Earthling: Rubio ratchets up the McCarthyism
Plus: Uncontrolled arms in Ukraine, climate change of heart, new killer asteroid, and more!
Seems like only yesterday the McCarthyism being spawned by Cold War II was McCarthyism lite.
Sure, expressing an unpopular view might get you accused of reciting a “Putin talking point” (by former US Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder—if you said NATO expansion paved the way to war); or of being a “Russia apologist” (by journalist Noah Smith—if you said America failed to engage in serious pre-war diplomacy). And, more grandiosely, there was the claim by occasional MSNBC guest Joseph Cirincione that America is home to a “pro-Putin axis” that “runs through the Tech Bros, libertarians, and into the peace movement,” not to mention the “MAGA GOP.”
All of these rhetorical tactics had the key McCarthyism ingredient of stigmatizing people with heterodox views by depicting them as sympathetic to a foreign power. But at least none of the stigmatized people were getting the full-on Joseph McCarthy treatment of being dragged before Congress and accused of obedience to a foreign power! Now, thanks in part to Senator Marco Rubio, we seem to have taken a step toward full-on McCarthyism.
Rubio has embraced allegations that The China Project, an American company that produces newsletters and the highly regarded Sinica podcast, is an agent of the Chinese Communist Party. As Ben Smith notes in Semafor, being officially deemed an “agent of a foreign principal” would lump The China Project in “with state-controlled media like the news service Xinhua and Russia’s RT. Foreign Agent registration isn’t a ban, but it’s a scarlet letter that brings with it cumbersome reporting requirements.”
As Smith’s writeup makes clear, the charges have no evident basis in fact. They derive entirely from claims made by a journalist who worked at The China Project briefly, was fired, says she was encouraged to pursue stories favorable to China, and wants Congress to investigate the company.
China Project editor-in-chief Jeremy Goldkorn says the 11-page complaint circulated by the former employee, Shannon Van Sant, “does not allege a source, vehicle, vector, or mechanism for the claimed CCP influence. It rests entirely upon her subjective observations from the less than 90 days she spent working at our company.” He attributes both her charges and Rubio’s embrace of them to the fact that “our founder and then-CEO, and half of our employees, are of Asian ethnicity. That’s racism.”
Much of America’s China watcher community—including even China hawks like James Palmer of Foreign Policy, who is quoted in Smith’s piece—has rallied around the The China Project and vouched for its journalistic legitimacy. However, many of the people doing the vouching are men, and some of their criticisms of Van Sant have led to allegations of misogyny by, most notably, Axios China correspondent Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian (who cites no specific examples).
Allen-Ebrahimian says that one guideline we should follow in this controversy is “believe women.” But, as it happens, the woman making the accusations against The China Project is focusing them to a considerable extent on another woman—Anla Cheng, the Chinese-American who founded The China Project and was its CEO during Van Sant’s tenure. So unless what Allen-Ebrahimian meant to say was “believe White women,” it’s hard to apply her rule of thumb here.
I’ve listened to the China Project’s Sinica podcast for years (I had co-host Kaiser Kuo on my podcast two years ago), and, though it tends to have (like my podcast, and like this newsletter) a pro-engagement tilt, it has featured much material critical of the CCP and of Chinese leader Xi Jinping. In fact, the China Project’s whole website has been banned in China since 2018. (Here is the first of the China Project’s reports on China’s Uyghur detention camps, published that year.)
The good news is that Marco Rubio doesn’t want to ban the website or the Sinica podcast. That’s not how we do these things in America. But being designated a foreign agent could bring a pretty literal scarlet letter on social media platforms—a kind of warning label that accompanies all posts—not to mention, quite possibly, a loss of prominence through the mysterious workings of social media algorithms. In that sense, people like Rubio have more power now than Senator Joseph McCarthy had.
In Responsible Statecraft, Connor Echols reports on the Biden administration’s new plan to prevent arms sent to Ukraine from falling into the wrong hands—provisions that some arms-control experts worry don’t go far enough.
The policy, announced by the State Department last week, targets the illegal trade of weapons like Javelin anti-tank weapons and Stinger anti-aircraft missiles—portable arms that could be used by non-state actors to hit, in addition to military targets, things ranging from cars to commercial planes. The plan would boost border security and train Ukrainians on how to keep better track of the weapons.
But some in the arms-control community remain concerned. Rachel Stohl of the Stimson Center worries that small arms, such as automatic rifles, could slip through the net. And Jordan Cohen of the Cato Institute notes that even if trade on the international black market is suppressed, arms proliferation within Ukraine could pose a danger to the country. Free-flowing weapons could facilitate the formation of powerful rebel factions, especially if a future government peace initiative alienates groups with extremist tendencies, such as the Azov Battalion.
Writing in the New York Times, David Wallace-Wells revises the climate change picture in accordance with updated warming projections. While he finds ample reason for continued concern, he makes a case for genuine, if fragile, optimism.
Wallace-Wells’s piece centers on 2021 data (and a corroborating UN report released last week) which suggests that by the end of this century the planet will be between 3.6 and 5.4 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the pre-industrial level, compared to 2.2 degrees warmer than that level today. This would be significantly below the 7-to-9 degree end-of-century number some models have predicted.
What’s changed? Primarily, adjustments to climate models that had assumed a “business as usual” reliance on coal for energy. Improved renewable energy technology, adroit public policy initiatives, and changes in market forces—all driven by increased awareness of climate change—have undermined this assumption.
Wallace-Wells doesn’t soft-pedal the threat of climate change. With more in the way of floods, droughts, and destructive storms in recent years, many people have already felt the impact of a changing climate, so the prospect of another 1 to 3 degrees of warming is well worth worrying about. Plus, the revised predictions are themselves ripe for revision—meaning, Wallace-Wells says, that the difference between sustaining progress toward a future of painful but survivable disruption and slouching toward environmental Armageddon will depend on actions we do or don’t take now.
And speaking of Armageddon: If Wallace-Wells’s revisionist view leaves you hungry for some old-fashioned climate apocalypticism, this piece from the Guardian announcing that the “World is close to ‘irreversible’ climate breakdown” should hit the spot.
Map of the week: On Thursday the UN General Assembly held its annual vote on whether to condemn America’s economic embargo of Cuba. Plot spoiler: