Base and Superstructure

Alienation, autonomy, and ideology

Category: Foreign Policy (Page 2 of 3)

These are posts on foreign policy from the blog Base and Superstructure. Unfortunately left-wing foreign policy is largely locked out of the mainstream press and culture. These posts are mostly overviews of foreign policy issues in specific parts of the world.

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U.S. Nigeria Policy 101

June 29, 2020 /

For the sixth installment of the Foreign Policy 101 series, let’s move to sub-Saharan Africa. We’ll take a look at U.S. policy in Nigeria. In most of these foreign policy posts, I approach policy through issues of war and peace. That’s a bit less useful in Nigeria, where economic issues loom large. The extraction of resources looms largest.

Oh, the U.S. fights wars in the region. But not as often as other places and not often at all in Nigeria. The U.S. has long been a Nigerian ally. It spends most of its time there managing its economic interests, especially via primitive accumulation. The U.S. state – and both U.S. and European NGOs – uses Nigeria as a place for gathering capital.

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syria damascus mosque

Syria Policy 101

May 4, 2020 /

A possible war with Syria rarely dominates the headlines, but it just as rarely strays too far from them. The situation has persisted since the Syrian civil war began in 2011. How did this happen, and where will it lead?

I’ll briefly review the history before diving into the policy details. The U.S.’s Syria policy fits well into the bipartisan foreign policy consensus, but it also reveals fault lines between Donald Trump and the Democrats, among other areas.

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Venezuela 101

February 17, 2020 /

Venezuela Bolivarian Republic seal

The political left doesn’t know what to make of Venezuela, just as it doesn’t know what to make of a lot of foreign policy issues. Ken Livingstone asserted Hugo Chávez should’ve killed the oligarchs. That’s one view. George Ciccariello-Maher, a more careful analyst, also lapses into overheated rhetoric. But if there’s anything like a left consensus, it looks like this: vague critique of the current administration standing next to critique of any US-backed war. As Michael Walzer would surely say, it’s the vague consensus at work.

I’d like to get less vague. I’ll give an overview of the situation in Venezuela, and I’ll honor a bit of the spirit of Livingstone’s flippant remark without reproducing its content. What’s the insight here? It’s this: the Bolivarian Revolution, ’21st Century Socialism’ in name, recreated many of the problems of 20th century socialism in practice. And I’m talking here about the social democratic varieties, not the Leninist or Stalinist ones.

But all things in good time. First there’s our point of departure. Everyone agrees things are fucked up in Venezuela, but they don’t agree how or why. What’s fucked up? Why did it happen? Will Venezuela fix it?

I’ll tackle some of these questions on the way to our destination.

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Bolivia Policy 101

December 26, 2019 /

bolivia 101 indigenous voters

Foreign policy is pretty central both to why I first became interested in politics and how I think leftist politics should work. And I think issues in Latin America are among the world’s most interesting and important. Yet I haven’t written much about Latin America in this blog. I’ll aim to correct that a bit with some discussion of Bolivia.

But, first, I want to say a bit about the special difficulties of writing about US policy in Latin America, generally, and in Bolivia, specifically. In the social media-inspired era of having an opinion about literally every little thing, I might bring a bit of a retro attitude toward Bolivia: fear of making a mistake. Fear, perhaps, that my own methods aren’t well suited to Bolivia.

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open borders

Open Borders and the Left

June 3, 2019 /

In the US, leftist attitudes toward immigration vary. At least, they did for much of the 20th century. Now, ‘open borders’ is an idea on the table across the US left in a way it hasn’t been previously. Much of the reason for this is reaction to the US’s increasingly draconian immigration policies since 9/11.

But there are also key issues of leftist theory and practice involved. Suzy Lee’s recent article in Catalyst provides a helpful frame for thinking about this. You can find the article here. I’ll sketch out Lee’s leftist argument for open borders before laying out some of the further issues and challenges.

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