Via Axios: The rise of the political potty mouth. To which I say, who the fuck cares? We are in the middle of growing fascism, but sure, let’s worry about some salty language.
Trump’s view of government and power on display, not to mention more of his truly unhealthy obsession with the Nobel Peace Prize.
Heaven help us
Trump: “If anybody thinks that Norway doesn't control the Nobel Prize, they're just kidding. They have a board, but it's controlled by Norway, and I don't care what Norway says."pic.twitter.com/Csg46p8dvF
Steven L. Taylor is a Professor Emeritus of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
Follow Steven on Twitter and/or BlueSky.
Boromir was, famously, wrong about thinking he could use the One Ring for good.
Tolkien, and even the LOTR films, make this as clear as day. So clear, in fact, that I think that Lee is saying that the Republicans should not use the power of the government (and thus repeat Boromir’s mistake), but rather destroy this power now that they have the chance.
That may be dumb in the real world, but it is not necessarily authoritarian.
Carney’s words have detonated through the corruption of MAGA propaganda and their corporate media hostages/collaborators/ shills/stenographers and extortion victims. It is simply jarring to the American ear to hear such a clear, focused explanation, declaration and enunciation of values, ideals and principles. It was extraordinary.
Mark Carney is the leader of the free world.
A hundred million Americans — at least — are grateful tonight for his titanic leadership, courage and honesty.
We the people must face reality.
Please read them and remember the Teddy Roosevelt adage: “Speak softly and carry a big stick.”
Mark Carney is a brilliant financial strategist.
Mark Carney holds the cards because Mark Carney has lots of T-bills.
He doesn’t have to say Trump’s name because the truth of the matter is that holding $38 trillion in US debt means America is owned by Canada, Europe and China.
When America stops believing in America it means that the world loses faith in America because faith in America was always the rock upon which faith in the future was anchored.
It’s gone.
Here is the opening part of Mark Carney’s remarks:
It’s a pleasure — and a duty — to be with you at this turning point for Canada and the world.
I’ll speak today about the rupture in the world order, the end of the pleasant fiction and the dawn of a brutal reality in which great-power geopolitics is unconstrained.
But I submit to you all the same that other countries, in particular middle powers like Canada, aren’t powerless. They have the power to build a new order that integrates our values, like respect for human rights, sustainable development, solidarity, sovereignty and the territorial integrity of states.
The power of the less powerful begins with honesty.
Every day we are reminded that we live in an era of great power rivalry. That the rules-based order is fading. That the strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must.
This aphorism of Thucydides is presented as inevitable — the natural logic of international relations reasserting itself. And faced with this logic, there is a strong tendency for countries to go along to get along. To accommodate. To avoid trouble. To hope that compliance will buy safety.
It won’t.
So, what are our options?
In 1978, the Czech dissident Václav Havel wrote an essay called The Power of the Powerless. In it, he asked a simple question: how did the communist system sustain itself?
His answer began with a greengrocer. Every morning, this shopkeeper places a sign in his window: “Workers of the world, unite!” He does not believe it. No one believes it. But he places the sign anyway — to avoid trouble, to signal compliance, to get along. And because every shopkeeper on every street does the same, the system persists.
Not through violence alone, but through the participation of ordinary people in rituals they privately know to be false.
Havel called this “living within a lie.” The system’s power comes not from its truth but from everyone’s willingness to perform as if it were true. And its fragility comes from the same source: when even one person stops performing — when the greengrocer removes his sign — the illusion begins to crack.
It is time for companies and countries to take their signs down. For decades, countries like Canada prospered under what we called the rules-based international order. We joined its institutions, praised its principles, and benefited from its predictability. We could pursue values-based foreign policies under its protection.
We knew the story of the international rules-based order was partially false. That the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient. That trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And that international law applied with varying rigour depending on the identity of the accused or the victim.
This fiction was useful, and American hegemony, in particular, helped provide public goods: open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security, and support for frameworks for resolving disputes.
So, we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals. And largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality. This bargain no longer works. Let me be direct: we are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition. Over the past two decades, a series of crises in finance, health, energy, and geopolitics laid bare the risks of extreme global integration.
More recently, great powers began using economic integration as weapons. Tariffs as leverage. Financial infrastructure as coercion. Supply chains as vulnerabilities to be exploited. You cannot “live within the lie” of mutual benefit through integration when integration becomes the source of your subordination. The multilateral institutions on which middle powers relied— the WTO, the UN, the COP—the architecture of collective problem solving — are greatly diminished.
As a result, many countries are drawing the same conclusions. They must develop greater strategic autonomy: in energy, food, critical minerals, in finance, and supply chains. This impulse is understandable. A country that cannot feed itself, fuel itself, or defend itself has few options. When the rules no longer protect you, you must protect yourself. But let us be clear-eyed about where this leads. A world of fortresses will be poorer, more fragile, and less sustainable.
And there is another truth: if great powers abandon even the pretence of rules and values for the unhindered pursuit of their power and interests, the gains from ‘transactionalism’ become harder to replicate. Hegemons cannot continually monetize their relationships. Allies will diversify to hedge against uncertainty. Buy insurance. Increase options. This rebuilds sovereignty— sovereignty which was once grounded in rules—but which will be increasingly anchored in the ability to withstand pressure.
This classic risk management comes at a price. But that cost of strategic autonomy, of sovereignty, can also be shared. Collective investments in resilience are cheaper than everyone building their own fortress. Shared standards reduce fragmentation. Complementarities are positive sum.
The question for middle powers, like Canada, is not whether to adapt to this new reality. We must. The question is whether we adapt by simply building higher walls — or whether we can do something more ambitious.
Canada was amongst the first to hear the wake-up call, leading us to fundamentally shift our strategic posture. Canadians know that our old, comfortable assumption that our geography and alliance memberships automatically conferred prosperity and security is no longer valid.
Our new approach rests on what Alexander Stubb has termed ‘values-based realism’ — or, to put it another way, we aim to be principled and pragmatic. Principled in our commitment to fundamental values: sovereignty and territorial integrity, the prohibition of the use of force except when consistent with the UN Charter, respect for human rights. Pragmatic in recognising that progress is often incremental, that interests diverge, that not every partner shares our values.
We are engaging broadly, strategically, with open eyes. We actively take on the world as it is, not wait for the world as we wish it to be. Canada is calibrating our relationships, so their depth reflects our values. We are prioritising broad engagement to maximise our influence, given the fluidity of the world, the risks that this poses, and the stakes for what comes next. We are no longer relying on just the strength of our values, but also on the value of our strength.
We are building that strength at home. Since my government took office, we have cut taxes on incomes, capital gains and business investment, we have removed all federal barriers to interprovincial trade, and we are fast-tracking a trillion dollars of investment in energy, AI, critical minerals, new trade corridors, and beyond. We are doubling our defence spending by 2030 and are doing so in ways that builds our domestic industries.
We are rapidly diversifying abroad. We have agreed to a comprehensive strategic partnership with the European Union, including joining SAFE, Europe’s defence procurement arrangements. We have signed twelve other trade and security deals on four continents in the last six months. In the past few days, we have concluded new strategic partnerships with China and Qatar. We are negotiating free trade pacts with India, ASEAN, Thailand, Philippines, Mercosur.
To help solve global problems, we are pursuing variable geometry— different coalitions for different issues, based on values and interests. On Ukraine, we are a core member of the Coalition of the Willing and one of the largest per-capita contributors to its defence and security. On Arctic sovereignty, we stand firmly with Greenland and Denmark and fully support their unique right to determine Greenland’s future.
Our commitment to Article 5 is unwavering. We are working with our NATO allies (including the Nordic Baltic 8) to further secure the alliance’s northern and western flanks, including through unprecedented investments in over-the-horizon radar, submarines, aircraft, and boots on the ground.
On plurilateral trade, we are championing efforts to build a bridge between the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the European Union, creating a new trading block of 1.5 billion people. On critical minerals, we are forming buyer’s clubs anchored in the G7 so that the world can diversify away from concentrated supply. On AI, we are cooperating with like-minded democracies to ensure we will not ultimately be forced to choose between hegemons and hyperscalers.
This is not naive multilateralism. Nor is it relying on diminished institutions. It is building the coalitions that work, issue by issue, with partners who share enough common ground to act together. In some cases, this will be the vast majority of nations. And it is creating a dense web of connections across trade, investment, culture on which we can draw for future challenges and opportunities. Middle powers must act together because if you are not at the table, you are on the menu. Great powers can afford to go it alone. They have the market size, the military capacity, the leverage to dictate terms. Middle powers do not.
But when we only negotiate bilaterally with a hegemon, we negotiate from weakness. We accept what is offered. We compete with each other to be the most accommodating. This is not sovereignty. It is the performance of sovereignty while accepting subordination.
In a world of great power rivalry, the countries in between have a choice: to compete with each other for favour or to combine to create a third path with impact. We should not allow the rise of hard power to blind us to the fact that the power of legitimacy, integrity, and rules will remain strong — if we choose to wield it together.
Which brings me back to Havel. What would it mean for middle powers to “live in truth”?
It means naming reality. Stop invoking the “rules-based international order” as though it still functions as advertised. Call the system what it is: a period where the most powerful pursue their interests using economic integration as a weapon of coercion.
It means acting consistently. Apply the same standards to allies and rivals. When middle powers criticize economic intimidation from one direction but stay silent when it comes from another, we are keeping the sign in the window.
It means building what we claim to believe in. Rather than waiting for the hegemon to restore an order it is dismantling, create institutions and agreements that function as described. And it means reducing the leverage that enables coercion.
Building a strong domestic economy should always be every government’s priority. Diversification internationally is not just economic prudence; it is the material foundation for honest foreign policy. Countries earn the right to principled stands by reducing their vulnerability to retaliation.
Canada has what the world wants. We are an energy superpower. We hold vast reserves of critical minerals. We have the most educated population in the world. Our pension funds are amongst the world’s largest and most sophisticated investors. We have capital, talent, and a government with the immense fiscal capacity to act decisively. And we have the values to which many others aspire.
Canada is a pluralistic society that works. Our public square is loud, diverse, and free. Canadians remain committed to sustainability. We are a stable, reliable partner—in a world that is anything but—a partner that builds and values relationships for the long term.
Canada has something else: a recognition of what is happening and a determination to act accordingly. We understand that this rupture calls for more than adaptation. It calls for honesty about the world as it is.
We are taking the sign out of the window. The old order is not coming back. We should not mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy. But from the fracture, we can build something better, stronger, and more just. This is the task of the middle powers, who have the most to lose from a world of fortresses and the most to gain from a world of genuine cooperation.
The powerful have their power. But we have something too — the capacity to stop pretending, to name reality, to build our strength at home, and to act together. That is Canada’s path. We choose it openly and confidently. And it is a path wide open to any country willing to take it with us.
There were two big puzzles confronting structural theories of international relations at the beginning of the 1990s. The first was straightforward: why had everyone been surprised by the dissolution of the Soviet Union? The USSR had been the second pole of a bipolar world order, and theories of world politics should probably be able to account for the advent, and the exit, of the superpowers that shape the world those theories purport to explain.
The second was more vexing—and more interesting, because it looked forward: why had the bipolar world been succeeded by a unipolar world? Why hadn’t Japan, Germany, or other countries seized the moment to balance against the United States and become superpowers themselves? After all, if countries are motivated by the prospect of maximizing their relative power and security, surely it’s better to be the leader of your own camp rather than a follower in another’s. How long could unipolarity last? And would what came afterward be as sanguinary as the multipolar world that had collapsed into the First World War?
And yet the world remained stubbornly unipolar for decades. The United States worried about rising powers and rogue states, but the major powers in the system—Russia eventually a notable exception—were largely content to let Washington take the lead. For some, this vindicated theories in which institutional legacies were most important; for others, it pointed to the importance of the full-spectrum power—soft, hard, smart, and dumb—that the United States could maintain.
A quieter camp pointed out that the United States was generally doing a lot—not all it could, but a lot—to make its leadership attractive to the other major powers: providing security, yes, but also shouldering a good share of global burdens in many fields while also linking its economy and society to the rest of the world. This approach, a few observers noted, managed to satisfy the range of potential powers who could actually undermine the United States and its order. One prominent theory noted that since the Second World War, the United States had engaged in practices of self-binding—generally asking for less than it could have taken and giving more than it needed to in order to make its leadership more attractive to others than the alternatives open to its rivals. For this group, there was an ongoing process of ratifying the U.S.-led order that relied on Washington realizing that its power conferred influence but its right to rule relied on the acquiescence of (most) other leading powers.
Well, all that is done now. Self-binding is over and Donald Trump killed it.
…
Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney, possibly the world leader with the greatest insight and problem-solving resume, has put the point well in a speech just now. As he observes, the degradation of international institutions means that other powers will have to work around the wreckage, collaborating in a way that reduces their reliance on the United States while ensuring that the minnows can join against the sharks. What he doesn’t say is that this world will be poorer than it would have been if they didn’t have to do that—defense is an expense, not a benefit—but he is right that it is necessary.
And it is necessary, despite the costs. Trump is chucking away the residual goodwill and confidence in the system that other powers had been willing to extend to it. They had done so for too long, out of some combination of hope and uncertainty, and like all self-interested players they have abandoned their previous course not out of altruism but self-regard.
The unipolar world, what was left of it, has died—of suicide, not murder. As I wrote several years ago, “the most successful blow to American primacy came not from external balancing, as realists long predicted, but from the free choice of American voters.” Twice, now, in fact.
@charontwo: Let me answer the first question. “Why were people surprised by the dissolution of the Soviet Union?” Because we were told over and over again that they were an implacable enemy intent on our destruction and must be opposed everywhere on Earth. This message was drummed into us, and we built military bases all over the world, built up a military industrial complex that consumed much of our economy, and engaged in wars in countries like Korea and Vietnam that the average person could not find on a map. The elites in power in both countries found this a useful paradigm to absorb economic and legal power to those elites.
Currently, we are told to oppose Chinese advances in acquisition of rare earths for technology development. If the Chinese make advances in technology, does that hurt me and you?
********************@
OK, now you made me defend Mike Lee.
Boromir was, famously, wrong about thinking he could use the One Ring for good.
Tolkien, and even the LOTR films, make this as clear as day. So clear, in fact, that I think that Lee is saying that the Republicans should not use the power of the government (and thus repeat Boromir’s mistake), but rather destroy this power now that they have the chance.
That may be dumb in the real world, but it is not necessarily authoritarian.
The market slid because it recognizes the new reality of American abdication of its leadership role.
Here is Steve Schmidt, commenting on the implications of a speech by Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney at the World Economic Forum at Davos:
“Steve Schmidt”
Here is the opening part of Mark Carney’s remarks:
Here is a CBC link re: Carney speech:
“CBC“
@charontwo:
Hopefully not too OT, some more links relevant to America’s evaporating hegemony:
“Foreign Affairs/Drezner”
“Paul Musgrave”
…
@drj:
I don’t think Mike Lee understands that.
The meme is making fun of people who don’t understand the temptation of the ring.
And Lee is very much seeing using the government to his prefered ends.
Related, Canada’s been wargaming a US invasion.
At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if Canada began to develop nuclear weapons and delivery systems.
@charontwo: Let me answer the first question. “Why were people surprised by the dissolution of the Soviet Union?” Because we were told over and over again that they were an implacable enemy intent on our destruction and must be opposed everywhere on Earth. This message was drummed into us, and we built military bases all over the world, built up a military industrial complex that consumed much of our economy, and engaged in wars in countries like Korea and Vietnam that the average person could not find on a map. The elites in power in both countries found this a useful paradigm to absorb economic and legal power to those elites.
Currently, we are told to oppose Chinese advances in acquisition of rare earths for technology development. If the Chinese make advances in technology, does that hurt me and you?
@Steven L. Taylor:
This is, of course, not very important, but the quotation marks around “limited government” seem to indicate irony (what else are these doing there?).
I’ll grant you that Mike Lee may have rather spectacularly missed the point, but the original meme maker perhaps not so much.