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“I grew up biculturally in Arizona. It was very common for people to cross the border five to six times a day. I’m sorry we don’t have that openness that we used to have,”* said ASU School of Transborder Studies director Irasema Coronado, during a panel at last Saturday’s Zócalo and Universidad de Guadalajara program “Are the U.S. and Mexico Becoming One Country?” The event was part of the Spanish-language LéaLA literary festival and book fair at LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes in downtown Los Angeles.

Panelists included artist, curator, and cultural consultant Anita Herrera and Universidad Autónoma de Nuevo León sociology professor Víctor Zúñiga. The program was moderated by Puente News Collaborative’s executive editor and correspondent Alfredo Corchado.

The conversation moved past the vitriol around immigration in contemporary political debate and looked at what unites the U.S. and Mexico. The panel spoke of the ties that bind the two countries—through migration, work, family, culture, language—and shared ways people themselves can serve as bridges for cross-border exchange.

Obvious connections bind the U.S. and Mexico to one another, the group observed. The two countries are geographic neighbors, and parts of the U.S.—like Los Angeles—were once part of Mexico. Mexico is the U.S.’s primary trading partner. Mexico also has the second largest number of citizens living abroad, after India— many of whom are in the U.S.

Despite this, there is still polarization, Corchado said. So how can culture fight back against it, and change the climate between the two countries? he asked.

“I think that culture transcends borders,” Herrera said. Born and raised in Huntington Park, California, Herrera was inspired to start her “Diaspora Dialogues” art series after she moved to Mexico City in 2018. The project consists mostly of experiential art installations. One such installation was set up at Saturday’s event and celebrated a family backyard party typical of her upbringing. It consisted of displays of old family photos, tacos, music, and the specific balloon arches and tables customary at those events. In the series, she wanted to share her specific culture, her Los Angeles, and open a space to discuss what connects, and disconnects, Mexicans and the diaspora.

“The diaspora exists because of an imaginary line,” Herrera said. Though she and her friends in Mexico City often listened to the same music and watched the same novelas, they were clearly not from the same country. Friends and family in Mexico called her “la gringa,” a name she did not like. She recalled struggles to obtain her Mexican tax identification number and her “papeles,” to learn more Spanish, and assimilate into Mexico City culture.

“I’ve learned a lot and unlearned a lot,” she said. “In the U.S., we are taught to be more selfish and individualistic. I’ve learned a new way to live.”

Zúñiga, the sociologist, offered the example of the “0.5 generation,” those who lived in the U.S. (many of them born there) and then moved to Mexico in the earlier part of this century, who are the subject of his book. This generation’s unique experiences and perspectives, as American and Mexican, inspire Zúñiga to believe a better relationship between the two countries is possible, he said.

“These children are much more than just bilingual individuals, these children are binational” and also bicultural, he said, having learned “to move between worlds, rituals, and norms that rival each other.”*

“To be bicultural,” Zúñiga further defined, “requires you to feel at home in the U.S. and equally at home in Mexico”*—something he and many migrants cannot claim. So, he asked, what impact does this 0.5 generation have on their communities? How are they adapting, and how is Mexico adapting to their presence?

Part of the reason some families move back to Mexico is because of immigration issues, like deportation. These families do not want to live separately. For Zúñiga, when families make the decision to stick together and move back to Mexico in the face of state policies they are defending themselves against separation.

Coronado offered a different perspective on those families, highlighting that many of this generation that moved back to Mexico are angry. They feel alienated and estranged in their new schools. They grew up imagining their lives on the football team or going to prom, and their lives have been changed radically. Many state a desire to return to the U.S. when they become adults.

Zúñiga said his research shows the situation appears to differ by region. At schools located closer to the border, in, for example, Zacatecas, his work has shown that 99% of students asked if the American-born students were similar to them said “yes.” The same question posed to students in Oaxaca and Puebla resulted in only 20% affirming the similarities. That “anti-Yankee” sentiment is regional, it demonstrated.

In so many ways, the border is a model for the larger countries, said Coronado, who herself grew up moving between Nogales, Arizona, and Nogales, Sonora. People move across the border for work, for doctor visits, and for medicine, she observed. Border towns exhibit an interdependency that can serve as a model for both countries on “how to get along, respect each other, have a harmonious relationship.”*

*This quote was translated live from Spanish to English by on-site interpreters.

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My favorite pecan pie recipe is from a Methodist cookbook sold at a church not far from the Virginia farm where my grandmother grew up. The pie’s perfectly gooey consistency comes from an obscene amount of Karo corn syrup; its slightly salty crust accentuates the toasty flavor of baked pecans. I make it every year for Thanksgiving, the quintessential American holiday I celebrate despite not living in the U.S. and not being American.

I was born in the ’90s in Mexico and grew up with the tantalizing promise of the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA. This landmark trade deal was heralded as a beacon of regional interconnectedness and economic progress. But for us kids, it symbolized more immediate delights: the chance to enjoy a Hershey’s chocolate bar or to buy the clothes Joey Potter wore in Dawson’s Creek, which we also now watched on TV. The promise of belonging to a shared, integrated region defined our childhoods, and with them, our identities.

I attended a private bilingual school, one of many that catered to Mexico’s expanding middle class and took pride in molding us into the most American versions of ourselves. Instead of a soccer team, we had basketball; we read coming-of-age novels like Holes and took SAT prep courses in case we wanted to apply to college in the U.S. But even among my classmates, I felt different. I thought of myself as not only bicultural but binational too.

My grandmother was an American nurse. In the ’40s, she met a visiting doctor from Sinaloa, Mexico inside the elevator of the Virginia hospital where she worked. As he held the doors open, he told himself that he would marry her one day. Eventually, he did. They had five children. The last of them, my dad, was born in the Mexican state of Sonora but was eligible for U.S. citizenship through his mom.

The author (left) with her father and older sister during a trip to Oaxaca, around 1997.

My dad was born long before the 1998 law that allowed Mexicans to have dual nationality, so he grew up in Mexico with a U.S. passport and, eventually, a Mexican work permit. In the late ’80s, his work permit expired, and he was deported out of Mexico. He crossed the border by foot, over the Laredo Bridge into Texas, carrying the official notice of his deportation from the country of his birth. He took a bus to Chicago, where he slept on a bench inside O’Hare airport until enough hours had gone by that he could legally return to Mexico, where my mom and 1-year-old sister awaited.

A few years later, I was born in Mexico City. I didn’t grow up with an American passport, but I did grow up with this story. It was proof of what I felt deeply: I was both Mexican and American.

Ever since I can remember, my dad has tried to pass on his U.S. nationality to my sister and me. He understands the financial and professional privileges of a blue passport. But because he’s never lived in the States (outside of the winters and summers he spent at the family farm in Virginia), he always hit a dead end. Still, I remained convinced that getting my U.S. nationality was just a matter of time. If my grandmother had been American and my father was American, why wouldn’t I be?

When I moved to New York for grad school on a temporary student visa, I was determined not to let bureaucracy get in the way of my heritage. So I filled out a “petition for alien relative,” a form that allowed my dad to request that I be given permanent U.S. residency through a green card. I could then, after several years, apply for citizenship. The reply from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services came in the mail a few weeks later: the petition had been accepted, meaning I was eligible for residency.

There was one caveat. I needed to follow-up with the Department of State, which processes the residency applications of U.S. citizen relatives and, eventually, issues the actual green card. Because my case wasn’t eligible for expedited processing, it would have to wait its turn in line. Last time I checked, the Department of State was beginning to process applications submitted in 1994.

The author (left) and her mother celebrating Thanksgiving in California, 2010.

Looking at the waitlist—and knowing I would not have documentation validating my binational identity for decades, at least—shattered something in me. The NAFTA promise that made us middle-class Mexicans think we would be citizens of a culturally intertwined North America felt like a lie. In Mexico, I was half-gringa. In the U.S., I was only Mexican and, as such, not always welcome.

I was reminded of this constantly while living in the States, though always in milder ways than foreigners who don’t pass as white (which I do). “Sorry, no Spanish here,” a woman on the other side of the phone replied when I called a public office asking—in my accented English—for an interview. On Bumble dates, men asked me for the expiration date of my visa; I went out for a few weeks with a guy who ultimately decided he could no longer see me because I didn’t have the paperwork to guarantee a long-term stay in the country. Second aunts posted Confederate flags with BUILD THE WALL captions on Facebook. I was unwanted. I did not belong. I was not who I thought I had been.

Four years after moving to New York, I consulted an immigration attorney who suggested a much easier path to a green card. It turned out I was eligible for an O-1, also known as the exceptional talent visa. I just had to file the paperwork and wait three months. After some years with the O-1, I could apply for a green card and eventually citizenship. I should have been excited, but something felt off.

I knew my privileged education had unlocked a path for immigration that many people are desperate for. I recognized that being able to choose where to build my life was an incredibly rare opportunity. But I also realized that living in the U.S. by any means possible wasn’t what I had truly been looking for. What I yearned for was a document that recognized my deep-rooted bond to my grandmother’s home. I had been searching, desperately, for something to validate my identity —papers I could point to that would say “You are of here, and also of there.” Yet documents alone couldn’t give me that. I headed back to Mexico.

Back in Mexico City, I rented an apartment far from where I grew up. I began buying my produce at the local mercado instead of Costco, which is where my family usually shopped. My poultry and meat came from a carnicería around the block. In some ways, I felt more Mexican than I ever had; in others, I felt like another digital nomad transplanted from the States to my own country.

Time passed. As my lingering doubts about going back to the U.S. dissipated, life took me by surprise. I met the man who would become my partner, the pandemic came and went, and we got married. I am now pregnant with our first child. When considering options for delivering our baby, my husband suggested we look into giving birth in the U.S. It would be our way to give our baby dual nationality, opening up employment and educational opportunities. We talked to friends who had done so and looked up doctors. But I decided against it.

These past few years, I’ve found a certain ease in my singular Mexican identity as I balance both the cultures I love. I enjoy warm tlacoyos for breakfast while listening to The Daily, bake peach pie on rainy Mexico City afternoons, and aloofly navigate the non-immigrant alien line at U.S. airports. While citizenship remains locked behind layers of bureaucracy and circumstance, biculturalism is something I continue to cultivate for myself. And this rich, complex blend of cultures is something I can pass on to my child, just as my dad did to me.

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“Olympic Games Doomed” and “No More Olympic Games,” read headlines published in London’s Times in 1924.

A century ago, British commentators called not only for their nation to withdraw from the Games, but some, more radically, for the end of the Olympics entirely. Rather than bringing together nations in friendly competition, many felt that the Olympic Games were only deepening global strife. Looking back on Great Britain’s continuously shifting history with the Games—and with the 1924 edition in particular—today reminds us why global politics always has the potential to spill over into the Olympic arena.

The 1924 Paris Games witnessed over 3,000 athletes from 44 nations compete in 17 sports. Coming almost exactly five years after the signing of the Treaty of Versailles and the end of World War I, these contests carried clear international and political significance. For the French, that meant seeing their athletes succeed at almost any cost and using their host’s spotlight to fight back against international criticism.

Following a general ban by the International Olympic Committee on the representatives of the defeated powers from the war, all countries except Germany were invited back to the 1924 Games. To the French, German participation was unthinkable considering relations between the two nations, and so French officials didn’t invite Germany to compete.

But the atmosphere was now fraught among the hosts, the United States, and Britain, former wartime allies who found themselves in a state of strained relations due to the French Occupation of Germany’s Ruhr region.

In January 1923, after Germany failed to make a scheduled Treaty of Versailles reparations payment, French troops entered the German region of the Ruhr to take resources, primarily coal, by force. Britain and the United States were among a large group of nations that condemned the occupation and the soldiers’ treatment of the local population. In response, France used the Olympics as a means to push back against international criticism.

The Americans bore the brunt of French hostility, beginning with the May rugby final, among the earliest competitions to take place. The American team had comprehensively beaten the French 17-3, yet still the home crowd taunted their opponents, leading to fights between fans in the crowd. Jeers of the locals nearly drowned out “The Star-Spangled Banner.” In the tennis men’s singles competition, the victory of American Vincent Richards over Frenchman Henri Cochet produced more outbursts from the crowd. And back-to-back American diving victories upset spectators to the point where they threatened to throw the judges into the pool.

For the British, the primary incident came in boxing, where judges awarded French rookie Roger Brousse victory over Britain’s Harry Mallin, the defending Olympic boxing champion, despite the contest being very much in Mallin’s favor. Mallin immediately launched an appeal, showing bite marks on his chest inflicted by his French opponent. Brousse was ultimately disqualified, and Mallin went on to become the first and only British male to successfully defend an Olympic boxing championship. But this helped sour the British on the Games. This sentiment was compounded by controversies in which the British were not directly involved in, like a fencing controversy between the Hungarians and Italians that resulted in an actual duel.

The British athletes did achieve victories, notably that of Harold Abrahams and Eric Liddell in track, performances later immortalized in the 1984 movie Chariots of Fire. Nevertheless, the Times of London columnist Sir Harry Perry Robinson wrote in August, shortly after the conclusion of the Games, that they “exacerbate international bitterness instead of soothing them.” An editorial in the same edition bemoaned that “shameful disorder, storms of abuse, free fights and the drowning of the national anthems of friendly nations by shouting and booing are not conductive to an atmosphere of Olympic calm.”

1924 wasn’t the first year that the Brits had questioned their participation in the Olympic Games. By the time the International Olympic Committee (IOC) formed in 1894, Britain, the self-proclaimed home of “modern sports,” already had its own ingrained sporting calendar, revolving around events like Ascot, Lord’s, Henley, and Wimbledon. Its preference had always been for the plethora of sporting events it organized and officiated. The consequence was that for the inaugural Olympic Games of 1896, Britain was represented by just 10 little-known athletes, several of whom came from the staff at the British Embassy in the host city of Athens. Britain’s Olympic organizing body, the British Olympic Association (BOA), wasn’t formed until 1905, nearly a decade after its counterparts in the U.S. and France.

When Britain hosted the Olympics for the first time three years later, in 1908, the U.S.  dominated in track and field, winning 16 of the 34 titles (while Britain only mustered seven). This victory of the “professional” American college system established a general feeling of negativity among the British public toward an “unwanted” addition to the sporting calendar; one that served to further damage the British ego, which was continually knocked at the start of the 20th century both on and off the sporting field.

Because of this, for the outspoken British press, the early Olympic Games didn’t feel as much a forum for British excellence but rather evidence of the nation’s physical decline.  After Britain only finished third in the medals table in the 1912 Stockholm Games, the Duke of Westminster branded the team’s poor performance a “national disaster.” That’s where the desire for Britain to drop out of the Olympics started in earnest. Nonetheless, Britain went in the other direction in its preparations for the 1916 Games, appointing its first-ever professional athletics coach to compete against its rivals for cultural, economic, and military dominance, in a period of heightened chauvinistic nationalism. But preparations for those Games ended in the summer of 1914 following the outbreak of World War I. Upon the resumption of the Olympics in 1920, there was no money for anything beyond sending a team to Antwerp and certainly no desire for expressions of nationalism following four years of bitter war.

The Paris Games of 1924 was perhaps a high point of British Olympic apathy, but despite the complaints of some, the growing international standing of the Games meant that the nation continued. Today, Great Britain remains just one of six countries to have competed at every Olympic Games.

As the Games (and Britain) return to Paris a century later, the world has accepted both the positivity of the Olympics in bringing nations together in friendly competition and the international incidents that they are poised to generate.

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Don’t worry, America.

We got this.

By “we,” I mean California.

By “this,” I mean this presidential election.

And by “got,” I mean that we are sending you the best possible candidate to weather whatever the next three-plus months hold.

Now let’s be honest about Kamala Harris. We’re not giving you our most charismatic public speaker. Harris’ sentences are sometimes as awkward as Joe Biden’s. She has a bad habit of fusing her talking points into word salads.

We’re not giving you our most disciplined politician. She’ll crack a joke when she shouldn’t or make a mistake in a meeting or at the border that requires political clean-up.

What we are giving you is our most enduring political escape artist. We are giving you someone who can emerge improbably triumphant from losing situations.

But, most of all, we are giving you someone who will take more crap than anyone possibly could, and never quit.

The best way to understand Kamala Harris, if you care to understand the person who (non-Trumpian God willing) will be our next president, is through a classic movie quote, courtesy of a prominent San Francisco political consultant named Eric Jaye.

The movie is The Shawshank Redemption, released in 1994 and based on a Stephen King novella that owes a debt to the French writer Alexandre Dumas’ The Count of Monte Cristo, a classic story about a prison break and unexpected revenge.

Years ago, Jaye suggested Kamala Harris was the California equivalent of the movie’s main character, Andy Dufresne, a falsely convicted banker who escapes Shawshank Prison through a 500-yard-long sewage pipe.

“Andy Dufresne,” Jaye said, quoting Morgan Freeman’s character in the movie, “who crawled through a river of shit and came out clean on the other side.”

Because Americans don’t know Harris this way, they are underestimating her. Just like they underestimate California.

Contrary to the stereotypes, 21st-century California is not soft or easy. It’s a crowded, crazily competitive place where everything is a struggle. It’s next to impossible to get into the school you want, or get a job that pays enough, or find an affordable place to live.

The real California made Harris tough. It helps that she grew up in a tough place and time—the madness of the late 1960s and early 1970s in Berkeley and in Oakland, which might be California’s toughest city. Her parents were scholars—not the toughest of professions—but they were immigrants, from India and Jamaica, who experienced tough adjustments to American life. And after their divorce, when Harris was still very young, she and her sister were raised almost entirely by their mother.

As a mixed-race kid, Harris struggled to fit in, at a newly integrated elementary school, and at both a Hindu temple and the 23rd Avenue Church of God. In her early teens, she was relocated to a foreign city, Montreal. She attended law school not in the leafy Ivy League like that supposed working-class hero JD Vance but at the UC Hastings, in the middle of San Francisco’s toughest neighborhood, the Tenderloin. And she worked as a prosecutor in Alameda County and then San Francisco, on the sorts of cases—sex crimes and child abuse—that can harden people.

She launched her political career in the hyper-competitive political culture of San Francisco, which forged many of our state’s toughest pols—Willie Brown, Nancy Pelosi, Phil and John Burton. Her first election, for San Francisco district attorney, was one she should have lost, because it was the trickiest challenge in politics—beating an incumbent who was also her boss. Somehow, she escaped with victory in a three-way race when she’d started in third.

Then Harris, still little known, ran statewide, for California attorney general—against a popular Los Angeles Republican named Steve Cooley who had the state’s law enforcement community behind him. On election night, she appeared to have lost. But when all the votes were counted three weeks later, she had squeaked through.

When a U.S. Senate seat opened in 2016, Harris was hardly the most popular Democrat in the state. But she jumped into the race early and managed to scare off other contenders and win the seat over another Democrat.

Harris’ 2020 presidential campaign was a disaster. She started strong in debates but didn’t make it to the Iowa caucuses, alienating both progressives and moderates. But even after that embarrassing campaign, she found a way through, convincing Biden to make her vice president.

Media and public reviews of her vice presidency have been dicey. She had too much staff turnover. Biden gave her impossible issues to manage, mainly immigration. For the first three years, her approval ratings and polling were lower than the president’s. She was cited as the reason he couldn’t retire after one term. But all those things turned. Her performance improved. And now Biden has bowed out and endorsed her for president because she looks like the stronger candidate.

She doesn’t have the nomination yet of course. She may have to go through a contested convention. And if she earns the nod, she’ll face a former president who is ready to attack.

Democrats are worried. Because Donald Trump is a constant font of lies and accusations. His strategy, as the now-imprisoned Trump advisor Steve Bannon has famously said, “is to flood the zone with shit.”

But this time, his opponent is Kamala Harris. She survived all the BS of San Francisco and California and national politics. She’s heard every disgusting sexist insult. She sloughed off slurs against two different races.

She’s about to be submerged in it all again. Because American politics is a river of you-know-what.

Which is why this is her moment.

Who is better equipped to navigate us through all the crap, and to the cleaner other side, than Kamala Devi Harris?

The post California Has Got This, America appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

If you were born any time after 1960, the first (and perhaps only) country that will come to mind when you think of “neutrality” is Switzerland—that tiny alpine nation that has been following a policy of “perpetual neutrality” for 200 years.

However, if you were born in the 1800s, the most obvious country that you would think of would be the United States of America.

George Washington declared American neutrality in his 1796 “Farewell Address.” “After deliberate examination […] I was well satisfied that our country, under all the circumstances of the case, had a right to take—and was bound in duty and interest to take—a neutral position,” the first U.S. president declared. He gave many reasons for his thinking, including that “a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils,” including binding the U.S. to interests and the wars of other states.

After that statement, neutrality remained a pillar of U.S. foreign policy for 150 years. But Washington’s definition of neutrality was hardly the only one in play.

Neutrality is a fuzzy concept that can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. In foreign policy, the term is used in at least three different ways: as a concept of international law, as a policy of states, and as an analytical category to describe the approaches of states toward certain conflicts. Within that framework, the meaning of neutrality frequently changes.

The U.S. history of neutrality exemplifies this. Indeed, the U.S. neutrality of Washington and of the early 19th century would look like a strange animal to us today, and very different from Switzerland’s version.

For instance, American neutrality did not preclude the U.S. from using warfare to achieve its goals elsewhere. It fought the Indigenous nations of North America in a series of bloody wars,  swallowed up the equally neutral Kingdom of Hawaii in 1899, and went to war with Mexico and Spain when that was in its interest.

From the beginning, U.S. neutrality policy was only directed toward Europe, and specifically toward European conflicts that the country wasn’t interested in. That included the first few years of the First and Second World Wars (1914-17 and 1939-41). The Americans only got rid of this neutrality-toward-useless-overseas-conflicts approach after the Japanese bombed them out of it in Pearl Harbor. So far, they haven’t returned to it.

At its time, this form of “occasional neutrality” was the norm. In fact, the 19th century was the global heyday of U.S.-style neutrality, because the balance of power that emerged after the early-1800s Napoleonic Wars provided relative stability to the Great Powers. That stability inspired more neutrality. Of course, this period was not peaceful—several small wars took place and the ramped-up colonization of Africa, Asia, and Australia killed millions of people. But the fact that no single Great Power could dominate the eight to 10 others led to each one of them having an interest in remaining neutral sometimes.

Hence, there was a strong desire for all powers to hammer out the concrete rules of engagement between belligerents and neutrals. This led to the codification of the “law of neutrality” in the 1899 and 1907 Hague Conventions. The conventions clearly stated the “do’s and don’ts” for neutrals and belligerents during war.

Today, the only states that still refer to these legalistic neutrality concepts are small, perpetually neutral states like Switzerland, Austria, or Ireland. They feel bound by neutrality law, which is why they refuse to export weapons to war zones (to Ukraine, for instance) or allow overflights to NATO countries that are engaged in military operations. Great Powers today, like the United States, China, or Russia, do not make use of this part of international law anymore.

The reason for that is well known. Since the Second World War, the U.S. has built what it now calls a “rules-based international system” that centers around alliance-building—from Israel to the NATO countries, Japan, the Philippines, and Australia. U.S. allies either help in interventions abroad (in Iraq, Syria, Libya, etc.) or allow the U.S. military to station personnel and assets on their soil and harbors, thereby enabling Washington to project unparalleled hard power with roughly 750 bases around the globe.

The allies, in return, receive guarantees of protection from Uncle Sam. No NATO country has ever been attacked by another state actor, nor has Japan seen any fighting since sticking to a grand bargain with the U.S. in the 1950s. In the Philippines and Taiwan, too, some believe that only their alliance with the U.S. deters China.

Instead, in the contemporary world neutrality is most often used to describe policies of states that, in one way or another, do not fall in line with other states toward a third-party conflict. Those states, however, don’t usually call themselves neutral, nor do they follow neutrality law; what they are neutral toward is often not even covered by the treaties of old.

Take, for example, the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) that formed during the Cold War. In response to the bipolar conflict between the two superpowers, recently de-colonized countries in Asia and Africa developed a loose coalition united by despising the idea of having to choose sides in an ideological conflict among former European colonizers. Countries like India, Indonesia, Ghana, or Egypt had no desire to pick a side between the Soviets and the West when they could remain on good terms with both sides and use trade with both to develop their economies and move away from dependence on former oppressors.

The NAM was and still is only a loose association of countries. Some, like the Philippines and Saudi Arabia, are even fixtures of the U.S. alliance system with military base agreements, showing that nonalignment and alliances can and do go together—international politics rarely is a binary affair. But since the outbreak of war between Russia and Ukraine, the NAM as a neutral block has again become relevant, with members refusing to choose sides.

Similarly, the BRICS+ states (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa and the 2024 additions of Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates) will likely also become a neutral block, because its members include friends and foes alike. China and India have open territorial disputes along their border, and Iran and Saudi Arabia are strongly opposed strategic rivals in West Asia. This all but ensures that the BRICS+ block won’t become a military alliance, but will remain institutionally tied to neutrality toward each other’s conflicts.

There is a propensity in the U.S. and Europe—especially in neoconservative circles—to view global security in a friend-foe schema, a Manichean black and white with the forces of good (democracies) on one side and evil (autocracies) on the other. But many nonaligned and neutral countries have a much more nuanced picture of international security.

There are moments when Western democracies and their allies make tremendous mistakes, like illegally invading Iraq and killing one million people, bombing Serbia and Libya, occupying parts of Syria in a stark breach of international law, or supporting the slaughter of tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians—not to mention the older mistakes of the Vietnam War or the overthrow of democratic regimes in Iran and Latin America. Such errors provide strong incentives to countries outside the immediate U.S. security regime to avoid hard alliances and opt for uncommitted, situational policies.

In short, there are many reasons why states decide to “go it alone” and not bind their fate to others. The international system’s dynamic and fluid amalgamation of interests and dependencies creates ever-changing compositions and conceptions of war, peace, and—indeed—neutrality.

The post When the U.S.A. Was Neutral appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

President Biden should drop out of the presidential race, but not because he is too old or too infirm.

He should drop out because he is not criminal enough to win.

The United States has broken bad—just look at our guns, our drugs, our major corporations—and a good and decent man no longer seems up to the job of running the country. We want our leaders to be scary because the world is scary. We’re looking for someone more cunning, more brutal, willing to violate the law or Constitution to serve and protect us.

This, not age, is the real story behind the reaction to the first presidential debate. Donald Trump broadcast his criminal id, lied constantly, defended his lawless January 6 coup, and suggested he would commit new crimes against the republic. For this, he was judged the winner. Meanwhile, Joe Biden played the kindly forgetful grandfather standing up for the rule of law and democracy—and created a political crisis that has many in his own party seeking to drive him from the race.

This post-debate reaction is hardly surprising. Criminality is politically powerful. Trump surged in his fundraising and maintained his lead in the polls after a New York jury convicted him on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records to conceal from voters his liaison with a porn star. Now, Democrats are encouraging Biden to behave more like Trump, by raising his voice, demonizing doubters, and talking as tough as Clint Eastwood’s convict in Escape from Alcatraz.

Some Americans remain puzzled that Americans would elect a criminal, or anyone who behaved like one. But the only real puzzle is why anyone is puzzled.

Criminal daring has always been useful to democratic leaders. Writing during the French Revolution—that violent and criminal launch of the modern republic—the Marquis de Sade, who spent much of his life in prison, observed, “It is certain that stealing nourishes courage, strength, skill, tact, in a word, all the virtues useful to a republican system.” From France to Brazil and beyond, human beings vote for politicians whom they suspect of crime and corruption.

There are three reasons for this. One reason is that the criminal or corrupt may be better than the alternatives. (Ask Louisianans about “voting for the crook” Edwin Edwards for governor over the former Klansman David Duke). Another reason is that being a president or prime minister requires dealing with foreign leaders who are criminals (see Putin, Vladimir).

Another, less discussed reason is representative: We humans want to see ourselves in our politicians, and we humans are a crooked species.

“There is no society known where a more or less developed criminality is not found under different forms,” Émile Durkheim wrote in his 1897 classic Suicide: A Study in Sociology. “We must therefore call crime necessary and declare that it cannot be non-existent, that the fundamental conditions of social organization logically imply it.”

Americans may not read much Durkheim, but our profoundly punitive country rivals dictatorships and autocracies in its fervor to lock up its people. So, it’s perfectly natural for huge percentages of Americans to want to see a convicted felon in the Oval Office.

Today, after generations of mass incarceration, one in three American adults has a criminal record. For context, that’s the same percentage of working-age adults who have four-year college degrees. The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University once determined that if all the Americans who had been arrested held hands, they would circle the globe three times.

If such comparisons don’t grab you, here’s something more political. In raw numbers, about 80 million Americans have a criminal record of some sort. Back in 2020, Joe Biden received just over 81 million voters in the November presidential election. As of spring 2024, 80.7 million Americans were registered as either Democrats or Republicans. Criminality and party membership are similarly common American experiences.

Which is why the Democrats should make sure they replace “good and decent” Biden with a convicted felon.

I mean, why give Trump the honor of making history as the first-ever convict in the Oval Office?

Alas, by this logic, my fellow Californian, Vice President Kamala Harris, won’t be Biden’s replacement. As a prosecutor with deep law enforcement experience, she’s the wrong fit for a country this crooked.

The good news is that other distinguished Californians boast criminal records. The actor Danny Trejo, an Angeleno, has developed a devoted following after spending his young adulthood in most of the great state prisons, including San Quentin, Folsom, Soledad, Vacaville, and Susanville. But Trejo is 80, and not nearly as well known as the best choice to take on the Biden mantle:

Snoop Dogg.

Born in Long Beach, Snoop (aka Calvin Broadus), 52, would bring clear convictions to the campaign: for cocaine possession in 1990, for gun possession during a 1993 traffic stop, and for charges of drug and gun possession in 2007. Snoop was also tried and acquitted of murder in 1996, an experience that more presidents should have, since the job is about making life-and-death decisions.

What makes Snoop the best choice, among the one-third of Americans with criminal histories, is just how expertly he’s mined his record to produce one of the most diverse and enduring careers in 21st-century entertainment. He’s a rapper, record producer, actor, tastemaker (with a taste for cannabis), comic, poet, author, and game show host. In 2022, demonstrating more mainstream credibility than any living politician, he headlined the Super Bowl halftime show.

And choosing a VP would be a no-brainer. Snoop and his friend and business partner, fellow ex-con Martha Stewart, have worked together on everything from TV shows to a line of handbags. Together, the two would make an unbeatable and utterly indecent presidential ticket.

Democratic elites, who include a lot of lawyers, might feel uncomfortable with someone with Snoop’s past in the White House. But that’s only because they fail to appreciate just how much the federal courts have changed the job.

Just this year, the Supreme Court made two rulings that blew the door wide open for criminal presidents. First, the court ignored the plain text of the 14th Amendment to determine that even a person who had committed the crime of insurrection against the country couldn’t be thrown off the ballot by a state. Then, earlier this month, the Court’s six-member conservative majority found that presidents have near-total immunity for crimes they commit in office.

If both the people and the highest court in the land want a crook in the White House, who dares stand in their way?

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