Mike Johnson’s Historic Choice

Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson faces a critical decision that could align his legacy with that of Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, who, in 1920, spearheaded the Senate Republicans’ rejection of the Treaty of Versailles, thus declining United States membership in the new League of Nations.

This was a stunning defeat for President Woodrow Wilson, who had championed the League as an alternative to the imperialism and power politics he considered responsible for World War I. The League sought to ensure peace by committing members to come to the defense of any other members who faced aggression. The prospect of a collective response would give pause to any aggressor otherwise tempted to attack a weaker neighbor.

But without the leadership of the United States, already the greatest power of the era, the League’s collective security mechanism lost all credibility. When Japan invaded China in 1931, the League sent a fact-finding team, but otherwise failed to act. Following Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia in 1935, the League imposed some ineffective sanctions, but was otherwise helpless to reverse Italy’s aggression. The League likewise stood by while Nazi Germany took the Sudetenland in 1938.

Through all these events, as the world stumbled toward a second world war within a generation, the United States sought safety in isolation. A meek giant, lulled into complacency by its geographic remoteness, the United States sat on the sidelines as aggressors threatened the peace in both Europe and Asia. Massive rallies organized under the slogan “America First,” sought to avoid the kinds of sacrifices that had been made along the trench lines in Europe a generation earlier.

Alas, peace and security could not be bought so cheaply. American security was bound up with the security of others. The American economy could not thrive if hostile rivals used violence to gain exclusive control over vast concentrations of industrial power and raw materials. Our democracy would be imperiled in a world dominated by autocracies. The isolationist illusion was finally punctured by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Following World War II, a new generation of leaders accepted the responsibilities of global leadership and built a set of American-centered alliances to keep the peace in Europe and East Asia. These alliances have secured the basis for spheres of remarkable peace, prosperity, and democracy in both regions, even in the face of great power threats both past and present.

The continued stability and peace in Europe and Asia depend upon the strength and credibility of the American commitments to the security of our partners. And this is where Mike Johnson faces a choice potentially as momentous as that of Senator Henry Cabot Lodge. Johnson holds the fate of Ukraine in his hands, and so too the standing of America’s international leadership.

Although Ukraine is not a treaty ally, the United States, both individually and through NATO, has made public commitments to assist Ukraine in defending itself from Russian aggression. The very fact that the current arms aid package for Ukraine has been held up in Congress for months has already harmed the credibility of America’s word.

Should the standoff result in a failure to resume arms shipments – especially if followed by major Russian battlefield advances – America’s friends and rivals alike will be forced to reconsider their strategic position in a world of renewed American isolationism. Already, Donald Trump’s reckless threats to pull out of NATO have damaged the alliance regardless of whether he wins the presidency or carries through on the threat. Our allies now understand that America’s commitment to their security is in question. And so do our rivals.

Speaker Johnson should calm such fears by bringing an aid package for Ukraine to a vote in the House, where it would likely pass. If he fails to do so, then this moment may well be remembered as a turning point akin to the failure of the League of Nations vote in the Senate, and the first step into a new era of isolationism and insecurity.

Henry Kissinger: China’s ‘Old Friend’

In the West, no shortage of commentators were quick to denounce Henry Kissinger as a war criminal upon his death. China’s media, by contrast, hailed Kissinger as an “old friend of the Chinese people” and a “distinguished American diplomat” known around the world for the “wisdom” of his diplomacy.

China’s embrace of Henry Kissinger began with his secret 1971 trip to Beijing to launch the process of normalization of relations between the United States and China. This past July, during Kissinger’s 100^th trip to China, he was treated to a personal meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in the very meeting place where Kissinger sat down with Premier Zhou Enlai fifty-two years earlier. Xi went out of his way to flatter Kissinger: “The Chinese people never forget their old friends, and Sino-U.S. relations will always be linked with the name of Henry Kissinger.”

The term “old friend” has an oddly personal and sentimental ring that seems out of place in a diplomatic context, yet it is frequently applied not only to Kissinger but also to other foreigners who are viewed with favor by the Chinese leadership. The term was first used in a 1956 edition of the People’s Daily in reference to American missionary James Gareth Endicott who became an unwavering defender of the Chinese Communist Party after the 1949 revolution.

Another early “old friend” was Edgar Snow, an American journalist who joined the Communist forces at their Yunnan base in the 1930s and who wrote a widely influential and flattering portrait of the movement titled Red Star Over China. Between 1956 and 2011, over six hundred individuals from 123 countries were granted the title of “old friend.”

In his once-classified study of Chinese negotiating behavior written for the RAND Corporation in 1985, former U.S. State Department and National Security Council official Richard Solomon noted: “The frequently used term “friendship” implies to the Chinese a strong sense of obligation for the ‘old friend’ to provide support and assistance to China.”

In her 2000 dissertation for Australian National University, political scientist Anne-Marie Brady quotes from a 1995 official Chinese handbook on foreign affairs: “The more friends we have the better, yet we also have to be selective. We especially want to make friends with such foreigners who are friendly to us, have some social prestige, have economic power, or academic achievements, or have political influence; this will be most advantageous for the achievement of a peaceful international environment and to support our nation’s economic construction.”

In short, the term “old friend” is bestowed on individuals considered sympathetic to Chinese views and aims who are in a position to serve China’s interests. An “old friend” will be feted with “special access and privileges” to the extent that they continue to act in ways desired by the Chinese state.

Ryan Ho Kilpatrick points out that the two countries accounting for the most “old friends” are the United States and Japan – both having histories of conflict with China. This makes sense because the utility of an “old friend” lies in their willingness to defend China even when this conflicts with the policies of their own government.

Henry Kissinger was a sophisticated man who well understood the transactional nature of his status as an “old friend” of China and he lived up to his end of the bargain. With access to the highest levels of power in both the United States and China, Kissinger played the role of an intermediary, passing backchannel messages between the leaderships and shaping coverage of events through media interviews and commentaries.

Kissinger sometimes allowed himself to be used by Beijing in ways that were embarrassing to D.C. Xi’s meeting with Kissinger during the latter’s aforementioned trip to Beijing in July 2023, served as an implicit rebuke of the Biden Administration set against Xi’s refusal to hold a one-on-one with U.S. climate enjoy and former Secretary of State John Kerry, whose visit to Beijing overlapped with that of Kissinger.

Kissinger was of greatest service to China during times of crisis in the bilateral relationship. Shortly following the violent suppression of pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square Beijing on June 4, 1989, Kissinger responded to Congressional moves to sanction China with an op-ed declaring: “A crackdown was inevitable” and “China remains too important for America’s national security to risk the relationship on the emotions of the moment.” Kissinger privately counseled President George H.W. Bush to resist pressures to punish Beijing and lobbied Congress against sanctions. In November of that year, Kissinger travelled to Beijing where, in a meeting with senior leaders, he is reported to have said regarding international reactions to the massacre: “China’s propaganda work has been insufficient.”

Kissinger gained much as an “old friend” of China. His continued access and relevance in China heightened Kissinger’s value to the many corporate boards on which he served and created business opportunities for his firm Kissinger Associates. By reminding onlookers of his key role in the opening to China, Kissinger burnished a reputation that otherwise took a beating as critical treatments of overall record in office proliferated over time.

Friendship is a precious commodity. Long ago, China made an investment in Henry Kissinger by bestowing him with the title of “old friend” along with the privileges that came with it. That investment brought a half century of returns.

Beyond the Biden-Xi Summit: We have Staunched the Bleeding in US-China Relations. Now Can the Patient Be Revived?

While the relationship between the United States and China has been through many ups and downs since President Richard Nixon’s historic trip to Beijing in 1972, the turn toward outright confrontation over the past few years has threatened the interests of both countries and the world. By all accounts, the meeting between Presidents Joseph Biden and Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in San Francisco has, for the time being, served to halt this downward spiral.

But can we do better than simply staunch the bleeding? Can a healthier relationship between Washington and Beijing be revived? It may seem a long shot given the hawkish moods in each country and the very real conflicting interests between a long-time global leader and a rising challenger. But the alternative path – leading to a massive arms race, military brinkmanship, and painful economic disruption – is not one we should lightly accept. Moreover, critical global problems cannot be successfully addressed without cooperation between the world’s two most powerful states. To move beyond the minimal goal of stabilizing a seriously degraded big power relationship, the U.S. needs to develop a strategy of cooperation, alongside the competitive strategies so often touted by the Biden Administration.

The Biden Administration’s recent diplomatic blitz to reengage with China is partly motivated by a realization of such costs. But it also arises from a sense that efforts during the early years of the Biden presidency to strengthen U.S. alliances and military posture in the region along with a strong U.S. economic recovery combined with China’s sputtering economic performance have strengthened America’s hand in dealing with China. The timing for reengagement is ripe.

But how to move beyond the plucking of a few low-hanging fruit? Here are five principles that should guide U.S. efforts to steer U.S.-China relations back to healthier and more sustainable balance between competition and cooperation.

First, avoid overemphasizing the ideological aspects of U.S.-China competition. Biden has repeatedly underlined the conflict between democracy and authoritarianism as a key organizing framework for U.S. foreign policy. This framing has reinforced Beijing’s fear that the U.S. aims to challenge the legitimacy of its communist system of government and spur popular opposition to its rule. This, for instance, is how Xi Jinping interpreted the Hong Kong democracy protests of 2019, which China’s media frequently attributed to foreign subversion. Biden’s repeated references to Xi Jinping as a “dictator” are interpreted in a similar vein.

The U.S. message must be that, while we hold dear our own commitment to democracy and reserve the right to speak out against major human rights abuses, such as those against Muslim minorities in Xinjiang, America does not seek to undermine the internal authority of the Chinese Communist Party. Rather, Washington’s interest lies in influencing the external policies of China where they impact U.S. interests and those of our allies. An overly ideological approach only sparks Beijing’s paranoia while also making it more difficult to rally non-democratic states to our own side when their support is needed. 

Second, the U.S. should right-size our estimation of China’s strengths and weaknesses. A few years ago, many Americans held an exaggerated sense of China’s strength, with many despairing that the U.S. was doomed to fall behind. More recently, an opposite narrative has taken hold. China’s slowing growth, massive debt, and aging population are viewed as weaknesses meaning that we have already witnessed “peak China,” with inexorable decline to follow. Both are exaggerations. China is a formidable great power and a far stronger challenger to U.S. power than the Soviet Union ever was. But the U.S. has strengths in technology, accumulated wealth, geographic position, alliance relationships, military assets, and soft power that China is unlikely to surpass. Exaggerating China’s strengths leads to panicked reactions, such as mutually costly efforts to kneecap China’s economic development. The opposite assessment can lead either to complacency or to dangerously assertive bullying. A measured evaluation of the China challenge will motivate the U.S. to take steps to enhance our own political and economic well-being from a position of self-confidence.

Third, the U.S. should seek to strengthen a vibrant multilateral order that includes China. The biggest factor working in the U.S. favor is the strength of the multilateral institutions, such as the United Nations, World Bank and World Trade Organization, that the U.S. itself helped to create. These organizations enhance collaboration, provide collective goods, maintain order, and strengthen the international rule of law. The most important thing that the U.S. can do in its relationship with China is to both strengthen these institutions and make sure China is included. The Biden Administration, unlike the Trump Administration and much of the Republican Party, has championed the first part of this formulation but not the second. Biden has attempted to repair the damage done by the Trump Administration’s hostility toward multilateral institutions. But he has given preference to institutions that exclude China and to ad hoc groupings aimed against China.

Yet China’s engagement with international institutions, even where in a fashion that challenges U.S. dominance, gives China a stake in the status quo and brings the weight of the international community to bear on restraining Chinese behavior. Although the theory that engagement with China would lead to its democratic transformation proved erroneous, the institutionalist argument for engagement has stronger support. China, for example, is now seeking to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), a project that the U.S. initiated and then abandoned. Were it to join, China would be required to meet high level trade standards and reform many of the practices that are the sources of complaints by foreign investors and trade partners. The U.S. should not only welcome China’s entry to the CPTPP, but negotiate its own reentry to the agreement.

Fourth, the current bias in favor of sticks should be leavened with a dose of carrots, and both should be tied to explicit conditions. U.S. policy toward China in recent years has been all sticks and no carrots. Worse, the U.S. has seldom stated what China could do to earn relief from sanctions. The theory behind the application of unconditional sticks is that the U.S. should focus on undercutting China’s capabilities because nothing the U.S. attempts can realistically change China’s behavior. But this may actually turn reality on its head. Given time, target states can typically find ways to blunt the impact of economic sanctions or match increases in military arms. Behavior, on the other hand, is easier to influence by changing the cost/benefit calculus of the target. Either sticks or carrots may be employed for this purpose, but to be effective, both must be connected to specific demands with the prospect that sticks will be withdrawn, or carrots delivered should the demands be met.

An example of the ineffective use of leverage are the trade tariffs that were imposed by the Trump Administration and remain in place. While the tariffs are ultimately paid by American consumers, China would like the tariffs removed since their exporters are placed at a disadvantage. Imposed as a stick, the tariffs could now serve as a carrot to obtain concessions from China, yet the U.S. refuses to state what steps the Chinese would need to take for the tariffs to be lifted. Generally, the U.S. should focus less on punishing China than on employing an efficient set of incentives designed to alter Chinese behavior.

Fifth, the U.S. should seek to reassure China where the latter holds unfounded fears of U.S. intentions. When states take steps to enhance their own security, they can unwittingly set in motion security dilemmas, whereby such steps threaten the security of other states. Each state then becomes ensnared in a spiral of hostility and arms racing. The only way out of a security dilemma is to provide the rival state with signals of reassurance and restraint in hopes of gaining reciprocity from the other side. There are many opportunities where this idea could be applied in U.S.-China relations. For instance, the U.S. has responded to the increasingly lopsided military balance across the Taiwan strait by taking steps to reinforce deterrence. Beijing, however, has interpreted these moves as a creeping strategy for eventual recognition of Taiwanese independence. China then rachets up pressures on Taiwan and the risks of war rise. The U.S. should seek ways to balance deterrence against a Chinese military strike on Taiwan with reassurance that the U.S. does not and will not support any unilateral Taiwanese move toward independence.  Strategies of cooperation bring risks. The other side may not reciprocate or may take undue advantage by pocketing concessions without offering any of its own. A rival may interpret gestures of cooperation as weakness and increase demands. That is why strategies of cooperation must be carefully hedged, so that the initiator has the option of shifting back to a more confrontational approach if necessary. In the current atmosphere, perhaps the best that can be expected is to put a floor beneath the U.S.-China relationship. Yet it is worth considering the possibilities of a more ambitious effort to normalize the relationship, if only because the risks and costs of failing to do so are so great.

David Skidmore is a Professor of Political Science at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa. He is currently at work on a book dealing with China’s international development finance and the West’s response.

SCRUTINIZING KISSINGER

(On the occasion of Henry Kissinger’s 100th birthday, I am sharing this review of Walter Isaacson’s biography of Kissinger that first appeared in The Review of Politics in 1994.)

Walter Isaacson: Kissinger: A Biography. (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992.
Pp. 893. $30.00.)

If, as Henry Kissinger once confided, power is the ultimate aphrodisiac, then few men have more fully or openly surrendered themselves to its seductions than America’s most celebrated statesman of recent decades. Walter Isaacson’s entertaining biography offers an intimate glimpse into Kissinger’s lifelong love affair with power politics.

Isaacson follows Kissinger life from his childhood in Germany, through his rise to power during the Nixon era and, finally, to his most recent roles as media pundit and business entrepreneur. Opinions about Henry Kissinger, pro or con, are often strongly held. In contrast with many previous treat­ments, Isaacson strikes a careful balance in his portrayal of the man. Avoid­ing caricature, the author’s tone is neither fawning nor condemnatory.

Isaacson pays tribute to Kissinger’s intellectual brilliance and lauds his principal achievements, including the initiation of detente with the Soviet Union and the opening to China. Kissinger is credited with preserving American power and engagement with the world at a time when the domes­tic mood tilted dangerously toward isolationism.

Yet there remains plenty of grist here for Kissinger’s many critics. Although Isaacson’s own judgments are rather reserved, perhaps overly so, the overall portrait he paints is hardly a flattering one. Kissinger emerges as a deeply flawed character, guilty of overweening ambition and capable of needless cruelty. While his record in power includes significant accomplishments, the overall legacy seems less profound or lasting in hindsight.

Isaacson emphasizes the degree to which the nation’s diplomacy came to reflect Kissinger’s own personal style and beliefs. Yet, owing to Kissinger’s multiple personas, the relationship was seldom simple. There was Kissinger the grand geopolitical thinker, his mind ranging across sweeping historical generalizations, Kissinger the tireless diplomat, wearing down negotiating partners with his tireless command of detail, and Kissinger the petty ma­nipulator, obsessed with perceived slights and endlessly engaged in devious bureaucratic games.

Despite his well-deserved reputation for imperious arrogance, Kissinger suffered from deep-seated insecurities. He craved the approval of others and felt compelled to explain himself to his critics. While tyrannical toward his subordinates and manipulative toward his peers, Kissinger often indulged in displays of obsequious deference toward his superiors. Kissinger sought out a series of mentors over the years including Fritz Kraemer, his army superior, William Elliot, his graduate adviser at Harvard, Nelson Rockefeller, his early political patron, and Richard Nixon, his White House boss.

Kissinger’s relationship with Nixon was tortuous. Among his subordi­nates, Kissinger spoke of Nixon with undisguised contempt. While admir­ing Nixon’s courage and perseverance, Kissinger considered the president a lonely and pathetic figure who lived in a Walter Mitty-like world of se!f­ delusion. Yet Kissinger was the ultimate courtier in Nixon’s presence. Kissinger suffered Nixon’s anti-Semitic remarks without complaint and ingratiated himself with his boss by reinforcing Nixon’s paranoid fears and embracing the cult of toughness that Nixon so fervently preached. He spent many hours stroking Nixon’s fragile ego and assiduously sought to mo­nopolize Nixon’s access to foreign policy advice.

Kissinger’s political philosophy, his personality and his diplomatic prac­tice were all driven by political realism, a doctrine which provided the intellectual and spiritual core of Kissinger’s life. Isaacson traces his embrace of realism to Kissinger’s childhood experiences. As a Jewish boy growing up in Germany, Kissinger witnessed the chaotic disintegration of the Weimar Republic and the rise of Nazism. This left him with a deep appreciation for the values of order, stability and legitimacy. Pessimistic about human nature, Kissinger rejected the liberal belief in the inevitability of progress. He viewed power, not moral ideals, as the driving force of history. The role of the statesman was to maneuver within the confines of choice carved out by the objective forces of historical movement. He thus rejected the extremes of either historical determinism or limitless free will.

Kissinger’s brand of realism could take brutal form. Adopting a globalist viewpoint that took scant account of local realities, Kissinger saw every affront to American power as a Soviet-inspired test of U.S. resolve. Only an unblinking demonstration of strength could preserve American credibility. This hard-nosed perspective lay behind Kissinger’s endorsement of the bombing and invasion of Cambodia, the Christmas bombing of Hanoi, the campaign to destabilize Salvador Allende’s government in Chile and U.S. aid to rebel factions in Angola. Kissinger’s sometimes appalling moral blind­ness was evident in his long-held (though eventually reversed) backing of the white minority regime in South Africa and his support for continued military assistance to Indonesia despite its bloody invasion and suppression of neighboring East Timor.

Nixon, of course, shared Kissinger’s fondness for realpolitik. Both em­braced a paranoid view of the world that took various forms, including, eventually, a large measure of distrust and jealousy toward one another. Nixon and Kissinger’s secretiveness, along with their contempt for both the Congress and the foreign affairs bureaucracy, are legendary. Isaacson ar­gues, perhaps correctly, that a degree of secrecy and surprise were necessary to the success of some of the administration’s principal initiatives. If pursued openly through formal channels, it is unlikely that either the initial steps toward detente with the Soviet Union or the opening to China would have survived bureaucratic or congressional resistance.

Yet secrecy and the banishment of expertise each exacted their price. Relying upon his own backchannel to bypass the formal U.S. bargaining team, Kissinger bungled crucial aspects of the SALT I negotiations and provided the Soviets with the opportunity to play the two channels against one another. In the 1 971 India-Pakistan war, Kissinger insisted, against accurate State Department advice to the contrary, upon viewing India as a Soviet proxy. Kissinger’s subsequent tilt toward the brutal Pakistani regime had tragic consequences.

Nixon and Kissinger’s obsession with secrecy had other costs as well. Concerned about leaks, especially with regard to the secret bombing of Cambodia, Kissinger ordered wiretaps placed upon his closest aides. Al­though not directly implicated in subsequent events, Kissinger’s frantic reaction to the release of the Pentagon Papers encouraged Nixon to autho­rize formation of the infamous Plumber’s Unit. The paranoid atmosphere inside the Nixon administration often reached comical extremes. Cut off from vital information by Kissinger, Defense Secretary Melvin Laird used the National Security Agency to intercept Kissinger’s backchannel messages while Navy Chief of Staff Elmo Zumwalt went so far as to place a personal spy within Kissinger’s inner circle.

When not engaged in petty machinations, Nixon and Kissinger did manage to infuse U.S. foreign policy with a rare degree of intellectual and strategic vision. They sought to construct a structure of peace built upon the triangular relationship between the United States, the Soviet Union and China. Kissinger hoped that America’s pivotal role in this tripolar diplo­macy would serve to constrain Soviet behavior while preserving U.S. power during a period of underlying decline. The audacity and ingenuity of this attempt to rearrange the global balance of power was breathtaking.

Yet Isaacson notes that Nixon and Kissinger’s structure of peace lacked solidity. The complexities of Kissinger’s strategy of linkage proved over­whelming. Most importantly, domestic obstacles, including but not limited to Watergate, interfered with Kissinger’s grand geopolitical scheme. Kissinger oversold detente to the public and his instinctive secrecy and distrust of democracy eventually led to a backlash against his style of diplomacy. The nation turned first to Jimmy Carter’s moralism and later to Ronald Reagan’s ideological anticommunism. Isaacson observes that while Kissinger often defended peace and order as moral imperatives in themselves, he never understood the desire of most Americans that their country stand for some set of higher ideals and purposes. Kissinger’s realism, for all its intellectual appeal, proved out of sync with the American character.

Isaacson’s biography usefully illustrates how a single strong-wil!ed personality can, for better or worse, leave a distinctive imprint on the foreign policy of a major power. ln the tradition of Otto von Bismarck, his nine­teenth-century twin, Kissinger attempted to rise above history by manipu­lating antagonisms at home and abroad. Like circus showmen, both Bis­marck and Kissinger amazed audiences with their clever balancing acts. Yet while each mastered events for a time, neither succeeded in deflecting the movement of deeper historical forces beyond the reach of realist analysis or the will of individual humans.

Who Really Wants to Indoctrinate Students?

Pouring over the bills that survived Iowa legislature’s March 3 “funnel” deadline, I came across House File 12, which immediately gave me a sense of déjà vu. The Republican-sponsored bill would require both public and charter high schools across Iowa to offer a United States government course that would, in addition to covering electoral procedures and the U.S. Constitution, entail a “comparative discussion of political ideologies, including communism and totalitarianism that conflict with the principles of freedom and democracy that were essential to the founding of the United States.”

This bill follows a similar one signed into law in June 2021 by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis which requires high school government courses to include “a comparative discussion of political ideologies, such as Communism and totalitarianism, that conflict with the principles of freedom and democracy essential to the founding principles of the United States.” DeSantis followed up in May, 2022 with a mandate that schools offer at least 45 minutes of instruction about the “evils of communism” on Florida’s newly designated “Victims of Communism Day,” set for November 7.

Florida Senator Rick Scott (R) recently introduced a bill in the U.S. House that would require schools nationwide to teach students “the dangers of communism.”

This sudden urgency to protect the precious minds of today’s youth from the allures of communism whisked me back to my senior year of high school in 1976 (the Bicentennial Year!). I recall whiling away hours in the back of the class, counting down the days until graduation, in a required course dreaded by all seniors titled “Americanism vs. Communism.”

In 1961, following the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, the Florida legislature passed a law requiring that all students take AVC, as it was universally called, to graduate. In addition to providing students with “a greater appreciation of democratic processes, freedom under law, and the will to preserve that freedom,” the law required that the course place “particular emphasis upon the dangers of communism, the ways to fight communism, the evils of communism, the fallacies of communism, and the false doctrines of communism.”

Initially, the State Department of Education used official reports of the House Committee on Un-American Activities and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s book A Study of Communism as texts. Instructors were forbidden from presenting communism in a favorable light. The course continued, in various forms, until the law was finally repealed in 1991, following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

One study of Florida’s “Americanism vs. Communism” law refers to it as an effort to dispense an “official ideology,” mirroring the practices of the political systems the lawmakers intended to warn against.

Now we have been suddenly transported back a half century, which is puzzling. It is not as if the earlier precedent was a stunning success. One researcher interviewed faculty and students who taught or took AVC in Central Florida high schools in the mid-1960s. Students universally panned the course, considering it boring propaganda. I can certainly attest to this conclusion. I recall students with their heads on their desks, films showing red ink blots spreading across the globe to illustrate the communist threat and readings informing us that Karl Marx was a bad father. The teacher appeared to enjoy the course least of all.

Indeed, former instructors interviewed for the study generally disliked being forced to teach pre-cooked answers dictated by politicians rather than genuine social science. The bolder instructors sought to transcend the limitations of the required teaching materials by following established methods for teaching comparative government in the classroom, although this sometimes led to harassment in an environment where faculty were required to take loyalty oaths.

The irony of House File 12 is that it fails to recognize that communism and other forms of totalitarianism have failed in most places where they have been tried precisely because humans are generally averse to propaganda and indoctrination. AVC was a waste of precious class time and a distraction from the kind of education that serves as the real bulwark to closed and rigid ideologies: critical thinking and exposure to a diversity of ideas.

The retro-Cold War classrooms that the current crop of Republican legislators want to create as part of their broader culture war branding may prove good politics in the short run but will not serve any meaningful educational purpose. Perhaps that is the point.

How the Ukraine War Influences Chinese Calculations about Taiwan

What lessons might Chinese President Xi Jinping and his advisers draw about Taiwan based upon Russia’s invasion of Ukraine?

Ukraine does present some good news from Beijing’s perspective. Russia’s nuclear weapons capability has deterred NATO from sending troops in direct defense of Ukraine. We know this because President Joseph Biden repeatedly broadcast the U.S. fear of war with a nuclear-armed adversary as the central rationale for ruling out direct American military intervention in defense of Ukraine. This might reassure Xi that the United States would likewise be deterred from intervening to save Taiwan.

Still, the comparison is inexact, which could lead Xi to dangerously miscalculate. The U.S. interest in Taiwan is far greater than the American investment in Ukraine’s fate. The loss of Taiwan would directly threaten Japan’s security and undercut the U.S. strategic position along the first island chain in East Asia. A failure to defend Taiwan would also strike a blow to American credibility in the region and around the world. Moreover, the U.S. retains nuclear advantages over China that it does not vis-à-vis Russia. Xi should also take into account that American public support for U.S. military intervention on behalf of Taiwan is much higher as compared with Ukraine.

Also on the plus side, Xi must take heart in noting that, according to polls, popular support among Russians for the war and for Putin has been high, despite Western efforts to puncture the all-encompassing media control exercised by Putin’s regime. An invasion of Taiwan would likely be popular among Chinese citizens as well.

While Xi might find the West’s unity around a campaign to arm Ukraine and sanction Russia unnerving, he can take some comfort from the fact that many countries in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia have balked at fully cutting ties with Russia or endorsing the West’s narrative of events. And China has an even wider network of friends and dependencies than Russia.

Still, the Ukraine war presents Xi with considerable cause for alarm. Most obviously, Russia vastly overestimated its own military prowess and underestimated both the will and fighting capacity of the Ukrainians. This is doubly discouraging since Beijing’s Taiwan invasion strategy depends upon a decisive victory achieved quickly enough – within days – to present the United States with a fait accompli. If the Taiwanese manage to hold out, on the other hand, then the U.S. Navy would have the opportunity to intervene.

Not only has the Ukraine conflict forced Beijing to question the assumption of quick victory, but it has also provided Taiwan with tactical lessons in how to foil an invasion force. Those advocating for a “porcupine” strategy that confronts a Chinese invasion force with an asymmetric, whole-of-society response have now gained the upper hand. Moreover, public support for raising military spending and lengthening military reserve training has deepened.

Another worrisome sign for Beijing has been the willingness and ability of the West to effectively cut Russia off from the global financial system. Although the value of the ruble has bounced back from its initial downturn, Russia is currently on the precipice of its first sovereign default since 1917. China must be impressed not only by the unprecedented degree of coordination among the world’s financial great powers, but also by the willingness of these countries to absorb considerable costs in order to punish Russia.

Of course, China’s economy is far larger, more resilient and more central to the global economy compared with that of Russia. Still, Xi must confront the sobering realities that the dollar remains the world’s key currency and the global financial system runs through New York and Washington, D.C. As the Ukraine example illustrates, China will undoubtedly pay an economic price should it make war upon Taiwan.

Overall, the main lesson for Beijing from the Ukraine crisis is that once war is initiated, uncertainty prevails and events can easily spin out of control. After the West’s weak response to Russian moves on Ukraine in 2014, Putin had little reason to expect more than pro forma protests as he completed his takeover of Ukraine. And how could Putin have predicted that a former comedian and his underequipped military would stand up to the mighty Russian army? As he seeks lessons from the Ukraine that might provide guidance on Taiwan, Xi Jinping is left to contemplate the fog and confusion of war.

The Purposes and Limits of Sanctions

The dramatic suite of sanctions that have been imposed upon Russia in the wake of the latter’s invasion of Ukraine represent the endpoint of a failed policy more than the beginning point of a potentially successful policy. The principal utility of sanctions lies in the threat of their use should the target engage in behavior that the wielder of sanctions seeks to discourage. By threatening costs contingent upon the target’s behavior, the state making the threat is engaging in an act of attempted deterrence. Should the target go ahead with the proscribed act, then this represents the failure of deterrence: the target either doubts the credibility of the deterrent threat or deems the costs to be imposed more than countered by the benefits to be gained from acting.

If the threat of sanctions fails, then the problem shifts from one of deterrence to compellence. Instead of seeking to dissuade the target from undertaking a proscribed act, the focus turns to reversing a step already taken or changing ongoing behavior. Compellence is much more difficult than deterrence. For one thing, once the act has occurred, it might prove difficult or even impossible to fully reverse the consequences. The damage brought by war, for instance, does not disappear once a cease fire is declared. Moreover, the target, once publicly committed to a course of action, would suffer political and reputational costs by buckling under to sanctions. Finally, as suggested above, if the cost of sanctions have already been priced into the target’s decision to act, then the likelihood of sanctions successfully serving the purpose of compellence will be low.

Beyond changing the target’s behavior, a more ambitious goal of sanctions might be to provoke the removal of the target’s leadership, through electoral loss, coup de etat or more thoroughgoing regime change. The actor may target elite supporters of the target state leadership in hopes they will abandon the leader. Sanctions may also seek to stimulate broader popular rebellion via sanctions that undermine the fundamental stability of the target state’s economy. If changing the behavior of a present set of target state leaders is difficult, removing them via sanctions is much more difficult.

Moreover, if leaders of the target state believe that the real purpose of sanctions is their removal, rather than just a change in their behavior, then they will be most unlikely to accede to demands. After all, no behavioral change on the part of the target state will suffice to relieve external pressures if regime change is the goal.

In fact, many studies have shown that sanctions seldom achieve all or a portion of the stated goals, whether the latter involve changes in behavior, leadership or both. So if sanctions fail for the purposes of deterrence and offer little prospect of success for the purposes of compellence, why impose them at all?

One purpose is to establish the credibility of future deterrent threats. Even if the threat of sanctions fails in the present case, a state will want to preserve the effectiveness of sanctions threats in future cases. That can only be accomplished by carrying through sanctions threats, even if there is little chance that such sanctions will compel the target to change behavior in the present case. The downside of doing so, of course, is that sanctions always involve costs to the states that imposes them, as well as to the target. There is, then, a price to preserving credibility.

Another purpose in imposing sanctions is not to alter the target’s behavior, but to convince politically significant domestic audiences that a leader is “doing something” about a problem, even if the “something” has little change of success. Indeed, rival political factions may compete over who is “tougher” on the issue by bidding upward the extent of sanctions. From the public’s standpoint, it may be sufficient that the sanctions “punish” the target state, even if they fail to alter that state’s behavior or leadership.

Which factors are driving Western sanctions on Russia? Preserving the future credibility of future sanctions threats does not require sanctions as broad and severe as those imposed upon Russia over the past week. So this would not appear a major factor.

Although the sanctions directed at Russia have been accompanied by demands that Russian troops leave Ukraine, it remains unclear whether Western policy-makers actually believe that this is a realistic goal. Reports suggest that some high-level officials are instead worried that the severity of Western sanctions may prompt escalatory moves on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s part, rather than retreat. Also, if the goal was near-term change in Russian behavior, we might expect some delineation of the conditions under which sanctions would be removed, so as to more precisely incentivize Putin’s conduct. So far, an explication of such conditionality has been missing in public statements by Western leaders.

There seems little doubt that the domestic demand for action has forced policy-makers in the US and Europe to impose sanctions far more severe than initially planned. This is linked to the determined resistance of the Ukrainian armed forces and population along with the extraordinarily effective messenging and leadership presented by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

There has been speculation that the West seeks to use sanctions as a tool to force Putin out of office. Some of the sanctions specifically target members of the Russian elite who are closely allied with Putin. The hope may be that these pillars of regime support can be stripped away. However, the severing of connections between Russian business elites and Western economies may simply make them all the more dependent upon their relationship with Putin. Regime change via ruptures in elite politics may be a goal of the West, but sanctions could nevertheless prove either ineffective or counterproductive for this purpose.

The most severe sanctions seek to isolate Russia’s Central Bank, force major Russian banks into bankruptcy and collapse the value of the ruble. Even if successful in destroying Russia’s economy, such measures will not impact the military situation on the ground in Ukraine in the near-term. But success is not assured, in part because China could provide a lifeline for Russian finance. The purpose of such thoroughgoing sanctions is not clear, but may rest upon the idea that Putin will pull back if faced with an economic downturn so severe as to produce popular unrest directed against his rule. Some Western officials may even hope that a popular uprising could remove Putin from office. If so, this expectation must be weighed against the possibility that the Russian people will direct their anger against the West rather than overthrow their rulers. One must also consider the morality of all-out economic warfare on a population which is, in a sense, hostage to the misdeeds of their ruler.

In the West’s clash with Russia over the invasion of Ukraine, sanctions are a second-best option. The focus on sanctions has somewhat obscured the more fundamental fact that Western leaders early on ruled out the threat of military force as a deterrent to Russian invasion or as a tool to repel or reverse such an invasion once it occurred. Indeed, it is the West that has been deterred from intervention in the conflict, mainly by Russia’s nuclear capabilities, and, to a lesser extent, by Russia’s conventional military superiority in the vicinity of Ukraine. Sanctions are what the West has left to wield once NATO’s military capabilities are removed from the equation. But they are unlikely to be enough to save Ukraine.

Did China Just Swerve?

In October 2020, Chair of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley received intelligence indicating that Chinese leaders feared that the U.S. sought to prod China into a war over Taiwan as a means for shoring up President Donald Trump’s political fortunes. Milley called his Chinese counterpart to assure the Chinese that U.S. intentions were peaceful.

Yet this brief moment of reassurance has not dissuaded the two superpowers from ramping up their game of chicken over Taiwan over the past year. President Biden has continued to raise the level of U.S. official contact with Taiwan’s government. Biden approved a major new arms package for Taiwan while deploying U.S. war ships through the Taiwan Strait and conducting naval and air exercises with Taiwanese and allied forces. Biden has openly courted Japanese and Australian engagement in future military contingencies involving Taiwan’s defense. Most recently, news reports revealed the secret deployment of a small contingent of U.S. Marines on a training mission to Taiwan over the past year.

For its parts, China has dramatically upped the tempo of PLA war planes crossing through Taiwan’s Air Defense Identification Zone and carried out threatening missile tests in the waters off of Taiwan. After a decade-long military buildup, American and Taiwanese analysts believe that China’s is now capable of successfully invading and occupying Taiwan, even if U.S. forces come to Taiwan’s assistance. China’s rhetorical warfare against Taiwan’s current policies and leadership has also reached new heights, with Chinese President Xi Jinping threatening in July to “smash” any Taiwanese move toward formal independence of the mainland.

Yet amidst these unprecedented tensions, Xi gave a relatively conciliatory speech on October 9 in which he declared: “achieving unification through peaceful means is most in line with the overall interests of Chinese people, including Taiwan compatriots.” Xi avoided repetition of his past insistence that Beijing reserves the right to use military force to resolve what the Chinese Communist Party regards as an internal matter that engages China’s sovereign rights. Moreover, Chinese spokespersons responded rather mildly to the explosive news of U.S. Marines stationed in Taiwan and apparently tamped down nationalist responses on social media.

Why the shift in tone? In part, Xi is no doubt responding to prior American moves that signal Biden’s desire to reduce tensions. These include a phone conversation between the two presidents in which Biden restated America’s commitment to a “one China” policy that recognizes the CCP as the sole government of mainland China. U.S. prosecutor’s also reached a deal that led to the release of Meng … by Canadian authorities and her return to China.

From another perspective, however, Xi’s apparent shift from threat to conciliation is illusory. From Beijing perspective, independence and unification are two very different things calling for differing responses. The CCP threatens military force as a tool to deter Taiwan from taking formal steps to declare independence from the mainland. Whenever Taiwan appears to be inching toward formal independence through incremental steps, the CCP responds with dire warnings and displays of military power.

While describing unification as “inevitable,” on the other hand, Xi and the CCP leadership consistently express a desire that this end be achieved through peaceful means. Moreover, Xi has refrained from setting a deadline for fulfilling the goal of unification. Taiwanese independence, in other words, must be resisted at all costs, including those entailed by war. Unification, however, can wait. The ambiguities of the status quo are tolerable, even if unsatisfactory from Beijing’s standpoint.

Xi understands that even a successful invasion of Taiwan would be tremendously costly and raise the risks of nuclear war.

How China’s Ambitious Belt and Road Plans for East Africa Came Apart

 As China draws back from large scale infrastructure investments in Africa, it is worth considering why so many major Belt and Road (BRI) projects in the region, unveiled with great fanfare, have ultimately failed. A connecting thread across such cases has been China’s inability to manage the political complexities associated with infrastructure development.

Within China itself, the context for infrastructure development is defined by political continuity, deep-pocketed state actors, state-controlled media and a weak civil society. Authorities can plan and implement projects with few serious impediments.

The BRI was envisioned as an extension of this top-down, “China Model” of infrastructure development model to other countries. But, of course, the political circumstances familiar to Chinese actors at home are seldom duplicated abroad despite the fact that, according to Ding Yifan of China’s Development Research Centre of the State Council, Chinese companies “think other countries are just like China.”

Chinese actors typically approach BRI deals with two contradictory assumptions; first, the political leadership with whom they are dealing is either too weak or too venal to challenge contract terms that decidedly favor China; and, second, these same leaders will be strong enough to fend-off resistance to ambitious infrastructure projects by opposition politicians and civil society groups while also mobilizing the financial resources necessary to sustain expensive, long term projects.

In practice, few projects meet the “just right” conditions of this Goldilocks formula. Instead, conditions are “too hot”: strong leaders reject unfavorable terms; or “too cold”: weak leaders cannot defend bad deals against domestic opposition or rescue the projects once they run into trouble. The three case studies below each illuminate a different path to failure.

Strong Leader – Deal Nixed: Bagamoyo Port

            In March, 2013, Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete and Chinese President Xi Jinping signed an agreement for a $10 billion port designed to handle 20 million containers a year. China Merchants Holding was contracted to build the port with China’s Export-Import Bank providing the bulk of financing. The port would be connected to a large industrial city and the TAZARA Railway, allowing goods to move to-and-from central Africa.

            Situated in Kiwete’s home district of Bagamoyo, the port was well-positioned to shower benefits upon the president’s supporters. With his term in office ending less than a month later, Kiwete rushed to conclude port construction contracts in October 2015.

In a stunning move, incoming President John Magufuli quickly moved to cancel the contracts. In contrast with Kikweta, Magufuli was an economic nationalist inclined to hard bargaining with foreign investors. Magufuli was also a tough, often authoritarian, leader who brooked little opposition.

            After years of further negotiations, Magufuli pulled the plug in October 2019. Declaring Chinese demands “exploitative,” Magufuli complained: “Those investors are coming with tough conditions that can only be accepted by mad people.” Tanzania Ports Authority Chief Executive Deusdedit Kakoko rejected China Merchants Holding International’s five key conditions, which included a 99-year lease, a tax holiday, below market rates for water and electricity, relaxed regulation and restrictions on Tanzania’s ability to develop competing ports.

            Following Magufuli’s death in office, newly installed President Samia Suluhu Hassan announced, in June 2021, the resumption of negotiations with China over the Bagamoyo Port project. Hassan is closely aligned with former President Jakaya Kikwete’s political network within the ruling Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) Party. Should Hassan prove pliable enough to accept China’s conditions, the port project would risk failure along our other two pathways.

Weak Leader – White Elephant: Kenya’s Standard Gauge Railway

Weak leaders accept terms favoring foreign lenders and investors. But one-sided projects often generate fatal opposition or, if implemented, risk becoming financial white elephants. Our two Kenya cases featured contract terms heavily favoring China. Both projects were negotiated by President Uhuru Kenyatta, widely considered to be a weaker than his predecessors: Uhuru’s father Jomo Kenyatta, a towering anti-colonial figure who served as Kenya’s first post-independence leader; and the autocratic Daniel arap Moi, who held the presidency for twenty-two years.

Despite his family pedigree, Uhuru Kenyatta was soundly defeated in his first bid for the presidency in 2002. He barely survived a court challenge to his 2013 victory. Although initial returns from the August 2017 election showed Kenyatta the winner, the Supreme Court ordered a new election after siding with a challenge mounted by the main opposition candidate. Following months of growing tension, Kenyatta’s challenger withdrew from the October revote, allowing Kenyatta to retain office.

To improve his precarious political position, Kenyatta sought to accelerate Kenyan economic development by attracting foreign capital, especially from China. In 2018, China held close to $10 billion or 73% of Kenya’s overall debt, among the highest in Africa. Even as Kenyan debt service tripled between 2013 and 2018, Kenyatta defiantly declared: “I will continue to borrow to develop.”

 Kenya’s Standard Gauge Railway (SGR) project served as the crown jewel of Kenyatta’s ambitious plan. The railway was designed to speed the flow and increase the capacity of goods moving to and from the Kenyan port of Mombasa. Kenya contracted with the China Road and Bridge Corporation (CRBC) to construct the SGR in three main stages. The plan also envisioned a fourth stage undertaken in cooperation with the government of Uganda, with a line running to the Ugandan capital of Kampala and eventually to the interior of East Africa. The financial viability of the project depended upon the expected volume of goods that an extended rail network would realize.

The bulk of financing for the first stage, from Mombasa to Nairobi, was provided by the China Export-Import Bank in the amount of $3.24 billion. A special purpose vehicle called the Kenyan Railway Corporation (KRC) contracted with CRBC to operate the line. Passenger and freight service were both operational by early 2018.

The terms of the SGR deal heavily favored the Chinese partners. Indeed, a Kenyan appeals court later ruled the original contract invalid due to the lack of competitive and transparent bidding. As collateral, Kenya was required to set up a special reserve account and to waive sovereign immunity for the port of Mombasa, making the latter vulnerable to seizure by Chinese creditors should Kenya default.

The loan for the first stage carried a high interest rate and quick repayment period. Conversely, to finance operations the CRBC borrowed from the KRC at zero interest and a generous grace period. Repayment made not in cash, but in services. Moreover, CRBC was relieved of liability for operating losses. Contract disputes were managed through arbitration in China under Chinese law.

Revenue from the initial year of operation came to less than half of projections and covered only half of operating costs. A Kenyan government report estimated that without subsidies freight transport along the new rail line cost twice that via truck. Despite hopes that the rail line would boost exports, the tonnage of goods shipped inland from Mombasa exceeded that shipped to the port by a ratio of almost 8 to 1. While the second stage of the SGR project is nearing completion, China’s Export-Import Bank pulled funding from the third stage due to concerns about financial viability as well as worries that Kenya is “politically unstable.”

In 2020, the SGR lost money at a rate of over $9 million per month, prompting the Kenyan government to require that government agencies and importers ship goods via train rather than truck, a demand resisted by importers and truckers. Kenya Railways defaulted on a $350 million payment to CRBC’s subsidiary Africa Star, which operates the SGR. In July 2020, KRC announced plans to take over management of the SGR from Africa Star, which, in turn, has demanded the full payment of past due debts before the full transfer of operations to KRC.

In sum, Kenyatta’s intended legacy project has become a financial morass while Kenya and China struggle to disentangle themselves from one another.

Weak Leader – Veto by Domestic Opponents: Lamu Power Project

In 2014, Kenya’s Ministry of Energy and Petroleum awarded a contract to Amu Power for construction of a $2 billion power plant, East Africa’s first to rely upon coal. Sixty percent of the total estimated project cost was to be financed by the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, a Chinese state-owned commercial bank. The plant was to be built by state-owned China Huadian Corporation.

From the beginning, the project was bathed in controversy due to the close proximity of the plant to a UNESCO heritage site, Lamu Old Town, which served as the best preserved Swahili cultural settlement in East Africa. There were also worries about the environmental impact of the plant.

Opposition to the project arose within Kenya’s Energy Regulatory Commission before licensing approval was finally given in 2016 by the National Environment Management Authority. These bureaucratic delays allowed time for a coalition of local and international NGOs to coalesce in opposition. An umbrella organization called Save Lamu brought together forty local civil society groups. Save Lamu received international support from national NGOs such as the INUKA Trust Fund, and international NGOs, including South Africa-based Natural Justice. From 2016—2019, the coalition conducted a campaign of petitions, protests, public meetings and workshops under the “deCOALinize” banner.

Save Lamu repeatedly requested meetings with representatives of ICBC and the Chinese Embassy without response. In June 2019, a deCOALinize and Greenpeace march to the Chinese Embassy was interrupted by police. This succeeded, however, in securing a subsequent meeting with Chinese Ambassador to Kenya Wu Peng, along with representatives of two Chinese firms under contract to construct the plant. No ICBC representative was present.

Acknowledging that it was Kenya’s decision whether to proceed with the plant, Ambassador Wu expressed reluctance to engage with civil society groups: “You know the problem is who represents your people. As a country, how do we engage bilaterally? We cannot talk to each individual person. It is impossible. You have about 50 million people but you have one administration elected by your people. That is the only way as government to government.”

Save Lamu and other groups sued to halt the project. In 2019, the Kenya National Environmental Tribunal cancelled the license for the Lamu power plant project, ruling that officials had failed to carry out adequate environmental assessments or public consultations. In November 2020, ICBC withdrew from the project, as did General Electric, which had planned an equity investment.

In retrospect, ICBC and the other Chinese entities were hampered by their discomfort and unfamiliarity in navigating the political complexities posed by operating in a country with democratic institutions, an independent judiciary and a vibrant, transnationally-connected civil society. Director of the Green Belt and Road Initiative Center Christoph Nedopil Wang observes that foreign companies have little choice but to consult with civil society since “agreements between businesses and government are insufficient to ensure the implementation of a project.”

Environmental journalist Shi Yi writes: “State-owned enterprises rarely speak to the Chinese media or public and generally do so only for self-promotion. The same approach is often followed overseas. Any public communication may need approval from the headquarters in China, and Chinese companies often discourage their employees from interacting with local people. This means company leaders may not be aware of investment risks in time.”

Conclusion

The evident bargaining advantages that Chinese state-owned firms enjoy in relation to many host states often produce one-sided contracts favoring China, but do not endow Chinese agents with sufficient control over the political variables necessary to project success. One-sided deals may be rejected once a strong leader assumes office, fall prey to domestic opposition or prove financially unviable. The political Goldilocks solution sought by Chinese actors – a host country leadership too weak to drive a hard bargain but strong enough to push a project to successful conclusion against domestic opposition and financial constraints – is elusive at best. These considerations suggest limits on the possibility of projecting a “China Model” via the BRI. When it comes to Chinese infrastructure investment, perhaps Dorothy put it best: “There’s no place like home!”

Public Servants Deserve a Hug, Not a Swift Kick

(Co-authored with Kyle Munson; reprinted from Iowa Capital Dispatch)

Perhaps you nod in agreement when politicians or pundits criticize some of the books available in your children’s school. Maybe you see vaccine mandates as an overreach of government power. You may think election security needs tightening. If so, you can vote, speak up at school board meetings, write a letter to the editor or grumble on social media. These are all legitimate channels for citizens in a democratic society who want to debate issues.

But it’s wrong to veer that debate into outright vilification of teachers and other public servants who are just trying to do their jobs—often persevering despite shrinking resources.

We now seem to live in a world where we’re told that teachers in local schools pursue a “sinister agenda” by providing “grooming materials” aimed at preparing our children for sexual exploitation. Vaccine mandates are “totalitarian” if not deadly. The 2020 presidential election was stolen, with Trump supporters urged to“fight like hell” and “take back” their country.

The reality, of course, is that teachers aren’t sinister. The vast majority are deeply engaged in the task of helping prepare children and young people for happy and productive lives. Public health workers aren’t fascists trying to poison us. Rather, they are doing their best to keep us healthy in the midst of a deadly global pandemic. Local election officials aren’t engaged in vast conspiracies to steal elections. They instead play a vital role in making our democracy work. And when rare cases of wrongdoing arise, existing systems of accountability kick in. If those prove inadequate, the answer is to advocate for thoughtful reform, not broad-brush attacks on public service itself.

The demonization of public servants is, of course, the product of cynical political calculation. Yet such attacks go well beyond ugly rhetoric. Elected officials have proposed to subject government workers to fines, lawsuits or arrest for doing their jobs. Across the country, as average Americans are taken in by conspiratorial thinking and false claims, health workers and election officials and even their families have become targets of vitriolic personal attacks and occasional violence.

The consequences hurt us all. Educators are leaving the profession. Election officials are quitting. Public health workers are resigning. Although the pandemic and other current realities have contributed to this wave of resignations, the personal and political attacks to which many public servants have been subjected have played an outsized role. As public institutions become shorn of the experienced professionals upon which their effectiveness depends, the ultimate victims of these trends, of course, are students, those in need of health care and democracy itself.

Politicians and pundits who use extreme rhetoric to are unlikely to pull back from the brink out of appeals to conscience. They will persist as long as such tactics work to bolster their political ambitions.

But there is the opportunity. We can speak up to defend the integrity of our friends, neighbors and family members in public service. We can learn to recognize when politicians and pundits cynically appeal to our deepest fears and basest emotions. And we can deny votes to candidates for office who engage in dangerous scapegoating. After all, we get the politics we deserve.

In the meantime, if you know a public servant, let them know you appreciate the work they do as champions of what civility remains.