Earthling: How MAGA brought us a two-front cold war

Plus: The Pentagon’s $340 million video game, Ukraine offensive deemed doomed, Xi-Biden diplomacy face-off, perils of AI, and more!

If you’re wondering what US foreign policy would look like under a President Ron DeSantis—or some other future Trumpist president, possibly including Trump himself—Politico Magazine has a piece worth checking out. Jacob Heilbrunn, editor of the National Interest, profiles Elbridge Colby, grandson of former CIA Director William Colby and “the intellectual leader and rising star of an insurgent wing in the Republican Party rebelling against decades of dominant interventionist and Reaganite thinking.”

Which, it turns out, isn’t the same as saying Colby is anti-interventionist. Though he’s drawn the ire of neoconservatives for his dovish views on Russia, those views are in the service of a kind of hawkishness. By Colby’s lights, Heilbrunn writes, the trouble with showering military resources on Ukraine as it fends off Russian aggression is that “American military planning and resources should be directed toward planning for a conflict with China over Taiwan.”  

Heilbrunn says Colby aims to “split the difference between the MAGA isolationists and the neoconservative hawks by arguing that China—not Russia—poses a dire threat to American national security.”

That’s one way of putting it. But it’s also true that the MAGA “isolationists”—in particular the very embodiment of MAGA, Donald Trump—paved the way for Colby’s trans-Pacific militarism. Trump’s populist appeal to the white working class involved blaming China for stealing American jobs, and a deadly pandemic that started in China allowed Trump to expand his indictment, depicting Beijing as a broader national security threat. Peter Navarro, Trump’s rabidly anti-China trade adviser, even suggested that Covid may have started as a Chinese-engineered bioweapon.

Here is an odd and often overlooked but historically momentous fact: Even as Trump was preparing the ground for China hawkism on the right, he was also, without even trying, preparing the ground for Russia hawkism on the left. Though Russiagate never delivered the smoking gun that ardently anti-Trump Democrats hoped for, their conviction that Trump is a Putin-loving Russian stooge remained strong enough to foster and sustain deep animus toward Putin and Russia—which in turn shaped the foreign policy discourse of liberal elites and the policy positions of Democratic politicians. Indeed, if not for Russiagate, President Biden might have felt he had enough political space to seriously explore a diplomatic resolution of the Ukraine crisis before Putin’s invasion, something he chose not to try.

The translation of intense anti-Trumpism into amped up Russophobia is perhaps best symbolized by the remark of Adam Schiff—who oversaw the House’s first impeachment inquiry—that the US is arming Ukraine "so we don't have to fight Russia here." This kind of near-hysteria about Russia among some Democrats is matched by near-hysteria about China among some Republicans—including some, like Colby, who are supposedly “rebelling” against decades of mindless interventionism. 

It’s tempting, all told, to say that if you want to be taken seriously in DC foreign policy circles, you have to be either an intense China hawk or an intense Russia hawk. But the truth is that, once you add in the considerable influence of the many neoconservatives and liberal interventionists who fit both of these descriptions, it’s hard to be taken seriously unless you’re both kinds of hawk. 

Obviously, both Russia and China pose real strategic challenges, challenges that sometimes warrant a forceful response. But if you want to discuss these challenges coolly and rationally, you should probably look for a venue outside of Washington. And you should limit the number of Democrats and Republicans in attendance.

Attention paid subscribers! Every week we bring you NZN member benefits, and this week we’d like to highlight a twofer. Not only do you have early access to a debate about the perils of AI, but you’ll retain exclusive access to the overtime segment, which lasted about an hour. The debate, moderated by Bob, was between AI experts Roko Mijic and Alexander Campbell.

And this week, as usual, NZN members also get access to the Parrot Room, Friday’s after-hours, few-holds-barred conversation between Bob and arch-frenemy Mickey Kaus.

Ever since early March, when Xi Jinping presided over rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, it has been The Earthling’s policy to try to stoke fierce competition between China and the US over which nation can do the most to bring peace and stability to the world.

So we were in some ways heartened by a piece by Peter Baker in Monday’s New York Times which noted, accurately, that the Biden years have seen a “dearth of diplomacy.” Unfortunately, any stimulating effect this piece might have on Biden’s competitive spirit is dulled by Baker’s blaming this dearth mainly on the circumstances Biden faces. The piece’s subhead says that “breakthroughs are harder to achieve in today’s fractious world.”

Left unaddressed was the question of why China, facing the same fractious world America faces, just managed to facilitate that Saudi-Iran breakthrough. Indeed, Baker somehow manages to use the breakthrough as more evidence of what a fractious world Biden faces: “The Saudis are playing the Americans off other major powers these days,” even “relying on China to facilitate a restoration of diplomatic relations with Iran.” What’s an American president to do?

In any event, the easing of Saudi-Iranian tensions continued to pay dividends this week, as the prospects for war-torn Yemen brightened. Saudi Arabia and Iran-backed Houthi rebels are reportedly finalizing terms of a ceasefire that, according to the Wall Street Journal, “could pave the way toward a lasting peace after eight years of war.” That’s good news regardless of who gets the credit.

Just when you thought it was safe to stop thinking about global pandemics… this week the Washington Post brought us this headline: Research with exotic viruses risks a deadly outbreak, scientists warn.

The article, by David Willman and Joby Warrick, explores the growing global infrastructure for capturing and studying pathogens. There are now thousands of biocontainment labs around the world—many built with the help of $3 billion spent by the US on such research in 78 countries since 2012—and the quality of oversight varies greatly.

And safety concerns begin before the pathogens even enter these labs. During the virus “hunting” process, researchers who handle infected animals risk contaminating themselves and, ultimately, population centers near the labs.

And we haven’t even gotten to the really scary part…