Sinophobia

White House trade advisor and prominent Sinophobe Peter Navarro was interviewed yesterday by ABC's George Stephanopoulos. The interview provides a convenient encapsulation of Trump's reelection strategy of scapegoating China for the coronavirus pandemic.

The United States might be a faltering hyper-power, but it remains unrivaled when it comes to capitalizing on crises. By blaming China, the Trump administration hopes to dodge voter retribution in November at the same time braking the Dragon's global economic growth.

It is unclear to me how much blame can be ascribed to China. If patient zero was diagnosed on November 17 of last year in Wuhan, what do we make of the patient in France who was diagnosed on November 16?

Much too much is unknown about COVID-19. For instance, what are we to make of the spike in multi-system inflammatory disease among children?

At this point I don't think that we can rule out a man-made origin of the coronavirus. The mainstream press dismisses man-made origin, as Mike Baker did recently in "When Did the Coronavirus Arrive in the U.S.? Here’s a Review of the Evidence":

Dr. Bedford [of Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle] said there was no evidence of genetic engineering in the virus, noting that it appeared to be a genetic outgrowth of a virus circulating among bats. It probably reached humans through an intermediate animal, such as a pangolin, he said.

“There’s no hallmarks of it having been manipulated in a lab,” Dr. Bedford said. “I think that’s definitive.”

He did not, however, rule out the possibility that some version of the virus being studied by scientists in Wuhan could have somehow escaped and spread from there. But he doubts that is the case. He said that the most prevalent theory about the virus’s origins — that it spread naturally among animals at a live animal market in Wuhan, then jumped to humans — was the most likely explanation.

But Kate Charlet's point in "The New Killer Pathogens" is that no such definitive statement is possible when it comes to genetic modification in a lab:

Ultimately, the power of these disincentives hinges on the ability to determine that an attack has occurred and to identify its source. For now, investigators looking at a pathogen in the aftermath of an attack would not necessarily be able to tell if gene-editing techniques had been used.

Possibility of Hong Kong Protests Spreading to Chinese Mainland

Yesterday protesters (see "Hong Kong Protesters Storm Legislature, Dividing the Movement" by Javier Hernandez) occupied Hong Kong's Legislative Council building for three hours, breaking glass, spraying paint and smashing office equipment. Most of the protesters had dispersed by the time the police reclaimed the building.

In the aftermath, the protest movement that has mobilized to defeat legislation allowing for extradition to the Chinese mainland is being declared effectively over. Hernandez concludes his dispatch:

“This movement has reached its end,” said Tian Feilong, the executive director of a research institute on Hong Kong policy in Beijing, citing the divisions between lawmakers and more extreme protesters. “It will cool down by itself.”

The political crisis might prompt officials to place even greater pressure on Beijing’s formidable network of sympathetic business executives, media outlets and civil servants in Hong Kong, experts say, such as by threatening employees of mainland companies whose children participate in the protests.

“Those elements will be pushed to the max to elicit greater compliance from the population,” said Victor Shih, an associate professor of political economy at the University of California, San Diego.

The movement now enters a period of uncertainty. Arrests are likely. Divisions are growing among protesters. Without a recognized set of leaders, the demonstrations lack a sense of focus.

Victoria Hui, an associate professor who studies Hong Kong politics at the University of Notre Dame, said a successful protest required some level of coordination, even if it was decentralized.

“It cannot be leaderless,” she said. “They need better coordination. It’s not worth it to court arrest.”

Peter Symonds of World Socialist Web Site sees the Hong Kong protests differently, not confined merely to the issue of extradition but encompassing housing and inequality that could spark protests on the mainland.

Writing in the South China Morning Post last Friday, commentator Albert Cheng cautiously advised Beijing and its Hong Kong administration that in order to end the protests it had to address the underlying social issues. “The government’s incompetence in tackling the city’s long-standing problems, such as the wealth gap and lack of upward mobility, has generated despair among the younger generation, prompting them to take to the streets,” he wrote.

The continuing protests are creating a political crisis, not just for the Lam administration but for Chinese President Xi Jinping and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime in Beijing. The CCP leadership is afraid that the political unrest in Hong Kong will spill into the Chinese mainland despite its efforts to block out any news of the protests.

The upheaval compounds the mounting problems and dilemmas confronting the CCP bureaucracy, which faces Washington’s aggressive trade and economic war and continuing US military provocations in the South China Sea and Taiwan Strait. The Chinese economy is continuing to slow, with growth rates well below the 8 percent benchmark that was long touted as necessary to avoid rising unemployment and social unrest.

Reflecting the deep-seated anxieties in Chinese ruling circles, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang warned the National People’s Congress in March: “There is still public dissatisfaction in many areas, such as education, healthcare, elderly care, housing, food and drug safety, and income distribution. Last year saw a number of public safety incidents and major workplace incidents.”

The CCP regime fears a political movement of the working class. It went to great lengths to black out any mention of the 30th anniversary of the June 4-5 Tiananmen Square massacre, which was aimed at crushing the mass opposition of Chinese workers to the consequences of the regime’s pro-market policies. Any mass movement of workers today would erupt on a far wider scale than in 1989.

The potential for the Hong Kong protests to trigger instability throughout China, and elsewhere, may account for the rather muted response in Western capitals. The European Union appealed for restraint and dialogue to defuse the protests, while Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, notorious for his militarist views, simply called on China “to adhere to its international obligations.”

The Western mainstream press exists substantially in its present form to demonize China. Now that it has its golden ticket, it's conflicted about using it.

Hong Kong Extradition Protests

China is presented as Public Enemy #2 by the U.S. mainstream media (Public Enemy #1 being Russia). But in terms of the actual number of stories devoted to bogeymanness, China has Russia beat (which says a lot about who the U.S. governing elite really fear). A reader must therefore exercise great caution when it comes to stories tarring the Chinese government as an odious malefactor (i.e., the Xinjiang re-education camps). I must say though that when it comes to the recent protests in Hong Kong over a proposal to allow criminal extradition to mainland China, I find myself in that anti-China camp and on the side of the citizens in the street.

This was not the case during the Umbrella Revolution. Then I thought what the protesters were demanding -- open elections for Hong Kong's chief executive -- while fine in theory was a standard of democracy that citizens of the "indispensable nation" did not even enjoy, since our choices are filtered by the completely corrupt two-party system, and therefore not meriting the high dudgeon displayed in the Western media.

On Saturday Hong Kong's chief executive Carrie Lam announced that she was pulling the unpopular extradition bill. But this failed to mollify the protesters, who turned out two-million strong yesterday. Their demands are (see "Hong Kong Protesters Return to the Streets, Rejecting Leader’s Apology" by Keith Bradsher and Daniel Victor):

[T]he complete withdrawal of the bill, not just an indefinite suspension; an impartial investigation into the police use of force during Wednesday’s clashes with protesters; and the rescinding the official description of that protest as an illegal riot, which could expose anyone arrested during the violent demonstration to long jail terms.

Talk now is that Beijing is going to ax chief executive Lam, but it doesn't want to go through the public process for selecting her replacement. So she'll probably be kept around until the protests die down.

China and Plastic Waste

One way we consumers can intuit the out-of-balance manner in which we live in late-stage capitalism is the amount of plastic waste that we produce. As I have mentioned before, it seems to me that the each purchase is consecrated with a carapace of plastic.

No greater bounty of refuse plastic can be found than in your average takeout order. Walking to a coffee house yesterday at lunch I crossed paths with a young woman toting a billowy white pillowcase of a plastic bag holding plastic clam shells containing her meal.

The main story, "Food Delivery Apps Are Drowning China in Plastic" by Raymond Zhong and Carolyn Zhang, in yesterday's business page of The New York Times manages a twofer: 1) it sketches the importance of the growing popularity of takeout orders made by smartphone in the planet's burgeoning plastic pollution problem; and 2) it maligns China.

Zhong and Zhang are not so successful in the former. China still produces less plastic waste per capita than the United States, and, come to find out, a lot of U.S. plastic recycling was based on its ability to export it to China, something now endangered since China banned the importation of many types of plastic:

People in China still generate less plastic waste, per capita, than Americans. But researchers estimate that nearly three-quarters of China’s plastic waste ends up in inadequately managed landfills or out in the open, where it can easily make its way into the sea. More plastic enters the world’s oceans from China than from any other country. Plastic can take centuries to break down undersea.

Recyclers manage to return some of China’s plastic trash into usable form to feed the nation’s factories. The country recycles around a quarter of its plastic, government statistics show, compared with less than 10 percent in the United States.

[snip]

China is home to a quarter of all plastic waste that is dumped out in the open. Scientists estimate that the Yangtze River emptied 367,000 tons of plastic debris into the sea in 2015, more than any other river in the world, and twice the amount carried by the Ganges in India and Bangladesh. The world’s third and fourth most polluting rivers are also in China.

Takeout apps may be indirectly encouraging restaurants to use more plastic. Restaurants in China that do business through Meituan and Ele.me say they are so dependent on customer ratings that they would rather use heavier containers, or sheathe an order in an extra layer of plastic wrap, than risk a bad review because of a spill.

[snip]

This deluge of trash might not be such a big problem were China not in the middle of a monumental, if flawed, effort to fix its recycling system. Recycling has long been a gritty, unregulated affair in the country, one driven less by green virtue than by the business opportunity in extracting value out of other people’s leavings.

The government now wants a recycling industry that doesn’t spoil the environment or sicken workers. The transition hasn’t been smooth.

China recently banned many types of scrap from being imported into the country, hoping that recyclers would focus on processing domestic material instead. That killed off a lucrative business for those recyclers, and left American cities scrambling to find new dumping grounds for their cardboard and plastic. Some cities have been forced to end their recycling programs.

No doubt most neighborhoods in the U.S. will eventually be impacted by China's ban. Mine is. The silver lining here is that a domestic fix will have to be devised.

(By the way, Naked Capitalism regularly covers plastic pollution issues.)

How Will China Respond?

It does seem as if the year-long trade negotiations between China and the United States are at impasse (see Nick Beams' "China to hit back if new US tariff threat goes ahead"). We'll find out shortly. As Keith Bradhser notes:

President Trump said on Sunday that American tariffs of 10 percent on $200 billion in Chinese goods, imposed last September, would rise to 25 percent on Friday. The tariffs would take effect just after midnight on Thursday, meaning the United States could wake up on Friday to an even more damaging trade war. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said on Monday that the tariffs might be reconsidered if Beijing restored what the United States regards as previous Chinese commitments, and made progress beyond them. 

The president also threatened to put tariffs on another $325 billion in Chinese goods, without specifying when.

Based on Beams' write-up, Team Trump wants the finalized trade deal enshrined in Chinese law rather than merely a set of regulations:

The character of the negotiations has undergone a qualitative change. They had been intended to wrap up the months-long negotiations and come to a final deal, which would then be presented to US President Trump and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping for signing.

That perspective has been cast to the winds. It is extremely doubtful if anything like it can be put together again, given the US actions and demands.

The US has claimed that China backtracked on previous agreements to write its concessions into Chinese law but then retreated, saying the measures would be carried out by regulations that carry less weight.

According to reports in the Wall Street Journal, the US is demanding China submit an inventory of laws and regulations that it would enact to guarantee that it was complying with any agreement. In other words, the US would effectively dictate economic policy to the Chinese government.

Beijing appears to have rejected this demand, regarding it as an infringement on its national sovereignty.

The Chinese decision to attend the talks is based on the hope that negotiations will be able to continue in some form and so prevent, or at least delay, a rapid escalation of the trade conflict.

Even that limited prospect is under a cloud given that the position of both sides is hardening.

Yesterday Trump posted a further inflammatory tweet: “The reason for the China pullback and attempted renegotiation of the trade deal is the HOPE that they will be able to ‘negotiate’ with Joe Biden or one of the very weak Democrats, and thereby continue to ripoff the United States ($500 billion a year) for years to come.”

With Pompeo jetting around the globe issuing diktats and making threats, it seems, with 18 months until the 2020 general election, that the Trump administration has assessed that its best -- if not only -- hope of a second term is by going to war. Take your pick: China, Venezuela and/or Iran. It's a smorgasbord. Add that to the wars the U.S. is already managing and it's more slop than the most gluttonous war-pig could ever hope to devour.

The Chinese are not without retaliatory options. Bradsher notes that a nuclear option would be for the Chinese to disrupt the global corporate supply chain. "China makes a huge amount of the parts and components that American companies need to produce their finished products."

But my guess is that Trump is right: China sees him as a one-term president. So rather than going nuclear, Beijing will again stop buying American soybeans, purchases which resumed in December when it looked like a trade deal was within reach, and tariffs will be reimposed on American automobiles.

The Reeducation Camps of Xinjiang

The dispatches on the Rohingya have dried up as the repatriation deal between Myanmar and Bangladesh, set to begin last month, stalled out.

Filling the void have been stories of Uighur Muslim internment camps in the restive western Chinese region of Xinjiang. Chris Buckley got things rolling in early September with "China Is Detaining Muslims in Vast Numbers. The Goal: ‘Transformation.’" The story's bombshell two-sentence paragraph was

The number of Uighurs, as well as Kazakhs and other Muslim minorities, who have been detained in the camps is unclear. Estimates range from several hundred thousand to perhaps a million, with exile Uighur groups saying the number is even higher.

All qualification was quickly lost and the number of Uighurs detained for reeducation became 1 million. I was walking home from work one night right after the midterm elections and I ran into a guy, an Amazon worker, coming from an anti-Trump rally. We got to talking, and it turned out he was Iranian. I said most people in the United States have not a clue how devastating the Iran-Iraq War was. He said one of Saddam's Scud missiles blew up down the street from his house. While we agreed on a lot, he said he was more frightened of China than an errant U.S. hyper power. He mentioned the 1 million in internment camps in Xinjiang.

Chris Buckley, along with co-author Austin Ramzy, was back at it yesterday with "China’s Detention Camps for Muslims Turn to Forced Labor." The Xinjiang reeducation camps, come to find out, have a forced labor component. Residents graduate from indoctrination to jobs in textile mills, sometimes housed right there at the internment camp.

China is a nation run by the central planning of the Communist Party. The Communist Party has a problem with poverty and underdevelopment in Xinjiang. Xinjiang is also the focus of foreign powers attempting to create separatist problems for China by means of Islam. It is an established pattern for Western intelligence services: Afghanistan, the First and Second Chechen Wars, Libya, Syria, etc. So the Chinese are being proactive. Training and jobs. The refugees fleeing Guatemala and Honduras might very well favor such internment camps in Arizona, California and Texas if it meant permanent residency and stable employment. And what about the opioid killing fields of West Virginia and Ohio?

These stories about the Uighur internment camps of Xinjiang are a good illustration of how the news works a la the Integrity Initiative. Intelligence agencies fronting as NGOs develop and work with "clusters" to spread misinformation.

New War Scares Before the End of Summer

It's all coming unraveled for Trump. When it comes apart, it will disintegrate quickly. Eventually all the braggadocio and brinkmanship he learned as a developer and a star of the New York City tabloids are going to have to be backed up with an actual war, whether a trade war or an armed conflict.

Team Trump is on the ropes with China. According to Mark Landler and Ana Swanson in "Chances of China Trade Win Undercut by Trump Team Infighting":

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Sunday that the United States would hold off on imposing tariffs on China, putting the trade war “on hold,” but hours later, the United States trade representative, Robert Lighthizer, warned the Chinese that the Trump administration might yet impose tariffs.

On Friday, Mr. Trump’s chief economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, told reporters that China had offered to reduce its trade surplus with the United States by $200 billion. Two days later, he said that the number was merely a “rough ballpark estimate,” and that the two countries never expected to reach an agreement and merely planned to issue a statement laying out next steps.

It was a muddled end to a chaotic process — one that revealed an American team riven by conflicts over tactics and policy, working for a president eager for a victory but torn by his desire to have a smooth summit meeting next month with North Korea, over which China wields enormous influence. 

Now the future of the negotiations falls to Wilbur Ross, the 80-year-old commerce secretary, who will travel to China in the coming days to try to nail down the commitments that proved so elusive in last week’s negotiations.

Trump is on the ropes with North Korea. There is a good chance that the ballyhooed Trump-Kim summit in Singapore won't happen.

It is obvious that complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula is a Trump fantasy. Trump has made a huge blunder though, similar to Obama's chemical weapons red line blunder, by proclaiming that no Northern Korean deal equals decimation of the country.

Yesterday Pompeo promised the same thing for Iran. Bill Van Auken has a masterful write-up in "US Secretary of State Pompeo presents war ultimatum to Iran." What caught my eye was his detailed summary of the steps being considered to counter the resumption of U.S. sanctions:

The French energy giant Total has already announced that it will withdraw from a $5 billion deal to develop the South Pars gas field in the Persian Gulf unless it is granted a sanctions waiver by US authorities. The Danish shipping giant Maersk Tankers said Thursday it would cease its activities in Iran, while German insurer Allianz and the Siemens corporation, which has sold gas turbines to Iran, have also announced that they are closing down their operations there. Airbus, which has already provided jets to Iran under a multibillion-dollar contract, has indicated it is considering compliance with US sanctions.

Meanwhile, China’s state-owned oil company CNPC announced that it is prepared to take over the contract for the Iranian gas field if Total withdraws. China is Iran’s top trade partner. The Russian government has signaled that it is prepared to incorporate Iran into a free trade zone.

While the unilateral US action has brought relations between Europe and America to their lowest point in the post-World War II era, with calls from European officials for an independent policy and a defense of “economic sovereignty,” the EU and its member states have yet to agree on any concrete policy for defying Washington.

Proposals coming out of Brussels reportedly include the continuation of Iranian oil imports by making direct euro-denominated payments to Iran’s central bank, bypassing the US financial system; paying damages to companies affected by US sanctions; and the retooling of a 1996 “blocking statute” drafted in response to US sanctions against Iran, Libya and Cuba, which makes it illegal for European firms to comply with extra-territorial sanctions. At the time, the Clinton administration provided relief for European corporations doing business in those countries, rendering the statute moot.

There is no indication that the Trump administration intends to provide any such exemptions. This means that, whatever the divisions among the European powers, trade war and political tensions will continue to intensify as the threat of a major new war in the Middle East looms.

Then there is the regime change operation underway in Venezuela.

Before the summer is over the U.S. will be at the center of several new war scares.

Venezuelan Presidential Election Another Battlefield in Growing China-Russia vs. U.S. War

The most blatant, indisputable "official enemy" propaganda has of late been produced by The New York Times with the reporting of William Neuman and Nicholas Casey on the presidential election in Venezuela.

For a sample, read the first paragraph of "Venezuela Election Won by Maduro Amid Widespread Disillusionment":

CARACAS, Venezuela — President Nicolás Maduro won a second term as president of Venezuela, a country in the midst of a historic economic collapse marked by soaring prices, widespread hunger, rampant crime, a failing health system and a large-scale exodus of its citizens.

From there the story goes to read like an opposition brief  in favor of a re-vote, which is what distant runner-up Henri Falcon is demanding:

Reuters lists the vote total:

The election board said Maduro took 5.8 million votes, versus 1.8 million for his chief challenger Henri Falcon, a former governor who broke with the boycott to stand. 

Turnout at the election was 46 percent, it said, way down from the 80 percent at the last presidential vote in 2013.

No doubt turnout was down significantly because Venezuelans know that a Maduro victory will precipitate more Yankee economic warfare against the country. According to Neuman and Casey,

The United States — which condemned the election as unfair and anti-democratic even before it happened — has threatened stricter sanctions. Also likely to increase pressure on Mr. Maduro’s government even before his next term begins: He has largely been cut off from international financing, and the government-run oil industry, which provides virtually all of the country’s hard currency, is in free fall, with plummeting production.

What Casey and Neuman don't mention, but the Reuters report does, is that the economic warfare is already so extreme that a U.S. oil company, ConocoPhillips, has seized significant property of the Venezuelan national oil company, PDVSA:

Furthermore, Venezuela’s multiple creditors are considering accelerating claims on unpaid foreign debt, while oil major ConocoPhillips has been taking aggressive action to seize state oil company PDVSA’s assets over a 2007 nationalization.

I was surprised to read of this last week in a business page feature written by Times energy specialist Clifford Krause, "Sanctions on Iran and Venezuela May Empower U.S. Rivals":

ConocoPhillips has seized cargoes at a refinery it leases in Curaçao and various storage facilities in Aruba, Bonaire and St. Eustatius to enforce a $2 billion arbitration ruling against the state oil company, Petróleos de Venezuela, known as Pdvsa.

The facilities were used to blend Venezuelan heavy crude with lighter oils, and the port in Curaçao was able to dock the largest tankers that typically send crude and other fuels across the Pacific.

“This will clearly limit Venezuela’s ability to export profitably to Asia,” said Francisco J. Monaldi, a Venezuelan oil expert at Rice University. “And if the supplies from Venezuela cannot arrive in Asia, China and India are less likely to go along with sanctions against Iran.”

Venezuela may hope for a reversal of the liens, either by international courts or by island governments concerned about protecting local jobs and fuel supplies. But with the country increasingly behind in its debt payments since last year, mining and oil companies are likely to make further attempts to seize Pdvsa assets in the coming months. That would limit Asian imports of Venezuelan oil even more.

More trouble may be coming for Venezuela in the next few days.

Trump administration officials have warned that they may impose additional sanctions on Venezuelan oil after the election on Sunday. Washington could restrict insurance on Venezuelan oil shipments or ban American sales of light oil used to blend with Venezuela’s heavy oil to prepare it for export. A ban on imports of Venezuelan oil altogether is less likely, although possible.

The point of the Krauss piece is that the Trump administration is biting off more than it can chew by sanctioning (with the ultimate intention of regime change) Iran and Venezuela simultaneously. China relies on both countries for its crude oil; hence, China will find a way around the sanctions:

In Venezuela, Beijing in recent years has tried to gain a stable energy source with more than $50 billion in loans in exchange for oil shipments, but lately has shied away from deepening its relationship. More recently, Russia has poured money into the tottering government and helped it create a cryptocurrency as it picks up oil fields on the cheap.

A collapse of the Venezuelan government might jeopardize payment of money owed to China and the future of oil-field acquisitions by Rosneft, the Russian oil company.

As Reuters says,

Though increasingly shunned in the West, Maduro can at least count on the support of major powers China and Russia, who have provided billions of dollars’ funding in recent years. 

In Beijing, foreign ministry spokesman Lu Kang said China believed the Venezuelan government and people could handle their own affairs and that everyone should respect the choice of the Venezuelan people.

China and Russia, at least for the time being, will stand fast with Venezuela.

The Gaddafi Option on Iran

For a compellingly plain explanation of why the U.S., its allies in Israel and among the sheikhdoms will continue to come up short against Iran and its allies read Eldar Mamedov's "Obsession With Iran Destabilizes The Middle East":

As the political track to roll back Iranian influence fails to produce desired results, Washington and its regional allies are debating whether to mirror what the Iranians did: build up proxies capable of challenging them militarily. This, however, is a daunting task. Organizations like Hezbollah, for example, are not just military groups acting on Iran’s behalf. It is a genuine Lebanese grassroots organization. Armed struggle is only one dimension of its activities. The rest is focused on social and political work, all of which integrates the holistic concept of “resistance”. By contrast, as the Syrian war has shown, the most militarily capable Sunni militant groups are in the orbit of al-Qaeda, pursuing a global jihad through means of nihilistic terrorism. And those Sunni militants that are outside this orbit, like Hamas, are in many ways allies of Iran and Hezbollah.

So, the notion of openly supporting al-Qaeda/Islamic State-type proxies against Iran/Hezbollah would be politically costly for the US and its allies and inevitably backfire, like it did on September 11. Kurds are not considered plausible proxies, given their own dynamic and complex relationships with Iran. There is, of course, an option of hiring an army of mercenaries paid by mainly Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates. But in the long term, mercenaries are always at disadvantage when confronted with highly motivated and capable local foes.

Taken together, these aggressive efforts to counter Iranian influence would only stiffen the resolve of Tehran and its allies/proxies to protect their positions and contribute to the destabilization of countries like Lebanon and Iraq. In such a climate, any talk of Hezbollah giving up its arms and becoming a “normal” social and political Lebanese actor would be an obvious no-go. In Iraq, consensus-minded politicians like Abadi would find it difficult to retain power, while figures like Hadi al-Amiri would be on the ascendant. Any prospect of security sector reform, involving the demobilization of the Hashd Shabi militias or their integration into the official security forces of the state, would be rendered impossible. To the contrary, there will be ample incentive for Iran and its allies in Iraq to transform Hashd into an Iraqi version of Hezbollah.

Thus, Trump administration’s anti-Iranian offensive is likely to make the Middle East even more violent and unstable than it already is. There was no need for that. The JCPOA opened the way for engaging Iran, also on regional issues. None other than Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei recognized as much when he said that the JCPOA was a test that, if successful, could lead to opening up conversation between the US and Iran on other issues. That could have provided an opportunity to address and perhaps even remove the more objectionable Iranian policies in the region. The utterly unnecessary crisis manufactured by Trump precludes that possibility. The result is likely to be not so much Iranian rollback as more chaos and destabilization in the Middle East.

There appears be two options to the neocon U.S. pullout of the JCPOA, one oriented primarily around recreating the pre-JCPOA status quo -- economic strangulation through extensive sanctions and periodic terror attacks on critical infrastructure and personnel -- and the other an outright military strike a la Libya.

The first can't succeed because China, Russia and most likely Europe -- we'll have to wait and see what effect Italy's new government has on the neoliberal corporate hive mind in Brussels -- are absolutely not going back to the pre-JCPOA status quo.

The days when China and Russia go along with U.S. global leadership are long gone. Was it Obama's "pivot to Asia"? Was it the Umbrella Revolution? We know for Russia it was definitely Kiev February 2014.

So sanctions aren't going to work over the long haul. China and Russia will continue to trade with Iran, if not Germany and Italy. That leaves option #2, the Gaddafi option. But Iran is not Libya. Persia has been around for a long time, longer than Europe. It is going to take more than F-16s and Tomahawks to bring Iran down. That was the whole point of the JCPOA. There were enough people within the U.S. national security state who understood that the Gaddafi option wouldn't work for Iran. To think otherwise is insanity.

By now we should know that this is Trump's game. He bluffs, runs right up against the insane and the absurd, and then he sashays backwards, rubbing out his tracks as he retreats. But before we can cry foul, he's on to the next absurdity, cartwheeling and tweeting.

Trump has made himself vulnerable to China though. If he accepts China's reported offer of $200 billion in additional imports from the U.S., he'll have to capitulate on his demands that China end "Made in China 2025"; he'll have to give in on national security restrictions to Chinese purchases of U.S. tech.

Without China there is no peace deal on the Korean Peninsula. Trump badly wants a peace deal between North and South Korea. He's hungry for it because he believes it will guarantee him a second term and it will put him in the history books as one of the greatest statesmen of all time.

But Trump's foreign policy team, minus Mattis, is composed of full-spectrum dominance neocons, which is why he'll try to keep everyone on board by promising a Gaddafi option on Iran.

Trump Can't Win

Trump can't win a trade war with China, and it looks like his principal MAGA demand to scrap NAFTA is being walked back. Trump's NAFTA position was always a bully's boast, the same one with which he is taunting the Chinese. He can't deliver because ag states are red states, and it's the ag states that are going to suffer the most if NAFTA is repealed or a trade war widens with China.

As Steven Lee Myers clarifies in "Why China Is Confident It Can Beat Trump in a Trade War": 

“The American agricultural sector is quite influential in the Congress,” said Wang Yong, a professor of economics at Peking University, explaining why China has targeted farm products such as soybeans with possible retaliatory tariffs. “China wants the American domestic political system to do the work.”

The president and his administration have sent drastically different messages this week.

Hours after China’s announcement on Wednesday, administration officials sought to calm fears that a trade war was imminent, suggesting that they might not pull the trigger on a plan to impose tariffs on $50 billion in Chinese goods.

But late Thursday, Mr. Trump said he would consider levying an additional $100 billion in tariffs on Chinese goods in response to its “unfair retaliation.” In a statement, he said, “Rather than remedy its misconduct, China has chosen to harm our farmers and manufacturers.”

Mr. Zhu, China’s vice minister of finance, this week had thanked American soybean farmers and the association that represents them for declaring their opposition to the Trump administration’s plan.

In addition to soybeans, China threatened to retaliate with tariffs on American cars, chemicals and other products. The 106 goods, many produced in parts of the country that have supported Mr. Trump, were selected to deliver a warning that American workers and consumers would suffer in a protracted standoff.

“If anyone wants to fight, we will be there with him,” Mr. Zhu said, more or less outlining the terms for an American surrender: the removal of unilateral tariffs and a resolution of any grievances through the World Trade Organization. “If he wants to negotiate, the door is open.”

The news is not good for Trump. He has turned out to be much more the warmonger than he appeared on the hustings. MAGA voters were not fans of the Clinton-Obama entanglements in the Middle East. Trump campaigned against the Iraq War and he criticized the Saudis. In office, his first overseas trip was to Saudi Arabia. The U.S. under Trump has proclaimed a long-term commitment to occupy Syria. Last week Trump said the occupation would end shortly, only to have the White House deny it this week.

Everything else to one side, if Trump proves to MAGA voters that he can deliver his tough talk on trade I think he has a chance at a second term. But the problem for Trump is that he can't. The best he can hope for is smoke and mirrors.

I know I've waffled on this because the Democrats are so horrible. But unless Trump can somehow spin his soon-to-be losses on trade, a blue wave could very well appear in November.

The Lunacy of U.S. Foreign Policy

For a snapshot of the lunacy of U.S. foreign policy, consult this morning's Situation Report by Paul McLeary and Adam Rawnsley:

On the road. Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs David M. Satterfield is on the way to Astana, Kazakhstan to observe the next round of Astana Process talks on Syria. The State Department “remains concerned with Iran’s involvement as a so-called ‘guarantor’ of the Astana process,” the department said in a statement Tuesday. “Iran’s activities in Syria and unquestioning support for the Assad regime have perpetuated the conflict and increased the suffering of ordinary Syrians.”

Sanctions. The United Nations unanimously passed a new round of sanctions on North Korea but Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin is warning China that the U.S. won't ease up the pressure after they passed. "We will put additional sanctions on [China] and prevent them from accessing the U.S. and international dollar system" if they don't enforce the latest sanctions, Mnuchin told reporters. 

Phase four. Al Monitor reporter Laura Rozen tweeted Tuesday night that she's heard Trump administration-affiliated think tanks are working on strategies on how to deal with insurgencies in North Korea in the aftermath of a potential war.  

It's war all the time for the United States. Unable to admit defeat and acknowledge reality, all the U.S. can do is wage war perpetually. There is a limit to such a strategy. When will it be reached? Possibly the Korean Peninsula.

War Scare with North Korea Directed at South Korean Voters

The war of words between North Korea and Trump has been mostly soft-pedaled this past week in the "newspaper of record," though this morning there is the appropriately alarming dispatch, "North Korea Says Nuclear War Could Break Out ‘At Any Moment’," by Gerry Mullany and Chris Buckley:

HONG KONG — North Korea said on Friday that nuclear war could break out on the Korean Peninsula “at any moment,” accusing the United States of escalating tensions that have set off fears of war and calls for calm by countries in the region.

Alluding to the Trump administration’s decision to send a naval flotilla to the region amid fears that Pyongyang is about to test a nuclear weapon, North Korea accused the United States of introducing “nuclear strategic assets” to the peninsula and of “pushing the situation there to the brink of war.”

“This has created a dangerous situation in which a thermonuclear war may break out any moment on the peninsula,” the North Korean Foreign Ministry’s Institute for Disarmament and Peace said in a statement published by the state-run Korean Central News Agency. 

Recent satellite images from North Korea suggest that it might soon carry out another underground detonation, analysts say, despite pointed warnings by the United States not to do so. On Saturday, the North will celebrate the 105th anniversary of the birth of its founder, Kim Il-sung, and it often uses such occasions as an opportunity to show off its military advances. A United States Navy strike group led by the aircraft carrier Carl Vinson has been diverted to the region in a show of resolve.

China, North Korea’s main ally, warned on Friday that regional tensions could run out of control. “The United States and South Korea and North Korea are engaging in tit for tat, with swords drawn and bows bent, and there have been storm clouds gathering,” China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, said in Beijing, according to Xinhua, the state news agency.

Yesterday Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe added to the anxiety by tapping into newly aroused fears of a chemical weapons attack:

The Japanese news media reported that the government’s National Security Council had been discussing the possible evacuation of an estimated 57,000 of its citizens in South Korea, should war break out. “We will take all necessary steps to protect our people’s lives and assets,” said Yoshihide Suga, Japan’s chief cabinet secretary. The Kyodo news agency said the council was concerned about the possibility of North Korean refugees arriving in boats on its shores.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan expressed concern on Thursday that North Korea could have the capability to deliver missiles equipped with sarin, the nerve agent whose recent use against civilians in Syria prompted Mr. Trump to order a missile strike there.

The gist of Trump's plan to deal with North Korea is to bribe China; that, and obliquely threaten a first-strike decapitation of Kim Jong-un.

South Korea is about to elect a progressive leader, Moon Jae-in, though a deep-state-friendly candidate, Ahn Cheol-soo, is being puffed at the eleventh hour. A lot of the U.S. saber-rattling, diverting the USS Carl Vinson carrier strike group to the Korean peninsula, is really intended for South Korean voters. Moon is opposed to the recent U.S. installation of its Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system. Ahn was originally opposed and then reversed himself.

THAAD is a key part of U.S. strategy to keep the Chinese Dragon penned in. Moon's election creates real problems for the U.S. What better way to mobilize conservative voters than to mock up a thermonuclear crisis?

Neoconned Again

Lately it seems as if the newspapers have returned to 2014: Stories about fighting in Eastern Ukraine; an incendiary report by Amnesty International alleging Syrian government crimes against humanity; a tendentious article in the Gray Lady which creates the impression that there is smoldering support for ISIS in Sunni Iraq.

Then there is this little gem by Gardiner Harris, "As Ties With U.S. Cool, Europeans Look to Forge Other Alliances," about the EU foreign minister Federica Mogherini's Foggy Bottom sit-down with the Secretary of State from ExxonMobil Rex Tillerson: "On Russian sanctions, she said President Trump’s policy was essentially identical to former President Barack Obama’s and to Europe’s."

It was foolish to expect that a Trump administration would be substantially different from prior ones. Sure, it is welcome news to see that Trump blocked Tillerson's choice of neocon archduke Elliot Abrams for his deputy, but the overall trajectory is still neocon. Robert Parry has lately been calling this out. What we're going to get, and no doubt what the Saudis have been promised (in order to let go of Islamic State), is increasing conflict with Iran; that, and increasing conflict with China. According to this morning's Situation Report:

The Pentagon wants to increase the number of freedom of navigation operations it conducts near man-made Chinese islands in the disputed territory of the South China Sea. Anonymous military officials told Navy Times that the carrier strike group attached to the USS Carl Vinson would carry out the operations if approved by the Trump administration. The operations began under the Obama administration and involve sailing within 12 nautical mile of the islands in order to content Beijing's claims of exclusive territorial sovereignty surrounding them.

The next four years are going to be a real neocon roller coaster.

Trump Will Go the Way of Nixon

I've been telling people since before the inaugural that it can't be sustained, that Trump will flame out. My epiphany yesterday was that what we are are dealing with here is a convoluted backward reanimation of Nixon.

Nixon came to power after winning a squeaker in 1968 because the Democratic Party had imploded. A shrewd campaigner and a dirty tricks magician, Nixon colluded with the South Vietnamese to upend LBJ's peace initiative, dooming Humphrey's chances of victory; then, in 1972, thanks to Kevin Phillips' Southern Strategy and the assassination attempt and crippling of George Wallace, Nixon reaped the whirlwind and smoked McGovern, remaking the GOP as the party of the cracker working man.

After that '72 landslide there was Watergate, and it was the GOP's turn to wander in the wilderness. Until the Reagan messiah appeared to cleanse the body politic six years later.

But Trump, who fancies himself a Reagan, is no Reagan. Trump is a Nixon, a deluded, brooding, grudge junkie without any of Nixon's Deep State sophistication, on foreign policy, on the labyrinthine federal bureaucracy, etc. Rather than recording himself on mountains of magnetic audio tape, Trump mainlines himself into the global noosphere via Twitter.

Nixon's election was a river flowing backward against the zeitgeist. The country continued to get freakier as Nixon welcomed Billy Graham to the White House. The same thing is going to happen now. Western society is now solidly feminist and multicultural and pantheistic. The old time dysfunctional cracker monotheistic patriarchal order is broken beyond repair. It can appear from the corner of the eye, like a ghost encountered on the staircase of the Winchester Mystery House, as majority sentiment, but it is not. Trump's 45% approval rating is probably his maximum level of support. We'll see tomorrow when a Right-to-Life march stacks up against last week's women's march.

Trump is headed full speed for the cliff. If I had to bet I would say that his goading of the Dragon is an almost certain path to destruction. To understand why read "Trump Injects High Risk Into Relations With China" by Jane Perlez and Chris Buckley. Trump's scrapping of the TPP convinced the Chinese that he might do the same thing with Nixon's One China policy. The Chinese are now preparing for a trade war; they will target Boeing aircraft and U.S. agricultural bounty. The Trump administration has also been hinting at a blockade of the islands China has recently constructed in the South China Sea. According to Perlez and Buckley,

Mr. Trump has also threatened China on control of territory it claims in the South China Sea. The comments by Mr. Trump’s press secretary, Sean Spicer, on Monday echoed those made by his nominee for secretary of state, Rex W. Tillerson, at his Senate confirmation hearing.

While Mr. Trump has not explained how he will keep China off islands where it has built airstrips and installed weapons, the comments by his appointees suggest the possibility of an American blockade. While Mr. Obama tried unsuccessfully to leverage American allies in the region to compel China to back down, Mr. Trump seems willing to abandon them and face China on his own.

That go-it-alone attitude has raised alarms at the Pentagon and among American Navy experts, who said such a blockade would be tantamount to war. The idea has also alarmed America’s allies.

Australia, Washington’s staunchest ally in the Asia Pacific region, would not participate in such a venture, its defense officials said, adding that a blockade could not be successful and could serve to persuade disenchanted American friends in the Asia Pacific to pivot toward China.

A scenario where the Pentagon refuses orders of the commander in chief and then works with allies in Congress to remove him is not far-fetched.

One thing is certain, the Masters of the Universe, the 0.1%, are nervous. "Elites Eying the Exits Signals America's Crisis," by Robert Johnson, was posted yesterday on Naked Capitalism:

Yves here. A former private equity partner mentioned the New Yorker story on 0.1% bunkering. He noticed how they focused on the private jet pilot as a point of vulnerability, that he might fly his family out and leave them stranded. So the approach is to assure him that his relatives get seats on the plane too.

Originally published at the Institute for New Economic Thinking website

Interviewed as part of an extraordinary New Yorker investigation into growing anxiety among America’s corporate elite over the potential for anarchic social collapse, Institute President Robert Johnson saw his peers’ talk of bolt-holes in New Zealand as reflecting a deeper crisis.

Johnson told writer Evan Osnos of the mounting anxiety he had encountered among hedge-fund managers and other wealthy Americans he knew. “More and more were saying, ‘You’ve got to have a private plane,” Johnson said. “You have to assure that the pilot’s family will be taken care of, too. They have to be on the plane.’ ”

Osnos writes: “By January, 2015, Johnson was sounding the alarm: the tensions produced by acute income inequality were becoming so pronounced that some of the world’s wealthiest people were taking steps to protect themselves. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Johnson told the audience, ‘I know hedge-fund managers all over the world who are buying airstrips and farms in places like New Zealand because they think they need a getaway.’ ”

Johnson bemoaned the lack of a “spirit of stewardship” and openness to more aggressively redistributive tax policy among the wealthy.

“Twenty-five hedge-fund managers make more money than all of the kindergarten teachers in America combined,” he told the New Yorker. “Being one of those twenty-five doesn’t feel good. I think they’ve developed a heightened sensitivity.”

If anything, Osnos wrote, inequality is widening, noting recent statistics from the National Bureau of Economic Research that showed that while incomes for the top 1 percent of Americans have nearly tripled, half of the population was earning at the same level they did in 1980, comparing America’s wealth gap to that seen in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

“If we had a more equal distribution of income, and much more money and energy going into public school systems, parks and recreation, the arts, and health care, it could take an awful lot of sting out of society,” Johnson said. “We’ve largely dismantled those things.”

He saw elite anxiety as an indicator America’s social crisis.

“Why do people who are envied for being so powerful appear to be so afraid?” Johnson said. “What does that really tell us about our system? It’s a very odd thing. You’re basically seeing that the people who’ve been the best at reading the tea leaves—the ones with the most resources, because that’s how they made their money—are now the ones most preparing to pull the rip cord and jump out of the plane.”

Trump is a manifestation of end times. When it becomes apparent that he is a lens magnifying end times, hastening their arrival, rather than punting them downfield for another decade or two, the GOP in Congress will abandon him. But by that time it will be too late.

Pink Revolution Demographics + Trump on Trade + Goading the Dragon + Brexit in Play

Nate Silver has a definitive breakdown of Saturday's women's marches ("The Long March Ahead For Democrats"):

Saturday’s Women’s Marches, which rebuked President Trump on the day after his inauguration, probably drew more than 3 million participants between hundreds of locations across the United States, making them among the largest mass protests in American history. The marches recalled the tea party protests of April 15, 2009, an event that helped to mark the beginnings of a backlash to former President Obama — but overall attendance at the Women’s Marches was about 10 times higher than at the tea party rallies, according to our estimates.

But the geographic distribution of the marches also echoed November’s election results, in which Hillary Clinton lost the Electoral College despite receiving almost 3 million more votes than Trump nationwide. About 80 percent of march attendees were in states that Clinton won, and a disproportionate number were in major cities. So if the marches were a reminder of the depth of opposition to Trump — unprecedented for a president so early in his term — they also reflected Democrats’ need to expand the breadth of their coalition if they are to make a comeback in 2018 and 2020.

Silver then proceeds to analyze the marches in terms of geography. The marches overwhelming took place in big cities, in states Clinton won, and reflect an urban versus rural divide that defined the election. Silver has very faint praise for the overall import of the Pink Revolution:

Like the early tea partiers, some of the people who turned out on Saturday will turn into organizers, fundraisers and influential voices in their communities, and some of them will even become candidates for office. The Democratic Party needs broader geographic appeal than what it has right now. But turning out 3 million people one day after the new president is inaugurated is a pretty good start.

My gut sense is that the women's march is a classic one-off like the People's Climate March of 2014 organized by 350.org -- huge but hard to replicate and of uncertain merit in creating meaningful change.

Yves Smith assesses what is in store for us with a Trump presidency. In "Consternation as Trump Starts Delivering on Campaign Promises While Making More Crazy Attacks on Critics" Smith argues that Trump is a narcissist with a difference -- he's a narcissist who is willing to regularly destroy his own image:

With Trump, we have, far more visibly. the same question that dogged the Obama Administration: what does he really stand for? With Obama, we learned that he was conservative and cautious, but also very much liked the appearance of getting things done. His press office repeatedly cited how much legislation was passed on his watch, as if volume was more important than quality. Trump is likely to have the same orientation. It’s easy to assume, as critics do, that Trump wants to become even wealthier. But Trump more than anything wants to be visible: his splashy/trashy buildings, his TV show, his relentless self-promotion, his reckless tweets. While Trump in oh so many ways looks like a classic narcissist, one departure is his need to mix things up. Most narcissists are working above all to have their environment reflect back a good image of them. Trump’s regular undermining of his own image is at odds with that.

There are far too many moving parts to have any firm view as to how the Trump Administration will pan out. But even though there was good reason to suspect that given the record of both celebrity politicians and DC outsiders, that Trump would wind up as Jimmy Carter squared, a President that didn’t get much done, the flip side is that underestimating Trump has proven to be a losing bet. Stay tuned.

Much a Trump's popular support is going to depend on how he handles trade. The Democrats doomed themselves by Obama pushing the TPP throughout 2016. Trump is off to a good start by scrapping the TPP. But as Smith points out much remains to be seen:

Both Bernie Sanders and the Teamsters praised Trump for ending the TPP. It is surprisingly under-reported that Trump met today with labor leaders, almost all of whom had supported Clinton. It is a not-well-kept secret that many union members bucked the leadership and voted for Trump. But the bosses engaging in a session with Trump that they described as “excellent” may be the start of the formal and long-overdue exit of unions from a party that has treated them as disposable for over 30 years. 

But how far will Trump go? The problems with TPP were much better publicized than many might assume; when Lambert saw Trump speak in Bangor, Trump referred to the TPP only by its initials, didn’t explain it, and the crowd seemed familiar with it. By contrast, other dangerous “trade” deals, like the TTIP and TISA, are still as of now, moving forward.

Trump appears committed to goading the Dragon. According to this morning's Foreign Policy Situation Report:

Warning shot aimed at Beijing. Sean Spicer also told reporters Monday that Washington is prepared to take action to prevent China from building more islands in the South China Sea and claiming the territory as its own. "It’s a question of if those islands are in fact in international waters,” he said, “and not part of China proper, then yeah, we’re going to make sure that we defend international territories from being taken over by one country."

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying shot back on Tuesday that China's sovereignty over the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea was "irrefutable," adding, “we urge the United States to respect the facts, speak and act cautiously to avoid harming the peace and stability of the South China Sea," Hua said. "China's resolve to protect its sovereignty and maritime rights in the South China Sea will not change.” 

If Trump continues down this path it can't end well. Trump acts as if he thinks that the Chinese are lightweights. He is going to have to switch up his game or risk catastrophic failure.

When it comes to catastrophic failure the UK political class' management of Brexit comes to mind. The Supreme Court ruled today that Article 50 negotiations can't begin until Parliament votes. Here is an 11th-hour opportunity for the discredited neoliberal orthodoxy. Parliament could block Article 50 and in effect repeal Brexit. This outcome is usually dismissed in most stories. But why? A majority of Labour and Conservative MPs opposed Brexit. I suppose they are worried about the repercussions to their political careers if they were to block Brexit. But a plausible scenario is to amend and talk any Parliamentary vote to death, May's government would fall and new elections would be held which would be a replay of the Brexit referendum. The outcome could very well be different this time.

NFL Ratings Drop & the End of the Unipolar World

UPDATE: Today (October 26) Ken Belson, Richard Sandomir and Rory Smith of The New York Times ponder the NFL ratings drop, tossing in the even worse drop in viewership of English Premier League soccer matches, in "TV Viewership Falls in N.F.L. and Premier League: A Blip, or Something Worse?"

The two most successful sports leagues in the world, bringing in billions of dollars in revenue, the biggest corporate sponsors and mammoth audiences every game day, are now sharing an altogether different experience: The National Football League and the English Premier League are seeing startling, double-digital declines in television viewership this season.

Viewership through the first seven weeks of the N.F.L. season is down by 12 percent in the United States, while the audiences for E.P.L. soccer matches this season, which began in August, are down nearly 20 percent in Britain.

All the trends that drove viewers away from other programs on broadcast television in recent years, including cord-cutting and DVRs, never punished the N.F.L. and the Premier League in the same way. Fans — lots and lots of them — did not seem willing to look away. 

They are now, in numbers that are alarming for the leagues, which have grown used to fans tuning in to their games in good times and bad, and for the networks, some of which have spent 10-figure sums for the rights to broadcast them. Viewership for N.F.L. games on CBS on Thursday nights, on NBC on Sunday nights and on ESPN on Monday nights is down by as much as 21 percent.

Everything -- from the presidential election season, to too many games being broadcast, to absence of Tom Brady to begin the season, to distracted viewers during the games -- is considered.

Sure, the presidential election year makes a difference. And we can't ignore the digitalization of our lives -- Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, smartphones, Tinder, Google, on and on. But I think the main impetus to go cold turkey from the national opiate is the loss of competitiveness in the first month, month and a half, of the season. This synced with the shift in consciousness already underway -- the loss in faith in the mainstream; the digitalization of our attention span -- to deliver up the double-digit ratings drop.

Will the NFL rebound? It could. But, as I argue below, since U.S. global hegemony and the potency of the NFL opiate are linked, it probably won't.

****

The seventh Sunday of the National Football League's 2016 season concluded with an overtime defensive struggle between the Seahawks and Cardinals. The game ended in a rare tie, 6-6.

This kind of nailbiter is more rare now than in recent years past. Most of the games I have seen this season have been deplorable. Before last night, I can think of only a few good games all year (though with Week 6's Thursday Night match-up between the Broncos and the Chargers, it appears a shift back to competitiveness is underway).

This is unusual, and worthy of remark. I came across this opening line from a story on the NFL's latest domestic violence snafu, "N.F.L. Shows It Doesn’t Really Care About Domestic Violence," written by the excellent reporter Juliet Macur: "Television ratings for the N.F.L. are down 11 percent this season, and league officials have been grasping for possible explanations."

If anything, excellent competition has been the norm in the National Football League for more than a decade. Such was not always the case. In the 1970s and 1980s blow-outs were common. The obvious explanation for the significant ratings drop this year (one that doesn't include Kaepernick protesting white supremacy by taking a knee during the national anthem) is that the games have been lousy.

But, as I said, with Week 6, things seem to have snapped back to the competitiveness we have grown accustomed to, with exciting, close games like the Rams and the Lions, the Falcons and the Seahawks, and the Colts and the Texans.

The NFL is the premiere entertainment product in the United States. Hollywood is not what it used to be. Old media is giving way to the ubiquitous internet, and there is a scramble among corporate giants to gobble up as much content as possible.

The NFL remains the one true opiate of the masses. For that opiate to lose its potency at a time of political  tumult (Trump, Black Lives Matter, New Cold War) is auspicious.

What this portends -- and here I am being optimistic -- is some form of realignment. The U.S. unipolar world is over. (See Dilip Hiro's magisterial "American Power at the Crossroads: A Snapshot of a Multipolar World in Action.") The power elite lining up behind Hillary think that through confrontation the U.S. can maintain its monolithic status. This is clearly delusional. Most voters in the Western core, while possibly not able to explain this, nonetheless feel it in their bones. For the United States, based on the voluble new McCarthyism of Hillary and  the Democratic Party, it appears to be either catastrophic direct conflict with Russia or an embarrassing about-face.

A third way would simply be the maintenance of the status quo where the U.S. unipolar world exists as a sort of kabuki, a fiction whereby American destroyers continue to travel in waters claimed by the Dragon in the South China Sea and the CIA continues to collude with Al Qaeda in the destruction of states, blowback be damned.

But the status quo cannot be maintained. That is what we are living through right now.  That is our present tense.

Hillary chose to reboot McCarthyism to help her rancid old carcass across the finish line; it was either that or address directly the content of the WikiLeaks Podesta emails.

She is in a box now. She is going to have to retreat or escalate. And she is going to have to act with very little popular support.

Dilip Hiro thinks that U.S. global leadership will be unchallenged for decades to come. But this assumes that Europe doesn't continue to disintegrate, which should proceed rapidly in the next four years, particularly given the situation unfolding in Mosul. It also assumes stability in the American electorate. Hillary is about to ascend to the throne with the duopoly crumbling beneath her. No one can foresee how she will able to govern.

The U.S. needs it televisual opiate now more than ever, and early indications are it is not going to be there. Let the brave new world be born!

All the U.S. Can Do is Play Cat and Mouse with the Dragon in the South China Sea

Austin Ramzy has a decent story, "KFC Targeted in Protests Over South China Sea," about an uptick in Chinese protests directed at the United States for its support of the Philippines' successful suit, decided last week in The Hague by an international tribunal, denying China's territorial claims over the South China Sea. According to Ramzy,

KFC outlets in about a dozen cities, including Hangzhou, in Zhejiang Province; Changsha, in Hunan Province; and Yangzhou, in Jiangsu Province, were targeted by protests and calls for a boycott on Monday, according to a report from Sohu News, a Chinese online news outlet. But the campaign was far smaller than previous nationalist boycotts, and state media outlets warned protesters to avoid any illegal behavior.

Ramzy doesn't mention the bombings of Kentucky Fried Chickens in Egypt last year. Yum Brands, the corporate owner of KFC, says it plans on selling its China operations, no doubt a shrewd business decision given that we are at the beginning of what promises to be a prolonged period of showy super-power saber rattling.

Yesterday Michael Forsythe reported, "China Begins Air Patrols Over Disputed Area of the South China Sea," that the Dragon would begin overflight of the Spratly Islands:

HONG KONG — China said Monday that it had begun what would become regular military air patrols over disputed islands and shoals of the South China Sea, highlighting its claim to the vast area a week after an international tribunal said Beijing’s assertion of sovereignty over the waters had no legal basis. 

China’s air force flew a “combat air patrol” over the South China Sea “recently,” Xinhua, the official news agency, reported, citing Shen Jinke, an air force spokesman. The patrol consisted of bombers, fighters, “scouts” and tankers and would become “regular practice,” Mr. Shen said, according to Xinhua.

The announcement of the air patrols, plus a separate statement that China would conduct military exercises in the South China Sea off the coast of Hainan Island, came as Adm. John M. Richardson, the chief of United States naval operations, was in Beijing to discuss the South China Sea and other issues that arose after the tribunal rebuked China’s claims over the waters on July 12.

The landmark decision rejected China’s assertion that it enjoys historical rights over a huge area of the South China Sea encompassed by a “nine-dash line.” China had argued that the tribunal had no jurisdiction in the matter.

***

On Monday, Admiral Richardson’s Chinese counterpart, Adm. Wu Shengli, said China would continue construction in the South China Sea. In the past two years, China has reclaimed thousands of acres on seven features in the Spratly Islands, an area where Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims, building ports, large airstrips and radar installations.

“We will never stop our construction on the Nansha Islands halfway,” Xinhua, in a separate report, quoted Admiral Wu as saying, using the Chinese name for the Spratly chain. “The Nansha Islands are China’s inherent territory, and our necessary construction on the islands is reasonable, justified and lawful.”

***

Bonnie S. Glaser, a senior adviser for Asia at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said that a more telling test of China’s posture after the decision last week may come when the United States Navy resumes so-called freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea, which often involve testing Chinese claims by ordering American ships to transit within 12 nautical miles of Chinese-claimed features.

The story is worth reading for its helpful map of the South China Sea.

The U.S. is in a pickle here. It can only threaten belligerence, belligerence that the Chinese know is a complete farce. Is the U.S. willing to go to war over territorial claims and island construction in the South China Sea? How can it when it is fighting multiple wars in the Greater Middle East and Africa and every aspect of its political life is divided? The GOP is split, as are the Democrats. The deep state is intact but it is at capacity managing the rewrite of Sykes-Picot and its reboot of the Cold War, not to mention the dissolution of the European Union that these moves have elicited. Also worth mentioning, a completely moribund U.S. antiwar movement will rise from the dead if it looks as if Obama's Asia pivot is going to morph into a shooting war.

No, all the U.S. can do is plead for the Dragon to come to the negotiating table. An illuminating sample of the pleading tone can be found in an unsigned editorial published by The New York Times last week, "Testing the Rule of Law in the South China Sea":

Given China’s stake in peaceful trade with the rest of the world, it would be foolish for President Xi Jinping to take provocative actions that could inflame regional tensions and conceivably lead to a military confrontation with its neighbors or the United States. Retaliatory measures — further island-building at Scarborough Shoal, for instance, or declaring an air defense zone over large portions of the South China Sea — would be risky.

In fact, the ruling offers a fresh opportunity to address maritime disputes in a peaceful manner. China’s ambassador to the United States, Cui Tiankai, condemned Tuesday’s ruling but said Beijing remains open to negotiations. Nations in the region have often gone wobbly in the face of pressure from Beijing. At this critical moment, despite competing interests of their own, they need to join the Philippines in endorsing the tribunal decision and then proceed, if necessary, with their own arbitration cases.

The United States, which is neutral on the various claims, can help ensure a peaceful, lawful path forward. The Obama administration has said that disputes should be resolved according to international law, a position it now reaffirms. It has built closer security relations with Asian nations and responded to China’s assertiveness in the South China Sea with increased naval patrols. This combination of diplomacy and pressure is sound, but the hard part is getting the balance right.

My guess is the U.S. is going to play the long game. Draw out negotiations, play cat and mouse with its destroyers and its spy planes, and hope that Abe can rapidly militarize a pacific Japanese populous. Better than a war with China, but still foolish and unsuccesful.