The Two Games Aren't Level: Dems Shouldn't Cooperate but Countries Should Pander

 I am seeing some stories of Democrats trying to pick off some elements of the Trump 2.0 agenda and agreeing to cooperate with them while I also saw much condemnation of Canadian PM Trudeau for going to Marlago to pander to Trump.  This is exactly backwards.  The key is this: the Democrats and foreign leaders are playing completely different games so don't expect them to behave the same.

The easier thing is foreign leaders: yes, going to meet with Trump legitimizes Trump a bit.  But foreign leaders have no choice--the American people elected Trump president again.  Yes, it sucks, but here we/they are.  The President is the actor for any country around the globe in normal times, and when the President happens to threaten his opponents or even his supposed friends with political violence and when his party is full of cowards yet they dominate every national institution, a foreign leader has to interact with Trump.  

This pic also legitimates Ivanka... yuck

People's memories are short, but very prominent and powerful leaders visited Trump in December of 2016 to get a sense of Trump and also, yes, to pander to him.  Trump is easy to manipulate if you know how, and flattery will get you very far.  Japan's Prime Minister Abe played Trump early and it paid dividends for the entire Trump 1.0 administration.  Did Japan get heaps of crap for not spending 2%?  Not nearly as much as other countries.  As far as I can recall, Japan did not get nearly as much pressure as South Korea for the privilege of hosting American troops.  

To be clear, this time, trying to go around Trump will not work.  Team Canada did a great job playing to Republicans in Congress and to Republican governors to try to minimize Trump's threats to the US-Canada trade relationship.  This time, it will simply not work.  This GOP is not the same GOP--it is now thoroughly Trump's party, which means they will do his bidding most of the time even if it hurts the interests of their district or state.  They live in fear of his encouraging them to be primaried or to have his supporters sicced on them.  So, yeah, Trudeau pandering to Trump's ego is the right move.  Will Pierre Poilevre be able to do so or will Trump look at him like he looks at Ted Cruz?

On to the Dems.  They need to oppose everything Trump does.  They need to make him fail.  This worked for the GOP, so time to learn from the opposition. The Dems need to paint every bad thing as being Trump's fault, they need to block as much as they can for as long as they can.  His policies will do harm, and the "good" ones will only provide cover for the bad ones.  Working with Musk and Vivek on the dodgy DOGE bullshit only grants it legitimacy it should not have.  The problem with government is not that it is wasteful--the problem with government today is that the GOP prevents it from serving the American people.  Remember what the Postal Service did during the first Trump Admin?  FFS.

Musk should be confronted at all times--he has not been confirmed by the Senate, DOGE is not a legitimate government agency, it should not be treated as anything other than a billionaire's club.  

To be clear, the election was close, and Harris lost because the pandemic and international dynamics produced inflation.  It was not a mandate for radical change that Trump proposes.  While the immigration message played well, there is no immigration crisis and it should not be granted the status of a real thing.  The Dems should fight back on that even if it is not popular at the moment.  It will become more popular as Trump's massive deportation hurts lots of Trump voters and everyone else and as it devastates the economy.  Get in front of it, for fuck suck.  

The only thing the Dems should avoid doing is hurting people.  So, the Dems can't close the government in a bargaining situation with Trump.  But then again, they don't control either house, so that's not really a choice.  But they should block everything else.  Stand for something.  And don't grant any of Trump's initiatives any legitimacy.  Unlike a foreign leader, you don't have to work with Trump.

Canada and American Asylum: Invoking Madisynn

[Caveat: I am not an immigration lawyer, but friends of mine who have explored this option have not found clear answers from immigration lawyers]

  It is not what you think.  Every four years, I would hate folks who said that they would flee to Canada due to a bad US presidential election result.  This time is very different.  Last Trump election did produce a bunch of people who did try to flee to Canada, some at great cost as they tried to walk into the country in mid-winter, losing lives and limbs.  This time it will be very different.

Canadian authorities need to be thinking about this RIGHT NOW, as the weaponization of the Department of Justice with Matt Gaetz Pam Biondi as Attorney General and Kash Patel as head of the FBI will people to rightly fear prosecution and persecution.  Not to mention "massive deportation" where the US government will put people into concentration camps before sending them to whatever country that will take them (Rwanda?)  There has been much discussion of target lists for those who have had the temerity to be decent public servants, real political opponents, or honest, dedicated journalists.  

Should they flee to Canada?  The more important question is: can they? First, the existing asylum policy is mostly focused on an agreement with the US that if an asylum claimant first goes to the US, they can't seek asylum in Canada, and if they first get to Canada, they can't claim it in the US.  Notice this does not really imagine Americans residing in the US seeking asylum in Canada.  So, it is not clear what will happen if Americans just show up in Canada and then seek asylum.  The good news is that they can get in, claiming to be a tourist or whatever, and then they can go .... damn, I have no idea.  But they can get in to the country. But staying?  No idea.

Which gets to the second thing: how about immigration? Can't Americans immigrate into Canada? Mostly, there are two pathways: family reunification and employment.  Americans can't just immigrate--they have to apply and there are processes.  If one has a job offer from a Canadian entity, then one can become a temporary resident that can lead to permanent residency and ultimately citizenship (as happened in my case).  However, the Canadian employer will have to justify why they need to hire a foreigner rather than a Canadian, and most employers don't want to go through this effort or subsidize the applications of the candidates.  My immigration was part of a larger federal policy aimed at reversing the brain drain, and McGill University also had no hesitancy about claiming that some academic was special enough that there were no Canadians that were as worthy.  So, immigration is hard but not impossible, costly and not free.

Third, Canada is not a paradise.  We are very much likely to elect a transphobic government (plus a few provinces are already enacting transphobic policies), so trans people seeking to escape persecution in the US may not find Canada to be that great of a place. 

Fourth, getting back to asylum, the Canadian government is going to have to think about the consequences of granting asylum to Trump's targets like General (ret.) Mark Milley or the Biden family or whatever.  If China is willing to hold a couple of Canadians hostage for a couple of years because Canada holds onto an extradition target, what would the Trump administration do if Canada grants asylum to some visible targets of Trump's resentment?  I wouldn't count on Canada to being that brave about it.  

Sorry for the pessimism here, but better to have a realistic plan than a dream when seeking to avoid persecution.  And, yes, Canadians will feel like shit and apologize a lot, but may not be that helpful. 

Despite, Thanksgiving

This may be the hardest year to give thanks.  Not only because a convicted felon was elected President, but because I lost my mother this year, my wife has been dealing with her mother declining, and my daughter's production company closed its doors.  It has been a hard year in many ways, but the only way to get through this madness and the sadness is to hold onto the good stuff.  And there was good stuff this year despite all the bad stuff.

 

 

The year started with two amazing trips back to back.  I got to ski Hokkaido with my sister, her boyfriend, and his kids, and then I got to join my brother in a couple of the most magical places with my cousin, his wife, and his kids joining us in the second place for two days of great rides.  I am very thankful both my sister and brother as well as my cousin for enticing me into such fun trips.  

I am very grateful to the two H's that dominated my winter: Humboldt and Hertie. The former funded my time in Germany for three months in 2024 and three more in 2025, and the latter was a terrific host last winter and again next winter.  It was a great environment to get a sense of what Europeans were thinking, to get feedback on my work, and to do research in both Berlin and Helsinki.  Oh, and being based in berlin for three months gave me opportunities to do some more travel--Vienna for a talk, parts of Germany for Hertie events, southern Germany and Italy with Mrs. Spew, and some Austrian Alp skiing.

 

I am very grateful for a very supportive family.  We got together twice in the aftermath of my mother's passing--a short shiva in NYC and the first wedding of the next generation.  Much solace to grieve in company and then to celebrate some love.  Oh, and the wedding had llamas!

I am thankful for the summer providing some quick distractions from the sadness: a CDSN edited volume workshop (on which I am quite behind in editing), a great ERGOMAS conference in Stockholm, and then a few days at the NATO summit in DC with my favorite NATO expert and former podcast co-host.  

I was quite glad to see family again in late summer in western Canada as the summer family vacation was reset to Vancouver and Victoria.  I had been to the former a few times, but my first Victoria trip plus heaps of time with my two sisters, my brother, and a couple of nieces. 

The fall brought a heap of CDSN fun.  I am so grateful for the great team that does all of the heavy-lifting especially Melissa and Sherry.  We did a heap of great stuff--the Summer Institute, the book workshop, helping IUS-C, all of the podcasts, and it only works with so many people sharing their expertise and enthusiasm.  And I have had to ask a lot more from everyone as we start the process of seeking funding for another 3 or 7 years.  The grants require a lot of teamwork and a lot of time from many people, and I am so very thankful to have such great partners in this endeavor.

Oh and the fall brought back the 1980s!  First my 40th high school reunion and then Bruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuce!  

My family has faced much stress this year, so I am most thankful for their resilience.  The only way out is through, and we know that some parts are going to get harder.  Other parts hopefully will be less stressful and more fun.  We are now planning ski trips and another Eurotrip for Mrs. Spew.  

Oh, and we can bake our way through it, of course. My sister made 7 pies for today, while I am 60% of the way through my cookiefest.  I hope you and yours are having a great Thanksgiving.

So It Begins: The Military and Massive Deportation

We have now entered the find out phase of the election--who will be appointed to what positions?

We might be feeling some relief that relatively sane sycophants like Marco Rubio are being named to Secretary of State.  That Kristi Noem is awful, but can she actually manage the Department of Homeland Security.

But on the other side, the truly awful are getting into key positions.  Stephen Miller, who is the most hateful and hated Trump player, will be Deputy Chief of Staff, which means he will be close to Trump all the time.  Tom Homan, who was a key player in family separation under Trump 1.0, is now back.  Listen to him:

incoming Trump "border czar" Tom Homan on Fox Business says he expects the military to be involved in his mass deportation

[image or embed]

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.bsky.social) November 12, 2024 at 10:07 AM

Which raises the question of what roles the US military might play in massive deportation:

1. Special ops, as Homan suggests, to go after the cartels.  Which means the US is waging war inside of Mexico and perhaps against Mexico.
2. Providing the external cordons of sweeps for those that are being deported.
3. Building the concentration camps and perhaps providing some of the guards for these places until the contracts can be written to provide private prison companies with sweet deals (who will be checking which companies grease which decision-makers?)
4. Repressing protests as people start to realize the scope/scale/cruelty of the deportation.

 The US military will follow lawful but awful orders.  The special ops stuff will not face resistance, I think, as this fits into their skill set and does not deviate from the kind of missions they have done elsewhere.  Plus we have had a shit ton of pop culture tell us that special ops are great for killing drug dealers.  Building concentration camps?  Fencing and pitching tents?  Part of the day job, and won't be seen as problematic until it is too late.  

It really is about 2 and 4.  What is involved with this?  Sending MPs into push protestors around?  Easy to imagine.  Sending in regular troops to confront large groups of protestors?  I have a research assistance looking into the literature on when democratic militaries repress or refuse, so I don't know right now what will happen.  Indeed, no one knows, because it is never clear what will happen when troops are giving orders to fire upon civilians until the decision point is upon us.  

I am fully engaged in doomerism, but pretty much any massive deportation pathway leads to cruelty and death.  Whether it causes a full-scale crisis in American civil-military relations where the military either defies the civilian authorities or engages in large scale repression of the public is not clear.  But the odds are far greater than they should be.  I am waiting to see who is named Attorney General and who is named SecDef, as those are the key appointments that will signal how massive deportation will be conducted and how much the military will be dragged into and torn apart by it.

 

Bruuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuce

 Such an awful week, but it ended well for me and Mrs. Spew.  For her big birthday, I splurged on tickets to see Bruce Springsteen.  I have been to less than 10 rock concerts in my life as I tend to fall asleep--watching people make music just doesn't entertain me much, but I figured Bruce would be an exception.  And I was not wrong. 

Bruce and the E Street Band put out so much energy that even in the very last row at the back of the arena, I could not help but have more energy at the end of the night than at the beginning.  And that is despite weathering one of the more severe colds I have had.  

I am not a musician (Oberlin let me in to prove they don't discriminate against those with no musical ability), so I can't speak to the musicianship of the band.  All I can say is that they have great stamina and passion as Bruce would do the count for the next song as the previous song was still echoing in the arena.  The choir occasionally took breaks, but for much of the concern, the band and especially Bruce just kept going and going.

I was surprised it took about 1.5 hours before he told his first story (and the only one) of the night.  It was about how his first bandmate from his first band died recently.  Yep, Bruce is sensing his mortality, especially with the loss of two members of the band (Clarence Clemons has been replaced by his nephew).  But he sure doesn't play like a 75 year old.  I hope I have about 25% of his passion and energy and physical fitness when I get there.

I never saw him live before, so I never thought of him as a talented guitarist, but he did some excellent work there.  The kazoo?  That I knew a
bout.  

Bruce didn't yank up a young woman to do Dancing in the Dark, but he did bring up a boy and had him sing a bit.  Nope, the kid was not a good singer, but the moment was special nonetheless.  

It is easy to rank this concert given how few I have seen.  It was either the best concert or second best to Billy Joel in London or San Diego.  I am glad I got a chance to experience the 2.5 hours of Bruce in person.  

And, yes, I was a bit surprised by one of the encores, but it is close enough to be seasonally appropriate, but I can't seem to be able to post my video of Bruce singing Santa Claus is coming to town.
 

Looking for Upside? CDSN's Domestic Ops Rock

Niru, Manu, and some of the other participants.
The post workshop dinner is not way we do this
but it is not not why we do this.

 This has been a crushing few days, and the hits will keep on coming.  But I can take some solace from the work we have been doing over the past few years.  Three years ago, the CDSN received funding from the Department of National Defence's MINDS program to address "Global Emergencies and Canadian Resilience."  That year, the MINDS program wanted research networks that addressed, among many other challenges/priorities, global health, supply chain vulnerability, the new NATO climate security centre of excellence, and domestic emergency operations.  We are coming to the end of this three year grant, and our next MINDS network grant application will focus on other stuff as DND's priorities have shifted.

 

Our CDSN Post-Doc,
Manu Ramkumar gave a
great talk on the
Singapore case

So, this was the last of the three workshops in Toronto run by Nirupama Agrawal, a professor of disaster management at York University, on what we can learn from Canada's domestic emergency operations.  She keeps bringing together military folks who are the key connections in Ontario with Ontario emergency management people, Indigenous folks who are involved in this stuff, academics, and municipal folks who do this stuff.  I finally attended one of her workshops as she kindly did not schedule it this time as the same time as US Thanksgiving.  

I am so grateful to Niru.  She got her students involved, they did a great job of running the day.  It was held in the Royal Canadian Military Institute, where I got to stay overnight.  It is a funky place, with lots of displays, libraries, bars, and history.  See the pics below.  I did guess during my talk that there are no displays of domestic emergency ops, and I was mostly right.  There was some stuff about the Canadian Rangers, who are northerners who play multiple roles as the eyes and ears of the military in the Arctic, but not anything else.

Why does that matter?  Well, I opened my intro talk with a discussion of what the CDSN is and does, and then talked about Canadian civil-military relations.  My usual shtick that the military wants to be autonomous and has more autonomy than most democratic militaries, and that the civilians are not doing much oversight.  When it comes to domestic ops, there is a basic disjuncture--the military doesn't want to do it and it successfully gets it listed at the bottom of the priorities of every defence policy document, and the population values this stuff quite a lot.  The civilians in government do not seem to be interested in getting this preference through to the military.  

After I spoke, we had a number of speakers who have real experience in this stuff, and I learned that there is far better coordination and lessons learned among the various actors.  I still am not sure how much Ontario is really picking up its share of responsibilities on this (there is a basic temptation for the provinces to shirk since they don't have to pay the bills when the CAF does the work even though the CAF could bill them--politically impossible to do so).  The military folks there were super sharp and had good stories to tell about how things play out in such efforts.  There is definitely room for improvement as the CAF is always asked to do more than their assigned tasks when they do engage in a domestic op (hey, can you take my appliances out of my flooded basement?).  

 

 

 

WWI flag with the scars of battle

Once again, the biggest challenges are how to deal with natural disasters that affect the Indigenous communities since the history of settler-ness means these places have poor infrastructure and are vulnerable to disasters.  Yanking them out in an emergency and evacuating them may be preferable to their being killed, but it is a crappy way to live.  So, there was some discussion of some efforts to improve their capacity to protect themselves.

 

 

I am very, very pleased and proud of what Niru and her students have accomplished.  This grant is ending, but we will certainly stay in the Niru business in one way or another, and our civ-mil stuff will ponder the domestic ops of it all.  I am just very grateful for the accidental networking that led to this partnership.

 And now a few random shots from our tour of RCMI:

An original copy of the letter
Ike sent the troops on the eve of D-Day

 

Display of women at war
featuring future CDS
Jennie Carignan

Display of Carignan's A-stan gear

 

 

Mea Culpa 2: Return of the Cruel

 Once again, I got the election wrong, spectacularly so.  Was confirmation bias the key?  Partly but mostly too much and too little comparative analysis.

Too much: yes, people were pissed at inflation, but it is down now and this government did better than any other at getting their country to a soft landing quickly.  Also, best wage growth for middle and lower class folks in decades.  But, nope, Americans don't think comparatively.  They were pissed about inflation and not elated about the low unemployment.  That Biden avoided a recession got no rewards.

Too little: turns out every democracy in 2024 had the incumbents losing and by big numbers.  Harris's loss was smaller than all, which might give her some due and undue credit.  US institutions and polarization limit how much she could possibly lose. 

Which gets us to the real puzzle of the election: why didn't Democrats turn out? Harris got something like 14 million votes less than Biden.  Trump got fewer votes than 2020.  All Harris really needed was to get something like 5-6 million less than Biden.  Perhaps I was deceived by the reports of my friends doing get out the vote stuff and by the fact that the Harris campaign did a lot of GOTV stuff and Trump's was run by Musk (who sucks at everything besides getting attention).  So, why did Harris not get as many votes as one might have expected:

• Incumbency.  The thing I got most wrong in my prediction post is that I thought she successfully flipped the script and positioned herself as the change candidate and Trump as the incumbent. Nope, nope, nope.
• Abortion/Dobbs didn't have the same magic on turnout this time as 2022.  Why?  I am guessing that it was partly due to the referenda that were supposed to generate turnout.  Instead, people didn't understand that these referenda would not actually protect their states from an anti-abortion government--they thought they got their umbrellas via these referenda so they could go out in the rain.  
• Racism and sexism.  Men of all kinds voted against Harris.  That a second woman lost to a clearly disqualified/unqualified man requires some consideration.  Trump won his gamble that his racism would not be problematic to men who didn't want a woman in the White House.
• No one cares about VPs.  Walz was fun, but only helped in Minnesota, JD Vance was awful but no one cared even though he has the best chance of any recent VP of becoming President.  
• Our pop culture heroes don't matter.  Beyonce, Taylor, Lebron don't move the needle.  
• The aforementioned split tickets--NC should have dragged down the GOP, but perhaps what happened was that queasy Dems knew that the Dem gov candidate would win and then didn't show up to vote for Harris.

The flip side is how could people vote for a convicted felon who also happened to be an insurrectionist.  Turns out Jan 6th didn't move the needle. Last year's inflation (and yes, prices haven't dropped, but they don't without some suffering) matters more than the threat to democracy.  What matters more to Trump voters are change, rejecting the status quo, resentment, fear, and ignorance.  Seeing a young woman say that Trump wouldn't ban abortion was just appalling.  That people don't understand what mass deportation really means is partly on the Dems but mostly on the media but also on the voters themselves.  They don't care about that or the cruelty directed at transpeople.  Yes, we only have two real choices, but showing displeasure at the status quo meant voting for the cruel and the corrupt.  That should have made a difference, but it didn't so that says much about a good hunk of the American electorate.

Which leads to this: that so many future targets of mass deportation voted for the party of mass deportation is just horrifying and appalling.  That Latino men might think they are immune because they are citizens, because they were here before the Anglos, because their families immigrated legally, whatever is even worse wishful thinking than I induldged in before Tuesday.  Empowering racist cops and sheriffs (and maybe militias?) to enforce mass deportation means lots of false positives--that people who are not undocumented migrants--will get swept up and sent to places that don't have due process and assume that those incarcerated don't have full citizenship rights.  Sure, people will learn to carry birth certificates and passports just to leave the house (papers, please!), but asshole cops and sheriffs can just take the docs and toss them aside and deny they have done so.  The people who will be enforcing the mass deportation sweeps are going to be the worst people, and they will have immunity (see Project 2025).  The camps don't have to be set up by super competent people.  They will have crappy sanitation and they will overcrowded and they won't be safe in summer (no AC) or in winter (no heating, little shelter).  And people will die due to reckless disregard (this is how concentration camps work) while the US govt spends a tremendous amount of its political capital and leverage forcing countries to accept the 10 million.  

People didn't take Trump seriously last time, but he did do a heap of bad that has been memory holed. His big campaign promises of banning Muslims and building a wall happened even if it was a shitty wall. I fully expect a weaponized Department of Justice and mass deportation to happen.  And both will be so very destructive including to those that voted for Trump.

Yes, I am angry.  Not just at myself for my wishful thinking and confirmation bias, but at the Democrats who didn't show up and let this happen and to the Trump voters who cared more about imaginary fears of an immigration crisis, who didn't care about a competent government doing much to improve things despite a Congress blocking its way, and who didn't mind either the cruelty aimed at trans people or the corruption and bullying of Trump and his people.

So, no, I am not sleeping well.  I am not sure how long this nightmare will last.  Our best hope is that we have a real election in 2 years which changes Congress so that it stop some of the worst excesses and that the GOP gets tossed in 4 since the pattern of the last three elections is tossing out whichever incumbent.  But that aforementioned weaponization of DoJ might mean that political opponents get arrested so that elections become farces.  That is how competitive autocracy works.