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The International Monetary Fund seems determined to dilute one of the best examples of global cooperation in response to the economic disruptions induced by the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change. It must change course now, before it is too late.¶ The IMF’s allocation of $650 billion in special drawing rights (SDRs, the Fund’s reserve asset) in August was long encouraged and widely welcomed. Given the IMF’s tight rules, it was clear from the start that the vast majority of SDRs would go to countries that did not need them. As a result, G7 leaders pledged to re-channel upwards of $100 billion of their allocations to “countries most in need of … pandemic [support to] stabilize their economies, and mount a green and global recovery … aligned with shared development and climate goals.”¶ While these moves seem small compared to the $17 trillion that rich countries have spent to support their economies during the pandemic, they were nonetheless significant. In October, just two months after the allocation, the G20 backed a plan by the IMF and the World Bank to develop and implement a Resilience and Sustainability Trust, which would allow wealthy countries to channel their allotments to low- and middle-income countries vulnerable to economic shocks. Because the RST could be used to address risks related to climate change, it would fill a glaring gap in international finance. The IMF announced that it would have a proposal ready for its 2022 spring meetings.¶ But will it be enough?¶ Extreme weather events like floods and hurricanes can trigger financial instability in vulnerable countries as they wipe out capital stock and sources of foreign exchange. Likewise, countries dependent on fossil-fuel exports face fiscal uncertainty as demand for oil and gas decreases to meet climate goals. In both cases, spillover effects can negatively affect trade. Countries confronting such conditions must undertake a structural transformation of their economies. But many low- and middle-income countries lack access to the cost-effective, flexible financing they need.¶ A well-designed RST would make the IMF criteria for resource allocation and country eligibility more adaptable. Unfortunately, five design flaws in the IMF’s approach would render the planned RST ineffective for most climate-vulnerable countries.¶ The first flaw concerns eligibility. IMF programs discriminate on the basis of income, but climate change does not. While the G20 explicitly called for the establishment of an RST covering low-income and climate-vulnerable middle-income countries, the IMF has adopted a narrow interpretation according to which middle-income countries would be eligible only if they do not exceed a certain income threshold.¶ But traditional measures of income are a poor criterion for determining eligibility. The IMF must adjust its thinking to actual circumstances and ensure that eligibility is based on climate vulnerability. It should not be controversial to integrate into the criteria simple measures such as susceptibility to physical climate risks like floods, droughts, and hurricanes, or economic factors like the share of fossil-fuel exports in total foreign-exchange earnings.¶ Second, there is a problem with the terms and accessibility of the funds. Developing countries lack the fiscal space to mobilize domestic resources to address the structural changes their economies need. Many also lack access to external resources on reasonable borrowing terms. But the IMF is proposing that RST users be charged the SDR interest rate (currently five basis points and on the rise) plus a margin of up to 100 basis points. These rates are not very different from what the Fund currently charges middle-income countries. More problematic is the access limits, which would be 100% of quota, or less than the SDR equivalent of $1 billion. These guidelines would do little to address the financing needs of all but the smallest countries.¶ The third flaw is the IMF’s insistence on conditionality. The Fund sees the RST as a top-up scheme for existing programs. This is deeply troubling. According to the IMF’s own research, its existing lending facilities are stigmatized, owing to their high levels of conditionality and low levels of performance with respect to economic recovery and other social outcomes. The RST was supposed to be a new instrument that recognizes and channels resources to the countries that are most vulnerable to climate change. But what the IMF plans is repackaged business as usual.¶ The fourth flaw is that even though the IMF is only now devising a climate-change strategy, it would head the RST. Multilateral and regional development banks are also prescribed SDR institutions, and they have a longer view and a stronger track record on climate policy. They need to be part of the RST’s governance.¶ Lastly, there is the question of scale. IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva has said the RST would be funded with around $30 billion initially and then scaled up to $50 billion. While the RST alone cannot be expected to substitute finance needed to address the intensifying effects of climate change, the needs assessment released by the Standing Committee on Finance of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change put the figure at $6 trillion, and other estimates are significantly higher. At the recent UN Climate Change Conference (COP26), Barbados Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley, whose country is among the world’s most vulnerable, proposed an annual increase in SDRs of $500 billion for 20 years to finance resilience and sustainability.¶ The IMF’s shareholders and stakeholders must reconsider the RST’s design. To succeed, it must include all climate-vulnerable developing countries, regardless of income level. It must provide low-cost financing that does not undermine members’ debt sustainability and is not linked to pre-existing IMF programs with onerous conditionalities. It must be governed by key stakeholders in development-finance institutions. And it must scale appropriately over time.¶ The IMF must make the necessary adjustments to its proposal for the RST. If it cannot, creditor countries should refrain from capitalizing it.

Last week's Annual Meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund - the Bretton Woods Institutions - was the first face-to-face gathering since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. The need for ambitious action could not be greater. The two institutions stressed that the world is facing multiple and interconnected crises - defined as a “polycrisis” by historian Adam Tooze - and outlined by the World Bank as: ‘Increased poverty. Food shortages. Energy shocks. Debt crises. Climate change. Inflation. War.’ The Bank’s forecast also predicted “the world may be edging toward a global recession in 2023”, while the IMF warned ‘the worst is yet to come’ for the global economy. This will have dramatic consequences for already rising poverty levels and inequalities. However, there was a disconnect between the alarming messages delivered by the World Bank and IMF - and by activists on the streets of Washington DC and around the world who were calling for action - and the underwhelming practical responses of the institutions. ¶ The main takeaway of the week is that the Bretton Woods Institutions have failed to deliver what is needed, proving yet again that they are unfit for purpose. The problem starts with their governance system, which simply must now be reformed. ¶ Designed in 1944, when power relations were driven by colonialism, the current governance structure and quota distribution, which gives the greatest power to a few countries, follows that same (neo)colonial logic. Mia Mottley, the Prime Minister of Barbados, argued in her address to the 2022 United Nations General Assembly, that the time had come “for a review of the settlement of the Bretton Woods institutions.” She said that the agreement that gave rise to the WB and the IMF “no longer serv[ing] the purpose in the 21st century that they served in the 20th century”. This was also raised by speakers at a civil society session dedicated to IMF governance, where the need to address the unbalanced governance structure and to end the ‘gentlemen's agreement’ that guarantees the US-European leadership at the BWIs, was clear.¶ A first step to deliver the systemic governance reform so desperately needed in both institutions would be a major change to the quota distribution. A major opportunity to advance with this reform is the upcoming 16th review of IMF quotas (the previous review failed to introduce any meaningful reforms). During the meetings IMF Managing Director, Kristalena Georgieva, acknowledged the high cost of failing to review the IMF quota, admitting to civil society organisations (CSOs) that “it undermines the credibility of the IMF, it undermines our ability to serve our members”. ¶ The polycrisis reveals the true colour of IMF policies¶ Civil society has for years denounced the gap between IMF rhetoric in favour of government spending on public services and social protection, and its practice that continues to recommend austerity measures. This year, the gap narrowed, as the rhetoric moved closer to the practice. Georgieva made clear that tackling inflation and reducing fiscal deficits are the priority, even if we are still deep in crisis with no end in sight, and even if countries have already contracted their public spending. As the 2022 edition of Oxfam and Development Finance International’s Commitment to Reducing Inequality Index shows, during the pandemic, half of low- and lower-middle-income countries saw health spending fall; half of the countries tracked by the Index cut social protection spending; 70 per cent cut education spending; two-thirds of countries failed to increase their minimum wage in line with gross domestic product. ¶ The standard IMF answer to CSOs’ concerns about the new wave of austerity cuts is that countries have to intensify social protection and other support measures targeted to the poorest and most vulnerable people. As Eurodad argued previously, targeted systems have proven to be inefficient at reaching those in need, commonly excluding over half of the intended beneficiaries and reinforcing gender stereotypes, rather than challenging them. In fact, civil society attending the Annual Meetings were astonished by the limited interest of IMF staff to seriously engage with CSO concerns, despite new evidence that by next year 85 per cent of the world will be affected by austerity. ¶ The only two measures announced to help countries face the crises and increase their fiscal space were the creation of a temporary Food Shock Window (FSW) for emergency lending, and the operationalisation of the Resilience and Sustainability Trust, both debt-creating tools.¶ The FSW might provide some short-term relief to countries struggling to pay for their food imports, but it does nothing to correct the IMF’s long held support for trade liberalisation measures, market-led land reforms and financial deregulation of agriculture, which have contributed to creating a dysfunctional and unbalanced global food system.¶ The operationalisation of the RST is the latest move of the so far-failed attempt to rechannel the 2021 Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) allocation to countries that need it the most. While the IMF announced that Rwanda, Barbados and Costa Rica have officially applied for the RST, no SDR has been rechanneled yet. ¶ At the Meetings, civil society reiterated concerns previously expressed about the RST, such as the fact that eligible countries must have a concurrent programme with the IMF, meaning they will have to withstand the Fund’s macroeconomic recommendations and definition of a stable macroeconomic environment, whether they agree with it or not. An additional concern is the emphasis placed on the hope that the RST will play a catalytic role for private capital to support climate needs, introducing reforms that will make it easier for governments to play a ‘de-risking role’ and create incentives to attract private investment in the energy transition. This sounds too much like WBG’s ‘maximising finance for development’ approach, termed by Professor Daniela Gabor the ‘Wall Street Consensus’, which has been questioned due to its focus on driving private capital into areas that should remain under the State. This is also something that may end up increasing the financial vulnerability of the Global South, serving the interest of private capital instead of those of people and the planet. None of these issues were addressed.¶ The RST, with its combination of macroeconomic programmes in the area of climate adaptation, energy transition and pandemic preparedness, will turn the IMF into a major actor in climate action. However, its limited expertise in the area, its unwillingness to move away from conditionality and austerity, and its unequal governance system make it ill-placed to play such a role. Climate action and climate finance should follow the principles of ‘polluters pay’ and ‘common but differentiated responsibilities’. They should include a strong element of justice and retribution, acknowledging that the most important policy issue in economics today is how to tackle climate change in an equitable, just, gender-responsive and human rights-based manner. All of these are yet to be seen in the IMF’s engagement with climate. ¶ The IMF should use a greater variety of instruments to help countries expand their fiscal space, such as the elimination of surcharges - a system of fees on loans from the institutions; a new allocation of Special Drawing Rights - especially if targeted to developing countries; and more focus on the need for debt restructuring. Yet none of these measures were addressed during the Meetings.

A narrative - are Han Chinese the "white people" of China has been a hit trend on Twitter lately. A researcher from Human Rights Watch, a New York-based non-governmental organization, hypes up this topic by asking, "should Han people reflect on Han privileges and Han Chauvinism?" It is very interesting to observe some Western forces "caring" more about Chinese people when the land they are living on is witnessing growing racism spreading like wild fire. Such rhetoric mirrors nothing but their obsession in measuring others' corn by their own bushel. To begin with, the question is a self projection of the US' white supremacy. For a long time, white Americans have been inheriting advantages — just because of their skin color — with privileges in education, medical care, employment, etc. They tend to be too accustomed to notice or acknowledge this inequity.  But admit it or not, social injustice is deteriorating fast. Li Haidong, professor at the Institute of International Relations of the China Foreign Affairs University, told the Global Times that the US handling of relations among different races has long been a mess. The rising white supremacy and politicization of the topic have further made it worse. "Some Americans even believe their constitution is a law made by slave owners, and thus is partial to white people. As a result, they ask why would they be patriotic and loyal to such a country," Li said.  Relations among different ethnic groups in China and racial problems in the US are totally different thing, observers note. Different ethnic groups of China have long lived on this soil since ancient times. They have gradually integrated into the Chinese nation through thousands of years and different dynasties. Yet the US is an immigrant country, with different groups which set foot on the soil tend to be mutually repulsive. The mass killings of native Americans in the history of the European colonization of the continent is an example. An article written by an American writer entitled, "When Native Americans Were Slaughtered in the Name of 'Civilization'" offers an insight: "Their skin was dark. Their languages were foreign. And their world views and spiritual beliefs were beyond most white men's comprehension." So the genocide occurred.  More importantly, China has been adopting inclusive and supportive policies toward its own ethnic minorities.  A netizen commented on Twitter, "Western people might have no idea that Han people in China have no privileges at all." Whoever clamors about so-called Han privileges and Han Chauvinism only lays bare his or her ignorance about China's ethnic policies.  In China, ethnic minority groups enjoy preferential policies in education access and employment. They were exempted from the regulation when one-child policy was adopted, and are encouraged to use their own languages. Their customs and habits, regarding their diet, holidays, marriage practice and burial habits, are well respected. Their right to choose a religious belief is protected by China's Constitution. There have also been policies that facilitate economic progress in ethnic minority areas, such as the one to boost the development of China's west, including the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and Tibet Autonomous Region. Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying once tweeted, "US frames that China disrespects ethnic minorities. Just look at China's #RMB banknotes, Tibetan, Uyghur, Mongolian and Sawcuengh are also printed beside mandarin. Ethnic solidarity is deeply rooted in Chinese society. Is there any other language than English on a USD banknote?" In China, all ethnic groups can enjoy the country's economic development and improving living standards. Unlike the US, where "people are increasingly emphasizing and focusing on whether they are white, black or Asian, instead of mentioning they are Americans," Li noted.  The current ties, or problems among different races in the US is bruising the so-called melting pot, battering the cohesion of the country, Li said, adding, "US elites, who have been addicted to playing these tricks, will be haunted by their own deeds." Some people in the West wish to utilize identity politics to create internal contradictions in China. The Chinese people are sick of such tricks. Their daydream will only end up being blown up. 

Comparison of ethnicities’ political participation system and practice

Main types of political participation system of Western ethnic groups

Comparison of China’s and major Western countries’ paradigms of minority language and cultural rights protection

Western countries were the first to face the issue of the protection of minority groups’ language and cultural rights. In the course of building nation-states over centuries, how to treat the language and cultural rights of minority groups has always been an important political issue faced by the nation-states of Western Europe. Historically, Western countries have two characteristics in the protection of the language and cultural rights of minority groups.Footnote 40 One is the regulation or legislation of rights protection, often issued before international bilateral or multilateral treatiesFootnote 41;the other is that the choice of legislation on rights protection is obviously passive, that is, the main reason for choosing to protect the language and cultural rights of minority groups is external pressure, or the internal need for maintaining national security.

A recent commentary from The Sydney Morning Herald’s international editor, Peter Hartcher, described China (along with Islamic State and Russia) as “fascist,” sparking an angry response from China’s Foreign Ministry. Yet the piece likely sparked cheers among people with similar views. There’s no problem with being so straightforward, even as China celebrate the 70th anniversary of victory in the “World Anti-Fascist War.” But the logic behind this piece does not stand firm.

The article gives three defining characteristics of fascists to support its argument: authoritarianism, highly centralized power structures, and exalting the nation above the people.

But as the American author James Baldwin wrote in 1963, “time reveals the foundations on which any kingdom rests, and eats at those foundations, and it destroys doctrines by proving them to be untrue.” Even if U.S. primacy was once a source of regional stability, there is little basis to think it will promote harmony today. The United States’ global power has diminished over the past generation, making it harder for Washington to direct the world. Other states have a newfound desire and capacity to resist, subvert, lash out against, or seek alternatives to U.S. preferences, including through violence. And the power of these countries is likely to continue to grow. It defies history to expect that dusk will never come for U.S. hegemony, especially as China—the world’s most populous state and Washington’s primary global competitor—draws power from its central place in the international economic system.

Nevertheless, two of the most recent U.S. presidents—Barack Obama and Donald Trump—charged themselves with the task of indefinitely propping up the sun. And President Joe Biden has picked up where both presidents left off. Initially, that meant taking steps to constrain Beijing. Now, it means taking steps to weaken the country. Obama started the process by launching a high-profile “pivot to Asia” designed to bolster the United States’ regional military presence as a check against China’s rise while interweaving his country’s economy into that of eight states close to China’s borders. Trump, who saw how China’s important economic position afforded it growing global influence, launched a trade war with Beijing. His administration also deepened Washington’s ties to Taiwan. Biden has increased the U.S. military buildup, facilitated a regional military buildup, and attempted to assemble the beginnings of an anti-Chinese containment coalition along with local Asian powers.

One final point, globalization. The opening of markets to trade and investment around the world had real benefits for some people. Certainly for millions of people in Asia, lower and middle classes back there, but not for the lower and middle classes in the United States and in Western Europe. It’s good for the global 1 percent but not for lower and middle classes here in the United States. That’s also been part of the backlash we’ve seen in the last few years.

The bottom line here is that liberal hegemony was a failure. Now again the question is, well, why did we do this? Well, one reason was because of this remarkable position of power we found ourselves in at the end of the Cold War, which made this seem possible. It led to a certain amount of hubris, but of course when you think about it, we were already in such good shape. An ambitious strategy of trying to reshape the world wasn’t really necessary either. Now we were already in pretty good shape. I think we did it because there was a very powerful bipartisan consensus, in favor of it within the foreign policy elite. That’s really the heart of the book. This is a consensus not shared by the general public. By the foreign policy elite, I mean those people who actively work on foreign affairs all the time. It’s what Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security advisor called the blob. We’re talking about the formal institutions of government, the president, NSC, Departments of State and Defense, Intelligence Services, and organizations like the Council on Foreign Relations, that lots of people belong to and participate in foreign affairs. Think tanks like the Brookings Institution, the Carnegie Endowment, many, many others. Various special interest groups and lobbies that try to advance some foreign policy cause, whether it’s arms control or human rights or whatever. There’re dozens of those in Washington. People in the media who write on a regular basis on foreign affairs. I would put them in the foreign policy elite as well. Of course people like me who writes books and articles that shape opinion or at least try to, who sometimes serve in government and who train the people who go into these key positions.

Let me start with the bad news. You’ll all remember the unipolar moment of the 1990s. The United States is dominant, the wind is at our back. Our only problems are a few pesky dictators, who haven’t really gotten the memo yet. The United States is on good terms with all the major powers, including Russia and China. Iraq was being disarmed. Iran had no nuclear enrichment capacity. We thought we had capped North Korea’s nuclear program as well. Globalization is proceeding rapidly with the formation of the World Trade Organization. NATO and the European Union are expanding, democracy is spreading worldwide. We have the Oslo Accords, meaning that we think we’re on the brink of a final peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. The American military seems unstoppable. The American economy’s actually doing pretty well.

Now, you fast forward to today. China’s power and ambitions have grown steadily. Russia has seized Crimea, relations with Moscow now are worse than at any time since the Cold War. Of course, Moscow and Beijing are increasingly aligned and cooperating against us. Democracy is now in retreat. According to Freedom House, a New York-based think tank, 2017 was the 12th consecutive year where global freedom declined. Since 1993, North Korea, India, and Pakistan have all tested nuclear weapons. Iran has acquired the capacity to build nuclear weapons if it ever wants to. It has all the technological capabilities it needs.

Pushing back against Trump’s foreign policy is an important goal. But moving forward requires a more serious analysis than claiming that the “liberal international order” was the centerpiece of past U.S. foreign-policy successes, and thus should be again. Both claims are flawed. We need to understand the limits of the liberal international order, where it previously failed to deliver benefits, and why it offers little guidance for many contemporary questions

First, advocates of the order tend to skim past the policies pursued under the liberal order that have not worked. These mistakes need to be directly confronted to do better in the future.

As others have pointed out, all of this makes a mockery of current U.S. and wider Western rhetoric during the Ukraine war about territorial sovereignty, human rights, and international norms and rules, while undermining Western states’ standing to condemn Russia’s own illegal actions.

And this is barely half of it. Biden is also continuing Trump’s recognition of another illegal annexation, this one of Western Sahara by Morocco, making the United States the first and only country to take a step rejected by both the United Nations and International Court of Justice. When NATO ally Turkey recently launched a cross-border bombing campaign in Iraq and Syria as a response to a terrorist attack, U.S. National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications John Kirby only remarked that the Turks “certainly have every right to defend themselves and their citizens.” This isn’t the first time Washington has given the nod to a war crime-filled Turkish incursion in Syria aimed at putting down the centuries-long Kurdish struggle for self-determination, with Trump having thrown the United States’ former Kurdish partners to the Turkish wolves back in 2019.

American foreign policy, they contend, has been controlled by a privileged cabal bent on serving its own interests rather than those of the nation at large; one that protects its turf by shutting out alternative ideas and excluding dissenting voices. The result has been three decades of dismal failure, with the United States squandering its post–Cold War advantages and careening from catastrophe to catastrophe. The key to getting things back on track, these critics charge, is to break the grip of the Blob. The only problem with this argument is that every component of it is wrong. The foreign policy establishment is not a closed cabal, American statecraft has not been a giant failure, and scrapping professionalism for amateurism would be a disaster. In truth, the foreign policy establishment is an American strength rather than weakness. It is more open-minded and accountable than its critics allow. It acts as a storehouse of accumulated professional wisdom, providing intellectual ballast to the ship of state. On balance, the establishment’s practical track record has been impressive, with some well-known fiascos outweighed by many quiet successes. And the current administration’s foreign policy blunders—including in its response to the current pandemic—demonstrate what happens when the establishment’s experience and expertise are rejected. In short, the Blob is not the problem. It is the solution. A CONTENTIOUS CLUB Blob theorists view the establishment as a club of like-minded elite insiders who control everything, take care of one another, and brush off challenges to conventional wisdom. In reality, the United States actually has a healthy marketplace of foreign policy ideas. Discussion over American foreign policy is loud, contentious, diverse, and generally pragmatic—and as a result, the nation gets the opportunity to learn from its mistakes, build on its successes, and improve its performance over time. In both absolute and relative terms, the expert community dealing with foreign policy and national security in the United States is remarkably large and heterogeneous. Inside government, cadres of professionals make vast amounts of technocratic knowledge and institutional memory available to policymakers. Every department and agency with an international role has distinctive regional or functional expertise it can bring to bear. This in-house knowledge is complemented by an even larger and more diverse network of experts in the many hundreds of think tanks and contract research institutions that surround the government and offer views ranging from right to left, hawk to dove, free trader to protectionist, technocratic to ideological. Pick any policy issue and you can put together a lively debate with ease. Should the United States engage with China or contain it? Negotiate with Iran or squeeze it? Withdraw from the Middle East or redouble its efforts? Reasoned arguments on all sides are widely available, in any form you want—all supplied from within the supposedly monolithic establishment. Moreover, unlike such communities in other leading powers, the American foreign policy establishment is connected to society rather than cut off from it, because the top several layers of U.S. national security bureaucracies are staffed by political appointees rather than civil servants. The Blob comprises government officials, outside experts, and many people who go back and forth between the two. Insiders know how government works and what is practical. Outsiders think independently. And in-and-outers bridge the gaps. Other countries simply do not have comparably large, diverse, permeable, expert communities that encourage vigorous debate over national policy—which is why, say, the caliber of U.S. debate about nuclear policy is more nuanced and better informed than in other nuclear powers, and which is why other countries would love to have such a Blob of their own. The American foreign policy establishment, finally, is generally more pragmatic than ideological. It values prudence and security over novelty and creativity. It knows that thinking outside the box may be useful in testing policy assumptions, but the box is usually there for a reason, and so reflexively embracing the far-out option is dangerous. Its members have made many mistakes, individually and collectively, but several features of the system enforce accountability over time. Foreign policy failures, for example, are politically toxic and often spur positive change. The monumental intelligence failures that allowed the September 11 attacks to happen were followed by policy and institutional reforms that have helped prevent other mass-casualty terrorist attacks on U.S. targets for almost two decades. Early misjudgments in the Iraq war led to the adoption of a new counterinsurgency strategy that restored stability, at least for a while. The international economic imbalances and financial procedures that led to the 2008 global financial crisis were addressed by policies that contributed to a decade-long recovery.

The underlying notion of “the security bureaucracies . . . looking for new enemies” is a threadbare concept that has somehow taken hold across the political spectrum, from the radical left (viz. Michael Klare [1981], who refers to a “threat bank”), to the liberal center (viz. Robert H. Johnson [1997], who dismisses most alleged “threats” as “improbable dangers”), to libertarians (viz. Ted Galen Carpenter [1992], Vice President for Foreign and Defense Policy of the Cato Institute, who wrote a book entitled A Search for Enemies). What is missing from most analysts’ claims of “threat inflation,” however, is a convincing theory of why, say, the American government significantly (not merely in excusable rhetoric) might magnify and even invent threats (and, more seriously, act on such inflated threat estimates). In a few places, Eland (2004, 185) suggests that such behavior might stem from military or national security bureaucrats’ attempts to enhance their personal status and organizational budgets, or even from the influence and dominance of “the military-industrial complex”; viz.: “Maintaining the empire and retaliating for the blowback from that empire keeps what President Eisenhower called the military-industrial complex fat and happy.” Or, in the same section: In the nation’s capital, vested interests, such as the law enforcement bureaucracies . . . routinely take advantage of “crises”to satisfy parochial desires. Similarly, many corporations use crises to get pet projects— a.k.a. pork—funded by the government. And national security crises, because of people’s fears, are especially ripe opportunities to grab largesse. (Ibid., 182) Thus, “bureaucratic-politics” theory, which once made several reputa- tions (such as those of Richard Neustadt, Morton Halperin, and Graham Allison) in defense-intellectual circles, and spawned an entire sub-industry within the field of international relations,5 is put into the service of dismissing putative security threats as imaginary. So, too, can a surprisingly cognate theory, “public choice,”6 which can be considered the right-wing analog of the “bureaucratic-politics” model, and is a preferred interpretation of governmental decision- making among libertarian observers. As Eland (2004, 203) summarizes: Public-choice theory argues [that] the government itself can develop sepa- rate interests from its citizens. The government reflects the interests of powerful pressure groups and the interests of the bureaucracies and the bureaucrats in them. Although this problem occurs in both foreign and domestic policy, it may be more severe in foreign policy because citizens pay less attention to policies that affect them less directly. There is, in this statement of public-choice theory, a certain ambiguity, and a certain degree of contradiction: Bureaucrats are supposedly, at the same time, subservient to societal interest groups and autonomous from society in general. This journal has pioneered the argument that state autonomy is a likely consequence of the public’s ignorance of most areas of state activity (e.g., Somin 1998; DeCanio 2000a, 2000b, 2006, 2007; Ravenal 2000a). But state autonomy does not necessarily mean that bureaucrats substitute their own interests for those of what could be called the “national society” that they ostensibly serve. I have argued (Ravenal 2000a) that, precisely because of the public-ignorance and elite-expertise factors, and especially because the opportunities—at least for bureaucrats (a few notable post-government lobbyist cases nonwithstanding)—for lucrative self-dealing are stringently fewer in the defense and diplomatic areas of government than they are in some of the contract-dispensing and more under-the-radar-screen agencies of government, the “public-choice” imputation of self-dealing, rather than working toward the national interest (which, however may not be synonymous with the interests, perceived or expressed, of citizens!) is less likely to hold. In short, state autonomy is likely to mean, in the derivation of foreign policy, that “state elites” are using rational judgment, in insulation from self-promoting interest groups—about what strategies, forces, and weapons are required for national defense. Ironically, “public choice”—not even a species of economics, but rather a kind of political interpretation—is not even about “public” choice, since, like the bureaucratic-politics model, it repudiates the very notion that bureaucrats make truly “public” choices; rather, they are held, axiomatically, to exhibit “rent-seeking” behavior, wherein they abuse their public positions in order to amass private gains, or at least to build personal empires within their ostensibly official niches. Such sub- rational models actually explain very little of what they purport to observe. Of course, there is some truth in them, regarding the “behavior” of some people, at some times, in some circumstances, under some conditions of incentive and motivation. But the factors that they posit operate mostly as constraints on the otherwise rational optimization of objectives that, if for no other reason than the playing out of official roles, transcends merely personal or parochial imperatives. My treatment of “role” differs from that of the bureaucratic-politics theorists, whose model of the derivation of foreign policy depends heavily, and acknowledgedly, on a narrow and specific identification of the role- playing of organizationally situated individuals in a partly conflictual “pulling and hauling” process that “results in” some policy outcome. Even here, bureaucratic-politics theorists Graham Allison and Philip Zelikow (1999, 311) allow that “some players are not able to articulate [sic] the governmental politics game because their conception of their job does not legitimate such activity.” This is a crucial admission, and one that points— empirically—to the need for a broader and generic treatment of role. Roles (all theorists state) give rise to “expectations” of performance. My point is that virtually every governmental role, and especially national-security roles, and particularly the roles of the uniformed military, embody expectations of devotion to the “national interest”; rational- ity in the derivation of policy at every functional level; and objectivity in the treatment of parameters, especially external parameters such as “threats” and the power and capabilities of other nations. Sub-rational models (such as “public choice”) fail to take into account even a partial dedication to the “national” interest (or even the possibility that the national interest may be honestly misconceived in more paro- chial terms). In contrast, an official’s role connects the individual to the (state-level) process, and moderates the (perhaps otherwise) self-seeking impulses of the individual. Role-derived behavior tends to be formalized and codified; relatively transparent and at least peer-reviewed, so as to be consistent with expectations; surviving the particular individual and trans- mitted to successors and ancillaries; measured against a standard and thus corrigible; defined in terms of the performed function and therefore derived from the state function; and uncorrrupt, because personal cheating and even egregious aggrandizement are conspicuously discouraged. My own direct observation suggests that defense decision-makers attempt to “frame” the structure of the problems that they try to solve on the basis of the most accurate intelligence. They make it their business to know where the threats come from. Thus, threats are not “socially constructed” (even though, of course, some values are). A major reason for the rationality, and the objectivity, of the process is that much security planning is done, not in vaguely undefined circum- stances that offer scope for idiosyncratic, subjective behavior, but rather in structured and reviewed organizational frameworks. Non-rationalities (which are bad for understanding and prediction) tend to get filtered out. People are fired for presenting skewed analysis and for making bad predictions. This is because something important is riding on the causal analysis and the contingent prediction. For these reasons, “public choice” does not have the “feel” of reality to many critics who have participated in the structure of defense decision-making. In that structure, obvious, and even not-so-obvious,“rent-seeking” would not only be shameful; it would present a severe risk of career termination. And, as mentioned, the defense bureaucracy is hardly a productive place for truly talented rent-seekers to operatecompared to opportunities for personal profit in the commercial world. A bureaucrat’s very self-placement in these reaches of government testi- fies either to a sincere commitment to the national interest or to a lack of sufficient imagination to exploit opportunities for personal profit.

Our findings warrant tempered optimism about the quality of strategic intelligence forecasts. The forecasts fared exceptionally well in terms of discrimination and calibration, and these results were not particularly sensitive to case exclusions. The results provide a stark comparison with Tetlock’s (17) findings. Whereas the best political forecasters in his sample explained about 20% of the outcome variance, forecasts in this study explained 76% of the variance in geopolitical outcomes. Likewise, the mean absolute deviation from perfect calibration (the square root of the calibration index) was 25% smaller in our study than in Tetlock’s, reflecting better calibration. Experience had no effect in his study, but analytic experience led to a practically beneficial improvement in discrimination in this study. Not only did senior analysts discriminate better than junior analysts, they produced 68% of the forecasts despite constituting less than half of the analyst sample (Materials and Method). Finally, whereas experts in Tetlock’s study showed overconfidence, forecasts in this study were underconfident. Although unbiased confidence is optimal, the cost of overconfidence in intelligence will usually outweigh that of underconfidence. Underconfident forecasting occurs when analysts discriminate better than they think they can. Although underconfidence reduces informational value for decision makers by expressing forecasts too timidly, it signals good judgment. Overconfidence, in contrast, indicates that forecasts are communicated with unwarranted certainty, implying that they are more error-prone than experts predict.

Fig. 4. Calibration curves before and after recalibration to t*.

The most troubling aspect of Afropessimism, however, may be its treatment of slavery. Despite the fact that Wilderson knows this is one of the most fiercely contested components of his worldview, he treats it as if it were a minor point, relegating an important statement of his position to a footnote: “It is worth reiterating that, through the lens of Afropessimism, slavery is, essentially, a relational dynamic, rather than a historical era or an ensemble of empirical practices (like whips and chains).” I submit that there is something deeply troubling about a casual parenthetical that proposes to evacuate the significance of the entire material history of antebellum slavery. It’s also logically bizarre, since it seems constitutive of the entire project that slavery have been real at least at some point in order for the relation to obtain in the first place. But these issues are brushed aside, since this erasure is necessary for the theory to do what Wilderson wants it to do; slavery must be transformed into a portable and fundamentally psychological relation untethered from historical memory and founded purely on the basis of melanin and the antagonism that an all-encompassing and all-powerful “whiteness” poses to it.

For many of us, such a leap is neither ethical nor comprehensible. But for Wilderson the portability and paradoxical fungibility of slavery fits perfectly with his interest in film and his Lacanian and Fanonian readings of it. How else to explain passages in Afropessimism in which incidents involving a terrible white roommate situation he and his girlfriend find themselves in circa 1979 are, for Wilderson, obviously comparable to Steve McQueen’s 2013 film, 12 Years a Slave, which was based on Solomon Northup’s 1853 slave narrative. This is not a jest, but a sustained and intensely explored analogy, in which the whipping of Patsey (played by Lupita Nyong’o in the film), descriptions of the cool sadism of Mary Epps (the slaveowner’s wife) from Northrup’s 1853 narrative, and Wilderson’s troubles with a batty white roommate all share the same stage. We are asked to imagine them as coequal and even coeval psychological theaters of cruelty, whose mise-en-scène simply involves different props. The plantation is everywhere and all the time. It is ontological, which means that it attaches trans-historically to all Black persons regardless of their social position.

Nonetheless, the fact that the main current of Afropessimist thinking runs counter to all of Black political history and tradition thus far; the fact that the foundational thinker for this perspective, Frantz Fanon, came to completely opposing conclusions with respect to the nature of politics and solidarity in struggle; the fact that the theory often appears to evade scrutiny or contestation by proclaiming itself “meta-theoretical” and “ontological”; the fact that it asserts a “mandate” for which no empirical evidence is provided and in the face of overwhelming evidence that it constitutes at best a minoritarian and class-specific position — all of this has to be reckoned with by those who want to take Afropessimism to heart.

Perhaps it’s worth reminding ourselves that when he was murdered, Fred Hampton was encouraging poor whites to analogize their position to that of poor Blacks. At the time of his assassination, Malcolm X was embracing and actively seeking to incorporate a cross-racial coalition into his new organization. Ella Baker actively encouraged the deepening of organizational ties and activist links across different communities by emphasizing common struggle and common oppression. What evidence do we have, on the other hand, that the power behind the status quo is quaking at the thought of Black folk gathering in isolation to mourn the end of the world?

In this interesting and important yet flawed book, Vitalis seeks to bridge the “vast gulf divid[ing] international relations from Africana studies,” bringing the “racism [of the discipline of international relations] to light.” Conventional narratives of the field’s history, he argues, trace it to the rise of realism and national security concerns in the years around World War II, adding a few historical thinkers, such as Thucydides, to claim a timeless intellectual pedigree. But this ignores both the extensive mainstream scholarship of the first decades of the twentieth century that dealt with colonialism and racial issues and the pioneering work of African American writers in what he calls “the Howard School.” Consigning both to the memory hole, he says, paints a distorted picture of the discipline’s origins and nature, obscuring the role that international relations scholarship has played in the construction and perpetuation of white Western dominance.

These are major claims, and some of them hold up better than others. Vitalis is correct to shine a spotlight on the forgotten academic work of the first third of the twentieth century and offers a timely reminder of just how prevalent racialized thinking was and how central a role imperialism—as opposed to straightforward great-power relations—played in global affairs. Back then, for example, “policy relevance” in political science often meant figuring out how to train good colonial administrators. Vitalis also provides a service by telling the story of scholars such as Alain Locke, Ralph Bunche, and Rayford Logan, enriching readers’ understanding of midcentury intellectual debates over U.S. foreign policy and tracing how racism operated inside various professional institutions.

This critique is both narrowly true and narrow in perspective. Context is of course important, but foreign policy choices are not sui generis, there are patterns across space and time that inform decision-making. Policymakers recognize this and routinely draw lessons from history when making foreign policy decisions. As noted below, policymakers in other areas such as development and public health routinely rely on broader, more general studies to craft policy. And, broader scholarship can improve foreign policy performance, as evidenced by the ability of IR academics to build on their own work to predict outcomes, including for example forecasting the lengths of the conventional and insurgency phases of the U.S.–Iraq conflict in the 2000s.

But, even if one were to accept the limits of general work, there is a growing body of academic work that evaluates foreign policy tools as applied to a specific country or region. These studies ask questions such as whether:

Blob theorists view the establishment as a club of like-minded elite insiders who control everything, take care of one another, and brush off challenges to conventional wisdom. In reality, the United States actually has a healthy marketplace of foreign policy ideas. Discussion over American foreign policy is loud, contentious, diverse, and generally pragmatic—and as a result, the nation gets the opportunity to learn from its mistakes, build on its successes, and improve its performance over time.

In both absolute and relative terms, the expert community dealing with foreign policy and national security in the United States is remarkably large and heterogeneous. Inside government, cadres of professionals make vast amounts of technocratic knowledge and institutional memory available to policymakers. Every department and agency with an international role has distinctive regional or functional expertise it can bring to bear. This in-house knowledge is complemented by an even larger and more diverse network of experts in the many hundreds of think tanks and contract research institutions that surround the government and offer views ranging from right to left, hawk to dove, free trader to protectionist, technocratic to ideological. Pick any policy issue and you can put together a lively debate with ease. Should the United States engage with China or contain it? Negotiate with Iran or squeeze it? Withdraw from the Middle East or redouble its efforts? Reasoned arguments on all sides are widely available, in any form you want—all supplied from within the supposedly monolithic establishment.

During the first two decades of the twenty-first century, China continued to act as an optimistic great power. The Chinese economy was growing rapidly, Beijing’s security environment was improving, and the country’s citizens were becoming more educated than ever before. (Even today, public opinion polling suggests that the Chinese are more optimistic about the future and more confident that their country is headed in the right direction than are the people in any other major economy.) This self-assurance fostered strategic patience and a focus on the long term. Beijing sponsored Confucius Institutes abroad to bolster its image and soft power. It invested in a long-term diplomatic strategy to reduce Taiwan’s international recognition. It developed wedge issues to play the United States and the European Union off each other, all while generating goodwill in the “global South.” China began creating global governance structures that could potentially challenge the liberal international order, including the New Development Bank, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, and the Belt and Road Initiative.

Over the same period, U.S. expectations darkened. The 9/11 terrorist attacks, the disastrous Iraq war, and the 2008 financial crisis all challenged Americans’ faith in the future. According to Gallup polling data, the last time a majority of U.S. respondents believed that their country was headed in the right direction was January 2004. A quick review of recent presidential inaugural addresses hints at this escalating pessimism. In 2009, amid an economic crisis and war, U.S. President Barack Obama stressed the need to “begin again the work of remaking America.” President Donald Trump’s rhetoric in 2017 was more hyperbolic, decrying the “American carnage” of the previous eight years and promising to “protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies, and destroying our jobs.” In his inaugural address in 2021, President Joe Biden acknowledged that “few periods in our nation’s history have been more challenging or difficult than the one we’re in now.”