Kamala Harris may have succeeded in convincing America that she’s a hip, “joyful” alternative to Sleepy Joe, but those outside the US shouldn’t be fooled. When it comes to foreign policy, all the signs suggest that Harris will follow the path set down by her former boss: one grounded in aggressively countering any challenges to America’s waning hegemony, by any means necessary.
But what, one might ask, about Harris the Progressive? For months, the American Right has gleefully painted the Democrat as a “woke” warrioress, a liberal campaigner who cares more about “kindness” than keeping America safe. Yet the truth couldn’t be more different. In fact, on the global stage, Harris’s progressive pedigree is precisely what makes her so dangerous.
One of the ways the US has traditionally justified its foreign interventions, especially after the Cold War, is through appeals to humanitarianism and morality. This represents in many respects the ideological foundation of liberal interventionism, which advocates for the use of military force, regime change or economic-diplomatic pressure to secure the “rules-based international order”. In reality, these lofty ideals have often served as the pretext for the advancement of US economic and geopolitical interests.
In 2022, the international relations scholar Christopher Mott coined the term “woke imperium” to describe the most recent iteration of this mode of government, which doesn’t just seek to overthrow foreign rivals, “but [to] engineer their very cultures according to the Western progressive model”. Its real aim, he explained, is to “advance the foreign policy objectives of the liberal Atlanticist Blob”.
Harris’s advocacy for progressive issues — from climate change to democratic governance in developing countries — perfectly fits this pattern. Like Biden, she has often framed the tensions resulting from the emerging multipolar order as a global struggle between democracy and authoritarianism, and championed human rights as a cornerstone of US foreign policy. As America’s first female president, and a multiracial one at that, she would be uniquely qualified to double down on this agenda.
To understand what this might entail, we need only look back at the past four years. From its role in provoking and escalating the war in Ukraine to its near-unconditional support for Israel and aggressive approach to China, it is no exaggeration to say that Biden’s Democratic Party has become the official heir to the neocon agenda. Read again the Wolfowitz Doctrine of 1992, which asserted that “America’s political and military mission in the post-Cold War era would be to ensure that no rival superpower is allowed to emerge in Western Europe, Asia, or the territory of the former Soviet Union”. The only difference now is that the US is no longer fighting to prevent the emergence of systemic challengers to its hegemony but, much more perilously, to contain and suppress new powers that have already emerged, first and foremost China and Russia. This was perhaps best captured by a classified report approved in March by the Biden Administration, and recently disclosed by The New York Times, advocating that the US must prepare for a simultaneous nuclear war against China, Russia and North Korea.
Harris played an important role in cementing this posture. In her speeches as Vice President, she repeatedly underscored the importance of maintaining American military superiority and reaffirming the US’s central role in Nato and other military alliances. She dealt extensively with Ukraine, for example, meeting Volodymyr Zelensky six times since the beginning of Russia’s invasion. On several occasions, she reiterated America’s unwavering commitment to Ukraine. Harris also made numerous trips to Asia, meeting with US allies in the region to bolster Washington’s various anti-China military-security alliances, as well as pushing important legislation targeting China for human rights violations.
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SubscribeInteresting story. What the author says may be true, but I can’t for the life of me work out why that would be a bad thing.
That’s because you’re a neocon too. A Dr. Strangelove. Or one of the models for Dr. Strangelove, a Johnny von Neumann: “If you say why not bomb [Moscow] tomorrow, I say, why not today? If you say at five o’clock, I say why not one o’clock?”
Correct. What’s your point?
I hate to break it to you, so I will try to do so delicately, but most of us disagree with you neocons. You are a sliver of the political spectrum. For good reason, since you prefer to war, war when any sensible person knows it’s better to jaw, jaw. Even Johnny von Neumann grew to view his warmongering ways as wrong.
You speak favorably of Ronald Reagan, but he was no neocon.
When you say “most of us”, I assume you mean “most of us UnHerd readers”. If so, I accept that you are probably correct. I’m not saying that war is “good”, merely that it is sometimes “necessary”. In the same way that Hitler needed to be fought, Putin needs to be fought. If we don’t fight him now, we will fight him tomorrow, or next week, or next month, or next year. I’ll say one thing about Reagan – he may have had a good working relationship with Gorbachev, but he had no love for Russians (unlike most of the US Right nowadays), and there is no way he would have let the likes of Putin get away with anything.
I’ve said this before, but you really are the ghost of Alf Garnett.
Your position that if we don’t fight Putin now we’ll be fighting him later has some precedence in past events, but there has to be some logic to the idea that Putin wants to rule Europe. I’m not sure if i’ve heard him state this, nor do I imagine he could achieve it. This is not like Hitler and a defenceless Europe, which you seem to be drawing comparisons with. It’s almost like you feel cheated of taking part in past conflicts where your bravery would be on show.
Likely he just likes to play war with other people’s children.
I did on occasion watch the show with Alf Garnett in it (the name of it escapes me), but I don’t recall the character in question expressing any views on relations with the Soviet Bloc. Putin wants to restore what he views as “Greater Russia”, and he wants a “buffer against NATO”. That much is clear. He seeks to do this by installing stooges to govern neighboring countries (as he has done in Belarus, and as he tried in Ukraine), or by invading them and subjugating them. It might not be identical to Hitler’s desire for lebensraum, but it is not too far removed. If he gets away with Ukraine, who is next on the list? The Baltic States probably. He might leave Poland alone for a while, but only because his army has made such hard work of the Ukraine war.
There are several possible reasons for your inability to figure this out, and none of them make it likely that you are a very sophisticated person.
I actually have an extensive knowledge of history. I know that Neville Chamberlain was a coward. There are many like him around today.
Chomsky said this decaded ago about the shiny progessives on the hill. He was right then, and doubly right now.
The US has not attempted regime change through direct military force since 2003. Qaddafi was overthrown by his own people (very much deserved) and despite what the vatniks think Obama was never serious about toppling the Assad regime.
Is this a spoof account?
ur clueless
Israel needs no reining in. ITS NOT “Reigning” BTW. Rein, like a horse.
But yes, she’s the same Neocon/Neoliberal mashup we’ve been dealing with for 30 years from both parties AKA The Blob ( with a brief respite from the Trump administration ).
How is your Italian?
Very good piece. Her record as state prosecuting attorney in California wasn’t exactly humane either Withholding crucial evidence that would have freed an innocent Afroamerican man on death row until she was forced to do so and other things
Such an act would be criminal, not merely inhumane.
I really wish you’d stop using the term ‘progressive’ when you really mean ‘progressivist’.
Of course it’s always possible that Harris is by far the lesser issue out of two dodgy candidates. Trump is a loathsome individual: he lives in a moral vacuum where rules and laws are made for other people, is likely already over the edge into senility himself (do you read transcripts of what he says?), lies continuously, and can’t stop being a huckster (crypto-currency, MAGA bibles, etc) as money is his God. I just don’t get why you want him as your leader.
You think the Clintons, Obamas, Biden+family are morally superior? I have a bridge to sell to you…
Perhaps you should consider my words more carefully, perhaps with a more open mind?
And that’s somewhat one-sided so fill in the gaps, since JFK perhaps: LBJ, Nixon, Carter (pretty much a saint him though), Reagan, Bush1, Bush2.
I just don’t get why you want him as your leader.
Because comparing conditions during his tenure vs. present day is a painfully easy exercise. As to the moral factor, did you forget that Kamala made her bones as a side piece? That her husband knocked up the nanny in his previous marriage? And take your own advice re: transcripts and apply them to Kamala, who most recently confirmed her image as a bobblehead during an interview with a Philadephia TV station.
Yes, Harris is the lesser of the two evils. Trump is also a Zionist neoconservative, just less coherent about it. His previous cabinet was loaded with neocons like Mike Pompeo and John Bolton, and he tanked the nuclear negotiations with Iran. In foreign policy (and domestic), Trump is the proverbial loose cannon.
Harris is a Zionist neoconservate, as Mr. Fazi accurately describes. But less reckless and more predictable than her orange opponent. Being more gradual and systematic in advancing America’s imperial agenda, Harris will give the rest of the world more time and more breathing space. And maybe even a chance to escape destruction.
Trump is not a neocon, that’s why he fired warmongers like Bolton.
How do you know Kamala is “less reckless and more predictable”? She was for nearly four years Biden’s VP, supposedly “last person to leave the room” on Biden’s reckless decision to chaotically leave Afghanistan, leaving behind billions worth of equipment, getting 11 soldiers killed and many wounded. You also think that the two recent wars were handled well and will “give breathing space to the rest of the world”? Looks more like we are getting closer to WWIII.
As America’s first female president, and a multiracial one at that, she would be uniquely qualified to double down on this agenda.
You are both a racist and sexist to think that race or sex is a qualification. I stopped reading there, since you are also an idiot.
I think you may possibly have misinterpreted his meaning of “qualified” in this instance.
The comment by Terry M was more revealing of his lack of insight than of anyone else’s.
To be fair. Qualified is is not the best word choice. Uniquely positioned or uniquely empowered….maybe?
Symbolically just right?
IDK. I read more than a little sarcasm into that line.
I guess that this article is consistent with Trump’s love of Putin and his autocratic friends. The author is advocating that Putin should be allowed to take Ukraine. I wonder whether he’d be happy if Putin also conquered Poland, Finland, Scandinavian and Baltic countries?
This comment is a non-starter. Trump truly doesn’t believe in war and would seek a negotiated settlement which could have myriad outcomes. War is not the answer.
It’s difficult to argue that Trump doesn’t believe in war when he clearly believes in violence: having ‘fight, fight, fight’ as his slogan; happy for his supporters to want to hang his VP; urging his rally attendees to assault journalists; convicted of sexual violence.
Thanks for the down votes but I believe that I merely stated some facts which indicate his proclivity for physical violence.
Trump believes, rightly so, that Putin could have been deterred. Biden allowed the invasion by literally ignoring the threat. So much so that it looked deliberate.
‘Escalating’ the war in Ukraine for this writer seems to mean ‘helping Ukraine defend itself from Russian aggression.’
Obviously Russia was forced to invade a sovereign state and reach almost Kiev destroying and murdering on their way because Biden had a gun pointing at Putins head. Same as in Chechnya and Georgia. How dared they having interests different to those of Russia! Literally Hitlers!
Exactly. Russia has shown itself, once again, for what it is. Those with his mindset never confront the nature of the regimes opposed to American power, nor why countries prefer to live in the Western orbit than those of China or Russia.
Why bother writing an article about Harris? Write about the people who run her. She’s just a front woman so the deep state can pretend we’re still a representative republic (which we haven’t been since Woodrow Wilson).
INDEED!!!! We need names!!
Have to agree. I think she’s a glorified spokesmodel selected precisely because “they” are certain she’ll do what she’s told. Who exactly is “they”? Pelosi, Obama, the Clintons, Blackrock? Any or all of the above?
However, I don’t she’s a shoe-in. Trump appeals to a lot of folks that are sick and tired of forever wars not least because the US hasn’t been very good at it (if success is measured by keeping China and Russia in their place). Trump will support Israel’s battle against Iranian proxy terrorists while there’s more than a few people that blame the mess on Democrat mishandling of Iran in the first place. The fact that the US has been unable to protect commercial shipping from Houthi activity in the Red Sea hasn’t gone unnoticed either.
You are giving too much credit to our idiocracy. Too many people vote based on their uninformed opinions about a single issue.
China and Russia have been kept very much in their place, but due to American military and financial power rather than its wars per se. China and Russia being kept in their place is a good thing, given the brutality of their regimes.
Read investigative journalist, Lee Fang, on Substack, for her background of “San Francisco” Democrats. He and Glenn Greenwald show her constant flip-flopping on issues that we need to know now.
I always read ”alternative reports”, starting with underground newspapers and comics in the 70s. There was a reason they proliferated.
“Harris will follow the path set down by her former boss: one grounded in aggressively countering any challenges to America’s waning hegemony, by any means necessary.”
Premise check: False. See Afghanistan retreat.
Afghanistan retreat was negotiated by the previous admin and deeply supported by the public. The Biden admin made the withdrawal a mess to show the stupidity of hasty withdrawals in order to argue against any such thing in the future. I guarantee we will hear, “Remember Afghanistan” in the future regarding future withdrawals.
So you are saying that virtually every thing negotiated and implemented by the previous administration was proudly overturned or reversed in the first few days of the Biden administration, yet they felt deeply compelled to honor a single deal in a way which granted billions of dollars of military material to our sworn enemies.
I have some land in Florida to sell you with good drainage.
The problem was is not in to withdraw, but how to withdraw.
.
If Fazi think Kamala is a hawk, he has to understand that she or whose behind her are not the hawks, but something like a hen with its head cut off running around the yard. I’m not sure Fazi ever saw this instructive spectacle
The idea that the Biden administration intentionally made the withdrawal a mess that cost the lives of untold numbers of Afghans and 13 US Marines to make a political point is both completely believable and astonishingly cynical and obscene. Democrat foreign policy in a nutshell.
I may vote for her after all!
The sub-text of this article could very well be – here is why the DC cabal cannot allow Donald Trump to be president again. He is NOT a warmonger. His time in office demonstrated that. His repeated desire to stop the killing in Ukraine amplifies that sentiment. Trump’s election would not turn the US into a pacifist nation, but it would put a damper on the grandiose plans of the war machine.
It is comical how the spirit of Reagan is being resurrected for the sake of political convenience by the left and right alike, the former of which hated the man with the passion of a million suns. I don’t recall Reagan sending troops into one theater after another. After the 1983 Beirut barracks bombing, we pulled out. He never favored war; his mentality was ‘peace through strength’ and included the rebuilding of a hollowed-out military that would deter others.
Perhaps the real clue lies in the old axiom “show me your friends, and I’ll tell you who you are.” The Dems’ embrace of Darth Cheney, of all people, is stunning in its transparency and cravenness. When you see a list of Repubs lining up behind someone who shares NONE of their values, save the penchant for war, that should be a giant, billowing red flag.
Yes, America wants to maintain being the top military and economic power in the world and why not? Who would we sooner have? American intervention in foreign countries has been a mixed bag, often due to domestic political pressures, but it was generally based on humanitarian considerations and directed against governments that were killing their own citizens in large numbers. It has never been an imperial land grab of population or resources. Contrast that with Russia in Ukraine and China’s ambitions in Taiwan both of which seek to control populations that are content with their existing governments and can democratically change them if they choose to. Theoretically “Europe” could offer a better alternative but it has no leader or foreign policy – it couldn’t even deal with genocide in its own back yard when Yugoslavia fractured.
The United States government is not here to guarantee the rights of foreigners. That is how you sell this interventionist crap to the kids that have to fight these wars. There are no altruist motives among politicians. It’s just the marketing or sales pitch.
The self-interest argument works in two opposing ways:
– the US government is not here to guarantee the rights of foreigners so the US shouldn’t fight any wars abroad to promote democracy in other countries.
– the US government is not here to guarantee the rights of foreigners so it’s fine to invade other countries and kill/detain/torture foreigners if it’s in American interests.
In the West, it is just democracy. To others not in the West, it is just the continuation of a nightmare.
Thomas no — she is wearing a neo-con skinsuit!
Also, the Cheneys aren’t ultra-conservatives, by virtue of their support for Harris.
Interesting reference to 1984 double speak, “intervention in the name of democracy, and war in the name of peace.”
War is Peace, Freedom is Slavery, Ignorance is Strength.
Consequences of Doublespeak: Loss of Critical Thinking, Manipulation of Truth, Perpetuation of Oppression
Brilliantly accurate.
Something the author did not mention is the damage done to the US armed forces by Obama & Biden through their DEI initiatives. Recruitment, morale, and combat efficiency are all suffering, with a compliant mainstream media failing to report on it. If any are interested, I strongly recommend checking out the site STARRS.US.
Mr. Fazi and many of the commentators here appear to hold that the US is omnipotent. Other states and entities prosecuting war and other significant actions against their neighbors must have been manipulated into such conduct by the US, or their actions are justified.
Mr. Fazi’s ideal of states respecting the multifarious cultures and internal choices of their neighbors is wonderful. Unfortunately, in the words of an old hymn “there is no peace on earth.” Putin declares that the Ukraine and other states lost when the USSR collapsed is a great tragedy that he seeks to reverse by war, first in Georgia and now in Ukraine. Xi in China declares that Taiwan has no legitimate independent existence, and the South China Sea, contrary to formal rulings under international law, belongs to China. He enforces his claims with violence and contempt for neighboring states.
I don’t understand what alternative Mr. Fazi and the others advocate. Do they believe that US withdrawal from world affairs will result in ambitious, aggressive states becoming benign supporters of peace on earth?
I assume that there is no taste for weak states to become playthings of the powerful. They apparently believe that the US is such a malignant entity. Do they read no history? In my reading, the US, pursuing its perception of its self-interest as has every state I’ve read of, has been more benignly positive than any other. In the wake of WWII, Germany, Japan, helped to recover to be independent states; Western Europe likewise with Eastern Europe excluded from the assistance by Stalin’s decree; Taiwan, the Philippines, Singapore, and South Korea evolving into prosperous states under US support ; and in recent years leading the western acceptance of opening markets to China.
Has the US been uniformly benign? Of course not. Have its actions helped to drop the proportion of the severely poor in the world? Yes, in addition to its policies that assisted millions into prosperity.
Good points, the article is full of isolationism propaganda and completely unbalanced. He proposes nothing realistic to replace the status quo, the US is a superpower with many vital interests, there is no hiding from what happens in the world, you either defend your interests and seek to expand your influence or let others gain the upper hand. It’s the rise and fall of empires which will continue. The Trump agenda is nonsense and threatens US vital and long term influence to the detriment of the US. At least with Harris we have an idea what we’re getting, with Trump no idea other than chaos and incoherent babble.
“At least with Harris we have an idea what we’re getting, with Trump no idea other than chaos and incoherent babble.”
.
Or lies or stupidity. A shameful withdrawal from Afghanistan, effectively allowing Putin to start a war in Ukraine with minimal aid from US to Ukraine, waiting until enough Ukrainians die for the country to be subjugated by Russia, money for Iran and tying the hands of Israel. All this is the policy of Obama, his puppet Biden and the future policy of the brainless Kamala. If you do not see this, I have serious doubts about your sanity
Unlike your guru Trump, my sanity is fine, you need to look in the mirror when you support a fanatical demented freak. His shameless debate performance revealed how weak and incoherent the man is, and dangerous
You’re angry, psychopath. I like it.
“Washington’s proxy war against Russia”?
You’ll need more than a Mearsheimer Substack to stand up that particular assertion.
Mr. Fazi, I offer a different take. I see the Biden/Harris (B/H) administration as “timidly noisy”, perhaps “reluctantly and fearfully supportive”. On Ukraine, B/H initially seemed more afraid of Putin’s use of nuclear weapons than of Russian victory. Perhaps wrongly thinking that we could drain the Russian resolve, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have needlessly died while we dribbled the arms that might have shut the invasion down very early on.
In southeast Asia, B/H has consistently allowed the China to have their way with the Philippines and offers only cursory support and long-term “pledges” to Taiwan. Venezuela has turned full-on dictatorship with little response despite multiple harsh financial options. Iran and Russia blatantly bypass oil sanctions. Afghanistan was it’s own bit of humiliation.
And in Israel, Hamas and Hezbollah continue to get a pass while Israel is the regular target of B/H criticisms. Yes, perhaps B/H are one of the few voices still tacitly supporting Israel, but with a growing number of caveats. Harris hasn’t been asked to speak directly on her go-forward policies, thus they remain a mystery.
Lastly, Harris has never been a strong supporter of increased military spending that might offset the progress made by China and Russia.
I would therefore conclude that B/H speak softly but are unwilling to wield any big sticks that would truly influence our adversaries. Seeing this, and seeing a “say anything to get elected” woman as President, I would suggest that those adversaries are champing at the bit for the continuation of the B/H policies.
No-one in US politics is a disguised neocon. They all support the neoconservative Washington consensus with perhaps the exception of Tulsi Gabbard and Rand Paul.
There was suspicion about DeSantis too, while my suspicion of Trump is that he would roll out a few threats to Kiev but maintain an only slightly compromised level of funding to the war.
She’s not in disguise….front and center neocon. Our government is riddled with.
“…to its near-unconditional support for Israel”
I stopped reading after that. Israel is not the aggressor. They have been under near-constant attack for the 75 years which the modern nation of Israel has existed. If it were to fall, Iran would surely take power over the entire region. Israel, besides being our only truly regional ally, is the single bulwark standing against Iranian hegemony.
Both Obama and Harris/Biden have openly supported Iran while constantly deriding Israel for daring to defend itself and its citizens from radical Islamic terror and threatening to cut off U.S aid.
Trump was and is a staunch supporter of Israel, and a sworn enemy of the Islamic Republic of Iran, such that no one dared mess with Israel under his watch. They waited for a Neocon administration, which they got with Harris/Biden, before pulling off 10/7.
I think this article is proof that “neocon” has become almost as meaningless a pejorative as “fascist”. Almost as meaningless, because the effective meaning of the former, “someone I don’t like who supports a muscular American foreign policy” is a little more coherent than the use of the latter that seems to mean “someone I don’t like and regard as being to my right politically”.
This is most compelling argument for supporting Harris that I have read.
Thank you, now I want to vote for Harris more than ever.
“We live under what can better be called interventionism.
Interventionism is a system where a small political class uses government interventions in a market economy to coercively transfer wealth into their own pockets. Interventionism inevitably moves towards socialism as the predictably bad consequences of interventions are used to justify more interventions, leading to more and more government control over the economy.
But while the politicians, bureaucrats, and politically-connected business leaders who make up the political class often rely on socialist rhetoric and Marxist academics to justify their next interventions, it is not in their interest to jump straight to a full-on socialist economy. There is too much money to be made along the way, and they want their coercively extracted profits to remain private.
Kamala Harris is an interventionist. She is fully committed to the big scam at the center of the political system and economy. That’s what makes her so dangerous.” – Mises Institute
https://mises.org/mises-wire/kamala-harris-not-radical-communist-makes-her-even-more-dangerous
Wow. Thank you.
Yes. Thanks for that. A good succinct piece of writing is worth a thousand words
That’s it. In a nutshell.
socialism is when the government does things. I am very smart.
Harris is a neocon capitalist just like Trump
You’re correct obviously, it’s hilarious how Unherd pieces are often rather insightful and the comments are just Fox News level analysis
Hilarious. You’ve just replied to yourself and told yourself you are correct. I agree with me.
Kamala is way over her head no matter the area of concern.
It doesn’t matter how empty headed she is. Her handlers will keep her on the straight and narrow just as they did with Biden. The perfidy will continue so long as we keep electing imperial barbarians.
I think that’s the point of all the “support” from The Blob.
She’s really just an avatar.
The same people who are running the government under the Joe Biden Avatar will be running it under the Kamabla Harris Avatar.
“Kamala Harris, Presidential avatar”. I think you’ve nailed it. I’ve been calling her an empty vessel and an auto-cue reader for “Bill ‘n’ Hil”, the Obamas and Pelosi, but that’s much more succinct. Thank you.
Harris is a perfect example of what Texans call a “post turtle”: She’s in a high place, you know she didn’t get there on her own, and she’s helpless now that she’s there.
a small political class uses government interventions in a market economy to coercively transfer wealth into their own pockets.
I would only quibble with the motives. “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity”, Hanlon’s razor. Most of these people see themselves as do-gooders. And, of course…
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.” C S Lewis
Except these people are NOT stupid. The clue lies in this line from the post: “ the predictably bad consequences…”
I characterize these foreseeable consequences which means they are intentional. Stupidity can account for one mistake, maybe two, but it does not explain an ongoing litany of results that normal people would consider to be bad.
You might have quoted Auric Goldfinger on that last point: “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.”
Thanks for that quote, an excellent unique reply.
Funny how these think tanks like the Heritage foundation and Mises Institute keep blaming everything and everyone for the failures of the economics they have been paddling themselves in the past 40 years. Although one could say that the more radical Austrian economics of the Mises Institute could actually be an alternative to today’s mess, we still have to ignore that a lot of their rhetoric aligns with the ever dominant neoliberal project.
That project was at the basis of financialization, offshoring / outsourcing and deregulation of the financial industry that ultimately led to 2008. Ever increasing government and central bank interference, like the QE rounds, is only necessary precisely because that system failed. If one calls that “socialism”, at least recognize it was mostly socialism for the ultra-wealthy.
That is also because the system was, from the start, designed to protect big capital while reducing the cost of labor. Market discipline does not count for big capital. However, the idea that this “government is the problem” ideology would produce growth and wealth that would trickle down was probably always simply a sales pitch. It seems a step too far for Austrians to actively distance themselves from the neoliberal supply-side failures. Then the question remains, why would it be different this time?
I think the Austrians would argue back that the fault lay not in the fact that banks failed in 2008, but in the fact that we bailed them out.
It would have been far better, so the Austrian logic goes, to let them fail, let them take the currency system with it, and put in place a decentralised, non-CB controlled system of currency.
The returns to wealth for the average currency holder would skyrocket, and the banking class would be reduced to a clearing house for pricing risk, which is all they are supposed to do.
Sure but they should be more explicit about that then, in my opinion. They focus on some abstract socialist Boogeyman while their rhetoric sounds pretty much the same as neoliberal rhetoric, even though they fundamentally seem to oppose quite a bit about neoliberalism and supply-side economics. It almost seems like what they insist on calling “socialism” is in reality just some variety of neoliberalism in practice.
Corporate Capitalism for sure seems to blur the lines between socialism and neoliberalism.
No, the Austrian school is for free markets, and capitalism, meaning the capitalists, those whose resources are at risk in an enterprise, are in control. We haven’t had capitalism for a long time. We have managerialism. I think James Burnham was premature in thinking it had arrived c. 1949, but certainly by the time the professional managers in government bailed out the professional managers in finances in 2008, it was no longer the capitalists in charge. And managerialism, with the managers floating between corporate C-suites, government, and the non-profit sector, is hostile to the free market. The class interests of the professional managerial class demand fascism as Mussolini himself used the term, the union of state and corporate power, not the almost-laissez-faire approach the Austrian school advocated.
Atlas Shrugged is basically a thought experiment, a rather long one, but entertaining along the way, in what happens with interventionism. It’s a long time since I read it, but since this Labour government got elected, almost every week I have cause to think about it.
That the Cheney’s have shown their true fecklessness to the nation that supported them so well is telling. That they back the results of an inner circle coup rather than trust the people tells even more.
Are Trump and another cabinet of corporate cronies the alternative you choose over Biden’s cabinet of once-removed corporate cronies? We don’t have a choice of a non-crony professional Public Service Class or a corporate-captured privileging class of legislators, policy-makers and regulatory “oversight” rather than “enforcement” class.
Government will be crony-dominated and our only choice is how competent is that crony class going to be and to what degree do they have a record of actually confronting the corporate overlords who fund both of our cartel Duopoly Pay2Play partnered parties’ who manipulate currency valuation and rely on Centralized Banking while our whole Cold War Propaganda System led by E-CON Propaganda Czar Milton “Freedom” Friedman preached the COMMIE EVILS OF CENTRALIZATION.
Add a Public Interest Acting Professional Class that was needed to keep the Boom\Bust Cycle of Crony Capital’s so-called Free Markets from leading US from one cycle of over-valued and SCARE-CITY\SCARCITY markets of scarcely circulating over-valued currency to its inflationary extreme of widely printed and circulated hence rapidly under-valued national currency that plagued the rest of the GOLD STANDARD ENFORCED DEPRESSED WORLD lurching between Euro Imperial World Wars and would come to characterize our BUST CYCLEs and growth of our Military Industrial Complex of CENTRALIZING E-CON SAVIORS of federally funded industrial rebirth as well.
https://www.nber.org/system/files/chapters/c11482/c11482.pdf
https://prospect.org/economy/neoliberalism-political-success-economic-failure/
Which is what our US GREAT DEPRESSION was: DEFLATION (meaning our national currency soared in value and working people could not get enough of it to feed their families. But back then we had NATIONAL RENT CONTROL & NATIONAL RETAIL PRICE CONTROL. Uncle Miltie and today’s corporate-captured DUOPOLY won’t be quick to remind US of what the OFFICE OF PRICE ADMINISTRATION actually did to lead US out of DEFLATION and DEPRESSION while preventing the LOSS OF VALUE OF NATIONAL CURRENCY that preceded the GREAT DEPRESSION and came about from the FINANCE & BANKING Policies of the Gilded Age:
Here, check the historical record and what happens when COMMIE CENTRALIZATION is run by CORPORATE CAPTURED CRONY CENTRALIZED BANK led by the FEDERAL RESERVE of the Wall Street Booming Gilded Age:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Price_Administration
https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/great-depression
The choice of Crony Centralization vs. Public Interest Professional Centralization is what led to deflationary correction that became inflationary over-correction when the PRIVATE INTERESTS became the CRONY FEDERAL RESERVE for the shrunken INDUSTRIALIST class and swelling ranks of the Wall Street FINANCE & SPECULATING class (of largely formerly productive Industrialists’ new generations of SPECULATIVE HEIRS. Incidentally looking a lot like BIG GOVERNMENT SUBSIDIZED LOW-INCOME HOUSING HEIR OF FRED TRUMP, NAMELY DONALD TRUMP.
He who TOOK A HUGE PUBLIC FORTUNE OF FEDERAL BIG GOVERNMENT CONTRACTS THAT BUILT ALL THAT ALL-WHITE Outer Borough SUBURBAN SUBSIDIZED LOW-INCOME HOUSING FOR U.S. VETS (racially segregated by contractor\owner Trump using federal funding) returning from 2 World War interventions and turned that huge well-distributed via jobs PUBLIC FUNDING into a small fortune siphoned by the heirs that inherited that transfer of well-managed Public Interest HUGE National Wealth that saved US from BOOM\BUST speculation and Private Interest opportunism and wealth concentration turning it into their own PRIVATE small fortunes.
Heirs like DONALD TRUMP son of wealth and housing contractor FRED TRUMP who actually built quality stuff with federal BIG GOVERNMENT money (except only for White vets returning on GI BILL). PUBLIC HOUSING PROJECTS that retained their market value and increased it with federally funded and privately contracted often mob-run maintenance further enriching the PRIVATE heirs to the NATIONAL PUBLIC FUNDING of housing and a rebirth of industrial development:
https://theconversation.com/woody-guthrie-old-man-trump-and-a-real-estate-empires-racist-foundations-53026
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/a-brief-oral-history-of-wayne-barrett-the-first-journalist-to-doggedly-cover-donald-trump
https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/01/wayne-barrett-obituary-reporter-village-voice-trump-first-214669/
Mitch RitterParadigm Sifters, Code Shifters, PsalmSong Chasers
Lay-Low Studios, Ore-Wa (Refuge of Atonement Seekers)
Media Discussion List\Looksee
If she has the same policies as Biden, it’s because the same people who pulled his strings are pulling hers. Which would hardly be surprising.
The Democrats ate more likely to unleash the US military upon its own people.
If she is anything, she is a puppet. Just as vacuous as senile Joe. American imperialism started with gun boat diplomacy in the nineteenth century in Asia quickly followed by the Spanish-American War and the creation of Panama. Its latest offspring is the proxy war in Ukraine. Im Westen nichts Neues.
Excellent piece. A Harris Presidency, which is now highly likely, brings Armageddon much closer. It is a chilling but very realistic prospect.
At this point in time, the race is 50/50. A statistical dead heat.
Not facing tyrants may bring Armageddon even speedier.
Trump is far more likely to unleash chaos in Europe than Harris, although he would probably mainly grumble and not actually withdraw from NATO.
Why are you surprised? Blair, Clinton, Obama…..but also pretty well all tue current crop of ultra-progressives are all locked into a Neo-liberal agenda of open borders, free movement of capital and labour. The Koch brothers and other Neo-cons and Neo-liberals are quite happy to go along with all the sex/race nonsense because it goes with open borders and cheap wages. As soon as you substitute gender and race baiting for moderate class….you’re basically in the Neo-liberal camp, and soon enough Neo-con geopolitics. Bernie Mark I was oriented to class – and was completely against Neo-con wars, but also open borders. Mark II version has flipped