Habeas corpus: unnerving bilge from Team Trump

Habeas corpus is a hallowed doctrine, one of the glories of English law - though it doesn't necessarily mean what people take it to mean (see below).  It was also faithfully uploaded into the US Constitution, being considered by the founding fathers to be a critical component of the freedoms they'd fought for and sought to enshrine.

Accuracy as to what it does mean is completely lost on Kristi Noem, Trump's Secretary of Homeland Security.  Context: the Trump administration is seeking to deport, summarily, people it doesn't like: starting with foreign students but ultimately extending to pretty much anyone, it seems.  "Seeking" is actually too weak because they've already started: but various US courts have been digging in and make orders for the Executive to desist.  So now Team Trump is suggesting they'll suspend what they term the "privilege" of habeas corpus - unless the courts see sense and just get out of their way.  Unsurprisingly, this topic has come up in Congressional hearings, and when Ms Noem was asked what she understood by the doctrine, replied thus:

"Habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the President has to be able to remove people from this country." 

I'm no lawyer, but the summary I offer below is, I think, essentially accurate - and Noem is wildly, perversely, threateningly off the mark: willful Ministry of Truth stuff.  That's pretty scary from the mouth of a high official in the Executive - whether we think she really is just pig-ignorant, or whether it's the line she's been told to use.  (Her interrogator, Sen Hassan, was a lot better on the subject but not wholly accurate either.)  We've yet to see how ultimately successful the courts will be in reining back the illegalities of Team Trump's actions: but if they are cowed into subservience or just plain ignored, America - which I have huge regard for, personal long-term investments in, and where I have spent a lot of time - is in a very dark place.

To the extent that anyone thinks of it as a parlour-game to come up with sophistry favouring risible Trumpite interpretations of the US Constitution (see below), they need to have a serious think about the benefits of the Rule of Law, much under threat as it is in various walks of life right now, here as well as in the USA and elsewhere.  As Robert Bolt's More asks: when the laws are all down and the Devil turns on you - what then?

ND  

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Habeas corpus: an amateur summary   (mine, not ChatGPT's).  The origins of HC stem from a time when English barons and 'magnates' were wont to imprison people on their own say-so, just because they could.  The doctrine is that a person [the "corpus", i.e. body in question] detained by any power other than the due processes of law should be handed over (not necessarily released) to the proper authorities, to receive the King's Justice.  

In the US Constitution, HC is not a "privilege" to be suspended at the whim of Donald Trump or anyone else, but a constitutional right that, explicitly, may only be suspended in circumstances of invasion or insurrection when the safety of citizens is at risk.  (There seems to be some debate as to whether the power to suspend lies with the President or Congress.)  The "justification" that's being offered is, of course, that the President considers the USA is indeed under invasion ... (from illegal immigrants).   

The vacuous Noem further opined that "Lincoln used (sic) HC" to the ends that, she asserts, a President is entitled to.  This is entirely false: Lincoln (a lawyer, of course) suspended HC with due and accurate consideration in circumstances when he could make a very strong case indeed for there being an insurrection in the wholly literal sense; AND his action was highly controversial, contested actively in the courts, and was in no sense a flippant sleight-of-hand for reasons of mere convenience.  Trump's "invasion" is of course a very far-fetched confection under any sober interpretation of the word; and the idea that even a flood of illegals puts the safety of citizens at risk is an even further stretch.  Deploying these arguments against individuals that have been ruled by the courts as not in the USA illegally and not posing risk to citizens (as in several of the current cases) just caps the action as the monstrosity it would be, if the threat were actually to be carried out.  

Towards a Theory of 'Trump Ideology'

A few weeks ago we suggested that, while there are clear signs of their being some kind of doctrinaire, ideological approach(es) behind whatever might be called a 'Trump Programme', it was perhaps too soon to elaborate it methodically.

Work in progress, maybe: but here's an interesting stab at it:  Trump as an auto-immune disorder.  What's particularly good about this is that it offers a thoughtful angle on one critical aspect of the puzzle, namely, why aren't the legendary Checks & Balances working?   I have a bit of a theory on this myself; but here's a much more fully-developed one.  It also makes a neat point about the difference between business conducted in markets, and business conducted via barter-like deals, which I think we could profitably come back to another time.

Not too long, and well worth adding to the evolving body of intelligent ruminative literature.  A couple of extracts: 

Other tinpot dictators – like Modi, Erdoğan, Putin, Xi**, Orbán – and their countries are distinct from the US in an important way. These autocrats do not have comparable democratic institutions. They can capture, subvert or sabotage democratic traditions in their own countries, using their own means. In each of them, there are longstanding traditions of inequality (such as caste in India), vigorous and celebrated imperial histories (Turkey, Russia and China) and deep traditions of racial and religious nationalism (Hungary and India).  But they do not have the special strengths of American democracy: a sturdy commitment to separation of church and state; the distribution of powers between legislature, judiciary and executive; and a deep antipathy towards tyrants, royal or otherwise... [Trump] has hit upon an original formula: to reverse-engineer the liberal institutions designed as guardrails against people like him.

 Trump loves wealth, ostentation and deals, but he hates markets, not because of their imperfections but because they, in principle, rest on ... supply and demand, the rationality of prices, all of which are safeguards against political fiat, personal greed and efforts to cook up macro outcomes for micro reasons. This hatred of markets unites all of today’s autocrats, because markets make their oligarchies unstable and their nationalist fiscal policies responsive to global finance ... they fear the power of global financial markets to shake their national economic goals.  [Trump] disdains the market – because it obeys no master other than its own rules of price, volume and scale. His weapon against it is tariffs, which he wields in the hopes of bringing it under his control. The market relies on the social contract, that agreement between individuals and government that is based in trust and predictability. Since Trump despises the market, he must dismantle the social contract, in all its forms and guises.

ND

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** Not sure "tinpot" is exactly appropriate for Xi ...

The U-Turn as Art Form

Until now, the Starmer-Reeve style has been to face down - and double-down on - all demands for policy U-turns.  It's been more than a style, it's been their carefully-crafted, McSweeney-minted modus operandi: Mr Tough Guy who'll see everyone off by sheer force of political will.  Don't like it, O weak-kneed Cabinet colleague?  Well, tough titty because you'll be defending it on the Sunday TV politics shows, and here are your lines-to-take.  You, too, O snowflake Labour MP?  It's backbench obscurity for you, or maybe the loss of the Whip.  Everything becomes a virility test for everyone on the government benches. 

Looks like Winter Fuel Allowance might just have been a step too far, though - we can see why - and there are plenty of other unpopular policies in the same line of country.  It'll be interesting to see how the spin-doctory stuff is handled.

Bad Al: master of the Dark Arts

Of course, covering for U-turns and reverse-ferret operations is meat and drink for the practitioners of the Dark Arts.  As Kipling said to Asquith in WW1, you set the policy, I'll find the words.  You sense they actually relish the intellectual challenge involved, just as did Syme in 1984.  (McSweeney is a bit more of an O'Brien character, if not the full Bad Al Campbell.)

However.  Their cunning wheeze for the WFA reversal seems to be: we can, and indeed should do it now - because the economy is in better shape.  Thanks to us and our tough decisions!!!  See what we did there?  Oh, how clever these spinners are.

But this comes out on the day both inflation and government borrowing turn out to be "higher than forecast", and quite noticeably, too (just how stupid are these forecasters?).  Some *inconsistency* there?

Don't worry: the masters of Doublethink will be up to the challenge!  Of that we may be sure.  "2 + 2 = 5", eh?

OS

Trump's team & the remarkable tale of the M10 tank

While Trump is stomping the world making desperate attempts to sate his Deal Lust at whatever cost to plausibility, partnerships, policy or prestige, business goes on in the vastness of the US government: and it seems possible not all of his appointees are complete dickheads.  I give you the youthful Army Secretary Dan Driscoll (wiki doesn't seem to know quite how old he is).

The M10 'Booker'.  Of no use to man nor beast

Upon taking office this chap has noticed that the M10 Booker program - a tank? an assault gun? an "armored infantry support vehicle"? - is, in any event, a costly dud.  And rather than soldier on regardless, as in many a similar circumstance over the decades, he has simply scrapped it, boldly and wisely stating that he ain't gonna fall for the Sunk Cost Fallacy.  

What a man! 

The soundness of his decision-making is of course compounded many-fold by the war in Ukraine, which signals as clearly as anything could that the weapons and doctrinal paradigms of the 20th Century are badly in need of 100% overhaul, not to say wholesale discarding.  In the race to do this effectively, every dollar spent on badly-procured, intrinsically obsolete stuff like the M10 is a dollar wasted, that could have been spent much better on something so completely different, it makes the head spin. 

In another excellent move, the US Army is not going to replace its 150,000 lumbering Humvees like-for-like.  For infantry purposes they are going instead for this - at a fraction of the cost.  

The Mad Max vibe obviously represents the future: see also the Russians abandoning the use of APCs for assault use - they get instantly malleted by Ukrainian drones - in favour of motorbikes on weaving courses to traverse the open fields between tree-lines.

I do feel sorry for the descendants of the two Booker families being commemorated.  Hopefully, they can take faint cheer from the wisdom of Driscoll's action.

Anyhow: to encounter a politician who properly understands the Sunk Cost Fallacy is a rare event, much to be applauded.  (Maybe there are other such people in Team Trump ..?)  As a matter of urgency, can Driscoll take Ed Miliband aside, please?  Hinkley Point, Sizewell, government-financed hydrogen projects etc etc, this means you.

ND 

How troubled is China about Trump's tariffs?

I mean, really troubled -?  Obviously, China has done very well out of the pre-existing "free trade" regime (everything is relative).  Obviously, the CPC (a) talks a good fight, and will always counterpunch stoutly as a reflex; and (b) ultimately doesn't mind imposing suffering on its people, provided the cause is sufficiently important strategically.

Whatever: they seem to have come to the table.  Sometimes the calm, confident-sounding bellicosity is a face-saving reflex.  Then again, Trump changes his story every day or so to maintain the spin on the wobbly plate of his bizarre policy-making, and is pretty keen on saving his own, errr, tanned face.  And as neutral venues go, Switzerland looks a bit more of a western location than, say, Singapore or Dubai would have done.  So far, so convenient for Trump's spin.

That said, there are a couple of other straws in the wind.  Firstly, following Xi's appearance in Moscow - a priceless morale-boost for Putin, so we know where the balance of obligations should now lie - and to China's serious annoyance, Russian online media have been showcasing clips of a tic of Xi's: he was spotted in Moscow letting his head drop a bit to one side, seemingly an involuntary slump before bringing himself back upright again.  It's been bruited about that this may be a sign of stroke, etc, yadder yadder.  Well, maybe he was just bored stiff: people are always speculating about health and striving for clickbait opportunities ... but, hey, this is Xi, the sole arbiter of Putin's future, in Russia, being poked by Russian media.  

And what it there's a soupçon of truth in it?

I'd say, the Taiwanese better start trembling.  That man wants them in the bag before he goes.  In all the crazy circumstances, who could be utterly amazed to wake up one morning to a fait accompli in the East China Sea?  Tariffs or no tariffs.

ND

Critical Mass: UK armed forces don't have it

We're potentially at a crucial juncture.  Enthused by his foreign adventures and how he is received overseas, Starmer talks openly about putting boots on the ground and planes in the air in Ukraine.  But he's also commissioning a review of our preparedness for a Russian attack at home.  ('But ...'?  Maybe that should be 'So' ...) 

Well let's save time & money and just tell him: we're horribly, horribly exposed.  No AA defence to speak of, for starters.  Much-denuded magazine depth.  Hugely vulnerable infrastructure.  Fewer battlefield drones than the Ukrainians expend in a day - and no experience or doctrine as to how to use the ones we have, past "experiments" having been a pitiful failure (Watchkeeper, this means you.)  No indigenous manufacturing capability to produce 90% of what we need.  Population demographics that could not underpin any type of call-up of the type needed to provide mass infantry.  (Don't be under any kind of illusion that drone warfare doesn't need many grunts at all.)

And - here's the biggie - no longer the critical mass in the standing army & navy (and probably not airforce, either) to mount either a major, sustained operation, nor a rapid build-up.  To the extent we are valued and even admired as a military power that can (genuinely) punch about its weight, it's because of (a) a number of specialisms that have - thus far - survived; (b) some plum overseas assets (Cyprus being top of the list); and (c) the ability to operate - thus far! - with the USA at our backs.  But - sustaining them gets progressively more difficult as critical mass seeps away.  Oh - and aside possibly from our increasingly worried Australian cousins, nobody is the slightest bit impressed by Gordon Bloody Brown's bloody aircraft carriers - a drain on the defence budget and an all-round vainglorious embarrassment.  

We've talked about critical mass before, in several contexts but most specifically including the military.  Here's a really interesting contribution on the subject.  Read it and weep.

Now, Starmer, how's your grandiose foreign policy / strategy looking? 

ND

Iberian blackout: all eyes on this one

Have been abroad this week, but fortunately not on the Iberian peninsular or southern France.  cascading blackouts like that are seriously no supposed to happen.  Speculation ahead of a proper post mortem is interesting only on an ad hominem basis: what explanation does a particular party instinctively reach for, and what does that tell us?

The continental TV I have been watching hasn't been slow to wonder whether grid decarbonisation doesn't have something to do with it, whilst carefully phrasing this as what "some people" are speculating.  Which suggests the green/progressive camp rather fears decarbonisation will ultimately feature in the account.  It kinda has to, because there is so much continual changing and tampering going on, and in the middle of all this, the Bad Thing has happened.

A couple of things are worth emphasising.  This genuinely is a very Bad Thing (albeit "could have been worse"), which isn't tolerable, even as a once-in-a-while event.  It's up there with Boeings operated by competent airlines that fall out of the sky.  Wholly unacceptable.

And: spin & framing notwithstanding, we will eventually get a proper account, which doubtless the greens (however technically ignorant) have been told.  There is a whole world of grid expertise out there, that (a) wants to know; (b) can detect BS at a thousand paces; and (c) won't be slow to let us all in on what's been found.  

ND