The war on terror primed America for autocracy

https://www.economist.com/by-invitation/2026/06/02/how-the-war-on-terror-primed-america-for-autocracy

by andsoitis • 29 days ago

292 281 29 days ago

economist.com

https://archive.is/CBCZM

IAmGraydon• 29 days ago

https://archive.is/CBCZM

rjzzleep• 29 days ago

It's interesting that decades into this we are still calling the massmurder and pillaging of dozens of countries, turning entire geographic regions into war ridden wastelands with slave markets, a "war on terror". Meanwhile the leaders of those so-called terror groups are praised and invited to ALL the western capitals.

anon2914• 29 days ago

I mean JD Vance is in Pakistan saying he's as close to the military junta there as his own wife, stirring up unnecessary pain at a full on mass unplanned genocide (I'm referring to the partition of India).

People claim Israel has America by the balls and that's probably true.

The other country that has us by the other ball is Pakistan.

holistio2• 29 days ago

The partition of India feels close to when you burn food and instead of washing the pan properly you just throw it in the dishwasher hoping it will sort it out somehow.

It isn't exactly the inability of the dishwasher to dissolve crimes against cuisine where the problem is rooted.

coliveira• 29 days ago

It's easy to control a country when all cybersecurity software used in that country reports to you.

GolfPopper• 29 days ago

It was just a simple spelling mistake. It was always meant to be 'The War on Terra'.

applicative4• 29 days ago

That isn’t what happened. You are inter alia combining the loony but causally inevitable ‘war on terror’ with … the Arab Spring (which Assadist - Putinist propaganda has linked in your mind to imaginary Libyan slave markets) Ask you preferred AI how many Kurdish language universities there are in the world and where they are and what their students think of your imaginary Putinist antiyankee brain slurry.

marssaxman• 29 days ago

This seemed obvious to me at the time. It was hard to understand why people in the cultural mainstream let themselves get swept up in it. I felt like I lost my country, back then, as they pretty much all went off into crazyland together.

altcognito• 29 days ago

It was obvious to many. It was even a sort of not-funny joke: "The terrorists have already won."

nullhole2• 29 days ago

The OK-ing of torture was a clear step into the totalitarian camp and a clear breach with justice, liberalism, and decency.

dnautics• 29 days ago

I'm gonna be that guy and say that the concern about torture is orthogonal to authoritarianism. There were very much "less authoritarian/less centralized" eras in the US when it was general course of action was to do torturous things far worse than many of the things that got labelled 'torture' in the post 1990s era.

euroderf• 28 days ago

History should record that for a brief moment of time, the US government tortured at least one person to death.

SpicyLemonZest4• 29 days ago

How old are you? I think a lot of younger folks don't fully adjust for important factors: plane hijackings used to be much more common, 9/11 was committed by the second group of Islamic terrorists who tried to blow up the World Trade Center, and 9/11 was the third major terrorist attack by Al-Qaeda in a 4 year span. It's easy now to say that it was a crazy worst-case scenario, but that was not at all obvious then; for all we knew, securing cockpits might have been impractical, and we'd just have to prepare the Air Force to shoot down a couple hijacked flights every decade.

There were real excesses, and I ultimately agree with you that many of them were predictable in advance, but there was no feasible version of a response that did not go at least a little into crazyland. It was a crazy time.

csb6• 29 days ago

"Real excesses" is a bit of an understatement. There is the security theater instituted by the TSA, the militarization of police, normalized Islamophobia, mass surveillance of U.S. citizens, torture as an official military policy, indefinite detention of "unlawful combatants", a trillion dollars spent destroying Iraq and Afghanistan, a million killed and many more made refugees. The rise of ISIS and the refugee crises in Europe can be traced back to the War on Terror. The Middle East should not be the punching bag for America to take out its "crazy" feelings (where "craziness" appears to be a polite way of saying "bloodlust").

thwarted• 29 days ago

younger folks don't fully adjust for important factors: plane hijackings used to be much more common

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_hijackings

(I can not say how comprehensive that wikipedia list is).

There's more in the 70s and 80s than I was expecting (having lived through the 80s), but given how many flights there are, hijackings have been and are exceedingly rare; and most of these are not even US flights. These are "driving is orders of magnitude more dangerous than flying" and "10x a very small number is still a very small number" numbers.

https://businesstats.com/global-air-traffic-number-of-flight...

https://easbcn.com/en/how-many-planes-fly-per-day-around-the...

https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/charts/world-air-pas...

These numbers only serve to re-enforce that the response of giving up liberty for (the feeling of) security due to terrorist action in the US was probably outsized. General population awareness in general was probably more of a deterrent after 9/11 than any of the first order 9/11 response actions, especially considering that the US gave countries in the middle east further reason to hate Americans and US foreign policy after 9/11. Obviously, terrorist attacks get a lot of air time and column inches, which feeds the perception of the risk.

Morromist2• 29 days ago

It was a crazy time, not in the danger from hijackings but the enormous amount of fear and cowardice America built up within itself. It was crazy because of the mass hysteria not the violence. Take this example: 1.2 million Americans died from Covid. 3000 americans died in the twin towers attack. That's 0.25% of the number that died from covid. However we gave up considerably more liberty to defend against the hijackers than we did the virus. It was a very unusual incident but the response wasn't warranted. I mean like 1/3 of the people who died in the twin towers, about 1000 people a year, die from being hit by trains, but you don't see anyone demanding we give up constitutional rights, or do literally anything at all to change that.

majormajor• 29 days ago

What do you think distinguishes the post-9/11 craziness from the Cold War/Red Scare craziness?

My reason for asking is because I believe that "that's unconstitutional!" has been a failed protest message for more like 100 years than 25 years (and there's threads of state violence at the local and state levels that go back far longer). And IMO that is even stronger evidence that words on an ~240-year-old-doc—and the way some interpret the second amendment in relation to those words—is a completely powerless measure against state violence. The United States is not exceptional in that regard. We'll only have a better country if we constantly, actively, choose to vote it that way.

stateofinquiry• 29 days ago

Probably the fact that most of the readership of the article and this site were alive for the former but not the latter. One could equally pin the rise of Joe McCarthy as the moment America started its move to "autocracy". Or when Roosevelt interned Japanese Americans. Or the civil war. Or the Mexican-American war. In fact, the struggle is constant (as mentioned downthread).

kitku• 29 days ago

I am still amazed by the typical internet American's (Yours also I presume) love for voting, despite having long degraded into a two-party charade.

Your sentiment starts out fierce: "constantly, actively..." and is immediately cut short "... choose to (only?) vote it that way."

You point out that voicing one's interpretations of the 2nd amendment is powerless - but voting, reduced to such a miniscule gesture, is also. The choice between a galloping right wing and a stagnant center-right is no choice at all. American elections are a facade for decisions already made on top. You can't vote it out.

ReptileMan• 29 days ago

What do you think distinguishes the post-9/11 craziness from the Cold War/Red Scare craziness?

State capacity. USA prior to the internet and the surveillance state was too big, too populous and too sparse to be effectively administered.

Trump is doing what every other president since WWII wanted to do ... but they didn't have the technology. Just for a moment imagine what USA will look like if you didn't get someone incompetent like Trump right now but Nixon or Johnson. With the modern security state - it would be their dream.

nephihaha2• 29 days ago

In the same way it is obvious that internet age gating, digital ID and abolition of physical cash will lead to much worse. But who's standing in their way?

fsflover• 28 days ago

https://eff.org and https://edri.org do.

ghtbircshotbe• 28 days ago

If you weren't for the Patriot act you were pro terrorist. If you suggested that the terrorists might be motivated by us involvement in the middle east rather than pure evil then you were probably also evil. Mob mentality has been around since forever. And yet the current situation is making Bush seem like a statesman by comparison

xbar• 29 days ago

Exactly what everyone said when Patriot Act was passed and renewed repeatedly.

America permanently traded away basic freedoms for the bogus promise of safety in the shadow of fear. And the Supreme Court was too scared to stop it despite its obvious constitutional problems. Crying eagle photos in chain-emails were sufficient propaganda to keep it in place.

nielsbot• 29 days ago

And the Supreme Court was too scared to stop it

Too scared? They may have been on board...

rayiner18• 29 days ago

It wasn’t just the GOTW. It was much of the 20th century from World War I onward. Each step led to further centralization of government, a larger and larger security apparatus, and more and more foreign entanglements. We are more or less retracing the path of Rome as the Republic expanded militarily until it was no longer practical to run it as a republic and it transitioned to empire.

danans2• 29 days ago

We are more or less retracing the path of Rome as the Republic expanded militarily until it was no longer practical to run it as a republic and it transitioned to empire.

The current military "excursion" seems to be transitioning the US out of being an empire.

gmadsen• 29 days ago

A Pax Romana would be a considerable upgrade

pyrale• 29 days ago

It wasn’t just the GOTW. It was much of the 20th century from World War I onward.

If you're looking for the seeds of imperialism, you'll find them all the way back to US independence.

The point the article is making is that 2001 was a tipping point in that evolution.

inigyou12• 29 days ago

Do you mean GWOT? Global war on terror?

pso• 29 days ago

If GOTW, actually means GWOT and Global War on Terror, please have courtesy of reading your posts beforehand, and perhaps also not assuming a US audience.

lopsotronic• 28 days ago

For all the editorial hay to be made from the "The Victory of Capital" or the purported "Inevitable Self-Destruction of Communism (with Russians In It)", the process of nations transforming into "security state zombies" is probably less a model of economics/ideology and more a normal lifecycle stage for nuclear powers. It's mistaking metabolic stage for victory.

Once a major power has credible nuclear deterrent, the functions of the Westphalian state focuses on that singular threat of destruction - it's a cannon that ends the state. Having it be a single cannon is antithetical to an open society or democratic patterns in government. Hence, Security State Zombie, unable to perform anything other than its duties of destruction.

Russia started the game in a depleted state and hit the lifecycle stage first - less open society to burn down. We teetered for a long time, but the 9/11 attacks, combined with a reactionary wing that no longer had to run a moral race with the Communists, sent the balance over the edge.

I suspect, right now, we are seeing the "Yeltsin Era", where people finally lose their last patience with the established system, and during which the nomenklatura/technocrats/security state solidify their holdings in communications and media. Terminating this period in an orderly fashion will require some organizational energy and talent. Increased direct cooperation between national security "black" assets and local law enforcement like Texas Marshalls (hey like in Sicario, except not in Mexico), or between black assets and federal groups not operating under legislative or judicial oversight (which I leave to you to name). It will not be a modest effort - the local assets will need to be linked up with aggressively, as they are less numerous than the law enforcement under direct local jurisdiction. I do wonder who our Putin will be, or if we will even see his face without a thermonuclear bonfire.

vlian20882• 29 days ago

Exactly what everyone said when Patriot Act was passed

I've been seeing plenty of Americans cheering on temporary safety over essential liberty since then, and I can't even provide examples without getting [flagged].

Terr_4• 29 days ago

I can't even provide examples [of Americans cheering on temporary safety over essential liberty]

I've seen other people critiquing it over the years, perhaps it has something to do with other aspects of the delivery or message?

mekoka• 29 days ago

This isn't a specifically American phenomenon. Humans have fear buttons. If you press the right ones, a sizable portion of any population would trade in significant amount of freedom to feel safer. Those for whom it's almost pathological spend considerable effort trying to pass on their worries to others, or chasing opportunities to exert some satisfactory control. If they succeed in either goals, you get less freedom.

zwarag• 29 days ago

Crying eagle photos in chain-emails

Can someone elaborate? Whwre is this reference comming from? A simple web search did not yield much

pjc504• 29 days ago

Eh, I think they meant the general colour of "not quite social media" that was present at the time: chain emails and blogs. But the patriotic fervor was nuts. While there were substantial anti-war protests, that was very much not the majority opinion, and people were "cancelled" over opposing the war.

It was inevitable. I remember, in the UK mid-afternoon after we'd found out about the first plane hitting the first tower, saying that would be the end of the Palestinians. Then the second plane hit. America would have to have reprisals, and Iraq was the target.

Mind you, the PNAC (Project for a New American Century; that era's version of project 2025, now quite hard to find on the Internet) always did want to go to war with Iran, and Iraq was a convenient vector for that.

rhubarbtree2• 29 days ago

Yep, a lot of people saw this coming. It was so obvious - new powers are always abused in the end. Same for the UK. Perhaps the politicians knew that and didn’t care. Not sure how deep their cynicism / malice goes. More power to us, they said.

graemep6• 29 days ago

In the UK there is a big element of sheer incompetence. Politicians who have not experience of life outside politics are really will-equipped to understand the consequences of what they do, and defer overly to expert opinion. Of course the police or intelligence services say they need more powers, it takes judgement to balance this against other considerations.

pjc504• 29 days ago

The UK however had pre-existing authoritarianism due to the Troubles. Acceding to ECHR in Northern Ireland and rolling back the authoritarianism there in favor of an external human rights court was a critical part of ending the cycle of violence there.

Barrin92• 29 days ago

in 1776 the American colonists rebelled against what they saw as the arbitrary and tyrannical British monarchy.

although they didn't just do that, the American founders also articulated the point that the article seems to present as some new insight. That permanent foreign military involvements and the state it requires will eventually diminish freedom at home, that was why many of them wanted to avoid emulating the British empire.

Given that papers like the Economist used to regularly be staunch defenders of these interventions until they went wrong, and only ever seemed to disavow them for their practical outcomes rather than in principle they might want to do some reflecting on that.

rayiner18• 29 days ago

I seem to recall the Economist wholeheartedly supporting the Iraq War. Am I wrong?

andsoitis3• 29 days ago

Yes, they ran a leading editorial titled "Why war would be justified", arguing that confronting Saddam Hussein was "the least bad of the limited range of available options".

However, they reversed position in 2007, calling the invasion a debacle.

andsoitis3• 29 days ago

the Economist used to regularly be staunch defenders of these interventions until they went wrong, and only ever seemed to disavow them for their practical outcomes rather than in principle they might want to do some reflecting on that

Can you link a couple of examples? Presumably those articles should be easy to find on economist.com

rayiner18• 29 days ago

The economist was a strong supporter of the Iraq War, and reiterated that in a retrospective 2003 article citing its earlier articles: https://home.uncg.edu/~jwjones/world/readings/economist.html

“The threat posed by Saddam

The Economist certainly said it was. We did so most strongly and clearly in a survey (Present at the creation, June 29th 2002) on America's world role; and in leaders on August 3rd that year (The case for war), February 22nd 2003 (Why war would be justified) and March 15th 2003 (Saddam's last victory).”

jdw64• 29 days ago

In democracy, there is a distinction between peacetime power and wartime power, and in a wartime power state, there is an inherent affinity with authoritarianism. After 9/11, the political language in the United States saw a revival of terms like 'state of emergency' and 'enemy within.' The moment the government is granted the authority to define who the 'enemy' is, the gun inevitably turns toward the citizens. The reason is simple: those in power come to see the state as an extension of themselves, and anyone who speaks against them becomes labeled as the 'enemy.'

On top of this, the limitations of the petrodollar system are becoming increasingly apparent. When it worked well in the past, economic distribution could be used to suppress dissatisfaction — the American middle class generation is a case in point. But as dollar hegemony weakens and resource allocation becomes more difficult, the ruling class typically begins to replace economic rewards with emotional rewards like fear and hostility. They point fingers and say, 'Your enemy is these people.' When the system cannot grow the pie, the most efficient resource allocation for authoritarianism is to forcefully suppress internal divisions through coercion. Perhaps the dollar system itself might be a fundamentally flawed system.

Apocryphon• 29 days ago

It arguably polarized the public, paving the way to today's sharp ideological divisions, because political differences suddenly were treated as matters of life and death compared to the laid-back '90s.

digitaltrees• 29 days ago

Before conservatives hurled TDS at democrats they called them unpatriotic when they said the war on terror would undermine civil liberties. Its rather annoying to see a title like this.

chaseadam17• 29 days ago

we're at the stage of the cycle where we know things are wrong but we don't care enough to do anything about them. unfortunately, it might not be until we live through the consequences that we can muster the energy to care enough again.

Havoc• 29 days ago

Cycle suggest this will revert. Think with current technology it’s possibly to build a silt sustaining autocracy

applicative4• 29 days ago

That my every movement is known to Google, Meta, Apple, et al, is much more disturbing than any autocratic effect of the dismal Patriot Act. The idea that ‘the state’ is the thing to fear, or even worth a moments’ thought, is basically childish and premodern. Witness eg the apotheosis of Snowden for revealing nugatory CIA corner cutting … in the same historical period when the above mentioned are completely hoovering up and relentlessly analyzing every datum about every American.

roarcher4• 29 days ago

Those corporations are certainly to be feared, but they don't have the power to impose violence or prison on you. The state does. It was the state that forced Snowden into exile. It is the state that is detaining people for the crime of walking out of Home Depot while speaking with an accent. Both must be kept in check.

inigyou12• 29 days ago

Google has the power to fire me from my job by deleting my Google account.

solidsnack9000• 29 days ago

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin#1750s

It's time to reconsider some of what we bought.

Animats• 29 days ago

Yes. History will record that bin Laden won. There's a pre-9/11 book about bin Laden, "The Man Who Declared War on America". Bin Laden was interviewed.

Consider the situation at the end of the Clinton administration. The US was at peace. The Soviet Union was gone. The US got along with China and Russia. No major enemies remained. The federal budget was balanced. Bin Laden looked at that, and realized that America had to be weakened before it could be defeated. That was his plan.

Mission accomplished.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bin_Laden:_The_Man_Who_Declare...

andsoitis3• 29 days ago

bin Laden won

are his people better off or are they worse off?

SpicyLemonZest4• 29 days ago

Al-Qaeda is larger and their allies in Afghanistan have further consolidated their rule. I might not call that "better off" but it's certainly in the direction bin Laden wanted things to go.

shakna3• 29 days ago

Most of the funding for the campaign came via Saudi Arabian citizens [0], and they have absolutely benefited from the change in political power in the Middle East.

[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20060311045338/http://news.bbc.c...

wmf• 29 days ago

Was his goal to provide for his people? I thought his goal was to bring down the Great Satan.

derektank• 29 days ago

Bin Laden’s ultimate objective was to evict US military forces from the Middle East. In response to 9/11, we massively expanded our footprint in the region and formed even deeper relationships with the Saudi government (whom Bin Laden hated for in his view, “[suspending] Islamic laws, and replacing it with statuary laws”). You can read it all in his original, late 90s declaration of jihad against the United States[1] and decide for yourself if you think he ultimately achieved what he wanted, but for my money, he lost basically everything. In the strictest sense, we did stop “occupying” (stationing troops) in Saudi Arabia itself after we kicked off the Iraq war and concentrated our forces in Iraq and at Al Udeid airbase, but I don’t think that was really the spirit of the thing.

[1] https://ctc.westpoint.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/10/Declara...

mullingitover3• 29 days ago

Bin Laden’s ultimate objective was to evict US military forces from the Middle East

Bush’s famous “Mission Accomplished” photo op was, ironically, on the same day US troops complied with bin Laden’s demand for them to leave Saudi Arabian soil.

JeremyNT• 28 days ago

I think there's a reasonable case to make that 9/11 broke American politics in a fundamental way, by fully unlocking and granting a permission structure for politicians to reach for nativism and xenophobia to justify basically everything.

It's clear that Bin Laden did not "win" in any immediate sense, but America might have still lost, so there's a claim to a Pyrrhic victory.

The truly erratic and unstable nature of the US regime in this moment unlocks strange possibilities that would otherwise have been unthinkable - for example, the current regime seeming to throw Israel to the wolves in order to cover its own military blunders.

nerdyadventurer• 28 days ago

All this due to US want to be hegemon, based all around the world. Why cannot live in harmony with others in a multi-polar world?

walrus01• 29 days ago

Yes. History will record that bin Laden won

Or as The Onion has put it:

https://theonion.com/fbi-uncovers-al-qaeda-plot-to-just-sit-...

rhubarbtree2• 29 days ago

Whilst I think there’s some truth to this, America’s elite would have brought us to this point anyway. Trump is a symptom of unfettered neoliberalism exporting jobs and destroying communities rather than a cause. Bin Laden drew America into forever wars and solidified their enemies in some dimensions. But America’s great downfall has been the ruthless pursuit of self-interest by its elite. They smashed the social compact and destroyed its institutions in the pursuit of profit.

I think Bin Laden will get a chapter in the book on the fall of America, but Reagan will be on the front cover.

pembrook5• 29 days ago

Oh come on. You’re trying to be edgy without any understanding of reality.

It’s like saying History will record Gavrilo Princip as having won WW1. Huh?

America’s current troubles are political polarization and ballooning deficits. Both of which are happening in every developed country, having nothing to do with 9/11. The foreign interventionism is a 100 year tradition in the US, nothing new under the sun.

The only thing Bin Laden accomplished is making air travel annoying, making some military contractors filthy rich, and getting hundreds of thousands of his Muslim brothers killed over values that are slowly eroding in the Middle East anyways.

The American global military empire was always going to decline over time, if anything, his actions reversed that decline and led to more American intervention. He got the opposite of what he wanted.

pjc504• 29 days ago

I do think spending a trillion dollars on Iraq might have something to do with the deficit.

watwut2• 29 days ago

America’s current troubles are political polarization and ballooning deficits.

American problem is one sided right wing radicalization, not polarization. If left of center moved the the right even more, the issues would remain.

emmelaich• 29 days ago

The problem started way before Bin Laden; in a large part due to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sayyid_Qutb and his brother Mohammed who taught Osama Bin Laden.

Many Muslims weren't political before the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muslim_Brotherhood got enough influence.

mrtksn• 29 days ago

What surprised me, was the indifference of people when all this was happening. Saying that the American response to the terrorist attacks was essentially the aim of the terrorist at first place and that they won just went unregistered - no counter arguments or rage or anything, no one cared about this claim.

1970-01-01• 29 days ago

I just don't buy this narrative. What primed the USA for decline was it's new allergy to manufacturing, addiction to social media, and Trump taking his spot as POTUS twice. If anything, these wars were something for everyone to worry about, which involved actual critical thinking. They were nowhere near the root cause.

UncleOxidant2• 29 days ago

Social media addiction didn't come around until about 2008 - and even then it took a few years to become widespread. Trump being elected twice isn't the cause of the decline, it's a symptom of it. The GWOT is one cause among many, but probably the one that pushed things over the edge. It led to both Iraq and Afghanistan wars which cost $Trillions that we borrowed and still haven't paid off. Not to mention the lost lives on all sides and further destabilization of the ME. Our over-reaction to 9/11 was the terrorists' dream. It's hard to imagine an outcome that would've been better from their perspective if their aim was to weaken and destabilize the US.

pstuart2• 29 days ago

I think the War on Drugs was the gateway drug to this insanity. It helped to create a more militarized police, and to condition us to surrender our rights because "think of the children!".

yanhangyhy2• 29 days ago

What do people really think about Mearsheimer's book? (John Mearsheimer, co-author of "The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy") His analysis and interpretation of the Jewish lobby provide excellent answers to a lot of questions. Perhaps this is a topic that isn't easy to discuss openly?

I don't want to make a sweeping statement that the U.S. is Israel's lapdog, but it is true that regarding many policies—especially those concerning the Middle East—the U.S. is essentially swayed by Israel.

Of course, right now J.D. Vance might represent a kind of domestic counter-force in the U.S. that leans more toward 'America First' rather than prioritizing Israel. Rubio is also a more pragmatic individual, and Trump is not your traditional politician who just blindly follows Israel's orders. Unfortunately, Trump might lose the next election, and the Democratic Party will absolutely revert the country back to its past status as a vassal state to Israel."

jazzpush22• 29 days ago

It's actually incredible that you can share that bottom paragraph with a straight face after we just went to war with Iran.

Let's discuss it openly, as you prime: how do you contrast what you just shared with the war, and Israel's actions after the agreed to ceasefire and declaration of war's end?

inigyou12• 29 days ago

In the last few DAYS the republican party has started putting on an anti-israel face to set up for the midterms, with JD Vance in particular giving a speech about how we need to separate from Israel. The democrat party, in its typical useless fashion, has not. So it looks at this point like the midterms will be another republican landslide.

lurk2• 29 days ago

Perhaps this is a topic that isn't easy to discuss openly?

Give it a few years.

J.D. Vance might represent a kind of domestic counter-force in the U.S. that leans more toward 'America First' rather than prioritizing Israel.

Do you mean like he’s going to drain the swamp?

yanhangyhy2• 29 days ago

Do you mean like he’s going to drain the swamp?

I'm not entirely sure either; after all, perhaps only Americans themselves know best. In China, Vance is generally considered to belong to the nativist camp. He doesn't support the U.S. attacking Iran and has been surprisingly quiet on this matter, as it would primarily benefit Israel rather than the United States. Therefore, if he were elected as the next president, we might see the U.S. and Israel gradually drift apart. Of course, powerful lobbying groups might prevent him from getting elected. To be honest, I don't really think Vance can succeed. I'm not entirely sure how much actual power the MAGA movement holds, but it seems they rely far too heavily on Trump's personal appeal.

bobjordan• 29 days ago

I subscribed to the economist from ~2008 for 10+ years before I cancelled. I'm mostly a centrist but admit to leaning libertarian these days, I think both sides do not represent "democracy" anymore, I do not trust the Democrats any more than Republicans in this regard. One only has to look at how the Democrats have turned California into a single party state to stop taking serious their tropes about anyone endangering "Democracy" more than they have when they've got a chance. Reading this article reinforces that I've only saved money and had time for other things than reading these thought pieces from biased echo chamber academics.

inigyou12• 29 days ago

Are there any sides other than democrats and republicans?

amanaplanacanal14• 29 days ago

How did the Democrats turn California into a single party state? By giving the voters what they want? How do you think democracy works?

arjie• 29 days ago

There's always some kind of monocausal influence claimed, but really that was like the Boer War in the early 1900s. America was certainly at top power in the last twenty years, but its alliance was already fracturing. The Western NATO members were pushing more of their productive capacity into social services and forming strong dependencies on Russian fossil fuels. China's ascendance also meant that the encirclement that US's presence in Europe + Taiwan + Japan (and those governments themselves) kept was going to need to be extra tight.

But Europe couldn't keep herself together, Taiwan was constrained by circumstances to not defence-spend-up and Japan is just moribund despite attempts to rebuild. Realistically, the US kept everyone together for some 40 years after the Berlin Wall fell and that's a pretty good run. Two generations in "Whitey's on the Moon" is a resurgent and wide culture, and China outproduces any other nation while domestically and internationally repudiating that culture.

Perhaps we were doomed to this path by the inexorable nature of success. Two generations have been born and enough time has passed that people have forgotten what it is like to fear the "awesome Soviet threat". The modern empire was a loose confederation of US-Europe and the East-Asian satrapies with a capital in DC perhaps but other capitals in London and Paris as well. And just like that Boer War showed the old British Empire could bleed so will Iran have done the same this time.

Doubtless when the need arises we will sweep away environmental law and historical protection law in order to build our factories but already the appetite for war is gone from America. Why Europe couldn't keep herself together and why America couldn't retain the alliance and why the modern Not-Empire fell will probably be written about, but I think it's worth remembering Kipling at the Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria who was then queen over an indomitable empire:

    Far-called, our navies melt away;
      On dune and headland sinks the fire:
    Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
      Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
    Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
    Lest we forget—lest we forget!

Or in the more elementary school warning manner: "This too shall pass". For my part, I certainly hope that "government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth" and that means our mighty opponents should not prevail because that is not their way of life. And certainly I do not think that lashing out at our allies or attempting to take for ourselves land which is nonetheless in this larger Not Empire is the way to ensure that.

At best, I hope that the Iran War teaches us where we are weak and we are wise enough to learn this, and I hope that the Not-Empire heals and order is restored in this world.

jmyeet3• 29 days ago

That's just not looking back far enough. The war on terror was a continuation. I'd say we're seeing the results of not stringing up all the slave owners after the Civil War.

American industrialists going back to the robber baron era and beyond have always loved autocracy, specifically fascism. This was heightened by the fear of communism. When FDR was elected, there was an attempted coup (ie the business plot [1]). Hitler was a fan of Henry Ford and named him in Mein Kampf. The Nazi regime enjoyed a certain amount of popularity in the US. There was a rally by the German American Bund in Madison Square Gardens in 1939. But FDR gave concessions to the working class that we still enjoy today (eg Social Security).

After WW2, we decided to make an enemy of Stalin (again, because communism). Thousands of former Nazis emigrated to the US (and, no, not just Operation Paper Clip; they were also in the CIA and FBI). Former Nazis gained high positions in the West German military and ultimatly NATO (eg Adolf Heuzinger [2]).

The mere existence of the Soviet Union forced the US government to give more concessions to the working class. The 1950s were incredibly prosperous as a result, in an era when the top marginal tax rate was 91% and the ratio of CEO to median wage was a fraction of what it is now.

The Fall of the Soviet Union was about the worst thing that could happen for normal Americans because suddenly there was no counterbalance to US global hegemony. The 1990s saw the Democrats abandon the New Deal in favor of Reagan economics and policies despite ~60 years of almost unbroken control of Congress up until that point. They then sowed the seeds for the destruction of American manufacturing and having an economy completely focused on hoarding land and housing. The 1990s is really where that began to go out of control.

My point is that history didn't begin with the war on terror. 9/11 itself was blowback from American imperialism that had been around since the 19th century.

I'd say if anything primed America for autocracy it was the domino effect from desegregation. This led to the political activation of the evangelical movement (no, it wasn't abortion) and evagelicals are primed to be followers. Add to this that there's no effective opposition because the Democrats decided to be Republican Lite and here we are.

All of this came about because a handful of very wealthy people wanted to be even wealthier at the expense of everyone else.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Plot

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adolf_Heusinger

vessenes2• 29 days ago

I’d like to pick on a couple points here that I think are not just nits:

more concessions to the working class. The 1950s were incredibly prosperous as a result

This is absolutely not a common read of the boom in the 1950s. The common read of the boom in the 1950s is that America leveraged its success in WW2 into a global imperial economy, exporting its goods everywhere in the world. The combination of massive manufacturing expansion at home during WW2, the brain drain into the US and the trade deals, power brokering and treaties that carved out the post war world order made America very wealthy. There is no world in which a “labor value” oriented economic order on its own would have resulted in an ‘incredibly prosperous’ 1950s without WW2.

The fall of the Soviet Union ushered in what I would consider more of a golden age, overseen by Clinton in the US, when we had a balanced budget, low global conflict and massively reduced inflation compared to Carter / Reagan early years. If you went back to 1994 and could have gotten 10% of working Americans to vote to return to 1980’s labor market, I’d be shocked. These were qualitatively different economic times. Post Iraq war, gas was at $0.99/gallon. In the earlier era you’re lionizing, there was rationing throughout the US.

I agree with your perspective on 9/11 being blowback, although I’d characterize it as blowback from our Middle East policy - I haven’t read a lot about Bin Laden, although I did read his manifesto — and I didn’t take away that he cared much about 18th century American imperialism (such as it was; we got much more effective at this in the 20th century in my opinion).

jmyeet3• 29 days ago

The common read of the boom in the 1950s is that America leveraged its success in WW2 into a global imperial economy, exporting its goods everywhere in the world.

I absolutely agree that the US massively benefited from WW2. For one, no war was fought on the American mainland (as opposed to, say, Europe and Japan, which were levelled). We benefitted from being the arms dealer. The post-1945 world order was reconstructed or built to our benefit. All of this is true.

But where did this wealth land? Wealth and income inequality actually shrank from 1945 to the 1970s and has exploded since [1][2].

The combination of massive manufacturing expansion at home during WW2 ...

And why was there manufacturing then but manufacturing has been hollowed out now? Where does the money go now? We had way more capital controls in the post-WW2 era. Now all the money just seems to speculate on real estate. And this is something Adam Smith and Karl Marx agreed on: landlords are parasites on the economy.

The fall of the Soviet Union ushered in what I would consider more of a golden age, overseen by Clinton in the US

Clinton was a disaster. I suspect you feel this way because you came of age in the 1990s maybe? The 1994 crime bill, financial deregulation (eg repealing Glass-Steagall), welfare "reforms", replacing federal programs with state block grants, effectively ending public housing (ie the Faircloth Amendment), NAFTA, three strikes rules, the list goes on. It was the Clinton administration where the so-called "New Democrats" divorced themselves from the labor movement and decided they wanted that sweet, sweet corporate PAC money.

If you opposed what the current Republican governments are doing and you're scratching your head wondering why there's no real opposition, you can point the finger directly at Bill Clinton as to why. Obama was also a generational missed opportunity here but I digress.

In the earlier era you’re lionizing, there was rationing throughout the US.

... because of US imperialism, specifically the US support for Israel.

I’d characterize it as blowback from our Middle East policy

No argument here. But our Middle East policy was US imperialism. Also, it's worth noting that we directly created bin Laden as one of the mujahadeen we used as a foil against the Soviets in Afghanistan as payback for Vietnam (basically).

[1] https://www.cbpp.org/research/poverty-and-inequality/a-guide...

[2] https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/exploding-wealth-inequality-u...

consensus1• 29 days ago

This, and all other grand historical narratives, are completely contrived to support whatever bone the author has to pick. X happened before Y != X caused Y.

SkyEyedGreyWyrm• 29 days ago

I'd like to expand on your comment, while the North/South lines drawn by the US Civil War are a common talking point, the influence of the west coast on how America has ended up as it has is not talked often enough, as an example Hebert Hoover was very influential in US policy as the last (living) American president after the death of FDR and a very connected indiviual who opposed New Deal policies, not mentioning his involvement in Japan and Germany, and that is before getting into the Hoover Institution or the Heritage Foundation

fallous2• 29 days ago

Your argument/timeline seems a bit confused in a couple of places. Our problem was "not stringing up all the slave owners after the Civil War," yet you then point out American industrialists (going back to the robber baron era) loved fascism. But the industrial parts of the US were the Northern states, not the South. Additionally you complain that the Democrats are no effective opposition but don't appear to consider that the Democratic Party would be even less effective if you had strung up all the slave owners after the Civil War given that it was that party which chose to secede from the Union in order to maintain slavery.

History indeed did not begin with the War on Terror, but I'm not sure you're entirely familiar with it.

jmyeet3• 29 days ago

Saying the Democrats were the Southern secessionists ignores the revolt against civil rights in the 1950s and 1960s and the Southern Strategy [1]. All the Dixiecrats simply became Republicans.

Also, the slave owners who got strung up should probably have included Andrew Johnson. Without Lincoln's unfortunately untimely demise or without Johnson we may well have avoided Confederate leaders regaining power and the whole Redeemer era of winding back rghts for the former enslaved.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy

Pxtl• 29 days ago

There are people walking around today who voted Bush twice and regretted it and now voted Trump three times and regretted it.

I wonder what war they'll regret next?

voakbasda• 29 days ago

I have regretted everyone that I ever voted for. Every candidate will ultimately be regrettable, because it’s not the candidate that’s bad - it is the system itself that has become irredeemably corrupt.

UncleOxidant2• 29 days ago

A friend went to an Obama rally in '08 when he came to town. Later he said, I'm sure I'll regret voting for him, but I'm also pretty sure I'll regret it less than most votes I've taken.

userbinator3• 29 days ago

The big problem is that if the USA doesn't start wars, other countries are certainly more than willing to start them against us.

inigyou12• 29 days ago

Which? Why?

wildrhythms• 29 days ago

Peddling the same old "might makes right" ideology I see.

amanaplanacanal14• 29 days ago

Wasn't Japan the last country to attack the US, almost 85 years ago? Nobody does it because there is no profit in it.

NordStreamYacht2• 29 days ago

FTA:

"In 1776 the American colonists rebelled against what they saw as the arbitrary and tyrannical British monarchy."

I like the sly use of "what they saw" - typical British snark.

JuniperMesos2• 29 days ago

There's plenty of American historiography that questions the motivations of the American revolution and how tyrannical the British monarchy was actually.

amanaplanacanal14• 29 days ago

I would guess that average folks living under the "tyrannical British monarchy" had as much or more freedom than Americans do now.

The-Old-Hacker• 28 days ago

Rosa Brooks, the author of the piece, is American.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosa_Brooks

SubiculumCode• 29 days ago

The elevation of the Executive branch the last and this century has led to this primordial autocracy. Say no to the royal perogative, and accept the more limited powers of Execution of Law.

https://jach.law.wisc.edu/exec-power-royal-prerogative-found...

pstuart2• 29 days ago

It would help if Congress wasn't sabotaged to enable this; and to have a major political party that effectively wants a king.

We were rightfully warned on the dangers of political parties and it's well demonstrated that that warning was correct in its assessment.

The fact that millions of Americans declare themselves to be loyal to their party first and foremost is terrifying. Evil people have weaponized the tribal stupidity of humans to trick them to vote against their own best interests.

I take no satisfaction in saying this, and would love to be proven wrong.

frogperson2• 28 days ago

You are right. So many parts of are system were designed for minority rule and haven't been changed in 250 years. The senate, fptp voting, no voting holidays, the electoral college and more. the wealthyvhave always and will always try to by pass democracy.

beej71• 28 days ago

I left "my" party a long, long time ago. I wish everyone would, but people really, really want to tribe up even if doing so fractures their own nation. (And sometimes especially if it does.)

Before I got banned from redstate.com 20 years ago for sharing an unflattering fact about a particular Congress, I remember one person there being genuinely uncomfortable with the fact that I wouldn't declare myself to be in one camp or the other. They really wanted me to be in a certain bucket so they'd know how to treat me. It was unnerving to them.

akramachamarei• 28 days ago

Well, more Americans are declaring themselves politically independent, so we may be moving in a better direction, at least nominally:

https://news.gallup.com/poll/700499/new-high-identify-politi...

Jensson2• 28 days ago

That exists in every single country, your political system not being able to handle that is the main issue. The voters are never the issue, the system is.

Mistletoe• 29 days ago

After 9/11 is when the country I loved began its descent into this mutated form, a country I don’t recognize today.

0xbadcafebee• 29 days ago

The war on terror was a great example of doublethink. First there's the name, which is redundant (war is already terrible/terrorizing). Then there's the fact that we inspired 9/11 to begin with. We trained and funded Al Qaeda in their fight with the Russians. Then we inserted ourselves into Middle East politics for financial reasons (we invaded Iraq the first time after Saddam threatened to take over the global supply of oil, which we were heavily dependent on with a secret deal with Saudi Arabia propping up the petrodollar). Finally we committed terrorism by razing Iraq and Afghanistan, destabilizing the entire region, illegally renditioning/torturing people and keeping them indefinitely in prison without a trial, growing the world-wide heroin trade, and giving birth to more radical militant groups (we directly caused the creation of ISIS and helped strengthen the Taliban). Our War on Terror birthed more terror in the Middle East at one time than has ever happened in history.

The War on Terror was also an early sign of kleptocracy in the US Executive by conservatives. There was massive waste, fraud and abuse, in the billions of dollars. People working in the executive directly profited by making sure their corporations won bids, and dollars sent overseas just vanished. The people who decided to wage war got rich off it. (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/13/opinion/afghanistan-war-e...)

rob74• 29 days ago

Less than a month after 9/11 President George W. Bush invaded Afghanistan, starting a war that would last for 20 years and kill more than 6,000 American military personnel and contractors before its ignominious end.

...and again (despite the Economist being British), the US-centric view that led to Trump declaring that NATO has never done anything for the US. In fact, after the US was the first (and so far only) country to invoke NATO article 5 after the 9/11 attacks, NATO troops were also sent to Afghanistan, and Wikipedia lists the following military casualty numbers:

USA: 2420

UK: 457

Canada: 159

France: 90

Germany: 62

Italy: 53

Others: 338

more details, including deaths per million population, where Georgia and Denmark are before the US: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_casualties_in_Afghan...

maciejw2• 29 days ago

I recommend a book 'Silk Roads' by Peter Frankopan. It’s an attempt to show world’s history as a continuous movement of center of civilizational gravity. It’s not without flaws, but interesting nonetheless.

Frankopan describes most of modern US history as a series of blunders. This approach is maybe a bit harsh, but it shows how difficult it is for a dominant power to stay on top.

I would summarise the book with a sentence „When you reach the top, the seeds of your decline are already planted”. In fact you can look at China or India - future dominant powers, and guess which of their flaws will make them fall.

civet_java• 28 days ago

I recommend a book 'Silk Roads' by Peter Frankopan.

Thank you for the recommendation!

In fact you can look at China or India - future dominant powers, and guess which of their flaws will make them fall.

Are these flaws talked about in the book or are they something you've worked out since after you read the book?

maciejw2• 25 days ago

I was referring to some factual errors and omissions that make other historians angry. But the narrative is captivating.

throwitaway222• 29 days ago

Bush did far more evil things and non-legal killings than Trump. He CREATED Ice, homeland security, etc.. So yeah, Bush was THE authoritarian, no need to jump forward 15 years, that's just TDS. Trump for the most part is just reinforcing existing laws, something that simply stopped happening during Biden's term. If you really think Trump is more authoritarian, then you forgot.

Never Forget.

amanaplanacanal14• 29 days ago

He hasn't exactly been out there speaking up against Trump either.

I can't tell if he is just simple minded or what. He always appears to be well meaning, and it's tempting to blame his advisors for all the awful stuff that happened on his watch.

Maybe the real test of a leader is to see who he chooses as his advisors. Bush was terrible, and Trump is even worse.

dartharva• 29 days ago

Juvenile ad hominem

TripleFFF• 29 days ago

Actually, it was the acceptance of blatantly and provably wrong information used to justify attacking an unrelated country and then deciding it didn't warrant any further investigation, justification or consequences that proved American fascism

agnosticmantis• 29 days ago

Any policy/weapon/tech used against an outgroup (e.g. brown people across the ocean) can and will eventually be used against the ingroup (citizens voting for it) by an inner ingroup.

Sooner or later any ingroup will itself be divided into an inner ingroup in power and a powerless outer ingroup who'll be treated just like the old outgroup.

aa-jv4• 29 days ago

A nation willfully ruled by war criminals will always become their final victim.

Americans need to start prosecuting their war criminals. This is the only way out of the quagmire.

noduerme3• 29 days ago

I agree that 9/11 primed America for totalitarianism, but as someone who was tear gassed protesting our invasion of Iraq and the Patriot Act, I don't think we're living in an autocracy. I've lived in too many autocratic countries now to think that that's anywhere close to the truth..America cannot possibly be compared to China or Russia in terms of the freedom living in the country to say (and do!) what you want, protected by a fairly rigorous rule of law that is still not subject to the whim of the ruling party. America more closely resembles an anarchic zone between a failed or wannabe autocratic regime and two anti-government movements, one right-wing and one left-wing. It's a nutty situation, but it definitely prevents either party from implementing anything even remotely resembling autocratic rule, to the extent that term has meaning in any other part of the world. Any sort of objective look at American political debate makes this patently obvious.

The closest parallel to America right now is Argentina prior to the dictatorship. If or when the real dictatorship comes, you'll know it, because just as in Russia you won't be publishing articles about it.

aa-jv4• 29 days ago

The Military Industrial Complex is the autocracy - the revolving door between the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the CFR - which are the entities really running the country (for the purposes of massively profitable military mis-adventures).

https://www.transparency.org/en/corruptionary/revolving-door

From a certain angle, it actually looks less like an autocracy and more like a military junta which has captured both 'sides' and puppet-masters either one depending on the mood of the masses, according to the needs of the MIC - which gets everything it wants without interference by "The People".

noduerme3• 29 days ago

That's nonsense, clearly, because we've just elected two - no, make that four Presidents in a row who used the Military Industrial Complex in radically divergent ways to different ends.

If we test the theory that American Presidents are beholden to the military industrial complex and not vice versa, compared to actually authoritarian countries in which the military basically is the government, we can see all sorts of civilian controls which restrain our government versus the others.

When I said it was like Argentina in the 60s, I meant that it definitely could become a quasi-mitary autocratic regime, but at the present moment it is not. It's just in the throes of populist movements which might ultimately lead to such a thing. Any objective glance at actual military regimes, any knowledge whatsoever of the rest of the world's history, proves immediately to a casual observer that the United States is not currently comparable to a military dictatorship.

The attempt to frame it as one, however, is blatantly ignorant of the current state of the world, to the degree that the motivation behind doing so is suspect. Really, only a shill for a dictatorship is interested in trying to prove that America is analogous to an autocratic state. An objective observer who wasn't being paid or hadn't bought into authoritarian propaganda would at least compare and contrast our legal system with the true, terrible, and numerous actual dictatorships all around the world.

TrackerFF• 29 days ago

A bunch of anti-ICE protesters in Texas were recently sentenced to 50-100 year prison sentences. It is one of the more egregious things I've read.

The long and short of it is: A bunch of people organized (over group chat) a protest in Texas, where their plan was to conduct noise protest with fireworks. Some of the people knew each others, some did not.

When they met up, some of the protesters broke off from the group and started vandalizing gov. property, like slashing up car tires.

This all culminated with a gov. guard approaching the people, guns drawn. One protestor fired at the guard from distance with a AR-15, and the guard was struck in the shoulder. The shooter argued that he believed the guard would fire at the group - he was handed a 100 year sentence due to attempted murder.

The rest of the group were found guilty in planning and aiding a violent terrorist attack, and handed 50 year and up sentences. If you look into the actual details of what they were charged with, and the things actually done, it gets even more wild.

This was possible due to "antifa" being designated a terrorist organization.

What this means in practice, at least in Texas, is that if you're part of a organized protest, and something goes wrong, you can and probably will be charged as a terrorist, or aiding a terrorist, and face life behind bars.

I have no doubt that if / when dems dethrone Trump and MAGA GOP, all but the shooter will be pardoned, and the terrorist designation of antifa will be removed - but we now see that designated antifa works as they intended: To charge anyone protesting Trump or his controlled organizations as "antifa", and thus label them as domestic terrorists.

r721• 29 days ago

Here's a flagged discussion of that: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48653311

expedition322• 29 days ago

Autocracy is part of American culture. The US parliament has always been weak and filled with people who's only purpose is to clap.

frogperson2• 28 days ago

make no mistake, the people behind this play the long game. the council for national policy has been working hard towards these goals since the 60s. the people who want to rule, do not want to deal with democracy. they do not want to ask permission.

rurban• 28 days ago

It's not a war on terror. It's just a war on civil rights.

The war on terror primed America for autocracy

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