The World Turns Up the Heat While US Freezes
Biden attends his first G7 as POTUS today | #TC88
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:
Global Commentary
Hot Spots
Global Commentary
As we all knew, Biden’s attempt at “bipartisanship” was stillborn with this GOP.
The $1.9 trillion COVID relief package is already too small and even feigning interest in bipartisanship was a pointless, time-wasting performance that no one bought a ticket for, let alone sat through the whole show. Instead – whether it’s reversing Trump’s planned withdrawals from Afghanistan and Germany or starting a pissing contest with Iran over Ameria’s re-entry into the JCPOA – Biden has been busy re-establishing the centrality of the Blob in Washington’s decision-making.
We can’t have #ForeverWars if our role in those conflicts end, now can we?!
Even though we left the deal, his administration is demanding Iran come back into compliance with the deal before the US will drop its sanctions. Understandably, Tehran balked at the idea, especially when Biden floated the idea of including ICBMs in a “new deal,” and demanded Washington drop sanctions before Iran returns to full compliance. This should be a no-brainer from Washington’s perspective, but this is the same government maintaining Maduro isn’t president of Venezuela.
We have no right to control Tehran’s missile program (or nuclear for that matter). We should attempt to repair our eviscerated credibility by re-establishing the JCPOA and use the moment to increase pressure on China, Russia, our own military-industrial complex, and other nuclear powers to reign in nuclear weapons globally.
To Biden’s credit, his administration did quickly extend the New START treaty with Russia, the final nuclear arms agreement restraining Russia and the US. Unfortunately, that gives China five years to close the gap between its arsenal of 1,000 and the 5,000+ of Russia and the US, but it was a necessary step to prevent an all-out arms race. He also ordered a “global posture review,” but the jury is still out if the results will be de-escalatory or simply the formalities to strategically antagonize in a world of Great Power competition. Today’s virtual G7 should give us some indication.
Back at home, vaccines are going out (albeit disfunctionally) and cases are going down, but we haven’t turned the corner yet. We’re approaching the 50th consecutive week of unemployment levels higher than the worst week of the Great Recession and only 16 percent of Americans say “democracy is working very or extremely well.” Not to mention we have three Americas: Blue America vs Red America vs Trump America.
As long as we accept the whiplash of the first 100 days of a new party’s president, it’s the hand we’ll continue to be dealt with a legislature that can’t function no matter who’s in power. Then again, that means it’s working as designed: not to.
Given the number of changes, I’ve compiled the ones relevant to this newsletter.
Overturned Trump’s transgender military ban! On his first day, he also signed another executive order that interprets SCOTUS’ Bostock decision broadly, determining that “gay and transgender employees are covered by Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination ‘because of sex.’” (Unrelated – but still awesome – a federal judge in the Middle District Court of Alabama ruled in Corbitt v Taylor a law that only allowed transgender people who have undergone gender-affirming surgery to correct the gender marker on their driver licenses as unconstitutional.)
Axed the Keystone XL pipeline (to Canada’s dismay), but is debating dropping sanctions on Nord Stream 2, the Russia-to-Germany pipeline under construction in the Baltic Sea to double gas exports to Germany. Berlin is lobbying Biden hard to ignore a bill passed by Congress requiring sanctions on companies that help with the construction of the pipeline as the pipeline is a lynchpin in Germany’s transition from coal and nuclear energy to renewable sources. France, Ukraine, and Poland agree with Congress that the pipeline will make Europe dependent on Moscow.
Called Xi Jinping to lay out the new administration’s priorities in the American-Sino relationship (aka setting out a Taiwan strategy that isn’t MAD.). In a separate phone call last week, Biden described Beijing’s geopolitics as “sharp power” and created a Pentagon task force on China to implement his five-point strategy. In response, China is ready to use its economic nuclear option (its monopoly on rare earth metals).
The home front. If the U.S. fails to repair its economy, maintain its edge in innovation and "rebuild our industrial base,” the official said, the strategy will be doomed to fail even if the U.S. gets everything else right.
Alliances. Across all areas of competition with China, Biden will engage with partners in Europe and Asia, in particular "the Quad" military partnership with Australia, India and Japan.
Technology. The official said the administration would immediately begin working with Republicans to build consensus around investments in key industries like semiconductors, artificial intelligence, biotech and clean energy "to make sure that we’re maintaining our edge."
Trade. Biden will work "off the baseline" of Trump's tariffs, though the official said "you can anticipate there will be changes" to tariff policies after a review is complete. Biden will coordinate his trade policies closely with partners, particularly in Europe.
Defense. The senior administration official noted that the administration had already run freedom of navigation exercises in South China Sea, transited the Taiwan Strait, and begun naval exercises with regional partners. The official also added that Biden would be unlikely to reduce U.S. troop levels in Asia — something considered by Trump.
Bonus: Trump released the official Indo-Pacific Strategy 20+ years early.
Ended the “Muslim Ban” and vocalized the US would end its support for the Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen, while rolling back Trump’s designation of the Houthi rebels as a terrorist organization.
Maintained the following Trump administration policies: designating China’s treatment of the Uighurs as “genocide,” building up the Quad as a “mini-NATO” in the Indo-Pacific, recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, recognizing Juan Guaidó as the legitimate interim president of Venezuela, providing lethal defensive weaponry to Ukraine, opposing the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline between Russia and Germany (the EU has joined the US in opposition following Alexei Navalny’s arrest in Russia), keeping trade war tariffs, and staying on Trump’s course in the new Space Race.
Re-entered the Paris climate accord and the World Health Organization, and joined the COVAX vaccine initiative. He also agreed with Angela Merkel that rich nations need to distribute excess doses of the vaccine ASAP to poor nations.
Stay safe and healthy, beautiful people. I hope everyone is staying as warm as they can while we wait for the Arctic to take her weather back! And, thanks for reading.
xoxo,
Kyle (@kgborland)
PS – Here are some great reads worth your time.
83% of Americans Support Biden's Order Enforcing LGBTQ+ Workplace Equality (Them)
After I Came Out, My Mother Left Our Church to Fight for Queer Youth (Harper’s Bazaar)
'Chosen families' ruptured: How Covid-19 hit an LGBTQ lifeline (NBC News)
He Was An Architect: Little Richard and black queer grief (NPR)
How Germany excused Hitler's Coup (Moral Universe)
In 1923, the budding Austrian-born dictator had made himself into both a cult hero and a convicted criminal after the Beer Hall Putsch, a colorful and clownish attempt to overthrow the Bavarian government during which Hitler and 3,000 members of his new paramilitary organization, the Sturmabteilung ⎼ “Assault Division” in English, also known as the SA, or the “Stormtroopers,” or the “Brownshirts” ⎼ hijacked a public meeting being held in a Munich beer hall, the Bürgerbräukeller, to announce the start of a national revolution and the formation of a new government. The coup lasted 24 hours.
Hitler was convicted of treason and sentenced to five years inside the Art Nouveau Landsberg fortress. Like Lenin and Stalin, whose Siberian prison exiles were more like unplanned vacations, Hitler did not do hard time. He was allowed gifts and visitors and, generally at leisure, was able to dictate the first volume of Mein Kampf to fellow inmate Rudolph Hess, a Hitler loyalist and core member of the German Nationalist Socialist Party, which, to save time, would come to be known simply as the Nazis (in German, “Nazi” is the short term for Nationalsozialist).
Hitler only served nine months of his five-year prison sentence for instigating a coup.
By the early 1930s, there were an estimated 500,000 Stormtroopers. Hitler had also created an elite wing of the SA called the Schutzstaffel (“Protection Squadron”), better known as the SS, which was initially a group of 300 personal bodyguards and grew into a private army of 50,000. These SA and SS bullyboys were typically ex-soldiers holding anti-leftist and anti-democratic views. Communists and Jews became their top targets.
Ultimately, every major German party recruited their own private armies, and any public political expression had a reasonable chance to result in some kind of furniture-smashing, head-cracking brawl.
How Religion and LGBTQ Rights Intersect in Media Coverage (CAP)
Istanbul student protests are a new frontline for the LGBTQ community (Coda)
LGBTQ People Are at Higher Risk in Disasters (Scientific American)
Precarious Progress: Advocating for LGBT Equality in China (OutRight)
Return to the Gay Underground (Boston Review)
Rush Limbaugh’s Greatest Act Was Dying Early (Discourse)
The first Black drag queen in North Alabama and other untold stories of the Queer South (Scalawag)
The Future of Fully Legal Cannabis (Playboy)
The Most American Religion (The Atlantic)
Mormons didn’t become avatars of a Norman Rockwellian ideal by accident. We taught ourselves to play the part over a centuries-long audition for full acceptance into American life. That we finally succeeded just as the country was on the brink of an identity crisis is one of the core ironies of modern Mormonism.
The New Language of Forever War-Making (The New Republic)
The ZIP Codes That Rule America (Tablet)
Uruk and the Emergence of Civilization (Perspectives)
Uruk and Uruk-influenced material can be found as far away as the North Caucasus Mountains, on the borders of the Eurasian steppe. It was some combination of colonization movement, proto-imperial takeover, ideological ferment, and mercantile enterprise.
The thing about states is that they’re exceptionally effective organizational tools. They channel resources and human effort on a scale that other forms of political and social organization struggle to match. Unfortunately for the neighbors of these states, “channeling resources and human effort” often translates into war, raiding, and expropriation.
What Happened to Ryan Murphy? (Vulture)
Yes, the Pandemic Is Ruining Your Body (The Atlantic)
“Why do western politicians beat their chests so hard? The reason is very simple: "American democracy" is the benchmark of western so-called democratic politics, and the so-called American "lighthouse" is the "backbone" of the western world. Since the Cold War, the western world has talked about "American Dream" and "American Story" through newspapers, books and Hollywood blockbusters, and promoted American democracy and values to the whole world. Capitol Hill and the Statue of Liberty always appear as benchmarks.
The United States has long prided itself on being a "city on a mountain" and a "beacon of the world". Americans are "voters of God", always standing on the so-called "moral high ground", pointing out and even intervening in the "democracy and freedom" of other countries. As a result, the "conclusion of the end of history" has been rampant since the end of the Cold War, and the "country on the top of the mountain" has become the limelight.
Nowadays, the bloody scenes that took place in the highest hall of American politics have torn off the "painted skin" of "American democracy", which can't be concealed by any painstaking packaging. American politics is not only a "house of cards", but also tends to "color revolution". Bloody riots and street violence are common in places where the United States has spared no effort to promote the "color revolution" overseas, but now they are staged in the center of the "lighthouse".
As Russian Deputy Representative to the United Nations Polianski said, "There is a picture of (Ukrainian) Independence Square style in Washington". The American Foreign Policy says that "the United States has become what American leaders often condemn", which is a great irony.”
– Xinhua - On the Fall of American "Lighthouse" 国际时评 | 论美国“灯塔”的倒掉 - 新华社
Chinese media had a field day following January 6’s insurrection.
Hot Spots
Crowded in Space: As of this week, The UAE, China and the US are all operating missions on or around the Red Planet. And, Turkey announced it’ll go to the moon by 2023. (Graphic: The Guardian)
Haiti: The government barely survived an attempted coup.
Why it matters: Haiti’s prolonged political crisis is coming to a head over the question of whether Moïse’s term ended on Sunday or will end on Feb. 7, 2022. This is just the latest flashpoint in a cycle of delayed elections, public frustration and fraying political legitimacy in the impoverished Caribbean nation.
Flashback: Moïse’s mentor and predecessor, Michel Martelly, left office in February 2016 without an elected successor after the results of a 2015 election were annulled. Moïse, a businessman with no prior political experience, was elected in November 2016 and took office in February 2017.
The opposition argues that, electoral delays aside, the clock on the current five-year presidential term started on Feb. 7, 2016.
Moïse says it began when he took office — a position backed by the Organization of American States, the UN and, as of Friday, the U.S. State Department.
Libya: An interim government has formed until December’s elections with Mohammed al-Menfi as presidency council head and Abdulhamid Dbeibeh as prime minister.
Taxing Big Tech: Maryland became the first state to enact a tax on the revenue generated from digital advertisements with funds focused on education and filling budgets gaps. In Australia, Google came to a deal with publishers and Facebook hit the kill switch, sending Aussie publisher’s traffic crashing more than 20 percent.
