In his classic account of the Peloponnesian War, Thucydides concluded that the conflict was the consequence of growing Athenian power instilling fear in Sparta. In “The Thucydides Trap”, an influential essay published in 2015, Graham Allison of Harvard University examined whether the same dynamic would apply to America and China. He identified 16 historical episodes where an established power’s position was disrupted by a challenger. In 12 of those cases the shift ended in war. A repetition today was not inevitable, he concluded, but escaping the trap “requires tremendous effort”.
Mr Allison’s analysis was studied closely in Washington and Beijing. Nonetheless, in the past five years the relationship between the world’s superpower and its Asian challenger has deteriorated in a manner that suggests few are paying heed to history. Under Xi Jinping, China has become more aggressively assertive abroad and more authoritarian at home. Under Donald Trump and now Joe Biden, American policy towards China has shifted from hubristic faith that it could be integrated into the existing American-led world order to something closer to paranoid containment marked by auapicion of China's intentions and a fearful bipartisan consensus that America's global eminence is at risk.
Read more at
Rivalry between America and China will shape the post-covid world | The Economist
Showing posts with label Paranoia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Paranoia. Show all posts
11/25/21
11/1/16
The US Russia Paranoia: Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia - by E. Lichterblau and S. Lee Myers
For much of the summer, the F.B.I.
pursued a widening investigation into a Russian role in the American
presidential campaign.
Agents scrutinized advisers close to Donald J. Trump, looked for financial connections with Russian financial figures, searched for those involved in hacking the computers of Democrats, and even chased a lead — which they ultimately came to doubt — about a possible secret channel of email communication from the Trump Organization to a Russian bank.
Law enforcement officials say that none of the investigations so far have found any conclusive or direct link between Mr. Trump and the Russian government.
Read more: Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia - The New York Times
Agents scrutinized advisers close to Donald J. Trump, looked for financial connections with Russian financial figures, searched for those involved in hacking the computers of Democrats, and even chased a lead — which they ultimately came to doubt — about a possible secret channel of email communication from the Trump Organization to a Russian bank.
Law enforcement officials say that none of the investigations so far have found any conclusive or direct link between Mr. Trump and the Russian government.
Read more: Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia - The New York Times
12/31/14
Turkey 2015:: The paranoid style in Turkish politics -by Padraig Reidy
What’s wrong with Turkey? Or, more to the point what is wrong with
Turkey’s president that makes him so determined to fight, like a two
a.m. drunk vowing to take on all comers?
In the past week alone, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his allies have launched attacks on his former ally Fethullah Gülen and his followers, novelists Orhan Pamuk and Elif Shafak, and even supporters of Istanbul soccer club Besiktas. It would be foolish to attempt to rank these attacks in terms of importance or urgency, but the attack on the Gülenites is the most interesting.
The Gülen movement was almost unknown to anyone outside Turkey and the Turkish diaspora until 2008, when Fethullah Gülen topped an online poll run jointly by Prospect and Foreign Policy magazines.
The poll was almost certainly hijacked by members of the movement, which its leader modestly claims doesn’t really exist (“[S]ome people may regard my views well and show respect to me, and I hope they have not deceived themselves in doing so,” Gülen conceded in an interview with Foreign Policy.
“Some people think that I am a leader of a movement. Some think that there is a central organization responsible for all the institutions they wrongly think affiliated with me. They ignore the zeal of many to serve humanity and to gain God’s good pleasure in doing so.”)
The movement, known to some as “Hizmet”, is seen as bearing great power in Turkey. In a country well used to conspiracy theories about secret organisations — such as the perceived ultra-nationalist, ultra-secular Ergenekon — it is unsurprising that the Gülenists attract suspicion. Their cultishness does little to allay that sentiment.
Among the many weapons at the disposal of the movement are its newspapers, the Turkish Zaman and English-language Today’s Zaman. It was journalists from Zaman, among others perceived as Gülenites, who were arrested over the weekend, as reported by Index.
The move by Erdoğan against Gülenists is widely seen as part of Erdoğan’s defence against allegations of corruption within his party — allegations he believes are led by Gülenists within the police and other agencies.
With their journalists arrested, the Gülenists now find themselves facing the kind of censorship they themselves espoused not so long ago.
In 2011, journalist Ahmet Sik was working on a book called Army of the Imam, which was sought to expose the Gülenists’ connections with the police. The manuscript was seized by authorities. When Andrew Finkel, then a columnist with Today’s Zaman (and occasional Index contributor), submitted an article suggesting that the Gülen movement should not support such censorship, he was sacked by the paper. (The column subsequently appeared in rival English-language newspaper Hurriyet Daily News)
It’s tempting amid all this to wish for a plague on all their houses. But as one Turkey watcher pointed out to me, it’s inevitable that some innocents will get caught in the crossfire between the former allies in Erdoğan’s Islamist AK party and the Gülen movement.
Meanwhile, in keeping with the paranoid style of Turkish politics, pro-Erdoğan newspaper Takvim identified an external enemy in the shape of an “international literature lobby”.
The agents of that lobby, which is clearly anti-Turkish rather than pro-free speech, were identified as Orhan Pamuk and Elif Shafak. It is, in its own way, true that Shafak and Pamuk are part of the international literature lobby: London-based Shafak can often be seen at English PEN events, and Pamuk has long been identified as a literary and free speech hero around the world.
But it is an enormous stretch to imagine that the novelists of the world are gathering in smoke-filled rooms plotting the overthrow of the Turkish state, rather than just hoping that Turkish people should be allowed write and read books in peace. Takvim went as far as to imagine that the authors were paid agents of the “literature lobby”, which is to make the terrible mistake of imagining there’s money in free speech. No matter: paranoia excels at inventing its own truths.
Read more: Padraig Reidy: The paranoid style in Turkish politics -
In the past week alone, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his allies have launched attacks on his former ally Fethullah Gülen and his followers, novelists Orhan Pamuk and Elif Shafak, and even supporters of Istanbul soccer club Besiktas. It would be foolish to attempt to rank these attacks in terms of importance or urgency, but the attack on the Gülenites is the most interesting.
The Gülen movement was almost unknown to anyone outside Turkey and the Turkish diaspora until 2008, when Fethullah Gülen topped an online poll run jointly by Prospect and Foreign Policy magazines.
The poll was almost certainly hijacked by members of the movement, which its leader modestly claims doesn’t really exist (“[S]ome people may regard my views well and show respect to me, and I hope they have not deceived themselves in doing so,” Gülen conceded in an interview with Foreign Policy.
“Some people think that I am a leader of a movement. Some think that there is a central organization responsible for all the institutions they wrongly think affiliated with me. They ignore the zeal of many to serve humanity and to gain God’s good pleasure in doing so.”)
The movement, known to some as “Hizmet”, is seen as bearing great power in Turkey. In a country well used to conspiracy theories about secret organisations — such as the perceived ultra-nationalist, ultra-secular Ergenekon — it is unsurprising that the Gülenists attract suspicion. Their cultishness does little to allay that sentiment.
Among the many weapons at the disposal of the movement are its newspapers, the Turkish Zaman and English-language Today’s Zaman. It was journalists from Zaman, among others perceived as Gülenites, who were arrested over the weekend, as reported by Index.
The move by Erdoğan against Gülenists is widely seen as part of Erdoğan’s defence against allegations of corruption within his party — allegations he believes are led by Gülenists within the police and other agencies.
With their journalists arrested, the Gülenists now find themselves facing the kind of censorship they themselves espoused not so long ago.
In 2011, journalist Ahmet Sik was working on a book called Army of the Imam, which was sought to expose the Gülenists’ connections with the police. The manuscript was seized by authorities. When Andrew Finkel, then a columnist with Today’s Zaman (and occasional Index contributor), submitted an article suggesting that the Gülen movement should not support such censorship, he was sacked by the paper. (The column subsequently appeared in rival English-language newspaper Hurriyet Daily News)
It’s tempting amid all this to wish for a plague on all their houses. But as one Turkey watcher pointed out to me, it’s inevitable that some innocents will get caught in the crossfire between the former allies in Erdoğan’s Islamist AK party and the Gülen movement.
Meanwhile, in keeping with the paranoid style of Turkish politics, pro-Erdoğan newspaper Takvim identified an external enemy in the shape of an “international literature lobby”.
The agents of that lobby, which is clearly anti-Turkish rather than pro-free speech, were identified as Orhan Pamuk and Elif Shafak. It is, in its own way, true that Shafak and Pamuk are part of the international literature lobby: London-based Shafak can often be seen at English PEN events, and Pamuk has long been identified as a literary and free speech hero around the world.
But it is an enormous stretch to imagine that the novelists of the world are gathering in smoke-filled rooms plotting the overthrow of the Turkish state, rather than just hoping that Turkish people should be allowed write and read books in peace. Takvim went as far as to imagine that the authors were paid agents of the “literature lobby”, which is to make the terrible mistake of imagining there’s money in free speech. No matter: paranoia excels at inventing its own truths.
Read more: Padraig Reidy: The paranoid style in Turkish politics -
8/6/13
NSA Spying: Opinion - Snowden and the paranoid state - by Sarah Kendzior Sarah Kendzior
"Paranoids are not paranoid because they're paranoid," Thomas Pynchon wrote in Gravity's Rainbow, "but because they keep putting themselves, f%#king idiots, deliberately into paranoid situations."
On June 23, 2013, Edward Snowden left China, a repressive state with a vast surveillance system, to fly to Russia, a repressive state with an even vaster surveillance system, in order to escape America, where he had worked for a surveillance system so vast he claims it gave him "the power to change people's fates".
In proclaiming his ability to change the fates of others, Snowden lost control of his own. He was lambasted as the instigator of international conspiracies and praised as the source of their revelation. He was at once a hero and a traitor , a pawn and a king, a courageous whistle-blower with the means to bring down nations and a naive narcissist, little millennial lost . He inspired debate and inspired even more debate over whether to debate him.
What are people looking for when they look at Snowden? They are looking for answers about how much states and corporations know about their personal lives, but more than that, they are looking for a sense that answers are possible. They are looking for knowledge untainted by corruption, as Snowden continues his world tour of corrupt regimes. They are looking for state agendas explained by someone without an agenda of his or her own. They are looking, and they are not finding what they seek.
Satisfactory explanations require trust in the person explaining. In the long term, Snowden will be seen as a symptom of a breakdown in political trust, not a cause. His legacy is paranoia - the paranoia of the individual about the paranoia of the state that spurs the paranoia of the public. This is not to say that paranoia is always unjustified. But it has become a weltanschauung instead of a reaction.
It matters, of course, whether the allegations of mass surveillance and data-collecting made by Snowden and Guardian writer Glenn Greenwald are true, but this is not what determines how the allegations are received. Suspicion of surveillance can be as poisonous to a functioning democracy as surveillance itself. Not knowing the extent of surveillance - of whom, by whom, to what end - heightens anxiety over the distance between the powerful and the public, an anxiety that was in place long before Snowden emerged.
Between the state and the citizen, we have the media, whose biases and careerism thicken the fog. With Snowden, every revelation has a refutation, but the citizen is left to evaluate the state of their nation on their trust in the individual reporting it.
American political paranoia has a long history, perhaps most famously summed up in Richard Hofstadter's study of the "paranoid style in American politics", in which he described how a small minority employed theories that were "overheated, oversuspicious, overaggressive, grandiose, and apocalyptic in expression", often gaining power in the process.
Hofstadter's study was published in 1965, thirty years before the popularisation of an international communications system that potentially gives every citizen the ability to debunk fatuous claims and distribute reliable evidence.
The internet would seem an antidote to conspiracy theories and state secrecy, but it has only amplified both.
Read more: Snowden and the paranoid state - Opinion - Al Jazeera English
On June 23, 2013, Edward Snowden left China, a repressive state with a vast surveillance system, to fly to Russia, a repressive state with an even vaster surveillance system, in order to escape America, where he had worked for a surveillance system so vast he claims it gave him "the power to change people's fates".
In proclaiming his ability to change the fates of others, Snowden lost control of his own. He was lambasted as the instigator of international conspiracies and praised as the source of their revelation. He was at once a hero and a traitor , a pawn and a king, a courageous whistle-blower with the means to bring down nations and a naive narcissist, little millennial lost . He inspired debate and inspired even more debate over whether to debate him.
What are people looking for when they look at Snowden? They are looking for answers about how much states and corporations know about their personal lives, but more than that, they are looking for a sense that answers are possible. They are looking for knowledge untainted by corruption, as Snowden continues his world tour of corrupt regimes. They are looking for state agendas explained by someone without an agenda of his or her own. They are looking, and they are not finding what they seek.
Satisfactory explanations require trust in the person explaining. In the long term, Snowden will be seen as a symptom of a breakdown in political trust, not a cause. His legacy is paranoia - the paranoia of the individual about the paranoia of the state that spurs the paranoia of the public. This is not to say that paranoia is always unjustified. But it has become a weltanschauung instead of a reaction.
It matters, of course, whether the allegations of mass surveillance and data-collecting made by Snowden and Guardian writer Glenn Greenwald are true, but this is not what determines how the allegations are received. Suspicion of surveillance can be as poisonous to a functioning democracy as surveillance itself. Not knowing the extent of surveillance - of whom, by whom, to what end - heightens anxiety over the distance between the powerful and the public, an anxiety that was in place long before Snowden emerged.
Between the state and the citizen, we have the media, whose biases and careerism thicken the fog. With Snowden, every revelation has a refutation, but the citizen is left to evaluate the state of their nation on their trust in the individual reporting it.
American political paranoia has a long history, perhaps most famously summed up in Richard Hofstadter's study of the "paranoid style in American politics", in which he described how a small minority employed theories that were "overheated, oversuspicious, overaggressive, grandiose, and apocalyptic in expression", often gaining power in the process.
Hofstadter's study was published in 1965, thirty years before the popularisation of an international communications system that potentially gives every citizen the ability to debunk fatuous claims and distribute reliable evidence.
The internet would seem an antidote to conspiracy theories and state secrecy, but it has only amplified both.
Read more: Snowden and the paranoid state - Opinion - Al Jazeera English
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