating up between Beijing and Canberra. Over the weekend, Foreign Ministry spokesman and Wolf Warrior diplomat Zhao Lijian tweeted a drawing about the recent revelations of killings of innocents in Afghanistan by Australian soldiers. This escalation followed China’s announcement of 13 “grievances” Canberra committed and new tariffs on Aussie wine. (Image: Sinocism)
Big Tech Funding Chinese Surveillance: Intel and Nvidia chips are powering supercomputers used by Beijing in its massive surveillance state.
Ethiopia: The northern region of Tigray is in rebellion against Addis Ababa after the ruling Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF) lost its long-held grip on the nation’s economy and government. More than 43,000 people have fled the violence and Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s declaration of “victory” is being compared to former US President George W. Bush’s "Mission Accomplished" speech on Iraq in 2003. As of this week, Abiy agreed to let UN into the Tigray region to help with aid, so it seems Addis Ababa is confident that the rebellion is over and order is being restored.
The key problem in the international community’s initial approach to South Sudan—and now to Ethiopia, which I led as prime minister from 2012 to 2018—is the assumption of moral equivalence, which leads foreign governments to adopt an attitude of false balance and bothsidesism. Facts and details regarding the true nature of conflicts and the forces igniting and driving them are frequently lost in international efforts to broker peace deals that often crumble as soon as they have been signed.
I confess, a TPLF-dominated coalition ruled Ethiopia shrewdly for 27 years. After being forced to give up the reins of power due to popular protests against our economic and political mismanagement—which I was a part of—the TPLF leadership designed and is now executing a strategy meant to capitalize on the propensity of the international community to fall into its default mode of bothsidesism and calls for a negotiated settlement. The TPLF’s leaders are savvy operators who know how susceptible the international community is to such manipulation.
Sea of Japan: Russia claims a US warship left Russian waters after a Russian ship threatened to ram the American vessel. The US dismisses the claim, insisting the USS John McCain was operating in international waters as part of a freedom of navigation operation (FONOP).
Taiwan: China claimed it would make a “legitimate and necessary response” after a US Navy admiral visited Taiwan.
