How black swans are shaping planet panic

March 11, 2020

by Pepe Escobar 

https://thesaker.is/how-black-swans-are-shaping-planet-panic/

Is the planet under the spell of a pair of black swans – a Wall Street meltdown, caused by an alleged oil war between Russia and the House of Saud, plus the uncontrolled spread of Covid-19 – leading to an all-out “cross-asset pandemonium” as billed by Nomura?

Or, as German analyst Peter Spengler suggests, whatever the averted climax in the Strait of Hormuz has not brought about so far “might now come through market forces”?

Let’s start with what really happened after five hours of relatively polite discussions last Friday in Vienna. What turned into a de facto OPEC+ meltdown was quite the game-changing plot twist.

OPEC+ includes Russia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. Essentially, after enduring years of OPEC price-fixing – the result of relentless US pressure over Saudi Arabia – while patiently rebuilding its foreign exchange reserves, Moscow saw the perfect window of opportunity to strike, targeting the US shale industry.

Shares of some of these US producers plunged as much as 50% on “Black Monday.” They simply cannot survive with a barrel of oil in the $30s – and that’s where this is going. After all these companies are drowning in debt.

A $30 barrel of oil has to be seen as a precious gift/stimulus package for a global economy in turmoil – especially from the point of view of oil importers and consumers. This is what Russia made possible.

And the stimulus may last for a while. Russia’s National Wealth Fund has made it clear it has enough reserves (over $150 billion) to cover a budget deficit from six to ten years – even with oil at $25 a barrel. Goldman Sachs has already gamed a possible Brent crude at $20 a barrel.

As Persian Gulf traders stress, the key to what is perceived in the US as an “oil war” between Moscow and Riyadh is mostly about derivatives. Essentially, banks won’t be able to pay those speculators who hold derivative insurance against a steep decline in the price of oil. Added stress comes from traders panicking with Covid-19 spreading across nations that are visibly unprepared to deal with it.

Watch the Russian game

Moscow must have gamed beforehand that Russian stocks traded in London – such as Gazprom, Rosneft, Novatek and Gazprom Neft – would collapse. According to Lukoil’s co-owner Leonid Fedun, Russia may lose up to $150 million a day from now on. The question is for how long this will be acceptable.

Still, from the beginning Rosneft’s position was that for Russia, the deal with OPEC+ was “meaningless” and only “cleared the way” for American shale oil.

The consensus among Russian energy giants was that the current market setup – massive “negative oil demand,” positive “supply shock” and no swing producer – inevitably had to crash the price of oil. They were watching, helplessly, as the US was already selling oil for a lower price than OPEC.

Moscow’s move against the US fracking industry was payback for the Trump administration messing with Nord Stream 2. The inevitable, steep devaluation of the ruble was gamed.

Still, what happened post-Vienna essentially has little to do with a Russia-Saudi trade war. The Russian Energy Ministry is phlegmatic: Move on, nothing to see here. Riyadh, significantly, has been emitting signs the OPEC+ deal may be back in the cards in the near future. A feasible scenario is that this sort of shock therapy will go on until 2022, and then Russia and OPEC will be back to the table to work out a new deal.

There are no definitive numbers, but the oil market accounts for less than 10% of Russia’s GDP (it used to be 16% in 2012). Iran’s oil exports in 2019 plunged by a whopping 70 %, and still, Tehran was able to adapt. Yet oil accounts for over 50% of Saudi GDP. Riyadh needs oil at no less than $85 a barrel to pay its bills. The 2020 budget, with crude priced at $62-63 a barrel, still has a $ 50 billion deficit.

Aramco says it will be offering no fewer than 300,000 barrels of oil a day beyond its “maximum sustained capacity” starting April 1. It says it will be able to produce a whopping 12.3 million barrels a day.

Persian Gulf traders say openly that this is unsustainable. It is. But the House of Saud, in desperation, will be digging into its strategic reserves to dump as much crude as possible as soon as possible – and keep the price war full tilt. The (oily) irony is that the top price war victims are an industry belonging to the American protector.

Saudi-occupied Arabia is a mess. King Salman is in a coma. Every grain of sand in the Nefud desert knows Jared of Arabia Kushner’s WhatsApp pal MBS has been de facto ruler for the past five years, but the timing of his new purge in Riyadh speaks volumes. Princes Mohammed bin Nayef, the king’s nephew, and Ahmed bin Abdulaziz, his younger brother, are now really in detention.

The CIA is fuming: Nayef was and remains Langley’s top asset. When the Saudi regime spin denounced “Americans” as partners in a possible coup against MBS, that word needed to be read as “CIA.” It’s just a matter of time before the US Deep State, in conjunction with disgruntled National Guard elements, comes for MBS’s head – even as he articulates taking over total power before the G-20 in Riyadh next November.

Black Hawk Down?

So what happens next? Amid a tsunami of scenarios, from New York to all points Asia, the most optimistic say that China is about to win the “people’s war” against Covid-19 – and the latest figures confirm it. In this case, global oil demand may increase by at least 480,000 barrels a day.

Well, that’s way more complicated.

The game now points to a confluence of Wall Street in panic; Covid-19 mass hysteria; lingering, myriad aftershocks of Trump’s global trade mess; the US election circus; total political instability in Europe. These interlocked crises do spell Perfect Storm. Yet the market angle is easily explained: that may be the beginning of the end of Wall Street artificially inflated by tens of trillions of US dollars pumped by the Fed through quantitative easings and repos since 2008. Call it the calling of the central bankers’ bluff.

A case can be made that the current financial panic will only subside when the ultimate black swan – Covid-19 – is contained. Borrowing from the famous Hollywood adage, “No one knows anything,” all bets are off. Amid thick fog, and discounting the usual amount of disinformation, a Rabobank analyst, among others, came up with four plausible Covid-19 scenarios. He now reckons it’s getting “ugly” and the fourth scenario – the “unthinkable” – is not far-fetched anymore.

This implies a global economic crisis of, yes, unthinkable magnitude.

To a great extent, it will all depend on how fast China – the inescapable crucial link in the global just-in-time supply chain – gets back to a new normal, offsetting interminable weeks of serial lockdowns.

Despised, discriminated against, demonized 24/7 by the “system leader,” China has gone full Nietzsche – about to prove that whatever does not kill you makes you stronger when it comes to a “people’s war” against Covid-19. On the US front, there’s scant hope that the gleaming Black “helicopter money” Hawk will crash down for good. The ultimate Black Swan will have the last word.

Global recession threat calls for fresh China-EU coordination mechanism

Source: Global Times Published: 2020/3/9

A "Black Monday" oil price plunge sent shockwaves through global financial markets, likely the latest manifestation of economic damage from the coronavirus outbreak, as concerns over the global spread of the epidemic, precipitated the dramatic failure of OPEC+ talks.

While it is understandable that countries around the world are currently fighting their own battles, facing disruptions to supply chains and financial market turmoil, more economic harm could be caused without global cooperation and coordination due to conflicts of interest.

Although the epidemic in China has been largely reined in, global coronavirus cases continued to rise, exceeding 100,000 over the weekend and spreading to more than 100 countries and regions. As more countries become embroiled in the outbreak, the global economy has been thrown into fears of recession amid further disruptions to supply chains. Last week, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) lowered its global GDP forecast by half a percentage point to 2.4 percent for 2020, the lowest since the 2008 financial crisis. It also warned that an escalation of the epidemic could plunge Japan and the eurozone into recession.

China and the EU are currently set to embrace new opportunities in the development of their relations, with a series of important cooperative plans on their agendas including the bilateral investment treaty. The two economies account for about 38 percent of the world's GDP. So whether it is in terms of the need to fight against the virus or in terms of economic interests, it is necessary for China and the EU to establish some kind of temporary coordination mechanism to strengthen their cooperation on the epidemic control and minimizing the impact on trade.

On the one hand, China and the EU can strengthen communication and the exchange of related epidemic information and medical control measures. At present, the virus is spreading rapidly in many European countries. Italy saw its number of coronavirus cases soar past that of South Korea over the weekend, making it the worst affected country after China. As the first to deal with the outbreak, China has made initial progress in fighting the virus and it can share information and experience with the EU to help the region with its current difficulties.

On the other hand, though the epidemic will inevitably inflict pains on the global economy, both sides can still work together to soften the blow by ensuring their normal trade activities. Coordination could be carried out to address difficulties in supply chains, logistics and relevant trade issues.

In an increasingly globalized world, no country or region can stand alone and keep its economy intact during the deepening coronavirus crisis. We hope a China-EU coordination mechanism could also serve as a model to guide countries in making joint efforts to combat the virus and safeguard normal economic exchanges.

The Coronavirus Could Be the Black Swan of 2020

The wheels could come off the global economy—and if they do, Trump will double down on racism, xenophobia, and the politics of fear.

By Sasha Abramsky

FEBRUARY 25, 2020

The Signal this week: Increasingly, the coronavirus, or COVID-19, as it is now officially called, is looking like the sort of unexpected, black swan event that scrambles all existing expectations for months, possibly years.

Unemployment is currently low, but the last week the stock market got a serious case of the jitters as it became clear just how much global supply chains and international travel are being disrupted. Other key indicators, measuring a business activity and the risks associated with holding short-term versus long-term government debt, also began flashing red. This week’s trading opened in Asia with a run on the markets, and the cycle of fear-driven selling is likely to dominate trading in the United States as well.

Japan’s economy has already begun a severe contraction; Europe’s looks set to follow. In China, consumer spending on big-purchase items is down this month—by north of 90 percent for cars. South Korea is now in emergency mode. So is Iran. With one country after another locking down borders, cutting off transit routes, and prohibiting the docking of container ships from hot-zone regions, it could be only a matter of time before economic growth grinds to a halt in the United States.

As recently as January it was considered a given that Trump would be heading into the election riding a wave of economic good news. But he could actually be facing a global public-health calamity and economic crisis. If so, February and March of 2020 may come to be seen by economic historians as somewhat similar to October 1929, when the wheels came off and the global economy collapsed.

How will the administration respond to this, given the hollowing out of the professional bureaucracies and the purging of appointees who aren’t deemed sufficiently enthusiastic about Trump? If recent developments are any indication, not well. Trump is busy cleaning house post-impeachment, with top officials under orders to fire anyone who questions his leadership, and with cabinet secretaries and department heads now being told the White House will choose their deputies.

Trump’s national security team is woefully unprepared for a pandemic. Since 2017, the administration has left a series of top public health and epidemic control jobs unfilled, despite repeated warnings by public health experts that this was tempting fate. Senator Angus King has introduced legislation in an attempt to remedy this deficiency, but there’s no sign the administration is heeding the calls. What matters to this president is not professional competence but sycophantic loyalty. And since Trump has said the outbreak will end with the coming of spring, it’s unlikely his officials will stand up to him and say otherwise.

If the crisis does indeed spiral out of control, expect more xenophobic, immigrant-bashing responses. Trump is already bottling up immigrants, many of them desperately ill and in need of specialized medical treatment, south of the US-Mexico border. He’s already blaming immigrants for any and every societal woe. He’s already running an election campaign that openly panders to racial and ethnic prejudices.

If pandemic conditions set in, these trends could intensify. If he is robbed of the ability to crow about the economy, Trump will lash out even more aggressively against foreigners. In times of fear and panic, such messages all too often resonate.

Progressives need to hone their responses to these changing conditions. If they don’t, the Black Swan moment could swamp them.

Sasha Abramsky, who writes regularly for The Nation, is the author of several books, including Inside Obama’s Brain, Breadline USA, American Furies, The American Way of Poverty, The House of 20,000 Books, and, most recently, Jumping at Shadows: The Triumph of Fear and the End of the American Dream. Subscribe to The Abramsky Report, a weekly, subscription-based political column, here.

LA CRISIS DEL TRABAJO EN MÉXICO

Uno de los temas más importantes en la actualidad (además de los riesgos a la salud, por nuevos tipos de virus y otras enfermedades), es la desaparición de puestos de trabajos formales debido a la automatización; aunado al crecimiento, en países como México, del llamado trabajo informal, que no cuenta con prestaciones, no está reglamentado, ni supervisado por las autoridades y tiene una baja productividad.

Si bien la tasa de desempleo en México en 2019 fue baja, el 3.5% de acuerdo a cifras del Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (INEGI), el empleo informal abarca a casi 6 de cada diez personas ocupadas en el país, lo que impacta en los ingresos para los trabajadores (son menores), y en la productividad de la economía en general (es más baja).

A lo anterior hay que sumar que según la Organización para la Cooperación y el Desarrollo Económico (OCDE)[1] en los próximos 15 años desaparecerán, por causa de la automatización, hasta el 25% de los puestos de trabajo en México (mientras que en el resto de América Latina serán uno de cada siete), lo que seguramente llevará a los desplazados a desempeñar puestos con menores sueldos y/o prestaciones, ya sea formales o informales, y con ello se afectará la demanda agregada de la economía, su productividad y el crecimiento de la misma.

Si consideramos que en la actualidad sólo 4 de cada 100 trabajadores en México gana más de $15,429 pesos al mes (el equivalente a 776 dólares)[2], nos podremos dar cuenta que la gran mayoría de los trabajadores están condenados a permanecer en una situación precaria, no sólo por los bajos ingresos que perciben, sino por el muy próximo riesgo a quedar en el subempleo y el desempleo, lo que aumentará sin duda el número de pobres en el país.

De acuerdo a la Encuesta Nacional de Ingresos y Gastos de los Hogares del INEGI[3], el monto promedio que necesitan las familias para el mantenimiento de su hogar es de $13,529 pesos al mes (680 dólares); por lo tanto, el 96% de los trabajadores del país no gana lo suficiente para mantener dignamente a su familia.

Para los grandes empresarios y las corporaciones nacionales e internacionales, esta situación no les preocupa pues buscan la mayor rentabilidad para sus capitales, ya sea en el país o fuera de él. De ahí que el gobierno de Andrés Manuel López Obrador tiene un reto mayúsculo para enfrentar la precarización del trabajo e incluso la desaparición del mismo por el avance de la automatización, antes de que la crisis del trabajo en al país haga polvo cualquier proyecto de desarrollo de este o de futuros gobiernos.

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[1] https://www.jornada.com.mx/ultimas/economia/2020/03/03/desapareceran-uno-de-cuatro-puestos-de-trabajo-en-mexico-por-automatizacion-1635.html

[2] https://www.eleconomista.com.mx/economia/Solo-4-de-cada-100-trabajadores-en-Mexico-ganan-mas-de-15429-pesos-al-mes-20191013-0002.html

[3] Ibidem.

LOS ESTADOUNIDENSES ESTÁN BIEN AMAESTRADOS

Ayer en el llamado “Super Tuesday”, día en que 14 estados eligieron en las primarias a una tercera parte de los 1991 delegados que se requieren para conseguir la nominación a la candidatura presidencial del Partido Demócrata en la Convención que se realizará en el mes de julio en Milwaukee, la mayoría de los electores se inclinaron por el representante del “establishment”, el favorito de las cúpulas demócratas y de los grandes grupos de interés estadounidenses (Wall Street, Silicon Valley, el “main Street media”, Big Pharma, el complejo-militar industrial, las petroleras, el lobby pro Israel, etc.), el ex vicepresidente y ex senador por el estado de Delaware (considerado un “paraíso fiscal”, en donde lavan miles de millones de dólares corporaciones estadounidenses y extranjeras cada año, sin ser molestadas), Joseph Biden.

Contra los pronósticos de diferentes encuestas, Biden se alzó con el triunfo en estados como Texas, en donde aparecía como favorito el senador por Vermont, Bernie Sanders o Massachusetts, de donde es originaria la senadora Elizabeth Warren, otra contendiente por la nominación, sumando en total 9 de las 14 entidades en disputa ayer (Virginia, Carolina del Norte, Arkansas, Alabama, Tennessee, Oklahoma y Minnesota).

Se suponía que el progresista Bernie Sanders, que ha criticado desde su campaña presidencial del 2016 a los grandes grupos de interés estadounidenses y la enorme desigualdad que se ha generado en Estados Unidos en las últimas décadas; que propone un sistema de salud gratuito para todos los estadounidenses, eliminar la deuda para los jóvenes que estudian en las universidades, legislación muy dura contra las industrias petroleras y mineras que contaminan el medio ambiente; privilegiar la diplomacia sobre las amenazas y la carrera armamentista, condicionar la ayuda militar a Israel a que respete los derechos humanos de los palestinos, etc. se alzaría con el triunfo en la mayoría de los estados del “Super Tuesday” (lo logró en California, el estado que más delegados elegía); pero el dinero de las grandes corporaciones estadounidenses, junto con los acuerdos logrados por la cúpula del Partido Demócrata para que otros candidatos “centristas” o “moderados” como Pete Buttigieg y Amy Klobuchar, se retiraran de la competencia y otorgaran su apoyo a Biden, más una campaña de miedo contra Sanders (impulsada también por el plutócrata Bloomberg, otro prospecto que intenta detener a Sanders), lanzada por los principales medios de comunicación, pintándolo casi como un Fidel Castro o un Hugo Chávez, además de ser supuestamente el “candidato de Putin”, generaron temor y confusión en el desinformado y muy bien amaestrado electorado demócrata, que decidió seguir con el mismo tipo de político que responde a los intereses de la plutocracia estadounidense, y votaron por el insípido, muy “moderado” y mediocre Biden.

No cabe duda de que los estadounidenses no pueden pensar por fuera de los límites que le tienen impuestos sus amos de las élites política y económica. Intentar cambiar, así sea mínimamente, el sistema de explotación interna y dominación externa que sostiene la hegemonía de Washington y Nueva York en el planeta, no está dentro de los parámetros del estadounidense medio, que es fácilmente manipulado para creer cualquier mentira que las élites dominantes deseen (ya sea pintar a Sanders como “el coco comunista”, o convencerlos de que un barbón escondido en una cueva en Afganistán, planeó y ordenó la destrucción de las icónicas Torres Gemelas de Nueva York).

Así, todo parece indicar que la elección presidencial en noviembre, será una vez más la competencia entre dos miembros del “establishment”, por más que Trump haya engañado por su parte, a los republicanos haciéndoles creer a la mayoría de ilusos de ese partido, que él representaba un verdadero cambio.

Biden y Trump defienden y defenderán los intereses de los verdaderos dueños de Estados Unidos, y el ingenuo pueblo estadounidense seguirá viendo cómo los mandan a pelear guerras a todas partes del mundo, que nada tienen que ver con su bienestar o seguridad; cómo las grandes corporaciones y los billonarios siguen amasando fortunas en detrimento de los ingresos de la mayoría de la población; cómo se sigue depredando el medio ambiente y cómo el complejo-militar-industrial sigue con su carrera armamentista, con el único fin de mantener el flujo de dólares hacia sus bolsillos.

Pero ese pueblo bien amaestrado, se merece seguir bajo el dominio de esos depredadores, pues no está dispuesto a despertar, ni a arriesgarse por un cambio, siquiera mínimo, del sistema en el que vive.

Grow Up About Dictators, America!

The Democrats’ presidential primary has exposed the pathological moral obsessions of U.S. foreign policy.

STEPHEN M. WALT MARCH 02, 2020

https://outline.com/pmF4g8

For foreign-policy mavens, the primary race for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination hasn’t been especially edifying, mostly because the subject has received relatively little attention. Even so, the recent squabble over the candidates’ attitudes toward autocrats has been a new low. I refer, of course, to the charge that Bernie Sanders is an apologist for dictatorship because he told an interviewer that Fidel Castro’s Cuba had some genuine educational achievements, as well as the parallel attack on Michael Bloomberg for saying that China’s Xi Jinping was “not a dictator.” As Daniel Larison later noted, “[T]oo much of the foreign policy section was consumed by this ‘denounce a dictator’ exercise and many other issues were neglected as a result.”

I like liberal democracy as much as anyone, and I’m grateful that I live in a country where those values are still (mostly) respected. But this reflexive need to offer full-throated attacks on authoritarianism is symptomatic of a long-standing pathology in the conduct of U.S. foreign policy; namely, the tendency to see someone’s moral vision and commitments as the most important (and maybe the only) criterion by which their foreign-policy competence should be assessed. It is an enduring manifestation of what realists have long criticized as America’s “legalistic/moralistic approach” to foreign affairs, an approach that overlooks the political and moral complexities of statecraft and has consistently led policymakers astray.

Moral considerations are hardly irrelevant in the conduct of foreign policy, but the simplistic moral litmus test on view in the recent Democratic debate mostly reveals that the United States remains, as I wrote back in 2005, “a remarkably immature Great Power—one whose rhetoric is frequently at odds with the reality of its own conduct and one that often treats the management of foreign affairs as an adjunct to domestic politics.”

Why is a politician’s willingness to denounce dictators a poor litmus test for his or her fitness for office? For starters, it’s too easy: Anyone running for president knows that you’re not supposed to say too many nice things about foreign despots, and even Donald Trump offered only mild praise for people like Russia’s Vladimir Putin when he was on the campaign trail in 2016.

More importantly, no matter what a candidate says on the campaign trail, whoever gets elected is going to have to do business with a lot of autocrats (some of whom are pretty odious) and especially if they happen to be in charge of a powerful country. Back in 1992, for example, Bill Clinton attacked George H.W. Bush for being too tolerant of Chinese human rights abuses and said he’d get tough with Beijing; once in office, he found that hectoring China didn’t work very well, and he soon reversed course. The next president is going to talk with people like Putin, Xi, Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman, Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and many, many more, and beginning the conversation by denouncing their immoral conduct won’t be the best way to advance U.S. interests or get them to improve their behavior even a little.

I’d take this insight a step further: In most cases, ostracizing autocrats or trying to freeze them out advances neither strategic nor moral objectives and may even be counterproductive. The failed U.S. embargo on Cuba is a clear case in point. The mighty United States refused to deal with Cuba for nearly half a century—solely to appease the Cuba lobby in Florida—yet this policy didn’t bring down the regime, didn’t help the Cuban people, and didn’t moderate Castro’s international conduct. One suspects a policy of engagement would have put Castro under more pressure over time, by allowing Cubans to see how much better life was elsewhere and by exposing the limitations of their own system. Similarly, not talking to countries like North Korea or Iran makes it harder to address the issues where interests conflict, which is why it makes sense to talk to them despite legitimate moral objections to these countries’ systems of rule.

Third, moral posturing of the sort on stage last week makes America look hypocritical. As everyone around the world knows, the United States has a long track record of supporting some pretty objectionable dictators, and it overthrew or undermined genuine and legitimate democrats on more than one occasion. Nor is U.S. behavior at home or abroad above reproach or consistent with the moral values to which Americans like to hold others.

Before some of you leap to Twitter to denounce what you just read, let me emphasize that I am not suggesting a moral equivalence between the United States and every autocrat who has ever ruled. I am merely pointing out that a tactic that might play on a debate stage—i.e., to accuse a political rival of being soft on dictators and insufficiently committed to America’s core political values—isn’t going to play very well abroad. Other nations already think the United States is remarkably hypocritical—and with good reason—and such antics are only likely to reinforce this view.

Unfortunately, the problem goes beyond the mudslinging of a contentious political campaign. As realists have warned for decades, America’s tendency to make morality the touchstone of its foreign policy isn’t just an occasional distraction; it is actively harmful to strategic and moral objectives alike.

One danger is utopianism, whereby the United States tries to rely on idealistic solutions that simply aren’t going to work. The Kellogg-Briand Pact is perhaps the best-known example of this kind of solution, but the tendency to see regime change and democracy promotion as the answer to numerous contemporary problems, including terrorism, is a close second. Liberal democracy has many virtues, but overzealous efforts to spread it abroad—either by peaceful or more forceful means—have a deeply disappointing track record. Insisting that other nations really ought to conform to our values may also lead us to neglect less idealistic outcomes that might still alleviate conflict and suffering in the short term.

Even worse, once we begin to view international politics and foreign policy as a morality play—with virtuous democrats on one side and evil despots on the other—the only logical solution to most global problems is to get rid of the latter. Once the troublemakers are gone, we tell ourselves, there simply won’t be any more trouble. At a minimum, this urge to do good by toppling wicked despots leads to hubristic debacles like the war in Iraq or the ill-fated intervention in Libya. At worst, it is a recipe for endless war to “eradicate evil” forever.

If simplistic moral litmus tests are not the answer, what is? A better approach was sketched many years ago, in Hans Morgenthau’s Scientific Man vs. Power Politics. Although Morgenthau is widely (and correctly) viewed as a central figure in the realist canon, he was also deeply concerned with moral issues and believed they could never be divorced from social and political life. Indeed, a central theme of this book is that all political action has moral consequences; there is no way to operate in the political world and keep entirely clean hands. (Similar themes run through the works of other realists, most notably the Christian realist Reinhold Niebuhr.)

For Morgenthau, therefore, there is an unavoidable tension between the moral universe of human beings and the real world where power politics prevails. Anyone who aspires to political leadership thus faces a very real burden. In his words, “To act successfully, that is, according to the rules of the political art, is political wisdom. To know with despair that the political act is inevitably evil, and to act nevertheless, is moral courage. To choose among several expedient actions the least evil one is moral judgment.”

Instead of asking for ritual denunciations of this despot or that dictatorship, therefore, the proper question to ask Sanders, Bloomberg, Elizabeth Warren, etc.—and Trump—is how they will weigh these unavoidable tensions when they are forced to deal with governments whose conduct and character differs substantially from American ideals. Does Sanders think Cuba’s legitimate educational accomplishments were possible only under a communist dictatorship? Are there any circumstances where he believes a country is better off under one-party rule? If not, are there conditions where he thinks the United States should use its power to advance purely moral ends? Similarly, instead of asking Bloomberg if Xi is a real dictator or not, a better question is what steps, if any, he would take to pressure China over moral issues and what those moral issues might be. Nor should Americans stop asking their current president why he seems to prefer autocrats to the leaders of other democracies and why his administration keeps taking steps right out of the authoritarian’s playbook.

In short, it is one thing to recognize the inescapable tension between our moral preferences and the realities of an imperfect world—and to do what we can to advance the former without sacrificing our security or making bad situations worse—and another thing to ignore moral considerations entirely (as Trump tends to do) or to reduce them to the shallow mudslinging and faux outrage of last week’s Democratic debate. The next time the remaining candidates are on stage, maybe someone will ask them how they would navigate some of the moral trade-offs and dilemmas that exist in the real world. For instance: How would they try to pressure China into halting the forced indoctrination of its Uighur Muslims? Would they be willing to extend diplomatic recognition to North Korea in exchange for progress on nuclear arms control? And so on. I don’t know about you, but I’d love to hear what they have to say.

Netanyahu aide in a leaked recording: ‘Hate is what unites our camp’

Natan Eshel heard saying negative campaigning works well with ‘non-Ashkenazi’ voters and that the ‘animal’ Miri Regev is particularly effective at it

29 February 2020, 

By TOI STAFF

https://www.timesofisrael.com/netanyahu-aide-in-leaked-recording-hate-is-what-unites-our-camp/

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s senior aide Natan Eshel said that “hate is what unites” the right-wing camp led by the Likud party and that negative campaigning works well on “non-Ashkenazi voters” in a leaked recording revealed by Channel 12 on Saturday.

Eshel, a former Netanyahu chief of staff who resigned amid allegations of sexual misconduct, continues to work with the premier, leading the previous two coalition negotiations over the past year.

In the newly revealed recording, he can be heard discussing the party’s campaign strategy with an unnamed person whom he is trying to recruit as a political adviser, according to the report. In the tape, Eshel says that Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit’s decision to indict Netanyahu in three corruption cases actually helped the premier in his campaign. “He went up by 20 percent” Eshel recalls, though it was unclear what numbers he was referring to.

 “If you haven’t stolen, what exactly have you come [into politics] for? We’ve checked this. And to my shock, they [the public] do not understand [this notion] of going into politics to do what’s good for the nation. You go into politics in order to steal and you need to be a man,” Eshel claims, not yet specifying which public he was referring to.

“Now, in this public, I’ll call it… non-Ashkenazi…What gets them worked up? Why do they hate the press?… They hate everything and we’ve succeeded in whipping up that hatred. Hatred is what unites our camp,” Eshel says plainly.

Eshel appeared to be referring to the Likud base of voters from Mizrahi communities, often in the periphery, who have long supported the party. In the recording, the Netanyahu confidante then goes on to explain that Likud minister Miri Regev is “excellent” at “stirring up” Likud supporters. Eshel recognized that Regev is “an animal” but works effectively as if she were standing in a stadium at a soccer match and waving her hands in order to drum up the crowd.

Asked to comment on the leaked recording, Eshel said he would not respond to “lies,” though it was unclear what exactly he was disputing.

The Likud party appeared to accept that the recording was genuine, but asserted in a statement that “it is impossible to compare Nathan Eshel’s erroneous private opinion when he has no role in the Likud campaign to the shocking testimony of Blue and White chairman Benny Gantz’s senior adviser, Israel Bachar, who says Gantz is a danger to Israel and does not deserve to be prime minister.”

Bachar, in a recording leaked to Channel 12 on Thursday, could be heard saying that Gantz does not have the courage to attack Iran and could pose a danger to Israel’s security.

Blue and White said in a statement Saturday that the Eshel recording shows what the Netanyahu aide “really thinks of Likud voters.”

“It is Netanyahu’s spirit that is poisoning Israel. It will be over in two days. Bibi, go home!” the centrist party added.

Netanyahu later Saturday issued a statement that said he called Eshel to make “clear to him that his comments are inappropriate and unacceptable.”

“He apologized immediately. The Likud is home to all parts of the Israeli public and that’s the way it will always be,” Netanyahu said.

This isn’t the first time this month that Eshel found himself in hot water over a leaked recording.

Last week, Netanyahu was forced to apologize to a prominent religious-Zionist rabbi Chaim Druckman after Eshel was recorded mocking him and the Yamina party that views him as a religious leader.

In the recording, Eshel appears to mock Druckman with the dismissive Yiddish prefix “sh,” calling him “Druckman and Shmuckman.”

Eshel later explained in a statement that he had spoken in “slang” and meant nothing by the comment.