Eurovisie April 2018

eurovisie a publication of the study association for european studies

Conference edition: Transatlantic Relations

April 2018 www.ses-uva.nl / eurovisie@ses-uva.nl

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volume 13, issue 4 - April 2018

editorial

mats licht

5 Monstrous Times 7 Darryl Barthe and NATO 8 Republicans Jakob Hagenberg on shifting sands 10 Built Mats Licht Be Many and They Be Few 13 We Sjors Roeters of ungrammaticality 16 InJoeppraise Leerssen value of life across the Atlantic 17 Eugenics: Alexandra Staudinger Spy Who Came in from the Cold 19 The Clara Iszezuk Art of the Deal 21 The Maarten van Campenhout Changing Face of Russian Disinformation 23 The Anna Boyce Computer Interfaces 26 Brain Sally Dixon EU & US or EU/US Lisanne Kielema

imprint Editorial office: Kloveniersburgwal 48, room E2.04/2.05, 1012 CX Amsterdam Editor-in-chief: Mats Licht Editors: Anna Boyce, Sally Dixon, Clara Iszezuk, Lisanne Kielema, Sjors Roeters, Alexandra Staudinger Final editing: Daniël Adam, Hanna Blom Design: Daniël Adam, Emiel Janssens With contributions by: Jakob Hagenberg, Joep Leerssen, Maarten van Campenhout & Darryl Barthe

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ast year, Eurovisie tried to be controversial like never before for the SES conference. Unfortunately, bashing a conservative autocrat over the head with a somewhat flattering Charlie Chaplin comparison does not yield the desired outrage at a faculty that is by and large a progressive, leftist stronghold. In any case, I have not yet been put on any secret lists – so much for the Turkish opinion police. This year, we lack an equally rousing item, but then again so does the Conference. It is just no fun bashing Trump any more, too easy. Like shooting fish in a barrel...sweet, juicy, orange, loud, racist fish...In fact I know a way to end up on a watch list after all! Did you know that it is illegal to say or to print the sentence “I want to kill the President of the United States of America.”? It’s okay now because I am not actually saying it, I am merely telling you that something like: “I would like to stick the President of the United States in a barrel and shoot him with a 12 gauge shotgun,” would be an illegal thing to say, at least under federal law in the US. Sorry, I got sidetracked there for a second. In any case, the message on this issue’s cover has to be enough for now. It is a simple message, applicable in all sorts of situations, fittingly accompanied by a grim Kolkhoz expression, aimed inside and outside Mother Russia: Don’t Talk.

‘Our parents can’t be spies – they’re not cool enough!’- Carmen Cortez

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EU & US or EU/US?

“Climate change leadership” of the EU and the US

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n the 1970s, climate change gradually started to become an important topic in international politics, and the EU and the US were both quick to jump on the climate change action train to reduce global emissions. Over the years, the EU and the US have both struggled with their frequently donned title of “climate change leader”: the US with the withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol (1995) and recently the Paris Agreement (2015), the EU at the Copenhagen negotiations in 2009, when, according to insiders, the EU’s high standards created a major blockage for other countries to commit to the agreement.

The EU’s ambitious plans did not change over time and remained at a substantial level at the Paris negotiations. Public demand to come to a common agreement eventually compelled the EU to decrease their ambitions in order to produce a joint text. Since the EU strove for a bigger agreement, some argue that the EU cannot be considered a climate change leader, because it is not able to persuade others to do the same as they do.

Meanwhile, the US can in some ways be viewed as a leader because they managed to decrease the EU’s proposed goals. This presents the question to what extent the EU and the US can be considered climate change leaders and why the EU seems more enthusiastic to fight climate change than the US. This enquiry allows us to first dig into the concept of leadership. Many types of leadership have been created, but for this article I will use the four types of leadership that Parker, Karlsson & Hjerpe outline in their research article ‘Assessing the European Union’s global climate change leadership: from Copenhagen to the Paris Agreement’ (2017). The first type is structural leadership, which relies on an actor’s ability to take actions that create incentives, costs, and benefits that may change other actors’ behaviours. The second mode is idea-based leadership, which consists of agenda setting efforts, problem naming and framing, and the discovery and proposal of joint solutions for collective

Lisanne Kielema problems. The third type is directional leadership, which means leading by example and demonstrating the feasibility and value of specific policies.

The fourth mode is instrumental leadership, which addresses an actor’s capacity to promote coalition-forming and bridge-building.

The authors argue that the EU has used all four types of leadership, some more fruitful than others, but that the EU has most distinctly succeeded in using instrumental leadership, since it has tried to build bridges both with less developed countries as well as with the US and China. Critics would argue that the EU lacks the third type of leadership since Paris (2015) “proved” that the EU cannot convince others. The US has also successfully performed all types of leadership and might be most competent in the third mode, since it is one of the most powerful states in international politics.

How come the EU is better at using instrumental leadership and the US at directional leadership?

A significant piece of this can be attributed to the identities of these actors. The EU is regularly viewed as a normative actor, and tackling climate change can be considered a normative challenge: making efforts to delay or stop climate change is just ‘the right thing to do.’ Therefore, the EU has been very eager to commit to reducing emissions and has dedicated itself to proposing meaningful standards at climate change negotiations. In relation to this, building bridges will lead to a common, and therefore normative, agreement. The US is frequently considered to be the only hegemon in international politics, which makes the country vastly powerful.

These characteristics can also be discovered in the internal structures of the actors. The normative identity of the EU replays in its preference to use consensus-voting in the Council of the EU, and in its desire to be a forum for debate for EU member states and EU citizens alike, through the Council of Ministers, European Council and the European Parliament. This consensus-bid also exists in clima-

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te change negotiations, where the EU has always managed to present a collective internal agreement on upcoming climate change negotiations.

Meanwhile, the US has always struggled to create an internal agreement. This is due to the Democrats often supporting climate action whilst Republicans regularly oppose taking steps. The US withdrawals from the Kyoto Protocol (1995) and the Paris Agreement (2015), both signed during a Democratic Presidency and abandoned during a Republican Presidency, illustrate this struggle. Many Republicans are not convinced of the seriousness of climate change or do not want to damage the economy, which can be connected to the US’ hegemonic position. This has led to the absence of a strong and clear US incentive during climate change negotiations.

EU learned from its mistakes in Copenhagen, when it did not lower ambitions and therefore could not produce a collective text. Even though decreasing their goals at the Paris negotiations might indicate that the EU is less of a leader because it failed at persuading other states of the importance of tackling climate change, it can also show that the EU learned that coming to an agreement with less meaningful targets is better than reaching no agreement, which implies better idea-based leadership.

Thirdly, by trying to reach consensus at the Paris negotiations in 2015, the EU has applied its internal goal of creating consensus, combining the wishes of all member states and institutions, to external policy negotiations, which might mean a spread of the EU’s internal strategy to internatioWhilst the US struggles with internal agreements, nal (climate change) negotiations. By considering the EU has problems with external agreements. the wishes of other countries in trying to reach At Copenhagen, the EU’s standards were too high a joint agreement, the EU might normatively be and led to no agreement since the EU could not a better leader (instrumental leadership) than a persuade others of the need for them. This shows state who forces countries to adjust to the same a lack of directional leadership. In Paris in 2015, interests as itself has (directional leadership). The the EU chose to lower its ambitions to create a Paris negotiations could therefore possibly indicacommon agreement, accepting a lack of directional te a spread of normative leadership, a component leadership, in order to achieve success in idea-ba- which is founded in the EU identity which, in turn, sed and instrumental leadership. could mean a spread of a part of the EU identity.

The principles discussed above present four interesting take-aways: firstly, whilst the EU’s consensus system is often seen as annoyingly complica“Secondly, it is questionable ted, this strategy does enable the EU to speak with one voice and ensure every side is satisfied to what extent the EU and with the resolution, which the US is not able to the US can be labelled as do due to the continuing Democrat/Republican tensions. Hence, instead of calling the EU’s interclimate change leaders.” nal structure complex, the EU could be praised for its commonality and effectiveness. To quote the EU’s motto: the Union is ‘united in diversity’ when negotiating an internal agreement.

Finally, it could be argued that hegemony and climate change leadership do not make a good Secondly, it is questionable to what extent the EU couple, while non-hegemony and climate change and the US can be labelled as climate change lea- leadership are also not a fruitful combination. The ders. The Paris agreement did re-establish the EU US seems unable to be a leader as this will harm as a leader, but since it had to lower its ambitions, their hegemonic status, whilst the EU is eager to it can be said that the EU did not have the power take climate change action but does not seem to to persuade other actors of the need to strongly have the capability of a global leader to lead by reduce emissions, directional leadership was lac- example and convince others. If this is the case, king. While the EU’s hybrid structure presents no this could result in a climate change leadership field problem internally since all institutions previously which will remain fragmented, with several leaders reached a joint agreement, the EU can face trou- who have either the will or the power to create ble convincing other actors of the need for action. strong, meaningful agreements, but not both. Time Despite this, there are signs to conclude that the will tell if this will be enough.

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DARRYL BARTHE

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he Pax Americana has been over for years, now. The US, marketed for so long as the “leader of the free world,” is being governed by an openly racist, authoritarian, regime. Americans have politically normalized permanent war, torture, and assassinations as foreign policy. Americans have politically normalized police murder, state-sanctioned and state-organized slavery, and have legalized bribery as domestic policy. America is at war with the world. America is at war with itself.

The grand-children and great-grandchildren of those men who stormed the beaches of Normandy on 6 June 1944, are killing themselves. They are overdosing on synthetic opiates at such rates that their deaths have negatively impacted life expectancy for white people in the US. Their children are massacring one another in school shootings.

They are stockpiling military-styled weapons and, occasionally, they are murdering their neighbors, their lovers, their unrequited love interests, as well as film-goers, and random country music fans, in Connecticut, Florida, Louisiana, Texas, Colorado and California and in scores of places in-between.

Monstrous Times their labor.

Surrounding the Whitney Plantation Museum on all sides, today, are factories and industrial plants, constructed on the sites of plantations long gone: Monsanto, Union Carbide, DuPont and others. This stretch of the Mississippi River, all the way to Baton Rouge, is called “Cancer Alley” because of elevated incidences of cancer among the residents.

The vast majority of these residents, of course, are working class people who depend on these same companies for work and who consistently vote against any attempt at regulating these industries in their state.

While it is easy to gasp in horror at the United States, given the sublime disaster of Donald Trump, it is useful to keep in mind that Donald Trump did not create this situation. Donald Trump did not create the synthetic opioid epidemic, it created him. Trump, for all his blustery racism, for all his sexual predation, and for all of his fake-machismo, did not create the crisis of mass incarceration in the US, the voting disenfranchisement that accompanies the mass incarceration state in the US created Trump. Donald Trump is not responsible for the culture of despair and violence that Last summer, I took a group of Dutch students to regularly erupts in mass shootings in the US, he is New Orleans as part of a class on the history of an outgrowth of it. Donald Trump is not responsithe city. I am originally from New Orleans. My fa- ble for “Cancer Alley,” even if he does profit from mily has lived in New Orleans since the middle of it. Donald Trump, whose grandfather Friedrich imthe 18th-century, long before Louisiana became a migrated to New York in the 1880’s, two decades territory of the United States. It was with a sense after private slavery was abolished in the US, is of exhausted frustration that I informed my studefinitely not the cause of the historical injustice dents to not drink the water from the faucet since and exploitation displayed at the Whitney Plantathere had been reports of brain eating amoebas tion Museum, even if that history is what informs in the drinking water supply of south Louisiana, a the sense of “greatness” that his supporters belielegacy of right-wing deregulation and American ve he represents.

Republican Party politics.

On election night 2016, I gave a talk at AmsterI took my students to the Whitney Plantation dam’s Spui 25 where I predicted a victory for Museum on Louisiana’s German Coast, just west of Hillary Clinton. I did not predict that Clinton would New Orleans. There, they could see a monument win because of her superiority as a candidate, to white supremacy and racial terror, repurposed but because I did not believe that American elites to offer insight into the lives of the people who would allow Trump access to the White House. had been enslaved there in the 19th-century. Later, If he was successful, I noted, the world would after dropping the students off at their accomhave much bigger problems to contemplate than modations, I visited my parents’ home in LaPlace, the fact that I was wrong in my prediction. When Louisiana (also on the German Coast). My father he was elected, I thought of Robert Oppenheiexplained to me that he knew people who were mer staring out onto a Nevada desert, watching sharecroppers on that plantation even into the mushroom clouds reach up to the sky, knowing early 1960’s who were never compensated for that the world had changed forever, and not for

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the better.

The positive correlation between Trump’s political support and communities ravaged by ‘deaths of despair’ (including opioid overdose, but also suicide) is well-established. Donald Trump is an avatar of hopelessness. He is the embodiment of the political will of a people maddened by rage and impoverishment. He is a petty, and clueless, would-be-aristocrat with no sense of noblesse oblige, embodying every quality that compelled the French people to drag Louis XVI to the guillotine. Donald Trump is a cry for help from deep within the American heartland and when those poor sods who gave him their votes realize the extent to which they have been betrayed, their despair, and their wrath, will only intensify.

history as a colony founded in slavery and genocide, that saved Western Europe from Nazism, now threatens to consume the United States and plunge the whole world into darkness. Now is the time of monsters.

What will Europe do?

Republicans and NATO

In the light of President Trump’s America-First rhetoric, NATO has taken a verbal beating. Guest contributer Jakob Hagenberg assesses the Republican Is Europe prepared to reach out to their cousins in position on the North Atlantic Treaty the United States? Is Europe prepared to chastise Organisation. their cousins in the United States? Is Europe prepared to demand that the United States comply with international standards of decency and law?

The European Union, last month, agreed to sign no trade agreements with any country that refuses to comply with the Paris accords but what about signing trade agreements with countries that permit the enslavement of people for smoking marijuana (like the US), or countries that overthrow democratically elected governments and deliberately destabilize countries in order to exploit their natural resources (like the US), or countries that initiate wars of aggression and convenience (like the US)? Is Europe prepared to do business with countries that systematically condone police murder (like the US)?

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hen the former reality-TV star and draft dodger, who famously declared NATO ‘obsolete’ while on the campaign trail, became president of the United States, policy-makers in Europe were thrown into turmoil. How could the country with the strongest military in the world, Europe’s guardian during and beyond the Cold War, suddenly elect a man president who has no knowledge of the military, let alone of the strategic importance of the strongest defensive alliance in the world? And how could the Republican party with its countless war hawks, who do not fear any military confrontation around the globe, endorse such a candidate?

First of all, regardless of any of Trump’s rhetoric, the vast majority of Americans (almost 70%) and most core Trump supporters (54%) believe that NATO is essential to US security, with support for NATO among college-educated Americans higher than among those without a degree. So when Trump questioned America’s commitment to its treaty obligations, most notably under Article 5 The United States has represented a cornerstone of the North Atlantic Treaty, to defend its allies in case of an attack, he did not do so because of of a global political and economic order sina wide-spread sentiment among the Republican ce World War II, when thousands of Americans crossed an ocean to die on the beaches of France, base to let America’s allies in Europe down, but in the villages of Belgium and Holland, and in the despite their support for NATO. In fact it has been a constant of American foreign policy under forests of Germany, in order to save Europeans presidents from both parties since the founding from themselves. That global political and ecoof NATO in 1949 to stress US commitment to nomic order has died and it is not clear what will its allies, both vis-à-vis the Soviet Union during replace it. That same penchant for violence and the Cold War and towards Russian and Islamist brutality that Americans possess, a legacy of its

“Is Europe prepared to chastice their cousins in the United States?”

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threats after the fall of Communism. Not only do Republicans share values with Europe – democracy, the rule of law, free market and human rights – that they are willing to defend, but they also have vested security and economic interests in a stable Europe whose borders are secure. Moreover, America’s NATO allies have been fighting with the US in countries such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and the Balkans, proving their solidarity. Thus, there is a general sense of obligation towards America’s European allies among most Republicans.

However, the Republican party is not comparable to European parties, with a strong central manifesto and leadership. It is more of an alliance of groups with different – and sometimes competing – ideologies. Most Republicans are conservatives that value free market, low government spending, and oppose illegal immigration. When it comes to foreign policy, however, aspirations differ. While most Republicans advocate an enormous military budget (with libertarians as the most notable sidelined exception), conservatives and neoconservatives disagree with so-called paleo-conservatives about the US’ military role in the world. The former tend to favour interventionist policies, with the US defending its values overseas, especially in Europe, whereas the latter tend to oppose interventions unless they are necessary for America’s immediate security. In any case, paleo-conservatives reject the necessity to spread democracy or other values with military force. Donald Trump managed to appeal to both groups by on the one hand stressing “America first“ and rejecting the US intervention in Iraq, but simultaneously advocating for a tougher fight against ISIS and an ever stronger military allegedly weakened by Obama. Trump’s rhetoric of only interfering where America’s security is directly at stake, but not considering Europe as a vital part of American security architecture, appealed to his base, but was not shared by establishment Republicans, most of whom are interventionalist conservatives that consider Russia a major threat to the US. It came as no surprise when Republican heavyweights in the senate heavily criticized Trump for challenging America’s commitment to defend the Baltic states, which are all NATO members, in case of a Russian attack. Also, most of Trump’s contenders in the Republican primaries opposed this stance. Trump’s advisors tried to placate the public, explaining that Trump did not aim to betray America’s allies, but to incentivise them to

increase their defence spending. This is indeed a demand of Republicans and Democrats alike.

Since Europe was reconstructed after World War II, American administrations pressed for high European military spending in order to share the burden of defending Western Europe against the Soviet Union. However, European nations were reluctant to do so, especially due to the fact that the US had a vital incentive to protect them and invested heavily in its military. After the fall of the Soviet Union, defence budgets were cut across Western Europe, which led even President Obama to call European countries ‘free-riders’. This notion is shared by the Republicans, especially as NATO members agreed to spend 2% of GDP on defence and 20% of their military budget on major equipment and Research and Development in 2006, reaffirming their commitment in 2014. Yet only five of 28 member states (the US, Estonia, Greece, Poland, and the United Kingdom) spend 2% or more of their GDP on defence, with the other countries only slowly and sometimes reluctantly increasing their military budgets. In 2015 alone, NATO countries spent $100 billion less than they would have had all NATO countries adhered to the 2% of GDP rule. It is under this light that Trump threatened other NATO members that he would not defend them unless they live up to their commitments.

Although appalled by Trump’s threatening language, Republicans share this concern for increased European military spending.

After the elections, Trump pledged to comply with Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty and to preserve NATO. After repeating his claim that European NATO members owed the US money, he was informed that there was no NATO account that European countries had failed to contribute to. It remains to be seen whether his rhetoric will lead to substantially higher defence spending in Europe.

But it is not only idealistic motives that make Republicans value America’s military bonds with Europe; an increase in Europe’s military spending would also boost the American economy, as not all arms would be produced in Europe, but also imported from the US. A stable Europe is essential for the US, as Europe and the US are each other’s principal trading partners and top sources of foreign direct investment. Conservatives in the US also derive another benefit from restricting Russia’s influence in Europe: in accordance

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with an anti-Russian rhetoric, an alienated Russia would be excluded from access to the European oil and gas market. As a consequence, European nations would have to import oil and gas from the US, which has boosted its production recently.

A weakening of Europe, both militarily and economically, due to Russian aggression would, by extension, also mean a weakening of the US. An armed conflict requiring American troops fighting on European soil in order to protect its interests, is a dire outlook for the United States.

Europe would then lead to a dangerous uncertainty that Russia could exploit for further aggression.

A strong presence in the transatlantic military relationship is thus a priority for most Republicans.

This is reflected in the fact that the US has sent troops to Central and Eastern Europe as part of the Atlantic Resolve mission, to deter Russia from attacking Europe. Next to about 60,000 troops in Western Europe, since 2015 the US has sent around 11,000 troops to Poland, the Baltic states, Hungary and Bulgaria, together with armed vehiA retreat from its strong partnership would cles, tanks and combat helicopters. Secretary of certainly increase political momentum in Europe Defense James Mattis and Tillerson’s successor for to move towards a European army. Yet, this is Secretary of State Mike Pompeo both have expresdetrimental to US interests as well. Not only has sed concerns about Russian aggression in Europe previous European military cooperation favoured and advocate military deterrence at Russia’s borEuropean weapon manufacturers at the Americans’ ders. So despite concerns among establishment expense, but it would also make Europe more Republicans about Trump’s lack of determined acindependent from American guidance. The lartion against Russian threats, the current adminisgest problem for America, however, would be the tration has continued to support Eastern European inability to replace American leadership. Germany countries in defending themselves against Russia. would be unwilling to take the lead for historiIn this light, it is unlikely that Republicans are cal reasons, and neither France nor Poland are going to abandon America’s allies in Europe and anywhere near the military capabilities of the US. pursue a path of weakening NATO. The process of replacing American leadership in

Built on Shifting Sands Academia does not like to be subjected to political pressure. But it is subjected to it in more subtle ways than direct interference alone. For Mats Licht, the example of American Studies is an illustration of the academic implications of politics, and of the importance of constructive criticism.

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niversities and politics share a difficult relationship to say the least. Particularly here at the UvA, the link between the two appears almost paradoxical: students are generally fiercely political, so much so that it occasionally frightens the powers that be, yet politics turning academic is frowned upon. While students are motivated, even encouraged, to form opinions and to influence political decisions in the Netherlands and beyond, the consensus is that this relationship ought not to be reciprocal. Every government measure that touches the university is debated,

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opposed, even actively protested in measures that occasionally culminate in the occupation of institutions that lie at the border of politics and academia – the Maagdenhuis is usually a prime candidate. Politics in academia is bad, so it goes.

Almost every academic will emphasise the supreme importance of freedom from political, vulgo ideological, interference in their scientific work.

One of the most fervent appeals to academic freedom was penned by eminent exile Edward Said.

He epitomised the idea that progressive thinking requires a constant re-shifting of context, a quasi

enforced aloofness on behalf of the academic, keeping himself simultaneously above and within established discourses. It stands to reason that Said also aimed to legitimise his own position – his purported “ideal academic” is almost necessarily an exile. But while we watch active politics with Argus’ eyes, always suspecting it to plan the demise of our freedoms, we forget that the very institutions we hold to be champions of the freedom we desire are themselves making political decisions. The key word here is selection bias. Whether through following or challenging canons, or simply by choosing subjects to offer over others, universities engage in a political discourse and even in the creation of political objects themselves. A prime example of this can be found in area studies. They are not only academic disciplines, but always also exercises of cultural diplomacy. But which of the two came first?

It is obvious that area studies reinforce a given mental division of the world at a given time. Categories like Europe, the Middle East, East Asia or America are not givens, and the decision to delineate a curriculum under these terms always forces a definition on the term itself. It is only since the mid-1990s that European Studies has included Eastern and Central Europe at all. And even these divisions reinforce yet another partitioning of our continent. But emphasising the constructivist nature of geographic terms does nothing to answer our question. It is more instructive to examine the origin of one of the less contentious of these disciplines: American Studies.

The issue of the United States claiming the term “American” for themselves is arguably less problematic than most other geographical denominations. American Studies, thus, has a relatively singular focus: anything pertaining to these United States of America, and nothing else. Everything to the south of them has Latin American Studies.

Only Canada is left without its own discipline. Did anybody say American Exceptionalism? The reason why the US got their own academic discipline is a great illustration of the political contingency of academics: the discipline emerged in the United States themselves during the 1930s, and was readily developed, including a canon of literature, history and cultural subjects, just in time for America stepping in to take on the reign of the Western world. When Europe lost all remaining semblance of great power after 1945, the US became the focal point of the so-called free world,

but most Europeans knew very little about their Big Brother across the pond.

Especially Britain had to accept the supremacy of another English-speaking nation. Its integration with the US, both politically and economically, grew steadily in the next few decades, and, in parallel, so did facilities for the teaching of American Studies in the country. Of course, Britain had had an interest in the New World ever since its colonial days there, so the discipline’s expansion could also be justified otherwise, but the main driving force behind it was certainly the emergence of a mono-centric Western world. In Britain in particular, this new world became visible through the influx of American pop culture, which brought with it a fresh market of cultural industry that was unheard of in Europe. America was now an inevitable part of British culture, one that had to be made sense of, particularly since pre-war notions of the States in Britain were ambiguous at best. During the war already, the British government expended considerable efforts to “rectify” the established image of the United States as a violent and corrupt society, which had largely been formed by Hollywood.

Both the British and the American governments thus had vested interest in developing American studies: the British to acclimatise its population to a new reality, the American to secure its influence and standing in Europe, which was still sceptical of American involvement. Cultural diplomacy was the answer. In Germany as well, then the petri dish of post-war social engineering, a similar expansion of American Studies brought the new friend close to its former enemies. German universities are still strongholds of the discipline, even with dwindling numbers of students. Japan and Southeast Asia were other places in which it was introduced, for the good of the region and the new world order.

The US State department even got involved in the financing of many of the new American Studies departments all over the world. As a result, scarcely a university could afford to remain without such a department, especially in Britain.

Since then, the discipline’s fate has curiously followed the state of world politics – after the expansion of the Cold War, it contracted again during the early 1990s. After a resurgence during the years surrounding the millennium, a tentative low was reached during the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. It seems that enrolments for American Studies programmes directly correlate with the popularity of the United States government’s po-

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licies. This is arguably a much more direct interference of politics in academia than any government measures affecting universities.

In the UK, once the biggest stronghold of American Studies in Europe, less than 800 degrees are awarded in the discipline a year. The focus of area studies, often motivated by global politics, has shifted – in many cases towards Europe as a whole. While this may not be the case in Britain, the numbers from elsewhere speak volumes. Indubitably, the rise of European Studies is the result of an equally energetic political endeavour: we all know how European integration had to be made attractive to millions of more or less apathetic national citizens. While most were easily satisfied with prospects of economic growth and increases in real wages, skepticism among the wealthier citizens could not be dispersed through promises of wealth only. Cultural diplomacy had to work on behalf of the new European Community, framing the desired reality as something enticing for the bourgeoisie. What could be more fitting than a new university degree with dubious prospects of employment? For comparison, the European Studies department at the UvA alone now admits around 200 students a year, as the biggest of four such departments in the Netherlands. This is the result of a remarkable expansion of the programme. A few years ago admissions were no more than half that number. After internationalisation, the programme is set to grow further – new facilities are acquired, students flood in from all over the world, four Master’s programmes are offered now. A similar rise, albeit on a somewhat lesser scale, is experienced by Middle Eastern Studies.

All the while the old top dog American Studies is passing through a converse development. A singular Master’s programme’s representation is irritatingly wedged into a Bushuis attic – braving the onslaught of SES members who thirst for human contact every day, lounging on sofas that are supposed to be shared, occupying the place as though they had no home. Alright, maybe the situation is not quite as dire. But being stuck in the same corner as an ever-expanding SES is a fitting analogy for the state of the discipline as a whole.

“But being stuck in the same corner as an ever-expanding SES is a fitting analogy for the state of the discipline as a whole.“ cause to the already suffering course can only be anticipated fearfully. All the while its professional network is in similar disarray. In 2013 the American Studies Association (ASA), one of the largest conglomerations of Americanists, was entangled in a scandal surrounding its support of the anti-Israeli BDS movement. Critics from within the organisation alleged this was an attempted overcompensation for the somewhat tainted reputation the discipline now enjoys around the world, due to controversial US foreign policies. The affair is far from over and an internal lawsuit of members against the organisation is still underway.

The example of American Studies ought to show us one thing: academic life is very much dependent on real political conditions. In area studies, this holds particularly true. It may be prudent to prepare for the eventual decline of European Studies. Hopefully it will decline in favour of Human Studies or something similarly universal. Whether it will or will not decline, however, is very much in our own hands. We ought to influence the political realities just as much as they influence us as students. Particularly now, when the idea of Europe is already the target of a destructive discourse led by its detractors, we should not hide in academia and hope that we can keep politics out of the door and funding inside. We must now create the conditions for a strong Europe, conditions that will allow for the continuation of a discipline that has American Studies reached its low during the early become a part of all our lives. American Studies 2000s and has been recovering somewhat since. deserves our support, not because it needs us, but But since the discipline is so tied to the fate of because it is important. After all, the true face of a single country, its destiny is decided heteroreality does not yield to the capricious political nomously. The damage a Trump presidency will preferences of the time.

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We Be Many and They Be Few Our political and politica, social and economic system is in dire need of alternative stories of who and what we are. Sjors Roeters examines the alternative narratives of worker cooperatives that reimagine the very nature of humankind.

We become the stories we tell ourselves. That is, the systems we live in influence and even determine the way we perceive and exist in the world.

In turn, our political and social economic systems are operational by the narratives we continuously tell ourselves. In this way, as Guardian columnist George Monbiot points out, ‘the most grotesque doctrines can look like common sense when embedded in a compelling narrative, as Lenin, Hitler, Georges Sorel, Gabriele D’Annunzio and Ayn Rand discovered.’ When we repeatedly retell the story of humans as Homo economicus – humans primarily as rational, egoistic actors – we organise our economic system accordingly, and we end up in a mess. We end up in the destructive, wasteful, inefficient, alienating, unjust, unhealthy societies we live in right now. And this is not simply an opinion: there is a broad consensus among leading scholars and Nobel laureates; Joseph Stiglitz, Thomas Piketty, Ha-Joon Chang, David Harvey, George Akerlof, Robert Shiller, Paul Krugman, Richard Wilkinson, Kate Pickett, Giacomo Corneo, and Kate Raworth, to name a few, agree on this.

On how to repair the broken system however, views may differ. Influential mainstream economists like Stiglitz and Krugman – winners of the Nobel prize in economics in 2001 and 2008 respectively – argue for Keynesian measures, a more redistributive tax system to counter inequality, and stronger social and environmental protection legislation. Although these policies are very much necessary, they do not, however, get to the roots of the systemic problems and deficiencies. Furthermore, they do not provide any meaningful story to replace the old which got us into this mess. It is only technocratic tinkering within the existing system while repro-

ducing the same narrative. This will not do as an alternative story to help the precarious situation of the neglected, frustrated citizens who have been hit disproportionately hard by the consequences of globalisation neoliberal style. We are in dire need of an alternative story. As cultural theorist, and writer on radical politics and popular culture Mark Fisher stated: ‘It’s easier to imagine the world than the end of capitalism.’ Yet it is only through our imagination and our discourse that we can change the world.

So what if we turn the system upside down?

What if, instead of letting the 1% decide over the fate of the 99%, we organise our system to do the opposite? Imagine we accompany our political democracy with economic democracy. As the socialist economist Richard Wolff questions in one of his many podcasts: how can we even speak of Western societies being ‘democratic’ if one third of our waking lives is spent at the workplace where there is no democracy whatsoever? He poignantly argues that ‘First, no democracy is complete if it does not include the economy and its basic institutions. Second, the weakness and merely electoral formality of actually existing political democracies flow from their lack of economic democracy. Finally, the capitalist organisation of production inside modern corporations directly contradicts and precludes economic democracy.’

Worker cooperatives provide an alternative. It is a system and a story wherein workers become the directors, and often owners, of the enterprise they work at. It is a system based on cooperation, solidarity and empowerment. As the International Co-operative Alliance defines: ‘Co-operatives are people-centred enterprises, owned and run by and for their members to realise their common dreams. Profits generated are either reinvested in the enterprise or returned to the members.’ This will consequently ‘allow people to take control of their economic future and, because they [cooperative enterprises] are not owned by shareholders, the economic and social benefits of their activity stay in the communities where they are establis-

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hed.’

Richard Wolff is one of the leading voices in the worker cooperative movement, a movement which has gained enormous traction since the many financial, economic, political and social crises that have hit particularly hard in Europe and the US since 2008. He argues for the alternative economic system of worker cooperatives, advocating to establish Democracy at Work – also the title of his book published in 2012. He agitates against the dominant characteristic of the hierarchical capitalist organisation where directors directing the enterprise – whether in Western private capitalism, or state capitalism as known in the former Soviet Union – are opposed to the workers who simply undergo these directives. Many companies work on the basis of one share, one vote – where the majority of the shares are in the hands of a handful of people who direct the company. Because they do not participate in the daily operations of the companies and thus do not suffer the consequences of their directives, they prioritise shortterm profits – with destructive consequences for both people and planet – over long-term sustainable growth which is good for communities, the environment and humanity. But what if we break down that hierarchy? What if we stop the exploitation of the many by the few, and instead work on the basis of one worker, one vote? In other words: what if we start choosing true democracy?

Wolff compares the breaking down of the capitalist hierarchy to the end of feudalism – and slavery.

He similarly uses the example of the antislavery movement as a parable to clarify the difference between the Keynesians and the more radical (that is, radicalis; of or pertaining to the root) economic thinkers. Antislavery agitators were horrified by the political and social economic system of slavery. Yet they split into two subgroups. The first ‘chose to agitate for improvements in slaves’ diets, clothing, housing, the treatment of their families.’

The second group completely agreed with the first group’s demands and goals, but insisted that ‘the basic problem of slavery was slavery itself, not merely the living conditions of the slaves. Even if reforms in the conditions of slaves might be won, so long as they remained slaves, those reforms would be insecure and reversible. This more radical group – the abolitionists – insisted that slavery would have to be dissolved in favour of universal personal freedom and emancipation.’ And so ‘slaves had finally to become their own masters to move society beyond the inhumanity, inequality,

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and indignity of slavery. Wage earners have likewise to become their own directors, to move society beyond the inhumanity, inequality, and indignity of capitalism in all its myriad forms.’

The worker cooperative movement aims at systemic change. It tells different stories of humanity; those of social cooperation, community, solidarity, empowerment, belonging, equality, sustainability and altruism. It does more justice to the unique characteristics of the Homo sapiens that primarily

ability to behave prosocially may be based on human-unique psychological mechanisms’. This unique characteristic, which strongly contradicts the Homo economicus conception of human character, actually precisely ‘allows us to engage in the kind of large-scale cooperation seen uniquely in humans.’ When we replace the neoliberal story of a Hobbesian ‘war of all against all’ – a story of toxic competition and individualism – with a story that is more faithful to our nature, people will act accordingly more and more so.

And the narratives of worker cooperatives are not simply theoretical. Richard Wolff in his Weekly and Monthly Economic Update podcasts highlights many examples of existing, well-functioning worker cooperatives in both the US, and particularly Europe. He uses them to illustrate the viability of this economic system.

distinguish it from other animals, namely, their prosocial behaviour. As economist Kate Raworth, author of Doughnut Economics, elaborates: ‘Homo sapiens, it turns out, is the most cooperative species on the planet, outperforming ants, hyenas, and even the naked mole-rat when it comes to living alongside those who are beyond our next of kin.’ As psychology and evolutionary biology evidences, humans are unique from other species precisely because of prosocial behaviour, which is ‘an anomaly in the animal kingdom. Our species’

The asterisk of twenty-first century worker cooperatives is the socioeconomic empire called the Mondragón Corporation – also known as ‘the Miracle of Mondragón’. It serves as a shining example of the alternative economic system of worker cooperatives, withstanding many crises not having to lay-off people. It was founded in 1956 during the Franco regime by the Catholic priest José Maria Arizmendiarietta and several technical workers, in response to the high unemployment in the region and the Spanish dictator’s negligence of it. It was an act of cooperation and self-empowerment at a time when the system failed them.

Since then it has grown to a global federation of 261 worker cooperatives and the eight-largest employer in Spain with a total of over 74 thousand worker-owners. Under the slogan “Humanity at Work” Mondragón has become almost synonymous with defiance to corporate capitalism. It embodies the power of cooperation, solidarity, self-reliance and emancipation from the bottom-up. And it inspires worker cooperatives on the other side of the Atlantic.

Worker cooperatives exemplify the interplay of ideas, practices and stories, and the potent influence they have on the systems of our societies.

But even more important, they exemplify the true power of the people. And importantly so. For, as author and human rights activist Arundhati Roy forcefully reminds us, ‘We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them. Another world is not only possible; she is on her way.

On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.’

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In praise of ungrammaticality Joep Leerssen

dances too, I say: for sure they do, but do they have disco? and the Macarena, MC Hammer and Gangnam Style?

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oing the family shopping on a Saturday, I dropped into Blokker and as usual got lost amidst the things I wish I had a need for. A song was piped through the shop, catchy tune, electropop with a good drive and nice chords. I listened more closely, and googled/YouTubed it when I got home. It was The Killers with something called “Human”.

Had I misheard it? Was the last word “dancer” or “denser”? Turned out there was a whole blogging internet war raging over that one. Are we you, man? Or are we dance her?

The chorus line had me puzzled. In a post-Morrissey combination of angst, poise and testosterone, the singer asked the insistent question “Are we human? Or are we dancer?” I liked that and at the same time it “rubbed”. To begin with it formulates as a dilemma what is in fact a fundamental part of human identity. The human is not just the thinking animal and the storytelling animal (or, as this song resoundingly illustrates, the self-doubting animal); the human is also, crucially, from the Amazon to the Artic and from Amsterdam to Abidjan, a dancing animal. And for those behaviorists who say that birds in their mating seasons have their

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The slightly grating logic of the either/or question was compounded by the word “dancer”, used in the singular (one would have expected “Are we dancers?”) or almost as a predicate – as in, “are we stupid?”, “are we happy”? or, indeed, “are we human”? Note that the first half of the question used the predicate too, and did NOT ask “are we humans”. That is how in Academic Writing Skills we would have corrected the question: are we humans, or are we dancers?

And then, in becoming plain-vanilla correct, the song would have lost, in fact, its poetry. Ungrammaticality – the fact that a turn of phrase, or a choice of words, is slightly “off” from normal usage, is, as the great critic Michael Riffaterre has pointed out, a key element of what makes a line memorable, and, in fact, poetic; its gives it that “rub” that makes you want to return to it, as unfinished business, like a failed love affair.

And so I was musing in the Blokker isles, on the abyss between poetry and academic writing skills, and the use of European Studies for analysing pop songs. And pondering the possibility of creatively spreading ungrammaticality. Like when I misread, in a Canadian hospital, the designation of an “inpatient elevator”, and began to rant “Out of the way! That one’s mine!” People - this was Canada didn’t get the joke.

I may yet do a start-up as a “Dyslectic Tattoo Studio”. That should keep the customer satisfried.

And here is your Skills assignment for next month: identify ungrammaticalities in your favourite pop songs.

Eugenics:

the value of life across the Atlantic Who is worthy of life and who would be too big of a burden on society? To those complex questions Americans and National Socialist Germans gave simple and destructive answers.

Alexandra Staudinger explores burdensome Transatlantic relations in the name of human betterment in the early 20th century.

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urope and the United States both have strict immigration policies, even more so in recent years. The framing of foreigners as a group weakening the nation-state has obvious xenophobic implications: the nation-state’s in-group is the right one, while anyone coming from outside is viewed with suspicion and as inferior. This is one arbitrary categorisation of humans into a social hierarchy, with the in-group in any given place seeing themselves as essentially different and better than outsiders. Such nativist immigration policies can be the expression of eugenics. It is an ideology declaring that the human stock should be improved by selective reproduction of the fittest people, the able-bodied, heterosexual, white Anglo-Saxon, upper class. The flip side of the coin is that those deemed unfit are actively discouraged from producing offspring. If ethnic minorities, the mentally or physically disabled, sex workers, and criminals would stop having babies, then deviant, promiscuous, and criminal behaviour would altogether seize to exist, according to eugenic logic.

By the same token, poverty and criminality would be inevitably passed down from one generation to the next. Subsequently, he developed the theoretical framework for modern eugenics, aiming to eliminate the undesirable part of humanity for a future without poverty, criminality, prostitution, and mental retardation. Galton was the founding father of the eugenics movement, which was put into practice at earliest in the 20th century United States. In 1910, the Eugenics Record Office (ERO) was founded in New York by the Carnegie Foundation, an organisation usually well known for its philanthropy. The Carnegie Foundation and other charitable establishments at the time viewed engagement with eugenics as philanthropic, which might be hard to imagine nowadays. Their enterprises and research centres promoted practices like forced sterilisation of certain social groups — mostly poor black and brown women — who had to undergo this procedure often without their knowledge. Sterilisation was tied to abortion, which means that a woman who wanted an abortion could only receive the procedure if she conPrior to social Darwinism, the idea of eugenics sented to a subsequent sterilisation, too. And in had been around at least since Plato advocated many cases, women who aborted were sterilised for state-facilitated human mating of the fittest directly afterwards, unknowingly and thus unable in his Republic. The modern version of eugenics to give their consent. Not only post-abortion were was nursed back to popularity in the late 19th sterilisations performed, but also after giving birth. century by the British Sir Francis Galton, a cousin Again, this applied to women and their offspring of Charles Darwin. He studied British high society who were perceived as a burden to society, due and came to the fateful conclusion that wealth to their skin colour, profession (sex work), or low and high social status were a result of good genes. social class. Such was the case with Buck v. Bell in

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1927, when a court in the state of Virginia ordered the forced sterilisation of a minor who had given birth, after being raped. In accordance with eugenic principles, ‘promiscuous’ mothers like her should better not pass on their immoral lifestyle and thus need to be sterilised, even against their will.

Leading American intellectuals of their time published in favour of such policies: the president of Stanford University, David Starr Jordan, wrote his book The Blood of the Nation: A Study in the Decay of Races by the Survival of the Unfit. As the title suggests, his work was a famous manifesto for eugenics. A similar text, The Passing of the Great Race by US-eugenicist Madison Grant, heavily influenced the young Adolf Hitler serving his time in Landsberg prison in the 1920s. The decline of the superior Nordic Race by an infiltration of Jews, Slavs, people of colour and other unfit peoples is its main theme and was declared by Hitler to be his ‘bible’. Those texts presented the extermination of entire social groups as a necessity for the betterment of the human race as a whole. The mass murder of people in gas chambers, a measure aimed to achieve this end, was even discussed by American eugenicists. Yet they dismissed the idea, as they considered the wider American public not yet ‘ready’ for a programme like that. It was ready, however, for competitions like the Fitter Family Contests, where families would compete to win the title of the most physically and mentally fit.

Based on standardised physiognomic features and the likelihood of the family’s members to show selfish, violent, promiscuous or alcoholic behaviour, a family could win the prestigious title. Organised by Californian-based institutions such as the Human Betterment Foundation, those contests did not physically endanger “undesirable” humans as other eugenic practices did. Still, they did their part to increase the popularity of eugenics in the US.

“The Nazi policy of 5000 forced sterilisations per month was received as the pupil surpassing its master.”

Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics in Berlin. He would later become infamous with his atrocities committed in Auschwitz under the pretence of medicine and scientific experimentation – Josef Mengele.

Until Narional Socialist war-mongering spilled over the borders of Europe, members of the American Eugenics Society were still enthusiastic about the German embrace of American research. The Nazi policy of 5000 forced sterilisations per month was received as the pupil surpassing its master. The US, in contrast, performed a mere 60.000 sterilisations between 1909 and 1963. The likes of Rockefeller, Carnegie, and others who had financially driven those programmes, had ceased to provide grants to German research centres before the beginning of the Second World War. Nonetheless, they did help these fully fledged hubs of racial thought on their feet and had thus directly aided the establishment of National Socialist sciences which legitimised their ideology. With the entry of the United States into World War Two, institutions of American eugenics continued to offer scientific legitimacy to the notion of Nordic/Aryan superiority well into the 1960s, albeit under the new name of Human Genetics. In Europe, eugenics in the form of sterilisations and exterminations en masse stopped with the defeat of Nazi Germany, but the practices it had generated continued to live on. For example Sweden, the country hailed for its welfare state and widespread gender equality, only ended the compulsory tie of sterilisation to sex reassignment surgery in 2012.

In the first half of the 20th century, it was disabled people, poor women of colour, and criminals who should be prevented from passing on their The then-richest Americans, the oil magnate Roc- genes, and simultaneously, their social standing. kefeller and the steel giant Carnegie, were key fi- Though the spectrum of socially acceptable ways gures increasing the popularity of eugenics abroad of living and being has expanded in the West over as well. European eugenic research institutes were the last century, there are still people viewed as small and underfunded before American investnegatively divergent, or unfit for raising children. ment arrived. The funding made it possible for Eu- Like transgender people now, there have and will ropean eugenicists to engage in eugenic research always be social groups who are perceived as on a big scale, essentially providing the scientific deviant from the norm. To what extent they are justification for the superiority of the Aryan race. nonetheless allowed to be, while being themselAmong the recipients of their grants was a young ves, depends on the freedom a society is willing to research assistant at the time working in the grant all its members.

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ith the Skripal Affair, for a few weeks it appeared that international newspapers morphed into one of John le Carré’s classic spy novels. The protagonist of this non-fiction story, former double agent Sergueï Skripal, would not have been misplaced on the pages of The Spy Who Came In From The Cold. Moscow denies London’s accusations of Russian implication in the Skripal affair, from the name of the ex-Russian spy poisoned with his daughter on March 4th while eating at an Italian restaurant in the town of Salisbury in southern England. Skripal had been part of a spy-swap and was believed safe from retaliation in England. The release of this heavy case in a context of already polemical Russian presidential elections is sowing the seeds of doubt and interrogation regarding the real actors and interests in this affair.

This affair raised up to fourteen other suspect death cases of important Russian personalities such as ex-spies and FSB agents, partners of the famous businessman Berezovski, real estate or oil moguls. Theresa May suspects the Kremlin to be behind those suspicious cases as the nerve agent used to poison Skripal, Novitchok or ‘the little new one’ in Russian has a history closely linked to the Soviet period and seems to revive some echoes of the Cold War. Novitchok is an extremely dangerous and powerful nerve agent causing a slowdown in heart rate and airway obstruction until death by asphyxiation. It was developed during the 1970s and 80s by weapon scientists in the former Soviet Union while international discussions decided to strictly forbid the use of chemical weapons. Novitchok’s components consisted of individually authorised ingredients that only showed toxicity when combined. This had a twofold advantage: the ingredients could be safely transported to where they were to be used, and they were virtually undetectable by international investigators in case of a control. When the international community found out about those Russian activities in the 1990s, the Cold War was at its end and Russia asked American help to dismantle its chemical weapons arsenal. A partnership that Moscow chose to break in 2012, sharpening doubts about the sincerity of its commitment to finally disband its chemical weapons arsenal. Officially, Russia is expected to complete the total destruction of its arsenal by December 2020, being a major problem regarding this affair if the nerve agent was really used by the Kremlin.

The Spy Who Came in from the Cold Clara Iszezuk

Is the use of Novitchok enough to prove that the Kremlin is behind this poisoning attempt?

The American Press agency who conducted an interview on the topic with experts, argues that Novitchok’s production requires skills and security measures that can normally only be found in government laboratories. Yet, Andrea Sella, professor in inorganic chemistry at University College London highlighted the fact that Russia is not the only country able to produce the nerve agent.

Alastair Hay, specialist in environmental toxicology at the University of Leeds added that: ‘Intelligence agencies and governments have a reasonable understanding of the different processes and manufacturing methods used by each country;’ calling then into question the choice of this poison so closely associated with Russia, while there exist ‘much more effective methods’ of killing someone, without taking the risk of being so easily identifiable. We can wonder if this can be considered as part of a Russian message to the UK and the West, or an occidental conspiracy against Putin.

The West will leave no ambiguity on this issue and in a common declaration on March 15th, the UK, France, Germany, and the US affirmed that Russian

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responsibility was the only plausible explanation, consequently asking Moscow all information regarding its chemical weapons programme. Still, Moscow claims to be the victim of a machination, a political ploy to ‘discredit Russia.’

Theresa May announced on Wednesday, March 14th her decision to expel twenty-three Russian diplomats believed to be engaged in espionage. In response to these expulsions, the Kremlin declared equivalent removals of diplomats. But the Prime minister could have gone harder and hurt Putin where it really hurts: the transparency regarding rich Russians’ bank accounts. The crisis provoked by the Skripal affair would have been a golden opportunity to have a closer look at the billions invested in Britain by Russian oligarchs and collaborators when some of them even have intelligence or criminal backgrounds. Indeed, it is possible in England to invest money through anonymous companies registered at Overseas Territories. Looking for the source of Russian investments could be a clever sanction affecting Putin, but could also be a risk for London’s real estate market and financial industries. Before Brexit, David Cameron, May’s predecessor, was preparing legislation in order to force those anonymous companies to reveal their owners. May postponed the introduction of the legislation, not so surprisingly as she proved already to not be such a decision-taker. This affair is really sensitive for the British Prime minister as support from the public and her cabinet got really divided

by Brexit. This burning affair does not leave May any other opportunity than to be firm.

The Russian reaction to the Skripal affair was in between denial, over-indignation, and a hint of conspiracy. If the affair gave a bad image of the Kremlin in the occidental part of the world, in Russia it boosted Putin’s domestic popularity just before the controversial Russian presidential election denounced for lacking opposition. Putin appears as a powerful leader who is not scared to be in opposition to the West. Andreï Lougovoï was the first Russian official to comment on the affair, a surprising choice as the deputy was already suspected to be implicated in another poisoning in 2006, contributing widely to make the Skripal case a diplomatic crisis. Lougovoï said: ‘I think this story is part of a broader plan, designed somewhere by someone, to discredit Russia before the World Football Cup,’ advancing the idea of a plan mounted to sabotage the World Cup held in Russia this summer, drawing a parallel with the Olympic

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Games in Sochi in 2014. The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs also declared: ‘We warned several times that before the start of the World Cup, the Western media will launch a massive campaign to discredit Russia and undermine confidence in the host country.’ As the case grew in importance in the United Kingdom, the official Russian reactions were tinged with irony. It took the expulsion of twenty-three Russian diplomats from the British territory with an ultimatum demanding clarifications from Moscow for Sergey Lavrov, the foreign minister, to respond soberly: ‘Russia is innocent and is ready to cooperate if Britain fulfils its international obligations.’ In other words, the British police opens the investigation to their Russian counterparts and agree to send Russia samples of the poison used. In the Russian media, the affair and the publicity it received was seen as a manoeuvre to discredit Putin, in addition to a touch of pride in the elimination of an old double agent.

The affair prompted strong reactions within the West. Donald Trump affirmed to support Britain, Emmanuel Macron condemned an ‘unacceptable attack,’ while Angela Merkel claimed to take extremely seriously London’s accusations against Moscow. Britain’s European allies are tired of the hectoring language used by British ministers negotiating Brexit, and at first they used this crisis to express their frustration. For several days, President Emmanuel Macron of France pointedly refused to blame Russia for the assassination attempt, saying he needed more conclusive proof.

On Thursday, though, Germany, France, and the United States issued a common statement on a common statement condemning the poisoning.

Denouncing a ‘clear violation’ of the Convention on the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Western leaders showed their common desire to let nothing pass. ‘It is an attack on British sovereignty,’ ‘it is our security to all who are threatened,’ they say in a threatening tone. ‘We ask Russia to face its responsibilities as a member of the UN Security Council in the maintenance of international peace and security,’ finally demand the four leaders, a few days before the Russian presidential election that Vladimir Putin is sure to win. This new alliance between Donald Trump and the European powers seems to be drawing new relationships between the US and the EU in a context of Transatlantic relationships under pressure.

Maarten van Campenhout

The Art of the Deal: an Introduction to Trumpian Transatlanticism With Trump on the other side of the negotiation table, Europe has to get used to a new way of Transatlantic deal making. In this guest contribution, Maarten van Campenhout, chair of the Conference Committee, sheds his light on why and how this has to be done.

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or most of the twentieth century, and especially since the Second World War, the United States and Europe have been very close and reliable allies. There has been intensive cooperation in all international policy areas: trade, security, climate change, etc. Especially the last several years, during the Obama administration, with TTIP and the Paris climate agreement even deeper relations were in the process of development. For years the political classes have been taking this close relationship for granted. The expectation of Europe’s and the US’ political establishment was one of continuation when Hillary Clinton would have logically succeeded Obama in a sweeping victory during the 2016 presidential election.

However, nothing could be further from the truth.

As we all know with the world-shocking election of Manhattan-based multibillionaire, businessman and media celebrity Donald Trump, things have changed radically, American foreign politics most prominently. After one and a half years of being in office the world knows Trump has turned the tables on almost every aspect of contemporary international relations. For Trump’s most severe critics the time of longing back to the world of Obama’s foreign politics has to be over. It is now crucial to understand what the attitude of Trump defines. Simply said: everything boils down to deal making, mastering the art of the deal. European leaders will have to step up their negotiation game, releasing their diplomatic niceties and have to understand Trumpian deal-making if they want

“It is this idea of a zero sum game that Trump has taken with him into the White House.“ to avoid being battered for the rest of Trump’s presidential term.

Trump is a real estate businessman who sees every form of cooperation as a deal and in a deal there is always a winner and a loser. It is this idea of a zero -sum game that Trump has taken with him into the White House. This is exemplified in the way Trump is talking about the cooperation within NATO: within NATO it is agreed that every member state has to invest 2% of their GDP into their military defense. At the moment, many European member

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states are not fulfilling that promise, while the US is paying more than this 2% benchmark. Overall, American military spending is 72% of the total spent by all 28 NATO allies. The point of European member states failing to pay their fair share has already been raised by the former administrations of Bush Jr. and Obama, but Trump is getting serious on this topic. He may have better luck at getting allies to increase their spending simply because he has made it the essential condition of America’s relationship with the alliance. There are several nuances and arguments to be made about why the European member states are paying what they pay, but it is important to note that Trump thinks much more straight-forward: if NATO is a deal, the 2% benchmark is one of the deal breakers. Repeatedly failing to deliver on this aspect can result in a reconsideration of the deal. For Trump it is as simple as that. As one NATO official recently put it: ‘you can spend all the time in the world telling US legislators that a country that spends 1% may spend it more wisely than one that spends 2%, but US legislators take a very simplistic view.’ For European leaders it is difficult to make Trump change his mind about this issue or to at least think about it more nuancedly.

They have to find ways to get rid of this elephant in the room: there is no way the (insubordinate) European member states are going to reach the 2% benchmark any time soon and it seems to be that Trump accepts only hard currency as a form of goodwill. Basically, for Trump’s European counterparts there are two policy options: pay the bill or ignore it and risk a rigorous withdrawal of the Trump administration on their side of the deal.

However, although Trump is commander-in-chief and has the power to set the NATO cooperation on fire, as long as the fight over the 2% benchmark stays just rhetorical, the Europeans have the time to find a solution. Unpredictability is one of Trump’s traits, so why not be unpredictable ourselves in finding ways of coming closer to Trump?

The field in which effective deal-making is most essential is trade, and as one can expect Transatlantic trade affairs are under Trump’s scrutiny, too. In March 2018, the Trump administration announced the imposition of trade tariffs on steel and aluminum imports from the EU, as a way of

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protecting the American domestic steel industry.

This sparked a heavy verbal fight between Trump and several EU officials with further threats of imposing more barriers from both sides of the Atlantic. A reason for Trump to opt for trade barriers is that he can fulfill a campaign promise he made to the blue collar workers in the Midwest and the Rustbelt who lost their jobs, a promise in which he vowed to bring back their jobs by stopping the unequal competition from abroad. Trump is so unhappy with, for example, NAFTA (North-American Free Trade Agreement) that he has halted (or pulled the plug of) several free trade agreements which were in the making. TTIP is one of them.

TTIP stands for Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, a trade agreement in which the EU and US would be forming one single market in which European and American companies would have to deal with less to no trade barriers. Therefore they would practically be able to sell their products in an internal market of 800 million (relatively wealthy) consumers. Years of negotiations had taken place, and the negotiations were already at an advanced stage, but negotiations on the free-trade agreement will probably be put on hold indefinitely.

Going from almost having a American-European internal market to imposing import tariffs is rigorous. It is not entirely clear what the exact state of TTIP is at this moment or if there is a possibility to revive the talks. The EU could try to reopen negotiations, but has to get out of the gate storming when doing so. The Trump presidency could offer a window of opportunity, because if a fierce negotiation is what Trump likes most, why do we not give it to him? If the US is led by an administration who loves winning, give him something to win. When the European leaders are going to play it hard, eventually Trump may start liking them. These are unorthodox times and maybe it is time to follow these up with unorthodox measures. If Trumpism is not adapting to the Europeans, the Europeans will have to adapt to Trumpism: less soft-power diplomacy, more Trumpian style negotiating. It is not ideal, but if Europe wants to make something out of the contemporary Transatlantic relations, it has to deal with Trump. When in Rome do as the Pope does, when in D.C. do as the Donald does.

The Changing Face of Russian Disinformation Through the means of technology and social media Russian policies of disinformation have become more advanced than ever. Anna Boyce looks into how these methods and policies have changed since the Cold War years.

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recently attended an exhibition of Soviet era art, which included a vast number of propaganda posters glorifying the leaders, people and ideology of the Soviet Union. What struck me was the boldness of these posters, the bright colours, the patriotism.

A group of smiling faces united under a blazing sun branded with a hammer and sickle, captioned ‘The people and the party are undivided.’ Of course propaganda is an integral part of any war, in particular a war of ideologies, aiming to win over the hearts and minds of people both domestically and abroad. But overt disinformation such as this is often seen as a thing of the past, however in light of current claims of Russian interference in the West, I could not help but think that far from disappearing it has simply transformed into something far more menacing.

Whilst Cold War propaganda from both sides of the Atlantic was primarily focused on the superiority of one ideology over another, the Soviets also pursued policies of disruption not dissimilar to those we see today. Conspiracies with apparent Soviet links included an implicating letter from the CIA to Lee Harvey Oswald, linked to JFK’s assassination, and the claim that HIV was in fact created in a CIA laboratory. As ridiculous as these claims may seem, there are still many people today who believe them and have fed into these streams of Russian disinformation.

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However, many other Soviet attempts to infiltrate the West failed. Early efforts at ‘fake news,’ attempts to publish pieces reporting on the successes of Soviet factories and collective farming though the medium of US newspapers and other media outlets. These were nearly always unsuccessful due to their blatantly false claims and the inherently obvious Soviet style in which they were written.

Soviet era disinformation can be seen as an amalgamation of overt propaganda, aiming to prove the dominance of the Soviet ideology, and a number of covert, manipulative measures such as the dissemination of conspiracy theories. With the exception of North Korea, the flamboyant posters and slogans aforementioned are decidedly a thing of the past. However, it is undeniable that the supposed streams of Russian disinformation toward the West that we see today emulate these policies of manipulation, and that through modern means of technology, particularly social media, they have become even more dangerous.

Since the end of the Cold War, there had been a hiatus of Russian policies of disinformation, thus the power of the Kremlin within global systems has been discredited. But in recent years we have seen previous habits return with a newfound vengeance. Today it is estimated that over 3.2 billion of us have access to the internet. This medium has created a new propaganda machine, one that is able to disseminate disinformation to many more people than has ever previously been possible. In addition, this new phenomenon has led to an information overload: the sheer amount of information available at our fingertips has made it harder than ever to distinguish the fake from the real. And whilst the existence of new forms of social media has made it easier than ever to spread information to the masses, it has made it equally harder to trace it back to its source.

A prime example of these new media of disinformation can be found in the ongoing investigation of the 2016 US elections, which revealed the extent to which Russia has taken advantage of new means of communication and technology. Whilst the methods of disinformation here have changed and the sheer amount of information being transmitted has

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“Far from disappearing, the Russian propaganda machine has gone undercover, enabling it to infiltrate the West more than ever before.”

increased, the essential aim for Russia has remain- working day and night every day of the year. This taken into account, is the sheer amount of Russian ed the same: to influence the masses in order to sponsored information floating around the internet benefit their own political aims. really so surprising?

Research into a number of viral Facebook acPart of the problem is that despite the plethora counts, whose content was highly politicised in of photoshopping and news falsification we see the run-up to the US elections has revealed a today, people still have too much trust in what number of them to be linked to Russian sources. they see on the internet, especially when affiliated A common characteristic of these accounts was with people and ideas that they identify with. In that they played on the patriotism, passion and anger of many Americans. Names such as ‘secured the weeks before the election, an image of the borders’ and ‘blacktivist’ were among a number of well known actor Aziz Ansari was circulating the twittersphere. The image showed Ansari holding a accounts posting content aiming to accentuate the extremity of people’s political views and then sign encouraging Clinton supporters to avoid the lines on election day and to vote from home by exploit them to their own political advantage. texting their vote instead, another similar tweet A potent example of this comes from a Facebook encouraged voters to cast their vote via twitter.

Although this may seem ridiculous, people still page named ‘The Heart of Texas’, which in the did it. Why? Because they were encouraged to by run up to the election posted a number of phointernet personas emulating their own beliefs and tographs of US veterans with the caption ‘Hillary ideas, and exploiting images of celebrities with Clinton has a 69% disapproval rate among vewhom they identify. terans.’ It was later discovered that these posts were sponsored by Russian sources.

Far from disappearing, the Russian propaganda Much of these false internet personas are thought machine has gone undercover, enabling it to infilto have come from newly discovered Russian ‘troll trate the West more than ever before. Furthermore, the vast majority of people live in echo chamfarms,’ officially known as web brigades. Many of bers of cyberspace whose characteristics make these so-called farms were unearthed as part of them easy to imitate and infiltrate. The internet Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 elections. Their intention being to has made everyone more susceptible to disinformation than ever before, but, contrary to the Cold flood the web with as much anti-American sentiment as possible, the sheer size and efficiency of War era, there has been no policy with which to these machines is shocking. Lyudmila Savchuk, an confront this, allowing for the kind of disinformation policies born in the Soviet Union to come to the internet activist who spent two months working forefront once again. undercover in one of these farms, claims there were constantly over one hundred employees

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Will humanity require brain computer implants to stay relevant?

What would you say if you discovered that a paralysed person could communicate her mind from her bedside? Or if we could improve the memory of people suffering from epileptic seizures? You would assume this is impossible. But you’d be wrong, says Sally Dixon.

I

f you choose to connect your brain to a computer, you will have the potential to do a whole variety of mind-boggling things, such as using 100% of your brain capacity (team Lucy or team Limitless?), memory travelling or… immortality.

Curious?

Computers are already entering human brains.

The first study on BCIs started in the early 1970’s and has since been used to help disabled people regain abilities. Remember the first example? Well, in 2016, doctors implanted a BCI on a paralysed woman in the Netherlands which enabled her to communicate using only her thoughts. She can Forget asking Siri ‘where is my phone?’ or Google now operate a speech computer with her mind Translate ‘no entender ni patata.’ Could brain com- and use this technology to communicate at home. puter implants (BCIs) really bring us closer to Black Mirror-esque fantasies such as unlimited memory?

Here’s how it works: our brain, as the central nervous system, emits and receives signals throughout our body. This is how we talk, eat, sleep – how we do everything. But what if technology could capture those signals? Unsurprisingly, it can.

BCIs are technological devices which connect our minds to computers through being placed on the surface of the brain, or attached to the brain’s cortex.

Before dismissing the future idea of wiring your brain to a computer as unthinkable, it is essential to acknowledge that computers have been creeping closer to our minds ever since their creation. Since 1946, the year of the first electronic computer, electronic devices and human beings have become increasingly entangled. Smart phones, smart watches, smart cities. With all this endless information at our fingertips, surely the logical conclusion is that we will gradually merge with machines?

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“Doctors implanted a BCI on a paralysed woman in the Netherlands which enabled her to communicate using only her thoughts.”

This is the first time a BCI has been used in a person’s day-to-day life, without the need for doctors and engineers to recalibrate the device.

We are at a stage where scientists predict that within the next 20 years BCIs will be designed not only to increase a range of senses in disabled persons, but also to enhance human performance. For the first time ever, in 2017, scientists boosted human memory with a brain implant. Dong Song from the University of Southern California took a group of 20 volunteers who had brain electrodes fitted that were originally intended for the treatment of

epilepsy. Once activated, the electrodes were able to stimulate the brain and improve short-term memory by roughly 15 percent and working memory by about 25 percent.

gine our memories getting hacked and us losing control over our individual thought processes – literally losing our minds. How would we cope with having the very characteristics that make us human stolen? What if our enhanced self would do Some companies are going even further by claiharmful actions that we otherwise would not have ming that BCIs will enable telepathic communicati- done? Perhaps Freud would argue that our BCI on. Serial entrepreneur Elon Musk’s latest venture, self is our new consciousness. The possibilities are Neuralink, intends to develop and produce BCIs both thrilling and terrifying. with the goal of ‘merging biological intelligence and machine intelligence’ to ensure that huReading Yuval Noah Harari’s book Homo Deus mankind remains relevant in the face of artificial helped to provide me with a refreshing step back intelligence. Bryan Johnson, founder of Kernel, and to focus on the bigger picture of futuristic technoFacebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg have also inves- logical advances. The possibilities of BCIs can be ted hundreds of millions into BCI research with the compared to the progress of humanity from Homo goal of allowing humans to at least co-evolve alErectus to Homo Sapiens. And as Harari notes, ongside machines. Given that the US is always one we have already advanced to such an extent that step ahead in terms of recent technological inven- three existential threats have been defeated: famitions, they are leading the BCI market, which was ne, total war and mass pandemics. With the rise of valued at approximately €656 million in 2015 and technology and machines like BCIs, we will be able is expected to reach €1.4 billion in 2022. Due to to upgrade ourselves into something different, perincreasing amounts of technological investments, haps immortal beings. Try to imagine 2028, 2068, the European BCI market is expected to expand and 2118. At no point in our lives or our parents’ by 14% from 2016 to 2024. The only problem? The lives have we been unable to anticipate complelack of professional expertise in handling BCIs. tely how the next ten years would look. Perhaps Have I mentioned cyber security issues and ethical we will be the first immortal generations. Natural considerations? progression or a leap too far? Pick a side.

Despite the overtly optimistic media portrayal of BCIs, it is necessary to consider the other side of the argument. Some people believe the devices should not be used due to safety reasons, such as the possibility of fatal brain damage. Nonetheless, due to the inevitable advances in technology and research, it is widely predicted that within the next few decades, certain BCIs will be ready to use by all. For that to happen, greater public discourse is necessary to ensure that the ethical and societal impacts of this technology are known.

But will everyone’s lives be improved by BCIs? After watching Black Mirror’s ‘The Entire History of You’ and ‘Playtest’, I was fearful. (Stop now and go watch them if you have not seen them!) Do we really want access to recordings of everything we do? We may never forget a face again, and that may be haunting. Or say I finally pass my Spanish exam thanks to my enhanced memory – but then again, we would pass all exams, if these would still exist at all. Our current education system would become obsolete or reduced to a drive you install to your brain. Teachers, schools, entire educational systems, could vanish from our collective needs.

Ethical considerations must be understood. Ima-

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upcoming events

SES Calendar 3 April - SES Conference

The annual SES conference will take place on the 3rd of April this year. We will discuss how the Transatlantic relationship will survive under the current-day pressure.

10 April - Board Information Evening

As we are well over half of the academic year, it is time to starting thinking about next year. This means that a new SES board has to be installed, do you think you are up for the challenge? Or are you just interested in what a function in the board entails? Come join the information evening on the 10th of April!

11 April - SES x AIM x KalioPPE Party

After a very succesful borrel with AIM and KalioPPE, we will now be throwing a party with them. You do not want to miss out on this one, so be sure to keep an eye out on our Facebook.

17 April - Pub Quiz

On the 17th of April, the Activity Committee will be organising another pub quiz. Assemble your team now and sign up for this event!

25 April to 6 May - SES Study Trip 2018

This year’s Study Trip will visit Helsinki, St. Petersburg, Tallinn and Riga. 35 SES members, the Travel Committee and the Board will be leaving the Netherlands behind for a cultural and entertaining excursion. We are looking forward to this amazing experience, it might just become a SES highlight of the year!

(c) studievereniging europese studies 2018