Dear CCI Friends,

A startling review by Paula Day, a Maine attorney and CCI volunteer.

Sharon Tennison
Center for Citizen Initiatives

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The Last Handoff

By Paula Day

Immediately before the Biden presidential inauguration, the New York Times Magazine ran an article, “The Last Handoff”–– a review of the Obama/Trump transition, a leap into “uncharted waters,” according to the author.

It was a provocative title that brought to mind the upcoming transition from Trump to Biden, certainly an event less charted than the one before.

Consider the similarities: both the 2016 and 2020 elections were so close that the  electoral college votes were critical; the losing sides were so incredulous that each insisted the winning side had somehow rigged the outcome.  Clinton acknowledged Trump’s win in 2016, but the Democrats, the FBI, the Intelligence Community, the Democratic Congress and mainstream media spent the next four years discrediting Trump to the point of trying to have him indicted for colluding with Russia. Donald Trump refused to concede and spent two months after the election insisting that he was the legitimate winner.

Had the Times acknowledged these similarities, its readers might have considered “let he who is without sin cast the first stone.”  Surely there can be no benefit to the country in this level of hysterical partisanship.

But a Balanced View was not what the Times had in mind.
It invested thousands of words in white on an ominous black background accompanied by suggestively sinister graphics, rehashing not one but three of the most thoroughly debunked cliches of the last four years: 1) the Russian “hacking” of the DNC emails, 2) the Steele Dossier, and 3) an exhaustive re-telling of the Michael Flynn story.

The only possible reason for the appearance of this January 11 article could be one more attempt to breath life into the cold corpse of Russiagate.  No matter how flimsy the accusations against Russia, Russia must remain the enemy by those in power. The article spins mundane facts into deceptive propaganda and we are reminded yet again that “the constant repetition of a lie is far more persuasive than the demonstration of truth.”

Read it and weep.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/01/11/magazine/trump-obama-presidential-transition.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage.

In Global Affairs, no more US Preeminence 

By Andrew Bacevich
Dr. Bacevich is a professor emeritus at Boston University and president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

Dear President Biden:

Soon after winning election to the presidency, you announced that “America is back, ready to lead the world” and to resume its accustomed place “at the head of the table.” Among those distressed that your predecessor showed so little interest in leading anything anywhere, such sentiments resonate.

In the political circles where you have spent virtually your entire adult life, belief that history summons the United States to lead the world is an article of faith. So too is the conviction that the world itself yearns for American leadership, with other nations eager for Washington to occupy a position of privilege. A return to pre-Trump normalcy implies a restoration of U.S. global preeminence.

I urge you to reconsider any such expectation. In the aftermath of World War II, with international politics centered on a bipolar competition between East and West, such a formulation possessed a certain utility. The euphoria unleashed by the end of the Cold War made the temptation to double down on such claims all but irresistible.

But the era of American primacy has ended. We may date its demise from the March 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, which as a U.S. senator you supported. In the roughly two decades since, as the U.S. was squandering trillions of dollars in failed military campaigns, the global order has undergone a transformation. The emergence of new threats in the form of climate change and pandemics offers one example. The shifting distribution of power in East Asia offers a second, with nuclear proliferation and our nation’s emergence as the world’s leading debtor others.

So the global table at which your administration will take a seat is not rectangular. It is round. No nation or body of nations will sit at its head. No doubt the clout wielded by individual countries gathered around that table varies – not all are equal. But none will dominate – not China, not Russia, not us, not anyone. Acknowledging this reality implies a radically different approach to statecraft, one that should emphasize collaboration rather than coercion, setting an example rather than issuing threats and inflicting punishment.

Yes, the U.S. must always stand ready to defend its vital interests from attack. But much as those interests are changing, so too should the means employed to protect them.

The challenges facing the incoming president may demand more than a return to normalcy

January 18, 2021
By Andrew Bacevich
Spectator

Regarding America’s role in the world, Joe Biden’s ascent to the presidency offers this bit of prospective good news: the random flailing about of the Trump era will end. No more diplomacy conducted via Twitter. A modicum of consistency and predictability might once more become emblems of American statecraft. Some version of normalcy will be restored.

While all this will be welcome, it prompts a fundamental question: will a return to pre-Trump normalcy suffice as a response to the challenges that Biden is about to inherit? After all, the post-Cold War version of normalcy — the policies as pursued by presidents Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and Barack Obama — created the conditions that gave rise to Donald Trump in the first place.

By any measure, the normalcy of the post-Cold War era flopped. It underwrote delusions, the United States infamously anointing itself as history’s ‘indispensable nation’. It defined American global leadership primarily in military terms. Normalcy found expression in rampant military activism that left US forces mired in multiple unwinnable wars. All of this came with a price tag: something in the order of $6 trillion (thus far) plus tens of thousands of US troops dead or wounded, many grievously. Journalists are making much of the fact that Joe Biden is the oldest person ever to assume the office of the presidency. Arguably more relevant than age, however, is Biden’s exposure to and participation in a specific chronicle of events. As a politician, our next president has been a fixture on the national political scene going back as far as the Cold War — he was first elected to the US Senate in 1972 when the Vietnam War was still underway.

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Dear CCI Friends,

Navalny’s latest efforts to get attention by demonizing Putin have put him in the spotlight again. It is still not known how or where the poisoning occurred or what the poison was. The report from Germany said that it was Novichok, however, when Russian scientists requested samples, the Germans refused to send them. Strange! Latest evidence I saw showed a lot of different substances found in Navalny’s chemistry but no Novichok. Still the whole story made for lots of publicity on both sides of the ocean.

Many in the U.S. are eager to condemn Putin and Russia. Navalny seems to be in search of ways to denigrate Putin. So these two factors are destined to make news periodically.

Russia is not a perfect country, the United States is not a perfect country. Will we ever better ourselves by condemning each other? I think not. Better we spend our time trying to get to know each others’ cultures rather than antagonizing each other.

I  contacted a few Russians about Navalny’s poisoning, his trip to Germany, and the protests in his defense. The following are a few of our friends’ varied responses. It is winter, Covid is still active in Russia. They too have been on lockdown in recent weeks. This may account for some of their current dissatisfactions, the same as many here in the U.S.

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Dear CCI Friends,

A Swedish man, Jan Oberg, whom I consider to be my counterpart across the ocean, has put up this amazingly simple message. It demonstrates where we are…and the questions we need to be asking ourselves. There is still time, but it is imperative that we change course this year in 2021.

It makes no difference who we voted for, we need to become educators on saving our earth. The consequences for ourselves, our children and grandchildren will be horrendous otherwise.

Join us in asking the hard questions about why we in America are a “warring nation.” Why do we spend so much money on our military and ever more destructive weapons? Why do we need to be #1 in the world?

Let us give up “Unipolar” status and work toward a “Multipolar” world where the larger nations of China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States can begin to work jointly to curb wars and strive for a world that works for larger and smaller nations and peoples.

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