Weekly Grounding #62

News, links, writing

Aug 30, 2024

Weekly Groundings are published every Friday to highlight the most interesting news, links, and writing I investigated during the past week. They are designed to ground your thinking in the midst of media overload and contribute to Handful of Earth’s broader framework. Please subscribe if you’d like to receive these posts directly in your inbox.

“Ukraine Has Crossed Moscow’s and Washington’s Red Lines”

Gideon Rachman analyzes Ukraine’s invasion of Russian territory at The Financial Times: “With the Kursk offensive, the Ukrainians have taken a leaf out of Israel’s book — by taking military action that has not been approved in Washington. The assumption by both Ukraine and Israel is that, if the action is successful, it will receive retrospective approval by America. If it fails, the US will ultimately help them deal with the consequences.”

Rachman continues: “Rather than respecting Russia’s red lines, the US and its allies have gradually tiptoed over them — testing how far Putin could be pushed through gradual escalation. Some western analysts believe that the Kursk offensive has now decisively debunked Putin’s nuclear threats. Phillips O’Brien of the University of St Andrews argues that invading Russia ‘has always been the last assumed red line of nuclear weapons usage — and the Ukrainians are marching . . . right across it.’ But the US does not believe that the last red line has been successfully crossed. Biden’s advisers continue to think that — if Putin believed his regime was on the point of total defeat — the Russians could resort to the use of nuclear weapons. When the Ukrainians complain that their allies are scared of the idea of victory, they have a point.”

“Start-up Incubator Y Combinator Backs Its First Weapons Firm”

As wars rage globally, the arms industry is having a field day. With so much money to be made selling the weapons of war, The Financial Times reports that “Y Combinator, the San Francisco start-up incubator that launched Airbnb, Reddit, Stripe and Coinbase, is backing a weapons company for the first time, entering a sector it has previously shunned.”

Already preparing for the next war, “Ares Industries, which launched last week, has pitched its ‘low-cost cruise missiles’ as suited for use in a potential war between the US and China in the Taiwan Strait. The start-up claims that US weapons stockpiles would be exhausted within weeks in such a conflict, and that ‘recent conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine have shown that our weapons are too large, too expensive for the wars of today.’ Ares’s founders, Alex Tseng and Devan Plantamura, say their $300,000 anti-ship cruise missiles ‘will be 10x smaller and 10x cheaper’ than today’s alternatives. On the YC website, Tseng’s biography consists of a single sentence: ‘Missiles are cool.’”

“Don’t Be Fooled: President Harris Would Keep on Arming Israel”

Amy Lieberman speaks to Dov Waxman about the history of American aid to Israel at Asia Times (republished from The Conversation): “Initially, for the first decade after Israel’s establishment in 1948, the US provided Israel with only economic aid, but, starting in the 1960s during the Kennedy administration, it began providing military aid as well. The US now gives only military aid to Israel. After Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War of 1967, when Israel demonstrated its ability to decisively defeat Soviet allies in the region, the US significantly increased its military aid to Israel. This was a turning point in many ways for the US-Israel relationship, because since then the US has seen Israel as a valuable ally.”

Waxman continues: “Another major increase in US military aid to Israel occurred under the Nixon administration in the late 1960s and early 1970s. This is worth noting because Nixon was not a great friend of Jewish people. But he increased US aid to Israel because of its strategic interest to the US. Since then, US military aid has continued to steadily increase over the years, and in the past year it has risen following Hamas’ October 7, 2023, attacks in Israel, and Israel’s subsequent invasion of Gaza.”

Of Kamala Harris, Waxman states: “I do not think she will agree with those calling for an arms embargo on Israel. For one thing, as vice president and before that as a senator, Kamala Harris has consistently supported providing US military aid to Israel. This position is typical of most Democratic Party members, as well as most Republicans.”

“Israeli Cabinet Trades Insults Over ‘Jewish Terrorism’ Warning”

Meanwhile in Israel, the government stands divided on how far violence should go against Palestinians. Is carpet bombing Gaza enough, or should Jewish settlers also be permitted to go on rampages in the West Bank? The Financial Times reports: “Israel’s government descended into bad-tempered infighting on Friday, as the defence minister accused his ‘irresponsible’ far-right cabinet colleague of putting the nation’s security at risk. The barbed exchanges followed reports that the head of the Shin Bet intelligence agency warned about the risk of ‘bloodshed’ from the actions of national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir and the growing phenomenon of ‘Jewish terrorism.’”

The report states that “Ben Gvir, who heads the Jewish Power party and is a key coalition ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, was given expanded powers last year over the police as part of his cabinet portfolio. He has consistently demanded harsher measures against Palestinians and has increased settlement construction in the occupied West Bank, as well as greater Jewish control over Jerusalem’s al Aqsa mosque compound.”

Notably, Shin Bet chief, Ronen Bar, acknowledges Israeli police support for settler violence in the West Bank: “Bar wrote that settler attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank had increased as a result of the war in Gaza and ‘the weak hand of the police, and possibly even a sense of support to a certain extent.’ The intelligence chief reportedly charged that unnamed parliament members, almost certainly from far-right parties, were providing money, legitimacy, and ‘words of praise’ to Israelis suspected of such attacks.” Since this article came out, the Israeli military has started a major operation in the occupied West Bank.

“Democrats Are Super Happy, Working-Class Voters Are Not”

Ruy Teixeira

analyzes recent presidential election polls at

The Liberal Patriot

. In one recent Washington Post/ABC News/Ipsos poll, “Harris is ahead of Trump by 3 or 4 points, depending on whether other candidates are included on the ballot test. But among working-class (noncollege) voters, Harris trails Trump by 7 points while leading among college-educated voters by 20 points. This is both somewhat worse than Biden did among working-class voters in 2020 (deficit of 4 points) and somewhat better than Biden did among college-educated voters (advantage of 18 points). The same pattern applies to white voters; Harris is doing somewhat better than Biden 2020 among white college voters but somewhat worse among white working-class voters. And among nonwhite working-class voters she is still underperforming. Biden carried these voters by 48 points in 2020; Harris is ahead by only 29 points.”

This is more evidence that, if the Harris campaign emerges victorious in November, it will likely be on account of increased support among college-educated white voters, as non-college educated white and non-white voters continue their drift out of the Democratic coalition.

“An Urban's Rural View”

Urban C. Lehner projects the impacts of industrial policy under Kamala Harris and Donald Trump presidencies at The Progressive Farmer: “Industrial policy refers to government support for—and protection of—particular industries, using tools like tariffs, subsidies and research. Washington policymakers used to deride it. They believed markets allocated capital better than governments and free trade made the country richer than protectionism…Today, devotion to free markets and free trade is a thing of the past.”

“When Donald Trump took office in 2017, he pulled the U.S. out of a big free-trade deal with Asia. Later Trump, who calls himself ‘tariff man,’ imposed tariffs on washing machines, solar panels, steel and aluminum, followed by tariffs on a broader array of Chinese products. Candidate Trump is promising tariffs that dwarf those from his presidency…As for Kamala Harris, she hasn't talked much about the issue, but many experts expect she’ll build on President Joe Biden's industrial policy. That would have her relying less on tariffs and more on subsidies, tougher buy-American rules for government purchases and research. Like Biden, she’s less likely to support and protect metal-bending industries, more likely to shower favors on high-tech industries like semiconductors and environmentally sensitive industries like electric cars. Again, her tariffs won’t likely be as high or broad as those Trump is touting; subsidies are likely to be the focus.”

Urban concludes with a note on the relationship between manufacturing and agriculture: “As Trump points out, the U.S. has for extended periods in its distant past imposed big tariffs in the name of promoting manufacturing. And if whopping tariffs bring about an American manufacturing renaissance, many Americans would say they’re worth it. But that renaissance is far from guaranteed. What’s nearly certain is that in the short run, trading partners would retaliate—and U.S. agriculture exports would be among those in the cross hairs.”

For more on the turn away from the Washington Consensus on free trade, see my article, “We Are All Trumpians Now.”

What grounded your thinking this week? Feel free to share in the comments.

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