Jul 8th 2010

The Fourth Estate Indeed!

by Michael Brenner

Dr. Michael Brenner is a Non-Resident Fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations. He publishes and teaches in the fields of American foreign policy, Euro-American relations, and the European Union. He is also Professor of International Affairs at the University of Pittsburgh. Brenner is the author of numerous books, and over 60 articles and published papers on a broad range of topics. These include books with Cambridge University Press (Nuclear Power and Non-Proliferation) and the Center For International Affairs at Harvard University (The Politics of International Monetary Reform); and publications in major journals in the United States and Europe, such as World Politics, Comparative Politics, Foreign Policy, International Studies Quarterly, International Affairs, Survival, Politique Etrangere, and Internationale Politik. His most recent work is Toward A More Independent Europe, Egmont Institute, Brussels.

War is the enemy of democracy. A protracted war is its nemesis. That means not only undermining civil liberties but an erosion of the honest discourse that is the essence of democracy. A truthful press is the first casualty.

The press' performance in Iraq and Afghanistan has been appalling. They have continually failed to meet their responsibilities to American democracy. There are three paramount functions that the press is supposed to perform: to inform accurately, completely and fairly; to observe critically the conduct of our government and to shed light on any dubious activities; and to sustain a public dialogue on policies of consequence. The media generally have fallen far short of this standard.

The bill of indictment is a comprehensive one. For years the press served as propagandist and cheerleader for everything that the Bush administration did. Even the august New York Times'played this role - most notably in acting as a vehicle for transmitting the skein of lies that paved the way for the Iraq adventure (remember Linda Miller & Michael Gordon on WMDs).. Let us recall as well its decision to bury the story of illegal surveillance and wiretaps of Americans in the U.S. for a year because, as its Executive Editor feebly said, the paper's policy is not to display details of legal matters. This is the rational of a kept press in an autocracy.

Second, passive acceptance of embedding on the Pentagon's terms has rendered most journalists loyal domestics most of the time. Ninety percent of the reporting from Baghdad (75% from Kabul) has been little more than a cut-and-paste collage of official communiques laced with the occasional calculated leak. It could have been done in New York or Washington just as well at less sweat. Reporters were unable even to communicate with the locals in their native language. Why didn't someone at the NYT think of telephoning Yousef Ibrahim (their senior Middle East correspondent of yesteryear), who is still active in the Gulf, instead of relying on a bunch of novices? It wasn't until three years into the Iraqi occupation that someone came up with the breakthrough idea of using Iraqi journalists as stringers. As a consequence, the gross distortions embedded in official explanations of what was happening were not subject to critical analysis or challenge.

Three, this state of affairs helps us to understand the paucity of reporting about Iraqi politics. Insightful reports on the behind the scenes politicking among Iraqi factions was a rare find. This despite the fact that Iraqi politicians at the other end of the Green Zone could be reached easily and safely by golf cart or skate board. Our ace journalists missed everything: inter alia, the split between Sunni tribes and the violent Sunni fundamentalist groups; Washington's massive support for Aliya Alawi (three times); Chalabi's self-exposure as an accomplice of Tehran (even when he was feeding the Bushies Iran-serving and self-serving tall tales); anything having to do with the Sadrists - most significant being how the Iranians forced al-Sadr to cease and desist at the time of the combat in Basra and Baghdad with Maliki/Petraeus in early 2008; how Maliki outsmarted us on the SOFA agreement; the impact of Baghdad's Sunni/Shi'ite civil war on the constellation of political forces in Iraq.

This failure explains the resilience of the great 'Surge' myth that deserves a Pulitzer Prize in the Fiction category. Embedded journalists are compromised journalists - as we understand what 'embedded' means nowadays. If David Halberstam and his colleagues had been similarly 'embedded,' the country would have swallowed whole the fictional tale of success in Vietnam. Most recently, it was embedded journalists, including the Washington Post's star reporter Rajiv Chandrasekaran, who for a whole month told us of Marjah, an imaginary city of 80,000 when in truth it is a dusty crossroads village. Hastings of Rolling Stone is on the mark when he says that if he wanted to be a Pentagon publicist, he would have studied advertising instead of journalism.

Specifically, how well has the press served the public interest in its explication of the Obama administration's judgments and choices on Afghanistan? Here are a few basic questions that deserve clarification. (1) Who is the enemy? In December, Obama said it was al-Qaeda; in June it was the Taliban. Are they identical? What distinction is made between Afghan Taliban and Pakistani Taliban? If the core of the movement is now across the border, how can our forces in South and East Afghanistan achieve an enduring 'victory'? (2) Yet, if we move into Pakistan, what dire consequences await us? What are the chances of the Pakistani government giving us permission to take over the Northwest quadrant of their country? What is likely reaction were we to do so without its permission? (3) Obama has said that this is a war we must win? How is that high stake reconciled with a commitment to begin withdrawing forces a year from now? (4) What is the definition of 'success"? Why have we still not gotten an answer from the White House or Obama's minions? (5) The McChrystal affair has exposed the unhappy reality that each of the President's senior officials is flying solo. What does Obama plan to do about this other than urge them to play nicely together?

Has the press demanded answers? I'm not aware of any serious effort to do so. Have we gotten answers from the White House? I'm not aware of any except the mumbo-jumbo on Sunday morning talk shows that passes intellectual muster only by the press participants' kindergarten standards.

Is this judgment too harsh? I suggest a mind experiment. Let's fast forward to next year's Super Bowl. It's Super Bowl fortnight. Let's imagine sports coverage of the superficiality and credulity that has marked the press' treatment of our overlapping interventions in the Greater Middle East. Imaginable? How long would any paper/network offering that sort of vapid coverage stay in business? The prosecution rests.

There are no straightforward fixes for this situation. After all, it is just one expression of the sharp deterioration in American public life generally. Honesty, integrity and fairness are crucial to making hard national choices and to establishing responsibility. Never in abundant supply in any country, they have become so scarce as to threaten the coherence and accountability of our political life. Virtual journalism is one of its symptoms.

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More Current Affairs

Apr 13th 2022
EXTRACTS" "Ukraine and Russia produce a substantial amount of grain and other food for export. Ukraine alone produces a whopping 6% of all food calories traded in the international market. At least it used to, before it was invaded by the world’s largest nuclear power." ...... "When it comes to cereals like wheat, corn, rice and barley, the big players talk about millions of metric tonnes, or MMTs. A single MMT of wheat contains about 3.4 trillion food calories,." ....."Ukraine produced about 80 MMT of grain (a category that includes wheat, corn and barley) in 2021, and is expected to harvest less than half of that this year. A shortfall of 40 MMT is enough missing calories that a country like the UK could only make it up by having everyone stop eating for three years. That’s the thing about tonnes of grain: a million here and a million there and pretty soon you’ve got a real issue on your plate."
Apr 11th 2022
EXTRACT: "I don’t even know the little girl’s name. All I do know is what a friend of a friend wrote on Viber: that her relative, a senior nurse in one of Kyiv’s hospitals, “saw in the morgue a child with 20 varieties of sperm on her small body.” Since this information was conveyed in a private conversation, there is no reason to doubt its veracity."
Apr 8th 2022
EXTRACT: "Russian society has so far failed to stop Putin, just as German society failed to stop Hitler. And so, like a poisoned chalice, that task has fallen to the West, as it did in 1939. The West must now treat Putin and his regime the same way that Winston Churchill treated Hitler: Don’t talk to him, just defeat him. Dead-enders such as Putin are too fanatical and desperate to be reliable negotiating partners."
Apr 3rd 2022
EXTRACT: "From 1807 to 1814 on the Iberian peninsula, Napoleon had to fight Spanish, Portuguese and British armies while beset by ubiquitous, ferocious insurgents. He described this war as his “bleeding ulcer”, draining him of men and equipment. It is the west’s aim to make Ukraine for Putin what Spain was for Napoleon. In the absence of a negotiated settlement, Ukraine and Nato will continue to grind away at Russia’s army, digging away at that bleeding ulcer and prolonging Russia’s agony on the military front, as the west continues its parallel assault on its economy. If Putin’s plan is to proceed with the Korea model, he will fail. There is a strong possibility that Putin has only a limited idea of how badly his army is faring. So be it – he’ll find out soon enough that there is now no path for him to military victory."
Apr 1st 2022
EXTRACTS: "Policymakers expected that the country would be able to secure its energy supply entirely from renewable sources, so they resolved to phase out coal and nuclear energy simultaneously. The last three of Germany’s 17 nuclear power plants are set to be shut down this year." ---- ".... the share of wind and solar power in Germany’s total final energy consumption, which includes heating, industrial processing, and traffic, was a meager 6.7%. And while wind and solar generated 29% of the country’s electricity output, electricity itself accounted for only about a fifth of its final energy consumption." ----- "If Germany suddenly halted Russian gas imports, gas-based residential heating systems – on which half the German population, approximately 40 million people, rely – and industrial processes that rely heavily on gas imports would break down....."
Apr 1st 2022
EXTRACT: "For Putin, the past that matters most is the one the dissident author and Nobel laureate Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn exalted: the time when the Slavic peoples were united within the Orthodox Christian kingdom of Kievan Rus’. Kyiv formed its heart, making Ukraine central to Putin’s pan-Slavic vision. ---- But, for Putin, the Ukraine war is about preserving Russia, not just expanding it. As Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov recently made clear, Russia’s leaders believe that their country is locked in a “life-and-death battle to exist on the world’s geopolitical map.” That worldview reflects Putin’s longstanding obsession with works of other Russian emigrant philosophers, such as Ivan Ilyin and Nikolai Berdyaev, who described a struggle for the Eurasian (Russian) soul against the Atlanticists (the West) who would destroy it. ---- Yet Putin and his neo-Eurasianists seem to believe that the key to victory is to create the kind of regime those anti-Bolshevik philosophers most detested: one run by the security forces. A police state would fulfill the vision of another of Putin’s heroes: the KGB chief turned Soviet General Secretary Yuri Andropov."
Apr 1st 2022
EXTRACTS: "Ukraine, known as the breadbasket of Europe, is struggling to export last year’s harvest, and may be unable to produce much this year either. In addition, the war has caused a global fertiliser shortage, which will push up food prices around the world too. Coming at a time when the global pandemic had already increased food insecurity and depleted resources around the world, many countries may not be resilient to a major food crisis brought on by the war. Back-to-back global catastrophic events like this have not happened for close to 100 years." ----- "Another useful analogue is the case of Germany during the first world war. When war broke out in 1914, the German authorities had anticipated a short conflict – not too dissimilar to Russian assumptions a few weeks ago. Just like in Ukraine now, the first world war severely disrupted German farming."
Mar 31st 2022
EXTRACT: "The horrors of World War II – the death camps, slave labor, and inhumane experiments on people – produced a global commitment never to permit such crimes to be repeated. This began a transformation of international politics whereby appreciation of the value of every person’s life and dignity ensured that even most authoritarian governments at least paid lip service to human rights.  ----- But the Soviet Union and many of its successor states, particularly Russia, never internalized this change. More than three decades after the USSR collapsed, most post-Soviet countries are still governed according to the old “imperial” paradigm. So, it should come as no surprise that we are now witnessing a clash between fundamentally different sets of values and ultimate goals for statehood."
Mar 26th 2022
EXTRACT: "Referencing past legacies as a justification for present-day political decisions is often effective – such appeals trigger emotional reflexes and contribute to thinking about politics in terms of rivalry and defence. The irony within the tragedy of the current situation is that Putin will assuredly go down in history as the figure that did more to unite the Ukrainian people (albeit against Russia) than any other in recent memory."
Mar 24th 2022
EXTRACT: " Despite the death and destruction that Russia rains down daily on them, the vast majority of Ukrainians are bullish about the future: 77% believe the country is moving in the right direction, 93% think they can beat back Russia, and 47% expect to win in the next few weeks.  Ukrainian policymakers are no less bullish, driving a hard bargain in negotiations with the Russians. Several factors account for this remarkable optimism."
Mar 21st 2022
EXTRACT: "As Russia’s war in Ukraine continues, China’s role has been thrown into sharp relief. Prior to the war, some commentators suggested that China would openly side with Russia or seek to act as a mediator – so far Beijing appears to have resisted doing either. As Qin Gang, China’s ambassador to the US, wrote recently in the Washington Post, Beijing has nothing to gain from this war, arguing “wielding the baton of sanctions at Chinese companies while seeking China’s support and cooperation simply won’t work”. Ambassador Qin also stressed that Beijing had no prior knowledge of the conflict,...."
Mar 17th 2022
EXTRACT: "The second source of Russian power is of course the world’s largest nuclear arsenal. Nuclear weapons would not deliver victory in a conventional war, but they could destroy a country in the blink of an eye. This brings us to a terrifying question: What will Putin do when he realizes that he cannot win his war in Ukraine by conventional means?"
Mar 17th 2022
EXTRACT: "An influential Shanghai-based academic commentator on international affairs, Hu Wei, recently advanced a cautionary argument that has been circulated widely in Chinese-language publications. In his commentary, which is unlikely to have been published without the approval of some of Xi’s senior courtiers, Hu wondered how Chinese communists would react if the war escalated beyond Ukraine, or if Russia was clearly defeated." ------- "For Hu, the answer for China’s leaders is simple. They should wash their hands of the relationship with Putin, ....."
Mar 12th 2022
EXTRACT: "Meanwhile, Xi seems to have realized that Putin has gone rogue. On March 8, one day after Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi had insisted that the friendship between China and Russia remained “rock solid,” Xi called French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz to say that he supported their peacemaking efforts."
Mar 7th 2022
EXTRACTS: "........Russia has been isolated by draconian Western sanctions that could devastate its economy for decades,...." ---- "Russia’s prospects are bleak, at best; without China, it has none at all. China holds the trump card in the ultimate survival of Putin’s Russia."
Mar 3rd 2022
EXTRACT: "Although Ukraine’s armed forces are outnumbered by those of Russian President Vladimir Putin invading our country, we take heart from the growing support we are receiving from friends abroad. Nobody should forget that this is not just an unprovoked invasion of Ukraine; it is an assault on the free world. ---- Putin has been at war with the free world for decades. "
Mar 2nd 2022
EXTRACT: "Moreover, with China sharing the Kremlin’s interest in containing the advance of liberal democracy around the world, Putin could count on the Chinese to provide an additional economic lifeline by purchasing Russian gas. But this new relationship will not be costless. As the world continues to divide into separate technological and economic blocs, Russia will become even more dependent on China, implying a loss of strategic autonomy. Russia may have a powerful military; but with a GDP similar to that of Spain and Italy, it is far from being an economic power."
Mar 1st 2022
EXTRACT: "The financial measures just announced against Russia are unprecedented for a country of its size. This of course means it’s impossible to predict exactly how their impacts will reverberate around the Russian – and global – economy. And we still need to see the exact details of the plan. But on their face they threaten the collapse of the Russian ruble, a run on Russian banks, hyperinflation, a sharp recession and high levels of unemployment in Russia, as well as turmoil in international financial markets."
Feb 26th 2022
EXTRACT: "Putin apparently assumes that China will back him. But while he launched the invasion just weeks after concluding something akin to an alliance agreement with Xi in Beijing, Chinese officials’ reactions have been very distant with calls for “restraint.” Given Putin’s near-total reliance on China for support in challenging the US-led international order, lying to Xi would have no political or strategic advantage. That is what is so worrying: Putin no longer seems capable of the calculations that are supposed to guide a leader’s decision-making. Far from an equal partner, Russia is now on track to become a kind of Chinese vassal state."
Feb 25th 2022
EXTRACTS: "Russia’s ascent to global power in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries resulted in numerous tragedies not only for the neighbors it subjugated and gradually absorbed, but also for its own people. China’s current leaders, in particular, should be mindful of this history, considering that imperial Russia seized more territory from China than from anyone else." ----- "Putin is taking Russia hurtling back toward the nineteenth century, in search of past greatness, whereas China is forging ahead to become the defining superpower of the twenty-first century. While China has achieved unprecedentedly rapid economic and technological modernization, Putin has been pouring Russia’s energy-export revenues into the military, once again cheating the Russian people out of their future."