It has always fascinated me that the right-authoritarian cult of toxic masculinity so ascendant geopolitically at present simply cannot do soft power. Not only can it not do soft power, but it cannot understand soft power. It reminds me of the old lore that vampires cannot cross freshly running water or consecrated ground without immediately bursting into flame. Can someone please test that theory out on Viktor Orbán? Some natural law, one suspects, prevents the hyper-masculinists from processing international law. Or, perhaps this is not so much an instance of natural law as it is of “ape law,” or, more precisely, the law of our proximate evolutionary predecessors.
Diplomacy, when seen through that prism, is the province of the weak. Which beings me to that unforgettable Thucydidean quote: “The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.” And so, 6.5 million years after diverging from the great apes and roughly 2500 years after the creation of The Peloponnesian War, here we are, making might right all over again.
Which is not to say that “hard power” is always retrograde and belonging to the kingdom of the monkeys. Nazism and Fascism — at present, rising up the philosophical charts, with a bullet — only understood the brutal language of hard power. Hitler understood diplomacy only as an opportunity for a strategic pause to amass greater munitions with which to wield against his enemies. World War II, despite its mass casualties (over 50 million), is generally regarded as a good and necessary war. It seems to me that hard power employed without reference to soft power options often brings about tyrannical and unjust results. It is rule by brute force unlimited by international opinion.
Why should hard power defer — or be held in reference — to soft power? Does the lion (see above) concern himself — always “himself,” by the way — with the opinion of a sheep? The answer, curiously enough, has something to do with the importance of diversity and inclusion in the polity. Vinnet Nayar, founder of the Sampark Foundation, wrote for the Harvard Business Review on the connection between soft power and more feminine — though not exclusively feminine — approaches to the politics and business:
As defined by Joseph S. Nye Jr., the former dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, soft power is the ability to influence or lead through persuasion or attraction, by co-opting people rather than coercing them. Soft power isn’t the exclusive preserve of women; U.S. President Obama, for instance, effectively uses soft power.
However, women are more inclined than are men to use soft power through tools such as dialogue and engagement rather than using the threat of arms or exclusion. Research has shown that women are excellent mediators, great networkers, and they place more value on building relationships than do men. They also keep cool during crises.
Can someone please forward this to Bibi Netanyahu? Actually, also to Putin, to the leadership of the RSF, to the aforementioned Orban of Hungary, to Erdogan and all the other water droplets that make up the authoritarian cloud that has darkened the landscape for more than a decade.
America is not immune. Last week, domestically, we had the bad operetta of OpenAI’s culture of toxic masculinity. Post coup, the OpenAI board is all male, non-diverse and, perhaps worst of all, includes Larry Summers, King of all Toxic bros.
The week before, Senator Bernie Sanders of the great state of Vermont, an evolved sort of fellow to be sure, had to keep the peace in the United States Senate. “A House committee chair called his colleague a ‘smurf,’ a former House speaker faced accusations of kidney punching and a senator threatened to fight a committee witness, saying of his conduct, ‘I’m still a guy,” is how Grace Panetta in the19thnews described it. “The day in Congress that seemed more fitting for the 19th-century era of canings on the Senate floor than 2023.” Or, as I said earlier, a bad operetta. But this is how we live now, choking on testosterone, waiting for the pendulum to swing from the right to a more copacetic center and clear away some of the musk in the process.
Who can begrudge Sen. Markwayne Mullin the drought du seigneur of throwing down with the president of the Teamsters? He belongs to the party of Trump, to the global authoritarian and anti-democratic wave, to the testosteronal cloud. The Republican Party, it needs be said, has a tremendous problem with toxic masculinity and no desire any time soon to work on it. Which would explain this thusness. It reminds me of how Kim Jung-il wears a teased bouffant, to project height, which in his pathetic, materialistic and testosteronal worldview, conveys brute strength that should — no must! — be feared. In the end, though, he is still just another broken man.
It should also be noted that Trump’s cynical attempt to pivot himself to moderate on abortion (his actual position in the 80s and 90s) is not only craven, but doomed to failure. How does he pull that off when he appointed the Court’s majority with the help of Mitch McConnell? Suburban women are not as easily fooled as testosteronal dudes, particularly it comes to matters of bodily choice. “It’s only relatively recently that women were even allowed access to the spheres of education, commerce and politics,” Dr. Joanna Martin — a women’s leadership coach trained in medicine and human psychology — told Forbes. “So it’s no surprise that much of our culture is built on distinctly ‘masculine’ foundations – competition, individualism, achievement – and that to succeed within that culture, women have adopted these masculine traits. I believe there is a different way. A way built on the concept of ‘soft power’.”
“Many people are triggered by the word ‘soft’ but we need an approach which is centered in compassion for ourselves and others, and yields to our very human needs. It is the rigid tree that breaks in a storm but the yielding willow bends with the wind and survives.” So true.
This holiday season is the perfect time for democratic leaders to emphasize the virtues of compassion, which, at least one month during the year, many of us try to conjure. There was nothing “weak” about the compassion of Rosalynn Carter — the embodiment, really, of soft power — particularly when contrasted against the cruelty of a Steven Miller. Hyperion to a satyr, to borrow from Shakespeare, for we will not look upon her like again. Rosalynn Carter, who spent half a century for advocating for better mental health care in America, was sent off with a memorial service attended by President Biden, as well as former Presidents, first Ladies, the current Governor of the state as well as Country music stars. She lived to see her home state turn purple, to turn more compassionate.
Compassion requires a lot of work, as opposed to “toughness,” which is such a visceral, innate noun. “Toughness” — or the appearance of toughness — is easy; compassion, by contrast, hard. Listen to Trump’s rallies for any length of time and you will hear the voice of a broken boy, endlessly projecting the veneer of power, of “tough,” in the hopes of hiding from view his own hollow, underdeveloped interior. Trump and Trumpism is the valorization of the underdeveloped interior — the broken boys and the Proud Boys — the anti-Woke that seeks to bury true history in favor of convenient fictions that reinforce inequality. Unfortunately, there are a lot of broken men in America — of all races.
Finally, not to overstate this as an issue, but I cannot fail to note that there has been a slight — and quixotic — uptick in African-American voters considering voting for Trump in 2024. Those voters, of course, are largely men, probably identifying more with their gender than with their race, which perfectly suits Trump’s more disciplined campaign team’s targets. Biden will have to counterprogram for that to make sure that his core is strong heading into the election. His closeness to Netanyahu certainly will not help him with getting out the African-American male vote, or, for that matter, college age voters.
What can we expect if the Republican Party takes back the Executive branch and possibly the Senate? Will they install the medieval droit du seigneur? Mass deportations and detention camps for immigrants? Audits of political enemies? Leaving NATO? As ridiculous as these examples sound, it is along these lines that the case should be made to vote blue, for the President and for Congress. Are the Democrats always right? Of course not, particularly when the President embraces a right-authoritarian like Benjamin Netanyahu so close that Biden is entirely blinded to his massive human rights violations. But at least Joe Biden — and the Democrat Party — is capable of acknowledging the notion of human rights and international opinion. And he listens and answers questions as a democrat — small d — ought to.
Does anyone think that Donald Trump gives a damn about human rights, particularly of non-citizens or even citizens that disagree with him? Just ask the late Jamal Khashoggi, former U.S. resident and contributing Washington Post global opinions columnist. Or, better yet, read the Statement from President Donald J. Trump on Standing with Saudi Arabia. Because you can’t ask Khashoggi, even if you wanted to, because he was killed on the direction of the Saudi leadership for dissent, according to our intelligence services, and his remains have never been found.
“Its a dangerous world,” is how Trump reacted to that finding. Just before the Saudi’s invested $2 billion in his son-in-law’s private equity firm, Affinity Partners.
“The United Arab Emirates planned to use its role as the host of UN climate talks as an opportunity to strike oil and gas deals, the BBC has learned. Leaked briefing documents reveal plans to discuss fossil fuel deals with 15 nations. The UN body responsible for the COP28 summit told the BBC hosts were expected to act without bias or self-interest. The UAE team did not deny using COP28 meetings for business talks, and said "private meetings are private.’” (Justin Rowlat/BBC)
“On October 12, as Israeli airstrikes were pummeling Gaza, Israel’s ambassador to India, Naor Gilon, told Asian News International that he had received such an outpouring of support from people in India that he could fill another Israeli army just with Indian volunteers. ‘Everyone is telling me, ‘I want to volunteer, I want to fight for Israel,’ he said. Gilon’s remarks came five days after Hamas militants’ attack on Israel claimed 1,200 lives (a number Israel revised down from the initial 1,400); Israel’s response has been an ongoing, genocidal bombing campaign, which killed more than 10,000 Palestinians in Gaza in its first month. Within hours of the Hamas attack, Narendra Modi, India’s far-right prime minister, expressed solidarity with Israel, and ministers throughout his party echoed him, many proclaiming that India and Israel share a common struggle against ‘terrorism.’ Meanwhile, Indian media has inundated hundreds of millions of viewers with relentless pro-Israel coverage, and India’s social media users have created such a flood of anti-Palestinian fake news that the cofounder of an Indian fact-checking nonprofit declared India “the disinformation capital of the world.” (Aparna Gopalan/TAP)
“Since the hijacking of the Galaxy Leader cargo ship in the Red Sea last week, the Houthis reportedly fired ballistic missiles that landed within ten nautical miles of the USS Mason on Sunday. The missile launch followed the U.S. Navy destroyer’s intervention in the attempted hijacking of another ship, a tanker named the Central Park, in the Gulf of Aden. The Houthis denied responsibility for this hijacking which appears to have been carried out by Somali pirates. The Houthis, who control most of northwest Yemen, also continue to launch cruise missiles and armed drones toward Israel. There are few good options when it comes to dealing with the Houthis. They are a formidable near-state organization that has evolved and been repeatedly tested during nearly two decades of war. From 2014, when they seized control of the Yemeni capital, Sana’a, the Houthis systematically vetted and incorporated many of Yemen’s best engineers, technicians, and officers from the Yemeni military and intelligence services into its own organization.” (Michael Horton/Responsible Statecraft)