The Lighthouse - 2022 Collection

THE LIGHTHOUSE 2022 COLLECTION

2022

OXFORD SOOTHSAYING & TRUTH-SLAYING / EU-BELARUS BORDER CRISIS / THE UNITED STATES IN THE 21ST CENTURY / A MEDIATION OF GREEK ANTIQUITY

THE LIGHTHOUSE 2022 COLLLECTION

EDITOR IN CHIEF Jack Vaughan

DESIGNER Rose Morley

CONTRIBUTOR Rose Morley

CONTRIBUTOR Justas Petrauskas

CONTRIBUTOR Alexander Miller

CONTRIBUTOR Margot Trotter

For access to prior issues and more information about inter national relations in Oxford head to: http://www.oxirsoc.com/

CONTENTS

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EDITOR'S NOTE

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SOOTH-SAYING AND TRUTH-SLAYING: HOW NEOCLASSICAL ENVIRONMENTAL DETERMINISM IS TAKING OVER THE WORLD

EU-BELARUS BORDER CRISIS: THERE

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IS NO EASY WAY OUT

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AMERICA IN 2022

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A MEDIATION OF GREEK ANTIQUITY

EDITOR'S NOTE This has been a tumultuous year for the Lighthouse, but we're delighted to present yo you a collection of articles written over the course of this year. if you would like to contribute to future editions of The Lighthouse please reach out to Oxford International Relations Society on facebook.

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SOOTHSAYING AND TRUTHSLAYING

HOW NEOCLASSICAL ENVIRONMENTAL DETERMINISM IS TAKING OVER THE WORLD

BY ROSE MORLEY What happens when academics flee from popular discourse? Non-academics take their place, and they do so with dangerous aplomb, careless flair, and troubling messages. Such is the case in the realm of geopolitics.

Although only formally coined at the beginning of the 20th century, concern about how territory and resources influence political realities has long been a mainstay of state consciousness. Over the course of this history, geopolitics has evolved extensively to the form in which it is studied academically today.

Early iterations were influenced by social Darwinism and viewed the state as a superorganism. Fredrich Ratzel proposed that only the states with the ambition to expand, culturally, economically, demographically as well as spatially, would survive. Geopolitical titans such as Halford Mackinder established typological hierarchies into which they slotted regions of the world. Mackinder proposed a crucial Pivot Area - the centre of the Eurasian landmass, which was succeeded in importance by the Inner Crescent, and finally the Outer Crescent - the Americas, sub-Saharan Africa, and Oceania. Nicolas Spykman later developed these into his Heartlands and Rimlands, positing that it was instead the outer Rimlands, the edges of the Eurasian continent, that were the most important rather than the Heartland.

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These theories consisted of some of the most widely disseminated forms of environmental and geographical determinism, setting forth that a particular climate and geography predisposes states and peoples towards certain trajectories and traits. These ideas operate on two levels: firstly, the state level, that the condition of a nation may be determined by its location and resources, and secondly that the character of a nation may be determined by its location and climate.

MACKINDER'S HEARTLAND AND SPYKMA'S RIMLAND

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Ideas such as these have been lambasted by those in the academic community for a lack of nuance and complexity, and as such the discipline of critical geopolitics was born.

Although geopolitics has long been interrogated as a discipline, notably for its association with the Nazi ideology and their obsession with lebensraum, or ‘living space’, critical geopolitics formally provides an alternative frame through which to view the world order.

Critical geopolitics applies a post structuralist perspective to assumptions about the influence of geography on statecraft, and it recognises that influences from individual political actors and economic relations also have an important role to play in global development. It moves away from the statecentred narrative, going beyond the simple divisions of the world into discrete spaces of allies and enemies, to understand the processes by which, as Derek Gregory puts it, distance is folded into difference. Rather than solely viewing the ‘big picture’ in a supposedly detached way, critical geopolitics acknowledges all understandings of the world as situated knowledge: geopolitical accounts of the world that presented as fact by classical geopolitics, are instead understood simply as different ways of representing reality in the interests of power.

Crucially, however, these theories have failed to break out of the realm of formal geopolitics and into practical and popular geopolitics – what might be thought of as the ‘real’ world. Instead, these gaps have been filled by a number of popular authors who have captured the minds of both the public and the politician. Some of these are more constructive – Jared Diamond, for example, turns the colonialist narrative on its head by reasoning that natural European superiority is a myth. He hypothesises that because peoples who live in the tropical belt die if they individually fail to obtain food or shelter, rather than indiscriminately from disease or cold as in the higher latitudes, then they should evolve more successful lineages. Though Diamond’s theories have not gone without criticism, there are others who are more deserving of it. Tim Marshall’s ‘Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need To Know About Global Politics’ and its follow up are similar in message to, although rather more accessible than, Robert Kaplan’s 'The Revenge of Geography'.

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oth books set forth that geography is the ultimate determinant of the world order and the people that act within it. Each author guides the reader through certain world regions, explaining how their geographical position has governed their history and condition. Kaplan, for example, blithely states that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict regarding land “is a case of utter geographical determinism” Of course, natural factors such as climatic distribution of disease, being land-locked and resource availability are important and influential – Friedman’s ‘flat world’ has not yet come to pass and, regardless of what Mark Zuckerberg may hope, the corporeality of our world still affects us. Indeed, one of Marshall’s arguments (echoed by Kaplan) regarding the reasons for Britain’s political history is one of merit and interest. He suggests that Britain has been able to develop such an advanced democracy because the security engendered by natural oceanic borders means that, unlike more insecurely positioned countries, there has been no rise of ‘Strong Man’ politics that is so often required for others to prosper. Yet when this determinism fails to consider other factors that also influence development trajectories, such as technology or the construction of grand infrastructure, problems arise. Kaplan, when listing “all” forms of national power, includes “political, diplomatic, economic, commercial, military and demographic”, missing cultural and social, softer forms that do not factor into the male-coded sphere of classical geopolitics. A failure to account for influences on a country’s development, such as a population’s opinion of those relating to it, or remarkable individuals such as Peter the Great, or any number of stochastic events, creates a blinkered narrative in which environmental determinism is sole dictator of a country, rather than one of many council people, all vying for influence.

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Even more dangerously however, is the shift away from geographic determinism of a state’s condition into determinism of their character.

Kaplan strays near to ancient pariahs such as Ellen Churchill Semple and Ellsworth Huntington, clumsily assigning certain traits to certain climates when he writes that the harsh Russian climate and landscape “hold the keys to the Russians’ character”. Assertations about the influence of climate on national character sails dangerously close to the racist assumptions that underpinned the devastating expansions of colonial empires, and Kaplan’s regurgitation of these sentiments is out of place in the modern world.

Most importantly, however, what unites these books is their dual influence on practical and popular discourse. Both ‘Prisoners’ and ‘Power’ have topped Amazon best seller lists and have been venerated by reviews in the press. Marshall has even released a child friendly book of ‘Prisoners’, replete with disturbingly cheery corporate Memphis-style illustrations, thus following in the steps of Halford Mackinder, who was involved in writing school-level textbooks for children. Kaplan, meanwhile, has exerted extraordinary influence on American political decisions. The ancient hatred thesis put forth in Kaplan’s ‘Balkan Ghosts’ was reportedly a factor in President Bill Clinton’s initial decision in 1993 to postpone military intervention in the Balkans, and in 2011 Kaplan was named one of the 100 most important global thinkers by Foreign Policy magazine. These authors have power, to shape and bend the accepted narrative, and there is precious little being done to provide an alternative.

Neoclassical geopolitics is alluring: it’s the glorious crystal ball that political elites dream about, providing a rational and apparently commonsensical vision of the world that fits neatly into policy and planning.

Without a challenger, the white knight of neoclassical geopolitics can sweep the floor and determine the future. Few academics are willing to take the risk of plunging into politics in this way, and many simply do not view it as their concern. It is not wilful ignorance, but a continuation of the long-held detachment of academics from the messy grit of the world. But critical geopolitics is precisely about messy grit – it is practically premised on it. The ways in which the discourse around geopolitics is generated must be interrogated, and by more than academics – the subtle intricacies that comprise the world require writing about, and not simply within journals. This call to arms, or call to pens, is nothing new to geographers, but in the growing wake of the Ukrainian crisis, it is clearer now more than ever that today’s world needs precision and exception rather than determinism and indiscriminate theories.

Nuance is hard to deliver accessibly, but the skill and elegance required for such a task would certainly not be effort wasted.

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Geopolitics is not simply about the scholarly pursuit of knowledge, it is also about the real-world actions of those in power, and the peoples that inform and endure their decisions. It is practice, not just postulation. This means that the scholars and authors of this subject carry a heavy burden – what they say, often goes. The responsibility incurred by making broad and sweeping statements about the state and future of world politics is often sidestepped by wary academics, unwilling to stake their reputation or muddy their values by travelling into the sullied waters of realpolitik. This leaves the spheres and ideas of scholars and popular authors dangerously disassociated, floating apart like bubbles rather than colliding into a balanced Venn diagram. Harm de Blij, writing about ‘Prisoners’, remembered his friend, a fellow academic, remarking that “no geographer could afford to publish” a book such as Kaplan’s. Faced with this new, popular spectre, it would seem now, that we cannot afford not to.

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EU- THERE OUT BELARUS BORDER CRISIS:

IS NO EASY WAY

BY JUSTAS PETRAUSKAS

At first sight, the two groups of people who were about to enter Lithuania on one of the final days of August can appear almost identical. Both include families, young children and other vulnerable groups. Both are trying to escape the unbearable reality of their home countries and wish to begin new lives abroad. However one of the groups interpreters who assisted Lithuanian troops in Afghanistan and their family members, 167 in total, - was transported to the country by Lithuanian government airlifts and almost immediately granted asylum status. The other group - a mix of people from Iraq, Eritrea and Somali - arrived by foot, attempted to illegally cross the Lithuanian-Belarusian border and were denied entry by Lithuanian border guards. While Afghan interpreters have been readjusting to the new life in Lithuania, Iraquis have been stuck in the cold, dangerous limbo between the borders, as Belarussian authorities refused to let them back in.

It may sound like a typical migration-related story, composed of government hypocrisy, antimigrant sentiment and bare-bone indifference.

It would be more than a grave mistake to turn to assume that this characterization is true.

The reality, as it so often turns out, is much more complicated. Lithuanian government insists that there is a difference between those groups. The first one exemplifies the duty of Lithuania to take care of people who helped the country's mission in Afghanistan and risked their lives in pursuing this job.

The second one is seen as a symptom of retaliatory tactics of the Belarussian dictator Aliaksandr Lukashenko, a "hybrid attack" and an artificially created illegal migration flow, designed as a response to the sanctions imposed by the EU and Lithuania's support for the democratic opposition in Belarus.

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To unpack the jargon which infuses these phrases, it is essential to understand the background of the crisis. The primary reason for it may lie in the fact that one of the more successful post-Soviet democracies of Europe, Lithuania, shares a border with the continent's last remaining dictatorship, Belarus. The friction between the two goes back to almost two decades, with Lithuania having established itself as a safe home for Belarussian dissidents, academics and even a university (European Humanities University, formerly a Minsk-based institution is now operating from Vilnius), who are no longer welcomed in Belarus. This friction reached its highest point on May 23rd 2021 when Roman Protasevich, a former editor of Nexta, a Belarussian dissident media channel, boarded a Ryanair flight from Athens to Vilnius, where he had been living for about a year. The flight proceeded as usual, however, some 10 km from the Lithuanian border Belarussian authorities ordered the plane to change its course and land in Minsk, given the emailed bomb threat from Hamas.

Subsequent reports from the airline and other parties involved confirmed that the threat was fabricated by the Belarussian regime and used as a pretext to arrest Protasevich when the plane landed in Minsk. Lithuania, whose citizens were stuck in Minsk for hours, denounced Belarus for an "act of state terrorism" and initiated talks in the EU about the imposition of economic sanctions as a response to the attack. The sanctions were, surprisingly for the EU, swiftly confirmed and the block's airspace was closed for Belarussian planes and airlines. Mr Lukashenko, in a typically cynical manner, threatened to "flood the EU with drugs and migrants", referring to Belarus' supposed position as a barrier for the EU's external border.

And flood he did. Between June and August, almost 4,200 illegal migrants crossed the Lithuanian border. However, "flooding" was by no means a passive act of relaxing Belarussian border security. Under normal circumstances, the migration route from Africa and the Middle East to Europe via Belarus is nor popular nor a quick one - the vast majority of migratory flow goes through the Mediterranean and Balkan countries.

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To generate the "flood" Belarussian state had to go great lengths: visa procedures for "tourist" permits have been greatly simplified, social media advertisement campaigns have been organized and the number of flights from Baghdad to Minsk has been increased. State tourism agency have been employed to organize the trips - a flight from Baghdad or Istanbul, a night or two in Minsk, in a state-owned hotel and a two-or-three hour drive at night to the Lithuanian, Latvian or Polish border. After that – an order to tear up passports and other documents and a vague pointing of direction, indicating that "Europe" is just a few steps away.

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Using migration as a means of achieving a desired strategic objectives is not an unpopular strategy for various authoritarian regimes. In 2017 Morocco unleashed a flow of migrants to Ceuta, Spain’s enclave in Northern Africa, as a response to Spain’s choice to admit West-Saharan independence leader Brahim Ghali for medical treatment. In 2010 Moammar Gaddafi threatened (albeit unsuccessfully) European leaders of turning “Europe black” if his demands regarding financial compensations and military aid will not be met. There are a few reasons why this strategy is compelling, especially for authoritarians wishing to influence the behaviour of liberal democracies. Firstly, it is almost impossible to respond to these actions without taking controversial policy steps. The 1951 Refugee Convention severely restricts the ability of a target country to block the movement of migrants, many of whom can be rightly classified as asylum seekers. Border walls and strategies similar to "push-backs" are almost always condemned by UNHCR as violating the Convention. If a target country is a typical liberal democracy, it cannot effectively respond to increases in migrant numbers without appearing hypocritical and unresponsible. Secondly, large influxes of undocumented migrants place significant pressure on target countries, as resources available to accommodate refugees are greatly exceeded by the actual needs: migratory flow can be almost unlimited, but the facilities countries can provide have very clear limits.

Thirdly, weaponized migration acts as one of the most efficient tools when it comes to generating domestic dissent in a target country. The government of a typical target country can very easily find itself squeezed between anti-immigratory far-right and aggressively critical pro-human-rights left.

This self-generated clash in the society helps to achieve the primary goal of the aggressor a change in the target country's position or policy.

THE BELARUS-LITHUANIA BORDER [clockwise] The border near Sakalinė, a border landmark near Buchyany and a fence on the Lithuanian side

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And while weaponized migration is not a new strategy, for Lithuania this autumn was a series of truly new beginnings. The country found itself facing problems previously associated only with the EU’s Mediterranean frontiers. The massive influx of illegal migration resulted in overflooded immigration detention centres and rising dissent in the border regions. The government responded by passing new emergency laws which allowed the Lithuanian Border Force to refuse entry for individuals trying to illegally cross the border (except for humanitarian reasons) and advise them to seek asylum or related status only in official border control posts or in the Lithuanian embassy in Minsk. The law also included a decision to build a border fence.

Latvia and Poland followed with similar, albeit stricter (in the case of Poland) policies. The number of migrants entering the country decreased drastically. However, the amount of those wishing to enter and being encouraged and forced to do so by Belarusian authorities has not changed. The crisis has not been solved – it has been merely frozen.

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From the analytical perspective, any crisis can be broken down into a set of interconnected problems. In the case of weaponized migration and the LithuanianBelarusian border crisis, these problems fall into two broad categories. Immediate ones are easier to spot: one would have to be blind to not notice the humanitarian catastrophe developing between the two countries.Migrants which have been brought down to the border by Belarussian state structures and refused entry to Lithuania are not allowed back to Belarus.

Belarussian border guards have been reported to engage in physical violence and even use shields and riot gear to push migrant groups towards the Lithuanian border. Refused entry

by Lithuania and suddenly unwelcomed by Belarus, they are sometimes forced to remain in border woods without shelter for days. And even though this is the problem that attracts most of the media attention, motivates protests and encourages calls for action from the UNHCR, it is not the most important one.

Far more important than misfortunes of individual migrants, however grave they may be, are reasons why these people found themselves between the borders of Lithuania and Belarus in the first place. I will discuss three of them: the fact that incentives that motivated people from the Middle East and Africa to fall into the hands of the opportunistic authoritarian and choose this migratory route are still in place; the fact that the scheme which allows migration to happen is nowhere near to be dismantled; and the fact that efficiently differentiating between economic migrants and refugees is still incredibly difficult.

The issue of incentives arises simply because in plenty of countries living conditions are so grave that leaving home and travelling (with various risks) to safe and comfortable Europe seems to be a better alternative than staying and suffering. The Middle East and African countries generally have young populations; for a large portion of their citizens’ leaving a country is the most effective course of action in the face of economic crisis or war. In the crudest and most dehumanizing terms, there is plenty of supply of illegal migration: Mr Lukashenko’s ticket agents in Erbil are unlikely to run out of clients.

The issue of the migration scheme stems directly from the issue of incentives: if certain actors have a need for something, that need sooner or later will be satisfied by another actor, given that it stands to gain from that action. Mr Lukashenko will continue to facilitate and organize this migration route, as long as he finds it beneficial for his cause – reversing EU sanctions and strengthening his regime. For Lithuania and other EU border countries, simply letting all the migrants in would be a move that is noble and well-perceived by human-rights NGOs in the short run, but dangerously unsustainable in the long run. For as long as there is a chance to freely enter the EU without official refugee status, there will be a flow of those willing to try their luck. And as long as there is a flow of those willing to try, Mr Lukashenko will be happy to use these people as a means to his own advantage. This means that the two alternatives often proposed as solutions – rejecting the zero illegal entry policy and sticking to humanitarian duties or attempting to negotiate with Mr Lukashenko and offer him financial or political compensation – are not feasible. Allowing free and unlimited entry would generate a permanent flow of illegal migration, with all the tragic consequences stemming from it and would eventually lead to a U-turn towards even stricter migration policies. Negotiating with Lukashenko for compensation would leave the tool of imminent threat in his hands, allowing it to be activated whenever the strategic need arises.

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Finally, there is an issue of differentiation.

It arises as a consequence of attempts to limit the entry of migrants into the country: how to differentiate between those individuals who face a real threat to their lives back at home (and thus need to be helped and let in) and those who are using the Mr Lukashenko’s newly built route to just access more economically prosperous Europe? Of the two options available to Lithuania, Latvia and Poland, neither seems appealing: allowing universal entry is not feasible; shutting the border completely is unjust and cruel.

There may be a way out of this mess, but that way is by no means an attractive one. Solving the issue of incentives requires clear signalling which would reduce the appeal of the migration route “Middle East – Minsk – EU border”. At the same time, to solve the differentiation problem, this signalling and policies necessary to generate it should not harm those in real need of help, that is, it should not prevent individuals eligible to be granted refugee status from getting it.

Finally, any solution should incorporate measures aimed at cracking down on the migration scheme created by Mr Lukashenko.

Zero tolerance for illegal entry, combined with the possibility to seek refugee status before reaching the Belarusian border may be a promising strategy. Yet it is essential that such strategies are lined up with constant economic and regulatory pressure aimed at all components of migration scheme: from Belarussian, Iraqi and other airlines, directly or indirectly involved in migrant trafficking from the Middle East to Belarus to any other countries or businesses at least partly contributing to Mr Lukashenko’s scheme.

Is it possible to have a course of action that neatly solves all three issues? As far as the current experience of Lithuania and the EU shows, the answer is, unfortunately, not positive. Lithuania’s zero illegal entry tolerance succeeded in bringing the migrant numbers and migration route’s attractiveness down and saved the tiny country from another crisis of overcrowded detention centres and spiralling public dissent. However, it also resulted in a lack of properly executed measures to address the differentiation issue.

While the option to seek asylum status in official border control posts and embassy in Minsk does exist, only a couple of migrants used it, as Belarussian authorities have taken actions to severely restrict the option’s availability from their side of the border.

Humanitarian aid, provided by Lithuanian Border Force for individuals who are refused entry, has not been and probably could never be substantial enough. And as for cracking down the migration scheme, while certain progress has been made on the EU level, Lukashenko’s regime still manages to get at least 50 flights a week from the Middle East to Minsk.

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At the time of writing, the situation continues to escalate. Days after EU Home Affairs Commissioner Ylva Johansson finally acknowledging that block’s “urgent priority is to turn off the supply [of migrants] coming into Minsk airport”, Poland faced new and more organized attempts to breach its borders. The reality is harsh and simple: the madness at the EU’s Eastern frontier is not likely to end soon.

AMERICA IN 2022

AN ESSAY

BY ALEXANDER MILLER

“When they turn the pages of history / when these days have passed long ago. / Will they read of us with sadness / for the seeds that we let grow?”

- A Farewell to Kings

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I. TODAY’S TOM SAWYER - THE UNITED STATES IN THE 21ST CENTURY We have a funny tendency to make singular images emblematic of whole stories. Those enclosures of pixels are a neat way for us to encompass everything about an event in history. A big red bus trundles around the United Kingdom, a number emblazoned on the side. A Soviet soldier raises the Red Flag over the Reichstag. A man stands in front of a tank column in China, clutching two plastic bags. And a helicopter lifts off from the roof of an American embassy.

We have not yet decided which image should be emblematic of America’s retreat from Afghanistan. Perhaps it should be those of young football players, falling from the wings of American aircraft leaving Kabul. Or maybe those of Afghan women, handing their babies to American Marines who straddle the barbed wire keeping them from safety. Perhaps, there is a case to be made that the right image is the same as that widely associated with another withdrawal in 1975 - that of a helicopter lifting off the roof of an American embassy.

After all, like Saigon forty-six years ago, Kabul fell as a result of a war-weary American administration, beset by protestors on all sides which, in a final act, threw up its hands and left. In what is surely one of the great cosmic ironies, one of the exact Sea Kings that lifted off that roof in Saigon in 1975 lifted from another in Kabul in 2021. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

O

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Or so goes the narrative. Yet, as any historian will tell you, the problem with pictures is that they freeze a moment in time.

They don’t, won’t, can’t, capture all of the swirling undercurrents that underpin every event. The promises on that bus never materialised. The Soviet soldier was probably posed by party propagandists. Tank Man’s resistance ended up being futile. And the reasons that helicopter left Saigon are very different from the reasons it left Kabul.

As Barack Obama took office in 2009, Charles Krauthammer said of American decline: “the assumption that somehow there exists some predetermined inevitable trajectory, the result of uncontrollable external forces, is wrong.” Decline, the former psychiatrist argued, was not a chronic condition of the American body politic. Instead, he claimed, it was a choice.

Twelve years after Krauthammer’s diagnosis, if decline is a choice, it is one that America’s leaders have been making since. It is easy to look at the world of today and see Pax Americana, whatever that meant, in tatters.

Whether it is in the bluster of Xi’s CCP, in Vladimir Putin’s little green men taking their holidays in Ukraine, or, indeed, in the fact that a man formerly responsible for suicide bombings is now the head of security in the newly Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.

What, for lack of a better phrase, is wrong with us? What happened to the United States that bestrode the world from the end of the Second World War to the fall of the Berlin Wall? And where is the way back?

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II. EVERYBODY GOT MIXED FEELINGS - WHO CARES? The first step in the creation of any solution is to accurately diagnose the problem. Much ink has been spilled about the alleged warweariness of the American people. Those who would explain America’s trajectory this way have a simple thesis. The American people, we are supposed to believe, are just fed up with overseas wars. No longer content with the expenditure of blood and treasure in the service of other nations, enough is enough for a war-weary people. When America withdraws, it’s just reflecting this newfound attitude among its citizens. Whilst it might be regrettable, it’s unavoidable.

To be sure, there is some truth to this claim.

When polled, most Americans do actually express markedly less support of foreign adventures than, say, in 2002. And it’s not false either that the very real cost in lives has extracted a toll on the morale of Americans.

But this is orthogonal to the real issue at stake. The question is not, “are Americans less supportive of foreign intervention”, but “why are Americans less supportive of foreign intervention?” It is very easy - and very convenient - to conclude that the reason is just the realities of foreign intervention coming home to Americans.

There is, though, a hole in this theory: for all the talk of declining enthusiasm, America has not witnessed a mass movement to get out of Afghanistan. Whilst it is true that the war might have been unpopular, distinctions must be made: Unpopular? Possibly. Important? Not so much. Indeed, foreign policy in general barely registers on Gallup’s tracking poll of the issues of most salience to voters. Only 1% say that it is.

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This hasn’t always been the case. In 1968, nearly forty-seven percent ranked the war in Vietnam as the number one issue facing the nation. And from the end of World War 2 until around the early 1970s, “foreign affairs” in general managed to capture majorities of American public concern, topping out at an incredible seventy-two percent in late 1962.

By way of comparison, the coronavirus pandemic at its absolute peak of public concern in April 2020 reached only forty-five percent.

A rather crude measure, to be sure, but its conclusion seems to ring true. There were no “get out of Afghanistan” nationwide protests.

Nobody died in the streets to get soldiers out of Bagram Airbase. No student protestors were shot. Nobody, it seemed, really cared about Afghanistan either way, as much as eggheads liked to spar about it in the pages of international relations journals.

All this poses a difficult question. If it was not the people who drove the withdrawal from Afghanistan, then who did? The answer is the only one possible: America’s leaders. In the face of overwhelming public apathy, American leaders chose withdrawal.

The preference rankings - or priorities - for foreign policy of American leader-elites are, then, different enough to ordinary Americans to conclude that, in this specific arena at least, the set of assumptions, priorities, and preconceptions that constitutes American foreign policy writ large responds mostly to the whim of its elites.

This is not a new phenomenon. It is probably uncontroversial, in fact, to say that this has been the case for the majority of American history. What makes this case different is that America’s elites are starting to shy away from the challenge of leading the world forward. The dominant set of assumptions ruling their thoughts and minds is one of withdrawal, not one of leadership, camouflaged behind platitudes about multilateralism and rules-based orders.

If it is true that what determines the course of American foreign policy in the 21st century is the sentiment of American elites more or less alone, then who can argue that American decline is anything but a choice? A move based on the decisions of a very select group of people.

Yet it is not perfect evidence. After all, might it be possible that the choice American leaders are making to step away from the exercise of American power is, in fact, part of a wider, more conscientious strategy to address a new American role in the world? A role commensurate with the demands and challenges of the second decade of the 21st century? That is, unfortunately, not the case.

Instead, the strategy itself - its underlying premises, assumptions, goals - is the choice.

It is the mechanism of decline.

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III. THE LIGHTED STAGE - INTERNATIONAL CONFLICT IN THE 21ST CENTURY Humans are, generally speaking, quite a good job at stopping wars between states. Whilst there are still certainly some hard-fought wars raging across the globe, more broadly the world has never been a more peaceful place.

Yet, though we can stop war, we are much less good at stopping conflict. More importantly, there has been a signal failure to understand that an absence of shooting does not mean that the need for foreign policy is over. Though the ships of the Royal Navy tend not to fire their massive main guns for any reason other than target practice, the work they do whether FONOPS or anti-piracy - is no less vital to the interests of the nation they serve. It is this disconnect that poisons public perception.

As foreign policy only makes the news at the absolute climax of events, it would be easy to conclude that, in any clash, there is a sort of inevitability of outcome. This could not be further from the truth. The current cataclysm in Ethiopia isn’t a random event. Hamas didn’t wake up one morning and decide to start intensifying strikes against Israel. Both were predictable consequences of undercurrents of ethnic and religious resentment in the region that were known by those paying attention for years. The recent fighting in and around Gaza was fuelled by regional politicking in the Gaza Strip elections and sparked by a longstanding dispute that made for an effective rallying point. Ethnic grievances in the Tigray province of Ethiopia created blue touch paper just waiting to be lit. The point is that whilst events are driven by the factors underpinning them - a point so obvious as to be trivial - the popular perception is exactly the opposite. That is to say, the popular conception of foreign affairs is as isolated points occurring singly in time and space, but that the exact opposite is true.

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This perception is a direct consequence of apathy about foreign policy. Economist-reading elites aside, few know - or, frankly, care about that which occurs outside of their immediate vicinity. Importantly, too, this is an apathy that extends to those who would consider themselves politically educated. When the only time one pays attention to foreign policy is at moments of maximum intensity, it is natural to believe that its results are inevitable.

This gamified, truncated, and social mediaified new world of foreign policy has had notable consequences in the tactics of the enemies of the West. Hamas now fund misinformation on Instagram, eagerly repeated and reposted by those too ill-informed to know better. The Assad regime engages in sophisticated propaganda tactics, amplified by anti-Western academics, promulgating narratives pervasive enough to spread as high as the Shadow Foreign Secretary. North Korea posts ‘memeable’ demonstrations of its fighting tactics. And, of course, as we now know all too well, Xi’s CCP and Putin’s Russia unleash hordes of Twitter bots, shaping the narratives on everything from elections to COVID-19 to sports.

Why is it that this information war is so incredibly effective? It is precisely because of the fact that its targets hold the reigns of American power. The point of spreading misinformation about the Iranian nuclear program is not to get Joe Blow in Arkansas to be less upset that a genocidal power is developing a weapon of mass destruction. It is to induce American elites - Twitter’s “blue checkmarks”, journalists, student activists – the well-credentialed members of elite institutions - into buying into a narrative of decline. The information war waged by hostile powers is effective precisely because those most susceptible to its attack are the only ones who control the direction of American foreign policy - because they are the only ones who care. It is a decapitation strike on the American leadership.

The perception of inexorable American decline, in other words, is caused partially by ignorance and partially by malice. Of course, it is in the interests of hostile powers to say that the United States is weak - that its efforts are futile. But it is also in their interest to say that the United States should be weak - that its efforts are malicious.

There is no easier way to break the will of an enemy to fight than to say that its goals are worthless.

And there is no better facilitator for that outcome than insisting on a moral relativism where no goals are worth anything. The kind of equivocation that the isolationist left, and increasingly the isolationist right, now traffic in, is rooted deeply in the idea that setting a standard for what is right and wrong in the international arena is just a category error. All states exercise their power in their foreign policy, they say. How can the West insist that they are any better?

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Why try to fight - why try to win - if everything is just a sad slump toward total moral neutrality? Really, then, there are three factors at play in this narrative of American decline. The first is that the exercise of American power is in the service of goals that are immoral. The second is that contradictory assertion, often held at the same time as the first, that the exercise of foreign policy in general is just amoral, and states are entitled to do whatever they please to reinforce whatever interests they please.

And the final assertion is that even if the West did attempt to exercise its power in beneficial ways, it is no longer capable of doing so.

Ultimately, the rejection of moral relativism and raw raison d’etat is foundational to any worldview that wants to be taken seriously as a prescription for American policy. Making an argument that some set of policies is good or bad is contingent on such a dichotomy as goodness and badness existing. Of course, it is true that all states seek to ensure their interests. But the interests of the West are right, and the interests of powers like Xi’s CCP and North Korea are wrong. Insisting on this is fundamental to any serious foreign policy prescription. The reason is simple: because there is nothing else. The premise of using American power is that American power is to be used. Otherwise, why bother?

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IV. A GIANT TURNING– WHAT IS THE BEST WAY TO LEVERAGE AMERICAN POWER? With hindsight, liberal internationalism has failed. The foreign policy conducted by President Obama between 2009 and 2016 was disastrous. The ad-hoc zigzagging of the Trump administration was not much better. And, as President Biden settles his hands on the levers of power, it is very clear that we will see a regression back to the same liberal internationalism that failed the world community for eight years under Obama’s stewardship.

What are the reasons for such an indictment of the foreign policy orthodoxy of American elites? There are two. First it failed to effectively leverage American power. The second is that it has equivocated between American allies and American foes.

Writers far more eloquent than I have written far more incisive pieces about each of these criticisms. But let me contribute my meagre amount to each.

The strategy of the liberal internationalist is clear. Writing in Foreign Affairs, Elizabeth Warren, a leading light of the new Democratic Party, sets it out clearly. The first pillar lies in ‘strengthening America at home instead of foreign adventurism’. Warren writes of the need for “international economic policies that benefit all Americans, not merely an elite few.” If this rhetoric sounds familiar, this is because it is copied nearverbatim from her messages on economic policy in general. It amounts to little more than air cover for using the rubric of foreign policy to enact domestic policy preferences. This is, it must be said, catastrophically unserious.

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Its second pillar is reducing defense spending. Warren’s argument is very simple.

The US spends too much on its military. It must cut back its commitment. The unspoken conclusion is that the money “saved” will be used to fund the increased domestic spending that Democrats yearn for. Warren uses the words “critical domestic priorities.” Bernie Sanders tells us that “endless wars” are used by the “powerful” (who exactly these powerful actually are is left to the reader’s imagination) to “distract” from problems at home. Joe Biden writes that “first and foremost” in order to “be a force for progress in the world” the United States must start at home, before going on to present a laundry list of Democratic policy preferences that he will enact in his efforts to achieve this.

Such rhetoric completely misses the point.

Ignore for the moment the obvious and ignored fact that the spending exists largely because of the Pentagon’s two-war doctrine, or the fact that a very large plurality of American discretionary spending on defense is funnelled into a welfare system that props up the wellbeing of America’s soldiers.

The simplest response is that focussing on the raw number is a mistake in the first place.

Really what we are concerned about is American power compared to other states with hostile interests. And once we account for the fact that the United States treats its soldiers overwhelmingly better in terms of pay and benefits than almost any country on the face of the globe, the US only spends more than China and Saudi Arabia put together. This ratio makes perfect sense if your goal is to maintain American interests. While it is in Warren’s - and her fellow elites’ - interests to make much hay out of raw numbers and proportions of spending, in reality, the United States spends less on defense as a percentage of its GDP than any time since the end of the Second World War. And, of course, it is not an either/or choice between home or abroad. The United States is a very large, very rich country. It is capable of doing both at the same time. This is not a purely mathematical formula. But even if this were a zero-sum game, the use of American power, as Warren correctly points out, improves the standard of living in the United States. Most obviously because it prevents terrorist attacks, but even indirectly in the fact that a global trade regime exists because of the use of American power that is favourable to the United States’ firms.

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The third pillar is an insistence that soft power and diplomacy can make up for the judicious use of American force. Warren writes in her op-ed that “alliances...are about safety in numbers”. Biden says that he will “invite [his] fellow democratic leaders around the world to put strengthening democracy back on the global agenda.” Quite literally, the Biden Doctrine amounts to asking states nicely to maybe talk about the interests of the United States Let us, however, be generous and look further in. Warren writes that “as we face down antidemocratic forces around the world, we will need our allies on our side.” Biden writes about a “united front...to face down China.” Why? It seems an unspoken premise that the United States is too weak to act to secure its interests alone. But where is that written? Who decreed that? It certainly doesn't seem obviously true -- if it is at all. In fact, it seems more likely that unilateral American power is strong enough. It is only, as we have said, the insistence on America's weakness by its elites that makes it so.

The favoured mechanism of the liberal internationalist is the use of international institutions and “diplomacy”. Biden writes about the need to make diplomacy the “first weapon”. But this is cart before the horse on the most consequential scale possible. Elites in other states, like Xi's CCP, recognise that their diplomacy is underpinned by the fact that they can and will regularly utilise the entire machinery of their military in concert with that diplomacy. Their diplomacy is the velvet glove for the iron fist. The liberal internationalist is set on a velvet glove for a velvet fist. You cannot conduct carrot-andstick foreign policy when you have no stick.

By kneecapping the power of America's military, and cutting off its credibility by declaring its reluctance to use force, of course diplomacy seems ineffective. This is, of course, not even mentioning the fact that many of the prized international institutions are already captured by states hostile to American interests. Witness the hilarious-ifnot-so-disturbing spectacle of a very senior WHO official pretending that his internet has crashed rather than acknowledging the existence of Taiwan. Or, indeed, the borderline malicious conduct of the DirectorGeneral of the WHO in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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The third pillar is an insistence that soft power and diplomacy can make up for the judicious use of American force. Warren writes in her op-ed that “alliances...are about safety in numbers”. Biden says that he will “invite [his] fellow democratic leaders around the world to put strengthening democracy back on the global agenda.” Quite literally, the Biden Doctrine amounts to asking states nicely to maybe talk about the interests of the United States Let us, however, be generous and look further in. Warren writes that “as we face down antidemocratic forces around the world, we will need our allies on our side.” Biden writes about a “united front...to face down China.” Why? It seems an unspoken premise that the United States is too weak to act to secure its interests alone. But where is that written? Who decreed that? It certainly doesn't seem obviously true -- if it is at all. In fact, it seems more likely that unilateral American power is strong enough. It is only, as we have said, the insistence on America's weakness by its elites that makes it so.

The favoured mechanism of the liberal internationalist is the use of international institutions and “diplomacy”. Biden writes about the need to make diplomacy the “first weapon”. But this is cart before the horse on the most consequential scale possible. Elites in other states, like Xi's CCP, recognise that their diplomacy is underpinned by the fact that they can and will regularly utilise the entire machinery of their military in concert with that diplomacy. Their diplomacy is the velvet glove for the iron fist. The liberal internationalist is set on a velvet glove for a velvet fist. You cannot conduct carrot-andstick foreign policy when you have no stick.

By kneecapping the power of America's military, and cutting off its credibility by declaring its reluctance to use force, of course diplomacy seems ineffective. This is, of course, not even mentioning the fact that many of the prized international institutions are already captured by states hostile to American interests. Witness the hilarious-ifnot-so-disturbing spectacle of a very senior WHO official pretending that his internet has crashed rather than acknowledging the existence of Taiwan. Or, indeed, the borderline malicious conduct of the DirectorGeneral of the WHO in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.

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President Biden is correct that working with allies makes the United States stronger. He is also correct that the leveraging of combined economies allows the United States to utilise economic force more effectively. But where the liberal internationalist falls down is when they begin insisting, prior to any particular situation, that diplomacy comes first. Why? There should be no presumption in favour of any particular means of conducting foreign policy. Rather, underpinning every means of conducting foreign policy should be a legitimate American capacity for unilateral power and a declared willingness to use it.

Biden can scarcely mention the need for America to take up world leadership again without, in the same breath, mentioning that its allies will come with it. Though true, it is not the point - a mistake that underpins the whole doctrine. Put simply, this is a way of looking at the world that is backwards.

The strategy is doomed to fail. Yet, perhaps more important in explaining this is the mindset that underpins it. President Biden says all the right things about America taking up leadership again. Isn't that what this essay has been arguing for? It is because the vision that American elites have for what American leadership actually entails is wrong.

That drives their failure.

What is this vision?

It sees America as a beacon of liberty - what the world should be, encapsulated in a country. It sees America as the standard bearer for what is right in the world. It sees America as a “city on a hill”. This is the way to understand the insistence on “fixing problems at home”, as misguided as it might be. The reason why it is necessary is in order that America take up the mantle of leadership, it must first be worthy to do so. These are all very admirable goals.

But here is the wrinkle that drives the disaster. It is Wilsonian in its nature, in that it sees America as an equal among equals, thriving together in a “rules-based order”. It seeks to cage the eagle and cause the world hegemon to blunt its claws -- to subordinate its power to organisations that it defined the terms of. There are two problems with this.

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First, when the end goal of a foreign policy doctrine is decline, of course decline seems inevitable. When one’s every goal is framed in terms of how it best achieves the transfer of power toward institutions that are not exclusively American, of course it seems to one that the United States is declining on the world stage.

But the second problem, and perhaps the more pernicious one, is this: the very premise of transferring power to international institutions is that the interests of each actor within those institutions is equivalent in value. This is not true. It is just false to suggest that the interests of the CCP’s China, the Ayatollahs’ Iran, or Assad’s Syria are consonant with any sort of world community, let alone the United States.

This is not a solvable problem. It cannot be regulated away by clever twists in the ways that these institutions elect their leaders, operate in committee, or carry out their actions. Either the actors with interests that don’t correspond to those of the international community in general and the United States in particular are removed from influence, which will lead to a catastrophic loss of legitimacy, or they capture them, and we have such unsightly spectacles as countries which don’t allow women to drive leading committees on women’s rights – and, far more seriously, putting the kibosh on any serious attempt to stop any international conflict in which these malicious actors have vested interest. As long as all actors involved have incentives to influence the conduct of international institutions, malign actors will either get their way or leave. Neither is a particularly appealing alternative.

And finally, the elephant in the room - the fact that there are elected representatives who truly believe that the interests of the United States are evil. Whether it is because they believe that America is “controlled by China” - patently nonsense - or it is because they believe that the very idea of a liberal and capitalist democracy is all wrong, and what is really needed is a political upheaval that will sweep away the old order and replace it with a new socialist alternative, it is no surprise that these politicians are hostile to the interests of the United States.

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V. APPROACHING THE UNREAL - THE NEW, OLD, NEW WORLD ORDER It will not be easy to arrest American decline on the world stage. It is not because there are inexorable factors driving the United States off a cliff. It is not because the United States lacks the productive capacity to maintain a world hegemony worth its salt. And it is most certainly not because the reserves of courage in the American spirit are exhausted. It is instead because at every level the men and women who chart the course of the United States have lost faith in its ability to do great works. They have lost confidence in the idea of an Empire of Liberty, and they are no longer compelled by the belief of America as a force for good.

But there is reason for hope, and it lies here: if American decline is a choice, then American revival can also be a choice. All that is required is the fortitude to make it.

In making that choice, leaders should look to the examples of the past: explaining to the public the purpose of and necessity for American interventions, like General Eisenhower did. It will require them to speak frankly to the country - about the reasons, for example, for the use of the American Aegis missile system on Japan’s Kongo-class warships. It will require a publicspiritedness from politicians which may be hard to imagine in this day and age. They will have to stop chasing the mirage of a population riled up by arms sales to the Kurds.

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It will also involve media outlets willing to adequately cover foreign affairs in ways nearly orthogonal to the ways in which they cover it now; not the explanation of factors leading to events at the point where events happen, but as coverage of those factors as they emerge. Instead of expressing shock at, say, the Turkish intervention in Libya, these newly responsible media outlets would cover Libyan elections and posit Turkish intervention.

It will not look like outsourcing responsibility for world leaderships to organisations that have proven feckless at best and actively captured by actors hostile to the interests of the United States at worst. And it will certainly not look like attempting to shoehorn the unwilling into coalitions of the willing. It will look like Presidents being newly willing to exercise the - still vast - reserves of American power, together with allies ideally, but alone if necessary.

Underpinning all of this will have to be a whole-hearted rejection of the narrative of inevitable American decline. In other words, it will start with the recognition that decline is a choice and not a process.

What are the images that we will associate with this century? To be sure, we will see, when we look back in the end, men falling out of planes over Kabul. But there is still time.

It is not as if the photo negatives of images of the flag of the People’s Republic of China flying from Taipei 101 are just waiting to be developed. Neither is the picture of dead bodies littering the ground somewhere in Ethiopia. The future is not fixed yet, and we may decide how it is represented. Now is the time for choosing. Because it always is.

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GREEK A ANTIQUITY

MEDIATION

BY MARGOT TROTTER A cursory glance at the representation of Greece in western media reveals symbolism ripe with references to Greece’s golden past: Antiquity. Cracked pottery cemented only with the glue of the EU, wildfires being put out by grim-faced statues, a Greek athlete pilfering giant coins emblazoned with the word “euro”; each articulates a specific criticism of the modern Greek state. It would seem that antiquity, often perceived as the source of Greece’s modern achievements, gives carte blanche to western Europe to sanitise and reimagine a classical past. But is it useful? Is tapping into ancient symbols of the past to establish continuity providing change to its modern counterpart? Can this negotiation and mediation of re-imagined history provide useful geopolitical commentary?

Greece itself has often relied on the legacy of its classical past. Hellenisation is everywhere in the country’s cultural and international projects. The official mascots of the 2004 Athens Olympic Games were Athená and Phevos, named after the gods Athena and Apollo, while the official logo of Greece’s Presidency of the EU copied a prehistoric Minoan painting from Santorini. Even the grassroots revival of “The Return of the Hellenes”, a New Age cult intent on venerating the dodecatheon, serves as a more extreme example of the retrieval of history and its injection into the present. Though, the latter example would also highlight internal Greek division on how to appropriately interpret its own past. In 2007, the Orthodox Church described revivalists as a handful of miserable resuscitators of a degenerate dead religion. Already from internal examples this historical negotiation is divisive. What happens when outside opinions are thrown in the mix?

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The western press and political cartoonists often draw on antiquity in order to portray the country’s economic crises and satirise its modern inadequacies. Popular and stereotypical perceptions of antiquity are mixed with current economic, environmental and geopolitical concerns.

Specific use of ancient symbolism such as political cartoons of the Venus de Milo anxiously hosing down wildfires whilst the Parthenon blazes in the distance make their geopolitical point successfully and succinctly. Greece has been getting too hot for comfort recently, with 125,000 hectares of forest and arable land having burnt since early August 2021. The World Meteorological Organisation connected the fires with regional heatwaves and wildfire seasons made worse by climate change. Twenty-five countries offered assistance, hammering home that international collaboration is paramount in producing effective climate action.

However, often the case is that ancient symbolism remains too general to provide adequate criticism for specific issues. Most frequently it revolves around the relationship between Greece and the EU, particularly surrounding economic (mis)management.

Substituting overt references to Greece’s political troubles for crumbling columns lacks the nuance needed to target specific shortcomings following 2008’s government-debt crisis. In one cartoon, European taxpayers have replaced the columns and are piled on top of the other to support the pediment where the Greeks are seen disporting themselves. A recent investigation funded by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) published in January 2022 argued for structural reform to combat issues of under-investment, with private investment notably lagging behind.

Trying to squeeze highly complex and systemic fiscal issues into tired metaphors of an ancient past risks oversimplifying the situation to a western audience uneducated in the complexities of investment dynamics.

Metaphorical creativity is missing from the picture. Still, Greece’s finance minister has announced that the country will repay the final bailout loans owed to IMF by the end of March 2022. Perhaps the break in continuity with ancient Greek heritage cartoonishly displayed is overly pejorative. Though Greece’s promises of full repayment by the end of next month remain to be seen.

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Where does this western European and EU entitlement to bring up such a distant past in order to create sometimes inaccurate comparisons originate from? One would propose that it lies with the idea that this polished (arguably re-invented) classical Greece is still considered by the West as the cradle of its own civilisation. There is a possessiveness to antiquity through European identification with ancient Greece as cultural ancestors.

One relationship which often cites historical comparison is that of Greece and Turkey. After decades of relative calm, relations between the two countries are highly volatile. The discovery of undersea gas fields has merged ancient conflicts with new. Facing off across the Aegean, a geostrategic highway, Turkey anxious that its own national waters have not yielded energy has set its sight on Cypriot and Greek maritime territory. Just in June 2022, Turkey announced its intentions to drill off the islands of Rhodes and Crete, based on an agreement with Libya setting up an Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) stretching from Turkey’s south-west coast down to northern Libya and, crucially, cutting through a Greek zone. Greece replied that it was “ready to respond” to this provocation. The volatile geopolitics of this part of the Mediterranean cut deep. The Battle of Thermopylae, one of antique’s best-known confrontations featured a Spartan-led alliance fighting the Persians on a narrow coastal path. Centuries later, the War of Greek Independence, true to its namesake, would establish the independent kingdom of Greece from the Ottoman Empire.

There is an underlying animosity which has vast historical precedent. The waters these nations share aren’t quite under the bridge.

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The flipside of Greek-Turkish agitation is the migrant crisis. Greece’s struggles in virtually acting as Europe’s border police amounted to 850,000 immigrants in 2015 making the dangerous journey across the short stretch of Aegean sea between Turkey and the Greek islands. The solution? EU funding for Turkey to work harder in order to prevent migrants from attempting the sea-crossing. Numbers have fallen dramatically, yet, Greece has flung the accusation that Ankara decides to open and close Turkey’s frontier at a whim in order to destabilise Greece. Ankara denies this. The frozen bodies of twelve migrants found inside Turkey close to the border with Greece in early February 2022 is a case study in the fragile relationship between both nations. The Turkish Interior Minister accused the Greek Border Units of pushing the bodies from Greece back towards Turkey, while Greece’s Migration Minister called Turkey’s version of events “false propraganda”. This blame game ties ongoing geopolitical issues with ancient feuds.

As the Greek-Turkish tensions harden, the climate crisis blazes on and Greece continues its long road to economic recovery, drawing on the past continues to be an attractive method of criticism. In rare cases its usage can be beneficial in conveying urgency. More often, the lazy attempts of the Western press to satirise what are highly complex issues dangerously oversimplifies modern Greece as a people portrayed to have wasted their symbolic capital.

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