Abbreviated Pundit Roundup: Blinken in China

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We begin today with John Hudson of The Washington Post reporting about Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s high-stakes diplomatic trip to China.

China’s foreign minister, Qin Gang, warned Blinken that he should “show respect” during a pre-trip phone call, and made clear his view that Washington alone was responsible for the abysmal state of relations.

But U.S. officials said Blinken remained hopeful that the two nations could move beyond feuding rhetoric and make progress on establishing regular lines of communication — a modest objective given the many existing disagreements over trade, human rights, Taiwan, Hong Kong and cybersecurity. [...]

Many times wealthier and more globally connected than it was in the 1970s, China has been flexing its diplomatic muscles recently, brokering a rapprochement between regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran, hosting French President Emmanuel Macron and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, and flirting with the role of peacemaker on the Middle East and the war in Ukraine.

The diplomatic streak has Beijing projecting confidence and independence, but it can ill afford a long standoff with Washington.

Barbara Slavin of JustSecurity suggests some ways in which China might be able to “assist” with Middle East diplomacy.

In recent years, China has become the region’s main trading partner but has largely remained a free rider in terms of diplomacy and security. In March, however, Beijing helped finalize an agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia restoring normal diplomatic relations between these historic rivals. Then, on June 14, Chinese leader Xi Jinping conspicuously hosted Mahmoud Abbas, the long-time leader of the Palestinian Authority. No one believes China can broker an end to the seemingly intractable Israeli-Palestinian dispute, but Beijing could use its economic leverage with Tehran – the largest backer of Palestinian militant groups – to pressure the groups to take or refrain from taking certain actions.

As the largest importer of Middle Eastern oil, including sanctioned Iranian oil, China is in a unique position to push Tehran to cool tensions with the United States and Israel both regionally and on the nuclear file. As previously observed by experts at our Stimson exercise, “The fact that China is the major purchaser of Iranian oil is a disincentive to Iran ever carrying out its repeated threats to close the Strait of Hormuz to tanker traffic.”

China can also encourage Tehran to accept what appears to be an emerging understanding with the United States that Iran will not enrich uranium to weapons grade. Enriching to 90 percent purity appears to be a red line that could spark an Israeli and/or U.S. strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. That could lead to a wider conflagration. In preventing such a scenario, China would be serving its own interests as opposed to those of Russia, which would see prices for its oil skyrocket in the event of a crisis in the Persian Gulf. China would also be contributing more generally to global non-proliferation.

Michael McFaul writes for his “McFaul’s World” Substack about what Secretary Blinken should be trying to accomplish.

“Improved relations”, “thaws”, or “détentes”, should never be the goal of diplomacy towards adversaries – or even allies. Rather, “improved relations” should be understood as a means – one of many – to achieve concrete outcomes that advance the security and economic interests of the American people. I would also add the advancement of values – democratic, American, universal – to this list of objectives, even though some might disagree. But getting the goals versus the means right was and remains critical. [...]

First, Blinken’s goal for this trip should not be “improved relations” or a “thaw” with the People’s Republic of China. Instead, he should seek to advance very concrete U.S. national interests. The U.S. and China achieving concrete outcomes together will improve the mood music in their bilateral relations, not the other way around. On this trip, Blinken will most likely come home with few concrete outcomes – the State Department calls them “deliverables.” That’s ok.

Second, Blinken should avoid linkage. Above all else, he should not think that refraining from talking about human rights abuses will produce progress on other matters. Blinken should, in fact, practice “dual-track diplomacy”. He should talk with Chinese government officials on all issues of importance and meet separately with Chinese non-governmental actors – civil society leaders (although they are fewer and fewer in numbers these days), students, businesspeople, academics, et cetera.

I largely agree with Ambassador McFaul that with diplomacy, ends and means often get confused. The essay by Ms. Slavin outlines some points on which the U.S. and China might agree. Diplomacy is about securing those agreements or “deliverables.”

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be visiting Washington later this week. Mohamed Zeeshan of The Diplomat gives a preview of PM Modi’s visit, which will include a state dinner and a Modi speech to a Joint Session of Congress.

When India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi goes to Washington this month, he is expected to be given a rapturous welcome. Modi’s itinerary will include a state dinner with U.S. President Joe Biden, a historic second address to the U.S. Congress, and a now customary sold-out audience with the Indian diaspora.

Given India’s vociferously neutral stance on the Ukraine war, it’s safe to say that Washington is going out of its way to make Modi feel comfortable. The U.S. hopes that in doing so, it would eventually be able to pull India away from Russia and also convince it to provide support to American troops during a potential conflict over Taiwan. [...]

Washington also sees China as a strategic threat to a U.S.-led world order. But while India might prefer American hegemony to Chinese hegemony, it also sees China’s rise as an opportunity to establish a more multipolar order, given the wide disparity in power between Beijing and Washington. Under Modi, India has also taken stances similar to China’s on a number of global governance debates, including norms of democracy, freedom of religion, human rights, data privacy and localization, cybersecurity and so on.

Dan Balz, Ann E. Marimow, and Perry Stein of The Washington Post point out that the Trump indictments and his candidacy for the presidency are contributing to the continued erosion of trust in American political institutions.

Not since the Vietnam War in the 1960s or perhaps the mid-19th century before the Civil War has the country’s governing structure faced such disunity and peril, given the unprecedented nature of a federal criminal indictment of a former president compounded by the fact that Trump has been charged by the Justice Department in the administration of the Democrat who defeated him in 2020 and who is his likeliest general election opponent in 2024, if Trump is nominated again by the Republican Party.

Scholars, legal experts and political strategists agree that what lies ahead is ugly and unpredictable. Many fear that the 2024 election will not overcome the distrust of many Americans in their government and its pillars, almost no matter the outcome. “A constitutional democracy stands or falls with the effectiveness and trustworthiness of the systems through which laws are created and enforced,” said William Galston of the Brookings Institution. “If you have fundamental doubts raised about those institutions, then constitutional democracy as a whole is in trouble.”

MAGA believes that Number 45, of all people, is worth it, I guess.

John Cassidy of The New Yorker wonders why President Biden isn’t getting more credit for the improved economy.

It’s not every day that a former President gets indicted—even though, with this former President, it is beginning to feel that way. But the eclipse of the inflation figure is emblematic of a larger story, which is that the U.S. economy has done a lot better in the past year than most experts expected. This development, however, has largely failed to penetrate the public consciousness. With inflation down and unemployment at 3.7 per cent, the so-called misery index, which combines these two rates, is at 7.7 per cent. In January, 2021, when Joe Biden was inaugurated, the misery index was also at 7.7 per cent. (The inflation rate was 1.4 per cent and the unemployment rate was 6.3 per cent.) And, yet, according to the RealClearPolitics poll average, Biden’s approval rating has dropped from above fifty per cent during the first months of his Presidency to just 37.6 per cent now, with a disapproval rating of fifty-nine per cent. This is a disconnect that demands an explanation.

Economists often talk about lags in policy. It takes a while for changes in interest rates or taxes to feed through to the economy, but there are lags in public perception of the economy’s health, too. Although inflation has been falling for nearly a year, the process has been gradual, and people may be only starting to notice. In two of the past seven polls in the R.C.P. database, Biden’s economic approval has edged up into the forties. That could conceivably be the start of a trend, but it would take a brave person to bet on it.

This is largely because, despite the inflation rate falling over all in the past year, many individual prices still remain considerably higher than they were when Biden took office. “Economists tend to look at the rate of change of prices, rather than price levels,” Bernard Yaros, an economist at Moody’s Analytics, told me, on Friday. “Inflation is important, partly because it helps determine what the Federal Reserve will do. But most people tend to look at price levels. And, if you look at levels, it’s understandable why households are still downbeat.”

Ed Kilgore of New York magazine wonders the same thing and he has a suggestion.

Most Americans do not follow monthly inflation, crime, or border-crossing statistics. They experience inflation through more expensive bills, less abundant grocery purchases, and delayed big-ticket investments; crime through if-it-bleeds-it-leads local news broadcasts and major events like mass shootings; immigration through vivid images of people in migrant camps or the frequency with which they hear foreign languages spoken in their own communities. The positive statistics Bill Scher recites need to be reflected over time in real-life experiences — and they need to persist until the moment voters decide how to vote. But pushing back when Biden haters pretend the country is going straight to hell is probably a good idea for Democrats. A swing voter might hear them.

The editorial board of the Des Moines Register acknowledges and celebrates a win in the Iowa Supreme Court for abortion rights but knows that the fight isn’t finished.

Three Iowa Supreme Court justices on Friday rejected a brutally invasive law that was passed in 2018 but never took effect. The ban on most abortions at about six weeks of pregnancy would have, in practical terms, kept many women from choosing abortion because it would be too late to legally get one by the time they realized they were pregnant. Three justices would have lifted a 2019 injunction blocking the so-called fetal heartbeat ban. With one justice recused, the tie vote means that a lower court’s decision leaving the injunction in place is the final word on the topic.

For people who are committed to abortion rights in the interest of preserving women’s health and dignity, the feeling perhaps resembles watching the underdog sports team you support secure a lucky victory early in the playoffs: The win is what matters, more than how it happened, but now a bigger challenge awaits.

That challenge, of course, is the expectation that sometime in the next eight months or so, the Republican-controlled Legislature will try again.

Greg Moore of the Arizona Republic worries that Juneteenth will become just another commercialized holiday.

As for commercialization, St. Patrick’s Day has been a religious and Irish cultural holiday for more than 1,000 years; but in the U.S., it’s little more than an excuse to get drunk on green beer.

Cinco de Mayo is a small holiday south of the border; but in the U.S., it’s exploded into an excuse to visit Mexican restaurants for extended happy hours.

And Pride month is supposed to be about equal protections under the law; but now, it’s often just an excuse for people to wear rainbows at parades.

Could Juneteenth be next?

Will the holiday become all about soul food and getting drunk? Will bigots use it as an excuse to go out in Blackface?

I haven’t seen a Juneteenth mattress sale yet but that might be inevitable.

Betsy Morais of Columbia Journalism Review points to data showing that media companies increased the percentage of white people that were hired in 2022.

This spring, Digiday reported that “media companies are still mostly hiring white people.” The news was damning not only because of the facts of the matter, but also the context: just a couple of years ago, the journalism industry was said to be undergoing a “reckoning” over racism. High-ranking white people resigned or were dismissed; there were prominent hires of Black editors and other people of color; newsrooms issued apologies. In a 2021 piece for CJR about the press, white supremacy, and atonement, Alexandria Neason noted that “to chart a new path forward, we will need much more than regret.”

Per Digiday: At Condé Nast, 49 percent of new hires in 2022 self-identified as white, up from 45 percent in 2021. At Vice Media Group, new hires in the United States were 54 percent white last year, up from 47 percent. At Hearst, new hires were 59 percent white. At the New York Times, 44 percent of new hires were people of color, “down a whopping 10 percentage points compared to 2021.” History repeats: In 1968, members of the Kerner Commission—an advisory board formed by President Lyndon B. Johnson in response to a series of protests against racism—observed in a report that the country’s mostly white media had failed to cover the underlying causes of the demonstrations. In response, the organization now known as the American Society of News Editors set out to build a journalism workforce that reflected the racial makeup of the US population by the year 2000. As Neason wrote, “that deadline came and went.”

And that’s occurring at a time when there have also been massive layoffs at media companies.

Kelly Weill of The Daily Beast reports on a recent Gallup poll showing that decreased support for same-sex relations and LGBTQ rights is largely a Republican phenomenon.

The change was largely driven by self-identified Republican respondents. Last year, 56 percent of Republicans told Gallup they approved of same-sex relations. This year, only 41 percent supported them, reflecting conservative campaigns against LGBTQ rights, from laws prohibiting discussion of LGBTQ issues in schools, to attacks on Pride-themed displays in stores.

“The current figure is the lowest Gallup has measured for Republicans since 2014 (39%),” Gallup found.

Conservatives have used LGBTQ rights as a cudgel over the past year, with right-wing outlets like Fox News falsely calling the Pride flag a sign of “grooming and pedophilia” when it flew on the White House this week, and GOP lawmakers attacking companies like Target for selling Pride merchandise this month. Donald Trump remarked on Republicans’ newfound animus for LGBTQ issues—notably transgender rights—during a speech this month, when he observed that his audience was less enthusiastic about tax cuts than they were about his attacks on trans rights.

Largely but not exclusively a Republican phenomenon.

Trump notes his crowd is more enthused about bigotry than they are for tax cuts: "It's amazing how strongly people feel about that. I talk about cutting taxes, people go like that, I talk about transgender everybody goes crazy. Five years ago you didn't know what the hell it was" pic.twitter.com/n1xoeCIL5C

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) June 11, 2023

Finally today, the newly award-winning columnist Ismael Perez writes for the Chicago Sun-Times about the history of LGBT journalism and journalists at the Sun-Times and looks fabulous!

John Teets, a gay journalist, joined the newspaper in 1966. But his sexual orientation wasn’t immediately known. It took a few years before, as he described it, he was “kicked out of the closet.”

Teets, now 74, worked as a clerk in the wire room, a caption writer, photo editor, copy editor, news editor and eventually joined the Sun-Times editorial board. Throughout the mid-1960s and 1970s, he had girlfriends and even an office romance with a woman.

After that relationship ended, he found love in 1976 with a man who loved parties and wanted to attend a work-related party Teets was invited to. To please his lover — the couple was married until his partner’s death in 2015 — Teets had to be brave.

“I had a plus-one and was suppose to tell the managing editor, Ralph Otwell, who my date was. So I walk in to his office and said, ‘Ralph, I will indeed bring someone to the party.’ And he said, ‘What’s her name?’ I said, ‘Robert.’ He clamped down on his pipe for a minute, and then he said, ‘I look forward to meeting him.’ And he turned to his typewriter and got back to work.”

Have the best possible day everyone!